The University of British Columbia Okanagan is, like every other campus, a deeply unique one. Hemmed in by the rolling hills of the valley, situated in the province's fastest-growing city, not to mention bearing countless new developments, UBCO can count itself as being especially fortunate and especially unique among its competitors.
However, there is also a rarely-discussed aspect of UBCO that is also unique among other campuses of its size: it has no graduate students'-specific association separate from the campus' student union organization. Where typically, graduate students have their own organization which they separately receive services from (and, accordingly, pay different fees towards), that is not the case in UBCO.
As of time of writing, however, efforts are being made between the SUO and the "Graduate Students' Association" (GSA) to fill that gap. Negotiations are currently underway between the two groups for the latter's separation from the SUO, and having taken an interest in this topic, I spoke with the directors of the GSA to see what their goals were, and how their project was going thus far.
Quinlin Osadczuk:
To get started, could you guys tell me how this whole thing got started, and how you got to where you are today?
Yazdan Gordanpour:
The background is that the SUO existed since this university existed — for many years. About five years ago, the Graduate Student Committee was established, which was a standing committee for the SUO. It was right around Covid where grad students were like, "why are we still paying tuition? We're not getting TA-ships, there's nobody really supporting the grad students — all the undergrads have gone home, and we're still here, we're still in the lab doing work. Campus is empty." That was mainly why the Grad Student Committee was established, it was within the SUO. The grad student population has grown since then. In 2016 the external review of the College of Graduate Studies said that the population of the grad students is now large enough that there's a need for a grad student society.
Brontë Shelton:
Obviously, it has to be external to the university, but the external review is where people — normally professors or department heads — come from other universities and they review your department, give you recommendations and they write it up in a report, and you can find it probably online1. So, we had one in 2016 and then we just had one [in 2024], as well. In the 2016 report and the 2024 report, there were recommendations in both of them that the grad students in this campus need a formal body and support should come from the university to help them separate that from the SUO and form a grad student-specific union.
YG:
So that's the general kind of zeitgeist of the grad student population. I was on the grad student committee — still am, I'm a student at-large there — and I was largely involved with grad student governance as much as it existed. I was very clear that that has run its course and the maximum representation from the SUO we've gotten, and now we need to take the next step, like any other university in Canada that has a separate grad student society. So I was involved with the grad student committee, I was talking to the grad student society at UBC-Vancouver, other people who knew these things, and I thought, "I think we can do this", so I reached out to people, and we started our grad student association.
Scarlett MacPherson:
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is one of the very few universities where the grad students are lumped in with the undergrads.
BS:
Yes.
YG:
Yes. We're the only one.
SM:
So it's not normal. We have different wants and needs and we're contributing fees that are disproportionately not spent on grad students just by virtue of the fact that we're a smaller population.
QO:
Right, that makes sense. So, based off of that, given where you are right now, what do you think you can do next? What's your broad goal for the future?
YG:
Referendum.
BS:
Yes, we're still in negotiations to formally separate. We're really optimistic right now, but we have to have a formal referendum with a question that's agreed upon by the SUO that all the grad students will get to vote on that says "we no longer want to be members of the SUO, we want to be members of the GSA now", and we've been negotiating with the SUO to see how those fees will change hands, and something that's made those negotiations more complicated is that we're really adamant that we don't want to affect the bus pass and the healthcare, because we don't want this to be too painful of a transition for graduate students. So we're making sure that those fees stand, and that there won't be an interruption in the extended health benefits, and the U-Pass has been a big part of our ongoing negotiations — but I think we're close, and I think getting the referendum question out and the votes on that are our next steps.
QO:
Perfect, okay. Have you guys been having any trouble when it comes to this stuff? Because I know that starting a new association like this can be difficult, because for most schools this happens naturally, whereas with UBCO it hasn't happened like that yet.
YG:
Yeah, it is challenging, because it doesn't happen that often — there's nobody who's done it that we can ask, "how did you do it at your university?"
