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The Brunswickan
Volume 141 Issue 8 • Canada’s Oldest Official Student Publication • UNB Fredericton’s Student Paper • Oct. 24, 2007
How sweet it is!
Thirty Thousand Five Hundred by Jennifer McKenzie Evan Scott, BedPush Coordinator, described how he spent his Friday night “… it was wet. This year we started out well, and then the rain came, and it came, and came, and came. All night.” And yet the members of Neville Jones pushed on, literally. They pushed a bed on wheels, 106 kilometers, overnight, from Saint John to Fredericton. This event is an exclamation mark on a seven week fundraising blitz by the Residence House that resulted in a $30,500 charitable donation to Women in Transition House. Neville-Jones finished their 12 hour trip running into the Boyce’s Farmer’s Market on Saturday, October 20, just
after 10 am, to a crowd of cheering supporters. Most important to the members of Neville-Jones, however, is the message that the all-male residence, is pushing: Domestic violence is unacceptable in every form. “It’s not just the money were raising, we’re also raising awareness about the issue of violence against women and domestic abuse,” expressed Scott. Women in Transition House, Inc. (WITH) operates a safe home for abused women and their children. It provides shelter, food, and other life necessities for 30 days, while battered women (and their children) transition out of abusive environments, and it offers much needed emotional support and counseling.
see Push page 3
Andrew Meade / The Brunswickan
The UNB Cougars clinched the Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball Association Championship on Sunday with a 2-0 victory over the Concordia Stingers. It is the team’s second ever National Title, and its first since 2003. For more on the Cougars run through the finals, see Sports, page 14.
Andrew Meade / The Brunswickan
Gregg Centre holds fall conference Profs release ‘humbling’ book by Lauren Kennedy
New book studying sex workers in the Maritimes is being hailed as a breakthrough
by Ashley Bursey In the midst of the Pickton trial in British Columbia, where a local farmer is on trial for the murder of six sex workers, a new book on sex workers in the Maritimes is “politically significant,” says co-author Leslie Ann Jeffrey. Jeffrey, Associate Professor of History and Politics at UNBSJ, along with Gayle MacDonald, Professor of Sociology at St. Thomas University, interviewed more than 50 sex workers in Halifax, Moncton, and Saint John to compile the book, spending more than two hours with some of them to create “Sex Workers in the Maritimes Talk Back.” “We had come up with the project several years ago when I was at STU, at the Human Rights Centre, and so was Gayle, and we had said what was missing from the literature on the sex trade in Canada was the Maritimes,” says Jeffrey. “The second thing was, we both agreed that what really needed to happen in the literature was a view from sex workers’ own perspective, because mostly we assume we know what’s important to know about the sex trade, we can define the problems, but we’re often wrong. “This project was designed to reverse that knowledge power nexus; to reverse the trend, and learn what sex
workers thought was important for us to know. A release about the book explains that it discusses “violence and safety, health and risk, politics and policy, media influence, and public perception of the trade, portraying every facet of their working lives and expressing sentiments at odds with commonly held opinions.” “Humbling. I’d say it was humbling,” says MacDonald. “It made me appreciate everything I have in my own life and appreciate the resilience they have in theirs. I did a lot of soul-searching about ‘What right does an academic have to ask anybody about anything?’ especially sex workers, but...it was fascinating work to do. You learn a lot about the human spirit, the ability to survive a lot.” The book is being hailed as a breakthrough, tearing down barriers and stereotypes that have been founded around sex work in the Maritimes. Too often, sex workers are seen as incapable, or are being objectified. “Many sex workers feel that the violence they’re facing today – it’s an inordinate amount of violence – is based on this image in the media...that treats these women as voiceless victims, and trash,” says Jeffrey. “We’re hoping that it...ultimately shows people how human they are, how insightful they are, to treat them with respect; social respect and political empowerment instead of treating them as trash or as people we should feel sorry for or we should speak for. Even people who are sympathetic...can often speak for them, and this is disempowering.” The book will likely help create policies around sex work, with real input from the workers themselves. “One of my favorite [stories] is in the
see Book page 11
This past weekend, the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society, partnering with Base Gagetown, held host to its annual fall conference titled ‘From Sarajevo to Kandahar: Rescuing Failed States in Historical Perspective’. The Gregg Centre was renamed last
year, although it has been around for the past 35 years under the name of the old Centre for Conflict Studies and Strategic Studies Program. Last year it all rolled together into one, where new elements were added to its mandate. Dr. Lee Windsor is the Deputy Director of the Gregg Centre and this year’s conference organizer. “We have always studied war from a broad perspective but we have never clearly articulated that, so now we are called the Centre for the Study of War and Society to more accurately reflect the
scope of what we study,” he said. “Over the next few years, we plan to have a more interdisciplinary approach and to encourage research, which includes having a new chair for the study of climate change and conflict.” The Canadian mission in Afghanistan is the latest in stability missions undertaken by the Canadian government within countries that have been ravaged by war or seen their civil society collapse. These countries are generally understood as being ‘failed states’ that have, stereotypically, seen their downfall
amplified as a result of the Cold War. Windsor explained that the whole idea behind this conference is to get students, soldiers, and academics to exchange ideas between uniforms and non-uniforms to help take down the walls that exist between the two worlds and help both to understand each other. “The idea for the name of this conference comes out of seeing that Canadians have a hard time understanding the mission in Afghanistan, largely
see Gregg page 3
And the batteries go in the buckets…
Andrew Meade / The Brunswickan
by Melanie Bell
The UNB chapter of Engineers Without Borders is known for its energy, but of all the associations the name conjures, batteries would seldom be the most immediate. This may soon change.
The chapter is collaborating with the campus Green Team to implement a recycling program for alkaline batteries. Ice cream buckets sporting bright orange signs have been in place at Head Hall and in campus libraries for about a month to collect used batteries. The filled buckets are brought to a central location and picked up by a waste management company. Damaged batteries will be removed to a landfill for hazard-
ous waste, while the others will be recycled. EWB-UNB chapter has found municipal and corporate sponsors willing to share in the program’s cost. This past Friday has seen the placement of more buckets in prominent locations such as meal halls and residences, but why batteries? “Despite its lack of outright environmentalism,” explains project participant Tim Jardine, “EWBUNB believes that part of the fight against global poverty is some deep reflection on the sustainability of our current consumer-oriented lifestyle. That is to say, if we expect developing countries to develop in a sustainable manner, perhaps it would help if we had our own house in order.” In Canada, approximately 450 million household batteries are sold annually. In 2004 alone, 350 million of these were sent to landfills along with household waste. Alkaline batteries, particularly those manufactured in previous decades before more strict environmental standards were put in place, contain varying quantities of heavy metals. These include mercury, cadmium and lead, which can harm ground water and air quality if improperly disposed of
or incinerated. A battery-recycling program implemented at Dalhousie University in 1998 has had a significant effect on battery waste diversion. The campus’s annual total of recycled batteries has risen from 0.2 tonnes at the beginning of the program to 2.5 tonnes in 2005. The coordinators of UNB’s battery recycling program hope that their efforts will garner similar results. Compared to the 11,600 tonnes of batteries that were thrown out in 2004, this amount is a drop in the bucket, but as the program suggests, every drop counts. Project coordinators have spoken to MP Andy Scott about getting funding to take the program citywide. Buckets would be placed in public locations like grocery stores, as they are on campus, making it easy for Fredericton residents to dispose of their batteries in a safe and constructive way. “Hopefully this is something that can be done from here on out,” says Mark Mosher, an EWB member and ambassador for the new program. “And we can make it as much of a natural reaction as recycling paper or cans.”