January 20, 2014

Monday, January 20, 2014 |

EDItoRs WILL MCDOnALD + SARAH BIgAM

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AMS ELECTIONS >>

Four candidates commit campaign violations

Photo cARtER BRUNDAgE/thE UBYssEY

Presidential hopeful Jackson chen is one of four candidates with violations.

Sarah Bigam + Will McDonald news Editors

Photo coURtEsY BRANDoN PARkER/BRUBc

Jon Pinkhasik, VP operations of brUBc, holds the successful petition results.

Fate of campus brewery in voters’ hands Andrew Liang Contributor

After four years of uncertainty, the fate of the campus microbrewery will be left up to students.

A question asking students if they want to pay for a campus microbrewery will appear on the AMS elections referendum after all, after the AMS brewery committee and brUBC collected more than the 1,000 signatures required to force a referendum question.

Both groups were pleased with the result. “We want[ed] to get as many as possible,” said Kerry Dyson, president of brUBC, “[but] we really didn’t have that much time. We were given a week to get those signatures, so we were shooting as high as we could.”

NEWs BrIEFs

AuS hosts inaugural conference the Arts Undergraduate society (AUs) held its first humanities and social sciences conference on Jan. 18 to highlight undergraduate research.

Daniel Munro, AUs VP academic, said the goal of the conference was to encourage students to think about research outside the classroom. “other faculties have events like this that are for science or what have you, but we’ve never had anything like this [for Arts],” said Munro. the conference presented research Arts students wouldn’t necessarily encounter in the classroom. “there was a kind of malaise with the arts and humanities education.

I think this initiative is a real counterpoint to that,” said Lloyd Axworthy, closing keynote speaker. omassi and Munro hope to expand the event to an annual canada-wide conference.

Senate and BOG candidate receives $40,000 research award senate and Board of governors candidate Philip Edgcumbe is one of five PhD students across canada for receive a $40,000 research grant from Prostate cancer canada. to help reduce post-operative complications in patients with prostate cancer, Edgcumbe is proposing to develop a navigation aid that will provide surgeons with a real-time ultrasound display of blood vessels, nerves and tumours beneath the surface during surgery. U

After AMS council voted down the brewery project, the AMS brewery committee and brUBC were given a deadline of Friday, Jan. 17 to get the required number of student signatures.

Over the past week, they gathered about 1,700 signatures on a petition asking if students supported the AMS establishing a fee to finance the construction and outfitting of an AMS microbrewery.

If the proposal passes in late January, a new student fee will be introduced. The fee would be $2.50 for the first two years, $5.00 for following two years, and $7 for the fifth year, chained to inflation after that.

“Just like anything, students would be able to opt out,” said Jon Pinkhasik, VP operations for

brUBC. “That was actually written on the petition form.”

While the proposed brewery is expected to be built on the UBC Farm, Pinkhasik said its location will not be mentioned in the referendum, in case this changes. “[The farm] really is a safety net for us. It is most likely going to be at the farm, but we don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot saying the farm, [if ] for whatever reason it can’t happen,” Pinkhasik said.

The AMS brewery committee and brUBC will now be mounting a campaign to spread awareness and support for the brewery.

Aaron Bailey of the AMS brewery committee said a brewery would bring the community together and provide educational opportunities in science and mar-

keting. This, as well as the groups’ collective passion for beer, are the main reasons they are pushing so hard for the brewery, according to Bailey.

Bailey said that according to a 2011 study, if the brewery were built at the farm, it could expect to produce about 800 hectolitres in the first year. After the first year, they brewery could scale up to producing as much as 1,600 hectolitres, which both groups hope would satisfy demand on campus and produce a profit to both finance the operational costs of the brewery and return some money to the AMS. In order for the brewery to be created, the referendum question must receive affirmative votes from eight per cent of the student body, or 4,663 people. U

REFERENDUM >>

Support for lower tuition fees added to elections ballot Nikos Wright Staff Writer

This year’s AMS elections ballot will include a referendum question asking if students want the society to lobby for lower tuition.

The referendum question came from the Social Justice Centre, one of UBC’s six resource groups. In less than a week and a half, the SJC managed to collect the 1,000 signatures required to push a question to the AMS elections ballot.

