The MSU is bringing back the #WheresTheWifi hashtag after partnering with UTS on a $100,000 Wi-Fi pilot project on campus.

New surveys on the MSU’s website and Facebook page were released Monday to gather feedback on which areas of campus are most in need of Wi-Fi.

Huzaifa Saeed, VP (Education), who sits on the Wi-Fi working group and is spearheading this year’s pilot project, says it’s an important step towards a larger-scale initiative.

The Wi-Fi working group consists of UTS, CLL, Library, Facility Services and the Registrar.

“I will be reporting to UTS later this week, and we will work out where we can spend the money,” said Saeed.

“I think it’s important for students to contribute, especially since Wi-Fi was such a big issue in the last [MSU] election,” he said.

In less than 24 hours, over 600 votes were casted on the MSU’s channels. So far, the Burke Science Building and Student Centre seem to be where most students have identified the greatest need for Wi-Fi.

The survey on the MSU’s website differs from the one on Facebook, providing a longer list of choices and asking for student satisfaction with Wi-Fi on campus.

Mukhtar Galan, current SRA representative (Engineering), ran with the slogan ‘Where’s the Wi-Fi?’ in his presidential campaign this past January.

Galan said he is very supportive of the pilot project and student poll.

“There are a lot of empty tables and study spaces on campus that can’t be used because there’s no Internet connection,” he said. “We have good space, we just need to optimize it.”

“I was surprised to hear from so many first-years last year that they couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi in some common rooms,” said Galan. “I think that’s a problem.”

However, the cost to expand Wi-Fi in residences is closer to $500,000, says Saeed, so it wouldn’t be feasible as part of the pilot project.

“After the project, [the MSU] will be submitting a multi-million dollar proposal to the University for Wi-Fi upgrades on campus,” Saeed said.

UTS’s website states that areas eligible for University funding are public gathering areas for students where there is seating or workspace. This includes lobbies, libraries and lounges.

‘Out of scope’ areas for Wi-Fi funding by UTS are classrooms, administrative areas, and faculty and staff offices. Wi-Fi improvements for these areas can be secured through departmental or project funding if available.

Discussions to improve Wi-Fi on campus, in addition to other technological services on campus, have been ongoing for years.

Last year, MSU President Matthew Dillon-Leitch and executives worked to get UnivMail undergraduate e-mail accounts migrated to Google.

The University’s ERP (enterprise resource planning) project was also announced last year. The purpose of the five-year project is to modernize and streamline McMaster’s outdated business processes.

The initiative entered the ‘fit-gap’ stage earlier this month. During this stage, members of the implementation team will examine how the selected PeopleSoft software fits McMaster’s business process needs, and where there are gaps.

 

 

 

 

 

Something was unmistakably amiss on Oct. 1 when walking through the outdoor Mills Plaza. The Chinese Cultural Festival, hosted by McMaster’s Confucius Institute, was in full swing, full in this case meaning a single, subtle tent and a modest display of staff.

Compared to last year, when the festival encompassed the entire MUSC Atrium in an ostentatious display of cultural pride, song, dance and prizes, it was an unfamiliar offering from the usually grandiose faculty.

Dr. Angela Sheng, Associate Professor of Art History and Director Chair of the Confucius Institute, explained the reasoning behind this massive shift in festivities. “I want [the festival] to be in the open, to attract student attention and I would like it to be driven by grassroots needs,” said Sheng.

The festival, scheduled to run from Oct. 1 to 3, encompassed many aspects, such as martial arts demonstrations, student presentations and a myriad of film screenings on Thursday, still seemed oddly cut down, sporting an almost subtle profile with few students stopping their daily activities to check out the event.

The Institute, recently scrutinized for its allegedly controversial hiring and training practices overseas for prospective teachers according to a Globe and Mail investigative report, seems to be in the process of restructuring its outward appearance to appeal to a larger student body.

“The Confucius Institute is synchronous with humanities and with President Deane’s Forward With Integrity message, and we want to highlight student endeavours and give them a platform to express their work,” said Sheng.

