Dudley George did not have to die
Dear Editors,
I have asked the question of some newspapers and will ask it again in case anyone has an answer: why was it seen that Dudley George had to die?
Why was Dudley George not given even the consideration that an animal out of control in an urban setting would be given? Why are First Nations peoples seen as less than animals? A deer or bear in a city would be brought down with a tranquillizer dart or a net or whatever. Why was Dudley seen as more disposable than a wild animal? Who made that decision? Don’t these decisions reflect racism and white supremacy attitudes?
Wouldn’t the scenario have played differently if the group occupying the park were white and had blue eyes to look into? They were seen to be less important as the boat people were less important as they floated for weeks on the ocean without being rescued as they escaped death. First Nations peoples were seen to be less important as Amherst thought up his “poison blankets” scheme of germ warfare against them in Canada. They were seen to be less as Cecil Rhodes in South Africa mowed Aboriginal people down—with the new machine guns—also weapons testing going on—3,000 of them when he wanted land with gold and diamonds.
In Ipperwash, newer and longer night sticks were experimented with as a man called “Slippery” was beaten mercilessly for being in his family’s cemetery. Mike Harris needs to realize that in management you can delegate tasks, but you cannot delegate responsibility and ability—those areas will remain his to his dying day and, understandably, will haunt him if he is a human being with any sensibilities at all.
How would Harris feel if he were shot at in his family’s cemetery? Wouldn’t his arms and home be emptier without one of his children?
Mona Smith
Kingston Resident
MCRC fails to serve students
Dear Editors,
Queen’s most ineffective student council has done it again. Infighting and petty squabbling have led the MCRC [to] completely lose focus of what their purpose is: serve students in residence, particularly the 92 per cent who are first years.
When I arrived at Queen’s, I was really looking forward to living in res. The freedom, the friends, the mini-fridge—what was there not to love? I knew that part of coming to this school was giving back what you were given, so I ed the MCRC as a member of the Peer Judicial Board (PJB), a body that deals with non-academic discipline in residence. I hoped to meet some interesting people who wanted to ensure that the right things were punished, and stupid adolescent acts (many of which I’ve done) were not taken too seriously.
What I couldn’t believe when I actually sat on a board was the lack of touch the board had with the general residence community. To begin with, the odds are greatly stacked against anyone appearing before the PJB. Ian Keuhl’s claim that “the checks and balances” are “all on one side” reflect some truth. The difference is that students, regardless of their innocence, rarely win. The word of a facilitator will always stand up against the word of a student. The worst part is that in a majority of cases, the facilitator was not present at the time of the violation.
Dons and facilitators seem to be out to punish students by looking for any circumstantial evidence. I know of many cases where students have not broken the rules, and even taken don-offered advice to respect others in the community. But weak evidence that was documented goes punished with hefty repercussions.
The most frequent example is marijuana use, whereby a don cannot identify if a student was using within the building or outside its premises. For the most part, I know students go outside to smoke up, and still come in smelling of the drug. Inexperienced dons and facilitators do not know what smells they are identifying and immediately jump to conclusions to punish students unfairly. Evidence such as length of time to open a door, asking who it is at the door, dirty clothes stacked near the door, and students facing an opposite direction can all be used to convict a student of drug use. It is ridiculous.
The board also lacks in many areas of procedural fairness that go against the Canadian legal system. If a student is present in a room at the time of an infraction, they are considered guilty. If a student’s roommate is drinking underage, that student can be (and often is) charged with the same offence. Facilitators serve as investigators and as jurors.
The PJB over-dramatizes every offence and thinks that its punishments serve as rehabilitation tools. All it does, in reality, is turn students against the MCRC.
of the board have little life experience in dealing with these prevalent realities. Underage drinking and marijuana use are stigmatized despite being frequent activities for a majority of students.
