the watch
WORK HARD, PLAY HARD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
BYOC: BRING YOUR OWN CUPS TUITION TIMELINE
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EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
ONLINE EDITOR
PUBLISHING BOARD
SOPHIE ALLEN-BARRON NICK HOLLAND
EMMA JONES
COLLEEN EARLE SARAH GRIFFIN AVI JACOB ERIN MCINTOSH
ZOË BRIMACOMBE ADRIENNE COLBORNE GRACE KENNEDY AIDAN McNALLY GWENDOLYN MONCRIEFF-GOULD JOHN SANDHAM TERRA TAILLEUR MELINA ZACCARIA
COPY EDITOR
PHOTOGRAPHER
REBECCA HUSSMAN
ASHLEY CORBETT
PUBLISHER GRACE KENNEDY
TREASURER JOHN SANDHAM
CONTRIBUTORS
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EDITOR’S NOTE
Hey King’s, We can’t believe this is our last editors’ note of 2015. We can really feel this year hurtling past at breakneck speed, and dreary November lends itself to reminiscing for brighter, softer, gentler days. Or, you know, the rollercoaster ride that was FYP. Looking back through the fog of the two-and-a-half years that followed, FYP blurs together into an exhilarating wave. Like Avi Jacob describes in her piece this issue, we can remember crashing from one extreme outlet to the next. Spending lecture napping in the bed of a sympathetic res student after an essay-induced all nighter only to hit the Wardy in full force for that night’s themed event. Passing a sleepy day at the Joseph Howe Symposium, brushing aside grains of rice left over from the Rocky Horror showing we attended there in Alumni Hall just the night before. Sophie still has a Sharpie-d sign stuck next to her desktop computer, a residual reminder from one of the last essays of first year: “WORK so you can SLEEP and then DANCE!” Having those nights of celebration to look forward to often motivated us to push through to the concluding paragraph. And damn, do we ever wish we could still pull an all-nighter— while managing to bounce back the next morning—the way
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we used to. We’ve been chalking our ever-earlier bedtimes up to growing old and boring... but could it be that all we’re missing is a toga party to look forward to? The incentive wasn’t really the alcohol. That Rocky Horror showing we mentioned was mostly spent half-napping on a desk in Alumni Hall after a bit too much wine. No, it was the jubilance of it all. The feeling of walking away from Pat Dixon’s office already planning your costume for that night. The feeling of dancing at the Dante party under a spinning light with a seraph, two sloths and a “celestial body” by your side. And yes, some Mondays, the feeling of relief as relaxation washed over you, tomato soup in hand in front of a game of Jeopardy. King’s does have a reputation for following serious work with serious play. We hope by now you’ve found your own favourite way to fling off the blanket of tension that can follow an essay. And we bet, with so many others along on the same ride, you’ll find someone to join you.
-Sophie & Nick
IN THIS ISSUE: VOL. 33 NO. 3 Cover Photo: File Photo/Evan McIntyre
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A NEW WAY TO CLEAN UP CAMPUS: DITCH THE DISPOSABLE CUPS
IS THERE AN INTELLECTUAL SPLIT BETWEEN THE HUMANITIES AND THE SCIENCES?
BYOC: BRING YOUR OWN CUPS
OPINION: DISMANTLING THE DIVIDE
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FYP STUDENTS ARE PARTYING LIKE IT’S THEIR JOB
NEWS ON TUITION HIKES CONTINUES TO POUR OUT OF KING’S
WORK HARD, PLAY HARD
THE TUITION TIMELINE
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DOES THE CHAPEL STILL HAVE A PLACE IN THE EVERYDAY LIVE OF STUDENTS?
YOU CAN PILE ON BLANKETS AND SCARVES ALL YOU WANT, BUT WILL THEY BE ENOUGH TO THAW THE END-OF-SEMESTER CHILL?
THE SACRED AND THE MUNDANE
WINTER COMFORT
We welcome your feedback on each issue. Letters to the editors should be signed. We reserve the right to edit all submissions. The Watch is owned and operated by the students of the University of King’s College. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people not be warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at watchman’s hand. - EZEKIEL 33:6
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Photo: Nick Holland
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BYOC: BRING YOUR OWN CUPS A new way to clean up campus: ditch the disposable cups
by Erin McIntosh
Fun fact: Halifax doesn’t recycle paper coffee cups. Fun fact number two: if you bring your own mug to the Galley you save 25 cents on a cup of coffee. When you use your own travel mug you’re not just helping the environment, you’re saving money too. For the past two months, student society Sustainability King’s has been fleshing out an idea to bring back the same travel mugs that were included in the frosh packs in 2012. The plan is to sell the mugs at the Galley for five or six dollars, which would include a free coffee upon purchase. Sustainability King’s hopes to get the word out about excessive waste and to get students to stop buying the non-recyclable coffee cups. “There’s no way the Galley should be selling all these cups,” said Matthew Green, sustainability commissioner with the KSU and fourth-year student. Green heads up Sustainability King’s.
