A few weeks into the fall term, Rocco Kusi-Achampong is confident that he and his team at the Students’ Administrative Council (SAC) are progressing on their campaign promises.

The health plan opt-out is online via the Student Web Service, better known as ROSI. Plans are progressing on a campus-wide party celebrating the 101st anniversary of SAC. Kusi-Achampong said a new Council of Student Governments is making communication easier between SAC and student organizations.

Even the long-awaited TTC Metropass discount is just around the corner, the SAC president promised.

The health plan opt-out option on ROSI will last until October 11.

“It’s going well. Anecdotally, it’s a success,” Kusi-Achampong said. He cautioned that, if more students opt-out via ROSI than usual, some recalculation of the health plan premiums may be necessary.

“We just have to wait for the more bureaucratic headaches to come, to see if it will be a headache, or it will be a success,” he added.

“That was a campaign promise that my opponents said I couldn’t do, and it’s done,” he said of the opt-out.

Kusi-Achampong said the changing high-school system in Ontario is making it possible for the TTC to give U of T students a deal on public transit. “We’ve been working very closely with the TTC,” he said.

“The reason why it is so opportune, this year, to get it done, is because of the double cohort,” he added. “The TTC stands to make a lot of money because of the graduating students that are leaving high school in Grade 12.” High school students get a Metropass discount, but currently, university students do not. That means the TTC might have enough surplus revenue to make the plan work.

“At latest—that’s me sleeping at Club Med in Mexico—at latest it should come in on January 1,” Kusi-Achampong said.

The SAC president said he is also moving forward on plans to increase communication with student leaders across campus.

“We attempted to have the first-ever presidents of associations, presidents of clubs and societies meeting last Friday. Turnout was poor,” Kusi-Achampong admitted, but he said that the experience was still worthwhile because “they didn’t know a lot of the things I was telling them,” such as the ability to influence SAC policy by using the commissions structure.

“It’s part of consensus-based governance,” he said.

A history of the 101 years of SAC has just been completed. “You’ll be amazed at what the students have been able to accomplish,” Kusi-Achampong said.

Part of the SAC 101 events will be a black-tie dinner.

“I want to draw past SAC officials who have become prominent in their respective fields. I want to get them reconnected with SAC,” Kusi-Achampong said, noting that the event, which is budgeted to cost $28,000, could end up generating money for SAC if alumni donations result.

Kusi-Achampong said the greatest satisfaction he has experienced so far in his term of office has been helping academically qualified, yet financially strapped students register for school. “That is the kind of thing that flutters my heart,” he said.

Photograph by Ryan Clements