That said, if someone can do a better job, I wholeheartedly invite them to. I’m glad there’s Indian food on campus, as a general fan of the cuisine, but realistically, Tandoori is the fast food version of Indian food even though it prices itself in the range of some of the restaurants I’ve been to. Similarly, the International Kitchen, which serves a different dish every day and rotates something like every month, sometimes has dishes among my favourite at UTM, but sometimes it’s mac and cheese. At such times, I resort to Timmies, Subway, or pizza, all of which quickly get monotonous. And why do we have one Starbucks on campus but two Second Cups? Is there ever a lineup for the one in the Meeting Place? Worst of all, when we Medium folks are here publishing on Sunday, the only place still open at suppertime is OPH, where you can miraculously pay upwards of $14 for a dish, a drink, and a chocolate bar. Yeah, things could be better.
The question is, who is this superhero who should come in and fix it?
For a long time, the flak has been directed at Chartwells, the food provider whose contract with the university names it as the sole provider of all food on campus, except for the Blind Duck, vending machines, and food you bring from home. The various restaurants have been routed through Chartwells since 2004.
That said, Chartwells’ winning the contract over the departing provider, Aramark—the same one that was in the news for having been given millions in subsidy while providing food services at Ryerson—was heralded as a major improvement. Chartwells had purportedly friendlier staff, they cared about the environment, and they had plans for the future. The president of the student union at the time said Chartwells was “an excellent choice for the campus [...] They have proven themselves in other schools and seem to be ahead of the game already.” (This was between remarks disparaging Aramark. He also said the student union was “one of the leading forces on campus in opposition to Aramark”—but then, they’re in opposition to most of what the administration does. Just last week a UTMSU exec described the administration to me as “the enemy” before regretting the word choice. No wonder Chartwells, now established at UTM, has come under fire.)
Anyway, my point is that replacing Chartwells with a different provider won’t change much. In fact, in 2000, the Medium printed a rather prophetic quote by a student who predicted that if we ever got rid of Aramark, some other monopoly would come along to make us miserable.
But one thing did actually change substantially between Aramark and Chartwells. In the latter contract, the Blind Duck is placed in the hands of students. The idea was that the profits from the pub could be forwarded to student service improvements.
It was a good idea, but something went wrong in the implementation. For years the Blind Duck has been so unprofitable that it requires a student levy of tens of thousands of dollars to break even. On top of that, it requires an advance from UTMSU of tens of thousands more that, until last year, has regularly been written off. The advance was recovered in 2012, but the pub is far from profitable.
But that doesn’t mean we should lose faith. The model is the right one. Right now, Chartwells’ contract is up for expiry in April, as you can read more about in this week’s cover story. And a lot of fuss is being made about whether it will be renewed or opened up to other bidders. But it doesn’t really matter either way. Whoever gets it will take advantage of the fact that our only other choices are to bus to Square One or (heaven help us) pack sandwiches in Tupperware, and will expect us to be grateful for a third, a fourth, even a fifth station selling the exact same soups and sandwiches, not to mention those adorable plastic cups filled with 10¢ worth of red jujubes being sold for $1.99.
No, what we need is a better infrastructure to gradually erode the need for outside providers. And that’s the tricky part. We need to know more about our situation and how to do better. Why is the pub unprofitable? How can we make it profitable? What do we want to see more of and can we offer it? Are the pub’s prices really any better than elsewhere on campus for the same item? We should be investigating questions like these.
It’s easy to take shots at Chartwells. It’s harder to work out a real solution. But that’s what needs to happen.
YOURS,
LUKE SAWCZAK
I would like to clarify a few things from your editorial last week (“Don’t give us gobbledygook”, Feb 24, 2014).
Firstly, UTMSU has put in both time and effort to make the students on our campus aware of what’s happening at the student societies summit. There are nearly 13,000 students on our campus and reaching out to the vast majority is often a challenge considering the various different campaigns UTMSU runs year round.
