All Posts Tagged With: ""

YFS holds open forum on campus security

York University students will be patrolling the neighbouring area, known as the York Village, in response to the recent killing of student Quian Liu, the Excalibur reported. The student patrols, which began late last week, was one of the ideas to come out of a forum on campus safety, hosted by the York Federation of Students (YFS) on Thursday. Another initiative came from the YFS which recommended that the university implement mandatory “anti-oppression” and equity training for students and staff. “[Students and staff] will be able to identify privileges on campus . . . it’s about people taking responsibility for their actions,” outgoing YFS president Darshika Selvasivam said.

Finances stable, but concerns over reputation remain

After two years, York University’s finances are finally recovering from the 2008-09 strike that saw classes canceled for three months. “In strict financial terms … we’ve begun to deal with it and recover from it, but obviously the strike’s impact on the university is much, much more than the financial,” Gary Brewer, vice-president of finance and administration told the Excalibur. According to the university’s Planning, Budget and Accountability report released last month, York`s deficit-in-assets was $68 million, down from $120 million the previous year. While enrolment did not not take the expected hit in the aftermath of the strike, Brewer acknowledged that “There’s an awful lot of reputation concerns still out there about York.”

UPDATE: University to reopen Wednesday

The heat is back on at York University after a fire damaged steam boilers Monday that caused the evacuation of the campus. Some 4,000 students living in residence have returned to the campus after spending the night in a hotel, or with friends and family. University administrators will be meeting to reschedule exams that had been canceled Monday night. A spokesman told the Toronto Star that the school hopes to have exams completed before the Christmas break.

UPDATE: York has announced that the university fully reopen on Wednesday and exams will continue as planned. Exams canceled Monday and Tuesday are still being rescheduled.

Pro-Israel suppporters to attend speech in disguise

Fomer British MP George Galloway kicks off his cross-country speaking tour at York University this evening. Galloway was famously denied entry into Canada last year because he had supported Hamas and other groups that the Canadian government considers to be terrorist organizations. Federal Court ruled last month that Galloway is in fact allowed in the country.

Pro-Israel critics of Galloway’s have been organizing to attend his York talk while disguised as left-wing activists, in what the National Post terms “a bizarro world in which Zionists pose as Palestinians to shout down a bearded Scot.”

In an email obtained by the Post, Jewish Tribune freelance reporter Joanne Hill, encourages participants to dress up.  “If they do not know your face, wear a keffiyeh or hijab or hippy-type clothing (blue jeans, Birkenstock sandals with socks, hand-woven Guatemalan man-purses, long scarves on men, etc.)” she wrote.  “If I could, I would pretend to be a confused pro-Palestinian lefty.”

For first-year students, the transition from high school to university can be difficult

If you’re a third-year student you probably won’t start thinking about the new academic year until mid-August − or maybe not even until the evening of September 6. Many first-year students, however, are getting nervous already, wondering what university is going to be like.

After having spoken to dozens of students and professors the verdict is in: it’s going to be really different than high school. But the news isn’t all bad. While there will be some difficult transitions, many parts of university life are much better than at high school. Students say there is less social pressure (it’s no longer cool to bully people), they like having freedom from parents and teachers who take attendance and university campuses offer limitless opportunities for having a great time. But the one thing that everyone agrees on: it is up to you to make your university experience a good one, and much more so than it was in high school.

This new-found responsibility to take care of oneself starts in the classroom. Rey Buenaventura, an academic advisor at Simon Fraser University, says, “No one is checking that they’ve done their homework. Nobody is checking on their attendance that closely. Sometimes students feel like there is no one who really cares about what they do, whether they even show up. That can be a problem.” By seeking out professors and TAs during office hours, setting up study groups with classmates and participating in seminars and class discussions, students can create a more meaningful connection with a class that may have 300 or 400 people in it − but it’s up to the student. “In a class of 500 students, the professor isn’t going to come to you; you have to go to the professor,” he says. “You can create your own experience.”

Some students, particularly those who went to a relatively small high school, feel like they get lost in the crowds of people. No longer do their professors know their name and they may spend the whole day on campus without running into anyone they know. But other students found this aspect of university life a relief. “It was easier to find people that shared similar goals, values and interests,” said Michael, a student at McMaster University. Kady, a McGill University student, says, “A big difference for me was the new establishment of myself. Coming into school without any connections to specific people, teams or clubs gave me the opportunity to reconstruct my McGill life exactly how I wanted it to be.”

For the experienced university students out there: what were the biggest differences you noticed between high school and university? How did you cope with the transition?

