Point of Inquiry is a reported column written about our student union’s governance and policies. It seeks to analyze the AMS with a critical — but constructive — eye. It occasionally contains novel reporting, but Point of Inquiry is written independently of The Ubyssey’s news team — which has no editorial involvement in the column and covers the AMS impartially.
Quyen Schroeder (they/she) is a fourth-year student studying English language and computer science, and they’ve been a committed observer of almost all AMS Council meetings since February 2023. She also ran as “Barry ‘Bee’ Buzzword” in the 2025 AMS Presidential election. They can be reached at q.schroeder@ubyssey.ca.
At the start of the last month, students gathered around a stage beside the Nest. Some held “Build UBC SkyTrain Now” signs. Some held umbrellas. Many held hot dogs. Behind the roughly one hundred of us who stood before the stage grew a line of students awaiting hotdogs hastily assembled by volunteers. Beside the gathered students, reporters and camera crews trained their lenses on the stage. VP External Solomon Yi-Kieran had just given up on fixing the podium’s microphones, opting instead for a megaphone.
This was the Rally for SkyTrain.
“My friends, over 15,000 of you signed the SkyTrain petition … Thanks to you, we got the SkyTrain in the news … Thanks to you, we generated so much attention that [BC Premier David Eby] released a statement about the importance of the SkyTrain,” Yi-Kieran said. “This is what happens when the community comes together. When tens of thousands of people decide that we can’t wait anymore and make our voices heard.”
As the afternoon continued, we heard speeches from UBC President Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Vancouver City Councillors Sean Orr and Lucy Maloney and Movement organizer Michelle Scarr.
Since the rally, I’ve been left with three thoughts. First, the rally was effective and should be the model for future advocacy. Second, the structure of the event was weird and its goals unclear. Finally, the portrayal of the event since has been misleading — especially in respect to crowd size.
The effective
I’m going to risk becoming a bit meta and explain newsworthiness and how us journalists tend to cover stories.
We lean toward focusing on discrete events, rather than ongoing, long-term issues. Take this column, for example. I first heard of the Rally for SkyTrain months ago. Back then, she went by a different name: the Trek for Transit. Since the first time Yi-Kieran brought it up, I knew there would be a column about it. It addressed my first column’s calls for the AMS to lead student advocacy. It was a significant part of Yi-Kieran’s mandate. And yet, I delayed writing this column until the event itself. I didn’t mention in this column that the rally had been discussed in council because I regularly assessed the other business to be more newsworthy than updates on the rally-to-be.
By creating a discrete event focused on the SkyTrain to UBC, the AMS was able to make SkyTrain advocacy newsworthy. In doing so, they generated significant press coverage. Beyond Yi-Kieran’s opinion piece, The Ubyssey also published a news report on the rally, a humour article on why the multi-decade delays are good and the essay you’re reading now. Outside of our humble community-centred publication, CBC, CTV and CityNews all ran stories on the Rally for SkyTrain and its associated petition. Even Ubyssey alumnus and bracket/ranking enthusiast Justin McElroy wrote a story on the feasibility of the SkyTrain to UBC. (As far back as 2008, McElroy wrote articles for The Ubyssey reporting on the project.)
From a media perspective, the Rally for SkyTrain was an incredible success.
Beyond news coverage, the Rally for SkyTrain brought students together, calling on all of us to take tangible action rather than wait for our campus to improve. Rallies like this break the AMS out of its routine of rote reports, budget proposals and annual recommendations that only glacially produce change — if at all. Mobilizing students and other community members is the way forward for AMS advocacy.
Despite my criticisms of the event, I think it has the potential to be the beginning of a much larger moment for our union and our campus community. That is, if the AMS continues to use this new tool in its tool box.
The weird
The format of this rally was perplexing, to say the least.
After the speeches concluded, the stage was held for three hours by bands, which, frankly, had nothing to do with public transit advocacy. One band mentioned having to bring their instruments on the bus, rather than on a hypothetical SkyTrain. There was little connection to the afternoon’s theme beyond that. With the SkyTrain podium and banners removed after the speeches, passersby could be forgiven for thinking it was just a live music event. The signal-to-noise ratio was exceptionally poor. The four-hour event featured only 30 minutes of speeches. What followed was three hours of live music. I left the event confused. I still am.
The form of the rally only briefly matched its purpose. It seemed like the reflection of a strange view of advocacy. When Yi-Kieran appeared on the Who Is with Ross Oteri podcast, they described how and why students should participate at the Rally for SkyTrain.
