Photo ‪Courtesy of the Intestinal Disease Education and Awareness Society‬

What do you see when you look at Western student Jessica Grossman? What you can’t see is the hardship she endured for years. What you can see is her ostomy.

For most dads, it would be a horrifying realization.

Their daughter, their little girl — all of 19-years-old and away from home for the first time attending a university with a reputation for less than responsible behavior — was seeing a new boy and she had — gasp — been sleeping with him.

Even the most even-keeled father would immediately be on the phone ordering the chastity belt. But not Jonathan Grossman — he couldn’t be happier.

“You can do that?” Jonathan, a hopelessly positive father if there ever was one, exuded. “I’m so proud of you. I would never even think you could do that. That’s awesome.”

No, it wasn’t sarcasm. He was genuinely proud of his baby girl — his little angel who took a little longer to grow into her wings.

He was just so happy she could live a normal life.

Waiting for the storm

When Jessica Grossman was 11-years-old she stood 5’3 and weighed all of 50 pounds.

Her hemoglobin levels — which ballpark around 120 for an average 11-year-old girl — hovered at 55. Anything 40 or below would have meant certain death.

Clearly something with Jessica was terribly wrong.

Two years prior to that, Jessica had been diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease — an incurable intestinal disorder in which the body’s immune system relentlessly attacks and inflames the intestines, like it would if it were trying to eliminate an unwanted substance from the digestive tract. The list of symptoms is long, but most suffer from diarrhea, weight loss, vomiting and intense abdominal pain.

Jessica was nine-years-old when she was diagnosed — a fairly early age to catch the disease. But studies show that the earlier you are diagnosed, the worse and more complicated the disease will be. Not to mention the fact that the disease often doesn’t develop until somewhere between the ages of 15 and 30. Meaning little Jessica Grossman could just sit idly by, waiting for a storm to come without a weather report.

Yet almost always there is a switch — an unrelated medical event that wakes the disease and begins its savage assault on the intestinal tract.

For Jessica, it was a stomach virus that she contracted right before she began Grade 7. Just like that, in the span of a few days, Jessica was drained of all her 11-year-old energy, replaced with stomach scraping pain that clawed at her insides around the clock.

Yes, something had gone terribly wrong. Little did Jessica know, she would spend the overwhelming majority of her next two years practically immobilized.

“Basically I’m in a bed in a hospital — I don’t ever want to get up. The pain keeps getting worse and worse. You can’t really describe it. Imagine your insides having sharp knives grinding through them constantly. That was my life,” Jessica said.

Jessica spent the majority of the ages 12 and 13 immobilized at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, only leaving briefly to go home and sleep in her own bed before the pain would get worse and she would need to go back. She tried going to school a few times but could only last around an hour before she got too tired and had to leave.

Her mother Julie, a physiotherapist and manager of a health clinic in north Toronto, would spend time with Jessica during her lunch breaks, hiding her lunch because she knew her daughter couldn’t eat. Her father Jonathan, who worked from home designing websites, was able to spend even more time with Jessica, working from the hospital while she slept.

Jessica spent countless nights unable to sleep because of the unbearable agony ripping through her stomach. Jonathan stayed up with her, talking about movies, music, anything to take her mind off the pain.

Jonathan, ever the idealist, would look up experimental procedures online, trying to inspire hope in Jessica during her darkest hours.

“He would say, ‘Hey Jessica, do you want to go to the States and eat some worms? There’s a study that says that will help your pain,’” Jessica said.

Finally, when Jessica was 13 and after two years of constant suffering in the hospital, doctors presented her with two options.

“They said either you get this ostomy or you die,” Jessica remembered. “It wasn’t really much of a choice.”

And thus, the doctors at Sick Kids went into Jessica’s stomach and harvested her colon, removing the final part of her digestive system and with it her ability to go to the washroom whenever she pleased. They then made a small incision in her abdomen and rerouted her small intestines out of her body, folding the edges of the open ended tube over on itself and stitching them down to form what’s known as a stoma. Waste would flow freely from the stoma into an ostomy, a small, tan-coloured pouch that collects any and all waste that passes through her digestive tract, like a balloon attached to a water faucet.

And that was that. Off went little Jessica Grossman, blindly into the world of having an ostomy after a life-changing and likely life-saving surgery. The surgeon’s wife, by some blind stroke of luck, had an ostomy herself and volunteered to show Jessica how it worked and teach her how to live her live with a bag constantly collecting waste on her hip.

“I’ve been very lucky. This was a choice for me. I had resources and connections. I got to see an actual person wearing one and she taught me everything like how she was wearing jeans,” Jessica said. “Some people aren’t as lucky. There are a lot of people who wake up with an ostomy and have no idea what happened. They don’t know it’s coming. One day it’s just there.”

The birth of an idea

All of a sudden the pain stopped. The Crohn’s went away and, other than a minor speed bump with a skin condition Jessica developed from her ostomy, the road was relatively smooth. Life was normal again.

She would get dehydrated quickly, on account of missing her colon, and her body had trouble storing iron, but these were minor inconveniences went compared to being able to live a healthy, normal life.

Jessica went back to being a teenage girl, catching up on the two years that passed her by while she lay in a hospital bed. She went to movies, she did dance, she dated.

She was always carrying a pouch of her own waste, literally attached at the hip. But it didn’t limit Jessica and she even found a penchant for yoga and dreamed, like many girls her age, of one day being an actress.

Summers were spent in Alberta at Camp Horizon, a summer getaway for youth with a variety of illnesses and disabilities, including ostomies. Winters were spent at home in Toronto, acting, modeling and being a teenager.

Then in a Grade 12 media class, Jessica was given an assignment to come up with a marketing tool for a charitable cause. She didn’t think much of it until she woke up in the middle of the night, as if struck by lightning, and immediately knew what to do. She was going to bear one of the most private parts of her body to her entire class — her ostomy.

“I decided the best way to get the point across that I’m okay with this and I’m positive about it was to show off my ostomy and just put it out there,” Jessica said.

Jessica set up a provocative photo shoot with a volunteer photographer and edited the photos with the help of her dad, a computer whiz with a deft hand for Photoshop. The photo caption was: “70,000 people in Canada have an ostomy — it’s time to stop covering up.”

And then it was over. Jessica handed it in to be marked — “I didn’t do as well as I hoped” — and then thought nothing more of it.

Until that summer.

Climbing the mountain

It was an unusually rainy summer in Calgary in 2007 — with the skies opening up and pouring down 60 cm of rain in August, a month most Albertans would say is typically their driest. But that didn’t bother Jessica who was determined to soak in her final year of bonfires, white water rafting and hospital horror stories at ostomy camp.

It was that summer that Jessica met Rob Hill, who, like Jessica, had his colon removed due to complications with Crohn’s disease and wears an ostomy.

It’s no surprise Rob and Jessica were drawn to each other — the like-minded duo both strive to put positive spins on their ostomies. Everyone who wears one has their own approach for how to shake the stigma that comes along with it. Hill simply climbs the earth’s tallest mountains.

Just last year Hill scaled Mount Everest, completing the vaunted seven summits, a campaign that sees brave climbers scale the highest mountain on each continent. Less than 250 people have accomplished the feat and Hill is only the 15th Canadian and the first person with Crohn’s Disease and an ostomy to summit the seven beasts. In ostomy circles, Hill is nothing short of Superman.

