Name: Ali Bee Calladine
Age: 19
Hometown: Whistler, BC
Program: Economics and International Development Studies
Nominated for: Vice President (Student Life)
Relevant experience: Senate Representative on DSU council, former DSU council chair, DSU Board of Operations chair, on the nominating committee of the DSU Society Review Committee, sits on Dalhousie Senate, former president of Dal OXFAM, former president of the International Development Education and Awareness Society, NSPIRG board member, organizer and creator of SUBfest
Dalhousie Gazette: What should be the main priority of the VP of Student Life next year?
Ali Bee Calladine: I have a few key priorities.
Obviously, when you think of Vice President (Student Life), the first thing that comes to mind is events, because that is an incredible way to engage students with the union and with student life here. But ultimately, we could be engaging students with events more than just having them participate in events, by actually having people organize events. By being in a role of support and tying things together, the VPSL office could create much more of a sense of community and collectivity around event planning here at Dal. This would also free up some capacity of the VPSL office to focus on services.
The DSU, the university overall, and many societies provide so many incredible services that a lot of students don’t know about, don’t have access to, and I think right now a lot of students are slipping through the cracks in those services. A really key priority is connecting students with those services that exist: whether it’s the writing centre, the food bank, or the Dalhousie Student Advocacy Service; which gives legal aid. I think it’s a great place for the VPSL to come in and do more by making sure that every student, whether or not they’re engaged with the union, is receiving those services.
A third main priority would be reaching out into the community. We’re the biggest university in Halifax, and I think we really owe it to Halifax and can benefit as a result from reaching out into the community and bringing our energy, bringing our diversity – really supporting everything that’s happening in the community, and then bringing that back and enriching student life by connecting it with everything that is Halifax.
DG: If you had to pick one student event to remove from the social calendar what would it be?
BC: Ideally, taking on a new position wouldn’t be about cutting events, it would be about transforming events and diversifying them.
Having said that, if there was one that I had to choose, it would probably be the Coors Light Party. I love the energy that comes out of that every year, and it is very cool and it is very high energy, but wouldn’t it be cool if we could take an event like that and transform it to be about a local business rather than supporting a big corporation? If we could do that we could have way more students engaged with the planning of it, and we could be giving back to our community a lot more, rather than just having an event arrive at our campus that is run by a corporation.
What do you like to do on the weekends?
A lot of dance parties. I go to the Farmer’s Market a lot, I’m great at making brunch. Honestly, just imagine a montage of happy sunny activities all set to some sort of folky Paul Simon song and that’s kind of what my classic weekend looks like.
Have you ever been kicked out of a bar?
No.
What book changed your life?
I’m going to say Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss. There are a lot of really cute ideas and messages and illustrations in that book that have stayed with me. My favorite part is definitely after they talk about the waiting place, and it’s a place where everyone’s just waiting for good things to happen and not taking any initiative, but then on the next page it says, “But no! That’s not for you. Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where boom bands are playing!” I think that I could find some more boom bands in my life and I try to make it part of my ideology.
Top band you’d like to bring to DalFest?
I just finished working with over twenty different bands in planning SUBfest. They were collaborating with each other and brought all of this amazing Halifax culture into the SUB and I would love to see some of that engagement and some of that culture come into DalFest. Beyond that, I would love to just see a really Canadian artist like Dan Mangan or The New Pornographers come into DalFest. That would be great.
How do you think Danny Shanahan, current VPSL, performed this year?
Danny has put a lot of work in these past two years and I’m really grateful for everything that he has given to student life here at Dal. But I ultimately think that elections shouldn’t be about Danny and about looking back at the position, they should be about the vision of the new people coming in. So I’d prefer to share a little bit more about what my vision is.
For example, talking about Sexton campus, I am so inspired by the sense of community that you have to feel when you go down to Sexton. I think that the VPSL could work to provide something down there that is about support, and is about de-stressing, and making people happy in the cracks between their classes. I would love to be bringing down yoga classes, dodgeball tournaments, and putting colouring books in the lobby. In general, just sort of working on de-stressing activities down there.
Beyond that, I think that it’s really important to have folks from all different parts of campus [and] all different parts of student life working together on events so that we are helping promote each other, and helping share the different subcultures that exist on campus. I would love to see an events committee that had folks from Sexton, from Carleton, from Varsity, from the International Student committees, and all of that. I think that that is part of the vision, which is pretty important.
How will you make O-Week and Dalhousie campus more inclusive?
I’ve actually worked on the O-Week Committee for the last two years, and two years ago I pitched an idea that we started to use, and it’s the “Choose Your Own Adventure” O-Week. When you come to Dal you have the opportunity to build your own degree, build your own set of extra-curriculars, build your own identity, and build your own life as an individual. I think you should also be able to build your own Orientation Week.
I picture O-Week having many events running simultaneously, and this leaves room for a lot of diversity and a lot of different options and individuality in each person’s Orientation Week. It means we could be bringing societies in to help build the orientation week from the ground up, rather than having them just step in at the last minute to try and get some publicity. I think we could then be building off of the exciting energy of coming to Dalhousie and using that to fuel the energy of O-Week, rather than just telling people they’re supposed to be excited. I think we could take that ideology and we could apply it to the rest of the year when it comes to inclusivity [and] diversity.
Ultimately, the VPSL’s office shouldn’t be planning events for 18,000 students. It should be empowering and supporting all of the different things that are coming from students to create the most diverse and dynamic plane of student life possible. I think this would mean that we would be filling the needs of all of the students and really celebrating our individuality here at Dal.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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