Alexandra Smith is running to be president on a platform of transparency and bettering the student experience.
Smith is a third-year interdisciplinary studies student and when asked about her top three priorities, she gave two as she feels "it's easier to have a shorter message that's deliverable to students.”
Her priorities are to increase community engagement and reduce student hardship.
Smith is running as an outsider to student politics, but said that she does not consider her position “something that’s detrimental,” noting her experience working with students the past two years through her job as a resident advisor.
“[The] AMS is not my strength. Other candidates can claim them because they have far more experience. But I am a student, I am facing students and I'm living with them. I'm talking with them every day and figuring out what it is that they need,” said Smith.
She also said she believes her predecessors made large promises without “considering the baby steps to get them there.”
In comparison, Smith said her campaign will be focused on “on narrowing the scope to the student body” and alleviating issues within her range by connecting students to pre-existing services and resources.
She hopes to deliver on a platform that addresses personal experiences she has heard from her peers and the feedback given in student experience surveys run by the AMS and UBC.
On restoring the AMS’s relationships with resource groups, Smith said she was “unaware of a lot of the conflicts that have occurred.”
But she believes this “blank slate is helpful, because I'm going to be approaching people with an open mind and asking them, ‘how is it that I can help you help yourself?’”
She also spoke about creating a more needs-based system for students who need financial support — however, Smith did not specify how she’d work on creating such a system.
“This is a university that has a high ticket price when we walk into it, and a lot of people have financial planning and they're prepared to pay when they come,” said Smith. “That doesn't mean that they shouldn't necessarily have financial assistance, but maybe it means that we direct financial assistance towards those who don't have other sources of funding.”
Smith said that after speaking with previous executives, she thinks a large issue is a lack of communication between the AMS and students — believing that often the intent of the executives is in line with what students want.
“But when you have a student body who isn't listening to all of the baby steps of ‘this is how we got to this decision.’ And instead [they] are seeing this isn't exactly lining up with what we want it to be. It's causing this disjointment,” she said.
To fix this Smith said she would “have an underlying transparency … and [keep] the constituents informed every step of the way because it seems like that's been a major issue.”
“I'm just aiming for a pragmatic approach.”
Smith is running against Christian 'CK' Kyle, Brandyn Marx and Shaun “The Bulldozer” You.
This article is part of our 2024 AMS Elections coverage. Follow us at @UbysseyNews on X (formerly Twitter) and follow our election coverage starting February 27.