All Posts Tagged With: "St. Francis Xavier University"

What students are talking about today (March 5th)

Jepsen (Dance Photographer - Brendan Lally/Flickr)

1. Carly Rae Jepsen, the 27-year-old Canadian singer, has cancelled a performance at the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree in July because the Scouts still ban gay members. In a series of Tweets she wrote: “As an artist who believes in equality for all people, I will not be participating in the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree this summer. I always have and will continue to support the LGBT community on a global level and stay informed on the ever changing landscape in the ongoing battle for gay rights in this country and across the globe.” This seems like a smart move.

2. It’s Israel Apartheid Week again and both Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney and Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned the annual hate-fest on Monday. So did at least one student op-ed, in Trent University’s Arthur, whose author argues the term apartheid is inaccurate. There was also a review of a film that compares Israel and apartheid South Africa in The Concordian. Here’s part of Kenney’s statement, which one might call overheated, even though he makes a valid point:

Continue reading ‘Israel Apartheid,’ Oberlin College & pro-gay Carly Rae

What students are talking about today (February 19th)

Brandon U.

1. Brandon University student Mason Kaluzniak left this weekend’s basketball game with free tuition to his Manitoba school. In the season’s final Shoot-out for Tuition contest he was drawn at random and asked to either take a half-court shot himself or assign it to someone else. He choose to give Bobcats Head Coach Gil Cheung a try, who sunk it and won the big prize for Kaluzniak. The video has been shared around the globe and has more than 1.3 million views on YouTube.

2. University of British Columbia Athletics has mandated sensitivity training for 29 student athletes who participated in the @UBCDimeWatch Twitter account that surfaced in 2012, reports The Ubyssey. DimeWatch posted creepy photos of UBC women—a “dime” is slang for a female with looks that are ‘a perfect 10′—and disappeared after being linked to a hockey player in October. Eight of the 29 were deemed in breach of the Student Code of Conduct and some have been suspended from their teams. Athletics isn’t releasing names, however. Litsa Chatzivasileiou, a gender instructor, criticized that choice. “I don’t understand why there’s so much secrecy behind it,” she told The Ubyssey. “If you don’t publicize this, the broader community still feels unsafe.”

3. Here’s another creepy story. A hidden camera was discovered in a co-ed washroom at Queen’s University’s Victoria Hall on Feb. 13, reports the Queen’s Journal. The camera was disguised as a towel hook inside a shower. It was removed, all other residence washrooms were checked and Kingston Police are investigating. No Secure Digital card was found in the camera and an e-mail to staff said it would be “inappropriate” to disclose whether any images were found by police.

4. Students at St. Francis Xavier University are back in class today after a three-week strike that started on Jan. 28. The tentative deal for staff includes an eight per cent salary increase over four years and improvements to job security and health benefits for part-time contract workers and full-time employees, according to CTV News. The student union is already looking for some kind of compensation for missed time. The deal includes five teaching days added to the school year.

5. The University of Regina has opened 10 gender-neutral washrooms on campus by tacking signs on wheelchair accessible single-stall bathrooms that read: “This washroom may be used by any person regardless of gender identity or expression.” Mikayla Schultz, president of the TransSask Support Services, supported the partly symbolic change. Schultz is undergoing a gender transition and told CBC News that the women’s washroom was never comfortable. Other universities in Canada, including the University of Victoria, have a limited number of gender-neutral stalls.

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Classes cancelled as professors picket over pay

Monday's picket (Clayton Blagdon/The Xaverian)

“We want to reclaim this university,” says St. Francis Xavier Association of University Teachers president Peter McInnis. That’s the message that faculty members carried as they took to the picket lines Monday commencing an unprecedented strike at the campus in Antigonish, N.S.

After eight months of talks, the administration and union failed to reach an agreement on pay and other issues. In the last round of bargaining faculty proposed a 9.3 per cent wage increase over three years, according to the AUT. The administration offered 6.2 per cent over four years.

According to Statistics Canada’s 2011 report, assistant professors at St. FX made a median of $74,377 in 2010-11 while full professors earned a median of $123,673. The average assistant professor’s salary nationwide was $91,035 and the average full professor’s salary was $143,366.

Professors, lab instructors, librarians and writing center workers all hit the pavement at 7:30 a.m. Monday forcing the postponement of classes for the foreseeable future and causing uncertainty for the school’s more than 4,000 students.

