Annoyed with student politicians earnestly trying to convince you that the world will descend into anarchy if they aren't elected?

Does anarchy sound worth a try?

Well, I don't have a resume to pad, I'll probably never look for a job, and I specialize at anarchy.

You probably neither know nor care what the AMS VP Academic & University Affairs does. I do -- I'll care so you won't have to. It's a heavy portfolio with weighty issues dealing with anything UBC does, and I'm a heavy candidate with a strong (five-bolt) connection to UBC. I've attended AMS Council meetings and I've been kicked out of as many UBC Board meetings as my combined competitors have been barred from entering. I've rolled for Board on three occasions (2004, 2005 and 2006), losing by as few as 6 (six) votes -- I have an excellent track record at very nearly but not quite winning elections, which I fully intend to continue this year. But I need your vote(s)!

Electing me will not just annoy the hell out of both the UBC administration and AMS types, I'll automatically be on the UNA board, so you get to really irritate the rich people too, for free! In fact, I'll probably be the single most effective way to accomplish that worthy goal.

Now, here are the main planks in my campaign platform (actual planks also shown in photo at left):

Campus Development

With the recent lease of a huge chunk of land south of 16th Avenue to UBC Properties Trust, UBC is embarking in earnest on a bold project of turning its land endowment into as much cash as possible, as quickly as possible. This, of course, means selling ludicrously expensive condos to rich people. Unfortunately, these rich people tend to think a university consists of students wandering around silently, reading books and pondering the meaning of life. Their neighbours in the undergrad residences, of course, believe university consists of some linear combination of drinking, partying, running around naked, listening to music, getting laid, and making noise. The massive influx of rich people will probably lead to UBC's downfall in a decade or two, but there's a far more immediate and pressing threat. Dogs.

We must protect our brethren, sistren and cast-iren from the indignities wrought by dogs. I intend to ban dogs in the academic core. If necessary, I'm willing to enforce this with an electric fence, or by floating campus fire hydrants at 70kV to ground for their protection. It's not a grudge, it's a vendetta.

Now, I have to admit, south of 16th Avenue isn't as bad a place for housing as, say, immediately downwind of the Chem building. I'll push for a Kraft Dinner Emporium in the South Campus mall, where students will be able to buy KD and similar starchy foods (such as instant noodles or rice) by the case or by the pallet, at massive discounts.

One common excuse for building condos on campus is that that was the original intent of giving UBC so much land -- we could sell it for housing to support ourselves. Another original intent was that everything south of University Boulevard would be agricultural. If we're selling the housing, it's logically inconsistent to not be bringing back the cows. I'll push to have a roving band of cows helping with the lawnmowing and hedge-trimming. We can even study ways to collect the methane they emit, for sustainable energy. All you need to get started is a cork! (Note: Cows should not be corked for extended periods of time; do not stand directly behind a corked cow.)

Incidentally, did you know UBC has the right to expropriate land? Section 51 of the University Act reads "A university may expropriate any land that it considers necessary for its purposes." How many times do you think we can sell condos and expropriate them back before people realize what we're up to? I figure about three or four, but time will tell. Muwahahahaha....

Anyway, South Campus 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've seen the error of my ways. In fact, we need to either buy a major brewery or start our own. 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 boutiques and rich people never could.

Student Housing

We have a fairly serious problem with student housing. It's expensive, there's nowhere near enough of it, and it's run on the principle that if you don't like how it's run you'll leave and one of the thousands of waitlisted students who doesn't know any better will gladly take your place.

A solution came to me one day when I was reflecting on my liberation and recently-found mobility. I propose a residence building on wheels. Think of the advantages! New scenery and a new perspective every morning, a fun game of hide-and-seek after class, the ability to escape the cops' and campus security's wrath when you have a party (and building inspectors, saving us money), all with no reduction in green space (it would just use existing pavement). Better still, it could be made into a pirate dorm, attacking and ransacking the luxury condos as it sails past. This would be best done toward the end of midterms, when socks would make a particularly noxious projectile. Any luxury condos still standing post-liberation could be reused for more student housing!

Teaching Evaluations

UBC has recently started having standard, UBC-wide teaching evaluation questions. Regardless of whether they actually return useful information, I think this is a good idea. To be useful, though, it has to mean something. Now, good teachers are occasionally rewarded with awards, tenure, recognition, or a pat on the back, but nothing's done about the really horrible ones.

I figure there need to be prizes for bad teaching. Teach too fast? You get to drink from the firehose. Mumble too much? Your incoming e-mail doesn't really need consonants. Keep making ridiculous mistakes and typos to the point nobody knows whether to believe you? We've got a cheque for you for $5.000,00 (I think that's where the decimal goes?) give or take a minus sign and a zero or two, which we signed on February 32nd, 2080. You can pick it up in BUCH G1307. Perhaps we can have a contest where, every year, one prof gets voted off the island.

