Category: News

OTTAWA – “Just because something has a plot, doesn’t necessarily mean it is a plot.”
With that, Mark Frutkin neatly summed up the attitude of several top Canadian writers gathered in Ottawa on Sunday. They attended in support of a Cornwall-area high school student jailed last month for writing a fictional tale
of a bullied kid planning to blow up his school.
The event, held in the theatre of the National Arts Centre, attracted some 400 supporters, along with many of Canada’s literary elite, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Christopher Levinson, and Michelle Desbarats, among others. Celebrity journalists Patrick Watson and Laurier Lapierre played host to
a round of readings, followed by a public forum centred on a 12-member panel of distinguished authors, creative writing teachers, and academics.
The Cornwall-area student, who can’t be named under the Young Offenders Act, was charged last December with uttering threats in a story called “Twisted”, which he read to his class. He has already served 34 days in jail, and is currently out on bail.
While the teen and his parents were on hand Sunday, organizers cancelled a public reading of his controversial story, saying they hoped to draw attention away from the teen and back to the greater issue of freedom of expression.
Despite being billed as “Artists For Freedom of Speech”, much of the discussion focused instead on violence in schools, bullying, and continuing cutbacks to education. Many parents of bullied kids argued that schools no longer have the resources to deal appropriately with troubled students.
“What bothered me the most was that this poor kid was bullied so much,” said author Charles de Lint. “And the people who should have helped him just bullied him more.”
Merilyn Simonds, whose work on the printed version of “The Valour and the Horror” landed her in a $500-million libel suit, noted that the bullies aren’t just in the schoolyards and that intimidation and censorship go hand-in-hand.
“It’s a wonderful thing when people in society have a chance to get up and speak,” said Simonds, adding that voices should never be silenced simply because others object to them or disagree.
For author Wayne Grady, this isn’t only undemocratic, it’s also dangerous.
“One of the things that artists do is to channel their fears into art,” said
Grady. “Writers channel anger into words. It’s a safety valve.”
This sentiment was echoed earlier by Michael Ondaatje, who spoke of writing as a
means of venting his frustrations as a teen.
“In the end, writers will write from their hearts, and that’s what this kid was
arrested for,” said de Lint.
However, even here a line can be crossed, according to Civil Libertarian Randal
Marlin, who read aloud the provisions of the Criminal Code against hate crimes and uttering threats.
“Uttering threats is right there in the code,” said Marlin.
However, it’s considered a crime only if there is a “reasonable assumption” that those threats will be carried out, he added.
“Just because I’m made to feel afraid doesn’t mean the person I’m afraid of should be carted off to jail,” said Marlin.
In his view, given the present environment, and in the wake of recent high school shootings, it may not have been unreasonable for police to investigate the Cornwall student’s alleged threats.
“But, when they found nothing, it should have ended there.”

Michael Farnan, a 27 year-old sculpting student from Saskatchewan, puts our abundance of snow to good use. Over the past four days, Farnan turned two tons of snow into a scene of people carving a bust of Jesus Christ’s head. Farnan wants his snow sculpture to reflect the religious tones of the Loyola campus, once a Catholic college. Farnan plans to build two more snow sculptures for the Loyola campus, and one in the VA courtyard. His works are part of a bigger project being organized by the Concordia faculty of Fine Arts called “Art Matters.”

Concordia has been criticized in the mainstream media for allowing students to defer their exams so they can protest at the summit of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) this April in Quebec City.
“The media has misinterpreted the reason why we let students postpone their exams. Clearly the media has only looked at the matter superficially,” said Frederick Lowy, Concordia’s Rector and Vice-Chancellor.
It has been interpreted by the media that Concordia University was taking a position against the FTAA summit. However, that is not the case, Lowy said.
“It would be impossible to take a political position on something like this, since there are over 20 thousand students and over 3 thousand staff and faculty.
There can be no single opinion,” he said.
Lowy insisted that Concordia has done the right thing to encourage students to take part and be involved in the social process. “It is important for students to become engaged in social concerns, since many young people are uninterested in public affairs. Besides, Concordia students may be society’s leaders of
tomorrow,” said Lowy.
“This is an issue of academic freedom. Students should be allowed to be social critics,” said CSU President Rob Green.
According to Lowy, there are risks in allowing students the flexibility to protest. Concordia could be perceived as taking a political position, but the benefits outweigh the risks.
“It is a risk worth taking since there is value for students to be engaged in the important events of the day,” said Lowy.
Last Friday, the senate passed a motion allowing students to postpone their exams only on the days that the summit is taking, April 20-24. The motion encouraged professors and departments to be as flexible as possible and that students who wish to attend the summit must write to the department chair, the professor and the registrar.
The main issue that worried senators was the abuse of this motion. To curb potential abuse, the motion stated that students must ask permission to postpone exams by no later than March 15, 2001.
A final date will be set at the senate meeting of Feb. 2.
“I believe that making students ask far ahead for permission will root out those who would use it to get more time for studying,” said Green.
Some students disagreed with Lowy and Green’s opinion.
“I am against it because I think it is stupid to demonstrate. There are other channels through which to protest, like your MP,” said James De Silva an engineering student.
“It’s not necessary to protest. I think the FTAA is a good thing for the global economy in the long run,” said Clavin Weeks, a finance student.
“Students have the right to pursue knowledge and to challenge both popular and unpopular ideas, as well as to explore different points of view and to experiment with ideas. This is what university is all about,” said Lowy.

