Dina Fanara
Assistant News Editor
“Education is our right, we will not give up the fight!”
Feb. 1 was known as the Day of Action for university students across Canada, as many marched through their respective campuses to take a stand against rising tuition fees. McMaster students gathered to chant in Mills Plaza from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
According to the Vancouver Sun, 24 campuses in British Columbia alone were to partake in the rally.
At the McMaster campus, a little over 50 students arrived within the first ten minutes of the event. The CHCH news crew was also present at the event, interviewing students and taking video footage of the rally as it began.
Music was blasting, thanks to a DJ present outside the Student Centre. People were gathering, and signs and snacks were shared. Students showed immense enthusiasm to be a part of such a movement. Though McMaster Security and Hamilton Police were present, no issues of conflict arose.
McMaster student Mel Napeloni said, “we need to have more activism on campus,” adding that it was great to see something that all students can relate to.
While the student group Occupy McMaster played a role in organizing the event, many students from all areas of the University were present, including members of the SRA (Student Representative Assembly), presidential candidates, graduate students and representatives of CUPE Union Local 3906, which represents teaching assistants, sessional professors and postdoctoral fellows on campus.
In a speech to the students in attendence, Simon Granat, SRA representative for the Faculty of Social Sciences, stated that, “we’re taking a stand to say students care about other students.”
Similarly, SRA Health Sciences representative Riaz Sayani-Mulji stated that, “we are the student movement, we can make a difference.” He explained that this is a critical time for students to make their voices heard, because the way the government grant system currently runs excludes two in three university students.
“Education is a human right,” continued Sayani-Mulji, and it’s something that many potential students have difficulty accessing because of cost limitations. According to Rick Gunderman, the candidate representing the Communist Party in the previous provincial election, the solution would be to “cut tuition altogether… attack from all angles that they are attacking us from.”
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) distributed leaflets to be handed out to students across Canada, outlining their three main goals: to drop student debt, reduce tuition fees and increase education funding.
The leaflet employs the awe-factor to support the movement, outlining that students are left with an average debt of approximately $37,000 upon graduation, and “tuition fees are growing faster than public transit, rent, food and other costs faced by students.”
After gathering in the Mills Plaza, students marched in unison, cheering, “What do we want? Dropped fees! When do we want it? Now!”
The march route included locations such as the Burke Science Building, the John Hodgins Engineering Building, University Avenue, the Arts Quad and the University Hall archway, concluding in Mills Plaza.
An article from Macleans entitled, “Protests underway from coast to coast,” underlines the finding that over the past twenty years, the proportion of operating costs of universities covered by public funding has dropped dramatically from 81 per cent to a mere 57 per cent.
Farzeen Foda
Senior News Editor
The 14th annual Charity Ball, themed Cirque, will be held on Feb. 3. Hamilton Convention Centre will see hundreds of McMaster students piling through its doors, dressed to impress.
Over the years, Charity Ball has been seen as the biggest formal for McMaster students, and until recent years, has been consistently sold out. Each year, a charity is carefully decided upon. The charity is chosen based on a proposal given by the charity, as well as its contribution and connection to McMaster
students and the surrounding Hamilton community.
Each year, 90 per cent of after-expenses revenue is donated to the chosen charity. The remaining 10 per cent is dedicated to the Alumni Advancement’s McMaster Senior Class Gift Fund. Proceeds from Cirque, will support Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Hamilton and Burlington and the goal is to sell 1,300 tickets to reach a target donation of $15,000.
As hundreds of students put money toward a charitable cause for an evening of dance, entertainment and light gambling, it seems very few students are fully aware of the charity aspect of Charity Ball.
Although embedded in the name “Charity Ball,” a mere three out of 30 randomly sampled McMaster students, all of whom were familiar with Charity Ball, knew which charity was to be supported by Cirque.
MSU Charity Ball Chair 2012, Christine Corso, contended that most students do understand and are aware of the charity aspect of the formal, noting that many students, when deciding between a faculty or club formal and Charity Ball, are more inclined to support a charity over a non-charitable formal.
Aware of the need to effectively communicate the charity supported by the Ball, a separate advertising campaign was established for the Big Brothers and Big Sisters aspect of the proceeds. But such advertising appears to be relatively scarce in comparison to the promotion presenting Charity Ball as an entertainment-oriented event.
Corso explained the intention of the posters as a means of relaying important information about the event as concisely as possible without being visually overbearing. “Without overwhelming people with posters, we need to communicate the date and time, and which charity we are supporting is also important, and that is why we had a separate ad campaign for it.” She also acknowledged that the promotional methods employed for Charity Ball have, in recent years, had to compete with other campus clubs and faculties holding their own formals, which has led to a decline in Charity Ball attendance.
