After six years of vacancy, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) reinstated the role of Vice President (VP) Sustainability and Operations this June. Hassanatou Koulibaly—who served as VP Student Life in the 2022-2023 academic year—currently holds the position after running unopposed in the 2022-2023 SSMU executive election. The VP Sustainability and Operation’s main responsibilities include managing space allocation in the University Centre building, overseeing SSMU’s business operations, such as Gerts Bar and Café, and providing foundational support to clubs on the SSMU Environment Committee.
The role first became vacant in August 2017, when the last VP Sustainability and Operations, Anuradha Mallik, resigned. Shortly after her resignation, the University Centre was closed from February 2018 to September 2021 due to asbestos closures and renovations, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In an interview with The Tribune, Koulibaly explained that because many of the VP’s responsibilities relate to managing the building, executives deemed the role unnecessary while the building was closed.
Koulibaly highlighted that SSMU decided to fill the VP Sustainability and Operations role for the 2023-2024 academic year in part to ensure a manageable workload for other executives.
“I was one of the advocates for having this role back [last year], because it is a significant amount of work to do,” Koulibaly said. “In my role as VP Student Life, [I found myself picking up a lot of the role] because it relates to clubs, and clubs use the space. […] I found myself stretched very thin.”
Former SSMU VP University Affairs Kerry Yang highlighted that the executive team’s overall workload has been growing over the course of several years as executives bring new ideas and projects to the organization each year. In addition to this executive overwork and around-the-clock hours, Yang noted that there has been instability within the SSMU executive team in recent years.
“[When an executive] takes leave or steps down, that workload passes on to the other [executives],” Yang said in an interview with The Tribune. “Just having another executive in case a situation like that happens is something that can be very helpful in terms of dividing up the workload and preventing too much burnout on the other executives.”
Koulibaly noted that one of the challenges she has faced this year is the undefined nature of the role. Because of this, one of her priorities for the year is to create internal regulations for the executive position that will clearly specify its mandate and allow students to hold the executive accountable. Koulibaly also spoke to the way that the role prioritizes parts of the SSMU mandate that were overlooked last year, such as holding the executives accountable to sustainability mandates.
“In my experience last year as VP Student Life, I knew that I had to give a sustainability workshop to the clubs, but that was about it,” Koulibaly said. “I find that it wasn’t [positioned as] ‘this is very important and every executive needs to make sure that in all of their projects and plans that they are making sustainability a priority’ […] I think a lot of the focus this year is to have the sustainability portion of the SSMU more prioritized in the various mandates that we do care about in various projects that are already happening.”
Despite this change in the executive team, some students still report difficulties accessing SSMU’s services. Blaise Benoit, U3 Science, emphasized the importance of SSMU in advocating for students, but expressed frustration about challenges securing funding for clubs through the organization.
“I know that there aren’t too many [SSMU executives], and they’re vastly overworked.” Benoit said in an interview with The Tribune. “But I [also] know that in the current structure with which they operate, it’s very difficult for clubs within McGill to just operate and gain the funding that should be allocated to them. It just seems so disorganized; I think there’s great changes that need to be made.”
