It’s unsurprising BUSU would attempt a long-term plan to guide their policymaking, but what they came up with is hindered by corporate jargon and ineffectual solutions.
Adopted in 2021, BUSU’s Strategic Plan was the first significant effort BUSU made to establish a formalized, cohesive framework outlining the organization’s direction over a five-year timespan.
But does BUSU’s Strategic Plan still hold up two years later, and does it really represent student interests? Here I will take an in-depth look at every section of BUSU’s Strategic Plan, from its goals and strategies to achieve them, to what has been accomplished so far.
The Plan begins with letters from BUSU’s past president, General Manager, and a few introductory pages. This is followed by three pages detailing the consultation process including interviews with BUSU execs and Brock administration, roundtables, focus groups, student surveys, workshops and reviews.
The final product was a restatement of BUSU’s vision, mission and objective, which is summed up as creating “the best student experience ever” but has been limited by a lack of continuity and focus.
On page 13 of the Plan, BUSU asserts their greatest strengths are “Highly Active Student Events” and “Strong Brand Awareness”. In other words, they take care of BadgerFest, make a lot of Instagram Reels and deploy a host of guerilla marketing strategies on campus.
The “External Realities” page of the Strategic Plan reflects the times during which it was created. This page establishes that the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning and the Ford government’s stance on student unions are major obstacles to BUSU’s success in their mission.
The four “Primary Constraints” listed on page 15 of BUSU’s Strategic Plan recognize what BUSU considers its main problems, each of which will be addressed in the document. The first constraints are “lacking continuity” and “ambiguous governance structure” which repeats what the plan has already said about BUSU needing cohesive long-term direction.
The “ambiguous governance structure” section also highlights that students score BUSU’s financial transparency as “below average.” These first two constraints are issues that mainly affect BUSU and their executives as opposed to the student body.
The latter two constraints are “advocacy shortcomings” and “inadequate physical space.” These are genuinely relevant issues BUSU has struggled with that strongly affect the average student.
The “advocacy shortcomings” section identifies that Ontario student unions have shifted “away from advocacy as the primary function.” The plan recognizes that “maintaining healthy relationships [with University administration] while advocating has weakened BUSU’s overall effectiveness.”
BUSU General Manager Robert Hilson said in an interview, “If all we did as an organization, if we chose one thing, it would be this: have fun… you might argue that advocacy is more important, than the fun. But that’s not what our students tell us. Students tell us that the fun is way more important than the advocacy.”
When it comes to BUSU’s priorities for events and advocacy, “it’s a 1A and a 1B… advocacy the students don’t notice as much,” said Hilson.
BUSU’s advocacy has been on the backburner for years now with most of it originating from groupthink OUSA policies and political connections rather than Brock student-driven initiatives. BUSU GM Hilson describes the bulk of BUSU’s advocacy as the following:
“Alyssa [VP of External Affairs] and her team have met with the mayors of St. Catharines and Thorald, they’ve met with all of the MPPs in the Niagara region, all of the MPs in the Niagara region, and certainly participate in OUSA. So, you want to continue a relationship with the elected leaders… A lot of students don’t necessarily care about policy. That’s still a problem.”
At the top of the Advocacy section on BUSU’s website, BUSU outlines the main function of their advocacy department is “to advocate for students’ needs and interests to various levels of government through the Ontario University Student Alliance (OUSA).” BUSU’s main avenue for advocacy is typically by proposals given to OUSA which then go through an approval process by other provincial student unions.
“Inadequate physical space” has been a major student concern for years with the growing population at Brock. The latest program from BUSU that I could find to increase student seating was a referendum last year for a new student centre which has been in development hell, and progressing at a snail’s pace, for nearly a decade.
The only reference to students’ transportation concerns is vaguely mentioned in the “advocacy shortcomings” section. BUSU acknowledges that “students rank BUSU slightly lower on their effectiveness for advocating on the contentious issues of transportation.”
Pages 18 to 29 of the Strategic Plan cover the “Our Solutions” sections, where the meat of the Strategic Plan lies. Any half-awake participant in a student survey can identify the problems of BUSU. The real test of a representative democracy is the ability to come up with innovative and popular solutions to public issues.
So what did BUSU come up with?
Hedgehog Concept:
Based on a Greek parable, “Hedgehog concept” is described as “not a goal to be the best or a strategy to be the best” but instead an understanding of what to be best at.
In summary, BUSU is using this concept to separate what they can be better at, from what they don’t want to be better at. This narrows their commitments and thus limits what they can improve on.
The three things they choose to commit to are: transforming the student experience, which restates their previous goals; enhancing student engagement, essentially more clubs and events; and revitalizing advocacy. The final commitment to advocacy is the only one that interests me and is also the one BUSU has ignored the most.
Under their advocacy commitment, BUSU states an objective to invest in an Affordable Transportation Advocacy Plan. As of now, BUSU has yet to mention this plan again, leading me to believe it’s been forgotten despite the Strategic Plan acknowledging that transportation advocacy has been one of BUSU’s greatest past failings.
Clock Building, and Not Time Telling:
One may notice that many of these so-called “solutions” in the Plan come in the form of analogies. The issue with this way of communicating solutions is that it’s vague and easily opens itself up to hypocrisy.
The metaphor of “Clock building” is associated with nurturing a strong organization that can consistently generate great ideas, but BUSU confines this thinking to the establishment and strict following of a governing document.
The institutionalizing of continuity comes at the price of this analogy’s main point being that of an ever-improving process. Though the Strategic Plan attempts to install a framework for BUSU’s innovative thinking, the plan consistently gets used as a platform for executives to fall back on rather than to stimulate creativity.
20 Mile March:
In an equally unhelpful analogy as the last, BUSU portrays themselves as ultramarathoners running across the continent 20 miles at a time.
