Looking at the website of the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, I admit it’s possible this comically awful kerning job was done on purpose. But if so, it looks silly.

And the fact they misspelled “québécois” inconsistently (note a missing accent on the second version), I’m thinking maybe Astral Media was just incompetent designing these ads.

See also:

• December 2, 2007 — Cherry Chocolate Rain
• November 6, 2007 — Respect? Pleasure? On Montreal radio?
• August 20, 2008 — For sale: TATV channel

Is coming to Concordia a sign that you’re no longer a sovereignist?
What are you getting at?

Well, I don’t know, a lot of people say that a sovereigntist might have rather chosen to go to Universite de Montréal or UQÀM to teach.
Why is that?

Well. Because they’re French universities.
Are you defending the principle of segregation sir?

Boisclair also says pretty definitively that he’s done with politics.

No word on whether he spent any time doing lines with CSU executives or checking out the stalls in the Hall Building’s 8th floor men’s bathroom (ok ok, that one was unfair).

See also:

• November 28, 2007 — Concordia Student Union needs a clarity act
• November 14, 2007 — Concordian sorry for offending Muslims
• November 1, 2007 — When should business trump journalism?

Though the article is unsurprisingly negative in tone, it provides quite a bit of insight into the situation at the paper, as well as what the future holds for print media in general.

A couple of things though:

1. While The Gazette’s lobby is very pretty and there are some shiny yellow surfaces, I doubt it’s actually made of solid gold as the article implies.
2. Sorry Mike Gasher, but “linkalism” is not a word.

See also:

• June 8, 2008 — Gazette call centre gets pink slip
• February 2, 2008 — More changes at The Gazette
• January 2, 2008 — Jack Todd among columnists leaving The Gazette

Naturally, the facts make it clear that pur laine Quebecers don’t have anything to fear from a few thousand immigrants.

See also:

• December 11, 2007 — We can’t accomodate freedom
• September 28, 2007 — More xenophobia at the Bouchard-Taylor commission
• September 22, 2007 — Bouchard-Taylor Commission legitimizes xenophobia

Some of the options being considered:

Abolish school boards entirely: This is the ADQ’s solution to the problem, and the excuse for reason why they want to force a real election. Administration of schools would fall to municipalities, the provincial government, and the schools themselves, removing a layer of bureaucracy. Unfortunately, as municipal mergers should have shown us, it’s not that easy. The bureaucracy created by the change might be as large or even larger than the bureaucracy it’s replacing.

Give school boards more power: For those (like me) who complain there aren’t any issues to be decided here (things like school taxes and curricula are set by the Quebec government), this might make elections more interesting. But it would also make the boards inconsistent, and that could lead to problems down the road.

Tie school board elections to municipal elections: I can’t see how this isn’t a good idea. Let’s reduce the amount of times we need to go out, update a voters’ list and wait in line to cast our ballots.

Here’s one I’d like to suggest adding to the list: Have school board commissioners appointed by municipalities instead of elected by the populace directly. This may sound anti-democratic at first, but the system it’s replacing isn’t perfect either. This solution would keep the bureaucracy as is, but the decisions about how local schools would be run would be left in part to the municipal governments they’re in. (Municipal politics aren’t high on voter turnout either, but it’s better than school board elections — and most people can name their mayor at least.)

Just a thought.

See also:

• December 6, 2007 — EMSB loser cries foul
• November 14, 2007 — More cries of “police brutality”
• November 9, 2007 — The tuition debate is over

The problem isn’t so bad on paper. Universities reserve more than half the seats on their governing boards for members of the community. This can mean businesspeople, community leaders, people at other educational institutions, retired educational industry professionals, doctors, lawyers, etc.

The problem mainly lies in the fact that these seats are self-selecting. They’re the highest governing bodies at their institutions, answerable only to the government, and so the boards basically control themselves. Nominations as members of the community are dealt with by a nominating committee of the board.

This causes two related problems: the people who are nominated tend to be friends or business associates of people already on the boards, and dissenting views get actively or passively shut out.

