This is your chance to meet and talk with like minded students about issues that matter to you. Think of it as a mini-Terry Talks. Each student comes with a 5 minute story in min about whatever topic they like. Everyone’s name is put into a hat and the names that come out get to tell their story to the group.

Its a great chance to meet new people, share ideas, and be inspired!

Terry Tales is happening every 2 weeks in the new Global Lounge from 5-7 on Mondays. Check out the facebook event for more details!

1. To what extent will the proposed 2% tuition increase ($88.59 on a base Arts/Science tuition) be an impediment to you continuing your studies at UBC?
2. Your tuition currently pays for 28%-30% of the operating costs of your UBC education. A government grant and investment income pays the balance. Choose one of the following to rate this 28%-30%:
3. What is the most important thing for UBC to invest in at this time?

I have several problems with these questions, especially the first two.

Question 1: Will an increase of 2% tuition ($89) impede you from attending UBC?

x – It would not be an impediment

x – It would create some financial pressure but I could manage the increase

x – It would seriously impact me and I would have to consider delaying my studies or not returning to UBC

I think that this is a perfectly appropriate question to ask. However, it is worded badly and even more worrisome, it could be used to misrepresent students.

The authors should really specify whether the $89 is for one semester or two. Not a big deal but important if they want to clarify. My bigger concern is the way most students will answer and how that could be used against them. I would guess that if most students answered honestly (without thinking about the consequences of their answers) they would answer that it wouldn’t really impede them from returning. As high as some claim that tuition is I don’t foresee a lot of students leaving university over $100. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I’m going to assume.

The concern with answering with the first option is that the administration will look at their results and say “Look AMS, here is proof that students can deal with larger increases.” That isn’t a good thing. And when the results are released the AMS, GSS, and students at large need to make sure that the questions aren’t used against them.

2. Your tuition currently pays for 28%-30% of the operating costs of your UBC education. A government grant and investment income pays the balance. Choose one of the following to rate this 28%-30%:

x – Too high

x – An appropriate range

x – Too low

Ahh the Goldilocks question. Too hot, too cold, or just right. The big problem with this question is that the issue is much to complicated to boil down to the three answers. I sympathize with the university on this but still think that this isn’t so much a question about tuition as it is a financial structure question. One that students at large and even those on the inside will have trouble answering.

Overall I’m quite upset by the survey. It strikes me as being very teleological (having a goal in mind before it is concluded). It is also possible that this was drafted up in response to the AMS tuition referendum question that passed. The university has subtly used the survey to show students that a) the tuition ‘increases’ that everyone is in a fuss about are very small and b) most of the money we get comes from outside sources (revenue or grants).

While I do agree with them that a 2% yearly increase is perfectly acceptable (I voted No on the referendum question) I disagree with the purpose of the survey and hope that the Administration didn’t mean it to be as nefarious as it could be interpreted.

And just for the record I beat Insiders on that one.

First of all the obvious: don’t vote for Blake Frederick. You would think that after all of the things that he has done wrong in the past year he would realize that this whole ‘leading’ and ‘making policy’ thing might not be his forte. I guess not. I mentioned him along side my definition of a zealot in a previous post: ‘Someone who, having lost sight of their goals, redoubles their efforts’ and that is exactly what Blake has done. He made the delusional comment that ‘no permanent damage has been done to the AMS-UBC relationship’.

Whatever he is smoking, I want some. How does the UBC Admin feel about Blake and the AMS consequently? Like we are a joke. See letter from President. End of story.

For me Azim was the easy pick. I’ve worked with him for two years on the Senate and he has been a passionate advocate for both international students and UNA community relations. There isn’t any candidate who is better suited to the job. I don’t think I need to say more about his knowledge of the overwhelming UBC system or his ability to be a rational, clearheaded advocate. Exactly what we need.

