Max Holmes is a longstanding student politician who currently serves on the UBC Board of Governors. Previously, Max was an elected student senator and also an AMS executive member. Max and I met at the UNA Children’s Garden picnic table to chat about what got Max into politics. I should note that I have known Max from early on in his student political career. We both served overlapping terms on the Board of Governors and on Senate.
Elected Positions
AMS VP Academic and University Affairs: September 2017 to May 2019
UBC Vancouver Student Senator: January 2018 to April 2021
UBC Governor: April 2019 to Present
Other Positions:
(Hired) AMS Elections Administrator: January 2017 to April 2017
(Hired) AMS Associate VP Academic and University Affairs: May 2017 to September 2017
(Appointed) Member of the Board of Directors CiTR 101.9FM and Discord Magazine: May 2018 to April 2021
Getting a start in politics
I started our conversation by asking Max how he got into student politics.
Max arrived on campus straight from an eastern US high school (he has dual US/Canadian citizenship). Max explained that in part he came to UBC because “UBC does international recruitment quite well and sends people to every school.”
“I spent one semester at UBC before I got involved, and I got hired to run their [AMS] elections. It's probably one of the hardest jobs I did. Student elections can be quite complicated, and then from there, rest is history.”
When I asked Max how he ended up working as the AMS elections officer in first year he said
“I was literally just like, I wanted a job. I wasn't somebody who was really attracted to clubs and other things on campus, and so I was like, maybe I can work and find community. Because I definitely struggled in that first semester to kind of find my community. I didn't do jumpstart, which is my biggest regret. I always tell people that if I could do UBC again, I do jump start. But I kind of applied for a job to find community. And then once I was in the AMS early on, I never necessarily stayed in the AMS because I loved the work. At times I did. It was definitely the people. Almost all the people I met in the AMS then are still my closest friends today.”
What defines Max’s politics?
I asked Max to tell me two or three things he’s been engaged in that defines his kind of politics.
“I will say probably one of the things I'm more proud of is my work in the Senate, actually, because, you know, the Senate holy 80 people. Just like everybody has an opinion and you have to try and find a way. You have to try and coalesce people into these coalitions of administration faculty, students, convocation (who tend to just be retired faculty), but all these people together to come in and agree on things. And I think the two biggest ones I can think of are fall reading break. But the one that doesn't get spoken about as much that … I think was equally, if not more impactful, was the academic concessions policy when we did that work, because we put together a committee, and it had managers of advising offices. The ombudsperson and I chaired the committee, and we … essentially completely changed that policy. And I still hear from students today about how much it's changed their experience and just not having to be so heavy on medical records and all these like there were so many things within there that were just so important to students.”
“But even the most revealing thing with my work in the Senate is how much people actually agree on what the problems are. It's just sometimes the solutions are more difficult. Everybody would say, oh, we don't have to deal with all these documentation, and this is so difficult, and it's a hassle for everyone. Well, then it's like, why don't we get rid of it? That was one of those things bringing together kind of coalitions on those topics. And those two topics were things that were always told to me, oh, it'll never happen because it takes far too long to get any work done in the Senate, and it's two to three years.”
“If you had a magic wand?”
That's really hard because I would want to fix a lot of things.
I actually think that the academic community is far better at governing itself and should have more ability to do that and be informed in good ways. And so I guess if I had a wand, I'd make the board majority elected. I would reform the Senate so that it has better structures to be less than just kind of this legislative weird body where the real things that are being proposed are by staff and administrators on the side. And the Senate has real difficulty actually getting anything done because of that.
So I would say I would want to create a system where academics [run the show] (whenever I say academics or the community when it comes to the board, I do include staff within that calculus, too and obviously I always include students and faculty). But I think if I could have a magic wand and kind of change everything, it would be that.
Max has observed a lack of willingness now for people to talk to each other informally. Max would try “to recreate some of the … willingness for people to speak and work with each other [informally]”
Everybody wants to work through formal channels. Nobody really wants to work, and nobody wants to sit down and have a chat and work things out. That's something that I wish I could change about UBC, because it wasn't always like that. Even in my time, I've seen how much informal channels that were so important to students have just been completely broken down and forced into these formal settings that really don't work to solve our problems.
Perhaps it as the pandemic I suggest to Max.
Yeah, I think [with] the pandemic just everybody got so overloaded on work that I think the informal things and that's why I was very understanding of it. I was like, everyone's super busy. Of course we're going to have to go back, but we're kind of post pandemic. And most of those things, I think people are just saying, like, no, let's force these conversations into this way, or trying to kind of push changes that aren't necessarily a good thing. I think the board in particular needs reform.
Yes, I agreed, the board needs reform. I suggested a majority elected board would make more sense than one majority appointed. Max nodded and we shifted conversational direction.
The UNA and student politicians.
One thing we hadn’t yet talked about was the relation between the UNA and students. First, the UNA had changed its bylaws to remove the appointed AMS Director. Then the AMS supported a group of student candidates in the UNA elections who closely affiliated with the AMS political structure. I asked Max to comment on the change in UNA bylaws remove the AMS Director and the 2021 UNA election outcome and what that might say about UNA/AMS relations.
“Despite years of people saying that this [UNA bylaw change] is something that needed to be prepared, I understood the UNA board was going in the direction that it was probably going to be all directors at large and there wouldn't be any requirement for any groups [such as students] to be represented. And you can argue the merits of that all the time, but I think there were a couple of problems with [the 2021 election] campaign. There was one, it was really outright like it looked like the AMS was trying to control you [the UNA]. AMS was running staff, was running execs. … It wasn't like [the AMS] went and found people within the neighbourhood that had a specific interest in this.”
