Tag Archives: Concordia University

| Uncategorized

Tuition increase just the tip of the iceberg

As the fall semester fast approaches from the horizon for students, some will be getting a wake-up call when they go to pay their tuition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

| Business

More quid-pro-diploma at Concordia

Concordia University has released its list of honorary doctorates for this year. As usual, it includes some genuinely noteworthy members of the community who should be recognized for their work: Howard Alper, research chemist; Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, archbishop; Grant Munro, filmmaker.

But, sadly, the list also contains people who are on there mainly because of their financial contributions: André Desmarais of Power Corp, who has given quite a bit to the university; and Donald McNaughton, who was a major fundraiser for over two decades.

It’s not that I think people who give their time and money to Concordia shouldn’t be honoured for it. Despite what some conspiracy-theorists may think, this is still mainly a selfless, altruistic act. But shouldn’t we be separating those who have done important things in this world from those who have so much money to spread around that they can buy an honorary degree?

I think it’s time to come up with some other method of honouring those who contribute financially to universities.

| Blogosphere, My articles

Never trust a student politician

I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for the fact that I have two more articles in the paper today, as neither is online (If you have the newsprint version, they’re on Page B2).

The first is a Justify Your Existence piece on Concordia Student Union president-elect Angelica Novoa, who has been under attack by her political opponents for being incompetent. Anyone want to take a wager on which side of this political magnet will be outraged with it first?

The other is the third in my series on Quebec bloggers-turned-authors: Mère Indigne, who unfortunately put her blog on hiatus mere days after I interviewed her. On the plus side, this means starting next week I can go back to featuring English blogs, some of which have been in my bank ready-to-write for four months now.

I should be ok for the next few weeks, but if anyone has suggestions for interesting local blogs that are updated regularly, let me know.

| Uncategorized

CSU: The 12-step program

If you’ve never experienced student politics at Concordia University, you’ll never understand it. It’s cold, calculating, ruthless, predictable, and it consumes would-be student politicians, infusing them with the worst that partisan politics have to offer.

The Concordia Student Union obsession began six years ago, when two nerds ran against each other. Not content to simply win or lose, both amassed an army of blind followers who would suspend their own moral compass in order to achieve the greater good. People refused to talk to each other, convinced that every minor misunderstanding was a huge conspiracy against them. Yearly elections were planned months in advance, with every underhanded trick under the book considered fair game.

Now, with those early nerds gone and the radical extreme sides of half a decade ago replaced with moderate parties whose politics aren’t all that different, some of those minions are finally coming to realize this, and they’ve created a Facebook support group (64 members and growing):

Concordia politics made me a worse person

| Uncategorized

What’s a student to do?

Now that the minority Quebec government has put power in the hands of whatever two of three parties can agree on, it looks like tuition in this province is finally going to (formally) increase. The Liberals promised a small hike, and the ADQ’s platform is in favour of tuition hikes. Only the PQ is in favour of keeping the freeze intact.

This is, of course, horrible news for student groups, to whom students pay huge amounts of money to represent their interests – chief among them being tuition. ASSÉ, the more militant student group, has already called for yet another unlimited student strike this fall. (I’d link to the English version, but their English site hasn’t been updated in two years.)

Some people are pointing out that the tuition hikes were open platform points for both parties, and the issue was heavily debated before the election. People want to raise tuition (in as much as voters can “want” any single issue in this electoral system).

The problem is that these groups are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can’t do nothing, or else their power to put fear into politicians’ hearts will fade (pressure from these groups is what has kept tuition this low for so long). On the other hand, cry wolf too often and nobody takes you seriously any more. ASSÉ especially has been very quick on the “strike” trigger (which is made worse by the fact that student “strikes” don’t actually cause financial or labour problems for the government), and this has led to many groups (including the Concordia Student Union) dropping ASSÉ in favour of the less militant and more negotiating FEUQ.

So even though ASSÉ is silly to call this strike, they must do so in order to save face.

| Uncategorized

Who are these people?

I stopped by Concordia tonight to check out the post-election CSU party at Reggie’s Bar. The polls closed in the evening and it’s not usually until the wee hours of the morning that the ballots are completely counted and the results given in one shot.

Unfortunately, it was cold outside, way too loud and crowded inside, and I didn’t really know anyone there. Besides, I already know how the results are going to look like.

Multiple sources have told me that for the CSU executive, the right-wing Unity slate has pulled ahead with a significant margin and is expected to win by about 1,000 votes. The Council is about evenly divided between the two groups’ supporters. And the referendum questions – some about increasing fees, the rest pointless opinion surveys – are almost all destined to fail.

We’ll see when I wake up later today whether any of that was correct.

UPDATE: Did I call it, or what?

| Uncategorized

Students show us how it’s done

Election time isn’t over for Concordia’s 30,000 undergraduate students. They’re at the polls until Thursday evening choosing, among other things, a new executive to run the Concordia Student Union.

For those unfamiliar with CSU politics, it’s a rather classic left-vs-right battle, with the left accusing the right of both incompetence and corruption (both accusations have some merit), and the right accusing the left of having no ideas and wanting to bring the university back to the radical protests of 2000-2003.

One of the many shots across the bow is this accusation by a former election chief (herself a candidate for a third party) that she was hired to bias the election in favour of the incumbent party.

