Alice Collins is a 20-year-old University of Saskatchewan student. Active in student politics and planning a career in law, she’s a promising recruit for employers when she graduates

The article is behind a subscription wall: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/local/story.html?id=24163607-7ac9-452b-9b3a-ead63fd49c8c

The Young Greens of Canada are currently holding their National Executive elections.  They have a good election page with information on all the candidates.  There are three of the candidates for Male Co-Chair that have blogs: Sean McFee (who links to the other candidates and is the reason I know of the other two blogs), Jason Hammond, and Mark Coffin.

Should be interesting to see how this new youth wing will work out for the Greens.  They could definitely use some expansion onto campuses across Canada as very few schools have a campus club.

This week, the Editorial of the Stoney Creek News makes mention of how little McMaster University does for the City of Hamilton as a whole:

Hamilton’s two other important institutions must also contribute more to rebuilding the confidence and trust of the community – the Hamilton school boards and McMaster University.

Since amalgamation, the public school board has been as out of sync and separated from the rest of the community as Mars is to earth. Vital decisions concerning schools, property and just working with other community groups have been willfully ignored.

McMaster University, which is now Hamilton’s largest employer, has also been largely absent when it comes to working for the community’s best interest.

McMaster is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which refuses to get involved to assist the community. Only when it is pushed, shoved and embarrassed – such as with its relationship with the Westdale neighbourhood – does it decide to take action.

As for a productive, cooperative partnership between City Hall and McMaster, that has remained elusive – a troubling dilemma involving the city’s most important entities.

McMaster University Administration has a very elitist attitude and looks down very much about the working class roots of the City of Hamilton.  I see it myself.  I went to a good high school in Hamilton but McMaster recruiters showed up rarely.  They only showed up once a year at the inner-city schools of Churchill and Delta.  I know from people that attend McMaster with me that McMasters does a lot more recruiting in the 905 belt.  It is a clear showing of where McMaster prefers its students to come from.  McMaster has absolutely no inner-city outreach program unlike many other universities and has no plans to start one.  McMaster is the closest university to Canada’s largest native reserve, the Six Nations, yet does little outreach as an institution outside of the good work of the Indigeous Studies Program.
The Stoney Creek News is right to call out McMaster this week.

Source: Stoney Creek News

The University of Arizona has extended their Student Code of Conduct off-campus as reported by the Arizona Daily Star in a story entitled “UA to start penalties for red-tag students.”  The Tucson Fox affilate aslo reports the story.  According to the Fox report, the Dean of Students Office will receive a report from the Tucson Police Department weekly detailing red-tag citations.  The DoS will tend determine which party hosts are students of UofA.  The DoS will tend issue on-campus penalties for parties host by students with a majority of guests being students.  The penalities must be linked to violations of the SCC such as

The “red-tag” is a highly visible notice which is printed on red paper and given when police fine a property for having an “unruly gatherering” under a law called the Unruly Gathering Ordinance (Noise Ordinance on SU site) and must remain clearly visible on the property where anyone passing by the property can clearly see it.  It must remain up for 180 days.  The “red-tag” is the scarlet letter of our times.

The ordinance that the “red-tag” is issued under is over a decade out.  It is supposed to be fairly applied across the City of Tucson but as the media reports it is not:

The Dean of Students’ pilot program will be the first time anybody has examined which portion of the city’s red-tag citations are issued to students, who are widely thought to receive the bulk of the citations. An Arizona Daily Star analysis of active red tags in August found most were concentrated within two miles of campus.

Now, it does not say if that is because the area is targeted or that students are the only ones that throw parties.  I doubt it is the latter. 

Currently in Ontario, the idea of a keg registry is being put forth as an way to stop/control/punish student parties.  The language used officially is that it will apply to all keg and police will visit all keg registars to make sure they throw a proper party that will not break any bylaws.   I can see things being targetted to students like in this case.

