If it felt like there were millions of new raptors fans this past summer, that’s because there probably were. There’s nothing quite like the first National basketball asociation championship in Canadian history to bring people together, one of the great powers of athletics. Whether it’s playing sports or watching the Toronto Raptors dominate the Golden State Warriors, sports have a habit of uniting people together over a common interest. This sense of inclusivity is also why intramurals play a big role in the off-campus community here at McMaster.
When you live off-campus, it can be hard to feel like you have a home at Mac. School can be a place associated with academic stress and not much else. This is why the society of off-campus students runs intramurals every week. Intramurals can be a great way to get to know more people who are also in a similar situations. Here’s what the president of the society of off-campus students, Jeremy Sewnauth, had to say about SOCS and intramurals.
“Sports are a universal thing that everyone can bond over whether you’re talking about it or playing it,” Sewnauth said. “At intramurals, we end up doing so many different sports, this term we’re running soccer, water polo and frisbee and those were the sports that the members of the society voted for.” Sewnauth said.
Taking part in the PlayFun division is a great way to get involved in sport through a relatively non-competitive environment, where no one takes things too seriously and everyone is just looking to have some fun. There’s no need to have extensive knowledge in the sport or know every detail about the rules. PlayFun is a casual level of sport where students can meet one another.
“You don’t have to have any experience, you don’t have to know how to play any sports, if it’s something you’re interested in or you just want to kill some time, you can just pop in and play. If you don’t know how to play it everyone that’s there is willing and able to teach you how to play,” Sewnauth mentioned.
Playing sports chosen by SOCS members themselves makes it likely that people will come out, as they are going to be playing the sports they voted for. This type of engagement with everyone in the club is part of why SOCS is so successful.
“Every single weekend we’ll have a full squad come out for soccer, frisbee and water polo which gives you the opportunity to bond with people. A lot of people after games end up hanging out and every time I’ve met so many people,” added Sewnauth.
SOCS aims to offer off-campus students a way to feel connected and provide a home at McMaster. They offer multiple ways of trying to do that but, sports and intramurals are definitely one of the best ways to accomplish their goal.
“A lot of the times you’ll see groups of people, like a floor in residence or something they’ll put together a team or that same group of students that were all friends before. In later years they’ll keep doing these intramural teams every year. We try to create something similar where we’re creating a community among sports,” said Sewnauth.
Being an off-campus student can often feel lonely but it doesn’t have to be. Intramurals are a great way to connect with other students. You can get a SOCS membership in the basement of the student centre and they’ll be more than happy to help you sign up for their intramural team.
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Westdale residents voiced their fierce opposition to the University’s proposed rezoning of a house on Forsyth Avenue at a community consultation meeting last week.
“It’s truly an incredibly stupid idea,” said one audience member at the Jan. 16 meeting in Gilmour Hall. The idea, to move services into an off-campus house, is attractive to a University short on space but unwelcome by the neighbourhood.
McMaster purchased 88 Forsyth Avenue in December for $735,000 with the intent of turning it into student lounge and office space. The Society of Off-Campus Students, Student Community Support Network and the Off-Campus Resource Centre are three MSU and McMaster organizations that would inhabit this 3,000 square foot home.
The thought to relocate these services came from the successful test drive of a SOCS student lounge in a vacant Wentworth House prior to its demolition last year. SOCS had temporarily taken over the old Phoenix restaurant and bar area and had found that having a large, dedicated lounge and quiet study space was beneficial to off-campus students between classes.
The Forsyth house would operate in a similar fashion. The building would be open from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and may be open on some weekends. Students would be welcome to access the formal services offered by SCSN and OCRC or enjoy quiet study space, a lounge and kitchen area, and a basement games room.
Supervision of the space would be provided daily by regular campus security personnel.
While no structural changes are planned for the blueprint of the house, fire regulations for a rezoning would require reinforced separation between floors. Other planned renovations include painting, updating the wiring and re-carpeting.
The property was previously owned by the Muslim Association of Canada, which used the space in a way similar to what the University has planned. Under the Association’s ownership, the property was called Cordoba House and operated as a library and resource centre for Muslim students. Since it was not being used as a family home, Cordoba House had been run without the proper zoning status for the past many years. The quiet nature of its mandate and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule, however, meant that the neighbours who understood its illegal zoning status weren’t bothered. Now, with fears of late-night activity and backyard parties, the community is ready to challenge the University on its intentions and oppose the rezoning of the house.
