Tag Archives: jeremy mcelroy

Breaking: The Not So Awesome New U-Pass

Hey, remember when we broke that story about how all the students in BC will now be getting access to a U-Pass? And how us cool kids at UBC will have to pay a little bit more? Sounds ok, right? We’re having a referendum on it in March so there will be more on this to come.

However, the new U-Pass system SUCKS SO HARSH. Let us break it down.

The U-Pass will now be monthly, instead of by semester. This is a HUGE pain in the ass, to always remember to go get your U-Pass at the end of the month before it becomes the 1st. Also, isn’t this wasting a lot of paper?
You will most likely be going to a vending machine to get your U-Pass.
If you lose your U-Pass, you can’t get another one until the next month. Update: You can actually get up to one lost one per month, but have to go to the carding office instead.
The U-Pass won’t have your picture or name on it. It also will not be able to swipe in the swipy machines.
You have to present your student card with your U-Pass.
If you are caught without your student card, you are fined $173 AND you are not allowed to participate in the U-Pass program for the rest of the year.

So, let’s say you’re taking the Canada Line to work. There’s a random fare check before you get on the train, and you have your U-Pass in your pocket like you always do. You’re asked for your student card, and then you realize- oh shit, you forgot your student card in your gym bag after using it to scan in at the BirdCoop! If you get a mean transit cop, you’re then fucked for the rest of the YEAR.

Not to mention that if you get your wallet stolen or just misplace your U-Pass (as I do at least three times/year) you are then fucked for the rest of the MONTH.

So basically Translink is trying to crack the whip down on students. Good thing we have some smarty pants on Council. Students, if you get caught, just say that you have no fare instead of showing “half” of it. Then you’re treated like a regular criminal and not that of the super special student criminal. Oh, and if you’re graduating, don’t forget to “lose” your student card! It will be valid for another five years, so you have all that time to get your friends who are still in school to give you their “lost” U-Pass each month.

Thank you, Translink for this epic fail.

Rage your comments and conspiracy theories in the commentzzzzz and

VOTE FOR US IN VFM TO GIVE US MONEY HERE <3 <3 <3

2011 Sparkle Surveys: Presidential Edition

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These are difficult times, what with the indiscriminate flyerfucking of campus, the slander/righteous media overhaul, and the general debacle that is Bijan Ahmadian’s political career.

At times like this, we turn to our port in a storm, our spiritual inspiration, and we ask ourselves, What Would Foxtrot Do? And then, the answer came to us, gleaming like Glenn Beck’s forehead in the soft light of the Spiderman 3 stage lights. FOXTROT WOULD RUN A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE SURVEY. BIGGEST RACE. BIGGEST SCANDAL. TOUGH QUESTIONS.

After the break, McElroy, Moll and Shaban face off, but we drop the ALL CAPS (kinda). In the interests of fairness, candidates are presented in alphabetical order.

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Sparkle Endorsements 2011

Where did all the Commerce go?

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You all know what a Commerce student is. Even though their new, expensive building keeps them oh-so-exclusive and they’re dwarfed in sized by Science and Arts, you’ve seen them around. There’s at least one of them running that club you’re in and they’re always click-click-clicking away on their Blackberries and Macbooks, dreaming of fast cars and fast money.

So where did they all go? With Ben Cappellacci’s recent resignation from the BoG race, the only Sauder-ite left running for office this year is Michael Moll, who’s a fresh face to AMS politics. His “experience” consists of being 2nd year and 3rd year rep at Commerce and a “business blog” that reminds us of a certain boring Owl. His platform is literally “The AMS should be more like the CUS”. Way to represent, Moll.

Last year’s Commerce candidates were filled with big names like Bijan (joint MBA/Law and bijan.ca), J Rebane (Kicking it with Pedobear), Ekat (a Foxtrot Fox) and Stas Pavlov (writes for these guys). There were seven Commerce candidates last year and almost all of them got elected!

(Interesting sidenote: the only candidate who beat a Commerce student last year was Jeremy McElroy, so look out, Moll!)

What did we do wrong, Sauder; what did we do?

