Month: March 2010

Categories
Campus Life GSS

Koerners Now Explicitly All-Ages

Most of y’all have heard by last Friday that the Koerner’s Pub liquor license has been suspended by the UBC Treasury/Legal departments. In response, Koerner’s still has its doors open, but the taps are dry.

According to a memo, the license was suspended because of two incidents this month. The first incident, a drunk underaged youngster fell off a roof overhang and was hospitalized. The second, someone drunk yelled at some cops.

koernersfamilyrestaurant

The RCMP informed the liquor control board, but UBC closed the spigot prior to hearing back.

This is one small step in what has been a two-year-long skirmish between authorities and the Pub’s management. In 2008, underage service was discovered. In 2009, a similar violation was found. You might have noticed the response of that guy from the external security company and the frankly outrageous bulletins threatening to expel underage/drunk students under non-academic discipline.

Our thoughts? Given the GSS Executive historically doesn’t seem to care much about liquor, or even its own pub, there’s strong precedent for not acting on this. If anything, this could be further fuel for the GSS to throw their hands in the air, claim the pub is too much of a liability, and use it as grounds to close the place for good. In an email to their council, the new executive seems to be pro-pub, but we’ll have to see how that manifests.

On the whole, people seem to like Koerners, and the GSS is accountable to students. If you’re mad about how bad that dreamboat on the acoustic guitar was tonight compared to every other night (and trust us; he didn’t get worse), we suggest letting the GSS Executive and Council know.

Categories
BoG Development

BoG Breakdown – Mar. 23 Meeting

The Board of Governors meeting for March/April has once again rolled around. Today is the Board Committees Meeting, with the full board meeting being April 8th. The agenda has a number of interesting elements on it, including details of UBC’s next budget, updates on the UBC Transit Line study, the tuition fee increases for next year, and more.

As always, if you have any thoughts or comments about these items or any others on the agenda, you can email the student Board reps, Mike Duncan and Bijan Ahmadian, who will be transitioning to the new student reps after this meeting.

Read on for a detailed analysis of what I consider to be some of the more interesting items on the agenda.

Continue reading “BoG Breakdown – Mar. 23 Meeting”
Categories
Student Politics SUS

SUS Elections 2010: Better Know an AMS Rep Candidate

With many uncontested (or essentially uncontested) races, SUS elections have not had much excitement factor this year. (Except maybe this.) Still, there’s one race worth talking about, and Kevin Moore shares his thoughts on that.

SUS AMS Rep

The race for SUS AMS rep is looking to be the most exciting of the SUS elections. Every other race is either uncontested, or has a councilor in it against a bunch of new people.

Continue reading “SUS Elections 2010: Better Know an AMS Rep Candidate”
Categories
AMS AMS Elections 2010 Media Site News Student Politics

Final AMS Electoral Fraud Reports and Revised Results

We’ve uploaded and posted links to all of the reports arising from the AMS Electoral Fraud investigation on our Twitter feed but since not everyone is twitter-savvy just yet, here are the links to:

Final Report from Isabel Ferreras (Elections Administrator)

Report from Forensic Data Recovery (Independent Auditing Firm)

Revised Elections Results presented in a somewhat awkward format.

Final cost to the AMS: currently estimated at $42,000-43,000.

Continue reading “Final AMS Electoral Fraud Reports and Revised Results”
Categories
Athletics BoG Government Student Politics

AvEd Strikes Down UVic’s Athletics Fee Increase but not UBC’s

As has already been discussed in a number of places already, UBC has recently created a Student Editorial Team to go along with The Administration Blog, where Pierre “zeeVP” Ouillet and Brian “BowtieBrian” Sullivan can communicate directly with the UBC community. The fact that the various different media have managed to each take something different from what was discussed during the first meeting is, I think, a positive thing. In that spirit, this posting is about something that definitely won’t be appearing in any other media source.

During the meeting we were discussing the (then-upcoming) CUS fee referendum when BSul mentioned something about an athletics fee at UVic having been recently turned down. It was a throwaway line, really, but my ears perked up due to my fanatical interest in athletics fees. As I looked into the details surrounding the proposed UVic athletics fee I realized something: UBC already did what UVic had proposed and had gotten away with it, successfully avoiding ministry intervention. And not only that, UBC will probably get away with it again in the future too.

Continue reading “AvEd Strikes Down UVic’s Athletics Fee Increase but not UBC’s”
Categories
SUS

SUS Elections 2010 Preview

AUS, EUS, and now SUS. We’ve got ’em all. (Actually not true – sorry HKin – let us know if there is anyone interested in covering HKin). Here are some initial thoughts on the SUS races.

My name is Kevin Moore and I am going to be covering the SUS elections for you this year. I am currently in my fifth year of a Computer Science degree and will be (hopefully) graduating next month. I currently sit on SUS council as the representative for the Computer Science Students Society which I serve as the president for.

This year’s election, like most before it, does not have many candidates that have not already done something on council. Several councilors who already hold executive positions are running for another executive position this year, and one of them is running for re-election. As for the AMS representative, only two of the seven people running (four are elected) are running for re-election. AMS rep will by far be the most interesting and contested race this year with so many people new to council running.