But when he wasn’t busy climbing the largest mountains on the planet, Hill founded the Intestinal Disease Education and Awareness Society (IDEAS) running campaigns and providing education to raise the awareness of intestinal diseases in North America.

Hill immediately saw potential in Jessica’s photos from her high school media class and, ever the mountain climber, wanted to take things to the next level. He wanted a website, a new photo shoot, a brand — he wanted Jessica to be the world’s most successful ostomy spokesperson. It would be called Uncover Ostomy.

Jubilant to turn words, diagrams and brain storm sessions into a movement, Jessica and Hill brought John O’Shaughnessy, a web, communications and social media expert, on board to help with the back end of the design and production. The trio made plans to reconvene in Vancouver in the summer of 2009 to do the photo shoot.

For once in her life, Jessica was able to take her ostomy and turn it into something that could help others — not just herself.

Against all odds

It’s funny how life feels like it needs to balance you out when things are going too well. Just as you realize your greatest achievements, successes, accomplishments — when you finally feel like you’ve gotten your wings back. Life likes to shoot a hole through one of them and bring you back down to earth.

Shortly after planning Uncover Ostomy, the news came down. Jessica’s dad Jonathan had myelofibrosis.

An extremely rare and life-halting bone marrow disease, myelofibrosis disrupts the body’s production of blood cells, leaving the afflicted with little to no energy, enlarged organs and a tremendous amount of pain in the mid-section.  It was cruelly similar to Jessica’s Crohn’s, but dissimilar in that there was no easy fix.

Without a full bone marrow transplant, myelofibrosis quickly develops into acute leukemia, a horrid strain of cancer that killed more than 2,000 people in Canada in 2007.

But bone marrow is a finicky substance. While it’s easy to find blood donors with only 30 blood types existing on the face of the planet, bone marrow is extraordinarily specific and the likelihood of finding a match is estimated at around one per cent.

In spite of the grim odds, Jessica and her family quickly went to work, organizing bone marrow drives to try to find a match, testing more than 2,000 people and spending nearly $75,000 US out of pocket after Canadian Blood Services refused to fund the drive.

And then the Grossmans won the bone marrow lottery.

Remarkably and against all odds they found a match. Jonathan was to undergo a bone marrow transfusion that July. The exact same day as Jessica’s photo shoot in Vancouver.

Jessica scrambled to reschedule and move her flight so she could be by her ailing father’s side as doctors tried to save his life. But Jonathan was having none of it.

“He said ‘Jessica, I don’t care. You’re going there and you’re doing this. You’re not going to sit here with me and let this pass you by. End of story,” Jessica said.

So as her dad lay in a hospital bed on the other side of the country receiving increasingly high levels of chemotherapy radiation that left him a vomiting, feverish mess, Jessica was in British Columbia doing the photo shoot and laying the ground work for Uncover Ostomy — the campaign that was supposed to be the most exciting, substantial achievement of her life. There’s conflicting times in your life, and then there’s that.

At 11:00 a.m. on July 29, a warm, overcast day in Vancouver, Jessica watched via Skype as Jonathan had a stem cell cocktail — resembling tomato soup, he would say — injected into his weathered body. He spoke to Jessica briefly before the toll of the ordeal caused him to vomit violently.

After completing her photo shoot and updating her aunt and uncle in Victoria, Jessica raced back to Toronto to be with her ailing father.

A life in 37 days

Jessica Grossman had spent more time in hospitals than anyone else should ever have to in their lives. And now she was going back.

But this time, when Jessica arrived at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto — right across the street from Sick Kids where she logged her years in a gown ­— she was the visitor and not the patient, sitting by her father’s side as he lay bedridden, hardly able to move or even talk.

It would go on like that for more than a month as Jonathan’s body decided whether it would accept the new bone marrow or not. Jessica blogged her father’s ordeal, as his body began bloating and spotting, while the area around his eyes puffed up like a fish and turned bright shades of red and yellow. Through the days spent vomiting and sleeping to the days where the combination of the procedure’s vicious effects on his body and the cocktail of drugs he was on would cause his moods to swing wildly from aloof and detached to angry and belligerent — Jessica was there.

The Grossmans watched the doctors scrawl Jonathan’s daily blood work on a white board across from his bed, clinging to every tenth of an increase in Jonathan’s neutrophil level or white blood cell count.

But throughout it all, their optimism remained guarded.  Just finding a donor had been a miracle in and of itself — it would take another one entirely for the transfusion to work. Bone marrow transplants are an absolute final option procedure, only given to those with life-threatening illnesses because the risk of a fatal complication from the procedure is far too high.

In order to even receive the transfusion, Jonathan had to endure eight straight days of chemotherapy to kill all of the diseased bone marrow in his body and make room for the new stem cells. Doctors surged an ungodly amount of radioactivity through every single pore of his being, enough to literally fry all of the bone marrow in his body. No man could possibly live through that.

On the day the Grossmans were supposed to find out if the new bone marrow was working, the doctors stopped putting Jonathan’s numbers up on the whiteboard. Slowly, Jonathan’s breaths began getting farther and farther apart.

Just before 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 30, 2009, at just 47 years of age, Jonathan Grossman died of kidney and liver failure. The chemotherapy had damaged his organs to the point where they refused to function.

Jessica wrote of the news on her blog, announcing her father’s death to the wide network of family and friends who followed it.

“Finally, he’s at peace.”

“I wish he could have seen where it’s gone”

Losing a parent is not a unique experience by any stretch of the imagination. For those who are lucky enough to live long lives it is, in fact, inevitability. Everybody dies, nothing lasts forever. We are all fragile organisms, much more delicate than we care to understand considering the average North American lifestyle. The existence that we take for granted everyday takes mere moments to be snatched away from us for all time.

But Jessica lost more than just a father.

Through her two-year gauntlet of tests, procedures and drug doses, Jonathan was there. When the doctors told Jessica they were taking away her colon in order to keep her alive, Jonathan was there. Through her darkest nights, curled up in pain on a hospital bed, just waiting for the next hour when maybe the pain would be a little softer, Jonathan was there.

And now he wasn’t. A mere two months before the expected launch of Uncover Ostomy, Jessica had lost her support system. Just like the colon the doctors removed six years earlier — how could she function without it?

But if anyone lives carpe diem, it’s Jessica Grossman.  Her father saw just 47 years and there was a time where it seemed like Jessica might not even make it to half that. If her dad could have had anything in this world, it would have been for his daughter to be successful and to achieve her dreams.

So on Oct. 3, 2009 — world ostomy day in Canada — Uncover Ostomy launched.

The website’s splash page was anything but subtle, with a seductive picture of Jessica, hair perfectly messed, wearing a skimpy white tank top and black jeans, undone at the top with a tan ostomy bag peaking out above the belt line.

Her first blog, complete with video and a written introduction, was surprisingly positive for a girl who had lost her father just a month prior.

But that shouldn’t have been a surprise — Jonathan was an unbelievably positive man. Those who knew him couldn’t help but be uplifted by his infectiously bright personality. He was the ultimate idealist who wanted to change everything that illed the world.

Uncover Ostomy wasn’t just for herself or the tens of thousands of Canadians living with ostomies. Jessica was doing this for her dad.

“I’m just so happy that he kept pushing me to do it no matter what. He was so involved in my life — he would never let anything hold me back,” Jessica said.

