Council Report - September 15, 2009

School has started again! Welcome back, and hope you all had an amazing O-week. Once again, this report is longer than normal due to the two-month layoff between BUSAC meetings. Stay with me, they’ll get shorter at some point.

Financial Restrictions Policies

As I updated you in the last report, one of the projects I began working on last year was a way to restrict any money that BUSU collects as a result of flat-fee, and reallocate that back into direct financial support for students. I’m happy to say that, since the last meeting, the remaining pieces of the policy have been passed by the Board of Directors. The three new additions – an Emergency Grants Policy, and a Scholarships and Bursaries Policy, are now added to the existing Food Voucher, ESLP and Campus Support programs that we have as acceptable uses for flat fee money. This year, just over $11,000 in flat fee money will be restricted to these programs, and that number is expected to climb for the next two years until flat-fee is fully implemented across all students on campus, to a number somewhere in the $24,000 range annually.

Transcripts and Academic Issues

During the summer retreat, it was identified that academic transcripts are an issue. On a student’s physical transcript (not the online version on the self-serve), dropped classes may have been shown. I followed up immediately on this issue, looking into existing Brock policies and speaking with the Registrar. The policy states, and the current practice is, that if a course is dropped during the period when the online registration is open, nothing will appear on your physical transcript copy. If anyone knows of ANY evidence to the contrary, please contact me immediately.

I have also spent the summer assisting a few students through their academic issues relating to courses and marks and appeals, mostly in the spring academic semester.

Health and Safety

Over the summer, I became fully First Aid and CPR trained (I had unfortunately let me certification lapse), and became re-certified on the AED machines around campus. We also held a fire drill in our building, and have participated in the early stages of pandemic planning (such as the Swine Flu, if it were to hit campus in the fall), in order to keep BUSU and our students as safe as possible should anything happen on campus this year.

Municipal Transit

I became heavily involved this summer in the transit contract negotiations with both Welland and Niagara Falls. Lianne, Sameer, Nazir and I attended a Welland City Council meeting to speak about our transit issues, and we received an extension of the current contract as negotiations continue to progress. With Niagara Falls, I conducted a major analysis of class times at Brock, and we re-jigged the entire Niagara Falls bus schedule to coincide with some better arrival and departure times for students who have classes at peak times during the day. This deal is now finalized.

Potential New Bus Service

In early August, Lianne and I met with two representatives from Coach Canada, and the gentleman who runs the St. Catharines Transit Terminal. We were looking at options for chartering cheap buses to get students to and from home, or other destinations, throughout the school year. Other student unions run similar services, such as the FEDS at Waterloo, and the AMS at Queen’s. We believe we have a pricing model in place that will work for a few destinations, and we are looking to launch some buses on Thanksgiving weekend as a test-run to see if the market supports the need that we have identified. Tickets will be sold at prices approximately 20% below the current passenger rates on the existing carriers, and in some cases, could make the drive 50% faster than existing connections.

Brock TV

The executive and Brock TV collaborated to create a BUSU promotional video for this year, based on the theme of ‘Planet Earth’ and focused on Brock. By the time you read this, you should be able to find it on our website and YouTube, so make sure you check this out if you haven’t done so already.

Town and Gown Issues

I attended the first meeting for the year of the Thorold Town and Gown committee, and Lianne was able to attend the St. Catharines Student Housing Liaison Committee. Both of these committees exist to address concerns of and about students in the respective cities. The first meetings went extremely well this year, and there are no immediate threats of any student-unfriendly action. Thorold’s committee is still waiting for the release of a staff recommendation after a rental property bylaw last year proved unpopular with landlords. St. Catharines is in the midst of a crackdown on properties that are unsafe for tenants to live in. Myself and Lianne are monitoring all of these developments to ensure that students will not be suddenly kicked out of their properties and leases if any houses are deemed to be unsafe; but that appropriate and reasonable time lengths are given for upgrades, or to find alternate housing.

Media

I did a live interview on CFBU for about half an hour on Wednesday August 26th, speaking about everything from O-week to lobby priorities. I also received some coverage in a Canadian Press article (picked up by CTV, The Star, Macleans On Campus, The Record and more) about digital textbook formats. On September 4th, I did a newspaper interview about student unemployment which was printed the next day, and another radio interview that night on CKTB. I also received some press on OUSA-related issues in the Ryerson Free Press, which was picked up by the Canadian University Press and could be in campus papers across the country in the coming weeks.

Copyright

On August 27th, I travelled to Toronto for a town hall on copyright issues. This was the second of two open meetings in Canada (the other was held in Montreal a few weeks prior), and were held in addition to about a dozen closed town halls about the issue. CASA or a CASA member school has been present at every part of the consultation, and I was able to attend, on behalf of BUSU and CASA, the Toronto session.

I was able to make a three-minute speech on behalf of students, touching on three main topics:
The maintenance of the current definition of ‘fair dealing,’ which allows use of copyright material for academic purposes. The current standard is interpreted by the Supreme Court, but not yet enshrined in law, and if our efforts are unsuccessful, could be replaced by a specific series of exemptions which WOULD include academic uses, but lead our universities to become much more restrictive with the flow of information for fear of being sued.
The increasing digitization of learning, including podcasts and online supplemental materials (such as lecture slides delivered through WebCT). The previous incarnation of the copyright bill placed severe restrictions on this content, and in some cases required the deletion of materials at times that are not conducive to a research or study cycle.
The ability to circumvent digital locks if the use is for an otherwise non-infringing purpose. Examples: converting material into a text-to-speech reader, studying cryptography in a classroom.

