CKLN: It’s time to take back our radio

By: Carmelle Wolfson

It’s hard to believe that a resolution has still not been reached at CKLN. A year has passed since the CKLN special meeting where membership voted overwhelmingly (over 90 per cent) to impeach non-student members on the Board of Directors and to dismiss the appointed Station Manager and appointed Program Director. Two boards still remain in place: the board that was voted out on February 23, 2008 (some directors refuse to resign to this day), and the new board that was legitimately elected by membership following the impeachment. 

At least 60 volunteer programmers have been locked out of the station, their shows taken off the air, and all the workers who unionized last fall have lost their jobs—all acts of reprisal since the special meeting. 

However, some promising developments at CKLN may lead to this battle’s conclusion. Three people who played key roles in maintaining the autocratic rule over CKLN have been booted out of the station, and the locks to the station have been changed. Now, for the first time since the board was legitimately elected by membership following the February 2008 meeting, the powers controlling CKLN have agreed to meet with the other board to develop parameters for an upcoming membership meeting and elections. 

In the past, the impeached board repeatedly refused the National Campus and Community Radio Association’s offers for mediation between to the two boards. These developments have not happened in isolation. This has been part of a long and sometimes emotionally draining struggle to restore democracy at CKLN 88.1 FM. 

I’ve been meeting with the Take Back Our Radio (TBOR) organizing committee in cafés in downtown Toronto weekly for over a year now. Dismissed volunteers and community supporters have been tirelessly picketing outside the Student Centre every Sunday since the lockout began last May. We have issued media releases and conducted interviews with community radio stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal, Kingston and elsewhere. Articles have now been published in campus, independent and mainstream media: the Ryerson Free Press, the Ryersonian, the Eyeopener, Xtra!, Eye Weekly, NOW Magazine, Exclaim!, Shameless Magazine, CP24, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Street News, Basics Community Newsletter, Toronto Social Justice Magazine, Mostly Water, Pitchfork Media, the Varsity and the Voice have all written about CKLN. 

We have spoken out about repression and censorship at CKLN at various public forums. Most recently, Hood 2 Hood organized a musical event dedicated to laid-off assistant news director Norman “Otis” Richmond. Norman has been a part of CKLN in one way or another for over two decades. He was let go in advance of February’s Afrikan Liberation Month, an event for which he has coordinated programming for many years. Last month, a motion was passed at the Ontario General Meeting of the Canadian Federation of Students in support of this grassroots organizing. 

TBOR has so far collected over 500 signatures petitioning law firm Iler and Campbell (who has many clients in the non-profit sector) to stop representing the current regime at CKLN. Additionally, former Anti-psychiatry radio host Don Weitz took CKLN to small claims court in February for wrongful dismissal. He has been awarded $100 to cover legal costs, but a settlement has yet to be reached, because those named in the statement of claim did not show up to the last court date. These events have forced Iler and Campbell to drop the illegitimate management and board of CKLN as clients. 

In the past, CKLN showed leadership by providing comprehensive, inclusive and cutting- edge programming and coverage of community actions and events. International Women’s Day (IWD) programming was an important highlight during the month of March, including the live-to-air broadcast of the IWD rally. Wimmin techs, programmers, hosts and volunteers at CKLN would volunteer their time and effort to infuse the airwaves with innovative and meaningful content for and by wimmin. 

Pride Day has also traditionally been a programming highlight at CKLN. However, the lack of special programming at CKLN from last year’s Pride proved that the current management in control of the station is not committed to its social justice mandate. When CKLN followed its social justice mandate, it produced high quality alternative coverage of events like IWD, Pride, Afrikan Liberation Month and Prisoner’s Justice Day.

Although the locked out wimmin programmers and techs of CKLN have been barred from the physical premises of the station, we continue to fight to reclaim our community radio space. On March 11, we will take the airwaves once again for a five-hour national broadcast. Marking IWD, the Take Back Our Radio organizing committee—including the hosts of CKLN’s only two feminist programs, Frequency Feminisms and Radio Cliteracy—will air programming that features voices otherwise silenced in the mainstream. It will also focus on community grassroots media across this country, its significance and its importance.

While recent developments at CKLN are heartening, we cannot assume that everything will work itself out and that all the hard work is over. The future of CKLN is now particularly precarious. The quality of programming at CKLN has deteriorated as a consequence of the volunteer lock-outs and lack of paid staff, while the annual fundraising drive (usually accounting for 40 per cent of the station’s operational finances) had abysmally low numbers. There are allegations of fraud and mismanagement of funds at the station. Finally, it remains unclear if CKLN will follow through with its lawsuit against the RSU and Ryerson at this point. 

The next Board of Directors at CKLN will have all these issues to contend with, on top of having to decide what to do with the 60-plus volunteers and staff who were driven out of the station. We cannot make the same mistake that many members made upon walking out of the special meeting last February. Members thought that by dropping their vote into a ballot box the problems at CKLN would immediately be fixed. 

