I am not a journalist by any means: despite starting my career in the Camosun College Student Society as assistant editor of the Nexus newspaper 25 years ago, I am an abysmal editor, utterly disastrous, and generally chaos embodied in human form. I once “proudly resented” the Victoria Shakespeare Festival, which I was the head of at the time. Where did that P go? I have no idea, but I assume one of two things: either Adobe InDesign hates me, entirely possible, or pushing yourself to run a festival that leads to very little sleep and lonely celibacy might make one’s subconscious, sort of, proudly resentful.
Either way, I am bad at catching my own mistakes.
A spectacular moment in my career is when laying out CCSS election platforms I forgot to delete an old statement but replaced the photo and name with that of a lovely Sikh gentleman. It was rather unfortunate that it was a pride candidate’s statement and she was talking about her dedication to the pride community and how lesbian she was—great for her, less so for the Sikh gentleman. Chaos. I had to own my mistake and make penance for my mistake and he was very gracious about the whole thing, especially as he lost that election.
So, I am not a journalist, however, I am a gregarious storyteller and I am setting out for the CCSS to advocate for you, the student body, by telling some of my stories, and I want to be really clear—especially with those of you who work for the college—that I have an agenda here: I want to strengthen student influence on campus, and my method is to tell you two kinds of stories.
I am going to tell you about the times when the college got it right and when the college missed important opportunities, from my perspective, over the last 25 years. I want you to celebrate this amazing institution as it is and I want you to lament with me what the college could have been, and together perhaps we can come up with a vision from our shared perspectives of what this institution should and could be.
As I am often criticizing the college as the primary student advocate, I think we should start by talking about a college triumph: The Alex & Jo Campbell Centre for Health and Wellness (and not just because they took the scary mannequins that would stare at me from the Richmond House bathroom at night when I went to the washroom, but partly). See you next issue.