On Nov. 18 Carleton students are invited to take part in a night of open mic performances, bake sales and presentations of social and environmental issues.

Carleton’s Humanitarian Organization of Latin American Students  (HOLAS), is hosting the event in a joint-effort coffee house at Rooster’s, to promote social and environmental awareness.

HOLAS will be partnering with other student-run groups such as Engineers Without Borders.

Each group involved will get a chance to give a presentation on the issues they focus on.

McMaster University alumni who make up the band the Arkells may have hit the ground running, but rest assured, they remain grounded.

“I think we know where we stand,” said lead vocalist and guitarist Max Kerman, speaking via phone hours before a scheduled gig in Windsor.

The band is currently in the midst of their first headlining cross-country tour, which touched ground in Ottawa Nov. 7.

For the past 10 years, students have been lobbying city council for an affordable universal bus pass (U-Pass), a semester-long pass that full-time students would get as part of their tuition fees. A U-Pass would allow eligible students to ride the bus or the O-Train by simply showing their student cards.

After years of student lobbying and council debates, Ottawa’s transit committee has finally come up with a reasonable offer of $145 per semester for a universal bus pass for students in Ottawa.

This is a proposal worth considering; with a reasonable offer on the table, now is the time to hold a referendum and let students decide whether they would support the U-Pass.

Prospective students are annually inundated with university ranking reports to help them decide where to study. But Maclean’s and The Globe and Mail shouldn’t be the only ones handing out grades — ultimately, students should be doing their own research and making their own judgments about where they decide to study.