Ntuple Indemnity

That’s right – the Students’ Union campaign season is well under way. Tuesday night’s Lister Hall election forum was a run-of-the-mill warm-up session, the highlight being Duncan Taylor’s solution to parking lot expansion (“a big laser”). Local uber-hack and reader of this weblog S. Murray “Steve” Smith has more extensive coverage of the forum in the first of his series of Candidate Report Cards, as well as reviews of the campaign literature going around.

Best Poster goes to incumbent Board of Governors Representative Roman Kotovych. Can you dig it?

I will likely post my final endorsements as soon as I am firmly decided on all races. That may not be the case until the Myer Horowitz forum on Monday.

Today’s issue of The Gateway was one of the best in recent memory, for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is a front-page article about the UADS heading to Singapore for Worlds over the Christmas break. For those of you who don’t already know, I am one of the six judges along for the ride. Also check out the accompanying photograph, in which Sharon displays one of the cuter expressions in her extensive library of subtextually evil glares.

David Berry scores the Opinion Article of the Week by very accurately dissecting the appeal of Students’ Union political advocacy as lying in empty stomachs rather than actual support for a given cause. Any article with a reference to “SU President Mat Brechtel, or VP (External) Chris Samuel, or, God forbid, Business councilor Steve Smith” is automatically a riot. Granted, Berry makes some errors, such as congratulating Mike Hudema’s success with media awareness when the former SU President is about as guilty of misinterpreting student support as one can get, and mistakenly tying the Speak Out! lectures to Executive initiatives, but he’ll receive his comeuppance in a future Letters to the Editor.

Speaking of which, Letters – consistently my favourite section, and one that only appears in the print edition – featured two significant entries today. The first was from Raymond Biesinger, last year’s Managing Editor, on a matter of factual accuracy regarding Canadian troops in Iraq. “Note,” he writes, “that if two jeeps were to fill the proverbial ‘left, right, and centre,’ they’d be one jeep shorthanded.” The second letter of note was a piece from Chris Jones clarifying a frequent item of student ignorance and misconception, that of the relationship between university funds and the construction of brand spanking new Engineering buildings.

Student journalism rules.

It’s about time, but I finally made my second appearance of the year in the University of Alberta paper, The Gateway. The piece concerns separation of powers and how its foundational principles would be beneficial to mankind – that is, on the surface. Beneath the surface, the piece is actually about, well, absolutely nothing.

There actually is one significant difference between the piece that was run and the original draft I sent in. It lies in the passage that reads, “Let us bypass the obvious political examples of iron-fisted dictatorial menaces holding power more concentrated than alcohol in a high-school student.” The boldface indicates the euphemism that they wisely substituted for “Lister resident”. There has been quite a feud going on for awhile now between angry Lister Hall residents and The Gateway, mostly concerning the latter’s alleged dissemination of a negative stereotype that the University’s most populous student residence is a breeding pit of drunken debauchery. The veracity of this claim is heavily disputed on both sides.

I confess, I was rather looking forward to the hate mail – but the edit was probably for the best. In a sense, it should demonstrate that no, the paper does not have some kind of angry unilateral vendetta against students in residence.

Or to quote Duncan: “Anyone see the article in today’s gateway? I tore it from a friend’s hand and stomped on it…. I was then told that it wasn’t actually about seperation of powers. I appologised.”

Happy Halloween, folks. By the way, M.Bison is the best costume ever.

It’s funny how much happens when you don’t update a weblog for three weeks.

Last Tuesday, I actually had someone come up to me – in person – and ask me to update this page. Apparently he seriously needed something better to do on his downtime, given that expounding on the various benefits of separating executive and legislative powers on the SU Webboard is no longer a dependable source of diversion. Yes, that’s right – Separation of Powers was defeated at the 7 October meeting. Since then, the big battle has been around the issue of the multi-year tuition proposal that Dr. Carl Amrhein, Provost and VP Academic, presented that very night. (See the minutes on Page 4 of the 21 October Agenda.) The big ruckus is over whether or not – and if so, under what conditions – SU President Mat Brechtel should negotiate with the administration for an agreement on tuition increases and a united front in lobbying the provincial government for more funding.

