Letter from the Editors: The UTSU presidential election is insulting to students

There is no other newspaper that follows the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) throughout the academic year as closely as The Varsity. 

And we are severely disappointed.

At 5:00 pm on February 28, voting for the 2025–2026 UTSU elections will officially end. As usual, we’ve covered executive candidates’ platforms by conducting interviews and hosting a candidate debate, and we continue to share election information on our social media. 

The UTSU — which represents over 40,000 full-time undergraduates at UTSG and collected $18.7 million from students in the 2023–2024 school year — has struggled with student engagement for years. But instead of taking steps to help get students involved, the union has conducted this election in ways that discourage students from voting. 

Structurally, students have little reason to vote when presented with two presidential candidates who symbolize the very issues contributing to disengagement: a complete lack of vision and broken promises.

The Varsity cannot, in good conscience, encourage you to vote for a lacklustre presidential slate. We need the union to take tangible steps to restore confidence in our election process and present a vision that can rally students.

This election, so far

This year’s UTSU put together an election timeline that seemed almost tailor-made to discourage voting.

The UTSU’s nomination period started on February 12. While its bylaws mandate that the union must notify students of the important election dates at least 14 days before the nomination period begins, the UTSU sent a first email notice only 12 days prior, on January 31.

When asked about this discrepancy, UTSU Chief Returning Officer Kyle Ross wrote in an email to The Varsity, “The minutes from [the Board of Directors] meeting [approving the dates] were posted on the website on January 20… satisfy[ing] the notice requirement… as it was the first time the information was publicly accessible to all members.”

But The Varsity can’t take this into serious consideration. How can information in the union’s meeting minutes, tucked away on its website, be justified as a notice to all students? There is a reason why the UTSU sends out emails to its entire membership: to ensure accessible and efficient delivery of information. 

Ross also added in his email that The Varsity had publicly made the elections information available through our reporting on January 27. 

Our confusion over this still stands. The union did not choose the most accessible and available option to share information, and it should moreover not rely on The Varsity to disseminate crucial information to students. 

But if even the candidates can’t find time during this period, how much can we expect students to engage?

The campaigning period ran from February 22–28, immediately following reading week and coinciding with UTSG students’ busy midterm season. 

Only six out of 18 UTSU candidates showed up to our debate at the UTSU Students Commons lounge on February 25. Most candidates did not confirm whether they would attend, and some who confirmed never showed up. A few candidates could not attend due to exams. Busy academic schedules notwithstanding, this failure to present themselves to students, even during the election season, does not bode well for their engagement with the student body.

The Student Commons also lacked a debate audience, with the few sitting there being friends of the candidates, current UTSU executives, or The Varsity reporters. Our YouTube livestream had crickets, and very few — two, to be exact — questions came our way through Instagram Live. 

But if even the candidates can’t find time during this period, how much can we expect students to engage?

Engaging students shouldn’t be this hard

The UTSU’s lack of engagement with the student population is not new, as evidenced by how few people actually show up to decide who will lead the union.

Barring one exception, UTSU turnout has stayed below 15 per cent since at least 2016. In 2024, voter turnout rates reached a six-year high with a meagre 13.2 per cent, but with the current UTSU’s handling of the election, we expect an even lower number.

This lack of engagement extends beyond election season. Just this year, we saw another example of how the union’s failure to communicate with students can harm us. 

In September, the UTSU, which originally offered $100 per a maximum of 15 visits to a mental health care practitioner, began offering standard coverage for fewer sessions per year and a limited Mental Health Support Fund to cover students once their standard coverage expired. Students on Reddit immediately caught wind of this change and raised concerns — four days prior to the union’s first and formal announcement. Soon after, the UTSU reverted back to the original plan. 

Many initiatives like the U-Pass also saw little to no progress under the current UTSU executive team. Beyond the meetings that The Varsity attends to report on, we can’t say the UTSU has been in direct and consistent communication with the student press and all of the student body about their initiatives. 

These issues go far back, and if left unaddressed at a systemic level, they will continue to impact students long after the executives exit. 

