Back in the Swing of Things

It has been awhile since my last blog post and I do want to apologize for that.

Here is what has been going on in the past 2 weeks at the DSU:

1. University and Student Union Presidents Meeting

On January 22nd the Council of Nova Scotia University President (CONSUP), Student Union/Association Presidents, and representatives from both the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) and the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) met. The purpose of the meeting with the touch base and to discuss the issues that both groups are looking to advocate to the provincial government on to include in their budget. The meeting was informative for everyone in attendance because it allowed us all to gain an understanding of the direction each group would like to take.

2. Presidential Review

As many of you will know the Dalhousie University President, Dr. Tom Traves, is seeking to extend his current 3 year term by 3 years. I am a member of the Presidential Review Committee and we have been meeting over the past few months. The deadline for submitting feedback on your view on Tom's reappointment is now closed. The committee will be putting forth a submission to the Board of Governors on the extension of the term at an upcoming meeting.

3. DSU Winter Carnival

The DSU hosted its annual Winter Carnival from Jan 21-24. The entire carnival was a great success with very talented Dalhousie students raising money for Shinerama through an open mic event, the always wonderful Sue Johanson gave a presentation as part of the DSU's Speaker Series, and as always Charity Ball was fabulous and our auction raised over $2000 for this year's selected charity.

4. Constitutional Review Committee

An ad-hoc committee of council was formed several months ago and the members on the committee, I am one of them, are working to revise the by-laws and regulations of the DSU Constitution. We are still seeking feedback on all areas of the constitution - if you have suggestions please email dsupres@dal.ca. The proposed changes will be available to the student body on February 18th and then on March 4th the DSU student body will be able to vote on the proposed changes - please note we need at least 75 union members to host the meeting.

5. ANSSA Student Assembly

This past weekend the members schools of ANSSA went to Cape Breton University for the winter 2009 student assembly. The student assembly meets twice a year with ideally 5 student delegates (which are not ANSSA board members) to discuss policies and set direction for the organization. The conference this weekend looked issues surrounding infrastructure, our pre-budget submission to the NS government, and our strategic plan. Overall the conference was a great success!

Those were the 5 large items that have been on my radar in the past 2 weeks. I have also had lots of meetings with members of senior administration, DSU councilors, executive and staff around day-to-day items and student concerns.

Hear the Roar!

Tonight the Board of Governor's Student Experience Committee had its annual meeting with a demographic of the Dalhousie student population. The meeting was with student athletes from varsity teams. Approximately 30 athletes showed up, and if it wasn't for having a cap on the number of athletes requested for the meeting I am sure we could have had many many many more!

The focus of the meeting with around the experience that Dalhousie varsity athletes have at Dalhousie and what traditions they feel are in place.

It was quickly discovered that each team has their own traditions that they have (team bonding events, etc) and there are some occasions throughout the year where the athletes come together but they didn't feel that there was an overarching event that pulls all Dalhousie students together.

Many other universities were compared to Dalhousie in the meeting for the way they do Homecomings and have students cheering on athletes at games. But it seemed unanimous that Dalhousie was lacking that something and we need to have it for our students.

Having a homecoming event was an idea that was proposed several times. It could incorporate several teams over a weekend and it could bring back alumni like at other schools.

It was also suggested that having after-game events would be a great way for students and community members to show their support for the teams - and now here is my plug for the upcoming game on Friday night - as part of the DSU's annual Winter Carnival we are encouraging students to attend this Friday night's men's hockey game at 7pm. There will be tiger burgers on special at the Grawood before the game (5pm) and the after party will be in the Grawood.

We also heard a lot about needing more funding to help the teams with things like traveling and to also put funding towards more and better athletic facilities.

And the piece that seemed to be the athlete's plea was that they want students and the general community to know about their upcoming games, to cheer them on, and to know about their successes!

The committee will be putting together all the notes that were taken from the meeting and presenting them to the Board of Governors ideally at the next meeting

Working Together

On Friday night I attended the women's and men's basketball games, both against UPEI, and our wonderful athletes won both games!

In between the games was a presentation from the Dalhousie senior administration and representatives from the Halifax Regional Municipality government (myself and next year's captain of the men's soccer team were the students present for the presentation). The city partnered with Dalhousie university to create a better field facility (Wickwire Field) for both Dalhousie athletes and the HRM community. The city presented a cheque for $150,000 to Dalhousie on Friday night, and another $150,000 will be coming in the future.

As a student of Dalhousie and a citizen of HRM for 18 years now, I really appreciate when I can see great partnerships happening to better the city

 we all live in.

16,000 Acts of Green

Dalhousie University and Acadia University have been going head to head in a competition to claim the green title.

The competition, One Million Acts of Green, put on by CBC and The Hour has people all across the country counting their acts of green. The two universities set up a competition where Dalhousie would need to raise 16,000 acts of green and Acadia would need to raise 3,000 acts of green (the number of acts of green are related to the approximate number of students at each institution).

Tonight the Dalhousie group took the lead and currently we are at 16,892 acts of green and the Acadia group is only at 2,104 acts of green.

Even though our wonderful Tigers have clearly won the competition against the Axemen the Dalhousie community needs to continue to find ways to become greener and continue to add acts of green to the overall competition. So if you have not yet created an account go start one now!

Go Tigers Go!