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Vol 41•Issue 10 • October 13 - October 19, 2011
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INSIDE: Protesters mobilize at U of O for Occupy Ottawa p.6 • ONLINE: Ravens hockey recruit makes it to the pros see charlatan.ca
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News
3
October 13 - October 19, 2011
News Editors: Jessica Chin and Jane Gerster • news@charlatan.ca
CUSA could relive fee freeze
The administration withheld CUSA fees for over a month last year and could do the same this year. ||
by Holly Stanczak
If the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council
freeze continues, administration
may withhold the student funds
they collect on CUSA’s behalf for
the second straight year, according
to the defendants’ factum filed in
court Sept. 29.
Carleton, CUSA and the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA)
signed an administrative agreement last November, stipulating
that CUSA must provide an auditor’s report to administration by
Oct. 15, 2011 in order to receive the
funds. With the council conflict and
injunctive freeze ongoing, administration wouldn’t comment directly
about whether or not they’d accept
the report.
“We are hopeful that the
parties can come to an immediate resolution for the sake of all
undergraduate students and the
university community,” said Carleton’s media relations coordinator
Christopher Cline via email.
“In doing so, CUSA will be in a
position to address the issues concerning financial management and
disclosure as outlined under the
terms of the administrative agree-
file
ment.”
An injunctive freeze placed on
CUSA council prevents them from
conducting any business. However,
in the meantime, president Obed
Okyere, vice-president (internal)
Ariel Norman, and vice-president
(finance) Karim Khamisa can make
decisions as CUSA’s trustees.
The audit in question was
passed last week, according to Norman. Norman said the audit was
conducted to standard and she’s
confident the administration will accept it.
“We did an audit with our
third-party auditors which were
approved by the entire board of
directors of CUSA Inc. and the
trustees have also approved that
[it] was finished and done properly,” Norman said. “I don’t think
[the administration] wants to go
through another ‘free the fees’
thing again.”
Last November, administration withheld a portion of student
funds from CUSA and the GSA,
claiming the student unions refused to provide Carleton’s Board
of Governors with their financial
audits.
Student clubs and services provided by CUSA were affected until
the university agreed to release the
fees in late November.
The university declined to comment directly on the legitimacy
of the audit passed by CUSA’s
trustees, which under normal
circumstances would have been
passed by council as well.
“[Administration] has repeatedly offered to provide mediation
services to the two parties and
continues to do so, as time is of the
essence,” Cline said on behalf of
the university.
A fee freeze would affect a wide
variety of campus services and
clubs. CUSA also runs a number of
student-owned businesses, including Oliver’s Pub, Rooster’s, Haven
Books and Henry’s Convenience
store.
The university will review the
audit and make funding decisions
following the submission of the
audit, Oct. 15. q
Arrests made in connection to res thefts
by Tara Sprickerhoff
Two arrests have been made
in connection with three thefts in
residence between Sept. 24 and
Oct. 5, according to Carleton’s
director of university safety Allan
Burns.
Burns said the two individuals
weren’t students. They came to
campus “specifically to steal from
rooms in residence,” he said.
The reported thefts took place
in empty and unlocked residence
rooms during the evening and
nighttime, said special constable
Mark Hargreaves, Carleton’s
community liaison officer.
Items reported stolen included
two cellphones and a laptop, he
said.
“Officers made arrests in connection with these incidents,”
Hargreaves said. “No charges
were laid, but the investigation is
continuing.”
Harrison Boyd, a first-year
journalism student, said on Facebook that two laptops, two
wallets, and two cellphones were
stolen from a room on his floor.
“I thought my floor was pretty
safe before it happened,” Boyd said.
Valuables are typically stolen when doors are left unlocked — even for just a few
minutes. || photo illustration by Josh Ragosin
In response to the thefts, the
department of housing and conference services sent an email to
all students in residence Oct. 7,
encouraging them to lock their
doors and not allow strangers into
the building.
“Everyone’s pretty careful
about locking doors now. If we see
a stranger on the floor we always
ask who they’re here to see,” Boyd
said. “We even have little signs
[that say] ‘don’t let strangers into
the dino cave.’ ”
For added security, students
can take part in a $20 laptop
registration program, according
to the department of university
safety.
The program attaches a hardto-remove “stop theft” plate to
students’ laptops or other electronics and registers the device
in a North American database,
helping in the recovery of stolen
property. When removed, the
“stop theft” plate leaves a permanent tattoo, marking it as stolen
property.
Still, not all thefts are reported.
“Reported thefts in residences
aren’t common,” Hargreaves said.
“Theft is a crime of opportunity so
[university safety] would like to
remind all residents to store valuables like cellphones, wallets and
MP3 devices in a secure drawer
when not in use.”
“I always have a lock on my
computer, my bathroom is always
locked, I bought a lock for my
drawer, and I have a stowaway
vault bolted to my bed frame,”
Boyd said. “I was afraid something like this would happen, and
I don’t plan on becoming a victim.” q
Man
charged
with assault
A 20-year-old man was arrested following an incident in
the Registrar’s Office in Tory
Building Oct. 11.
Allan Burns, Carleton’s
director of university safety,
wouldn’t reveal the name of
the individual, but Ottawa
police constable Marc Soucy
confirmed that Nahian Islam
was charged with assaulting a
peace officer Oct. 11 at Carleton.
Although Islam was a student at Carleton last year,
Burns wouldn’t confirm his
status at this point. The university isn’t identifying the
individual as a student, said
Carleton spokesperson Beth
Gorham.
Burns said when three special constables arrived on the
scene, the individual became
combative and punched a constable in the head. The officer
wasn’t injured, Burns said.
Before
Ottawa
police
arrived, Islam was seen
screaming and yelling inside
the office, as staff directed
people away.
“There’s a student inside, a
student that’s very distressed,”
said Lisa Ralph, an associate
university registrar, as Islam
was screaming.
Melanie Moller, a secondyear journalism student, said
her class was watching a movie in Tory Building when they
heard yelling.
“My prof paused [the movie] and went outside,” Moller
said. “Then she just came back
in and said, ‘don’t worry, we’re
all safe, but you know, there’s
someone freaking out in the
Registrar’s Office.‘ ”
Burns said the individual
was banned from campus as of
Oct. 7, but returned Oct. 11 to
speak to the Registrar’s Office.
“We were called to respond
to . . . provide him information
on [the ban], and to escort him
off campus,” Burns said. “That
resulted in the struggle that
happened.”
Burns said he couldn’t release any information on the
ban, but all bans of that nature
come from the president’s office. President Roseann Runte
won’t be commenting on
the arrest, according to the
president’s office.
Islam was arrested Sept. 30
on campus and charged with
causing a disturbance and resisting arrest, Soucy said. He
was charged Oct. 11 with failing to comply with his release
conditions of that arrest, in
addition to assaulting a peace
officer, Soucy added. — Jessica Chin
4
charlatan.ca/news
New resources
for women in
politics
by Jasmine Kelly
Equal Voice and Carleton’s Centre for
Women in Politics and Public Leadership are
working together on research designed to
provide more support to women in politics.
As part of this initiative, a website will
be created to provide information and
research to anyone who needs it, particularly
female candidates, their supporters, and
those involved in politics and public policy
formation, according to a press release.
“We’d like women who are thinking of
running to be as informed as possible about
what the realities are,” said Nancy Peckford,
executive director of Equal Voice. “It’s very
useful to ensure [that] the research that’s
being done on women in politics is accessible
to a wider audience.”
Women are currently unable to access
a wide variety of research in the field, said
Clare Beckton, the centre’s executive director.
“Because we don’t have a full body of
research, we don’t necessarily know where
the gaps are that could help us with assisting
policy-makers and women who want in to
politics,” Beckton said. “We hope to be able
to identify some gaps in research, and get
some funding and the ability to do some of
that research.”
The web portal will offer available
research and information on four main
topics, according to the release, including
women’s experiences as candidates, the
impact of women’s participation in public
life, gender and voting behaviour, and
strategies to increase their participation in
politics.
“We don’t have nearly enough women in
politics,” Beckton said.
Only 25 per cent of Canadian MPs are
women, the release stated, ranking Canada
40th in the world in this category.
“Women tend to need to be asked [to run]
in many cases rather than them choosing to
run,” Beckton said. “There are some that
do want to run but don’t necessarily get
selected because of barriers within party
structures.”
“The research that’s being done will help
to equip women with what they need so that
they’re as prepared as possible,” Peckford
said.
The web portal will be launched sometime
in 2012, she added. q
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Teaming up for eco-friendly design
by Pedro Vasconcellos
Mayor Jim Watson was on hand Oct. 6 for
the culmination of a four-day, eco-friendly
architecture design contest at Carleton.
Carleton students teamed up with
Dutch students from the Delft University
of Technology in the Netherlands to make
the designs, which were supposed to solve
some of Ottawa’s architectural issues in an
eco-friendly way.
“The site we’ve chosen is . . . along
the O-Train line between Somerset and
Gladstone,” said architecture professor
Benjamin Gianni.
The four groups of students had four
days to design and present the project, and
according to the judges of the competition,
almost all of them had design problems.
“[The winner] is not a spectacular
project. In fact, all of the others had
more remarkable elements. But in its non
‘spectacularness’ it did a lot of things right,
and the judges identified it as a solid,
competent project, and selected it as the
winner,” Gianni said.
Watson, who attended the project’s
culmination, said the project is very important
to Ottawa, emphasizing the city’s lack of
advancement in green, urban technology.
“One of the things we are trying to do in
the city is certainly learn from our friends in
Mayor Jim Watson greeted students at the four-day eco-friendly design contest. ||
Europe. We have always the temptation to
engage in urban sprawl, because we have so
much land. But we know that urban sprawl
does not pay for itself,” he said.
“In China, they have segregated bike
lanes, Montreal has, Vancouver has. We’re
late to the game, but at least we’re in the game
now with the Laurier segregated bike lane.”
The mayor, along with Netherlands
ambassador Wim Geerts, praised the project
as an opportunity of growth for both countries.
photo by
Carol Kan
“It’s a great win-win opportunity to learn
some techniques from Europe, and also to
bring a practical conclusion right here on
city hall,” Watson said.
“It’s so enriching to have all these different
perspectives, different angles on a project
like this,” Geerts said. “There is a lot of
creative thinking here, innovative thinking,
out of the box thinking. And I go back feeling
more optimistic about the future than I was
before.” q
NEWS BRIEFS
Prof receives Jean
Monnet Chair
Nearly six months after her application, Carleton professor Joan DeBardeleben
has received the Jean Monnet Chair in the
European Union’s Eastern Neighbourhood
Relations.