So UBC, show those Commerce kiddies that you still care! Get out your boomboxes and your mix tapes and stand outside those Henry Angus windows! Better yet, maybe pretend to care about their upcoming CUS elections, which I hear some of the above names are running in.

Because underneath their Globe and Mail newspapers and cheap suits,
there beats a heart that wants to be loved. <3

(Bored by a post without any pictures? Don’t worry, our endorsements are going up REEAAAAL soon.

Don’t forget to show US some love, too, and vote for us for Voter-Funded Media funding!)

Sorry, JMac and BCapp.

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We here at AMS Confidential would like to express our sincerest apologies to Ben Cappellacci and Jeremy McElroy. You may remember the picture to the right, from a while back. At the time, we were quite critical about their brown, “old man blazers.” I know times are tough since Bijan’s idea for a clothing allowance was killed, but you guys need to call each other ahead and make sure you’re not wearing similar jackets on the same day. Faux pas!

Why are we sorry? Due to this monstrosity.

What would possess someone to buy such a jacket? This garment makes those brown old man blazers look… well, better. Now I’m really glad Bijan didn’t get that clothing allowance, because I wouldn’t want my student fees to be spent on garbage like this. The brown… the grey… Yuck.

This picture (before the unicorn heart laser battle) was snagged from Bijan’s latest video blog, where we got to see his uninspired speech at the UBC Student Leadership Conference. I highly enjoyed the panning shots of the crowd where you can see people texting, along with other University staff not really paying attention. Using his finely honed conflict resolution skills, Bijan taught us it’s important to compromise in situations like signing lease agreements. O RLY?

[Editor’s Note: the SLC specifically mentioned that there was to be no photo or video taken in the Chan Centre, whoops!]

People Who May or May Not Run

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AMS Elections are currently a shitshow, and they haven’t even started yet.

Nominations close on Friday and there is no AMS Elections website. Maybe if they advertised we wouldn’t have three slates of people who are always involved?
There is no schedule of events anywhere…debates? Beer garden? Anything?
There are also no elections dates or campaigning dates posted anywhere except on the Facebook page, which ~50 people like and hasn’t been updated since November (same with Twitter).
There is no VFM funding right now and elections are about to start!
Oh, and NO ONE KNOWS WHAT VOTING SYSTEM WE ARE USING.

The Elections budget is approximately $50,000. Isn’t there a little referendum coming up that has to do with fiscal responsibility? We get that the EA is probably working on the new online voting system, but he has also hired four co-ordinators to help him, and it’s THREE DAYS before elections start.

Anyway, we are coping by giving you GOSSIP. Hot Gossip.

At the end of the day, candidates are supposed to be running individually and not as part of a slate (fancy way of saying political party). Except this year, there are Three Groups Who Are Not A Slate.

The Frat Boys and Token Sorority Girl (Bijan’s picks to continue his legacy of UBC’s Got Talent)
The Incumbents (the political hacks who think they can change the world with the AMS)
The SJC/Knollies (the people who only care about the AMS when something pisses them off)

With that in mind, we give you the gossip!

The Frat Boys and Token Sorority Girl

President: Michael Moll is Alpha Delta Phi and part of the CUS, from Kenya, and shows up to AMS Council occasionally.

VP Academic: Matt Parson is Phi Delta Theta, the President of the Inter Fraternity Council at UBC (which EA Erik Mackinnon sits on), and is probably the hottest of all the candidates running. [Though some of our editors are on record as disagreeing.]

VP External: Katherine Tyson (isn’t technically in a sorority, she was too sick to rush this year) has been on AMS Council for a year and a half and is the Chair of UnECoRn, the committee that deals with things in the VPX’s portfolio. Was known this year for being rather antagonistic to Bijan—right until elections season rolled around. What gives, KT? We were way into your powerful woman schtick.

VP Finance: Arash Ehteshami is Kappa Sigma, the VP Internal of the AUS, and dating the President of SUS.

VP Administration: Mike Silley is Sigma Chi, has been on AMS Council for a long time, and is the Chair of BAFCOM, the committee that deals with AMS Businesses.

