CFS ALERT - Trying to defend what is already outdated

On Sunday March 27th 2010, CBC's The National filed this report regarding the Canadian Federation of Students.

Shortly after, I stumbled upon this interesting report, authored by Titus Gregory, entitled "Solidarity for Their Own Good: Self-Determination and the Canadian Federation of Students". This is definitely a must read! It reveils many things that I personnally already knew but I'm sure it will get some awkward reactions from the "radical lefties" on campus.

THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID IT!

By the way, when does Katherine Giroux-Bougard (pictured above) finish her term. Whenever it is, I'm sure whoever has been chosen to replace her will have already been studying their outdated talking points and know them by heart.

UPDATE: A must read from a University of Victoria student regarding many disputes within the CFS, between the national body and its provincial counterparts:
http://eyeontheuvss.blogspot.com/2010/03/twilight-of-cfs.html

La Fédération Canadienne des étudiantes et des étudiants-Ontario (FCÉÉ-O) publie un nouveau rapport

Le lundi 22 mars, la Fédération canadienne des étudiantes et des étudiants — Ontario (FCÉÉ-O) a publié un rapport s'intitulant « The Final Report of the Task Force on Campus Racism ». Je n'ai pas encore eu la chance de le lire, mais je vais prendre le temps, dans les jours à venir, car c'est un sujet de débat intéressant.
Par contre, lorsque j'ai tenté d'ouvrir ce même rapport en français, il n'y en a pas un. Le rapport le plus récent du site français s'intitule « Rapport final du Groupe d'étude sur les besoins des étudiantes et des étudiants musulmans » qui fut publié le mercredi 21 mars 2007.

Est-ce que ce rapport est censé être la version française du nouveau rapport publié en anglais cette semaine? Sinon, est-ce la FCÉÉ a l'intention de publier la version française de ce nouveau rapport?

Will you "Vote Fail"?

My fellow blogger, Ken Joly, has began an interesting campaign via Facebook called "Votez Fail /Vote Fail". This campaign is directly geared towards Social Science students who will be asked, for a second time, to vote for who will represent them on the SFUO Board of Administration (BOA) during the 2010-2011 academic year. According to Joly, this campaign was spearheaded because of "the gross inconsistencies in the management of recent SFUO Elections and the seemingly autocratic and unprofessional behaviour of current-SFUO President Seamus Wolfe..."

He goes on to encourage all Social Science students who "are not happy with the way “democracy” exists at the SFUO..." to place a "Vote Fail" sticker on their ballot instead of spoiling it. I have thought this whole process over for a couple days now and am left with a few questions which I will put forward in this blog posting:

1. If students in fact place a "Vote Fail" sticker on their ballots, thus demonstrating their disapproval of the SFUO's failed "democratic" process, how will the student body then find out how many of the "spoiled" ballots actually contained one of these stickers?

2. As of March 16th at 8:20 pm, this Facebook group has 195 members; Assuming it continues to grow at the same pace until voting days, will this campaign gain enough steam to force realistic changes in the way the SFUO manages its elections?

I also feel the need to condemn the disqualification of three Social Sciences' candidates who ran in the original elections (Amanda Iarusso, Amanda Marochko and Matika Lauzon) due to the fact that they had "invalid" signatures (meaning one or more students having signed their nomination forms were not recognized as being apart of the Faculty of Social Sciences). I personally think that it's ridiculous that they weren't given an extra 24 hours to get the required number of valid signatures. Who could possibly argue against that? When you're trying to encourage a diversity of students to participate in student politics (more specifically the "Amandas" being women and Matika being a francophone), I think it's quite counter-productive to take such drastic measures as to disqualify these individuals. Let me be clear though in saying that regardless of the categories that these specific individuals fall under, ANY candidate being disqualified on such a pitiful technicality is frankly preposterous.

(Not a very) Bottled Water Free Day at the University of Ottawa

I'll personally start by saying that I stopped drinking bottled water awhile back after having read many different sources stating that the composition of the plastic, in the long-term, is harmful to your health (but what isn't these day, right?). I am also personally in favour of the winding down of bottled water as a commercialized product.

What I'd be curious to know is who exactly paid for the posters that are plastered everywhere on campus. I wouldn't be too impressed if I were to find out that the SFUO spent (our money) on useless posters that promotes the day. Whoevers money was spent, it didn't seem to have much of an impact because I can tell you that it certainly didn't stop people from being spotted all over the U of O campus drinking water from those clear plastic bottles that were supposed to be boycotted for the day. It'd be interesting to see how much money was spent on promoting today's symbolic boycott.

I visisted the Canadian Federation of Student's (CFS) website to see what efforts were put into promoting Bottled Water Free Day. Possibly some information, some suggestions on encouraging students to participate, etc. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any such information on the website (other than 2 press releases).

This is an interesting campaign... but the publicity shouldn't be funded (if it in fact is) with student's money!

Board of Administration of the SFUO - Sunday February 28th 2010

Note: I appologize about the audio at certain points in the video; my thumb was covering the microphone.