Daily Bulletin

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Thursday, July 31, 1997

Why students don't volunteer

Undergraduate math students are voting this week on whether Chris Buchanan, vice-president (activities and services) of the Math Society, should be removed from office. The issues involve his performance in previous MathSoc roles and his suitability for the job; but discussion of the referendum has touched on other matters, as in these paragraphs, from a manifesto by Buchanan himself, about why more students don't get involved in student organizations:

First of all, more students are working part-time. Tuition has increased over 40% in the past three years. For those of you who are in co-op, you need to make up that difference somewhere (it's not as if salaries have increased 40% in the past three years), and for those on OSAP, it hasn't increased either. This trend is going to continue. For those who read the Daily Bulletin, there is a bit on yet another rule change by OSAP. Students will now be considered to be living at "home" during their work-terms (or summers for us regular folks). This means that the minimum contribution has increased substantially, which means that even more students are going to need to work, which reduces volunteers even more.
Secondly, students are concentrating on academics more. In 1993, the new cumulative average was introduced [in mathematics] (before that the students had a cumulative average that did not include any marks which were failures . . . Nice, huh?). The maximum number of failures was also reduced from 6 to 4. In 1994, the Major Average was introduced. With these much more restrictive academic requirements, it is of no surprise that students are more concerned with academic performance than they once were, and that this has resulted in fewer volunteers.

Rovers (that's Scouts) based at UW

Here's a note from Ed Spike in the electrical and computer engineering department, who doubles, I learn, as advisor to the UW Rover Crew:

The U of Waterloo Rover Crew will hold an investiture this Thursday, July 31, in E 2 room 4401, at 5:15 p.m. (to 6:30 p.m.). All UW Scouters and Guiders are invited to the investiture. Scouting uniforms are requested. The Crew will be showing their new neckers with the UW colours for the very first time. Please RSVP spike@eestaff.watstar.

Rovers are the most senior level of Scouts. Membership is open to men and women aged 18 to 26, and Scouts Canada explains that "The outdoors is an essential part of the Rover program. Rovers often participate in adventurous activities like mountain climbing, white water rafting, or para-sailing. Rovers also help their local communities by running service activities such as food drives, park clean-ups, and tree plantings. Rovers meet in a group called a crew. Rovers develop and manage their own program under the mentorship of a respected advisor."

The Rover Promise: "On my honour I promise that I will do my best To do my duty to God and the Queen, To help other people at all times, And to carry out the spirit of the Scout Law." The Rover Motto: "Service."

It's the last day of July

And that means, among other things, it's the last day as dean of applied health sciences for Bob Norman, who is leaving office early to concentrate on heading a major research program. Norman has been dean since 1991.

The registrar's office notes that tomorrow is the deadline for intention to graduate forms for those who want to be wearing black gowns and broad smiles at fall convocation.

Applications for fall term jobs in campus recreation will be available as of tomorrow, the athletics department says -- drop by Physical Activities Complex room 2039.

Nominations for the next Distinguished Teacher Awards, to be given in the spring of 1998, are now being accepted, the teaching resource office says. Inquiries: ext. 3132.

Events of today and tomorrow

The Graduate Student Association holds its annual golf tournament this afternoon at the Merry Hill course.

The Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance and the Institute for Insurance and Pension Research -- both based in the school of accountancy -- present a talk today by Philippe Artzner of Strasbourg University and Cornell University. Topic: "Value at Risk: Theoretical and Practical Aspects". Time: 2 p.m. Place: Math and Computer room 5158.

A general meeting of the corporation of Imprint, the student newspaper, has been called for 9:30 tomorrow morning to deal with a controversy over the board of directors. All students who pay the Imprint fee are members of the corporation.

The talk of the campuses

Things just don't get simpler at Simon Fraser University in the suburbs of Vancouver, where president John Stubbs has been under fire for approving the dismissal of swimming coach Liam Donnelly in a sexual harassment case. The board of governors reinstated Donnelly last week after a mediator cast serious doubt on his accuser, student Rachel Marsden, and Donnelly is now talking about suing Marsden. Latest development: Stubbs has announced in an open letter that he is suffering from depression and has asked for medical leave.

At Colorado State University, a crisis of a different kind: a flash flood on Spring Creek, which killed four people in a nearby trailer park in Fort Collins, has caused millions of dollars of damage to the campus. More than a dozen buildings are closed, and an estimated 500,000 books in the basement of the Morgan Library have been damaged.

Local volunteers are wanted

Requests this week from the Volunteer Action Centre are for people to help with an AIDS fund-raising walk on September 28; "friends" to visit parents with new babies, under the Cradlelink program; and people who can lead public library tours. More information: 742-8610.

Waterloo Web site of the day

THE SCHOLARLY SOCIETIES PROJECT
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/

Editor Jim Parrott and his colleagues in the UW library have tracked down more than a thousand societies of scholars and experts, from Abrasive Engineering to the Yuen Ren Society for the Promotion of Chinese Dialect Fieldwork, and this page is the result.

Parrott explains:

The Scholarly Societies Project was created to facilitate access to information about scholarly societies across the world. The Project began as a collection of 16 gophers; it was announced to the public on Feb. 18, 1994. The web version of the Project was announced on Nov. 25, 1994; by then it had links to more than 70 websites and 100 gophers. At that time there was an alphabetical list, a set of 20 subject guides, as well as links to 40 serial publications in full-text form (mostly newsletters).
Throughout 1995, there were a number of enhancements, including a set of hypertext essays on the role of scholarly societies in scholarly communication, a chronology of founding dates of societies, a list of meeting/conference announcements compiled by scholarly societies, and areas for special types of societies (international unions, federations, and academies of science).
As of May 26, 1997, there are now a total of 1069 websites and 2 gophers in the Project.

New on the Scholarly Societies web site is some material about "URL stability", something that's of crucial importance to anybody who's trying to maintain Web links and has only 24 hours in the day to do it. Says Parrott: "The overall URL-stability index for the Project is now 32.8%, which means that if the collection were not tended for several years (the Internet equivalent of several centuries), at least a third of the URLs would still be valid. Speaking very roughly, it appears that the disciplines associated with professions are most likely to have permanent URLs, followed by the sciences and social sciences, and then by the humanities.

"The reason for computing these URL-stability indices and publicizing them so widely throughout the Project is remind users, and especially creators of websites for scholarly societies, that it is in fact possible to avoid the nuisance of frequent URL changes, which has plagued the Internet in recent years."

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY July 31, 1961: President Gerry Hagey strikes a committee to look into "the academic and operational problems involved" in changing from four terms a year to three.

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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