Archive for February, 2011
Study explores the reasons behind dropping out
Losing a job isn’t one of them
A recent study by researchers from Michigan State University found that college students who are considering dropping out are especially sensitive to “critical events” such as depression or a loss of financial aid.
That’s not too surprising, considering the fact that twenty-five per cent of students who visit university health clinics may be suffering from depression.
The surprising part of the study? Major events such as a death in the family, a significant injury, inability to enter their intended major, substance addiction, becoming engaged or married, or losing a job needed to pay tuition all had much less of an influence on the decision to drop out.
The supposedly small influence of losing a job surprises me because paying for books and tuition comes right down to the last dollar for many of us, even with part time jobs, student loans and scholarships. I know it would be tough for me to pay thousands of dollars in tuition and books each semester (even if you buy them second hand through friends or websites like AbeBooks, it can still add up) after suddenly losing a job or other source of money.
The study developed a mathematical model to describe the reasons behind students deciding to quit, analyzing surveys from 1,158 freshmen at 10 U.S. colleges and universities. The survey included a list of 21 “critical events” (such as the previously mentioned loss of financial aid or death in the family) and students were asked if they had experienced any of them during the previous semester. The students were later asked if they planned to withdraw.
Other events that influenced students included an unexpected bad grade, roommate conflicts, and being recruited by an employer or another institution.
‘We will overcome the current crisis’
Tensions high at Concordia’s first board meeting since Judith Woodsworth’s alleged firing
Were Concordia University faculty consulted before the (alleged) firing of president Judith Woodsworth?
On Thursday morning, the university’s board of governors met for the first time since Woodsworth’s sudden and controversial departure in late December.
And while steps were taken to move forward, approving a plan to review the school’s governance structure, new questions were raised about what role faculty played in the process leading up to her departure.
Faculty representatives have universally condemned the process, blaming it on a secretive and powerful board executive committee acting without consultation or proper approval.
But according to Jean Freed, the part-time faculty representative to the board–a position that carries speaking but not voting rights–faculty members were consulted in the run up to Woodsworth’s departure.
“Every board member knew what was going on before Dec. 22,” she said.
Freed maintained that even though she doesn’t have a vote and is not a member of the “star chamber,” she had a say. “Every constituency was consulted.”
Freed said she is tired of people “pretending” that they didn’t know what was going on. “I think there are members of certain constituencies who’ve led their constituencies to believe this happened without consultation, without their knowledge and in my opinion that quite simply is not the case.”
Board chair Peter Kruyt had the support of a majority of board members, she said–even though no formal vote was taken–and that faculty had been outnumbered.
She added that the secrecy surrounding Woodsworth’s departure was due to the fact that it was a “matter of employment” and that board members were legally prohibited from commenting publicly, adding that Woodsworth was the only person who could have made the issue public.
“I can assure you that if your employer fired you you would not want that discussion in the papers,” she said.
Freed’s comments came towards the end of debate on a resolution to create an outside committee to review Concordia’s governance structure. If the university senate approves the plan Friday, interim president Frederick Lowy, along with the university senate, will be responsible for finding the committee members and creating their mandate. The committee would be composed of two or three experts from outside Concordia.
Throughout the meeting full-time faculty representatives criticized the actions of Kruyt and the executive, saying that their voices weren’t being heard.
When Lowy called for “people to talk to each other in a way that hasn’t been happening,” finance professor Lawrence Kryzanowski replied that, “it’s not a matter of talking it’s a matter of listening.” Kryzanowski comment was greeted with applause from around 30 professors and students who had come to watch the meeting. “People want a change in governance, there’s a real problem,” he said.
At times the meeting became tense. “It’s the chair and the vice chairs that have caused most of this problem,” said Kryzanowski,” again to audience applause.
“In your opinion,” shot back vice chair, Jonathan Wener, who was chairing the meeting.
Kruyt, arguably the most controversial member of the board was not in attendance. Wener said Kruyt was out of town on business. University officials played down Kruyt’s absence, saying it had been planed long in advance. According to one well-placed source, Kruyt is currently in China.
Throughout the meeting Lowy played the role of elder statesman. “We will overcome the current crisis,” he said. “The key activities of the university continue to perform well … academic activities in particular.”
