May 2025 marks the end of a one-year term for outgoing WUSA vice president (VP) Arya Razmjoo. The student leader remarked that WUSA has accomplished a lot this year – launching a new Ombuds office, organizing several free events, advocating for student interests at the municipal, regional, provincial, and federal levels, and putting forward a referendum for partnership divestment. Imprint sat down with VP Razmjoo to discuss his time at the student union and plans for the future. 

Razmjoo is a current communications and legal studies student, and vice president of both WUSA and OUSA (Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance). Razmjoo began his journey with WUSA in his first year, sitting on multiple student committees including the Governance committee and Elections and Referenda committee before running for the WUSA President role in 2024. 

“My motivation for running [for President] was really just to give back and help my community. And I think this is one of the few roles that allows people in our age group to really have a substantial amount of impact, even though that impact is not always seen at the time. It often takes a year or two for the results of the things we work on to actually be initiated,” Razmjoo said. 

Razmjoo was appointed VP by the student union, a more externally focused role that required advocating for student interests to key stakeholders. Instead of feeling unprepared for the new position, Razmjoo said he pivoted his focus. Coming into the role with no specific game plan, he felt played to his advantage.

“Taking an external focus, I looked at what was needed in the organization, and I think having no biases or no real previous plans really helped me find the areas where we lacked. I think we made some really strong investments in those areas this year as well,” Razmjoo said.

Student advocacy is central to the VP’s role. Razmjoo reflected on the recent creation of the WUSA Advocacy department, the development of WUSA’s official policy stances on key student issues, and the launch of an advocacy representative survey platform that allows WUSA to interview thousands of students on key issues with ease. 

Notably, Razmjoo is proud of WUSA’s external advocacy work at the federal level with an organization called CASA (Canadian Alliance of Student Associations), which WUSA joined over the past year as an observer. 

“Through CASA, I had a whole week in Ottawa where we met with ministers, we met with MPs from all the political ridings, we even got the Prime Minister, which a year ago would have been impossible to think about,” Razmjoo said. 

According to Razmjoo, a major advantage of working with CASA is the group’s independent advisory group for Indigenous issues, giving WUSA the opportunity to work with Indigenous students at the forefront of developing solutions for students’ education-related concerns.

At the municipal and regional level, WUSA worked closely with a Waterloo regional committee called Town and Gown that bridges the gap between students at post-secondary institutions and the communities they live in. Through negotiation efforts led by Razmjoo with the region, the committee gained a regional representative.

“So the committee now has a bigger scope. We can talk about both Waterloo issues and Kitchener issues, because we have a Kitchener campus, but also regional, which I believe is a lot more powerful than the municipality,” Razmjoo said. “So even basic things like recycling and compost, which are not the sexiest things to talk about, but are still regional issues, including transit. The region has a lot of control over it.”

This year, students saw a five percent increase to their GRT pass fees while the region announced cuts to GRT funding. Cuts to funding called for less buses, especially on Ring Road, and the removal of garbage cans from bus stops.

“I spoke to many, many regional councilors, we got the votes to actually defeat [the GRT budget cuts that impacted Waterloo city] which was something that really took a lot of energy and I was very proud of,” Razmjoo said.

WUSA also hosted OUSA’s general assembly at Waterloo, contributing to the student union’s provincial-level advocacy work. 

“We hosted all the schools to come here and bring all their delegates and we formulated two policy papers on comprehensive access to university, so every student no matter their background or financial feasibility can actually come to university, but also one on tech enabled learning. With AI coming up, we quickly responded to that,” Razmjoo said.

Despite engaging with all levels of government, Razmjoo noted that WUSA does not have the capacity to do all advocacy work. To target this issue, Razmjoo helped launch Change Engine, an initiative which provides students with resources to do their own grassroots advocacy work. 

“Students come and they pitch their projects, and we literally give them money, and we say, go do this advocacy. We had folks come and wanted to do safe walks programs, so we funded them and they can explore that. They had a passion for that, so we said we will fund it,” Razmjoo said.

Razmjoo also shared his WUSA team was one of the first to do campus visits and speak with students in Stratford, Cambridge, and Kitchener in several years. WUSA is currently collecting data from these visits and formulating reports that will better infom advocacy efforts at all municipal and regional levels.

Switching focus toward internal efforts, WUSA also hosted several events this year, with a focus on providing students with free food, fun opportunities, and events across all university campuses. WUSA organized trips to Niagara Falls, the Cambridge Butterfly Museum, and snow tubing. An increase in events also comes with a slight increase in this year’s student WUSA events fee. 

Some other projects WUSA launched this year include advocating for expanded student counselling hours, the 2024 Responsible Partnerships and Investments Referendum, advocating for athletic membership to be extended to students on co-op, and a campus goose statue. 

Razmjoo noted the high-performance of commercial operations on campus over his term along with an increase in the variety of food options available on-campus to students. Chaska, an Indian street food retailer located in the SLC, was launched last year – a project Razmjoo said was in the works at WUSA for over 10 years. 

Another ten-year-long project that was introduced in the past year is the Ombuds Office at UW. The office provides students with confidential, impartial, and independent resources for navigating academic and non-academic challenges, according to WUSA.

Razmjoo shared that a key concern faced by WUSA when bringing students new initiatives and projects is that larger scopes can take years to implement. 

“Some projects can take a couple of years to get done. There are a few like Chaska, opening a new restaurant can take years frankly. Getting the permits, getting the university to allow us to open it, that was like six years of negotiations,” Razmjoo said.

Razmjoo stressed that all the initiatives undertaken by WUSA are almost exclusively done for the next generation of students. Fees are also structured so that future students who see the results of WUSA’s work will also support paying for it. 

“However, future students do not get to vote on those issues at all. It’s a philosophical dilemma, but when folks want bigger projects, the reality is that future folks will benefit from it. So if students want us to do smaller projects, they will see the benefits more often,” Arya said.

In the future, Razmjoo would like to see progress made on the 2024 Responsible Partnerships and Investments Referendum, full membership for CASA, and more advocacy work with the region and municipality. 

“We really did a lot this year. It is just we had a lot of walls with the university saying no. So I’m hoping that the next officers can come up with creative strategies for expanding their advocacy and getting that work really finished,” Razmjoo said.

Moving forward, Razmjoo will continue to engage with WUSA as a member of the elected board and Senate, hoping to engage the elected student representatives on issues of accountability and transparency when it comes to WUSA’s internal processes. 

“I’m on the board and the Senate, so my tentacles are still in. You guys have not gotten rid of me this year, so I’m still around, ” Razmjoo said.

“But honestly, I’m excited to be a student again. I’m probably going to take the LSAT this summer and then prepare for law school. But really, I’m retired right? I’m excited to see what the upcoming officers and the upcoming folks can achieve and what they are passionate about. But for me, it’s retirement baby, it’s retirement.”