The choice then fell between Guillaume and Sean. I’ve worked with Sean at Senate and he is certainly capable of doing the work effectively on the BOG. I’ve also worked with Guillaume on AMS Council and seen how good he can be at representing his faculty at that level. For me, the difference between the two isn’t work ethic, platforms, or rationality. The largest difference is experience at an ‘upper university level’. The small, often sad world of the AMS is a different beast entirely than the Senate/BOG. The experience needed to operate at the BOG level is greater than that of Senate and to jump into it with no experience within the Exec of AMS or Senate isn’t going to serve Guillaume well. It was a tough decision for me and that’s what it came down to.

I’m just going to go through the main items of interest. If you have questions or comments about any other items then use the contact form to get a hold of me.

5. Academic Policy Committee – Thursday Noon-hour Break (here)

So if you didn’t already know, you’ll be shocked to find out that there is a Senate mandated noonhour break (think primary school recess) between 12:30 and 2:00 each Thursday. The rationale behind this break is a good one: students (and maybe more importantly faculty) need some free time to do volunteer work. Our campus has tons of cool projects and options because faculty and students have the time to organize them. Effectively this guarantees that they have some time to do it.

The policy was suspended for a one year period because of last year’s extreme space limitations. This year the policy came back into play. Unfortunately there really isn’t a mechanism for enforcing it. The Academic Policy Committee was tasked with the ugly job of figuring out how to do this.

They came back with very little effectively saying that both sides have strong arguments. Although the break is vital to students and faculty, it is too overbearing to force the university to do anything about. They cite Place and Promise, blah, blah, blah. As an enthralled reader you are left with a suggestion to faculties to do it.

There will certainly be some questions here and I will be trying to suggest some other options for enforcement.

6 & 7. Admissions and Curriculum Committees

See the agenda for what is happening here. I don’t think there is anything really contentious. All of it came from the faculties and most of the changes are to calendar wording and admissions issues. Feel free to look through them here (for admissions), here (for more admissions), and here (for curriculum).

8. Teaching and Learning Committee Presentation on CSL (Community Service Learning) and CBR (Community Based Research) at UBCV (here)

Yay! Exciting stuff! There is a lot of talk about how to bring the UBC classroom into the broader community. The concept has very few critics, but the implementation is very difficult. It is expensive and requires changing our thinking around grades and ‘learning objectives’.

The questions that the Senate will be asked during the presentation include:

• In light of the goal for significantly increased participations, how do you think that UBC might best advance CSL and CBR over the next five years?
• Are there real or perceived barriers for faculty participation that need to be addressed?
• What would successful CSL and CBR outcomes look like from the student perspective? From the community perspective? Are there barriers to engagement?
• What are the implications associated with the plan to advance CSL and CBR?
• What role(s) should the Senate play to help advance the plan for CSL and CBR?

This will be a really interesting presentation and I encourage everyone to come and check it out.

10. Annual Report on Enrollment (here)

More exciting stuff! Wondering who all those first years are on campus? The Annual Report on enrollment has all of your answers!.

I’m not going to give any analysis here because there isn’t enough time. However, my initial thoughts are that the spelled ‘enrollment’ wrong on the cover so it should be very interesting.

Thoughts

Nothing super exciting this month but it would still be great to see all of you out there at the meeting tomorrow night. Especially if you are a candidate (see point 3 here).

And vote for Geoff’s Place in the VFM contest!

Enjoy Comrade Costeloe at his own site: www.comrade.geoffcosteloe.com!

If you like the content please vote in the VFM! It takes a lot of work to put out a 5 minute video like that!

Increased Student Interest?

Regardless of which side of ‘The Debacle’ a student found themselves, it would be difficult to say that we will see a low voter turnout now. Students were certainly engaged in December as evidenced by the attendance levels at AMS meetings. As the issue distills  into late January it will be very interesting to see if the interest level is sustained or it devolves into the more pessimistic view of student politics that we are used to. Some things that will likely impact the engagement are: levels of pettiness, uninteresting policies at the fore front, ideologically based policies. If we can avoid some of these pitfalls hopefully students will turn up at the polls (now located at their desks online). The first is likely the most dangerous and probable.

