Incite Magazine - December 2007

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Thoughts about Tuition

Letter from Brazil Big People, Little World

University of Ottawa

Graduate studies at the Faculty of Arts and at the Faculty of Social Sciences

Generous financial support:

The Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Social Sciences offer renewable financial support between $15,500 and $18,000 per year. • 50 innovative programs • 470 professor-researchers

The University of Ottawa is ranked fifth among Canadian universities in research intensity. www.arts.uOttawa.ca www.socialsciences.uOttawa.ca 1 877 uOttawa 613-562-5700

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EDITORIAL

am hardly a politically–savvy person: my experience with the world of government is limited to a student council campaign under the slogan “Lederer is Better– er” (which I recycled from my dad’s high school run for office) and a month–longobsessionwithTheDaily Show­—still my main source for current events (not a problem because, I figure, you have to understand what’s going on in Washington to be able to laugh at it). I momentarily curbed my aversion to politicking, tuning in to the Republican YouTube debate for long enough to witness a few 30–second responses to the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy currently in place for homosexuals serving in the American army.

The three candidates whom I saw respond to the question all recommended maintaining “Don’t ask, don’t tell” for the purpose of army cohesion—that allowing gay men and women to reveal themselves would cause divisions within the service—an answer that caught me completely off guard. And, while I think the politicians produced a thoroughly flawed response, had I heard only one candidate answer in that fashion, I might have at least viewed it as a somewhat creative way of justifying a completely prejudiced sentiment: creative because I had expected the gamut of Republican opinion to give me the typical, the ever–anticipated “because it’s unnatural” answer.

Equating artificiality with depravity, evil,

and everything bad is really problematic, yet it has become a popular, very Zen response to most life problems. Feeling under the weather? An apple a day keeps the doctor away—that, or an all “natural” raw food diet.

I’m not trying to condemn or even discredit the staunchly vegan approach to eating. What is important, I think, is recognizing that, just because something is called “natural,” does not necessarily mean it is healthy; eating meat may be morally unsound, environmentally noxious, and incredibly unhealthy—but to condemn it because it is “unnatural” is utterly meaningless.

After all, the entire medical field—our modern notion of healing—is centred around undoing nature’s flaws, ailments birthed by Mother Nature herself. Pill popping is the quintessential “unnatural” action, introducing manufactured materials to reform organically–occurring injury. And yet, who could claim that medicine, for all of its ethical controversies, doesn’t reform bodily ills? Surgery, radiation, and defibrillation help to maintain life, stitching up a gaping wound forwards recovery, and dressing a gash certainly helps to avoid unnecessary—yet totally natural—infection; all address bodily illness, legitimately and actually striving towards recuperation, and yet they are utterly inorganic practices.

The natural world is full of flaws. For every synthetic crook, there’s an equally deviant naturally–occuring virus: poisonous berries, porcupine pins, and the clap are all products of nature that we’d rather not touch.

Editing and Production Co–ordinator

Rob Lederer Editors

Muneeb Ansari

Zsuzsi Fodor

Katie Huth Layout Co–ordinator

Ana Nikolic Graphics Co–ordinator

Erin Giroux

Chris Evans Ben Freeman Kate Mackeracher

Graphics and Layout

Erin Giroux Christa Hirsch

Yang Lei Ishani Nath

Michelle Tian Lisa Xu

Jenny Zhan Contributors

Melissa Anthony Vasiliki Bednar

Justina Chong Nick Davies

Chris Hilbrecht Caroline Landau

Jordan Mackenzie Katie Merchant

Erin O’Neil Andrew Prine

Siva Vijenthira Catherine M.A. Wiebe Assistant Editors

Laurel Berkowitz Robyn Guyatt

Elise McCormick Manisha Phadnis

Why then do we so confidently choose the natural path? When we step into an organic grocery store, why are we so sure that we’re placing ourselves outside of harm’s way?

Sure, technological evolution is hardly ever an uncontested good and, quite often, the harm change invites is more powerful than the improvements it brings. But we mustn’t become neo–Luddites, thwarting technology, or other so–called “unnatural” entities, simply because they cannot be plucked straight from the vine. Synthetically–constructed drugs, untypical human practices, and genetically– altered produce do not exist on a simple natural/unnatural, good/harmful binary.

Like a murky and foggy horror–movie back alley, the term “natural” is, in itself, a little too hazy for comfort. Recently, a friend of mine criticized drug use by claiming that it alters the mind, bringing it into an unnatural state. But, we change mental states constantly, often as the result of conscious decision–making. Stressed out near the beginning of week, I tend to make the most of Toonie Tuesday at Westdale’s cupcake store. The moist, sugary ambrosia they offer, I know, will improve my mood, my state of mind. Other than the legal issues, how is slurping down a weekly mini chocolate–vanilla cake any different from lighting up after a hard day’s work? And yet, drugs are conventionally natural in lots of other ways, certainly more so than exceptionally sweet desserts. For one, they grow from the earth; they have physical roots (outside of their shadier, black–market roots).

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INSIDE FEATURES

7 The Art of Followership 8 Letter from Brazil 10 Controlling Cyberspace 12 Poetry 14 More Pennies for Our Thoughts 17 Comic 18 Stories to Tell Each Other Where We Came From 22 A View from the Top 24 Blueberries Do we need a followership programme?

Adventures in Brazil

Who controls the Internet?

Microscopic Tangles

Original verse by Justina Chong

Incite explores three positions on rising tuition Rare Lenience

Printing

Hamilton Web Printing

Original Fiction

Impact Youth Publications 119 South Oval Hamilton, ON L8S 1R2 incite@mcmaster.ca http://www.incitemagazine.ca Incite is published six times per academic year by Impact Youth Publications. 10,000 copies are distributed in the McMaster University–Westdale area. Entire contents copyright 2007–2008 Impact Youth Publications. Letters up to 300 words may be sent to the above address; they may be edited for length and clarity and will not be printed unless a name, address, and daytime phone are provided.

Opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Incite’s staff or Impact Youth Publications.

Where does “natural” begin? What does it even mean? In her article “The Art of Followership” in this month’s issue, Kate MacKeracher posits that the term “leadership” has come to simply refer to all that is good, and I fear the same can be said about “natural.” To accept that something is good, healthy, productive simply because it’s been given that label is to overlook a field of complexities. There’s certainly something to be said for introducing outsiders into our lives, to spice things up, to foster novel insights, to question firmly held beliefs. It is possible to enhance and to grow—to accept the natural as an end seems like accepting second spot, to simply ignore that there might be a better option out there. Isn’t that the premise of every makeover? Sure, natural hair colours can be hot, but there’s no harm in experimenting.

Sometimes that dyed–brunette look really brings out your eyes or, dare I say it, seems even more natural than your normal blonde locks.

So, before condemning conventional medicine, eating habits, drug use, alternative sexualities, dye jobs, or, really, anything because it just doesn’t seem to fit the natural order, get creative—really contemplate why you think it’s so wrong. You probably have a reason—and it’s probably better thought out than the general Republican candidate’s response. If you’re thinking about relying on “unnatural,” you’d be better off applying a “Don’t tell” policy yourself.

The trials of being a tall girl Original photography

Cover by Erin Giroux

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DEPARTMENTS Happenings: News from Near and Far Column: Trappings Toolbox: Making Fast Cash Column: Myths

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Happenings

MINUTES FROM LAST MONTH selected news from near and far

Your Next Vacation

inside the bubble Time present and time past Once again, the McMaster Museum of Art is bringing a little bit of culture into student life by opening three new exhibits that bring history and contemporary art head– to–head. A collection titled “Silver Works”, by Canadian artist Don Jean–Louis, explores contemporary art with an examination of new media and technologies. Jean–Louis stresses “appearances” and looking through the artist’s eye to gain new perspective on the ordinary.

Adjacent to this exhibit is the work of Robert Houle, whose collection “Troubling Abstraction” (produced between 1985 and 2007) prompts the viewer to look abstractly at history with modern–day biases.

Michael Allgoewer and Peter Kirkland’s contemporary collection titled “Unknown Spaces” adds a homier feeling, as these Hamilton– based artists represent our beloved Steeltown. Although you probably will not see any familiar images of Main Street, their abstract images will transport you into a world of vivid colours. All these exhibits are now on display and depart in mid–January. Inspiration comes in

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all forms; maybe you’ll find yours the next time you venture over to the Museum of Art.

Innovation Park(ing lot)

The innovation quotient of Hamilton is about to shoot off the scale with a 15–million dollar renovation of the former Camco office building at the site of the McMaster Innovation Park (MIP), according to The Hamilton Spectator. Mac purchased the 37 acres of abandoned building and rubble in January 2005 for 13 million dollars to be a home for leading scientists in such spiffily–named disciplines as materials and nanotechnology. Curiously, the university has not announced this pricey renovation effort on its own website—the most recent update on the MIP pages is the year–old appointment of Zach Douglas as Founding President. Since laying down the cash for the park, Mac has poured forth promises of an unprecedented revolution in human knowledge and a surge in lucrative business deals, but so far has been a little tenuous on tedious, concrete facts. One exception to this transcendental communication approach is the MIP’s elaborate, seven–phase parking plan,

available with full–colour diagrams on the McMaster website; a special page devoted to phase one, currently in effect, details three different layers of permit applications. A detailed parking plan, shadowy facilities, and an acronym disturbingly reminiscent of RIP…

Not just another volunteer experience Instead of burying yourself in textbooks or sand this reading week, why not seek out a more meaningful experience? McMaster Service Learning offers five trips, open to all undergraduate students—in Hamilton, St. John’s, Vancouver, Miami, and Cuernavaca, Mexico. The SL team is sending out a final call for participants: there are a few spots available on all trips. Service learning is a form of experiential education that combines community service with group reflection. Apply today (or, by the end of the December exam period) to learn more about community issues and your impact with a group of 20–odd students. For more information and access to the online application, go to http://servicelearning.mcmaster.ca/

Trafficking texts Wondering where you can get some last–minute holiday money? Now that classes have ended and the holidays are approaching, many students are looking for ways to save, save, save! So why not sell your text books?

They’re mountains of gold. And with two Mac stores—Undercovers and Titles—willing to buy them, unloading unwanted books is a convenient way to take a little stress off. And for an added bonus, at Undercovers you can sell your old movies and novels.

These fine establishments will take your paraphernalia until mid December. Acquired an extra copy of Bourne Supremacy this season? Then bring it in and get the movie you actually wanted. If these money solutions still leave you wondering whether you’ll have to give your mom another pasta necklace this Christmas, well, your outdated Chemistry 1A03 text book might make a nice change.

Compiled by Melissa Anthony, Katie Huth, and Kate MacKeracher

Mars attacks TEXAS—NASA has released details of its plan to send astronauts to Mars within the next two decades. The plan presently estimates that the crew will remain on the red planet for up to 16 months, using “closed–loop” life support systems that recycle air and water, and growing fruits and vegetables onboard the shuttle to feed the crew. Protecting the astronauts from high levels of cosmic radiation is a major problem that still needs to be addressed. Estimates for the cost of the mission range from 20 to 450 billion dollars. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee quipped during a recent speech that maybe Hillary Clinton could be on the first rocket to Mars. Or maybe we should send the entire Republican Party to the Sun, Mike.

Cell–fishness OTTAWA—Industry Minister Jim Prentice recently announced the implementation of new rules to increase competition in wireless communications. In an auction process due to begin in late May 2008, 40

in north america... percent of the airwaves will be reserved for new entrants, including Quebecor, MTS Allstream, Shaw, and Eastlink. The remainder will be open to all bidders including Canada’s biggest three providers: Rogers, Bell, and Telus. One industry analyst called this a “grand slam for consumers,” saying that it will rupture the oligopolic structure of the cellular industry, while Liberal industry critic Scott Brison argued that “there’s no proof it will lead to lower prices.” The reality for consumers won’t be known till late 2008, when successful new bidders are expected to begin competing in the market.

