THE RED EYE

It’s summer time, which means road construction season for the wonderful province of Saskatchewan. This is all hunky-dory when the municipal government doesn’t decide to do it all at once in the same area (you’re shit out of luck, Saskatoon residents). Or is it? I’ve got a huge number of friends and family who work in the road management and construction sectors, and they tell stories that could make your blood run cold. Why? Because there is a complete disregard for the safety of our road workers in the province, and as much as I like to pin things to the government (who doesn’t?) in this case they are only responsible for part of the debacle that is road safety.

The rest of the responsibility for this issue falls with every damn person reading this article. You fuckers.

I say the government is responsible for one simple reason, and it’s probably something you’ve never thought of (go figure). It’s pretty straightforward: whereas the regional depot managers under the provincial umbrella of the Department of Highways are very stringent in their regulations regarding the placement of signage and the times of day when it is appropriate, municipal governments are not. The DOH can not leave “men at work” and other road safety signs posted when there is no need for them, but in nearly every major civic center signage is posted around the clock when it is evident there are no workers on site. In essence, the fat pricks at the Cities of Saskatoon and Regina are fucking the entire system by teaching their citizens that construction signage has essentially no meaning. People from these cities are conditioned to use their better judgement (faulty, if it fucking exists at all) to determine whether or not to follow the law. This is a major problem that, if these morons had ever spent a day in the field, they would understand and (theoretically) rectify. Like I said though, fatheads in city hall can only be held accountable for a small portion of the problem, and I’d like to breach the topic of the remaining responsibility in the form of a question:

Are you a fucking dog that can be conditioned to whatever is convenient, or are you a sentient human being that gives enough of a shit about your fellow students to add five minutes to your drive time to save their lives?

That’s right, geniuses. Huge numbers of our own engineering students are hired on for the summer as labourers, supervisors, consultants and technicians to work on our roads and every time you drive above the speed limit in a construction zone, you’re putting them at risk. As far as I’m concerned, you are single-handedly responsible for every death that ever has/will occur on a Saskatchewan road construction zone every time you break this law.

And yes, it is the law. In fact, new standards have just been put in place to ensure that speed limit signs in construction zones are white rather than orange, because some dipshit of a driver’s education instructor told you all once that “coloured signs are only a suggestion” in passing, and you were enough of a lazy cunt to make sure that was the only thing you took out of the class. Even when these signs are not posted, the speed limit reduction is still in effect. It’s usually pretty obvious because of all the FLASHING FUCKING LIGHTS MOUNTED ON THE TOP OF THE DAMN VEHICLES. Apparently this is too hard to figure out, because people still blow by our men and women every day because they’re ignorant, or too blind to be driving anyway.

Makes me sick.

I suppose you’d like an example. Last summer, a young flagperson (dude with the flippy sign) was struck and killed by a driver who had skipped the line she had created by doing her damn job before the drunk cunt drove off down the road. There’s been a lot of controversy over the Crown prosecutors making an example out of this guy, so let me clear it up for you.

This motherfucker killed an innocent young woman who had moved to our province to find a more prosperous life than she had previously, and for no other reason than that he is a selfish, arrogant piece of shit. The Crown is going after this guy like a tank full of tiger sharks going for a butchered side of meat. For once, they got something right. There’s been a lot of talk like “rehab blah blah blah he needs acceptance back into society” from the shitheads (hippies) in the crowd. I’ll tell you what this guy needs:

He needs to spend the rest of his shitty life rotting in a cell up in Sask Pen with a 400 lb biker who will fuck him so hard day in and day out that his bunghole starts to look like the Grand Fucking Canyon. If someone told me that it would happen, I would call it Supreme Justice like it has never been served to such a chump before.

What I’m getting at is pretty simple: set an example. Be “that guy” who actually does 60 clicks going under the new Circle Dr bridge site, and keep our friends and family safe.

Saskatoon residents have been forced to adopt ridiculousness to match this year's snow fall

Due to record-maintaining snowfall and a quick melt, this year’s spring runoff in the Saskatoon area is posing a major threat to the city’s safety. Although floods are not considered as immediately dangerous in Saskatoon as they are in other places (only a real dipshit would build a city in the middle of the prairie and dig a too-shallow man-made lake smack in the middle of it…), riverbank erosion has posed a serious threat in the past. The summer of 2012 saw a considerable amount of the Saskatchewan riverbank slough off into the river in the south-west corner of the city, forcing families to be evacuated from their homes and destroying several decades of graffiti that the community has not yet been able to replace.

