Monday, November 26, 2007

Foresight: UBC's annual report; AGM today!

UBC, over the last several years, has adopted the practice of holding an Annual General Meeting, to coincide with the release of its annual report. The AGM is happening today at 12:00-1:00, in downtown Kelowna. It is being broadcast live (at 12:00) in two ways so that we can watch it too:

This year's report, "Foresight" is a short, spiffy, and readable document outlining the major accomplishments and programs at UBC in the past year. You can read it HERE. The report is structured around the personal narratives of individuals, who are featured in attractive colour photos on half the pages. Summary graphics of finances, donors, and sustainability targets constitute the remained of the report to complete a gushing profile of our illustrious institution. I learned about a few new things from the report. For instance , there's a new fancy rowing facility in Richmond for varsity athletes. There's a new Centre for Microbial Diversity and Evolution, funded by a $7 million investment from the Tula Foundation, being headed up by Patrick Keeling, who does awesome research on understudied protists. (This is especially cool, since most types of microbes are almost completely unstudied). Anyway, the report supplies an optimistic, incomplete glance at the positive accomplishments at UBC. By looking briefly at the financial summary page, you'd have no idea about the recurring structural deficit.


Sunday, November 25, 2007

The townie theory of social engagement, or lack thereof.

ACF is one of the only UBC events I attend. I'm lazy and antisocial, so I don't prioritize things like beer gardens and storm the wall and pit night and whatever else. When I do socialize on campus, I'm getting drunk with a few friends at Koerner's or the Gallery.

I really have trouble believing that the u-pass and bad financial aid policies are the reason people don't party on campus. Personally, I blame townies such as myself, who can go home after school to unwind. When you know the city real well, there's less reliance on the campus scene as far as finding fun goes.

There's the simple matter of competition - I'd like to state for the record that I think rational choice theory is overrated, overused, and oppressive as it obfuscates the role of systemic discrimination and power in things. As we are discussing something as minor as 'where Ainge gets sloshed and why', I'm going to apply it, as this is its place. If anyone wants to chime in with some critical theoretical analysis of my drinking habits, please, feel free. I'd also like to state that this is purely anecdotal, as is most of the stuff you'll read on the internets.

I drink where I drink because I appreciate a good beer on tap, and a nice booth or patio. Standing around Buchanan D holding a dixie cup with a bunch of strangers I may have seen in class or on the bus just ain't my thing. I make a little money, and I want to maximize the enjoyment. See, it's simple.

Being a townie has definitely influenced my indifference towards campus events. Spending twenty years in this hamlet means I get that sense of community elsewhere. I coach debate at my old high school, I involve myself in local politics, I hang with my ridiculous Italian family, and I stay in touch with people I've known for ages.

My experience is not universal - some townies do throw themselves into campus life. The thing is, UBC events compete with everything else the city has to offer, and the sentimental ties that should be keeping us on campus to party just aren't there. We don't mythologize our college experience that much here in Canada. It's seen less as a life-changing experience and more as gettin that there diploma thing whut helps ya get a job . When I was applying for university, 80% of my grad class ended up staying in Vancouver. By virtue of its lower mainland location, UBC complements my life as it already is. I'm here for the courses.


Friday, November 23, 2007

Three green-tinted notes

A few notes of interest that come to mind for the environmentalist-lite on campus:

