Hip-hop homecoming for Canadian jazz trio

charlatan
the
Vol 42•Issue 2 • June 28 - July 25, 2012
carleton’s independent weekly - since 1945
Hip-hop homecoming
for Canadian jazz trio
p.10
cover by
Fraser Tripp
INSIDE: Protestor holds red square tattoo-a-thon p. 4 • ONLINE: Concordia creates Jun Lin fund and award see charlatan.ca
News
2
June 28 - July 25, 2012
News Editors: Adella Khan and Holly Stanczak • news@charlatan.ca
CU forced to explain $15M donation
by Avery Zingel
Carleton is being criticized after giving
the Canadian Press a redacted version of its
$15-million donor agreement with Calgary
multi-billionaire Clayton Riddell for a political science graduate program backed by
Reform Party leader Preston Manning.
The donation is the largest program gift
in Carleton’s history, helping establish a
school that existed only as an idea for years,
according to a document created by the administration.
The graduate program will “improve the
quality and effectiveness of democratic governance in Canada,” the document said.
The university initially refused to provide the Canadian Press with the donor
agreement until it was ordered by the information commissioner’s office to do so.
They issued a redacted agreement with
blacked out sections including “naming considerations” and “administration” which
involve securing government approvals,
and funding commitments.
The sections were blacked out to protect
Riddell’s privacy and confidential information, said Beth Gorham, Carleton’s manager
of public affairs.
“If we decided to go ahead and disclose
confidential and personal information, I
don’t think the donor would be very happy,”
Gorham said.
ON THE WEB
Khomeini conference
causes controversy
Carleton administration has come under fire after issuing a redacted version of its $15-million donor
agreement to the Canadian Press. || photo illustration by Pedro Vasconcellos
The information may become available
at some point if the privacy commission decides the administration must release more
information, but it is “routine” for administration to protect the private and confidential
information of donors, Gorham said.
The graduate program in political management is the first of its kind in Canada and
is expected to provide the groundwork for
young adults to enter politics, according to
Gorham.
The program took its first students in
September 2011 and these students are now
doing 10 weeks of wide ranging internship
placements — from the Prime Minister’s Office and Democracy Watch to polling firms
and working with New Democratic Party
MPs, Gorham said.
The administration released a document
outlining the intentions of the program, and
addressed public concerns about political
spin in program curriculum.
A committee report delivered in 2009
cited in the document said, “The proposed
program had to be avowedly trans-partisan,” and that the objective of the Clayton
Riddell graduate program is to “prepare its
graduates for productive employment in
leadership, management, and administrative support positions with elected officials,
political parties and NGOs.”
The degree proposes methods for young
people to have “a rigorous professional formation so that they will be sought after by
different political parties and organizations,
and go on to leadership and senior roles in
the various corridors of political contest in
Canada.”
Carleton administration said it has studied the ethical implications and provisioned
committees and reviews to ensure course material will be presented without partisanship.
“Under no circumstances will we build a
program that takes on any specific political
colouration,” the administration’s document
said.
The three adjunct professors who will
teach the program have yet to be chosen, according to the document.
q
CUSA rejects CFS campaign
Carleton hosted “The Contemporary Awakening and Imam Khomeini’s
Thoughts,” hosted by the Cultural Centre of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the
Iranian Cultural Association of Carleton
University June 2, according to Carleton’s website.
“The conference was about Imam
Khomeini, several dimensions of his
thoughts and his legacy, Islamic Awakening as well as Islamic Governance,”
said the president of the Iranian Culture
Association of Carleton University, Ehsan Mohammadi.
Khomeini was the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 and acted as the
Supreme Leader of the country, according to Mohammadi.
— Miriam Katawazi
CU becomes hub for
immigration research
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has signed an agreement with
Carleton to establish a new independent
home for a research network that deals
with migration, diaspora, and refugee
studies.
Howard Duncan, the executive head
of the research network Metropolis Secretariat, said the project began in 1996 and
was intended to be an experimental and
temporary project.
— Dessy Sukendar
For the full stories, visit
charlatan.ca
CUSA voted against supporting the CFS anti-homophobia and transphobia campaign at a CUSA council meeting June 18. || photo by Pedro Vasconcellos
by Adella Khan
Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) voted against supporting the
Canadian Federation of Students (CFS)
campaign to challenge homophobia and
transphobia on June 18.
The motion, presented by Sarah McCue
of Carleton’s GLBTQ Centre for Sexual and
Gender Diversity, was met with no discussion and failed with 11 votes for and 13 votes
against. Carleton student Arun Smith motivated the motion and said that although he
wasn’t surprised by the result, he was disappointed with CUSA’s response.
“How 13 Councillors and Executives can
reject a campaign built for and by students
. . . providing a toolkit for customization to
suit particular campus environments, that is
supported by the GSA, the Administration,
and members of the GLBTQ+ community,
without even looking at the material objectively, baffles me entirely,” Smith said via
email.
Michael De Luca, CUSA vice-president
(finance), who voted against supporting the
CFS-run campaign said that CUSA already
strives to ensure campus is a safe place with
policies against discrimination like the promotion of “homo/bi/transphobia.”
“I do not believe in supporting a campaign run by an organization (the CFS)
whose primary goal, as a corporate entity,
is to generate a revenue from Carleton students,” De Luca said via email.
“The CUSA Executive cares and is pas-
sionate about the issue that has arisen on our
campus and we have been responsive to it
by initiating a CUSA-run campaign that will
debut this fall.”
Smith said that CUSA is adopting a
“father-knows-best” attitude to combatting
homophobia and transphobia that is not
working for students.
“It is this sort of over-politicization that is
undermining the ability of students to participate in and to trust their student union,”
Smith said.
“This says very clearly that queer and
trans student issues are not a priority for this
Executive and their allied councillors.”
Despite lacking CUSA support, Smith
said the campaign will continue to work
with other organizations on campus. q
June 28 - July 25, 2012
charlatan.ca/news
Frosh Week gets Folked up
Great Big Sea will be one of the bands playing at Ottawa Folk Festival on Sept. 8 when students gain entrance through Orientation Week. || provided
by Nikki Gladstone
Students starting their first year at Carleton this fall may feel a little more inclined to
purchase an orientation week package when
they discover Carleton has teamed up with
Ottawa Folk Festival.
On Sept. 8, incoming Carleton firstyears will gain entry to the festival, which
includes over 20 performances with bands
like Yukon Blonde and Great Big Sea, said
a fall orientation coordinator with the
Student Experience Office (SEO), Grace
Valentine.
The decision to work with Ottawa Folk
Festival as a part of Fall Orientation Week
was made by the SEO in conjunction with
the Carleton University Students’ Asso-
ciation (CUSA) vice-president (student life)
Tomisin Olawale said via email.
Adding the additional concerts will help
“open [students] eyes to some of the things
Carleton and CUSA can do for them, and
also what the city has to offer,” Olawale said.
Valentine echoed these sentiments.
“[The] orientation program seeks to
benefit the incoming students and create the
best first year experience possible, and by
collaborating with the Ottawa Folk Festival
we are able to add value to our Fall Orientation programming,” Valentine said.
Even with the new collaboration, Valentine assured students that traditional aspects
of Carleton orientation week, such as the
yearly outdoor concert, will remain.
“We are not changing the programming,
[just] simply adding to [it],” she said.
In addition to attracting a larger group
of students to register for orientation week,
Valentine thinks the collaboration will
encourage greater student involvement
overall.
“This allows the students to better foster relationships with each other through
additional activities and programming,”
she said.
According to the Ottawa Folk Festival
website, the festival was first established to
showcase Canada’s folk traditions through
music, dance, storytelling and crafts, was
first introduced in 1994. The festival is a
not-for-profit, volunteer organization that
plays host to some of the world’s best folk
artists. q
3
New program to focus on
global and local health issues
Carleton will launch a unique interdisciplinary graduate health care
program this fall that will seek solutions
to health concerns on a local and global
scale, according to program director Susan Aitken.
Housed in Carleton’s new Institute of
Health: Science, Technology and Policy,
the Masters of Science degree in Health:
Science, Technology, and Policy (HSTP)
will draw from different faculties, including business, arts and social sciences,
public affairs, engineering and design,
and science.
“When we consulted with employers and asked what’s missing, they said
there are scientists, researchers and
people making policy, but they can’t
communicate [with each other],” Aitken
said.
Replacing a historical model with a
program that bridges multiple disciplines
will allow Carleton to “fulfill a mission
in the marketplace and address big questions,” she said.
Group-based research and hands-on
learning will be used to tackle issues as
diverse as vaccinations for infections like
H1N1, to the engineering of wheelchairs
and its effect on the lives of Canadians living with disabilities, Aitken said.
The program includes two graduate
diplomas aimed at both existing Carleton students and professionals working
in the field.
According to Aitken, the Institute of
Health: Science, Technology and Policy
has attracted learning and networking
opportunities with external organizations like Health Canada, The Ottawa
Hospital, and the Public Health Agency
of Canada.
The new program will be launched in
the fall alongside the new PhD of Social
Work and PhD in Applied Linguistics and
Discourse Studies.
— Haley Ritchie
Kielbergers receive honorary degrees
by Cassie Aylward
Carleton’s senate awarded honorary
doctorate degrees to several notable Canadians in June, including the youngest
recipients ever, Craig and Marc Kielberger,
according to university media representative Chris Cline.
