The contested race for Junior Senator sees four first-year students reaching for the title.
In the running for the position are Ally Van Buren, Dala Shawabkah, Paige de Kroon, and Valentine Adeseiye, all Sci ’28. The Junior Senator is responsible for representing engineering students at Queen’s Senate and the Engineering Faculty Board. They serve a two-year term and progress to Senior Senator after their first year.
De Kroon and Van Buren both sat down with The Journal to discuss their platforms. Despite multiple attempts, Adeseiye and Shawabkah didn’t respond to The Journal’s interview request in time for publication.
Shawabkah is running on a platform of community, open communication, and resource advocacy. Shawabkah shared her vision on Instagram, stating her belief that everyone within EngSoc should have equal opportunities. Adeseiye hasn’t released a campaign or platform online.
Ally Van Buren
If elected, Van Buren’s priority is to prevent direct-stream programs, which she believes limit students’ freedom to explore all engineering disciplines. She advocates for restructuring first-year courses to ensure equal opportunities for students to discover and pursue any discipline, fostering inclusivity across the faculty.
“Advocating for every single student for their concerns, for their needs, is my primary goal and what I want to accomplish, not just what I want, because it’s not about me at all, it’s about everyone else, and it’s me wanting to be the spokesperson,” Van Buren said in an interview with The Journal.
Planning on enrolling in the Department of Civil Engineering, Van Buren aims to advocate for equitable funding across all disciplines, ensuring programs like civil, geo, mining, and chemical engineering have the resources needed to thrive alongside oversubscribed fields like computer and mechanical engineering.
Tradition is also at the forefront of Van Buren’s agenda. She wants to reassure engineering students of her commitment to preserving EngSoc traditions like the Grease Pole and ensuring Clark Pub remains open, recognizing its sentimental value to students and alumni.
By remaining transparent and keeping in mind student input by conducting polls, Van Buren aims to be the voice of her student community and represent their needs and concerns by putting their interests first.
Paige de Kroon
De Kroon believes her previous involvement with her high school student community—like serving as her high school’s student council’s treasurer and starting a club called the Humanitarian Education Leadership Program, which ran events such as food drives and worked with a local women’s shelter in Brockville—have prepared her for the Junior Senator position.
When asked why she chose to run, de Kroon explained she’s always had an interest in student government, noting if she wasn’t in engineering, she’d be in law.
De Kroon highlights transparency as a core concern of hers. While she’s committed to providing updates and information to students, she also wants to open channels for students to communicate their own concerns. She explained creating a form where students can input their opinions, needs, want into the form and she would present those ideas to Queen’s Senate.
If elected, one issue de Kroon foresees is a lack of student engagement, potentially with her idea for a centralized platform, but touched on how she would deal with it.
“I would for that, I would put it through EngSoc, I would just make it a really well-known thing, so that students know that they have that resource,” de Kroon said.
She clarified along with her experience in high school, her qualifications also stem from her personal characteristics.
“I do have a genuine care and ion for this. It’s such a privilege to be a part of the engineering community here, and I really do want to see it flourish and I think it could more so with a proper bridge between the university level faculty and students themselves,” de Kroon said.
The debate for EngSoc President and Junior Senator takes place on Jan. 22 at Beamish-Munro Hall at 7 p.m. Election results will be released on Jan. 30.
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