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Recipes, Student Life

Baked brie

by Monique Evans on

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Having holiday bread and cheese withdrawal? Fear not. This baked brie is easy, oh-so-delicious, and guaranteed to disappear in 10 minutes or less. It’s served with caramelized onions and wrapped in puff pastry. If you don’t like onions, you can use cranberry relish and almonds, or even raspberries tossed in a little flour and sugar. Get some friends together, grab a bottle of wine (or several) and a couple baguettes, and relive the food comas of winter break.

 

Ingredients

One 8″ wheel of brie

One package puff pastry, thawed

3 large onions, julienned

3 cloves garlic, minced.

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 tsp brown sugar

1 egg yolk

Fresh thyme, minced

Flour for rolling out pastry

1 sliced baguette

A note on cooking wine: If you wouldn’t drink it, don’t put it in your food. A couple of good cooking wines are La Chamiza Chardonnay ($8.65 at SAQ) and Caliterra Reserva Sauvignon Blanc ($12 at SAQ).

Directions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Grease a 9″ pie dish. Roll out each square of puff pastry. Cut one into a disc the same size as the brie. Roll the other out thinly enough that you can fold it around the sides of the wheel of brie.

3. Melt some butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté onions until translucent and add the thyme. Reduce heat to medium and cook until onions are golden, stirring often, about (25 minutes).

4. Add the minced garlic and cook for a couple minutes. Add the first 1/4 cup of wine. Stir until liquid evaporates.

5. Sprinkle in the sugar and cook the onions until they are soft and brown (about 10 minutes).

6. Add the remaining 1/4 cup wine and stir until the liquid evaporates. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

7. Place the wheel of brie on the larger of the two pieces of pastry. Top with caramelized onions. Place the 8″ disc of pastry on top of the wheel and fold the larger pastry around the cheese so that you have covered the whole wheel without holes.

8. Place in a pie dish. Whisk the egg yolk with a little water and brush it over the top of the pastry.

9. Poke a few holes in the top of the pastry to let the steam out.

10. Bake in the oven for 25-35 minutes or until the puff pastry is nice and golden. Let it sit for at least 15 minutes before serving with  sliced baguette.

Student Life

Showering like a pro

by Matt Essert on

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There are only a few reasons to take a shower. One possible reason is that you are so smelly that strangers tell you as much. If a stranger complains that you are smelly, it means that you are so smelly that the stranger felt the need to tell you about it, an uncomfortable act for anyone. If a friend or family member tells you that you are smelly, you can probably just ignore it and write it off as playful teasing. But if you are so dirty that you raise dust clouds as you walk around sterilized areas, you may want to consider showering. It is important that you diagnose your level of dirtiness in sterilized areas since unsterilized areas comes with their own dirt and grime, which could easily mix with your dirt and grime and give you an inaccurate measurement of your filthiness.

If, alternatively, you are not smelly or dirty enough to meet these requirements but still want to take a shower, you should probably do something to get dirty or smelly enough to warrant the use of enough water to hydrate a mid-sized village in Siberia. Maybe you should join an intramural team, like volleyball or ball hockey. Ultimate Frisbee is also very popular in warmer months. Intramural sports are great for this because even though you aren’t good enough to play the sport at a competitive level, you still really like the sport and will probably get really into the game and work up a sweat. You could also just run in place for a few hours until you get sweaty enough to take a shower. This would be an especially good option if you don’t like spending time with other people, but do like showering.

If you have, probably begrudgingly, decided you need to take a shower, the first step in the process is to find a shower. Most showers are located in bathrooms or bathroom showroom stores. Some showers in bathroom showroom stores are not fully functional, so they will not be very useful for this instructional guide. At this point, you need to find a bathroom. Many bathrooms can be found in public places—these are called “public bathrooms.” Although these can be very useful in tight situations, they are often gross and sometimes do not have showers. Remember, locating a shower is a key part of this process, so don’t give up! Try looking in your own bathroom at home; you may be surprised to find exactly what you are looking for there.

Upon finding a shower, you should now attempt to bathe yourself. Most doctors agree that you should be naked when taking a shower, but some are just not comfortable with this. Don’t be embarrassed to wear your swim trunks in the shower the first few hundred times you attempt this tricky operation.

