Visiting academic to discuss Nordic, Aboriginal media
Finnish media researcher and journalist Thomas Moring will give a pair of talks on Aboriginal and Nordic media on Oct. 22 and 23 as part of an ongoing speaker series by the Concordian Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies (CCBS).
Concordia Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies is a university-recognized research centre and media-related research archive with international reach.
The CCBS’s director and series organizer Mike Gasher said the lectures, aside from the educational value, serve as sparks for future research collaboration between members, of which Moring is one.
“Mostly we want to learn from him, and give him the opportunity to learn what his colleagues at the centre are working on,” said Gasher by e-mail.
Gasher considers the first talk as being of interest to anybody curious about the ever-evolving business models of the media in light of digitization and globalization, with the Nordic model being one of many.
“The topic of indigenous media is very pertinent. We talk a lot about contemporary society being highly mediated, in that it is through media—media of all kinds—that we experience and engage with the world. Media have given aboriginal peoples new visibility and a new voice,” said Gasher of the second talk.
The CCBS is set to host separate talks by scholar Rodney Benson and journalist Francine Pelletier before the end of the semester, with more unnamed presenters after the new year.
“The Media Business in the Nordic States,” will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at noon in CJ 2.409 at the Loyola Campus.
“Indigenous Media: Questions of Culture, Identity and Language” will occur in the Atrium of the Samuel Bronfman Building of Concordia University, 1590 Docteur Penfield, on Thursday, Oct. 23 at noon.
Renowned Governor General delivers opening 2014 Massey Lectures at Concordia
Journalist, author, and former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson delivered a poignant and complex analysis of what it means to belong on the opening night of the 2014 Massey Lectures.
Her talk, entitled Belonging:The Paradox of Citizenship, provided a careful synthesis of ideas ranging from the personal to the antiquated.
Drawing on knowledge from a lifetime of curiosity and research, the larger part of her lecture was an in-depth analysis of literary and historical instances of belonging and citizenship.
Perhaps a deliberate nod to Quebec’s roots, France’s literary tradition and the evolution of one particular French town throughout the ages, from brute feudalism between secular and religious lords to enlightened democracy, was the main focus, with other examples pulled from domains like biology and philosophy.
For Clarkson, citizenship is an enduring web of connections, simultaneously an obligation stemming from the responsibility owed to others and a deep well to draw upon for strength. It is a peek into the persistent need, even of societies like our own, which concern themselves primarily with individualism, for “stabilization and confirmation outside ourselves.”
Clarkson’s debut also explored the mutability of these identities, showing that nothing is written in stone and the majority have final say about who is one of us and who isn’t. For all the talk of origins and common experience, outsiders are joined by threads above culture and approaching the fundamental human experience.
In a nutshell, “If we remove our sense of belonging to each other, no matter what our material and social conditions are, survival, acquisition, and selfish triumphalism will endure at the cost of our humanity,” she said, quoting historian Alan Turnbull.
While her speech was intellectual in nature and required a prior grounding for best effect, it was her personal history and opinion unlocked during the question and answer period which created the strongest emotional resonance with the crowd.
When asked about the limits of citizenship and integration, Clarkson dug into her own memories and experiences as a young girl in an immigrant family coming to a country still plagued by racialism and discrimination. By drawing the connections from state-sponsored exclusion, such as the head tax, to the Japanese labour camps of WWII, and finally to Quebec’s current battle over identity politics and accommodation, the lecture came full circle by reminding us of the very pressing and present Canadian evolution of belonging.
The Massey Lectures continue with dates in Halifax, Saskatoon Vancouver, and finally in Toronto. Recording will be featured on CBC’s Ideas in November.
Foundation’s founder talks about empowering women through education
Wanda Bedard, founder of the girl’s educational charity 60 Million Girls Foundation, will be featured at a talk on the Oct. 15 on a pilot self-learning project focusing on young girls in rural Sierra Leone.
Bedard, a Montreal local, started the charity group in the late ‘90s after repeatedly hearing and reading about the plight of Afghan women under the harshly and repressive rule of the theocratic Taliban regime.
Shocked by their narrow existence and enraged by such squandered potential, Bedard decided to get involved herself. One Sunday morning, disgusted after reading a story of an Afghani girl sold by her father to a much older warlord for a pittance, she decided to change directions and work towards the betterment of the millions of disenfranchised women the world over.
“I can be upset after reading these things, but if I don’t take action and participate, I’m not helping improve things or change things,” said Bedard on her motivation.
