Last Wednesday, Claire Stewart-Kanigan was voted in as representative of the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) to the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) Legislative Council. Stewart-Kanigan won with 41.8 per cent of the total votes (975), beating out other candidates Ryan Mitton (32.2 per cent) and Harmon Moon (25.9 per cent).
SSMU Council typically has three representatives from the AUS, elected by arts undergraduate students each year. However, one of the representatives elected last March, Sean Phipps, resigned from the position.
Stewart-Kanigan is currently a joint-honours student studying political science and Canadian studies, and is co-president of McGill Students for the New Democratic Party. In her platform, Stewart-Kanigan stated three main focuses: helping students know where their tuition is going, ensuring that spending is directed by an ethical, students-first mandate, and prioritizing the establishment of student-run spaces.
“A central function of an arts rep is just that—to represent. So of course that is always going to be my overall priority,” Stewart-Kanigan said in her platform video.
“I’ve been a delegate and representative [for] numerous clubs in the past so I’m no stranger to giving up my own view in favour of the democratically elected conclusion,” she continued. “However, consent building through lots and lots of communication and outreach will be a big focus of mine.”
AUS President Devon LaBuik expressed confidence in Stewart-Kanigan’s ability to succeed in the position, even though he sees it as a challenging one.
“As Arts representative, I think the hardest thing is to make sure student voices are heard and not just yours,” LaBuik said. “This is a very difficult position to be in since you’re elected, but you have to keep in mind you have to get an aggregate of opinion, and that’s very tough.”
According to LaBuik, the main problem AUS faced in this election was low voter turnout. Only one of every ten eligible students voted, despite the fact that the online voting process takes no more than a few minutes. In a faculty with over 7,000 students, LaBuik said that engaging students can be difficult.
“What we did [that was new] this election was candidate videos and sending them out to students,” he said. “We’d probably have to do something [else] in the next election though. Our goal by the end of the year would be try to get 20 to 30 per cent of the students to vote. [It] will be tough, but we’re going to try our best to get people more involved.”
