See Basketball on page 47
See Students on page 24
Volume XL Issue 17
Ap ril 16, 2013
Ninth year of Pangaea success
Aleksandra Sharova
PANGAEA: Members of the Durham College Punjabi club dancing the Bhangra at the ninth annual Pangaea cultural show on March 21 in the Campus Recreation and Wellness Centre gyms at Oshawa campus. More on page 18.
Students’ vote ousts SA president at AGM
Many issues plague the SA for the end of term Brad Andrews The Chronicle
R
achel Calvelli is the first president of the Student Association to not complete a term after students voted to remove her from office last Wednesday. The vote to oust Calvelli at the annual general meeting received the required two-thirds support of those attending and was done early in the five-hour meeting. The motion to oust Calvelli cited her use of SA funds for her
rent, and transparency issues. The vote was postponed at the first AGM in October while an investigation into possible violations by the SA president occurred. That investigation was completed in February but the details of that report were not made public at the meeting. A statement by the board said the president had committed no violations deserving an ouster. Before the vote Calvelli had said her term as president had been “challenging” and added she had only 27 days left in her term. “Not even business days,” she added. Current board member Sriharan Thiyagarajah was critical of Calvelli’s removal. “I don’t think this is a democratic way of doing business at the end of the term,” he said. He felt some had ignored the facts and were biased against Calvelli. Chantel James, an incoming board member for UOIT,
said she had worked on Calvelli’s campaign but was “disappointed (the SA) couldn’t have functioned better”. She said students were “missing a big chunk of the story”, and criticized the report’s findings and the lack of transparency at the SA. “There’s a lot we didn’t know as students,” she added. Josh Bickle, a member of the board and incoming vicepresident for Durham College, had one word for his reaction to Calvelli’s ouster: shocked. He was concerned because her removal leaves no elected officers on the SA executive before the new officers and directors are sworn in on May 1. Bickle said the problems this creates for the Student Association seems like par for the course this year. Calvelli’s removal is just one of many problems facing the SA this year.
See Proxies page 2
DC lobbying for change in apprenticeships Chris Burrows The Chronicle
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eadership attitude and movement of the apprenticeship system. These are the issues Durham College president, Don Lovisa, has been lobbying various levels of government to come to terms with in the need for reform in Ontario’s skilled trade gap, the shortage of skilled workers in Ontario versus the number of jobs requiring skilled labourers. There are two parts that need to be accomplished to change the apprenticeship program in Ontario, said Lovisa in an interview. The first part is getting various levels of government to do more promoting around
the need for skilled trades and the value of a career in a skilled trade. “We look across this country and there’s a shortage of skilled people right across the country,” he said. “It’s about trying to change the bias that there is in a lot of homes and a lot of schools. You know ‘I don’t want my son or daughter to be a trades person. I want them to be a doctor, a lawyer, whatever,’ and we have a massive need in this country. “Our federal government just changed our immigration rules to allow qualified trades people to come into Canada through fast track to try and accommodate some of the gaps.”
See Lovisa on page 3