The Argosy Vol. 143, Iss. 17 (March 13, 2014)

Mount Allison’s

THE March 13, 2014

ARGOSY Independent Student Newspaper

Hoping for a little cash back since 1872

Vol. 143 Iss. 17

Students demand compensation for lost classes

Approximately twenty-five students marched around campus in support of a tuition rebate. MASU did not endorse the protest, but is lobbying the administration for a rebate. (Chris Donovan/Argosy)

Student union requesting tuition rebate Kevin Levangie

Political Beat Writer In the wake of the three-week faculty strike at Mount Allison University, some students are demanding their money back. Approximately twentyfive students marched across campus last Friday and visited the registrar’s office asking for a firm commitment to reimburse students for lost tuition dollars.

Meeting in Gracie’s on Friday, March 7, protest organizer Alex Thomas addressed the crowd. “Our message is simple: the university should not profit from a situation in which students incur a significant loss

News

Sackville landmark dismantled: Pg. 2

of a service which we paid for in full,” he said.

Thomas indicated the protestors supported a recent Mount Allison Students’ Union (MASU) submission to the administration, sent to students on March 3, requesting a tuition rebate to make up for lost instructional time during the strike. Thomas said the immediate goal of the protest was to have a commitment by the administration “to pass on all savings due to the strike to students.”

The student union voted against supporting the demonstration, citing poor timing, as the event coincided with the university’s annual open house to recruit incoming students.

The demonstration was specifically intended to coincide with the open house, with the organizers aiming

to increase the audience exposed to their message.

Responding to concerns about the demonstration potentially damaging the university’s reputation, Thomas said, “I don’t think anyone who saw our demonstration would be any less likely to come to Mount Allison. We greeted people we saw with smiles, and they greeted us with smiles.”

MASU Vice-President, External Affairs Ian Smith and Vice-President, Communications Matt Ranson, showed up to watch the protestors gather before the march.

Smith said MASU had made their stance on a tuition rebate clear with their proposal. “Our biggest issue with this protest is that it was taking place on the day of the open house,” he added.

According to the MASU

submission, the university saved “approximately $856,948 in tenure [sic] faculty wages” during the three-week strike.

The student union suggests this money, and other savings, “should provide the University with ample opportunity to compensate students for services not rendered during the strike period.”

University Vice-President Student Affairs Ron Byrne indicated that the protest caused minimal disruption, and was particularly conscientious of and polite to the employees of the registrar’s office. “[The protest] was done respectfully, it was done appropriately, and I think […] they were obviously sending a positive message that they wanted us to hear,” he said.

Addressing a potential rebate, Byrne said that it was premature to declare what sort of financial situation resulted

Arts &Literature Entertainment

Gallery hop unites Candye Kane’s arts community: Pg. 7 performance: Pg. 10

from the strike, because the ongoing arbitration may result in the payment of professors and librarians who had their salaries withheld during the strike.

The administration and faculty association agreed to use binding arbitration on Feb. 16 to resolve outstanding issues on the faculty contract and to set the terms of back-to-work protocol, ending the strike. The two sides have since agreed on a potential arbitrator, and have inquired about his availability.

Byrne indicated that any savings would benefit students anyway. “Whatever savings, if any, will be used by the university in a way that is going to support our students, both today and in the future. […]

There are many things that will go in a calculation before we can figure out, whether there were any savings,” Byrne said.

Sports

Mt. A Hockey nearly wins title: Pg. 11

Byrne said it was “premature” to make predictions about the likelihood of a rebate, and indicated that the process of determining whether there will be a rebate would involve deciding if such a rebate was financially possible, meeting and discussing it with MASU, and then presenting a proposal to the Board of Regents, with whom final financial authority rests.

Thomas is troubled by the administration’s response.

“I sincerely hope that I’m wrong in interpreting [Byrne’s comments] as an indication that the university has no plan to [offer students] a significant tuition rebate,” Thomas said, referring to a March 9 CBC interview in which Byrne made similar statements on the subject.

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STUDENT STARTUP OFF TO A RUNNING START The Grocery Runners offer delivery for students RCMP TARGETTING GRAFFITI Town strikes action committee

NEWS

March 13, 2014

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Radio Canada International towers come down End of an era for shortwave broadcasting

Miriam Namakanda News Writer

The Radio Canada International (RCI) towers are coming down this week, and while many Sackville residents will be sad to see them go, activists outside the community have been raising concern about the termination of shortwave broadcasting.

RCI is the international broadcasting service of CBC/ Radio Canada, and the Sackville towers were its only relay station.

The towers began broadcasting internationally in 1945, delivering high power shortwave broadcasts around the world. They were the first of their kind in North America and the only North American broadcast to deliver transmissions beyond the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Though the towers have not been used since 2012, a number of people are dismayed that the federal government’s funding cuts to the CBC in 2012 resulted in the discontinuation of shortwave broadcasting. Although a number of shows were cancelled due to the cuts, Radio Canada International continues to operate online.

A Tantramar landmark is being dismantled this week. The CBC plans to sell the 222-acre property. (Nick Sleptov/Argosy) CBC President Hubert Lacroix said in an October 2012 public statement that the move to online broadcasting was a necessary adaptation and reflected the “new world reality.” The decision came shortly after RCI lost eighty per cent of its funding from the federal government.

When the changes were announced, supporters rallied against the discontinuation of shortwave broadcasting. Among these was the Radio Canada International Action Committee, representing unionized RCI workers. They argued that shortwave broadcasting was an important service for Canada abroad, and a valuable means of

Mt. A rebuffs a request for lead negotiator’s pay Mt. A won’t disclose lawyer’s salary Kevin Levangie

Political Beat Writer Mount Allison University has refused The Argosy’s request for payment invoices to their chief negotiator during the faculty labour dispute. Halifaxbased lawyer Brian Johnston of Stewart McKelvey was the chief negotiator for the university side in the contract negotiations, which lasted from July 4, 2013, to Feb. 16, 2014.

The Argosy filed the request on Feb. 4 under New Brunswick’s right to information legislation. As the university is a public institution in the province, the act allows individuals to request files of the university by submitting a form to David Stewart, Mt. A’s vicepresident administration.

Stewart replied to the

request in a Feb. 14 letter to The Argosy, which stated: “[The] invoices are subject to solicitor client privilege and therefore I refuse to provide you with access to them under section 27(1)(a) of the Act.” Section 27 of the Right to Information Act covers under what circumstances the public body may choose to deny an applicant the information she or he requested. Section 27(1) (a) of the act reads: “The head of a public body may refuse to disclose to an applicant (a) information that is subject to solicitor-client privilege.”

According to the Canadian Bar Association, solicitorclient privilege applies to communication between a lawyer and client for the purpose of legal advice. The privilege is the client’s, who may voluntarily disclose the information.

While Stewart is not the head of Mt. A, the letter notes that University President Robert Campbell has delegated all “his duties and powers under the Act with the exception of the power to delegate.”

outside information for countries with repressive censorship laws.

“The idea that listeners in other countries can go online is farcical,” Sheldon Harvey told The Montreal Gazette in 2012. Harvey is a shortwave transmission radio “enthusiast” and president of the Canadian International DX club.

He runs a blog on the subject, and is concerned by the declining use of shortwave radio. Harvey also pointed out that shortwave radio is valuable because it cannot be censored, while governments around the world can restrict Internet access.

Back in Sackville, many people are more concerned about the structure itself, rather than the transmissions it

was built to disseminate. The town’s Tourism and Business Manager, Ron Kelly-Spurles, said, “I think the towers have a historical connection to Sackville [...] I think that people here are attached to the sight of them, the lights, and all the things they had on them, not necessarily as much the function of them.”

Moncton-based abstract filmmaker, Amanda Dawn Christie, is not one of these people. “I think it’s a huge loss in terms of international communication,” she said in an interview with The Argosy. “Anyone can build a shortwave radio; you can’t do that with a computer,” she added.

Christie made it clear that her

opinion on the matter is not supposed to influence the documentary she is working on about the towers called Spectres of Shortwave. The filmmaker said she had “built up a personal relationship” with the towers after researching them for four years.

This relationship was so strong that she was moved to tears at the sight of the wires being taken down when demolition began last week.

Christie was inspired to do the documentary after an art installation in which she built a free-standing sink structure out of basic plumbing that was capable of picking up shortwave transmissions.

She started the “Marshland Radio Plumbing Project” in 2009, which was originally intended to simply document the towers, but has since incorporated their closure.

Christie said that saving the towers was not sustainable. “This has been inevitable,” she said. Christie pointed out that that since they ended transmission in 2012, the towers have not been maintained and if they had continued to be kept they would have posed a risk. In addition, the cost of maintenance was high, with a single light bulb costing $1,000, explained Christie.

The CBC had originally planned on selling the land with the towers intact, but had difficulty finding a buyer. The news agency still plans on selling the 222-acre property once the towers are removed.

CUP approaches insolvency Student press co-op seeks out stability Richard Kent Editor-in-Chief

The Canadian University Press (CUP) may be forced to shut down by the end of the academic year, unless it raises thousands of dollars by April 30.

CUP, which provides its fifty-five members with services including legal advice, training, and a news wire, has faced declining revenues and assets for years, but this time, the organization’s back is against the wall.

The national cooperative of student newspapers sent a memorandum to its members (including The Argosy) on Feb. 20, notifying them that the organization was facing a cash flow emergency. With just $1,687 left in the bank, CUP could not afford to pay its two full-time staff.

CUP was able to pay its staff when FREE Media agreed to advance a planned donation.

The memo indicated that

CUP would immediately lay off its twelve part-time staff, most of whom worked on CUP’s wire service, as well as liquidate most of its physical assets, cut compensation for its two full-time employees, and attempt to terminate the lease for its office.

J-Source published the memo the next day.

On Feb. 28, it launched a fundraising campaign, Keep CUP Strong, on indiegogo. com, with a target of $50,000

by April 13.

As of March 11, the campaign had raised just over $3,500 from supporters, including former CUP staff and current student journalists—but the pace of donations has slowed since the campaign’s launch.

In a report to CUP’s directors, President Erin Hudson projected the fundraiser would bring in about $5,000—enough, with asset sales and the collection of some unpaid fees, to begin CUP’s next fiscal year with a small surplus.

In an interview, Hudson told The Argosy that the fundraiser’s success was vital to CUP’s short-term survival, but it would take more than donations to stabilize the

cooperative.

“Now, it’s really our only hope in a lot of ways, because if we don’t get a cash injection quickly, then it really shortens the time-frame we have to work with to make these decisions [to stabilize CUP’s finances],” she said,

“I think in the last three years, there’s been this sense of, ‘CUP doesn’t really have that much money anymore,’ but I don’t think anyone really realized the reality of the situation until a couple weeks ago.” also identifying further expenditure reduction as a short-term goal.

Hudson’s report to the board requested governance reforms and new investments as long-term solutions.

While CUP has faced

declining revenues and deficits for the past three years, this year was the first that CUP had no savings left to draw upon. With no revenue due until September, when papers pay their membership fees, the organization would face insolvency in May. “I think in the last three years, there’s kind of been this sense of, ‘CUP doesn’t really have that much money anymore,’ but I don’t think anyone really realized the reality of the situation until a couple weeks ago.”

CUP’s financial woes have existed since 2012. In May 2012, CUP ran a deficit of $10,243, but transferred $51,105 into its operating budget. By June 2013, CUP’s deficit was was $113,718, and CUP’s remaining investment of $10,779 was cashed in. This year, CUP had no remaining investments to draw from.

CUP’s income has declined over the past decade, as campus papers have left the organization, often citing a combination of high member fees and declining revenues for campus media organizations.

Founded in 1938, CUP is the world’s oldest student press service.

The Argosy

www.argosy.ca

NEWS

SFUO president condemns ‘rape culture’ University of Ottawa student leaders resign Adam Feibel The Fulcrum

OTTAWA (CUP) — Students at the University of Ottawa became the focus of nationwide debate about rape culture and Internet privacy after a sexually aggressive Facebook group chat about student federation president Anne-Marie Roy was posted online.

Roy has been the subject of support and scrutiny for her efforts to condemn the five students who participated in the conversation, four of whom were elected student officials at the the University of Ottawa, and to denounce “toxic” attitudes toward sexual violence on campus.

“The fact that the five men could so casually discuss and joke about me and the position students have elected me to hold in such sexually violent ways points to how normalized rape culture, misogyny, and sexism are on

our campus and in our society,” she said in an official statement.