The Incumbents/Hacks

President: Jeremy McElroy is the current VP External, former AUS/RBF guy who hearts the AMS.

VP Academic: Justin Yang is the current VP Finance of AUS, former VP Finance of SUS, former Student Senator, and is the current AMS Tutoring co-ordinator.

VP External: Mitch Wright is the current Associate VP External, former elections administrator, former AUS dude and all around hack.

VP Finance: Elin Tayyar is Beta Theta Pi, the current VP Finance, former SAC Vice-Chair, and last year’s hottest candidate.

VP Admin: A BLACK SHEEP. Er, dark horse?

The SJC/Knollies

They keep their Facebook profiles quite limited, unfortunately. Why do these people have no overly involved student profiles?! We’ll give you more details as we learn them.

President: Gord Katic is a kid we met off of Twitter who is a part of the SJC. He’s incredibly verbose. That’s all we know.

VP Academic: Omar Shaban is part of SPHR whose passion in life is “a secular Palestinian state where anybody regardless of his/her religion or race can live.” Awwwww!

VP External: Rory Breasail has been on AMS Council for nine months, and sits on the UnECoRn committee. He is also part of the SJC.

VP Finance: Arielle Friedman (also known as Care-ielle?!?) is part of the SJC, and a frequent contributor to The Knoll.

Other

There’s some random guy from RezLife at Totem who is also probably running for VP Finance, and a rumoured FIFTH candidate that we don’t know about.

Things to bitch about: We’ve only heard of ONE candidate for VP Admin, so if there’s any of you who like SUB/Clubs, you should run…the more the merrier! There’s also an extreme lack of women running, with only TWO femmes fatale garnering for your votes. Oh, and no joke candidates? Where is Princess Leia, Kommander Keg, the Invisible Man, or Water Fountain?

BoG: Sean Heisler (current BoAwesome), Andrew Carne (hacktastic engineer), Sean Cregten (current Associate VP Academic)

Senate: Thomas Brennan, Sean Cregten, AJ Hajir Hajian, <insert ten other random students here, five of whom will drop out within the first week>.

Nominations close on Friday!

Your Complete Guide to The AMS

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new to ubc? here’s what you missed…

PREVIOUSLY on AMS CONFIDENTIAL:

The AMS stands for your Alma Mater Society. The name doesn’t make sense, but it was formed to be your student society; you pay them fees and in return they keep the university from doing whatever it wants. Plus, parties and stuff!

anyway.

MIKE used to be Alma Mater Society President and he poledanced a lot

there’s like a million of these on facebook.

but then he turned things over to BLAKE

guido guido guido (photo c/o gerald deo)

go o~on….

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Province Announces a Unicorn U-Pass!

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In a flurry of activity on Twitter, BC Premier Gordon Campbell announced that all Metro Vancouver post-secondary students (except those private school kids at TWU!) will be eligible for a U-Pass, eliminating excuses for students to drive drunk!!! Oh, wait.

The new universal Unicorn U-Pass will cost $30/month, with students outside of Metro Vancouver paying less.

uh, yeah. we went there.

So, what does that mean for you sexy UBC folk? Yes, our ego may be a little crushed as our elitism is threatened and those plastic cards with horrific photos from first year pop up everywhere. However, great news: MORE SEXY REFERENDA.

VP External Jeremy McElroy broke exclusively to us (ok, it was a tweet to Taylor, but whatever) that come January 2011, there will be a referendum on accepting the U-Pass at the new price of $30/month. Or, $120/semester.

Currently you are paying $95/semester, or $23.75/month, so the price increase for a normal school year will be $50/year.

In comparison, currently those other kids are stuck with the FastTrax program offered from Translink which allows full-time students from non-private post-secondary institutions to travel across all zones for the price of a single zone adult monthly pass. Or, $81/month. Yikes.

SFU, Langara College, and Capilano University (our not-as-hot sisters in the U-Pass program) are also affected. Langara and Capilano currently pay more than $30/month so they get an immediate price cut. We assume SFU will also be holding a referendum to accept the new price. What do you think? Is paying ~$50 more per year worth it for students from Kwantlen, Emily Carr, etc to save $400 per year?