Residents potentially affected can lobby City officials to veto the rezoning. A presumed decrease in property value and potential noise issues were the major concerns of the community members opposed to rezoning the property for non-residential use. “We will fight this all the way,” said one Forsyth Avenue resident at the meeting. Rezoning involves a lengthy application to the City and progress is not expected for several months.
The significant renovations to the roof and windows will be put on hold until the zoning matter is resolved. In the meantime, the property has been added to McMaster’s regular groundskeeping and security rotation.
No new occupants were identified for the spaces in the student centre that OCRS, SOCS and SCSN would vacate if their relocation to 88 Forsyth is successful.
I volunteered for MAC Bread Bin in second year, and I helped run an event called Feed the Bus. We parked a school bus on campus and asked students to donate food and spare change for Hamilton food banks.
I was a SOCS rep then, too, so I talked to one of the vice-presidents of SOCS about helping me promote the event by spreading the word among reps.
The response was incredible. A crowd of reps, who brought with them their orange jumpsuits and Welcome Week enthusiasm, congregated outside the bus every day for the week, soliciting donations from passers-by. We wouldn’t have raised near the amount of money that we did without them.
SOCS still helps out every year for Feed the Bus. Why? Because SOCS reps care about feeding the hungry in Hamilton, and they do something about it by supporting MAC Bread Bin. That’s just what it means to be a rep with the off-campus students society.
Fast forward three years to the MSU’s general assembly on Tuesday. After last year’s attendance of over 670 students, this year was an embarrassment. Only 60 people showed up, and no more than 30 voted on either of the two motions.
To be clear, a well-attended general assembly is not the end goal. It shouldn’t be about quorum for the sake of quorum, or direct democracy for the sake of direct democracy. It shouldn’t use gimmicks to boost attendance. But it has the potential to be a big opportunity for student ideas to get some attention, and people need to be aware that it’s happening.
Promotion for this year’s GA, though, was awful. Intentionally or not, the MSU made little effort to tell students about an event that, just a year prior, they felt was worthy of a major marketing campaign. The date announcement came late. There weren’t many posters. There wasn’t even a Facebook event.
There’s no question that the poor promotion was responsible for the low turnout. But, more importantly, it meant that only one motion was on the table at the start of the meeting.
In years past, the motions were what drew the crowds. Last year, the Welcome Week fee proposal got reps to attend. A motion for the MSU to recognize the Greek Life Council got fraternity members out. The McMaster Marching Band went to see their fee request pass.
It wasn’t about attracting students one at a time. It was about finding where they were already engaged and meeting them halfway.
And despite the problems with the 2012 general assembly (see last week’s editorial), it got that right, even though our students union usually gets it wrong on political student engagement. Be it in General Assembly or the SRA or other avenues, they don’t go to where their members already are.
It’s not that students don’t care. The term “student apathy” is an ugly one – it misplaces the blame.
The problem is structural. If you’re on the SRA, you might be involved in some other segment of campus life, but only by coincidence. At Mac, student government is just another thing to do.
Students care about their societies, clubs, rep groups and social circles. That stuff comes to constitute a person’s identity. I wasn’t just a Mac student. I was an ArtSci, and I lived off-campus, and I was – and continue to be – a Silhouette editor. And because of those things, I found new ways to engage. I found new things to care about.
And that’s why, if the MSU really wants to know how students are feeling or what they want, it needs to connect itself to other groups.
In the same way that being a SOCS rep has become synonymous with caring about food security in Hamilton, being a part of some facet of campus life should fit naturally with political engagement in the MSU. A change like that could ensure better use of student money. It could improve student life. It could turn unilateral lobbying efforts into movements.
It won’t be easy. It could mean re-making a decades-old student government structure to incorporate student leaders from other parts of campus. Or it could mean that the MSU should absorb faculty societies.
But if the MSU wants to be seen as a viable means through which its members can improve their undergrad experience, change is necessary. The MSU can’t be isolated. It can’t keep splitting the attention of students who want to be engaged.
And it can’t keep trying to fight this enemy that is so-called student apathy.