since the King’s bookstore started selling King’s mugs, students have been using them more as well. Guy feels that getting rid of paper cups would be beneficial to both the environment and the café. “In theory I really like the idea of getting rid of the paper cups,” said Guy.” “It would take care of a couple problems: one being waste and two the issue of ordering cups, which can be kind of stressful.” Sustainability King’s continues to work out pricing and logistics for purchasing the mugs. No date has been set for when they hope to get the travel mugs on Galley shelves. The plan to sell travel mugs is just one part of a larger campaign to revamp the Galley’s waste policy. Members of Sustainability King’s created large signs to go over the three waste bins in the Wardroom. They will have pictures of the specific objects sold at the Galley and where they are supposed to go. These signs will be posted in the near future. |w
The Galley charges $1.50 to fill your travel mug with coffee. The usual cost, disposable cup included, is $1.75. Green feels a restructuring of the price system is the best way to influence students to bring a mug. He thinks there should be a price for coffee and a price for the cup, instead of getting the discount on coffee with a mug. In the end, students would still pay the same amount but are forced to think about their purchase of the cup. “Hopefully this will be a step towards eliminating a lot of the paper cups that people are buying now,” Green said. The project of procuring the travel mugs will be funded by Sustainability King’s and the KSU, to keep the Galley from shouldering the additional costs. Profits from the travel mugs will go back to the KSU and Sustainability King’s. Erica Guy is an employee of the Galley and said travel mugs are fairly popular, especially among professors. She said
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Photo: Ashley Corbett
OPINION: DISMANTLING THE DIVIDE Is there an intellectual split between the humanities and the sciences?
by Colleen Earle
To continue my trend of pointing out issues I have come across in our community it is time to point out another: the false dichotomy and conflict created between the arts and sciences. First, let me explain my motivation, which is twofold. When I was in high school, in Dartmouth, I did all the sciences. It was my ambition to become a pathologist or a physicist. I loved science and math dearly. My friends, who exclusively took arts, frequently said they did far more work than me because papers were harder than math, chemistry and physics. I, naturally, always disagreed with this and asserted they were different types of work and were, in many ways, equal in value despite the fact I spent several hours a night doing more work than they did. This year I am taking calculus. I was met with support from many of my close friends who have a great appreciation for math and science. But more often, especially within our own community I was only asked why I would ever want to submit myself to such suffering. Finally, the other day when I was in the McCain building, where I spend far too much of my time weekly, I heard a statement I found worrying. A defense of taking an arts degree that consisted of putting down other students by simply asking, “Yeah, but can you write?” While this may be a valid question, it is completely inappropriate. This question not only oversimplifies their own degree but also another entire discipline. The humanities and sciences teach two different skill sets, many of which are not transferable. Many students of the humanities cannot make proper sense of a scientific paper, let alone write one, one of the issues that leads to the
amounts of scientific illiteracy across the western world. It is true, as this student in the McCain pointed out, that many science students cannot write a paper for the humanities to the same caliber that someone who has studied the humanities should be able to. Is that really their fault? The answer is clearly no. Neither the humanities or the sciences give students the proper opportunity to learn about the other to appreciate them and learn a further skill set that will aid them in their own fields. Humanities could often do with a good dose of scientific objectivism, as we all too often get caught up in our own ideas of what something should say, closing ourselves off to other interpretations because they do not fit with our own world view. The sciences could benefit from some of the humanities writing techniques that allow us to express complex ideas eloquently in a way that our grandmothers would understand without having studied a topic for years. This is all to say what might be the most obvious: the sciences and humanities are simply different. They allow us to learn different skill sets, which used alone are good and sufficient, but when used together make a stronger argument. One is simply not better than the other and in most cases they are just incomparable. It is far past time for us all to bury the hatchet and get over ourselves so we can all increase the value of our learning by being interdisciplinary. By not shutting each other out of our respective studies and working together to make knowledge as a whole better. We need to stop comparing ourselves to each other and thinking that one has more worth. We all work hard and we should all be able to appreciate that fact, despite our inability, perhaps, to understand the other all of the time. |w
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WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?