The reasons that might seem “nonsensical” to you will make perfect sense when one carefully goes through the content of the entire letter. The letter not only summarizes the reasons but also gives a detailed explanation of why we believe so. Since the beginning of the summit meetings, the environment has been one that is very controlled and hinders active participation and discussion. I don’t understand why the U of T administration is taking a lead on this summit when the outcome of this summit is in no way enforceable upon an autonomous organization such as UTSU. If student societies have concerns, they should raise it with UTSU directly rather that approaching the administration for help. UTSU is membership-driven. If there are concerns by its members, it will definitely look into those concerns.
The summit is a breach of autonomy on many levels. The administration is trying to influence the workings of an independent organization such as UTSU by hosting this summit. Why aren’t levy-collecting groups a part of this summit? Do they not have a direct stake in what is being discussed behind these closed doors?
The issue to me seems that student societies (that, by the way, duplicate what UTSU does) just want to redirect membership fees from UTSU to themselves. Well, if you are that determined to redirect and collecting fees to fund similar services already being provided by UTSU, why don’t you run your own referendum to do so?
UTMSU’s relationship with UTSU was endorsed by our joint membership at the annual general membership meetings of both UTMSU and UTSU and is re-emphasized in our union’s by-laws—By-law XV. Students at UTM appreciate the cooperative relationship we have with our sister students’ union that has saved UTM students’ money and provided students with access to services such as the health and dental plan. You wrote that the university requires anyone who receives student money to be financially transparent. Well, keeping that logic in mind, students at UTM also pay tuition fees to the university. Does that mean that if students put forth a request to view Chartwells’ contract with the university, the university would provide them with the original and “unblackened” version of it? UTMSU had made this request repeatedly for many years and has been denied. Does this mean that the University of Toronto is not financially transparent? If so, we hope that you will focus your future editorials on why students need a strong central students’ union that will hold the university accountable and ensure more transparency.
Raymond Noronha
President
UTM Students’ Union
]]>I think that most of the discontent that the student body has with the UTMSU office team comes from a lack of effective communication between both groups. Communication is key if the UTMSU office team wants more students to voice their opinion and get involved.
Students often complain that UTMSU seems to not focus on important issues like lack of study space in favor of ideas like the student centre expansion or the heated bus shelter. These problems have a root cause with a lack of effective communication between the two groups.
The biggest communication issue is a lack of effective communication channels. A lot of students don’t even read the weekly UTMSU e-newsletter—they consider it spam. Some cite that the same things are posted in there every week. Others compare it to someone leaving a flyer on the windshield, an advertisement that they must now delete from their inbox.
Some students don’t even know how to voice their complaints directly to the union. They know that there’s an office but they have no idea who to raise their issues with.
Other students say that even though they’ve raised issues, they feel that those issues haven’t been addressed or followed up on.
Students often feel harassed by the union’s solicitors and volunteers. They feel that their personal space is being effective and that the concerns or questions that they raise are ignored or addressed with cookie-cutter answers. Students feel that some of the solicitors aren’t trained properly or are rude. Here we can cite the example of the students being followed out of buildings by volunteers, as pointed out in last week’s “Few attend open forum”. This type of behavior is threatening and creates an environment where students will feel unsafe voicing their opinion.
In short, if the union wants to get more students involved then they must create an environment where students can feel that their input is valued. This means that the communication between the students and the union ought to go both ways, and students must be made aware of how they can communicate with the UTMSU office staff.
Jakub Stach
Second year, philosophy
]]>I am writing to share with you the concerns raised by representatives of the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union at meetings of the QSS committee. These concerns have been communicated in past QSS meetings and we hope that members of governance will be able to create spaces for these matters to be adequately resolved.
The concerns are:
The decision by the university administration to pursue non-QSS-approved priorities with no recourse from student representatives.
The lack of a permanent secretary, and meeting minutes been circulated without adequate notice.
The lack of transparency. A budget process that prevents members from adequately consulting their members.
As a students’ union, we are further concerned that the current governance timeline does not permit for adequate consultation regarding the budgets of university services.
