Born from the 70 students in attendance of the first classes at the University of Saskatchewan, the Student Representative Council (SRC) created its first constitution over a hundred years ago in 1910. The inception of the organization was encouraged by faculty, as they believed that “students should be allowed to govern their own affairs as much as possible.”

The University of Saskatchewan’s Student Union (USSU) coming into the picture in 1973 brought greater legitimacy and power to student voices and concerns. Despite the SRC ending a year later, its initial mission, “to act as a unifying force in university life and as the supreme representative body of the students,” is still present in spirit in current-day student governance affairs here at USask.

A lot of time has passed since the USSU was established and means of communication and students voicing concerns have changed as well. Noticing posts on the University of Saskatchewan’s unofficial Reddit page that brought into question the USSU’s conduct, financial spending, and activities over the last academic year, The Sheaf decided to investigate.

We had the chance to talk with the USSU executive team, along with one of their four Senior Managers: Jason Ventnor, who is responsible for communications and marketing. We gave them the opportunity to respond to some of the concerns that students have raised on social media regarding the organization.

Workload, courses, office hours, research, and volunteering

It’s no secret that acting as the president of a non-profit organization comes with a lot of work. One of the first concerns raised by students was whether the current number of course hours that the President and their team had taken on affected their ability to properly fulfill the responsibilities and obligations they had to the students they’re representing. In an attempt to ensure that their USSU duties are not compromised, the number of credits each executive is allowed to be registered for in a term is outlined in the USSU Bylaw. As of now, the maximum is nine credits per term. If an executive wanted to take more than the allowed number of credits, they would have to get approval from the University Students’ Council.

The VP Academic Affairs, VP Student Affairs, and VP Operations and Finance are taking two to three classes this semester, and President Ishita Mann, studying cellular, physiological, and pharmacological sciences is taking two classes as well, and will be graduating this year. 

Along with her studies and the responsibilities that come with her role, Mann also aids in research as a volunteer under a master’s student. “It’s not like a paid position or even like a dedicated thing,” she explains. “So whenever she wants me to come in, […] it’s once a month or something like that, and I’ll go in, and I’ll do imaging because you have to prepare slides for the imaging itself. Those take a certain amount of time. You have to slice those images and then you can finally go ahead and [take pictures]. Imaging literally just involves putting it under a microscope and then taking a snapshot of them, and I can do that on weekends.”

At the age of 16 Mann was the founder of YHYSaskatchewan (YHYSK), which on her personal website is described as “one of North America’s fastest-growing youth-led nonprofits.” We asked her about how she’s able to manage the organization while acting as President, and she clarified: “I’m not managing Youth Helping Youth right now, because I’m a full-time employee. I’m also a student right now so obviously like needing to have some type of balance in my life and with research.”

Whenever the topic was brought up, Mann was quick to assure us that her extracurriculars and classes didn’t cut into her presidential work. “Because it is easy for me to see my schedules I plan beforehand. I always have that spirit in me because I like to manage different roles and it’s not been that difficult to manage. It takes a lot of dedication for sure,” she states. “I’m here at my job for the hours that I’m supposed to be. I’m approachable by email. It doesn’t take long to get a response from me at all and it doesn’t affect my ability to prepare reports that I do for University Council.”

Not many people would be able to balance all these various responsibilities like Mann, and one has to give credit where it’s due. It may be true that she’s available for her office hours, attends meetings, finishes assignments, and is able to work in a lab. And yes, the argument can be made that whether or not she attends classes or is able to fully be present for her other engagements is her business. But that’s simply not the case when it comes to the activities of the President of the USSU who has the responsibility of being the representative of over 19 000 students. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that many students would want future representatives to be able to dedicate more time to their USSU duties instead of extracurriculars, especially given that they’re full-time employees being paid $43,000 a year with benefits, paid sick leaves, and vacation times.

Okay, so what has this administration actually accomplished?

