Tired of resume-padding student politicians, earnestly trying to convince you that the world will descend into anarchy if they aren't elected?

Perhaps you think anarchy sounds kind of fun?

Well, the Fire Hydrant is your (aqueous) solution! I don't have a resume to pad, and will probably never look for a job, but I DO have the potential to create some genuine, localized anarchy right here at UBC.

You probably neither know nor care what UBC's Board of Governors (a.k.a. BoG or Board) is. I do. I've even attended about five hours of their committee meetings, and would have spoken to them if I'd had a mouth. If you elect me, I'll give a shit so you don't have to.

BoG is a small group of mostly provincial appointees who run the university from behind the curtain. Martha Piper is on it. Electing me will annoy the hell out of Martha, and most of her senior administration. It's probably the most effective way to accomplish this worthy goal.

With the important stuff out of the way, here are the main planks in my campaign platform (planks in platform also shown in photo at left):

Campus Development
This year, UBC will begin selling off a massive portion of South Campus (south of 16th Avenue), for luxury apartments, a shopping mall, and assorted other purposes. If development must happen at UBC, I figure the middle of nowhere is a fine place for it. I will push for a Kraft Dinner Emporium in the South Campus mall, where students can buy KD and similar starchy foods (such as instant noodles) by the case or by the pallet, at massive discounts. One of my more serious personal... err, hydrantal concerns with the development, however, is the dog population that could live there if we don't act now. We must protect our brethren, sistren and cast-iren from the indignities wrought by dogs. I intend to institute a ban on dogs on all UBC-controlled land -- but I might be bargained down to simply electrifying campus fire hydrants for their protection. Call it a grudge.

Anyway, this sale is expected to net UBC around 600 million to a billion dollars over the next 5-10 years. While I initially believed that investing this sum and using the interest to buy beer was the way to go, I have seen the error of my ways. In fact, we need to buy a major brewery. On-campus alcohol prices could be cut by almost half if beer were available at cost. And who wouldn't want to support their studies by working nights at a brewery, complete with all the beer they could drink without passing out? Now that's what I call an investment. It'll breathe life into this campus like stores and residents never would.

Oh, and did you know that UBC's development subsidiary, UBC Properties Trust, is owned by UBC Properties Investments Limited, which is in turn owned by UBC and Loblaws? I will ensure that the proposed South Campus supermarket is not assigned to Loblaws (SuperValu, Extra Foods, Superstore,...) in an inside deal. As a fire hydrant, I believe in getting things out in the open, preferably rapidly and under high pressure. This case is black and white (by contrast, I'm only red and white) -- it's a conflict of interest.

Policy
BoG sets policies for UBC, covering such unlikely events as snow closures and profs getting appointed to Canada's Senate or elected as MPs. We had 128 policies at last count, which is clearly excessive.

A paucity of policy on policies potentially produces a plethora of poor or purposeless policies, possibly propagating pandemonium. I propose a Policy Policy, to preclude the proliferation of pointless policies (our present plight). A Policy Policy represents my paramount policy priority.

Given the other policies present, I consider it shocking that we still do not have a policy specifically addressing alien invasions. If my policy policy did not preclude such a policy, I would propose one based on the current snow closure policy. It's not obvious to me which of the two would be invoked more frequently.

Tuition
Tuition is expected to go up about another 10% this spring, which will complete its doubling in under 4 years. Can you name one former lab course that has its labs back? Any restored discussion groups? Of course not. This extra money has had no noticable impact on your education. You need an immovable object opposing this, and I'm as immovable as they come. When I attended that recent BoG committee meeting, the Board succeeded in moving me only about 30 cm, and turning me around slightly. And that's only because I wasn't paying attention.

UBC's Administration
UBC's administration likes to speak in meaningless buzzwords, in an attempt to numb the otherwise lucid listener into submission. I will leverage my core competencies in architecting synergystic pedagogical buzzword paradigms for influquating befuddlement, strategically capitalizing on proprietary buzzword sourcing to beat the administration at their own game. At the very least, I'll irritate them. Especially the public relations people and administrators who like to say "synergies" a lot. And Martha. Come to think of it, most members of the administration will probably come to view me as the banes of their existences.

UBC Pemberton
While it hasn't been announced yet, the next logical step (after the current campus land firesale and takeover of OUC Kelowna) is to move UBC's Vancouver operations to cheap land just northeast of Pemberton, then sell off the remainder of the Point Grey campus to pay for the move. I'm not sure whether this move can still be halted, but if it must go through, then I'll push for cheap Whistler ski passes (or our own ski hill) as part of the deal, along with express buses connecting UBC Pemberton with Whistler, Squamish and downtown Vancouver. Obviously, they'll have to run 24 hours a day.

One of my gripes with the current campus is that it was landscaped by homesick easterners, such that the trees are all non-native species that look dead throughout the school year. In Pemberton, I'll see if we can keep some of the original conifers in place, instead of trying to make the campus look like Ontario or England. UBC's garbage can squirrels and pizza-theiving seagulls also don't really belong on campus. I will resist pressure to name the new campus after Ike Barber, no matter how much he donates. And if any candidate can resist pressure, it's me -- I'm rated to 250 psi. Don't like our swampy, mushy grass here either? I'm a fluid mechanic, with a solid background in hydrology. Leave it to me.

Obscure technicality: What actually happens if I really do get elected. (not particularly humourous)