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!

January Events

During the winter semester there is A LOT of events that take place. I have listed below the upcoming events for January (please note that this does not include Grawood/TRoom events or society events). And you can find out more about our events at the DSU's website.

21 - 24 - Winter Carnival

21 - Society Fair (10:30am - 2:30pm, McInnes Room, SUB)

21 - Council meeting (6:30pm, Council Chambers, SUB)

21 - Shinerama Open Mic (8:00pm, Grawood, SUB - cash prizes and Dalebrity judges!)

22 - Speaker Series - Sex with Sue Johanson (7:00pm, Ondaatje Hall, McCain Bldg - $5 advance/$7 at the door)

23 - DAL vs. UPEI Men's Hockey (7:00pm, Arena)

24 - Charity Ball (6:30pm, McInnes Room, SUB - tickets $25/each)

27 - Speaker Series - Richard Stallman on the Free Software Movement (McInnes Room, SUB, FREE!)

30 - Feb 1 - ANSSA Student Assembly (Cape Breton)

I will try to post each month's events in a timely manner.