Matt Goyer: University of Waterloo

So we trust Bomber not to do anything nefarious with those hand held devices they use to swap everyone's drivers licenses, right?

And Feds are dreaming if they think city hall will budge on the 75m rule. Employees at city hall told me that if it changes it will increase not decrease and that the change will take years. Never mind the fact that there are several groups of citizens lobbying against students/absentee landlords (I believe one group is headed by a retired Waterloo professor?).

Today's lunchtime reading, Canadian Business: Schools of higher earning ' Investors are scrambling for bonds issued by universities':

While students typically spend years repaying their government sponsored loans which carry interest rates of between 7% and 9.5% annually universities are locking in their public debt for up to 40 years, at about 6.5%.

Don't worry. Waterloo isn't financing capital projects with bond and/or debenture issues they're just selling off courses to Microsoft.

UW School President Johnston answers 10 questions about the Microsoft sell-out

The Bulletin took care today to point out that those aren't frosh getting wet in the photo below because 'PACO wouldn't let us do something like that to the frosh'. Bah, frosh week here sucks.

I don't know why this hasn't hit the Bulletin or UW Student yet.. This is from one of Nat's co-worker's site:

so i found out yesterday (wednesday, i guess two days ago now) a friend of mine [mg: a UW student] was killed in ibiza, on his way back to his hostel in a taxi. he got head-on'd by a guy in a bimmer. he was one of the four killed, according to the news. omar's friend who was with him is in the hospital.

Ibiza is in Spain.. We were in Spain.. We rode in taxis.. We didn't use seat belts.. The number one killer of tourists is transportation accidents..

We're of course shocked and saddened (even though neither Nat nor I new the two UW students involved).

U of Waterloo wastes $2400 of student's money

Yesterday our prof failed to show for our class claiming he 'somehow got the idea that class started at 10:30' (instead of 10).

Of course the venerable Mark Schaan in his Arts Frosh Orientation video tape assures us that at university the 'five minute rule' does not apply and that you should stay to the bitter end of the class in case the prof decides to show at the last minute. Now the frosh might fall for that but we sure didn't.

Oh well. Better luck next class?

The Daily Bulletin announced that the turnkey desk's housing list is now online via Ezide.

Why we need two off campus housing websites is beyond me but I guess it fits with Waterloo's inability to solve problems using modern technology.

(yet another?) UW student commits suicide (from The Star).

In UW Student's discussion Paul says

As a society, we shouldn't lie to ourselves and pretend suicides don't happen by covering them up.

Here I am torn. While I feel there needs to be coverage of student suicides on campus I've read that media coverage of suicides increases the likelihood of suicide (read The Tipping Point). So what do we do? How do we find that balance?

My concern is how do we keep our school accountable for the mental health of its students when it covers up its largest problems and fails to help those in need?

From the Imprint regarding my letter they didn't run:

I actually wanted to run that article in the last edition but was unable to due to a serious lack of space. However, don't you fret, I'll be trying to put all unpublished works up on the web. It should be up shortly. I hope that you continue writing to Imprint in the future.

Bah. I'm unhappy with that answer. Time for more complaining.

UWStudent.org: New degree means less math, more flexibility, for CSers

Proponents of the BCS felt that UW's math requirements for CS students had two problems: they made it "very difficult for students to gain exposure to application areas outside the Faculty" and the math content of the degree was "largely determined by mathematicians outside CS."

I'm pro-less math. 27.5% of the courses I will take for my degree will be math while 37.5% will be CS.

Check out the transition plan to see when they're dropping all the bitchy courses we're taking now :).

And it's great to see Ragde in there commenting with the students.

UW Bulletin: Currently there is a very low percentage of female students studying computer science. At UW, the percentage has dropped to below 20 per cent from 33 per cent in the late 1980s

Headline remarkably absent: 1000s of students left in the dark about co-op placements.

Congratulations to Natalie who got the job she wanted.

..Unfortunately she didn't find out till this morning when she went to school and asked someone in the know because the computer system has been down since Friday afternoon when she was supposed to find out. Stressed out she woke up every few hours the last 3 nights to check to see if the problem had been fixed; sort as if the school had someone working around the clock. We all know this isn't the case. The school couldn't give a damn about the students. Quite frankly the person in charge of Quest and Access should be fired. If this was a private business they'd be gone long ago.