“I know he was so proud of the fact that I had started it. I wish he could have seen where it’s gone.”

The future is today

If Jonathan was here today he would see a unique online community, a one-of-its-kind arena for ostomates — if you don’t recognize that word, you aren’t one of them — from around the world to come together and exchange ideas, share tips and, most importantly of all, break the stigma.

“The stigma is there so people that have [ostomies] hide it. But if they keep hiding it, the stigma is still going to be there,” Jessica said. “I want to break through that. When I talk to kids with ostomies I say, be positive about it because that’s the only way that it’s going to change.

“We need to get the information out to people who don’t have ostomies, because once they know it’s okay and they learn what it is and realize that it saves our lives, then the people who have it will be more open.”

That starts in the next few months when Jessica and the team from IDEAS are revamping Uncover Ostomy with a new design, new photos and improved functionality. Jessica already blogs regularly and answers reader questions, giving tips and advice on how to live with an ostomy. But she wants the website to grow into a support system with areas for those with ostomies around the world to interact with each other and share their own tips and stories.

Jessica doesn’t mind being the one fielding the questions from first-time ostomates. But what she really wants is for others to step up and follow her lead, putting a positive spin on life with an ostomy.

She already gets countless comments from ostomates world-wide on her Facebook fan page and her Twitter, even receiving photos from brave individuals looking to follow her lead and show off their ostomies for the world to see.

“A lot of people with ostomies create their own handicap with the way they think about it,” Jessica said. “If you come out with it and tell people about it and say ‘this is what I have and I’m fine with it,’ then people see it positively. If you go up to someone and say there’s this gross weird thing attached to me, everyone else is going to see the same thing.”

“Hopefully it will be a snowball effect because the discourse around ostomies has only just recently started to change.”

Not that anything about Jessica’s life ever stays stagnant. Leaving the University of Western Ontario after four years with a BA in media studies and going to New York University to do her masters in graphic communications management and technology in the fall, change constantly fills the air in Jessica’s world. There’s always mountains to climb.

“If you don’t have positivity, all you’re going to do is stop yourself from doing anything you want to do,” Jessica said. “I’ve been able to look at it very positively and the ostomy hasn’t stopped me from doing anything.”

That much is clear for Jessica Grossman. No one needs to tell her anything is possible. No one can ever clip those wings.

That’s where the sports mega-conglomerate finds itself today, with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan indicating a desire to sell off their 66 per cent share in the most lucrative sports franchise north of the 49th parallel.

The price tag is a bit steep at $1.6 billion or so, which is reportedly about a quarter billion dollars more than what the property is actually worth. But you couldn’t possibly find a better way to spend your inconceivable amounts of money.

And naturally the bidders are lining up. Rogers, Bell, Telus and even minority shareholder Larry Tanenbaum — who currently controls just a 20.6 per cent stake of the colossal conglomerate — are all said to be in on the auction.

Of course no one really believes that Tanenbaum will be able to find the $1.6 billion under his mattress and would need a team of investors to help him make the purchase.

Which means that for Toronto sports fans, the misery, woe and soul-crushing despair shall continue, as their teams remain lacking the one thing they truly need — an individual majority owner.

For most Toronto sports fans, the exit of the OTPP is a massive sigh of relief.

They are, after all, the nameless, faceless corporation that sat idly by watching their pockets expand at exponential rates while the on-ice, on-court and on-pitch products dwindled, never showing so much as an ounce of bother.

As long as the cash continued to pile up and the platinum seats remained reserved, everyone at OTPP was more than willing to idly watch the god-awful product they offered most nights.

The games sold out, people continued to die on the waiting list for Leafs season tickets and no matter how much they raised ticket, concession and merchandising prices, the stock continued to fly off the shelves.

It’s all well and good if you’re a cynic and have accepted the inevitable complete corporatization of professional sports. But believe it or not there is still the vast majority of credulous out there, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, who want their sports teams to actually, you know, win.

But for them, chances are any kind of sustained success for a sports franchise in Toronto won’t come without smarter, more passionate ownership.

The Maple Leafs went with an over-the-hill lineup for years before just recently realizing that maybe this young and fast trend isn’t going to fade away.

The Raptors refused to trade Chris Bosh for draft picks and young assets when it was entirely evident he had no interest in remaining in Toronto, much like the Utah Jazz did with Deron Williams who had half  Bosh’s profile but still netted them an impressive return.

It would be easier to swallow a 30-games-below-.500 season if there were more than two examples of bankable young talent on the team.

And of course there’s Toronto FC who can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that no one wants to shave years off their careers with the inevitable knee surgeries required after playing on BMO Field’s scorched-earth-like turf, which makes the Rogers Centre look like the gardens of Eden.

Not once, while these atrocities of reason and assaults against forward thinking were taking place did an owner step in and say: ‘you know, maybe this isn’t working.’

Because without any semblance of public pressure or accountability, why would you? And do you really think Bell or Rogers will operate any differently?

It’s clear that what MLSE needs is a sole, individual owner whose passion and tenacity forces success. Think Mark Cuban with the Dallas Mavericks or Terry Pegula with the Buffalo Sabres.

Those owners create success because they are fans first and astonishingly rich people second. Not to mention innovative thinkers third.

They want their teams to win more than anything under the sun and don’t tolerate ignorance. They are unflinchingly rigid on the ultimate goal — numbers in the win column before the bottom line.

But in Toronto, where unlike anywhere else in the world losing equals revenue, the corporate control is practically assured to continue.

There’s just too much money to be made.

Photo by Geoffrey McMurray

David C. Onley, the 28th and current Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, was in London Saturday afternoon to present the Queen’s Cup at the 100th playing of the game at Western’s Thompson Arena.

The Lieutenant Governor is the Monarchy’s official representative in Ontario and is responsible for a number of governmental duties including inducting individuals into the Order of Ontario.

Onley, who was diagnosed with polio when he was three-year-old and suffers from partial paralysis, is Ontario’s first Lieutenant Governor with a visible disability. He has use of his hands and arms but requires an electric scooter to travel.

The 61-year-old former television journalist has been a vocal champion of issues affecting Ontario’s approximately 1.5 million disabled residents.

Onley studied political science at the University of Toronto but was awarded an honourary doctorate in law from Western in 2008.

Gazette Associate Editor Arden Zwelling talked to Onley during the second intermission of the Queen’s Cup about hockey and accessibility in sport.

Gazette: It must be nice when your job brings you out to watch a hockey game. I’m sure you enjoy doing things like this.

David C. Onley: Oh definitely — especially for a major event like this. It doesn’t happen that often actually. I was in London during the summer for the opening of the Special Olympics. That was great. I really enjoyed that. And now I get to come back and it’s great to a part of, really, a landmark championship.

Gaz: Hockey has been getting a lot of negative press lately with some unfortunate on-ice incidents at the professional level. It must be a good feeling to do something like this that reminds people what’s great about the game.

DCO: Exactly. I really like watching OUA hockey. The rules and the structuring of the OUA are great. This is every bit as entertaining of a game as you could want to see. There’s hard checks. There’s crisp plays. Overall, there’s just a great flow to the game.

Gaz: You’ve been very involved with sport over your tenure as Lieutenant Governor, especially when it comes to things like the Special Olympics and the Paralympics. How important is sport to what you do?

