News
Joel Solomon Vs. Board of Governors
Joel Solomon is one of the provincial appointees currently serving on the UBC Board of Governors. He’s a finance guy, but also an environmentalist. I recently read his book The Clean Money Revolution and decided to do a compare-and-contrast of its contents to stated UBC Board of Governors policy. Take a look at the following [...]
Unnecessarily pitting visitors vs community: MacInnes field parkade
If you, like me, have found yourself idly wondering why the site of the new MacInnes field has been sitting as a desolate, soggy pit of disgusting gravel-water over the last 6 months since the demolition of the old aquatic centre was completed, well, now you know: yet another expensive and unnecessary underground construction project [...]
New loophole in BC domestic tuition cap: a gchat dialogue.
UBC got some flack this year for their mega tuition increases for international students. Domestic students have been spared from drastic changes in the cost of education in recent years thanks to a BC government policy limiting tuition+fee increases to 2% a year since 2005. But that policy is very quietly being reinterpreted. I have [...]
FOI request turns up no records on Wesbrook Place consultants
This is a great example of how the Board’s difficulties with governance, engagement, and decision-making go well beyond the Gupta Affair and are built into how they conduct themselves on other big issues too. Rather than performing their duties as a governing body in good faith, the Board has outsourced the whole thing to a private corporation, and that corporation has in turn hired consultants.
UBC Insiders On Air, episode 26: from reddit to rowing
In this, our very last week of regular programming, we talk to UBC’s nerdiest and jock-iest constituencies! We have John Harvey for news (an engineering student and moderator of reddit’s /r/ubc). We discuss developments at the faculty association, the University Neighborhood Association’s financial woes, and the latest and concluding chapter of GuptaGate. For our feature [...]
UBC Insiders On Air, Episode 25: Tax Ingenuity and University Inidgineity
This week we are joined for topical chats with Alex Usher, of Higher Education Strategy Associates (and post-secondary education lifer). Our main interview this week is with Linc Kesler, the Director of the First Nations House of Learning at UBC, to talk about UBC’s aboriginal agenda. SUBSCRIBE to the podcast feed by searching for “UBC [...]
Chair of UBC BoG Finance Committee found to have avoided over $1M in BC taxes
Last December, The Honourable Mr. Justice George Macintosh found that Greg Peet, through a company he controlled called Veracity Capital, participated in a scheme designed to avoid paying over $1M in BC provincial taxes. “This is a simple case of a tax not being paid anywhere which ought to have been paid somewhere,” Macintosh wrote.
UBC Insiders On Air, Episode 24 – Sara-Jane Finlay
This week we are joined for news by 4th-year English student (and the brains behind some of this year’s more theatrical BoG protests) Gretta Dattan and brand new AMS VP Academic and student senator Samantha So. Our main interview this week is with Sara-Jane Finlay, AVP Equity and Inclusion, to talk about UBC’s sexual assault response and policy-making.
Divestment Double Standard
In making the decision not to divest, it’s a pretty clear double standard being applied – the old paternalistic chestnut of “do as I say, not as I do”. This decision should hopefully make clear that the Board’s difficulties with governance, engagement, and decision-making go well beyond the Gupta Affair and are built into how they conduct themselves on other big issues too.
UBC Insiders On Air, Episode 23 – Ingrid Parent
This week Moira Warburton and Tanner Bokor join us to talk news and elections, although voting is basically over. For our feature interview, we welcome Ingrid Parent, the University Librarian.
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