All Posts Tagged With: "St. Thomas University"

Scott Hems overcame bullying and lost 100 pounds

Scott Hems

This story originally appeared in The Aquinian, the student newspaper at St. Thomas University.

In high school, I was a typical big guy. I took a lot of shit from people. I got teased and laughed at. Girls wouldn’t talk to me. I could never eat enough, and I never felt good about myself.

There was one thing did make me happy, though, and that was hockey. I loved hockey in high school, but couldn’t make the high level teams because of my weight. During AAA tryouts one year, the coach called me. He wanted to tell me I was a fantastic goalie and had the heart of a champion.

He followed up the pep talk by saying I was “too fat to present the image we want on this team.”

Continue reading Too fat for the team

Inside the war against risky drinking on campus

Mark Peterson/Redux

From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings

When outraged members of Pi Kappa Alpha at the University of Tennessee called a news conference in September to protest the suspension of their fraternity due to allegations of strange and excessive alcohol abuse, two words sprang to mind: Animal House. The news conference, immortalized on YouTube, is so unintentionally bizarre that it could be mistaken for an outtake from the subversive 1978 frat-boy comedy that launched a million toga parties and countless hangovers. The press conference—featuring a bow-tied, dead-serious Southern lawyer backed by an angelic legion of fraternity members in their Sunday suits—was called to refute allegations that one of their own, 20-year-old Alexander P. Broughton, had indulged in “butt-chugging” massive quantities of wine. While there was no denying that Broughton was hospitalized with alcohol poisoning after a night of fraternity drinking games, the idea of an alcohol enema is “repulsive” to Broughton, his lawyer said. “He is a straight man.”

Continue reading Battling the binge

A timeline of injuries, deaths, scandals and crackdowns

Graphic by Jessie Willms. Text by Josh Dehaas.

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School offers money, food and shelter

Three students who were the victims of an apartment fire in Fredericton in November have received generous help from their school, St. Thomas University. All three have been offered $750 to use however they like, a meal plan worth $350 and free residence for the rest of the semester. The STU Alumni Office also gave each student a $200 Visa gift card. Even faculty chipped in, giving the students hoodies after learning that their clothing was damaged. Perhaps the best gift of all: students will get extensions on their coursework and postponed exams, reports The Daily Gleaner.

Why students are flocking to Memorial University

Memorial University student. By Andrew Tolson.

The 21st Maclean’s University Rankings includes a close look at Atlantic Canada’s schools. To read more, buy your copy today.

Amber Haighway, a fifth-year music education student at Memorial University (MUN) in St. John’s, Nfld., has many jealous friends studying in places like Toronto, New Brunswick and back home in Nova Scotia. They say things like, “I can’t believe you pay that little for a whole semester—that’s the price of one course at my school.” It’s not far from the truth. As the Glace Bay native explains, “it’s more affordable to travel from Nova Scotia and pay for school, books and housing in Newfoundland than to go 10 minutes down the road to Cape Breton University and live at home with my parents.”

Continue reading Rock-bottom prices on The Rock

Drunken party involved “an initiation”

The University of Guelph’s men’s rugby team is suspended for two games over an off-campus party.

Athletics director Tom Kendall told The Globe and Mail that a Sept. 17 party violated the school’s athletics code because of misuse of alcohol and an initiation. ”It’s more the alcohol,” Kendall said. “Nobody was hurt and the police weren’t involved. It wasn’t severe in that sense, it wasn’t a hazing incident,” he added, although he said it’s “not 100 per cent clear” what type of initiation occurred.

St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B. recently unveiled its draft student behaviour code, which imposes up to $500 fines and possible expulsion for incidents of hazing at off-campus gatherings where more than two STU students are present. That policy was developed after a STU student died from injuries at a party where excessive drinking and hazing reportedly occurred.

Guelph’s Gryphons rugby team will forfeit two upcoming games, against Toronto and McMaster.

STU’s new code of conduct strikes the right balance: Petz

Photo courtesy of eliduke on Flickr

Keep on your best behavior St. Thomas students or you could not be a STU student no more. The university has a new code of conduct that will apply to your activities both on and off campus. A committee of university officials, students and faculty will now be able to impose punishments for things like hazing, including fines of up to $500 and expulsion. Seems draconian, right?

The new rules are the result of a policy review that followed the death of Andrew Bartlett. Bartlett died last October after attending his volleyball team’s initiation party at an off-campus residence where hazing and excessive drinking allegedly took place before he fell down a flight of stairs and fatally injured his head.