Craig, 29, founded the international development charity Free The Children when
he was 12 years-old. Kielberger was inspired
to start the organization after reading a story
in the Toronto Star about a murdered 12 yearold who had been a child labourer since he
was four, according to Free The Children’s
website.
His brother Marc, 36, was also involved
in the founding and continuation of the organization.
Craig said receiving an honorary degree
is an “extraordinary honour.”
“Education is really the cornerstone of
our international development model,” he
said. “Education is something that’s so important to the work we do, and something
that we so greatly honour and treasure.”
Craig also holds a Peace and Conflict
Studies degree from the University of To-
Marc and Craig Kielberger were the youngest-ever recipients of honorary degrees at Carleton. || provided
ronto, and executive masters of business
administration from York University’s
Schulich School of Business.
Craig said he hopes being the youngest recipient of the honorary degree sends
a message to the class of 2012. “I hope it
underscores that we’re never too young to
make our impact in the world,“ he said.
He said Free The Children has worked
with several Carleton students, particularly
with international service trips.
Craig also praised Carleton’s international business program, whose first round of
graduates are receiving diplomas this year.
He said the program is helpful for those
wanting to do work similar international
development work.
“It’s not just the question of having the
intention to do good, but also the skills,
and the training to ensure that intention is
grounded in effective action and effective
leadership,” he said. “I’m really an admirer
of the leadership that’s emerging from [the
program]. It’s unprecedented in Canada.”
Cline said in an email that the university
was “honoured” to present the Kielbergers
with Doctors of Laws.
“Craig and Marc Kielberger have shown
exemplary leadership in the promotion of
rights of the child, ethical living and social
responsibility,” he said.
Honorary degrees were also awarded
to politician and Aboriginal activist Elijah Harper, engineer and astronaut Julie
Payette, and fiction writer Elizabeth Hay,
among others.
Kielberger said he hopes after receiving
the award, himself and Free The Children
will strengthen their involvement with
Carleton.
“We hope to spend more time at Carleton,
and we hope to get more students involved
as volunteers,” Craig said. “We certainly
won’t be strangers to the university.”
q
National
4
June 28 - July 25, 2012
National Editor: Marina von Stackelberg • national@charlatan.ca
CFS: Lib tuition grant falls short
by Emma Paling
The Liberal 30 per cent Ontario
Tuition grant has only been given
out to one third of undergraduate students, despite having been
touted to benefit five out of six
post-secondary students, according to the Canadian Federation of
Students (CFS) and Teresa Armstrong, New Democratic Party
(NDP) critic for Training, Colleges,
and Universities.
The 200,000 students who have
received the grant represent 60 per
cent of eligible students, according
to Gyula Kovacs, senior media relations co-ordinator of the Ontario
Ministry of Training, Colleges, and
Universities.
This would mean that only a little over half of all 600,000 Ontario
undergraduates are even eligible
for the grant.
Once the program is fully
fleshed out, 300,000 students are
expected to receive the grant, Kovacs said via email.
A list of exclusions, including being out of high school for
more than four years, studying
part-time, or taking a professional
The Education of Charlie
Banks
For
more coverage . . .
Drinks and sexual
orientation
Nine scholarships and grants, including the Queen Elizabeth 11 Aiming for the Top scholarship, have been cut in order to pay
for the new 30 per cent grant, according to the Canadian Federation of Students. || photo illustration by Pedro Vasconcellos
program like law disqualifies nearly half of all undergrads.
The Liberals aim to “support
all middle-class Ontario families”
with an “across-the-board” tuition
grant, she said.
During last year’s provincial
election, the Liberals ran on a platform of reducing tuition by 30 per
cent, but not giving out a grant to
select students, said CFS-Ontario
chairperson Sarah King.
Nine other scholarships and
grants, including the Queen
Elizabeth II Aiming for the Top
scholarship and another for
students living in low-income
housing, were cancelled in order
to fund this program, King said.
Simply lowering tuition across
the board would have saved
money on the administrative costs
related to sorting through grant
applications, King added.
Kovacs did not specifically say
how much money was allocated
for this grant, or what will be done
with the leftover funds since the
grant has only been given out to
200,000 students.
Quebec protestors put red square in ink
A new study says students
who don’t identify as straight
or gay are more likely
to abuse alcohol, Nikki
Gladstone reports.
Concordia University
creates Jun Lin fund
Melissa Novacaska writes
about a new fund and award
created in memory of Jun Lin.
York defrauded
$1.2 million
Melissa Novacaska reports on
two former York U employees
who allegedly charged the
school for goods and services
it never received.
BFA reinstated
As Melissa Novacaska
reports, Queen’s has brought
back its fine arts program.
Roy organized the tattoo-a-thon to show the movement’s permanency. || Provided
Guaranteed grad
by Juanita Bawagan
Tatiana von Recklinghausen
describes a new initiative
that will pay extra tuition if
students are unsuccesful.
Education in Canada
needs improvment
Melissa Novacaska details
how Canada’s post-secondary
education needs improvement
according to an OECD report.
charlatan.ca
She said $1.1 billion has been
given out in student grants, including the Ontario Tuition grant,
in the 2011-2012 year.
“The number of students that
have got it when we implemented
this within two months, quite
frankly, of getting elected, was
extraordinary,” said Glen Murray,
Ontario minister for Training, Colleges, and Universities in question
period at Queen’s Park on June 4.
Kovacs said five-sixths of students who are within four years of
graduating high school should be
eligible for the grant.
However this condition disqualifies the most students,
including all mature students,
automatically leaving out about
two-thirds of college students,
King said.
Carleton student Megan Tessier
didn’t qualify for the grant because
she took a year off between high
school and university to earn
money.
Tessier said she’s frustrated
because her need for the grant is
essentially why she wasn’t eligible.
“I worked about 60 hours a
week for a year to save up enough
money to go [to university],” said
Tessier.
“Even though I paid just as
much in the last four years as
everyone else, I somehow didn’t
warrant the extra financial help.”
Tessier said the grant would
have been very helpful to pay off
her student debt of approximately
$50,000.
q
Cassie Hendry explains the
cutting of the Queen Elizabeth II
Aiming for the Top scholarship at
charlatan.ca
Behind every tattoo is a story.
This holds true for the 107
people who had Quebec’s infamous red square permanently inked
on their bodies during a tattoo-athon in Parc Émilie-Gamelin in
Montreal June 19.
For some it represented an
international journey, for others,
the plight of students but for
Montreal blogger and organizer
Gabriel Roy, it was more of a joke.
When politicians made statements that the Quebec protests
would disappear soon enough,
Roy said he organized this event
to show the permanence of the
movement.
“It was just a big ‘fuck you’ [to
politicians],” he laughed.
The tattoo-a-thon is the most
recent one of Roy’s comical protests. He has also organized the
first nude protest and a flash mob
protest.
It’s not all jokes for Roy. As he
points to the red square tattooed
over his heart and explains his
sleeve (there’s a tattoo for each of
his daughters), he also points to
his rib cage.
He said this was where his ribs
were fractured after being beaten
by four police officers during a
peaceful protest.
Instead of responding with
violence, he said, he chose to produce a mocking online video.
“The best answer is often the
funniest,” he said.
The tattoo event’s Facebook
page is flooded with photos of
students sporting the red square
tattoo on their backs, their chests,
their legs and even their hips. Students from colleges in Montreal
and Quebec, according to their
Facebook accounts, leave comments of solidarity as their tattoos
heal.
The red square itself dates
back to 2004 student protests, according to the Collectif pour un
Québec sans pauvreté (Collective for a Poverty-Free Quebec). It
stems from the phrase “carrément
dans le rouge,” meaning students
were squarely in the red because
of the debt situation.
For some, the tattoo has nothing to do with students at all.
“I did the tattoo for a different
reason than all the demonstrators,”
said Chico Peres, the production
manager at CUTV, Concordia University’s campus and community
television network.
Peres received a grant from the
Portuguese government to work
at any network in the world and
said he chose CUTV. He started
working in July 2011 and the protests have been a defining part of
his work.
“I got [the tattoo] to mark the
moment we are in right now,” he
said in the CUTV newsroom.
He added that it’s symbolic of
all of his time at CUTV and his
journey to Canada.
“I’m here. I give my heart and
soul and I want to immortalize it.”
Peres’ tattoo on his wrist wasn’t
done properly and the resulting
scar will remain there forever. He
said he doesn’t mind so much as
it contributes to his changing definition of what the tattoo means
to him.
No matter what the story behind each person’s tattoo of the
red square is, they all seem to
be inspired by transforming moments with echoing impacts.
Roy didn’t even wear a red
square at first because it only
boosted the premier’s popularity
and the protests did a disservice
to the student movement, he said.
However, with the violent responses, the creation of Bill 78 and
the ongoing protests, he said it’s
too late to turn back.
Roy will be the first to admit
that not everyone who got the
tattoo thought a lot about it, he
said. Still, he said he hopes his tattoo
will serve as a reminder to him if
he ever stops believing in all that
the red square stands for: fighting
corruption in the government,
exposing police brutality and
pushing towards a better future
for his daughters.