A more accurate allegory might be that of a hitchhiker thumbing their way onto rides and then staying in a town for a few days. This is because BUSU’s goals for this concept — bringing higher quality services and fostering diversity — are mainly controlled through Brock’s administration.
BUSU notes their main function to achieve these goals is through encouragement, but like the hitchhiker, BUSU is restricted to going along with what Brock is already doing with no ability to get their hands on the wheel.
This concept embodies BUSU’s struggle to revitalize advocacy because they keep themselves in arms’ reach of the administration rather than running their own race.
Preserve the Core and Stimulate Progress:
This is the only “solution” not presented in a self-contained analogy and the only one that provides real student-centred objectives that will directly affect students.
The first objective is to build a new student centre. Which, mind you, has been in development for years with little progress.
The second is changing BUSU-owned businesses into a social enterprise. This change is primarily in name only but comes with the purported intentions to provide food at breakeven costs, implement optimization for student employment and improvements to environmental stability.
The objectives from this section are still in the works but are at least a good direction for BUSU in theory.
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A more effective list of solutions would have been in a similar style to what was laid out under the heading “Preserve the Core and Stimulate the Progress”: solutions that are centred on an ambitious philosophy while also stating clear objectives that can provide noticeable, real changes to the lives of Brock students.
So, where do we go from here?
From page 30 of the Strategic Plan, BUSU pats themselves on the back for what they feel is their successful identification of problems and solutions. The plan then states that additional plans will be needed for further development.
The majority of the advocacy plans listed in the document are not searchable on BUSU’s website, meaning they likely haven’t been created yet.
BUSU states that the Strategic Plan will be fulfilled by “thorough and rigorous in implementation,” and remain open to student input.
Therefore, I would like to present My Strategic Plan to Fix BUSU’s Strategic Plan:
Step 1) Students first concept:
Identify the key difference between policies that affect Brock students versus policies that affect BUSU. Everything that does not directly affect the students should be erased from the “Our Solutions” section of the Strategic Plan.
The plan acknowledges that surveyed students rank BUSU’s effectiveness at providing sitting spaces and advocating for transportation are similarly quite low — ranked at 3.2/5 and 3.7/5 respectively — however, transportation advocacy is not considered a primary constraint. Problems affecting students need to be clarified and addressed at a higher level than problems affecting BUSU as an organization.
“We certainly hear about parking fees… but there has not been a board member that has brought anything about transit or parking to our board in over 6 years,” said Hilson.
The continued lack of interest and effective change created from issues that affect Brock students continues to impede BUSU’s growth and purpose as a student democracy.
Step 2) Grassroots approach:
BUSU executives have become far too comfortable in their relationship with Brock administration. While a connection with university administrators has its benefits, it sacrifices the democratic aspects and general autonomy of a student union.
BUSU consistently allows decisions and policies to come from the top-down from Brock admin. BUSU totes themselves as “student-powered,” a nothing term that could apply to any student club, when a real union should power the students. BUSU must gain awareness of their most powerful resource: Brock’s growing student population.
It seems as though BUSU tries to misdirect student attention away from advocacy, thus keeping the student voice preoccupied with bread and circuses. BUSU events, clubs and concerts feel like an echo chamber of vanity that ultimately deplatforms student movements and shifts student focus toward a placid state of entertainment consumption.
Grassroots thinking and student action have the power to make BUSU truly representative of student ideals by placing student advocacy at the forefront.
Step 3) Fix the website:
A well-informed student body is the key to a successful democracy and student well-being at Brock. Despite recently renovating the design of their website, BUSU still has plenty of room for improvement.
The current website — like most of BUSU’s advertising — prioritizes events, clubs and appearance over categories like news, student voice and “supports & services.”
Compare BUSU’s website to a more formidable student union like at U of T, for example. From the University of Toronto’s Student Union’s (UTSU) website, students can access information on financial aid, health and dental insurance, mental health resources, local deals and food programming all from the homepage.
UTSU’s website is centred around giving students what they need as opposed to showing students what the union wants them to see.
Step 4) Accountability:
In 2022, BUSU changed their executive members into non-elected members hired by the Board through a three-stage hiring process. Despite the controversial shift away from directly democratic leadership, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The hiring process does entail highly qualified individuals being hired for a full-time job by elected officials.
However, this point is moot if there is not a strong and constant expectation to hold these executives accountable.
Recording and publicly releasing reasons for hiring and potential biases will effectively enhance transparency, limit corruption, and provide students with clear insights into the factors influencing the selection of student executives.
A public written statement by the executives on what they accomplished that week and a self-written strategic plan for themselves documenting what they will accomplish each semester are just a few examples of how BUSU members can better be held accountable.
Should any or all of the executives fail to meet their goals or get caught lying in a report, it should be the Board’s duty to begin a rehiring process and put to a referendum whether the current executive should be allowed to remain an executive at BUSU.
Additionally, the success criteria for BUSU-led events and the consequences of wasting student-provided finances should be properly defined and reported. There is no consequence to holding our elected and non-elected student representatives at the highest level of accountability. This goes for all members of BUSU but especially our executives.
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BUSU’s Strategic Plan fails to properly address several constraints and most of the “solutions” it provides are redundant at best and incoherent at worst.
The good bits I have highlighted from the plan are its acknowledgement of dwindling student advocacy and a willingness to stimulate progress for students.
For BUSU to reach their full potential the union must draw their power and decision-making from the bottom-up. BUSU must become a union that empowers the students to make the changes they wish to see at Brock.
I hope for a future where BUSU returns to their roots in advocacy and becomes an agent of change that students can be proud of.
The Brock Press’ editorial staff reached out to BUSU’s President and Vice President of University Affairs for comment prior to the writing and release of this article but received no response.