The Student Representative Assembly has approved 31 new clubs for 2015 at their first meeting of the semester on Jan. 11.
Griffith Dias, Clubs Administrator, recommended the ratification of these new clubs after reviewing their applications over December.
This brings the total number of clubs at Mac to 337, including cultural, religious, and political associations, clubs focused on social issues, recreational clubs, and academic groups.
Some of the new clubs include Bloggers at Mac, McMaster Musicbox Children’s Charity, Pro-Choice Club, S for Sustainability, Sign Language Club, and McMaster Robotics.
It also included a variety of political clubs such as the McMaster Conservatives, the McMaster New Democrats, and the McMaster Young Liberals.
Although these clubs were approved, not all MSU clubs will receive club funding.
“If a club receives any funding, whether from the university, from students, or from Athletics and Recreation, they do not receive [additional] funding from the MSU,” said Scott Mallon, MSU VP (Finance).
For example, clubs such as McMaster Cheerleading are listed both as an MSU club and a part of Athletics and Recreation, but will not receive double the amount of funding.
“Some clubs [are listed under the MSU] for risk management purposes. So not every club that’s on here pulls from MSU funding, but they use our risk management system so that they can do events and not get sued,” said Daniel D’Angela, MSU Finance Commissioner.
At the meeting, some concern arose about the Clubs Executive Council, a group that is supposed to meet once each semester. The council facilitates communication between MSU clubs, gives awards to outstanding clubs, advises on policy changes, and is a judicial appeal body for MSU clubs. The group has not yet met this year.
“The fact that [the Clubs Executive Council] has not started yet is a symptom of the fact that we have [306] clubs and there is one person managing them all,” said Miranda Clayton, President of the McMaster Marching Band, at the SRA meeting.
A solution to this issue has not yet been proposed, and the new clubs were still passed under the recommendation of the MSU Clubs Administrator.
Additional SRA motions passed include the motion to fill one MSU seat on the elections committee. This position was filled, in addition to a seat for an SRA member to sit on the MSU Executive Board.
By: Daniel Aruz
The year-end celebration is still very much on the table for MSU President Teddy Saull, even after three recently failed end-of-year celebration Student Representative Assembly motions.
During the report segment of the SRA meeting on Nov. 2, Saull stated that he will be starting a working group regarding what the MSU should “do about a year end celebration if anything.”
The previous SRA meeting saw over fifty students, who came to share their views on how the end of the year celebration money should be put to use. The strongly negative response escalated via online discussion and a petition bearing 500 signatures denouncing the maximum $215,000 proposal. This has been the largest audience an SRA meeting has had in recent memory.
The $215,000 motion was pulled due to the overwhelming negative response, and the failure of Option 2, spending $170,000, and Option 3, the $95,000 allocation. Despite this, Saull continued to ask whether or not he should continue to pursue some form of a year-end celebration, in a scaled-down form.
“I took a straw-poll (this is an informal vote to see how people are feeling on a question less formal than a motion) and the majority of the SRA expressed interest in me continuing to do so. In short, I am continuing the pursuit of this idea on the recommendation of the SRA,” said Saull, via email. “I would certainly have dropped the idea completely if that was the will of the assembly.”
Saull is looking to possibly build a survey to gather student feedback in the coming weeks. He noted throughout the report segment of the meeting that he has been having difficulty in getting feedback from students, who he has supposedly been reaching out to via social media, and focus groups.
“I remain excited about the prospect of some sort of send off event, even if it is completely re-imagined from what I had initially conceived (maybe there’s something we can do that doesn’t cost any money, for example), and I look forward to working with students and university partners to figure out what that might be,” said Saull.
Since the last SRA meeting, Saull noted that he has been paying more attention to social media, and that he is looking into creating surveys for multiple larger projects he has been working on, including Frost week and the year-end celebration.
