2011.03.03

Not now, I’m eating roast meat with my woman since 1918

Uthe ubyssey MARCH 03, 2011volume 92, number xxxviiiroom 24, student union buildingpublished mondays and [email protected]

can UBc stUdents still pUt on a show?

Last year was a financiaL fLop.this year’s was up in the air.

the question is...

page 4

A microbrewery in the new SUB?

It’s more likely than you think!

pAge 3

from cheaper eating to budgeting while on exchange: the ubyssey ’s guide to finance.

page 6

2 / u b y s s e y. c a / e v e n t s / 2 011 . 0 3 . 0 3

Canada Post Sales Agreement

#0040878022

march 03, 2011volume xcii, no xxxviii

editorial

coordinating editor Justin McElroy : [email protected] editor Arshy Mann : [email protected] news editorKalyeena Makortoff : [email protected] news writer Micki Cowan : [email protected] editorsJonny Wakefield & Bryce Warnes : [email protected] culture writerGinny Monaco : [email protected] illustratorIndiana Joel : [email protected] editor Marie Vondracek : [email protected] editorTrevor Record : [email protected] editorGeoff Lister : [email protected] manager Virginie Ménard : [email protected] editor Kai Green : [email protected] editorTara Martellaro : [email protected] multimedia editorStephanie Warren : [email protected] editorDavid Marino : [email protected] Blake : [email protected]

Room 24, Student Union Building6138 Student Union BoulevardVancouver, BC V6T 1Z1tel: 604.822.2301web: www.ubyssey.cae-mail: [email protected]

business

Room 23, Student Union Buildingprint advertising: 604.822.1654 business office: 604.822.6681web advertising: 604.822.1658e-mail: [email protected]

business managerFernie Pereira : [email protected] ad salesKathy Yan Li : [email protected] ad salesPaul Bucci : [email protected] Hoopes : accounts@ubyssey,ca

contributors

Mandy Ng Kait BolongaroKarina Palmitesta Gordon KaticCharles To Amelia WaizAnna Kouzovleva Chelsea SweeneyJasmine Shum Paulina AksenovaKelsea O’Connor Alicia WoodsideWill MacDonald Marie ValstadDennis Tsang Jon Chiang legal

The Ubyssey is the official student newspaper of the University of British Columbia. It is published every Monday and Thursday by The Ubyssey Publi-cations Society. We are an autonomous, democrat-ically run student organization, and all students are encouraged to participate.

Editorials are chosen and written by the Ubys-sey staff. They are the expressed opinion of the staff, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Ubyssey Publications Society or the Universi-ty of British Columbia. All editorial content appear-ing in The Ubyssey is the property of The Ubyssey Publications Society. Stories, opinions, photographs and artwork contained herein cannot be reproduced without the expressed, written permission of The Ubyssey Publications Society.

The Ubyssey is a founding member of Canadian University Press (CUP) and adheres to CUP’s guid-ing principles.

Letters to the editor must be under 300 words. Please include your phone number, student number and signature (not for publication) as well as your year and faculty with all submissions. ID will be checked when submissions are dropped off at the editorial office of The Ubyssey; otherwise verifica-tion will be done by phone. “Perspectives” are opin-ion pieces over 300 words but under 750 words and are run according to space. “Freestyles” are opinion pieces written by Ubyssey staff members. Priority will be given to letters and perspectives over free-styles unless the latter is time sensitive. Opinion pieces will not be run until the identity of the writ-er has been verified. The Ubyssey reserves the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. All letters must be received by 12 noon the day before intend-ed publication. Letters received after this point will be published in the following issue unless there is an urgent time restriction or other matter deemed relevant by the Ubyssey staff.

It is agreed by all persons placing display or clas-sified advertising that if the Ubyssey Publications Society fails to publish an advertisement or if an error in the ad occurs the liability of the UPS will not be greater than the price paid for the ad. The UPS shall not be responsible for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value or the impact of the ad.

events

Give us events for March! More! More!

[email protected]

Utheubyssey.ca

ongoing events

ubyssey production • Come help us create this baby! Learn about layout and editing. Expect to be fed. • Every Sunday and Wednesday, 2pm.

resource groups • Are you working on a progressive project, but need funding? Do you have an idea, but can’t get it off the ground? Apply to the Resource Groups for funding! Come in, pitch your idea to us and we will consider fully or partially funding your project. • Every Monday, 11am in SUB 245 (second floor, north-east corner). For more info email [email protected].

thursday, mar. 3

oh my darling: the love shack tour • With a sweet name and even sweeter sound, Oh My Darling conjures up the right mix of emotion and elation with their unique brand of country. Their prairie roots mixed with blue-grass, Appalachian old time, southern twang and Franco-folk makes their style a melt-ing pot of musical languages. Their winter Love Shack Tour features love-themed singles in a run of shows in Western Canada. • 9pm, Railway Club, 579 Dunsmuir St, $10.

english majors: ice cream so-cial • This event is for Eng-lish majors and potential Eng-lish majors (especially second-year students). Alumni from the program have been invited to speak about their experienc-es in the work force and also discuss internship opportuni-ties. • 4–6pm, Room 261, Ir-ving K Barber.

friday, mar. 4

ubc symphonic orchestra • Guest conductor for this concert is Roman Brogli-Sacher, chief conductor and opera director

of the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Theatre Lübeck, Germa-ny. This concert also features a new work by UBC composition student Eileen Padgett and piano soloist Bogdan Dulu, winner of the 2011 UBC Con-certo Competition. • 8–10pm, Chan Centre, free.

citr radio open house • Ever wonder what a functioning campus and community radio station looks like? Ever stay up late at night asking yourself just how we store all the CDs and records we have at our dis-posal? Well, you’re in luck, be-cause CiTR 101.9 FM is having an open house. Come to the SUB for snacks, station tours and maybe even a chance to get on-air. • 12–4pm, Room 233, SUB.

monday, mar. 7

citr radio volunteer orienta-tion • Interested in getting in-volved with CiTR? Swing by our monthly volunteer orientation session. It’s a chance for you to learn about what’s going on for volunteers at CiTR, and get to know people involved with the station. • 6:30–7:30pm, CiTR Lounge, Room 233, SUB. For more info, email Andrew at [email protected].

tuesday, mar. 8

unicef ubc: casino royale • Uni-cef UBC and Deke are host-ing their charity event, “Casi-no Royale.” There will be pok-er, blackjack and a cash bar. All of the proceeds will go to the Pakistan Relief Fund. • 6–11pm, UBC Global Lounge, email [email protected] for more information.

wednesday, mar. 9

coastal first nations dance fes-tival • This festival highlights the richness and diversity of tradi-tional First Nations dance groups

from coastal BC through public performances, ticketed events and special school programs. • Runs until Mar 13, 10am–5pm, Museum of Anthropol-ogy, $14/$12 + HST. For a full schedule of events, please vis-it moa.ubc.ca/events or contact (604) 822-5978 or [email protected].

ubc film societ y screening: tangled • The UBC Film Soci-ety will be showing Tangled, the latest film from Disney. The magically long-haired Ra-punzel has spent her entire life in a tower, but now that a run-away thief has stumbled upon her, she is about to discover the world for the first time, and who she really is. • Runs un-til Mar 13, 7–9pm, Norm The-atre, SUB. $2.50 members, $5 non-members.

