Elections 2k15: McVittie runs for Student Life VP

Alex McVittie is a first year student from Toronto. This year at King’s she’s been involved with the Theatrical Society and the External Action Committee.

Why do you want to run?
“I didn’t initially want to run for First Year Rep at the beginning of the year, I wanted to experience the King’s community and see what all of the platforms were like and experience how council works. My roommate is the First Year Rep, so I got to see the ins and outs of council, and got to research a lot about the KSU and what they did. I figured the end of my first year was a really good time to run, because I’m invigorated and excited about the KSU, and I have enough information at the end of the year to be able to really accurately represent the student body. I think it’s exciting.
What makes you qualified?
In high school I was really involved in student government. I was the head girl at my high school, the head of all the prefects and the Student Body President, I think is what other high schools call it, so in that I was able to learn a lot of organizational skills, like organizing all the societies, which is kind of what I would be doing as Student Life VP. I’ll be able to use the skills that I learned from there, and how to manage a lot of different things on my plate. That’s something I’m really good at because I’m really super organized now, I always have my work done so I’ll be able to manage it. On top of that, I’m super enthusiastic, I’m really excited and passionate about King’s. I love being involved and I think that Student Life VP is a really good platform for me to show what I’m good at.
What is it you’re good at?
“I’m very very good at overseeing everything, making sure that things are working the way they’re supposed to work, on a timeline they’re supposed to work on. I really enjoy being able to interact with many different groups of people, and I’d like to think that I’m a people person. I love meeting new people and I’ve been able to do that through the things that I’ve been involved in at King’s this year, like helping organizing the day of action with the External Action Committee, and like the KTS I met a lot of different people who are in different areas of their lives at King’s. I think just being able to socialize with them and see what they’re really interested in would be a good thing.
“I really want to try to integrate them (Day Students) more. I have a lot of friends that are day students as well, through my tutorial. What they said is they just need to know about it, like they would show up if they just knew about it. I think easier and better communication between the two would be really good and I think that I’d be able to do that. Potentially to create a Twitter that all of the events are posted on…kind of like TWAK, but a daily thing that would go out. I’m trying to figure out the logistics of it, something that would go out to people’s phones, kind of like a DalAlert. I know I can’t do that logistically because of how much it costs to send out texts, so like unless it was coming from my parents paying for my phone bill, it would probably be bad. I know you can set it up so that if people set the calendar invites, there will be notifications for Blackberries, Androids and iPhones.
“ portfolio that I really want to try and develop is that King’s is viewed, or how I viewed it when I was in high school, was as an arts school. If you go to King’s you love doing theatre, and you love being involved in things that aren’t necessarily sports, not that we don’t have sports students since a lot of my friends are on sports teams, but it’s not promoted as heavily as I think the arts are at King’s. I think that having pre-game parties, and like pump up so we have a ton of student involvement and student support. I love making promotional videos, so making promotional videos for the teams would be really great, and good for the students to see who the athletes are, what they’re representing, and how their season is going.
How are you going to help societies communicate with Exec?
“The issue between societies and the Exec, I think, is because communication isn’t as accessible as it should be. I know that they have all different Facebook pages, I’m assuming, because the External Action Committee has one, and all of the KTS do, but maybe having a hub or a way of integrating them? I think it’s hard having individual societies because then for Alex Bryant, or whoever takes the position next year, it’s hard to communicate with those people. I think if there was a group with either all of the Execs of the societies, or the chairs of all the societies, would be really helpful, especially to the person who’s running it. In terms of communication between the societies and their leaders, I think maybe having a meeting about how to make it easier, in terms of sending the notifications, and things that make it more accessible electronically, because I think sending emails, people are starting to outdate that, which is hard, but I guess it’s the easiest way of communication.
What’s the most important aspect of King’s student life?
“I think the most important aspect, especially for me and what I’ve observed, is the amount of people that have been involved and haven’t –like, our students are so involved—and the fact that people kind of don’t recognize it. We were talking last night, a couple of my friends and I in the Wardroom about how all of us do so many things, and nobody knows about it. I talked also in my platform about how I want to reinvigorate the K-point system, which nobody really knows about, or they know about it but they don’t really know how it works, including me. I’m going to talk to Alex about that later in the week. The K-point system needs to be up, so what I was thinking of doing was sending out a biweekly newsletter of things that people are doing, it would be on a nomination or a recommendation basis in which a student would say ‘Oh, this is my friend, she’s doing this many things, she’s contributing to this many charities,’ so people knew what other people are doing. I also think it would be really encouraging to the students that don’t participate as much as lot of us do, because either they don’t feel as accessible, or it’s too hard to get into, and I think that having that much promotion surrounding what our students are doing, and how amazing we are as a student body, would be really really good.”
[box type=”info”] Jonathan Brown Gilbert originally campaigned for SLVP alongside McVittie but withdrew from the race during his speech Monday night.[/box]