Lister Centre

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Lister Centre is the largest single student residence in Canada[1], located at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The centre is named after the man who was in charge of the University of Alberta residences for forty-five years, Reg Lister. The centre now houses just under 2,000 students in the same complex and contains, among other things, a conference centre.

Currently, Lister Centre is run by Residence Services (RS) with the students being represented by the Lister Hall Students' Association (LHSA). The Lister Centre is host to a large intramural league, which creates an interesting, good natured and competitive environment for its residents[neutrality disputed].

Contents

[edit] History

The centre consists of four towers; Kelsey and Henday Halls both built in 1963, Mackenzie Hall built in 1969, and the newest addition Schäffer Hall, which was opened in the summer of 2003. Kelsey Hall was traditionally an all-female tower, while Mackenzie Hall was mixed-gender oriented, and Henday Hall was an all-male tower (made evident by the Henday Riots). Presently, each tower is mixed with a roughly equal distribution of males and females.

[edit] Lister Life

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Lister Centre comprises four towers: Henday, Mackenzie, Kelsey, and Schäffer. Each tower has ten to twelve floors, and each floor in the traditional dormitory-style residence houses approximately 40 students. Each floor has a Floor Coordinator (FC) or Resident Assisant (RA) who is in charge of the floor activities and dynamics. FCs/RAs are usually second or third year (and sometimes more) returning students, and are elected in the prior year by the residents living on the floor at the time. This process of floor elections is pivotal to the community feeling fostered in Lister. Rather than a hiring process, the floor vote has a much more friendly feel and ensures the floors are run by students, for students.

List of Lister Hall Students' Association (LHSA) President:

2004/2005 Karen Ross

2005/2006 Simmon Hofstetter

2006/2007 Michael Janz

2007/2008 Kyle Marshall

2008/2009 Adam Williams

[edit] The Ship

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Henday, Mackenzie, Kelsey and Schäffer Towers
Henday, Mackenzie, Kelsey and Schäffer Towers

Until recently, Lister Centre housed its own in-house bar, The Ship. The Ship was a popular place for students to go on the weekends, especially Thursday nights, as this was the first night of the week when the bar would serve alcohol[2]. Parties that took place there were usually themed, with most students coming dressed for that week's particular theme. When The Ship was closed down due to insurance reasons in January 2004, students sought to carry on the tradition of themed parties by having "Ship Nights" at the on campus bar, The Powerplant[3]. As of fall 2006, Ship Nights run for two weeks and then take a two week break. Popular themes for ship night include: Toga night, 80s night, James Bond night, Dodgeball, and Halloween. During the Fall 2006 semester The Ship was renovated into a lounge type area with couches, tables and chairs, and a pool table[4].

[edit] Tower competitions

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Near the beginning of the second (Winter) semester each tower has a tower competition. The events pit the floors against each other in their respective towers in a week-long competition. Each one traditionally has an event that runs all week with other events running each night. While events vary in each tower, most of them combine elements of sleep deprivation, with some events taking place during the night, and floor co-operation[citation needed].

[edit] Dodgeball

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Lister Centre also houses a very large resident intramural league, the Lister Dodgeball League, consisting of over 1400 students. Team names vary from simple (example: The Manatees) to lengthy non-sequiturs (example: 10,000 Angry Bees All Over Your Dorf Dingle Muffin While You're Sleeping), also including suggestive names, such as (example: The Penetrators - Go Deep, Go Hard, Go Home).

The dodgeball season consists of a seeding tournament (exhibition single-knockout tournament), a 15-week regular season, an All-Star tournament and a Playoff tournament.

The exhibition tournament is held on the second or third weekend of the school year. It is designed to give all the new players a chance to learn the game and its rules as well as also allowing for loose preseason ranks to be assigned. Based on these ranks, the teams are divided up into 4 divisions of 9 teams and also into 3 12-team tiers. The divisions are spread out across the ranks (ie: A Division consists of the 1st, 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th, 21st, 25th, 29th and 33rd ranks). The tiers simply group the top 3 teams in each division into the highest tier, the middle 3 teams in each division into the middle tier and the bottom 3 teams in each division into the lowest tier.

In regular season, teams are scheduled to play the other 8 teams in their division (divisional) and also 6 of the teams in their tier (inter-divisional). This season every team was given a bye week. Each divisional week saw 16 games played with 4 teams having their bye week, 1 from each division. Each inter-divisional week saw 18 games being played. There were 9 weeks of play in the first semester and 6 weeks of play in second semester, ending in the week leading up to Reading Week.