This year the combination of a large runoff and accelerated riverbank erosion could not be coming at a worse time. Whereas it would be logical to assume that the City of Saskatoon is on-the-ball, Town Hall is too busy trying to figure out their next move in screwing over the public transit system and will be unable to provide aid to residents. Naturally, the next course of action would be to turn to the intrepid students of the University of Saskatchewan College of Engineering, but these students are currently in the middle of exams and unlikely to expose themselves to sunlight for the next few weeks. Saskatoon residents have been forced to seek help in the lowest forms to face this year’s erosion issue.

The Federally United Community of Karyology, Typography, Ichthyology, and Topography Students (FUCKTITS) has started an initiative to sandbag the southwestern banks of the river in hopes of reducing the effects of riverbank erosion. While the solution they have developed is not ideal, Starbucks server and FUCKTITS spokesperson Chi Tilatey feels that the group has effectively killed two birds with one stone.

“We know we’re not as good at this as Engineering students,” Tilatey admits. “That being said, if we keep using Arts students as sandbags we not only slow down river erosion, but can provide our students with the most viable summer employment opportunities they’re likely to get. All in all, just one structural-civil engineering student would be great.”

Some residents are openly displaying their lack of faith in the FUCKTITS initiative, citing the group’s lack of experience and the annoyance of having to listen to “the same damn debate about the same damn Shakespeare sonnet every damn night” as cause to pursue other avenues of obtaining engineering students such as a call to the University of Regina for help. This is a course of action that Saskatoon City Council will not be supporting.

“Seriously guys?” complains The Somewhat Honourable Lordy Dude Ukrainianofski. “We’re better off with FUCKTITS.”

In light of recent graduations and all such activities, we at the Red Eye feel that our resources in the form of senior members are under threat. Sir Windsor Horne Lockwood was charged with gleaning what wisdom he could from one of our oldest-ballsest old-balls, Captain Von Snugglebutter. The following conversation is all he could get out of the beloved Captain:

Sir Windsor Horne Lockwood III : Should we clear porn from the Internet in the event of an Apocalypse so future generations don’t give up on us when they rediscover it?

Captain Von Snugglebutter: No, because somewhere down the road someone will name their daughter ‘Tissue’, forgetting the lost English definition of the word. Once the digital archive of humanity is rediscovered, it will reveal that the most common use of ‘Tissue’ with be that people blew their load in her. What a whore.

Thanks, Cap’n. We salute you.

In my many years at the University of Saskatchewan, I’ve come to learn that there’s a group of students dedicated to making me contemplate the rarity of common sense. We all know these students in Eng. The ones that come up to you and ask where the second floor of the Eng library is. The ones who ask where the ‘lambda lab’ is. The ones who bring their Captain Morgan’s into the ‘Eng Lounge’ only to watch him sail away with Campus Security as they find out that it isn’t a real lounge. And at times like these, all you can do is shake your head and mutter, “Fuckin’ first years…” Yes, we all know those students. So here they are, a list of real #firstyearproblems from this year, feel free to tweet your own @the_redeye!

“My first year was a lot like my sexual conquests during it… I failed. #firstyearproblems ”

“Starting dating upper year girl but didn’t check sexual history. Every time I walked in the lounge I thought they were applauding my arrival… #firstyearproblems ”

“Chem prof complains when people fall asleep in his class… I have narcolepsy… #firstyearproblems ”

“Went for Sex in the Building armbar, turns out the Dean does not count as a witness… #firstyearproblems ”

“Bought a poofie from table in the hallway.. I was in the Agriculture building… #firstyearproblems “

“Prof said that we were studying matrices, so I skipped class and watched Keanu Reeves pwn N00bs to study for the midterm #firstyearproblems “

“Went to school with a 4 year plan, leaving with an 18 year problem #firstyearproblems “

“Girls in Eng are so scarce that out of the 10 in my class 5 are taken, 4 are lesbians and 1 is my sister. #firstyearproblems “

“Thought that my Comm 102 prof was a first year girl, offered to tutor her in Biology… #firstyearproblems “

“This is why you don’t take me drinking.. I’m like a dog off a leash, I pee on everything… #firstyearproblems “

“All my buddies went to Bernouli’s Lab Friday night. I stayed in, I have 5 labs a week already, why would I go to an extra non-credit on on a weekend?? My friends are fucking idiots… #firstyearproblems “

“Heard some upper years cheering ‘FFY’ today. I don’t know what it means, but it sounded really encouraging! #firstyearproblems “

“Dad dropped me off at University with a box of condoms.. they expired… #FOURTHYEARPROBLEMS”

Compliments of the Red Eye staff.

