This coming year, the Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union will not be seeing many changes in the services and programming department. With no addition of completely new services, students can only expect existing services to be improved.
According to Kimberly Hutchings, vice-president of services and programming at the Students’ Union, students can look forward to changes enforced by the services themselves rather than these made by the Students’ Union.
After deciding to eliminate the Peer Connect Line last year, Peer Connect will be facing some changes within the service to accommodate for the loss of the line, while continuing to provide mental health awareness and education on campus.
“Peer Connect is kind of focusing on filling the gap for where that line would have supported students and making sure that students are still getting all of the support and access that they would have been offered with the line, but just from one committee instead of splitting it into two,” said Hutchings.
Food Bank is expected to continue operating without many changes. They plan on continuing the hot meal program which was introduced last year.
Laurier’s Healthy Lifestyles Committee, which is dedicated to promoting safe sex, stress relief activities, smart drinking habits, consent and healthy habits to the Laurier community, will be focusing more on an all-encompassing physical health mandate this year, rather than focusing solely on safe sex and alcohol awareness as per their previous mandate, adds Hutchings.
According to Healthy Lifestyles coordinator, Kaylee Boulton, the mandate has been changed to promote eating healthy, as well. This year will also come with the introduction of three first-year education events throughout the semester instead of floor talks.
When it comes to working with community members, the Students’ Union has made it an active part of their services in the past and hopes to continue to do so this year.
“That kind of comes with what each coordinator has decided they want to do for the year. Ideally, we would like to work more with community partners, but I think we’ll see that progress throughout the school year,” said Hutchings.
As for first-year programming, the Students’ Union will continue to support their First-Year Project committee.
The committee will hire 11 first-year executives that will spend the year planning events geared towards fellow first-year students.
Their first event will be ‘Return to the O,’ happening on September 22. The event will be held in the Turret for all first-year students and O-Week volunteers to relive some of the O-Week energy.