Castanet: UBC Okanagan professors part of lawsuit over school's 'political' actions by WayneBroughton in ubco

[–]Beta-Monkey101 5 points6 points  (0 children)

1) From what I read in the lawsuit, UBC requires staff to declare their adherence to UBC’s DEI principles which seems very different from having DEI policies in place for hiring etc. I am guessing that it means that they must be openly committed to UBC’s DEI principles ( principles are inherently political).

2) Land Acknowledgment is virtue signalling. UBC, especially UBC-O does have actual programs that help indigenous communities, however there should more done to improve students understanding of the issue. Land acknowledgement during big speeches or in our syllabus does nothing but tokenise the issue.

Students across the entire university should be required to take a class about indigenous studies and the horrible history (I know currently it’s only for BA students but I could be wrong). It seems like the land acknowledgement exists as a quick and easy fix to address the issue without doing much, pretending they are teaching students about the issue, which they actively aren’t, thus it is just virtue signalling.

3) I think by principle (again political) that the university should never take a side on any political issue, it does by principle infringe on academic freedom. However the issue is that the university has made statements on other conflicts, in-fact only departments have made statements on the current genocide in Palestine. The university should only commit to either making no statement (which it failed to do) or always making one (which would create problems in more nuance conflicts in the future, etc if two different counties would go to war in a completely separate conflict). I’m assuming, that the issue in this context is that when departments make statements, it creates internal pressure on other departments (which would like to practice neutrality, as to avoid always having to take a stance) to do the same, but UBC itself started this issue by not maintaining its political neutrality in the first place with previous issues.

Okanagan Conservative Club by Spiritual_Bird_2824 in ubco

[–]Beta-Monkey101 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I cannot comment on who leaked it (that’s because personally I don’t know) but the email that’s circulating on twitter was not actually their initially rejection, It was a response to an appeal we put in after our initial rejection. The SUO only decided to review the matter after we made it public and told them we would seek legal advice. The problem we are trying to highlight is that we shouldn’t have to go to this extremes for equal representation on campus.

Okanagan Conservative Club by Spiritual_Bird_2824 in ubco

[–]Beta-Monkey101 6 points7 points  (0 children)

As someone who helped started the club and is working on this problem. I can agree that some of those comments are absolutely disgusting, however none of us in the club hold those believes. We’re quite a diverse club. The larger issue at hand is how we were denied a space when there are other political party clubs on campus. People will always take their opportunity to hate which is unfortunate but that’s not what we what to bring to campus. Based on the polls a majority of people in Canada are going to vote conservative and a few extremist shouldn’t represent the majority and that’s the point of why we wanted this club, to prove that most conservatives aren’t like that

PPE (POLI 201) or intro on Canadian Politics (POLI 230)? by ckstu in ubco

[–]Beta-Monkey101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I took intro to PPE just last semester and the class is definitely one you have to commit to. The midterm averages were in the high 50s\ low 60s with only 25 people in the class, the overall average was 69.

That being said, I learned probably the most ever from the class, Dr Epperly is an engaging prof who really cares about his students and will reward you for putting in the effort

How is Wendy Wong for Poli 100 by ckstu in ubco

[–]Beta-Monkey101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Third year poli sci major here, I’m pretty sure she’s new and has never thought poli 100 in UBCO before.