Every year The Gateway hosts a panel to determine who should and who will win in each race for the Students’ Union elections to assist those undecided on who to vote for. Our election dissection panel is here with their insights on student politics and their takes on this year’s candidates.

Opinions expressed by the panellists do not reflect those of The Gateway.

The Panel

This year’s panel for election dissection included:

• Tom Ndekezi: U of A alumni, former arts and culture editor at The Gateway

• Kyle Monda: U of A alumni, past Gateway contributor, GFC and Students’ Council councillor, past candidate for Students’ Union vice-president (student life) 

• Alyssa Stoddard: third-year political science and English student, previous caucus researcher for the Government of Alberta (2019 – 2021)

The Candidates

• Gurleen Kaur, a second-year arts student and current Students’ Union arts councillor.
• Milan Regmi, a third-year music and education student, and current student senator.

With two candidates in the running for this year’s Students’ Union vice-president (academic) (VPA) position, the panellists were torn by the dichotomy between Kaur and Regmi.

Stoddard was concerned by Regmi’s plans to create a two-tier tuition system, in which Regmi hopes the wealthiest one per cent of students will pay more tuition so the other 99 per cent of students pay less.

“I was shocked when I read [Regmi’s] two-tier student tuition system,” Stoddard said. “[It] makes no sense to me. I don’t know how you would, one, make that assumption. I don’t know why you need to. I think the government of the day is already trying to make a two-tiered system in various aspects of Alberta. I don’t know why you need to place students that have worked incredibly hard regardless of money, race, country that you come from, whatever — [into tiers] to pay tuition.”

“I don’t think it matters and I’m curious how he would make that assumption to have wealthy students pay more. That was a shocker to me.”

Monda was also concerned about Regmi’s platform, but about various promises listed, noting that they were “out of scope” of the VPA position.

“To me, it really seems like [Regmi] put together a platform to run for president, and then decided to run for VPA at the last minute,” Monda said. “A lot of what he’s talking about is frankly, out of scope for the VPA position, and while there’s a lot of really big ideas in this platform addressing a whole wack of issues, whether that’s tuition policy, housing, jobs, how much the Students’ Union pays the staff — I don’t understand why that’s in a VPA portfolio.”

“I can really see that he’s really done his homework and he has a really clear vision for where he wants to go, but I think there’s a bit too much.”

However, Monda felt that VPA candidate Kaur’s platform suffered the opposite issue.

“She seems quite underprepared for the race,” Monda said. “I think that in her interview responses and such, it does seem like she has the right ideas about why she wants to run and her motivations are really pure; … it seems kind of half-baked, unfortunately. I would love to see what she could put together in the future, but I’m not sure it’s quite there yet.”

Ndekezi echoed Monda’s ideas, also noting that the two candidates were extremes on both ends. 

“[Regmi] has too much, and [Kaur] has too little,” Ndekezi said. “I got the same sense reading through the platforms that [Kaur] seems to be passionate about the position and the causes she supports, which is obviously something good to see, but I think there’s a lot of questions about the both of them.”

“That point about the two-tier tuition — I know [Regmi] had another point about abolishing the curve — these are all things which I think we all at some point in the food court have said to our friends, ‘wouldn’t it be great?’ but I don’t know exactly how feasible it is and I think those are definitely not just points you can throw out there unless you have very detailed plans. With [Kaur], there’s not really much that stands out — any really detailed points. It’s a toss-up in my opinion.”

Stoddard pointed out that she thought Kaur’s platform was “faculty-specific,” as the goal to have no-textbook courses may not be feasible for some courses, like science, engineering, and language courses.

“[Her platform] has more of an inexperienced and rushed approach than [Regmi’s],” Stoddard said.

However, Stoddard liked that Kaur brought new ideas as an international student and was a female candidate, and didn’t think that Regmi’s relative newness to the Students’ Union and students governance was a hindrance for his campaign run.

“If [Kaur] has that international student perspective, … then I think there can be some more monumental change to listening to some of those international student perspectives,” she said. 

Ndekezi noted that while all panellists had concerns about candidates’ platforms, there was still a positive outcome after it all, which Monda “applaud[ed].”

“One positive that would come out of this race is that whoever wins will bring a different perspective, instead of the usual,” Ndekezi said.

One panellist said they “don’t really feel 100 per cent putting [their] ‘should win’ stamp on either of them.”

In the VPA race, all panellists had a hard time deciding which candidate should win because of various concerns with both candidates’ platforms.

Who will win: two votes for Milan Regmi, one vote for Undecided

Who should win: two votes for Undecided, one vote for Gurleen Kaur