David Onley, UTSC alum and former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, here recalls one of his first initiatives as a student leader: lobbying with his peers for student residences on campus in the 1980s, much to administrative chagrin.
To read more about the development of UTSC’s student residences, click here.
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0:04
Probably the thing that I was most proud of was that the student council was very aware that there were no residences on the campus at that time and different efforts by the administration have not succeeded in getting residences. And so a number of us, not only in the student council, but who were student council members who were also members of the political science students’ [association], approached it as a political science problem.
0:46
And, with the assistance of different members of the political science department, different professors, we put together an approach to the government to acquire funding for the residences. And in fact, it was a successful project.
1:06
And that ended up in the construction of the first student residences on campus.
1:19
That was definitely one of the great things that I really am quite proud of and, and so were all my colleagues on the student council. And it was a very, very big project.
1:33
We thought of every politician that we could find from the local Scarborough councillors to the local MPPs, to the MPs, to the Minister of Housing, and we just went and then lobbied, basically is what we did.