By: Jyssika Russell
The SRA meeting on Oct. 19 demonstrated the power of student engagement, democracy, and the ability of the SRA to represent student voices during the year-end celebration motion, also known as #concertgate or #215kparty.
But still, the bigger question remains: how did it get this far?
MSU President Teddy Saull stated that he consulted both the MSU Finance Committee and the Presidents’ Council, a regular meeting with the presidents of the MSU, faculty societies, SOCS and IRC. Both bodies supported the year-end celebration, with the Finance Committee supporting the full $215,000 expenditure.
Yet, after The Silhouette published two articles about the proposal, there was a huge outcry from students, larger than anything I have ever seen since arriving at Mac in 2009. How is it that thousands of students strongly disagreed with a motion that their elected student leaders supported?
The simplest answer I could come up with was the structural inequality of the MSU.
Many of the 1,500 students who signed the online petition cited financial struggles in their disagreement. They felt that their hard-earned money was being spent on something that was frivolous, inaccessible, and unsustainable. As someone living in poverty with over $25,000 in student debt, I can’t help but agree. How did their elected leaders not represent these voices before the motion was brought to the table?
If you are a low-income student, it is harder to be or become one of those voices at the table.
For example, many community- and leadership-building events hosted by the MSU occur in Hamilton over the summer, often on weekends. If you are struggling to fund your education, you’ll most likely be working and at home—potentially at a “student” job, like retail sales or summer camp, which often involves working evenings and weekends. To attend one of these MSU weekends, which includes SRA and PTM trainings, Horizons, and CLAY, you would have to lose funds by taking time off, and spend more money making your way to Hamilton. There are also no advertised bursaries for low income students to attend these events.
While being involved in these events isn’t mandatory, it significantly affects your ability to be involved, to make connections, and to be at those meetings where your voice needs to be heard.
This doesn’t even include other student leadership positions that require large time commitments, like being a Welcome Week rep or planner, or other leadership roles during the school year.
Even those student leadership positions that are paid, such as service managers in the MSU, pay only just above minimum wage, and aren’t near the $14/hr suggested living wage for Hamilton.
Many students can literally not afford to be involved in student leadership.
How can this be solved?
Last year the concept of an Inclusion Council was brought to the SRA, to include historically marginalized voices on campus, including those of low income students. There are many reasons why it didn’t pass, and the concept is being further developed to bring forward again this year. Still, many SRA members questioned its necessity.
I firmly believe that if Mr. Saull had brought the year-end celebration to an Inclusion Council, a council designed to hear the unheard, he would have faced disagreement and dissent. He would have faced the 90 percent of students not involved in the MSU; those whom he ran to represent. He would have heard that bringing forward a motion for such a $215,000 celebration was not only unnecessary, but insulting to students who are struggling day to day to make ends meet.
By: Eric Gillis
Recently, a proposal was put forward to the Student Representative Assembly by current President Teddy Saull, asking that the SRA vote to allow the MSU spend a whopping $215,000 on a “year-end celebration.”
Or, in other words, a gigantic party. A huge, expensive party that costs you $215,000 of your money. To the proposal’s credit, there are “cheaper” options, but all of them, save for the absolute “cheapest,” are in the six-figure range and even the cheapest one is a superbly inexpensive $95,000 of your money.
And the kicker? You’d still have to pay for tickets. So not only is this proposal suggesting we should spend a huge sum of your money on a party, but that you should have to pay a fee on top of it to attend the events of this party.
The proposal does acknowledge that this is a “substantial amount” of money, but then goes on whimsically waxing poetic of dreams in an attempt to reassure everyone that it’s all okay. You see, the proposal informs delightfully: we, as an organization, have a surplus. And we shouldn’t have a surplus, because we’re a non-profit organization. Hence, this huge expensive, gigantic, party will help us get rid of our surplus like any good non-profit student government should strive to do.
This is indeed true. A non-profit should absolutely be striving to not have a surplus. I agree with the sentiment entirely, as I’m sure most of my fellow SRA members do. But I want to talk about priorities.
