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Thursday, October 5, 1995

Waiting for the hurricane

Kitchener-Waterloo is expecting wind and rain tonight as Tropical Storm Opal (she's been demoted from "hurricane") races in our direction. The National Hurricane Center in Florida, which has been tracking Opal, says there is a 35 per cent chance that the storm centre will pass near here (their location reference is Long Point on Lake Erie) in the next 24 hours.

Among those watching with interest is Gary Brannon of UW's cartographic centre, who offers this interpretation:

Don't be fooled. It was never expected to still be a hurricane when it arrived here. Note we are already getting the effects of it though the centre is still 700-800 miles south. The problems with this particular storm are that 1. It is moving very fast and this means that it is retaining much of its moisture 2. It will join with a deep low pressure moving in from the west and this will add fuel. I think it is still going to pack quite a punch, though the danger is more in the amounts of rainfall (100-200 mm predicted) than with the winds (70 km per hr gusts predicted). As a example that everyone will understand -- if this was a winter storm, 200mm of rain would equate to about 2 metres of snow!!

I should add that I'm a weather buff and not a climatologist, but if this thing stays on course, I'm quite sure it will be an interesting evening and night.

Associate dean is named

For the first time, UW is to have an "associate dean, graduate studies". Memo issued yesterday:
The Dean of Graduate Studies, Pat Rowe, has announced the appointment of an Associate Dean, Graduate Studies, a position that was approved last spring. She is very pleased to report that Dwight Aplevich, Electrical and Computer Engineering, has agreed to accept the appointment effective September 1, 1995. He will have special responsibilities for graduate student support, in particular, scholarships and awards.
Aplevich has served as associate dean (computing) in the engineering faculty, and as chair of the University Committee on Student Appeals.

Visits from teachers' colleges

Representatives from various faculties of education will be at UW next week -- on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but not Monday as we wrongly said in yesterday's Gazette. (Monday's a holiday.)

Who's coming? This schedule comes from the career resource centre, which is organizing the visits:

Making Higher Education Work

That's the title of a recent, and suddenly controversial, document from the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, which includes UW's Federation of Students. Among its controversial points:
Increasing tuition fees is not an acceptable method by which to raise funds; instead, we recommend the creation of an Education Beneficiary Fund (EBF), which would be composed of a Graduate Beneficiary Contribution (GBC) and a Corporate Beneficiary Contribution (CBC). These two groups were chosen because graduates and businesses are the two major beneficiaries of higher education.

The GBC could take the form of a surtax upon that portion of the graduates' income which is above the average yearly wage for non-university graduates (currently $21,000 per annum). Effectively, the government, by investing in an individuals' education through subsidizing universities, would earn a permanent equity stake in graduates' human capital, and would claim it through this contribution.

A motion to support the document was defeated at the September 27 meeting of the Federation council, but it's still under discussion. Copies of the document, and more information, are available today at a table in the Student Life Centre. And the Feds yesterday announced an open forum about it, to be held Thursday, October 12, at 5:30 p.m. in Engineering Lecture room 101.

Clubs are meeting today

The chess club will have its first meeting of the fall term today from 5 to 8 p.m. in Engineering Lecture room 204. Information: Patrick Leckey at pjleckey@healthy.

Waveform Transmission Collective, described as "an organization of UW ravers", will have its first fall meeting at 4:30 p.m. in Math and Computer room 4040. Information: James Thai, jthai@novice.

And on Buster Keaton's 100th birthday

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca

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