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Divinus Inferno

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Delia Macpherson, Staff Contributor

Dante’s Inferno is a love story that takes place in hell. When you read it, your imagination can’t help but form vivid images of ice and mud and blood. The writing is dark and poetic.
Dante’s Divinus Inferno was performed this past weekend in the Sir James Dunn Theatre at Dalhousie. But the show wasn’t Dante’s Inferno at all.
I’m waiting in my chair. The theatre is packed. Lights dim. Curtains open. A cello player sits centre stage, in the middle of a large dome. Two massive screens form a circular shape around him, one in front and one behind. I imagine these screens were supposed to be the highlight of the show: an edgy, interesting way of depicting images of hell.
After minute five, I had completely lost interest in the slightly washed-out looking images of space and the Second World War. It was cool in an “I’m going to get high and watch a screensaver off Windows Media Player” way.
Most of the acting took place behind the first screen, so their faces and bodies were blurred. The intimacy wasn’t there.
The post-modern interpretation used familiar characters, such as Beatrice, Virgil and Dante, but it wasn’t true to the plot at all. The play only spent about 40 minutes on Dante passing through hell. The only circles shown of nine were the first three.
The production was abstract and fragmented. Every so often, a random scene of a tour guide and group of tourists who were clearly from modern day, would stomp onto the stage in the middle of a scene.
For the majority of the production I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
The show was only about an hour and 10 minutes. The first few minutes included two small children: one riding a bike and the other skipping rope. We didn’t see them again until the last minute of the show. I have no idea what significance they had to the plot.
The actors would mostly stand still in one spot, and speak out lengthy and boring monologues about the trinity, god, death, the universe, etc. There was very little movement at all.  Mostly Dante and Virgil just stood around talking about themselves and listening to the bubbly tour guide snapping pictures with tourists. Dante was a whiney child, Vigil the uninterested parent.
There were no interesting props that would resemble hell. The stage was black The lighting was white. The screen images were pale and dull. There were no demons with body paint that moved with mind-provoking choreography. There were no upside-down crosses or skulls. All those things that could make a play about hell badass were missing.
Jessica Jerome played Charon in one of the few scenes that really captured my interest. She plays the boatman of the Acheron River, one of the four rivers in the underworld. The screens show water swooshing about. The sound of waves and the ocean ring through the theatre. She stands centre stage holding two massive oars sticking out of stage left and right. She wears a plain, ugly, floor-length dress. Her blond hair is down. She begins rowing and moving slightly as she speaks. Her acting is strong and moving. Her voice is dynamic with emotion and volume. All of a sudden, white worm-like things start writhing and crawling towards her. There are 10 of them, at least. They are souls swimming in the river of hell. They get closer and closer to her until she starts screaming:
“Spineless creature! Blasted Reptiles! … We may be in hell but we still have our pride … a place in hell is still to be earned.”
Satan, played by Matthew Peach, was also really well done. He was a small man, neatly tucked into a black suit. He had a metallic silver suitcase and moved with a jump in his step. He spoke with laughter in his voice that was so insincere it gave me goose bumps.
These two scenes were together less than 10 minutes of the show. Most of it was dull and blah. It was neither a classical piece of theatre nor a modern one.
Dante’s Divinus Inferno was a failed experiment.

Editing Modernism in Canada

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Amy Donovan, Staff Contributor

