{"id":554,"date":"2010-03-12T13:11:12","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T21:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amsconfidential.wordpress.com\/?p=554"},"modified":"2010-03-12T13:11:12","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T21:11:12","slug":"guest-post-little-spoon-sounds-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/2010\/03\/12\/guest-post-little-spoon-sounds-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Little Spoon Sounds Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the spirit of what appears to be the new modus operandi for constituency coverage, we’re pleased to bring you a guest post about something we know nothing about: The CUS Referendum <\/em>(previous article on the subject here<\/a>). Our guest blogger is a most notable Sauder student (a ‘Saudi,’ if you will), the<\/em> owner of one impeccable black suit, and a heckuva lady. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s face it\u2014the halls of Henry Angus are abuzz with talk of this building referendum. Walk into the Sauder building and you\u2019re bound to find people in little \u201cask me!\u201d t-shirts, eyes glazed over from lack of sleep and willing to tell you all the amazing things that will happen in phase two and beyond\u2014all you have to do is vote yes. <\/span><\/p>\n

FACT #1\u2014VOTE INFORMED…OBVIOUSLY: <\/strong> Let\u2019s be frank here. I\u2019m not going to tell you how to vote, or think, or act. I\u2019m not going to discount cash flows and show fancy graphs and numbers as there are plenty of other<\/a> blogs<\/a> doing<\/a> that<\/a>. I\u2019m going to tell it like it is, clear and simple, for people that want some sort of honesty before they hit the polls. Chances are though, if you\u2019re a Sauder keener, you\u2019ve already voted. But if not, perhaps you should continue to read this and maybe even comment below, because when all is said and done, it\u2019s really about two things: value and principle. <\/span><\/p>\n

FACT #2\u2014THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN A TUITION INCREASE AND NOT A STUDENT FEE: <\/strong> When it comes to a student fee, you need to get it voted in by a referendum, convince students to vote yes and achieve quorum, convince the AMS to ratify the referendum results, bring it to UBC\u2019s BoG and then hope to God that the Province doesn\u2019t shoot it down. Sound like a lot of work? Well, it is, and if by some chance all goes well, the funds flow in a rather complicated way: to UBC to the AMS and back to UBC. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. Money is lost because of handling fees and admin time and quite frankly, it just doesn\u2019t make sense<\/em>. The reason for this is a tuition cap by the provincial government, and because of this freeze, institutions are finding creative ways of upping the price. This whole building debacle is the equivalent of you going to the back door of the Pit because you didn\u2019t want to stand in line and paying the bouncer, then getting caught by the manager and having to pay him too.
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FACT #3\u2014THOSE WHO TRULY BENEFIT FROM THIS ARE THE SAUDER \u201cSUPER ELITE\u201d: <\/strong> There are Sauder students, and then there are the crazy, super-involved, future CEO Sauder students. [Ed. note: our guest may or may not be one of these.] <\/em>Those are the ones that try to improve the UBC community, beef up their resumes, and they all hang out together in one giant ball of awesome. They are the CUS, the conferences and the clubs. They are the ones that wear suits just because they can, apply to jobs they are not qualified for yet still manage to nail them, and spend more time on volunteer position projects than on class projects; they want to see a Sauder just as good as the Iveys and the Whartons of this world. And they are the ones that will most directly benefit from the better building. The rest? Well, they\u2019ll get an amazing facility all right, but they\u2019d still become the same bookkeepers they would have become had the building never been improved. <\/span><\/p>\n

FACT #4\u2014YOU DON\u2019T MESS WITH EX-MCKINSEY CONSULTANTS:<\/strong> What has set this referendum apart is backing from alumni. This is both a good and bad thing. You get strong, mature and knowledgeable people putting themselves behind an initiative\u2014but you also get extremely persuasive individuals affecting the results of this vote. And trust me, when an ex-Mckinsey, ex-CUS president and all-round rock star wants you to vote yes, you are going to vote yes, a) because you fear the guy and b) you retain a small hope that one day, he\u2019ll get you a job. That has been my only point of worry during this whole campaign; people unable to voice their opinions because they are afraid that they\u2019ll be ostracized later.<\/span><\/p>\n

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apparently this is how commerce kids apply for jobs<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Your <\/span>FACT #5\u2014SPEAKING OF MCKINSEY, YOU DON\u2019T MESS WITH A FRENCH MAN:<\/strong> Ladies and gentlemen, my new-found crush is none other than UBC\u2019s VP Finance, Pierre Ouillet. [Ed note: ooooOOOOoooooOOOOooo] <\/em>This man cut SEVEN LAYERS of middle management and somehow found thirty million dollars to balance UBC\u2019s budget. This man is a hawk, and if Sauder does not manage to cough up enough money to cover their ass, they will have to answer to this guy. He\u2019ll most likely bail out the faculty with newly allowed debt financing and force Sauder to cut programs. But what he\u2019ll also do is cut from other faculties and essentially \u201cslow down\u201d the renovations line so that other buildings slated for renovation, like law and pharmacy, are postponed. Taking our previous analogy further, that\u2019s like having to wait in line at the Pit only to realize that the extremely long wait was because the bouncers had to take care of a pesky customer that got in through the back door. <\/span><\/p>\n

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rawwwrrrr. or, uh, screeeeeech.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Your <\/span>FACT #6\u2014YOU\u2019RE DAMNED IF YOU DO AND YOU\u2019RE DAMNED IF YOU DON\u2019T: <\/strong> To get a better school, you need more money, but to get more money, you need a better school. So now what? The way I see it, it\u2019s not about bailing about some ambitious Dean, or punishing the \u201cbad\u201d faculty, or simply building a building. It\u2019s about laying down the foundation (or rather the rest of the foundation) for a better school. Sure, mistakes were made: Dean Dan should<\/em> have secured financing, the CUS should<\/em> have taken a more neutral stance and demanded more from their faculty, and the government should<\/em> have worked together with the University and students so that this would never have happened in the first place. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

BAWWW SCHNOOKUMS<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Your<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, it\u2019s about value and where YOU see it. If you think that $500 a year for four, or five, or six years is worth it, will get you a better degree and ultimately a better job, then by all means vote yes. If you consider this a gross mismanaging of the referendum process (which it was, in a sense) and a sneaky way to increase tuition, then vote no. <\/span><\/p>\n

But what you certainly must NOT do is not vote at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

XOXO,<\/span><\/p>\n

Little Spoon<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the spirit of what appears to be the new modus operandi for constituency coverage, we’re pleased to bring you a guest post about something we know nothing about: The CUS Referendum (previous article on the subject here). Our guest blogger is a most notable Sauder student (a ‘Saudi,’ if you will), the owner of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1877,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,8500],"tags":[8568,8573,8663,8715,8734,683412,8810],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sauder","category-total-dreamboat","tag-cus-referendum","tag-dean-dean","tag-little-spoon","tag-omg-a-kitty","tag-pierre-ouillet","tag-sauder","tag-this-isnt-taylor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1877"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/amsconfidential\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}