Tag Archives: Concordia University

| Blogosphere, Media

When should business trump journalism?

Perhaps it’s unfair to prey on the defenceless student media, but there’s an issue brewing behind the scenes that’s just so interesting on a larger scale.

The Link and The Concordian, the two student-run newspapers at Concordia University, are mortal enemies and they are fiercely competitive (after a few years of one paper being clearly superior to the other). They compete over design, contributors, editors, money and anything else they can think of.

I bring it up because it makes me wonder what rules should exist in general for journalists when it comes to their competition. Some media flat-out refuse to refer to direct competitors by name, unless it’s to report bad news about them. Many have rules restricting staff (and in some cases even freelancers) from contributing to competing media. And, of course, there’s the whole problem of when media outlets report on themselves.

Blogs, for the most part, take a completely different position. They welcome competition, link to their posts, hang out together and exchange tips. The idea there is that becoming part of a community helps everyone in it.

Who’s right? Is the cooperation among blogs simply because they’re such small enterprises and they’re trying to get noticed? When big blogs become large, mainstream, corporate-owned companies instead of some guys in a basement, will they too try to actively shut out their competition?

At what point do we have to stop being journalists and start being businesspeople?

(Note: This post was edited at the request of The Link, who wish to keep their dirty laundry in their own hamper. The main point still stands.) 

| Montreal

What’s in a university’s name?

McGill has a bug up its butt.

The university, whose name has apparently been left unprotected for almost 200 years, has begun clamping down on the use of the name “McGill” by organizations on campus. It started with CKUT, which was blackmailed into dropping “McGill” from its name last month. Now they’re reviewing all student-run groups, forcing them into mounds of paperwork to justify using the McGill name in theirs.

Concordia University has had a similar policy (PDF) since 2001, with one significant difference: Concordia’s policy grandfathered existing student groups, and as far as I can tell they don’t sweat the small stuff: Only for-profit enterprises and large groups bother with approval.

McGill’s move is just silly. Well-intentioned, but silly. A student club devoted to stamp-collecting at McGill is obviously going to call itself the McGill Stamp-Collecting Club or something similar, just for clarity’s sake. The name implies only that it is at McGill, not that it is run by McGill’s administration. Requiring such a complicated process as board approval will only create unnecessary work for volunteers and discourage students from creating social clubs on campus.

McGill says they’re “reviewing” the policy. Let’s hope they come up with some sane guidelines that have more to do with encouraging a vibrant and active student populace than it does with over-regulation and paperwork.

| Montreal, Video

Concordia Reports is back

Concordia Reports, the TV news show created by Concordia journalism students, has started its third season since the shows started being uploaded to YouTube.

Though it’s a low-budget show, its journalists are untrained and nobody involved is going to win any awards for smooth acting, the show provides a chance to watch some interesting stories about Concordia and Montreal.

The second episode of the season includes a story on CJLO, the Concordia student radio station that’s still, after a gabillion years, trying to get its transmitter setup to broadcast on AM. It also features a lengthy interview with Mike Boone (starting about the 12-minute mark) about HabsInsideOut.com.

So far they have 32 shows uploaded, between 15 and 25 minutes in length.

| In the news

Concordia president doesn’t have a PhD

Last month I opined here that Concordia University was faced with a tough problem. Their president had just decided to quit, and the second-in-command position (provost and VP academic) was vacant. That left them with the unenviable choices of either appointing another VP to the position (all of whom were experts in their jobs and only one had a PhD — the one they appointed as interim provost), or going further down the food chain to find a PhD candidate with little leadership experience.

It looks like they’ve opted for the first choice, appointing VP Services Michael Di Grappa as “acting president” (not to be confused with “interim president” whom they will appoint later, or “president” whom they will appoint … later later).

And while a search committee finds a new president (and a new provost), a special executive committee will find an interim president.

Confused yet?

