NEWS

Dawson Students on the Rise of Gas Prices

A new source of anxiety for already stressed-out students

ALICE MARTIN Managing Editor

If every driver’s wallet in Quebec has been taking a hard hit for the past months at the gas pump, it’s easily arguable that Montreal students are among the ones gasping the loudest when filling up their tanks. When gas reached its highest point on the island last month, according to CAA Quebec, Montrealers could expect to pay 60% more than at its lowest point in the past year. “At gas station pumps, you can see how much the last person paid, and it’s not uncommon to see over 100 dollars on the screens right now”, says Matthew Saad, a General Social Science student at Dawson.

Gas prices popping up in Montreal are primarily the result of the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. Russia is one of the world’s largest oil producers in the world but, as part of sanctions for their inhumane invasion of Ukraine, Canada has cut Russian oil imports, a decision made to impact Russia’s economy. As of April 7th, The US has also followed Canada’s footsteps, and other European countries are thinking about doing the same. Factors like inflation and the growing oil supply shortages can also be considered. Furthermore, Montreal pays a higher gas tax than the rest of

This is the case for Qassam Azara, an Internet and Robotics student at St-Laurent Cegep in Montreal. “I thought about using public transportation more, but there are a lot of drawbacks. COVID is one of my main problems because the buses and subways are always crowded, and I wouldn’t want to risk catching it and infecting my family. I would also have to get up earlier and take public transportation for a total of 3 hours each way and also if the buses don’t show up or are late, some teachers aren’t very reasonable with delays to their classes,” he explains. Azara continues, “As a full-time student and worker, it is very hard to see prices going up so quickly while keeping the same salary. I have to spend more and more of my paycheck just to get to work or school. It has definitely caused more anxiety and stress seeing that I have to calculate how I will spend my earnings on gas, food, bills, and other things.”

For now, students who wish to relieve some stress because of gas prices can benefit from services like GasBuddy and Gasoline Watch from CAA Quebec. The former is a website that lets you compare prices from all the gas stations in your area to see which one offers the lowest price. All the prices come from users who update the website themselves, but you can see when the price was last updated. As for Gasoline Watch, this useful service tells you whether it’s worth it to gas up on a certain day by comparing the realistic price to the average pump price.

To ease the burden on Quebecers, the Legault government thought about suspending the gas tax. However, that idea has been ruled out on grounds that it would profit gas companies instead of consumers. Fortunately, anything that goes up suddenly is bound to fall, and gas prices seem to be following that pattern, although they’ve stalled for now. In a month, prices dropped about 0.10$ on average. p p

Quebec—and all of Canada—creating a perfect storm for oil prices to soar.

Students are immensely impacted by the rise of gas prices as they are already stuck between a housing crisis, rising inflation rates and cost of living, as well as high tuition costs. Luckily, many Dawson students are already taking public transit as the school is blessed with its own entry from the Atwater metro, but it has still changed the way they live.

Sammy Péladeau, a Modern Languages student at Dawson, explains, “As a young student, driving was one of the ways for me to feel free, to have no limits. I’m from a small town far away, and my friends and boyfriend still live there. The fact that gas prices are this high doesn’t allow me to see them. […] Lately, it’s choosing between eating or seeing my friends.”

Other than the social context, it’s also a source of stress for other students. Alessio Guzzo, a Graphic Design student at Dawson, says, “As a student, I work part-time and barely make enough to pay for school supplies, so the added expense of extra cost for gas is a struggle.” Matthew Saad also noted that when public transport isn’t readily available where a student lives–or if it’s simply not an option–it can add a lot of anxiety to said student’s wallet.

French Implementation in CEGEP: Is Grade 12 a Better Option?

JACQUELINE LISBONA News Editor

On Thursday, March 24, Bernard Tremblay, President of the Fédération des CÉGEPS, announced that the Quebec government was planning to force thousands of students in English CEGEPs to take three of their core courses in French to receive their DEC. The CEGEP federation includes five anglophone colleges.

The amendment is scheduled to be included in the government’s legislation overhauling the Charter of the French language, Bill 96. Labeled as an act “representing French as the official and common language of Quebec”, Bill 96 has caused upheavals amongst Montrealers.

In an interview with the Montreal Gazette, Tremblay shared his views on the government’s involvement: “It’s not possible for students who have not picked up enough French in 11 years of schooling to pick it up overnight!” he exclaimed.

Tremblay further explained that the CEGEP federation has performed an examination on the level of French proficiency among first year students attending English CEGEPS. The results indicated that more than 35% of 29,000 students enrolled are not sufficiently fluent in French to pass the courses.

This new requirement will undoubtedly affect students’ R scores, a score used by Quebec university admissions offices to compare and rank CEGEP students. A lower R score, even by the tiniest percentage, could result in a student being accepted or rejected from a Quebec university.

Vaughn Vanslet, second year social science student at Dawson, shared his frustration with the new law: “At this point, I don’t think there is a reason to stay in Quebec and continue my education here. I would have so many opportunities if I left given the program I am in. Also, I would say I am a good French speaker, but I would feel overwhelmed taking three classes in a language I am not exactly fluent in. I feel like I should have a say in the language I choose to learn in.”

