Opening Remarks
Hi Huron! My name is Ziyana Kotadia, and as the 2020/2021 HUCSC President, it is my pleasure to write to you one last time to reflect on our school year.
This year has presented several unexpected hurdles for our student body – from navigating the landscape of online learning, to managing unprecedented financial and mental health concerns in the wake of the pandemic, to engaging with Senior Administration’s autonomy proposal, the 2020/2021 academic year has been full of unforeseen challenges. The HUCSC has worked hard throughout the year to translate these challenges into opportunities for us to connect with our student body. I am so proud of what this year’s Council has been able to accomplish together, despite the difficult circumstances we all faced as a student community.
I want to begin by saying how grateful I am to have been able to lead Huron students this year. While I wish our student community could have been in person this year, I am continually humbled by the creativity and commitment to community that has enabled us to come together in online spaces. It’s a testament to Huron students’ collective strength that we have been able to adapt to learning, growing, and connecting in new ways.
What has the HUCSC done this year?
Part of my job as President is to oversee the work being done in each of the HUCSC’s portfolios. In our Governance Portfolio this year, we were able to review and update seven policies as well as introduce a total of seven new policies, procedures, and Memorandums of Understanding. If you haven’t already, please check out the end-of-year blog posts from your VP Finance and Administration Andrew McCann, VP Student Affairs Lexi Magder, VP Student Events Rachael Toffoletti, and VP Communications Kendra Hancock to learn more about the work we have undertaken in our Executive Portfolios.
Some highlights: this year we have ratified six new HUCSC clubs, transitioned to HUCSC’s new Student Centre and Beaver Dam in the academic building, held two Town Halls with Huron’s Senior Administration, introduced Monthly Redefine Movements, prioritized wellness initiatives like a new podcast and planning an all-day Wellness Retreat, hosted academic department mixer and mentorship events, created the HUCSC Hype Team, and developed Beaver Tails (HUCSC’s new newsletter). Your VPs have worked incredibly hard this year to accomplish their respective goals on behalf of the HUCSC – each of our portfolios has done amazing work, from building and launching HUCSC’s Merchandise Store, to running our new Equity, Enviro, Wellness, and Accessibility programming, to hosting unforgettable events like our Lennon Stella/Two Friends “Couch Concert” collaboration with the KUCSC, to developing new communication strategies andmanaging new platforms such as this blog.
As for the President’s Portfolio, we took the lead on a number of projects and advocacy priorities. This year, the HUCSC prioritized feedback collection throughout the year to inform and ground our community-engaged advocacy work, holding three separate rounds of general student feedback collection throughout the year (Summer, September, and January) that were supplemented with additional feedback opportunities on specific advocacy projects (ie: HUCSC Strategic Plan, accessibility advocacy, student employee research, HUCSC response to the Huron Autonomy Proposal).
HUCSC had a number of advocacy wins with year, including getting commitment from Huron to make allyship and anti-oppression training mandatory for all employees of the university and to establish a confidential, centralized reporting tool for all incidents of discrimination and harassment. In a year of significant affordability concern for students, it was also a priority for the HUCSC to work on financial support for students. Early on in May 2020 and in the wake of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked with Huron to establish the Huron Student Relief Fund to support students in need and contributed 10K to this fund. This year, the HUCSC was able to work with the Office of the Registrar to end the system of charging students for Enrollment Verification Letters, and also successfully advocated for free menstrual products to be made available in all washrooms at Huron, effective Fall 2021.
As well, my portfolio took the lead on developing an advocacy strategy in the wake of Huron’s Autonomy Proposal, which included working with the Student Affairs portfolio to put together surveys and focus groups to collect data and student feedback, overseeing the writing of HUCSC’s Report and recommendations to Senior Administration, collaborating with the Communications portfolio to manage the public affairs aspect of our stance, and more. The Presidential Portfolio also took the lead on HUCSC’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion work within the university, which included me personally cohosting two Student Listening Circles on Racism with Dr. Craig, helping to author the first-ever Equity and Diversity Committee report on the status of EDI at Huron, and working with our Student Affairs portfolio to produce a document of equityrecommendations to Huron (all of which were committed to by Dr.Craig).
This year, my portfolio also put together HUCSC’s first-ever Strategic Plan, and I am hopeful that in the future, it can act as a guiding document for the organization to create high-level consistency for the HUCSC and ensure our leadership is always acting in resonance with student values. We were also able to work with Huron to create the new ‘Unsung Leader Scholarship’ to be offered to Huron students alongside other scholarships annually; this new scholarship, which students can be nominated for by other community members, seeks to recognize those who make meaningful contributions to our campus community but are not typically recognized for their efforts.
My portfolio also took on a new project this year researchinghow Huron can better support student employees of the university. My Research Associate produced a Report to outline this work and collaborated with me to present HUCSC’s recommendations to stakeholders at Huron. Meanwhile, my Internal Associate worked hard at facilitating HUCSC’s mentorship program between former HUCSC Presidents and current students, and also managed HUCSC’s H-Awards to recognize the community-engaged work our students do. I was also pleased to be able to work with our Head Soph and Huron’s AVP Students to restructure Huron’s process for hiring our soph team.
In terms of external work, we had a great year of collaboration with our partners at the USC, KUCSC, and BUCSC. At the USC, I was elected as the Secretary of the University Affairs standing committee, elected to two working groups (Anti-Gender Based and Sexual Violence and Anti-Oppression), and sat on hiring panels for the USC’s Board of Directors and the Purple Care Trust. I also had the opportunity to work with two other women of colour councillors at the USC to put together a ‘BIPOC Women in Politics’ event, and spoke at this event to an audience of Western and HBK students. I was able to run to represent Huron and Western students at the Ontario Undergraduate Students’ Alliance (OUSA) Fall General Assembly, where I worked on four policy papers to shape OUSA’s advocacy priorities on ‘Housing, Transit, and Community Development’, ‘Environmental Sustainability,’ ‘A Comprehensive Access to Post-Secondary Education, and ‘Responses to COVID-19’. I also worked to built a new relationship between HUCSC and CityStudio London and sat with the other HBK Council Presidents on CityStudio’s Working Group and Advisory Circle with other stakeholders from Huron, Brescia, Kings, Western, Fanshawe, and the USC.
Closing Remarks
It feels like time has worked differently this year – it’s hard to tell if our school year has flown by or dragged out. In a year where the days have blurred together and the months have overlapped and the challenges we faced have pushed us to our limits, I want to take a moment to recognize the resilient spirit of our student body. Your efforts and dedication to one another this year have not gone unnoticed.
Being HUCSC President has been the gift of a lifetime and an incredible learning experience. To my Executives: Lexi, Andrew, Rachael, and Kendra, I am endlessly grateful for each of you and couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated team. To my Portfolio: Nick, Ailin, Kyla, and Josephine, I am inspired every day by each of you and I have loved working with you this year. Thank you to every member of the HUCSC who has worked tirelessly on behalf of the student body – I see you and I appreciate all of the hours you have put in this year.
To Huron students: thank you for trusting me to be your leader and advocate this year. Know that your voices matter and that together, they are incredibly powerful. It has been my honour to represent you this year, and I can’t wait to see everyone in personthis fall!