The Arizona Students Union has two pages in their off-campus housing guide dedicated to the ordinance:
http://www.union.arizona.edu/csil/csa/housingguide/redtag.php
http://www.union.arizona.edu/csil/csa/housingguide/noiseordinance.php

The Sheaf recently (just prior to Christmas) took up membership in CUP.
Last year, The Sheaf ran a cartoon called “Capitalist Pig” which generated a great amount of controversy.  Membership in CUP will prove to be very helpful if a similar event occurs in the future.  This may be a reason for their rejoining CUP.
The Sheaf also published this week.

Zac Spicer, a McMaster Student who does a great job of blogging on his blog: Towards A Just Society, posted on Facebook that Mark Holland (M.P. Ajax-Pickering) will be speaking at McMaster this Thursday, January 11th at 7pm for two hours in MUSC 311/313.

Wikipedia (naturally) has an article on him with the following:

Holland has been named by the Globe and Mail as a member of the new ‘Rat Pack’ and was voted by the Hill Times as the most effective Opposition MP in Question Period and the ‘Best Up-And-Comer’ (December, 2006) . Mark is also known for his impressive style in question period and for posing hard questions in Committee. Stockwell Day has referred to Mark as ‘Perry Mason on Steroids’ and ‘the Caped Crusader’ during their sometimes heated exchanges in the Public Safety and National Security meetings. Macleans has labeled Holland – ‘Part Attack Dog – Part King Maker’ for his going after Conservatives and for his role in the 2006 leadership campaign.

I am hoping to interview him for a Silhouette column to run the following week.
I am doing a throw out to my readership, what do you want to know from this M.P.?

I do not know how I feel about this one right now.  I think it is meaningful but I also feel that it is not concise.  Anyway, here it is:

It is often said that knowledge is power or something to that effect. It is said that in order to gain knowledge, one must be provided with vast amounts of information to digest. Without information there can be no knowledge. Universities are supposed to be sanctuaries where knowledge is freely available. In spite of this ideal, information about the universities themselves tends to be hidden as much as possible. University administrations prefer to live in a culture of secrecy and McMaster University is no exception. McMaster is not close to the worse, but they are a shining example of transparency either.

McMaster University, like many other universities in Ontario, fought against the Government of Ontario extending Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation to include the M.U.S.H. (Municipalities, Universities, Schools, Hospitals) sector; which is where the majority of taxpayers’ money is spent. Right now, McMaster along with most of the M.U.S.H. is currently fighting to prevent the extension of the watchdog powers of the Ontario Ombudsman to include them. I cannot blame them, if the students can take their cases to the Ombudsman if the University is acting unjustly or abusing its power, this would require many changes to University policy. It would almost guarantee that the Student Code of Conduct would have to change to have a presumption of innocence and a fairer burden of proof. It would definitely result in more transparency, and ultimately more accountability.

Currently, the University is in the middle of a budget crisis and they are warning of cuts. These cuts are more likely to be more directed towards students than the Administration. In the mid-90s, again much to the opposition and anger of the M.U.S.H. sector, the Ontario Government passed the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act more commonly known as the “Sunshine Law.” It requires the disclosure of the pay of public sector employees who are paid a salary of $100,000 or more. Under this law, we know the salary of one of the highest paid University Presidents in Canada; Peter George of McMaster University. The fact that we are able to get these figures is something that McMaster and many other universities are unhappy about. They argue that we, the citizens, are unable to understand the reasons for high salaries of university administrators and that releasing this information does more harm than good.

This brings me to my main point for this week’s article.

For many years, the Inter-Residence Council (IRC) budget sub-committee, a body of over 25 resident students, has been allowed to review financial information from the Housing and Conference Services budget. This access has existed under a long standing consultation framework and the arrangement has been working for many years.