Full of books, Macs and light, the McCain building’s Editing Modernism in Canada (EMiC) office, overlooks that big red abstract painting just behind the first-floor elevators.
It’s an appropriate view for a project aimed at promoting research in the more abstract literature produced during the Canadian modernist period.
“A lot of stuff was published during the modernist period in Canada,” says Vanessa Lent, project administrator at the international project’s Dal home base, and PhD student specializing in Canadian modernism. “And a lot of it just disappeared.”
Modernism, a period characterized by experimentation in form, started in Canada in about 1915 and faded out around the 1960s. For a long time after that, people looked back at the first half of the century saying, “Oh, there was nothing really happening there – just a bunch of flittering here and there, but nothing substantial,” Lent quips.
“There was quite a bit produced that was substantial, and for economic reasons and different political reasons didn’t get a fair shot.”
Surprise, surprise: many of the authors who didn’t get a fair shake from the publishing world were women or gay men. These people were writing in a style that was more abstract and less realist than “this idea of virile masculinity in Canadian modernism that was representative of our pioneering past” – an idea that was important to the public in Canada, if not to all modernists.
It’s the abstract, left out, “feminine” style of writing that EMiC editors at Dal are trying to gather before it’s lost forever. At the moment they’re mostly working with published, but unpopular works, some rare and some simply unknown. But the project is only in its second year, and will eventually start printing unpublished manuscripts.
Before EMiC’s completion in 2015, Lent and her co-researchers hope to have republished many pieces in both scholarly and non-scholarly editions, and to have established a digital research base for academics interested in the subject. Over the summer, they scoured used-book databases on the Internet and purchased about $15,000 worth of books.
All of those volumes will be “scanned for posterity” through the Dal libraries, and Lent says EMiC will probably make a couple more large-scale purchases over the next few years. Their grant, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, is approximately $3 million.
So why were so many of these volumes’ authors women, or gay?
Modernism as a movement didn’t start in Canada until 10 or 12 years after it started in Britain and the United States, Lent explains. And by that time, people were afraid of it—afraid of “all this experimentation with form and especially the idea of abstraction; taking a human form and breaking it apart, if you can imagine,” she says, citing Picasso’s work as a well-known example.
“People started worrying about what this did to the humanity of the piece … There was this weird alignment of modernist aesthetics and non-realism with dehumanization and fascism.”
It didn’t help, she adds, that a lot of modernism’s big names, such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, were attracted to fascism at the beginning, before it became a reality. “They backed away from it, but that alignment of modernism with fascism never went away.”
So at the time, women and gay male writers were thought to be fascist.
“The people who did tend towards abstraction were called feminine and were called decadent and were called degenerate,” says Lent. “The idea of art as needing to be representative, not abstract, was really important to Canadian modernism.
“As the years went on, the people who were aligned with the masculine camp happened to be the people who started teaching in universities and making the class syllabuses in what was then a really new discipline: Canadian literature.”
EMiC aims to show that Canadians “always had a thing to say” about issues such as feminism and gender. It aims to “level the playing field for what was actually being produced” as well as leveling the playing field of research resources in Canadian modernism. “The principal investigator, Dean Irvine, is really focused on changing the structure of who gets access to information,” says Lent.
And they’re hiring undergrads as research assistants.
“We want to make sure that we don’t recreate those weird systems of hierarchical power” with regards to where research money goes, like the ones happening in the publishing industry back in the day.
“That sounds sort of doomsday,” Lent says, laughing. “But that’s one of the things we’ve built into the project, to try to work between all these different groups of people, because the more experience you bring into a project, the richer it’s going to be.”
It’s a win-win situation. Ezra Pound would be proud.

FemFest showcases female empowerment through art

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Tessa Elliott-Israelson, Arts Contributor