The next step is to turn on the water. This is probably one of the most difficult parts of the process. Although most showers differ in their setting for adjusting the water temperature, most shower knobs share one characteristic: every setting except one is excruciatingly hot or terrifyingly cold, and adjusting the knob or knobs by more than 1/16 of an inch will make the water temperature unbearable. You’ll probably need to spend a good 15 to 20 minutes determining a good temperature for your upcoming shower. Trial and error is a good method, although some showerers will collect samples of water in containers and measure them with an instant read thermometer, but this is best left to the pros.

At this point, you may have spent up to 20 minutes standing naked (or in swim trunks) in your bathroom testing the water temperature. After 20 minutes in the bathroom with the shower running, your roommates probably think you are just playing with yourself in the shower, which is totally not cool, so you should probably turn off the shower and pretend to dry off.

You may be upset that you didn’t actually bathe yourself, but hopefully you are honing in on the perfect setting for the water temperature. You probably weren’t even smelly or dirty enough to need a shower anyway, so don’t worry about it. Just put some gel in your hair, rub your face with olive oil, and you’ll be fine.

Sports

Redmen rally riles up rambunctious Carnival crowd

by Walker Kitchens on

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Holly Stewart

In front of the largest home crowd of the year, tied 2-2 in the third period, and killing off a five-on-three penalty, goaltender Hubert Morin and the McGill Redmen kept their composure and held off one more Carleton offensive onslaught. Following the successful penalty kill the Redmen were able to rally with three goals in the final period to defeat the Carleton Ravens 5-4 on Friday night and give the Management Carnival crowd of 1,355 something to celebrate.

“We stayed composed, and that was one of our keys tonight before the game,” said McGill Head Coach Kelly Nobes. “To keep our emotional composure, knowing we were going to have a big energetic crowd. And knowing that Carleton was going to come out hard—they’re a physical team and a high energy team so we were going to need to stay composed.”

“That’s our team—we never give up,” echoed Morin. “We have to work harder and stay focused all the time and even if they score a couple goals, we [have to] work through it and give our best and that’s how we came back.”

The third ranked Redmen (19-0-2) trailed 2-1 after the first period, and Carleton (11-6-2) continued to outplay the Redmen in the second. The Ravens created many scoring chances in the slot but Morin answered every time with clutch saves in traffic.

It wasn’t until captain Evan Vossen rocketed a slapshot into the top right corner of the net with six minutes left in the second that McGill was able tie the game at 2-2.  However, the Redmen got into penalty trouble to begin the third period after Vossen was sent to the box for roughing to end the second and Morin was given a delay of game penalty a minute into the third. Despite being two men down, Morin and the McGill penalty killers neutralized the Raven attack without conceding a goal.

Nobes credited Morin with keeping the Redmen in the game and until the offence were able to orchestrate the comeback.

“Hubert made saves at the right time tonight so that the momentum didn’t swing in the wrong direction,” Nobes said. “And that’s the sign of an experienced goalie and that’s oftentimes the difference in hockey games.”

Morin credited the massive crowd with helping energize him in the game’s tense moments.

“The crowd was pretty loud with all the energy and emotion—you’re so into it—you’re so focused and [that’s] how I made the key saves,” Morin said. “You’re on your toes the whole time and you just try something, and sometimes it works. It worked fine tonight.”

Leading the Redmen attack was playmaker Alex Picard-Hooper, who scored the first goal of the third period to give McGill their first lead of the game. He also set up the other two Redmen goals in the period. On the Redmen’s fourth goal, he made an incredible pass into the slot on the powerplay that defenceman Hubert Genest buried, and also assisted Vossen’s empty net goal. The three-point night extends Picard-Hooper’s CIS leading point total to a 47 points in 21 games.

“[Picard-Hooper’s] been pretty consistent for us,” said Nobes. “He’s a smart player and the puck sticks to his stick. He makes great passes and his head [is] always up.”

The hockey game was part of the Management Carnival schedule, which resulted in 1,355 fans showing up. The McGill crowd was extremely loud throughout the game celebrating the Redmen goals and taunting the Carleton players, namely their goalie Matthew Dopud, and defenceman Brad Albert.

“That was unreal,” said Morin. “It was our biggest crowd of the year and people were so loud and it brought us a lot of energy, it was good for us.”

