Responsibility to Represent

I want to talk a litle bit about how I feel student politicians, and politicians in general, should act. In particular I want to talk about the responsibility to listen to the general public and act on what they hear. I have given this issue a lot of thought since the Macleans debate and I will use that debate as an example of what I'm talking about.

The Macleans debate centred on whether the UVSS should do anything in response to the "Too Asian" article. The UVSS Board meeting that discussed this was the most well attended board meeting so far this term, and every attendee that spoke was in favour of boycotting Macleans. The board eventually voted in favour of the boycott, but there were some that voted against it. There were a couple reasons for the votes against: one was that because people thought the article was problematic, but a boycott would amount to censorship (I strongly disagree, and stated why at the board meeting, and won't get at that here as its not the true focus of this post), and the other is that the article didn't bother them combined with ideology of the first reason.

As for me, when I read the article, it didn't bother me. When the issue came before the board, I voted in favour of the boycott. Now why in the world would I choose to boycott something that didn't bother me? The simple reason is that I am on the board to represent the student body as a whole, not just myself and my viewpoint. I am not asian, so the article did not target me. However, many asian students, as well as other students, expressed to me that this was a racist article and that we should, as their representatives, do what we could to make their displeasure known to Macleans. As a student representative, it was my responsibility to listen to their concerns and act upon them. To do anything otherwise would be to not do my job.

The counter-argument to my reasoning is that it was simply a vocal minority and that the majority of students either don't care, or against the issue. I don't buy this argument for two reasons. The first reason is that the "vocal minority" in this case were the people directly affected by the article. Of course it didn't bother most people, they aren't asian. It was the asian community that stood up and said this bothered them. When a minority group says they have concerns that they are being targeted, they are the people you should be listening to.

The second reason is more what I want to focus on in this post as it steps away from the Macleans issue and addresses a problem I have seen in most governing bodies. The reason that I don't buy the whole "vocal minority" argument in this case and most cases is that by labelling a group a "vocal minority" you are delegitimizing what they have to say whether they represent a broader portion of the community or not. An important point here is that we don't know for sure whether they do represent the larger community or are just a vocal minority. The majority of people aren't vocal, that's why they aren't called the vocal majority, and we can't assume that we know what they want. All we can do as representatives is listen to the people that are talking to us, but who are these people?

In student government, as well as other governments, I am going to artificially narrow down who is talking to us into two general groups: our circle of friends that have access to us all the time (in other governments I equate this to the large business interests that always have access to the government) , and groups that campaign on a certain issue, the "vocal minorities". Often times these to groups conflict on how the government should address an issue (far less in student politics than at other levels). In this case, who should you listen to? Of course you should listen to both groups as they will both provide unique perspectives, but in the end, you have to make a decision to act one way or another, or make a compromise between the two. This is very difficult even for those with the best of intentions.

Sometimes there is no room for compromise, like if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees society as we know it will exist no more so every country has to do everything they can to reduce their impacts... wait, that's a really bad example. A better example is the Macleans motion that went before the board. It was either boycott Macleans or do nothing. There was a compromise amendment proposed that was to just write a letter, but in reality that would be to do nothing; Macleans would get that letter, say "how nice", and then throw it in the garbage. So really you have to make a decision to act or not to act.

When making the decision to act, or not to act, there are two key factors (note: I have noticed that I am incedibly binary in writing this post) that should go into deciding which group to side with. One factor is who is affected by this issue. I am far more inclined to listen to people who are genuinely effected "vocal minority" by an issue in a way that prevents them from participating in the community, effects their health, or effects their means of survival. Their arguments hold more weight for me than someone "friend" who not effected by an issue. It is for this reason that I weighed the point of view of the asian community in the Macleans debate over any other view.

The second factor is not related to the Macleans debate, and often not to student politics at all. This is who stands to gain financially or in power from a decision that has to be made. For example, if you have a tar sands company "business friend" that says there should be no regulation on them, and an environmental group "vocal minority" that says there should be, I am much more inclined to side with the environmental group because they have nothing to gain financially whereas the tar sands company does. Therefore, the tarsands company is far more likely to lie to you, or at least withhold the truth.

Now I want to talk about a third group that you should listen to that I neglected to mention earlier. This is your fellow representatives. So many times I get frustrated at board meetings and feel that discussion is pointless because people don't listen to each other. The purpose of government should not be to oppose and attempt to embarrass to other by trying to find flaws in an argument. The purpose should be to provide different points of view and really listen to each other and then come to a decision by addressing concerns. There are some people on the board that do this very well, but there are others that refuse to be swayed by others on the board no matter what the situation. I find this to be unacceptable and it defeats the purpose of even having meetings.

So in summary, we as student representatives have a responsibility to listen to students on campus when they come to us with an issue. We also have a responsibility to listen to each other. Once we have truly done these things, we then have the responsibility to take actions to represent the students as we said we would.

Rob McDonald

UVSS Representatives Meet with Minister Ida Chong

This morning Ben Johnson, Dylan Sherlock, James Coccola and myself from Uvic, and Matteus Clement from Camosun met with Provincial Cabinet Minister Ida Chong and Assistant Deputy Minister Victoria Thibault to discuss issues affecting students across the province. Even with a full hour of discussions, we still didn't have time to talk about everything we wanted to, but we were able to hit on some key issues.

The first issue discussed was that of interest rates on student loans. Clement made the case that the interest rates had an inhibiting effect on students choosing to enter post-secondary education, and Sherlock followed that up with the argument that saddling students with paying all this interest was bad for the economy as it left graduates unable to effectively participate in important economic activities due to the inability to get more credit once they graduate. Thibault responded that reducing interest rates has been looked at, but not acted upon because government didn't have the money to cover that cost. I take a bit of an issue with this statement as while it may be true that the ministry might not have the money in their budget to do this, the government as a whole seems to have plenty of money to spend on frivolous things such as a new roof for BC Place, a new conference centre, and the Olympics.

The second issue talked about was the issue of grants and non-repayable loans. Chong pointed to the current programs as a strength of our student aid system, but Sherlock pointed out that BC has the lowest rates of grants and non-repayable loans in the country. Much of this discussion hinged on whether grants should be up front or on the back end. Chong said the reasoning for the current back end grants program is to ensure that students complete their programs so that the government doesn't waste their money. Clement made the point that back end grants don't get students in the door, because they still have to put up the money up front to start school. Sherlock followed this up by saying that back end grants were income contingent because a student would still have to have a certain amount of money to start school and may not be able to wait until they are done their courses to get that money back.

Coccola then turned the conversation to university funding and asked about changes to the way universities to be funded to keep up with inflation, especially for schools that have maxed out their enrolments to try to keep up. Chong expressed concern about increasing funding for schools that have maxed out their enrolments as she didn't want to take money away from regional schools that had lower enrolments to fund the bigger schools. For me, this sent up a big alarm bell in that the way she framed her concern was that there would be no room for an overall rise in funding for education, just a shift of funding from one department to another, in fact this was the tone of the entire conversation of the day.

