Tim Louman-Gardiner
Issue of the Day: Governance
Who governs UBC? Right now it’s a complicated balance between the University’s BoG, and the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). In short, UBC’s BoG has the final say on development on campus, provided it conforms with various strategic plans (OCP, etc) that are the purview of the GVRD. However, what happens when there’s a conflict? [...]
Debate V: Admin with Issue of the Day Goodness!
Today marked the second VP Administration debate. I use the term loosely. Generally speaking a debate involves a clash of ideas, and usually some disagreement. These candidates? Well, they just don’t. They generally agree. Students need to be more involved in renovation decisions, there needs to be less red tape for SAC, we need to [...]
Issue Backgrounder: Tuition and Financial Aid
It’s become clear, through comments, that most students don’t really know how Universities are funded, and how the financial aid process works. And since it currently ranks highest on our survey as an issue, we’re presenting this backgrounder. It’s wonky, but hopefully in plain English. 1) Government fundingThe government funds Universities in many ways. The [...]
Survey Results
As you may know, we did a survey of our readership. Stats are below the jump: Total responses: 43 Percentage planning to vote: 88.2% Are they AMS types? 27% said yes, while 9% said they pay attention and show up occasionally. 41% said they had a few friends involved, while 24% said they had no [...]
Debate IV: VP External
Subtitle: Naylor vs. the World We observed a unique phenomenon at the debate today. Matt Naylor knows a lot, and brought a lot of ideas. As punishment, he had to deal with all the other candidates shooting for him, trying to criticize him and his ideas. They clearly see him as the front-runner. This corner [...]
Swimming Upstream: The Maxwell Maxwell Story
Ordinarily, we like to look at the races race-by-race, but the Presidential race is kinda unique, the most important and, in this year’s unique circumstance, the two candidates are largely incomparable. One is offering a largely philosophical vision, the other a practical one. It’s the former with which we’re concerning ourselves, initially. Look for the [...]
Point-Counterpoint
This morning, Maxwell Maxwell and Jeff Friedrich had an excellent mini-debate on one of the posts below. It’s well worth reading, as it highlights the candidates’ distinctions, and provides some excellent discussion on the AMS. So we’ve reproduced it here. Maxwell Maxwell:To use a favourite word of mine, I think you misunderestimated my proposal. I [...]
Issue of the Day: U-Pass
Image from Wikipedia So, as most readers know, we have a U-Pass. Students pay $22/month, and can’t opt out unless they live outside Translink. In return, we get a pass good for Transit all over the lower mainland. The fee used to be $20/month, but we voted overwhelmingly in favor of raising it by $2/month [...]
Issue of the Day: Student Space
(If you haven’t filled out the survey, please check out the post below this one… we appreciate it!) Ironically (given the construction), student space is hard to come by on this campus. It generally exist in three forms: Space in University buildings. This includes faculty lounges, lobbies, study rooms, etc. Undergraduate Society spaces. Including MASS, [...]
Issue of the Day: Campus Life
A lot of ink has been spilled about “apathy.” We believe that the way to address apathy is to run a (student) government that’s relevant and important to students, voter turnout and promotions be damned. One of the recurring themes involves student life. Comments on earlier posts have included: “Are there not enough people coming [...]
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