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Cyberstalking- who are your Facebook friends? P. 7

Stingers win the Cup P. 17

Quiet in the boardroom Editorial P. 20

Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011

arts Steve James gives viewers something to chew on P. 10

music Christina Gentile draws sounds from gypsy lifestyle P. 14

opinions Students to BoG: let’s get a room P. 21

Volume 29 Issue 6

Graphic by Katie Brioux

Concordia students CSU rejects student lose seats on board centre proposal Students walk out of meeting in protest on ‘dark day’ Sarah Deshaies CUP Quebec Bureau Chief Concordia University is one step closer to reforming its bloated Board of Governors but in taking that step, it has reduced students’ presence on the highest university body, and that has student representatives crying foul. At a heated meeting on Sept. 28, the number of seats was cut from 40 to 25 in a 27-7 secret ballot vote on an omnibus series of recommendations. “I think it’s a dark day for Concordia. Students have been disempowered,” said undergraduate student governor Laura Beach. “Other voices on the board have also been silenced.” Previously, undergraduate stu-

dents held four positions on the board, with one seat representing graduate students. Now, one person will represent each group, with a third “alternate” who can replace the undergraduate governor in case they are absent. This student will only have speaking rights at meetings of the full board, but will be able to vote at the committee level. Retired staff and faculty have also lost their one observer seat on the board. “In both cases, there was absolutely no adequate justification or motivation provided,” said Beach. “There’s a complete disrespect for the process,” said undergraduate representative Cameron Monagle, who lamented the lack of prior consultation and the fact that the motion bypassed the university’s senate. “It’s disappointing because we’re going to be fighting this battle for a long time, and it’s really time for Concordia to turn the page.”

See “New board” on P. 5

Union will now turn to students for consultation

Jacqueline Di Bartolomeo and Alyssa Tremblay News and assistant news editors The Concordia Student Union council of representatives unanimously rejected the university’s current proposal to convert the Faubourg Ste-Catherine into a student centre at a special council meeting held last Tuesday evening. “This university has abandoned its students,” CSU president Lex Gill said in her opening statement to the 27 council members. She also admitted that the recent vote to decrease student representation on the Board of Governors influenced her and VP clubs and student space Gonzalo Nieto’s final recommendation that the CSU should not enter what would have been a 25-year, 51.4 million dollar agreement with Concordia University. The passing of the six-part motion

composed of recommendations made by Gill and Nieto incited cheers and applause from council, a reaction that Nieto later described as “validating.” Discussions between the current CSU executive and Concordia’s administration regarding the student centre proposal have been ongoing since June. Other issues listed in the report included worries about the loss of current student space and a lack of clarity over which university policies regarding student behaviour would apply to the student centre, as well as several noted instances in which the tricky wording of legal documents held potential for the CSU to lose both money and management power of the Faubourg to the university. “We feel that in some ways the process has been a little bit backwards,” said Nieto in an interview, referring to the fact that the CSU began collecting money from students for a student centre early in the new millennium via a $2 per credit fee levy without having any concrete plans regarding the centre itself.

See “Executive” on P. 3

theconcordian.com

news 2

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Got a news tip? news@theconcordian.com

City in brief Alyssa Tremblay

Abducted U.K. girl found in Montreal

A seven-year-old British girl who had been declared missing in 2008 was reunited with her father after being found in Montreal last week. According to the CBC, Pearl Da Massa was allegedly kidnapped from her home in Manchester, England by her mother, Helen Gavaghan, who claims she fled with her daughter to escape an abusive relationship with her husband. Pearl lived in hiding for three years, moving from Mexico to the United States and then to Toronto before finally being spotted on the metro with her mother, whose suspicious behaviour regarding her daughter caught the eye of a fellow commuter who alerted the police. Gavaghan is expected to be extradited back to the UK where she will face abduction charges.

Don’t step on the cracks

A pedestrian bridge that passes over Côte de Liesse Road was closed last week after inspections revealed the overpass’ structure is too weak to safely support the weight of the people crossing. CTV Montreal reported that despite warnings from both the city and engineers, pedestrians have continued to use the crumbling bridge to avoid the roughly 500 metre walk to the next available crossing. This most recent example of Montreal’s deteriorating infrastructure comes two days after anticollusion chief Jacques Duchesneau proposed that the Quebec government hold public and private inquiries into the connections between organized crime and the province’s corrupt construction industry.

Prochaine station: ton cellulaire

The daily commute of most Montrealers will be getting a technological upgrade in the next year as the STM has announced that it plans to install a massive cellular network in the metro tunnels by the end of 2013. According to a report in La Presse last Friday, Bell, Rogers, Telus and Vidéotron will be working in collaboration to provide their users network coverage and boost the mobile reception in all 68 metro stations. Adding Wi-Fi access to the underground transit system is also in the works as well. Now all the STM needs to do is improve wheelchair accessibility in the metro, and maybe throw in some air-conditioned subway cars while they’re at it.

asfa

ASFA candidates will have to fight for a seat at the table Open positions to be contested at next week’s byelections

Jacqueline Di Bartolomeo News editor All open positions for the Arts and Science Federation of Associations’ byelections will be contested next week, a sign that extending the nomination period until Sept. 29 worked in ASFA’s favour. Those who are running for positions on the executive include Katie Brioux, Laura Robbins, and Alexis Suzuki, who applied for VP communications, while Boris Degas and Paul Jerajian are in the running for VP external affairs and sustainability. Two students, Sian Mill and Yasmeen Zahar, submitted their nominations for independent councillor. ASFA also found a chief electoral officer in fourth-year political science student Marvin Cidamon. “I was contacted by ASFA to do the job when the person that was going to do it was found to be ineligible,” Cidamon explained in an email. He ran the Economics Student Society elections last year. “I am definitely ready to step up to the next level to run ASFA’s executive elections and referendum,” he wrote. Cidamon’s predecessor Nicolas

Last year’s asFa eLections came and went with no VP communications to be Found. Photo by naVneet PaLL Cuillerier left the position at the end of the last school year, citing a busy academic schedule. Cuillerier now serves as chair of the Concordia Student Union council. The VP communications position remained unfilled following last year’s general elections. The VP external and sustainability position became available recently after Asma Omar resigned before ASFA’s first council meeting. ASFA president Alex Gordon had previously explained that

they had extended the nomination period until Sept. 29 because they felt there was not enough time to inform students about applying for positions. So far the campaign period is looking promising, according to Cidamon. “Everyone has hit the ground running, everyone’s doing great. I just checked everyone’s posters, they look amazing. They’re going to do their campaigning thing, go to classes, make sure they give their spiel, and hopefully not

campus

Montreal-born cell biologist wins Nobel Prize

Montrealer Dr. Ralph Steinman has been posthumously awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Medicine, according to the Gazette. Steinman, who studied biology and chemistry at McGill, died of pancreatic cancer only two days before the official announcement from the Nobel Foundation on Monday. He shares the prize with Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann for their groundbreaking discoveries related to the workings of the human immune system.

One thousand helium-filled red balloons bumped and floated along the ceiling of the main floor of the Hall building after being released by students last Wednesday, in the first of many demonstrations of protest by the Concordia Student Union against the tuition fee hikes proposed by the Quebec government. Each balloon represented 30 students who will not be able to afford to go to university if tuition fees are increased. Student unions and advocacy groups across the province are gearing up for Nov. 10, when a massive anti-tuition hike demonstration is planned to hit the streets of Montreal. Photos by Navneet Pall

bash each other too much,” he half-joked. Cidamon also pointed out the brevity of the campaign period. “Voting is actually a week away, [so that’s] a really short campaign period. I always feel like the campaign period should be a couple of days longer. If I could change something it would be that,” he said. The byelections will take place Oct. 12 and 13. Check the Concordian for more ASFA election updates in the coming weeks.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Executive to refrain from participating in student centre discussions until further notice

Nation in brief Jacqueline Di Bartolomeo

Safe injection site to remain open

The first government-sanctioned drug injection clinic will remain open, Canada’s top court has ruled. In a decision that opens the door for other safe injection sites to be set up across Canada, the Supreme Court said the InSite clinic, located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, should remain open, despite the federal government’s view that such sites foster addiction. The court ruled that British Columbia cannot offer health services that breach federal laws, and that shutting the site down would violate the right of heroin addicts to access health care. The site was in danger of closing after the federal health minister decided in 2008 not to renew their special exemption under federal drug laws. The site has provided medical supervision for the injection of illegally bought heroin since 2003. Nearly 12,000 people visit the site annually, which is located in one of Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhoods.

Message in a bottle

Nieto (left) and Gill (right) recommended council refrain from engaging in student centre discussions until future notice. Photo by Navneet Pall

In attendance for the first half of last week’s meeting were dean of students Andrew Woodall, VP services Roger Côté, director of facilities management Martine Lehoux and associate VP facilities management Peter Bolla. The four university representatives opened the meeting with a presentation featuring projected costs and artist renderings of the Faubourg student centre, followed by a questionand-answer session with CSU council members. The administration had been informed of

Gill and Nieto’s recommendations ahead of time and did not remain for the deliberation period. During the presentation, Côté described the Faubourg proposal as a partnership between the CSU and the university, a sentiment which was not echoed by the CSU executives. “I think it would be foolish for anyone around this table to take seriously the idea that there is an equal sense of respect and partnership between the institution and between the 40-

odd-thousand people who walk these halls,” said Gill. In an interview, Côté called the result a “missed opportunity,” but said he respected the students’ decision. While the university will wait until council mandates their executives to rejoin discussions with the student centre user committee, Côté said the university will move ahead with plans to purchase the Faubourg for academic purposes. “We had put a student centre as a top priority in our view in

terms of potential use for the facility, but with the CSU council’s decision last week, we will be pursuing our interest in that facility to meet other needs that the university has and those are in the academic domain, for academic purposes,” he said. Those needs include classrooms, labs, meeting rooms and offices. The Student Centre Report in its entirety is available for download on the student union’s website (www.csu. qc.ca.)

Who, what, when? The student centre project over time In 2003, Concordia undergrads vote to put in place a $1 per credit fee levy to raise funds for a student centre.The fee levy increases to $2 per credit after another referendum vote in 2005.

Students vote down two separate referendum questions attempting to further raise the fee levy by $2,50 per credit in March of 2010 and again in November. That same month, it is revealed that the Faubourg will be the location of the student centre.

Concordia University puts forward the Faubourg Ste-Catherine as a potential student centre to the CSU in 2006.The union turns down the offer.

On Sept. 27, 2011 the CSU council votes during a special meeting to reject the Faubourg student centre proposal.

Shortly after the current CSU executives took office in June of 2011, Concordia informs them that a decision on the Faubourg must be made by September.

Text by Alyssa Tremblay. Graphic by Katie Brioux

A retired Prince Edward Island fisherman who has been throwing bottles into the sea with messages in them for over 15 years has received thousands of responses from all over the world. CTV reported that Harold Hackett, 58, started the hobby in 1996 while tuna fishing. Since then, he has dropped over 5,000 bottles into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the hopes that they will reach the Atlantic Ocean. Hackett has received responses from places like the U.K., Germany and as far as Africa and South America. The fisherman photocopies handwritten messages, dates them, and puts them in glass bottles. He plans to continue the practice as long as he can walk down to the beach.

Instructors at UofA let cheating go unreported

Thirty-nine per cent of instructors and 26 per cent of teaching assistants at the University of Alberta have let a case of cheating go by without reporting it, according to the results of the institution’s Academic Integrity Survey. The Gateway reported that 38 per cent of instructors say the effectiveness of the university’s academic disciplinary policy is “low” or “very low.” Instructors also report feeling unprepared to discipline students. In response, academic integrity coordinator Chris Hackett suggested instructors be given a level of decision making in disciplining the students.

Pizza not honey

Conservation officers in Whistler, B.C. are on the lookout for a black bear after it broke into a pizza parlour in the ski destination on Monday. According to the Vancouver Sun, the bear grabbed a beef and blue cheese pizza off the display counter at Fat Tony’s in Whistler Village and started gobbling it down. The two employees working at the time eventually made a noise to scare it off. The officers are looking to set up a trap near the restaurant. The Whistler Question is reporting that this season will herald the worst berry crop in almost twenty years, which has lead researchers to predict a rise in black bear activity in the village.

theconcordian

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

World A hate story in brief Capitalism: Lecture focuses lecture

Jacqueline Di Bartolomeo

Foreign accent afflicts Scottish woman

A Scottish woman started speaking with an Italian accent after suffering a minor stroke, according to the Telegraph. Debbie McCann, 48, suffered what appeared to be a stroke in her home in November 2010 and left her with a rare condition called Foreign Accent Syndrome. The Glasgow native now has a speech pattern most common to Italians. McCann also writes with a foreign accent, omitting words like “a” and “to” when writing. Only 60 people have been diagnosed with the syndrome since its discovery in the 1940s. There is no cure for Foreign Accent Syndrome, according to expert Anja Lowitt, who said the condition is sometimes permanent.

Begone, pot tourists

Coffee shop owners in the Dutch city of Maastricht have banned most tourists from their shops. CNN reported that foreign tourists, except for those from Germany and Belgium, will no longer be allowed within the coffee shops, wherein the Netherlands visitors can purchase and consume cannabis. Marc Josemans, president of the Society of United Coffee Shops, said they created the regulation in order to deal with the amount of tourists who visit the city each year and to counter crime caused by drug runners who also frequent the shops. Josemans said tourists bring traffic and nuisance. Maastricht plays host to 2.2 million tourists every year. Six thousand people visit coffee shops there everyday, three quarters of whom are foreign.

Good samaritan

An anonymous benefactor left 10 million yen in a toilet bowl in Japan with a note saying it should be donated to victims of the tsunami that hit the country last March. The bag of rolled bills was found in a city hall in the suburbs of Tokyo, BBC reported. The city hall said it would give the money to the Red Cross if not reclaimed within three months. Around $50 million in cash has been found in the Japanese disaster zone to date, while an additional $30 million found in safes.These occurrences are not unheard of in Japan. In 2007, a donor left 400 blank envelopes with 10,000 yen notes in them in the toilets of city halls across Japan, while 18 residents of a Tokyo apartment building found a total of 1.8 million yen in envelopes in their mailboxes. The person responsible for distributing this cash remains unknown.

