First there was Insiders 1.0. No joke, it was pretty awesome. It gave everyone a great outlet to talk about issues, occasionally flame each other, but most of all to learn about the issues of the day.

About a year ago, Insiders got some new editors and moved away from the dinosaur known as blogspot to these swanky new WordPress digs as part of UBC Blogs (back when it was a more exclusive club). It may have been slightly aesthetically lacking but the core was based on some really kick-ass stories.

This is one final post to announce the creation of www.ubcinsiders.ca, AKA “UBC Insiders 3.0″ where we now live and have discovered the that using pictures is a good thing. We’re excited and hope you’ll continue to visit us there.

At the University of Toronto, housing stocks are low, and plans are underway to build a tower of a tower. Thirty-plus stories of student housing. Typically, more beds is met with much rejoice, but this is being met with caution. The plan is to have the tower managed privately, through a Public-Private Partnership, which involves the university relinquishing control over certain aspects of planning, management, and operation.

UBC faces a similar housing-crunch. While past UBC administrations have fought vehemently against the P3 model, advocating for its own UBC3 model (where the public partner is UBC, and the private partner is UBC), rumour has it that the current admin has been reassessing that stance to meet demands. (Sidenote: There’s great stories of Martha Piper shouting at senior ministerial staffers on this very issue. It worked.)

In light of numbers assessing the need for more dorms, the Campus Plan states UBC’s goal is to have 50% of its undergraduate population on campus. The Campus Plan does not answer how, and P3′s are the low-hanging fruit.

The Province will not likely be able to commit the money for the massive expansion. UBC had to exert considerable pressure on them for the debt needed to expand Totem Park by a few hundred beds. Image the The problem: Government doesn’t like having the million-dollar debt-loads on its books, when it won’t be seeing the black for some time, particularly given the recession. A P3 model gets around this problem. The debt isn’t carried by UBC, it’s on the back of hedge funds.

It’s still too early to see if this is a win for students. Private firms are concerned about one thing, their bottom line, while Universities are concerned about their reputation. Typically, private firms respond to demands because it effects their bottom line, but given the absurdly high the demand for student housing is, the inability for true low-/no-income rental competition in West Point Grey, and the simple appeal and added-value of being a student on campus, there’s plenty of opportunity for gouging.

And that gouging would fester in the regulation blackout of many campuses, UBC included. Educational institutions are given wide-range to run housing as they see fit, often exempted from the rules of the private market (see: 4b.) This is somewhat appropriate, because the bottom line matters less to Universities, who are more interested in providing a holistic, accommodating experience to their students (it is half of their business, after all.) For private firms, all that comes secondary to more profit, so students would need rent controls and other tenancy rights to protect their interests.

How these concerns are managed and negotiated at UofT will set the model for the rest of the country. At stake is how public our public institutions ought to be, and the role of universities in providing student life.

First of all, the format used makes it difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on sometimes. There are no actual totals from last year included, and lines that have been eliminated from the budget (Block Party, Equity and Diversity, Safety Coordinator, Policy Analyst) do not appear in the document to let you know that they did in fact exist in last year’s budget.

Going into the content, it’s important to know that this budgeting process has been ongoing for a while now. Back in March, council overwhelmingly supported the principle of eliminating the structural deficit. And this budget has met that goal: nothing is coming out of unreplenished funds (savings, essentially) to make it balance.

However, how they ended up there is not exactly how they said they’d do it in March. At the time, they played the doomsday card in order to undertake the cutting/restructuring of some AMS Services, Equity, and Safety. And it wasn’t just the services that would be cut; other parts of the AMS would suffer too. The preliminary budget presented in March summarized the major cuts as follows:

For the most part, they stuck to the targets, with two glaring exceptions. At the time, they still planned to hold Block Party, albeit with a reduced budget. Instead, they unceremoniously dumped the entire event.

And then there’s that line that goes from a fairly large red number on the left to a fairly large green number on the right: Exec Offices. Rather than trimming their budgets by $42,000 as promised, it actually increased by $28,000.

While the rest of the budgets are being cut, the execs have made a $70,000 cash grab. What makes the whole thing more offensive is where it’s going. Here are the highlights of new/increased funding in the “Exec Offices” budgets:

*$7,200 for additional exec health plans, above and beyond the AMS’s own student health plan ($1,200 per exec)

*$4,600 for cell phone plans

*$1,250 increase to furniture budgets

*$9,500 increase to “Conferences & Official Business”

*$5,500 increase to “Partnership Building”

*$22,500 in new funds for “Provincial Lobbying” – supposedly membership dues for an as-yet-non-existent pan-BC lobbying group.