Continue reading Mixed feelings at St. FX over faculty strike

The labour minister on ’80s hair and staying close to home

Minister Raitt (Sean Kilpatrick/CP)

The 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings asked some of Canada’s most successful writers, politicians and scientists what they wish they’d known in university. Their answers are perfect additions to our First Year Survivor blog. Here, Minister of Labour Lisa Raitt offers her advice.

I graduated from an all-girls Catholic school and I decided to do a year—before I moved away—at University College of Cape Breton, now called CBU. At the time they were not allowed to give full science degrees in what I wanted to study, which was chemistry, so I knew I would do one or two years there then transfer.

My first year, I worked at our local Dairy Queen and I lived at home so it was very much like being in high school but the academics were a lot more difficult. One embarrassing thing: first-year university, here I’m going to be in class with boys for the first time and I get the worst haircut and perm you can imagine. It was absolutely horrendous. In the ’80s we did the perm thing and I was like Olivia Newton John on steroids. It took me a long time with that bad hair to get a boyfriend in university and I’ve been terrified of getting my hair cut ever since.

Continue reading Lisa Raitt’s advice for students

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.

Continue reading Marking the Montreal Massacre

That mysterious substance guidance counsellors call ‘fit’ is not so mysterious anymore.

Deanna Jarvis, the 19-year-old first-year student on our cover, says she knows the University of Guelph is the right place for her. She’s just not sure why. Maybe it’s the gold and red leaves that litter the campus in the fall. She could never live in a concrete jungle, she says. Perhaps it’s that Guelph offers a rare major (adult development, families and wellbeing) that will teach her how to help people. “I just like to listen to friends and help them,” she says. Or maybe it’s that Guelph is a big enough school to keep famous playwrights like Judith Thompson on staff. Jarvis, a parttime actor, is a huge Thompson fan. Whatever the reason, Guelph just seems to fit.

Parents, students, university presidents and even education marketers are trying to nail down exactly what makes a school fit. Traditionally, school size and city size were the shorthand for determining where a particular student should go. Big schools offer more cultural opportunities; tiny schools offer more personal interaction, or so the theory goes. Those rules still apply, but sociologist James Côté, of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., has found another predictor for what he calls the “goodness of fit.” His research found students do best when their inner motivations match what the environment has to offer.

Tom Traves, president of Dalhousie University, agrees that students should look inward to determine the best school for them. “For some students it will be a small, intimate, collegial environment,” says Traves. “For other students, their personalities will be sufficiently expansive and their strength of purpose and needs will be such that going to a small environment will be too much like an extension of high school.”

Côté would agree, but says university officials are not the only people to ask. “You’ll have to do the digging yourself,” he says. Some “universities don’t want to alienate prospective students who aren’t the right fit,” he explains. “Because they’re funded by tuition and the number of bums in seats.”

Assuming they’re not going to university because of parental pressure, most students have one of three motivations, according to Côté: the “personal and intellectual” motivation, the “career and materialism” motivation, or the “humanitarian” motivation.

For the student whose goal is to develop personally and intellectually, a small liberalarts oriented school is best, he says. “A good liberal arts education really requires smaller class sizes, so you can have seminars and contact with faculty,” he explains. “You’ll also be required to do more public speaking and writing. A large school simply can’t do this.” St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish, N.S., and Quest University in Squamish, B.C., are examples of schools where students seeking personal and intellectual growth will find it, he says.

Large, reputable schools like McGill and the University of Toronto fit students who are personally and intellectually motivated, says Côté, but be sure “you’re outgoing or able to work on your own.” Students who choose the school primarily for its reputation, says Côté, need to remember that “they may never see any of the profs that make those schools famous.”

The second type of student, the “careeristmaterialist,” is someone who wants a degree mainly for the job and prestige. “The careeristmaterialist might fit at schools that are vocationally oriented,” says Côté. “We’re going that direction at Western,” he says, giving the example of the increasing popularity of degrees like the bachelor of management and organizational studies over the traditional broad B.A.

The third (and more rare) motivation to study is altruism. Côté offers King’s University College (a Western affiliate) as a good fit for the “humanitarianism-motivated” student, because of its social justice focus.

Ken Steele, an education marketing expert, agrees with Côté that universities themselves are unlikely to help you determine fit. Most universities are still trying to be “everything to everyone,” he says. However, he has seen a few encouraging examples of schools that are marketing with “goodness of fit” in mind. “Acadia [in Wolfville, N.S.] actually says it’s not for everyone,” explains Steele. “They want students to know they’re coming to a small town and that’s going to be a shock for some of them.”