Echoing Vanslet’s sentiments, second year social science student Jillian Goldenberg stated: “I think that this puts English speakers at a huge disadvantage in terms of getting into university. To be admitted in competitive programs at English universities, a high R score is required. If a student does not receive a high R score because they are taking three forced French classes, that is not fair, and it lowers their chances of getting into a university. By implementing this new law in English schools, it will lower anglophone students’ R scores and therefore make them less competitive candidates for Quebec universities, making their only option to move out of province for their University diploma. I personally believe that this is just another tactic to get rid of anglophones without saying ‘let’s get rid of anglophones’.”

Dawson CEGEP professor Sara Beer acknowledged that while in principle, there is ideological value and importance to this new change, she does not believe that the language bill should apply to CEGEP. She maintains that since CEGEP is post-secondary, students should have the right to learn in the language of their choice. She stated: “If we were to move forward with the imposition, I think what would happen is that there would be loopholes. For example, our French implementation could be a 5-minute oral presentation and that would be it for the course. Some of us just wouldn’t be qualified to grade at a college level unless it was a real French teacher.”

The loopholes are already here with additional pre-university options popping up.

Lower Canada College (LCC) offers a Grade 12 Pre-University option. Mandatory core courses in French are not required. With an enriched curriculum and personalized academic counseling, LCC receives an influx of applicants each year despite an estimated cost of $25,000 per year.

Additionally, TAV College has launched a new Grade 12 school opportunity called “Grade 12 study option”. At a cost of approximately $1400, this one-year program allows students to obtain an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD). This diploma follows the admission requirements for universities in Quebec, Canada, the USA, and abroad.

According to Eli Meroz, TAV’s Director of Studies, TAV’s Grade 12 program will be taught in English, and it will allow all students to achieve their academic goals one year earlier. This option will also bypass the implementation of Bill 96 in other CEGEPS.

The three profiles available in this Grade 12 study option are: Sciences, General Social Science, or Commerce. TAV will be accepting applications for admission to this program for the Fall semester until August 15th, 2022. p

Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Social Media War

EMILY MCQUEEN Staff Writer

Rusia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. Most of us got the news– not from a newspaper, radio, or television– but from Instagram, Tiktok, or Snapchat.

I recall seeing videos of Russian soldiers marching toward the Ukrainian border on my For You page before the War had officially begun. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is being documented and shared on social media on a grander scale than any previous or current global conflict. In one way, it has spread further than WWI and WWII, considering that anyone who has access to a phone (about half the global population) or a computer can watch the violence, comment on it, and offer financial support, no matter where they are on the planet (excluding state-censored regimes). This article will provide an overview of the history of wartime media and will investigate how social media has affected this one.

The first “media war”, the 1898 Spanish-American War, was the first to be precipitated by the media, mostly by newspaper articles or correspondences. WWI was photographed and filmed, and by WW2 almost every North American and Western European home had a radio, the cheapest and most popular media outlet. Technology was thus used for wartime propaganda, the diffusion of information, and calls to the population to join wartime efforts. In 1955, the Vietnam war broke out, which would grow to have immense TV coverage by 1965. According to Forbes magazine, in the year 1968, 600 accredited journalists were covering the war for U.S. wire services, radio, and television networks. Every day at 5 pm, there would be daily briefings on the war put on by the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office. In 2011, the Arab Spring was somewhat discussed on social media as many other wars to come; However, because social media platforms have now grown larger (in 2022, Facebook has tripledthribbled its average use) this war’s social media scope is larger than any other’s. Unlike ever before, audiences and civilians can now participate in news coverage instead of it being reserved solely for professional reporters, especially in the West. This has also come with a normalization of using social media as a political tool.

For peace activists and those wanting to expose the horrors of war to the world, social media is the most useful weapon at their disposal. A peace activist in the Ukrainian city of Lviv posted a photograph of 109 baby strollers in a square surrounded by rubble to commemorate the children killed by Russian soldiers. The image quickly spread to millions. Other viral videos showcase a little girl singing in a shelter and a cellist performing on a street full of debris and damaged buildings. In the New York Times article ‘Like a Weapon’: Ukraine’s Use of Social Media To Stir Resistance, Anastasiya Magerramova, the 27-year-old press secretary for the Okhmatdyt Ppediatric Hhospital in Kyiv, discusses her experience sleeping in the ward and working exhausting hours while constantly photographing and filming the sufferings of civilians. Because parts of some Ukrainian territory are inaccessible or hardly accessible to journalists, Magerramova believes “It’s going to be even more important that people document and share their direct experiences of the war and that concerned audiences don’t look away.”

