Empty Cage

Just as a note — these are my own personal, internal opinions. They should not reflect upon my association, family, friends, employees, pets ect. Also note, because people keep dinging me on this — by SAFA I mean SAFA Executive.

The referendum has concluded, and I have to say, despite my squirming about getting enough people to vote at the last second, I was pretty confident about this whole process. Right now, I’m feeling pretty confident that I’ve made some good strategic moves, and that I’m ready to… pass the presidency on to someone else as quickly as possible.

Defederation is the golden word on campus these days, though mostly with regards to the SFUO, so our little success story is bound to be completely overlooked, but I think it’s a big deal, mostly because I’ve been nursing an ulcer over these votes. So, I’m going to post inflammatory things in my politely Canadian way now. Well, to be fair, I doubt I’ll say anything here that I haven’t said at a BOD meeting at some point or another.

SAFA (Student Federation of the Faculty of Arts) is broken, extremely broken, and to be honest I am hard pressed to think of a way to fix it, shy of taking the science route, eliminating member associations and just having representatives from each department. I think I’ve finally figured out why it’s broken too, or at least part of the problem.

For those unaware of the happenings in the faculty of Arts, the SAFA executive is the highest executive in Arts, acting as an administrator to the smaller departments. The executive is paid out an honouraria every month (they always call it that, let’s reduce it to layman’s terms — a sum of money equal to about $200) for doing what is formally called ‘Policy 5′ on the absolute bare minimum that a SAFA executive can do. These include things like going to executive meetings, and I suspect, breathing.

Most SAFA executive can run their policy five in under 3 minutes, usually glazing over the ‘I didn’t do’s which they say just as fast and in the exact same tone as the ‘did’s. They also like a healthy smoke screen of all the parties that they attended. We vote, SAFA gets honouraria. Cake.

And this is the biggest issue that keeps resurfacing. ‘Let’s just keep voting yes until someone motions to close’. I’ve done it before, and it’s not completely unreasonable when a simple BOD takes three hours. But it’s unhealthy to the various departments in Arts, since we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot with sheeple voting. This is how we ended up with a section in the constitution that takes 5% of the levy of a student association that doesn’t attend these insipid things. We voted this in, and it was a really stupid idea. SAFA claims its all fair because if they don’t attend they don’t get their honouraria.

This is such a false and bizarrely twisted analogy that it entertains me. You lose your personal money if you don’t come, but I lose 5% of the money that goes back into the students that I’m supposed to be providing events and services for? How is this a dichotomy? Maybe if you paid me to go to these… Perhaps if the BODs were useful to running my association attendance wouldn’t be a problem.

Any ways, this honouraria versus none has sort of turned SAFA into the task masters of the whole faculty of Arts instead of the administrators. When they want something they demand. Then doing passive aggressive things to eventually bend us to their will.

And maybe this would be okay if they then provided useful services to the MAs. But one association spent most of the early part of the year financially in the hole, and SAFA didn’t deem in necessary to lend them a cent to allow for events (and this is one of the large associations), but they were okay spending a few hundred dollars on executive bonding. Due to a mistake in apparel last year, (that was debatable the fault of a previous SAFA executive), another association paid all or almost all of their levy cheques this year directly to SAFA. So far, holding 101 week, and events, and dealing with the SFUO are the only services they can promise us right now.

A previous UPSA president whom I love and respect very much pointed out to me the following, knock down argument. ‘Much of SAFA has never sat on a MA before, they don’t really know what we do, and because of this they’re afraid that we do nothing.’ Which is the argument that has kept me from rage quitting so many times. But most people will tell you, shit gets ugly when the boss doesn’t know what you do. And then you get fired.

I love the idea of solidarity in the Arts department, but I think we’re doing it wrong. As I announced at my last BOD, Arts could function with a chair, and the member associations alone. Then I got laughed off the stage. But my heart was in the right place.

I got an extension on a project I didn’t finish, a paper that was due forever ago I am allowed to hand in late, and honestly I’m just sad now because I actually have to do them rather than flagrantly ignore the deadline.

I’m sick, I don’t wanna work.

The tough draw a unicorn.

Or at least, that’s how I dealt with my AI2 challenge at the Computer Science Games last weekend. Which I would have blogged about earlier, if I hadn’t gotten what I am not calling ‘CS Games Plague’ a serious disease that involves coughing, mucus and feeling generally like shit. But, turns out that a night of social alcohol with friends (that’s right, potential employers, I was very controlled) has mostly killed it. Or maybe I’m more distracted by the hangover,

Regardless, it was a very interesting look at engineering culture, from one of those cursed to be born an artsie.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I want to write more stern things about the SFUO, and SAFA but I feel like I’m just going to alienate more normal people when I do that.

