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: Olivia Monardo

Finding a significant other these days can be difficult, especially with the added pressure of maintaining a solid social media presence on multiple platforms. But what if I told you that there is an app that can take all these troubles away? Introducing Luxy, the dating app for only the snobbiest, most self-indulgent people. Luxy incorporates aspects of Instagram, Facebook, and even Twitter into one big mobile dating service that lets people pick their most desired matches based on the three best selfies they choose to display. The only catch? You have to be rich to use it. Along with providing information on your favourite designer brands, Luxy lets you know the net worth of each one of your matches—which is obviously what truly matters when choosing a mate.

The CEO of Luxy, whoever he is, remains anonymous due to the fact that he fears the criticisms that may come along with this app. But who would criticize such a forward-thinking app? It’s not like Luxy bases its matches on pure aesthetic, or decides a person’s worth based on the brands they choose or the ritzy sports they play. No, Luxy prides itself on maintaining a reliable, solid network of all the richest people within a 100-kilometer radius, ensuring that none of these rich people should be forced to flirt among the general population.

Luxy allows each of its users three rounds of people choosing per day. Each round consists of 10 profiles; those of which get accepted appear in a list that does nothing more than remind you how lonely you truly are. In order to message one of these obviously elite people, they must first accept you in return, and the chances of that are slim to none. Although Luxy is an app with very few problems, it doesn’t take into account the ego of the rich people who use it. Not only do they want everyone to know how great they are, they want to know how great everyone else is too, which often leaves them disappointed, bored, and impatiently waiting to play their next round.

Jeff Doucet
MSU VP-Finance

Last week, Stephen Harper flew to Brussells to sign a Free-Trade agreement with the European Union. After Harper secured the support of all ten Premiers, Canada has reached an agreement in principle to sign the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with our viagra and canadian European peers. The full-text of the agreement has yet to be released, but the agreement has already been supported in principle by both the Liberal and New Democratic Party.

This is remarkable, as it was only twenty-five years ago that Free-Trade was a divisive election issue. However, since the Mulroney government’s implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement brought nation-wide economic growth and diversification, all federal parties now support free trade.

While we have yet to find out the finer details of the agreement, we know enough to start talking about its benefits and what it means for our local economy in Hamilton. When hearing about government initiatives such as CETA, it is easy to hear large, broad statements such as “12 billion annually” or “80,000 new jobs” and not really know what it means.

While the industry has taken a hit, Hamilton has remained a local economy supported by a manufacturing sector. Contributing billions of dollars to the national economy, Hamilton’s manufacturing sector makes up roughly 4 per cent of the province’s GDP. Several major industries such as automotive parts dominate the local economy while other important industries are growing rapidly. Green automotive technology in particular has the potential to grow and produce innovative, exportable products. The federal government and McMaster University demonstrated this commitment to green automotive technologies with the recent opening of the McMaster Automotive Research Centre. The research centre will collaborate with the private sector to develop, design, and test innovative hybrid technology.

With our globally recognized research-intensive universities, Canada has the ability to pair local industry with Post-Secondary Education and deliver commercial and economic success.

We all know that large-scale, simplified manufacturing has left North America for good. Other countries with lower wages and lower environmental standards will continue to hold the advantage in mass producing simplified goods. Because of partnerships like MARC, Canada will continue to hold the comparative advantage is in the advanced manufacturing of complicated, innovative technologies. But here is the thing: on a global scale, the Canadian automotive sector is relatively small. If you are a company that is producing technology that will one day be hidden under the hood of a car, you need unrestricted access to the global market to truly prosper.

The EU is the world’s second largest producer of automobiles, producing over 16 million cars, trucks and vans in 2012. To put this in perspective, last year Canada nearly produced 2.5 million automobiles. While Canadian auto-parts companies can currently sell their product in Europe, they face barriers to entry. CETA will eliminate EU tariffs on auto parts, which currently run up to 4.5 per cent. With the implementation of CETA, local companies in Hamilton will have an important leg up over competitors in other countries. Volkswagen while assembling a car in Germany could can now use Canadian technology at a lower price.