“C’est pour qu’il n’oublie
jamais,” his daughter said, meaning, “It’s so he’ll never forget.”
q
June 28 - July 25, 2012
charlatan.ca/national
5
U of T to get full-time Muslim chaplaincy
by Sammy Hudes
Muslim students and alumni
at the University of Toronto have
established the first-ever program
to fund a full-time, paid Muslim
chaplain on a Canadian university
campus.
The Muslim Students Association (MSA) at U of T founded
the Muslim Chaplaincy Program
last year with the goal of raising
$70,000 by this September, in time
for the upcoming fall semester.
The project was born out of
the need for a long-term presence
on campus to serve and support
young Muslims with respect to
their educational, counseling and
faith-related needs, according to
Ruqayyah Ahdab, chair of the
board for the program.
In a recent promotional video,
Muslim students depict some of
the challenges they face, such as
being told by strangers to go back
to their country.
One of the students in the
video said she had to sit through
an entire lecture listening to her
professor explain to the class that
Islam degrades women.
Others explained they often
question their faith, or that there
is something about mosques that
make them uncomfortable.
“The situations that the students were going through and
who they were trying to turn to for
help [made us] notice there was a
void,” said Ahdab, who estimates
that there are 3,000 to 3,500 Muslim students at U of T.
“They would seek help or assistance from their community
leaders, imams or their parents, but
sometimes it didn’t feel like there
was a culturally relevant or agerelevant stance that these people
could put themselves in, to really
give advice that meant something
to these young Muslims.”
Until now, an imam has served
as a part-time, volunteer chaplain on campus but is nearing
retirement. Due to his many other
commitments, he was often unable to provide full services for
students in need of religious assistance, U of T MSA president Aisha
Raja said.
Hiring a full-time chaplain will
create a chaplaincy office, which
Raja said will be able to provide
“an inclusive space for Muslim
youth to address issues of identity, public education and special
needs, and to try to create a safe
community on campus where they
can go to on a regular basis to talk
about issues they’re having.”
Raja noted that the chaplain
won’t necessarily be an officially
recognized religious leader.
“It’s going to be a person who
has a religious background in education but also has a background in
counseling and therapy,” she said.
Much like the Christian and
Jewish communities, which each
U of T will be the first university in Canada to offer a full-time Muslim chaplaincy
program for its students. || photo illustration by Pedro Vasconcellos
fund their own respective chaplaincies at U of T, Raja says the
MSA is hoping that Toronto’s
Muslim community will help fund
their program.
Due to the university’s status
as a secular institution, it cannot
provide funding for the program.
Nevertheless, both Raja and Ahdab say that U of T administration
— through the university’s MultiFaith Centre and the Campus
Chaplains Association—have been
very supportive.
“There is just a sense that there
really was a need, both in terms
of providing spiritual religious
care but also community development,” said the Multi-Faith
Centre’s director, Richard Chambers, noting that U of T has 30
full-time and part-time chaplains
in total.
“The Muslim community,
which is much smaller than the
Christian community on campus, is
nevertheless very well-organized,
very visible and is a significant size
unto itself.”
Throughout the past year, the
MSA consulted with U of T administration and other chaplaincies on
campus and abroad in order to
develop the project. Among many
others, they turned to Omer Bajwa,
coordinator of Muslim life at Yale
University’s chaplaincy office.
After advising the MSA at U of
T on ways to structure their program, Bajwa said the project has
plenty of potential.
“It’s very exciting and promising if a university of that caliber
and that size whose students and
alumni can put together a project
like this. This can hopefully develop into a wonderful, thriving
position,” he said.
Ali Abu Alhawa, president of
Carleton’s MSA, said he would be
pleased to see the program make
its way over to Carleton as well.
“It would be easier for Muslim
students to encounter their problems or any questions that they
have, especially for Muslim students who come [from] abroad as
international students,” Abu Alhawa said.
“[When] they’re new to the
country and the city and they don’t
have any family or friends here,
they could come ask the chaplaincy on campus.”
q
U of A shooting raises questions
Marijuana seminar
over emergency notification system could come to Ottawa
by Peter Mazereeuw
The University of Alberta is
facing criticism for not using
their emergency notification
system (ENS) to notify staff and
students immediately following
fatal shootings on campus June
15.
Social media was abuzz with
complaints from students and
staff who felt the school should
have used the system.
“@UAlberta Surprised that as
#ualberta staff I did not receive
something through the emergency notification system…?”
@KristanMorin tweeted.
“@UAlberta if this doesn’t
constitute an emergency fit for a
notification, I don’t know what
does,” tweeted @fvaughanj (Fay
Vaughan-Johnston).
University of Alberta officials
did post regular updates on the
school website and Twitter, but
chose not to use the school’s
emergency notification system.
That decision was based on information from Edmonton police
that the shooter was no longer
on the campus and therefore did
not pose a threat to staff and students, according to a message by
U of A acting president Carl Amrhein on the school’s website.
The way the ENS system was
used in the shooting will be part
of an “incident debrief” by the
school, Amrhein wrote.
Some were upset that the
school chose to use Twitter instead of the ENS.
“@UAlberta how can you
tweet and not send out an emergency text ?! It’s finals & I was on
campus studying & I bet I’m not
the only one,” tweeted @jennnboo.
“#ualberta didn’t want to
alarm 50,000 students”, sorry
#ualberta, but social media gen
knows before you do. alerts
should be sooner. #yeg,” tweeted
@jole (Joel Adria).
In case of a crisis similar to
the one at U of A, Carleton’s department of safety would likely
activate its own ENS, said director of university safety Allan
Burns.
However, Burns pointed out
that the ENS’ purpose is to instruct people on things they have
to do in an emergency.
“It’s not a system we use to
inform people about what’s happening unless it directly involves
them. We would use the internal
Carleton communication system
to keep people updated in terms
of what’s happening,” Burns
said.
Only about 3,500 staff and
students have signed up for
Carleton’s ENS, Burns said.
There are nearly 27,000 full
and part-time students at Carleton, and roughly 2,600 staff,
according to the Carleton website, which means only one in
eight people would be warned
of a crisis on campus through the
EMS, something Burns identified
as a weakness.
“One of the problems is trying
to convince students to sign up
for it,” he said, pointing out that
the system is voluntary.
Carleton’s ENS includes a text
message component, Burns said,
as well as emails sent to anyone
with a Carleton account and a
“screen capture” pop-up on computers registered with the school.
Students can sign up for the
ENS through Carleton Central. q
For a timeline from
Peter Mazereeuw of how the
shooting unfolded, visit
charlatan.ca
by Peter Mazereeuw
A seminar on how to grow
medical marijuana may be coming to Ottawa this fall.
Greenline Academy is hoping
to hold a weekend seminar in
the capital on the ins and outs
of growing medical marijuana
legally, according to Greenline
founder Don Schultz.
Greenline Academy is a private company that has hosted
a number of similar seminars
across Canada in the past year.
A team of experts teach registrants about three aspects of
growing medical marijuana:
cultivation, medical benefits
and chemical composition, and
complying with Health Canada
regulations, Schultz said.
Greenline has opened online
registration for a seminar in Ottawa.
If 100 registrants and a venue
can be found, the seminar will
likely be held in late September,
Schultz said.
“My ideal student is a patient
that really needs the medicine,
who can grow it for themselves
or can get someone to grow it for
them,” he said, adding medical
professionals also attend many
of Greenline’s seminars.
“My main concern is about the
patients, and I try to stay away
from illegal growers,” he said.
Greenline’s seminars are open
to anyone willing to pay the $330
fee.
However some compassion
clubs question the lack of restriction on registrants.
Compassion clubs are organizations that sell marijuana to
patients in need of specialized
strains of the drug. They are
technically illegal operations, according to Health Canada.
“Unless they’re checking that
each person that goes in to take
the course are MMAR [medical
marijuana access regulations]
card holders, then there’s really no way of telling who is
taking those lessons,” said Issac Oommen, communications
co-ordinator for the British Columbia Compassion Club Society.
MMAR card holders are
people who have successfully
applied to Health Canada for access to medical marijuana.
For the rest of the story, visit
charlatan.ca
Features
7
June 28 - July 25, 2012
Features Editor: Oliver Sachgau• features@charlatan.ca
Get a Hobby: your ultimate summer guide
This month, the charlatan explores activities and passions to try this summer
The Reel Deal: making a movie
by Hilary Roberts
Do you want to be rich and
famous? Or do you have an idea
that you think people would love
to see? A filmmaker can do all that
when they make a movie.
Whether you’re the future Scorsese, Cronenberg, or Tarantino,
it’s time to make your Hollywood
dreams come true.
With HD video cameras tucked
inside iPhones and teenagers with
stars in their eyes hosting their
own YouTube channels, almost
anyone can create their own film.
Digital cameras, video editing
software like Final Cut Pro, and
video-sharing websites
such as YouTube and
Vimeo have
helped
filmmaking more
accessible,
said Pixie
Cram, the
workshop co-ordinator for Ottawa
film co-operative Saw Video.
“I’m of the mentality that it’s not
the tool, it’s how you use it,” Cram
said.
“People can do really beautiful
work with very basic video cameras. It’s got to do with how you
compose the shot, the lighting, but
also what you’re communicating.”
There’s no one set process used
to make a film, she said. One
filmmaker may start with a script,
while another may jump
right in without a script.