In its early years, Charity Ball tickets would invariably be sold out, so advertising efforts were relatively weak and virtually unnecessary until recently. Corso noted that it is possible that as the need for Charity Ball promotion increased, “the charity aspect may have gotten lost in that, and [the event] started being advertised as more of a formal.”
Last year, Charity Ball raised $9,500 for The Ronald McDonald House, falling well below the preceding two years, which raised $31,500 and $27,500, respectively.
With hundreds of tickets sold for a night of fun in the name of charity, there may be something to be said about the fact that the charitable aspect of the night is drowning in the glitz and glam of the formal event.
Farzeen Foda
Senior News Editor
The beginning of each term brings a new rush to bookstores, with students left at the mercy of professors who insist on using new editions of textbooks, and publishers who eagerly await the opportunity to correct a few typos and sell a new edition of an old textbook at almost double the cost.
Textbookrental.ca is a relatively new company, which started as a proactive measure against high textbook prices.
The rental service, which has been mentioned by Macleans and The Globe and Mail, was established by recent university graduates, and is currently run by alumni as well as current university students. The service also boasts a quick and simplistic rental process, “saving students up to 75 per cent off the regular textbook price,” said Jack Neary, Business Development Manager for textbookrental.ca.
Exorbitant prices of textbooks over and above regular tuition fees is a painful pinch on the already stretched wallet, especially when most textbooks serve little to no purpose once a course is completed.
“I hate spending so much money on a textbook that I’ll never use again and have difficulty selling once I’m done with it. It’s the biggest waste of money I can think of,” said Ankita Dubey, a fourth year Psychology student at McMaster.
As recent graduates or current university students themselves, those at textbookrental.ca understand this sentiment and put forth every effort to make their service as student-friendly as possible.
Students can search their textbook of interest online at the company website, using the ISBN number of the textbook, and order it at a nominal shipping rate. Textbookrental.ca subsidizes shipping fees through Canada Post allowing students to have their textbooks delivered directly to them within 2-3 business days, noted Neary.
This feature is intended to save students the back-breaking labour of transporting heavy textbooks home upon purchase, he explained.
Upon rental, the cost of rental varies with the amount of time the student requests to keep the textbook. Once the rental period is has elapsed, students can return the textbook to one of many depots located in key university cities in Ontario and across Canada. Currently, depots are located throughout the GTA, Hamilton, Waterloo, Guelph, Windsor and Montreal. The company is expected to soon establish depots in Kingston, Ottawa and in the west coast, including Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. Return of textbooks can also be done free of charge through postage as the cost of mailing will be reimbursed by textbookrental.ca, explained Neary.
The Hamilton depot is located relatively close to McMaster, on King St. West, and has seen substantial business from McMaster University as well as Mohawk College students.
Students can also sell their used textbooks to textbookrental.ca with a buy-back service available year-round, where “students can receive cash on the spot,” said Neary, explaining that textbook values are monitored daily to get a fair price based on supply and demand, and for buy-backs, “we value [textbooks] higher than the bookstore,” he said.
A textbook rental service of this calibre is a relatively new concept in Canada with another service of its kind “BookMob” which operates similarly, however, in the United States, textbook rental services are more widespread and numerous, with Chegg.com as a popular service that operates in conjunction with the publishing company McGraw Hill.
A simple alternative to traditional textbook purchasing does not come without its opposition. For textbook rental services, publishers remain concerned about their financial status as a result of such programs, as many services of this sort do not give any portion of their rental revenue to the publishers of the titles rented, including textbookrental.ca.
Collen O’Neill from the Canadian Publishers Council, in an interview with Macleans, referred to these rental programs an “administrative nightmare” for publishers in the United States.
For the purposes of students, textbook rental services tend to be fairly successful, another service operating in Canada, biblio.com proved to be helpful for Stena Sothiratnam, a first year Masters in Global Health Student at McMaster who was able to find the textbooks she needed at a much lower cost than the traditional bookstore. “I’ve used biblio.com and textbooks are so much cheaper,” she said.
Farzeen Foda
Senior News Editor
McMaster University’s Budget Remodelling Task Force recently released its Final Report, available online through the Provost’s Website.
The Task Force has been working on this project since 2007, when Phase I was initiated, noted Khaled Hassanein, chair of Phase II of the Task Force, which started in August 2009.
The current University budget is undergoing a transformation to increase transparency, but also “find a balance between accuracy and simplicity,” said Hassanein, so faculties can better understand their funding allocations and make plans accordingly.
