By Michael Scoular and Megan Lambert (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 25, 2015
Tyson Pannu
Third-year, business
What kind of background knowledge do you have of Senate?
To be honest, I don’t have extensive knowledge on how the Senate operates, just because I don’t think many students do. But for the most part, I think they don’t act as a student, they try to act on the interests of the university, right? So that’s something that interests me as a business student, is looking at something from the whole picture instead of just how it can benefit you in your role as a student, right? I mean yeah, I don’t have extensive knowledge on how exactly they operate, but that’s why I’m running, right? I want to get more involved and I want to learn more about the process and what exactly goes into it, and the outcomes of those, right?
What students do you feel you’ll be representative of on Senate? I know the roles calls for representing all students, but what students are you most representative of?
Well, for the Senate I would be looking to represent the whole student body, not just specific programs because that’s what the senate is for. I just got elected as the marketing student association president so from that standpoint yeah I would be advocating on behalf of the marketing students and the business students, so I’d want to try and keep it separate from my senate candidacy, I’d want to try keep the senate ordeal based on the student body rather than just specific programs. I do want to draw a bit of a line between them and keep them as separate as I can, try to remain as unbiased as I can.
How then do you plan to communicate with students, whether it’s Bachelor of Science students or students in general?
As a marketing person, I would communicate with them in any way I can. I’d also get in touch with previous senate members and see how they did things, see if I can pick their brain a little bit. Obviously that wouldn’t happen unless I was elected, but I would like to go about that and see the way they communicated with all the students, and if I can adopt those communication methods and tweak them a little bit, maybe make them a little bit better, whether that’s email or through events, even just posting things on the boards around the school, getting in touch with organizations, maybe getting them to send out emails on my behalf to let students know hey this is what’s going on, hey this is what the situation is. I would probably use social media, that’s a great outlet and I realize the potential of social media too, even with just twitter and facebook.
What is your stance on the Writing Centre?
I can’t comment too extensively on that, just because I don’t know the in and outs, but from what I’ve heard, I like the idea of the academic centre, but I have also gone to the writing centre myself and I find that they are a great help. It really sucks that it’s a controversy. I wish we could work together with the writing centre to expand their reach a little bit more rather than eliminating them. That should be the common goal among all parties right now, just look at the big picture and try to move past what’s happened. I don’t know exactly the process that happened between the board of governors and the senate and the writing centre, so I can’t comment too much on how I feel about it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