The festival itself, while smaller in scale, promoted a single, unified message. It highlighted spirituality as a means to promote overall well-being, as well as stressing the importance of values shared between heritage students and students without a Chinese background at McMaster.

Looking forward in the year, Sheng has further plans to engage the student body in Chinese culture. “We have the upcoming Distinguished Speaker Series to look forward to. On October 30 an archeologist is going to speak about the first emperor of China. Later in November a linguist will come and speak about the phonetic system [of Mandarin].”

The Institute’s current plans do not end at festivities alone, as it is currently engaged in a proposal to found a new Chinese business course.

“It would be a language course that focuses on business language, and business etiquette and know-how that is different in China,” said Sheng.

The proposal has been submitted to the Curriculum Committee of the Faculty of Humanities and if passed will move on to review by the Senate’s Undergraduate Planning Committee this fall.

“I’d like to know what students would like [to know about China]. These projects have to be initiated by students and then they can be incorporated into next year’s budget proposal,” said Sheng on how students could get involved in the faculty.

The Confucius Institute will continue to run events throughout the year, but it remains to be seen if future showings by the organization will be equally toned down.

Staff cleaners were responsible for clearing out the Occupy McMaster area last week.

An investigation conducted by McMaster Security Services, prompted by a theft report, found that cleaners had thrown away furniture, blankets, promotional materials and other items from the couch space in the corner of the student centre.

According to Security Services Staff Sergeant Cathy O'Donnell, the area was cleaned as a result of a miscommunication.

Lori Diamond, director of the Student Centre's administration, confirmed that the directive did not come from her office. A supervisor of the night shift, she explained, had told employees to clean the area, but not to clear it out completely, when they asked about whether students were still using it. The employees mistakenly proceeded to throw away everything except the bookshelf and its contents.

Diamond explained that, although MUSC staff have the authority to throw away items left in MUSC, it is not in the philosophy of her administration to do so. Cleaning staff have mainly left the Occupy McMaster area untouched since it began residing there last November.

Members of Occupy have been rebuilding their presence in the space since they found it empty on the morning of Sept. 18, which was the day after the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.

On Sept. 21, students could lounge in muskoka chairs and play a round of bocce ball - in the middle of the MUSC parking lot.

Although the single parking spot was only temporarily converted for a few hours, it was meant to catch students attention and get them to talk about the issue of commuting. Run by SmartCommute, in partnership with MetroLinx,The City of Hamilton and the Office of Sustainability at McMaster, this initiative intended to spark conversation about how students, faculty and staff get to campus.

SmartCommute hopes to educate the community about different commuting options, whether it be walking, biking, carpooling or using public transit. They have converted parking spots into grassy areas at various offices and malls around Hamilton and the GTA.

 

When members of Occupy McMaster arrived at their space in the corner of the Student Centre on Tuesday, Sept. 18, they didn’t know what had happened.

Lori Diamond, administrative director of the Student Centre, didn’t know either.

Siobhan Stewart, president of the McMaster Students Union, said she saw that Occupy was still set up in the corner of the student centre when she left late on Monday night.

But Tuesday morning – the day after the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street – the area was cleared out. The books, the furniture, the blankets, the pamphlets, the posters and all of the other items that has collected since Occupy began spending time on the MUSC couches last November was gone.

Representatives of Occupy met with McMaster Security Services Tuesday morning in hopes of getting to the bottom of the matter. Security Services said they would check security tapes.

“We do have a theft report, and it is with our investigator right now,” said Cathy O’Donnell, Staff Sergeant of Security Services, on Wednesday.

“It’s a temporary setback for the student movement,” said Alvand Mohtashami, who was one of the founders of the group last November.  “But we are organizing to build a culture of revolution.”

The MUSC space was relatively empty over the summer months, but now that September has come, students are coming together again to get Occupy McMaster back up and running.

They’ve added a couple of tables and some pamphlets, and they are trying to be more vigilant.

“I’ll be back as soon as possible and support the occupiers, whose existence and presence is necessary to the survival of the idea of the university as a place of unhampered pursuit of the truth, wrote Dr. Karl Andersson, who is currently back in Sweden, in a comment on TheSil.ca.