Buried alive

A morgue in Turkey has outfitted all of its facilities to make sure people can get out of them in case they are not actually dead, MSNBC reported. The town of Malatya, in eastern Turkey, has equipped their mortuary with alarms and motion detectors to monitor any sign of life. Their refrigerators will also have door handles to allow people to climb out of their coffins and get out in the event that they were in a coma. The move is an effort to alleviate ancient fears of being buried alive.

on the effects of capitalism in the western world Alyssa Tremblay Assistant news editor

The needs of the everyday person are being ignored in the world of big business. That was the consensus between speakers Kari Polanyi Levitt and Jaggi Singh at the Lounge Speaker Series which kicked off last Friday afternoon on the seventh floor of the Hall Building. Despite having what they described as “conflicting, but complementary” opinions on the subject of capitalism, both Levitt, McGill emerita professor of economics, and Singh, a member of Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes, agreed that the economic system in question has some inherently unpleasant qualities. “It’s a system that I describe as ‘looks like Disney, tastes like Coke, but smells like shit,’’ said Singh, adding to Polanyi’s description of capitalism as a system which rewards greed and undervalues people, something which is at odds with the values of the average person’s core beliefs of putting human beings (i.e. friends and family) first. Both speakers claimed the finance sector controls politicians and that markets rule the government. In response to the 2008 financial crisis in which governments gave billions of dollars to bail out banks, Singh asked the audience to consider what a “people’s bailout” to help us “thrive and basically survive” would look like. “It was unquestioned by economists that you would bailout Goldman and Sachs,” said Singh. “These were billionaires and millionaires

sinGh (riGht) and PoLanyi criticized the Finance sector’s imPortance in PoLitics. Photo by GinGa takeshima that if they weren’t bailed out would still be pretty rich and survive [...] a people’s bailout would’ve been something like demanding that we could cancel all credit card debt of anybody who makes $100,000 or less [a year]?” “The cause of the problem is in the enormously growing power of finance,” said Polanyi, explaining that huge profits and salaries are being made in industries like banking, insurance and real estate, which provide relatively few services in return. Moderated by GSA VP external Holly Nazar, the discussion panel, titled “Predatory Capitalism and the End of Sovereignty,” was the first part of the Concordia Student Union speaker series in collaboration with QPIRG. “We’re putting on about eight different events this semester that have

to do with Canadian politics,” said Anthony Garoufalis, a student who is part of the CSU’s Lounge Speaker Series committee. A student volunteer at QPIRG, Garoufalis explained that the series will explore Canadian politics while giving historical perspective on some of the issues we face today. “I think what they’re doing is really valuable,” said CSU VP external Chad Walcott, who sees the series’ theme of discussing social political issues as a way of getting students motivated for the Nov. 10 tuition fee protests. In their closing remarks, both Singh and Polanyi advocated activism as the only way to combat capitalism in the Western world, which Polanyi claims is leading us towards an economic depression the size of which has not been seen since the 1920s. “You guys are not going to live in

the same comfort as the generation of your parents,” warned Polanyi, calling for more activism from students. “We need people who are going to devote their life [...] to confront the evil aspects of the system.” “We are all economists of one sort or another and can all have an understanding of the world around us,” Singh encouraged. The Lounge Speaker Series takes place on the seventh floor of the Hall building every Friday from 1 to 3 p.m. This week’s talk is titled “Activism and Research in Turbulent Times” and will feature Concordia professor Dr. Anna Kruzynski and CSU president Lex Gill, as well as a representative from Community-University Research Exchange, a Montreal database that brings together student research and local, non-profit groups and activist organizations.

campus

Bringing the fight to Concordia Stephen Lewis calls on students to help battle cancer Cameron Ahmad Contributor Few Canadians have acquired as much global clout and respect as Stephen Lewis. A former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, the acclaimed diplomat and longtime politician drew international praise for his work in Africa fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Lewis’ focus has recently turned to the fight against cancer, a topic which he will be addressing as a featured speaker in H-110 in the Hall building this Wednesday at 5 p.m. Concordia is Lewis’ second stop on the People vs. Cancer tour organized by the Campaign to Control Cancer (C2CC). The C2CC states online

that their goal is to “fundamentally transform Canada’s response to cancer from one of fear and insecurity to one of strength and control.” The campaign hopes to engage students in joining a worldwide dialogue about cancer and learning about how the impact of the disease can be lessened. C2CC has published an action plan including specific initiatives and policy goals, such as “motivating Canadians to prioritize screening” and advising local governments. The event at Concordia, which will be broadcast live on the organization’s website, will communicate these initiatives to a young audience. Last year’s tour “clearly struck a chord with university students,” said Lewis in an interview on C2CC’s website. “They were ready to be mobilized.” According to Dr. Simon Sutcliffe, chair of the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, the university tours have helped “bring the public voice to cancer control efforts across Canada.”

Lewis has turned his Focus From PoLitics to the FiGht aGainst cancer. Dr. Sutcliffe, who will be speaking alongside Lewis on Wednesday, stated in a testimonial on controlcancer.ca that the “C2CC is playing an important role in helping to build effective public awareness.” Lewis’ international reputation and talented oratory skills are bringing widespread attention to the movement against cancer. After beginning his

career in politics, serving as a member of Ontario’s Legislative Assembly for 15 years and subsequently as the leader of the Ontario NDP from 1970 to 1978, Lewis shifted his focus to international human rights and health-related issues when he was appointed Canada’s United Nations ambassador, later serving as the UN’s special envoy to Africa regarding HIV/AIDS.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Continued from cover

New board structure has room for one undergrad, one grad, and one ‘alternate’ representative Though students make up the largest group at Concordia, they are outnumbered by other groups on the board. On the new board, full-time and part-time faculty will have five and one representatives, respectively, while staff have one member. The new board makeup will include 15 external and 10 internal members, and two vice-chairs, each representing one group. Cutting down on the number of governors was one of the recommendations made by an ad hoc

governance review committee, which agreed with the findings of the Shapiro Report, which was released last June. Concordia has been embroiled in controversy since its president, Judith Woodsworth, was fired in late December 2010. At the time, it was reported that she had left for “personal reasons,” but it was soon apparent she had been let go by the board. Woodsworth’s dismissal came just a few years after her predecessor, Claude Lajeunesse, also left amid negative circumstances.

While the university celebrated Thursday’s reforms, students see it as a sign that things are not getting better. “I think what we realized today is that the governance crisis at Concordia isn’t going away, and that’s disappointing,” said Monagle. “This was an opportunity to turn the page and to start afresh and to really address the issues that have been plaguing this university.” Lex Gill, a governor and president of the Concordia Student Union, agreed.

bog

“These guys are ostensibly attempting to fix governance issues at the university and are replicating the same dynamics of power and marginalization that was the problem in the first place,” she said. “You talk about contempt, and evidently, there’s still contempt for students.” Board chair Peter Kruyt, who announced he will be stepping down next June, was not available for comment after the meeting. But in a release put out by the university shortly afterward, he said, “The

changes approved today will result in a more effective and engaged Board of Governors.” The five students left the meeting in protest after the vote, shortly before the meeting ended. The changes to the board’s structure will come into effect July 1, 2012. Elsewhere in Quebec, McGill University’s board has 25 members, with one undergraduate student and one graduate representative. Bishop’s University has a 17member board with one student representative.

on the street

GSA looking to up transparency at BoG

Jacques Gallant Editor-in-chief Graduate students’ representative Erik Chevrier is looking to increase transparency at the Board of Governors, but first he must get his fellow governors to talk about his motion. At the Sept. 28 BoG meeting, Chevrier proposed that an item be added to the agenda to discuss his resolution calling for, among other things, the television broadcast of Board meetings and a question period from the audience. The item had originally not been approved to be added to the agenda prior to the meeting, but was added at the meeting itself following a vote by a majority of governors. But because the meeting was adjourned immediately after the vote on governance recommendations, the item has been pushed until the Board reconvenes in October. “The external governance committee requested that the BoG adopt measures to make the BoG more transparent. Considering that the main argument to restructure the BoG membership (to reduce student seats), was to comply with the external governance requests, I feel that it is also important to apply other requests (make the board more transparent),” wrote Chevrier in an email.

“

The resolution asks the BoG’s executive committee to approve a question period of no less than 20 minutes at the end of each regular meeting in which members of the campus community can ask questions and offer comments, increased seating in the actual room where the BoG meeting is taking place with a capacity of no less than 40 seats, and permission for CUTV to record meetings and post the video to their website. Concordia’s VP institutional relations and secretary-general Bram Freedman said this week that the GSA proposal was discussed at an executive committee meeting prior to the full board meeting and that “all present, with the exception of [CSU president Lex] Gill, who spoke in favour of the resolution, were against placing it on the agenda of the Board meeting. They were concerned that the proposal might inhibit the free exchange of ideas and the level of comfort that Board members might feel.” Freedman went on say that it was noted at the executive committee meeting that an overflow room already exists where the meetings are broadcast live. To his knowledge, the committee has never entertained in the past any of the ideas from the GSA resolution. For Chevrier, an overflow room is not enough. “In an overflow room, people cannot ask the BoG members any questions. They are also removed from the room where important decisions are made,” he said.

The Sept. 28 meeting was held in EV-2.260, where all meetings until June 21 are scheduled to take place. The room itself only holds enough seats for 20 spectators, who must often show up early for the 8 a.m. meeting in order to get the ticket needed for entrance in the room. As for the idea of CUTV broadcasting meetings, the station’s manager Laura Kneale indicated that CUTV has requested in the past to film BoG meetings, as it does already for CSU council meetings, but that the request has yet to be granted. “We believe that allowing CUTV to film these meetings would at the very least help increase transparency and accountability at the BoG as well as give Concordia students increased access to their principal governing body decisions in a noneditorialized way,” she wrote in an email. Kneale said that last year CUTV filed their request with university spokesperson Chris Mota, who referred them to an “administrative procedure.” Kneale said CUTV decided to hold off from pursuing the matter further at the time due to other projects, but is again interested this year in filming the meetings. Mota explained on Monday that there is in fact no actual procedure in place when it comes to filming BoG meetings. “It is sort of the accepted procedure, it’s how the Board has evolved,” she said. “There’s nothing in print that says you can’t film, but there’s nothing that says you can either. Ultimately it’s up to the Board.”

Heard at the BoG

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Motion to broadcast meetings pushed to October

“I’d like to know why they lowered the students [representatives] like that. I mean, shouldn’t students have much more of a say or be better represented?” - Andrew O’Kill-Griffin, creative writing

“There probably should be more students, but at the same time, I kind of understand where that comes from, where there should be less people to make a decision.” - Tais Costa, studio arts

“We can talk about democracy later.” - Me Rita de Santis, chair of the BoG’s ad hoc governance committee “We’re all equal, but some are more equal than others.” - William Knitter, pensioners’ representative “This process doesn’t have much legitimacy.” - Lex Gill, undergraduate governor “Maybe we shouldn’t have an audience.” - Peter Kruyt, BoG chair

“We need to regain confidence, and moving ahead with this [composition recommendations] will only aggravate things further.” - Cameron Monagle, undergraduate governor

“They should keep the amount of representatives, we’re losing [our] voice, and I feel like we need more people to represent us because we’re a large number of students. I go to this school, so I don’t want to be represented by just two people. I feel like the more people we have, [the better.]” - Amanda Estime, urban studies Compiled by Sarah Deshaies. Photos by Navneet Pall

theconcordian

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Under one flag media

How the CBC and cultural identity intersect Carol-Lynne Michaels The Nexus (Camosun College)

VICTORIA, B.C. (CUP) — The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is approaching its 75th birthday. What does it mean to us three quarters of a decade later? The CBC was born out of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission on Nov. 2, 1936. The celebrations have started, and a new logo and slogan remind us that the CBC is “yours to celebrate.” And so it is. The crown corporation CBC/Radio-Canada is the chief provider of Canadian news, music, and storytelling. It’s gone from black and white to colour, colour to high-definition, and is currently transitioning from analog to digital. Our media climate is shifting and our beloved CBC is up against a weak economy, changing demographics, and emerging technologies. Birthday or not, life slows down for no one. In March, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that the CBC must submit two proposals to meet reductions in operating appropriations. The proposals will outline how to meet a five per cent and 10 per cent cut over three years and will inform the 2012 federal budget. It’s part of a government-wide strategic and operating review of 67 organizations. Sounds like the government is asking the CBC to buckle down and not only prepare, but plan, for cuts. During the weak economic period of 2009, the CBC had losses of $171 million for which to make up. The public broadcaster shifted its game plan, sold assets, and cut close to 800 jobs. Now, two-and-a-half years later, the federal government is asking the CBC to prepare for another round of wallet wringing. What did you get the CBC for its birthday? Every year, Canadian taxpayers contribute what works out to be $34 per capita to the public broadcasting service. Collectively, Canadians contributed nearly $1.1 billion last year. The CBC is by far the largest public broadcaster in the country, but it’s not exclusively publicly funded. The CBC has four sources of funding. During the first quarter of 2011–12, tax dollars made up 61 per cent of CBC’s funding, while advertising covered 24 per cent. Specialty services and other revenues wrapped up the remaining 15 per cent in the form of subscription and ad sales from specialty programs, real-estate sales, and rentals. Compared to other industrialized countries, $34 is a bargain. A 2011 Nordicity analysis shows Canadians are ahead of only New Zealand and the United States. Americans pay $4 per year. On average, other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries pay $87 annually in support of their public-broadcasting corporations. And yet we still hear complaints about left-leaning content about our Canadian content provider. CBC Radio freelancer John Threlfall doesn’t necessarily agree with that take on the broadcaster. “Is it left-of-centre?” says the Victoria resident. “Who defines the centre? If the centre is currently defined by Stephen Harper and the federal Conservatives then, yes, it’s left-of-centre. If the centre was defined by the mythical alternative universe where Jack Layton and the NDP got into power then, no, it would be more centre.” Threlfall, also the former editor of Victoria alt-weekly Monday Magazine, doesn’t let his journalism background escape him while analyzing the CBC.

the cbc must Find a way to meet a FiVe-Per cent and 10-Per cent cut oVer three years. Photo by aLi hackett/nexus

