January 2016 by The Watch

the watch January 2016

STUDENTS SPONSOR SYRIAN FAMILY ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

BEING A “COLLEGE” STRESS SOOTHERS

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EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

ONLINE EDITOR

PUBLISHING BOARD

SOPHIE ALLEN-BARRON NICK HOLLAND

EMMA JONES

ZOË BRIMACOMBE ADRIENNE COLBORNE GRACE KENNEDY AIDAN McNALLY GWENDOLYN MONCRIEFF-GOULD JOHN SANDHAM TERRA TAILLEUR MELINA ZACCARIA

PUBLISHER GRACE KENNEDY

TREASURER JOHN SANDHAM

CONTRIBUTORS BEN von BREDOW SARA CONNORS HANNAH DALEY

COPY EDITOR

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

REBECCA HUSSMAN

ASHLEY CORBETT

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EDITOR’S NOTE Welcome back! Whether you spent your December at work, curled up on a couch somewhere or exploring a new country, we hope you’re coming back to King’s feeling refreshed and ready for the semester ahead. At very least, you’ll need the moxie to make it over Halifax’s notoriously treacherous winter sidewalks. This issue, Ben von Bredow got us thinking about the “college” in UKC. In his opinion piece (pg. 8), he talks about collegiality, and what that distinction means for our school. The common goals and love for one another is something that will feel familiar for many. But can we really claim to have that collegiate spirit? Students, as Ben will mention, find themselves at King’s for all manner of reasons. Some start with FYP, finding the idea of a one-year program appealing: no strings, no commitment. And we know more than one journalism student who finds philosophy a slog, something to trudge through in their first year on their way to what they really wanted to do. That’s not a uniquely King’s experience—any student body is going to see varying levels of enthusiasm.

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But it means the Oxfordian experience—of picking from a myriad of colleges the one that best aligns with you— doesn’t apply here. Unfortunately, it seems what unites King’s students right now shouldn’t factor into life at a post-secondary institution. Financial woes are the topic at hand, setting aside the unity of knowledge and love Ben describes. Doesn’t it sound nice to be able to fully immerse yourself in your readings, your reporting or your society duties without having to squeeze it in between shifts, or without the shadow of debt hanging over you? Students have acted and made it clear again and again that this is a barrier to their learning. You know, what colleges and universities are for. Sky-high student fees, more than anything, are what keep King’s from being truly collegial.

-Sophie & Nick

IN THIS ISSUE: VOL. 33 NO. 4 Cover Photo: Nick Holland/The Watch

Therapy animals provide solace for stressed students

Some tips to ease your mind this semester

PAWSITIVELY PEACEFUL

SHUTTING DOWN STRESS

King’s students help bring a Syrian FAMILY to Canada

What sets uS apart, what brings us together

AN OFFER OF FRIENDSHIP

BEING A “COLLEGE”

CHILL JAMS

Songs for the coldest months of the year

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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PAWSITIVELY PEACEFUL

Therapy animals provide solace for stressed students

by Sara Connors

University is not a walk in the park.

imals could be helpful for students with anxiety disorders.

Many students are plagued by looming deadlines, exams, projects and essays, and it’s not uncommon for some students to feel anxious throughout the school year.

A university “seems like the perfect population to have them. You’re away from home, and for most (students), the first time,” she says. “The benefits could be huge for people.”

But for students with depression or social anxiety disorders, university can seem like a nightmare. Not only are many of these students under pressure to do well academically, they’re also expected to adapt to a new social environment away from the comforts of home and to fit in with their peers and floormates.

Another way animals help students are paws rooms. Run by the Therapeutic Paws of Canada (TPOC), paws rooms help students de-stress by allowing them to interact and play with registered therapy dogs.

According to Statistics Canada, 12 per cent of Canadians have anxiety disorders, causing mild to severe impairment. First-year students particularly struggle with university stress, and 14 per cent of first-year students in Canadian universities drop out every year. But some students are fighting school stress in a new way — with animals. Dogs, cats — even hedgehogs — are now making appearances in university residences across Canada. Referred to as therapy animals, these critters help students with anxiety by providing comfort and calm. They differ from service animals, like guide dogs, because they’re not trained to perform tasks or to assist their handlers with disabilities. Instead, therapy animals are used in hospitals, nursing homes, schools and rehabilitation centres as a source of stress relief and to improve mood. Dean of Students Nick Hatt says, “If a student approaches us and it’s clear that their doctor or therapist feels that this is a good thing, we’ll assist them and do everything we can to support them.” Hatt says there’s one registered animal on campus currently, but he can’t disclose what it is, along with the student. Though Dr. Amanda Macdonald doesn’t have any patients using therapy animals in her practice, she says therapy an-

