CJLO's AM antenna in Ville St. Pierre

Concordia University's student-run television and radio stations are always looking up, looking for ways to grow. It's been more than a decade now that both have gotten their funding directly from students instead of through the Concordia Student Union. They've since split their funding sources and have asked students for increases in their per-credit student fees.

CJLO, the radio station, has been transmitting at 1690 kHz since 2008, out of an antenna in Ville St. Pierre, just down the hill from its Loyola studio. It produces a full schedule of programming, most of it music-based but with some talk and information programs as well. But the 1 kilowatt transmitter on AM doesn't reach out very far, and many students don't have AM radios.

CUTV, the television station, has never had a broadcasting license. It can be seen on televisions on campus and on its website. Though it does produce a significant amount of programming, it's nowhere near enough to fill a full schedule without repeating every program dozens of times.

Both stations are looking to increase their reach through new ways of broadcasting, and to do that they each need more money, so both are in the process of asking students for yet another increase in their per-credit fees.

In a referendum of Concordia Student Union members Tuesday to Thursday this week, CJLO is asking for an increase from 25 to 34 cents per credit. This works out to $10.20 a year for a full-time student taking five classes a semester. CUTV is asking for an increase from 18 cents to 34 cents per credit, which would almost double its funding.

UPDATE (Dec. 3): Both questions passed, The Link reports. Following a rubber-stamp from the university's board, the fees will be applied to students' tuition bills.

Broadcasting equipment at CJLO's offices, sending its signal online and to its AM transmitter

The plans

Here's what they want to do to make themselves more accessible.

CJLO wants to setup a low-power FM retransmitter downtown, which would cover the downtown campus. "The frequency we are looking at is around 10 city blocks and no commercial station seems to want it," station manager Stephanie Saretsky tells me. "We have been told by our AM consultant that the response from the CRTC should be favorable because of this fact. Obviously nothing is guarenteed, but CJLO cannot start the application process without the fee levy."

The CRTC has said there isn't more space on the FM dial in Montreal (106.7 is an exception, now that it has been vacated by Aboriginal Voices Radio and the pirate station KKIC, but an application is pending to use that frequency). But the city is saturated only in terms of high-powered stations. There are options available for low-power transmitters covering a small area, and this seems to be what CJLO is looking for - something just to cover the downtown campus, so students can tune in between classes.

CUTV, meanwhile, doesn't want to setup a broadcast transmitter, but it does want to get on cable television, where most viewers are anyway. CUTV's plan is to apply to the CRTC for a community channel license, which would require cable systems to carry the channel. In the short term, the station is looking to get time on VOX, the community channel run by Videotron.

Both plans are admirable, though the campaigns by both groups are tying the increased funding to the new broadcast licenses. Neither group has actually applied for one yet, and the likelihood of success is far from absolute. Getting a new FM transmitter in Montreal - even a low-power one - isn't easy, particularly if it's just retransmitting another station. The CRTC process is hardly a formality or a rubber-stamp. For CUTV, the group would have to convince the CRTC to give it a channel on the cable dial even though there already exists a television station in Montreal devoted to programming from its four universities - Canal Savoir.

And it goes without saying that if these applications fail, neither of these groups is going to voluntarily reduce its student fee.

Still, I wish them luck. CJLO deserves to be heard, and a low-power retransmitter covering just the downtown campus makes a lot of sense. CUTV, meanwhile, has a lot of promise, but without a continuous outlet there isn't much incentive to produce sufficient quality of quantity of television programming.

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It's a scary time, because student politicians have been known to try to take advantage of that right to try to exact revenge on editors who have criticized them, or try to take control over the paper to change how it covers the news.

But I think the paper has gone too far in trying to shield itself from this perceived menace.

Dear editor,

As a former Concordia student and Link editor, I always make sure to pick up a copy of my old newspaper every time I'm near the campus. I've been reading with interest the paper's coverage of the Concordia Student Union election and the dismissal of President Judith Woodsworth by the university's Board of Governors. In coverage of both those issues, you called for increased transparency and accountability on the part of both student and university governments, and rightfully so.

But something I noticed has made me wonder if the next target of your demand for increased transparency shouldn't be The Link itself.

As I write this, you and other members of the Link Publication Society (essentially, all Concordia students who bother showing up) are hours away from taking part in its annual general assembly, in which you appoint members to the paper's board of directors, approve constitutional amendments and do other boring stuff that has nothing to do with the paper's editorial content.

At the bottom of your notice for this meeting is written the following: "Constitutional amendments are available at the Link office."

What's notable about this is that it means this list is not available anywhere else. The proposed constitutional amendments were not printed in the paper. They are not available on the website (for that matter, neither is the constitution itself). The Link's board is proposing changes to the rules that govern the way the organization runs and seems to be doing everything in its power to make it difficult for students to find out what those changes are. (I can only imagine what you make students go through if they want to see the amendments. Do they have to show ID? Are they allowed to take a copy out of the office or make notes? Are they monitored while they read them?)

I believe this is being done intentionally to prevent as many students as possible from seeing the proposed amendments before the meeting, in case any may disagree with them and want to round up support to vote them down.

It's a perfectly understandable and justifiable fear. But it's still wrong.

I don't say this lightly. I know more than most the dangers of student politicians coming to this one meeting a year when they have the power to vote and using that power to take control of the paper for the sole purpose of affecting its editorial content. I know because I lived it in 2001.

Back then, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had taken over all other political discussion at the university, and editorial decisions of The Link caused a rift between the paper and members of a Palestinian activist group and the CSU. Enemies of the paper protested and passed around a petition calling for The Link to be shut down. They later used sheer numbers to take over the general assembly, appoint sympathetic students to the board and demand changes to the bylaws.

The result was a nasty political tug of war between Link editorial staff and student activists that caused the paper to be shut down over the summer.

In the years that followed, I proposed changes to The Link's bylaws that strengthened its protections from those who would seek to control it for political reasons. (Those protections may still be in place. I don't know for sure, because I don't have access to The Link's constitution.) I learned that increased transparency helps the free press more than it hinders, even if it may sometimes seem in the paper's best interest to try to manipulate its own democratic processes.

It's a delicate balancing act between having a newspaper that is free of political control and having one that is accountable to its members and properly protected from itself. But secrecy doesn't protect The Link from politicians. It only serves to make it unaccountable and untransparent. And that makes it wrong.

I read with interest your recent decision to increase the use of your website by moving breaking news there. You can make a big leap in transparency by also posting your bylaws, constitutional amendments and board meeting minutes.

Transparency is scary in a world where knowledge is power. But The Link is strong. And if any politicians try to take it over again, I'll be the first to run down there with a picket sign and make sure they don't succeed.

Please reconsider your policy.

Steve Faguy, B.CompSc 2004, GrDip Journ. 2005

Editor-in-Chief 2003-04

It may seem petty to care about how a university newspaper announces constitutional amendments half a decade after graduating from that university (sadly, I know people who have been gone longer and still care more). But I don't think anyone else knows this issue as well as I do, and something compels me to write to them about it.

