Meet Ben Lukenchuk and Emma Kinakin. These talented, hardworking, multitasking students recently got elected as the Director of Outreach and University Relations (Ben), and Director of Student Affairs (Emma). Both of them are in their third year and are majoring in Economics at the University of Victoria. They also work as teaching assistants for the course Econ 103. When he gets a break from his crazy schedule, Ben enjoys running, while Emma practices her debating skills as a hobby and passion in her spare time. Right now they are super excited to get crackin’ with their new positions.
- HC: What are the three words that you would use to describe each other?
Emma, about Ben: Enthusiastic, hardworking, obsessive.
Ben, about Emma: Realistic, hard-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside, studious.
- HC: How did you decide to participate in the UVSS elections and why?
Ben: “It all started at Kevin’s (Elected as the Director of Finance) kitchen table. We were studying for our Math exam. It was there in my radar for a while and I asked Kevin, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ and he was like, ‘I don’t know…let’s try.’ So by midnight we had read through most of the by-laws and we were like ‘yeah, let’s do this; let’s build a team.’ Then we started building our team with the people we knew, our friends, our lab students, our friends of friends, and here we are with our slate that ended up doing the elections. The people in our team were never really engaged with UVSS, so we all kind of had an outsiders’ perspective about what we can do to improve the experience of students given that we know [from being] on the outside.
- HC: Why did you run for the position of the Director of Outreach and University Relations (Ben) and the Director of Student Affairs (Emma)?
Ben: “Actually, for the five executive directors’ positions we found people who had personal experience that suited the roles. Like some of the role of this position is broadly overseeing the variety of different functions of the society; you are responsible to the society and you are kind of the vehicle for the communications with university. These are roles that I typically have enjoyed doing in the past works I have done. That is why it seemed like a good role for me to take on”.
Emma: “In my first year I became the president of the debate club and there’s a lot of work between clubs and students that people aren’t really aware of. For example, you have to go to Club Council meetings and over the past couple of years I had to deal with the UVSS quite directly through their club systems, and I’ve found myself really frustrated with a lot of structures that you have to go through, and a lot of it doesn’t make sense to anyone who is actually running a club. I found that, in the past, people who had been the Director of Student Affairs did not really have that perspective of coming up through the club system, and so I thought that that I could try and improve it using my experiences and ran for this position.”
- HC: How do you manage school, involvement with UVSS, and other activities?
Ben: “Well, as an econ student, life is all about choices. So sometimes I choose to work instead of sleep, which is fine by me because I enjoy what I do, but actually it’s about time management; it’s about internal deadlines, [and] it’s about having a system that works for you for writing things down.”
Emma: “I’ve always been the kind of person that says yes to things, so being busy with too many things isn’t really a new experience. I guess it kind of comes naturally to me, but I’d say time management; I am a very big procrastinator and I know it sounds cheesy but I live in the moment and a lot of people get really caught up thinking about what comes next – ‘what am I gonna do’ – but I think if you just live in the moment and focus on now, it works out better.”
- HC: Tell us about your overall experience with the UVSS elections.
Ben: “I’d say that I’ve learned a lot of things over the course of student elections. There’s a lot of learning and we’ve been extremely busy during the time; our schedules were very structured. It was two intense weeks and frankly, after the elections, there was no post-winning celebration for me – I went home and slept.”
Emma: “The campaign experience was very stressful so… winning was amazing, the slate coming together was really amazing. I mean, the tensions were high [and] there were personality conflicts, so there were times when you kind of have to step back and get some perspective from the election. And being on campus most of the time during the elections when everyone is talking about it 24/7 is often is not conducive to good mental health (laughs).”
- HC: What do you think made students want to vote for Encompass (their slate)?
Ben: “From my perspective, I think each slate brought something very different to the table but everybody had the strong desire to achieve a better student experience. I think what was different with Encompass was that we kind of brought up some issues that are small but they really matter. We were out there talking to students every single day trying to understand what they wanted, and we brought their opinions into our platform. Students kind of had a level of ownership on what we were doing so I think that was a big portion of the win.”
Emma: “I think we represented the sentiment on campus that people wanted; a change from the current UVSS. I think a lot of people were perhaps frustrated with UVSS because it didn’t represent them. And what we did was, we asked people what they wanted from UVSS and we generally tried to reflect their thoughts in our campaign, our promises, and I think students really identified with that.”
- HC: What are the changes your slate plans to bring to UVic? What areas will you guys be mainly focusing on?
Ben: “One thing I’ll be working on is the social media policy. Our team will focus on how to improve the food services in the sub.”
Emma: “I think we are very keen on working with the students and the people we ran with in the elections. For me, in the student affairs, I’ll definitely look at the student policies and try to bring in my experience and see how I can make it easier for other people.”
- HC: Do you guys want to join politics in the future?
Ben: “I’m not sure if I’ll be a candidate or someone behind the scenes, but I’d like to be involved in politics in the future.”
Emma: “Not really, I am not really a politics-y person. I might go into an academic career instead.”