“This is our first Jean Monnet Chair and
it’s a really nice recognition of the kind of
expertise we’ve built up in the area of European Union studies,” said DeBardeleben, a
European and Russian studies professor.
The chairs, which are offered by a section of the European commissions, offer a
variety of grants, projects and workshops
to encourage learning about European matters, DeBardeleben said.
“It recognizes the extraordinary calibre
of work done by [DeBardeleben],” said
Carleton president Roseann Runte via
email. “The award demonstrates the very
high regard in which [she] is held by her
colleagues around the world. Her knowledge and expertise are great assets.”
The Jean Monnet teaching chairs focus
on European integration, DeBardeleben
said, adding that her specific award is focused on eastern European countries such
as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Prof elected to press club
board of directors
A Carleton professor is one of seven
new members of the National Press Club
of Canada’s board of directors.
Dwayne Winseck, a journalism profes-
sor, was elected to the press club Sept. 28 by
Roxanne Brousseau-Felio, a former student
and press club committee member.
“It’s a nice validation . . . it’s nice to see
that whatever I’m doing, whatever I’m putting out there is being validated. This is a
pretty significant marker,” Winseck said.
The positions weren’t just limited to
journalists, he said. A more accurate name
for the organization would be “the media
club,” he added.
“It’s people that are basically working
in the media industry and that’s one of the
things that I’m really going to press for in
terms of how we think about this.”
— briefs by Lana Perić
For the rest of these stories, visit
charlatan.ca
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charlatan.ca/news
October 13 - October 19, 2011
5
Poll station confusion turns away students
Non-residence students weren’t allowed to vote on campus Oct. 6
Posters on campus didn’t differentiate between
advance polling and election day polling, leaving
certain students confused. || photo by Marina von
Stackelberg
by Marina von Stackelberg
Certain off-campus students didn’t have
the time to vote in the provincial election because they were mistakenly informed they
could vote on campus. Fourth-year history
student Wyatt Danowski said he was turned
away from voting at on-campus polling stations Oct. 6 because he didn’t live in residence.
Danowski said he was surprised when told
he couldn’t cast his ballot in Fenn Lounge.
“[The poll clerks] told us that a majority of
people had made the same mistake [as me],”
he said. “They had a list of people who were
filing complaints to Elections Ontario about
it.”
Advance polls on campus were open to all
students living in the Ottawa Centre riding
since no one is directed to a specific advance
poll, according to Elections Canada, but on
election day, it was just for students in residence.
“It’s just how we deliver the election,” said
Alicia Fowlie, communications coordinator
for Elections Ontario. “We only have 500-700
voters at each poll so they can be processed in
a quick and efficient matter. It keeps it man-
ageable.”
Fowlie said she hadn’t heard of any
confusion. This system wasn’t made clear to
students, Danowski said.
“[When I went to the poll], it didn’t say
anywhere that it was only for [residence] students . . . it wasn’t advertised at all,” he said.
When he walked up and told the poll
clerks he lived in Ottawa Centre, Danowski
said one of them thought it was the name of a
residence building.
“They couldn’t tell me why the polling station was only for residence students,” he said.
“I asked them if there was another polling
station at Carleton for off-campus students,
and they said they didn’t know.”
Students were well-informed about the
polling stations, according to Chantle Beeso,
the vice-president (student issues) for the
Carleton University Students’ Association
(CUSA).
“I was out there everyday letting students
know that on election day [the poll] was only
for residence students,” Beeso said. “Maybe
some students [didn’t know], but that just
comes with some people . . . it happens in
every case.”
The polls were highly publicized, Fowlie
said. But according to Danowski, the publicity only made things worse.
“The whyicantvote.ca posters didn’t make
me want to vote, [instead] it just made it seem
really complicated,” he said. “I couldn’t tell if
it was a joke or to help me find out where to
vote. There was no formal poster just clearly
telling me the info I needed.”
CUSA posters were still visible election
day, advertising “Live on or near campus?
Vote here: Frontenace 10 a.m.- 8 p.m.”
However, Beeso said these were generic
posters meant for advance polling.
“It’s our front desk people who put out the
The most affordable option for new
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posters,” she said. “They could have put out
a blank one [that didn’t specify it was an advance poll],” she said, adding “it may have
confused students.”
Although Danowski said he was unable to
vote in the end because class and work left
him no time to find an off-campus poll, Beeso
said a record number of students cast a ballot.
Forty-five per cent of residence students
turned out on election day, she said, and over
500 students attended advance polls, which
were offered for the first time. q
Carleton ranks 226-250th worldwide
Carleton president Roseann Runte said despite the rankings, she believes Carleton has excellent
professors and excellent students. || file
Out of 400 universities around the
world, Carleton ranked in the 226-250
category, according to the Time’s Higher
Education (THE) university rankings.
THE weighs universities according to
a number of different criteria, which are
grouped into five categories: teaching,
research, citations, industry outcome and
international outlook, according to their
website.
Carleton placed 226-250th internationally, as well as in North America, while
the University of Ottawa placed 185th in
both categories. At 19th place, the University of Toronto was the top-ranked
Canadian school. The California Institute
of Technology, Harvard University and
Stanford University were the top three
universities.
Carleton is currently reviewing the
results, according to Carleton president
Roseann Runte.
“We always look at rankings and
attempt to use them to improve our performance. Each of the ranking systems
measures slightly different issues and
uses different methodology,” Runte said
via email, adding that she believes Carleton is improving.
“I personally believe that Carleton is
becoming better known for the excellent
faculty and students who work and study
here,” she said.
Carleton has not ranked in the top
200 in over five years, according to the
recently released rankings. Carleton tied
for seventh out of 12 universities in the
Maclean’s rankings, and 401-500 out of
500 in the Academic Ranking of World
Universities.
— Oliver Sachgau
National
6
October 13 - October 19, 2011
National Editor: Cassie Aylward • national@charlatan.ca
Protesters prepare to Occupy Ottawa
by Jonathan Duncan
A crowd of about 150 people
showed up at the University of Ottawa Oct. 6 for Occupy Ottawa’s
first meeting.
Occupy Ottawa is part of a new
movement that has sprung up
around the globe, in which people
gather in public spaces in protest of
social injustice.
The first of these protests, Occupy Wall Street, took place Sept.
17 in New York City.
Demonstrators have occupied a
park in the city’s financial district
for over three weeks.
Since the original demonstration
in New York, over 400 like-minded
protests have surfaced, according
to Occupy Wall Street’s website.
“It’s time to put people before
profits [and] communities before
corporations,” reads the mission
statement on Occupy Ottawa’s Facebook group.
“Right now, you’re looking at
a climate around the world, especially here in North America,
[where] we’re not sheltered from
the economic disparities that are
becoming really acute, and are
driving people to take action,”
said the Ottawa movement’s
Occupy Wall Street protests inspired an Ottawa rally. ||
organizer and a graduate in international development, who asked
to be identified as Kevin D.
“We’ve tried a lot of different
methods, protesting, lobbying
groups, but our politicians don’t
listen, and that’s why we have this
dissent right now.”
photo courtesy of
Paul Stein
The initial Ottawa meeting focused on organizing and planning
an overall strategy for the organization.
More than 12 sub-committees
were formed at the meeting,
according to Kevin D, and Confederation Park has been chosen as a
location for the group’s “general
assembly,” which will take place
Oct. 15. Groups in Vancouver, Calgary, Victoria, and Edmonton are
also planning action Oct. 15.
While no clear goals have been
defined by Occupy Ottawa, literature was on hand stating: “[We]
gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice . .
. . We write so that all people who
feel wronged by the corporate
forces of the world can know that
we are your allies.”
Brigette DePape, the former
Senate page who held up a sign
that read “Stop Harper” during the
June 3 throne speech, was among
those in attendance at the meeting.
“This movement started with
young people in the States who are
fed up with politics as usual,” she
said. “We’ve heard about it through
social media, and it’s really exciting to see this surge of outrage at
the clarity of understanding that
our political system is not working
for us, and our economic system is
not working for us.”
Everyone at the meeting maintained a message of non-violence
and agreed the protest will be
peaceful.
“[A violent protest would be]
completely counter-productive to
what we’re trying to do,” said firstyear Carleton student Sean Wilkin.
Others said they would personally subdue any upstarts of
violence from within the protest.
Although
there
was
a
consensus for peaceful protest
there was more debate about
whether or not the police should
be involved and notified of the
group’s upcoming activities.
Some were apprehensive.
“We have the right to peacefully
assemble. I’m not going to kowtow
to the police. They have no right
to tell me where I can and cannot
protest. If we tell them how many
we are, and where we’re going to
be, they’re just going to send twice
as many people,” said a woman
who asked to remain anonymous.
Others said they believe a
transparent dialogue with police
was the only way to ensure their
right to protest wouldn’t be
subverted.
As for the actual occupation
of a location in Ottawa, Major’s
Hill Park has been discussed as a
possibility, but this decision will be
made at the general assembly Oct.
15, according to Occupy Ottawa’s
Facebook group.
q
Voter turnout hits historic low Easy win for Naqvi
in Ottawa Centre
Less than 50 per cent of eligible voters in Ontario made it to the polls last week. ||
photo illustration by Carol Kan
by Lana Perić
Ontario’s provincial election
Oct. 6 resulted in an all-time low
for voter turnout.
Only 49.2 per cent of the population went out and cast a vote
this year, according to Elections
Ontario, breaking the 2007 record,
when the turnout was 52.8 per
cent.
This is the first time ever that
half of eligible voters didn’t vote
in an Ontario provincial election.
Scott Bennett, a political science
professor at Carleton University,
said he believes there are several
factors associated with the low
turnout.
Electoral fatigue from a recent
federal election is one of them,
Bennett said.
“Many people simply do not
separate one level of politics from
another and are simply tired of
politics in general.”
When an election isn’t perceived to be a close race between
parties, people are less motivated
to get out and vote, he added.
“There were a few polls that
suggested it was not close at the
end, and this may have influenced
people,” Bennett said. “I think a lot
of marginal potential voters were
confused by the fluctuating trends
but decided that things could not
be changed much by their vote.”
If the different parties had more
charismatic or exciting leaders, it
would only affect voter turnout by
a few points, Bennett said.
“I think a large portion of the
public has tuned out of electoral
politics because they find it boring,
they have a wider range of entertainment and participation options
than a few decades ago,” Bennett
said. “They don’t think they will
have much impact on the result,
and generally don’t think it makes
much difference who wins.”
