By: Andrea Larson

The actions of the
Northern Undergraduate
Student Society can only be
seen as a breach of trust.
After failing to make quorum
at the Annual General
Meeting, NUGSS held an
Extraordinary General
Meeting in which quorum was
not needed to pass constitu-
tional amendments.
Because of the poor adver-
tisement of both meetings the
majority of those students
attending were NUGSS

members. NUGSS used this’

opportunity to vote on
changes that most students
would not have supported.
One such change was to stu-
dent fees. In order to
increase revenue for the
Student Society NUGSS

Editorials and Letters

It’s Our Money!

Breach of Trust Between Students and Student Society

changed the fee system so
that no matter how many
courses a student was taking
they would have to pay the
same fee as a student taking
five courses. Previously the
scale was based on how
many credits a student had
per semester up to a maxi-
mum amount. Now students
are required to pay the maxi-
mum amount whether they
are taking one course or six.
While this does not seriously
affect full time students this
adds quite a bit to the tuition
fees of a part time student.
Part time students who
are only taking one or two
courses are the most affected
by the change. These stu-
dents are often working and
don’t spend much time at the
university and therefore sel-
dom use the services provid-

ed by NUGSS. This is not
the first time that part time
students have been abused
by NUGSS. In the summer
when students are only tak-
ing a few courses at a time
they still have to pay the full
amount of fees, twice.
Students pay twice in the
summer due to the change
over between spring and
summer courses. The rev-
enue from spring and sum-
mer semesters is not even
used at that time, as during
the summer NUGSS is large-
ly inactive.

What does NUGSS plan
to do with the hard earned
cash they keep taking from
you? Maybe you should stop
by their office and ask them.

Letters to the

Dear Editor,

| am writing to you about
what | term draconian restric-
tions on our internet service
in the UNBC residences. As
of this September, we have
been subjected to a 100MB
per day limit on our internet
service, in addition to a $25 a
month fee. In my eyes, this is
a $25a month too much for a
crippled service, noting how
easy it is to exceed this limit
without ever downloading a
single MP3 file, as was veri-
fied yesterday on the Res
Net’s Ipmonitor service:

Shop cookware set on
EBAY:
30.93 MB

Download PDF files for
assignment

45MB

From financial account-
ing standards board

Access WebCt (anything
outside res is counted,

And this includes com-
puter labs!)
15 MB

This makes any kind of
software updates a no-no
without getting prior approval,
with many software updates
topping over 100 megs,
which should not be. As a
result of these irrationally
imposed restrictions, | sought
to get Shaw@home, but was
appalled to have found out
that my freedom of choice
has been trepidated upon.
Last week, the university
asked Shaw to cease and
desist providing

Shaw @home service to stu-
dents in residence in order to
avoid cannibalizing their own
outdated service.

Having learned more, |
discover that we are literally
being punished for past
year’s abuse when Napster
was at it’s heyday. The resi-
dence is only fed by a single
T-1 connection, which used
to cost $1500 a month, until
Telus discovered the line
feeding the university was of
much better quality than what
was given, and the

Residence network band- .

width bill went up suddenly
over $8000. For people who
don’t know, a T-1 has the
capacity to carry out 28
simultaneous voice conver-
sations, but the service pro-
vided to the university was

Over The Edge appreciates every students opin-
ion, and will print letters to the editor that are

submitted.

Please drop off you submission at our office or
e-mail us at: over-the-edge @ unbc.ca.

able to handle 138 64-kilobit
(8K/sec) transfers according
to a high level Telus support
engineer. This is paltry in
comparison to a
Shaw @home account, which
can provide better than T-1
performance at any given
time.

This is where the plot
thickens. Last year, the net-
work was supposed to have
been updated, and the
University was to have its
own dedicated fiber run from
the coast at a cost of around
$30 million plus the annual
cost of maintenance, but with
the demise of 360 Networks,
this did not go down. Now,
there is no guarantee if and
when the system will be
upgraded. The thing is, why
then should we be subsidiz-

ing something we will not
reap any benefits from?

Well, then | must con-
clude to say that there are
only three options which
would be satisfactory:

1. Lift the 100MB per day
limit, and impose monitoring
to seek those who consistent-
ly abuse the system, and
impose use restrictions on
them.

2. Make the service free,
and keep existing restric-
tions.

3. Leave the system as it
is, but get your paws of those
who choose Shaw@home,
and let free enterprise do its
thing.

Robert Hogue

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