As a former volunteer and student, I also wonder who will be allowed to participate in the upcoming membership meeting and therefore determine the direction the station will go from here. Will community members whose donations were refused or who did not want to donate to the current regime be allowed entrance? 

There are other unanswered questions as well. For instance, why have I heard that security forces will be called upon once again to survey this upcoming meeting? And finally, who will even want to run for a board position when the station is in such a mess? 

Carmelle Wolfson is a former Radio Cliteracy volunteer, a show that aired on CKLN every Sunday morning for a year before members were locked out of the station. She is also a Ryerson Journalism alumna. 

The IWD broadcast and community event will take place at the Imperial Pub on March 11 from 5pm to 10pm. Please join us in taking back our radio! The program will air on numerous community radio stations across the country

For more information, please visit www.takebackourradio.blogspot.com

Why Big Media is bad for journalism

By: Steve Anderson

Media giant Canwest reported a $33 million loss in the quarter ending November 30, 2008, and an overwhelming $3.7 billion debt. In the past 12 months, Canwest has also cut over 1,000 jobs and is scaling back local operations, and considering shutting down some stations entirely. Collectively Canwest, Torstar, Quebecor and CTVglobemedia have cut over 1,300 more jobs in the past three months, on top of deep cuts made last year. With ad revenues expected to slump further, there is no end in sight. The effects of these dramatic cuts in journalism will negatively affect public debate and discourse in Canada because, as former Toronto Star publisher John Honderich notes, “the quality of public debate, if not the very quality of life in any community, is a direct function of the quality of media that serve it.” 

Journalism’s diagnosis 

In his piece entitled “All the news that’s fit to fund,” John Honderich does a good job of explaining why journalism is important in a democratic society. Honderich also gives good ideas on how to revive journalism however; he fails to discuss why journalism is in its current state of crisis.

So what is the cause of the current state of journalism in Canada? In a statement made by Leonard Asper, Canada’s largest media baron, on the likely demolition of TV stations located in Montreal, Hamilton, Red Deer, British Columbia stations, Kelowna and Victoria, he declared “as they are currently configured, these stations are not core to our television operations going forward… we believe that our efforts are best focused on the areas of greatest return.” Asper poignantly reveals that news outlets, and the journalists that work for them, are increasingly treated as a part of a business rather than a unique social institution that is essential to a functioning democracy.

But Big Media executives try to claim journalism’s woes are caused by the slumping economy or the displacement of audiences to new online media. While these are factors, the primary cause is the highly concentrated media ownership in Canada combined with the deepening bottom-line mentality of Big Media corporations. Media ownership is more highly concentrated in Canada than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world. As of 2005, almost all private Canadian television stations are owned by national media conglomerates and, because of increasing cross-ownership, most of our newspapers are owned by the same corporations that own television and radio stations. Something to think about is how just hours before CTVglobemedia announced its intention to take over CHUM, they laid off 281 people and canceled news broadcasts across the country.

Big Media’s race to the bottom

In 2007, the Canadian Energy, Communications and Paperworkers (CEP) union published a study entitled Voices from the Newsroom in which they found that only 9.5 per cent of journalists indicated that they believe the corporate owners of their news outlet valued good journalism over profit. Unsurprisingly, 44 per cent of journalists reported a decreased desire to stay in journalism. The CEP report clearly illustrates the sentiment felt by many journalists: that the bottom line mentality of Big Media owners is having an increasingly negative impact on their ability to do their jobs. Allowing just a few companies to own most of our media means journalism is likely to be less grounded in local communities and thus less relevant to audiences. A newspaper is not likely to provide engaging journalism if it is geared towards efficiently delivering eyeballs to advertisers while investing the least amount of money possible in journalism. Combine this bottom-line mentality with an uncompetitive, concentrated traditional media market, along with the erosion of ad revenue, and you’ll find a race to the bottom for journalism in Canada. The news entity that can most effectively cut costs and exploit journalists wins!

Some might argue that even if a media outlet has a social or public service mandate, it still has to make money in order to produce journalism. Putting aside the assumption that media outlets need to be run as money making businesses, let’s debunk another myth about journalism: that it is unprofitable. In looking at the Canwest job losses, we place the blame squarely in corporate mismanagement. What is the debt from? Not unprofitable journalism, but rather acquisitions and mergers that were entirely unnecessary, and profoundly unpopular with the public.

Advertising 

Quebecor, one of the countries largest media conglomerates, recently locked out workers of its most profitable newspaper, the Journal de Montréal. The Journal’s union estimates Quebecor drew in $50 million in profits from the Journal de Montréal in 2008. We might ask why lock out workers in a profitable business? While Quebecor may be profitable, in Canada’s uncompetitive traditional media market, it can be MORE profitable if it breaks, or at least weakens worker compensation and benefits. When a media company is focused on achieving utmost profitability, it may be inclined to continually push for more and more output by fewer and fewer journalists, thereby creating a downward spiral for journalism. The problem with journalism in Canada isn’t so much the economic slow down or new media, these just exasperate a trend that was already underway. The real culprit is the propensity of Big Media to treat news operations as just another business.