*$9,000 for Lobby Days

*$11,000 increase to executive committee “Special Projects”

*$12,000 increase to other executive “Special Projects”

*$14,000 for “Discretionary Allocation” by budget committee

The items above total to just under $92,000 of new/increased spending in the exec portfolios, and for what? Most are either exec perks, or vaguely-defined slush funds.

The rationalization offered is that this shouldn’t matter because of the overall totals. The preliminary budget allocated $660,000 for Student Government while the current budget allocates $689,000; the increase isn’t massive, is still down from last year’s $751,000, and some movement between preliminary and final budgets are to be expected so everything is fine. But then how did the exec budget end up ballooning so drastically?

What the preliminary budget didn’t hint at was the axing of the Policy Analyst position, which cost ~$70,000. When the Policy Analyst position was eliminated, for which no explanation is obvious, it provided a massive injection of unallocated dollars into the student government portfolio. That’s how the execs managed to find so much unassigned funding to devote to their own uses. There were also a bunch of funds resulting from the elimination of a number of assistants/commissioners (savings ~$45,000).

Why not put some of it back into AMS Services, avoiding cuts? Why not save it by putting it back in the AMS’s funds? Why not put it into holding an end-of-year event? Why even cut the Policy Analyst in the first place? Instead, all of the funding, and more, was allocated to the exec portfolios.

The whole thing is blatant hypocrisy by the executives: a massive cash grab while they are sounding the alarm of a budget crisis and preaching fiscal responsibility on everyone else. AMS Council shouldn’t accept this type of behaviour.

Events

Meeting the budgeted savings for the AMS’s three big events hardly seems like a slam dunk either. Here’s why:

Welcome Back BBQ: The major cut is decreasing band costs from $9,500 to $3,000. However, at the same time there’s 20% increase in profit from food and beverage. Will more people really come out to see a lower-profile act?

FirstWeek: All of the “savings” doesn’t come from spending less, it comes from selling more. The more conservative cost is predicated on the AMS more than doubling their revenue from frosh kits, increasing ticket revenue by 1/3, and doubling sponsorship dollars. This seems pretty risky… the obvious question is ‘what if that extra revenue doesn’t come in?’

Shea (AMS Events dude) apparently proposed a revenue-neutral model for FirstWeek which was rejected as not being realistic. So then what does that say about what the AMS Exec are proposing for the last event…

Block Party: After saying in the preliminary budget that it would be cut by $7k, it was eliminated from the budget completely. When this fact was noticed, and subsequently tweeted and written about, the AMS was caught completely flat-footed. Among wildly conflicting reports from various execs, they denied Block Party was canceled and were aghast that media would interpret its complete omission from the budget as such.

Furthermore, not only is Block Party not canceled, the AMS claims that they are very intent about supporting some last-day-of-classes event, assuming that it’s revenue-neutral. (Although, as mentioned above, they thought a revenue-neutral FirstWeek was unrealistic). Here are the details they’ve figured out so far:

Where will it be held? Not sure yet.

What will it be called? Not sure yet.

Who will be organizing it? Not sure yet.

Who will be paying for it? Not sure yet.

What will it consist of? Not sure yet.

What happens if a revenue-neutral model can’t be developed? Don’t know.

What if a revenue-neutral model is developed but fails, incurring large cost overruns? Don’t know.

etc.

Block Party clearly lives on, and how dare you suggest otherwise!

Presentations

Strategic Plan – Bijan Ahmadian
Budget Committee – Elin Tayyar/Ben Cappellacci

Vague titles, but you can guess what sorts of things will be in them. The presentation arising from the Final Report on Systemic Discrimination in the AMS was slated to happen this month but is not. The reason given by Ekat is “BECAUSE WE ARE EVIL”. That may have been a joke answer, with the real reason being that they didn’t want to have too many presentations on the agenda. However, using “keeping the meeting short” as a reason to leave things off the agenda should really be considered a joke as well.

2010-2011 AMS Budget

“BE IT RESOLVED THAT the 2010/2011 AMS Budget be accepted as presented.”

Dear Councilors: please scrutinize this budget in depth. If you have not read the budget in detail, abstain from voting on it. Voting on things you haven’t read through fails pretty much everyone.