Every time I leave a PJB hearing, I am extremely frustrated and raged about the discipline system in residence. Punishment is placed before a fair trial. When I approached several officials about why so many students are wrongfully convicted, they couldn’t offer me an answer. The MCRC was obviously too busy placing forth “non-serious” impeachment motions to care about the true state of the students they are “governing.”
This was the year of over-crowding, for which I was initially a victim of temporary residence. The MCRC’s inaction on this issue, and on not facing the realities of discipline being far too harsh and punitive in residence has caused frustration for many students, including myself. It never ceases to amaze me that, with six common rooms for 29 floors in Vic Hall, and overcrowding in most other residences, the MCRC can waste time on these types of motions that have nothing to do with student life.
My message is this: students in residence are supposed to be enjoying the best years of their lives. The MCRC has failed to foster an environment where this can be maximized. Team KHL has an uphill battle to restore MCRC faith after so much scandal.
Tyler Barrack
Comm ’09
An open letter to ‘Professor X’
Dear Editors,
RE: “With e-mail, professors are always on call” (National Post, Feb. 25, 2006).
I must start by apologizing for having a public confrontation with you [“Professor X”], as this discussion should really be taking place one-on-one during one of your scheduled office hours. But since you chose to remain anonymous in the National Post article in which you were quoted, you leave me no option but to take out my beef with your comments publicly in the hopes that you will read this newspaper.
For of the unassuming Queen’s community who may be wondering why I am writing to “Professor X” in this newspaper, here is a short summary. On Feb. 25, the front page of the National Post featured an article titled “With e-mail, professors are always on call.” The article featured quotes from a couple of Queen’s professors as well as one professor from York University, all of whom were expressing their frustrations with having to answer seemingly endless student e-mails over Reading Week.
Professor X, of Queen’s University, expressed disgust with “a number of ‘incredibly rude e-mails’ that he responds to against his better judgment.” Professor X continued to say “‘I will always respond like the student wasn’t rude, which is dumb because all it does is encourage them … Whereas what I’d really like to say is ‘You little s—, bugger off.’”
Professor X: Upon receiving “incredibly rude” e-mails from students, perhaps the nature of your responses should not go against your better judgment. Expressing your disappointment specifically to the offending student in a personal e-mail signed with your real name seems like the appropriate and professional thing to do. Personally responding to offending students as if they are not rude, only to anonymously lash out at Queen’s students in general in a national newspaper is perhaps not the healthiest way to deal with your feelings about specific students’ e-mailing tendencies.
As you explained in the article, you chose not to reveal your true identity: “for fear of receiving more e-mails.” I can understand your concern, but I cannot respect your cowardice. Professor X, I sincerely doubt whether you would have felt so brave to make these comments without hiding behind [anonymity]. Your choice to remain anonymous means that those of us who have read the article can assume that these comments may have been made by any one of our professors. We can now sit in class and wonder which one of our friendly lecturers would sincerely like some of us “little s—”s to “bugger off.”
It is unfortunate that this article’s appearance in a national newspaper coincides with the Ontario University undergraduate application period. Your Trunchbull-esque attitude towards students certainly does not reflect the welcoming atmosphere one sees on Queen’s brochures. Professor X, I invite you to please respond to this letter by e-mailing me personally at [email protected]. I can assure that neither my timetable nor my inbox are too full to accommodate any questions or comments that you may have.
Talia Schlanger
ArtSci ’08
Students involved in Aberdeen should be ejected from Queen’s
Dear Editors,
Queen’s istration wants to classify all alumni in the same group when discussing the “unlawful street party on Aberdeen last Sept. 24.” This is unfair to the larger group of alumni who were not in attendance at the party.
However, I doubt if those in attendance at the Aberdeen party are even of the alumni, but rather students who hope to graduate with a Queen’s degree.
It is up to Queen’s istration to determine who are the students, and implement policies and procedures to deal with students by ejection from the University. We do not need to defend their boorish behaviour because there is no excuse for it.
