Tuition cost STU’s biggest issue: Livingstone, Manning, Henry

Although they have different plans for the union they want to lead, all three STUSU presidential candidates believe that the cost of post-secondary education needs to change.

Students will see both old and new names on the ballot when they cast their vote for the students’ union president next week. Current president Ella Henry, Mark Livingstone and Michael Manning are candidates to lead the union. Livingstone came third to Henry’s victory last year while Manning has never been on a STUSU ballot before.

With the province facing more than $800-million deficit, whoever students elect will face the task of lobbying a government making tough decisions.

Henry, who served as vice-president education before being elected president last year, says the new union will have a short window of time to lobby the province before the government negotiates a four-year funding model which will set fees for all the province’s universities.

“Once that’s signed, it’s done for four years. No amount of advocacy and lobbying is going to change that,” Henry said.

Livingstone, a fourth-year economics student, says post-secondary education is the election’s main issue. He says the union must be reasonable with its demands while the province is facing hard times.

“We need to make sure the government listens to the students and we need to build a relationship with them,” he said. “We need to fight for reasonable improvements for student aid for students who need it the most.”

When lobbying the government about post-secondary education, Manning will draw from his own experiences struggling with student debt.

“I know what it’s like to be the average student. I hear candidates talking about debt loads [and] I’m one of those students. I have student debt, I know what it’s like to struggle.

“I’m taking that experience and bringing it to the table as well.”

Manning has always thought about running for the union’s presidency, but decided to put his name on the ballot after some students gave him the extra push.

“I had a lot of people come up to me and encourage me to run, saying they thought I would be someone who could represent them well, someone different than what the options have been.

“If you have people around you [who] feel that you’re what they want to bring them into the future, I think you need to take that very seriously and work for what the students want.”

Manning will release a more detailed platform this week, but plans to focus his campaign on accountability, co-operation and efficiency.

“I’m willing to compromise and work with the other candidates to listen to their ideas too because I might not always have the best answer,” he said.

After finishing third in last year’s presidential race against Henry and Melissa Bastarache, Livingstone says he’s more prepared this time around.

“Last time, I did run to win but I was a little bit late getting off to a start,” Livingstone said.

This time around, the Riverview, N.B. native says his platform is more focused. His main priorities are making sure the union stays sustainable and eliminates its budgeted deficit, embodies the student life on campus and works toward reasonable goals.

“We need to be good stewards of our students’ union. We need to be fiscally responsible, fiscally transparent and we need to ensure the student union’s long-term sustainability,” Livingstone said.

“We might not have a students’ union in a few years if things don’t change.”

Henry is seeking a second term as president because she still has work to do on the issues she has focused on during her mandate.

One of these things is making sure students have a say when the university negotiates its cafeteria contract, something Henry says the university only does once or twice in a decade.

“We need to be concerned about the price of food, the quality of food, the availability of healthy options.

“Once you have a contract, it’s there until it’s up.”

If she is re-elected, Henry will also focus on representing students as government negotiates the funding model and dealing with the union’s $100,000 surplus. Creating the university’s own bookstore, a possibility the union is studying, is one thing the money could be used for, she suggested.

All three candidates say they want to co-operate with one another on campus, even if they find themselves working with people who have different beliefs. In the past, tensions have boiled over when union members clashed because of different viewpoints.

Sean Thompson, last year’s chief returning officer who is now a law student at the University of New Brunswick, says it will be hard for the union to get anything done if members with different perspectives can’t compromise.

“Having a mixture of voices around the table, so long as they all work together, makes for a stronger union,” Thompson said.