The Commerce Times

What’s going on in the RSU?

From February 8 to 10, Ryerson voted for the school’s future students’ union executives and faculty directors. This year’s RSU elections had well over 3,000 ballots, a record number of voters for Ryerson, as well as the highest number of presidential candidates Ryerson has ever seen.

The existing situation of the Ryerson Student Union (RSU) is generally unknown to students, as many pay little attention to university politics. During this year’s election campaigns, students were stopped in the halls, bridges and building lobbies, as different teams attempted to win over their votes, often leaving students unsure of whom to vote for and why.

All teams running promised change-making strategies and plans for the upcoming year, such as decreases in student fees and more events to enhance student life. Despite each team advocating for a positive and progressive change on campus, students were still left wondering why the teams that ran were opposing one another and what the problem in the RSU was in the first place.

We need to work on building, expanding and redeveloping change to vote for and why.

“I only ran to raise awareness about the RSU’s mishandling of money,” said Sherif El Tawil, a second year industrial engineering student and the only one of the four RSU presidential candidates to run independently in the elections. He says that the Ryerson Student Union is also incorrectly distributing student money to cover “useless expenses.”
“The RSU uses $1000 per year on uniform costs? Then why isn’t the guy selling me my metro pass wearing a uniform? When have you seen anyone in the RSU in a uniform?” said El Tawil.

In his campaign posters, El Tawil openly expressed his lack of support for president-elect, Toby Whitfield, and stated that as current vice-president of finance of the RSU, he is responsible for the current waste of student money.

El Tawil disagrees that RSU lobbying led to the closing of Gould Street; and said that it was the university as a whole that succeeded at temporarily closing of the street, in order to speed up the construction of the Ryerson Image Arts building. “As a matter of fact, the RSU was ticketed for setting up a sports field in the middle of Gould Street in the first semester, and that ticket is now being paid from student money,” he said.

Ryerson is an 86 per cent commuter school; when voting is done by ballot box, it doesn’t make sense.

El Tawil said that he plans on running again in next year’s elections, this time to really succeed at receiving student votes. If elected, he plans on trying to reallocate student money and de-federalizing from the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS); an organization which he believes is a profit-seeking corporation “hiding behind the name of a student federation.” He also plans on following the points suggested in an audit issued by Deloitte Canada; one of which was an adaptation of an online voting system instead of the current paper-ballot one. President-elect for the 2010-2011 academic year, Toby Whitfield, says that the focus should be student issues rather than personal issues, and acknowledged that there had in fact been negative campaigns against him. But he said that there are no issues currently within the RSU. Whitfield ran under the slate “Students United.”

“We need to work on building, expanding and redeveloping change,” said Whitfield. He emphasized a fact in which he firmly believes: “The RSU works for students.”

Whitfield said that as current VP finance of the RSU executive team, they have succeeded at the elimination of the $70 deferral fee, decreasing the price of the metro pass to $99 from the original price of $120, as well as successfully lobbying for the one-year pilot project of the closing down of Gould Street. “We will continue to lobby and campaign to drop tuition fees in the upcoming year,” said Whitfield.

“Drop Fees is a useless campaign,” was Sherif El tawil’s counter-opinion. “A lot of the RSU budget money is allocated to that campaign, $32000 were spent on it this year and only 120 to 130 Ryerson students attended the rally, and the $70 deferral fee was not the biggest student concern.”

The presidential candidate with the second largest number of votes this year, Darius Sookram, seemed to share a view similar to Sherif El Tawil. “RSU is very adversarial, not conducive to making deals or things work,” he said.
Running under the slate titled “LEAD,” Sookram also claimed to having had his posters torn down by opposing “Students United” team during the campaigning period. When asked if he is sure of the other team’s responsibility for the attacks, Sookram was certain. “I get e-mails from people I trust all over campus telling me exactly what is going on.”

Darius also supports a change to an online voting system, arguing that “Ryerson is an 86 per cent commuter school, when voting is done by ballot box, it doesn’t make sense.”

Sookram described Ryerson student groups as being the hands of Ryerson University, and the RSU being the head. He says that bettering communication between the students and their union and educating them of the current situation is a means to bettering student life on campus.

The difference between the number of votes for Toby Whitfield and Darius Sookram was a total of 268, the smallest margin between two slates to ever occur during the RSU elections.

Tom Dolezel, a fourth year Radio and Television Arts student, ran for the second time this year. He also says that an online voting system is necessary in the future. “Unless there’s online voting, nothing will change,” he said. “Any CFS-affiliated slate gets at least 1000 student votes. That’s why online voting would help students dilute those numbers.”

Dolezel had a unique and humorous approach in his campaigns, calling his slate “The TomTourage” and running alongside candidates for vice presidents student life and education, Calvin Desautels and Paul Murphy.

“People thought my campaign was a joke campaign, it wasn’t. They are too serious when it comes to these matters, they need to loosen up,” said Dolezel.

Dolezel recognizes problems in the current RSU set-up, and says that the RSU is not aiming for students’ best interests, but rather “other peoples’ interests.” If he pursues a Master’s at Ryerson next year, Dolezel plans to run for president once again, with the intention of attempting to reallocate the student money and using it to better the school.