This new and improved budget system features a de-centralization of funding, noted Hassanein, and resembles the one used by the University of Toronto.
The current University budget follows an Incremental system, and McMaster is in the process of transitioning to an Activity-Based system.
The primary difference between the Incremental and Activity-Based system is that following the Incremental System, faculties receive funding based on historical estimates of their needs, whereas, in the Activity-Based system, funding is allocated based on the activities of each faculty, referenced as activity units in the report.
The Task Force has released the final report in an effort to receive feedback from the McMaster community.
Hassanein outlined a few potential risks associated with the Activity-Based budget model, noting that, given its nature, it may give way to reduced inter-faculty collaboration.
This strong drawback is intended to be targeted through a variation of the Activity-Based model, maintaining some aspects of the Incremental system.
Another potential risk pertains to the possibility that this alternative model may result in financial benefit for some faculties, while incurring a deficit in others.
To prevent this possibility, a University Fund will be put in place to support those faculties that may incur a loss upon transition to the new model.
A Shadow Budget will also be implemented for an undefined period of time.
During this time, the University will maintain its current model, but run the alternative model concurrently on a smaller scale to better evaluate its efficacy with McMaster.
The University will also be actively involved in training necessary staff in the implementation of the new budget system.
The budget remodelling task began with Phase I in 2007, at which time the Activity-Based Budget was evaluated, and it was decided, “would this be a good idea for Mac,” according to Hassanein, who explained that McMaster looked to other universities who had implemented the system.
Following careful evaluation, Phase I approved the Activity-Based Budget and concluded that McMaster must develop an Activity-Based Budget system that would be in line with the University’s academic mission, leading to Phase II, which began with a discussion with the Deans of faculties.
Kacper Niburski
Assistant News Editor
There is no question about it: over the years, the MSU finances have often been in a state of bedlam.
With a tendency of incurring a greater expenditure than revenues could match, the MSU saw a deficit of $925,799 in 2009/2010, followed by a deficit of $149,078 in 2010/2011.
While it is true that such numbers may paint a grim picture, there is a hint of optimism.
As the academic year began with a new Board of Government led by MSU President Matt Dillion-Leitch, new policies were promised. Of those, fiscal management took priority and it was thought that financial benefits may accrue from a general restructuring.
“The deficits demanded action which would steer us back on course and see positive results,” said MSU VP (Finance) Duncan Thompson.
The financial woes were addressed in a variety of ways. The first of change was switching the reviewer of financial statements from Deloitte to KPMG LLP, which is a standard practice for external audits.
Through a thorough analysis of the MSU’s accounting practices, KPMG LLG, who assessed the statements of operations and examined changes in net assets and cash flow, did not report on significant internal control deficiencies.
Such a positive trend can be attributed to the expectations set by the Board of Directors on the MSU.
After the near-$1-million debt in 2010, most of which resulted from the rising cost of administering the dental and health plans without adjusting the student fee to match the increase in claimants, the governing body outlined that it must lower expenses by five per cent, even if sales would not increase.
With such an expectation, the deficit was largely cut. It was projected that a deficit of $402,309 for the 2010/2011 year would be observed, however, a deficit of only $149,078 was reported.
Positive trends such as above are further evident if one looks into the inner workings of the MSU.
“We saw a concerted effort from all business last year to improve their customer service and satisfaction. This led to an increase in volume of costumers,” said Thompson.
“TwelvEighty, under new management, made an effort to improve food quality. Union Market worked extremely hard to get competing suppliers to offer us the best prices. Underground Media + Design managed to pick up some of the largest courses on campus for their courseware project, such as first year Engineering and Pyschology,” he added.
Thompson noted that despite the optimism, work needs to be done. One such area is regarding the MSU’s investment policy.
As it stands currently, there exists no mechanism within the MSU to direct investment policies.
Consequently, there is little to no direction regarding both how an investment is done and the willingness of an organization to contribute to the MSU’s portfolio.
“Our current investment portfolio is very low risk meaning very low yield, mostly in the bond market.”
In KPMG’s audit report, a suggestion was offered. It was observed that by drafting an investment policy regarding the MSU’s level of market risk, the MSU would be able to use funds more efficiently.
As to projections for this year, Thompson hesitated.
“The budget released earlier this year predicts that if all our businesses and services manage to keep exactly as we have predicated, we expect a surplus of $120,163 at the end of the year.”
“However, since the majority of all our business happens during the academic year, it’s still too early to tell exactly,” he added.
Even if it is “too early to tell”, the positive trends suggest that with the appropriate management, the MSU will no long worry over deficit. Instead, the challenge may be of a different nature: mo’ money, mo’ problems.