In general, however, Cram
said making a movie can be
divided into three stages: preproduction, production and
post-production.
If desired, the entire process
can be completed by the filmmaker alone.
Making the movie
The preparation period
before shooting the film is
called pre-production.
“[It’s] anything to do with scriptwriting or storyboarding. If you’re
doing a documentary, it’s making
a treatment, researching, identifying locations, or subjects if it’s
a non-fiction film. Writing grant
proposals, breaking down your
script into a shooting schedule,”
Cram said.
Depending on the type of film
and the size of production, an
indie filmmaker may also want to
use a writer, a storyboard artist,
a location scout to find the best
settings, a production manager
to take care of the logistics and
scheduling, and a production designer to make the film look good,
Cram said.
When it’s time to get the camera
rolling, the film is in its production stage.
At this stage, the
cast and
crew
film
the
movie,
Cram
film on a video-sharing website.
Cram said she recommends Vimeo
over YouTube. Posting videos to a
blog is another option, she said.The
filmmaker may also choose to enter a
festival. Many film festivals have student categories, and some will award
cash prizes, Cram said.
“The festivals are a really good stepping stone because, if you can get
into one, then [the film] gets seen by
a number of people,” she said.
But watch out for those charging
exorbitant entrance fees, Cram said.
Some festivals are “out to exploit,”
she said.
“Be careful about spending $100 on
an entry fee and having to buy an
airplane ticket and
go to Palm
said.
If working with a crew, Cram
said she would recommend having
a separate sound technician and
cinematographer to get the best
possible audio and video quality.
For those with a bit of money to
splurge, Cram said she also recommends spending a bit more money
on an external microphone.
Editing the raw footage into a
final film is called the post-production stage.
Separate audio and video editors
can be useful, Cram said, and
some student filmmakers may
have
a
composer
working on the
music and another
editor to insert titles.
Springs to attend the opening. It’s not necessarily
gonna be the thing that breaks you in
your career.”
Local film festivals are a great option because many are free to enter
or only charge a small fee, she said.
The Ottawa Animation Festival, for
instance, is free to enter, pays entrants a screening fee and has specific
prizes for students.
Cash prizes aren’t as common at
Canadian film festivals as they are
in the United States, Cram said, but
winning a prize is one way of recouping some of the costs involved
with making a film.
Films can be made on the cheap
with a consumer-grade digital camera, she said.
Using video editing software on
a personal computer can also keep
costs low.
Another option is to apply for grants
from film organizations, such as government bodies Telefilm Canada and
the National Film Board of Canada
(NFB).
But some of these grants come with
restrictions. The NFB offers cash and
technical services grants, but the
organization also retains some or all
of the copyright to the film.
Marketing
your movie
Once post-production is complete, the
filmmaker may want
an audience.
An obvious distribution option for students is to post the
The Canada Council for the Arts
offers grants for “emerging artists,”
but undergraduate students aren’t
eligible.
Some filmmakers have turned to the
Internet to ask for donations.
On a website called Kickstarter, aspiring creative types can ask donors
to help fund their artistic projects in
exchange for “rewards,” which the
website defines as “things like a copy
of what’s being made, a limited edition or a custom experience related
to the project.”
Doing it all on a budget
Unfortunately, most student films
are funded by the
filmmakers
themselves,
Cram said.
One way of keeping costs down is to
join an indie film co-operative, such as
Saw Video or the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of Ottawa.
Filmmakers can pay an annual fee
membership fee and rental fees to access professional filming and editing
equipment.
At Saw, anyone wishing to rent
equipment also has to take basic the
co-operative’s basic classes, Cram
said.
The cost of making a film will vary
widely, Cram said.
As a very general estimate, if
using volunteers and free local settings, a short film could be made in
about a week and cost about $500
using Saw’s filming and editing
equipment.
Cram said her best recommendation is to start out small by making a
short film.
“Don’t expect too much of yourself,” she said.
“It’s good to start with low expectations, that this is a learning experience to begin with. And [...] take
risks, too. Just do it.” S
­— graphics by Marcus Poon
­
Rolling In Style: cycling
by Aaron Nava
There are many different kinds of
cycling and just as many reasons why
people like it. However, if you’d like to
start cycling (or would like to cycle more
often), there are some important basics
to consider.
“We think that anyone can get on their
bike and ride,” said Peter Tregunno,
president of the Ottawa Bicycle Club.
“But there are a couple of tips and
tricks that you learn from these things,
these types of courses, or from people,
and you can get on, you can ride, and
you can survive.”
“The first thing I ask people is ‘what
do you want to get out of this?’ because there’s so many different facets to
cycling that there’s not an easy answer to
that question,” Tregunno said.
“How you get started depends on what
you want out of it.”
As such, novice cyclists should consider what kind of riding they want to do.
“Is it paths, or longer rides, or if it’s
road riding, or even a recreational short
ride?” said Stephane Bigras, who is the
manager of local sports store Fresh Air
Experience.
“We ask all these kinds of questions
when somebody comes in,
so we
narrow it down to a few
choices.”
Getting a bike that suits
the kind of ride you’re
going on (and fits you
properly) is useful, if
you don’t already have one.
However you ride,
though, it’s important to
have the right gear.
“You’re touching the
bike at three places: your
feet, your butt, and your
hands. And if you’re
uncomfortable in any of those
three, you’re going to give up and you’re
going to toss your bike into the canal,”
Tregunno said.
“Expect to spend some money, or
borrow some equipment, for a pair of
cycling shoes, a decent pair of cycling
shorts . . . A cycling jersey is [also] typically nice, or a breathable top, [and] a
helmet.”
If you plan to bike regularly, you’ll also
need some gear—and training—available to deal with a flat tire, which might
otherwise leave you stranded.
To fix one of those, you’ll need to carry
an extra inner tube, tire levers, and a
pump, according to Tregunno
“Go into any bike shop if it’s not a busy
time, and if you have a flat, watch as a
mechanic fixes it, and they’ll show you
the tricks to get it done. There are also a
number of good YouTube videos on what
the tricks are,” he said.
Ottawa has many bike paths available
for the discerning cyclist. Local cycling
stores carry maps of these paths, as does
the City of Ottawa.
Google Maps has also been updated
with the latest Ottawa bike routes.
Perhaps the best resource for cycling
information, though, is the Ottawa cycling community itself.
For one, all of the bicycle stores in the
city may be businesses first, but cycling
enthusiasts usually run them.
“If you’re buying a bike or buying an
accessory and you have a question,
they’ll usually know, and if they don’t
know, there’s someone in each one of
these shops, guaranteed, every day, who
does know,” Tregunno said.
The best way to find out more, according to Tregunno, is to go to the people
who cycle themselves.
“The best people to talk to are people
who are doing it,” he said.
r
Hell on Wheels:
roller derby
by Brianna Harris
There is something to be said for
being able to hit other people on fourwheeled roller skates, and then blaming it on your alter ego. In roller derby,
that is exactly what happens.
Roller derby has been emerging as a
more mainstream sport the past few
years.
Roller derby is a (traditionally) women-only contact
sport, said Melanie MacGuigan, the director of
administration at Ottawa
Roller Derby.
“I think the appeal
of roller derby is the
aggressive nature
that isn’t offered in
more traditional sports
for women,” MacGuigan said.
There are two
teams
composed of five
members on each. Of the five
team members, there are four
blockers and one jammer. The jammer is the person getting points for her
team by lapping the rink as often as
she can. She gets a point for every girl
on the opposite team she passes. This
is called a jam and lasts two minutes,
MacGuigan explained.
A match in roller derby is called a
bout, which can be anywhere from
two twenty-minute halves to two
thirty-minute halves, depending on the
league. The first half is broken down
into a series of jams.
There is also a lead jammer position,
which carries with it more strategy, she
said.
“One girl has to break through the
pack on the first time around. The first
time she breaks through the pack,
she doesn’t get any points, she’s just
establishing the lead jammer status.
That lead jammer can call off the jam
whenever she wants. It’s a strategy
position really. So you really want to
get that lead jam,” MacGuigan said.
One thing people don’t know about
roller derby is that it is a very intense
sport, according to MacGuigan.
“Everyone was first attracted to it for
its badass girl in fishnets and coolsounding tough name, but first of all
it’s a sport. We work out really hard.
We have to skate for a long time, we
have to skate and get hit by other girls
for a long time, so it’s a great cardio
sport that way,” she said.
In order to protect themselves, players wear knee pads, elbow pads, wrist
guards, a helmet and mouthguard.
Each player also gets to choose a
nickname to skate under. These “roller
derby names” help players build an
alter ego, which is especially important
for women who aren’t as enthused
about the aggressiveness of the sport,
MacGuigan said.
“By creating this alter ago for themselves, they can say ‘Well it’s not me
being aggressive, it’s my alter ego being aggressive’,” MacGuigan said.
She said that players are encouraged
to have fun with their names. “A lot of
names are nicknames that friends have
given them, and some come up with
something that’s incredibly creative.
Half of the fun is coming up with your
roller derby name,” she said. In her
case, she said she started with her first
name, Melanie.
“I was thinking Melrose, like Melrose
Place. I turned it into Hell, I thought
Hellrose sounded tougher than Melrose. I turned it into a double entendre,
a pretty flower from hell or the syntax
of hell rising up, hell rose,” MacGuigan
said.
