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Off to Nationals! After earning a silver medal in the OUA championships, the women’s soccer team earned a berth to Nationals >> pg. 11
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CANADA’S ONLY DAILY STUDENT NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED 1906
VOLUME 107, ISSUE 32
Western hosts OUSA general assembly Student delegates from across the province debate OUSA policy Kevin Hurren, Iain Boekhoff and Megan Devlin GAZETTE EDITORS This weekend, Western hosted the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance’s fall general assembly. Before departing Sunday afternoon, delegates from the seven member universities — Queen’s, Brock, Waterloo, McMaster, Trent, Wilfrid Laurier and Western — gathered in the University Students’ Council’s council chambers for the plenary meeting, to discuss OUSA progress and debate future policy papers. After Amir Eftekarpour, OUSA president, opened the meeting with a presentation outlining the successes and failures of the student advocacy organization in the past year. He went on to discuss what this year’s executive committee had been working towards since their appointment in May. The majority of the day was spent with delegates debating three policy papers. These papers will eventually be submitted to the Ontario provincial government and will guide OUSA in systematic and institutional changes the organization wants to see made. The first policy paper put forward to delegates had several recommendations on ancillary fees levied on students by universities. The policy also raises concerns over Access Copyright, which charges students for reading material, which the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled are free under the “fair dealing” rule. The debate on it never got started however, because it was passed unanimously after the speaker’s calls for debate were met with crickets. The second policy paper debated was about access to post-secondary education by removing barriers to entry. The most controversial recommendation was for the Ontario government to abolish streaming in high schools. Courses are currently split into four different streams, with the academic stream being preparation for university and the applied stream being preparation for college. The reasoning behind this is that low-income students tend overwhelmingly to be placed in the applied stream, which means they cannot apply to university. As an alternative the paper proposes a system similar to that in British Columbia, which has open courses, and for high achieving students,
USC says sorry about PINK display Dorothy Kessler CONTRIBUTOR
Julian Uzielli GAZETTE
FROM WESTERN WITH LOVE. Amir Eftekarpour, president of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, addresses the general assembly on Friday. The group lobbies the Ontario government for student interests.
advanced placement courses. There were several points of contention among delegates, including whether the policy paper should recommend for streaming to be abolished because it was the problem, or if it was an issue of low-income students being systematically placed in applied stream and therefore unable to apply to university. Delegates from the Brock University Students’ Union questioned the amount of information given to delegates to be able to make such a strong recommendation. They also questioned whether it was in OUSA’s mission to lobby for this change. Eftekarpour dismissed these concerns, saying OUSA is for students in university, leaving university, and coming into university and this was an issue that demanded attention. He added later on that it was particularly so because the Ontario government has initiated a review of its education system and acknowledges the problems with the number of low-income students who cannot attend university. After spirited debate, the paper unanimously passed, almost unchanged. Co-curricular transcripts were another main point of debate at the OUSA general assembly on Sunday. After much deliberation, OUSA
delegates approved a policy calling for the creation of co-curricular transcripts at universities across Ontario, which would be similar to those started at Western. A co-curricular transcript is a record of the outside-the-classroom experiences a student engages in while at university, and is meant to compliment the traditional transcript. Pat Whelan, president of the University Students’ Council, was a strong supporter of co-curricular records. “I think it’s a really strong message from the university to students that co-curricular experiences, that out of the classroom piece, are legitimate learning experiences and are part of educating the whole,” Whelan said in an interview after the assembly. However, OUSA delegates from the University of Waterloo and Queen’s were against the idea. One delegate from Queen’s felt uncomfortable being mandated by the province to provide a record of his activities while at university. He explained that at some universities, students didn’t place much trust in the administration, and another delegate from Queen’s added the lack of validation in the co-curricular record was a problem.
Although having an official cocurricular transcript might give the appearance of importance to extracurricular activities, she explained this could be deceiving since the university couldn’t possibly know the details of the degree of a student’s involvement in a given organization. While delegates from Waterloo and Queen’s agreed co-curricular records could be successful on an institutional level, they didn’t feel OUSA should support these transcripts being mandated by the province. However, the proposal was kept in the end, to Whelan’s approval. Whelan explained that when a student is learning in the classroom, half of that cost is paid for by the province, and the other half is paid by the student through tuition. However, when a student is working at a volunteer position — with the USC, for example — that learning experience is entirely student-funded. “I think on the provincial context it’s important for students and governments to recognize these cocurricular experiences as legitimate learning opportunities,” Whelan said.
The University Students’ Council has apologized following negative student reactions of the “PINK” campaign event for Victoria’s Secret in the UCC atrium last week that conflicted with their first conference for Women in Leadership. The USC received feedback from students via Twitter, Facebook, and an open letter on Tumblr. Many students were offended by a cardboard cutout of the “ideal” woman, which encouraged students to pose with their faces in the cut out face of the model. “We had some awareness of the broad brushstroke plan in that there was going to be giveaways and reference to the “PINK” brand, but we didn’t necessarily know particulars,” said Jas Irwin, vice-president communications for the USC. “The cardboard cutout was something that we had not seen, or known was coming.” The USC acknowledged the impact of the event via an online letter to inform students that the event was related to the USC, and not the university, and to articulate that they understood that the event had a negative impact on people. “The University’s Students’ Council would like to formally and sincerely apologize to anyone who was triggered, offended, or otherwise negatively impacted by the presence of the display,” the letter read. However, not all students felt that the “PINK” campaign was unjustified. “I think there was a little bit of an overreaction,” said Katrina Chvedukas, a fourth-year student in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. “A lot of people on main campus thought that [the PINK campaign] was fat shaming, and trying to project a certain image onto the school and students, and I don’t think that was the message they tried to provide.” Currently there are no definitive regulations or consistency in how commercial entities end up being approved to advertise on campus, but there are plans to develop a more robust way of bringing any commercial entity onto campus and in particular brand name marketing companies. “What we’re looking at is making >> see PINK pg.3