10.13.06
Posted in Canadian life, University life at 7:50 pm by ducky
Today, an article ran in the Globe and Mail about various woes at Green College. Much of it is about a harassment lawsuit that I don’t know anything about, but then part was about the recent contract issues and the tensions between the Principal, Keith Benson, and the residents.
According to the article, Prof. Benson “paints a picture of drinking and partying so wild that it forced two serious scholars to leave the college last year because they couldn’t work.”
My immediate reaction was, “Where were these parties and why wasn’t I invited?!?” 😉
In all seriousness, however, Prof. Benson’s perception of reality is very, very different from mine. I’ll put things that the reporter said he said (which are direct quotes from the article, but frequently paraphrases (not direct quotes) from Prof. Benson) in bold, and my model of the universe in italics.
- “Prof. Benson attributes the conflicts to a few residents” – 59 of the roughly 100 residents attached a statement to their contract stating that the didn’t like it. Out of about 100 residents, about 75 cast ballots to form a Green College Resident Association, 70 voted for, 4 abstained, and 1 voted against. This is more than fits comfortably into my definition of “few”.
- “whom he describes as disrespectful and so abusive to college staff that equity complaints have been made against them.” – That’s the first I’ve heard of complaints from the staff, and I am surprised. In the contract dispute, I thought that the residents behaved with admirable composure given the sudden threat to their housing.
- “[Benson] also describes the residents as very young” – That’s the nicest thing anybody has said to me all day! I’m 43, my husband is 44, and we are not the oldest residents at the college. I haven’t really investigated this year, but last year there were (at least) two people who were in their 50s, us in our early 40s, and then about three people (out of 100) who were in their late thirties. After that, it got harder for me to tell age, but many of the residents are older. I’d guess that the average age is probably around 27, and that doesn’t fit with my mental model of “very young”.
- Benson “paints a picture of drinking and partying so wild that it forced two serious scholars to leave the college last year because they couldn’t work” – This was the first I’d heard of any issue. I can think of two in-room parties (not counting the time when we had about ten guests sitting in our room drinking approximately one glass of wine with no music and minimal noise) in the two years I’ve been here, and both were on non-school nights. There have been a few Green College parties run by the Social Committee, but the official parties and both in-room parties were on non-school nights.
- “it forced two serious scholars” – implies that not all the scholars are serious. I’ve thought hard about the people I’ve known here, and I can only think of one — a postdoc — who perhaps was not very serious about his scholarship. (He might have been, but his research didn’t come up in conversation much.)
- “‘They don’t understand academic civility,’ Prof. Benson said, calling their behaviour inappropriate. ‘For example, at a welcoming dinner [for residents and alumni], they did the wave. And an emcee made jokes about [the housing contract] in front of the dean.'” – While I can’t swear that the dean also did the wave, she was at one of the tables that did do the wave. All the tables except for Dr. Benson’s did the wave. My table was almost completely alumni, and they expressed disappointment that Prof. Benson’s table did not do the wave. And my mental model of emcees is that they are supposed to make jokes.
Now, I understand that journalists are not able to provide absolutely all context for absolutely all quotes, so perhaps he didn’t really mean what the article indicated. I hope so.
Finally, according to the article, “Ann Rose, acting dean of graduate studies, said she is solving problems as they arise.” – I have no disagreement here. I been impressed at how helpful Dean Rose has been.
Permalink
09.21.06
Posted in Canadian life, University life at 9:55 am by ducky
I’ve been negligent in telling what ultimately happened with the Green College residence contract conflict.
The University came back with a new contract. There are still some egregious clasuses regulating (perfectly legal) behavior, but during the meeting, the administrators repeated over and over again that they had no intention of enforcing the rules to ridiculous extremes. They said that those clauses were intended for egregious behavior. For example, the prohibition against rules against any noise audible outside the room is not intended to be used to keep me from saying, “Who’s there?”, but to keep people from blaring 200 decibal opera at 3 AM.
I suspect that it is hard to write contracts to clearly prohibit egregious behavior while also allowing reasonable behavior, and they didn’t want to work that hard.
Jim and I had to think really hard about whether we wanted to sign or not. We ultimately did, attaching a statement that said (basically) that we were signing in reliance upon the statements of the administrators that the rules would be enforced reasonably. The fundamental reason we felt okay signing was that people closer to the negotiations than us said that the administration recognized that we were quite capable of causing pain (in the form of bad publicity) for them if they were unreasonable about the contract.