“This kind of behaviour has clear impacts on women,” she continued.

“It creates an environment that is intimidating, threatening and toxic.

Women on this campus and in our society deserve better.”

The incidents began Feb. 10, during the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) election campaign, when Roy received photos of the group chat from an anonymous third party.

On that day, she also received an email apology from all five participants. After reading week, Roy presented the men’s comments to members of the federation’s Board of Administration (BOA) at its meeting on Feb. 23.

The conversation consisted of SFUO vice-president social Pat Marquis; BOA representative Alexandre Giroux; Alex Larochelle and Michel Fournier-Simard, who hold executive positions with federation-associate societies; and student Bart Tremblay, who holds no elected position.

Roy was given a cease and desist letter that listed the names of all but Marquis on the grounds that

distributing the photos would be a violation of the men’s privacy. She was also informed that the four men were considering legal action.

Less than a week later, those photos were made public on the blog Bellejar.ca. The post includes screenshots with English translations, as about half the conversation takes place in French.

It begins with Tremblay, who writes that the “president will suck me off in her office chair and after I will fuck her in the ass on Pat’s desk.” He then clarifies that this is in reference to Roy. “Someone punish her with their shaft,” says Larochelle.

The conversation turns to doubts about Roy’s city of origin, before Giroux remarks that “if you fuck Anne-Marie, I will definitely buy you a beer.” Marquis says he’ll “get a 24 for Bart if he does it.” The documented part of the conversation ends with two of the men debating whether Roy has a sexually transmitted infection.

All four student officials have since resigned from their positions, and the four who had threatened legal action no longer intend to do so.

NDP leader talks democracy building Student group invites Dominic Cardy to campus

This Week in the World Joanna Perkin

Teacher sues after being fired for being gay

Mark Zmuda, the vice-principal and swim coach at Eastside Catholic School in Seattle, was fired in December after marrying his same-sex partner. On Friday, Zmuda sued the school for wrongful dismissal, also saying that he had only taken the job after he had read a school policy on the website saying that they did not discriminate on the basis of an employee’s sexual orientation or marital status. This school policy has since been removed from the website. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Washington state since November 2012. Reuters reported that Zmuda married last July. Washington state has said that religious non-profits are not exempt from workplace discrimination laws if an employee has no religious role; the outcome of Zmuda’s case will depend on his religious role in the school.

Ukraine crisis not over yet

On March 8, a Ukrainian border patrol plane came under fire near the Russianoccupied Crimea, as the crisis in the region worsens. Reuters reported that no one was hurt in the accident, in which gunmen opened fire on the unarmed aircraft that was on an observation mission. Russians have invaded this region, and President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia has a right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian citizens. Russian troops have been increasingly aggressive to both Ukrainian troops and civilians, although there has been reportedly no resistance made by Ukrainians.

Malaysian airplane goes missing

A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and twelve crew members went missing off the Vietnamese coast Saturday morning, presumed to have crashed. There was no report of bad weather, and no sign as to why the flight would have crashed, although two passengers are reported to have been carrying stolen passports. There were no reports of emergencies on board, nor claims of sabotage or terrorist threats on board. Reuters reported that two passengers were Canadian. Search and rescue will continue searching, although there is no sign of wreckage, or of the plane. The plane last made contact about halfway between Malaysia and the southern tip of Vietnam.

Mohawk Protests in Ontario

Four people near Belleville, Ontario have been taken into custody after Mohawk protestors calling for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women occupied CN Rail tracks. The Canadian Press reported that VIA Rail trains between Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto were delayed after the tracks were blocked by protestors. The release of the missing women report on March 7 has sparked outcry from opposition critics, First Nations leaders, and human rights groups. There are at least 600 cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal cases since the 1960s, as well as many other unreported cases, something that has recently caught the attention of the United Nations.

Jean-Sébastien Comeau The leader of New Brunswick’s New Democratic Party took a break from politics last Friday during a visit to Sackville, where he discussed his prior career in democracy promotion.

Mount Allison University’s Centre For International Studies (CIS) invited Dominic Cardy, leader of the provincial NDP, to share his past work and current views on democracy promotion abroad.

During the March 7 event, Cardy spoke to approximately ten students in the Avard-Dixon building.

Cardy began his work abroad in 2001, working for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) until 2008, before renewing his involvement with the provincial NDP. In his senior staff position at NDI, Cardy worked in countries such as Nepal, Pakistan, and Cambodia. In the span of an hour, he referred to his own experience to highlight the current challenges in trying to establish democracy abroad. Founded in 1983, the National Democratic Institute, an organization that deems itself nonprofit and non-partisan, although loosely affiliated with the American Democratic Party, works with a wide array of similar organizations across the world and largely focuses on the promotion of democracy and institution building abroad.

While recognizing the achievements of his former employer, Cardy was also, at times, quite critical of the work they had done, noting the importance of being extremely considerate of the local socio-economic and political

3

Pregnant mother drives minivan into ocean

Dominic Cardy addresses Mt. A students last Friday. (Chris Donovan/Argosy) circumstances when working abroad.

In the first few years of its existence, “[NDI] was a complete waste of time and money […] the amount of money involved, the technology involved, the resources that go into an American political race are so vast compared to anywhere else in the world that the transferability of skills was very minimal,” explained Cardy.

In contrast, Canada’s elections are done with much scarcer resources— due to this, there is a much higher transferability of techniques. Cardy said this led the organization to hire a greater number of Canadians.

While the organizing of elections in autocratic countries was quite popular for a period of time, the organization quickly realized that simply holding elections was not necessarily a step forward. “Having an election doesn’t necessarily mean very much,” Cardy said. Citing Russia’s current occupation of Crimea, where Russia plans to hold a referendum concerning the possible annexation of Crimea by Russia in the near future, he said the results of this referendum cannot be regarded as legitimate.

“You can’t organize an election

in ten days,” Cardy explained, “but because in the West we hadn’t thought about what elections meant as a part of democracy, for a long time you would just sign off on anything that looked like an election. It took quite a while for groups like mine to start being much more rigorous.”

The shift was eventually made from organizing elections to focusing on the structural aspect of a country’s political system. When linking his current line of work to his days with NDI, it is clear Cardy values the opportunity to work alongside various political parties from across the world. “I had a nearly unparalleled chance to work with dozens of different groups all working in the same basic task as I am as a leader of my party—trying to win elections—and see how they approach different challenges.

It was an incredibly eye opening experience,” he said.

“We had planned [the event] to be a smaller, more seminar-style talk and discussion that allowed for engagement with the students present,” explained CIS Coordinator Natalie Brunet, adding that she was satisfied with student turnout.

Ebony Wilkerson is facing attempted murder and aggravated child abuse charges after she drove her minivan into the ocean at Daytona Beach, Florida with her three children in the backseat. She says that she did not intend to harm anyone, but her children, aged three, nine, and ten, were yelling that she was trying to kill them. Bystanders also report that she was reluctant to let rescuers help her children out of the car. The vehicle’s windows were rolled up, and the doors were locked, and one of the children attempted to wrestle the steering wheel away from her after she told her children to close their eyes and go to sleep. The Associated Press reported that none of the children were harmed.

Lebanon protests against domestic violence

Thousands of people have been marching through the streets of Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, demanding politicians to pass a law against domestic violence. The BBC reported that the rally was led mostly by relatives of victims.

Lebanon has no laws protecting women from violence by family members and there are no national statistics on domestic violence in Lebanon. Many protestors were holding pictures of family members who had been killed by their husbands.

The BBC reported that in Lebanon, a rapist can escape punishment if he marries his victim, something that protestors are also hoping to change. This bill is also generating a great deal of controversy in the country’s parliament.

Corrections Richard Kent

Editor-in-Chief

The Argosy reported Feb. 6 that the Mount Allison Faculty Association had received $1 million in donations from the CAUT defense fund. The money was provided as a loan.

The Argosy regrets these and other errors. Errors requiring correction should be emailed to Editor-in-Chief Richard Kent at argosy@mta.ca.

ONLINE:

EXCLUSIVE ARTICLES ONLINE Follow @The_Argosy and @argosynews for breaking news and MASU updates from news staff.

SHIP’S LOG EVENTS Canada in a New Wo r l d - M . G a r n e a u

T h u r s d a y M a r. 1 3 , 4 5:30pm Crabtree Auditorium This is a question and answer session with Marc Garneau, MP (Liberal c r i t i c f o r Fo re i g n A f f a i r s in the House of Commons) and Dominic LeBl a n c , M P.

S p a n i s h F i l m Fe s t i val

T h u r s d a y M a r. 1 3 - 1 4 , 6:30 - 8:30pm S i r J a m e s D u n n M i n i Wu Contact Natalie Paul e y, S e c r e t a r y o f M o d e r n Languages and Literatures for more information at napauley@mta.ca or 3642478.

Student Success Course

We d n e s d a y M a r . 1 9 , 6 9pm Crabtree Auditorium The Student Success Course is designed to help build the research, writing, critical thinking,

s t u d y, n o t e - t a k i n g , a n d time management skills that will help students succeed in their courses.

A RT S & M U S I C Ve n t u s M a c h i n a Quintet

T h u r s d a y M a r. 1 3 , 8 10pm Conservatory of Music Inspired by legends and fairy-tales, this programme features the n e w l y - c o m p o s e d ‘A c a d i a n L e g e n d s ’ , b y M o n c t o n’s Richard Gibson, a beautiful arrangement of select i o n s f r o m R a v e l ’s ‘ M o t h e r Goose Suite’ and a quintet v e r s i o n o f ‘ Pe t e r a n d t h e Wo l f ’ . S u i t a b l e f o r t a l l tale lovers of all ages.

Brunton Auditorium, 8pm.

Tickets are $10 adults, $5 for students/seniors, $25 f o r f a m i l y. S u b s c r i p t i o n s for recitals are also availa b l e. Fo r m o re i n f o r m a tion please e-mail us at music@mta.ca or call 506364-2374.

Swing Society Dance Show Fr i d a y M a r. 1 4 , 7 - 9 p m ;

S a t u r d a y M a r. 1 5 , 2 - 4 p m and 7 - 9pm Athletic Centre Gymnasium T i c k e t s : 5 $ a t t h e d o o r, or pre-ordered through Elizabeth Nagy at eanagy@mta.ca

F lute Alors

S a t u r d a y M a r. 1 5 , 8 10pm Conservatory of Music M o u n t A l l i s o n Pe r f o r m i n g Arts Series presents Flûte Alors! A Debut Atlantic event. Recorder Quartet: V i n c e n t L a u z e r, M a r i e Laurence Primeau, Alexa R a i n e -Wr i g h t a n d C a r o l i n e Tr e m b l a y. T h e v i r tuoso performers of Flûte Alors! offer a vibrant mix of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary music for recorder a fascinating, yet often overlooked, instrument.

Prepare for a thrilling journey through the music of many times and places, a voyage that is exhilarating, eventful and unexpected! Numbers are limi t e d , s o o rd e r e a r l y ! Fo r additional information, v i s i t w w w. m t a . c a / d e p a r t m e n t s / Pe r f o r m i n g A r t s .

March 13, 2014

Contact: Margaret Ann Craig, 364-2662 (voice mail only), performarts@ mta.ca

Underbridge BuildA-Book Event

S u n d a y M a r. 1 6 , 2 - 4 p m Owens Art Gallery Par ticipants will receive bookbinding materials and learn how to bind using a coptic stitch, which is a simple and sturdy bookbinding technique.

Student Recital Maddix and Johnson

S u n d a y M a r. 1 6 , 3 - 5 p m Conservatory of Music Dylan Maddix, trumpet, with Lynn Johnson, piano.

Admission is free, all are we l c om e t o a t t e n d . Fo r more information contact the music dept. at music@ mta.ca or call 364-2374.

Student Recital Stone and Urbancic

S u n d a y M a r. 1 6 , 8 - 1 0 p m Conservatory of Music MacKenzie Stone, soprano with Aude Urbancic, piano. Admission is free, all a re we l c om e t o a t t e n d . Fo r more information contact

argosy@mta.ca

the music dept. at music@ mta.ca or call 364-2374.

Student Composition Recital M o n d a y M a r. 1 7 , 8 - 1 0 p m Conservatory of Music New music by Mount Allison student composers, featuring performers from the Department of Music.

