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REPORT
From the office of the

External Affairs Commissioner

TO: FROM: SUBJECT: DATE: Members of the Student Representative Assembly Huzaifa Saeed, External Affairs Commissioner SRA Report, 11H 16th October 2010

Dear Assembly, This Report covers my activities over the summer and the first month of this academic term. It also outlines prior events, upcoming projects and long term direction of the committee for the rest of the year.
CASA (Canadian Alliance of Student Association) Summer Strategy & Policy Conference: McMaster University- July 2010

I attended a good portion of the conference despite restrictions by my 12 hour full time job. A significant area of contribution was during the all-important Policy Debate session where I was able to partner up with other schools and successfully push for and get approved a policy and lobbying focus on Parallel Importation Tax removal and unprecedentedly for CASA (given its traditional emphasis on access and affordability) I partnered with a delegate from Calgary to approve an CASA emphasis towards PSE Data Collection, National Quality Assurance and Pedagogical Learning Enhancement. I was also elected to the Bylaws Committee.
OUSA Research Projects

I will be helping out OUSA for the Student Mental Health Research Project to be completed by next March alongside SRA Health Sci Josh Weiner and an MSU member. Furthermore, in continuation from last year I will also be helping promote the upcoming focus groups on Aboriginal

Students and Access Categories. Similarly as a member of the Campus Research Council I have also been providing my feedback for ongoing policy work.
Municipal Relations

Due to the Provincial Election, they took a back seat; however I will be renewing contact with City Stakeholders and am also hoping to compile an updated analysis and policy statement on last years landmark Your City Survey. Also hoping to present survey results and student perspective at Hamilton HiveX on 23rd October.
Transit & LRT

Our committee is also going to be helping on the policy/research side member Mr Erl and the VpEd in their bid to push for Light Rail Transit within the city of Hamilton. The ETA for that is end of October. The Committee is also interested in investigating the concerns of a traditionally ignored group of students on campus aka GO Bus Commuters and integrating that into a Transit Super Policy next term.
CASA Review

Although we are now full time members of CASA, the SRA last year tasked us with doing another review by January, work on it will start in November. Unless there is consensus within the committee for a different approach I would recommend the same strategy as last year. Members will take up sections of policy to review and evaluate and compare with McMasters needs. They will also be contacting all member institutes to gain their opinion and insight on CASA membership. It will essentially will be a comparative analysis from last years extensive review to see what progress CASA has made in various sectors.
Blog Posts & Website

Now that the Elections are over I plan on authoring a few blog posts regarding various issues like the upcoming

Drummond Commission Report, Future of Learning Report by CCL, Creation of a Knowledge Economy in Hamilton and so on.
MSU Advocacy Think Tank

The MSU Advocacy Think Tank an initiative I started last year. It is a research and policy institute for MSU members at large to become involved in externally focused advocacy projects. I will be restarting further invites once the committee starts working on more research based projects.
Provincial Elections

Throughout the summer and early fall the committee was discussing creating a grading scheme for the party platforms, however after a lot of discussion there wasnt complete consensus on the perfect model for an objective and failsafe end product and due to miscommunications we failed to make headway. Subsequently the committee instead compiled a detailed analysis of all party platforms that was featured on the MSU Portal. Members also participated actively in grassroots outreach, Overall I was very pleased our overall contribution as well as the overall MSU Campaign reflected indirectly by the comparatively stronger student turnout.
MSU PSE Policy Bank & Awareness Campaign

There was consensus within the committee that the MSU needs to develop its own set of Flexible, Specialized and McMaster Specific Policy on PSE issues. We finalized the following topics: -Tuition (to be completed by Nov 13th) -Funding & Deferred Maintenance -Student Housing (In possible collaboration with SCSN & OCRC) -Copyright & Academic Materials Lastly, we are hoping to run an awareness campaign on the pitfalls of the student financial aid market as well as the alternate options available to them. This is partly in response

to a report by the Ministry of Finance taskforce report that surveyed a 75% failure rate. We might be utilizing the CASA Campaign support for the project. I am also open to any ideas SRA or MSU members have. The realm of External Affairs has endless potential for issues one can conduct research or policy work on. Feel free to email me! Sincerely, Huzaifa Saeed MSU External Affairs Commissioner 11/12 SRA Social Sciences 11/12