roommate meet up • Moving off-campus next year? Still look-ing for that perfect roommate? Speed Renting and UBC Res-idence Life are pleased to of-fer UBC students a unique and personalized roommate meet-up event. These events offer an informal, relaxed atmosphere where you have the opportuni-ty to meet and mingle with stu-dents just like you! Free food and refreshments provided. • 5:30–7pm, Marine Drive Resi-dence Commonsblock, $8 en-trance fee.

thursday, mar. 10

hungry 4 change • Oxfam UBC presents Hungry 4 Change, an annual dinner organized and hosted by UBC students that gathers together the commu-nity for a taste of the reality of food distribution inequality. Featuring speakers from Ox-fam Canada as well as a spe-cial guest. • 6:30pm, Heritage Hall, 3102 Main St, $25, $15 for students. For tickets, visit ox-famubc.rezgo.com or email [email protected].

friday, mar. 11

ubc film societ y screening: ChROnICles OF naRnIa: VOyage OF the daWn tReadeR • The UBC Film Society will be show-ing The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Tread-er, the third film in the Narnia series. Lucy and Edmund Pe-vensie return to Narnia with their cousin Eustace, where they meet up with Prince Cas-pian for a trip across the sea aboard the royal ship The Dawn Treader. Along the way they encounter dragons, dwarves, merfolk and a band of lost warriors before reaching the edge of the world. • Runs un-til Mar. 13, 9–11pm, Norm The-atre, SUB. $2.50 members, $5 non-members.

saturday, mar. 12

amnest y international ubc conference • Amnesty Inter-national UBC is hosting their conference, “When is a De-mocracy not a Democracy?” This small scale conference provides the perfect environ-ment for discussion and net-working amongst students, professors, speakers and oth-er members of the communi-ty. Dress code is business ca-sual. • 1:30–6:30pm, Lillooet Room (301), Chapman Learn-ing Centre, Irving K Barber. Or-der tickets via eventbrite.com.

hugh masekela • The Indepen-dent legendary South Afri -can trumpeter Hugh Maseke-la is an innovator in the world music and jazz scene and is active as a performer, com-poser, producer and activ-ist. His tour in support of his latest album, Phola, brings him (on flugelhorn) to UBC, where he will combine with five other superb South Af-rican musicians to explore his incredible musical his -tory. • 8pm, Chan Centre, $55.25–$73.25.

2 0 1 1 . 0 3 . 0 3 / u b y s s e y . c a / n e w s / 3

News editor ARSHY MANN » [email protected] assistant editor KALYEENA MAKORTOFF » [email protected]

senior writer MICKI COWAN » [email protected]

news BRIEFS

liambas to leave ubc after concussion hit

justin [email protected]

Mike Liambas has decided to leave UBC’s hockey program following an on-ice fight and subsequent two-game sus-pension that garnered atten-tion from coast to coast.

“Michael has decided to leave UBC and pursue profes-sional hockey,” head coach Mi-lan Dragicevic said Wednesday, offering no further comment. Sources have told The Ubyssey Liambas hopes to sign with a professional team after the win-ter semester has ended.

In Friday’s game against the Alberta Golden Bears, Liam-bas got into an altercation with Eric Hunter, Alberta’s captain. Though the reason for the al-tercation is disputed, it ended with Hunter suffering a concus-sion and facial cuts.

Liambas was assessed a game misconduct and two-game suspension, leaving him out of UBC’s final game of the year on Saturday.

The story quickly made na-tional headlines because of Li-ambas’s past career in the On-tario Hockey League, which ended in October 2009 when he checked Ben Fanelli of the Kitchener Rangers into the boards, fracturing his skull.

Liambas was suspended for the remainder of the season and decided to move to UBC after the school offered him a scholarship.

In November, Liambas said he was looking forward to the opportunities UBC would provide for his career and academics.

“After everything I’ve been through, the best route for my life right now is for some men-tal stability and just settling it down for a bit,” he said.

“I’m getting my school done and paid for and I’m still play-ing hockey. I’ll be able to work on the offensive side of my game, instead of worrying about fighting.”

All requests for comment from Liambas were directed to Nick James, his agent.

—With files from Marie Vondracek

Law school more competitive during recession mike dicksonContributor

This June, several thousand Arts and Science graduates will re-ceive their degree, shake the hand of Stephen Toope, smile for the cameras and then calm-ly face the question that so many before them have faced:

What now?For many who are furtive about

their future career prospects, the answer lies in attaining more ed-ucation to set themselves apart from peers.

For Arts students especially, that often means law school.

During times of economic downturn, like the global reces-sion we have recently emerged from, applications to UBC Law often increase substantially. Since September 2010, 20 per cent more people applied to UBC Law than the previous year.

“When there is an influx of applications every category be-comes more competitive,” said Elaine Borthwick, director of J.D. admissions for UBC Law. “How-ever, 2010 was not a normal year, as competitiveness increased this year by only four per cent.”

Additionally, the faculty is admitting 200 first year law

students this year instead of the 180 it has admitted in each of the last two years.

With the economic downturn, law school has become more dif-ficult to be accepted to, but not overly so. Even in down years, people still need lawyers.

“The job market was definite-ly affected by the recession we

just experienced,” said Pamela Cyr, director of Career Services at the UBC Faculty of Law. “De-spite this, the articling placement rate among our graduates is very high, about 96 per cent.”

However, what happens when you leave law school and re-sume your job search remains governed by the dual laws of

first-come-first-served and sur-vival of the fittest.

Insurance lawyer Seth Wheel-don, a recent graduate of the UBC J.D. program, thinks that the ul-tra-competitive legal job market in Vancouver might bear fruit for the rest of BC.

“In Vancouver, the market is especially competitive. After the recession, I noticed some of my peers taking jobs in the interior of BC,” Wheeldon said.

“The fact that the market shrunk in Vancouver proper has benefited places like Kelowna and Kamloops that have struggled with filling vacancies in the past.”

While the economy no doubt has an impact on the number of admissions to UBC Law year-to-year, an esteemed faculty rep-utation likely garners as much competition for student admis-sion as do economic and em-ployment considerations.

“We are committed to being one of the world’s great cen-tres for legal education and re-search,” Borthwick said.

“I believe UBC Law has a sol-id reputation for being one of the best law schools in Can-ada and as a result students are very eager to attend UBC Law.” U

The law building under construction. geoff lister photo/THE UBYSSEY

arshy [email protected]

SafeWalk stout. Point Grey pil-sner. AleMS.

These delectable drinks could soon be a reality.

Plans to build a microbrew-ery in the new Student Union Building are currently ferment-ing in the AMS.

If this plan is approved, the AMS would be the only student union in the country to own and operate a microbrewery. VP Fi-nance Elin Tayyar said that the brew pub would be focused on the UBC community.

“We’re looking at selling [beer] to clubs and campus groups. We would not be interested in sell-ing to off-campus groups at all,” he said.

“The whole point is to keep it local for our students and faculty.”

Tayyar said that the AMS first became interested in the idea of a brew pub because of cost issues as well as sustainability ones.

“Sustainability is a huge por-tion of this because you’re avoid-ing all the transportation. We’ll be looking to use [products] from the farm and give our by-prod-ucts to the farm to use,” he said.

“The cost of making your beer is a lot less…there’s no price min-imum that we have to sell it to ourselves at.”

The AMS has hired a consult-ing firm with experience in set-ting up microbreweries to look into the matter.

