By Alex Bak

McMaster University has been steadily increasing its ranking in the world for the last decade with the Shanghai Ranking. Placing 66th in the world last year behind only two other Canadian universities, McMaster is now a top institution for higher education.

However, the access that McMaster students have to study areas on campus is limited, specifically during high-traffic periods such as during midterms or exam season.

The libraries that are often found vacant become packed with space so scarce that some are forced to study in between bookshelves or trudge back home reluctantly or fight for chairs in Thode.

Compared to the University of British Columbia, ranked 31st in the Shanghai Ranking, McMaster’s four libraries pale in comparison to UBC’s 11.

At McMaster, though there are areas that one can study at in each building, it is important to consider that even in these location, it can still be a challenge to find study space.

Have you ever tried to study in the third floor of the student centre at common lunch hour? With an hour break in between classes for both lunch and study time, students shouldn’t have to worry about wasting time looking for a space to study as well.

The upcoming Student Activity Building could be the opportunity McMaster needs to join the other institutions of similar calibre in providing its students with the means to productively study on campus.

Having garnered 857 votes (0.04 per cent of the total student body) in the in-person survey for study space designs, although it was the most requested (26 per cent), it is hard to discern whether study space is something that a majority of students want.

Compared to the University of British Columbia, ranked 31st in the Shanghai Ranking, McMaster’s four libraries pale in comparison to UBC’s 11.

However, the 40,000 square feet of possibility could aid in alleviating the sparsity of space.

One other way that McMaster could respond the study space problem is through lengthening its hours of operations. A joint initiative between multiple student groups launched a pilot program for extended hours at the H.G. Thode Library this past year.

The 3 a.m. extended hours were pivotal, especially for the time-crunch periods before midterms as well as completing the assignments that were due at midnight.

If these extended hours became a part of the university policy instead of a brief student-led program, it could be stable and a solidified function for future students to enjoy and utilise.

Conjoining both extended hours and a large part of the Student Activity Building being allocated for study space could potentially bring about seemingly inconspicuous but monumental changes for the academic life of the McMaster student body.

With McMaster Students Union presidential elections wrapping up, this may be an opportune moment for this issue to be addressed and create dialogue.

A few of the MSU presidential candidates have already addressed this issue on their platforms and are creating conversation about this issue among students.

However, some of the suggestions on the candidates’ platforms don’t seem financially or time-feasible and should be readdressed accordingly.

It’s time now that we start implementing our options and solving the issue of limited study space on campus

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By Rebecca Abelson

Discussions around campus safety have permeated the agendas of several of the McMaster Students Union presidential platforms. Shaarujaa Nadarajah, Patricia Kousoulas and Aquino Inigo are the three out of six candidates who have proposed various avenues to implement newfound security practices. These efforts have both yearlong and exam-time applications.

A nightly shuttle bus service is one of the more notable programs put forth. All three candidates propose a shuttle bus service that will transport students during late exam hours to their respective neighbourhoods. This will act as an extension of the Student Walk Home Attendant Team, which currently operates from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. every day by providing students with a safe, reliable form of transportation after hours. Nadarajah’s platform discusses campus safety in tandem with the prevention of sexual violence, and the implementation of the shuttle service is rightly considered.

Under Kousoulas’s platform point of “Feeling Well,” she highlights the importance of providing extra support to students during exam time. The shuttle bus proposition complements her objectives by alleviating the fears associated with late nights on campus.

In doing so, students would be able to avoid long waits at distant bus stops, cold walks home and unwanted catcalling. The shuttle system is a feasible on-campus resource that can be used to improve the academic and personal well-being of McMaster students.

In a similar vein, Inigo’s platform also proposes a call-in service where students can contact a volunteer to accompany them on the phone during their walks home. Like the shuttle bus, this call-in service acts as an extension of SWHAT by allowing students to have contact with a trained volunteer during the later hours of the night. Expanding familiar campus services is an excellent way to incorporate students into new security initiatives.

McMaster students must be able to rely on their university and the support it provides.

In addition, the propositions put forth also tend to the security of the volunteers by creating additional avenues for safe commutes. In the case of the shuttle bus program, SWHAT volunteers would be able to use the service after late nights spent serving McMaster students.

Increased lighting in poorly lit student neighbourhoods is another focal point of Inigo’s platform. By working with Ward 1 councillor Aidan Johnson and SWHAT, student neighbourhoods lacking sufficient lighting are promised to be identified and made more visible. This would contribute to feelings of safety and security among the student-body.

From the initiatives explored, it becomes apparent that all three candidates emphasize the value of harm prevention. Through the implementation of bus services, call-in programs and brighter neighbourhoods, the presidential candidates aim to reduce the likelihood of assault by taking preventative action. These activities exemplify the active pursuit of MSU candidates in eliminating widespread issues within university campuses.

As an off-campus student, I’d argue that on and off-campus security should continue to be at the forefront of presidential campaigns. Since most students live off campus, it is integral that their safety needs are not overlooked. The route home should not burden on and off campus students, nor should it deter students from late nights at the library.

