Tuition increase at SFU
Students at Simon Fraser University are facing a 15 per cent tuition increase this year, and questions regarding the increase are being raised by student leaders.
The University’s Board of Governors said the increase was justified due to a $15-million deficit; a product of reduction in provincial grants and new expenses.
New expenses included increasing faculty acquisitions, the new faculty of health sciences and IT system expansion.
Titus Gregory, university relation’s officer for Simon Fraser’s student society, disagreed that the increases are completely justified.
“I think they could have done more in the area of simply trying to reduce their expenses and could have done more in holding back the urge to start new programs,” Gregory said. “That is something that we have critiqued them on for quite a while.”
However, Gregory did agree that reduced provincial support has played a role in the problem.
Racist Graffiti at Ryerson
There was a rash of racist and threatening graffiti at Ryerson University this summer, beginning with spray-painted threats towards Muslims spray-painted on the Multifaith Centre in June.
Detective James Hogan of the Toronto Police’s Hate Crimes Unit said he has never seen anything this overt in Canada. The hate crimes were reported on in the Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and Al Jazeera, and Premier Dalton McGuinty issued a statement denouncing the acts.
A group called FBC Ridaz assumed responsibility for the threats in flyers that were posted on campus that further threatened the Muslim community at Ryerson. Another group called the “Full Blooded Israelis Brigades” posted flyers at the same time encouraging violence against Muslims.
Ahmed Arshi, president of the Ryerson Muslim Student Association at Ryerson also received a threatening note. Jonathan Vandersluis, vice president of Hillel at Ryerson said Hillel has an excellent relationship with the Muslim groups on campus.
“It won’t get ruined by someone’s attempt to pull us apart … we’ll all be working together throughout the semester and the year,” Vandersluis said.
Arshi agreed that both groups are solid in their stance against racism.
“Yes there’s differences between us, but there’s one thing in common—we say no to racism,” Arshi said.
Security at the University is investigating the crimes and offering counselling and self-defence training.
A Multifaith Day is scheduled for Sept. 15 in response to the threats and graffiti.
UofT students play the prime minister
Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberal government will be greeting three University of Toronto students in November to hear what they would do if they were Prime Minister.
Ashleigh Androsoff, Sean Keating and Juda Strawczynski are among 10 finalists who seized the challenge to present their political vision for Canada in the annual “As Prime Minister” contest sponsored by Magna International.
The Canadian auto-parts giant awarded each of the students $10,000 and a four-month internship for submitting their creative solutions to the question, ‘What political vision would you offer to improve our living standards and ensure a secure and prosperous global community?’
Andersoff, who is in her final year of a Ph.D program, and law students Keating and Strawczynski, were honoured with opportunities to attended functions with senior government members and a luncheon with the Speaker of the House of Commons, among other events. The first-place winner will be announced at the Gala dinner.
In addition to an additional $10,000 in prize money, the winner will be offered a one-year, $50,000 paid internship at Magna International.
Guelph combats computer viruses, spam
The battle against SPAM has never been stronger at Guelph University. This September, thousands of returning students will be greeted with cleaner e-mail in-boxes.
Guelph’s Computing and Communications Services (CCS) spent the summer tackling the technological trouble, and now assure students they have set up protective barriers that will guard the University’s system from viruses and other unwanted e-mails.
The more than two million e-mail messages that move through Guelph’s system every week will now pass through filters before being distributed to individual mailboxes and prior to exiting the campus network.
The proactive measures, including frequent virus-scanning and spam-filtering, were implemented in part to maintain the credible reputation of uoguelph.ca addresses.
CCS has also increased their control over e-mail traffic flow by centralizing virus up-dates to now be performed by the main system a minimum of every two hours, as opposed to their previous approach that relied on all members of the campus community to safeguard their individual systems.
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