jump to navigation

Raymond’s plan for TWU September 20, 2006

Posted by mwj as , , . 9 comments.

I went to my first Undergraduate Academic Council yesterday, and heard Dr. Jonathan Raymond’s unveil some of his new ideas for TWU. The highlights? If all goes as planned at the board meeting in October, Student Life as we know it will no longer exist at Trinity. The focus of both the Board and the President’s Cabinet over the next year will be almost entirely on policy, based on the Carver model. And by next Fall we should have a framework from which to focus on academics and become Canada’s premier Christian university.

(more…)

TWUSA wants to spend your money September 13, 2006

Posted by mwj as , , . 4 comments.

Every year we hear about the big pile of sludge money that gets shifted over to the subsequent year’s council, unspent and unused. For the past couple of years it has been around $30,000. The reasons for such a large carry-over each year have more to do with underspent budgets and unclaimed CUBE money than broad financial mismanagement, but the fact remains that it’s a whole bunch of money that we’re left with each year.

Quite frankly, we don’t know what to do with this money, and I would like to hear from students to get some ideas. So far I’ve heard the following:

Do you have any other ideas?

UPDATE: I just had a new idea. What if we dissolve the association and just send $300,000 a year into an endowment fund. After 5 years we’ll have about $1.6 million, and about one hundred grand a year from the interest to give to students who need it.

Machines and the mind September 10, 2006

Posted by mwj as , , . 2 comments.

Less than a month before world chess champion Gary Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue, Harper’s Magazine held a forum entitled “Our Machines, Ourselves.” The dialogue has been included in the coursepaq (Doede’s spelling) for a course I am taking entitled “Philosophy of the Mind.” Below are some excerpts:

“The only instinct that has proved more consistently human than our drive to invent tools has been our need to demonstrate our superiority over them.” (more…)

Nested authority at TWU September 6, 2006

Posted by mwj as , , , . 3 comments.

I met with Dr. Raymond yesterday. I’d booked 45 minutes but his secretary had cut it down to half an hour and he was 10 minutes late, so I had to be understandably pointed in my approach. We were going to have dinner with him as an executive tonight, so I figured we could save the pleasantries ’till then.

(more…)

How very unspartan September 4, 2006

Posted by mwj as . add a comment.

Recreation services has been seen by the suits of Trinity Western University as a bastard child for too long. The club teams, intra-dorm sports and general fitness programs provided for the student body have been undermined and devalued in favour of a small group that we have given far too large a slice of the pie. The six Spartan teams at TWU have received an inordinate amount of attention over the past seven years, and it’s time to re-evaluate and recognize the impact that this imbalance has had on the rest of campus. (more…)

Thumbprints at TWU September 1, 2006

Posted by mwj as , . 3 comments.

It’s been too long, but I’m back, and I’m ready to put my fingerprints all over this clay that we call Trinity Western University.

There’s a new president here, and a new style of leadership. No longer are we Wayside School, a horribly flawed architectural project one story wide and a hundred stories high. Jonathan Raymond has come to flatten this institution and give back power to the people who make this place run.

Those people are the staff that break their backs cleaning up after students. Those people are the professors who take a 50% cut in their paycheck and choose students over the lofty towers of academia. And those people are the students themselves who pay more than they should for their education, taking loans and working part-time jobs for an education they have to keep convincing themselves is worth it. (more…)