Campus News
Students continue to occupy McGill building
Protesters want radio station and QPIRG fees reinstated
It’s day three of an occupation of the sixth floor of the James Administration building at McGill.
It appears protesters didn’t plan for it to last so long. On Wednesday night, occupiers sent down a bucket on a rope to try and haul up food from supporters below. Security guards cut the rope.
Doug Sweet, Director of Media Relations for McGill, told the Montreal Gazette that, “hauling stuff up by rope to the sixth floor is potentially dangerous,” and could potentially “break windows.”
Students took over the building on Tuesday when about 60 showed up to protest the administration’s decision to not honour a referendum over the continuation of funding for two campus groups. Most protesters were in the lobby of the building and have since left.
The Quebec Public Interest Research Group, a social justice organization, and CKUT, a campus radio station, were funded mainly by student fees. Two-thirds of voters appeared to support continued student funding of QPIRG in the Fall 2011 vote, but the university’s deputy provost for student life and learning, Morton Mendelson, invalidated the question due to confusing wording.
In addition to reinstating student funding to both groups, protesters want Mendelson to be fired or to resign. They’re calling their protest Mendelson’s “surprise resignation party.” Twitter is abuzz about the “party” with the hashtag #6party. A blog claims to offer “communiques from the sixth floor.”
McGill Daily published a letter today from QPIRG that thanks protesters and demands that their funding continue. However, they will not run a question about funding in the upcoming referendum.
CKUT, on the other hand, will not only seek affirmation of funding, but will ask students to make their fee mandatory. If passed, students who don’t support the station will not be able to opt-out.
Public Interest Research Groups have been controversial lately. Conservative students don’t want their student fees funding causes of the left, such as Israel Apartheid Week and anti-capitalism initiatives. Queen’s University students recently voted to stop collecting fees for a PIRG.
Lazaridis donates $21 million to Waterloo
RIM founder’s gifts now total $123 million
The founders of Research In Motion (RIM), the Waterloo, Ont. based produce of BlackBerry products, have fallen. But one of them, Mike Lazaridis, is ready to make a new investment. He and his wife Ophelia pledged $21 million to the University of Waterloo on Wednesday. “History has shown us that a relatively small investment in fundamental research in physics and in science today can lead to huge innovation tomorrow,” Lazaridis said. The money will fund chairs in condensed matter and astrophysics, a new science building and scholarships for mathematics students. The couple have donated $123 million in total, after funding the Institute for Quantum Computing and the soon-to-open Quantum Nano Centre. To get a sense of how big those donations are, consider that only one gift to a Canadian university exceeded $20 million last year, reports Academica.
Announcing the 3M Teaching Fellowship winners
Ten of Canada’s best teachers honoured
The 3M National Teaching Fellowships are Canada’s most prestigious teaching award. Each year since 1986, 10 university faculty members have been recognized for their leadership and contributions to university teaching by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. One professor, Marjorie Johnson of Western University, was profiled in our annual student issue. To read about how she engages kinesiology students, click here. Over the coming weeks we’ll be profiling the other nine winners right here on Maclean’s On Campus. They are:
-
- A.R. Elangovan, Victoria
-
- Adrian Chan, Carleton
-
- Charles Lucy, Alberta
-
- Connie Varnhagen, Alberta
-
- Fiona Walton, UPEI
-
- Marshall Beier, McMaster
-
- Sarah Forgie, Alberta
-
- Susan Vajoczki, McMaster
-
- Toni Samek, Alberta
Continue reading Announcing the 3M Teaching Fellowship winners
Marjorie Johnson, top of her class
Celebrating Canada’s 3M Teaching Fellows
Photo by Andrew Tolson
Marjorie Johnson is just one of the ten 3M Teaching Fellows announced in the annual Maclean’s student issue, on sale this week. To see who the other nine winners are, click here.
Story by Gustavo Vieira.
A soothing guitar ballad is piped through the sound system, muffling the chatter of a few dozen second-year kinesiology students; they’re waiting for anatomy class to begin at an auditorium at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont. A slide show reviewing the body parts studied in previous classes plays on a loop: the medial pterygoid, trunks of brachial plexus, the maxillary artery, and so on. Two minutes later, the lights dim; a clip from Grey’s Anatomy appears, depicting a blood-gushing patient being treated by a frazzled young medical resident struggling to contain the bleeding. The students go silent. It’s time for Marjorie Johnson to start her lecture on the intricate anatomy of the human neck. Not before she pulls up a photo of Steve Nash, the Phoenix Suns superstar, his neck’s veins, muscles and nerves bulging beneath his skin as he protects the ball from an opponent at a basketball game. “He’s one of my heroes,” Johnson later confesses, “so they see Steve Nash a lot.”
