A new civic responsibility award has been created to allow the University to show pride in its students, said Vice-Principal (Academic) Patrick Deane. “It was created because events like Aberdeen 2005 gave rise to a perception that students, when in the city of Kingston are more of a liability,” Deane said. “And anyone familiar with students knows that’s not true.”

The bad news is the Queen’s Centre will no longer have industrial elevators in its final design. The good news is, by cutting back on ornamental details such as hand railings, the University has been able to shave several million dollars off the total cost of the project.

Queen’s has previously dealt with potentially threatening students in situations similar to that of Cho Seung-Hui, a Virginia Tech student who shot 32 people on campus before killing himself on April 16. Vice-Principal (operations and finance) Andrew Simpson said Queen’s has a strong track record of identifying and treating students in distress.

Beginning in September, Aberdeen Street will be home to a new student community centre. The University recently bought the house from the Lee family—the street’s last non-student residents. Work began on the house last month and will be completed in September.

A year after being elected on a promise to “Make it happen,” members of Team MBT—AMS President James Macmillan, Vice-President (Operations) Ian Black and Vice-President (University Affairs) Meghan Teuber—agreed it’s hard to put a finger on their year’s defining issue.

When the 2006-07 budget was drawn up last summer, AMS services were expected to lose $63,469. Vice-President (Operations) Ian Black said he now expects the AMS to end the year with a surplus.

Michele Romanow, Sci ’07 and this year’s Agnes Benidickson Tricolour Award recipient, has a list of accomplishments that runs from volunteering with the AMS Kaleidoscope program, to being chief FREC during Frosh Week 2004, to serving as vice-president (communications) of the Engineering Student Societies Council of Ontario.

Queen’s University Faculty Association (QUFA) President John Holmes said a widening gap between student and faculty populations is eroding the quality of education at Queen’s.

On Monday, women’s studies professor Dina Georgis and music professor Olga Malyshko won the AMS Frank Knox Awards for excellence in teaching.

Organized by the Canadian Federation of Students, the task force was formed in January 2006 to address the needs of Muslim students at Canadian post-secondary institutions. They released their findings on March 21.

On April 14, after 85 years and three incarnations, countless triumphs and sorrows, one provincial hockey championship and a literal trial by fire, Jock Harty Arena will see its last hockey game. The athletics department will host Rock the Jock, on last chance to enjoy the arena featuring a game between the women’s hockey team and an alumni team and public skating.

At last weekend’s Sustainability Conference organized by Queen’s Sustainability Network (QSN), photographer and keynote speaker Edward Burtynsky presented a slideshow of his photographs showing pictures of our intrusion into nature all over the world: railroads cutting through forests in British Columbia, spirals of highways in Los Angeles and construction on the Three Gorges Dam in China.