Op-Ed: You Love the USC, You Just Don’t Know It
If you spent 90% of your days in the UCC (like I do), I bet you would think that the last 2 weeks of January are the busiest time on campus. The atrium is full of people asking you to chat on your way to class or hand you a campaign sticker, the walls layered with brightly coloured posters with pillars, promises and platform points, and your social media feeds flooded with branded videos, Canva graphics, and enough enthusiastic story reposts to burst your notifications centre.
If it isn’t apparent to you already, there is a large contingent of people running or supporting something, but what might be less clear is what exactly they are running for.
If you’ve made it this far into this article, you probably know that the USC is your student government, but I’m not sure that quite covers it. The fact is that the USC is one of the largest not-for-profits in the city of London and actually one of the most influential student associations in the entire country. Every concert on campus is thrown by us, every one of our 230+ ratified clubs is supported by us, and every issue you have as a student – from academic considerations and summer employment, to affordability, transit, housing and more – is advocated on by us to Western administration, city council, provincial parliament, and even the federal government.
To that end, the USC is more than what meets the eye. The USC is designed to fill the gaps left by administration and government to make sure all students have what they need to thrive both on and off campus. Our motto is that Students have the Power to Change the World and while that may seem cliche for a student council, at the USC we live it. That’s why the USC is the largest employer of students on campus and provides hundreds of volunteer opportunities. It is also why we operate three food & beverage establishments (shoutout to our newest – The Cove!), why we run the Peer Support Centre, the on-campus food bank, the income tax clinic, the grocery shuttle, and every kind of programming imaginable – from Orientation Week to puppy yoga to our purple concerts series.
If you really think about it, the USC isn’t just a university student council, we are an employer, event host, financial advisor, social services provider, community organizer, and lobby group all rolled up into one. And perhaps most importantly, we are an organization that does not exist without you.
At its core, the USC is students serving students, and students figuring out what their peers want and need most during their 4+ years on campus. We do that in a lot of ways: conducting surveys, running feedback sessions, looking at event attendance to see where we created a hit and where we missed the mark, to name a few. But the underlying reality is that we need you to tell us what you want, and how you tell us can be very simple.
From February 2-4, I need you to vote.
I know campus ballots can be longer than a course syllabus, and I know that candidate platforms can be even longer (trust me, mine had 82 platform points) but that just scratches the surface of how many issues affect your life as a student, and how many things the USC can improve.
If you’ve ever ridden the bus with your one card or ever attended a club event – hell if you’ve ever eaten a spoke bagel – the USC has impacted your life. And whether you want more of what we’re offering or something completely different, voting helps us get you closer to the campus life you’re looking for.
A year ago, I campaigned for USC President on the idea of “our Western, our vision”. I truly believe that if students are what make a campus, a campus, then we should have a substantive say in what our lives on this campus look like. One of the biggest ways we have our say is through the ballot, and that’s true of our lives in London, in Ontario, and in the country.
So have your say. Give the next generation of USC leadership – your peers – your vision for campus. This is your Western, so tell us what you’re looking for.
