Author: Milos Kovacevic

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Concordia Student Union News

$1.5 million more for CSU’s housing co-op

Student union’s project gets a welcome cash infusion from new donor

Concordia Student Union (CSU)’s cooperative student housing project has received a boost thanks to a $1.85-million partnership deal with the Chantier de L’Économie Sociale, a provincial collective promoting the social economy and affordable community housing initiatives.

Concretely, this could translate into a financial aid of up to $1.5 million from the collective that would have been otherwise borrowed from banks at an interest rate. Once the CSU’s $1.85 million commitment, the project’s estimated cost of slightly above $6 million will mean only around half of the total amount will have to be borrowed from traditional financial institutions.

Getting involved with social and solidarity economy

In a presentation that took place during last week’s CSU meeting, the Chantier’s Chief Executive Officer Nancy Neamtan presented what it meant to participate in the social and solidarity economy.

Described as an alternative to the traditional economic system mainly looking to create profits, this new approach to economic development is primarily focused on community participation and empowerment, and on individual and collective responsibility.

Neamtan stressed the fact that by participating in social and solidarity economy, investors and involved communities learn to “use money in a different way” so to effectively change the way the current economic structures work.

According to VP External and Advocacy Terry Wilkings, this project will operate under the idea of ‘patient capital’ that does not necessitate quick paybacks.

“We have a very unique service at the CSU, which is the off-campus Housing and Job Bank; other university student unions do not provide this level of service. However, repeatedly what we hear from the staff members and coordinators is that they’re servicing students when they’re already in crisis mode. Instead of lobbying the municipal government, what we would like to do is demonstrate feasible alternatives that replace the tenant-landlord relationship with cooperative student ownership,” he said.

What it means for Concordia students

At the next elections, the CSU will present to the student body a referendum question asking if they’re willing to approve the creation of a fund to be used in this above-mentioned housing project. It will also ask approval for a contribution of up to $1.85 million to the project from the student space fund.

For now, no precise timeline was offered by the CSU concerning the actual housing project, most probably due to the fact that it is still in the early stages. Once operational, it will take somewhere between 12 and 17 years to pay back, thanks to a unique and flexible payback schedule and depending on interest rate fluctuations which will see the banks being paid back first and the patient capital investors able to wait.

Since the building is an asset, once the loan is repaid it can be further leveraged to help fund for more student housing, thus perpetuating the cycle.

There are currently two examples of housing co-ops for Quebec students: in Sherbrooke and in Trois-Rivieres.

Concordia’s co-op housing rundown:

Cost, per room: $425-$450/room (80 per cent of median), including heating and electricity.

Where: Undetermined yet, but will be in a region with low median rent, but within a 20 minute radius from the downtown campus.

How big: 100-150 beds.

Structure: Self managing co-op, which means lower management and staff costs, but no front desk, meal plans, or security (unless the co-op is willing to pay more for those services).

Support: Budget accounts for administrative personnel for collecting accounting, rent, insurance coverage, reparation and maintenance.

Leases: 12-month leases, can be sublet, and can be renewed each year (unlike current student housing which forces tenants to move out after the first year.)

Governance: Nine-person board made up of six tenant-member directors, and three support-members.

To find out more, attend Concordia’s first student housing fair on Tuesday, Feb. 17 at the LB Atrium from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

 

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Activism on your plate

Detroit’s Malik Yakini showcases social transformation through food

Concordia Transitions 2015, held on Sunday Feb. 8, was a day of events organized around a student-run food system for the university. Aside from providing an in-depth overview of Concordia’s food network, its history, and where it could go, the attendees were given the chance to hear from a series of speakers.

One of them was Malik Yakini, the executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and member of D-Town Farms, an organic farm in the urban decay of the city. Equally knowledgeable in history and demographics as he is in farming, Yaniki painted a grim image of his home city and its hopeful start towards redemption through the narrative of food.

The current crisis, according to Yakini, is due to Detroit’s civic collapse and decades of intentional policy against its non-white denizens. Depending on who you ask, around a third of the city now lies empty—the result, Yakini said, of both economic implosion and white flight to the suburbs in response to non-white migration into the industrial heart of the city. (Detroit is listed in the 2010 United States Census as 82.7 per cent African American or Black.) Unemployment figures—a result of what Yakini called “intentional disinvestment”—vary widely depending on who is asked, at anywhere from 20 per cent to over 50 per cent. To a large extent the decay has affected the less affluent, mostly Black population of the city. From a food perspective, what has happened is a disaster.

“As of 2007, the last national grocery store chain closed its doors in the city of Detroit,” said Yakini. The remaining network of grocery stores are deemed by Yakini to be exploitative, not to re-invest into the local community, and of inferior quality.

Organizations like D-Town farms—currently occupying a two-acre location in Detroit’s Rouge Park—see the emptiness as fallow ground waiting to be reclaimed. But to rebuild (and make it better than before) requires more than soil and seeds. It requires a change in spirit.

“The work that we do is guided by values,” he said. “Love is the overriding value that guides everything we do.” Yakini believes what’s required is a re-thinking of our place in the world, of humans as part of the ecosystem and not having dominion over it.

“This idea that human beings were put here to have dominion over the earth is a very eurocentric idea. And so we also have love for the other animals and plants with which we share the planet, and we have an understanding that our survival is dependent on us understanding that we’re part of this matrix of life that includes the other life forms with which we share the planet,” he continued. “We thought that one of the things that we could do is really promote the growing of food as a way of filling that gap.” Filling that gap has meant re-educating his community on the importance and nobility of working with food—all the way to the root: “We now understand that significant and deep societal change is intergenerational. One of our goals from the very beginning was to involve youth in the food movement. It’s very important that we have young people who see work in the food system as being valuable work, because there’s all kinds of class implications about farming in particular. Some people see farming as lower-class work.”

