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ConU admin seeks help from province

Concordia administration has asked different government ministries to investigate the Concordia Student Union (CSU) on the grounds that they are going against their legal mandate.
In a press release dated Oct. 5, the university asked the general inspector of financial institutions, the Quebec ministry of education and the minister of justice to investigate whether the actions of the current CSU executives goes against their legal mandate.
“These are ludicrous claims,” said Sabrina Stea, president of the CSU, “These allegations are off the wall and I don’t know if they have actually read it. They are missing the context.”
“We are not in a position to do something,” said Dennis Murphy, Concordia’s executive director of communications. “Following the general assembly, we saw that students were dissatisfied with the executive and after receiving numerous complaints, we brought the matter to the province.”
Murphy added that Education Minister, Fran?ois Legault, said that he would not get involved because it was an internal matter and students will take care of it themselves. Nonetheless, Rector and Vice-Chancellor Frederick Lowy will be meeting with representatives of the education minisrty to discuss the handbook and other matters relating to the CSU.
Legault also said in a press conference that
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Copies of handbook given to CSIS & MUC

Concordia’s controversial handbook is in the hands of the Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS), according to the legal counsel for B’Nai Brith Canada.
“Copies have been given to the Attorney General, the Montreal Urban Community (MUC) police and CSIS. This matter has gone beyond Concordia,” said Steven Slimovitch, the legal counsel for B’Nai Brith Canada. “This is a matter that has nothing to do with protest, nothing to do with freedom of expression and it has clearly transcended university politics. This is now a document to be investigated by CSIS.”
The agenda includes artwork of a jet crashing into a room full of men in suits and advice on how to carry out illegal action. One page reads “do not leave a paper trail that could lead the police to suspect you.”
“I hope the matter is pursued on an investigative, terrorist and criminal level,” said Slimovitch.
Investigating threats to the security of Canada, CSIS would not comment on whether or not they are looking into the issue. “Operational details cannot be discussed,” said Chantal Lapalme, a CSIS public relations officer.
Concordia Student Union (CSU) President Sabrina Stea said the events of Sept. 11 have left people with heightened paranoia. “For B’Nai Brith to assume we knew anything about Sept. 11 is completely preposterous,” said Stea.
Slimovitch said he would have expected police to find a document like the agenda during a search of a fringe or underground organization, not as an agenda openly distributed on campus.
“I am really scared. Scared of what is happening to our university,” said Stea. “It means free speech and critical thinking is out the window.”
According to Slimovitch, the agenda goes beyond free speech. “Your right to free speech ends when your exercise of free speech calls for violence against others. There is no right, under the guise of free speech, to advocate the commission of a criminal offense. There isn’t a court in the land that will support that view.”
B’Nai Brith Canada wants the handbook publication removed and the university to establish a policy to never associate itself with this type of material again. “The agenda is an open call to violence against establishment with a clearly anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist slant,” said Slimovitch.
However Stea said the handbook gives marginalized students a place to express themselves. “The agenda is about diversity of opinion.”
The CSU has also received a backlash from the university administration. “We certainly don’t think it represents the views of all students. For some students it may even be an imposition of views they don’t want to hear,” said Dennis Murphy, the executive director of communications at Concordia. “It has become an issue that has caused a lot of significant problems for Concordia students, staff and faculty.”
Murphy pointed out that the CSU is an autonomous organization that the university has no authority over. He said it was unfortunate that the university was linked to the handbook even though the agenda is entirely a matter of the CSU.
“It’s bad advertising for the university, it gives the university a negative image that it doesn’t deserve and technically isn’t associated with,” said Murphy. “It detracts from the extremely positive work people have being doing in the last number of years.”
Wary advertisers have said they will think carefully next year before including their ads in the Concordia student agenda. Murphy added he is not surprised advertisers are unhappy.
“I”ll have to think twice about doing an ad with you [Concordia],” said a spokesperson for Greiche and Scaff Optometrists, who wished to remain unnamed. Greiche and Scaff received a number of angry complaints from citizens who were upset that the company was associated with the controversial agenda, according to the spokesperson. “We’ve had to explain ourselves for the last four days. We had no idea what would be written in the agenda. We trusted Concordia as a university.”
The Peel Pub will want to see a copy of the contents of the agenda next year before deciding to place its advertisement. “We will be more careful next time,” said Sterios Mimidakis, the general manager for Peel Pub.
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Provincial government offers mass vaccination

Concordia Health Services will be holding a vaccination campaign from October to December against
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Animal rights group oppose Thanksgiving turkey slaughter