It’s well known that McMaster’s enrolment is high and the campus is short on space, but this month, off-campus and commuter students at McMaster will be given a new place to hang out.
A new lounge is opening on campus, dedicated to off-campus and commuter students. The lounge, named “The Lodge,” will occupy the space in Wentworth House that was formerly taken by The Phoenix.
The aim of the space is to help commuter students of all years connect to Mac by giving them a place to relax and study.
Jennifer Kleven, Director of the Off-Campus Resource Centre, thinks the lounge will make a noticeable difference to off-campus and commuter students, who may not feel the sense of community that residence students do.
“Sometimes they feel this disconnect,” she explained. “And it’s been shown that the more connected they feel to the school, the higher their grades will often be. And we think that’s really important.”
The project of establishing the lounge was started early in 2012, and it has been a joint effort between the Off-Campus Resource Centre and McMaster’s Office of Student Affairs, with input from the Society of Off-Campus Students (SOCS).
Gina Robinson, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and a major advocate for the lounge, had a hard time hiding her excitement about the project.
As a Mac grad and a former commuter student, Robinson appreciates the needs of students today.
“I’m really passionate about the commuters,” she said. “I can remember being a commuter student—it was difficult at that time.
She described how students once used Hamilton Hall as a communal space, before the student centre was built. With straightforward amenities—tables and chairs, a couple TV’s, and a microwave—it felt to her like a home away from home. She hopes current commuter students can have that same feeling.
Robinson and Kleven looked at research on commuter students from American schools such as the University of Ohio and University of Miami, as such research hasn’t been produced by Canadian universities, despite the trend of “refocusing on off-campus and commuter students.”
Although the idea has been widely praised, questions have been raised about the choice of location for the lounge. The old Phoenix, while it can accommodate a large number of students, is in Wentworth House, which is set to be torn down this spring to make way for the university’s new Wilson Building for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Kleven explained that they saw the space as a good opportunity to launch the initiative as a pilot project.
“We all know space is tight on the campus,” she said. ”So why not take advantage of it while we can? It was going to sit vacant, nobody was going to be using it, so why not use it?”
“We wanted to create a space now,” explained Robinson, emphasizing that there is a pressing need for a lounge.
With a temporary space, however, they needed to be careful with money.
“When we were spending money we were trying to do it very carefully,” said Robinson.
The project received $25,000 from the Student Life Enhancement Fund for the project, which will be spent on furniture for the space. The remaining $20,000-$25,000 that have been budgeted will come from the Office of Student Affairs.
Although some of the costs are one-time—for example, the wireless will cost about $5000—Robinson and Kleven believe it’s worth it.
“It’ll be good money spent if this is a successful initiative, and then we can find more permanent space,” said Robinson.
Finding permanent space for The Lodge is something the team can only hope for at this point. Although Kleven and Robinson have appealed to the university administration for a permanent space, it’s not easy to find on such a packed campus.
Explained Kleven, “we’re hoping that we’re going to get hordes of students…[so] this will be an obvious example to the administration that we need this type of space on a permanent basis.”
It’s that time of year again. With a new group of first year students and a fresh team of reps, Welcome Week is once again in full swing. The difference this time is that every first year student has bought a MacPass.
Halfway through the week, MSU President Siobhan Stewart is already happy about the results. “I would say it’s better,” said Stewart of this year’s Welcome Week. “I think it’s too early to say one hundred percent, but my perception at least is that it’s better.”
This positive response comes in the wake of last year’s MacPass policy change. In a campaign run by former MSU president Matthew Dillion-Leitch, quorum was reached at the MSU general assembly, where students voted in favour of a motion to impose a universal Welcome Week levy on first years.
Rather than paying separately for the ticket to Welcome Week events, all incoming students are now charged the $110 though their student accounts with no chance to opt out.
The intentions behind this change were both “financial and philosophical,” explained MSU Vice President of Administration David Campbell.
In previous years, Campbell said, some students who wanted to purchase MacPasses on site were turned away.
“[Dillon-Leitch] saw that this wasn’t right,” he said.
Furthermore, he described the prices of years past as being “artificially low,” due to a subsidy from another university source.
“The problem that we were faced with…was do we want to jack the prices up, or are we going to find another solution? Because we need some sort of sustainable model.”