The voter turnout isn’t necessarily a problem. It does, however,
represent apathy, according to
Bennett.
He said he believes people see
very little net benefit in voting
compared to using their time in
other ways.
Julia Riddick, a second-year
geography student at Carleton,
said she made sure to go out and
vote.
“As a citizen of Canada, I have
been given my right to vote, unlike
so many other people. You don’t
know what you have until it’s
gone,” Riddick said.
Grant Hutter, a fourth-year
commerce student at Carleton,
said he has never missed out on
voting during election day, at any
level of government.
“Students should look at current election issues at hand and
realize that voting now influences the future political landscape
which they’ll be living and working in,” Hutter said.
For the rest of this story visit
charlatan.ca
by the Charlatan
Ottawa Centre Liberal incumbent Yasir Naqvi overcame New
Democratic Party (NDP) challenger Anil Naidoo by more than
9,000 votes Oct. 6 to become part
of the Ontario Liberal Party’s third
successive government.
“It’s about the relationship I’ve
built with the community and the
work that I’ve been doing over the
last four years,” MPP-elect Naqvi
said. “I think people responded
and they said that I have done a
decent job.”
Speaking in a banquet hall only
a few hundred metres from Naqvi’s
celebration at The Preston Bar and
Grill, Naidoo thanked supporters
and staff for what had previously
looked like a winning campaign.
“I’ve been saying all along that
it takes a village to raise a candidate. And you are my village,”
Naidoo said.
The Liberals finished only one
seat away from having an historic
third consecutive majority government with 53 of 107 seats.
The Liberal government is
promising a 30 per cent reduction in tuition fees for all Ontario
undergraduates whose families
earn less than $160,000 per year.
This would mean annual saving
of about $1,600 per university student, and $700 per college student.
Naqvi received 47 per cent of the
vote Oct. 6, with all polls reporting.
The Progressive Conservatives
have been elected in 37 seats while
the NDP have 17.
“I was looking forward to tonight,” Naqvi said. “I will remain
engaged with the community and
make sure that I am always there.”
Observers and pundits had expected the race to be much closer,
with some polls suggesting a dead
heat between Naqvi and Naidoo.
Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar
accompanied Naidoo to the function.
“Friends, tonight the people
have spoken. We know that we
had a candidate who spoke to the
issues,” Dewar said.
PC candidate Rob Dekker, trailing Naqvi by more than 14,000
votes, could not be reached for
comment.
q
For more coverage . . .
Low turnout in NWT
Brianna Harris reports on
the historically low voter
turnout in the Northwest
Territories.
charlatan.ca
October 13 - October 19, 2011
charlatan.ca/national
7
Liberals push for national
suicide prevention program
by Sarah Brandon
With interim leader Bob Rae at the helm,
the Liberal Party of Canada is pushing to
introduce a suicide prevention program in
Canada, aiming to lower the rising rates of
suicide, according to The Globe and Mail.
Rae spoke out about the necessity for the
issue to be dealt with in an opinion piece
published in The Globe Oct. 4.
“Suicide is not just a personal tragedy,
a life cut short, an existential decision that
leaves disbelief and devastation behind. It
has become far more,” Rae wrote.
This is a topic that has long been
stigmatized and surrounded by secrecy,
according to the Canadian Association for
Suicide Prevention (CASP).
“In the past three decades, more than
100,000 Canadians died by suicide. Every
year in Canada, an average of 3,750 people
die by suicide,” the CASP said in a statement
on their website.
A national suicide prevention strategy
has been put forward by Liberal MPs, and
the Conservatives have backed the motion,
according to the CBC.
“Obviously, we will look at any specific
ideas to see how we can improve on this
particular national health problem,” Prime
Minister Stephen Harper said in response
to a question posed by Rae during question
period.
Rae said suicide prevention needs to be
addressed on a political scale.
“When I say that suicide has now become
a political question, I do not mean that it is in
any sense partisan,” he wrote.
“But we do have to admit that, if people
were better housed, and less poor, and more
able to be accepted for who they are, they
would be less likely to allow setbacks to
become a reason to end it all.”
“We’re the only country in the industrial
world that doesn’t have a national strategy,”
Rae said in the House of Commons Oct. 4.
Bob Rae is leading the way for a national action plan for suicide prevention. || photo courtesy of Alex Smyth
Dammy Damstrom Albach, president of
the CASP, told CTV he hopes that Canada
will be able to declare that it has put together
a national strategy before the next World
Suicide Prevention Day Sept. 10, 2012.
“We have been calling for a national
suicide prevention strategy for well over a
decade. It often felt like no one in Ottawa
was listening,” said Tim Wall, executive
director of the CASP, in a release from the
Canadian Mental Health Association.
The release called for greater
governmental involvement to set the
strategy in motion.
“We need leadership from our federal
politicians to advance good health policy . . .
It is astonishing that more hasn’t been done
to stop this serious yet often preventable
public health problem,” said Nizar Ladha,
president of the Canadian Psychiatric
Association in the release.
Suicide is an issue that has affected the
lives of many young people.
In 2008, Nadia Kajouji, first-year student
at Carleton, drowned herself in the Rideau
River, after suffering from depression and
many other struggles. She was encouraged
to commit suicide in an online chat room by
former Minnesota nurse William MelchertDinkel.
Some students acknowledge the necessity
for suicide to be recognized as a dangerous
consequence of various factors.
“[Suicide] has become an issue because of
bullying, stress, home life and other things
that can pile on,” said Edward Seymour,
first-year computer science student at
Carleton.
Others believe that with modern
technology, suicide has become an even
more prevalent issue.
“Technology, the Internet and social
networking have opened an entirely new
door to bullies,” said Mykola Hughes, firstyear political science student at Carleton. q
Drunk Facebooking
could be linked to
alcoholism
Students who post Facebook pictures and status updates about getting
drunk are more likely to have drinking
problems, according to a study by the
University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Out of the 224 undergraduates surveyed, two-thirds of the students didn’t
have any reference to alcohol on their
pages.
The rest either mentioned or referenced non-problematic social drinking,
or showed evidence of more dangerous drinking habits, like intoxication or
blacking out, according to Reuters.
Students who showed references
to alcohol were then required to take a
10-question assessment test.
Nearly six in 10 students whose
Facebook pages had references to intoxication and other dangerous drinking
habits showed risks for alcohol abuse
and alcohol dependence, as well as other
drinking related problems, according to
Reuters.
Megan A. Moreno, lead author of
the study and an assistant professor of
adolescent medicine at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine
and Public Health, said the results could
help schools find out if certain students
show early signs of alcoholism, according to a press release from the National
Institute of Health.
This, in turn, may allow schools to
intervene before the problems become
serious. Some students don’t agree with
the study’s findings.
Meagen Kelly, a second-year student
at Ryerson University, said drunk Facebook updates don’t mean a thing.
“Drunken status updates don’t show
a sign of a drinking problem,” Kelly said.
“It just shows that people can not put
away their phones while drunk.”
— Cassandra Gallo
For the rest of this story visit
charlatan.ca
For the rest of this story visit
charlatan.ca
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make lifelong friends, and experience unique
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8
charlatan/oped
For web exclusives . . .
Blog Posts
Religion: Baha’i faith
New religion blogger Donald
Lucas, a member of the Baha’i
community, discusses whether
there’s a place for God in
academia.
Overheard at
Carleton
(A guy and a girl make out)
Girl: I’ve never felt this way
before.
Guy: I’ve never felt this sticky
before!
OOO
Religion: Islam
Muhammad Mohamed talks
about what he learned over
the weekend at a conference
organized by the Revert
Muslims Association.
Person 1: The eighth
commandment says, ‘Thou
Shalt Not Bootycalleth Thine
Neighbor.’
Person 2: Really?
Person 1: No, stupidoh!
OOO
Opinions
Election wraps up
James Craig, a public affairs and
policy management student,
reflects on the results of the
Oct. 6 Ontario provincial
election.
Is fat funny on TV?
Andrew Kelly examines the
weight gain of TV character
Mac from It’s Always Sunny in
Philadelphia. Did he take it too far
just to get some laughs?
charlatan.ca
(On the bus)
Guy: Yo fuck 2012, man.
I’mma live in the forest.
January 1st, I’m moving out
and finding a nice tree.
OOO
Guy: I really enjoyed how
CBC said “Liveral,” rather
than Liberal a few times. That
made me laugh quite a bit!
Girl: The whole election made
me laugh quite a bit!
OOO
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overheards to:
oped@charlatan.ca
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October 13 - October 19, 2011
Gandhi statue doesn’t belong on campus
RE: “Gandhi statue unveiled at
Carleton,” Oct. 6-12, 2011
I passed by the Gandhi statue for
the first time Oct. 6. It certainly does
justice to the man and it looks nice on
campus. But it’s kind of weird.
The statue was a gift from India
to honour Gandhi, someone the Indian high commissioner to Canada
called “the greatest man of all time.”
You can’t turn down a gift like that.
But let’s face the facts. Carleton isn’t
exactly the most popular kid on the
block. We don’t have the history or
architecture our local competitor U
of O can boast. We’re big, modernish and really unremarkable. Placing
a statue of Mohandas Gandhi here
in far-flung Ottawa, on a university
campus with a predominantly nonHindu student body, is questionable
to say the least. Why are our grounds
home to a statue of an Indian civil
rights icon who probably never heard
of Carleton — a man who has already
received decades of positive attention
from billions of people around the
world and already has an ass-load
of statues in his likeness? Isn’t there
some Indian cultural centre or Hindu
temple that would appreciate this a
lot more?
Let’s carve out a name for ourselves and erect a statue of someone
who means something to Carleton,
and vice versa. Here are a few candidates: A. Former prime minister and
Carleton chancellor Lester B. Pearson.
This guy won a Nobel Peace Prize for
how he handled the Suez Canal crisis.
Also, he was prime minister during
the introduction of universal health
care, student loans and the current
Canadian flag. B. Sir Guy Carleton.
Our school’s namesake defended
Canada against American invaders
and sculptors love making statues of
people from that era. C. Henry Marshall Tory. He was the first president
of the university back when we were
Carleton College. Check out his
Wikipedia page and tell me a statue
of him wouldn’t look badass. These
are just a few other dead guys for
your consideration. At least they’d
give a damn.
—Matt Casey,
third-year journalism
Occupy Ottawa offers hope for change
As we look toward the future with
a global environmental catastrophe, a
dysfunctional political system, and a
crippled economy, I frankly have
little faith in the powers that be who
support the status quo.