  • UBC Farm Fee referendum: Yesterday I was at the farm. Getting there was a bit of a hazard due to the South Campus construction bedlam, and I ended up getting tangled in a barbed wire fence while attempting a shortcut, and shredding my favorite pants. Not that it wasn't worth it. In between sorting butternut squashes and bunching kale and collard greens, I checked in with Mark Bomford, the director of the UBC farm, about recent farm developments. As you may have noticed, the UBC farm is collecting signatures to introduce a 4-dollar student fee. Two of these dollars would turn into sustainable yearly funding for the UBC farm's programming. Two of the dollars would be put in a fund to be allocated to students engaged in climate-action related projects. More accurately, they are actually collecting signatures to place a question about the student fee hike on this year's referendum ballot. All new AMS fees need to be approved by referendum. 1000 signatures are needed for referendum questions to be put on the ballot without the approval of AMS council. They're a few hundred signatures short so far, but it's expected to reach the goal. The money would mean that students, not the university, are the ones supporting the Farm in the most substantial and sustainable way. Currently, the farm functions from a combination of temporary grants (chielfy a TLEF grant that expires this year). It has no core institutional funding, though it does receive support from the faculty of land and Food Systems. If the fee is approved in referendum, the governance structure of the Farm would change to include AMS representation. This would probably take the form of AMS representatives on the current farm advisory committee. This committee reports to the dean of the faculty of Land and Food systems, and makes the major steering decision about the farm. Eventually though, says Bomford, the goal is to have the farm acknowledged as an official unit of the LAFS faculty in the Senate. This new funding, he continued, will allow the farm to meet its goals in sustainability, student services, and outreach. These will be student dollars for students, he said. I've had reservations about students saddling the financing of the Farm. Too me, this is an example of a program that should have core university funding - it meets the University's trek 2010 vision perfectly. Does students taking up the cause of the farm send the wrong signal? Bomford and Jeff Friedrich, the AMS president don't think so. They think that if students approve this fee, it will put pressure on the university to match funding. This will be interesting to watch.
  • Elizabeth May at UBC: The leader of the federal Green Party was at UBC to speak today. This is the second time I've heard Ms. May speak, and I have to say, I've just been floored both times. She is incredible. First, she really is a talented speaker. She's very sharp, very insightful, and a wonderful aura of leadership surrounds her. Even in a dingy physics lecture hall, she was both comfortable, and respectable. And the content! oh the content! I haven't heard so much actual content out of a Seriously. She was full of information, science, and points of view. She talked about policy solutions in a very concrete, non-hand-wavy way. She summarized, explained, and illustrated with a near-perfect balance of vision and detail. There were absolutely no platitudes. If this is what Elizabeth May can deliver in Hennings 200, I cannot wait to see her in the official debates, not to menetion the House of Commons.
  • Terry speaker series: 100 mile diet authors: Today, Friday the 23, is the kickoff of the Terry Project's high-profile speaker series. For the uninitiated, Terry is an innovative project at UBC whose aim is to address big global issues (environmental and social) from a multidisciplinary perspective. There are several branches of the project, including a brand-new undergraduate course (ASIC 200), a very cool website (, a writing contest, lots of neat collaborations, and, of course, the speaker series. Among previous participants are notables like Stephen Lewis, David Suzuki, and Vandana Shiva. Tomorrow it's going to be James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith. From the terry website:
    These are the authors of "The 100-Mile Diet," a bestseller and buzz worthy book that uses a social experiment (can we subsist on only eating things produced within a 100 mile radius?) to look into the world of food politics, economics, and culture. Extra bonus is that James and Alisa also happen to be Vancouverites, so their story has this wonderful local angle to it.
    The talk is tomorrow at the Chan at 12:00, and there's still some (free) tickets available.


Thursday, November 22, 2007

More ACF Post-Mortem

Maayan keeps nagging me to post. I never do. Quite frankly, there's little UBC-related stuff that can raise my ire and I'm able to comment on in a public forum. This is one such issue.

There are two universal UBC experiences. Imagine UBC, and Arts County Fair. Seriously. Think about it - is there any event, beyond those two, that impacts essentially every student at UBC (well, the Vancouver campus)? Even if you've never gone to ACF, you've still gone to a res breakfast, or hung out with friends, or taken a day off because everybody else was partying. It's campus-wide party, on a campus with a dearth of campus-wide cohesion.

That's why its demise is sad. Very, very sad. Sure it's a drunken booze-up, but this one was special. It's as essential a part of the UBC year as literally anything else.

So, who's to blame? First, not the AUS. They've been soldiering on for years, swimming upstream. It's to their credit that they created a campus-wide institution, and kept it going so long and so successfully. I place blame in three areas:

  • The University Neighbourhood Association. All those condos around T-Bird stadium, along Wesbrook Mall? Those are filled with people who complain loudly every time there's a loud concert at T-Bird, and every time there are drunk students stumbling around. Their constant pressure has resulted in massively inflated police and security costs, and additional planning headaches. Sure, nobody wants loud, drunken people around their property, but you moved to a university campus - what were you expecting?
  • UBC Administration. Several reasons. For putting up roadblocks to the event, rather than helping to remove them. For translating the UNA concerns into pressure brought to bear on the organizers. For shoddy financial aid and admission policies (see below).
  • Students. It's a great event. Go to it.

