The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) is swiftly approaching their next election for their student board. Online voting will be open from 9 am on Tuesday, April 7 until 9 pm on Thursday, April 9.
The CCSS is responsible for many student services, including the UPass program, the food bank, health and dental programs, mental health and housing resources, WalkSafer, the ombudsperson, and the book swap program.
CCSS executive director Michel Turcotte says that the college moving classes online due to COVID-19 will not affect the election.
“We’ve committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure that the elections will still take place under whatever circumstances we find ourselves in,” he says. “People can vote from home, because everyone will receive a link through their email, from the college, and even the platform information is in that election portal, so people will have the opportunity to make those informed choices.”
However, Turcotte is unsure of how the empty campuses will affect voter turnout.
“This is going to be the first fully remote election with nobody on campus, so that will be interesting to see how that impacts voter participation and the ability for candidates to gain awareness,” he says. “Since everybody is maintaining some degree of social isolation, I’m hoping that students will actually have more time to read through the information and participate in this process, and that voter turnout actually increases, but there’s still some unknowns in relation to that.”
The election will also have a referendum question which proposes to increase the student society fee by $1 a month. Turcotte says this is to cover increased expenses relating to funding services such as the WalkSafer program, the new Ombudsperson (which the CCSS and Camosun College both fund), and other advocacy expenses that have been growing steadily under the same budget.
“We have been seeking to fund those services internally, trying to make that work up until now,” he says. “Passing that referendum will allow us to maintain even current services slightly better than what we would without it.”
CCSS external executive Fillette Umulisa believes students should care about voting because the role of CCSS’ elected leaders is to fight for the rights of those very students.
“I think they should care because as a student union, we are the ones that look out for the interests of every student here at Camosun College, so I think it’s important that people get to choose the people that are going to make the decisions that are going to affect them,” she says. “Students are going to have life on campus and you need somebody that you can hold accountable to be able to represent you when you cannot represent yourself.”
Umulisa says that one of the primary strengths of the CCSS is that its members know what it’s like to be students.
“I would not want to imagine a world where [student societies] did not exist, a world in which there’s nobody to advocate for people if they need things,” she says. “It’s students who run the student unions; they know how to act and how to do it because they’re facing the same issues every student is facing.”
Turcotte believes that student societies have a large impact on the student experience through advocacy work.
“The main purpose of a student society is to advocate for students and to make the experience as good as possible for our members,” he says, “so we try to do that both by advocating with the institution and the governments, but also by providing those services or trying to get the college to provide those services for students.”
Turcotte believes that voting is important for students, because it allows them to have a say in where their money is spent.
“Student societies are responsible for most of the auxiliary fees that students pay; that’s why students are essential in terms of providing good governance to those organizations,” he says. “That requires students picking their leaders, to help ensure that those funds are allocated in an accountable manner.”
Turcotte says that without student societies, campus life for students would be devoid of so many of the little things that improve students’ quality of experience.
“People would come to class but they wouldn’t have help if they got into difficulty,” he says. “Like, if you need a grade appeal, or some advice, or you want to go to the dentist, or have someone walk with you to the bus stop after hours, all those sorts of things—you can see evidence of the student society’s existence all over campus.”
Turcotte says that working for CCSS has been rewarding because he can witness personal growth in students who are involved with the student society.
“To me, watching students developing governance experience is redeeming, in a sense,” he says. “I’ve seen many of them grow a lot personally as they gain that experience and participate in those processes, represent students at meetings at meetings in various parts of the country, or with MPs and MLAs; it means a lot to me to watch young people have those growth opportunities.”
Umulisa loves that through her work with the CCSS she’s been given the opportunity to provide for a community that has given so much to her.
“I have been entrusted with an opportunity to stand out and represent my fellow students; for me it is a great way to show that I’m giving back to the community. I love the Camosun community, it’s important, and it’s been really good for me that I want every other student’s experience to be the same,” she says. “On top of that, there’s a sense of belonging when you’re part of a bigger group, [you] get that sense of saying, wow, my voice was part of this movement. There’s always that feeling I’m actually doing something, and that something is benefitting more people than just myself.”
Umulisa urges students to think of the elections not as a series of adversarial competitions, but as a team committed to student prosperity.
“I think coming into the election students should know that regardless of who they vote for, even though we run as individuals, when the results come out and the new board is set, we all work closely because we all have one thing in mind: to be responsible and accountable to the people that voted for us,” she says. “So [students] should cast their vote, because whomever they’re going to vote for is going to stand out and represent them to the best of their abilities.”
See camosunstudent.org for more information on the CCSS and the elections.