Tom Simons, a 23 years old Dutch student of Industrial design, is one of the candidates for a position as Chairperson (Vice-Chairperson) of the Agora/ European Planing Meeting (EPM). Member since 2010, Tom covered several positions in his local (AEGEE-Enschede) and was a member of the Mediation Commission. At Autumn Agora Cagliari he was elected as Chairperson of the Agora and now he aims to run for a second term.
The AEGEEan: Why did you decide to run again for the position of Chairperson?
Tom: Being part of the Chair Team last year has been one of the best experiences I had in AEGEE since joining in 2010. It was a big challenge and a great learning experience. I think I can still contribute a lot to improve our statutory events and at the same time keep developing myself by being part of the Chair Team for another year. I think that now I have experience with the basic tasks of the Chair Team, a second term will allow me to go more in depth in implementing possible improvements to our statutory events.
You stated that you still think that there is room to improve statutory events. What did your team do in this sense?
The Agora is our most important decision making body, and thus it should have the most space for discussions in order to come to a fair and representative decision. In the last year we increased this possibility by having as much discussions as possible in Prytania. AT Spring Agora Asturias position papers were presented during Prytania, and at the upcoming Agora the EPM topics and the activity plans of Working Groups will be also presented during Prytania. Besides this, the important topic of finances was also moved from a Progress Meeting to a Prytanium for two reasons. Firstly to increase the influence of the locals in the budgeting process, and secondly to provide the possibility for all locals to send a delegate to this meeting, which wasn’t always possible before when the progress meeting was during a Prytanium slot. Although I am very happy with these changes, I think there is still more that can be improved.
Looking back at what you have done with your current team, do you think you reached all the points you had in your program in 2014?
One of the points in my program last year was to improve the discussion aspect and other content of the Agora, which I think was reached by the points described above. Besides this, a point from my program was to change the role of the Chair in the EPM. Although we had some minor changes, such as chairing two panel discussions, this was still early in our term, and we were still growing in our roles as Chair Team, so I think more can be gained here.
Choosing participants always raised a lot of controversies, what went wrong this time, and how would you ease the process?
I think the main problem this time was that people were unaware of the selection procedure we adhered to. In my opinion we made it as fair as possible for everyone, for all statutory events in the past year, but there will always be people who disagree with us. In the future the main thing I would change is to explicitly explain to the network which steps we will follow in the selection procedure. This way, people will be aware how their application will be processed.
One point of you candidature states: continue helping participants to be prepared for the statutory events. What have you done during your term and what do you think needs to be improved?
Before EPM Burgos, the manual of the EPM for newbies was created in order to help participants gain an understanding of the EPM and everything discussed at this event. Besides this, we updated the Agora for newbies presentation and we continued with the delegate quiz as done by the previous Chair Teams. We also presented a summary of all relevant procedures at the beginning of the Agora, and in the upcoming Agora we will have a short Agora for newbies presentation in the opening plenary. For the next Agora, AEGEE will pilot with a new online system to submit proposals, comment on them etc. I think this is an excellent opportunity to involve participants more in the decision making process.
Having attended Agorae both as delegate and envoy, and now as Chairperson, what do you think is the major point that needs to be improved?
Having 800 people together is such an amazing opportunity, but discussing in this large group poses a difficulty. I would like to see as much content being discussed in smaller groups (Prytania/Progress Meetings) to allocate more time and allow more people to participate in the discussions. I think last year we made some big steps, but there is still more to be gained in this respect. Besides these changes that I think would benefit the Agora, I think the Chair Team should also implement changes the network wants. During the last Agora there was a Progress Meeting on Agora reform, and there will be one during the upcoming Agora as well. This is an excellent opportunity to gather input from the network on improving the Agora, which can then be implemented by the Chair Team.
Would you change something from this past year?
We all make mistakes and I always try to learn from mine and improve my skills so as to not make the same mistake twice. If I would have to name an example, I would say increasing the transparency. As I said earlier, the transparency of the visitor selection procedure would be one thing in particular I would inform the network about beforehand.
Why should people vote for you?
I think people should vote for the candidate they think is most suited for the job, so I’m not going to ask people to vote for me. Instead I encourage everyone to read all applications and listen to the presentations during the Agora, and make a decision based on that.
Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona
You can read his full candidature here.