All Posts Tagged With: "campus"

Jewish Defence League to hold event to counter Israeli Apartheid Week

The Jewish Defence League of Canada has announced it will be hosting an event called “Islamic State Apartheid Week” in Toronto next week. Its stated goal is to “counter the campus lies against Jews and highlight the truth of Islam,” as well as “expose and confront the Israel bashers and Jew haters during IAW [Israeli Apartheid Week].”

Sounds like this all should go off without a hitch, no?

So far, it seems the program consists of protesting IAW events. The first gathering is scheduled for Tuesday, March 8, to protest a screening of “Jaffa the Oranges Clockwork,” which (to add another twist) is being sponsored by the Ryerson Student Union. Two more protests–one at the University of Toronto and another at York University–have been scheduled so far.

As of yet, just over 100 people have confirmed attendance on Facebook.

She’s relevant because we are making her relevant

Until this week I knew very little about Ann Coulter and I liked it that way. I was vaguely aware of her as a deliberately provocative, talking-head right-winger. I had the sense that she was good at antagonizing people. That was about it. I had about as much interest in following her “work” as I do in Rush Limbauch’s oeuvre.

This week I can’t hide from her. She’s everywhere. Elections just ended at U of T with the usual accusations and counter-accusations, students at UTSC just approved an unprecedented and massive levy to fund a world-class athletics facility for use in the 2015 Pan-Am Games, wrestling continues unabated over the fate and status of First Nations University of Canada, and all I can bloody well hear about is this screwball American provocateur who has just about nothing relevant to say to Canadians and nothing informed to say to anyone. Someone please tell me why I’m supposed to care?

The freedom of expression angle I get. It’s important to pause once in a while to reflect on the importance of free speech and also on the occasional limits necessarily imposed on it. But honestly, can’t we have that debate in context of someone who is at least relevant? Ezra Levant is a home-grown topic of debate, speaking to and about Canadian issues. Ann Coulter is just a traveling gong show promoting nothing other than her own celebrity. And we let her! We even help her! Every line I’m writing this very moment gives her more of the commodity she’s so successfully selling — her own profile. She doesn’t care if we like her or what we say about her just as long as we keep listening and paying attention. And we sure are doing that.

The fact that this is playing out on our university campuses is no coincidence. Students make fantastic reactionaries. There’s a whole lot of good intentions there but not a lot of direction. So with very little of their own to say, student activists simply argue about what someone else is saying. Coulter opens her mouth and gets the whole thing rolling for us. She says something outrageous, some students argue she shouldn’t be allowed to say it, others defend her right to say it, and all of a sudden that’s the whole debate. Students aren’t saying anything at all–or at least nothing of their own. They’re just arguing over what Coulter said. And that’s just sad.

Maybe I’m bitter because the spat of Ann Coulter articles here are the biggest thing for On Campus in ages. Even the strike at York didn’t attract this much attention or this many comments. Students do have a lot of power and can set the agenda for discussion of post-secondary issues if they want to. But taking on real and complex topics is difficult. Getting all outraged about Coulter–or alternatively, getting all outraged over the suppression of Coulter–is easy. And as long as we keep getting distracted by every circus sideshow that comes to campus, it’s going to remain that much harder to bring attention to the real issues affecting post-secondary students in Canada today.

But hey, in the spirit of giving everyone what they want, here’s a video of Coulter saying outrageous things. Enjoy.

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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Students’ engagement with abstract political issues faces a test this week

Unless you live under a rock off campus, someone has probably informed you that federal Parliament has been prorogued, and that this raises various concerns about constitutional law, democratic process, legitimate governance…or not. More likely you’ve just heard about this prorogue thing in terms that suggests it’s bad. Because going any further than that requires a very involved discussion.

I won’t attempt to summarize the running dialogue on exactly what it means that Parliament has been prorogued. There is a huge amount of news coverage available on the topic. But it is highly significant that a lot of the energy and organization against this action, by the government, is based on and around Canada’s post-secondary campuses.