DCO: I think it’s very important — especially when it comes to the Paralympics and the Parapan-Am Games that are coming up in 2015. It gives people a chance to see people with disabilities in a completely different light. Especially a year ago with the Paralympics Games in Vancouver — there was unprecedented TV coverage. We got to see these athletes perform. And people got to the point of realizing that these are amazing athletes who just happen to have a disability as opposed to a disabled person who is also an athlete.

Gaz: Do you think it’s really important that people make that distinction? That these are athletes first and disabled individuals second.

DCO: The distinction is very important and I think it does help. In terms of people in everyday life, all sorts of people have disabilities. Over 15 per cent of our population has either a physical disability or a so called invisible disability — an internal condition of some sort. But the majority of people with disabilities are able to overcome them and have very productive lives. The handicap is really what other people think. The handicap is a bad attitude from someone else or a bad design or choosing not the hire somebody only because they have a disability. So it’s great when you get to see disabled people in a completely different light, especially in the world of international and national sport. Such as the World Sledge Hockey Championships which are coming up [in London] in a few weeks.

Gaz: Absolutely. That’s a really significant event in the paralympic community and it’s fitting that it’s in London after the Special Olympics were here just last summer.

DCO: Definitely. For London to be holding the World Sledge Hockey Championship, that’s huge. I was talking to one of the local sledge players here today. We were talking about tournaments that are all over southern Ontario and the United States and what a great community it is. So to have it here is great.

Gaz: Your championing of accessibility is obviously well known. Where would you like to see accessibility in sport go in the next five to ten years?

DCO: Where I’d like to see it go is where I think it will go, really. I think it is simply going to continue to grow. It gives young people, both guys and gals, who have some kind of a disability the opportunity to say: ‘hey, I can be involved in athletics.’ Whether it’s sit skiing or swimming or whatever competition you’re interested in doing. You know, (Canadian paralympian) Rick Hansen has a great saying that I’ve heard from him at various occasions and events. He says that nowhere in the definition of the world athlete is the term ‘able bodied.’ And it’s true. It really, really is true.

Gaz: It absolutely is. And you think about how many professional athletes play through disabilities. They may just be hidden or aren’t spoken about as much. They aren’t as obvious as Rick Hansen’s but they do exist and those people can still be role models.

DCO: Exactly. It’s not really what’s happened to you. It’s what you do with what you’ve got left. You think back sometime ago to a player like Bobby Orr. You know, the guy had to wear braces on both legs in order to play hockey. Was he disabled? Well, most would say no. But technically he was. And there are plenty of other players that require insulin and things like that.

Gaz: One of your big initiatives for accessibility in sport is the Governor’s Games. Tell me a little about that.

DCO: Well, we hold the Lieutenant Governor’s games every year at Variety Village in Toronto. It was started by one of my predecessors John Black Aird in the 1980’s and it’s been going strong ever since. It’s an amazing opportunity to bring young people with a total range of disabilities together. We have this large field house facility which is completely accessible and has both able bodied and disabled members who belong to the Variety Village. Every year we put on a great tournament.

Gaz: Do you think that’s one of the biggest things? Providing that ‘opportunity’ for disabled people to be involved in sport.

DCO: I absolutely think so. It’s not that long ago that the accessibility things that we take for granted today like wheelchair parking spots, ramps and elevators simply didn’t exist. And now they do and it’s giving people opportunity every day.

Corey Stanford/Gazette

There were plenty of indications Saturday afternoon that things just weren’t going to go the Western Mustangs’ way.

A bad bounce here, the loss of a skate edge there. It seemed like fate was stacked against the official visiting team playing in its own arena.

But none were as telling as the moment in the third period when — with 2:17 remaining and McGill sniper Francis Verreault-Paul in the penalty box — Mustangs head coach Clarke Singer pulled his goalie to give his team a two-man advantage in a last ditch effort to climb back into the game.

It was as safe a bet as Singer could make with the faceoff deep in the Redmen zone and his team down three, watching its hopes of an Ontario championship crumble before their eyes.

But off the faceoff McGill centreman Maxime Langelier-Parent stabbed at the puck as it fell from the linesman’s hand, batting it forward, past the Mustangs defenders and all the way down the ice where it slid agonizingly slowly into the Mustangs’ gaping net.

Now that’s crushing.

“I thought we had a couple bad breaks,” Singer said after the game, an understatement if there ever was one. “Turkiewicz loses an edge clearing the puck and they score. Greenside just falls down on the fourth goal. Just bad breaks, right?”

Call it excuses from the head coach whose team just lost 6-2, but the 100^th playing of the Queen’s Cup at Thompson Arena Saturday didn’t look as lopsided as the score sheet read by the end of the contest.

Mustangs goaltender Anthony Grieco only lasted 40 minutes Saturday but he hardly had a chance on any of the five goals he allowed.

“It’s a hockey game. Bounces go here and bounces go there, and unfortunately today the bounces didn’t go our way,” Mustangs defenceman Jason Swit, who scored his team’s first goal on a long point shot in the second period, said.

But as far as things the Mustangs could control went, there was definite room for improvement. The Mustangs took five minor penalties in the span of 10 minutes in the second period, limiting any chance they had of clawing back into the game in the middle frame.

By the third, McGill could simply sit back in their neutral zone and let the Mustangs come to them as they held Western to just six shots in the third period and killed off two separate penalties with ease.

“We knew going in that they had a lot of offensive talent,” Swit said. “They’re a really good team. We gave it our all but they just had more.”

The Mustangs were actually extremely efficient in containing the high-powered Redmen tandem of Verreault-Paul and Alex Picard-Hooper, who were both held goalless until midway through the second when Picard-Hooper slid an easy goal into a wide-open net.

The duo combined for 100 points in the regular season — even though Verreault-Paul missed 9 of the Redmen’s 28 games — and both finished in the top four in OUA scoring. But Saturday the pair was relatively silent — Picard-Hooper also added an assist — which, as far as silver linings go, is a nice one to have.

“I don’t think it was a four goal difference between us and them,” Singer said. “There’s a lot of work to be done. But can we play a lot better? I think we can.”

Of course, the fact remains that McGill had all the goals they would need halfway through the first period as they consistently made the Mustangs pay for giveaways in their own zone.

Singer said earlier in the week that the way McGill could hurt his team would be off turnovers and odd-man rushes in transition. Unfortunately for the 12-year Mustangs coach, it was a prophecy that manifested itself on Saturday.

The Redmen capitalized on nearly every Mustangs turnover, scoring goals that you couldn’t describe as overly masterful — but that count just the same.

“Credit to McGill, good hockey teams make things go their way and they did,” Singer said.

Of course, the next stop for both these teams is the national championship in Fredericton in two weeks time. And by the final whistle on Saturday it was clear why McGill is one of the early favourites heading into the tournament.

“[McGill is] a real good team. They’re number two in Canada for a reason,” Singer said. “They’re the best team we’ve played this year, that’s for sure.”

But despite that, the best may be yet to come as the team spends the next week and a half getting ready for stiff competition at Nationals.

Luckily for these Mustangs, in the CIS redemption is always hanging right around the corner. And when they travel east on March 24 they could get another shot at the Redmen.

It’s one Swit and the rest of the Mustangs are looking forward to.

“We’re going to have to improve before we play them again but at nationals we’ll be a lot stronger,” Swit said. “They’re a good team but we’re just as good as them.”

CFL/J.P. Moczulski

When you appear in four Ontario football championships in a row, people start to take notice.

