Posting Problems

• ** WARNING! INCOMING RANT ***

Let me preface this by saying that this topic is not directed to any one person or department, it simply designed to spread awareness about an issue.

Okay. That is just about enough!

The ULSU ran into an issue this year. It was something that was never encountered in the past. And it was something that has caused considerable frustration to everyone that has ever suffered through it. I am talking about posting at the University of Lethbridge.

At first, we could ignore it. After all, it is just a couple of posters here and there. Maybe they fell down. Maybe the duct tape did not hold to concrete. Maybe a couple people did not agree with the content and tore them down. These things happen.

But then it got worse. Much worse. Soon, any poster that was trying to promote student life, whether it was from the Students’ Union, an on-campus group, or department was being ripped down. And it wasn’t just one or two posters here and there. It was systematic destruction of any and all posters on this campus.

The only “safe” place is on the sparse bulletin boards around campus. If you have seen the bulletin boards, you will see why I put safe in quotations. They are a cluttered mess, which are only cleaned off during convocations. Quite honestly, they so cluttered as to be useless. In addition, there is no set system as to which postings can go where, so anything and everything goes on all the boards that are not under glass. Rooms for rent, bands, Thailand trips, mushroom promotion, books for sale,  club events; it all becomes the same: unreadable and un-usable.

As an aside, this year, the ULSU, fed up with the clutter that infects boards in the SU Building, instituted a system: Grouping of posters by type. Was it effective? Yes. Was it expensive and complicated? No. All it involved was labeling the boards, and posting a guideline notice. Problem solved.

In addition to the bulletin boards, there is the matter of posting on concrete. Now, in the past, on-campus groups had been allowed to post on unfinished concrete surfaces. The postings typically had to be in the promotion of campus life, whether it was a special lecturer, or special event. This year, despite the new strategic plan outlining student engagement as a key priority, this is no longer the case.

Now, I am greatly in favor to the prohibition of posting on painted or finished surfaces. Duct tape, the typical material for affixing posters, can seriously damage drywall or laminate. But concrete?! Duct tape is strong, but I have yet to encounter a type that can compromise the structural, or even surface integrity of concrete.

So, what is the point of this rant? Well, something need to change. It seems like a fairly trivial issue to get worked up over. But it is not. As stupid as it sounds, posters are important at the University of Lethbridge.

So, a call to action:

The posting guidelines need to change. Rather than promoting the university community to be involved, it is hurting it. Posters, despite their weaknesses, are still a very simple, and very effective way to communicate. They show that there are people on this campus that are excited to be here, people that want to get others excited as well.  Posters demonstrate that there is life within these austere, concrete walls. Let’s make sure that that life can grow and flourish.

So, what are we doing to change these guidelines? First, we need your feedback. Email me (su.president@uleth.ca) with your comments and frustrations,  but also with your suggestions for improvement. We will take it from there.

I am admittedly biased, but in my mind, posters around the campus are a good thing. They are one of the things that make Universities unique. In what other environment can you find so much activity in such a small space? People; staff, students, and faculty, complain that there is nothing to do here. I vehemently disagree. The University of Lethbridge is a hive of activity and excitement. There are many people here who are passionate about promoting campus culture. Posters help them do that.

Adam Vossepoel

President

huzzah minister!!! part 3- Let’s talk about Tri Councils

And we are back. I like that Jenn posted about the VP Research because a big part of their job is to secure funding from the Tri-Councils for research. Conincidentally, we here at CASA are talking about Tri-Council funding as it pertains to students.

So, what the heck are the Tri-Councils? Well, they are the autonomous bodies that are charged with reviewing research projects throughout the country, and subsequently providing funding for said projects. The Tri-Councils are:

Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR)

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

So, why are we talking about the tri-councils. Well, research is important. We are biased, of course, but we fundamentally believe that education and innovation are the primary means of improving this country. That is why we are talking about Tri-Council funding and autonomy.

There are 2 things that we are talking to ministers, MPs, senators, and leaders about.