Admission is free, all are we l c om e t o a t t e n d . Fo r more information please e-mail music@mta.ca or call 506-364-2374.

Collegium Musicum

We d n e s d a y M a r . 1 9 , 4 5pm Conservatory of Music Pe r f o r m a n c e s by t h e s t u dents of the Department of Music. Admission is f re e, a l l a re we l c om e. Fo r more information please call the Department of Music at 364-2374 or email music@mta.ca

Spring Session Course

GERM 2701 F ilm Course Ta u g h t i n E n g l i s h No pre-requisits required Contact lbeck@mta.ca

Feed Your Brain lecture Using x-rays to proble for arsenic exposure Arsenic is well known as an acute poison. However, the effects of arsenic resulting from chronic exposure (usually through drinking water) are much more widespread, and have reached a crisis level in Bangladesh.

Long-term exposure to arsenic is associated with skin cancer and other skin abnormalities, as well as bladder, kidney, and lung cancer. If not excreted from the body, arsenic binds with keratin, making skin and nails primary locations for accumulation.

Exposure to arsenic is assessed through its concentration in urine, hair, and nail clippings. These analyses are normally performed through labbased techniques. We have explored

the use of portable x-ray fluorescence as an alternative approach with several advantages. The ability of the method to simultaneously assess for selenium in the body may be relevant for future efforts to combat the effects of arsenic exposure. In this presentation, methods developed in our group will be outlined and the results reviewed. Sabbatical work will be highlighted, including a trip to Bangladesh. Sabbatical research will also be presented from the Canadian Light Source, where synchrotron radiation was used to explore arsenic in tissue samples.

The lecture takes place on Tuesday, March 18 at 11:30am until 1:30pm in the Ralph Pichard Bell Library Theatre.

All members of the Mount Allison & Sackville communities are welcome!

Refreshments will be served.

Submit to the Ship’s Log If you have a non-profit event that you need to publicize, The Argosy can help. Submissions must include the event’s title, time, and location, along with a brief description. The Argosy reserves the right to edit submissions for length and style.

The deadline for submissions is one week prior to publication.

Submit an event to argosy@mta.ca For further information, visit www.argosy.ca or email argosy@mta.ca.

EARLY MUSIC SACKVILLE MUSIQUE ANCIENNE Sackville Festival of Early Music is hiring a FESTIVAL PUBLICITY ASSISTANT

Term: Part-time August–October 2014 Honorarium: $1450.

• • • • • • •

Preparation and distribution of publicity materials for the Sackville Festival of Early Music Creation and submission of PSAs for broadcast media Promotion of interview/feature opportunities to area media Strategic marketing to the campus community Promotion of festival to music organizations in the Maritimes Use of social media to publicize the festival.

Onsite assistance to the Artistic Director during the festival (September 14-28)

This position will have particular appeal for Mount Allison students who are considering a career in arts management or self-employment in the arts sector, and are able to work independently.

Deadline for submissions: MARCH 27, 2014 Please submit a cover letter and resume to wburnett@mta.ca This position is funded by the J.E.A.Crake Foundation

The Argosy

OPINIONS

www.argosy.ca

Cheque, please!

Students deserve their money back for lost class time The Argosy Editorial Board

On Monday, the Mount Allison Students’ Union (MASU) made a reasonable request to the university.

Students, MASU said, ought to be reimbursed for the class time lost to the strike. We agree.

The premise is a simple one: Students pay tuition to receive, among other things, classes and access to the faculty who teach them. As Mount Allison’s faculty and administrators are either unable or unwilling to work out their differences, there was a strike, costing students twelve instructional days, and twenty-one calendar days where faculty could have been

providing us with guidance. Therefore, the university ought to return the wages it didn’t pay its faculty for those twenty-one days—roughly $856,948—to its students.

On one hand, we have misgivings about MASU’s approach. Attaching a monetary value to education— especially the sort of higher learning that we are supposedly here to do—is problematic. And we remain disappointed by MASU’s advocacy during the strike, which was too little, too late.

On the other hand, we are paying for something, and if we’re not going to get it, we should get a refund— regardless of whether or not Mt. A is forced to pay faculty the wages lost during the strike.

The strike laid bare, for all to see, that students are not equal stakeholders in this university. We were marginalized by both sides during negotiations.

And when the time came to clean up the mess, the university’s senate voted

Revisions & Reflections Let’s make Quebec want to stay Mitchell Gunn April 7, 2014 may turn out to be a day for the Canadian history books, a day where the future of our country could take a turn in almost any direction, and yet, most of the Canadian population will have no influence on its outcome.

On April 7, Quebec residents will go to the polls to vote in their provincial general elections.

As we close in on Election Day, opinion polls indicate that the Parti Québécois (PQ), currently holding power as a minority government, could win a majority. It’s a possibility that has many federalists on edge.

After all, the Parti Québécois uses separatism as a foundation of their party; if they win a majority, another Quebec independence referendum could loom on the horizon.

Furthermore, the PQ proposed the polarizing Quebec Charter of Values prohibiting public sector employees from wearing conspicuous religious symbols—a majority government would let them push this bill through with few obstacles. Finally, the PQ has also expressed a desire to tighten bilingualism legislation, effectively granting more authority and scope to the province’s infamous ‘language police.’

There have been numerous calls for Quebec residents to vote against the PQ and stick with Canada but nobody will know the outcome for sure until April 7. But I have one major question to ask: Say, for one reason or another, the federalists manage to hold off a PQ majority this year. Then what?

Then we do this whole dance again in five years. Or ten, or maybe close to twenty.

The last Quebec sovereignty referendum was in October 1995.

Then, the federalists got by with

the slimmest of margins, with only 50.58 per cent of Quebec residents voting against separation. For the last nineteen years, the separatist movement has been slowly regaining momentum, and now it is poised to force the question once again.

And here’s the thing: a majority of Québécois want that to happen—at least, that’s what the early surveys are suggesting. While these informal polls are by no means conclusive, observers seem to agree on their implications: a PQ majority is in the cards.

All of their policies that are causing such concern among Canadians—the Charter of Values, the language legislation, and most of all separatism—are actually making them more popular in Quebec. That’s what’s making me anxious, not the election itself.

This means that the majority of Quebec residents would rather go through the potential difficulties of becoming a sovereign state rather than remain a part of Canada.

More important, though, is the fact that this sentiment isn’t likely to change regardless of the result of the upcoming election. If the PQ doesn’t win a majority, then separatists will bide their time and we’ll have another panic attack when the next provincial election rolls around.

If Canada is to have any hope of keeping Quebec—not just this year, but in the future—we have to be able to change their minds. The Québécois feel that their unique identity, culture, and history aren’t being respected in the larger Canadian picture. The Canadian government has made some rather feckless attempts to address Quebec’s concerns, effectively bandaid solutions to try and keep Canada together.

If the Canadian government doesn’t find a committed, systematic way to improve the relationship, Quebec is going to separate. I don’t want it to happen, but it will. Maybe not today.

Maybe not on April 7. But it’s only a matter of time.

A RGOSY

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w w w. a r g o s y. c a

overwhelmingly against students’ best interests to gut the semester of an extra four instructional days, bringing the total to twelve.

Twelve instructional days is a lot of class time. Each full-time student at Mt. A lost roughly thirty-six hours of instruction, not counting labs— nineteen per cent of the semester. In the two days before reading week, classes and faculty scrambled to cut material from their syllabi. Most of us won’t have an opportunity to judge for ourselves whether these lost readings, assignments, lectures, and discussions would have been valuable.

A refund is further justified by precedent. In February, the University of New Brunswick (UNB) announced it would compensate students after a strike similar in duration to our own.

UNB’s directors felt that profiting from their strike and lockout would have been wrong. And in 2007, students at both St. Thomas University and Acadia University were compensated

after job actions kept them out of classes.

Mt. A’s administrators would do well to pay attention to the Acadia case: Acadia’s then-president, Gail DinterGottlieb, said that “providing students with a [tuition] credit […] lets our future alumni know that we appreciate their support of Acadia.” With this year’s enrolment decline, Mt. A’s future alumni pool is already short; the last thing Mt. A needs is four consecutive grad years of alienated alumni who will think twice about donating.

It is possible that the province will force Mt. A’s administration to compensate faculty for lost wages, as part of the arbitration process that ended the strike, but students deserve to be compensated regardless. If the university saved money during the strike by not paying faculty, then we, students, deserve our money back. If the university did not save any money, then we, students, deserve our money back.

Letters to the Editor The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the deadliest conflicts since the Second World War and has seen unprecedented levels of sexual violence against women. In the DRC, it is estimated that forty-eight rapes take place every hour.

We as consumers may unwittingly be contributing to these atrocities because the conflict in the DRC is fuelled and funded by an illegal trade in minerals. These minerals are found in products we purchase and use every day, particularly in our electronic devices (cellphone, anyone?).

On March 8, in recognition of International Women’s Day, the United Nations will shine a spotlight on the issue. In Canada, the Conflict Minerals Act, which would make it possible for Canadians to choose products without conflict minerals, has had first reading in Parliament (Private Member’s Bill C-486). And the Just Minerals Campaign launched by the Canadian Fair Trade Network

is underway to raise awareness and encourage active support of the bill.

What can we do? We can sign an online petition to stop conflict minerals and then help spread the campaign via social media. We can contact our MPs and government leaders to let them know we want legislation to ensure Canadian products are conflict-free.

We can contact the companies whose products we purchase to tell them that conflict-free sourcing of materials is important to us. We can inform ourselves and use our purchasing power to make responsible choices.

A ranking of the world’s largest electronics companies is available at http://www.raisehopeforcongo. org/companyrankings providing information on actions each tech company is (or is not) taking to ensure a clean minerals trade. Find out how your favourites rank and then take steps accordingly.

On International Women’s Day let’s all do something to help stop the violence.

-Ruth Buckinger,

As a student working on my sixth year and second degree at your school, I have been trying my best to give you the benefit of the doubt throughout the past few weeks as we worked through a faculty strike. I had been hoping that you would keep your students’ opinions in mind and that you would adjust the semester to best fit our needs.

Instead you have basically told us all that you don’t care about our opinions, that you don’t care what your students think. You tabled two proposals, each of which would have giving us eight days of class time back. While this is far from the fifteen class days we lost due to the strike, we could have worked with it. However in your meeting of the Senate today, Wednesday, Feb. 19, you allowed a professor, one of the individuals responsible for the loss of our class time in the first place, to reduce the number of new class days we would receive because the exam period would have been too hectic for the professors, and because it would

have only given them two days after the exam period to submit marks.

So now we are only getting three class days back, nowhere near enough time to make up for the fifteen class days we lost. And even when all of the student senators, the ones representing your 2400 paying students, voted against this terrible plan, you still voted in favour of it. You might as well have just sent an email to the student body telling us that our opinions don’t count, that you will do whatever you want, and that you will side with the professors that caused this problem in the first place. Mt. A, considering you won’t give me my class days back, I will instead be demanding my money back.

There should have been seventy-four days in total that we were paying for (sixty-two class days and twelve exam days). Now there will only be fifty class days and ten exam days. That means that I will be expecting you to refund what I paid for those fourteen days lost ($48.95 per day lost), otherwise I will see you in court. -Justin Pauley

Independent Student Newspaper of Mount Allison University Thursday March 13, 2014 volume 143 issue 17 Since 1872 Circulation 1,700

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disclaimers and copyright The Argosy is the official independent student journal of news, opinion, and the arts, written, edited and funded by the students of Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of The Argosy’s staff or its Board of Directors. The Argosy is published weekly throughout the academic year by Argosy Publications Inc. Student contributions in the form of letters, articles, photography, graphic design and comics are welcome.

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A NOVEL TO CHANGE OUR NATION Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda chosen as Canada Reads 2014 winner BOOK REVIEW: HELL GOING BY LYNN COADY Giller Prize winner exposes the limitations of communication

March 13, 2014

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START exhibition asks, ‘What’s it all for?’

Lisa Theriault on machines, humour, and geometry Daniel Marcotte Arts & Literature Writer Fourth-year fine arts student Lisa Theriault loves to play around with the humorous and the ambiguous, the structured and the nonsensical.