“Thanksgiving is murder on turkeys,” claims the Concordia Animal Rights Association (CARA), as the group launched a campaign Oct. 4 to coincide with the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) national effort.
“No living creature should be killed or held in horrid conditions,” said Jenn Mosher, member of CARA and the executive administrative assistant for the CSU. “There are alternatives out there.”
In an effort to deter people from eating turkey on the holiday, the university group was handing out rolls of mock turkey and meat substitutes for students to try, instead of the traditional holiday bird. As well, CARA passed out vegetarian recipes which excluded the gobbling fowl from the menu.
Some reaction from students, however, showed that kicking the habit of eating meat on Thanksgiving may take a bit more than cold turkey.
“A lot of people were hesitant to try [the substitutes],” said Mosher. “But a lot of people were surprised at the taste.”
PETA held similar campaigns in cities across Canada last week, including Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary.
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Interesting times for IITS media labs

In a rush to remain modern, (IITS) technicians have been scrambling over the past few weeks on a refurbishing project of Concordia’s largest classrooms. As a result, the media labs at the Sir George Williams (SGW) and Loyola campuses were closed for the first month of classes.
“It’s because we’re giving priority to classrooms that the media labs have been closed,” explained Jessica Jodoin, a technician at the Loyola IITS.
The technicians have been working on a $1-million dollar revamping project on 60 Concordia classrooms, 12 rooms at Loyola and the rest around the SGW campus. Their work includes installing new LCD projectors, new slide machines, hook-ups for teachers’ laptops, as well as the usual updating of TVs and VCRs.
However, Jodoin said that IITS is two months behind schedule, understaffed, and competing with students for time in the classrooms. This did not leave IITS staff with time to tend to the media labs. “We have to run all over… they have to hire more staff. September for us this year has been a nightmare.”
IITS is the academic technologies branch of the university and is a service to the university, taking care of such varied needs as computer rooms, equipment depots for students and teachers, maintaining in-class equipment, setting up websites for classes and departments, and providing media labs for students at both campuses.
However there are fewer people to handle these responsibilities than last year. A source at the media labs in the Hall Building, who wanted to remain anonymous, said budget cut-backs have forced the facilities to get rid of 10 part-time employees during the summer. The source equated the labour lost to six full-time positions. Now there is a bare-bones crew of four full-timers and no more workshops available in video and sound editing.
Full-time workers at the IITS facilities at Loyola lost a total of 11 man-hours. Also, the total amount of hours per week that the media labs are open has been reduced by more than half.
According to Director of IITS Andrew McAusland, the money IITS has been free to spend on part-time help has been brought back down to its original budget of three years ago, from $200,000 to $10,000. “We need to make sure funds that go into this thing are funds that are correctly applied.”
McAusland had a different story as to what was the situation with the media labs during the first weeks. “No, they [were] not closed.” McAusland is also the Director for Academic Technologies for the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, and came into the IITS job seven months ago.
Media labs changing hands
There are two situations that throw cogs in the IITS’ wheels, the lesser of which being complications in plans to move the Loyola IITS to the second floor of the Central Building (CC) to give more space to the dean of students office. But what has more IITS technicians gossiping are the plans to transfer ownership of both media labs to the faculty of fine arts by January 2002.
“We’re putting them closer to the people who use them. This is a rationalization of the services,” said McAusland.
There are conflicting reports as to who ran the media labs during the summer. McAusland said it was a test period for the fine arts faculty, others said that was just a memo. Although fine arts assistant dean of academics Andrea Fairchild admitted that the majority of her students use the facilities, she would not comment on what was her faculty’s involvement with the media labs during the summer, nor on how the transfer process is going other than saying it was premature to speculate on the outcome.
There are also discrepancies as to which faculties are the clientele of the media labs. According to McAusland, only five per cent of media labs users come from faculties other than the Fine Arts.
Although Jodoin agreed that many of the students who use the facilities at Loyola are either fine arts or communication students, she added that marketing and exercise sciences students also use the equipment. Jodoin questioned what access students and teachers in other faculties would have to multi-media facilities if the Fine Arts Faculty were to take over. McAusland assured that all students would have access to the machines.
He added that moving the labs closer to the people who use them, administratively speaking, would allow for a greater degree of communication between the students’ needs and what services are actually provided. “Students come in with expectations that we’re having a hard time keeping up with [them]. We should not be responsible in saying how academics develop, and really that’s what at play here.”
However Jodoin said that IITS had to service students as a whole. “The media labs are where we know what students are doing and where we should be going. You lose that and you lose touch with what we should be offering.”
As for now the media labs have resumed services, albeit shorter hours. The Loyola and SGW media labs now run from 10 a.m. till 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays.
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Reporters need to talk about trauma