This won’t hurt a bit…

CALIFORNIA—Hewlett–Packard and a partner company that develops medical devices have taken a stab at developing a futuristic alternative to conventional needle injections. The new skin patch technology uses microneedles that barely penetrate the skin to deliver drugs into the epidermis without causing any pain. Each patch is about the size of a postage stamp and contains about 150 microneedles and 400 cylindrical reservoirs

that can be filled with the necessary drugs. A microchip implanted in the skin patch allows one patch to control the dosage and administration time of several drugs at once. HP describes this new technology as similar to the mechanism used in the company’s patented inkjet cartridges. The companies hope to have the skin patch available to consumers by 2010.

Biting the hand that feeds you?

EDMONTON—The Edmonton Public School Board has voted unanimously in favour of a total ban on the sale of junk food in its schools. School trustees cited health issues such as diabetes and obesity as reasons for banning all foods low in nutritional value and high in fat, sugar, or salt.

Instead, students will have access to 100–percent juice, water, fruit, wraps, and other healthy items in school cafeterias and vending machines. Students have said that the lack of junk food at school will not make them eat healthier, as many schools are within walking distance of fast food restaurants or convenience stores where students prefer to go at lunchtime. One stu-

dent interviewed by local media reacted predictably to the news by saying “that sucks.” Perhaps “Bite me!” would have been a little more appropriate.

Six degrees of Kevin Beacon CYBERSPACE—Facebook users have succeeded in forcing the website to readjust the way its ad systems work. More than 50 000 members of the social networking site signed a petition for the company to alter or abandon its Beacon advertising technology, which tracks what Facebook users buy online and adjusts ad banners accordingly. Until now, Beacon was implemented on an “opt–out” basis, and users had to search out the setting to deactivate the technology. With the new system, Beacon will be an “opt–in” system that only tracks data if users give explicit permission for Facebook to do so. Mark Zuckerberg has saved face—and perhaps Facebook—by apologising in a letter sent to users through the website.

Compiled by Erin O’Neil

...and around the world Aussie Osborne CANBERRA—Newly elected Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently announced the makeup of his cabinet. His new arrangement emphasizes the economy, education, and the environment as priorities during his first term. The announcement was somewhat overshadowed by Rudd’s appointee to the environment portfolio. Peter Garrett, who has been an MP since 2004, is best known as the former lead singer of the rock group Midnight Oil. The group had one international hit, “Beds Are Burning”, and performed at the closing ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He may no longer be rocking the free world, but this former rock star has landed a pretty sweet gig.

Teddy Troubles SUDAN—A British woman teaching at a school in Khartoum has been convicted for allowing her primary school students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad. When arrested, 54–year–old Gillian Gibbons was told she could face six months in jail, forty lashes, or a fine. Sudanese clerics called her actions a calculated part of a Western plot against Islam, and called for the full measure of the law to be used

against her. Ms. Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in a Sudanese jail and subsequent deportation.

Finding the harsh conditions of her sentencing to be unbearable, many international diplomats and Muslim communities around the world have denounced her arrest and called for her acquittal.

Sappy love scene LONDON—Norman Mailer, author of The Castle in the Forest, has been posthumously awarded the 2007 Bad Sex in Fiction Award for the most awkward description of a sexual encounter in a novel. The annual prize, awarded by Literary Review magazine, is intended to discourage authors from writing tasteless sexual accounts. Mailer won for a passage in his book that reads, “His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound.” That hot and heavy passage evokes the requisite question: Did Fabio make the cover?

Just picket VIETNAM—Thousands of workers have gone on strike at a Nike plant

in Dong Nai, near Ho Chi Minh City. The workers are demanding more pay, bonuses, and cost –of–living allowances. The average monthly salary at the plant is 62 dollars, about 20 percent higher than the current minimum wage.

The factory produces about 10 percent of the 75 million pairs of shoes made for Nike in Vietnam every year. Rising inflation has contributed to a flurry of strikes in Vietnam related to the cost of living. In an effort to address this problem, the Vietnamese government recently increased minimum wage for workers at foreign firms by 25 percent, and another increase of 12 percent is expected in January.

Rap battle IRAN—The Iranian government has announced a campaign to target rap music in the country. The Ministry for Culture and Islamic Guidance has indicated that illegal studios will be closed and rap singers will be confronted about the vulgar content of their songs. The move is seen as a reaction to the growing popularity of Farsi rap music among young men in the country. Any Iranian musician wanting to record an album or perform on

stage must obtain official permission, and many Iranian rappers are seeking haven in Los Angeles and other American cities. The government has also targeted movies, drugs, alcohol, and cosmetics in an attempt to stop “Western” values from eroding traditional Islamic morality.

Democratic socialism VENEZUELA—Amid national protests and US angst, Venezuelans narrowly rejected 69 constitutional changes proposed by President Hugo Chavez, in a referendum on 2 December. Arguing their necessity for Venezuela’s shift to socialism, Chavez presented amendments including a six–hour workday, a voting age of 16, and, most controversially, a reversal of current limits on presidential re–election.

Opponents called the changes totalitarian. Venezuela is a major oil supplier of the United States; President Bush voiced his relief at the vote’s outcome with characteristic elegance: “We felt that this referendum would make Chavez president for life, and that’s not ever a welcome development.”

Compiled by Erin O’Neil

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COLUMN

Trappings

By Siva Vijenthira

Go Hug Yourself

F

uck. Is it even an obscenity anymore?

I suppose it is, because I wouldn’t say it to my mother or a professor, but it doesn’t carry nearly as much shock value as it must have originally.

We can speculate that when the f–bomb was first censored out of a 15th–century poem*, it had horrendous connotations, but now it sits easily on par with myriad other previously taboo words like “hell,” “damn,” and “God.” None of them are acceptable in a business situation, but all are fine within certain social circles. In fact, there are certain places that seem to require dropping former “swear words” to seem a member of the community.

By “places,” I of course mean the Internet. Excited by the anonymity of online communication, millions of users now release their suppressed teenaged (or middle–aged) angst by typing out lines of unbidden and unrestrained attacks on strangers they will never meet. Forum newbies will often include apologetic disclaimers to their first posts, begging for “forgiveness” or “kindness” if they’ve unknowingly wronged the trolls that frequent the boards. Some sections of the Internet have unofficially become so seemingly exclusive that many people, no doubt, never post at all out of fear that they will be labelled with an expletive.

But, why do they feel fear, if “eff” has become as normalized as I claim?

After engaging in the kind of intense contemplation and discussion this topic obviously merits, I’ve come to believe that much of the word’s simultaneous appeal and repulsiveness is in its sound.

“Fuck” begins with what phoneticians call a “voiceless fricative,” meaning it is said without vocal chords, by forcing air out quickly through a small space in the mouth. I’m no linguist, but I have to say that most words starting in voiceless fricatives are enormously satisfying to spit out. “Shit” is a good example. So in times of mere aggravation, the f–sound shoots satisfyingly through lips and teeth like a harmless (but devious!) spitball. But with the right inflection, online or not, the cuss becomes a grievous insult. Only certain words, mind you, have the right pho netic sound to seem so horrible when given this inflection. Imagine saying the word “hug,”

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for instance, with the same venom oft en given to “fuck”. Would it have the same sting?

One online forum called Truth and Beauty Bombs has been experimenting for over a year now with that very idea.

The forum is named after a panel from the popular webcomic A Softer World , whi ch avows that the dreamers and lovers of the world are not alone, and come armed with truth and beauty bombs—so one c an imagine the supportive tone the forum’s creators wanted to maintain. In August 2006, when the seemingly inevitable jerk mentality arose, forum co–founder Ryan North, of Dinosaur Comics fame, decided to implement filters to bring the forum back to its safe and geeky heyday. Posts containing “dick” seemed instead to wax eloquent on “Nixon,” the word “fag” became “cigarette,” and “cock” was “rooster OR reproductive organ (context permitting)”.

The most controversial move, though, was probably the introduction of “hug” to replace the forum–favourite “fuck.” In a posted explanation about his decision and about how to bypass the filter, Ryan reasoned that “if you want to say [fuck], you have to take that extra second to make extra sure you want to say it, which reduces casual profanity and makes the place more funny (IN MY OPINION) when you don ’t.

Also if you post a hate–filled screed it instead becomes a pretty hilarious screed, which can diffuse OTHERWISE TENSE SITUATIONS.” The man makes a lot of sense. It is nearly impossible to imagine being hurt by the phrase “hug you,” because the word’s sound and meaning are so soft and lovely, and the filter lends a comical overtone to expressions like “hug off” (which doesn’t make sense anyway, in its filtered or original form). If you think about it, telling someone to “fuck off” is a pretty awful thing to do, regardless of its present–day normalcy. The word still seems to entail violence—violent sexual assault as a matter of fact—and therefore has questionable implications for those who insist they mean no real harm. Most people who use the word apparently do so either because they are too unmotivated to find better synonyms (and are also, therefore, probably too unmotivated to consider the

emotional or social consequences of a “hate–filled screed”) or because it is simply used all the time in their social circles. That latter reason raises an important question: now that it has become almost a cliché to use the f–word, even despite its outmoded categorization as a sign of rebellion, why bother? Why not be a true rebel and use the word “hug” instead?

That word excited me, actually, when I first visited the Truth and Beauty Bombs forum unaware of the history of that filter and read friendly messages saying “aw, hug!” and “go hug yourself.” Though “hug” is also a voiceless fricative, it begins at the back of the throat and is classified as “glottal,” making it relatively satisfying to say but not nearly as caustic to hear as its predecessor. It also invokes a feeling of peace and even rehabilitation, rather than violent sexual punishment. Imagine hugging the people who do you wrong, or telling them to hug themselves. Imagine “hugging” perfect strangers online—or even in person! The idea carries with it a sublime feeling of revolution, stronger and more captivating than rebellion. It brings to mind the Free Hugs campaign started in 2004 and popularized on YouTube in 2006.

People offering free hugs on the streets and in malls still encounter scepticism and even legal barriers, and organizing a campaign on McMaster grounds is still prohibited, but now there are throngs of supporters in cities around the world. In an isolating, Purell–filled, touch–fearing, hate–mongering society, hearing “hug you!” might turn out to be the brightest part of your day! I say if a throwaway gag about “making fetch happen” can work on Mean Girls, we as enlightened souls can definitely make hug happen. Viva la revolución.

*That censored 15th–century poem, if you’re curious, was in Latin, with a phony Latinized version of “fuck.” The line in question translates to “They [the friars] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of [the town of] Ely.”

Perspective

S

The Art of Followership how to be a follower. After all, how hard is it to be Sam Gamgee? Someone hands you the sack with all the pots and points you in the direction of Mordor, and off you trot. Don Quixote clatters through town on a broken–down nag and calls you to a life of knight–errantry; it doesn’t take imagination to be Sancho Panza, just blithe obedience.

Let us scrutinize this followership business a little more closely. Lacking a desire for public office, I am, perforce, a follower of some party, some candidate, in every election. Will I scrutinize the platforms, attend the debates, interrogate vague or non–committal positions? Will I vote by my conscience, or by expediency, or by the remarkable compatibility of a candidate’s name with the Mickey Mouse song? Or, crushed beneath the sometimes–dehumanizing university workload, between the lab report due tomorrow and the essay I have to hand in tonight, will I forget to vote altogether?

Make no mistake, these are not leadership dilemmas; they have nothing to do with influencing others, with inspiring or cajoling or rallying support—they merely concern the ways I negotiate with would–be leaders. These are questions of followership.

By virtue of my yearly tuition cheques, I am a follower of McMaster’s administrators, although I may not have voted for the people wielding power in our fair halls of academia. I’m stuck with them, and, in my case, for longer than the customary four–year term; short of dropping out, there’s little I can do if I disagree with their leaderly “vision.”

Yet as followers we have the power to refuse the party line; if the “innovation” and “Research University of the Year” labels begin to wear thin, for example, we can speak of the microbiology professor who, with no reward and little recognition, so brilliantly teaches the drama and elegance of tRNA regulation; we can mention our libraries, with their up–to–date computers and out–of–date books. We can describe the beauties and absurdities of this school, contradict with concretes the plastic words of the McMaster spinmachine. We can have—not the courage, for what are we risking?—but the independence, the critical insight of Sancho Panza, to speak up when our leaders’ giants look to us like windmills.