Our undergraduate student union here at USask is just one student union among many across Canada. Naturally, organizational structure and goals vary from campus to campus in order to meet the needs of the unique groups of students being represented. However, you can find constants among the work these unions do, such as amplifying student voices at the academic institution and in all levels of government, health and dental plans, and transit passes to name a few.

In 1926 the precursor to our current health and benefit plans, called the Comprehensive Accident and Sick Benefit Fund, was created by the SRC, earning the group the title “a leader in student services and health care.” We can see the roots of where our transit passes came from in the late 1960s, when the USSU recognized that transportation for students came with challenges and worked with the Saskatoon Transit Company to create the university bus service.

The USSU was involved in the multi-million dollar project that would later result in the Place Riel Student Center that we know and love today, and their lobbying efforts in response to the student housing crisis in the 60s led to the building of the McEown Park Complex. Outside of these large undertakings, the SRC and later the USSU had always created social events, worked to bolster student engagement, and provided scholarships.

With just over two months left of the 2023-2024 term, we wanted to hear from the current administration what they had managed to accomplish and what they hope to in the future. 

Mann talked about how she thought that “this is probably the first year [the USSU] had a lot of touch points with the City of Saskatoon,” and explained that they were focused on the housing crisis, working with the city to create the Housing Accelerator Program. While it’s certainly not true that this is the first year that the USSU has been involved with the city to a large extent, it’s nice to know that they were working on an issue that many students are currently struggling with.

“A lot of these things are not like – it’s not like you can stab your finger and then a chain happens,” Mann explained. “You have to wait it out and you have to see what impact that has had. We are seeing a positive nod in the direction of seeing if we even need hearing boards.” Other projects she says her administration is working on are expediting academic appeals, and “going to the university to consider the impact that it has on students’ mental health and wellbeing, and even their future career prospects.”

Fourth-year psychology student and VP Operations and Finance, Nishtha Mehta, chimed in to talk about the work she’s been doing with other similar groups: “I’ve been in contact with numerous student unions from across Canada, specifically in the same position as me.” She said that they were working on a “specific campus group policy and how we can implement that into our specific policy.” Unfortunately she said she’s unable to tell us what it is yet, because it’s still in the works. Hopefully in the future we’ll see what comes out of it.

Issues surrounding transparency

Within the bylaws governing the USSU, Section 18 states that executives should “ensure that the Union is transparent and fully accountable to its members by making accessible to members all policies, job descriptions, and minutes of meetings of members, Council, Executive, and committees.”

We asked if the executives thought that they were fulfilling this responsibility. “I think that nothing is perfect. Everything has a scope of improvement,” Mann starts. “We thought that everything was going good because there were no concerns that were raised. So for this to come up now it made us aware … maybe we assumed there was no gap and people were able to access information they needed, but it has provided us reflection on what needs to be changed.”

A sentiment shared by some is that they were under the impression that being an executive was a volunteer role, so they were even more surprised when it turned out that executives were paid so much. It seems too, that in general students don’t have a clear idea of what the USSU is all about.

“I mean it’s always a constant battle with every student union to reach all members and we try to get information out as much as we can through PAWS announcements, emails and that type of thing,” said Ventnor. “We can always do a better job. I mean, that’s one of my mantras here is leave the position better than when you found it, right? So ultimately, like, some of that is on the executive, some of that on the administration, like the management team, which includes me, so making sure that students are aware. But ultimately we do rely a lot on the counselors, the report back to the college associations, because we ultimately can’t reach everywhere.”

Concerns on abuses of power

Probably one of the most important concerns to come from the Reddit posts were surrounding allegations of abuse of powers by the executive team. Specifically, some users pointed to the close relationships that Mann had with two student council members that they suspected were going to run in this upcoming election.

Ventnor was first to respond: “Well, two things. No one’s officially a candidate yet. They won’t be officially candidates until the 18th. We always have counselors that run in elections, so there’s always going to be some kind of connection. Ultimately, the bylaw and the elections policy, that you can look up, has a number of rules and regulations in there that police the election and it’s shared by a practicing lawyer for the elections committee, so ultimately they oversee the election. The executives have no control over what happens.”