Speaking as someone who has read the budget in way too much detail: there are a number of really bad things going on with this budget which will be explained in a separate post, and probably be even better explained by the Ubyssey. Basically it boils down to the fact that execs were raising the alarm about the precarious financial situation of the AMS a few months ago, making lots of cuts to services and promising cuts to exec budgets as well. Now that the actual budget has arrived, the cuts to services are still there but exec budgets have actually increased, with a lot of the money finding its way into slush funds and executive perks. Even if you don’t mind the increased exec budgets (though I don’t know why you wouldn’t), the false pretenses put forward for the whole process is offensive.

BAFCOM motions

*An extra $1000 (from $5k to $6k) for the renovation of 42A.
*An extra $350 (from $2k to $2350) for installing safety rails.
*Up to $3,500 to renovate the 249 service centre
*Up to $2,500 to renovate the public computer terminals

Executive Benefits

Be it resolved that the members of the executive, and the ECSS have their compensation changed to add the following: The ability to be reimbursed for expenses not covered under their healthcare coverage that would be provided under the extended healthcare plan that the AMS’s permanent staff revive, up to $1200 per annum.

This is one of the aforementioned exec perks being proposed. Their argument is that it will simply bring them in line with other full time AMS employees. I’d argue that, although they work full-time, their primary identity should still be as a student (whom they are supposed to represent), not as an AMS employee. The execs are eligible for the AMS Health and Dental plan. My question to the execs: is that not an adequate health plan?

(To make matters worse, rumours also abound about cuts to the student health plan next year.)

Elections Administrator

Trying to get an early jump on things because they are planning referenda for October, the AMS is hiring their EA now. There’s no name provided; interviews hadn’t been completed when the agenda came out. Who’s the (un)lucky person this year?

Committee Appointments

1 student-at-large seat on the University & External Relations Committee and 2 student-at-large seats on the Education Committee are up for grabs. Catch: the appointments are very short, ending at the first council meeting in September 2010.

Also available: 2 councilor spots on the UBC Ombuds Advisory Committee

Another extraordinary Board Meeting: Let’s revise the OCP!

UBC’s Board of Governors has scheduled their second extraordinary board meeting so far this year for Friday at 2 pm. There’s only one thing on the agenda but it’s substantial: setting out the process by which UBC will revise the OCP, which has not been reviewed since 1997. The OCP (Official Community Plan) is the master planning document for the university which looks at the big picture of what types of development happens on what parts of campus. To be clear: this isn’t discussing the changes they’d like to make, only the process by which they want to go about making changes and consulting on them. It’s supposed to start in mid-July, ramp up to a first round of public consultation in October, a second round in late November/early December, and then the final revisions will be submitted to the province in February 2011.

The plan consists mostly of background info, only getting mildly specific in order to address the UBC Farm. In mid-May, Toope released a “President’s Statement on UBC Farm and Bill 20″ to make it “crystal clear” that UBC was still committed to preserving the Farm, and that the governance changes would in no way affect that.

Apparently unmoved by that vague assurance, the Friends of the UBC Farm’s blog put out a call for UBC Farm supporters to send letters to UBC and the province, to urge them to change the Farm’s zoning so that it would no longer be within a “Future Housing Reserve”.

You get the sense that UBC definitely wants this resolved as part of the OCP revision:

…there are two other issues that need to be addressed in this plan amendment process.

The first is the resolution of the three Future Housing Reserves identified in the Land Use Plan, one of which contains the UBC Farm. As per the Board of Governors’ resolution of November 2008, this land will be designated for academic purposes when the academic plan for the area is completed and the housing density assigned to the area is transferred to other parts of campus. The academic plan, “Cultivating Place”, is now complete, the density transfer will be addressed in the amendment process and the area’s designation will be changed to a special “green” academic designation. “Cultivating Place” will be the guiding framework for land use in this area.

Final Report on Systemic Discrimination in the AMS

Commissioned last year from SPARC BC at a cost of $12,000, the Final Report on Systemic Discrimination within the AMS has been released. It’s 38 pages of telling the AMS everything they’re doing wrong to the detriment of pretty much everyone.

But wait, how do we know the AMS is such a hotbed of systemic discrimination that such a report is needed?

“The fact that systemic discrimination is likely hidden makes it difficult to diagnose and address. This does not mean that systemic discrimination does not exist,” and thus “this review assumes that systemic discrimination is at work in the AMS and therefore seeks to identify the pattern of systemic discrimination at work in the AMS.” If nothing else, the report does an excellent job attempting to justify its own existence.

