Tina Tong ran on a platform emphasizing affordability, accessibility and transparency. Tong went on a leave of absence in September and will be returning in January. Currently, Joshua Kim serves as interim VP external.
The VP external’s job involves lobbying the government on behalf of the student body. This term, Kim said food, housing and financial security are at the top of their list of demands to the government bodies.
On food security, at a municipal level, Kim said the VP external office is looking to collaborate with the Greater Vancouver Food bank and other community resources to ensure that UBC students can have reliable access to food. At a provincial level, Kim said they are advocating for a non-repayable food security grant.
The office has also been advocating to expand the Residential Tenancy Act — which sets out the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants — to protect students from sudden increases in rent.
Kim said they are also preparing a policy brief for the municipal government on “purpose-built housing” for students.
“[We want to] focus on how [the government] will be helping purpose build [to] focus on students ... purpose built is affordable housing in the city and a lot of high density housing to be constructed. [This means zoning laws [will] ... be a bit more accommodating,” said Kim.
While Kim spoke about the different goals around financial security, progress has been slow.
The office has advocated to increase the BC Access Grant — a grant that provides financial support to BC post-secondary students — Kim said the Minister of Post-Secondary Education, Selina Robinson, has responded that the “government is still working on it.”
One of Tong’s goals included advocating to the province to provide annual funding for sexualized violence prevention offices on campus. Kim said that this goal has been “a bit more tricky,” as the provincial government has opted towards creating a “province-wide sexualized violence prevention plan.”
However, the external office plans to return to this issue at upcoming lobby weeks.
“We are still working with the attorney general to ensure that those resources are allocated to post-secondary [institutions] to allow for the establishment of these sexualized violence prevention offices on campus,” said Kim.
The goal of accessible learning has also been a top priority. Kim said they want to “mandate universities to allocate more resources for accessible education, such as virtual learning [and] classroom lecture recordings.”
“Folks with disabilities want to have the quality of education that they paid for … and [that] their academic [journey] … is not interrupted,” said Kim.
Kim said standstills in their plans can be attributed to the current instability of the Canadian economy.
“I think most of the roadblocks come with the issue with governments not really willing to spend so much money in the current economic state. There’s fears of recession, there’s fears of inflation in a lot of areas," said Kim.
Unfortunately, Kim said the VP external’s goal to cap international student tuition has been rejected by Robinson. Instead, transparency on international tuition will be prioritized.
“We did receive information from Minister Robinson that they will be instead have a more transparent initiative for post secondary students,” said Kim.
“The BC government [is] mandating post secondary institutions to have a section on their website to inform the international students applying … the total amount of tuition they will be paying … for their four years. So, they’re not caught by surprise.”
The VP external office has also reached a stalemate in their plans to bring back bus 480 and start construction on the new SkyTrain due to TransLink's income deficits.
“Of course, we’re constantly pushing on it, but understanding TransLink’s current financial situation and that they cannot expand their services to bring that back right now,” said Kim.
However, over the summer Tong was able to “enhance the exemption eligibility and U-Pass affordability” by increasing the number of students who are eligible to opt-out of U-Pass, and successfully enforced the Summer Transit Subsidy.
“I’m constantly saying, it’s being worked on [or] we’re waiting for feedback, it's just because we are pushing for these things constantly but on the government’s side, things move really slow because they have so many things to work on,” said Kim.
Kim said the office is still hopeful and plans to continue to push for their goals at future lobby weeks and meetings with the government.
“We need to remind them that this is a priority for us and how students are living and why students deserve a better living condition and education condition.”