Historically, McMaster Students Union presidential candidates often have big dreams to tackle issues concerning marginalized communities. Topics that reappear every year include accessibility, reducing financial barriers and sexual violence support. While these platform points can be well-intentioned, they can often be examples of poor allyship instead. Using people of colour, the 2SLGBTQ+ community, disabled people and survivors as talking points for campaigning can be insensitive if candidates are unable to follow through with their platform points.
There are clear examples of platforms that have done this. In 2018, past MSU president Ikram Farah campaigned on reducing financial barriers by re-evaluating the Ontario Student Assistance Program’s structure and reworking it to accurately reflect tuition cost discrepancies between different programs. This would mean that two students who paid different tuition amounts, and who previously qualified for the same amount of financial aid, would instead receive aid that was proportional to their costs. Although Farah completed her presidential term in April 2019, any advocacy done surrounding OSAP hasn’t had a huge impact on OSAP’s structure.
In 2019, current MSU president Josh Marando promised to hire an additional sexual violence response coordinator to address the lack of support for survivors of sexual violence. Marando still has three months left in his term, but the efforts into hiring a new sexual violence response coordinator seem to be lacking. So far, an additional sexual violence response coordinator has yet to be hired.
In addition to an absence of follow-through, candidates also often fail to consult adequately. This year, MSU presidential candidate Krystina Koc aimed to address student safety due to the Westdale and Thorndale break-ins that occurred last year, and to increase support to Maccess. However, Koc’s consultations about student safety were limited and she failed to consult Maccess regarding how to best improve support.
Incoming MSU President Giancarlo Da-Ré’s plans to improve accessibility by making the MSU website compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and increasing the number of courses that use Echo360 to record lectures. He also wants to implement consent culture modules that would be mandatory for welcome week representatives. Although Da-Ré states he has done 100 consultations and has platform points surrounding accessibility and consent, he did not consult Maccess or the Women and Gender Equity Network prior to campaigning.
Evidently, solidarity with low-income students, people of colour, survivors and disabled people have been a large topic of discussion within presidential platforms. However, these campaign points are rarely acted upon or are executed poorly. This leaves me and many others with questions: if these points don’t result in any visible change, why have them in your platform at all?
During campaign season, presidential candidates are trying to win students’ votes. Therefore, it’s usually important to maintain a good public image. Nothing looks better than advocating for a marginalized population. Regardless of whether these candidates actually care for the marginalized populations they’re advocating for, if they’re coming from a place of privilege and put us into their platforms, it can seem like they’re trying to win brownie points for being good people.
Additionally, this allyship quickly becomes performative if the candidates don’t follow through when it comes to supporting marginalized communities — which they often don’t. Even if you have the best intentions to help others, it is hard to change systemic oppression in a one-year term because these structures have been in place for centuries.
Typically, advocacy movements are initiated by marginalized communities themselves, not presidents. This can be seen with the WGEN, which was created to provide a safe space for women and trans people, as well as students that face sexual violence. WGEN was approved by the Student Representative Assembly because of a community survey that provided statistics of students who faced assaults, misogyny and sexism on campus. Although the SRA did come into play with the creation of this service, consultations and surveys were important in its creation, which is what the presidential candidates have been failing to do. In addition, WGEN was spearheaded by women, trans people and survivors advocating for its existence, proving that marginalized communities have always been at the forefront of these movements — not the MSU president. If the MSU president is serious about advocating for marginalized communities, then they need to consult with the groups who represent the needs of these students.
Despite Koc and Da-Ré’s well-intentioned platforms for improving peer support services and consent education respectively, they failed to consult the communities that are directly affected: Maccess and WGEN. How will you help improve support and remove systemic barriers if you do not talk to those that are directly affected?