This example of how our local economy will benefit illustrates the importance of CETA, and the impact it will have on other industries and local economies. As tariffs as high as 22 per cent are lifted on our industries, Canada will continue to grow as a world leader in the trade of our unique goods.

Whether these goods are lumber exports from Northern Quebec, shrimp from the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, mineral production in Nunavut, or software technology in British Columbia, local economies across Canada stand to benefit from increased access to five hundred million consumers in the European Union.

Graciela Analiz

Things are looking dismal out there. We’re more materialistic than ever; we can’t tell the difference between needs and wants and we equate happiness with material goods. And despite the rather pessimistic view of what has become of us, I’ve noticed something over the past few years—I’ve become a little less attached to stuff.

I wasn’t the only one with this inkling. The Journal of Consumer Research noticed it back in 2007, when Lan Nguyen Chaplin and Deborah Roedder John conducted a study looking at materialism in children and adolescents. It so happens that between ages 8 and 13 our lust for possessions reaches all-time highs, but by late adolescence this lust begins to decline.

This brought me back to the good ol’ tween years, the age I thought (rather naïvely) that I could make myself twenty times better than I actually was. I was hopeful, maybe too hopeful, and definitely too idealistic. This is exactly what advertising takes advantage of - presenting us with an ideal self. They don’t want us to be content with who we currently are and what we own. It’s not surprising then why they flock to this age group.

But getting older has this thing of thwarting these sorts of hopes. So you get more realistic and realize that this is about as good as it’s going to get. Sure, you and I, and a whole lot of other people are still figuring it out, but with time we grow more comfortable with ourselves and plant our feet a little firmer to the ground. It’s not that advertising stops working altogether, consumerism is enough evidence against that, but it loses a bit of its edge.

The surer we are about ourselves the less effective advertising is, and advertising is, after all, what fuels materialism.

Mind you, becoming a little less attached to worldly possessions doesn’t suddenly make me an ascetic. The passage of time won’t ever completely heal us of our materialistic ways.

But in this age and generation characterized by the incessant need to have, getting older and a little less materialistic is a victory, a small one, but a victory nonetheless.

Northern students, student with disabilities, and finance on the agenda

From Nov. 2-4 the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) held their biannual General Assembly in Waterloo, Ont. McMaster sent seven delegates, including MSU VP Education Huzaifa Saeed and MSU President Siobhan Stewart.

OUSA, McMaster’s educational lobbying body,of which the McMaster Student Union is a paying member, has been in the spotlight of late for endorsing a province-wide tuition freeze. They argue that continued tuition increases will not fix province-wide funding issues; rather, it will exacerbate the problem, causing students to use higher amounts of provincial loans and grants.

Beyond the direct financial implications, OUSA has argued that continued tuition increases will make PSE less accessible to low and middle-income groups and will threaten youth employability.

The General Assembly aimed to develop OUSA’s priorities for the next year. The focus areas at the Waterloo conference were Northern and Rural Students, Students with Disabilities,and Student Financial Aid.

All three focus areas were concerned with how to strengthen infrastructure and remove financial barriers for students by lobbying the provincial government. Affordability and financial assistance for students were recurring themes throughout the conference papers.

The plenary policy paper on Rural and Northern Students makes recommendations on how the provincial government can improve accessibility and participation of rural and northern students in post-secondary education (PSE).

The paper specifically defines a student as a Northern or Rural Student if they live in Thunder Bay, Cochrane, Algoma, Sudbury, Timiskaming, Nipissing, Manitoulin or Parry Sound.

The report discusses how these young people struggle to attend post-secondary institutions. If these students are able to access PSE, they often go on to incur sizeable travel and commuting costs.

Currently, the provincial government provides $500 per term to students commuting to a campus 80 kilometers or more from their home. For students who are living away from home, they offer $300 per term, provided that the student’s permanent home address is 80 kilometers or more from a campus.

