Archive for March, 2008
Re-thinking referenda
Today is the last day to vote in this year’s AMS referendum. The results of the four questions will determine if we continue to have a U-pass program, if we’ll start subsidizing refugee students, if we’ll build a new SUB, and if we’ll make some by-law changes. The reason you need to we cajoled, marketed, [...]
UBC Farm politics, elaboration of.
If you’ve voted in the current student referendum, you may have noticed that there is no question about the UBC Farm. Most people of course, wouldn’t have expected one, but it is a surprise to some. The Friends of the Farm started a campaign to get a question on the referendum ballot which would see [...]
What to learn from the Crompton Lougheed affair
The world has gone mad. I don’t check comments for one day while working on a paper, and when I return there’s a frenzy! Anyway. There’s plenty of discussion in the below post about any and all aspects of this controversy. I want to zoom out and offer a few things we can take away [...]
Student Court Decision
The Student Court released its decision today in the VP Academic matter. They allowed the appeal, ordering that Alex Lougheed be disqualified. The Court left the matter of how to fill the vacancy up to the AMS Executive. More to come later, undoubtedly after Council. But, for those interested, the excerpt that outlines the reasoning [...]
Budget "cuts" are a pretty good idea.
As Tim mentioned below, the BC government had decided to reshuffle this year’s post secondary education money, as reported in the Vancouver Sun. The result is that universities lose out on a percentage or two of funding and smaller colleges and professional schools get a boost. UBC specifically is losing 8.7 million dollars from its [...]
Weekend Update
Various and sundry news items: At SFU, the defederation referendum passed. Over 66% of voters voted in favour of leaving the CFS. 4500 votes were cast. To student politics people, this kind of referendum is the Most Important Thing Ever. But it goes to show that, to students writ large, it really isn’t that big [...]
Quick note on our comment threads
With the latest discussions around our guest editorials, we’ve been forced to remove some comments because they were outside the implicit code of respect expected on our blog. We have preserved the option for anonymous comments because we think it is an important option in some (though not many) cases. Anonymity is not an exemption [...]
UBC and the NCAA
[I’d meant to write this sooner, but work commitments sapped my time and writing energies. As well, there’s a very good Ubyssey article on the subject; read it here. I also note that there has been some discussion at AMS Exec about the Athletics fee; I’m not sure what it is, and I’m not sure [...]
Counterpoint: Of the Knolligarchy and Other Phantasmagoric Creatures of the AMS Politics
An opinion piece by Bahram Norouzi When Maayan emailed me a week ago and asked me to write an opposing perspective on “power-mongering in the AMS assisted by AMS funds” by the “Knolligarchy” I knew that I was up for some crap, what I didn’t know was its magnitude. Having read the opinion piece by [...]
Financial Aid and Tuition
I have been meaning to post about this for quite some time now, being heavily subsidized by a european government to study one of the most expensive programs in a college (medical) for a registration fee (covering a half year buspass as well as heavily discounted warm lunches) of 200 Euros (300 CAD) a semester. [...]
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