Followership is not a simple yes/no decision, but an endless yes–but, a ceaseless process of challenge and negotiation.

But it is not those aspects of life which accidentally cast me in the role of follower that make me one; in every project, I eschew the group leader’s position, and in all my organizations, I enthusiastically embrace minionhood. And no doubt I am merely lazy, and indecisive, and chary of confrontation; but wiser, more energetic followers than I seem fitted for their position not so much by a lack of leadership potential as by an abundance of particular skills—whether for making cony stew or designing sewage treatment plants—that would be wasted in a management position.

And truthfully, one more consideration (in addition to my rampant unfitness) holds me back

G RAPHIC BY Lisa Xu

omewhere in the coils of ABB there is a poster that enjoins every passer–by to “Be a Leader!” and, while I didn’t stop to read the fine print, I have long pondered this recklessly undiscriminating message. Did the anonymous authors not consider who might stroll past and take their open invitation to heart—a new Hitler, a budding Bush, a sleep–deprived Incite writer devoted to excising the phrase “because of” from the English language? Or do they believe that to be a leader, of no matter what, to whatever end, is a simple good?

Fortunately for admirers of ridiculously inelegant phrases, I haven’t a managerial bone in my body; I was made for doing, not directing.

Think of my kind as the Samwise Gamgees of the world: stodgy, (mostly) dependable, preoccupied with pedestrian tasks like preparing lunch. If folk wisdom is correct in claiming there are two kinds of helpers—those who give advice and those who peel potatoes—then we are that class of people who amble through life with sleeves rolled up, sharp potato–peeler in hand. In a word, we’re followers.

Ah, but “follower” is such an unappealing term, besmirched by associations with the second girl in your grade six class to try out pink highlights.

So much more glamorous, marketable, infinitely flexible is “leader”—or, better still, “leadership”.

Indeed, with such a catchall term as leadership, what need for its ungangly parallel, followership?

For “anyone is capable” of being a leader, as the website of McMaster’s own Dr. Mary E. Keyes Leadership Programme asserts, and given the website’s expansive definition of leadership, “a relational process of people together attempting to accomplish change or make a difference to benefit the common good,” it is easy to see why: “leadership” is the sexy new name for co– operation.

But let me draw attention to a slight equivocation in our common use of the word “leader.” On the one hand, there is the “leadership” developed by myriads of conferences, books, Programmes, and workshops into such cosmic dimensions that it crowds out all need for followers. Yet occasionally we use this term a little more narrowly, to mark one in the “relational process” with more authority than the others. In our common process of education at McMaster, Peter George has certain leaderly responsibilities not shared even by graduates of the Mary E. Keyes Leadership Programme. When we speak of political, military, corporate, or religious leaders, we indicate people who hold a particular office, with specific powers and privileges, distinct from others in the organization.

In this more precise sense of the word, then, let me posit the existence of leadership positions and “leaders” to fill them, in contrast to roles filled by “followers.” And indeed, I cannot deny the organizational advantages of, say, a production co–ordinator for herding inspired artists, procrastinating writers, detail–obsessive layout–ists, and absentee editors along the straight and narrow path of magazine–making. But leaders have their glory (and disproportionately high salaries); here, I want to sing—or rather, prosaically detail—the nuances of followerhood.

When I ask why there are no followership programmes, friends tell me that everyone knows

By Kate MacKeracher

from catapulting into the high–powered business suit of leadership: a tentativeness of vision. The Mary E. Keyes Leadership Programme proposes that a leader’s duty is to bring positive change to the world; but what is positive change? My definitions shift from day to day; I am still in the rough stages of piecing together how to live the examined life—or if Socrates is insufficiently postmodern, I’m still learning how to tell a story about the world that I can live with. Uncertain of my own mind, how could I round up a team of like–minded followers to lead according to my unreliable vision?

Perhaps, too, I read Thoreau too young and too literally where he writes, “I would not have anyone adopt my mode of living on any account; for, besides that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbour’s instead.”

Even I can admit Thoreau takes his individualism a little far, however; after all, it is only the patient application of my editor’s foot to my posterior that has made me finish this article almost on time and almost in a coherent fashion. I suppose followership and leadership are acceptable if we see them as distinct but temporary positions— that even Peter George might do well to cultivate some skills of an engaged follower, and even I, however uncomfortably and incompetently, now and then may have to act the leader.

I delved into my worn copies of The Lord of the Rings books for the perfect line from Sam to sum up my meandering musings, but came up empty–handed. And perhaps that’s just the point: he’s not a flashy orator or simplistic hero, but a messy, unsatisfying character, plodding along in the background, now giving away rings of power, now mourning over abandoned pots—playing a part not amenable to posterable slogans.

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FROM

LETTER

Letter From

Brazil

As I approach my sixth and ultimate month of a semester abroad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I’m gearing myself for the torrent of questions I’ll meet upon my return. “How was Brazil? What was it like? Did you love it? Do you miss it?” And as I muse over these questions and their potential answers again and again, I keep coming to the conclusion that, for me, there is only one satisfactory method to approach these issues.

I’m talking about Portuguese. The language, that is.

It is often said that the most integral means to unlocking a foreign culture is to dominate its language. This is especially true for Brazil, the only South (or Latin) American country that speaks Portuguese, a rich, complex, and layered language that has absorbed linguistic (besides obvious cultural–religious) roots from Portugal; from Brazil’s various indigenous languages, most notably Tupi–Guarani; and from numerous African dialects that reflect Brazil’s long and unfortunate involvement in the African slave trade.

I’m a big believer, moreover, that languages strongly reflect the cultures to which they belong, each carrying a specific world view. In my hometown of New York City, we often say “Oh, it wasn’t my cup of tea” to express something that didn’t exactly agree with us. Examine the expression “not my cup of tea,” though, and interesting sociological undertones emerge; most evident is the vestigial US link to England, a country where teatime is so traditional that when American colonists dumped crates of imported tea in the Boston Tea Party of 1773, it was a veritable act of revolution! In Rio, the carioca (resident of Rio) version of the same expression is “Ah, não era a minha praia,” or, “It wasn’t my beach.” So what does this reflect about Brazilian culture? At first glance, “it wasn’t my beach” suggests only the beach–town character of Rio de Janeiro: a laidback attitude, jovial demeanor, and casual attire, not to mention obsessive care of one’s body.

These are all true assumptions, to an extent. But “it wasn’t my beach” also encapsulates a much more nuanced truism of carioca life. Rio de Janeiro is full of juxtapositions. The distribution of wealth in Brazil, a country with a landmass so vast that all of Europe save Russia would fit snugly inside, is among the most inequitable in the world; Rio’s topography boasts ritzy nightclubs interwoven with favelas, illegal squatter territories or shantytowns that are (perhaps unfairly) renowned for hosting violent drug trafficking and skirmishes with armed police. This coexistence of rich and poor is just one of many critical Brazilian divisions. The expression “it wasn’t my beach” reflects yet another. The world–famous beaches in Rio—those of Leblon, Ipanema (of Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes’s ultra–famous song “The Girl from Ipanema”) and Copacabana (you can all start singing now)—are demarcated by lifeguard posts, each of which connotes a certain type of crowd. Post 9 is where the young and beautiful congregate; Post 10 is a family zone. And if you’re sunbathing at a post that doesn’t quite agree with your persona? Well, “it wasn’t my beach.”

Beyond idiomatic expressions, however, Portuguese is an extremely complicated language that possesses, as just one of its tricky little gifts to foreign students, a curious (read: impossible) mood called the “future subjunctive.” The subjunctive mood, just like in many other languages, introduces a thought that contains volition, doubt, request, or that expresses a situation that is imaginary or hypothetical. The presentation of such criteria grammatically obligates one to change the conjugation of the main verb in the sentence. Take an example, with emphasis on the subjunctive elements: “Eu duvido que você escove os dentes todos os dias,” or, “I doubt that you brush your teeth every day.”

Unlike any other Romance language, however, Portuguese has retained its subjunctive in the future. The future subjunctive introduces the idea that something has not yet happened. And because this event in the future has yet to be realized or concretized, its reality and plausibility are therefore called into question. This is a particularly alien concept for the average native English speaker because actions that are perfectly reliable and guaranteed within English grammar (such as “When I arrive at home,” in which the act of your arriving at home is a sure and uncontested event) are, in Portuguese, suddenly thrown into the dark shadows of doubt of the future subjunctive tense (the translation, for the record, would be “Quando eu chegar em casa”).

What does the Portuguese future subjunctive tense suggest about Brazilian culture? Well, for starters, little in life is guaranteed. The unreliability of the

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simple phrase “when I arrive at home” suggests that any sort of thing could happen to hamper your arrival at home: you could be abducted by a UFO, you could forget where you live, you could be attacked by a snapping turtle…The possibilities are limitless. So when Brazilians speak, they almost always leave a doubt. In a country in which airlines are on strike as intermittently as it rains, politicians are regularly accused of sundry counts of corruption, and a majority of the population wonders from where their next meal will come, guarantees are hard to come by. What’s great about Brazilians is their tireless levity and their capacity to rebound from the lowest lows. In short, the future subjunctive tense in Portuguese reflects a playful negativity that permeates the country.

There are many examples that illustrate this uniquely Brazilian tendency.

Consider, for example, Brazil’s national slogan, found on coins and flags alike: “Order and Progress.” As sober and austere as this dictum might seem, in my short time here, I’ve heard countless Brazilians make an absolute mockery of it. For anyone who has taken a bus in Rio de Janeiro—because the bus companies are all privatized, they speed through their routes as quickly as possible to attract riders away from their competitors—will agree that “order and progress” isn’t exactly the game of the day. Perhaps my favorite example is that of Ademar de Barros, a popular São Paulo politician who won a gubernatorial race in the 1960s on a platform that included a frank admission of embezzlement: “Roubo mas faço,” he claimed. Or in loose translation, “I rob, but I get things done.”

This infusive sense of humor and goodwill extends to the average Brazilian’s distaste for the history of Portugal’s haphazard colonization and governance of Brazil, formalized only in 1808 with the arrival of the Portuguese court, a whopping three centuries after Brazil’s discovery! Jokes around these parts often lament, “Wouldn’t it have been better to have fallen to the hands of the Dutch or French? Then maybe we could have had some real culture!”

Or consider the Portuguese language’s tendency to make nouns, adjectives, and adverbs diminutive by adding the suffix –inho/a or –zinho/a, which connotes, depending on the context, usually either great affection or great displeasure, or both simultaneously! For example, “Aquele hotelzinho” could just as easily mean, “That cute little hotel,” as “That awful little dump, a sorry excuse for a hotel.” Or the inverse, the augmentative suffix of –ão/ona exaggerates size, turning a bottle, “uma garrafa,” into an enormous bottle, “um garrafão.”

This is not to mention the “superlative of all superlatives,” the affix –íssimo/a, which turns a word such as “chato” (boring/awkward/annoying) into “chatíssimo” (as boring/awkward/annoying as you can imagine!). You can see the fun that people have with the language.

and Brazil’s pioneering alternative energy projects, such as ethanol fuel and the hydroelectric dam at Itaipu. Some are here to nurture their passion for Brazilian music, home to samba, bossa nova, funk, and MPB (Música Popular Brasileira, Brazilian Popular Music). Some are studying the syncretism between and among Brazil’s nominally national religion, Catholicism, the ever–expanding Evangelical Church, and countless Afro–Brazilian traditions, among them Candomblé and Umbanda. Some love the food, a mixture of rice, beans, meat, cheese, manioch, with a heavy dose of sweets and Brazilian fruits such as açaí and guaraná. (And of course, the traditional Brazilian drink caipirinha, made of sugar, lime, and potent Brazilian sugarcane rum, called cachaça.)

And why am I here? It boils down to the obvious, a thirst to learn Portuguese. My mother and her side of the family hail from Curitiba, a city that belongs to the southernmost of Brazil’s five regions. Curitiba, world–renowned for its urban planning, like many parts of Southern Brazil harbors a long legacy of immigration that attracted, besides my family, hoards of Italians, Japanese, Portuguese, and Germans.