“One of the things that I had, like, really wished -because I tried to stay neutral within the campaign, despite I have my own opinions- but I thought, for example, there should have been far more direct [campaigning]. This is something I've forever criticized in student politics, is the people who win are the best campaigners always. It doesn't matter how much experience you have, anything else, and campaigning is going out and speaking to people and doing things. It's classroom announcements. Like when you're talking about student politics, classroom announcements, it's giving out goody bags. I remember when I was running my exec campaigns or even my really contentious campaign to get on the board. When I first ran, I probably gave out like 1000 candies to separate students and it'd be like 11:00pm and I would be in the first year dorms talking to people. And so I really think that's what students do well when they mobilize. And a lot of that I feel like people have forgotten during the pandemic. And they think that the social media channels engage just as many people when they absolutely don't. It doesn't matter what you do on social media, what you do on your website, what you do with lawn signs.”
“I'd even say even media played a role. When I lived on campus and I lived in the University Village, those apartments up there. I got The Campus Resident every single time it came out. That was actually one of the most informative things when I was serving on board, was reading that and really getting an understanding of what people thought within the community. And I was always like, why didn't the people who were running, the students ,write things and get out ahead of time? And so yeah, that was one of those things that had so much potential and had been things that students had been talking about for a while but the execution was just so poorly done.”
Density and climate change.
Our next hot topic was density.
When the Stadium Place development first came up I was on the Board of Governors. I noted that as soon as UBC realized that extending Sky Train onto campus they also realized they could achieve $300 to $500 million more in land lease sales based upon what they would have achieved with only car and bus transport. It was at this point that I started to hear calls from planners and developers to densify Stadium Place (which started as part of an athletics campaign to rebuild their stadium). I suggested to Max that this seemed to be a natural fit to the developers, getting a kind of eco-social justice approach veneered in affordable housing language. So with that kind of provocative read in, I asked Max what he thought about the argument? How does he suggest finding a place to respond with empathy toward those already on campus who might have concerns about ramping up density so massively - essentially Manhattanizing the Stadium area.
“On the issue of density, I think SkyTrain has less to do with it. I'm somebody who radically believes that as much as possible, we should be building (1) affordable housing and (2), faculty and staff housing as much as possible as nonprofit, as affordable as we can get it within the means that we have. Would I love it if the government got rid of the taxable benefit and all these other obstacles that we have? Absolutely. Do I think that we have the pull to ever make government change those things? No. So I try to operate within the environment that I'm in, even though there are things that I would obviously do differently if I had the powers of government and so much more. I think, when responding to community concerns, I think you also have to look at all of the things that are coming forward, because at least from what I see it, we're agreed, everyone is agreed on, like, two major issues. And those two major issues are we want this, if we do anything, to address the climate emergency.”
“And I'm somebody who believes we should be banning natural gas with any new buildings in campus, that we should be phasing out any of the usage that we currently have within the neighbourhood. If we need to provide rebates or other things with the fees that we collect, let's try and find a way to do that. And there are great programs from BC Hydro already to support those initiatives. Not so much when it comes to condos, but I think there's ways around that.”
“So we're all agreed on climate. We all agree mostly that we want to address the climate emergency, try to have net zero as much as possible for our buildings on campus. And we're all agreed we want affordable housing for faculty and staff and students on campus. And so I hear that from everyone. I hear that from the UNA. I hear that. I don't hear anybody disagreeing on those two things. And then it comes down to how are you able to do that?”
“And I do take the viewpoint that if you slightly increase density if you are able to have more housing on campus, UBC can contribute to the Sky Train, which will reduce GHD emissions and make campus more accessible for those people who live really far off campus.”
“There's an argument to be made there that you should only be putting development in those areas that are climate resilient. And I actually think UBC in the general area where the Sky Train would be built out to, is one of those areas, at least in metro Vancouver. That's my argument for why I'd like to see an increase in student housing in particular, and to try and create better affordability mechanisms within student housing.”
“I think we do have to respect community engagement within these processes, hear people out as much as we can. However, just as I think that there's a reckoning happening provincially on the issue of municipalities being completely slowed down to do anything, especially on the affordable housing front, I worry that same situation is happening at UBC. But UBC doesn't have clear governance about it. So I think it becomes even worse for us at times because we don't necessarily know how to evaluate all of the different information.”
“I think when you hear all these different perspectives you can try and use facts and information to say okay, well obviously we're not going to decrease the amount of housing we are going to build on campus because there's housing [needs]. But we need to recognize that we do need more affordable housing, we need a vibrant community, we need better amenities on campus and so we are going to build some more. But actually this is going to be increased contribution to the endowment. This is entirely going to be going towards getting Sky Train built out to campus which I think generally there's large support from the community.”
“Let's actually look at how we can create a more vibrant community, not just looking at the product. Because one of the things I've said is what is the value to the university? Because you have to put everything in money terms but what is the value to the university for having amazing recruitment when it comes to faculty and staff housing? And I think the value is a whole lot more than a couple of hundred million that we get for the endowment. And so that's one of those and it's having those trade off conversations where people recognize that things that may not necessarily give you money have value to the university community.”
My thoughts
I’ve worked with Max on the Board of Governors and on Senate. We don’t always agree. What I admire in Max, among other things, is that despite disagreements he continues to engage, insistent in his perspective, but always willing to shift his approach in light of new or better information. Unlike others I meet on social media, Max seems to have found a way to stay reasonable irrespective of whether his interlocutor is agreeable or in agreement.
In a world in which public debate is becoming more and more unhinged, hyperbolic, and inflammatory it is refreshing to meet a politician who exemplifies a considered, sincere, insistent, and caring approach toward public discourse and debate.