Andersson, a grey-haired scholar who was studying the Bertrand Russell archives in Mills Library, was a regular presence at Occupy last school year, and he helped to maintain a 24-hour watch.

Two years after it was allocated, the McMaster University Student Centre (MUSC) continues to hold $1.1 million in student money, and both the McMaster Students Union (MSU) and the University, along with the part-time students association (MAPS), are looking for a way to spend it.

The money came from excess student fees collected by the MSU in 2010-11, which were collected to pay for the remaining portion on a loan from the University to fund the MUSC’s construction ten years ago.

The money will either go toward a new capital project to improve the Student Centre or toward discounting occupancy fees of its resident businesses and services.

The decision of how the funds will be spent now sits with the MUSC Board of Management, which includes representatives from the MSU, the University and MAPS.

John McGowan, who is the general manager of the MSU, explained that details on how, exactly, the money will be spent have not yet been worked out.

The money was not originally earmarked for projects of a certain kind.

“In all scenarios, it will help benefit undergraduate students,” he said, given that a reduction in occupancy costs for MSU services would mean more funding for other areas, and that a capital project would, presumably, benefit at least some students.

The issue began in 1987 when the MSU held a student referendum about the construction of a student centre. As a result, they started to collect a yearly amount from students to finance their portion of the Student Centre. In order to pay for their share, the MSU borrowed money from the University, to be paid back over a number of years.

MUSC was completed in 2002. However, the final loan payment from the MSU to the University didn’t occur until April of 2011.

“Leading up year of the retirement of the capital debt on the student centre, there was a lot of discussion between the University and the MSU on exactly what was outstanding,” said McGowan.

“The project had been going on for an extended period of time and the many stakeholders had changed. When sorting out the remaining balance, there were a couple of discrepancies that all parties needed to clarify regarding contributions to the student centre versus loans for the student centre.”

Because the discrepancies could not be sorted out until after fees were to be set early in 2010 for the following school year, the MSU has a decision to make. Should it collect only what it thought the remaining balance on the loan was, or collect the same amount as the previous year, increased with inflation, to cover their bases?

They opted for the latter. When the dust settled and the University could not produce proof that the MSU owed more than it thought it owed, it turned out that the MSU had collected roughly $1.13 million more than was required.

As per an agreement between the University and MSU, which was clarified when the final year’s fee was set, that surplus was transferred to the MUSC, which has a separate administrative body that is jointly managed by the MSU and University.

“That’s full-time undergraduate money that students said they wanted to spend on the MUSC,” explained McGowan about the money sent to MUSC.

On September 25 and 26 between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. McMaster’s Student Centre will be center stage for a plethora of organizations from across Hamilton. Nearly 75 vendors will take over the Student Centre atrium in hopes of exposing students to the need for volunteers in the Hamilton community.

This year marks the 8th annual Community Engagement and Volunteer Fair with a record-breaking number of young activists expected to turn out. Spread out over two days, the Volunteer Fair will expose students to a multitude of local agencies, from small grassroots to globally recognized organizations all hoping to team up with students to make a difference in the greater community.

The fair promises to be even larger this year, as the Student Success Centre has recently announced its collaboration with the Faculty of Social Sciences and Experiential Education.

This new partnership will give students access to a wider variety and higher volume of agencies across Hamilton. “The [Student Success Centre] has more relationships and partners in the community,” said Angela Fortino, Employer Relations Officer at the Student Success Centre. “This year the fair is full, plus we have organizations on the waiting list.”

More relationships within the community mean more opportunities for students to find the right volunteer position for them.

Students will not only have the opportunity to interact with big brand organizations such as United Way and Red Cross, but also a more diverse set of niche organizations this year.

“We get agencies that meet a particular need in the community that is pretty unique… You’re able to tap into different aspects of the community,” said Adam Kuhn, Student Success Centre Manager.

And with the Student Success Centre on board, a higher volume of students are expected to take notice and be aware of the event.

“The Student Success Centre has more retail access across campus to reach a higher volume of students,” explained Kuhn.