Di Grappa doesn’t have a PhD. His highest academic credentials are a Master’s of public policy at New York University. He also doesn’t have much academic experience. As VP Services, he’s responsible for making sure the escalators run the buildings stay upright, classrooms have video projectors, and registration happens properly.

Considering the apparent very short nature of this appointment, it’s not like it’ll matter very much. Plus the fact that as a senior administrator for seven years he’s been involved in major administration decision-making.

As sad as it is, it’s probably the best solution to a horrible problem that Concordia’s board of governors has no one to blame but itself. Unfortunately it creates a situation where people the guy running a university granting PhDs hasn’t earned one himself.

And if that’s not bad enough news for Concordia, Valery Fabrikant is in the news again. Meanwhile, McGill has decided to raise $750 million just for the heck of it.

UPDATE (Oct. 20): David Bernans, the non-student student activist, has naturally started a Facebook group advocating Di Grappa’s immediate dismissal. I’m sure Concordia will act immediately based on his demands.

UPDATE (Oct. 30): A letter-writer to The Link points out that Columbia and Harvard had presidents who were PhD-less.

UPDATE (Oct. 23): The Concordian has an interview with Di Grappa, who stresses that the position is temporary. The Link has a similar interview.

| Uncategorized

I will not use the force

Oh petty Concordia Student Union political grandstanding, how I miss thee. (UPDATE: Now there’s video: Part One, Part Two)

Not that the grownups at Loyola and Sir George aren’t doing petty political grandstanding of their own, of course.

I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to hide my degree more than a protest or the prospect of some dirty hippies running the joint.

| Uncategorized

Concordia’s student media bickering again

At Concordia University, there’s been a rivalry between its student newspapers for more than 20 years now, since The Concordian was launched in 1984 as competition for The Link (both now have RSS feeds, by the way, for those who want alternative local news sources).

This week, The Concordian rekindled some of that rivalry by questioning The Link’s referendum question asking to have their fees applied to graduate students. Currently both papers are funded by fees from undergraduate students only.

The piece goes on in detail about how The Link (a paper I ran three years ago) receives twice as much money from students than The Concordian, for about as much output (one issue a week during the school year). Because of the extra money, The Link can afford new computers, salaries for its editors, better quality printing and a substantial budget surplus.

Let’s go into a bit of background to understand this situation a bit better.

The Link was created in 1980 as the result of a merger of two newspapers: The Georgian, which served Sir George Williams University, and the Loyola News, which served Loyola College. When those two institutions merged in 1974, it was decided that merging the two student newspapers was a logical step.

Efforts to create a second student newspaper at SGWU and Concordia emerged during the 60s and 70s, but none lasted more than a few years. In 1984 a group of renegade Link staffers broke off and formed The Concordian, which was supposed to have a more moderate mainstream editorial stance to balance The Link’s crazy leftism. (An ideological split that amazingly lasts to this day)

Both newspapers were funded in full by the student association, until in 1986 students decided that in order to ensure editorial independence they should get their funding directly from students through a tax on their tuition fees. Since then, both are independent organizations with their own boards of directors.

At the time, The Link was publishing twice a week and The Concordian once, so the fee was established at $0.13 per credit for The Link and $0.07 per credit to The Concordian. In the early 1990s, The Link successfully passed a referendum to increase it to $0.20, and in the late 1990s dropped from 40 issues a year to 30, or once a week. The Concordian got their fee levy increased from $0.07 to $0.10 a few years ago.

So all this to say that The Link publishes 30 issues a year and The Concordian 25, and The Link gets almost twice as much money ($0.19 per credit from all undergrads after yet another referendum to get engineering and business students to join in). The fee difference has always been a pain in the Concordian’s neck.

The criticisms brought up in the piece are for the most part justified. The Link enjoys an accumulated $250,000 surplus while The Concordian barely scrapes by. The old excuse that The Link was simply better has largely fallen by the wayside as the quality of both papers’ editorial content has become more equal.

