Last week, the University of Calgary Cross Country team competed against varsity squads and clubs from all over western Canada in the Golden Bear open at the University of Alberta. The women's team came in second, just behind the hosts, while the men placed fifth.

In the heart of Africa, the University of Hargeisa is part of a vast rebuilding effort after years of civil war. Located in Somaliland, a region in Northern Somalia, the school is in desperate need of new textbooks, according to Salan Ahmed, a coordinator for International Assistance Canada. The fifth annual Students' Union Book Drive begins collecting textbooks Nov. 1 and aims to help this development.

From Nov. 2 until the new year, University of Calgary students won't see Students' Union officials in their offices. To allow for $200,000 in renovations to occur, the SU is temporarily moving their offices to the old club office area in MacEwan Hall, rooms 209 and 210.

"Right now is the only opportunity to do something like this," said SU Vice-president Operations and Finance Matt Lauzon.

It has been almost 40 years since British lawyer Peter Beneson started the entity known today known as Amnesty International. What began in 1961 has now grown to massive proportions, with over one million activists in over 150 countries. The organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, and continues to raise awareness of humanitarian issues around the globe. There are over 60,000 Canadian AI members, several of them right here on campus at the University of Calgary.

After years of delay, the oft-plagued MacEwan Hall expansion finally got underway Thurs., Oct. 26 with a groundbreaking and rock-moving ceremony at the University of Calgary. The new $8.8 million building, to extend from the east side of MacEwan Hall, will contain a new ballroom, as well as space for conferences and trade shows.

"It's been a long, long road that we've had to take to reach this point, but we're all very excited to be here," said U of C Students' Union President Toby White.

If you plan to learn about only one issue during the current Federal election campaign, consider making that issue electoral reform, specifically proportional representation. Our current "first-past-the-post" model allows the candidate who gets the highest percentage of votes in a riding to sit in parliament as that riding's MP. Sounds good, right? Not necessarily--look at what recent history taught us.
In the last federal election, Reform only got 54.4 per cent of the vote in Alberta.