For people who want to get into roller
derby, or for those who are just starting, the first thing MacGuigan said they
need to know is that everybody falls
while skating.
“One thing we always try to tell our
girls is don’t be afraid of falling. If you
fall, all we ask is you get back up,”
MacGuigan said.
“I had never been on wheels before
in my life the first time I went and the
next morning, I was so black and blue
and sore I could barely walk,” said Carleton student Paige Mueller, who has
been playing roller derby for two years.
“But I didn’t give up and now, I realize that sticking with it was very worth
it,” she said.
Everybody has a reason they like to
play. MacGuigan said she got started
with roller derby while looking for a
“different” sport to play, she said. She
was looking for a sport that had contact and wasn’t something everyone
else already did.
Mueller said that the best part of
the sport for her are her fellow derby
girls.
“A bunch of normal everyday women
transform into their badass alter-egos
a couple nights a week and get together to kick each others asses and
cheer each other on on the track.”
“It’s amazing the team work and
camaraderie that this sport fosters,”
Mueller said. f
8
charlatan.ca/oped
CUSA councillors far from “lazy”
I am disappointed with how the decision
to remove the summer committee meeting
requirement has been portrayed. It makes
councillors out to be “lazy” and “uncommitted,” which is far from the reality.
The requirement was removed such that
extremely busy councillors could live without the fear of being removed from their
duties for something as small as missing a
committee meeting.
The reality is that, in only a month, councillors and executives alike have almost
literally moved mountains in reforming this
organization.
We’re working harder than ever to reform CUSA and introduce new measures
to ensure accountability, transparency, and
real democracy.
All the initiatives you may have heard
about recently are the product of collaboration between our council and executive and
dedication by our distinguished student
leaders.
We’ve already announced “CUSA Live,”
a service to live stream everything to do with
CUSA and its council, increasing accountability and accessibility to unfathomable
levels relative to previous years.
The executive is in the process of reinventing the entire web presence of CUSA,
including its website, Facebook and Twitter
accounts, and other forms of electronic and
social media.
This is an unparalleled commitment in
pro-active disclosure, and communication
with the average student.
Even the electoral process has been reimagined. I have personally undertaken,
with a few of my colleagues and friends, the
burden of rewriting our antiquated, out-ofdate, and ineffective electoral code. Instead
of clinging to a process that doesn’t work for
anyone, we’ve put in an exorbitant amount
of time, energy, and effort to develop a selfsustaining and forward-thinking model for
our campaigning and polling moving forward.
In short, we’re doing things differently.
We’re actually working hard day and night,
weekday, evening, and weekend, to bring
CUSA into the 21st century.
Keeping with our new mantra of going
above and beyond, I will be not only tabling
the new electoral code to the Council, but I
will also be bringing the changes before the
Constitution and Policy committee meeting
within the next week.
This is an unheard of move at our university, and one that serves to better study and
better understand all every decision made
by Council.
Next time, before you judge a decision to
be “lazy” and to be made by “uncommitted”
councillors, check your facts and actually
talk to your student representatives. We’re
working harder than ever, and this minute
change simply ensures that we can continue
to do so without fear of excessive punishment.
RE: “Red square should go cross-country,” May 31-June 27, 2012
The scope of what has been unfolding
in Quebec recently is astonishing. Smoke
bombs are set off in the Metro. Students are
forced to leave classrooms while protesters storm their campuses and harass them.
All of this in protest to a $325 increase per
year, for five years, to the lowest tuition in
Canada. Astonishing.
Once these strikes are finished, Quebec students will still be paying one of the
lowest tuition rates in North America. As
an Ontario student, this fact alone makes
these strikes incredibly difficult to relate
to.
The most confusing part of this entire
spectacle is how in some circles, the red
square appears to be catching on across
the country.
Let’s keep it simple and look at Ontario.
A petition has recently surfaced with several Carleton University students’ names
on it. It is addressed to the Canadian Federation of Students (surprise!) and it calls
on them to bring a strike vote to Ontario
this fall.
Several things are wrong with this
picture. First of all, it assumes that the approach in Quebec has had success worthy
of cross-country application. This is simply
not true. All the Quebec protests have done
is irritate the general population trying to
go about their daily lives, physically and
—Justin Campbell,
CUSA representative
for computer science
Don’t knock “voluntourism”
We’re about midway through our summer holiday and many university students
are using the time to do X good deed in X
foreign country.
Fill in the blanks with your own Facebook
friends’ status updates and photo captions:
Here I am “painting a school in Ecuador,”
or “caring for orphaned elephants in Thailand,” or “delivering medical equipment to
hospitals in Ghana.”
The specifics don’t really matter and,
in my eyes, it’s simple math: whatever X
equals, it’s generally a positive.
But not everyone agrees.
My Facebook newsfeed, it seems, is
Windsor Star reporter Claire Brownell’s
worst nightmare. In an April Ottawa Citizen opinion piece she didn’t just advise
twentysomethings against going to Africa,
she advised against anything other than
“stay[ing] put and work[ing] on fixing problems at home.”
Hers isn’t the only argument I’ve heard
against “voluntourism,” trips that combine
travel with community service.
In fact, a feature in the October issue of the
Charlatan explored the topic with a largely
critical article titled, “Too Many Volunteer
Heroes?”
Umm . . . I’d expect this type of dissuasion from my bitter and jaded grandparents,
not my fresh-faced, ambitious peers. Isn’t it
up to us to prove we aren’t as apathetic and
self-serving as the cynics make us out to be?
Brownell herself looks like she’s in her late
20s or early 30s — not as out-of-touch with
Gen Y as one might assume.
It’s time for an attitude adjustment.
On a recent trip to Israel, I volunteered
at Save a Child’s Heart, which provides urgent life-saving cardiac surgery to infants
and children from under-privileged countries at no cost. My group and I played with
Beware the red square
children who were about to undergo, or had
already undergone, their heart surgeries.
We didn’t cure their illnesses or improve
the quality of health care in their countries,
but we gave what we could to an organization doing just that. Individuals’ minor roles
add up.
Would it be so terrible if “voluntouring”
increased someone’s sense of tolerance or
compassion? Doesn’t self-growth become
mass progress once more and more people
experience it?
Perhaps we could improve international
communication or break down the “us versus them” dichotomy.
It’s much more powerful to stare global
issues like poverty, injustice and disease
right in the face than it is to write a cheque.
This power can ignite a strong spark in
someone and take them beyond a summer
or semester long project. It can turn into a
lifelong mission, and a highly successful one
at that.
Of course, the system isn’t perfect, and not
all organizations are equal. It’s obvious that
prospective participants must thoroughly
research any charitable organization before
soliciting donations for it or traveling to the
third world with it.
As I write this, I’m at home, where Brownell prefers me. I’m unemployed due to the
crappy economy, just as she suspected.
Contrary to her suggestions, I don’t have
plans to “start a community garden,” “start
a business” or start Occupy 2.0. Maybe I
should, but I won’t, especially not before
school starts up again.
Frankly, I’d be of better use in Africa
bottle-feeding chimpanzees. At least I’d be
contributing something.
—Ilana Belfer,
fourth-year journalism
verbally attack fellow students, shut down
post-secondary education for the year, and
outright reject, on ideological grounds, any
of the honest concessions offered by the
Charest government.
So, why would the CFS play such an
active role in pushing these strikes beyond
Quebec?
It’s simple. If the strike moves beyond
Quebec, it presents a huge financial opportunity for the CFS to profit from student
associations across the country purchasing
materials, produced by the CFS, that are related to the strike. The CFS would then use
this money to pay off their staff members,
who have yet to produce any real results
for students and continue to put corporate
interests before student interests.
Lobbying and campaigns can be effective when done correctly and carried out by
competent people. The student “strikes” in
Quebec have only proven to be destructive
and sensationalist, while accomplishing
very little. It is clear that we need a unified
stance in Ontario.
If you want to graduate on time and
with as little debt as possible, then I urge
you: beware the CFS and beware the red
square.
For the rest of this letter, visit
charlatan.ca
—Sean White,
CUSA public affairs councillor
Overheard at Carleton
(At the bookstore)
Girl 1: I want this paperweight!
Girl 2: How much paper do you have?
Girl 1: A lot of paper.
Girl 2: Is it outside? Or is there just a
constant draft blowing through your
house?
OOO
(In the Unicentre)
Guy 1: He doens’t even look human, he
looks like a dinosaur or something.
Guy 2: What’s his name? Chris Bosh?
OOO
Girl: What is sex? What is that? It’s just
like a number?
Girl 2: Is that what you just said?
OOO
Guy: Is it true that girls’ periods attract
bears?
Girl: You’re a dick.
OOO
Girl: My boyfriend is coming in four
hours.
Guy: Wow, you’ve really got sex planned
down to a tee, eh?
OOO
Girl 1: Look at this! (Points to cut on
forehead)
Girl 2: How'd you do that?
Girl 1: My computer.
Girl 2: You cut it on your computer?
Girl 1: The computer fell onto my face.
OOO
OOO
Girl: Don’t say dickbag. You can say a
bag of dicks, though. I’m OK with that.
Girl: BROLO!
Bro, you only live once, so submit some Overheards.
