An excruciatingly long agenda was set for this last meeting before the winter break. After sitting on their laurels for a whole term, the Arts caucus decided to put everything they ever wanted in the AMS into this one meeting and throw it at us like a brick. Items of interest included re-establishing “unofficial” slates [...]
Two new posts today. Don’t forget to scroll down. So today I was walking along on the upper floor of the SUB, about to head downstairs to the pottery studio, when I heard this alluring jazzy music coming from the ballroom. I thought it might be a recording. So I headed over, thinking that I [...]
Lowdown on yesterday’s meeting: it was exhausting, and sort of charged up for some weird reason. I think order was poorer than usual somehow. Maybe it’s the pressure of the end of the year building up. Anyway. The meeting began with Nancy Knight, the Administration’s AVP campus & Community Planning. Nancy always puts on a [...]
So two times today, power failed at UBC. The first time was around 1 in the afternoon. Sebastian, from my plant genetics class recounted to me that someone else in his lab had lost 100 PCR reactions that had been in the thermocycler due the 20-minute outage. I sympathized absently, and wondered how much money [...]
Yesterday there was an AMS council meeting. I missed it, but since everyone loves hearing about the machinations of democracy, or better yet, themselves, here’s a summary written up by Blake Frederick, the AVP Academic and University Affairs (otherwise known as Brendon’s minion), on his brand-new blog: http://universityaffairs.blogspot.com/. I also have word that a certain [...]
Voter Funded Media, the contest that saw the birth of this and other (now defunct) charming student publications, is soon to be re-launched for this year. Yay! The media-reform project is meant to improve media culture, and by extension democracy in general. This is theoretically accomplished by making media into a public good: you reward [...]
Trek Park, the space “liberated” from the old bus loop as a protest for the U-boulevard re-development project, is looking a little worse for wear. The park, consisting of some grassy areas, a large checkerboard, and some benches and furniture, was set up to create a student-friendly, free public space, and raise awareness and opposition [...]
There’s a veritable cornucopia of consultations going on right now. So get your voices and obnoxious views into those final reports, dudes. For serious. Sub Renew – AMS is starting the consultation process for the prospective expansion and renovation of the SUB. Everything from buying out Pacific Spirit Place (the university-owned and operated cafeteria) to [...]
Israel Boycott debate re-opened Also in the September’s Faculty Focus newsletter (click!), is an article calling on faculty and UBC to open up a debate on an academic boycott of Israeli academia. The article is authored by some familiar faculty members, including the head of the undergraduate biology program, Martin Adamson, and Arts AMS councilor [...]
Two items of interest from the UBC Faculty Association this month. See above post. Sources from the Faculty Focus (click!) newsletter. Teaching evaluation ire The Association has called upon the university to put an immediate moratorium on the new teacher evaluation system to be implemented this term. The new system would see “modular” forms filled [...]
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