Falling back on her professional experience as a businesswoman, she spent the next severak years trying to understand, in her words, why women were so little valued. She self-researched and attended workshops, volunteered for organizations like UNICEF, and sought out anybody who could better inform her on the workings of international aid organizations. She also realized only education could fundamentally elevate the conditions of the women in the world’s most unstable and poor countries.
The 60 Million Girls Foundation’s mandate is to fundraise and aid two to three projects a year completely though volunteers — as Bedard says, pretty much their entire staff has day jobs on the side, but this allows for “99 percent” of money raised to go to the sources that need them These projects are realized by established and registered Canadian charities who pitch their proposals and budgets to scrutiny and feasibility studies by Bedard’s foundation.
“Because we’re a public foundation we have no capital so we start pretty well at zero dollars every January and then we do the fundraising throughout the year,” she explained of the efforts that have seen the foundation give grants totaling $300,000 at a time for a grand total of $1.9 million over the years, spread over 16 projects.
“We take an awful lot of care in choosing our partners,” said Bedard of the risks and difficulties in carrying out operations in states where corruption and violence may be endemic. Only groups with a proven track record of strong connections to these communities and visions beyond the short-term are considered. Detailed budgets require reasonable administrative costs, and the foundation sometimes sends its own members (at their own expense) to check up on them. Every six months a status update is performed, which Bedard says is necessary in regions where volatile politics and instability can drastically alter the landscape they are working in.
“It’s important to us to have really close communication with our partners. It didn’t make a lot of sense of us to reinvent the organizations in the field or projects in the field when there’s already so many amazing projects going on and what they often lack is funding and partnerships,” said Bedard.
Despite some difficult instances — Bedard particularly remembers one project for post-secondary aboriginal education in Honduras marred by political instability brought on by a coup — no initiative has been abandoned or cancelled, though modifications have often occurred in response to changes in situation.
“You have to take [the instability] into account if you want to help these communities,” said Bedard.
“Any organization without strong community links and engagement won’t be successful. We constantly ask for feedback.”
With eight years of experience, 60 Million Girls has begun taking a more active role in suggesting and planning initiatives it thinks will best serve girls’ education. This, and their personal experience from travelling in Africas, is from whence springs the pilot project on self-directed computer-based learning in Sierra Leone.
“I remember being in very rural areas, hours and hours away from the nearest city, and then you’d be there and see a cell phone kiosk selling cell phone cards or telephones in the middle of nowhere. I said to myself ‘This is crazy, how could these people, who live in absolute poverty, think of buying a luxury like a cell phone? [Then I] realized this isn’t a luxury — this is a lifesaving tool. These communities did not have access to information beforehand and there is no electricity, but there are small entrepreneurs who have charging stations with generators. What I found amazing at the time was that the country actually skipped a whole generation of technology because they never had landlines for telephones and went right to cell phones.”
The challenge was figuring out a way to harness the innovation.
Rural African schools lack the resources to provide a strong education. There is a dearth of qualified teachers (Bedard estimated there are around 3.5 million missing teachers across the world) and government funding, though coming from a good place, is insufficient. Add to it the burden posed on the parents in providing for their children and making up for lost manpower back at their homesteads, and there are strong factors holding education back. 60 Million Girls therefore came up with a way to instead let the children learn on their own with the help of computers, which Bedard considers as “containers in which can be put vast amounts of information.” These computers lack certain basics like word processing, which depend on expensive add-ons like printers, and are instead outfitted with tutorial software, offline Wikipedia, and various encyclopedias. The choice of software originally focused on literacy, but was found to be problematic as literature was culturally specific and particular to each host community. Mathematics, by contrast, was more universal in its applicability.
“We wanted to see if they worked and if the girls showed any interest. It was absolutely stunning. The girls loved it. They went through all the math videos at their level of high school, and they were clamouring for more. They were doing it on their own; there was no teacher overseeing things.” A second phase of some two-and-a-half months followed in April. It is these findings and the methodology behind it that form part of the discussion on Wednesday.
Bedard herself is already convinced.
“The research clearly shows that for every additional year of primary school that a girl gets, infant mortality rates decrease by 10 to 15 per cent. For every additional level of high school, potential revenue increases by about 25 per cent. So at the very core of it is to give the girls, and the boys depending on the projects, the tools to look after themselves, to be able to understand [the label] if they are given medicine, to understand the importance of prenatal care if pregnant, to understand the importance of nutrition or vaccination for their kids. To be able to read and write and understand basic numeracy, [the benefits] are clearly demonstrated.”