Email: oped@charlatan.ca
Voicebox
RE: “CUSA councillors should get summer off,” May 31-June 27, 2012
June 28 - July 25, 2012
Hey voicebox! Canada Day is
coming up so I just wanted to
wish everyone a happy Canada Day and also ask where our
Canadan spirit is at! So far this
summer I’ve been doing some
travelling in Europe and noticed
that everyone is so patriotic in
other places, especially watch-
ing Euro Cup. Where is our Canadian
pride? We’re so lucky to live in such
an awesome country. I think we need
to pick it up a notch and be proud, and
not only on July 1. We need to keep
the patriotism alive all year round!
Happy Canada Day everybody!
BLEEP!
Show your pride by calling: 613-520-7500
Opinions/Editorial
9
June 28 - July 25, 2012
Op/Ed Editor: Tom Ruta • oped@charlatan.ca
Make students a priority
Money should never be taken from students to give to
other students, yet the 30 per cent tuition rebate promised
by the Ontario provincial government is doing exactly that.
According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the
Ontario government has cut nine provincial scholarships and
bursaries since October 2011. By quietly cutting scholarships
like the Queen Elizabeth II Aiming for the Top scholarship,
which is awarded to students with financial need and high
marks, the provincial government has been able to provide
this money rebate to arguably more students.
But with all of the conditions placed on the rebate, students who are too well off and students with lower incomes
are often not able to get the rebate. This juggling of student
funds has taken money away from those who need it the
most and has given it to middle-class students.
This rebate was marketed to students by the Liberal Party
in a manner that made people believe funds would be created to decrease tuition rather than taken away from those
who can hardly afford an education to be given to those who
can almost afford it.
Students should be made a real priority in politics and
not just used as a voting tactic. When changes like this are
being made to student resources, the government needs to
be more transparent and make it clear how they plan on
funding these endeavors.
All Ontario students deserve to be paying less tuition, yet
the Ontario government forgets that some need more help
than others.
q
Frosh will be getting into Ottawa Folk Festival for free Sept. 8. Will they fit in? — pg. 3
Rise above partisan politics, CUSA
Disney/Pixar falling short
It’s no secret that Disney movies have often portrayed
stereotypical characters. Check out the short film Mickey
Mouse Monopoly if you don’t agree.
Although this has improved over the last few decades,
Disney/Pixar is still falling very short.
The only time female characters play a significant role
in most Disney movies are as the princesses, who are often
portrayed as weak, passive and two dimensional.
Even modern princesses like Mulan, who are shown to
be more independent and strong, still have a significant
amount of the story plot focused on their romantic relationship with a male.
The new Disney/Pixar movie Brave might be breaking
the mould by having a female protagonist whose story does
not revolve around her chasing a guy, yet the catalyst for
the film is still based on the female protagonist’s future of
marriage.
Furthermore, at the expense of creating a strong female
character, the male characters of the film have been reduced
to simplified, dumb-witted goofs.
Why isn’t it possible for Disney to portray a complex
female character alongside a similarly complex male character?
The power of the female character in Brave is trivialized
by the simplified portrayals of the male characters. This
makes it seem like the only way to have a strong female
character is to have dumb, thoughtless men around. Can
a woman only be powerful if there are no powerful men
around?
It’s an insult to audiences that Disney can’t manage to
make a movie where male and female characters can both be
well-developed, thoughtful, and powerful.
q
charlatan poll
Did you receive the 30 per cent tuition rebate?
Vote online at www.charlatan.ca
Last Issue: Should all Carleton faculty have to go through safe space and sensitivity training?
the
charlatan
Yes: 56 per cent
June 28-July 25, 2012
Volume 42, Issue 02
Room 531 Unicentre
1125 Colonel By Drive
Carleton University
Ottawa, ON — K1S 5B6
General: 613-520-6680
Advertising: 613-520-3580
www.charlatan.ca
charlatan@charlatan.ca
Circulation: 8,500
No: 44 per cent
Editor-in-Chief
Jessica Chin
editor@charlatan.ca
Production Assistant
The simple answer: a blatant and somewhat unsurprising
display of partisan politics. You see, the campaign was initiated by the CFS. Many of the councillors who voted against
the campaign are openly anti-CFS, and have long advocated
de-federation (leaving the CFS).
The Graduate Students’ Association. Campus Safety.
I’m not psychic, but I don’t think I need to be to connect
Equity Services. Student Affairs. The entire administration.
the dots on this one. Most councillors are anti-CFS. They see
This is a list of groups and bodies on campus who have a CFS campaign on the table. They vote it down automaticcome out in fervent support of the Challenge Homophobia ally out of some misguided political principle. Presto. CUSA
and Transphobia (CHAT) campaign created by the Can- declines to support the campaign.
adian Federation of Students (CFS) in conjunction with the
Now, I know what some of you will say. “How do you
Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line.
know they didn’t see some other problem with the camArun Smith, the victim of an online hate crime earlier paign?” I, nor anyone else publicly connected to CHAT,
this year, was inspired to bring a branch of the campaign have heard one single legitimate criticism of the campaign
to Carleton to educate students and help eliminate homo- itself. Nothing. All they can talk about is the CFS.
phobia and transphobia on campus.
Not only are these critics woefully unqualified to deWhen I look at that list, I see one glaring omission: my construct or criticize an LGBTTQ-related campaign, but it’s
own student union.
blatantly obvious from the lack
During the last sesof substance behind anything
As for the CFS connection itself, if you
sion of council, Carleton
that’s been said to me that they
are starving and someone you dislike
University Students’ Ashaven’t even bothered to read
offers you a sandwich, you don’t refse
sociation (CUSA) voted
the campaign material. Talk
against supporting the
about due process.
because you don’t like the person
campaign (without even
As for the CFS connection
holding it.
debating the motion, I
itself, if you are starving, and
might add) and I can’t
someone you dislike offers you
think of a single legitimate
a sandwich, you don’t refuse bereason for doing so.
cause you don’t like the person
According to Smith,
holding it.
several different campaigns were considered before setAnyone with half a brain would swallow their pride and
tling on CHAT. I’ve investigated them myself, and found take the sandwich.
that each one of them had problematic aspects that would
To councillors like Ben Diaz, Kaylee Cameron, and David
hinder their application in the context, be it lack of trans- MacMillan, who, among others, voted in favour of supgendered perspective, being too online focused, lack of porting CHAT, thank you.
Canadian context, not being suitable for a larger scale, or
Everyone else, you succeeded in putting your own parexcessive cost.
tisan political garbage before ensuring the best possible
CHAT is made by students, for students, to be used in learning environment for your queer constituents. Sure,
a university context. It deals with discrimination based on you might come back with some flimsy photo op event or
both sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as issues campaign, but the fact remains that until you decide to chalof intersectional oppression, how issues of race, age and lenge homophobia and transphobia, you are complicit in its
ability interact with issues of sexuality and gender. On top existence.
of that, the CFS provides the campaign materials to students
It’s like the saying goes, if you refuse to stand against opfree of charge.
pression, you stand with the oppressor.
It is, far and away, the best campaign available. So why
I don’t know about you folks, but I don’t think that’s a
did CUSA vote it down?
good place to be. q
Features Editor
Graphics Editor
Contributors
Op/Ed Editor
Web Editor
Cassie Aylward, Juanita Bawagan, Ilana Belfer, Justin Campbell, Joëlle Dahan, Riley Evans, Nikki
Gladstone, Brittany Gushue, Cassie Hendry, Sammy Hudes, Miriam Katawazi, Andrew Ko, Peter
Mazereeuw, Melissa Novacaska, Emma Paling, Haley Ritchie, Jamie Shinkewski, Calum Slingerland,
Alex Smith-Eivemark, Dessy Sukendar, Sarah Thuswaldner, Tatiana von Recklinghausen, Sean White,
Brock Wilson, Avery Zingel
Oliver Sachgau
Tom Ruta
Mitchell Vandenborn
Arts Editor
Adella Khan and
Holly Stanczak
Sports Editor
News Editors
National Editor
Marina von Stackelberg
Riley Evans is a second-year
journalism student who says CUSA needs
to look past politics when it comes to
challenging homophobia and transpobia.
Fraser Tripp
Jon Willemsen
Marcus Poon
Yuko Inoue
Web Guru
Tyler Pearce
Photo Editor
Pedro Vasconcellos
The Charlatan’s photos are produced exclusively by the photo editor, the photo assistant and volunteer members, unless otherwise noted as a provided photograph. The Charlatan is Carleton University’s independent student newspaper. It is an editorially and financially autonomous journal published
weekly during the fall and winter semesters, and monthly during the summer. Charlatan Publications Incorporated, Ottawa, Ontario, is a non-profit corporation registered under the Canada Corporations Act and is the publisher of the Charlatan. Editorial content is the sole responsibility of
editorial staff members, but may not reflect the beliefs of all members. The Charlatan reserves the right to edit letters for length and grammar. The Charlatan officially has three nipples. Contents are copyright 2009. No article or photograph or other content may be duplicated or reproduced in any
way without the prior written permission of the editor-in-chief. All rights reserved. ISSN 0315-1859. National advertising for the Charlatan is handled through the Campus Network, 145 Berkeley Street, Suite 500, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 2X1: (416) 922-9392.
