punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

“So what do you actually DO as DSU President?”

That isn’t the question I should have been asked. That’s the question I’m always asked. I’ve had to answer that question countless times over the past two years. For the first six months this question was terrifying. What do I do? I would grasp at answers, stumbling and stuttering through enough of my calendar for the week until it seemed like I had answered well enough.

Having been doing this for the past year and a half the answer now comes easily. I do three things. I spend half of my time working on external advocacy – the government, public, and other stakeholders on postsecondary education issues through our membership in ANSSA and CASA. I spend half of my time working on internal advocacy – helping the Dalhousie Administration to enrich the experience of students through committees, Senate and Board of Governors. I spend the other half of my time being CEO of the DSU – managing my team of Vice Presidents and giving strategic direction to the organization. Before anyone thinks to point it out, those numbers do add up correctly.

That’s not interesting.

What I should have been talking about all along is what I’m not doing. There are a lot of responsibilities that just come with the title. I sit on five Boards (4 of them ex-officio), Senate (along with 3 sub-committees), and countless University steering committees, working groups, taskforces and party planning committees. This isn’t different than any other DSU Executive – I believe at last count the DSU VPI sits on 13 DSU Committees. It can be incredibly hard to add new commitments and initiatives to your schedule as they typically have to push out an old one. Next year’s Executive need to spend time talking about the things they are not doing, but wish they could. Then they need to decide to do some of those projects and throw away the old ones. What you are not doing is often more important than the day-to-day that you end up trapped in.

These are just 5 of the things that I should have been doing all along but I haven’t.

Municipal Lobbying

Halifax is great.

A few years ago fellow pundit and former President, Mike Tipping, successfully started a Municipal Lobbying group for Halifax. This was a very good idea. Unfortunately by the time I had made it to student politics the Halifax Student Alliance (HSA) had closed its doors due to one of the founding members pulling funding.

For a variety of reasons (that don’t matter) I don’t think we should restart the HSA as a funded municipal lobbying group with staff and all the inherent headaches. I however do find it incredible that student unions in the city don’t spend any time lobbying on municipal issues. While the funding from Universities does come from the provincial and federal levels, students are obviously affected by issues in the city in which they live.

I should have spent time talking to the other student unions/associations in the city creating a collective vision for how the city should look and work. We should be meeting regularly with our councillors, the mayor, and city staff. With an election quickly approaching municipal politics are more important than ever. Student issues should be election issues.

Weekly column in the Gazette

I know a lot of things.

Not because I’m smarter than you are (I’m not). It just happens to be my job to know things.  I also only know so many things because of the million committees I sit on. I should be doing a much better job of passing this relevant information on to students.

I’m an Engineer – I do like to think I hide it fairly well. Still, writing (like this) is typically an anxiety inducing, time consuming, activity for me. I should have sucked it up and just written as much as possible until it became comfortable to meet a weekly deadline.

I have no idea if the Gazette would publish a weekly column from a President. What I do know is that I would be able to say something interesting and relevant to students every week. At the least I should be making a better effort to share information so that more students have a chance to act on it.       

Voter Funded Media

Punditry is one of the best things to ever happen to the DSU Elections.

Voter Funded Media is a great way to encourage punditry style ‘media coverage’ year round. As Peter Kelly would say, this will help throw the windows open for our democracy. For a much better explanation of voter funded media than I would give go here.

We would have to create a model that works for Dalhousie but we have a lot going for us. We have 17 000 students who could all contribute. We also have a school full of aspiring journalists right beside us who could be encouraged to cover the DSU with the carrot of some extra beer money. Halifax is a creative city full of engaged people – we should be attracting some of that energy.

Engage Council

I spent two years on council before I was an Executive. An engaged council can be a very good thing (or a very bad thing) for an Executive team.

My first term I tried really hard to engage council. I really did. I organized an orientation in the Sumer. I made an awesome agenda. It was going to be great. Only two people came. That was pretty defeating and I didn’t try any more large scale events outside of regularly scheduled council meetings. I also created a group mailing list. I’m pretty sure my welcome message was the only message that was sent.

This is a shame because the best work of council happens outside of council chambers. When we can discuss ideas outside of the language of motions, solutions outside of minuted conversations, a lot more is accomplished. I have regular conversations with a few councillors, but not enough. I also don’t think enough councillors talk to each other outside of meetings, and I should be doing my best to facilitate that. I should be working to empower Councillors to be effective, giving them the knowledge and skills required to act with intention.

Tell people no

There is always more to do as a DSU Executive.

These are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to issues that I wish I could work on or address directly. It’s also extremely easy to get lost simply going from meeting to meeting and putting out the small fires that crop up all over campus.

It’s really important to schedule blocks of time to work on the big things. That draft strategic plan. That year long project you campaigned on. That letter you should write your Grandmother. Those are the important things that keep on getting pushed off to next week until it’s the end of April and there are no more weeks left.

Executive members need to know how to say no. We all want to do the best job possible and help everyone but at the end of the day it is just not practical. This is something I’ve struggled with for the past two years. It may seem like a great idea to cut out exercise, watching TV, spending time with friends and other things you enjoy in order to have more time to work. You will end up working longer hours, but I can personally guarantee that you will be less productive and get less done. You will also be miserable while you’re at it.

So say no. Make time for what is important to you. A well balanced life is a productive life.

Next December don’t make the mistake of asking the Executive what they are doing. Ask them what they wish they could be doing if they had more time. The answers will be far more interesting. And make sure they are scheduling in downtime for themselves – they will be much happier and the DSU will be more effective.

Chris is currently looking for a nice beach to sit on and sip drinks with those little umbrellas. You will be able to find him there after May 1^st. There are only three months left in his term as President and he’s already overcommitted as is. He won’t be doing any of the things referenced in this post (other than a bit of municipal work and a smattering of saying no).