Empowering Girls: Using Educational Technology to save lives will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. at the York Amphitheatre (room 1.615) of the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex, at 1515 Ste. Catherine St. W.
CUPFA announces short-term contract agreement with university
Concordia University’s Part-time Faculty Association (CUPFA) has reached a tentative, one-year agreement with university officials in a deal that leaves both sides happy but signals much work in the future.
David Douglas, CUPFA’s president, explained how the current negotiations were the end result of prolonged discussions not simply within CUPFA itself but between all the faculty and staff organizations at the university.
“All the labour agreements of the last couple of years were settled at the time when [we began ours],” Douglas said.
As a consequence, CUPFA was the last to be wrapping things up, effectively making them out of step with the other organizations. Now, with another deadline looming in May 2015 for the next round of negotiations, CUPFA is preparing to go back to the table.
“At a certain point it became difficult for either our side or their side to contemplate life after May — it just became simpler to settle what we could, which is what we’ve done, and then re-open fully, essentially in the same cycle as everybody else,” said Douglas. “All of those contracts are coming up in May — this is the timeframe for us.”
Normative issues — or remuneration aside from pay, like benefits — featured heavily in the negotiations.
“We figured if we’re at the table we might as well be on the table,” he said of the worry about job security, pensions, and research commitments in an era of cuts.
Douglas said concerns coming from what his group considered an insufficient follow-through of last year’s collective agreement drove the need for a fuller agreement this time around and a better implementation of terms.
Speaking of the university’s latest initiative, the Voluntary Departure Program, Douglas said: “We were certainly aware of the budget austerity climate [and] we were given a specific information session about the Voluntary Departure Program, which doesn’t really affect us, [though] we didn’t really know it was coming.”
The program seeks to give a lump-sum payment to staff who voluntarily leave, and is expected to save the school millions of dollars annually.
“I think at some level, when you take away staff, there’s an inevitable impact or reflection on student life and faculty life,” said Douglas on the effects the program may have on his association. He said the last round of budget cuts lowered membership by about 5 per cent, mostly from a contraction of teaching schedules.
“Because cuts came midyear, really the only sort of possibility was to cut the courses that part-time faculty were teaching,” explained Douglas.
When it comes to suggestions about how Concordia may save additional money, CUPFA suggested a restriction on limited-term appointments (LTA), a system by which faculty is recruited on a limited contractual basis — effectively, temporary tenure.
“There are some necessities to LTA [sic] appointments, but we feel that it’s been enlarged over the last few years to our detriment. I think we’re cheaper than LTA, so if you want to cut the budget, I think cutting temporary appointments that are more expensive than part-time faculty is not a bad place to start.”
He said that as soon as matters are clarified and the final text is rewritten to better reflect the new situation and ratifications, the public will have access to the full details of the deal. He expects this to be completed in several weeks.
“We’re certainly working as hard as we can to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s.”
“There are things we had to leave on the table [and] priorities we could not realize, but there are other things that we will be able to answer in the interest of our members.”
Limiting present priorities has allowed for future discussion over what is to be brought up and what issues will be re-opened come May, Douglas said. Such matters will be something to be brought up with CUPFA members soon.
A suggestion by the Coms Guild for pubcrawl first-aid kits was met with a frosty reaction by Concordia Health Services, seemingly because of the event’s relation to alcohol.
Coms Guild Vice President Michele Burchiani came up with the idea after suffering a minor cut at an earlier event. “It was nothing big – [but] there wasn’t any means to treat it right away.”
After consulting with his fellow executives, he decided to approach Health Services with the idea of ‘mini first-aid kits’ that he said would contain things like Band-Aids, antiseptics, alcohol swabs and Q-tips and would be carried around on outings by team leaders.
Burchiani says Health Services representatives met his idea with apprehensiveness which only increased as his explanations continued. Intuiting the stumbling block, he asked and was told that Health Services does not associate itself with alcohol-related events. This surprised him somewhat, as he believed preventative measures were part of their mandate, and part of the reason he approached them. The other reason was as a way of spreading the costs.
“We thought we’d approach Concordia and see if they could help us out,” he said. “I explained to [them] that at events there’s the possibility of small injuries—not that they happen often. Just in case, we would like to be prepared.”
When approached, representatives from Health Services declined to comment. University Spokesperson Chris Mota stated that she was not aware of the incident but confirmed Health Services discourages events related to alcohol. Mota likewise stressed that there was no exclusionary policy in place that would deter Health Services from offering first aid kits.
She said Concordia has always supported activity initiatives from its student body by providing security and safety, and said the main impediments were the logistics of providing for off-campus activities.
