Author: Ian Down

The November by-elections for the Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) will be conducted entirely through electronic voting, thanks to a motion passed by council last week.

On Thursday, Sept. 20, council approved a motion to implement electronic voting and, following the elections, conduct a review of the results for future elections.

MyVote, the system chosen by ASFA’s Ad-Hoc online voting committee, allows voters to cast their ballots on their mobile devices or desktop computers. Electronic voting booths will also be installed on campus.

Alex Karasick, chair of ASFA’s online voting committee, said the system could be implemented in time for November’s elections and would cost less than $1,000. By comparison, the federation spent more than $9,500 on last year’s by-election, according to an end-of-year financial report.

The motion passed after more than 45 minutes of debate in council. Irish Studies Student Association councillor Margot Berner, who voted against the motion, expressed concern that voting electronically would compromise election security.

Karasick said the risk of a by-election being tampered with was low. “It’s a by-election, so no one cares,” he said.

“What we want to do here is determine whether or not online voting is feasible by doing it in a case where it doesn’t have severe consequences, were anything to happen,” said Karasick.

“I think it’s very important to protect the democratic integrity of all of our voting,” said Berner.

“While this seems like something very interesting, it seems very rushed,” said Berner. “I would urge someone to table [the motion] for later, when the logistics have been determined, the research has been presented, and we can all make an informed and empowered decision.”

Berner introduced a motion to remove the implementation and review clauses from the motion, which would reduce it to a mandate for the Internal committee to review the logistics of implementing online voting. The motion was struck down by council.

In response to calls for the research to be presented, Karasick gave a presentation on the research conducted by the online voting committee. He said the committee conducted an informal survey of student unions and associations across Canada, including some from the University of Manitoba, Bishop’s and McGill. Karasick said his questions about the benefits, drawbacks and logistics of online voting were “generally very favourable” with regards to accessibility, sustainability and participation.

ASFA General Manager Chris Lechkobit-Carpenter said achieving quorum for an election has been a challenge since before he started working for ASFA. “Any means of assisting with participation and engagement is a good idea,” he said.

When the Commerce and Administration Student Association (CASA) implemented online voting in its general election last March, voter turnout increased by 25 per cent, according to The Link.

In March 2017, ASFA’s general elections had to be extended by half a day after failing to reach quorum.

Karasick plans to have a formal research document finished and ready to be presented within the next two weeks.

What went wrong between CASA and its last private tutoring sponsor?

 

If you’re a student in the John Molson School of Business (JMSB), you won’t see ads for major tutoring companies at Frosh, or any JMSB-sponsored events. Any posters advertising private tutors in the MB building are quickly taken down.

This wasn’t always the case. For years, JMSB’s student association, the Commerce and Administration Students’ Association (CASA), had one private tutoring sponsor: SOS Tutoring. The Montreal-based company sponsored Frosh, posted ads on CASA’s website, and hung posters around the MB building.

For most of their relationship, “There were no issues with us and CASA,” said Aaron Benshabat, an executive at SOS. “We had a very healthy relationship.”

Then, in the summer of 2016, CASA’s then-VP External, Rudy Grow, said he discovered that another local student association was getting a better sponsorship deal from SOS. “They were basically getting a steal from us,” he said.

Although the exact details of the contracts are private, Benshabat said the $4,000-$6,000 sponsorship contracts SOS has with its partner schools are generally within a few hundred dollars of each other. However, Grow said his organization was getting paid less “per student” than the other, smaller student association. CASA’s existing contract with SOS was set to expire at the end of the year.

Benshabat said the friction between CASA and SOS was caused not by an unfair deal, but by pressure from the JMSB administration. “They got light pressure in the beginning,” he said. “And then, over time, it seemed every time I was talking to a new president, it was more of, not a comment that they received from academia, but more of a ‘Hey, you should start thinking about not working with [private tutors].’”

He said the school’s alleged pressuring of CASA to cut ties with SOS, which he blamed on institutional bias against private tutors, compromised the association’s independence from the administration.

