WUSA’s 2024 Impact Report Highlight

What is the WUSA Impact Report? WUSA’s Impact Report summarizes all that WUSA accomplished in the previous governing year.  The full report is live and can be found on the 2024 Impact Report Webpage. 

The report begins with a message from the previous president, followed by an introduction to WUSA and the Board of Directors. After this, it focuses on the accomplishments, behind-the-scenes improvement, and advocacy wins that WUSA achieved.  

Accomplishments: 

• Two New Spaces in SLC: With the reopening of the newly renovated Lounge on 3, and the creation of the Student Lounge, previously the “Bomber” Pub, including a new WUSA-run restaurant called SmashBites! 

• Election Support: Including supporting clubs and societies through 54 different elections that WUSA supported through the vote.WUSA.ca web portal. This includes the most recent WUSA election which saw the greatest turnout in the past decade, in which 1 in 4 students cast a ballot.  

• Housing and Transport: A new Housing Playbook was created to help students understand their rights as tenants, provide guidance on navigating rental agreements, and resolving disputes. When it comes to new transit WUSA worked closely with the arts faculty to develop a new bus pilot program to support students at the Stratford campus.   

• Gender Equity and Inclusion: WUSA worked with the Women’s Centre and the University’s Equity Diversity Inclusion and Anti-Racism (EDI-R) Office to improve access to menstrual products on campus. WUSA also partnered with the Waterloo Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office (SVPRO) to better educate students on the increase in sexual violence at the beginning of the term, known as the Red Zone.  

• Mental Health: WUSA worked to better understand student experience with mental health through the Student Connectedness Survey, which looked to understand how connected students feel to the University of Waterloo and the surrounding community, and the Student Safety and Mental Health Survey, which examined the impact on mental health that student safety on campus had. Other activities such as art therapy sessions, comfort through cooking, and a community-wide photo competition were also held throughout the year.  

Behind the Scenes: 

• Cheque Requests: In the background accounting has been continuing to work hard to improve the systems that support clubs including the streamlining and overall improvement of the Cheque Request Process, reducing the wait time for students to receive their reimbursements.  

• New Society Supports: A full-time societies relations coordinator role has been created; they will support all the faculty societies on Campus.  

Advocacy Wins:  

• Policy Stances: 5 New Policy stances were developed: Experiential Education, Local and Regional Transit, Off-Campus Housing, Gender Based Sexual Violence, and Mental Health. These stances are used when meeting with University and Government stakeholders to focus on key student issues. 

• Government Advocacy: Ongoing meetings with government stakeholders to advocate for WUSA’s Policy position, better student support, and increased funding for the post-secondary sector.  

This is only a small look at the many things that WUSA was able to complete, check out the full report to read about everything WUSA was able to achieve. Each year WUSA strives to improve and better support students. If you want to reach out about anything relating to the report, please do so through the WUSA’s Contact page. 

 

Rory Norris 

Communications Assistant