An Extremely Divisive Election?

Another consequence of ‘The Debacle’ is the potential for an incredibly ‘Right-Left’ showdown. In a sense, both sides are looking for vindication through a victory in the elections. Many hacks will be simply counting the elected as either a win or a loss depending on which side of the fence they sit. Here is my initial break down of where I think the candidates will fall. This isn’t intended to outline their actual political ideals, just where they stood on ‘The Debacle’. The ‘pro-UN’ is in red and the ‘anti-UN(/pro-tuition?)’ in in blue. Joke candidates are in pink and if your name is black that means I don’t know or haven’t met you yet (so contact me!).

President
Sean Kim
Pak Ho Leung
Natalie Swift
Bijan Ahmadian

VP Academic and University Affairs
Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes
Ben Cappellacci

VP Finance
Elin Tayyar
The Invisible Man

VP Admin
Ekaterina Dovjenko
Michael Haack

VP External
Stas Pavlov
Jeremy McElroy
Timothy Chu Timothy Chu
Aaron Palm

BOG

Sean Heisler
Azim Wazeer
Bijan Ahmadien
Nader Beyzaei
Philip Edgecumbe
AJ Hajin Hajian
Guillaume Houle
Peter Stein

Senate
Aminollah Sabzevari
Blair McRadu
Alyssa Koehn
Syed Nayef Andrabi
Miriam Sabzevaed
Joël Mertens
Nader Beyzaei
Ryan Bredin
Philip Edgecumbe
Arielle Friedman
AJ Hajin Hajian
Sean Heisler
Spencer Rasmussen
Johannes Rebane
Gary Tse
Blake Frederick

SLFS
Siavash Ahmadi
JJ MacLean – Students for Responsible Leadership (SRL)
Hillson Tse – Students for Responsible Leadership (SRL)
Aaron Sihota – Students for Responsible Leadership (SRL)
Paul Godin – Students for Responsible Leadership (SRL)
Alexander Shalashnly – Students for Responsible Leadership (SRL)
Anthony Bryson – Students for Responsible Leadership (SRL)
Kyle Warwick
Omid Atai

Thanks to UBC Insiders for the list.

Again, this is my quick once over, and it will change in the next hours/days/weeks. Initially you might think that the Blues vastly outnumber the Reds. Remember though that it isn’t the number of candidates running that matters, it is the votes. Having said that, the number and affiliation of the candidates may be an indication of the campus’ general feeling towards…’issues’ shall we say. This might actually backfire for the Blues as they see their votes split between numerous candidates with similar platforms. It will be interesting to see who stays and who drops out and how the ratio of Blue:Red candidates affects the outcome (if it does). On a lighter note I think that the following video/game exemplifies the issue and will be Geoff’s Place’s official meme for the election period:

Yes. By Marx.

Potential for Epic Failblog Submissions

This election has more potential to be hilarious than any I’ve seen in the past. Tensions are high, the media is scrutinizing like never before. I expect some awesome results.

The first of these results may already have come in: both Blake and Tim will be running on a ballot that also contains a referendum asking for their resignations. That’s pretty funny regardless of how you stand (unless you are Tim or Blake I would guess). Direct democracy ftw?

Stay Tuned!

Remember it isn’t over until the Fat Lady sings. So stay tuned to Geoff’s Place and all other VFM outfits for the latest from the down low!

Speaking of VFM it would be great to get some votes for that. Voting is open now and will continue until election day! Vote early, vote often, vote Geoff’s Place, vote now (here)!

Also note, I’ve taken on a subsidiary project to help broaden this site’s accused ‘bias’. I’m having a lot of fun with it and I hope you’ll like it when it comes online!

If you are attending (and here comes the shameless plug) I’m running two sessions that day that you might think about signing up for. They first is ‘Finding Your Element’ where I will pass on some advice from Sir Ken Robinson’s best selling book The Element. It will be an intorverted look at yourself to see whether or not your goals are in line with your leadership style.