On Oct. 15, millions will form
protest encampments in 1,200 cities
across the globe. Ottawa will answer
the call with Occupy Ottawa’s first
general assembly at noon in Confederation Park.
While I by no means speak for
the leaderless groundswell of popular dissent, I recognize the hope for
a fundamental change in the way
we do things as a species. A transnational movement is beginning to
take shape on this Earth — one that’s
fed up with the prevailing mindset of
profit before people, the increasingly
Orwellian behaviour of our governments, and the overall bleak future
we appear doomed to inherit.
These protests raise existential
concerns, which are outside the
realm of current political discourse.
One can’t run for election by questioning the logic of economic growth,
a campaign can’t be fought on the
contradictions of consumerism and
sustainability, and no politician
would question the ability of dominant civilization to function as it does
within a post-carbon world. There’s
no discourse to ask if stock markets
truly promote human fulfillment, or
if the labour-for-income paradigm is
still appropriate for an increasingly
automated economy. This movement
represents the chance to embrace a
new human narrative. We know we
don’t have the answers yet, but that’s
besides the point.
As we enter into an era of immense technological possibility, we
face challenges that may require a
new definition of progress and a new
relationship between humanity and
the planet. Albert Einstein reminds
us: “the significant problems we
have cannot be solved at the same
level of thinking with which we created them.”
—Peter McCartney,
third-year journalism
University of Ottawa
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Opinions/Editorial
9
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Op/Ed Editor: Ilana Belfer • oped@charlatan.ca
Concert failed to rock the vote
The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA)’s
“Rock the Vote” concert was intended to motivate students to
go out and cast their ballots in the Oct. 6 provincial election.
With a historically low voter turnout of 49.2 per cent and
only 100 to 150 people attending K-OS’ DJ set at the Oct. 5 concert, clearly, more should have been done.
The failure of the “Rock the Vote” concert comes as a result of CUSA not doing enough to secure a good venue and
a big-name headliner. Their lacklustre advertising campaign
probably didn’t help either.
Held at Oliver’s Pub, the concert was closed to students
under 19. This cut off a key demographic, since 18-year-olds
can vote, too. This also contributed to low ticket sales, according to organizers, who ended up giving $5 tickets away for free.
Either Classified or Lupe Fiasco was originally supposed to
headline the event at Lansdowne Park, but that fell through,
according to CUSA president Obed Okyere. Last year’s concert
was successful because LMFAO was able to not only draw a
crowd, but hype them up to vote for the municipal election, too.
Even if students over 19 wanted to see K-OS DJ (not even
perform), they probably didn’t hear about the event. CUSA’s
website still reads “more details to come” and most of the posters on campus were advertising the “Rock the Vote” barbecue,
not the concert.
Events like “Rock the Vote” have the potential to engage
youth in ways more political events can’t, as Paul Dewar pointed out at the concert. Unfortunately, CUSA didn’t seize this
opportunity to promote student involvement in the democratic
process.
q
Occupy Wall Street lacks focus
Occupy Wall Street is a movement that has taken the world
by storm since the original protest in New York City Sept. 17.
Similar protests have resulted in mass arrests in several cities
across North America. Ottawa might be next.
Occupy Ottawa had their first meeting Oct. 6, and will be
holding a general assembly Oct. 15, when they’ll determine a
location to “occupy.”
While it’s admirable that protesters are passionate and
loud enough to evoke so much attention and participation,
the movement’s mission lacks focus, which will likely stand
in the way of its success. Sure, the movement stemmed from
a protest targeting Wall Street, the centre of American capitalism. But what do these protesters want instead?
Dysfunction and corruption in governments, in general, is
far too big an issue to cover with only one protest.
Occupy Wall Street protesters’ left-wing ideologies remain
just that — ideals. The organizers have introduced no official list of demands offering solutions to the problems they’re
bringing up. The only list that exists is on the unofficial website for the protest, where supporters can suggest things that
could appear on the official list.
The protesters should pick one area of government, and
focus on one specific issue at a time. That way, their message
will come across more clearly to the public and to each other.
Are all supporters of this movement, including major labour
unions, protesting for and against the same causes?
With so many messages involved, the core message of the
movement is being fractured — whatever that message is.
If the Occupy Wall Street supporters want to be successful
in affecting social change, they need to pick a strong, clear
message and a specific purpose. If they don’t, someone else
— perhaps the media — will likely pick one for them. q
the
charlatan poll
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Yes: 41 per cent
Oct 13 -Oct 19, 2011
Volume 41, Issue 10
Room 531 Unicentre
1125 Colonel By Drive
Carleton University
Ottawa, ON — K1S 5B6
General: 613-520-6680
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Circulation: 8,500
No: 59 per cent
Editor-in-Chief
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editor@charlatan.ca
Production Assistant
Andrew Nguyen
News Editors
Jessica Chin and
Jane Gerster
National Editor
Cassie Aylward
Features Editor
Cullen Bird
Less than half of Ontarians voted in the Oct. 6 provincial election, which was an all-time low — p. 6
Voters won’t turn up if turned down
on campus come election day — especially when they see
a polling station set up in one of the residence buildings. If
CUSA is going to launch an advertising campaign, they should
inform students. But they made no mention of any restrictions.
It’s not like Brewer Park is far. From the athletics building,
it’s probably a two-minute walk. But why make the process
more complicated than it needs to be? What valid reason is
Repetitions of “Did you vote yet?” from students repre- there for having to turn away students, just because they don’t
senting political parties on campus were palpable on provincial live in residence? The added administrative work necessary
to be able to accommodate students located outside of their
election day Oct. 6.
Whether it was the flocks of red, blue and orange attire, or assigned polling zone certainly can’t take that much extra legthe Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA)’s post- work.
Out of a student population of over 20,000, only about
ers comparing political parties’ platforms, a clear message was
being sent to the student body: exercise your democratic right 3,000 had the opportunity to vote on campus. Granted, not
even close to all the students at Carleton live in the Ottawa
to vote. And vote I did.
I walked into Fenn Lounge in Residence Commons, pro- Centre riding where the university is located, but I’m sure a
vided proof of residence and filled out my ballot — simple significant enough number do.
It may not seem like a big
enough . . . because I live on
deal to check online and walk
residence.
If students are less inclined to cast
a few more minutes, but when
Turns out you had to be
their ballots in the first place, those on
voter apathy among students is
living on campus to vote at
acknowledged as being signifithe campus polling station.
the fence about voting certainly aren’t
cantly lower than the provincial
I watched numerous stugoing to make the extra effort to go off
or federal average, this is a probdents get turned away and
campus.
lem.
told to go to the next closIf students are less inclined
est polling station at Brewer
to cast their ballots in the first
Park.
place, those on the fence about
Elections Canada manvoting certainly aren’t going to
dates that polling stations for
advance polling are open to anyone in the riding where the make the extra effort to go anywhere off campus.
This is the sad reality. We live in a province and country
polling station is located. On election day, though, each voter
is only able to vote at their assigned polling station, which is where young people aren’t voting. According to a Library of
Parliament report, voter turnout amongst people aged 18 to 24
determined by their address.
For students, this becomes problematic. While living away was 20 per cent below the national average in the 2008 federal
from home, as is the case for me and most of my friends, your election. If this is such a big problem, Elections Canada should
permanent address is likely your parents’ address. As a re- be going out of its way to make sure students are voting, not
sult, many students wouldn’t have received a voter card. This discouraging them.
Regardless of the justification for the decision, it doesn’t
means they would have been forced to check the Elections Onsuffice. How hard could it have been to accommodate those
tario website to confirm their assigned polling station.
Let’s be honest — a student isn’t going to make this much students living in the Ottawa Centre riding?
Would the riding’s outcome have differed had more stueffort. If they’re on campus, they’re going to be inclined to vote
on campus. In fact, it almost seemed like CUSA was telling dents not been turned away? Maybe not. But the principle still
them to. I saw posters around campus advertising an election stands. If we want a more politically engaged society of politicday barbecue taking place in the residence quad to promote ally engaged citizens, more needs to be done from the ground
voting. If the act of voting is being promoted on campus, stu- up, and loosening election day restrictions for students would
dents are likely to assume they’ll have the opportunity to vote be a good place to start. q
Op/Ed Editor
Ilana Belfer
Perspectives Editor
Hilary Roberts
Arts Editor
Juanita Bawagan
Sports Editor
Erika Stark
Photo Editor
Carol Kan
Graphics Editor
Don Dimanlig
Arik Ligeti is a third-year
journalism student who says it should
have been easier for students to vote in
the Ontario provincial election.
Web Editor
Chris Herhalt
Copy Editor
Candice So
Staff Photographer
Pedro Vasconcellos
Web Guru
Desirée Walko
Social Media
Coordinator
Shamit Tushakiran
Contributors:
Alex Baillie, Eric Balnar, Matt Blenkarn, Sarah Brandon, Willie Caroll, Matt Casey, Kathleen Clark, James Craig,
Maciej Czop, Akinaom Deresse, Johnathan Duncan, Joel Eastwood, Cassandra Gallo, Brianna Harris, JasmineKelly,
Andrew Kelly, Anna Kozlova, Clifford Lam, Matthew Lee, Arik Ligeti, Donald Lucas, Peter McCartney, Muhammad
Mohamed, Gianluca Nesci, Luke Ottenhof, Lana Peric, JasonQuinn, John Ragosin, Oliver Sachgau, Lewis Smith
Tara Sprickerhoff, HollyStanczak, Dessy Sukendar, Caitlin Teed, HannahThompson, Fraser Tripp, Yamina Tsalamlal, Oliver Van Ousen, Pedro Vasconcellos, Marina von Stackelberg, Joseph Webb, Jon Willemsen
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’s official clothing choice is lumpy fall sweaters. Contents are copyright 2011. 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.
Features
11
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Features Editor: Cullen Bird • features@charlatan.ca
Information Overload
Data Distractions
By Yamina Tsalamlal &
Kathleen Clark
Jeffery Satchwill, a fifthyear communications student
at the University of Ottawa,
gets all his news on the way
to work from his iPad, a tool
to access the plethora of information virtually within his
grasp.
“I like it in the sense that it
allows me to instantaneously fill my natural curiosity,”
Satchwill said. “To be able to
access the Internet anywhere
I go is pretty remarkable and
useful.”
He said his only concern is
relying too much on technology. And he’s not alone.
From technology writers
to neuroscientists, experts
have been studying the
“You can have it with any
communication means: Twitter, Facebook, Internet chat,
text messages and what have
you,” Pijpers said in a phone
interview.
