arts | fund drive
news | student voices lacking
opinion| women aren’t ‘girls’
sports| cis hockey insert
Volume 145 · March 21 · Issue 25, 2012
www.thebruns.ca
brunswickan canada’s oldest official student publication.
The dead and the dancing
Currie fee gets a “no” from UNB students Alanah Duffy News Reporter One of the most contentious issues at the University of New Brunswick was raised in a referendum question during the UNB Student Union’s general election. It asked: “do you agree with paying the $150 facilities access fee known commonly as the ‘Currie fee’?” Of the 1,141 ballots cast in this vote, 757 said no while 384 said yes, making about 66 per cent of voters opposed to the fee. Adam Melanson, a science representative for the UNBSU, and Cody Jack, an arts representative, fought to have this referendum question on the ballot. “I thought I’d heard from enough students who were upset about this fee, and we were able to put forward a petition that required a referendum on this issue,” Melanson explained. “Another reason was that last year’s student union had officially asked the presidents of the university to hold a referendum on this issue of the Currie fee before implementing it, and the university declined.” Melanson and Jack pushed for a second referendum question to be included on the ballot. The question asked: “should the University of New Brunswick policy and the provincial University Act require a student referendum on the implementation of ancillary fees?” There were 1095 votes cast in this question; 798 students said yes while 297 students said no, making the average about 73 per cent in favour of a referendum for future ancillary fee impositions. “This referendum was also a way to show the university the proper way of introducing ancillary fees,” Melanson said. The university imposed the manda-
SEE CURRIE PAGE 2
Monica Lacey is an emerging artist from Charlottetown and an NBCCD grad. Her work is being shown at the UNB Art Centre. Tim Lingley / The Brunswickan Haley Ryan Arts Reporter For the next month the UNB Art Centre will be home to disturbing and beautiful images, sometimes even in the same frame. Monica Lacey and Brody LeBlanc are two emerging artists whose works will be shown until Apr. 20 in Memorial Hall, as part of the Werkstatt series. Lacey, who’s from Charlottetown and moved back home after completing her arts degree here in Fredericton at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design (NBCCD), said the show came about thanks to connections at the craft college. Exactly a year ago, Lacey and LeBlanc had a show together in the gallery at NBCCD, which the director of the UNB Art Centre, Marie
Maltais, attended and approved. “She talked with us and offered us shows,” Lacey said in a phone interview, “and exactly a year later this exhibit opened.” Lacey’s area of the gallery is dedicated to her series of art entitled The Sky is Always Moving, which is a photo/sculpture/video exhibit dealing with dance as part of the human experience. “We’re designed to do it,” Lacey said, “and even those who say they don’t like dancing can appreciate it when it’s in art ... everybody has their own story about it.” While Lacey’s years at the craft college prepared her for working with photography and sculpture, she said the video aspect of her new work was definitely a challenge. She found the editing software much more difficult than she would
have thought, and it was a lot to learn. “I very much enjoyed shooting the film,” Lacey said, laughing. “The editing ... not so much.” LeBlanc, a Fredericton photographer, also attended NBCCD when Lacey was there and said he thinks their work is similar in the emotional connections they’re able to portray. His series of photos in the show is called Playing Dead, where many of the beautiful visuals are paired with something morbid. “There’s a bit of satire in the photos, a bit of humour,” LeBlanc said. “I placed things in these dark scenes that are kind of funny ... It’s interesting to see how people react to them, and they’re bringing up the question of what is acceptable socially.” He says while some people might
consider his photos dark in subject matter, there is a lot of “weird stuff” in the world that people don’t think twice about consuming, like bigbudget movies with lots of violence, or the media frenzy around a murder trial. “Now that’s disturbing to me,” LeBlanc said. Photography is the only medium LeBlanc has wanted to really work in since he was 11. He said it comes easily to him, and the whole process makes a lot of sense. “You take things that are there and existing and make them what you want them to be,” he said, “3D turns into 2D art.” Lacey and LeBlanc’s work will be on display in the UNB Art Centre in Memorial Hall until Apr. 20, and the gallery is open 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. during the week.