Waiting for the call to order at today's VP Logistics election forum

In spite of massive and controversial policy changes, the Saskatoon Engineering Students’ Society elections are posed to wrap up with a new executive fully installed. Voting for the only remaining vacancy on the SESS executive, Vice-President Logistics, commences next Monday with the results announced at the annual KegSuck competition on Tuesday. SESS members are encouraged to vote online through PAWS over that time.

In utter contrast to other years in which former Presidents have had to use their incredible size and shaggy beards to intimidate first year students into taking executive positions, SESS elections this year have featured a whirlwind of competition both internally and outside of the organization. Following the cancelling of the first election round due to a well-publicized confrontation with members of the public regarding their poster policy, the 2012-2013 executive revisited their policy manual (available at sess.usask.ca) to clear up serious issues in their elections format. The executive presented the SESS Council with a revised version of the policy manual shortly afterwards, complete with the installation of an Elections Returning Council. This ERC has the power in any election to place responsibilities on any elections candidate within the Society, and places the onus on any candidate to slide into their big-boy pants when it comes to managing their campaigns. Despite the rough path to their current configuration, Elections Returning Committee Chair Ellen McLaughlin feels that this round of elections for VP Logistics will finish “smoothly this time around”.

McLaughlin cites the recent changes to policy as the driving force behind the format of this election, although it places more pressure on the SESS’s Returning Committee to oversee things. It’s a miracle that the SESS managed to find people competent enough to handle the elections who didn’t have the brains to keep their hands off it considering the clusterfuck the first presidential election turned into, but McLaughlin claims that there were only minor bumps in the road to this round that were easily resolved by repairing communications. Her RCM 300 professor should be giddy with glee.

The primary feature of this year’s forums, other than attempts by the outgoing VP Administration to prove once and for all that he has laid claim to Grand Loudmouth Poobah, was discussion by the candidates on their ability to encourage positive relations between the SESS and the College of Engineering’s discipline student societies. Incoming President Eric Peach views the growth of this aspect of the VP Logistics position as a positive: involvement of the discipline societies is a vital part to the 5-year plan outlined by the 2013-2014 executive and Board of Directors. Past the larger aspirations of the position, Peach most notably desires that the new VP Logistics fits in with what he believes to already be a very cohesive executive and that they easily “become part of the family the executive turns into.”

This Year’s VP Logistics Candidates

· Conor Kerslake - 2nd Year Electrical Engineering

· Roger Pederson - 3rd Year Mechanical Engineering

· Mark Cousins  - 4th Year Environmental Engineering

· Andrew Pan - 1st Year General Engineering

For more information on candidates and the elections forums, visit the Red Eye on Twitter or Facebook!

Why hello there!

Welcome to the new(ish) Red Eye website. As you might notice, we’ve undergone a bit of a brand change-up this year, and the continued updates on this website are a part of those changes. Right now, we’re working on moving servers, getting things together, blah blah blah. Trust me, we will keep you posted.

What is this new website? This is your online portal to student generated news and editorial writing for the College of Engineering. If you have a news, editorial, or joke piece you want to see published you can email it to the Editor at red.eye@sess.usask.ca. You can also follow the Editor, Javelin, Hang 10, and others from the Red Eye staff on Facebook or Twitter (@the_redeye).

Feel free to comment on anything on this site: it’s your Red Eye.

• In a meeting featuring a record number of participants due to the Chair’s ill-advised announcement of its occurrence to everyone present in Louis’ pub on March 21st of this year, the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union student council approved their budget for the 2013-2014 school year. The only Engineering students aware of this budget or its details were those in the room at the time, as spreading important information to the student body would require the Engineering MSC’s to actually be social, rather than spend all their time in the PAC gym or hiding out in the ECE wing.