“If you stick to one, then you
don’t have an information overload. But if you use various
communication means, with
the same information, then you
are probably suffering information overload. But don’t blame
the tool. Blame the person for
not selecting the right tool and
filtering the right information.”
Pijpers isn’t the only one
who has pointed out people’s
misuse of technology.
Pulled apart
“We pull the trigger on
the guns, not the guns them-
Being distracted can affect
productivity. Jackson said
studies have shown the average worker switches tasks
every three minutes.
Not only that, but a distracted lifestyle also affects
relationships. She argued that
with sites like Facebook, unwired relationships are few
and far between.
“[We need] depth of connections, not just hyper
connectivity and expanding
networks of people,” Jackson
said.
In other words, people need
face-time with friends and
family.
Author and journalist David
Shenk said he agrees.
Before the birth of iPads
and smartphones, he wrote the
1997 book, Data Smog: Surviv-
”
I think there will be a time in the next couple of years that
people make the wrong decisions because they just missed the
information, they didn’t get that nugget out of those hundred
emails.
— Guus Pijpers,
author of Information Overload
impact of technology on
people’s shortening attention
spans.
Used properly, laptops,
smart phones, and tablets are
handy organizational tools.
But the relationship between
humans and their pocket-portals to the Internet can lead to
overdosing on information.
High on information
Guus Pijpers’ book, Information Overload - A System
for Better Managing Everyday Data, warned of this.
Trying to absorb too much
information is neither new
nor inevitable, according to
Pijpers, though he admits the
process is accelerated by the
host of gadgets at people’s
disposal.
There are simply too many
ways to access the same information.
selves,” said Maggie Jackson,
author of Distracted: The
Erosion of Attention and the
Coming Dark Age.
In Distracted, Jackson argued
that new applications and uses
of technology have eroded our
attention spans and capacity
to think deeply and analytically
about things.
She also looked into what
innovations science has come
up with to improve people’s
capacity to pay attention.
“In the past, the now archaic definition of the word
[distracted] meant to be pulled
in pieces, or to be scattered.
And I think that actually fits
how many people feel today . . .
They’re always reacting to their
environment, the communications media and are always in
a hurry,” Jackson said.
Doing more, achieving less
ing the Information Glut.
In this book, Shenk outlined
many concerns now proven
correct of what he called “the
rapid shift from information
scarcity to information abundance.”
While he finds innovations
in technology exciting, he said
he believes society needs to
start putting more value on
slow and creative thinking, instead of speed.
“To be constantly stimulated, accessible, reached is
not something we want in our
lives. It’s thrilling, just not
nourishing,” Shenk said.
Similarly, Jackson argued
that more value should be
given to reflection — not just
the first answer that pops up
on Google.
According to Jackson, it’s
easy to pick the first answer
that appears, but much more
difficult to find a second or
third answer. This takes patience. Yet slower-paced, more
patient individuals aren’t considered as productive.
“Out of all this mix, I’d argue
that we’re not valuing slower,
focused types of attention,”
Jackson said.
“We are tending to value the
quick, the multitasking style.
We think that that’s the way
to get things done. We’re trying so hard to be efficient that
we’re becoming inefficient.
We’re not giving ourselves
time for slow thinking, which
is highly creative,” she added.
The answer to this may be to
spend some time “unplugged,”
away from the computer
screen, Shenk said. People
should make themselves inaccessible from time to time in
order to be more reflective, he
added.
Beyond our capacity
paper, notes and that kind of
stuff because we cannot hold
the information,” D’Angiulli
said.
“To manipulate and work on
it, you need to hold it. But when
there’s capacity limits and you
have to do this very quickly —
for example sitting in a class
for a very complex, even boring lecture — you need some
external memory to help you.”
Multi-wasting
Multi-tasking requires more
than just a brain, he said.
More and more, people are
turning to technology as their
extended memory.
But D’Angiulli said he has
reservations about relying too
heavily on the new toys.
“The Internet and other
gadgets are supposed to be
supporting technology to do
the multi-tasking. But what
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happens [is that devices like
the mobile phone] will distract
you and then it becomes dangerous,” he said.
“This gadgetry very, very
quickly can produce addiction.
I can do email anytime now,
right. Even in the bathroom. That
means the technology is controlling you but you don’t have
any executive control over it.”
The addiction can sometimes make studying pretty
ineffective, he said.
More seriously, there are
dangers of people believing
they are master of their smart
phone while they happen to be
driving.
An interpersonal solution
There are a few easy ways
to avoid information overload, Pjipers said. Friends and
acquaintances can act as conduits of information. People
can distill long, tedious articles into informational tidbits.
“A human can add more
value than anything else. And
the famous phrase I use: talking to a person for five minutes
gives you more information
than five hours online,” he
said.
“People forget. They think
we need to find it on the Internet. If you have to paint
your house do you go on the
internet or do you talk to your
neighbours and friends to look
if they have a good painter?
You can find anything on the
Internet of course, but if you
want a really good painter for
your house, you talk to your
neighbour, you talk to your
friends. That’s where you get
the qualified information.”
An ignorant future?
If people don’t tone down
their information mining, Pijpers said he worries society
will begin to overlook data that
is actually important.
“I think there will be a time
in the next couple of years
that people make the wrong
decisions because they just
missed the information, they
didn’t get that nugget out of
those hundred emails,” he
said. “It’s not that the information is not available but just
people miss it.”
Jackson said she foresees
pile-ups on the information
highway.
“The potential to be well-informed is there but I think that
we’re at risk of creating a new
form of ignorance,” Jackson said.
“In the past, ignorance was
based on the lack of information . .
. now ignorance is based on an unwillingness or inability to access
the information and turn it into
knowledge.”
q
Amedeo D’Angiulli, a neuroscience professor at Carleton
University, studies the oversaturated brain. He said his
research on memory and how
humans select information
from their environments has
helped spark an interest in the
science behind multi-tasking.
“Our cognitive system is
very limited,” he said.
In fact, [people are only
capable of processing about
five to seven “chunks” of information at any given time,
according to D’Angiulli.
“And that’s the amount we
can consciously control,” he
said.
“A chunk of information
could be anything. It could be
five to seven digits or five to
seven words or five to seven
images . . . the rest of the information is lost or we are not
entirely sure if it’s transferred
to long-term memory.”
Outsourcing the info
To overcome this biological
barrier, people have developed
the clever technique of “extended external memory.”
Simply put, people take
notes, read maps, consult
drawings and use symbols to
fill in where their brains can’t
manage.
“That’s why people are constantly relying [on] pieces of
People who bombard themselves with information may be decreasing their productivity by overloading their brain. || photo illustration by Pedro vasconcellos
f
by Anna Kozlova
From a map of the local
transit network to a graph displaying a cellphone’s monthly
usage, information graphics
have become a regular part of
people’s lives.
Infographics have been
around for thousands of years,
with cave paintings being the
earliest example, but they
haven’t always been well-received.
“Most people in the past
have shunned infographics,”
said Larry Weldon, a statistics
professor at Simon Fraser University. “Now they’re seen as
a great way to communicate a
message.”
Chris Collins, an assistant
professor in the faculty of science at the University of Ontario
Institute of Technology (UOIT),
said people use infographics
all the time, even though they
may not call them that.
“We draw diagrams, make
sketches . . . information
graphics are just a formalized
version of that,” said Collins,
who specializes in information
visualization at UOIT.
Infographics help communicate information to the public,
he added.
Infographics
also
help
people focus on the information itself by “[moving] the
information from the periphery
. . . to a more central position
in the argument,” said Brian
Fisher, an associate professor
at Simon Fraser University’s
School of Interactive Arts and
Technology, in an email.
In addition to simplifying
information, however, infographics have the potential of
complicating it, which Collins
said can lead to information
overload.
“The temptation is always to
try to present more information
in such a way that it is understandable by the reader. This is
not easy,” Fisher said.
“There’s certainly a tendency to make them overly
complex,” said John Dill, a
is
professor at the School of
Interactive Arts & Technology
at Simon Fraser University.
“It ends up not being helpful
and also [turns] off the person who you are trying to sell
this visualization to.”
No longer limited to the
two dimensional print images
often displayed in textbooks,
infographics have evolved into
web graphics that allow users
to interact with the data.
One way to increase the
comprehension
of
infographics is through adding
interaction, essentially giving
the reader an active role in
the conversation, Fisher said.
“This parallels what has
happened in YouTube etc .
. . where we went from consuming media from radio and
television to reworking it and
re-presenting it,” Fisher said.
Interactive
infographics
can help alleviate information overload by putting the
viewers in control and letting
them choose the information
they want to look at, according to Collins.
There are now entire departments dedicated to the
creation of infographics at
publications like the Toronto
Star, the New York Times and
CNN, according to Collins.
“I think it’s a really exciting and hot area right now,”
he said.
While the field of infographics is rapidly developing, it’s
important for people to possess the visual literacy to
understand them, he added.
Fisher said he believes
people are becoming more
and more used to information
graphics.
“I think we are beginning to
build a ‘visual vocabulary’ to
communicate the implications
of data that a reasonable proportion of the population can
understand,” he said.
“This means that instead
of simply accepting [or not]
the conclusions of a writer,
readers can draw their own
conclusions.”
q
Arts
Low turnout for K-OS’ ‘Rock the Vote’ set
12
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Arts Editor: Juanita Bawagan • arts@charlatan.ca
by Caitlin Teed
K-OS did a live DJ set for the “Rock the Vote” concert Oct. 5. ||
Neighborhoods
Blink-182
DGC/Interscope Records
Neighborhoods,
Blink-182’s
first studio album in eight years,
represents the growth of the pop
punk trio as they have matured
and pushed new boundaries
with their music since their “indefinite hiatus.”
Released Sept. 27, the album contains many themes that
may seem foreign to die-hard
Blink-182 fans, but it’s perhaps
best described in the words of
Blink themselves: “I guess this is
growing up.”
Following the release of their
self-titled 2003 album, the band
struggled with internal issues,
which came to a climax with
their 2005 “indefinite hiatus.”
However, in 2009, the band announced their reunion and this
subsequent record, which infamously took two years to record.
The band took an autonomous
approach, self-producing the entire record.
An even farther departure
from such efforts as the iconic
Enema of the State and Take Off
Your Pants and Jacket, the album
exudes a more aggressive, bleak
tone straight from the opening
track, “Ghost on the Dancefloor.”
