SU Presidential candidates forum: three candidates, one seat
By Michael Sarsito, March 4 2026—
With voting just days away, many students may still be asking the same questions: what do the candidates actually stand for? At the Presidential Candidates Forum organized by the UCalgary Students’ Union (SU), candidates Gabriela Dziegielewska, Michael Harris and Julia Law gave in-depth answers to a range of questions and addressed issues highlighted in their platforms.
Restoring the fight
In her opening remarks, Gabriela Dziegielewska — the current VP Academic — highlighted several key achievements from her term, including securing a review of advising offices, launching campus-wide academic rights campaign, uncovering policy violations that negatively impacted students’ finances and consistently keeping students informed through substantive social media updates.
If elected, Dziegielewska wants to mobilize students to defend the existing two per cent tuition cap that is at risk. According to a 2025 Alberta expert panel report, the province’s current two per cent annual cap on domestic tuition increases should be replaced with a system that allows institutions the freedom to determine the tuition cost for first-year students up to the maximum amount for each cluster established by Advanced Education.
“We need to take advantage of the political moment by pushing as hard as we can for students to get what we want,” said Dziegielewska. “To push students’ message out to the general public so that it’s not just us and students on this campus who are invested in provincial post-secondary education … It’s everybody else that goes to the voting booth this election.”
Dziegielewska also wants to restore the SU breakfast program to address food insecurity on campus directly.
“We have seen every single year, student food insecurity on this campus goes up and up and up … there are other resources but they are not enough,” said Dziegielewska. “[The SU has] done it before. We have the money to pay for it. We have the staff who have the expertise to know how these types of programs should be run … it’s something that we just have full control over and can work on implementing right away.”
In her concluding statements, Dziegielewska reassured students of her commitment to them.
“If you vote for me, you can expect an SU that will come out the gates swinging anytime we need to,” she said. “You can expect an SU that will mobilize its 30,000 undergraduates so that we are a major political source of power in this province,” said Dziegielewska.
Liberty, transparency, affordability
In his opening remarks, Michael Harris emphasized several key accomplishments.
“We have fought to ensure that there was ample support for those that were unfairly prosecuted during the Quad protest in 2024,” said Harris. “I helped organize a petition that got 20,000 signatures from students across Western Canada that was submitted to Mark Carney to remove the consumer carbon tax. And we’ve been here on campus fighting authoritarian groups and those that have harassed students, hurt students, or assaulted students.”
If elected, Harris wants to bring back student club president town halls.
“The biggest complaint that I’ve heard from presidents on campus is that they have rarely got a say in how the SU works and how Club Hub works,” said Harris. “I’ve gotten a lot of complaints about cuts to funding, being [un]able to organize events, having to wait two to three weeks [to be] able to host an event on campus.”
Harris also aims to promote and protect students’ rights to free speech. He pointed to the 2024 Quad protest as one of his examples. Just around midnight on May 9, 2024, Calgary Police dismantled the pro-Palestinian protest campsite on the University of Calgary Quad. Five people were arrested, three of whom were charged under the Trespass to Premises Act.
“As we’ve seen back in 2024, the provincial government does not actually support freedom of speech on this campus,” said Harris. “If you have a political opinion that the federal government disagrees with or the provincial government disagrees with, they will try their best to censor you, to shut you down.”
The third round is designed to ask in-depth questions that will highlight specifically on the candidates’ platforms. The moderator pointed out that nonprofits must publish an already balanced budget, which is available on the SU website annually and when asked to identify specific line items in the Student Union budget that concerned him, Harris did not point to any.
Instead, Harris spoke more broadly about the student elected officials and his claim of how they spend their budget.
“Student union politicians are career politicians,” said Harris. “They spend the entire budget because that’s what they want to do to make their resume more impressive, that they actually went and did all these other different vanity projects or otherwise.”
Additionally, he pivoted to criticizing University of Calgary’s Boards of Governors and his claims of how they award themselves an absurd amount of money as a gift to themselves.
“[The university] loves to give themselves, like the board of governors, loves to give themselves big million-dollar bonuses every single Christmas,” said Harris. “They love to blow money on their own projects. They like to use money to take away power and control away from the university student union and give it back to themselves. They like to take that money and give it back to their own government.”
In his concluding statements, Harris reminds students of his commitment.
“I want to make sure that we bring common sense to this university and to our union so that … we have money left over for future generations. We have liberty left over for future generations and transparency left over for future generations,” said Harris.
“Still locked in”
In her opening remarks, Julia Law — the current VP External — underlined some of her achievements during her term, including fighting against tuition increases and being one of the few students interviewed by the Expert Panel that reviewed Alberta Post-Secondaries.
“The province knows that the system is flawed, and it’s time to have an SU president that holds them accountable while they know what they’re doing,” said Law.
Additionally one of Law’s claims of accomplishment comes in the form of securing student housing funding.
“I secured $10 million in affordable housing funding from the city,” said Law.
If elected, Julia Law wants to hold the province accountable for the 11 key recommendations from the Expert Panel and argues that students should be consulted during the process of implementation.
“There’s a new funding framework down the pipeline. They’re claiming it’s going to be in budget 2027. We need to have students heard so that we can have quality of education going forward and that our education is properly funded province wide,” said Law. “I believe that you deserve to have predictability.”
Law also aims to strengthen connections with satellite campuses by hosting and engaging in events meant just for them, recognizing that many students at these locations are unaware of the services the SU provides.
“They can access the SU hardship fund. They can apply for our scholarships, but they don’t know that because we aren’t there,” said Law. “It’s about tapping into those connections and having the SU actually physically have a presence, whether it’s bodily or it’s just posters.”
In her concluding statements, Law made a personal appeal to students.
“I’m the candidate who cares. I’m the candidate who’s going to uplift you. I’m the candidate who’s not going to take you down because you’re too young, because your issues don’t matter. Because it all does,” said Law.
Voting will open at 9 a.m. on March 3rd and closes at 4 p.m. on March 5th, 2026. In-person polling stations will be available at Information and Communications Technology (ICT), MacEwan Student Centre, and TFDL foyer. Online voting will also be available through myUofC Student Centre.