By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: June 5, 2013
National recognition for UFV and a network of other student unions at his fingertips are just two of the things SUS president Shane Potter gained at the recent Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) conference in Ottawa.
The conference brings together student unions from across the country to discuss student politics and lobby the federal government on student issues. SUS is currently an associate member of CASA; the cost of membership and value of being a part of the association has been a topic of debate during many budget and advocacy conversations over the last couple of years and will be reconsidered before their membership is due in April 2014.
Potter and VP academic Kristianne Hendricks attended the conference in May and came home armed with new ideas and knowledge of how to run a better SUS.
“We talked to 24 different student unions, which is amazing,” Potter said of the conference. “It’s great, just for the interaction and networking alone. It’s basically having the best and brightest all in one room, all sharing ideas. It really helped me as a president to just understand better the direction we need to go.”
SUS has sent delegates to previous CASA conferences, but Potter felt as though the resources were not utilized to the best of their ability.
“We really never had the same sort of presence. Kristianne and I wanted to really get involved,” Potter explained. “[CASA members] knew about our school but we never really took the chance to interact or use CASA as a networking opportunity.”
Getting involved paid off, as Potter was elected to the CASA board of officers while at the conference. This is a first for UFV. After meeting and interacting with the student unions, he was nominated by another institution and elected shortly thereafter as the board secretary. He will be responsible for managing the administration and internal affairs of CASA.
“This is actually the first time in my knowledge of SUS history,” Potter explained, “that we’ve had a CASA member on the board, let alone as a board officer. So it’s quite a privilege and an honour to actually have that spot. It shows the dedication and the commitment of our university.”
Potter is the only student from BC on the board, though other schools in BC are members of CASA.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to get our lobbying concerns, to get the BC concerns to a national level,” he said.
One of his main concerns looks at the language surrounding funding from education to skills training and trades.
“They have kind of replaced the word education with skills training. That’s always quite concerning for me personally,” he explained, worrying about the ramifications that will come for the arts. “If the government is going to spend money on education or if the government is going to spend money on job training … I’d like people to know where the money is going,” he said. “Is that a direction we want to go down?”
Potter, who now has contact information for all of the schools he interacted with, is impressed with the amount of networking and resources gained through participating in the conference and from his new position with the board.
“The nice thing about having this sort of networking is that we can get the procedures. We can get the plans and we can see exactly the business model that other student associations are using. So instead of us taking the time and reinventing the wheel, we can take things that work from societies that are much older than us and improve, grow and get better.”