“You run your own pussy let me run mine,” shouts El Jones, host of FemFest 2009, which ran last weekend at The Company House on Gottingen Street.
FemFest was a showcase of local female talent that supports and promotes women’s artistic endeavours around Halifax. It was hosted by the St. Mary’s University Women’s Centre, a student-run organization that works to create a woman-friendly campus.
The audience members inside The Company House are mostly women, but there are also a few men (there is an abundance of pixie cuts, as well as a few mullets). Most people seem to be students or people in their early 20s, but there are some older people here as well.
El Jones sets the mood with a powerful slam poem about South African runner Caster Semenya – whose gender is being questioned – followed by a witty piece entitled “Why can’t people leave my vagina the fuck alone?”
The rest of the first half of the show includes a couple of up-and-coming singer songwriters who are clearly excited to be there. They have the requisite angst-filled lyrics paired with sweet voices. This contrasts nicely with some well-placed belly dancing.
After a quick intermission the audience seems more vocal, maybe due to the drink specials that include the Butch option “Blue Balls” and the Fem option “Sour Pussy”.
Then there is more spoken word poetry and raw acoustic vocalists – a high point being the edgy and soulful Katie Day channelling Janis Joplin – who declares, “There’s a shit load of talent here.”
The show finishes off with a demonic dance number by Bang Bang Burlesque, followed by a DJ who tops off the night with some Lauryn Hill.
Overall the reception seems good. While the room never gets completely packed at The Company House, more people filter in throughout the show. Most of the audience members seem to know at least one of the performers and cheer wildly for their friends on stage.
FemFest is actually a few “fests” – featuring singer-songwriters, a variety of dancers, and spoken word, as well as a craft fair and story-telling night. All the proceeds of the events go straight back to the artists themselves.
FemFest falls in the middle of the 16 days of Activism Against Gender Violence, which began on Nov. 25 and ends Dec. 6. This is the first time the event has had a weekend of its own.
“I don’t want to say it’s exclusively for women,” says Caitlin Blennerhassett, a student at St. Mary’s University and the sole organizer of FemFest 2009. “It’s for anybody who wants to celebrate the female community.”
Blennerhassett hopes all audiences will join the celebration. She is encouraged by the feedback she received before this year’s show from local media, artists, and preview audiences.
She explained that she is doubly motivated with strong feelings about both women’s issues and the local Halifax music scene.
“Basically my job involves talking to artists, nailing down set lists and locations, directing and stage managing the shows, and promoting it as much as possible.”
Blennerhassett got involved with the event when she applied to be a co-ordinator at the St. Mary’s University Women’s centre.
The shows have been widely promoted all over Halifax. They have relied heavily on online promotion, successfully using social media tools like Facebook to get the word out.
“We wanted to get visibility not just for the show and the artists, but for the women’s centre itself within the community, as a safe space for women on and off the university campuses,” she says. “We hope women will keep us in mind if they need something.”
Blennerhassett says the purpose of FemFest is to create awareness and spread a positive message about female expression.
“We’re celebrating moving forward and taking action. Maybe that’s idealistic, but it’s a good time.”
Here, feminism is definitely not a bad word, but neither are men the scum of the earth.
The message is female empowerment through art.

PROF TALK: Dr. Sarah-Jane Corke

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Rebecca Spence, Staff Contributor

Your heart is pounding. Your hands are sweaty and trembling. There are butterflies in your stomach. Your professor has just called on you to give your opinion on whether or not Henry Kissinger should be considered a war criminal.
Speaking up in class is some students’ worst nightmares. Dr. Sarah-Jane Corke, a Dalhousie history professor, is doing her part to encourage students to confront that nightmare head on through seminar classes and structured debates.
“I know that when I was younger I did not like to talk in class,” says Corke, who specializes in American history. “I actually stopped going to seminar classes in my first year because I was so nervous about talking.”
After eight years of teaching, Corke says she sees that women tend to be more hesitant to talk in class than men. She believes that her course content – American foreign policy and intelligence history – is linked with the social expectation that men would know more, causing women to hang back. But she also believes their reluctance is perpetuated by cultural barriers.
“Women are taught even today not to cause controversies,” she says. “I think women should push the boundaries.”
Corke often notices cases where female students are criticized for their strength in their arguments, whereas men are never condemned for being outspoken.
“It’s difficult for a young woman to be as vocal and as argumentative – which I think is a good thing – in classes, without being labeled as bitchy or aggressive.”
Corke thinks it is tough to find scholarly female role models in fields such as diplomatic history and military history, which could be a contributing factor to this trend. She recalls doing her MA at the University of Guelph, where she wanted to study American foreign policy. She encountered strong encouragement from her male professors to choose social and cultural history, like the rest of her female colleagues. Even while doing her PhD at the University of New Brunswick, Corke had to fight against being pressured to pursue women’s history instead.
“I’m not trying to be dismissive of women’s history,” she says. “It plays a huge role. But at the same time we also need female historians of American foreign relations, we need female military historians, we need female historians of intelligence. Women should be reaching out by going into all fields. I think they have a contribution to make.”
Corke serves as an outstanding example for young women interested in studying history at Dal. She constantly goes out of her way to pull female students aside to encourage them – either individually or as a group. She also acknowledges that she’s had a number of male students come to see her because they are so nervous about talking in public.
“I think men and women are equally insecure and equally strong,” she says. “But I think it’s harder for women to make their voice heard.”
She always tell students – whether they’re male or female – that it is much better to learn how to speak confidently in a second- or third-year seminar class for 20 per cent of their grade with people you will never see again, as opposed to learning the skills in your first real job interview or work presentation.
“If I could encourage even one or two young women to think about being a more active participant in their education, that would be a good thing.”