There is a possibility that Concordia university will no longer manage its parking lots.
According to Michael Di Grappa, vice rector (services), if the change were to take place there would be no significant changes for users.
“The university is not in the parking lot business and I believe that if the lots were managed by a parking lot company then students, faculty and staff would get better service,” said Di Grappa.
“There is no deadline for the possible change and the format would be the same,” said Bob MacIver, director of auxiliary services.
Currently, the Garda security company in responsible for running the parking lots on both campuses. With a change of management in the lots, Garda would cease patrolling them.
Di Grappa assures that the level of security would not go down. “Security is (includes) both staff and equipment, like lighting and cameras. The parking lot employees can be trained to deal with emergencies,” said Di Grappa.
He also added that if the change in management were to occur, the parking employees would be taught the procedures regarding communication with the security desks.

The Quebec component of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) is usually a participant of the cross-Canada “Day of Action” against cuts to education, but it has not yet decided on the topic of protest this year.
The demonstration, which usually takes place in early February, is a combined effort by all provincial chapters of the CFS and takes aim at an issue of importance to students throughout the nation.
Suggested topics for this year’s demonstration include the suggested $4-billion cuts to education leaked by a member of the Quebec government last week. The CFS has not yet made any final decisions.
This year, the CFS has turned its attention towards the planned protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meetings in Quebec City.
“By and large, what we are focusing on is the FTAA,” said Dave Conti, secretary-treasurer of the CFS. “We meet as a component to discuss plans of action every week, but it is the one that is requiring most of our attention at
this time.”
The CFS has been busy working with members of various coalitions in preparation for April’s events, including FTAA alert groups, as well as setting up workshops, spreading the word and organizing buses and billeting for students
who plan to attend.

Quebec has one of the better education systems in the country, according to a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
But being at the top of rankings might only be a dubious honour, said Erika Shaker, director of the CCPA Education Project and a co-author of the report.
“Being in first place does not mean you’re the best. It means you’re the least bad,” she said. “There’s a good deal of room for improvement.”
The CCPA used data available free from Statistics Canada. That meant it could only do comparisons by province, not by institution.
Quebec has the lowest college and university tuition in Canada. It also had the most low-income earners with a post-secondary education.
Its provincial government pays more than 67 per cent of the costs of post-secondary education, the highest rate in any province. “This is something we hold very highly,” Shaker said.
But student-professor ratios in Quebec colleges and universities are increasing, and only 25.3 per cent of the faculty are women, placing Quebec in ninth place.
Quebec also has a low participation rate: only 16.4 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds attend college and university.
The CCPA began its ranking of post-secondary education last year. “We were concerned that conventional ranking systems focused too much on individual institutions. It doesn’t deal with the issues at hand,” Shaker said.
Individual rankings are flawed because they rely too much on reputation, she said.
“It doesn’t say anything about the quality of the innstitution. The size of alumni and the age of the institution will have an impact.” Comparing McGill and Concordia would be a good example of this, she said.
Shaker also thought it was admirable for Quebec to opt out of the federal government’s Millennium Scholarship program. “It’s a way for the federal government to justify the withdrawl of money from the [education] system, then putting the money back in.”
She also said many students could not fully benefit from the scholarchips anyway because some provinces deduct scholarship amounts from the maximum allowable student loan.
CSU President Rob Green agreed with many of the report’s findings, but was disappointed that ancillary fees – like Concordia’s administration fee – were not considered.
“That would have probably affected our rating for accessibility,” he said. “Overall, it’s pretty clear that for the race to the bottom, we’re losing – which is good.”
But Green feared Quebec’s policy-makers are bevoming increasing envious of Ontario’s right-wing policies when it comes to education.
Ontario placed last in the CCPA’s survey bacause of its soaring tuition, lack of provincial funding and poor student-faculty ratio.
Concordia’s administration is still looking into the study and has not yet commented.
You can find the study at www.policyalternatives.ca