As befits a community disadvantaged under the current system, Yakini’s food movement breaks from the past on two issues: first, in opposition to what he calls the entrenched and universal system of white supremacism which privileges the descendents of mostly western Europeans; and second against capitalism, which Yakini has called a method that exploits land, labour, and wealth transfer independent of merit or fair work.

“There are many concepts in capitalism that are unsustainable,” he said, citing unending growth and the belief in perpetual strife over resources. “That thinking is going to lead to our destruction. We think that there is an abundance on the Earth, but we just have to change our thinking and change how those resources are distributed.”

“One of the problems with the food system is that it’s become so large that local communities can’t benefit from it and it is fragile because of its scale,” he said.

By reclaiming the city one acre at a time, Yakini’s dream is to empower and create an alternate system of civic mindedness and equality for both his community and those who choose to stand in solidarity with it.

Their methods and successes have attracted a widespread following, something that still surprises Yaniki.

“We certainly didn’t set out to be celebrities; we set out to improve the conditions in our communities. It’s mind-boggling to go places and meet people who know what we’re doing and who are inspired by it, because that was not our intent. Our intent was to make the conditions in our community better.”

Nor does Yaniki see himself as deserving of any particular praise: “I always like people to know that although I am the chief spokesman for the group, I’m representing a collective of people who work very hard.”

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Preparing media for activism coverage

Panel of experts discuss the role of media and the nature of coverage in social movements

How does the media view social movements? Can journalists be activists? From yesteryear’s feminism and anti-war movements to today’s austerity marches and student protests, the question of how the media packages, frames, and interprets such acts is increasingly under scrutiny.

The event came on the tail end of Concordia’s Solidarity Teach-In week, a multi-day program of exchanges, workshops, and discussions leading up to the anti-austerity actions of spring 2015.

The panel featured freelancer (and former The Concordian News editor) Kalina Laframboise,

activist and producer Laith Marouf, veteran Radio-Canada journalist and assistant professor in the journalism department Philippe Marcoux, communications department assistant professor Fenwick McKelvey, and multimedia journalist Damon van der Linde.

The discussion revolved around perceptions of objectivity, the perceived hostility of traditional media towards disruptive social movements, and the differences between it and independent community media.

Van der Linde, who claims experience from extensive human rights reporting in Africa and elsewhere, believes the aim for journalistic objectivity precludes a reporter from being an activist.

“One of the biggest problems with news striving for objectivity and being a journalist covering social movements is often—not always—[that] social movements have leaders, a certain amount of power, they have political affiliations, there could also be money involved, and it’s all controlled by people,” said van der Linde.

“No one is asking to give equal space in an article or in a report, or equal credibility to both sides of a story,” said van der Linde, using the example of climate change. “But if you leave out a voice because it doesn’t follow the narrative you believe, then you’re not a journalist.”

Marcoux, owing to his many years working for Canada’s national broadcaster, offered insight on behalf of traditional, established media. “I think it’s really important to point out [that] … no matter how much you insist, [CBC/Radio-Canada] is a public broadcaster and will never be a state broadcaster.” He says influence does percolate within public media, but cautions on overextending its reach. “There is no such thing as a public line that is decided by the government and funneled down to the CBC newsroom. Journalists never hear about the government. The CBC and Radio-Canada [are] not perfect—trust me, I’ve spent my life criticizing them. But the biggest problem about them is not political influence.”

During typical coverage of countercultural events, Marcoux maintained that the people working in front of the camera and behind it are trying their best.

“They may not manage—you are perfectly allowed to think their coverage is biased—but the mistake you would be making is by not understanding that they think they’re striving for objectivity. When you deal with them, understand that they don’t think they have a bias. Use them, don’t use them, try to influence them, that’s up to you—but understand the position they start on.”

So is traditional media an ally or enemy of social movements? That’s the wrong way to look at it, according to Marcoux. “At the very least, they don’t want to be either. That’s the important point.”

This response did not sate everyone.

“CBC/Radio-Canada is just like the Syrian television, or the Portuguese government television. They are mouthpieces of whoever is in power,” said Marouf, one-time executive director of Concordia University Television (CUTV). Marouf maintained Canada’s luck came from having a third alternative to state and corporate media in the form of community media, whose mandate was to give a voice of balance to the mainstream.

“Those who decide to work for government outlets are bound by the editorial positions of their bosses,” he said. “The shortcoming of that is that you have no real control of the message, you are bound by the interests of the media to use that coverage, and you have no say obviously in which direction that content’s going to go.”

Yet the alternative of independent media isn’t too rosy, seeing as they operate in a ‘deeply fractured’ landscape. As an example close to home, he mentioned Concordia’s local media, which for all its efforts and relatively robust funding lacks effectiveness and technological savvy at reaching out the world beyond campus.

“On the one hand these media are very specific in terms of what platform they’re delivering on. With what’s happening at [Concordia] and McGill and UQAM and UdeM, the students have more than $4 million annually in financing—but the outcome for these dollars is very low. Why? Because right now the reality is that people when they’re searching for information on the Internet the traffic is going towards multimedia multiplatform delivery. The mainstream corporate sector … there’ll be audio, there’ll video, and there’ll be text, and they’ll be delivering in a newspaper format and a web format. If Concordia students really want to do something, you have democratic ways to change the realities of these islands of media, and bring them together to have very successful multiplat multimedia outlet that can have much more effect, opening this media out to the community to participate in it, to have access to training,”  he said, citing his time at CUTV in the 2012 student protests as an example of positive coverage that outshone mainstream reporting.

“CUTV was successful at the time [of the 2012 student protests] because of its ability to create a symbiosis between all the social media online, around a live broadcast, with a symbiosis of this live broadcast live-stream equipment, and the bodies of a whole team on the street at the forefront of the social movement, broadcasting you live unedited images from the frontlines.”

