Published on 03/11/2009

Jermaine Bagnall is not Barack Obama, no matter how much everybody might want him to be.
“That’s a true compliment, but undeserved,” he said. “I’m not coming in as a messiah.”

No Obama, but looking for ‘change’

Jermaine Bagnall is not Barack Obama, no matter how much everybody might want him to be.
“That’s a true compliment, but undeserved,” he said. “I’m not coming in as a messiah.”
Bagnall, a graduate film student who is only in his second year at Ryerson, beat out RSU veteran Abdul Snobar and upstart Tom Dolezel for the RSU presidency by playing a safe campaign and staying out of trouble.
Since then, the politically inexperienced Bagnall, 27, has enjoyed a honeymoon with students looking for a breath of fresh air.
And when he officially takes over a continually dysfunctional students’ union on May 1, many are expecting miracles.
But until he starts making real decisions, nobody will know what the Bagnall administration will really be like.
Bagnall, a tall, lithe athlete who spends most of the interview contorting his body into different positions between two chairs, has had a hard time dealing with the sudden blast of media attention.
“Sitting here talking to (The Ryersonian) on a Friday night, that’s kind of weird,” he said.
Considering his background, he really should be used to it by now.
Bagnall, who was born in Etobicoke and grew up in Edmonton, was a star player for the varsity basketball team at Laurentian University.
A walk-on wearing No. 22, he ended up playing forward for four years, even coming back from a serious knee injury.
At one point, he even got recruited to a Division II college team in Tennessee, but turned it down to return to Laurentian.
After graduation, Bagnall did a summer course in film at Ryerson and decided to pursue a graduate degree here.
He was taking pictures for the Ryerson Free Press when he stumbled into his first confrontation with RSU politics.
“It was the meeting to have a motion to defederate (from the Canadian Federation of Students),” he said. “People were at each other’s throats. It was chaos. I thought ‘My goodness, what is this?’”
But instead of getting turned off by the RSU, he got involved.
In 2008, he was acclaimed as chair of the graduate council. This position got him on the board of directors and a front seat to the destructive infighting that has plagued the RSU.
“People seemed to be stuck, not voting with their conscience,” he said. “My major thing is the personal level of animosity with people.”
Since winning, Bagnall has made an effort to speak to faculty reps and as many key RSU members as possible.
He promises that next year’s team RSU will not be split by competing slates.
“We’re a team, not out to get each other,” he said.
The cynics might say that Bagnall can pull this off because his Undivided slate swept the executive positions and a majority of seats on the board. “People should know the board will be very different. We’re in a culture shift,” he said. “I don’t have a personal agenda.”
However, it is still unclear exactly where Bagnall’s personal politics fall.
He is a bright, well-spoken individual with an easygoing charm.
But when pressed on important subjects like the expiring health and dental plan, the continuing U-Pass saga, racially charged political activism on campus, CKLN, or even the upcoming athletic centre referendum, Bagnall is non-committal, often citing the need for more research.
But just like Obama, Bagnall is in danger of being labelled as all flash and no substance if he doesn’t show early, positive results. “I haven’t done anything yet,” he said. “You can’t make everybody happy. I (just) don’t want to do stuff where my parents would be mad at me.”