There has been much said about the demise of the drinking culture. I don't believe that, per se. But I've long had a beer garden theory of social engagement. Beer gardens weren't about the drinking - they were about the community. Just happened to involve sweet, delicious beer. There used to be 6-7 on any given Friday. No longer. Their demise coincides with the tuition hike, and corresponding (relative) decline in need-based financial aid. People need to work more, maybe are more likely to need a part-time job that takes away their Fridays. Maintaining your scholarship becomes more important, so people are less likely to go out and party, more likely to spend Friday working on the essay. And you're more likely to stay at home to save money, meaning you spend your Fridays with high school friends, not on campus.

I also reserve a special bitterness for the housing lottery. Peoples' social networks moved off-campus when housing became lottery-based and people and their friends got kicked out of housing. People were less in tune with the campus social culture, and less likely to come out. By contrast, res was filled with 18 year-olds who couldn't even get in to (the good parts of) ACF.

What's the solution? There are two. First, the University administration can step up. Recognize the value of ACF to the campus and help support it. I'm sure the AUS could provide a fulsome list of ways the University could help. Second, perhaps other undergrad societies could step up to the plate. AUS will have some institutional memory, other campus groups could help absorb the financial risk, and, hell, maybe the event could even be bigger and better.

My big fear is that once this event is gone, it'll be impossible, in today's climate, to bring it (or anything similar) back.


Arts County Fair is no more

The yearly campus festival of music and debauchery synonymous with the last day of classes is no more. Ats County Fair, the last-day-of-class drinking extravaganza that has marked the end of the school year for 16 seasons of students at UBC has come to a sad end. The Arts Undergraduate society cancelled the event for the year at a Tuesday meeting.

Citing the increasing debt that the even has incurred over the past two years, the press release from AUS president Stephanie Ryan expressed regret about the need for the cancellation. Essentially, he financial reality of running an enormous festival with security have gotten out of sync with the revenue from ticket and alcohol sales.

In the press release Stephanie blamed a lack of engagement on campus and change in the sense of community and drinking culture for the declining popularity of the event. Looking over pictures of ACF crouds with AUS old timer (and blog hero) Gerald Deo revealed a pretty stark trend - simply less people.

I've never been to ACF, and don't know too much about it, but this seems unfortunate even to me. The cancellation of this event will only make people more convinced of the dearth of fun on campus, and ignite more feelings of disappointment in campus life, and detachment from the campus community. Facts is facts though - the AUS can't go on losing tens of thousands of dollars every few years. Happily, the AMS will be running an event on the last day of school as something of a substitute for ACF this year on McInnes field. And it's anything like the welcome back BBQ, it will probably rock. So we can still look forward to that.

The interesting thing about this is to speculate about the AUS itself. With the fair out of the way, they will actually be able to reclaim the second term of the year. There's great potential for any number of creative and interesting events now. Who knows, this may even result in a better and stronger AUS that has a more sustained focus on Arts students throughout the year, instead of the typical form of a fairly small clique of ACF-planners.


AMS meeting Nov. 21- Frustrations

An excruciatingly long agenda was set for this last meeting before the winter break. After sitting on their laurels for a whole term, the Arts caucus decided to put everything they ever wanted in the AMS into this one meeting and throw it at us like a brick. Items of interest included re-establishing "unofficial" slates (whatever that means), a default role-call vote for all non-procedural motions, and code changes to try and make people submit documents earlier. The first one failed, the second carried, and the others I forget about. Whatever.

I want to spend this post talking about something else though. Now, journalism in general, and blogging in particular is the ultimate form of political passive-aggression. One can critique, bitch, call people out, and watch. One doesn't have to do anything, or be accountable to anyone - and that's what makes it fun to write (and presumably to read). Well, dear readers, right now I'm going to commit the tacky act of trying to both do, and blog at the same time.

I haven't talked much about this on the blog (if at all) but I've been chairing an AMS committee for a few months now. This committee was originally envisioned to look at the idea of a randomly selected student's assembly to supplement the AMS democracy and make it more representative of all students. Its mandate was broadened to include any form of improving political representation and engagement in the AMS democracy, and the committee was accordingly christened "the ad-hoc representation and engagement reform committee". We've been looking at a variety of ideas to improve political representation over the last six months, ranging from changes to elections systems, to council composition, to the creation of new populist bodies like a student's assembly or wisdom council, to more internal issues like committee reform and executive office hours.

