Yesterday, UBC Insiders released a database of Special Occasion Licences (SOLs) granted at UBC that revealed 1 in 5 SOLs granted at UBC were approved by the RCMP despite being in breach of provincial liquor regulations. The overwhelming majority of these events were not student-run. There is another area to explore about how the RCMP scrutinizes SOL applications at UBC: rules that aren’t in provincial law.
Category: Campus Life
Last year, former Ubyssey reporter Bryan Zandberg wrote a piece for the Tyee examining whether there was a “War on Fun” at UBC.
A year later, the piece is as dated as it is current. Sgt. Dan Wendland is no longer with us at UBC, but his legacy lives on through the policies he implemented. The students featured in the article for the most part have given up the fight, but a new set of students is discovering the absurdity with which the RCMP holds power over Special Occasion Licences (SOLs) at UBC.
In re-launching UBC Insiders, we made investigative features part of our mandate. Over the summer, I tracked down as many Special Occasion Licence applications filed at UBC as possible. With these in hand, a database was constructed through many, many late nights of data-entry. The database has been put online and can be accessed here. The database profiles 730 events from January 2008 until the present. The results confirm things that, empirically, students knew were happening. But they also raise questions about what rules the RCMP was actually enforcing.
Happy First Week all. Here’s what happened while you were out.
On Campus
The Student Board of Governors representatives turned over. Tim Blair bids farewell, as Michael Duncan takes his place. Bijan Ahmadian and Alexandra Caldwell (UBC-O) were re-elected for their respective second terms.
The University approved a plan to in-fill Totem residence. This was met with surprise and glee from at least one editor of this blog. (Board item front page, 60-megabyte board presentation .pdf)
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St. John Hospice
Last September, in partnership with the Vancouver Hospice Society, the Order of St. John and Vancouver Coastal Health, the Board of Governors passed a partial Board 1 to build a hospice. The building will only cost UBC marginal maintenance costs, the management will be undertaken by VCH, and the building is forfeited to UBC in at least fifty years. A good deal for all parties. The Board approved the plan, and sent the planning department off to come up with a site and to contract out the design.
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Koerner’s Pub Patio Project
At the last GSS Council meeting on July 23, 2009, a plan to expand Koerner’s Pub came up for council approval. However, before it could be dealt with quorum was lost for the third month in a row and no decision could be made. This project has been on the table for quite a while now, and many people have put a lot of work into refining the design and financing options of the plan.
Most graduate students and other patrons of Koerner’s Pub are unaware of the planned pub expansion. Since it represents one of the biggest and most meaningful projects the GSS has considered in a number of years, this post is meant to inform all of those people about what the project’s all about, why it’s worthwhile, and what the current situation is. Most of the information in here represent the findings of the Pub Patio Project Task Force (PPPTF) and its presentation to council, which can be viewed here.
The new Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre is currently applying for an amendment to their liquor-primary licence. The matter will be coming before Metro Vancouver’s Electoral Area committee for approval this Friday and there seems to be a significant hurdle in the way: as a result of past violations, the RCMP does not support it.
- Read the letter from the RCMP about problems Athletics has been having controlling alcohol and drugs at concerts held in the arena.
- This letter was posted yesterday on the the @ubcinsiders Twitter feed. For up-to-date news, follow us!
- The full agenda package can be found here, and contains a wealth of documents about the application, though hopefully I will be able to save you the trouble of reading through it all.
Thunderbird Arena currently has a liquor-primary licence which covers the seating area in Father Bauer arena as well as the location of the former Thunderbar. When the new facility was erected around Father Bauer arena, the new areas were not covered under the existing liquor licence. As a result, UBC Athletics is applying for an amendment to the existing liquor-primary licence to cover the seating area and floor of the new arena. This application is not only in UBC’s interests, VANOC wants it too. It’s in the venue agreement, and so UBC does as VANOC wants.
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More from the CIS AGM
The Coles notes version of this post was already published: CIS restricts dual membership with NCAA.
Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS), the organization that governs high-performance sport at the post-secondary level, held its Annual General Meeting from June 8-12 in Gatineau, Quebec.
When UBC decided to defer its decision on NCAA membership until at least 2010, one of the reasons cited was unresolved issues reagarding CIS. In the context of potential NCAA membership, the three main issues identified were (1) Dual membership rules, (2) Athletic Financial Aid rules and (3) Quality of competition within Canada West. The CIS AGM is the only time of year where these issues can be dealt with formally by the CIS membership.
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Want chairs? Perhaps… 99 of them?
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:
- 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.
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Two fun promos!
Thought I’d drop by to share a couple cool clips.
This is from Terry*, an interdisciplinary project at UBC that runs a course (ASIC 200) and an amazing speaker series. The newest branch of the project is Terry Talks, a one-day conference modeled on the popular TED Talks. It’ll bring UBC’s most dynamic students to give “the talk of their life” on a high-profile platform. All you folks should consider attending or even applying to be one of the special few!
Promo number 2 is from our very own AMS, starring Prez Michael Duncan. What happens when the Joker threatens to take over the AMS and blow up the SUB? There’s only one way to find out dudes.
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RBF's triumphant return
As you were wandering about campus this week, you might have noticed people strutting about in army fatigues, bright red shirts, and megaphones shouting vaguely about fun, beer, parties, beer, campus life, beer, politics, and beer. These are not drunk Russians left over from the soviet era. Nay, these are the members of the Radical Beer Faction, UBC’s oldest political group. Back when the AMS elections ran with parties (called slates) RBF ran a full slate of joke candidates, ranging from fairies to fire hydrants. These days, RBF is an AMS club, focusing on fighting what they have termed the “war on fun” on campus. This “war,” being waged upon students by the “axis of boring” of the UNA, RCMP, and university administration, has allegedly reduced the number of parties on campus due to restricted liquor licences, and bitchier neighbours. For the RBF’s lobbying document, click here.
RBF VP politburo “Scary” Mike Kushnir recently had a nice little interview on the CBC radio drive-home show On the Coast explaining the Faction and the its activities at UBC. Have a listen.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ebgoX90lc]
Mike is a pretty eloquent guy. For the response from the RCMP and a shout-out from Grant Lawrence, CBC radio 3 host of awesomeness, here is part 2 of the segment.
If nothing else, RBF has built itself a kickass brand with Soviet-style iconography, enthusiastic membership, and a great message: the way we party is political. Take a look at some of Tim’s old posts here, and here to see why. The issue of beer gardens and how students party on campus actually does relate to the fundamental issue of students’ social and political engagement with fellow students. Props to the Ubyssey for harnessing the energy of this group in a by-weekly RBF column, which will be paired with a column from another active campus group, Students for a Democratic Society.