TRI-COUNCIL PAY EQUITY

A student should not need to take a vow of poverty if they want to do grad work in the Social Sciences and Humanities. But that is what we are requiring of them right now. Students who pursue graduate research through SSHRC get paid significantly less than those who are funded by NSERC and CIHR. Why?

Well, one of the things we hear is NSERC and CIHR need more funding to attract grad students, because of market forces. They could make a lot of money working, rather than researching or something like that. They also throw bunk excuses like “the Universities set the pay level of the degrees!”

But, we are having none of that!!! First off, the value of research is in-calculable. Who knows? The next big thing might come from the social sciences. So why is the government falsely perpetuating market forces? Also, universities don’t spend money on things that they don’t consider necessary, like student salaries (They are a business folks. If you weren’t forced to spend more money on someone’s salary, you would’nt).

So, our ask: Pay equity across the Tri-Councils. Whether this means that the government puts more funding into SSHRC, or simply rejigs the rules to ensure this equity are inconsequential to us, as long as it happens.

Research is valuable, whether is done in the social sciences, natural sciences, or health field. Let’s make sure that students who want to do this work are not disadvantaged.

TRI-COUNCIL AUTONOMY

In Budget 2009, there were some concerning mandates. One thing that the Government did was direct SSHRC to focus in on Business related grad projects. We have an issue with this one too!

The Tri-Councils are supposed to be arms length from the government. And here we have a case of direct interference. While we have no specific issue with differentially funding the tri-councils to reflect the government’s priorities, we believe that is where it should end.

DO NOT tell an independent agency that a management graduate project is more valuable than a history graduate project.

Again, it comes back to the intrinsic value of research across the board. I have been the using the R.I.M example (they are the folks who came up with the Blackberry). The work that RIM did to come up with that little tool needed input from across the disciplines; from computer science to linguistics, to user interface research. If any part of that was missing, the Blackberry would not exist. And that is just one example among many.

Research is important. It is not the government’s place to determine what research should be done. That is the responsibility of the Tri-Councils. That is why they were set up in the first place. Do not tinker with that.

Adam Vossepoel

President

Huzzah Minister!!! Part 2: Let’s talk about books…

When you think of the costs associated with obtaining a University education, you typically think of tution, rent, cost of living, etc. But academic materials (textbooks, course packs, lab materials) are real, and often exorbitantly priced.

Get a load of this statistic: From 1997-2005, textbook prices have increased by 280%, while CPI has only increased by 22%!!! Obviously, something is wrong here.

Well, neglecting the publishing costs, and shipping costs, and whatever other costs that the bookstore tells you they have, there is also another cost on top of the list price. That cost is the Book Importation Regualtions.

It breaks down like this. In 1999, Canada imposed these book import regulations in an effort to protect the Canadian publishing industry. Any books that were imported from the States were subject to a 10% fee above the list price; from anywhere else, it is 15%. One would think that the government might be seeing some revenue from this regulation, but they are not! Not a single penny!

So why is this regualtion in place? Maybe it increased the number of publishing houses in Canada? Wrong. Since this regulation was put in, we have seen the eventual extinction of our publishing houses; from around 40 to 2!

“So what?”, you may be asking yourself. Well, to put it into context, if this regualtion were to be removed, Canadian students would immediately be saving ~$30M/ year on books from the U.S. alone! And this stat doesn’t even account for the savings that students at French schools would see (Canada’s French publishing community is weak, which means that most academic materials must be imported from France, increasing costs for French students).

But I am not done! You know when you walk into Chapters to pick up a book and you see 2 prices on the back, a Canadian one and an American one? Well, that is not just the exchange rate. That difference in price is this book import regualtion fouling your favorite fiction as well!

So, let’s recap:

1) Canadians pay an extra 10-15% on any imported book

2) Canada is the only country that has this regualtion

3) The government does not see a penny of revenue from this regualtion

4) A flick of the wrist and a signature can eliminate this regualtion immediately

5) It makes books cheaper for Canadian citizens

Taking all the above things into account, there should be only one question in your head, “Why aren’t we doing this?!” We here at CASA have the same question in mind, and now, so do a lot of MPs looking for political capital. Let’s hope they can see it a easily as we can.

