The president attended the new student welcome, and so did I
Photo by Sydney Lobe.
UVic President Kevin Hall wrapped up his welcome speech and turned from the podium to exit the auditorium.
Hall only made it a few steps before James Pepler, project officer for the Office of the President, pressed play on the Shania Twain classic “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” at full volume on his iPhone.
“President Hall always requests to exit to this song,” Pepler called out to the crowd of students.
The auditorium erupted into laughter, and Hall, Chancellor Marion Buller, Pepler, and I left the faculty of science to resume their new student welcome.
“I think I prefer the Barbie song,” said President Hall once the four of us were well up the auditorium’s staircase.
For the previous hour, we’d been riding around in a fabulously decorated golf cart listening to Aqua. “Barbie Girl” played a fair few times.
The trio of administrators called this little vehicle the “Kev Kart” — a special rig for Hall and Buller to ride around in during new student welcome. We took the Kev Kart from one faculty welcome to another, stopping to meet free-roaming new additions to UVic’s student body in between engagements.
In a previous interview with the Martlet, Kevin Hall answered questions about his role at the university, his background, and his involvement with the community, but the question remained: who is the president, really?
For some, it doesn’t matter, and the only relevant factor in understanding Kevin Hall as president is paying attention to his fiscal, political, and social actions.
For others, politics is personal, and who a person is in their day-to-day life — when they are with their friends, family, or say, riding around in a decked-out golf cart with their colleagues — matters a great deal.
When the Kev Kart first pulled up in front of the Michael Williams building to collect me for the afternoon, I was immediately swarmed by a cacophony of overlapping dialogue and laughter.
Pepler drove, Hall rode shotgun, and Buller sat in the back with a fourth space reserved beside her, for me.
I shook hands with the three administrators, which would be the first and last formality of the afternoon.
We headed out, and right away Hall turned around in his seat to face me.
“So, you’re a journalist?” he said. I nodded. “What do you think of Chat GPT?” he asked then, with full attention, like he really believed I could tell him something he didn’t already know.
This was the first occasion of many throughout the day where we ‘lost’ Hall to an engaging conversation with somebody he had just met.
While the four of us buzzed from guest appearance to guest appearance, with a media responsibility in between, Chancellor Buller and I spoke about her long-spanning career as a lawyer and judge. She told me that she still practiced law when she had time — and had been practicing since she’d graduated law school here at UVic years ago.
“Campus is like home to me,” she said, watching her surroundings race by, as the golf cart whirred to its next destination. I followed her gaze across the quad, ardent and sparkling, and I could only think one thing — she loves it here.
If home is where the heart is, Buller’s heart is stretched all the way around Ring Road, twice.
At the end of the afternoon, I said goodbye to the chancellor and president, and stood outside of the Kev Kart with Pepler, simultaneously energized and exhausted.
“Was that what you were expecting?” he asked, smoothing down the UVic flags on the side of the golf cart.
“Not at all,” I answered. We both laughed.
“Yeah, they’re a fun pair,” said Pepler.
I remarked that both Hall’s and Buller’s passion for the university was hard to ignore.
Pepler agreed, then explained that he had also worked with Jamie Cassels, UVic’s former president, before Hall came into office, but the two presidents were vastly different.
While Cassels, with a background in education and law, saw the student body as a group for him to educate and serve, Hall sees UVic students and faculty as potential partners, colleagues, and long-term connections, with as much to offer him as he has to offer them.
“That seems like just the kind of person you’d want leading your university,” I said.
“Exactly,” Pepler replied, smiling.
In a prior interview with Hall, the Martlet asked him what piece of education or career advice he would give to UVic students.
Leaving campus that afternoon, I thought about his reply: “You’ve got to be passionate about what you do.”
Whether you are indifferent to, critical, or approving of Hall’s aptness in his presidential role, know this: when it comes to his advice to the student body, the president is leading by example.