UPDATE: A shortened version of this letter (to meet their 400-word limit) appeared in Tuesday's Link. Its editor says the paper is open to adding these documents online.

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Frederick Lowy in 2003

It's official: Concordia University's executive committee has recommended that Frederick Lowy, who served as rector/president from 1995 to 2005, be reinstalled as interim president. Barring some unprecedented and unexpected revolt, the Board of Governors will approve that recommendation and Lowy will run the university again during the months it takes for a committee to seek out a president to take a full five-year term.

I was a student from 2000 to 2005, and I wrote about student and university politics for The Link, so I know Lowy pretty well and have interviewed him a few times during some of the most heated moments of Concordia's recent history.

Other leaders have been in office during Concordia's darker moments. John W. O'Brien came to office in the immediate aftermath of the Sir George Williams computer riots of 1969, and stayed on through Concordia's creation until 1984. Patrick Kenniff took over and acted as rector during the Fabrikant shootings, until political infighting got him fired.

Nobody killed anyone (that I know of) during Lowy's tenure, but that didn't mean it was easy for him. During three successive years he got hit with a major scandal involving students. In the fall of 2000, it was a $200,000 embezzlement scandal involving a member of the Concordia Student Union's executive. In the fall of 2001, it was a radical student union executive whose highly radical student agenda was a victim of unfortunate timing, coming out in the days surrounding Sept. 11. This was followed by a revolt from mainly engineering and commerce students who forced the CSU president to resign, only to see the subsequent by-election (which the "right wing" candidate won) annulled as a result of an apparent bribery scandal. Then in the fall of 2002, a protest against a speech by Benjamin Netanyahu got out of hand and made headlines around the world.

During these turbulent years, Lowy was caught between a radical student union and increasingly angry donors and alumni.

Lowy (whether individually or with his executive committee or vice-rectors) made some tough decisions during those times. The university temporarily cut off funding for the student union as the legitimacy of its leadership came into question. It expelled (or "excluded") two of the more radical student activists, which was controversial at the time because it bypassed the university's own student disciplinary process (the university argued that the two were not technically students at the time, which sparked a surreal debate over the fact that Concordia did not technically have a clear definition of what "student" meant). And it famously banned all activity on campus related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the immediate aftermath of that Netanyahu riot - a move that was an obvious violation of a fundamental right to free speech, but accomplished its goal of cooling down both sides.

Through it all, Lowy was soft-spoken, kind of halfway between a kind, wise grandfather and a man without a clue. Perhaps it was his background in psychiatry, but Lowy was a pressure release valve at a time when it was most needed.

That's not to say he was perfect. The things that made him a good peacemaker also made him incapable of standing up to his board or of making any serious changes in the way the university was structured.

Whether he was a good leader or not is up for debate, though he certainly seems more so in hindsight than he did at the time.

What's not up for debate is the simple fact that Lowy is the only leader in the past 20 years to leave office amicably, at the end of his mandate. For a university desperate for a temporary, quick-fix return to stability, they could have done far worse than look to Lowy.

Working on the Gazette's online desk today, I took the liberty of pulling some articles from the archives about Lowy. It's funny looking back to see that Lowy's challenge in 1995 was to improve morale and improve the mood and add more civility to internal politics. When he left, he got good marks, suggesting he succeeded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYtvdcbIbw

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Judith Woodsworth and some of the Concordia board members who may or may not choose to eventually find out why she left her position as president

I find myself, more than anything else, amused that everyone is focusing on Concordia University's Board of Governors in the wake of the sudden departure of its president, Judith Woodsworth.

When I was a student at the university from 2000 to 2005, I tried to attend as many of these board meetings as I could, to get an idea of how the university operates. It didn't take me long to figure out how things work there.

Like many other such bodies, the Board of Governors is largely a rubber-stamp organization. The big decisions are taken at the level of the executive committee, who presents them to the board as a fait accompli. Sometimes there is debate - particularly when someone outside the ruling clique has a problem with the decision - but the result of the eventual vote is rarely in doubt.

Strange definition of "community"

Concordia's Board of Governors is made up of 40 voting members. The largest group - and one which by itself forms a majority - is 23 people selected from among the "community at large". The others are a mix of faculty (6), staff (1), students (5) and alumni (3), each appointed by their respective associations, plus the president and chancellor.

A look at the list of those representing the "community at large", and you see the words "chairman", "president and chief executive officer" and "corporate director" a lot. They're all from the crowd you see at black-tie galas for hospital foundations (in fact, many members of the board are also on the boards of hospital foundations), not the ones setting up community gardens or organizing festivals or doing all the other stuff you think of when you think "community".

The biggest problem with this group is that it is de facto self-appointed. The board has a nominating committee, which recommends candidates to the board, which appoints them to a body called the Corporation of Concordia University (whose makeup is identical to the board), who then appoints them to the board. The "community at large" group forms a majority on each of these bodies.

The inherent problem with this setup has been obvious to the Concordia Student Union for more than a decade. But they control only four seats on the board. Occasionally, they might get support from the one graduate student, but their cause is always a losing one. Faculty, staff and the general public weren't on the side of the crazy anarchists.

Questions from unexpected places

The sudden departure of President Judith Woodsworth just before Christmas was the straw that broke the camel's back. Concordia's previous supposedly-permanent president, Claude Lajeunesse, also left well before his first mandate was to end, and also for reasons that were never made clear. Meanwhile, the university has lost a lot of other senior administrators over the past couple of years.

Now people are starting to take notice. Donald Boisvert, who was the university's dean of students while I was a student there, wrote a piece in The Gazette demanding an explanation from the board. Lucie Lequin, president of Concordia's faculty association, wrote a public letter to members (PDF) saying they should also demand to know why so much money is being spent forcing senior administrators to leave.

The situation has attracted the attention of the news media. Peggy Curran, The Gazette's universities reporter, is writing a piece every day or two about it. On Saturday, an article in the Globe and Mail. Chris Mota, the university's official spokesperson, has been working overtime the past couple of weeks doing interviews for TV and radio, trying to explain a statement that Woodsworth herself has reportedly admitted isn't true.

Meanwhile, that "community at large" group remains silent. The chair, Peter Kruyt, and the other members of the board have not been heard from. A complete blackout on public statements.

Time to shine some light

Clearly someone needs to step in and demand explanations. Unfortunately, the only body with the power to overrule the Board of Governors is the Quebec government, and they have shown a strong reluctance to do so in the past. We don't know yet whether this latest scandal will be enough for them to step in.

If they do, though, questions should be raised not only about the process for hiring and firing senior administrators, but about whether there is something inherently wrong with an organization that controls millions of dollars having a self-appointed board of directors. The government should investigate whether this is a good idea, or whether it is likely to lead to the formation of a clique, conflicts of interest, and the negative consequences that come with it.