Coccola also asked about the government's throne speech commitment to remove universities from Government Reporting Entity status. Chong said that this was understandably running behind due to the uncertainties going forward with the leadership in flux. She also said that it was a complex issue that might have unintended consequences such as damaging the province's credit rating. Sherlock asked if an opt out option for some schools that took issue with the status might be in the offing, and Chong said that was a solution that might be looked at.

Finally Johnson asked what the rationale was for the splitting of colleges and universities into two different ministries (though at the moment Chong oversees both ministries). Chong responded by saying it allowed each institution to focus on what they did best. For colleges that would means training people within their regions and partnering with local skills training organizations to help local economies. For universities this means a more research focused funding and partnerships with business research bodies. After, the meeting Johnson mused that this does sound good in the colleges case, but we all agreed that for the universities it could lead to an increasing role of private interests in our universities which is a place we don't want to go. Further to this issue, Coccola asked whether the split of ministries would effect the 2% cap on tuition fee hikes on either colleges or universities. Chong responded that this was not on the table at this time, and expressed willingness to talk about the cap and whether it could be raised at all, but she indicated that bringing that cap down to 0% was a no go zone.

In all, it was a very useful meeting in which we gathered a solid amount of information from Chong and Thibault. They both committed to continuing the conversation, and Thibault was willing to set up another meeting in the near future. I was left with the impression that they are willing to look at several different policies to help improve access to post-secondary education, but also that it did not look like their would be any more funding than current levels. I realize that Chong is not in a position to make more funds available, but she is in a position to lobby strongly for increased funding for post-secondary education and that is something we sincerely hope she takes up.

Rob McDonald

The Medium is the Message: The Lost Medium

Here is something I thought up in the shower this morning and I thought I should write is down. I admit it's rough and would need to be developed more to stand up to scrutiny, but I want to know what people think. So please read, comment and poke holes in if you want.

The Medium is the Message: The Lost Medium

Marshall McLuhan's “The Medium is the Message” shifted focus from the content of media to the medium itself as what is important to how societies function. A key concept he brings forth is that one type of media contains other types. For example, written media is contained in tv in the form of a script, oral media is contained in written media in the form of speech and so on all the way back to thought.

In his analysis, McLuhan, and the rest of our society as wrapped up in our mode of thought as we are, forgot, or didn't notice one type of media that was contained in other media in our history. The medium I am referring to is spiritual communications, be they signs, visions, dreams or what have you. This medium has been described by cultures across the world, including our own, though in the more distant past than most. The Bible is a great example of this, for in the Bible, a written media, is contained oral media (indeed the First Testament at least came from oral tradition and wasn't written down until long after it came into being, hence all the psalms), and within the oral media lies spiritual media. The easiest example that comes to mind is when Moses sees a burning bush and hears the word of God speak to him through the bush.

It is the spiritual media that has provided the moral grounding of societies throughout the ages. Oral traditions were used to translate spiritual media to those who couldn't access that media. Over time, the oral traditions were overtaken by written media, and in that process the spiritual media that was encased within oral traditions then became encased in written media. This transition created a situation where spiritual media became far more inaccessible to the regular person, and the church became the translator of all spiritual media through control of the written media (remember that in the beginning, written media wasn't very accessible as not many people knew how to read or write, and papyrus or parchment, the key materials used for written media before the 1600's wasn't easy to acquire or mass produce). With the the ability to be the (at least self proclaimed) sole translator of spiritual media, came great power, and with great power came the potential for great abuse. And abuse that power, the church did. The Spanish Inquisition, the burning of witches, and the elimination of the Templars are only a few examples of the abuses of the church.

The frequent abuses of power caused for a movement to separate church and state. This is what happened over the period of a couple of centuries and with that move emerged a new set of problems. The church remained the interpreter of spiritual media and the state was left to look after the physical well-being of society, which usually simply meant the economic well-being of society. It is important to note that since the state was not supposed to interact with the church, it did not have the spiritual media as the foundation of their existence that the church had. This left the state to look after the economic interests of their society without the moral foundations that had grounded society in the past. Of course this did not happen overnight, and for a long time the state was influenced by the morals of the previous spiritual dominated society that created it. However, in modern times and especially in Western society, states have become completely secularized and tied to an economic orthodoxy. This leaves us in our present situation where our economically focused governments can see only problems related to economic issues because that is all it has the space to do. They cannot address spiritual problems because of the separation of church and state. Furthermore, they cannot even acknowledge the existence of spiritual media because it is buried within the oral traditions which are buried within the written religious texts which they are not supposed to interact with.

Our governments are not equipped to deal with the moral issues of our time, be they inequality, racism, lack of spirituality/compassion/empathy in our society, or environmental issues (yes, I view environmental degradation as partially a moral/spiritual problem). And herein lies the problem with our society, because it is the government we look to to deal with these problems. What this means is that we need to understand that governments are not going to be able to solve these problems and we have to start solving them by other means, or we have to change the basic premise of how our governments work. If we want governments to deal with the moral issues of out time, we must re-incorporate the state with spirituality and most of all with spiritual media in a world that desperately needs it.

Rob McDonald

UVSS Referendum This Week

Hey all,

James Coccola, chair of the UVSS, has asked me to post this on here. I think it is a good idea as I too have been campaigning on these issues. When I campaigned to get elected to the UVSS one my key issues was financial sustainability. Saying yes to these referendum questions will go the longest way to achieving that sustainability. I have been part of many discussions and plans to find creative ways to get more funds into the UVSS and keep costs down, and some of them will hopefully come to fruition. However, despite our best efforts, the effects of rising costs in the last 22 years has left us no room other than to do what we are asking for in the referendum this week.

So without further ado, here is James' letter:

As many of you know, the UVSS is conducting several referendums this week. The purpose behind the referendums is to save the Students’ Society. Over the past three years we have accumulated a debt of nearly $370,000 and this year we are projecting to go an additional $90,000 into the red.

The last increase to our fees was in 1988. There are students coming to campus this year for the first time who were born in 1992. Inflation alone has damaged our ability to pay for services and now we are left with a 22 year gap in funding that we simply are not able to deal with.

Many students have asked me why we don’t try to cut costs more. The simple answer is that we have and there really is nothing left to cut: our Grafix Department has been reduced to one part-time staff from two and-a-half staff; info booth hours have been reduced, including a closure in the summer; our committee budgets have been dramatically slashed; and the Student Union Building is now only open until 9:30 . Among many other projects, we are currently looking to cut down handbook costs.

There are four questions related to the UVSS that we encourage you to VOTE YES on. (Plus a question from UVic Pride that you should also VOTE YES on.)

The first question asks for 50 cents per semester for events. Whether it’s concerts, speakers, pancakes or beer gardens, the UVSS wants to make sure that there are events that you will remember for years to come. The money collected for this fee could only be used for events. This means that no matter what, our budget will always have the money to put on the great events that you expect and deserve.