Next up, TRI-COUCIL FUNDING and AUTONOMY

Adam Vossepoel

President

Sweet Rhymes and Hard Times

Our goals this week,

As the Economy looks bleak:

Learn more about RAP and the CSGP,

And get big Commitments from every MP!

Gather together and collect Information,

To Spread PSE all over the Nation!

The above is courtesy of the great team at the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. I am hunkered down in Ottawa at the Lord Elgin Hotel, with VP Admin Brodie Pattenden, and President Elect Jeremy Girard. We are in the process of briefing new and old members about how to effectively advocate PSE issues to the federal government.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, CASA is a national lobby organization that focuses on issues related to post secondary education in Canada. Over the next week (3.5 days technically) over 70 student leaders will be meeting with ~150 MPs, Senators, and Policy staff of the government.

This event, called Lobby Con (Con is for conference, not some clever reference to government), and has become quite the event on the Hill. The priorities that CASA has can change from year to year, but it always focuses on improving Canada’s university system through non-partisan, rational, and intelligent policy recommendations.

This year, in the face of the “looming economic crisis” (I really hate that term actually. Sorry for perpetuating it), CASA has had a tough job. It is not easy to ask for funding when the government is staring down the wrong end of defecit budget for the first time in a decade. But CASA does not give up that easily. We are nothing if not persistent!

This year, the membership has decided to focus on the following priorities, in no particular order:

- Expand the Canada Student Grant Program

- Enhance the Repayment Assistance Plan

- Take a Balanced Approach to Copyright Law

- Reduce the Cost of Academic Materials

- Create Tri-Council Funding Autonomy

- Improve Tri-Council Salary Guideline

As the week goes on, I will post more on each of the above points.

Until the future,

Adam Vossepoel

President

Introductions and Head to Head

Well Folks,

It’s that time of year again. If you hadn’t noticed, there are a whole bunch of posters plastered around this University, trying to get you to support candidates in their bid to rule the ULSU! Cue dramatic music!

Who will be the next crew? Guess what, it is all up to you ( Ha, that rhymes. (I wish I could do that all the time!)).

So come on out to the Atrium on Wednesday, February 25th, at Noon, and meet the candidates. This is our annual Town Hall, where all prospective candidates will tell you why they want to be on the next ULSU Council.

Then, it gets really exciting. Thursday, February 26th, again at Noon in the Atrium, come on out for the Executive Candidate Debates! Now, you may ask, “Who are 3/4 candidates going to debate, when they are acclaimed?”. Well, have no fear, except for the VP Internal position, all other candidates will be up against myself, and the current VP Admin, Brodie Pattenden. And my goodness, is Brodie a ferocious debater!

For more information about the ULSU Elections, or to find out about the candidates, visit WWW.ULSU.CA

Adam Vossepoel

President

This is what it sounds like when worlds collide

WARNING: Further proof of the ULSU President’s geekiness about to explode all over this post. Proceed with caution.

All right! September 10th is finally here. And you know what that means! It means that the Large Hadron Collider is finally online. Scientific advance, here we come!

So, a couple questions may be running through your head right now. What the heck is the Large Hadron Collider (or LHC for those acronym lovers), and why is anyone excited enough to write blog post about it? Well, buckle up, because you are in for a wild ride*.

The LHC is a particle accelerator. Essentially, it is a giant ring (27km long) of superconducting magnets that is buried underground, near Geneva, on the border of Switzerland and France.

The LHC fires protons (a type of hadron), and/or lead ions, in opposite directions around this ring at incredibly high energy (we are talking near the speed of light). Why would they do this? To make them collide, of course!

