Laurence and Sherry for MSU

Choose Progress for Congress

As students, we understand the highs and lows of our everyday lives, and we believe that we, as students, deserve better. This is why we are centering our platform on human values, and prioritizing essential students rights: the right to affordability, to social responsibility, to impactful careers, to student expression, to well being, and to an accessible student life.

Laurence Liang

I'm Laurence, and as Coordinator of External Affairs, and as the only current Congress member running for presidency, I've been working beyond the scope of my mandate to stand up for issues that matter and to provide students the enjoyable student life they deserve.

I created MariSaves (student discounts website, and negotiated a few), MariWork (student jobs website), Life is Green (a composting partnership with Concordia), and the COAC Website (intercollegiate), and have been developing the MSU app since the start of the school year. I signed the first intercollegiate COAC Climate Plan, outlining collective objectives from 5 student unions on climate, that cover 28 000 students.

I also connected several clubs between colleges, including MEDLFE, the Programming Club, Green Team, and the Gaming Club, and I helped organize 2 hackathons this semseter, BrebeufHx and MariHacks, helping 200 students get hands on coding exprience. I've been involved in the Programming Club, the Marianopolis Research Team, Green Team, the Montreal Chinese Hospital, Global Brigades, and have supported the activities of the Marianopolis Broadcast Network, MariSings, Mari CEVES, and MariSpace, among countless other clubs that I've been in touch with.

But all this isn't important. What matters the most is that I love what I do, and that I will be as dedicated as I currently am to bring student life at Marianopolis to the next level.

Sherry Yang

I'm Sherry, and having been minister of communications in my high school’s student council, I am excited to bring my experience up front to offer a unique experience, and my dedication to standing up for students, to do what it takes to make student experiences much more enjoyable, connected and empowering at Marianopolis.

I'm part of numerous clubs at Mari including Descendants of the Dragon, the Marianopolis Chinese Student Association, and the Montreal Chinese Hospital, as well as being a member of the Air Cadets. Through my commitment in these activities, I strengthened bonds and experienced the authentic, human aspects of the student experience. This inspires me to give back and to offer something new and enjoyable for students.

I will bring my experience to listen to student concerns and to offer the best opportunities for clubs and student life. I will be committed as I've been in these activities to hear your concerns, and together, to stand up and create a unified, strong and caring student body.

Our Platform

1- Affordability

Free medical emergency coverage: We will provide all students with free medical emergency coverage on campus, reimbursing costs for transportation and essential medication that insurances don't cover

Financial assistance: For students in need of financial assistance, we will provide basic costs for learning resources including book loans, hunam resources and online tools

Fair Cafeteria Pricing: We will continue Congress' work to obtain fair cafeteria pricing by asking for "buy x get 1 free" programs, and by promoting reusable containers.

Free Essential Club Purchases: All essential club purchases (food expenses up to 20$, material loans and shareable software) will be given by default to all clubs. This will allow more student clubs to host quality events, and will foster collaborations between clubs, improving the quality of student life.

More Student Discounts: We will continue providing exclusive student discounts by reaching out to local businesses, as done using MariSaves.

2- Social Responsibility

Social Impact Fund: We will create a new funding source with the administration from external sponsorships, outside of the Congress budget, to fund student projects that directly help communities.

Renew the COAC Cliamte Plan: We will renew the first ever signed COAC Climate Plan that we created, and advocate for climate-responsible spending from student unions and for all future school renovations to be certified energy-efficient.

Upgrade the Green CEGEP Certification: We will upgrade the current level 1 certification to Excellence level. This includes hosting a sustainability event among green certified cegeps, creating a plan of action, and making public the school's climate footprint.

Accessible composting: We will continue our current partnership that we initiated with Concordia, Life is Green, to exchange tips on composting, and will add accessible composting bins on campus.

Data-driven approach: We will use our knowledge in programming to deploy a website that allows students to track metrics, such as waste management and carbon emissions, to solve challenges more efficiently.

3- Impactful Careers

Innovation Hub: We will create an innovation hub, a platform to connect all Mari student projects to mentors, investors, and a wider audience.

Student jobs and volunteering: We will continue to offer student jobs online through Mariwork, the website we created for Congress, and include volunteering opportunities as well. These jobs will be centered on alumni relations, unique experiences and supporting local businesses.

Job Fair: We will also continue to provide a Job Fair like the one we are doing with Congress this semester, to offer students quality student jobs.

4- Student Expression

Reform Student Expression: We realize that Congress members go beyond their mandate to help students. We want to make this process even more efficient. To do so, we will create an online platform that publicly tracks student concerns in real time, and displays the progress of those discussions.

Diversity and Equal Representation Recommendations: To represent the truly diverse student body that Marianopolis is, we will ammend a section to the Constitution that encourages all MSU advertisements and content to be representative of the mentioned subject in terms of gender, ethnicity and appearance.

Reconciliation Efforts for Indigenous Heritage: We will continue to increase awareness for Indigenous Heritage and issues. We will regularly publish news on current Indigenous issues, contact resources for students to help out, and collaborate with the Native Studies Certificate to make invited speaker presentations avialable online.

Increase club visibility, artistic visibility, and cultural visibility: We will regularly publish in a news section about the latest cultural, artistic and club events on campus, to highlight our Mari student body. We will also create a publicly accessible database to further promote this initiative.

5 - Student Well Being

New Safe Zone: We will create a safe zone for individuals with questions on gender, addiction, and mental health to seek comfort from students and staff.

Support international student integration: We will provide information and human resources to help international students feel at home at Mari. We will also host a meet-and-greet session to form stronger friendships between students.

Support students with disabilities: We will provide support for students with disabilities by covering essential equipment and providing needed learning resources, because we are all students and all share the same right to learn in a fair way.

Mental health: We will host recurring de-stress events. We are also taking an open-data approach for students to submit on a MSU open-data website about their well being, so that we can take a more structured approach in identifying and treating mental health.

List of all important dates: We will ask staff to publish a compiled document of all important program-related dates, to make it easier for new Mari students and for current Mari students to better progress.

6 - Accessibile Student Life

Intercollegiate collaborations: As Coordinator of External Affairs, we will use our experience to foster more student project collaborations between cegeps, through the COAC website we created. We will also continue discussions on a COAC (intercollegiate) party that started this year between 5 student unions. We will also ensure collaborations with universities, such as the Life Is Green partnership with Concordia University.

Increase club collaborations: By increasing club visibility and covering essential needs, we will encourage clubs to partner up by providing these resources, which will improve the quality of the student experience at Mari.

STM shuttle bus: Many students are pushing Congress to increase the frequency and reliability of the 124 shuttle bus. We will take a different approach. We will ask the STM to create a line between Villa Maria metro and Marianopolis, which is much shorter in distance, has less user volume, and has less traffic, which will make buses more frequent and reliable.

Tech, open data and MSU app: We will continue tech services we started with Congress this year, such as MariWork, MariSaves, Life is Green (partnership with Concordia), the COAC Website and the MSU app. We have been on the Tech Committee sinc its creation, and with our experience in knowledge, we are best equiped to continue its development. We will also use Aritifical Intelligence (yes! we have working experience with that) to analyze open data to take a structured approach on issues like mental health, waste management efficiency and optimizing communications between the student body, Congress, and the administration.