Lacklustre candidates

Unfortunately, we don’t have much faith that this next crop of candidates will be vastly better than previous years.

The few students who watched this year’s debate concluded that the presidential candidates were particularly disappointing. 

To us, these two candidates reveal two of the union’s worst tendencies: it either significantly underdelivers on its ambitious promises, or makes no promises at all, so it can’t be held accountable for its blunders. 

Woodsworth College Students’ Association President Paul Gweon represents this latter problem. His Instagram candidate profile promises that he will bring “actionable proposals” to university officials and “Support students now” — but he makes no mention of what specific policies he would propose and how he would support students. 

Both his opponent and The Varsity questioned him during the debate about how he would carry out his promise to address student mental health and union engagement. But his answers boiled down to what he repeatedly emphasized — “UTSU has millions of dollars that it can spend [on] events.” In an effort to be a “No-nonsense” candidate who can ‘actually’ deliver promises, Gweon fails to provide any concrete promises at all.

While Melani Vevecka offered a more concrete and actionable platform, we realized that what she presented was painfully familiar. 

Vevecka rehashed the same ideas that many previous UTSU candidates and executives have run on and left unfulfilled, highlighting the union’s repeated failures. She proposed advocating for a retroactive CR/NCR option for students, similar to the CR/NCR deadline extension that U of T’s student unions have lobbied for since the COVID-19 pandemic. Her other platform pillar was to implement TTC subsidy options for students in financial need, but the union had already been working on a free TTC Pass Program since November 2024 and just began operating it this past week.

These are the only two available presidential candidates. And when one of them is elected, students collectively will have to pay them $38,000 a year to bring recycled, unfulfilled ideas, or more upscale pet therapy sessions and ski trips. 

If our student union had spent the previous years — or even just this past year — engaging students better, we might have expected more interesting and qualified candidates and platforms. Instead, we’re presented with two limited options that insult the intellect of the undergraduate student population. 

Merely a cycle

We know the issue is bigger than the two candidates. We criticize their platforms not to burden them with the union’s almost 125 years of history, but to urge them to reevaluate their promises to students, since we’ll have to see one of them in the position next year. 

To the future executive team: We need the union to make sure that the schedule actually meets students’ needs by either extending the voting period or ensuring that voting days don’t all fall in the depths of midterm season.

Most importantly, the UTSU is in desperate need of big, structural changes to how it communicates with and serves students throughout the year. 

Any current iteration of the union should be responsible for an effective and transparent knowledge transfer that allows each new year’s executive team to build upon previous portfolios productively, not begin anew. This should mean consistently updated, publicly available documentation of everything going on within the union. 

This would be the only way students and student press could keep the union accountable across their four or more years at U of T and the only way candidates can be expected to create platforms that don’t feel rehashed or underwhelming.

If the UTSU can’t make it easier for students and student clubs to get the resources, support, or visibility the union can offer, how different is this institution from the bureaucratic university administration? In what way does it fulfill its purposes as a “union” — in every sense of the word?

From the student papers to the student body

On December 18, 1900, students and faculty from all different colleges came to discuss creating a union that would “bring together the men of the various faculties of the University.” This undergraduate union, through a series of name changes, spanning more than a century, would eventually come to be known as the University of Toronto Students’ Union. 

And though its objectives may have changed over those years, we, alongside the other college papers of UTSG, are in need of a union that wholly represents all the students of this campus. 

So, our core message is simple.

The Varsity’s 2016 Editorial Board urged students to vote to keep the union with a multi-million dollar budget accountable. But until the union can reevaluate how it can deliver on concrete promises to the students it serves, we’re not sure if we can say the same with confidence. 

The UTSU does not have an official minimum voter turnout percentage that would require a re-election in the absence of it. Nevertheless, opting not to vote in a presidential election sends a message that students are unwilling to adapt to the limited platforms candidates bring. Students do not work for the union’s bureaucratic system, and do not owe their vote to it.

This Editorial has been signed in support by:

– The Mike

– The Trinity Review

– The Strand

– The Gargoyle 

– The Trinity Times