Whatever the nature of the reporting, Laframboise reiterated at the end something all the panelists seemed to agree with “You’re always going to get flak no matter what you write. It doesn’t matter. Everybody’s biased in one way or another.”

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Continuing defiance behind the bars

The history and current state of non-violent Palestinian prison resistance

Decades of politics have hinged on what transpires in the open spaces of Holy Land and over the lines drawn by the Israel-Palestine conflict. But how have Palestinians responded once removed from the outside and taken into the Israeli prison system?

Last week’s talk, “Prisoner’s Dilemma: Prison-based resistance and the diffusion of activism in Palestine,” sought to answer that question. Given by visiting McGill faculty member Dr. Julie Norman, who specializes in Palestinian civil resistance, the talk drew on her work with prisoners, former heads of Israeli intelligence and security services, and NGOs to shed light on decades of Palestinian prisoner experiences covering, broadly, the events since the Israeli territorial gains of the 1967 Six-Day War until today.

This was a time where, to cope with rising Palestinian resistance, thousands were incarcerated by Israel: some as prisoners, others under the label of ‘administrative detention’ or as ‘security prisoners’ who could be held for up to six months without trial or reason, and whose stay could be indefinitely extended. They were held in conditions Dr. Norman describes as terrible: poor nutrition and sanitation, little access to family, without basics such as writing implements and paper. Some were forced to refer to their jailers as ‘masters.’

Though many Palestinians were imprisoned for violent acts, many more were taken in a bid to ‘confine and diffuse’ the Palestinian drive for independence. Dr. Norman maintains the highpoint of such mobilization came in the ‘70s and ‘80s, mostly because of the unique confluence of social and political events occurring at the time. Ideologies were profuse, ranging across the spectrum, but particularly influential were the socialists and communist with their ideas of communal effort. As the prison system inflated and expanded, Palestinians learned how adapt.

Dr. Norman portrays this organization as happening on all levels in a ‘counter-order’ meant to destabilize the prison system. To deal with collaborators—or ‘birds,’ as they were called—on which every prison system depends on, prisoner groups banded together and maintained silence save for a single spokesperson who interacted with the wardens and acted as liaison. Smuggled radios were brought in and listened to by a select number who transmitted the day’s political news by way of messages secreted in tiny capsules and passed on in palms, mouths, and elsewhere; books were copied, sometimes spliced with other texts to make them harder to decode; group discussions on history, politics, and society were organized; and all throughout, the exterior supported them by political pressure in the form of vigils and marches. Hunger strikes, sometimes carried out by thousands, made force-feeding impossible and gave the prisoners leverage to improve their conditions.

As one interviewee told her, “Everything you find in prison has a story of resistance behind it. For example, the blankets: In Ramallah we had three blankets, though in the beginning we had one, and somebody suffered and resisted to increase the number of blankets. Later in 1991 in Hebron prison, we had six blankets, so through our demands we were able to increase the number over time. Everything you find in prison—the blankets, the cups, the pens, the paper, the books, the food—everything has a story of struggle behind it.” And everything was designed to “disrupt prison order and make it unmanageable.”

With the signing of the Oslo accords in the ‘90s, prison resistance shifted. As the political situation rapidly changed, the make-up and tactics of prisoners likewise shifted. Political fragmentation amongst Palestinians bred cynicism and disillusionment, and the rise of Islamic jihad organizations undid much of the message of nonviolence. The Israelis changed too: frequent transfers, pre-emptive crackdowns, and the increasing use of solitary confinement have chipped away communal action and turned it into individual resistance, even as actual prison conditions have drastically improved.

Yet as Dr. Norman makes clear the method of the fight may have changed, but the nature of the struggle continues.

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CRTC gives CJLO poor reception

Wanted FM spot too close to air traffic frequency

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has denied Concordia radio station CJLO a SGW campus transmitter meant to alleviate poor downtown reception.

Michael Sallot, who took over the helm as Station Manager in November of last year, said CJLO tried to get the transmitter by citing the station’s mandate as set by the CRTC itself: serving both the Loyola and downtown communities of Concordia.

“We quickly found that with the power of our transmitter, being what it is, it’s difficult to tune in to CJLO … when you’re downtown,” he said. “It’s complicated by the geography of the region: with the mountain and all the skyscrapers downtown that absorb the signal.” Simply turning up the power would require a separate application to the CRTC, said Sallot. Instead, they applied for a repeating FM transmitter atop the Hall building that would make it available on the FM band. CJLO currently broadcasts at 1690 AM.

Montreal’s FM spectrum is already crowded, and this proved to be the reason behind the CRTC’s unreceptiveness to the idea. CJLO requested they be given 107.9 MHz, just shy of the 108 and upwards reserved for air traffic control communication. Sallot said the CRTC felt the issues faced by CJLO weren’t exceptional compared to the problems faced by other stations and too close to the air control frequencies for comfort.

Another thorny issue was with Vermont Public Radio, which also broadcast on the 107.9 frequency, who Sallot said filed interventions against them for fear of broadcast overlap. Sallot says this did not figure into the CRTC’s decision. “If [VPR] thinks they prevented us from getting our application in any way, they’re mistaken.”

Despite the setback, CJLO is considering its options.

“To that end, we’re not going to abandon hope. At the end of the day, it’s business as usual.”

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Reclaiming First Nations’ education

Panel discusses schooling for natives

Education isn’t just what’s picked up in the classroom; it is also the intergenerational passing-down of cultural and spiritual vibrancy, something aboriginal people have long been pressured to forget.

Learning within the circle, a presentation coinciding with last week’s First Voices Week, sought to bring together for a mostly non-aboriginal audience a First Nation perspective on the struggles, setbacks, and attainments of aboriginal education and cultural pedagogy.