With a synth-infused drums
and guitar intro, vocalist Tom
Delonge opens the record with
photo by
Maciej Czop
wistful, haunting lyrics: “I’ll never
let you down, boy / I’ll never let
you go / Her subtle hint of life /
Is so innocent and scary.”
Onward and upward, the album kicks into “Natives,” which
delivers a frenetic, speedy guitar lick. Fronted by bassist Mark
Hoppus, it’s perhaps the most
nostalgic throwback to the late
‘90s Blink.
The lead single, “Up All
Night,” is a delightful crucible of
past, present and future. Angstridden and bearing romantic
memories of older Blink tracks,
the catchy, upbeat rocker pounds
away with stunningly sharp fills
from drummer Travis Barker
and reverb-drenched vocals from
Hoppus and Delonge, who exchange vocal fire in the verses.
Another highlight off the album is
“Kaleidoscope,” which explores
the complex muddle of issues surrounding the creation of the new
album.
Let me be clear in saying that
the Poway, Calif. trio are exploring new grounds and are no
longer young men.
Neighborhoods is a far more mature and dark record; long gone
are the days of juvenile potty
humour of Blink past. Replacing
the usual light-hearted, prankster
themes are lyrics dealing with
death, depression, and loneliness. Their personal interests as a
band have evolved over the past
decade, and with it, so has their
sound.
— Luke Ottenhof
For the rest of this story, visit
charlatan.ca
Before it was time to cast the
vote in the Oct. 6 provincial election, Carleton rocked the vote with
a live DJ set by K-OS at Oliver’s
Pub Oct. 5.
Despite showing up a little later
than expected, K-OS mixed fresh
songs from the DJ stand above
the dance floor where an excited
crowd of 100-150 congregated.
The general tone of K-OS’ set
was retro-rap with a bit of Michael
Jackson thrown in. While it was a
DJ set, K-OS still sang hits “Sunday
Morning” and “Crabbuckit” from
behind the DJ booth.
Obed Okyere, president of the
Carleton University Student’s Association (CUSA), said he wanted
to ensure students were aware of
how important it was to vote the
following day.
“I think students are going to be
very excited about the fact that we
are doing something to motivate
them,” Okyere said.
The goal of this concert was to
encourage students to vote in the
election, but it had some drawbacks, said Rideau River Residence
Association (RRRA) president Kaisha Thompson. One of the issues
with this year’s “Rock the Vote”
concert was that it barred students
under the age of 19 from attending,
Thompson said.
“A lot of our students aren’t 19
years old and it has undercut our
ability to sell and promote tickets
because it is limited to students in
the upper years,” she said.
Tickets started being given out
for free after originally being sold for
$5 in advance. Artists such as Lupe
Fiasco and Classified were considered as possibilities to perform
at an all-ages concert taking place
at Lansdowne Park, but organizers
were unable to secure this, according to Thompson and Okyere.
Caresse Ley, a second-year journalism student, said K-OS is a great
artist but she would have preferred
to see Lupe Fiasco, and added that
Classified was also a bigger name.
“I thought the party would be
rocking early and it [was] not,” Ley
said. “I am not entirely sure that the
message is going to come through
the same as they hoped it would.”
Anil Naidoo, who was the New
Democratic Party (NDP) candidate
for Ottawa Centre, also made an
appearance at the event and spoke
about how important “Rock the
Vote” is to get young people out
to vote. “This is fun . . . the campaign is over so it is good to have
some good music,” Naidoo said
before K-OS’ set. “Looks like good
energy here and like it is going to
be a good night.”
Alongside Naidoo was OttawaCentre MP Paul Dewar, who also
spoke to students about the importance of voting. Dewar, who
recently declared his candidacy
for the NDP leadership race, said
events like vote mobs and concerts
can motivate students to come out
and support a greater initiative.
“These get-out-and-vote initiatives I will always go to because
they have a greater effect on students than more political events,”
he said. q
— with files from Clifford Lam
CUAG director wins lifetime achievement award
Diana Nemiroff said one of her greatest achievements was including aboriginal art in
the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. || photo by Joel Eastwood
by Matt Blenkarn
Diana Nemiroff, director of the
Carleton University Art Gallery
(CUAG), said the most important
thing early in her career was taking
risks — it appears to have paid off.
Nemiroff won the lifetime
achievement award Sept. 30 at the
Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG).
A former curator at the National
Gallery of Canada (NGC), Nemiroff was nominated for the award
by Sandra Dyck, the curator at the
CUAG. Nemiroff has expanded
the CUAG’s publications program,
enhanced its funding profile and
purchased important works, Dyck
said in an email.
Nemiroff said the award was
well-timed because she plans to
retire in June 2012. She worked as
a curator with the NGC from 1983
to 2005. During this time, she said
the gallery began to collect work
from Canadian aboriginal artists,
which before then had been the
domain of the Canadian Museum
of Civilization. Nemiroff described
this as both her “biggest risk” and
the decision that had the greatest
payback.
“Symbolically, to be excluded,
even if it’s only by appearance,
from the [NGC], is to be excluded from the nation’s art history,
and that’s completely unacceptable,” she said. “So it was terribly
important to a lot of people that
we [did] this, and that we [did] it
right.”
“Crossings,” which examined
work of artists who were living
outside of their countries of origin,
was her favourite exhibition with
the NGC, she said.
“I felt that it was an exhibition
that was enormously relevant to
our times,” she said. “In terms of
the quality of the exhibition, I was
very happy with it. It was a big,
broad, ambitious exhibition that
included some of the best artists
working internationally today, as
well as some really important Canadian artists.”
Nemiroff said coming to the
CUAG had its own benefits, such
as the chance to work on a more local and community level.
“What the award does is to
give a name to something that is
a very real part of working in a
place like this,” she said. “You’re
much more connected to your colleagues and to the problems on
the ground.”
q
October 13 - October 19, 2011
charlatan.ca/arts
13
Sewing together art and psychology
say it’s soft, so it’s visceral.”
Her work plays on the physical and mental familiarity we have with textiles and
languages, she said.
One of her whimsical projects was keeping a lost “Mitten Database” from 2001-2007.
She has also displayed sculptures of words
in their original script made out of cultural
fabrics. These are just a few indications of
Bergmans’ inclination towards interesting
stories behind recycled textiles.
She said she often remixes the secondhand fabrics from their previous context to
create not only her art pieces, but her clothing line as well.
Currently, Bergmans is a resident artist at
Banff Centre — an arts, cultural, and educational conference facility in Banff, Alta. She
said she’s planning a sculpture of human
organs made from a supply of mis-manufactured military-issued socks. Others will be
made out of scraps of wedding dresses.
This project will give her an opportunity
to weave her ideas together in a larger scale,
she said.
q
by Dessy Sukendar
The works of Carleton psychology graduate Karina Bergmans, in terms of physical
scale, are finally catching up to her name.
The Ottawa-based multidisciplinary artist’s most recent large-scale installation work
is currently on display in “Fieldwork,” in
Perth, Ont.
The art installation has three giant graffitistyle words, spelling out “OOH AH WOW,”
made out of tarps and stuffed with hay. They
have been installed outdoors and will remain
there for the entire winter.
Bergmans, a 1996 psychology graduate, said
it was during her years at Carleton that she realized sewing, coupled with her degree, could
potentially be channeled into creating art.
Bergmans had always been curious about
people’s behaviour and motivation, she said,
which is why her art toys with people’s perception. She said she believes in making her
art approachable, often in a humorous way.
“Fieldwork” stems from an ongoing,
relatively smaller-scale “TEXT-ing” project,
composed of brightly coloured letter-shaped
pillows. Both projects invite the public to play
with creating words and taking pictures, she
said.
“TEXT-ing” has been touring since 2007 in
galleries and more unconventional settings.
For example, Bergmans said she took a photo
of the word “COZY” on snow-filled benches
and streets.
Early in her career, Bergmans carved out
Architecture
For more coverage . . .
Karina Bergmans stuffing giant letters for her “Fieldwork” installation. ||
her principle in making her work open to
“public intervention,” she said.
Textiles have always played a role in her
art and its interaction. “We are so familiar
photo courtesy of
J. Derikozis
with textiles,” Bergmans said. “In upholstery,
towels, bedding, etc . . . There’s a tactile connection there. The sense of touch is immediate
and gratifying . . . you feel a texture, you can
Plowing through Hollywood
Akinaom Deresse reviewed Speed-thePlow, a dark, witty play that offers a
satirical look at the movie industry.
charlatan.ca
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14
charlatan.ca/arts
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Romanticizing data
“Harold and Maude meets A
Walk to Remember”
Restless
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classic
Ajay Bhattacharyya combines his electronic beats with Amy Kirkpatrick’s soft vocals. ||
Embracing a society built around rapidly
changing technology and working off each
other’s own styles, Amy Kirkpatrick and Ajay
Bhattacharyya formed Data Romance.
With the release of their self-titled EP in
June, the Victoria-based electro-indie duo kicked
off a North American tour that includes a stop
in Ottawa at the Raw Sugar Café Oct. 16. The
Charlatan’s Fraser Tripp caught up with
them on the road.
The Charlatan (TC): How did you get
started?
Amy Kirkpatrick (AK): Well, I’ve been playing piano since I was four and then I started
doing just solo guitar when I was 16, just
sort of taught myself . . . A couple of years
ago we started writing electronic music, or
[Bhattacharyya] started writing some beats
and then sending them to me and then I’d
write vocals over them.
For more coverage . . .
Breaking the mould
Jason Quinn reviewed Mastodon’s new
album, The Hunter, that sets its aim on a
larger audience.
charlatan.ca
provided
TC: How, if at all, have you found that
working with Bhattacharyya has changed
your musical style?
AK: It’s changed it a lot. I mean, he has such
an eclectic music taste that I wouldn’t think
to have listened to on my own. Back when I
was doing solo piano stuff, I was listening
to more solo female artists to get inspiration
and then when [Bhattacharyya] came along,
obviously he had somewhat heavier tastes
and that’s kind of affected what our sound
today is.
TC: Would you say that you learned anything from recording Data Romance that
you might have applied to your next EP, to
be released in the winter?
Ajay Bhattacharyya (AB): We’re such a
young band, I think we’re growing and
learning a lot, you know, by the day. I think
the second EP reflects that in that it’s more
ambitious. There’s a lot grander sound and
we tried writing in different ways. Usually,
I would come with the instrumentals first
and [Kirkpatrick] would put lyrics on top of
it. But [in our] second EP, we tried the approach where [Kirkpatrick] would write a
song just using piano or guitar, we’d check
the vocals and I’d build a beat around it.
