After years of experience with Carleton’s Academic Student Government, Carleton’s senate, and being a Faculty of Public Affairs co-ordinator, Dan Crich said he is ready to take his student politics involvement to the next step.
Crich, a fourth-year political science student, is currently sitting as a public affairs councillor on Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council. He is running for CUSA president under the slate ACT Now Carleton.
Crich said, if elected, ACT Now Carleton aims to focus on increasing financial transparency, reviewing executive benefits, and increasing funding for student services.
“We think that executive benefits are a little bit too much for students,” he said. “Just because you’re an executive for a student union doesn’t mean that you’re better than the general student body.”
He added his slate is currently reviewing all benefits CUSA executives receive, including credits for tuition and executive pay, to finalize which benefits to get rid of or lower.
Crich also plans to focus on increasing funding for student service centres. He said some student centre funding has gone down over the past few years, citing the Aboriginal Student Service Centre on campus as an example.
“We’re on traditional Algonquin territory and we should be supporting aboriginal students at Carleton,” he said. “At the student union level, advocacy for issues should be our top priority.”
Crich added since CUSA executives started to remove campaign material provided by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), the amount of student advocacy has decreased.
“Regardless of whether the CFS are here or not, we still need to have advocacy campaigns,” he said.
ACT Now Carleton is also planning on opening a student financial resource centre on campus if elected, according to Crich.
“At Carleton we don’t have a lot of resources for life-skills really,” he said.
Crich added when he moved from British Columbia to Ottawa he learned the hard way to properly budget his finances.
“With the centre, we can offer things to students like how to budget,” he said. “It would drastically improve student life because people will be able to budget more effectively and learn life skills that they wouldn’t have otherwise learned before.”
Crich also said his slate is planning on presenting quarterly budgets during the school year as a way to improve financial transparency and accountability.
“The vice-president (finance) of two CUSA executives ago didn’t present the budget on time. So you’re looking at a level of transparency that just really isn’t there,” he said. “If students were given the opportunity to see where their money is going, I think they would take it.”
Crich said his team is the most passionate group of people he has encountered at Carleton.
“I want every student at Carleton to be able to feel included,” Crich said.