Throughout the governance debate student representatives remained silent.
The university’s senate, the highest academic body, meets tomorrow.
How students are being disenfranchised
Electoral rules fail to realize that students hold a dual citizenship within Canada
Electoral districts are a tricky thing for any first-time voter to navigate, especially so if that new voter has recently moved ridings, as is the case for many university students in Canada.
New Hampshire is attempting to push legislation through that would disenfranchise university students in an electoral district unless they were a resident before enrolling in university.
Currently, in Canadian federal elections, citizens vote in the district where their permanent address is located, and students who move away from home have the option to cast their ballot in their school’s riding if they can prove residency.
But provincial election rules vary across the country. The Ontario Election Act, for example, defines residency — and therefore voting eligibility — as “the place where your family resides … until you move elsewhere with the intention of making that change permanent.” Technically, any student in Ontario who does not intend to permanently move to their university’s riding would be ineligible.
On the other hand, B.C. students can “register and vote in either the riding where [they] reside while going to school, or in the riding [they] usually live in when you’re not at school.” And residents studying out-of-province can request a mail-in ballot.
But, even with these rules in place there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of clarity or enforcement when it comes to registering to vote.
Take me, for example. My first election was May 2005’s B.C. provincial election, where I exercised my right to vote. Four months later, I began my undergraduate degree in Nova Scotia and that January participated in the 2006 federal election and had the choice to vote in my new riding or my old one. In the 2008 federal election, students in my riding were turned away at some polling stations because their permanent address was in another province and were therefore ineligible to vote, contrary to Canada’s Elections Act.
In a recent interview with Maclean’s On Campus, Danielle Smith, leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance Party, explained how she would make it easier for students to vote on their campuses, saying fixed election dates are the first step.
“Once you’ve got fixed election dates, I see no reason why you wouldn’t be able to have polling stations on campuses to be able to allow for kids who are living in residence to be able to vote in the election,” she said. “We seem to have no problem setting up polling stations in other facilities where we have temporary residence, like prisons for instance.”
Smith, for one, isn’t surprised that current Conservative governments, in both Alberta and at the federal level, haven’t moved on something like this.
“I think it is probably no secret that a lot of university students tend to be more progressive in their attitudes, and they may tend to vote NDP or Liberal, or on the left side of the spectrum,” she said. “And when you have a conservative government, they see no reason to find a way to facilitate the vote.”
This logic seems to be fuelling the New Hampshire legislation, as well. An editorial that appeared in the Tufts University student newspaper on Feb. 7 calls out the bill for similar reasons.
“The Daily objects to the proposal, which was introduced by State Rep. Gregory Sorg, on several dimensions, not least that it may be a transparent attempt by Republican lawmakers to disenfranchise a liberal-leaning bloc of voters in the months leading up to the presidential election,” the editorial reads.
The paper backs up their claim with a statement made by Sorg himself: “Even if [college students] voted the way that I wanted them to, I would not want them to be voting because they would cancel out the votes of the residents of the town who have a stake in the future.”
What Sorg, and others like him, are neglecting to admit — or perhaps blatantly ignoring — is that the goal of any election is for the people to have a say in the governments that take their tax dollars and provide them with basic services, including infrastructure, emergency care, and in some ways, post-secondary education.
If I pay income tax in British Columbia from a summer job, but property tax in Nova Scotia from rent on my student apartment, I’m drawing goods and services and giving back within two systems. To further illustrate this point, I paid sales tax on my groceries and textbooks in Nova Scotia, but interest on my student loans in British Columbia. I also draw services from both provinces in the form of roads, health care, water and basic municipal services.
What any of these proposals fail to realize is that students are essentially citizens in two places at once and shouldn’t be disenfranchised in an election because they’re attending school, unless they hold stakes in two ridings in the same election. Dual citizenship between Canada and the U.S. is a good analogy of this. People who hold dual citizenship can vote in either country, both countries or not at all. They have a stake in both countries, give and take of services in both countries, and are therefore allowed to vote in both countries. Why are student populations any different?