Most of the residents who were holding out also signed. I know of two students and one spouse who could not bring themselves to sign, and will be moving out in a few days. At least 57 residents attached the “in reliance” clause to their contracts. This includes people who did so retroactively — people who were not part of “the holdouts”. I don’t know if their statements will have any legal weight, but it sure was a nice show of support.
One postscript: a professor I spoke to seemed to be under the impression that the police were present at some point. I think he must be a child of the sixties, where police were everywhere and disputes were violent. Or perhaps he was thinking of the APEC97 protests. I was only here for a few days during the contract dispute, but I have not heard *anything* about police. While I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some raised voices in the town hall meeting with the Principal about the contract, but I also have the impression that the negotiations with other university administrators were entirely calm and civil.
Permalink
08.28.06
Posted in Canadian life, University life at 11:09 pm by ducky
Today I and at least 21 of my fellow residents received eviction notices from our dorm.
“Dorm” isn’t exactly the right word for it, but “residential academic community” is a mouthful. The University of British Columbia’s Green College is supposed to be more than just a place to live, with a strong academic component and strong self-governance. It also has the reputation for having better food: the ten meals per week are provided by the Green College Dining Society, a non-profit owned and run by the residents.
At least, that’s how it is supposed to work. On 28 July, after being repeatedly assured by the Principal that there would be “no substantive changes”, we were all given a new contract and told to sign in two business days. In addition to switching from being month-to-month to term-based, the new contract has a number of onerous terms. Many of them would not be legal if they were in a private landlord’s contract, but UBC has a blanket exemption from the BC Tenancy Act.
The new contract:
- Has a clause that the administration can change the terms of the contract at will with a week’s notice. (That’s not a contract, that’s an oath of fealty!)
- Has a long list of prohibited behaviors that are grounds for behavior, which if enforced, would mean that everybody could be evicted. Prohibited behaviors include but are not limited to:
- Any noise that is audible from outside the room. Walking around, moving chairs, and calling, “Who’s there?” would all thus be grounds for eviction.
- Having a party on any day at any time except for Friday and Saturday night, or without prior notice to the Resident Advisor. Parties are defined as alcohol, seven or more people, noise. (The contract does not specify if there is an AND or an OR joining those clauses!) This means that if seven people go down to the TV room to watch a hockey game on Sunday afternoon, they cheer their team, and one person has a beer, it is a violation worthy of eviction.
- Open (which apparently means, as in the US, unsealed) liquor containers in the hallways. Thus to bring a half-empty bottle of wine from one room to another would be an eviction-worthy violation. (I guess they would rather we finish it off.)
- If evicted, you still have to pay your rent.
- Says that we have to adhere to documents that do not exist.
- Has a cancel-with-no-penalty date that is two weeks before we got the contract.
- Gives the administration the right to enter our rooms with no notice for almost any reason.
- Gives the administration the right to make us change rooms whenever they feel like it, with minimal notice.
- Says that if the administration changes the meal plan, then we have to sign up for the new meal plan at whatever cost and whatever level of service they switch to. This gives them a way to dissolve that pesky student-run Green College Dining Society and further erode self-governance.
- Says that if there is a catastrophe such that our rooms are unlivable, we still have to pay rent and meal plan. (This was also in the previous contract, but with a month-to-month lease, there was a much lower financial risk.)
- Researchers who lose their eligibility (i.e. turn in their thesis) have only three days to move out, and must pay a penalty of 25% of the semester’s cost for doing so. (This makes short-term stays, e.g. for visiting research scholars, difficult.)
- Explicitly promises nothing except for a mattress pad and internet access.
- Drinking games are not permitted. Shared-container alcohol (like a punchbowl) is not permitted at parties.
- Acting as a host to someone who has been evicted is itself an evictable offense.
In addition, it limits which rooms couples with one partner being a non-student can live in, thus effectively limiting the number of non-student partners. This is an end run around the student-run Membership Committee.
I have the impression that many of these clauses are ones that they have no intention of enforcing. (In fact, the Principal has already issued contracts to two couples with non-student partners who do NOT live in one of the two couples rooms.) This seems strange to me: if you do not plan to enforce the rules, you shouldn’t write them into the contract. Maybe they think that writing the rules into the contract means that they are covered in the case of liability, but I would think that if it is patently obvious that they cannot enforce the rules as written, then I would think that a jury could be persuaded that the rules effectively did not exist.
We have tried reasoning with the acting Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies (who has traditionally overseen Green College), Housing, and Legal. While the Dean seems sympathetic, Housing and Legal are resolute: “The University does not negotiate contracts.” (Um. Didn’t they just negotiate contracts with the Teaching Assistant’s Union?)