University Boulevard

Of all the possible places for housing, next door to the Pit Pub, immediately downwind of Chemistry and across the road from the biomedical precinct has got to be the worst UBC has to offer. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that UBC has identified that precise location as in serious need of housing. Similarly, students, faculty and staff have indicated that they want food outlets spread out more evenly around campus for convenience (if they want variety, they can walk), so UBC wants to install a good number of new food outlets under the new housing, right next to all the other food outlets. Underneath all that, they want to build TransLink a new $45M underground bus terminal, based on pre-UPass ridership numbers, the assumption that we had adequate bus service and stable (non-increasing) ridership three years ago, and that having buses switch to driving on the left while underground in a busy tunnel was a clever idea.

In my personal, or more accurately hydrantal, opinion, this is a bad idea. It's particularly annoying that UBC's paying for $40M of the $45M. So how do you fix this situation? Well, you elect an immovable object. Me. I'm not afraid to step on the administration's toes, and at 94.6kg including the campaign platform and casters, you know they'll feel it. They won't be able to fool me either, I have spies on every street corner. I'm your best bet for fixing this project.

If they somehow manage to build the bus terminal as designed without me stopping them, I'll insist on firepoles or spiral slides for quick access, at a bare minimum. As a device not only interested in but specifically designed for public safety, I'll also do what I can to ensure the design looks, feels and actually is safe.

Municipal Governance

UBC is not in Vancouver (nor is it in the University Endowment Lands). UBC is in Greater Vancouver Regional District (Metro Vancouver) Electoral Area A. This means that we don't really have a municipal government. There's nobody to pass leash bylaws, or stoop-and-scoop bylaws, or even create speed limits. Some of this UBC does, the GVRD does a couple things, but many of them just aren't possible.

Worse yet, the only opportunity for anyone elected to have input into transit is through the Council of Mayors, which passes TransLink's overall strategic visiony stuff. They also pick the TransLink board from a list of names handed to them from an unelected and slanted screening panel. We don't have a mayor, so we don't get a say. There is a solution. UBC can become the Mountain Resort Municipality of Quadra.

Why is this a good idea? The result is a municipality that has more students living in it than non-university-related residents. Mountain Resort Municipalities have certain rights for the landowner (UBC) that other municipalities don't (this could be used to prevent the locals from interfering with our liquor licenses, fumehoods, or loud partying). A mayor and council exist, with the power to ban or restrict dogs, ban or restrict cars, pass bylaws, share control over development with UBC, and have a small say over transit. I want to call it Quadra because we're in the federal Vancouver-Quadra riding, which does not contain a Quadra. It should really have a Quadra.

Actually, to really have say over transit, the best approach is to have every residence be its own municipality. Most votes at TransLink's Council of Mayors are one vote per 20 000 residents or fraction thereof, so every new mayor is a new vote. The appointment of the Board is one mayor, one vote (to slant it to favour cars), so we'd be particularly powerful there. And there are several municipalities already included with fewer residents than Gage, including Anmore and Belcarra.

Now, you may guess that a Mountain Resort Municipality is supposed to have a ski hill. You'd be correct. Thanks to section 2 of the Mountain Resort Associations Act, having a Mountain Resort Municipality requires that there by overnight accommodation (check), year-round recreational facilities (check), and a ski lift. So we need to dump some dirt onto the side of a parkade, and install a ski lift. Fortunately, campus seems to be riddled with archaeological projects to find gigantic square holes that someone once buried, so there's plenty of spare dirt. A ski lift probably doesn't cost all that much to build if its vertical drop is 10 metres, and the operating cost is nil, because we'd only be able to use it once every few years anyway. But we'd need a sign at the bottom showing where the run was (in a beautifully-drawn snowy oblique view), along with the run's name, a black diamond (there's probably traffic at the bottom), and a red box saying it's closed.

If you've ever wanted to go to university at a ski resort, this is your chance. Just elect me, and I'll make it happen.

Buzzwords

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 the influquation of befuddlement, strategically capitalizing on proprietary buzzword sourcing for hydrantal buzzword equity escalation. My buzzword engineering will capture mindshare at the expense of the administration's bovine biowaste. At the very least, I'll irritate the people who like to say "synergies" a lot.

The Vancouver Campus Plan vision document introduces the buzzword "collaboratories". I understand collaboratories are a new paradigm for pedagogical synergies. I think this particular word is stupid, and will not rest until it is excised from the campus plan lexicon.

Endorsements

I am the only candidate for VP Academic not dis-endorsed by the Devil's Advocate. Those debaters really know a solid candidate when they see one.

Note

***Note: If elected, I promise to break all my campaign promises, including this one.***