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Frosh Survival Guide

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Katie Ingram, Opinions Columnist

After two months of class following the December holidays, Dalhousie gives students a well-deserved February break. We have one week off, but we’re expected to do work.
Even if we use this time to take a trip, or spend it at home, there are always assignments that are due the week back. Work prevents break from being a true vacation. Don’t fret though. You can keep all or most of the week focused on ‘breaking’, not studying.
If you are leaving Halifax for break, and you don’t want to have to take your work with you, there are two ways to ensure your suitcase is free of textbooks and notes.
If you know you have an assignment or two due after the break, you should do it whenever you have free time. This will make your workload over the next few days a bit larger, but it will definitely pay off in the end.
Also, try spending an extra hour doing homework each night. If you tend to stop doing work at 9 p.m., change it to 10 p.m. Take the extra hour to work out ideas for that essay, or start the first couple questions on that math assignment.
If you are trying to avoid reading over the break, try reading in class during breaks. Even if you only get a few pages done you’ll get a jump start for following week.
If you’re the type of person who wants to do work and assignments over the break, but still want to take time off, try dividing your week in two. Use the first half of the week to do work – then take the other half off.
Don’t spend the entire time doing work if you don’t have to.
Even though the week off is labelled a ‘study break’ you should make sure you have time to yourself that doesn’t revolve around assignments, lab reports, studying and essays. If you adopt this plan, you won’t feel guilty about taking time off because you will have accomplished something.
If you’re one of the unlucky students who have midterms immediately following break, then a solution to your problem becomes slightly trickier.
If you’re planning to leave, you can record your notes and listen to them when you’re on a plane, or lying on a beach somewhere. If you’re not taking a trip during the week, your best bet is to make sure you know what you need to study. That way you can devote at least half the week to studying, even if it’s only a couple hours a day.
No matter what you’re planning for study break, you don’t have to spend the entire time doing work. Get organized and you will start March knowing that you haven’t completely slacked off.
Remember, you’re a student and any time off is well-deserved!

Letters to the Editor

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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Canada still ahead of China

To the Editor,
I appreciate the overall sentiment in Justin Ling’s column, but his opening paragraph featured the line “but what makes Canada so much better (than China on human rights)?”
While the shutting down of needle clinics and the forced exodus of the homeless population is deplorable, come on! This is China versus Canada we’re talking about.
Every human rights issue  in China makes us look better.

— Connor Rosine, second-year journalism student at the University of King’s College

Dalhousie’s fall study day misses the mark

To the Editor,
It was with reservation that I heard that Dalhousie would be adding a fall study day next year. I wasn’t aware this was even being considered. I hadn’t heard much from fellow students actively desiring such a day, though anecdotally, some of my friends did express a remote desire to have a fall break. The decision was swift, according to Rob LeForte, vice president (education) of the Dalhousie Student Union. While I’m glad we’ll have a day to study, my reservations stem from the timing of the fall break.
This year, reading week is arguably too late in the semester, after seven weeks of classes. Next fall’s study break will come nine weeks in, when, at least for engineering students, midterms are long forgotten. That precious day would be well served during the midterm season as a chance to keep pace with the material.
My greatest concern, however, stems from the precise date chosen. Nov. 12 was chosen in order to create a four-day weekend, starting with Remembrance Day. Given the culture of binge-drinking on long weekends and days off in university, I feel that the already abused day off for Remembrance Day will turn into a four-day binge.
This move will encourage some students to forget about the brave men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice to keep you and me free, which is not surprising given that many students already choose to nurse their hangovers into the early afternoon on that important day.
Today’s youth are forgetting the important moments of our past. The tragedies of war should not be forgotten, because when they are, we run the risk of returning to a state of world war. Rather than giving the students an extra excuse to drink on that hallowed day, we should be moving the study day a few weeks earlier: Oct. 29, for example. Such a date would be during the busy midterm season, and would provide us with a much-needed break.
Our veterans deserve more than a four-day binge. Our veterans deserve more from today’s generation. The timing of the fall break is unfortunate, and I hope next year’s crop of Senators will take Remembrance Day into greater consideration when timing future study breaks.

— Ben Wedge, engineering student at Dalhousie University

Stranger danger

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Kaley Kennedy, Opinions Editor

