The Insiders
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Posts by Neal Yonson:
- The NDP wants to give $200,000 per year to the UBC Farm.
But only if they form a government. That’s a rather large ‘if’. Hooray for pandering!
- Hwi Lee, the student who sent email threats resulting in a lockdown of the BioSciences building, was given a conditional sentence of one year, as well as a six month curfew. In addition, he has to stay away from UBC, will have two years of probation and has to write a letter to the Ubyssey explaining the incident.
I guess the judge doesn’t read UBC Insiders – too bad.
- The family of Karol Jaholkowski, a man who fell off a fraternity house roof at Arts County Fair 2007, is suing UBC and a fellow fraternity brother for the injury.
I guess they don’t read UBC Insiders either. Otherwise they’d know lawsuits like that don’t work.
Incidents like this no doubt contributed to the RCMP crackdown on alcohol. However, I am 99.9999999% sure this did not occur at a licenced event, so if incidents like this are used to justify the stricter rules, it’s a red herring.
A Vancouver Sun story with more details from right after the accident can be found here.
- Metro Vancouver won’t be getting compensated for land in Pacific Spirit Park that was expropriated by the province. The two parcels of land in PSP, and the University Golf Course were to be given to the Musqueam First Nation in a land deal reached in 2007.
There is still hope that one day Hampton Place can be expropriated and turned into student residences.
- It costs >$200K to rent the arena for a weekend. That’s according to a lawsuit UBC launched, claiming they were not paid for an Anthony Robbins appearance on campus last fall.
I’m not sure The Power Within will be welcome at UBC again. This was one of the first non-hockey events to be held at Thunderbird Arena and a test of how disruptive these types of events would be to UNA residents. Everything was going fine until, unbeknownst to UBC, they decided to set up drumming and fire-walking outside the building…
- On my walk towards the bus recently, I noticed someone had kindly disposed of their UBC parking ticket on the ground. If anyone is curious, they have now started writing *WARNING ONLY* tickets, with threats of towing. I’m guessing they are doing it in order to log the plate numbers so they’ll know if you are making a habit of not paying. That’s strike one for you, Mr. Silver 4-Door Nissan.
The best part of the ticket is the last line on the back: “This Traffic Notice is issued by authority of the Board of Governors of The University of British Columbia.” Whoops.
- In NCAA-related news, Western Washington University (in Bellingham) folded their Div II football team last year due to financial constraints. Some of those ex-WWU players are coming to UBC to join the Thunderbirds.
From the article: “If you can get school paid for just for playing football, that is awesome. But the whole point of college for me, is to get my degree,” says Kelly Kurisu. There was nothing stopping him from getting his degree at WWU since the university did not go under, to the best of my knowledge. I wonder what incentives Athletics offered him to come here.
- UBC Properties Investments Ltd., and UBC Properties Trust
- Discovery Parks Inc.
- UBC Foundation
- University Golf Club, and University Golf Course
- UBC Research Enterprises Inc.
- BC Research Inc.
- UBC Investment Management Trust
- Lower prices. That’s pretty self-explanatory. While I would not describe myself as a poor, starving student, I am cheap and would love the food to be more affordable.
- Keep longer hours. As a grad student, I habitually work evenings and weekends. I also work year round. Over the summer, dinnertime service at UBC Food outlets stops. Surprisingly, my body’s need for dinner does not.
- Stop running “non-traditional” franchises. Start accepting coupons and participating in specials at ALL of the chain locations. Please stop abusing the fact that there is very little competition at UBC.
- Follow the AMS’s lead and invest in water fountains at any location big enough to handle it. Put a fountain in Trek Express over the summer, and follow it up with some more around the dining area of Pacific Spirit Place.
May
5
I definitely don’t want to turn into a news aggregator blog, but there have been a number of UBC news items lately that I thought were interesting and wanted to share. And trust me, I think it’s totally lame when I read something that is just a recap of other stories I’ve already read or heard about. So hopefully there is something in here you didn’t know about yet…
May
2
Pierre Ouillet, UBC’s recently hired VP Finance, Resources, Operations is getting down to business. In a memo dated April 2, significant changes to the structure of many units in his portfolio were outlined. At first, it may seem strange that one of the stated aims was “an imperative to streamline and simplify our organizational structure to improve impact and efficiency” when in fact it could be argued that even more layers of bureaucracy were added. Nevertheless, let’s press on and find out more about these changes.