“Everybody should be allowed to pursue education at whatever level, no matter their financial means,” said Gabriel D’Astous, a third-year SJC member double majoring in history and political science, and the one who led the petition initiative.

“Accessibility to university should only be based on your capacities as a student ... so in that sense tuition does present a financial barrier to some people,” he added.

According to AMS VP external affairs Tanner Bokor, the SJC petition came as a bit of a surprise to the AMS, which already has a policy of a similar nature on tuition affordability.

The AMS’s current policy regarding tuition reduction, according to Bokor, states that “the AMS will advocate for lower tuition when that tuition decrease is met with non-student funding.” This non-stu-

FILE Photo gEoFF LIstER/thE UBYssEY

the January referendum will have a question asking the AMs to lobby for lower tuition.

dent funding can come in the form of increased government funds or external donations. The AMS’s current policy also affirms education as a right.

Acknowledging that the resource groups and the AMS executives seldom interact, Bokor said the AMS and SJC may have different strategies on lowering tuition, with the AMS perhaps having a long-term goal that seeks to balance academic quality with attempts to lower tuition.

“I don’t think our [strategies are] that different,” D’Astous said.

“I don’t think the SJC is taking a short-term strategy, or that we’re neglecting academic quality.”

AMS council has not yet decided whether to support the referendum or not. Nonetheless, Bokor said he believes a no vote would be the worst outcome for the referendum.

“Regardless of our potential differences in strategy for how

we should be advocating for these issues, it’s important that we continue to talk about [them],” he said.

“The goal of the question is definitely [to] start taking steps toward reduced tuition, but obviously ... if the referendum passes, we won’t have reduced tuition [automatically],” he said.

D’Astous also said that the goal of the referendum is to reinforce the AMS’s preexisting mandate of seeking to lower tuition, as well as to bring awareness to student debt.

If the petition succeeds, the result will be taken to the university and external relations committee and AMS council for a decision on how to develop its policy to reflect the referendum decision.

The SJC currently has no concrete plans on how to reduce tuition fees, but they plan to collaborate with the AMS if the referendum succeeds. U

Four candidates have been added to the elections penalty box for campaign violations.

Presidential candidate Jackson Chen had his campaign budget reduced by $50 for posting an unapproved website. His website also lacked the required AMS elections logo and listed the wrong dates for voting.

Chen said he forgot to have the AMS check his website, and thought he didn’t have to include the exact AMS elections logo.

“I though I could put it in another way ... which looked better because we don’t like the designing by the AMS,” said Chen.

Chen’s campaign budget has been reduced from $350 to $300, and the maximum reimbursement he can receive has been cut from $200 to $150. “[My campaign] is all run by volunteers, my friends, so it’s OK for my campaign to be reduced by $50.

It’s fine for me,” said Chen.

VP external candidate Jon Snow had his maximum spending limit reduced from $350 to $200 and his maximum reimbursement cut from $200 to $100 for mass emailing before the campaign period.

Over the Christmas holidays, Snow — real name Philip He — sent out emails to all the clubs listed on the AMS website informing members that he was running in the upcoming election, and asking to meet up to discuss his platform.

Snow, who sent the emails through a personal account, said he did not consider this mass mailing.

“I did personalize them to some degree,” he said.

Snow said in the emails he wrote he was running “as a candidate”; he would not confirm whether he wrote that he was running as a real or a joke candidate.

Elections administrator Roddy Lai said Snow’s status as a joke candidate wouldn’t have made any difference in the penalty given.

“Joke candidate aside, they are treated like any candidate,” said Lai. “They have to follow the rules. If they do anything that violates the rules, they will be punished.”

“I don’t mind,” Snow said. “It kind of goes with my role as an outcast as Jon Snow.”

As well, VP finance candidate Joaquin Acevedo and VP administration candidate Ava Nasiri both received warnings for minor campaign violations.

Lai said Acevedo received a warning for accidentally posting his campaign website before the elections committee approved it.

According to Lai, Acevedo is using the same website he used last year, and it automatically went live when Acevedo renewed the domain.

Nasiri received a warning after some of her campaign volunteers put more than one campaign poster on a single bulletin board. U