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Aimed at first-year students, but open to everyone, 32 owner and dog “teams” travel across Halifax and surrounding areas visiting universities across the city. Hatt says over 200 King’s students visited the paws room in April 2014. King’s students visited another paws room during the 2015 winter exam season. TPOC Halifax team leader Mark Grant says the paws rooms are popular with students because “dogs are very warming. They’re very comfortable giving back to students.” Because the use of therapy animals in residence is fairly recent, most schools’ that allow them don’t have any set guidelines. MacDonald says universities should be careful about using therapy animals. “I would love to take a dog with me, to the library, to class, etcetera. It would be comforting and it would benefit me. But does someone with anxiety necessarily have to have a dog, or animal with them?” Though therapy animals may not be allowed to live on every residence, TPOC leader Mark Grant says more universities across the country are asking the foundation to to visit their campuses. |w

The author made several attempts to reach out to students who have therapy pets. Her messages and calls were not returned.

Photo: Ashley Corbett/The Watch

Photo: Flickr/schnappischnap

SHUTTING DOWN STRESS Some tips to ease your mind this semester

by Nick Holland

Listen to Weightless by Marconi Union Marconi Union takes credit for creating the most relaxing song in the world. It is so relaxing doctors warn people not to listen to Weightless while driving. The British Academy of Sound Therapy analyzed 40 women connected to sensors. Of all the other artists played, including Mozart or Coldplay, Marconi Union was the most relaxing. It is considered to be more relaxing than taking a walk or getting a massage. The group worked with sound therapists to carefully craft this tune with harmonies and bass lines to slow the heart rate, relaxing the body. The rate of a resting healthy heart is around 50-60 beats per minute (bpm), give or take a few pumps. The eight-minute track starts at 60 bpm and slows to 50. It takes the body at least five minutes to go through entrainment, which is the brain’s response to rhythmic sensory stimulation, such as pulses. Weightless run eight minutes, which give some wiggle room. Source: The Telegraph Turn the phone off You’re tucked away in bed or sitting in the corner at your desk, writing an essay due in two hours. Your phone in resting by your lap. The screen lights up with an audible DING— it’s a text. The overwhelming pressure to respond almost always wins, distracting you from work. That’s according to a 2012 study from the University of Worcester. Richard Balding is the author of the study and he’s also a psychology professor at the university. He and his team surveyed 100 participants—university students and people working in retail and the public sector— about their phones.

“The more (smartphones are) being used the more we’re actually becoming a bit dependent upon them,” Balding said, “and actually courting stress instead of relieving it.” In few cases the very stressed participants thought they felt their phone vibrated in their pocket. It never did. Source: Everyday Health Naam yoga hand tricks Business Insider interviewed Sharon Melnick, a business psychologist. She says Eastern medicine can help relieve stress. The Naam school of yoga suggests using pressure points in the hands to manage the body’s physical reaction. Using your thumb to apply gentle pressure to the slight hollow between the second and third knuckles on your pointer finger will take away the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of nerves, says Melnick. And breathing with your hands making the OK sign — with the index finger of each hand meeting the thumb — is supposed to wash away feelings of fear. Push your positioned hands away from you on the exhale, and bring them towards your chest on the inhale. Source: Business Insider Surround yourself with sound If you need to give your brain a break, reach for ambient noise. Soft, crackly buzzing like white noise is supposed to help with concentration. When you really want to zone out, more realistic nature sounds are your friends. Try a website or app like rainymood (rainymood.com). Even on a rare precipitation-free day in Halifax, you can listen to the simulated drops. Source: CBC/The Nature of Things

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AN OFFER OF FRIENDSHIP King’s students help bring a Syrian to Canada

by Hannah Daley

In 2015 the severity of the Syrian refugee crisis was recognized by much of the world’s population when a photo of a young Syrian boy’s body washed up onto a Turkish beach circulated the Internet. While the Syrian conflict has been going on for nearly five years now, more attention is being brought to it and the refugee situation it has caused. At King’s, Micah Zionce and Sam Hodgkins-Sumner are working toward the goal of reunifying a Syrian family within the Halifax community. They are co-chairs of the King’s chapter of the Saint George Refugee Sponsorship. Earlier this year Zionce and Hodgkins-Sumner approached faculty at King’s with the intention of supporting a Syrian family. This lead to a connection being formed between King’s and Saint George’s that has so far seen success. The Saint George Refugee Sponsorship has collaborated with various community members and groups, including King’s, and is on track to sponsor a family. To get it started, they first approached the board of governors and faculty of King’s. “We’ve spoken at the board of governors meeting and the faculty meeting and they’ve been really supportive,” said Hodgkins-Sumner. “I think it’s a really good way to rally support. Not just the financial support but in terms of building a community around these people.” The group has recently received information about the family they will be supporting. They are about to be a family of five. While the group was originally planning for them to arrive by late January or early February, it has been pushed back a bit due to the pregnancy. As students themselves, Zionce and Hodgkins-Sumner say it is important to be conscious of what is going on in the world. “I think it’s important for us as university students to take a step back, take a step off campus and really realize the larger problems in the world as a whole,” said Zionce.