Growing up in the Northern hemisphere, I began to conceive of a life in which I could communicate with my Brazilian family during my freshman and sophomore years at Brown University. I fell in love with Portuguese and Brazilian history, which I see as a fantastical, winding tour of idiosyncratic colonization, monarchies, republics, and dictatorships. This is how I find myself here as one of a group of 15 “Brown in Brazil” students, living with a lovely carioca family and enrolled at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, or PUC–Rio, Rio’s premier Catholic university. And, just as Brazil is filled with juxtaposition and binaries, so too is my life here.

In some ways living here is just like living anywhere else, with the added awareness of being a guest in a foreign city where customs and realities are different from my New York City Jewish upbringing. That is to say, I pack my lunch for school, go to class, and still keep up with Grey’s Anatomy. That is also to say that the average carioca has never eaten a bagel, doesn’t know what Yiddish is, and pronounces “ranking” as “hunkin’.” But in other ways, life here offers me shocking freedom and spontaneity, gifts that allow me to treat everything as a new, exciting adventure: day trips to neighboring cities, departing from Rio’s chaotic bus terminal, impromptu explorations of narrow streets, taste trials of different kinds of condensed milk sweets, van rides through unfamiliar and bustling avenues with funk music blaring from the radio. And, as perhaps is to be expected in a place in which I am an obvious foreigner, albeit with a Brazilian identity and affinity, a privileged outsider’s ability to observe cultural effects such as slang, class barriers, and social norms.

Here’s a hodgepodge of bullet–point information that I never found in any Lonely Planet guide. Brazil is a country in which the terms “gordinho/a,” (“little fatty”) and “neguinho/a” (“little black boy/girl”) are not only acceptable, but are actually terms of endearment. Skin color here runs the gamut from centuries of racial mixing and immigration; Brazilian society simultaneously causes my pallor to evoke cries of, “Go to the beach!” while still firmly drawing conclusions of social class based on the lightness or darkness of one’s skin.

Accents and dialects are important markers of regions and sometimes class: if you push your R’s, you’re probably from the South; if you pronounce your S’s like “sh,” you’re probably from Rio. Soccer, or futebol, is a national pastime and everyone cheers for a team. Team loyalties run through generations, and it is absolutely unacceptable to be a frontrunner. Maybe almost as important is the social phenomenon of the primetime telenovela, the Brazilian soap opera. Brazilians don’t have anything similar to European coffee shop culture.

Instead, they’ll meet over a light draft beer, or chopp, or at a juice stand to eat a pastel (a filo–dough filled pastry) or pão de queijo (cheese bread) and have some passion fruit juice. Conversations are often animated, loud, and alight with gesticulations. Dancing is important. Humour, of course, is necessary.

So when I am confronted with questions about my stay in Brazil upon my return to the US, I know it will be nearly impossible to convey the complexity, richness, and chameleon nature of my time here. Brazilians, who play with the language and rarely make absolute statements, have definitely imbued these proclivities in me. But there is one answer that I will be able to give with alacrity and authority to meet the questions of, “Was it worth it? Did you love it?” without leaving a shadow of a doubt. It’s perhaps the only expression in Portuguese that I know of that can address these questions with graceful certainty, so un–subjunctive that I wonder how it’s still around. The answer?

“Sem dúvida nenhuma.” “Without a doubt.”

In my experience, Brazilians’ famous reputation for warmth and reception has been most clearly manifest in conversations about Portuguese itself. Many Brazilians who recognize that Portuguese is not commonly taught or spoken in the US will ask, “What made you decide to learn Portuguese and come to Brazil?” in recognition of the fact that gringos grit it out to learn this sweet, melodic, and difficult language.

Why did we come to Brazil? The answers are numerous. Some fell in love with Rio’s sensual cadence, rhythm, colour, and beauty on a summer vacation and came back to live among cariocas. Some wanted to study Portuguese to network into Brazil’s expanding economy, still rich in agricultural production of goods such as soy and coffee, but also now in technology and manufactured items. Some are aspiring ecologists who wanted to learn about the Amazon

Caroline Landau incite 9

DEBATE

who controls cyberspace?

By Muneeb Ansari and Ana Nikolic Nobody The Internet has created marvelous advances in the way we learn, work, and play. But these advancements have not come without a price. While the Internet has made accessible large volumes of useful information, it has become home to much content that is indecent, shocking, and oftentimes downright illegal. The common response of many governments and advocacy groups is simple: try to control the Internet.

But is this possible? Who really controls cyberspace?

Those who advocate for greater Internet regulation fail to realize is that the Internet, by design, is uncontrollable. Think back to the roots of the Internet: computer scientists and engineers working in top–secret US government laboratories needed a way to distribute information to different bases without its being intercepted by the Soviets. This led to the creation of ArpaNet. Its protocol was unique in that content and location information was distributed, rather than centralized. This decentralization was the keystone of what would soon become the Internet. Today, Domain Name System (DNS) servers are scattered around the world, and there are enough of them that the Internet cannot effectively be shut down.

Because of this, when people say that they want to control the Internet, this means that they want to control access to certain websites. You can always limit access to some websites directly through Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but you can’t stop DNS servers from routing to a server. Even if you shut down one server, a person could likely place their website elsewhere. Even more importantly, the relationships between Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and persons are often tenuous, making it difficult to hunt down or control individual users. Such attempts to control the Internet generally prove ineffective. Furthermore, the global nature of the Internet blurs the lines between what is considered legal and illegal, as laws can differ drastically from country to country. For example, Canadian law allows people to post and download sheet music by a composer who has been dead for at least 50 years because, at that point, it is considered to have entered the public domain. But, in certain European countries, this same music would not be old enough to be legally downloaded. Internet regulation is plagued by similar confusions, making it a task beyond the scope of any individual government. This does not mean that we should just give up and let the Internet run wild, but that no matter what we do, we will ultimately fail due to the nature of the protocol itself.

Governments Although the Internet was designed to elude unilateral control, one must consider factors other than just its technical setup. Governments have a lot of power to regulate the Internet and, thus, indirectly control it. If they want, governments can enact legislation to regulate content on websites, and force certain conditions on ISPs. There is the famous example of China, where the government strictly censors many websites. (One can even check which websites would work in China at greatfirewallofchina. com.) The Internet is designed to promote the free flow of information—restricting this flow means gaining control of who sees what, when,

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where, and how. In Cuba, for example, Internet access is strictly regulated with the government handing out pre–paid cards (much like telephone calling cards) and limiting the amount of time people can devote to checking their email and surfing the Internet. Also, the websites that are viewable are generally only Cuban websites, which cuts off the population from the wider world.

It is not only authoritarian governments who can exercise such strict control over the Internet.

Though highly decentralized, the Net is not as anarchic as it seems. Have you ever wondered how and where Uniform Resource Locator (URL) addresses come from? Where do people sign– up or create domain names such as www.xyz. com or www.mcmaster.ca? There is an organization which doles these names out: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN). Based in California, ICANN keeps a central registry of the domain names and owners of all websites in the world, so that it is clear who (or what) is responsible for a particular URL. It doesn’t control the DNS services—one can have a server on the Internet without a domain name too. But in this case the only ones who will know about such a server are those told about it by the creators. In other words, it will not show up on a Google search, and thus be almost inaccessible.

Until recently, ICANN was a non–profit organization run by American citizens and subject to American law. ICANN has been the Net’s ‘traffic cop’ for nearly a decade, and has been very good at doing its job—there have been no ‘outages’ (similar to power outages) or any other major disruptions on the web. Yet, in the past few years, foreign governments have been pressuring the Americans to make ICANN more of an international body. Why try to change something that isn’t broken? The answer lies in the amount of power ICANN really has. It could block users from setting up any domain name it deemed unsuitable. It is also a root server, acting as a relay and sending user requests to their desired destination. If it was shut down or incapacitated, this would drastically reduce the speed at which a website could be accessed: think of it as being forced to make detour on a particularly busy highway. In the age of the War on Terror and the Patriot Act, the American government could use Internet control as a means of imposing sanctions on perceived hostile states. But it’s not just the Americans that one should worry about as ICANN will probably soon become more internationalized. Although this multilateral control might make it more difficult to enforce a certain ideology on the way the Internet is regulated, the power to control will still remain—it will just have shifted from one government to many. Governments could then collude and sign an international treaty on Internet governance, as they are already trying to do.

Corporations How do we access the Internet? For the vast majority, it is usually by signing up with an ISP for a monthly or annual fee. The type of access offered by the ISPs varies: there’s dial–up, high–speed, high–speed lite, high–speed ultra, warp–speed, etc. While there are a large number of ISPs out there, they are not representative of the actual networks, as they all route their users through backbones owned by a few major telecommunication corporations. For example, all DSL services in Ontario, regardless of ISP, actually use a backbone owned and operated by Bell Nexxia. Inevitably, telecom behemoths like Bell, Rogers, and Cogeco are the means through which Canadians get online, and all users are subject to the policies they impose on ISPs. To access the Internet, users have to agree to ISP terms and conditions which they have little to no power in changing.

Not only this, but recently the ISP–owning corporations in the United States have tried to get rid of “Network Neutrality.” Network Neutrality ensures that all types of Web content be provided at an equal speed to users. With the end of Net Neutrality, corporations will be able to speed up access to certain websites, slow down access to others, and effectively block access to some. They plan to charge websites extra fees for faster access, and more importantly, speed up access to websites owned by their parent companies. Imagine how many users will be compelled to switch to a Hotmail or Gmail email account from smaller, privately–owned ones because their service takes too long to load. Users may likewise have to switch from alternative news websites to more mainstream ones, which are probably owned by the same people as the ISP. This negates one of the big advantages of the Internet—easy access to alternative points of view. Net Neutrality is an idea which applies to all telecommunications media but may soon be abolished when it comes to the Internet. Many authoritarian states do not allow private corporations to set up ISPs. Their reasoning is simple: control of the Internet, and thus information accessibility, lies with whomever provides the service.

The Technological Elite Hackers, crackers, the technological “elite”— whatever you call them, you can’t deny that these people have some influence over the Internet. Even large websites such as eBay and Yahoo! have fallen prey to debilitating barrages known as Distributed Denial of Service attacks. They occur when a malicious hacker uses “zombie” computers scattered worldwide to overload a website with traffic, rendering it inaccessible. Viruses, Trojan horses and the like strike fear into the hearts of Internet users and regulators. One contemporary example of power of “hackerdom” is the prevalence of file sharing. For every file sharing protocol that is shut down, three new ones seem to spring right back up. The same is true of software piracy.

These activities represent much of the reason for controlling the Internet, and hackers are the ones responsible for keeping the arms race going. After all, without an enemy to control, why would controlling the Internet even be on anyone’s mind? The Internet would be more like television and radio, neither of which seriously concern regulators since it is highly unlikely that someone will set up an illegal TV station.

Some Concluding Thoughts Ana: There is one final group who can control the Internet: the people. The Internet is a protocol, a series of tubes connected through a complex web of servers and networks. Without people, that’s all that the Internet would be. But we need users to generate content, provide updates, discuss websites, make recommendations, and also complain and remove questionable content.

We are all connected, for better or for worse, and it is our responsibility to make the most of it. You may think that Facebook has questionable privacy policies, and this may worry you. But if you are so worried, why create a Facebook account in the first place? Traffic is the currency of the Internet: if enough people quit Facebook, advertising revenue would decrease to a sufficient degree that their operations would grind to a halt.

The Internet is not a self–regulating entity; for our rights to be protected, we sometimes need to step in. If you saw a robbery taking place, would you let it happen? Probably not. The same is true of cyberspace.

When you do a Google search, I’m sure you occasionally get links to websites that are less than legitimate. But you will likely have been trained not to click on them—it’s a matter of common sense, of cyber–smarts. If you were walking around downtown Hamilton alone in the middle of the night, you would probably stick to well–trafficked streets and avoid sketchy–looking alleys. Just as prudent behaviour prevents crime in real life, we can apply the same level of cautiousness to our online actions.

