UWSA's Osterberg 10 days over allowed vacation time
By Stephanie Saunders
Lance Writer
November 25, 2009
By early fall, UWSA vice president of administration, Ryan Osterberg, found himself with negative 10 vacation days - a situation that has never occurred before, and it has recently been dealt with by the rest of the governing body.
 Executive positions are paid through student tuition. Their job is to best represent students’ needs and concerns, and to ensure a well rounded university experience.
Osterberg is responsible for UWSA’s administrative aspects as a corporation, as well as large scale events on campus, and several campus programs.
Absenteeism became a concern after Osterberg ran out of vacation time in October after representing students for 4 months.
Executives are given 10 paid vacation days and five unpaid sick days.
Osterberg explains that visiting family in Alberta in August and October ate up most of his time. Other incidents were random sick days in which isolation was recommended to UWSA, especially in wake of spreading the H1N1 flu. This prevalence has left Osterberg taking a total of 25 vacation and sick days, 10 over his limit. >>
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Time to "spruce up" CAW
By Michal Tellos
News Editor
November 25, 2009
In the wake of poor Maclean’s and Globe and Mail rankings, two UWSA council members, Kimberley and Amanda Orr, have started a student-based initiative that would see short and long term plans to improve the CAW Centre.
 The two UWSA representatives cited UWindsor’s poor positioning on lists that rank services to students as their motivation for the project, which is still in its infancy.
“It was definitely the low rankings in Maclean’s and the Globe and Mail again. We think that by fixing up the university and especially the student centre that it would give students a sense of appreciation of their own campus,” said Kimberley Orr.
The project will combine short and long term goals.
“What we really want is a combination of long-term and short-term goals, so that students can see instant benefits to their dollars. But the main goal is to start a long-term view of how we can fix the CAW Centre, and that it can be a continuing process,” said Kimberley Orr.
Amanda Orr emphasized that this project is for students.
“This is their university, and a lot of students don’t realize that the UWSA has control over the CAW Centre, so we want to improve campus life for everyone. This collectively will hopefully make for a better experience,” she said. >>
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Wildeman town-hall meeting all hall, no town
By Michal Tellos
News Editor
November 25, 2009
Last Wednesday, UWindsor president Alan Wildeman held a town-hall meeting to discuss issues surrounding the university, such as tuition, national reputation, and UWindsor's future.
 Despite the distribution of a mass e-mail nearly a week prior, as well as advertisement in the CAW and on Facebook, less than two-dozen students attended.
UWSA president Mohsin Khan provided a few possible reasons for this.
“It could be that this president has taken a lot of consultative steps with students. He’s went out of his way to talk to a lot of students, so maybe they feel like they’re being listened to. It could be they’re just busy. There could be a number of factors about this,” he said, adding that the UWSA did what they could to make the meeting known.
Wildeman began the meeting by discussing tuition fees increasing.
He provided a graph displaying tuition fees over the last eight years, and he pointed out that tuition then was within a single percentage of where it is today.
“But overall where we are in 2009 is within a percentage of where we were eight years ago, which I’m not saying is good news at all, because the other reality is that if you look in Canada, the amount of government funding compared to tuition fees, Ontario ranks ninth out of 10 in the provinces,” said Wildeman. >>
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