Some people might argue students are not informed enough to be able to truly understand the balance sheets of most any department at McMaster. This does not mean that we should not be allowed to try. The University should be providing the background information and support to student leaders to better understand the financial decisions being made in departments across the University. If this is not done, the administration would, in effect, be hiding the finances from the very people who have the greatest right to know how money is being spent; the people footing a large portion of the bill.

If the University is not transparent, people will assume the worse about where money is going and how it is being spent. Right now, some students question whether either Housing or Parking are revenue neutral. There is a belief, rightly or wrongly, that these departments are generating “profits” which are being directed into other areas of the University. The only way to truly know the truth is for sunshine to be shown onto the books of these and other departments.

McMaster is not alone is the wish for secrecy, many other universities act the same way. In my first year of university, I attended another school. I arrived there two days after a new students’ union leadership had begun their term. The previous student union leadership was a clique which was very friendly toward the University administration. The University administration took the position that they would merely wait out a year and ignore the new student leadership with the hope of a return to the previous student leadership. The University refused to cooperate with the students’ union on many issues and refused to provide much of any information about University finances. The students’ union decided to file dozens of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. The students’ union received most of the information they requested using FOI and was able to use this to lobbying for improvements for students. Not only did the students’ union itself file FOI requests, the students’ union helped to fund requests by various faculty councils and residence governments. After a few months of this, the University decided that it was going to have to provide the information anyway and that the students’ union had undergone a permanent change. With the Students’ Union no longer in their back pocket and unable to keep them from getting information, the University began to negotiate with the Students’ Union. They even formed committees with true student input into many major decisions. The use of FOI by the Students’ Union there resulted in improvements for students.

McMaster University is now covered by Freedom of Information legislation. Student leaders can request full disclosure of the finances for key departments and the University should release it. As is the case with any large budget, there will be areas that people will questions and expenses that people will disagree with the need for. If the University believes that by cutting off the flow of information to students they are doing themselves a favour, they are wrong.

It is worth noting how this relates to the current budget crisis the University is facing. It is the belief of some that the true reason the University is reluctant to disclose information about budgeting is that they are planning to increase fees to make a profit to put into other areas of the University.

The University has stated that it will seek increases to ancillary fees. If such fees are blocked by students – as is possible under current government regulation requiring student consent to increases in non-tuition fees – cuts will be the likely result in programs and student services. Student governments that are actually concerned about this should be acting now to prepare to offer their own suggestions on where to find the money to erase the deficit. Student societies in each faculty should be filing requests for communications by their Deans about budget cutbacks. They should be working to find out what programs are on the chopping block and helping students in those programs to prevent the loss of classes. FOI has tilted the scale in our favour as students, we should be using it.

Isn’t there anyone else that is interested in knowing exactly (in detail) where our money is going?

My column in the Silhouette usually generates a lot of conversation.  A few weeks ago, I wrote my first column.  It was about the pillars of democracy.  In it, I mentioned the poor coverage of The Other Press at Douglas College in covering the DSU scandal by not covering it.  I am not the only one to have done so.  I commented on the good job that The Peak as being doing covering the story.  For their trouble, The Peak is being sued.  Global News also covered the story and is being sued as well.  I have the Global News reports embedded at the end of this post.

Regarding this wildly inaccurate article, I just thought I’d pass along a ‘pillar’ of journalism that perhaps you could mention to this dude. i.e. Do research before you write your articles. Contrary to your statements, The Other Press is not in any way controlled by our Student Union. We have heavily covered the DSU developments (about 15 articles and counting) although several major articles were removed from our website at the advise of the CUP lawyer when the Peak (the best paper in Canada? Are the fumes strong in your office?) wrote their wildly inflammatory article on the subject (which Coleman so strongly praises) and which, I might mention, has resulted in a lawsuit accusing them of slander.

Coleman…your writing sucks more ass than a lyposuction hose. Go apply for a job at the Peak.

Regards,

Trev Hargreaves
Ed. In Chief
Das Other Press.