Tayyar said that the AMS’s first concern is the financial feasibility of the building a microbrewery.

“We wouldn’t want to lose money on this project because there’s a lot of capital costs

involved and we wouldn’t want to take that kind of a hit in un-certain times.

“We’d probably be looking at a 20 year pay-off of the initial investment. It depends on what the demand is going to be, what the market is going to look like, the pricing, et cetera.”

The microbrewery would like-ly be placed next to the Pit Pub in the new SUB. This would re-quire digging deeper under the Knoll, where the Pit is current-ly slated to go.

According to their consul-tants, the AMS would have to hire a full-time brewmaster and an assistant for the brew pub.

Last October, the Universi-ty of Saskatchewan Students’ Union axed a similar plan to

open their own microbrewery. A report commission by the USSU said that the project was finan-cially infeasible and would be stifled by restrictive liquor laws.

The microbrewery was a pet project of USSU President War-ren Kirkland. He had proposed the pub as both a revenue op-portunity for the USSU and a way to train chemistry and bi-ology students to become fu-ture brewers.

In order to repay the full cost of the venture, the pub would have had to sell 20,000 liters of beer a year for the next 25 years, which the USSU determined was unlikely to happen.

T h e E n g i n e e r i n g S t u -dents’ Union (EUS) at UBC is also considering installing a

microbrewery in the new En-gineering Student Centre (ESC).

“A microbrewery is current-ly being designed by a group of graduating chemical engineer-ing students as part of their cap-stone design project course,” said former EUS President Lin Watt.

However, she added that, “the feasibility of implementing the microbrewery in the ESC has not been determined yet.”

Tayyar said that the AMS would be deciding whether to move forward with the micro-brewery at the end of March.

“We’ll see what our consul-tants come up with. We’re do-ing a very thorough study and we’ll be relying on their results to make the decision,” he said. U

AMS looking to install brew pub in new SUB

Micropeople making some microbrews under the Knoll. indiana joel illustration/THE UBYSSEY

david elop photo/THE UBYSSEY

4 / u bys sey.c a /cu lt u r e /2 011.03.03

Block Party 2010 left the AMS with a bit of a financial hang-over. Once the cups were cleared from MacInnes Field and students stumbled off to finals and sum-mer, it became clear that the stu-dent society was a little more in the hole than they expected. Head-lined by the Barenaked Ladies and attended by only 2900 stu-dents, the third annual Block Par-ty lost $103,000.

Facing a tight budget due to de-creased business revenues, the AMS decided this year’s Block Party couldn’t afford to lose mon-ey. The event’s budget has been scaled back to $92,767, a large drop when you consider last year’s talent budget alone was $115,000.

With a month to go until Block Party Four, it seems the event is at an important juncture. With the AMS hurting for money, the de-mand for large one-off concerts drying up and memories of the glory days of Arts County Fair fading fast, can students still put on a show?

concerts in a dangerous time

The market for large outdoor concerts has dwindled in recent years. “They’re certainly expen-sive to do for one day,” said Shea Dahl, the director of AMS Events. “Your costs are always going to be high if it’s a one-day event.”

The trend is now towards ei-ther huge events or smaller club shows. “The concert business has dried up,” said Alnoor Aziz, asso-ciate director and CFO of UBC Ath-letics. “The biggest promoter, Live Nation, is not doing mid-level con-certs anymore. They’re only stick-ing with big ticket items, big tick-et names and sticking with certain venues only such as Rogers Arena.”

Thunder-bird Stadium used to be such a venue, but has recently been turfed, making large concerts next to impossi-ble at the venerable stadium. This September, UBC Athletics negoti-ated with the University Neigh-bourhood Association and RCMP to begin having DJ shows at T-Bird Arena, but the idea is in bureau-cratic paralysis.

That puts the AMS in an awk-ward position: subsidizing a mid-sized event which generally loses money and is attended by a rel-atively small chunk of the stu-dent population. Is Block Party something the AMS can contin-ue to sustain?

AMS President Jeremy McEl-roy said that in previous years, it was accepted that they would run a deficit on Block Party. “The AMS likes capping either end of the year with a big festival, so [it is] all about subsidizing this par-ticular event,” he said.

McElroy attributed a number of factors beyond the talent budget to last year’s loss. “The bands we’d originally lined up pulled out at the last minute, so we were stuck trying to find a group to play and essentially opted for a more ex-pensive band,” he said. “The AMS had embraced it and allowed for that deficit. So it wasn’t a super huge deal, like, ‘Argh, we’ve lost all this money,’” said McElroy.

Past headliners have includ-ed the Roots, Hey Ocean and Mi-chael Bernard Fitzgerald. This year’s talent budget has been cut to almost 1/6th of last years—to $18,500. This necessitated hir-ing smaller names: the lineup, announced early this week, has a more electronic/hip hop bent, with Switch, rye rye, Team Can-ada DJs, and MY!GAY!HUSBAND! performing. The AMS will still need to sell at least 4318 tickets to break even.

When the AMS released its budget this year and Block Party had not been included, rumours

spread in the AMS that the con-cert had been canceled. McElroy said this was frustrating for last year’s executive, who had no in-tention of ever cutting Block Party. “People were saying, ‘Oh, it’s not budgeted for, so it’s canceled.’ No matter how much we’d say, ‘No, it’s happening,’ people seemed to think we were lying,” he said. “To me, that was a personal af-front, because of my involvement with Arts County Fair, that anyone would think that I would, number one, let that happen and number two, lie about it.”

thanks, that was fun

Every year, from 1992 to 2007, UBC was home to Canada’s larg-est student-organized event, Arts County Fair, the Arts Undergrad-uate Society’s response to the En-gineers’ OktobEUrfest. The first year of ACF was intended to mim-ic a real county fair, complete with rides and featuring musi-cal accompaniment by then lit-tle-known Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies. In the gap be-tween BNL being booked for the show and the day of the concert, the group’s debut album Gordon topped charts—and suddenly, tick-ets for ACF sold out. Due to the number of people attending, the show was moved from MacInnes Field to Thunderbird Arena and on April 3, 1992, a UBC institu-tion was born.

“Some people look back and smile, while some people look back and grimace at the memory of Arts County Fair,” said McElroy, who was social coordinator for the AUS during the last year the

society put on ACF. “Fifteen thou-sand people, five bands, 500 kegs of beer—it was huge. But also, at times, it did reflect poorly, mak-ing UBC a party school, just a rea-son for binge drinking and gen-eral debauchery.”

It may have been ACF’s dou-ble nature as a source of student pride and campus chaos that led to its demise. The event was not well-loved by UNA residents or the RCMP.

“Certainly it’s been no secret that the RCMP has not been very supportive of Arts County Fair, ever since 2003, 2004 onwards,” said Mike Kushnir, who was heav-ily involved in planning and run-ning the ACF from 2002 to 2007. Kushnir, who now regularly orga-nizes parties in East Vancouver, suggested that market housing was one cause for increasing fi-nancial pressures on ACF.

“People who buy property [on campus] want to make sure they get their beauty sleep and that their flowers don’t get trampled on. So we had to make sure that there were security guards that were patrolling the more delicate areas,” said Kushnir. “I don’t real-ly know how many residents actu-ally complained, but with the in-crease of market housing on cam-pus, it definitely gave the RCMP the cards to say that they were re-sponding to community desires.”