Some of these ideas are pretty substantial, and have the potential for inconclusive philosophical debate. Some would take a fair amount of money and effort to implement. Others, we thought, were fairly straightforward and non-controversial. One such idea was a change in the voting system for AMS executives from First Past the Post (a terrible system) to Condorcet (an empirically better one). The basic idea of Condorcet voting is that it selects a "consensus" candidate to win. That is, the person that most people prefer over most other people will win. If that sounds vague, think of it this way: strategic voting is impossible. Vote splitting is impossible. The candidate that would win against all other candidates in 1-on-1 matchups is declared the winner. Condorcet offers substantial differences from FPTP, and also from the more widely known instant runoff voting, particularly in campaigns with three or more strong candidates.

This voting system is carried out by a ranked ballot (you mark candidates according to preference 1,2,3), and a fairly straightforward counting procedure which bases the winner off of a hierarchy formed by one-on-one matchups. For more information, see the wiki article on the method HERE.

Our committee learned about this system over the course of about four weeks. As soon as members of our committee understood the system, they agreed that it was superior. It was not controversial in our committee discussions, unlike other ideas that had been much more divisive. A few of us tried our hand at writing up the necessary code, since the researcher/archivist who normally would help with this task wasn't up to it. So here we were, with code all drafted up (albeit a bit hurriedly, but with at least 5 revisions), unanimous approval within our committee, and the honest opinion that this is a really good, if small, change to the AMS democracy. We invited an expert on voting systems to give a presentation to council about the benefits of the Condorcet method. A member of the committee took council through a detailed simulation of how the counting procedure works, covering even unlikely scenarios of concern. We did a little demostration of the method and carried out the procedure on the spot. Then there was debate.

In this debate, several things began to dawn on me.

The quality of this debate was one of the poorest I've seen at AMS (though there's probably been worse - I've only been around for less than a year). AMS council is often capable of really insightful, careful, and interesting debate. And when that's the case, good decisions tend to follow. Here, there was clouded, misguided, and wrongheaded debate - and quite obviously, the results were less than ideal. What really disturbs me is the apparent incapability of most councilors to pay CLOSE attention, understand, and reach a decision on a slightly involved piece of code in the council chambers. It is well acknowledged that the council chambers is more or less the worst place to grasp code, improve wording, and micromanage technicalities. What disturbs me even more though is that given this (well-known) fact, council still doesn't trust its committees - the working groups of the society - enough to take their advice! So given this mistrust, council needs to truly grasp ideas before they vote on them. Unfortunately, they get paralyzed and confused whenever they're asked to understand and really concentrate on something a bit involved (like say, a voting system). Then they need only cry ignorance and confusion as a basis for turning that thing away, and before we know it, all technical and structural changes are nearly impossible.

I don't take a pessimistic view on this: I think that nine out of ten moderately intelligent people have the intellectual wherewithal to listen, understand, and respond to a clear presentation. After all, we're in university. But people emailing, facebooking, and dreaming when slightly involved material is being presented really doesn't help. Closed minds don't help either - and I saw some of that tonight.

In our committee we spent considerable time trying to decide what level of detail would be the most convincing to AMS council in regards to this particular motion. Our initial tendency was to keep it general and hope that council would believe and trust our unanimous judgement as a committee of council. Then we got cold feet and decided it would be a good idea to include the detailed simulations so that each councilor could make a informed, down-to-the-mechanism, decision for him/herself. Both these objectives failed abjectly. Not only did many councilors and an executive seem to distrust our motives (by making ludicrous conjectures about Condorcet favoring certain political stripes), but the greater proportion of councilors had absolutely no grasp of the system we were proposing and its very real benefits - as was made depressingly clear by strings of irrelevant comments, inapplicable criticisms, and illogical questions.

There were a few fair criticisms. Precious few. One was the "non-standard" code language we had chosen, which described a protocol in more mathematical language than usual. A few others regarding the breaking of ties and vote thresholds for candidate re-reimbursement were fair, and certainly worth a few more clauses. The significant one was how such a system would be implemented given the dire reality of an inflexible, expensive, and apparently non-functional computer system the AMS has purchased. Other comments ranged from the old standby of "it would cost to many resources," at the most benign, to "but it won't increase voter turnout!!!111" at the most irrelelvant, to "why would we elect the second best person form some random thing with vote-splitting," and "what is the success rate of this system?" at the most bewildering. (paraphrases).

