Executive members of student unions at the University of Toronto were recently photographed campaigning in support of candidates in the Ryerson Students’ Union election.
Vip Vigneswaran, a Woodsworth College student and former campaign manager of Team Unite, the slate that ran against the incumbent U of T Voice last year, alleges that he saw executives from the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU), the Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students (APUS), and the Scarborough Campus Students Union (SCSU) campaigning at Ryerson University on behalf of Unite Ryerson — the slate that included incumbents.
Transform Ryerson, the first opposition slate in four years, ended up defeating Unite Ryerson in each executive candidate position.
Yolen Bollo-Kamara, UTSU president, confirmed than she did campaign in support of Pascale Diverlus, Unite’s presidential candidate.
Bollo-Kamara says that she and Diverlus have worked closely together, and continue to work together now as organizers with Black Lives Matter Toronto. “I respect the incredible work she’s done over the past several years and I recognize the impact of strong student representation,” Bollo-Kamara says.
Bollo-Kamara says that collaboration between student leaders is key to achieving crucial goals. “In recent years, elected student representatives in the GTA have worked together to achieve many important victories, such as changes to flat fees, tuition freezes and the implementation of the discounted Post-secondary Student Metropass,” she says.
However, Vigneswaran says he believes that it is inappropriate for executives from different campuses to campaign on behalf of slates from other campuses. “I think it intuitively gives an unfair advantage to the incumbency and is therefore inappropriate,” he says.
Bollo-Kamara disagrees, saying that every slate has advantages and disadvantages in different ways. “For example, students who live in residence, play on sport teams, are involved in clubs, college or faculty councils, community advocacy or partisan politics have particular communities from which to draw potential voters and volunteers. Strong candidates are successful in mobilizing support, which serves them well in advocating for students throughout the year, if elected,” says Bollo-Kamara.
Vigneswaran takes issue with the fact that student union executives may have more time available to them with which to help on campaigns. “A lot of these union executives, by virtue of their position, are not full-time students and can simply just take a ‘vacation’ day to campaign elsewhere and then those that they campaign for return the favour,” Vigneswaran says.
Bollo-Kamara verified that she took about a day-and-a-half of vacation days in order to campaign at Ryerson.
The use of external campaigners in student union elections has been a point of contention for many years. In 2014, various student union executives from other universities in the Greater Toronto Area, including one from Ryerson, were spotted campaigning on behalf of U of T Voice.