Concordia, like all universities, is a publicly-funded institution. It needs to be responsible to the public.

Want your name on something? Just donate some money

A foreshadowing screed from my hippie days

I wrote the following article for a journalism class (a version was also published in the student paper The Link) in 2005, shortly before Dr. Frederick Lowy ended his term as Concordia University's president. In the past 25 years, he is the only Concordia president to have departed on friendly terms, completing a mandate and not needing to be replaced by an interim president/rector.

Philanthropists Anonymous

Near the entrance of the J. W. McConnell Library Building, three pillars feature plaques commemorating the financial contributions of students, alumni and government to the building's funding campaign. A fourth explains the building's name, citing the "exemplary generosity of the J. W. McConnell Family Foundation." It makes no mention of who McConnell was or any non-financial reason why the building might be named after him.

Above the plaques, suspended from the ceiling, a gold and copper-coloured display laughingly referred to as art by the university's administration lists major individual donors to Concordia's Capital Campaign. The starting price for your name here: $5,000.

At Concordia, high-profile donors are honoured not just with ugly plaques, but prestigious academic awards, honorary degrees, buildings and programs in their name, and in many cases a seat on the most powerful body in the university's hierarchy.

There is no formal contract in these exchanges. No agreement is made forcing the university to reward financial donors, and these rewards have been given to many who haven't given the university a dime. But far too many names appear on the lists of those honoured and the lists of those who donate than can be explained by coincidence.

Is this a way of thanking people who have contributed to the community, a teaser to encourage more donations, or is there something about Concordia's major financial donors that causes them to be praised for reasons other than their material wealth?

In Quebec, where tuition in Canada is at its lowest, the pressure to seek alternative sources of funding is extremely high.

Frederick Lowy, Concordia's president, says post-secondary education in Quebec is drastically underfunded, and that more money is needed to keep Concordia competitive with other universities across Canada. In Maclean's magazine's annual rating of Canadian universities, Concordia is currently rated second-last out of 11 universities in its category. Most of its low points relate to a lack of adequate funding compared to other Canadian universities, where tuition is higher.

Every year, when the Maclean's rankings come out, Lowy brings them to the group most concerned about Concordia's overall financial picture: its Board of Governors.

The Board of Governors is Concordia's highest governing body. It meets about once a month during the academic year to make decisions on university governance. It approves budgets, hires senior administrators, and approve major policy changes, but the meetings themselves usually involve little more than receiving reports and rubber-stamping recommendations of committees.

The 40-member Board of Governors is composed of representatives appointed from different constituencies, including faculty, staff, alumni and students. The largest constituency, comprising just over half of the board, is known as the "community at-large". Since Concordia is a public university, it logically follows that members of the community should have a say in how it is run.

But unlike the other constituencies, the community-at-large members aren't appointed by the group they represent. Instead, the board appoints a nominating committee, composed mostly of community-at-large members, which receives nominations and recommends appointments back to the board. The board accepts the recommendations behind closed doors, and appoints the person to the Corporation of Concordia University. The Corporation then meets and appoints the person to the Board of Governors.

Once this process is complete, the person begins a three-year term, and their appointment is made public. Normally, a governor will serve up to three three-year terms on the Board of Governors, for a total of nine years.

Lowy says that in addition to academic and cultural backgrounds, the nominating committee looks for "people who can spark donations," either by donating themselves or gathering other donors.

So it's no coincidence that the community-at-large seats are filled with some of the richest people around: executives at large corporations. Almost all of the 23 community-at-large members are (or were) senior management of large companies, including the National Bank, Quebecor World, Ernst and Young, and the aptly-named Power Corporation.

These people are also among Canada's most prolific political donors, including some of the heaviest donors to the federal Liberal and New Democratic parties. They're called upon to lobby and negotiate with the provincial government to try to secure more funding for education.

Jean McGuire, a management professor in the John Molson School of Business, says this situation is very common for private and non-profit corporations alike. She says donors feel more comfortable if they know what's going on in the organization, and want to make sure their money is used wisely.

She says their motivation for giving to universities isn't to control them, but help them in their mission. This is why donations and increased involvement in a non-profit organization both come together.

Tim McSorley, the Quebec regional chair of the Canadian Federation of Students, doesn't quite see it that way. While he agrees that the corporate sector does have a place on the Board of Governors, he believes its weight is too much and is silencing the voices of others who could serve.

McSorley says the unusually wealthy corporate CEOs don't reflect the economic diversity of the community. "It's an academic institution," he says. "It should have a multitude of voices." He rejects the implication that corporate CEOs are better at managing large organizations and says there are people who know how who aren't part of the corporate sector.

CFS Quebec has long claimed that corporate CEOs on the Board of Governors have an inherent conflict of interest. They have a say in the organization that trains their future workforce. CFS-Q says this creates a danger that certain programs, like those in engineering and the sciences, will receive more attention if they're more profitable, while programs like philosophy or history would receive less.

Students have already raised concerns that the needs of fine arts students are being taken away to give more space to computer science and engineering.

As part of the CFS-Q executive, McSorley has been raising awareness about the dangers of private involvement in education, a solution he doesn't like any better than increased tuition. He says students are providing free labour for large corporations while paying for their own training.

Lowy says that despite the apparent problems on paper, he's not concerned about corporate influence. He says the board has no wish to control the curriculum. Instead, he says, it leaves that to the university's senate, which deals with academic programs and is comprised only of students, administration and faculty. The senate, he says, is free of such corporate influence.

But Concordia's corporate connections aren't just through its community-at-large board members. Lowy himself sits on the board of directors of two large companies.

One is Dundee Bancorp, a holding corporation for financial management companies. Lowy sits stone-faced as he describes the nature of the company, his public relations officer looking on nervously. The company's board of directors includes fellow governors Richard J. Renaud and Normand Beauchamp.

Lowy also sits on the board of Neurochem, a pharmaceutical company, with fellow board member Peter Kruyt.

He is quick to downplay the potential conflict of interest his membership on these boards represents, saying there are "no areas of conflict."

Lowy is also quick to dismiss the idea that he and the board members meet in secret. He says that while the executive members of the board meet often, his relationship to the community-at-large members is "collegial," not personal.

But Lowy isn't the only one with these extra-curricular connections. Most of the corporate CEOs on the board run companies, and many sit on the boards of other non-profit and for-profit corporations. Playing a quick game of six degrees of separation yields many connections between these members outside of the university.

Board member Jonathan Wener owns Canderel, a real estate company. Canderel employed the services of the Davies, Ward, Phillips and Vineberg law firm, as well as fellow board member Lillian Vineberg. The law firm, meanwhile, has another board member, Rita Lc de Santis, as one of its partners. Similar connections attach at least 15 members of the board's community-at-large contingent together.

Concordia's president doesn't pretend that dangers don't present themselves. But when it comes to the pressures of sacrificing integrity, he points to an entirely different problem: personal favours.