The second question is asking for 90 cents per semester for elections. UVSS members recently voted to change our bylaws so that the UVSS board is removed from the process that adjudicates complaints between candidates. This means that external professionals will now be adjudicating our elections so that the process is as fair as possible. But impartiality comes at a price, which means our elections will be getting more expensive.

Many students don’t realize just how costly UVSS elections are. Last year, they cost the Society $27,000. This pays for an external Chief Electoral Officer, two deputy electoral officers, 40 pollsitters, 12 ballot counters, advertising, materials for candidates and legal costs for the complaints process.

The reasoning behind the dedicated fees for special events and elections is that no matter the state of UVSS finances, there will always be money to throw great events and to ensure fair and impartial elections. It will also free up money from our over-burdened operations fund which currently pays for these things so that we can pay down our considerable debt.

The third question doesn’t cost students any money at all and would benefit the Students’ Society tremendously. The question asks students to allow us to transfer $4 a semester from the Building and Capital fund (B&C Fund) and move it to the Operations Fund. This question is a little confusing and requires a bit of explanation.

The Building and Capital Fund is currently $13 per student per semester. It can only be used on large equipment purchases and on building renovations. When Bean There was upgraded last year, we used the B&C fund. Same thing for when we painted the SUB. This fund always has a healthy balance - so much so that it would be prudent to transfer a portion of it into operations. On the other hand, the operations fund is in rough shape. It pays for everything else: janitorial, campaigns, events, the wages of our student employees, etc.

Students always say things like: “If you have the money to spend $100,000 on a renovation, why don’t you use that money to pay for your operations?” The simple answer is that we can’t. When a student fee is decided by referendum and targeted for a specific purpose, it is essentially illegal to use that money for a purpose other than for which it was intended.

This third referendum question seeks to create a balance between the building and operations funds. This way, we don’t have to ask students to fund more than is asked in our fourth referendum question.

The fourth referendum question is directly related to the operations fund. We are asking to increase fees by 40 cents a semester, each semester for the next three years (a mere 10 cents per month). In total this represents an increase of $3.60 over the three years.

The purpose of gradually increasing fees is so that we can pull ourselves out of debt in the short-term and also so that the Society can make financial plans for the long-term. There is also the simple fact that basically no organization or government out there that can be expected to provide the same level of service over 22 years without an increase in its core funding.

As a bonus, if you graduate in the next year or two, you will not pay the full increase. This way, the fee increase takes place in the fairest way possible. Future students will pay for the services they use.

The Students’ Society is looking to pursue several projects: eliminating the health and dental administration fee and offering more services within the SUB are just a few. Unfortunately, we face severe financial restrictions until these referendums are passed. It’s only a few dollars out of your pocket, but it will put us on solid financial footing and allow us and future UVSS Boards to build the kind of students’ society that our members deserve.

On November 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th please vote YES and help bring a little change to the UVSS.

James Coccola

Wilderness Skills Club Survives Deluge.

On Sept 25-26, the UVic Wilderness Skills Club held their bi-annual camping trip. The goal of these camping trips is to learn how to make functional shelters out of natural materials that can keep a person warm and dry at night and make fire using only sticks while providing an opportunity for the group to have fun in the woods and get to know each other better. The trip is a unique experience in putting wilderness survival skills into practice that students would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

On all but one of these counts, the camping trip was a success, just not in the way anyone expected. The trip started off wonderfully and innocuously. The sun was shining on the Saturday and the temperature was warm. Everyone was in great spirits, with a couple of people even wanting to sleep under the stars. The group improved upon the three pre-existing shelters and built a new one. There was not enough materials to build enough shelters for all eleven people so a tent was brought to fit the last couple people in. In hindsight, the group was very grateful for the tent. On Saturday evening, however, the shelters looked great, and everyone was keen to sleep in them. Mike Divell, a first time participant in the trip commented that “neat was the feeling that these shelters really fit in to nature - on first glance they didn't even register as something built by man. Very cool.” Since April Barry, co-president of the club, and I had slept in shelters before, we volunteered to sleep in the tent so as to allow everyone else to have the experience of sleeping in the shelters. The fire making was very smooth. Said Divell, “Watching fire started from almost nothing was very impressive and memorable... I'd never seen it work before.”

Just after dark, it started to rain and everyone scampered to their shelters. At first the shelters were very warm and dry. Cherie Lavoie, who was in a shelter with two other people said she was “surprised at how warm it was in the shelter, I didn't even need my long johns!” Then the rain got heavier... and heavier. During the building of the shelters I had stressed that the inside of the shelters should be lined with debris so that they would be more comfortable and so that if it rained, water would run underneath everyone so they would get wet. But by the time the group had gotten to this point, they had all been working for quite some time, and it was only a half-hearted attempt to do a good job at this. I also didn't push them hard to make sure it was good as I didn't completely realize the importance of this insulation. As the rain kept falling murmurs could be heard over the cacophony of the clouds dumping on the tent. April and I felt really bad; here we were, the leaders of the club, laying in our mostly dry tent, while everyone else was presumably drowning in their shelters. By 2:00am I decided I had to do something or there would be a revolt. So I got out of the tent and told everyone else to pile in. All but two people gratefully got out of their shelters and got into what was at this point a very leaky tent. The two guys that stayed in their shelter decided they were at least warm where they were, if not dry, so they would tough out the night in the shelter. We got as much dry clothes on people as possible, and managed to fit nine of us in a four person tent. It was like human jenga. There were layers of people. Body parts were all over the place. Nobody knew who's legs they were on top of and who's feet were on top of them. We all became quite close that night, not only physically, but we all bonded quite well. There was much laughter, and little sleep, except, incredibly, from the two guys out in their shelter snoring away.

After about an hour and a half, everyone had settled in as much as they could and was trying to get some sleep. Suddenly there was a loud crack and a corner of the tent collapsed. Some were worried that a tree had fallen on us, but everyone seemed to be okay. It turned out a tent pole had snapped due to the pressure of so many people being in the tent. I was able to fix it somewhat, and the tent stayed standing, though somewhat more leaky. Less than a half-hour later, a tree then proceeded to fall on our tent. It was even loud enough to wake up the snoring guys in their shelter. Nobody was hurt, but it did crumple the same corner some more and gave everybody a mini heart attack. By the time morning came, and everyone had shifted several times to avoid laying in the moat that had formed around the edge of the tent, we were all quite happy to be alive. We were even happier that, as it got light, the rain stopped. The two guys in the shelter crawled out slightly more pruny than they had been when the night started, but otherwise no worse for wear. They were even able to get a fire going even though everything was thoroughly soaked. Despite the ordeal of the night everyone was in high spirits, though understandably quite tired.