Last week, Dalhousie Security sent students a security bulletin describing a sexual assault against two female students that happened on Feb. 6 in the south end of Halifax. While receiving the odd e-mail reminder to stay alert when walking alone at night, or to make sure I lock my door is somewhat helpful, the stranger-danger approach to campus safety still misses the mark.
Security bulletins are important. They provide important information for students that will help them be aware of some of the risks. These bulletins also have a history of coming out of grassroots initiatives by communities to report events that aren’t reported by the media. In the United States, universities are mandated to report crime statistics on campus to staff and students because of public pressure after a case where a woman was tortured, raped and murdered. The university failed to disclose over 30 other attacks that in the three years preceding this attack.
But security bulletins can’t do all the work, and neither can the criminal justice system.
According to Statistics Canada, 88 per cent of sexual assaults are not reported to police. Annually, about 31,000 sexual assaults occur in Nova Scotia. But in 2007, just over 700 were reported to police.
Why are so many sexual assaults unreported? There are several reasons. According to Statistics Canada, reasons range from a desire for privacy, to fear of the perpetrator, to not knowing if what happened was a crime or if they have adequate evidence, to not trusting the police and the courts.
While it would be nice to believe that we live in a world where sexual assault survivors wouldn’t face questions such as “What were you wearing?” or “How much did you have to drink?” or “But, you went home with the accused willingly, didn’t you?” the reality is that these questions are common in a court of law, where the survivor is also under a microscope.
What would it look like if there were a security bulletin for every sexual assault that happened on campus? The picture would be a lot harder to handle. There would be more than just “victims” and “assailants” – there would be friends, classmates, and co-workers on both sides of the line. In two-thirds of the reported sexual assaults in Nova Scotia in 2007 the sexual assault survivor knew the perpetrator.
But there aren’t Security Bulletins that say: “Sorry, you’re still going to have to sit next to your floormate who wouldn’t leave your room unless you went down on him.”
There aren’t Security Bulletins that say: “You were drunk, but you still have the right to feel wronged.”
There aren’t Security Bulletins that say: “Sexual assault is more than a crime; it’s a breech of trust. Educate yourself, protect others.”
Security bulletins like that don’t exist because we don’t always name sexual assault for what it is. Sometimes a response to feeling shitty the morning after is less “You were assaulted and this wasn’t your fault,” and more “Let’s dye your hair – that will make you feel better.” Sometimes the story itself is less “I was raped,” and more “I said no at first, but he was stubborn. At least he wore a condom.”
Campus culture, and the world at large, has trouble naming sexual violence. We live in a world of dichotomies: sluts and virgins, geeks and players, partner material and one-night stands. Sometimes sexual assault resides in the gray area: an area people have trouble naming, even recognizing.
And while the National Post will argue, “Women’s Studies courses have taught that all women – or nearlyall (sic) – are victims and nearly all men are victimizers,” I’m not saying either.
Survivors and perpetrators of sexual assault are people. They are people we know, and we need to be more responsible for that. We know the symptoms of date rape drugs, but do you have someone to call if you need to talk? We know how to call 911, but do we know what we’d do if a friend assaulted someone else? We can understand the weight of the word “no”, but are we willing to make communication and consent a cornerstone of our sex lives? We understand that walking someone home might help him or her feel safe, but do we know what to do if the danger is at home?
Maybe instead of our view of campus safety relying on security bulletins and police officers, what if it looked more like looking out for each other?

How the Daily News reacted to allegations of racism

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Gazette Staff

It was nearly midnight and Matthew Byard already felt bored. One down, seven hours to go. On this Friday night in January 2007 few customers shivered through the automatic doors into Sobey’s on North Street where Byard, 22 at the time, worked security.

To help pass the time, the former Atlantic Media Institute student tucked into his nightly collection of newspapers and magazines: Cosmopolitan, Frank, the Daily News and the Herald.
“They were about to become yesterday’s news,” remembered the African Nova Scotian, who now works at Dalhousie’s Black Student Advisory Centre and the Black Cultural Centre.
He leafed through the pages of the Daily News and began reading an article in the Opinions section by Alex J. Walling.
“Paris should stop playing race card,” the headline warned.
The small picture above Walling’s byline showed a smiling White man with two chins.
“I take exception to the allegations from Waverly-Fall River Beaver Bank MLA Percy Paris on the touchy topic of racism,” Walling wrote.
“This was a hot issue that week,” remembered Byard as he revisited the article from 2007. “Everybody and their dog had an opinion.”
“Here’s my point,” Walling wrote. “Why is it that every time something seems to go wrong for a Black man, the race card is used?”
“At that point I probably fucking flipped,” said Byard, who seldom swears. “To me it came across as racist.”
The next day Byard couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d read, so he sat down and typed his thoughts. On Monday, Jan. 22, the Daily News printed four letters to the editor after responses to Walling’s article flooded in over the weekend. Byard’s was the first.
“As a 23-year-old Black man who has had things go wrong that I admit have had nothing to do with my race, I take exception to the suggestion that I would have used some sort of ‘race card’ to explain my misfortune. As a Black man who has been the victim of both subtle and blatant discrimination, I take exception to his suggestion that my claims would be unfounded … To pinpoint a clear-cut undeniable list of examples of racism can be strenuous, mind-boggling and stressful to those on the receiving end. As a result, it often goes unmentioned, and frustration builds.”
Angry readers led Daily News editor Jack Romanelli to a critical crossroads: would he ignore or respond to the allegations of racism?
On Thursday, Feb. 1, his decision filled the front page: “Stolen Hopes, Stolen Dreams” the headline declared in caps. “Our Editor’s Round Table grapples with Nova Scotia’s most highly charged topic – racism.”
Coverage of the contentious issue comprised five additional pages that day in reaction to a “firestorm of letters”. The Daily News hosted, and printed the transcript of, a round table discussion that aimed to answer the question: Is there racism in Nova Scotia?
The dialogue was far from positive. At one point, the discussion brought tears to the eyes of Wanda Thomas-Bernard, head of Dalhousie’s School of Social Work. She challenged the Daily News for under-representing and misrepresenting visible minorities.
“You have a responsibility in terms of the education of the wider public,” she said. “People read your paper. Common, every-day people who have no exposure to people who don’t look like themselves read your paper. So what can you do to educate the public? I want to invite you to critically examine yourselves. You need to do that. And it can’t be one or two columns here and there every two weeks or so. You have to offer us something more. We have newsworthy stories; newsworthy experiences; we have a whole history that isn’t being taught and isn’t getting the kind of exposure it needs.”
An editor’s note ran below her statement:
“Newspapers, as a famous quote goes, should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. So we are happy to accept Wanda Thomas-Bernard’s challenge. As a first step, we have funded a $1,000 yearly scholarship, with a guarantee of a summer internship, for an African Nova Scotian in the King’s College journalism program. And we have asked members of our advisory panel to regularly review coverage. Now we issue our own challenge to policy- and decision-makers. Join us in a second round table to continue this discussion in the hopes of raising tolerance and balancing the playing field.”
The newspaper hoped to create a starting point for community debate. The round table successfully found the answer to its question about the existence of racism. But it didn’t “defuse landmines” as the Feb. 1 editorial suggested.
One year later, Transcontinental shut down the Daily News.