“You have to control education if you want your people, your culture, [and] your language to survive,” summed up Kenneth Deer, editor of the Mohawk community newspaper The Eastern Door and co-chairman of the National Indian Education Council in Canada. Alongside Deer were artist/writer/documentarian Alanis Obomsawin and Queen’s University Assistant Professor and Rhodes Scholar Lindsay Morcom.

Between the 19th and later half of the 20th century, the Indian Act determined how First Nations people would be incorporated into the Canadian social and legal system. For the time, the laws were at least nominally trying to better the lives of the country’s original inhabitants, though in reality it perpetuated a system of exploitation and led to, amongst other things, the residential schools into which aboriginal children were forcibly placed, and in which they experienced forced Europeanization.

Despite decades of struggle on the part of aboriginal people for recognition, slightly less than half of aboriginal individuals aged 18-64 have attained a postsecondary certificate—diploma, degree, trade school—compared to the almost two-thirds for the rest of Canada. That number falls to slightly above one-third amongst the Inuit population. Today, funding per student is thousands of dollars less than their non-aboriginal counterparts in the public system.

“We don’t ask for a right to self-determination. We exercise it,” said Deer, who helped set up aboriginal-run schooling in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Kahnawake. “If you believe that you’re sovereign, you’ll act like you’re sovereign.”

This education that he searches for is something deep. “By culture I don’t mean [just] songs and dances. I mean something more holistic: our politics, our clan system, our chiefs, the way we relate to our world,” said Deer.

“If we ever stop struggling we’re finished, we’re dead, we disappear,” he said. “So we are going to struggle, and sometimes we’re going to butt heads, because we’re not going to assimilate, we are not going to disappear.”

Another speaker, Obomsawin, referenced personal experience on those days of disappearing. Hers were the most poignant examples of the drive to stamp out the spirit of the culture.

“I knew one thing, I was going to a very dangerous place,” recalled Obomsawin of the humiliation heaped on her in the residential school system.

Despite this, she embodies hope, talking about an aboriginal rebound spearheaded by experienced activists and, most hearteningly, a generation of enthusiastic youth unapologetic of their origins initiating movements such as Idle No More.

The future of Canada’s stance towards aboriginal educational and the catch-up Bill-C33 was discussed. Here there was some disagreement on whether or not it was a step in the right direction. The bill, which aims at increasing the quality of aboriginal education through curriculum improvements and increased funding, has drawn criticism for maintaining the same unequal power dynamics and disparities.

Morcom drew allusions between the bill and civil unions for gay people wanting marriage: an ‘almost there’ solution that gives just enough budge to weaken public support and make those pressing for change look like they’ve overstayed their welcome. She also explained how it wouldn’t cover funding, services like libraries and immersion programs. By refusing to consult the hundreds of First Nations communities scattered across the country, Morcom believes Canada has once again taken on the paternalistic patronizing of its predecessors in deciding what it believes is best for aboriginal populations.

“It’s actually an extremely unjust piece of legislation,” she said.

Deer too blasted the bill, admitting he hadn’t and wouldn’t read it at all.

Morcom believes the way forward in the future is for Canadians to fully question and explore their past, and to realize their nation isn’t merely a friendly stereotype but has a history as a ‘colonizing culture’: “We need to think about how we think about history, how we think about each other’s rights.”

The aim isn’t a continuance of guilt for those of European descent, but an acknowledgment of inherited privilege and a critical acceptance that allows for the fact we may not be quite the friendly, open Canadian stereotypes we make ourselves out to be.

“We need to question that narrative or we’re never going to go forward,” says Morcom. “We all share a responsibility in the dialogue.”

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Concordia hacks to success and beyond

Four-man team beats thousands, wins prize with Microsoft

Picture thousands of mostly undergraduate programmers and software engineers converging and taking over a building in Toronto. Some bring sleeping bags for quick naps; others consume vast amounts of stimulants to stay awake, for time is of the essence and in as little in 24 hours of coding they’ll have moved on.

This is a hackathon, and Concordia’s small group is moving up.

Sponsored by the University of Toronto, last weekend’s event saw 17 Concordia students participate, courtesy of student organization HacksConcordia.

Organizer Buruç Asrin and his three teammates—Mathieu St-Louis, Tyler Argo, and McGill student Brendan Gordon—beat out some 1,000 other contestants to win a prize with Microsoft. It was the second time they had done it with the same company in less than six months of attending hackathons.

Asrin says hackathons favour imagination and skill over practicality. Most projects live and die during during those long days, and participants use the time to work on their abilities and brainstorm rather than code fully fleshed-out creations.

“[In the time we have] it’s difficult to make a piece of software that will change the world,” he said.

Their entry in Toronto certainly won’t change the world, but it’s fun. Named after Scarlett Johansson’s A.I. character in the 2013 movie Her, their idea was to create a personable computer assistant similar to Apple’s Siri. Using natural language processing, Scarlett decodes what you’re saying and responds in kind. There are limits, of course; the software can’t cope with ambiguity or complexity, but it will hold up in a simple conversation, and can detect sentiments: tell Scarlett you’re feeling down, for example, and it (she) will play you a happy song to cheer you up.

Considering they only had 36 hours to come up with an idea (one is expected to arrive with empty hands and abide by the gentleman’s rule that frowns on entering with pre-designed code), it’s an impressive idea built upon pioneering work.

“All that natural language processing—which takes years and years to develop—was already done,” Asrin admitted.

Typically sponsorships pay for the transportation and lodging of hackathon contestants as well as the space rentals—and these sponsorships can be huge: Argo said the University of Pennsylvania’s hackathon, PennHacks, had a budget of $300,000. This time around, the Concordia group was reimbursed only $50 for finding their own way to the event. Nonetheless, the event still attracted talent from across the country.