Her exhibition, “What’s It All For?”, opened at START Gallery on March 7 and constituted one of the stops on that evening’s All-Inclusive Gallery Hop. The multimedia exhibit features a series of silkscreen prints and a projected image that depict segments of a larger contraption, forcing the viewer to gradually piece together the snapshots on their way to the completed machine. However, Theriault’s work is less about finding the true purpose of the strange apparatus, and more about employing subtle humour and disjointed geometry in order to explore the effect that machines have upon our perception of a natural environment.

Much of the project is a

Lisa Theriault’s collection of prints and animation will be on display at START Gallery until March 18. Her work explores the idea of human and nature’s relationship with machines in a subtle and humorous way. (Darrel Theriault/ Submitted). culmination of Theriault’s work over the last year. “I’ve always done little drawings of strange buildings up on stilts and things like that,” she said, “but I didn’t really figure out what it was about until this year.” The structures are directly inspired by industrial or mechanical processes that Theriault has deconstructed and repurposed to make them appear useless or silly. “They’re all based on things that already exist and things that I think don’t make sense; I want to create something new that

doesn’t make sense.”

To a certain extent, Theriault sees her work as a commentary on what she calls “ironies” of science and technology and their potentially negative effects upon the environment and our cultural consciousness. “I think machines can sometimes be kind of useless; we feel like they help us, but really they’re kind of destroying us,” she said, envisioning her machine as an embodiment of this paradox. “I thought of it as this building [used] to study trees;

[there’s] this irony of cutting down trees to make something that studies trees.”

At the same time, Theriault doesn’t want her work to appear too explicitly political.

She believes that the more ambiguous or ridiculous elements of the piece serve to draw attention away from any didactic message and allow the viewer to form their own interpretations on the themes she explores.

“Humour is just a nice way to lighten it up and make it less focused on my particular

opinion,” she said. “I really like when there’s just one thing out of place. That’s what really creates thinking and makes things more interesting.”

Theriault also uses a lot of detail in her work, winking playfully at the viewer, and inviting them to look for the ‘Easter eggs’ that she has strewn throughout the prints. “[There are] little added elements that I just do for fun, and if people notice it, that’s great,” she said, citing a bobby pin hidden amongst a bed of screws as just one example.

“For me it’s like a fun game. I’d like people to be able to notice things differently; I think it helps people to talk about it more when they have different interpretations of it.”

Additionally, Theriault has tweaked the rules of geometry to her own artistic whims. Each print is meticulously measured to appear structured and realistic, yet entirely without the use of a vanishing point that would establish depth and perspective. “It creates this weird illusion where things that are further up could appear to be on the same plane; things don’t recede the same way,” she said. “It adds to that nonsensicalness [because] there’s more ambiguity to how things are laid out.”

Although she used to consider herself a perfectionist, Theriault has established that she is merely “careful,” as her artistic philosophy involves making mistakes and letting them drive the art to new, perhaps unintended, places. “If it gets messed up and it doesn’t make sense then I work with it. I like to start from a place of perfection and let it get messed up, then tweak it at the end so it makes sense together.”

Theriault’s exhibition can be viewed at START Gallery in the back of Struts Gallery on 7 Lorne Street until March 18.

Mt. A International Choir collaborates with UPEI Choir spreads cultural awareness with music Daniel Marcotte Arts & Literature Writer The Mount Allison International Choir travelled to the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) over reading week in order to demonstrate their commitment to promoting and celebrating cultural diversity on university campuses across Atlantic Canada. The group met with a similar ensemble, the AIRS (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing) Multicultural Choir, for a collaborative and studentled singing experience meant to encourage cultural learning and foster an interdisciplinary musical experience.

Bixin Lori Chen, a fourthyear commerce student and current president of the International Choir, explained that the seven-year AIRS project at UPEI’s department of psychology was the original inspiration for the choral

Members of the international choir travelled to UPEI to exchange songs, ideas, and methods of educating students in various languages and musical traditions. (Annie Wei/International Choir) project at Mount Allison. For this reason, the choir’s trip on Feb. 25 was an opportunity to collaborate with students working toward a similar objective and exchange songs, ideas, and methods of educating students in various languages and musical traditions. “The trip was very meaningful for our group,” said Chen, believing that the UPEI choir’s larger musical repertoire and more technical

aspects helped broaden the musical and cultural scope of the Mt. A choir.

Chen also cites her involvement with the choir as a unique learning experience that has facilitated a deeper understanding of music.

“Before I joined the club, I had no clue about notes or music,” she said, “but now I can read a lot of the notes on the page.”

She also believes that the collaborative and casual

environment that the choir provides is an excellent way to experience other cultures. “It’s a very relaxing way to learn a language,” she said, explaining the process of collectively learning pronunciation through repetition and group singing. “When you’re in the whole group singing in the language together … it’s a great way to build up confidence. It’s very hard to pick up at first, but once you

put it to the music, [everyone] picks it up very quickly.”

Founded in January 2013, the Mount Allison International Choir is a student society that brings a variety of choral selections from multiple languages around the world to promote cultural awareness. The group meets once a week for an informal rehearsal of traditional and popular songs from a broad selection of languages, including Cantonese, German, Japanese, English, and French. Although new songs from various languages and cultures are encouraged, participants require no musical or linguistic experience; each song’s cultural importance and pronunciations are introduced by a native speaker of the language, then learned as a group with piano accompaniment.

The choir is also closely associated with other multicultural organizations at Mount Allison, including the annual MOSAIC Banquet and Coffee House, both of which have previously provided a venue for the choir to perform.

Because the choir has only existed for just over a year, Chen states that the next major goal for the society will

be publicity and encouraging more students and Sackville community members to come out to weekly rehearsals. “We just need a lot more promotion to reach out to the community,” said Chen. “Our goal is to have more students come out and join us, [including] International Students so we can have more songs from different countries.”

Additionally, Chen’s longterm goal for the choir is to inspire other universities to experiment with this model of multicultural learning through vocal performance, just as they imported the idea from AIRS at UPEI. “This choir helps teach you how to sing and how to interact with people,” said Chen optimistically. “I really hope that this choir will bring people to think about different cultures, and we hope that through Mount Allison we can bring this to another university.”

The Mount Allison International Choir meets every Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm in the University Chapel, and is open to all students and Sackville residents. Among other choral groups, they will be performing at “A Concert of Cantatas” on Sunday, March 23.

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ARTS & LITERATURE

7

All photos by Chris Donovan/Argosy

Sackville’s All-Inclusive Gallery Hop Sackville’s artists show off their work around town Julia McMillan Arts & Literature Editor Last Friday night, I found myself gingerly walking up a narrow stairwell that led to a stranger’s apartment. At the top of the stairs, I was met by a shrine-like collection of portraits of porcelain dolls, a carefully placed lock of human hair, and an array of kitschy home knick-knacks. I didn’t get lost on the way to a party, or accidentally stumble into an old woman’s living room. Rather, I was midway through my loop of the Sackville All-Inclusive Gallery Hop, and was viewing an installation by fine arts student Jillian Gooch, situated in the hallway outside her Main Street apartment.

The gallery hop was filled with an impressive number of interesting, unusual, and wonderfully strange exhibitions, like Gooch’s, that were created by local artists and set up in venues both conventional and experimental. The event was a one-night-only, town-wide art exhibition organized by The Blazer Sisters, a duo comprising fine arts students Rosie Butler and Alix Wilson.

As indicated by its name, the event hinged on the theme of inclusivity—an idea that manifested itself through the diversity of artists, media, venues, and audience members.

The aim of the event was to create an opportunity for all kinds of artists to display their work in an unintimidating and non-traditional setting.

To achieve this, Wilson and Butler took an ‘anything goes’ approach to the curation process, and encouraged anyone and everyone to contribute to

the event. There was no jury process, and there were no artistic guidelines.

“Anyone who wanted to make work and show their work could be a part of [the gallery hop]—no matter what that was,” Butler said. “So … people that don’t normally fit into a typical art show format or gallery space could be a part of this, and have equal opportunity.”

The result was an artistic smorgasbord, with a sampling of media ranging from portraiture, sculpture, performance art, photography, and drawings. The varied works drew in an equally diverse and impressively sizeable crowd of gallery hoppers. As we moved from location to location, we encountered new groups of community members, which provided ample opportunity for discussion about the different exhibitions. This was perhaps the most successful part of the inaugural gallery hop: the way it engaged such a large part of the community and generated a rare sort of conversation about the art that is being created in Sackville. In this way, it truly was an inclusive, immersive event.

The gallery hop traversed the whole of Sackville’s downtown, encompassing locations both on campus and in town. Most of the more conventional exhibiting spaces were used, like Gairdner Fine Arts Building, which featured an incredibly impressive exhibition of work by the first-year fine arts students; START Gallery, where Lisa Theriault debuted her collections of prints and animation in an exhibition entitled “What’s It All For?”; Thunder and Lightening, where pieces by Butler and Wilson graced the back walls; and Struts Gallery, which featured artist-in-residence Brandon Blommaert’s closing reception of animation work, as well as a collection of prints made by Struts’s March break camp attendees.

However, one of the most interesting elements of the event was the way that certain artists worked outside of gallery spaces, and instead chose to integrate their work into unexpected places and local businesses. As Wilson put it, this allowed people “to be involved without even knowing it,” because people could go about their business while also stumbling across one of the temporary exhibitions.

Music students might have been shocked to see Posy Legge’s collection of largescale portraits of porn stills in the Music Conservatory, while those walking down Bridge Street would have caught sight of Jesse Francis and Jeanne Fries’s interactive geometric sculpture in the snow in a corner of Memorial Park. Ducky’s and Pickles also participated as venues, displaying the works of Amanda Curti and Alex Francheville, respectively. Curti’s frank and subtly voyeuristic portraits and Francheville’s witty and comical drawings looked so at home on the walls that it made me wonder why these establishments don’t feature student artwork on a more regular and permanent basis.

The gallery hop culminated with a closing reception at the Sackville Music Hall, where about eighty people gathered to witness Sally Hill’s performance art piece, and check out work

by Luke Patterson, Rachel Thornton, Hilary Cantin, Soohyn Lee, Jet Belliveau, John Murchie, Butler, and Wilson.

The All-Inclusive Gallery Hop was the first event that Butler and Wilson have presented as The Blazer Sisters, but the pair plans to organize similar art and community events in the future.

Photos: Viewers check out the first-year fine arts students’ work (top); Sally Hill’s performance art (middle); Posy Legge’s paintings at the conservatory.

8

Mt. A’s service trips

March 13, 2014

argosy@mta.ca

Student volunteers strive for good, admit room to improve Global Brigades and Habitat for Humanity head south again Tyler Stuart & Taylor Losier Features Staff

On a cold Sackville morning, the Friday before reading week, Mount Allison students left their homes for a chance to help others and themselves.

Mt A’s chapters of Global Brigades and Habitat for Humanity—two philanthropic organizations— sent over 140 students down south between them. Habitat for Humanity bussed to Punta Gorda, Florida, while Global Brigades flew to Honduras, a developing country in Central America. Both organizations have garnered significant support from Mt. A’s administration, which has promoted the service trips online and in university publications.

Ron Byrne, Mt. A’s vicepresident, student and international affairs, said that these service trips provide educational an experience— exposing students to things they would otherwise only read about.

“I’m a passionate believer in these,” Byrne said. “I think the learning is critical. In many, many cases, I think students will be able to apply things that their learning in the classroom to things that are happening in the real world.”

While Mt. A has praised what it calls “student philanthropy” as a cornerstone of the university community, some of its service trips have received criticism for their simplistic and periodic approaches.

Dave Thomas, a political science professor at Mt. A, said that he is “deeply skeptical” of the value in week-long service trips.

“There seems to be mounting evidence that the short-term volunteer activities often don’t lead to the long-term effects and benefits that we want them to.”

According to its website, Global Brigades’ mission is “to empower volunteers and under-resourced communities to resolve global health and economic disparities and inspire all involved to collaboratively work towards an equal world.”

Liam St. Louis, first-year international relations student, decided not to join Global Brigades.

“I felt like what I want to be involved with is not something that helps me more than it helps them,” St Louis said. “I felt that Global Brigades—while undoubtedly does help them in some ways—focuses in large part on what it does for the person who goes down to Honduras.”

Critics of these trips have accused them of ‘voluntourism,’ a form of tourism in which travellers participate in volunteer work.

Carolle de Ste-Croix, the Alumni Director at Mt. A, has been going to Honduras with Global Brigades for five years. de Ste-Croix, who said she would only work for secular philanthropic groups, said that she rejects the notion that Global Brigades is voluntourism.

