Campus Notes

Canadian campuses working toward reconciliation have their work cut out

Campus Notes — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 19:41:46 +0000

rabble.ca and the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) are teaming up to find Canada's next progressive student journalists. Generously funded by the CFS, Campus Notes will be running articles on Canada's critical post-secondary education issues. Have an idea? Pitch it here.

Canadian universities shifting to top-down, corporate governance are reading from the same playbook

Campus Notes — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 18:54:18 +0000

On June 28, 2013, the then-president of Brock University, Jack Lightstone, posted an open letter online and via email to the Brock community titled "The Need for a Program Review."

New campus sex assault policies show Canadian universities still aren't listening to survivors

Campus Notes — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 18:20:52 +0000

Queen's history of white supremacy much longer than one racist party

Campus Notes — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 19:28:09 +0000

National controversy flared up after the revelation of pictures from a party held near Queen's University campus where students dressed in highly inappropriate, culturally stereotyped costumes -- including Buddhist monks drinking beer, Vietcong guerrilla fighters with rice hats and toy guns, and Mexicans in sombreros and prison outfits. This is racism.

But this story is not about that party. It is about the culture of white privilege that permeates on major campuses around Canada and how activists at Queen's University are working to make meaningful cultural change.

Queen's racist costumes not 'just a party' for students and graduates of colour

Campus Notes — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 22:35:57 +0000

"It's just a party."

That's the excuse being used to dismiss the actions of Queen's University students who recently hosted a costume party featuring racially stereotypically outfits.

Photos from the party -- with students dressed as everything from Buddhist monks to Viet Cong guerrillas to Middle Eastern sheiks -- were shared on social media and have since garnered mainstream attention.

What concerns me, maybe even more than the party itself, is the collective shrug of friends and colleagues when faced with the images.

"It's just a party. They're having fun. They're not trying to offend anyone."

Student activists aren't just fighting climate change. They're fighting corporate university bureaucracy.

Campus Notes — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 19:19:52 +0000

CanLit heavyweights' letter in support of Steven Galloway leaves rape survivors out in the cold

Campus Notes — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 20:49:54 +0000

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Queen's students forced to apologize for casting Othello as a white woman still don't get it

Campus Notes — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 18:39:24 +0000

As a mixed-race woman of Black heritage, I have always connected deeply to Shakespeare's Othello. For people of colour growing up in a predominantly white nation with a deeply Eurocentric curriculum, non-white characters like Othello are significant because they affirm our existence in literature, and help us articulate our struggles with internalized racism and white supremacy.

There are so few instances in Western literature where Black characters are permitted to exist, let alone to exist as multifaceted, sympathetic, and central. Othello is one of the rare texts in the English literary canon to make a Black character its protagonist and to focus on issues of anti-Black racism.

Canadian post-secondary students literally going hungry for an education

Campus Notes — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 19:39:08 +0000

Studying while Black still tokenizing experience for many racialized post-secondary students

Campus Notes — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 19:49:38 +0000

Racialized students at the University of King's College are a sparse and often isolated minority.

Let's make post-secondary education free for everyone

Campus Notes — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 17:38:45 +0000

For as long as I've been a student, I've heard experts, politicians and even some of my own classmates say that "free tuition" is a bad idea.

I've been told that free tuition is "wrong", or "self-interested." Why? Because those who get to college or university are already privileged. Why should our society subsidize them?

I've never understood this argument, but that may have something to do with my own life story. My parents were refugees from Somalia, and I am a first-generation university student in Canada.

Despite their best protests, Canadian universities still aren't safe spaces for diverse voices

Campus Notes — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 16:38:20 +0000

Universities are still pretty clueless when it comes to safe spaces

Campus Notes — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 19:13:36 +0000

The current war against political correctness saw the conservative side celebrate a major victory when University of Chicago dean of students John Ellison warned future undergraduates that trigger warnings and safe spaces would not be tolerated on campus.

"Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own," Ellison wrote in a letter to the incoming student body.

Feminist frosh week: Holding leadership accountable for rape culture

Campus Notes — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 21:46:58 +0000

As the first day of school looms, students are preparing by buying school supplies, moving into dorms, and figuring out where their classes are. But one issue students shouldn't have to prepare for is rape culture on campuses.

Unfortunately, sexual assault and rape culture is a big concern for students with increasing awareness of the problem across Canada and the fact that post-secondary institutions have done a poor job of addressing it. WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre says grade 12 girls have expressed concern over sexual violence being "inevitable" at colleges and universities.

Calling progressive student journalists: rabble.ca wants you!

