The USC Elections are right around the corner (February 14th and 15th) and with it the race for USC President. As the head of the third most powerful student union in Ontario and one of the largest in Canada, the winning presidential candidate will, to put it lightly, have his or her hands full. As a Western student, the outcome of the election will affect our lives and so it’s every student’s responsibility to take action, learn about the candidates and make an informed decision. To help you along the process, we interviewed the presidential candidates and got to know them as a potential leader and as a person.
Meet Jon Silver, a fourth year MIT student. Jon has been very interested in and involved with charity work throughout Western as well as student government. At the time of our interview, Jon was excited about The Giants winning the super bowl because the Patriots have won too many times! His decision to run for President stems from an experience at O-Week; “There was a moment when I was on stage during O-week, I was the charity head soph and we were doing our presentation with Shinerama and Terry Fox, and I put my ‘W’ up for Western and we wanted everyone to do it. It was one of those surreal moments when you see 7000 people in front of you with their ‘W’s up and everyone was united for one cause.” It was that moment that made Jon realize that students have a lot of power; “My reason for running is that I want to be able to harness that power through the USC so that students are really driving the change; its students that raised $220,000 for o-week, its students that built the UCC in the first place and so I want students to be at the forefront of everything.” That is the same philosophy Jon has used for his platform about which he says “I think it is student driven and it is focused on giving students direct input on how the university works. I’m really putting students at the forefront of everything that we do as an organization. We call ourselves the best student experience in Canada; let’s make sure students are facilitated.” To implement his platform, Jon has a lot of ideas; he wants to start cooking lessons which he believes will be fun and helpful to students, especially first year students who need to learn how to cook before they live off campus. He also wants to start a mental health hotline where students who are feeling anxious, depressed and tired can call in and get support. One of his other ideas involves increasing the e-mail capacity from 50MB. With all his ideas, Jon says “I think we have a very big emphasis on the USC on involvement, I want to make the USC more personalized so that students can come to us and feel like they have a relationship with the president and with our student council. I really want to put students into decision making. There are a lot of changes to O-Week this year and what I want to do is get students involved with this process. For me, it’s all about process, because if we have strong student involvement in the process then the outcomes are going to be students focused.”
Like all other Western students, it is evident that Jon has endless Western pride; “We have an academic reputation, an academic tradition which you won’t get anywhere else. However, we don’t emphasize that, we emphasize student experience. This is what I love about western; it’s a combination of academics and experience and I don’t think we need to change that, I think we need to strengthen what we do best.” The student experience that Jon values and which Western is famous for all across Canada, is responsible for his most memorable experience at Western; “it’s from first year and my first time going tray-bagonning. We stole a bunch of trays from the caf and went to the back hill, I lived in Perth. We were just going down the hill and it was one of those moments where its not planned, our floor was all there, crazy cold out, and that was the moment you realize, I’m at Western. I’m at a university with all these new people loving my life.” Jon also credits the student body and their passion for Western for inspiring him; “I was charity head soph and got to pick a team of 25 people and what really inspires me is the fact that I got to see the progression of the students on the team. We picked a couple of first years in a team that required a lot of experience based knowledge. What inspires me was seeing people who had zero connections to cystic fibrosis be so passionate about it. I think western students are pretty incredible and it’s that passion that I’ve seen that really inspire me. It’s those first year students that literally will not sleep all night and then haul 15 jugs of water halfway across campus because they really care. It’s that passion that I sometimes think we forget at USC.”
After four years at Western, Jon has some words of wisdom to share with students about making the most of their experience at Western; “I think my advice would be to be very open-minded, never say no to an opportunity. I think that is the best advice I can give someone. The reason why I’m in this place is because someone said get involved with the USC and presidential candidates and I thought why not? I got involved, loved it and then that just spiralled into more and more involvement. Not everyone is going to have the same experiences but just be open to experiences.”
HC Quiz
Celebrity crush
Scarlett Johansson
Dream job?
President of the USC
Something you want to do before graduating?
I still want to go to western film, I’ve never been to western film.
Guilty pleasure
I don’t even feel bad about it, but Nutella. All the time, I could eat a tub of Nutella in a week!
Pet peeves
Dishonesty; not just telling the truth but just being honest with yourself. I hate people who think more of themselves, just be honest with yourself.
Favourite off campus location
I love Christina’s
Something about you people don’t know
I’ve been playing music my whole life; music is one of my driving passions
If you could have one super power, what would it be?
It would be flying
If you had a time machine, where would you go?
I would go back to see what my parents were like when they were kids; I think that would be really cool to see.
If you could invite anyone to dinner, living or dead, who would you ask?
I would love to have dinner with John Lennon. He was one of the most complicated and most influential people in the world and inspired so many people to believe in his vision. And he wrote good music!