Mann expressed that they were aware of the speculations, and said to that point, “as an executive, we made it a point to stay distanced from elections, like if people have, you know, concerns or questions we typically have meetings in three. So, for example, if I’m having a meeting with a potential candidate, I’ll make sure that it’s in the upstairs open area instead of my actual office, where the door could be closed.”

A related issue is the speculations some students have about two of the current executives forming a slate, working together to run for different positions. Ventnor agreed that this would be in violation of the rules: “Yeah, it’s under the USSU bylaw and in the elections policy, which is why we have the practicing lawyer that oversees chairs the elections committee.”

Mann said she had “no knowledge of any sort of slate,” and that “all [she knows] is that [she] saw a full room of people and that for [her] was a good sign, and beyond that, no idea.”

Student engagement

Only four percent of the undergraduate student population voted to have Mann as President, meaning only 804 students voted to have her represent the whole undergraduate student body. While the recent online posts have brought this issue to the forefront of our consciousness, low voter turnout and lack of student engagement has resurfaced time and time again in the USSU’s past.

Starting in the early 50s, voter turnout dropped from around 60 percent to 30 percent in the early 70s. And in the mid to late 90s, these numbers remained between around 17 and 22 percent. More recently, 2009 marked the first time that all USSU executive positions went uncontested. Voter turnout went from 23.9 percent in 2016, to 18.6 percent in the following year.

Given that the executives have so much power and influence over the lives of everyday students, it strikes one as odd that there is a clear declining trend with regards to student interest in their governance.

Ventnor explained that USSU executives do have a role in promoting student engagement in all areas, including politics in order to “promote the general welfare of the union.” He continued, “Every year we’re always trying to increase the amount of candidates, so sometimes we’re more successful than others, but ultimately we would like to have all contested positions.”

International students running for President

In the Annual General Meeting (AGM) that took place on November 30th, 2023, a motion was passed that increases the number of credits the USSU President can take. It has been suspected by some that this was done to allow the VP Student Affairs Gurbaz Singh, a third-year international student studying computer science, to run for President next year. As of March 18th, he is confirmed to be running for USSU President for the 2024-2025 academic year.

However, Mann said the motion “was brought up in the Annual General Meeting to change the bylaw, essentially because the Non-Profit Corporation Act also updates and now we have some room to play around in.”

This isn’t the first time that attention has been brought to the fact that the previous credit unit requirement prevented international students from attaining the President role, since international students must take at least nine credits to legally be able to work while classes are in session. After all, as members of the USSU, international students should also have the opportunity to become President, just as domestic students.

Ventnor further explained that “back in 2020, Autumn’s (President of the 2020 – 2021 Executive Team) year, they started the change to the credits, ultimately waiting for the Non-Profit Corporation [Act] to be updated. It was updated in 2022, which allowed directors to be from international students, so once that was updated we could update our bylaw to reflect that. So it was more the Non-Profit Corporation Act limited who could be directors.”

Prior to this, it was the case that 25 percent of the directors had to be Saskatchewan residents. Because this requirement had been removed, the credit unit formula determining who could become executives could now also be modified.

At the end of the day, it’s a good thing for changes and modifications to the rules to take place so that international students are also able to take on leadership roles in student government. This is not the issue that most opponents to the motion probably have.

The main issue is whether or not by taking on a full course load the President is able to fulfill their duties. Does it make sense for a full-time employee, representing the undergraduate student population of USask, to take on a full course load at the same time?

Creating a space for international students in such leadership positions in the USSU may take a lot more thought and organization than simply allowing them to take more classes.

Financials

Other than the yearly wages of the executives, students had questions regarding the USSU’s financials. We first brought up the rumors surrounding allegations that student money was used to buy a PS5 gaming console for one of the execs.

The response was light chuckles and the assurance that really was just a rumor. “I don’t know where it came from,” quipped Singh. Ventnor added, “Nobody here has a PS5. Nobody gets those kinds of perks. That’s just Reddit being Reddit.”