Lowy says the most common request involves parents who want their children's admission rejections or failures overturned. Lowy says it's difficult to say no to such requests, especially when they come from friends of the university, but that aside from providing an explanation of the university's point of view, he never gets involved in such matters.

The matters he and Concordia's academic administration do have a say in is the awarding of honorary degrees and the naming of buildings and facilities. Some believe these symbolic gestures are an acceptable way of thanking donors, while others are uncomfortable with the idea of universities selling their good name to the highest bidder.

Former governors Francesco Bellini, Dominic D'Alessandro, Leonard Ellen and Alan B. Gold have all received honorary degrees after donating millions to the university. The university's policies currently forbid giving honorary degrees to sitting members of the Board of Governors.

Honorary degrees are given to people who have contributed to the community. Lowy says they are given to Concordia graduates who have "done important things in life" or are "leaders in their field."

Though major donors are among Concordia's honorees, most degree recipients are not donors to the university.

McGuire dismisses the idea that degrees are given as a result of donations. The awarding of such degrees are decided by faculty councils, not senior administration. McGuire says the possibility of future donations has never been raised at these meetings.

Lowy says people would feel insulted if honorary degrees were purchased instead of being awarded based on merit.

"You can't really sell the degrees," Lowy says. "It's not a bad idea," he adds with a laugh.

Honorary degrees are awarded for service to the community. But the naming of buildings, rooms and programs are more directly related to the donations received to aid in their construction.

The Richard J. Renaud Science Complex, which opened on Concordia's Loyola campus in 2003, was named after Renaud, a current member of the board, largely due to his financial contributions. About a dozen facilities and programs are named after major donors for the same reason.

The largest known donation came from Molson Inc. in 2001. Eric Molson, Molson's chairman and Concordia's chancellor, announced that the brewery would be giving $10 million to Concordia's business school. In return, the Faculty of Commerce and Administration would rename itself to the John Molson School of Business, after the man who founded the brewery over 200 years ago.

When it comes to naming buildings after donors, McSorley is hesitant to immediately denounce the practice in general. He says naming a place isn't a problem in itself, but a symptom of the need for funding from the private sector.

McGuire doesn't think the deal benefits Molson. She says the company could just as easily have started a foundation named after itself. "Most of the people who are giving money already have prestige."

But McSorley has some reservations about Molson. "You have 30,000 people going to Concordia who know their commerce school is called the John Molson School of Business," he says. "When you think of how much beer students drink..."

Concordia's Board of Governors next meets on Thursday, Feb. 17, at 8 a.m. in room 2.260 of the EV building, 1515 Ste. Catherine St. W., corner Guy. Expect it to be a circus of people demanding the governors finally speak up about what's going on.

UPDATE (Jan. 10): Board chair Peter Kruyt has finally issued a public statement on the matter. It's filled with bullshit, so I've extracted key paragraphs (emphasis mine):

Notwithstanding our support of the principle of transparency, good governance requires, among other things, that the Board respect confidentiality agreements in conducting the business of the University. The statement that Concordia issued on December 22 was approved by both Concordia and Dr. Woodsworth, and both parties are accordingly limited in what each can say publicly. I also believe that individuals should have the right to privacy.

We are determined to build on this solid foundation and have established ambitious yet attainable goals for ourselves through our Strategic Framework. Our commitment is to focus on Concordia’s strengths, striking a balance between our tradition as a welcoming and engaged university, and our mission of building on excellence in education, research, creative activity and community partnerships. We aim to rank among Canada’s top comprehensive universities within the next decade and to be a first choice university for students and faculty in Canada and internationally in defined fields, or “signature areas.”

It was in this context and following discussions with members of the Board during the month of December that Dr. Woodsworth made the decision to resign.

Though the idea was to say nothing here, this statement makes a few things clear:

• Despite what it says, it's pretty clear that Woodsworth did not leave willingly (and not just because that's what Woodsworth herself has said). You don't have "discussions with members of the board" and then suddenly decide to resign effective immediately just before Christmas while getting a hefty severance package. The board wanted her out, and fired her, offering the option to say she resigned while still taking her severance. That face-saving move is pointless now that everyone has a clear idea what actually happened.
• Knowing that, it's clear that this was either some sort of disagreement over policy or the board not feeling that Woodsworth was doing enough to meet its priorities. And rather than have a formal process for reviewing the president, some board members apparently took it upon themselves to convince her to resign.

Though supposedly meant to quell the controversy surrounding this issue, obviously this statement will not do anything of the sort. The one good thing it does is put to rest any suggestion that this has something to do with a minor scandal over expenses (it's all the media has to go on at this point because it happens to be before a court). But the thought that anyone is going to be satisfied by this statement is wishful thinking to the point of self-delusion.

Judith Woodsworth was thrown to the curb through a process that is sketchy at best (the Board of Governors has not met once since this whole thing began). And the board's ruling clique isn't about to investigate its own activities.

Concordia board chair Peter Kruyt (or, more likely, a secretary) welcomes comments about this issue at Chairman.Board@concordia.ca. But since he and his friends are not giving any interviews, don't expect to learn anything.

UPDATE (Jan. 12): About 200 professors have signed an open letter demanding answers and comparing the board to a "star chamber"

Alumni support resignation

UPDATE (Jan. 14): Concordia's three alumni associations have picked sides, and they back the university the board whoever forced Woodsworth to resign. The university sent out an email to alumni (including myself) on their behalf with the following key paragraphs:

Appreciating that the President’s resignation has raised many questions about Concordia’s governance practices, we queried our Board of Governors representatives* and senior university officials on the matter.

Those discussions, which respected the confidentiality that governs deliberations by the Board of Governors, have allowed the executives of the three alumni associations to concur that Dr. Woodsworth’s decision to resign had the support of a significant majority of the internal and external members of the Board of Governors. In our view, the process was conducted fairly and objectively and the transition to a new Interim President and Vice-Chancellor is in the best interests of the university and the alumni.

I'm not sure what "respected the confidentiality" means. Either the executives got information out of their representatives on the board, which it seems to me would violate that confidentiality, or those representatives said "just trust us" and said nothing of consequence, or there were hints that they think didn't violate confidentiality but probably did.

As for their confidence that the decision to resign had "significant majority" support, I have no idea where that information would have come from. To be clear, there has not been a board meeting since her resignation.

*For the record, the alumni representatives on the board are:

• For the Concordia University Alumni Association, Francesco Ciampini, a lawyer
• For the Sir George Williams Alumni Association, Robert Barnes
• For the Loyola Alumni Association, John Lemieux, a lawyer and partner in his firm

Students support resignation

Meanwhile, undergraduate student representatives appointed by the Concordia Student Union have also supported Woodsworth's decision to resign, according to an email the CSU's Amine Dabchy sent to The Gazette. In fact, they demanded "significant changes" after being disappointed with Woodsworth's lack of leadership in a meeting on Dec. 1:

We stated unequivocally that the students had lost confidence in this administration and we called upon Peter Kruyt to take immediate action by demanding significant changes.