“For events on campus we do what we can — but can [supplies] actually be supplied to anybody who’s having an event? They can’t,” Mota said.
Burchiani did not provide an estimate of how much the measure would have cost if covered by Coms Guild alone. He also says the matter has not been pursued after his first meeting with Health Services representatives.
An update on the ongoing effort to court International students.
Concordia’s Housing and Job Bank (HoJo) is saluting a recent Montreal report calling for better housing as one of its key priorities in attracting and retaining international students.
The report, titled L’urgence d’agir pour attirer et retenir les meilleurs étudiants internationaux à Montréal, reiterated the rising importance of foreign students as a potential demographic resource for skilled and integrated citizens in a globalized world where mobile human capital is to be courted and enticed.
HoJo is joined in its statement of support by the L’unité de travail pour l’implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE), an organization promoting co-operative student-run housing in the city.
Off-Campus HoJo Assistant Kyle McLoughlin agrees the rector’s report is a start, but says the universities and government have their work cut out for them. In his professional experience, the difficulties for international students come from both being unaware of the resources available to aid them and not knowing their legal rights.
“International students pay an average of 20 per cent higher than the median rent in Montreal,” said McLoughlin of the existence of a ‘predatory market’ of landlords making a business from vulnerable international students.
“We see at HoJo an endless amount of students who are taken advantage of and who are asked for [such unlawful things as] illegal deposits, they’re asked for illegal personal information like photocopies of their passports [or] driver’s licenses, or cases where landlords refuse to rent to non-Canadian students,” McLoughlin said. Corporate entities sponsoring workers also frequently cross the line in their demands.
For McLoughlin, one particular vector of abuse is the avenue available to Quebec landlords in demanding a guarantor in for tenants they suspect of bad faith or financial insolvency, a normally sensible enough option.
“However, many companies will require that the guarantor be somebody from Quebec or from Canada, and if you’re an international student who doesn’t have any family or friend connections to the city, it can be exceptionally complicated,” McLoughlin said.
“The university can do anything it wants to in its ability to act as the official voice in these matters, but at the moment they don’t,” he said of the university’s ability to alleviate the situation, suggesting a streamlined form system to confirm student status, which confirms financial stability, as it is one of the requirements for studying in Canada to begin with.
Justice, when available, can be glacial. “The law only favours somebody to the extent that it’s enforced,” he said of the Regie du logement’s newest figures which point out wait times that stretch up to a full year. For many international students, they’ll sooner receive their degree and move on then receive a resolution to their problem from the overwhelmed Regie. “It can take so much time [to exercise their rights] that the students don’t find it worth it.”
“What we would like to see is a more effective, more streamlined Regie du logement, a body that enforces the rules and regulations that exist in Quebec, and a sort of focus towards creating a better student housing situation.”
He said HOJO and UTILE’s mission, in addition to providing legal and informative aid, is also to get the information out to both sides of the divide.
“We feel we’re educating landlords at the same time as informing students about what their rights are.”
Annual Antiquarian Book Fair brings rare items and collector’a knowledge to university.
I’m holding a $15,000 book in my hands. It’s a one-of-a-kind piece of 1870s French fiction extolling the pastoral life. Its owner half-jokingly introduces it as the very first treehugger novel. I asked if I could open it, hopeful because it wasn’t under lock and key or behind glass, but surprised all the same when the request is accepted – if it was mine, I’d demand latex gloves. The touch, the smell, the hand-drawn pictures and binding all speak of a craft inimitable by electronics. Next to it is a self-published sliver of a book by a young and completely unknown Margaret Atwood. Further down along the tables are musty bibles from the 1700s; religious and political tracts hailing from the Glorious Revolution; limited edition lithographs from famed artists; old maps showing how far Montreal has evolved, yet how little it’s changed.
Though not a typical experience, this is what you would find if you attended last weekend’s 31st annual Antiquarian Book Fair, held at the ground floor of the McConnell Library building.
Photo by Milos Kovacevic.
The books (and maps) were wide-ranging and multinational in character, and their keepers a colourful bunch. The older books were kept quite in the open, which was unusual. Some were falling apart, but perhaps that was the reason for their display – you keep your real valuables safe and keep a few shiny ones for display. After all, students won’t routinely spend a few hundred dollars on a hard cover.