Newsrooms lack racially diverse reporters
As a former Daily News copy editor, Tattrie saw the round table on racism before it went to print. He had the impression Romanelli genuinely wanted to confront racism to compensate for a lack of balance. Romanelli could not be reached for comment before this article went to print.
“For most reporters, for most journalists, they really do want to see a balanced portrayal,” Tattrie said.
However, the Daily News wasn’t able to fully balance its news coverage because, as the former copy editor said, the newsroom was “pretty much a sea of white.”
Out of the approximately 100 employees of the Daily News at the time, Tattrie named three writers who were racially diverse.
A Diversity Watch report by the Ryerson School of Journalism found that newspapers lagged in hiring racialized people, who they called “racial minorities”. The study took a census of Canadian newsrooms between 1994 and 2004. In newspapers with circulations of over 100,000, the study found a four per cent representation of racial minorities in newsrooms. In reality, racialized people make up 24 per cent of Canada’s population according to Diversity Watch. In Halifax, racialized people make up about 10 per cent of the population according to a Statistics Canada report from 2006.
In addition, Diversity Watch found editors’ commitments to hiring racial minorities had dropped. In 1994, 26 per cent of editors said they had a “very strong commitment” to hiring racial minorities. In 2004, just 13 per cent had the same commitment.
When asked to explain the lack of racial minorities in their newsrooms, a large number of editors said, “Minorities just don’t apply here.”
Currently, ‘minorities’ don’t have a chance if they apply at the Herald. Due to the recession, the newspaper has a freeze on hiring.
A recent Herald intern who preferred not to be named said, “The newsroom is exclusively white, unless I’m forgetting someone, though it’s pretty balanced gender-wise. Most people have been there for at least 10 to 15 years. … I’d say that a lack of diversity is perhaps a side-affect of a lack of staff turnover. People don’t leave and they don’t hire.”
Canada’s Top 100 Employers for 2010 reveals that two per cent of Herald employees, and four per cent of managers, are “visible minorities”.
The Coast and Metro News do not employ any reporters or editors who are racialized people.
At the Gazette, our photo editor Pau Balite is from the Phillipines. However, the rest of us are White.
Tattrie said White people don’t instinctively see systemic racism, so it ends up in print. When White people make up the majority of newsroom staff, they don’t seek out stories from racially diverse communities. Therefore less racial diversity appears in the paper.
Tattrie suggested this problem could be remedied if editors hired more journalists from diverse racial backgrounds. As an example, he pointed to a Daily News article about the city removing “squatters” such as Eddie Carvery from Seaview Park, the former site of Africville.
“White people, I’m talking about, we wouldn’t see the ridiculousness of Walter Fitzgerald saying, ‘We can’t just let people take our land – we’ve got to kick them off.’ Somebody from an Africville background would immediately see that for what it was (Eddie Carvery grew up on that land). A lot of things like that. We would just hear them differently if we were from a different background.”
He said students in the King’s College journalism school are mostly White, so the reporters are going to be mostly White.
“It’s a difficult cycle to get out of given that there aren’t reporters coming from different (racial) communities, so (racialized) people don’t see that as a career path.”