There used to be a log-linear graph in the Physics department of the number of Presidents, VPs, AVPs, students and faculty over time, extrapolated to the point where there’d be more AVPs than students. Adding more admin positions? Is it Thursday already?
– Darren Peets
The revised organizational chart can be found here. Although there are a number of blank spaces on the chart, no positions are actually vacant. Other than, that, it’s a pretty standard, boring org. chart.
Wait a minute… Al, is that you? Al Poettcker?! OH MY GOODNESS, what are you doing there? UBC will be going to court to claim that your organization is not under their control. But somebody snuck you and Philip Falls onto that org. chart anyways, perched right beside Pierre in the top middle. This must be some sort of conspiracy.
The Bare Necessities: Food and Housing
The merger between Food and Housing is already running full speed ahead with Andrew Parr, formerly Director of UBC Food Services, on top of the combined unit. UBC Food is now moved into the VP Students portfolio and the UBC-O food and housing units are also included. This merger coincides with the departure of Fred Fotis, former director of UBC Housing, for greener pastures. Most student politicians I have talked to were not fans of Mr. Fotis and Andrew Parr will bring a more student-focused approach with him.
The merger makes sense in that there is obviously a lot of interplay between the departments already. Cafeterias in residence are already integrated, while conferences and catering certainly do plenty of business together as well. However, Andrew Parr has no experience dealing with housing and childcare issues. While he considers housing a functioning department already (meaning that there is no need for any major overhaul; just continued management), long-standing challenges remain. The childcare situation is still at the top of many people’s minds, while the length of the waiting list for residence still poses problems.
Two different strategic planning processes are now underway: one for childcare and one for housing. We’ll see how much of a priority the AMS and GSS truly put on these issues, since there is a much bigger opportunity to drive change at this point in the process rather than simply bitching about the results later. The strategic planning will also be influenced by the results of the ongoing campus plan process. As we all saw during the last round of consultations, C&CP was hedging their bets on being able to use the “future housing reserves” (aka the UBC Farm) in every one of their plans. Now that that appears not to be an option, don’t hold your breath waiting for C&CP to come up with some wonderful plan for all this stuff. I’m going to tentatively say that Andrew Parr’s lack of experience in housing and childcare issues may actually be a good thing if he’s able to cut through the bullshit and end up with a plan that could actually work.
Pierre puts UBC on a diet: Let’s lose those LBS!
Some ancillaries have operated in an environment where funding had to come from charging services to other units. While it sounded like a good idea at the time, it had [created] some adverse behaviors – overcharging for services, creating internal bureaucracy.
-Pierre Ouillet
The Land and Building Services portfolio, which was responsible for infrastructure at UBC, has been dispersed among a few portfolios. UBC Trek and the Sustainability Office now find themselves under Campus and Community Planning. Building Operations takes over Plant Ops and Utilities. Infrastructure Development comes into its own with former Plant Ops head John Metras on top. I’ll let Alex explain this one:
Putting the former director of Plant Ops responsible for liaising with Properties will hopefully fix one of the problems with Properties: they don’t give a shit about life cycle–just capital costs.
-Alex Lougheed
Not only does this help advance UBC’s sustainability ethos, it just seems like common sense at this point. One of the themes of this shakeup is having UBC’s departments working together as a team towards a common goal. The point that Properties Trust needs to adjust their way of thinking about how they do business has been brought up before. This appears to be the follow through. I again feel compelled to point out the complete lack of control UBC has over Properties.
I guess any reform of Plant Ops at this point is a lost cause. They get shuffled, but with no real changes.
Despite the disappearance of Land and Building Services, the former AVP in charge isn’t leaving, he’s leading. Geoff Atkins is now UBC’s “Leader of University Sustainability”. I hope to expand on Geoff and his new role in a future post, but in short: Geoff is free to use UBC as his playground to test and implement new ideas about sustainability. What strikes me most about Geoff is that he takes problems and thinks about them completely differently that most people would. This is an amazing quality and makes him seem well-suited to a blue sky position like this; it also leads to his ideas sounding alternately brilliant and crazy (and sometimes both). He is truly passionate about sustainability issues which makes me hope he will be able to make the most of this opportunity.
HR moved under Toope
The VP Ops/Fin portfolio lost some more weight by having HR now report to President Toope. I honestly haven’t a clue why this change was made. Pierre Ouillet’s charming assertion that it “reflects the importance we are putting on our people,” definitely does not fly with me. This is where you are supposed to help me out in the comments section.
