Concordia students surveyed on commuting habits this week
Fill out a 10-minute survey and get a free, bike-blended smoothie. Allego Concordia will be conducting a commuter habits survey on the Hall building’s 7th floor on the SGW campus from March 25 to 26, and at Loyola from April 1 to 2.
“We want to help people find ways to leave their cars at home,” said Allego program coordinator Blake Saucier-Curtis. The survey data will help Concordia “improve transportation programs like the shuttle bus, bike racks and carpooling bulletin board.”
The survey will be available from March 25-April 25. Tomoe Yoshihara, who designed the bike blender, says it “makes a mean smoothie when you ride it around the block.”
This adds new meaning to the notion of burning and consuming calories. The bike blender was adapted from a stationary model designed by David Brodsky.
Together with Jacques Gallant, Yoshihara also co-designed a bike blender table that took a trip to Vienna for the Roboexotica competition (http://www.roboexotica.com), where it won the Environmental Design Award. Brodsky, Yoshihara and Gallant are all volunteers at Right to Move/La voie libre, a bicycle co-op located on the Concordia downtown campus.
Allego and the blender will also be making an appearance at the Fossil Fools Day of Action at the Loyola campus (http://www.fossilfoolsdayofaction.org/category/front-page/).
For more information on Allego Concordia and the survey, check out their web site at http://sustainable.concordia.ca/ourinitiatives/allego/.
– Bettina Grassmann
Be the Change rejected by Judicial Board
In a split-decision rendered late last week, the CSU Judicial Board (JB) struck down an appeal by Councilor Andrew Fernandez and the “Be the Change” council slate. Be the Change’s appeal had come in response to a ruling by Chief Electoral Officer Jason Druker. The CEO held that Be the Change’s posters made inaccurate and libelous statements about the current CSU executives and its permanent staff, and had demanded that the slate remove them or face strict sanctions.
Although the posters, first revealed on “poster night” two weeks ago, had made no direct libelous statements, they did include questions as to the amount of money earned by current CSU executives and the financial controls on union spending.
Some posters have been removed since the JB dismissed Be the Change’s appeal, but the slate has since posted a new series last week explicitly accusing the CSU of both corruption and nepotism.
According to CSU VP of Communications Noah Stewart, although both the Unity slate and the current CSU want the posters removed, they will not be calling for additional sanctions against the slate, despite what he called the “clearly defamatory” nature of the posters’ content. According to Stewart, the Unity members don’t want to see “the only opposition group on campus removed from the race.”
According to Judicial Board Chair Tristan Texteira, now that the board has dismissed the appeal, it will be up to the CEO to make sure that all offending posters are removed from campus. Texteira said although the members of the board were divided over a number of the posters’ claims – particularly the presentation of CSU executives’ salaries and expenses – everyone agreed that the posters were unsupportable when taken as a whole.
– Andrew Haig
1% Campaign Winners
Five student groups out of thirteen were chosen by the Sustainability Action Fund to receive partial funding for their projects.
Among the groups chosen was R4 who will receive $650 for their Loan A Dish project. Others were Pistol Press, Right to Move, People’s Potato and Reggie’s, who will receive the largest dollar amount of all the projects.
The $7,533 allotted to the popular student bar will be used for the purchase of a new dishwasher and glass cups. Negotiations are in the works, with Reggie’s and R4, to share the environmentally-friendly dishwasher.
The Sustainability Action Fund, which takes 25 cents per credit from a students’ tuition, used just over $15,000 of its $17,000 budget for this semester’s special projects.
According to the 1% Campaign’s Coordinator ,Mohamed Shuriye, the remaining $1716.67 will be available for applicants and projects this summer.
– Stephanie Dubois
