By Vanessa Broadbent (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: February 18, 2015
Ricardo Coppola
Vice-president internal candidate
Fourth-year anthropology major, Latin-American minor
Campus involvement
SUS budget committee
SUS food bank organizer
SUS receptionist
AfterMath floor manager
Latin American club president
Oxfam executive
Student association of international development (SAID) member
How would you describe the role of SUS? What do they do?
[SUS’s] motto is “for students, by students.” I know sometimes it doesn’t come across, or sometimes decisions are made and questions arise from students, and I feel like we could do a better job on that, but I think the intention is to help students. Their services are the shuttle bus, the health and dental, the U-Pass. We run the food bank, [AfterMath], and all the clubs and associations.
What appeals to you about the position you are running for?
It seemed like it needed a few changes. I believe we need to work on our transparency. Our documentation, even though it’s available to students through our website, it’s not much advertised. If the information’s out there, people are going to be able to work more with the society.
How do you address the lack of student engagement on campus?
I help in clubs. I also organize events like the food bank open mic. The Latin American club, usually we have small gatherings for people to get to know more about the culture. I think there’s this idea that this campus is a commuter campus, which is true, but we also have a lot of people who do live here [and] would want to participate given the chance.
Do you have any specific projects or bylaws that you want to implement?
I really don’t want to focus on new things. We introduced a lot of things last year with the new building, the extension of the shuttle bus to Langley, the IT [referendum] that just happened. There’s going to be a lot of things that need organizing. We need a good foundation before we can move into anything else.
Is there anything that SUS has done in the past year that you haven’t been happy with?
Before I started working on the food bank, it was under somebody else. I understand why the person could not give more time to organizing it, but it was not managed well. Maybe in the future, if we have those problems we can solve them before they become too large.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