The Concordia Student Union (CSU) recently switched phone companies in order to save money. The change caused confusion and chaos to clubs and organizations at the Loyola campus.
“We changed to AT&T because we were being charged about $40,000 a year by Bell and Telesis [the company set up by the university which deals with the administration and maintenance of the phone lines] and we wanted to save more money,” said Mistie Mullarkey the CSU’s VP Academic.
Another reason why the CSU switched was that Telesis would not give the CSU the breakdown of who was using their phone lines.
“It was ridiculous. We couldn’t get information on how many phone lines we had or who was using them,” said Mullarkey.
Previously, the CSU was being charged by Bell for the use of the phone lines and by Telesis for the administration and maintenance of the phone lines. “Overall Concordia benefits with Bell and Telesis, but for the CSU it is much cheaper to be with AT&T,” Mullarkey said.
Elias Makos, the station manager for CJLO at the Loyola campus wonders whether the switch was worth it. “The first day was horrible. Our contacts had a lot of trouble calling us and these contacts are crucial to our radio station. We never got our messages and we couldn’t call out. It was all very confusing and chaotic,” said Makos.
Makos never knew about the change until last Monday when he picked up the phone. “We weren’t informed by AT&T of the switch until the very last moment and there was no time to contact the clubs at Loyola,” said Mullarkey.
The switch occurred at the SGW campus in October. At the Loyola campus, it happened sometime over the holidays.
Last summer, the CSU’s General Manager Rick Stom and former VP Finance Sheryll Navidad tried to negotiate a better deal with Telesis, but the offer was not satisfactory. That is when the CSU decided to go with AT&T.
Because of the new telephone system is not part of Concordia University’s Telesis, those phoning from CSU lines must dial a seven-digit number instead of four digits to call other departments in the university.
When the CSU broke away from the contract with Bell, which was good for five more years, the university had to pay a stiff penalty fee. “The administration had to pay roughly a $60,000 penalty,” said Michael Di Grappa, Vice-Rector (services).
Mullarkey says that the CSU was not bound to the contract.
Being with AT&T, the CSU now knows how many phone lines they have. “We have about a hundred phone lines,” said Patrice Blais the Chair of the Council of Representatives and acting VP Finance, “and we will be cutting about ten of them that are not part of the CSU.”
According to Blais the CSU will save around $23,000 with AT&T. Cutting phone lines that are not used and those that do not belong to the CSU will save the union three thousand dollars.
Blais also discovered that under the previous system, the CSU was paying for their phone lines twice. “We would give money to clubs for their phone bills, but we had already paid for them. At the beginning this way of paying for phone bills was respected, but then it broke down over the years. The situation is now rectified,” added Blais.
Paying only once for the phone lines will add $10,000 to the coffers of the CSU. Not having to pay both Bell and Telesis will save the union another $10,000, since AT&T combines the costs for the phone lines and those for their administration.

Many undergraduate professors were late handing in their Fall 2000 grades, according to statistics from the registrar’s office.
As of Jan. 15, 1,890 grades were outstanding in 80 sections in Arts and Science. Twenty-nine grades were not received for five Commerce and Administrations sections, while 1,224 outstanding grades were registered for 60 Engineering and Computer Science sections. For 27 Fine Arts sections, 315 grades had not been reported.
The situation had improved by Jan. 23, with the number of outstanding grades dropping by more than half in all faculties.
Usually, professors have seven working days from their last examination to turn in class grades to the registrar’s office, said Concordia registrar Lynne Prendergast. Three more days are allotted to enter the data into the computer.
If students do not have a grade 10 days after their professor’s last exam, they should complain, Prendergast said.
She said she has no authority to force professors to submit their marks on time. “All I can do is make statements at senate [about how late things are].”

Students wishing to demonstrate in Quebec City during a meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) from Apr. 20 to 24 may apply for examination deferrals, Concordia’s senate decided last Friday.
Potential demonstrators must send a letter to their professor and department chair, asking for authorization. The deadline for such a letter will be determined at the next meeting of senate on Feb. 2.
In addition, the registrar’s office must be notified for the regular examination deferral process to take place.
The process for getting an exam deferral is more difficult for those who wish to attend the FTAA protests, said Concordia registrar Lynne Prendergast. Ordinarily, the consent of the professor and the department’s chair is not necessary.
Only non-graduating students are qualified for examination deferral.
Senators voted overwhelmingly to approve the motion, with only one opposing vote from Biology professor Clara Cupples.
At first, two senators expressed concern at the possibility of abuse by those who feel unprepared for an exam.
These were dismissed by senator Patrice Blais, also chair of the CSU council fo representatives.
He said he would find it shocking if anyone would go through so many layers of bureaucracy to be excused from an exam. It would be easier to get a note from Health Services, Blais joked.

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