They are ready for the challenge. Candidates want to show you why they deserve to be on the Student Association’s (SA) board of directors.
“I’ve been with the SA for almost three years now,” said Yassimin Yassini the current Arts and Design Representative and candidate for St. James campus director. “I’ve been in different positions and I felt that I needed to move up the hierarchy in order to make changes that are needed to hear out the students more broadly, rather than focus on one centre.”
A new school year brings a new group of students ready to help current and future students have the best experience at George Brown College (GBC) through the SA.
Divided into campus directors, educational representatives, and constituency representatives, a variety of candidates are campaigning to prove themselves worthy of being elected into their desired positions.
The Dialog extended the opportunity to all candidates to voice their future goals if elected. Candidates Aavya Sharma who is running for business representative and Nicolas Kiriakou, running for construction & engineering representative, sent regrets as they had class or exams. Thomas Hadwen, running for Casa Loma campus director, chose to campaign at Casa Loma instead of speaking with The Dialog at St. James campus during our scheduled interview time.
“I would like to follow-up on the idea of having specific events for hospitality students, while having a focus on hospitality networking,” said Hughes. “I am hoping to put together major events that would incorporate industry professionals in hopes of getting something started there for students.”
Opposing candidate for hospitality representative Melanie McIntosh said, “I would do so by listening to what they want to be changed or created and accomplishing it. I would also do so by making them aware of services offered by the school to help them and by raising their awareness of school events.”
Katherine Klomp, fashion management student and Arts and Design representative candidate, wants to bring all fashion studies programs to the forefront.
“Lately I’ve been challenging myself and seeing where I can go with it,” said Klomp about her decision to run in this year’s elections. “I would love to create a more comfortable environment for the dancers when they go on break, bring in new drafting tables for the sewers because they’re falling apart, and make students aware of the jewellery students,”
Samantha Brown candidate for aboriginal representative hopes that if elected she can help expand the college’s awareness of the aboriginal community while expanding the resources available to aboriginal students. “I want us to be big and bold and outspoken,” said Brown.
Husain Slatewala, a candidate for international representative believes in bettering the experience for international students while lessening the challenges they face within the school.
“When I came here I had faced a lot of international immigration problems, and taking that into account,” said Slatewala. “I would organize seminars to help students by calling professional lawyers and immigration officers and helping with whatever students needed.”
Also running for international student representative, Himanshu (no last name given) and Rahul Borthakur, talked about their qualifications based on previous experiences back in India and experiences upon entering Canada.
“I want to create opportunities for every international student to network, because networking is important in the Canadian job market,” said Borthakur. “It’s a very hard task coming from other countries, so I want to create platforms and bring in motivational speakers to help them network.”
Himanshu says one goal is to improve diversity and social inclusion at GBC.
“In spite of being a diverse culture, we are still lacking inclusion,” said Himanshu. “That is my aim, if people are coming from all different countries inclusion should be there, which will make all students of different cultures, be one.”