Grow, who would become CASA’s president in the spring of 2017, said that the university did pressure CASA to end its relationship with SOS, although it was never stated what would happen if CASA refused. “They’re not gonna tell you ‘We’re gonna do this,’ but you can tell in the tone of their voice that something would likely happen.”

“The JMSB administration did articulate to CASA how it felt about sponsorship agreements with tutoring firms,” said university spokesperson Mary-Jo Barr. “However, CASA is an independent body and for this reason, the administration did not, and would not, direct them to end their relationships with any third parties.”

Grow said that following his discovery, he and Benshabat met several times between September and November 2016 to discuss their contract. By their last meeting in November, CASA had a new price tag: $50,000 a year. Grow said that when he presented this amount, he was “laughed out of the room.”

Finally, in February 2017, after failing to reach a deal with SOS, Grow introduced a motion at a regular council meeting to “Prevent all CASA subsidiaries from signing any form of sponsorship contract or agreement with any company or person external to the Concordia umbrella that offers tutoring services and/or crash courses for courses offered at Concordia University.”

The minutes show that the motion was overwhelmingly approved, with 11 votes for, one against and three abstentions.

Grow said the decision wasn’t just about being unhappy with their contract. “[We] were also opposed to people profiting off of student money,” he said.

“We wanted to encourage students to utilize the free services included in their tuition (weekly tutorials, extra tutoring…) rather than spend so much on external companies.” said Evan Pitchie, who was CASA’s president in the 2016-17 academic year.

In addition, JMSB now has an app that connects students with private tutors. Launched in the winter of 2018, CASA+ allows students to find tutors by subject, according to CASA’s website. Grow said that unlike a private tutoring company, the app isn’t designed to make a profit. “CASA’s not making money off of it; it’s really about making that service more accessible and affordable to students,” he said.

Pitchie said CASA provided its tutors with extra training to ensure the quality of tutoring was competitive with private companies.

Benshabat said it’s the students who lose out in this situation, since they might not know what private tutoring options exist for them. “It’s not that they would choose either/or, but [CASA] at least made them aware that if you need help and it’s extra than the standard, it’s there,” he said.

As for SOS, Benshabat said that although Concordia is the private tutor’s biggest partner, his company was able to adjust its business strategy to avoid any major financial losses.

JMSB students can download CASA’s tutoring app off of the App Store.

How Kappa Chi is living up to its slogan “Better men for a better world.”

Brett Gilmore doesn’t like what he sees when he Googles “fraternity:” Everything from incidents involving drugs and alcohol, to rape allegations and scandals that force fraternities to close their doors. Now, as Kappa Chi president, he’s looking to change that.

Gilmore is a second-year Concordia film studies major, ordained reverend and president of Kappa Chi, Concordia’s chapter of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Mandatory consent training was one of his main campaign promises during his run for president in the spring of 2018.

Gilmore was inspired in part by his time working for a travel company, an experience which often brought him into contact with traveling fraternities. “I saw a lot of Greek life and how they acted, and I feel like there wasn’t that training, so I decided to take it upon myself,” he said.

Although the program is labeled “consent training,” Gilmore said it encompasses much more than just consent. Fraternity brothers will also be trained in bystander intervention and responsible drug and alcohol use.

First, all of Kappa Chi’s current members earned their Smart Serve Certifications last week. Smart Serve is a training program run in Ontario that teaches bartenders and other service professionals how to responsibly serve alcohol, according to its website.

Following the fraternity’s fall recruitment period, known as “rush,” the fraternity will train all new and current members in a program designed by Concordia’s Dean of Students Office. Gilmore said the training will encompass everything from consent to bystander intervention to responsible drug and alcohol use.

Since 2017, Concordia has administered mandatory consent training to all of its fraternities and sororities through the Dean of Students Office. “In our trainings, we cover all the resources that may be accessed in situations that may arise at student events or in the day-to-day of student life,” said Terry Kyle, Manager of Student life in the Dean of Students Office. “These include: Sexual Assault Resource Centre, Security, Centre for Gender Advocacy, Health Services/Counselling & Psych.”