Opportunity missed, experiments needed 

The CRTC had a good opportunity to decentralize and diversify Canadian media ownership in their 2007 Diversity of Voices hearing, but while they established important cross-ownership rules, they did so after allowing several mergers to go through. The new rules seemed carefully crafted to avoid any forced divestment of Canadian media companies. To make matters worse, the response to the current state of journalism, and the wider economic turmoil, seem to further deepen the trends that have helped produce the crisis in the first place. Besides recent (seemingly) successful efforts by big media to lobby the CRTC to soften it’s regulatory orientation, The Canadian Press agency is looking to move from an industry co-operative funded by its members, to a business aimed at turning a profit for its new investors; the exact opposite of what journalism in Canada needs right now.

Despite the layoffs, weak morale and Big Media debt, journalism in Canada is far from its grave. Now that we have properly diagnosed what has deflated journalism, we can come up with the anecdote; to develop and experiment with new forms and mechanisms of financing journalism. With the decline of big business financed journalism, this is the perfect time for us to re-imagine what journalism in the 21st century should look like.

In my next column, I will lay out various schemes for a rejuvenated 21st century public services journalism in Canada. There’s no shortage of experiments underway, and you may in fact be reading this column on one of those experiments right now.

Steve Anderson is the national coordinator for the Campaign for Democratic Media. He is a contributing author of Censored 2008 and Battleground: The Media and has written for The Tyee, Toronto Star, Epoch Times, Common Ground, Rabble.ca and Adbusters.

Media Links is a syndicated column supported by CommonGround, TheTyee, Rabble.ca, and VUE Weekly.

Obama-mania in Canada’s Capital

 

By: Alexandra Mandelis

“YES WE CAN!” read the poster on a telephone pole outside the House of Commons, freshly stapled there on the morning of February 18, 2009. In a parody of the “Do Not Litter” campaign, the poster showed a stick figure tossing a stylized blue Conservative Party “C” into a garbage can. 

I grinned and took a snapshot for my politically-minded friends in Toronto. For this activist who campaigned for women’s rights during the worst of the Bush and Harper years, visiting Ottawa during President Barack Obama’s first state visit felt like homecoming of sorts. 

An hour before Obama’s anticipated noontime arrival, the US Secret Service and the RCMP blocked off all routes to Parliament Hill. I was stopped at the corner of Rideau and Sussex Avenues, as were some protesters holding a banner that proclaimed “Harper Lies about Climate Change”. 

Frustrated by the closed streets, Ottawans and political pilgrims alike spilled into the surrounding streets and nearby Rideau Mall. At the barricades I met a University of Ottawa graduate student, Carmela, who had also hoped to catch a glimpse of President Obama. Together we listened to the helicopters chopping above, surveying the airspace while Obama’s motorcade brought him to Parliament for his scheduled meeting with Harper. Shortly after, the barricades were removed and people were permitted to walk and drive up to Parliament Hill. 

After warming up at a coffee shop, Carmela and I decided to wait at Parliament for Obama’s departure, thinking we’d get an even better view than we would have in the morning, had we been a part of his welcoming crew. Just as we had hoped, Carmela and I arrived in time to secure optimal viewing spots of the House of Commons’ bulletproof-glass covered door—second from the front of the barricades. 

From this vantage point, we could see other evidence that Harper and his buddies had done their best to roll out the red carpet for America’s new royalty: the Stars-and-Stripes flying on the Hill and snipers placed on the roof of the building. 

President Obama’s rumoured 3pm departure attracted a modest-sized crowd throughout the afternoon. Talking to others who were sporting Obama t-shirts, US flags and “Obama blue” clothing, I learned that people had come to Ottawa for all sorts of personal reasons. But the common thread that connected us all was “hope.” If change could happen in the US, it can happen in Canada too. 

As the clock on the House of Commons struck three, I turned around to see that the crowd had become larger. People were chanting “O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!” Cheeky requests from some diehard fans to “bring Obama out” did not hasten his exit from Parliament. But it did inspire one man to tease the crowd by waving and pretending to be Obama. By 3:45pm, it was clear that the visit was wrapping up as Obama’s motorcade began to assemble outside the Parliament Buildings. 

As a veteran of many rock concerts, I knew that as soon as Obama was seen (or thought to be seen) I would be jostled about and unable to see him, much less take photos. Unfortunately, this proved to be true. Although I am certain he would have loved to bask in the crowd’s adulation, Obama really had to go—his meeting with Harper had run over time and the Secret Service and RCMP were standing by for Obama’s escape. As the crowd dispersed, the presidential motorcade and circling helicopters disappeared as quickly as they had arrived that morning. 