In the end it turned out to be an unforgettable experience. We survived. We all bonded in a way that only such extreme conditions could facilitate. We learned valuable lessons about what it takes to build a shelter in the woods that will actually protect you from the elements. Divell summed up his thoughts on it with this comment, “Of course the rain is unforgettable too. The feeling of 'wow we built some awesome shelters' quickly turning into 'ooops. needed more work'”. The following week our workshops focused around building shelters, and the people that went on the camping trip definitely had a few tips for those who had never done it before. As for me, I need to find a new tent.

Rob McDonald

Fraternities and Sororities Denied Recognition at UVSS AGM

I know I am a little bit behind in writing about this as it happened on Thursday and other bloggers have already writted about this at length, but I believe I can provide a little bit of a different viewpoint to what happened at the Annual General Meeting.

Many things were said at the meeting from both sides of the issue. I was impressed with the actual arguments from both groups. I also feel that both sides were stating the truth. This may seem to be a wierd thing to say, as the two sides of the issue were saying opposite things, but I feel that in most cases there is no black or white, just the grey middle ground of reality, and this was no exception.

So what was said, and why do I feel it was all true?

First the anti-frats/sors side that won the vote:

The basic claim is that faternites and sororities are, by their nature, exclusionary and hierarchical. Historically they have a negative reputation of brutal hazings and sexualized violence.
I agree with both of these arguments. They have a selective admission process, even if it is only by gender, and fees to join make it so only those who are economically able to join can do so. I have also heard both first hand and from newspapers about the issues of hazings and sexualized violence.

The arguments of the pro-frats/sors group was:

They are groups that are created to build communities, network with other student bodies, and have fun. The group that wanted to organize on campus said that they would include any self identified woman and not implement any hazings. The fraternity also claimed to not practice any discrimination.
Again, I agree with everything said above. I believe fraternities and sororities can be a lot of fun for many of those involved. I believe that members of fraternities and sororities become part a network of people that will last beyond their university careers. I also believe that the girls that wanted to start a sorority had nothing but the best of intentions and wanted to create a cool space to do their thing.

So how do I reconcile these competing arguments?

I believe that while there are some fraternities and sororities that exist that are good community citizens as described by the pro group, I also believe there are fraternities and sororities that are not. I also believe that if we were to allow fraternities and sororities on campus, it would be difficult to differentiate, at least initially, between groups that are problematic, and those who are not.

Therefore, it comes down to a benefit/cost analysis. The benefits of fraternities and sororities are as stated above: They build longterm networks, they can be fun, and they give those involved a sense of belonging to something.
The costs are: A feeling of exclusion by those who don't get admitted. Potential for psychological and physical hazings. Potential for sexualized violence. Perpetuation of unequal relations that exist in our society.

For me, the benefits do not outweigh the costs. One can say that we should give them a chance. Maybe they won't have brutal hazings. Maybe women wouldn't get raped. But how do you quantify when it isn't okay anymore?
How many people have to be excluded?
How many people have to be hazed?
Do we have to wait for an incident of sexualized violence to happen before we don't allow them? What do we say to the victims of these things?
Sorry, we had to let it happen to you before we decided we don't want these groups? I don't think that would be much consolation to these people. That is assuming these things would even be reported. It is well known that incidences like these are vastly underreported for a variety of reasons.
It is for these reasons that I am very happy that the students of UVic came out to not recognize fraternities and sororities. I feel that the atmosphere at UVic is great as it is, and I hope it stays that way.

On a related note. As frustrating as it was when a certain member tried to subvert the voting process everytime he went up to the mic (I can't remember the name, but I know every person who was at the meeting know who I am talking about). In the end I am happy to hear how people reacted to this guy. I talked to people that said they came to the meeting either undecided or in favour of frats and sors, but based on the conduct of this person, they changed their vote to against frats and sors.
This is a great reminder that no matter how well you know the rules and are able to manipulate them, in a forum that involves voting, and is therefore political, you can't go around being a first class jerk and using those rules to shield you. People don't like it very much.

Rob McDonald

New progressive blog! It is called UVic Underground, and it's a cool new progressive blog for UVic students. I have posted this post on there as well. Hopefully everyone can check it out and contribute.

I Abstain

I have been having conversations with fellow board members recently on the role of abstentions. There are two points of view on when to use abstentions.

One point of view is that they should only be used in cases of conflict of interest. The other point of view is that there are many times when an absention is ok beyond the mandatory conflict of interest abstentions. I will present the arguments of both sides as well as I can here and then I will say which point of view I prefer.

The first view is that abstentions should only be used in conflict of interest situations. The reasoning is that we are on the board to represent the students. We are obliged to vote on an issue one way or another for students. It is a cop out if we don't make a choice one way or another. Comparisons can be made to the parliament where they have to vote one way or another. If we don't make a vote on an issue, we are not fulfilling our duties as a director.

The other view is that there are a variety of situations in which an abstention can and should be used. The two most common situations when abstentions are used are as follows. The first is when you are torn by two sides of an argument. You are in favour of it in some aspects, but other parts of it dont' sit well with you. You don't really want to support it, but you also don't really want it to fail. People who say one should always have to vote would say this is a political cop out and that you should make a vote one way or another.
The other situation is if you don't really know enough or don't care one way or another about an issue. You feel it's not your place to sway the issue one way or the other. The always vote proponents would say that these are poor excuses for not voting. It is our responsiblility to care about all the issues on the students' behalf and to be well researched enough to make those votes, otherwise we are not doing our duty as directors.

I have abstained for both of the above reasons, more the former than the latter. I have felt that I don't want to sway the vote one way or another so I want the rest of the votes to sort out what was going to happen. However, if I feel a vote is going to be close and my vote will be important one way or another, I am much more hesitant to abstain from the voting. I can think of only one time where I chose to abstain on a close issue. In that case, it was a very grey area kind of vote and I was completely unsure as to which way I should vote, so I just didn't. In most cases however, if a person's vote (or non-vote) is likely to sway a decision on way or another, I am opposed to abstaining.

So what does everyone else think? Did I miss anything? Why should a director be able to abstain or not?

Rob McDonald

Summertime news

Hey all,

Sorry I have neglected this lately, I have been bogged down with school and computer troubles, both both are over now, so i should be posting here more regularly!

So summertime news:

The UVSS has a new health plan. This is a pretty big thing that we've been working on over the summer, and the details have all now been finalized. It is a much better deal for students than the previous deal. We will now have better coverage, including vision and travel insurance, and next year it will cost students less money. There will be communications sent out to all UVic students in the fall, so look out for it. I wanted to link to it on the website, but it's not there, nor are we registered into Student Care's system yet. Hopefully this gets sorted out soon.

There will be a garden built in front of the SUB! I wish I could claim some amount of credit for this as I was working on a garden proposal, but alas, all the work and planning for this garden was done before my time. I am pleased to say that this is even better than the garden I was trying to make happen, so I'm very excited about it. Look for the ground breaking to happen either near the end of the fall semester or the beginning of the spring semester.

