Youssef Abdel Kader & Lamis Sallam: Altering Perceptions
The Caravan Editorial Board met with Youssef Abdel Kader and Lamis Sallam, candidates for SU President and Vice-President, respectively.
Q: How would you evaluate the SU’s performance this year?
Youssef Abdel Kader: This year’s SU was one of the most successful, because if we are talking about it from a representation POV, which is my area, most of the problems were dealt with accordingly and were solved, such as the Fall Commencement. From the services and entertainment aspect, we had major progress in them. Overall, the best output this semester was the SU app.
Lamis Sallam: There are many good things that happened this year such as the SU app. I really find it very beneficial and we are going to build many things on it next year.
What are the structural changes you are planning for in the SU?
K: This year, part of ‘altering perceptions’ is that we already have our committees. We don’t want to emphasize a lot on the exact committees because we might change it due to a lot of factors and due to the caliber of the people applying. What will change next year is my committee because it has a tremendous amount of responsibility in dealing with all the stakeholders and administration. I don’t want anyone else to be put in a situation where you can continue to collaborate with another club but you stop that collaboration because there is a tuition fees crisis. Political representation has its own responsibility and its own importance. So you have to separate it from public relations.
S: There is a committee that we might add which is called ‘social responsibility’. We believe that the SU must be related to social responsibility, whether inside the university or outside.
Balancing between events, entertainment and representation appears to be an issue for every union, how do you plan to balance between all three?
K: It depends on the personality and the character of the SU president. This year, although a lot of people might have perceived Saeed as the person who is more events oriented. However, when it came down to business that there is a big representation problem. Saeed and the events and entertainment teams were very cooperative. In the end, what’s more important? Solving a problem. At the same time, we can’t neglect the fact that a lot of students attribute the success of the SU to events and entertainment. You can’t just neglect that part. But at the same time, the main focus and the main importance is in representation. In my opinion, it all depends on the SU president and vice president and how they’re going to coordinate such a thing.
S: I personally believe that this is our own perception that we need to change in the university. I hear many people saying that the SU does nothing but parties. But the SU does do other things. It just isn’t clear to the people. We can emphasize on this through marketing next year. This is part of altering perceptions about the SU.
Some students have complained about transparency beyond social media, how do you plan on improving communication and the issue of transparency?
K: A big part of the problem in this SU was marketing. Solely because of two things; we depend highly on social media, and that’s a wrong approach to it, and at the same time, we needed to enhance the perception on the students on what the SU is doing on ground. For example, during the tuition fees and the commencement issues, when we went on ground, and started serving people and letting them know everything, people had a neglective approach to the SU. That’s totally fine because based on previous experiences, the SU was neglective. However how to change such a thing is when you get better actions. For example, if the people found the SU serving students on the commencement and there is a student that didn’t take part in it, when he figures out that the commencement was actually solved, then the next time there is an onground survey or open forum, he will take part in it because he or she knows that it had a benefit.
A lot of students have said that the SU has lost its ability to mobilize students and students lost interest, do you view this as true and how do you plan on tackling this issue?
K: [It is] true that the SU has lost its ability to highly mobilize students. However, why do we always need to mobilize students? My representation approach was if I can solve something behind closed doors then why shouldn’t I? That’s part of our vision of changing that perception. I don’t want to be a reactive SU. I don’t want to solely focus on representation. I want to take fast decisions in these problems but at the same time, I want to focus on what’s more important as our rule, which is developing students.
S: I was a part of CIMUN and many other clubs other than the SU. I see things the way most of the students that are outside the SU see [them]. This is part of changing the perception.
What are the challenges that SU generally faces from your experiences?
K: When I applied as a chair this year, my biggest concern was that the students did not trust the SU. You need to regain anyone’s trust by proving actions, not words. I can’t go out and say that ‘I’m here as a SU to fix such and such,’ when in the end my previous experience proves that I was not able to solve these issues. How are we going to alter all of these perceptions? Based on our previous experience, we were able to solve a lot of things previously and hopefully that is enough for us to solve a lot of things in the future.
S: Development is not necessarily in just making students join the SU or specific clubs. There are many different ways through which we can develop students and I think that we should stress on those points through altering perceptions.
Some students have told us that the SU is exclusive and that they can’t get assistance unless they know someone personally in the SU. How do you respond to that?
K: Technology.
S: SU Rep.
K: Anyone who runs for elections should gain more popularity and answer things on Rate AUC professors. However I choose not to do that even though I was planning on running for elections because I don’t want anything to be personal. The credit should always go to the SU or the entity or body that helped me become this person and help me achieve this goal.
Why I answered intuitively ‘technology’ is because it’s the easiest way to reach anyone. Everyone has a phone. Whether through the SU app, the SU website or technological infrastructure which is in the plaza, reaching students with technology is the most inclusive option.
S: We want to make a hotline for the SU as well. We would use it for a short period of time because we want students to download the app to the reach the SU.
