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Category Archives: UBC Insiders

Insiders 3.0!

Here at Insiders cent­ral, if there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s leav­ing old web­sites in our wake. First there was Insiders 1.0. No joke, it was pretty awe­some. It gave every­one a great out­let to talk about issues, occa­sion­ally flame each other, but most of all to learn about the issues of the day. […]

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Debt-Restricted, Campuses Seek Private Investment for New Housing

Uni­ver­sit­ies are strapped for cash. Being debt-restricted by recession-paranoid gov­ern­ments, many schools are look­ing to altern­at­ive deliv­ery mod­els to meet the demand for hous­ing stock across the coun­try. At the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, hous­ing stocks are low, and plans are under­way to build a tower of a tower. Thirty-plus stor­ies of stu­dent hous­ing. Typ­ic­ally, more […]

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AMS Budget 2010/11 In Depth: Executive Cash Grab

The AMS’s 2010-11 budget is com­ing up for approval tonight, and it’s some­thing coun­cilors should be look­ing at very closely, as there are some con­cern­ing things in there. First of all, the format used makes it dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out exactly what’s going on some­times. There are no actual totals from last year included, and […]

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AMS Council Agenda: July 14, 2010

First meet­ing in a month, but a rel­at­ively light agenda. Here’s a run­down of what’s com­ing up. Present­a­tions Stra­tegic Plan – Bijan Ahma­dian Budget Com­mit­tee – Elin Tayyar/Ben Cap­pel­lacci Vague titles, but you can guess what sorts of things will be in them. The present­a­tion arising from the Final Report on Sys­temic Dis­crim­in­a­tion in the […]

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Headlines for Hacks – June 2010

It’s been a bit quiet around Insiders lately: writ­ing long posts take work, and we’d rather be enjoy­ing the sun­shine. But that doesn’t mean things have stopped hap­pen­ing. Make sure to check out AMS Confidential’s News for N00bs for the latest news (and lulz!); rather than over­lap, we’ll come up with our own allit­er­at­ive title […]

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The Fallacy of Absolute Grading

There seems to be a com­mon assump­tion many stu­dents, media, and par­ents hold. It’s an assump­tion that’s flat out wrong, and only those who don’t under­stand how aca­demic insti­tu­tions work hold it. It runs wild in the media, in par­ents’ minds, and is abused by many for cheap polit­ical gain. That assump­tion: that a grade […]

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Graduation Ceremonies Underway

Just a quick post to let every­one know the 2010 con­greg­a­tion cere­mon­ies are tak­ing place this week. Yes­ter­day, Eng­lish, Econ and other small arts pro­grams crossed the stage. Today it’s more of the same, includ­ing Poli Sci, Law and Edu­ca­tion. Telestu­dios airs a live stream of the cere­mon­ies, unfor­tu­nately using Microsoft pro­pri­et­ary plat­forms (.asx and […]

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Judge, Jury and Tow Truck Driver

Com­ing to the Board of Gov­ernors in early June is a new set of Park­ing Rules for UBC. Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the reas­ons they are look­ing to enact new rules are: (a) revise UBC’s traffic and park­ing regime so that it inter­locks with the new legis­lat­ive frame­work; (b) update and stream­line the exist­ing traffic […]

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UBC Insiders Reader Feedback Survey!

Last Septem­ber UBC Insiders had a bit of a reju­ven­a­tion with a new web­site, new staff, and new ethos. At the time, we weren’t sure how it would work out, and we’re still not: that’s why we want to know what you think. Please let us know how we’re doing by filling out the survey […]

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Policy 116: Coca-Cola and the Freedom of UBC’s Information

Back in Janu­ary, UBC Insiders broke a story about email vot­ing by the Board of Gov­ernors. At the time, we inten­ded to actu­ally go into the board policies that were involved. Life and AMS elec­tions got in the way. Hubert Lai, Uni­ver­sity Coun­sel (ie. UBC’s law­yer), gave an inter­view about Policy 116: Com­mer­cial Agree­ments Initiated […]

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