The Queen's Journal, Issue 6

Page 1

Marquee MatchUp

See the historic rivalry on page 14

F r i d ay , S e p t e m b e r 1 4 , 2 0 1 2 — I ss u e 6

the journal Frosh on film

See queensjournal.ca for full video of Frosh Week 2011

Queen’s University — Since 1873

Up in the air

Alcohol

Frosh Week alcohol use in review Kingston Police, University, KGH document infractions B y Vincent M atak Assistant News Editor

The Kingston Fall Fair arrived at the Memorial Centre fair grounds on Thursday and will run until Sunday evening.

Photo by Tiffany Lam

two other publishers are together responsible for approximately 42 per cent of all of the academic journals produced in the world. Saleh said that other publishers, such as Springer and Wiley-Blackwellhavesimilarpolicies to Elsevier. “Elsevier is sometimes used as a metaphor to describe big

and predominantly in the Queen’s area,” he said. “Obviously it’s a big concern when students come back and we had to double up on officers for that night.” On Sept. 8, the last day of this year’s Frosh Week, Kingston Police issued 27 drinking violation tickets to students in the Queen’s area. Eight officers were deployed to the area on Saturday night, twice as many normally designated to the area. The University itself started collecting data regarding alcoholrelated incidents in 2002 through the Queen’s Alcohol Working Group. The 2011 Frosh Week ban was implemented following a coroner’s investigation of the death of two students, which lead to a review of campus alcohol policies. University officials at the time said the ban wasn’t a result of the alcohol review. After University administrators reviewed the effects of the ban last year, the decision was made in February to extend the ban indefinitely. The 2011 decision was part of a growing trend toward addressing alcohol issues at universities; in August, Nova Scotia’s Acadia University announced that they, too, would be banning alcohol from residence during orientation week following the 2011 alcoholrelated death of a 19-year-old student during Frosh Week. Arig Girgrah, assistant dean of Student Affairs, said since 2010, documented incidents of underage drinking in residence during Frosh Week have increased by 84 per

See Boycotters on page 7

See Police on page 6

For the first time, Kingston Police have started collecting statistics regarding student-related incidents during Frosh Week. The information will be gathered in order to determine patterns in student-related occurrences during the school year, said Kingston Police Media Relations Officer Steven Koopman. This is the second year where students, even those 19 or older, were prohibited from drinking in residence buildings during Frosh Week. In anticipation of the week, local police doubled-up on officers on patrol near Queen’s, especially in the student housing areas around the University, Koopman said. “We purposely have an increased presence on the streets

Publishing

Questioning the cost of knowledge Faculty, librarians boycott publishing giant Elsevier over cost and open access concerns B y R osie H ales Assistant News Editor For almost 13,000 academics worldwide, the cost of information is too high. Professors, researchers and librarians across the world have signed a petition taking a stand against publisher Elsevier’s high subscription prices and open access restrictions. Seven of these people are listed as being from Queen’s. The online petition, entitled “The Cost of Knowledge,” allows signees to pledge to refrain from publishing, refereeing, and doing editorial work through Elsevier. “It’s not about signing the petition itself, it’s mainly about what’s behind this petition,” said Nasser Saleh, Queen’s librarian and archivist. “It’s about how this raised and created discussions.” The bundling of journals is one of the issues that Saleh takes with Elsevier. “When we deal with publishers, we don’t acquire individual journals. If I have to buy the five

top journals in one field then I also have to buy 30 other journals at the same time because they come as a package,” he said. This means that the library sometimes ends up paying for unwanted journals. “We don’t need bundles but we need to find flexibility, rather than a take it or leave it approach,” Saleh said. Saleh added that a large portion of the library’s budget goes towards the subscriptions for Elsevier, but that he can’t cancel these subscriptions because they do provide subscriptions to high demand journals. Journals are available to everybody at Queen’s, but Saleh said that mainly researchers and graduate students use them. “My standpoint as a librarian is different than my standpoint as a person,” he said. “I can’t decide to unsubscribe because I have community needs.” In a February statement entitled “A Message to the Research Community,” on the publisher’s

website, Elsevier responded by saying that “Libraries are never forced to take bundled packages” but that “Most choose large collections, however, because they get substantial volume discounts that offer more titles at a lower cost.” According to an article in the University of Toronto’s student newspaper the Varsity, Elsevier and

Inside

news

dialogue

A look at the future of OPIRG in the wake of losing their AMS student fee. page 2

A contributor breaks down the Iranian ban on women in university courses. page 9


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