For the rest of this story, visit
charlatan.ca
Enoch Brae (Henry Hopper, son of
the late great Dennis Hopper) is a deathobsessed teenager who spends most of his
time doing what death-obsessed teenagers
do. He lies down and draws crime scenestyle chalk outlines of himself. He plays
battleship against the ghost of a Japanese
kamikaze pilot named Hiroshi. And he
attends funerals of people he’s never met.
It’s at one of these funerals where he
meets Annabel Cotton. Cotton, played by
Mia Wasikowska, is a girl who has taken
a few pages out of Vampire Weekend
bassist Ezra Koenig’s style guide to form
a charming indie romantic interest which
no guy in his right mind could resist.
But Brae isn’t in his right mind, so resist he does, until prompted by Hiroshi
to go say hello. Brae and Cotton bond
over the death of his parents, and he
warms up to her.
They start doing charming things
like hanging out under bridges, going to
morgues, and talking to Hiroshi.
This is the essential plot of Gus Van
Writing
Competition
Carleton University
Do you have the “write” stuff? Then send
us your original, unpublished short story
or poetry (any style or form).
Eligibility: all Carleton University staff,
faculty, students. Alumni and retirees
Short story category
Entrants may submit one (1) story which
must be typed in English and no more
than 2,000 words.
Poetry category
Entrants may submit up to three (3)
poems, each not exceeding 60 lines and
typed in English.
Final-round judges: Authors Frances
Itani and Mark Frutkin and poets Marilyn
Iwama and George Bowering.
Prizes (in each category)
1st prize: $500 ■ 2nd prize: $350
Honourable mention: $50
There is a C$15 entry fee.
No electronic submissions.
Competition opens September 12, 2011
and closes December 16, 2011.
Full details and rules at
carleton.ca/bookstore.
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Writer’s Workshop
Improve your poetry or short stories
Sunday, October 2, 2011
1546 Chatelain Ave
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Cost: $40 or $30 for students
Location: Carleton University Bookstore
Full details on the Carleton University
Writing Competition website at
carleton.ca/bookstore
Sant’s new film, Restless. Van Sant is known
as a talented director, but his inconsistencies have always placed him outside the
pantheon of independent filmmakers. That
said, there was quite a bit of optimism
surrounding the production of this film,
because Van Sant was working on such
familiar territory: death.
Sadly, the familiarity hurt the film more
than helped it. The film feels, well, safe.
The camera is delicate and intimate at
all the right moments, and Danny Elfman’s
soft, acoustic guitar-heavy score adds nicely to the mood. But when you’re watching
the montage that serves as the transition
into the third act, you can’t help but feel
that you’ve seen this all before.
At no point is Van Sant pushing the
boundaries of the indie romance flick. It’s
like he picked up a script that was Harold
and Maude meets A Walk to Remember and
decided to make exactly that film.
However, there’s a lot to be said for the
ability of a good ending to make a film, and
the final act of Restless is excellent. Without
saying too much, it manages to be beautiful
and thought-provoking without seeming
too derivative, which is something it should
have shared with the first two-thirds of this
movie.
While it probably won’t blow you away,
Restless is still a movie worth watching. It
has the ability to remind us that we should
celebrate life while we’re alive to live it. Van
Sant’s earlier films may have had a preoccupation with death but it’s only in Restless that
he seems to have matured enough to accept it.
— Alex Baillie
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Perspectives
16
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Perspectives Editor: Hilary Roberts • perspectives@charlatan.ca
Stirring up social media comfort food
Mariette Nguessan, a fourth-year
law student at Carleton, sat down
with the Charlatan’s Hannah
Thompson to talk about Chicken
Soup For The Woman’s Soul, a
Facebook page with healthy lifestyle
tips for the modern woman.
The Charlatan (TC): When did you
decide to start your page, Chicken’s Soup For The Woman’s Soul,
and when did you actually set it
up?
Mariette Nguessan (MN): It’s really random because I was actually
in São Tomé and Príncipe (a country in Africa). It’s an island where
my dad lives. And I was just in my
bed, bored, and I’ve always had a
passion for cooking, and because I
was bored, I [was] like, “You know
what, why don’t I give women advice on how to stay healthy, how to
cook, everything that I love to do.”
I’m really passionate about hygiene.
I’m really passionate about cooking
and fitness and healthy eating, so
I’m like, “Why don’t I just start a
page?” And that’s how it started. I
was just bored in bed and the idea
came to me.
TC: Where did you get the idea for
Chicken’s Soup For The Woman’s
Soul?
Fourth-year law student Mariette Nguessan, 21, said she started a Facebook page to share her advice for healthy living with a wide range of women. ||
MN: The page is about empowering women and it’s very
comforting because I give a lot of
advice so that women know that
they’re not alone when they’re
going through rough things in
their lives, like relationships and
all the other problems they have.
It’s a page for women and it’s
supposed to be comforting like
chicken soup.
TC: What’s the goal of the page?
MN: It’s really to exchange with
other women how to stay healthy,
little tips they didn’t know before
that make a huge difference on
how to stay clean and how to stay
beautiful because a lot of times,
we don’t even think about these
things. And we have busy lifestyles. We’re in and we’re out. We
don’t really think about the little
things that make a difference on
how people perceive us and how
we are.
TC: How do you decide what goes
onto the page?
MN: Inspiration. If nothing comes
to my head, I don’t put anything.
If I’m busy, I don’t put [anything].
But if an idea comes in my head,
I just go and I do it. So basically,
inspiration, whatever comes to my
head.
TC: Where do you find the time
between your studies to update
the page?
Nguessan updates her Facebook page with posts about food, drink recipes, exercise,
personal care, shopping, beauty and other topics that women may find interesting.
MN: I don’t really. I mean, sometimes [when] I study, I’m like,
“OK, I’m going to give 10 min-
utes to just do this really quick.”
I mean, I try, but when I don’t
have time, I don’t do it. I don’t
force myself. It’s a project. No
one’s rushing me. It can be here
for years. I’m not in any rush to
do anything.
TC: Does anybody help?
MN: No. Well, I ask people to share
input if they have any, but no one
really helps me with the page. They
just put what they think. They just
contribute to what I write, so that’s
really cool.
TC: Who are you targeting with
your page?
MN: Women, women and women,
because men, we’re tired of them,
you know? They’re their own species. Us women, we need to come
together and just be the best that
we can be. You know, women, we
are the future. Like Beyoncé said,
“Girls, we run this world.” That’s
my view on things.
TC: Where do you see the page going in the future and do you think
it’ll go past Facebook?
MN: I’m a firm believer. I believe
in God and whatever happens in
life, happens. I don’t do things to
try to get recognition. I do it because I love it. And if it does go
Your Drug Information Centre
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613-526-3666
photos by
Carol Kan
past Facebook, that’s what God
wanted and obviously he has a bigger plan for me.
But you know, I take things
step by step. I don’t really plan my
life. I just do things because I love
[them].
q
Spoonfuls of soup
• Learn to listen to your
body! If your stomach is
growling [. . .] eat. If it feels
full, stop. If you are tired,
rest. If you have noticed
you are out of shape, get
back into shape. If there
is anything unusual about
the way you feel [. . .] look
into it to make sure everything is all right. Everybody is different and often
times, we don’t even know
what is best for our bodies.
[That’s] why is it important
to listen [to] our bodies because it sends signals to our
brain so that WE become
aware of what is going on
and give it what it needs.
By doing this you will
lead a healthier life both
physically and mentally.
• Important advice for the
day: whenever you buy
new clothes ALWAYS wash
them before you wear
[them]. [You] don’t even
want to know the amount
of people who tried it on
with body odour, and bacteria in places [you] don’t
want to know!
— source: Chicken Soup For
The Woman’s Soul
On-Campus Full Service Pharmacy
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- Private Consultation Area
- Travel Clinic Services
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Sports
18
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Sports Editor: Erika Stark • sports@charlatan.ca
Ravens open season with two losses
by Jon Willemsen
The Carleton Ravens men’s
hockey team started their season
on a losing note Oct. 7-8, dropping
both of their road games against
the Brock Badgers and the Western Mustangs.
“We were hoping to go in there
and come out with two wins, but
we didn’t perform to the best of
our capabilities both games,” said
Ravens defenceman Justin Caruana. “We need to find out what
is going on, get back to work this
week during practice, and try and
turn things around this coming
weekend.”
In their regular season opener
Oct. 7, the Ravens lost 6-3 to the
Badgers in St. Catharines, Ont.
Second-year defenceman Brad
Albert, team captain Brandon
MacLean, and fourth-year forward Shane Bakker scored for
the Ravens, while goaltender
Matthew Dopud stopped 18 of 23
shots in the loss.
The Badgers’ final goal was a
late empty-netter.
“I think we certainly struggled
in our first game,” said head coach
Marty Johnston. “We didn’t have
our legs the way we wanted to in
the first half of the game, and it
sort of snowballed from there.”
The following day, Carleton
The Ravens couldn’t recover from a 3-0 deficit against the Western Mustangs Oct. 8, losing their second straight game to open
their 2011-12 campaign with a 0-2 record. || photo courtesy of the Western Mustangs
played a much stronger game
against the Mustangs, ranked fifth
in the country, but still lost by a
score of 4-2.
The line of Joe Pleckaitis,
Jeff Hayes, and Ryan Berard accounted for both Ravens goals.
Second-year forwards Pleckaitis
and Hayes, both from Ottawa,
each had a goal and an assist,
while Berard notched two assists.
Ryan Dube was solid between
the pipes for the Ravens, turning
aside 27 of the 31 shots he faced.
“I thought we had a much better effort [Oct. 8] and played well
against one of the best teams in
the country,” Johnston said. “So
we are looking to build off that
performance and hopefully turn
it into a win [this] weekend.”
In order to get into the win
bracket, Johnston said the team
needs to work on their offensive
production. Carleton went a combined 0-11 on the power play in
their first two games.
“We’re really struggling to
score goals at the moment,” he
said. “We haven’t generated
enough scoring [at] even strength
and on our power plays.”
Looking forward, Caruana
said the team has to play from
the opening whistle to the final
buzzer if they want to improve.
The Ravens never led in either of
their two opening games due to
slow starts.
“I think our big problem this
weekend was playing the full 60
minutes,” he said. “We could put
good periods together, and some
good spurts here and here, but I
think we need to start faster and
get the jump on teams rather than
come from behind. If we do that, I
think we’ll be fine.”
The Ravens play their first two
home games of the season Oct. 1415 against the Guelph Gryphons
and the Waterloo Warriors.