More interesting and rewarding than the literature on display was the chance to speak to their owners and gain insight into a specialized industry. A relatively modest event of some two dozen participants ranging from as far as Ottawa and Toronto, they were nonetheless friendly and informative. Any bibliophile would find pleasure in discussing literature with them. After a few tables, one gains the barest of footholds in their world. Patterns emerge and similarities became apparent. Cartographers are a political bunch, dealing in visual representations of dominions and empires; the book antiquarians are a patient folk – more than once, I was told it took several decades of diligent service before clients offered their loyalty and the chance at seeing or handling the real treasures. All are ultimately salesmen, eager to cultivate connections but not necessarily open to discussing the tricks of their trade or the specifics of margins and sources. Judging from the median age of the book sellers, it’s not a business easily broken into.
“You need about $2 million in stock to get $200,000 in [yearly] income,” said Wesley Begg of Toronto’s Contract Editions, which specializes in rare books. Despite prohibitive entry costs – or perhaps because of, as those able to sink such resources have substantial sums to fall back upon – Begg thinks the future of the rare and unusual book trade will always exist to cater to a wide array of budgets, from rich patrons to bibliophile student collectors. Not so for regular used book stores, which Begg declares a moribund industry. More nuanced is the opinion on the book industry as a whole: some see highs, others continue to experience tough times.
Montreal isn’t Europe or New York when it comes to antique books. We’re not a major stopping point, and the offerings (and prices, which can hit millions of dollars) reflect this, but it’s nice to know Concordia’s library serves and will continue to serve as a gathering place for dusty tomes and their fans.
$29 million in total cuts by the end of this fiscal year forces Concordia to snip where it can.
Concordia University announced on Sept. 24 that it will be instituting a Voluntary Departure Plan for staff in continuing efforts to adjust to government instructions mandating $13 million in budget compressions for the current fiscal year.
The program, unveiled after internal consultation on ways to meet a shrinking budget, will see mostly administrative staff given the option of leaving before contract expiry in exchange for severance packages, said to total about a year’s worth of pay for staff who have been working at the school over 10 years. Faculty members such as professors or other positions like librarians won’t be included in the plan.
The expected cost of the severance packages will help deal with the deficit to be overcome by saving the university up to $5 million this year, and may save up to $12 million on a permanent basis from the 2015-2016 fiscal year onwards. Concordia says it expects anywhere from 150 to 180 individuals to take the offer in a lengthy ‘rebalancing’ that would last several months to sort out.
Ultimately the amount of staff that will leave are unknown and it may very well be less than predicted, though Concordia President Alan Shepard said previous schools who’ve instituted the initiative have equally met greater-than-expected demand. Either way, he stressed the completely voluntary nature of the plan and how it was made with care in mind for the loyalty of university staff.
Other measures will be taken in addition to the Voluntary Departure Program in response to the government’s compression of the budget. For one, there would be delays in upgrading equipment like computers, but Shepard said there would be no cuts in student bursaries, scholarships, or research.
Shepard also admitted several important positions might go empty under such circumstances, but that the university would do its best to adapt.
“It’s hard to change the tire of the car when the car is running,” he said of the difficulties in changing a large entity like a university.
“We’re trying in a most respectful way to respond to the restraints given,” said Shepard on the difficult financial climate Concordia and other education institutions are facing.
Theatre Sainte-Catherine’s monthly Sketch night here to amuse and entertain you
The Theatre Sainte-Catherine (TSC) is small. For somebody who’s never seen it, it’s a bottleneck connecting a stage to a bar with a dozen or so tables. From its size and minimal sets, one would be justified in enquiring how it survives, despite a busy weekly schedule of improv, laughs, and stage drama. Such places are not supposed to be small, I tell myself. They are supposed to be visited by the masses and have huge stages. Nor had I heard of the performers before. Added to my often precariously subjective humour, seldom finding toilet or sexual humour — comedic staples, both of them — amusing, I could see things going south very soon.
Things were anything but. I’m quickly reminded each time I go there that the minimal space is made for small gatherings. It magnifies the intimacy of the atmosphere. Laughter doesn’t disappear or get drowned out, but comes loud and clear and individual to the person emitting it, and you feel close enough even in the furthest back rows to be included in a skit.
That night was the beginning of TSC’s first ever monthly sketch night, which I presume is a mixture of established talent and stage volunteers (or travelling bards) with unshakeable confidence in their craft.
Comics Daniel Carin and Chris Sandiford’s beginning fare of talk show mockery was good enough to be the main meal. The two have real chemistry with each other, and I found myself wondering if they were besties in real life. Bonus points for their routine’s inclusion of two things close to my heart: book reviews and science fiction humour, which are about as far as you can get from penis jokes and fart humour.