If you have a different view on an issue happening on campus then we want to hear from you. Email Sophie or Nick if you want your opinion featured in The Watch:
watcheditors@gmail.com
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WORK HARD, PLAY HARD FYP students are partying like it’s their job
by Avi Jacob
It’s Monday. The day begins with you handing in an all-nighter paper followed by two hours of lecture on a topic you don’t fully understand. Lecture finally comes to a close with a relieved round of applause from the hall. As you push back your seat and collect your things, you wonder if everyone else is just as confused as you are—hoping they are. Making your way down the halls you clench your teeth, nervous everyone will notice you have nothing to say. Nervous you really don’t have anything to say. You’re already forgetting what the lecture was about.
Last week was hard, this week might be worse. You need to celebrate in the few moments you have before reading another 90 pages. Luckily, somewhere on campus, someone will be throwing a party for the same reason. Maybe everyone is already there, just waiting for you to show up. In your head you shout a triumphant TGIFM—Thank God It’s FYP Monday.
You wander back to your room.
Each person who enters FYP is told two things: they’re entering a tight and peculiar community, and it’s going to be one hell of a tough year. A whirlwind academic tour through the history of thought, philosophy and religion, the program requires students to give over mind, body and soul.
Most parties at King’s are thrown with a theme. One example is the annual tradition of the Dante party. Thrown in one of the residence buildings, the party is set up in four levels to signify Dante’s Divine Comedy — the dark wood, the inferno, purgatory and paradise.
FYP can be taxing.
Lee says he thinks a lot of the parties and drinking habits at King’s have to do with the works being read, such as Dante.
“If the arts are like the military, FYP is like the Navy SEALs training,” says Clifford Lee, the don of residence for Middle Bay.
“After finishing large and difficult texts, the students celebrate the books and their accomplishment in reading them,” Lee says.
Lee and nine other dons on campus hold the job of supporting students with their academic and social lives. This includes being aware of the large number of parties thrown in residence throughout the year, even multiple times in a week.
So where does this need to party down with the classics come from?
While partying on a university campus hardly sounds like news, a party thrown at King’s usually comes with a twist. Lee says he has not been instructed to prohibit drinking in students’ rooms, or to keep them from storing alcohol. King’s has become known for offering alcohol at school events, mostly sherry and wine. o o o o o 08
Lee says while everyone is different, many students experience a similar kind of stress from the workload throughout the year and seek some kind of outlet. Beth Airton, a FYP and journalism student, says it has a lot to do with the fact that so much of what students do—academically and socially—takes place within the enclosed quad, almost as if students are unable to escape their studies.
File Photo
Photo: Ashley Corbett
Airton says if it wasn’t for her journalism assignments sending her off campus, she’d have almost no reason to leave and no energy to do so. “By the time I leave lecture, I just need some coffee,” she says. “I’ve even started napping every day.” While the amount of work is one contributing factor, the content itself can have a high impact on students. Airton says investing so much time and effort in something like Dante has made her excited to celebrate it. At the same time, planning for the celebration has helped keep the subject in her mind. “Because my friends and I were talking so much about dressing up for the party,” she says, “it helped me remember little details for the midterm.” Lee says that Nihilism and the German philosophers like Heidegger can hit students especially hard.
“They take so much responsibility,” he says. “In such a small school you have to. There’s no anonymity.” Last year, the students throwing the Dante party kept the dons, the dean and security in the planning loop. They even had a student checking King’s IDs at the door and patrol present throughout the night. Lee thinks the high level of maturity comes from the type of students attracted to King’s and the community the program instils: a bit of nature and nurture. A testament to the program itself, parties stand as a foundation in socialization. The dons work to promote the idea that the event is the point, not the alcohol. Entering one of the parties, the caring and mutual support amongst guests can be seen immediately. The academic influence is even more apparent. While only some students are armed with drinks, many are talking about what they read that day. |w
“All of a sudden (students are) being told to question the religious concepts they’ve been taught from September. Nothing makes sense.” The stress piles on as quickly as the daily reading. With a paper due every other week, students are left seeking outlets for a sense of release and a celebration for another hurdle crossed. While students at King’s have been given ample opportunities to party, they must operate under the understanding that they will act wisely and not abuse them. So far students have done well. Lee says he is always surprised by the maturity shown by students.
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THE TUITION TIMELINE April O
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April 9
The Nova Scotia provincial government releases the 2015 budget. The three per cent tuition cap is lifted allowing universities to make a one-time market adjustment to tuition, or a spread over the coming years. The cap will return for the next school year.
April 10
King’s president George Cooper emails the entire school, ensuring students the lifted cap will not cause a tuition hike for the 2015-16 year.
