From hash pipe to hash tag: how the campus has changed
Hello again Dear Readers, and apologies again for my prolonged absence. Pig flu and all that; you understand.
I'm writing this from the UBC campus again - I'm here for a day of meetings and have managed to squeeze in a few minutes of writing in between talking about neglected global diseases, systems biology, and whether the opera singers should go before or after the orchestra in the annual revue.
I've plugged my laptop into an outlet in the foyer of the Laserre building, known in my time as being a great place to get intimate on campus, as the 2nd floor washroom had a vinyl couch and lockable door. I may venture up there later out of curiosity, but I suspect my investigation will reveal that the couch is gone, the old wooden door has been replaced with some modern frosted glass number, and the 2nd floor bog has been renamed the "Earl and Marion Peterson Family Relief Facility" in the continuing tradition of academic patronage.
While some things on a campus never change (beer, dissatisfaction with student-led politics, weird food smells), this is a very mutable place and bears little resemblance to the campus I left behind when I got my B.Sc. I was reminded of this a few times recently, taking part in student-led events that demonstrated the marked change in extracurricular activities over the years.
As I wrote some time ago, the beer-drinking and trouble-making of years gone by have been replaced by rather more mature pursuits, like creating associations for networking, communication, activism, putting on conferences, starting charities, and other things that have relevance to the real world and look good on a CV. I've always poked gentle fun at all of this - after all, university's the time to have your fun while you still can and not worry about grown-up business, because once you've graduated you will spend much of your existence running from meeting to meeting as dictated by your Outlook calendar, filling out forms in triplicate to have someone come and move your wastebasket, and having to delay your actual work to deal with crises like an 8-foot freezer that won't fit through a 7-foot door. Gentle needling aside, though, there are some really great student-focused initiatives on campus.
One of the coolest by far is Tedx Terry Talks (http://www.terry.ubc.ca/terrytalks/), or #TedXTt to call it by its hashtag (another campus change I've noticed - if you play word association and say "hash" you get "tag" back and not "pipe"). In its second year, this is a Ted-style conference (if you see "Ted" and think first of your accountant or your brother in law, please go to ted.com and be awed) featuring a few of UBC's most interesting and inspiring students speaking about something important to them. I was delighted to be a part of it this year as the alumni speaker, and came out feeling very warm and fuzzy about our world's future (I then saw peopleofwalmart.com and my belief in the impending doom of our society was suddenly and violently reawakened, but I was doing good for at least a day or two there).
Terry Talks emcee Dave Ng (also founder of the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique - http://www.scq.ubc.ca/sciencescouts/) edited a wonderful series of videos featuring this year's speakers (http://www.terry.ubc.ca/terrytalks/) which I encourage you to check out. Alexander Cannon shared the very personal and engaging story of his transition from female to male, Azim Wazeer took us on a tour of the many places and cultures he experienced growing up, Iris Amuto painted a vivid portrait of Africa's true and beautiful self, Tahira Ibrahim expressed her wish for all of us to just get along, and Camille Israel and her ukulele taught us how to fall in love with our major all over again. The scientists were well-represented too, with Jennifer Kaban encouraging us to keep a sense of wonder in looking at the world, Nadine Qureshi advocating simple measures for malarial prevention, Eric Ma explaining the world of synthetic biology and designing life forms from scratch, and yours truly talking about H1N1, open access, and sequencing poop (note: times may change, campuses may change, poop jokes, though - always funny).
UBC President Stephen Toope is another champion of student achievement. Three years ago, he resurrected the Blue and Gold Revue, which had been a 1950s-1960s-era student talent show with dramatic readings, skits, and polite young men with clean fingernails singing "How Much is That Doggie in the Window" a cappella. The 21st century version of the Revue highlights amazing student achievements, and this year's event, to be held December 2 (http://www.supporting.ubc.ca/revue), has everything from an interdisciplinary student-led clinic in Vancouver's most impoverished neighbourhood to the sixth-best moon-dust-excavating robot in the world.
