All Posts Tagged With: "politics"
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.
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.
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!”
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.
The Cougars? The Redmen? Oh, how offensive!
The naming of sports teams is now fraught with peril
The Human Beings Mascot from Community on Citytv
One of the best running gags in the TV show Community is that Greendale College’s teams are called “The Human Beings”—an absurdly bland moniker designed to insulate the school from complaints and controversy—the sort of complaints levied periodically against the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Redskins.
The fictional school’s feckless Dean might have a point, though, because naming sports teams, at schools especially, is now fraught with peril.
This danger was underscored last week when Utah’s Corner Canyon High School had to do away with its team name “Cougars.” The term, which, in some circles has come to mean an older woman sexually interested in younger men, was the subject of complaints. Canyon teams will now be “The Chargers.”
Continue reading The Cougars? The Redmen? Oh, how offensive!
Lethbridge donated money to PC Party
Wildrose Alliance wants investigation
Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance Party is calling for an investigation into all of the province’s post-secondary schools after learning that the University of Lethbridge reimbursed staff who attended Progressive Conservative Party dinners and golf tournaments in 2004 and 2005. The reimbursements cost the school $15,000. Lethbridge officials say they weren’t aware until 2005 of a new law that came into effect in 2004 that outlawed such payments. ”As soon as we were notified by the auditor general’s office, we at the very next meeting passed new policy to comply with the legislation,” Bob Turner, chair of the board of governors told the Calgary Herald.
Course requires field work with Occupy movement
Protesting prof says she will remain objective
Photo by bogieharmond on Flickr
Students at Columbia University in New York are being offered a course that requires most of those taking part to work with the Occupy Movement.
Anthropologist Hannah Appel, who supports the movement, is teaching “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement.”
Appel is described on Columbia’s website as a post-doc “with research interests in the daily life of capitalism and the private sector.”
She told the New York Post that, ”Inevitably, my experience will color the way I teach, but I feel equipped to teach [the course] objectively.”
Unlike Canada’s Occupy movement, which has moved out of city parks, New York’s occupiers have continued to gather publicly. In fact, 68 protesters were arrested at or near Zuccotti Park on charges of trespassing, disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment on New Year’s Eve.
NDP candidate would lavish gifts on students
But Paul Dewar doesn’t have much support
Photo from PaulDewar.ca
No less than nine people are fighting for the leadership of the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Now, one candidate has distinguished himself by promising gifts for students—in the form of cash.
Paul Dewar, member for Ottawa Centre, released a plan last week that would provide 10,000 youth with tuition grants in exchange for time served with non-profits, either in Canada or abroad. Those youth would get $1,500 per month to cover expenses during their years of volunteer work and up to $6,000 more for education or training.
But that’s not all. Dewar says he’d reduce interest on the federal portion of the student loan to prime (potentially saving students thousands), he would reduce tuition fees by $700 per year and he’d provide $200-million more in grants for low-income, disabled and Aboriginal Canadians.
Continue reading NDP candidate would lavish gifts on students
French professor steals English sign
Latest in U Ottawa language tussle
A University of Ottawa professor stole a National Bank sign set up on campus because it wasn’t available in French. François Charboneau, an assistant professor of Political Studies told CBC News that he did so because he wanted to send a stronger message than simply “making another complaint.” All official signs must appear in English and French at the university, but many companies providing services on campus, such as construction companies and food shops, don’t follow the same rules. That’s because the 1974 provincial act that made the university bilingual says it must support this mandate in “programmes, central administration, general services, internal administration of its faculties and schools, its teaching staff, its support staff and its student population.” It says nothing of ancillary services. It isn’t just francophones who are often frustrated by the relationship between English and French on campus. An anglophone student recently wrote of her frustration about French-only signs and service at a Quizno’s sandwich shop on campus.
Commandant Camila’s uprising
A student’s revolt against Pinochet’s school reforms
Photo by Victor Ruiz Caballero/Reuters
Story by Richard Warnica.