Attention had also been brought to the fact that Louis’ – one of the businesses under the control of the USSU – has been running at a deficit. To that Ventnor responded: “So difficult question.  There’s a lot of layers to Louis’ obviously, given that it’s on campus and has different availability throughout the year, on when students are on campus and when they’re not.” 

Another thing to consider is that the USSU facilitates student group events, and they often don’t charge attendees for being in the Louis’ space. Ventnor explains, “ultimately as a campus bar and it’s for students, so a lot of the cost that would charge the public we don’t charge students for.”

Senior management team

After 15 years, the previous General Manager (GM) retired from her role. Her last message for the USSU Annual Report, signed in April 2021, included her reflections on the USSU and the Senior Management teams response to the abrupt changes in circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and her recommended plans of action to be implemented following her absence.

She wrote: “We prepared for my departure and adopted my recommendation that a new GM is not hired. In the interim, the four remaining senior managers will share the GM duties between them, requiring significant planning and organization.”

In a 2003 publication by the USSU, a page included the positions within the executive team along with a quick description of their responsibilities. Relatively unchanged are the President and Vice-President positions, however there was the description of the GM. Acting as an ‘ex-officio’, they were described as being responsible for “the USSU’s business and administration,” and “[mentoring] and [advising] the elected executive members.”

This and the past year’s USSU administration have been running without a GM, and we asked what they thought about operating without one. 

“Well, instead of one general manager, we have four senior managers,” Mann responded. She also went on to say that having a GM would mean adding another person to the payroll and argued that that money could go towards supporting the centers that they run and providing competitive wages. “At the end of the day, like we saw, the four senior managers worked very well with last year’s executives in our transitions.”

Interestingly, she also said that no one informed her of the need to hire a GM, expressing, “if that was ever recommended to me, I would very much implement it.”

We then turned our attention to the senior management team. The four current members Amanda Mitchell, Jason Kovitch, Jason Ventnor and Stefanie Ewen hold the positions of Accounting Controller, Business and Services Manager, Communications and Marketing Manager, and Facilities Manager, respectively.

They are all full-time professionals that were hired by the previous GM, and are able to remain employed until they decide to retire, move on, or are let go by the executive team. Ventnor explained that ultimately, it’s the executive team that are their bosses.

The GM acted as a bridge between the USSU executive team and the senior management team – managing the operations and affairs of both teams while not being too closely aligned with either. However, now that there isn’t a GM in the picture, the senior management team works intimately with the executive team.

In the last GM’s message, it seems she intended for the holding off of hiring a replacement to be temporary given the pandemic, and made preparations for what she thought would be temporary continued operations without a GM. However, it seems that Ventnor has a different interpretation of her recommendation.

When asked whether he thought it was worth having a GM, he responded, “Personally, I think it gives the executive more options right and who they need to work with and what [or] who’s available to them, because part of that role for the general manager is mainly to be the liaison with the executive. That’s part of my role now, and then we split up a couple of the other duties throughout the senior managers.”

His point is that this new way of doing things allows for the two teams to meet as a group and work as a collective. But he also mentions that “it would be up to the executive if they think a GM is needed.”

Each year, the executive team is replaced with newly elected representatives, but the members of the senior management team remain relatively constant. Ventnor, for example, has had his role for over 18 years, and the other members have been around for similar lengths of time.

On paper, the executive team is the boss of the senior management team, but how realistic is this assumption? An idealistic picture is painted of the two teams together, but under a different lens one can make the argument that a critical part is missing. Currently, the management team’s only oversight is the undergraduate students that are filtered through each year. It’s not hard to imagine them preferring the greater freedoms awarded when a GM isn’t looking over them.

Conclusion: What to keep in mind for the upcoming elections

Campaigning for the upcoming USSU elections started on Monday March 18th, and voting will take place in Paws on March 27th and 28th. With many seemingly competent candidates running for the same positions, there are a few points to keep in mind when choosing a candidate and casting your vote. 