Arts
Exhibit explores impact of colonialism
10
June 28 - July 25, 2012
Arts Editor: Fraser Tripp • arts@charlatan.ca
by Brittany Gushue
On National Aboriginal Day, June 21,
Gallery 101 opened the exhibition God’s
Country/Gzhe-minidoo Ki in association with
the first annual Asinabka Film and Media
Arts Festival in Ottawa.
Co-curated by Carleton graduate Howard Adler and undergraduate student
Christopher Wong, the exhibition featured
works by contemporary Aboriginal artists
Douglas Cardinal, Frank Shebageget, Scott
Benesiinaabandan, and Tannis Nielson.
The show displays a various array of art
media, from Douglas Cardinal’s proposed
blueprint for the Asinabka National Indigenous Centre to Tannis Nielsen’s experimental
video “Not forgotten.”
The exhibition “showcases Indigenous
artists that are dealing with how they approach legacies of colonialism,” Adler said.
“The works in this show we have here
all have some sort of connection to land or
memory.”
Frank Shebageget’s installation piece
“Lodge”—which appears to be a simple recreation of a beaver dam—actively critiques
these legacies through the clever appropriation
of the Beaver floatplane. As one approaches
the piece, they are struck with the realization
that each piece of wood used to construct the
dam is carved in the form of the plane.
Wong explained that Shebageget hand-
“Lodge” by Frank Shebageget is composed of 1672 handcrafted planes. || Provided
crafted all 1672 pieces.
“For him, these planes were like an army
or a swarm of bees that came to colonize
northern Ontario and so when he put this
together he wanted to sort of de-colonize
that colonization process by making it into
a beaver lodge.”
“This is not just the aftermath. It ‘s picking
up the pieces and trying to move forward,”
Wong said.
“This is a beaver lodge, but it’s not made
up of twigs per se. It’s made of airplanes, it’s
hand-crafted using modern technological
methods.”
Adler said the theme of decolonization
was a prominent one between the works as
he described their link as “coming to grips
with colonial legacies and decolonizing
through art.”
Architect and activist Douglas Cardinal is
another example of an artist dealing with the
legacy of colonialism through the medium
of architecture.
Cardinal spoke at the opening about the
proposed plan for the National Indigenous
Centre on Victoria Island in Ottawa which
he said “was and is the spiritual centre of all
Anishinaabe people.”
Cardinal said he envisions a circular
building which serves as “a gathering space
where people could come and discuss in the
circle which would be a forum, a gathering
space for people to talk.”
The visionary behind this concept was
the Elder William Commanda, to which Cardinal attributes his inspiration.
“He really believed that we should develop a circle where all nations and all
people come together. There’s only one race
and that’s the human race. When we speak
from our hearts, we are all the same.”
The project has yet to be realized due to
a lack of funding and current government
support, Cardinal said.
However, he does not criticize the government but recognizes that the initiative
has to come from the people.
“The soft power of love is much more
powerful than the hard power of force” Cardinal explained, in reference to a belief of the
Elders.
The exhibition runs until July 28. Adler
expressed a desire for visitors “to think
about colonialism and the fact that it hasn’t
ended. Aboriginal people in Canada are still
coming to grips with these things.”
“I don’t think non-Aboriginal people,
regular Canadians I guess, should be off the
hook by not thinking about colonial legacies
because they are implicated in that history as
well.”
q
BADBADNOTGOOD make magic
Believe
Justin Bieber
Island Records
There’s a reason Justin Bieber exploded
into stardom so fast and with such teeny
pop vigour—and it wasn’t just due to his
superfluously worshipped hair. What
people forget amidst Bieber’s militia of
boy-hungry fangirls is that there is a truly
impressive array of writers and producers
buttressing this image that has attained
international fame.
With big brother Usher himself on
board as executive producer on the album
and names such as Drake and Nicki Minaj
attached, Bieber’s latest has the needed
support to capture a very specific sound
that flirts with the Red Bull-induced, Facebook-romanced, clubbing teen culture of
this age. And that’s what pop music is all
about, isn’t it?
Right from the get-go, it’s clear Bieber
and his producers had the club in mind.
Starting the first track with a sophomore
collaboration with Ludacris called “All
Around The World,” Bieber trades in his
younger melodies for deeper vocals and
heavier euro-house beats. Following with
his hit single “Boyfriend,” Bieber tries to
engrave his new image as the player rather than the pup. The track’s slick falsetto
and cool rhythms compose a song that can
finally be heard on the dance floor rather
than on the Family Channel.
— Andrew Ko
For the rest of this story, visit
charlatan.ca
Pianist Matthew Tavares displayed feats of
keyboard wizardry June 1 at Ritual. || photo by
Fraser Tripp
by Calum Slingerland
Having recently performed a string of tour
dates in the United States, including numerous performances at the popular California
music festival Coachella, Ontario-based jazz
trio BADBADNOTGOOD were seemingly
long overdue for some stage time at home.
Local Ottawa band Daughters of the
Revolution opened the evening, bringing
their eclectic mix of hip-hop, electro, spoken
word, and punk to the stage. Fronted by
former World Poetry Slam Champion Ian
Keteku, the band impressed the audience
with clever wordplay and abnormal instrumentation throughout their set.
When BADBADNOTGOOD took the
stage, the three musicians played an energetic set in front of an enthusiastic crowd
at Ottawa’s Ritual nightclub June 1, their
first show in the nation’s capital. Mixing elements of jazz music and hip-hop, the group
treated those in attendance to a musical melange unlike any other.
The show was also special for bass guitarist Chester Hansen. An Ottawa native,
Hansen was welcomed to the stage with raucous cheers and applause from friends and
family in the audience that evening.
The trio set the tone early, kicking things
off with their jazz rendition of rapper Waka
Flocka Flame’s “Hard in Da Paint”. Frenetic
jazz drumming from Alex Sowinski amazed
the crowd, while pianist Matthew Tavares
delivered some wonderfully improvised
keyboard parts.
BADBADNOTGOOD then moved on to
cover an entirely different genre, choosing to
interpret the James Blake version of “Limit
To Your Love.” The crowd clapped along to
Tavares’ delivery of the song’s recognizable
piano line, while Hansen dazzled the onlookers with an extremely groovy, extended
bass solo. Sowinski took a minute to pause
and ask the crowd to “make some noise for
the hometown boy” before launching right
back into the feverish ending of the piece.
The trio also covered another James Blake
standard, “CMYK,” in which they whipped
the crowd into a frenzy through energetic
drumming and sheer keyboard wizardry. A
mosh pit soon broke out in the crowd, and
some audience members even went as far as
to crowd-surf, two things you don’t usually
hear about at jazz concerts.
The band treated the crowd to some of
their original compositions from their latest
mixtape BBNG2 as well. The ever-eerie
“Vices” was played, with Tavares ensnaring
the crowd in the lull of his ghostly keyboard
lines. “CHSTR” kept the intensity strong
with more bass soloing and lightning-fast
drum work, while “DMZ” made many
heads spin with its constantly changing time
signatures.
BADBADNOTGOOD rounded out the
evening with a couple of Kanye West jazz
renditions, including “Flashing Lights” and
an 11-minute jam to the hip-hop star’s latest
single “Mercy.” With the crowd begging for
more, they did an encore performance of
their medley combining Tyler the Creator’s
“Bastard” with Gucci Mane’s “Lemonade.”
The band’s performance was essentially
flawless, with each member showcasing
his skills to full effect. Their onstage energy successfully kept the crowd engaged
throughout the entire performance.
q
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June 28 - July 25, 2012
charlatanarts
11
Crystalyne navigates Canadian music waters
by Joëlle Dahan
With a successful new EP and
two music videos, one of which is
already being featured on MuchMusic’s website, Toronto-based
Crystalyne seem to be navigating
in the right direction for a successful career.
The four-piece band consisting
of Marissa Dattoli, Josh Given,
Scott Blake and Justin Niece, recently released their first EP,
Navigate.
The band is currently on tour
and took the stage at Ottawa’s
Club Saw June 22, delivering an
energy-filled set for their fans.
Lead singer Dattoli may be recognized from her appearance on
MuchMusic’s second season of
Disband with her old band Good
and Broken as well as her many
YouTube videos. Crystalyne is her
newest musical project in which
she said she is very proud to be a
part of.
Crystalyne’s EP Navigate was
released in June. However, the
recording process, which started
last fall, was interrupted by an unexpected tour. After beginning the
recording process of Navigate, the
band hopped on a tour with motivational organization LiveDifferent.
Although the recording time was
pushed back a little, the LiveDifferent tour allowed Crystalyne to
introduce themselves across Canada.
“We got to play to so many
Crystalyne released their first EP, Navigate, in June. It explores lead singer Marissa Dattoli’s personal struggles. || provided
group of kids in different places
so it built an initial fan base for us
across all of the west of Canada.
It’s like everything came together
because we had just started playing together two or three weeks
before we left for the tour,” Given
said.
Navigate speaks about some of
Dattoli’s personal struggles.
“I went through a really hard
breakup before the band formed
and I felt like the only way I could
get over it was to write these songs.
So the EP is all about that,” Dattoli
said.
The title track “Navigate” is the
one song that brings everything
into perspective, the band said.
“I always felt like I needed to figure out what I had to do. With my
old band, for example, I was not in
the right place. I felt like creatively
I couldn’t say what I wanted to say.