Solutions
As a King’s journalism student, I see what Tattrie’s talking about. My classes are unquestionably filled with White students, and professors.
In Discourses of Domination – a book that can be found in the King’s Library – Frances Henry and Carol Tator write: “White culture is the hidden norm against which the ‘differences’ of all other subordinate groups are evaluated. For those who have inherited its mantle, Whiteness suggests normality, truth, objectivity, and merit.”
White journalists must strive to be aware of this ingrained bias when we write, and when we look for story ideas.
As Keith Woods wrote in the Poynter Online article “Reporting on Race Relations”, representing race and racism in complex terms – rather than in euphemisms or metaphors – begs for “a strong focus on the fundamental tools of good journalism, along with an investigator’s resolve to work through this subject’s unique obstacles.”
Woods suggested reporters look for unfamiliar ways to frame a story, rather than simple, universal themes of oppression, supremacy, inferiority, conflict, fear, ignorance, love, unity, redemption, hatred, pain or confusion.
“Find a broader range of voices; employ more of those universal elements to tell what is surely going to be a complex story.”
Woods said reporters should be sure to include context because it helps their readers understand “why people respond to one another as they do.”
But Stephen Kimber, professor and Chair of the King’s Journalism department, said reporters aren’t given the tools or the time to look deeper.
“There’s a kind of catch-22 these days in coverage – that we’re reducing the number of reporters out there and we’re expecting them to do more to fill the space,” he said.
He suggested that because newsroom managers aren’t giving reporters enough time, they do not ask deeper questions or find the right sources – real people rather than experts.
“I think the best thing we can do as reporters is to go as deeply as possible into things, but trying to keep our minds open.”
When Kimber began writing a feature for The Coast about Uniacke Square, he hung out with kids in the neighbourhood and listened to them talk.
“The role of a journalist is really to go in and to be a foreign correspondent in your own backyard,” he said. “To go in and try and see the world fresh.”
Kimber said journalists have less of a problem reporting with fresh eyes and ears in an actual foreign country.
Asaf Rashid hopes copies of Racism in Perspective land in the laps of local editors. He wants them to digest it, learn from it.
“It is a lot of effort,” Rashid said of reporting stories that involve racialized groups. “You have to find people. You have to talk to one contact. They give you another contact. They give you another contact. Yes it’s difficult.”
But, he said, “It’s totally worth it.”

Thank you Fred Vallance Jones and Bruce Wark for your considerable help and advice. This feature was originally intended for publication in the King’s Journalism Review. Dan Leger rescinded his comments from an earlier interview because he did not want them to appear in the Gazette.

WHITE PAPER

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Hilary Beaumont, Copy Editor

Radio reporter Asaf Rashid believes a community member without a voice in the local media is like a journalist stripped of free speech. So last June when his co-worker proposed a new publication to expose racism in Halifax, Rashid didn’t hesitate to help. Called Racism in Perspective, the new magazine funded by the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group (NSPIRG) is scheduled to debut as early as this spring.
“It’s really important,” said Rashid, campaign co-ordinator for NSPIRG. “Specifically because of how bad the media coverage has been in general about issues around racism. It’s the same type of stereotypes over and over again.”
Rashid tacked and stapled posters around Halifax. He sent e-mails calling for poetry, essays, songs, comics, photos and artwork – anything rooted in the idea of ‘race’. “We invite you to call it as you see it, and to say it loud and clear,” the posters proclaimed.
Rashid felt drawn to the project. Last May he covered community reaction to schoolyard brawls at Cole Harbour and Auburn Drive high schools for CKDU. While interviewing the students and parents involved, he noticed a rift between his sources’ stories. The police and school board told one tale while Black parents and children told another. Yet Rashid said the local media did little to represent Black students’ stories of police brutality.
“The problem is a lack of places out there where the voices of the people who are facing these daily assaults and harassments within these marginalized communities (can be heard, and a) lack of space for those stories to come out,” he said. “So we want to create that space.”
In local newspapers, White faces fill that space. Halifax’s print media do not reflect the racial reality of the city, of the province, in an accurate way. We do not tell stories about racism and institutional injustices as part of an overarching news philosophy; instead we talk about race in a tokenized manner. We carelessly misrepresent racialized people as celebrities or criminals. We fail to provide vital historical context for traditionally under-represented communities.
However, opposing views on racial coverage exist in local newsrooms. Some people see White paper. Some people don’t.