Now, you may be thinking, if these particles have such high energy, wouldn’t it  be dangerous to try to make them crash into each other? What is the point? Well, one of the great things about the LHC is that it will allow researchers to simulate the conditions that governed the Universe moments after the Big Bang. And surprisingly enough, this could lead to a lot of questions being answered.

So why does it matter? While our knowledge of physics has come a long way since Newton and his apple, there is still a lot that we don’t know. Like how can pure energy be converted into mass, where is all the anti-matter, how are protons held together, or why is there gravity? The LHC experiments should be able to answer these questions. Neat, huh?

All this leads to what is called the Grand Unification Theory. You see, there is this problem between general realtivity (Einstein’s bowling ball on a rubber sheet model; the explanation for why there are planetary orbits and gravity) and quantum mechanics ( the physics that works on the ultra small scale; gluon, muons, quarks, and the forces that keep atoms from exploding). They can’t come to an agreement. The laws that govern the macro level forces do not apply at the micro scale, and vice versa. Apparently, this is really frustrating if you are a physicist.

The strongest contender for grand unification is string theory. Hailed by physicists and mathematicians for its elegance, string theory, so far, is a purely mathematical construct: it claims that the world is made of tiny vibrating strings rather than point-like particles, but no-one has ever observed such a string, and the theory hasn’t been tested in any other way. It is pretty mind-blowing stuff.

One of the most interesting predictions that drop out of the mathematics of string theory is that spacetime isn’t four-dimensional, as is usually thought, but ten-dimensional. The six extra spatial dimensions, so some believe, are curled up so tightly that we cannot perceive them. One way to test this idea is to create high-energy environments that enable particles to jump in and out of the hidden dimensions in a way we can detect. This is where the LHC could come in handy.

So, your’s truly will be waiting with baited breath, wondering about other dimensions, while the LHC experiments run. In the meantime, please enjoy this delicious rap:

* I am not a particle physicist

Adam Vossepoel

President

Our own Canadian Idol!

Woot! Go Theo!

For those of you who are not into Canadian Idol, you now have a reason. University of Lethbridge student and Coaldale native, Theo Tams, is taking the contest by storm.

With a powerful voice, great personality, and emotional performances, Theo is on the track to take the title of “Canadian Idol”!

The ULSU and the University of Lethbridge are proud to host a viewing of Theo on Canadian Idol, on the big screen in the Zoo, tonight!

Come up to the Zoo, SU Ballrooms, at 7:00pm tonight, to show your support for one of our own students! It promises to be a great show!

Showing Our True Colors

Yes!

The ULSU has a brand new look. Fresh paint does wonders for an office.

Come on down and have a look.

Adam Vossepoel

President

Reverberations

It is late. This day has been a challenging one.

The ULSU is in the process hiring a new General Manager. It is not a simple task. Aside from the logistics of organizing the process, there are the implications that result from the decision.

As I am wont to do, I let my mind and body wander away from the Students’ Union offices. While I stood upon the embankment outside the SU Building, facing the Library, I found myself whistling. The night is cool and calm; summer serenity belying the flurry of activity within the U of L.

My whistling carried, echoing off the buildings of the U of L; off the Library, off the Center for the Arts, off of University Hall, and lucidity cautiously approached.

The Students’ Union works within the University of Lethbridge community. Our two organizations exist within the same environment, and the issues facing one will inevitably have an effect on the other. In the same way that the echo was carried throughout the campus, any decisions made in SU 180 will ultimately be felt by the rest.

It is a consideration that is not taken lightly.

Adam Vossepoel

President

龍舟in Lethbridge

So, today marks the beginning of the Lethbridge Dragonboat Festival. Over the last few years, this event has grown from about 10 boats, to over 60 boats in 2008.

Each team has 20 paddlers, racing against the clock and each other. And only 1 teams can come out on top.

This year, the U of L has 2 teams in the Festival, the Pronghorn Paddlers and Fiat Dux. Both teams are doing pretty well so far. So come out to Henderson Lake today and tomorrow, and cheer on the U of L!

To make it better, there is a beer garden as well. Come on down!

Adam Vossepoel

President