![[University of Waterloo]](/images/logobars/goldbar.gif)
| Friday |
Monday, September 12, 2005
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[A hundred of them outside Perimeter]](/images/2005/0907einstein.jpg)
A hundred clones
of Albert Einstein made the announcement the other day at the
Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics in Waterloo: to celebrate the centennial of
Einstein's "miracle year" of 1905, Perimeter will hold EinsteinFest
from September 30 to October 30. Guest speakers, an Einstein display
from the archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, museum
exhibits and special concerts are among the plans. Perimeter is
independent of UW but with strong links to the university's department
of physics.
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Everybody who was involved in orientation will have memories of it -- and, organizers like to point out, some students have already meet their lifelong best friends or the people they're going to marry. I haven't heard much this morning about Saturday night's toga party (presumably those who were there have done more sleeping than e-mailing over the past few hours) but I did have word that "Single and Sexy" was a loud success to its first-year audiences. There were "some great changes in the script", associate provost Catharine Scott reports, adding ruefully that there were "several references that I didn't get, given my age, but that our new students found hilarious."
One comment I have heard is that some upper-year students weren't happy to find the Student Life Centre closed to them at several points last week. "The SLC is closed for frosh activities Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights of frosh week," says SLC manager Ann Simpson. "Although they begin setup in the afternoon, usually about 3:00, the building is open until 7 p.m. when Brubaker's closes." She says the special arrangement could perhaps be announced more clearly in advance next year.
Anyway, the term now begins in earnest. As always on the first class day of a term, the staff in co-operative education and career services will be out of the office for a professional development day. This time round the top agenda item is meeting Peggy Jarvie, who's been on duty for four weeks now as the newly-appointed executive director of CECS. She'll speak this morning about what lies ahead for the department. The program also includes words from several other CECS staff, and a presentation on "the millennial generation" that Julie Hummel and Julie Kalbfleisch of the marketing and undergraduate recruitment office have done a number of times for various campus groups.
For the beginning-of-term rush, the UW bookstore, UW Shop and Techworx in South Campus Hall will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. today through Thursday. Extended hours for the Campus Techshop in the Student Life Centre: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. And ArtWorx in East Campus Hall reopens today after a summer-long hiatus, with extended hours of 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. today and tomorrow.
"The Tuition Trap" is the title of the paper, published by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations. Feds vice-president (education) Howie Bender said Waterloo students "welcome the opportunity to begin discussions around the impact of higher tuition fees on middle-income families".
According to the report, middle-income families will suffer the most if university fees are allowed to increase as they did under the previous government.
Says economist Hugh Mackenzie, who produced the report for OCUFA: "Those advocating higher tuition offer deceptively simple but flawed remedies to postsecondary education funding pressures but the majority of families in the middle lose out. When governments substitute high tuition for public funding, Ontarians lose the key benefits of our progressive income tax system which ensures a net transfer from higher-income families to lower- income families. Those in the middle get lost in the shuffle."
The report "offers a sobering caution to the Ontario government", says OCUFA president Michael Doucet: "Make sure future tuition policy eliminates barriers to postsecondary education rather than creates new ones. That is why we recommend the government extend its tuition freeze while it studies the ramifications of high tuition on low- and middle-income families."
"Middle-income families have already begun to face affordability challenges currently faced by low-income families," Bender of UW's Feds agrees. "Costs for students in university have soared in the last decade. Tuition is a significant cost the government can and must control if it is committed to a post-secondary system that is affordable and accessible."
| WHEN AND WHERE |
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Duncan Murie, development and alumni affairs, retirement
party, 3:30 to 5:30, University Club, RSVP to ext. 7593.
Club That Really Likes Anime (CTRL-A) first meeting of the term 6 p.m., Math and Computer room 2038. Return-to-campus interviews for co-op students Tuesday-Thursday, schedule online. Meningitis vaccine clinic for students born 1985 through 1990, Tuesday-Thursday 9:30 to 11:30, Health Services, no charge. Campus Recreation open house Tuesday 11:30 to 3:00 outside Student Life Centre. Registration starts Monday for campus rec leagues; starts September 19 for instructional programs; details online. Part-time job fair Tuesday noon to 2 p.m., Student Life Centre. "Find a part-time job that suits your schedule. Bring your resumé and meet potential employers." 'Starting Your Own Business' career workshop, Tuesday 4:30, Tatham Centre room 2218, registration online. Waterloo Christian Fellowship "U-2" theme evening, live DJ, Tuesday 6 to 10 p.m., Bombshelter Pub, Student Life Centre. Library books borrowed on term loan before the beginning of August are due Wednesday -- return or renew online. Volunteer fair Wednesday 11:00 to 3:00, Student Life Centre. Orchestra@UWaterloo open rehearsal Thursday 7:00 to 9:30, Ron Eydt Village. New players (students, staff, faculty, alumni) invited -- register online. |
Said Federation president John Andersen: "These new grants will help counterbalance tuition fees that have more than doubled in the last decade. Targeting grants to those who need it, levels the playing field for all Canadians irrespective of family income."
The new grants are to provide eligible students up to half the cost of their tuition to a maximum of $3,000. When combined with the Canada Access Grant, the federal government's new low-income grant, such students can receive up to $6,000, roughly the full cost of their first year of tuition.
Said Bender: "We are pleased to see actions taken to reduce financial barriers for low income students. However, the provincial government must also continue to carefully control student costs." He called for "a permanent effective freeze on tuition fees to keep our universities accessible and affordable for Ontario's families."
Road work was still under way Friday on University Avenue, where the Region of Waterloo had intended to finish a repaving job before summer's end but didn't quite make it. "We're very close to being done," a Region official tells me. There's no work being done today, but the final step is to put down a top coating of asphalt all the way from the railroad tracks (east of the main campus entrance) to Keats Way, west of Westmount Road. That job will be done this Wednesday, starting in the early morning and finishing by about 4 p.m. Police will be on duty at the Westmount Road and Seagram Drive intersections to help the traffic keep moving, one lane each way.
Continuing after that, but not interfering much with traffic, is a job at the northeast corner of that intersection -- the woodlot at the edge of the main campus -- where the culvert that carries Laurel Creek across University Avenue is being extended. It will provide support for a new westbound bicycle lane and, some day, a right-turn lane for vehicles at Westmount Road. Work has gone slowly there because it turned out to be necessary to get an environment ministry permit for some of the work, the Regional official told me, but it's moving along now. The adjoining ground is a mess, but the Region has promised that no mature trees will be destroyed for that project.
Voting was to begin today for full-time UW staff members to elect a representative on the university's board of governors. One of the two staff seats has been vacant since Mark Walker of the registrar's office finished a three-year term on April 30. Nominations were filed during the summer, and balloting was to start today, but is now expected to begin next week, the university secretariat says.
The football Warriors defeated the University of Toronto Varsity Blues 29-27 on Saturday, in front of a big crowd of enthusiastic first-year students. In other weekend sports, the men's rugby Warriors defeated Laurier 28-15, but in baseball Laurier outscored the Warriors 8-6. There will be other weekend scores to come. Last Wednesday there was a pair of Guelph-Waterloo soccer games: the women's team beat the Gryphons 2-0, but the men's team lost 1-0.
Auditions are continuing this week for the Chamber, University and Chapel Choirs, the Instrumental Chamber and Stage Band, and music studio performance. . . . Here's a reminder that the September offerings of Skills for the Academic Workplace and other short courses offered by information systems and technology are listed online. . . . Just in case anybody's still wondering, the mystic lettering "MMX" on some new students' T-shirts means that they'll graduate from here V years after arriving in the year MMV. . . .
CAR