Category: Issues

Student Court: AUS Presidential Election “void and of no effect”

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date April 18, 2010
13 Comments on Student Court: AUS Presidential Election “void and of no effect”

On Friday, Student Court handed down a decision in Trasolini v. AUS Elections Committee which concluded that this year’s AUS Presidential Election is “void and of no effect”.

Upon reviewing the decision, Brian Platt sent an email to AUS council announcing that he was stepping down immediately. Elysia Pine, who was elected as AUS VP Internal this year, ascends to the presidency on an interim basis until the AUS can figure out what to do next. Basically the two major details that need to be worked out:

1) Who is the interim president? Should it be Elysia or should AUS council appoint someone else to fill this role?

2) When should the by-election be held? Could the AUS really hold a legitimate presidential election during exams, or worse, during the summer? Or is September the only viable option?

There will almost certainly be a special AUS council meeting held this week devoted to figuring out these details. Unfortunately there’s no obvious best course of action here.

Issues Student Politics

How the CUS has Failed Its Voters

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date March 11, 2010
2 Comments on How the CUS has Failed Its Voters

This year on Insiders we’ve tried to stay away from ranty editorials but this time I can’t resist.

I was brought into this commerce fee thing innocently enough, when Alex told me about a CUS meeting where they would be discussing the fee. I was happy to stay out of it and let him deal with it all until I got a message saying that he couldn’t make the meeting and could I please go take notes in his place? So I went, and got my first taste of the CUS.

From the beginning, the process behind running the referendum has been poisoned and as is widely acknowledged, is an inititative of the Dean, not the CUS. Most, if not all, of the info the CUS went on appeared to have come in the form of “Dean Dan said…” and the CUS blindly trusted anything that was said. I understand that Dan is a popular fellow. I had the pleasure of working with him on a university committee considering NCAA membership. He’s charismatic and persuasive. But it doesn’t mean he’s necessarily on your side.

So as far as the comments Dean Dan made today, we had given Dan an outline of what we suggested we would like to see him talk about. That being said, Dean Dan is obviously in a position where he wants, you know, he is personally invested in this and we really wanted him to share the information that he shared with us two Fridays ago. So he shared that information with students as well. He went on to share his own personal biases as well.

Connor McGauley, incoming CUS President
From March 1, 2010 CUS meeting

Issues Student Politics

The Henry Angus Tuition Fee

Post author By Alex Lougheed
Post date March 10, 2010
10 Comments on The Henry Angus Tuition Fee

Commerce students are before the ballot now. There are some good backgrounders out there. We scrapped ours because frankly, it was too dry. The important lessons coming from the history are:

1. The rhetoric behind accreditation grew stronger with time. At first it was not being mentioned, then there were short references, now there’s direct citations from documents no one’s seen.

2. Fun accounting tricks took place. The development was “phased” and then a lot of the project was shifted into Phase 1 slowly in what is most likely an attempt to maximize funds from the first CUS referendum. This includes things that didn’t need to be there, like A/V.

3. Phase 2, in a sense, has to happen. If only Phase 1 occurs, its costs go up because building code and seismic improvements are in Phase 2. When you’re tearing down walls to upgrade to code, you may as well save money and make those walls pretty. It would be really stupid to not do Phase 2.

The fact that ‘phasing’ is irrelevant if you have to do both is beside the point. What’s important to note from the history is that there is this financial model that was created by the administration, and they’re relying on the inflexibility they built in to get a desired outcome. It’s like arguing “we shouldn’t stop the train, because I deliberately broke the breaks.”

This piece goes into the nature of tuition and student fee accounting, what’s wrong with this question, and the bad precedents it is setting.

Issues

Counterpoint: Commerce Students Should Not Support the Fee Referendum

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date March 8, 2010
2 Comments on Counterpoint: Commerce Students Should Not Support the Fee Referendum

This piece in opposition to the proposed $500 Commerce fee was written by Adrian Pape, an undergraduate student in commerce.

The point to this counterpoint can be found here.

Problems with the CUS Referendum

1. “Building fee” or “student fee”: call it what you want, this fee has already been rejected by the provincial government. The previous fee was rejected because it was considered a tuition increase (which is capped at 2%). UVic held a referendum last October on “a new athletics and recreation building fee” that passed, but was also rejected. This falls under the tuition category. These fees are capped. We shouldn’t be trying to sneak around that issue. N.B.: They were voting on an Athletics and Recreating building – we’re voting on an academic building – our classrooms.

Issues

Point: Commerce Students Should Support the Fee Referendum

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date March 8, 2010
3 Comments on Point: Commerce Students Should Support the Fee Referendum

What exciting times we live in! The CUS this week has a referendum before their members to decide on a $500 fee to support the construction of Phase II of the Henry Angus building. This is one half of a point-counterpoint on the subject. This was written by Laura Silvester, outgoing CUS president.

For the counterpoint to this article, please click here.

The question currently being posed to Commerce students is whether or not they are supportive of paying an annual $500 student fee to fund a part of the Henry Angus building renewal project. I will be stating reasons why Commerce students may be in favour of this.

BoG Issues News

Board of Governors Invents Secretive Voting Procedure

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date January 11, 2010
15 Comments on Board of Governors Invents Secretive Voting Procedure

Last fall, the Board of Governors gave its consent to UBC’s newest policy, Policy 92: Land Use and Permitting. Look closely at the top right-hand corner of the policy. The approval date listed is October 2009.

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One problem: the Board never met in October..

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From BoG website.

Campus Life Issues UNA

Come on feel the noise

The UNA just started a public consultation about their proposed noise bylaw which runs until November 9.

This process has been ongoing since well before the appearance of Bill 13, which would give UBC the ability to regulate noise all over campus. The University Neighbours’ Agreement, the document which defines the governance of the UNA, outlines how rules regarding noise, nuisance, parking, and traffic can be put in place. Although the UNA does all the legwork to develop the rule(s), UBC’s Board of Governors would be the ones to ultimately put them in place. The Neighbours’ Agreement is clear that any new rules would apply only to the areas falling under UNA jurisdiction, not all of campus.

The fact that Bill 13 exists is a tacit acknowledgment that the BOG never really had the legal authority necessary to enact any noise rule the UNA came up with (not that it would have stopped them, of course.) Since it’s likely Bill 13 will pass, this is probably a moot point but still worth noting.

Reading through the proposed bylaw the image that comes to mind, to borrow a phrase, is that of a wildly overlapping Venn diagram. It contains some very broad, very vague rules with seemingly contradictory clauses, odd exceptions and an uneven mode of enforcement. Naturally, this is a subject on which UBC Insiders cannot keep quiet.

Campus Life Issues

A Forensic Examination of the War on Fun, Part 2

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date September 15, 2009
4 Comments on A Forensic Examination of the War on Fun, Part 2

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.

Campus Life Issues

A Forensic Examination of the War on Fun, Part 1

Post author By Neal Yonson
Post date September 14, 2009
12 Comments on A Forensic Examination of the War on Fun, Part 1

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.

Athletics BoG Campus Life Development Government Issues News President Student Movement Student Politics Uncategorized

Summer News Recap

Post author By Alex Lougheed
Post date September 9, 2009

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)