The overarching question to consider is whether we will be getting increased service to UBC, or if we are simply subsidizing increased service along routes to these other institutions.

As we’ve previously mentioned, in addition to the cost of the U-Pass going up, there are also whispers in a not-so-silent manner that AMS Council is going to hold a referendum or two on raising student fees and tying our student fees to CPI. Stay tuned, kids…we have a feeling there will be some sexy and dramatic debate next year about a whackload of fee increases.

For more information on the UBC U-Pass click here or here.

Executive Report Cards, Part 1

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Hopefully all you lovely readers are enjoying your summer, blissfully free of UBC. We’re still here, and also kind of bored… so we read all the AMS executives’ quarterly reports.

Critiques, you ask? Applause? BISH PLZ. That would require us delving into the Issues That Matter. Since it’s impossible to get an interview with these sexy folk, we’re just going to stop at the surface level of their reports. (Which, we might add, would make any stakeholder cringe at the epic amounts of graphic design fail. Can’t you people get some artsy interns in or something?)

VP Administration

FTW: Completed SUB negotiations; maintained perfect mane. Mad Commerce negotiation skillz earned the AMS a grace period of 8 years for services in the old/current SUB, and maintained the winning side of fixed interest rates, among other things. Planned SUB Architect Selection.

Facepalm: Failed to save the equity program from the chopping block—which may or may not be seen as a good thing, depending on whether you <3 equity or capitalism more. Yay for a lighter portfolio?

Sparkles: there is apparently a “huge ongoing issue” with the water polo club…wait, what? We have a water polo club? Um, we’re having a major flashback to the good ol’ days, when we were but young sprogs watching the OC in our dorm/parents’ rec room…

not to be confused with an Issue That Matters.

Dramz (Possibly Imaginary): She mentioned the Ubyssey Architect profile of stock questions to the firms and how that helped their campaign in March…however, she totally snubbed former VP Admin Crystal Hon & the intense Issues That Matter blogging that occurred in April while Architect Selection was actually taking place. Plus, Crystal wasn’t present at the signing of the SUB negotiations…which she worked on for a year. KNIFE FIGHT OR JUST DUMB POLICY?

Her quarterly also mentions a miscommunication between the former Equity Big Head Guru & the new occupants of her once-proudly-Equitized office space. Hey, Emma? apparently you need to return some keys. We know leaving is hard, but sit-ins are just too, too retro.

“While I am in commerce, I’m no blood-thirsty, greedy, proletariat-crushing capitalist that hates equity and i think the whole Equity idea within the AMS has gone amuck.”

Ben Cappellacci, VP Academic & University Affairs

FTW: Ben’s working on implementing the Credit/D/Fail system which will help our—well, mostly your—GPAs! WOO. He also merged the Safewalk and Safety offices and seemed to generally care about and work with international students.

this bears little relevance but had to be posted anyway.

Facepalm: Ben mentions the “Sale of Liquor” database in his report…but SOL’s are “Special Occasion Licenses.” Ben writes as if he is involved in this project, while in reality, this editor hasn’t witnessed Ben inputting over 1000 SOL’s into a database past midnight on a Saturday night. [Important disclaimer: Taylor, Girlfriend of Insider, gets all defensive when her mans has to work late.] Ben’s office houses the binders that the SOLs are stored in, but this is mainly an Issues That Matter volunteer project.

Also, Ben doesn’t seem to love council much.

Sparkles: The new campus plan for the next 20 years includes the goal to house 50% of all UBC students in residence. The Sauder Store is coming in September 2011, and we only have 2 more years of the horrid Vista system left (OH THANK GAWD).

Dramz: Ben lays some executive-speak smack down on former AVP Ian Turner, saying their relationship was “strained at best” and that Ian “was unable to produce a completed project during his time in the office.” Ooo~ooh, burn. On the other hand, Ian totally made Sportswriter of the Year.

“AMS Council is truly the stuff of legend.”

die, old man blazers, DIE.