The report’s conclusions are well-meaning but not necessarily practical. It highlights communication with the student body as an area in need of major improvement; most within the AMS would concur on this point. It also champions the use of non-voting seats. The report notes the steep learning curve required to be involved on the council level, and suggest ways of flattening that curve. Finally, it expresses affection for equity training, and advocates for (what else?) more research into systemic discrimination in the AMS.

There will be a presentation at the next council meeting (July 14) going over the findings and what the AMS’s plan is to deal with issues of systemic discrimination.

CASA’s coming to Vancouver

CASA’s 2011 AGM will be happening in Vancouver next March! Here’s hoping we’re not in the process of withdrawing our membership for the umpteenth time while that’s going on.

In other CASA news, a new national director was named – Zach Dayler. Dayler is a polisci major coming from Acadia (BA) and Dalhousie (MA).

Bargaining Begins

Contracts for most of the unions operating on campus expire this summer, which means a great deal of admin hours this summer will be devoted to working out new ones.

CUPE 116, representing many of UBC’s non-faculty employees initiated the bargaining process at the end of March, though haven’t yet had their first meeting with UBC.

The contract for CUPE 2278 (UBC’s TA Union) is up on August 31 of this year, though from what we’ve heard, that bargaining process has not begun yet either.

UBC’s Faculty Association has stated their proposals on their website, along with UBC’s proposals to them.

UBC’s Association of Administrative and Professional Staff also has a collective agreement expiring on June 30, 2010, despite the fact that they are not actually a union.

Want to transform the undergrad experience? Use lots of jargon

Enrolment Services are currently working on a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project, which is focusing on transforming the experiences of undergraduate students at UBC. Everything has the potential to change, including how students are recruited and choose to apply to UBC, applying for awards, selecting a faculty, and registering for courses. Enrolment Services want to make the process as intuitive, simple, and timely as possible.

A BPR project is all about radical change, dramatic outcomes, and the transformation or replacement of an overall process. It’s an eight week process being taken on by a 14 member team, who will then create a report and a set of recommendations. These will then be presented to the Executive Steering Committee, co-chaired by @bowtiebrian himself, Brian Sullivan, and UBC’s Provost, David Farrar.

Such a project also occurred in 2000, and the final report can be found here. Many changes came from that BPR project, and many more will happen from this year’s, called ASIST.

If you want to learn more about the project, and give your thoughts, visit their website: http://blog.students.ubc.ca/asist/about/

-From Kevin Byers

Bijan can’t work without pants, wants AMS to buy his clothes for him

During the April 30 AMS Council meeting, Bijan said something to the effect of “I can’t do serious business without pants on.” Nobody thought much of it beyond it being a funny comment. Turns out it may have been an actual plea for pants.

During the executive committee meeting two days before that council meeting, Bijan raised the idea of taking money from the Lobbying Fund to use as a wardrobe budget for execs. Thankfully, the other execs shot that idea down, taking the downright absurd position that “people can buy their own clothes”. Presumably Bijan was able to find some non-AMS-funded clothing to wear and get back to serious business.

Thanks to the UN debacle last year, a few people have started taking the unprecedented step of actually reading all the minutes that get approved. Yes, it’s crazy. But not nearly as insane as these BAFCOM Minutes which also got approved.

That assumption: that a grade percent, standing on its own, means something.

The Vancouver Sun recently posted an article entitled “Want to go to UBC? You’ll need an A average”. In the article, UBC’s associate director of enrolment states “I wouldn’t have got in with my grades 20 years ago, but if 20 years ago the cutoffs had been what they are now, I would’ve worked harder and I would’ve got in.” He’s assuming that higher admission grades means one has to work harder to be admitted.

Now, I’m not sure if Arida is deliberately giving the Sun what they want to hear here, but he’s not being exactly truthful. Fact of the matter is, your grade percentage is irrelevant. What does matter is where you fall compared to your peers.

UBC tries to admit the best students it can. The province tells UBC how many domestic students it has to admit. So, UBC takes in as many applications as it can, sorts them from best to worst, and takes as many as they can.*

That’s it. A cutoff average is just UBC’s estimate to get a desired class size. It’s not some magical metric of difficulty of transferring to UBC from high school. That metric is the percentage of students admitted from the applicant pool. Counter to the picture the Sun paints, the trend in BC has been more students being admitted to university, and less students graduating from high school.

Our high schools have bumped the curve to the right, while provincial policy has shifted the z-score to the left. Despite students now needing 6 more percentage points, it’s actually easier to get in. That’s the fallacy of absolute grading.

