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Contents
Contents
Appalling appealWho watches the
Watchmen
?On their way
Censored!
News
News
Arts
Arts
Sports
Sports
Feature
Feature
p. 4
p. 4
p. 9
p. 9
p. 16
p. 16
p. 12
p. 12
March 6 Student Arbitration Committee hear-ing descends into chaos.
p. 4
Find out who’s running in the GSAÉDelections.
p. 5–6
Zack Snyder directed it, and
Jaclyn Lytle
talks with him.
p. 9Hisham Kelati
and
Kalin Smith,
appar-ently.
p. 14
Men’s basketball prepares to head to the CISchampionships.
p. 16
How much are you paying for food? The Heartand Stroke Foundation has an idea.
p. 18Sarah Gibbons
investigates the banning of books.
p. 12–13Di
gets violent.
p. 20
Shifing the
Fulcrum
Re: “Pack it up and leave” (News, March 6)
EMMA GODMERE’S MOS recentcolumn regarding protests at Univer-sity o Ottawa Senate meetings did apoor job representing the studentswho participated in the protests aswell as Godmere’s capacity as an in- vestigative journalist. Surely an ex-perienced news editor would hold anopinion that refects careul consid-eration o act. However, the columndid not present to students the trueseries o events, did not accurately re-fect the opinion o those who partici-pated in the protests, and took a bitteranti-student stance.Te column stated that the U o OPresident Allan Rock collaborated withStudent Federation o the University o Ottawa (SFUO) VP University AairsSeamus Wole to dra a recording pol-icy and presented it to the public oreedback immediately ollowing thecancelled meeting o Jan. 12. However,the discussion was only opened to thepublic on Feb. 3, and it was openedthrough a discussion board on Face-book. Tis is a glaring chronologicalmistake that unortunately evaded therigorous verication o acts exercisedby the
Fulcrum
.Te column also proessed that thestudents desired that the Senate “estab-lish a clear policy on allowing record-ing devices.” Tis was never the mainobjective o the group. Following thearrest o Marc Kelly on Dec. 1, stu-dents began to worry about the roleo the Ottawa police on their campus.Kelly was told by a police o cer thathe would be arrested beore he shoutedthe statement o “Vision 2010”. Moreimportantly, the police were called tonegotiate with Kelly while the mem-bers o the Senate could have been pre-sented with Kelly’s case and voted as towhether or not he would be allowed tolm the public Senate meeting. At thatpoint, there was no policy preventingKelly rom recording.Te students who attended theJan. 12 Senate meeting protested theunjustied arrest that occurred theprevious month. On that day, Rock cancelled the meeting a ew minutesinto the session despite clear objec-tions by three student senators. TeSenate members were not allowed to vote to adjourn the meeting. Tis sce-nario repeated itsel on Feb. 2 whenU o O VP Academic Robert Majorcancelled the Senate meeting beoreit began. He was not orced to cancelthe meeting; the decision was deliber-ate. On March 2, seeing that the Sen-ate meetings had been cancelled, theprotestors attempted to ensure that ittook place, initiating the Senate meet-ing on their own. Tis was rejectedand Rock once again decided to uni-laterally cancel the Senate meeting.Te column took a disturbingly an-ti-student stance by assigning blameto the members o the U o O com-munity concerned about the actionso the U o O administration. Whathave not been examined here arethe actions taken by the administra-tion: the calling o the police to ejecta student asking or a discussion, thedeliberate cancellation o importantSenate meetings without consultingthe members o the Senate, and thehijacking o the democratic Senate by Rock and Major.Due to the misleading statementsand blatant disregard or act in thelast news column, I believe it is timeto shi the
Fulcrum
and transer le- verage to the students: www.ulcrum-shi.blogspot.com
Liam Kennedy-SlaneyFirst-year biochemistry student
Moving orward
FRUSRAION. DISAPPOIN-MEN. MELANCHOLY.Tese are three words to display the emotions that I elt on March 6as I was sitting in attendance at theSFUO Student Arbitration Commit-tee (SAC) hearing. What I witnessedas our leader, as your president, andas a person were students ghting,disrespecting, and belligerently ac-costing students. “Students ghtingstudents”, when our raison d’être is“students helping students.”What I witnessed was our studentederation, which holds values o dignity,equity, human rights, and positive spacebecome besmirched by the inappropri-ate and unacceptable actions o someo its members. As tensions escalated Imade it clear to the persons leading thearbitration that this would not be able tocontinue. On behal o the ederation, itis regrettable that we could not ensurethat positive space. Te SFUO will takeproactive steps or uture proceedingso this level o contention, to avoid thisrom occurring again.What I witnessed were studentsexercising their right in our constitu-tion to contest the elections. Similarly,other students exercised their right tochallenge the judicial processes orwhich that contest was being exam-ined and concluded upon. Unequiv-ocally, these are valid disputes thatmust and will be concluded upon.In reconciliation o the events thattook place on March 6, I call on allparties involved to lead and discour-age any behaviours that dishonourour ederation, that dishonour ourcause. As we move orward, past theevents we unortunately experienced,I call on all students to use commonsense beore acting on emotion to en-sure that respect and dignity are guar-anteed under our SFUO.oday, I have come to the conclu-sion that amidst all that our studentederation is acing and the years wehave taken to build our ederation,nothing is accomplished by a contin-uous consumption o contempt. Withthis in mind, my sentiments havetranslated into hope. Hope that wecan disagree without being disagree-able; hope that we can deend every person’s rights to a positive space andhope that we can come together as astudent ederation once more.“Te ace o the enemy rightensme only when I see how much it re-sembles me.”