“You can’t stop examining the

While in Honduras, the architecture brigade worked in collaboration with rural community members on a housing project. (Anna Paradis/Submitted) ethics of what you’re doing,” de Ste-Croix said. “You always need to be questioning, but across-theboard statements and criticisms that sweep away what’s been done as voluntourism, they’re as unhelpful as the evangelical mission groups who also think they know everything.”

Members of Habitat for Humanity were less hostile to the idea of voluntourism, but said that some of the criticism toward Habitat for Humanity is unproductive.

“I think no matter what, you can criticize volunteerism or personal interest philanthropy, and those people will just feel that way, and that’s too bad,” said Kristopher Russell-Murray, Mt. A’s Habitat for Humanity chapter vice-president of finance.

Mt. A’s Habitat for Humanity executives did not deny that there is not an element of voluntourism involved with their trip. They said it is not a negative phenomenon.

“I think that whenever you travel you’re bound to see some sights, but I think that the main focus of the trip wasn’t being a tourist; it was to volunteer and, if we could volunteer twenty-four-seven that we were there, I think we would have,” said Maria Wilson, Mt. A’s Habitat for Humanity chapter president. “But, unfortunately, Habitat for Humanity only has certain hours that you can volunteer.”

Charlotte County, the location where the builds took place, was the victim of a level four hurricane, Hurricane Charley, back in August 2004. According to FEMA report, nearly eighty per cent of its buildings were impacted. Today, nearly twelve per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and areas are still recovering.

Over three days, members worked the same hours as the contractors, from 9 am to 3 pm, were spent on site, working to put up vinyl siding, painting, and roofing. The students participated in everything that didn’t require specialized training, like plumbing or electrical.

It wasn’t all work, though. Due to set work hours in Florida, Habitat for Humanity members had some downtime. After builds, the group had some time to visit beaches, malls and go bowling. On their last day,

they went to a dinner at Fisherman’s Village. The event was not strictly sober. Those who were of age had the freedom to go out, but the exec made sure to remind them why they were there.

“If people are of age and want to drink at night, we gave them that freedom,” Wilson said, “but, at the same time, we want to make sure that everyone is on their A-game at the work site, so nobody is going out to get silly; the one reason we were down there was to volunteer, if you choose to drink, feel free, but we made it clear what the purpose of the trip was.”

According to its website, Habitat for Humanity “believes that every man, woman and child should have a decent, safe and affordable place to live.” The organization builds and repairs houses around world using volunteer labor and donations.

Both Global Brigades and Habitat for Humanity rely on a cumulative system of service trips. This allows groups to visit one week at a time, building on the last group’s effort.

One criticism of these trips questions who benefits from the efforts of the students.

“I think the primary beneficiaries are people who come from here,” Thomas said “It’s a great experience for them; they learn a lot; it looks good on their CVs.” Executive members of Global Brigades agreed that they often benefit more than those whom they intend to help.

“It is a two-way street,” said Alex Whynot, Mt. A’s Global Brigades chapter president. “We are looking to do work that benefits the community, obviously; however, what each individual student takes from it is greater than what each community immediately takes from it,” Whynot said.

Global Brigades Mt. A sent five brigades to Honduras this year: water, medical dental, architecture, public health, and micro-finance.

Their goal was to work with local Hondurans to benefit the community in these fields.

While Thomas is skeptical of these service trips, he said students should be cognizant of their actions.

“Most of the students that I have

talked to are honest and open about what’s happening,” Thomas said.

“That’s better than if people blindly go into these things thinking they are saving the world, when they’re really not.”

“I think that a lot of students’ minds can be opened up by engaging in these kinds of activities— throwing themselves into a completely different context than they have ever seen before,” Thomas said.

Whynot agreed. “It’s something that you can’t be shy of,” Whynot said. “We’re not changing the world; we’re hoping to change lives in Honduras and in Canada.”

The executive members of the Habitat for Humanity said that engaging with the culture contributed to the overall volunteer experience.

“I think it’s great that people can volunteer and see other things too while they’re there, because it helps us build character and it’s a cultural experience, and that’s all part of it, too,” said Lauren Gauthier, Habitat’s vice-president of fundraising.

Some have criticized the organizations for sending students to different cultures and contexts with little understanding of the political and social climate.

A large component of this potential cultural gap is language. Maritza Fariña, a Spanish professor and Global Brigades chaperone, said that many students in Global Brigades do not try to learn Spanish—the national language in Honduras.

She said that the only way to fully understand the Honduran people was to learn the language.

“The first time its okay, but if you go for the second and third time, you ought to learn the language,” Fariña said. “I think that shows respect.”

Whynot, who worked in the water brigade this year, said that while his Spanish is limited, he was able to communicate ideas to the Honduran community.

“Although there is a language barrier, the communication barrier can sometimes be broken down,” Whynot said.

But cultural issues go deeper than language.

“In Honduras, just like in any other place, there are social and political

contexts and conflicts,” Thomas said.

“And any time you involve yourself in another community, you are stepping into typically very complex social relations in that location.”

In 2009, Honduras underwent a constitutional crisis that resulted in a coup d’état. Its de facto government has been condemned as illegitimate by multiple countries and the United Nations. On top of that, the presence of North American companies invested in Honduran water and minerals have caused environmental damage and economic dependencies.

Thomas said that inserting one’s self into another culture could have unknown ramifications. Executive and first-year members of Global Brigades said they questioned the impact they had on the Honduran communities they visited.

These short-term trips, while claiming to promote sustainable development, have been called charities by critics. Thomas said that he contrasts the charitable approaches to poverty and inequality with social justice.

“The charitable approach doesn’t ask any of the hard questions about why people are poor, why people are in the situation that they are.”

Fariña declined to travel to Honduras when first approached by her students six years ago.

“I said no, because I don’t believe in charity,” Fariña said.

Thomas said the social justice approach “asks questions about our own complicity in creating the circumstances for people to be poor in the first-place.”

Thomas said that students should consider the political situation in Honduras before inserting themselves in the lives of its citizens.

“There are plenty of things you can do right here that have an impact in other parts of the world,” Thomas said.

Such criticism has encouraged executive members of philanthropic groups to examine their motives and actions. Whynot said that he encouraged his executive and chapter members to be skeptical about their mission and to think critically of their work.

“There are always goods and bads, and to recognize them is the first step.”

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Mt. A’s service trips

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Global Brigades won’t save the world, but it can help individuals

Support or critique student philanthropy, but don’t confuse it

My week in microfinace

Research first, then decide

Ryan Macrae As a member of the Microfinance Brigade that travelled to Honduras during reading week, I had the privilege of working on sustainability projects in a rural community, Gauricayan, which is roughly two hours from the capital city, Tegucigalpa.

Our Brigade worked with the local caja—similar to a bank—developing strategies to promote the benefits of sound financial management, while running workshops with the executive members on how to organize banking accounts. We also helped

start a community chicken farm business. At the end of the week, we allocated a portion of our funds, called the community investment fund, in areas that would benefit the greater community. The caja decided whether or not to execute our recommendations. Our goal wasn’t to direct them, but to have them direct us to help them achieve their goals.

Before joining Global Brigades at Mount Allison, I was skeptical of the idea of going to Honduras and telling people what they needed. As a science student who knows hardly any Spanish and is uneducated in the field of economic development, it was hard to believe I had anything to offer their village. It wasn’t until I became involved with the organization that I realized that we weren’t there

to dictate their development, but rather to act as a tool for them to use with the development of their own projects. I realized thinking critically about the whole process was one of the best ways to prepare myself for the trip.

Although I am normally an optimistic person, I am aware that a group of about one hundred undergraduate students are not able to solve the issues of global poverty.

The trip was our privilege, not theirs. What I have gained from this experience with their community greatly outweighs anything I could have done for them. And although my brigade was able to benefit their small village in certain ways, it was important that I knew that I was learning from them, not teaching them.

Mt. A students, staff, and faculty travelled to Honduras in five brigades: water, public health, medical dental, architecture, and micro-finance. (Anna Paradis/Submitted)

Ryan Harley The only thing Mount Allison’s chapters of Habitat for Humanity and Global Brigades have in common is they both happen during reading break. That’s it. Their mandates are completely different.

I get really frustrated when I hear people condemn one organization by association with the other. I don’t think any of us should be in the business of deciding what initiatives on campus are more virtuous or valuable than others. But I find it problematic when groups

become untouchable in terms of criticism.

For example, when noone wants to criticize Global Brigades because there is a good chance that someone in earshot has been involved, and then critic gets a full-frontal attack, that’s a problem. Maybe that’s my bias though; I happen to care a lot about the MASU, which gets its fair share of regular criticism. I think this feature project is great, because The Argosy should be asking these questions—it’s their job.

At the end of the day, I’m more inclined to think that we should support all the initiatives that our colleagues and classmates care about. If you don’t want to financially support an initiative for one reason or another, then don’t go to their pub nights, don’t go to their keggers,

9

and don’t participate in their fundraisers. It’s as easy as that.

Personally, if a group of my peers care a lot about something, I’m usually thrilled for them and inclined to support them—and I hope they would be equally as inclined to support the things I care about. The idea that there is only a selection of ‘worthwhile’ initiatives on campus is a fallacy. We shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the things our peers care a lot about, and I don’t think any group on campus should take itself too seriously.

No one is saving the world.

Call a spade a spade. Respect that we all have different interests, and respect how those interests take a lot of different shapes—all virtuous and valuable to the people involved.

Habitat for Humanity worked in Punta Gorda, Florida, and had time to enjoy the beach while on their service trip. (Hanna Nathanson/Submitted)

Next year, think twice before flying to Honduras Does Global Brigades really help?

Angad Singh Dhillon There is nothing inherently wrong with volunteering. You can volunteer at the local shelter or community centre, or you can travel the world volunteering with organizations that need extra personnel in locations where there may be none. However, before you decide to volunteer in an organization, it is imperative to critically analyze the cumulative effect of your involvement in the society. This is where I believe organizations like Global Brigades

have taken a misstep. The following are just some reasons why you should think twice about a trip to Honduras as a ‘Brigader.’

By flying in hundreds of young adults from developed countries into Honduras on a weekly basis, Global Brigades takes away the possibility of employment of as many local residents who could have benefitted from the wages. By volunteering to do manual labour for free, the university students no doubt learn a few lessons as to how tough life can be in developing countries, but that does not help the people with whom they are supposedly empathizing.

If a foreign organization keeps coming into various communities and societies of Honduras and tackling most of their public health, water, and medical problems, the government effectively abdicates all responsibility to provide those goods to the people. Area-specific voluntourism breeds a culture

of complacency wherein local governments have no incentive to tackle the existing structural problems because of the bandaid solutions that international organizations like Global Brigades provide.

On a more macro level, Global—as much of a benevolent organization as it may be—is not legally responsible to the people. In the case of the Water Brigades, if there are any water problems in the surrounding areas indirectly or directly because of one of its projects, or lack of water downstream, they cannot be held accountable to the extent the government can be. International organizations often escape the level of scrutiny that government projects would usually attract.

If there is anything that starkly portrays everything wrong with the Global Brigades model of international development, it is the Micro-finance Brigade. Every year,

eighteen to twenty-three-year-old Canadian students go to Honduras with suggestions as to how to help Hondurans improve their projects and businesses. The audacity of this—that mostly middle-class Canadian students, who have little understanding of the socio-economic context of developing countries, are offering financial advice—is beyond comprehension.

Mount Allison University prides itself in the critical thinking it inculcates in its students, and its efforts at achieving economic and environmental sustainability.

Therefore, the administration’s unconditional and uncritical support of Global Brigades is bewildering.

By co-opting Global Brigades into its advertising campaign, it has overlooked the costs-benefit analysis of the organization, failing to acknowledge who Brigades really help in the long run—its students.

The environmental impact of flying

hundreds of students every winter to the tropics to volunteer is astounding, keeping in mind the University’s emphasis on sustainability. Also, the economic sustainability that the administration keeps pivoting to during every other debate on campus is surprisingly lost when it comes to supporting an organization that is intrinsically unsustainable.

Having said all that, it is my firm belief that most students who go for Global Brigades have the best of intentions at heart and just want to help in any way possible. However, in the fervour to help, it is easy to forget that these communities in developing countries have thousands of educated people with excellent ideas on how to improve things. The question you have to ask yourself is this: Would sending a cheque and enabling these communities to help themselves be a better idea as opposed to perpetuating the colonial concept of the West knows best?

