U of T already has a student-developed iPhone app, but now we also have a handy tool for searching for U of T courses online. Created by psychology student Ammar Ijaz, it allows you to search by course code, term, professor, date and time, enrollment indicators, enrollment controls, and whether or not there is a waitlist. Ammar says:

Don’t you hate trying to find courses to take? Using the timetable and calendar books is bad enough, but the archaic website is even worse! I hate searching for courses, too, so I decided to create a website to make the task easier. Looking for 3rd year psych courses? Just put in “PSY3″ as a course code and hit “Show me!”

Check it out!

You’ve seen him do the Soulja Boy in his underwear and you’ve seen him in a banana costume. This time he’s running through the U of T campus, New Ho King, and a grocery store dressed as a chicken. Why?

I believe being confident or cocky is a personal characteristic that’s developed over time. Being confident has nothing to do with one’s race.

SexyDragon (a.k.a. Yang) is back with another video in which he is running around Toronto in a banana costume. Why? A banana is white on the inside and yellow on the outside — this is how some people describe Asians who are so-called “white-washed.” Yang wants to emphasize how silly it is to label people this way, by being an actual banana!

Image by Reveus from the blogUT Flickr pool

We read the news so that you don’t have to!

UTSC students voted in favor of contributing money to build a “high-performance athletic facility” on their campus for the 2010 Pan Am Games. The facility will include two Olympic-sized swimming pools and a dive tank. Full-time students will be paying $40/semester and part-time students $8/semester. However these numbers will go up significantly to $140/semester and $28/semester in 2014, which is when the facility is supposed to open. A representative of the campaign against the levy says that students were fooled into paying for the construction when it would have been opened regardless.

A construction worker and recent immigrant from Turkey, Hilit Mutlu, passed away last week after falling 10 meters through UTSC’s new Instructional Center. Sadly, the incident was cited as “preventable.”

On a lighter note (I guess), the UTSU election was a rather dramatic event, with a lot of controversy and both sides — “Change” and “Stronger Together” — harassing campaigning all over campus for days. Stronger Together came out on top, winning all of the executive positions. The voter turnout was approximately only 16.4%.

After years of student complaints regarding marks appearing late on ROSI, U of T is finally doing something about it by transitioning to electronic mark submission (professors currently have the option to submit marks on paper). Now if they could only address all of the other problems we have with ROSI…

As of this year’s admission cycle, 250 spaces in PhD programs will be cut, while 500 spaces in Masters programs will be created. The change was decided after receiving demands from students, though the details of how this will affect each department are not mentioned.

In the year 2008, U of T lost $1.5 billion from its pension and endowment funds — nearly 30% of its total value. The U of T Asset Management Corporation invested in high-risk assets and suffered the worst losses out of all other Canadian Universities with more conservative investments.

If you missed the last Overheard on Twitter, you can check it out here.

• @Lisa_Dunn: “U of T just called me to ask for money for students to be able to sleep over in Robarts library. Ew!”
• @scarletqueen: “if U of T taught Buffyology (aka Buffy studies, i mean we have women studies, why not?) i would totally major in that shit. MAKE THIS HAPPEN”
• @hughdashhyphen: “I am the urinal cake to U of T’s disintegrative parabola of piss.”
• @otakupeter: “family.utoronto.ca is a REALLY BAD IDEA, I will PERSONALLY deliver letters explaining why to David Naylor’s house if you give them to me”
• @carmisandiego: “i hate when people say “UFT” instead of “U of T”. please tell me what the F stands for. fools.”
• @moepickles: “This reading “week” is only going to make me procrastinate more. #UofT“
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Image from x3nomic in the blogUT Flickr pool

Take our nose out of your textbook for a minute to find out what’s going on outside of the exam craze.

It seems that everyone is pissed off at the UTSU. A lot went down at their Annual General Meeting on November 19th. For one, the college councils have a few issues, which you can read the details of here. Furthermore, the meeting started 45 minutes late and ended 3 hours late, because students from UTM were delayed by traffic, meaning that people who planned to leave on time were left out. The Varsity has the rest of the details along with a giant list of comments.

The French Club (EFUT) is disappointed that they won’t find out whether or not they will receive funding from the UTSU until January because they didn’t submit a list of their members with their funding application. This list need to include the names, students numbers, and enrolment statuses of each member, which the EFUT says violates the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The executives have already spent $1,000 paying for events out of their own pockets. Sounds similar to something that happened to us at blogUT >_>

Some interdisciplinary programs may be on the chopping block unless colleges provide sufficiently convincing reviews to the Faculty of Arts and Science.

The Admissions and Awards building has moved to 172 St. George Street, a building U of T bought in 2008.

To end on a happy note (unless you are graduating this year, in which case this does not apply to you), the TTC has extended the Metropass discount to all post-secondary students. This means that you can buy the pass for $99, which is $12 less than it would be.

There are a lot of students out there who want to start an Internet company but are lost, either because there is not enough “push” from the community to motivate them to get started or because they don’t know where to find the right people. U of T’s Web Startup Society wants to connect student entrepreneurs with people who aspire to be entrepreneurs.

In Stanford, or even in Waterloo, most students want to create their own startup once they graduate. However, over here, the startup scene is fairly disappointing. The WSS wants to change that by starting a culture in which people will once again believe that they can change the world through the Internet.

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