New at SSMU: Karen Pelley, Jeff Feiner, Duncan Reid, Sam Johnston and Lorenzo Pederzani PHOTO: OWEN EGAN

SSMU's new slate

DANIEL McCABE | McGill's undergraduate students recently elected a new slate of leaders. Scheduled to take over the reins in May, the new members of the Students' Society of McGill University's (SSMU) executive are going to be in for a very interesting year, predicts president-elect Duncan Reid. "There's going to be more change this year than in at least a decade. It's going to be dramatic. Even students who aren't very involved in student activities are going to notice it." The changes will be driven by two factors, says Reid, currently SSMU's vice-president (finance). After struggling to successfully pay off its debts, the society now has to cope with the University's decision to start charging for the upkeep and maintenance of the Student Union Building that serves as SSMU's headquarters. The building houses a wide variety of student groups -- such as The McGill Tribune, the Debating Union and Player's Theatre. It also includes Gert's pub, a cafeteria, a basement café and SSMU's administrative offices. The new charges from McGill could amount to as much as $400,000 a year. The coming changes will go beyond funding issues though, says Reid. "We'll be redefining what the core vision of the Students' Society should be." The process has already begun. The current SSMU executive has hired the consulting firm KPMG to evaluate their operations. Focus groups involving student leaders are currently being conducted and Reid says the re-evaluation process will be broadened to gather input from a wider student constituency. He believes SSMU has to take stock of itself for a variety of reasons. The responsibilities of the SSMU executive need to be more clearly defined -- there have been several tense turf battles in recent years between SSMU presidents and vice-presidents. There is also a sense that SSMU isn't serving enough students -- how can it encourage students who aren't taking part in activities to become involved? By the end of his year-long mandate as president, Reid expects that some firm administrative changes will be in place. A Vancouver-born economics student, Reid also wants to establish a new lecture series that could attract well-known and thoughtful speakers to campus. Pointing to the popularity of recent McGill lectures by Noam Chomsky, David Suzuki and Naomi Wolf, Reid says, "I'd like to get some people who can really challenge an audience and get them thinking." As the incoming vice-president (finance), Lorenzo Pederzani says part of his job will be to squeeze every nickel he can out of companies that want to do business with SSMU -- be they cola suppliers or long distance phone firms. There is litle choice, says Pederzani, with the maintenance charges looming. "We're not making enough money from Miraval," says Pederzani of the company that manages the cafeteria in the building. The political science student, who is also from Vancouver, notes that in previous years, SSMU earned about $340,000 more from the cafeteria than it does now. He would like to set up a food court in the building -- to offer students a greater variety of foods and to spur a higher profit margin for SSMU's food operations. And he will investigate the possibility of adding international students to the SSMU health plan. As the producer of McGill's Players' Theatre, he helped the student drama group turn a modest profit. He was also a representative of student clubs on Students' Council. Montreal native Sam Johnston, a history and Russian studies student, will become SSMU's next vice-president (university affairs) and yes, she's one of those Johnstons (big sister Alex held the same job, while father David, a law professor, was McGill's principal for 15 years). Johnston, an arts senator, plans to lobby McGill departments to become more involved in the University's work-study program. "There are more students applying for those jobs than there are jobs." She'll also explore the possibility of working with the Alumni Association to expand its mentoring program for McGill students so that undergraduates on student exchanges could meet graduates in the areas they travel to. Working through SSMU, Johnston has organized a popular mini-course on preparing for law school admissions tests at a much cheaper rate than companies such as Kaplan's. She'd like to offer more courses of that kind -- for graduate school and MBA school admissions tests as well. She'll approach the Recruitment and Liaison Office to see if SSMU and RLO can collaborate on a project. The idea would be to take McGill students from underrepresented socio-economic or cultural backgrounds and send them back to their communities to spread the word about McGill's programs to other potential students. Johnston also wants to encourage departments to offer McGill students more opportunities to take on community work for course credit. The incoming vice-president (external) is Toronto-born philosophy student Jeff Feiner. Feiner, currently the vice-president (external) for the Arts Undergraduate Society, says his new job is chiefly about building links between McGill students and the world outside the Roddick Gates. At the national level, Feiner will maintain SSMU's links to the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), a lobbying group said to have influenced Paul Martin's most recent budget. (Current vp [external] Lisa Phipps was one of several CASA members invited to a private meeting with Martin before the budget was released). Provincially, he will determine the relationship between SSMU and FEUQ, the lobbying group that represents most Quebec university students. FEUQ's pro-sovereignty stance has long been a source of tension. "Most McGill students don't support sovereignty at all, so joining FEUQ might be out of the question. But we do share similar concerns about threats to the quality and accessibility of Quebec universities. There could be areas where we should be working together." Feiner thinks McGill students should be more active on the local front as well. Municipal elections are coming up and Feiner believes the city's university students should use their potential power as a voting bloc to wrest promises from mayoralty candidates -- for cheaper bus and metro transportation, for instance. Feiner asserts that students can effect change through political pressure. As a high school student, he served as the president of the Toronto Association of Student Councils which successfully lobbied the government to give students a greater say in school board decisions. His predecesors on the association got the government to agree to make bus passes less expensive for high school students. "I've seen situations where students were told that something was impossible and it ended up happening when they kept pressing for it." Microbiology and immunology student Karen Pelley will be taking over the vice-president (internal) portfolio. She'll oversee SSMU's frosh programs for new and returning students in the fall. After serving as SSMU's frosh coordinator last autumn, she's well prepared for that role. Pelley, the scheduling coordinator for McGill's Walksafe Network and a blood drive organizer for the Science Undergraduate Society, will also be in charge of SSMU's array of student clubs. She would like to modify SSMU's traditional Activities Night -- an event at which the different clubs set up booths to recruit potential new members. "It usually starts at 5 pm, but by that time, a lot of students have already left the University to go home. I think it should be an all-day event." Pelley wants to book more live entertainment for Gert's pub. She'll also be preparing for the new Student Services Building -- scheduled to open in September 1999 -- that will be located right next door. Many student clubs will move to the new building and Pelley has to decide what to do with the offices they vacate.