The author interviewed her professor for this article.

Giving feminism a new perspective

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Lucy Scholey, Assistant News Editor

In the dimly lit Wardroom, among pitchers of beer and endless games of pool, people are slumped in chairs with their noses stuck in a newly launched zine.
Other copies of the Feminist Collective Zine lay in piles around the University of King’s College bar while local poets, dancers and musicians – including self-declared feminist singer Jenocide – performed at the event’s opening Nov. 24.
The new magazine is the culmination of discussions and ideas from the Feminist Collective, a society new to King’s this year.
Emma Morgan-Thorp, gender and women’s studies major and self-described “feminist dork,” helped initiate the society. She wanted to bring together a group of people to share ideas and viewpoints on feminism. It’s a topic that isn’t openly discussed on campus, she says.
“Only since the beginning of the Feminist Collective, have I walked into the Wardroom and heard someone say ‘feminism’ in a conversation over beer,” she says.
She wanted a project to encapsulate the ideas brought to the society’s weekly meetings. She pitched the zine, and fellow Feminist Collective members Kate Hazell and Jess Geddes took on the role as editors.
The theme for this month’s edition is “Sex and the Sex Trade,” with roughly 20 submissions from essays, to poetry to photo collages.
“There’s a lot of very honest submissions here,” Hazell says. “Honest words.”
The submissions include articles about prostitution laws in Canada, burlesque dancing and consensual sex.
Fourth-year King’s student Simon Ross-Siegel wrote about religious prostitution under Islamic law. For him, feminism is about “getting our culture to the point where women have access to the political sphere, voting, rights, institutional rights.”
“I think we’ve fallen away from it, in a way. You hear arguments, for example, about how women in Afghanistan are really anti-imperialist, in a way, because they’re rejecting media stereotypes. I think this is ridiculous.”
For Feminist Collective member and zine contributor Melina Giannelia, feminism is often guided by misperceptions.
“For me, when I was younger and in high school, the word ‘feminism’ was always a bad word and no one ever wanted to be associated with it,” she says.
Since starting university, she says she’s gained a new perspective.
“Feminism is not a bunch of scary, bra-burning separatists who think that the world would function only without men. There are so many different ways to express feminism and to be a feminist,” she adds. “There are so many different sides and so many different aspects and I think that that’s an important part of what the collective is trying to do.”
Morgan-Thorp says many people are still misguided when it comes to feminism and feminist issues. Some have questioned the Feminist Collective’s philosophy.
“A lot of people have come up to me in the past couple of months and said, ‘Well do we really need feminism still? Isn’t sexism kind of over?” she says. “That blows my mind. I can’t imagine anybody believing that.”
But she thinks the Feminist Collective has opened new discussions across campus. The zine will continue providing an outlet for people who want to discuss feminism and give voice to the different feminist perspectives. “Gender and Violence” is the theme for next month’s issue.
“I’m really glad that the term ‘feminist’ didn’t deter people from making submissions,” adds Hazell, who says she’s pleased with the zine’s response and hopes it will spark interest across the city.
“It’s crisp now,” she adds, holding up the black-and-white zine, “but I hope to see it weathered somewhere months from now in a café or in a library just having been enjoyed by many, many people.”

Funny bitches

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Rebecca Spence, Staff Contributor

