The Argosy, March 15, Vol.147, Iss. 18

NEWS Fewer incoming students could mean deficit (Pg. 3) Stealth publishing since 1872

ARTS & CULTURE Senior recitals launched by Sarah Sharpe (Pg. 6)

SPORTS Basketball nationals to be hosted by Mt. A (Pg. 11)

OPINIONS Looking toward the Argosy’s future (Pg. 14)

Mount Allison’s Independent Student Newspaper

COVER: PHOTOGRAPHY

BY LIANG CHAO YI, LAYOUT BY ADRIAN KIVA PICTURING MT. A, 2018.

March 15, 2018 Vol. 147, Iss. 18

02 NEWS

EDITOR: MAIA HERRIOT & MINNOW HOLTZ-CARRIERE | MARCH 15. 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

SUSTAINABILITY

Atlantic salmon in troubled waters Population dropping significantly, dams and salmon farming possible factors

CCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship Wed., March 14 to Sat., March 17, McCormack Gym, Athletic Centre

THURSDAY, MAR. 15 Interdisciplinary Conversations 4:30 p.m., Owens Art Gallery Japanese Cultural Festival 7-9 p.m., Gracie’s Cafe

FRIDAY, MAR. 16 After ISIS?: Regional and Domestic Political Dynamics in a Changing Middle East 12:30-3:30 p.m., Avard-Dixon 112 Psychology department guest speaker: Dr. Jonathan Wilbiks 2:30 p.m., Dunn Mini Wu MediaKids Academy 3-4 p.m., Wallace McCain Student Centre 124 Women’s Leadership Series 2.0 3:30 p.m., Jennings Hall Banquet Room Starry Sackville 7 p.m., Dunn Mini Wu ATLANTIC SALMON FEDERATION REPORTS POPULATIONS HAVE DROPPED DRAMATICALLY IN THE LAST 20 YEARS. LOUIS SOBOL/ARGOSY Student recital: Emily Steers and Lucie Bauby with Sébastien Leclerc 7:30-9:30 p.m., Conservatory of Music, Brunton Auditorium Science Atlantic Environment Conference Fri., March 16 - Sun., March 18

SATURDAY, MAR. 17 Student recital: Madeline Duffy with Jennie Del Motte 7:30-9:30 p.m., Conservatory of Music Brunton Auditorium

SUNDAY, MAR. 18 Student recital: Minae (Mia) Masui and Sung-Ho (David) Kwon with Stephen Runge 7:30-9:30 p.m., Conservatory of Music, Brunton Auditorium

MONDAY, FEB. 6

AMELIA MACDOUGALL-FLEMING

News Reporter

In the last two decades, Atlantic salmon populations have dropped drastically, and a group of researchers want to know why. The Atlantic Salmon Federation presented the documentary Lost at Sea on March 7.

“Wild Atlantic salmon in North America are not doing so well these days,” said Steve Sutton, an advocate for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, when he introduced the documentary. “We’ve got many populations throughout southern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that are either threatened or endangered.

There is something happening in the ocean that we don’t quite understand and it’s interfering with the survival of young salmon when they go to sea.”

The film explained that salmon are born in rivers, and leave as juveniles to journey to the ocean to

feed. After the fish have grown in the ocean, they return back to their home river to spawn. However, the documentary explained that in in the last two decades, the Atlantic salmon population has dropped by 70 per cent and there are fewer salmon left to do so.

Lost at Sea offered some possible suggestions as to why Atlantic salmon have been disappearing. One of the reasons the film explored was aquaculture in the Bay of Fundy, which is one of the world’s most concentrated fish farming areas. The film explained that wild Atlantic salmon are breeding with escaped farm salmon, which is spreading diseases such as sea lice that can be devastating to salmon populations.

The hybrid salmon are also weaker, and do not survive as well as the wild Atlantic salmon in nature.

Nathan Wilbur, who works with the Atlantic Salmon Federation and attended the screening, would

like to see on-shore containment of farmed salmon. He said, “It’s proven to be impossible to be able to handle [farmed] salmon 100 per cent of the time, and that’s why we’d like to see changes to closed containment.

Ultimately, we’d like to see landbased containment so that we don’t have these escapes, and also so we don’t have these parasite issues.”

Another potential explanation for the decline in the Atlantic salmon population is the number of dams that have been built in recent years.

In Maine, for example, all of the Atlantic salmon spawning locations are located above the dam in the Penobscot River. In order to solve the decline of the Atlantic salmon, fish ladders were installed in the dam, and salmon were loaded into trucks and driven upriver past the dam.

However, these efforts did not help restore Atlantic salmon numbers.

The Penobscot dam was subsequently removed in 2013, and the river was

restored.

Whatever the reason for their decreasing numbers, many people feel it is important to maintain local salmon populations. “It’s important to protect them because they’re a great food source and they’re a big component of our ecosystem,” said Julia Campbell, a fourth-year biology student. “They play a great role. We need to protect them and not keep things the way they are.”

Atlantic salmon are also important for the maritime economy and culture. “We’ve lost most of our valuable commercial fisheries for salmon, our recreational fisheries are in decline, and so are our food and social ceremonial fisheries by First Nations,” said Sutton.

Hopefully, Lost at Sea will encourage Mt. A students and the community to think more about the their own roles in the future of the Atlantic salmon.

The Quench Grand Opening 8 a.m. - 5 p.m., The Pond

Jean-Paul Boudreau appointed Mt. A president

THURSDAY, FEB. 7

The Board of Regents announced via email on March 13 that it had agreed to appoint Jean-Paul Boudreau as the University’s 15th president and vice-chancellor, replacing Robert Campbell. Boudreau’s five-year term will begin on July 1, 2018.

Mt. A’s First Powwow 12:30-4:30 p.m., Athletic Centre

Boudreau holds a PhD in psychology and has worked at Ryerson University in Toronto since 2003 as chair of the department of psychology and dean of the faculty of arts. He is currently Ryerson’s special advisor and executive lead of social innovation.

This summer, Boudreau intends to go on a “listening tour” to learn about the Mt. A community’s interests and concerns.

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UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS

03

Low enrolment may cause deficit, lead to tuition increase for some students

Mount Allison University dependent on student tuition fees for 45 per cent of its budget LILY FALK News Reporter

AN INCOMING CLASS OF ONLY 625 STUDENTS WOULD MEAN A $750 000 DEFICIT IN THE UNIVERSITY BUDGET FOR THE 2018-2019 YEAR. SARAH NOONAN/ARGOSY

On March 8 and 9, Mount Allison hosted two town hall meetings to discuss the 2018-19 University budget. Despite the stormy weather, a number of faculty and students were in attendance to hear a presentation

by Robert Inglis, the vice-president of finance.

The issue of enrolment was the centrepiece of Inglis’s presentation.

This past year, the University budgeted for 700 incoming students, though only 600 ended up attending.

The drop in enrolment makes it difficult to guess how many students will attend in the coming year. This is an issue because fewer students paying tuition means less money for the budget than expected.

Inglis argued that an incoming class of 625 students for the 2018-19 school year would likely mean a $750,000 deficit. This is assuming a two per cent increase in tuition and

one per cent increase in the N.B. provincial government’s grant. This tuition increase would not exceed two per cent for international or New Brunswick students but could go higher for out-of-province students.

Inglis explained that Mt. A’s revenue is broken into three main sections: 45 per cent comes from tuition fees, 45 per cent from a provincial government grant and the other 10 per cent from the endowment, interest and other minor sources of income such as the Fitness Centre.

“That’s why discussions about recruitment are so important,” said Inglis. The difference between expected student numbers and the actual numbers makes a $1.2 million difference on the $45 million budget.

The challenge of not knowing how many first-year students will come to and stay at Mt. A for four years makes forecasting the budget difficult. The University is highly cautious about running a deficit.

Gloria Jollymore, the vicepresident of university advancement, was in attendance and spoke to how deficits can negatively impact potential donors. “It gives donors confidence when we don’t have a deficit,” she said.

Kira Gill-Maher, a third-year international relations student, attended the town hall and believes it’s important for students to stay informed about university affairs.

She also pointed out how Centennial Hall is physically inaccessible for some, so having a town hall gives the opportunity for students to ask questions. “I think it is also important to look at the University’s financial dilemmas from another perspective – it’s not always black and white,” said Gill-Maher.

The University’s budget affects all aspects of student life but despite the opportunity to ask questions at a town hall, it remains difficult for students to understand the financial workings of the institution.

LIBRARIES

Mount Allison begins earliest stage of new libraries and archives revitalization project

Students, faculty and staff gave their ideas and opinions at open town hall meeting MINNOW HOLTZ-CARRIERE News Editor Over the next five to seven years Mount Allison will undergo the extensive process of updating and renovating its library.

The library revitalization project will include quality of life improvements like more power outlets, new lighting and asbestos removal, as well as large-scale changes to the library’s appearance and organization.

The absolute earliest stage of this process involves collecting ideas and suggestions from Mt. A students, faculty and staff.