Desperate to cut their teeth
Changing standards for training schools have created a flood of dental hygienists
Though she could use more hours, Maria Di Bartolomeo, who works in three different dental offices, considers herself “pretty lucky.” That’s because the 23-year-old from Woodbridge, Ont., is a recently graduated dental hygienist practising in the profession’s toughest provincial market. “Right now I have to take what I can get,” says Di Bartolomeo, who splits her time between offices in Woodbridge, Richmond Hill and Etobicoke. Competition to land even a few hours a week is ruthless, she says: “There are just stacks and stacks of resumés that come in.” And graduates are so desperate for a job they’re willing to work for as little as $20 an hour—about 30 per cent less than the going rate in recent years for newly minted hygienists.
Every source Maclean’s spoke with had the same answer for what’s gone wrong in Ontario: there are too many private schools, too many graduates, and the market is flooded. And the problem seems to be spreading. Data collected by the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association (CDHA) shows that between 2006 and 2009 salaries have declined 6.5 per cent and the share of dental hygienists younger than 29 was up 17 per cent. Part of the issue is that Ontario has 28 dental hygiene programs, 24 of which are private colleges. By comparison, second-place Quebec has a total of eight private and public schools, while Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia all have one school each. And Ontario schools are pumping grads into other provinces, chiefly Alberta and British Columbia, says CDHA acting executive director Ann Wright.
The proliferation of schools in Ontario started after the provincial government passed an act in 2005 that allowed private dental hygiene programs to seek accreditation after opening, says Wright. While all dental education programs must still demonstrate to the Commission on Dental Accreditation of Canada that they meet certain minimum standards, since September 2006, in Ontario at least, the schools have been able to start training students before passing the quality test. With barriers to entry into the lucrative Ontario market so low, schools started springing up everywhere. At one point there were more than 40 schools, says Wright. (Numbers have declined as several schools failed to achieve the required accreditation and were subsequently shut down.)
Last year, the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities determined that all dental hygiene programs must meet Ontario’s accreditation requirements by December 2012—seven schools have already announced they won’t make that deadline. Still, it will take a while before the market assimilates the high number of hygienists that Ontario schools have produced in recent years, and the province could still have more than 20 schools.
Some graduates are feeling shortchanged. After all, a two-year program at one of the private schools costs about $40,000, says Wright. “When I went into school, there was an abundance of jobs and I thought it would be the same when I got out, but now with over $60,000 in personal school debt and no job it looks really bleak,” lamented an anonymous commenter on the public chat room of the website DentalHygienist.ca.
Others remain optimistic. Tiffany Halioua, a dental hygiene student at Aurora Dental College, says she was aware of the tough job market but enrolled anyway. A job in the health sector with flexible hours and no handling of blood is a dream. “I’m expecting that when I graduate I won’t have a full-time job,” but it’s worth it, she says.
Embracing your midterms
Less time for studying means more time for relaxation
When I first found out that all my midterms and lab reports were due before Reading Week, I was disappointed that I wouldn’t have the extra studying and report-writing time.
I quickly realized that I was actually lucky.
Had everything been due after Reading Week, I would have spent the entire nine days procrastinating, but not the fun guilt-free kind of procrastination. I’m talking about the type where you know you should be studying, which means you can’t quite bring yourself to do anything fun.
So instead you stare blankly at the TV with your notebook and textbook open in front of you.
I even listen to the infomercials. And not in the normal “I can’t believe anyone would actually buy that thing” way. But in a, “I’d rather watch someone enthusiastically clean their kitchen with a ShamWow cloth than study for my physiology midterm” kind of way.
But heading into Reading Week with my midterms and lab reports behind me, I’m free to spend the whole week reading. Yeah, sure. Reading.
MNA’s vote against extending Bill 101 to CEGEPS
‘We think we should leave things as they are,’ Beauchamp
Quebec’s National Assembly took preemptive action yesterday against a Parti Quebecois proposal to extend Bill 101 to CEGEPs, the Montreal Gazette reports. An Action democratique du Quebec motion, supported by the governing Liberals, to oppose the plan passed 65-45. The PQ, which will be considering the proposal at a party convention in April, wants the same language rules applied to colleges as elementary and secondary schools, by preventing allophones and francophones from attending English language CEGEPs. The PQ’s Pierre Curzi says he is worried about an increasingly “anglicized” Montreal, despite Statistics Canada reports that show English as a second language is actually declining, if slightly, in the city. Liberal education minister, Line Beauchamp pointed out that 95 per cent of francophones who go onto college are already attending french CEGEPs. “We think we should leave things as they are,” the minister said.
