SU Elections 2025 Q&A: Vice-president (operations and finance)

The vice-president (operations and finance) (VPOF) manages the University of Alberta Students’ Union’s (SU) $13 million budget. Additionally, they oversee several SU businesses, such as Dewey’s, The Daily Grind, Room At The Top (RATT), SUBprint, and SUBmart. The VPOF also deals with tenancy agreements in the Students’ Union Building (SUB) and manages the dedicated fee units (DFU) for student groups and associations.

There are three candidates running for VPOF:

• Ryley Bazinet, a second-year accounting student
• Levi Flaman, a third-year East Asian studies and computing science after-degree student. He is the current VPOF
• Nathan Thiessen, a third-year political science (honours) student, a 2024–25 SU arts councillor, and a faculty of arts representative on the General Faculties Council

The following interviews have been edited for brevity and clarity. Candidates were given 1 minute and 30 seconds to answer each question.

Why have you decided to run for VPOF?

Ryley Bazinet: I’m running for VPOF because, like many students, I’m fed up with rising fees and missed opportunities within the SU. I’m not a political hack. I’m a student who believes in [spending] smarter, [making] better use of SU resources, and [not] putting extra financial strain on students already facing an affordability crisis. By cutting unnecessary executive salary increases and expanding the revenue potential of our under–utilized businesses, I want to prove that we can run the SU effectively so students get real financial relief, not endless hikes.

Levi Flaman: First I want to continue some of the work that has already been done this year in terms of student affordability and improving efficiency within the organization. A lot of the efficiencies that I’ve found and pursued this year pertain to the financial aspect of it. I want to look more at productivity and time efficiency. If I win again, some of the things are not going to be as visible, but they’re going to be felt. So if students apply for a new student group or student group renewal, sometimes that process is exceptionally long. So that’s something that we’re hoping to shorten in the coming years among many other things.

Nathan Thiessen: For the past two years I’ve served on Students’ Council in various committees. I believe the most vital function that the SU has to offer students is with its student services and enterprises that serve students on a daily basis. When it comes to the role itself, I believe I can not only bring in experience necessary into the position, but a fresh version as well. I believe that we must continuously strive towards a better SU [and] that students deserve a better SU. I believe that comes with new vision with new takes, and [to] bring together campus partners, as well as students, and extend the understanding of the SU to students. But it also requires a vision towards the future. The SU has a century of history of working on behalf of students, but [what] we have lacked to see is a vision towards the future. I think that’s vital to the SU.

What would you say are the three main takeaways from your platform?

Bazinet: I will immediately freeze and eventually reduce the SU fees by cutting my own salary by $10,000 if I’m elected, and [will] encourage the other executives to do the same. I will use those reduced salaries to reduce the SU fees, with the goal of lowering it for students by at least $5 for the following year. And maximize the under-utilized SU businesses to increase revenues [with] events at the Myer Horowitz Theatre, the Dinwoodie Lounge, and reopening RATT more than just one day a week. The plan is to improve representation and transparency, advocating for additional suites for Indigenous and international students, more office hours for Augustana and Campus Saint-Jean (CSJ) so that their voices are heard, [and] propose professors to disclose the syllabus and any textbook costs before the semester starts, so students know what they’re getting into for better financial transparency.

Flaman: First is efficiency by switching gears from the monetary to the time efficiency of it. Second is maintaining continuity, because we have the potential of having several new executives this year that may not have been on council or been involved with the SU before. Having that institutional memory come from one year to the next would be particularly beneficial, especially with everything that’s been happening in the United States (U.S), because we’re not immune to the tariff/trade war. So this is going to be a tumultuous few months, and it would be good to have somebody who is going to be experienced from day one and doesn’t have to learn the ropes as they go. The third thing is focusing more on our student services and our businesses. A lot of our businesses are doing quite well, especially the Daily Grind, and it’s doing so well that we’re opening a second location. Now the company is bringing in a lot more money that we can put towards the services that need it and ensure that students are getting value for their membership.

Thiessen: The three main broad strokes are sustainability, engagement, and vision. When it comes to our operations and finance, we cannot only look towards economic sustainability within our business practices [and our] business partners, but the social and environmental impact that our operations and finance takes. We have to ensure that we are looking towards a commitment to sustainability holistically through social, economic, [and] environmental [practices]. I feel like that is a major gap when it comes to the SU’s mandate and we should be working with our campus partners to see how we can be serving all of our students. And working with our campus partners to deliver on behalf of those students. When it comes to vision, I believe we have to look towards the future and ensure that the SU remains relevant and responds to students’ needs as we are seeing an increasing enrolment growth, as well as diversity of demands and needs from students. So holistically, we have to be looking towards the future, and principles of sustainability, engagement, and vision need to be [at the] core.

Previous VPOFs have worked to review the SUB Master Plan to ensure it’s meeting the needs of the campus community. How do you plan on continuing that goal?

Bazinet: I plan to listen to students and hold more office hours at Augustana and CSJ, work with fellow SU executives, and listen to the people, first and foremost. Students come first. At the end of the day, I’m a student. Anything I do, I’ll still be a student afterwards. I’m only second-year, I have at least two years left in my degree. So these changes will affect me directly. So I have my own and the students’ futures in mind.