Evany Rosen and Cheryl Hann serve as living proof that women can be smart, beautiful and funny. They have it all, and it’s hard not to be jealous of their success. Those bitches.
But in all seriousness, we’re talking about a pair of hilarious ladies. They act, they write, they do stand-up, and they balance schedules that include at least two performances a week with full-time university classes. Between sketches with their eight-person improv group Picnicface at Yuk Yuk’s on Tuesdays, and Joker’s on Sundays, there is little time to spend writing philosophy papers and studying for English exams.
But the balancing act is worth the effort.
“There’s nothing else like making a whole group of people laugh,” says Hann, 23, who is working toward a double major in English and philosophy. “It’s just the best.”
These wonder women are inspirational. They represent a new wave in female comedy that constantly strives to shatter stereotypes and break boundaries. Both Hann and Rosen acknowledge the long-lasting struggle that women have endured within the arts, and try to thoughtfully explain the foolish yet common attitude that “women can’t be funny” or that “women are not as funny as men.”
“Comedy is a younger art form in general, and women always get let into any art form later – whether it takes decades or centuries,” says Rosen, 22, who moved from Toronto to Halifax for the King’s Foundation Year Program. “There’s going to be a whole lot of skepticism about whether or not women will succeed at it, which I assume they will, as they have in every other attempt they’ve tried in the last 2,000 years. But we’ll see what happens.”
Hann calls that type of close-minded attitude “nonsense”.
“All of the people that I’ve always found funniest have been women,” she says. “All of the reasons I wanted to get into comedy were all female.”
For Hann and Rosen, these reasons range from Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion to Jane Lynch and Jennifer Coolidge in Best in Show to “Saturday Night Live” cast members such as Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch and Kristen Wiig. And then, of course, there’s Tina Fey.
“To me, Tina Fey opened doors that didn’t really exist for women,” says Rosen. “In creating 30 Rock she created the first comedic item developed by a woman that isn’t for women. It’s not a sketch for women, it’s not a show for women, it’s not an idea for women, it’s not about women. It’s just funny and a woman did it. That’s a game changer in a huge way.”
Hann and Rosen are also thankful to Sarah Silverman for doing the same thing for stand-up that Tina Fey did for television.
“The first time I saw her do stand-up, it changed something for me,” says Rosen. “I would say she inspired me, even if I don’t love her jokes.”
Hann, although not a fan of Silverman, grants that she is an important and influential personality.
Hann and Rosen are also heavily influenced by each other’s wits.
“I think Evan is so funny,” says Hann.
“I think Cheryl is so funny,” says Rosen.
Fortunately, both Hann and Rosen have never felt they had to work harder than the guys in Picnicface to feel appreciated. They feel as though opportunities are always made available to them.
“Especially because the comedy scene in Halifax is so small to begin with. It would be silly if it were a boys’ club,” says Hann. “It would be, like, a five-person club.”
Even within their own comedy troupe, Hann and Rosen are able to play around with gender roles.
“You would think that Evany and I would have to take on all the female roles in the sketches,” says Hann. “But more often than not you see Bill (Wood) in a wig and me in a mustache, which is good, because I really enjoy wearing a mustache.”
The pair even performed a show at The Paragon while wearing as much facial hair as they could, covering their faces and bodies in mustaches.
“It was a feminist statement,” jokes Hann.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for these two. Both Hann and Rosen claim to have bombed on occasion in front of a crowd. Hann recalls a show in front of a group of 50-year-old women in Amherst, Nova Scotia.
“I told a joke about transformers and they were like, what is a robot?” says Hann. “It was painful, but expected.”
Rosen brings up a show in Somserset, P.E.I., as being “the worst show I’ve ever done.”
“My opener at the time was about Jewish,” she says. “They were like, what are you doing? Get off the stage!”
Halifax, on the other hand, has always had a “wonderful audience.”
“We’ve always been very lucky here,” says Rosen.
Looking toward the future, both are somewhat unsure about what place comedy and acting will have in their lives. Although Rosen loves performing, she hopes to move more towards writing, and hopes she and Hann will be able to get to work together more on their own.
Hann, who wants to go to grad school, and ultimately become a professor, believes that performing stand-up is training her to speak in front of hundreds of university-aged students.
“They’ll think I’m hip,” she jokes. “They’ll think I’m with it.”