If one were to rank the legacies of the Pinochet era in Chile, education reform wouldn’t likely make most lists. The former dictator devastated his country in many ways. Thousands of his opponents were murdered or simply disappeared. Countless more were tortured or forced into exile. But Augusto Pinochet also radically deregulated the education market, pulling funds from the public sector in the early 1980s and spreading them into a parallel private system. Remarkably, it is that decision that has his country roiling today.
McGill Principal defends herself
Protesters were “masked and hooded”
McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum told the Montreal Gazette yesterday that she is “sorry” to students who were hurt by pepper spray when riot police showed up at the administration building on Nov. 10. Students have called the response to their occupy-style protest heavy-handed. But Munroe-Blum defends herself by stressing that the occupiers were “masked and hooded,” which frightened the staff. She also added, “when you call the police you don’t tell them how to do their job.” The pepper-spraying at McGill came the same day tens of thousands of Quebec students marched in protest to the annual tuition rise of $325, which will bring fees more in line with the Canadian norm by 2017. Munroe-Blum continues to defend the tuition increases as a way to compete with better-funded schools like the University of British Columbia and University of Toronto. Three police officers at the University of California Davis are on leave after pepper-spraying 11 seated students at an Occupy protest Friday. Those protesters were not masked.
Bloggers prove that not all students support McGill strike
Union says they’re a “small minority”
McGill students. By shahk on Flickr.
In the war of words between McGill’s administration and MUNACA, the union representing 1,700 support staff who have been on strike since Sep. 1, a new battalion of students has emerged— and they’re fighting for Principal Heather Munroe-Blum.
Since the blog Exposing MUNACA went online Nov. 9, it has been viewed roughly 25,000 times.
The bloggers are physics student Peter Guo and English student Kayla Herbert. Their critique of MUNACA fills a hole in the public debate, considering that both the Students’ Society of McGill University and the McGill Daily newspaper have sided with the union.
In response to the popular blog, Joel Pedneault, SSMU’s vice-president of external affairs, told the Montreal Gazette today that he will send an e-mail to all students with more “objective” facts. “When they see the conditions at other universities, they will see MUNACA’s side,” he said.
Continue reading Bloggers prove that not all students support McGill strike
Saskatchewan MLA is a PhD student and a mom
Jennifer Campeau balances motherhood, school and politics
Saskatoon Fairview MLA Jennifer Campeau
Running for office isn’t easy. But how many politicians can say they won their seats while parenting and working on their PhDs?
Not many. But Jennifer Campeau, the newest member the Saskatchewan Legistlature can.
Campeau, 38, is pursuing her PhD in Native Studies at the University of Saskatchewan.
The Yellow Quill First Nation members’ election in Saskatoon Fairview on on Nov. 7 marked only the second time a First Nations woman was elected to the Legislative Assembly in Saskatchewan and the first time an Aboriginal Canadian woman snagged a seat for the Saskatchewan Party, which cleaned up with 49 out of 58 ridings this month.
Despite the rigours of campaigning, Campeau chose not to take any time off from her studies.
“You’ve really got to be out there knocking on doors at least 3 hours a night, if not more,” she says. Still, Campeau doesn’t take the opportunity of post-secondary education for granted. A single mother, it took her a long time to earn her first degree. It was simply too difficult to study full-time while working to support her young daughter. ”It was just the two of us so I didn’t have the support that I could have had to do well in school; I had to work to support us both,” she says.
“[But] when I was 30 and she was old enough to be in school all day, I’d had enough of telling her that education was important when I didn’t have a degree myself,” she says. Sometimes she would bring her daughter to class, explaining “it instilled in her the value of post-secondary education.”
Campeau now has a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Saskatchewan.
She’s pursing her doctoral degree in Native Studies to learn more about aboriginal policy. She says the economic challenges facing Yellow Quill First Nation are part of the reason she chose her field of study.