There were other changes as well; this post touched on the ones I found most interesting. The original memo is linked at the top, so read it for the full list.
Apr
25
Freedom of Information Applies to UBC's Corporate Entities
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UBC just got a little more transparent.
A very recent ruling from the Office of the Infomation and Privacy Commissioner for BC has ruled that UBC must release records requested under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) for three of its subsidiaries: UBC Properties Investment Ltd., UBC Research Enterprises Inc. and UBC Investment Management Trust.
The FIPPA request was initiated by Stanley Tromp, a former UBC student and Ubyssey reporter who, in 2001, also managed to force the release of Coca-Cola’s 12-year exclusivity contract with UBC and the AMS.
The initial request asked for the annual report, salary of the highest ranking employee and meeting minutes from 7 organizations associated with UBC:
UBC denied the requests, asserting that these organizations are private organizations, and therefore FIPPA does not apply. Mr. Tromp then requested a review by the Office of the Infomation and Privacy Commissioner for BC resulting in the ruling linked above.
In the end, it was found that UBC Properties Investment Ltd., UBC Research Enterprises Inc. and UBC Investment Management Trust are “under the control of a public body” and therefore must fulfill FIPPA requests. While UBC tried to pull out all the stops in arguing why the records of these bodies were not under their control, the adjudicator seemed distinctly unimpressed with their arguments and rejected all of them as being irrelevant, contrary to the spirit of the law, or inconsistent with precedent.
The adjudicator pointed out that the three organizations were incorporated by UBC, 100% owned by UBC, must report to UBC administration and/or BoG, and most if not all of their directors are UBC employees or BoG members. That constitutes “control”.
The other four organizations were found not to be under UBC’s control and not required to disclose the requested documents. UBC has thirty days to appeal the ruling.
Update April 27: UBC does intend to appeal.
Apr
20
In case you were unaware, 99 Chairs and Trek Express will be closed for the summer in order to undergo renovations. 99 Chairs is kaput, to be replaced by a White Spot. Pizza Pizza and Timmy’s will be staying put and the sandwich place will get a new name familiar to those in Vanier: Stackables.
So, without further ado, here’s your Craigslist ad of the day. Chairs and tables from Trek Express and 99 Chairs can be yours for as low as $5! Not only that, Andrew Parr, the head honcho over at UBC Food Services is actually volunteering to take calls on the weekend to sell their stuff on Craigslist. Folks, that is what is known as dedication, or possibly just workaholism. Give this man a promotion!
Actually… UBC did just promote him. But that is another topic for another post!
A few weeks ago, I went to 99 Chairs for the first and last time, mostly to be able to write this post without being completely uninformed. (According to my co-worker, the main reason most people went to 99 Chairs was to buy beer on your meal card.) Although the food was passable, I did get the sense that this was a worn-out restaurant – no pizazz or excitement. It could certainly use some sprucing up. But… a White Spot?
Really?
I don’t think UBC Food Services runs franchises very well. Like many university campuses, with a near-monopoly on campus food service, there is only a token effort to be competitive. (Check out this other Craigslist ad too . They go out of their way to tout “No competition” as one of the best qualities of their UBC business.) Personally, I thought the whole idea of having a franchised restaurant is that all the locations are pretty much the same. UBC Food is running the black sheep of all of these corporate families. (For the record, UBC Food describes their franchises as being “non-traditional”.)
Much like my beloved Shopper’s Drug Mart which refused to honour Shopper’s Drug Mart flyers, nowhere except A&W accepts coupons. The Subway in the SUB doesn’t ever participate in the never-ending Subway promotions and in fact, their regular prices are slightly higher than average. The Tim Hortons at Trek Express doesn’t accept Tim Hortons gift cards which are being heavily promoted chain-wide, though I’ll note they do participate in Roll Up the Rim; there probably would be a revolt if they ignored that one. Have you ever been to another Manchu Wok that closes at 2:30 pm and is never open on weekends? How about a Tim Hortons that closes at 3:30 pm and is likewise restricted to Monday to Friday? Heck, McDonald’s in the Village is open to 3 AM!