ACF a lso faced internal obstacles.

“One of things that happened was there was a lot of people

within the [AUS] that really man-aged to coalesce institutional in-formation and decision making...that knowledge didn’t really get transferred on through the years,” said Kushnir. “So what happened was, you had this group of people who had done it for three or four years in a row, they didn’t really have anybody to pass on the torch, so to speak. It became harder and harder to run.”

As the central group of volun-teers organizing the event grad-uated and left UBC, there was no one to take over in their stead. And with the heart of the ACF’s volunteer base being whittled away, the enthusiasm of those less directly involved with plan-ning the event waned.

“Because there was this inter-nal decision-making process, the other people who had to work on it saw it less and less as their proj-ect and as someone else’s project,” said Kushnir. “There was more absenteeism and people started questioning why they were do-ing it. So the volunteer staff start-ed to dwindle and the quality of their work started to dwindle, [and] there [were] more things that needed to be contracted out, which upped the cost.”

By the time ACF was cancelled, the event had racked up $38,000 in debt for the AUS.

“At the same time, people ex-pected more volunteer organiz-ers,” said Stephanie Ryan, who was AUS President in 2006 and 2007. “Shrinking revenue, in-creasing costs—it’s not a sustain-able trend. And it was also a very labour intensive event to pull off. We had probably between 50 and

100 volunteers most years, and the core organizers were donat-ing a huge amount of time into organizing the event.

“We really had an incredible thing going on for those 16 years, and I think that anyone who was involved with organizing Arts County Fair should be very very proud of what we were able to do,” she added. “But all good things come to an end at some point.”

it’s all been done

Students began protesting ACF’s demise shortly after it was can-celled. But it was far beyond re-vival, and attempts to fill the vac-uum it left have, for the most part, failed. During its best year, Block Party attracted barely half the number of people ACF did at its worst.

“The problem now is that, if people tried to bring back ACF, you would be bringing back some-thing that would be a poor imita-tion of it,” said Brian Platt, current AUS President. “ACF is not going to come back in the form that it was before, even if it’s just for the fact that there’s nowhere on cam-pus any more where you can have a 17,000 person party. It would be better to leave ACF as it was: as sort of this amazing, magical thing that happened for 15 years.”

Platt said that, in order for something capable of taking ACF’s place to develop, student societ-ies need to “think outside the box” when planning their events.

“When they throw events now, it’s almost always [in] the SUB ballroom or their own student space,” he said. “If we start tak-ing a few risks—making sure that

it’s a manage-able risk, that it’s something you’ll organize well and that you have the capacity to or-

ganize it—that’s especially what this university needs.”

Platt points to Get Lucky, the AUS’s 2011 St. Patrick’s Day event, as one such risk-taking venture. An outdoor concert and beer garden taking place around the Knoll, Get Lucky has a capacity of 500 students, with tickets sell-ing for five dollars. It will feature Vancouver performers, as well as performances by finalists in the AMS’s battle of the bands, Com-bat Rock.

“We’re trying to pioneer some-thing new with Get Lucky. There’s risks involved, it might rain,” said Platt. But he argued the danger of failure is well worth the poten-tial rewards of success—name-ly, the seed of a yearly institu-tion like ACF.

“I’m not saying that Get Lucky’s the next ACF,” said Platt. “What I’m saying is that these things start with an idea and the impor-tant thing is to do that idea well.”

if we had a million dollars

Even though it has fallen on tough times, McElroy said he is sure the AMS will stay committed to the idea of a party on the last day of classes. If they finds itself in a better way financially, McEl-roy said the event will likely be given a larger budget. “The AMS has always contributed to these events without any expectation of recompense.”

Though he hopes more stu-dents will turn out to the show, he doesn’t think relatively small attendance numbers—especial-ly when compared to ACF—is any reason to discount the event.

“Not all students take ad-vantage of our tutoring servic-es, not all students take advan-tage of our food bank, he said. “The argument has been made that if only 4000 people go to Block Party, but you’re spend-ing $40,000, is that a good use of student money? And I would say absolutely.” U

it’s been four years since the shutdown of canada’s Largest student-run concert. this year, a cut-back bLock party is Looking a LittLe worse for wear. so

what’s the future of campus parties?

jonny wakefield &bryce warnes [email protected]

2 011. 03. 03/ u bys sey.c a /c u lt u r e /5

alicia woodsideContributor

As a young hacker with a track record of cracking some of the most well-known websites on the internet, every day brings Chris Russo something new and unexpected.

Within the first month of 2011, Russo found himself wrapped up in the centre of a major publicity storm that pitted him against the founder of the world’s largest free dating website, PlentyOfFish. In the media, Chris was villainized, described as a threat to security who had exposed PlentyOfFish’s 30,000,000 members. It’s not the first time he has stirred contro-versy with a major website. Just six months earlier, in July 2010, Russo hacked Pirate Bay, making a name for himself with his re-ported ability to access four mil-lion accounts’ worth of user data.

At his home in Buenos Ai-res, during a Skype interview, Russo paints a picture of the 23 years that led up to his worldwide

notoriety. While his youthfulness is frequently mention in the me-dia, reports rarely note that Rus-so already has over a decade of ex-perience. Russo got his own com-puter when he was only eight and began to teach himself pro-gramming by reading forums.

“I [found] I could communi-cate with computers better than I could with humans,” he said. But his first introduction to the world of hacking came through romance.

“I had a discussion with the girl I was dating, so I got interest-ed in hacking her email account. I guess that was the way I start-ed with security-related topics,” Russo said. After that, he found-ed and ran several different un-derground communities before heading off to university, where he studied to become a software engineer at Argentina’s Univer-sidad Argentina de la Empresa.

But like Bill Gates or Mark Zuck-erberg, a university degree wasn’t in the cards. “I was wasting my time... So I just didn’t go back [to

university] one day,” said Russo. The years of self-teaching were a big factor. “I already had the tech-nical knowledge in programming that was interesting for me in the career, so I decided to quit and fo-cus directly on my own business.” This led him to create Insilence, an internet-penetration testing business which has grown to em-ploy five researchers.

Today, the word “hacker” has a negative connotation, one that evokes viruses, information theft and fear. Russo is often portrayed as a villain in the media. For ex-ample, a February 11 article in the Financial Post said, “Chris Russo must have had some bad online dating experiences. Less than two weeks after the self-described ‘se-curity researcher’ based in Ar-gentina accessed the Vancou-ver-based online dating website PlentyOfFish, it now appears he has set his sights on eHarmony, a similar web-based romance provider.”

However, Russo explained that he has come under fire because

of a stereotype fabricated by Hol-lywood dramas in the 1990s. He insisted that, unlike the movies, there are distinct types of hack-ers. “A hacker is basically a person with advanced technical knowl-edge. This doesn’t mean that ev-eryone who’s into hacking is a criminal.” He added, “You, as a hacker, can provide services to companies seeking ... security so-lutions, release public advisories, create tools in order to expose a certain vulnerability—or sell ser-vices to underground communi-ties, develop malware or viruses, sell stolen information or even steal money from others. ... This isn’t something related to the pro-fession itself, but the ethics and education of the person. It’s most-ly like the difference between a po-liceman and a thief. The fact that you have skills aiming a gun or analyzing weak points in a struc-ture doesn’t mean that you’ll nec-essarily use such skills to cause harm.”

So where does Russo stand? Is he a cop or a robber?

