Hello!
June was an exciting month for OUSA and our students as we welcomed a new provincial government! Our Steering Committee was able to gain lots of traction with the media and other stakeholders to discuss our OUSA Votes campaign, aimed at informing students on how to vote and why it matters. We’re very excited to now begin engaging with so many new Members of Provincial Parliament, building relationships and discussing the future when it comes to undergraduate students.
Over the past month, OUSA’s Steering Committee has been hard at work, setting ourselves up for a year of hard work and continued advocacy. We spent several days putting our heads together at OUSA’s Annual Strategic Conference. As a team, we developed our priorities and vision for the year, as well as our plans to work with the new government in the best interest of students and the province. We’ve also been working to transition our executive: the President (myself!), VP Finance, and VP Administration & HR. This creates continuity within our organization between the executive from year to year in order to ensure that OUSA is working optimally to achieve our vision and missions statement.
OUSA’s summer interns have also been hard at work. Cat, OUSA’s Advocacy and Communications intern, has been working to develop the Annual Strategic Plan, prepare our annual campaigns, and planning our first ever Policy Symposium! Mackenzie, our Research and Policy intern, has also been busy putting together a research report on tuition and access, assisting our Research and Policy Analysts as they conduct their analyses of the OPSSS survey results, and also helping plan our Policy Symposium. Mackenzie also wrote an incredible blog discussing the history and importance of Pride month, which you can check out here. We also released this year’s edition of Habitats, which highlighted the successes and challenges that are faced in navigating municipal-level issues affecting undergraduate students.
And as mentioned, this August, we’ll be bringing together stakeholders across the province for our first-ever Policy Symposium that our entire team has been working on. Here, we’ll discuss a variety of post-secondary issues and the importance of prioritizing them to improve not only the student experience, but also to improve Ontario as a whole.
July is looking to be an exciting month, and I’m looking forward to engaging with and updating you all soon.
Danny Chang