I wish to focus on Mr. Hargreaves’ implied assertion that since The Peak is being sued, they must have been wrong.  I must ask him why it is that he removed these supposed articles from the website of his paper to prevent getting sued? More importantly, how does the fact that Global News is being sued factor into his thought process?
Also, of note, Titus Gregory of www.studentunion.ca received a very threatening letter for posting the forensic audit that found that money was missing, misused, or misspent and has resulted in a criminal investigation by the New Westminster Police.
Removed

Wajid Khan, MP for Mississauga-Streetsville left the Liberal Party of Canada today to join the Conservative Party of Canada and the Government Caucus.  This is a major coup for the Conservatives and a major blow to the Liberals.
Stéphane Dion has taken a major hit on this.  He is being protrayed as overly partisan in demanding that Mr. Khan stop advising the Prime Minister on Middle Eastern Affairs.
I have to say that I think Mr. Khan did the right thing in offering to, as a M.P., help the government in the aftermath of the arrests in Toronto last year of people suspected of planning terrorist acts.  If he has done the right thing since, I am still debating this.  My gut says yes.  I believe that at the very least, he is speaking out against those who share the same religion as him that use it as an excuse to commit acts of violence.  This is important, people listen more to their peers and those they have things in commons with.
The damage this has done to Dion is hard to measure immediately.  I believe it is a lot of damage.  This is the first impression of him as Liberal leader that people are getting.  He appears to be very partisan and more interested in politicial calculations than getting work done.  This is something that people do not like in politicians and one of the times that people believe is wrong in politics.  If the Conservatives can personify the concept of partisan politics in Dion, they will be able to hold onto their current seats and potential pick up seats in the GTA.

CTV Coverage Here
CBC Coverage Here

Spitzer acted unilaterally yesterday and raised the standards of conduct for New York government employees.

He has done the following:

• Banned Adminstration Officials from accepting corporate gifts, speaking fees, or seeking public office while working for the Governor.
• Prohibition on Government employees from lobbying the agencies they worked for, for two years following their employment.
• No politician shall appear in any taxpayer funded advertisements.  (The previous Governor was all over the T.V. in these ads, being near the border, I saw them all the time.)
• He also banned Government employees from donating to politicial parties.

This all in his first day.

I am going to keep watching Spitzer, he is a leading candidate for President in 2012 already.

He also ordered that all Government Agencies shall stream their public meetings over the internet!

 I try to listen to a few radio shows on a daily basis.  Radio Open Source (ROS) out of UMass Lowell, the Brian Lehrer Show from WNYC, and (sometimes) the Leonard Lopate Show from WNYC.

I find that ROS is hit and miss.  This is mostly because some topics are of absolutely no interest to me.  There are a lot of topics that are of little interest to me that I enjoy the shows about.

The Brian Lehrer Show is normally very informative, same with Leonard Lopate.

Today’s BL show will have the following topics and looks like it will be very interesting:

We’ll explore a question raised by the Sean Bell shooting: Can black police officers be racist? Two of the shooters on the Bell case were black and two others were also non-white, leading to a different kind of debate about the role of race. Also, astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, on his new book Death by Black Hole and why he thinks science and religion can get along; plus, a survey of Republican presidential hopefuls

Just noted while getting the UMass Lowell link that they, has their main news story, now have classes available as podcasts including video and PowerPoint slides.  Many other schools in the U.S. already offer this.  I really liked the graphic, and know that it make some university administrators cringe:

A federal appeals court has ordered the immediate end of affirmation action in the admissions policies of Michigan’s publicly funded PSE institutions. This is to take effect for the current admissions cycle.
The PSE institutions had argued, and reached an agreement with the State Attorney General, that they could not implement the ballot initiative banning affirmative action at this point because the admission cycle for classes beginning in September 07 had already begun.
A lower court agreed. This lower court ruling in favour of the delay is what the appeal court overturned.
The ruling of the Federal Court Appeal is available here:
http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/06a0476p-06.pdf