As an MLA, Campeau hopes to provide a voice for both Aboriginal Canadians and newcomers alike. “The Saskatchewan economy and population is growing, so we have a lot of people new to Saskatchewan in Saskatoon Fairview,” she says. “I want to bring their concerns to the table.”
You’re forigiven if it all sounds tiring. ”In the last eight years, I haven’t really had a life of leisure, I’ve always been working and going to school,” jokes Campeau, “so I kind of got used to a fast pace.”
Scenes from the Occupy Toronto eviction
As some protesters pack up, others discuss what to do next
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- The Charter of Rights is “the only permit we need”
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- Protesters and passersby watch the general assembly together
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- A woman sits near her tent outside St. James Cathedral
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- There were more tents in this area this morning, they say
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- Bertrand folds his tent, says “it was a gift from a friend”
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- Dejected-looking protesters discuss their plans
Around 10 a.m. this morning, the City of Toronto posted eviction notices on the benches and fountains in St. James Park telling Occupy Toronto protesters to “remove your tents, structures, equipment and personal belongings” between 12:01 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. It also said: “the City can no longer sanction the appropriation of St. James Park by a relatively small group of people to the exclusion of all others wishing to use the park and to the detriment of those in the vicinity.”
The park has been occupied by members of the anti-greed Occupy Wall Street movement for past 31 days. Protesters were evicted and arrested last night at the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City, although a court order has allowed them back into Zuccotti Park today.
The scene in St. James Park this afternoon was more serene. Under bright sunshine, a handful of protesters chatted about what to do next, trading bets about the likelihood of riot police with tear gas tearing down their encampment at midnight. One man, who gave his name as Bertrand, packed up his tent, adding “it was a gift.” An advertising student from Humber College packed up too.
Others assembled at a microphone in front of St. James Cathedral to discuss what they might do next. The small crowd was doubled in size by journalists, local residents and onlookers in business attire. Meanwhile, an old lady sped through the centre of the park on her motor-scooter, a man jogged through in shorts, and children played in the mud where the grass was killed by tents.
Near the entrance to the park, a young man stood holding a poster of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, shouting out “this is the only permit we need!” A passerby called him a “loser.”
Quebec launches site to sell tuition increase
Students react swiftly with copycat site
Minister Line Beauchamp from Quebec Gov. Video
Quebec’s Liberal government has launched a new website to convince students of the fairness of the annual $325 tuition fee increase that will bring tuition to $3,793 in 2016-17.
But a coalition of student groups quickly launched their own anti-tuition website, which looks almost exactly the same as the government’s.
Student groups cried foul last week when they learned that Quebec had budgeted $50,000 for Internet advertising, including some that attempts to re-route Internet users to the governments’ site whenever they search the names of activist organizations on Google, reported La Presse.
Tens of thousands of students protested the Charest governments’ increase last week, despite the fact that Quebec will continue to have some of the lowest fees in North America even after the rise.
Continue reading Quebec launches site to sell tuition increase
Why the student protests won’t move Charest
Nothing to gain
Protest photo by shahk on Flickr
University students in Quebec continued their fight against annual $325 tuition increases on Nov. 10, protesting in large numbers by skipping classes. Classes were even cancelled at Dawson College and students marched in the streets of Montreal.
It was well organized and peaceful. To get a sense of that, consider that marshals in fluorescent vests helped defuse the tense moments between protesters and police outside Charest’s Montreal office where things might have become violent. Although the sight of riot police on campus is always disturbing, there was only a small cadre of roughly 100 students outside the McGill Administration building when police moved in.
But as big and peaceful as the demonstration was, will it change anything?
Although the 2005 student strike ended with the government giving in to some student demands, Thursday’s much shorter “strike” takes place in a much less friendly political climate and a much more uncertain economy. Even as students were marching in Montreal, education minister Line Beauchamp stood up in the National Assembly to reiterate that students must pay “their fair share.”