In addition, all chapters of Tau Kappa Epsilon must undergo a training session on consent, responsible drug and alcohol use or a related subject each semester, which is designed and administered by Tau Kappa Epsilon’s head office in the U.S.

However, Gilmore said he wants to make sure all relevant skills are covered in the first semester as soon as new pledges arrive. He also wants his program to harmonize Concordia’s rules and standards with those of Tau Kappa Epsilon in the U.S.

Gilmore already has extensive training in the skills he will teach his new pledges. When he worked as a director at a travel company, he took a three-hour consent course. Also, he and two of his fraternity brothers worked for one summer at an air cadet summer camp where they were required to take an eight-hour course on the proper way to deal with “everything from child abuse, to bullying, to adolescent intoxication and drug use,” he said.

Gilmore said promoting his new program to the media has been a challenge because of the stigma surrounding fraternities. He cites a recent radio interview with “The Evan Solomon Show,” in which host Evan Solomon asked Gilmore, “Do you still get wasted at parties? Is that still part of it? To pound liquor and get girls?” He also asked Gilmore if his fraternity still engaged in humiliating or abusive initiation rituals, known as “hazing.”

“Everything he was saying was literally what we’re trying to break,” said Gilmore, “because we’re not about that.” He said popular movies like Animal House and the National Lampoon series have contributed to this stigma.

Gilmore’s journey with Tau Kappa Epsilon began during his summer working at the cadet camp. There, he met two Tau Kappa Epsilon members who would become his “brothers.” It was through them that he was introduced to fraternity culture. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen it on TV, but I really don’t know what it’s about, and then they recruited me,” he said.

Since its founding at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1899, Tau Kappa Epsilon has had a long history of progressivism, according to Gilmore. Founded under the name “Nights of Classic Lore,” the fraternity was one of the first in Canada to ban hazing in 1929. “You don’t need hazing anymore,” said Gilmore. “It’s a fad. To scare someone into doing something isn’t the right thing to do.” He said the fraternity also abolished its requirement that members must be Christian during the civil rights era of the 1960s.

Famous members of the fraternity include U.S. President Ronald Reagan and American quarterback Aaron Rodgers, according to the chapter’s website.

Although Gilmore said he is not aware of any other fraternities in Montreal that have also adopted consent training, some American fraternities have followed the trend. In March, The Yale Daily News reported several fraternities on its campus were requesting consent training workshops. One of them, Delta Kappa Epsilon, was implementing mandatory consent training for its members as well, according to the article.

With 20 members, Concordia’s Tau Kappa Epsilon chapter is one of the smallest at Concordia. However, Gilmore said his fraternity is looking to expand to at least 60 members. Right now, it’s in the middle of its fall recruitment period, so training is not likely to start until October or November.

Gilmore said he wants his fraternity to set a standard on campus. “We just want to be qualified so that if we’re in a situation, no matter if it’s in Greek life, if we’re at a party with another club, a faculty party or another party outside of school, we’re able to take the necessary steps to help the situation,” he said.

Interested students can learn more about joining Kappa Chi on their website.

Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

World in brief

India’s highest court struck down a centuries-old law outlawing gay sex. “History owes an apology to the members of this community and their families,” declared Judge Dipak Misra in his ruling.

British intelligence services identified two Russian nationals as suspects in the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Salisbury. British Prime Minister Theresa May said the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March must have been approved by high-ranking members of the Russian government, possibly including President Vladimir Putin himself.

Authorities in Seoul have begun daily inspections of the city’s 20,000 public bathrooms to crack down on placements of spy cams. According to CNN, such incidents have increased almost five-fold since 2011.

The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from a senior White House official entitled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The author claimed that “many of the senior officials in [President Trump’s] administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” including the author himself.

Jair Bolsonaro, the frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential election, was stabbed in the abdomen at a campaign rally. A suspect is in police custody.