Though it’s clear that universities should be accountable for their students while they’re living, working and studying on campus, policing student behavior off-campus is more controversial.

But by limiting their code of conduct to occasions when students are clearly representing the university, STU’s new code of conduct strikes the right balance between student rights to behave how they like and the university’s right to protect its reputation—-not to mention their duty to keep students safe. The code rightly spells-out which behaviours are acceptable and which are not.

To violate the code, an incident must involve at least two STU students and occur at a university-sanctioned event or one where the student is representing the university. Hazing is highlighted, with a list of more than 20 examples spelled out. Overall, hazing is defined as “any activity expected of someone joining a group (or to maintain full status in a group) that humiliates, degrades or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the person’s willingness to participate,” reports The Aquinian student newspaper.*

The death of Andrew Bartlett is not the first incident to prompt questions about whether university discipline rules should reach off campus. Following allegations of hazing at the University of Alberta chapter of Delta Kappa Epilson fraternity at their off-campus location, the university suspended the fraternity for five years, disallowing DKE from using university services or associating itself with the U of A. Despite calls for a harsher punishment, there was little else the university could do to discipline the chapter under the U of A’s code of student behavior.

Another incident that stirred up debate on university discipline was the Stanley Cup rioting in Vancouver. Some wanted the University of British Columbia to punish those found guilty of taking part in looting. A spokesperson for the UBC told campus paper The Ubyssey that they would be letting the police and the courts determine discipline for any students involved in the looting.

Like STU, UBC made the right choice there too.It’s reasonable for universities to try to protect their students’ safety and their own reputations, but universities are no substitute for good parenting and good decisions on the part of students. Their duty only goes so far.

*This story has been updated from an earlier version that failed to attribute details of the draft code to The Aquinian, a student newspaper at St. Thomas University. Maclean’s On Campus regrets the error.

STU profs who plan to boycott convocation should be wary of the message they are sending their students

A group of professors at St. Thomas University are protesting the decision to award an honorary degree to Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside, and some have now threatened to boycott the graduation ceremonies.

In an open letter to the Daily Gleaner, the professors at the liberal arts university objected to the decision to award the degree to a “sitting politician,” as well as because of Woodside’s “record on the environment and by his unwillingness to recognize gay and lesbian citizens.”

Back in the 1990’s, Woodside refused to declare a Gay Pride weekend in Fredericton until he was ordered to do so by the Human Rights Commission. However, since taking office again in 2004, Woodside has declared Pride Week and even participated in some of the events.

But for other professors, their decision to boycott the ceremonies has more to do with the ethics of awarding an honorary degree to a politician who is still in office.  “There’s a general sense of unease about the kind of vulgarity and the crassness of that,” Ian Nicholson, an STU professor who signed the letter of objection told Global Saskatoon. “Of sorta paying up to power, of trying to buy favours from politicians by giving them one of these impressive sounding degrees.”

For these reasons, a group of STU professors may be absent at the convocation ceremonies of their students this weekend. And while I don’t agree with their position, it is understandable why they would choose to be so. The ethics of awarding an honorary degree to a sitting politician is undeniably complicated, and that decision is made even thornier when the recipient has held controversial opinions in the past, despite recent reforms.

But by boycotting the ceremonies, these professors are putting their own politics over their students. Which is fine, of course. But small liberal arts universities, unlike large, research-driven institutions, are driven by the reputation of having intimate classrooms and personal connections between students and professors. You go to the University of Toronto if you want to be lectured by a world-renowned theorist who probably doesn’t know your name, but you enroll in St. Thomas University if you want to develop a relationship with faculty and engage personally with your instructors. If these professors don’t show up to their students’ graduations, they will be inadvertently forfeiting one of the great merits of their institution.

St. Thomas University reverses courses on preventing handing out condoms during orientation

Condoms will be handed out to first-year students at St. Thomas University after all. In July, the St. Thomas Students’ Union was told by Residence Life that they could not include condoms in Welcome Week kits alongside t-shirts, clip boards, and information about the campus, on the grounds that it was against university policy. Condoms were readily available elsewhere on campus, and incoming students had more important things to worry about during their first week, the students’ union was told. When it was discovered that no such policy existed, STU president Dennis Cochrane struck a committee on student health to look into the matter.

Background: Condom controversy at STU

The ten member committee, composed of various campus constituencies, including four students, recommended that condoms could be handed out during orientation week. “The committee supports the proposal to include a sample condom, accompanied by appropriate sexual health education materials, in the package for incoming first year students. The committee further recommends that there be an enhanced focus on providing sexual health education information to all students,” the recommendation, which was made public this week reads.