So you may have guessed by now that I’m not terribly excited about White Spot. Don’t worry, there will be no Durganesque rant about the horrible dangers of corporations. Instead, I am wondering how much time and effort is going into this plan. After all the dust has settled, what real changes will we see? My prediction: not much. The food will still be mediocre, the hours terrible, they won’t participate in White Spot promotions, and you’ll have to start tipping. It seems like a completely lateral move from what 99 Chairs was, except that it will take a large amount of money (franchise fee of $75,000 and an initial investment of $750,000 – $2,500,000) and effort to get there. What’s the point?
UBC’s ancillaries, UBC Food included, could definitely serve students and the larger UBC community better with a different set of priorities. If you read the documentation of UBC Food’s visit to BoG in February, there is a long list of objectives they are working on. Reading it as a potential customer of theirs, I could not find a single objective where I read it and thought “Oh, that’s a good idea.” I guess potential customers is not a market segment they are hoping to attract.
Some things about ancillary structure are indeed changing soon, driven by UBC Admin. The full details aren’t out there quite yet, but I’m sure you’ll hear more as it develops.
I will give UBC Food some brownie points for the simple fact that they are not Aramark or Sodexo. Still, I can’t help but thinking that they are wasting a lot of resources on initiatives that, in my opinion, have no real benefit in the end. If they really have so much money and time they wish to expend to improve food service on this campus, I have ideas for some more tangible ways to do it:
Apr
16
Please accept my apologies in advance to those who find copy and paste posts offensive.
I was recently introduced to CanLII, a site that archives court decisions. After a brief search for “UBC”, I found this one which was too funny not to pass along.
“The plaintiff says that U.B.C. should not have left a goal upright on McInnes Field at night. I reject the suggestion that the goal as it stood was an allurement or trap to the plaintiff, an adult male, to use as a kind of jungle gym.“
An excerpt, condensed and edited to remove extraneous information:
The plaintiff claims damages for injuries suffered when, after clambering onto the crossbar of a portable soccer goal at the University of British Columbia, the goal tipped forward, the plaintiff fell and the crossbar hit his face.
The plaintiff, aged 33 years, is an unemployed mill worker living in Prince George. On Friday, 10 March 1990 he was staying with a friend in Vancouver. He went out with his friend early in the evening for Chinese food. He drank two bottles of beer. After returning to his friend’s apartment he left to go out for the evening with another friend, Brian Saarela. They went to a cabaret for an hour or so where the plaintiff said he had one bottle of beer. After waiting in a line-up to get into the Kitsilano Pub, the two friends decided instead to drive to the Pit, a drinking establishment for students at U.B.C. They arrived there shortly after 11 p.m. and stayed for an hour and a half or so. The plaintiff said that while there he drank three or four pints of beer.
The plaintiff had not visited the U.B.C. campus before. He was taken there in Brian Saarela’s truck. Saarela parked his truck in a parking lot at the side of McInnes Field, a large grassed sports field adjacent to the Student Union Building which houses the Pit. The plaintiff and Saarela walked across McInnes Field to get to the Student Union Building. There were portable goals on and around the field (perhaps four in total).
The two friends emerged from the Pit at about 12:30 a.m. and began retracing their steps across McInnes field to get to their vehicle. The two men approached a portable goal which was standing upright on the field. The plaintiff began to walk across the front of the goal. Saarela saw his friend put his right hand on the goal’s left upright post. He saw nothing more until a few seconds later he heard a thump and saw his friend lying face up on the ground with the goal’s crossbar across his chest. Saarela’s attention had been diverted when he was fumbling in his pocket for his watch and then dropped it.
The plaintiff says that he jumped up and grabbed the crossbar with both hands. He was facing along the line of the crossbar. He pulled himself up to the bar and then threw his right leg up and around it. Then says the plaintiff, “I think I felt it let go – something give…it happened so fast, I didn’t have time to do anything…I was on the ground…with the crossbar on my face”.
Brian Saarela assisted the plaintiff back to his truck and drove him to the nearby emergency ward of the U.B.C. Hospital. The plaintiff was found to have suffered severe facial injuries. It was the view of both the emergency ward doctor, and the plastic surgeon intern who saw him later that night at the Vancouver General Hospital, that the plaintiff had been drinking heavily.
The plaintiff says that U.B.C. should not have left a goal upright on McInnes Field at night. I reject the suggestion that the goal as it stood was an allurement or trap to the plaintiff, an adult male, to use as a kind of jungle gym.
