By: Rimsha Laeeq
As a commuter at McMaster University, getting home early isn’t always an option. For students who commute, studying late for a midterm in the library or attending an evening event is hardly an easy decision to make.
When deciding to stay late on campus as a commuter, transit is an issue to consider. It is crucial for students to be involved in the many activities that the university hosts. Students should not have to worry about their safety when commuting home from school.
This is why the Hamilton Street Railway should extend their bus schedules to the later hours of the evening.
The HSR has many buses that operate throughout the day, from the eastbound to the westbound, including the 5, 1, 51 and the 10, otherwise known as the B-Line Express.
Nevertheless, after 7:00 p.m., the B-Line stops running, meaning off-campus students have to either arrange their own rides or take one of the three other buses, which usually requires transferring onto another bus in downtown Hamilton.
As an off-campus student, the last B-line bus I can take to reach home under an hour departs from McMaster at 6:43 p.m. With most events ending after this, it becomes difficult for me to get home.
My 50-minute commute on one bus turns into an hour and 15-minute commute over two buses, and includes waiting in the heart of downtown to catch the second bus.
Students living off-campus are often forced to leave campus early and miss amazing events that McMaster offers because their bus won’t run after a specific time.
Being a university student does not mean to solely “work with academics”. I believe it is important for the HSR to extend their bus timings not only for the safety of their students but to allow students to become more involved with the different events taking place on campus.
With extended bus timings, students can engage in the abundant cultural events occurring at McMaster, with the opportunity to meet several other students at the university from a variety of programs and levels. This gives students the benefit of learning about the diverse cultures present at McMaster.
Off-campus students shouldn’t feel like they don’t belong, or don’t have a say in many of the events taking place due to inconvenient bus timings. These students, including myself, need to be a part of the university culture.
When it comes to academics, H.G. Thode Library of Science and Engineering is open until 2:00 a.m. during exam season for students to effectively study, whether that be alone or in groups.
For most students, once you sit down to study and are motivated to do so, you can study for hours on end. With a restricted time period due to bussing, this can often demotivate students, as getting in a ‘grind’ mode may be quite difficult for some.
Additionally, students study differently, which means that they need to be able to switch up their study environments. Some students prefer to study on campus while others prefer their home. Students shouldn’t have to compromise their academics because a bus doesn’t run at a later time.
For students who commute using the B-Line Express, this bus only runs on weekdays. With midterms, exams or other events occurring on the weekend, students are forced to take two or more buses or find alternate means of transport to get on campus.
Students should not be afraid of staying late at the school they attend. They should feel safe and have no difficulty commuting back and forth from campus on the daily.
When considering the safety of students, their involvement at McMaster and networking with people to make their university career a more fun-filled experience, HSR bus timings should most definitely be extended.
For students who are currently commuting and have to stay late, the McMaster Students Union offers a volunteer service, the Student Walk Home Attendant Team, who will walk or bus with students to their destination. This service is open seven days a week from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
By: Tanvi Pathak
In March, McMaster Students Union is slated to release its second annual municipal budget submission to Hamilton city council.
According to Shemar Hackett, the MSU associate vice president (Municipal Affairs), the budget submission will prioritize transit, student housing, student employment, bylaws and enforcement and lighting.
After consulting students and reviewing data from The Your City survey, the MSU decided these key areas were ones that stood out as issues that needed immediate attention.
The committee’s decision to focus on these areas is also linked to the rising demand for off-campus housing.
According to Andrew Parashis, a property manager at Spotted Properties, the largest property management in the McMaster community, demand for student housing has soared in recent years.
Parashis notes that with the increase of local and international students attending McMaster, the waiting list for students seeking accommodations through Spotted Properties has tripled in the last year alone.
The municipal budget submission will also focus on accessible employment opportunities.
The union’s education department and municipal affairs committee’s recommendations aim to offer proactive solutions for each issue and improve Hamilton’s attractiveness to students and recent McMaster grads.
One of the committee’s recommendations is for the city of Hamilton to implement a lighting audit across Ward 1.
