Next year’s Computing Students’ Association (COMPSA) executive team is currently in limbo, with no candidates stepping forward to fill the vacant vice-presidential roles.
The COMPSA de-slated elections nomination period ended on Jan. 30, seeing two candidates in the running for President of the Society. Currently, no candidates are in contention for the Vice-President (Operations) or Vice-President (Student Affairs) positions.
In an e-mail sent to The Journal, COMPSA’s Internal Affairs Director Kieron Luke, CompSci ’26, explained the only candidates received for this election were those vying for the presidential position. He mentioned COMPSA is working on a solution for the other positions and will need to hold another election, though the details on how to proceed are still being decided.
In interviews with The Journal, presidential candidates Hugh Tuckwell, CompSci ’26, and Rehr Vafadar, CompSci ’27, shared their priorities and visions for the year, should they be elected.
Hugh Tuckwell
Tuckwell’s campaign rests on three pillars: growing the Society’s professional development program, improving internal operations, and expanding COMPSA’s outreach.
To him, the biggest issue facing computing students is landing internships, a point of stress for students including himself. To address this, he plans on strengthening COMPSA’s relationship with QHacks—a 36-hour hackathon which draws students from all across Canada—to provide students with additional project opportunities and expand Life After Computing, a major job networking event in Toronto.
“We want to help these clearly motivated and ambitious students get the internships that they deserve and the opportunities they deserve,” Tuckwell said in an interview with The Journal.
Drawing on his experience overseeing hiring as last year’s COMPSA’s Internal Affairs Director, Tuckwell plans on improving the Society’s internal operations by automating istrative hiring redundancies and using COMPSA’s budget to lower ticket prices for events, making them more financially accessible.
Tuckwell’s third pillar aims to expand COMPSA’s presence on campus. One way he intends to accomplish this is by strengthening relations with the AMS in order to grow COMPSA’s presence during Orientation Week.
“If a first year [student] really likes orientation, they start finding out about COMPSA, they start going to these general assemblies, they start making friends, and they start finding a community. We end up getting a lot more engagement,” Tuckwell said.
Tuckwell pledges to stay able to computing students by actively listening to concerns raised by elected Year Representatives, who serve as the voice of their peers and bring key issues and ideas to COMPSA executives.
Rehr Vafadar
Real change and greater professional opportunities for computing students is what drove Vafadar to run for COMPSA President. His vision is to inspire collaboration within the computing community, enabling students to build their “dream projects.”
If elected, Vafadar aims to help computing students build their resumes and secure internships by expanding and increasing funds for COMPSA Innovate, a project the candidate recently launched under the Society’s Professional Development portfolio.
Currently, COMPSA Innovate has a form that connects lower- and upper-year computing students, allowing them to pool their collective time and data resources to collaborate on research projects.
“I believe here at COMPSA, we have amazing skills and an amazing community that should be invested in as much as possible by allowing them to get themselves out there and have opportunities that will establish for them a better future, better resumes and better job opportunities,” Vafadar said.
Vafadar promises he would fulfil his leadership responsibilities and remain able to computing students, citing his track record of consistent action and ability to push for better initiatives like alumni-ed events, and collaborations with Smith Commerce.
“You know that I will uphold my promises because I have so far,” he said. “I’m not even a director [at COMPSA], but I’ve been able to push this new initiative program [COMPSA Innovate] forward. Imagine what I can do as President.”
The COMPSA presidential debate is scheduled for Feb. 7 at 5:30 p.m. at the CASLab, with voting set to take place from Feb. 8 to 9.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].