Board election results (unofficial, post-recount):

Jeff Friedrich	1381	Elected
Darren Peets	849	Elected
Aidha Shaikh	840	Not elected
Melody Ma	684	Not elected
Rob McLean	683	Not elected
Tristan Markle	439	Not elected
Hillson Tse	408	Not elected
Cris Marincat	320	Not elected

Thanks, everyone!

Hi, I'm Darren Peets, a candidate for UBC's Board of Governors (BoG) in the January 2007 AMS elections. BoG is UBC's highest governing body for all non-academic matters. It has 21 members -- the President and Chancellor, one staff member from each campus, one Okanagan and two Vancouver faculty members, one Okanagan and two Vancouver students, and 11 (eleven) CEO-type people appointed by the provincial Cabinet. Board members primarily have the power to ask awkward questions and push the administration to do or not do things. Still, this is arguably the most important position on campus to which a student can be elected, and the quality of your representation can have substantial and lasting effects, even if they may not be obvious at the time.

Details on the election, all-candidates' meetings, how to vote, etc. are located at http://www.ams.ubc.ca/elections/

BoG all-candidates' meetings:

• Totem Park ballroom, 2007-01-16, 18:00-19:00 (past)
• SUB Conversation Pit, 2007-01-26, 12:00-13:00 (past)

Who I Am And How I Got Here

I'm a graduate student, doing a PhD in Physics on high-temperature superconductivity, specifically in Tl₂Ba₂CuO_6+x. I did my undergrad here, so I've been around since shortly after the earth cooled, and I've been TAing Phys 352 (a third-year lab course for Engineering Physics students) for quite some time.

I became interested in campus development at UBC 4-5 years ago when the University Boulevard Neighbourhood Plan was being put together. I was shocked that something so ridiculous, and so universally condemned by the campus community (swim team excepted) had so much momentum. While the 18-storey condo towers and through-traffic to Marine Drive were removed from the Plan, many disturbing elements survived. I started paying more attention to campus development and the running of the university in general. The deeper I dug, the more concerns I had.

I was the grad student rep on the South Campus Plan Working Group, and the GSS has had me on the University Town Committee since July 2004 (no website) and the Vancouver Campus Plan's Technical Advisory Committee since the summer (I've also been a blogger for that plan's website). I've been on the External Committee of the GSS since 2004, and have been attending the AMS's Campus Development Committee for nearly as long. A little over a year ago, I became a member of each society's Council after having long resisted. As a result of this assorted experience and my tendency to attend BoG meetings for the information (and food), I now have a fairly strong and broad understanding of how the university operates and where the information is hidden. Largely through longevity and persistence, I've become the student societies' memory. I know what questions to ask, where the proverbial skeletons are buried, and when administrators are trying to stretch the truth, and I'm also in a position to provide insight and useful suggestions.

Since becoming involved, I've attended a large fraction of the public meetings, open houses, town halls, etc. organized by Campus & Community Planning, the U Town office, Housing, etc. (and eaten plenty of their free food). I've had the opportunity to offer suggestions and criticism on various UBC projects, and some of these suggestions have been incorporated. I've attended more BoG and BoG committee meetings than our two current reps combined (I had a head start), and have taken a Fire Hydrant to more of these meetings than all but one of my opponents have even attended.

I'd love to claim credit here for all sorts of concrete results, but I've concentrated my efforts on campus development, where changes are scarce, and almost everything noteworthy I've helped do was a team effort or an incremental improvement. Major changes are rarely the work of one person. I'll toss a couple things out there, though: After being told (and verifying) that international students couldn't legally sit on BoG, I asked the Ministry of Advanced Education if that could be changed. They were willing to relax the citizenship requirement if BC's assorted student societies asked them to. I got the AMS and GSS to support amending the Act, and got their executives to obtain support from most of the province's other student societies to lobby the Ministry. The Act was amended in March, and we have at least one international student running for BoG this year. In a second example, two years ago I came within six votes of getting a Fire Hydrant elected to BoG, and took it to the next meeting. It was introduced to then-President Martha Piper -- she was startled to hear how well it did, and announced her resignation at the next BoG meeting (I'll likely never know whether this was anything more than coincidence, but I'd like to think I helped clarify her thinking).

Endorsements

I've been endorsed by

• Elections Insider
• The Ubyssey
• AMS President Kevin Keystone
• (and The Knoll had me a close third)

Contact Info

For more information on me or on my campaign platform, please send me an e-mail at dpeets@physics.ubc.ca.