Carmela and I decided to head to the nearby Parliament Pub for a toast to having witnessed history in the making. Some spectators said they had seen him wave his hand as he got into his car, but most (yours truly included) stated they were just “happy to be there” for the historic occasion. 

Many exchanged contact information, and between diehard followers, there were goodbyes punctuated with “see you at the next Obama day!” 

When that day will come, we can only guess!

Attention Feminists: A Call to Action

By: Alexandra Mandelis

I am a feminist. 

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Perhaps you’ve done some research on feminism or taken part in some feminist activism. Maybe you even went so far as to get a university degree in Women’s Studies. 

I did.

I graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Women’s Studies in 2008, and yet I do not have a working knowledge of feminist history. That is inexcusable. Communication and storytelling are essential to the development of any social movement, and the feminist one is no exception.

Feminists of my generation, this is a call to action.

We can no longer afford to sacrifice women’s solidarity to the silence brought about by the continued comparison of labels of oppression. Global political and social forces have conspired to strip away the rights our mothers and grandmothers fought so hard to win for us throughout the last 100 years.

We have all been celebrating the fact that Barack Obama is now the US President, the first Black man to win that office—and a self-proclaimed feminist.

His victory was dependent on women’s right to vote—a right denied to all American women regardless of race, age, class, immigration status or anything else until 1920, only 89 years ago.

In Canada, women won the right to vote two years earlier in 1918. But women were still not considered to be “persons” under the mandate of the British North America Act, a law that restricted their full participation in legal, political and social life in Canada.

I learned from my mother—and not from any classes—that October 18 is Person’s Day, the date in 1929 on which women finally won legal recognition as “persons”, following a ruling by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England.

Today Canadian and American women are not in imminent danger of losing the vote. However, we are in danger of losing the basic right to control our bodies. While I spent five years writing essays apologizing for being a white, privileged, straight woman in the ivory tower, the Bush administration was galvanizing an extravagant, organized, global war on women’s rights unlike any previously seen in history.

Shame on my generation!

We have political power like never before in human history, and yet we squander it to fight amongst ourselves. No one else wants to say it, so I will: We are missing the bigger picture. What good are small gains in our rights when the very basic ones teeter so close to the brink? How will you access that hard-won specialized program/service/right without the right to decide the basic course of your life?

In the last few years, we have seen renewed global interest in a number of noble causes: environmentalism, nuclear disarmament and democracy. Why not feminism, the movement that stands for the rights of half of the Earth’s population—the half with the special ability to create and nurture life? 

From this day forward, I will live my feminism.

I will be an ally.

I will name misogyny, violence against women and other crimes against my sisters when I see these things happen.

I will remain critically aware of, but not apologize for, my sexual orientation, skin colour, age, class and all of the other characteristics that make me unique.

After all, well-behaved women never make history.

I will not seek out what makes me different from my global sisters. Instead I will focus on what we share.

I am a feminist. Are you?

‘Would you like to have a taste today, sir?’ The joys of working a part-time job

By: Huda Assaqqaf

Have you ever worked a part-time customer service job to pay your cell phone bill? Most of us have, and we can work anything, even at minimum wage, to get that bi-weekly paycheque deposited into our bank account.

I am working such a job, where I have to convince people that the product I am sampling will be the best they will ever taste in their life, regardless of whether I have ever sampled the product myself, or I hate it so much I would never give it to my worst enemy.

In search of a temporary job after graduation, I came across a company called InStore Focus, a national product sampling company that has been around for about 50 years now. Here’s how my job works: on weekends, I receive product profiles and the grocery store location where I will be performing my demonstration. The demos are 12 to 14 hours long, and split over two days. 

I have had many products like SlimFit bars, Starbucks Coffee, Lindt chocolates, ice-cream, some luxurious high-class Italian cheese, and even jam and muffins. I really hated the Mott’s Clamato demo: after more than 14 hours, I only gave out 50 samples. The rest of the time I was counting the seconds on my watch.

I sometimes meet interesting shoppers: those who don’t want to try anything and give raised eye-brow looks, as well as those who stop, sample, praise and move on. Sometimes I get those who sample, go shop, come back, take more for their “other family members” and leave. I sometimes encounter those who are more curious about me than the product: they simply stop to chat, talking politics, weather, news and everything you can imagine. I often wish I could just disappear to stop hearing them.

The shoppers in the grocery store reflect the neighbourhood around it. At some Loblaw’s or Metro stores, I notice BMWs and Ferraris in the parking lot, and shoppers wearing suits and diamond earrings, filling up their carts with carefully selected products. In some not-so-rich areas, whole families come shopping and take whatever is on sale. With the cheapest products in their carts, they rarely buy my product—unless I have a coupon for it.