Like the CFL, for instance, who invited four Western Mustangs — the second most from any single team in the nation — to take part in the CFL’s annual Evaluation Camp this past weekend in Toronto.

The E-Camp is the final chance for Canada’s top-ranked football prospects to work out in front of CFL coaches and scouts before the May CFL Entry Draft.

The weekend includes physical testing, live one-on-one drills and individual interviews with team representatives who grill the players on every aspect of their game and character.

John Surla was by far the highest-profile Mustang attending the weekend’s festivities — a CFL camera crew followed his every move. It’s the kind of fanfare that comes with a resume listing three All-Canadian selections and the 2009 President’s Trophy as the top defensive player in Ontario.

The Niagara Falls native spent the better part of 2011 in Bradenton, Florida training at Athletic Edge Sports, a combine-specific training facility that produced last year’s CFL first overall pick Shomari Williams of Queen’s.

But despite his hard work, Surla — a traditionally low tester — finished in the bottom half of the six-man linebackers group in all of the tests except for the vertical jump where his 32 inches put him in a three-way tie for third.

“The testing is just something that I’ve always struggled with. But as long as I’m trying my best I think the scouts will see what kind of person I am and the numbers won’t affect me too much,” Surla said.

It was a much different game once Surla got to strap on pads and do what he does best — hit people really hard — in Sunday afternoon’s on-field drills.

Surla and the rest of the linebackers took part in one-on-one drills against the running backs, rushing the quarterback and trying to cover the backs on passing routes.

Surla thought his on-field performance would convince the scouts he was ready for a shot in the CFL.

“That’s where I make my money,” Surla said of the on-field drills. “I’m a football player and I like being on the field. Those are the type of things I excel at.”

The testing can be your worst enemy as Surla found out but it can also be your best friend as was the case with Mustangs offensive lineman Brendan Dunn.

Dunn was relatively unknown to CFL scouts coming into E-Camp, having only started on the Mustangs for one year. But the six-foot-seven, 280-pounder quickly changed that by finishing in the top two among the dozen offensive linemen at the camp in four out of the six physical testing categories.

“That was the goal — to make people notice me. I’m trying to get drafted and that’s what you have to do,” Dunn said.

Dunn’s most impressive number was his 40-yard dash time, which came in at a brisk 5.14 seconds. Despite being an absolute mountain of a man, Dunn rumbled down the track nearly two hundredths of a second faster than any of the other offensive linemen.

For the Burlington, ON native, it was all in the cleats.

“I wear these cleats all the time — they’re the lightest cleats I’ve ever had in my life,” Dunn said of his black and white Under Armour boots. “I love them. I use them here, I use them in games. They’re lightning fast.”

On the other side of the line was Mustangs defensive end Alexander Robinson, who is coming off an impressive CIS second team All-Canadian season that saw him record 29.5 tackles and lead the Mustangs in sacks with 6.5.

Robinson was especially deft in his one-on-one drills, beating his man on all of his repetitions and showing explosive speed off the line of scrimmage. Most scouts and pundits called Robinson the biggest surprise of the linemen group.

“It’s a big part of football at Western, one-on-ones. We practice it a lot so that definitely came through today,” Robinson said.

Another Mustang who seized the opportunity to leave a lasting impression on scouts was defensive back Craig Butler who stole the show during the one-on-one drills between defensive backs and wide receivers.

Like Surla, Butler’s testing numbers have never blown anyone away. Rather, Butler saves his show-stopping performances for the field.

The fourth-year King’s student drew a round of applause from the crowd at E-Camp pulling down two interceptions during the live drills and frustrating receivers with tight coverage.

“I feel great right now. I knew that the on-field stuff was going to be my time to shine. I feel like I did pretty well,” Butler said after the drills. “At Western, we’re football players. It all comes down to working hard on the field. This is a game of football, not a game of bench press or 40-yard sprints.”

Butler ran the gauntlet of team interviews on the weekend, sitting down with representatives from six of the CFL’s eight teams on Friday and Saturday.

“The first meeting I had was pretty nerve wracking. I was probably talking a little too fast,” Butler admitted. “But by the end of it you calm down and I ended up really enjoying it.”

The next two months for the four Mustangs amount to a lot of waiting until the draft on May 8 when they’ll find out if they are headed for a CFL training camp or back to the Mustangs for another season.

Not that Butler has any doubts about how he’ll pass the time.

“I’ll be back in the gym [Monday]. It’s time to get after it and get ready.”

No longer will our cellphones run out of batteries because we refuse to do the sensible thing and charge them at night. And no longer will our utterly pointless text messages to one another take a bit longer than usual.

I’m kidding — but I dare you to name two other Andrew Forgione platform points off the top of your head.

The smartphone stuff was the most publicized of his promises and clearly it resonated with voters.

But what obviously resounded more was Forgione’s campaign — the unstoppable, social media-powered blimp that puttered along at a steady, dependable pace to the tune of Duck Sauce.

It was populist, engaging and polished to the point of obsessive compulsiveness.

And it worked to perfection.

A 52 per cent majority win isn’t just a victory for Forgione, it’s a victory for the establishment.

The last three presidents we’ve had were all cut from the same cloth — polished, populist, pompous — and now you can make it four-gione.

But that’s not to say this is a bad thing. Forgione is a status quo kind of guy and following a year when the USC actually made strides financially for a change, maybe that’s what this government needs.

Plus, this year’s campaign pushed serious issues like mental health support services to the foreground. Forgione knows this needs his attention and the same goes for clubs reform, community space and, most of all, the intergalactic Death Star that is the Student Life department.

In the end, the Omid Salari surge simply was not enough to lift the eccentric ethics major and council speaker into office.

Say what you will about the man who walked around campus with a balloon tied to his waist and refused to censor himself, it sure was fun having him around.

As much as the USC needs a steady hand to steer this ship, it also needs strong, dissenting voices like Salari’s to be given a forum to challenge the organization.

Salari is a savvy political wizard who we likely haven’t seen the last of. Or heard the last from, at least.

David Basu Roy, meanwhile, will likely be remembered for his doomed greenhouse idea — a lightning rod of criticism over the past two weeks.

His campaign was never given much of a chance from the get-go, but for a relative unknown at the beginning of campaigning, the 1,571 votes he garnered is impressive.

You can say that students voted for the campaign and not for the man. But Forgione did what he had to do to win.

Through the slickest campaign videos, a seemingly endless campaign team and Forgibombs dropped left and right, his victory was rarely in doubt.

If you sit still you can already hear next year’s candidates taking note.

Corey Stanford/Gazette

So yeah, Andrew Forgione is your next University Students’ Council president. Read the news story here and my column on his win here.

Forgione and his team campaigned their asses off until the bitter end, even deploying the tried and true campaign tactic of getting someone — an utter hack, by the way — to report that the opponent was ahead in the polls earlier in the day. It wasn’t necessary — Basu Roy and Salari’s votes combined couldn’t overtake Forgione — but it shows just how far Forgione’s team was willing to go for the win. You can’t fault a guy who does everything he can to secure victory. Don’t hate the player, and so on.

All I do is write

The Gazette’s unstoppable photography duo of Nyssa Kawahara and Corey Stanford have been doing a tremendous job of documenting this democratic debacle through stunning visuals the past two weeks. They’re both immensely talented and this blog would be nothing without their wonderful work featured at the top of every entry. I’m more than honoured to offer some choice selections from their USC elections portfolios.