When I was at Concordia, I wrote a piece about the corporate connections of the members of Concordia’s Board of Governors. A little bit of Google searching found a lot of associations between most of the members’ companies. One acted as a lawyer for another. One serves on the board of the company whose CEO is the wife of another member. And so on.

In some cases, these associations are perfectly reasonable, having been formed after the two were appointed to the board together. But the chronology doesn’t solve the problem that the fat cats are friends and do things together.

There’s also other problems: These connected rich people tend to be more likely to receive honourary degrees, have buildings and academic programs named after them, or receive other official praise from the universities they’re connected to, in exchange for their generous donations. (Technically, board memebrs can’t receive honourary degrees while they’re on the board, and paying for such degrees isn’t allowed either. So we see a lot of anonymous donations, or PR people stressing that donations aren’t made with strings attached. And degrees are handed out after people retire from the board.)

The government needs to step in and solve this problem with new rules. Representation from academics and students needs to be increased. More non-business types need to be brought in. Academic decisions need to be deferred to academic bodies. And tough conflict-of-interest rules need to be established.

Business leaders should be on boards of universities. They have experience running large organizations, and have a lot of expertise they’re willing to share. But the power this gives them is very big, and it needs to be kept in check.

See also:

• November 14, 2007 — More cries of “police brutality”
• November 9, 2007 — The tuition debate is over
• November 7, 2007 — School boards: What will we do with them now?

Plastic shopping bags, especially those from grocery stores, are considered one of the bigger environmental issues facing us (they’re not actually such a huge issue, but they’re treated that way). They line streets, clog sewers, choke children and make crank-calls to your boss. They have a high volume and low weight, which makes recycling them inefficient.

So various jurisdictions are looking into ways to reduce or even eliminate this urban blight. Quebec is considering imposing a tax on them to reduce their usage, while a Maxi store in Sherbrooke has decided to eliminate them in favour of reusable bags, bins and favourable publicity.

Other countries around the world have taken different approaches to these bags since bout 2002 (Wikipedia has a roundup), most being a mixture of financial disincentives and voluntary compliance. So far (unless I missed one), no industrialized Western nation has banned them outright.

No magic answer

Plastic bags are clearly detrimental to the environment and their use should be heavily reduced. Even the plastics lobby thinks so (though their propaganda literature suggests otherwise). But the proposed solutions all have problems:

Taxes: Serge Lavoie of the plastics industry makes some good (albeit extremely self-serving) points about why this is problematic. Well, actually he makes three points, two of which are bullshit. He says plastic bags aren’t a problem, but then says they’re a minor problem, and then points to other problems and asks why we aren’t tackling those (I’ve heard similar arguments about why we shouldn’t criticize Israel for human rights violations). He also points to legislation and public opinion polls, which only proves that their lobbyists are working hard. But the point that makes a lot of sense is that people are going to find ways around the law. It’s already happened in Ireland, where people are using bags that are worse for the environment but not subject to the tax. Simply put: when money is involved, the market will find a way around it.

Voluntary compliance: The argument against this one is simple: People say things that make them look good, but greed and laziness set in when nobody’s looking. People are already aware of the problem, and many are changing some of their habits, but voluntary compliance alone isn’t going to solve the problem.

As someone who does most of his grocery shopping lugging around a big green bin, I can attest to other problems with the system as it is now:

