Ab SchMarina Banister
Tom Patrick
Why are you running for VP (Academic)?
Banister: I really believe that students should have a strong voice in their education. And ideas I hope to implement in my platform I think will do a good job to improve the university experience for students from a variety of different faculties.
I feel as though I could jump right in and start immediately to lobby the university administration on issues that matter to students.
Patrick: I’m running for VP (Academic) because I’ve been an undergraduate student for five years and a lot of things have happened that, when I was a student, I just kind of accepted it, but in hindsight, not that I’m at the end of my degree and now that I’ve been involved in Students’ Council for a year, you start to see that there are actually solutions to some of these issues.
What skills or experiences make you the best candidate for VPA?
Banister: I sat on every level of student governance at the U of A in my four years. And I’m a big believer that politicians should be politicians and not experts. So if I were to be elected, although I do have a plethora of experience I would constantly going back to different faculty associations and department associations to letting them inform the different decisions I should make on their behalf.
Patrick: I have been involved in student services for a while. I volunteered for three years for orientation, two of those years in leadership position. I’ve been involved in student governance for over a year in General Faculties Council and just under a year for Students’ Council. I think I have been a very effective councillor there. I think I have provided a good voice for students, I have made some positive changes for (The Faculty of Engineering), and I think I would be able to do the same for the student body at large.
High textbook costs have been a consistent problem, do you have any plans on dealing with them?
Banister: So this is not a new issue by any means. What I want to do is focus on textbook costs, but also the larger academic affordability in general. So I want to encourage professors to use course packs instead of textbooks. I also want to make sure there are necessary scholarships and bursaries for people who have higher needs, and I also want to challenge any sort of incentives that professors sometimes get for selecting certain texts or materials for their courses.
Patrick: Well, not specifically the cost of textbooks. I’m hoping that we can, as an institution, start eliminating textbooks from a lot of intro-level classes. See, textbooks would be a crazy hard thing to get into how they price up textbooks. And for a lot of intro-level classes, textbooks are not actually necessary. So you’re taking an introductory statistics course, all of that stuff would already be available online in an educational format.
Looking back on this year, is there anything you would have done differently from the current VP (Academic)?
Banister: I think that VP Rahman did a very good job this year, and there are a few things I would have done differently. But more so that I would have focused my energy in different places. So if I were to be elected VP (Academic), I want to invest equally in both advocating to the university administration as well as providing support to all the levels of governance that really make a big impact to faculty associations and department associations.
Patrick: You know, I hadn’t thought about that before. I’m not sure. I think I do generally agree with what his direction was with what he was trying to do. A lot of my points are an extension of that. So no, I don’t think so; I think he did a generally good job.
What was your Purity Test score? What would you have done to “improve” it? What’s one question you would have added?
Banister: My Purity Test score was the Padawan, which I think is the lowest score of the positive numbers. So I’m pretty satisfied with my score. I checked off all the boxes that I’ve done in my life and there weren’t a lot that I think I should have checked off that I wanted to so I’m pretty satisfied with my score. I think I’ve had a very similar score for my whole university, interestingly enough.
Patrick: Oh boy, that’s a loaded question. I think I was Smuggler. Like improve it up or improve it down? I mean, I like to think that my life decisions aren’t made for the Purity Test.