A sense of camaraderie permeates the events. Asrin says it’s partly because everyone is happy to share, but also because they must: the dizzying pace of software development means you must cross lines and seek help. Even rivals like Apple and Microsoft routinely do it.

“Software moves so quickly, we need to understand it. Regardless if we’re competitors, we’re in the same boat,” said Asrin. Argo estimated he reads between 20-30 articles a day to keep up to date.

The increasing importance of hackathons has swelled attendance numbers and consequently raised the bar. The landscape is more competitive and serious, virtual career fairs carefully scouted for talent by top software companies watching in the background. This means that even as they become bigger, some are becoming more closed to the amateur talent that created them.

U.S. hackathons hosted by Ivy League schools now require lengthy application processes asking for credentials and project histories, cutting all but the most accomplished—or the most willing to devote their time to the life. The elitism does not sit well with Asrin and his teammates, even as they understand the progression.

“It’s harder to get in PennHacks than to get into the university,” said Argo. “Hackathons should really be open to everybody. It shouldn’t necessarily need to have experience to attend a hackathon. It should be a learning experience.”

Asrin agreed: “That’s why they were created in the first place: for you to learn something. We were lucky. We were at the beginning of this, so we caught the wave. If I was entering software engineering this year, it would have been difficult for me to enter into a hackathon.”

Hackathons have also taught them a thing or two about confidence in their ability.  As Asrin says: “When we went to the Yale hackathon, I came to the realization that it’s an Ivy League school, it’s a top school, but on paper these guys are in real life no better than us. We buy the same textbooks off Amazon, the programming concept we’re taught here is the same. The only difference between him and me is he pays ten times more in tuition that I do. That’s one realization: you’re good enough.”

HackConcordia aims to make everybody feel the same way.

“We’re kind of creating momentum, showing everybody we can compete.”

To that end, they encourage non-programmers to come by and even try it for themselves.

“It’s very easy to feel overwhelmed or feel subpar when you look at all the things there are to learn in software engineering. In reality all you have to do is read a few tutorials and do it,” said Argo.

To learn more about HackConcordia, go to hackconcordia.com

To test Scarlett (requires a working microphone and Chrome browser) go to https://beepboop.azurewebsites.net/

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Ways to use your English degree

Panel shares experiences and tips on how to land that job upon graduation

Of the major degrees, English is the perennial butt of jokes for finding post-school success. We’ve all heard of English graduates, optimistic rather than practical, joining the swelling ranks of arts majors looking down the gullet of an unsure future and competitive academia the moment they descent the podium steps.

The possibilities aren’t that bleak if the search is widened and non-traditional careers are considered. “What To Do With Your English Degree”, an event sponsored by the Concordia Association of Students in English (CASE) and featuring four great panelists speaking from experience on their professional journeys through non-traditional careers.

Enter Kasper Hartman (Video game writing), Katia Grubisic (Freelance editing and translation), Chris Masson (TV Writing) and Jack Allen (Digital Marketing), the quadrumvirate putting everybody’s minds to ease.

The game path

Kasper Hartman graduated from Concordia back in 2008 and has always dabbled in creative writing and games before joining the two. He says gamers’ expectations have kept pace with improvements in technology—that is to say exponentially. A decade ago, games were first created and the finished product sent to the writers for words and actions. Now, the strategy is reversed, with storytelling skills and narrative development seen as an important resource foolish to skimp on. Developers have realized (as the Star Wars prequels have not) that technology and graphics can create a world, but made for a thin veneer when it comes to breathing it to life and offering the player a sense of meaning and motivation. Creatives are increasingly taking control and dictating the terms.

“As many years ago a writer may have been the very last person hired for a project, today they might be among the very first,” he said, adding,“There’s a lot that goes into the job that’s not just purely writing, and the more versatile you can be, the better you’ll adapt to the ups and downs.”

“Talent and craft and a little bit of courage”

The best advice editor and translator Katia Grubisic has is not to worry.

“The skills you have and that you didn’t know you had will prove themselves in the coming months and years,” she said.

Grubisic is a freelancer, that perilous and scary existence entirely dependant on you selling yourself without a middleman or corporate security, but with the advantages of being able to schedule and run it at your own pace.

She divides careers into three parts: the incredibly lucrative, the professionally unavoidable, and the enjoyable.

“It’s really strange what you wind up enjoying,” she said. “The smallest thing can steer you down a path,” she said, embodying the millennial experience of lesser job security and greater mobility. If you’re freelancing, the enjoyable may not pay as much as the status quo, but don’t close yourself to it. On the other hand the lucrative niche might be the one you devote more of your time to, but won’t necessarily be the most interesting one. “The more you do the work, the more people will be willing to believe you could do more work.” And that, she says, means being able to charge more.

Then there are the unavoidable, potentially painful and exhausting stepping stones. These are the opportunities, internships, and volunteerism that might not fit perfectly with your idealized career, but one that instinct tells you won’t come again. Seize them, do your best, and see what happens.

Grubisic’s bonus tip for polyglot translators: There’s a rush happening to standardize texts and contracts as countries become better integrated and join larger political and economic unions. For example, with each European country entering the EU, there’s a very real demand for translators to step in ease the transition. This means fluent third- or fourth- language speakers stand to gain.
Practicing the art of ‘showing up’

Chris Masson’s background was in creative writing and theatre and he’s always believed it’s about putting the work before the ego. Many jobs are collaborative. “If at any point you’re pushing back or resisting change or feedback or criticism, that’s going to reflect badly on you,” he said. Making yourself a pleasure to work with will greatly improve chances of an encore, as reciprocity is a universal rule.

This means networking, networking, networking. Spend time around like minded people, share ideas and absorb tips.