The Imprint didn't run my letter to the editor complaining about UW Counselling Services in light of the recent propoganda piece which ran. While not impressed I have heard that enough of us have complained that UW is re-evaluating their policies on how they deal with students seeking help who while students aren't considered students because 'they may not return in the fall'.

UW Student reports on Student Force a website for 'Open Rating of Co-op Employers'.

While I'm a huge fan of Rate My Professors and in fact I even toyed for awhile with developing my own rate Waterloo's employers and professors site, I have a feeling that The School is going to shut this thing down pretty fast; free speech be damned because the school isn't going to let us bite the hand that feeds.

Does your lodging house conform to the Waterloo Building Code for Lodging Houses?

What worries me the most is the second means of escape from the basement (since the house doesn't have one) and the minimum requirements for ceiling height.

It might be much more expensive to license this place than I thought..

Note: I don't have to conform to any of this since I the owner live in the house and I only have 3 other people living with me. But I would like to get 2 more people in the basement which would require a loding license (probably class 2 because of the whole Minimum Distance Separation business).

While complaining about housing in Waterloo let me say that the members of 'Not Your Neighbours', a group protesting the influx of students into their 'old' neighbhoods, won't be complaining when they go to sell their houses for $15k+ above asking price once they're moving into their expensive retirement homes.

Berkeley has a weblogging course (via Dave).

I wish our school was that forward thinking.

You are alone: How suicidal students can't seek help

To the editor,
With regards to the feature article, 'You are not alone, How suicidal students can seek help' I'd like you to 'Picture yourself in a difficult situation: you're frightened and alone; your questions remain unanswered; you're confused and desperate.' Now picture that when you call UW Counseling services you are rudely told that your mental health needs will have to wait till you are back on campus as a full time student attending classes in the fall. Where do you turn now?
If the University of Waterloo takes the issue of student mental health and student suicide SERIOUSLY then UW Counseling Services would not be recklessly turning away students who are not currently enrolled (as a full time student) for spring term when they come calling for help.
-- Matt Goyer
3A Computer Science

Note: Matt Goyer is not (currently) suicidal. Though I'm certainly depressed about CS360! (formal language theory makes me want to puke)

But of course access to counselling isn't necessarily going to help as seen in MIT's Elizabeth Shin's case.

John sees the light:

[A]re we CS students really all doomed to spend our careers in a cubical, working under an irrational pointy haired boss a la Dilbert ? Where's UW's entrepreneurial spirit that everyone can't stop talking about? It's certainly not in the CS classroom.

Don't worry! Waterloo is starting a Master of Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program (for real info check my archives) which if you ask me is simply a program to churn out higher quality managers for the its corporate donors.

You have to realize that it's more profitable for Waterloo to churn out a large number of middle managers and cube farms full of coders then it is to turn a handful of us into world class leaders.

Attempting to view my class schedule for this term:

SQL error. Stmt #: 554 Error Position: 46 Return: 942 - ORA-00942: table or view does not exist

Thanks University of Waterloo for a quality system!

The University of Waterloo now has a School of CS (check out the lame launch site!).

The new school of CS will have 63 faculty members, 2,175 undergraduate students and 215 grad students.

So remember that whole 'you have a scholarship and can therefore afford our 15%/year tution increase' incident complete with a mass mailing from our president? Here's a choice paragraph:

I would like you to know that we are doing our best to provide student support in the form of scholarships and bursaries. The number of scholarships available varies from faculty to faculty. Faculties with deregulated programs have more scholarships than others. Clearly not all students in deregulated areas can receive scholarships, but many do. For example, engineering has a total of 520 scholarships/awards, while Computer Science has a total 291 scholarships/awards.

So a stunning 87% of those of us in CS don't have a scholarship. And what's more is that those who do probably only have a few hundred dollars; hardly enough to offset the huge increases we're facing.