Corey Stanford/Gazette

Oh, hey — it’s the last day of University Students’ Council Elections 2011. Whattayaknow?

I don’t know if this culminating day came quickly or slowly, to be honest. It doesn’t feels like it’s been more than half a month. Yet I also feel like this whole USC elections process has been akin to suffocating in quicksand.

So really, who knows. The good news is that it’s over and at 9:00 p.m. this evening we’ll know who the next USC president is and be able to return to our regular lives of never talking to each other.

Let’s just look forward to that.

Obviously, you should probably vote if you haven’t done so already. But more importantly than anything — get informed, damnit. Just remember yesterday’s quote of the day.

Anyway, here’s some stuff.

To everyone who’s been along for the ride — It’s been a slice.

Thanks for reading.

This is as bad as that professional hockey team in Ottawa

We’ve kind of beaten the Senator-At-Large thing to death now with yesterday’s blog and today’s story on it in the hard-copy, tree-killing version of our product.

But it’s easily the biggest issue of this voting period so far. All of the candidates ran under the assumption students would have seven votes. As someone eloquently put it to me on Monday, the senatorial candidates “didn’t just have the rug pulled out from under them — they were pushed off the cliff.”

I don’t really like the idea of running as a slate, which a number of the candidates did. I mean, you should be running for yourself, not using your Facebook clout to help out your friends. It’s entirely unfair to someone from outside the USC who wants to run for Senator-At-Large and can’t benefit from the existing relationships between candidates. But they’re just playing the game. Don’t hate the player, and so on.

So we’ll see how this affects things. If anything it will be interesting to see how the votes shake out between Michael Ciniello, Adam Fearnall and Alysha Li who ran a “joint campaign.” Is the one who gets the most votes the best candidate? Or maybe just the one who pulled the most weight during their joint campaign? Or the one with the best Facebook page?

Here’s a hint: it’s likely the third option.

I spoke to current senator-at-large Pat Searle at length about this yesterday. He was clearly upset not only that this decision came down so ridiculously late but also that senators were getting the short end of the stick once again.

Currently, senatorial and Board of Governors candidates are not reimbursed by the USC for their campaigns like other candidates are. That means that anyone running to be a part of one of the two highest governing bodies of the university are doing it completely out of their own pocket, while faculty councilors who may not even show up to USC meetings are reimbursed for their expenses.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me now and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me two years ago when I interviewed former USC VP-University Affairs Jacqueline Cole for this article. Back then she thought the policy should change:

“I think that [the USC] hasn’t figured out what we want our relationship to be with students who are involved with the Senate and BOG,” Cole said.

“The USC plays a key role in advocating for students to get involved in university governance and if we want to take ourselves seriously I think that we need to support students who want to get involved.”

Two years later, nothing has changed and Searle is echoing Cole’s statements on his Fuss on the Bus blog and to me yesterday when he had this to say about it:

“I think something needs to change because if this is how senators are being treated I don’t think people will keep on running. It’s certainly already eliminating students who can’t afford to run. The USC will give you a loan but you have to pay back the loan at some point. There isn’t an option where you can just run a free campaign. Unless you’re really popular and you have a Facebook group that everyone wants to be a part of, you’re out of luck.”

It would be a major win if the USC could lobby someone to change this and a major fail if they simply continue talking to the media about it and never acting on it.

Listen, you can complain to me all day about it, but I can only publicize your thoughts. I can’t actually make anything happen. But you can, elected USC representatives. At least try.

Another interesting tidbit from my conversation with Searle yesterday — he said now that students only get a vote a piece for Senator-At-Large he wouldn’t be surprised if the last place finisher in the race had less than 10 votes. We’ll have to wait until tonight to see if he’s right, but a result like that has got to sting.

Some biting criticism

So since we’re getting all worked up here, let’s talk about the Spoke and the Wave shall we?

I’m a big fan of the quality food sold at both establishment, and while I may gripe at the prices, I’ll always be going back because it’s honestly the best food available in the UCC where I work for about 14 hours every day.

But here’s a question — when did USC president become synonymous with restaurant proprietor?

It seems that every election season the candidates bring forward their fantastic ideas about how to fix The Spoke and The Wave. Meals for $3, Spoke to go, moving Rick McGhie nights back upstairs, turning The Spoke into a lounge then back into a bar then back into a lounge and then morphing the two into a bounge. The list goes on so long that it hurts my soul.

At the media forum on Friday, USC VP-Finance Ely Rygier was wise enough to raise the fact that this year the Spoke and the Wave are $10,000 in the black after suffering through an absolutely awful period financially the last two years.

I never wish to be in the shoes of the presidential candidates when they’re sitting up on that stage being grilled by USCers and media alike. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. But this was the one instance where I wish I was, so that I could answer Ely’s question of why the Spoke and Wave had such a massive turnaround.

Luckily I have a blog. So I can answer it here in four words — leave your managers alone.

There is a distinct difference between this year’s USC student executive and previous year’s executives and how they deal with the Spoke/Wave. And none of the candidates identified it. They leave Jeff Armour alone.

Jeff Armour, for those of you who don’t know, is the food and beverage manager for the USC, meaning he runs the show at The Spoke and Wave. If you ever see him sometime, you should shake his hand and say thanks for providing students with such excellent service.

Armour will hate that I’m naming him here because he’s that noble of a guy but it’s just too difficult to watch amateur politicians tell him how to do his job. I mean, where do you get the nerve?

His 15 years of experience in the restaurant industry tells me that Armour might know a thing or two about making a restaurant or bar successful.

Never mind that the Spoke and Wave also have Mark Leonard as head chef, the same Mark Leonard that Salari incorrectly referred to as “Jeff Armour’s boss” at Friday’s debate. A fact Andrew Forgione did not know enough about to refute him on.

Listen, we don’t expect the candidates to know everything. That would be unreasonable. But in turn, the candidates should not try to address everything as if they know everything. That’s equally as unreasonable.

It’s perfectly fine to answer a question by saying “You know what? This isn’t in my wheelhouse. I have no experience what-so-ever in that field. That’s why the USC has full-time managers with mountains of experience on these subjects. So that I don’t have to pretend I know everything.”

The best answer to Ely’s question was “Jeff Armour.” And none of the candidates said it.

Odds and Ends

• David Basu Roy has footage of a spoken word he performed at The Spoke last week. No word of a lie, I saw Basu Roy doing karaoke at The Spoke Tuesday night. Say what you will about the guy, he is a man of the people.
• Meanwhile the Andrew Forgione team checks in with a rip off of that Google search commercial that I vaguely remember from a Super Bowl a couple years back. It’s nothing earth shattering but it is well done and polished —thanks to YouTube — like most of Forgione’s campaign. It certainly can’t hurt his chances.
• The Gazette has some of the best damn photographers on this campus and we’ll be featuring some of their exemplary campaign photography later today. Keep your eyes peeled for that one
• Again, thanks to everyone who read, loved, hated, tolerated and commented on Blog the Vote. It wouldn’t have been worth it without you.

Unlike in recent years when voters were allowed to vote for seven Senator-At-Large candidates, this year every student will only be allowed to vote for one.

The change was truly a last minute decision. Just Monday morning, all nine senatorial candidates were asked to approve a ballot which clearly said “you may vote for 7 candidates at large” at the top. The ballot was unanimously approved.

