Teagan Shuck, Alison Wong, and Nathan Beckner-Stetson are running uncontested in the 2023 Residence Society (ResSoc) election, which is happening on Jan. 23. Three positions are up for grabs: President, Vice-President (Residence Operations), and Vice-President (Society Operations).
The three spoke to The Journal about their qualifications and platforms.
Nathan Beckner-Stetson
Nathan Beckner-Stetson, MSc ’24, is running for ResSoc President. In an interview with The Journal, he explained his motivations for running for ResSoc. He said he really believes in the goals of the society and appreciates what they are trying to do.
“I think that students need to have a voice because there are oftentimes a lot of things that could get overlooked, or that won’t happen if that voice has been brought forward,” he said.
With a lot of experience at Queen’s and within ResSoc, Beckner-Stetson’s platform focuses on integration, identity, and interconnectivity, which he said fits in with the core values of ResSoc.
He said he plans to connect the residences more with larger-scale events to encourage more cooperation and community with students who are new to the Queen’s environment. Some of these plans involve bringing back a large semi-formal and screening films in residence.
He also wants to rework ResSoc’s internal committee structure, so the organization can combine the knowledge of internal and external committees.
“If we had a way to combine all of this knowledge together, and we had a way to bring these organizations together in some sort of a large meeting once a term, we’d be able to cover a lot more issues and dig deeper into things.”
Beckner-Stetson said a lot of operating knowledge within ResSoc has been lost over the years. To mitigate this issue, he wants to teach staff about the duties and responsibilities within the ResSoc constitution.
“I want to inspire staff and encourage them to take a stronger role in improving the lives of their students, since that is essentially what the organization is there to do,” he said.
He wants to hire a new chief compliance officer, which he said will improve ability and consistency over the years.
Teagan Schuck
Teagan Schuck, ArtSci ’25, is running for Vice-President (Residence Operations) (VPRO). She has been involved with ResSoc for two years, starting as a first-year intern for ResSoc, and working this past academic year as a Residence Facilitator (RF).
“When elections were coming up, and I knew this was something I was capable of, I thought, why not try it? I’ve done the other roles, and I really liked the team that ResSoc has right now,” Schuck said in an interview with The Journal.
Schuck said her experience working within ResSoc provided her with the opportunity to learn about “the inner workings of ResSoc and the VPRO,” she said.
The key pillars of her platform are opportunity, accessibility, and ability. For the platform of opportunity, Schuck wants to implement more ways for students and ResSoc staff to build professional skills and find work opportunities.
For accessibility, Schuck said this would take the form of making ResSoc and its operations more transparent and digestible for students. The pillar of ability is the central pillar her platform is built on.
“We are student government. It’s important for [students] to be aware of what we’re doing and how things are going,” she said.
Under this pillar, she wants to follow up with individual student concerns and increase modes of communication with students, such as advertising the general assemblies more and increasing the frequency of summary reports.
“I think that also kind of leads into accessibility because when they know what we’re doing, it’s easier for them to grasp what exactly we are as a society,” she said.
“As a society, I think if we’re a little bit more open about what exactly is going on all the time, it’s going to be a lot easier for students to come to us for concerns.”
Alison Wong
Alison Wong, Sci ’23, is running for the position of Vice-President (Society Operations). They are the current ResSoc Human Resources Officer.
“What I’m running on is based on some goals and projects that I’ve had in place in my current year right now as Human Resources Officer,” Wong said in an interview with The Journal.
Wong’s platform is based on three pillars. The first is proactive EDII. Wong expressed they wanted to work over the summer to partner with different organizations to create a robust proactive EDII program instead of working reactively.
“When students come in and move in September, we can establish a safe community with [EDII] expectations there. So, putting out ives, putting up educational programs,” they said.
The second pillar is professional development for students and staff. Wong wants to continue the work of the previous istration and provide more opportunities for student staff to develop professional skills and further career goals.
“Working for [ResSoc] shouldn’t just be an opportunity to help the students and residents,” they said. “It should be an opportunity as a student staff to grow your own professional skills and take something transferable from that experience.”
The final pillar of Wong’s campaign is efficiency. Focusing on information transfer and transparency,
Wong wants to keep everyone within the organization informed so the efforts of each istration “aren’t lost after their one-year term.”
An appealing part of the job for Wong is the ability to implement different ion projects, on top of the broader scope of the role.
“There aren’t too many restrictive day-to-day responsibilities. Having time and freedom to focus on those projects would be really exciting.”
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