Tigers on the Road!

On Wednesday September 17th the grand unveiling of the DAL bus took place outside of the Killiam Library on Studley Campus.

There were people from the university, athletes, members of the DSU executive, and interested students all milling about once the bus drove down University Avenue beeping the horn. The University's Vice President of Student Services was the official ribbon cutter with myself and several athletes there to help hold the ribbon.

The bus is phenomenal - we all were able to take a tour, and as silly as that may sound there were a lot of great points we learned on the tour so it was definitely worth it.

What I loved the most was the this bus did not cost students anything! The Department of Athletics reviewed the transportation budget last year and when they added up how much money they were spending on renting buses and vans they decided to investigate and find out how much it would cost if we simply had our own bus. So they crunched the numbers and it worked out that it was more economical for them to get a bus. The bus was made in Germany and is the only one of its kind in Canada (fuel effieciency, sustainable, wireless access, etc).

The bus will also be able to be rented by departments and student groups - there is a fee associated with it - but if you can afford it it is a great way to travel.

DSU Website - www.dsu.ca

Each year the DSU executive come in and they talk about changing the website and doing an overhaul. This year we have had conversations around that and it is something we are looking at doing. But that does not mean that we have decided to ignore our current website. This year the executive have been great at updating it when necessary.

So make sure to check it out on a regular basis - there is always new things from media releases, to the poll, to news items (right hand side of the main page - great to find out the big events/topics going on).

And as always if there is anything that you want to have added to the website please email our Vice President (Internal), Daniel Boyle at dsuvpi@dal.ca

WWW.DSU.CA

Imagine Imagine Imagine

On Tuesday September 23rd the DSU will be hosting its fall semester Imagine event.

The event is designed for the DSU executive to gain feedback from their stakeholders. For this event we have chosen to engage just our students. The University has started to create conversations around what a campus master plan would look like. Several committees have been created to tackle different aspects of the master plan consulations. The DSU executive are involved in several of the committees and want to make sure that when they are sitting around the disussion table that student concerns are being brought forward. The event on Tuesday will be students opportunity to come foward and engage in conversations with other students on what their dream campus would be (this ranges from buildings to experiences).

After the event, the DSU executive will harvest (gather) all of the points given at the meeting, will write a report detailing the event and the outcomes of it. This information will be available to students via the DSU website (www.dsu.ca).

There will also be opportunities for students to meet with DSU executives after this initial event to discuss other ideas that may arrise over the year concerning the master plan.

We have been working very hard this year to ensure that we have ways to connect and engage with our students on topics that are hot and important to them right now. It is our hope that this event is successful in doing just that.

Imagine 2008
Tuesday September 23
4:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Room 303 - Student Union Building

For more information please contact me!!!

Smells like elections!

Well it is going to be one busy semester for both myself and our Vice President (Education), Mark Coffin.

It was announced on Sunday that there will be a Federal election on October 14th. And as we all already know there is also going to be a Municipal election on October 18th.

The DSU is a member of both the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (national advocacy group) and the Halifax Student Alliance (municipal advocacy group). These groups will be helping both Mark and I with all of the upcoming media that will be discussing election issues - and of course we want post secondary eduction (changes to the federal funding formula, funding for graduate student research, and accessible and affordable quality education) to be a priority at the national level, and crime/violence/safety and transportation and housing concerns to be a priority at the municipal level.

As the elections get closer I will be updating my blog and what is going on, what we've done, who is being receptive, and who is not. However, it is past midnight now and I have an 8:30am class so that's all the blogging I have in me for tonight.