One year ago, Chrissie Knitter, Mike Jones and Erik Gaustad, fresh off their defeat of Team HTD, were waiting to take their positions at the helm of the AMS, an $8 million corporation.
The days, weeks and months that followed were filled with hours in meetings, dealing with unexpected problems, lack of sleep and criticisms.
In May 2004, this group will step down and a new group of three will fill the offices that have become so familiar to this year’s executive. The Journal sat down with the outgoing executive for an in-depth interview to get their perspective on the past year.
What have been the most difficult challenges you have faced since you took over?
Knitter: The unpredictability is really difficult in these jobs. You never know what your challenges are going to be next week. The other thing that can be somewhat frustrating is to work for weeks on end on something that doesn’t end up going through, or you didn’t end up needing to do your work necessarily because the situation change[d]. For instance, I probably spent literally a week working on contingency plans for a potential union strike. Thankfully they didn’t strike, but at the same time, a lot of effort, a lot of heart put into trying to minimize the impact of it.
Jones: Working within the University can be extremely challenging at times. We are here for a year and trying to push things through and try[ing] to make things happen, and it is really frustrating when you have been pushing, pushing, pushing and pushing and … see very little give. Finally something happens, and then it is great. The majority of the time, nothing happens at all.
If you look back on who you were when you began this job and who you are now, how would you say your time as the AMS executive has changed you as people?
Jones: I am a little bit chubbier. It’s forced me in a lot of ways to be more organized. I have always been organized with keeping track of filing paper, that sort of thing, organizing my thoughts and making sure I am making a list of everything, making sure everybody who comes in my door or who leaves voice mail is getting something back.
Knitter: I have a couple more grey hairs but I also learned a great deal of work ethic. I don’t think I ever knew I could put in 14-hour days, six days a week, for weeks on end without absolutely going nutty. I went a little bit nutty. I never thought I could work that way, in the kind of conditions where you are stuck in the JDUC for hours on end. So it is a lot of patience and a lot of perspective. I think, often, at the beginning of executive’s term, everything is a crisis, everything is a huge deal. At the end of the year, you get some perspective on what things you need to stress out about and what things are more okay.
Gaustad: Bitter, disillusioned, poor, sleep deprived, unhealthy, skinny. I think that you get a lot better at prioritizing what is important, not just in the work sense but in your life, because you don’t have a lot of time for the things you always took for granted. You don’t have the flexibility that you can just randomly decide you want to go out at night, because chances are you have a meeting at seven or nine or whenever. As much as your friends aren’t going to like being part of your calendar, it is just a reality. You have to prioritize what really adds value to your life. It is my friends. It is my girlfriend. It is calling my mom every Sunday because I have it scheduled it in at 11. You just become more self-aware. And also you really learn where your deficiencies are. Where people might throw you a punch on the shoulder when you did something stupid, here you have 50 people express very vocally what they think about the bad decision you have made.
Since the beginning of the term, seven full-time head and assistant managers have resigned or been suspended (P&CC head manager, QP head manager on two occasions, academic affairs commissioner, deputy academics commissioner and the QP operations manager). This number is unusually high—why do you think these problems occurred?
Knitter: I think it is more usual than people expect. Every year, we lose a number of managers for a wide array of issues. For instance, Warren, who was our academic affairs commissioner, got into med school—you can’t really predict that … I think the other thing to keep in mind is the opportunities we are providing for students. We have to always make sure [we’re] giving people professional experiences in a ive environment where they can actually learn and grow within them. That is one of the reasons.
I am so happy about hiring a full-time food and beverages officer—adding that to our permanent staff will really help people in those operations. I think over the last number of years, we have really thrown people in over their heads and we haven’t really been putting them into an environment where they can necessarily succeed. It is a really difficult operation to run bars … and Erik and I don’t know how to do it, nor should we necessarily expect somebody we throw into it to know right off the bat how to do it. I think that having John McDiarmaid on our staff is going to really help us provide [a] better experience for all the students involved and hopefully help with our retention rate of some of our managers.
But we ask a lot of people around here. We ask people to work pretty extensive hours, still take classes, deal with their friends; a lot of them, we ask them to take an extra year of school to do this and on top of it, they get to be criticized by a lot of people. A lot of people are in the public eye, and when we are asking all of this of them, we are paying them very, very little, but we have got to make sure these jobs are enjoyable and good experiences for people.