“Is it left-of-centre in that it challenges the government?” he asks. “It challenges things that are being put out there and it doesn’t accept them at face value. But why is that left? And why is that just not inquiry?” Angus McKinnon, spokesperson for CBC/ Radio-Canada, says complaints that the CBC is politically left-of-centre don’t bear themselves out in fact. “Quite rightly, as Canada’s public broadcaster, our news and current affairs operations are held to a higher standard,” he says. “CBC/Radio-Canada strives every day to provide fairness and balance in its news coverage and platforms where Canadians can find, and add to, a wide diversity of viewpoints and voices from all across the political spectrum.” Steven Larsen, a 29-year-old history student at Camosun College, says he’s a fan of the CBC in a lot of ways, but adds that there are drawbacks to being publicly funded. “The whole idea raises a lot of issues for me, in terms of the validity of what they’re telling me,” says Larsen. “I mean, they’re paid for by the government by tax dollars.” This quickness to criticize the public broadcaster reveals a certain passion that most Canadians have for the CBC. What’s a Canadian anyway? CBC/Radio-Canada connects Canadians across a nation that boasts the world’s second largest land mass. The 1991 Broadcasting Act states that “the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens, and entertains.” It also mandates that the CBC “reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.” CBC continues to play a key role in reinforcing to Canadians what it means to be Canadian. Elizabeth Grove-White, an associate professor in the department of English at the University of Victoria, says that the CBC “enlarges our imagination and our understanding to know what’s happening in other parts of our country.” She moved from Ireland to Toronto in 1973. With no Canadian connections, Grove-White says that the CBC was a great introduction to this

country. “The CBC has served a very important function in welcoming new Canadians,” she says. “For people like me, who come from other parts of the world, the CBC has been a window into Canadian culture and arts and life and politics.” Grove-White eventually came to work for the CBC, writing, interviewing, researching and producing several radio programs. She eventually earned a Peabody Award in 1980 for her work on a documentary. It’s often said that the CBC reaches out to Canadian communities, but in the experience of Grove-White, it also reaches out to individual community members. Those individuals, of course, have their own varying opinions on what CBC means to them. “I think CBC is a little left-wing sometimes,” says Victoria resident Evelyn Mason. “You can tell it’s propped up by government; nobody seems to put any effort into it.” Her husband David says that when it comes to program selection, there is a bad side to publicly funded media entities like the CBC. “They’re not at the mercy of who’s going to buy advertising as much as the private networks, so they’re willing to carry stuff just because they like the people who are doing it, or whatever.” Mason loves Coronation Street, but is tired of seeing the same personalities and programming year after year. But David gives credit to CBC personality George Stromboulopoulos, saying that “he’s smart, a little irreverent.” What has the CBC done for you lately? Canadians are a collection of diverse fragments held together by publicly funded mortar. “If there was no CBC, Canadian stories and news would still exist on the internet, but there’s the problem of not really knowing what to look for,” says Josh Driver, a criminal justice student at Camosun. “We’d probably end up disconnected from the events going on in our local area. We’d end up with just the U.S. media. We’d end up knowing more about them than ourselves.” A Harris/Decima study released in the spring of 2010 declared that 81 per cent of Canadians agree it’s important that the Canadian government work to maintain and build a culture and identity distinct from the United States.

In 1970, Pierre Juneau, the first chairman of the Canada Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, famously said “Canadian broadcasting should be Canadian.” Canadian content regulations were drafted and have stimulated the artistic landscape of Canada ever since. Canadian musicians such as Bryan Adams and Sarah McLachlan have full-fledged careers and international acclaim. You can still hear Rush and The Tragically Hip on the air. The Arcade Fire, Kid Koala, K’naan, and so many more Canadian artists are right up there in Canada’s musical mountain range. Canadian content regulations have created a weird and wonderful filtration system that pulls diverse artists from above the 49th parallel and launches them out on national airwaves. What’s a world without the CBC? The CBC’s programming is expansive; it’s touched the lives of practically every Canadian, in some ways more directly than others. “Honestly, I would be hard-pressed to imagine Canada as we know it today without the CBC,” says Threlfall, who now works at UVic as communications and special projects officer for the faculty of fine arts. “So many peoples’ cultural memories and cultural backbone have been fashioned by or supported by the CBC over the years.” The CBC: we love it, we hate it, and we pay for it (some of us involuntarily) Petitions exist online about it: save it or suffocate it. The discussion is there. The fact that everyone has an opinion demonstrates the invisible ties that tangle Canadians with the CBC. “It’s providing Canadian identity—multiculturalism, regionalism, all of us together individually and collectively,” says Victoria mayor Dean Fortin. “The CBC is a very important institution. It’s the one that is dedicated to Canadian culture: bringing forward and developing Canadian identity.” CBC’s McKinnon says that the organization aims to express culture and enrich democratic life, and that their new five-year strategic plan committing to deepening the CBC’s relationship with Canadians. “[In the plan] we commit to providing a publicly owned, publicly-minded space where Canadians can meet and exchange with each other and with the country,” he says.

life

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Write to the editor: life@theconcordian.com

social networking

Are we getting too close for comfort? Social media can trigger online harassment and cyberstalking Luciana Gravotta Contributor Sabrina Fortier* didn’t know what she was getting herself into when she started dating a young Spaniard on an exchange. They agreed to not pursue a long distance relationship, but to stay friends. They kept in touch on Skype and through Facebook. But soon things began to get creepy. When the Concordia graduate student started refusing his Skype calls, he got in her face. “He called my house phone and yelled at me for ignoring him,” she said. “How he got my home phone? I don’t know.” The young man started spamming Fortier on Facebook, demanding to know why she didn’t take his calls. He got her address somehow; he sent her a package of cured meats and jewelry. “One year after I took him off Facebook and Skype and everything else, I ‘run into him’ at a party in Toronto!” she said. The man had apparently befriended a friend of Fortier’s through Facebook, got her to invite him to Toronto, and was staying at her place. Fortier said she left the party “disgusted and scared.” Fortier had a stalker, and it wasn’t some stranger she didn’t know. Stalking, which is defined as when an individual frequently intrudes on another person’s life in a way that can be perceived as threatening, has likely been happening for a long time, but cyberstalking is a new phenomenon. Many use social networking to keep tabs on others; a 2011 study by Brian Spitzberg at San Diego State University found 84 per cent of undergraduate students say that they use social networking sites to monitor their romantic partner’s activity. Big Brother-like activities range from the seemingly benign, like looking at a partners’ comments or pictures on Facebook, to the obsessive, such as hacking into Facebook profiles to check on private messages. Another study from East Carolina University found that five per cent of male and two per cent of female undergraduates have used webcams to keep an eye on their significant other. Technology is changing the way people interact: social networking sites are increasing interactions, and dating websites’ numbers are exploding. But the news isn’t all good for love in the information age, as social media also fuels jealousy. According to Spitzberg, “There is some evidence to suggest that social media add new incentives to the experience of jealousy because they increase the ability to monitor, lurk, and snoop.” Uncertainty about a relationship (How much does he like me? Is she seeing someone else?) causes anxiety. People try to alleviate this anxiety by seeking information to dispel doubts about their romantic partner. Concordia graduate student Anne Lovell* said that she checked a boyfriend’s email account because she was insecure about his relationship with an ex-girlfriend. “I also checked it a few times again after we broke up because I wanted to know if he had moved on,” she said. Although it may feel like figuring out what a current lover or ex is up to will relieve anxiety, social media is often equivocal. “Every new piece of information provided by social media has about equal opportunity to increase uncertainty as it does

Tips To be Facebook sTalker-Free Do:

Tell your friends not to share any of your private information in public areas WiTh any sign of cyber harassment, block the person and send a report to Facebook. It’s better to be safe than sorry! change your privacy settings to the most private setting

Don’T:

accepT strangers on Facebook share your password with anyone. You never know when the relationship could turn sour and friendly sharing could turn into spiteful hacking reveal your phone number or address anywhere rub your relationship information all over Facebook. People are naturally attracted to drama and this will encourage snoopers to stalk your boyfriend/girlfriend “check-in” everywhere you go on Facebook. This is practically an invitation for stalkers to coincidentally show up at the same place you’re at - Paola Rivas Graphic by Carlo Tudino

to decrease it,” said Spitzberg. With 72 per cent of young adults using social networking sites, and with these sites becoming an essential tool in our interpersonal interactions, it seems unlikely that the uncertainty-informationuncertainty cycle will subside. So what to do? The key is to find the right balance between what goes public and what stays private. “We need to know about others because we can benefit and learn from them but we also have a fundamental need for privacy,” said Spitzberg. Perhaps it is just a question of a new media social revolution that has yet to be harnessed. “The thing about media is that it is also part of the solution; as means of invading privacy increase, means of protecting privacy increase,” said Spitzberg. Concordia students seem to know how to set up the right barriers. Jean Crevier, investigator in the

university’s security department, confirmed that no cyberstalking incidents have been reported this year. Mike Babin, director of infrastructure and operations at IITS, Concordia’s information technology department, says that they have revoked student accounts due to harassment, but that it has been rare. In a few cases, the harassed student was redirected to the police. When harassment happens in cyberspace or through email servers that are not regulated by the university, it is unclear who should take responsibility. “Lets say a person is using a computer at Concordia but the harassment is happening on their Facebook page, well then it’s not really a Concordia issue,” said Babin. Concordia security’s role in situations where a student feels threatened is guidance or counselling,

says Crevier. He has had discussions with students as to what is on their Facebook pages and how it may be contributing to unwanted attention. With a medium with so few rules and regulations, Spitzberg suggests that the power is in our hands. Each individual needs to be motivated and knowledgeable in their use of technology in order to be able to protect themselves. While in Toronto, Fortier’s stalker used Facebook to track her movements, probably to arrange ‘accidental’ bump-ins. She had to threaten to call the police. Her friend finally kicked him out of her house when she found out his ulterior motive. Finally, Fortier never heard from him again. She is more careful on Facebook now. “If someone new asks to be my friend and we’ve only met once, I don’t usually accept,” Fortier said. *Names have been changed for privacy reasons.

theconcordian

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 food

Awaken your taste buds in the darkness at O.NOIR Experience tasty cuisine through someone else’s eyes George Menexis Contributor Montreal is recognized across the world for its diverse cultures, amazing nightlife and not to mention exquisite dining. It is this that convinced restaurant owner Moe Alameddine to bring O.NOIR to Montreal. Keeping originality is difficult when opening a restaurant in the heart of downtown Montreal since there is so much variety. It is an area that holds hundreds of restaurants with many types of decor and culture. O.NOIR doesn’t have that problem. Their unique concept has turned heads and dazzled people internationally. What concept you may ask? A three course gourmet meal in complete darkness. “We try to make the customer feel the experience of what it is to be blind,” said restaurant head manager Alejandro Martinez. “You are doing the whole restaurant experience without your primary sense. It’s quite something.” Needless to say, I was extremely excited to get this unique dining experience started. I sat in a dimly lit area as I waited to be seated. This is where I ordered my food and drinks. Looking at a menu in the dining room would have been quite a feat because, you know, the lighting’s a little bad in there. Before I knew it, it was my turn to be led into the darkness. I gingerly touched my waiter’s shoulder as he led us into the dark haze of O.NOIR’s main din-

O.NOIR is more than just a restaurant: it is an unforgettable experience. Photo by Navneet Pall

ing room. It was as if my eyes were completely shut - I was blind. A rush of fear rose in the pit of my stomach when I realized my sense of sight was completely gone. As I sat down and fumbled with my cutlery, I calmed down. I touched my surroundings and tried to make out where I was. I could touch. I became aware of the noise around me. People were talking, knives were clinking against forks, chairs were moving and waiters were shouting. I could hear. The smells of exquisite meals being served all around engulfed me. I could smell. My senses had been heightened to an unrealistic level. “Some say your senses are heightened, but you do this manually. You put more attention on

smaller things,” laughed Alejandro. “You may even eat your meal with your hands at times, just to feel what you’re eating.” Yes, the concept is great, but equally exceptional is the food. Let’s be honest - a restaurant can’t make it on an idea alone. It needs a reputation of fine wines and delicious meals and the smells and tastes I experienced at O.NOIR were nothing short of that. The food, though a small selection, was simple and cooked to perfection. The filet mignon was finger licking good, literally, because, at times, you do eat with your fingers. To make O.NOIR’s experience even more exciting, every single waiter in the restaurant is blind. The visually impaired in Quebec face a 70

per cent unemployment rate. It’s great to see an organization like O.NOIR that trains and offers jobs, as well as donates five per cent of its profits towards organizations helping visually impaired people of all ages. There’s nothing bad to say about this unique restaurant. Smart concept, delicious food, and an amazing staff are what make O.NOIR unforgettable. But what makes this restaurant worth trying is that it’s not just a restaurant but also an organization. They don’t just give, but more importantly, they raise awareness. As owner Moe Alameddine puts it, “we get to do something we love, while making a difference.”

Did you know… …that you can apply NOW for the 2011-2012

Undergraduate In-Course Bursary Program! The online In-Course Bursary application is now available on the MyConcordia Portal. The Concordia University Foundation, along with various corporations, private individuals, and alumni, contribute funding to the In-Course Bursary program, which is restricted to Undergraduate students in Bachelor’s programs in their second year of studies or higher. All candidates must be in acceptable academic standing with a Last Annual GPA of at least 2.00. For further information, consult the online In-Course Bursary application which is available through the MyConcordia Portal, or visit the Financial Aid and Awards Office website at http://financialaid.concordia.ca To apply for the Undergraduate In-Course Bursary Program, log on to your MyConcordia Portal account, then follow the Financial > Financial Aid links to the web applications section. Students already receiving an Entrance Scholarship, Entrance Bursary, In-Course Scholarship, or In-Course Bursary at Concordia University for the 2011-2012 school year are not eligible to apply for the In-Course Bursary program. Applications will be considered in late November 2011 and candidates will be notified in December by letter.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Sunday October 16 2011 at midnight Apply today! Don’t delay!

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

tech

App-etite for the bizarre Apps that will either leave you laughing or scratching your head Joel Abrahams Contributor Being a fresh transplant from the grid-like city of San Francisco, I tend to find myself lost in the maze of streets that make up Montreal. My horrible sense of direction within the city, combined with the fact that I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak French, lead me to rely on my trusty iPhone to get around Montreal, as well as other little things (Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be honest, I still canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember where all of my classes are). Some iPhone apps are terrific; there are necessity apps, like maps (see above) and there are reference apps, like Wikipedia and news applications. Other apps veer into a virtual realm of irreverence and pointlessness, a place where vast amounts of time are lost playing with a three-and-a-half inch glass screen. Yet thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no need to worry about melting your brain with hours of scrolling through the App Store trying to find the cream of the crop of useless, stupid apps, as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve taken it upon myself to do it for you.

sleep Talk recorDer

So itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one of those nights: youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had a few too many shots, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s way too late and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re feeling a little too social for your own good. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the type to make those annoying, inebriated phone calls, but youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re too drunk to put in the effort of scrolling through your contact list to find that special someone to call for a heart-toheart conversation, this is the app for you. You pick the people youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re cool to chat up while drunk, and you give the phone a shake to call one up. Use at your own peril, and watch out for what you may find in the morning.

mcDonalDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nuTriTion calculaTor price: Free

I scrolled by this app and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even think about looking at it, as it seemed somewhat reasonable. If you were on a diet and watching how many calories you consumed, the app makes sense if you unfortunately find yourself at McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot. But thinking logically, if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re watching your health to the point where you feel the need to download an app for it, you probably shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be going to McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in the first place.