In the 2012/13 governance cycle, student representatives made it clear that they were not in support of certain expenses that will be forced onto students. One example is the cost of the purchase and maintenance of the shuttle bus ticket machine. Student representatives made it clear that the machine will serve faculty and staff, since students have access to a T-card and do not require shuttle bus tickets. All UTM Students are charged an incidental fee through the shuttle bus portion of the student services fee. At meetings of QSS, all student representatives on QSS made it clear that we do not support a mandatory charge for all students to purchase, operate, and maintain a ticket machine that will not service UTM students. A decision was made by the administration to purchase the ticket machine and charge all UTM Students for the operation and maintenance of the ticket machine. We request that the campus council and its committee review whether operation of university services are supported by QSS since they are funded primarily through QSS-approved ancillary fees.
As per the terms of reference of the Quality Services to Students committee, the secretary of the body must be recommended by the dean of student affairs. We would like to encourage the administration to make a recommendation for a secretary as soon as possible. We are also concerned that meeting minutes are circulated during the meeting day and not in advance of meetings as per the expectations set out in Section 4: Policies and Procedures. We strive to abide by the terms of reference of this important protocol body. Unfortunately, over the past 12 months we have noticed a trend of meeting minutes submitted just before meetings or at meetings. This prevents members from adequately reviewing and approving of these minutes in a timely manner. We hope this trend will be rectified moving forward.
We have made many requests for more information on the status of the amalgamation of the Sheridan and St. George shuttle bus operation. We have pointed to the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities guidelines that govern how services funded through program fees are charged.
We have not been provided with any information that validates student approval for the amalgamation of the Sheridan and St. George shuttle bus operation as per the expectations of the protocol. We are also concerned with the prospect that the administration will recommend specific program-related costs to be borne by all students through an ancillary fee charged to all students. Our request for more information regarding the decision to amalgamate a program related expense (Sheridan service) with the St. George shuttle service has not been addressed to this date.
We are concerned by the current governance cycle that allows for little consultation regarding the proposed university services. In the current cycle, we did not have adequate time to properly review the proposed budgets with all stakeholders. The working groups of Quality Services to Students were not presented with budgets that they could review before making recommendations to the entire body. This is a concern that we hope will be addressed moving forward.
Finally, we would like to thank the directors of all the university services for being accessible throughout the process. We believe that the ongoing concerns will be resolved if we work together to find solutions that challenge our current governance system at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
With respect, and hope for a future where we can work together.
Raymond Noronha
President
UTM Students’ Union
On behalf of the board of directors
]]>It’s a question of numbers. There aren’t many people dedicated to the CCR; there’s a tri-campus coordinator downtown. Without them, the basic problem is this: We have a lot of clubs. Not many of them are in close contact with staff or faculty. But we need a reliable, objective party to validate a student’s application to have their activities listed on the CCR with their transcript. If we don’t have that check, the CCR gets inundated with undeserving students and loses its credibility. So who should be the validator?
The Medium’s case is easy. Everyone who writes gets their name in print. We’d just submit the list of people who’ve written six articles over the year (whom we call “staff writers”).
But most of UTM’s clubs don’t have such tangible evidence of involvement. Say you organize a typical club event—discussion and fuchkas, perhaps—and students come. Should you take attendance? Even if so, how do we prove to a third party that you were responsible for that work? We could have the club president sign your application. But how do we avoid people signing for their friends? Could you turn down a friend who asked you to let them get credit so they could have a shot at getting into grad school?
As for UTMSU being the signer, the credibility problem still applies, albeit to a lesser degree, and so does the difficulty of having a fairly small staff supervise a lot of clubs.
The solutions proposed to us in the consultation were not bad, but not perfect. They proposed breaking the requirements into three more clearly defined steps. That’s good. But you still need to figure out who makes the assessments. The solution proposed was that each club be a part of a “community of practice”, linking them to relevant departments or offices of the university who could liaise with the clubs. In other words, break up the supervising into a lot of smaller pieces. But pairing them up might not be easy. Sure, the UTM Archery Club could be matched with the RAWC. But what about the many ethnic clubs we have? Do they all get dumped on the lap of, I don’t know, the sociology department? Or do they default back to UTM’s Department of Student Life, who offloaded them in the first place, and who currently has one person running the CCR in addition to her job description?