The principal goal of my job is to get the customers to put my product in their carts. I use the attributes of the product to market it. For example: “this ice-cream is fat-free” or “you add milk, shake and bake.” I love to see the reactions on people’s faces when they taste the products; sometimes I wish I had a camera to record it.

Sometimes when I’m bored and no one is trying my product, I literally chase down the customers, forcing them to try it: “Hello, madam. I’m sure your child will love this” or “this is so easy to make” or “would you like to have a taste and compare it to the brand you usually buy?” When the store’s employees see me doing this, they start laughing. But then they line up at my station to have a taste.

It can be an interesting job, but it all depends on the product and my mood, of course. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter—as long as it pays for my cell phone bill!

Memo to Minister Kenney: Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism

By: Judy Rebick and Alan Sears

As Israeli Apartheid Week gets underway, there is a major campaign currently underway to deny freedom of expression on campus to those in solidarity with Palestine on the basis of alleged anti-Semitism. 

The Equity Office at Carleton University banned the Israeli Apartheid Week poster and the Provost issued a statement that threatened students with expulsion. B’nai Brith took out newspaper ads calling on University Presidents to “prevent Israeli apartheid week” in order to “take a stand against anti-Semitism on campus”. This builds on a pattern established last year, when McMaster University banned the use of the term “Israeli apartheid” (eventually rescinding the ban) and the University of Toronto cancelled room bookings for a Palestine solidarity student conference. 

The argument that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic rests on the notion that Israel is singled out for undue criticism because it is a Jewish state. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney used this logic when he said recently: “We do see the growth of a new anti-Semitism predicated on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland.”

This statement is only legitimate if we completely ignore the situation of the Palestinians, the residents of the land Israel claimed as a “Jewish homeland”. The recent assault on Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, including at least 346 children, is just the latest in an ongoing saga of displacement, occupation and dehumanization dating back to 1948. 

Critics of Israel are not singling it out for undue criticism, but merely holding it to the same standards as all other nations in such areas as respect for human rights and international law. 

Defenders of Israeli policy routinely attempt to direct our attention to abuses happening in other places and insist that a hidden agenda must underlie any focus on Israeli brutality in this unjust world. This argument would lead to paralysis in human rights activism by claiming that one must address all cases at once, or only the “worst” cases. Should we have told Rosa Parks, who refused to go the back of a segregated bus in Alabama in 1955, to quit whining as conditions were even worse in South Africa, or colonized Kenya, or for that matter for Palestinians in refugee camps? 

The deployment of anti-Semitism as an accusation to silence criticism of Israel is also a serious setback in genuine struggles against anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. It is based on a claim that the State of Israel is the single outcome of the history of the Jewish people, the final end of generations of diasporic existence. It attempts to make the Zionist project of a Jewish nation the only legitimate project for all Jews. 

This nationalist project has largely marginalized Jewish universalism, which argued that the future of a minority, diasporic community depended on winning widespread freedoms that applied to all members of society. That meant that in Canada, for example, the Jewish population was historically very active in struggles for a wide range of social rights and against the idea of Canada as a Christian nation. 

The misuse of equity claims to silence Palestinian voices is a setback in the advancement of a human rights agenda. Further, it is a dangerous strategy that makes critics of the State of Israel into enemies of the Jewish people despite themselves. It even casts those of us who are Jewish allies of Palestinian rights as enemies in the battle against anti-Semitism. Further, it disarms us in the face of anti-Semitic incidents, weakening the credibility of organizations that have used the term too broadly and blurred the line between opposition to the State of Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice. 

Anti-Semitism has no place in the Palestine solidarity movement and as Jews in that movement we can attest to the fact that the leadership of the Palestinian rights movement and many Arab and Muslim communities are actively addressing anti-Semitism wherever it raises its ugly head. On the other hand, false claims of anti-Semitism from pro-Israeli groups undermines their cause and creates more polarization, fear and anger around these issues than there needs to be.

 Judy Rebick and Alan Sears are both university professors and Jews in solidarity with Palestine. The abovzzze article was originally posted online on rabble.ca: tinyurl.com/cfxmhw

Letter to the editor on our Palestine coverage

To the editor: 

Based on the unbalanced reporting on the Gaza conflict in your February 2009 issue, you should be ashamed to present yourselves as a legitimate media outlet. The issue was fiercely and completely one-sided on the topic of Gaza and the Mid-east conflict, a decidedly two-sided issue. 

There were multiple articles on the topic, all of which were strongly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. And as I’m sure you are well aware, interviewing a pro-Palestinian Jew is not getting the other side on the topic; it is simply strengthening the pro-Palestinian argument. 

In your extreme bias, you undermine the intelligence of your readers, denying them the right to assess more complete information and to come to their own conclusions. Instead, you choose for them. 

This is not journalism; this is propaganda. And you know it. 

