photo by jesse kinos-goodin
Humber Etc.
On Feb. 27 Humber media studies students were fortunate enough to meet with Toronto Mayor David Miller who discussed Toronto’s Agenda for Prosperity, some local hot spots for North Etobicoke residents, the Tower Renewal program, and a new website for Torontonians to estimate their carbon footprint.
After the mayor finished his speech, students from all of Humber’s media outlets – the Humber Et Cetera, Humber TV, and Humber Radio for questions – were invited to ask questions.
While it was great to hear Miller reach out to students and discuss some of the positive initiatives being done around the city for the environment, the urban landscape, and local residents, a slightly strange and rather worrying contrast can be made here.
That same day, in the student centre, which is just adjacent to the Seventh Semester room where Miller was speaking, an HSF election debate was taking place.
While the floor was completely open to students speaking with Miller, the question and answer period with the HSF presidential candidates attests to the lack of transparency within this college’s student government. Miller also visited the newsroom where student journalists had a chance to talk to him in a one-on-one setting. Many took him up on the opportunity.
By contrast, in the student centre, students had to write down questions that would be placed in numbered envelopes. Candidates would then pick a random envelope and answer only that specific question, leaving out the valid concerns of other students.
This system would be effective had there been a room of 500 eager voters vying for their questions to be answered, but in a room of 150 students – where only 50 at the most were paying close attention – the lucky envelope seems ludicrous.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just have an open floor in the student centre and give everyone the opportunity to ask a question?
Then again, HSF needs to spend its $5-million budget somehow, and having people on payroll to put questions in envelopes is the perfect way.
How is it that an elected official to the biggest city in the country feels comfortable answering student journalist questions that could potentially put him between a rock and a hard place (like some of them actually did) but a student government that clocked a 6.7 per cent voter turn out last year has a pseudo-screening process for student concerns?
Perhaps this lack of transparency and openness is the reason, along with the oft-cited commuter school phenomenon, that Humber students are so disconnected from their government.