Team ERA campaigns to provide value to students

Team ERA wants to “revitalize” the AMS through advocacy, financial accessibility, and student wellness.

Their platform was developed after consulting over 100 people, including students, club heads, members from each faculty society, and various university representatives.

Editor

Elisabeth McHarg, ArtSci ’23, is running for vice-president (operations). From working on the AMS Orientation Roundtable to being a barista at Common Ground (CoGro), McHarg has held seven roles within ASUS and the AMS.

“I definitely found a passion for the AMS in my time at the AMS, and that inspired me wanting to run and continue to make a change and impact students’ lives,” she said in an interview with The Journal ERA’s presidential candidate Ryan Chen, Kin ’23, and current Physical Health Education and Kinesiology Student Association (PHEKSA) president, said getting involved in student government helped him adjust to university.

Vice-president (university affairs) candidate Alicia Parker, ArtSci ’24, was a first-year intern at ASUS, class of 2024 representative, and current Academics Commissioner. She said student government has been a “highlight” of her time at Queen’s.

Accessibility, transparency, and advocacy—the current AMS executive’s platform—will

“permeate” through ERA’s pillars, according to McHarg.

They believe their pillars and shared passion for advocacy bring ERA together.

Revitalizing Community

The AMS provides students with various jobs, and ERA wants to ensure these roles are safe, pay well, and translate to the workforce by working with AMS permanent staff and Queen’s Career Services.

Skylar Soroka, Assistant News Editor

International Holocaust Remembrance Day took place on Jan. 27, with several Queen’s students and organizations helping to educate the student body.

The Journal sat down with Leora Tarshish, professional staff member at Queen’s Hillel, to discuss the significance of this day. Tarnish said this is the day we commemorate the losses of the people who died in the Holocaust.

“When we say the people, we don’t mean just us, because Jews have their own internal day for remembering the victims of what we would call in Hebrew, the Shoah,” she added.

Although it only takes place on one day, Tarshish said Hillel tries to build around the day.

“We say we’re going to create a whole week, a campaign of awareness, so that we can build up to the day. In that week, we focused on breaking down different aspects of it,” she said.

Tarshish said Hillel welcomed a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor to tell his story last Friday.

“This is really going to be one of his last engagements. He said that it’s really hard to retell the story. It’s really hard to live through that trauma, to share it publicly, to go through these motions, and he’s really tried his best to speak in so many spaces.”

Tarshish spoke to how non-Jewish community members can educate themselves.

“When [non-Jewish people] ask

Aimée Look, Assistant News Editor

To mark the sixth anniversary of the Quebec City Mosque massacre, Queen’s Muslim Societies Global Perspectives held a panel and discussion forum to discuss Islamophobia in Canada.

The panel opened at 6 p.m. at Mackintosh-Corry Hall on Jan 30, with sociology Professor Dr. Fauzia Husain sharing her experiences of Islamophobia at Queen’s and elsewhere.

“Make sure you don’t make Canada look bad,” Husain said her family told her before she came to the panel. “Make sure you don’t come off as angry. In other words, make sure you don’t confirm the stereotype.”

“I asked myself, will playing nice keep me safe? Will playing nice keep other Muslims safe?” Husain said.

Husain, who has only been at Queen’s for sixth months, said she experienced Islamophobia when she received her teaching evaluations. The evaluations were a typical distribution of