Two town hall meetings were held to discuss how the library is currently used and how it might be used in the future.

“Architects these days – we don’t come in as experts and say ‘This is what you should do,’ ” said Stephen Teeple of Teeple Architects, one of two architects present at the meeting. “We’re not here to tell anyone what to do. We’re going to talk about opportunities to make sure everybody realizes that there is a large scope of possibility for this project. The existing library has a lot of good things going on in it, and

those can be made much more potent and powerful and beautiful, we think.

We’re here to understand what people desire, what people want to see this library evolve into.” Stephen Outerbridge, an architect from EXP, was also present.

The presenters also provided some examples of other recently renovated university libraries and learning centres, like the Ryerson Student Learning Centre and the Musashino Art University Museum and Library.

Suggestions at the meeting on March 6 ranged from improvements for library staff workspaces to better natural lighting to the addition of a specifically Indigenous space developed in consultation with Indigenous students and faculty.

Increasing accessibility in the library was a main concern for many. Lower shelves and more widely spaced stacks, accessible washrooms, and a more central, up-to-date, functional elevator were popular ideas.

Sustainability going forward also came up. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Divest movement, but the idea among students and the community is that this has to be a green, sustainable building,”

“THE IDEA AMONG

STUDENTS AND THE COMMUNITY

IS THAT THIS HAS TO BE A GREEN, SUSTAINABLE BUILDING.”

said one audience member. “And [sustainability] can’t just be a theme, it has to be a core principle.” She suggested the use of solar panels and geothermal energy for the library, and its detachment from fossil fuels.

Other attendees brought up the idea of areas featuring different collections or archival materials that might be hidden from view otherwise.

A number of people posed the idea of creating a space for art in the library.

“One of the challenges in the space that I’ve been presented with many times by students is that they’re looking for flexible exhibition space,” said library archivist David Mawhinney. “One of the things that I’ve talked about regularly is if there was some way that you could set up scrims that roll down and roll up, so that if someone wanted to do an exhibition in there … it would be up for a week, they’d take it down, and the scrim goes up again. You’re moving with more flexibility in that main space.”

Both audience members and the presenting architects were interested in creating spaces for a variety of purposes and study habits. Teaching classrooms, peer tutoring space and offices for teaching assistants were put on the table.

“From my perspective a big part of it is striking a balance between study space and social space, which I think the library we have now does reasonably well. I do like the flow

THE REVITALIZATION PROJECT WILL INCLUDE “QUALITY OF LIFE” IMPROVEMENTS, ARCHITECTURAL MODERNIZATION AND LARGE-SCALE ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES THAT WILL PREPARE THE LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES FOR THE NEXT 40 YEARS. TENEA WELSH/ARGOSY of walking into the library and you have tables and people are chattering and whatever and you can find people you know and talk to them a little bit before you go about your daily business,” said one student in attendance.

Overseeing the project is the Libraries 2025 Vision Committee.

Co-chaired by Provost Jeff Ollerhead and VP international and student affairs Kim Meade, the committee includes one librarian, one library staff member and university librarian Marc Truitt, as well as five other members from various university constituencies.

The committee is currently aiming to complete the library revitalization

project by 2025, the 150th anniversary of Grace Annie Lockhart’s graduation from Mt. A. Beyond the recent town halls, Ollerhead said there would be more opportunities for the public to engage with the process in the future. He encouraged students and faculty to continue participating, and to encourage their friends and colleagues to do so as well.

The next step of the process will involve attracting donors to fund the project, but this is tied into community interest and participation. “We need some idea that we can raise some money, but we need some really good ideas that we can raise money for,” said Ollerhead.

04

NEWS

MARCH 15, 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

OUTREACH

ACTIVISM

Big Buddies is a program that pairs local kids with a student role model, or “big buddy,” from Mount Allison. Buddies spend time together once a week hanging out, playing games and building friendships.

Centre for International Studies organizes a public conversation between Khan and Mt. A student Tina Oh

Community Masuma Khan discusses volunteer profiles colonization and activism

GEORGE JACOB IS A SECOND-YEAR SOCIOLOGY MAJOR. “I’d like to emphasize that the one hour at Big Buddies is continually the highlight of my week. It’s during this hour that all your stress disappears entirely because suddenly your world is concerned with simply being the best big buddy you can be. We run around for an hour, screaming, laughing and playing with kids that we know want us to be there, who enjoy our company and who only ever judge when you aren’t laughing as hard as you should be. All that matters are the smiles that are left on everyone’s faces because you got to remember what it’s really like to be a kid again – something that so many of us have forgotten.

And that’s a lesson that can only be learned from a kid, because after all they are the experts, and we’re the naive ones.”

CECILIA WATT IS A SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR. “Growing up in Sackville there were always Mt. A students involved in my life, whether they were in my classroom helping, teaching me piano or coaching swimming and soccer. Big Buddies was the perfect opportunity for me to give back to my town and to Mt. A. And every Thursday at 6:15, no matter how tired I am, it is always worth it. It’s worth it to see the smile on my buddy’s face every time she sees me, it’s worth it to see her get more and more comfortable playing with other kids every week, and it’s worth it to see a group of stressed out university students completely forget their worries and become kids again for an hour. It has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done, the kids adopt you as their own and make you a part of their family, and there’s nothing better than that.”

GILLIAN HILL/ARGOSY

LAST YEAR AS HER STUDENT UNION’S PRESIDENT, KHAN MOVED THAT THE DAL STUDENT UNION NOT PARTICIPATE IN CANADA 150 IN PROTEST OF WHAT SHE SAW AS A CELEBRATION OF COLONIZATION AND INDIGENOUS GENOCIDE. CHAOYI LIANG/ARGOSY

MAIA HERRIOT News Editor To her critics, Masuma Khan says, “I’m just a human being, a person who is fed up – someone’s kid.”

As an Afghan-Muslim and racialized woman growing up in Halifax, Khan said she is no stranger to discrimination and systemic racism.

As the vice-president academic and external for the Dalhousie Student Union, outgoing president of Dalhousie’s Muslim Association, leader of Dalhousie’s protest of high tuition fees last year and organizer of the public vigil after the Quebec City mosque shooting, Khan has often faced the judgement of her peers.

However, in the past year as her story left Dalhousie, Khan has come under international scrutiny.

Last June, in an effort to support Canada’s Indigenous communities and reject what she considered to be a celebration of colonization and genocide, Khan moved that the Dalhousie Student Union not participate in Canada 150. On March 5, Mount Allison’s Centre for International Studies hosted Khan to speak about her experiences.

After her motion was made public, there was an immediate backlash that led Khan to make a Facebook post about how little she was concerned about white fragility. Khan was then investigated by Dalhousie after a complaint was filed by another student stating that “Targeting ‘white people’ who celebrate Canada Day is blatant discrimination.”

Dalhousie decided to take disciplinary action after Khan rejected the initial offer of undergoing counselling and writing a reflective

essay.

The University contemplated its course of disciplinary action as news of Khan’s case grew and Khan hired a lawyer. On Oct. 25 the University dropped its intention of senate disciplinary action for Khan after facing criticism for pursuing it in the first place.

Khan says she just wants the conversation around these events to return to being about the colonizing and discriminatory nature of so much of what we still do as settlerCanadians. She spent the majority of her talk with Tina Oh and the question period that followed speaking on the topic of Indigenous rights.

Her identity as an ally and accomplice to other marginalized communities is central to Khan’s activism. Khan feels it is her duty as a settler to include Canada’s Indigenous communities in her efforts. “You can’t talk about activism or movement or liberation on this land without involving Indigenous people – it can’t happen anymore.

It is so disrespectful to not centre them when talking about liberating others in their territory. I won’t partake in anything that doesn’t have Indigenous women at the forefront,” she said.

When an audience member criticised Khan for dismissing the concept of “white genocide” – something a white supremacist website accused her of supporting – and by extension the attempted Acadian genocide and playing into a “victim game” when centring Indigenous genocide, Khan’s response was met with applause.

“When we’re talking about genocide, when we’re talking about

Indigenous people, it’s because Indigenous people are still being displaced, still going through intergenerational trauma, the 60s scoop, the residential schools still active until 1996, Indigenous children being the highest represented in the foster care system, Indigenous people making up less than three per cent of the population and yet being the highest represented within incarceration and policing systems.

So it is important to recognise no one is denying that Acadians went through what they went through, but you can’t talk about that without talking about whose land you’re on, because this land you’re talking about is based off of the understanding that our relationship would be one of peace and friendship and that was not honoured, still is not being honoured – Tina Fontaine is happening right now, Colten Boushie is happening right now.”

Despite a year of death threats, racial slurs, accusations of being “anti-Canadian” and appearing on American white supremacy sites as a terrorist, Khan is currently running for re-election as vicepresident academic and external for the Dalhousie Student Union. “I decided I’m just gonna do it, because the work never stops, and Dalhousie is extremely oppressive, as are all institutions,” she said. “I’m so scared of someone coming into the position and not being survivor-centric, not understanding racialized issues, grad student issues, international student issues, not understanding their settler identity and the duty they have – ­ because that’s not in the constitution.”

