Wednesday September 14, 2011
Wiring UofT Micah Gold-Utting
The cup Returns to SMC Rachel Venturo
Students of St. Michael’s College were given cause to celebrate after they claimed victory over their constant adversaries, the engineers, in this year’s annual bed racing competition. The bitter rivalry between University of Toronto engineers and SMC students is reignited each year when they face off in this famed frosh tradition. After a difficult defeat last year that ended the college’s eight year reign, students were proud to hoist the revered bed racing trophy once again. Like the engineers, St. Mike’s raced a bed driven by frosh and another by frosh leaders. In an unprecedented competition, the SMC frosh found themselves facing off against the SMC leaders twice in the tournament. In their first encounter, the two St. Mike’s teams wheeled toward the finish line together. New College, the only other college to participate, was quickly eliminated from the competition leaving St. Mike’s and the engineers to battle it out for a spot in the final race. The SMC
frosh and leader teams overcame the engineering frosh and leader teams, respectively, to go forward to the finals together for an inevitable victory for the college. It was most definitely a bittersweet win for this year’s frosh. Despite both SMC teams making it to the finals, the leaders were too fast to be taken by their frosh counterparts. The winning St. Mike’s bed was driven by Gavin Barnes, Patrick Marquardt, Blair MacDonald, and Stephen Furgiuele. The four frosh leaders raced past jeering spectators, questionable-looking “beds”, and gutless moves made by the opposition toward victory. The bed racing trophy will remain at St. Mike’s until next year’s frosh week when the college goes up against the engineering faculty once again. Despite the engineer’s best efforts to usurp the championship title next year, the future frosh of St. Michael’s College will try to carry on the college’s winning streak.
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WiredQuad.com launched on Monday, September 5. The website is being developed by Qamar Munir (pictured right) and Babak Basseri, both senior students at U of T. While the website has similarities to both social media sites (e.g. Facebook) and educational services (e.g. Blackboard), it aims to be something more. Munir calls it a “social learning platform” and hopes that it will act to consolidate student life on campus. The project began as a desire to create “a better Blackboard”. Munir says he wanted to design a hub for class information that students actually wanted to use. However, the focus of the project expanded as he became frustrated with the fragmentation of information regarding student life at the university. “For a single club, you have to check their twitter, and their Facebook, and their website,” Munir points out, “there is no place where you can find a functional, complete calendar of events.” So while the goal is still to replace Blackboard, WiredQuad.com became a website with the function of aggregating the school community.
The project began as a desire to create “a better Blackboard”. However, the lofty goals come with many challenges. Munir says that official adoption has led to additional concerns regarding security and has delayed some of the educational integration. For now, the site is mainly for social networking simply because this aspect was ready first. Eventually, Munir wants the site to be an educational tool with “social media peppered on top”. Right now, the site’s short term
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goal is to get student unions and clubs on board. The site is exclusive to U of T students, requiring a UTOR email to register. Upon logging in, the site member is faced with a dashboard containing an aggregation of questions from their subscribed groups. The system actively helps groups and students get connected. For instance, when SMC students joins the site, they automatically become connected to both SMCSU and St. Michael’s College. Once a student is signed up within WiredQuad, it becomes possible to apply to get their club into the system. The application is a simple process of fact-checking before receiving approval. “The best way to move the project forward is to sign up,” urges Munir. His goal is to build an active community first, which will enable him to develop the site towards a viable Blackboard replacement. Additionally, he adds that they could use additional help from developers and particularly graphic designers. To get in contact with the team behind WiredQuad. com, feel free to email Qamar@ wiredquad.com
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