TSC’s house sketch team caused much laughter with creative skits featuring gossipy airhead news reporter Justine (whose name is a play on (this) “just in”), a fierce MIC battle over whose mothers were nicer, and a healthy dose of babies getting shot with handguns, amongst other things. The lads were magnificent in their enthusiasm and ability, the women more so (Katie Leggitt’s accents and facial expressions were really impressive).
It was at this moment, during a mercifully placed intermission, that a scheduling conflict caused an early departure. But the show did have real lasting effects: I find myself prowling about the internet for Carin & Sandiford’s videos late at night and waiting for the right situation to pawn off residual jokes as my own.
There were, of course, a few hiccups. Host Brad Armstrong’s uncomfortable focus on a front-row audience member was a bit awkward, even the best skits can sometimes be excessive in length, and certain subject matter was of a questionable nature (ISIS beheadings — a bit too soon?).
Yet the enthusiasm and camaraderie of the performers shines through, and their sharp wits and material grab you and demand you give them proper respect. Small as it is, you feel like you’ve stumbled upon a community of performers who did their thing before you’d come by, and would persist at it long after you left. The most genuine moments came when the composure of the cast members cracked under each other’s witty repartee and you saw authentic, unscripted laughs. They might not be getting paid a lot for what they do, and they may not get huge crowds, but they’re having a hell of a lot of fun. The small nook in the wall that is the Theatre Sainte-Catherine is doing just fine, and will continue to do so.
For more information about Theatre Sainte-Catherine events, visit theatresaintecatherine.com.
Seven-year projects will look at aging and technology & northern and rural communities
In late August, the announcement was made that two Concordia professors had received $5.49 million in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to lead a pair of massively collaborative projects on social change.
Mapping cross-generational attitudes towards technology
Technological progressivism has taught us that technological progress is equated with improvement. Yet the only individuals who have come through the technological revolution – those decades of breathtaking change between room-sized computing machines to ubiquitous apps – are the baby boomers and their immediate predecessors, and what their attitudes and experiences have to teach us is what Concordia Communications professor Kim Sawchuk’s 7-year, $2.99m grant will be looking for.
“I’ve been working on issues of digital technology for the past 20-25 years,” said Sawchuk of the Ageing, Communication, Technologies (ACT) initiative. Sawchuk’s career, as well as her experience as a feminist media scholar and collaborator in community-based learning projects, will help her in her work. “This project to a certain extent is an extension of that kind of impetus but as well is taking into account two really large megatrends in our society,” she said of her passionate curiosity on the effects of the circuit on the modern man.
Like Reimer, Sawchuk’s project will cross international boundaries and include dozens of fellow researchers in opening up the discussion on how older adults use technology in a rapidly aging society with an increasing predominance towards mobile and digital communication.
A good part of the research will be gathering data and dispelling stereotypes. Sawchuk is keen to clear up misconceptions tied to digital ageism. (Or, as she puts it, the idea “that young people are just born knowing computers and digital media and older people aren’t.”)
Take for example the notion that all seniors past a certain cutoff like retirement – what she calls the ‘grey zone’ – are homogenous without taking into effect their sometimes widely different experiences with gadgetry. By carefully untangling concepts and analyzing them, the researchers aim to explore the shifting and fluid concept of age under various cultural, national, and urban/rural contexts.
“The whole question is not to just accept age as a demographic variable [but] to really ask the question: how do we age well, and [about] the art of aging given our new media environment,” she said.
“We’re asking questions on how we can set up intergenerational connections between different types of users of technology and within media studies [and] trying to shift the focus away from a preoccupation on young people,” she said on the importance of giving the experiences of older adults proper weight.
She’s quick to point out that contrary to popular beliefs, plenty of studies show septuagenarians, octogenarians, and beyond taking up computers – and others show them choosing to consciously opt-out. By finding out how seniors are integrated into network societies, and how they are not policies and strategies, could be developed in increasing their inclusion at a time given when the digital landscape forces certain exigencies forced on them.
“You can say they’re cynical [about modern technology] but what it is is that they’re realistic about what it will do for them. Older people don’t tend to care about cool, they tend to care about whether or not it is useful for them to maintain connections and to get what they need to get done done,” she said. Yet sometimes this leaves them behind the curve; for example as when care facilities relying on landlines to keep families in touch while communicating with the families themselves have shifted to Skype and webcams.
“It is asking the question of what it is they actually do know that may have to teach us about the present technologically-saturated world we live in.”