McMaster University is the home away from home for a multitude of diverse students. The responsibility to uphold their well-being should not end where the campus perimeters are drawn.

These obligations must be extended to students in their commute home, to school and while on campus. Moreover, the pertinence of on and off-campus safety measures in the 2017 MSU presidential campaigns reiterates the value student well-being poses to the McMaster Students Union.

McMaster students must be able to rely on their university and the support it provides. Shaarujaa Nadarajah, Patricia Kousoulas and Aquino Inigo have done an effective job in raising awareness of prominent and relevant safety concerns and should encourage other presidential candidates to follow suit.

Remember the feeling of getting your report card? McMaster was faced with that feeling this October, as the Globe and Mail published its annual Canadian University Report.

The assessment, released on Oct. 25, tried to get away from the largely data-based rankings of other organizations, instead assigning letter grades to different aspects of the university’s performance based on student surveys.

And McMaster’s administration was certainly pleased with the report card results.

“It’s extremely gratifying to be ranked by students as providing the highest quality teaching and learning experience in Canada,” President Patrick Deane told the Daily News, referring to McMaster’s first-place finish in its division for quality of teaching and learning.

Most notably, Mac ranked first in campus atmosphere, research opportunities and quality of teaching and learning, as well as second in student satisfaction, where it placed behind Western.

It also made an impression at the lower end of the large school division, placing second to last in city satisfaction and information technology. And naturally, McMaster’s infamous SOLAR system earned the university last place in course registration.

“If you take all the rankings, they add up to an interesting perspective that we’re strong, but there are some areas which need our attention,” said Deane.

The premise of the Globe’s rankings is a survey of current undergraduate students. For the 2013 rankings, 33,000 undergrads responded to a survey, and their responses, given on a scale of 1 to 9, were converted into corresponding letter grades. But the entire premise of this style of ranking is problematic, said Lonnie Magee, an economics professor at Mac.

“How would a university student be able to know about another school?” he asked. “It’s so driven by how you compare it with what you’re expecting.” He explained that since students attend only one university, such a comparison not particularly useful.

The Globe and Mail addressed this criticism in its 2012 Canadian University Report, released last October. Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, an education consulting firm that advises the Globe on the annual report, argued that student surveys are a reliable method of devising rankings.

“Another criticism [of the report] was that student[s] … had no idea what was available at any school other than their own. That’s true to some extent – but if year after year a particular institution gets results which are particularly good or particularly bad compared to other institutions of its type, then the results start to gain in validity,” Usher argued.

Magee notes that such results come from the “temptation to make the results more objective, to accumulate statistics and present them to show that your rankings are based on these ‘hard facts’ that have been collected.” He cautioned that qualitative factors like student satisfaction are tough to compare.

The Canadian University Report is one of two major Canadian university ranking publications. The other, administered by Maclean’s, is the more well-established of the two. It will release its 22nd annual rankings issue this year, while the Globe has just published its 11th.

Rather than following the Globe and Mail’s approach of a heavily student-based survey, Maclean’s compiles a number of factors to generate its rankings. Schools are divided into three categories: medical-doctoral, comprehensive and primarily undergraduate, in order to improve the comparison.

But the factors it uses for this comparison, made up largely of data from Statistics Canada and federal funding agencies, are sometimes criticized for not being entirely relevant to students or administration.

Mike Veall, an economics professor at McMaster, has published work on the effectiveness of the Maclean’s rankings. He described their methods as being a “little bit suspect in terms of gaining indicators.”

“It’s not quite clear that the indicators match quite well with what students or administrators should care about,” he said.

While there are many factors, the rankings do consider data like the number of library holdings and amount of money available for current expenses per weighted full-time-equivalent student.

McMaster has also been rated by broader, global organizations. But these, too, have their limitations.

The Times Higher Education (THE), for example, produces a rankings issue considered to be one of the best in the world.

This year, McMaster placed 88^th overall in their report. But the THE also ranks by faculty, and in the “clinical, pre-clinical, and health” category, McMaster earned 14th place in the world, making it the top school in the category in Canada.

Meanwhile, QS, a British firm, ranked McMaster 152nd. A Shanghai-based organization Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) placed McMaster this year at 92nd.

International rankings methods provide a different set of criteria. While Maclean’s and the Globe consider student satisfaction, such firms as QS and THE factor in a school’s industry influence and international impact – an area where McMaster can’t compete as well, especially when factors like number of Nobel Prize winners are considered.

But in the end, a bad report card doesn’t have a huge effect on a school, Veall said. In his 2005 study, co-authored by Qi Kong, a Mac undergrad at the time, he concluded that a change in ranking has little effect on a school’s enrolment share or the entrance average of its students. A shift of one place in the rankings can, at best, change the mean entrance average by 0.3 percent, although Veall emphasized that this conclusion was “not particularly robust.”

But even though the rankings may not matter much in the end, it doesn’t mean McMaster can’t be happy with a good report card.