This, the Link newspaper contends, led directly to their issues being stolen from the stands and disposed of during polling.

This email was sent to me this afternoon. The allegations are technically baseless, but probably true:

March 28, 2007
For Immediate Release – please forward widely

Concordia newspaper goes missing during student union elections

MONTREAL—For the second year in a row, copies of The Link, Concordia’s independent student newspaper, have gone missing from newsstands during the university’s student elections.

The papers disappeared from the Loyola campus overnight, one day after polling began. The issue contained Concordia Student Union (CSU) election coverage including an article exposing current CSU executives of interfering in the Chief Electoral Officer selection process.

After resigning from his position with the CSU executive last Fall, Taylor Noakes told The Link that the removal of the papers last March was planned by the CSU executive and the University Administration. Neither party will confirm the allegations.

Last March the papers were discovered on a cart in at the university’s shipping and receiving area and were returned to newsstands. A complaint has been filed with Concordia Security, but missing copies of the current issue still haven’t turned up.

UPDATE:  The paper reprinted their press release.

| Uncategorized

Shhh, we’re giving Al Gore a degree

Concordia is handing Al Gore an honorary doctorate … behind closed doors. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this one of those times you want some attention? Methinks this is all Mr. Gore’s doing, since he’s so busy he can’t take a few days out of his schedule to properly receive an honorary degree.

In other Concordia news, the John Molson School of Business has changed its logo to be in line with Concordia’s change earlier. And Michael Di Grappa’s new video doesn’t do it for me (he’s explaining that sour labour talks are not his fault).

| Media, Video

Speaking of biased reporting

This again?

For the unfamiliar, “Confrontation at Concordia” was a “documentary” created by “journalist” Martin Himel after the Sept. 9, 2002 riot at Concordia University which stopped a planned speech there by former Israeli Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu.

I put words in quotes because the Global TV special was insanely biased in favour of one side of the conflict (namely, the right-wing, pro-Netanyahu, anti-Palestinian side). It was so bad the matter was taken up with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Its decision (which I reported on) said in part:

The Panel recognizes that the documentary film at issue was not detached and objective in a journalistic sense; however, the Panel is not of the view that its broadcast was in breach of any of the foregoing provisions of the either the CAB Code of Ethics or the RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics. That being said, the Panel considers that it would have been helpful to the audience to inform viewers that the broadcast was a point-of-view documentary.

The council made the point that since it was a documentary, not a news piece, it didn’t have to be objective. I disagree, but c’est la vie. Now because of this, people think Concordia’s Muslim groups are funded by the Saudi government.

As far as documentary coverage of that era of Concordia history, I recommend the far more balanced documentary Discordia.

| Blogosphere

Concordia politics aren’t what they used to be

I just came back from Concordia’s Hall Building, the historical epicentre of student politics.

Or at least it was.

What used to be, only seconds after midnight two weeks before the election, a building covered from floor to ceiling in posters of all kinds in some sort of fire safety inspector’s nightmare, is now a shadow of its former self.

At the bottom of the escalator from the second to fourth floor stood a couple of campaigners in orange t-shirts handing out flyers supporting their team. I expected once I reached the top to find another campaign worker with a recycling bin to collect discarded flyers (this illusion of green-ness was first thought of five years ago and has been stolen ever since), but there was no one to be found.

As I got to the fifth floor, and paused to read some of the posters, a woman behind me said she was “insulted” that nobody warned her of an election. It was supposed to be a joke, and I took it as such. Perhaps less so later when I found her chatting with those same campaign workers on the 2nd floor.

For those of you bored enough to care, there appear to be three executive slates in this election: Go, Unity and Impact. No, those aren’t gay bars, that’s what they’re naming themselves. Less than 24 hours after the campaign began, some people are already blogging about it.

The referendum questions, usually the more interesting part of the elections, are the usual fare: a question or seven asking people’s opinions and having no real impact on anything, a question from The Concordian asking for more funding (so it can get a budget similar to The Link’s), and QPIRG trying to suck money out of students by mentioning the People’s Potato and Frigo Vert (without saying that those groups already get separate levies from students). The questions are awfully worded (I’ll try to get a quote once someone puts a question online), but rarely in CSU history has the chief election officer actually made use of his or her power to reject questions which so obviously are meant to prejudice the outcome of the vote.

On the way home I spoke with one of Concordia’s shuttle bus drivers. He let on a student with a cup of coffee despite a boss that’s really picky about the rules. I noted that the STM bus drivers don’t care about food but do care about fares, while the Concordia drivers care about food but don’t care about people showing their IDs before they get on.

Strange.

| Media, Montreal, Video

YouTube, the neverending pit of content

I stopped by YouTube today and did my usual search for things Montreal-related:

  • Concordia’s TV journalism students have this week’s Concordia Reports focusing on the Quebec election, talking to some angryphones in the West Island including Ste. Anne mayor Bill Tierney and political columnist (i.e. failed politician) Ricky Blue. I’m actually pretty impressed with what has been coming out of Concordia’s budding journalists lately in terms of quality. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re getting better, because real TV journalism requires so little real effort, or because even half-assed videography is light-years beyond most of what YouTube has right now.
  • Two Marianopolis kids started a Rock-Paper-Scissors league.
  • Even street kids are videoblogging.