MARCH 14, 2007

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Rob Walker Editor in Chief

I was walking along University Avenue on Friday night after checking out 300 at the theatre, and some asshole in an old. Buick throws a liquor bottle at me from the passenger window. I could hear them laughing all the way down the ave. Who does something like this? No, seriously ‘random liquor bottle thrower-guy’, what’s your damage?.In what weird little world do you live in where this is cool? The sad part is I would bet 20 bucks the driver was just as drunk as he was. Look, I know it’s hard, coming from an alcoholic family, a father who beats you and a mother who smokes like its her job. The fact that you have no educa- tion and future, to the point where the

highlight of your life is driving along

Justa L

Mélanie Bernard Managing Editor

One of our reporters was assigned the task of finding out who was running for the upcoming SU Elections and writing a

brief summary on each candidate for the

LLCs

THE CADRE ¢ 2

Right Here and Now

University Avenue at 11pm throwing liquor bottles and looking for fights isn’t something to be ashamed of at all. In fact, I’m sure your 16 year old cousin/ girlfriend was really impressed. Frankly, I’m impressed you were able to work the window. Was it a roller or automatic? I know how those automatic jobbies scare you.

Sigh, I’m just glad it was a plastic bottle.

In other news, what’s the deal with this proposed inctease in tuition? Wasn’t 6.5 per cent last year enough? Now they’re talking about a 4 per cent increase every year for three years. Great. Because I know that the value of the degree, infla- tion and the job market have certainly increased 180 per cent to match the rise in tuition since 1990. Oh wait, it hasn’t.

So why does our tuition continue to rise? You can compare us to other uni- versities in the Maritimes all you want, but the fact is time after time Canadian universities fall behind in international

rankings of affordability in education.

More and more people are taking longer to graduate, taking on more shifts at work or just plain dropping out.

I spoke with Member of Parliament Shawn Murphy in Ottawa last month and he told me he thought the entire stu- dent loan system needs to be scrapped and started from scratch. I agree. I would really like to know what these extra costs are for...didn’t we just spend millions of dollars on building a bunch of stuff? How many students use those buildings, how much income are we expecting back from them?

Do I teally have to tell this to an insti- tution? My mom taught me this when _ I was like, 5: “If you don’t have the money, stop spending it.” Spending a ton of money on projects only a tiny, tiny fraction of the university will use and then saying you need to increase tuition is simply ridiculous.

If we keep going the way we’re going now, we'll have a lovely campus with

state of the art buildings, and it will be

completely deserted.

ittle Something ...

executive positions. We were wondering if the assignment was too big for one reporter to handle and we were consid- ering asking two reporters to tackle it. What if 12 people had applied for the positions of SU Prez, VP Activities and SU Executive VP?? It would be a night- mate to try to get all of those profiles done.

But this is UPEI after all. Would some- thing like that actually happen? No. I was disgusted to find out that only 1 person was running for each SU president and VP activities. It is really hard to imagine that out of a school of 4,000 students only two people were interested in those positions. This really goes to show that this campus is the most apathetic cam- pus on the face of the planet. And that

is not something to be proud of.

I can’t imagine how it feels for those people who were the only ones who applied. I would assume they want to actually feel like they won the position by proving to the students that they have what it takes to make a difference... instead of having the position handed to them through a yes/no vote.

Do the positions just not seem like that much fun? Does it sound like too much work? Do most students on campus already have part-time jobs? Is trying to make a difference in this school through the student union such a futile ep ie Why were there only a handful of students that applied?

I hope next year there are more people that get involved because this year, it’s an

embarrassment to the school.