Jumping the hurdles Western women finish third; men fourth in OUA track and field championships. >> Pg. 8
thegazette Is it news or is it arts since 1906
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2015
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Dentistry students work on restorative justice at Dalhousie Katie Lear NEWS EDITOR @KatieAtGazette
The 29 Dalhousie University students participating in a restorative justice process published an open letter on Sunday as a public update amidst the ongoing controversy. The letter was released by 12 members of the private Facebook group, six women named in the Facebook posts and 11 women and men from the dentistry class DDS2015. Thirteen of Dalhousie’s male fourth-year dentistry students first drew ire from the public when a series of misogynistic posts from a private “Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen” Facebook group went public. Posts included a poll on which female classmates they would have “hate” sex with and mention of chloroforming their female classmates. In the open letter, members of the original Facebook group expressed regret for their actions. “Since December we have been engaged in the intensive and difficult self-reflection and development required to start the process of earning back the trust of our colleagues, families, professors, the university community, the profession and the public,” members of the DDS 2015 Facebook group wrote in the open letter. “This will take time but we will work each day to model the personal and professional core values to which we are committed and that will guide us now and in the future. We hope one day to regain the trust of those we have harmed and impacted.”
>> see DALHOUSIE pg.3
Tayor Lasota • GAZETTE
CONRAD > LIL JON. The Social Science Students’ Council, members of whom are shown here with Conrad Black, the keynote speaker at their first academic conference, has dropped out of funding Lil Jon, which would have been their second concert this year.
SSSC in concert funding snafu Katie Lear NEWS EDITOR @KatieAtGazette
The Social Science Students’ Council has dropped out of a jointly funded concert with the University Students’ Council. The SSSC had been in talks with the University Students’ Council during the summer to jointly fund a set of concerts for undergraduate students, including the Audien concert in the fall and the upcoming Lil Jon concert. The SSSC, ultimately, was unable to back the Lil Jon event. While the SSSC was never an official partner for the Lil Jon concert, according to SSSC president Jack Litchfield, the SSSC initially expressed strong interest in collaborating with the USC. “We were approached by the USC about doing collaborative programming on two events: Audien being the first one and then having a Social Sci-led concert the second semester, and [funding] would be 50–50 for both of them,” Litchfield said.
Litchfield alleged that after the Audien concert on November 6, he received resistance from the dean of Social Science to jointly fund the Lil Jon concert. “We initially set aside about $20,000 for concert events. Audien – our share of Audien – was only $7,500 and then that would’ve left us with $12,500 to put towards another concert second semester, which incidentally would’ve been half of Lil Jon had we gone that way. But the first concert happens, [and the] dean decides ‘that’s your concert for the year, I don’t want to disperse any more funds for concerts,’ ” Litchfield said. Brian Timney, the dean of Social Science, said he didn’t deny the funding but questioned the SSSC’s use of the donation fund. “This year the council … wanted to invest more heavily in the academic conference, and I agreed with that because it’s a good use of the Student Donation Fund – although it was quite a lot of money that they put out on the academic conference,” Timney said.
“I suggested that their having put out this much money on the various events this year – that maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to dip into the SDF for yet another concert. So I didn’t deny them the funding but questioned whether it was a good use of the donation fund.” Timney is referring to money spent on an academic conference earlier this year that the SSSC financed. The conference brought Conrad Black as a keynote speaker to deliver a lecture about capitalism. “We brought in the academic conference, we brought in Conrad Black, we brought in Gwynne Dyer — obviously that cost a lot of money, especially as it’s the first time we’re doing an academic conference, so we’ve had a lot of up-front investments in that,” he said. According to Litchfield, however, funding the concerts jointly with the USC would have saved money while still allowing for the extra cost of the conference. “Based on our own internal projections for contracts, that was
going to save us money, paying half for Audien and then paying half for a much larger concert nets us a net gain. So based on our SDF budget, we would’ve been paying less than we would for one concert to do two concerts,” he said. “We ended up spending more on the academic conference than we initially expected to because we got some bigger speakers in and we wanted to do a bit more promotion and stuff like that, so we didn’t end up doing that collaborative deal [for the concerts] because of that,” he continued. Timney also raised concerns on how best to use the SDF and argued that the money was better spent on other projects instead of concerts. “The main point for me is that the SDF was originally designed to support academic activities in the department and other kinds of academic activities. The introduction of concerts came in just a few years ago and my own view is that concerts aren’t the best use of these funds, but it’s for the students to make the decisions about them.”