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“The Syrian crisis is just one of those.” He says this initiative helped him put into perspective everything he takes for granted—a college education, running water. “I feel like this project has really helped me be more grateful for things that I never would have thought of beforehand.” When they were first starting the initiative at King’s, one of the first people they spoke to was Nick Hatt, dean of students. He says Zionce and Hodgkins-Sumner have really spearheaded the entire thing at King’s. They made the presentations to faculty and the board of governors, and took other steps to create the connections they currently have. “It’s important for us to extend an offer of friendship, to recognize that in those offers of friendship we must expect nothing in return,” said Hatt. “Simply to recognize that in helping those who are fleeing from violence we recognize that when anybody in this world is in pain, or in hurting we must do everything we can to help one another.” Another member of the King’s community involved in the initiative is Father Thorne. He says, “No matter what your intention and no matter what your reason or purpose for participating in the bringing of Syrian refugees it’s a good thing and no matter whether it’s good for you or not it’s certainly good for them.” This semester there will be fundraising events for the initiative, including a benefit concert in the Chapel. |w

Photo: Ashley Corbett Corbett/The Watch

Left: Micah Zionce. Right: Sam Hodgkins-Sumner

Photo: Nick Holland/The Watch

BEING A “COLLEGE” What sets up apart, what brings us together

by Ben von Bredow

A lot of FYP students arrived in September ecstatic they had been accepted to Hogwarts. I did, two-and-a-half years ago. The robes, the formal meals, the candle-lit Chapel, the constant company of bookish types — it seemed like something out of a fantasy novel. Actually, it comes out of Oxford University. And that’s important. It’s important because our scholastic heritage means that we are a college, like those that make up Oxford. As members of a college, King’s students, faculty, administrators, and staff share a common life and a common purpose in a way that is not necessarily available at other post-secondary institutions. Our life together is directed towards the lofty goal of becoming more truly and completely human. Robert Crouse, a founder of FYP and long-time professor at King’s and Dalhousie, taught that collegiate life is about seeking the unity of knowing and loving. We are most fully human when we have learned how to bring together true thinking and true loving — we must learn to love and know ourselves, the world, and thought itself. This is why a college is fundamentally a community: because we can’t learn to love without each other. We teach one another how to think by thinking together. Anyone who has studied for FYP oral exams knows how this works. But, what’s more, we open ourselves up to the possibility of love by sharing in a common life as a college. Seeking the unity of thought and love is probably not why most King’s students ended up here. It certainly wasn’t why I applied. This is exactly the point: by becoming members of a college before we know what the highest values of the college are, we can genuinely learn something. The college is the meeting place between us and the goal of learning to how to think and how to love, even though we didn’t at first know this was what we were looking for all along. The difference between a collegiate structure and other models of post-secondary education has to do with what “educa-

tion” means. People apply to universities because they have an interest in a particular topic or activity they want to “fill up” with actual knowledge and skills. We shop for universities on this basis, and the result is that, for better or for worse, we only reinforce the interests and inclinations we already had. We get skills so we can get jobs. This is important, but this is not the collegiate attitude towards education. Liberal arts colleges will never convincingly be defended on the basis of utility. We are a members of a college so that we might become better: the goal is to transform our inclinations, in our minds and in our wills, so that we love and know what is right and good in a way that is not simply self-referential. On a more practical level, this is why King’s places such a high value on its traditions: matriculation, formal meal and the smells-and-bells Thursday Eucharist at the Chapel (the “University Service”). Though these ceremonies serve many purposes, they knit us together as a community because they transcend our initial ability to understand or fully appreciate them. By seeking to understand — and eventually to criticize and reform — the traditional practical markers of the “King’s identity,” we are transformed into people who learn to think in the context of a committed community. But our common life is about much more than our traditions. It is also about our institutions, the shared spaces where we can learn to love one another. We are entertained and challenged by attending KTS shows together. We, together, engage with current events in the life of our college by reading and discussing articles in the Watch. We worship together at the Chapel. We read together at the Haliburton Society. We eat together in Prince Hall. We relax and socialize together in the Wardroom. 11 o o o o o