You've also got great student-led groups like The Student Biotechnology Network (http://www.thesbn.ca/) and Young Women in Business (http://www.ywib.ca) working to prep students for their eventual release into the wild, and cross-organization events like Worlds Aids Day (http://www.terry.ubc.ca/index.php/2009/11/24/cool-event-ubc-world-aids-day-events-dec-1st-3rd/), for which a whole range of student groups have come together to stage a series of events December 1-3 (one of those groups is UBC A Cappella, who I'm pretty sure still have clean fingernails, though they may have dropped "Doggie in the Window" by now).
So, yes, the campus has changed, but it's certainly changed for the better if the accomplishments and engagement of its current students are used as a yardstick. The price of beer hasn't changed much, though, and I can now afford more of it, so with that I'll sign off, as I really must dash off to the Earl and Marion Peterson Family Relief Facility.
Tagged with
students,
columbia,
university,
changed,
british,
ubc,
extracurricular
| 
JENNIFER GARDY 
Comments
Don't forget about the UBC Student Leadership Conference, in which Jennifer will present as a Featured Presenter on Jan. 9, 2010.
How have I not heard about TED.com before??? A website with my name, full of stimulating things that I care about! Thanks Jennifer!
Consider cutting your bangs. You'd be surprised how far a little bit of style goes now that you're in university.
If the author thinks that students have replaced partying with "more mature pursuits", I suspect she's been hitting the hash pipe herself. Stats and personal experience say otherwise...
Maybe what changed was you?
Those doing the 'achiever' thing have always been there, they're just never as visible to students (who generally don't care) as they are to full fledged adults (who write reference letters).
Case in point. I recently attended an event at my alma mater full of serious students and I was amazed at how articulate and accomplished everyone seemed. I thought the steady notches up in entrance exams must be resulting in, frankly, a more boring student population albeit one better suited to professional life then my era.
Then I got on public transit with three drunk students. At 5 pm, on a Thursday, a few weeks from some fairly important finals. By the volume and tone they spoke at I actually knew they had to be from my college before they started talking about their first year classes. Call it intuition or, perhaps, recognition.
Is it strange I recognized the slightly annoying kids on the bus instead of the achievers? Not really. Those slightly annoying kids on the bus were my friends. And, ahem... me.
For the record, those kids on the bus are doing just fine in the real world five years later. There are many things you can learn in college and only half are officially sanctioned.
Painful to read.Ouch. Stick with science.
Why on earth would you plug the horrible site peopleofwalmart.com? It's homophobic, bigoted, and generally hateful. It's a site trying to go viral to make money. And I clicked into it on your say-so (could be that you agree with me, but if that were the case, you wouldn't plug this link at all). It's got nothing to do with walmart either pro or con, but everything to do with bigotry of poor, unhealthy and slightly mentally off people. Please be more responsible with your links - you might be "educated" through science, but you sure don't come off as truly an educated person.
@ rik: If you go back and read that section again you will see that the Walmart link is provided as an example of all that is bad in the world in comparison to the TED link which is about inspiration and all that is good. Comparison has long been used as a legitimate method of making a point and Jennifer's use of this method hardly merits your inference that she is not a "truly educated person". Personally, I would rather the horrid websites of the world (like peopleofwalmart) are pointed out for what they are rather than allowed to exist without challenge.
C'mon guys, I point out a bunch of rad stuff students are doing, like someone brave enough to speak about their transition between genders, someone who's barely legal to drink yet started her own malaria prevention charity, and guy that's building lifeforms from scratch and all you can whinge about is my bangs (which are awesome), my writing (where's your G&M; blog, l. smith?), and me not being truly educated (it's a link on the internet - use your own judgment but don't get your knickers in a knot if you didn't like what you saw)?
Stop being a curmudgeon on the internet and go out and do something cool like Alexander, Nadine, Eric and all the other great people I met through UBC's Tedx Terry program.
