but everything else is…..
Seriously Peets, you need to work on the marketing.
For example; “Recliner. In working order” should read, “Own a piece of UBC history, Recliner used multiple times by the Hydrant”
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For those of you not familiar with Peets, he is the man behind UBC’s favourite candidate: The Fire Hydrant.
I’m travelling back to Hamilton after a weekend away. Presently, I’m transferring between buses in London Ontario.
The Greyhound terminal has been renovated since the last time I was here and is greatly improved. It’s clean, has lots of seating, a Subway instead of the old cafeteria, lockers, and a counter with multiple plugs for people to charge their laptops.
It’s everything a public transit station should be. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been chased by transit station security guards for plugging my laptop in at a city bus terminal; here, there is a big sign encouraging me to plug-in.
Stephane Dion held a town hall earlier this week at the University of British Columbia and The Ubyssey covered it.
Without his teleprompter, and when not worried about the political scripting of his answers, Dion is a very strong speaker.
The Liberals be wise to hold more of these town halls across Canada and focus on earning positive local media reviews.
It appears faculty at the Brandon University will be on strike starting Monday.
Meanwhile, the strike at the University of Windsor continues without any end in sight. The provincial mediator has left the table and neither side is talking. According to the mediator, there is no reasonable prospect the sides will be able to settle the dispute at the present time.
This leaves students with no classes, and no hope of returning to classes this week.
With this in mind, it is time for the government to prepare to act.
The Ontario Minister of Labour, Peter Fonseca, must deliver a strong message to the two sides that he expects them to negotiate. Failing that, he must be prepared to table back-to-work legislation. (It’s a shame that no one is able to toss the leaders of the two sides into a room and lock the door until they reach an agreement.)
If the two sides do not sit down; it’s inevitable that the province will be forced to legislate faculty back-to-work. The government will not tolerate a cancellation of the academic year.
UWindsor students cannot afford to lose summer jobs because there exams run into the first week of May to make up for a strike in October.
In short, the Minister of Labour must get the two sides into a room Monday morning or table back-to-work legislation; anything else will be letting students suffer in the interest of political appearances.
The Windsor Star had a strong editorial and cartoon against the faculty union on Friday.
(A side note, I’ve noted discussion about how a fall strike may hurt recruitment as grade 12 students are presently deciding which schools to apply to. If anything, I’d be more inclined to attend a university which settled contracts negotiations the year prior to my attending than one which faces contract talks during my first year)
Carleton’s overreaction to a student pointing out their computer security flaws has resulted in the students withdrawing from the university.
Nevermind the fact the university is using an anvil to swat a fly; they are losing the opportunity to engage a brillant student in a positive manner.
Clearly, this student is extremely talented in Computer Science. Yes, he did violate the student code of conduct.
That said, I very much doubt the university would be punishing him so severely if it were not for the embarassment they suffered when he finally made the institutions flaws public.
If I were the head of a major computer science program; I’d be actively recruiting this student.
The Ontario Universities Fair is this weekend in Toronto.
I attended the fair last year and posted the following advice:
1) Give yourself enough time. I was in the fair for six hours and I did not get to see everything I wanted to see from the display booths. I did not even get to the presentations.
2) Water – bring a bottle of water, you are going to be there for awhile.
3) Running shoes – thankfully, I was too lazy to bother to put on anything other than jeans today and as such, I was wearing my nicely worn runners. (Fashion has never been my thing)
4) SWAG – the key to any going to any university recruitment event is to get the free stuff.
I’m going to add one more piece; be prepared to wait. This point reinforces 1, 2, and 3.
The fair is limited to Ontario’s public universities.
The Maclean’s Virtual Fair will include post-secondary institutions from across Canada. You can still register for the V-Fair here.
If you live in the Toronto area, make the trip to the OUF and sign up for the V-Fair; you can never be too informed.
Coleman on Campus will return overnight with a post related to the latest anti-student trend; bylaws to limit the number of students living in a house.
In reality, the new bylaws are designed to make it unaffordable for students to live in areas near universities and to drive young people out of communities.
The bylaws do not actually have a plan of where to place the students; just that the students need to driven out of communities.
Tonight, the anti-student movement in Hamilton, Ontario is holding a “public” meeting to discussion how to implement Oshawa’s anti-student bylaw near McMaster University. I’m going to try to attend the meeting. Knowing the group holding it, I no expecting to be welcome.