All of this is leading up to protests planned across Canada (and in some cases abroad) this Saturday. Will they materialize? Will they be well attended? Will they be significant enough to gain some attention and coverage, competing as they are with the disaster in Haiti and the political realignment occurring in the U.S.? Side note there, by the way. If the issue loses to Haiti that’s entirely justified. People are dying over there. But if folks would rather read about Obama than take the time to think about our own government that’s rather sad.

Any time students seem to get excited about something it raises questions about just how real and genuine it is, at the grassroots level. The CFS can usually manage some kind of a demonstration around tuition — but we all know those are fairly well stage-managed and they go directly to students’ self-interests. Meanwhile, the much talked-about walk out by Ontario college students barely materialized at all. And yet, when student anger does solidify it can be very powerful indeed. Vietnam War era protests come to mind. There was even a shadow of that around the invasion of Iraq.

Complicating this long-standing question of just how angry students really are, and how to tell when they’re serious, is the new phenomenon of social media. As Obama’s campaign demonstrated, social media and digital communities can certainly be rallied to produce tangible and dramatic results. At the same time, thousands of people in a Facebook group can produce the illusion of a movement with no real substance. And as heavy adopters and users of social media, it’s hard to know when students are seriously pissed off and when a lot of them have simply joined a digital fad.

One thing is for certain. The organizers of these protests and the promoters of this issue have succeeded, at least, in getting “prorogue” into the public vocabulary. And that’s no simple feat. Their campaign for attention has been effective and clever. But the test is this Saturday. Will it translate into real bodies? Will people stand in the cold and give real voice to their displeasure, or is this popular discontent only sufficient to prompt the creation of Facebook groups? Because it still comes down to that. Without feet on the street no one will care.

Personally, I’m hoping for a large turn-out. Not merely because of my position on the issue, but because I’d like to believe that students do have the capacity to become active and engaged over such an abstract issue. Students pissed off about the cost of their tuition isn’t news and in fact it’s barely political engagement. It’s just obvious self-interest made manifest. Students pissed off about the state of their democracy — now that’s pretty cool.

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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.

A fantastic organization with a very awkward name

Recently I had the opportunity to attend and speak at this year’s annual western AMICCUS-C conference, hosted in Calgary by the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University. AMICUSS-C stands for the Association of Managers in Canadian College, University and Student Centres. That’s one hell of an acronym, isn’t it? But apart from the difficulty with the name it’s a great organization that people should know more about.

Students’ unions are big business. Okay, “big” may be pushing it, but far bigger than most suspect. Budgets in the seven-figure range are typical. Many unions have responsibility for their own restaurants and bars, buildings, and other services. And in order to run these things properly, unions quite naturally hire full-time managers to do the job. You wouldn’t want to rely entirely on students, after all, with the rapid turnover, annual instability, and general inexperience. Unions typically employ a lot of students also, but the full-time managers are different. They’re there to stay and it’s their job – for many it’s a real career.

How all of this infrastructure runs is frequently a mystery to students. First, many students don’t draw a clear distinction between services that are operated and delivered by their union and services that come from the university or college. For all practical purposes it often doesn’t matter. And second, even where students know what their union is really doing, the full autonomy and power of the union may not be obvious. It’s easy to imagine a relationship similar to student government in high school, where student activities are still directed at the highest level by the administration. But it simply isn’t true. Unions are separately incorporated. They exist outside the administration entirely. The directors of these unions have as much power and responsibility as the directors of any private corporation. And many are still teenagers.

Seen from this perspective, the role of a full-time professional manager in a union environment is very complicated. The manager is certain to be older – maybe much older – and to have far more experience. But the students are still in charge. This isn’t theoretical. Students do the hiring, set the compensation packages, make decisions about promotion, and yes sometimes fire people. When a union is running well students tend to do this with the benefit of a lot of competent advice. When a union is running badly, well, sometimes things go less professionally. But either way these decisions affect people’s careers.

