Kevin Menz
Associate News Editor

After hearing reports that Kelsey Topola graduated last year with a degree in English and Political Studies, sirens of scandal rang throughout the Sheaf office.

She is the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union — the undergraduate student government’s — vice president of academic affairs! However, she silenced any scandalous rumours by pointing out that she was accepted back into the college and is, in fact, an undergrad and eligible to be on the USSU.

Phew!

“I reapplied to arts and science and got accepted,” said Topola. “I’m taking undergrad classes so I can work at this job.”

She has extensive experience with student government at the university and is excited about her job on the USSU.

“I’ve been really involved in student politics for a long time. I was on the ASSU [Arts and Science Students’ Union] for three years and had been a member of the Political Studies and Public Administration Students’ Society. So I’ve known a lot about student government and I’ve found it not too hard to adjust to my new position,” she said. “I actually really enjoy my job.”

This familiarity with student government has made it easy to acquaint herself with her position and has allowed her to work hard in preparing for the upcoming school year.

“Scott [Hitchings] always says to stop doing stuff; you’re making us look bad. So I say, ”˜Eat shit, Hitchings!’ ”

Topola’s summer consisted of organizing executive projects like the Be Book Smart campaign — which wrapped up earlier this month — and the Academic Integrity and Academic Advising Awareness weeks.

However, she is predominantly focused on the undergraduate forum, co-curricular transcripts and the proliferation of open access resources.

“The undergraduate forum is when the deans and associate deans from the university and a bunch of students get together — I think there’s about 36 to 40 people in total — so students can talk about issues that are important to them and have these issues heard firsthand by the higher-ups in administration.”

“Scott Hitchings always says to stop doing stuff: “You’re making us look bad.”
So I say, ”˜Eat shit, Hitchings!’ ”

The five meetings throughout the year will focus on childcare, academic scheduling, cultural diversity and racism, and the proposal of an ombudsman office, which would serve as a neutral office outside of the government that would hear individual student complaints and would either directly deal with the complaint or would direct the student to the correct avenue in which to deal with the problem.

She also noted that the first forum will be sometime in October and that if a student wishes to take part they must fill out a Students At Large form online or at the USSU office. The USSU’s appointments board will then select the best four applicants to attend the forums throughout the year.

Another concept Topola is fighting for this year is the creation of a co-curricular transcript.

“The co-curricular transcript is an official university record of different volunteer work or involvement in non-academic activities — like a student’s involvement with the Huskies or as a volunteer at the learning centre,” she said.

“I see the main purpose for them as employer references. For example, a student society might not remember every volunteer when an employer calls to check resumes. This would provide sufficient proof of extracurricular activities.”

Promotion of open access information is something she wants to continue to promote all year, beyond the Book Smart campaign.

“Open Access information is scholarly peer-reviewed information that people can view for free. It is the idea that knowledge can be free or shared and the only stipulation is that when you use that knowledge you credit the source.”

She is trying to encourage professors to not only publish their work on open access resources, but to utilize as many open access resources as they can.

To correspond with this idea of scholarly resources through the Internet, she is also reworking the methodology of teacher evaluation.

These new teacher evaluations would no longer have deadlines; students wouldn’t have to take the time to answer surveys during the busiest school week of the year.

“I have been working out a University of Saskatchewan specific version of the Rate My Professor website,” she said. “It would be voluntary and always open for students. I think it’s a much better way of doing it than the system we have now — which is, ”˜Here’s another survey in your fucking mailbox, do it!’ ”

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image: Olivia Swerhorne Wick