Since coming to Mount Royal College in 2003, Jeff Agnew has run for executive office at the Students’ Association five times. This year, he finally got a chance to serve as president.
“It felt amazing,” he said. “I’m proud of the fight I’ve put in. To have a strong voice here, which I’ve always been able to provide as a student, and now as an executive, it’s just been an amazing experience.”
Agnew is a Athabasca University transfer student in history and political science, and has always been drawn to student politics, although not without controversy.
In 2004, he was disqualified in his race for VP external for not handing in his campaign receipts after another candidate told him they weren’t needed after losing. He was still able to participate by campaigning in favour of the U-Pass referendum.
Now, he is at the centre of a “crazy” byelection (see timeline below). However, he said, “to be quite honest my fellow candidates have been quite respectful.”
Agnew has been in office for about seven months, and wants to continue after the byelection and hopefully for another year-long term after that.
“A lot of the work you want to get done takes at least two years,” he said. “Everything you put out there can’t always be accomplished in a day … I look forward to getting back to work and seeing what I can accomplish for the next few months.”
— Alan Mattson
Since taking office May 16 it has been a privilege serving you as your student president. You have trusted me to lead an organization that has over 100 hundred employees and a $7 million budget. This byelection has given me the rare opportunity to update you, on the work I have done as well as the goals I wish to achieve in the next few months.
First I wish to identify the years of experience, knowledge, and skill I have gained from being heavily involved in the Students’ Association. For the past five years I have run for an executive council position and collected over 2000 votes of support from students like yourselves for important issues affecting students. In each election I stood adamantly for affordable tuition, making our college into a University to offer more opportunities to our students, cheaper and accessible transit, stopping parking fee increases, building a parkade to create more student spaces, and creating affordable housing units for students, making sure there is enough microwaves in Wyckham House for hungry students, keeping class sizes small with instruction based, not researched based professors. For the last seven months I have accomplished many of these goals.
Parking - Parking was one of the top concerns that students voiced to me during my last election. In the seven months that I have been in office the college has earmarked money to spend on a brand new parkade that will increase student parking spaces tremendously. I want to continue to pressure the college into keeping there promise to students to increase more spaces on campus.
University status – For our degrees and certificates to be worthwhile outside of MRC we need to be recognized as a university. Employers will higher students from a institution with the label of university over students from a college. Give me the opportunity as your president to get us our proper name of Mount Royal University and give our degree students a better opportunity to gain employment in their fields after graduation.
Affordable Cost of Living – Probably the biggest threat to MRC students is the outrageous cost of living in Calgary. It affects every aspect of our lives (rent, groceries, gas, tuition, books etc.) We have to continue to fight at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels to have students high cost of living recognized and to get our government to provide more subsidies for students instead of debt through student loans. MRC students cannot afford to borrow more money when the economy is so uncertain.
As President I will continue my focus on improving these issues for students as well as any issue that students ask to he executives to focus on. To accomplish these goals we need a strong student leader that has the experience, ability and knowledge, to improve our students’ lives and education on and off campus. It is my goal during this election to prove that once again I am the right person to lead us and the Students' Association in accomplishing our goals.
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