Investigative

This category contains 42 posts

UBC and SFU: Cracking Open Two Sets of Books

Should private companies which are wholly-owned by BC universities be subject to the same FOI requirements as their parent universities? A case involving UBC will be trying to get the answer to that question soon.

Best Buy University

Ever since Pierre Ouillet was hired on as Vice President Finance, Resources and Operations, we’ve been noticing a trend with UBC’s relatively recent hires (well, most have been here for about a year now. We’re behind, ok.) (Dave King photo, modified by Alex. CC by-nc-sa 2.0)

Judge, Jury and Tow Truck Driver

Coming to the Board of Governors in early June is a new set of Parking Rules for UBC. According to the document, the reasons they are looking to enact new rules are: (a) revise UBC’s traffic and parking regime so that it interlocks with the new legislative framework; (b) update and streamline the existing traffic [...]

Policy 116: Coca-Cola and the Freedom of UBC’s Information

Back in January, UBC Insiders broke a story about email voting by the Board of Governors. At the time, we intended to actually go into the board policies that were involved. Life and AMS elections got in the way. Hubert Lai, University Counsel (ie. UBC’s lawyer), gave an interview about Policy 116: Commercial Agreements Initiated [...]

AvEd Strikes Down UVic’s Athletics Fee Increase but not UBC’s

As has already been discussed in a number of places already, UBC has recently created a Student Editorial Team to go along with The Administration Blog, where Pierre “zeeVP” Ouillet and Brian “BowtieBrian” Sullivan can communicate directly with the UBC community. The fact that the various different media have managed to each take something different [...]

The Henry Angus Tuition Fee

Commerce students are before the ballot now. There are some good backgrounders out there. We scrapped ours because frankly, it was too dry. The important lessons coming from the history are: 1. The rhetoric behind accreditation grew stronger with time. At first it was not being mentioned, then there were short references, now there’s direct [...]

Yes, The Killers Killed the Liquor at Thunderbird Arena

Avid readers of this blog may recall a post from last summer entitled: “Did The Killers Kill the Liquor at Thunderbird Arena?” The original post should be read in its entirety, but if you’re too lazy the synopsis is that in July 2009, UBC Athletics put an application forward to amend the liquor licence at [...]

Board of Governors Invents Secretive Voting Procedure

Last fall, the Board of Governors gave its consent to UBC’s newest policy, Policy 92: Land Use and Permitting. Look closely at the top right-hand corner of the policy. The approval date listed is October 2009. . . One problem: the Board never met in October.. .. From BoG website. The creation of Policy 92 [...]

The Quest for Admissions Fairness

Earlier this week we posted about a new Senate admissons policy, J-50. While it represents a small step in the quest for fairness in the admissions process, there is still a great deal more going on behind the scenes that is also more controversial. Indeed, while J-50 received widespread support from Senate, there were some [...]

Senate Enacts New Admissions Policy: Alberta Students get 2% Bump

Like all of the students whose studies it governs, the UBC Vancouver Senate found itself busy during the last exam period. At their meeting on Dec 16, Senate approved a new admissions policy, J-50, which allows the Senate Admissions Committee to adjust the admissions averages of incoming high school students based on where they originate [...]

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