The second session will be a presentation about UBC MIX, which has been chosen as an SLC Highlighted Project this year. If you are interested in what UBC MIX is all about or want to find a way to get involved please come out and get some more info.

Hope to see you all there!

Charles Tupper: A Measure of Patience

Stephen Harper: A James Dean for the 21st Century (based of of this editorial by Andrew Steele)

Comments and debate on them is encouraged!

More to come!

Where we stand

Now, I give you fair warning, either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice! - The Queen from Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland

I believe that there is little doubt that last nights meeting sent a clear message to the President and Vice President External. So far, their strategy has been one of changing the rhetoric of the debate. I, like all councilors, have received numerous e-mails from lots of students. The voices from students has taken one of two tones. They are essentially as follows:

“How can council be in support of tuition increases? You should support Tim and Blake in their efforts to reduce tuition.”

“Blake and Tim have embarrassed me and all students by abusing their power to pursue their own political goals. I am not a fan of increasing tuition but I am also not a fan of allowing crazies to represent me”

A little artistic interpretation there but that’s what I take as being the gist. I doubt anyone would disagree with me on this point.

Both of these issues were brought up at council last night. Both are legitimate concerns. Lets start with tuition.

As I’ve already stated, there is a tuition issue; students have made that very clear. The response should be to allow students to voice their concerns to committee over several weeks. As Tahara put it very well at council meeting on Wednesday: “What about the students who couldn’t make it out tonight?”

This whole issue is about students and ensuring that they have their voices heard in AMS decisions. Pushing a huge policy issue to council and saying ‘Decide now!’ without proper consultation is an irresponsible way to be making policy. I would challenge anyone to argue differently. If you don’t trust me, trust the Duchess from AiWL

Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves. - The Duchess

If we can set up a council that doesn’t allow anyone to push their own agenda and that students can easily voice their opinions (as they have this week) policies will take care of themselves and will become self evident. In the end, this should make our councilors jobs easier.

The other type of e-mails I’ve been getting speak to the other side of the same coin as in the previous debate: involving students in decisions.

More contributions from the Duchess, this time in not so good a way:

If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.

It most certainly would dear Duchess. But would it be a better world? No. This issue isn’t about speed, its about responsibility. The reckless actions of the President and Vice President were done without consultation with anyone (publicly at least). This isn’t the first time it has happened either. It is my opinion, and certainly the opinion of many students who have e-mailed me, that we can’t open ourselves up to more risk from the two of them. They have already done massive amounts of damage to us as a society.

What does this mean to students? It means that large scale projects (most notably the new SUB) are put at risk because of recklessness. It isn’t out of anger or retribution that there has been a move to recall Blake and Tim, it is about bringing the AMS into damage control mode, and not letting anything else happen to the society until the new executives are elected in January.

If you think the President and Executives should be able to run the AMS like their little fiefdom, without hearing the voices of students then you should support Tim and Blake. If you think that there should be checks and balances to our system and no one person (or small group of people) should be able to control the whole system, you should support their removal.

It was clear to me that the majority of students who came to council on Wednesday night chose the latter.

What happens from here?

In a strange twist, the future is probably actually clearer than the present. In my opinion this is what will take place:

1. Blake and Tim will be impeached on Monday night unless they can suddenly justify their actions better than he has been to date.

2. They will proceed to go to try and take the AMS to court.

3. They will finance their legal fees through the Student Legal Fund Society (it just so happens that Blake’s girlfriend sits on the board).

What happens after that is beyond the looking glass. It is Blake and Tim’s absolute right to take the AMS to court for what has happened. I would offer them some friendly advice if they are planning to go this route (as I’m sure you have discussed).