Grubisic points out, though, that explicitly wishing to network can come off as inauthentic. Don’t be a business card distributing machine: people will see through you. Rather, take a genuine interest in people. You’re interesting if you’re interested.

Grades and French are important…up to a point

Jack Allen is currently an online marketer and an anglophone, he says a lack of French won’t hold back a skilled and ambitious individual from breaking out in Montreal. Grades matter if you’re aiming for postgraduate studies and beyond, but skillsets are learned outside the classrooms and it’s more a matter of leveraging your effort and personality towards a desired goal.

“For most job applications, you wouldn’t put your GPA,” he said.

All four share broadly similar paths: an eagerness to take on work, no shyness for approaching people and offering their services, and versatility. The particulars are centered around English students but the advice is universal: market yourself, try for that rung just above your immediate reach, and remember that skills can be learned on the job and you’re more likely to be hired based on your perceived enthusiasm and attitude.

Engage and you’ll find success.

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Pondering and laughing over Charlie Hebdo

The seriousness and jest in satire and religious mockery

Two satirists and a religious studies professor walk into a room: this isn’t a joke, but what happened last Tuesday at an event sponsored by Concordia’s Montreal Institute of Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) in light of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France.

The panel’s resident academic and assistant professor in the Departments of Religion and Theology, Dr. André Gagné, began by contextualizing the discussion and showing the historical and modern differences in Islam itself. Islam, said Gagné, has had a long history of using imagery, and rather than forbidding its making, made the distinction between imagery for representational and illustrative purposes—which was sanctioned— and imagery as something to stand between God and man and be the object of worship—which was considered idolatry.

“It is sad to see there is actually little justification for such horrific crimes,” he said, continuing: “[these are] interpretations over which people are fighting to the death in the Middle East.”

For Gagné, religious adherents pick what they will of their religions, and thus picking one ‘authentic’ Islam among many for the role of yardstick is an ambiguous concept: “There is no such thing as a true or false Islam. Scholarship has abandoned the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy. What we see are simply the various manifestations or facets of a religion,” he said.

However, this does not mean that the violence exhibited by some Islamists is completely groundless, especially when one considers the concept of abrogation, whereby latter, generally more forceful and violent, verses of the Qur’an (revealed at a time where ascendant Islam feared less from its pagan milieu) replaced older, sometimes more peaceful commandments revealed when Muhammad needed to tread more lightly.

“People who say that the Bible or the Qur’an do not contain violent commands or narratives have not carefully read them or are simply deluding themselves. Holy books do contain the good and the bad,” he cautioned.

These exhortations can sometimes give direction when personal and collective injustice is experienced, or when people searching for an aggressive worldview as answer to the ‘hopelessness they experience.’ When one is vulnerable, says Gagné, is when one is most open to radicalization, and it is up to modern secular societies to both integrate and accept religious traditions and to maintain a critical perspective toward ideologies by upholding humanistic principles.

“Ideas that promote violence should be denounced and resisted. This is why Islam, or any other religious tradition that stifles human dignity, should be critiqued.” For Gagné religion, unlike other parts of culture, is still strangely off-limits and sacrosanct. Pluralism entails the right to disagree, and the need for religions to cope with disagreement—something contemporary global Islam may be as yet unable to do.

“Muslims can surely disagree with the assessment people can have of their tradition, but the best way to state their case is with ink and paper. This is what freedom of speech is all about,” he said in a brief statement at the start of the panel.

“It is strange how we are quick to say the perpetrators of the Paris attacks do not represent true Islam, but rarely say the same thing when the attacks are far from home,” said Gagné, referring to the West’s obsession with Islamist attacks only insomuch as it was the centre of the story. Ignored is the the rampant Muslim-on-Muslim violence the world over.

Montreal Gazette cartoonists Pascal Élie (Pascal) and Terry Mosher (Aislin) balanced the intellectualism with the welcome dose of (solemn) lightheartedness that befit satirists.

“If you’re going to laugh at other people, you’re going to have to laugh at yourself. The proof is in the pudding,” said the irreverent and rascally Mosher. “When the Pope says we are not allowed to poke fun [at religion],” he continued, referring to the Pope Francis’ reaction to the attack when he said the world should not be surprised by violence when the sacred is mocked, “let me be blunt: fuck him. This is a very established part of the process. We poke fun, this is what we do, and we’re a very important part of freedom.”

Fittingly, humorous self-criticism alongside Gagné’s academic introspection was at the heart of the message Pascal and Aislin delivered. More than anything they pointed to the need for criticizing ourselves and making fun of our own actions, as during the PR nirvana that occurred when world leaders joined in a solidarity march in Paris in support of the freedom of expression. The amusing thing the two noticed—and drew—was a good portion of those ministers and presidents were part of coercive, oppressive regimes that have a long pedigree of media control and intimidation.

“We grab these things and sort of run with them,” said Aislin, cycling through a series of cartoons poking fun at the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ trend. “You have to get cheeky and poke fun.”

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A more dynamic Concordia?

President Shepard: “We have to keep up to speed, whatever that might mean.”

The times, they are a changin’. Concordia’s Academic Plan and Strategic Framework are expiring and the university is seeking to engage the entire community in deciding what comes next.

This is the takeaway message Concordia President Alan Shepard wants the student body to know as he and his administration get set to enact the Strategic Directions drive, the process by which we’ll all be able to chip in with our two cents in an act of participatory community building.

“For me it’s important both in a formal sense that we have a document, and in an informal sense in that it facilitates the conversations. I think we’re having right now and all around the place conversations about where we we want to go, whether we want to go there or not, how do we get there, how much that will cost, and what resources do we need,” said Shepard when asked as to the raison-d’être of the initiative, which isn’t a necessity for universities.