Northern students also typically borrow at higher rates, using on average $7,496 in government loans, compared to the provincial average of $6,601.

Students with disabilities also represent another group that disproportionately shoulders the burden of high costs associated with PSE.

The Students with Disabilities policy paper emphasized how financial assistance is difficult for students with disabilities to access. It specifically noted how students with disabilities are often unable to meet OSAP requirements and funding is occasionally off-limits for students who are only part-time students or who have temporary disabilities.

The Financial Assistance policy paper re-affirms OUSA’s position on tuition increases in Ontario. More specifically, it advocates for wide-sweeping changes to OSAP including removing ineligibilities and updating the loan structure.

OSAP is currently capped at $12,240 (for a two-term academic year). OUSA has argued that this limit does not adequately help students, and forces students to take out private loans, seek additional employment or, in the worst-case, drop out of school. The organization has recommended that if tuition increases it should be by no more than the inflation rate (calculated by the Ontario Consumer Price Index).

Shivani Persad, one of the McMaster delegates and the McMaster Advocacy Street Team Coordinator, hopes to plan events back on campus that promote current policies being advocated by OUSA. Persad explained that the team will be promoting part of the larger OUSA-run mental health campaign, which will encompass some discussion on students with disabilities.

OUSA, and other student organizations such as the Canadian Federation of Students, continue to advocate for reductions or freezes to tuition. In the next semester, OUSA will discuss issues regarding Public-Private Partnerships and Online Learning.

 

Titles is the students’ source on campus for all things textbook related. Although its main location is now mostly dedicated to McMaster paraphernalia and school supplies, the store’s primary focus is books.

With such a focus, it’s hard to believe that every September, students are faced with empty shelves and backordered textbooks.

“[Textbook ordering] is always a challenge,” said Lesley Mills, Accounting Manager at Titles.

Donna Shapiro, the bookstore’s director, explained further.

“We have to be very cautious when we place an order that we can make sure either we’re going to sell out, or we’re going to sell enough … so we’re not ending up writing off stock at the end of the day.”

Titles is responsible for ordering books for hundreds of classes for the year. For the fall semester, it oversees over 2500 courses and course sections worth of materials. A further 2100 courses and sections are processed for the winter term.

Even with such a high volume of courseware, Titles is very careful to be conservative, which contributes to its availability levels.

“We don’t end up with a lot of money at the end of the day, so we try and minimize the return – shipping costs are a fairly substantial cost,” Mills explained.

Titles collects about 20 percent of the cost of every book, but much of that money is put towards rent, shipping and staffing the store. Returns to the publishers are costly, said Shapiro. And that’s not a cost anyone wants to incur.

“The university has put a lot more fiscal demands on us. The whole campus is asked to be more fiscally responsible than they were historically in some areas. This is just one area where we know we can save money for everybody.”

The bookstore faces a number of challenges in determining how much stock to order. The four Titles book buyers must consider a course’s estimated enrolment and its actual enrolment, as well as the book’s sell-through in previous years. The store never orders books for 100 percent of the class, because not all the students will buy it.

Mills described how the first-year physics course had over 800 students registered, but only 200 textbooks were sold.

“There’s a huge issue there,” she said. She also noted that peer-to-peer selling is one thing that can cut into the sales.

Much of the store’s September trouble comes from communication issues.

“I think our biggest challenge with book availability isn’t determining the number that we have to have … it’s finding out from the faculty member in a timely fashion what it is they’re going to use,” Shapiro said.

Despite this, the store administration has given up on setting deadlines for professors to choose their textbooks.

“A deadline means nothing, because nobody adheres to it,” claimed Shapiro, noting that there once was a deadline set for mid-July for September orders.

The store is afforded more flexibility with the emergence of eBooks, however. This new kind of book production, while useful and environmentally friendly, has forced Titles and its affiliated publishers to evolve.

“It’s a whole new world out there,” said Shapiro.

