Blog
November 23rd 2009 | 4
UWSA website FAIL
There’s a by-election this week. Really. You can read about it in the current issue of The Uniter.
U of W students can be forgiven if they are unaware of the upcoming UWSA by-elections. Anyone checking the home, news, calendar or events page of the UWSA website would certainly have no idea. In fact, as far as I can tell, there isn’t a single mention of the by-elections anywhere on the site.
Every year, candidates running for positions with the UWSA say they want to increase student awareness of the services the student association offers. Often, this is the only goal. But every year communication is nil, and the next administration starts from scratch.
The UWSA just launched a spiffy new website. It looks pretty nice. This would have been a perfect opportunity to implement a real communication strategy, starting with keeping an up-to-date website with clear and obvious information about what the UWSA is up to. Instead, aside from a lonely Tweet from five days ago announcing by-election speeches in the Bulman Centre, there is no indication that an essential democratic function is even happening.
Students need to be aware of what their representatives are doing for the association to be democratic and for students to care about what it does. The UWSA is clearly aware of this, since they repeat this line every year at election time. It’s unfortunate they don’t heed their own message.
Discussion
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The UWSA’s new website was just launched this past week. We are currently Beta Testing the website, which is why there is a lack of information. We regret the timing of this, since a by election is currently happening. The Chief Elections commissioner has consulted with the UWSA executive to promote the by-election on campus, as well extra steps were taken to increase the by-elections visibility by having speeches hosted in Riddell, where there is increased traffic from students.
Once the beta testing has been completed the UWSA plans to have a launch party to allow students to navigate the website. Also during this time more information about events on campus will be posted regularly, in coordination with other organizations on campus.
– Courtney Maddock, Vice President Internal, Univers | November 23rd 2009 at 5:05pm | Link
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“mission statment”
– spelling fail | November 23rd 2009 at 11:51pm | Link
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Not to blame Courtney, but this has been a problem for the past several years, and was recommended to be fixed in a number of CEC reports (including David EisBrenner’s, the current VPA). It’s almost like a CFS member group doesn’t want to disseminate information quickly and easily. . .
– Johnathan Tuttle | November 25th 2009 at 1:48pm | Link
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“It’s almost like a CFS member group doesn’t want to disseminate information quickly and easily. . . ”
– Sean Owen Terrick in Winnipeg | December 2nd 2009 at 1:41pm | Link