Tesla’s stock price fell suddenly after CEO Elon Musk was filmed smoking a mixture of marijuana and tobacco on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Nation in brief

Several Indigenous and Métis communities have expressed interest in investing in the Trans Mountain pipeline despite a Supreme Court ruling overturning its approval. Late last month, the court ordered the halt of the project due to a lack of proper environmental impact assessment or consultation with Indigenous communities.

The United States continued to urge Canada to lower its tariffs on dairy products as a concession in the two countries’ ongoing NAFTA talks. This week, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would cause Canada’s “ruination” with tarifs if concessions were not made.

A report from Statistics Canada showed that the country lost over 51,000 jobs last month. According to Bloomberg, Ontario led the country in job loss following the biggest month-to-month drop in the province since 2009.

Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, pledged to move ahead with his plan to redraw Toronto’s municipal boundaries despite a contrary decision from the Ontario Superior Court. Ford will enact the constitutional notwithstanding clause, with allows governing bodies to operate outside of the constraints of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to reduce the size of Toronto’s city council from 47 to 25 less than two months before the city’s Oct. 22 election.

Daniel Kueblboeck, a German pop singer, was confirmed missing on the weekend after falling off a cruise ship off the coast of Newfoundland.

City in brief

An investigation by The Montreal Gazette found a lack of relevant competition for bids on municipal projects in Montreal. According to the article by Linda Gyulai, 40 per cent of contracts approved by the city in the last year had two bids or fewer, and 20 per cent had just one.

Montreal-born tennis player Eugénie Bouchard was criticized by some of Quebec’s party leaders for relocating to the Bahamas, a known tax haven. “I think we should live where we were born, where we learned to play tennis and pay taxes in our country,” Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault was quoted as saying in The Montreal Gazette.

Guy Leclair, the Parti Québecois candidate for Beauharnois, resigned his candidacy after being charged with impaired driving. Leclair, who was first elected in his riding in 2008, had previously been convicted of the same charges in 2011.

SAQ employees across the province went on a surprise strike on Sunday, which continued into Monday. The liquor board’s employees have been without a contract since March.

Australia’s Michael Matthews won Montreal’s ninth annual Grand Prix Cycliste bike race. Matthews pulled off a last-minute passing manoeuvre to beat Italy’s Sonny Colbrelli, making him the second of his countrymen to win the race since its beginning in 2010.

The city of Brossard was placed under a temporary boil water advisory over the weekend, following the discovery of certain harmful bacteria in its water supply.

Neither Jon Paul Fiorentino nor David McGimpsey have been assigned classes for the upcoming year, according to the university.

The two Concordia English professors who were named as subjects of third-party sexual misconduct investigations have not yet returned to teaching.

In an email to The Concordian, university spokesperson Mary-Jo Barr confirmed that Jon Paul Fiorentino and David McGimpsey have not been assigned classes for the 2018-19 year.

Neither instructor appears in the MyConcordia class database for either the Fall 2018 or Winter 2019 semesters. However, both are still listed as part-time instructors in the university’s directory.

Both professors had previously had their classes reassigned to other instructors in January following unspecified sexual misconduct allegations.

Concordia President Alan Shepard previously told The Concordian that teachers could not be assigned classes while under investigation. However, in her email, Barr said that for reasons of confidentiality, the university could not reveal whether or not any third-party investigations were currently underway.

In February, the CBC obtained an audio recording of Catherine Maheu, the lawyer spearheading the third-party investigation, discussing the cases. She mentions both Fiorentino and McGimpsey by name in the recording, according to the CBC.

In May, former Concordia creative writing student, Emma Healey, revealed that Fiorentino was the unnamed subject of her 2014 essay, “Stories Like Passwords,” which details an abusive relationship she had with one of her writing professors.

On May 22, Healey tweeted, “‘Stories Like Passwords’ is about Jon Paul Fiorentino. “He’s the professor who manipulated me into a relationship, emotionally abused me, assaulted me, coerced me into sex and raped me while I was a student at Concordia and he was a teacher.”

A second, university-led investigation into the cultural climate of sexual misconduct at Concordia released its recommendations in June.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

Recent investments in education have allowed Concordia to once again approach a balanced budget.