However, Chief Returning Officer Adam Smith received a phone call from University Secretariat Ericka Hegedues Monday afternoon instructing him to change the number of student votes.

The majority of USC elections are governed by Smith, but both senatorial and board of governors elections are administrated by the Hegedues because they technically are university positions, not student council.

Smith had no choice but to change the ballot, as the senatorial elections are out of his jurisdiction.

But for the past two weeks the candidates had been campaigning based on the assumption students would have seven votes.

That makes the move especially damaging for candidates who ran as a ticket, telling voters to vote for themselves as well as another candidate or even a pair of candidates in the case of Adam Fearnall, Alysha Li and Michael Ciniello, who ran a joint campaign.

“I entered into a joint campaign with two other candidates because we had a similar vision and set of ideas for the senate next year,” Ciniello said. “We all would have done a lot more individual campaigning if we knew this was going to happen.”

Several of the candidates took to Twitter and Facebook early Tuesday morning to voice their displeasure with the move, prompting Smith to send all nine candidates an e-mail at 1:35 a.m. to explain the situation.

“The ballot I sent you for review was what we had planned on using up until I received this phone call,” Smith said in the e-mail. “Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to change anything at this time.”

Smith said on Tuesday that he was too busy to inform the candidates prior to the beginning of the voting period.

“It was a very last minute decision,” Smith said. “I notified them as soon as I could of what the situation was. I sympathize with the candidates, but it’s unfortunately just how things work.”

Hegedues could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. However, Smith speculated that she made the move in order to ensure students were voting for the best candidate and not simply recognizable names.

“I don’t think it will change the overall results of the election. The best will be elected,” Smith said. “If they’re running a good campaign, people will want to vote for them for that reason. Not because they’re associated with other people.”

Candidates for the senate and board of governors have long suffered from not officially being a part of the USC campaign. Their campaign budgets are not reimbursed by the USC, unlike candidates for faculty president or councilor positions.

“If [the university secretariat] is going to bring down rulings at 3:00 in the afternoon the day before voting begins, I don’t think that’s really fair,” Pat Searle, a current senator-at-large, said. “If this is how senators are treated, I don’t think people will keep running.”

Corey Stanford/Gazette

Okay, Western. Let’s all just take a deep breath.

Solid Twitter panic last night. I was thoroughly impressed. I mean, you could’ve done better. Maybe next time try rioting or razing some buildings or something. But the impulsive, panicked reaction online to the launch of the 2011 edition of the University Students’ Council election was a nice touch.

But frankly, if I was running for senator-at-large, I might have been a little frenzied myself. Here’s the deal.

When the keenest of the keen went online to vote in the USC elections early this morning, they found they were only able to vote for one senator-at-large. Seven senators are elected to the position and traditionally students are able to cast seven votes.

But according to an e-mail from Chief Returning Officer Adam Smith sent to all nine senator-at-large candidates that was obtained by Blog the Vote, Smith was instructed by University Secretariat Erika Hegedues on Monday to reduce the number of candidates students can vote for from seven to one. This despite the fact that all senatorial candidates were asked to approve the following ballot Monday morning:

While Smith is the CRO of most of the USC elections, Hegedues is in charge of both the Senate and Board of Governors elections and has final say in both those matters.

Here’s an excerpt from Smith’s e-mail to the senatorial candidates:

“Earlier today, I received a phone call from Erika informing me that I was to change the number of Senators-at-Large candidates a student can vote for from 7 to 1. She assured me this is the way it has always been done and that IT would be taking care of the reprogramming of the ballot. Again, let me stress that UWO administers these elections, not the USC.

The ballot I sent you for review was what we had planned on using up until I received this phone call. Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to change anything at this time.

That being said, we will be looking into it again in the morning. This does not mean it will be changed. If anything does, I will inform you immediately.”

It may not seem like the biggest issue from the outside looking in, until you realize that some of the senatorial candidates ran as a slate. Candidates Michael Ciniello, Alysha Li and Adam Fearnall all ran a joint campaign anticipating that students would have seven votes and be able to vote all three of them in. Now, with the rug pulled out from under them mere hours before the voting period begins, the senatorial candidates are feeling misled. Ciniello had this to say about the matter via e-mail late last night:

“Some heads up would have been nice, at least for campaigning purposes. I entered into a joint campaign with two other candidates because we had a similar vision and set of ideas for the senate next year. Now that only one vote can be cast, the possibility that the majority of our supporters votes will go to only one of us looms overhead. We all would have done a lot more individual campaigning if we knew this was going to happen. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.”

Meanwhile, Vivian Leung, another candidate for senator-at-large, told me late last night that she had also been telling voters that they would not be forced to choose simply one candidate:

“It affects anyone, including myself, who has been telling voters that they don’t need to make a choice between one and another candidate because we would love to work together and would appreciate getting voted in together.”

The principle of giving every student just one vote isn’t the issue here. The playing field is still level and, if anything, the best candidates would get in because students who aren’t informed on all of the senatorial candidates wouldn’t simply be picking sixth and seventh names at random to fill their ballots.

What’s at issue here is that the senatorial candidates ran their campaigns under the assumption that voters would not have to pick just one of them. That severely changes the dynamic of their campaign. If students were only going to receive one vote, that should have been determined before the campaign period ever began — not a few hours before the polls open.

I’m sure we’ll find out more about this on Tuesday but as of now it appears that Smith won’t be able to do anything about this and students will only have one senatorial vote this year. With polls closing Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. and more and more students voting with every passing hour, there are certainly a lot of senatorial candidates out there feeling like they got the raw end of the deal.

So that said, it’s a big day I guess

Because the elections issue of the Gazette is out, of course. What — is there something else going on?

Oh yeah, that whole voting thing. When you’ve got a moment, do your part and first get informed and then vote.

I cannot stress this enough — don’t vote if you’re not getting informed first

How do you go about getting informed? As far as objective sources go, might I suggest today’s issue of the Gazette or Pat Searle’s Fuss on the Bus elections special as starting points. This blog ain’t bad either.

Or for platforms and information directly from the candidates, you can check out the respective websites for presidential candidates David Basu Roy, Andrew Forgione and Omid Salari.

Just please read something before you vote.

Really, that’s the most important thing today. Don’t just vote because you feel like you have to. Don’t just vote for the guy with the video you like the most. Don’t just vote for the hot one. Actually read up on the candidates, check out their platforms and get informed.

Boosting voter turnout would be great, but I’ll take a 20 per cent share of campus that is informed over a 50 per cent share of campus that just votes for the name they recognize any day of the week. Remember, this is the highest position on your student union — it’s a very big, important, influential role. Don’t just hand your vote to someone without doing your homework.

And don’t just brush up on the presidential elections either. Learn about the senatorial candidates and the board of governors candidates as well. The USC representatives on the board of governors sit on the highest governing body of the university. It’s a big freakin’ deal.

But if you’re not going to get involved, that’s cool. Just don’t vote. You’re not helping.

But when the chips are down, sometimes the best move is to just go all in. So let’s put our cards on the table, ante up and see what’s coming up the river.

All right — it’s out of my system.

It’s election time on campus today and tomorrow as students file into electronic voting booths and choose the next president of the University Students’ Council.

Well, the vast majority of you actually won’t. But at least 20 per cent of you will cast a ballot today or tomorrow and award one lucky individual a yearlong lease to an office on the third floor of the UCC.