President Cochrane has accepted the proposal, making it official university policy.

“I’m certainly pleased that [the] committee agreed and recommended the inclusion of condoms in the Welcome Week kits,” student president Ella Henry said. “It’s also encouraging that the university plans to work to improve sexual health education and access to condoms on campus beyond Welcome Week.”

In coming to its conclusion, the President’s Advisory Committee on Student Health reviewed policy at other maritime universities. The University of New Brunswick which shares its Fredericton campus with St. Thomas, has handed out condoms during orientation for years. In fact, St. Thomas itself had permitted condom distribution during Welcome Week in some previous years.

He was a peace-loving professor who dedicated his life to understanding why people commit violence

John Patrick McKendy was born on Aug. 21, 1949, in Bathurst, N.B., to Arthur and Bernadette McKendy, who raised their seven children in a devoutly Roman Catholic home. The second oldest, John, stood out from his siblings as “the sensitive one” with a “quiet, almost brooding” nature, says his brother Mike. While Arthur earned a living as a civil servant, the boys were often cast outdoors to invent their own fun. “John was the conscience,” says Mike, “He wouldn’t let us get too far astray.”

Though Bernadette, who later became a children’s librarian, impressed the importance of education on her four boys and three girls equally, says Mike, “we all knew that John would go beyond our achievements.” His deep intellect and focus won him top marks. In his teens, he earned his amateur radio licence—perhaps early evidence of a desire to listen to others. But despite the accolades he got from school, or from Boy Scouts and Air Cadets, John “shunned honour and recognition,” says Mike, recalling how his “painfully shy” brother preferred to soak in the action from the periphery. “He certainly didn’t do it for the badge.”

After high school, John followed in his older brother Charles’s footsteps and enrolled at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., where he excelled. Occasionally, John would hitchhike home to Bathurst with his friends, who, like him, “were the sensitive type,” says Mike. The Kent State shooting in 1970, in which four students were killed, was pivotal for John. Though he retained his faith in God, he chafed at the rigidity of institutions like the Catholic Church. By the time he was in Toronto earning his Ph.D. in sociology, he had gravitated to the more peaceful, meditative doctrine of Quakerism. The notion that “people are not inherently bad,” says friend Vince Zelazny, became intertwined with his academic pursuits.

John met his wife, Carol Wakeham, at Mike’s wedding in New Jersey in 1976. He was the best man, and she was the maid of honour and sister of the bride. Despite their differences—she took charge, while he was more laissez-faire—theirs was an attraction, recalls Mike, that “stood out, even against the focus on us that day.” After a year-long, cross-border courtship, they were married. When his daughters Colleen and Laura were born, John fostered an encouraging environment, where there were never winners or losers. “They adored him,” says Mike.

Among the professors at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, where he taught throughout his career, John was a “peacemaker,” with a knack for “dealing with wounded egos,” says long-time colleague Sylvia Hale. In his field, the research he conducted with men who had abused their partners, and the workshops he facilitated with Dorchester Penitentiary inmates, was considered radical. Though he “had never been violent in his life,” John conceded to the men that “all of us have been abusive,” says Sylvia. Their stories strengthened his belief in guidance instead of punishment.

Though John was passionate about research, his first love was teaching. Clad in sneakers, jeans, a collared shirt and sweater, the professor who refused to be called “Doctor” inspired his students. In early 1994, Dawne Clarke was a single mother who had recently escaped an abusive relationship. As she struggled to hold her newborn daughter while taking notes in John’s class, he scooped up the baby and finished the lecture. Recalls Dawne, “He didn’t even break stride.”

It was a desire to understand the causes of violence, and hunger for travel, that led John to volunteer in Burundi in the summer of 2007 and again in 2008. During the six-week stints, he helped construct an AIDS clinic, and took part in alternatives to violence workshops with people who were both perpetrators and victims of the Rwandan genocide. “He was right in the middle of everything, relating to everyone,” says coordinator Dave Zarembka. John applied for a sabbatical, and was planning to return in January on an open ticket.

John’s daughter Laura had been married for less than a year when her relationship “crashed completely,” says a friend, and she moved in with her dad. He revealed snippets of the trauma to colleagues, and put his trip to Africa on hold. At a recent Quaker meeting, John prompted those gathered to pray for Laura’s husband, Nicholas Wade Baker. On Friday, Oct. 31, a violent attack occurred. Police have released few details, but they believe Nick assaulted a woman, whom friends and family identify as Laura, and killed John in his home. On Saturday, Nick’s body was found in a rented car, an apparent suicide. John McKendy was 59.