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MCGUIRE DISCUSSES THE EVOLUTION OF HIP HOP Haligonian rapper, producer, and academic lectures for Black History Month WEIRD LINES MAKES A SECOND APPEARANCE Supergroup appears alongside Hash Jesus and Kappa Chow at the Legion

March 13, 2014

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The Candye Kane Band razes George’s Roadhouse California diva brings a unique blend of genres

Cameron McIntyre

Entertainment Writer

Blues idol Candye Kane delivered a remarkable performance Saturday, peppered with empowering monologues, perfectly executed guitar solos, and sexual innuendo. As is expected for events sponsored by the Tantramarsh Blues Society, the show on International Women’s Day was almost as packed as the nearly at-capacity Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas show at the end of January.

Nonetheless, it was difficult to find a seat until the final half of the threehour set, when the crowd moved to the dance floor.

Kane, who has been performing for thirty years, played a style of music that mixed swing and the blues, while adding a distinct southern California twist as it dipped in and out of surf rock guitar riffs. The product was a set that could be danced to effortlessly.

Kane’s songs were powered by the always on-point guitar work of Laura Chavez, of whom Kane was quick to sing praises. The set included songs from her thirteen-album discography, padded out by a few covers, of which “These Boots are Made for Walkin’”

Candye Kane (left) croons for the adoring crowd at George’s Roadhouse. Laura Chavez (right) impresses with her proficient and melodic solos. (Chris Donovan/Argosy) served as a rousing encore.

The set was often intercut by lengthy monologues in which Kane spoke inspirationally of her life, career, and personality. These monologues contextualized the upcoming songs, or told stories of her life as an artist, living with pancreatic cancer, or family. She spoke about her time in France, opening a show for Ray Charles, and how much she

was out of her element surrounded by all the snow in Sackville. She talked about growing up in east Los Angeles and how her mother, a police officer, taught her how to shoplift. Although at times she was a bit heavy handed in pushing her CDs, as a whole her monologues provided great insight into who she was and how her strong personality shone both through and outside of her music.

Unfortunately, as the first portion of the set wore on, Kane’s voice grew a little hoarse and it detracted a little from the performance. But, after a twenty minute interlude in the middle of the night, the performance had noticeably improved. Although she was not able to showcase the true extent of her strong singing abilities, what she lacked in volume she more than made up for in character.

Candye Kane, no matter the context, seemed like she lived the music she sung and was extremely comfortable in her own skin. She maintained an air of confidence and stalwartness, talking at length about her last five years of living with cancer, seeming to want nothing more than to genuinely help anyone else who happened to be in a hard time in their life.

Llewyn Davis is very sad Lacklustre 86th Oscars hold Coen brothers film features great music Sam Moore Inside Llewyn Davis is yet another skillfully crafted film by the Coen brothers. But it’s also almost devoid of plot, depressing, and occasionally plodding. The film shows a week in the life of the titular Llewyn Davis (played by Oscar Isaac), a fictional folk singer, based loosely (very, very loosely) on folk singer Dave Van Ronk in New York City in 1962. Davis struggles; he is homeless, couch-surfing with one friend after another.

He has no money and no real prospects for making any. His music—which is awesome, by the way—is getting him nowhere. The film opens with a frustrated and depressed Davis coping with the death of his former bandmate (voiced in recordings by Marcus Mumford), and the film ends with a frustrated and depressed Davis. And that is the root of my problem with the film: it’s about an unhappy man who struggles to maintain his unhappy life. There is no arc to

his depression; he just remains malcontent throughout.

That’s not to say there’s not a lot to like about the film.

The performances by Isaac, as well as that of his costars, are very good. Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan perform ably as Davis’s only friends, the musician-couple Jim and Jean. It’s not often that you get actors as talented as Isaac and Mulligan who can also sing as well as they can.

John Goodman provides some of the only levity to the film as Roland Turner, a condescending and insulting jazz musician. Despite Turner’s constant jabs at Davis over the course of their too-short meeting, everything in the movie is just sad. Everything seems to have a melancholic veneer, even extending into the cinematography. Everything is shot seemingly through smoke, fog, or snow and this gives every shot a muted and washed out look. Although it looks really interesting, it still adds to this depressing alternative version of 1960s

New York.

If this was all the film had to offer, I don’t think I could really recommend it. The aimless nature of the plot and the fact that everyone in the film is an asshole in one way or another are very offputting. Thankfully, there is another layer to Inside Llewyn Davis: the music. The actors perform all of it live, on set, and all of it is great. With the exception of the song sung by Justin Timberlake that is just exceptional, every song comes from real folk acts from 1960s or earlier. The music was so good, after the film I went home and downlo…—I mean, purchased—the soundtrack of the movie, as well as everything I could find by Dave Van Ronk, and have had them on repeat pretty much constantly since then.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a sad film. It starts sad and it stays sad. But it’s well acted, well written, well shot, and the music is fantastic. Just don’t go see it if your looking for a pick-me-up.

Write for Entertainment!

Come to weekly contributor meetings every Thursday at 5:30pm on the 3rd floor of the student centre.

no surprises for film pundits DeGeneres hosts for a second time Austin Landry ‘Hollywood’s biggest night,’ took place last week in Los Angeles and aired globally to the largest audience it has seen in over a decade. Last year’s show was hosted by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane.

His typically vulgar sense of humour did not fare well with the majority of his audience, a large number of whom are young children. It’s therefore no surprise that the Academy’s selection committee chose to hire DeGeneres, the antithesis of MacFarlane, to host this year.

Her opening monologue was perhaps the high point of the show; it was short, it showcased her whimsical side, and it was funny because it poked fun at all the right A-list celebrities. Ellen put Jennifer Lawrence in her place in calling her out on her two stumbles in two Oscars ceremonies in a row, a record almost as impressive as the

three nominations Lawrence has already accrued at twentythree.

Throughout the telecast, DeGeneres kept viewers entertained by treating the Dolby Theatre like her own studio lot, frequently walking and dancing among various high-profile Hollywood types. Like any good host, she knows that one of the keys to running a good show is breaking through the poise of the people she interacts with, which she frequently did.

Unfortunately for viewers, there was little aside from Ellen’s ebullience that kept the show afloat. Compared with last year when Cristoph Waltz, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ang Lee, Quentin Tarantino, and Adele all gave impressive, memorable acceptance speeches and performances, the only one worthy of quote from this year’s crop was that of Lupita Nyong’o for best supporting actress. She remarkably observed that a great deal of her happiness is owed to the pain of others, and that that fact doesn’t escape her for a minute. Jared Leto, who won the first award of the evening for supporting actor, showed humility in

thanking his mother. However, as was the case with all the other acceptance speeches he gave during this year’s awards sweep for his portrayal of a transgender woman named Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club, Leto inexplicably was unable to utter the phrase ‘transgendered people’ in his speech, opting instead for “all the Rayons in the world”.

Overall, the most salient part of this year’s Oscars was their predictability. The entirety of the show went by without a major upset. Steve McQueen’s slavery drama 12 Years a Slave took home best picture and best adapted screenplay, successfully concluding a very lucrative trip around the awards circuit. Even the Academy’s ‘splitting’ of the two highest awards (picture and director) was foreseeable, as Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Gravity, had just picked up the best director award from the Directors’ Guild of America a few weeks earlier.

Traditionally the DGA award is known as a near-perfect barometer for the directing Oscar, and Cuarón followed suit. This made him the first Latin-American director to have won the award.

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Underdogs nearly pull off title heist in AUS final

Mt. A comes just goals short of improbable AUS comeback Benjamin Foster Sports Writer

Mount Allison has always been viewed as an academic school who has prided themselves in having student athletes who exceed in their academics. In the 2013-14 school year, the Mounties have shown that they can also contend for championships.

It started this season with the improbable five game winning streak that put the football team in the Uteck Bowl. That was followed by amazing performances by the women’s volleyball team, the badminton squad, and finally by the women’s hockey team.

The women’s hockey Mounties dropped game three of the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) conference final by a score of 2-0 on Saturday night. After getting over coming so close to a championship, this team will realize just how much they have

Mt. A defied almost all odds in the 2013-14 AUS final. (Chris Donovan/Argosy) accomplished.

On Nov. 28, they sat last in the AUS with a record of 3-8 and their playoff hopes were non-existent. That is when they started the streak that saw them become one of the hottest teams in the AUS, winning seven of

their next eight games.

As the number five seed in the AUS, they were considered underdogs in the first round against the Saint Thomas University (STU) Tommies.

Mt. A won the series in two straight convincing victories. Once again,

The ‘one ring to rule them all’ Birth control that prevents HIV and pregnancy Célina Boothby Patrick Kiser, a bio-medical engineer of Northwestern University in Illinois, may have changed the way we treat women’s reproductive health forever. Kiser has invented a first-of-its kind intravaginal ring that administers two drugs that protects against HIV, herpes, and pregnancy all in one dose.

According to the World Health Organization thirtyfive million people around the globe live with HIV/AIDS and 222 million women testify they would appreciate delaying or stopping pregnancy but are unable to access any contraceptives.

Kiser explains that women would mostly be using this ring for contraceptive purposes but there is an added bonus against sexually transmitted diseases as well. This would have a huge impact on women in the developing world in particular who face unwanted

pregnancies that can have incredible health, economic, and cultural repercussions.

Kiser would like to see this ring introduced into these areas to reduce such situations.

The ring is five and a half centimetres in diameter and is easily inserted into the vagina where it stays for three months at a time. Kiser and his colleagues worked tirelessly for five years to come up with a device that would reliably administer appropriate doses of the two medicines (an antiretroviral drug and a contraceptive) over such a long period of time. The inspiring s c i e n c e behind this device is that each drug has a different daily dose of release.

The ring will administer ten milligrams of the antiretroviral drug (to fight against HIV) and only ten micrograms of the contraceptive daily. This difference in dosage is a huge testament to the advancing technology that medical sciences are taking part in.

The intravaginal ring has huge benefits to women

globally. With the large number of women that require HIV medications and contraceptive pills, this ring will cut down on the amount of human error that can occur when required to take pills at the same time daily. David Friend, one of the development directors at CONRAD that develops reproductive health technologies for low-income countries states “by having a ring that can remain in the body for up to ninety days, our hope is that this ring will offer a solution to increase adherence, and therefore p r o v i d e g r e a t e r protection against HIV while also preventing pregnancy”.

K i s e r explains that the rings are being manufactured now and will begin testing in women very shortly. Kiser and colleagues have provided another great technological advancement to the health sector, especially for women in underdeveloped countries.

According to the World Health Organization, thirty-five million people live with HIV/ AIDS

Célina Boothby is Mount Allison’s Health Intern.

they were deemed major underdogs against the nationally ranked Saint Francis Xavier University X-Women.

Despite a game one loss, the Mounties never gave up and ended up winning in double overtime in game three to advance to only their second AUS final ever.

“We had a no quit team. We knew what we were capable of and we have faith in each other. Throughout the season the comebacks came from our hard work” said Mounties head coach Zach Ball.

Unfortunately, the Mounties were unable to capture their first ever AUS title in game three after they ran into a skilled goaltender. Université de Moncton goaltender Gabrielle Forget turned away all twenty-seven Mounties shots as she was named the playoffs most valuable player.

“I’m incredibly proud of my team” said Mounties goaltender Kate O’Brien. “We worked so hard and never gave up. Our motto for playoffs was ‘earned not given’. We just latched on to it and set our sights on nationals.”

O’Brien proved to the entire league this season that she is one of the best female goaltenders in Canadian Inter-university Sport. In the playoffs she had a sparkling 1.82 goals against

average and a .932 save percentage.

“I guess it was my mind set. I knew that I had to stay focused and calm” added O’Brien. “Focusing on the little things and not the bigger picture helped me through the playoffs.”

Lindsay James was sensational for Mt. A in the playoffs. Leading all players with six goals and one assist, including a three goal effort in the STU elimination game in the first series.

This team did not run off individuals. Ball made the most out of the talented squad he had.

Rookie Jennifer Bell became one of the biggest forces in the AUS and she was always there when the team needed energy. Captain Kristen Cooze and Emily van Diepen were the backbones of the defence.

