Fifteen of the UTMSU’s closest friends, family, and marital partners are expected to overwhelm the polls this coming week as the competition heats up between the Connect UTM slate and… for the five executive seats. The positions are incredibly vital to the inner workings of the UTMSU since they allow the union to develop necessary student initiatives, like collecting student dues for the CFS, and handing out Churros sometimes.
The Connect UTM slate, made up of previous UTMSU employees, is currently leading in the polls across the university, mostly due to the fact that they are running unopposed and no one can really cares about the UTMSU election at all.
President-elect Mitra Yakubi, known for being “sensitive” when asked basic questions by the media, is expected to uphold the union’s long standing tradition of avoiding responsibilities and wasting student fees, all while providing the guise of a “bustling” campus life at UTM.
When questioned by The Medium about her slate’s platform, Yakubi demanded that the journalists for The Medium be registered as “emotional offenders.”
“I’m fed up with The Medium blatantly harassing people by asking basic questions. I’m sick and tired of being held accountable by you people. How am I going to do anything if I have to be transparent about it?”
When questioned about how she was expecting to deal with tough conversations if she couldn’t respond to basic questions, Yakubi declined to answer. She then excused herself, claiming she had to go order foam for Frosh which is over six months away.
While most of the executive positions available are uncontested, guaranteeing another year of a UTMSU that simply exists, there is one lone cowboy trying to shake things up. For the role of VP Internal, Med K is challenging Connect UTM’s Fahad Dayala for the position.
Med K, unique for having a perspective outside of the clique-yness of the UTMSU, appeals to the lucrative Reddit demographic of UTM, often appearing on the UTM subreddit. Most recently, K brought attention to the disdain students have for Chartwells, the company responsible for your 20-minute Subway sandwich wait and the hair in your Thai food.
The most notable aspect of Med K’s platform is the demand for transparency, a word that sent all other nominees flipping through their dictionaries to find the definition during the all candidates forum.
Dayala responded urgently, “Accountability isn’t like Rome. It can’t be built in a day, but we can certainly burn it down. You just expect us to be honest? And actually hold our promises? Do you even know how politics works?”
Dayala continued to discuss her credentials, most notably her time assisting in the management of Frosh: “We were proud to organize the cringey-est frosh this side of the GTA. Sure, we may not have streets full of joyous students, actually fun activities, or anything that resembles a real campus social life, but it’s an event that still happens, and that, my friends, is an accomplishment.”
As the forum continued, the students running for Board of Directors managed to say some nonsense that never really amounted to anything, while Yakubi summarized the impact of the UTMSU by saying, “We work very hard to give UTM the shell of a student life it currently has. Can you imagine the campus culture without free breakfast?”
With the “competition” heating up, we here at The Medium are begging students to care at least a little bit.