I am puzzled by the university’s response — it seems to me like the university is dangerously under-reacting. Apparently, the University is exempt from the BC Tenancy Act because they need to be able to discriminate against non-students, which is prohibited by the Tenancy Act. However, they really seem to be abusing their exemption. It seems to me that this would leave them vulnerable to the assertion that they should not get a blanket exemption, but rather only exemptions from specific, targeted clauses.
Mostly, however, I am sad. Green College seemed like such a bright, shiny place when we applied. From talking to alumni, it sounds like it used to be a really neat institution. But while I am really impressed by my fellow residents, the institution seems to be sliding into greyness.
Permalink
07.04.06
Posted in Canadian life at 9:02 am by ducky
This weekend, Jim and I found ourselves in a piano bar in the “New York, New York” casino in Las Vegas. The two piano players were working the crowd pretty hard, not playing any songs in full unless they got paid. The going rate seemed to be about $20 per song early on, increasing as the night went on.
At one point, someone requested err bought “Proud to be an American”, and the lead player stirred the crowd up:
Piano player #1: Who here is American?
Crowd: screams
Piano player #1: Who’s proud to be an American?
Crowd: screams
Piano player #1: Everybody else, well I guess you’re unintelligible.
I didn’t understand what he said, but it sounded lightly derogatory. I thought that was a shame, that it might make the non-Americans uncomfortable.
I was thus very happy and proud of my husband when he filled out a request card (accompanied by the requisite $20) that said, “Please play O, Canada in honor of Canada Day.” I thought that was a nice gesture to our friends up north who have been so nice to us.
When the request percolated to the top of the pile, however, the lead player played it to the crowd as an affront to the United States. I was stunned. He then made some deragatory comments about Canada’s military, implying, “You better not insult the U.S. because the U.S. could go kick Canada’s ass any day.”
The lead player quickly got someone to pay up $40 to play The Star-Spangled Banner. Player #2 played “good cop”, and got Player #1 to agree to play O, Canada if Canada would pony up $41.
We didn’t bite. Partly because I had a suspicion that the price for O, Canada would get raised indefinitely, but mostly because this was never intended to be a competition! Jim got the request card and wrote, “This is an American game” and we left. (I thought he should have taken his $20 back, but he didn’t.)
I wonder if they understood his comment. They probably took it as meaning, “This game is rigged in favor of Americans, so I can’t win, so I won’t bother trying to compete.” Instead, what he meant was, “Competing like this is something Americans do. Canadians do not value one-upmanship.”
As we left, they were singing God Bless America. I think from now until forever, when I hear people say, “God bless America”, in my head, I’m going to hear them saying, “God bless America, but fuck every other country.”
I thought about writing a disappointed letter to the casino management, but Jim pointed out that the piano players were just playing to the crowd — that they simply reflected the sentiments of the crowd.
P.S. I later realized that incident in the bar revealed not one, but two ugly things. Not only does American patriotism exclude any respect for other countries, but in America, everything is for sale.
Permalink
03.10.06
Posted in Canadian life, Random thoughts at 10:31 am by ducky
On Wednesday, I decided that I’d seen the last snow of the year. It wasn’t actually snow — it was very small hail — but I decided that was good enough.
Yesterday (Thursday), there was a light snow that didn’t stick. I decided that the hail from the previous day didn’t count.
Today, we woke up to big puffy fluffy snow that stuck. So today I have to decide that snow only counts if it sticks.
Permalink
03.08.06
Posted in Canadian life, Random thoughts at 7:51 pm by ducky
Today, as I walked to class, the rain turned to white stuff. I thought it was snow, but it was actually very small hail.
It was really miserable today — cold, wet, clammy, more cold, more wet, more clammy. The rooms I had my classes in were dry but cold, and my jeans took a long time to dry out as well. All day it rained, and pretty hard, too.
It reminded me a bit of Illinois, where I grew up and got my first two academic degrees. In late February, we’d have a streak of really nice weather, and everybody would start to get giddy at finally being done with winter. Then, after everybody took their winter clothes home over Spring Break, just as the daffodils would start to bloom, we’d get another snowfall. Everybody would get really depressed at the seemingly interminable winter.
This happened regularly enough over enough years that even as dense as I am, I learned that it always snows exactly once after Spring Break. So in late February, when everybody else would be dancing about, I’d still be casting suspicious gazes at the sky. I didn’t trust Mother Nature to keep up the good weather.
Sure enough, the week after Spring Break, it would snow.
While everybody else would be morose about the return of bad weather, I by contrast would be greatly relieved. Finally! The last snow! I could relax and look forward to the oncoming beautiful weather.