If you complained about our Provosts statements this probably ended up in your inbox today:

Dear Matt,

Thank you very much for your comments about scholarship and tuition fees.
As you are probably aware University funding by governments in Ontario has been declining for over a decade. For the last six years Ontario has stood last (60 out of 60) of North American jurisdictions in changes in its operating grant per student. Government has not provided “inflationary adjustment.” Since our inflationary costs ranges from 4-5 per cent per year, universities are facing potential annual budget cuts of 4-5 percent. Since 80% of our operating costs are tied to salary and benefits, this means eliminating faculty and staff positions. The net result is the cancellation of courses, larger class sizes, reliance on part time instructors, and cancellation of journal subscriptions etc. leading to deterioration in the quality of education UW can offer.
By raising tuition fees we have been able to reduce the magnitude of these cuts at UW. We still needed to cut our budget by 3.5% in 2001-02 and by another 2% in 2002-03. Our choice is to raise tuition fees to protect the quality of program or let the quality of program decline.
I would like you to know that we are doing our best to provide student support in the form of scholarships and bursaries. The number of scholarships available varies from faculty to faculty. Faculties with deregulated programs have more scholarships than others. Clearly not all students in deregulated areas can receive scholarships, but many do. For example, engineering has a total of 520 scholarships/awards, while Computer Science has a total 291 scholarships/awards. The 02-03 budget includes $ 9.7 million in student aid, mostly bursaries aimed at all levels who have needs greater than Ontario Student Assistance Program will meet. We intend to do more and bringing in millions of dollars in new funding for student support is an important goal of Campaign Waterloo, which is about to begin.
Should you encounter financial hardship, I encourage you to meet with our Student Aid Office to see whether you are eligible for student aid.
I wish you all the best in your studies at the University of Waterloo.
Sincerely,
David Johnston,
President

Does anyone know how many students are currently enrolled in Computer Science?

I sent my Dad an email pointing him to the Call for Expression of Interest because Waterloo needs a new facility for the School of Architecture.

All two of my exams are now over! :) Of course many of you don't know how I could be so stressed about two exams.. But they were both math exams and if previous performance is any indicator than it'd indicate that I had to work my ass off to pass.

And work I did! Math 239 had way too much time spent on it. So much in fact that I even started to understand graph theory by the end of it. So much so that I probably passed the course.

Now Pure Math 330 was a different animal. See this course is supposed to be the easiest math course there is (that's before I heard of CO480) and the assignments and mid-terms confirmed just how slack the course was. So feeling confident no one really studied for the final. Big mistake! The prof pulled a fast one and examined us on material that was never covered in class (disclaimer: I never attended class so I'm taking several people's word that the material was never covered). Fortunately everyone felt equally kicked in the stomach so when we all fail at least we'll have failed together.

Mark weighs in on the tution thing thinking he's oh-so-smart since he's not only former VP-ED of UWaterloo but also a Rhodes Scholar :).

Our student president speaks out on UWS:

When I asked whether the administration believed that poor students could afford this tuition increase, our Provost said that because deregulated programs have such high entrance averages, most of the students in them have scholarships and so will be able to afford the tuition hikes.
I invite you to tell him what you think of this. Feel free to embellish or change the text of the email as you see fit. Asking for a response would be particularly appropriate.
And please tell all your friends.

(Emphasis mine) Thanks to Nat for the heads up because I usually just read the headlines there.

And yes I sent in my email saying that I didn't receive a scholarhsip.

The Record: Health inspectors alerted after 30 students fall ill (Thanks Jenn)

WATERLOO -- Public health inspectors are investigating a report that as many as 30 university students became ill this week after dining at a Waterloo restaurant.
A group of engineering students and professors from the University of Waterloo attended an end-of-term lunch last Tuesday at Johnny Fiasco's, a restaurant at 14 University Ave. W., said Rashid Anand, a student who helped organize the event.
By Wednesday night more than 20 from the party were ill with vomiting, diarrhea, fever and chills, and some with muscle aches and pains, Anand said yesterday.

At the 2002 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest the University of Waterloo came third placing just behind MIT with just 2 more penalty points.

Despite our high placing at these international competitions many Americans still have no clue that our school is just as good or better than the big American ones.

Like Ming I am disillusioned with the quality of our program here at the University of Waterloo home to the world's largest math faculty. So I was pleasantly surprised to find this work report by Richard Hoshino a Waterloo student: Reforming the Teaching of Mathematics at the Undergraduate Level.

