Council squabbles
If the last AMS Council meeting showed us anything, it’s that the society’s entire executive evaluation system is one hot and unprofessional mess. After President Tanner Bokor was formally reprimanded for an agitated phone call he made to members of the Oversight Committed, he forfeited his share of the PAI allocation and asked to withdraw from the performance evaluation that comes with it. Council denied his request on grounds that executives should not be able to just opt out of the evaluation by refusing their bonus.
So many problems, so little space. Despite what some of the Councillors have said, the current PAI allocation is meant strictly to distribute bonus money by looking at how the executives have reached their goals. While we agree that people who hold public office should not be able to drop out of a performance review, PAI should also not be the only way to examine performance. If the sole way that the AMS is holding its executives accountable is through this pot of $5,000, it’s clear that something needs to change. Here’s a particularly wild idea: independent reviews at other times in the year.
But can we also talk about the fact that members of the Oversight Committee (as in, other Councillors) are the ones who will be evaluating the performance of the execs and distributing PAI allocations? Peer review is important, of course, but the fact that it is the only type of evaluation the execs go through only serves to hammer home the need for professional reviews that are independent of bonuses. As has been seen in several past years, the risk of personal politics and inner-Council pettiness coming into play rises substantially when you have students evaluating other students and the possibility of getting a larger share of $5,000 dangling over executive’s heads.
We hope this is not what provincial and federal politics is like, but we are also not holding our breath in expectation.
Our resident Sauder student on Friday classes
NOOOOOooooOoooOoooOoooooooOooOoOooOoOoOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!!!! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!"
The rest of us on Friday classes for Sauderites
Although many Sauder students are bereaving the loss of their free Fridays, the majority of us at The Ubyssey (with some exceptions -- see above) do not have a lot of sympathy for our business-minded comrades. Though it's understandable that Sauderites are worried about no longer being able to attend weekend conferences, it seems like the Faculty will still be offering flexibility in course schedules (which will let people take Fridays off). Friday classes are a simple fact of life for almost every student at UBC; now Sauderites will have to rely even more on their attire to stand out from the plebs, as opposed to their long weekends.
The end of an era
It's Wednesday night, you're already tired of school and it's too far away from Friday, it's exchange night for the Greeks and you are really craving a cheap T-Bird lager. Perfectly situated on campus, the Pit has always seemed like such a perfect place to wind down after a hard Monday and Tuesday.
For the last two years I have been going to the Pit almost every single Wednesday, either to hang out with friends or to photograph it for The Calendar. In all that time, there have been certain things that I have noticed remain pretty consistent:
- You can never have a beer at the pit without spilling at least a little bit of it.
- The closer you are to the pillar on the dance floor, the closer you are to hooking up with someone.
- The T-Bird lager makes you feel like pit in the morning.
- DJ Good Spin playing the same playlist EVERY GOD DAMN TIME (this includes Ignition, Don't Stop Believing and Get Low)
- Somehow you always spend way more money than you should.
- Waiting just as long in the beer line as you did to get in.
And that's just to name a few.
Last Wednesday as I walked up the stairs to the smokers pit and left the music fading behind me it finally hit me that this might actually be the real LAST last Pit Night in the old sub. By a twist of fate, just a week before I had met the AMS president from the year 1962, the one responsible for the beginning of the Pit Era. Talking to him about how it all started and in exchange me telling him how it was now showed me just how much the Pit has shaped the social lives of UBC students.
The Pit has offered many great memories and horrible mornings, but I'm not going to lie I am absurdly excited for a new Pit with sky lights.
Block Party was wet, but wild
The weather for Friday's Block Party was less-than-ideal, with grey skies, chilling winds and frequent showers marring an otherwise cheerful occasion.
Despite the lack of cooperation from the weather gods, we think that the event turned out pretty well. Everything ran smoothly, from what we could see, and other than a higher-than-usual incidence of shattered phones (pavement has a tendency to do that), there were no major problems. The acts ranged from adequate to outstanding, with none giving a particularly poor performance. Though people weren't thrilled about the cold, it seemed that by the end of the night, the combination of dancing, thousands of bodies packed together in front of the stage and the cheerful atmosphere meant that people came to embrace the drenched clothes as part of the atmosphere.
We were particularly impressed by Tokyo Police Club and Yukon Blonde's performances, with the latter proving more successful than many of its counterparts from previous years in drawing people toward the stage quite early on in the night.
All-in-all, despite being held in a parking lot and having had pretty awful luck with the weather, the 8th Annual Block Party was a night to remember (though for a few, possibly a night they want to forget).