Flaman: We got off to a slow start this year [and] that is predominantly due to struggles filling the students-at-large seats and getting four members from university facilities and operations assigned to sit on the committee. So we didn’t have our first meeting of the year until mid-December or early January. That’s unacceptable. We need to go from day one. Whether I win or lose, that’s something that’s already in the works in terms of getting our committees up-and-running in May as opposed to in November. But the master plan, which right now is a design schematic, is nothing fixed in any way. We want to make sure we’re staying ahead of student trends and student needs, and providing things to students before they realize they need it. We don’t want to lag behind when it comes to our study spaces. The Central Academic Building (CAB) was recently renovated, [and] there’s the new library with the study space there. So we want to ensure that students feel like they have a home away from home and that they can study here.

Thiessen: SUB is the living room of campus, so ensuring that it remains responsive to students’ needs as well as forward-looking when growing the space and the long-term vision for stuff is crucial. We’ve completed the Myer Horowitz Theatre renovation, which was a step in the right direction, but that’s not where the story ends. [We have to] look at the SUB Master Plan [to see] how we can make action towards expanding SUB and it’s deliverables, as well as looking to the SUB planning committee to see what work has been done and also deliver on this long-term vision for SUB. SUB and the services and businesses that are offered here on campus is important. That’s why we need to take meaningful action to continue the growth of SUB beyond the Myer Horowitz Theatre, and into the building itself through space revitalization, space utilization, and space maximization.

How would you work to increase non-student revenue to reduce the UASU’s dependence on student revenue?

Bazinet: The best example is RATT. Before [the COVID-19 pandemic], it was generating around $750,000 in revenue. Now it’s a fraction of that and it’s only open once a week instead of the full week, and most of the time it’s empty. This is very under-utilized, and it could be so much more than it is, especially for the student experience. [As well], it could help reduce financial strains on students and make us less dependent on the student fees. There’s also the Daily Grind — it’s a very popular location and it could definitely be expanded. There could be a lot more events held at the Myer Horowitz Theatre. It’s a nice, large space, and there’s not many events for how much we put into it in renovations.

Flaman: We made great strides this year due to the [reopening] of the Myer Horowitz Theatre after many delays, and that’s helping quite a bit, [with] the money that we made from our grand reopening show with Tegan and Sara, which was sold out. We’ve had the Law Show come back for the first time in several years, and there are some stand-up comedians that came by. We have this great asset and it’s the first time it’s been refreshed in several decades, so we need to make great use of that, and broaden the scope to the surrounding Edmonton community. The new Daily Grind will also help being on the main floor of University Commons. [There are] a lot of university faculty and staff in the upper levels and university executives have all moved in there. So we’re going to have a lot of people who can come spend money in that location, which is going to hopefully free up some of the lines in our [SUB] location downstairs. So maybe we can lower some of the wait times and the cost for some of this stuff.

Thiessen: It’s crucial that we increase non-student revenue and that we build businesses and student services, but also decrease reliance on the mandatory student unionism. That’s why vision is so crucial to my policy platform. It comes to looking to the future. We can work towards making sure that our operations are efficient in minor ways. But it comes to working towards the future and how we can expand [our businesses], how we can make them more relevant, and how we can make them more efficient. Now, the Daily Grind opening up in University Commons, which I hope within my VPOF term is achieved and is realized, is just the first step. Looking beyond next year, I believe we have to explore how we can invest in infrastructure in our SU businesses and how to make sure that we don’t have delays in provisions such as the Dewey’s kitchen closing down or the [reduced] menu. And infrastructure spending is important. That means increased services built around students and less reliance on student fees. So we have to look towards a long-term vision into how we can maintain sustainable SU services that don’t rely on student fees.

Previous VPOFs have worked to increase transparency of the UASU’s finances while working on better managing the UASU budget. Why should students trust you with the budget of over $13 million?

Bazinet: The SU has councils in place to audit and make sure that finances are allocated properly. I’ll make it easier to access the budgets. These budgets are very difficult to find, and they’re not very clear. I’ll make them more transparent, easier to read, [and] easier to understand so people understand where their money’s going, what’s happening to it, and where it eventually ends up. And that would add to the student experience.

Flaman: One of my biggest pet peeves in this role is that a lot of our financial spreadsheets are custom created by our accounting team and our director of finance. In some cases, I don’t even understand that. So one of the things that we started pursuing this year is upgrading our antiquated accounting software. It hasn’t been updated in forever, but the struggle to go from what we have [now] to anything new is there’s nothing you can buy and use. It’s all software as a service now which is horrendously expensive to implement. But by getting this new accounting software and updating our different spreadsheets and everything, that will make it easier for us to take what’s in there and export it into a PDF and some kind of quarterly or semester report. So that would be the first step among better transparency.

Thiessen: I’ve served as audit chair in the past two years and I’m proud to have delivered clean audits for the UASU. When we have [had] recommendations within those audit requests, action was taken and accountability [and] transparency was delivered on behalf of students. But beyond that, recalling the three broad strokes in my policy about engagement, students should know what their money is going towards. So when it comes to increasing transparency, I believe there’s a lot we can do as there’s much left to be desired from the previous VPOF. And that means a social media campaign exploring the items of the budget to say, “hey, this is what the SU’s doing on your behalf, these are student services available to you, these are our business users social enterprises that are delivering real, tangible goods and services that students need.”

— With files from Kathryn Johnson and Gabriella Menezes.