So today, even as I looked at the white precipitation in the palm of my glove, I was happy. I don’t know the Vancouver weather patterns, but I convinced myself that this was the “one last snow after Spring Break.”
I was relieved.
Permalink
06.08.05
Posted in Canadian life at 9:39 pm by ducky
My husband and I are aboot to move to Canada, eh?It was very difficult to choose between the computer science programs at Stanford University University of British Columbia. Stanford has more prestige, we wouldn’t have to move, my husband wouldn’t have to quit his job, I’m already in the Stanford system, I know people there, and it would be cheaper. (Really. I’d finish faster, so the opportunity cost would be lower.)
However, UBC had some things going for it, some of which I recap in more detail my UBC trip report. I felt that I would have richer interactions with my fellow students at UBC. A secondary consideration is that we would like to see if we like living in Vancouver. While my student visa requires that I return, and while Jim wants to come back to the US afterwards, I’d like to live in Canada for at least a little while.
We have lots of family on both sides of the family now living in Bellingham, WA, which is about an hour south of Vancouver: my mother, Jim’s mother, Jim’s sister and family, my cousin and family, and two nephews going to Western Washington. That adds up to twelve people in five households.
I also am dismayed by the trajectory that the US is taking.
- Americans seem to have completely lost the will to actually pay for the services that they demand, resulting in what I consider gross fiscal mismanagement.
- I am concerned about the erosion of individual liberties that has been instituted by this administration.
- I am concerned about the culture of fear that is being developed, and I’m becoming convinced that the fear-mongering is deliberate. (There’s an ad that the Department of Homeland Security runs on the Spanish-language radio station that I listen to that features a little boy at bedtime, asking his mother to leave the light on because he’s afraid of terrorist attacks.)
- While I am certain that the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution will eventually lead to genuine equal protection under the law for my gay and lesbian friends, it’s a slow and frustrating fight in the US. Canada is much farther along.
A minor, tertiary point is that my mother has some health challenges. It was not the deciding factor, however; I’m in adequate denial that I think the aftermath of her surgery will be all over by the time I start classes.
Green College
My husband and I are thus leaving our small, cramped condo in Palo Alto for a spacious independent living facility in Canada. We will be outsourcing our kitchen, dining room, and living room to our dorm complex.Green College is kind of a graduate dorm with some extras (and a few larger rooms for couples).. They take seriously the idea of building community: you have to apply and convince them that you would contribute to the community. They sponsor lectures. They expect people to show up for breakfast and dinner. They intentionally designed the rooms to outsource the kitchen/living areas.
Oh, and it’s got a great location. (The dorm is actually up and to the left from the marker.) We are very much looking forward to the move.
“Is your husband going with you?”
I’ve been surprised at the number of people who have asked if my beloved husband was coming with me, even people who I would have thought would know just how totally, utterly stupid-crazy we are about each other. Yes, he’s coming with me. “What’s he going to do?” He has great plans to master Emperor Level in Civ 3 and learning how to fly at Boundary Bay airport. He might also get enthusiastic and study for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.
Basically, he’s been at the same job for sixteen years, and just wants to goof off a little bit. After how well he’s treated me, I’m happy to assist him in that endeavor.
Permalink
03.24.05
Posted in Canadian life, University life at 9:41 pm by ducky
My beloved husband and I just got back from Vancouver, British Columbia, where we explored the University of British Columbia as one of the options for a MS in CS. The other option is Stanford, which unquestionably has more prestige, but everyone says that Vancouver is a great place to live, UBC seemed like a reasonable university, and we have family just across the border in Bellingham.
We were very impressed with UBC.
Grad student interaction
One place that I think UBC really shines over Stanford is in interactions with other students. At Stanford, it is quite possible to get a MS degree without ever seeing another student, thanks to their strong distance learning program. Not only that, but apparently a lot of the on-campus students don’t bother actually going to class in person when the lectures are available on the Web.
Furthermore, at Stanford, the MSCS is a short, terminal program. While you can do research, it’s not the normal path. This means that the students are not part of lab groups, and I think therefore much more isolated.
At UBC, by contrast, all first-year masters students, who usually are not yet doing research, are given a desk and a SunRay thin client in a room secured with key-card access. After the first year, MS students start on their research, at which point they get a desk in a lab with other students in that research group.
Graduate students are also woven into departmental governance much more than I could ever imagine at any of the universities that I have known. There is a grad student on every departmental committee, including grad admissions, including faculty recruiting, including even the committee that chose a new department head. Barry Po, a PhD student who was my principal contact, apparently had been and is still very involved in getting the new building constructed — up to and including negotiating prices for computer equipment!
