26 March 1985
DU Shines at RMC by John Moot
The McGill Debating Union turned in another strong performance at the Royal Military college Invitational Debating Tournament held March 15-17 in Kingston. McGill sent three teams to the tournament, which is perhaps the most prestigious on the Canadian circuit aside from McGiII's own Winter Carnival tournament. The team of Lindsey Slaughter and Gopal Sreenivasan placed second, losing a closely-fought final to Harvard. the McGill team had to argue the Government side of the resolution " Be it resolved that ail that's yours is mine and all mine yours." They interpreted the resolution such that they had to argue in favour of Canada-U.s. free trade - Ali college debates involve wacky .nterpretations) .
Sreenivasan explained that they had wanted to argue a case in favour of the redistribution of income, but that they had refrained because that case had been already used in the final at the World Championships, held here at McGill. Although the audience was hostile to the free trade proposition, McGill managed to keep the audience vote close (Harvard 83, McGill 67). McGiIllost the judges panel 3-2. Individually, McGill also did very well. Matthew Mendelso,hn was the third place speaker and Bruce Morrison placed tenth. Mendelsohn and Morrison also place fifth as a team. In previous tournaments Ihis term, McGill's team of Suzanne Mehmet and Mark Warner placed second at Dalhousie and Mendelso hn and La wrence Zuckeer won a tournament al Concordia .
Beleaguered ASUS Fights Back ~ Gopal
rrenlvU&n Tht McGiIl Art s and Science L~craduate Society (ASUS) IIU bml in the spotlight a fair 01 lite, what ",i th Iheir elecbOas lIId ail . However , nOI ail orthe li,hl has becn favourable . A Diltly miele lasl week Ihal ASUS events are ked by a lack of studenl inleltlI and enlhusiasm. The article ,enaally ponrayed the .I,Sl; u an inepl organization b does very liule at aIl. .nue hu also been sorne dùcussJon on campu Ihat the "-SUS Iw becn plagued by di fflCUltie. at the vp (Finance) lIOIitioo, ~hich is Ihe number '0 IlOsrtJon at the ASUS after ~ ~tlldent. Apparently, this . iF 1 VP (Finance) , Ben he ~, didn' I work very hard : ~ sed meetings and generalq d Ihe bare minimum reed. The ASUS made an un~r~ attempt earlier tbis to Impeach him. j~ an interview wilh the den lit, oUl&oing ASUS presit Jack Vincelli rC3ponded to of the questions hanging ASUS. to Dally heLief, charged, the ASUS is IlJUch involved in combattUdeIlt apathy . "ASUS pretl~ aood job of arous1 Ih' Intere~t , " he said . rnk Wc had a good year ~ear. A lot of people put a wOrk inlO evenls this
:1
ISked whal the ASUS
accomplished Ih is year, Vincelli menlioned Ihe co-sponsorship of Welcome Week and of Win ter Carnival, Ihe funding and supervision of 32 de parlmental associations, Ihe funding of 15 student journals, and the spon so r s hip of guest s peakers su c h a s Robert Bourassa , Billy Hays, and Peter Newman . Vincelli said that wh en the Doity reporter had asked him the question , he had been "offguard" and very tired because he had been working late on the Grad Bali. Consequently, the impression was created that. lhe couldn ' I name very many thmgs that the ASUS had done . . With respect to studenl I~ terest, Vincelli Suggested that It isn' t fair to compare the le.vel of interest and in volvemen,t 10 t.he Arts and Science faculues wlth that of faculties ~uch , as Management of Engmeenng. Those faculties are much smaller and their stud~nts ha~e something very pa.rucular :: common, Vincelh argue . ASUS is the largest f.acult y rou on campus, he conunued, !nd i~ is much more diver~.e::a~ other facullY groups.. have does an art history major . in common wilh a biochemlstry " he asked rhetoncally . , 1 k of stu d en t1 Vincelli s,ai~ that f t~~S a:; isn't cohesion IS Just a a anybody' s fault . . . Vincelli was cau tt OUS ID 'Ing tO questions about . h VP respon d Ihe difficulties wlth t e
(Finance). He admitted that there had been problems, but dec1ined to be specifie on the record. He attributed the difficulties in part to an internaI power struggJ ~ in the ASUS over the past few years involving the Alpha Delta Phi (AD) fraternity. Quite a few ADs have been involved in Ihe ASUS in the past, Vincelli explained, and the ADs have come to view the ASUS as "theirs to run". Last year' s VP (Finance), Peter Hoffman, was an AD, Vincelli said . And although he " worked very hard" and " did a good job" , he. was obstruc.tige at times and tned to run thmgs his own way, Vincelli commented . The current VP (Finance) ,
Mikula, is also an AD . Vincelli 'suggested that the difficulties this year stemmed from attempts by the AD faction in the ASUS to exert their influence. However, he wanted to play down the extent of the problem. Ail the work was done anyhow he said. Next year for the first lime there will be no ADs at ail on the ASUS executive, Vincelli observed. A1though three ADs stood for election, none of them were elected. Similar problems should therefore not arise next year according to Vincelli. Said Vincelli: " There's a good council in place for next year. They're ail experienced and have already started to wo rk and to famil iar ize themselves with their jobs."
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PGSS Funding W orkshop Wednesday March 27th, 1985 R 8:00 pm the Post-Graduate Students' Society is presenting a Funding Workshop with representatives from t~e three major Research Counctls. Dr. G.M. MacNabb, President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Heather Steele, Director of the Fellowships Division of. t.he Social Sciences and Humaruues Research Council (SSHRC), Dr . Eva Kushner, Vice President of SSHRC, and Dr. Francis Rolleston. Public Af-
fairs Director of the Medical Research Council will ail he present. Each Council will be given an opportunity to speak and, following, there will he an open question peTiod during whieh the audience may addrC3s the representatives. The Workshop will take place at Thompson House, the PostGraduate Center at 3650 McTavish Street (north of Dr. Pen field) . For this special event the House will he open to ail members of the McGill communitv.
Il Council Il by Adeeb Khalid
The Students' Council met in a Special session last Thursday to discuss the restructuring of the Program Board. The matter had been held up from last week' s regular meeting. Tabled were two proposais for the new terms of reference of the Board. The StudSoc executive called for the replacement of the position of over-all chairman by six independent Chairmen directly responsible to StudSoc V.P . (Internai). Yat K. Lo , the moyer of the proposai , hoped this decentralization would promote healthy competition among the committees and result in better services. Drew Young of the Program Board came to the meeting to present an alternative set of proposais since he "found the executive proposaIs unrealistic". His version preserved, to a greal extent, the status quo, since in his opinIon, this year's Board has been very successful and there is no reason to tamper with ils structure. ln order to better discuss the matter, the meeting dissolved itself into a Commiuee of the whole for half an hour of profound deliberations. Ginny Barton wondered whether the executive proposais would not strengthen the StudSoc vis-à-vis the Board. "l! looks preny bureaucratie to me," she said. Andrew Diamond doubted that the competicontinued on paae 10