TWeeT us your picks @TheconcorDian

The idea is supposed to be that you touch your phone and it vibrates and shakes, as if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re tickling it. Make the mistake I did, and accidentally turn your phone onto your ringtone while in the library, and it will giggle, too. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if it is supposed to be a person or the iPhone itself, but either way, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a pointless idea for an app, which just caused me a lot of embarrassment.

One of the original useless apps is arguably also one of the most popular. This visual gag classic basically allows you to mimic drinking a glass of beer on your iPhone as you tilt it back, complete with â&#x20AC;&#x153;digital bubbles.â&#x20AC;? According to Apple, way back when the first metal iPhones were made iBeer found its way on the charts of the top 10 most downloaded paid apps. Crazy to think this app was raking in gobs of cash off the simple concept that people will pay to pretend to drink a beer from their phones. Hard to say how that makes sense at all.

price: $0.99

e-mail The liFe eDiTor aT liFe@ TheconcorDian.com or

price: Free

Inspired by Jersey Shore, the infamous TV show that everyone loves to hate, this app will make any picture look like you were the life of the party. Take a random picture, go into the app and get yourself some sweet tattoos, a six-pack and a wife beater.

Dialer

mosT useless or mosT useFul applicaTions you have DoWnloaDeD on your iphone?

Tickle me

ibeer

iDrunk

WhaT are The WeirDesT, coolesT,

Do you know if you talk in your sleep or not? Anyone who doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s my question; do you really want to listen to yourself rambling unconsciously about God-knowswhat for eight hours? This app doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t record all your hours of sleep; it triggers when it thinks youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re babbling. You can even share your incoherent thoughts with the rest of the world and browse through what other people across the globe are talking about in their sleep. Kind of creepy.

jersiFy

price: Free

WriTe To us!

price: $0.99

Graphic by Sean Kershaw

Photo by Navneet Pall

ivooDoo

price: $2.99 The priciest app on the list, iVooDoo gives you up to five different dolls and lets you take pictures from your camera roll to put your unsuspecting arch nemeses face onto a doll. Exacting revenge on your ex has never been so easy, but whereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the fun in putting the pins in a doll on an iPhone? Once you can figure out if the pins do anything to the actual person, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll consider downloading. Maybe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be in the next update, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not holding my breath.

Once again, this is what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d call the cream of the crop. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure there are thousands of other apps around the world so pointless that their reason for existence comes into question, and of course there were a couple that just felt too explicit or creepy to print. Feel free to check them out if you feel inclined to, although donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t blame me once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve wasted all your time.

MMPA

Master of Management & Professional Accounting

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www.utoronto.ca/mmpa

arts 10

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Write to the editor: arts@theconcordian.com profile

You can go your own way Tell it, Steve James is known for telling the stories of those who are often marginalized in urban settings in American society. Hoop Dreams is his most celebrated film to date, and it earned him an Oscar nomination. Here are some other James-directed films you can check out: At the Death House Door (2008) Reel Paradise (2005) Stevie (2002) Stop Substance Abuse (1986)

Documentary filmmaker Steve James was in town on Sept. 26, talking to students at Cinema Politica’s screening of his film The Interrupters.

Documentary filmmaker Steve James lets his subjects - and the footage - say it all Brandon Judd Contributor Two years ago, Steve James sat in a car and watched Flamo, a particularly volatile subject in his film The Interrupters, struggle with his thoughts. After a while, the troubled character spoke. “You know, life repeat[s] itself as a cycle,” he said pensively. “You just be one of the people there telling the story. I’m trying to be one of the [people] telling the story.” It was a poetic moment crucial to showing the man in transition, and an important part of the film as a whole. It’s those moments that make James happy to be a documentary filmmaker, and to have his camera around. “[It was] perhaps not a moment that would’ve happened had I not been next to him filming,” James said. “He was struggling to articulate something as much for us as he was for himself. He might have just sat there and thought about it and looked out the window instead of saying it. But he forced himself to articulate it, probably for us. Does [that] make it any less true?” For the director of Hoop Dreams, the interplay between his camera and the reality it captures is highly nuanced, and this complexity carries over to his films. James’ films are so engrossing because

he’s not giving a crash course on a specific topic, as you would see in an Alex Gibney documentary. You’re simply being placed in another world, inhabited by complicated social dynamics and equally complicated people. As James put it, he’s trying to distill his experience filming the movie into an accessible package. “We boil it down from years of filming, in some cases, to a few hours,” James explained. “But I want you as a viewer to go on the same journey of immersion and revelation that I always feel like I go through.” James is often referred to as part of the cinéma vérité movement, which strives for naturalism and tends to avoid direct interaction between filmmaker and subject. But he thinks making a film from this distance is unnecessarily restrictive. “I always felt like vérité’s limitation is that it’s harder for you to get inside someone’s head,” he said. “I’m interested in really understanding interesting people and situations and immersing you, as the viewer, into the lives of such people.” Instead of settling for the ‘fly on the wall’ experience of many cinéma vérité filmmakers, James lets you hear answers to questions you’d ask if you were there yourself. Despite the strong moral compass that emerges clearly in his media interviews, James refuses to be polemic in his films. The absence of talking heads and broad voiceovers doesn’t mean a shortage of strong views, however, it simply means there’s less dogmatism. “I hope to present the world in a complicated way so the viewer has something to

chew on,” James said. “Something to think about and maybe even go off and, I don’t know, have dinner and argue about afterwards.” None of James’ films exemplifies this more than Stevie, an intensely personal film about the man who, as a child, James was a Big Brother to. The film starts as a retrospective, but quickly becomes a gut-wrenching portrait of the emotional effects of an egregious crime on the perpetrator’s family and friends. It’s shocking to watch everyone involved in the film, both in front of and behind the camera, struggle to come to terms with what Stevie has done. You can clearly sense James’ own doubts about his involvement as both a former mentor and a filmmaker. And it’s hard as a viewer to see Stevie’s fall, because the affection of those surrounding him in the film is so contagious. This type of emotional involvement is common in his films. In Hoop Dreams, James watched Arthur Agee and William Gates grow up over the five years of filming. He built relationships that last to this day, and the level of comfort created was crucial to the film’s intimacy. But it was a doubleedged sword emotionally. “When William blew his knee out, I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach as if my brother’s career was in jeopardy,” James recounted. “When he missed those free throws I was heartbroken. But I also realized, as a filmmaker, that was a very dramatic scene we just got. There are times you need to put something in the movie they might wish were not in there. But you want to come out

of the experience feeling that you treated people with respect and empathy, and that your portrait shows that even if it shows some warts.” James has focused on stories about the marginalized. In the U.S., this often means telling stories about inner city AfricanAmericans. Being a middle-aged white man from Virginia, he’s often asked about racial obstacles he’s encountered. In his filmmaking process, James strives to avoid “making things a big deal.” He approaches race with the same pragmatism. “I find being white and trying to tell a story about another ethnic group, as much as there’s a hurdle of sorts to get over, presents an opportunity,” he said with characteristic aplomb. “We live in such a stratifying society in the United States that I think there’s a tremendous amount of curiosity across lines of race. People want to actually talk to someone who’s white if you’re black, or vice versa. So the making of a film presents that opportunity - it can be a passport across lines of class and race.” It’s clear, both from his films and the way he speaks, that James is a compassionate humanist. You become immersed in James’ films and hard realities cannot be shrugged off. But for James, the goal of the film is as much about the subject as the viewer. “I think that making a documentary should ideally be a therapeutic process for [your subjects],” he mused. “You’re asking them questions, you’re curious about their lives, you’re spending all this time with them. And what you’re saying to them is that your life matters.”

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

film

En français, please! Homegrown comedy tackles language issues, holds off on snides Elizabeth Mackay Contributor Who knew French homework could be funny? It turns out, Kevin Tierney did. In his directorial debut, French Immersion, the award-winning producer of Bon Cop, Bad Cop employs slapstick humour to tackle the sensitive subject of language in Quebec. This bilingual comedy follows four Anglo-Canadians and a New Yorker to a fictitious village in Northern Quebec, St-Isidore-du-Coeur-de-Jésus. They are enrolled in a French immersion program and isolated from the English-speaking world. The anglophones quickly discover that the town’s entire population (all 2,000 people - 1,999 of whom share the surname “Tremblay”) is in on their program, and any spoken English is interrupted with a loud “EN FRANÇAIS!” The adults are thrown back into summer camp days, learning French in class, on field trips, school buses and in the homes of their French-speaking host families. French Immersion boasts an all-Canadian cast, including Corner Gas’ Fred Ewanuick, This Hour Has 22 Minutes comedian Gavin Crawford and Jacob Tierney, the director’s son, who directed and starred in The Trotsky and Good Neighbours. Mixing French and English talent breathes life into a genuine on-screen culture clash. Bobby (Crawford) is a politician from Newfoundland and Labrador looking to run for prime minister; Cathy (Martha Burns) is

kevin tierney’S characterS in French ImmersIon get SchooleD in the oui’S anD non’S of french, whether they like it or not.

undercover with the RCMP; Aretha (Olunike Adeliyi) is an airline stewardess; Colin (Ewanuick) is a divorced mailman from Alberta looking to get ahead at work; Jonathan (Jacob Tierney) is a New York City chef. The juxtaposition of big personalities in a small town environment also provides the laughs. Relationships flourish between people that wouldn’t be friends under usual circumstances. French Immersion begins as a goofy comedy in the vein of Rat Race and National Lampoon, and ends heartwarmingly as a lesson of what can be accomplished

when people work together. The film is a tad predictable, but solid performances from the cast and kooky characters and situations make for awkward but hilarious situations. Adeliyi shines as the Jamaican-Canadian stewardess who swears she can speak French, “it’s just no French people understand me.” The movie approaches a politically uncomfortable subject with ease and executes it hilariously. Learning a language as an adult is no joke, and you don’t need to be from Quebec or even Canada to get it. The film is in Canada’s both official languages,

and is fully subtitled for viewers who are not bilingual. French Immersion delivers laughs and is great, light-hearted fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it opens the discussion on language barriers in Canada and encourages the learning and practicing of English and French, but does not scold those who are not bilingual. Whether you are a Montrealer or a Montréalais, French Immersion will hit close to home. French Immersion opens Oct. 7 at AMC Forum, 2313 Ste-Catherine St. W.

book launch

Like childhood memories in a funhouse mirror ConU prof Adrian Norvid publishes ephemeral pop-culture odyssey Nogoodniks Rebecca Ugolini Staff writer The best humour removes tongue from cheek just long enough to stick it out at the audience. From Mad magazine to Monty Python, cult franchises rely as much on in-jokes as they do on nonsense to craft the ultimate punch line: “I don’t get it.” For some viewers, the temptation to reason with the absurd is too great to resist: but sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, Joni Mitchell’s ass is just Joni Mitchell’s ass… At least, that’s the kind of irreverent imagery found in Adrian Norvid’s whimsical new book of illustrations Nogoodniks, published by independent press Drawn & Quarterly. A lover of “crummy, cheap, cheesy stuff,” Norvid finds comedic cannon fodder for his collection of nearly 90 new drawings and collages in everything from 1970s counterculture to English humour to quintessential symbols of Americana. It’s-No-Wonderbread, anyone? Invoking childhood’s most-beloved emblems (remember Tootsie Pops? Frisbees? The Hulk?) through adulthood’s sardonic lens, Norvid crafts a reading experience that resists categorization. The perversion of familiar icons is nostalgic yet fresh, and even somewhat sweet despite its crude bent.