Campus Notes — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 21:07:14 +0000

rabble.ca and the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) are teaming up to find Canada's next progressive student journalists.

We're looking for progressive stories that get to the heart of what it means to be a student in 21st-century Canada. What challenges do college and university students face? What would a truly progressive vision for post-secondary education look like? And most importantly, how do we get there?

Funded by the CFS, Canada's oldest and largest student organization representing over 650,000 students, the Campus Notes student journalism project is seeking sharp, well-written pitches for feature stories on critical student issues.

Ontario's 'benevolence with strings attached' is keeping low-income students out of university

Campus Notes — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 17:44:02 +0000

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I am being denied access to education.

For the past few weeks, I have been in conversation with the National Student Loan Center, Canada Student Loans Services, my local MP's office, among others to try and get answers. The resistance and lack of answers I've repeatedly encountered has convinced me Ontario's student loan system is restrictive and discriminatory.

'The typical brown paper envelope under the door': UBC's student society found guilty of unfair labour practices

Campus Notes — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 21:03:08 +0000

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Story originally published in The Ubyssey.

New funding models could cut 670 unionized jobs at York University

Campus Notes — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 00:26:45 +0000

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York University administrators are proposing a new funding model that stands to eliminate 670 union jobs for graduate students.

Among the jobs on the chopping block are graduate assistantships, which include a variety of applied work settings, according to a CUPE 3903 press release.

Reconciliation looks like divestment

Campus Notes — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 07:29:57 +0000

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Is UBC's new sexual assault policy enough?

Campus Notes — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 21:07:12 +0000

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In response to national attention over their mishandling of sexual assault complaints, the University of British Columbia has released the first draft of their stand-alone sexual assault policy. However, there are questions over whether it can adequately deal with the systemic problem.

Many teens find school stifling, stressful and depressing. So why don't we reinvent it?

Campus Notes — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 16:57:11 +0000

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New resource for university teachers demonstrates how to acknowledge Indigenous territory

Campus Notes — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 06:48:39 +0000

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McGill ignoring input on sexual assault policy, students say

Campus Notes — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 20:47:46 +0000

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Students at Montreal's McGill University wrote a critical open letter on April 7 to the school's administration after the school ignored previous promises to consider student input into the development of their sexual assault policy.

How to save a language: B.C. university offers Haida field course

Campus Notes — Thu, 26 May 2016 23:01:10 +0000

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Learning a language can be hard, but it's even harder when there's almost no one left to learn it from. That was the challenge for Simon Fraser University visiting professor Anvita Abbi. She decided to teach a course on Haida, which she had no experience with before -- and almost no one to learn it from.

"When I came here, I realized there are hardly any [Haida] speakers left, except maybe two or three," she said.

Trudeau fails to deliver on election promise to support Indigenous post-secondary students

Campus Notes — Thu, 26 May 2016 16:37:37 +0000

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In the 2016 federal budget, Trudeau failed to deliver on his explicit election commitment to invest $50 million per year in the Post-Secondary Student Support Program (PSSSP), a federal initiative that provides support to Indigenous and Inuit students pursuing post-secondary education. Instead, the Liberals invested no new funding in the program.

Manitoba's new Conservative government could mean bad news for students

Campus Notes — Tue, 10 May 2016 19:04:18 +0000

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McGill's handling of sexual assault a bureaucratic nightmare

Campus Notes — Thu, 05 May 2016 19:02:18 +0000

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault and self-harm.

I have spent the last two years in a fight, struggling to accept that I have been sexually assaulted by another student, and that I am worthy despite what has happened to me. The first year, the fight was with myself, and I won; the second year, it was with McGill, and I lost miserably. It has become abundantly clear to me that, following the shameful example set by the Canadian justice system, McGill breeds predators, lacks adequate mechanisms to support its students, and refuses to put any in place. And in the past year, I have watched myself fall through its cracks.

Mandatory Indigenous Studies courses aren't Reconciliation, they're an easy way out

Campus Notes — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 17:53:00 +0000

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I fully agree with everyone who argues that Canadian university students do not know enough about Indigenous peoples and their societies, histories, political orders and worldviews or systems of knowledge.

McGill must rectify its misleading and one-sided statement on the BDS movement

Campus Notes — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 18:11:03 +0000

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Dear Professor Fortier,

Canadian university partners with foreign mining firm and its checkered, colonialist legacy

Campus Notes — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 20:05:25 +0000

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An institute for "extractive governance" has moved to the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. If we were to judge it from its partners, there are reasons to be concerned. Its largest sponsor is the Lundin Foundation, a foundation with corporate sponsors set up by the Swedish Lundin family, owners of the Lundin oil and mining companies.