• Bags are still considered proof-of-purchase. It’s ludicrous when you think about it, because it’s easy to slip something into a bag, but it’s how many stores distinguish between stuff you’ve bought and stuff you haven’t. Re-using bags leads to confusion and suspicion. Half the time when I go by the cash at Loblaws, the cashier has to ask me whether or not I’ve purchased the reusable bin I’m using.
• Minor inconveniences at the cash. Aside from the aforementioned suspicion, there’s other annoying problems. Groceries are placed in bags automatically unless you ask for something different. Rebates offered for not taking plastic bags aren’t always applied. My favourite is when trying to use the self-checkout at Loblaws. Not only is the system geared for bags (using a bin means balancing it on the scale and hoping it doesn’t fall), but you need operator assistance before you can start scanning your groceries. If a big chain like Loblaws makes it difficult, imagine what it’s like for smaller places.
• Remembering to bring your bags. I don’t own a car, and a lot of the time I do groceries it’s on the way home from something. So I don’t have my big cumbersome bin. Plastic bags are small enough to put in your pocket, but not everyone will think ahead necessarily.
• Merchants give good PR about protecting the environment, but in reality they just don’t care. They have no problem polluting as much as they can behind the scenes. They build massive buildings with ultra-high ceilings and keep them super-heated in the winter and super-chilled in the summer with wide open doors. Merchants in San Francisco promised to put a lid on their plastic bag use to avoid a tax on them, but ended up doing nothing.

Outright banning: This extreme step has been proposed in some developing countries as well as many small cities and towns. But they run into similar problems as taxing above: people will simply find a way around the problem, and that way might have even worse environmental consequences.

Finally, any drastic measure also ignores the fact that most households have already found ways to reuse plastic bags. There are two most common:

1. Garbage. Put the bag in the kitchen garbage can, dump everything unrecyclable in it, tie it up and throw it in the big garbage bin at the curb. Depending on your output, households can go through at least a couple of these each week. (That would survive a reduction, but not an elimination of plastic bags)
2. Poop scooping. One or two bags a day, per dog, are used to scoop and dispose of dog poop.

In both these cases, an alternative would need to be found. Using no bags would be impractical, because humans would have to get their hands dirty touching the slimy grossness. Purchasing bags is an option, but would probably be unpopular since we currently get them free. Instead, I can imagine a lot of dog poop going unscooped as a result of this ban.

Biodegradable bags: This is the solution that seems to be the magic solution to all these problems. BioBag Canada certainly thinks so. But these bags are still in development, and very expensive compared to plastic bags. The industry also argues that biodegradable isn’t necessarily better in landfills, because it releases methane and carbon dioxide, while plastic bags just sit there and do nothing. Despite that, I think this will eventually be a favourable option.

Hypocrisy

Finally, I’ll add one bit of ludicrous hypocrisy to this debate: Cities who are starting green projects are requiring use of disposable bags where they aren’t necessary:

• In Côte-Saint-Luc, residents who are part of a pilot curbside compost pickup project are being given a short supply of compostable bags, which they will then have to replenish by paying for them out of pocket. They then place these bags in a special bin that will be emptied into trucks. But why the middle man? Why not just throw your food scraps directly into this container? Yeah, stuff might stick to the inside, but what’s the worst that’ll happen? It’ll decompose?
• Even worse, Ville-Marie has phased out recycling bins in favour of clear plastic bags that look a lot like garbage bags. They seem to think it’s better that way. Maybe they’re right, but I see a lot of confusion between garbage and recycling, bags ripped open by raccoons looking for food and homeless people looking for returnable containers. Not to mention that it costs money and looks awful.

Baby steps

So what’s my solution? Everything in moderation. Voluntary measures will probably be the most successful in the short term. You don’t want plastic bags clogging your sewers? Don’t bring them home from the grocery store. Bring reusable canvas bags when you shop. Get retailers to do more to encourage use of reusable bags and bins, as well as collecting used bags.

Innovative ways to reduce bag use, combined with phasing in of compostable/biodegradable bags where preferable, will probably be the eventual solution to this problem. But any solution has to be cheap, convenient, practical and aesthetic if it’s going to succeed. Trying to force it is asking for it to backfire.

See also:

• August 10, 2007 — Please leave your bags at the tax office
• November 23, 2007 — Gas company critics are hypocrites
• May 23, 2008 — Bouchard-Taylor love wasting paper (literally)

The winner gets half this blog’s gross revenues from last month and the pride of being smarter than an advertising agency.