Officer tells students don’t dress like a ‘slut’
UPDATE: Toronto police to apologize for comments made at York
A Toronto police officer reportedly told York University students that to avoid sexual assault, women should not dress like “sluts.” The word was uttered in late January during a session on campus security held at Osgoode Hall. Describing the incident, Ronda Bessner, an assistant dean in the law school, told the Excalibur that “One of the safety tips was for women not to dress like ‘sluts.’ He said something like, ‘I’ve been told I shouldn’t say this,’ and then he uttered the words.” Bessner subsequently called Toronto police to complain and to demand an apology from the officer who made the comment. A spokesperson for the police said they are investigating the matter. “[This is] definitely something that we take very seriously. This matter [...] has been brought to the attention of our professional standards unit and is something we will be looking into,” the spokesperson said.
UPDATE: The Toronto Sun is reporting that the officer who made the comments will be issuing an apology. “The officer will personally send a letter of apology to the faculty and students at Osgoode Hall,” Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash said.
UVic expands, residents complain
There could even be more noisy student housing
I’ve just returned from a short trip to Victoria, where I can sadly report that the post-secondary story dominating the minds of ordinary citizens is no longer the fate of refugee bunnies.
Don’t get me wrong—those creatures, whose plight is one of the great tragic stories of our times, still commandeers our attention from time to time. But the story is many months old at this point, and there’s only so many ways you can shoot a dead rabbit horse.
However, I’m happy to report that the local media has moved on to a slightly more important topic about their university.
Instead of “Cute Animals Under Threat,” it’s now “Concerned Residents Don’t Like Change.”
Last year, the university bought a six-hectare parcel of land, the “Queenswood Property,” which is two blocks away from its boundaries. Previously owned by the Sisters of St. Ann, UVic naturally wants to rezone the land to give them maximum flexibility when they decide what exactly they want to do with it. People who live in the area, naturally, are concerned.
“What they proposed was clearly not respectful in any way of the comments they received from the residents,” a resident of the area said to a local paper.
Both articles on the issue raise the specter of student housing (noises from young people! boo!) as a possibility, and while UVic hasn’t exactly said what they would do with the land, it has to be a possibility for them. They currently have 2,100 students living in university housing and with an overall population of around 20,000, that’s not a great ratio.
UVic, surrounded as it is by residential land, has finite space, and this rezoning will give them a tremendous opportunity to shape future development. The only question is; what will it be?
Carleton awards honourary degree to Aung San Suu Kyi
Special ceremony to be held Feb 22
Carelton University will be awarding an honourary degree to Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. The honorary Doctor of Laws will be presented in absentia at a special ceremony next Tuesday. Suu Kyi, whose party had won elections in 1990, has spent most of the past two decades under some form of detention by the military Junta that rules the country. She was finally released last September.
Concordia’s controversial chair plans to skip board meeting
Quiet settlement of wrongful dismissal case raises more questions about former presidents (alleged) firing
Peter Kruyt, the controversial chair of Concordia University’s board of governors, is not planning to attend tomorrow’s board meeting–the first full meeting since the sudden departure of president Judith Woodsworth in December–according to Montreal Gazette columnist Peggy Curran.
The university’s senate, student union and some alumni have called for Kruyt’s resignation, in response to his handling of the Woodsworth situation and the secrecy surrounding the departure of several other high-level university officials.
The circumstances surrounding the (alleged) firing of Woodsworth continue to remain mysterious. Earlier this month, the university settled a wrongful dismissal suit brought by two auditors who were fired by Woodsworth. The former president told Quebec’s labour review board that the auditors had lied to her and that one of them had violated university policies by signing off on expenses claimed by a subordinate for meals he attended. Under cross-examination she admitted to doing the same thing on at least five occasions. Concordia policy requires the most senior person present to claim any expenses for meals.
The university’s release announcing the settlement praises the auditors and their “honest, loyal and dedicated service.” It also states that they were offered their jobs back but declined.
