Daily Bulletin

The visitors are here

Once they get parked, visitors will find a system of colour-coded balloons guiding them to events at their faculties -- red for applied health sciences, green for environmental studies, purple for arts, pink (of course) for mathematics, yellow for engineering, and black for science. Faculties and colleges have planned events for the morning, with tours of campus highlights scheduled throughout the day.

South Campus Hall will host displays introducing various services available to students, and general campus tours start there. Meanwhile, there are tours of individual faculties, the residences and colleges, the libraries, the PAC, career services and health services. And in the Student Life Centre, visitors will have a chance to meet representatives of the Federation of Students, health services, the office for persons with disabilities, Student Life 101, the Student Ambassador Association, and even the Conrad Grebel College stage band, which will perform from 12:15 to 12:45.

Special sessions will be offered on "Financing Your University Education" (at the Laurel Room, South Campus Hall at 8:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.) and on Co-operative Education and Career Services in the Humanities Theatre at 2:15.

Casual earnings change Staff who are paid through the casual earnings system at UW need to do some payroll paperwork in the next few days. As of mid-April, the every-two-weeks casual payroll will produce direct bank deposits, rather than cheques. So individuals who are paid on that payroll (ranging from student library clerks to lifeguards) need to provide bank account information. There will be a sign-up session for that purpose on Monday, March 20, between 2 and 4 p.m. in the multipurpose room of the Student Life Centre. Those who can't attend that session should come to the human resources department (in the General Services Complex) to do the paperwork, or print forms from the web and forward them, along with a blank cheque, to Boyanka Martinez in the HR department.

Programming team ready for contest

They are the survivors of 1,968 teams that entered regional competitions last fall. Members of the UW finalist team, which took first place in the East Central regionals, are undergraduate students Ondrej Lhotak, computer science; Donny Cheung, combinatorics and optimization; and Jeff Shute, computer science.

"Working in three-person teams, students rely on their programming skills and creativity during the five-hour battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance," IBM says in a news release explaining the annual contest."The winning team will walk away with bragging rights, scholarships, IBM hardware and software and the 'smartest trophy in the world'."

UW's team won the international event, held in the Netherlands, last year over 61 other teams and also won the title in 1994. UW finished ahead of the University of Freiburg; third place went to St. Petersburg IFMO. Bucharest University was fourth and Duke University, fifth.

In the regional competitions last fall, nearly 13,000 of the world's top computer science and computer engineering students and faculty gathered for preliminary and regional heats in 69 countries. India, Iran, South Africa and Spain participated for the first time this year.

UW's A team won the East Central Regionals, held at UW in November, by a commanding margin, says computer science professor Gordon Cormack, coach of the two UW teams in the event. The team solved all of the eight questions posed. Second place went to a University of Toronto team and third to Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh, which are also advancing to the world finals. The University of Alberta and the University of Calgary are the only other Canadian teams in the event.

American teams in the finals, Wednesday through Sunday, include Cornell, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Virginia Tech and others.

Love story hits stage tomorrow

Based on the experiences of the author and his classmates, the play deals with "the suicide of a pupil who fails to cope with the exacting academic standards of his school, and the death of an innocent schoolgirl at the hands of a back-street abortionist, the victim of her own ignorance and her mother's prudery.

"The play was banned in Berlin in 1912, but its supporters found an unexpected ally in an enlightened judge of the Administrative Court who lifted the ban, and whose assessment of the play's merit is still valid, although the social circumstances which gave rise to it may have altered radically. 'The play,' he wrote, shows how the forces of real life affect innocent young people at the age of puberty, with particular reference to their own incipient sexuality and the demands made on them by life, and especially by their schooling. They perish in the ensuing conflict, because their appointed mentors, their parents and teachers, fail to guide them with proper understanding, because hey are prudish and lacking in worldly wisdom."

A cast of students perform in the UW production, directed by drama instructor Darlene Spencer, with set and lights by Robin Paterson, and costumes by Jocelyne Sobeski.

Show time is 8 p.m. Tickets -- $10 general, $8 students and seniors -- are available at the UW box office in the Humanities building, phone 888-4908.

Environmentalist lecture, and more

In 1975, 22-year-old Marilyn became Chairperson of the Public Expenditures Committee. She travelled to over 35 countries in this capacity and discovered that the rules that governed the finances of her own country were operating worldwide. Marilyn also discovered that our international accounting systems do not count many things -- notably the work of women and the cost of environmental damage.

By approaching economics and politics from the viewpoint of an average citizen, Marilyn challenges the assumption that international business systems are adequately meeting the needs of both local and global communities. Using plain language laced with ironic humour, she makes it clear that classic economics work to benefit one particular group, while the rest of us -- the vast majority -- pay the price.

A feminist economist with a PhD in Political Economy, a development consultant who has worked in more than a dozen countries, a farmer and an activist for "female human rights", Marilyn is currently Associate Professor in Social Policy and Social Work at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. In 1997, she received a British Council Award to travel to London to participate in the British Council Seminar on Women, Human Rights, Culture and Tradition. She was also awarded a Massey University Research Fellowship for 1998.

Her views have been published many times in books and international publications. Her first book, If Women Counted: The New Feminist Economics, was released in 1989 and was the basis of a Canadian National Film Board production entitled "Who's Counting?" Her latest book is the The Three Masquerades: Equality, Work, and Human Rights.

Marilyn's goal is to be understood, because she believes if people don't have information they can't act on issues. Her irreverent, clear, common-sense approach to demystifying the political process and global economics make her presentations inspiring and memorable.

Marilyn unscrambles the codes of global economics and reveals the important flaws in the international economic system, which places no value on peace, unpaid work or the preservation of natural resources. Women remain more than 50 percent of the world's population, yet hold no more than 10 percent of the seats in national legislatures. Marilyn takes a hard look at the disparity between what women contribute to communities and how their work is valued. Marilyn makes a convincing argument for changing an economic system that does not value clean air, water, and the unspoiled ecosystems that sustain and enrich life on earth.

Architecture students get their job ranking forms in the co-op department today, two weeks after the same process for students in other programs. Results of the match for spring term jobs in architecture will be available Thursday.

UW math students who have been on exchange programs in other lands, and visiting exchange students from other universities, will talk about their experiences, institutions and countries at an exchange information session tomorrow afternoon. Information will be provided on current and proposed exchanges in the faculty of mathematics. The session runs from 3 to 4 p.m. Wednesday in Math and Computer room 5158.

CAR

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