See also:

• November 2, 2007 — Attention to detail
• August 20, 2008 — More “clarifications”
• August 19, 2008 — Another gigantic waste of money from Bell

So you can imagine the gall this guy has to sue his former colleagues for $600,000 for their actions that somehow forced him to go on a shooting rampage. He’s demanding access to his computer so he can pursue his case.

Considering he has a 0% success rate in court (mostly because he represents himself), I don’t think anyone has much to worry about. But it’s still annoying that we have to keep hearing from this guy.

See also:

• November 14, 2007 — Fabrikant gets his way
• February 29, 2008 — Journalism died today
• November 16, 2007 — Libel chill is warming slightly

• The Quebec council on the status of women seeks to impose a dress code on all public employees, preventing them from wearing “visible religious symbols” like a scarf over their head or a little hat. Of course, it goes without saying that Catholics wearing crosses around their necks are specifically exempt. They get special treatment because they believe in the correct God.
• The group also wants the Quebec charter amended to make sure that gender equality usurps religious freedom. This makes sense, but does that mean that women could sue for the right to become priests? If they’re for gender equality in all religions, then they must be in favour of that as well.
• Pauline Marois is opining that the solution to reasonable accommodation is … wait for it … Quebec independence. In a statement that sounds almost Third Reich-ish, she suggests that independence would remove “ambiguity” concerning what Quebec is. Instead, immigrants would see it as the racist, intolerant, French-only haven of backwards ideas we all know and love. And if these ethnics want to join us, all they have to do is rid themselves of their religion, their culture, their language and anything else that makes them different.

See also:

• December 11, 2007 — We can’t accomodate freedom
• September 22, 2007 — Bouchard-Taylor Commission legitimizes xenophobia
• November 27, 2007 — Reasonable information on reasonable accommodation

Suddenly, it’s no longer taboo to express an irrational, paranoid fear of immigrants flooding in to take over your country. To suggest that a few dozen quiet immigrants with cloth over their faces settling in a town hundreds of kilometres away is going to somehow radically alter the way of life in a place that is 96% Catholic might have once been considered ignorant racism. But now that the commission is coming along, it’s giving these lunatics a forum in which to express their paranoia.

Tonight in a park, as I watched a free movie screening, one of the spectators shouted at the end, complaining that the film was not in French and that Quebec is a French-only province. The man was clearly off his rocker, and the crowd stayed silent in response. The young moderator of the evening, in an attempt at diplomacy, repeated an invitation to a post-screening party in the province’s official language, but the man was still yelling as she spoke in his tongue. He wasn’t interested in accomodation, he just wanted to yell.

Now if that same man were to walk into a commission hearing room and give those opinions into a microphone, suddenly it would become news. It would get into the newspapers, and would require acknowledgment and analysis.

I realize I’m generalizing here, but normal people have better things to do with their lives than attend these hearings. It’s the unemployed crazies who want someone to blame for their crappy lives that come to these town halls and blame immigrants they’ve never seen or met.

Perhaps there’s no alternative to this. We’re dealing with questions of morality, and that requires public consultation. But it still irks me that we’re giving an open mic to racist, xenophobic extremists and pretending like their opinions are justified.

See also:

• September 28, 2007 — More xenophobia at the Bouchard-Taylor commission
• December 11, 2007 — We can’t accomodate freedom
• November 27, 2007 — Reasonable information on reasonable accommodation

Called “School Schmool” (education is a tool of the proletariat!), it commemorates the invention of the pipe bomb and encourages vandalism of advertisements.

Those of us with long memories might remember “Uprising“, the 2001 Concordia student agenda, which had a similar ultra-activist slant, titles in Broken Typewriter font for that extra edge, the same “alternative” calendar anniversary notes, and encouraged people to vandalize advertisements, dismantle the capitalist system by firing their “bo$$e$” (l33t!), squat in abandoned buildings, steal expensive cars to take for joy rides and then crash into other expensive cars and setup pirate radio stations.

It also, of course, demonized Israel, the U.S., the media, the university, police, heterosexuals, capitalism and just about any large company.