Even if it can be said that U.B.C. should have reasonably anticipated that the occasional nighttime visitor, inebriated or not, might try to do chin-ups on an encounter with the portable goal while crossing McInnes Field, that I find is not what happened in this case.
I regret the plaintiff’s serious injury, but must conclude that he was the author of his own misfortune.
The plaintiff’s claim must be dismissed with costs on scale 3.
Apr
9
The AUS Elections happened quite recently, and the results are posted below. I’m a little bit saddened, in general, by elections of both the AUS and SUS- a fair number of the positions this year were uncontested or were yes/no votes. In fact, the UBC Debate Society’s election was more contested than either election (only 2 yes/no votes), just to use an example that I’m familiar with. I don’t know much about the candidates in this race, but I do recognize some of the names of the AMS reps- Matt Naylor will be continuing on in student politics, and I’m pleased to see Mike Silley there as well. Kristian Arciaga will be taking on the VP Fin job, which he should also be fantastic for given his enthusiasm about student governance this year. I’d just like to see more names and fewer yes/no votes next year!
Referendum
Yes 157
No 224
President (1)
Guillaume Houle 150
Ryan Trasolini 147
VP Finance (1)
Kristian Arciaga
Yes 232
No 47
VP Internal (1)
Tracy Leung
Yes 199
No 24
VP External (1)
Kyle Warwick
Yes 194
No 26
VP Academic (1)
Regina Tay
Yes 187
No 15
VP Administration (1)
Cheryl Kornder
Yes 196
No 19
Social Coordinator (1)
Uncontested
Promotions Coordinator (1)
Katie Fedosenko
Yes 175
No 17
Student Services Coordinator (1)
Laura Manyari
Yes 182
No 21
MASS Coordinator (1)
Alina Kwan
Yes 179
No 24
AMS Representatives (5)
Kyle Warwick 182
Mike Silley 152
Matthew Naylor 141
Carolee Changfoot 137
Jeremy McElroy 132
Jeremy Wood 126
General Officers (2)
Sarah Bihis
Yes 178
No 40
Kelsi Biring
Yes 187
No 32
Social Officer (1)
Richa Sharma
Yes 169
No 22
Promotions Officer (1)
Uncontested
Student Services Officer (1)
Judy Yuen
Yes 173
No 19
MASS Officer (1)
Pelican Mann
Yes 197
No 40
Apr
8
Hi everyone,
I would like to extend a warm welcome to Neal, who will be joining the Insiders team! Neal has already done some writing for us, as you all well know by know, and has been really passionate about some of the things going on at UBC, particularly those to do with the NCAA. He is a graduate student in chemistry who is familiar with the way the university works, and I’m really glad to have him on board!
Apologies for my lack of posting, by the way- my 7 courses caught up with me and I’m now trying to catch up on about 10 chapters of reading that I put off to do my papers/lab reports/midterm studying! I will resume writing once things have settled down a bit.
Apr
5
Stay Safe
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Some of you may have heard the news today about a woman who was killed in Pacific Spirit Park on what appears to be a random attack while she was out for a run/walk around 41st and Camosun. I just wanted to make a quick post in relation to it, as I know that with upcoming exams, lots of people seek exercise as a form of stress relief. I would like to remind everyone to stay safe, to not go to places where you may be vulnerable, to not run with headphones if you are running in the woods or by yourself, and to stay alert and aware of your surroundings and preferably not go out on your own if you’re going somewhere isolated. This incident has affected me personally, and I would hate to hear any more news about anyone getting hurt. So please- be aware, follow some of the suggestions laid out by the police: always jog or cycle with a companion, do not wear headphones, carry a whistle or personal alarm, wear visible clothing, and take a cell phone.
Link to the story: “http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Tragedy+Ladner+family+park+murder+victim+identified/1462387/story.html
Please take care.
Apr
3
As a number of media sites have already reported, UBC lost its parking case at the BC Supreme Court. The court found that UBC has no authority to issue parking tickets or collect money for parking violations. I know what you’re thinking…
Well, not necessarily.
The suit focused on UBC’s ability to issue parking tickets and collect money for parking violations. And as it turns out, they can’t. However, UBC’s ability to regulate parking, charge for parking and enforce parking were not at issue. UBC can still legally do all these things.
