Daily Bulletin

Monday, December 22, 1997

with information for the Christmas and New Year's holiday break

University of Waterloo • Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Coming to the end of 1997

The long Christmas and New Year's break is almost at hand. Fall term exams ended Friday, and today is the last day of work for staff. Full services are being provided today, pretty much, although central stores says the last mail delivery and pickup will be at about 1 p.m. And some departments, including the bookstore, the computer store and Graphics Express, are closed altogether.

Custodians will work a special 4 p.m. to midnight schedule tonight, their last shift of the year. After today, pretty much all staff members are off work until Friday, January 2, 1998.

Faculty members, however, will be hard at work tomorrow before their holiday begins. Instructors must submit fall term marks by Friday, January 2, and the winter term begins -- both registration and classes -- on Monday, January 5.

Two notes left from Friday

Students (and other people in the 12-to-22 age group) should be planning to get meningitis vaccinations in the next few days. A clinic at Resurrection Catholic Secondary School is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. today, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday. (UW's health services has a small number of doses of vaccine, which are available during working hours today to co-op students about to leave on work term, but not to anybody else.)

Here are the correct answers to the PhD Pursuit quiz in Friday's Bulletin: 1b, 2c, 3a, 4b, 5a, 6b, 7c, 8c, 9a, 10b, 11c.

UW closes for ten days

And so we leave the campus to the few people who live here 365 days a year, and to the essential staff who will be on duty over the break:

UW police will be in operation 24 hours a day throughout the Christmas and New Year's period. The emergency phone number is 888-4911 (on campus, that's ext. 4911).
The central plant will be staffed as usual, and emergency maintenance requests can be called in to ext. 3793. Snow removal from December 24 through January 1 will be minimal, and limited to priority areas such as the ring road.
The Student Life Centre (phone ext. 3867) will be open 24 hours a day as usual throughout the holiday.

Other notes on services over the next two weeks:

All parking lots, except lot D under Needles Hall and the ECEC lot at the PAS building, will be open and free throughout the holiday period. Gates to service roads will be kept closed during the holiday break.
Computers never entirely shut down, but the Computing Help and Information Place, or CHIP, will be closed as of 4 p.m. today and won't reopen until January 2 at 8:00. If you notice an outage of the campus computer network or any major IST-maintained computing facility during the holiday break, you can report it by telephoning the IST helpdesk at 888-4357 or sending e-mail to request@ist.uwaterloo.ca. If the outage has a severe impact on the university computing environment, and the appropriate support people can be contacted, the problem will be addressed as soon as possible, IST says.
Food services has shut almost all its cash outlets. The only place left open today is Tim Horton's in the Davis Centre, until 3 p.m. And then there's no food service at all on campus until outlets reopen at their normal hours on Monday, January 5.
The libraries are open today for the last time in 1997. The Dana Porter and Davis Centre Libraries will close at 6:00, the University Map and Design Library and the Optometry Resource Centre at 4:30. Libraries will then be closed for ten days, reopening January 2; they'll be closed again over the January 3-4 weekend, and resume normal hours on January 5.
The Columbia Icefield will be open for recreational skating December 27 and January 3 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and December 28 from 1 to 2 p.m. Otherwise, all recreational facilities are closed. The Physical Activities Complex will close for public use today at 4:30 and reopen January 5.
The switchboard will close at 6:00 tonight and reopen on January 2. While it's closed, it's possible to direct-dial to UW extensions through the "automated attendant" at 888-4567.

Construction work will happen here and there on campus during the break, including some minor work in the Physical Activities Complex tote room (and they'll be painting the lockers). There will also be work in the Engineering III welding shop, and replacement of corridor carpets in Ron Eydt Village.

A few holiday activities

There are no sports events on campus during the break this year -- the basketball Athenas' Christmas Shoot-out is actually a post-Christmas shoot-out, January 2 to 4. The volleyball Athenas are also running a tournament January 2-4. And the basketball Warriors will play an exhibition game against Prince Edward Island on Friday, January 2, at 4 p.m.; tickets are $7.

Federation Hall will host its usual "New Year's Eve Extravaganza" on December 31, "the party of the year". Tickets are $15 in advance for UW students, $25 for non-students and at the door. St. Jerome's College has a New Year's Eve dinner-dance, with tickets $50 per person, $95 per couple. The University Club also has a New Year's Eve party going -- close to sold out at last report.

Roman Catholic worship services at St. Jerome's College are scheduled Christmas Eve, 7 p.m. and midnight; Christmas Day, 10 a.m.; December 28, 9:30 and 11:30 a.m.; December 31, 5 p.m.; New Year's Day, 10 a.m.

Anglican worship at Renison College is scheduled on Christmas Eve at 11 p.m. (There will be no Sunday service December 28.)

Wise words as we scatter

Some parting advice from the plant operations department:

Heat and ventilation will be kept at night settings from December 24 through January 1. Anyone coming to campus during that time can expect to find cool buildings. It will save additional energy expense if coffee-makers, computers, office equipment and unused fumehoods are turned off during the break. And please make very sure all windows are closed before you leave.

And from the UW police:

Do not leave any personal valuables or smaller attractive items, such as laptop computers, radios and cameras, in the office or workplaces. These items should be secured in a cabinet or removed to home for safekeeping over the holidays. The local police services will be out in full force with the RIDE program over the holidays, so if you drink, do not drive.

Registration for the new year

For graduate students: Graduate students who have not yet registered for the winter term 1998 may register in person at the cashier's office, 1st floor, Needles Hall, today or when the cashier's office reopens on January 2. Graduate students may also register by mail or drop off their registration documents (with payments by cheque) at the graduate studies office on the third floor of Needles Hall.

For undergraduate students: The cashier's office in Needles Hall is open today to receive winter term registrations. A drop box is available at the registrar's office in Needles Hall (cheques postdated to January 1 are accepted). The cashier's office and registrar's office will be open again starting January 2; in-person registration begins Monday, January 5, in the Physical Activities complex, Blue North corner.

Today in UW history

December 21, 1968: On the Saturday before Christmas, the biology and earth sciences museum holds an open house.

December 22, 1982: $17 million worth of projects are announced linking UW and IBM.

As the 40th anniversary year comes to an end, we say goodbye also to the "Today in UW History" series, which has run all year in this Bulletin. The 366-day sequence, including entries for December 23 through 31, will continue to be available on a Web page.

And it's so long from me

The next Daily Bulletin will hit the computer screen on Friday, January 2, 1998, and the next Gazette will be in print Wednesday, January 7. Any emergency announcements before January will be made through a Flash on the UWinfo home page.

. . . So some of us go now to church,
and some to feast, and some to skis,
and some to bed -- and most of us
to loving friends and families --
though some must study or must work:
a dozen faiths, a thousand ways
to live in harmony with truth
through cold and dark December days.

We pause from labours, when we can,
and hear the season's whispered call
to burn the candles of our lives
for Peace on earth, good will to all.

CAR

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