Unfortunately for Concordia’s student handbook, it was released in September 2001, which was pretty horrible timing. It eventually helped lead to an unprecedented student revolt that took the student union’s executive out of office. (This one probably won’t generate a reaction on the same level, if only because it wasn’t the official student union agenda.)

Like all stupid student ideas, after five years when everyone’s graduated, they start repeating themselves. Embezzlement of student funds, patronage appointments, election fraud, all tend to come and go on a five-year cycle. As do all the election promises that later turn out to be too complicated to accomplish or too impractical to be worth the time.

See also:

• November 18, 2007 — Screaming matches are not interviews
• November 14, 2007 — More cries of “police brutality”
• November 9, 2007 — The tuition debate is over

It makes sense. Take 5 never really had a purpose. It was just a section where they threw together DVD reviews, electronics, gaming, the puzzles page and comics. It wasn’t really clear what tied them together.

So after realizing that few people read the section (they had a survey about it earlier this year) and that even fewer people care, they’re gutting it and redistributing its contents:

DVD reviews join the Friday Preview section as a single page, though it keeps the funky Take 5-style layout, which makes it look out of place.

Mark Saltzman’s electronics advertorials column moves to Thursdays in Arts & Life, where it will apparently be once every two weeks, rotated with other articles like those of photography columnist Martin Coles.

Tyler Todd’s In the Game column is being replaced by a blog of the same name. This makes sense considering the way Todd has been writing his columns. And considering they were always published in a tiny font, maybe this means people will be able to read it. (It also means Todd can do fun stuff like include pictures with his rants.)

Video game reviews, as far as I can tell, will no longer appear in The Gazette. That’s kind of a step backwards, but it’s another step in the continuing alienation between newspapers and younger generations, which will lead to newspapers’ downfall once the baby boombers die off.

The puzzles and comic pages will move back to Weekend Life, where they were before Take 5 was launched.

What do you think?

See also:

• August 2, 2008 — Gazette starting Olympics page, photographer blog
• July 13, 2008 — YASTGB: Lampert at the airplane junket
• March 21, 2008 — Gazette editor-in-chief starting blog

Are these risks serious? Technically, nobody knows for sure. Studies of cellphone use haven’t found a definitive link between long-term use and any cancer, but cellphones have only been in widespread use for about a decade.

But here’s what we do know:

First, apologies for the technical nature of this explanation, but you’ll need to learn a little bit about electromagnetic radiation.

The spectrum 101

Everything that transmits a radio wave does so on a particular frequency, whether it’s over-the-air television signals, broadcast AM/FM radio, cellphones, walkie-talkies, cordless phones, satellite signals or remote controls. All the frequencies combined form the electromagnetic spectrum, which goes from low-frequency shortwave radio to microwave to infrared, visible and UV light and eventually X-rays and gamma rays. The latter categories are dangerous in high doses because the rays penetrate the skin and start messing around with your cells, but frequencies below visible light don’t have that problem because they are non-ionizing.

To prevent interference between two groups trying to use the same frequency (close enough that they can hear each other), governments allocate spectrum for specific purposes and assign licenses to companies to use specific frequencies or frequency bands.

Industry Canada, which regulates the allocation of spectrum, has a chart on its website (my favourite chart ever) that tells you what frequencies are allocated to what type of services.

As you can see from the chart, every bit of usable radio frequency, from 9 kilohertz to 275 gigahertz, is already assigned to one or even multiple purposes. This makes it difficult for new services like cellphone providers or cordless device makers to avoid interfering with existing services.

There are, however, areas of the spectrum where people can play around without as much restriction. These bands, called “ISM bands“, are allocated to uses where the purpose isn’t communication. Because of that, there’s no problem with interference. (However, devices using this band for communication have to accept interference from ISM devices.)

One of these bands is at 2.4 GHz, which is pretty ideal for high-bandwidth short-distance radio communication like cordless phones and home wireless networks. So companies started making low-power devices that uses this band to communicate over short distances. Because they are low-power and the signal doesn’t carry far, there isn’t much interference, and coordination isn’t necessary.