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PRISON REFORM

05

Mount Allison hosts prison reform activist Aisha Francis of FIBI for lecture Canada’s judicial system has room to improve argues Francis, speaking from experience

RYAN KARIMI News Reporter Aisha Francis from Families Impacted by Incarceration (FIBI) made a compelling case against Canada’s current judicial system last Tuesday, March 6.

Invited to Mount Allison by Tina Oh and Shannon Power, student coordinators of the Centre for International Studies, Francis said, “We are hoping to bring a new lens to justice.”

“I’m hoping to provoke everyone and make everyone a little uncomfortable,” she said early in the event.

She acknowledged that people will necessarily have differing opinions on the subject matter of her talk. Francis expressed that her goal was not to indoctrinate the audience; her intention was “[to ask] everyone tonight to look at it

differently, to look at it not from a place of mind but also a place of heart.”

She began the talk by summarizing her own experiences with the justice system. She and her husband had recently bought a home in Toronto when, one night, the police raided her house and arrested her husband, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for gang involvement.

“My children had firearms in their faces,” Francis said. After the raid, she said, “Nobody would speak to me, nobody would play with my children.”

Francis raised the question of whether the perpetrator truly bears the weight of an incarceration, or whether their loved ones do.

This experience inspired her to found FIBI, an organization that aims to deliver holistic aid both to those who spend time in prisons and to

“YOU DON’T TRULY REALIZE THE

INJUSTICES IN THE

SYSTEM UNTIL YOU SEE YOUR LOVED ONES GO

THROUGH IT.”

their loved ones. “Family is key. It’s an early point of intervention,” she said. “It all begins at home – it’s the cause [of early criminal activity in some cases] and the cure.”

Her programs aim to support former inmates by delivering “education, life experience [and] health,” in addition to financial support. She also mentioned initiatives to overcome barriers to reintegration into society, such as instructional programs focused on technological literacy.

“When I think about justice, I am torn,” she said, ending the talk.

She and her family were able to overcome challenges associated with her husband’s incarceration, but she knows that not all families are able to do so. “Public safety doesn’t look like longer minimum sentences,” Francis said, strongly stating the importance for policy-makers to draft policy that reflects the personal experiences of inmates and their families. “It is not enough for us to be theoretical,” said Francis.

The topic of prison reform caught Power’s eye “after encountering

FIBI SUPPORTS FORMER INMATES AND THEIR FAMILIES. LOUIS SOBOL/ARGOSY certain thinkers like Angela Davis and others who show that simply putting people in prisons does not actually make the world safer, especially for communities that are disproportionately policed,” she said.

“I became interested in prison justice because I have a family impacted by incarceration,” added

Oh. “You don’t truly realize the injustices in the system until you see your loved ones go through it.”

At the end of the event, Oh and Power announced that the next talk put on by the Centre for International Studies will feature Dr. Paulette Steeves, and will take place on March 22.

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 Mt. A • An unofficial copy of the nominee’s/applicant’s transcript showing a CGPA of no lower than 2.5 Applicants/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 Mt. A. Applicants can include other relevant material if they so choose.

All materials must be submitted to Owen Griffiths, Dept. of History, Room 211, Hart Hall by Monday, April 6, 2018

06 ARTS & CULTURE

MUSIC

Sarah Sharpe sings recital with sparkle and style

EDITOR: ALIX MAIN MARCH 15, 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

COLUMN

Fourth-year vocalist presents stunning recital to peers, professors and colleagues as part of performance series MAGGIE PITMAN Contributor The winter semester is coming to an end, and with that comes the stress of final exams, papers and assignments.

In the music department, the end of the semester takes on a different meaning as the senior recital season begins. The department showcases their junior and senior students with an exciting schedule of recitals each year toward the end of the winter semester. This year, the first senior student to perform was a voice student from the studio of Dr. Vicki St. Pierre.

Sarah Sharpe, a fourth-year voice student, presented her recital on Saturday, March 10 in Brunton auditorium. Her program included a broad range of works that showed a variety of vocal techniques and styles in different languages. Each piece was accompanied on piano by Sharpe’s friend and colleague, third-year piano student Martine Jomphe.

“I feel very fortunate to have shared the stage with my collaborative pianist, Martine,” Sharpe said after her recital. “She has worked so hard on my repertoire and her exceptional collaboration skills supported and enhanced my performance as a singer. I think this recital has been rewarding for the both of us.”

Beginning her program with Bach and ending with Handel, Sharpe bookended the recital beautifully with two selections from the baroque period. The middle featured works by Schumann, Dvorak, Poulenc, as well as the fun piece Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein.

Sharpe displayed her strong diction skills in this performance. Singers in the department are required to take a

class in diction as a part of their degree programs. This class teaches them how to sing in different languages and learn the different pronunciations for words that will help prepare them for a career in singing.

Perhaps one of the most captivating parts of Sharpe’s recital was her use of body language in her performance.

Her recital included pieces in English, French, Latin, Italian and German; with this diversity of languages sometimes comes a barrier for audience members. Sharpe’s use of body language gave the audience a better understanding of the text being sung while adding sparkle and variety to an already exceptional program.

“Sarah’s ability to channel the emotional atmosphere of the program – whether witty, angry or seductive – was engaging and exceptionally displayed,” said Gibson MacMillan, a first-year organ student. “This made for not only a fine display of musicality but also a truly enjoyable performance.”

The goal of a senior recital is to not only celebrate all of the hard work put in over the course of a four-year degree. It is also a way to recognize the progress and the obstacles

overcome by the student throughout their education.

“I feel very grateful for the opportunity to perform my first full recital in such a warm and supportive environment,” said Sharpe following the performance.

“The encouragement and support from both faculty and students have definitely contributed to my success as a performer and musician at Mount Allison. The numerous performing opportunities in this program helped to prepare for my recital.” Students are given many opportunities to perform in their time at Mt. A, including Collegium Musicum concerts and smaller recitals. “Because I was able to perform many of my pieces in front of an audience prior to my recital, I was able to take the stage with confidence,” said Sharpe.

The student recital season at Mt. A is an entertaining and worthwhile experience. If you haven’t already, make your way to Brunton Auditorium to see what the music program is all about. The next student recital will be Friday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m. featuring vocalist Emily Steers and flutist Lucie Bauby.

SHARPE IS ONE OF MANY MUSIC STUDENTS PERFORMING THIS RECITAL SEASON. GILLIAN HILL/ARGOSY

TINA OH Columnist In October 2017, the Centre for International Studies organized Mount Allison’s first allyship and anti-oppression workshop. It was a free event that was open to the wider community and was led by a genderqueer person of colour assisted by a queer white woman.

As organizers, our vision for the event was to set a precedent for anti-oppression workshops to be commonplace on our campus and community. Accordingly, a few months later, the Feminist Leadership Conference announced that their theme this year would be centred around allyship.

With increases to alt-right and white supremacist activity on university campuses, the embracement of allyship by privileged individuals is a real way to support and be in solidarity with people of colour, specifically queer people of colour.

Allyship is a verb and a lifelong process for the privileged to challenge oppressions (that they benefit from) without being performative.

It is something that cannot be selfappointed or self-defined, as the purpose is to centre minority bodies and voices. True allies seek to open up space for marginalized peoples out of responsibility, rather than guilt and white fragility. More importantly, however, allyship is a spectrum.

Over the past week, I’ve been engaging with organizers from the Mount Allison Feminist Leadership Conference concerning their roles as allies. I was deeply unimpressed and disappointed when it was brought to my attention that a white person would be giving a talk on appropriate responses to allyship, often referred

to as “calling in” and “calling out.” “Calling in” is a concept of educating a person who has said or done something oppressive through communicative aims. It is often thought to be a more compassionate way of calling someone out for their harmful actions, and in most situations, I would say this is the best way to hold people accountable.

However, if you are the victim, calling someone in requires deeply traumatic emotional and intellectual labour.

Marginalized folks are allowed to be angry and call their abusers out for their violent actions. Choosing to act as an ally only when being called in is wrong; it’s a tactic of tone-policing.

Especially as a feminist organization, it was discouraging that organizers felt it was appropriate or acceptable to have a white person teach other people what appropriate responses to allyship looks like. In addition, it was disappointing to hear that all the organizers were white, especially in light of the conference theme. It took a week to address the organizers because I was distraught by my own internalized racism and fear from backlash, so I made excuses to ignore holding the organizers accountable.

However, since then, I’ve had some dialogue with individual organizers about learning from this experience and ensuring that the situation is not repeated again in the future.

Similar to being a good partner or sibling, instructions do not exist on how to be a good ally. In any context where power structures and oppressions are being dismantled, the loss of power often results in white fragility. It is inevitable to make poor decisions – it’s just unfortunate that the learning curve is shouldered and pained by the marginalized.

