Yearning for glitzy yearbooks
The AMS is planning on spending $30,000 on a yearbook to mark their centennial.
As an editorial board of a newspaper we appreciate the importance of good documentation, but $30,000 is a hefty price tag for this kind of internal project. Granted, one third of that sum is coming out of the Administration’s Centennial Initiatives Fund, but another $20,000 is supposed to come from donors that the AMS has yet to find. Seeing as the project is already underway, let's just hope that it remains cost-neutral for students as planned. Also, we can’t help but wonder for whom this project is intended. It certainly seems like a reach to say that it's being geared towards the handful of students who know or care about what the AMS actually does.
From an observer’s perspective it honestly seems more like a way for the AMS to stroke its own ego. For an organization that is already criticized for their disconnect form the student body, the centennial yearbook looks more like another step away from students, rather than a step towards them.
Autism research walks a fine line
Christopher Shaw’s research on the aluminum in vaccines and autism brings up a lot of questions and few answers. While hypothesizing about the dangers of vaccines brings up thoughts of pseudoscience, Jenny McCarthy and general bad science vibes, we also realize that we can’t discourage scientific research because we, and the vast bulk of the scientific community, strongly disagree with the hypothesis. At its very core, the scientific process is all about challenging and testing current theories, often to the ridicule of others.
That said, sometimes the implications of conducting a study of this type spread out wider than rejection by the WHO. Even though Shaw himself firmly states that he is not anti-vaccination and just hopes to see if current alternatives are safe, a study that tries to find a link between vaccines and autism provides ammunition to thousands of anti-vaxxers who are looking for any scientific study that confirms their belief and ignoring the hordes of evidence that suggest the contrary. While we are not sure how this fine line can be walked, the dangers of feeding the anti-vaxxer fire and, in doing so, bringing back easily preventable diseases like measles are clear enough.
Graduate Students Society independence
The Graduate Student Society is considering holding a referendum to become independent of the AMS, citing a lack of representation for their student population and the irrelevance of some services offered to their demographics.
While it may hold true that graduate students don't join clubs as frequently as their undergraduate counterparts, we don't feel that that's reason enough to justify reducing fees or separating entirely. Plenty of people, undergraduate and graduate alike, can go through their entire UBC careers without ever joining a club -- yet unless they live in complete isolation they still benefit from the atmosphere of a school that has some sort of social scene and culture beyond academics. It's analogous to just about any other tax: you might be paying for someone else's pension, or healthcare, or roads or any other number of things that you don't, yourself, use -- but it's also a fee that's essentially going toward improving your community and society.
This is all still in the early stages and the results of the GSS investigation into the matter are yet to be seen, but we hope that even if the report concludes that grad students do join clubs less frequently and don't use services as much, the GSS will continue to view itself as an independent part of a larger community rather than breaking off entirely.