As UTGSU faces Bill 33, OSAP cuts, funding challenges, and affordability concerns, Moghadam stresses the need for strong operations, staff, and foundations for student support. He reviews recent austerity measures as significant threats to both students’ daily lives and to postsecondary education in Ontario.

“Having this independent post-secondary education system that actually is accessible to everyone, not only makes you a better academic and a better student, but also just a better person for society and the community,” he said. “These attacks and these changes in the policies… they’re important because they are threatening the very notion of being a student in post-secondary and having accessible access to education.”

Moghadam’s campaign focuses on empowering students across all divisions and departments so that student-led initiatives can “revive this notion of student representation.” He wants to make sure students know that UTGSU fights for their needs and has their back.

As BoA Vice-Chair and later Chair, Avikpe revamped and rewrote the appeals process to clarify policy and timeline. His goals include running a governance explainer series to help students understand the UTGSU’s role and responsibilities, and starting an institutional memory project to ensure continuity across different years. He sees his role as increasing transparency and accountability so that students can better navigate UTGSU processes.

“Even though we have the governance documents and the website is pretty clear, most students still do not understand how the UTGSU works, so how decisions affect them. […] This creates a transparency gap, not a documentation gap,” he said.

Avikpe plans to create a student group incubator project that would bring together cohorts of new groups each semester and provide mentorship. This incubator would offer guidance from established student organizations, help with guidance on governance and constitutions, funding, application support, and event planning support. 

As VP Internal, Avikpe also hopes to bring together student groups to form a food security network that shares resources and identifies gaps affecting graduate students.

Based on his extensive experience with meetings and collaborations with different GTA unions and advocacy groups, Silver believes the UTGSU can organize and draw on the strength of its partners to achieve common deals. 

Silver wants to build more student power, which he says “doesn’t come from executives, but it comes from the students themselves… The more we can engage with students, the stronger the student union can be, and the better we can advocate for students.” 

Silver’s experience working on the Base Funding Committee (BFC) also informs his efforts to bring more graduate students into the fold of UTGSU. “But if we actually want to get it across the line, we have to have enough students supporting it to actually make it a reality.”

“That made me realize that many of the issues graduate students face are academic and structural. As VP Academics, I want to focus on strengthening the systems that support graduate students — particularly around supervisor accountability, mentorships, and [creating] clear pathways to raising concerns.” 

“The student-supervisor relationship is central to graduate education. Right now, the systems for support and accountability just vary widely across departments […] By improving clarity, mentorship structures, [and] support systems, we can create a more consistent and supportive experience for graduate students throughout the university.”

If elected, Shimshek also plans to collect data on the impacts of OSAP cuts on the student body in order to “understand where the gaps are,” and plan accordingly. 

As the incumbent VP Grad Life, Shimshek has also prioritized students’ mental health in year-round programming. She believes that her years of involvement in student life and work within the U of T administration prepare her to address graduate students’ academic challenges.

Having worked on various grants and bursaries, including UTGSU’s mental wellness and emergency grants, Zadeh aims to make the union’s financial policies and direction more understandable for students. “It’s a little bit complicated, and the best way to make it more transparent is to make it easier to understand,” he said.

Zadeh also wants UTGSU directors and executives to be more engaged with the union’s finances. “Many UTGSU members aren’t aware of the financial situation […] Some of them don’t know how the system works. Just giving them information sometimes is not enough. Sometimes a little bit of explanation makes it easier for all the members to understand how the system is working.”

Additionally, Zadeh is also passionate about the Supervisor Relationships Campaign and building trust and engagement in the Finance Committee. 

In his interview, he emphasized the union’s need for a central, digital platform — currently in the works — that will allow people to correspond with the executives, book rooms, apply for grants or bursaries, and receive funds electronically rather than through cheques. He also looked forward to publicizing and using the union’s cost-of-living survey data to better advocate for graduate students. 

As VP Grad Life, Mata aims to implement more networking, events, and facilitate more outreach at UTSC, UTM, and the Institute for Aerospace Studies. She hopes to develop resources for graduate students’ mental health in light of OSAP cuts and increase the number of volunteer opportunities for students. 

“I really do love student government, and I feel like you have to have a passion to help students in order to be in a specific role like this.”