—Bryan Tolson, FAUW President
Hi everyone,
It is almost election time for FAUW and we are looking for six good people to join the FAUW Board of Directors! (See our website for a description of the open positions and deadlines.) My term as FAUW president runs to June 2019, so we will get to work together for one year!
While I am very fond of all the current Board members and will be saddened to see any of them leave, contested elections are healthy for an organization and we hope to see multiple candidates for all open positions.
In particular, we are seeking a diverse set of candidates including good representation from women and both visible and invisible minorities. Having a variety of perspectives around the table when we debate issues is key to our success. While the current gender balance on our Board is good, we do need better representation of other minority groups, and we need your help in assembling a slate of candidates that moves us in this direction.
I encourage each of you to consider running, or to encourage a colleague to run who you think would be a good fit for the FAUW Board. Here are some signs you’d enjoy being a director:
- You like to advocate for others.
- You want to see things change for the benefit of your current and future colleagues.
- It pains you to see inequity and unfairness go unaddressed.
- You value and appreciate clear policy and procedural language.
I spent my last three or four pre-tenure years complaining with like-minded colleagues about things that were just plain unfair. I finally tired of complaining for sport and decided to complain more constructively by joining FAUW. My complaining transformed into campaigning and advocating to the right audiences, and then into creating new policies and procedures that make things more fair. By joining FAUW, you can actually bring about the changes you want to see in the way things are done at Waterloo.
I can assure you of a few things, should you become a director:
- You will get to choose which FAUW issues you work on.
- You will learn a tonne about how this University runs. In particular, you will understand how things work outside of your own Faculty—this is often surprising and always interesting.
- You will laugh much more in our meetings than on most other committees. I’d like to take all the credit for this based on my immense comedic talents, but the truth is that all our current directors and staff have fun as we go about our often serious and sometimes not-so-serious work.
If you have read this far, I presume we can at least count on you to vote in the election! Details about voting are on our website and will be emailed to you in March.
If you are interested in running, or would like to suggest someone who might be, please contact a member of the Elections Committee.
Thank you,
Bryan
The FAUW Blog 