And finally we find the reason my blogging stems to a trickle after a few short weeks. I completely run out of interesting things to write about. I even run out of uninteresting things to write about leaving me in a pickle.

I know what I said about blogs with regards to ‘nothing’ but, I just thought I’d point out that the greatest obstacle to me being famous on the intartubez is the fact that I am an extremely boring person.

I think it’s interesting though, that I just updated my LinkedIn profile. It feels weird to be student, 22, and already fairly expected to have some sort of business related web presence. It’s like I’m finally entering the real world. I’m not going to harp on things like privacy and that sort of thing (how I have to hide my almost non-existent binge drinking photos from the internet) but more how much you are expected to show.

In this day and age people like to be able to have a pretty general idea of me before they meet me. Know what I look like, things that I’ve done, and more than one person has told me if I don’t have a profile on X site I should hang up my hat.

But oddly enough I think this is a good thing. Employers kicking your ass because you are an ass on the internet may not be kosher, but I think that in the case of a hiring situation having a picture of someone beyond their polished best ‘I will say what you want me to say so you hire me’ is probably a good thing. You’re giving a job to a person not to a set of credentials — otherwise what’s the point of an interview.

In more schizophrenic news, I tried MeeGo Linux and I owe you a review.

I’m only really a secret politician. I’m not going to come out and say I have any importance in student politics. I do have a job (President of the Philosophy Student’s Association), but as far as I’m concerned it’s not a wildly coveted duty — at least partially because I don’t get paid like SAFA or the SFUO — and yet deal with at least some levels of political bullshit.

At the University of Ottawa student politics are serious business. From my conversations with people at other schools students politics are a joke and are often happy to accept that role. I appreciate a strong student government a lot, if students have a lot of power then they can improve the experience at the school, mobilize change and attempt to modernize ancient school policies.

Which begs the question why we have such a low student satisfaction here at UofO. I’d like to speculate, but I’m poorly informed and despite the previous two paragraphs the SFUO and student government are not actually what I want to talk about here today.

There is a new website making its rounds in the UO community, known as UOleaks (please google it if you want to read it, I’m not giving the satisfaction of another referring site). A student run blog, that is allowing me to lose even more faith in the system here.

UOleaks is a website that has decided to make the SFUO and administration ‘accountable’ ironic when you realize every blogger on the site operates under an alias, and that the WHOIS information for the domain name is hidden. UOleaks posts ‘tips’ they receive from the student body and comment on them, with a strong political bias. And you know what? That’s fine, if you have an opinion I want to hear it — but I want to hear it from you, not some board of shadowy figures.

I have made no secret that I find the Fulcrum, our student newspaper, extremely bland (and Dear Di to be one of the most horrible things ever printed on a frequent basis). However, Fulcrum writers take responsibility for their writing, and UOleaks hides.

And for fear of what? Last I checked this was student politics, not a police state. What are they going to do to you, UOleaks? Or is there another reason you don’t want us to know who you are. You coy bastards, what’s that under your webskirt?

I have suspected since the beginning that I know one of the authors, again, my connection to student politics and the slant at which the journal is written, plus where I found the link. Don’t worry, love, I’m not going to out you. But accept your words. I’m sick of this site’s declaration of accountability without being accountable themselves. They have this air of being liberators and informers of the student population, but can they be trusted?

My concern goes along these lines, without names, or identifiers of any kind, how do we know this hasn’t been written by candidates in the election? Based on the strong political leanings of the site (all the authors being nearly unanimous in their election decisions) it doesn’t seem so far fetched given this is the case. If there was some real dialogue about candidates I would be far less likely to get my tinfoil hat on.

And in many cases I agree with UOleaks, independently, I voted for almost all their recommendations. Except Communications (I’m sorry, the candidate they picked for Communications had a seat on the BOA, and certainly only once attended our Arts Board meetings, you had a chance I don’t trust you to communicate. Sorry.)

So, Uoleaks, grow up, honestly. Maybe then I’ll take your bitching seriously.

Of course, no one takes my bitching seriously even with my name unveiled, so I do understand you pain.

I’m now a Philosophy/Computer Science double major, and I’m telling everyone. I am so happy with this combo!

Okay, I’m up to episode six, and damnit, I am trying to study so hard, but this series is something bloody else. It is what Anime should be — fewer people screaming at each other and more people contemplating the god of the internet Wired.

How have I missed this before? It’s just my cup of tea. And thanks to it being my cup of tea I am going to fail three exams.

Woo!

Just not websiteing much.