Newspapers neglect to represent racialized people
On the side streets off of Spring Garden Road, I asked 10 people – all who have lived in Halifax for more than one year and who regularly read the news – the same question: Are racialized people under-represented, equally represented or over-represented in Halifax’s print media? Seven people said they are under-represented. Two said they are equally represented. One said they are over-represented.
After this informal survey, I decided to look at the Chronicle Herald – the most widely read newspaper in Nova Scotia, and the largest independent daily in Atlantic Canada.
It is not possible to determine race based on named sources. Instead I analyzed the Herald’s photos because they superficially reflect the people in the stories they accompany.
I counted the photos in the paper’s “A” section (local, national and international news) for one month. Then I categorized the people in the photos by race.
From Aug. 22 to Sept. 22, 2009, the Chronicle Herald printed 304 photos that showed people. Of these photos, 283 showed White people, 11 showed Black people, four showed Aboriginal people and six showed people from other racial backgrounds.
Ninety three per cent of identifiable photos were of White people. Seven per cent showed people from racialized groups.
In an e-mail Dan Leger, director of news content at the Herald, said these numbers are not a fair representation of the paper.
“I do not believe that analyzing the content of one section of a newspaper over a very limited time will provide enough data to properly understand what that paper is doing, for good or ill,” he wrote. “As an editor, I would never accept that methodology for a news story. Any conclusions drawn from such a limited sample, which doesn’t include coverage of the arts, sports or business, to give a few examples, would be very suspect.”
In addition, I surveyed photos from the Herald’s front pages for three months in 2009. The numbers were similar: one person in every 10 was from a racialized group. I also noted the context of these photos. The racialized people who made the cover fell mostly into two categories: prominent public figure or criminal.
In May, Tiger Woods graced the front page twice and pictures of Black youth involved in the same arrests on which Rashid reported made the front page four times. Three crime stories with photos also showed racialized people that month. In October, O.J. Simpson, two Black men charged with murder and a Black former child soldier were pictured in front-page photos. In June, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson and politician Percy Paris made the cover.
Aboriginal people were by far the most under-represented; over the span of three months only one Aboriginal person appeared on the cover. He danced in a stand-alone photo wearing traditional clothing. The Herald did not provide historical context.
Aboriginal author Daniel Paul said he isn’t represented in Halifax’s print media.
Paul, author of We Weren’t the Savages, gave a talk at Dalhousie’s Student Union Building on Jan. 28. He told students and faculty the true history of Nova Scotia, which he outlines in his book, and pointed to recent examples of racism in the local media.
“For the Halifax Herald to have published that little ‘today in history’ thing where a White man discovered the mouth of the Amazon – that’s utter nonsense. The place was discovered for thousands of years before any European ever saw the mouth of the Amazon. But it’s a demonstration of White supremacist thinking when these people who edit such things can’t see in their minds the people who were there. (We are) victimized by a racism that’s so pervasive that it’s invisible.”
Paul, who wrote for the Herald in 1994, said newspapers should start a campaign to eliminate systemic racism from Nova Scotia.
“It needs to be done,” he said in a brief interview after his presentation. “Newspapers are the ones that are the dispensers of information. … When you’re looking at television news you get a few paragraphs about something and that’s about it. But newspapers can publish stories from the past and revelations, and ask questions. A newspaper’s responsibility is to begin to work with society toward improving itself.”
Jon Tattrie, a freelance writer and author, pitches stories to local print media outlets. He said local newspapers are interested in diverse coverage.
“There’s a real hunger for them,” he said over the phone last week. “In the current issue of Halifax Magazine I’ve got a story about Seven Sparks healing lodge, part of the Mi’kmaq Friendship Centre. It’s a program for Aboriginal offenders to rehabilitate themselves through Mi’kmaq culture. And the editor (Trevor Adams) was so excited about it. He was really thrilled from the start that I had pitched it to him, and would run stories like that every edition if he had them.”
Since he started freelancing on Feb. 11, 2008 – the day Transcontinental shut down the Daily News and dropped Tattrie as a copy editor – he has learned to tailor his pitches to each editor’s taste. He said local print editors would run stories about racialized people, as long as they had a news hook.
However, he said the local media do not accurately represent Halifax’s population.
“It can get slanted. It can get skewed. And I’m sure I have too. But if people don’t tell you, and you don’t see it in the first place then you’ll just never be aware of your own misunderstandings.”
In an interview last fall Tim Bousquet, news editor of The Coast, said those misunderstandings are common in the local print media. On his blog, Bousquet plays a watchdog role for the media’s portrayal of racialized people. He has criticized the Herald and the CBC’s online publication for unfair representation of Black people in a criminal context.
“There are some real particulars and the first that comes to mind is crime reporting. The way it works, and I see it all the time in the Chronicle Herald – I always call them on it, too – it’s: ‘A woman was mugged. Two Black men were seen running away.’ It’s not a description anyone can make anything out of. It just tells you generally to be afraid of Black people.”
In an e-mail, Bousquet attached a Herald article that described three suspects in a crime as “Black and wore black hoodies and dark pants.”
Above the link, he simply wrote: “Who does this help?”
Bousquet said publications under-represent or misrepresent racialized groups because of the types of stories reporters and editors choose.
“We tend to only be interested in those communities when there’s a problem, which is the nature of the media.”
However, he said there’s no easy way to ensure fair representation of racialized groups.
“To some degree, the media reflects the good and the bad attitudes. So the charge is: can’t we reflect more than those attitudes? We should have a mission to better represent minorities. By better represent, I mean to give a fuller picture. Not just the Black or White, hero or scum.”

Killam to stay open until 3 a.m.

