UBC Reports | Vol. 49 | No. 3 | Mar. 6, 2003

IN THE NEWS

Highlights of UBC Media Coverage in February 2003

Compiled by Brian Lin

Federal money promised

$1.7 billion in federal money for research has been promised to universities over the next three years.

UBC President Martha Piper told The Vancouver Sun that she hopes that perhaps 15 per cent of 4,000 federally funded graduate students will be attracted to UBC.

“Those would be some of the most outstanding young minds of the future,” Piper said. “That’s just an extraordinary source of talent that we would be very actively trying to recruit.”

The new federal budget also includes an initiative which will allow students to make as much as $1,700 a year -- up from $600 annually -- before their income reduces the amount they are eligible to borrow through students loans.

“There’s no doubt that when it’s fully implemented, it will have a tremendous impact,” UBC AVP of Government Relations Allan Tupper told The Globe and Mail.

Not enough punishment

A B.C. Supreme Court judge recently sentenced two street racers to house arrest for killing a pedestrian.

“It’s totally inappropriate to have somebody sentenced to house arrest, basically the punishment for killing a person is to go away and be a good citizen,” UBC law senior instructor Don Egleston told BCTV.

Currently, a first-degree murder conviction is an automatic 25 years behind bars. Using a weapon during a robbery, even if no shots are fired, is a minimum four years in jail.

“If you get killed by a car you’re just as dead as being killed by a rifle bullet, at the present time, the law doesn’t seem to recognize that,” said Egleston.

Demonstrations unprecedented

UBC political science Prof. Richard Price, who specializes in international relations, believes what drove so many people to take part in anti-war protests was a belief the U.S. has not made a credible case for war, and that attacking Iraq could have serious international consequences, including increased terrorism around the world.

Price told The Vancouver Sun that while it is impossible to gauge what direct impact such protests might have on government decision-making, history shows they do have an indirect effect.

Backcountry skiers undeterred

Veteran avalanche expert and UBC geography Prof. Dave McClung told The Globe and Mail that it would be folly to try to restrict backcountry skiing, despite the two recent disasters.

“Whose business is that to regulate it? What about rock-climbing? What about hang-gliding? Risk is related to reward, and it always will be,” he said.

“I am philosophically opposed to some kind of government agency closing down the backcountry to people. Even when instability is high or extreme, you can always find a place to ski.”