So how about we hire more staff? A student fee to pay for a CCR coordinator at UTM was proposed at a QSS meeting in February 2013, but was voted down by students who felt the university should fund it. Without it, the people best placed to sign are club execs, who’d still require verifying.
So far, the response is more consultation. Maybe we’re not ready for the CCR. Or maybe the university should make room in its budget for staff to manage the service.
YOURS,
LUKE SAWCZAK
]]>
Quitting the summit isn’t necessarily stupid; after all, it’s a moderated discussion of an issue between downtown student groups that has little to do with UTMSU, except insofar as we might get the same idea someday and try to separate from UTSU, too. But the way we quit wasn’t one many students will feel they can stand behind.
First of all, it came out of nowhere. The seven-page goodbye note—signed by Melissa Theodore, UTMSU’s VP external, on behalf of the executive team—says they spent “many hours” reporting on the meetings to UTM students. I haven’t heard a peep. Might’ve been nice to talk through this.
At least as frustrating are the nonsensical reasons given for quitting. The letter extols student groups’ autonomy, for example, without a word as to why the summit is a breach of autonomy. Then it proceeds to lament the fact that the societies whose members voted to divert their money from UTSU don’t know what’s good for them and should stay in line. Actually, bringing that up at all is disingenuous: We know that this is the incumbents’ view. And that the smaller groups hold another view. That’s why the summit was called.
But that’s not the only convoluted logic in the letter. On the one hand, it insists that UTMSU “doesn’t know what the purpose of the summit is”. But despite being in the dark, the union also manages to “have serious concerns that the unknown purpose of this summit is in conflict with our mission, and as such an inappropriate use of our valuable time”. Well, which is it?
Elsewhere, the letter says attendees attacked UTSU to gain favour with the university, and so defends UTSU’s policy on proxies (voting on behalf of others) by saying that a major critic, the Engineering Society, also allows them. EngSoc’s bylaws are attached. Nice; now I can easily verify that UTSU lets one person vote for 11 people while EngSoc lets one person vote for three. The absentees also count towards minimum attendance for UTSU but not EngSoc. This isn’t to take sides; it’s just to say that misleading finger-pointing doesn’t befit a student representative.
Since none of these reasons makes sense, I suspect it’s because other attendees—rightfully or not—have been asking to see the contract that has UTM students pay UTSU, only for most of it to be remitted to UTMSU. The letter says UTMSU is only too eager to “summarize” the terms, as long as they don’t have to “divulge” them. Meanwhile, the university requires anyone who receives student money to be financially transparent.
I guess being caught on that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And made it hit the eject button.
YOURS,
LUKE SAWCZAK
.
The full letter was shared with various campus media and can be read at the end of this news article.
]]>It’s always great to see the Medium publishing articles on career-related topics to assist students in navigating their career goals—the last one being on LinkedIn, specifically their University pages.
Ms. Farah Khan outlined the feature and identified some flaws which may make it difficult for employers/recruiters to find students and vice versa. As an employment advisor who assists students on a very regular basis with LinkedIn, I know that while the initial aspects of LinkedIn can be beneficial (create a profile, look for job postings), its far greater potential lies in its research and networking tools that are not as obvious.
One of the biggest questions I get is “What can I do with my degree in…?” Well, the University pages allows students to browse through alumni profiles based on what they studied, where they work, and what they are skilled at. It allows you to explore different career paths, companies, and jobs by learning about what the people who graduated from the university are doing. You might be surprised at the diverse professional paths they’ve taken and what’s possible for you.