HEALTHY Student

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Rachel Sunter, Health Columnist

Recently a number of friends have recently come to me in various states of unhappiness. Some of them are in relationships, some are single. A thick common thread I’ve found between them, however, is their lack of quality time spent with friends.
After moving out and dunking our heads in the Halifax drinking scene, it’s amazing how months can fly by and few meaningful connections are really sustained. Each year, we get bigger workloads at school, have to start paying student debts, and watch as new friends and old roommates are whisked out of Halifax as their lives unfold elsewhere.
Especially in our early adult years, with the marital chase sailing across the distant horizon, it can be easy to fall into the romantic fulfillment trap. In perilous search of a date, many people forget how important it is to put time and energy into those other relationships in our lives: our friends.
A hundred nights out may build you an army of chummy Facebook pics, but when your personal life goes askew, those party-made friendships can feel surprisingly feeble. It’s important to remember that all good relationships – not just the sexual ones – need quality time to build feelings of trust, compassion and acceptance.
In high school, everyone was forced to hang out every day, so best friends seemed to happen naturally. In the adult world, it can take a conscious effort to set aside time for friend-making. That’s no indication of you being less appealing or fun; it’s the reality of everyone having a unique schedule.
Quality time means time spent with someone in which you have each other’s complete attention, whether directly, or by mutually sharing in an enjoyable activity. Drugs and alcohol compromise your attention, and detract from true quality time. Because of this, it’s no surprise that joining groups or teams, and volunteering will bring you closer to people with whom you could share quality time.
If that sounds like too much, you can still strengthen acquaintances into better friends. Pick your targets, and set up some friend-dates. Just like romantic dates, if you want to get closer to your friends, don’t just wait for it to happen – make it happen. If you’re not feeling comfortable enough to invite a friend one-on-one, think up a group activity to bring people together where you can share in a mutual interest.
There are several different types of friend-dates you can have in Halifax. Trivia nights are great for bringing different friends together and bonding over common or obscure knowledge. Check out campus and downtown bars for different weekly nights.
Picnics or tobogganing, weather permitting, can be a good way to get outside. Being outdoors entices freedom and laughter to all. Citadel Hill is great for bonding in any season.
Hockey, football, Ultimate Fighting Championship nights and watching real life sports in the city can be good group activities. This is particularly helpful if you’re actually into the sport or teams you’re watching. Come winter, we’ll get the Olympics too. In live action sports, there’s less conversation, and more cheering – but it’s still quality time. Campus games are also a good low-cost option.
Karaoke, dinner parties, playing sports and making crafts are all ways to hang out with new people and have fun.
When you’ve been off your friend-game for a while, it can be hard to get back into the scene. Just remember that there is no shame in friend-dating; you’ll both have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
All friendships are open relationships, so you don’t have to worry about cheating or changing your relationship status. And the real best part: according to studies in longevity, spending quality time with friends has been correlated to better health and longer life. Try getting by with a little help from your friends.

Frosh Survival Guide: Exam prep

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Katie Ingram, Opinions Columnist

Around early December, students start to fear one word: exams.
Although there tends to be a lot of exams in a two-week period, there are ways to ensure you remain relatively stress-free and successful during this trying time.
Get organized
To start, make sure you are caught up on all readings before you even think about studying. Though you have probably tried hard to keep up, you can sometime fall behind due to abundant assignments and midterms. After catching up on all your readings, organize your notes to save time while studying. Once you have everything organized, the next step is to look at marks. Calculate a rough estimate of your academic standing, and then calculate what the exam is worth. Knowing that key number, you’ll have a good idea of how well you need to do on the exam in order to achieve a good mark.
So, you’ve done your readings, you’ve organized your notes, and you have a goal.
Now the studying begins!
Make a schedule
On average, you should read through notes and other supplementary material at least once a day, but this could change depending on the nature of your exams. If you have one exam that is worth 50 per cent and one that is worth 20 per cent, you should put more time into studying for the one that’s worth more – unless you’re doing worse in the class with the 20 per cent exam.
Be mindful of the exam schedule, and order your studying accordingly. One strategy is to make a calendar of when your exams are and then a schedule of how long you’ll be studying for a subject to ensure that you devote enough time to each course instead of cramming the night before.
Study in a group
Besides pouring over books day after day, another good technique is group studying. Get together with a group of people from class at least once before the exam. This will not only allow you to discuss ideas and possible ways to answer questions, you can also talk about specific information that seems more important than others. Also, if you are in a class that allows cheat sheets, working with others will allow you to work together on the sheet incase you forget something important.
Take breaks
You should make sure you do two important things: sleep and relax. You will retain more information if you get adequate sleep. Make sure you take breaks during studying as well. Try to have at least a five to 10 minute break every two hours.
After you’ve finished an exam, take a couple hours off to relax as it will give your brain time to rest before you start studying again.

