Category: Campus

There are times when the exercise of authority becomes excessive, terrifying, and incomprehensible. I have come face to face with this authority. I have been charged $13.50 for a computer returned an hour and thirty minutes past due. There is, of course, nothing wrong with library fines. In a school with our scope, it is difficult to expect every item could be returned promptly without a disincentive against delays. In the absence of a disincentive, there is the frustration of constant scarcity, of empty shelves. However, having justified a fine,…

Trouble in Paradise, and an old Commie Gag Workers used to say in communist Russia, “they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work!” It is said by some that we share these illusions of productivity with the Russian peasantry. The upcoming VCSA elections are small-scale and increase the discouraging feeling of voting’s bourgeois absurdity. Acts as simple as casting a vote, can feel like complicity in a show of make-believe: You believe in the power of the vote and in its significance; executive members believe in their importance. However,…

There will be a vigil held in the carrefour area, during the UB of April 3rd. This ceremony will honour the fifty-one dead and the fifty injured at New Zealand’s Christchurch mosque. Vanier’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) has taken the time to organize the event. Hifza Randhawa, the MSA’s vice-president, is dismayed by the media’s response to the attack. There is a gaping disparity, she remarks, between the coverage of violence perpetrated by Muslims and similar acts executed by the radical right. “[F]alse notions concerning Islam and Muslims” have been…

Professor Ara K. had come into the newsroom to pitch his story. I put on my thinking cap and adjusted my collar. It was a classic forum, 8 students, 3 teachers, given the chance to play a part in a parliamentary simulation. “Political activity in the belly of our educational system,” I thought. “This should be good.” I took the case and K. left. The next time I saw Ara K. he had brought company. Sitting across from me was Melissa Paradis, a political scientist just like K., humble, thoughtful….

Raise your hand if you’ve felt personally victimized by the Vanier College registration hotline. At least, that’s how I certainly felt. Registration is probably the most stressful time leading up to the semester. There’s that dread with starting over again after having been away for so long. The stress in hoping you get the class with the teacher who has a 4.8 rating or from wanting to be in a class with your best friend. The fact that you might have to deal with an intense course load doesn’t help…