The 21 October meeting led to a lengthy discussion of this issue that extended all the way to 11pm before postponement and adjournment. Thus, there is an extra meeting tomorrow night to evaluate this very issue.

Currently, the prevailing analysis is that the terms offered by the University are clearly unacceptable and do little aside from silencing the SU’s annual tuition campaign once every two years. While it is true that the current terms are unequivocally lopsided and make a superficial connection to the “united front” idea, Council is also demonstrating an irrational unwillingness to differentiate the multi-year concept from the current offer. As a matter of principle, a coordinated multi-year strategy could deliver some serious goods – but it needs significant ironing first.

It’s much more substantially debated on the Webboard, here and here.

Believe it or not, Council dung-flinging wasn’t the only thing that happened in October. I had the opportunity to see two very notable releases in cinemas, Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Mystic River. Both of them are highly recommended viewing. Unfortunately, a deluge of midterms still prevents me from having the time to get back to my old hobby of comprehensively analysing every film I see; tack these to the waiting list.

The Tory-Alliance merger brouhaha: what hasn’t been said? Well, for starters, everything. The Mackay-Harper agreement on the establishment of the Conservative Party of Canada – good name, by the way, and I still associate Conservative with the word “Tory” due to my British imperial roots – has a section on founding principles that says, for lack of a better descriptor, dick-all. I missed their on-campus merger forum last week on account of debate practice, so there are some blanks to fill in, but I remain a sceptic.

The debate practice was in preparation for the 2003 Hart House Invitational at the University of Toronto, which was the classiest tournament I have ever attended. I will shower it with praise in another post. I will not shower my actual performance at this event with any praise at all.

Why?

To offer more vocal opposition against junk motions like the Political Policy that the Students’ Union opposes the proposed tobacco ban, so we don’t end up with meetings like tonight’s Council where such a policy actually passes. Read it in the Late Additions package and tell me how people could possibly think this is a good idea, given that the reasons provided are for the most part simply uninformed, or included for the sake of padding out the appearance of a rationale behind the document.

Not only is the issue of second-hand smoke completely left by the wayside, never mind that it’s a focal point of any talk of a smoking prohibition; but arguments such as the one concerning students in residence are completely misrepresenting the issue. If anything, the fact that smoking is already prohibited in residence – generally regarded as a good thing by the residents themselves – sets a precedent for the direction that the rest of campus should follow. That this is going to lead to people going off campus and disturbing the neighbours is a flimsy straw man; Lister residents already go off campus for their frequent excursions of drunken debauchery at places like Duke’s Donair. Considering that the City of Edmonton will have phased out smoking in public a year before this SU Political Policy even expires, this is clearly an ill-founded act of ignorance defying the growing belief in our society that smoking is no longer socially acceptable.

Fortunately, the campus-wide smoking ban itself will most likely pass at the Board of Governors. However, regardless of one’s stance on the issue of the prohibition, the Students’ Union has no business indulging itself in a statement of beliefs that is not just opposed, but clearly detrimental to a good segment the students it represents. Apparently, Council still has no concept of just how dangerous it is to assume universal stances on controversial issues. If anything, the undercurrent of the student body viewing the SU as not being representative of their views is more justified than ever before.

There are some good Gateway reads on either side of the campus smoking ban issue: Kristine Owram defends the notion of choice, Mark Barker reminds us that smoking is on its way out, and Chris Boutet calls the proposed ban unenforceable.

On the other hand, the Separation of Powers case advocated by Councilor Smith looked particularly strong tonight when it was introduced after the 9pm roll call, after which Councilors had fulfilled their attendance requirement. The segregation of the judiciary branch from Council’s duties was well-received and passed unanimously, though it was separated from the rest of the motion regarding the separation of executive and legislative functions. That in itself was unsurprising, as the need for that was very clearly demonstrated by a half-hour in camera bylaw interpretation debate incited by Paul Reikie’s appeal to be reinstated to Council, which meant that the Agenda was not even approved until an hour and forty-five minutes into the meeting.

The issue of executive and legislative separation saw some opening fireworks from both sides as it ran the Second Reading gauntlet, but was tabled to the next meeting. Naturally, this means more fun and games on the Webboard.