While the Pirate Bay hack stirred allegations that Chris profited from selling informa-tion about users’ downloads on the site, he publicly denied sell-ing the information.

“The Pirate Bay hack was close-ly linked to a government, that’s all I can say.” In the case of Plen-tyOfFish, Russo’s actions take a wildly different plot line, depend-ing on the source of the informa-tion. When asked about the inci-dent in person one month later, he said, “I didn’t hack into PlentyOfF-ish. What we did was reporting a security vulnerability to its own-er, just like we regularly do when we find something vulnerable on the web ... Many people [think] that hackers like us break into the security of the site, but the re-ality is that we never broke into it, we just informed about the po-tential risk of a website running like that.

“If you were a firefighter, and you saw a fire on the street, you would stop to put it out, wouldn’t you?” U

When he’s not hacking, Chris Russo is busy looking like a total badass. photo courtesy chris russo

The hacker who schooled PlentyOfFishChris Russo reveals security flaws the best way he knows how

UCheck out our one week exper-iments with fruitarianism, raw veganism and the paleo diet at

http://ubyssey.ca/multimedia/

online exclusives

profile

fiNaNce6/ u bys se y.c a / f i na nc e /2 010 .11. 2 2

amelia waizContributor

As a student, planning your study schedule for exams can feel more urgent than plan-ning your long-term financial future, but taking a moment to review your options for in-vestment is more than worth-while. If you are curious about this topic, here are some risks and benefits to consider when deciding what form of invest-ment is right for you.

tax free saving accounts

UBC Commerce Professor Emeritus Steve Hamilton ranks using a Tax-Free Savings Ac-count (TFSA) as a “common-sense” move. A TFSA is a new type of savings account where you can contribute a maximum of $5,000 a year. It’s different from a regular savings account in that you will not be taxed on the interest earned within the account, even if you decide to withdraw it.

Funds from these accounts can be invested through a wide range of methods, al lowing for tax-free growth. If you do not contribute the maximum amount in a certain year, the unused amount can be contrib-uted in a later year. There are fees, however, if the money is withdrawn more than a certain amount of times per month, de-pending on the bank.

budgeting for investments

Hamilton said investing about five per cent of your income as soon as you have a cheque coming in is advisable, with the goal of meeting the $5000 limit of a TFSA.

“I’d [invest] monthly because I know if I do it at the end of the year, I’ll procrastinate. I’ll de-cide to go out and buy football tickets... or go on a trip to Se-attle. Let’s get on these things month after month. Just make it a habit.”

Joy Begley, a UBC accounting professor, said that learning to budget early on will help stu-dents later in life, when they have more monthly expenses.

“It’s a good time in your life to try to get some practice at managing your money, before you’re out there buying houses and cars and things like that.”

low-risk options

There are a number of options for investing that bear low risks such as term deposits, bonds and guaranteed investments. With a term deposit, the mon-ey you invest is locked in for a certain period of time. After that period it can be withdrawn or kept for another term. Lon-ger periods tend to yield great-er returns.

Guaranteed Investment Cer-tificates (GICs) will give you a guaranteed rate of return over a fixed period of time. GICs are more flexible than term depos-its—you can redeem them at any-time. Canada Savings Bonds of-fer a low risk, low return, secure investment that is guaranteed by the government of Canada. The interest rate will change pe-riodically according to the cen-tral bank’s intervention.

Hamilton suggests that for starting investors, the low risk options may not make as much sense as the higher risk options due to their comparatively low yields.

“If you’re 20 years old with $5000 out and you lose it all, you have a lifetime to make it up.”

higher-risk options

If you choose mutual funds, your money is pooled with other in-vestors—and managed, for a fee, by a professional investment fund manager. The level of risk

with mutual funds varies. For all the low-risk options your in-vestment can only increase, but with mutual funds there is risk because of the stock market.

This added risk is balanced out by the possibility of great-er returns. However, Hamilton warns against creeping fees.

“You’ve got to watch the expen-sive ratio. They call it the MRE, the management expense ratio. Right now there are a lot of funds that go charging anywhere be-tween 1.75 and 2.5 per cent.”

Saving for real estate is also an often overlooked investment plan. However, Hamilton said that the rewards are well worth the high risk, so long as you are careful not to buy a property be-yond your means.

“My goal at a young age is save enough money to buy a principal residence, whether it is a condo or a house, but get a principal resi-dence,” said Hamilton. “It’s a tax-free investment, it gets you in the habit of saving because you take on mortgage with regular month-ly payments. I think it just has so many virtues for a young person.”

If these options sound in-teresting to you, talk to your bank—they would be happy to help someone who is taking ini-tiative in financial planning. U

If you have contributed to a Registered Retirement Savings plan (RRSP), the money within it can be put into any of the above investments except a TFSA.

editor TREVOR RECORD » [email protected] guest editor ANNA KOUZOVLEVA » [email protected]

anna kouzovlevaGuest Editor

One of a student’s best friends is, without a doubt, a cred-it card. How else do you pay next month’s rent if the allocat-ed amount was “accidentally” spent shopping at Metrotown last weekend? Indeed, it is al-most too convenient to spend money that we do not have us-ing our credit cards. As harmless as it may seem at first, credit card abuse can lead to serious financial consequences that can impact the rest of your life.

First things first, credit cards are certainly useful and have countless advantages, including convenience, rewards and mon-ey back options, among others. Yet reminding ourselves about their risks is imperative if we want to avoid debt.

The average credit card interest is around 14.6 per cent, according to creditcards.com. Doesn’t seem like a lot to you? Well, consider this example. If you have around $10,000 in credit card debt and make monthly payments of $200 dollars, it will take you around nine years to pay off your debt. This is a total payment of twice the original amount! Gently put, one purchase can grow into a quite a responsibility.

If this risk is not enough, one of the more significant problems caused by credit card misuse is bad credit history. This, in turn, can lead to problems with future financing for loans and mortgag-es, along with other financing op-tions that are necessary for impor-tant purchases such as vehicles and real estate. So just remember that your next “necessary” trip to Whistler purchased on your credit card is a potential barrier to your becoming a home owner. How is that for a reality check?

But fear not; your future finan-cial position is in your hands. All it takes is for you to be careful and conscientious about your spending and credit card usage. To start you off, here are a few rules to follow:

1. Never spend an amount that you do not actually have or plan to receive in your bank account within the due date of your credit card payment. This pre-vents build up of high-interest debt. UBC Commerce Profes-sor Emeritus Steve Hamilton has some simple advice for students who are spending too much.

“Put that card at the bottom of your drawer and don’t take it

out until you’ve re i n e d i n your spending,” he said.

2. Pay your balances on time! The easiest way to avoid outra-geous interest, is to simply pay off your credit card on or be-fore the due date. It would be a shame to pay a few extra dol-lars each month, just because you were being lazy to either walk to the bank or, use easy online banking.

3. If you are desperate for mon-ey, there are alternatives to the credit card.

“You’re going to want to talk to the bank and tell them that you’re a student and tell them about what debts you current-ly have,” said UBC Accounting Professor Joy Begley. “Ask them what they can do to help maybe move that credit card debt over into a line of credit or something else that would have a lower rate of interest. Then work on some plan to repay it, either a little bit every week if you have a job or to plan to repay it off in the sum-mer with a summer job.”

