On Wednesday November 13, the Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) held its General Assembly meeting in the Bronfman Building. The MUS student executives used this opportunity to present their goals for the year and progress thus far.
President Brooke Callaghan began the meeting by introducing the faculty’s newly adopted values: community, equity, and development. Callaghan suggested that the implementation of guiding values is a crucial step in solidifying the organization’s long term identity, which the MUS previously lacked.
Finance
Callaghan has expressed that the ongoing goal of the MUS is to increase financial transparency, stating that the MUS “hasn’t passed an audit in five years and we are very behind on our books.” To combat this, Callaghan and VP Finance Guy Miller have been retroactively bookkeeping to update the MUS records with the help of a hired accountant. Ideally, they would like next year’s MUS members to be able to start fresh with past mistakes already accounted for.
Academic
VP Academic Kanishq Shah is currently making plans to encourage professors to align crash courses – which often occur infrequently and right before midterms – to take place in class every three weeks. Often, he explained, when students miss a class which they know contained information pertinent to future lectures they feel disincentivized to go to future lectures, fearing they will not understand. Ideally Shah’s proposed change would help resolve this problem.
Shah is also working to create a transparent evaluation process for “unfair exams.” This is in response to evaluation methods that have been accused of placing too much emphasis on the memorization of details that do not represent an understanding of course materials. He stated: “Too many students are putting too much work into exams that aren’t actually assessing them on what they have learned but on what they have memorized, which is completely unfair.”
Philanthropy
As well as carrying out various charity events this year, VP Philanthropy Jillian Weisleder is working to build off the work of last year’s VP Philanthropy to create a program for students to seek funding from the school for leadership opportunities that may have associated costs. She hopes that some of this funding can be supported by alumni who feel passionate about a specific conference, organization, or area of study, and who want to provide McGill students with an opportunity to similarly cultivate their passion. She hopes to have this program off the ground by the end of the year.
Internal
VP Internal Sara Duklas is currently working towards getting clubs to use Slack, a streamlined channel for messages, to allow better inter-club communication. She is also looking to implement a latte machine to offer tea, hot chocolate and coffee in hopes to reduce drink prices and create a more sustainable practices for beverage consumption.
Corporate Relations
The MUS sponsorship revenue goal is $130,000, the majority of this total being generated through MUS events that have partnered with corporations. This year the VP, Ariane Dusablon, is working to create long-term sponsorship partners for MUS, saying, “We don’t want to have to go back to the same partners every year, but instead build long term contracts that cover several years.” The clubs that would be targeted to seek long term contracts would be those with recurring events, consistent turnout, and would likely have recuring sponsorship partners every year. Dusablon hopes that long term contracts will help lead clubs towards self-sustainability.
Events
VP Events Charlotte Koch is looking to improve the incident reporting policies for faculty events. She says: “Because [faculties] are all separate legal entities, you would technically have to report an incident to all nine faculties, SSMU and McGill [administration] if a problem were to arise.” To combat this, she is creating a way to streamline the system among faculties to help avoid bureaucratic difficulties which could foster possible trauma that may have been experienced by the person filing the report.
Koch has also placed focused on Philanthropy through events with a goal of $60,000 by the end of the year. She is confident about this goal as they have already raised $14,000 through Hype Week alone.
Communications
VP Communications Amanda Beaumont is looking to expand the MUS social media presence including the use of Instagram stories, a newly updated website, and the growth of Humans of Brofman.
Overall, the MUS executive is looking forward to expanding their open-door policies to ensure that students feel comfortable reaching out to the team with questions or concerns.