“It’s a lot of childhood remnants, I think, because I came over here to Canada when I was 10 years old, and I still had a lot of Englishness in me,” Norvid said of the influence of the English culture and wordplay on his humour. Norvid’s play with words focuses on puns and malapropisms, but also on the similar sonorous quality of words. On one page, a square-jawed, dopey-looking skull nestles near the outer corner, the text reading “dull little skull.” On another, a man’s black silk top hat seems to fly off backward into the book, the inside decorated by flourishes and the text “Topper Upper.” “My family are from the North of England, and they were addicted to words. You felt that sitting in the living room listening to them just yak like parrots for hours on end,” Norvid recalled, imitating his relatives’ mile-a-minute speech. “It was almost like watching Monty Python, to hang

around them, and of course as a kid you’d just be like, ‘God, what is going on?’” Norvid’s expressive and cartoon-inspired art recreates a child’s sense of impatience, wonder and confusion without recourse to a narrative or to particular reading guidelines. Picked up and flipped through on a whim in a bookshop, Nogoodniks can hook a reader on any page. “I didn’t do the drawings in any particular order, and I don’t think there’s a theme that people can go back and discover on a second reading,” explained Norvid of the book’s loosely-associated content. “I think of it as a collection of dumb, slightly caustic, maybe barely even funny things,” he continued, “that have some kind of relationship with one another, but that you might not figure out, and that I may not even really know.” For fans of independent comic culture, Nogoodniks will be dou bly entertaiing. Sometimes reminiscent in style of the bizarre illustrations of masters like R. Crumb, Norvid’s skillful drawings still communicate the same almost grassroots look. Intense facial expressions, slightly contorted

limbs and fingers, and a certain collapsing of depth both ally the illustrations of Nogoodniks with the greater independent illustration and comic publishing tradition and set it apart as a work with an identity of its own making. As Crumb said of his own medium: “When people say ‘What are underground comics?’ I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved—we didn’t have anyone standing over us.” Norvid echoed the sentiment of unmediated expression when he said: “There’s definitely an attitude to this, one of being silly together. I’ll insult you, and you insult me—let’s just relax, okay?” Unsurprisingly, the source for the book’s content is as ephemeral as the final product. Norvid, who typically works with much larger pieces, discussed his bookmaking process as one that was spontaneous and exhilarating as well as sometimes discouraging and uncertain. “A lot of these things just pop into my head very spontaneously, and I’ll jot them down in a little notebook,” he said, explaining the source for the book’s humour, “and then I’ll just use them. I say, the universe will give these things up, so don’t inflect them too much; have faith that they’ll work on some level. And it’s a bit of an idiot faith, really.” Nogoodniks is being launched on Oct. 7 at 7 p.m. at Drawn & Quarterly, 211 Bernard St. For more information, go to www.drawnandquarterly.com. Graphic by Phil Waheed

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

journées de la culture

theconcordian

You ain’t jivin’

man, were the ‘50S ever a great DecaDe. Besides giving us Elvis and Johnny Cash, not to mention a blonde actress you might have heard of (Marylin, anyone?), the ‘50s were also the decade of dance. The moves coming out of everyone’s feet and limbs were those of the rockabilly jive, a dance set to the best of the decade’s swing and good old rock ‘n’ roll. Montrealers got a taste of the groove last weekend when local dance studio Rock Avenue opened its doors for the Journées de la culture festival, offering a free rockabilly jive workshop. Right on, Daddy-O! Photos by Navneet Pall and Tiffany Blaise (bottom right)

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

film

Welcome to the valley of the dolls Filmmaker pulls at your emotions with inanimate objects and a good dose of mystery Sofia Gay Arts editor

here’s a tight shot on what looks like a textbook picture of a bird. Its head is cut out in a circle and moved to the side, allowing for blood to drip on the space and spill into the empty inside of a toy horse lying in a field, seen through a peep-hole-sized view. All around it, darkness. Then a shot of plants on a red background, with light shining on them to reveal pictures of teeth underneath. All this, backed by a soundtrack of what sounds like mild radio static and violins. But then – wait! A close-up shot of the horse’s blood-filled stomach is backed by horror movie-like jumpy violins, followed by the textbook bird getting its head back - upside down. While this may sound like the kind of dream one wakes up from groggily, barely able to recall its bits and pieces, it’s actually Ghost Algebra, a 2009 film by L.A.-based experimental filmmaker Janie Geiser, who says that scene surprised her, too. “[Ghost Algebra] has a lot of blood, which is red paint. And I don’t even know how I started down that road. It was just, I wanted something liquid,” she said. “I didn’t set out to do that. I think maybe even I just had some red paint lying around near where I was, and then it just jumped into the water.” Finding her niche in using inanimate objects in her films and performances, Geiser’s work has been recognized internationally, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Yet it all began with a stage small enough for dolls. Starting as a visual artist, Geiser found the world of experimental puppet theatre when she was living in Atlanta. Later on, it was “an interest in the figure, and making figures move” which led her to film. “What I really loved about it was the ability to frame things and cut out everything else,” Geiser explained. “In theatre, you have to always really think about what’s outside the frame of what you’re wanting the audience to see.” Geiser also uses found sounds, with the school beside her house as one of her favourite spots to collect them. “I like to go to the woods. I like mixing nature sounds with other things, and especially urban nature, where you’ll be listening to birds but then you’ll also hear a car go by. It gives a kind of realness to this really artificial world,” she said. Geiser’s use of sound can be seen in the striking and suspenseful The Red Book, which was chosen for the National Film Registry in 2009. Drone-like chanting at the beginning gives way to industrial sounds as the film follows a twodimensional character, whose wanderings about the city evoke some very threedimensional emotions in the viewer. The flawlessly quick succession in which the objects in her films move makes one wish they would go a little slower to allow for a longer look. Instead, the viewer is left both enchanted and touched, without quite knowing what ex-

Janie geiSer combineS founD obJectS anD SounDS for minD-blowing anD heaD-turning reSultS in her filmS

actly it was that made them feel that way. “I generally have the terrain of the film in my mind, and the emotional narrative that I’m unearthing or going for [...] Each shot, I’ll make a beginning composition for, but then I’ll let it take me where it wants to go,” she said. “There’s a combination of planning and intuition.” Geiser is aware that her filoms are not going to resonate with everyone, but she explains how that is inherent in the nature of her work. “It’s experimental film, not everyone’s going to engage with that form,” she said. She compared the experience

of watching one of her films to reading poetry, because each viewer will interact with them differently and draw different emotions from them. And it’s that connection that Geiser strives for in her films, and which makes the answer to what she would do if she wasn’t a filmmaker startling. “If I wasn’t an artist,” she said musingly, “maybe I’d be a forest ranger.” The Secret Lives of Inanimate Objects: The Films of Janie Geiser is showing at the Segal Centre, 5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine Rd., on Oct. 5 and 6 at 6:30 p.m. Student tickets are $8. For tickets and

more information, go to www.segalcentre.org.

music 14

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Write to the editor: music@theconcordian.com profile

From the opera houses of Germany to the streets of Australia

ConCordia student Christina Gentile (t.i.n.a.) returned to Montreal to finish her deGree and her albuM after MeetinG JaCk Johnson while buskinG in australia.

Concordia’s Christina Gentile strives to spread love through her music Leah Batstone Contributor You could simply say that singer/songwriter Christina Gentile is a Concordia student who studies integrated music, but that wouldn’t be a fair description. The truth to her personality lies in her captivating story, filled with small miracles and personal discovery. Gentile grew up backstage in European opera houses, so music was always an integral part of her life. “I knew I was going to study music,” she said, as we sipped coffee at the Second Cup on Ste-Catherine Street. While it seems like an obvious career choice, coming from a family where both parents are trained opera singers, her parents never pushed her into a career in music. When she was just 16 she moved from Germany to Montreal where she began studying musicals and classical music at CEGEP. She advanced to studying jazz at Concordia, but felt unsatisfied with the direction her life was taking. “Something in the academic setting was missing,” she said. “The passion you have, the drive to do something gets suppressed, and I needed to fill that void.”

On a whim, Gentile decided to leave her friends, her studies and her job, and packed her bags for Australia. “The plan was to have no plan,” she said, laughing. “A lot of people thought I was out of my mind probably.” With a guitar and a small amount of luggage, she embarked on a two-year voyage that not only filled her void—it overflowed it. After moving to Australia, Gentile, who performs under the name T.I.N.A., started working in a hostel in Australia and played occasionally in bars. Then, two months into her trip, an accident left her with a broken foot. Unable to work, but anxious to make money, she resorted to busking as a temporary solution. When her foot healed, she decided to give firespinning a try and wound up breaking her other foot in the exact same place. So, it was back to busking. “It was like God was giving me a sign to quit [my jobs] and just play music,” said Gentile, and surprisingly, it was busking that gave her the courage to follow her passion. “Busking is about connecting with the people,” said Gentile, who believes music should be about spreading love. “You’re doing music primarily for yourself, but you’re also healing other people.” If her passion wasn’t enough to convince her to follow her career as a musician, her experience as a busker would. In a few hours on the street, she’d earn the

equivalent of a full day at work. “I’ve talked to so many buskers, and for some reason, I don’t know many people who have made as much money as I did,” she admitted. “It depends on the weather, the day, the location.” Her good fortune continued in the generosity of people from Down Under. Gentile explained that in Australia and New Zealand people love street musicians. Unlike in Canada, where most passersby might stop for a moment, or just walk briskly past, spectators there would get comfortable and listen to her music, sometimes for an hour. She got more than the spare change fans would toss into her guitar case, she was constantly receiving gifts of all sorts: chocolate, bottled water, cookies—even beer. People who enjoyed her music wanted to show their appreciation in any way they could. Even though people were generous, busking was far from easy. “Singing properly requires use of the entire body,” she said. “It is physically and emotionally draining.” After a day of busking, she would feel so exhausted she’d swear she was hungover. “Sometimes I felt like, why am I still doing this?” she confessed. “You go through these phases where people come up to you and tell you how great you are, and other times it dies down. Every time you hit that low and think, maybe I should change careers, these miracles would pop up.”

One such miracle was meeting Jack Johnson on the streets of Byron Bay, a beachside town on the northwestern side of Australia. Gentile routinely includes a Jack Johnson song in her setlist, but coincidentally, while performing one of his songs outside a café one day, he drove by and noticed her playing. He stopped his car, ran across the road, and complimented her on performing his song well. She was absolutely shocked, and barely recognized the well-known musician, thinking that it was too good to be true. It was then that Gentile vowed she would finish her degree and her album upon returning to Montreal. Last week, she checked “complete debut CD” off her to-do list. Her debut album, T.I.N.A.: Voice Yourself, takes melodic guitar chords and blends them with ethereal vocals, reggae beats, and gypsy violins. “It’s been life-changing, seeing people so grounded,” she said, reflecting on her journey. “Being on the streets, it connects you to people. I think we’re so disconnected from everybody. If you take the time to talk to someone on the street, there’s a whole different way of life” Her CD release is Oct. 13 at Kafein Café and Bar, 1429A Bishop St., from 6 to 8 p.m. Stop in to hear T.I.N.A.’s music and check out art by Concordia students Emie Gravel and Estelle de Pierre.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

mixtape

For some, Thanksgiving means a day off from classes, seeing fam-

ily and friends and reflecting on everything we are thankful for. For others, it’s turkey dump time. Thanksgiving is the first holiday of the school year and the perfect opportunity for students to return home and break up with their long distance sweethearts face to face. If you find yourself a victim of the turkey dump, your only consolation is to bury yourself in mountains of gravy, and mentally spite your ex by listening to angsty breakup tunes. Just remember things will get better. Look at my girl B (track 14) who, post-bozo, has a famous man and an even more famous pregnancé. Listen to the mixtape here: http://8tracks.com/the_concordian/turkey-dump

Turkey Dump Tunes Compiled by Stefani Forster Contributor

SIDE A/STEP 1: Wallow in self-pity

SIDE B/STEP 2: Get angry (and get over it)

1. “Left and Leaving” - The Weakerthans - Left and Leaving 2. “Someone Like You” - Adele - 21 3. “Marvin’s Room” - Drake - Take Care 4. “Breakeven” - The Script - The Script 5. “Everything I’m Not” - The Veronicas - The Secret Life of... 6. “Leave the Pieces” - The Wreckers - Single 7. “Dancing On My Own” - Robyn Body Talk Pt. 1 8. “Be Alright” - Vienne - Vienne 9. “Bad Dream” - Keane - Under The Iron Sea 10. “I’m Not Crying” - Flight of the Conchords - The Distant Future

11. “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad” - Brand New - Your Favorite Weapon 12. “Superman” - Eminem - The Eminem Show 13. “You Oughta Know” - Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill 14. “Irreplaceable” - Beyoncé - B’Day 15. “Through With You” - Maroon 5 Songs About Jane 16. “I’ve Been Thinkin’ About Something” - Hanson - Shout It Out 17. “Young Blood” - The Naked and Famous - Passive Me, Aggressive You 18. “Tears Dry on Their Own” - Amy Winehouse - Back To Black 19. “Song for the Dumped” - Ben Folds Five - Whatever And Ever Amen 20. “Fell in Love Without You” - Motion City Soundtrack - Even If It Kills Me

Quick Spins

Retro review

Wilco - The Whole Love (BMI; 2011)

Switchfoot – Vice Verses (Atlantic Records; 2011)

Dum Dum Girls - Only in Dreams (Sub Pop; 2011)

Led Zeppelin - Physical Grafitti (Swan Song; 1979)

With the release of The Whole Love, their eighth studio album, Jeff Tweedy and company show that they are capable of creating fresh music while retaining their familiar sound. The album opens up with an unprecedented Wilco track titled “Art of Almost.” The bass line carries the song’s melody while a string section and Nels Cline’s signature style adds necessary bite. This is all backed by a drum beat which evokes a dubstep feel in the song’s first half while providing hard-rock intensity in the song’s climactic ending. The remaining songs retreat back to the country, folk, and rock musicianship Wilco is known for. “I Might,” “Dawned On Me,” and “Born Alone” carry the upbeat feeling from the band’s previous album, Wilco (The Album), while songs like “Capitol City” and “One Sunday Morning” are reminiscent of the soft melodic sounds on A Ghost is Born.

Why should anyone care about Switchfoot in 2011? Long gone are the days when “Dare You To Move” played in endless loops on everyone’s iPod, and their split with major label Columbia in 2007 left them flying, largely, under the radar. But the fact remains that this often-labelled Christian rock band can still write some solid tunes. Their eighth studio album, Vice Verses is a pleasant collection of tracks which vary between upbeat rockers and mellow ballads. Much of the album was written around the band’s rhythm section, highlighting the bass and drum work of Tim Foreman and Chad Butler. A definite highlight is the groovy, spoken-word style of “Selling the News,” which is unfortunately the only real creative departure to be found on the record. Switchfoot didn’t reinvent themselves – to no one’s real surprise - but Vice Verses proves that they can still fill an album with catchy, well-written songs.

Only in Dreams is the sophomore release of indie music’s riot grrrl rag dolls, Dum Dum Girls. The album drew inspiration from frontwoman Kristen “Dee Dee” Gundred’s mother’s death and separation from her husband. This has definitely led to a new-found maturity among the girl group’s gloss and punk energy. Admittedly, most of the songs follow a familiar structure and after a listen to the first single “Bedroom Eyes,” you will get the gist of Only in Dreams’ other 10 tracks. This album certainly has a more produced sound, thanks in part to The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner’s aid. It has a more cohesive vocal contribution from the other girls, overall, which was lacking from their debut album, I Will Be. There is a glimmer of longevity under the surface of this melodic, hooky, retro garage-pop gem. It isn’t perfection, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Ambitious even by Led Zeppelin standards, Physical Graffiti is one dense record. The double album brought back the raw bluesy sound that made I and II the gold standard for half-pace head banging. “Custard Pie” sets the tone: the Clavinet riff drops like lead, and the swampy harmonica adds grit. In “Trampled Under Foot,” Jimmy Page is playful and sharp and John Paul Jones channels Motown, while “Bron-Y-Aur” is both a fingerpicking gem and a welcome moment of rest. Physical Graffiti is Zeppelin at their most indulgent. So it’s no surprise some tracks underwhelm. “Night Flight” never finds its footing and “Kashmir” opens with force but drones. Nevertheless, the highs of this album outweigh the lows. And, of course, there’s “In the Light.” The verse is impossibly heavy; the exuberance of the chorus contagious. It’s unheralded, but no less brilliant for it. Any “Best of Led Zeppelin” discussion can’t be complete without it. The same goes for this album.