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2015-1 O
Sept. 9
First FYP lecture. The program’s enrolment for the start of the school year is 233, down from 250 the previous year.
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Sept. 28
King’s president George Cooper holds a conversation with students. He says the $1,000 hike is delayed, possibly reopening in a year. “We appreciate your passion,” says Cooper. “We respect your opinions.”
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Photo: Flickr/KMR Photography
News on tuition hikes continues to pour out of King’s. Here is a walkthrough of the school’s lengthy discussion on hiking tuition, starting with the province’s decision to slash the tuition cap for one year.
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Mid-April
A committee on student fees is formed, tasked to make recommendations on tuition adjustments.
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1 6 Ye a r O
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Sept. 15
Sept. 24
An email is sent to students and staff saying the committee on student fees has been considering a tuition hike of $1,000 for FYP.
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Oct. 15
The board of governors vote in favour of the committee recommendations to raise FYP tuition—$500 in 2017-18 and $500 in 2018-19. This brings the grand total to $8,630.
About 50 students show up to a town hall and discuss the proposed hike. Among the attendees: Daniel Brandes, director of FYP; committee members, who recommended the hike; KSU executives.
KSU president Alex Bryant says the increase will be more than one grand. He says tuition fees will range from $7,000-$9,000.
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Oct. 18
At council KSU says they will be going to Nova Scotia’s Department of Labour and Advanced Education, planning to appeal the hike.
Nov. 3
The KSU meets with the Department of Labour and Advanced Education to talk tuition fees. The students’ union wants the provincial department to reject the proposed hike.
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o o o o oPhoto: 12 Ashley Corbett
THE SACRED AND THE MUNDANE Does the Chapel still have a place in the everyday lives of students?
by Sarah Griffin
Maybe you’re more familiar with them than you think. Some nights, sonorous voices permeate the campus at 5 p.m. from this religious cornucopia. Perhaps you’ve heard glimpses from your Bay? Maybe you’ve travelled with them. They leave brightly in the morning every Thanksgiving and Christmas. You most definitely encountered them at matriculation. Them? The community and building that make up our King’s Chapel. The place originally intended for students to connect the intellectual and the practical. The place where we are to put our contemplation into spiritual practice. The Chapel is currently under external review. Realistically, can the Chapel be of any use in this day an age? If non-Christians are to meditate there, are we being disrespectful to the chapel’s original intention? The King’s Chapel community would hope that these are the last thoughts to enter your mind when you walk by the small stone chapel. Karis Tees, a fifth year self-proclaimed Christian involved in multiple aspects of the Chapel, believes that it has the ability to provide the students with a place of meditation beyond those who consider themselves Christian. “There’s something about what happens in the chapel that feels like it’s an adequate response to the brokenness of the world.” Tees says there is no attempt to evangelize in the services, as the emphasis is on the beauty of the chapel: something that reaches everyone regardless of faith. There is a noticeable lack of students who don’t consider themselves Christian who are involved frequently with the chapel. However, if the Chapel community were to have it their way, this would not be the case. Father Thorne, the university’s chaplain, suggests that students are put off of the religious aspect of the Chapel: “It’s a strange prejudice of our society that you can read a book and somehow know what the book is about even though the book has been written in a Monastic setting. It was written at a time when there was no difference between philosophy and theology; it was all the same.” In fact, Thorne suggests that by keeping to the original Anglican texts, we’re being more inclusive of other faiths by not allowing ourselves to be caught up in
the more progressive forms of Anglicanism. Essentially, he argues that keeping the Chapel as something of a museum piece of sixth century Monasticism is inclusive because of the focus on ‘The Divine’, rather than more contemporary understandings of ‘God’. “The chapel is all about conversion. Not to Anglicanism. Not to Christianity. But conversion to the good, the true and the beautiful. That’s the conversion that every young person who comes to university is seeking, even if they don’t know it,” said Father Thorne reclining in his chair, chin up and eyes closed. But if the Chapel is just to be seen as a conversion to ‘the Good’, why do we have a chapel? The Dalhousie Multifaith attempts to draw students to the greater ‘Good’, with no explicit reference to a single religion. Thorne argues that our refusal to expose ourselves to the Chapel while reading Christian thoughts in books, we are exhibiting our Western hubris: “‘We think we understand the insight, and take the good out of every tradition and rise above it all. As soon as you leave the chair and walk out you think “Oh, those poor Egyptians, if only they knew what I knew. If only they were above things like me. It’s the western hubris.” Essentially, the snow-bearded chaplain believes that if we fully understand a particular spiritual tradition can we come to respect those of other spiritual traditions. “What (different religions) share in common is the Aristotelian notion of habit — how souls are shaped. How we come to love one another and ourselves in and through the particular habits of particular traditions.” The King’s chapel is based off of the Oxford University Model, whose Magdalen Chapel was built between 1474 and 1480. The chaplain, Rev. Michael Piret in Oxford believes that his chapel has not experienced a clash of tradition and the contemporary. He attributes this harmony to a choral tradition that draws students of all faiths and of none to experience classic Anglican services such as Choral Evensong.