“For a book world that hadn’t changed for centuries upon centuries, you’re seeing such rapid changes now that the publishers can’t even keep up with the materials that they’re creating.”

Brian Decker

Executive Editor

 

Ontarians may be headed back to the polls this spring.

The Liberal provincial minority government tabled its proposed budget Tuesday, but Opposition and Progressive Conservative party Leader Tim Hudak says his party will not support the budget, putting Andrea Horwath’s New Democratic Party in a position to decide whether the budget is voted down.

The budget aims to slash the province’s $15.3 billion deficit by freezing wages at hospitals, universities, colleges and on other public sector employees. If it is defeated, an election could be called as early as May.

“We are making the right choices to ensure that Ontario families are receiving the best possible services and the best value for tax dollars,” said Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan. “All of us have a role to play in balancing the budget.”

The budget aims to save $17.7 billion over the next three years while increasing revenues by $4.4 billion without tax increases. But opponents of the legislation say it’s leaving too many groups out of the equation.

“With students having huge debt and not a lot of job prospects coming out of school, it’s concerning that there’s nothing in this budget for job creation,” said Hamilton Mountain MPP Monique Taylor.

“The budget’s falling short on job creation and health care. There’s nothing in to help everyday families and make life easier for them,” said Taylor. “That’s a serious problem.”
Horwath said that her party’s MPPs will be meeting with constituents and having a “serious talk” this week over whether to support the budget.

“We’re not ready to make that decision yet,” said Taylor. “We won’t know that until after our next caucus meeting.”

Some of the features of the budget include austerity toward pensions for current public sector employees, including greater required contributions and a reduction in future benefits, as well as a freeze on scheduled drops in corporate income taxes and the Business Education tax.

The budget comes on the heels of February’s Drummond Report, which called for numerous measures to take place in order to quickly tackle the deficit.

However, the Liberals left a number of the report’s recommendations out of the budget, including a plan to cancel the recent 30 per cent tuition grant for university students.

“The government’s commitment to continue funding enrolment growth and the tuition grant are critical to creating a more accessible and affordable post-secondary education system,” said Sean Madden, President of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA), a provincial student lobbying group.

Madden said, however, that postsecondary education still needs to be a bigger priority for the McGuinty Liberals.

“With this Budget, our universities will continue to operate with the least per-student funding and highest tuition fees of any province, while teaching quality and student success remain pressing issues,” he said.

Katija Bonin

The Silhouette

 

On Thursday, March 1, a phishing email was sent to the general population of McMaster. Purporting to be from University Technology Services (UTS), the email asked email users to go to a non-McMaster website and provide log in credentials. Failure to do so would allegedly result in termination of one’s email account.

As stated by Julia Kraveca, manager of Client Services for UTS, “such attacks happen every so often.” Out of all incoming e-mail messages that McMaster receives, approximately 22 per cent are legitimate e-mails. The remaining e-mails are types of spam that may be caught by filters, and just like catching fish with a net, it is to be expected that one may fall through.

The main difference is that senders of phishing e-mails are aware of the different security mechanisms, and swim around them in order to be the one that lands in student inboxes.

In such circumstance, when the unauthentic email was not prevented, UTS used defensive measures in order to control its effects, noted Kraveca.

The phishing note was reported to UTS at 2 p.m. on March 1, and by 2:30 p.m. UTS had blocked on-campus access to the website noted in the e-mail, and had published a cautionary note through the McMaster University website.

After careful evaluation, it was determined that only two per cent of the targetted population received the spam email, and only 0.05 per cent actually visited the website. However, it is unknown out of this percentile how many email users actually responded to the request in the phishing e-mail. Additionally, a campus-wide notice was released the following morning.

Although the sender is unknown, “it is evident that their intent in sending the e-mail was malicious, and was sent with the purpose of collecting private information that could somehow be misused,” said Kraveca.

Based on the available statistical data, it appears that the phishing e-mail was caught before it was able to travel too far, making its impact quite insignificant. UTS interpreted the given data as affirmation to having successfully educated the McMaster community on protecting themselves from fraudulent emails.