Immediately following Reading Week, there is an All-Star Tournament. There are four All-Star teams from each tower consisting of 28 players (17 males, 11 females). These players were selected through a process that started with the referees and Exec nominating a large number of players for a preliminary list. Then the Exec met with each tower's liaisons and voted on each player on the list and made changes where the liaisons saw fit. The tournament itself opened on the Monday with a Skills competition that saw players from each team compete in Hardest Throw, Accuracy, Doctor Drag, 1-v-1 and Fastest to the Line. The next three nights saw the All-Star Round Robin series, with each team playing once a night. On Friday the Alumni Tournament opened with each Alumni team playing one match before the Dodgeball Balls Deep pubcrawl commenced. On Saturday the Alumni Round Robin wrapped up with the All-Star Semi-Finals occurring as well. Sunday was the final day, seeing the Alumni Semi-Finals and Finals being played as well as the All-Star Finals.

The Playoff tournament begins after a one week break from the All-Star Tournament. The bottom 8 teams from the regular season duke it out in this week off, eliminating 4 teams with the remaining 4 preparing to play the top 4 teams in the league in the first round. It is a 32 team single-elimination tournament for the first two rounds. The quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals are all best of 3 matches. The winner of this tournament is crowned champion and awarded the Jon Paul Cup. The winner of the Jon Paul Cup for the 2007/2008 season is 10 Schäffer.

In 2005 team chants were banned by Residence Services for fear they would distract non-residents during meetings that are sometimes held in the centre's conference rooms located near the gymnasium.

[edit] Dining

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The dining facilities in Lister Centre are managed and staffed by Aramark. Their facilities include the "Marina", which offers a large selection of snack and food choices for the students in a convenience store setting and the traditional "Caf", which serves more home style cooking. The Marina features a short-order grill, a limited Tim Hortons, a Booster Juice, and baked pizza. Concerns have been raised by the residents of Lister in regards to the quality and price of the food served.[5] Aramark has been accused of neglecting the quality of food, while at the same time over-pricing it. In the Winter 2006 term a student petition was passed around to help voice concerns over the quality and value of the food. The petition featured over 1000 signatures. Residence Services has also made it mandatory for residents to purchase a meal plan (minimum $2310). In early 2006 the Aramark cafe in Lister centre failed a health inspection due to vermin. Even still after all the inspections food is still served with extreme sub-standard cleanliness. At the Booster Juice in the marina yogurt used in the energy drinks is seen sitting on the counter with no contact to ice for entire days. The meat used in burgers, steaks etc is of extremely low standards, finding bone in a burger or steak is not uncommon in the lister market cafeteria. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/features/restaurants/database.html?r=Lister]

[edit] Norovirus outbreak

A severe outbreak of a viral infection swept through the Lister residence starting on September 29, 2006. Edmonton's Capital Health system was very active in trying to control the outbreak and contain it to the Lister Residence. The virus has since been identified as part of the Norovirus strain. The fear being that it could spread into the general campus population at the University of Alberta, which enrolls 36,000 students. The infection was effectively contained within 5 days as the rate of infection began to drop. The number of students infected is officially reported to be approximately 130, although many residents believe the actual number of infections to be higher.[6] Concerns have been raised over the issue of Aramark Food Services' general cleanliness. The outbreak is drawing public scrutiny to the general practises of Aramark's food service system. Third-party contract cleaners have been hired to execute a mass cleaning plan. Such comprehensive cleaning normally occurs only a few times each year. Laundry fees were temporarily waived as encouragement for students to take responsibility to do their part in combating the virus. Students who showed symptoms were asked to voluntarily quarantine themselves to their rooms. Guests to Lister Centre were highly restricted but a full scale quarantine of the residence was not deemed to be required; however, visiting hours were restricted and signs deterring entrance were placed on all doors into the complex.

Despite the severity of the outbreak the virus became the subject of many jokes in Lister with students facetiously referring to it as the "GIV" (Gastrointestinal virus) pronounced "give." The student newspaper, The Gateway ran an editorial comic depicting the students as people with less than clean lifestyles, and the comics section featured references to the residents cleanliness as well. All programming, including floor events, and dodgeball were postponed for approximately a 10 day period.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links