Monday, October 19, 2015

Canada votes today

Polls open today for the 2015 Federal Election from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. as the country decides who should be in charge on Parliament Hill.

According to the Federation of Students, on-campus polling stations for students in residences and surrounding neighbourhoods (and possibly those non-students who live in said neighbourhoods) will be located in V1, the Student Life Centre, and UWP's Beck Hall. Students who live in V1, MKV, REV, CLV, or the university college residences can vote at the V1 location. People who live on Phillip Street, the west side of Lester, and between University Avenue and Columbia Street can vote in the Student Life Centre, and people who live in UWP or on Lester south of University Avenue or on the west side of Albert St. can vote in UWP.

Employees will vote at polling stations based on their home addresses.

The majority of students at the main Waterloo campus, as well as many staff and faculty members, live in one of two ridings: Waterloo (the city of Waterloo, including the campus, and northern parts of Kitchener, formerly known as Kitchener-Waterloo) and Kitchener Centre (which includes the Pharmacy building and Gage Avenue offices).

Other nearby ridings include Kitchener-Conestoga (south Kitchener and rural areas of Waterloo Region), a new riding named Kitchener South-Hespeler, Cambridge (which includes the School of Architecture), and Perth-Wellington (which includes the Stratford campus).

Some local electoral districts have been redrawn somewhat, with the Kitchener-Waterloo riding rechristened Waterloo, having lost about 20 per cent of its southern and western territories to neighbouring ridings. The riding is now made up of the City of Waterloo and a portion of Kitchener north of the CN Railway and northeast of the Conestoga Parkway.

An entirely new riding, Kitchener South-Hespeler, contains the part of Cambridge that sits north of the 401, and a portion of southeast Kitchener. It has inherited bits of the Cambridge, Kitchener Centre and Kitchener-Conestoga ridings.

Kitchener Centre has given a little from the west and the south, and has grown a little in the north.

The vaguely horseshoe-shaped riding of Kitchener-Conestoga continues to wrap around the other Kitchener and Waterloo districts, but has shrunk slightly to make room for the Kitchener South-Hespeler district while eating into Waterloo and Kitchener Centre's west side.

Cambridge has expanded into Brant County, while a bit of its northern end has been transferred to Kitchener South-Hespeler.

Housing and Residences, the Federation of Students, and various student groups have worked with Elections Canada to ensure that students have an opportunity to exercise their franchise. There have been vote mobs and a pilot project that allowed students to vote on-campus and have their votes counted in either their home ridings or in the Waterloo riding. In all, 4,931 votes were cast on campus during the pilot.

The Federation of Students will be running a vote shuttle to a number of nearby polling stations for students. Users should register for a ride. The vote shuttle will depart from the Student Life Centre beginning at 10:00 a.m.

Candidates in all the ridings have now been formally nominated and are listed on the Elections Canada site.

Voters will need a voter registration card, which they should have received in the mail, but they can also register at their poll today if need be.

"By law, everyone who is eligible to vote must have three consecutive hours to cast their vote on election day," says the Elections Canada website. "If your hours of work do not allow for three consecutive hours to vote, your employer must give you time off."

Wear your mental health wellness shirts tomorrow

Mental Health Wellness Day is tomorrow, and to signify the University of Waterloo’s support for mental health wellness, students, staff and faculty are being encouraged to wear their orange mental health wellness t-shirts.

If you’re on campus tomorrow and wearing your orange t-shirt at 10:30 a.m., the mental health wellness committee would like to invite you to come to the SLC atrium for a group photo– mark it in your calendar!

Tuesday marks the seventh time we have set aside a day to acknowledge the importance of mental health and remind the campus community that Waterloo is a caring community and a safe place to ask for help.

For more information, visit the Mental Health Wellness Day website.

Staff rep for dispute resolution pool needed

The University of Waterloo Staff Association (UWSA) Nominating Committee is seeking applications for staff representation on the Dispute Resolution Pool (Policy 36). There is one position available for University support staff for a term beginning immediately and running to April 30, 2018.

Says the UWSA: "When a Dispute Resolution is requested under Policy 36 (Dispute Resolution for University Support Staff) three members will be drawn from the pool to form a tribunal. Policy 36 governs the pool and sets out the procedures that are to be followed. The time commitment for the pool is difficult to define as pool members are asked to serve on a tribunal when the need arises. As this is a university level committee, release time for committee training and responsibilities will be granted."

The Dispute Resolution for University Support staff consists of six staff members nominated by the UWSA Nominating Committee along with six staff members nominated by the Vice-President, Academic & Provost.

Please direct any questions to Gail Spencer, UWSA Executive Manager at extension 38668.

Team wins awards at iGEM competition

This article was originally posted on the Applied Mathematics news site.

The Waterloo International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) team was awarded gold medal standing at the recent 2015 iGEM Giant Jamboree in Boston. The Waterloo team also received awards for best poster overgrad and best software tool overgrad, as well as being nominated for the best overgrad foundational advance project.break

The Waterloo team's project was called "CRISPieR: re-engineering CRISPR-Cas9 with functional applications in eukaryotic systems". The Waterloo iGEM team includes undergraduate students from the faculties of Mathematics, Engineering, and Science, including seven Applied Math and Mathematical Physics students.

Senate to discuss Fall Break pilot; other notes

The University's Senate will meet today at 3:30 p.m. in NH 3001.

As part of the agenda, Senate will be asked to "approve modifications to calendar guidelines for a three-year period to include a two-day Fall Break following Thanksgiving Monday by starting classes earlier by two days (Thursday of Orientation Week), and to evaluate this initiative after three years."

Among the other agenda items: