VOLUME 11, ISSUE 7 Br KATHLEEN DE VERE News EpITor There is a problem with the Backyard Barbeque that students should know about: it not only barbe- ques hamburgers, but money as well. Last semester, the popular NUGSS event generated a net loss of $14,629.73, the largest ever amount in the history of the event. While the concert was never designed as a rev- enue-generating event, two years ago the Backyard Barbeque lost approxi- mately $5000, only a third of this year’s loss. According to NUGSS, there is not one single reason for the loss: rather, it is a combination of an undersold venue, high initial cost, and the low price of student tickets. “It’s easy to make money, and say, o.k. this is how much we’re going to charge, it’s open to everybody, whether you can afford it or not, but that was not the issue,” said Abdul Mohamed, NUGSS’ Director of Finance and Operations. “Our mandate was to concentrate on UNBC Students, because the event is for them, and NUGSS is for them, so we decided to charge a reasonable price, have fun, and at the same time, make it for everyone as well. So we had two differ- ent prices, one for the public [$37] and one for students [$22].” Student surveys that had been con- ducted before the most recent Backyard Barbeque in September ~ indicated students wanted to keep the venue more exclusive, and to limit the. sale of tickets to non-students. Because of the survey NUGSS lim- ited the number of non-students attending the event by capping in- town Ticket Masters sale§ at 500, and sales to students at 2000. Ticket prices were also kept artifi- cially low for this year’s Backyard Barbeque because the earlier student surveys indicated students wanted to see bigger name bands at the next Backyard Barbéque but not see a sig- nificant increase in ticket prices. According to Jeremy Belyea, NUGSS’ Director of University Affairs, because it was the 10th annual Backyard Barbeque, NUGSS decided to bring in highly popular band Sum 41, and the cost to bring in Sum 41 was much higher tharr NUGSS had- paid in previous years to past headlin- ers. With artificially low ticket prices for students, NUGSS subsidized much more of the events cost than jt had in previous years. In addition to the ticket pricing issue, this year’s Backyard Barbeque was also undersold, with 1058 student tickets, and 433 non-student tickets, for a total of 149] tickets sold. January 19, 2005 Backyard Barbeque B ~ With the loss of more than $14,000 spread out amongst members of NUGSS, the loss equals a cost of ‘approximately $4 per student, which . means even students who did not attend the Backyard Barbeque subsi- dized the event through their fees. Because of the loss, NUGSS is look- ing into re-evaluating the concept, idea and execution of the Backyard Barbeque for next year. “The question is, if I was running a NEWS o.seeceeeee 3 OPINION ....... 7 GAB Sissy -2 10 PRCA DN cee 12 SPORTS a sacsesceess 14 ‘TAKING HOME OUR BABY BUMBLE BEE SINCE 1994 rings in Big Loss PHoToGRAPHY BY Becky BooTH AND BELINDA Li This years Backyard-Barbeque pustéd’a-loss-of. more than $14,000. Pictured here is Sum 41, the head- liner of the event. The cost of bringing such a big name act to the Barbeque was one of the reasons NUGSS gave for the money lost on the concert. private btisiness, if I was a private pro- moter in town, the way I'd look at it was to say, I’m going to do a cost-ben- efit analysis. You want to get the most for your buck and make the most prof- it,” said Mohamed, “We did not go into it with that mindset because we’re the student union, and we said, how much should we charge students, so we can get the most students to show up at the show. We could have made it $40, which would have had less students, but more members of the public show up, but we didn’t want to do that.” “The intensions were good, more students came in, but the ques- tion that I think is going to be betore the board next year is, is it worth it t have the Backyard Barbeque? Is it < anc good idea to~lose money, and how much should we lose, or should we make a profit? These are the kind of questions we’ll be putting before the board next year,” said Mohamed. a Bond Announces $1.2 Million for High- -Tech Research at UNBC aad Puoto BY RoB VAN ADRICHEM Minister Bond in the high-performance computing lab, located in the new lab extension. The student is Dino Gigliotti, a graduate student in mathematics who is using the HPC to help determine a mathematical model for more effectively using pine beetle-infected trees in local mills. Br KaToiern Dr VERE News Eprror Last December, the UNBC campus was graced with the presence of Minister of Health Services Shirley Bond when the Liberal MLA partici- ‘pated in the official opening ceremony for the new lab building extension. Bond, who was the Minister of Advanced Education at the time, also used the opportunity to announce an infusion of government money for three of UNBC’s high-tech research programs. The funding, which totals more than $1.2 million is being sup- plied by the BC Knowledge Development Fund. Some of the money will be used for equipment upgrades in the High Performance Computing Lab. The lab will be receiving more computers to enhance its power as the region’s pre- mier computing and visualization cen- tre. So far the lab has been used to mea- sure climate and wind, the effects of cli- mate change on glaciers, and to sup- port the research projects in a variety of academic fields at UNBC. The new computers will allow several research teams to build simulations related to air and groundwater quality. The equip- ment will also be used to visualize infor- mation from large databases, and sup- port applications in interstellar chem- istry, theoretical and experimental physics, astrophysics, computer science and mathematics. More money will also be allocated to the Northern Soil and Groundwater Remediation Researh Laboratory, which is currently headed by Environmental Engineering professor Jianbing Li. The lab includes special- ized instruments and a large three- dimensional chamber for sinulating environmental remediation strategies in northern soil and cold climates. Programs housed in the new medical building also benefited from the fund- ing announcements, as money from the Knowledge Development Fund will be used to purchase new molecular genet- ics equipment, which will support research on how genes are activated and how extraneous regions are removed from genes in order to acti- vate them. A lab led by Biochemistry professor Stephen Rader will use the new equipment to develop new tech- niques for understanding how extrane- ous regions of genes can be removed from RNA, and how the errors in this natural process, known as RNA splic- ing, may be responsible for inherited diseases. Each of the projects receiving fund- ing from the BC Knowledge Development Fund are also receiving funding from the federally funded Canada Foundation for innovation. In addition to supplying funding for research projects, the provincial gov- ernment also funded the construction of the new lab building extension. The $6.3 million building measures over 23,000 square feet, and houses two large lecture theatres, new computer labs, classrooms, and _stae-of-the-art equipment.