This may not make offensive content disappear immediately, but will definitely reduce its effect on our daily lives. The Internet may be a scary place, but we need to remember that it is just a technology like any other. Slide shows were replaced by movie reels, VHS beat out BetaMax only to be driven into obsolescence by the DVD, and books are printed rather than copied out by hand. Eventually the Internet will complete its life cycle and become obsolete. What will replace it? Nobody knows, but until then, we must make do with what we have.

Muneeb: The vast majority of Internet users just want to check their emails, browse websites, instant message and download files.

They do this through the means available to them: ISPs operating under the laws and regulations of their respective governments.

The Internet policies of governments or ISPs cannot usually be affected by the average Internet user. If users have a problem, some can get around the laws—for example, dissident bloggers or file–sharing “pirates.” But most users are not sufficiently technologically–savvy to pull off such antics. If the government or a telecommunications company shut down access to a radio or TV station, anyone could theoretically aim a satellite in the right direction and have access to it. In the same way, anyone can also set up their own TV or radio station—all you need is the right equipment and knowledge of how to transmit certain waves out into the world. But very few people do. For one, it is illegal: TV and radio are strictly regulated by governments (in Canada, by the CRTC), and it takes much bureaucratic wrangling to get the proper licenses to broadcast. Furthermore, very few people have the knowledge and equipment to set up a restricted station. The same idea applies to the Internet. If some content is blocked, a user can reroute and set it up on another server, but this rarely happens. The notion that for every one file–sharing mechanism shut down, three more can pop up greatly exaggerates the personal agency of the average Internet user. Sadly, most users are bound to use the Internet with the cards they are dealt. The real control of what they can see or do online rests in the hands of governments and ISPs.

incite 11

POETRY

rosewood blood–hued brew draws damp rings on dark cherry and a lip print ridged with specks of bois rosé. she cradles needles, a mass of angora, and peers over gilded rims to count stitches for her baby. once, when baby was rude, rose–shaped soap rolled against the back of her teeth and over her tongue. and when baby was bad, a red rivulet trickled onto the white duvet and into its seams. but baby is good now— holds herself in, shrinks boneward, earns her angora sweater. blood–hued brew draws damp rings on dark cherry and keeps her heart afloat.

story–tell sometimes i think you’re inside the tip of my pencil, scrawling your way into my story even though i’m the one holding the pencil. sometimes i think i’m letting you, until i remember my soft pink rubber pearl can translate you into crumbs and dents. but when i

felt your nose, cold, against my cheek, i remembered: we aren’t books. we are two people

on the bus home from the tarot card reader. let’s get a white dog, so dark.

people can see him in the

By Ju stin a Chong 12 incite

G RAPHICS BY J ENNY ZHAN

remorse why did you cut a hole in your blank t after you cut a hole in my bl nket? if you’re going to hurt me, then mean it.

incite 13

FEATURE

M o re Pen nies fo r O u r Th o ug h ts Incite explores three positions on rising tuition

By Chris Evans and Zsuzsi Fodor

U

ndergraduates, graduates and professional students aim to spend two to four years at university. In this relatively short timespan, we may feel relatively unaffected by year–to–year increases in tuition. Off the top of our heads, few of us could recall how much exactly we paid for tuition and how it compared to last year’s. Nevertheless, rising tuition fees are a hotly debated topic on Canadian university campuses, particularly in Ontario. Just take a look at the front window of CUPE’s office in Wentworth House, where a poster featuring Marie Antoinette declares “Tuition? Let them eat cake!” The numbers from the last 15 years indicate a worrisome trend. According to Statistics Canada, the average tuition at Ontario universities was only $1680 in the 1990–91 school year. By 2004–05, fees had increased by an astonishing 195 percent to the more familiar cost of $4960. Ancillary fees, which cover non–academic services such as athletics, health, and student government, rose 20 percent from $568 to $686 over the same period. What is behind this explosive development? And what does it mean for students, who consider themselves poor at the best of times? We put the question to three stakeholders in the tuition debate: the MSU, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and the McMaster administration.

We quickly discovered that tuition is hardly just a matter of budgeting, but reflects deeper issues about the university’s goals for the future, our society’s moral responsibility to make post–secondary education accessible, and Canada’s adaptability to an increasingly

Graphic by Michelle Tian

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competitive global economy.

Our search first brought us to the desk of Arati Sharma, the MSU’s Vice President Education and McMaster’s delegate to the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA). OUSA is a coalition of student union councils that lobbies the government on improving the affordability, accessibility, accountability, and quality of post–secondary education. Sharma began by laying out the mechanics of how tuition increases work.

Fees are regulated for certain programs and deregulated for others. In regulated programs, the Ontario government stipulates that tuition for first year students can only increase by 4.5 percent per year, and by four percent for upper–year students. Deregulated programs, including engineering, business, law, and medicine among others, are capped at eight percent. Why are certain programs regulated, and not others? Sharma explained that students want regulated programs, but university administrations favour deregulated ones. While students are interested in keeping costs down, universities are finding themselves under increasing financial pressure to provide quality education. Thus far, the solution has come through tuition hikes. So what is the deeper problem that regulation is trying to contain? Why are students and universities alike finding it harder to make ends meet?

In brief, Sharma told us, provincial funding is coming up short. Universities have four sources of income: tuition, private donations, direct provincial funding, and indirect federal funding. Education is constitutionally a provincial mandate.

Therefore, Ontario is responsible for funding post–secondary institutions on a per–student basis. The federal government makes indirect contributions through Canada Social Transfer, research and innovation funding, and federal loan and scholarship programs. Ontario provides the lowest level of funding per capita of any province. As of 2005, Ontario supplied about $180 per capita while the other nine provinces on average gave slightly less than $260. Since federal funding is relatively constant and the impact of private donors is relatively limited, the rest of the financial burden falls on students. For the 2004–05 fiscal year, tuition offset 45 percent of Ontario post–secondary institutions’ operating costs.

The averages for Canada and members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD—or the global North) were 29.6 percent and 21.4 percent, respectively. Sharma also pointed out that recent surges in enrolment have exacerbated the problem. Since last year, McMaster’s student population has risen from about 18 000 to 19 648. When per–student funding is already lacking, the gross shortage becomes

all the more acute.

It is Sharma and OUSA’s position that the present post–secondary cost–recovery system is unsustainable: quality of education and infrastructure are deteriorating, and student and university budgets alike are being stretched “beyond the breaking point.” The university cost–recovery system therefore requires a fundamental restructuring.

Sharma stresses that all willing and qualified students should be able to access and excel within Ontario’s system of post–secondary education, and that financial considerations should not dissuade them from doing so.

While students and their families should pay for education, this must not become an unreasonable commitment. Therefore, public funding must pick up the slack. OUSA points to the fact that post–secondary education is a common good, with benefits that extend beyond the student’s individual edification.

It argues, for example, that higher education is an important input into cultural life, civil society, and especially the economy. In the context of economic globalization—and the rise of India and China—developed countries will increasingly rely on innovative and skill–intensive industries. The provincial government forecasts that 70 percent of all new jobs will require some form of post– secondary education. The need for a broad, inclusive post–secondary educational system is therefore a very pressing public issue.

Sharma argues that the government must recognize its gravity and allocate public resources accordingly.

How do we approach the issue? Sharma, through OUSA, is pursuing a pan–Canadian accord for a new cost–recovery model for post–secondary institutions. In the meantime, she suggests that the government should regulate all tuition, ensuring that it does not increase beyond the rate of inflation. The Ontario government must also increase its per–student funding, at least to the national average. As Sharma put it, “it’s unfortunate that we are the richest province, but students get the least funding.” Concurrently, the province must broaden its understanding of education expenses to include not only tuition and ancillary fees, but textbooks, living expenses, and transportation, among other things. The federal government can also improve its contribution. Sharma cited as an example the 2003 decision to split the Canada Health and Social Transfer into the Canada Health Transfer and the Canada Social Transfer. This change ensured that a constant portion of federal funds were earmarked for health spending, rather than being left to the provinces’ discretion. Sharma believes that a similar scheme for education would both increase funding and make it more dependable. On a more philosophical note, Sharma suggests that the province should

Graphic by Michelle Tian

rethink the notion of a complete education as a K–14 or K–16 enterprise. This would put a policy emphasis on high participation and completion rates, comparable to what the province does for the primary and secondary systems.

Leaving the MUSC, we journeyed to the basement of Wentworth House. There we sat down with Mary Ellen Campbell and Max Haiven, Vice–President and President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3906. CUPE is Canada’s largest union, representing over half a million Canadians.

Local 3906 represents McMaster’s 2000 Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, Sessional Lecturers, and hourly–rated Music Instructors. Its stance is that, like any employer, McMaster should cover its employees’ work–related expenses. In the case of 3906’s members, these include tuition fees. While its members are its top priority, CUPE lobbies for an eventual abolishment of tuition, claiming that it is an unjust user fee for a public service. They propose that it should not fall to students and their families to pay up, but rather that taxation and other collective funding should bankroll postsecondary education.

When asked how they anticipated making headway, Campbell and Haiven outlined CUPE’s three–pronged approach: freeze tuition, reduce it, and ultimately abolish it.

At present, this consists of building political momentum with like–minded Canadian organizations. According to the numbers so far, Campbell and Haiven agree that it has been an uphill battle; tuition fees are still on a seemingly untamable rise. But they stress the importance of building a grassroots political will, which is intangible by definition. Further complicating measurable progress on tuition is the interconnectedness of this issue with the fundamental divides that characterize our society. They view the increasing commodification of a public good, one of the few remaining enclaves from market forces, as a chilling development in the imposition of a global neo–liberal agenda.

According to the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA)— one of CUPE’s ally organizations—per– student government funding in Ontario is 25 percent below the Canadian average and 33 percent below the United States’. OCUFA sees a direct correlation between student funding and student engagement; lower funds means fewer professors, bigger classes, and less interactivity. Ontario’s student to faculty ratio is 27:1 whereas the American average is 15:1. According to Brian E. Brown, President of OCUFA, Ontario universities will need 11 000 more professors by 2010. By then, the province can expect 46 000 more students enrolled in its post–secondary institutions, lighting a fire under universities to find more funds.

Universities are increasingly turning to private donors for financial support—in McMaster’s case, the ubiquitous Michael G. DeGroote, David Braley, and most recently Chancellor Lynton Wilson. CUPE sees these private–public partnerships as endemic to the university’s strategy of expanding, corporatizing, and privatizing. This pervasive trend is apparent in McMaster’s recent construction program, and its emphasis on business and science buildings. “Arts have become the poor cousin, creating have and have–not faculties,” stated CUPE in an October 2006 research paper. While Chancellor Wilson’s $10 million donation to

Humanities will help fund a liberal arts building on campus, Haiven notes that the building is not based on McMaster’s needs but the personal agenda of the donor. The same applies for all corporate donors whose altruism is motivated by a desire to access the student market, not to promote higher quality, more accessible education. CUPE’s bottom line is that charging students for their education is unjust and that the federal and provincial governments should be footing the bill—not private donors and private interests.

Is the university worth fighting for?

Haiven and Campbell are adamant that it is—they wouldn’t be here otherwise.

CUPE’s position is that all education is a right and therefore must be universally accessible. Statistics Canada found in 2002 that 70 percent of those facing barriers to post–secondary education cited finances as the cause. Canada charges some of the most prohibitive tuition fees in the industrialized world; in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, France, and Norway, post–secondary education costs very little or nothing at all. The union upholds university education as an essential social service, just like primary and secondary education or healthcare.

CUPE Local 3906 will continue to gather student support for its mandate to end tuition. In association with the Canadian Federation of Students, the Labour Movement of General Students, and McMaster alumni, it will carry on its lobbying efforts with the provincial and federal governments. It claims to have made progress by mobilizing students, but also that overall political priorities are skewed. Campbell and Haiven situate the problem of inflating tuition fees within a political environment where foreign occupation receives more attention than education. They have hope for what is possible, but admit there is a long way to go. The university is one of the last spaces where thinking outside of market forces is permitted, reflects Haiven. Given the incursions of corporatism into university institutions and culture, he worries that we are seeing this ideal being actively undone.