These meeting places are not simply about circumstance and interest; they are not “neutral” spaces which are there for our interest and convenience. Rather, they are crucially important as the most basic places where we practice a collegial attitude. Just as it is a part of friendship to, for example, attend a play in which a friend is acting, so it is an act of corporate friendship when we engage as fully as we can with those events and places which define us as a community. To commit oneself to communal acts of friendship is the first step toward friendship with oneself and toward love of Wisdom. So we should attend the KTS. We ought to read The Watch. We must consider out-tripping with the Chapel, whatever religious background we come from. When I say that the collegial attitude is “not necessarily available at other post-secondary institutions,” I must add that it is not necessarily present at King’s either. Our participation in college life is entirely up to us, as students, faculty, staff and administrators.

There are reasons why we might not be able to fully participate in the life of the college. For example, I am well aware that this vision of collegiate life is a deep challenge to the pluralism which many members of our community hold dear. But I suggest that college life is worth pursuing in spite of — even because of — our individual differences. King’s is a labour of love which reconciles us and our differences. It is difficult work at first to see just how important our presence with one another is, at communal events and on a daily basis. It is difficult work to allow a community and a philosophical tradition to transform us intellectually and morally. But the goal of this work, and the work itself, is nothing other than love. We first love our colleagues, our college, and our curriculum so that we can learn love itself, which is the final goal of a life truly and fully lived. |w

Pluralism noun

A theory or system that recognizes more than one ultimate principle. Source: Oxford Dictionaries

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Here’s what’s coming up soon at King’s Friday, Jan. 8 (Wardroom) Loyalty Entertainment Group

Jan. 15 to Jan. 16 (NAB) SNARCon

Local rappers w/ 90s realness

UndergRAD work unpacking academic norms

Jan. 18 to Jan.23 (The Pit) Infringement

Friday, Jan. 22 (Wardroom) Andrew Jamieson and The Apple Corps

Plays by King’s, for King’s, around King’s

Monday, Jan. 18 (Wardroom) FYP Monday Back Pocket Material and Strong Boy Twangy funk, upbeat indie

Haligonian folk, 60s pop/rock

Monday, Feb. 1 (Wardroom) FYP Monday The Age and No Problem Neo-psychedelia, chill alternative

Photo: Sophie Allen-Barron/The Watch

CHILL JAMS

Songs for the coldest months of the year

by Sophie Allen-Barron The song:

The song:

The scene: You have no interest in going outside any more than necessary. With makeshift padding from scarves and your coat, the window benches of the NAB atrium become your lounge between classes. The warm air gusts up from the vents underneath you and you press your face to the icy windowpane beside you, letting it soothe your weary eyes.

The scene: You pull the door tightly behind you and heave a sigh of relief. The slush has soaked your jeans and plastered them to your legs, wrapping you in a deep chill. You pull them off, put on a fresh pair of sweatpants and fire up the kettle. You feel the warmth sweep over you along with a wave of gratitude to be inside — for now.

The song:

The scene: The bus finally approaches the curb. You only get a little splattered with salty sludge. There’s a window seat free and you sink into it, snatching your toque off your head and holding it in your lap for the rest of the ride. It’s only 4:50 p.m. but already the tree branches are just black slashes on a reddening sky. All day you imagined it was Friday. It is Wednesday.

The scene: It’s Saturday and you have nowhere to be. You surprise your roommates with a stack of pancakes and sit around the kitchen table, pulling your hands into your sleeves and wrapping them around mugs of hot coffee. The winter sunlight is clear and uncompromising and shoos the sleep from your eyes. Maybe you’ll go for a walk in the park today.

The song:

The scene: You’re walking home after class. It is mid-afternoon. Plucking your headphones from your ears, you’re startled to find the world has gone silent except for your own boots cracking the days-old crust of snow. This is your kingdom now. It’s just you and the flakes.

The scene: You’re heading to bed. The last one awake, you make the rounds, turning off lights and checking the locks. In the beam of the streetlight you can see it’s started to snow, the first fresh coating in at least a week. You pull the duvet over you in bed and pretend you’re a squirrel in hibernation.

Soon It Will Be Cold Enough To Build Fires - Emancipator

Yes I’m Changing - Tame Impala

The Woods - Daughter

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I Would Like to Call It Beauty - Corinne Bailey Rae

Warm Foothills - Alt-J

4:35 a.m. - Gemma Hayes

Photo: Flickr/taqumi

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