University — Category

Waikato University’s student magazine Nexus has finally caught up with other student mags and got themselves a website.

• Nexus Magazine

It probably would’ve been a bigger and better launch if they did it when Issue 01 for 2007 comes out in February…

Wait, this is Waikato Uni, it wouldn’t make a difference! (It took a number of weeks for 50 people to join the Nexus Forums launched a few months ago).

The results had just arrived for the WSU elections about 15 minutes ago. Sehai Orgad stays as the president, however Moira Neho got VP. Megan had some good plans for the WSU, but alas.

Almost all of my predictions were true. BOC only won in positions where they ran unopposed, so James Greenless (Finance) and Ana Moriaty (Womens Rights). Olivia Beattie got Campaigns; Education went to the only runners, Ben Delaney and Whetu Taukamo; Environmental to Claire Taylor and Katy Dimmendaal; Tatiana Hohepa and Elaine Kameta for Maori; Vince Malcolm-Buchanan for mature students; Sports officer is Glen Delamare; and disabilities went to Jeff Hawkes.

Official results in next weeks Nexus.

The Waikato Student Union executive candidate debates was big, there were lots of people out in the sun listening to the candidates, definately more than last year.

The most exciting time of the whole event was when the president and vice-president candidates were up for question time. Nexus staff were quick to ask Kahu Nikora, candidate for both president and vice-president, about his verbal assault on one of their staff. They quoted him as saying “I’ll cut your fucking head off,” after the magazine published comments about him. At first he said that they have no proof, then he denied he said the word “fucking,” then claimed he would do it again to anyone that defames him, and said that it wasn’t assault (he is doing law at Uni).

The BOC guy going for president, Carl Bishop, did not say anything new, but the other candidates were trying to prove that they were up for the job. VP candidate, Martin Dalton, did admit they were not up to speed with what happens in the WSU, but pressured that he is up for learning the ways, and that the other BOC candidates are learning their specific fields at the University. James Greenless, the only candidate for Financial Officer, was not available, and nor was Woman’s Rights Officer candidate, Ana Moriaty.

So, after that, here’s who I pick (Updated 14/9):

• President - Sehai Orgad. She is very popular among the students, everyone knows her, and she is currently the favorite.
• Vice-President - Megan Moffet. I’m slightly biased, she’s my friend.
• Campaigns - Olivia Beattie. She isn’t in BOC.
• Education - Ben Delaney and Whetu Taukamo (running together) would win. I don’t think two candidates is necessary, and will be voting No Confidence.
• Finance - James Greenless of BOC is the only one running, he would win. I wanted to hear what he had to say though, marks off.
• Environmental - Claire Taylor and Katy Dimmendaal. OK, I don’t like having two people run for one position, but the other guy looked like he was doped up, and has been using his guitar as a marketing tool (no, not him playing it, but just having it on his person).
• GLBT - No one is running for this position anymore.
• Maori Students - Renee Rewi Tatiana Hohepa and Elaine Kameta. Had some information that these two are better.
• Mature Students - Vince Malcolm-Buchanan. Alan King, who is running together with Kerry Mackay, had been accused of racism, and there were murmurings of alcoholism. Vince has been it this year.
• Sports - Glen Delamare. This guy in his picture in Nexus, has a tennis racket in one hand, a soccer ball in the other, cricket padding on his leg, blowing a whistle and having two trophies at his knees. Winner.
• Woman’s Rights - This one is a tough one, I have the feeling that this would end up as No Confidence as some of the women I’ve talked to dislike the whole “beer in one hand” picture of her.
• Disabled Students - Jeff Hawkes. How could I forget Jeff? This years current disabled student officer, and a great guy.

Voting starts on Monday. Go out and vote!

Just a reminder that Rodney Hide, will be at Waikato University tomorrow. While I don’t totally agree with everything (or, most things) he says, he is a pretty charismatic fellow who does stand for what he believes is fair, so it’d be interesting to hear what he has to say. Plus, Nexus reminds us that it isn’t often politicians come here, unless they are soliciting votes during elections, so play nicely.

He’ll be at the Village Green from 12 noon to 1pm tomrrow.

Once that is over, stay for the WSU election debates! They should all be there ready to answer your questions. There will be a free BBQ and alcohol (yes, free beer, and BOC says we don’t have enough). That’s 1pm to 2pm (you don’t have class then) tomorrow.

Once again, it is Waikato Student Union elections for all the positions. Last year I don’t think there was too much contention with Sehai Orgad being the favorite for president and suitably winning.

This year, there are three contenders. Sehai is running for a second term. She seems to be picked as the favorite this time around again, with a Nexus poll showing 59% of voters will vote for her (yes, a whole 13 people!). She has done well this last year, cleaning up the mess of the last couple of WSU executives, that it would be a shame for her not to get back in. Kahu Nikora is running again after his defeat last year. His advertising campaign left a lot to be desired. Random contender is Carl Bishop, who is apart of the BOC group, which stands for Beer On Campus - because all other problems in life don’t exist.

BOC are perhaps the worst contenders for the positions they are running for. They have seven people in their group, running for most of the positions. The sad thing is that two are running “No Confidence”, the Finance Officer (James Greenless), and the Women’s Rights Officer (Ana Moriaty). Everyone one of their blurbs had the exact same thing written, which is taken from their MySpace page.