Trial track: “The Whole Love”

Trial track: “Dark Horses”

Trial track: “Bedroom Eyes”

Trial track: “In the Light”

8.0/10

- Mike Beaton

7.5/10

- Robert Flis

7.0/10

- Paul Traunero

- Brandon Judd

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 profile

theconcordian

Andrew Guilbert Staff writer

It’s hard to Stand! when you’re living in a van

Four years ago, music legend Sly Stone lived in an impressively sized house in Napa Valley, complete with a plethora of cars and its very own backyard vineyard. Today, the funk pioneer known for such hits as “Dance to the Music” and “Everyday People” is homeless and living in a white camper van in L.A. Stone sued his manager for fraud in 2009 and blames his current woes on financial mismanagement and poor life decisions. “That’s why I got so much money, that there are so many people around, and that’s why I am in court. Millions of dollars!” Stone told the New York Post. “But now please tell everybody, please, to give me a job, play my music. I’m tired of all this shit, man.”

Betty White Hot

Golden Girl Betty White, 89, has recorded a rap video and vocals for a remixed version of British singer/songwriter Luciana’s “I’m Still Hot.” The octogenarian’s unusual foray into the music world was all done for a good cause: to raise money for the Los Angeles Zoo. “Music videos are not necessarily close to my heart, but animals always are, I’m always comfortable with them,” says White. In the video, White is seen atop a golden throne sporting a boa constrictor and surrounded by, in her own words, “nice young men […] that are built like little brick houses.” For those interested in hearing White rock the mic and helping out L.A.’s animals, the track is available for download on iTunes.

Stop hinting — smash the damn pumpkins already

Billy Corgan has rather obliquely stated that he may disband the Smashing Pumpkins if their next record does not make an impact in the music market. Corgan, who has been releasing songs digitally one at a time as part of the Pumpkins’ Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project, said the lack of response to Teargarden compelled him to go back to a traditional album format. Corgan hopes that Oceania, the band’s first studio release in four years, will revive interest in the Pumpkins. If not, he said “We’re going to have to step back and really evaluate where we’re going, because it’s a tremendous amount of energy to put out to just feel like you’re throwing a pebble in the ocean.”

Pumped up to kill?

A 14-year-old Phoenix, Arizona boy was arrested last week for threatening to go on a killing spree at his former middle school after the teenager commented on the YouTube video for Foster the People’s controversial radio hit “Pumped Up Kicks.” The song’s lyrics describe a “cowboy kid” who finds a gun in his father’s closet and whose chorus consists of a warning to the “other kids” to “outrun my gun.” According to Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jessie Spurgin, “He gave out a specific place and time for when it would happen, that made [the threat] a little more credible in our eyes.” A sawed-off shotgun was later found during a search of the teen’s home, where he lives with his grandfather.

SOFI is locked, loaded and ready to go solo now that sofi is under deadMau5’s winG, her Career is ready to take fliGht. Photo by Martin leGault-rioux

In the shadow of two giant mouse ears, SOFI’s music career shines Audrey Folliot Contributor

ou can do nothing but shine when you have talent, beauty and a great personality. SOFI has it all, so it’s no wonder she’s touring with Grammy-winning DJ and producer deadmau5. Describing herself as just Some Other Female Interest, SOFI (real name Sofia Toufa) has been singing for as long as she can remember. Back in her native Germany, she used to mastermind shows with her sister and perform them at school. Playing more and more in public, she stepped up her game. Her talent was recognized early. At 13, Toufa started spending time in recording studios, working with producers and playing in clubs with well-known bands in Germany, all the while keeping up with her schoolwork. Her career seemed to launch itself. “It was never an epiphany like ‘Oh my god, this is what I want to do’ you know,” Toufa said. “I think it’s just one of those things that just chooses you.” Since she moved to Los Angeles around five years ago, Toufa has become somewhat of an ‘entertainment trifecta,’ working as a singer, dancer, and actor. And not only is she multi-talented, she’s been involved with some big names. Toufa was singing and choreographing on Avril Lavigne’s The Best Damn Thing tour, and she was also on Britney Spears’ Circus tour as a backup vocalist. In 2007, Toufa met deadmau5, an electronic producer from Toronto known for the gigantic mouse head he wears in shows, and they recorded a few songs together. Last February, deadmau5 launched his North American Meowingtons Hax tour and took Toufa under his wing. After a number of sold-out shows in the United States, the tour stopped in Montreal for three straight nights of bass-pumping

performances at Metropolis. “With deadmau5, it’s almost like his fans are religiously in love with him, it’s like a cult,” Toufa said, admitting that she’s always impressed to see how the crowd responds to the music as she watches it back on video after the performance. “This is so freaking crazy,” she exclaimed. “There’s a MOUSE performing and everyone’s freaking out!” There are no better words to describe the atmosphere of that performance. People ages 16 to over 40 were dancing and screaming, and some people managed to bodysurf over the entire crowd without even getting injured. The gigantic 3D cube upon which deadmau5 was performing displayed amazing visual and lighting effects, but the most impressive thing was seeing how much time deadmau5’s fans had spent building themselves gigantic mouse heads just like his. It’s a testament to the cult of people

who follow his music. When Toufa took the stage to perform her two songs, “Sofi Needs A Ladder” and “One Trick Pony” from deadmau5’s 4x4=12, alongside deadmau5, the crowd went hysterical. Including the opening acts, the show went on for five full hours, yet the crowd kept cheering for more. Now that she’s with deadmau5, Toufa is driving in the fast lane. Her first single “Bring out the Devil,” which was released on deadmau5’s label, “mau5trap,” featured DJ Skillrex and has made waves with online music bloggers and critics. On Oct. 24, SOFI releases her first EP, Locked and Loaded, for which she wrote all the lyrics and composed the vocal arrangements. Toufa described the album as a “cool, heavy sounding EP with soft melodies,” and after working with big industry names like Noisia, Skillrex, Millions Like Us and Kill the Noise, she’s definitely locked, loaded and ready to go.

The Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program (CVAP) is currently recruiting Concordia University students for summer 2012. We are a fee levy and non-profit organization supporting community led development in Gulu, Uganda. Volunteers travel for a period of two months- either May and June or July and August. Come volunteer with us! Deadline to apply is November 1st Information sessions: October 13th and 14th(check our website for locations) www.ConcordiaVolunteers.org or email us at info@concordiavolunteers.org Cvap Uganda

Get involved in your global community!

sports

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Write to the editor: sports@theconcordian.com Rugby

Concordia beats McGill to keep Kelly-Anne Drummond Cup

The Concordia Stingers sprinted their way to a 17-7 victory over McGill in the Kelly-Anne Drummond Cup on Friday. The Stingers are now 3-1 on the year. Photo by Navneet Pall

Stingers women win third game in a row Paolo Mingarelli Staff writer The Concordia Stingers were able to retain the Kelly-Anne Drummond Cup with a 17-7 victory over crosstown rival McGill at home on Friday night. “I’m just really glad we could do it again for Kelly-Anne,” said Stingers’ captain Jackie Tittley. The game honoured the former Stingers’ rugby player who was murdered by her boyfriend in 2004. Though the Stingers were able to outscore McGill in the first half, scoring two tries to McGill’s one, the game was truly won in the second half, with credit being given to a suffocating Stingers’ defence. The Stingers would not concede a point, while

offensively they were able to put five of their own on the board, denying any chance of a McGill comeback. “Defensively it’s hard to play against that much pressure for 35 out of the 40 minutes but we had a lot of resilience,” said Stingers coach Graeme McGravie. “We came right back and scored and I couldn’t be happier with the result.” Although the ball was often in possession of the Concordia side during the first half, there were ample chances where the Stingers came away with no points. These mistakes and penalties allowed McGill to hang around longer than McGravie would have liked. “We left two tries on the field in the first half because we didn’t execute,” he said. “We got white-line fever that almost came back to haunt us because (McGill) did not go away.” Concordia was pressured constantly and throughout the game as McGill was

knocking on the door of the try zone. Many of the McGill chances were crash plays provided by ruck-wins and penalties against the Stingers. However, every time they were faced with a challenge, the Stingers were able to put up a wall defensively. “In moments we could have crumbled and [fallen], but we didn’t and I think everybody should be really proud of themselves” said Stingers’ second-row Sarah Nesbitt. Nesbitt showcased astonishing skill and effort during the entire 80 minutes. She was able to steal many of the McGill lineout set plays. Nesbitt also scored a try during the first half of a lineout that became a maul in which the forward pack for Concordia simply out powered the opposition. Nesbitt’s most important play though was made on the defensive side of the ball. With 23 minutes remaining in the second half and with Concordia clinging to a 12-7 lead, Nesbitt made a game-saving tackle to

force a McGill player out of bounds at the one-yard line. McGill did make other attempts at breaking the Concordia defence. Several times the McGill outside centre would hit gaps, but would never make it far enough to cause any trouble as the Stingers back three would catch up to any runs towards their end. “We work on it a lot at practice, but the back three played a hell of a game. Very exciting and very positive part for us,” said McGravie. Friday’s win comes after a game in Ottawa where, even though the Stingers emerged victorious 39-5, the squad was not particularly proud with their performance. “I think the sheer fact we can bounce back from that messy game in Ottawa and play the way we did tonight demonstrates a lot of character for our team,” said Tittley. The Stingers will face Laval on Sunday, Oct. 9 at 1 p.m. in Quebec City.

theconcordian

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 hockey

Concordia hopes to heat up on the ice this season

eriC begin (12) will need To STep up on deFenCe For The STingerS. phoTo by Cindy lopez

Both the men’s and women’s hockey teams are expecting improvement Julian Mei Sports editor

Andrew Maggio Contributor

Men’s team Coming into the 2011-12 season, the Concordia Stingers men’s hockey team has reloaded and appears recharged as they begin the long journey towards league supremacy. After a 12-16 record and a first round playoff exit to UQTR last season, the Stingers are looking to improve. If the Stingers have learned anything from last year it’s that they need to play consistently for an entire season. Last year, Concordia started the season 9-3 before going on a seven game losing streak where the Stingers were outscored 48-21, which included a humiliating 11-2 loss at Lakehead. Needless to say, Concordia has to improve defensively. The Stingers allowed the second most goals in their conference last year, negating the fact that they were one of the best teams offensively. Returning defenceman Eric Begin will be heavily relied on to shut down other teams’ top units and be a leader for the Stingers. Concordia will also have a lot of fresh faces on the ice this season which may not necessarily be a bad thing. The biggest addition for the Stingers will be in the crease. Nicholas Champion joins the Stingers after a successful career playing in the QMJHL. Champion will be a likely improvement over last year’s starting goalie, Maxime Joyal, who posted an ugly 4.95 goals against average and .869 save percentage. “A lot of new faces have joined our ranks this year, and the energy on the ice and in the room is as positive as I’ve ever seen it,” said secondyear winger Roberto Mormina. “If we do the little things right and we trust each other to make the right decisions on and off the ice, we’re going to have a very successful season.” Despite recent struggles, the entire team remains optimistic. “We’re looking forward to a great season,” said defenceman Michael Blundon. “We’ve got a good group of veterans coming back and an exciting group of rookies. We’ve had a good preseason and we are excited for the regular season to start.” The Stingers haven’t posted a record above

.500 since the 2008-09 season and have not won a playoff round in a decade. Fortunately for the Stingers though, once the puck drops on a new season, there is another chance to erase history. Women’s team Coming into the 2011-12 season, the Concordia Stingers men’s hockey team has reloaded and appears recharged as they begin the long journey towards league supremacy. After a 12-16 record and a first round playoff exit to UQTR last season, the Stingers are looking to improve. If the Stingers have learned anything from last year it’s that they need to play consistently for an entire season. Last year, Concordia started the season 9-3 before going on a seven game losing streak where the Stingers were outscored 48-21, which included a humiliating 11-2 loss at Lakehead. Needless to say, Concordia has to improve defensively. The Stingers allowed the second most goals in their conference last year, negating the fact that they were one of the best teams offensively. Returning defenceman Eric Begin will be heavily relied on to shut down other teams’ top units and be a leader for the Stingers. Concordia will also have a lot of fresh faces on the ice this season which may not necessarily be a bad thing. The biggest addition for the Stingers will be in the crease. Nicholas Champion joins the Stingers after a successful career playing in the QMJHL. Champion will be a likely improvement over last year’s starting goalie, Maxime Joyal, who posted an ugly 4.95 goals against average and .869 save percentage. “A lot of new faces have joined our ranks this year, and the energy on the ice and in the room is as positive as I’ve ever seen it,” said second-year winger Roberto Mormina. “If we do the little things right and we trust each other to make the right decisions on and off the ice, we’re going to have a very successful season.” Despite recent struggles, the entire team remains optimistic. “We’re looking forward to a great season,” said defenceman Michael Blundon. “We’ve got a good group of veterans coming back and an exciting group of rookies. We’ve had a good pre-season and we are excited for the regular season to start.” The Stingers haven’t posted a record above .500 since the 2008-09 season and have not won a playoff round in a decade. Fortunately for the Stingers though, once the puck drops on a new season, there is another chance to erase history.

Sports briefs

Julian Mei Sports editor

Football A superb Rouge et Or defence and heavy gusts of wind made life hell for the Stingers offence Sunday in Quebec City. The Stingers managed just two first downs the entire game, on an afternoon they’d do best to forget. Reid Quest, after throwing for 434 yards last week against Sherbrooke, managed just 55 yards on 9-for-22 passing with one interception in just his second career start. Quest was also sacked six times on the day. The Stingers’ ground game wasn’t much better, rushing the ball 21 times for just 55 yards. On the other side of the ball Rouge et Or running back Sébastien Lévesque ran wild against the Stingers, amassing 192 yards and a touchdown on 26 carries. Though Concordia led 4-0 early the Stingers simply didn’t have the fire power to compete on the road against the first-ranked Rouge et Or. Shortly after the Stingers took the 4-0 lead a Reid Quest interception by Arnaud Gascon-Nadon was returned 19 yards for a touchdown, giving Laval a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. With the win Laval remains perfect in the season while the Stingers drop to 2-3 and prepare to face McGill at home this Saturday at 1 p.m.