McMaster’s new Provost and Vice– President Academic, Dr. Ilene Busch– Vishniac, graciously entertained our tuition inquiries in a Saturday afternoon phone conference. One of her first moves in office was the establishment of three committees, on Best Teaching and Learning Practices, Prioritization, and Alternative Budget Models.

Part of what drew Dr. Busch–Vishniac from

Johns Hopkins University to McMaster is its problem–based learning (PBL) approach, internationally reputed as the “McMaster Model.” The first committee seeks to further integrate teaching and research by introducing more PBL and Inquiry courses.

The challenge lies in figuring out how to apply this “intimate” learning style to McMaster’s growing classes. Dr. Busch–Vishniac asserts that this dilemma is felt around the world and that McMaster should be the one to provide an answer. One of the questions for the Best Teaching and Learning Practices committee is whether Inquiry courses are more costly to offer. At present, there is no data available.

Dr. Busch–Vishniac’s Prioritization committee will evaluate what McMaster’s primary goals should be, as a guide for how resources are allocated. While the Prioritization committee has no direct bearing on the University Fees Committee, which determines the budget, it will play a significant role in informing policy. She says it is important to evaluate which aspects of McMaster’s mission are most important so that it has a clear and thorough focus.

Even some “activities that are fun and useful need to be allowed to disappear so that resources can be put squarely on priorities.” The Provost notes that resources are always constrained—it is a fact of life for university administrators—and that determining McMaster’s priorities will help focus finances.

The committee on Alternative Budget Models will look into finding new methods for dividing up McMaster’s funds. As the current model stands, students’ tuition is funneled into their home departments. A problem arises when students take electives in other departments, as the host departments receive no compensation. The Faculties of Humanities and Sciences do more so–called “service teaching” than anyone else on campus and are consequentially running low not just on funds, but lecturers. The present solution is to redistribute money between faculty budgets on an ad hoc basis, but this cannot be prolonged and doesn’t allow for planning, says the Provost. At Johns Hopkins, tuition dollars follow the students. Funding therefore depends on enrolment in courses as opposed to degree programs. Recalling McMaster’s intimate PBL and Inquiry approach, a problem with this model is that classes with low enrolment lose resources compared to the mega–lectures. Dr. Busch–Vishniac’s plan is to look at all the available models and find the one best suited to McMaster.

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The first meeting of the Alternative Budget Model task force is scheduled for mid– December. She anticipates that it will be a slow procedure in order to ensure maximum participation, including from students. At present, she is acquiring candidate names from the McMaster Association of Part–time Students (MAPS) and the MSU. Another pressure felt by the administration is the need to stay competitive as a teaching and research institution. The cost of doing so, says the Provost, is a major contributor to tuition increases. University expenses are better described by the Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) than the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the normal measure of inflation. For example, she explains that while a new model of computer may be expensive, the market offers consumers less–expensive alternatives, such as older computers recently rendered obsolete. But in order to remain competitive, universities are compelled to choose the most advanced and therefore expensive products. This dynamic builds an extra degree of inflation into university expenses, one that CPI fails to describe. According to Dr. Busch–Vishniac, the price of leading technological advancements and facilities is increasing, and competition for faculty members has caused salaries to rise.

As a result, the cost of staying on the cutting–edge is increasing. Nevertheless, Dr. Busch–Vishniac affirms that it is not good enough to accept mediocrity instead of greatness due to financial constraints.

Like the MSU and CUPE, the Provost highlights that finances are spread thinly in university budgets due to inadequate provincial funding. One of the most important tasks of universities is to help the province and federal government realize that education plays a role in every realm of society. As a result, governments should be more invested in it—and investing more in it. Over the last 10 to 15 years, while other provinces were reaching deeper into their pockets, Ontario has been shortchanging its students. The basic provincial grant to McMaster gets slightly bumped up every few years but then remains at a plateau until the next incremental rise.

The provincial government should build inflation into its basic grant, says the Provost, as well as be more responsive to the social significance of post–secondary education.

In light of all three stakeholders’ adamancy that universities need better funding, we asked the Provost whether post–secondary education is a right.

She readily agrees it is a common good, noting that it is in the best interest of governments and society to have an educated population. Having a university degree in Canada translates into a two– and–a–half–time increase in lifetime earnings. This benefits not only the individual, but also his or her community and government tax revenues. In terms of viewing post–secondary education as a universal right, however, the Provost acknowledged that it was a “tricky” question. She believes in the necessity of providing access to university for all those eligible. McMaster does what it can through its bursary program but this is not a comprehensive solution.

The vast majority of McMaster’s budget is allocated to student awards

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and faculty and support staff salaries. While a new budget model might help fund them more efficiently, the Provost does not foresee it yielding enormous gains. She sees the most effective course of action in lobbying the province. The recently re–elected Liberal government might be easier to persuade, she says, but unless substantial progress is made, tuition will continue to rise. Dr. Busch– Vishniac promised that the administration will try to keep the increases as slow and small as possible, while still accomplishing McMaster’s mission.

Having explored some of the viewpoints on the tuition debate, we are left with a couple of outstanding questions. First, all parties agree that the province is shirking its responsibilities. Why is provincial funding for post–secondary education in Ontario so low? We didn’t have the chance to speak to a representative from Queen’s Park, but the government’s appraisal of the situation and the justifications for its policies are an essential aspect of this issue. Second, we still wonder

why it is becoming increasingly expensive to run universities. Why are costs of technology and facilities rising and salaries expanding?

Are these increases inevitable, and how high will they continue to rise in the future? Last is the question of whether a post–secondary education should be considered a right. If so, then the government would be ethically obligated to provide it universally and unconditionally. This would require a major overhaul of the university funding structure and a significantly increased financial commitment. While CUPE emphatically endorses this position, the MSU and Provost skirt such binding language. But maybe the dichotomy between idealism and pragmatism is beginning to disintegrate. As we have seen, post–secondary education is going to become increasingly important for Canada’s economic future. Not only can we start to talk about it as an entitlement, we can also discuss it as an investment.

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Learning. It’s in our Nature. incite 17

Fiction

Stories to Tell Each Other Where We Came From

T

here was no word in the beginning. Only flesh—soft, still growing, and unruly, like a sponge of dough left too long in a sunny window.

There were no stories, either, only the indentations of the world on flesh, bruises as memories.

There were songs. I remember them without their words; the words came later, when we slept again in my mother’s bed and she sang us to sleep with the first songs we knew.

When I was born, my father sang, waiting in the hallway. That was what my grandmother said when I asked what she remembered of my birth. The beginnings are always harder to remember, she says. When things are ending, you know that you’re leaving soon, that you must say goodbye. And so you make marks in the spaces, reminders to come back to, decide that the taste of this soup will always be the taste of this moment.

But the beginning is difficult. Either you are too young to remember it, or you don’t know that it’s happening, or, perhaps worst of all, it is too wrapped up in an ending for you to know that something marvellous is about to start. You get better at seeing beginnings when you are older, she said. But there are fewer of them to be seen.

That is why there are no words for the beginning, why we must invent stories to tell each other where we came from. ● The first memory I have is not of my grandmother, it is of her food, though perhaps the two are not really different. I was old enough to have memories, but young enough that they had no words assigned to them. My mother added the words later, when we were moving pictures from boxes into albums.

There was a perfect loaf. It was on a plate, silver but made from tin, on the counter between the kitchen and the dining room, where I could only reach from the tall stool that I later remembered for its kick–down footrest. It was sweet loaf, shaped just like the bread in the store, and I knew without cutting it that all the holes inside were perfectly round and white and tiny. There was white icing on top, dripping down the sides, shiny and dull at once like a frozen pond.

We didn’t eat it. Everyone was doing things—getting up from the table, scraping plates, serving coffee, moving around, offering fresh peach pie—but no one was eating the sweet bread with its frozen–pond icing. I picked up the bread and moved it to the small table where I sat for dinners with the whole family, and started to remove the icing. I picked at it until there was nothing left on the bread, and piled it like a snowdrift on the table against the wall. I licked my fingers and rubbed them along the bread, making the brown surface shiny, with all the pores exposed and highlighted, like my mother sunning herself at the beach.

I put it back on the silver–tin plate, and left to play on the velvet flowered couch in the living room. My grandmother told me later that she thought, for a moment, that she had forgotten the icing. But then she saw it, a snowfall on the formica, and realized what I had done.

She told me when I was older that she’d never eaten this kind of bread without icing before.

There is sadness inside bread, my grandmother said later. That is what the sweet icing is for, on this one, to cover up the taste of sadness.

That is what the butter is for, and the meat and the cheese and the lettuce and pickles and tomatoes on your sandwich. That is why you never see anyone but those men in prison movies eating bread plain, because they are already drowning in sadness so they do not notice the extra taste of it in their bread.

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She said she wore perfume for that reason, too—because the sweet smell covered up the sadness inside. ● I have an even earlier memory than this one, but it has words attached, so I know that it comes only from photographs.

My grandmother was in the kitchen, making bread. I didn’t know what bread was, yet, I hadn’t learned about the yeast and the rising and knocking on the top to be sure that nothing was left inside except the sound of the spaces between.

I want to go home, my grandmother tells me I said. It was your first sentence, she said, and already you were leaving. I was playing with a piece of dough in the picture that my mother took from the chair where she sat with her feet up, waiting for my sister to be born. My hair has flour in it, and my grandmother’s looks like it does. I know my mother was sitting there because there is a corresponding picture, taken by my grandmother the moment before my mother took hers, of my mother, squinting at us through the camera propped on her belly, smiling with the half of her face that we could see. ● My sister was born in the summer.

Once the flour is added, then we knead it.

My father drove my mother to the hospital, and went to park the car.

You are pushing air in with your hands, they are breathing for the dough.

She walked in to the hospital alone, while my father parked the car.

In the stickyness of summer it was hard to breathe.

It cannot breathe for itself, but it needs the air to grow. So we push it in. See, see, that is how, you push it in, close it around the air.

She had to sit, waiting, for an hour, which seems longer when you are waiting to fold out onto yourself, like socks after the wash.

You must keep pushing the air in, use the palms of your hands. Here, stand on this stool so you will be a little taller.

My sister was born feet first.

You must turn it inside out, make sure that everything has air, has spaces inside to breathe while we are gone.

The sun was setting when her head came out.

We are almost done, now, put the bowl by the window, in the spot where the sun is still shining.

It was evening when my sister was born.

Set it here to rest, in the bowl by the window, where it is warmest and the sun is still shining. ● I stayed with my grandmother while my sister cried. She would say come in, come in, dear one. I have your bed all ready. My father would thank her and leave to go back home.

I didn’t know until later that she always had my bed ready, and that she put only chocolates with tight wrappers on the nightstand, so that they would last if I did not come over as soon as she would have liked.

When I stayed with her, she told me about riding the train. My grandmother loved trains, though no one knew that she did.

My grandfather used trains, to transport the lumber from his forests to the mills on the island. My father examined them, trying to find out how they worked, wanting to paint their insides. My mother rode them to meetings in the city, when she wrote papers that she gave to people who didn’t smile.

My grandmother loved them. She had been on a train once, to the city, before she knew that my grandfather loved her and would name a sawmill for her, in the time when she wanted to be a nurse.

She said that when my sister was old enough, she would take both of us on the train to the city, and that we would eat chocolates directly from the box and not need to put them in a dish as my mother did when we had company.

(When we had company, we had the square chocolates with mint in the middle and the box–ones filled with cherries and raspberry crème.

When I found my mother’s secret drawer, where she stored the chocolates and the small chocolate dishes for company, I ate them, though they didn’t taste as I remembered.)

We would go to the stores, and she would buy for both of us a set of deerskin gloves, that she said would be as soft as my sister’s hair after my mother washed it, and as strong as my father when he threw me over his shoulder with one hand and carried me up the stairs to bed. We were only to wear the gloves on Sundays, she said, to church, and also to occasions. When we were in the city, we would finish eating all of the chocolate before we bought our gloves, because it would certainly not behoove us to have stained gloves, she said.

(I spent much time after this conversation picturing my hands turning into hooves if I stained my gloves, and so only wore them inside the car to church on Sundays, taking them off before we left the car to go inside.)