The Canadian University Survey Consortium’s 2011 results
Survey shows student satisfaction at 25 schools
The annual CUSC survey measures student satisfaction. In 2011, a questionnaire was issued to a random sample of approximately 1,000 undergraduates at each of 25 participating schools. In total, more than 8,500 students responded to questions about everything from academics to support services. Here are the results you’ll want to see if you’re considering one of these schools.
Continue reading The Canadian University Survey Consortium’s 2011 results
Stop calling these students mentally ill
Anxiety and depression need to be reclassified
Photo by Sander van der Wel on Flickr
Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about efforts to improve the services available to students related to their psychological well-being on campuses. University presidents met for a workshop recently, and Queen’s University welcomed a new $1-million chair to study stigma.
Now, I am no mental health professional but I do know a few things about universities and have some experience with anxiety and depression.
If it were up to me, those trying to improve things on Canadian campuses would keep one crucial principle in mind: be careful how you talk about it.
First, let’s call depression and anxiety something other than “mental illness.”
Can’t afford a hall? How about a stall?
Colleges sell naming rights to washrooms
Photo by Svadilfari on Flickr
Cash-strapped Canadian universities will want to read this story from Inside Higher Education.
A Utah college is selling the naming rights to bathroom stalls on campus to raise money for a bankrupt musical theatre company.
At $2,000 apiece, the Dixie State College stalls are a deal. Harvard’s Law School, for example, received $100,000 for the naming of a washroom.
MIT rejected an offer to buy naming rights for a washroom from venture capitalist Brad Feld a decade ago. He then paid $25,000 for a washroom at the University of Colorado instead.
“Truth Behind the Sarah Grunfeld Story” video emerges
Student who accused professor of antisemitism is back
From The Truth Behind the Sarah Grunfeld story
Remember Sarah Grunfeld? She’s the York University student who stormed out of a lecture in September of last year because her professor said that “all Jews should be sterilized.”
It later emerged that Professor Cameron Johnston, who is Jewish, was using the statement as an example of an invalid and dangerous opinion that must be reasonably qualified.
It appears that Grunfeld left the 450-seat lecture before Cameron qualified the opinion. Grunfeld was widely rebuked, including by Maclean’s own 22-year-old Jewish columnist, Emma Teitel.
But she didn’t go away quietly. She’s now back in a YouTube video called The Truth Behind the Sarah Grunfeld story. At least, we assume it’s her; the face in the video appears in silhouette.
“I was ridiculed, I was demonized,” says the shadowy figure. “I was called an moron, a dimwit, an idiot…” The figure then explains that she was paying full attention (FULL ATTENTION!) and sitting in the front row of class. “I know exactly what I heard,” she says. The shadowy figure admits that the comment happened in the “first five minutes of [Cameron's] talk about how opinions can be dangerous.” She says she waited for the professor to provide some kind of qualifier, but he did not.
This all comes before the shadowy figure accuses against the media, York University, Hillel of Greater Toronto and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs of mistreating her. The voice concludes by asking: “what’s the future for Jewish students?”
A better question might be: “what’s the future of Sarah Grunfeld?”
Video appears to show Montreal police attacking protesters
Internal investigation launched
From YouTube video by forgedinhatred
Montreal police have opened an internal investigation into the actions of police officers at an anti-tuition protest that occurred on Jan. 27 outside offices of Quebec’s education ministry.
It comes after a video was posted on YouTube and ciculated on Twitter that appears to show an officer suddenly attacking a small crowd.
It’s the latest evidence of tensions over tuition fees that will rise $325 over the next five years. Just last week, activists called for kidnappings, violence and sabotage to prevent the increases.
Continue reading Video appears to show Montreal police attacking protesters
Student quits over Halifax transit strike
39,000 students can’t use their bus passes
A Saint Mary’s University student said he quit his classes on Monday because the transit strike in Halifax has made it too difficult to get to school. ”I was already missing assignments and quizzes and stuff due to the strike,” second-year criminology student Chase Sabourin told CBC News. “The strike could be over this week, it could be another month down the road. I’m not going to wait around hoping it’s going to end tomorrow,” he added. Sabourin said he plans to return in September. Seven hundred Amalgamated Transit Union workers went on strike on Feb. 2. rendering Halifax’s 39,000 student transit passes useless, at least for now.
