Candidates Under Fire

This article originally appeared in Imprint, University of Waterloo’s official student newspaper
- February 9, 2007

by Suzanne Gardner

Candidates for the 2007-2008 Federation of Students’ election squared off at a campus media forum on February 7. The 13 candidates faced a bombardment of questions from three campus media outlets. Jonathan Fishbein represented the newly-formed podcast, The O’Fishbein Factor, Jeff Aho was questioning on behalf of The Iron Warrior, while Michael L. Davenport and Suzanne Gardner were there for Imprint.

 

The forum began with the three senate-at-large candidates, Renjie Butalid, Keith Chan and Mohamed Farid, giving opening statements and taking questions from the media. All three candidates focused on the university’s Sixth Decade Plan. Chan summed up his concerns, explaining that “the Sixth Decade Plan is [so] focused on the future that it’s not fixing the problems on our campus right now.”

 

Fishbein, himself a former senator, pointedly asked all candidates if they had ever attended a senate meeting, to which all three answered “no.”

 

Fishbein also asked the first group of candidates a question he asked all candidates throughout the forum: “Kittens or butterflies?” Although kittens were losing this poll after the first group of candidates were questioned, by the end of the forum, the results were 8-4 for kittens.

 

The two candidates for the vice-president administration and finance (VPAF) position, Del Pereira and Arthur Chan, approached the microphone next. Both candidates tackled questions on Bomber, Fed Hall and Aussies, and specifically addressed the question of why their plans for Fed Hall are going to work, when former VPAFs plans have failed in the past. “I have the numbers to back it up,” said Pereira.

 

Jonah Levine and Stuart Hastings, both candidates for the vice-president education (VPED) position, followed the VPAF candidates. Hastings started his opening statement by gratefully praising Rick Theis, the forum’s moderator, all of the media representatives and his opponent Levine — a positive mood that altered slightly when Fishbein prefaced his first question to the VPED candidates:

 

“We here at The O’Fishbein Factor are refusing to recognize Stuart Hastings’ candidacy until he appears on our show for an interview, so we’ll only be asking questions of Jonah today.”

 

Hastings did answer questions from the other two media outlets, however, explaining that when representing students to the administration, he wants to “sit down at the table and meet them halfway and that’s when students and institution can work together, and we get positive results that fits everybody’s needs.”

 

Vice-president internal (VPI) candidates Nhu Nhat Nguyen, Faraz Warsi and Darcy Higgins faced the media next, taking on typical questions about their plans for clubs and services on campus, as well as particularly time-sensitive questions.

 

Imprint asked all candidates to agree to “running this Federation of Students for all students regardless of your personal biases.” All three candidates did agree to uphold this value.

 

Finally, after over two hours had elapsed, the three presidential candidates took the stage.

 

Michelle Zakrison, the presidential incumbent, faced Kevin Royal, her opponent from last year’s election, and Adam Schubert.

 

Zakrison repeatedly cited her experience as the current Feds president as a reason to re-elect her, yet later she stated that “we need fresh eyes.”

 

When questioned on these contradictory statements, Zakrison defended her views by describing that she plans to attend conferences to learn new ideas to give herself a pair of fresh eyes.

 

Conversely, candidate Schubert was asked how he plans to overcome the disadvantage of having much less experience than both of his opponents, to which he replied, “Yes, I haven’t actually held those titles but I think you’ll agree that it’s more than just a title, and I think that I’ve been very informed of the activities of Feds in the past year. [...] I think that the students are craving action, and I think that that’s where my experience lies.”