UBC Insiders On Air, Episode 10 – Nil Keshmiri and John Metras

Nil Keshmiri and John Metras, who are both deserving of 50 foot banners.

This week, former Commerce Undergraduate Society president and friend of Wally the Bull, Nil Keshmiri joins us on the news beat. We talk about the KUS referendum being put to rest, a proposed boycott of UBC Food Services, gender parity in engineering, and she is more than gracious in answering our intemperate accusations about Sauder’s many shady sides.

For our interview, we talk to John Metras, the Managing Director of UBC Infrastructure Development. This is the university’s office that proposes and manages construction projects. We cover the cliche that UBC is the “University of Building Construction”, specific projects including the bus loop/residence, Tall Wood building, and dig into district energy systems.

Some episode links:

• The KUS referendum results will not be ratified.
• The AMS calls for a boycott of UBC Food Services. They are trying to do *something* I guess?
• Engineering aims for gender parity in enrolment by 2020.
• Sauder. There was that time the CUS had a weird, Sauder-admin-initiated referendum for a $500/year student fee to pay for their building. Which is bad enough until it came out that Sauder admin were renovating their offices using money they seem to have hidden from students during that referendum. And speaking of referenda, after the Sauder rape chants, students voted down a plan to allocate money after kinda saying they would.
• Plans are afoot for an 18-story building constructed primarily out of wood.