The Volunteer Fair is essentially a mass-networking project with a dual focus. It gives students a means of networking with volunteer organizations, and it allows local agencies a means of recruiting essential volunteers through a single, two-day event.

Volunteering is one means of expanding your professional Rolodex as a student, simply by means of networking. It’s is also a good way of establishing credibility and rapport, which can potentially act as leverage into a full time position. Students can use volunteer positions to build their resumes, linking their volunteer work to their field of academic study, and potential future occupation.

“[Volunteering] can affirm your career goals and passions or it can challenge your assumptions,” noted Kuhn on the benefits of volunteering.

The Volunteer Fair presents an opportunity for students to connect with a diverse range of local agencies in hopes of finding the right niche regardless of passion, career goal, or area of interest.

I don’t know who took Occupy McMaster’s stuff. Student Centre administration says they’re not responsible, and Security Services is still looking into the matter.

But whoever effectively evicted Occupy McMaster from the student centre did it in a planned and deliberate manner.

The one-year anniversary of Occupy’s parent movement, Occupy Wall Street, was the day before. An article had just been published in the Hamilton Spectator that pointed to dwindling membership of the campus group.

And the place wasn’t just robbed; it was cleared out completely. With the exception of a bookcase (which, presumably, was too heavy to carry away), everything was taken and the area was cleaned very late Monday night during a rare lapse of vigilance. By Tuesday morning, it was as if Occupy McMaster had never existed.

People will joke about this – and maybe with good reason. The irony was painful this summer, during which the “Apathy 2 Action” sign hung next to a mostly empty seating area. And for months, the Swedish scholar who practically made Occupy his home looked out of place.

Even the name, “Occupy McMaster,” invited criticism. The small and subdued group of students who weren’t bothering anyone did not at all resemble the larger global protests of similar names.

But whether it was a student prankster or a frustrated maintenance worker or someone higher up that caused this, it was wrong.

There are good, honest and self-aware people down at Occupy. Like engaged members of faculty societies or of clubs or of MSU services, they’re just looking for something and somewhere to be here at Mac. They are always friendly, always welcoming, and they’re there because they enjoy being around each other. They just wanted to share that.

And that includes Dr. Karl, who was a kind, progressive and interesting presence in the student centre.

If the culprits are a group of students who simply had it in for Occupy, I hope they understand that what they did wasn’t necessary or political. It was mean-spirited.

Whether or not it was Occupy’s time to vacate, this wasn’t the way to do it. I hope that, as the students rebuild in MUSC, everyone else will show a little more understanding this time around.

Say what you will about my looks or my personality, but my eyesight is perfect.

And even if I did need to visit an optometrist from time to time, I wouldn’t need to go far. There’s one on King Street, just across from the Metro in Westdale.

So what gives, MUSC?

After all the talk about what would replace the vacant storefront in the student centre between Union Market and the University Centre Pharmacy, the McMaster University Student Centre (MUSC) Board of Management has given the space to an optometrist.

The decision was a big missed opportunity.

Other schools are doing some really cool things with their student spaces, and, from what I’ve heard, there was no shortage of ideas on what we could do with the open space next to the pharmacy. There was talk of coffee shops, restaurants, lounge spaces, student services and, of course, a grocery store.

But instead, we’re getting an eye doctor – someone students might visit only from time to time, and that’s if they don’t continue seeing their previous optometrists during their visits home.

In other words, we’ll be left with that lonely and lacklustre stretch of hallway between La Piazza and Union Market.

I understand the financial argument; it’s true that sending an in-house service into MUSC’s potential retail space is a risk. But why sign a third-party business for the sake of bringing in revenue if we’re just going to sink that revenue into underexposed services?

The House of Games, SWHAT, SHEC, SCSN, Avtek, Maroons, Campus Events and Underground Media & Design (and, for that matter, the Silhouette) are among the MSU services pushed out of sight into the upper or lower floors of MUSC, not to mention organizations like SOCS, the Off-Campus Resource Centre and the Centre for Student Development.