Jeremy McElroy, VP External

FTW: Jeremy went to Ottawa, came home, and we became Associate Members of CASA again! He also dealt with a debacle around the U-Pass Subsidy Fund, which was fully allocated to students in financial need for the first time ever. He then found out that the U-Pass mailouts were being paid for from this fund, so there was a 60k overdraft. Bad former Execs! bad!

FACEPALM: OH MY GAWD THAT BLAZER. Also, a notable lack of copy editing in this one. We’d volunteer to look over the drafts next time, but somehow we don’t think he’d go for it.

Sparkles: what’s up with Lobby Days? Is that happening this year despite the OVER 9000!!!1!!!!1! DOLLARZ aspect? What does a girl have to do to score herself an invite to that party?

Dramz: HST is looming like my thighs after a winter of inactivity, and there’s a BC Lobby initiative trying to get off the ground. And considering that the province has promised a universal post-secondary pass but provided no details—well, it doesn’t take a Commerce major to realize that our traditionally Hells Of Low fees could rise to accomodate other schools.

More next time, as we delve into the shallow, shallow depths of QUARTERLY REPORTS woooooo

Bye Bye International Seat…

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Oh, International Seat…so last month’s Disabilities Seat. If you want some point vs point action that sort of hurts your brain, check out the epic battle of Timkachu vs. Chairman Naylor on Issues That Matter here.

At Council on Wednesday, the Legislative Procedures Committee (Leprecomm LPC) headed by our very Chairman Naylor brought the issue of abolishing the International Students seat (which is non-voting) to Council’s oval table. They argued that the ISA seat was not in the best interest of the group it represents, and that the structure of the AMS is not amenable to such a seat. Basically, in the AMS we have representation by population, so having a seat tailored to the interests of international students allows for double representation, which is an LPC no-no.

Representation by population is something that is important to preserve as it is allowing each member a representative on council through a direct channel and empowers people to get elected through those channels. –Chairman Naylor

Saayy whaaaat? Federalism?

Basically:

As a student, you belong to a faculty. Be this Arts, Engineering, Science, or Human Kinetics to name a few (oh hai, they happen to be having their own elections and Arts/HK nomination forms are due Tuesday. http://ubcvotes.ca for more info! *shameless democracy plug*).
Within your faculty, you have an undergraduate society which holds elections to elect your own sexy executive and other positions, including AMS reps.
The AMS has reps based on how many students are in that faculty. Proportional representation, anyone? If you’re in Arts, you get 5 reps. Science, 4. & on and on and on…so that every student has the same amount of representation on Council, and the same chance of getting elected to Council.

The whole point in this is that someone represents you based on your faculty and that everyone is equal, and it is NOT based on whether you’re an international student, a student with disabilities, a gay student, a commuter student, etc.

Tahara encompassed the above in a moving speech, except she threw in an “anglo-saxon seat” example which got these editors daydreaming…

JJ is running for SUS Director of Finance...but we'd kind of like this instead.

Anyway, a lot of sexy debate resumed. And we mean a LOT. Let us also note that Brittany Perna was just recently elected to the seat, and this was her first real council meeting…such a nice welcome! Here are some of this editor’s favourite bitch slap quotes.

Tim: There’s been no consultation with International Students.
El Naylorino: Tim, it’s quite clear you don’t care about consultation. #OHSNAP

Naz, Former Int’l Rep: If I am gay, I am gay everywhere. If I go back to Iran, I am not an international student.

There were also some nice quotes:

The only divides we should see at this table are the arbitrary ones between faculties. –New VPX Jeremy

We should work holistically with I-House. – Iggy (up for re-election!)

So then it came time to vote, and it was breathtakingly close. 2/3 was needed, and it got EXACTLY 2/3. Perhaps the lesson learned from this debate is that if you want to push your controversial cause through council, seeking political advice—and impassioned speech-making—from Timkachu is a guaranteed way to make it fail.

Remember kids, as Chairman Naylor bravely expressed, High School Musical style, we’re all in this together. Love each other, and love those international/domestic kids…they’re a big source of sex appeal/revenue for the university <3

Disclaimer of sorts? Kai is an international student, and Taylor is a domestic student. EQUALLY FUNDED VOTER FUNDED MEDIA WHAT WHAT.