Daily Bulletin, Wednesday, March 9, 1994

TALKING MONEY:  The senate finance committee meets this afternoon
(3 p.m., Needles Hall room 3004) for "preliminary discussion" of the
university's 1994-95 budget.  The discussion will have to be pretty 
vague and hypothetical, since the government still has not announced
what the level of grants and tuition fees will be for the new fiscal
year, which starts May 1.

All the rumours point to a cut in grants beyond what's already been
announced.  (And what's been announced amounts to a drop of several 
tenths of a per cent on the grant in general, and another million dollars
a year thanks to "additional qualifications" courses for teachers, one
of those complex issues that are bad news whichever way you look at them.)

The question is, will the "substantial" increase in tuition fees that has
been mentioned by Dave Cooke, the education minister, be enough to balance
the drop in grants?  UW's director of operations analysis, Bob Truman,
says the rule of thumb is that fees will have to go up by 5 per cent
for every 1 per cent drop in grants, if the university's total income is
to stay level from this year to next year.  Otherwise, it's budget-cutting
time again.

On the finance committee's agenda this afternoon is "Asymmetrical cuts,
process and criteria".  In other words: if some activities at UW are to
be cut more than others, how do we go about making the decisions?

LAUGH AND LEARN:  Staff members are invited to watch John Cleese -- yes,
the Monty Python, Fawlty Towers fellow -- at noontime tomorrow, as part
of the staff training and development Brown Bag Lunch Series.  To be shown
is one of a series of videos made by Cleese on organizational issues; this
one is on "Presentation Skills".  Bring your lunch to Davis Centre 1302,
from 12 noon to 1:00 on Thursday.  Refreshments are provided, says Katrina
Maugham of the human resources department, who's making the arrangements.

WOMEN'S WEEK continues.  Today, activities include a talk on native
women's well-being, 12:30, Davis Centre 1301; alternative medicine and 
homeopathy for women, 7 p.m., Needles Hall 3001; Kenyan women's music, a 
talk by Carol Ann Weaver of Conrad Grebel College, 7:30.

At Wilfrid Laurier University, Sandra Pyke of York University, one of the
country's most prominent feminists, gives a Laurier Lecture at 8:00 tonight
in the Maureen Forrester Recital Hall of WLU's John Aird Centre.  Her topic
is "The Gendered Academy: Issues of Equality and Equity", and she'll talk
about the difficulties facing women in Canadian universities.

Tomorrow at UW: a panel discussion by "feminist professors" (that's all the
information provided to us) at 7 p.m. in Needles Hall 3001.

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
888-4567 ext. 3004      credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca