Matt Goyer: University of Waterloo
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- Mon, 16 Sep 2002 14:29:10 GMT
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So we trust Bomber not to do anything nefarious with those hand held devices they use to swap everyone's drivers licenses, right?And Feds are dreaming if they think city hall will budge on the 75m rule. Employees at city hall told me that if it changes it will increase not decrease and that the change will take years. Never mind the fact that there are several groups of citizens lobbying against students/absentee landlords (I believe one group is headed by a retired Waterloo professor?).
Today's lunchtime reading, Canadian Business: Schools of higher earning ' Investors are scrambling for bonds issued by universities':While students typically spend years repaying their government sponsored loans which carry interest rates of between 7% and 9.5% annually universities are locking in their public debt for up to 40 years, at about 6.5%.
Don't worry. Waterloo isn't financing capital projects with bond and/or debenture issues they're just selling off courses to Microsoft.
UW School President Johnston answers 10 questions about the Microsoft sell-out
The Bulletin took care today to point out that those aren't frosh getting wet in the photo below because 'PACO wouldn't let us do something like that to the frosh'. Bah, frosh week here sucks.
I don't know why this hasn't hit the Bulletin or UW Student yet.. This is from one of Nat's co-worker's site:so i found out yesterday (wednesday, i guess two days ago now) a friend of mine [mg: a UW student] was killed in ibiza, on his way back to his hostel in a taxi. he got head-on'd by a guy in a bimmer. he was one of the four killed, according to the news. omar's friend who was with him is in the hospital.
Ibiza is in Spain.. We were in Spain.. We rode in taxis.. We didn't use seat belts.. The number one killer of tourists is transportation accidents..
We're of course shocked and saddened (even though neither Nat nor I new the two UW students involved).
U of Waterloo wastes $2400 of student's moneyYesterday our prof failed to show for our class claiming he 'somehow got the idea that class started at 10:30' (instead of 10).
Of course the venerable Mark Schaan in his Arts Frosh Orientation video tape assures us that at university the 'five minute rule' does not apply and that you should stay to the bitter end of the class in case the prof decides to show at the last minute. Now the frosh might fall for that but we sure didn't.
Oh well. Better luck next class?
The Daily Bulletin announced that the turnkey desk's housing list is now online via Ezide.Why we need two off campus housing websites is beyond me but I guess it fits with Waterloo's inability to solve problems using modern technology.
(yet another?) UW student commits suicide (from The Star).In UW Student's discussion Paul says
As a society, we shouldn't lie to ourselves and pretend suicides don't happen by covering them up.
Here I am torn. While I feel there needs to be coverage of student suicides on campus I've read that media coverage of suicides increases the likelihood of suicide (read The Tipping Point). So what do we do? How do we find that balance?
My concern is how do we keep our school accountable for the mental health of its students when it covers up its largest problems and fails to help those in need?
From the Imprint regarding my letter they didn't run:I actually wanted to run that article in the last edition but was unable to due to a serious lack of space. However, don't you fret, I'll be trying to put all unpublished works up on the web. It should be up shortly. I hope that you continue writing to Imprint in the future.
Bah. I'm unhappy with that answer. Time for more complaining.
UWStudent.org: New degree means less math, more flexibility, for CSersProponents of the BCS felt that UW's math requirements for CS students had two problems: they made it "very difficult for students to gain exposure to application areas outside the Faculty" and the math content of the degree was "largely determined by mathematicians outside CS."
I'm pro-less math. 27.5% of the courses I will take for my degree will be math while 37.5% will be CS.Check out the transition plan to see when they're dropping all the bitchy courses we're taking now :).
And it's great to see Ragde in there commenting with the students.
UW Bulletin: Currently there is a very low percentage of female students studying computer science. At UW, the percentage has dropped to below 20 per cent from 33 per cent in the late 1980sHeadline remarkably absent: 1000s of students left in the dark about co-op placements.
Congratulations to Natalie who got the job she wanted...Unfortunately she didn't find out till this morning when she went to school and asked someone in the know because the computer system has been down since Friday afternoon when she was supposed to find out. Stressed out she woke up every few hours the last 3 nights to check to see if the problem had been fixed; sort as if the school had someone working around the clock. We all know this isn't the case. The school couldn't give a damn about the students. Quite frankly the person in charge of Quest and Access should be fired. If this was a private business they'd be gone long ago.
The Imprint didn't run my letter to the editor complaining about UW Counselling Services in light of the recent propoganda piece which ran. While not impressed I have heard that enough of us have complained that UW is re-evaluating their policies on how they deal with students seeking help who while students aren't considered students because 'they may not return in the fall'.
UW Student reports on Student Force a website for 'Open Rating of Co-op Employers'.While I'm a huge fan of Rate My Professors and in fact I even toyed for awhile with developing my own rate Waterloo's employers and professors site, I have a feeling that The School is going to shut this thing down pretty fast; free speech be damned because the school isn't going to let us bite the hand that feeds.
Does your lodging house conform to the Waterloo Building Code for Lodging Houses?What worries me the most is the second means of escape from the basement (since the house doesn't have one) and the minimum requirements for ceiling height.
It might be much more expensive to license this place than I thought..
Note: I don't have to conform to any of this since I the owner live in the house and I only have 3 other people living with me. But I would like to get 2 more people in the basement which would require a loding license (probably class 2 because of the whole Minimum Distance Separation business).
While complaining about housing in Waterloo let me say that the members of 'Not Your Neighbours', a group protesting the influx of students into their 'old' neighbhoods, won't be complaining when they go to sell their houses for $15k+ above asking price once they're moving into their expensive retirement homes.
