In brief

JENELLE PETRINCHUK STAFF

Mice at Bannatyne

UMSU president Garry Sran mentioned during his executive report at the most recent UMSU council meeting that some “little friends” decided to make a home of some equipment at the Bannatyne campus.

Recently a photocopier was purchased by UMSU for Bannatyne students and was free to use, as long as students provided their own paper. However, a family of mice made their way inside the machine, nested and had babies.

Complications arose when the mice left droppings on one of the internal drums in the copier, leaving streaks on students’ copied papers, a problem that kept occurring after the machine was fixed and cleaned.

Sran said that the machine will be replaced.

“It’s pretty gross to know one of our regional hospitals, the Health Sciences Centre, has mice,” he said.

Sran comments on federal budget

Although UMSU councilors were excited about receiving money from the federal government for post-secondary education at both the UMSU AGM on March 21 and UMSU council on March 22, president of UMSU Garry Sran said there are still downfalls to the funding.

“It’s all short of our estimates,” he said. “We thought it would be a least $1 billion.”

In the recently tabled 2007 federal budget, $800 million is being dedicated to post-secondary education, though the funding won’t be implemented until the 2008-09 fiscal year.

“It’s really crappy that they didn’t institute it this year,” said Sran.

Sran is not completely disappointed with the results, noting that it was because of active students that the government heard the message of under-funding. He did express some concern that the new government will not keep this year’s presented budget next year, the year the money is supposed to be implemented.

Sran highlighted various amounts he is excited about, such as $10 million dedicated over two years to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, $15 million to cover indirect research costs, $500 million to provide labour market training and $105 million for Aboriginal Skills and Employment Partnership.

Although the Bloc Québécois is supporting the budget, both the Liberal party and the NDP have stated that they will not.

Travel budget boosted

The March 22 UMSU council meeting saw two motions pass unanimously.

The first motion, under the executive report, was simply to destroy the ballots from the recent UMSU election. According to president Garry Sran, the bylaws state the motion must be presented to council every year.

Sran stated that the ballots would be shredded and then donated to the Winnipeg Human Society to line kennels.

The second motion resolved that UMSU council approve an additional $5,000 for undergraduate student travel grant funding. A busy year for travellers, the undergrad budget reached its limit and still had an application pending funding.

The graduate funding budget only has $200 left in it.

However, due to a potential surplus of well over $100,000 in UMSU’s discretionary budget, councilors agreed the increase for the travel grants was fine.

UMGSA election results

The results for the U of M Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) election have been released.

According to current president Meghan Gallant who released the unofficial results via e-mail, the new president of GSA will be Matt McLean who received 139 “yes-votes” and 15 “no-votes.”

The ratio of no-votes compared to yes-votes was very low throughout the election. Through the five running positions yes-votes topped out at 140 (and bottomed out at 134) while no-votes topped out at 16 (and bottomed out at 10).

Only one ballot was spoiled, not including blank ballots that only reached 45 in total.

Other winning positions were Faisal Shibley, for vice-president (internal), Aaron Gleen for vice-president (external), Caroline Rosa for vice-president (academic) and Wenyue Wu as a senator.

Two vacant senator positions will be filled via byelection in the fall.

Problem driving institute

A group of graduate students at the U of M have created a mock institution entitled the University of Manitoba’s Problem Driving Institute. The program includes a “Problem Driving Awareness Week” and a website located at www.idrivetoomuch.ca.

Although the program is essentially a parody of other self-help programs (it was founded by “Dr. T. Ransit” and includes lists of symptoms and treatments) it was established to convey a strong sustainability message, focused on U of M faculty instead of the students.