Nobes agreed that the crowd energized the Redmen and created an amazing atmosphere to play in.

“It was great. It was awesome. It was outstanding,” he said. “It’s unfortunate it isn’t like that every night but [it’s] great to see all the McGill fans [come out to the game]—it made for a lot of fun.”

McGill’s next home game is on Wednesday, January 19 in a rematch against Carleton. While the crowd will not be nearly as big or energetic, the Redmen will hope to duplicate Friday’s result.

Behind the Bench, Sports

Steroids clouding MLB’s Hall of Fame judgements

by Gabe Pulver on

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Let’s start with the truth about Major League Baseball: 1) We’re still in the “Steroid Era.” 2) We’ve always been in the Steroid Era. This week’s example: a player under suspicion of juicing has been retroactively accused and it may jeopardize his Hall of Fame chances. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

In the wake of last week’s Hall of Fame induction vote, a donnybrook erupted amongst baseball writers and fans. Jeff Bagwell, the legendary first baseman with the funny batting stance and tremendous power, received a shockingly low number of votes in what has been widely accepted as an accusation of past steroid use. Until now, Bagwell’s name hadn’t appeared on the juicing marquee alongside Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Mark McGwire.

Like Bonds and Clemens, Bagwell never failed a steroid test, and put up his best numbers before rules or a testing system were in place. By the time he entered the twilight of his career in 2001, he was already considered to be the fourth greatest first baseman of all time by stats analysis guru Bill James. Admittedly, this was BAP (Before Albert Pujols), but his numbers are fantastic. He was a pillar of his team and his community, and spent his entire career with a single team—the Houston Astros. In any other era, his Hall of Fame candidacy would be unquestioned. Unfortunately, Bagwell played amongst the juicers on the field and the jesters in the press who are all too happy to keep the steroid story mill churning. Unlike Bonds and Clemens, Bagwell wasn’t under suspicion during his career—he seems to be a victim of circumstance. Unlike many other baseball fans, I believe that juicers like Bonds and Clemens belong in the Hall. Put them in the “steroid wing,” or with some stupid asterisk, but get them in there, and fast. Hank Aaron and Mike Schmidt were admitted amphetamine users. Even the great Mickey Mantle used a primitive form of steroids late in his career.

Another legend on this year’s ballot, Rafael Palmeiro, has the on-field numbers to expect a first-ballot induction but barely got enough votes to stay on the ballot for next year. He lied about his steroid use before failing a test, and now he may never get in. The Hall of Fame is clearly romanticizing the past, and is caught up in a witchhunt zeitgeist.

Bonds and Clemens should be in the hall eventually, and they probably will. It would be tough to keep Barry Bonds out, and in retrospect we can say that the way he was railroaded into villainy by both the game and the media was both unprecedented and unparalleled. His demonization speaks to the mostly arbitrary nature of whom we as fans decide to like. There’s very little doubt that Barry Bonds is a total prick on and off the field. There’s also no question that he is one of the best left-handed hitters of all time.

Compare him to Roberto Alomar, one of this year’s inductees. In addition to a famous incident in which he spat in an umpire’s face, Alomar is also under suspicion of having had unprotected sex with an ex-girlfriend while suffering from AIDS.

Cheating in a game, which everybody else is doing anyway, is judged more harshly than lying to somebody about not having AIDS before having unprotected sex.

Did Jeff Bagwell cheat at baseball? Maybe, but that’s not the point this year. I’m not saying that the Steroid Era should be forgotten, but we already have our villains, our heroes, and our admitted juicers that people have forgiven and forgotten about, like Andy Pettite. There’s no need to look for more people to point the finger at.

Sports

Tennis Preview: Australian Open

by Christophe Boyer on

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The first Grand Slam event of 2011 began Sunday evening on the hard courts of Melbourne Park, Australia. While you’re shivering in front of your TV and watching the temperatures at centre court rise as the mercury in your apartment plummets, check out some of our picks for the men’s and women’s brackets.

Without question, the biggest story of the tournament is Rafael Nadal’s bid for a fourth straight Grand Slam win. Nadal, who won the Australian Open in 2009, was forced to retire last year in his quarterfinal match against Andy Murray because of tendinitis in his knee. Twenty-four-year-old Nadal, who has nine Grand Slam trophies to his name, made an incredible comeback in 2010, winning the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. He will now try to become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win four majors in a row.