Queen’s must develop policies and procedures to deal with the students and coddling them with “safe” and “happy time” programs are what we develop for nursery school children. We expect more from our college applicants, so perhaps you begin with the acceptance process. This is an embarrassment to Queen’s alumni and should not be tolerated by us.
Rosemarie B. Barker
RNC, BSN, MPA ’91
Property standards should be higher
Dear Editors,
RE: “Cockroach award ‘one-sided diatribe’” (Journal, March 3, 2006).
As a tenant of one of Phil Lam’s properties, I can confirm that he’s exactly what’s locally termed as a “slum lord.” I applaud the AMS’s stance against Mr. Lam’s poor maintenance standards and renting out lucrative properties to students, and his ill-conceived “why stay in the property if it is so bad” mentality that inevitably plagues some of the Ghetto landlords.
Inarguably, this does not mean his violations of tenant rights is permissible, nor should it be the allowed reasoning behind his decision to threaten “readily successful” legal actions for receiving a bad landlord award.
Examples such as this should motivate the city of Kingston to impose higher property standards, if not to improve the poor reputation of the Ghetto slums that stains any of the town’s appeal.
Char Yun
ArtSci ’08
Lam should take legal action against AMS
Dear Editors,
RE: “Cockroach award ‘one-sided diatribe’” (Journal, March 3, 2006).
Being a three-time lessee of Phil Lam properties, I was surprised by the announcement of him winning the AMS Golden Cockroach Award. Firstly, the apartment I rented from him was a decent student house and at no time did I feel that it did not meet minimum building code standards. Secondly, if there was a problem (i.e. loose bathroom tiles, broken fridge) Phil was only too happy to repair it, in some cases only hours after informing him of the problem. In fact, because of his diligence as a landlord and the respect he gave me as a tenant, I signed a lease last week to live at another one of his rentals.
Nevertheless, as I have never been to/rented his 288 Earl St. rental, I cannot testify to its condition or the treatment of its tenants by Phil, but I will stand up for a person I know to be a respectable individual. Basing an “award” such as this one on one property and its one-time tenants is unjust. The AMS knew that publicly ridiculing a landlord for property standards would result in some students boycotting or failing to sign leases with the award winner (if the AMS executive did not foresee this, I would seriously question their ability to lead a successful student government).
I understand that the award was to force landlords to adhere to minimum building standards and to provide students with nice homes, but the approach the AMS took by naming a landlord publicly as the worst landlord is slander. As such, I think that Phil Lam should take legal action against this injustice to him. And as for Mr. Rabidoux’s quote, “I encourage him to focus his energy on actually fixing up the houses rather than getting in a huff,” being a landlord is Phil’s job—if he did not get into a huff about being blacklisted as the worst landlord and the possibility of losing income, I would be concerned.
Caleb Hasler
ArtSci ’05, MSc ’07
City of Kingston should be Golden Cockroach winner
Dear Editors,
If you are looking for the real Golden Cockroach award recipient, look no further than the city of Kingston itself. It has jeopardized the safety of students and other Kingston residence for nearly three months. Last November the city of Kingston undertook a construction project along Johnson Street and down Albert Street. The sidewalks were ripped up in order to place a new pipeline below the surface. Interestingly enough, one section of sidewalk, which lies on the north side of Johnson Street between Nelson and Albert streets, was never replaced. Where vehicles fly by at anywhere between 50 to 70 km per hour, it has been an extremely uncomfortable feeling getting home, especially at night due to the lack of a clear divider between pedestrian and vehicle paths. Now as spring approaches, a new hurdle has appeared—giant puddles.
Last fall Kingston undertook a project to clean up the Ghetto by outlawing signs on houses. In addition, property standard inspectors would walk all Ghetto streets ensuring garbage was put away and grounds were kept clean. What happened to the inspectors? I think the city deserves a notice too. The city of Kingston should stop the double-standard and clean up its own act.
Karlis Vasarais
Comm ’06
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