The campaign calls for a short planning timeline of six months so that by June some preliminary points can be sent over to the senate and the Board of Governors for approval. Then will come the time to hear from the faculties and staff for what they foresee their realistic needs and areas for growth can be. Eight groups, organized under headings like experiential learning or innovation and entrepreneurship, will help organize the endeavour.

“We’ll ask those units where they want to go within the framework that’s been established,” said Shepard.

For the rest of the semester a slate of speakers at the forefront of university education will come by and give public, free lectures.

“It’s designed to bring in outside voices, because there’s nothing worse than planning for five to 10 years down the road and [be] talking to only yourself.” Up to 25 academics, intellectuals, and notables will form those outside voices via free public lectures open to all.

One thing the administration seem eager to broadcast is a plan to expand focus on research.

“Universities today cannot be as they once were—almost exclusively teaching institutions— because we will find that if we do that we wouldn’t be providing the faculty with the latest research,” he said. It’s well known that the Federal government takes a positive view to giving grants when there’s research on campus.

Another point of focus will be a pressing need to find space for the Fine Arts faculty, which has had space issues in the past.

Shepard said experiential learning—specifically co-ops and internships—was another point to be discussed. “We will gradually have more online stuff, whether it’ll be whole programs, individual courses, or, more likely, more blended courses.”

When asked what universities Concordia is using as an example, Shepard mentioned Arizona State University—which has catapulted in the last few years into a major research university and is the largest public university by enrollment in the U.S.—as an institution worthy of emulation.

“I think the days when each domain of knowledge was separate, I think those days are waning, both in terms of how knowledge gets organized and what students want and need.”

This may mean a reorganization of programs and the possibility of new classes and programs. Everything is on the table, even increasing revenue from other partners—but how and from whom wasn’t said.

Even though Strategic Visions is getting a fair dose of fanfare, it isn’t meant to be a do-all, end-all.

“It isn’t a detailed plan; it’s not a playbook,” said Shepard.The previous academic plan had scores of recommendations; not this one. “I don’t see us changing our stripes to be something we’re not,” said Shepard, who likened successful universities as those nimble enough to seize opportunities fast, rather than scratching their heads about whether its prescribed on a bullet-point list.

The first lecture as part of the speaker series will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 28, by former University of Wisconsin-Madison and American Council on Education President David Ward. Georgetown University Vice-Provost for Education Randy Bass visits on Feb. 5.

Please visit concordia.ca/about/strategic-directions/events.html for more information.

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Concordia student suing former boss for defamation

Complaint was also launched against the university with Quebec Labour Board

Rose Tandel was a student and model personal trainer with Concordia University’s Le Gym when in May 2013 she refused her boss’ request to ask a Muslim colleague to stop praying. Tandel says her colleague wasn’t in a public space and wasn’t drawing attention but was told praying was against the Code of Conduct. Since then, she alleges a systematic attempt by the university and her boss to discredit her and ignore her complaints, causing her to quit and initiate a $60,000 lawsuit for defamation.

Now Montreal’s Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) has joined her legal counsel before the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission.

CRARR is a civil rights organization dealing primarily but not exclusively with discrimination based on race. They’ve previously defended Concordia students before the Human Rights Commission and work closely with the Concordia Student Union (CSU) Legal Information Clinic.

“We got the official mandate right after the holidays from Ms. Tandel,” said CRARR Executive Director Fo Niemi, after previous attempts at mediation by the Commission des normes du travail du Québec failed.

Niemi says it will be his organization’s job to see whether Tandel had been the victim of discrimination throughout the event.

“This won’t be based necessarily on her race or religion or ethnicity, but that she spoke against her manager’s attitude on a Muslim colleague’s prayer,” Niemi said.

“Because she objected to discrimination of her Muslim colleague’s religion, she herself became a target of discrimination,” said Niemi. “We intend to file a complaint very soon with the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission.” He says the focus will not be on the initial incident, but the way it was subsequently handled by the university.

“We don’t know exactly what has happened with the whole issue of Muslim prayers in the workplace. We don’t know what Concordia has done on that issue. That’s the first question we want to ask. And secondly we’re going to ask: what happened to Ms. Tandel when she went to seek help with office of rights and responsibilities and human resource department. The situation turned around to make her into a problem employee.”

Tandel had been an employee with the gym for five years with a spotless record free of any issues prior to the fallout.

Niemi said based on his information about the case and his organization’s track record, things look good for a positive outcome.

“The advantage of a complaint before the human rights commission is that we can ask for non-monetary remedies. In other words, requiring Concordia to correct its policies in these situations or adopt new policies so this does not happen again.” Niemi said another employee could potentially join the complaint, but would not say at the moment if it was the original Muslim employee implicated. “We’re looking at whether this is an isolated incident, or whether this has taken place before or is taking place now.”

“This ordeal has been very hard on her both financially and psychologically,” said Niemi.

Tandel says her experiences took a turn for the worse when she made the decision to challenge what she calls false assertions made by her manager and the administration allegedly shielding him.

“They [HR] made me believe they had set up a meeting to discuss the issue,” she said. “In fact I walked into a disciplinary hearing without being prepared.”

And it wasn’t just one disciplinary hearing but a total of four, including the first two when she discovered her boss had opened up a case with HR against her on accusations of fraud and theft stemming from money and items missing in the workplace and which she successfully defended herself against. She alleges he later spread rumors with the gym staff over her giving a client’s a free membership card Tandel says he himself gave her, in addition to other accusations.

Niemi said these unexpected disciplinary hearings were a clear violation of procedure, and despite proving her innocence on those charges she was suspended on other charges of circumventing procedure to help a friend and insubordination. When Tandel continued seeking an explanation, HR accused her of poisoning the workplace.

Tandel says her superior has a history of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, with previous occurrences of what she considers racist, sexist, and insensitive comments. He called her Muslim co-worker’s praying an unwelcome ‘sermon’ that brought Islam into the work environment. She also alleges he has been shuffled around previously because of his attitude and has a track record of accusing others of theft.