Concordia’s administration is projecting to eliminate its deficit by 2020, according to its 2018-19 budget.

In a media briefing on the school’s budget for the upcoming year, Concordia’s Senior Director of Financial Planning and Budget Services, Jean-François Hamel, said the administration should return to a balanced budget by the end of the 2019-20 academic year.

Cuts to education since 2010 — about $1.5 billion, according to Global News — have plunged Concordia into a deficit. However, new investments in education in 2017 — including a pledge of $3.4 billion over five years, according to the Montreal Gazette — have created an opportunity for Concordia to re-balance its budget.

Hamel said one of the keys to reducing Concordia’s deficit is its increasing enrollment. University enrollment in Quebec is declining across the board, especially outside of major urban centres. However, Hamel said Concordia’s enrollment has been steadily increasing — by 6 per cent in two years, according to the university’s website. Hamel said several factors play into this, including its urban location and English language of instruction, both of which appeal to international students.

Denis Cossette, Concordia’s Chief Financial Officer, said the university also continues to attract graduate students in large numbers, as well as francophone CEGEP students who wish to pursue their studies in English. He also credits Concordia’s voluntary retirement program with helping to reduce the deficit by offering 109 faculty members an early retirement in 2017.

Hamel does not expect the university’s tuition hike for international students in deregulated programs to affect international enrollment. In May, the university approved a 3.28 per cent tuition increase for international students in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science and the John Molson School of Business following the deregulation of tuition for those programs. “We’ve been applying these types of increases to international tuition for years now,” said Hamel. “All we’ve seen is an increase in the international student population, even though we were increasing the fees.”

The administration predicts that the deficit at the end of the current academic year will be $1.9 million, down from $3.9 million in 2017-18. Hamel said a total of about $90 million was cut from Concordia’s operating budget between 2010 and 2017, but that it should regain this funding by the 2022-23 year.

Cossette said because the administration doesn’t decide how faculties spend their funding, individual programs and activities were not singled out to be cut in order to reduce the deficit.

In total, the university is predicting $496.9 million in revenues and $498.8 million in expenses for the 2018-19 year.

Cossette said several factors make the administration’s deficit timeline uncertain. The ongoing diplomatic spat between Canada and Saudi Arabia and the resulting lack of Saudi nationals at Concordia will leave a gap in enrollment. The election of a new provincial party on Oct. 1 could also mean big changes for university funding.

Archive Photo by Alex Hutchins.

The Kingdom will terminate all scholarship funding by the end of August, according to the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau

Saudi nationals studying in Canada on scholarships, grants or bursaries from their government have less than a month to leave the country.

On Thursday, Aug. 23, the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau (SACB) in Ottawa announced that all government-funded students must leave the country by Sept. 22. Furthermore, the SACB said that Saudi Arabia will cease all scholarship funding on Aug. 31.

“We would like to confirm that we are very keen to provide all what we could [sic] to our students to facilitate the decision of the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the statement read. The SACB could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

According to its website, the SACB supports Saudis seeking education in Canada by “administering scholarships and providing comprehensive support services to ensure the cultural, educational, and social welfare of Saudi students and their families in Canada.”

Mary-Jo Barr, Concordia’s Director of Public Relations, said that there are “more than 60” Saudi students at Concordia studying with aid from their government.

“We are actively liaising with different academic organizations to receive more clarity on the situation,” she said. “We are committed to assisting our students through this challenging time.”

Concordia’s International Students Office has been holding information sessions for affected students, and has been advising them in person.

The Saudi Government first announced it would withdraw all of its funded students from Canada on Aug. 6, following a tweet by Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Chrystia Freeland, calling for the “immediate release” of Raif and Samar Badawi. Raif Badawi, a blogger and activist, has been in prison in Saudi Arabia since 2013, and his sister Samar, a women’s rights activist, was arrested on July 30.Saudi Arabia also expelled Canada’s ambassador, Dennis Horak. Furthermore, it recalled its own ambassador and froze “all new businesses transactions and investments linked with Canada,” according to Vox.

Graphic by Wednesday Laplante.