Not only that, Dabchy suggests that the departure of so many vice-presidents might not be so much a problem with the board being drunk with power as it might have been the fault of Woodsworth herself (at least for those resignations that happened under her watch).

Faculty supports Woodsworth

From that same Gazette article, we learn that the six faculty representatives wanted Woodsworth to complete her term. Why the faculty would be the protesters while the students, alumni and others stay silent is a really good question.

Board members exceed own term limits

UPDATE (Jan. 19): As noted by The Link, 13 of the 23 community-at-large members of the Board of Governors have exceeded recommended term limits of two times three years. This list includes chair Peter Kruyt, former chair Lillian Vineberg, as well as a majority of members of the nominating committee (that, of course, decides who sits on the board), and a large chunk of the members of other key committees that deal with real estate and senior salaries.

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Students of Concordia University's journalism graduate diploma program

Almost a month ago, The Gazette went through a yearly tradition of inviting journalism students into its office and handing out some awards (read: small bursaries) to those who have stood out among their peers.

This evening went on like others have before it, with the students being invited into the office and being served wine and cheese before some people they don't know introduce other people they don't know and hand out bursaries named after people they don't know.

But there was a big difference this year: a new bursary, named after someone else they didn't know.

Mike King bursary

The new award was the Mike King bursary, setup in honour of the Gazette business reporter who died suddenly in June. This is a story in itself - normally an endowment sufficient to distribute annual awards takes much longer than four months to build up, but an outpour of donations from friends and colleagues (including myself) meant the first $500 bursary went out right away.

Michael Moore, winner of the inaugural Mike King bursary

Yes, his name is Michael Moore. And yes, he's heard the jokes. His teachers see his name and make some funny comment about how they love his movies.

One of the disadvantages to a name like this is that Moore is entirely ungoogleable. I missed him during the awards night (hence why some eagle-eyed readers will notice that he's photographed in the daylight outside Concordia's Hall Building a few days later), and attempts to find him online were entirely fruitless. Thankfully we were still able to get in touch.

Moore is in his third year as a journalism undergrad, with some English courses on the side. His goal when he graduates in the spring? "I would like to get a job."

Permitted to daydream a bit, he says he'd like to become a sports writer, penning long columns (Dave Stubbs, look out). He sees people like Peter King of Sports Illustrated as role models.

But he knows he's not going to start out as a high-profile columnist, and he's ready to start small.

"I'm willing to go to (small towns), like Mike did, if that's what it takes" he said, noting the career path of the man whose name is attached to his bursary. Mike King worked in Windsor, Ont., Kelowna, B.C. and other small towns in western Canada before getting his dream job at The Gazette.

Lewis Harris award

Lew Harris was a reporter and later a copy editor at the Montreal Star and Gazette until he died of pancreatic cancer in 1999. He had, according to his Gazette obituary, a "quick, dry sense of humour and a hidden flair for whimsy."

Married to reporter Marian Scott and the brother of copy editor Leon Harris, Lew covered politics and crime in his reporting days, and started up some controversy in the 1984 Canadian election campaign when he noticed Liberal leader John Turner had a bum-patting habit.

The bursary started shortly after Harris died. Its first winner was a Concordia journalism student by the name of Caroline Plante. Plante is now the National Assembly reporter for Global Montreal.

Katherine Lalancette, winner of the Lewis Harris award

Journalism student, fluently bilingual, magazine writer, former Alouettes cheerleader. Guess which of these raised eyebrows when it was brought up during the awards ceremony.

Sure enough, fourth year undergrad Katherine Lalancette once danced with the pom poms for Montreal's Canadian Football League team. There's even video evidence online.

But Lalancette was a bit surprised when she heard this tidbit mentioned while her award was presented. The introductions are done mostly based on each student's application, and Lalancette purposefully didn't mention her cheerleading on hers.

Not that she wasn't proud of her past - cheerleading at that level is a lot of work and takes a lot of practice - but she feared that this information might contribute to prejudice against her.

Lalancette has already gotten some real-world media experience under her belt as a contributor to Loulou magazine. Born in Sherbrooke but raised in Montreal, she's fluently bilingual and writes in both languages - a huge asset in the Montreal media environment.

As for her future, she's still unsure. "That's a big question now that I'm graduating," she says. She might want to apply to Columbia University to continue her studies, or be a feature writer about social issues (a common theme among the award winners tonight), or continuing to write about fashion and beauty.

But she's not planning to go back to cheerleading anytime soon.

Katherine Lalancette is on Twitter at @kik_tweets

Susan Carson award

Susan Carson was a feature writer and columnist at The Gazette from 1979 until 1988, when she died of complications following brain surgery.

"Carson was a champion of the poor, the abused, the disabled," The Gazette wrote when the fund was established. "She took their problems to heart and wrote about them; her stories appeared in The Gazette as well as in other Canadian publications.

"Readers responded with jobs for those who needed work, shelter and clothing for people who had lost their homes and opportunity for those who had lost hope. They identified with her loving and gently humorous columns about her family and how she managed to juggle her job with her role as mother and wife. And they were strengthened by the determination of brave, sick children she wrote about, the dignity of mothers on welfare trying to raise families or the resolve of people who refused to allow disabilities to get in the way of productive lives."

Carson, who was married to John Kalbfleisch (now the Second Draft columnist) wrote a column about life as a working mother.

Mel Lefebvre, winner of the Susan Carson bursary

Mel Lefebvre is definitely an idealist. The Montrealer's bachelor's degree is in environmental science, and she just started up a Concordia chapter of Journalists for Human Rights (it's on Facebook). Her dream job isn't as a general assignment reporter, but as a communications director for the David Suzuki Foundation. Failing that, she'd be happy with a feature writer job at National Geographic.

"Cheesy, but ... yeah," she admits, acknowledging that neither dream is particularly likely.

Still, her goal is to change the world for the better, and "hopefully journalism is the right tool," she says.

Mel Lefebvre is on Twitter at @mlynnelefebvre

Philip Fisher bursaries

The most ancient of the Gazette journalism bursaries are named after Philip Fisher, who was president of the Southam newspaper chain from 1945 to 1961. Southam owned The Gazette until the newspaper chain was sold to Hollinger and then Canwest.

Among previous winners are Catherine Solyom and Ann Carroll, both of whom went on to become reporters at The Gazette.

The bursaries are given out annually to two Concordia graduate diploma students.

Carmen Fabio, winner of a Philip Fisher bursary

Carmen Fabio's previous career was designing graphical interfaces for nuclear power plant simulators.

And she quit that to go into journalism.

The born-and-bred Montrealer wanted a change, she says, and to do something that she enjoyed rather than something that made her rich.

