Queen’s University’s recent budget cuts to the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) has left the department in a precarious position. While the Smith-funded School of Business and Engineering faculty thrive, the University continues to handle the situation with a lack of honesty and transparency, leaving students frustrated.

I’m sick of living in “unprecedented times.” I’m truly at my limit. In the last four years, my generation has lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, online school, rising temperatures, and six seasons of Too Hot to Handle.

In my office in Dunning Hall, there’s an image of an ampersand hanging on the wall. I’m fond of ampersands. Beside the fact they just look cool, the ampersand (&) is for me a kind of value statement. It’s a guiding star. To me, that “&” is an icon for one of the things I love the best about the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS). We’re a Faculty of Arts and Science.

More than a year has passed now since Oct. 7, 2023, and it’s been difficult to put into words and even fathom what that really means—what it means for a whole year to have passed since the massacre of our loved ones, our people.

The first time I witnessed an Honorary Degree (HD) at graduation, I was a third-year student hidden behind the stage arranging hoods and gowns—a job taken on by the AMS operations team. The organized chaos slowed as my attention drifted to the voice on stage, listing off a litany of achievements that stretched so long the audience began to chuckle in disbelief.

For much of human history, academia was always treated as a holistic pursuit. Science was a type of natural philosophy, and it shared the same inquiry methods as history. It wasn’t uncommon to find an astronomer who was also a philosopher, or perhaps a historian who studied biology. It’s in this melting pot of subjects that teaching and learning flourished, and much of what we study in more well-defined fields today originates from this time.

On the night of Aug. 30, I was walking alone near Victoria Park when, all of a sudden, I saw a police officer running toward me.

You may have noticed a gap in your schedule on SOLUS for Sept. 30. At first glance, it might seem like an opportunity to get some extra sleep and catch up on—or procrastinate—your readings. In reality, that emptiness is a call to action.

As the new academic year begins, staff members at Queen’s are increasingly burdened by austerity measures—including widespread layoffs and persistent budget cuts—embedded within the University’s revised fiscal strategy.

Abortions are simply not talked about enough today outside of political contexts. When it comes to young adults who actually go through these experiences, the narratives are scarce and often negative.

On a scale of open to closed door, search committees are padlocked.

This year, Kingston smashed its new housing targets by a whopping 250 per cent with 1465 new housing projects starting in the city. But as the demand for housing becomes fiercer and more competitive, Queen’s isn’t doing enough to support their students in finding a place to call home.

Exactly one year ago, I laid out four things I learned from four years at Queen’s. Now that I’ve made it through another year and another degree, I thought I would keep the tradition going.

Over the next six years, $6.1 billion will be allocated to create a Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) to provide support to Canadians with disabilities.