Roger Federer, regarded by many as the favourite, will try to stop the Spaniard. He proved that he’s capable by defeating Rafa at the Barclays ATP World Tour Final on November 28; he also won three majors in a row in 2006 and 2007 but was thwarted in his attempt for a fourth on both occasions by Nadal at the French Open. Can Roger repay the favour in Melbourne?

Finally, don’t forget about veteran Andy Roddick. Still possessing one of the most powerful serves in the game, the former world number one is now 28 years old and knows he doesn’t have much time left to capture a second Grand Slam title.

Prediction: Nadal over Federer in the final

Sleeper: Andy Roddick

On the women’s side, defending champion Serena Williams is sidelined with a foot injury and won’t be able to defend her title. In Serena’s absence, Kim Clijsters is the favourite to capture her first Australian Open.

Two other players to watch are Francesca Schiavone, who won her first Grand Slam at Roland Garros in 2010 at the age of 27, and the woman that Schiavone beat in Paris, homegrown talent Samantha Stosur. Stosur is the best hope for Australia on the men’s or women’s side. She broke the top five in the WTA rankings July and is sure to get raucous support at Melbourne Park.

Caroline Wozniacki, who finished 2010 as world number one, has never won a Grand Slam tournament but has been excellent on the WTA tour. Wozniacki has never beaten Clijsters, Henin, or either of the Williams sisters. She was runner-up at the 2009 U.S. Open and reached the 2010 year-end WTA Tour Championships where she lost to Clijsters in a compelling final. She may yet get another crack at Clijsters in Melbourne to prove her number one ranking is merited.

Maria Sharapova has an outside shot to return to her former winning ways. She missed significant action due to injury in late 2008 and early 2009, and hasn’t been the same since. If Sharapova is to get through her bracket she will need to get through 31-year-old Venus Williams and 21-year-old talent Viktoria Azarenka.

Azarenka has never made it past the quarterfinals of any Grand Slam event, but may benefit from a relatively weak bracket to go on and challenge Wozniacki in the semi-finals.

Prediction: Wozniacki over Clijsters in the final

Sleeper: Viktoria Azarenka

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Writing, directing, and performing a play…all in 24 hours

by Daniel Sorger on

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Anna Katycheva

Even if you’ve never heard of McGill’s Tuesday Night Cafe Theatre (TNC), you’ve probably wondered why there’s a 50s-inspired neon sign on the otherwise pleasant ivory tower that is the Islamic Studies building. But within the walls of this subtle structure is a world of student ingenuity and talent.

This weekend, over 50 people came to TNC’s annual 24-hour playwriting festival—one event out of the weeklong ARTifact festival. Everyday life was flipped on its head as three playwrights and tens of amateur actors and stage crew dove headlong into utterly new and challenging material. The night seemed to give a resounding answer, full of gusto, to the question lurking in the back of many of our heads: “Why theatre?”

The first play of the evening, written by Danji Buck-Moore, began with a challenge to the audience to justify why they would choose one “Lavid Dynch” film over another. It then proceeded to tell the story of a young man who desperately sought the precious attention of the idolized director, only to find that he himself was acting in a farce. The show played with viewers’ sensibilities of how theatre is meant to work and with the tendency to mythologize artists at the expense of a powerful dramatic experience. As the plot thickened, spectators were intimately introduced to a narrative device in human form: a dinosaur-tailed antagonist playing a recorder and two New Age disciples of Dynch who were connected at the neck by a scarf. In an effort to involve the crowd, the duo gently wrapped an audience member in their yarn.

The second show, written by Lara Oundjian, cleverly emphasized the role of acting in everyday life. Her piece began with a surreal gunfight that turned out to be a children’s game. It went on to follow the lives of four friends as they dealt with their flaws through therapy, constantly revisiting their early memories. As the characters developed, they found that re-enacting their unconventional and imaginative childhood dramas and dreams is the most reliable way to deal with their growing pains.

After the three half-hour performances finished, McGill English professor and judge Myrna Wyatt Selkirk commented that the success of the evening came from the emphasis on “respect” and “fun.” ARTifact coordinator Ben Bengtson echoed similar sentiments.