Hackett emphasized that there are neighborhoods off-campus substantially lacking in visibility. As a result, many students do not feel comfortable walking home late at night after classes.
A lighting audit would reduce these issues in these neighborhoods and identify priority locations for new street lights.
The committee reached out to the Ward 1 councilor Maureen Wilson, who was receptive to the committee’s recommendation and is confident that the proposal will be valuable to McMaster and Ward 1.
Another recommendation calls for city council to move forward with the landlord licensing project discussed in December.
Hackett and Stephanie Bertolo, MSU vice president (Education), articulated their stance on landlord licensing to Ward 8 city councilor Terry Whitehead, who sits on the Rental Housing sub-committee.
Since then, the motion to implement a pilot project was brought to council and endorsed by many councilors.
Prior to the development of the budget submission, the committee consulted city officials.
The committee plans to continue to meet with the city staff and councillors to push for their recommendations and make them a priority for the council.
Thus far, they have met with Terry Cooke, CEO of the Hamilton Community Foundation, to discuss student engagement and retention and the ways in which organizations can support one another in the future.
The municipal affairs committee has also been successful in implementing its Landlord Rating system, a platform developed by the MSU education department.
The landlord licensing project, which the committee has also been lobbying for, got the Hamilton city council rental housing sub committee’s stamp of approval and will be put forth into discussion during the next city council meeting.
“The council has been extremely receptive to all our points about the agreements we put forth,” said Hackett, adding that the MSU budget submission has proven to be a valuable resource for lobbying municipal stakeholders.
Over the next few weeks, the municipal affairs committee will meet with city councilors and community stakeholders to advocate for their budget submission proposals.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
By: Rob Hardy
Eight years ago, as a rookie contributor to The Silhouette, I wrote one of my very first pieces on the sorry state of the Hamilton Street Railway. It still survives online under the title of “Public Transit Blues”. So what's changed since for McMaster University students and the city itself? Not much.
Some things are a bit better and some have gotten worse, but overall I would say the HSR is the same miserable experience it's always been.
There do seem to be more student buses during peak times on campus so it's not as packed as it used to be. We also have been able to negotiate year-round bus passes for Mac students, which previously only gave us an eight-month deal.
While I believe the HSR functions as best as it can within its limitations, the truth is that this is often not even remotely good enough.
In my case, coming in from Stoney Creek, the time spent commuting is brutal. If I take the B-Line, it still takes roughly 50 minutes. Trapped in a compartment full of stale air, at times too overheated, and shaking like hell as it travels our streets, the experience can be uncomfortable.
What's worse is that unlike previously, where the B-Line used to come right onto campus, it now stops on Main Street. Having to then walk all the way down to Togo Salmon Hall, in often unpleasant conditions, is ridiculous.
Moreover, the B-Line still ends around 7:00 p.m. This results in having to make two connections, which significantly adds to the trials of an already long day. While I can understand that express buses may terminate service at night, it would greatly help if a consecutive route ran from at least University Plaza to Eastgate, even with regular stops.
I use the B-Line as merely one example. Anyone living on the mountain, who also has to first get downtown before progressing into Westdale, suffers similarly.
Part of this dilemma is that Hamilton has unique geography to contend with. Our city layout is not a simple grid like you would find in Edmonton, for example, with nothing other than a river to divide us.
But much of the fault lies with the HSR itself. My biggest issue is with buses that arrive early, causing them to leave many people behind. Sometimes I have been able to trace this to drivers who began their route early, because there is no other way, logistically-speaking, they could have already arrived at that stop.
This is notable given that the HSR has been trying very hard to rebuild ridership — somewhat of a fool's errand considering their target market is people who take the bus out of necessity.
What's more striking is that even intra-city travel within Hamilton becomes “a commute” if one were to cross the length of the city twice a day. The current system as it stands is simply too broken and not meant for people in Stoney Creek to travel by bus all the way to Ancaster mountain.