While it is nice to have more free alcohol, the main thing that WSU puts its money towards is hardship grants towards students who are having trouble getting by. Who cares about them, eh? Let us just put it towards more kegs.

So, what are some really cool, alcohol involving, events that BOC have in store? Nexus this week gave each president candidate a page, here’s what Carl had to say:

I am a student who wants to bring back O-week, kegs in the park and a killer Month of Mo.

“Month of Mo?” I think that is that strange facial hair-style he has got, and at one point on now defunct television program Sports Cafe, they had a Month of Movember or something to that effect. Of course, Uni is wrapping up at that time, so I fail to see how that would work.

On making the WSU more relevant to students, Carl gave more examples of what they would do.

[After talking about improving communication between students and WSU] Then we would introduce more fun stuff. How about giving students events they actually want to turn up to! More events during O-week? Kegs on Campus? Month of Mo? Flat Crawls?

Thing is, the WSU does end of semester parties, when they have Open Student Meetings they usually have a BBQ and a couple of kegs of beer at hand. Certain departments do pub crawls for students. Month of Mo, is in November.

The Nexus then asked what would they say to the Waikato Times about the declining enrolments? Well, how about market the University for having massive O weeks, you know, stuff that probably doesn’t affect student numbers.

Some more questions were asked. He got the student levy wrong (”Wondering where that $100+ goes every year.”), the levy is $84 (incl. GST). In the year that he started, the levy was $30 less.

Alarm bells went off while reading the Lettuce page, from an annonymous student:

To those chumps who dared each other over a beer to run for the WSU exec

(Emphasis mine). That’s scary. And to think two of these guys are running up against No Confidence (which many don’t get so they’ll most likely get in). You can just see these positions being empty when Uni starts and then the WSU having to run another by-election. What a waste of time and effort.

University has started for 2006 and the first day (which was on Monday) on the first class hopefully set the tone for the rest of the year. Someone set off the fire alarm, in an adjacent block (we knew this because the fire alarm told us, and it also said that it wasn’t a drill, what a fantastic fire alarm). We had to evacuate even though it appeared nothing burnt to the ground.

Currently I have been told of two major projects, one for Software Engineering Project (funny that) and one for Database Administration (groan). One good thing about the Database Admin is that we aren’t using Microsoft SQL Server. Nor do we have to use Visual Basic .net. Good news all round!

Tomorrow is my free day to do whatever, it may end up programming the next version of PSP MusicBox, promoting the current one, or just playing The Sims 2. Oh and participating in O Week, cause Wednesday there is always sure of something interesting going on… sometimes.

Speaking about O Week, I spent my first Monday out in town. The Hilly, which is closing down at the end of the week, was good, mainly because of how much it felt like a reunion with some of the people that I lost touch with last year. It was great. I then went into town, lost my mates, went to find them then went home. I know, I should’ve spent the time to meet people, especially since everyone was soaked from the foam that was going on before we entered, but I think I was way too drunk to focus.

Will be going out later in town, I’ll have to avoid the Hilly though - damn paying $10 or even $20 to enter. Sure, it sounds like there maybe some decent acts, but then it’ll bite into the alcohol fund, which is almost nothing.

Still contemplating joining the gym though. I’ve almost got the money to go join it. It should be good, but then I could also go out and run around a bit more often, but I don’t think I’ll ever do that.

Wednesday, MATH102 (Intro to Algebra)
Thursday, COMP201 (Computer Systems)
Friday, COMP244 (Software Engineering Process)
Wednesday, COMP140 (Foundations of Computer Science)

And that’s that! 2005 is all over!

Looks like I’ve offended people (with the aid of others) in the Waikato Students Union and the Komati Awhina (Maori Student Union) by referring to opponents in the election as “crazy.” And then at WSU I probably offended a couple more people by voicing my opinions on the executive. Oops, sorry.

Speaking of the WSU, I just attended the election talks and there are some very strong candidates in this years election. The Returning Officer who is from the Hamilton East Rotary club had said that everyone should go out and vote because having 300-400 people out of 11,000 to vote is nonsense. It’s your $75, mightas well use your voice. Now that the WSU is out of the financial problems it can get on and do stuff with your money.

Last blog post for the day, unless something dramatic happens.

Today I had a test for COMP201 (computer systems - the one with all the assembly) and I’m beginning to think that I’m better at this computer science stuff than I thought. However, everyone else found the test quite easy (I was surprised when it ended).

Plus the exceptions and interrupts was somehow easy, despite all the instructions saying that it was the most challenging exercise of the whole course.

Anyone else have comment on COMP201?

They encourage us to test our code in COMP244. Testing had fortunately found a bug in the loading and saving mechanism, something that I wasn’t expecting. It seems that the load/save doesn’t restore the graph exactly as it is meant to. I tried it out by creating two graphs, composing them, and got a result. When I saved them and loaded them again I got nullpointerexception errors all the time.

Spring embedder I think is coming along nicely. I can’t be bothered with it anymore tonight, so I’ll finish it before the day is out tomorrow, that’s when it is due.

And I also passed the COMP201 mastery test for number representation and file formats. Not that bad when you know it, but then I’ve got a real test tomorrow for it so a little worried about it.