Laval

Concordia

Men’s rugby Rainy weather on Friday night caused the Concordia offence to dry up in an 8-0 defeat at the hands of the Bishop’s Gaiters. The Stingers found themselves down 3-0 early in the game but had a golden opportunity to tie or take the lead 15 minutes later, just a few metres out of the try area. The Stingers elected to go for the try rather than just convert an easy kick for three points. However, Concordia couldn’t get through Bishop’s defence, and turned the ball over without scoring any points. Bishop’s would score an unconverted try before halftime to stretch the score to 8-0. The weather deteriorated further in the second half which made ball handling difficult and thus making a Stingers’ comeback more improbable. The Stingers would pressure the Gaiters occasionally but each time it seemed a mishandling of the ball or a penalty would turn the possession over to Bishop’s. “The effort was there,” said head coach Clive Gibson. “Unfortunately the team has just been unable to finish. Hopefully the next two weeks off will allow us to perfect some things before the playoffs.”

Bishops

Concordia

Baseball Even though the Stingers clinched first place last week they were determined not to “back in” to the playoffs. The Stingers swept their final doubleheader of the season convincingly, trampling John Abbott College 13-1 in the first game, and 4-2 in the second, playing Saturday in cold rainy conditions. Manager Howard Schwartz wanted to get

all of his starting pitchers some limited action before the playoffs, so Alex Kechayan, Mat Jacobson, André Legarde and Brandon Berkovits combined to hold John Abbott to just three runs in two games. Kechayan and Jacobson were the pitchers of decision, both picking up wins. The two players combined to go 9-0 this season in what Schwartz expected to be a transitional year for the Stingers’ pitching staff. “Jacobson is undefeated in his career still,” said Schwartz. “This was definitely his breakout year, though, and it’s when we needed him to come up big.” The Stingers will begin their pursuit of a national title on Oct. 9 at noon when the playoffs begin. Their opponent has yet to be determined, but Concordia will have homefield advantage for the first two games of their best-of-three series.

Concordia

John Abbott

Women’s soccer Concordia outplayed both Bishop’s and UQTR on the road this weekend, but unfortunately they were unable to pick up a win. In the game against Bishop’s, Concordia out shot the Gaiters 18-5 but found themselves trailing after Bishop’s scored in the 68th minute on a penalty kick. Staring down at another tough defeat the Stingers were able to answer in the 75th minute when Jennifer Duff scored for the Stingers on a penalty kick of her own, allowing the Stingers to salvage a draw and pickup a single point. The story on Sunday was reverse. Duff again scored on a penalty kick in the 60th minute to give Concordia a 1-0 lead. However, UQTR was able to answer with a late goal of their own in the 78th minute. The two draws bring the Stingers’ record to 1-5-2 on the year.

Friday

Concordia

Bishop’s

Sunday

Concordia

UQTR

Men’s soccer The disastrous season for the Concordia men’s soccer team continued on Sunday in TroisRivières. After playing what most coaches and players believed to be their worst game of the season last weekend against Sherbrooke, the Stingers were unable to muster a single goal on the road. Making the loss more depressing is that UQTR, like Concordia, is one of the weaker teams in the conference and a game the Stingers would have been expecting to get points out of. The loss drops Concordia’s record to 1-5-1. The Stingers have allowed the most goals against in the league and are now in sole possession of last place.

UQTR

Concordia

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

football

Quest unseats Morsink for the QB job The Stingers will be Quest’s team, for now Stefano Mocella Staff writer The Concordia Stingers have given quarterback Reid Quest the keys to the 2011 season. Terrance Morsink, who started in all but one of the Stingers’ games last season and started for the first three games of the 2011 season, is now on the sidelines watching Quest run the offence. Quest saw some playing time in the first three games, getting reps against Laval, and playing in relief of Morsink versus St. Francis Xavier after Morsink threw six straight incompletions to open the game. Quest’s first start came against Sherbrooke in week four, where he showed some encouraging signs. Despite falling short in the 33-26 loss to Sherbrooke, Quest completed 34 of 51 passes for 434 yards, two touchdowns and an interception against one of the top teams in the province. Coach Gerry McGrath said the switch at quarterback was best for the team: “Terrance has been a little inconsistent and we felt Reid was coming along well. The team responded well to Reid. Terrance is capable but he’s struggled at times.” A switch at quarterback is a tough decision to make, with not knowing how players will respond. McGrath said that Morsink was upset but accepting of the decision. “He’s a competitive young man and I’d be upset if he wasn’t upset,” said McGrath. “He wants to play, he wants to be the guy, but everybody has to earn their position on this team, and you have to play at a high level to keep your position. We’re certainly not writing him off though, we still believe in him.” Morsink declined to comment for this

QuarTerbaCKS reid QueST (leFT) and Troy MCCuSKer TalK wiTh Qb CoaCh Sean dougherTy. QueST iS The Man For now. phoTo by navneeT pall story. Quest is in his first season and still learning the offence, but the coaches showed confidence in him. He said that the conversation in which he was given the starting job was short: “Coach McGrath just pulled me aside and told me I’d be getting the start against Sherbrooke. It was as simple as that.” The good news for the Stingers is that there are no hard feelings between Morsink and Quest. In fact, Quest says that Morsink has helped him tremendously since he joined the team. “Terrance is one of my best friends on the team,” said Quest. “He’s helped me out with the playbook and reading defences, so I’m really grateful for how he helped me.” The Stingers are trying to get back to

the playoffs after missing them last season, finishing with a 4-5 record. They’ve shown so far this year that they can compete with most teams in their conference, but being competitive and winning are two different things. If the Stingers expect to win, they’ll need strong play at quarterback whether it’s from Quest or Morsink. Neither man played well against Laval on Sunday, though. Quest was 9-for-22 for just 51 yards passing while Morsink was 0-for-4 in his limited action. Starting jobs at quarterback are never completely safe. Any coach will put in the quarterback who he feels gives his team the best chance to win. Quest is the man for now, but he realizes that he must keep his play at a

Événements

high level to keep his starting job. “I have to stay calm and collected in the pocket,” said Quest. “We have a lot of playmakers on this team, so I just have to make the right reads, get our receivers the ball and make the proper decisions.” The Stingers still have a chance at the playoffs. They have two games remaining against McGill and have already got their games (though they were losses) against top-ranked Laval out of the way. The Stingers will likely be in the playoff hunt with Laval, Sherbrooke and Montréal, but who will be steering the ship into the postseason remains a question mark. The Stingers face the McGill Redmen on Oct. 8 at 1 p.m.

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opinions 20

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Write to the editor: opinions@theconcordian.com editorial

So much for being innovative The BoG’s decision to cut student reps goes against everything ConU stands for Last Wednesday, Concordia’s Board of Governors, the highest governing body at the university, voted 27-7 to adopt a recommendation that will reduce the BoG from 40 to 25 seats as of July 1, 2012. In the process, the board also voted to reduce undergraduate student representation from four to one, as well as adding a second “alternate” student governor who will have speaking rights only. This decision is a total slap in the face to undergraduate students, who represent the largest faction of the campus community, and goes against the board’s own goals of increasing transparency and accountability within Concordia’s flawed governance structure. As was made clear in a letter sent by student governors to the Board’s ad hoc governance committee in August, the recommendation stemming from both the committee and the Shapiro Report does not properly reflect the sheer number of voices that student governors represent at the Board level. The letter indicated that should the Board want to maintain the current level of undergraduate representation, “theoretically there would be 3.125 student representatives, or one student for every 14,000 students.” The majority of BoG members didn’t listen, to the surprise of no one. Because BoG chair Peter Kruyt called for a secret ballot vote on the composition recommendations— not a very transparent move—it is difficult to really know the identity of the two governors who voted alongside the four undergraduate governors and one graduate student governor in opposing the recommendation. Prior to the vote, the ad hoc governance committee’s chair Me Rita de Santis described how her committee had “elegantly” come with a solution to the undergrad representation dilemma by providing undergrads with one undergrad governor and one “alternate.” Directing her comments to the student governors sitting at the same table, de Santis told them “your voice is not going down by that much,” and reminded them that by shrinking the board’s size and ultimately student representation, Concordia’s board of governors will be on par with similar bodies at other Canadian universities. But what exactly is so great about that? Concordia’s

letters

Re: Homeschooling debate, Vol. 29 issue 5 As a former homeschooled student now studying towards obtaining my BA in Psychology at Concordia, I was happy to see Sandra Martin-Chang’s study on homeschooling. I was also eager to read the education column in last week’s issue of the Concordian, only to put away the newspaper feeling like homeschooling was yet again misunderstood and misrepresented. While both authors are entitled to their opinion, I would like to challenge it by sharing my own take on the issue. Joseph E. Leger wrote about his own experience as a homeschooler raised in a rural, conservative Christian family where he was isolated from other children, leading him to become socially awkward. When reading about his experience, we must remember that not everyone lives in a conservative Christian family in an isolated region; many of us live in large cities where we are in constant

Graphic by Katie Brioux

own mission statement, easily found on its website, says that the institution “is one of Canada’s most innovative and diverse, comprehensive universities.” Since when does doing what everyone else is doing make a university innovative? The glowing statement on the website further reads that “early in the new millennium, the world faces extraordinary challenges—ones that are already generating big thinking at Concordia.” Clearly the “big thinking” ideal does not apply to the Board of Governors and its own set of “challenges.” During last Wednesday’s meeting, external governor Lillian Vineberg, who finally saw fit to step down after 17 years on the Board, said that students should not be so concerned over losing voices, because “all” governors ultimately represent the interests of all members of the campus community, including students. If this were indeed the case and all governors were actually listening to students’

interaction with people outside our family, as well as in secular households. Three different variables seem to have affected Leger’s social development: homeschooling, a controlled environment, and geographical location. Blaming homeschooling alone seems hardly fair; of all the homeschoolers I’ve met, very few seemed socially awkward. While I feel for Leger’s situation and can see where he is coming from, I find that Shereen Rafea’s article merely repeated the same arguments that have been used against homeschooling for years. While she makes a valid point regarding the effects of the self-selectivity of the study on the pool of high-performing home-educated children that it assessed, the disparity is at least partially offset by the fact that the public-schooled students were also self-selected. Rafea also says that when poorly managed, homeschooling can set back a child academically. This is also true, but implying that school is the panacea to prevent children from falling behind is drastically inaccurate. Underfunded and overcrowded schools, poor educators, negative social factors (including bullying and its serious psychological

concerns, perhaps the BoG would not have been in such a hurry to dole out severance packages totalling $2 million to ousted Concordia presidents Claude Lajeunesse and Judith Woodsworth, which is what really got the Board into so much trouble in the first place. Something for Vineberg and her former colleagues on the Board to think about. But regardless if the undergrads have one governor, four governors, or 10 governors, it has become more than obvious that there is very little respect for them on the Board, at least where the chair, Peter Kruyt, is concerned. The chair has the authority to call on governors to speak, but also to silence them, and it was usually the latter action that Kruyt employed throughout last Wednesday’s meeting when student governors tried to speak up. First of all, it is heartening to see that this year’s group of student governors—Laura Beach, AJ West, Cameron Monagle, and Lex Gill for the undergrads and Erik Chevrier for the grads—is much more vocal at the board level than their predecessors, and truly did their best to sway the Board’s decision on composition. But while Kruyt may see them differently, the five students mentioned above are still governors, and that title earns them the same respect and time at the microphone afforded to their much older colleagues. Rita de Santis in particular spoke for nearly an hour, never once interrupted by the chair. But when it came to student governors, they were cut off, told to “keep it short” or, in at least one instance, had their microphone turned off. Throughout last year, students—again, the largest faction of the campus community—saw themselves shut out of important contract negotiations, kept in the dark about the payment of severance packages to fired administrators and essentially told their opinion did not carry much weight. With the Shapiro Report’s 38 recommendations on reforming governance at Concordia, released last June, there was for a time a slight glimmer of hope that the university was on its way to healing old wounds and that maybe students would finally be given a more active role in the running of the university. But with the vote cast at last Wednesday’s Board of Governors meeting, it is clear that not much has changed within Concordia’s administration. If anything, the situation has become much worse. Maybe it is time to update the mission statement.

consequences), inflexible curriculum, and the many distractions of the school environment are not the optimal conditions for children to excel. The many studies done support the hypothesis that homeschooling serves children’s academic needs exceptionally well—especially when compared to Quebec’s despairingly low five-year graduation rate, which was recently reported by the Gazette to be as low as 61 per cent for 2008-2009. In the United States, colleges are highly appreciative of, and sometimes even actively recruit homeschoolers due to their solid academic background and their high level of motivation. The next point that Rafea brings up is children’s socialization and the importance of being exposed to different people and opinions. Socialization can take place through many mediums: playing with neighbourhood friends, enrolling in extracurricular activities, watching TV and even going to the grocery store are all ways to introduce children to social norms, and homeschooling does not preclude a child from participating in these activities.

Regarding exposing children to diversity of opinion, due to being out into the world and not in a classroom with 30 other children their age, homeschoolers tend to have many opportunities to learn about other people’s point of view on various issues. I cannot count the number of enlightening discussions I have had about politics, social issues, religion and other polarizing topics with many different people on both sides of the spectrum. In fact, I have found my homeschooled peers to be much more aware of important world issues than my public-schooled peers. Last but not least, Rafea says that education is “just too important to experiment with.” I could not agree with her more, and that is why I consider myself fortunate to have been educated in a customized and carefully-chosen manner (homeschooling has been around for at least 40 years) instead of being subjected to the Ministry of Education’s experiments with a seemingly neverending stream of reforms—which even teachers are speaking out against. Alix Clara Haeberle-Savard Psychology

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

BoG

Concordia is failing us when we

can’t get in a room for a meeting Sarah Deshaies Chief copy editor

The Board of Governors has adopted several measures in order to reform itself after last year’s chaos, and the university immediately patted itself on the back for a job well done. But it’s evident that despite this hopeful new era, some things are still very wrong about this school and the way it governs itself. And you don’t need to necessarily look to a belittling chairperson, or patronizing board members, or upset students to catch this. It’s in the little things, like how Concordia cannot be bothered to accommodate a few extra bodies in a room. Last Wednesday, I skipped my morning class and headed downtown to catch the drama that was going to be the Board of Governors meeting. BoG starts early, and space is limited, so if you’re going as an observer, you need to queue for it like it’s a midnight Star Wars theatrical release. Arriving shortly after 8:30 a.m., I knew I had missed my chance to grab a coveted audience seat in EV-2.260. The 20 observer seats were filled with students, media and staff. I headed regardless to the meeting room in order to get the location of the overflow room in order to catch the meeting outside of what I could read on Twitter. The four security guards vigilantly patrolling an empty hallway outside the board meeting, which is closed off to you by a pane of frosted glass, redirected me to a room in the Hall building. I grumbled and huffed and puffed my way up the escalators, pissed off to be shuttled off to another corner of the campus in order to catch the going-ons of what was a highly important meeting for students. This sad little room, tucked away down a

corridor on the sixth floor, is used for overflow—or, for all the people who don’t make it into the meeting but still want to catch the bullshit transpiring there. Present was another security official, and a few students and a professor quietly watching the low-quality feed projected onto a screen, snickering or tisking at various moments. The heated debates progressed through the meeting, and I realized that our version of the board meeting was being censored by the location of the camera, and the limitations of the microphones. If a camera was pointed at a speaker, you could not observe the behaviour of the rest of the people in the room; if someone new spoke, and the IITS guy didn’t react fast enough to turn up their mic, you missed their remarks.

