UBC Insiders

Welcome!

After slaving away behind the scenes for three months now, we’re finally public. Introducing the brand-new UBC Insiders! Andrew, Justin, Neal and I have been working away behind the scenes, securing the new team, working on web development and coming up with a business strategy, editorial schedules and research ideas to give you what you want from UBC Insiders: the best coverage of UBC Vancouver political news and opinion.

To the AMS, and Fincom in particular for helping fund my trip to Ottawa to attend the CIS AGM.

You can read the articles I wrote about it here and here.

If you are hoping to go to a conference, event, or have a special project in mind, I strongly encourage you to apply for one of their Student Initiatives Fund grants (which is what I got).

If you are an AMS club looking to do something special, they also have an option for you: the Clubs Benefit Fund.

Finally, another good funding option they have is the Innovative Projects Fund, which exists to provide seed money for new projects of direct benefit to students.

I am a huge AMS fan and it’s not only because they just gave me money. It is easy to criticize them when they make mistakes, but in the end it is full of great people who do good things, and UBC students are definitely better off for it.

It’s so nice out today. Can’t we all just go sit on the Knoll and have council there?

Highlights:

• A visit from Pierre Ouillet and Brian Sullivan
• Tom Dvorak’s EPIC Sunglasses tan

Bonjour Pierre Ouillet

Pierre Ouillet (UBC’s VP Finance, Resources and Operations) is here with Brian Sullivan to talk about structural deficits in the UBC budget. These must be the hot new thing in institutional finance this year, since we also got a presentation from Tom Dvorak about it last month.

The Faculty of Graduate Studies (FoGS) recently implemented “automated continuous thesis registration”, which works as follows:

“Starting in Summer 2009, when students register in a thesis or dissertation course once, their registration in that course will automatically roll each term until the end of the student’s program (excepting if they are on leave).’

On the surface this seems pragmatic. In the original email which went out last May they hoped that it would make life easier for students, faculty and staff. They also allege that students not registering was a common occurrence, causing UBC to lose out on some tuition fees and provincial funding.

This year, the Ubyssey will have more resources invested in their culture section (one editor last year; this year there are two), with fewer resources going into news (two editors last year; this year only one). They now have a culture blog and, I believe, a paid culture staffer over the summer. Correction: Apparently the grant the Ubyssey obtained went news and coordinating editors. Over the summer the rest of the staff is volunteer.

A quick look at their recent culture content reveals entries about other websites, and coverage of things happening around Vancouver which are already covered quite competently by Vancouver’s other media outlets. Events happening or upcoming on campus or put on by the AMS? Not a peep.