Month: February 2010

CP&D Open Houses Galore

This is a little last minute, but if you want to be heard about the future of housing on campus, as well as the future of the heart of campus (the University Boulevard area, as well as McInnis Field and the current bus loop), there are two open houses forthcoming. All you need to do is show up:

1. Public Open House • UBC Student Housing Demand Study

Date: Friday, February 5th
Time: 2:30 pm – 3:30pm
Local: SUB 211

A follow-up to this study, which among other things, states that 43% of students living off campus would live on campus if they had the choice. Learn about the study and provide your input regarding the study and next-steps.

2. Public Open House • University Boulevard Neighbourhood

Date: Monday, February 8th
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Local: SUB Concourse

Long ago, there was a design competition to redo the University Boulevard Neighbourhood (solid line). It’s been about six years since that design competition finished. Since then, the winning architects have disappeared, their replacement also disappeared, an underground bus loop has disappeared, and in the chaos, a 120 million dollar Student Union Building, and an Olympic-sized pit of mud have appeared.

Despite most of the original plan’s premises disappearing, the model of the neighbourhood remains the same. This open house seems to be a welcome acknowledgment of “ok, crap, what now”. Further, the ‘study area’ includes much much more than the University Boulevard Neighbourhood–going all the way to the current bus loop (where future plans are still undecided). It’ll be very interesting to see what’s on display.

AMS AMS Elections 2010

Voter Funded Media Results

Post author By Alex Lougheed
Post date February 3, 2010
7 Comments on Voter Funded Media Results

Here are the results from continuous VFM thusfar, and from the one-time VFM in interactive graph form!

The real winner at the end of the day, I would say, is the gossip rag AMS Confidential, who managed to create themselves partway through continuous VFM and eventually surpassed the Radical Beer Tribune in terms of total cash out.

It remains hard to get a firm grasp over the one-time VFM results, due to the limited information we now have. What we do know, is that on average, students allocated $1334 with their vouchers. This means a high degree of non-participation in one-time VFM, as this number should be at least $2000 if participation were 100%. If the history of one-time tells us anything though, it’s that results are hard to predict, and the characteristics you’d expect to be predictors aren’t that strong.

Analysis by Tim remains as true today as it did three years ago: there are different niches for the blogs to fill, but at the end of the day, the real benefit of one-time VFM is now the electorate can generally expect better-researched candidates.

We’ve been in talks with the Elections Committee to get more detailed results from the elections, as we beget further analysis. We’re hoping they get released to all soon, so we can try to get a better feeling on what exactly the results mean.

Athletics Campus Life News

Yes, The Killers Killed the Liquor at Thunderbird Arena

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date February 1, 2010

Avid readers of this blog may recall a post from last summer entitled: “Did The Killers Kill the Liquor at Thunderbird Arena?”

The original post should be read in its entirety, but if you’re too lazy the synopsis is that in July 2009, UBC Athletics put an application forward to amend the liquor licence at T-Bird Arena. (Apologies to Doug Mitchell; T-Bird Arena is much simpler to write than DMTWSC.) At the time, campus RCMP had serious objections to the proposal based on a series of major infractions at previous licenced (and non-licenced) events at the arena and things were not looking good for Athletics.

In the fall, the Liquor Control and Licencing Board (LCLB) issued their decision on Athletics’s application and it didn’t work out very well. In short: Yes, the Killers killed the liquor at Thunderbird Arena.