Helping journalists deal with post-traumatic stress was the goal behind the Canadian Association of Journalists’ (CAJ) lecture on Oct. 4, which was entitled “Aftershock: Taking the Trauma Out of Covering Tragedy”.
Sponsored by the journalism department, the event took place at the Russell Breen Senate Chamber and was planned long before the Sept. 11th tragedy. The lecture did not respond to Sept. 11.
The panel included Meg Moritz, the associate dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Colorado, who also produced the documentary “Covering Columbine” which showed how journalists felt about reporting on the high school tragedy.
Another panelist was Robert Frank, who is the Montreal stringer for the New York Times and the executive director of Newscoverage Unlimited.
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Community lecture brings assistance to the forefront

On Sept. 27 a Community Lecture Series on AIDS/HIV held a lecture entitled “Frontline South Africa: Treatment Access on Trial”, which stressed the importance of pharmaceutical companies to provide essential medicines to people with AIDS in South Africa.
The Community Lecture Series was put on by the Lecture Series Project, director Thomas Waugh and was sponsored by various companies including the dean of students office.
“We cannot save people because the pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell the patents for the medicines to companies in South Africa,” said Mark Heywood who is the head of the AIDS Law Project and is also the National Secretary of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
Major pharmaceutical companies have been refusing to provide antibiotics for more than 24 million people with HIV and AIDS in South Africa because they would be losing property rights by letting local drug companies in South Africa create the medicines.
“The pharmaceutical companies are abusing their rights to patents, which set the prices for medicines, for people that cannot afford them,” explained Heywood.
Even after the Medicine and Related Substance Control Amendment Act was passed in May of 1997 in South Africa, pharmaceutical companies still managed to block the implementation of the act until April 2000.
“Because these companies are refusing [to give] medicine, they are speeding up the HIV epidemic,” said Heywood. In March of this year, the TAC managed to stop the pharmaceutical companies from blocking the act, but the companies are still fighting it.
Another issue that is plaguing the massive amount of sufferers is the role of the South African government. As the epidemic was increasing between 1992 to 1994, the South African government was in the process of political change. This resulted in the politicians giving the AIDS crisis less of a priority.
“The AIDS epidemic is now so visibly a problem that the new democratic president cannot ignore it,” said Heywood.
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This is what democracy looks like

Students voted overwhelmingly against expelling some corporations from Concordia at the Sept. 26 general assembly. The general assembly was called by the Concordia Student Union (CSU) President, Sabrina Stea.
Students also voted to allow the Engineering and Computer science Association (ECA) and the Commerce and Administration Student Association (CASA) councils to select their own representatives for the university governing bodies of the Board of Governors (BoG) and the university senate.
Stea said that the subjects for the general assembly were decided by students, councillors and employees of the student union.
She added that about 750 attended the general assembly. Quorum for assemblies is about 550 people.
Another motion that was voted upon, before the general assembly lost quorum was on whether Concordia should expel Bell Helicopters Textron Canada (BHTC), Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) and Nortel Networks. The motion stated that these corporations had supplied the tools of war to bloody operations all the world, where human rights were being violated at the hands of the military.
David Bernans, the CSU researcher, supported the motion at the general assembly.
He had also written a controversial article about some of the corporations that were to be expelled.
Students for the motion said the situation in Columbia was as an example of what these corporations were doing. Those in opposition to the motion concentrated on the potential loss of job opportunity and financing.
Speaker Seana Miller appealed to students and cautioned them to remember that five companies had already withdrawn from the CASA and ECA career fairs, as they felt they had been accused of corporate crimes. She warned students that passing such a motion would send a strong message of anti-corporatism to companies.
Jason Leigh said students might suffer from the passing of the motion and suggested a more active approach. “These companies provide us with jobs. What are we going to do when they pack up and leave? The best thing that could happen would be for us to be recruited by these companies, and once we’re in, work to change their policies.”
“Students voted overwhelmingly ‘nay’ on this motion. I heard someone say ‘This is the day that students took the student union back.’ It was important that this general assembly happened because the executive is not compromising with students,” said Chris Schulz.
The other two issues on the agenda, a motion to re-instate expelled students Tom Keefer and Laith Marouf, the capital campaign fee motion and a motion of sympathy to the victims of New York were not discussed as quorum was called and it was found that it was lost.
Stea added that she wished that students had discussed more at the general assembly.
Additional reporting by Diana Thibeault
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Hundreds mark intifada anniversary