The new MacPass levy has translated to increased registration for Welcome Week. Although the fee is automatically applied, students were given the opportunity to register online in advance, explained Michele Corbeil, First Year Transition Program Coordinator at the Student Success Centre.
She described the response as “positively overwhelming,” citing an increase of 500 students in registration before the week began.
By Sunday, a total of over 4600 students had picked up MacPasses—roughly 800 more than in previous years and still rising throughout the week.
“The majority of that increase happened in off-campus students, which is really key,” said Campbell. “We were really pleased with that, because that was one of our big targets.”
Though the registration overall was up, it was difficult to say if attendance increased at specific events.
“It’s a growing year for SOCS,” said Stewart. “They’re really motivated and…excited about it.” Both Campbell and Stewart emphasized the expansion of programming for off-campus students, as well as other marginalized groups. “The programming is fairly diverse…and we’re always looking to expand that.”
The no opt-out policy doesn’t appear to be a major issue, for either off-campus or residence students.
Said Stewart, “I haven’t heard any complaints from any first year that I’ve talked to, but that’s just my experience thus far.”
Campbell notes that the no opt-out policy is something the MSU is still working on.
“In my ideal world, it wouldn’t be that we’d introduce an opt-out, but it would just be that every student was getting something out of it,” he said.
And in the end, that’s what Welcome Week is all about, said Stewart. “My sincere hope is that students find something to connect to during this week.”
Dina Fanara
Assistant News Editor
When an organization has been around as long as the Society of Off Campus Students (SOCS), which has just this past weekend celebrated its thirtieth birthday, bumps in the road are often faced.
Whether it be the group’s journey from a club under the jurisdiction of the McMaster Students Union (MSU) into an independent society at the University or the yearly struggle to win the “Residence Cup,” SOCS has managed to stay strong and pull through.
Over the years, thousands of McMaster students have been given the opportunity to hold the position of Welcome Week representative for SOCS. In 2001, a student named Jamie Kuss was selected to represent SOCS during Welcome Week of that year. However, only days before Welcome Week was to begin, Kuss passed away after battling for some time with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoblastic lymphoma, which is a cancer that effects the lymphatic system.
Immediately following, SOCS began the James Kuss Memorial Fund, raising money for the McMaster University Bone Marrow/Leukemia Research Fund. For the past decade, SOCS has worked hard to raise money in Kuss’s name. Last weekend, a donation of $20,000 was made by SOCS to the Fund in Kuss’s name.
The initial presentation of the oversized cheque was made on Friday, Nov. 19. The Kuss family made a special appearance the following day at the SOCS 30th Anniversary party at the Phoenix, retelling Kuss’s story and thanking SOCS for the donation made in his honour.
Nichole Fanara, a current SOCS rep, explained that, “the speeches about Jaime Kuss were really moving, people were crying and they retold his story.”
Jamie’s big brother, Tim Kuss, gave a short speech on Saturday. He explained how he wanted Jamie to enjoy his first year at McMaster. However, he was worried when Jamie didn’t get into residence, which had been an important part of his own university experience.
Upon entering first year, Jamie chose to get invoved with SOCS instead, and became a valued member of the society, first as a member, and then as a rep in 2001. The audience listened in silence as Tim recounted the story, ending by explaining that just days before Welcome Week 2001 was to start, Jamie lost his battle with cancer.
The event overall was a very moving one, making past and present members extremely proud to be a part of the society.
Current SOCS Vice-President Athletics, Arjun Sithamparapillai, stated that “It makes me proud to be part of a society whose spirit and dedication shows no parameters. It is extremely rare to witness established alumni cheering as if it was still Welcome Week.”
The event also served as a museum for thirty years’ worth of SOCS items. Whitney Evans, current SOCS Vice-President Social, stated that “the memorabilia room made SOCS alumni feel at home, with old photos, trophies, t-shirts, posters and more.”
Kaialise Mattiozzi, current SOCS Vice-President Promotions, added, “To see the past, present and future of SOCS congregate under one roof was fantastic. To also see the changes SOCS had gone through over the years, as well as what hadn’t changed, was truly remarkable. I thought I couldn’t love SOCS any more than I did, but that night proved me wrong.”
