A second-year commerce student, Julien Hart wants to empower clubs. This focus is motivated by his formal and informal experiences working in event-planning intensive positions such as the social chair of the Zeta Psi fraternity.
The knowledge he has gained at Sauder also influences his platform.
To facilitate the operation of clubs, Hart’s platform has three pillars — streamlining booking, simplifying the policy for club management software transitions and improving the current Club Handbook.
The first pillar tackles the inefficiency around booking, which Hart has “witnessed firsthand.” This issue is also addressed by Pooja Bhatti, another candidate in the VP Administration race.
To resolve this problem, Hart advocates for an “overhaul” of the current system in favour of a “simple and more reliable [one],” but he has yet to expand on the details of what this simpler system would entail. For reference, Bhatti suggests making it an online system like what the Abdul Ladha Science Student Centre currently has.
Hart’s second pillar aims to create a policy that would smooth out the transition between the club management softwares, which has received mixed reactions from students with the recent change from Orgsync to Clubhouse.
“We’re going to keep offering training sessions and people will learn it,” said Hart. “But if we keep switching these programs every time the contract ends … it’s going to be difficult for the clubs to stay engaged.”
To compliment the policy, Hart also suggests reaching to Sauder’s professors that are experts at organizational behaviour or business technology management for guidance. Hart doesn’t associate any potential cost with this form of consultation that he mentioned.
The last pillar suggests improvements to the Club Handbook that aim at providing clubs with technical knowledge beyond the administrative rules. Some areas include how to increase “the accessibility to corporate partnerships,” “establish [one’s] own sponsorships” and “[preserve the] marketing experience.”
“I want to take those [COMM] 202 skills and bring them to the club executives so they can get those sponsorships,” said Hart. “I’ve created some great relationships with people … there’s so much when people start expanding beyond the basic UBC resources.”
Overall, Hart considers this the hardest goal of his platform due to the amount of required information.
“It takes time and effort, but I think there’s a lot of value to be added from that,” said Hart. “That’s how I want the VP Administration to work with students — to work with students to empower them.