At a virtual open forum on Jan. 21, Commerce Society (ComSoc) executive, uncontested Team Triple A expanded their platform to students.
Consisting of Presidential candidate Amber Graham, Vice-President (Student Affairs) candidate Ava Tan, and Vice-President (Operations) candidate, Alexa Melo, all Comm ’27. Due to two of the running candidates currently being on exchange, the open forum took place on Zoom, and was facilitated by Chief Returning Officer Elite La, Comm ’28, and current President Prem Mehta-Spooner, Comm ’26.
The forum lasted 30 minutes and consisted of eight questions, both generalized and candidate specific. Each candidate was given 30 seconds to prepare an answer, followed by a three-minute response.
Similar to the team’s public platform and statements previously given to The Journal, Team Triple A are intent on re-emphasizing their pillars to the student body.
The forum’s first few questions set a foundation for the team to share their experience at ComSoc, their appreciation for what they’ve achieved in previous roles and the plan to ensure ComSoc is a welcoming place for students.
“Through my Ombudsperson role, I was really able to get a holistic and overarching view of ComSoc,” Graham said. “And I think the advocacy aspects of that are something I wanted to do on a larger scale.”
When asked about equity, diversity, inclusion and indigeneity (EDII), Graham again answered the question, citing that the initiative was more her responsibility.
“Providing people the resources they need to succeed […] the more we can do to help people feel like they’re in a safe space here and they have the resources they need to succeed,” she said. “That’s very important to us… we don’t know everything so it’s really important for us to work with other students who all had different experiences and different perspectives and ideas to really create something meaningful.”
When asked about feedback and efficiency of initiatives, Melo discussed creating infrastructure to enable students to give feedback anonymously, while also harbouring an environment to be approachable. Tan added the possibility of open office hours with the executive’s team and an Instagram forum to better student advocacy at the AMS and Senate.
“We can get the actual feedback from students and be able to bring that with us to the meetings to be better prepared, and to make sure these students are having a voice as well.”
Melo then took the opportunity to campaign a “controlled environment document” when asked about financial transparency and accountability. The document would set a clear outline of the “inflows and outflows” to ensure efficiency and operations.
“I think we’re all people that if we don’t know something, we ask, or we figure it out,” Melo said. “And we’re driven to figure that out, we want to understand why things happen. We want to be helpful and ultimately, we all have the same goal,” she said.
Towards the end of the 30 minutes, La began to facilitate anonymously submitted questions from viewers. When asked to discuss past ComSoc initiatives, Tan mentioned the idea of repeating the past event of a coffee house in the coming year as a way for students to come together as a community and showcase students’ talents.
The voting period for the ComSoc executive election will take place on Jan. 26 to 27, with ballots to be e-mailed to all Commerce students.
Tags
ComSoc elections, Elections 2026, Townhall
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