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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Meriha Beaton, News Contributor

Dalhousie students will soon have a new place to study late at night. For exam preparation time, the Killam Library will be open until 3 a.m.
“After the loss of the Computer Science building as a late night study space, most students had no option for a late night study space facility,” says Rob LeForte, vice president (education) of the Dalhousie Student Union (DSU). “We took this feedback very seriously and lobbied the university administration on the issue.”
Dal Student Services proposed extended study hours last fall, and facility management laid out the project’s cost. The university is working on installing Dal card readers and other security measures.
“The advantage is simple to see for students,” LeForte wrote in an e-mail. “If a student needs a place on campus to study late at night or get together to do group work, it will be there.”
The DSU argued that students had no safe place to study past midnight. Students who work late hours with a part-time job need a place to go afterwards to study. The Killam also provides free Internet access for students who don’t have wireless at home.
When she heard about the extended hours, second-year Dal student Mira Karasik was pleased.
“People have different schedules, so I think it is important that the library’s resources are accessible whenever they need it,” says Karasik. “Especially during midterms and exams, because people do tend to stay up past 12.”
LeForte admits that there are a few concerns surrounding these changes, but says they are minor compared to the advantages. For instance, there’s the danger of students walking home alone at night, along with the health concern that later hours of operation will advocate unhealthy sleeping patterns.
“We did identify that a potential disadvantage could be dangers associated with walking home after a late night of school work, but have considered this around discussions of implementation,” says LeForte. “I think it is important to note that health concerns associated with staying up late to finish schoolwork were a component to the decision to eliminate a 24-hour study space.”
Up until two years ago, the Computer Science Building offered a 24-hour study space. But Jeff Lamb, assistant vice president for Facilities Management, said in a DalNews article that only a few students stayed in the building until the wee hours of the morning. That was not enough to maintain an overnight employee and the university didn’t want to encourage late-night study habits, he said at the time.
Regardless, the DSU recognized the need for a safe after-hours study space.
“People are going to stay up late anyway, and if they go back to, lets say, their homes or the (residence) rooms, that’s not a very good study space all the time,” says Karasik. “It’s important to have quiet computers, if you don’t have one, and books.”
To ensure maximum safety, the university will install security cameras in the Killam’s atrium and Learning Commons.
“To keep the facility open late, security has been top priority,” says LeForte. “Security cameras will enable monitoring and give peace of mind to those using the space.”
The exact date for these changes is yet to be announced, but they should be implemented in time for exam period. If more students use the late-night space, the administration will consider making the changes permanent. Although more time and money will be needed to make these transformations last year round, they will benefit the students in the long run.
“If students need to stay up late to study and do their work, they have a safe and convenient place to do it,” says LeForte.

Megan Leslie says you count

Scott Beed
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New Democrat MP Megan Leslie is using her time off from the House of Commons to re-connect with her riding this week. On Feb. 9, Leslie talked to a group of 30 students and community members about youth involvement in politics. The Dalhousie Political Science Society hosted the event.

According to a Statistics Canada report, Canadian voter turnout has dropped nearly 20 per cent in the last 20 years. It dropped below 60 per cent for the first time in the 2008 election.

Dr. Kristin Good, a political science professor at Dalhousie, says voter deference is to blame for the most part. In four years, Canadians have gone to the polls for three separate federal elections. In the same time period, there have also been two provincial elections and two municipal elections. With frequencies this high, many Nova Scotians have cast ballots more often than they’ve gone to the dentist.

Voter turnout is not the only thing in decline. Participation in all aspects of formal politics has dropped. The population hit hardest by the political apathy bug seem to be the youth. But Leslie says that dwindling voter turnout numbers can be misleading.

“Just because you’re not volunteering with the Liberals, or a card holding NDP member, or you’re not involved with electoral politics doesn’t mean you are not involved in politics. Student government, community engagement, and activism are all important parts of political culture,” she says.

Many Dalhousie students are involved in student groups such as Students Mobilize for Action on Campus (SMAC) and Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group (NSPIRG), which both have mandates to help promote grassroots politics and to develop political, social and cultural awareness on campus. SMAC and NSPIRG have recently been working with other campus groups such as Campus Action on Food (CAF) to provide alternative food options to students.

Sébastien Poissant Labelle is a member of NSPIRG. He says that last year’s  “Stop NSPIRG” campaign dealt a serious blow to the activist movement on campus.

“What freedom do students groups have to be critical of student-run political institutions if what they say puts their group or some other group at financial risk?” asks Labelle.

One of NSPIRG’s goals is to maintain accountability between the students of Dalhousie. Labelle says they can’t perform that job to the best of their ability if the future of their budget is unclear. To maintain a healthy and vibrant student activist community at Dal, he believes NSPIRG needs to be able to act freely.

Jennifer Chisholm, president of the Dalhousie Political Science Society, says these interest groups have undeniable value on campus because they bring political discussion outside of the classroom and into a more social setting, which automatically makes politics more accessible to students.
Leslie also stressed that community matters.

“A politician can talk in the House of Commons until she’s blue in the face but if the community’s not behind her, nothing will get done. And the same goes in the community: They can get behind an issue but if the MP doesn’t then their voice won’t be heard,” she says. “Don’t assume that your MP knows the issue and is purposely ignoring it. He (or she) could just be ignorant on the matter.”

She says if the politician doesn’t know the facts, it’s the constituents’ job to inform him or her.

Leslie is still concerned with the growing mantra that one vote won’t change anything.

“I really believe that every vote does count. I really believe that every letter to an MP counts. I really believe that every community meeting counts.”