Michelle Bitran 

Ryerson Free Press replies:

The Ryerson Free Press welcomes any feedback, including criticism and disagreements, about the content of our newspaper. However, we do not apologize for taking sides in debates, especially this one. As a leading independent student newspaper, we seek to amplify those perspectives that deserve a wider hearing but are often marginalized. 

The Palestinian perspective is one such case. In the broader media, the perspective of the state of Israel and its supporters dominates, creating a wholly uneven and lopsided debate. Worse, many media outlets that favour Israel’s perspective also claim to be objective, an attempt to hide their pro-Israel bias. By giving voice to those whose perspectives are rarely heard (including Palestinians and their Jewish allies), the Ryerson Free Press aims to restore some balance to a debate that needs more attention, not less. 

We believe that our job as responsible journalists includes challenging accepted norms and supporting dissident opinions. As university administrators move to repress debates about Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians on a growing number of campuses across Canada, it is even more urgent for the Ryerson Free Press to continue expanding the range of debate and discussion on this topic.

Ryerson Commerce Society supports tax increase, Athletics referendum anti-democratic

By: Nora Loreto News Editor

At the end of February, the Toronto Star reported that there is growing pressure from some administrators within Ontario’s post-secondary education system to increase tuition fees by as much as 25 per cent.

For Ontario students, 25 per cent of the current average cost of fees ($5,643) equals an additional $1,410.75 in fees. Should your math skills need some help, that would make the average cost of tuition fees a whopping $7,053.75. Of course, ancillary fees are not added in, so the total cost would be closer to $8,000 per year.

Tuition fees in Ontario have increased steadily over the past decade and-a-half. Average starting wages, however, have not. This leaves many students and their families caught in a cycle of student loans, credit cards and one, two or three part-time jobs.

Despite the threat of higher fees, Ryerson’s benevolent administration has allowed for two separate referenda to occur during March: one to increase fees for the Ryerson Commerce Society and one to increase Athletics fees.

Ryerson Commerce Society fee: a 200 per cent increase?

The Ryerson Commerce Society (RCS) is a club that exists to ignite the capitalist spirit within Ryerson’s business students.

In addition to representation by the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) and programme-specific clubs, business students are also represented by the RCS. And for an additional $40, which represents a 200 per cent increase in fees, they may soon be represented in even more ways than that. Part-time students are not eligible to vote in this referendum, despite the Board of Governors website incorrectly stating they were until a week before the vote.

Even with all this representation, the RCS has still had a rocky history.

It was only a few years ago that it stopped asking RSU for a loan between $20,000 and $40,000 every fall because of poor money management (an early form of the now ubiquitous “bailout” package). It still owes more than $2,000 to the RSU for frosh week material from 2006.

According to RCS, any new money collected from an increased fee will allow business students to hold more conferences, to support student groups and to generate more respect from Ryerson president Sheldon Levy and Dean of Business Ken Jones. The RCS argues that a fee increase will also increase the value of the Ryerson degree.

Wait, did the RCS just confuse value with cost? There are many things that have no value but high costs: a losing game of poker, for example.

Business students are being asked if they want to increase their fees to the RCS by 200 per cent. It seems that RCS is hoping that business students have not learned much about the value of the dollar. After all, a 200 per cent increase is not small change.

In a time of economic crisis, wouldn’t the RCS (at least by its own logic) help Canada’s economy more by allowing students to keep their money to spend more?

Decreasing students’ purchasing power is not the smartest decision a society of commerce could make. It’s basically a tax increase. Has the RCS been infiltrated by a bunch of tax-and-spend liberals? Worse, has it been taken over by communists?

We shall see. Students will vote on BlackBoard from March 3 to 5. 

Ryerson Athletics

Students are also being asked to pay more so that Sports and Recreation can build a new athletics facility. That vote will last from March 16-19, and will also be conducted on blackboard.

The last time Ryerson tried to slip through an athletic referendum was in 2004. The administration was widely criticized for using financial resources to sway votes, obscuring the facts and keeping the vote quiet so that few students would vote. In the end, students rejected the $61 fee increase.

This time, it seems the administration is doing the same thing. Ryerson’s homepage makes no mention of the impending referendum. Neither does Blackboard. Sports and Recreation’s website lists an aptly-titled help page: “Get the FAQs.” Too bad for us: we’re actually looking for answers, not more questions. The website makes no mention of who is eligible to vote (part-time, full-time, CE?), or how much the increase will be.

This information is only available here, buried deep inside the Board of Governors website: http://tinyurl.com/c6a6ez.

The proposed fee increase is $126. It will be pro-rated for part-time students.

Even more troubling, the vote is misleading and undemocratic. Democracy is the principle that people have a right to vote on an issue that is directly related to them. The referendum on athletics fees is a vote that will be made by students today for a fee to be collected by students once the building is built. According to the referendum declaration, this will be no earlier than 2012.