Becoming the MSU president doesn’t mean that you suddenly have the ability to support marginalized people. Anyone and everyone can support movements to dismantle oppressive barriers — instead of campaigning on the idea that you will support marginalized people during your presidential term, start by supporting them in your everyday lives. Talk to the people you know and ask them how you can support them. Actually consult the marginalized communities you hope to support, not the institutions that oppress us. Even if you can’t make a huge change during your one-year term, you can still make meaningful change through your individual actions as a person. But if you’re not willing to commit to your platform and actually support marginalized students, please leave us out of it.
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This story has been edited to reflect new information revealed since its initial publication.
Now well over a month since the campaign period ended, the McMaster Students Union finally has an official MSU president-elect: Ikram Farah. Following this year’s race, students may see changes in the Elections Department as they reconsider their current system.
This year’s MSU presidential election saw two disqualifications, something unheard of in the MSU’s history. Candidates Farah and Rabeena Obaidullah were both disqualified.
Both candidates appealed to the highest electoral board, the Electoral Appeals Board, whose decisions are final and binding. According to the declarations released on March 13, the EAB overturned a series of violations for both candidates and reinstated both.
The rationale behind Farah’s disqualification and for both candidates’ reinstatement remains unclear as the MSU has not yet released the minutes from any of these meetings. On March 13, both Obaidullah and Farah were reinstated, resulting in Farah securing the MSU presidency.
On March 11, the Elections Department presented a delegation to the Student Representative Assembly, where they outlined some of their major issues with the current system for electoral appeals and fines.
The two representatives, Shaarujaa Nadarajah and Iku Nwosu, spoke of the difficulties the Elections Department and committee have.
In particular, they highlighted three major issues: limited information, a strict time constraint and lack of perspective as to why certain fines were submitted.
During an election, all MSU presidential candidates are subject to the Elections Department’s rules. If found violating multiple rules, the Elections Department has the power to disqualify a candidate.
According to the meeting minutes from the Election Department’s Jan. 25 meeting, Obaidullah was disqualified for campaigning in private Facebook groups, among other infractions.
The exact reasoning behind Farah’s disqualification remains unclear as the meeting minutes from Election Department’s Feb. 5 meeting have not been released, but according to press releases, two additional violations were ratified at this meeting against Farah, resulting in her disqualification.
During the March 11 SRA meeting, Nadarajah stated that one of the major limitations of the current fines process as the limited information presented to the committee.
Currently, elections committee members are presented all complaint forms the night the voting period ends and are expected to come to a final decision before the night is over.
When it comes to fines, elections committee must decide whether or not to fine a candidate based on a complaint form which they received a few hours prior to the election night meeting.
The form asks the complainant to outline the infraction, tie it to a rule and provide any supplementary evidence along with a witness signature.
Candidates are only informed of their fines following the final decisions. Candidates may contest fines, so long as they announce their intent to appeal a decision within five business days.
“One of the limitations of elections committee is that we can only look at what’s in front of us… a paragraph is describing a situation to us,” Nadarajah said.
In addition, Nadarajah also stressed that the time limit meant the elections committee would be forced to do a cost-benefit analysis of their decisions and ultimately value the quickest decision in order to announce a president-elect before the next morning.
Nadarajah also stated that while the elections committee has eight members, it only needs five to reach quorum, meaning that under certain circumstances only three members are enough to disqualify a candidate.
She also discussed the subjectivity of election committee’s decisions, namely that it is difficult for the election committee to establish when a candidate has impacted the integrity of an election.
They then went over the structure of other student union electoral offices, such as the University of Western Ontario and Queen’s University. UWO uses a demerit system and candidates are informed of any fines throughout the campaign period. At UWO, 30 demerit points automatically results in a disqualification.
At Queen’s, their equivalent elections team is comprised of five others in addition to the Chief Returning Officer and each person has a specific job, whether that be investigating fines or handling finances.
Both Nadarajah and Nwosu stated that the Elections Department may need to mirror some of these systems, whether it follow UWO’s quantitative approach or Queen’s and its delegation of duties.