Time and time again, you have been criticized for not keeping the promises in your platforms, such as purchasing student houses in the Ghetto, purchasing the JDUC computer store, making textbooks tax-deductible and making midterm evaluations for professors compulsory. What would be your response to these criticisms?
Gaustad: In of the housing, one of the things we really stressed in our campaign was that buying houses isn’t something that you decide to go out and do in two weeks … One of the things we have done is commission a small business consulting group out of the School of Business to do a feasibility study for us …. They will be presenting that to us and the new council on Apr. 6. I think the disillusionment that we don’t own 50 houses is a misunderstanding of the financial capacity of the Society and the risk tolerance we have. If we are going to go out and spend hundreds [of] thousands of student dollars on what we think is meaningful, we are going to get other people who have done a lot of research and really know what they are talking about and who are outside our organization also [believing] in it. The textbooks are the same thing … We went and asked why this wasn’t the case. We went and asked the politicians at large, like Peter Milliken [Member of Parliament for Kingston and the Islands] … We had the University go out and ask their legal counsel …. [We had] KPMG and their tax division look at this issue.
We can walk out of our year and say these have been our contributions: we now have the AMS logo in all the services and [on] all the uniforms, we went to [the] Journal Board, we have developed a policy review [for the elections process]. This is a five-year plan and we just have chewed up a quarter of it … They have said, in our plan, go and find a food and beverage person.
When students came back in September, there was fair trade coffee in the Common Ground, which everyone told us was impossible. We were going to have QCollege be a new service, everyone [said] it was a waste of money. Of course, the courses sold out; courses have increased. We were going to have new copiers and improved services in the P&CC, people were like, “It’s a waste of money, it is not going to work.” The copiers are always [up and running], the downtimes are down, the sales are up through the roof. [This was] the most profitable year in [the] P&CC’s history.
Knitter: One of the things we stressed during our campaign was the idea of long-term planning and thinking bigger than what you can accomplish in just four months over the summer. I think that is really important for people to continue with, [otherwise] we won’t continue to grow as a society and really reach out into things that are really going to impact students in a greater capacity.
What do you think will be the biggest challenges facing Queen’s specifically and universities in general in the next year?
Knitter: We will have a new principal coming in and that could possibly change the direction Queen’s [will] take and what role it plays within the whole university sector. At the same time, having a fundamental overview done by the provincial government on the university and college post-secondary system as a whole, the two coming together at the same time really allows for a lot of uncertainty as to what Queen’s is going to be, what role they are going to play, what kind of institution we are gong to be in the next few years.
Principal Leggett has been with us for 10 years and somewhat with the same vision and mission that you are able to know who you are working with. Having someone who is not known to the AMS, who doesn’t know the AMS, could really change the dynamic between students and the istration. Looking back on your year at the helm, what are the accomplishments of which you are most proud?
Knitter: It is really hard to sum it up in a couple of sentences but I am really proud of the long-term initiatives that we have done, like the creation of the two new positions of the student centre officer and the food and beverage officer. I think those will have really long-term benefits [for] everybody. It is exciting to go into next year and watch what they will be able to do with the several [initiatives] … Another thing I am really excited about are the relationships we have built with all the s … and we have been able to work together to accomplish similar goals, especially when it comes to the lobbying that Principal Leggett and I have done together to the provincial government. I think it is really important students and s work together and we have taken big steps towards that this year. Jones: The thing I am most excited about is Block Buddies. I am really excited that Brian [Cheney, vice-president-elect of university affairs] is very ionate about that. I am also excited about all the accessibility, we’ve sort of started a momentum, it takes a while for things to happen around here but I think over the summer, all those projects are going to come to fruition. The QP has been one of the executive’s biggest challenges this year, with the resignation of two QP managers [Chris Hirst, former head manager and Pam Hopson, former operations manager.] The culture of the QP was cited as a big problem by one of your council . How has this particular problem been addressed this year?