The year 2012 is a generation away for undergraduate students. In 2012-13, first-year students will have graduated and kids currently in grade 11 will be in their third year. It is absurd to allow for a vote that will adversely affect students that are not even at Ryerson yet. It is contrary to democratic principles. The administration is using tactics that should be condemned.

Here’s an idea: build the facility and hold the referendum in 2012. The outcome is the same.

Imagine if the Continuing Education Students’ Association of Ryerson put forward a referendum for students to double its fee, but in five years. Students would be outraged and the administration wouldn’t stand for it.

A referendum to increase athletic fees is completely unfair for students. No one who signed up to go to Ryerson agreed in their forms to have their administration play students off of each other.

Whether or not you use the RAC makes no difference. President Levy should be on his hands and knees to the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities begging for more money to operate the university, not sitting back and watching varsity athletes hiss at students who do not support paying more for athletics. This approach represents yet more downloading of university costs onto students’ shoulders. 

What’s the common denominator here? Online voting.  

Rather than holding a fair vote where poll stations are set up and voting areas are monitored to ensure that students are not coerced into voting a certain way, both votes will happen online—with all the problems that entails.

In Ryerson’s recent past, there have been numerous allegations of cheating through online voting. With every computer a de facto ballot box, anyone can shove a laptop into someone’s face and instruct them on how to vote.

Last year, there were a number of allegations that some students who won Senate elections did so by cheating. This year, cheating was recognized as a widespread problem. Sadly, the solution was to run all the winners through a “democracy lecture” rather than disqualifying anyone.

With online voting slated for these two referenda, don’t be surprised if you have a laptop shoved in your face and are told how to vote. Should this happen to you, politely decline and vote in the comfort and privacy of your own home.

Could Ryerson’s administration be ignoring the problems that online voting have caused in the past to push forward their own political agenda? Why couldn’t they just hire students to staff poll stations like during a real referendum? Maybe it’s because the combination of a low-profile vote and a core of active students who are zealously in favour of these fee increases means both votes have a better chance of passing. If both succeed, Levy’s honour will indeed have been bought by RCS, and a new building will be built for Ryerson’s athletes.

CFS launches task force to combat systemic campus racism

By: Rebecca Granovsky-Larson Editor in Chief

In the wake of a rash of troubling racially-motivated hate incidents at Ontario schools over the past several years, the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario has launched a Task Force on Campus Racism.

“These incidents are not isolated, but are part of a broader systemic problem,” explained CFS Ontario National Executive Representative Hildah Otieno at a press conference on February 18.

“Students realize if the issue is not addressed it could really divide our campuses, which is why students are taking a lead role on this.”

The campaign will follow a similar structure to the 2007 Task Force on the Needs of Muslim Students which sought to address the structural ways students were excluded from participation and flagged incidents of racism.

Task Force members will visit schools across the provinces to hear the challenges and successes of racialized students, staff and faculty, culminating in a report and campaign to be launched this fall.

Terry Downey, Executive Vice-President of the Ontario Federation of Labour and Task Force member recalled experiencing racism as Black woman when going to Dalhousie University. 

“Every day racism still exists, no matter how subtle it is we need to weed it out and show it for what it is - to show that actions that may not be intentional and may not be perceived as operating in a racist way, but people must know how it is perceived and expressed and hurts individuals.”

One subtle incident of racism Downey recounted was how a Muslim student was berated when her long skirts stuck in an elevator, noting that she doubts a non-Muslim student would have received such a reprimand. 

“You are paying to go to school and have a right to be treated with dignity and respect.”

She also cites more overt recent manifestations of racism, such as ongoing reports of racial profiling by Black Student Association members and recent bigoted vandalism and graffiti at various Toronto area universities.

Khaled Mouammar, National President of the Canadian Arab Federation said that despite being a rich country, Canada has failed to adequately fund post-secondary institutions, which is having a disproportionately negative impact on minority groups’ free speech rights on campus.

To fill funding shortfalls he said universities are increasingly turning to private donors who pressure administrations to curtail faculty and student’s rights to political dissent.

He noted recent incidents at York, Concordia and Carlton where students had problems in renting rooms, experienced repeated events cancellations, were denied the right to protest and had their funding slashed.

Mouammar attributes this to “calls by donors that muzzle freedom of speech to not receive funding. There are serious moves to constrain what was happening on campuses.”

This past month, university administrators rejected the call of former judge Paul Staniszewski to limit the scholarships he funds from being given to Muslim students. He established scholarships at York and the University of Windsor. Krisna Saravanamuttu, vice-president of equity of the York Federation of Students, and a member of the Task Force told the Toronto Star that he was appalled at Staniszewski’s comments.

The CFS filed a police report a week after the Task Force launch when they received a letter containing a racially motivated death threat against panel member Otieno.