* This is a simplified model. UBC takes in the applications and modifies them according to broad based admissions, province of origin (Alberta students get a boost), and other considerations. With international enrolment UBC is free to do whatever.

Telestudios airs a live stream of the ceremonies, unfortunately using Microsoft proprietary platforms (.asx and Silverlight). If anyone knows how to get those working on a reasonable platform leave a note in the comments thread. I tried to get a capture stream running in VLC, but failed.

On a more personal note, I’ll be crossing on Monday at 1:30pm. Tune in for what hopes to be a spectacular student speech by my former boss, Michael Duncan (no pressure), and come meet up with us for photos after the ceremony’s over!

(a) revise UBC’s traffic and parking regime so that it interlocks with the new legislative framework;
(b) update and streamline the existing traffic and parking rules, which have been overtaken in many instances by changing technology, management practices and by the evolving character of the Point Grey campus;
(c) establish a uniform traffic and parking system for UBC and UBC Okanagan; and
(d) add flexibility in order to meet future changes

Someone who regularly drives to and parks a car on campus might now be interested to hear what changes are in store for them. In response, UBC would like you to stop paying attention, because this process is not a big deal and should be entirely uncontroversial because it’s simply formalizing current practice.

It is unlikely that the users of parking services at either UBC Okanagan or UBC Vancouver will even realize that the Proposed Rules have been adopted unless they take the time to read and compare them with the existing rules.

In fairness, that’s largely accurate: the new parking regulations are indeed mostly a restatement, in better legalese, of UBC Parking’s current parking regulations.

That’s the problem.

The basis for re-enacting the current policy appears to be a logical fallacy that goes something like: current practice is best practice, because it is current practice. [Or in broader terms, UBC knows best, because it is UBC.]

The class action lawsuit UBC faced over the legality of their parking practices might suggest otherwise, and the university would be well-advised to give a little more consideration to where they might be if the province had not stepped in with retroactive legislation designed to legitimize the parking rules.

Some things that could warrant further reflection include:

* If you pay the posted rate for parking, but the posted rate is incorrect, you are considered to be in the wrong for paying the incorrect amount. [Sec. 11]

* Questionable wording in which a Traffic Notice is issued for “an alleged contravention of the Rules,” but then goes on to state that in regards to the Traffic Notice “the endorsement by the Compliance Officer [... is] proof of the facts stated therein.” My non-lawyer interpretation is that the issuance of a Traffic Notice both alleges and simultaneously proves the infraction happened. [Sec. 20]

* Immobilizing and/or towing cars, even if they are legally parked at the time, for having 3 or more outstanding tickets [Sec 21. (b)]

* Withholding academic services to students as a result of outstanding parking fees. [Policy 67]

* When a parking ticket is appealed, the “Hearing Officer” who is tasked with resolving disputes is an employee of UBC Parking.

The last bullet is particularly unfortunate, as it undermines the legitimacy of the entire set of regulations. Despite best efforts to downplay this by including a clause stating the hearing officer “must faithfully, honestly and impartially perform his or her duties,” having such a person employed by, and reporting to, one of the sides in the dispute is an inarguable Conflict of Interest. By making the rules, enforcing the rules, and deciding on the rules, UBC gets to play judge, jury and tow truck driver.

This is a perfect example of why a lot of people are worried, legitimately, about the new governance regime coming about as a result of the Metro Van divorce. The checks and balances supposedly in UBC’s system are set up in such a way as to be bureaucratic, rather than objective. If the Board doesn’t send these rules back for more careful reflection on this front, it will represent a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

On a more personal level, this past year has brought out the highs (digging into some really interesting stories; seeing change as a result of things that have been written) and lows (endless meetings; being worked to the point of exhaustion during AMS Elections) of working on a blog like this but it’s always been rewarding and worthwhile. Thank you for reading.

Lougheed note: A huge thanks to all those who have offered support during this venture. This was definitely my proudest side-project this year, and it couldn’t have happened without the constant feedback, positive or negative. In particular, I’d like to offer a huge thanks to Neal, whose cunning, acumen and persistence kept me going even when there was no midnight oil left to burn.

Hubert Lai, University Counsel (ie. UBC’s lawyer), gave an interview about Policy 116: Commercial Agreements Initiated by External Affairs and the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, where he explained what the policy was and why it was repealed. Most of all, he repeatedly played down the importance of the repealing of this policy, saying it was obsolete and should have been taken off the books years ago.

