openWIDE // WESTERN LIFE
The FIMS Student Council (FIMSSC) is a group of undergraduate volunteers who are working hard to make FIMS the best program it can be. This includes planning great events, helping you study for exams, creating the best faculty apparel on campus, and advocating for student rights. Keep up to date by liking the “Fimssc” Facebook page and coming out to meetings, but in the meantime, get to know this year’s executive team!
EMMA COATES PRESIDENT OW: In FIMS we read work by a lot of different theorists. Do you have one that you could single out as your all-time favourite? One that changed the way you see the world?
ecoates6@uwo.ca OW: When can frosh contact you?
EC: Derrida’s “the center is not the center,” is WAY COOL! It is a concept that makes you reconsider the way you think about the structures we’re surrounded by everyday. Derrida’s writing is an attempt to problematize structuralism: a way of conceptualizing society as a bunch of structures that order human beings into different roles within the structures. As with most thinkers in FIMS, Derrida wants people to realize that it’s more complicated than that! There is no binary being vs structure - the people within structures influence and change the structure and vice versa.
EC: Contact me ANYTIME if you’re looking to get involved, have questions about what the heck you got yourself into, or feel as though something could be done differently. I can help by assisting you to advocate for what is important to you. Together we can make change in our own faculty (FIMSSC) or on a larger scale at Western (USC).
VP COMMUNICATIONS REBECCA MCLAREN OW: Coming into FIMS, it can be intimidating that most of your courses will be essay-based. However, as most upper-year students know, this basically means you get to choose to study things that you are passionate about. Do you have a favourite essay that you’ve written for FIMS? RM: In first year, I wrote an essay arguing that deodorant is not a simple and binary idea, but a normalized network of social interactions and standards. One of my second year papers compared a Ceeps bar photo to Bentham’s concept of panopticon by focusing on the layout of the bar and the behaviour of guests - bar photos and deodorant, my two true passions.
mclarenrebecca@hotmail.com
OW: When can frosh contact you? RM: Slide into the FIMSSC Facebook dms if you have questions about events or getting involved. Tell me what interests you and show me articles that relate to what you're learning about in class - I'll share all this stuff online!
12 // v.18