Perhaps you remember Richard from the Imprint article Richard Hoshino teaches for credit. Quote from that article:

Little did these students, or the rest of the UW environment, know that a twenty-two-year-old, third-year student in co-op Math Teaching would become one of the most popular instructors on campus after teaching a third- year problem-solving class for his co-op term.

This report strikes a chord with me because things for me this term are quite bad. I've stopped attending one class completely (PMATH330) and the other (MATH239) I might as well not attend because in both I learn absolutely nothing. Math lectures lose me completely. I was glad to read in Richard's report that I'm not the only one. I must admit that the only reason I attend classes is because of the social stigma attached to not attending and also because it helps to pick up any possible hints for assignments and exams. In semi-ideal Mattland I'd sign up for courses at the beginning of the term skip classes and a week before the midterm hire a math tutor, write the midterm and repeat the process come finals. And of course in ideal Mattland none of this would be necessary because I'd find class worth attending.

My school is failing me and I'm paying the highest computer science tution in the country for this privilege. I had until today believed that the problem was mine. But according to Richard it's not. The problem lies within our lecture-centric classes and dis-interested profs.

Compounding the lecture problem is the exam problem which Ming has already touched upon. How is it possible that our school has taught math for 35 years (we're a young school) and has to adjust the marks on *every single* exam. Is it that hard to set a fair exam? I understand that 7% of the class (those on the Dean's Honours List) need to be challenged, need to stretch their minds, but what about the rest of us? What about the majority of students who make up the classes? For me, writing an un-fair exam, is incredibly taxing and does nothing to build goodwill between me and the faculty. It only deepens my feelings of mathematical inadequacy (it also doesn't help I live with Waterloo's math star).

Don't mis-understand me. I have no doubt that our school produces the best graduates because we only let the best in and only the best (or perhaps we're all masochistic) will survive but could they be smarter?

(I wanted to give you a link but you got a screen full. Sorry about that).

In other news

Those of you in Waterloo may have noticed that Gino's is now known as Campus Pizza. Of course some of you may not have noticed. I certainly didn't till Langeman pointed it out and today's Campus Pizza Letter certainly confirms the change.

In the letter they list three reasons for the switch:

Customers are used to our local Gino's high quality pizza
Gino's (head office) is switching their sauce
Gino's (head office) is bullying our local Gino's

We of course got the real scoop behind the change. See it turns out that Gino's head office is experiencing financial difficulties and our local Gino's wants to distance themselves from the spectacular flameout which is bound to occur when they go under (think Enron). And of course the tinkering with the sauce is just a convenient reason to break their franchise contract. Now the big question is, will Campus Pizza continue to operate Panino? I always figured that they were required to as part of the franchising agreement not because it's actually a hot business (though they have a killer location in the Plaza).

More speculation welcome.

Time for some Imprint coverage.

Think before you dress absolutely killed me. Especially since one of the guys featured (the one with the Waterloo leather jacket) is in my class. I'm looking forward to the letters of complaint in next week's issue (note: the article doesn't render well in IE 6 or Opera.. ).

Imprint Condom Survey Ad. Imprint is looking for five couples to test ride condoms. Too funny. Good thing they're not running this during frosh week or it'd be pulled for sure because we all know UW frosh are virgins.

The Election. Boooring. Though I was surprised to see that the voter turn out doubled from last year. I guess as the number of election foul ups increases so does voter turn out. Maybe if our school had more naked candidates I would have voted.

UW budget goes down, tuition goes up. Choice quotes:

'The government does not account for inflation when they fund the university. '
'Furthermore, the government has not been funding certain students as they promised. When they originally came into office, they said that students should pay 25 per cent of fees. At the next election, this figure rose to 35 per cent. Last year the Ontario average was even higher: 39 per cent.'
'The university has assigned the maximum annual percentage that the board of governors permits on student fee increases: 15 per cent. However, tuition increases are also cumulative -- 15 per cent can be applied each year. This means that for engineering, computer science, architecture and optometry students, tuition could increase by 100 per cent in 5 years.'

(Emphasis mine).

Science student found dead on campus. Details on this have been sparse. Update. Last night I heard the rumor circulating about this story.. It's pretty shocking.

For the out-of-towners. From the Imprint (which is sporting a nice new look) Business down at Pho Maxim (about 80%) since they got fined for health code violations (I can't find the original article on the violations).