Networking is key in one’s job search; 70 to 80% of jobs out there are never even advertised—you find them via your network. While networking, you strategically build meaningful relationships with people and exchange information and ideas with them. One challenge most students have however, is to create that network—it can certainly be intimidating! LinkedIn, including the University pages, can help you identify contacts currently working in jobs and companies you may be interested in. They may be able to share information and insights that will help you in your job search. When reaching out to the people you find, you can leverage the fact that you are a student from the same university they attended. Often people are very willing to help others, especially since they were probably in your shoes at some point; you just need to make it easy for them. Once you create that connection, ask questions, listen, and learn from others And thank them for their time; it’s a positive way to network.
The University page is just one tool you can use, no matter what stage you are at in your journey. LinkedIn has other research features that may not be as obvious; the Career Centre holds LinkedIn workshops and individual profile critiques to help you get the most out of this system. Visit our website, call, or come to DV 3094 and see how we can help you!
Sincerely,
Natasha Walli
Employment advisor, Career Centre
]]>Amir Moazzami
UTMSU Division IV board
]]>So the question that naturally arises when a proposal is voted down and the voter turnout is, if not approaching democratic levels, better than usual (it was 25% or 3,100 of us, give or take), is what to make of it. Outside of this editorial, the question of what interperetation to take of the facts is dealt with in four ways this week: a news article with an interview of the union’s president, a letter from a senior student, a letter from a UTMSU board member, and video interviewing random students around campus.
The conclusion I take from it is that nobody has set the Thames on fire. We’re not looking at a startling new grassroots movement wherein a group of radically disenfranchised students has decided to throw down UTMSU’s decisions. Nor do the figures readily support that. The margin of majority is so small (about 70 votes) that chance could have accounted for it. Thus, when the president, Raymond Noronha, said that “students don’t want an expanded Student Centre”, I’m not so sure he’s right. A better summary would be “Slightly more students don’t want it than want it.”
But in fact, I doubt most students really even voted on the expansion. Judging by the opinions we’ve gathered, they voted against paying more fees. (Maybe the unequivocal zeal for paying less that the Canadian Federation of Students fosters in its members worked too well.) They often said that they want to be around to experience what they pay for—a complaint that, surprisingly enough, I find less reasonable than UTMSU’s serene response: that we enjoy what we didn’t pay for.
It’s because of this, I think, that Noronha’s answers more or less put the loss down to misconception and “rumours”. Not that there was no misinformation; not many people we spoke to got the numbers exactly right. But I think that’s the other extreme from the “radically disenfranchised” explanation. Perhaps students are neither outright opposed to UTMSU nor simply misinformed, but have—at least those who aren’t swamped in their schoolwork—some discrimination as to which fees they’ll accept and which they won’t. After all, besides the closeness of the vote, the recent outcry about UTMSU having voted down an increase in the Health and Counselling Centre’s budget shows that students are willing to pay for some causes they deem important. And the reason they don’t deem the Student Centre expansion important probably comes down to a lack of use of it—and that brings us back to the bit about the few interested students. So no, the fact that the referendum failed isn’t so much a sign of students’ sudden engagement in campus politics as it is a reminder of the opposite fact. (Not that this is another tired call to get involved.)
And perhaps the union was aware of that. After all, it would seem a bit unusual that they went all out campaigning for the “yes” votes this year even though the same terms were passed last time around (but invalidated due to human error)—unless they suspected, apparently correctly, that our tolerance for in-your-face campaigning was about maxed out.
The main pragmatic question is what happens now, and nobody has talked much about it. I believe that’s because it won’t be clear what they’ll do until an official interpretation of this year’s results is decided on and solidified, which will probably happen over the next couple of months and be passed on to the incoming execs. They might ask themselves: Was UTM just misinformed? Then make it clearer. Was UTM scared about fees? Then negotiate a better agreement with the university, and if that fails, make the costs less explicit and get angry at the Medium for printing it clearly (hey, it worked last year). Were the various anonymous Facebook pages too effective a platform of dissent? Be more hip next time. Or… Do students just not want a Student Centre? Hard to say what they’d do then. That one might stump them.
YOURS,
LUKE SAWCZAK