But there is nothing sinister about The Link’s fee. They have it because they asked students for more money and students said yes. When The Concordian goes to students this fall to ask that their fee be brought in line (something The Link apparently doesn’t support), it’ll be up to those students to decide if their paper is worthy of the extra money.

The Link, which asked graduate students to join them a couple of years ago and lost a referendum on the subject, is certainly motivated more by money than membership in its desire to get fees from graduate students. I wanted membership extended to graduate students because there were some (notably in the journalism department’s graduate diploma program) who wanted to become members of the society. But they said no. To me, that was the end of it. Graduate students are disconnected from student life and don’t spend as much time on campus, so they decided the student paper thing wasn’t for them.

Now they’re trying again, and The Concordian isn’t happy about the idea of the divide between rich and poor getting larger. I can’t say I blame them for their emotional reaction, though they shouldn’t be blaming The Link for their troubles.

We’ll see what happens to both papers’ requests for more student fee money. Will students want to dig into their own pockets to settle the score?

| Uncategorized

Fabrikant makes serial killers look bad

Most school campus shoot-em-up maniacs have the decency to kill themselves before they’re arrested: Harris and Klebold, Cho, Gill. But Valery Fabrikant, the paranoid Concordia engineering professor who killed four of his colleagues in 1992, was arrested and tried for the murders and is in prison. His first chance for parole won’t come for another 10 years.
But jail (and a lack of access to computers) hasn’t stopped him from publishing articles, updating a website, appealing, appealing, appealing, appealing, appealing, appealing, appealing, appealing and otherwise reminding his victims’ families that he’s sitting comfortably in jail while his victims are still dead.

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.

| Media

Even student politics should be open

A mini storm is brewing at Concordia University over a subject so stupid I can’t believe there are actually two sides to it: student union councillors don’t want their public meetings videotaped for public broadcast, despite mandating it at the previous meeting.

A little history here. Many moons ago, Concordia University Television was founded as Canada’s first university-based television station. It doesn’t have a television broadcasting license, nor is it on cable anywhere. Instead, it has monitors on a closed-circuit system throughout the university, mainly in the downtown Hall Building.

Somewhere in the 1990s, the Concordia Student Union (which was still concerned with that “democracy” thing and hadn’t yet been taken over by the moderate/radical or Israeli/Palestinian political divides, each bent on using political corruption to eliminate the other and stay in power at any cost) had the bright idea that, because nobody cared about what they did, they should get the word out more. So they mandated (read: required) CUTV to film their meetings and “broadcast” them to students. But because of technical limitations at CUTV, this never happened. And with the inevitable turnover on both sides, this rule was eventually forgotten.

Fast-forward to this spring. CUTV station manager Jason Gondziola wins a seat on the CSU Council of Representatives, somehow believing that being a student politician and running a student media outlet does not present an inherent conflict of interest. He immediately starts lobbying for permission for CUTV to start filming meetings. Over the past few years, the station has been using student money to buy lots of new equipment and is distributing some videos via its website.

But CSU councillors, specifically John Molson School of Business councillor Catherine Côté, who apparently have no idea what politics mean, are concerned about their privacy. In some cases in the past, it’s been Muslim women on Council who didn’t want their faces exposed. Ditto some paranoid anarchists. I’m not sure who it is now, but I’m certain it’s either an idiot or someone who is trying to hide from constituents.

Student politicians are almost by definition stupid. It’s not their fault. They’re learning how to become real politicians. This means that, for example, their political dirty tricks are a lot more transparent (illegally paying campaign workers, bribing, appointing partisan hacks to electoral and judicial positions, etc.).

But it boggles the mind that a student politician, who has run in an election and appeared on hundreds of posters and thousands of ballots, would cite privacy concerns as a reason to prevent journalists from recording the public proceedings of the most important student-run body at Concordia, responsible for a budget of over a million dollars. The fact that Councillor Côté did so after the fact, using the excuse that the issue should be revisited because she couldn’t be bothered to show up to the previous meeting and should be given a chance to express her views, is the height of arrogance.

