YFS builds partnership with Student Centre

Yuni Kim
Assistant News Editor
The York University Student Centre (YUSC) programming department has recently seen the resignation of several employees, and York’s student union is stepping in to help the Student Centre host events.
“The Student Centre, from my understanding, is better than it used to be [in] previous years,” said Vanessa Hunt, vice-president of campus life of the York Federation of Students (YFS). “I have a great relationship working with folks over [at the Student Centre]. It’s been very welcoming.”
The YFS hosted the first pub night of this academic year and Osmel Maynes, programming and events coordinator for the YFS, will now host the Underground’s Dirty Bingo nights, after Scott Jarvis, YUSC executive director, fired former host Shirley Nov. 4 following a complaint.
Some of the other changes and collaborations this year include hosting YorkFest Welcome Week 2010 as a joint event between YFS’ Welcome Week and Student Centre’s YorkFest. Both YorkFest and Welcome Week are annual events held at the beginning of the academic year that welcome new and old students back to York. This year YorkFest included the York Village, where on-campus clubs can socialize and recruit more members, and a concert, whose headliner was N.E.R.D.
Sophia Pirani, a former YUSC employee, feels the YFS is over-stepping its authority and taking over YorkFest event co-ordination, and not really collaborating with Student Centre staff.
“I was YorkFest’s assistant last year and a YorkFest sponsor- ship coordinator for this year,” said Pirani. “It was the event that we worked [on] for six to eight months before it actually hap pened. YorkFest was [Saqueeb’s] baby, his event.”
YorkFest was apparently unofficially branded “SaqFest” within the YUSC, a nickname that paid tribute to Saqueeb “Saq” Rajan, who headed the event for the last several years, before the YFS and the Student Centre joined forces. Rajan was fired Nov. 12 by the YUSC board of directors after working as marketing and events manager for the YUSC for seven years. His dismissal inspired several Student Centre employees to walk off their jobs in protest, starting Nov. 15. Jarvis declined to discuss the reasons behind Rajan’s firing.
Hunt also said she was not aware of the details behind Rajan’s dismissal. She made it clear Rajan’s role and experience was not over-shadowed during YorkFest preparations.
Pirani, however, said that this year, the YFS and the Student Centre took control of YorkFest away from Rajan. She noted that, together, both groups were only able to obtain $70,000 from corporate sponsors, $20,000 less than last year. The YFS and YUSC only picked up 60 percent of the sponsors Rajan got last year, she added, for multiple reasons, including increased sponsorship fees.
“[Rajan] didn’t have a lot of control of what was going on with the sponsors because the YFS were really anti-corporate and picky over who they wanted to sponsor the event,” said Pirani.
In a Sept. 21 Excalibur article, Jeremy Salter, executive director of the YFS, explained the YFS and the Student Centre collaborated on YorkFest this year because the group’s formerly separate events overlapped in many ways. Jarvis agreed with Salter, and said “it did not make sense to have the same events twice.”
“Personally, it felt like a takeover,” said Pirani. “The [YFS] did what they thought they knew how to do, and that would be the concert portion of the event and the barbeque. I can’t say that they did a great takeover, but it didn’t feel like collaboration. It felt like we had to come up with our ideas and budgets and then take it to them and have them approve it.”
Hunt re-emphasized the efforts taken by both sides to work together in a collaborative effort.
“We worked very closely together on the pub night itself […] It was really successful,” she said. “As an incoming person, I’m not going to try to take over anything […] Rather than saying, ‘I’ll do this and you’ll do this and go our separate ways,’ we actually worked together rather than leaving it all to one person.”
Hunt said that, so far, she has not had any major conflicts with the administration of the Student Centre.
“Everybody has a different experience, and everybody goes in with a certain mindset,” said Hunt. “I didn’t know what to expect, and it just happened to work out great for me.”
Other changes to YUSC operations include the shutting down of discount ticket-selling booth The Source, previously owned by the Student Centre. That closing resulted in the YFS membership office purchasing a license to sell tickets to concerts, comedy acts and TTC tokens in the Student Centre.
Hunt pointed out that together the YFS and the YUSC have also created more club space for students, and have implemented new features to support student clubs.
“We talked to [students] about issues that students and clubs have, so now there’s a waive on the booking fees […] there’s new catering menus specifically made for clubs at a reduced cost in order to support them and their events.”
Siva Vimalachandran, chair of the YUSC board of directors, concurred with Hunt. “The YUSC enjoys
its relationship with the YFS and looks forward to continue working with them in the future,” she wrote in an email.
York is not the only school where the student union and student centre work closely together. Students at Ryerson University found themselves in a similar situation in April 2007 when the Student Campus Centre (SCC), Ryerson Students’ Union president Muhammad Ali Jabbar and Continuing Education Students Association (CESAR) president Jeremy Salter signed an agree ment that gave the Ryerson stu- dent union control over the operations of the SCC. According to an April 3, 2007 article by Ryerson’s Eyeopener, the agreement ended the student union’s long and hard fight for control over the Ryerson’s Student Campus Centre.
Earlier this year, the Student Centre board of directors changed their by-laws to include two more YFS director seats, doubling the total from two to four. The YFS Student Centre directors include YFS president Krisna Saravanamuttu, YFS v-p of operations Steven Broadley, YFS v-p of campaigns and advocacy Darshika Selvasivam and Salter.
With files from the eyeopener, Excalibur archives and Brittany Goldfield-Rodrigues