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

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.