News Briefs

March 26, 2010

Fee nixed

VICTORIA—Graduate students at the University of Victoria claimed victory in late February after getting a fee overturned.

The Victoria News reported that the B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education had overruled a $55 per term fee proposed by the university to help fund a new $58-million athletics facility on campus. The grad students claimed they already pay significant fees - $73 per term – for athletic facilities.

Hot commodity

MONTREAL—Many people thought red Olympic mittens were a hot commodity but it seems McGill University’s red silk ties have been in demand since the university’s alumnus and Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team head coach Mike Babcock wore one to the gold-medal match.

The manager of McGill’s bookstore, in a Toronto Star story, said “in a good month we might sell two ties,” but now there is a waiting list to buy it. The tie, which Babcock refers to as his “lucky” tie, has its own Facebook page with over 1,300 fans.

Call for tuition increase

WINNIPEG—“Manitoba students have had it easy for too long,” states an editorial in a recent edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, which goes on to say that “(tuition) fees have got to rise, prudently but surely.” The editorial calls the province’s long-standing tuition freeze a “misguided provincial policy” that put institutions on a “starvation diet.”

Contract online

HAMILTON—Just months before Patrick Deane is to take over as president of McMaster University, the institution has made his contract public.

According to the Hamilton Spectator, the university posted Deane’s five-year contract on its website, demonstrating a change of course after opposing the release of current president Peter George’s contract in 2006. Deane’s contract includes $340,000 in annual salary with a maximum 15 per cent performance bonus, a $10,000 annual car allowance, up to six weeks of vacation and a paid membership to the Hamilton Club.