“I think we’re still finding our
way,” Johnston said. “We are
hoping that we can continue to
improve our play, and make sure
that we are peaking at the right
time. We’re not setting any specific goals and we just want to make
sure that we are playing our best
at the end of the season.” q
Men’s hockey team adds NCAA talent
by Lewis Smith
The Carleton Ravens men’s
hockey team has added more
depth to their lineup, recruiting a
pair of former National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I players.
Defenceman Michael Folkes,
who last played for the Ohio State
Buckeyes, said he’s excited at the
prospect of a fresh start with the
Ravens.
“As soon as I got here, it felt like
I was part of the team,” Folkes said.
“Immediately, as soon as I got to
the dressing room, the team was
real nice and it felt really comfortable for me.”
The rugged defender’s childhood roots played a part in his
decision to play for the Ravens.
“I knew a bunch of the guys on
the team already from growing up
in [Burlington, Ont.] with them, so
after talking to them a few times,
it seemed like the right fit,” Folkes
said.
The 6’1” defenceman’s time in
the NCAA ended after a coaching
change at Ohio State brought an
unexpected change in his plans,
Folkes said.
“We got a new coach that came
in over the summer and he decided that things weren’t right for
a couple of the Canadian players
on the team,” Folkes said. “[The
coach] decided to make some
moves, and that ultimately led to
me ending up at Carleton.”
Folkes told the Charlatan radio
show Oct. 11 he wasn’t given any
indication about why he was let go,
other than that it “wasn’t because
of [his] abilities.” Folkes said he got
the news in a “two-minute meeting” with the coach.
He committed to the Ravens
midway through last season, but
wasn’t eligible to play until this
season.
In two seasons with the Buckeyes, Folkes contributed three
assists and racked up 28 penalty
minutes in 35 games as a shutdown
defenceman. He figures to be an
important cog in the Ravens’ back
end, providing some more grit and
a physical edge, which will be key
with the departure of captain Brad
Good.
“My physical play and my defensive defenseman style . . . will
definitely help the team in the long
run,” Folkes said.
He emphasized that his play
will require him to “[keep] the
puck out of the net” and “keep the
front of the net nice and clean for
the goalies.”
“We’re going to try and get
him in and see how he plays,” said
Ravens head coach Marty John-
ston. “We see him as a guy that
could be physical, can be a strong
force on the penalty kill and provide a solid effort every night.”
The Ravens have also added
winger Andrew Glass from the
Boston University Terriers. Due
to Canadian Interuniversity Sport
(CIS) regulations, Glass will remain ineligible to join the team in
games until Dec. 20.
“I think the fact that he was
drafted by [the NHL’s] Washington [Capitals] and that he went
to such a great school like [Boston University] shows that there
is definitely some high-end talent
there,” Johnston said. “It’s just a
matter of getting it out of him.”
Like Folkes, a dispute with the
coach led Glass to pursue other
options to further his career in
hockey.
Glass told the Daily Free Press in
Boston, Mass. he was suspended
from the Terriers after being late
for two meetings and missing a
team weightlifting session during exam week last December. He
eventually was dismissed from the
team after a number of other conflicts with head coach Jack Parker.
“It’s a fresh start,” he told the
Daily Free Press about his move
to Carleton. “It’s a place where I
can start over and get away from
all of this, move on and just start
Michael Folkes played for the Ohio State Buckeyes for two seasons before being let go
from the team. || photo courtesy of the Ohio State department of athletics
pursuing a future with hockey and
academics somewhere else.”
Glass’ issues with his former
team didn’t worry his new coach.
“We try to do as much homework as possible on the situations,”
Johnston said. “We’ve had a good
experience with [third-year forward] Joey Manley’s transfer from
the NCAA and turning into a topfour scorer, so I think everyone
deserves a second chance.” q
October 13 - October 19, 2011
charlatan.ca/sports
19
Basketball team picks up Racism an issue on the ice
Charlatan’s Gianluca Nesci continues to
second pre-season win Theexplore
the problem of racism in sport
by Muhammad Mohamed
The Carleton Ravens women’s basketball
team continued their run-up to the regular
season with a 61-48 victory over the Concordia Stingers at the Ravens’ Nest Oct. 6.
Coming off a convincing 80-50 win
against the Montmorency College Nomades
in their first exhibition game Oct. 2, the
Ravens never trailed against a sloppy Concordia team to improve their pre-season
record to 2-0.
A slew of turnovers prevented the game
from developing any kind of flow in the first
quarter. But some strong play from fourthyear Ravens guards Kendall MacLeod and
Alyson Bush helped the home team secure
a 14-11 lead at the end of the opening frame.
The Stingers mounted a comeback of
sorts in the second, with Kaylah Barrett
sinking a couple of three-pointers to get
her team to within one point of the Ravens.
But despite moving the ball around well
and being strong on the boards, Concordia
still went into the locker room down 25-21
at halftime.
That was the closest the Stingers would
get to the Ravens for the rest of the game. A
three-pointer from Bush early on in the third
set the tone for the quarter. Bush led from
the front, asserting her dominance in the
paint and nailing her shots with ease. The
Ravens entered the final quarter up 40-33.
The Ravens’ exhibition record stands at 2-0 after
beating the Stingers Oct. 6. || photo by Carol Kan
A series of late three-pointers from the
Stingers’ Natasha Raposo wasn’t enough,
as the Ravens ended up with a comfortable
13-point win.
For the rest of this story, visit
charlatan.ca
Nicholas Baptiste of the Ontario Hockey
League’s (OHL) Sudbury Wolves is no stranger to racism on the ice. At only 16 years old,
the African-Canadian said he has already developed a “thick skin” to combat racism on
the ice.
“When a guy stoops that low and he does
something like that and you kind of ignore it
and not even respond to it, chances are he’s
not going to do it again because it didn’t really work,” Baptiste said, referring to his own
experiences with racism. “So I just try and let
my game do the talking.”
Baptiste was selected sixth overall by
the Wolves in the 2011 OHL Priority Selection Draft. But the Ottawa native and former
member of the Junior A Senators organization isn’t alone.
Three other black players joined the 6’0”
right winger in the top 12 selections of the
draft for the first time in league history.
Highly-touted defenceman Darnell Nurse
was taken third overall by the Sault Ste.
Marie Greyhounds. Jordan Subban, who is
the younger brother of rising Montreal Canadiens star PK Subban, was next to go off the
board, as he was picked by the Belleville Bulls
with the fifth selection. With the 12th pick
overall, the Erie Otters drafted Burlington,
Ont. native Stephen Harper.
Baptiste credits the players who have
come before him with opening the door for
young black players to get involved in the
DISCOVER
University of Ottawa
Graduate Studies
at uOttawa.
Learn more about graduate studies,
visit www.discoveruOttawa.ca.
»
game. He said the likes of Jarome Iginla,
Evander Kane and many others have proven
that black players are equally capable of playing at a high level in a predominantly white
sport.
For Carleton Ravens women’s hockey
coach Shelley Coolidge, the emergence of
young, African-Canadian talent is a clear sign
that “hockey is a sport for all.”
More importantly though, she said by
opening the game to people of various ethnic backgrounds, we can learn a much more
valuable lesson to take with us into everyday life.
— with files from Maria Church
For the rest of this story and an audio version
of the entire two-part feature, visit
charlatan.ca
For more coverage . . .
Tanski joins the Whale
Lewis Smith reports on one of
Carleton’s men’s hockey recruits
who is now playing in the AHL.
charlatan.ca
20
charlatan.ca/sports
October 13 - October 19, 2011
Ravens baseball team headed to nationals
by Gianluca Nesci
After spending many years wallowing in mediocrity, the Carleton
Ravens men’s baseball team is now
making its mark on the Canadian
Intercollegiate Baseball Association (CIBA).
For the first time in over 15
years, the Ravens will have a
chance to bring home a championship ring when they travel
to Moncton, N.B. for the CIBA
national championship Oct. 21-23.
The men qualified for the competition by sweeping a three-game
series with the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees Oct. 8.
The program’s improvement
over the years has been “incredible,” according to team captain
Blake Enzel.
“For [my] first time as a Raven,
not only did we have a winning
record, but we won more games
this year than the previous two
combined,” the veteran catcher
said. “We’re going to the national
championship . . . an idea that was
once a pipe dream.”
Enzel credited a solid pitching
staff as the catalyst for the impressive campaign.
“We have an incredibly deep
pitching rotation. Our ace, Charlie
The Ravens men’s baseball team is going to nationals Oct. 21-23 for the first time in over 15 years || photo by Pedro Vasconcellos
Crabb, is almost unhittable when
he’s on his A-game,” Enzel said.
Crabb’s talents were on full display over the weekend, as he gave
up just a single run en route to a
3-1 victory in the opening game of
the series.
In what Enzel called an “incredibly intense” game two, the
Ravens’ bats came out to play. Outfielder Evan Hammond got things
started in the first inning, hitting a
two-run homer to put the Ravens
on top early. With the score tied
at two in the bottom of the sixth,
shortstop Steve Renaud broke the
game open with a clutch double,
driving in two runs in the process.
On the back of that hit, the
Ravens went on to win 5-3.
The fact that the win came at
the expense of their rival, the GeeGees, is sweet, Enzel said, but it’s
not the most thrilling aspect of
things.
“It’s always nice to beat your
cross-town rival,” he said. “But to
be honest, we’ve taken so many
steps this year to resurrecting
Carleton baseball towards becoming relevant again. It’s incredibly
exciting.”
Before Enzel and company travel to New Brunswick for the big
tournament, they will take on the
Concordia University Stingers in
a bid to claim the CIBA Northern
Division title Oct. 15.
Regardless of the outcome from
this three-game series, the Ravens
have earned their ticket to Moncton by virtue of the victory over
Ottawa.
But that ticket will be an expensive one.
Without varsity status, the team
doesn’t receive full funding from
the university to cover things such
as travel expenses. Enzel said they
will do their best in the coming
weeks to raise the necessary funds
for the long trip to the East Coast.
“Getting to Moncton is going to
cost our team a lot of money,” he
said. “We’re planning a big fundraiser before we leave, so anyone
interested in supporting the baseball Ravens should stay tuned for
the date.”
Enzel also said this edition of
the Ravens shouldn’t be a one-hit
wonder. A young foundation has
been laid for the team to be competitive in the future, he said.
“This team has been adding
pieces since I’ve started,” Enzel
said. “It’s very likely that there will
only be one graduating player, so
returning the majority of a talented
team sets us up for a repeat of this
year’s success.” q
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