During this decade, the light rail transit promised to offer innovation, as we moved from the planning stages to acquired funding to implementation. After all, Canadian cities of comparable size can now reasonably be expected to have an alternative public transit option on their most travelled route.
But as things stand, the latest news is that certain council members are now weary of paying additional costs should the project go over-budget, a reasonable possibility considering its timeline has been continually delayed due to endless council motions on the subject. But why should the province keep footing the entire bill anyway, especially for a city whose factions are still so divided on this issue?
While the HSR is a crucial part of Hamilton, their monopoly on public transit leaves bewildered riders powerless to really express their concerns. When we are caused to be late for school or work, an apology is pretty useless, and most people don't even bother to complain.
What some have done is stop riding. Yes, the HSR wants to regain their numbers. But many previous and potential transit users are waiting for more than a hollow marketing campaign to be convinced.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
[adrotate banner="16"]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
When I first heard that a movie called The End of The Tour was in the works about American author, David Foster Wallace, I was very cynical. When I found out that Jason Segel was being cast as the recently deceased literary genius, my worries were not alleviated. With Segel being paired with Jesse Eisenberg as David Lipsky, I was bracing myself for disaster considering the dissonance of their personalities.
The tour referenced in the title refers to how the film tells the story of the five-day interview Lipsky did with Wallace for Rolling Stone at the peak of Wallace’s career, following the publication of his novel, Infinite Jest. The interview between the two strangers morphs into a sort of lengthy first date, where the two discuss the ups and downs of life, and attempt to find truth in each other and themselves. Lipsky turned this interview into a memoir in 2010, after it wasn’t featured in Rolling Stone in 2006 as intended. The memoir in turn inspired the making of The End of the Tour.
After avoiding it for some time, I finally gave into my curiosity and watched the movie. Running one hour and 46 minutes, the movie was long, but it rewarded those who stuck with it until the end with a hefty dose of inspiration and much to ponder. The movie echoes what Lipsky did in his own book, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, in its heavy reliance on using Wallace’s own quotes, rather than trying to speak for him. There is, of course, the other aspect of speaking on his behalf, with the film crew being left to devise their own interpretation of Wallace’s actions, behaviours, speech patterns, but they do so with care. There was nothing outlandish about Segel’s portrayal of Wallace, and that has to be respected.
There was one part, however, that was a little off-putting. About three-fourths of the way through, conversation between the two men felt rushed — it seemed as though they were trying to jam in as many quotes as they could before their time ran out. The shift starts just after a tense moment of jealousy between the two men over a woman. This inspires a heated conversation in Wallace’s living room, and continues into the night, when Wallace enters Lipsky’s bedroom to ask if he’s awake. Given that Lipsky is, and he says so, Wallace stands in the doorway and spouts lines about depression and an over-analysis of the self. It seemed like they needed to invent more ways and places for the two to converse, and this is just an attempt at a new, creative setting. The slate is wiped clean between the two in the morning after Lipsky tearfully writes down notes from what Wallace had said that night.
The movie largely focuses on the secondary character, Lipsky, almost making him the main character. Eisenberg is essentially used as a vehicle to express Wallace’s ideas, to be a prompt. The focus on Lipsky is also an attempt to talk about what it’s like to meet and talk with someone you admire, a mentor of sorts. Lipsky expresses his own feelings of inadequacy and adoration for Wallace, through both saying it and directing a prolonged, mesmerized look at him. This tactic makes the movie more palpable and accessible to an audience, where you can find some of yourself in the Lipsky character. The sentiments quoted in this film are universal. It’s a truly pleasurable experience consuming something that resonates with you, and this film fits easily into that category.
I could not rave about this film enough. Both Segel and Eisenberg deliver performances that echo two great men in a way that is poignant and memorable — I was wrong about my initial objection about their casting. I would easily recommend this movie to both fans of David Foster Wallace and strangers to his incredible written works. At the very least, The End of The Tour brings viewers into the world of a brilliant writer where they can find the little sparks of life that still keep Wallace alive in his interviews, short stories, and critically acclaimed novels.
Photo Credit: Rolling Stone
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