“It’s all about having fun,” he said. “And I know that’s kind of a generic word, but it really just translates into high energy.” He emphatically praised the amateur actors for their genuine and unadulterated respect of the play, particularly under time constraints.          

“They have such knowledge of the conventions of the theatre,” he says. “They’re making smart decisions out there instinctually.”

“I sat down and I just let my brain do its thing,” says playwright Stuart Wright of the process of writing a play in 24 hours. “I like to think of plays as dreams that a whole community can share at once. I hope that, at best, there was a very strange and meaningful dream.”

While people often judge the performing arts based on tomato-meters and star quality, ARTifact demonstrated that suspending judgment and physically participating are crucial to a lively and communal theatrical experience.

Bengtson described the experience of grappling with this kind of performance: “You start to think about it and then you say, ‘Ah I’m just gonna go with it.’ That’s what theatre is.”

A less verbal response came from theatre-goer Chad Simmonds who fell off his chair quite loudly, twice, during the course of the night.

To find out more about theatre at McGill, visit mcgillstage.com

McGill, News

Midnight Kitchen takes over Shatner’s Room 302

by Maria Flores on

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In an attempt to replace the Architecture Café, Room 302 of the Shatner Building is set to become the newest university lounge. The space, which is currently used during mealtime by Midnight Kitchen, will add to the number of student-friendly spots on campus and serve as a space for student dining.

The initiative began over the summer, after Management student Ari Jaffe, a Green Building researcher and former environment commissioner, presented a report that aimed to include sustainability on campus and create more student-run initiatives and food programs.

“We already have Midnight Kitchen, which is great because it provides sustainable vegan food, [but] the closure of the Architecture Café put things more into perspective because we would like to increase places to eat which are student friendly,” said Vice-President Clubs and Services Anushay Khan. “This is a way to increase student-friendly space, but also to fulfill the gap that the Architecture Café created.”  

According to Khan, the lack of space to eat is a problem for students. When they get Midnight Kitchen they either go to the cafeteria or down to Gert’s.   

“The advantage to having this in Room 302 is that Midnight Kitchen already serves there during the weekdays, so one of the things we try to do is to expand their service, and at the same time allow people to come and have a place to eat,” she said.

By modifying the space, she said, Room 302 will fulfill the needs that are arising as Midnight Kitchen expands.

“[Midnight Kitchen] is continually growing, they are very popular, they provide tons and tons of services for student, they are very involved in food politics, and they do serve vegan meals which is not an option that you find very frequently on campus,” said Khan.

The Student’s Society has allocated $1,000 of its space budget for the lounge’s renovation, which Khan hopes to have finished by February. Because other clubs will continue to have access to the room, furniture will be easily removable and flexible to serve other purposes.

“We are not looking to spend a lot of money on the lounge because first of all we are going to try it out, and the hopefully we’ll take it from there. To accommodate as many groups as possible we are not going to buy any material that is fixable into the room,” Khan said.

The lounge will be furnished with couches, tables, and paintings. Details regarding opening hours are still being worked out.

“It’s looking like it will probably be open and free for students to come in and out of from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and then after that it would be open for meetings, etc,” said Alex Briggs, U2 mechanical engineering, who works for Midnight Kitchen. “Although it’s much further and not at all in a central location, it will be kind of a replacement for the Architecture Café.”

Additional plans for the space are to run a food co-op and sell products from Organic Campus to allow students to buy food a cheaper prices.

“I strongly believe that it sets a model for what the university should be doing,” Khan said. “I think that is something that SSMU should definitely do, not only to support its service but also to provide alternative space for dining.”

News

Harvard student found to have fabricated stellar career

by Sean Wood on

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Holly Stewart, The Harvard Crimson

In December, a virtuosic liar narrowly missed fooling one of the best and most rigorous universities in the world. After fraudulently making his way through Harvard University as a phony literary critic, Adam Wheeler, 24, pleaded guilty on December 16 to charges of fraud, identity theft, falsifying endorsements, and pretending to hold a degree. He has spent 30 days in jail, will serve 10 years of probation, and will surrender $45,806 in unjustly won awards and financial aid.