The Mt. A community showed their support bringing over 800 people to game two of the AUS final in Sackville. The Mounties were able to harvest lady luck at the right time, and nearly rode their winning streak to their first AUS women’s hockey title ever. The 2014-15 Mounties women’s hockey season will be much anticipated by the entire community after how this nearly fateful season ended.

Buffett offers basketball fans a billion dollar challenge Gators lead the pack into the Madness Alex Bates

Sports Editor Quicken Loans, and the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett, have issued a challenge to residents of the United States; correctly select every winner in all sixty-seven games of this year’s NCAA Men’ Division I Basketball Championship, and you will get to choose between a cool lump sum payout of $500,000,000 or forty instalments of $40,000,000.

Sounds pretty simple right? Fill out a “bracket”, and then rub elbows with the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway as you collect your prize.

Unfortunately, the art of “bracketology” is nothing but a crapshoot.

The chances of predicting every matchup are just over two to the sixty-seventh power, or 147,573,952,589,676,412,928 for short.

Every year millions of people from all around the world attempt to become the very first person to fill out a perfect bracket. That’s right; there are no documented cases of anyone ever correctly choosing every game correctly.

‘Selection Sunday’ in which teams will find out where they are ranked, and whom they will play in the first round, does not happen until March 16, the favourites have already been established in regular season play.

The University of Florida Gators could be the pretournament favourite. The Gators are 29-2 this season, and are 18-0 in the Southeastern Conference. Florida is led by forward Casey Prather, who averages 14.5 points per game, and 5.3 rebounds per game.

The Gators won back-to-back national titles in 2006 and 2007, and certainly have the support to bring the title back to Gainesville.

At 34-0, the Wichita State University Shockers look like the team to beat, as they are the only team to complete the NCAA Division I season with a perfect record, ever.

Even with an unblemished record, the Associated Press still didn’t award the Shockers the number one ranking.

Wichita State has only been to two Final Four’s ever, and have only appeared in the tournament ten times. Led by a Junior with one of the most unconventional names ever, Cleanthony Early, the Shockers will attempt to do as their name suggests, and win the title for the first time in team history.

What makes the tournament difficult to select,

is the emergence of “Cinderella teams.” The term was coined after the 1949-50 City College of New York literally recruited players from the “streets of New York” and became the only team to win the National Invitation Tournament and the NCAA Tournament in the same year. In 2013, the Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles defeated the secondseeded Georgetown Hoyas in the tournament at nearly tento-one odds, coining them the 2013 Cinderella team.

A key to unearthing these underdogs, is to look for teams with strong defence.

The George Washington University Colonials have allowed on average 66.4 points per game. In comparison, the Gators allowed 71.5 points per game this season. March Madness junkies everywhere could sleep on the unranked colonials because of their lack of offensive attack. The Colonials nearly upset tenthranked Saint Louis Billikens on Feb. 22, and beat the twentieth-ranked Creighton Bluejays in early December.

Even a seasoned college basketball fan will have no better chance at selecting a perfect bracket than anyone with opposable thumbs. If you do hit it big in this years March Madness tournament, don’t forget to mention us in your acceptance speech when you collect the money, and best of luck in your quest.

12 SPORTS

March 13, 2014

argosy@mta.ca

Better Know a Mountie Caitlin MacDonald Benjamin Foster Sports Writer

Volleyball has always played a huge role in Caitlin MacDonald’s life. She started playing the sport in elementary in her home of Fort McMurray, Alberta. “I wanted to play volleyball because my sister played and she was my role model. I always wanted to be like my family because they are the rocks in my life.”

Now the fifth year history student is finishing up her degree and just played her last game of university volleyball for Mount Allison. She played her first few years of club volleyball in Fort McMurray and then moved for the first time to Edmonton, Alberta.

MacDonald lived in Edmonton until moving again in grade eleven to Sussex, New Brunswick.

“Volleyball took up a lot of time when I was younger so I did not have time to play any other sports” said MacDonald. “Everywhere I have gone I still have friends I talk to and am close with.”

Like her fellow senior teammate and former roommate Erika Cronkhite, MacDonald transferred to Mt. A after playing her first season in the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) conference for Cape Breton University (CBU).

“My first choice out of high school was Mt. A but I really wanted to play

for an AUS school and CBU recruited me so I chose to go there” the senior commented.

After one season at CBU she decided it was time for a switch. She enjoyed playing for CBU but the school was simply too far from home.

“I decided to come to Mt. A because it’s only an hour and twenty minutes from home and I really wanted to continue playing volleyball. Mt. A was a great fit!” said MacDonald.

She played her first games as a Mountie in the second half of the 2010-11 season after taking a semester off. She fit right in with the team and she helped them go all the way to win the Atlantic Collegiate Atheltic Association (ACAA) title.

“That year was unreal. It was great getting back to playing volleyball and the girls were great” said MacDonald.

“Going into the ACAA [playoffs] we were the underdogs but we were able to finally beat Mount Saint Vincent University in the semi-final. The energy in the final is something I will never forget. We went five sets against University of New Brunswick Saint John and it was awesome to come out with the victory.”

Her second year of university volleyball was derailed by a knee injury that caused her to miss much of the season. She came back strong in 201213 with a season that saw her get named to the ACAA second all-star

Mounties in Motion since the first year I was here and I also volunteer at the hospital. It has been so rewarding.”

When she is not on the court or working hard on schoolwork, Caitlin loves to travel. She has already been to Nashville, Las Vegas, and Japan in the past year.

“I love traveling but I think my favorite place is Boston. I am a huge Red Sox fan and I would love to live there.”

Coach Paul Settle commented on MacDonald leaving, “She is one of my captains and starters. She rarely gets off the floor because her passing is so good. She has represented the Mounties very well and she will bring that leadership with her.”

She plans to attend St. Thomas University next year to pursue a degree in education as MacDonald hopes to become a high school teacher one day.

MacDonald accumulated 128 digs in 2013-14. (Sue Seaborn/Mount Allison) team. She led the Mounties with 103 kills.

Despite the disappointing finish to this season, Caitlin has formed bonds at Mt. A that she will never forget. MacDonald once again led the Mounties in kills this year with 103 and also added an impressive 128 digs, her most ever in one season. Cronkhite

and Georgia Sibold have played with her all four years on the volleyball team. The trio will graduate together this year after becoming great friends on and off the court.

The five foot eight power hitter will miss many things about Mt. A. “I will miss the team aspect of volleyball and the Sackville community. I have done

Call for Nominations Crake-Sawdon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Student Journalism

Value $1000.00 Applications/nominations must include the following: • • •

A letter of application/nomination indicating contributions and qualities that merit consideration in the area of student journalism (one page maximum) A list showing involvement in print journalism at Mount A An unofficial copy of the nominee’s/applicant’s transcript

Applicants or nominees must also arrange for two letters of reference to be sent to Dr. Owen Griffiths by the due date. At least one letter must be from a person familiar with the applicant’s/ nominee’s work in print journalism at Mount A. Applicants can include other relevant material if they so chose.

Completed applications should be submitted to Owen Griffiths, Department of History, Room 211, Hart Hall. Questions can be directed to: ogriffiths@mta.ca.

All materials must be submitted by April 4, 2014.

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500 POUND ‘IRON MAN’ SUIT BEING DEVELOPED FOR DEEP SEA DIVING Researchers say that new diving suit can reach depths as far as 1000 feet

The Argosy

SCIENCE

www.argosy.ca

Spotted wren-babbler belongs to unique avian family

Asian songbird to be renamed ‘Elachura’ Allison O’Reilly Science Editor

A newly published study has found that a previously unknown family of songbirds is represented by just one species. Scientists were investigating families within the Passerida group (which includes sparrows), and identified ten distinct avian family branches.

The spotted wren-babbler, a bird that is found in Asia, represents the newly identified family that has been discovered. The data reveals that the bird is neither a wren, nor a wrenbabbler. In fact, it has no close living relatives whatsoever. The researchers, located at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, claim that the spotted wren-babbler is the only representative of a unique avian family that is the earliest surviving evolutionary subsidiary in the Passerida family.

The discovery was made by an international team of researchers led by Per Alstrom, associate professor at the Swedish University

The spotted-wren babbler, which was recently discovered by Swedish scientists to belong to its own family, named Elachuridae. (Ramki Sreenivasan/Conservation India) of Agricultural Sciences, as well as visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Evolutionary relationships and our understanding of them have been changing dramatically in the past ten years, as DNA technology is becoming more accessible and computers are getting faster at analyzing large DNA datasets. The Swedish team collected DNA samples from representatives of all known families within Passerida, which includes five major lineages of babblers. The team also included

samples from other birds, which included the wren-babbler.

The team then assembled one of the largest DNA sequence datasets ever accumulated for the Passerida group (both in number of species and loci represented). This data was analyzed to reconstruct a multilocus family. It was through this analysis that the researchers discovered the spotted wren-babbler perched alone on a thin, bare twig on the family tree.

“Within Passerida, which contains thirty-six percent of all bird and

sixty per cent of all passerines, the spotted wren-babbler is unqiue, as it is the only extant species that on its own represents one of the most basal lineages,” writes the authors in their published paper, found in the peerreviewed journal Biology Letters.

This bird has fooled ornithologists and taxonomy experts for more than one hundred years. This is due to convergent evolution, which states that unrelated species evolve to look like each other simply because they occupy the same area. With

Enviro. News

Honours Profile Hillary Hamilton

Olivia White

Allison O’Reilly Science Editor

Hillary Hamilton is a fourth-year psychology honours student working with Odette Gould. Her thesis is entitled “Mental health medication adherence in a Canadian undergraduate university population.”

Gould is a psychology professor who primarily researches adult development and aging. Her program, the Adult Development and Aging Research Program, has been in operation at Mount Allison since 2000. A project that Gould has undertaken in recent years involves medication adherence, which entails investigating how seniors remember to take their medications. Gould has also worked with patients at the Moncton Hospital to design a new test that pharmacists could use to help determine whether older patients can manage their medications independently.

Hamilton’s research is similar, but instead of studying medication adherence in older individuals, she is focusing on an undergraduate university sample.

“I’m glad that [Gould] is flexible enough to let me focus on an undergraduate sample for my research,” Hamilton

Honours student Hillary Hamilton working her lab in Crabtree ground floor. (Nick Sleptov/Argosy) said, adding that Gould’s knowledge on medication adherence from her previous research has proven invaluable.

Hamilton created a survey for students to take who have been treating depression, anxiety, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for three months or longer. The survey aims to investigate the participants’ attitudes, beliefs, and how they’re able to manage their medications. By administering the survey, Hamilton hopes the paint a picture of the participants’ overall experience of taking medications in university, and answer questions regarding how often they are taken, why they choose not to take them, and whether participants have

support from their family and peers.

To accompany the survey, Hamilton plans to conduct one-on-one interviews with participants as well.

Through the use of interviews, Hamilton can collect other valuable information that is hard to determine from a survey. Interviews can also provide more internal validity.

“Surveys are great for yielding quantitative data,” Hamilton explains.

“By conducting interviews, we can really dig deep into daily experiences and yield valuable qualitative data.”

By undertaking this project, Hamilton aims to provide information that could help researchers understand medication adherence in

animals such as songbirds, it becomes very difficult to determine which characters are most important for making taxonomic classifications.

Due to the reclassifying of the bird, the researchers proposed a new family name, Elachuridae, as well as recommending that the scientific name be changed to Elachura formosa. They also suggested that the bird’s common name be changed to Elachura.

young adults and how to implement changes.

“From being a part of a university community, you can see that there are not enough resources [to help students in medication adherence], and that the age group is very vulnerable,” Hamilton said.

After completing her undergraduate degree, Hamilton hopes to continue her education in psychology by obtaining a master’s degree.

Hamilton is still looking for participants for her study.

If you are an undergraduate student who has been treating depression, anxiety, or ADHD for three months or more, and wish to participate in this study, you can contact Hillary Hamilton at hahamilton@ mta.ca.

The Northern Hemisphere has been witness to a series of unusual weather patterns over this past winter. In Canada, a polar vortex blowing south over Canada has contributed to the Great Lakes freezing over almost completely, a phenomenon that hasn’t happened for decades. The increasingly number of irregular weather events this winter has spurred debate amongst climate scientists as to how these events are connected to climate change and warming in the Arctic. A report put out by the United Kingdom Meteorology Office in February theorizes that persistent patterns of perturbations in the polar jet stream over the past winter have lead to these hemispheric patterns of irregular weather.

