Leah HennigAt the Augustana Campus Forum on February 26, Susan Huseynova showed that she’s not only listening to student concerns, but is working to improve her campaign with each forum. Her performance as the vice-president (academic) (VPA) candidate has been up to par, with one misstep at the Campus Saint-Jean (CSJ) forum. However, it seems like Huseynova wanted to redeem herself at the Augustana forum.
Her opening statement was perfectly tailored to the students at Augustana. She acknowledged their fears and concerns about moving from the three-11 calendar to the standard 13-week semester. While the University of Alberta Students’ Union’s (SU) VPA can’t reverse this decision, it’s clear that Huseynova is aware there will be some growing pains with this transition. She stated that she’ll work with the Augustana Students’ Association (ASA) to provide any relief and help that she can during the transition, should she be elected. She also committed to working on the conflicts between U of A advisors’ advice and the information on the U of A’s website.
Huseynova has also cleared up how she plans to go about restructuring the Council of Faculty Associations (COFA) into a senate-like format. She plans on having defined seats, increased transparency, and working with the executives at COFA to create a clear mandate to follow. All in all, her ideas are feasible and practical for her plans to restructure COFA, and it’s nice to see her expanding on her ideas to give students more clarity, especially when she brings them up at every forum.
While she did perform quite well at Augustana, her statements never seemed to stretch beyond acknowledging the struggles specific to the group hosting the forum and talking about restructuring COFA. There’s much more that Huseynova could be addressing, and while it seems like the candidates in other races are overpromising and overestimating what they can do in a year, it feels as though Huseynova is almost doing the opposite.
She also again suffers from not having a campaign platform to reference. It can be difficult to get out every idea you want to at a forum, especially as their statements timed. Because of this, she loses out on the ability to speak about an idea briefly and then let students know they can find out more about her plans through her platform.
At the Interdepartmental Science Students’ Society (ISSS) forum, Huseynova did an excellent job at addressing the specific needs of students in the science faculty. She prioritized the advising needs of students and acknowledged the lack of research opportunities available to students in the faculty. Her performance in the ISSS forum was one of her best, which doesn’t come as that big of a surprise seeing as she is currently serving as their VPA. While she did struggle in certain areas at other forums, she really came through with targeted and actionable ideas for science students.
However, at the International Students’ Association (ISA), Huseynova had some good points, but struggled to answer the questions moderator Abdullah Al Anik asked her. Her opening statement was well done, and it’s clear she did her research about the issues international students are facing.
However, when it came to the ISA’s questions, she struggled to properly answer them. Anik said that immigration status of international students is tied to full-time enrolment at the U of A. With that in mind, Huseynova was asked to consider whether academic probation accounts for immigration risk.
Huseynova gave a considerate answer, saying she was unable to speak for all international students. However, she was unable to provide an actual response to the question. Her only concrete idea given was to create a system to flag students who are underperforming before they’re officially put on academic probation. The idea is potentially helpful, but not suited for all situations. Especially for individuals who may be struggling to take enough classes to be considered full-time.
The second question Anik asked Huseynova was how the curriculum could better reflect global perspectives instead of primarily centring on Western ones. Huseynova didn’t seem to quite grasp the question. She focused exclusively on discussing the same plans she did in the Indigenous Students’ Union (ISU) forum. She once again stated her plans to have Indigenous-led courses and co-create course materials with Indigenous individuals. While this is great, it had nothing to do with what the question was actually asking.
Her responses to the ISA’s questions were severely lacking, but fortunately, there’s nobody to compare her answers to. In spite of that, her performance throughout both the Augustana and ISU forums wasn’t necessarily bad. It only showed that she has some areas to improve in. She still presents as a decently strong candidate for VPA, and in an uncontested race, that’s a good place to be in.