Student employment numbers slowly crawling back

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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Emma Godmere, CUP Ottawa Bureau Chief

OTTAWA (CUP) — Richard Mah would guess he sent out about 300 resumés last summer and didn’t get a job.
He was on the wrong side of an unfortunate statistic. In July 2009, Statistics Canada recorded its highest youth unemployment rate ever, as one in five young people found themselves jobless.
But Mah is now part of more optimistic statistic – he was one of 29,000 Canadian students who found employment in January. Not only did he accept a placement in the University of Ottawa’s work-study program, but he is also expecting several job offers to be awaiting after graduation this spring.
But the road to that job was hard.
“Everyone was screwed last summer,” said Mah, a fourth-year biomedical sciences student at the University of Ottawa.
“I guess I would have started (applying for work) around March or April … I applied to everything that I could find,” he explained. He applied through his school, to the government, and to retail jobs. And nothing came up.
“I would send away 20-30 resumes at a time, being like, ‘Let’s see if I get anything this time,’ and for the most part, I really didn’t hear anything back at all.”
After sending hundreds of resumés, he said he only got three or four interviews. “I felt really defeated – I mean, I wasted how many months of sending things out, pounding the pavement? And I had nothing to show for it.”
Luckily, many students have found work since last summer’s high rates of unemployment, according to a Statistics Canada report released last week.
The Feb. 5 Labour Force Survey release indicated the student jobless rate is now sitting at 15.1 per cent, down from the 16 per cent reported at the end of 2009 – making this the most significant increase in youth employment since fall 2008.
“Right now, the way to characterize the state of the labour market is (that) we’re in a holding pattern,” said Miles Corak, a professor specializing in labour economics, unemployment, and poverty with the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs.
“The economy is starting to turn around (and) there’s growth in production, but it’s going to take a longer time for that to feed into the labour market and to lower unemployment rates,” he continued. “A lot of people got discouraged by the (poor employment) situation of last year and have stopped looking for work – they might start coming back into the market (now).”
Few Canadian students have forgotten about the discouragement they faced last year, when unemployment rates among youth hit 20.9 per cent.
Mah, originally from a small town in Saskatchewan, explained that the extensive and unsuccessful search for employment even took a toll on his personal life.
“It’s hard living away from home … There (are) a lot of people who live close to home (who) can go home whenever they need to – I’m kind of stuck out here on my own, and it was really stressful for even me and my family,” he said, adding that his parents felt the unemployment issue was his fault.
Can other Canadian students expect the employment increases to continue?
“You’re not going to see a huge spike in employment—there (are) going to be steady gains that incrementally build up,” offered Corak. “Things will be better than they were last year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to be as good as they were two summers ago.”
Canada is still out 280,000 jobs compared to the start of the economic recession in October 2008, and not all corners of the country experienced an increase in employment – Nova Scotians lost 5,000 jobs in January and are now facing a 9.8 per cent unemployment rate.
Regardless, Corak maintained that it is just a matter of time before Canadians hear of better news.
“We’re moving in the right direction – but how fast we move, I think (that) is where you might have some disputes.”

Olympic protests draw first-time activists

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Andrew Bates, CUP Western Bureau Chief

KELOWNA, B.C. (CUP) — “There’s nothing I can possibly do as one person to stop the Olympics from happening,” said Kim Larson, a UBC Okanagan student who protested the torch relay in Kelowna a month ago.
“I wanted the people who went … to see the torch to think about the people who might have to sleep in that park that night.”
Larson is one of a growing number of protesters of Olympic events that are getting involved for the first time, according to Chris Shaw, a leading anti-games protester and temporary spokesperson for the Olympic Resistance Network.
“There’s a lot of people showing up and talking about showing up who have never held a protest in their life,” Shaw told the Canadian University Press. “The Olympics have done that thing they claim they are very good at; they’ve united a lot of people.”
Larson, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work, doesn’t identify as an activist. “I am one of those people who has sat around drinking coffee with people, and said, ‘you know what sucks about the world?’
“I often share my opinions, but I never do anything about it.”
“The newcomers are not the traditional leftist groups that you would associate with this sort of protest,” said Shaw, a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at UBC Vancouver.
According to Shaw, the Olympic protest movement includes everyone from taxpayers’ advocates to businesspeople to simply interested citizens. “There are some single moms and single dads,” he said. “We have soccer moms and soccer dads.”
He said that this leads to some surprises when it comes to the protesters that arrive. “Some people are showing up for reasons that are more fiscal than poverty related,” he said. “There are … Russians who are coming out to protest the (2014 Olympic) Sochi Games. I have no idea what their politics are.”
The public image of protesters varies, Shaw said. “There are a lot of people who follow the mainstream media (portrayal) that all of the protesters are bunch of black-clad, hoodie wearing, face-scarved hooligans who are intent on breaking windows and creating mayhem. I don’t think I fit into the black-hoodie brick-throwing type, but the police would like to pretend that we all do.”
Protesters have been cast as the party creating conflict, according to David Jefferess, assistant professor of cultural studies at UBC Okanagan. “From the media representation, the focus is on the event of the disruption, and not necessarily the context, not necessarily … the way the protesters figure within the conflict.”
Larson said she is proud of the Olympics, but wants to raise awareness of homelessness in Vancouver and abroad. She’s doing a practicum for her degree at the Kelowna Drop-In and Information Centre, which helps the homeless and other individuals in her community. It may have to shut its doors at the end of March, however, due to funding cuts.
At the Kelowna torch relay celebration, Larson brought a sign that read, “Is this flame keeping the homeless warm?” and held it up right in front of the stage.
“There was about a chorus of fifty people telling me in not a nice way to take my sign down,” she said. “The police even came by and asked if I would like to move to the back.” According to Larson, they did not pressure her when she refused.
Shaw maintains that it is the issues that are bringing people together. “They’re doing that for a variety of reasons … A lot of people just don’t like how things have gone,” he said. “They didn’t sign up for this.”
Larson is happy with her protest, despite the disapproving looks. She found that a lot of people, including Kelowna mayor Sharon Shepherd, came up to talk to her and discuss those issues.
“A few homeless people that are clients of the Drop-In Centre came to talk to me, and that was the most touching thing,” she said. “Then (B.C. premier) Gordon Campbell drove by, and gave me a big disapproving look as he was in his limo and read what my sign said … so that was funny.”