"Do I want money, or do I want to enjoy getting up in the morning?" she asked rhetorically. Deciding that she preferred to change the world, she enrolled in Concordia's journalism graduate diploma program, where she's the ... umm ... dean of the class. And by that I mean she's surrounded by relative children.

The former design art student says she would like to go into radio documentary. But, like her colleagues, she'll take what she can get.

Carmen Fabio is on Twitter at @Carma999

Meagan Wohlberg, winner of a Philip Fisher bursary

"I actually care about things," Meagan Wohlberg says about her desire to change the world.

Wohlberg grew up in northern Saskatchewan and studied philosophy and English in her undergraduate years at the University of Saskatchewan.

"I want my career to mold to my politics," she says. She wants to give a voice to the voiceless, to help people who are disadvantaged tell their own stories, and she rejects the idea that all stories must be balanced. "I think there are ways of giving a balanced view" without giving equal time to sides that are illegitimate.

She says she'd see herself working for an alternate, online publication, combining social work with journalism.

"I don't think there's a person who doesn't have a voice," she says.

Meagan Wohlberg is on Twitter at @meaganimous

The losers

Three adorable Fagstein fans gather around my chins for a photo

Though the two undergraduate winners were informed of their bursaries in advance, the entire graduate diploma class was brought in and their wins were surprises.

When I started interviewing the winners, a few of the non-winners got a bit testy with me, wondering why I wasn't interviewing them. I felt bad. I mean, I didn't want to exclude anyone, but I didn't have time to interview dozens of journalism students about their futures.

I especially felt bad when I found out they were fans of this blog. So, hi there. At least you get your photo on my blog.

(Don't feel too bad, though. When these awards were handed out in 2004, I was one of the students present, and I didn't win anything either. So some day you might grow up to become a sarcastic blogger too!)

There were guys in this class too.

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View of the tunnel from just outside the turnstiles at the Guy metro

A tunnel connecting the Guy metro station to Concordia University's Hall Building and library building downtown is finally complete, and the finishing touches are being applied before it's open to the public.

Great timing. Just when people finally want to venture outside again, we have an excuse not to.

View of the new tunnel from the old tunnel connecting the Hall and library buildings

The tunnel, which stretches for about a block and a half (and as you can see above, doesn't feature much to look at or do), won't just shelter students from the cold. They'll also bring students away from downtown traffic, and cut down significantly on the number of jaywalkings across de Maisonneuve Blvd. from students heading from the metro to classes at the Hall Building.

The tunnel also connects the two parts of Concordia's downtown campus: the old section comprising the Hall Building (built in the 1960s and with a rich history, particularly because the Concordia Student Union is housed there) and the J.W. McConnell Library Building (opened in 1992), and the new section with the GM building (formerly used for business classes and which is slated for renovation), the EV building (engineering, computer science and visual arts, opened in 2005) and the new John Molson School of Business building, which opened last fall.

Map of Concordia tunnels: Blue are already in use, red is the new tunnel to Guy metro

While it would still be a stretch to call this an Underground City West, the growth of only the past half decade leaves hope for commercial expansion that might make life in those tunnels more interesting.

UPDATE: The Link has video of a trip through the tunnel, which seems to show a lot of water infiltration:

UPDATE (April 9): The tunnel is open now, and the university says those puddles in the video above are nothing to worry about.

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But this week, even though the drama on campus seemed to be just as big as every year (The Link this week was filled with election stories - PDF), nobody really cared off-campus.

Part of it is that the left-right divide that polarized student politics 5-10 years ago doesn't exist anymore. Looking at the two parties that ran this year, I couldn't figure out which party was on which side.

In the end, the party that was expected to win did so handily, with 73% of the student vote, 26 of 29 seats on the Council of Representatives, all four elected seats on the university's senate and both elected seats on the Board of Governors.

But that wasn't the big story of this election.

Instead, the big issue was on the referendum ballot, and questions about fees.

Free money

It's a perennial thing at Concordia that various groups will pester the CSU council to put a referendum question on the ballot demanding to institute or increase an independent fee levy on students. While student unions complain of non-tuition fees that have been steadily increasing over the past decade and a half, the CSU seems more than happy to add to those fees, usually by putting on the ballot misleading questions that sell an organization and then demand some small-looking per-credit fee (nowadays with a promise to refund students if they ask).

Two groups got questions on the ballot:

• Le Frigo Vert, the vegan food store that wanted to increase its levy by 50% - it says it wants to expand its hours and offer better discounts on food, but critics say it just wants to increase salaries of the people who work there. The vote failed 1,576-1,754.
• Cinema Politica, an activist movie screening group, wanted to increase its fee by 250%, for reasons that I'm sure it thought were justified. The measure passed by only 15 votes, 1,674-1,659.

A third question about fees also failed. The student union has been collecting massive fees for years to build a new student-owned building that would house extra-curricular activities. In order to speed up the process, the union asked to have the fee more than double, to a point where it would end up costing a full-time student $135 a year, and rake in more than $2 million a year total from Concordia undergrads. That question was soundly defeated, 931-2,348.

You can't leave me!

The big question on the ballot, though, was about whether Concordia undergraduate students wanted to maintain their membership in the Canadian Federation of Students.

In the past two years there has been a wave of student associations who have gone through the process of disaffiliating with CFS. Not because they disagree with the CFS's stand on tuition or social or economic issues, but because they feel the CFS is undemocratic, and their repeated attempts to reform the CFS's structure have failed.

In fact, the situation has gotten so bad that the CFS is now at war with its own Quebec chapter (tensions had been simmering for quite a while for years previously), and has banished CFS-Q from its organization (now demanding that it change its name).

As if proving their point about the lack of democracy, the CFS is refusing to allow student unions to leave, even after referendums are held with students voting overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from the CFS and stop paying fees.

How can they ignore the democratic will of students so brazenly? Well, it's in the CFS by-laws.

In a document poetically called Solidarity For Their Own Good, and posted to Stephen Taylor's blog, Titus Gregory spends 339 heavily-footnoted pages talking about the structure of CFS and the increasingly convoluted procedure put in place to disaffiliate from the organization.

The procedures put an insane amount of power in CFS's hands considering the obvious stake they have in the result.