The SUB now has a slurpee machine in SUBText, go buy slurpees and then get your teeth checked using the health plan!

I am now working at the UVic Bookstore. Come by and say hi while you stock up on your textbooks.

More has definitely happened but that's all I can think of. I promise to write more in depth about some issues soon.

Rob McDonald

wideeyecinema.com is a website that is all about documentaries (and not quite documentaries) for things raging from health to conspiracy theories. Definitely worth checking out, if only just to see the all the stuff that is out there.

The Life of Rob

I thought I'd write a little history about me so that those of you who don't know me very well can have a better idea of where I'm coming from. I will only hit the more interesting things here, so keep in mind that it is not everything I have ever done.

I was born in New Westminster and lived in Vancouver until I was seven years old. Then we moved up to Quesnel BC for half a year before moving 55 miles outside of Quesnel in the middle of the woods. It was November and below -20c and we lived in a teepee for a month until we got the walls built on our one room trailer with an addition. Needless to say this was quite the culture shock. We moved around to different places out of town until I graduated from high school. My best friend growing up was our 3/4 wolf dog named Grizz. Other pets included at times a baby bear, a racoon, and a cat named Homer who liked to beat up coyotes.

After graduating from high school with straight A's I had planned to go to BCIT to do a broadcast journalism program. Instead, I changed my mind and decided to join the carnival to save up money to go to a Wilderness Survival School. I still rate the courses I took there as the most amazing experiences I ever had. I took me two years to save up for my first course in California, which was focused on physical survival skills, and then one more year to save up for two more courses in New Jersey, which focused more on Native American Philosophy.

I then moved back to Quesnel where I worked at Panago, studied Nutritional Consulting through Alive Academy of Nutrition, and got involved with the Metis. I sat on the Metis board of directors as a youth rep, and got involved with traditional Metis step-dancing, performing at various venues and eventually teaching it. I grew tired of the cold Quesnel winters and moved to Mexico for 6 months to teach English. I found I wasn't a very good English teacher and moved back to Quesnel. I soon discovered internet poker and learned that I could make an acceptable amount of money at it.

Based on the knowledge that I could make money anywhere as long as I had an internet connection, I decided that to move to Victoria where the winters are very mild. I also moved here with the intention of getting involved with the Green Party. I quickly got involved with the party and became the campaign manager for candidate Ariel Lade in the 2006 federal election. Around the same time the competition in poker became much tougher so I had to get a real job again after the election. I ended up going to Panago to manage the Shelbourne location. After a year of that I moved to Toronto, Ontario for a few months to work in the MMP campaign for a proportionate electoral system in that province. When that campaign finished I came back to Victoria and took over the management of the Panago in Esquimalt.

It was at this time that I knew I needed a career instead of hopping from one thing to the next, so after a year at Esquimalt, I decided to go back to school and applied to UVic. I am now starting my 3rd year at UVic and I enjoy it very much. In the past two years I have started my own club where I teach wilderness survival skills to students. I have been involved in the Model UN Club, and I now sit on the UVSS board of directors.

Hopefully this has been a fun read for everyone!

Rob McDonald

Tom Brown's Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School is a world renowned school that teaches wilderness survival skills and Native American Philosophy. Tom has written several books on the topic, which are how I found out about the school. His books opened my eyes to how our society is destroying our natural surroundings and the need to change our societal values in order to preserve the natural environment that sustains us. It is his books and classes that provide the guide force of my life and points towards the things I need to accomplish.

The Role of Student Politics

There was much discussion around UVic during the election campaign in March about what role student politics should encompass. There were two key strains of thought on this issue. One strain of thought is that student politics should be related, as much as possible, to only those issues which happen on campus and not anything else. The other point of view is that student politics should focus on larger student issues that fall outside of campus as well.

The first strain of thought supposes that all we can or should affect are on campus student issues. So the specific focus for this group is providing great events, keeping fees down, focusing on on campus services, and managing the clubs and course unions. This is not an extensive list and sometimes the focus does fall onto broader issues, such as transit opportunities and student debt.

The other strain also focuses on all these issues, as they are indded quite important. The difference is that this group also feels that the role of student politics should also be expanded to how students interact within the communities in which they live. Big issues here would be the transit issue, legalization of secondary suites, environmental sustainability, and others. The reasoning is that students live and work in the larger community and it is our job to represent students in all capacities. This is the camp which I am in, I believe all parts of our society are connected and we have to acknowledge that reality and interact with society as a whole based on this reality.

I also want to take this a step further and examine the effects of student politics on the community at large. One reason I am in favour of student politics focusing on larger community issues is because I feel that student politics already affects the community regardless of what focus we take, whether is be solely on campus or otherwise. I say this because once the students involved in student politics graduate from school, they will take the skills and views they adopted into the broader community with them, many into larger political spheres. This being the case, the strains of thought that are promoted in student politics can become very influential in municipal, provincial, and federal politics. The interconnectedness of many issues becomes even more apparent at each of these levels. Thus, having a broader perspective within student politics can translate to having broader perspectives at the municipal, provincial, and most importantly, federal levels. I feel this is very important for our society in this day and age, where the interconnectedness of many divergent issues is becoming increasingly apparent. This is why I feel it is not productive to have a limited view of what student politics should be during our time in school.

Rob McDonald

Protesting the G20

It may seem a little bit late to look at the issues surrounding the G20, but I have wanted some time to collect my thoughts on the issue. This post is more thinking about the role of protesting in our society than that of the G20. The G20 is simply the most visible recent venue where all the issues surrounding protesting have come to the fore. The big issue of the G20 protests was the amount of security surrounding the event and the number violations of protesters rights by the police during the protests.

The story starts with the announcement of the $1 billion budget for security for the two days of the G20. This alone would cause me to protest, nevermind whether I agreed with the event or not. I feel that this budget and the seemingly weekly announcements of what weapons would be put to use during the protests set the tone for how the protests would unfold before the G20 even started. These were very intimidating and antagonistic gestures that were meant to put fear into the hearts of those who were contemplating disturbing the event. My feeling is it had the opposite effect on many people, angering them even more about the G20 event and causing them to go out and have their voice be heard.

One the G20 started, I was not at all surprised that the tone of the protests was exactly what it was. What did surprise me was the complete abuse of power used against the protesters. Say what you will about the behaviour of the protesters; detaining huge blocks of people for as long as they could, beating people, and threatening rape represents a gross misconduct on the part of the police, and the calls for more far-reaching inquiries should not go unheeded.

Of course, the behaviour of the protesters also needs to be examined. Unquestionably, there were some violent outbursts amongst the protesters, and the people committing this violence needed to be dealt with. A big problem with figuring out how hard the police should have come down on the protesters is the possibility that the most violent actions of the protesters may have been committed by police provocateurs themselves. Ever since it was proven a couple of years ago that police infiltrated the protesters in order to undermine the protest movement by creating violence, and the following police crackdown on protesters, one must question the amount of violence and damage that legitimate protesters actually cause. This opens the door for protesters to commit acts of violence and then place the blame on police provocateurs. When we don't know who did what, it is hard to figure out who is in the right.

