Both teams running in the Main Campus Residence Council (MCRC) executive election want to put a face to a council many students don’t know a lot about. Team TAP presidential candidate Tina Yan, ArtSci ’10, said her team hopes to bring MCRC closer to students in residence.
“We thought there was a connection missing between residence and the MCRC,” Yan said.
Along with MCRC awareness, the team’s platform focuses on student life, changing attitudes towards discipline and maximizing MCRC staff member efficiency.
Yan and vice-president (discipline) candidate Paolo Uy, ArtSci ’10, formed the team in September. In November, vice-president (residence affairs) candidate Annie Guo, Comm ’11 joined them.
The team said their diverse background and previous experience with MCRC will help them with their campaign. Yan is house president of Waldron Tower, where Uy is the discipline facilitator.
As a first year, Guo said, she hopes to bring new perspective to the MCRC.
TAP wants to create an online newsletter for residence affairs and broadcast information on the LCD monitors in residences and cafeterias.
Next year will be MCRC’s 20th anniversary. TAP plans to run a carnival event during Frosh Week to promote MCRC awareness.
The team would like the Vice-President of finance and operations to be made into two separate positions due to the workload the job requires. They also think the vice-president of society activities position—which manages social facilitators and plans society-wide events—should be eliminated and house presidents should be given more authority.
“We would like to re-define the roles of the MCRC staff so they already know what their jobs are like and what their duties are,” Gou said.
Team PMC presidential candidate Michael Paramathasan, ArtSci ’11, said his team’s “for the students, by the students.”
Team PMC also wants to split the role of the vice-president (finance and operations) in two due to its workload.
Paramathasan and vice-president (discipline) candidate Jessica Cha, ArtSci ‘10 decided to run in October. Vice-president (resident affairs) candidate Brittaney MacLeod, joined the team in early January.
“We’re moving forward as a team and taking insight from previous years,” said MacLeod, ArtSci ’10, who has past experience as a social facilitator. Cha was a house president at Chown and Paramathasan is an intern to the current president and chair of the president’s office.
They plan to create an MCRC board of directors to make sure student money is being spent usefully and that there’s continuity within the committee.
“When someone makes a mistake in one year the information is not given to the upcoming president, so they make the same mistake over again one year after another,” Cha said.
The board will consist of a group of house presidents, past executives, alumni, residence life and members of The Journal.
The team also plans to advertise more for general assemblies and put more MCRC information on the website to receive more input from students.
Paramathasan said people don’t know what the MCRC is until they’re written up for violations.
“We would like to have a more personal face,” he said. They want to create a resource centre where students will be able to rent equipment such as laptops and speakers using their student cards. In Victoria Hall, team PMC wants to make the basement into a study library where students can donate old computers and printers.
The team plans to turn one of the empty rooms in Victoria Hall into a study area and develop a confidential hotline for students who need help with learning strategies.
They also hope to get rid of the blue MCRC cards given to students in residence and put a sticker on student cards, instead. The team hopes to incorporate the use of flex dollars for laundry services.
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