A protest is planned for the meeting which will take place tomorrow morning.
While some alumni are planning to attend the protest, the university’s alumni association has backed the board. The association has also faced criticism from faculty members who are graduates of the university. Maria Peluso, president of the part time faculty association, told the Link, “they have become apologists for the Board of Governors. As an alumni member, I don’t know where the alumni got their facts from.”
Interestingly, six of the alumni association’s seven executives and six of the 13 non-executive directors come from the same faculty, the John Molson School Business. Currently, that faculty accounts for under 21 per cent of the university’s population.
German minister alleged to have plagiarised PhD thesis
Law prof claims similarities between dissertation and several news articles
Germany defence minister, the popular Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, is being accused of plagiarizing parts of his doctoral dissertation. University of Bayreuth, where he earned his degree after completing his thesis in 2006, is investigating the claims made by Bremen University law professor Andreas Fischer-Lescano. Fischer-Lescano alleges that the defence minister lifted passages from several newspaper articles and failed to use proper notation. “The duplication appears throughout the work and in all its substantive parts,” he told the Guardian. Zu Guttenberg denies the accusation. “I did the work in good faith with my own knowledge,” he said. Elsewhere he has called the charge “absurd.” A Swiss newspaper has created a website comparing the thesis to the articles the minister allegedly copied.
McGill student president misled Ivy Leaguers
Conflict of interest allegations over social networking website continue to grow
McGill’s student president is accused of deceiving his counterparts at three Ivy League American universities over his involvement with a social networking website site. Zach Newburg was censured by his student council earlier this month after it was revealed that he had a financial stake in jobbook, a website that aims to connect employers with students at top universities. He did not disclose his interest in the company until January despite being involved for several months.
In promoting the new service, Newburg traveled with company founder Jean de Brabant to several universities in the United States and Britain. Newburg maintains that when meeting with student leaders at other universities, he represented only himself and not the Students’ Society of McGill University. “I was not representing the SSMU in an official capacity. And that should have been clear. And was made clear,” he told the McGill Daily.
However, the Daily reports that student presidents from Princeton, Harvard and Yale, who all met with Newburg, dispute those claims. “I thought throughout the meeting that [Newburgh] was representing McGill” said Michael Yaroshefsky, president of Princeton’s undergraduate union. “He was using his involvement in student government as a fulcrum to gain leverage for this private endeavour – it was dishonest and distasteful.”
UWinnipeg faculty reject contract offer
Admin wants to freeze wages for two years.
University of Winnipeg faculty voted 65 per cent today to reject a contract offer from the university. At issue was the fact that the administration offered zero salary increases for the first two years of a four-year contract, and requested senior faculty increase their pension contributions. Official statements have yet to be released from either the university or the union. More details tomorrow.
UPDATE: The Winnipeg Free Press has comments from the union, which confirmed the vote, and from the admin which says it wants to keep bargaining.
CAUT to change investigations into religious schools
Targeted schools feel investigations were unnecessary to begin with
After completing lengthy investigations into three religious universities and their hiring practices, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has said it will stop sending teams of investigators to schools it suspects require a faith test as part of their conditions of employment, reported the National Post.
The CAUT was criticized for deploying elaborate inquiries devoted to uncovering the existence of faith tests, when the information was readily available publicly through websites and university calendars.
Investigations were conducted into Trinity Western University, Crandall University, and the Canadian Mennonite University. Each CAUT report concluded that the schools required statements of faith from faculty members as an employment requirement. The organization also recently launched an inquiry into Redeemer University College in Ontario.
“In hindsight we started out using our elaborate investigative procedures because we wanted to be fair to the institutions,” CAUT executive director James Turk says. “We didn’t want to say the schools were doing something inappropriate without checking it out carefully.”
However, Justin Cooper, president of Christian Higher Education Canada, which oversees 33 private Christian universities and colleges in Canada, felt that the investigations have made some parents and donors question whether or not there was cause for concern: “Essentially what they were investigating was something that was public knowledge and then inferred conclusions that these faith statements were stifling the academic atmosphere, without ever conducting an empirical review. They have reached a damaging conclusion that discredits our schools.”