CS Department facilities
The facilities there are outstanding. They are JUST moving into a big new, well-laid out, well-equipped building. UBC is a state school, and the winds of political favor happen to be blowing in the University and Department’s favor right now. (UBC is building lots of residence halls right now, in part because of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.)
I like the usability of the new building much more than I like Gates, Stanford’s CS building. (And it’s not just the name I don’t like.) At Gates, you have quite long sight-lines down the corridors, but the ceilings are at normal heights, so it gives an optical illusion of being cramped. In the UBC building, the ceilings are quite high.
At Gates, the doors don’t have windows in them — not even the ones leading in and out of staircases or classrooms. (I’m always nervous that I will whap someone in the face as I go through or that someone will whap me.) The faculty offices have a thin, tall window next to their doors that IIRC is frosted. That helps a little, but is nothing like at UBC.
In the new building at UBC, the faculty doors are mostly glass. They are frosted for privacy, but you at least get the natural light filtering through. Meanwhile, the labs — where the grad students live — have clear glass doors, so you can see people bustling. It feels alive.
There is a snack-bar-ish area in Gates which you can discover if you walk through the entire building (as I did). However, it isn’t at all obvious. They are also experimenting with a small student lounge — big enough for about three overstuffed chairs and a ping-pong table.
At UBC, there are two different lounges in the new building. There is an undergraduate lounge on the first floor of the new building in a very obvious place. It’s quite large — there are about four sofas and about ten tables, with lots of handsome chairs (with “cs.ubc.ca” carved in the backs), and some vending machines. Then, on the top floor, with an absolutely stunning view of the ocean and mountains, is another lounge that is more for faculty/staff/grad students. (I don’t know if undergrads are restricted, but they probably wouldn’t go up there.) It felt bigger than the undergrad lounge, had a sink, and I bet it’ll have a fridge and a microwave at some point.
At Gates, I have the sense that most people keep their doors closed. (Either that or nobody’s ever there!) In the CS department at UBC, it seemed like people kept their doors open. It was a much friendlier environment. (Note that this is probably in large part because Stanford has such prestige. People probably bother Stanford profs a lot more than UBC profs.)
Housing
We stayed at Saint John’s College, a grad student/postdoc dorm that has a few couples’ suites, and that was a good move. We got to meet a number of the students, who gave us good info about the CS department, residences, culture, etc. Saint John’s has a mandatory meal plan, seminars, and various events that happen frequently. For example, next week one of the guys we ate dinner with is going to give a talk on a particular composer.One woman showed us the suite that she and her husband have at Saint John’s; it is very small by the standards we are used to, but livable.
Saint John’s is interesting in that it has a strong international theme to it. Another, similar residence hall called Green College has more interesting architecture and a strong interdisciplinary theme.
There are also two apartment complexes that we could live in on-campus. These are much more stand-alone: no meal service, no seminars, probably minimal socializing.
If we go to UBC, we think our first choice is to live in Green’s or Saint John’s if we can get in.
Trailing spouse
Canada is MUCH more accommodating of trailing spouses than the US is. Not only would there be no problem with Jim living in a student dorm, but there would be zero problem with him working up there. He basically just has to fill out a form.
They want me!
UBC is recruiting me very aggressively. They want me. They say they think I’d be a valuable addition to the department. They are reimbursing us $500 of the cost of this trip, regardless of whether or not we decide to move there. Barry Po has spent a significant amount of time wooing me when he should be preparing for his thesis defense next week. I had a full day of tours, meetings with faculty, etc.
Stanford doesn’t really seem to care. I have the sense that if I went to UBC, Stanford would just offer my position to one of the other highly-qualified students with nary a backwards glance.
They are friendly!
People were genuinely, sincerely, actively nice up there. For example, I was wandering around the halls of the old CS building to get a sense of the place. (I like to look at cartoons and posters on doors, see what flyers are pinned up, etc. to get the feel of a place.) Alan Hu, one of the CS faculty, saw me wandering around and asked if he could help me find something. I explained who I was and what I was doing, and asked him a few questions about the department. (It’s always good to talk to people that weren’t hand-picked to talk to you!) He ended up spending an hour or so in a very engaging conversation with my husband and I comparing Stanford (where he got his PhD) and UBC.
Conclusions
UBC acquitted itself extremely well. Now I need to go see if I can bend the Stanford experience into one that would give me as rich interactions with other students (and, to a lesser extent, faculty) as UBC would.
Permalink
« Previous Page « Previous Page Next entries »