There is also a very complicated dance to perform with the administration of the university or college. As I said, the administration isn’t calling the shots. But they do have deeply entrenched interests. While the union may own a building or control it with a long-term lease, the institution typically owns the land. While a union may run the campus pub, the administration probably holds the liquor license. Contracts for cleaning, maintenance, and utilities in student space may or may not be carried out by the staff of the institution. All of these relationships need to be managed. While the employees of the union and the employees of the school may both “work for” students in some sense, their relationship towards students is very different. And so their relationship towards one another is complicated.

Why they do it, where it leads, and what it’s really worth

I hate the term “student leader.” I think a lot of people do. It just seems smarmy and self-congratulatory. And I’m speaking as a guy who lived that role. I can only imagine how the term must aggravate other people. And yet, we do need folks to run our student unions and our residence councils and our campus media and our clubs and more besides. And often we want to talk about those people as a group. So for lack of a better term I’ll call them student leaders.

Some recent discussion about student politics and student politicians (see here and here) got me thinking about this topic. Surrounding the debate about the appropriate role of unions and the right (or lack thereof) of elected students to hold and express their individual opinions, there were a few references to the perceived benefits and opportunities that come along with leadership roles on campus. I’ve heard it all before. Quite a lot of people seem to believe that the whole student leadership scene is just using it all to get … something. Something more than just the opportunity to do the job, anyway. Maybe that’s why the term is so annoying.

Now I don’t want to get into an extensive debate about what union execs are getting paid (see here for that debate) or whether it’s appropriate. That’s only a small fraction of the many student leaders on campus anyway. A very few students get paid something approaching real salaries to do essentially full time jobs. Some others receive honorariums that are probably quite small in relation to the amount of work they put in. And most are simply volunteers. But even the best paid aren’t receiving more than they’d earn for entry-level clerical work. So let’s just agree that it isn’t about the money, and when people suggest there’s something selfish going on they mean something different.

Back to this idea that students get involved in these positions with the expectation of some secondary gain. Most often this accusation is very vague. “Oh, you don’t really care about X (the club, the union, the position), you’re just in it for yourself.” But that’s got to mean something like awards, personal connections, job opportunities, political careers, etc. We’ve already excluded money as a realistic motive, and it makes no sense to suggest that someone is using one student position only to get to another student position. The end goal has to be something more significant than that – some reward or advantage that comes after university is done.

Brief pause. There is always the rare instance of actual abuse. Unfortunately, any time someone has access to a budget and some responsibility there is the chance they might do something fraudulent. Here’s one example of that. I would never attempt to excuse or justify anything like this. I’ll just say that it happens in student activities just as it happens everywhere else. People steal from charities too. It’s very sad. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

Here’s what I’ve discovered about every student leadership position I’ve ever held or interacted with. It’s worth basically nothing to just have the job. I mean it. Sure you can use it as a line on your CV. But then people fill their CVs with bullshit all the time. And if you really want to create an impressive sounding title for yourself just invent a club, register it with your Student Affairs office (or local equivalent) and declare yourself President. It’s very easy. And exactly because it’s easy to manufacture empty claims of this sort, anyone who might possibly care about your activities on campus will not be suckered in by lines of empty crap. Will they care about what you’ve really done on campus? Very possibly they will. But now we’re talking about your actual work and achievements – not the mere fact that you filled a position and held a title.

I definitely know students who found their direction as a result of some role on campus – elected or otherwise. I’m one of them. Certainly there’s a lot of what I do, right now, that I can trace back in some way to my student union days. But I could never have guessed at where I’d end up when the whole thing started. And that’s also true of just about everyone I know. Building on your experiences, finding some success at the things you do well and getting noticed for that … there’s nothing illegitimate about it. That’s just the way people build careers in any environment. And sure, that happens in student leadership as well. Maybe academic advocacy leads you eventually to law school, as it did in my case. Maybe experience with the student press leads to a career in journalism. But not automatically. Not just because you won an election or got hired for a job.

