0:08 Hello, my name is Cole Brocksome, 0:10 and I'm Jemma Dooreleyers. 0:11 We are here with the Rye Report for Friday, November 8. 0:15 Today we'll be discussing how a cashless society affects homeless people in Toronto, and a major change to Ryerson's computer engineering program. 0:22 We will also take a look at Ryerson's first student storytelling event and cuts to the Canadian Federation of Students. 0:29 People don't pay much with cash now, and that's having an effect on Toronto's homeless. Mike Day lives on Toronto streets near Ryerson's campus. 0:38 So you've noticed a lot less people have actual money? Yes. So you do find people give other things or do you find they just keep walking? 0:45 Oh they just keep on walking or some of them will stop and offer to buy food. 0:52 Layla Smarkfish is a Ryerson finance prof. She says the declining availability of physical cash is impacting vulnerable groups like the poor, elderly and homeless. In 2012 cash payments made up 39% of transactions in Canada. In 2017 the number dropped to 29%. 1:12 Ryerson International hosted its first ever student storytelling events last Tuesday. Through the Looking Glass: stories about living and learning abroad was the name of the event. Samantha Larocque from Ryerson International said the event was a collaboration with Replay Storytelling. Replay Storytelling is a monthly storytelling show featuring performances of all true stories based around a specific theme. Paul Afflalo is the artistic director of Replay Storytelling. He says he was excited for the opportunity to work with Ryerson students to produce this show. 1:43 Our partnership with Ryerson happened over the summer, where Ryerson International came to one of our shows. Loved what we're doing and then asked us if we want to participate in global learning week. And we said yes, this sounds like a great experience where we get together six students who will shell per share personal experiences about their travels abroad. Afflalo says he hopes to work with Ryerson again in the future. 2:07 Ryerson computer engineering students can now specialize in software production. At this senate meeting, it became official. In the fall of 2020, students will be able to work in courses about software design, analysis and quality assurance. Computer science students have always been able to take some software courses, but the option for engineering students opens up to many job options. Dr. Xavier Fernando is a Ryerson prof. 2:30 Change, change is always there, but certain fundamental aspects of engineering has not changed that much, right. So the thing is, you actually you get new programming languages, new tools, new environments, but still some of the fundamentals are the same, right? So you basically wanted the software to perform certain functions that the most important thing is it should be dependable, right? It's not how many how many lines of code you write, or how sophisticated the functionalities but the thing is, it should be repeatable, dependable, reliable, and all those things will come into picture. 3:07 The Canadian Federation of Students says they had to lay off a significant portion of their staff because of the student choice initiative. CFS chairperson Sofia Discaltsi. He says the student organization had to cut 67 positions to keep its campaigns and services for members intact. 3:24 At the end of the day, it's a catch 22 that we want advocacy campaigns and services to give to members but we couldn't pay the staff to do it. And if we can pay, we pay the staff to do you have less resources to give to students so he was kind of a very difficult situation to be in. 3:43 The student choice initiative is the provincial legislation that allows students to opt out of paying for some campus services including the Canadian Federation of Students. CFS is the largest student organization in Canada and represents more than 500,000 students across the country. 3:58 That's it for the Rye Report for Friday, November 8. 4:01 I'm Cole, I'm Jemma, thanks for tuning in.