The Link agrees, calling her an “enemy of transparency”.

She, and the entire CSU Council, should be ashamed.

| Uncategorized

Maclean’s student activism series focuses on Concordia

Kate Lunau, a former Concordia journalism student (who interned at The Gazette last summer) writes Part 1 of a Maclean’s series on student activism, which focuses on Concordia University and the risk assessment committee which is headed by its VP services and … uhh … “doesn’t exist” according to the university.

It quotes David Bernans, the professional student behind the crusade against this secret committee after it “mistakenly” stopped a reading from his book last year.

It also mentions my alma mater, The Link, and its editorial demanding more transparency in the university’s handling of security issues.

| Montreal

Concordia president forced to resign

Claude Lajeunesse

Concordia President Claude Lajeunesse has resigned, just two years and change after taking office. The reason? Everyone hated him.

You can tell it’s bad when the PR people aren’t even trying to hide it. It was a “mutual agreement” between Lajeunesse and the Board of Governors, according to spokesperson Chris Mota, who I’m sure has had a really bad day today trying to explain to the media why the university’s internal political struggles are literally ripping its senior administration to shreds.

(He had a similar problem at his previous stint at Ryerson, and those who remember him there are applauding this embarrassing misstep in his career.)

While a search committee hurriedly tries to find a replacement, the Board will have to find an interim replacement, likely from within the university’s senior administration.

Unfortunately for them, not many of those people are qualified for the job, if only because few of them have PhDs. Instead, all but one of Concordia’s VPs are professionals in their fields, and have specific skills training instead of rounded academic degrees. (One, the fundraising VP Kathy Assayag, doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree. Ms. Assayag does, in fact, have a degree from McGill University. My apologies.)

The Provost/VP Academic position, which is the most logical choice for an interim replacement, is vacant after Lajeunesse eliminated his political enemies reluctantly accepted the forced resignation of Martin Singer last year.

That leaves the four faculty deans, the dean of “general studies” and the VP of research and graduate studies comprising the field of candidates. And that’s already reaching. You could also go down to the vice-provost and vice-deans, but that that point you might as well start appointing janitors to senior administration positions.

Speaking of which, do you want to run Concordia University? Send in your CV, they might just be desperate enough to take you.

Meanwhile, even the crazy leftists who think all senior administrators are out to secretly murder them are looking back longingly at the days of former president Fred Lowy, who diplomatically kept the university together instead of stubbornly shutting people out (at least until the Netanyahu riot put so much pressure on him he started making poor decisions)

UPDATE: The Gazette has a longer story on the sudden departure, with a quote from an anonymous “insider” pointing out the obvious: That personality conflicts and a clash of professional styles between the Board of Governors and Lajeunesse led to the latter’s departure. It also points out the troubles he’s had with labour unions, the unfortunate timing with the provost position being vacant as well, and the relative quiet on the student front (which is more a matter of a shift in student politics than anything on the administration side).

Meanwhile, Lajeunesse himself issues the most BS-laden press release I’ve seen in … minutes. (Does all this niceness about his departure mean he’s still going to attend his meet-and-greet barbecue this Friday?)

On the same day, he announces that Dr. Louise Dandurand, the graduate studies and research VP I mentioned above who’s one of the few people with a PhD on the senior administration, has been appointed interim Provost. That puts her in the most logical position to take over the presidency, though it would look odd being promoted to an interim position based on holding another position you were promoted to a month earlier.

UPDATE (Sept. 21): The Gazette demands to know why he stepped down. It suggests the problem might have to do with an existential debate over whether the university should be more Ivy-leagueish or more accessible, a debate that was settled years before Lajeunesse came here when Concordia dropped its “real education for the real world” slogan and decided it would be a serious, research-based university that was still accessible.

UPDATE (Sept. 25): The Link reports that one of the governors is quietly resigning for undisclosed reasons (though the timing suggests a possible link to the Lajeunesse resignation).