ARTS & CULTURE

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LOCAL SCENE

07

Thunder and Lightning hosts Richard Laviolette Local bar regularly becomes cozy venue for local musicians and warm refuge for community

MAX CHAPMAN Arts & Culture Reporter Sackville is home to a number of specialty shops, restaurants and bars that serve to make the community a fantastic personality. One such spot is Thunder and Lightning. This venue serves people from all places, and allows them a comfortable, friendly environment to relax.

On Sunday, March 11, Thunder and Lightning hosted a set performed

by Richard Laviolette and his dusty rock ’n’ roll style of strumming.

Laviolette is a Sackville-based musician from Guelph, Ont., who has worked on eight studio albums so far. Taking the Long Way Home, Laviolette’s latest album, was prominently featured during the line-up.

“I’m really excited to share this with you guys here,” said Laviolette before beginning his performance. A crowd of 30 watched as he plucked his way through parts of his discography and covered artists that resonated with his style.

Ken Boudreau of Amherst, N.S.,

sat in the ever-growing audience.

“I love this place,” said Boudreau.

When asked if he meant Thunder and Lightning or Sackville, he answered, “Both.” Boudreau went on, saying, “Great entertainment comes to and from this town, I come for the atmosphere here, and it is just right.”

It is easy to see why an amazing space like this has such a loyal following.

Boudreau comes to many local performances with his wife and other family members.

Laviolette joked with the crowd before a particularly angry number: “If anyone gets mad by this next song, and you’ve finished your drinks recently, now would be a good time to smash them off the wall.” After the laughter died out he added, “Just kidding, because I’d like to be invited back.”

The audience was made up all ages – kids as young as four or five were dancing to Laviolette’s smooth chording and strong voice. “This place is great.… It brings in everyone,” said Dr. Danielle Douglas, a professor from the psychology department.

After only nine months in Sackville,

Thunder and Lightning has had a vast impact on her life. Not only has she made many friends at T&L, but Douglas was engaged to her nowfiancée there.

“It is absolutely the most queer positive space in Sackville,” said Douglas when asked about what she likes most about the bar. “It is a place for people who are just coming into town.”

Dan Bell, a first-year English student, said, “It’s a place where you can just come and relax in. It’s not too loud, it’s nice.”

As Laviolette progressed through his setlist, his lyricism became descriptive of the evening – in his words, “This is how we move together.” People tapped their feet and listened to Laviolette as the night died down and snow piled up outside. Events like these are integral to Sackville’s unique social scene, and Thunder and Lightning does a wonderful job of promoting them. If you would like to enjoy the next one, keep an eye on their Facebook page.

RICHARD LAVIOLETTE PERFORMS FROM ALBUM ‘TAKING THE LONG WAY HOME’ AT THUNDER AND LIGHTNING’S SUNDAY SESSIONS SERIES. GILLIAN HILL/ARGOSY

SERIAL FICTION

Small Town, Big Mystery Chapter 8: Love Thy Neighbour MARIA DIME Columnist It took Ralph and Ms. Fannon twenty minutes to drive back to town from the Lincolnshire Air Force base.

They hardly said a word, their hearts still pounding with the adrenaline of JUSTICE. At the Hundredth Meridian

by The Tragically Hip played on the radio. The setting sun ran across the fields of wheat and mustard and Ralph remembered something he’d read: the marshes turned to follow the sun.

They hung a left at the only traffic light in town, Ms. Fannon accelerating to catch the yellow, and sped towards the high school.

“And what exactly are we doing here?” she asked.

“Just trust me,” was Ralph’s response. “Herr Hansel is telling me we need to be here.”

“You always were an odd one.”

Ms. Fannon’s red mustang pulled into the parking lot and screeched to a halt. The parking lot was empty, save for a battered old Pinto with a woman standing beside it. It was Ms. Tallrustle, Herr Hansel’s lover.

“Of course!” said Ralph as he

leaped out of the car and ran across the sea of asphalt. “Ms. Tallrustle, Ms. Tallrustle! Wait!” As Ralph approached her, he felt her heaviness.

Mascara was s m u d g e d below her eyelashes, and her face had a staleness about it.

“Ralph. We haven’t seen you in class lately…If you’ll excuse me, I was on my way home.” “ I need t o talk to you, Ms. Tallrustle. About Herr Hansel.” At the sound of his name she broke, and leaned back onto the hood of her car to hide the flow of black tears.

“Control yourself, Ms. Tallrustle!”

God help this suffering soul.

Ralph, frightened by human sadness, could only turn his head the other way. Ms. Fannon had walked over, though. She stood facing

SYLVAN HAMBURGER/ARGOSY

Ms. Tallrustle with marshmallow eyes, and reached a hand onto her shoulder.

“There, there, darling. You must miss that man.” Ms. Tallrustle response was a deeper sob. “Ms. Tallrustle, may I ask you a question?”

She nodded in consent. “Was Herr Hansel connected, in any way, to the Air Force?”

“No, no,” she gasped. “That man hadn’t a violent bone in his body.”

“And you have no suspicions to who may have killed him?”

“None.”

“What about you, Ms. Tallrustle?

Do have any connections at the Air Force?”

“Me!? No, no.”

“Madame, I’ll tell you something.

Today I stood by a door at the base, and heard General Howe admit to

knowing that Herr Hansel’s body was at the Air Force base.”

Ms. Tallrustle’s silenced her sobs, and a look of curiosity spread across her face. “Who, did you say?”

“General Howe.”

“Howe? Willy Howe? Little Willy Howe?”

“I believe his name is William Howe, yes. You know him?”

“Of course I do. I grew up next door to the Howes.”

TITLE Written by Sylvan Hamburger

Ten years ago, it was commonplace to see Mount Allison fine arts students traipsing down Lorne Street with 35-mm cameras around their necks.

They would pass the train station and approach the Enterprise Foundry with captivated caution, attracted to the long brick buildings with high windows where men poured molten iron into century-old moulds. The foundry represented an industrial side of Sackville that was as foreign to the students as the University was to the foundry workers.

Almost 150 years earlier, Mt. A and the Enterprise Foundry, one of two foundries in town, were established within a span of 20 years.

Sackville, until then a shipbuilding and farming community, became the site of two diverging economic and cultural realities. As the University expanded – attracting more students, professors and artists to the town – so did the foundries, which eventually employed over 900 workers and became the largest private producers

Evan Rensch, Portrait of Roger Oulton

of cast-iron stoves in Canada.

Local churches provided a shared site of worship for the estranged communities until the mid20th century, when the Sackville parish began to decline and Mt. A decided to construct its own chapel.

Without the regular congregations, interactions between the two communities became infrequent and increasingly uneasy.

Paul Boggard, a member of the Tantramar Heritage Trust and former philosophy professor, remembers when the University closed the York Street entrances to Convocation Hall and the Owens Art Gallery, leaving both buildings with doors that only opened onto campus.

“We don’t have the fence anymore, but when I first came to Mount Allison we had a fence with steel prongs, sharp tipped, going up York Street, telling you to walk up the sidewalk but by God stay off of the grass,” said Boggard.

In 1975, artists Kitty Haskell and Diana Asimakos, in conversation Owens Art Gallery director Christopher Youngs, recognized a lack of community involvement at the Owens and a need for more offcampus art education. After securing government funding and tacit support from the Owens, Haskell and Asimakos established the Sackville Community Arts Centre at the former elementary schoolhouse in Middle Sackville. The centre held night classes for adults, a community gallery and a partnership with Marshview Middle School.

Janet Crawford, filmmaker and owner of Fog Forest Gallery, got involved with the Centre in its first year of operation. She helped establish the field studies program with the middle school, where students in Grade 6 travelled throughout the Tantramar region using art practices as a way of exploring and

From the film “Sand Dance” by Janet Crawford

learning about their community.

“Our philosophy was to understand in-depth the things that were right beside you [through a process of artmaking],” said Crawford.

In the third year of the field studies program, the centre arranged a yearlong foundry field studies project.

Once a week, a group of 12-yearolds visited the Enterprise Foundry, where they explored the buildings and observed the workers. Their experiences at the foundry inspired art in a variety of media that was shown in the Community Arts Centre gallery upon completion of the project.

“These kids were going through the foundry and they were seeing their dads working on the assembly line. The pride that would come out with those kids was incredible,” said Crawford. “They finally got a chance to see the environment that their parents worked in.”

Katherine Haskell, Floor Moulding, found in the Foundry Impressions Catalogue

Evan Rensch Moulding Shop (furnace) Following the conclusion of the foundry field studies project, Crawford, Haskell and Asimakos decided to continue making work at the Enterprise Foundry. “We were just dumbstruck by it and started to get really excited about exploring it, not as teachers of 12-year-old kids but as artists ourselves,” said Crawford, who grew up in Sackville but had never entered the foundry until working with the program.

The three artists decided to focus on the moulding shop, where the iron components of the stoves were cast.

The work, consisting of photographs, sculptures and a film, eventually came together in a catalogue and an exhibition, Foundry Impressions, at the Community Arts Centre gallery. Crawford remembers some of the foundry workers attending the exhibition’s opening reception.