Consider the following: why is it that we can apparently manage to pull something like this off with a six-figure price tag in a mere four months, yet we are evidently incapable as an organization of getting even a rudimentary implementation of a women’s centre on campus in a timely manner without significant bureaucratic mess and delay? How is it that an absolutely massive party is a more easily accomplished endeavour? For over three years now there has been an active movement to make the Women and Gender Equity Network happen – this is not a new conversation. So where’s the women’s centre?
What about your financial needs? Don’t you wish there was a little more emergency financial aid available? The MSU could be providing that. If we have a surplus we need to be getting rid of couldn’t we be helping our fellow McMaster students in need? Wouldn’t that be more in line with what we should be doing as an organization?
Further, didn’t Union Market raise its prices on coffee recently? Aren’t some of the prices on goods in Union Market, like chips, overpriced? If we’re making a surplus, do we need to be charging those prices? The same goes for TwelvEighty. If we have a surplus we need to get rid of, couldn’t we be charging a little less and actually put together some healthy nutritious meals for students on a budget?
And what about our student employees? We pay most of them a wage that is well below the poverty line. Yet, we have a surplus that we evidently need to get rid of. So, why don’t we strive to pay all of our student employees a living wage? This would help our fellow student employees with their school fees and, given our financial situation, would be a prudent financial decision. Why not invest in our employees?
The answer to these questions is quite simply: priorities.
By: Daniel D'Angela
The typical Student Representative Assembly meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. “O Canada” is played by 6:45 and the next two to four hours are spent talking about various issues regarding governance and post-secondary education.
All pretty exciting stuff in my opinion, but I will admit it’s not a page-turner. However, this Oct. 19, the meeting will be very different. At this upcoming SRA meeting, your student representatives will be voting on allocating $215,000 from the MSU to a spring McMaster Send-Off concert.
I will be voting in support of this allocation. An expenditure of his size comes with many legitimate concerns and questions that I will try to address.
The first concern is that the MSU should be funding services, instead of recreational events. The MSU is one of the most important service providers for students. This past fiscal year, the MSU spent more than $3.5 million on over 20 student services, from the Child Care Centre to EFRT. These services greatly enrich student life, and make McMaster a safer and more inclusive community.
We also have one of the strongest Campus Events staff in the country; hosting shows of such international acclaim as Steve Angello and Lil' Jon.
We are not forced to make a choice between great entertainment and great services. Fun events and investing in student-run events are not mutually exclusive, and our record proves that.
Another concern is that spending so much money on a concert is financially irresponsible. Over the last three fiscal years the MSU has run a $1.5 million surplus and this year a projected $130,000 surplus.
We currently have over $5 million in reserves in cash and near-cash assets. According to our own comptroller Maggie Gallagher, “the success of the past three years has put the organization in a very healthy financial position.
The year-end celebration is a financial risk that we are ready to handle.” After accounting for projected ticket sales, we would lose at most $90,000 for the MSU, still leaving a healthy $40,000 projected surplus in 2014.
In our constitution, it states that we will “draw into a true society all students at McMaster University” by “foster[ing] activities and events which will enhance the University experience of its members and contribute to the life of the University as a whole.” Nothing better outlines and clarifies why this concert would be such a boon to McMaster and its students.
This concert would bring together over 6,000 students, making it the largest event in our history. It would change the game, not only at Mac, but all Canadian universities. It would it provide a phenomenal experience to at least a quarter of our members, provide value to members who traditionally are not always targeted by our services, create a new tradition, and build campus pride.
To provide one last piece of encouragement for this motion: our last concert sold out in 36 hours and 2,000 students attended. Our Welcome Week concerts routinely have over 5,000 attendees and cost $50,000 each. Now imagine what we could do with $215,000.
After a decade of operation, students will no longer have the option to explore the beginnings of the universe.