I’m going to confess, in elementary school and high school I was never really a mathy kid. Quite the contrary in fact, I think it was the fourth grade where my computational skills were markedly slower than all the other little kids… and I knew it. I seem to recall reasoning along the lines of ‘this is why we have calculators’. But in elementary school calculators are the infinitely dirty word of the school system. Computation is key, and if you’re behind in math, well maybe it’s just not your thing.

I have since learned that Math probably was my thing.

After all, I was a lifelong lover of science (and wisdom haha). I loved logic and reasoning puzzles. I liked when things worked out logically, solving problems and was always in awe of the world I was a part of. It was sort of my thing, the nerd. I think this was how I eventually ended up in Philosophy. Math was definitely not my thing, and you can’t go into science or technology without math, and so I found myself in Philosophy arguably the most scientific of the arts.

I remember so clearly in high school, you are either in the science stream or the arts one. Period. You’re either an impractical hippie or a humourless drone. Job, or soul. Like its some kind of either or thing. And for me the rock in the road was always the mathematics. I could build a computer program in grade 10, but I was completely an artsie. Obviously. I took history and stuff, and always had my ass handed to me in math.

When you want to understand the all encompassing everything though these lines make things difficult. And this all started when I couldn’t multiply as fast as the others in the fifth grade.

It started to occur to me over the past few years that math is something interesting. I took Pre-Calculus last year under the pretence of needing it for a Computer Science Minor (technically true, but I could have minored in any number of things that wouldn’t have needed math). I’d been under some sort of personal conviction that mathematics was something that I should be good at.

I still had my ass handed to me.

The difference was I wasn’t left hopeless and convinced I wasn’t a math kid. I actually came out curious, yeah, okay, marks did not reflect but my memories of the class were a barrage of equations, minimal explanations, hellfire, all at eight thirty in the morning. Not the prof (actually a grad student)’s fault, tons of material, no time etc. But I think what I won there was a springboard and the confidence to keep going, despite my GPA begging I stop being so cruel to it.

And so I think, Philosophy of Math, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Technology. These things all exist. The thought of Physics and Philosophy makes me giddy, string theories, movement. Unfortunately this is all stuff I have to go backwards to learn so that I can apply ideas to what I think. Because back in High School I was an artsie kid, and taking science or math would only serve to drop my average and then no university would ever take me. And besides– a structured major at any University is not open to this idea, they want you to learn Science or Philosophy. One or the other, take your pick.

This is the part that gets me. I’m going to school to learn. Obviously. This is what school is for. But I am not allowed to learn what I want to learn. Instead I have to hedge around what I have an aptitude for to keep my GPA in check, or my average high. So I was told I wasn’t good at math, yeah, I still would probably take a few minutes to recall 7×8 but math and science aren’t even close to being about that. I understand why they have to do this, not every student — hell — most students don’t want to learn. They want the paper, the degree or the diploma and I can accept that. But I think as far as those of us who want to learn we have been put in the most hostile environment of all time.

I am always posting when I should be doing something else. In this case that something else is sleeping as it it 2:45AM and that is when the normal people generally get some shut eye. But good old Kae, she’s a bloody insomniac and therefore blunders through her entire life half asleep. Go Team.

I feel like I should blog more, but whenever I have an idea for a blog post it is when I am smack dab in the middle of doing something else. I mean, my life isn’t the hyper exciting rocketship ride it was in the UK, but, so what, I’m still living right. In many ways that trip was bad for me, I expect everything to be exhilerating in my life now and get all pissy when I have to do the same old. Or find a fucking job.

Speaking of finding a job, holy bloody fuck is it getting hard. People don’t seem to get that I could care less about the recession but everywhere has a hiring freeze. You just want to yell at them ‘Well, fuck, you may not be hiring but they are still going to charge me several thousand dollars next year to go to school.” I know it isn’t the fault of individual companies, but do people have to be so agressive when refusing my resume. Shit. I may need to go back to Ottawa where I have more options.

Speaking of which, I finished my first year of University April 30th, I had an exam 7-10 which was the last possible time slot, and it was my hideous math exam from hell. But so far I’ve passed all my courses with just my Criminology mark to come in. Woohoo. I finally got my minor together too, so I am now a Philosophy Major with a Computer Science Minor.

Because this entry is doomed to be schitzophrenic due to the early hour that I am unloading my brain I guess I can babble about music for a bit, I’ve been getting into even more grunge tunes, not sure why, but lately Hole, Melvins, Meat Puppets and Butthole Surfers are getting a lot of play time here. I am in love with Plateau by the Meat Puppets and Pepper by the Butthole Surfers (I know, the commercial underground forgive me gods of indie for I have sinned)

Anyways, I thought I could write more of an entry but I’m drawing a big old blank. So, more entries soon, but sleep now.

EDIT:

I confess — I have Twitter.