Nadarajah and Nwosu offered a list of recommendations for reform. They argued they should increase transparency between candidates and their office with respect to fines, increase the threshold within the elections committee to disqualify a candidate from half the committee to two-thirds the committee and better outline and detail the appeals process.
This year’s MSU presidential election and its disqualifications was unprecedented event that may alter the way in which elections are run through the MSU.
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With January over, the McMaster Students Union has its unofficial president-elect: Ikram Farah, a level IV political science and labour studies student.
At the time of this article’s publication, the results are unofficial. Candidate Rabeena Obaidullah was disqualified but may appeal this decision to the MSU elections committee.
Of the first-choice votes, Farah received 38.6 per cent of the total vote, while every other candidate received under 20 per cent. With that said, due to the ranked voting system, it is unclear how Obaidullah’s potential reinstatement will affect the results as the results would be tabulated again and votes redistributed to her.
Despite the uncertainty of her victory, Farah remains excited to hold the title of president-elect, claiming the morning of Jan. 26 to be one of stress and hope.
“I knew that I was always going to be perceived differently because I have different [intersecting identities] and they have different intersects. I’m hoping there’s influence in seeing me in the role.”
Ikram Farah
McMaster Students Union
President-elect
Farah received the traditional call from the current MSU president at around 3:40 a.m. while spending time with her friends in the Hedden Hall common room, where she is a community advisor.
“[MSU president Chukky Ibe] called and we put it on speaker. When we heard his voice, we knew but we needed him to say it. When he said congratulations, we all started screaming,” Farah said.
Following the news, Farah immediately called her mother, who had called a little earlier asking why she had not received the results yet.
“She had just woken up for prayer and I didn’t want her to fall too deep of a sleep. So I called her twice and that’s when I started crying. … It took her so long to realize how big this was,” Farah said. “It’s a cultural thing, I think; in her head, I should just be going to grad school. She didn’t understand until the Christmas break that this was a job, that this was something I was invested in,” she added.
Farah is excited to use her various experiences in her role as president.
“I know how to talk to people, I understand in different lenses, I’ve been involved with different groups. I’ve seen how different experiences can manifest and where people go wrong, where people go right with respect for change. I’ve seen it from an MSU perspective, I’ve seen it from a residence life perspective, I’ve seen it from the McMaster perspective,” Farah said.
Farah will begin working on the extended Go bus hours and the international shuttle bus so that they are up and running by Welcome Week to ensure both commuter and international students may attend.
Farah also hopes to begin working on making improvements to the McMaster Student Absence Form and introducing tax-free Tuesdays, and is optimistic that these projects will be achieved by September.
Farah will also be the fifth female MSU president. She hopes her position will only encourage others.
“I knew that I was always going to be perceived differently because I have different [intersecting identities] and they have different intersects. I’m hoping there’s influence in seeing me in the role,” Farah said.
While her victory remains up in the air, Farah remains hopeful that she will get to be the next MSU president and has her eyes set on what she wants achieved.
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In the “Revamping Your Campus” pillar of her platform, Ikram Farah highlights her interest in increasing lighting in low-traffic locations on campus and in student-populated locations off-campus.
Farah argues that poor lighting conditions have decreased students’ sense of safety, noting the municipal government’s effort to upgrade street lighting on residential streets in Hamilton. This pillar of Farah’s platform is aimed at pushing the city of Hamilton to include more LED lighting on and off campus in the next year.
It should be noted that Farah’s promise to improve lighting on streets off-campus is not new, with former McMaster Students Union presidential candidate Aquino Inigo and 2014-2015 MSU president Teddy Saull inquiring about lighting in the past.
Last year, Ward 1 councillor Aidan Johnson stated in an email to the Silhouette that former councillor Brian McHattie encountered feasibility problems when residents pushed back against increased light pollution.
Although the replacement of all residential street and LED lights in Hamilton is currently being undertaken by the Hamilton municipal government, LED replacement for the off-campus McMaster area will not necessarily be prioritized.