What will be interesting to see is whether of not UBC comes up with a genuine, reasonable response to this. From the beginning, it never seemed like they were taking this lawsuit very seriously and were basically trying to bully their way out of it. It’s never a good sign when you abandon your main defense right before the trial. And so far, after the decision, everything they’ve done has merely been posturing. They’ve already said they’ll appeal. They also released a bulletin which I can’t help but snicker at.
“Nothing to see here, folks… business as usual… here is some legalese to obscure what’s really going on… continue overpaying us for parking… if you do not continue to pay us you will unleash a traffic Armageddon… and if we do have to tow you, please know we’re only doing it for your own good.”
The result of the ruling is that now, the only way UBC can enforce parking regulations is by either 1) asking everyone nicely to continue paying for parking, or 2) towing and impounding vehicles. I really hope UBC thinks long and hard before using option #2 given that heavy-handed application of parking rules is what got them into this mess in the first place. If they start towing cars left, right and centre, they are eventually going to end up with another lawsuit on their hands.
I don’t have a whole lot more to add, but was hoping to hear what people think about this in the comments because I think it’s a very interesting development. No other campus blog has mentioned it and the Ubyssey won’t have the story ready until next Tuesday.
Personally I am interested in learning that if this judgement is upheld on appeal, what are the broader implications? There must be other instances where UBC has granted themselves powers they are not legally entitled to under the University Act. Anybody know?
Mar
25
After almost a year, the NCAA Division II Review Committee has finally released its final report regarding UBC-V’s potential application to NCAA Division II. At 588 pages including appendices it’s a monster, but unless you are an absolute nut for documents, the first 28 should suffice, along with the Consultation Summary Report which was posted online earlier this month (also included in the overall report).
So what exactly does it say?
I will mention at this point that I sit on the NCAA committee as a representative of the AMS (and by extension, students at large) and was involved in the whole process of arriving at this final document, so I hope you’ll excuse me if I’m very careful in my analysis. I should also point out the obvious fact that I am speaking on behalf of myself only, not on behalf of the committee.
I would also like to say that at the beginning of this process, many people had fears that this would be a rubber-stamp, faux-consultation situation. I hope that after reading the report and consultation summary, no one continues to feel that way.
The first important thing to note in this report is what it doesn’t say. While there are recommendations contained within, it does not take a stand on the whole underlying issue: should UBC join the NCAA Division II?
While the committee could not come up with a definitive answer, President Toope will have to (but not necessarily soon.) Publicly he has been very quiet on the subject of the NCAA and it’s impossible to guess what the final outcome will be.
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Do you agree or disagree that UBC Vancouver should proceed with an application for membership in the NCAA Division II?
Agree – 48%
Disagree – 52%
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What is clear is that it will take a lot of leadership to simply make a decision – any decision. One of the recommendations contained in the report is that UBC complete its communications plan prior to announcing its decision. The cynical view of this recommendation is that UBC will be trying to use a PR campaign to push through an unpopular decision. Unfortunately for UBC and the cynics out there, any decision they make will be unpopular, which is why this recommendation is vital. If public opinion above is to be believed, the outcome is the same: you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.
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Recommendation A: Should UBC Vancouver decide to proceed with an application for membership in the NCAA Division II, the committee recommends that the University, prior to making any application for membership, seek an exemption from the requirement of academic accreditation.
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This is a BIG DEAL. NCAA bylaws require all member institutions to be accredited by a US accrediting agency. While some faculties like Sauder and Medicine already get US accreditation, most of the university doesn’t. As mentioned in the report, the accreditation process would cost, at minimum, $500k-$1M every year. The university would be the one paying for this, diverting these funds from research and learning. Dealbreaker #1.
As well, many areas of the university would have to alter the way they develop curricula to suit the new accreditation requirements. You would need widespread buy-in from faculty to make this happen and that doesn’t seem likely. Dealbreaker #2.
Seeking US accreditation simply so that our sports teams can play in the NCAA is absurd. It’s possible that the NCAA could exempt UBC from this accreditation requirement, with the recognition that we already have Canadian accreditation and oh yeah, we’re pretty reputable to boot. If that exemption comes, the door to the NCAA is still open. If not, that door is slammed shut.
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…members of Division II believe that a well-conducted intercollegiate athletics program, based on sound educational principles and practices, is a proper part of the educational mission of a university or college and that the educational well-being and academic success of the participating student-athlete is of primary concern.