The bigger question, though, is what has become the role of protests in our current society. It is painfully obvious that our current government doesn't want to hear the voices of anyone but themselves, so it is no surprise that they would try to undermind the protest movement in any way they can. The problem is that I feel that protests should be a very powerful way that people can express their dissatisfaction with how the government is conducting itself. Instead of acknowledging those feelings, the government is trying to stifle that voice, leaving no place for the dissatisfied people to express their opinions. This further distances people from the political process, leading less and less people to be motivated to participate at even the most basic political level, voting. When citizens are restricted in the tools they can use to influence government policy, and many are moved to apathy by the feeling of disgust with the political process, this is very bad for democracy. So bad that we can question whether it really is a democracy at all.

It is interesting to note that there was a protest march targeted at the lack of inquiries into the G20 abuses. The protest was said to go very smoothly as the police were very accommodating to protesters. It makes one wonder what the actual G20 protests would have been like if the police had taken this attitude in the first place.

Rob McDonald

Curious Free Agent Days

July 1st was the opening of free agent season in the NHL. As a hockey fan, it is one of the most exciting times of the year. This is the time when you hope that your favorite team can snag that player you think will put them over the top. This can also be the time when your favorite team shells out ridiculous money that they are going to regret in the long run. Being a Canucks fan has been rewarding in the recent past at this time of year. The biggest deal wasn't a free agent signing, but a summertime trade that brought Roberto Luongo to the Canucks in exchange for Todd Bertuzzi and others. It was a Canucks fan's dream come true. This year I am excited again. In discussing who I would want most amongst friends, Dan Hamhuis is a name that was at or near the top of everyone's list. It didn't look like it would happen with both Philly and then Pittsburgh trading for his rights, which made it all the more exciting when word came that Canucks had got their guy. In this post I will write about the moves of all the Canadian teams (From west to east), as well as the other more interesting moves made in the NHL in the past couple of days.

Vancouver Canucks

As stated already, they got Hamhuis, and I'm very happy about that. Along with the trade at the draft to acquire Keith Ballard, this gives Vancouver a very solid defense. Although, at the start of the season last year I also thought the Canucks would have a very solid defense. Having said that, I think this year's addition is one top four player better, and that could be the player that puts them over the top. The other most notable signing they made was to give Manny Malholtra a three year deal worth $2.5 million per year. Most of the response to this signing has been positive, but I find it to be a curious deal. I am wondering where they are going to fit him in. He is a centre and the first to lines are set with Henrik Sedin and Ryan Kesler. This leaves the third and fourth lines open. At that price, you would think that they signed Malhotra to play on the third line, but then what about Cody Hodgsen? It is general consensus that he should be ready to make the jump to the NHL this year, and he is also a centreman. A player like him you don't want to put on the fourth line, it would probably be more beneficial for him to play in the minors and get the ice time than for him to play on the fourth line. Maybe you shift him to the wing on the second or third line? If not, you have Malhotra playing on the fourth line, and I think $2.5 mil is too much to be paying for a fourth line centre, especially when it was Gillis' stated goal to get a guy who has won the cup before, and Malholtra has not.

Calgary Flames

What can I say here that hasn't already been said? I actually like the Alex Tanguay signing. He and Iginla did play well together. But Olli Jokinen? Really? This guy is going to have to have a point per game season to stop the vitriol that is being directed at Darryl Sutter. As a Canucks fan, I'm loving this, but you gotta feel for Flames fans right now, they must feel like they just got punched in the gut.

Edmonton Oilers

They managed to pick up Kurtis Foster, which I think was a very good signing. This guy has displayed some very good potential at both ends of the rink, he just needs to stay healthy. The curious move involves a very similar kind of player. Edmonton has waived Sheldon Souray. I'm a pretty big hockey fan and other than Foster, Souray, Ladislav Smid, and Jason Strudwick, I can name another Oilers defenseman. This leads me to believe that Edmonton does not have the depth to just give away a defenseman of the caliber of Souray, no matter how injury prone he is. I could understand if the Oilers were up against the cap, but before July 1st, they had $20 million in cap space even with Souray's $5.25 million on the books. I just feel like some team is going to pick up Souray, and he's going to make the Oilers look really bad for giving him away for nothing. Maybe the strategy is to finish last again so they can get two really high draft picks like Pittsburg, Chicago, Washington, and Tampa Bay did.

Toronto Maple Leafs

Colby Armstrong? Hahahaha. Moving on. (Trading for Kris Versteeg was actually a good move though, I just can't resist mocking the Leafs)

Ottawa Senators

I'm torn about Ottawa's moves. They lost Anton Volchenkov, but gained Sergei Gonchar. Most of the comments have been deriding Bryan Murray for giving Gonchar $5 million for three years, but I think Gonchar still has enough left in the tank for the style of game he plays. The problem is they lost Volchenkov to get Gonchar. In looking foward to free agency, I had Volchenkov even with Hamhuis as the top two guys I wanted the Canucks to sign. This guy is a super strong defensive defenseman that gets the job done. I don't think Ottawa has anyone else near that caliber that can step into that same role. I think if I was in Ottawa, i would have preferred to retain Volchenkov rather than signing Gonchar.

Montreal Canadiens

They signed two veteran backup goalies in Alex Auld and Curtis Sanford to support Carey Price after they didn't get their guy in Dan Ellis. I think Ellis would have been a better fit, but neither of these guys is bad. Either of them could play 20-25 games to spell Price, my preference is Auld, but if Price really falters, the Canadiens will be in trouble, neither of these guys will be able to step up and take the reigns.

Most ridiculous signing:

Yes there was a signing that made even less sense than Olli Jokinen going back to the Flames, and the was the New York Rangers signing Derek Boogaard for $1.65 million per year is absolutely incredible. The only thing this guy can do is fight, and he doesn't even do that very much. With all the poor signings Glen Sather has made, it's curious that there aren't even rumors that his job is in jeopardy.

Most interesting signing:

Antero Niittymaki going to the San Jose Sharks. The finger was squarely pointed at Evgeni Nabokov for letting in goals at the wrong time during the playoffs and taking all the momentum out of San Jose's sails. This summer they opted to let Nabokov walk and went for a cheaper option in Niittymaki at $2 million per year for two years. According to their plan, all he has to do is be solid like Niemi, Fleury, and Osgood have been in recent playoffs and they should do better. Niittymaki does have the ability to get really hot and was solid this past season in Tampa Bay. It will be interesting to see if this move puts them over the top.

Final Note:

This isn't hockey related, but it was absolutely heartbreaking to see how Ghana lost their World Cup Quarter-Final game against Uruguay today. Their were full value for making it as far as they did, and hopefully we will see an African team make it to at least to the semi-finals sometime in the near future.