Wheeler posed as a postmodern critic of Renaissance English literature and an expert in Armenian studies. In his resumé, which was released and reviewed by The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, he claimed to have written or co-authored six books and to be proficient in Old English, Classical Armenian, and Old Persian. In addition, he claimed to have given talks at McGill and to have had two books under review with McGill-Queen’s University Press. The majority of his claims were completely false.

“Old Persian? Are you kidding me?” said Barmak Nassirian, assistant executive director of the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Wheeler attended a public high school in Delaware, where he was a good-but-not-great student. According to a detailed report by the Boston Globe, he had a penchant for regularly using huge and difficult words in conversation, a habit on which Wheeler would rely in his ascent to Harvard. Sentences of his reported by the Crimson read as though they were doctored with a thesaurus.

“[At MIT], I was, to put it poorly, suckled upon the teat of disdain. That being said (fortified by a reflexive snort), I was inspired thereby to apply to Harvard, where the humanities, in short, are not, simpliciter, a source of opprobrium,” read one of his emails printed in the Crimson.

He told one of his first major public lies when he won a poetry competition with “This Much I Know,” a poem plagiarized from an Irish poet.

In 2005, he entered Bowdoin College, a prestigious liberal arts school in Maine.  After Bowdoin put him under investigation for academic dishonesty, he decided to transfer. Instead of saying he had spent his first years at Bowdoin, though, he said that he had gone to MIT.  Moreover, he said  he had obtained a perfect 4.0 GPA and a perfect 1600 score on his SAT.

After impressing a Harvard interviewer, Wheeler was admitted to Harvard College. Not satisfied there, he applied for and won a number of awards with plagiarized work. In fact, it was not until he was under consideration for a Rhodes Scholarship that he aroused some suspicion. Harvard English professor W. James Simpson noticed that one of Wheeler’s papers was similar to the work of another Harvard professor, and Harvard subsequently began to investigate Wheeler’s records.  

Nassirian was amazed that Wheeler was able to counterfeit the most fraud-proof parts of an application: transcripts and standardized test scores.

“I don’t want to get into them, but there are some really compelling details about transcripts and test scores that are designed to ensure their authenticity,” Nassirian said.

At the beginning of his trial in May, Wheeler pleaded not guilty, but eventually changed his plea.

 “Mr. Wheeler decided to accept responsibility for his conduct so that he could move forward,” said Steven Sussman, Wheeler’s lawyer, in an email to the Tribune.

Wheeler’s resumé claims that he gave three talks in 2009 at a conference at McGill given by Seven Days Work Foundation, an interdisciplinary research organization.  But the Foundation’s director Marc Shell, a Harvard comparative literature professor, denied that Wheeler had ever been involved.

“Adam Wheeler has never spoken at Seven Days Work and has never visited there,” said Shell in an email to the Tribune.

In reality, the conference did not take place at McGill, but in New Brunswick. Wheeler also claimed to have co-authored four books with Shell, two of which he fraudulently claimed were under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press.  Shell flatly denied Wheeler’s involvement in any of his work.

Gerald Leone, the Middlesex District Attorney whose office prosecuted the case, called attention to the victims of Wheeler’s crime.

“His fraudulent actions seriously undermined the integrity of the competitive admissions process, sullied the reputation of some of the finest educators and educational institutions in the country, and cheated those who competed honestly for what he fraudulently received,” Leone said in a press release.

News

Seven students rebel against uOttawa’s U-Pass

by Kirsten Williams on

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The Student Union at the University of Ottawa might be regretting the referendum it put forth in February 2010. The referendum, which passed, required all students to pay for an OC Transpo (Ottawa’s transit system) semester pass as a part of their fees, in the process reducing the passes’ cost from $242 to $145 per semester. However, nine U of O students are claiming that the fee imposition was unfair and are suing the Union in small-claims court for $6,022.57.

While the U-Pass program has been successful at post-secondary institutions across North America, the plaintiffs are arguing that the referendum was unconstitutional. The students are arguing that because the U-Pass fee pays for a public service, it can be considered a tax and, under the Canadian constitution the Student Union is not authorized to either collect or issue a tax.

They are also arguing that the referendum question was ambiguous and that students could not understand that the bus pass would not be valid on all transit networks.