Lastly, don’t forget the details. Triple check the time and location of your exam, bring a couple pens or pencils, and give yourself plenty of time.
If after all of this, you are still worried about exams, or want some extra help, Dalhousie Student Services offer a free program called Studying for Success. This program will not only help you with exam prep problems, such as time management and how to write exam essays, but can also help you with studying issues that have recurred throughout the term.

Segregation the solution

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Ben Wedge, Staff Contributor

Cameron House, and Howe Hall in general, has a long-standing legacy as being the rowdiest place on campus. Until recently, Cameron House was an all-male residence. Not long ago, all of Howe Hall was single gendered. Now, the last vestige of single-gender dormitories on campus is Newcombe, a section of the once female-only dorm called Sherriff Hall.
I have heard many stories over the years of the glory days of residence at Dal – I know some men, who between them, lived in Howe Hall every year between 1977 and 1986.
Back then, people lived differently in residence.
The year used to start with the first-year men going over to Sherriff to carry the girls’ bags upstairs. Afterward, the Sherriff dining hall was used for a big dance party, where dancing and dry humping were two mutually exclusive activities, and everyone would get to know each other. The legal drinking age was 18, like it is in sensible places such as Alberta, Quebec, and Manitoba. At the end of the night, they’d all head home, except the sneakiest of the lot.
Now, things are different. Parents move their student in, and then the students go downtown, or to different events on campus as part of the Dalhousie Student Union’s Orientation Week. Though these events are officially “dry”, students find ways to consume liquor before, during and after. The drink of choice for many seems to be hard liquor, and at the end of the night, many new couples have hooked up, maybe never to speak again.
A recent study by researchers from the United States that surveyed 500 students at five universities showed that students living in co-ed dorms are 2 ½ times more likely to binge drink on a weekly basis, and twice as likely to have at least three sexual partners in one year.
That’s not to say sex is a bad thing – as long as students are responsible about their drinking and sex, there should be no long-term consequences. Sex is vital to human interaction and development.
In a post on The Frisky, a university-focused website, Olivia Allin argues that, despite some intense partying, she didn’t want to sleep with freshman guys on campus.
“I realized they were mostly slutty,” she writes.
Is that what we’re here to learn?
The Toronto Public School Board is exploring the option of creating all-male schools, citing studies that show single-gender education increasing academic success. At university, we’re shifting further and further from this “old” way, and instead dashing headfirst into a fully co-ed scenario.
Maybe the solution isn’t full segregation: allow students to make decisions themselves. Co-ed dorms should allow the opposite gender to remain, accompanied, in the dorm at any time. Preserving more floors and wings of our residences may not be the end of the world, in fact, it may just allow us to flourish academically, and provide a clearer divide between studying and partying hours.
According to Elizabeth McCormack, co-ordinator of the Dal Women’s Centre, one in six female undergrads has been a victim of rape, and fewer than one per cent of date rapes are reported to police. These are situations that occur at parties, and at clubs, where drugs can be slipped into drinks, or young people engage in normally unwanted sexual activity.
In an e-mail interview, McCormack explained that much of this is due to peer pressure and the need to fit in with everyone else in residence.
Many of these pressures go away in a single-gender residence situation – the pressure is reduced to certain times, rather than the near-constant partying and liquor-fuelled sex buffet that exists in the co-ed situation.
Both men and women could benefit from some separation in that first year away from home – a chance to study more, but still ample opportunity for partying when wanted. Given the stats, perhaps it is time we look, once again, at single-sex residences, to slow the dropping grades and dangerous party ethic present on modern campuses.