First Nations students optimistic about future despite funding cuts

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Ashley Gaboury, CUP Central Bureau Chief

WINNIPEG (CUP) — Despite provincial and federal funding cuts of $12 million and counting, students at the First Nations University of Canada are optimistic about the institution’s future, said student Cadmus Delorme.
“Number one, we will not let our institution close. What the students wanted from day one was accountability and transparency. We got that,” said Delorme, commenting on the recent appointment of an interim board of governors at FNU, Canada’s only aboriginal-run university.

Delorme, the FNU Student’s Association vice-president, said students rallied the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) – the organization that controls the university – to let “experts” form an interim board of governors.

The school’s board of governors was dissolved earlier this month.

“I’m ready to go back to school. I feel a lot better … There are experts making decisions and I mean experts that have been through this institution,” said Delorme.

He described the new board members as experts “that have graduated and have moved on and got the experience of working within the economy. Now they are bringing that back with ideas to improve us.”

The school became embroiled in controversy after its former chief financial officer Murray Westerlund made claims of misspending at the Regina-based institution; both upper levels of government have begun to withdraw their funding from the school, and possibly may do so for good.

Although Delorme said he was disappointed to learn of funding cuts to the university, he is pleased that discussions are taking place to redirect FNU funding through another institution.

According to Rob Norris, Saskatchewan’s minister of advanced education, the province will no longer fund FNU, but there is a possibility funding dollars could be directed to the University of Regina to benefit the school’s students.

“What we’ve said is there will be no provincial public dollars invested in the foreseeable future in the First Nations University.”

“That being said … if there is a partnership agreement – a new deal – between the University of Regina and First Nations University that ensures far greater accountability, ensuring that we’ll never go back to where we’ve been as far as the allegations and challenges over the last five years, then we would look at that option,” said Norris.
Delorme said he would like to see funding channelled through the University of Regina.

“We have a lot of history with the University of Regina. We have always been a little-brother institution to the University of Regina. The history of University of Regina and First Nations education goes way back.”
As for Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl’s announcement that the federal government would end its $7.3 million in annual funding to the school, Delorme said the decision is “outrageous.”

“It’s wrong. I have nothing positive about what they’re doing right now,” said Delorme.

Jean Crowder, the federal NDP aboriginal affairs critic, is also disappointed with Strahl’s decision to cut funding to the university, having recently sent a letter to the minister concerning his decision to pull federal funding.
“First of all, I think that the federal minister should have intervened sooner. The problems at the First Nations University are not new … I think if the minister had recognized that there were some challenges (and) had stepped in earlier … that would have been preferable to yanking funding,” said Crowder.

According to Crowder, the federal government is backing away from its education responsibilities at a time when many First Nations people believe there is still an established treaty right regarding education – an issue, she said, that has yet to be sorted out.

“The federal government continues to undermine the aboriginal control of education,” said Crowder. “What the federal government would really like to do is throw all responsibility of post-secondary education to the provinces and wash its hands of it.”

Despite funding cuts, Norris said that students will be able to complete their degrees, and that his primary concern at the moment is to ensure that students will be able to do so uninterrupted.

“What we’ve said is we want to make sure the students will have smooth completion of their semester and through the summer. We’ll ensure that through until the end of August, so that takes care of intersession and summer session,” said Norris.

“We don’t want to, in any way, disrupt students.”

The sentiment was echoed by Barbara Pollock, vice-president external for the University of Regina, of which FNU is already considered a federated college.

“Our primary obligation is to our students … We will be putting in place measures that make sure that students who are currently registered in our degree programs will indeed complete them, even if they are in year one or two,” said Pollock.

Norris said the fate of FNU remains a topic of important discussion for the provincial government, FSIN and the University of Regina as well as other stakeholders.

“This chapter has come to a close. The next chapter is in the making.”

As for the students, Delorme said the next step is to educate the public on the university’s importance. “Right now … we’ve got to educate the public on how important this institution is to First Nations people, to non-First Nations people, to the province of Saskatchewan and to the country of Canada,” said Delorme.

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