UPDATE (Sept. 27): Concordia’s full-time faculty association (which normally doesn’t take issue with anything the university does) is peeved at the lack of an explanation.

| In the news, Montreal

I did it… wait! I’m suing!

It looks like Larry Craig isn’t the only person in the world trying to rewrite history by appealing his own admission of guilt.

Here in Montreal, former Concordia student Ashraf Azar is suing Concordia for the ludicrously high sum of $16 million $13.5 million after he admitted to “tampering with other students’ exams and assignments” and got expelled in 2004.

Azar, a recently engaged (congrats) biochemistry student who ran for student council twice and lost both times, wrote the lawsuit himself without legal aid, which probably accounts for the huge figure.

His argument is that he was pressured into admitting guilt by his CSU university-appointed (see below) advocate, who suggested that doing so would result in a lesser punishment. The fact he got expelled, which is the most serious punishment, suggests that didn’t happen.

Though the lawsuit is ridiculous and will probably be laughed out of court, there is a grain of real concern here. The obvious conflict of interest in a university both appointing advocates for students while simultaneously seeking to punish them is what led to the creation of the Concordia Student Union’s Advocacy Centre. The centre quickly got a lot of traffic, especially from international students who are highly pressured to succeed, have English as a second or third language, and are brought up on different rules when it comes to things like citing academic content.

Much like defence lawyers, CSU student advocates admit they’ve gotten guilty people off on technicalities, or at least had their punishments reduced. So I suppose that despite being guilty, Azar might have a point if he argued that having a student advocate from the student union would have resulted in a lesser punishment.

But he still admitted guilt, and he was punished for it. He doesn’t deserve to have a degree handed to him, nor does he deserve any money for his mistake, to say nothing of millions of dollars.

UPDATE (Sept. 19): The Link has an interview with more details on the story. Apparently the advocate was appointed by the CSU advocacy centre (which if true, means they have a lot of ‘splainin to do), and (see comment below) lawyers wouldn’t take his case because it’s “unwinnable”. Oh yeah, he also says he didn’t do it, and he’s being discriminated against.

| Web design

Concordia’s new website fails to improve

Concordia University is changing the design of its homepage. Again. The new website, currently in beta testing, has some laudable goals: create a uniform look across the dozens of departmental websites, and introduce new features.

So far, the new website falls flat. Here’s why:

  1. The website pushes news, which was the big selling point of their current design, down the page and into a corner in favour of static content.
  2. The immensely-useful “quicklinks”, to things people actually want to reach like the student information portal, program calendar, class schedule etc. are moved to the bottom of the page or taken off the homepage entirely.
  3. The tour touts the page’s accessibility features, including the ability to increase text size (which is already available in most browsers, but they also change the stylesheet to fit too). Unfortunately, the style sheet breaks at larger font sizes and the page looks ugly.
  4. Giant header image pushes all content down.

It looks more “Web 2.0” in all the bad ways. And since it fails at the most basic test: whether it’s better than the site it’s replacing, I’ll give it a C- (assuming that their content-management system actually makes it easier for departments to make websites, which has not yet been proven).

| Uncategorized

Wireless freedom!

Apparently Concordia has backtracked from its plan to begin charging students for access to its wireless network. The decision apparently came right from the top, which is a much-needed PR boost for president Claude Lajeunesse (though why he had to wait for student outrage to decide that wireless access is an “essential service” is beyond me).

So students will save a few bucks each year, which they will no doubt be giving to their student union so they can continue needlessly suing other student unions over petty student politics.

| Montreal

Grownups’ turn to protest at Con U

The labour situation at Concordia just got a lot stickier, with a vote by its support staff union 95% in favour of authorizing a strike. They’ve been without a contract since 2002 and want pay increases.

If the strike occurs, it’ll be the first major test of president Claude Lajeunesse, who has so far presided over a university that has been uncharacteristically out of the headlines.