All Posts Tagged With: "University of Regina"

Previous referendum failed

Students at the University of Regina have voted to add a $1.00 fee to fund the campus Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity, which supports queer youth. Of the 475 students who voted, 86 per cent were in favour, according to unofficial results. According to The Carillon student newspaper, students rejected the addition of a $7.00 annual fee for the Pride Centre in 2008.

Café lectures trend grows

The University of Regina is offering free general interest lectures served alongside pints of beer.

It’s part of a growing trend in university towns where students are proving they’re interested in learning for the sake of learning—so long as they can simultaneously eat snacks and drink beer.

The Science Pub series was created by Bev Robertson, a professor emeritus who now owns the Bushwakker Brewpub where the monthly event is held. He told the Leader-Post that he got the idea after hearing about similar events further west.

Continue reading Cheers to the Science Pub

Prof. Pettigrew explains his support for more open urination

Photo by daveynin on Flickr

If you want evidence that universities are places where basic assumptions are questioned, check out this story about students in Regina and Winnipeg pushing for gender-neutral washrooms.

The point of such gender-neutral facilities is to provide a place for those who do not fit neatly into the normal divisions of male and female. If this seems confusing, consider the case of an old undergraduate buddy of mine who I will call “Andy.” Andy was, genetically speaking, female, but had her hair cropped short and liked to sport a Greek fisherman hat with a men’s shirt and jeans. She was tall and fit and if you were just passing by her on the street you would be hard-pressed to fit her into the usual categories of men and women. That, of course, was sort of the point. Once, a mean-spirited store-owner mistook her for an effeminate man: “You look like a girl,” he sneered.

Continue reading Gender-neutral washrooms are the way to go

Profs working in Canada “must have no record of Falun Gong”

Photo courtesy of IvanWalsh.com on Flickr

A rule imposed by Confucius Institutes — an educational arm of the Chinese government that operates on at least eight Canadian campuses — breaks “all human rights codes in Canada,” human rights lawyer Clive Ansley told The Epoch Times.

The main CI website says that overseas volunteer Chinese teachers must have “no record of participation in Falun Gong,” a spiritual practice with roots in Buddhism and Taoism. China’s government vehemently opposes the practice and has arrested and killed many adherents, according to Amnesty International.

Barb Pollock, vice president of external relations at the University of Regina, told The Epoch Times that she did not know about the rule, but promised that her school’s agreements with China “have everything to do with academic freedom.” She also said that although teachers are selected by their Chinese partner, Hunan University, “what they teach [here] is our business.”

In June, the University of Manitoba rejected the idea of a Confucius Institute on campus. The University of British Columbia has also declined. But more than 320 exist worldwide, where they offer credit and non-credit courses in language and history.

China says that the funding of CIs—$150,000 initially and up to $200,000 per year after that— is meant to promote cultural understanding. But along with the money, schools have signed constitutions that say that “institute activities must … respect cultural customs, and shall not contravene concerning laws and regulations in Canada and China.”

Terry Russell, an Asian Studies professor at Manitoba, says that such rules compromise academic freedom, because academics are dissuaded from discussing Taiwan, Tibet, Falun Gong, or the Tiananmen Square massacre. That could result in an unrealistically positive view of China among the students who pass through the credit courses they offer in Canada, he says.

Disagreement over referendum votes should have been solved long before votes were cast

Another day, another court battle between the Canadian Federation of Students and one of its unions.

This time, it’s the University of Regina Students’ Union taking CFS to court, to seek an injunction in the hopes of seeing the results of a referendum to decide whether or not the union will remain with the student lobby group. The ballots for the referendum were cast over a month ago.

Like most CFS disputes that see the inside of a court room, this too seems like a waste of student’s money on legal fees.

Since students went to polls in late October, CFS representatives from the Referendum Oversight Committee have not returned to the university to finish counting the provisional ballots, which had to be verified by the U of R registrar’s office before they could be counted. These ballots have since been approved.

