Activities and Engagement – Nishita Vishal Lakhani

Adulting is hard but Uni shouldn’t be! Turning your rants into actual feedbacks (Promise!) As someone who’s navigated the ups and downs of uni life and figuring out how to adult (ish) for my undergrad – I get you. So let’s make uni life less stressful and more fun, together!

Tell us about yourself, uh, and your campaign for activities and engagement, officer.

Hi, guys. I am Nishita, and I am standing for the Role of Activities and Engagement Officer this year. About myself: I am currently studying MSc Clinical Health Psychology. I have been a roll ball player, which is basically basketball on skates, and I have been a published author before. So my campaign would incorporate a lot of things which I believe are extremely important for the students’ union at Queen’s. One of them is basically having an Activities and Engagement Calendar, which would be a one-stop calendar for all the clubs and societies so that they can come on and put on all of their events there so that the students don’t have to go through fifty different Instagram pages to find one event on campus.

Another thing that I would like to include would be sustainable catering. So we see that a lot of Queen’s events have lunches and snacks. So a lot of them, I believe, would go to waste in case nobody consumed them. So the sustainable catering would include the university taking all the food that they have as leftovers and providing it in the students accommodations or taking it to a local charity so that the food does not get wasted.

Then I would also like to include housing and fair rent because every student deserves a good landlord.

Also, I would like to include digital literacy. So currently a lot of students believe that AI is basically about, uh, having their homework’s done or their assignments done, but I believe that’s not true. I would like to have workshops which help us use AI as a tool instead of AI thinking for us.

So yeah, that’s good. Um, do you have any experience representing students or with clubs and societies in the past that you hope to bring to the role?

I have been a student council member in my undergrad, but at Queen’s, since I came here for my Master’s, I did not particularly find the time to get involved with clubs and societies, but I have been a Student Ambassador for Queen’s University and I am also currently their Social Media Ambassador for the School of Psychology, as well as for Queen’s University. And along with that, I also write blogs for the university. You can find them on the university website.

I do have experience with Queen’s University administration, but, uh, I did not want to, you know, be giving half of the time that I have to clubs and societies, because that would be unfair for them. So that’s about it.

What specific issues, uh, do you think, uh, that clubs and societies or activities and engagement have that you think need to be, um, solved or worked on?

So currently I believe that a lot of clubs and societies have problems gaining student interest or getting students to come to the events, and I don’t believe that it is the fault of the clubs and societies. I think it is because half the time students are not aware of the events happening around campus. And the other half of the time the events clash with like between two big societies. So the activities calendar that I am talking about would include free slots, which the clubs and societies can look into and host their events on those particular days or those particular times so that they get the involvement that they are looking for.

As an international student, what would you bring to help us make activities and engagement more engaging for international students at Queen’s?

Currently, there are a lot of undergrad students who are running for this role. And since they have been here for quite a while, I believe that they have gotten into the politics of the – I would say – administration. And so being an international student, I would bring a fresh perspective into the university, which a lot of students who have been at university for, say, two years or three years wouldn’t have. As an international student, there is a very fine line between, say, coming here and belonging here. So I would like to, you know, erase that line because a lot of international students struggle with their social network and all these events at campus. They have kind of become monotonous for them. So they are not involved much with the events. So I would like to change that very much.

If you had to describe your campaign in five words or less, what would it be?

Erasing [the] line between being [and] belonging.

What do you do in your free time?

During my free time, I like to come to the SU and just hang around in one of those chairs, which is on second floor; the yellow chairs which overlook the view of the city. I can get my work done. I can just listen to music sitting there. I can watch a series. Anything can be done there because it becomes like a private space for myself.

You can read Nishita’s manifesto here.