Archive for December, 2011
Ontario student dies after taking ecstasy
Follows accidental death of Calgary teen who took pills
Photo by USDEA
A 23-year-old University of Western Ontario student who attended a concert in Guelph on Nov. 23 died of an apparent reaction to ecstasy pills, reports the Guelph Mercury. The Sarnia, Ont. native was taken to a Guelph hospital at 2:30 a.m. and died of organ failure on Nov. 26 in Kitchener.
Last week, a 16-year-old in Calgary died after taking what appears to have been ecstasy.
The drug most commonly sold as ecstacy is MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine), which floods users with euphoria and a sense of empathy. MDMA itself rarely causes sudden death. However, the brightly-coloured pills sold as ecstasy come from drug labs where they’re sometimes laced with more deadly drugs. U.K. Professor David Nutt published a study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in 2009 that suggested the risk of death from ecstasy use is similar to the risk of death from horseback riding.
St. Thomas students lost apartments to fire
School offers money, food and shelter
Three students who were the victims of an apartment fire in Fredericton in November have received generous help from their school, St. Thomas University. All three have been offered $750 to use however they like, a meal plan worth $350 and free residence for the rest of the semester. The STU Alumni Office also gave each student a $200 Visa gift card. Even faculty chipped in, giving the students hoodies after learning that their clothing was damaged. Perhaps the best gift of all: students will get extensions on their coursework and postponed exams, reports The Daily Gleaner.
Marking the Montreal Massacre
A coast-to-coast round-up of remembrance
Photo by Flabber DeGasky on Flickr
On this date in 1989, a young man named Marc Lepine rounded up women at the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal and opened fire, killing 14 females and injuring 14 others before turning the gun on himself. In his suicide note, he blamed women for his problems.
Since 1991, Dec. 6 has been The National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Across Quebec today, survivors of the shooting will gather with activists and ask the Quebec government to sue the Canadian government over Bill C-19, which will abolish the long-gun registry and—they say— allow more violence against women to occur.
Here are a few of the ways universities across the country are marking the sombre occasion.
Blinded UBC student’s attacker dies
Cause of death T.B.D.
A Bangladeshi newspaper reports that Hassan Syed, the who man allegedly beat, bit and blinded his wife, University of British Columbia (UBC) master’s student Rumana Manzur, has died. Golam Haider, deputy inspector general of prisons, told bdnews24.com that Syed had been brought to a hospital prison cell Nov. 23 because he was mentally unstable. He then suffered cardiac failure on Dec. 5. Asked about suicide as a potential cause, Haider said that an autopsy has not yet been completed. Manzur’s aunt told The Toronto Star that her niece is aware of the death, but unable to speak publicly about it. The UBC community reacted to the news of Manzur’s June attack by raising $58,000 in the first month after it, which helped bring the victim and her child to Vancouver. Surgeries in Canada to restore her sight were unsuccessful, but the fundraising hasn’t stopped. UBC’s Muslim Students’ Association raised a further $6,000 for Manzur at an Iftar during Ramadan.
A nativity scene on campus?
A simple solution for the Christmas controversy blues
Photo by kevin dooley on Flickr
Last year around this time I was startled to notice a small nativity scene set up in our university cafeteria. I considered making a formal complaint to the effect that at a public university such overtly religious symbols should be avoided. But it was only a little one, and even my great and growing peevishness has its limits.
Still, it’s easy to see why Christmas poses such a problem for educational institutions. On one hand, it is a venerable annual tradition for millions, with a seemingly endless store of symbols and songs to draw upon. On the other hand, for many, it is among the holiest days of the year, and one still hears a phrase like “the true meaning of Christmas” where “true meaning” is meant to suggest the religious meaning.
And so it is no surprise that controversy and indignation has become one of our new favourite holiday traditions.
Student union still won’t publish its budget
Students currently need to meet with the VP Finance to see details
Photo by Jenna Marie Wakani.
The University of Prince Edward Island Student Union says it will continue to keep the details of its budgets “for members only.” In other words, these pie charts with no figures attached are all that will remain posted on their website—the place where the public would normally expect to find details.
This comes after students demanded at a meeting last week that the union make their plans for spending easier to find, reports The Cadre.
That meeting resulted from a Facebook post that made the rounds. It said: “$700 of your dollars will go to the UPEISU over four years. Do you think that the SU budget should be accessible to the students and be able to see how they’re spending your money? Post this if you are concerned…”
Continue reading Student union still won’t publish its budget
UBC students charged for Stanley Cup Rioting
One accused of assault
Photo by Elopde on Wikimedia Commons
Among the 25 suspected Stanley Cup rioters who were charged last week in Vancouver, at least two are University of British Columbia students.