I’ll begin with some advice from the King:

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. - The King

You have gone through the motions and have reached the end of the road. Stop. Your passion about tuition is appreciated and you have successfully managed to make tuition a talking point for students. This is a good thing even if how you did it broke any standard of ethics I can think of. Over the next months we will be having a discussion with students around tuition and looking at the issue critically. I wasn’t around the AMS when our previous policy was passed and I look forward to learning more about the issue. What more do you get by not resigning? It would be the best thing for yourself and your sanity and the best thing for the AMS and council, who are keen to see you out the door.

You are verging on being viewed of as a zealot. Before everyone gets in a tiff about my use of that word I would like to define it. My definition of a zealot: ’someone who, having lost sight of their objective, redoubles their effort’. Your back is against the wall and the issues are clearly over. What is more fighting going to gain you?

I wish could just close my eyes and count to 20 and this would all disappear. I’m sure you feel the same.

Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is — oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! - Alice

Things have gone beyond sideways. As I read the press releases and subsequent articles that came out I felt as though I was slipping into another dimension. How could this be? I think is the question on most people’s minds; and rightly so. How is it that a democratically elected President whose personal crusade is to ‘the eradication of oppression’  (from his facebook) so whimsically cast aside democracy, process, trust, and, lets be honest, common sense? As a council member, I feel oppressed. So do many students judging by the expected attendance at tonight’s council meeting. In truth, it would appear that Blake and Tim (Blim) have actually increased the net oppression on our campus during their time in office. Their actions have eroded the AMS’s ability to engage in any form of discussion with the university administration, VANOC, the BC Government and the federal government making student voices weaker than they were before.

How do I know that this has happened? Because as a senator and student leader I interact with people in these areas on nearly a daily basis. If I was polite I would say that the reason for these burnt bridges was because of a lack of cohesive stance on some issues. If I was truthful I would say that, in the eyes of bodies higher and more important than us, we look like whiny, spoiled little brats, throwing a tantrum in the aisle of the grocery store until Mom gets us the candy that we want. Is that how student leaders are supposed to act?

So how exactly did we get here? The answer is longwinded so I’m going to try and summarize it as best I can. Note that this is only how I see things. I think that many people will agree with me.

What is happening now is the climax of a war that has been raging for quite some time in the backrooms of the AMS. There are two sides in this conflict: idealists and realists. Steve Janke wrote a fantastic article about idealists and realists and he explains it much better than me but I’ll try and sum it up (here: just the first couple paragraphs). It encapsulates our situation very well. Idealists are individuals who have a view of an ideal world and work tireless to achieve it. In their minds, the ends always justify the means. As long as the real world moves incrementally closer to their perceived ideal world then it is worth it. In their minds, trampling on democracy, civil disobedience, and just being batshit crazy can all be justified by the world that they are trying to build (which to them is the world we all want, some of us just don’t know it yet). This is exactly the defense that Blake and Tim have used to justify their claim to the UN: we are lobbying for lower tuition for UBC students. The UN complaint may bring us a planck length closer to lower tuition, so to them, it shall be done by any means necessary.

On the other side of this war are the realists. They don’t have a teleological view of the world. To them, the way the world works is a summation of causes and effects that have lead us to this point. An ideal world doesn’t exist, in fact many of them would probably say that there are moralities such as right and wrong and not universal and are subject to vantage point. There are costs and benefits to every decision. If the benefits to the group outweigh the costs then action should be taken. They don’t oppose tuition reduction in our case, they just don’t want to drop a nuclear bomb on valuable relationships to do it. The costs outweigh the benefits. From reading the comments on posts and blogs this week, I would say that most of the students at our university are realists.

It is important to note that realists or idealists are found all across the political spectrum. There are idealist conservatives as well as idealist liberals.

Over the past couple years and AMS executives the idealists have been winning the war. We can tell this because of how our system now. Is it any coincidence that Tristan Markle, notorious Knolly, former AMS executive is the partner complaintant on the UN claim (even though he isn’t a student and didn’t contribute a dime to the legal fees)? Is it any coincidence that Stefanie Ratjen, another Knolly and former AMS executive as well as an outspoken and radical critic of the 2010 Olympics, was recently given almost $20,000 by the Student Legal Fund Society to educate students about their rights around protesting at the Olympics?

