It has been 2 months since the Sauder Frosh chant incident started, and the media has backed off. Commenting on a blog post by Rina Shimizu that was written during the time when Sauder was under stressful attacks, I realize that a lot has changed since then.

University was supposed to be an amazing experience, and the CUS and Frosh leaders certainly wanted to give the first years  a memorable time at Frosh. With this scandal, however, patriotic first years are suddenly slammed and looked down upon for being in Sauder.

Therefore, I am proud to say that Sauder is currently being rebranded, and swift actions are taken to prove to the world that one mistake is not going to lead to our downfall. The CUS team attempted to approve funding for counselling at UBC directed at sexual violence. Although there was a disappointingly low percentage of voters, and the referendum failed, the efforts made by the CUS Board of Directors were admirable.

In conclusion, Sauder is still in the process of improving and moving forward from the foolish mistakes made during Frosh, and hopefully, our branding will be improved after the actions of our faithful CUS.

As most people know by now, Snapchat had declined Facebook’s offer of buying out the company for 3 billion dollars. Inspired by a post by Shubhankar Rustagi that mainly describes why Facebook would want to buy Snapchat, I am going to concentrate more on the reason why the founder of Snapchat turned down Facebook’s deal.

Since Snapchat has proven to be such a successful company, it is obvious that there are multiple investors aside from Facebook. Some investment offers have been so tempting to consider, such as Tencent Holdings Limited from China’s offer that would raise Snapchat’s value to $4 billion.

With so many choices to expand the company, why should Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat, choose to sell his hard work to Facebook instead?

I believe Spiegel has made a brilliant choice in not allowing Facebook to buyout Snapchat. After all, this company has only been founded for 2 years, with many chances to become better and more profitable. Not to mention, this man is only 23 years old, and at such a young age, if he made any wrong decisions on his business, he could still find a way to recover financially or discover a new innovative idea.

As I scrolled through Facebook for the past month or so, I noted that my apps-crazed friends constantly updated their newsfeed by posting images of personalized cartoon versions of themselves. Every picture was different, from hiding a dead body to travelling on a magic carpet, and it’s something I’ve never seen before.

Turns out these cartoons are made from an iPhone app called “Bitstrips”, and of course, I jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded it, too.

Relating to Porter’s generic strategies, how Bitstrips is gaining competitive advantage is by expanding on their product uniqueness in a broad industry. The iPhone apps industry is indeed very large due to innovative entrepreneurs and the low barrier to entry, so it is essential for the company to differentiate themselves from other apps.

In this article, the writer voices his discontent with Bitstrips, complaining about how the system is “slow, clumsily laid out, and buggy”. I, however, could ignore the flaws and simply focus on the uniqueness and creativity of the comics. After all, a picture says a thousand words, and what could show my emotions better than a cartoon version of myself freaking out about homework?

I’d have to admit that the class where Mike of Pirate Joe’s visited was my favourite one yet.

After Mike’s speech, what I didn’t understand was how he could gloriously demonstrate his unethical actions as if he was right. It seems as Mike is fearless, and the “Unafraid” part of Pirate Joe’s motto certainly confirms it.

Business problems arise when peoples’ ethical standards change, therefore,  I doubt Mike’s standards. Sauder constantly reminds  students to make ethical decisions, and yet, standing in front of us is a Sauder graduate who earns money by cheating.

From Mike’s lecture about his business, I realized that in some cases, the unethical businesses are the successful ones. Mike must have gone through brilliant planning to get away for reselling the products of Trader Joe’s. This interesting story about Pirate Joe’s is certainly one to retell.

After the class, I had a reality check. Would I really like to live my life in risk? I surely wouldn’t put my 4 years of business education to waste and go against my morals. I applaud Mike’s success with Pirate Joe’s so far, but I’m proud to say that I won’t be another one of Mike Hallatt in the future.

The Philippines has been struck with a horrifying typhoon, and the death of innocent villagers is at such a high number that the death toll still can not be counted. In Tacloban, the city that was hit the hardest by Typhoon Haiyan, corpses are lying everywhere from ditches to the streets. Fortunately, selfless people all over the world donated relief money to the Filipinos to help out the people affected from the typhoon.

It has been noted that the priority of the Philippines government is simply to bury the deceased as fast as possible, thus not allowing  friends and families of the dead to  have one last glance of their cherished ones. This unethical act of such a corrupted government is outrageous and inconsiderate to the people affected.

In class, I have been taught about the ethicality of businesses and enterprises, but not about the government. I’m sure most people know that some politicians are deceitful beings who put their self-interests before the social interest, but in the case of a natural disaster where millions of people were innocently killed, some actions have to be clearly made about where the relief money from donors are funded to.