So what’s special about 2.4 GHz? It’s the frequency used by microwave ovens.

Microwave ovens work by bombarding food with electromagnetic radiation, which causes water molecules to vibrate and heat up. A metal cage prevents the radiation from escaping the microwave and heating up your face.

It’s all about power (and distance)

The difference between microwave ovens and 802.11 WiFi is power. Microwaves require a lot of it: between 500 and 2,000 Watts. But wireless routers use maybe 10 Watts less than 1W. And they’re not always-on in the same way microwaves are.

With the cellphone debate, the argument is that long-term exposure to a heat source can cause adverse effects. There’s no question that some EM radiation is absorbed by the brain when using a cellphone. And that causes a slight temperature increase. But then so does putting your head on a pillow.

Though they operate at about the same power levels, there’s a big difference between cellphones and WiFi transmitters: cellphones are a potential danger because the antenna is inches from your brain. Unless your face really is glued to your laptop, this isn’t the face for WiFi. The amount of energy absorbed decreases exponentially with the distance to the source of radiation, so even an inch or two makes a big difference.

Electromagnetic radiation has been with us for decades, and isn’t going away soon. There’s no conclusive evidence that non-ionizing radiation at low power has any adverse health effects, and until some shows up, there’s really no sense in worrying.

(Note: It should be noted that the network being created in Montreal is actually WiMAX and not WiFi, which operates on licensed frequencies near the ISM bands, but the potential effects are the same.)

UPDATE (Sept. 11): A response to the Gazette article points out that you’ll get more EM radiation from standing out in the Sun. Though, funny enough, aluminum foil hats would be pretty effective at blocking the radiation from getting into your head.

See also:

• August 14, 2008 — Yves Bolduc’s spending spree
• December 2, 2007 — A person in Quebec was infected with HIV today
• September 30, 2007 — HPV vaccine, warts and all

Mike Boone, today on A6:

“…it is easier to throw a pork chop past a wolf than it is to slip an error or ambiguity past the crackerjack Gazette copy desk.”

From another article on that same page about burials resuming:

“The 129 gravediggers and maintenance staff, members of the Confdration (sic*) des syndicats nationaux, have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2003. The workers’ last contract expired on Dec. 31, 2003.”

And in today’s corrections box:

“An Agence France-Presse story in Friday’s paper said former U.S. president Richard Nixon was impeached. In fact, Nixon resigned before the impeachment resolutions could be heard by the full House. The Gazette regrets the error.”

* The Gazette still doesn’t know how to upload articles with accents to its website.

See also:

• June 9, 2008 — No regrets
• April 21, 2008 — No more erorrs in the Gazzete
• September 18, 2007 — Mike Boone LIES!

Yet this province seems to be the largest battleground for student protests in North America. They protest tuition fees, which are too high because they’re above zero (some protests involve CEGEP students, whose tuition fees actually are zero). They protest government cuts to loans and bursaries. They protest the colonial capitalist imperialistic racist empire bent on … evil of some sort.

And, of course, they protest each other.

Five student associations from Concordia, McGill and Dawson are suing each other over control of the Quebec chapter of the Canadian Federation of Students. Concordia’s graduate association is planning to pull out of the organization over this dispute which has seen two competing executives appointed. (UPDATE Sept. 13: The Concordian — yeah, I know — has a detailed story on what’s going on)

“Regional” (read: not Montreal or Quebec City) groups at UQTR, UQO and UQAR are threatening to leave the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) over their concerns the group is too Montreal-centric, and create their own lobby group to represent just their interests.

Currently there are three post-secondary lobby groups in Quebec. In addition to FEUQ (considerd the grown-up group because they sit down and negotiate with the government) and CFS-Q (considered almost renegade by its parent national organization and with little weight in Quebec because it only represents the two anglophone universities and an anglophone CEGEP), there’s ASSÉ, the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante, which is a newer, more militant group that accepts nothing short of free education for all.

