The Insiders
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Mar
15
AvEd Strikes Down UVic’s Athletics Fee Increase but not UBC’s
Posted by: Neal Yonson | March 15, 2010 | 9 Comments
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.
Read more
Mar
14
SUS Elections 2010 Preview
Posted by: Neal Yonson | March 14, 2010 | 1 Comment
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/
Mar
13
Engineers Vote: All Candidate Forum Coverage
Posted by: Andrew Carne | March 13, 2010 | 8 Comments
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.
Mar
13
The MASS Renew Project
Posted by: Neal Yonson | March 13, 2010 | Comments Off on 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.
Mar
12
AMS Electoral Fraud: The Technical Perspective
Posted by: Andrew Carne | March 12, 2010 | 6 Comments
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.
Mar
12
Arts, The Force is With You
Posted by: Neal Yonson | March 12, 2010 | 2 Comments
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! Read more
Mar
11
How the CUS has Failed Its Voters
Posted by: Neal Yonson | March 11, 2010 | 2 Comments
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
Mar
10
The Henry Angus Tuition Fee
Posted by: Alex Lougheed | March 10, 2010 | 10 Comments
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.
Mar
8
Counterpoint: Commerce Students Should Not Support the Fee Referendum
Posted by: Neal Yonson | March 8, 2010 | 2 Comments
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. Read more
Mar
8
Point: Commerce Students Should Support the Fee Referendum
Posted by: Neal Yonson | March 8, 2010 | 3 Comments
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. Read more
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