TRAC President Jeremy Tessier said the union is “happy with how the negotiations went.”

The union of Teaching and Research Assistants at Concordia (TRAC) has reached an agreement in principle with Concordia.

On June 21, after eight months of negotiations, the union arrived at an agreement with the administration for the period of May 1, 2016 to May 31, 2021.

“I am very proud of the work both teams did at the table, genuinely engaging in a principle-based bargaining exercise and jointly working on solutions to commonly identified problems,” Nadia Hardy, vice-provost of Faculty Relations, was quoted as saying in a university press release.

“We’re happy with how the negotiations went,” said TRAC President Jeremy Tessier.

All that’s left before the agreement comes into force is for Concordia’s Board of Governors to approve it in September, and then for Tessier and Concordia President Alan Shepard to sign it.

Negotiations had reached an impasse in March when the university’s negotiating team revealed it had not been given a mandate to negotiate beyond the 2017-18 year.

As part of the new agreement, all of Concordia’s teaching assistants (TAs) and research assistants (RAs) will receive both retroactive pay increases and regular pay increases between now and 2020. Starting June 1, 2020 RAs will be paid $15.76 an hour for undergraduates, $20.20 for master’s students and $27.21 for doctoral students. Prior to the agreement, their wages were $14.23, $18.27 and $24.65, respectively, roughly a 10 per cent increase for each.

Starting in June 2020, both TAs and markers will earn $26.47 an hour. This is an increase of about 6 per cent from $24.93 an hour for TAs and about 31 per cent from $20.21 for markers. The wages of markers and TAs will be gradually harmonized through a series of regular pay increases so that starting in June 2020, they will be paid the same wage.

The practice of paying different hourly wages for assisting in the classroom and for marking tests and assignments, even when the tasks were carried out by the same person, is known as “contract splitting,” and was another key issue throughout the negotiations. Prior to 2017, some departments, mainly in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, engaged in contract splitting, since assisting in lectures and lab demonstrations in ENCS requires a more specialized set of skills. However, beginning in 2017, more departments in other faculties began adopting the practice. With the signing of the new collective agreement, departments will revert to previous practices, meaning only those that engaged in contract splitting before 2017 will continue to do so.

The grievance process for TRAC members was ratified to give members 30 days after the end of their contract to submit a complaint. Previously, grievances against professors had to be filed within 20 days of the member becoming aware of the issue. However, Tessier said this model is inappropriate for an academic setting. “Our relationship with the employer is not just a simple employee-employer relation,” he said. “There’s also other things that are at stake, like your academic progress, your relationship with the department, all these things that could affect future work.”

Tessier said the draft agreement was overwhelmingly approved by TRAC’s general assembly when it was presented in July.

Once the agreement comes into force, Tessier said the union’s focus will shift to making sure the agreement is properly enforced and understood by both students and teachers.

This is the first time that TAs and RAs, who unionized in 2007, will be united under one agreement. A separate negotiation process is still underway for exam invigilators, who are negotiating their first collective agreement since unionizing in 2015. Tessier said he is “optimistic” they will reach an agreement by January 2019.

Every TA and RA at Concordia is a member of TRAC. Tessier says the union has about 3,200 members at any given time, including about 1,800 active members per semester and those who have been employed within the last year. It is a local chapter of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), which itself represents more than 180,000 workers across the country.

Former TRAC President Alexandre St-Onge-Perron also approved of the deal. “I think the new agreement will bring significant improvements for TAs and RAs and it does achieve the objectives we had after the consultations with members last year,” he said in an e-mail to The Concordian.

Both the current and former presidents attributed the union’s success to the strong activism of its members. “It was a good effort on the part of our membership to mobilize and make sure that we’re seen on campus and that our presence is known,” said Tessier. Notably, TRAC members and their allies protested outside of two Board of Governors meetings over the summer to raise awareness for their cause, and in February presented University President Alan Shepard with a giant Valentine’s day card signed by the union’s members.

“It is because they participated in their union during the last year that they can celebrate victory today,” said St-Onge-Perron.