The Pundits will offer commentary on the DSU Elections based on their unique personal experience with the DSU and its elections season.

The team was assembled using a seemingly arbitrary “Hey, who do you think would be good for this?” style.  If you weren’t asked to be part of it, please don’t be insulted.  Yet.  First, contact us asking to become part of the panel for next year.  If we say no, THEN you can be insulted.

In the meantime, we are always open to guest commentary… and of course you can send us any information you may have.

Profiles of the pundits follow.

Lisa Buchanan

Lisa has been involved with the DSU since her third year of undergrad (2004-05) when she became the DSU Representative on Shirreff Hall Residence Council. The following year, she retained this position and became one of the Residence Community representatives on DSU Council.

Since entering Dalhousie Law School in 2006, Lisa has been on the DalOUT Executive and is currently President. For the past three years, she has been the LGBTQ Students’ Community Representative on DSU Council. In 2007, Lisa coordinated a successful referendum campaign resulting in a levy for DalOUT.

At last count, Lisa has held positions on upwards of nine DSU committees, often those dealing with constitutional revision. She is currently Chair of the Committee for Promotion of Diversity on Campus. Lisa is also a member of the DSU Board of Operations.

Jen Bond

A former election blogger on her own blog, Caring is Creepy, Jen is very excited to move her rants to punditry.ca along with so many old friends and fellow hacks.

Jen started her career in student politics on residence council for Eliza Ritchie Hall. After a stint as president there, she moved over to the DSU, first as an undergraduate senator and then as Vice President (Education). Since then, Jen has taken a “step back” from DSU politics…and by that she means she moved across the street to the law school and still relishes being in the trenches. An occasional guest chairperson for council, Jen has been ableto keep a finger on the pulse of the DSU.

Jen does not subscribe to the second wave feminist mantra that “the personal is political.” As a result, all of her opinions have to do with the candidates as political entities and not as human beings. Take her criticisms personally at your peril.

Janet Conrad

Janet’s first experience with the Student Union was at an Imagine DSU event.  She was representing the Dalhousie Tea Drinkers’ Society, of which she is a founding executive and past president – by far, her greatest claim to fame at Dalhousie.  She is currently a Board of Governors Representative on the DSU Council for 2009-2011 and is in her sixth year at Dalhousie, having completed a Mechanical Engineering degree and moved on to a Masters in Biomedical Engineering.

Janet’s DSU experience includes acting as the Sexton Campus Director for one and half terms.  She has sat or currently sits on the Society Review Committee, Grants Committee, Sustainability Office Board, Sexton Campus Advisory Committee, and the Referendum Review Committee.  On the board side, she also sits on the Student Experience and Academic Affairs and Research Committees.

Although extremely excited to be a pundit, it should be remembered that she’ll have to work with some of these people next year.  If you want to know the real meaning behind what she’s written, increase her emotions threefold.  Example:   “I thought that that speech lacked validity,” read “I think that candidate is a lying scumbag” (lying scumbag = 3*[lacking validity]).

Zhindra Gillis

Zhindra started her involvement with the DSU as an exec on the Dalhousie Undergraduate Engineering Society in her second year. In her 3rd year she moved down to Sexton and proceeded to be a loud voice and a huge pain in the butt to the DSU exec at the time. She began writing for the Sextant (for which she is now the treasurer) and writing reports on things like T-Room redesign. In 2 years on the Sexton Engineering Society Zhindra made herself known as one of the annoying kids from Sexton who is complaining all the time. Which sounds like an awful label but she wears it like a badge of honour. While known mostly for working  on events like Sexton Orientation, the December 6th Memorial and Techball, Zhindra has also been involved in bringing light to issues like security on campus, facilities problems,  and DSU/Sexton relations.

Zhindra caught DSU election fever as a member of the DSU elections committee last year and over the summer she  was appointed the new Sexton Campus Director. In her short time on council she has sat on the DSUSO board, Grants committee, nominating committee and of course has been deputy chair of the Sexton Campus Advisory Committee. She has been dubbed by Mark Hobbs as “the key to Sexton Campus”, if you want to know something about Sexton she probably knows it. She’s also not afraid to stir the pot or speak her mind, she made that very clear by becoming one of the first people to notice of motion the impeachment of a DSU executive in a really long time.