“One of the reasons that the three of us got interested in the moulding shop was not only because the environment was so dramatic but the work that was being done there was historic,” said Crawford. “You had these men performing this work by hand. They’re working with things like sand and hot molten iron and depending on how well they had been trained, they could turn out a really well crafted piece of cast iron that would go into making up a Franklin stove or a furnace.”

The artists were also fascinated by the mould patterns that shaped the

iron. “A lot of these patterns were created when the foundry first started in the mid-1800s, so they’re very flowery,” said Crawford. “They had really interesting designs carved into the original wooden patterns which were created in the Victorian era.”

Barbara Sternberg, a filmmaker and subsequent co-founder of Struts’ artist-run centre, was involved with the Community Arts Centre and an instructor for the foundry field studies project.

“Art shouldn’t be made in a vacuum,” said Sternberg. “We saw that in Sackville there were two worlds.

There were the townies – the local people – and the university people.

So the kids in the public school were children of the university professors or children of local fishermen, local farmers and a lot of them worked in the foundries. We wanted to use the art project to bridge those worlds.”

Like the other instructors, Sternberg continued to make work at the foundry following the completion of the middle school project. In 1979, she completed Opus 40, a film that focused on interviews with workers and repetitive images of the casting process.

When Opus 40 was shown at Struts a few years later, one of the workers approached Sternberg after the screening. “He came and brought his daughter because she had never seen him at the foundry. He was really glad that [the film] was there,”

she said.

Not long after the completion of the foundry field studies project, business began to decline due to foreign competition and outdated facilities. Eventually, the Fawcett Foundry, Sackville’s other foundry, halted production. Due to heightened community lobbying, the province stepped in, brokered a deal to transfer the assets to the Fisher family, who owned the Enterprise foundry, and sold the land to Mt. A for one dollar.

The Fawcett Foundry facilities, located at the corner of Main and Salem, were demolished and burned in 1986. The site currently exists as a University parking lot.

The Enterprise Foundry continued to produce stoves for another 25 years, though in a progressively reduced manner. Darren Wheaton, the last owner of the Enterprise Foundry, remembers students and artists photographing the foundry in its final years of operation.

“We’d always have someone coming down once or twice a year,” said Wheaton. “We tried to have a good working relationship with the University and accommodate them when they came down, though they had to work around our schedule.”

Wheaton recalls doing custom moulding jobs for local artists as well as working with Mt. A sculpture students in the early 2000s. He also rented out studio and storage spaces above the foundry offices for artists,

including the former head of the fine arts department, Thaddeus Holownia.

Evan Rensch, a graduate of the Mt. A fine arts program, began taking pictures of the foundry with a large viewfinder camera the year after his graduation in 2006. Although Rensch had spent a portion of his childhood in Sackville, his family did not have a personal connection with the foundry. “If anything, my fascination with it was how foreign it was to me, to my experience,” he said.

“I became addicted to the place and I would photograph there, when I was in town, a few times a week. I’d keep showing up and over the course of years they grew to just accept me,” he said. “They gave me a nickname.

For some reason they started calling me Angus.”

For five years, Rensch documented the Enterprise Foundry. At first he was hesitant, focusing primarily on the architecture of the space, but eventually he asked Roger Oulton, a worker in the moulding shop, if he could take his portrait in 2010. Over the next two years, Rensch completed a portrait of everyone who still worked regularly at the foundry. He shot the final portrait in the fall of 2011. A few months later, in January 2012, there was a fire at the Enterprise Foundry and the plant never reopened.

When the foundry shut down, most of the workers were retirement age, although Wheaton said some of the men continue to work odd

jobs around Sackville. “They were established in town so they would have stuck around,” he said.

In the year following the fire, Rensch produced a catalogue and exhibited the 22 nearly lifesize portraits at the Owens in a show entitled Enterprise. Rensch remembers most of the workers attending the show: “It was one of the better attended shows at the Owens in a number of years.”

“The foundry is so entrenched in the identity of the community still that a lot of people came to see the show that probably wouldn’t make a concerted effort to see any show at the Owens,” Rensch said. “There are kind of two streams without a lot of overlap [in Sackville], so to bridge those was a satisfying aspect of the work.”

Wheaton attended the reception of Enterprise and said most of the foundry workers showed up at the Owens. “Most of them weren’t into the artsy stuff,” he said. “But when they saw the final project, particularly the portraits [Rensch] did of everyone, they were really taken by surprise.”

What remained of the Enterprise buildings was sold to Bowser’s Construction, a local construction company, shortly after the fire.

The site is currently used to store construction debris, materials and machinery.

Barbara Sternberg, photo stills of the moulding process

10

ARTS & CULTURE

MARCH 15, 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

FILM

PLAYLIST

Sharp Reviews: ‘Edward Scissorhands’ Songs

Tim Burton’s fairy tale can’t draw blood, but it leaves its mark.

DEREK SHARP Columnist Fairy tales can be hard to pin down.

They don’t aspire to fulfill basic narrative expectations like pacing or logical character motivations: Why does the Witch want to eat Hansel and Gretel? Well, uh, because that’s what witches do, I guess.

Edward Scissorhands is a fairy tale through and through, and it too has fairly underdeveloped characters and motivations. Honestly, this is probably what the film was going for but unfortunately, the the plot feels empty and simplistic as a result. Fairy tales only come alive – and become meaningful – when you take a step back and look at the story through metaphor and allegory. But a film is

a different beast than the short story, which is where fairy tales thrive. The unstoppable forward momentum of film makes taking a step back and reflecting pretty much impossible during the film’s runtime. The act of watching Edward Scissorhands isn’t very entertaining, and so I’m not sure it’s a good movie. However, once the film is done and that reflection occurs, the artistry and themes are fun to play with. This I definitely admire, but that doesn’t mean it’s all that fun to watch. Edward Scissorhands is a weird movie.

For those of you who don’t know, Edward (Johnny Depp) was created in a lab in a castle on a hill, a deliberate allusion to Mary Shelley’s novel and James’s Whale’s cinematic adaptation, Frankenstein. Edward is like Shelley’s and Whale’s creatures in

some ways and different in others. In the end they are all three scrutinized and repulsed by society. For Victor’s creation, it’s because he’s ugly and not ‘natural.’ The problem with Edward?

His hands are scissors.

Edward, scissors and all, is found and brought home by Peg (Diane West), a makeup saleswoman. This is about as much plot as the film cares to give. Much of the runtime is devoted to various hijinks and conflicts which serve to explore one aspect of the metaphor on display: Edward is unlike the majority. He’s different and thereby stands in for those who don’t feel normal. The film then begins to explore how being different can go: What if people like the difference?

What if this difference is valuable to others? What if the difference is

potentially dangerous? These are all addressed, but they feel extremely disconnected. Whole sequences could be switched around without problem. Nothing really builds on anything else, making it all clunky and underdeveloped.

The best thing about Edward Scissorhands is the way the director, Tim Burton, fuses the 1950s American white suburban setting with a surreal aesthetic to explore the truth about the suburbia we see.

The lawns are perfectly maintained, the sun always shines, the houses are pastel, the housewives are ferocious, and the whole society functions like clockwork. It elevates every disconnected sequence by giving each a greater social context and narrative depth. It doesn’t solve the narrative jankiness entirely, but it’s certainly adds value that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

In the end I still don’t know where I come down on Edward Scissorhands.

Is it narratively satisfying? Not really.

Does it have something to say? Is Edward Scissorhands a good movie?

I don’t know. I didn’t really enjoy the film and I can’t find it in myself to recommend it, but the story is not without value. It’s wholly unique. If you’ve read this far and think you’d be into it, you probably would be.

I saw Edward Scissorhands at a screening put on by Mount Allison’s Association of Chronically Ill and Disabled Students (ACID). Check them out on Facebook to learn more!

to make soup to ANDREW LINTON Contributor With daylight savings and two snow storms in the same week, spring is giving us some mixed signals.

Whether you’re studying, browsing the Osheaga lineup or making soup, here are some cozy Canadian tunes to help you through the last few weeks of winter. Scan the QR code below for a link to the playlist on Spotify!

SYLVAN HAMBURGER/ARGOSY

Yellow Bird – Ben Stevenson Song for You – Rhye KIDS – Milk & Bone Runnin’ (feat. Busty and

THEATRE

Alison Crosby tries everything in theatre

the Bass) – Free n Losh

JENA MCLEAN Arts & Culture Reporter

9 to 5 – Harrison Brome

Alison Crosby’s current artistic desire to “do everything” has deep roots in her beginnings with theatre.

“I was a very talkative, very attention-seeking child and eventually one of my cousins said to my mother, ‘Dear God, Diane, put her in theatre,’ ” Crosby told me over the phone. Her mother promptly enrolled her in Cape Breton’s Class Acts Drama School.

“I was taking acting classes, I was taking musical theatre classes even though I refused to sing, I was taking playwriting classes and stagecraft classes and just everything that they offered because I just could not get enough of it,” she said.