Unlike last year when it was at times tough to tell heads or tails from the six candidates, this season we have three men who have, at the very least, defined themselves.

Andrew Forgione is the establishment candidate. He doesn’t like being called that but it’s undeniable he’s followed the “how to win a USC election” blueprint the closest of anyone.

That’s not to say it’s a bad thing that his campaign feels familiar. If you were running for USC president, why wouldn’t you follow a formula for success?

Plus, as he’s asserted when challenged on the topic in previous weeks, why are we chastising him for simply being prepared?

He clearly wants to win and if fielding a populist platform, viral video and a friendly, incessantly branded campaign is the path to victory, then you can’t fault him for taking it.

This is a campaign-to-win race. No one outside of the Gazette office is going to remember your promises or your platform two months from now. Campaign to get the key to the office, then do what you really want to once you’re sitting at the desk.

What he will do once he gets the desk has been the question plaguing Omid Salari throughout this race as his often-unpredictable behavior has not inspired confidence in some of the electorate.

His professionalism and tact have been frequently and fairly called into question. Yet there’s no denying the eccentric USC speaker has stuck true to himself throughout the campaign, whether he’s walking around campus with balloons floating above him or turning debates on their heads with his abrasive, oft-controversial rhetoric.

But at the same time he’s the type of guy who would hate that word — rhetoric. Which is why his campaign resonates with so many people tired of the same old polished USC candidates.

His campaign took some time to get off the ground much like it took Salari time to figure out how to accentuate his better qualities at debates. That has resulted in a definite Salari surge over the second week of campaigning, especially noticeable Monday on Twitter and Facebook where Salari supporters started to come out of the woodwork. But it won’t be until Wednesday night when we find out if it was enough.

David Basu Roy, meanwhile, entered this race from somewhere out in left field and has stayed there for most of it. From an unexplained banana suit gimmick early on in his campaign to knowingly printing unapproved posters — as a recent USC audit revealed — his candidacy hasn’t always added up.

He’s exceptionally bright, if inexperienced with the USC, and has shown the ability to adapt as the campaign has worn on. He ditched the banana suit early and has backed off in the latter half of the campaign from his USC greenhouse idea, which is widely believed to be entirely unfeasible — both good moves that show his flexibility.

Basu Roy also provides an alternative option to those turned off by Forgione’s polish or Salari’s abrasiveness. Most of campus doesn’t relate to the USC or truly understand what it is, which makes Basu Roy an intriguing candidate because he stands beside them on the outside looking in.

Of course, unfortunately for the engineering major, those students mostly don’t vote.

Which is the fourth and certainly most popular option in the race — the platform that says “I just can’t be bothered.”

It’s a candidate that doesn’t even require a vote and I guarantee you it will win this election.

Nyssa Kuwahara/Gazette -- What the Ron Swanson is going on here? You'll just have to pick up tomorrow's election issue to find out.

We got a peek at the apparently only partially completed USC elections audit this morning. There’s nothing earth shattering in it, but definitely a couple points of interest.

It goes into greater detail about the demerit points leveled on Andrew Forgione and David Basu Roy. These are all facts we confirmed here at Blog the Vote last week before anyone from the elections committee was willing to talk about it but now we have the official USC word on it so that’s something.

On Basu Roy’s 15 point penalty

“Basu Roy knowingly printed unapproved posters that violate the USC’s Advertising Oversight Committee’s policies. […] Basu Roy distributed this unapproved material around campus.”

And on Forgione’s four point penalty:

“Forgione attended the CSA, a USC ratified club, meeting the week before nominations closed. At this meeting, a member of his campaign team solicited support from the club.”

EnviroWestern also chips in their environmental audit which is based on the receipts provided by the candidates. According to them, Omid Salari has by far the most environmentally sound campaign, using just 55 sheets of paper and 659 litres of water to create said paper. Now, that could partially be due to the fact that his campaign didn’t really get off the ground until the beginning of week two. Plus, the report seems to indicate he hasn’t submitted all of his receipts yet. Regardless, they’re still impressive figures considering the numbers his opponents put up.

Forgione’s campaign used 505 sheets of paper and 12,672 litres of water to create the paper. That’s a lot but it pales in comparison to the 700 sheets of paper and 21,176 litres of water that the audit claims Basu Roy used. Basu Roy, need I remind you, specializes in environmental engineering so it’s certainly surprising to see him at the top of the list. When I asked him about it Monday afternoon, he said EnviroWestern only took into account the physical sheets of paper he used and not the type of ink which he feels has a greater impact that straight sheets of paper. Safe to say, he doesn’t think EnviroWestern’s report was as in-depth as it could have been.

The final portion of the audit takes on campaign finances and is apparently still incomplete. We’ll see what it looks like once all the receipts are submitted, but it’s still interesting to see where things stand at this point:

Couple things of note here. Forgione’s trendy reusable bags were the costliest investment of the period at over $600. Salari’s balloons came close, running him $580 when you factor in the outrageous price of helium tank rentals these days.

It’s safe to say Forgione got the better investment out of his $600, as he was able to produce a massive amount of bags which students can get some practical use out of after the election period. Meanwhile, Salari’s balloons have been a continuous nuisance for him, as they were constantly getting damaged or floating to the top of the UCC atrium, as helium-filled balloons tend to do.

Basu Roy, meanwhile, has spent the least to date of the three candidates yet has also run the least environmentally friendly campaign so far, according to the audit. That’s quite a feat. He avoided spending a large chunk of his budget on something elaborate like his competitors did, which is noble considering its student money he would be spending. But at the same time he was also the least buzz-worthy candidate of the campaign period.

We’re apparently going to be getting more information on the candidates’ campaign financials shortly so stay tuned for that. But as things stand now, I would say Andrew Forgione has easily spent his money the most effectively. He’s utilized his entire budget and run by far the most interesting, engaging campaign. Call it formulaic or establishment-based, but it definitely reached a lot of people. And in a popularity contest like this, is that not what’s most vital to getting elected?

Today in videos

• A shaven, nicely dressed and eloquent Omid Salari shows his professional side in his latest video effort. Is he bowing to his critics that say he’s unprofessional? Perhaps. But it’s probably something that he had to do considering his spiraling reputation during the campaign. And he makes an excellent point. It’s ironic that his campaign and candour during it has been called into question despite the fact he’s the only candidate to not receive a single demerit point.
• Also, this somehow didn’t make it into the blog last week, but here’s the video from CHRW’s Minute to win it experiment which offered all candidates running in USC elections an opportunity to plug themselves on air for a minute. It was tremendously underutilized by the candidates, most of whom didn’t bother to show up despite being told about it at their all-candidates meeting. Of course, all three presidential candidates did their part to ruin the project’s legitimacy, with David Basu Roy performing a spoken word thing, Andrew Forgione rapping and Omid Salari taking off his shirt.

Finally, no idea how I missed this one either, but my man Pat Searle wrote just a fantastic blog post last week about the hard-working students who run for senatorial and board of governor positions on their own buck with no reimbursement from the USC. A situation that leaves many feeling helpless:

“The lack of funding is really felt when you are running an at-large election, or cross-constituency election, when you can’t just rely on your experience within your own constituency. Without funding, you are left to print your own posters and bag-tags and rave cards or whatever, at your own expense. You feel a little helpless, and honestly, who can blame you?”