One lump or two?
You would think that after all the years Martha Piper has served as president, she would be better at handling tuition town halls. While she kept up her ever-positive attitude about UBC and "excellence,” we can’t get over the weird mixed metaphor she blurted about putting camels in a tent: "If you get all the camels in the tent, it's pretty hard to poke holes.”
"If you get all the camels in the tent it's pretty hard to poke holes" #waitwhat #shitpipersays #ubctuition2015
— Ubyssey News (@UbysseyNews) October 28, 2015The actual metaphor about the camel in the tent is basically a "give an inch and they’ll take a mile" story told through the metaphor of a camel owner who allows the camels to stick their nose in the tent with the rest of the camel slowly following in.
Maybe that’s what Piper actually meant — let UBC hike tuition rates in pursuit of “excellence” once and pretty soon, you’ll have a tent full of money — pretty hard to poke holes in that.
Not-so-great Treks
If you follow UBC public relations on Twitter, you might've seen their recently posted overview and description of Great Treks, with an emphasis on the first one. It’s true that UBC has some amazing history. This institution has a big part to play is asking questions and challenging assumptions, something deeply intertwined with the Treks.
But there’s also been a lot of the opposite. A lot of higher level administrators making decisions without proper consultation and there are a lot of issues concerning transparency, housing and so forth, and hat makes it worse is not talking about it.
There have been a lot of Great Treks — to save the UBC Farm, to lobby for more government funding, etc. — but none them addressed problems at the university that showed up in UBC's PR pieces.
Suggesting our history is squeaky clean is a lie and robs UBC of a rich education of students being spurred to protest and causing administrators' minds to be changed.
Kin katastrophe
We were utterly overjoyed to see the whole sorry kinesiology building mess put to bed at Wednesday night’s council meeting. Even more refreshing was to hear Justin Tsang, KUS President, call the cancellation of the building a “blessing in disguise.”
Kin students, you deserve so much better than the Community Health Sciences Centre. At every turn, you were led to believe that you were getting the best and the simple fact is that you weren’t. Make Your Mark’s campaign was accurate — you do need a home. But you need a solid, well-built house in a nice neighbourhood with a mortgage that you can afford, not a sketchy model home built by the Bluth family. Hopefully the change in leadership within the faculty means you’ll finally get the long-term residence you deserve.