Tell us about your portfolio:

We’re doing a lot of restructuring on the C&S portfolio, because it’s so huge and the VP of Clubs & Services just tends to burn out in various scenarios. In the past, there have been two major publications associated with the portfolio: Old McGill, which is the yearbook, and the SSMU handbook. These publications are better suited to other portfolios. As part of that restructuring,  we’ve been talking about moving Old McGill to the VP Internal portfolio and the handbook to the president.

Any long-term goals for your portfolio this year & beyond?

As for clubs, my big goals there in terms of longevity is putting a system in place that makes sense and is highly organized that keeps track of new clubs. So many new clubs are created all the time but we don’t have a systematic way of organizing them, which creates problems. If we don’t know which clubs are active, we can’t really help them.

Similarly, we hope to have a more systematic way of supporting services; Shyam [VP F&O] and I are working on a sample budget for services. We oversee services but they’re also very autonomous; another goal of mine is to help keep it that way. As it’s technically their money, services should control how they pay stipended positions.

Anything from previous years that you’ve found really works?

Anushay [Khan] and Sarah [Olle, the previous two VP C&S] were both of strong convictions and recognized the political aspect of the portfolio, which I think is admirable. That’s something that’s hard to do but is your duty; it’s a commitment to defending student life.

I think something I really love about Anushay is that she just has a lot of passion; she’s really dedicated to the job. That can be dangerous in this position, which can be a lot of work; really caring about the job is something I really care about …  Sarah had a lot of vision as well, for the website and doing bookings online. Often it feels like the things I’m doing aren’t specifically my ideas, but something done in the past that I’m building on and am actually realizing.

Never have I ever lost my keys, but I don’t want to jinx myself.