When my sister was a little older, and starting to be quiet at night, my father sang to me instead of taking me to my grandmother’s house.

He came to sing after my mother and my sister were in bed, after he thought they might be sleeping. I was the last to fall asleep, or at least the last to stop talking.

My father would come and lie next to me in my bed, and hold my hand, and explain things to me. He explained why engineers on trains were different than engineers in offices, and how escalators worked. He told me about his bachelor days, which was when he used to eat spaghetti out of pots instead of bowls, and mix his vegetables in with his noodles so that he didn’t have another dirty dish. He told me that when mum was gone away, that we would eat like bachelors.

And then he sang. My father’s voice was like wood left out in the rain. He sang hymns, mostly—they were the only music he really knew,

I found out later. He did not play music in competitions when he was younger, like my mother did. He didn’t have a radio, either, until he met my mother and wanted to get one so that she would be happy. He only heard music in church and from his mother, singing when she thought that no one was listening.

When he sang, and when he explained things, he held my hand. He would squeeze it, while he was singing. If I squeezed back, it meant that I was still awake, and that he should keep singing. If I didn’t, it meant that I was asleep and that he could leave—but quietly, or else I would wake up and we would begin again.

My grandmother sang to me too.

She sang to me before my father, after the stories of trains and before I fell asleep, while I sucked on the chocolates that she left beside my bed, but I remember my father’s singing more. Perhaps because I was still thinking only of the train and the chocolates out of boxes when she sang, perhaps because I remember all of her food more than any of her singing. Her songs were not like my father’s—hymns that our church had already forgotten sung low so as not to wake up my sister in the next room. My father’s songs were for falling asleep, and my grandmother’s songs were for dreams.

She sang to me when my sister was barely born, when my father drove me to her house in the night so that my mother did not have to hear us both crying. I cried because I wanted to help, but did not yet have enough words to say so.

I asked her, later, where her songs came from, but she didn’t tell me.

She just passed me another jar of summer squash to put onto the top shelf, where she couldn’t reach any more, and said that I should look in the place where the summer began and the fall ended, if indeed they were the same place, and that maybe I would find her songs there.

My grandmother lined the shelves of her cold cellar with old song sheets from the Christmas newspaper. In between the printed lyrics, she sometimes penciled lines of different songs. But the sheets were cut apart, so as to fit on the shelves, and I could never find their beginnings.

By Catherine M.A. Wiebe

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TOOLBOX

B

Instant

y the presence of bags under students’ eyes and the presents in the bag on Santa’s back, it’s clear that exams are fast approaching. The holidays tend to be a busy and expensive time for everyone. Whether it’s buying the perfect present for a loved one, reconnecting over drinks with high school pals, or going out for a movie with your parents, it can be hard not to spend cash at this time of year. After being cooped up in the library for weeks—okay, days—preparing for exams, we all deserve a break. Knowing this, Incite dispatched some of its most business–savvy writers to find the easiest ways to make a quick buck or two, to help ensure that you’ll have the most enjoyable winter break without breaking the bank (or having to break into one).

Andrew and Chris Seek Change Feeling like brain dead teenagers, we turned to our fountain of artistic creativity, MTV. If Fiddy Cent can make mad cheddar with his tunes, why not us? Could we not take advantage of the booming Hamilton music scene? So, ukulele and guitar case in hand, we headed out to work the streets. But it was cold. Beaten, but not defeated we regrouped the next day wielding rakes and plastic bags. But it snowed.

We then tried to turn lead into gold, but we the secrets of alchemy eluded us.

Seeking divine inspiration, we headed to Divinity College. As we wandered the eerily deserted corridors, a beam of light shone through Jesus’ stained–glass halo, illuminating a lone penny on the floor. Then it hit us: Couch Hunting. We would scour the length and breadth of campus and beyond in search of lost coins.

It is a well–known fact that loose change confined to pockets will invariably attempt to escape whenever its owners let their guard down.

Couches are legendary for their ability to swallow change, so we decided to head to a place where preoccupation and comfy chairs are plentiful: Mills Library. Although the couches were, as expected, profitable, they took a backseat to the rest of the library. The cigarette graveyard in front of Mills housed a respectable share of pennies, and the ground around the photocopiers proved lucrative too. Despite our natural curiosity about the fate of pennies on the movable bookshelf tracks, it seems no other like–minded missionaries were curious enough about the physics behind it. Too bad Thode doesn’t have movable shelving units.

Now, if you’ve ever actually smelled money, especially ground money, you’ll know that it has a unique musk. Pockets infused with that heady aroma, we thought that MUSC might be a good place to increase our riches. We expected to find ourselves on Easy Street, but both Quarters and the floors around the multitude of cash registers proved barren, rendering little more than a few pennies. In desperation we decided to search around the OSAP office, but we must not have qualified, as we left hardly a penny richer than before.

Our final stop on campus was the fountain in MDCL. It was our El Dorado: the sparkling quarters, nickels, and dimes in the pond begged us to take them. Not wanting to make a splash, however, we gave in to our morals and left the coins to languish uncollected.

Faced with the high concentration—and competition—of penniless students on campus, we decided to try our luck on the streets of Westdale. We first investigated the couches of a typical student house, which did not let us down. The plundering of three chesterfields added a whopping 2.24 dollars to our haul.

Testing our theory that high schoolers are too cool to pick up pennies, the hunt for cash continued in the halls of Westdale High. Class was over, and, except for a custodian emptying garbage cans, the corridor was empty.

As first years, we assumed that we could pull off the Grade–12–who– forgot–his–backpack routine, scour the place for change and be on our way. Unfortunately, our very unusual habit of picking up every penny we happened upon must have alerted the janitor that we didn’t belong.

He sent us on our way, but not without getting our two–cents’ worth: we found two glorious pennies on the steps.

On the way home we stopped at The Barn, but after searching the produce aisle without turning up a dime we realized that it was a fruitless undertaking. The streets were getting darker and colder, and we were tiring of this hunt for change.

Our total for the afternoon came to 3.38 dollars. Not bad, considering we did not accept charity from coin–rich friends. In celebration, we squandered our ridiculously hard–earned money on a loaf of bread from Weil’s bakery. Sourdough never tasted so sweet.

Although scouring for change probably isn’t the best way to make fast cash, it can be done. And perhaps by refining your hunting skills by, say, blitzing a few couches, photocopiers, pop machines, and public fountains (if you’re that unscrupulous), it would be possible to make some decent coin.

Jordan Plays an Unlikely Hand

Graphic By Erin Giroux

20 incite

With the holiday season upon us, and my bank account dipping into the low double digits, I was faced with a familiar decision: I could either convert to a religion that doesn’t require holiday gift giving, or try to make some fast cash.

After deciding that I rather liked my lax pseudo–WASPy agnostic ways, I turned my mind to minimal effort money making. My thoughts drifted to summers where my lemonade stand brought in enough cash to buy two Snickers bars at Becker’s. Perhaps I could reclaim that childhood bliss, while making some quick moolah.

And thus, the idea of a hot chocolate stand was born. It seemed so easy—boil water, steam cocoa, embarrass myself at a street corner, and spin a profit. It turns out that the road to success is paved with broken paper cups and broken dreams. The first problem that I encountered was a financial one. The start–up costs of hot chocolate mix, a portable water heater, and disposable cups really snowball. Add in some marshmallows or whipped cream, and this quick cash scheme becomes anything but cost–effective.

The second problem was one of aesthetics. When I was seven years old and working my lemonade stand, I had rosy cheeks, Shirley–Temple curls, and running shoes that lit up when I ran anywhere. The years have not been kind. Whenever I told anyone about the hot chocolate stand I yearned for, I was met with one response: “Aren’t you too old?”

This, my friends, is called ageism.

The end of the week left me with failed hot–chocolate–stand fantasies and no money for Christmas presents. Luckily, Sinan, my first–year Poli Sci friend, answered my cash–strapped prayers. He led

Graphic By Erin Giroux

Gravy

me to an unnamed common room in an unnamed dorm, where a group of students play a weekly poker game. He explained that this poker night was a tradition among his friends. He introduced me to Duncan, the apparent ring leader of this little band of brothers. His well–kept I had to make some money, and fast—my break began in only a poker chip set created an air of legitimacy until he informed me that, couple of weeks!—so I started scheming plans to fill my financial void. in preparation for the game, he had watched some James Bond. None of Remembering my garish reflection, I knew I couldn’t rely on looks to the other players introduced themselves. The anticipation of the game bring in the goods. I needed a plan that would allow me to hide my was far more important than this pesky Inciter. wrinkles, at least until Avon lotion could nurse me to a full smooth– Tension hung in the air like a tangible force field. Some tried to act skinned recovery. Naturally, I decided to head to the sperm bank: where friendly, offering an off–colour joke here, a pat on the back there. Most else could I relieve the stresses of exam time and make some dough at descended into stoicism, attempting to hide the nature of their hand the same time? with a stone–cold demeanour. This was no Vegas. Dim lights and pots I was reminded of a friend’s theory that only one man in the whole of five dollars or less highlighted the juvenility of the game. And yet, to world is donating sperm, working to build an army of children so these players, it could have been the World Championship of Poker. that someday he can take over the world. I could be that man. I could And then the stereotypes emerged: the returning Champ, calm and succeed where Pinky and the Brain had failed. I went to bed, the night cocky; the newbie, with the wide–eyed look of a fish caught in a shark before my scheduled trip to the clinic, with fantasies of cash and global tank; and the good luck connoisseur complete with shorts covered in domination flagellating across my mind. Then I awoke, startled. I could aces and spades. I wondered if those shorts had magical poker properties. be that man. I could be partially responsible for inflicting upon the It turns out they didn’t. world an incredibly lazy child. I could have a child! The very thought As the number of players dwindled from seven to four, the end was of it made me panic and yearn for a simpler time, one where I was the in sight. Like a newly–elected US president, Duncan, who found little one being nurtured and taken care of. Clearly, I was not ready for such success in earlier rounds, began to accumulate the others’ wealth as if a big step. they were a rag–tag group of developing Later I learned that men are no longer paid for donating their nations full of natural sperm. In Canada, it’s done altruistically, for the sake of providing resources. Then Sinan pulled adults with the chance to have a kid when they cannot take the out the big guns: a 1788 ‘good conventional route. So, regardless of whether or not I could have luck’ Maria Theresa coin. transcended my fright at reproducing, giving up my gametes Unfortunately, the ghost of wouldn’t have got me any closer to discovering that elusive the late Austrian Queen must money tree. The act of sperm donation, however, is a worthy have been busy, as his luck route for those who are not out to spin a profit, who are mature went from bad to worse. enough to understand that they may produce a child and wish After buying in for five to help someone else. dollars, Duncan came out Next, I thought about playing the stock market. I’ve never on top, spinning a 15 dollar really understood how stocks work; it’s always just seemed Graphic By Erin Giroux profit in under an hour. He then like a socially acceptable way of gambling, betting on horses performed an impromptu victory with boring names—Bombardier, Corel, Loblaws—unlike the dance with his newly acquired twenty–dollar bill—like I said, this much more interesting and often ghetto–fabulous titles of thoroughbreds, wasn’t Vegas. like Smartly Jones and Street Sense (both Kentucky Derby Champions).

While achieving Duncan–like success is tough, it’s not impossible, Remembering my failed attempts in the Toronto Star Stock Challenge even for a beginner. With some practice, and perhaps the guidance of in grade six, and my propensity for choosing stocks either because they a willing enthusiast, a game of Texas Hold’em can be as profitable as a have funny names or their companies sold clothes that I liked, I was Texas hold up. unsure about my innate talents at selecting the right stocks. So, I turned

Rob Dances with Debauchery A week ago, after a fidgety two–hour night of sleep, I rummaged through my yet–unpacked laundry basket of clean clothes for a nice shirt (collared, as Jostens recommends), and headed off to have my grad photo taken. An initial look in the mirror momentarily boosted my self– confidence—with zero zits and only minimal facial puffiness, things were looking about as good as usual. Later, smiling at an acquaintance as I strolled through the Student Centre, I caught a glimpse of my grinning face in the Union Market glass. It was horrifying: upon smiling, creases and bags emerged from places where I usually beamed with delight, poisoning them with a sadness that I thought came only with age and experience.

