The AMS’s smart plan to branch off its businesses

At the February 8 AMS Council meeting, VP Finance Elin Tayyar laid out an ambitious plan to have the AMS form a separate company to run its businesses. This company would run independently from the student government side and focus on maximizing profits. Those profits would then flow back into the student government to help fund student services.

This makes a lot of sense. The AMS is already unique among Canadian student unions for the amount of money it makes off its business operations, and this new plan would provide those businesses with stable and professional management—as opposed to a 40-person council filled with student politicians, most of whom know little about how to run a business.

The danger, of course, is that the AMS loses all control of its business operations and its outlets start gouging students to make a buck. But the plan lays out enough safeguards that we are confident this won’t be a significant problem.

In the long term, this plan could enable the AMS to provide more student services without needing to raise student fees, and that is good news for all of us.

If only we could have more of the Davis Cup atmosphere

Last weekend saw the world of international tennis descend upon UBC, as France and Canada played in the Davis Cup.

The Davis Cup is like the Champion’s League of tennis, so this event was a pretty big deal (unless you don’t follow tennis or soccer, in which case that analogy didn’t help you). Thunderbird Arena was transformed into a tennis court and 5000 fans screamed their hearts out for the home team, creating a lovely and loud world-class viewing experience.

The problem, of course, is that this almost never happens. The biggest white elephant of the 2010 Olympics is the regularly-vacant Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. While the Olympic Village was a financial disaster, at least people inhabit it. The same can’t be said for our arena.
Some of this is due to 6000-person concerts no longer being a viable model, but part of it is due to UBC’s frustrating and byzantine bureaucracy that functions in place of an actual government.

So if you enjoyed the atmosphere in Thunderbird Arena this weekend, savour it. Odds are it’ll be a while before it happens again.

Where the @#%# is the WTF campaign?

Seven BC student unions have banded together for the Where’s the Funding Campaign, but if you haven’t heard of it, you can blame the campaign’s shoddy marketing strategy.

There has been a sparse presence at WTF’s booth in the SUB conversation pit. When people are actually there, they hand out Valentine’s Day card parodies that very vaguely indicate the campaign’s purpose. “Let’s not drag this out…I want to break up with interest rates on student loans,” reads one card. Another: “This budget I’m looking for a little love…Core funding is at the heart of this relationship.”

The only other information on the cards is the list of student unions involved in the campaign and its website.

This may have seemed clever when it was first conjured up, but the cards are hardly helpful if you are looking to engage students on their way to class amid the bustle of commercial booths during the Valentine’s Day market.

We can’t help but point out that this ineffective initiative is falling in the wake of the well-organized and nationally visible Day of Action held by the Canadian Federation of Students. The AMS might be confident that they can lobby government on post-secondary funding without being part of a national lobbying group, but they aren’t proving it with this campaign. They either need to get the provincial lobby group together, or put some serious work into improving their grassroots campaigning ability.

A professor who sets the standard for social media

Although the communications staff in UBC’s various departments often use Twitter and Facebook to get their messages out, only a handful of its faculty really “get” social media.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see a professor who really engages with his students online in a way that isn’t superficial. And in that regard, Raul Pacheco-Vega—the subject of this week’s “Our Campus” profile—is at the head of the pack.

With over two thousand users following his research account and several thousand more on his personal feed, Pacheco-Vega is a minor celebrity by Twitter standards—and a large portion of those followers are his students. He uses the platform to post updates on his research, link to work opportunities in his field and give students real-time feedback on assignments. Through this unfettered interaction with students, Pacheco-Vega makes his work feel vibrant and alive, and it gives the political science department a sense of openness and innovation. Other professors should take note.

The elections administrator needs to be hired in the summer

Although this year’s AMS elections campaign was generally free of scandal (along with being free of vigorous campaigning by most candidates), a bit of trouble has arisen with the theological colleges. It turns out that some of them were unable to vote because their registrar did not send out the emails with voting instructions.

We’ve said it before: the AMS needs to hire the elections administrator (EA) in the summer, rather than waiting until the winter as they did this year. The problems this year clearly stem from a lack of communication; in the future, the EA needs as much time as possible to sort these issues out ahead of time.

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