Rob McDonald

Canucks.com... the name pretty much says it all.

CFS Skills

This past weekend I was able to attend the CFS Skills workshops put on every year to enable directors on various college and university boards to become better suited to do their jobs. Overall it was a good experience in which I learned some valuable things and was able to meet with some very interesting people from all over BC. I will do an overview of the weekend with my thoughts on each of the events.

Day 1

The day started surprisingly late being that is was a Saturday. It seemed to me that the day should have started early on Saturday and then cut out the Monday so that the conference would only go over two days.

It started out with an hour long ice breaker session, which I felt was largely a waste of time with such a large group. This could have been cut out all together.

The only actual workshop of the day was about the rights and responsibilities of boards and directors. It was fairly dull, but there was some essential and basic information. Not everything useful can be fun and exciting I guess.

The day ended with a karaoke night at Felicita's. I found this to be the more fun of the two nights by far, and would advocate that this be the only night Felicita's is opened for this event in the future.

Day 2

This day felt very long. Most people were very tired from the night before and from getting up early to watch the soccer game, and it was a grind for everyone to get through it. It wasn't helped by the quality of the workshops. They were mostly quite mediocre. I'll go through them all one-by-one:

Who's Who: This one was both boring and not incredibly important in my mind. I could have definitely done without.

Public Speaking: This workshop was ok. There were a few good points. I can definitely see how someone who didn't have experience with public speaking could have taken a lot out of this workshop.

Contracts: Again, this was ok. There was some interesting info and it was probably as interesting as could be being that the topic was contracts.

Finances: This workshop could have been much better. It was essentially a platform to show all the crazy things that have been done in the past, but it didn't connect that to good practices that we should be doing. If that connection were to be made in the future, this would be a worthwhile workshop.

Lobbying: This was my favorite workshop of the day. There was some useful information about who and how to lobby.

Campaigns: Unfortunately i was so tired by this point that I don't think I can comment on this workshop one way or another. I was unable to retain any of the information, so it may or may not have been very good.

The day ended with a "dance party" at Felicita's in which I'm sure Felictia's did not do very well, I was so tired I went home early.

Day 3

This day was pretty much the opposite of the previous day. I liked most of the workshops on this day and i felt I was able to gain the more useful info on this day than the other two days combined.

Volunteers: This was a very good workshop that talked about how to recruit and retain volunteers. Definitely useful for anyone in any non-profit organization

Staff: I found this to be pretty generic stuff that I already knew, but there were lots of questions so it seemed that there were people who did get some benefit from this workshop.

Media: This may have been my favorite workshop of the weekend. We learned about developing a media and communications strategy and how to interact with members of the media. From front to back, I found this workshop to be engaging and informative.

Membership engagement: Also a very good workshop. There was some great information on how to engage students in the student society that we can act upon immediately.

Meetings: This was split into two groups, facilitation and participation. I attended the facilitation meeting and got some useful information about how to run smooth meetings. About as interesting as a workshop about Robert's Rules can be.

So that was the Skills weekend from my point of view. If there is anything anyone wants to know about the weekend, feel free to ask.

Rob McDonald

CFS Canada is a group comprised of member locals from Colleges and Universities across Canada. Their purpose is to advocate for student interests and to provide services to member locals such as the skills workshops and the ISIC cards.

The American Dream

I can't take the credit for writing this. It was written by Chris Hedges, on a site called adbusters. I just posted it to give people something to think about while I'm doing the CFS skills workshop this weekend. It is very interesting to read and relate to, being that Canada is kind of like "America Lite". Too bad it doesn't point to joyful times in our future.

The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or John Edwards, enthralls the country … despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class.

The virtues that sustain a nation-state and build community, from honesty to self-sacrifice to transparency to sharing, are ridiculed each night on television as rubes stupid enough to cling to this antiquated behavior are voted off reality shows. Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame, cheered on by millions of viewers, elect to “disappear” the unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show America’s Next Top Model, a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes from the group portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to the television audience, nonpersons. Celebrities that can no longer generate publicity, good or bad, vanish. Life, these shows persistently teach, is a brutal world of unadulterated competition and a constant quest for notoriety and attention.

Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American character, permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after all, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the numbers of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the prisons and the soup kitchens.

It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Michael Jackson, from his phony marriages to the portraits of himself dressed as royalty to his insatiable hunger for new toys to his questionable relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. And this is also the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the nationwide celebration of image over substance, of illusion over truth. And it is why investment bankers blink in confusion when questioned about the morality of the billions in profits they made by selling worthless toxic assets to investors.

We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us investment houses like Goldman Sachs … that willfully trashed the global economy and stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation. The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity. It is fused into one bizarre, perverted belief system and it has banished the possibility of the country returning to a reality-based world or avoiding internal collapse. A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies.

The tantalizing illusions offered by our consumer culture, however, are vanishing for most citizens as we head toward collapse. The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The jobs we are shedding are not coming back, as the White House economist Lawrence Summers tacitly acknowledges when he talks of a “jobless recovery.” The belief that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the accumulation of vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others is exposed as a fraud. Freedom can no longer be conflated with the free market. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out. And class warfare, once buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance.

America is sinking under trillions in debt it can never repay and stays afloat by frantically selling about $2 billion in Treasury bonds a day to the Chinese. It saw 2.8 million people lose their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8,000 people a day – and stands idle as they are joined by another 2.4 million people this year. It refuses to prosecute the Bush administration for obvious war crimes, including the use of torture, and sees no reason to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Deficits are pushing individual states to bankruptcy and forcing the closure of everything from schools to parks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have squandered trillions of dollars, appear endless. There are 50 million Americans in real poverty and tens of millions of Americans in a category called “near poverty.” One in eight Americans – and one in four children – depend on food stamps to eat. And yet, in the midst of it all, we continue to be a country consumed by happy talk and happy thoughts. We continue to embrace the illusion of inevitable progress, personal success and rising prosperity. Reality is not considered an impediment to desire.

When a culture lives within an illusion it perpetuates a state of permanent infantilism or childishness. As the gap widens between the illusion and reality, as we suddenly grasp that it is our home being foreclosed or our job that is not coming back, we react like children. We scream and yell for a savior, someone who promises us revenge, moral renewal and new glory. It is not a new story. A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually, emotionally and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans and will usher America into a new dark age. It was the economic collapse in Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in Tsarist Russia that opened the door for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A cabal of proto-fascist misfits, from Christian demagogues to loudmouth talk show hosts, whom we naïvely dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal. And as in all totalitarian societies, those who do not pay fealty to the illusions imposed by the state become the outcasts, the persecuted.