According to Joey Coleman, a local journalist, the implementation of Farah’s off-campus objective is only feasible should the MSU have sway in City Hall. As such, the extent to which the McMaster area will be prioritized will depend on whether McMaster students vote en masse in the upcoming municipal election.
It should be noted that the MSU has struggled to incentivize students to vote in municipal elections in the past. During the 2014 Ward 1 election, for instance, only 40.7 per cent of all voters in the area cast a ballot for a total of 8,870 votes. McMaster's population of 26,780 undergraduates means if just half that number voted in the election, it would have equated to 151.0 per cent of the previous Ward 1 turnout.
Coleman states that the MSU president needs a plan to mobilize the student vote, particularly one that starts on May 1, in order to be effective. Nevertheless, a plan to increase civic engagement amongst McMaster students is not outlined in Farah’s platform.
In light of these facts, Farah’s promise seems elusive.
Moreover, in the “Revamping Your Campus” pillar of her platform, Farah also promises to make the campus more accessible to students who experience physical barriers.
Farah notes that areas on campus continue to be inaccessible, citing the need for more accessible pathways, roads, stairways and parking lots.
In her platform, Farah does not specify what her plan to improve physical campus accessibility will entail. Although she mentions that she has been communicating with McMaster’s director of maintenance about this platform point, Farah does not highlight specific policies or initiatives that she seeks to implement should she be elected.
While Farah does mention her interest in investing money into making university infrastructure more accessible, she does not highlight precisely how much money she aims to invest, where the funding will come from or whether the initiative will require a multi-year effort.
Overall, certain aspects of Farah’s platform do not seem feasible without better planning.
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Ikram Farah is a level IV Honours Political Science and Labour Studies student. Her platform focuses on advocacy and improving student life.
Within the university, Farah has worked at the circulation desk in Mills Library, as a Community Advisor and as a student partner for the MacPherson Institute.
In the McMaster Students Union, Farah has served as an Ontario University Student Association delegate and represented the Social Sciences faculty as a caucus leader on the Student Representative Assembly during the 2016-2017 year.
Under her “Transit — Your Destination” pillar, Farah hopes to work with various groups to improve transit for both international and commuter students. Farah plans on partnering with Airways Transit Limited to create a service that transports international students to and from airports. She also plans on working with Metrolinx to extend GO bus hours to better match student schedules.
Farah’s “Revamping Your Campus” pillar focuses on the need for more outlets on campus, improved lighting in low-traffic areas and student-populated areas off-campus and reduced physical barriers.
The “Re-EXAMining Exams” pillar seeks to improve students’ academic experiences by advocating for an extended study break before exams and the opportunity for students to reschedule exams when two consecutive ones are on the same day.
Through her “A Student’s Success” pillar, Farah also seeks to develop what she calls a “Brighter World Transcript,” meant to highlight students involvements outside of academia. She also hopes to improve the McMaster Student Absence Form by adding a part outlining the student’s estimation of assignment completion and standardize the three day period of the MSAF to be three business days across the board to ensure students have the time they need.
Farah also focuses on improving food options on campus.Two platform points that centre around this are Farah’s plan to implement a “Tax-Free Tuesdays” initiative that would make McMaster Hospitality Services food tax-free on Tuesdays and working with Bridges Café to offer healthier options at other restaurants on campus.
Farah also plans to reduce financial barriers for students by advocating for an earlier bursary date and re-evaluation of the OSAP structure to ensure that accounts for program cost discrepancies.
Farah plans on addressing student support by making improvements to the Note-Taker initiative currently offered by Student Accessibility Services. She hopes to collaborate with their office to incentivize students by offering them MSU Courtesy Cards as a short-term plan, and then eventually offer honorariums.
Farah also hopes to foster a safer campus for students by advocating for the addition of a second Sexual Violence Response Coordinator to improve the university’s response to sexual violence on campus.
To learn more about Farah's platform, visit her Facebook page and website: www.ikram2018.com
https://www.facebook.com/itsikramfarah
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