Who invited him?

I didn’t want to make teeny robots for doctors. I wanted to be the doctor

During my last couple years of high school, I started thinking about possible undergraduate degrees. Something that could work towards my dream of one day attending medical school. Maybe microbiology? Health studies? Biology?

I definitely had some decisions to make. But then I learned about some of the harsh realities of getting into med school. Out of the thousands and thousands of qualified hopefuls with high GPAs and diverse extracurricular activities who apply each year, only a handful make it in.

It’s not that these rejected applicants wouldn’t make good doctors. It’s strictly a numbers game. In Canada, government funding of med school spots means restrictions on how many doctors we can graduate each year.

Meaning, most people who apply to medical school in Canada won’t ever get in. No matter how smart, determined, or dedicated they are.

I knew the stats were working against me. In grade 12, I decided it was time to start thinking about Plan B.

Engineering?

It instantly clicked with me. Engineers solve problems using math and science. They apply their knowledge to a system, with a specific goal in mind.

Okay: so what type of engineering, and where?

Choosing a program comes before choosing a university. Once I had decided that, the University of Waterloo, renowned for its school of engineering, went straight to the top of my list.

UW was also a great fit because I lived in Kitchener and knew I couldn’t afford to go too far from home. U of T, York, Guelph, McMaster, Brock, and Western were also added to the list since all were within a doable commuting distance. I had a lot of great schools to choose from.

I looked through the different engineering programs each school offered. Mechanical, electrical, civil… then I saw it: Nanotechnology.

It sounded absolutely perfect to me. A program being offered for the first time in Canada, and best of all, at the University of Waterloo. The school’s website boasts, “you’ll apply mathematics, science, and engineering to model, design, and fabricate nanoengineered structures for sensors, electronics, biosystems, or advanced materials.”

An engineering program with biological applications in which “you’ll design nanostructures that may interact with cells.” Math and biology. Together. I was thrilled. It was like the program was speaking to me directly.

I had dreams of making tiny robots for doctors to use to kill cancer cells.

But two days before my university applications were due, I suddenly had a moment of, “What the hell am I thinking?!”

Engineering? Me? Why?

Overnight, I totally revamped everything I was about to do after realizing I was making a huge mistake. You can’t start compromising a dream before you’ve even taken a first step. Hell, of course I’d never get into med school. If I didn’t even try.

I didn’t want to make teeny robots for doctors. I wanted to be the doctor.

Some interviews, word-for-word, can come across as ill-formed, awkward and vague

I was recently looking over a composite by the BBC of all George W. Bush’s worst “slip-ups” over the last eight-plus years. There are all the famous ones, most of which featured in Michael Moore’s famous movie. We learn that the human being and fish should coexist peacfully, that a saying in Texas is “Fool me, you won’t fool me again” and so on. It got me thinking.

While we were interviewing features for Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started, we figured the best approach was to record each interview, so that we would be able to look over entire transcripts when writing a profile. What we learned was that, if you take, word for word, what someone has spoken and present it to the reader, it comes across as ill-formed, awkward and vague. So much in conversation is communicated through tone, gesture and an implicit understanding with the listener. All of this is lost in text.

When writing Kickstart, we needed to make sure the profiles were readable. That was our first priority. It involved a lot of editing, caressing, rewriting. (To avoid putting words in our interviewees’ mouths, we always made sure to show them the final copies to make sure we weren’t inventing anything – and they always signed off) Had we presented the mere interview transcripts, some of the most articulate people we interviewed (Hon. John Godfrey, James Orbinski, Lynda Haverstock, among many others) would never have comes across as well as they did in person.

All this to say that, perhaps, many of the best-loved Bushisms of the past era were often the result of a simple transcription. His message may (may) have been better expressed in person, to his audience. I urge everyone to be careful before passing judgment on someone based on a one or two-line quote read in the media. Often times, it lacks that great, important element known as “context.”

The Star covered Ontario’s university professors’ lobby group’s public criticism of U of T and Ryerson for buying full page ads to thank the government for recent funding announcements. To hear what the universities had to say in defense, read our coverage here. Advertising has also been at the centre of controversy at York this [...]

The Star covered Ontario’s university professors’ lobby group’s public criticism of U of T and Ryerson for buying full page ads to thank the government for recent funding announcements. To hear what the universities had to say in defense, read our coverage here.

Advertising has also been at the centre of controversy at York this week. The university had a “frank talk” with the Globe about “stealing” it’s advertising concept. Check out the ads in question here.