1. A billion-way tie

Tallying the votes for the Uniter 30 poll is always an interesting process. Readers can vote for anyone or anything they want in a given category, or omit any individual one if they choose. This can lead to wildly varying results from category to category.

Sometimes, there’s a clear landslide winner that gains dozens more votes than the runner- up. Other times, a single vote determines the winner. The same is true for the number of contenders: the votes may be split between only three or four clear favourites, or there may be a long list of nominees, each with a small number of votes.

But something very unusual happened this year as I counted the votes for the favourite University of Winnipeg (U of W) course category. The number of nominees kept piling up, but no course garnered more than a single vote.

At first, I was aghast. “What am I going to do without a clear winner in the category?” But as the process went on, it did become clear what an incredible breadth and diversity of topics are represented in the course materials at the U of W. It’s touching and actually kind of sweet that every student had a different thing they were excited about.

Votes were cast not just for full-term courses, but also for guest lectures and one-off seminars. Topics and classes were as varied as Rebeca Heringer’s work in the Faculty of Education to the lessons imparted by the Manitoba Food History Truck. Others chose to single out specific profs, like Kent Simmons in the biology department or Andrew Burke in English.

Others still specified that, while they aren’t current students, they wanted to offer support to campus organizations like CKUW and Diversity Food Services. So, while we always prefer to single out a clear winner, this is still nice.

Published in Volume 76, Number 12 of The Uniter (December 2, 2021)