RPLC: The importance of Rural and Northern communities
Retired Concordia sociology professor William Reimer, meanwhile, will be using his 40+ years of experience with Canada’s northern and rural communities to begin work on systemizing and exploring the complex workings of such communities and their relationship with urban centres for the sake of better, more informed policy formulation.
Photo by robWall on Flickr
Reimer said the $2.5 million received for his project, called the Rural Police Learning Commons (RPLC), won’t be so much for research purposes as for the fostering of partnerships with other organizations and individuals.
His research over the years has pointed to a decline in small communities (a wide definition that, albeit roughly, encompasses small and oftentimes unique population centers outside the commuting sheds of metropolitan areas) far from cities – save those tied to mining, oil, or special touristic advantages like Banff. The amenities of rural communities rely much more on the delicate balance of social services pooled from their limited population. Should these shrink, a domino effect takes hold. “That whole package of services starts to shrink and gets into a kind of a cycle whereby that makes the place less attractive and in turn more people move out – [it becomes] a cycle of decline which can be very problematic for [their] sustainability,” Reimer said.
Meanwhile rural areas adjoining urban centres are facing the opposite problem, as a population eager to leave the cities stream in a move that alters their fundamental identities as rural areas.
Seeing as these regions serve as crucial intermediaries for Canada’s food production and resource extraction, understanding the reasons behind the changes and better understanding northern and rural groups are of critical importance.
Reimer says his experience working with large networks will aid in increasing cohesion between the approximately 30 institutional participants and 60 individual partners. As he describes it, his job will be figuring out how to operate under such circumstances.
“The problems of simply coordinating and communicating become extremely difficult, but on the other hand there are tremendous advantages because it means we get the opportunity to find out what’s happening in Norway or Italy or the U.S. and so on, and what they’ve done that have ameliorated some of the challenges we’re facing here and vice versa.”
To build and maintain connections, Reimer and those working with him plan to attend many conferences and events and videoconferencing when physical presence is impossible. He calls the project a tremendous opportunity for students and participating faculty, and says the efforts will be very interdisciplinary. Not only sociologists will be present, but social workers, economists, those in the health and environmental sciences, and geographers, among others.
“A lot of these types of analysis require perspectives from these many different disciplines,” he said, highlighting the special role of both Canadian and Quebecois participation..
“From a research point of view it’s a fantastic blessing,” he said of our geographical breadth. Canada’s sheer size means “you can’t have a one-size-fits-all type of policy, because of variation”
Quebec, aside from its colourful range of unique rural communities, is also the only province with a rural policy governing the political and economic relationship between government and non-metropolitan regions.
“There’s plenty that’s going on in Canada, and particularly in Quebec, that’s of great interest to other countries.”
The project’s seven-year lifespan may seem like a long time, but it’s really just the beginning.
“If we’re looking at the long term consequences, our objective would be to establish a robust partnership network that will go on beyond the seven years. We don’t know what the pressing issues are going to be in seven years. We can’t set up a mechanism to address them all but what we can do is set up a mechanism whereby the people who are most likely to be informed and the people we want to train for this uncertain future are well equipped,” he said.
“Our objective is to make sure there’s a strong, well connected, informative, collaborative network established by the time our seven years are up.”
The Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA), Concordia’s largest faculty organization, recently voted to add $16,000 in additional expenses to bring an already red budget deficit to a total of $61,000.
VP Finance Melina Ghio explained that the deficit is a response to rising costs, inflation, and additional funds given to ASFA’s member associations (MAs), which are department specific student associations. She says two budgets were originally proposed during council deliberations back in June.
“There was one option where we did not have a deficit, where we had cut majorly where we could …so you ended up having a zero dollar deficit,” she said of the so-called ‘Thrifty Budget.’ These cuts would have been to variable costs, like administration.
Ultimately the council decided on adopting the ‘Generous Budget’ over the one that would have curtailed costs and eliminated the gap. Originally, before additional costs were voted in late August, the previewed deficit was at $44,000.
“The reason, I think, that council thought it was best to go to the generous budget is that we’re going to look into increasing our fee levy this year,” Ghio said. “Economically speaking, ASFA’s income has been fairly stable — our main source of income has been the fee levy, by far. Essentially the fee levy is the source of our income.”
Comparing last year’s budget to this year’s showed the fee levy income (which currently accounts for around 75 per cent of ASFA’s revenue) to have increased by less than $2,800, while expenses have in some cases gone up dramatically. Currently, the fee levy for ASFA stands at $1.22 per credit per student.