“By going [to the rally] and by showing the media, by showing politicians that you care enough to take some time out of your day to get a free hotdog and chant for SkyTrain, that is how we show that people care … That’s how we make our voices heard to the government.”
Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but I’m not convinced that eating a free hotdog is necessary or sufficient to make one’s voice heard, nor is listening to three hours of music. While it may be necessary to incentivize students to engage in advocacy campaigns through entertainment and food, students should also have an opportunity to meaningfully participate in the campaign, rather than passively experience a rally.
When the Rally for SkyTrain was first introduced in council as the Trek for Transit, it had many similar components, but with a key twist: there would be a trek from the Nest to UBC Farm after speeches but before the free hot dogs.
The proposal hearkened back to the earliest days of university advocacy. In 1922, shortly after UBC was founded, its student body of just over 1,000 called on the province to fund the continued construction of the Point Grey campus we use today. (Construction had been halted during First World War, so classes were being held in a much smaller facility.) In an event later called the Great Trek, at least 1,000 marched through downtown Vancouver out to the now-Point Grey campus. Not only that, but after months of students canvassing their hometowns and Vancouver, the AMS amassed a petition of 56,000 signatures and presented it to the provincial government. The population of the province at the time was 541,000, meaning the AMS signed up a tenth of the province. A week after the Great Trek, the provincial government approved funding for the university’s construction.
The Great Trek’s goal and audience were clear. The Rally for SkyTrain’s was murky. To whom was it advocating? Solely the media, it seems. Holding the rally outside the Nest restricted its reach to UBC community members. A few hundred passionate students alone do not make a SkyTrain. I submit that this rally could have tried to convince Vancouverites that the SkyTrain extension is necessary — especially targeted at those who live between Arbutus and campus, whose homes might be affected by the construction.
Followup question: for what was the rally advocating? Funding from all levels of government and the province’s release of a $40 million business case and detailed technical plan which includes geotechnical analyses along the train’s proposed route. Don’t feel bad if you missed the second one — to be honest, I did too, until I started working on this essay.
The rally should have placed a stronger focus on educating attendees on the roadblocks to the extension. Those at the rally should have been given techniques to dismantle those roadblocks, and charged to do so.
The message I took away was not one of empowerment. It was one of complacency. I’ve done all I can by signing a petition and eating my hot dog. The people on the stage will handle things from here.
The misleading
In June, Yi-Kieran presented the SkyTrain Advocacy Plan where they said the office would be “aiming for 1,000 person turnout” at the Rally for SkyTrain. In their updates to council, Yi-Kieran reported that over a thousand people turned out.
I believe that a thousand people lined up for the free hot dogs. The number who ate their hotdog while listening to the speeches — or even the music — I believe was much lower.
Throughout the event, I counted attendees who were visibly paying attention to the stage — not those who were just walking by or waiting in line for a hotdog or cosmetic product. While speeches were being given, I counted close to 100 people. During the three hours the bands played, the crowd averaged between 30 and 50 people.
Now, I think the AMS could verifiably say that 1,000 people interacted with the Rally for SkyTrain purely based on the number of hotdogs distributed. I do not doubt the literal truth of that number. But it is misleading. When I hear that 1,000 people were at a rally, I assume that’s a roughly concurrent measurement and that all of those people are meaningfully participating in the rally.
Yet, as I said before, this was still an effective rally. It drew media attention towards the university and SkyTrain advocacy.
But a rally/outdoor concert of a dubious 1,000 and a petition of 15,000 isn’t enough to create immediate change — something Yi-Kieran would agree with me on. Asked at the AMS’s Annual General Meeting when the SkyTrain would be complete, their optimistic prediction was a decade from now. Their pessimistic prediction was 25 years from now.
In researching this essay, I found a piece of portentous wisdom in UBC’s 1923 yearbook, reflecting on the Great Trek: “We had obtained about 15,000 signatures, which total, although impressive, was not sufficient to induce the government to take definite steps in the matter.”
Led by the AMS, students “threw themselves heart and soul into the work,” canvassing house-to-house until they got 56,000 signatures. Even then, they didn’t stop. They marched through the city on custom-made floats, occupied the half-complete construction of the Point Grey campus and directly lobbied the provincial government. And they won. It wasn’t just AMS executives doing the work: it was each and every student.
Fifteen thousand signatures won’t be enough. If the AMS seeks to force the government’s hand, it’ll need a sustained and focused campaign with even more support.
And us students? If we want a SkyTrain to UBC, tenants’ rights in university housing, fair working conditions for graduate researchers or anything else, our advocacy must be more than eating hotdogs and listening to music.
This is an opinion essay, and a part of a regular column. It reflects the columnist's views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
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