So, zooming back out again, here's a generalized question. Given this example, (of a fairly small change that should be a no-brainer, but due to it's slightly involved technical nature, turns out to be a quagmire of misunderstanding), how do we as students expect the AMS to function at a level that reflects a degree of intellectualism? Especially when it come to structure and administration changes of a slightly involved nature? AMS has passed, and I hope it will continue to pass initiatives far more over-arching, radical, and serious than this trivial example. The thing is that some cool and necessary good ideas can be explained by expressive words and hand-waving, and some cool and necessary good ideas cannot. They simply require detailed, painstaking, sequential procedures. Unfortunately, most structural reforms fall into the latter category- and this is the category that our current structure handles so very poorly. I'm sure the irony of this catch 22 isn't lost on you.

That's my frustration for today. I'll probably regret it in the morning.


Thursday, November 8, 2007

Jam spaces on campus - grassroots!

Two new posts today. Don't forget to scroll down.

So today I was walking along on the upper floor of the SUB, about to head downstairs to the pottery studio, when I heard this alluring jazzy music coming from the ballroom. I thought it might be a recording. So I headed over, thinking that I might catch the dance club practicing or something equally exciting. The ballroom was deserted - but the music kept coming. It was emanating from my right. I turned around to peek in the window of the servery door. There I saw a girl in a knitted toque rocking out on a piano. She was producing the most wonderful music, totally in her own world - jammed up against the wall among the sinks, fridges, and portable bars, on the clammy tile floor.

I stood there and listened to her for a while - she didn't notice - and then I went on my way. This reminded me of a cool project that GSS councilor Roderigo Nunes has started. It's about establishing music-friendly jam spaces on campus, in environments that aren't formal, or linked to alcohol. They're trying to get pianos tuned, refurbished, and placed in public areas. It's based on the idea that music is good. I'm pretty sure we can agree on that. Since Roderigo is in social sciences, there's lots more big words in the official description, including a reference to Henri Lefebvre.
Check out the Jam Spaces project, being organized on facebook, (the natural home for all activism, apparently) HERE.

There used to be a piano next to the SUB art gallery that students used regularly. Not sure where it went, but it not there now. It's pretty bizarre that the only usable piano in the SUB would hidden away in an upstairs kitchen, of all places. It was wonderful to hear that music today though; it would be wonderful to come across spontaneous music around campus more often. It's also pretty neat to see a grassroots type of group come together to forward a great topical issue like music spaces - one that wouldn't really ever come up from traditional student government circles.


AMS meeting Nov. 7th - Nancy and Arts

Lowdown on yesterday's meeting: it was exhausting, and sort of charged up for some weird reason. I think order was poorer than usual somehow. Maybe it's the pressure of the end of the year building up.

Anyway. The meeting began with Nancy Knight, the Administration's AVP campus & Community Planning. Nancy always puts on a good show, and her presentations to AMS council always bring about some interesting discussion. She was presenting about the re-consultation results and new recommendations she's put together for U-Blvd. Or rather, the subset of the University Boulevard Neighborhood known as "University Square". As outlined a couple posts ago, the consultation and revised plans have been going on in collaboration with students over the past several months. Nancy summarized the results from both the July and September consultations, and then went on to describe a preliminary revised plan for the square area. You can see the "before and after" diagrams for the building plan below. Outlined in yellow is the university-boulevard neighborhood, as specified in the Official Community Plan. Outlined in red is the University square subset of that plan.

Above, is the diagram for the plan before last May's Board meeting. note the buildings on both sides of the proposed plaza, and the lack of a knoll, and the boxed-in entrance to the SUB.
Here is what Nancy showed us yesterday. The blue building footprints on the west side (ie. over top of Hennings, Hebb and Ladha) aren't new buildings - they're just there to indicate that the border of the square precinct is being pushed back and integrated with the academic buildings. Note the re-appearance of the knoll. The U-shaped building is the only one that would have residential of the upper levels. It's left tip is meant to be some sort of alumni/welcome centre/ community hall/SUB expansion concept. The ladder-like thing is a prospective covered walkway from the opening of the underground loop to the SUB. The Square in the trees is supposed to be some sort of student lounge or social space.

for more riveting details, check behind the jump

Nancy talked about four elements in the revised open space plan:
  • Knoll (re-created green space)
  • Plazas (with green elements)
  • Walkways (with green elements)
  • Patios and seating areas

Also five elements in the revised building program (130000-160000 sq ft, depending on SUB renew plans)

  • Offices/Classrooms/meeting rooms
  • Student lounge/social spaces
  • Food outlets/ student businesses
  • Student housing
  • Community hall (ie. alum, welcome centre, etc)

