On Campus

What students are talking about today (Oct. 4 edition)

Big Bird, full buses in B.C., hackers & Lena Dunham

B.C. Transit bus (scazon/Flickr)

1. In a poll, two-thirds of CNN viewers concurred that Romney came out on top. Romney didn’t win with the under-12 demographic, however, as he said he’d cut funding to PBS, home of Big Bird, because public television is not worth borrowing money from China to fund. Luckily for him, children can’t vote.

2. Transit users in Victoria, B.C. are being passed up by full buses more than twice often as predicted by B.C. Transit before they implemented “real-time tracking.” The agency suggests post-secondary schools should stagger class start times to reduce the problem. I have a feeling this isn’t just a frustration for B.C. students. Am I right?

3. Hackers called Team GhostShell have claimed responsibility for breaking into more than 120,000 computer accounts at dozens of universities to protest what they see as high-cost and low-quality higher education. Sites at the University of British Columbia and McMaster University were on the list of what’s called “ProjectWestWind.” Identity Finder, a data-protection company, found that more than 35,000 e-mail addresses and thousands of usernames were compromised. Most of the sites were the type made by professors themselves, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.

4. A 1983 recording has surfaced that shows Apple founder Steve Jobs was thinking about “shrinking a computer down so that it fits in a book, possibly equipped with a radio antenna,” and talking about the need for a radio station that would allow people to sample different programs before buying. This was long before consumers had heard of Internet—never mind iPad or iTunes.

5. The University of Saskatchewan has launched Saskatoon’s first car-share, called WeCar, which is open to anyone in the city who wants to become a member.

6. Kent Peterson, the former executive of the Canadian Federation of Students Saskatchewan who was alerted by a bank early this year that his signature may have been forged, has gone to the police. Haanim Nur resigned as president of the University of Regina Students’ Union in June and recently told The Carillon it was because she had forged three CFS-S cheques totaling $1,000.

7. Interested groups and universities in Ontario have submitted their responses to a controversial discussion paper put forward by Liberal minister Glen Murray earlier this year that outlined ideas for a major overhaul of the system, including a lot more online courses. The unions (OPSEU, CUPE, OCUFA) and the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario have been critical. CFS-O’s counter-proposal includes lower tuition, more spending on accessibility and a cap on salaries of $250,000.

8. Teachers from across Nunavut and the Northwest Territories will soon deliver a new mandatory 25-hour segment of a Grade 10 Northern Studies course that will teach about residential schools, reports The Globe and Mail. For decades, Indigenous children as young as four were taken from their families to Church-run schools where they were often abused mentally, physically and sexually.

9. The University of Alberta is reviewing 19 recommendations about how it responded to the shooting on campus that left three armoured truck guards dead and another injured on campus. The report suggests improved communication and the use of social media to spread information.

10. Who says Generation Y can’t find financial success doing all the artsy things they dream of? Lena Dunham, the 26-year-old creator and star of Girls, will be paid $3.6 million to write a book.

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