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Volume 106, Issue 11
Art history, hold the art
Twenty-somethings $180 OCAD textbook sparks controversy roosting with ‘rents Kaitlyn McGrath Associate Editor
Andrei Calinescu Gazette
Alex Carmona News Editor The university textbook racket has taken one step closer to its logical conclusion. Ontario College of Art and Design students are up in arms over a $180 art history textbook that, contrary to what one might think, does not contain a scrap of art. Global Visual & Material Culture: Beginnings to 1800, required for students taking the first-year course Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800, instead shows empty boxes directing students to two accompanying ebooks containing the pictures. Affected students have started an online petition, seeking some kind of satisfaction from the university. As of press time, it contained around 450 signatures. “It’s ridiculous that we should have to pay for this textbook when it doesn’t even have images in it. You shouldn’t need a computer to read a book,” Simon Steer, a signatory of the petition, said. “We can’t resell this textbook next year when they publish one with pictures, and if we decide to hold on to it, it will become useless after all the pictures are removed from the server it’s held on.” According to Kathryn Shailer, dean of liberal studies at OCAD, copyright concerns prevented the
publisher from including any art in the physical copy of the book. “The book is complete as printed and is not missing pictures —we didn’t get copyright clearance in time. If we had opted for print clearance of all the […] images, the text would have cost over $800,” she said. She added the textbook is actually an amalgamation of two different texts, along with additional material added by the university.
Quite simply, the book is incomplete and next to useless unless you are able to spend hours in front of a computer while you read. — Cheryl Huber OCAD student
Cheryl Huber, another student in the course, doesn’t see that as a valid excuse. “While I can see the attraction of having a text book that is written and produced to specifically address the course content, I am very disappointed in the final product. Quite simply, the book is incomplete and next to useless un-
less you are able to spend hours in front of a computer while you read,” she said. “Even then, stopping every few moments to look up an image interrupts the rhythm, not to mention the enjoyment, of reading and processing information. I’m afraid that this will act as a deterrent for many students to study the material.” Brent Ashley, the father of a student in the course, characterized the book as “an unmitigated sham of a travesty of a mockery of a hand-drawn-facsimile of a textbook.” “There is no discount on the $180 price for an ART textbook that has NO PICTURES. Devoid of pictures. Bereft of art,” he wrote in his blog. “If I am going to have to pay $180 for an art history book that is of no resale value to next year’s students, it had damn well better be an excellent visual reference with hard cover and full colour plates, to keep around for years, festooning my coffee table and that of my heirs.” Shailer and OCAD will be providing an open-forum for students to discuss the issue today.
Live in your parents’ basement? Everybody’s doing it. According to the Statistics Canada 2011 census results, 42.3 per cent of young adults between the age of 20 and 29 are living at home. And that number is as high as 59.3 per cent when looking specifically at young adults aged 20 to 24. Although the number has remained virtually the same since 2006, the number was as low as 41.6 per cent in 1981. In the past, living with your parents into your mid to late twenties may not have been the first choice for many students. However, according to Zenaida Ravanera, a research associate at the Population Studies Centre at Western, the recent trend suggests that living with your parents into your twenties may be becoming the norm. “Perhaps it’s being viewed less negative now compared to 10 or 20 years ago,” she explained. “This has been happening for some time so it can be viewed less negatively now.” Andrea Wishart, a third-year master’s of science candidate, currently lives at home with her parents. Although she is from London, Wishart moved out during her undergraduate degree in order to have the full university experience, but since beginning her master’s, she has returned home. “Grad school is a bit more like a job, and is often a lot more nine-tofive and beyond,” she wrote in an email. “The stipend really isn’t a lot to live on either—unless you have really good scholarships, you don’t really have a lot of money left over once you’re done paying for rent, food and a car, if you own one.” Money, it seems, is one of the main reasons why young adults
are forced to delay their departure from the nest. Given the difficulty some students have finding employment after graduation, living on their own may not be financially wise. “It’s kind of a strategy to deal with debt,” Ravanera said. “It’s additional time preparing for your own future.” It’s a useful strategy for many students, including Wishart. “Any extra money from not paying rent has gone towards paying off undergraduate debt, which will hopefully put me in a better place financially when I graduate with my master’s of science,” she said. Statistics Canada also reported men are more likely to live at home than women. In 2011, 46.7 per cent of young adults living at home were men, while that number shrinks to 37.9 per cent for women. A reason for this could be that women typically marry younger than men. “It’s always been that men live longer with their parents,” Ravanera said. “One way of leaving a parental home is when you form your own home. Men marry later than woman, so naturally they stay longer with their parents.” Ravanera also added that although young adults may once again be living with their parents, the relationship does not have to be the same as when he or she was a teenager. Adjustments should be made on both ends—parents should realize their children may need more privacy, and the child, if possible, should help out with some costs. “From the outside it looks like I’m a mooch getting waited on hand and foot by parents who never stopped taking care of me,” Wishart said. “It’s very different in reality—everyone’s family situation is different.”
2011 census results
42.3% of people aged 20-29 live in the parental home, •compared with 32.1% in 1991, and 26.9% in 1981.
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59.3% of people aged 20-24 live in the parental home, compared with 59.5% in 2006, and 41.5% in 1981. 25.2% of people aged 25-29 live in the parental home, •compared with 24.7% in 2006, and 11.3% in 1981. Source: Statistics Canada