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He claims that events such as these provide a spiritual space from which people of diverse backgrounds benefit, creating an environment for students to participate or not to, depending on what seems right for them. This seems to be a nice idea in theory, but in practice, has the Chapel been helpful in any way to those of different backgrounds? It may be in the Chapel’s favour within the university to see themselves as inclusive, but is this practical? Chris Parsons, a King’s alum who graduated in 2009, seems to think so. Parsons is Atheist, and identified as such throughout his studies at King’s. “I was in a rough time in my life and I found through consistently going I had a contemplative space that was a lot slower and escapes rhythms of everyday life. Through the process of attending those events I struck up friendships and relationships with Father Thorne and students. The informal nature of those relationships is where I feel a lot of the good of the chapel comes from.” But how does this compare to multi-faith communities like the centre at Dalhousie? “I do think there is an advantage to it being the chapel, one of which is that it is part of the history of King’s. It’s part of the history that we need to grapple with and re-think. We can’t blow up that history, but we need to think of how to negotiate it,” says Parsons. “The chapel has a diverse community, but relative to the King’s student body. Its ability to reach out to other faiths is constrained by the limits of King’s. King’s as a university has not done a good job of having a racially and ethnically diverse student body. The King’s chapel has not had to confront those sorts of questions because it’s a product of the fact that the university is very homogenous,” says Parsons. “It’s not a Chapel problem.” |w
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Photo: Ashley Corbett
Hali Deli This next concoction has turned me into a grandmother long before my time. Is it raining? Chicken soup pot. Are you sick? Chicken soup pot. Did you just pass in an essay you’re unhappy with, step in a puddle and lose your favourite pen? Chicken soup pot, and you had better get a slice of cheesecake for dessert. The chicken soup at the Hali Deli (2389 Agricola St.) is nothing new: unassuming shreds of meat, coins of carrot, thick egg noodles and a plump matzo ball swim in a simple broth. But the sum of those classic parts is almost like taking a bath from the inside out. Each spoonful will make you feel warmer and calmer no matter what time of day it is.
Phil’s Seafood I’ll admit to being biased as a Maritimer, but there’s nothing quite like a bowl of chowder. Nova Scotia is filled to the brim with appetizing options, but on the peninsula Phil’s Seafood (6285 Quinpool Rd.) rises to the top. The fish chowder is good; the seafood chowder is spectacular. A bowlful of hunks of lobster, sweet scallops and lots of creamy broth to be sopped up with the accompanying buttery roll makes the perfect supper for a blustery day.
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The Nook Bracing yourself against the cold doesn’t have to mean slurping down an entire meal. Halifax has no shortage of coffee shops ready to serve up your favourite tea and coffee drinks. For something with a fairytale spin, head to The Nook (2118 Gottingen St.) for a vanilla rose steamer. Possibly the closest thing to the hot and creamy drink the White Witch offers Edmund in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in existence, this cup’s floral fragrance is a welcome touch of summer as winter worsens.
WINTER COMFORT
You can pile on blanket scarves all you want, but will they be enough to thaw the end-of-semester chill? November weather in Nova Scotia is cruel and fickle, and often the only way I can bear to step out into the grey days is to turn myself into a walking hot water bottle. Thermos upon thermos of tea does the trick, but for those most desperate days, let the flavours of the Halifax Hot Liquids Map be your guide.
by Sophie Allen-Barron
Indochine Banh Mi So far the “hot” in “hot liquids” has referred to temperature only. Those looking to add spice to the mix should stop by Indochine Banh Mi. (1551 South Park St., 1701 Barrington St.) While it’s sadly no longer a permanent menu item, snatch up their coconut curry soup if you see it on the specials board. Vermicelli noodles and either chicken or tofu (your choice!) are blanketed in a silky, surprisingly spicy broth. If they’re not serving it when you venture in, don’t feel you’ve had a wasted trip. Indochine also offers pho tinged with anise and served with a wedge of lime, the perfect tangy and savory defense against the chilly air outside.
W Map: Sophie Allen-Barron/The Watch
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