External Affairs Officer

Bradley Por

While Bradley Por did not have much experience in student politics prior to becoming External Affairs Officer (EAO), he told The Daily, “This has been, personally, one of the best experiences I’ve had, particularly because I’m actually a student of politics and law, so to experience it on the ground has been really enlightening.”

Por ran on a platform emphasizing more active student engagement in the Quebec student movement. One of the difficulties he faced was communicating to students the importance of student federations. While Por said he was successful in presenting the two student unions – Union étudiante du Québec (UEQ) and the Association pour la voix étudiante au Québec (AVEQ) – to students and in creating an affiliation policy, he maintains that engagement at the provincial level is one of the major challenges for external officers. He further emphasized the importance of having EAOS who are political and do their best to fire up students’ interests.

Another one of Por’s platform points focused on building a coalition of student associations to confront austerity. In working with both UEQ and AVEQ, Por has taken admirably firm stances against austerity. This week he will be organizing a forum on PGSS and the Quebec student movement, with an emphasis on austerity – though he noted that he wished he held more forums during the year, and we’d tend to agree.

While Por campaigned with the promise of making himself available through office hours in Thomson House, he told The Daily that he did not succeed in doing so, citing the fact that students do not show up to these kinds of office hours as much as he’d like them to. The Daily wonders, however, how Por would know whether students wanted to attend his office hours if he did not hold them in the first place. Por said he often found himself communicating with students just by being in Thomson House, though it should be noted that this does not pass as sufficient consultation.