-From NCAA Division II Philosophy Statement
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One of the things that needs to be made clear is that Div II != Div I, and that’s a good thing. Div II does have a strong commitment to academics and it appears this commitment isn’t simply idle chatter. It was refreshing to learn that schools in Division II take this ethos seriously and practice it.
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The committee believes that were UBC Vancouver to join the NCAA Division II, there would be an inherent pressure to seek membership in Division I.
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Of course, it’s never that simple, right? UC-San Diego is a fascinating case study and the only academic comparator to UBC in Division II. Formerly a Division III school, they moved up to Division II because they were simply too large of a school to fit with other Division III schools. Despite moving up, they are now facing pressure to move up again, to Division I. Alarmingly, it is believed that if UBC were in Division II, we would also be under constant pressure to move up to Division I. For UBC, the thought of Division I should be absolutely out of the question for so many reasons that I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count them.
Much of this pressure to move up is inherent in being an institution which is much larger than your peers. Based on my research, of the 282 Division II schools, only 6 have more than 20,000 students (UCSD is second most populous, at ~29,000). UBC would easily eclipse those schools in size. If UCSD were to move up to Division I, UBC would be left with no academic comparators in Division II, likely adding even more pressure for UBC to move up as well.
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The student body at the University of California, San Diego, an academic comparator to UBC Vancouver, exhibits a level of campus interest in varsity athletics that is not dissimilar to that seen at UBC Vancouver. This is explained in part by the fact that students do not see the competing Division II member institutions as what can be termed “fraternal institutions”.
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In the consultation discussion guide the only potential benefit listed for regular students is “enhancing school spirit and pride”. The committee found that it is extremely unlikely that having the NCAA on campus will have any positive effect on fan support. In fact, it might even get worse since the Division II schools have zero name recognition. Getting people out to games requires marketing, plain and simple, and that can be done regardless of where UBC plays.
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These financial indicators suggest that Athletics and Recreation is in a sound financial position as evidenced by its seven-figure net income in each of the past two years.
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The revelation that UBC Athletics is in a good financial situation should come as news to no one. Although Athletics has certain unrealistic financial expectations regarding joini
ng the NCAA (such as >100% increase in gate revenues), in the short term joining the NCAA wouldn’t change the budgets much.
What happens after the short term is the unanswered million-dollar question (or more likely a multi-million dollar question). UBC’s varsity budget currently stands at about CAD$4.5M. The average varsity budget of a NCAA Division II school with football in the first quartile is around USD$9M (at current exchange rates, about CAD$11M.) As mentioned above, UBC would be by far the largest school in Division II. In the long term, would UBC Athletics be happy at current varsity funding levels? Or would they try to drastically increase their varsity budget to bring it in line with other large Division II schools?
So what about UCSD, who moved up from Div III? Well, in 2007 they passed a fee referendum that saw their athletics fee more than triple, going from $95 to $329 (!) This increase effectively doubled the budget of their athletic department, in order to put them in the same realm as other large Division II schools.
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UBC Vancouver’s consideration of application for membership in the NCAA Division II has proved a catalyst for opening discussions about changes to the CIS.
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Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) is still a big question mark, in that they have been oddly silent. While there have been meetings between UBC and CIS officials, nothing particularly notable came out of them. CIS did release a document last October in an attempt to demonstrate their commitment to excellence but it isn’t clear if action is following their words. While visiting Ottawa in February, I went into the CIS offices to ask if they had released anything else relevant since then. The answer was no.
Whether or not CIS intends on changing anything is still a mystery. Hopefully more will be revealed at the CIS AGM in early June. Bob Philip was asked about whether he would still want to be in the NCAA if CIS were to adopt NCAA-style financial aid rules and a higher calibre of play. The response was a non-committal. For athletics, it seems like the dislike of CIS goes deeper than just the rules on the surface.
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The committee observed that the operations of UBC Athletics and Recreation were not well understood by the academic units of the university.
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And that brings us to the last recommendation: an advisory committee to facilitate communication between Athletics and the academic departments. UBC seems to be very committee-happy though that might be a symptom of any large organization. All I can say is that it’s not a bad idea, but if a committee of this type is formed, it needs to have some real powers, not just talk about things. Being able to report directly to the president, as proposed in the report, would give this committee some much-needed clout.
I encourage you to read the report for the full story and to make up your own mind. I hope the Ubyssey has something upcoming on this report, since they (Justin McElroy in particular) have had lots of meaningful NCAA coverage this year.