When it came time to pick a university to learn more, Crosby was torn between Acadia and St. Thomas. After an impromptu stop at the midpoint, Mount Allison, she changed her mind completely.

“I could kind of make the program fit what I wanted to do,” she said.

Crosby immediately got involved with Mt. A’s theatre scene.

“I went to Paul Del Motte and said, ‘I have experience with lights! Put me in with the lights!’ ” she said. “I realized I knew nothing about lights

but Paul was super helpful. From there I just did every single show that Mt. A put on in my four years there.”

Crosby continued her early habit of learning as much as possible, branching out into acting, designing lights and stepping up as a stage manager. She also co-founded the “mini-theatre company” AXE Productions.

“I started it with Erik [Garf] and Xavier [Gould] and we put on Kat Sandler’s Punch Up,” she said, “I probably wouldn’t have done that at another school.” All of this work led to her final project as a drama student.

“I think the highlight for me is when I directed Little One by Hannah Moscovitch,” Crosby said.

“Everything that I did at Mt. A kind of led to that show.” She found herself drawn to the play’s depiction of “a humanity that is kind of dirty and messy.” The rehearsal process reinforced Mt. A’s most important lesson: “Learn everything that you possibly can.”

“Nothing is ever irrelevant. You know? Your English class is going to help you direct your next show,” she said. “You have to obsessively learn.”

Since graduating, Crosby has been Ship’s Company Theatre’s apprentice stage manager and filled a multitude

of roles and needs at Highland Arts Theatre. She’s apprenticed at Festival Antigonish’s Summer Theatre and is currently Matchstick Theatre’s resident lighting designer. She was also recently Matchstick’s first guest director, exploring more “messy humanity” in Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes. The play focuses on the true story of a teenage boy dying while trying to cross the Berlin Wall.

“What [playwright] Jordan Tannahill did is he took that last hour of Peter’s life and conceptualized what would go through an 18-yearold’s head after you’ve been shot,” Crosby said. “What do you think about for an hour while you die?”

Though she’s found success in Halifax as a director and designer, Crosby admits she misses the MotyerFancy theatre’s technical tools and flexibility as a space. This is reflected in her two-pronged advice to current students.

“Number one: appreciate the amazing and unique space you have to work with. Not everyone has that at their fingertips,” she said. “Number two: try everything you possibly can.

If you’re serious about doing theatre after university, you should be doing as many shows as you can in as many capacities as you can.”

Unsurprisingly, this mindset is seen

in Crosby’s current and upcoming work. She is currently writing a play to be performed at Halifax’s Atlantic Fringe Festival. In the coming months she will be working as a stage manager at Eastern Front Theatre and Ship’s Company Theatre, and continuing as Matchstick Theatre’s resident lighting designer.

Coastline – Geoffroy

Machine – TENDER L’amour – Karim Ouellet Way With Words – Bahamas Please – Rhye

! n e p O w o N

8 a.m. – 5 p.m. at The Pond

EDITOR: ISAAC DOUCETTE MARCH 15, 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

VARSITY

SPORTS & HEALTH 11

Women’s basketball team brings home ACAA banner

COLUMN

Mounties to host nationals on home court March 15–17 KEIFER BELL Sports Reporter The Mounties took home the banner with a thrilling overtime victory, 77-71 in the finals over the Mount Saint Vincent Mystics. The women’s varsity basketball team went into the ACAA championships confidently despite being the underdogs against the powerful Mystics roster, who finished the regular season with just one loss.

Sarah McGeachy and Erin Steeves, seniors and co-captains of the team, talked about their big win.

“Going into the game, we knew what we had to do. We weren’t completely satisfied about the way we played in our win against Holland in the semi-finals,” Steeves said. “We knew that we had to play better in the final game.”

McGeachy added to this, talking about the game plan going into their final game: “We wanted to keep the pace going and really spread the floor and attack. We wanted to focus on the things that we can control ourselves, and not them.”

Both McGeachy and Steeves were part of the Mounties team that lost the 2015 ACAA championship game.

“We weren’t expected to win the final when we were in first year, but this time we weren’t going to be satisfied with a silver medal,” McGeachy explained.

The players talked about how they have watched women’s basketball at Mt. A develop over their four years on campus, giving credit to their coach, Matt Gamblin. “[Gamblin] has built a great program since he’s been here. We started with a team of nine recruits in our first year. He really restarted the program at [Mt. A] to build it to where it is today,” Steeves said.

“Over the years there have been progressively more and more fans at our games, which shows us that our hard work is paying off.”

The Mounties were predetermined to host nationals but winning the title has given them a better

Sexual activity without consent is sexual assault

SHARE answers your questions about consent YANA TITARENKO Peer Education Mentor MELODY PETLOCK SHARE Advisor

MOUNTIES FORWARD KIERSTEN MANGOLD MAKES A LAYUP IN THE ACAA CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL VS. THE MSVU MYSTICS ON MARCH 4. ACAA/SUBMITTED ranking. Losing the ACAA title most likely would have resulted in the Mounties being ranked last, and forced to play the number one team in the tournament. With the win, the Mounties sit as the second seed in their division and will face off against the Medicine Hat Rattlers in their first game at the national championships.

McGeachy talked about how they plan on approaching the tournament: “We want to win the first game and make it to the national semi-final.

Our goal is to get a medal. We think it’s extremely doable if we win that first game.”

As both McGeachy and Steeves are graduating, this weekend will mark the end of their basketball careers.

“I think that it’ll be really bittersweet, but I’m happy that we get to finish our careers on our home court in front of all of our friends and families,” McGeachy said.

Steeves echoed this message: “There are a lot of emotions going into your final games, but in the back of your head you’re telling yourself that it’s not quite over yet. Going into nationals knowing this is the end of our career is a surreal feeling, but I’m happy that it’s on our home court.”

The CCAA National Championships will take place from March 15 to 17 in the McCormack Gymnasium. Eight teams will participate in the championships. The Mounties play their first game at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 15.

Last week we started a conversation about consent, defining it as permission for something to happen or an agreement to do something. This week, we continue the conversation and answer three questions: Isn’t continuous consent awkward? How does consent apply in the cyber world? And finally, what about consent in a relationship?

Isn’t continuous consent awkward?

Some people think needing to ask for consent continuously throughout a sexual encounter is awkward. That is why it is important to talk about sex and what you hope to do during sex, before having sex.

The premise is that to enjoy sex, and ensure continuous consent, you need to be tuned in. You need to be able to read your partner’s verbal and physical cues to know if they are still into everything. It is easier to ask for consent than to live with the guilt of traumatizing someone by sexually assaulting them.

What about dating sites? Social media? Sexting?

Consent to sexual activity needs to take place at the time of the activity, and face to face. You must agree in person. No one else can agree on your behalf. If you are exchanging sex

stories, images or engaging in online sex, the same rules apply as in person.

You have to have consent. You have to say yes.

What about if I am in a relationship?

Continuous consent also plays a role in a committed relationship.

According to the Family Violence in Canada report published by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 80 per cent of sexual offences are committed by someone the survivor knows. In fact, most sexual assaults happen in cases where people are dating, are in a relationship or have been in a relationship. While in a relationship, your partner retains the right to reject any or all sexual activity with you at any point, regardless of what you have done or tried before.

This may be for one time, a period of time or all of the time. Refusal of a given sex act does not imply a rejection of the relationship.

Long-term partners can have sex without an explicit contract every time, but should also agree that if one says “stop,” that means stop.

Talking about sex is a crucial part of consent for many reasons, but a very important one is that it will help your partner know your likes and dislikes, and know when they have crossed the line.

If you have any other questions you would like to have answered about consent, feel free to reach out to Melody Petlock at share@mta.ca.

80 PER CENT OF

SEXUAL OFFENCES ARE COMMITTED

BY SOMEONE THE

SURVIVOR KNOWS

Call for health writing Have your voice heard on mental, physical or sexual health: contact Isaac Doucette at idoucette@mta.ca to have your writing featured in an upcoming issue

MOUNTIES COACH MATT GAMBLIN TALKS STRATEGY DURING A TIME-OUT IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL. ACAA/SUBMITTED

EDITOR: ALLISON MACNEILL| MARCH 15, 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

OPINIONS 13

Good people won’t save the world ALEXIS BLANCHARD METHOT & MINNOW HOLTZ-CARRIERE This piece is a response to the article How History Can Save the World, published Feb. 15. We take umbrage with its somewhat naive view of history as a discipline and its use in transformative and emancipatory processes. While we agree that history is valuable and holds the potential to help people understand and solve contemporary problems, we don’t feel that it is something that should be passively absorbed and repeated, regardless of how well one can empathize with others. History might make you a better person, but good people won’t save the world – or to be more precise, they won’t be enough.

History is more than the abstract study of the past – it is fundamentally its reattachment to the present. If history can change the world, it is by

questioning the ideas and sequences of events we perceive to be true and asking why things are the way they are. It is by unmasking false constructions that justify oppression, presenting examples of more just alternatives, or pointing to the simple possibility of change that history can make a difference. The personal revelation that you share some human commonality with a medieval monk or Han peasant is valuable, but means little on a broader scale. A good historian is one who, in the translated words of the French-Canadian philosopher Pierre Vadeboncœur, “tears down monuments to reveal the maggots crawling under them.”