I’ve behind by two days on my study schedule and do not plan to blog on either Sunday or Monday.
I’ll be back on Tuesday.
On the schedule for Tuesday: Metrolinx is holding a media session to brief us on the Greater Toronto-Hamilton draft Regional Transportation Plan and Investment Strategy; Jack Layton will be in Hamilton; the architects of Oshawa’s anti-student housing bylaw are in Hamilton at the invitation of the anti-student Ainslie Wood/Westdale Community Association of Resident Homeowners Inc. (AWWCA).
An interesting sidenote, the AWWCA held one of their regular “Hey Hey Ho Ho! The students have to go” rallies today, and one of the professionally made signs provided for protesters called on McMaster University President Peter George to resign. 1
The Ontario Legislative Assembly returns from summer recess on Monday. I’ll try to make a trip up during the week to ask the Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities John Milloy “Whatzz up?” It was be nice to directly question him instead of dealing with his staff. He’s one of the most intelligent politicians I’ve ever met and he knows his portfolio; his political staff make him appear to be incompetent.
Of course, if the NDP or Conservatives unveil their post-secondary platforms on Monday; I’ll be online to cover it.
Updates:
1) According to a reporter from McMaster’s student newspaper The Silhouette, the signs actually belong to the ever more anti-student group known as WADS. WADS stands for “Westdale Against Drunk Students.”
The Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper, finally has a website. (again)
This week’s issue is up: www.thesil.ca
Yesterday, Stéphane Dion’s unveiled his post-secondary education platform.
The platform proposes to replace current federal tax credits with in-study grants; provide significant relief for student loan borrowers in their repayment phase; create more needs-based grants, with each grant having greater value than currently planned under the Canada Student Grant Program; guarantee every student a loan of $5,000; provide more funding for university research; offer tax credits for private sector research; and increase funding to universities for the indirect costs of research.
In short, the announcement had something for everyone–almost.
There was one group that did not get any new free money: students from upper-income families. The only change for them is they now have access to a $5,000 loan and they keep benefiting from the funds they currently receive from federal tax credits (but in a new way).
This is a refreshing change, and hopefully a watershed moment in Canadian higher education policy. For the past few years, governments have focused on “aid” schemes that amounted to little more than bribing voters with promises of free money.
A recent trend are grants for “textbooks” and “technology.” Both the federal Conservative government and Ontario Liberal government have implemented these schemes.
The federal “textbook tax credit” is a tax credit worth about $80 for students who have enough income to take advantage of it while in school. It’s a universal tax credit which benefits poor and rich students equally. In effect, it’s the same as the already existing education tax credit. Just a fancy name for the purposes of a photo-op.
The Ontario “textbook and technology grant” is a $150 mail-in rebate cheque that all post-secondary students in Ontario can apply for. Students don’t receive the money until October and only if they know to apply for it. This “grant” is worse public policy than the federal “textbook tax credit.” Not only does it do nothing to address access issues, it costs millions of dollars to administer. Instead of lowering tuition increase by $150, the Ontario government is spending millions to create an administrative structure to print cheques that amount to little more than political propaganda funded by taxpayers.
The result of these recent policies is hundreds of millions of dollars being wasted on schemes that do nothing to assist students who need help. Meanwhile, raises in the cost of obtaining a post-secondary education have outstripped support for the neediest students and made it more difficult to obtain a post-secondary education, especially an university education.Dion’s proposal focuses on students who need support and isn’t a mere vote buying scheme. The amount of the grants is significant enough that they will actually make a difference. They are focused where they can make the greatest amount of difference and no money is wasted on schemes that benefit the rich as much as the poor.
It may be the latter reality that has the Canadian Federation of Students upset at the proposal. The CFS prefers tuition cuts over these targeted grants. Aside from the fact that the federal government doesn’t deal with tuition as it is a provincial responsibility, this position is insane because the CFS knows that tuition cuts benefit upper-income students and needier students equally. Yet, they continue to fight for tuition cuts instead of focusing on needs-based grants. It makes you wonder who they really work for…
The New Democrats and the Conservatives will be unveiling their post-secondary platforms in the next few weeks. Hopefully, they show good policy sense as the Liberal have.