Stephanie Marentette (BOA SocSci)

1.What is your name, what position are you running for, and could you please sum up your platform in one sentence?
Stephanie Marentette, BOA Social SciencesPlatform in one sentence: The BOA has a serious visibility problem that I hope to change so that more students in my faculty become aware of things going on on campus and who they can talk to if they have questions or things they would like to see happen on campus.

2.Name one thing the University of Ottawa administration is doing right.
I think that the Univeristy Administration is decently able to adapt to bizarre situations such as the bus strike. Providing shuttles and having the President of the university offer up his own residence to try and encourage people to let students stay in their homes until the strike was over was a good effort. Some people may not have been helped by this or felt that it was good enough, but at least something was done to try and help students get to class. I also like how involved Allen Rock is in running the university. By doing things such as staying in a student residence to be able to better understand how it feels to be a first year and to offer up his home proves that he cares about the university and the students who go here. Having the univeristy function the way it is supposed to depends on good leadership at the top, which we are very
fortunate to have.

3.What is the largest problem on campus?
The largest problem on campus is the fact that in order to get anything done, there is this huge and complicated process that seems to change on a rotating basis which I feel is a real deterrence to student groups on campus. I personally have experienced this myself through trying to speak
to people on campus about UNICEF events that the club has tried to launch. There was one time where I spoke with person A, who then told me to talk to person B. Person B then referred me back to person A, who then said talk to person C. Person C then sent me to person D, and this continued for about a week. That is absolutely ridiculous and I feel that student clubs and groups with really valuable ideas and events to offer to students do not achieve anywhere near as much as they could if they had a bit more support and that support was effective.

4.What can you bring to the SFUO/BOA/BOG that no other candidate can (aka why should someone vote for you)?
I can bring to the table my experience and my approachability. Everyone running for the BOA has really great ideas that they want to see implemented, which I do as well. But what separates me is that I will take into consideration not just my ideas, but those of the students I represent, and I will achieve the best possible result for our faculty through my ability to work with others. It doesn't do anybody any good if the person representing them only pushes their own agenda and is not able to effectively work with the other members of the board.

5.And to steal a question from my co-op workbook: if you came back from a meeting and there was an elephant in your office, what would you do?
I would be pretty excited since I've always wanted a pet elephant :)