However, UTS did not want to undermine the impact the email had for the 0.05 per cent whose world was turned upside down as a result of the leaked spam.

The hope is that such an incident does not happen again, however, it is not entirely preventable, explained Kraveca. Students and faculty are therefore strongly urged to exercise caution in order to protect themselves from duplicitous emails.

In the event that such an occurrence does repeat, students and faculty are urged to report the potential phishing scam to the UTS Service Desk as soon as possible.

Suggested protective measures may include refraining from opening e-mails if the source is unknown or appears suspicious. Often phishing schemes are designed to imitate legitimate companies or institutions, thus users are encouraged to acknowledge the use of distorted logos and misspelt words, which are telltale signs that the sources are not genuine.

Lastly, one must resist clicking embedded links or verifying confidential information, as these are often connected with fraudulent online activity.

UTS is actively involved around the clock in the prevention, detection and investigation of potential electronic fraud within the University. On any given day UTS processes 1.4 million e-mail messages.

Rob Hardy

Silhouette Staff

 

It’s not until very recently that our evolution as a human race has finally allowed us to begin enjoying a life of relative material wealth – one where death by starvation or exceptionally poor shelter are no longer the norm. Though that level of poverty is still the case for many countries around the world. Gone is the era of Dickensian school days where much of the class arrived in rags and sat hungry in their seats. (Though, to be fair, one in five American children are still living in poverty.) But what is different about today’s age, what perhaps partly makes officials and economists hesitate to label us approaching anything close to an economic depression, is the fact that society is absolutely swimming in “stuff.”

Back in the Great Depression of the last century, as many lives were thrown into tremendous economic devastation, one of the maxims of the days was “to make do” – and for some this meant literally scrounging for food scraps in the streets of New York. The rise of consumerism during the 1920s began to shame more frugal types who refused to give up making their own clothing, not spending some extra discretionary income simply because it was available for the time being. For those with that attitude, the “Dirty Thirties” saw no cessation of quilting bees and ingenuous ways to make your dollars go further. The end of the Second World War, however, saw yet another increase in consumerist attitudes that have never really ceased.

Faced with the prospect of financial annihilation in our current hard times, as many have already experienced, the face of frugality and preparedness look much different today. One of the benefits of the times we are living in, despite a slash-and-burn job market, is that even though money coming in may be tight, resources and strategies for being in the black are abundant.

Recently, shows like Extreme Couponing have shown that by sacrificing all your spare time and storage space, you too can buy three cartloads of groceries for nearly nothing. To be serious, though, as much as some of these families “pay” in other ways for their hard-earned goodies, the idea of sacrificing and doing the leg work to get a better deal often mean the difference between living well or maxing out your credit card. Though retailers on this side of the border are allergic to the concept of double-coupon days, there is much wisdom to be gleaned from these tales.

Taking it to the next level, Extreme Cheapskates focuses on those who not only want to save money at the store, but to avoid going there at all cost. Message boards regarding this program are buzzing with tips and discussion on how to best scrimp and save, though also when being cheap simply crosses the line. One man dries his paper towels on a clothesline inside to reuse. One mom avoids the tissue aisle completely: her brood uses washable cloths she throws in the washing machine to save $20 a month on toilet paper.

Whichever side of the fence you’re on, it’s clear that a lot of the things we throw away today are actually useful in themselves. Oftentimes, we are already getting two-for-one deals on much of our purchases. Margarine comes in a useful container that you can save for something else later, and bread bags can be washed out and re-used for other things, so you can bypass paying another nickel (six cents when you add the tax) for more plastic bags you don’t really need at home.

One of the less pleasant Canadian traditions from days of yore that’s rarely ever mentioned is the stacks of Sears catalogues that used to stock outhouses from coast to coast. Given the new trend in scavenging for needs by looking for what’s already available instead of flushing cash straight down the john, one might view that stack of fliers delivered to your door every week in a whole new light.