On the campaign trail: Josephine Wong
Interview by Amanda McCuaig
Quick Facts
Name: Josephine Wong
Running For: Member Services Officer
Colour: Yellow
Slate: The Independents
Major: Engineering
Peak: The guidelines for the MSO position are quite ambiguous. What do you think your role is and what are you going to do to prove to the campus your work?
Josephine: I see the MSO position as being a liaison between the Pub, departmental student unions, grad caucuses, and other university departments. This year I have worked closely with the current MSO participating in new student orientation, the activities for Week of Welcome, the Surrey university open house, and just making sure that the student society is just better integrated with the campus life initiatives. Like one of the things that [the Faculty of Applied Sciences] is doing is establishing contacts with people who do student life, and also people who do recreation and athletics, and I think these are groups with students and university staff people who have common goals to make the university experience better for all students.
P: In terms of your slate name, “The Independents,” some people have expressed that it’s commodifying the term independent. Where did that decision come from?
J: It started because I was talking to Titus [Gregory], and we were independent candidates, and we have common respect for each other. We decided that we weren’t really into running as one giant slate, but I also wanted to signify with our slate that people should consider voting for the independent candidates. And so it’s more of a shout out to the other independent candidates and to say there are other options out there.
P: Do you think its contradictory in your slate though, to be a slate calling yourself the Independents?
J: I think that the way that our slate is different from the other slates is that we are independents who happen to be running together because we’re friends. We don’t have a common platform, we don’t whip each other into shape in terms of our campaign. We are really people who are going to do it together because we have some common ideas, but mostly it’s built on a foundation of common respect for each other.
P: I find that there are three things that people want to change: the Pub, IBT, and the potential student union building. So the Pub aside, what are your views on how you are going to deal with IBT and the SUB?
J: Well, I’m the only student representative right now who is in favour of IBT. My reasons for it are that I think that students should have the option to choose the educational experience that they get at SFU. I think that for some international students who come to SFU they would benefit from going to IBT for the first year and they would have better chances of being successful because they would have more support because of smaller class sizes. I don’t think that we as a Student Society should prevent people from having that option. Our goal, though, is to ensure that the implementation of IBT goes well, and that students who go to IBT get maximum benefits from that program. I think that definitely there needs to be a lot more student services, not just for the international students but for all students at SFU. And that is also one of my goals, that as much as we want it to happen overnight, it won’t happen overnight.
P: There have been many rumours over the year that the two slates elected last year were unable to work well together in the office. You were on one of those slates, so if you’re elected as an independent, how are you going to deal with that conflict?
J: I think that it’s unfortunate that the elections process creates a lot of ill will between people of different slates, although I think that this year the slate politics aren’t necessarily as strong as they were last year. Last year there were conflicts within the slates themselves, and that even though some people ran together, their slates within themselves fell apart so there was a lot of animosity within the office but not all of it was tied to slate politics. I think it’s a matter of personality and in an office with 15 people it’s obvious that personality can stand in the way. My goal would be to try to work with everyone to the best of my abilities and to help the new Board members be the best Board members that they can be.