4. Avoid paying the minimum payment; instead, always pay the full balance. If you pay off only the minimum, interest will accumulate on the rest of your balance. After a few periods, you will end up paying interest on your interest. Doesn’t sound too appealing, does it?

“The ideal way to use a credit card is to pay it off every month,” said Begley. “If you pay it off ev-ery month, then you don’t pay the very high rates of interest.”

If you follow these golden rules, then you can actually benefit from credit card usage. For ex-ample, a credit card can save money if it offers money back options or points. Just be pru-dent in training your credit card habits, and the benefits will quickly outweigh the draw-backs. U

anna kouzovlevaGuest Editor

As much as all of us dread being reminded of our finances, a reali-ty check is bound to hit us hard at one point or another, especially in our current, vulnerable state of transition from living in the nest to independent lives as adults. Thus, it is important to prepare yourself as a student for future financial decision making.

We decided to prepare this issue for all of you, as a useful

reference for your student re-lated financing. This is just the first step to becoming acquaint-ed with organizing your money. However, keep in mind that the valuable tips of fellow students can be a solid foundation to be-coming financially literate indi-viduals. There are many places to start when it comes to keep-ing track of your money and in this issue we want to present just some of the possibilities.

After reading this issue, stu-dents will find out that saving

money can be a pleasant expe-rience, especially since much of the advice our writers offer in-volves freebies. It is astounding that many students have not the slightest idea about easy money-saving tricks that can aid in keep-ing finances on track. Hence, as the editor of the Finance Issue, I feel the obligation to inform stu-dents of easy yet effective steps to gain a solid understanding of their money options.

I hope that this issue will be a valuable starting-off point

for students who are looking to make smart financial de-cisions. Also, I hope it brings awareness about the subject to students who have little inter-est in their finances. My goal is to convey that personal fi-nancial responsibility can be rewarding and easy with a lit-tle research. In this issue, we have conducted much of the beginning research for you, so get ready to start making life-changing financial deci-sions. U

Welcome to the Finance Supplement

courtesy of anna kouzovleva

credit card smarts A beginner’s guide to investing

geoff lister photo/THE UBYSSEY

2 011. 03. 03/ u bys se y.c a / f i na nc e /7

jasmine shumContributor

You’re going on exchange! Af-ter all the anticipation and ex-citement of discovering your partner school, you’ll realize that the best things in life are not always free. Living abroad can—but doesn’t have to—be ex-pensive. You will surely want to discover the best that your new city has to offer, as well as do some traveling. So, to make sure you’ll survive during your time abroad, it is best to create a monthly budget.

First things first—let’s start with the basics. Categories to in-clude in your budget are the fol-lowing: tuition, rent, travel, trans-portation, health and life insur-ance, food, phone, personal and emergency.

“You should firstly determine what the trouble costs would be,” said UBC accounting professor Joy Begley. “In this case, look online at airfares and then you want to think about what your ac-commodations are going to be.”

Once you have your expens-es planned (either on paper or, better yet, an Excel spreadsheet) you need to figure out how to allocate your money. Straight-away you can account for the fixed items such as rent and tu-ition. Figuring out how much you will be spending in the oth-er categories is where it may get tricky. To make your bud-get as accurate as possible, do some research beforehand. Ask around or look on the internet to see how much groceries will be each month or how much a phone will cost. Then you can do a rough estimate of your needs.

a few budget tipsBe realistic—it is important to be realistic from the beginning so you aren’t disappointed (or starving) in the end. Are you sure you’ll only be eating 50 euros worth of food per month, while spending thousands traveling? Didn’t think so. If you’re realistic from the start you won’t have to worry about running out of money at the end of your exchange.

“You’re going to have to think about what your daily costs are go-ing to be,” said Begley. “So you’ll have to keep a budget for food and for travel within the area in which you are visiting. And for inciden-tal costs.”

Make sure check out the UBC Go Global web site, www.students.ubc.ca/global. In addition to a check-list for getting prepared, they have

budgeting tools for students consid-ering going on exchange.

Know your travel options for when you arrive—if you’re in Eu-rope, websites such as SkyScan-ner.net or RyanAir.com will help you find the best deals on flights. Also, consider alternatives to fly-ing, such as trains or buses. Eu-rolines.com offers super cheap deals—20 euro round trip from Rotterdam to London? I’ll take it!

Another option: get some friends together and rent a car. Nothing beats a good old fash-ioned road trip.

tips for once you’re there

Once you’re there, meet the lo-cals—they can direct you to dis-count shops and weekly markets

and all that other good stuff that we foreigners don’t know about. This is especially useful if you are not familiar with your new country’s native language. Don’t get ripped off because you are written off as some dumb tourist!

Always ask for a student dis-count, because often student dis-counts are offered at museums and theatres, etc. It doesn’t work every time but it never hurts to ask!

Every time you make a pur-chase, write it down—it sounds tedious, but it is very helpful. Re-cording your expenses will enable you to compare your actual costs to your budgeted costs, helping you to make adjustments later on. Additionally, seeing your purchas-es on paper will make you think more about the way you spend

and affect where you choose to put your money in the future.

Think before you buy and if there’s something you MUST get because you “can’t get this at home,” be aware that you may have to spend hundreds of dol-lars shipping it back or you might have to leave it behind. Is it still worth it?

At the beginning of your ex-change you will want to be a tourist and experience a new city so you might be spending a lit-tle more freely than you would at home. But don’t be in vacation mode all the time! You’re living abroad, you’re not on holiday! Be aware of how much you’re spending but remember that it’s fine to pamper yourself once in a while. U

Going on exchange: how to plan ahead

Make a budget before you leave when going on exchange. melissa gray photo/THE UBYSSEY

8/ u bys se y.c a / f i na nc e /2 011. 03. 03

kait bolongaroContributor

Have you ever calculated the amount of money you spend on coffee or tea throughout the year? What about on lunch at the SUB?

A major hidden cost in the student budget is eating out. The sandwich special at the Pendulum costs $6.95 and in-cludes a small green salad. The cost of this sandwich would be enough to buy meat, cheese, lettuce and bread for four or five sandwiches at the grocery store. That means $27.80 in savings in one week by bring-ing a sandwich from home.

“If you are living on a fair-ly tight budget, you are going to want to limit the number of times you eat out,” said UBC ac-counting professor Joy Begley. “Eating in is usually cheaper, just going to the grocery store and buying the ingredients and just cooking it at home. You’re going to also have to be real-istic about how much you’re

going to spend on your social activities.”

For those dead-set on eating in the SUB, The Pendulum does offer a 25 cent discount when us-ing personal take-out contain-ers. The Delly in the SUB also offers 50 per cent discounts on all food after 3pm on Fridays and most of the food lasts sev-eral days.

Another major budget blow can be coffee. According to the Coffee Association of Canada website, 63 per cent of Cana-dian adults drink coffee on a daily basis. While 66 per cent is consumed at home, a full 16 per cent of coffee is purchased from speciality coffee shops. As individual purchases, the number may seem insignifi-cant. When looking at the to-tal cost, however, it can be stag-gering. Fortunately, with prop-er budgeting and preparation this amount can be trimmed.

Coffee, in particular from high-end cafés, takes up a sig-nificant portion of a student’s budget. If one spends $2 on a

coffee every school day for 32 weeks, the final total is $320. A decent coffee maker from Walmart starts at $30 and a can of coffee at Save-On Foods is $6. This equals a total savings of at least $200 over the school year. Still need the specialty drink? Bring your own mug. Blue Chip offers a 25 cent discount on ev-ery drink purchased with a per-sonal mug.