Only about 20 per cent of the student population voted on the referendum question and only about two-thirds of those, or about 15 per cent of the student population, voted “yes.” Opposition remains strong with students who live close to campus and claim that the transit pass is unnecessary for them.

“I don’t have any need for it,” said second year Economics student and plaintiff Chris Spoke to the Ottawa Sun. “I live about a seven-minute walk away and I think I’ve used the bus twice since September.”

Student Union president Tyler Steeves told U of O student newspaper The Fulcrum, “it’s unfortunate that students’ money is going to be wasted defending this thing.”

But according to Spoke, for the student minority in question, it’s less about the financial burden and more about how much student unions should be able to impose on their members.

“If you need a bus pass, you should be able to buy one; if you don’t want one, you shouldn’t,” said Spoke.

The Student Union has been granted until the end of January to file a defence. In the meantime, the nine student plaintiffs remain hopeful for a settlement.

News, SSMU

SSMU to give opt-outable groups chance to speak out

by Mookie Kideckel on

More in News:

The Students’ Society is gearing up to help opt-outable groups and services to protect their revenues. SSMU Vice-President Clubs and Services Anushay Khan announced at SSMU Council this week that roundtable discussions with several such groups—which include several SSMU services, the Quebec Public Interest Research Group, and CKUT Radio—led Khan to offer them a chance to provide more information about themselves to students. The move comes in the wake of last semester’s controversy between Conservative McGill and QPIRG.

While SSMU has always offered postering space in the Shatner Building to these groups, Khan said, this year it intends to expand their ability to reach constituents. This includes more posters in Shatner, electronic signage, and, starting next year, a chance to offer short descriptions of what they do in the first edition of the SSMU listserv.

According to Khan, the issue is  SSMU’s responsibility. Even student groups unaffiliated with SSMU are working to benefit students, she said, and many provide services that SSMU cannot offer directly. Opt-outs therefore, can pose a financial strain for SSMU.

Moreover, Khan cited a motion regarding opt-outs passed at the October 2007 General Assembly. It called for SSMU to “take every reasonable action to reclaim and protect the sovereignty and independence of all campus student groups and activities” and attempt to “put an end to the online opt-out system recently created by the University such that campus groups shall be in charge of their own opt-out process.”

Khan said this may be controversial, but it provides a clear directive for her to act upon.  

“If any other student group came to me with a request, I would have to help them too,” she said, “with SSMU’s mandate and goals in mind and regardless of my personal opinion.”

The resolution opposes online opt-outs only. Khan called the opt-out system a good idea in and of itself. Due to its easy execution, she said, opting out often results from  misinformation.

Khan’s evidence for this is the growth of “shadow opt-outs,” whereby students opt out of all possible services rather than one or two explicitly political causes. These account for the majority of student opt-outs. The solution is to either  change the system, or to create a better forum for providing information—even if only one side of the opt-out debate ends up speaking.

Access to information was the subject of another new initiative announced at council this week: a new SSMU website, with an initial price tag of $31,000. The site has been in the process of a steady overhaul since a 2007-08 redesign that first changed the site from text-based HTML to a more user-friendly and frequently updated page.

Citing concerns that what was intended as a temporary fix is still fairly unusable,  SSMU VP Finance and Operations Nick Drew plans a redesign of the website to make it a one-stop shop that will be easier to navigate.

Drew justifies the website’s cost by pointing to Plank Multimedia, Inc., the company SSMU is hiring to redo the website. The Montreal-based organization has designed websites for clients like Michael Moore, the Bell Centre, and the Canadian Medical Association. Drew explains that companies with less expensive quotes could not do what he wanted—design a high-quality site on an open source platform that would minimize future update costs—and tended to refer him to Plank as a company that could offer the level of expertise necessary.

The website will also spell the end of SSMU’s short-lived Book Bazaar. Drew plans to save money by moving it completely online as of next year as part of a broad online marketplace. While this will overlap with existing services like McGill Classifieds and MUS Classy, Drew posited that this will be more advanced than such rivals and more trustworthy than sites like Craigslist and Kijiji.

“We’re looking to do something more dynamic,” he said, “with pictures and a more appealing look so students know exactly what they’re buying.”  

The site will also feature an “auto-expire” feature that removes items when they are no longer available, and will be limited to student buyers and sellers.

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