Among the rules the CFS forces student unions to go through:

• A requirement that 20% of students sign a petition demanding to leave CFS (this is just to put the matter to a vote). For the CSU, this would mean more than 5,000 students, and about 10 times the number it would take to force any other matter onto a referendum ballot
• The CFS, not the student union, sets the date for the referendum
• A standardized question that makes no reference to what fees students pay to CFS
• Votes for disaffiliation by any one student association must be a minimum of five years apart
• Votes for disaffiliation cannot take place between April 15 and Sept. 15, or between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15
• No three student associations can hold disaffiliation referendums within the same three-month period. As a result of this (and the previous rule), the CFS refused to allow a referendum at Concordia until almost a year after the petition was delivered in October.
• A special body, with half its members appointed by CFS, decides on what campaign materials are allowed (and can unilaterally tear down posters it feels are not compliant). During a referendum at Dawson College in 2008 (this one to join CFS), posters arguing against CFS affiliation were declared illegal for incredibly dubious reasons (most alleging defamation against CFS), including the argument that one had "out of date" citations from student newspapers.
• The CFS has the right to appoint poll clerks, scrutineers, and one of two members of an appeals committee to deal with any disputes over these rules
• Campaigning of any kind is prohibited outside of the campaign period, but an exception is made for any material that describes or advertises CFS services so long as it doesn't reference the referendum directly
• All outstanding fees must be paid to CFS before choosing to disaffiliate. The CSU was shocked when the CFS calculated their outstanding fees to be more than $1 million, and outright deny that any such deficit exists.

Imagine any other organization imposing these kinds of rules for someone wanting to leave that organization, and one word comes to mind: undemocratic.

It's easier to leave a cellphone contract from hell than it is to leave CFS.

Which brings us back to the entire reason these student associations want to leave.

But they can't leave. Instead, the CFS is suing or threatening to sue any student union that dares try, finding some violation of the CFS-imposed rules to argue that the union is violating CFS by-laws and hence a contract between the two organizations.

Other battles are going on with the McGill graduate association, as well as Concordia's Graduate Student Association, which CFS also argues owes it a lot of money. If all the disaffiliation campaigns are successful, the CFS will be left with virtually no presence in Quebec, Canada's second-largest province.

At Concordia, even though the question was simply whether they wanted to remain part of CFS, the students voted 72% against. Not only did members of both parties running for the executive support leaving CFS (one made it a primary platform point), but the issue seemed to unite (what's left of) both sides of the political divide, proving once again that corruption is not a partisan issue.

And so, like that psycho ex-girlfriend who insists your relationship isn't over until she agrees to end it, the CFS will be using its lawyers to convince student associations to stay (Heck, I expect a lawyer's letter threatening me for this post any day now). And all the money being sunk into this battle (from both sides) is money that won't be used to advocate for student causes and provide services to students at universities.

The CFS might even win some of these court challenges, successfully finding some loophole that invalidates months of work on the part of a student association that just wants to leave.

But just because the CFS might win doesn't mean it shouldn't be ashamed of itself.

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Spotted at Concordia University last week

Nice to know I have a government that will spend my tax money on giant, unnecessary signs that advertise to me other ways the government is using my tax money.

I wonder if there's a similar sign outside Canada's sign-making factories, saying the government is "investing" in them too.

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Mittens for Haiti!

I passed by this donation bin setup at Concordia for Haiti. In it, I saw bags with scarves, winter coats, and mittens.

I'm guessing they were from people who have never been to Haiti, and who aren't experts in meteorology. (Or, as someone comments below, hopefully for Haitian refugees coming here, which would save on shipping costs.)

The difficulty in getting supplies (particularly the right ones) to disaster zones is one of the reasons charities ask you to give money instead of stuff. A lot of stuff, unfortunately, is useless.

Hope for Haiti Now is on until 10 p.m. on CBC, CTV, Global, CityTV, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Vermont Public Television, CNN, MuchMusic, MTV Canada, National Geographic Channel, WGN, WPIX and BET. Quebec's Ensemble pour Haïti airs on Radio-Canada, TVA, V, Télé-Québec, TV5, LCN, RDI, MusiMax and Musique Plus.

Remember if you're watching the U.S. special to donate to Canadian charities to take advantage of the government's donation matching program 1-877-51-HAITI or canadaforhaiti.com.

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The best part about this video is clearly the subtitles, in case people have trouble understanding Rick Mercer.

The video is a promotion for Concordia's We Value campaign, which appears to have something to do with making people respect each other and ... uhh ... value stuff, I guess.

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And, fortunately for us, his work teaching Concordia students to handle video has come in handy here, and the entire hour-long discussion is available on YouTube:

It has more to do with the Expos and sports business than journalism, but it's still a fascinating look at what went wrong with this franchise from people who know.

The panel includes:

• Elliott Price, Team 990 host and former Expos broadcaster
• Michael Barrett, Former Expos catcher
• Dave Van Horne, former Expos radio broadcaster
• Serge Touchette, journalist with RueFrontenac.com

Jack Todd, of course, also has some thoughts on the matter, which he shared in a column. His talk at the conference is recorded audio-only here, though there's a lot of noise.

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Concordia University baseball champions (photo by Al Fournier)

They won the national championship this weekend. This despite losing two of three games in round-robin play. They won a quarterfinal tiebreaker, and then their semifinal match and the championship final of the ... uhh ... six-team tournament.

Go Stingers!

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(See Part 2)

Concordia baseball has been trying for years to get the kind of recognition that high-profile sports like football and hockey get, though they say the university has been immensely supportive of their efforts.

Insert your own joke about Jeffrey Loria and the Expos here.

UPDATE: I should mention the team is going to the national championships. Let's hope Rick Monday isn't there.

UPDATE (Oct. 26): They won! National champions! W00t!

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This year's lineup looks interesting, if only because of a panel called Life After the Expos, with Dave van Horne and Elliott Price. It will be followed by a play-by-play workshop, which also includes Sportsnet's Rob Faulds.

Registration is free, and the event takes place at Loyola campus on Saturday, Nov. 7.

* Of course, the likelihood of anyone getting a job in sports journalism, much less as a play-by-play announcer, is just about zero in this media environment.

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For all the media attention it received, the Netanyahu riot didn't cause much lasting physical damage. There were no serious injuries, and the 2008 Habs riot caused much more in the way of property damage than the two windows and emptied fire extinguisher cost Concordia. But the political and media fallout was enormous. The riot led to an unprecedented ban on all organized events related to Middle East issues on campus. After that ban was lifted a few weeks later, the Concordia Student Union pounced on a controversial flyer and some amateur legal analysis to hastily suspend the Jewish student group Hillel. The next spring, students voted en masse to expel the left-wing radicals in charge of student politics. For the next half-decade, students continually decided that a corrupt moderate student government was still better than bringing the leftists back.

Two documentaries were produced about the Netanyahu riot and the political conflict around it.

One was called "Confrontation at Concordia", by Martin Himel, which aired on Global TV. There's no official version online, but it was uploaded to Google Video in its entirety (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) by a white supremacist group (it's unclear whether they take the side of the Jews or Palestinians in this debate - one would assume they despise both). Himel's documentary makes Michael Moore look reasoned and unbiased. He clearly takes the side of Hillel, even comparing actions of Palestinian supporters on campus to actions in 1930s Germany that preceded the Holocaust, asking rhetorically how far Concordia's tensions could escalate in comparison. The film invites experts from only one side of the debate, and includes a lot of voiceovers in which Himel makes bold statements based solely on his own opinion. Himel even appears multiple times to talk into the camera.