It’s easy for her to have such bravado. Premier Jean Charest faces no threats on the left who might gain from angry student voters. The Parti Québécois, the only other party to have formed government in this province since the 1970s, is tearing itself apart.
At the moment, Charest’s biggest political threat comes from the right. François Legault, a former PQ cabinet minister, and his centre-right Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec (CAQ) are leading in recent polls. The Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), a right-wing party with four seats in the National Assembly, is entering into formal negotiations with the CAQ concerning a potential merger.
Legault is on the record saying that students in programs which lead to higher paying jobs should pay more tuition. Considering that kind of thinking, it’s safe to bet that students wouldn’t find a CAQ government any more supportive of their demands.
Ontario city wants new university
Pledges millions for new campus
The City of Barrie approved a preliminary motion Monday to ask Ontario’s government for the province’s next university campus, reports the Barrie Examiner. City council will also commit $14-million toward a new campus of Laurentian University that would cost roughly $60-million to build. Laurentian itself has committed $14-million. The proposed campus would house 3,000 students and open in 2020. Barrie is estimated to have grown by one-third in the past decade to 135,000 people according to the City, with 191,000 in the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) in 2010, according to Statistics Canada. That makes it the biggest CMA in Ontario, by far, without a university. The Ontario Liberals promised three new campuses during the October election campaign. Ontario will need to add between 50,000 and 104,000 new undergraduates seats by 2025 to meet the growing demand for degrees, according to the new book Academic Reform.
University of Saskatchewan president defends endorsement
It’s not the first time a president has praised a politician
Photo by waferboard on Flickr
A University of Saskatchewan professor says President Peter MacKinnon’s endorsement of a Saskatchewan Party minister is unprecedented and constitutes an “abuse of power.”
MacKinnon is quoted in a brochure saying: “Rob Norris is the finest minister responsible for post-secondary education that I have been privileged to work with in my (13) years as (president).”
Len Findlay, Director of the Humanities Research Unit at the university, said presidents are required to stay neutral. “It’s a publicly funded institution and it’s a provincial responsibility,” Findlay told the StarPhoeix. “Provincial governments change and the interests of the institution and the public interest is best served by the university not being seen to align itself with one party…”
MacKinnon said there’s nothing wrong with the comment. He said that it’s important to be careful during election campaigns, but the comment was made in a speech before the writ was dropped.
But are such endorsements, even during elections, really unprecedented as Findlay suggests?
Here are some recent examples of how university and college presidents have praised political parties. You be the judge.
In March, University of Guelph President Alastair Summerlee endorsed federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s “Learning Passport,” calling it “absolutely amazing” and “a very, very positive contribution,” reported the Guelph Mercury.
In September, York University President Mamdouh Shoukri said in response to the Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal platform that: ”the goals of having the highest postsecondary attainment rate and most educated workforce in the world are the right ones.”
That same week, Sheldon Levy, President of Ryerson University, said that the Ontario Liberal’s platform included “the most progressive change in tuition policy I have seen in 40 years.”
And while their words came after the election in October, both University of Manitoba President David Barnard and Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth offered their gratitude to the NDP for promises of new funding that came in Manitoba’s Throne Speech, according to CKNW.
MacKinnon’s comments may be controversial, but such endorsements aren’t unprecedented.
To read more about what the Nov. 7 Saskatchewan election means for you, click here and here.
Obama offers students debt relief
News comes as study reveals rapidly growing tuition rates
Photo by feelsgoodlost on Flickr
As some American students continued their Occupy protests on Wednesday, President Barack Obama was being cheered by other students in Colorado where he announced he will speed up his initiatives to help students overcome debt.
“We should be doing everything we can to put college education within reach for every American,” the President said in what CNN describes as a “campaign-style event.”
Obama announced that a program to limit the repayment of federal student loan debt to 10 per cent of discretionary income will start next year, instead of the year after. And he said that students will be able to consolidate public and private loans to save on interest charges.
