The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) kicked off the campaign period for its spring 2021 elections on Sunday, March 28. Voting for the online elections is happening from 9 am Monday, April 12 to 11:59 pm Wednesday, April 14. CCSS external executive Quinn Cunningham, who is not running for re-election, says that although the CCSS has now had time to adjust to campaigning online, there is a certain “vulnerability and eagerness” involved with talking to students face to face, and that still can’t happen due to COVID-19.
“To be perfectly honest… my favourite part about being involved in the Camosun College Student Society is speaking to students on campus, those kind of random encounters,” says Cunningham.
When it comes to campaigning, the online environment isn’t as organic, he says, but the main issues facing students for this election remain the same, for the most part. Still, he acknowledges that it has been “a heavy year,” one that has exacerbated many of the issues facing students.
“Affordability [of Victoria] is a huge problem,” he says. “The price of post-secondary is a huge problem,” he says.
As far as how online schooling influences those things, solutions are going to have to be made on the fly, he says, once staff and students return to campus in September, and these are the sorts of decisions that the election winners can have a say in.
“I hope we’re able to return to campus in the fall,” he says. “I hope that we’re able to curve back to a point where it’s safe for students to return. In the instance where we’re going back and we’re looking at, maybe, a mixed-education approach, I think there are going to be accessibility issues.”
If there are students that are unvaccinated and therefore uncomfortable returning, he says, or maybe students that don’t feel fully confident in how campus services and classes are being run, it’s going to be particularly important for the CCSS to make sure students are heard, says Cunningham. The same goes for affordability: government assistance with evictions and other financial measures are not enough to alleviate the “huge problem” of affordability in Victoria for students, he says.
“Students are vulnerable. A lot of young adults enter [rental] contracts that are predatory,” he says. “It’s not just the province’s job; it’s a municipal issue as well, and that’s why the CCSS… works for housing that’s designed for people of low income. There’s not a good housing support system, I feel, in Victoria, for low income, and a lot of students fall into that bracket.”
To read the candidates’ platforms and to find out more information on the elections, go to camosunstudent.org/elections.