The Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union president Tarique Plummer has announced a new initiative along with his executive team called the Students’ Union Presidential Sponsorship Program, where student groups can apply for funding to travel to cases and conferences that can be used to better enhance their club or association.
“During the campaign season one of the promises I made, a part of my 15-point platform, was to provide funding for competitive groups. Now I made that commitment based on speaking to numerous groups, with the understanding that when groups want to go and compete, there is limited funding opportunities available for them, and I realized that universities should be supporting student excellence,” said Tarique Plummer, President and CEO of the Students’ Union.
Any club, society, group or association may apply for the funding available on the Students’ Union Website, and the activities available to participate in through the funding include debates, case competitions, conferences, sports, dance competitions and musical competitions.
“There are ways in which we can get our names out there and we can interest students to have the highest possible experiential learning opportunity there is, and so in order to tackle that issue, we decided from a Students’ Union perspective that it would be important for us to create a sponsorship program called the Presidential Sponsorship Program, that looks at providing subsidies for groups that are going to compete at the provincial, national and international level,” Plummer said.
The funding requires an applicant to identify with a club, fill out their affiliation with said club, and provide documentation and information for the event they will be at to validate their attendance and to ensure the Students’ Union is allocating their funds for students wisely.
With the implementation of this program, Plummer has now accomplished one-third of the points he promised Laurier students in his platform, with others including a Students’ Union ambassador program, sports clubs and the Laurier app among others.
“We will provide you with some of the support when it comes down to accommodation and registration, and any other related expenses. We don’t necessarily provide all of the support, but we want to ensure that its feasible and possible for you to go on that trip, and the program is open on an ongoing basis,” said Plummer.
Though there are some funding opportunities available on campus, many are through certain faculties or associations, whereas the Presidential Sponsorship Program is available to any undergraduate student group, regardless of their degree.
“This project is more so for this particular year, and we’ll see what happens; if it is a very good year and the Students’ Union recognizes there is significant demand, they will hopefully continue it next year,” Plummer said.
“We want to see if it definitively has value, and one of the main reasons of doing this is to function as a catalyst.”
“Many people make the argument of should the Students’ Union be the ones to do this, well our argument is that students are going to go on these trips, we represent the students and want to support those initiatives.”
With the implementation of this program, Plummer has now accomplished one-third of the points he promised Laurier students in his platform, with others including a Students’ Union ambassador program, sports clubs and the Laurier app among others.
“For this particular year, which is in my budget, I have between 20 and 30 thousand dollars allocated for this project,”
“Again, it’s on a trial basis, because we don’t know the demand, so we said hopefully this is a decent amount, but if we recognize the demand is very significant, that presents an opportunity for us as an organization to look in our budget to see if it’s possible to support in other ways, but this is all dependent on how successful the program is.”
