My name is Shaun Shepherd and I’m running to be your UTSU President with Unity, a passionate and diverse team. We are comprised of students from professional faculties and every college. Students involved in clubs, course unions, athletics and mature students. Each of us has a range of experience and is dedicated to ending the politics of division at U of T. We want to unite students to improve this campus.
Our platform is ambitious and comprehensive, but achievable. I encourage everyone to view our platform in its entirety on our website www.voteunity.ca.
BERNARDA GOSPIC/THE VARSITY
We will work to make education more accessible by uniting with other students’ unions to drop fees and curb student debt. We also want to stop the collection of flat tuition fees in all faculties on both campuses. Our team successfully lobbied the administration to review the flat fee tuition structure in 2013. We refuse to stop our advocacy until flat fees are dismantled.
We will also advocate to stop the practice of charging students interest on deferred tuition fees. Students are often forced to pay interest on tuition fees twice, once while in study, and again in OSAP or student loan repayment. OSAP is awarded to students in two installments. As a result, students may be forced to defer their fees and are then subject to interest charges. This unfair policy must stop.
Unity will lobby the administration to implement a drop credit policy so students can remove a credit of their choice from their transcript. Similar practices are already in place at McGill, Queen’s, Waterloo and other universities in Canada. This policy recognizes that students may have personal issues affecting the grade awarded at the end of a course that doesn’t reflect their academic ability. These marks should not hinder students’ chances of attending professional or graduate school.
Our team is committed to the principles of equity. We want to foster a community where discrimination is actively condemned by our members. We will work with equity-seeking groups to develop strategies toward combating oppression on campus. We will also start an anti-racism collective to respond to incidences of racism on campus, to create structural changes to dismantle systemic racism, and to engage the campus in anti-racism education.
Our colleges and faculties do an excellent job of welcoming new students through orientation week. We want to ensure that upper year students are also welcomed back through a Week of Welcome open to all students. We will move the UTSU orientation day to this week so college and faculty councils can plan a full orientation week for their first-years. In the Week of Welcome, we will also have more clubs days to give clubs more time to recruit new members from all years of study.
If these issues are important to you, this week, vote Shaun Shepherd for president, Noor Baig for VP equity, Abigail Cudjoe for VP external, Munib Sajjad for VP university affairs, Corey Scott for VP internal and services and the entire Unity team. Because U of T needs Unity.