“That [fee levy] has not increased, but MAs…need more money,” Ghio said. She believed the fee levy discussions and changes would most likely come next year, but couldn’t commit to any firm dates.
“Nothing’s been set in stone…but we definitely want to look towards covering most of…the deficit [with the fee levy],” she answered to the question of how big the increase would be, saying several more weeks would be required to crunch the math and come up with accurate numbers.
Alongside factors like election expenses and the creation of a communications coordinator position, ASFA purchased a printer and related office supplies for some of the MAs located at the Loyola campus.
“Instead of imposing it on their budget, FinCom thought it would be better to have it as part of ASFA’s budget,” she said. Counting the supplies, printer, and surrounding expenses, it added $1,500 to the bill.
“If [the fee levy hike] doesn’t pass, ASFA has enough money in its bank account to account for the deficit,” assured Ghio, though she would not say how much of a surplus the ASFA coffers contained.
Aside from fee levies, Ghio did say there has already been a higher-than-expected profit from ASFA’s first event of the year, Frosh Week. “When we hold events, there’s a certain amount of money that comes in from our events, but not much,” she said, saying Frosh had earned around $5,000 more than anticipated.
In any case, the VP explained that previous experience has shown budget spending to be more prudent than the figures show.
“Generally speaking, according to the budgets that we make, we don’t spend as much as we anticipate. To look at ASFA historically, I’d say we anticipate spending more money than we do over the course of the years.” She says MAs, for example, typically organize less activities than planned because of time constraints and other commitments.
She also said the deficits were broadly proportionate to those of other organizations like the CSU, which she says will also be asking for a fee levy increase to cope with rising expenses.
“We didn’t want to be in a situation where we end up with a crash,” she said at the fattening of the budget and in relation to previous financial difficulties encountered by Concordia student organizations.
NOTE: An earlier version of this article stated that fixed costs would be reduced in the Thrifty Budget. As these costs are fixed, they would not be reduced with this plan.
It was also stated that ASFA’s cost for students per credit is $9.75, when it is in fact $1.22.
Gender action group Dragonroot Media partners with CGA to strengthen its mission
After several years of dedication as Montreal’s feminist and gender-issue radio program, newly expanded Dragonroot Media (formerly Dragonroot Radio) has tightened ties with Concordia’s Centre for Gender Advocacy by rebranding itself as an action group in an effort to provide better services.
Originally started in the fall of 2011 and broadcasting over McGill’s CKUT 90.3 FM radio station, the show has been shining a light on gender-specific topics by reporting on events and exploring issues with activists and intellectuals.
“I feel like being part of Dragonroot for the past few years has really shaped my politics, and everybody I speak to [on the show] shapes and changes how I understand issues. It’s been pretty rewarding in that way,” said Hannah Besseau, host-turned-coordinator for the program who, among others, has been behind the move that will see Dragonroot Media, completely run by volunteers, restructured to increase its scope and resources.
The organization has always had a close relationship with the Centre for Gender Advocacy. When the Centre began looking to create a stronger bond with surrounding groups, Dragonroot’s passion came foremost to their mind and they were encouraged to apply as an action group, a designation allowing for it to receive operational and promotional funding and other benefits.
“Who better to make a better action group than Dragonroot?” asked Besseau rhetorically on the eve of last week’s fundraising concert at La Sala Rossa. She said the increased visibility of the group will allow it to reach a bigger audience and tackle larger projects, but also stressed the group will remain as it was before.
“Now that we’ve [got] an action group status, we’re hoping make our radio content better. We want to find different ways to approach gender content on the radio. We’re also working on a new website to post more things, and we’re doing a call-out for editors to produce more content.”
The recruitment drive is an effort on part of the group to remain true to its origins as a consensus-based collective but adopt an editorial model that will create several longer-lasting positions to ensure volunteers will still be able to come and go as before without interrupting content consistency. A small core of well-defined roles and positions will ensure sections of Dragonroot Media, like their blog, which has suffered from bouts of inactivity in the past, don’t re-occur. Besseau believes the permanence will enable a mentorship program to take hold that will help those interested in media and willing to assume a more prominent role in gender awareness hone their abilities and confidence.
“We really want to have a space where people can come and learn media skills, specifically for gender topics. That way, we’ll have people constantly engaging and learning. [We’ll be] putting the microphone, so to speak, in the hands of those who it would benefit.”
Dragonroot Media’s weekly radio program runs every Tuesday on CKUT 90.3 FM at 8:30 – 9 p.m. If you’re interested in contributing or keeping up to date with the project, find for them on Facebook or Twitter.