While they may no longer be sending a team of investigators, Turk told the National Post CAUT will still continue to keep an eye on schools that require statements of faith from their faculty. “An institution that includes or excludes teachers on the basis of a faith test is antithetical to what a university is supposed to be,” he said. “We’d be just as concerned if a secular university made its teachers sign an ideological statement.”
Boomers are the latest cash crop
Later-in-life schooling ‘is not just growing, it’s growing exponentially.’
When David Prosser, 64, graduated from Ryerson University in June of last year, it was his third time there in a cap-and-gown ceremony. In 2005, after ending a lifelong career at Kodak Canada, he enrolled to train as a fundraising manager at Ryerson’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, and now works as a development director for a Toronto-based mental health charity. “It was a big change to get from the corporate world to the non-profit,” he says—but his alma mater was there to help.
Prosser is one of an increasing number of students who are trotting back to campus decades after their first graduation, and changing the face of universities across Canada. Mid-career and mature professionals going back to the books are fuelling a boom in adult education that goes well beyond colleges. At the Chang school, enrolment rose by 49 per cent since 2001; at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS), it’s up 75 per cent since 2007; at the University of Ottawa, it nearly doubled between 2000 and 2009, growing 28 per cent this academic year alone; and at McGill University, it grew by around 6.5 per cent since 2009-2010. When Simon Fraser University (SFU) advertised a free workshop called “Later in Life Career Transitions” around Christmas last year, the 70-spot event was fully booked before New Year’s, and when the school decided to make another 100 seats available, they sold out in a week. “I think it says a lot about the hunger for learning and career options later in life,” says SFU’s dean of lifelong learning Helen Wussow, who added that enrolment at the school was up this year.
Continuing education used to be predominantly the realm of public and private colleges, but universities are now diving into the sector. Many have been offering some continuing education classes for decades, but the recent eye-popping rates of growth reflect a conscious effort to step up those programs. “In the last four years we’ve created a new visual identity for the school and a new brand-awareness effort,” says Almira Mun, strategic marketing director at U of T’s SCS, adding that this included a facelift for course catalogues and publications, and more ads in local newspapers. In 2008, the U of O turned its adult education classes into a new Centre for Continuing Education, which offers both personal enrichment and professional development classes and is housed in a brand-new building with a view of the Parliament Buildings. SFU and McGill are both conducting market research to lay the foundations to expand their offerings for adult learners.
The increased demand for later-in-life schooling is coming from foreigners seeking a quick gateway to the Canadian workplace, mid-career professionals who want to update their skills and, especially, sprightly baby boomers looking for a new career after retirement or some stimulation to keep an aging mind in shape. But regardless of place and year of birth, when skilled workers look for a professional upgrade or intellectual pastime, they increasingly want to do so at the university level, says Serge Blais, director of U of O’s adult ed centre. The sector, he says, “is not just growing, it’s growing exponentially.”
And, along with enrolment, revenue is on the rise. At U of O, for example, it grew by 89 per cent between 2000 and 2009. Other schools declined to disclose financial information to Maclean’s. Yet, with young people’s full-time post-secondary enrolment expected to dip by nine per cent between 2012 and 2025 due to Canada’s aging population, catering to seasoned students looks like a good insurance policy.
BC Student Support Programs cut by $34 million
UPDATED: Eventually, high school students will realize that debt will be a bigger issue if they stay in BC
CLARIFICATION: Our claim that $34 million had been removed from Student Support Programs is inaccurate. The Ministry of Advanced Education has split into the Ministry of Science and Universities, which is responsible for universities, and the Ministry of Regional Economic and Skills Development which is now responsible for colleges. Prior budgets included supports for both university and college students under the same ministry. They are now listed under separate departmental budgets. We regret the error.
With a new Premier of British Columbia set to be elected by the BC Liberal party at the end of this month, a lame-duck provincial budget was almost a certainty.
And it was, for the most part. A $600 million contingency fund was put in place for the next premier, but otherwise, this was a status quo budget, with no real winners or losers in any department.
Well, except for post-secondary students. Their programs for financial assistance were cut by $34 million.