• According to several students present in the meeting, the USSU is predicting yet another year in which they close out at a financial loss. Whereas the USSU is a student organization and doesn’t have a large income base (due largely to the mismanagement of their capital assets), outgoing Vice-President Operations and Finance Steven Heidel explained that a large part of the USSU’s losses are due to depreciation in the value of capital, not gross errors in spending. However, the Council did approve a $70K increase in their operations budget while still recovering from the major renovations of Place Riel and Louis pub.

• Despite the adorable stature and deep, soothing voice of the old VP Ops-Fi several of the at-large students present at the Council meeting found the USSU’s decisions in terms of this year’s spending questionable. The USSU still owes $17.75M on Place Riel (a debt that costs the organization a whopping $120K per month), and Heidel predicts that Louis’ will continue to lose $130K and more, so it is difficult to fathom why the funding committees would think it remotely acceptable to approve an $666K “improvement” of Browser’s coffee shop/wine bar [identity crisis much?]. One Engineering student who wished to remain nameless offered the suggestion that a more cost-effective improvement of Browser’s could be performed with “a sledgehammer, 8 litres of diesel fuel, and a free box of matches.”

• All in all, the USSU accountants managed to find several thousand dollars in funding to their various centers that could be spared from the seemingly bottomless pit that is their finances, and a charitable increase to student grants was performed. It is obvious that while Heidel’s administration (despite the presence of several Edwards’ students on the Council) has the financial acuity of a class of preschool children as Heidel had to spend the first 25 minutes of the meeting with an illustration of a red Corvette, so the major flaws in this year’s budget hardly come as a surprise to anyone. The USSU has their hearts in the right place: now it’s time to get their heads there as well.

-You wake up every morning feeling restless and full of pain.
-You have a hard time enjoying day to day life knowing that it is nagging at you.
-You spend an agonizing amount of time addressing it only for a small percent improvement.
-After your treatment is complete, you still have no idea whether you’ll actually make it for another month.
-Day to day, you still have know why either is necessary, or why it had to happen to you.
-You have to watch how much alcohol you consume lest you compromise your fight with it.
-You consult people for help with it, only for them to tell you meaningless information that doesn’t answer your question.
-There is no literature on it out there that actually simplifies the problem to the level you can understand.
-It costs you a lot of money, and you didn’t want it anyway.
-Every day, you wonder if it’s even worth getting out of bed for.
-They keep saying that a solution exists, but apparently you’ll never live to see it.

-Hang 10

So Snogolf happened a couple months ago, and despite their promises the U of R Engineers never made an appearance. Do you know what did make an appearance? American beer, and lots of it. Over some bullshitting while drinking some good Saskatoon beer, we found out that this isn’t the only difference between U of R Engineers and American Beer. For example:

· American beer is only 45% fake;

· Regina Engineers are drunk bitches, American beer gets bitches drunk;

· Nobody feels nauseous after encountering one American beer;

· American beer doesn’t smell like it sounds;

· American beer can actually help you with your homework;

· People don’t cheer if you shoot an American beer off a fence;

· American beer comes in 12 packs, in Regina they come in 13;

· American beer is worth having its own building to foster its creation;

· American beer doesn’t smell like sweat when you’ve got your mouth around its hole (er… thanks Captain Von Snugglebutter…);

· 40 American beer will give you less of a headache;

· American beer has a better international reputation, and will make lots of money;

· American beer is still worth something when you take off the label;

· Girls will pick up an American beer.

The two aren’t COMPLETELY different, though. American beer and U of R Engineers do have a couple of similarities. I mean, once a U of R Engineer and American beer are ready for the real world, you can find them both making money at Fuddruckers. The main similarity though, the link that really helps U of R Engineers and American beer understand each other, is that they are both just trying to cover up that something significantly better is hanging out just North of them.

- Sir Windsor Horne Lockwood III, with special thanks to Gunner, Tyler Durden, Captain Von Snugglebutter, Javelin, da Joker and that random French fuck

The dirty, corrupt group of self righteous Artsies that relied on a split vote to provide them with the visionary leadership team that brought you eco-friendly fonts and free cellphone charging. Primary goal is to cater to the grossly mediocre on campus, chiefly by enriching the lives of those who waste 4 years on a degree that would be worth more if printed on single-ply toilet paper. Composed of an executive that basks as it floats insipidly in a pool of its own ignorance, with the exception of the argyle-wearing imp that actually runs the joint.

- Javelin