Alberta Liberals promise free tuition
But students shouldn’t get too excited yet
Raj Sherman by dave.cournoyer on Flickr
If elected later this year, the Alberta Liberals say they would begin eliminating post-secondary tuition and start forgiving up to a $1,000 per year in student loans for working graduates.
Liberal leader Raj Sherman unveiled the platform on Monday in Edmonton ahead of an election that’s expected to be called this spring.
The Liberals would pay for their tuition elimination, forgiven student loans and other new spending with $1.5-billion in tax hikes on corporations and on the wealthiest 10 per cent of earners.
But students dreaming of free school shouldn’t get excited yet. The Liberals have only eight of the legislature’s 83 seats and are running in fourth place with just 12 per cent support, according to a poll by CBC News. The incumbent Progressive Conservatives, led by Premier Alison Redford, had 46 per cent of decided voters in the poll, followed by the upstart Wildrose Alliance at 24 per cent and the New Democrats at 14 per cent.
Teacher’s job fair cancelled
Recruiters didn’t show
Here’s more evidence that newly-minted teachers face a rough job market. The University of Prince Edward Island cancelled their education job fair this year due to lack of interest from recruiters, reports CBC News. But there is hope, they note, if students willing to travel to Nunavut. (Yes, seriously!) Last week we noted that the University of Manitoba’s teaching job fair attracted no local school boards, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police showed up, suggesting that while teachers aren’t in high demand in schools right now, their skills continue to be valued by other employers.
Saudi Arabian student still missing
Officials comb South Saskatchewan River
A jacket that may have belonged to a missing student from Saudi Arabia prompted an unsuccessful search of the South Saskatchewan River on Saturday, reports CKOM radio. Hamza Alsharief, a 23-year-old chemical engineering student at the University of Saskatchewan, went missing in December. Alsharief’s wallet and identification were found in his residence. Investigators believe he may have taken his own life. He’s described as 5’8″ with a slim build, brown hair and brown eyes.
Quebec activists call for kidnappings, vandalism
Student association blames mobilization committee
Anti-tuition poster by AFELC at UQAM
A student group is distancing itself from a pamphlet bearing its logo that called on students to commit acts of vandalism, kidnapping and sabotage to fight against tuition hikes.
The pamphlet, which circulated last week, bears the logo of AFELC, which represents humanities and communications students at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM).
In a post on the group’s Facebook page, association executives claim they first heard about the pamphlet when they were contacted by reporters. They say that the pamphlet appears to have been created by people involved with the association’s “mobilization committee,” which is an informal wing that fights tuition increases.
Continue reading Quebec activists call for kidnappings, vandalism
OPIRG fee voted down by Queen’s students
Campus conservatives celebrate
The Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) will no longer get $4.36 from each Queen’s student after 62 per cent of voters in last week’s referendum supported eliminating the fee.
OPIRG and its individual branches have been controversial on Canadian campuses for promoting what critics say are left-wing political causes that don’t reflect the wider community’s beliefs.
The Public Interest Research Groups at more than one Canadian university have been criticized for supporting Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual event that encourages sanctions against Israel.
Stuart Clark, who organized the anti-OPIRG campaign, made a similar argument that student’s fees shouldn’t go to political causes. After winning, he posted this on the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association’s Facebook wall: “We took down OPIRG. I think celebrations are in order!”
Canada’s first gay fraternity faces critics
You won’t guess who’s upset
The crest of gay fraternity Delta Lambda Phi
McGill University has a new fraternity and it’s facing criticism from a surprising corner.
On Saturday, Delta Lambda Phi (DLP) became the first Greek society in Canada that markets itself to “gay, bisexual, and progressive men.”
But while the members report no homophobia toward them, they told the Toronto Star that they’ve faced criticism from activist group Queer McGill. Elyse Lewis of Queer McGill says that by reserving itself only for “men and those who identify as men,” the fraternity implies that transgender men aren’t real men.
Continue reading Canada’s first gay fraternity faces critics
The three secret qualities of top students
Prof. Pettigrew tells what his A+ students have in common
Aristotle, a great scholar. By Tilemahos_E on Flickr.
