The sole team running for Main Campus Residents’ Council (MCRC) executive includes a familiar face.
Presidential candidate Tuba Chishti for team CYL ran in last year’s race for the position of vice-president of residence affairs in team MCF.
“After running and losing last year at first I wasn’t going to do anything, but I still felt there was a lot I could add to the society, and that I could learn from the society,” she said. “I’ve grown a lot.”
Her teammates for the Feb. 1 election are vice-presidential candidate of residence affairs Dorothy Yu and vice-presidential candidate of discipline John Liu.
Chishti said if elected, she would work to increase communication between the MCRC and its residents by adding a feedback section to the MCRC website, putting executive reports online and connecting with residents directly.
“We can literally go knocking on doors,” Chishti, ArtSci ’14, said.
She said her team is qualified based on their current roles.
“We are all running for our boss’s position,” she said. “We know what kind of management you have to do, because we’ve seen it.”
Yu said she wants to increase don interaction between residence buildings in order to create a tight-knit community.
Yu added that she wants to continue the current executive’s initiative to involve first-year students in the Council. This year, the MCRC executive added a first-year position, event assistant, to its staff.
“They acted like interns towards the president. It’s a valuable opportunity,” Yu, ArtSci ’14, said. “We want to increase that and increase first-year involvement in general.”
Liu said his main focus would be informing students about the existing residence rules.
“MCRC deals with damage control,” he said. “But we need to raise awareness from the beginning.”
Liu said this could be done by putting up posters in the residences that would outline the rules and why it’s important to respect them.
Currently, Liu doesn’t know how much this would cost, but said it would be minimal and posters would be more specific than in previous years.
“We’ll be able to promote it more exclusively — it’d more specialized,” Liu said.
According to Liu, team CYL strongly believes in remedial action instead of punitive action. This is something they’d like to continue through the MCRC’s Peer Judicial Board.
The Peer Judicial Board members discuss Residence Rules and conduct hearings for residents who are charged in violation of the rules. Currently, a chair and appeals co-ordinator sit on this board, as well as members at large, who are student-volunteers.
Liu said he believes residents respond better to their peers than they do to administration when it comes to disciplinary action.
“They will respect us if we show them that we’ve been through what [they’re] going through,” he said. “There’s a level of understanding that you can’t have with admin.”
All three candidates currently hold positions with the MCRC this year. Chishti is events co-ordinator, Yu is the house president for Adelaide and Ban Righ Halls, and Liu is McNeil house’s residence facilitator.
— With files from Meaghan Wray
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