Thoroughly dejected, I headed to the bank machine to grab some cash before heading home. Upon viewing my account balance I grimaced, which, working in concert with my emotive puffiness, must have given me the appearance of a mad Quasimodo, though with slightly improved posture. It seems the cups of coffee that kept me company during countless late nights of school–work seclusion had begun adding up, leaving me financially unprepared for the holidays.

to an experienced friend for advice. He suggested that I start with a company or industry that I knew well—looks like my appreciation of the iPod was a good reason to buy AAPL (Apple). Or, he recommended choosing a company you know is doomed, and short them; but as you generally need at least 25,000 dollars to play, this isn’t really an option for the cash–strapped student. But since stocks tend to move more like snails than horses, he also introduced me to a better way to make fast cash: put options. This type of derivative expires after a set amount of time, and you can buy them for far less money (we’re talking 50 to 100 dollars). It is essentially playing stock market roulette: you can either win big or lose everything you’ve got.

I strolled to My Dog Joe for a cup of coffee to contemplate my next move, scanning the financial section for stocks I might buy. The pages upon pages of meaningless acronyms brought me the same confused feeling I experienced during my first German class. So, like the language class I found so terrifying, I dropped this risky plan of taking on the TSX. I could apply for a job, but that takes a lot of time—and, let’s face it, most student jobs don’t pay enough to meet my pressing needs. I could organize a pyramid scheme, but I don’t think I could survive in the slammer. Or maybe I should just play the odds and buy a lottery ticket—I am on a tight schedule here, people!

By Chris Hilbrecht, Rob Lederer, Jordan MacKenzie and Andrew Prine incite 21

PERSPECTIVE

A View from the Top

W

By Vasiliki Bednar and Katie Merchant

e’re the first to find our friends in a crowd and we’ve never been intimidated by the top shelf. We’ve looked right over shorter women into crowded ladies’ room mirrors and silently cursed them for their overwhelming influence on “average inseam.” We have superior strength and are surprisingly believable as superheroes on Halloween. We can guiltlessly consume (slightly) more calories to sustain ourselves. We lead the crusade against slouching, probably have really big feet, and can’t hide in small places. We’re tall girls. The word “cute” is never used to describe us, but we’re still left with lots to say about being long–legged.

Harnessing our 44 years of combined experience, generalizations, and anecdotes, we’ve penned this to celebrate the insights on and for the ever elegant and oh–so–obvious Tall Woman. While we’re both far from being giants, we’re still pretty close—and we’re ready to offer a lighthearted look at the view from the top.

Being a tall girl is a quality revered and admired NOW; long–legs are synonymous with being model–like and graceful. But a big reason we “tall girls” are so engrossed with our small sisterhood of statuesque femmes is the extreme awkwardness of the pre–teen, teen, and even post–teen years that we share—all those years when it was so hard to feel admired like models.

Instead of being model–like (and yeah, we’re getting heavy generous with that attribution), we were man–like. Ouch.

You see, the price of warp–speed physical development weighed heavier on us than our too–short pants. Tall girls each have a beautiful symbolic badge for the tribulations they’ve endured in order to universally value their Green Giant status. There’s no escaping it—standing at the back of every school picture, being expected to play on sports teams, and having your wingspan capture at least three other kids in team pictures. Try enjoying a junior high dance when you’ve got at least a foot on everyone, and most of the boys still really enjoy watching Pokémon. Try finding clothes that fit when you’ve surpassed GapKid sizing and your mom refuses to let you dress “like a teenager.” Try wearing a training bra when you still get excited about going to the park. Then, go ahead and let us know just how “big” we are.

That’s right. Big. See, emerging out of that teenage fog, we’re still addled with comments about how “BIG” we are. “Wow, you’re so tall!

How tall are you?” And it’s way worse than being pregnant, because our condition lasts way more than nine months. The best (worst!) is encountering others who totally hype their own height. We’ve both had boys ask us how tall we are, and the comparison only ever demonstrates how much other people exaggerate their own height. (“You’ve got to be what, 6’2”?”...

No.) Here’s a secret: every tall girl knows her exact height. How else would we be able to play it down?

Forget asking us if we’ve dated anyone shorter: of course we have. And if you don’t want to date us because of our height then you can bet we’re not interested in leaning down to kiss you.

Tall girls are also

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privy to modern social politics that apply to size. Being tall implicitly enables us to assert a physical dominance over those smaller, however slight the difference. They also make us somehow seem more mature and even motherly. Let’s face it—it’s comforting to have a tall female friend. Someone you can get the perfect hug from and rest your head on her shoulder. Someone who will listen AND have great smelling hair. Look around, and you’ll see that almost every social niche boasts a token tall girl. Well, maybe not—but it should.

However, after spending days trying to find a pair of jeans with a 36” inseam, going to countless shoe stores asking apologetically, “Do you have ANYTHING in a size 11? Wait, but not heels,” and having your mother tell you that any skirts you try on don’t pass the length test, tall girls are finally being recognized and celebrated in the contemporary fashion world. Redemption from prevailing fashion—flat shoes, high waists, and short, shifty dresses are the arsenal of every tall woman. Jean companies are altering their not–so–average inseam, so the standard pains of the ever–dreaded Tall Girl shopping trip can be left behind. There is one step, however, that we have yet to take—a step in heels. The stiletto is considered the feminine ideal, and we tall girls would like to step out of our trendy flats once in a while.

Wearing heels has ALWAYS been out of the question. Once, trying on a pair of kitten heels caused me to teeter around the store like a toddler taking her first few steps and proclaim that I was “too tall.” Yet the fantasy of slipping our feet into a shiny black pair of heels is something we can’t escape. Enter Cat Deeley, the beautiful (and TALL!) host of So You Think You Can Dance. An inspiration to all girls over 5’10”, she effortlessly AND confidently struts around the stage in the highest of heels, towering over (even the male!) dancers.

There’s more than one reason to look up to a tall woman. In general, we find our fellow Amazons to be wonderful examples of assertive women. It’s fruitless to be shy, so you might as well give in to your natural inclination to be large and in charge. Tall women—and even women in general—are essentially on permanent display. It’s hardly believable when someone claims they “didn’t see you”—unless you managed to fit into their blind spot. Through lessons learned in high school and beyond, tall girls learn to drop that shy façade and prepare to GET noticed. Height is the perfect predisposition to confidence and even aggression—but that could just be testosterone.

Remember, despite the manly connotations of our past, we remain just as feminine as the “average” woman—it’s just that everything that is so fantastic about being female got supersized with us. After years of being assured that we would “appreciate our height when we’re older,” we finally do. The ultimate message from one tall girl to another is to wear it and work it, with the pride and confidence it deserves.

Graphic by Ishani Nath

COLUMN

MYTHS E–FRANKENSTEIN, OR, THE POSTMODERN PROMETHEUS

December 11, 20––.

Rob says: hey sis Game, Set, Madge says: hey rob, where r u?

Rob says: st. petersburg Rob says: it’s really cold Game, Set, Madge says: sounds cool Rob says: but it’ll get worse when I go to the arctic, so whatevs Game, Set, Madge says: get it?

Rob says: oh, lol Game, Set, Madge says: so, trying to find the northwest passage, eh?

Rob says: yep Game, Set, Madge says: 1 sec, phone Rob says: I gotta go anyway, I’m at an internet cafe and this lady is yelling at me in russian. see ya.

Rob says: oh, and I might not come back alive March 28, 20––.

Madge says: hey rob!

Rob says: hey sis! what’s shakin Madge says: god, i haven’t talked to u in like 4ever Rob says: I kno,w seriusly Rob says: *knwo, seriously Rob says: *know Rob says: man, I can’t spell today Madge says: where are you?

Rob says: arkhangelsk.

Rob says: in russia.

Madge says: cool cool. do you have a boat yet?

Rob says: yeah, and a crew. they’re pretty chill.

Madge says: that’s good Rob says: I feel like I’m exploring themes of loneliness though, and foreshadowing the eventual downfall of my searcjh for glory & deification of courage Madge says: weak Rob says: Yeah seriously. still feel pretty good about the whole thing though.

Madge says: that’s good Rob says: yeah. k, I gotta go now, but send me an e–mail or something and update me on your life, all right?

Madge says: i will! good luck!

Rob says: thanks, bye Madge says: bye July 7, 20––.

Madge says: Hey there, how are you doing! Want to see some pix? :) http://102.92.56.56/ind1.htm Rob says: hey madge! link doesn’t work Madge says: Hey there, how are you doing! Want to see some pix? :) http://102.92.56.56/ ind1.htm Rob says: I think you

have some sort of virus, you should get your comp looked at Rob says: anyway, we’re north of norway. we stopped next to this rich guy’s yacht, and he has satellite internet and a wireless router, so I thought I’d check in Rob says: everything’s going fine. it’s warmer than I thought.

Madge says: Hey there, how are you doing! Want to see some pix? :) http://102.92.56.56/ind1.htm Rob says: say hi to everyone for me Madge says: Hey there, how are you doing! Want to see some pix? :) http://102.92.56.56/ind1.htm August 5, 20––.

Rob says: yo, I have the craziest story for you Madge (DO NOT ACCEPT ANY LINKS FROM ME) says: hang on, brb Rob says: just read this when you get back Rob says: so about a week ago, our ship got stranded in ice, and we saw this huge, like, 8–foot–tall guy on a dogsled off in the distance Rob says: then the next day, another guy came up to our ship and came on board. his name’s victor, and he was basically dead from exhaustion Rob says: apparently he made this monster out of spare body parts Rob says: it came to life and he’s been chasing it across europe Rob says: it was probably the huge guy we saw on the dogsled Rob says: it killed his brother, best friend, wife, and like ten other people Rob says: oh, victor says “actually it only killed the first three, but my father died from grief and our servant was framed and executed for my brother’s death” Rob says: but still!

Rob says: so he’s been chasing it down Madge (DO NOT ACCEPT ANY LINKS FROM ME) says: whaaaaaaat Rob says: I know!

Madge (DO NOT ACCEPT ANY LINKS FROM ME) says: that’s so crazy Madge (DO NOT ACCEPT ANY LINKS FROM ME) says: tell him i said good luck!

Rob says: he says thanks Madge (DO NOT ACCEPT ANY LINKS FROM ME) says: i gotta go, american idol is on... i hope your friend kills that monster Rob says: k ttyl Madge (DO NOT ACCEPT ANY LINKS FROM ME) says: he does want to kill it rite?

Rob says: yeah Madge (DO NOT ACCEPT ANY LINKS FROM ME) says: cool, ttfn September 12, 20––.

Madge says: hey rob Rob says: hey Madge... Victor died :( Madge says: :( Madge says: i’m so sorry. are you okay?

Rob says: yeah, I think I’ll be fine Rob says: hang on, I think I’m hearing some-

thing Madge says: what is it?

Madge says: rob?

Rob says: o Rob says: m Rob says: g Madge says: what?

Rob says: I went into the cabin, where Victor’s body is Rob says: and the monster was in there, standing over him Madge says: why is his body still in the cabin?

Rob says: well there’s nowhere else to put him Madge says: it was standing over him? no way Rob says: yeah Madge says: what happened, are you ok?

Rob says: I’m fine Rob says: the monster was so hideous Rob says: and so upset Rob says: when he saw Victor, he said he was going to go burn himself to death!

Rob says: so he jumped out of the cabin window back onto this ice raft Rob says: he was borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance Madge says: wow Rob says: I know, seriously Madge says: that’s so intense Rob says: yeah Madge says: well anyway, I have to go bed Rob says: k, see ya October 2, 20––.

Adam says: Hello.

Madge says: hi Madge says: sorry, do i know u?

Adam says: I know your brother.

Madge says: oh, how do you know rob?

Adam says: We met on a ship.

Madge says: oh, were you friends? he never mentioned anyone named adam Adam says: I was more of a friend of a friend.

Madge says: cool Adam says: Do you like dogsleds?

Adam says: Or isolation?

Adam says: Hello?

By Nick Davies incite 23

blueberries

photography by christa hirsch

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