December 2 2002

Over The Edge Page 3

Students Protest Campbell s Cuts

Gordon Campbell Unveils Northern Medical Centre as Students Protest

By Kathleen De Vere

On November 21st hun-
dreds of protesters banged on
glass and shouted outside the
University to protest
the Liberal govern-
ment’s cuts to educa-
tion and social
spending. The pro-
testers were outside,
hoping to send a
message to Premier
Gordon Campbell
who was at the
University. Campbell
was inside’ the
Bentley Science Centre
announcing the construction
on the new Northern Health
Sciences Center.

The unveiling was strictly
invitation-only, attended by
UNBC’s financial donors,
Deans, and members of the
University’s Senate and
Student Society. Campbell,
John Cairns, the Dean of
Medicine at UBC, President
Jago and the Mayor of Prince
George, Colin Kinsley, all
spoke about the reasons
behind funding the new 12 mil-
lion-dollar facility. Canada is
currently facing a severe short-
age of physicians, and British
Columbia only produces 25%
of the doctors and physicians
that it requires every year, said
Cairns. The new building is a
satellite campus of the new
Life Sciences centre at UBC,
which is a part of the $134 mil-
lion dollar Life Sciences

Initiative. This initiative was
originally a NDP program, but
has been continued by the cur-
rent Liberal government.

As part of the Rural
and Remote
Healthcare Strategy,
the new medical
facility will increase
the number of doc-
tors graduating from
the current level of
128 per year to 224
by 2005. With the
completion of the
Northern Health
Sciences Centre, doctors will
be able to complete their resi-
dencies in Prince George, and
the first group of 24 medical
students will begin their stud-
ies here in 2004. By allowing
medical students to study and

If they write it bigger, will he listen? ~

fulfill their residency require-
ments in Northern British
Columbia, the percentage of
doctors that will choose to
practice in Northern British
Columbia should increase.
Currently, northern areas of
British Columbia have great
difficulty retaining physicians,
and over 10,000 people in
Prince George have no family

doctor. ;
After the architectural
designs were _ unveiled,

Campbell quipped, “I want. you
to notice how much wood

there is here.” While the Liberal.

government has allotted $2.8
million dollars for medical
spending and_ research,
(according to Campbell), all
other university funding will
continue to be frozen at the
current levels. While this reve-

By Andrea Larson

In December of 2001 the
Senate of UNBC made the
core requirement obsolete.
The core requirement has
been replaced by a breadth
requirement, which give stu-
dents a greater number of
options in order to broaden
their university experience.

Students on the calendar
years from 2001-2002 and
2002-2003 will have the option
to either use the old system of
core requirements or else fol-
low the new guidelines for the
breadth requirement.

The breadth system
employs a series of quadrants.
A student using this system is
required to pick at least one
course from each quadrant.
The core courses that were
previously offered will still be
available to take in each of the
quadrants, but it is no longer
mandatory to take any core
courses. Students using previ-
ous calendar years are still
under the previous require-
ments. According to Todd
Whitcome, a member of
UNBC senate, these changes
have been in order to “ensure

lation is not surprising, another
tuition hike is highly likely.
Finally, when asked about the
protesters outside who had
been audible during the entire

presentation, he joked, “Those
were protesters? | thought
they were the school band.’

Protesters demonstrate against Liberal Cuts at the unveiling of the
medical building plans.

Who Needs Core When You Can Have Breadth Instead?

students have maximal lati-
tude in how they go about
obtaining the knowledge’.

The idea behind a breadth
or core requirement is that stu-
dents attend university in order
to broaden their knowledge,
rather than just getting a
degree to get a job. Whitcome
feels that students “can’t just
take courses in one discipline
if they want to understand
knowledge on a_ grander
scale”. If all a student wanted
to learn is how to be a techni-
cian they could easily go to a
technical school, and all they
would learn is how to be a
technician without the messi-
ness of breadth.

Whitcome feels that the orig-
inal “intent and design was a
noble exercise, but it was not
well received as many good
ideas are” causing most stu-
dents to misunderstand the
point behind the requirement.
Hopefully the new require-
ments will be implemented in a
way that students will be more
receptive to. Whitcome feels
that “many students are quite
cross-disciplinary” and the
new breadth requirements will

help students use this to their
advantage.

In other universities there
are similar requirements for
breadth. At the University of
British Columbia all first year
students are required to take
first year English.

The new requirements are
not in the current calendar or
the previous year, but they are
retroactive. The reason these
changes were not incorporat-
ed into the calendar this year
is the repercussions of such
an action are diverse and
needed time to consider
before they were released to
students. Thus far, according
to Jennifer Young of the
Academic Advising office, stu-
dents “aren’t quite aware of
[the breadth requirement] and
don’t know what it means”.

Young expects more stu-
dents to be coming into the
Academic Advising office next
semester and that they will
“really need to target the stu-
dents for next year”. You can
go by the Academic Advising
office or talk to your personal
advisor in order to find out how
the changes to core affect you.