RORY MACLEAN
News Editor

Bottled Water Campaign

Ben Fawcett, vice-president student affairs for the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union, put forward a motion to support the Better than Bottled Water campaign.

Organized by a group of graduate students from the school of environment and sustainability, the campaign seeks to discourage the sale of bottled water on campus to promote the use of free public water services.

Fawcett’s motion calls on University Students’ Council to pursue initiatives that promote access to water fountains and fill stations, and limit the provision and sale of bottled water on campus.

The motion drew some criticism from councillors who were concerned the move would force council to pursue a ban on bottled water, but Fawcett assured USC this was not the point.

“It’s not something that says in the future we can’t sell bottled water,” said Fawcett.

It is not the USSU’s intent to ban bottled water at this point, he said.

Councillor for Edwards School of Business Alecia Nagy said that leaving the choice of buying or not buying bottled water to students, and not banning it was an important part of the motion.

Roger Loor, councillor for Pharmacy and Nutrition, asked for clarification on some of the information about the Better than Bottled Water campaign.

The information could not be provided immediately, so the vote on Fawcett’s motion was tabled until the next meeting.

Mad paper waste

Vice-president Academic Daniel McCollough gave councillors an update on how much paper was used to conduct the surveys for the USSU’s teaching excellence awards.

“The teaching excellence awards actually used 11,000 sheets of paper in order to do the surveys,” he said.

McCollough lamented the excessive paper use, but argued that in-class paper surveys were the easiest way to get the most respondents from each class.

To make up for this waste, several trees are being planted in honour of the award recipients, said Fawcett.

The next meeting of USC promises to be a marathon as Scott Hitchings will be presenting the USSU’s budget.