William Barker, president of the University of King’s College in Halifax (an even smaller school than Acadia), suggests visiting as many schools as possible, sitting in on lectures, and staying overnight with a friend.

That’s advice Côté wants parents to hear. He says more parents should encourage their offspring to explore far and wide; too often they encourage offspring to choose the closest school to home in order to save money. “You may save a lot financially in the short run, but you will have lost in the long run,” he says. If a person fails at university because it’s the wrong fit, they risk losing millions of dollars in lifetime earnings, he explains—and it’s not a cheap investment. “If parents were forking out this kind of money in the stock market or real estate, they’d look at it much more carefully,” says Côté.

Of course, not everyone can afford to fly around the country to research each school. That’s why Maclean’s asked successful students from four schools exactly what makes their university the right fit for them. Their answers prove just how important it is for future students to ask themselves who they are and why they want a degree. Why? Just ask Côté. “If you don’t develop goals of what you want to get out of university, you potentially squander the most transformative experience of your life.”

With Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze

Riiny Ngot’s incredible journey from war-torn Sudan to St. FX

Where are we going? Riiny Ngot admits thinking to himself about 45 minutes into the two-hour drive from the Halifax airport to St. Francis Xavier University, his rural Nova Scotia home for the next three years. We’re in the middle of nowhere.

Dramatic change, however, has long been a fact of life for the towering 21-year-old basketball centre, who begins his career in the CIS, the Canadian university league, this fall. Riiny, who is seven foot two—a foot taller than the team average, and the tallest player in the league—is also part of a remarkable group of refugees. They are known as the Lost Boys of Sudan. Starting in the late 1980s, some 25,000 children who had been orphaned or separated from their parents crossed the country seeking refuge from Sudan’s raging civil war. That conflict—one of the last century’s most brutal—pitted the northern Muslim government against the mostly Christian south, and ultimately claimed two million lives.

Psychologists who documented the Lost Boys’ exposure to death and violence place them among the most badly war-traumatized children ever examined. For Riiny, who is gentle and soft-spoken, lily-white scars on his legs and arms are only the physical reminders of the war. He aches, all the time, for the family it took from him.

When Riiny was 11, fighting exploded in the southern city of Wau, where he grew up. He was nearby, at his grandparents’ farm tending to a newborn calf, and he ran home, passing scores of dead and wounded, to find his house in flames. Amid the crackle of gunfire, he could hear Akuol, his eight-year-old sister, screaming from inside. Tearing through the house, he found her hidden in a closet. They escaped just before their home collapsed.

There was no sign of their parents, so they left Wau, crossing the country’s war-ravaged southern flank and joining other children who were fleeing the fighting. They travelled under cover of darkness—and not just to escape the 40-degree heat. Almost anyone they encountered—government troops, rebel soldiers or rival tribes—was a likely threat: Akuol could have been enslaved or forced to become a rebel wife, while Riiny, who already stood six foot three, was ripe for recruitment by the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. (Thousands of children also died from starvation, dehydration, animal attacks and disease.)

For most of the month-long journey, Riiny carried Akuol, who was frightened and tired. When it came to crossing the rain-swollen Gilo River to safety in Ethiopia, he tied her to his back using a T-shirt, and dove deep to avoid the river’s strong top currents. As they surfaced, Riiny heard his best friend, who had been travelling with them, screaming in terror: he was being attacked by a crocodile. Hundreds died that day, lost to animal attack and drowning, says Riiny. Others remember the river streaked with red, the blood of lost friends.

Two more elections to note. Voter turnout at UBC was only 1214.4 per cent. The winner of the presidential race, Blake Frederick, was disqualified by the Elections Committee for “slate-like” behaviour. The Alma Mater Society at UBC banned slates a few years ago, a good background article on the ban was published in The Ubyssey [...]

Two more elections to note.

Voter turnout at UBC was only 1214.4 per cent.

The winner of the presidential race, Blake Frederick, was disqualified by the Elections Committee for “slate-like” behaviour. The Alma Mater Society at UBC banned slates a few years ago, a good background article on the ban was published in The Ubyssey this week. (I’m planning to write on the slate-ban this weekend)

Turnout at Ryerson was up, but still very low by national standards at 14 per cent. (Thanks to Cassandra Jowett for noting this in a comment on my blog)

Voter turnout at St. Francis Xavier remains the envy of every campus in Canada with an amazing 60.24 per cent.