DON'T BE TROLLS; BE AWESOME.
california dreamin': While I appreciate you trying to clarify why the walmart link appears on this blog, the fact remains that anytime someone with access to a larger readership (such as this blog by virtue of being linked to G&M;) has greater marketing ability to plug goods/services/other sites. Simply providing a link on a site is advertisement: this is the currency of internet marketing. The walmart site gets more ad money the more web traffic they generate. It's quite simple. I'm certainly not saying that this was a paid link on the part of this blog, but it is a link all the same which ultimately supports the walmart site. My only point was that I believe links should be used responsibly when there's a larger readership and should be transparent as to why the link is there. Not to mention, the reason the link is here is vague: "doom of our society"? Many people might think that this a political anti-walmart site or something akin to this (I certainly did). Clicking into the link generates ad dollars for the site - that's how these sites make money. Bottom line is that this blog is supporting the site by providing a link and inviting readers to check it out. I found this disappointing from this blog in particular since it comes from someone who is supposed to be promoting education.
"NerdGirl" needs to grow a thicker skin and not let people's blog comments bother her. Looks like you're not cut out for blogging, kiddo...
I'm a UBC alumni too and have nostalgic thoughts about campus having spent a great deal of my life living working and studying there. So I understand Jennifer Gardy's nostalgia about the campus in her blogs.
Her reaction to some posters' comments is a bit unexpected though. Sometimes I find her writings a bit self-indulging actually which may explain her sensitivity to criticism about her writings.
Anyways, in my opinion, UBC is changing for the worst, actually. New modern buildings are replacing old ones (how painful it was to see the destruction of Main Library!) and its academic charm and coziness is being lost in the process.
University isn't a party house, really. I hope readers won't get a false impression from this article that it's all about drinking beer and hanging out. Unless if you are a genius who needs little time to study (and most of us are not), university is about hard work and perseverance, not beer.
Blogging rule number 1: grow a thick skin.
@EC. My view is that the whole purpose of blogging is to exchange and debate ideas and I don't think that Nerd Girl is adverse to having her ideas challenged. I think what she is objecting to (and rightfully so)are comments that are just gratuitous nastiness and which make no contribution to intelligent discussion of the topic at hand.
Sunny is spot on. Any regular reader of this blog will know that I have a plenty thick skin and generally ignore the trolls, but what's pissed me off here is that instead of my usual fluff pieces, I take the time to highlight some very cool people and hardly any of the commenters recognize that. Everybody's too busy taking cheap potshots to give the great students and organizations I mentioned any of what I believe the kids call "props" these days.
I had a pleasure and the privilege of emceeing the Blue and Gold Revue last night and was again absolutely blown away by some of the stuff people are doing on campus. These students, alumni and faculty deserve a huge round of applause.
Not sure what Sunny has mentioned is realistic because you can't expect people to formulate their criticism in the same style or the way you *think* is appropriate. Different people phrase their criticisms differently and it being a blog it's kind of expected them not being sugar coated.
Clearly when people express their criticism (in whatever form) there's some element of them being unhappy with the article no?
@ Victor S. You seem to be saying that the fact this is a blog and, therefore, somewhat anonymous gives people the right to be rude. I can't agree with that.
I have no quarrel with people expressing criticism or being unhappy with an article. I am just suggesting that the criticism should be relevant to the topic and expressed in a somewhat civilized manner.
@ Nerd Girl. The TED site is truly inspiring...thanks for pointing it out.
@Viktor Ahhh, no wonder you're snippy about this post. The sixth-best moon dust-excavating robot in the world is one that you labelled as "pathetic" and "an amateur project" (and then "paaaathetic" again for exmphasis) in your comments in a Vancouver Sun article on October 10th.
I guess you'll be disappointed to hear that not only did NASA tell the team that their bot did extremely well (6th place for a student team, when many of the winners were long-established robotics firms!), but it was something that could actually be deployed in a NASA program right now.
Dear Jennifer,
I am deeply touched that you took your time to research my comments. I remember the article and that comment was made by me. As I recall this project's member's weren't particularly confident that their creation will work properly. Apparently it did, this time.
I still regard this project as amateurish and I still believe it will be foolish for NASA to consider their project seriously because if the original creators weren't confident in the success of their work, how do expect others to be confident about it when big $$$ are on the line? My guess is NASA is simply encouraging them to continue working on it. Nothing to be snippy about. Sixth-place isn't something to be overjoyed about either. But it depends on your standards, I guess ;-)
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