So I had to leave that and figure out
what I was doing. My ex-boyfriend
was obviously not the person I
I always felt like I needed to figure out
what I had to do. With my old band, for
example, I was not in the right place.
”
— Marissa Dattoli,
lead singer
was supposed to be with, so I had
to leave that and figure out where
I was going. I had to navigate
around all those situations and
get to where I’m supposed to be.
That’s kind of the whole point,”
Dattoli said.
“The EP has undertones and
you can take any song and change
it. It doesn’t have to be about an exboyfriend it can be about God or
any personal struggle.”
Crystalyne’s success seems to
be rising quickly.
The band has already shot
two music videos for their songs
“Wolves” and “Weapon.”
The video for “Weapon” is
currently being featured on MuchMusic’s website.
“For us this is just the beginning. We feel really blessed and
really excited to be receiving all
the opportunities we have been
receiving,” Dattoli said.
“The MuchMusic thing was a
huge deal for us.”
Dattoli explained that the next
step for the band is to start writing
more.
Given said the band is aiming
to start touring again in the fall
and they hope to breakthrough
into the United States in the near
future.
“I feel like we’re starting our
sail. We know where we want to
go and we have our goals in sight.
You need to know how to navigate
in order to get to where you want
to be,” Blake said.
q
Fringe play anything but predictable
Brave
Disney Pixar
Dillon reunites with his sister Amelia on a park bench in Alex Kirkpatrick’s The Boy and the Girl and the Secrets They Shared || photo courtesy of Alex Kirkpatrick
by Sarah Thuswaldner
When a young man reunites
with his long-lost, emotionally
turbulent sister, it’s obvious to
the average theatre-goer how the
story will pan out. It will be tearful. It will be touching. It will be
tender.
The Boy and the Girl and the
Secrets They Shared, an Ottawa
Fringe Festival play, was none of
those things.
Instead, it wove one sinister
and shocking plot point after another into a mesmerizingly dark
story.
Written and directed by University of Ottawa student Alex
Kirkpatrick, it was surprising, to
say the least.
Though a little rough around
the edges, the bizarre originality
of the plot and the charisma of
the two actors made it a highly
watchable production. The siblings, separated for 10 years by
the foster care system, meet on a
park bench and discuss how their
lives turned out.
Amelia, adopted by a pictureperfect family, is a high school
dropout and leads an unhappy
life.
Dillon, though raised in
a series of foster homes, is a
thoroughly respectable university student.
Though they seem very different, they share a tumultuous past
thanks to their father, a convicted
and psychotic serial killer.
The riveting progression of
their story was captivatingly
disturbing, as both Dillon and
Amelia are more like their father
than they let on.
Lewis Caunter and Jameelah
Rahey played off each other very
well, and kept up the energy
throughout the entire one-hour
scene.
Dillon and Amelia, initially
difficult to understand, were naturally impossible to relate to or
identify with by the finale. However, this is to be expected when
writing for unrepentantly evil
characters, and Kirkpatrick did
an excellent job of creating protagonists that garnered attention
and interest rather than sympathy.
While the dialogue was decidedly theatrical, as opposed to
natural, it meshed well with the
surreal and unsettling nature of
the story.
What seemed to initially be
a heartfelt drama became something else entirely, and then
something else again.
The Boy and the Girl and the Secrets They Shared was an intense
and layered story, challenging expectations on every level.
q
Delightful, whimsical, and
magical are words that describe
Disney Pixar’s new animated
film, Brave.
The film is a tale about a mother
and daughter whose relationship
has been wounded by pride,
causing the protagonist, Princess
Merida, to ask a feeble witch for a
spell to change her mother. However, in true fairy tale fashion, the
spell does not unravel according
to Merida’s plan and takes the
princess and her mother, Queen
Elinor, voiced by Emma Thompson, on an enchanting, comical,
touching journey.
Brave’s standout feature is its
protagonist, Princess Merida.
Strong-willed, courageous, intelligent and opinionated, she is one
of the few female characters Disney or Pixar has created that does
not rely on a man throughout the
story. She has no male at her side
and depends on herself.
— Alex Smith-Eivemark
For the rest of this story, visit
charlatan.ca
Sports
12
June 28 - July 25, 2012
Sports Editor: Jon Willemsen • sports@charlatan.ca
Former Raven scores overtime winner
by Brock Wilson
Former Carleton Ravens captain Brandon MacLean scored the
overtime winner that catapulted
the Florida Everblades to their
first ever Kelly Cup championship
in the East Coast Hockey League
(ECHL) finals with a 3-2 overtime
win against the Las Vegas Wranglers.
“It’s a goal that you dream
about scoring as a kid and you
never think you’re going to get
the opportunity . . . It’s something
I will never forget,” MacLean said
of his overtime goal.
The winning goal was MacLean’s fourth of the post-season,
which contributed to his playoffhigh total of 13 points in 18 games
among rookies.
“He’s someone who has a big
heart and puts a stamp on everything he does,” said Ravens head
coach Marty Johnston. “He’s got to
be considered one of the best players we’ve ever had.”
As a three-time Ontario University Athletics (OUA) all-star and
tallying 143 points in 108 career
games played with the Ravens, it
is clear that MacLean is a special
hockey player who has left his legacy at Carleton.
“Carleton helped me to develop
a lot of great skills,” MacLean said.
“They have great coaches that
Brandon MacLean took advantage of a late-season professional contract with the Florida Everblades of the ECHL. || file
helped me become a professional
and develop both my body and
mind.”
MacLean said he has many
warm memories of Carleton, but
said the one that stands out for him
is spending time and growing with
his teammates.
“Becoming men with guys that
I had been living with for four
years . . . and the relationships that
I will have for a lifetime is my fond-
est memory,” he said.
Carleton not only provided
MacLean with a place to develop
his skills on the ice, he said it
also gave him the skills needed
in the classroom to obtain an
undergraduate degree in law. But
MacLean said his focus right now
is to continue with hockey.
“In the immediate future it’s
about trying to find a job at the
next level in the American Hockey League, and if that doesn’t
happen I have been offered a
contract to go back in Florida,”
he said. “The best thing about
having a degree is having that to
fall back on if hockey ends suddenly,” he said.
Johnston said he feels MacLean
has a successful hockey career
ahead of him.
“I think he will do well . . . it’s
important for any player to get in
there and get a few games under
their belt, and in a very short period of time he has already put his
stamp on what he can do by winning a Kelly Cup and being the
overtime hero to seal that championship,” Johnston said.
As for the Ravens team now,
Johnston said their focus is not to
replace MacLean with one player,
but to work as a team to make up
for his absence.
“It’s about trying to fill that
void offensively and as a group
knowing there is a big voice lost in
the room,” Johnston said.
“As a group we have to try to
fill that space as best we can but
we’re not going to ever replace
him.”
q
50 years on, CIS continues to evolve
by Jamie Shinkewski
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
(CIS), the organization that encompasses university athletic teams
like the Carleton Ravens, celebrated its 50th anniversary during the
2011-2012 year.
According to the CIS website, the original Canadian
Interuniversity Athletic Union
(CIAU) Central existed from
1906 to 1955, but was only composed of schools from Ontario
and Quebec.
In 1961, the CIAU was reconstituted to become an athletics
association represented by universities from coast to coast. The
idea was to provide Canadian
universities with an opportunity for excellence in their sport
programs, an increased schedule,
year round coaches, and government funding.
Government
funding
increased from $1 million in 1961
to $20 million at the end of the
decade. In June 2001, the CIAU
members voted to change their
name and logo to the current CIS
design, according to the CIS website.
Now, with the recent addition of
two schools, Mount Royal University in Calgary and the University
of Northern British Columbia in
The CIS created a commerative logo to celebrate their 50th anniversary season. || photo courtesy of Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS)
Prince George, the CIS has grown
to 54 members.
Regarding the half-century
milestone, CIS president Leo MacPherson said the accomplishment
is nice, but the task is to focus on
continued growth.
“Celebrating our 50th anniversary was great, but our primary
focus has to do with ensuring we
set out a positive path for prosperity over the next five to 10 years,”
he said.
Jennifer Brenning, Carleton’s
director of recreation and athletics,
said she believes a key to further
developing the CIS is their market-
ing tactics.
“I think [the CIS] is a great aspect of the Canadian identity,”
Brenning said. “It just needs to be
advertised more to the public for it
to continue to grow.”
As a celebration of the 50th
anniversary, each of the CIS’s 21
national championships offered a
celebration featuring a reflection
of the growth of the CIS, with the
Ravens men’s basketball team being one of the programs who won
the national championship in the
celebratory season.
With the return of the men’s
football team in the fall of 2013,
along with the women’s rugby
team attaining varsity status in
the 2012-13 season, the Carleton
Ravens will have 10 teams competing in the CIS.
MacPherson said the plan is
to continue trying to reach the
full potential of Canadian university sports, but that task will
certainly be a difficult one heading into the CIS’s 51st season and
beyond.
“The sport market in Canada
is crowded and we have to grow
our niche,” he said. “It won’t be
easy, but we are up for the challenge.”
q
For more coverage . . .
West chooses Ravens
Cassie Aylward reports
on Carleton recruiting
Joey West, a local veteran
OHL player with the
Peterborough Petes, to
suit up for the Ravens
men’s hockey team in the
upcoming 2012-13 season.
charlatan.ca