The Faculty of Science has decided to discontinue the undergraduate Origins Research Specialization. The ORS will be phased out over three years, meaning that the students currently enrolled in levels two through four will be the last to complete the specialization.
Robert Baker, Dean of the Faculty of Science, explained that the decision to close the program was a financial one.
“Our main concern over the research specialization is the low number of students who take it so we have to put on courses for the relatively new students taking it,” said Baker. “We just don’t think that’s very effective.”
The ORS enrolled 18 new students in level II for the 2014-2015 academic year, two shy of its enrolment goal.
The Institute was opened in 2004 and is one of few such institutions in North America, aiming to provide “broad interdisciplinary courses aimed at fundamental questions in science.” In addition to the ORS, the Origins Institute continues to run a graduate program in astrobiology.
Jonathan Stone, Associate Director of the Origins Institute, admits that he and his colleagues were somewhat surprised by the closing of the specialization.
“It was very informal,” he said of the discussions surrounding the closing of the ORS in the spring. “From my perspective […] it disappeared overnight.”
Stone speculated that it was because of the lack of protection by any one faculty that the ORS was so quickly shut down.
“I understand the faculty is in dire financial situation,” he said. “And I think we were just the easiest member of the herd to trim.”
Students in the specialization, as well as faculty, are disappointed at the decision to end the ORS.
“I think it’s a huge shame, because I think the Origins courses are really what a science course at McMaster should be,” said Julie-Anne Mendoza, a fourth-year Arts and Science student pursuing a combined honours in Origins studies.
“The current format [of science courses] is boring, and it’s not a great way to learn. But the Origins courses take a very creative approach. We talk about problems from a much more holistic approach.”
As VP Academic of the Origins Undergraduate Society, Mendoza has helped to collect letters from students and alumni who are unhappy with the decision from the Faculty of Science. The letters were submitted to the Academic Planning committee in the hopes of appealing the closure.
Though the decision is not technically final, Stone has little hope that the decision would be overturned, considering the committee’s previous comments.
“I would say the odds are literally 99 percent against,” he said of the possibility for a reversal of the cut.
Despite this, Stone, with the support of the OI, has proposed that Origins be preserved at the undergraduate level in the form of a stream in the Life Sciences program. He envisions a collection of courses, hosted by a variety of different departments within the Faculty of Science, that can be combined into a form of origins studies and would enroll a larger number of students.
The OI submitted a document proposing this option to the Dean.
“It is a possibility,” Baker said of a potential Origins stream. “We haven’t made that decision yet.”
He explained that the current stages of academic planning are still preliminary, and before any final commitments are made the committee will convene working groups to explore different curriculum options.
A new stream in Life Sciences would fit with the Faculty’s new priorities.
“What we really want to do is try and take some of the things we’ve learned from things like Origins Research Institute and the iSci program and bring some of those ideas to a much larger range of students so more of them can profit from that interdisciplinary hands-on type of approach,” said Baker.
The committee is considering establishing a stream in health geography and health policy, as well as one focused on human health, toxins, and environmental issues.
The Dean recognized that the closing of the ORS was not ideal, but was a pragmatic choice.
“It’s not like we’re saying it’s not a good program and students aren’t learning from it,” he said. “It is simply that we need the resources to improve other programs that need improvement and we will reach more students.”
McMaster allocates $1 million to blended learning courses
David Wilkinson, Provost and Vice President (Academic) of McMaster University announced on Sept. 9 the allocation of $1 million towards creating ten new blended learning courses over the next two years.
The courses will focus on online learning, while also providing students with experiential opportunities to apply what they’ve learned online.
“We are working with the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning and working the faculties, investing quite heavily in a number of those kinds of courses,” said Wilkinson. “Five different faculties are going to be engaged in this. The Faculty of Science in particular will be leading the way.”