Gaustad: I think the number of things that have happened have to be looked at in a holistic perspective, in of alcohol served on campus … [Seeking] out collective liquor insurance is how we are able to operate the bars in the first place; [the] number two step is to have positive dialogue with istration to regain credibility. We had a slew of infractions the year before we came in, including one which got us the suspension. Restoring our credibility was a huge priority. The QP would have to take the consequences of the past. That means things have to get [shaken] up, things have to be tightened, and having all those things change challenges the culture. Operating two separate outlets didn’t seem to be an option anymore, so we have amalgamated them both into hospitality services. Lastly, we realized that running a bar is pretty challenging … Campus bars across the province are losing money. Campus bars across the province are struggling with theft, manager resignations, staff quitting, staff getting fired … I think that the expectations we place on managers is phenomenal in comparison to other service managers. So that is why we went out and said we need a professional … so that when they are having problems, they have a professional to go talk to. Though I might be their boss, I know even less about running a bar than they do. I am not going to be particularly helpful, the service director isn’t going to be particularly helpful and I think the insular culture that has been in place in the bars is a consequence of that. Where are the managers going to turn? They are going to turn to the other people in the bar who actually know what is going on. Your executive has been the subject of criticism, especially on the topic of ability—in of not posting your platform online, not promptly updating the website with assembly minutes, council not being available for students who wish to discuss problems, and for scaling down the message board and editing critical messages. Do you think these criticisms are valid?
Knitter: Firstly, I think we have a lot of ability measures in place that a lot of people don’t know about. That is the biggest problem with the AMS, the seeming inability to get the mass message out to what is available for students and it is really frustrating at times. Very few organizations will have the heads get up every two weeks, answer questions, submit written and oral reports to be mandated by any Queen’s student who feel there is any issue they want the executive to do. We are there every two weeks and people hold us able … we are asked questions about what we have been up to, and I think Assembly is really ignored as the real ability issue—all those people are there to represent students. If the student has a concern, they should be using those representatives to raise them to us … In of office hours and being available in the office, people often forgot, people who work here take courses, should have family and friends as well and a lot of the work we do in particular—The executive is with the istration and with committees outside these offices. It is really difficult to try to arrange your meetings with Principal Leggett around other meetings … it is our job to be very flexible in our ability to meet and attend all the meetings and committees that we have with the various university bodies.
Gaustad: I don’t really feel it is our duty, or really right, to provide a forum for individuals to anonymously criticize other individuals at a very personal level, which was starting to happen. Nor did we really want to be in the business of randomly cutting out people’s comments … If they were going to criticize people in public, I think it is a pretty fair requirement, just like you would never publish an unnamed letter to the editor, especially if it criticized another individual …. A number of the comments went far beyond the line of reasonableness and that is too bad … As much as there were bad posts, there were a lot of really really constructive ones, some things that we did wrong. A great one is the Assembly minutes. I mean, why weren’t the Assembly minutes on? Because I made a mistake and didn’t do my job. That’s a simple answer. That was an opportunity for somebody to tell me that and it was an opportunity for me to say, “I really need to get on that …” By the next Assembly, the minutes were there.
Thousands of dollars was spent on renovations for Alfie’s this year. Do you believe this was a prudent financial move, considering it was going to be shut down after one term?
Gaustad: Well, obviously we didn’t know it was going to close after one term or we would have closed it first term, when we approved the expenditure. The board approved the expenditure in light of the environment we are operating in. Dividing up the space [was] the most prudent investment we could make. We could have gotten that curtain for eight and a half thousand if we had spent an extra month on it.
It was closed for the first few weeks of September. I guess our philosophy was if we could make it a $120,000 loss instead of a $180,000, it would be $60,000 of student money that we saved, even though we know we are not going to come anywhere near breaking even.
The QEA lost $60,000. The QP, after posting a profit of $10,000 last year, is projected to lose $30,000. Alfie’s lost $154,000. How would you respond to those who claim the losses did not have to be so severe?
Gaustad: They are welcome to apply [to work for the AMS]. I am not going to criticize and say we couldn’t have done better. I feel confident we did our best. Now if that is the best that is out there, I don’t know. And I think there are people there who could have done a better job.
We got the best people out of those who applied and expressed interest—those people we got tried hard … If you look around Ontario specifically, there is hardly a type of bar that has the activity and business that the QP does. If we wanted to make money, we could up a pint to $7 and people would still keep coming. But that is not what we really are. What do you define better as? Six nights a week, we are at capacity. We could not be serving any more students, really.
We are going to have made and spent about $8 million—a little less than that, on that $8 million surplus. We are going to come out with about a $1,000 surplus. If we are trying to break even, that is as good as it gets. Quite honestly, I wouldn’t have been happy with that if I made a $1,000 profit because guess where it came from—your pocket and our pocket. If we wanted that, we would franchise it out to corporations.
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