0:09 Good morning, Ryersonians. I'm 0:11 Here Farooqi and I'm Nicolas Baxter. This is Rye report for September 27. We're bringing you the top stories for the week. 0:18 This week on the show, Ryerson will be taking part in Nuit Blanche, no more waitlist for counseling and why first year students are less engaged in campus activities. The wait is over. There was no wait for ongoing counseling for the first time in Ryerson counseling center this Tuesday. Students were forced to wait up to two weeks for an appointment last year. Access to ongoing counseling services would sometimes take four to five weeks. Alan McDonald is the Director of Student Health and Wellness at Ryerson. 0:48 As of yesterday when I met with my you know when I met with the key folks here. We have a small number of students waiting, but we have the slots available. But they're waiting because they're trying something else there. They might be too busy like I like we do have a waitlist, but we have space on our on our ongoing counseling list so effectively we have no wait. 1:10 He says the counseling services have seen an improvement in wait time since last year. 45% of students are now being seen within 48 hours. The remaining students are seen within a week. McDonald says the demand for counseling hasn't changed. The short wait times are due to a lot of hard work from the counseling group. 1:26 Nuit Blanche is coming to Toronto Saturday. Ryerson will be participating in this year's event. The university will feature at least three art projects in their art space and image center. Architectural science students from Ryerson are collaborating on an interactive installation. This isn't the first time Ryerson has been a part of Nuit Blanche. The award winning event has been held annually since 2006. The university has held exhibits most years. This year steam for Nuit Blanche is many possible futures. Alise Rasmussen is a Ryerson graduate displaying her art at the school's artspace. Her work will be presented in the foreign bodies exhibition. The exhibits will explore the relationship between bodies and space. She says Nuit Blanche is a great way for the general audience to engage in different artistic practices. 2:13 Ryerson social activities aren't so social. The university ran a poll in 2016 to measure participation in campus activities among first year students. Almost half of those surveyed said they were uninvolved. The poll showed 45% of first year said campus activities fell short of expectations. 13% said that their engagement was much less than expected. Saudia Mahmoud is a leader of the Ryerson tri-mentoring program. She says student disengagement is due to the amount of commuters at the university. John Austin is the intern Vice Provost for Student Affairs at Ryerson. He says it's harder to think about being involved on campus when a student has a two hour GO train ride home. Mahmoud says Ryerson students life is still very vibrant if you make the effort to get involved. Austin says first year students have a hard time transitioning from the high school community feel. The survey also said 92% of students would recommend the university to friends. The survey's margin of error is within about six percentage points. 18 times of 20. 3:13 The Hummussiah is a new Middle Eastern fast food restaurant on campus. I spoke with Tom Levy, the manager of the Hummussiah. He talks about how his middle eastern restaurant compares to others and why it's all about hummus. Why are you guys using hummus as your main selling point? Um, 3:29 first of all, it's something that I personally love from the Middle East. So you know, it's a staple over there. It was hard for us to see that the homeless in Toronto that everybody knows is a cold dip basically and not a warm meal, which is what we're used to. That was the main thing there are other considerations like cost is it's very good product to sell overall in terms of margins. You can also you know, sell it at a very good price point give someone a very nice filling meal for not a lot of money. So there's a few considerations, but hummus is an easy product to work with. It tastes great and people love it. 4:05 How would you compare yourself to other Middle Eastern inspired restaurants? 4:09 Um well at the end of the day I don't think it's the food that really sets anybody apart and are really it's not it's not about the product as much as it is about the attitude and making the product so what we try to bring in here is a lot of communication we have the three values that we have are communication generosity and happiness. So everything we do we kind of try to make sure that those three things are incorporated in it so if it's you know generosity could come into play with our price point. It could also come into play with everything is you know all the add ons kind of a free select sauces are free and you know you want some more olives, some more peppers, it's on us, man. Don't worry about it kind of thing. That's the attitude. Communication, we'll try to talk to you as much as possible. Figure out what you want so we can get you the best thing possible. And happiness, you know that's something that we take very seriously from the workers to the customers and we try to make sure that everyone's feeling as good as possible all the time. 5:02 That's it for today. This is Nicolas Baxter, 5:06 and I'm Heer Farooqi for rookie you've been listening to report. Tune in next week as we highlight the week's top stories.