The policy was enacted when freedom of information laws were first being applied to universities. It covered how the university dealt with third-party companies that were not subject to these freedom of information laws who, by doing business with UBC, might be compelled to release information they might otherwise consider confidential. Policy 116 laid out the fact that:

1) The third party was allowed to hand-pick which information UBC should black out from the document in the event of an FOI request; and

2) If the appropriateness of blacking out those sections was challenged at the level of the privacy commissioner or via judicial review, the third party would have to pay all the costs associated with those challenges.

According to Hubert Lai (who, as a side note, recommends the Nitobe Garden as a good place to kiss on campus), times have changed…

…the kind of language that we would put in a contract and the kind of expectations the parties could have, back in 1995, they were fully supported by the [privacy] commissioner’s office. Since that time, the commissioner’s office has had that decision judicially reviewed and it’s been overturned and so the approach is very different on that as well. So the information that was contained in Policy 116 was no longer correct once that decision had been made.

The agreements this policy was meant to address weren’t run of the mill contracts. This was at a time when UBC had an affinity for exclusivity contracts, of which there were three majors. One was for telecommunications with Telus. Another was for travel with Canadian Airlines (it didn’t last long). The third was the infamous deal with the AMS and Coca-Cola.

What information was contained in the Coca-Cola deal that was considered confidential? Well, everything. Only 3 of 179 pages were released as a result of the original FOI request by Ubyssey reporter Stanley Tromp, and the university supported the ongoing censorship until a years-long judicial review forced the release of the details. In a way, Policy 116 was UBC’s way of enacting an interpretation of FOI laws in a way that benefitted them, until it was overturned in the courts; a loose evaluation of the situation might even be to say that Policy 116 needed to be retired because it was outside the law.

As a general strategy, trying to establish an interpretation of FOI laws that swings in their favour is something UBC was still trying to do last year when they appealed the Privacy Commissioner’s ruling opening up Properties Trust. In that case, the Petition of Appeal UBC filed did not even bother arguing the merits of the case, trying instead to get it thrown out on procedural grounds. That case is currently back with the Privacy Commissioner, on hold indefinitely.

Getting back to the topic at hand, for a narrower view of the type of info Coca-Cola wanted kept confidential, Hubert Lai explains:

Coke at the time said to both the AMS and the university – because it was a three-way agreement you have to remember between UBC, the AMS and Coke. They said “look, we’re prepared to share pricing information with you. There’s two sets of pricing information we’re prepared to share with you. One is the information that we can share with you if we know it’s going to remain confidential because if it was disclosed it would put us at a competitive disadvantage. If you can’t do that, and we recognize you may have some problems, then we can give you a different set of pricing information which will be higher prices, but if that’s the cost of transparency then that’s a decision the AMS and the university can make.” Thus ensued quite a discussion and both the AMS and the university ultimately decided that it made sense to go with the lower pricing information.

No one reading this blog should idealistic or naive enough to believe UBC wouldn’t put a price on transparency (and if you are, re-read the quote above again). However, to hear that the value UBC and the AMS placed on transparency was lower than the value of getting a marginally better price on soft drinks? Even for jaded cynics that’s detestable.

Although UBC will say they’ve gotten out of the business of exclusivity contracts, their relationship with Coca-Cola never ended. A new “non-exclusive product supplier agreement” between Coca-Cola, UBC Athetics and UBC Food Services was ratified by BoG at their April 2010 meeting, worth $6.665M over 10 years. (How nice of Coca-Cola to also give UBC a meaningless sustainability award shortly before it was approved.)

Now, with proposed changes to BC’s liquor laws set to “permit financial relationships between liquor manufacturers and licensees” a similar agreement with the likes of Molson might not be far off. (Fun Fact: there’s a plaque just inside the SRC identifying Labatt as a major donor to the project.)

While the university may not technically consider these to be exclusivity deals, they’re close. At the very least UBC has not been shy about doing deals designed to limit competition on campus. The contracts it has with businesses in the aptly-named Strangway building on U-Blvd: Royal Bank, Shopper’s and Mahony’s have clauses preventing any other banks, pharmacies, or liquor-primary licenced bars, respectively, from operating anywhere in the U-Blvd neighbourhood. The last one has caused some headaches for the AMS in severely limiting what can be done with regard to The Pit and The Gallery in the NEW SUB. Although it’s clear UBC is being a total sellout to make a quick buck with these agreements, progression in privacy laws means that this time, at least we know about it.