“They told me they could call a disciplinary hearing whenever they wanted,” she said. This caused an additional 3-week suspension on charges she wasn’t doing her work properly, despite a previous promotion and pay raise.

Most importantly, she says the subject of his comments on Muslims was never approached or dealt with in any way by the investigation.

“Most of them don’t speak French and they’re international students, and this is the only place they can work at,” she said, regarding the vulnerability of some of her co-workers and their hesitancy in corroborating her story.

At one point her Muslim co-worker finally made a grievance.

“We were made to believe they would resolve both files. Instead they signed a contract with [the Muslim co-worker] and tied his hands.” She said this binding by non-disclosure was deliberate. Eventually, she said her co-worker was reposted to the Loyola campus.

“The normalcy of my work changed. I couldn’t communicate with my managers so I couldn’t stay informed and wouldn’t be available for whatever I was suppose to be available for, and then they would charge me with disciplinary hearings.”

At around the same time, she was sent an invoice for approximately $4,500 she owed over incorrectly billed overtime pay, save that the overtime pay was given to all her fellow coworkers and only she, to her knowledge, was required to pay it.

Not long afterwards, they received a phone call from Concordia’s HR department for an ‘off-the-books’ meeting where they offered to drop the overtime bill if she agreed to never set foot in the gym and not speak about her experiences with the public or her clients. When she began her defamation lawsuit, the invoices ceased.

“They comfortably buried the issues and focused on me being a thief,” she said.

Tandel says her superior was approached with sensitivity training by an interim director at the time, but that it never went anywhere.

The labour board will hear the case on Feb. 16, at least the third time Concordia has pushed back the date. Her case was originally set to be heard in November 2014.

Tandel believes these interruptions are delaying tactics by the university to exhaust her financially. Despite being given a lawyer by the labour board.

“I’m asking for reinstatement, for wages lost, for damages [due to] psychological harassment, for clearance of my employee file.”

The court date will last two to three days and will finally look over the evidence from both sides.

When she complained about the conduct of the HR director, she received a reply by the Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines saying that, in his capacities, the HR director had the ‘mandate to support the managers in their decisions.’

“Out of all the other organizations outside of the labour board and my personal lawyer, [CRARR] seems to really care. I really think they’ll work to resolve the issue with me.”

The CSU has an agreement with CRARR and will partially pay for their services.

The Concordian was unable to reach Concordia for comment by press time.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article stated sometimes dropped the last R in CRARR. This has been fixed. Also, CRARR is representing Ms. Tandel before the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission, not the Canadian Human rights tribunal/Quebec Student Rights and Youth Rights Commission. The Concordian apologizes for the error.

CLARIFICATION: Ms. Tandel wished to clarify by saying the first two disciplinary hearings were over falsely accusations on money and items missing in the workplace, and the membership card issue was a separate issue solely to do with rumours she alleges he spread to the staff. This has been added.

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TRAC reveals reason behind exec axe

General assembly a mum, passive affair—despite controversial report

The Teaching and Research Assistants of Concordia union held a special general assembly on Monday, Jan. 20 to tackle the recent findings of a report that recommended an overhaul of their executive council.

“The situation is a bit ambiguous,” said former Mobilization and Communications Officer Robert Sonin, who alongside his fellow executives complained about the president back in September on charges of harassment. “We don’t know what happens now because the report is going to move on anyways.”

The report stirred tempers when it was released at the end of December and obtained by The Concordian not long after. It detailed the conclusion of an official investigation by TRAC’s parent union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the conclusions understandably irked the executives who’d lost their jobs.

The report found the president abused his power and relieved him of his position, but made the recommendation to relieve the other executives as well because of a toxic workplace atmosphere. When the executives made the report public and started speaking to the media, PSAC sent them a notice threatening legal action unless the electronic report was ‘retrieved’ and the conversation ceased, arguing it was PSAC property and would be discussed at Monday’s general assembly.

When contacted by The Concordian last week, PSAC issued a statement saying no further comment would be offered.

“I don’t know why they would pass it by the locals if they’re not going to use it. They gave it to a room of people who don’t really know anything except for the report,” added Sonin.

The recommendations were voted down 17 to 40, but the report is nonetheless going to be sent to the regional council and the national board of directors.

“The way the PSAC process works is—I don’t want to say it’s entirely irrelevant, but it’s really not relevant. It’s relevant in the sense the local has expressed its opinion, but the reporters and investigators hold the weight.” Sonin said, calling the meeting an act of rubber-stamping.

Sonin said the general assembly mostly revolved around presenting the report and the qualifications necessary for holding office.

“This meeting was only to receive the report,” he said. He also stated the PSAC representative reiterated the official stance that TRAC members were not to share the findings.

The elections are set to happen for the first week of March, at the earliest. Until then TRAC is essentially dormant, leaving important matters at a standstill, such as the pay negotiations that were supposed to have started in November.

According to PSAC rules, members under investigation weren’t allowed to speak on their behalf, so Sonin could not speak at the event.

He’s now uncertain of how to proceed, a sentiment his fellow executives probably share.

“The report for the most part is accurate, I think they came down with a reasonable account of what went on. I would have rather seen the executive continue and I would have hoped they would have done all this in a much more timely way. The result is our complaints were vindicated.”

Sonin continued: “Right now I’m totally dissatisfied with the way PSAC handled this. It’s bizarre to me people who complained lose their job over it. In the best of all worlds you want a report like this to lay the blame where it rests, and I don’t think it did that. They need a better way to handle harassment.”

As the GA finished late Monday night, The Concordian was unable to get comment from various attendees, but will update the online version of this article with additional viewpoints as they come in.

 

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