The documentary caused outrage among Concordia's left, and even moderates (such as myself) decried it as biased. It was the subject of complaints to both the Quebec Press Council and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Both dismissed the majority of the complaints, finding only that Himel and Global should have made it clear to viewers that this was a point-of-view opinion documentary and not a news piece.

The other documentary, called Discordia, was a production of the National Film Board and the CBC. Directors Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal took a radically different approach to their film, focusing it more on three figures involved and the personal, emotional rollercoaster they went through in those months. Addelman and Mallal do not appear in their own film, and there are no voiceovers. Only a few subtitles give dry, matter-of-fact statements. All the opinion is given by the three stars: Noah Sarna of Hillel, Samer Elatrash of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, and Aaron Maté of the Concordia Student Union. Though it is slightly biased to the pro-Palestinian side because two of those three are on one side of the debate, the film makes no grand hyperbolic statements and gives no clue to its directors' political views.

Neither documentary, of course, tells the whole story. Such a thing would be impossible in an hour-long film. But the latter, at least, gives a slice of the nuances of the debate, while the former shows the real (if outrageously exaggerated) fears that Israel's supporters had about what was going on at the activist university.

Concordia has calmed down considerably in those seven years, so the closest the younger generation will get to the "viper's nest" is through such historical documents.

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On the left: Heroes. On the right: Terrorists.

The Gazette's Bill Brownstein is on a driver's rights binge this week. On Monday, he was on CFCF talking about how the city was "held hostage" by the Tour de l'Île, and repeating the anti-cyclist talking points:

• The Tour de l'Île shut down the city and prevented people from getting to hospitals
• Why can't the Tour de l'Île be held on the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve where it won't bother anyone?
• Cops never ticket cyclists and always ticket drivers
• Drivers would like to walk and cycle everywhere, but it's impossible in this city
• Drivers are an oppressed majority, and having a handful of bike paths and Bixi stations scattered around the city is going way too far
• Removable poles along bike paths are better than permanent concrete medians like we have on de Maisonneuve Blvd.

Of course, there are counter-arguments to all these. The tours' routes were constructed to allow car traffic through wherever safely possible (and for crying out loud, it's one weekend day a year), emergency vehicles were given priority, and holding it on another island would defeat the purpose of a Tour de l'Île, wouldn't it?

When you consider how much space in this city is reserved solely for four-wheel transportation, and how many traffic rules are designed solely to prevent them from crashing into each other, you wonder if people who say drivers are oppressed aren't on some crazy drug.

Sadly, Brownstein's throwaway half-joking suggestion of a "car party" might very well come true if drivers' limitless sense of entitlement continues to grow.

This tunnel under de Maisonneuve Blvd. will link Concordia's Hall and Library buildings with the Guy-Concordia metro station.

Today, in his newspaper column, Brownstein talks about the tunnel being constructed at Concordia's downtown campus that would connect the two older buildings at de Maisonneuve and Mackay with the Guy-Concordia metro station (and, just as importantly, the two newer buildings):

Are you kidding me? The students can’t handle the two-block trek outside! Has this exercise really been worth it? Construction on that corner has done a marvellous job of crippling traffic for motorists and cyclists alike.

While this is true, consider what will happen once the tunnel is built. Students will no longer have to go outside to get between the metro and the Hall Building. They will no longer have to jaywalk across de Maisonneuve Blvd., and they'll no longer be an annoying swarm for drivers to contend with on a daily basis. Not to mention how much easier it will be to transport equipment between buildings. This construction will actually be good for drivers.

Brownstein also talks about Old Montreal being closed to traffic and the horror that's causing by forcing drivers to walk a couple of blocks to their overpriced restaurants overpriced hotels with their bags. (Bonus points if you notice the blatant hypocrisy here.)

Sorry Bill, you haven't made a convert out of me.

CORRECTION (June 25): Brownstein was talking about Old Montreal hotels needing to send bellboys blocks away to pick up bags, not people needing to walk to overpriced restaurants. Fagstein regrets the error.

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Meanwhile, the CSU says it spent $200,000 on legal fees alone in the past year.

Good thing I'm not a student there anymore. I can laugh about their misfortune instead of crying at the massive waste of money.

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Unlike actual degrees which require lots of hard work, honorary degrees are bestowed upon people the university believes will make it look good. In many cases, mere celebrity will suffice. This year, Concordia is giving degrees to Air Farce veterans Don Ferguson and Roger Abbott, who graduated from Loyola College, as well as Canadiens legend Jean Béliveau.

Other awards are handed out to people who excel in their industries and set an example for students.

And then there are those whose titles include the words "CEO", whose honours have more to do with how much money they've given to the university than how much they've contributed to society, as I wrote last year.

Richard J. Renaud

This year, two names fall under that category: Richard J. Renaud and Mel Hoppenheim. It's no coincidence that the former has a building named after him and the latter an entire program.

Concordia doesn't hide the fact that contributions to the university are a factor when deciding who to hand degrees to. In fact, it's listed right there as one of the criteria (PDF). But the university tempers it by adding other categories of contribution - supposedly volunteer or creative work would also help, though I don't recall any volunteers for the People's Potato getting honorary degrees recently.

The big reason Renaud is getting his degree now instead of years ago is that he just retired from the Board of Governors last year (a seat on the board is another perk you get when you give the university millions of dollars). The board decides who gets degrees, and has a policy against awarding them to sitting members.

This isn't to imply that Renaud has ulterior motives for his contributions to the university. The value of an honorary degree hardly justifies the price. But it's sad that this supposed academic honour is bestowed upon the rich far more often than the poor.

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Concordia's announcement said it would be reviewed "over the next few months," which I can only guess means it's not going to happen this summer at all.

That's unfortunate.

Of course, with all the construction going on in that area as Concordia builds a new tunnel from the Hall Building to the Guy-Concordia métro station (and its new buildings next to it), people probably wouldn't have noticed a further narrowing of the street anyway.

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Concordia blocked access to Facebook in September - but intentionally left it open on its wireless network, in residences and in its libraries - out of concerns for "spam, viruses and leaks of confidential information related to use of the social networking site."

This line of reasoning was criticized - even mocked - by Internet experts like Michael Geist, who argued none of these things are specific to Facebook.

It also led to coverage in the media: CBC, Gazette, McGill Daily and others.

So what changed? Officially, it was reopened because of improved security:

After the recent improvement of certain security checks and procedures at Concordia, including the installation of a new firewall, the university made the decision to officially reinstate Facebook.

Again, it's unclear how a "new firewall" will protect Concordia against whatever ills it attributed to Facebook. It used phishing as a prime example, and it's unclear how a firewall will stop those kinds of activities.

But realistically, the growth of Facebook has meant the loss of productivity from its use (my guess for the real reason behind its original blocking) is outweighed by its value as a communications tool - between students and professors, between the university and its alumni, between sports teams and their fans.

Concordia reminds its network users to use best practices for safeguarding personal information and passwords.

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