Last board election (spring 2020), UVSS had just 14.8% of their membership vote, for a body that is supposedly the representative of the 18000+ undergraduates, having less than a fifth of the membership even caring to vote in your elections, let alone get involved is undoubtedly disappointing. This isn't just a UVSS issue either, only 6% of SFU's undergraduate membership showed up for the SFSS election, there are similar stats for other universities. Nonetheless, being the best amongst losers still makes us losers, What's worse is that a large majority of the UVSS membership barely understand what the UVSS is, or what it does, let alone when it's elections are. This piece tries to breakdown three areas that UVSS falls short in : Their presence in students' lives, their student perception , and a lack of a regular medium of communication with a majority of the membership (that isn't a throwaway item → email).
Presence of the UVSS in student's Lives →
In perspective, the UVSS is functioning quite well as a "fountain" of opportunities, services, and aid. The primary issue with their efforts is the limited quantity and quality of student engagement. Inevitably, only a small subset of the UVic population will intentionally search for opportunities on campus and/or be willing to leave their comfort zone to participate in them. The Trivia nights prove a point here, a small proportion of the student population found, and continually participate, the same principle can be applied to majority of their other initiatives. The result is the Gate Effect, the small subset of the student population that relies on the UVSS for services and opportunities naturally learns about the politics and more personal resources / services the UVSS offers. While the majority of the membership is closed off from their information network. Effectively, The UVSS has an almost non-existent presence in the lives of students who are plenty comfortable without the UVSS. This self evidently implies that to a majority of it's membership, the UVSS seems to be nothing more than another fee.
From a student's perspective, The UVSS has a very limited scope of changing responsibilities. Essentially to the average student, the UVSS continually is a persistent bug that is continually reminding people in power what students want and continues to host and organize what it does. The majority of the membership isn't being actively being sold on different visions for the UVSS. In other words, no matter who I vote for, ultimately things will more or less stay the same. Even when keeping the UVSS's recent victories and efforts in mind (Saanich housing bylaws, DIVEST campaign, clubs and course union days, etc.) the perception is that voting doesn't change that. Everyone I vote for in a UVSS election knows that students care about the environment, sustainable housing yada yada yada and will work towards that. Thus there seems to be no real importance to voting for the UVSS, which doesn't effect the UVSS's function, but definitely effects voter turn out ... because why vote if it doesn't matter.
Lastly, UVSS doesn't have a consistent way to communicate with a majority of its membership, the closest thing they have to a regular form of contact is the email list. The email list is limited in two ways, I suspect there is a good quantity of people who don't bother reading the email, and two, selling anyone on anything through email is nearly impossible. This almost self evident disadvantage becomes painfully obvious when they are trying to promote or garner attention for a particular activity like course union / clubs day or wellness week. They can hardly reach a majority of the membership, much less convince them to show up. This also happens to be a pre-requisite to addressing the first two issues. Even if they tried to address their lack of presence or student perception with the majority of the membership, they have no real means to do it, there is no medium. With no medium, UVSS's trying to engage a membership of ignorant (Not their fault) and relatively complacent students with their hands tied behind their back.
There are three things the the UVSS needs to provide every undergraduate student walking into an election cycle with: Pre-concieved ideas they want to see come to fruition, different visions of the future of the society to buy into, and a variety of different guided opportunties to participate in the election that are systemically integrated in every students schedule. (I'll probably come out with a solution piece later)