She emphasized the importance of having a "mixed use" space in the square: that is, one with both daytime uses (shops, offices) and 24-hour ones (residential, study spaces). Clearly, in some ways this vision of a complete cocktail of uses doesn't always jive with what people want. For example, in the cases of offices, most commercial, and residential, the results from the surveys were very negative. I asked Nancy yesterday what she does as a planner in instances like these when feedback tells you something that you disagree with. She replied that you try to deal wit the underlying qualitative worries. For instance, with the housing, a lot of the qualitative concern surrounded the ideas of unnaffordability, market housing, non-student residents, and so on. So even though residential is still included in the new plan, it's half as much, she's guaranteed that it will be only for students, and it will be in the price range of the residences, run by a non-profit. I found this fairly convincing. I still haven't heard a great case for office and classroom space to be included though.

That said, this thing is a vast improvement to me. The aren't buildings boxing the square, and the knoll is the central green feature. It feels more open, and the shift in emphasis from commercial uses to community and student-focused uses are quite good. Also, this isn't final. A lot depends on what the AMS depends to do regarding SUB renewal. Expanding SUB into the square could mean AMS administered social space, and more AMS businesses in the square area. I think that's pretty cool.

In other council business, the Arts caucus had a bit of a show of strength yesterday. They came decked out in faculty colours, wielding purple pom-poms, sporting a minty-fresh representative (AJ Johal), and ready with THREE motions (in varying degrees of silliness and obsolescence) from the floor (much to Jeff's frustration {and much to my rage, when a notably trivial issue was referred to code and policies}). A feisty AUS Pres Stephanie Ryan put it this way: "we've decided to be more effective. We do this by wearing purple, and reading documents before council". And indeed, read documents they had. SAC minutes, which are usually ignored, and rubber-stamped, were dissected by Arts councilor Sam Heppell before they were finally approved. Recent questions about SAC (specifically the rules governing how they constitute and de-constitute clubs) have potentiated their forthcoming presentation to council.

Other stuff on the agenda was approval of policies coming out of Blake Frederick's housing document. These were deferred to the next meeting, since they had only been sent out half an hour before council. The document itself had been sent out way before, and the policies didn't differ in content from the document, but, the arts caucus, in a self-righteous tizzy, (and ironically having just proffered three motions from the floor) said it was not enough time. As a result, the document can't be used to lobby administrators until the new year. I guess there always has to be a balance between good "process," and common sense. Having read the document, and discussed it with Blake, I'm think it was as ready as it's going to be.

Time is a pretty sensitive issue all around. Not enough time, people wasting each other's time, and so on. I happened to be sitting next to one of the new Education reps (I think her name was Dana). It was her first council meeting. When asked how she liked it, she said something like "Very interesting...but I think some people should be more careful with how they use other's time". Amen to that.


Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Things to notice when the lights go out

So two times today, power failed at UBC. The first time was around 1 in the afternoon. Sebastian, from my plant genetics class recounted to me that someone else in his lab had lost 100 PCR reactions that had been in the thermocycler due the 20-minute outage. I sympathized absently, and wondered how much money of wasted taq that was. When the second outage hit, at 7:25, I was in the lab myself, waiting for some media to cool. Being in the basement, it went pitch black. According to the EOS facilities manager, a transformer failed in the afternoon, and the power was rerouted to another one. But according to his email this afternoon, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't happen again.

I noticed a few things:

  • UBC has no auxiliary power to the labs in the biology building. Only a few hallways had some lights.
  • The incubators in which our experiments reside have no automatic backup. Neither do our freezers, including the -70. There are numerous fish labs in the bio building. Prolonged lack of refrigeration could get ugly.
  • The SUB was completely dark
  • Many windows in Gage seemed to have mysterious sources of light. By contrast, the windows in the new condos behind Gage were brightly lit as normal.
  • the bus loop has no emergency lights
  • People love it when stuff goes wrong. It seems like we just wait for problems, however mundane (or maybe, especially mundane), as long as they're a little bit universal. Everyone on the incredibly packed bus home was in the most elated mood: seats were shuffled to the most deserving-looking people promptly; if you swayed, you would be grabbed and stabilized from a couple directions; pleasantries and smiles were exchanged.
  • Simple phones, with no additional functions, are good. You can still dial by them feeling around in total darkeness.

Where does the power on campus come from? Is plant ops in charge of it? How come the new condos have better backup power than research labs? How many thousands of dollars will it cost when the power surge destroys all manner of expensive electronics in labs all over campus (not to mention the wasted taq!)? Any enlightenment would be most welcome.