In the budget estimates which need to be voted on, there’s a line item for “Student Support Programs”, which provide, and I quote:
financial, income and other assistance to and for students including scholarships, bursaries, loan forgiveness programs, transfers to students, and transfers for initiatives that enhance student performance and access. Costs may be recovered from organizations and the federal government for payments administered on their behalf for programs described within this sub-vote.
Now, here’s the amount of (rounded to the nearest million) money budgeted for that over the past four years.
2008: $132 million
2009: $99 million
2010: $84 million
2011: $50 million
Depressed yet? Consider that the student loan repayment program is considered to be abysmal, or that the government has also canceled the provincial grant program, that the Vancouver area is ridiculously expensive to live in, or that there isn’t even a ministry for post-secondary education anymore (it’s now “Science and Universities”) and you can see why student leaders are furious. The government, as it did during its throne speech, will trumpet the fact that there are more universities than ever before and that press releases from the Canadian Federation of Students don’t tell the whole story and so on.
But you know what? Ultimately, whomever is elected the next BC Premier will have to do a much better job of engaging on the issue, and at least pretending to give a hoot. Or at the very least, notifying student leaders before they make cuts (which they haven’t done in the past, and didn’t do today). Because eventually, high school students will click into the fact that debt will be a bigger issue if they stay in BC than any other province in Canada, and adjust accordingly.
NYU fellow trashes raped journalist
Offensive comments are a step back for progressive attitudes toward rape victims
While most of us were horrified to read the news that CBS correspondent Lara Logan had been brutally beaten and raped in Egypt, Nir Rosen, a fellow at NYU Center for Law and Security, just couldn’t resist a few political jabs.
He began his Twitter rant saying:
“Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal.” (Anderson Cooper had also been attacked while covering the protests in Egypt.)
He then continued:
“Yes yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too.” (Rape is hilarious, says NYU scholar.)
And it gets worse:
“Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger.” (Don’t feel too bad for her, she propagates war!)
Then:
“Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women, which is still wrong, but if it was worse than [sic] I’m sorry.” (Maybe if I pluralize her plight than you’ll see my point? Uhh… *then.)
Followed, of course, by a feeble attempt a damage control:
“ah fuck it, I apologize for being insensitive, it’s always wrong, that’s obvious, but I’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she will get.”
Then a better one:
“As someone who’s devoted his career to defending victims and supporting justice, I’m very ashamed for my insensitive and offensive comments.”
It’s hard not to be disgusted by Rosen’s remarks. Despite much of the progress that’s taken place in Western society in recent decades with regards to the perception of women and gender equality, sexual assault is one of those issues that seems to lag behind. It wasn’t until 1983 with Bill C-127, for example, that a man could be charged for sexually assaulting his wife. And later, in 1992, when victim blaming finally took a hit with a rape shield law laying out strict guidelines governing how accusers’ previous sexual conduct could be brought into assault trials. Then there are treasures, such as Whoopi Goldberg, who defended Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old girl as not “rape-rape,” and worrying stories of honour killings taking place in Canadian cities where girls deemed “sexually immodest” are murdered for dishonouring families.
Blaming the victim is not new, although usually the line is: “Well, if she went out looking like that…” rather than “Well, she is a war monger, after all.” But politicizing tragedy is always tasteless, no matter how you spin it. Whether it’s rejoicing in the grave illness of a political opponent or using a horrific incident to malign those on the other side of the table, there is usually little to be reaped for such rhetoric except for some pitiful self-satisfaction.
As a man and an academic who purports to be a progressive human rights advocate, Rosen has let his larger political agenda blind him from acknowledging individual injustice. Remarks such as his, which are so poorly and misguidedly contextualized, hinder the progression of attitudes towards rape victims and women overall. It seems he can only support justice as long as its on his terms. Your move, NYU.
Update: Nir Rosen submitted his resignation to NYU earlier today. The university has accepted.
Military belongs on campus
The army has as much a right to recruit on campus as any other employer
A group of students at the University of Toronto are trying to stop the Canadian Forces from holding information sessions on campus on the grounds that they felt it was wrong to recruit students to be trained “to kill and to fight wars.”
With all due respect to the 30 students who felt strongly enough about the issue to show up and protest the information seminar: you’re all wrong.
The seminar being protested was being held behind closed doors and only students interested in hearing the information were in attendance. Recruiters did not station themselves in the middle of campus with megaphones, they did not stage drills in the quad as demonstrations of active duty and they did not interrupt class time.