Sex Ed: Seven wonders of the wang

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
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By Katie Toth, Sex Columnist

When I talk about gender, I often get excited about sexism, queer issues, fluidity and feminism. But there’s this one thing that is so gendered, so identified with masculinity and with confidence in our society that I just had to investigate it. It’s the phallus. The cock. The purple yogurt slinger. It’s the penis.
The penis is an amazing part of the human body – it can shrink, grow, urinate, impregnate, give and receive pleasure. Yet it seems like mainstream pornography and movies like American Pie are the only sources where we can find discussion of this magical tool. There are no Penis Monologues, no discussions of how it feels to be small or big, that aren’t immediately turned into emasculating jokes.
I spent three days reading about penises this week and got so enthused that I decided to share with you seven fun penis facts. Hopefully those with or without penises can appreciate the wonders of these little guys a bit more, because even if they’re not as big as John Holmes’, that doesn’t mean they’re not awesome.

1. The penis can get a pimple.
Just like any part of our bodies with hair follicles and sweat glands, sebum can build up under the skin, get inflamed, and become a zit. If you think you have a pimple or ingrown hair on your shlong, especially if it’s in an area of the penis that has a few hairs already, then it might be just that. If your red friend doesn’t go away for a few days, though, you should definitely get it checked out. And if you’re unsure whether it looks like a pimple or something more suspicious, such as a sore, rash, pustule, wart, rugburn or sunburn, waddle quickly to the local clinic or your trusted physician. And of course, if your penis is burning or itching, and a quick scratch isn’t making the sensation go away, you need to get tested.

2. Penises change colour when they get hard.
They can turn red, brown-red or even purple! Don’t be afraid if your penis likes to join the rainbow brigade when you become aroused – it just makes your little guy that much more unique.

3. The penis multi-tasks.
Unlike vulvas, which have a separate urethra and vagina – different holes for urinary and reproductive functions, respectively – the penis has one orifice doing all the work. Urine, pre-cum and semen all come out of this same tiny opening at the center of the head of the penis.

4. Penises don’t need to be circumcised.
In 1999, the American Pediatric Association made it clear that there is no basis for infant circumcision. While people still continue to circumcise for religious (or occasionally, cosmetic) reasons, doctors no longer push infant circumcision as a method of maintaining hygiene or preventing infection. Hooray!

5. Uncircumcised penises gather smegma.
Uncircumcised men can find smegma, a sticky white substance of oils, dead skin cells, and moisture, between the foreskin and the head of the penis. Some researchers believe smegma is meant to lubricate the space between the foreskin and head of the penis, making sex more comfortable. Female-bodied peeps also get smegma, between their clitoris and the labia minora (just around the clitoral hood). A little smegma isn’t a bad thing, but folks at Planned Parenthood emphasize that you clean under the foreskin regularly (when you take a shower) to prevent its aging buildup against your body, which may lead to infections.

6. It’s impossible to have excess sperm build up in your body.
Sperm, which are formed in the testes, wait in the epididymis to mature for up to six weeks. Sperm that are not released get old, die and are reabsorbed into the body. So you don’t need to masturbate to prevent a sperm backlog. One could, however, consider masturbating to relieve stress, give their skin a healthy glow, and become a better sexual partner. And according to Dr. Yvonne Fulbright of Fox News, masturbation and solo sexy fun times “may increase a man’s virility.”

7. The prostate gland actually has a function other than feeling good when touched.
Also known as the “male G-spot”, the prostate stores an antacid fluid that mixes with pre-cum and sperm to neutralize the urethra before ejaculation. Remember how I said that the urethra is a transport mechanism for both urine and ejaculate? Well, because sperm are sensitive little fellows, they can be burnt to death by the high acidity in urine. This alkaline fluid lets them swim to their end destination – be it a cervix, an anus or a condom – safely.
This gland, about the size of a walnut, is very sensitive, and many people, whatever their orientation or gender identity, enjoy prostate stimulation. And it can be good for you; prostate stimulation and orgasms may prevent prostate cancer. So, if you’re into that sort of thing, get out some lube, wear some gloves, which you should immediately throw out afterward, and reach up for the P-spot!

Those are just a few of the exciting features of the biological cock. You’ll notice I didn’t even approach issues such as average size, length or girth, because it’s really not important. When your penis can turn purple who cares about measuring it?
I just hope that we can enjoy the penis for everything it is, and does, instead of freaking out about what it says about our personalities or how successful in bed we’ll be. Love your penis, penis-owners, because it’s probably not going anywhere.

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