Queen’s Budget Update

Hiring freeze, 1.5 per cent reduction in spending across facilities is underway

Meghrig Milkon Assistant News Editor

Akash Singh explained.

Sofia Tosello Assistant News Editor

The Computing Student Association (COMPSA) is asking for a $14,800 rebate of computing students’ mandatory ASUS fee to increase orientation funding.

COMPSA asked on June 26 for the ASUS executives to transfer $14,700 in computing students’ mandatory ASUS fees. ASUS will make its decision in mid-August.

COMPSA plans to allocate $3,500 towards computing orientation week; $8,750 will help support computing clubs, professional development ventures, equity and academic support initiatives, and internal affairs. The rest of the funds will be used for various events that COMPSA plans to host in the fall and winter, COMPSA President

Last years’ large event turnout motivated the COMPSA executives to increase orientation and school-year events’ capacity but found themselves facing budgetary restraints. COMPSA executives launched an Instagram survey to investigate the extent computing students utilized ASUS services in June. The survey received around 150 responses. “What we expected to see [from the survey results] is what we saw. Overall, the computing student body is not engaging too much within ASUS services,” Singh said in an interview with The Journal Singh told The Journal 97 per cent of surveyed students didn’t use the ASUS jacket subsidy and only one respondent volunteered for ASUS.

“Any extra revenue coming back into COMPSA is going to ensure that students who in the past have not seen much value in COMPSA or have not engaged with us have a reason to do so,” Singh said.

If granted, the rebate will be a one-time payment.

COMPSA has the lowest mandatory faculty society fee, sitting at $1.13 per student.

To relieve the budgetary strain for future executives, Singh plans to propose an additional student fee for computing orientation or increase the current computing student fee during referendum in February.

In an interview with The Journal, ASUS President Amaiya Walters noticed there were discrepancies between the ASUS database and the data gathered during the COMPSA survey. The largest discrepancies were the amount of jacket subsidies used by

Kingston’s first hospice

10-suite residence to be accompanied by a $13 million price tag

Allie Moustakis

Copy Editor

Kingston embraces its first hospice residence with 24-hour end-of-life care.

The 10-suite hospice residence is set to open in mid-2024 and will provide support services in a home-like setting to people in the final stage of their life. The 13,000 square foot residence is currently under construction at 1200 Princess St. and will cost $13 million.

Hospice Kingston has offered in-home visiting, wellness services, and grief and bereavement support groups for clients and caregivers in the community for 38 years. After a decade of planning, they voluntarily merged with Providence Care in 2022 to create the community’s first residence.

“From a hospice service perspective, this has been the missing piece […] to support a continuum of palliative care in Kingston,” said Krista Wells Pearce, vice-president of corporate services and executive director, Hospice

Kingston at Providence Care, in an interview with The Journal The residence will be run primarily by community volunteers with staff on-call to assist.

Volunteers go through general orientation and are required to complete over 30 hours of self-directed training provided to them by Hospice Palliative Care Ontario (HPCO).

Volunteers are then matched with clients to provide one-on-one support for mental and physical health. With the mental health side being the most intense part of the job for all involved, explained Wells Pearce

“The physical stuff is textbook, you know how to manage pain and make sure that people aren’t getting pressure ulcers and their nutrition is modified; but the spiritual, social, and emotional side of all services is important—especially at end-oflife,” Wells Pearce said.

One of the major issues Ava Penry, MSc ’24, observed among seniors in Kingston is loneliness and isolation. Penry is the co-chair of Queen’s Grandfriends, a club that journal_news@ams.queensu.ca

Walters attributed the discrepancies in the survey to the low student sample size. Of 1,100 computing students, only around 150 students completed the survey.

Low participation in the survey means ASUS can’t depend solely on the survey data to decide on issuing a rebate amount. Walters will consider the information which ASUS has in their database.

“If COMPSA has enough funds to run orientation now, then we can continue to talk with COMPSA about some better data collection to see how computing students are using ASUS services. We can then give them a rebate later in the fall semester to run events and programs,” Walters said.

The next step is for ASUS to evaluate if the proposed rebate COMPSA suggested aligns fairly with their budget for orientation week.