The idealists hands are so far in the pockets of the AMS that it is basically second base (high five?). There strategy has been cunning and it has worked. Several groups and subsidiaries of the AMS, most notably the resource groups, have been hijacked by these idealists and are being used to actively pursue their own selfish political aims. Certainly the groups do provide important services to students through the Womyn’s Centre, the LGBT support, etc. But in the past years, there sinister side has begun to outweigh their benefits. Did you know that all students pay a small amount of money every year to pay for the Knoll. This rag is how the Knollies got their name and it is filled with hateful rhetoric, attacking all perspectives but their own. I’m sure you’ve all seen it at some point and I don’t need to go into the level of shit that is spewed out of that magazine. Besides, I didn’t bring my waders (fishing joke).

If students at large new about this, they would want it changed. I want it changed. But attempts to do so are criticized by the idealists as being driven by straight, white, christian, men who want to continue the oppression and colonization of indigenous groups through the disenfranchisement of minority…blah blah blah. I will have you know that being a white heterosexual male, traits over which I had no control often serve me badly in council as apparently my voice doesn’t count or accurately reflect students at this university. For more information on this see the minutes of the disability seat debate. It strikes me as humorously hypocritical that these idealists claim that my skin colour should disenfranchise my voice while trying to promote the voice of other disenfranchised groups. Actually that is really funny.

So what will be done to remedy the situation? In about 3 hours council will have an emergency meeting to call for the resignation of Blake Frederick and Tim Chu. They have become the puppets of this idealist movement, the strings being pulled by shadowy figures out of the view of students and councilors. How else can Blake turn around on his facebook page yesterday and claim that the he has received an outpouring of support from students regarding the issue (he has since taken this down, but a photo of it can be found here)? It is the same small group of radical idealists who give him the ideas to run with, pave the way for them to happen, have him do them, then congratulate him on them afterward.

I’m actually surprised that Tim or Blake won’t be at the meeting tonight (the BC NDP convention took priority I believe). They seem to enjoy being martyred for their agenda, like two Jesus Christs of social justice. If we brought a crucifix to the meeting they would probably be the ones driving in the nails.

No doubt we are angry at them, no doubt they have committed a crime against democracy and students at UBC, no doubt that something must be done to remedy the situation. My concern is that it won’t stop with the two traitors this week. The idealists pulling the strings are everywhere in the AMS and they will keep pulling the strings whether Tim and Blake resign or not. They will find more weak willed cowards to put forward as candidates in the next election and the war will begin anew.

As a result, the realists need to think very hard about how to proceed this week. If impeachment is brought forward a week from now I will vote for it, that’s what students seem to want. I hope though, that it doesn’t come forward. The costs of losing an impeachment vote are much greater than the benefits of winning it. If a discussion occurs in which Blake threatens legal action against the AMS or even specific councilors some of us will undoubtedly back down. If an impeachment vote is lost then we will have been viewed to endorse Blake and Tim, re-solidifying their delusions of support.

There are other ways of punishing Blake. Remove every possible power that he has. I firmly believe that Blake and Tim are ideologues. They truly believe in their perverted minds that they have the support of council and students. If we stop their ability to do anything then we separate ourselves from the executives. Telling the university and all the other damaged relationships that Blake or Tim have no ability to represent students or council will be enough to start on a path to recovery. We must maim them so badly that they become lame ducks until the next election in January.

The best way to win this war against the radical idealists isn’t to remove Blake and Tim. That will feel good and appeal to our desire for vengeance but it won’t fix the problem. I ask you then whether it is worth risking it. It may just add fuel to their fire. What really needs to happen is several years where real students run for positions. Students need to vote in the election. That is the real point of all this.

Hopefully this will be a catalyst to get an truly engaged and representative student society. That is the real lesson in all of this.

Let the circus begin.

Dec 1 – Updated tags, removed note at beginning, expanded SEO Pack