A not her idea for cof fee drinkers is to switch to tea, which is about half the price of specialty coffees. The Boule-vard gives free hot water with your own mug and tea bag, while hot water is 25 cents at Ike’s in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. There is also free coffee and tea at the Simon K.Y. Lee Global Lounge at Ma-rine Drive Residence.

By brewing coffee at home and packing a lunch, a student could potentially save hun-dreds of dollars over the 32-week school year. Even by sim-ply bringing a reusable mug or container, students can save. U

on-campus freebies

If you are anything like an aver-age UBC student, chances are you are on a tight budget. Even if that is not the case, there is no doubt that you love anything that’s labeled “free,” especially when it comes to nutrition. Here are several pieces of advice for those on the quest for compli-mentary food:

1. mark off weekly indulgences in your calendar

The campus is full of hidden treasures. Free food can be found at AMS Council Meetings every Wednesday night at 6pm in Council Chambers. In addition, hitting up Community Eats (put on by Sprouts in SUB Room 66) should become a Friday after-noon ritual for those in search of a hot, nutritious and, most im-portantly, free meal. Don’t for-get to bring your own plate and utensils. Ubyssey volunteers who come to help out on pro-duction nights on Wednesdays and Sundays in The Ubyssey’s office are also given a free meal.

2. follow free food ubc onlineBelieve it or not, there is a

group of brilliant students who have it as their mission to reveal the campus-wide freebies avail-able to each and every student. @freefoodubc and www.free-foodubc.wordpress.com should keep you updated on the lat-est deals.

3. know your campus food dealsMake it a rule for yourself to

walk by a Starbucks every morn-ing, be it in the SUB or Fred Kai-ser. Often, samples of a new-ly-introduced torte or scone will be available to passersby. More-over, remember that with the new AMS Coffee Card, after ten coffees purchased at AMS businesses in a re-usable mug, you will receive the next medi-um cuppa joe for free.

4. check ubc eventsSubscribe to AMS clubs’

newsletters and follow www.events.ubc.ca. You will uncover numerous opportunities to avoid paying for your lunch.

With these tips, you are bound to save a few bucks, which in turn can later be spent on cheap Pit beer specials. If you are vigilant enough, you may even score the “perfect week” of food served gratis. Happy hunting! U

—Paulina Aksenova

Budgeting for food

Financial cleanup on aisle three. charles to photo/THE UBYSSEY

shopping wiseGroceries can be very costly for students on budgets who live on their own. Although chains pro-vide an easy source for everyday shopping, in order to save money it is necessary to shop at several different locations to save money.

shop small

Small grocery stores on Broad-way, West 4th and Main Street often have better prices on pro-duce than the grocery chains, even during the winter months. I shop at East West Market on Main Street, where they have two-for-one sales on normally expensive items such as almond milk and organic soup. Bananas are usually ten to twenty cents cheaper than if purchased at Safe-way, whereas apples can be up to a dollar cheaper. And these small shops usually have every-day sales on main grocery items, including dairy and frozen foods.

shop in bulk

Buying items in bulk like dried fruit, pasta, flour, spices, herbs, nuts and snacks is cheaper than buying those same items already packaged. The packaged price is usually double or triple the amount paid for a bulk item. The Real Canadian Superstore offers great deals on cases of canned soup and vegetables, juice, Kraft Dinner and granola bars. Split the spoils with a roommate if it is too much for you. Also, the T&T in Chi-natown sells cheap bulk packag-es of rice noodles and produce. Even Shoppers Drug Mart and London Drugs have great deals on snack food, pasta and frozen meals. If you have—or have ac-cess to someone who has—a Costco membership, their deals are usually quite good too.

cheap meat

“I only shop at Price Mart be-cause they have inexpensive good quality pork, chicken and produce,” third-year sociology major Ryan Chu claimed.

Inexpensive meat can also be found at Safeway and Save-On Foods as well, starting at around $1.99 per pound. It is also help-ful to look at Save-On Foods, Safeway and the Real Canadi-an Superstore’s online flyers be-fore going shopping so that gro-cery lists can be plotted out and impulse shopping cut down. U

—Chelsea Sweeney

Cutting costs: Eating out and coffee

Need a job? Find work on campuskelsea o’connorContributor

Working while studying is of-ten unavoidable for many stu-dents. However, UBC offers Work Study and Work Learn programs that offer on-campus jobs with f lexible hours, a competitive wage and career-related work experience.

Work Study positions are available for domestic stu-dents who are taking at least nine credits. International un-dergraduates can apply to the Work Learn program, open to full-time students who have a study permit. Both Work Study and Work Learn positions have a limit of ten hours per week, of-fering flexible work hours based around students’ class sched-ules, with average wages from $13-$18 per hour.

According to the Career Ser-vices website (careers.ubc.ca), Work Study/Learn positions include clerical and lab posi-tions, library assistance jobs and event planning. It’s a great way to get involved at UBC, earn some career-related skills and

supplement your income while on campus. For the winter term, positions are posted in August through October, while summer jobs begin being posted in April on the Career Services website. Apply early—they fill up fast!

Donna Chin, managing ed-itor at Canadian Literature, an on-campus academic journal, has hired Work Study and Co-Op students for nearly ten years.

“It’s a good way for students to learn job skills and pay for their studies at the same time,” she said. Chin observed that it’s eco-nomical for the employer to hire a Work Study student because of the subsidy they receive from UBC, making it a win-win sit-uation for both employers and students.

Angela, a fourth-year dietetics student who asked that her last

name be omitted, has worked as a clerical assistant through the Work Study program for three years.

“[Work Study/Learn] employ-ers are more in touch with be-ing a student [than a regular em-ployer],” she said. “Having a job on campus is so convenient.”

Juggling work and school can be tough, so Angela doesn’t mind the ten-hour limit. She notes “It’s

a good break from school and adds variety to a study-heavy day.”

Besides Work Study/Learn, there are several options for on-campus work. Positions with AMS-run businesses in the SUB, the UBC Bookstore, Student Housing & Hospitality Servic-es, Food Services and the busi-nesses at UBC and Wesbrook Village offer the convenience of working on campus. The ad-vantage for this form of employ-ment is that there are usually no restrictions on how many hours you can work. Peak hir-ing times are before the start of new school terms (August/December).

Susan Pan, a fourth-year food, nutrition & health student, works at the UBC Aquatic Centre front desk. “I like that you can work in between classes; they under-stand if it’s just for two hours,” she said. Pan likes that there’s no travel time between work and school and that she can work as often as she wants. U

Visit careers.ubc.ca to learn more about working on campus.

Work Study and Work Learn offer flexible employment for UBC students. jonathan chiang photo/THE UBYSSEY

2011.03.03/ubyssey.ca/advertisement/9

10 / u b y s s e y. c a /g a m e s / 2 011 . 0 3 . 0 3

Every Wednesday and Sunday we have production, which means free dinner for anyone who volunteers. Come to the SUB Room 24 and get crackin’.

justin mcelroy | [email protected] Utheubyssey.ca

games & ComICS

sudoku (very easy)

sazaemon, by meiki shu

comicmaster, by maria cirstea

Submit your comics to our website at ubyssey.ca/volunteer/submit-a-comic.