Anger, hope and resignation were all in evidence as pro-Palestinian protesters marched through downtown Montreal on Sept. 29.
“This rally is in commemoration of the Intifada [Palestinian uprising],” said Sami Nazzal, president of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), the student association that organized the rally. “We also want to send a message about the backlash against Arabs and Muslims [in light of the attack on the U.S.], because it’s totally unfair to punish people according to their ethnicity.”
The rally started in front of Concordia University’s Sir George Williams (SGW) campus and drew between three and five hundred people. Armed with banners and slogans like “settlements are illegal,” “684 killed,” “328 houses demolished” and “Sharon is a war criminal,” the protesters made their way towards the Israeli consulate on the corner of Peel and Rene Levesque.
They called on Israel to fully withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza strip (which Israel occupied in 1967), to stop demolishing Palestinian houses, to stop expanding Israeli settlements, and to respect Palestinian human rights.
“What we want is justice according to international law and the Geneva
convention. Apply it and there won’t be any problems,” said Nazzal. “I would advise everybody to go read the Amnesty International reports, and they will show you how many articles of the Geneva convention the Israeli army is violating everyday.”
“Don’t forget the children in Israeli jails,” said another protester.
Several protesters complained about the Israeli law that automatically allows anyone who is Jewish to get Israeli citizenship.
“The Jews in Israel have so many choices,” said Ghada Shahrour, a Lebanese student. “They can either stay there and live in peace, and stop importing people from outside, or, and this is the better choice, they can go back to their lands.”
However, not everybody agreed with the protesters. One bystander was disturbed by an Israeli flag with the word “slayer” spray painted on it in red. “Why do they have to do this,” he asked, slowly shaking his head.
A woman with him was also shocked. “To blame Israel and to say it is doing wrong to them is very wrong because [Arabs] were the aggressors,” she said.
Another angry bystander shouted at the protesters, his face turning red with frustration. “Bush is going to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget,” he said, “what they think they can go and kill people and then come out and march and tell us we’re all wrong. You ought to imprison these people, because all these people are going to come and try to kill Canadians now.”
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Photographer roughed up

During last Saturday’s Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) rally, Concordian photographer Mike Pochwat was hassled by several protesters wearing scarves over their faces. The march organizers said they are not sure who the men were.
Pochwat said it started when he tried to photograph CSU President Sabrina Stea, who was marching in the rally. “The people around her covered her with flags.
They came up and used their chests to block my camera. They said, ‘no, you can’t photograph her.'”
When Pochwat moved on to photograph other parts of the rally, he noticed several men, who he thought were protest marshals, keeping watch on him.
They continued to block his photographs. “There was a group of three guys, sometimes five guys, that were following me,” he said. According to Pochwat, one of them said, “if you come here again and take any photos of anybody, you’ll be sorry you met me.”
Sami Nazzal, president of SPHR Concordia, said that the men were not parade marshals. He said that one woman had been following Pochwat, because march organizers did not want him taking pictures without people’s permission.
“He was annoying people and he was aggressive,” said Nazzal. “He was there, too close to people’s faces, taking pictures.” Nazzal added that many Muslim women in particular take offense to being photographed without their permission. “All they tried to do was maintain order and keep the peace,” said Nazzal, in regards to the protest marshals.
“I don’t appreciate people coming up to me specifically and taking my picture,” said Stea. “The photographer was standing beside someone from The Suburban, a paper that has a vendetta against us [the CSU],” she added. Stea was referring to Albert S
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Concordia rector finds student union disruptive

Tensions flared up at the Sept. 26 Board of Governors (BoG) meeting, where Rector Frederick Lowy expressed his extreme annoyance and disappointment with the Concordia Student Union (CSU) and its current leadership.
The meeting became a strained and tense affair when it was time for Lowy to make his report. He described to the BoG that the university’s very public “black eye” that was the result of the disruptive events that had taken place over the summer. He described his relations with the CSU as having been fairly harmonious for the first three years of his tenure. The last three years had become acrimonious as the CSU became more and more confrontational when it dealt with the university’s administration.
He used the CSU’s recently published student handbook as an example of just how bad the situation had become. He denounced the Intifada editorial and condemned a number of articles published throughout the book as being mean-spirited and irresponsible. “Sally Spilhouse [Advisor of the office of rights and responsibilities] is not a racist,” he added.
Lowy was also dismayed by the “Steal Something Today” article. He described the appalled reaction to the student’s handbook as he described the quality and the quantity of e-mails, faxes and letters he had received ever since the handbook had been released. “This gives the university a bad image.”
The rector was looking directly at CSU President Sabrina Stea when he said this and finished his report by telling her that the university would be always willing to co-operate with the student union, but “it takes two to tango.”
A motion of support for Lowy’s actions over the summer, especially the banning of two students from the university, was easily passed by the board.
Jack Lightstone, provost and vice-rector research, said the CSU has been high-jacked by a small group of activists who have little to do with student life here at Concordia.
Michael Di Grappa, the vice-rector of services demanded to know from Stea just what was meant by expelled CSU vp internal Laith Marouf’s comment, “In two weeks, you’ll be sorry!” Stea said that it was a legal affair.
Lowy’s remarks also included the news of a rise in student enrollment just as enrollments in the rest of the province were in decline. He was pleased to comment upon the quality and the variety of the programs presently offered by the university.
He also announced that the university would be hiring over a hundred and fifty new professors over the next two year and that here were more international and out of province students than ever before. He was happy to state that the university’s reputation has been much improved and that the university debt was eliminated.