Even TwelvEighty, our should-be-‘place-to-be’ student-run bar couldn’t make it into a decent location. (I never did like the idea of getting a beer just down the hall from my calculus tutorial.) It’s no wonder that it hasn’t been able to make the MSU money like the Rathskeller and the Downstairs John used to.

But if it’s going to be a third-party vendor that gets the spot, at least it should have been something of wider and more regular use. For the record, I would have loved to see a fresh produce seller like Grocery Checkout pop up.

There are student representatives on MUSC’s management board for a reason. McMaster’s full-time students, through their MSU fees, have paid a lot of money for the construction of the student centre. Whether it’s a service of the University or the MSU, or an outside vendor, decisions on who gets to set up shop in our student space should be purposeful and in our best interests.

So rather than allowing dentists and eye doctors and photo studios to populate the prime real estate, let’s make this building work for us.

Aaron Grierson

The Silhouette

 

Talk about a whirlwind campaign this year; posters started going up about two weeks ago, and according to the MSU website, we finish voting today. (It’s a little surprising that none of the candidates’ posters had the voting date on them, but I digress.) Matching the speed of these campaigns are the flight of certain words.

Environmental sustainability, better public transit, better club engagement, better food choices; these are just some of the topics that are frequently discussed, using the usual corporate buzzwords and attention-getting sales points. Some candidates are riding old ideas, made popular by recent events; it’s as though they wanted to bring down the bureaucracy that runs the school. Overall though, what we have is a group of students who are honest, well intentioned and serious about bringing change.

That’s great, in theory; the problem has been and probably always will be actually accomplishing the platform goals. It’s not that the candidates are making grandiose promises that cannot be kept, as many cynics might claim, nor is it that the candidates are liars, but it’s the system that the candidates must work within that prevents an expedient change. I consider myself an indifferent voter. Not because I am genuinely apathetic towards politics, but because I’ve spent the past four years watching students get elected, and, if they’re lucky, make one big thing happen for which some people might remember them for. Two recent examples would be the Mac Farmstand and the incoming email switch from the old MUSS server to Gmail (which doesn’t actually save anyone any amount of typing, as the “cis.mcmaster” part of the URL is superfluous). Any other major changes must have been done without public spectacle, as I can’t recollect any publication of any sort.

The elects do have their ways of reaching out to students though. In addition to the websites, there are the traditional classroom rambles, where one person comes around and gives an incredibly condensed spiel about “why it would be best to vote for them”. Last year in particular I found them useless because they provided no substantial evidence that they could provide the results for the changes they promised. Sure enough, most changes didn’t come around. Something new this year are the revamped improvised headquarters in the student centre. I don’t eat there a lot but do they ever look annoying. They take entire sections of tables up with flashy banners and free handouts which will be, even if read, promptly discarded, hopefully in the recycling. I can appreciate reaching out to students in a public place where many will see you, but the student centre is hardly an ideal place for a political discussion due to noise and body levels during peaks. Of course, all that yelling one has to do might fit in well with politics.

But, that probably won’t stop me from voting for the most realistic candidate. Or perhaps just abstain if the ballot allows it. Kin Hubbard once pointed out that we would all like to vote for the best man, but he is never a candidate. Outdated language aside, his point holds. My major issue with any politician is that the promises or goals they make to their target audience are often far too optimistic for their own success.

A problem, especially at this level of politics, is that the elections are always cast, rather accurately, as popularity contests. Sometimes, so much so that some of the platform points sound like they are catering to certain groups in which they hold a strong affinity towards. Social media makes this so much easier, as I’ve gotten added to groups for candidates I don’t even know personally, and it’s not a good way to convince me, as someone who wants to be an informed voter.

A final thought, if I may venture once more into the past, is taken from previous candidates who were never taken seriously. They were talking communism, dictatorial takeovers, and reforming the school’s bureaucracy by basically eliminating it. It sounds outlandish and echoes an old war, but maybe they have the right idea, that the popularity contest, as it were, should be an actual vie for a seat of power to ensure, under certain restrictions, that the people’s voice may be heard and that improvements can be made without all of the paperwork. That doesn’t help external unions, but a baby usually doesn’t start walking by running. Maybe politicians shouldn’t either.