[email protected]

Utheubyssey.ca

virginie menard |

solutionblundergrads, by phil flickinger (blundeRgRads.COm)

2011.03.03/ubyssey.ca/opinions/11

opiNioNs do you care? WRITE US A LETTER » [email protected]

bryce warnes graphic/THE UBYSSEY

opinions

editorial

the ubyssey needs you!

We’ve mentioned before that The Ubyssey has teamed up with the AMS and others on next week’s referen-dum question on student fees, which would raise our student levy from $5 to $6. Next Monday we’ll be deluging you with information about why this is a good thing, but today we’d like to explain why we’re asking for a $1 fee increase and what we would do with it.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” And while Charlie Sheen, con-science of America, recently called Jefferson “a pussy,” we think the author of the US Constitu-tion had a good point.

A free and vibrant press is needed in any com-munity. It informs. It entertains. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

And though a campus newspaper does all of this—sometimes well, sometimes less so—The Ubyssey is more than that.

We’re a place that has trained dozens upon doz-ens of Canada’s finest journalists. In the last three years, we’ve won more national awards than any other campus paper in the country. We’re a histor-ical record of what and who this campus is year after year. Most of all, we’re a paper that is truly the voice of students, produced by over 200 of you each year, the majority of whom are volunteers.

And while we’ve been around since 1918, it was only in 1995 that students voted to make us a financially autonomous organization, with a $5 student fee. In the 16 years since, we haven’t once asked for a fee increase.

We are now. Here’s why. First, we want to ensure our fiscal solvency. Are

we in danger of losing an AMS-level amount of money? No. But this is still an increase that we’re going to need sooner rather than later.

In the last 15 years, the cost to print paper has gone up and salaries have slowly increased. We’ve also invested in webmasters and video editors, as the internet has become integral to what we do. If our fees were tied to inflation, they would be at around $6.50 per student right now. Instead, we’ve stayed at $5.

And if you know anything about newspapers, you know that the advertising market hasn’t been great to us over the last decade, so while we’ve upgraded in what we do online, we’ve had to make corresponding cuts to other services. An increase to $6, with annual CPI increases, will ensure that we can continue our current level of services year after year.

This extra money isn’t just about ensuring the stability of what we have, though. It’s about build-ing for the future and meeting the needs of to-day’s students.

In the last decade, the number of students taking summer classes has increased by thou-sands. UBC is no longer a little ghost town from May to August.

Because of that, we’d like to provide The Ubys-sey for all 12 months of the year, with a reduced staff printing issues every two weeks from May to August, while keeping our website updated. We want to serve students who work, live and study here during the summer and if the referendum passes, we can do that.

In addition, a dollar increase would also allow UBC to have the first campus newspaper that tru-ly embraces the internet. We’re talking daily up-dates, increased online-exclusive stories, more of our awesome videos—things students deserve and we want to provide. The increase would give us the resources necessary to do that.

That’s our promise to you if this passes. We know we aren’t always perfect, but we’re by all measurements one of the best university papers in Canada and we’d like to keep it that way for some time to come.

So if you’re someone who enjoys reading us regularly in print and zealously online, or some-one who enjoys having something to read dur-ing breakfast in Vanier and lunch in the SUB, please vote for the fee increase next week. It’s a vote that shows your appreciation for who we are. More importantly, it’s an investment in what we can become. U

gordon katicColumnist

In one day, four students collected al-most 1200 signatures in support of a referendum that would implore the AMS to lobby for reduced domestic and international tuition fees. On March 7, you’ll be able to decide. Will our stu-dent union fight for affordable educa-tion, or will they continue to acqui-esce to soaring fees and bloated debt?

The old adage that says “education is the one thing a person is willing to pay for and not get” seems to be a maxim among those deciding AMS tu-ition policy. Our representatives have the impression that we’d like to con-tinue paying more for less.

Students are paying unprecedent-ed tuition for a deteriorating standard of education. In Canada, tuition fees have grown more than four-fold over the past two decades. They have sig-nificantly outpaced the rise in food, shelter and inflation, and now account for the single largest expenditure for

many students. In the same time peri-od, class sizes have soared as the ratio of students to faculty has increased by almost 40 per cent. As a result, Cana-dians lag behind most industrialized nations in PhD graduates.

We often hear that there is no mon-ey, but these arguments are demon-strably false. The issue is not money, but priorities. Despite the wishes of a vast majority of Canadians, our gov-ernment has privileged expensive cor-porate tax cuts and costly deficit re-duction over post-secondary educa-tion. They fail to recognize that edu-cation offers a tremendous return on investment. A recent OECD report has found that funding post-secondary ed-ucation has a “direct public benefit” of over $100,000 per person, exceed-ing the cost by $62,141. However, we have lagged behind other OECD coun-tries in educational investment, and our proportion of GDP dedicated to education has decreased significant-ly. The average university operating revenue consisted of 80 per cent public

funding just three decades ago, but that number is now less than 50 per cent. In response, two parties have footed the bill: students and the cor-porate world. Canadian students are working more than ever, and Canadi-an universities are among the most privatized of OECD countries.

Nearly half of all students work dur-ing their school year, a percentage al-most twice as high an increase of al-most double from 1976. Studies have shown that students are feeling un-bearable levels of stress from jugging work, school and their social lives. Moreover, the burden of school debt has forced many to pursue less than ideal careers, and prevented others from taking rewarding internships and volunteer positions.

Despite the views of a significant majority of students (and eight out of ten Canadians), our student union continues to support annual tuition increases. However, on March 7 you can force their hand by voting in favor of the tuition referendum. U

In the February 24 article “AMS push-es forward with fee restructure,” the AMS claims that if the new fee struc-ture isn’t passed, the society will be forced to reorganize, or even shut down. If you investigate the num-bers, this claim fails logic, and for you—student—I’ve done the math.

At the beginning of the fiscal year, AMS passed a balanced budget, rely-ing on a $900,000 contribution from AMS businesses. As early as July, it was known this projection would not be reached, and the AMS would have to cut spending. Unfortunate-ly, Council was unwilling to act un-til a new projection was made (on November 26). The projection was a $204,000 shortfall, offset by $64,000 in spending reductions. Subtracting, we find out AMS is now projecting a $140,000 deficit this year.

To handle the $140,000 deficit, the AMS is proposing $800,000 in new student fees (in the ‘Fees’ question

on the referendum) and threaten-ing a shutdown if they don’t get what they want.

We went on to discuss the con-troversial “Sustainability Projects Fund”, and any plans the AMS has for what would be a $100,000 fund (if passed with the ‘Fees’ question on the referendum). Elin [Tayyar, VP Fi-nance] explained that there is cur-rently no plan for what the money might be used for, only that he would be attempting to have at least half of the fund’s board be students-at-large, although it would likely con-sist of Council members and corpo-rate representatives.

I urge every student to investigate the proposed fee structure, and vote NO on the ‘Fees’ question when they find the “accountability gap” Elin and I uncovered.

—Nick FrankChair, No Campaign

letters

Katic: Students shouldn’t accept tuition increases

Would you like to say something about the referendum that

Nick Frank or Jeremy McElroy haven’t said yet? Send us a letter under 300 words by

Sunday at noon.

Send all letters to [email protected].

U theubyssey.ca

12/ubyssey.ca/advertisement/2011.03.03

2011.03.03

Documents

Transcript of 2011.03.03