For now I will leave you with a link to the candidate profiles so you can read over the platforms and see who is running. In the next day or so I will post a more detailed analysis of each candidate and who I think you should vote for. You can find the candidates list at http://www.ubcvotes.ca/science/candidates/

Categories
EUS Student Politics

Engineers Vote: All Candidate Forum Coverage

The EUS Elections

Coverage by Bowinn Ma.
• EUS President 2007-2008
• AMS Councilor 2006-2008
• EUS Vice-President Internal 2006-2007
• EUS Executive Social Coordinator 2005-2006
Currently an Arts student, Bowinn is two years removed from the EUS. For reference, she and her government brought Engineering such initiatives and services as the Engineering Student Centre Project, the EUS Organizational Structural Changes, EUS Constitutional Reform, First Year Study Space, e-nEUS, PP Clubroom Crawl, Policy Reform, the branding and marketing reform process, and Tutoring Services.

Candidate Forum Moderator: Matthew Naylor, Arts
Attendance: More than at AMS Elections Debates
Length of time: 3.5 hours.

As per my AMS Elections coverage pieces, I must insists that this is an opinion piece. Don’t like it? Too bad.

This election is an exciting one indeed. With a whole whackload of opposition candidates, every position is ripe with competition between the ‘bred’ candidate (ie. Got involved through the rungs and layers of volunteer positions leading up to Executive positions, high levels of experience, understanding of the inner workings of the Society, respect for the Constitution and the processes it protects) and the ‘new’ candidate (ie. Little if any understanding of the organization, next to no experience in any of its processes or student government in general, high levels of passion and anger, perhaps overly enthusiastic about what I personally believe are somewhat unrealistic goals). I describe these as I see it, based on me watching hundreds of people put in enormous amounts of effort over the greater part of a decade and seeing what can be realistically accomplished through it all.

Continue reading “Engineers Vote: All Candidate Forum Coverage”
Categories
AUS

The MASS Renew Project

Our intrepid AUS reporter Crystal Hon knows a thing or two about projects involving the building of new student space at UBC. Here are her thoughts on a referendum question being put to Arts students.

By now some of you will have found out about the AUS Fee Referendum that is on the ballot for this round of elections. The AUS unfortunately did not run a promotional campaign on this issue so students who are not on the list-serv, in the facebook group or have some kind of connection to the AUS won’t know about it. Let’s start with the referendum question.

Do you support the Arts Undergraduate Society increasing its yearly student fee starting with the 2010/2011 Academic year from $13 to:
 
$18 for the academic years 2010/2011 to 2011/2012, and to;
$23 for the academic years 2012/2013 to 2013/2014, and to;
$28 for the academic year 2015/2016,
 
for the purpose of building a new student social and study space in an area surrounding the new Buchanan West courtyard as well as renovating the current Meekison Arts Student Space (MASS) by adding student club offices, multimedia meeting rooms, group study rooms and other student facilities as determined by the Arts Undergraduate Student Social Space Expansion (AUSSSE) committee following a consultation with the Arts students?
 
Notes:
-The Fee would increase in each school year after the 2015/16 school year by the rate of inflation determined by the Canadian Consumer Price Index. 
-The Fee would be levied on all active AUS members on a yearly basis
-The Fee would continue to be levied until the AUS has completed all its financing obligations for the new Student Social space and re-purposing of the current Meekison Arts Student Space.

Continue reading “The MASS Renew Project”
Categories
AMS AMS Elections 2010

AMS Electoral Fraud: The Technical Perspective

This is part one of a two-part editorial series on the recently revealed AMS Electoral Fraud.

While many of our readers have probably read the preliminary report issued by the Elections Committee, and were possibly even present at the last Council meeting, there hasn’t been a detailed technical explanation provided about exactly how the system was broken. Through brief discussions with members of the EC I believe I now understand how the attack occurred.

The crux of the matter is that student numbers were not validated during the final submission phase, which allowed for a trivial exploit of the system. Due to the simplicity of this hack, I remain deeply concerned about the validity of any of the election results, and I will be hesitant to accept their accuracy even following the final auditor’s report.

I would however like to emphasize that I’m not trying to tear down or belittle the work that this year’s EC did. This year’s elections were probably the smoothest and best-organized elections I have seen during my time at UBC, with this one exception. It is a new system, and mistakes do happen; albeit a rather titanic one in this case. That aside, I think the response following the discovery of the exploit has been handled very well, and I appreciate the levels of public disclosure.

More detailed and technical analysis after the jump.

Continue reading “AMS Electoral Fraud: The Technical Perspective”
Categories
AUS

Arts, The Force is With You

UBC Votes! But none of us in AUS elections since none of us are Arts students. But that doesn’t mean we can’t provide coverage, and so without further ado, we present our first guest blogger who rarely wears pants. AMS Gossip Guy is going to be jealous. Don’t forget to vote in Continuous VFM.

Dear UBC Insiders Readers,

My name is Crystal Hon and I am going to be your AUS election blogger! A couple things about me: I am currently majoring in English Literature and I am a little bit addicted to Reese’s pieces. I have a bit of experience in running in elections and working in student societies. I was most recently known as the VP Administration for the AMS and before that, I was the VP Internal for the AUS. I agreed to do help the Insiders with the AUS elections because I love the Arts and I believe in the ability of students to change their university experience. With that being said, I am so excited to be blogging for the Insiders; I have never been on this side of the elections fence before!

Continue reading “Arts, The Force is With You”

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