Setting foot on campus… before September

When I left my chemistry lab exam last April, I thought the next time I’d be on Waterloo’s campus would be this September. Starting my second year. But last week, when I set foot on campus for the first time in over two months, I thought I was doing something blasphemous.

Going to school? During the summer? Even though I’d only be there for 10 minutes to hand in some forms, it felt like I was performing some obscene act. School and summer just don’t mesh.

I had the same expectations of visiting Waterloo’s campus during summer vacation as I would visiting my old high school. That it would be depressing. A reminder of past anxieties and worries. I was sure the whole visit would just be something to endure.

But as I walked around campus, seven weeks early, I realized something that surprised me.

I’ve missed being on campus.

The far right is gaining a foothold in U.S. universities

United States college campuses, which in the ’60s gave rise to a generation of civil rights activists and anti-war protesters, are not traditional launching pads for the far right. But this year, chapters of Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), which stands opposed to “radical multiculturalism, political correctness, racial preferences, mass immigration, and socialism,” have spread to eight campuses—evidence, say experts, of a growing fringe movement.

In fact, buoyed by the economic downturn, the election of a black, liberal president and a strong undercurrent of nativism, right-wing extremism in general is gaining traction. But even before the U.S. economy tanked, the far right was ramping up. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), between 2000 and 2008 the number of hate groups ballooned from 602 to 926.

Project director Mark Potok says immigration from Mexico “has clearly been the biggest driver.” (Immigration debates have also been credited for the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, and xenophobic violence in Russia.) Along with cadres of neo-Nazis, Potok says extreme nativist groups like the website Vdare, tellingly named after Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, are being “aided and abetted by people in positions of power.” (A lengthy archive of former presidential adviser Pat Buchanan’s writings can be found there.)

On campuses, the far-right movement can also be explained by the stinging defeat of Republicans last November. Increasingly, says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in California, right-wing college students “feel both personally and socially disenfranchised.”

Washington, D.C., student Kevin DeAnna, who founded YWC last fall, echoes this sentiment: “I’m just sick of seeing conservatives being pushed around.” At the same time, says Levin, violence from the left, such as that which prevented virulent anti-immigration lobbyist Tom Tancredo from speaking at a recent YWC event, fuels “an undercurrent of resentment that allows some of the worst demagoguery on the right to take root.”

How real a threat the burgeoning far right poses remains to be seen. As Chip Berlet, co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America, points out, while “radical ideology and violent methodology sometimes intersect, they sometimes don’t.” DeAnna denies that his call to preserve “Western heritage” has racial undertones (“We have a black [member] at MIT,” he told Maclean’s). Still, the SPLC says this new group is one it will be watching closely.

Students who live in residence on campus were supplied with food, bottled water and portable toilets

More than 5,000 staff and students were forced to evacuate the University of Lethbridge on Tuesday after a blocked pipe threatened to spread raw sewage across campus.

“It took us less than an hour to get people evacuated and it was very orderly,” said Nancy Walker, one of the vice-presidents at the southern Alberta institution, which has 7,000 students and a thousand staff.

Problems began around 9:30 a.m. when the main sewer line serving the campus became blocked with sewage. That forced a backup into the Students’ Union Building.

As officials tried to deal with that, raw sewage began backing up into the physical education centre. They knew then they had a much bigger problem.

“In order to stop sewage from coming into our buildings throughout our whole campus we had to shut down the water,” said Walker.

“And if you don’t have water, you don’t have washrooms, so we had to evacuate the university campus. We probably evacuated anywhere between (5,000) and 7,000 people this morning.”

Students and staff were alerted by email, digital sign boards and public address announcements. Extra buses were brought in. Staff went through buildings to make sure everyone was out.

Disaster recovery crews were called in to assess the damage.

The 600 students who live in residence on campus were supplied with food, bottled water and portable toilets.

There were no reports of injuries or people falling ill.

Classes were cancelled for the day. It was hoped classes could resume Wednesday.

Kevin Jensen, acting public operations manager for the City of Lethbridge, said crews were able to locate the blockage and were taking steps to flush it out.

- The Canadian Press