For at least one major Canadian university, prospective undergraduates may soon need more than just good grades to enrol. Starting in September, the University of British Columbia will implement a “broad-based admissions” process at its Vancouver campus. The new method requires students to answer four to six “personal profile” questions as a complement to their secondary school transcripts, enabling the university to learn more about the calibre and integrity of their applicants.

What used to be an ivory tower has now become a “gated database,” according to a recent editorial for The Atlantic. The target is JSTOR, a company which digitizes scholarship for convenient use by universities and other such academic institutions, and its banner is “Free the Research!” The author of the piece, Laura McKenna, argues that JSTOR is a “stubborn tradition” which keeps the public from ever accessing its wealth of information with its reliance on archaic publisher relationships. “If academic journals skipped that needless step of providing a print version of their journals, they could simply upload the papers to a website and take the publishers out of the process,” she writes.

On the evening of November 14, 2006, a Russian agent who called himself Paul William Hampel was arrested at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport. In his possession were the iconic hallmarks of globetrotting espionage; forged papers, thousands of dollars in various currencies, a shortwave radio, and multiple cellphones with password-protected SIM cards.

Starting this month, many undergraduate students pursuing post-secondary education in Ontario can look forward to a 30 per cent tuition rebate. The new program, a core component of the Liberal campaign platform and spearheaded by “education premier” Dalton McGuinty, will be available to roughly half of the province's undergraduates.

“The future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed,” once claimed cyber prophet and preeminent science fiction author William Gibson years ago. Marc Goodman, Global thinker and founder of the Future Crimes Institute, frequently returned to this idea throughout his November 30 discussion on The Future of Crime. Indeed the future is here, and it’s evidently in nefarious hands.

After three hours of tedious debate and technical difficulties, Tuesday’s UTSU Annual General Meeting came to a predictable conclusion. While members eventually approved all bylaw changes outlined on the agenda, several vocal students nevertheless raised deep concerns about the potential implications of the amendments, probing beyond UTSU assurances of humble “housekeeping.”

Way back in 1999, I once had a curious thought while playing Final Fantasy VIII, a Japanese role playing game in the spunky-teenagers-save-the-world mould. This particular game features a rather prominent dichotomy between the civilized and savage, as futuristic settlements litter a world where monsters still roam the countryside outside the city limits. One of the questions it caused me to consider was how technology could advance without complete dominion over the wilderness. Continental road and rail networks that could be interrupted by marauding monsters felt ridiculous, even by the loosest standards of fiction.

“On 14 October 2011, 15-year-old Jamie Hubley, an openly gay young man, committed suicide after being bullied at school,” said Charles Hill, the first president of the University of Toronto Homophile Association (UTHA), visibly holding back tears. The tragedy of Jamie Hubley is a timely reminder of the challenges members of LGBT communities have faced and continue to face to this day. This saddening reality surely weighed heavily on the minds of many of the attendees and distinguished speakers who gathered in the East Hall of UC on Wednesday for the unveiling of a commemorative plaque to honour the UTHA.