Alexander Peepre, a 20-year-old political science student, is charged with the assault of Cameron Brown, a photographer who alleges he was struck from behind by Peepre while trying to put out a fire and after trying to capture some of the criminal acts on film. “I tried to get some clear shots of people that were causing the damage because I knew right away that that would be the best way to identify them afterward and send them off to the police,” Brown told The Ubyssey.
Jensen White, a UBC science student from Seattle, is charged with mischief and participating in a riot.
Continue reading UBC students charged for Stanley Cup Rioting
University of Toronto tutorials are too big
What good is a lab or tutorial with 50 or 100 students in it?
Photo by Shane Global Language Centres
The union that represents teaching assistants at Canada’s biggest school, the University of Toronto, wants the public to know about the ballooning student-instructor ratios in the tutorials and labs they teach.
CUPE 3902, which represents 4,200 teaching assistants, graduate-student instructors, lab demonstrators, invigilators and writing instructors, voted 91 per cent in favour of striking on Nov. 30. A strike is still far off—2012 at the earliest.
The union may be using tutorial and lab numbers as a bargaining chip, but that doesn’t make the figures any less surprising—or concerning.
If the union is correct, 42 per cent of labs and tutorials at U of T now have more than 50 students, more than 100 sections have more than 100 students, and the proportion of tutorials and lectures that have 20 or fewer students has dropped from 40 per cent in 2006 to 23 per cent in 2011.
Continue reading University of Toronto tutorials are too big
Time for this year’s edition of X-Ring Idol
A fine university deserves better than this: Pettigrew
Photo by GViciano on Flickr.
There’s a lot I like about St. Francis Xavier University. Its pleasant campus, the small town charm of Antigonish, its rich history. But the ridiculous obsession that the university and its alumni have with their university ring…
Yes, it’s December again, and that means it’s time for the annual X-ring ceremony at the storied Nova Scotia campus. If you don’t live in the Maritimes, it’s hard to imagine how crazy people are for this ring. The University has multiple web pages devoted to it, complete with close-up glamour shots that look like they were taken for a Mercedes-Benz advertisement. Graduates await the ceremony like kids awaiting Christmas, and like so many Gollums out of Tolkein, they count the days til they can get their hands on the precious, the precious.
Continue reading Time for this year’s edition of X-Ring Idol
McGill reaches tentative deal with workers
But the bitter strike is not quite over yet
McGill University and representatives of striking support workers have accepted a tentative agreement put forward by a provincially-appointed conciliator, both sides announced on Wednesday.
While both sides have said they won’t be revealing the details of the tentative agreement until it is presented to union members, MUNACA president Kevin Whittaker told the Montreal Gazette that: “The agreement does contain a number of the main objectives we wanted,” including a pay increase that is “well over” the university’s original offer.
Kwantlen students vote to oust troubled board
Meeting marked by pepper spray, fire alarms, chants of “racism”
Photo courtesy of Matt Law for The Runner
Kwantlen University students who were meeting on campus Wednesday to oust their student leaders were temporarily interrupted after someone released a spray into the air—likely pepper spray— forcing coughing and teary students to flee.
Then, someone pulled the fire alarm.
After being let back into the building by fire officials approximately one hour later, students were just about to vote when someone pulled the fire alarm again, forcing them back outside.
But students were patient. Instead of losing quorum—250 voters—the crowd grew so large that organizers were able to spare 30 students to guard each fire alarm against troublemakers. Then, students voted nearly unanimously to remove the current board of directors and prevent them from running again. The vote signals a turning point on a campus where the student association has been the target of unusual scrutiny for months. At the end of the day, Kwantlen Student Association directors were escorted by security into their offices to collect their belongings.
Continue reading Kwantlen students vote to oust troubled board
Canadian university considers radical change
Find out why some students are opposed
Algoma University photo by Ontario MTCU
Back in first year, I remember realizing that the hardest part of university isn’t the lab reports, the chemistry midterms, or the 1000-word essays.
It’s when they’re all due within three days of each other. Before you can even begin learning the material, you must learn how to juggle five course’s worth material that always comes due at once.
That problem could be eliminated for future students at tiny Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, which is debating switching to a block plan where students would be taught one course at a time, rather than five at once.
The block plan looks like this. A semester’s worth of calculus is compressed into three and a half weeks, with classes taking three or four hours each day, followed by four or five hours of homework. After a few weeks, there’s an exam. Then students move directly to the next course.
Continue reading Canadian university considers radical change
