By Lexey Burns, Editor in Chief
“It basically started from that Instagram post,” second-year Political Science student Kristiina Räisänen said.
At the end of July, the SGA announced on their Instagram that the Universal Buss Pass (UPass) would not be a part of the association’s student fees in the Fall of 2020.
Räisänen is a single mother and a mature student at Laurentian University. Räisänen said the lack of a bus pass left her stranded after the pass from the previous school year expired at the end of August.
“I don’t have my own vehicle which is why the UPass is essential to my life for groceries, doing errands, bringing my daughter to play dates when it’s socially acceptable,” Räisänen said.
In an August email the SGA said students had between August 10 and 30 to apply for a reimbursement, between $200 and $300, and approved students would be notified by September 14.
But Räisänen has been very vocal on social media about her struggles to get the reimbursement.
Räisänen said she could see multiple things wrong with this proposition from the SGA. First, with the approvals being announced halfway through the month, this threw her budgeting plans for a loop.
Second, Räisänen had not heard anything about the reimbursement on September 14. As the weeks passed, her emails to the SGA were met with less-than-helpful replies.
“There was just no consistency [with the emails],” Räisänen said. “They would apologize and say ‘oh I’m so sorry that our communication wasn’t the greatest but we’re going to change going forward and we’re going to learn from our mistakes.’”
Finally, Räisänen said that the SGA offered her the minimum $200.
“I am virtually a no-income household…so for them to say that I didn’t have the financial need to get the full $300 is just— I find that a little strange and I don’t understand then how the financial aid department decided who got $200 versus who got up to $300.”
Räisänen posted a timeline to UMentioned Laurentian of her back-and-forth struggles with the SGA, Financial Aid and Laurentian’s Hub.
Ben Mackenzie, Vice President of Student Life, responded to the post, saying that he would like to remind students associated with the SGA that “we are all human.”
“There is no handbook and no training that comes with this job, every year new students get elected and new student ideas from,” Mackenzie said. “The fact is that every single one of the SGA team members is actually working quite hard to figure out how to make it through this very uncertain time.”
MacKenzie said that the reason why not everyone received the full $300 reimbursement was “depending on the situation of financial need, some students were granted a higher amount and some were granted a lower amount so we were able to reach and help more students then if we just gave everyone the full amount.”
Members of the SGA are also concerned as to why the SGA has taken to social media to inform students of their decisions and the reasons as to why these decisions were made, instead of sending out a formal email to all students.
Fourth year Sports and Physical Education with Concurrent Education student Dylan Kryskow said “to be better at communicating I suggest answering questions like this in an email to students rather than on facebook.”
The SGA sent a survey to students on October 22nd asking for feedback on the UPass.