Dean HaldenbySFUO president
An unair process
I IS WIH great reluctance that wehad to reuse to submit ourselves tothe process o the Student ArbitrationCommittee on March 6.Following our victory in the SFUOelections, a group o unsuccessul can-didates decided to contest the elec-tions by claiming that we had workedas a team, which is not allowed as perthe SFUO constitution.We wish to assure the student pop-ulation that although we are riends,each one o us led her/his own cam-paign in proper ashion. We are out-lining the act that we are riends orthe sake o transparency. Furthermore,three o us (Roxanne, Julie, and Sea-mus) were a part o the executive thisyear; thereore, it is perectly naturalthat we share many o the same views.When we learned that the electionwas being contested, we immediately began preparing our deence. In doingso, we truly wanted to share our side o the story while accepting any decisionthat would be rendered by the SAC.However, many irregularities ap-peared over the course o the process.For example, the SFUO constitutionoutlines that once a case is to be pre-sented to the SAC, each party has theright to select an arbitrator. Aer which,these arbitrators select the remainingmembers o the committee. Unortu-nately, we did not have the opportunity o selecting one o these arbitrators.Moreover, it was only on the eve o thehearing that we learned that documentsthat had been rendered inadmissiblewould now be considered to be admis-sible. It was impossible to go over all o these documents in a single evening.What’s more, the SAC even recog-nized that it had committed seriousprocedural mistakes. For example,they had assured us that a conden-tial email that we had sent to the chie arbitrator in regards to intimidationrom the other party would remain
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March 12–18, 2009
Letters
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What do you think of theU of O’s decision to banthe Israeli Apartheid Weekposter?
Great move:Terrible decision:Unsure:
thefulcrum.ca poll
Last week’s results
48%44%7%
condential. However, this did notend up being the case.Te list o irregularities goes on, butwe simply wanted to outline a ew o them. Because many o the by-lawscontained in the SFUO constitutionwere not ollowed, we could not agreeto appear in ront o the SAC, andthereore could not agree to abide to itsruling. Although the SFUO constitu-tion gives us the right not to appear inront o the SAC, this was by no meansthe choice that we wanted to make.We believe that being elected by over 8,000 students is legitimate; more-over, we also believe that being tried by three arbitrators that do not ollow theSFUO constitution is not. Our goal isnot to blame the arbitrators becausewe ully realize that they are studentswho are volunteering their time. Nev-ertheless, we had to outline the proce-dural errors that took place.We have nothing to hide and wouldclearly have preerred appearing inront o the SAC rather than reusingto do so. Although we are not appear-ing in ront o the committee, we wishto assure you our deence to the alle-gations has been prepared and sharedwith the media as well as with the stu-dent population. For these reasons, wewill deer the decision to the highestdecision making body o the edera-tion: the Board o Administration.Please know that we are committedto ulll the mandate that you haveentrusted us with.
Seamus Wole, SFUO president-elect Roxanne Dubois,SFUO vp-elect, fnance Jean Guillaume,SFUO vp-elect, social Julie Séguin, SFUOvp-elect, communicationsDue to space constraints we wereunable to print all letters received.Visit theulcrum.ca/letters or more.
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