cshen.ca

Senate Elections

It’s been a few weeks since the Senate elections took place, but I never found time to write this entry. Unfortunately, I was not elected as a student senator, coming in 11th place, right on the line. The complete senate results are as follows (top 10 are elected).

Name	Votes
Kevin Harding	701
Amanda van Baarsen	679
Natalie Bocking	647
Joe Paling	647
Haida Arsenault-Antolick	612
Earl Tapia	552
Camille MacDonald	539
Ravi Patel	529
Andrew Fergusson	527
Aman Bains	520
Me	456
Robin Steudel	450
Roberto Trasolini	435
Jason Chan	423
Anna Belkine	362

What does this mean? I take it to mean that many, many people are still unaware of the evils of Turnitin.com (my major campaign platform), or if aware, apathetic about it. It also means that I won’t be able to push for speeding up the process of making the service optional.

It does not mean, however, that I will stop defending these rights to which all students are entitled. It will only be a longer process with more work, but it will be done one way or another. I do not have a full roadmap as of yet, but the first step will be continuing to raise public awareness of the issues. I hope the SFSS could step up its own efforts once again, this time not to deal directly with the university, but to educate the student body. I will continue to write for The Peak when appropriate, and try to apply some pressure on Senate as well. We’ll see how that goes.

SFSS Elections

Contrary to popular (mis)belief, I am not running for a position on the Simon Fraser Student Society, nor am I related to any of the candidates for that matter. With that said, this election is of particular importance to most of the university because it coincides with the referendum to leave the Canadian Federation of Students, and the elected board will be responsible for following through with the results. Not being particularly involved in the issue, it is important to me for another reason.

As I have mentioned, I wish the SFSS would step up efforts at educating the student body on Turnitin.com’s problems. The election offer a chance to question candidates on their willingness to commit to such an effort. Given the media coverage the election is afforded, it also serves as a good medium to bring up these issues to the attention of not only potential SFSS board members, but also of students who are following the election – that is to say, quite some number.

Of course, there’s the question of who will be representing me on the student society, the usual democratic stuff. This is a preliminary list of people I support, I might change my mind at any time, and may or may not update this list. Actually, the list might even be bogus to begin with, just to mess with your mind, so don’t take it to be who I’ll actually vote for.

Position	Candidate
President	Joe Paling
Treasurer	Anna Belkine
External Relations Officer	Natalie Bocking
Member Services Officer	Earl Von Tapia
Internal Relations Officer	Haida Arsenault Antolick
University Relations Officer	Andy Shen
At Large 1	Jonathan Brockman
At Large 2	Colin Whelan
Arts Rep	James Plett
Applied Science Rep	Ahmad Sidiqi

I’m unable to vote for the other faculty reps.