We oppose the notion that humanity can only be raised by goodness alone. Humanity is raised and prevented from falling by the elevation of material conditions that allow for its free development.

The sentiment that motivates those who elevate those material conditions, or the profound goodness of their soul, is utterly irrelevant.

Spartacus will always be greater than Christ, Toussaint Louverture always a thousand times a better herald of human civilization than Mother Teresa, each member of the International Brigade worth more than every missionary.

What we are saying is that the perceived goodness of a person, their moral code or their ability to relate to experiences that are not their own are all insignificant in comparison to their actions. For historians, this translates to what they choose to represent and how they represent it. It is indecent to talk about the colonization of the Americas without speaking of genocide, about Athenian democracy without speaking of misogyny, and about the vast majority of human

society without putting at its forefront the immense masses of exploited labourers, be they slaves, serfs or wage proletariat, and to reduce their struggles for justice to bloody footnotes in history books. History is not a neutral discipline. History is powerful and it is interpretive – by necessity its readers and writers must take a side and have an opinion.

History is not something that easily unites us under a common banner of humanity. Instead, it’s something we can use to mark the battle line of future rebellions for those whose humanity is still denied.

Historians interpret the past, but what matters is making the future.

Disclaimer: Minnow Holtz-Carriere is a news editor.

Independent Student Newspaper of Mount Allison University Thursday, March 15, 2018 volume 147, issue 18 Since 1872 Circulation 1,000

on Unceded Mi’kmaq Land 62 York Street W. McCain Student Centre Mount Allison University Sackville, New Brunswick

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E4L 1H3

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THE ARGOSY is published by Argosy Publications, Inc., a student run, autonomous, apolitical not-for-profit organization operated in accordance with the province of New Brunswick.

THE ARGOSY is a member of the Canadian University Press, a national co-operative of student newspapers.

The Underbridge Press is a student-run publishing organization at Mount Allison University.

EDITORIAL staff EDITORS-IN-CHIEF | Adrian Kiva, Mirelle Naud

NEWS EDITOR | Maia Herriot, Minnow Holtz-Carriere ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR | Alix Main SPORTS AND HEALTH EDITOR | Isaac Doucette OPINIONS EDITOR | Allison MacNeill

On the canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero

Archbishop Oscar Romero will soon be declared a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Long recognized as a candidate worthy of sainthood by popular acclaim, the Vatican has made moves to officially canonize Romero, that is, to formally recognize him as a saint. Pope Francis, a Latin American and a champion of the poor, has ruled that the declaration of sainthood will come following the usual process; this involves recognition of a miracle attributed to him by the Vatican theological and medical commission.

In the Catholic tradition, saints do not have to perform miracles, but as

w w w. s i n c e 1 8 7 2 . c a

MANAGING EDITOR | Mathieu Gallant

COLUMN

THE REV. JOHN C. PERKIN Columnist

THE ARGOSY

those who are believed to intercede in the heavenly realm on behalf of petitioners, a miracle in response to a prayer directed through a particular person can result in canonization.

As one who stands in the Protestant tradition, I have a different understanding of what constitutes a saint; a miracle of healing through intercession is not my standard of recognition. In the New Testament, the saints are the holy ones, those who form the church. Those who are specifically recognized as exceptional are surely those who live outstanding or exemplary lives of witness to the faith that has informed and directed them. For me, a saint is one who

has borne extraordinary witness to the faith. In the Greek of the New Testament, the word for witness – marturos – is the same root that gives us our English word martyr.

Oscar Romero meets both the original and the contemporary terms of marturos. A champion of the poor of El Salvador, Romero was a symbol of the loss of freedom and human rights in Latin America after being gunned down in March 1980 by a right-wing death squad while celebrating Mass. John Paul II, raised under a communist regime in Poland, expressed great concern about the political activity of Romero and the links between his theology

of liberation and the Marxist social analysis often employed by liberation theologians; while he had recognized Romero as a witness to the faith, he did not push the agenda of his canonization.

Preaching prophetically, Romero often used his sermons to denounce the repression practiced by the Salvadoran regime, and to call for more rights for the downtrodden and the poor. During the Salvadoran Civil War, he appealed particularly in the last sermon he delivered, on March 24, 1980, to the soldiers of the Salvadoran army to respond to the higher law of love and justice, and to stop killing their brothers and sisters.

In his homilies and pastoral letters and on his radio broadcasts over several years preceding his death, Archbishop Romero condemned the country’s oligarchy: the rulership of the nation resided in the hands of a few families who owned most of the land. He also condemned the violence employed to hold on to power; Salvadoran peasants had risen up against the feudal regime, demanding ownership of their land and the military responded with violent acts of repression.

A witness to truth, justice, rights and care for the disenfranchised and marginalized, Romero was killed for his defiant and prophetic voice of condemnation directed against the repressive regime under which he lived, and died, a witness and martyr to the cause of faith and human rights. In a world of passive acquiescence to the powers that be, I believe his life and work were miracle enough for sainthood. May he be remembered as a saint and hero of the faith, inevitably to be immortalized in church windows so that his witness continues to live on, through stained glass.

HUMOUR EDITOR | Carly Penrose COPY EDITOR | Charlotte Savage

PRODUCTION staff PRODUCTION MANAGER | Marina Mavridis PHOTOGRAPHERS | Gillian Hill, Chaoyi Liang ILLUSTRATION EDITOR | Sylvan Hamburger ILLUSTRATORS | Sarah Noonan, Louis Sobol VIDEOGRAPHER | Louis Sobol VIDEOGRAPHY PRODUCER | Lily Falk ONLINE EDITOR | Marina Mavridis

REPORTING staff NEWS REPORTERS | Amelia Fleming, Lily Falk ARTS & CULTURE REPORTERS | Max Chapman, Ryan Karimi, Jena McLean SPORTS REPORTER | Keifer Bell, Hamza Munawar

OPERATIONS staff BUSINESS MANAGER | Jill MacIntyre DISTRIBUTION MANAGERS | Matthew Hamilton Fyfe, Shannon Power

CONTRIBUTORS Maria Dime (Pen name), Erik Garf, Andrew Linton, Daniel Macgregor, Alexis Blanchard Methot, Kathleen Morrison, Tina Oh, the Rev. Perkin, Melody Petlock, Maggie Pitman, Ella Porter, Derek Sharp. Yana Titarenko COVER | Chaoyi Liang, Adrian Kiva

PUBLICATION board Leslie Kern, David Thomas, Mark Nicol, Cecilia Stuart

DISCLAIMERS & 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 designs and comics are welcome. The Argosy reserves the right to edit or refuse all materials deemed sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic or otherwise unfit for print, as determined by the Editors in Chief. Articles or other contributions can be sent to argosy@mta.ca or directly to a section editor. The Argosy will print unsolicited materials at its own discretion.

Letters to the editor must be signed, though names may be withheld at the sender’s request and at the Argosy’s discretion. Anonymous letters will not be printed.

Comments , concerns or complaints about the Argosy’s content or operations should be first sent to the Editors in Chief at the address above.

If the Editors in Chief are unable to resolve a complaint, it may be taken to the Argosy Publications, Inc. Board of Directors. The chairs of the Board of Directors can be reached at the address above.

All materials appearing in the Argosy bear the copyright of Argosy Publications, Inc. Material cannot be reprinted without the consent of the Editors in Chief.

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OPINIONS

MARCH 15, 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

INKING

The myth of the “virgin” book

DANIEL MACGREGOR Contributor The first time is always the most awkward. You don’t know where to put it, and don’t even know if this is the right time. But this is something important that you want to remember when you’re older.

These are common dilemmas when someone considers introducing the first foreign stroke of ink to an otherwise untouched book. The reasons are many: resale value, the holiness of the author’s words and a fear of focusing on the wrong line.

The idea of writing in books was rather alien to me when it was introduced at a book reading many years ago by the actions of one of the characters, whose name I have since forgotten. It took until now for me to

realize it is a misfortune that inked books are valued less monetarily than new books, and not encouraged.

This is especially true in high school, where we were punished for writing in our textbooks, and thus lost our heart to try it again.

What I call inking is simply the adding of foreign words and ideas to a book (or any type of physical text) by your own hand. It can take any form, whatever the second hand author feels is appropriate. Granted, this can mean a book filled with the highest grade of hatred. Yet, this practice of making spiteful comments is not much of a difference from social media. So hopefully, you will choose to fill your books with only the most philosophical of thoughts.

The truth is that inking is communication in one of its finest forms. Without it, a book is only the words of a single author, or maybe a small group of collaborators. It is suspended in time, never changing unless a new edition is created. It is assumed that the only reason to read a book is for the treasured words of one person. The readers are only passive bystanders, nothing more.