As well as in the Faculty of Science, blended learning courses will be offered in engineering, business, social science and humanities. The new blended learning technique will mainly be used to develop first-year courses.
A portion of the $1 million allocation will be set aside for MIIETL to develop tools to measure the effectiveness of blended and online learning strategies.
“There is evidence that providing students with different pathways to learn is effective. There is certainly lots of evidence that transfer of knowledge through lecture is a particularly ineffective approach […] to transmitting content,” said Wilkinson. “One of the areas where McMaster wants to lead through MIIETL is actually the development of evidence around [types of learning].”
In addition to the blended learning courses, McMaster has received funding from the Ontario Online Institute to develop seven online courses. These courses will be offered in both first-year and upper-level courses.
“We are going to focus more on blended learning than on purely online content, but we are developing online in a number of different ways,” said Wilkinson.
The Ontario Online Institute is a project that aims to provide online learning opportunities for students in Ontario, eventually enabling students to take online courses at different universities and apply the credit at their home school.
View today's SRA meeting on our live broadcast, here.
Read up on today's agenda and supplementary documents, here.
Make your room feel just like home!
Family Photos
Family photos put the “family” in “jail cell”. And there’s nothing quite like seeing some precious photos of family grace those white brick walls.
A Rug or Two
It might be the fact that my toes are #blessed every morning they roll out of bed, feelin’ like they’re in toe paradise with that sheep rug heaven, but I think rugs are the most pivotally homey addition you can make.
Let there be Light
You can’t have a fireplace (surprise!), but you can add some seriously needed warmth with the right lighting. Consider buying a floorlamp because, let’s be real, no human being can function normally with the fluorescent lights often installed in dorm rooms.
Buy a Nice Lil' Cup
A mug that makes you happy is a staple for any home, so don’t feel you need to stick to the paper cups you get from MUSC all the time (as convenient as they are to defrost our hands on the way to class).
With a number of Ontario universities facing large pension deficits, the province recently gave universities and other public sector employers a three-year extension to put sustainable pension plans in place.
Prior to the extension, several universities were running pension deficits in the hundreds of millions and had applied for solvency relief from the government, with terms expiring in January 2014. The three-year extension would allow universities to defer their solvency payments, or make interest-only payments, until 2018.
“[The extension] gives universities and their employees breathing room to address their pension plans,” said Graeme Stewart, communications director for Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). The OCUFA lobbied for short-term relief from pension pressures.
Currently, all but three universities in Ontario face pension solvency deficits, according to OCUFA.
Queen’s University, for instance, faces a pension deficit of $459 million. To pay that off in 10 years, the university would have to draw heavily from its operating budget — extra funds it does not have — to allot $35 million annually to its pension fund.
Caroline Davis, vice-principal of finance and administration at Queen’s, recently called the university’s deficit issue “one of the most pressing financial issues facing Queen’s” in a Q and A on the school’s website.
Davis also said that the three-year short-term relief “would not eliminate [the university's] solvency problem and it would come at a cost.”
“It’s a little like making only the minimum payments on your credit card,” she said.
McMaster University’s 2013-14 consolidated budget similarly cited the university’s pension deficit as “the most significant financial pressure McMaster faces.”
The University of Ottawa has a pension deficit of $289 million and was approved for solvency relief this past June. Prior to the approval, the U of O faced the option of diverting $62 million, about 9 per cent of its operating budget, to paying off the deficit over five years.
Unfunded pension liabilities in universities have been an issue in Ontario for a number of years, exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis.
“There were contribution holidays taken a decade ago when the plans had surpluses – the universities asked to not make contributions and were given that,” said Stewart. “The market crashed in 2008 and still hasn’t recovered. We also have historically low interest rates.”
“This is a short term stop gap,” Stewart said of the extension granted by the province. “OCUFA has received a grant from the government to do research on [sustainable pension options] – and so has the Council of Ontario Universities.
“It gives us time to do research and gives us time to propose some solutions.”