To give an example, the Concordia Student Union has been a member of all three organizations over the past few years, paying student money to three redundant organizations. They recently dropped ASSÉ (which was the cheapest of the three but also the most ineffective), and now pay money only to two.

And yet despite this, Jean Charest was returned to power with the clear intention of raising tuition, and fees are going up. FEUQ is threatening strikes, but they’ve already lost the battle. The public voted for tuition increases, and a few hundred students choosing to waste their money by not going to class isn’t going to get anyone to change their mind.

All three groups need to take a moment to figure out why they’re losing (even many students don’t support their positions — though I don’t see too many of them lining up to donate money to the universities), and change their strategy before they become even more irrelevant than they already are. Once that happens, student unions will start pulling their funding and the Quebec student activist movement will implode.

UPDATE (Sept. 25): A judge decides to keep the offices off-limits to both groups until the issue can be reviewed further. The SSMU is happy, while the CSU is not.

See also:

• November 9, 2007 — The tuition debate is over
• November 18, 2007 — Screaming matches are not interviews
• November 14, 2007 — More cries of “police brutality”

Oh to live in a province one day where people can speak French without fear of government repression…

See also:

• February 16, 2008 — The McKibbin’s kinda-non-story
• December 19, 2007 — Quebec to censor fast-car ads?
• December 8, 2007 — Private security giving speeding tickets sounds like a bad idea

You see, in addition to the $100 a year tuition increase (which works out to $50 a semester, $10 a course or $3 a credit), universities are continuing to pack on administrative fees — taxes on tuition to pay for things that used to be included free.

At my alma mater, Concordia University, some of the new fees include a “Copyright fee” and a “Technology Infrastructure Fee”, even though the latter, at $4 per credit or $60 a semester, doesn’t include access to things like the formerly-free campus-wide wireless network — now they make you pay for that, which is pissing off some students.

Concordia’s list of “miscellaneous fees” is always good for a laugh, and was the butt of jokes at the Concordia Student Union back when it was controlled by the radical left. There’s a fee to apply, a fee to confirm attendance, a fee for the required student ID card, a fee to graduate, and a fee to mail your degree, among many others.

But while students make fun of these fees and protest against them, the number of student association fees (which the students themselves approve) has gone up considerably in the past few years. In 2000, there were 10 of these fees. Now the number has doubled. The newest fee, to be added in the winter, will support the “Sustainability Action Fund”. This isn’t to be confused with the entirely separate fee to run Sustainable Concordia, or for groups like the CSU or the Quebec Public Interest Research Group. In all, these student-managed fees account for between $8 and $12 per credit, which works out to $240 to $360 per year. (And that doesn’t include the student-managed health and dental plan, which is another $200 per year)

While some of these fees are opt-outable (most notably the health plan), most aren’t.

So before student groups start complaining about how their constituents are being nickel-and-dimed to death, perhaps they should start looking in their own backyard.

See also:

• February 12, 2008 — Concordian interviews Boisclair
• November 14, 2007 — More cries of “police brutality”
• November 9, 2007 — The tuition debate is over

The reasons are vague and legal-sounding, but about half seem to do with giving out trade secrets of private corporations.

I’m not interested in how Pavage Connerie Jean-Luc drills its core samples. I want to know what’s wrong with these structures and what was fixed about them. What about the law prevents the government from giving us this information?

See also:

• January 19, 2008 — When 90% just isn’t good enough
• December 11, 2007 — We can’t accomodate freedom
• December 8, 2007 — Private security giving speeding tickets sounds like a bad idea

It’s an outrageous claim that will no doubt lead to someone’s immediate firing and numerous complaints with the Quebec human rights tribunal.

Oh, wait… it’s not black people. It’s young people. They’re the cause of all this crime.

Well then, that kind of discrimination and blatant offensive generalization is perfectly acceptable.

Say it with me now folks: Correlation is not causation.

See also:

• August 19, 2008 — Don’t mess with the readers
• August 2, 2008 — Gazette starting Olympics page, photographer blog
• July 25, 2008 — Myles has given up on baseball