As an engineering student hoping to graduate this year Zhindra expects that this will be the last DSU election she can vote in. While making up her mind about who to vote for she will enjoy sharing her thoughts with fellow punditry addicts. Seriously, she was checking it more than facebook at one point last year.

John Hillman

Coming soon.

Mike Smit

Mike Smit is a long-time political hack.  His DSU involvement includes 4 years as a councillor, time on every DSU committee, 4 years as an A-level society executive, and a total of 6 years as a common sight in the halls of the DSU offices.  He brought the first successful, widely-used online voting system to Dalhousie in 2002, and still manages iVoteOnline.com, which provides online voting software to 6 student groups at 3 universities.  He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Dalhousie before leaving in 2006 to pursue his PhD at the University of Alberta.

He has closely followed every DSU Election since 2000, served as a close advisor on technology and policy to the elections committee from 2002-2005, and took his commentary online via MikeSmit.com in 2006.  Since then, his site has been a locus of information and commentary about DSU elections and DSU candidates.

Eric Snow

Eric has been involved with the DSU in various capacities, serving on Council (excluding brief stints to come up for air) since Fall 2006.  A veteran of DSU elections, Eric ran the last three: a loss for Senate in 2007, a win in the same race in 2008, and a loss for President in 2009.  His claim to faim is managing to successfully ward off the upstart campaign of one Gregory Debogorski for a second place Presidential finish.  After three years of being ravaged by Mike Smit and his cronies, Eric has decided that if you can’t beat ‘em, you might as well join ‘em.

Currently, Eric is in the first year of his Master of Public Administration in the Faculty of Management, after having spend his undergrad doing stints in Computer Science, Arts and Social Sciences and even the University of King’s College (don’t tell anyone!).  As such, he likes to think he brings a relatively broad crossection of perspectives of the university to Punditry.ca.  In addition to his experience with the DSU Constitution, Society Policy, external lobbying groups and recruitment, Eric is the current Vice President (Academic) of the Dalhousie Association of Graduate Students.  As such, he’s eager to see how the candidates incorporate graduate students into their platform.

Mike Tipping

Mike served as DSU Vice President (Education) in 2006-07 and President in 2007-08, a time now commonly known as the union’s “golden era.”

During his term as President, Mike focused on increasing student inclusion and interaction across all disciplines, student groups and campuses (even Yarmouth). He also led the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations for two of its most successful years and worked to bring tuition reductions and more and better financial assistance to university students across the province.

Mike pulled off a rare DSU election hat trick, winning his two executive campaigns and then managing the successful referendum to create and fund the Halifax Student Alliance.

He has now returned to his home state of Maine where he works as a communications specialist and political columnist.

Mike is also humble, unassuming, and wrote his own biography for this site.

Pundits of DSU Elections Past

Ann Elizabeth Beringer

Ann has the unique perspective of being a former DSU outsider, DSU insider, DSU employee and DSU observer.  She launched her DSU career in 2005 when she was coerced into becoming CRO for the DSU General Election by several people who would go on to become great friends and student-politics mentors.  Previously, she was involved in D-Level and resident societies.  After serving as CRO, she continued her involvement by sitting on DSU Council as the International Students Representative as well as chairing the Arts and Social Sciences Society.  During her time on DSU Council she was on several key committees including Grants, Society Policy and Constitution and Policy. After a failed bid at becoming the 2006-2007 DSU VP Education, she worked for the student advocacy service for a summer (Ann tells me she “looks forward someday to telling people that the only candidacy I ever lost was in university to future US President and fellow pundit Mike Tipping”).  Ann stepped out of the student union spotlight that fall, starting a new degree in Informatics and devoting her time to the Computer Science Society.  She occasionally finds herself a “consultant”, telling people what NOT to do, whenever campaign season comes around.

Mark Coffin

Mark is the current VP Education for the DSU.  He joined the DSU executive team last year after an uphill battle against the no-vote for his position, which is to say – he ran unopposed.  He is in the fourth year of an Environmental Science and Marine Biology degree at Dal. He has spent most of his free time while at Dal doing environmental and educational advocacy both inside and outside of the university. As a current DSU executive, Mark will be offering unbiased but highly critical commentary on all of the candidates in this race.