What they did do was provide information on a legitimate career option for interested students.
This isn’t the first time that a relatively small group of students has taken it upon themselves to protect their peers from the so-called evils of military recruitment. Back in 2008, the University of Ottawa’s student newspaper was forced to turn down all advertising from the Department of National Defence after a small group of students forced policy through at the paper’s annual general meeting.
Melanie Wood, the paper’s editor at the time, had her head on straight. She told Metro newspaper that “university students should be able to judge an advertisement’s message for themselves, and have information from all sources upon which to base decisions.”
And that’s what students at the University of Toronto should be allowed to do, as well.
Everyone is allowed to have an opinion. The protesters are allowed to believe that the military is wrong, that the war in Afghanistan is an imperialist push into Asia and that killing in every form is an incorrigible evil. But they are not allowed to force their beliefs on their fellow students.
Post-secondary institutions across Canada are filled with bright, intelligent and agile minds who are capable of deciding what kinds of information they do and do not wish to receive. If those people are interested in pursuing a military career path, they have a right to do so, and a right to learn about it in the comfort of their campus.
Top medical prof faces plagiarism allegations
Study retracted in 2007, prof continues to receive federal research grants
A top University of Calgary medical professor is facing allegations he plagiarized portions of a celebrated 2003 paper on medical ethics. Although the 88 page study was officially retracted by journal Current Problems in Surgery, in 2007, it is only now being discussed publicly after Postmedia had learned of the incident. The retraction noted that former U of C head of surgery Rene Lafreniere had taken “multiple passages . . . from other sources without appropriate attribution given the original authors.” Although the original study had three other coauthors, Lafreniere was specifically identified in the journal’s published retraction notice. Also in 2007 Lafreniere was named president of the Canadian Association of General Surgeons. In 2009, he, and another academic, had received a research grant worth nearly $70,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The U of C is not commenting directly on the case.
CFS-MB chair escapes impeachment
Motion alleges chairperson ‘failed to consult’ with executive members on her activities
For this week’s issue of The Manitoban, I reported on a motion that was brought forward to impeach Canadian Federation of Students-Manitoba chairperson Alanna Makinson by CFS-Manitoba Local 96, the University of Manitoba Graduate Students Association (UMGSA) at a Feb. 10 Special General Meeting.
The motion alleged Makinson “failed to consult with executive members with respect to her activities in relation to the operations of the Manitoba CFS,” according to a copy of the meeting’s agenda obtained by the Manitoban:
“The motion also claimed that Makinson had failed to communicate in the official languages of Canada, violating National CFS Bylaw 13; had not met with all member locals on their campuses, ‘which resulted in a lack of participations and disconnect between member locals within Manitoba CFS’; and that issues of communication, meeting timelines and deliverables, and violations of the bylaws ‘were brought forward to the attention of the chairperson by phone, email and at provincial executive meetings without resolution’,” reported The Manitoban.
The motion was defeated, with only two of the five CFS Manitoba locals, UMGSA and Association etudiante du College universitaire de Saint-Boniface (AECUSB), supporting the motion.
Makinson told The Manitoban she was “taken aback” when she saw the motion, and felt that “there were many, many opportunities built in through our democratic structures, the provincial executive, to direct any concerns that they might have.”
UMGSA president Meaghan Labine explained that the motion was not meant to be “hostile”, but an attempt to resolve concerns she says UMGSA had brought up on numerous occasions, stressing that they were primarily concerned with holding provincial staff accountable.
“This isn’t a high school club. You have to treat people professionally and set clear mandates and communicate effectively [ . . . ]” said Labine,.
“We need to see results for our graduate students; there’s limited time, there’s limited resources, and you only get a year to be effective.”
A motion was also brought forward by the graduate students association for the creation of a development and review committee to examine the performance of provincial office staff and full-time chairperson, which was tabled for further review by the provincial executive committee.
While Makinson told The Manitoban that CFS Manitoba had no problem with conducting performance reviews, she felt “they definitely need to be done in a proper way.”
“We don’t want to create an attacking environment; we don’t want to create a hostile environment,” Makinson said.