“Receiving a hateful letter wishing death upon me and members of my community was a very upsetting experience,” said Otieno in a press release dated March 5. “There is no way that threats and insults are going to intimidate students out of confronting racism. We won’t back down.”

The cross-province hearings will conclude at the end of April, when the statements will be compiled and formulated into a report which will be launched in fall of 2009. For more details visit noracism.ca

Radical profs refuse to give out marks

By: Joe Howell CUP Ontario Bureau Chief and Amanda-Marie Quntino Ryerson Free Press Culture Editor

“I don’t grade. I don’t give any requirements, including attendance, in my course,” says York University professor David Noble. “The reason is simple: all my students are adults.”

He has just begun a joint lecture with fellow unorthodox professor Denis Rancourt, who has been suspended from the University of Ottawa and barred from the campus after a number of disputes with the administration about his teaching methods, and it is already clear that the reason is a good deal more complex than that.

“Grades create an environment of terror, fear, [and] intimidation, and therefore subvert the possibility of education,” continues Noble. He thinks other professors participate in the system so they can shift their anxiety about public speaking onto their students.

The social sciences professor believes that the pressure of having student performance judged makes real education “impossible,” because the desire to learn must come from within.

“No one can teach anyone else. That’s a myth. It’s a scam. It’s a con. People can only teach themselves,” said Noble. But “these institutions are not about education,” he explains. “That’s just branding. . . .They’re about the reproduction of subordination.”

The statements are polemic, but the two educators are no strangers to controversy.

The lecture is titled “Critical Pedagogy: Activism Inside the Classroom,” and that’s putting it lightly.

Noble once sued York University for $10 million, alleging that it was part of an effort to “publicly destroy [his] reputation” for criticizing Israel. He won $2,500 for having his right of academic freedom breached.

Rancourt, a self-described anarchist, has previously had his Ottawa Cinema Politica film group banned from U of O facilities, and once tried to create a class with the course code “SCI1984.”

He was recently charged with trespassing for entering the campus.

They were both at the University of Toronto as part of the Students’ Union’s Xpression Against Oppression Week during the last week of January, where they presented marking as one more tool of subjugation.

“Grades foster the presumption of inequality. We’re not equal – some get As and some get Cs,” said Noble.

“I start with the presumption of equality: We’re all of equal intelligence. Some of us excel at some things, others excel at others.”

York made Noble’s class a pass/fail to get him off the ‘radar’ he said.

Rancourt spoke next, explaining at length his battle with the administration. After the dean rejected his bid for a similar pass/fail structure, Rancourt gave everyone in his fourth-year class an A-plus.

“And this is a real problem,” he said.

Now the administration is claiming that these marks were given “arbitrarily.”

“They’re calling it a form of academic fraud,” said Rancourt.

He argued the reasons he was given for being disciplined are specious, and that there are many other factors at play. One of them is that he’s a “pain in the butt.” Rancourt runs uofowatch.blogspot.com where he “reports all the malfeasance and corruption” he can find.

Rancourt also thinks the U of O faculty is unnerved by his campaign against marking students.

“They don’t want to be unmasked. They don’t want it to become obvious that professors use grades to hide their incompetence,” he claimed.

He cites opposition from other U of O professors to his unconventional teaching style as part of his proof.

“A third of the Faculty of Science has written a joint letter to my dean asking that I be disciplined. They couldn’t explain why – ‘He’s just wrong! You have to do something about this guy.’”

And so they have. A dean of U of O has recommended to the board of governors that they dismiss Rancourt, but a resolution is still pending.

When contacted by the Ryerson Free Press, officials at the university refused to comment further on the grounds for the dismissal recommendation.

If he is indeed let go, Rancourt won’t regret it. He said that he recognized the risks before undertaking his struggle, and said to himself: “They’ll fire you . . . but it’ll be worth it. I will be alive; I won’t be subservient anymore. I’ll be doing what I think I need to do.”

Noble and Rancourt may seem radical, but they are not alone when it comes to their opinion regarding marks being oppressive.

Alan Sears, a sociology professor at Ryerson, who is sympathetic with his fellow professors, admits to finding himself teaching in a situation not of his choosing with its own structures and requirements, so he grades — but not because he agrees with the system, because his job description requires it of him.

“I think marking is the enemy of learning,” said Sears.

“It makes learning the means to an end with the mark being the end rather than the learning. It is about teaching people to submit to authority, not about helping them learn. In a popular education context (activism, politics, unions, etc.) I have taught without grading, and it is way better.”

He currently uses marks to grade his students partly because it is a condition of his employment and partly because everyone, including students, expects it.

Sears believes this norm can be modified, citing a situation in the 1960s when hundreds of free universities and alternative centres of learning thrived, and the power of the professor and the bureaucracy was challenged in the classroom. 

“The only way this will change at the university level is if students mobilize and demand a meaningful education,” said Sears.

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