SFU's Computing Science Student Society

Hello CSSS,


My name is Oscar. If you’ve spent any time around the common room this past Fall and Spring, or have been on the Discord server anytime in this past semester, you’ll probably recognize me. Even though I only started in Fall 2016, I’ve done a lot for the CSSS. I started my first semester as Exec at Large, doing odd jobs around the common room and generally making sure things ran smoothly. After the Fall, I spent my time helping the CSSS where I could while focusing on my courses. But now, I’m back.


If I’m elected to Director of Events, there are a number of things I plan to focus on. Firstly, I plan to revive the Events Committee. Once back, I’m going to leverage the committee to help bring bigger and better events to the members of the CSSS. This starts with ensuring we have consistent board games nights, as well as working to come up with new ways to make them a little more interesting. On top of board games night, my plan is to have multiple unique events each semester. Events which engage CS students in ways we’ve not had before. This includes working with David, our President, to ensure our new and improved Hacktime runs better than ever.


In case anyone may be wondering, here are a few of the events I plan to have sometime this year. Firstly, I want to make sure our yearly Hackathon is better than years past. Then I’m planning on running at least one fundraiser on top of our regular hoodie sale. Additionally, as part of my initiative to rebuild the Events Committee, I’m going to ensure the First Year Rep’s do their part and run a kickass event for all the first-years. Finally, there’s also the secret event I’m working on right now, Project Sigma Foxtrot. Anyone want to hazard a guess?


Thank you for reading my rant of a speech,


Oscar

My name is Courtenay Huffman. Many of you have had the chance to meet me over the past few years when I first started taking computing science courses and deciding that this is where my future is. One of the most important things I have learned while at SFU is that having a network of people is one of the best things a person can have. Recently I have gotten involved in WiCS (Women in Computing Science), and have had the opportunity to organize an event to visit Microsoft where the Gears of War video game is produced. I have also gotten to know everyone who likes to hang out in the common room, where people are unexpectedly social. My goal will be to create an environment that will be most beneficial to all of you by organizing events that will create a social environment to foster stronger relations with your peers, allow you to have fun because everyone needs to destress a little after spending hours upon hours grueling over their code only to realize that they forgot a semicolon on line 48, as well as create opportunities to enhance your learning. I will do this in a few ways:

• Continue hosting old-time favourite events
• I would obviously continue the tradition of board games night. Those are great!
• Host more social events that increase student engagement
• Host more movie nights
• Host events that reach a wide range of interests to encourage participation from more students such as organizing sport or other physical activities, getting students together to play videogames, etc…
• Coordinately closely with WiCS to encourage more diversity in participation
• Foster an environment conducive to advancing our knowledge in computing science
• Set up a way to help you find external hackathons you’re interested in, and help in putting together a group
• Book rooms for group sessions to study (I think group study sessions before midterms would be super helpful for lots of you) or explore other topics relating to CS
• Bring in more people from the industry to network or teach us about some part of the real world

This sounds like a lot to do, and I agree which is why I would create a more formal event committee that allows people to get involved in planning events they are interested in, to whichever degree of commitment they are capable of. You can be assured that all events will be the best they can possibly be!

Dear CSSS Members,


My name is Dawn Chandler, and I am a Computing Science Honours student. For the past year, I have been the (Co-)President of Women in Computing Science (WiCS) at SFU. During this time, I have helped run two outreach conferences, a hackathon, a mentorship program, and a technical interview workshop series, to name a few. I have also been trying to build a better relationship between WiCS and the CSSS, by attending CSSS meetings, acting as a liaison, and proposing joint social events.


The principal duties of the Director of Archives are to take meeting minutes, post meeting reminders, and maintain the records of the CSSS. I have taken meeting minutes for a variety of organisations, ranging from WiCS to Board of Directors meetings at a non-profit. For WiCS, I have also been in charge of sending out meeting reminders. In general, I have a reputation for being very, very organised.


I ask that you vote for me, Dawn Chandler, to be the CSSS Director of Archives because of my secretarial experience and how I would bring female representation to the CSSS executive team.


Sincerely,

Dawn Chandler

I make no promises pertaining to the technologies that I will use to take meeting minutes, and reserve the right to use pen and paper should circumstances dictate.

Hey there everyone!


I'm Ali Arshad, and am currently running to be the Director of Archives of the CSSS for the next lil' while. I'm about to head into my second year here at SFU and I'm already a self-deprecating mess of a person. If you've ever seen me, I'm either cramming hard in CSIL or passed out somewhere else on campus. That being said, I have always been known to work to the best of my abilities, and I intend to do so alongside the rest of the CSSS to become a great Director.


As the next Director of Archives, I swear in the name of my father's grandfather's great grandson that I will uphold the following commandments:

• The comprehensive documentation of all CSSS meeting minutes
• The archiving of all unarchived archives
• The promotion and encouragement of attendance of the CSSS meetings
• The sole use my superior Asus laptop, running Windows 10, to record the meetings minutes

Vote for me and bring an end to my perpetual sadness!

Sincerely,
Ye Boi Ali