The Bachelor of Arts & Science Integrative Council hosted the second annual Ampersand Conference last week, which focussed on creativity in the digital age. The four-day event featured addresses by Christian Lander, the founder of the popular blog Stuff White People Like, and Ben Huh, the internet entrepreneur who popularized Lolcats, as well as workshops on digitial innovation.
News
News, off and on campus.
CAMPUS: Web site offers alternative to traditional text
Going back to school may be becoming less painful on your wallet with the introduction of free online books. Freeload Press Company is offering online versions of textbooks, workbooks and study guides in the popular PDF format at no cost. The catch? The pages also contain advertisements, making textbooks appear more like magazines and causing controversy within the academic world.
Daily Publications Society narrowly passes $1 fee increase
The Daily Publications Society, which publishes The McGill Daily and Le Délit, passed its $1 fee increase on Thursday, with 51.3 per cent of students voting to increase the DPS’s non-opt-outable fee to $6 per semester. Approximately 2,500 students, or 12.
CAMPUS: Wireless worries
As early as the nineties, McGill was at the forefront of developing a wireless network. Today that network provides over 2,500 wireless access points, each covering 250 square feet, and the university is in the process of upgrading its coverage and launching a three-year project to better integrate users around the campus.
McGill study finds Montreal still a long way from racial equality
Montreal is still a long way from racial equality, according to a recent study conducted by several professors at McGill’s School of Social Work. The comprehensive survey of the city’s black demographics found that black Montrealers make less money and are less likely to be employed than non-blacks.
CAMPUS: SSMU ditches room fees
Making good on a central campaign promise, Students’ Society executives announced last week that rooms in the Shatner Building can now be booked free of charge. Beginning last Friday, internal clubs, faculty associations, media, SSMU recognized groups and others are now able to use the rooms without the customary bill.
Gross talks physics and the history of the universe
Can you construct a machine with free will? Will the universe accelerate forever? And how will the universe end? These were the questions that David Gross, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, addressed during his lecture at McGill on Thursday. Born in Washington, D.
NATIONAL: McGill number eight in counterculture
McGill students can now brag to their friends at UBC about a new top-ten ranking, but its not one that university administrators will be talking about. In the October issue of cannabis magazine High Times, McGill has been ranked as the number eight counterculture school in North America.
CAMPUS: Library service desk in jeopardy
A proposed reorganization of the Blackader-Lauterman Library of Architecture and Art is in the works and may end up closing the service desk permanently. Janine Schmidt, the Trenholme Director of Libraries, issued a document in May 2006 to McGill librarians that presented a plan to “close the service point of the library and leave the collection part unattended,” according to Marilyn Berger, the head librarian at Blackader-Lauterman.
CAMPUS: MUNACA still without contract
The McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association’s negotiation committee rejected McGill’s latest contract offer last week, informing the administration that they would not lower their salary demands. MUNACA, a union representing non-academic employees like nurses, librarians, and administrative assistants, wants a 13 per cent salary increase over four years.