First and foremost — as students, we collectively have the power (and frankly, the responsibility) to ensure that the USSU executives are representative of the student body and that they’re meeting demands and expectations. 

As mentioned, only four percent of the student population voted in the last elections. Poor engagement has been an issue for decades, as voter turnout decreases each year. We cannot ensure that the executives are fairly representing the students if we do not research their campaigns and vote in the elections. 

So, before you vote for the candidate you’re friends with, or for the one that has the most appealing poster, think – are they telling us what we want to hear, or are they being genuine? Because it is really easy to “advocate for transparency” in a campaign poster, but how will they actually hold themselves to that standard? It is easy to list vague words such as “action” — what does that mean in terms of their position within the USSU? In the case of candidates who are running for a second term, have they succeeded in achieving their goals in their previous term? What are the candidates planning on doing if they win, and how will they do it? Do they have an actual plan laid out in their campaign? Because again, it is easy to say that as a candidate, one will “promote inclusivity” hoping to attract more demographics, but is it possible they are making empty promises? For instance, past executives have initiated plans that they claimed would be in place for a number of years. What happened to those plans, and why are they not being implemented by new executives? This is important to consider because some of them are centered around obviously important topics that all potential candidates claim to be concerned with, such as advocating for Indigenous Peoples on campus. The bottom line is that we all know campaigns are a marketing scheme; all claims made in them have to be challenged. This way we will know for certain that candidates are not “advocating” for things they can’t accomplish, or worse, that they are not interested in accomplishing. 

This leads us to the second point. None of this can be achieved if we, as students, do not engage in the campaign and election process. We have learned that our engagement is the key to ensuring that actions are being taken. We hold them accountable by remaining connected with the executive team throughout the year. Any undergraduate student can attend public USSU meetings where our voices can be heard. 

Suppose this piece has encouraged you to become more involved with student politics and you want to start somewhere. In that case, the USSU is hosting two candidate forums within the next two weeks – an in-person forum at Louis’ on Wednesday, March 20th at 4:00 p.m. and a virtual forum on Tuesday, March 26th at 7:00 p.m. Information on how to register is available on their website. 

Attending meetings may sound mundane, but it’s a crucial part of our responsibility as students. If you’ve ever had a job, you’ve likely had a questionable supervisor or manager — think back to all the times you’ve complained that they were not completing their tasks, that they were slacking off during work hours, and how that affected you and your coworkers. The executives voluntarily chose to run for their positions, and they get paid to do (or at least try) what they promised to do. It is unfair to us, who pay an ever-increasing amount of tuition and fees, if they are not meeting expectations. Our attendance at these meetings ensures that they do. 

And again — the responsibility of ensuring that they are being held accountable lies within the student body of the University. By attending meetings, we ensure that future executives are a) doing what they promised they would and b) not doing the bare minimum and just using their position to build up their resume. It historically has been relatively easy for executives to scrape by and not follow through with anything meaningful, despite what they promised in their campaigns. Remember that the elected candidates are supposed to serve you — not the other way around. 

The third point, and arguably the most important one, is that this was a lesson for all of us to learn. This piece will hopefully encourage future executives to fulfill their promises before the annual budget spreadsheet is posted on Reddit again and chaos ensues, and encourage students to become interested in student governance, vote in the elections, and attend meetings. 

The USSU is incredibly powerful; it gives us our health and dental plan, affordable semester-long bus pass, the Pride and Women’s Centres, and many other benefits and facilities you take advantage of on a daily basis. So, if you were upset or angry over what happened, remember that your involvement in student politics is worth it and can make a difference. 

Being an independent group, The Sheaf is not controlled or financed by the USSU — if after everything we’ve said you still do not want to attend meetings or vote in the elections, our contact information is public and we are a valuable channel to voice your concerns through and engage in student affairs. We can only hope that all forms of engagement with student matters continue to grow in future years, to the point where articles like this will not be necessary.