We cannot ignore the downsides of social media use as war-time media, seeing as information can be misleading, polarizing, or even completely false. Misinformation can be unintentional, sometimes in the form of memes, tales, or urban legends individuals find interesting. While these are not particularly harmful, I would still add a disclaimer or check factual sources before reposting. There is also intentional misinformation, which is propelled by both government and non-government users. This form of propaganda can be harmful and cause further hatred between populations. Putin’s promise to ‘de-Nazify Ukraine’, a country that elected a Jewish president, or any claims that ‘Ukraine has a high number of Nazis’, would be an example of intentional misinformation to dissuade support for the country. Deepfake videos of both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been appearing on the internet at frequent rates. These would also fall under intentional misinformation. Compared to the 2014 invasion of the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine, Russia has engaged in media warfare to a smaller extent, because Moscow attempts to completely deny the extent of the war instead of putting out propaganda in support of it, although some accounts do put verified Ukrainian civilian accounts into question.

To avoid misinformation, I would recommend further researching the information you are exposed to on your feed by comparing it to reputable news sources that factcheck and confirm stories before circulating them.

Social media holds much more power than older, more traditional forms of media, as it allows civilians to document their own lives and allows anybody, professional or not, to immediately engage with and spread information. But when any platform holds the power to sway a war, we must account for the danger of false news, which is curated to cause outrage and fear. p

It’s going to be even more important that people document and share their direct experiences of the war and that concerned audiences don’t look away.

Why Is Everyone Suddenly Interested in NFTs?

…and how long can the hype last?

PATRICIA CHIRU Contributor

The pandemic has brought on iconic moments, such as Lizzo’s 2020 Grammys’ performance, the ice coffee trend, the BLM movement, Taylor Swift’s latest albums, and NFTs. The emergence of NFTs has led to a lot of excitement among young investors who are searching for untraditional investment methods. However, the question remains: are NFT’s worth the hype?

The acronym NFT stands for “non-fungible token” and these unique “tokens” are a unit of digital data. NFTs are currently used as digital art, and they are traded on the Ethereum blockchain, although other similar platforms support them. The first NFT was created on May 3, 2014 by Kevin McCoy. According to Alternative Press, he created a hypnotic octagon which was later sold for over $1.4 million in November of last year. From 2015-2016, NFTs switched to the Ethereum blockchain from the Counterparty platform. The next year, “CryptoKitties”, another type of NFT, exploded on social media. However, the defining factor in their rise to trendiness was when other blockchains like Solana and Flow began to implement their own NFTs in 2021.

Anyone can create their own NFT and sell it. The buyer purchases the original work, but anyone can download a copy of it. The creator also receives royalties and a percentage of each transaction even after they are not the seller anymore. Buyers profit from selling their NFTs for more than they originally paid for as a financial investment.

Most of the hype surrounding NFTs comes from the influx of celebrities who sell or buy them. Melania Trump’s interest in NFTs incited her to launch a “POTUS NFT Collection” which will feature about 10,000 of these tokens. According to Forbes, each token highlights “iconic moments from the former [US] president’s administration.” Logan Paul, a YouTube influencer, is another celebrity selling his own NFTs. He created a Pokémon card of himself which sold for about $17,000. On the theme of trading cards, the Canadian actor William Shatner sold NFTs that contained an X-ray of his teeth. Even Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, jumped on the trend and sold his first tweet as an NFT for roughly $3 million. Non-fungible tokens are slowly following the same popularity path as cryptocurrencies did. In November of last year, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, announced his plans for a “Bitcoin city” at the foot of the Conchagua volcano. In a BBC article covering the news, the president said that everything in the city will be dedicated to Bitcoin. Businesses will have to accept the cryptocurrency as payment, all for the purpose of generating revenue for the city.

When asked if something similar might happen with NFTs on a smaller or bigger level, Kayrod Niamir, business and marketing professor at Dawson College, said that NFTs are too volatile and will sooner or later go out of trend. This will ultimately lead to many structural problems and too much instability. Although M. Niamir concedes that some investors will make money out of these tokens, basing a whole economy or organization on such volatility can only lead to difficult organizational problems.

A major problem NFTs are currently facing are environmental issues. Despite these cryptocurrency tokens being relatively new and having little expert-reviewed data about their greenhouse emissions, some digital artists such as Memo Atken have put out estimates. According to an article published by The Verge, Atken estimated that the famous “Space Cat” NFT (see picture) leaves a carbon footprint “equivalent to an EU resident’s electricity usage for two months”. Additionally, blockchains like Ethereum “[use] about as much electricity as the entire country of Libya”. The entire planet is facing global warming and many believe that an increased interest in cryptocurrencies and digital art like NFTs will only accelerate the problem. However, others argue that NFTs do not occupy that much space on a blockchain, making their emissions not drastically harmful. The safest bet would be to keep an eye on them to prevent a rapid pollution problem arising from NFTs (and cryptocurrencies).

Non-fungible tokens are definitely an interesting emerging market. Their popularity, accentuated by celebrity contributions, are driving prices up. However, their threat to the planet’s health should act as a forewarning for sellers and buyers alike that NFTs’ longevity is questionable.

As always when dealing with financial investments, please do your research and/or consult a professional before investing. This article is informative and does not provide any legal financial advice. p p