I feel that the points were very well received, and the Minister spent more time writing during my comments than I saw him at any other point of the night. The forum was, unfortunately, dominated in a coordinated fashion by music-industry representatives with their own agenda to push, but everyone in the room recognized and saw this, including the Minister himself. I am certain that with the access students have received through this process, that any new proposed legislation will be much more student-friendly than the last (provided an election doesn’t kill a copyright bill again).

Federal Election

We’re gearing up again. The opposition parties have all once again threatened to pull the plug on the government. A federal election could be held as early as November. The Welcome Wagon kits this year included election information, and the background content for our website during an election is being updated. As well, I have already been in contact with Elections Canada on a number of issues throughout the summer.

Good Neighbour Program

Independently this summer, myself and Brad Clarke from Off Campus Living both developed an awards program to reward students and community members who are being good neighbours out in the community. We met, harmonized our ideas into one joint program (with double the budget), and have placed the information on the backgrounds of our respective websites. We will be ramping up the promotion of them during the first full week of October, where OCL was already planning to initiate a ‘Good Neighbour Week’. All-told, we will be giving prizes to 6 individual students, 6 student households/groups, and 4 longer-term community members this year.

OUSA

Throughout the summer as OUSA VP Finance, I had been working on revamping the accounting system of OUSA. This project has now been finished from my end – approximately 70% of OUSA’s line items are either renamed or moved, and about 90% of lines now have new descriptions to better reflect what expenses get put into them. This is a significant improvement on what had been done in the past – there were numerous lines used that had not been budgeted for, and vice versa. There were a number of gaps where expenses were falling into miscellaneous accounts, and many numbers from the previous three years were virtually useless for any future predictions. The bookkeeper is now finalizing all of the changes in our accounting software, and our auditors have been notified of the changes. This will be a marked improvement in the past, and should be able to withstand the next decade or so of finances for OUSA.

Along those lines, OUSA’s information from the past two years is now with the auditors. We had missed an audit, so this is a double-year for us. We don’t anticipate any major deviations from our calculated income statements, and the results should in by early October, with plenty of time before OUSA General Assembly.

We are now looking at revamping OUSA’s bylaws to update them into modern language, and updates needed as the organization has moved away from some of the realities at the organization’s creation. These should be approved by Steering Committee at its next meeting, later this month in London.

At the same time, we are working on a new long-term plan for OUSA, as this is a year for the expiry of that as well. The core principles and strategies should be ready for General Assembly to adopt in October.

Meetings with bureaucrats in Toronto have continued all summer, with Alexi and Dan taking the lion’s share of these. MTCU has two important projects this year (in our eyes) – the tuition policy, and a follow-up to Reaching Higher 2. Both of these will ramp up quickly in the fall when the legislature and politicians return.

CASA

Beyond the copyright issue that I discussed earlier, much of the work with CASA this summer has been of the preliminary policy nature. I am, as of now, sitting on three committees: policy committee, child-care sub-committee, and the strategic plan committee. I have a few more that will come on-line in the coming months, and for now we are mostly reviewing the existing documents and policies in these areas, looking for the gaps and compiling our research independently to move forward with new documents for November in Halifax.

CASA is, of course, also preparing for a federal election, and as a Regional Coordinator, I have some extra roles to play in the facilitation of satellite lobbying, and setting general election campaign strategy for the organization. These conference calls continue to be on-going as well.

Welcome Wagon

Lianne, Sameer and I were able to participate in this year’s Welcome Wagon on the Wednesday of O-Week. I was sent out to the Jacobson area with two fire prevention officers in St. Catharines, and we knocked on all doors on the street. If we hit a student house, we welcomed them back to the neighbourhood with a welcome kit, and we also talked to the longer-term residents about good neighbour relations. This program has been a growing success every year, and I feel very positive about the impact we will be having, especially in some of the higher-problem areas of the past.

O-Week

Was pretty boring this week. JUST KIDDING! We had an amazing week, with over 300 volunteers for move-in day, the best tower kick-off ever, and a tower party that broke attendance records. Of course, we also smashed the Guinness World Record for Largest Air Guitar session on Wednesday night during the Metric concert, and held the first ever Brock Paper Scissors tournament. Over 100,000 free items were given away, and the week was a resounding success on all fronts. You’ll receive more information verbally, and from Sohail’s report.

VPUA Job Tip of the Week – Part 1.

I’ve been doing a ‘closing lyric of the BUSAC’ for a year now, I thought that I’d also start filling my reports with “job tips”, or some of the tools and things that I have learned that help me gather information and do my job to the best of my ability. We have 14 BUSAC meetings scheduled, including this one, so consider this a 14-part mini-series about the VPUA and politics. For anyone who is considering running for VPUA in the future, or wants to get more involved in external activities, representation, or anything else, you may find some of these suggestions useful for you immediately.

Tip #1 – Macleans on Campus

Keeping tabs on the website http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/ is a virtual requirement. This site features a number of regular student bloggers, as well as consistently updating with relevant stories about universities and colleges, student assistance, and broader issues that are making national news which might be student-related. As well, a few longer-term bloggers have very in-depth knowledge about internal students’ union workings, and share their thoughts when certain topics come to the forefront. This is also one of the few places where bloggers actively seek out information on what student unions are up to, outside of everyone’s individual “campus bubble” (such as breaking last year’s ‘Shinerama scandal’ at Carleton). Also look to this site to be in the middle of any issue involving CASA, OUSA or the CFS. **Caution, as with any media, be cautious to separate opinion from fact, and recognize that some articles may be written with certain political slants.

Closing Lyric of the BUSAC

“Every generation gets a chance to change the world
Pity the nation that won't listen to your boys and girls'
Cause the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard”
- U2