“

The university needs to make BoG room accessible

If, among all our brand new buildings, no one at Concordia can be bothered

to design a meeting room that can accommodate more than 20 observers,

then at the very least, we need to set up overflow

rooms that are close to the actual action.

You’re watching a meeting unfold through the lens of a technician, and it’s unfair. Someone like student Alex Matak heckles BoG chair Peter Kruyt, and you can barely hear her speak. CSU president Lex Gill’s mic was cut off at one point, certainly to stop her from questioning Kruyt. Laura Glover, a theatre and political science student, was one of the students who missed getting a ticket in order to snag a seat at BoG. She found herself in the overflow room.

“I think my general feeling is that there shouldn’t be an overflow room at all,” she said. “I think that if the board is really interested in building a better Concordia for students, they should be welcoming participants and actively seeking student input and at the very least, holding meetings in a room that can accommodate as many students as possible.” I was pissed off at this meeting, more so than any other of the BoG meetings I’ve attended. These meetings are now always held on the second floor of the EV building in 2.660. I’ve comfortably gone to overflow meetings in a stylish room just below 2.660 on previous occasions; you still have to watch through a livefeed (when it works) but at least you’re in the same building as the BoG. I checked that room on my way in last week, to see if the overflow room was there, or if perhaps a class was taking place could excuse its lack of use. It was empty. If scheduling permits, why can’t all BoG overflow rooms happen in that easy-to-access room below? I asked the four security guards hanging around outside the BoG that day, and they naturally had no answer. Danielle Tessier, secretary to the BoG, declined to answer my question and forwarded me to university spokesperson Chris Mota. In her experience, the roomy, accessible space in the EV has been used for “exceptional cases where there was an expectation of large numbers of people having to be diverted from the main room at the last minute.” Since attendance numbers have slipped down again, the regular room in Hall is being used again. Mota said that this room has been used for years; it’s available, and that the AV quality is good. These are good points, but I’m sure the university sees another advantage in it; I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Concordia prefers shunting casual observers into another building where they can’t be a distraction or protest, and where they can get a censored version of events. Essentially, we’re being cut off from the higher actions of the BoG. To Glover as well, it’s a sign of how the university regards students: “I do think that there

is just an overwhelming feeling that students aren’t welcome.” Erik Chevrier, governor and graduate student representative, has the right idea, if his fellow governors pay any attention to him. Chevrier would like to make the BoG more transparent, and his proposal, which was pushed to October’s meeting, calls for a number of measures, including a room that seats no less than 40 seats, and for CUTV to film the meetings. After a big hullabaloo last year, CUTV managed to start filming CSU council meetings, which are a hundred times more caustic than BoG meetings. If CSU council kids can handle being filmed, I’m sure the BoG, which is populated by many a high-profile community member, can. I’ll be sure to get my keister out of bed and down on time so I can see with my own eyes how the BoG handles Chevrier’s proposal. In last week’s issue, we wrote about how the CSU needs to have a better, more spacious meeting space, potentially at Loyola. This problem clearly applies to the BoG; Concordia’s builders and planners, in a move worthy of great stupidity, apparently never planned for board and council meetings that would require an audience bigger than 20. I’m asking to be able to sit in on a meeting without having to arrive 30 minutes early. I don’t want to watch people deliberate the fate of our school on a screen, and I don’t want to be redirected away by security guards. If a student (rightly) heckles a belligerent Peter Kruyt, who is never made available for interviews, I’d love to witness it with my own eyes. If, among all our brand new buildings, no one at Concordia can be bothered to design a meeting room that can accommodate more than 20 observers, then at the very least, we need to set up overflow rooms that are close to the actual action—without this, Concordia University continues to perpetuate a lack of regard for students and casual observers’ interests, and no amount of motions and wastefully expensive committees and reports will fix this simple problem.

conflict

With great power comes great responsibility Canada’s role in Libya shows we’re here to help world peace George Menexis Contributor The Canadian government has decided to extend its military mission in Libya until December 2011, bringing its involvement in the country to a total of nine months. “Canada’s role in Libya is not yet done. We are committed to supporting the Libyan people as they transition to a democracy— one that respects freedom, human rights and the rule of law,” said Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird when the mission was extended. But the big question remains: should Canada continue to play a role in Libya? Only two Libyan towns remain Gadhafistrongholds: Sirte and Bani Walid. The former dictator’s remaining fighters there are

putting the lives of thousands of civilians at risk, and hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid, said Defence Minister Peter MacKay. Canada’s military reputation is changing drastically on the international level. “Canada has to be ready to defend itself in any and all threats,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said. When elected in 2006, he promised to make the Canadian military a top priority, spending over $15 billion on the Canadian military alone. The money is being used to purchase war trucks, helicopters, C-17 transport planes, and replacing aging fleets. Recently, Harper has put in another $16 billion towards stealth fighter jets and a new helicopter base camp in British Columbia., as well as replacing 28 cyclones (twin-engine helicopters) with top-of-the-line models. It is clear that our military is getting a very expensive makeover. with many critics accusing Harper of putting taxpayers’

money to violent use. However, let’s not kid ourselves; the Canadian army used to be a laughing matter. Now, it’s a defence force to be respected. But none of these resources will be used frivolously; when announcing the new $15 million base in B.C. last February, Harper said that Canada “has never gone and will never go looking for trouble.” Canada, it seems, is trying to follow along the steps of the mighty United States of America by going to Libya. What better way to start than with a powerful army? With the majority government Harper earned last May, we can foresee Canada’s international involvement in a few years. It looks like the country will become, along with the United States, powerful allies for countries where the population is suffering from a lack of human rights. Libyans are being deprived of their human rights, and Canada needs to be there to support their cause. We have the power to do

a lot on the international scene right now. Even before the beginning of Harper’s regime, Canada had an important role internationally. Now, however, the country has gone from being passive to being actively engaged in military missions internationally. Canada should stay in Libya until its citizens receive the rights and democratic freedoms they deserve. “The embattled people of Libya have challenged us: do we believe in freedom, or do we just say we believe in freedom?” said Harper at the start of Canada’s mission in Libya. Canada’s new international reputation gives our country new responsibilities: to protect and serve not only our own country, but also countries that need it the most. Yes, there are sacrifices we, as a nation state, must make. These sacrifices have now become necessary to the improvement of a foreseeable world peace among nations. Let’s start with Libya.

theconcordian

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

animal abuse

We’re the best—at abusing animals Recent puppy mill raid highlights Quebec’s animals rights fail Catlin Spencer Contributor Quebec has the worst animal welfare laws in all of Canada, and despite public outcry and persuasion from animal welfare advocates, laws and regulations have yet to be brought up to par with our neighbouring provinces. Our province was named last May as one of the best places in Canada to be an animal abuser, along with Alberta, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, in the 2011 annual report released by Animal Legal Defence Fund. The American organization’s report analyzes legislation that limits animal cruelty, and found Quebec lacking. New regulations are being implemented too slowly and sometimes not at all. For example, in July, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ) released new resolutions based on two-and-a-half years worth of propositions and study to the Animal Health Protection Act from veterinarians, animal welfare experts, and industry representatives. Among the resolutions accepted and implemented, the SCPA pointed out seriously critical points that were not included in the MAPAQ’s update such as veterinary care, a maximum number of breeding dogs per facility, enrichment for dogs and cats confined to cages for extended periods of time and loopholes in euthanasia methods. “Because of the lack of a proper legislation, a lot of puppy mills have settled down in Quebec, generating filthy conditions, excessive breeding, sick puppies and, more generally, basic cruelty to animals,” said Martine Lachance, director of the International Research Group in Animal Law at

Quebec needs stricter animal welfare laws in order to protect puppies like these. Photo courtesy of the Humane Society of Canada UQAM, in 2007. The influential animal rights advocate was speaking to Voiceless, an animal rights group. Problematic to her is also the lack of a central organization in Quebec or Canada. Other propositions have been denied completely outright. Recently, Michael O’Sullivan of the Humane Society of Canada suggested mandatory sentencing for offenders in animal cruelty cases. While federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson says that animal cruelty is “totally unacceptable” to both Canadian society and his government, he said there are no plans to implement this proposal.

According to the CBC, Quebec has a draft of new animal welfare regulations designed to crack down on puppy mills by putting in law minimum standards for cleanliness and care, but who knows when these proposals will actually take place. We need stricter laws and resolutions in Quebec, and we need them now. As it stands, a puppy mill kennel operator in Quebec can expect to face fines up to $1,200 (as was the case for the operator of the Clarendon kennel in which 527 dogs were seized this month). That’s roughly $2.25 per dog. In Ontario, the same offence would land the kennel operator in jail for two

years, face fines up to $60,000 and receive a lifetime ownership ban. Send them to prison and see how they like being in a cage. While MAPAQ Minister Pierre Corbeil says that fines will be increased to $10,000 or $25,000 for first time offenders, it is still far from being as much as a deterrent as Ontario’s laws. Additional jail time is also necessary, on top of higher fines, as a way of preventing offenders from re-offending. However, the damage caused by Quebec’s lax animal welfare laws is already brutal. For how long does Quebec want to be known as the puppy mill capital of North America?

deportation

Paola Ortiz needs real ‘adequate support’ Canada’s reputation as welcoming is tarnished Erica Commisso Contributor Canada is renowned for its so-called multicultural and welcoming policy with immigrants. This, however, may not hold true with the recent deportation of Paola Ortiz, a 31-year-old woman ordered to return to Mexico. Amid protests to allow Ortiz to remain in Montreal with her children and new husband, who are Canadian citizens, the Federal Court of Canada recently denied suspension of her deportation despite another appeal by Ortiz’s lawyers. Ortiz claims that her ex-husband in Mexico is abusive and will have her killed upon her return, but Canadian officials decided to deport her anyway. From a humanitarian perspective, what does this say about Canada? Officials claim that Ortiz “can receive adequate support in Mexico” to stop the abuse. With Ortiz claiming refugee status in Canada in 2006 and later applying to be a permanent Canadian resident, though, she clearly feels this is not true. She found a full-time job and for once, she said, lives “a normal life without violence.” She fled everything she knew to start over. She applied for permanent residency to be “saved” from

her abusive relationship and was turned down. Ortiz must leave behind her two children. The conscious decision to leave a four-year-old awaiting surgery for a hearing disability and a two-year-old with autism and not bring them with her to Mexico can only prove her faith that this country is a safer place than home. What about her ex, a Mexican police officer? The Immigration Review Board is under pressure to provide a better explanation than their overused excuse that Ortiz “can receive adequate support” to prevent her from harm. They say that she can be treated for the conjugal violence she was subjected to. This same country, however, treated her for post-traumatic stress after she fled Mexico and years of abuse from many parties, including her ex-husband, who is immune from prosecution because he is a police officer. How can a country that claims to be “hard on crime” and seek equal justice seriously feel that an inability to prosecute a criminal can be classified as “adequate support”? What kind of support can be defined as “adequate”? The term remains undefined. It is also interesting to consider that, just under two years ago, a Mexican woman was deported from Canada, only to be killed by drug traffickers she had tried to evade in Canada. Furthermore, a family that had applied for asylum but was denied by Canadian officials returned on Sept. 22 after their deportation

was overturned. It seems that none of this was considered in Ortiz’s case. Daniel Veron, of Solidarity Across Borders, says that Ortiz’s situation is one of many deportation cases based on meeting government refugee quotas rather than humanitarian grounds. Based on the evidence, he can’t be too far from the truth. It seems as though the decision was rushed, without any true attempt to help Ortiz. She married a Canadian citizen and, pending his sponsorship of her, would have obtained her citizenship. Alas, no such opportunity presented itself. Her children are Canadian citizens and therefore allowed to stay, but Paola Ortiz, after living here for over three years (a citizenship requirement) and marrying a Cana-

dian citizen, is not. Its almost illogical. Canada’s reputation as a ‘welcoming’ country for immigrants has certainly been tarnished. Widely considered too harsh, this ruling suggests that quotas supersede humanity in Canadian immigration. The justification behind her deportation was vague and contradictory. Her case has been coined “a Canadian disgrace” by the Coop média de Montréal, and several federal and provincial parties have asked that the deportation ruling be overturned. With such outcry for a different outcome, a different action should have been considered. But it wasn’t, and after robbing Paola Ortiz of her family, her normal life, and likely her safety, Canada has a lot to answer for.

The Etcetera Page

Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011 Vol. 29 issue 6 JaCqueS Gallant

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Girl playinG with the draGon display at the 19th edition of the maGic of lanterns at the botanical Gardens. photo by marissa moses

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Tensions ran high at last Wednesday’s Board of Governors meeting, after the board voted to decrease undergraduate student representation from four to one. Plagued by governance issues, Concordia is not receiving a whole lot of praise on Twitter these days.

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@ajwest: It’s like having a last meal that you

brennan neill emily wHite Cindy loPez ruben baStien

don’t get to choose as Rita de Santis explains #CUBoG changes. About to lose student representation. @Ncuillerier: One chair to another

Mr.Kruyt, if you propose that BOG shouldn’t have an audience then you have lost the purpose of your job. #CuBog #Order @bdestefanis: jesus. wtf is a #cubog???? @Replqwtil: Can Rita de Santis please sit

down now? Her prowling around is kind of disconcerting...#CUBoG @kaepora: I wonder how much longer Peter

Kruyt’s power will mind-blind him until he just hits students below the belt for too long. #CUBoG @1D4TW: Thanks to Concordia students

for their activism at #CUBoG as we faculty are too busy mumbling, shuffling our papers, playing by broken rules

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