BS:
The last time that a grad student association separated from an all-campus association was in the '70s, in Canada, right? When did Vancouver do it?
YG:
Oh, UBC Vancouver? Yeah. But they also didn't separate, they already had something.
BS:
So there's no precedent.
YG:
So there's the journey and challenge of how do you navigate this whole thing, and then negotiations with the SUO — they've been supportive, and we're optimistic a referendum will go well, fingers crossed, but it's an institution, it has its own speed. The university told us that they wouldn't take sides until we'd handled things with the SUO, so sort of like we're stuck between the SUO and university, operating with a budget of zero, for the moment.
BS:
That's what I was going to say, the SUO's been supportive of us forming, but we don't have any infrastructure or help from either side, so there's paperwork and fees, and requirements associated with becoming a student society in British Columbia, and since we've been established, we've been paying for those fees out of pocket.
SM:
Brontë and Yazdan are being very humble right now. I've only been a director since December, but these two have been putting in unpaid labour upwards of a year now, so it's volunteer work of basically a part-time to a full-time job of establishing this, and we're just trying to improve the quality of life for grad students, because there are services that would benefit us that the SUO has no motivation to provide for us, because as Brontë mentioned, the majority of their membership is undergraduate students.
YG:
But I'll stress that it's not for their lack of trying — all the executives have really tried this year and last year to really do stuff for grad students, it's just hard because [they're mostly] not grad student[s], so they don't have the network, they don't know what's needed.
QO:
Would you say that's more an issue of lack of grad representations towards the executives and leadership of the SUO, or would you say that's more of an inherent systemic issue?
BS:
Both. It's hard to get representation in the SUO when systemically we're a smaller part of the population. So, we've had grad students run to be on the board or to fill those roles —
YG:
[Whispering] I did last year [chuckles].
BS:
— but, when it's run primarily by undergrads, you can have every grad student on campus vote for a grad student, but there's so many undergrads that you'd probably still lose. It's not a fair election when you're considering grad student representation.
SM:
I don't have the numbers, but how much of the student body are we?
BS:
11 percent?
YG:
11 percent.
SM:
So yeah, as Brontë said, if you get all of us, 100 percent of the grad students to vote for one grad student, we're still 11 percent of the vote.
BS:
Yeah [chuckles].
YG:
And even the composition of the SUO board, there's 17 directors. One of them is a representative from the College of Graduate Studies, so it's even less than 11 percent on the board.
QO:
Then I guess that's a pretty good reason for you guys to start doing this.
BS:
Yeah — representation, access to the same opportunities undergrads get — we're a smaller population, so I think we need a separate body to be able to have access to the same opportunities that they do. There's not gonna be a grad student who's going to be paid to be a director in the SUO at this point, and being able to address the issues that disproportionately affect grad students like childcare, TA'ing advocacy, those are things the SUO doesn't have a focus on.
QO:
Well, fair enough. I think I should ask, then, is there anything else you guys want to bring up? Closing thoughts?
YG:
What I really want, is that I don't want this to look like a grad student versus undergrad issue, because in all universities, both societies really collaborate, and everyone's a student so we have a lot of common issues that we really need to work on. It's just that there are some things that are different, and you need specific organizations to really represent a more specific constituency's voice.
SM:
Directors of the SUO this year, they've been really great. I've been going to their office hours a lot, and they have been receptive, but like [Yazdan and Brontë] have been saying, it's just not their priority to focus on the grad students.
YG:
And it shouldn't be.
QO:
And I think that's a very nice note to end on. Thank you guys very much.
[End Interview]
At time of interview, negotiations remain ongoing, but the leaders of the club remain optimistic. With the AGM behind them, and hope ahead, the GSA may well soon see the light of day. My hopes are with them, and I ask that if you can support them, you do so.
1 University of British Columbia. (2025). External Reviews. The University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus. Source Link
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