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University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
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Wednesday, December 11, 1996

[Angel]

Song of angel train

It will come upon the noon-hour today, that glorious song of old, as the twelfth annual Christmas carol sing led by Jake Willms takes place in the Modern Languages lobby. Willms retired this summer, but he wouldn't let a little thing like that keep him from coming back to conduct "Joy to the World" and "Calypso Noel". And many of us wouldn't let a Christmas season go by without taking part in this UW tradition, sticking around for "O Come All Ye Faithful" as the finale, with (surely again this year) timbits and hot cider to follow. All are welcome -- the music starts at 12:15.

Man arrested in assaults

Waterloo Regional Police arrested a man in Waterloo Park Monday and charged him with seven counts of sexual assault relating to incidents on or near the UW campus since early November.

Walter Sanchez, who lives in Kitchener and works part-time at a restaurant near campus, was arrested "after sexually assaulting an undercover police officer", the Regionals said. An investigation, including the use of decoy victims in areas around the park, was carried on by Regional and UW police after a rash of incidents including two on a single day, November 26. Typically, women walking alone on isolated pathways were grabbed; no one has been seriously injured.

"A search warrant was executed at his residence," the police statement yesterday said, "where several items (bicycles, clothing) were seized involved in these incidents."

All the charges against Sanchez have to do with incidents in the past few weeks. Another man, Edgardo Esparza, was arrested at the beginning of November and charged in connection with several similar assaults that took place in August and September.

Living long on UW pensions

Here's some cheery news: university faculty and staff need their pensions for longer than other people. "The average university person will live longer than the average person in the community," Frank Reynolds of UW's statistics department told yesterday's annual pension meeting. And that's one reason the pension plan is so important at an employer like this one.

It's been another good year for pension investments, provost Jim Kalbfleisch told the meeting. Year-to-year returns from September 1995 to September 1996 were about 17 per cent, and the fund now stands at more than $500 million and has a "healthy" surplus even after some money was taken out to help fund the special early retirement program

Kalbfleisch reminded the meeting that in UW's "defined benefit" pension plan, the size and growth of the fund don't determine an individual's pension. That depends on a formula involving the individual's final salary and how long he or she worked at UW and contributed to the pension plan. Some staff and faculty at yesterday's meeting asked pointed questions about whether everybody might be better off with a "defined contribution" plan, to take advantage of that healthy growth in the fund. Not necessarily, said Kalbfleisch and other members of the pension and benefits committee: that would be great when interest rates are high, not so great for someone who retired at a time of low rates.

Someone asked what will happen to UW pensions if there are big cuts in the federal Canada Pension Plan over the coming years. Kirti Shah of the statistics department, another member of the P&B committee, had a confident answer: "The committee would make it a very high priority to make good the difference."

60 years after the abdication

A few notes, briefly: And . . . there's a notice in this morning's Gazette inviting nominations for four student seats on the UW senate. Open are two-year seats representing undergraduates in engineering, mathematics, and "at large", and a one-year seat for an undergraduate from science. The terms all begin May 1. Nomination deadline is January 17.

CAR

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