Though it is difficult statistically to link a long-term trend to day-to-day weather, more and more evidence suggests that these irregular and record-breaking weather events are consequences of climate change heating up the Arctic.

Research has been looking at how Arctic warming is changing the polar jet stream, which is a high altitude wind that encircles the globe. This jet stream is the key factor influencing the weather experienced in the Northern Hemisphere.

This polar jet stream is well understood by climate scientists. Because warm air is less dense than cold air, it rises above it. So when warm air parcels from the south travel northward, they sit atop the cold Arctic air.

The greater the difference in temperature between these two air parcels, the faster the jet stream moves across the Northern Hemisphere. But when the temperatures of these air parcels are disrupted, the weather events that travel with the stream are disrupted as well. Loss of Arctic sea ice is linked to increased heat in the atmosphere, as sea ice cover acts as a lid that separates the ocean from a colder atmosphere. As increasing amounts of sea ice are lost, the Arctic is becoming incrementally warmer, and the temperature difference between these two air parcels is lessening, causing a slower, weaker jet stream. The change in speed of the jet stream’s movement is causing for a more convoluted path, and weather patterns are disrupted and tend to remain in one place for longer periods of time. In theory then, when weather is especially hot, wet, dry, or cold, it will tend to stay in this state for longer, thus increasing the chance of flooding, drought, and other extreme weather events.

14 SCIENCE

March 13, 2014

New state of matter discovered The new state of matter is found in chicken eyes

Massive Pokémon game captivates ‘Twitch Plays Pokémon’ draws millions

Keegan Smith

Martin Omes

Researchers at Princeton and Washington Universities have discovered a new state of matter in an unexpected place—the retinas of chickens.

First described in 2003, this state is called ‘disordered hyperuniformity’, and has never before been seen in biological systems (though it has been observed in plasmas).

Chickens have relatively small eyes, but their vision is impeccable.

Joseph Corbo, a genetics professor at Washington University, believed that this is possible due to the layout of light-detecting cells, called cones, in their eyes.

In studying the patterns of cells in their retinas, he sought help from Salvatore Torquato, a Princeton chemistry professor and the original discoverer of the new state.

Chickens have five types of cone cells—four for detecting colour, and one more for detecting light levels. These cells are different sizes, which makes self-organization into a crystal structure (considered the optimal solution from a biological systems perspective, and the one typically employed by other animals) much more difficult. The problem is further confounded by the small size of the bird’s retinas.

Twitch Plays Pokémon has just finished one of the most intriguing gaming experiments of the year so far. Tens of thousands of Internet users collectively worked together to beat the Gameboy Colour game Pokémon Red on the online streaming service Twitch.

TPP began Feb. 12, when an anonymous developer created a live-stream of Pokémon Red, and hacked the site’s chat box to serve as the controller for the game. The spectators in the chat would then type out their commands into the game. The game processes them concurrently, leading to absolute chaos. The stream began as a social experiment to further prove that that the infinite monkey theorem is true. The theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text. With the chat typing in various instructions into the chat and seventeen days into the stream, the players beat the game’s final bosses, the Elite Four, and became the Pokémon Champion.

The channel attracted more than thirty-five million unique views over its span and at its

Science Writer

“The system is frustrated from finding what might be the optimal solution,” Torquato said in a news release.

“While the pattern must be disordered, it must also be as uniform as possible. Thus, disordered hyperuniformity is an excellent solution.”

When Torquato and his colleagues examined the pattern of these cells, they found that it looks chaotic on a small scale.

When observed more broadly, however, the number of each cone cell per unit of area in the retina is a constant. This was an immediate tip that there was something more to the situation.

Writing a program to model the arrangement of these cells, Torquato and his team determined that each cell has

an ‘exclusion region’ around it—a buffer zone that prevents similar cells from growing within it, while allowing the other cone cell types to flourish.

The effect is a wide dispersal of cells in the retina without clustering of like cells. This is what allows the cells to remain at equal densities across the retina, even though there is no strongly ordered structure.

What is most surprising is that because this mechanism is repeated for each cell type, this represents a new concept within the field—the idea of ‘multiple hyperuniformity’.

Remove any one cell type, and the system remains hyperuniform.This is a property that has never been seen, in the biological world, or otherwise.

“Disordered hyperuniform materials possess a hidden order,” Torquato told the Princeton News.

These materials have the capacity to act as liquids—displaying the same physical properties in all directions—and as crystals— in that their density is the same over large distances.

This makes them interesting for application in a number of fields, including new optics systems for miniaturized cameras, or detectors that are sensitive only to certain wavelengths. Now that these systems have been observed in the natural world, it is believed that replicating them will be much easier.

argosy@mta.ca

peak, there were nearly 120,000 players participating in the experiment. After twenty-four hours of completing Pokémon Red, the gamers have begun to play Pokémon Crystal, which is a third generation title for the series.

Twitch’s VP of marketing Matthew DiPietro said that the original stream was an example of “how video games have become a platform for entertainment and creativity that extends way beyond the original intent of the game creator.”

The stream inspired a vocal following, with a dedicated forum on Reddit, collecting masses of fan-art, cults on Twitter following particular Pokémon, and videos of the players favourite moments popping up all over YouTube.

“By merging a video game, live video, and a participatory experience, the broadcaster has created an entertainment hybrid custom made for the Twitch community,” DiPietro said. “This is a wonderful proof on concept that we hope to see more of in the future.”

It is not clear how much TPP will continue to attract such large amount of interest, as the original game went viral mostly due to its novelty, but the blending of spectating and participation is a valid format, that we may see more of in the future. To follow its progress through Pokémon Crystal, you can watch the stream at www. twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon or follow the twitter @TwitchPlaysPokemon for updates.

Starry Sackville lecture discusses all things meteors Monthly lecture given by Western’s Rob Weryk Allison O’Reilly Science Editor

A sizeable crowd packed a classroom in Dunn this past Friday for the physics department’s monthly Starry Sackville lecture. This talk, led by Rob Weryk, was entitled ‘What do meteors tell us about the solar system?’

The talk began by giving clear definitions for meteoroids and meteorites. A meteoroid is a solid particle that is in orbit around the sun, and is produced from the decay of a comet or asteroid.

Meteorites are meteoroids that originate in outer space, but survive its impact with the Earth’s surface.

The importance of studying meteors was a prevailing theme of the talk.

“They are very likely similar to the material that was present when the universe formed,” Weryk claimed. “If we can understand what meteors are

made of, and where they came from in the solar system, they can give us a better understanding of what the formation and evolution of the solar system was like. We can learn exactly how the earth formed, and potentially how life on earth formed.”

Weryk discussed the formation of the solar system, which condensed out of a solar nebula, followed by the formation of a planetary disc. As material is drawn into the disc, it rotates, eventually forming planetesimals.

The planetesimals eventually formed to create planets. A solar wind was responsible for the clearing of the remaining planetesimals, creating a solar system with the planets in the centre, and remnants left over that exist in the perimeter.

Various meteor-related topics were discussed throughout the talk, which included the planetesimal remnants, which we know as comets and meteors; how this material arrives on earth, from asteroids and particle ejection from comets; and meteor observations, such as the Perseid in August, and Orionid in October.

Another aspect of the talk focused on the Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN). The SOMN

Visiting lecturer Rob Weryk discusses meteroids in a classroom in the Sir James Dunn Building. (Allison O’Reilly/Argosy) uses all-sky camera observations, and covers most of Southern Ontario.

The intent of the network was to use a dense array of all-sky cameras, with spacing between fifty to one hundred kilometres apart, to record many meteors from multiple stations. These cameras, which are fully automated,

would then use triangulation in order to determine the location of meteors in the solar system.

The ultimate goal of the SOMN is to detect unexpected events. Since its inception in 2004, the network has detected 8000 meteors, and six potential meteorite falls (with one recovery).

The talk was followed with a trip to the Gemini Observatory for any audience members who wished to look at the sky. Mount Allison professor Catherine Lovekin, who introduced the talk, cheerfully claimed that “the skies are clear tonight… we are finally going to go after the talk tonight.”

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The Argosy

www.argosy.ca

CAR RUNS FOR TORONTO MAYOR Councillors claim Ford Focus is ‘more than qualified’ REVERSE CROSSWORD The puzzle is solved——you guess the clues!

HUMOUR

Across 1. Type of vacuum flask 6. Sun 10. The products of human creativity 14. Picture 15. South American country 16. Defeat decisively 17. High, low and neap 18. Twin sister of Ares 19. Cotton bundle 20. Blue blood 22. Small island 23. Gull-like bird 24. A piece of mail

26. Affirm 30. Former boxing champ 31. Hearing organ 32. No more than 33. Twinge 35. Lustrous fabric 39. Opening words of a text 41. An informal term for money 43. Maxim 44. Distinctive flair 46. Double-reed woodwind 47. Derisive laugh 49. Actress Lupino 50. South African monetary unit

51. Cave 54. Agreeable 56. Train track 57. Excessively dramatic 63. Doing nothing 64. Rhythm 65. Redress 66. Fastens 67. Therefore 68. Goat antelope 69. Mats of grass 70. Stag or doe 71. Make improvements

Down 1. Devil tree 2. Arab chieftain 3. Dry riverbed 4. How old we are 5. Relaxes 6. Hypothesize 7. A piece of ground 8. Diva’s solo 9. A light noise 10. A type of judge 11. Cut of beef 12. Gown fabric

13. Drive 21. Relative of a giraffe 25. Where the sun rises 26. Dogfish 27. Sell 28. Killer whale 29. Having no apparent gravitational pull 34. Pugilist 36. Brass instrument 37. Computer symbol 38. Require

40. Kind of moss 42. Make into law 45. Bloodline 48. A bed of rich soil 51. Southern breakfast dish 52. Audio communications 53. Lubricated 55. Delete 58. Not there 59. Bit of gossip 60. Center 61. Nameless 62. Bawdy

(CUP) — Puzzles provided by BestCrosswords.com. Used with permission.

Personal Credits Notice

If you received a Common Experience Payment, you could get $3,000 in Personal Credits for educational programs and services.

The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

The healing continues.

Since 2007, almost 80,000 former students have received a Common Experience Payment (“CEP”) as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. CEP recipients are now eligible to receive non-cash Personal Credits of up to $3,000, for either themselves or certain family members, for educational programs and services.

What are Personal Credits? Personal Credits may be used for a wide range of educational programs and services, including those provided by universities, colleges, trade or training schools, Indigenous Institutions of Higher Learning, or which relate to literacy or trades, as well as programs and services related to Aboriginal identities, histories, cultures or languages.

the terms and conditions. Personal Credits of multiple CEP recipients can be combined to support a group learning activity.

How can I get Personal Credits? Each CEP recipient will be mailed an Acknowledgement Form. If you do not receive an Acknowledgement Form by the end of January 2014, please call 1-866-343-1858. Completed Acknowledgement Forms should be returned as soon as possible and must be postmarked no later than October 31, 2014.

How do I redeem my Personal Credits? Once approved, you will be sent a personalized Redemption Form for each individual using Personal Credits How much are Personal Credits?

CEP recipients have the option of at each educational entity or group.

Adequate funds are available for each sharing their Personal Credits with Once the Form is received, provide CEP recipient to receive up to $3,000 certain family members, such as: it to the educational entity or group in Personal Credits, depending on • Spouses • Children listed. The educational entity or group your approved educational expenses.

• Grandchildren • Siblings must then complete and mail back the Which educational entities and Redemption Form postmarked no later groups are included? A list of approved educational than December 1, 2014. entities and groups has been jointly developed by Canada, the Assembly of First Nations and Inuit What happens to unused Personal Credits? The value of representatives. If an educational entity or group unused Personal Credits will be transferred to the National is not on the list, please consult the website for Indian Brotherhood Trust Fund and Inuvialuit Education Foundation for educational programs. more information.

Will I receive a cheque? No. Cheques will be issued For more information, including how Personal Credits can directly to the educational entity or group providing be redeemed by certain family members of CEP recipients that are deceased, visit www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca the service. or call 1-866-343-1858.

Who can use Personal Credits? CEP recipients can use the full amount themselves or give part or all of The IRS Crisis Line (1-866-925-4419) provides immediate their Personal Credits to certain family members such and culturally appropriate counselling support to former as a spouse, child, grandchild or sibling, as defined in students who are experiencing distress.

1-866-343-1858 • www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca