On Sunday night, in front of a small crowd in the Victoria Hall lobby, Residence Society (ResSoc) Executive candidates Team CPR and Team IWJ debated over the future of the society.
Both teams are running candidates for Society President, Vice President of Judicial Affairs (VPJA) and Vice President of Residential Affairs (VPRA).
Team CPR is made up of Presidential candidate Jake Roseman, Andrea Colisanti for VPRA and Maddie Perrault for VPJA. On Team IWJ, Matt Ierino is running for the presidential role, Emmy Williams for VPRA and Nishi Joseph for VPJA.
Chief Electoral Officer Leo Liu and audience members asked questions while the event was broadcast on Facebook Live by current VPJA Varman Jeyaseelan. The live feed drew an audience of around 1,300 online.
During the opening statements, Roseman touched on points about increased society transparency and greater access to their general assembly minutes, which he later pointed out weren’t posted anywhere — despite having an ad hoc drop box on the ResSoc website.
Further, he said that Team CPR would fill all hired positions prior to the summer for greater stability.
For Team IWJ, Joseph opened with a note about speaking to students across campus, so that their needs could be directly addressed. She also stressed the need for open and accessible executives and promised, like their opponents, that transparency was of utmost importance.
Kicking off the question period, Liu asked each candidate what their most memorable staff experience was. Team IWJ all gave answers which highlighted their individual backgrounds: Ierino worked on West Campus while Williams was House President for Graduate Residence.
Team CPR used their answer to touch upon a later-repeated point, that ResSoc staff need to be more accessible. This topic came up again when Colisanti was asked about how she planned to interact with her subordinates, namely the House Presidents.
“As a VPRA you have to deliver a lot of feedback,” she said. “It’s easier when it is not only a professional relationship but one that is on a friend to friend basis.”
Williams contradicted Colisanti’s statement, saying the relationship should be professional before friendly. A friendly relationship wasn’t necessarily bad, she explained, so long as it didn’t impede on the professionalism expected from an executive team.
Cohesion between the teams came when discussing the Senior Residence Facilitator position, which both teams agree isn’t clearly defined and is therefore too close to the regular RF duties.
The Senior RF discussion arose during questions about the non-academic misconduct system, of which Queen’s Residences are an agent.
In order to demonstrate to the Senate Residence Committee the value in keeping the RFs involvement in non-academic discipline, Ierino stated plans to make the senior RF position higher paying and give those employees a wider range of training to attract more qualified candidates.
Roseman agreed that the senior RF position ought to be further differentiated from a regular RF, but, he said that to incentivize the positions in the manner which Ierino suggested would instead make the position more daunting to applicants and be a poor use of the Society’s funds.
Moving along to financial questions and what each team would do to ensure a neutral budget, Ierino said that Team IWJ would investigate as many revenue streams as possible and hopes to begin selling certain products like laundry detergents at residences’ front desks.
Roseman quickly retorted that Ierino seemed to be proposing more spending and no actual saving schemes. He went on by saying that CPR would lower the salary of the First Year Event Advisors, as he felt the position was over-paid.
Tags
audience, debate, Facebook, ResSoc, student government
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