A blogger at Inside Higher Ed has posed a fascinating question: what is an ideal student?
Strictly speaking, there could not possibly be an ideal student any more than there could be perfect person. But the question is worth thinking about if you care about education.
I wouldn’t want to repeat the answers already on offer, so let me move the question out of the abstract just a bit and ask a similar question: what have my very best students had in common?
To answer this question, I turned to a list I keep affixed to my filing cabinet in my office under a magnet that says “ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS.” It shows all the students who have earned grades of A+ in my courses. Readers of this blog may surmise from my curmudgeonly persona that the list is not huge. In fact, there are sixteen names.
From that list I selected the five who seemed most memorable for their abilities and achievements. What did they have in common? Many things, of course, some of which were also suggested in the IHE piece: curiosity, open-mindedness, willingness to be engaged. Intelligence, of course, and a capacity for hard work, obviously. But three other qualities stand out, too:
- 1. Ambition. By this, I don’t mean a desire to be famous or make a lot of money, but rather a willingness to try to do something great in whatever one does. For the best students, an assignment is not merely a requirement to be met, but an opportunity to test and strengthen themselves.
2. Humility. Seemingly the opposite of ambition, humility, in the best students, sits in elegant balance with it. The best students have the confidence to push themselves to be the best they can, but they are humble enough to know that there is always more to learn. Life is short, and learning the art takes a long time.
3. Creativity. Observers sometimes worry that formal education stifles creativity, and, to be sure, academia does come with certain rules and restrictions. Still, like a great musician or painter, a great student figures out that some rules are actually empowering, and that some can be stretched or broken when the occasion demands.
Of course, these students don’t come along every day. My little A+ list shows I’m lucky if they come along every year, and nobody would suggest you have to be a top student to be a good student. But all students should ask themselves whether they could demonstrate more of these qualities. I know I could have used more of number 2 when I was a student.
But then, we didn’t have blogs in those days, and I probably wouldn’t have listened, anyway.
Todd Pettigrew is Associate Professor English at Cape Breton University.
Guess who’s recruiting education grads
Hint: It’s not schools, and they pay $80k after three years.
RCMP by Daniel Paquet
Education graduates face a dismal job market. Two-thirds of recent grads in Ontario aren’t working full-time. The University of British Columbia’s teacher’s college recently admitted that many graduates won’t find jobs in teaching.
Things are bad in Manitoba too. The local school boards didn’t even show up at Monday’s University of Manitoba education job fair.
But that same job fair should give education graduates a reason to be hopeful, because it showed how certain other employers value their experiences.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for example, showed up at Manitoba’s education job fair for the first time Monday. The force is recruiting education graduates for the police academy in Regina.
Today is the CFS National Day of Action
Protests underway from coast to coast
Today, students from Memorial University of Newfoundland to the University of British Columbia are participating in the National Day of Action organized by the Canadian Federation of Students.
Through marches and on social media, they’re promoting the idea that Education is a Right.
Their explicit demands are for lower tuition fees, less student debt and more public funding.
The CFS says that the average student with debt owes $25,000 by graduation and that public funding has dropped from 81 per cent of operating costs of universities 20 years ago to 57 per cent today—all while tuition has risen from 14 per cent of operating funding to more than 35 per cent.
In other words, students are paying more of their own costs for university than ever before, which makes it difficult for low and middle-income students to get through school and then pay off debts.
The campaign is being discussed widely on Twitter with the tags #feb1 #cfsfcee or #cdnpse.
Peggy Nash, a candidate for the New Democratic Party’s leadership has already tweeted in solidarity and provided a link to her Plan to make Post-Secondary Education Accessible.
In Newfoundland, which already has among the lowest tuition anywhere, conservative Premier Kathy Dunderdale attended a National Day of Action event this morning and said that, during her lifetime, she’d like to see students’ first degrees paid for by the province, reports VOCM radio.
Israel scratched from U. Windsor globes
Jewish student complained
The University of Windsor’s Leddy Library removed three globes earlier this month because of what appeared to be anti-Israeli vandalism. Gavin Wolch, a third-year law school student who is Jewish, told The Lance student newspaper that he complained more than once about the globes before they were removed. A library official denied that he’d received earlier complaints. This is not the first time that ethnically-motivated graffiti has been reported at the university. In November, anti-Arab and anti-South Asian graffiti was found in the washrooms near Windsor’s multi-faith space.
