I know that student politics aren’t perfect, but I also know most students try their very best and most of our flaws can be chalked up to lack of experience. We’re young, our views are only as broad as our experiences, and for many of us that isn’t a lot to go off of.
So what’s the PEO’s excuse? I went to the Annual General Meeting of the Professional Engineers Ontario, and in a room full of individuals who were licensed based on their experience and expertise, I was astounded by what I heard. It wasn’t a problem with the motions that were brought forth, which I will detail later in this article. The thing that surprised me most was the lack of respect and professionalism that was coming from the members and the chair throughout the meeting.
I know political arguments can get heated; we’ve seen it in our very own EngSoc meetings. The difference was, this was not a student society where many people were still developing their leadership skills. This was the annual general meeting of Professional Engineers Ontario, it should have professional standards. It was bothersome to me that in a room full of professionals, it felt like the group of student society executives I was with were the only ones who realized how unacceptable the comments and thrashing and speaking out of order were for our profession. I know I was an outsider looking in, but I had been to the meeting last year and there was no improvement coming from the members. I understood that the PEO Council had been under new leadership and lot of things can be chalked up to the actions of the current council, but it was the members that were behaving poorly, not the council. I kept being told that what I was watching was not a reflection of our profession, but when it was the general members, not the council, being disrespectful how could I believe such a claim?
I was suddenly embarrassed for the profession I had been working towards for the last four years. The prestige and honour associated with licensure that I had seen among colleagues on co-op jobs was slipping away from my memory. All I could think was the only way to fix this, the only way I would want to be associated with the profession of engineering in the future, was if there was a culture shift, and a significant one at that.
Here’s where you, the student, comes in. It is up to us to conduct ourselves in a way that positively reflects our profession. In today’s world, focused on technology and innovation rather than infrastructure, many graduates of engineering may never obtain their licence. However, all our actions reflect the education we have received. We rarely hear stories of the poor conduct of doctors, lawyers, and accountants from their licencing bodies. That might be because we are farther removed from that profession as engineers, but it’s also because their members have not sent rash emails or uttered rude comments at meetings.
We are the future of our profession. I know outstanding engineering students from the University of Waterloo and others in Ontario. I know that the engineer that positively reflects the profession, the engineer that serves the public, attends this school. I also know that there is a group of very hard working individuals at the PEO that are working towards bettering the profession of engineering. If we want engineering to mean something in the future, we need to act with the same respect we’d like for our profession. We need to speak up when we feel a decision does not best serve our mission to protect society, but we also need to understand differences of opinions and make our voices heard without shunning out the voices of our colleagues. I think engineering is necessary and important to our society, but if we forget that we work for society and with them, then society might forget us. Respecting our colleagues is part of working for society, and I hope when our generation is in the workforce we will be a positive example for our successors.
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