Inking is a story within a story, but only if the book that you marked with your underscores and thoughts

USED BOOKS ARE OFTEN PRICED AT A LOWER RATE THAN NEW BOOKS, IMPLYING THEY ARE WORTH LESS. GILL HILL/ARGOSY is passed on. Otherwise, it is only a The plot and facts portrayed by the pages. Thus, the results are an tome on your shelf collecting dust the primary author are not changed, ever-shifting contribution of ideas with fading emphases. However, since that ink is fairly permanent. across time and space. when it is inherited — be it from The ink on the margin tells the story By writing in between the margins, a used book store, as a half-assed of the secondary author(s). What did readers can fight the myth of the Christmas gift or on the steps of a they underline? What did they find “virgin” book with their own words nunnery — it is a narrative of a fellow important? Why did they write this and thoughts. Who doesn’t want seeker of knowledge. This could be or that next to this quote? This is the to call out the bullshit in some old a totally new person, or an older reader’s journey of trying to decipher books? edition of yourself. the actions of those whose ink stains

EDITORIAL

The Argosy prints every week, and has since 1922 – but should it continue to?

MIRELLE NAUD Editor-in-Chief

For almost 100 years, the Argosy has upheld a truly impressive tradition of printing weekly newspapers. In 1922, the paper became the Argosy Weekly after having been printed monthly and then bi-weekly since 1872.

The Argosy continues to print on a weekly schedule, and has shifted from being a smaller tabloid with clip art to a larger and more polished-looking broadsheet paper showcasing a range of student artwork.

But the digital age has pushed many newspapers to re-evaluate themselves. Two years ago, the U.K.’s Independent switched completely online, becoming the first national newspaper to do so. Just last year, the Globe and Mail announced its cut to daily print circulation in the Maritimes, citing the expenses of printing and distribution.

Changes have also been happening at university papers. The Baron at the University of New Brunswick St. John went online in 2012 after having been a bi-weekly print edition. Canada’s oldest official student publication, the Brunswickan, switched two years ago from a weekly to a monthly print edition and now publishes online continuously.

The Argosy should not excuse itself from the trend of self-evaluation.

Now that there is the option of online publishing, the Argosy’s weekly printing schedule is looking to be

more burdensome.

For one, printing is expensive. Last term, printing costs made up almost half of the Argosy’s expenditures. The budget, sourced mainly from a yearly $33 student levy, is potentially facing future reductions due to the decline of student enrolment. If the Argosy continues to print every week, it will have to allocate more of its budget proportionally to printing.

With more of the budget reserved for printing, staff pay might have to be reduced. Fewer positions might be paid. Exciting projects like videography or web design might suffer due to insufficient funding.

Currently, the cost of a single print run is more than what the Argosy can afford to pay a reporter for the entire year – and this is considering that a reporter’s pay has more than doubled in the past two years, although not enough for it to be considered fair compensation.

A weekly print schedule also limits what reporters and editors can write about. When emphasis is placed on filling a paper every week, stories that can be finished faster are prioritized over longer or more investigative pieces.

A weekly print schedule also means that editors and production staff suffer frequently from burnout. This is because it takes hours to lay out and review pages to prepare for printing, and the routine is repeated every week. Some editors and production staff spend up to eight or 12 hours

in the office on a school night. High burnout and turnover rates are an issue not just at the individual level; they eventually affect the paper’s quality within and over the years.

I think that the first step toward a less problematic publishing schedule would be to print bi-weekly newspapers and to publish online in the time in between. For example, halving the number of print issues saves enough money that we can consider paying reporters per piece.

Or we could pay for new positions, like web design or social media management. We could fund our website or our videography project more.

My point is that what we save with eliminating print costs can fund more interesting and important projects.

By giving reporters and editors more flexibility over their schedules, it can reduce burnout and turnover and lead to more in-depth coverage.

Unlike many news publications, the Argosy is fortunately not in a position where it has to compete with other outlets or care about print ad revenue to maintain its budget. It is, however, in a position where its print schedule should seriously be re-evaluated because there are more innovative, equitable and sustainable possibilities.

The decision to publish online with bi-weekly print issues has not yet been officially made. We are currently in the stages of thinking about what structural changes the shift would

SYLVAN HAMBURGER/ARGOSY entail and how we can meaningfully spend the freed budget. These stages will also involve consulting our funders and readers.

As a paper written by students and for students, the Argosy should be directed by student input. Join us at our next funder’s meeting on Thursday, March 29 from 5:30 to

6:30 p.m. to discuss the potential transition in more detail. The meeting will be held in the Wallace McCain Student Centre in room 125. If you cannot make the meeting and would still like to give us feedback, direct your messages to argosy@mta.ca. I look forward to discussing the future of the Argosy with you.

HUMOUR 15

EDITOR: CARLY PENROSE | MARCH 15, 2018 | ARGOSY@MTA.CA

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ACROSS 1. What brits call porridge 7. The name for the accent in über 13. If at first you don’t succeed…

17. Cauliflower that has been broken down to substitute a grain in your meal 18. These helped Mary Poppins fly 19. 1/24th of a day 21. Atmospheric 23. Dexy’s midnight runners want her to “come on” 24. Young, dumb and this 25. Somewhere in the distance 27. You may need to use one of these cords if you’re not near an outlet 29. Baby syllable 31. Head and shoulders shampoo might fix a dry one of these

34. Honduran websites end with this 35. Winnie-the-Pooh’s vice 36. According to the movie, there are three billboards outside this town in Missouri 40. A negatively charged atom 41. Tasting like a salty liquid 43. Fought in an honorable medieval battle 45. If you have cable, or satellite TV you can watch movies on this channel 46. Fatherly nickname 47. Company that produces the Cube and the Sentra 49. A container for a loved one’s ashes 50. A fluffy white nuisance at this time of year

52. Canada’s top undergraduate university in MacLean’s in 2016 54. The scooter teletubby 55. Adjective describing a spider from a children’s rhyme 57. Potential 2020 presidential candidate with pro wrestling experience 60. Flavour shot to make your water tasty 62. To react negatively to 63. Often precedes a woman’s maiden name on official documentation 65. The place from which Drake takes in his views of the 6ix 66. India pale ____ 67. Every single one 70. A chief Canadian export is attractive actors with this first name

71. Not radio or film 72. Doubled, these make up the shape of DNA 75. Hammer wielding god 77. An ethnic and cultural group with a large population in Louisiana 80. To engage in idle talk 81. Many biblical disasters are these 83. Unpaid grunt workers 85. _____ Raton is a popular vacation spot 86. A mountain goat with curly horns 87. Used to represent a substance’s acidity levels 88. Followed orders 89. Art movement that came about in the 1950s 91. Nova Scotia’s provincial bird 92. A purple spring flower 93. Prefix meaning “within” DOWN 1. Many people love a glass of this with their breakfast 2. Ready, ____, fire!

3. An American version of Goji’s 4. Division that of gamete cells 5. This garden is supposed to be paradise 6. Old-timey instrument that bards might have used 7. Purple potato 8. A type of scan that takes photos of your brain 9. Venezuelan-American Youtuber with 8.2 million subscribers 10. The first name of Jeopardy! host Trebek 11. A shortened version of University of Lethbridge 12. Tannenbaum - n = 14. A Song of Ice and Fire, or a Game of these 15. Mickey and Mara are both these 16. A goofy laugh 20. If you’re angry, you’re seeing this 22. Norther than South Dakota 24. Part human, part machine 26. Record and electronics company that signed artist from Elvis to Justin Timberlake 28. Connected to the thigh bone

30. To abandon a mission 32. This little buddy can carry up to 50 times its body weight 33. This citrus fruit, in Spain 37. If they are in the oven it means you’re expecting 38. Canadian school for dramatic arts in Quebec 39. As opposed to biological sex, this refers to how a person identifies 42. Like lots of Leslies (from Parks and Recreation) 44. A “gift” for agreeing to marry a woman 48. A miniaturized version of a classic American dessert 51. Spicy sushi condiment 53. Having appeal for very specific groups of people 56. Second best search engine 58. Japanese currency 59. Main courses at a restaurant 61. Like someone from a state in Southern Mexico 64. Coming from all directions, and ____ which way 68. This mythical guy carries the weight of the world on his shoulders 69. Take a big ol’ bite 73. Ontario’s NB Liquor 74. “I [optimistically wish for]” 76. A person who knows a lot about nutrition may have this title 77. Acronym for Community Trust Bank 78. Binary is made up of ___ and zeroes 79. Trippy drug 81. Shorthand for traditional hairstyle that was popular in the disco era 82. Espionage artist 84. Neither option 89. This day happened on Wednesday of this week 90. Can go with 81 down to mean back and forth

Joke of the week: WHAT DO OPERA SINGERS, BATTERS AND COMMERCE STUDENTS HAVE IN COMMON? THEY’RE ALL FOCUSED ON THE PITCH CARLY PENROSE

LOUIS SOBOL AND ERIK GARF/CREATORS, LOUIS SOBOL/ILLUSTRATIONS