An URSU press release explained that counting is delayed over a dispute between the CFS and the union over the eligibility of ballots cast by First Nations University students, who pay fees to both URSU and the FNUniv Students’ Association. However, each students’ association is its own union local under CFS, with URSU as Local 9 and the FNUniv Students Association as Local 90, meaning FNUuniv will remain a member of the CFS regardless of the outcome of the referendum.

At this point, the ROC knows which way the result of the referendum leans towards, based on the ballots that have been counted, but the results of the provisional ballots are not yet known. According to the union, CFS is delaying the ballot counting process until it is decided whether or not the votes from FNUniv students are eligible.

Shouldn’t this discussion  have happened long before the ballots were even cast? It seems ridiculous that this dispute is happening after FNUniv students have already voted.

URSU’s stance is that the eligibility of FNUniv students was supposed to be left undecided until it was concluded that the votes of FNUniv students would sway the results one way or the other.

CFS claims it did not agree to this arrangement, and has accused the union of disenfranchising FNUniv students. CFS chair David Molenhuis told the Leader Post that the union must acknowledge that all students who cast a vote are “absolutely members of the students’ union and participate in every other way through voting in elections to voting in other referenda.”

URSU, in turn, is accusing CFS of trying to prevent “bad press” over the issue and the potential loss of one of its most active members by delaying the release of the results.

It’s understandable why URSU is getting a bit antsy over seeing the results of their referendum, considering the reputation the CFS has gained for not exactly being the most cooperative organization to work with in these situations. However, this seems like a massive waste of the court’s time and a huge misuse of resources over what seems like a pretty simple disagreement. One that should have been resolved way before the referendum voting even took place.

Then again, is anyone surprised this dispute has escalated to this point? It’s only one in a long line of battles for CFS court watchers to keep tabs on.

Scholarship for children of fallen Canadian soldiers is granted despite professors’ objections last March

(Editor’s note: This post has been updated below)

Hang on to your knickers, University of Regina professors. The first Hero Fund scholarship has been awarded.

Maritimer Matthew Mellish is the first recipient of the Hero Fund scholarship for children of fallen Canadian soldiers. Matthew’s father, Warrant Officer Frank Mellish, was killed in 2006 by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Matthew has received $10,000 from the Canadian Hero Fund to cover tuition and books.

A nice break for a young student who has obviously had a rough ride, right?

Wrong, you imperial jingoist!

When a similar initiative, dubbed “Project Hero,” was being launched earlier in the spring and universities across Canada were signing on, a group of professors from the University of Regina released an “open letter” to the president of the university objecting to its participation in the scholarship program.

They wrote that the Hero Fund (Update: We have been informed by Hero Fund administration that they are unaffiliated with Project Hero. The Hero Fund relies strictly on private donations, whereas individual universities foot the bill for Project Hero recipients.) Project Hero was “a glorification of Canadian imperialism in Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

“We do not want our university associated with the political impulse to unquestioning glorification of military action,” they argued.

Though despite the professors’ valiant (dare I say, heroic?) efforts to get the university to ditch the program, the University of Regina is still participating in the Project Hero scholarship. And now the Hero Fund has awarded its first scholarship. Bloody compatriots! Surely an extended appeal to Matthew Mellish directly is the next step in these professors’ pursuits of military modesty. Right? Or will bashfulness suddenly seize their pens when ideology is confronted with a real-life story?

Anti-war movements on campus are not new. Poppies have become the target of late, quickly becoming an unfashionable statement on many Canadian campuses. Some students and professors choose to abstain from wearing the Remembrance Day symbol because they believe it glorifies war. Others opt to wear white poppies, which is seen as a symbol for peace and nonviolence.

Then there are more direct approaches; in 2007, for example, the University of Victoria’s student union banned military recruiting at the campus job fair, a move which was later overturned by a general vote. At Laurier that same year, students chose to protest across the street from a veterans’ memorial, only after conceding to pressure and abandoning their original plan to protest on the memorial during ceremonies.

This sort of in-your-face pacifism is what leaves as bad taste in some people’s mouths. Choosing not to wear a poppy on Rememberance Day is a personal choice–lighting a torch to the stash is not. The University of Regina professors can exclude the word “hero” from their own military vernacular if they so desire, but no one asked them to serve as university administration conscience. They have the option to keep their change in the pockets, and the decorum–hopefully now–to cease the politicization of a student’s personal tragedy.

Answer: yes

My fellow blogger Todd Pettigrew, as well as several professors at the University of Regina say no.

“Project Hero,” the program implemented several weeks ago at U of R, provides free tuition for four years (as well as $1,000 for books) to the children of military personnel who have died in active duty.

But to Prof Pettigrew and the 16 professors who are protesting the scholarship program, Project Hero does more than just provide tuition—it glorifies war.

“It implies that military officers have a special status simply by virtue of being in the military,” writes Pettigrew. “It suggests that the whole class of people is to venerated, and that military service is a special calling to which only a select group of heroes can aspire.”

I’ll admit, the name “Project Hero” leaves little to the imagination. So how about we call it the “Military Dependent Scholarship?” Or the “Children of Deceased Veterans Bursary?” Problem solved, right?

With the word “hero” gone, you’d have to do a hell of a lot of extrapolation to get back to the glorification of soldiers, no? (I can already feel the vibration of goaded fingers.) How would the renamed scholarship glorify war any more than, say, wearing a poppy on Veterans Day?

One could argue I’m missing the “meta,” but I see the the scholarship simply as a way to provide tuition to children who have lost a parent, and by extension, a financial resource. Yes the families of fallen military personnel are compensated, but this program provides a fiscal opportunity specific to the pursuit of higher education. I’m sure the U of R professors would agree with me when I say that it’s a pursuit worth of encouraging.

I think it’s also worth noting that this scholarship isn’t for “Children of Military in Afghanistan.” Canadian troops just happen to be there at the moment. Military lives are lost in combat and in training, during battles of which Canadian citizens approve and many of which they do not. Funny–in World War II, when professors and academics were one of the first to be persecuted in Nazi-occupied Germany, Canadian soldiers fought against constricting pressures, allowing for academic freedom and freedom of speech, which, ironically, grants our professors the opportunity to object to Project Hero today. What would attitudes towards the program have been back in 1940? Should we only compensate the children of war casualties who fought for causes with which we agree?

Another overlooked point in this whole debate is that the children of many professors at Canadian universities pay reduced or no tuition if they enroll at an institution where a parent works. As long as we’re extrapolating, what message does that send? Let’s say a professor is a racist bigot who spews ignorant propaganda in lecture all day–do we deny his/her child the financial break because of what could be inferred from the subsidy?

Professor Pettigrew makes the very good point that it’s not just military personnel who risk their lives for others; police officers, firefighters and others put put themselves in danger each day for the public. And I completely agree. To go further, I think universities should provide scholarships for the children of those who have lost their lives in the line of public duty.

But, in the meantime, I think we should let these veterans’ kids have their break. Just as “glorifying war” churns the stomachs of these professors, politicizing the tragedies of Canadian military families leaves a bad feeling in mine.

If grads can’t land jobs in their field within six months, school will pay for year of courses

Guarantees usually come when you buy things like a TV or maybe a car, but a Saskatchewan university is offering one for something different – an education.

The University of Regina has launched a guarantee program for students who can’t find a job in their field within six months of graduation. Under the plan, students can take another year of courses and the school will foot the bill for tuition.

The university says the guarantee is the first program of its kind at a Canadian university.

“It almost seems like a free insurance policy. You don’t have to pay anything into it and you’re guaranteed to get something out of it,” says Kyle Addison, a business administration student and president of the University of Regina Students’ Union.

The program will officially be up and running next September, but any student who started university this fall can apply for it.

Like any guarantee, there are rules that apply.

Barb Pollock, vice-president of external relations at the U of R, says among other things, students will have to maintain a 70 per cent average, take an active role in campus life and get career counselling to prepare for the job market.

“The whole idea is to not only help you maintain a successful path in your academics but to expose you and make you marketable, employable,” says Pollock.

“It also, there’s no doubt, could have a beneficial effect for us in recruitment. But the reason for it for us is the idea about getting students involved and engaged in the university from the get-go, the minute they walk in the door, so that they have a greater chance for success at the end of their program.”