The decline of American empire began long before the current economic meltdown or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It began before the first Gulf War or Ronald Reagan. It began when we shifted, in the words of Harvard historian Charles Maier, from an “empire of production” to an “empire of consumption.” By the end of the Vietnam War, when the costs of the war ate away at Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and domestic oil production began its steady, inexorable decline, we saw our country transformed from one that primarily produced to one that primarily consumed. We started borrowing to maintain a level of consumption as well as an empire we could no longer afford. We began to use force, especially in the Middle East, to feed our insatiable thirst for cheap oil. We substituted the illusion of growth and prosperity for real growth and prosperity. The bill is now due. America’s most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals but those who sold us the perverted ideology of free-market capitalism and globalization. They have dynamited the very foundations of our society. In the 17^th century these speculators would have been hung. Today they run the government and consume billions in taxpayer subsidies.

As the pressure mounts, as the despair and desperation reach into larger and larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability. The emergence of the corporate state always means the emergence of the security state. This is why the Bush White House pushed through the Patriot Act (and its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” warrantless wiretapping on American citizens and the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable ballot-counting. The motive behind these measures is not to fight terrorism or to bolster national security. It is to seize and maintain internal control. It is about controlling us.

And yet, even in the face of catastrophe, mass culture continues to assure us that if we close our eyes, if we visualize what we want, if we have faith in ourselves, if we tell God that we believe in miracles, if we tap into our inner strength, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, if we focus on happiness, our lives will be harmonious and complete. This cultural retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, by Hollywood or by Christian preachers, is magical thinking. It turns worthless mortgages and debt into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into an opportunity for growth. It turns alienation and anxiety into a cheerful conformity. It turns a nation that wages illegal wars and administers offshore penal colonies where it openly practices torture into the greatest democracy on earth. And it keeps us from fighting back.

Resistance movements will have to look now at the long night of slavery, the decades of oppression in the Soviet Union and the curse of fascism for models. The goal will no longer be the possibility of reforming the system but of protecting truth, civility and culture from mass contamination. It will require the kind of schizophrenic lifestyle that characterizes all totalitarian societies. Our private and public demeanors will often have to stand in stark contrast. Acts of defiance will often be subtle and nuanced. They will be carried out not for short term gain but the assertion of our integrity. Rebellion will have an ultimate if not easily definable purpose. The more we retreat from the culture at large the more room we will have to carve out lives of meaning, the more we will be able to wall off the flood of illusions disseminated by mass culture and the more we will retain sanity in an insane world. The goal will become the ability to endure.

adbusters.org is a site dedicated to activism and changing our existing power structures to create a more equitable society the coming century

Rob McDonald

What does Hockey Have to Do With Student Politics?

Nothing that I know of. But being a big hockey fan and Canucks fan ( I have been cheering for the Canucks since I was a 5 year old brat living 5 blocks away from the Pacific Coliseum), I can't help but being really excited that Henrik Sedin won the MVP award this year. This marks the first time a Canucks player has won a major award in the NHL. We were tantalizingly close with Pavel Bure and Markus Naslund, but aside from those spurts, it seemed that we were always left to cheer for mediocrity. Now with a Canuck winning a major award, that feeling seems to be dissipating. It feels like we do have a team worth getting behind, and that they do have a chance to win the Stanley Cup (especially since Chicago has just traded Byfuglian to the Eastern Conference).

It is even more important that Henrik won the Hart (and the Art Ross) this year since Pavel Bure was snubbed from induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame in favour of Dino Ciccarelli, meaning that there is still no player that played a significant portion of their career in Vancouver in the Hall. Henrik Sedin winning MVP this year will change that. As long as he keeps up his normal pace, meaning at least a point a game for the rest of his career, he is almost guaranteed to be in the Hall. There is no player in history that I know of that has won the MVP award and not been inducted into the Hall of Fame once they became eligible. And if Henrik gets into the Hall, it would be very hard to keep Daniel out. Perhaps, when the time comes, they should be inducted as one player, Henrik and Daniel. It would only be fitting.

Rob McDonald

Yahoo Sports is where I tend to get most of my hockey information not because I think it's better than anywhere else, but because I really like their hockey pool structure. I usually am in two or three different yahoo pools a year.

Big Changes Ahead for the UVSS?

A motion was brought forward to the UVSS Board meeting on June 21 to form an ad hoc commitee with the purpose of looking at potential changes to the structure of the UVSS. This is potentially the biggest issue that will come before the board this year, with the possible exception of the CFS referendum issue. The last time the structure of the board was changed was in 1996. The motion was eventually tabled until next meeting to give time gather more information, but it is not too early to talk about the issues here.

In my discussions with various board members, there are three key issues that people want to focus on: Changing the way we elect our board members; Changing the representation on the board to possibly a model that better represents each faculty; and Making more executive directors with more specific responsibilities and less hours. I have heard arguments both for and against each of these propositions and will lay them out here. Before I do, however, I want it to be known that many of these arguments both for and against are not necessarily my own, but of those of people that I have talked to. The purpose of laying them out in this fashion is to, hopefully, create a discussion around these arguments so that some of us can use this discussion to come to a position on these issues.

Changing the Way We Elect Board Members

The argument for this is that we use the antiquated first-past-the-post system which is tailor-made for a two party/slate system and creates tensions between the two sides. This past election was very indicative of these symptoms where it was essentially two slates running against each other and only people from those two slates ended up being elected. And while members of this board have been very civil and so far willing to work with each other, last years board was incredibly divisive down slate lines. The argument is that if the voting system is changed to something like STV or AV, it will reduce those tensions and create a more friendly working environment on the board and allow for a better diversity of voices.

The argument against changing the way we elect our board members is that students really don't know much about the people they are electing, especially for the director at large positions. We already get to vote for 11 people, and asking to rank the votes or do anything more complex than just picking 11 people would be asking too much of the students. How would we rank people from one to eleven if we only know perhaps three of the names and the rest we just are voting by slate? Already it's intimidating looking at the list and having to choose 11 people, asking students for more than this would be unrealistic.

Changing the Board to Become More Faculty Representative.

The argument for this is that some faculties are vastly under-represented on the board while other faculties are vastly over-represented. Our current board is a great example of this. There are no students from the engineering faculty on the board, and only one each from the sciences and commerce faculties. Meanwhile, the board is made up of mostly people from the social sciences faculty, with the majority of those being political science students. I will outline the potential solutions to this problem, then I will follow up with an argument against why any changes at all are needed.

Solution #1:

Make it so the board has to have the same proportionate makeup as students make up the faculties at UVic. To clarify, if UVic is made up of 25% science students, 25% engineering students, 25% social science students, and 25% humanities students (sorry to any faculties I left out), then the board should be made up of the same proportions. This would give each faculty their proportionate voice on the board.

Solution #2:

Make it so the board has at least one representative from each faculty. This way each faculty would have UVSS representation, while allowing for people that come from more competitive faculties to have less diminished chance of getting elected than under the first solution.

Solution #3:

Assign a faculty to each board member. That board member would then consult with their assigned faculty to let them know what is going on at the board level and listen to concerns of the faculty to bring them back to the board.

The arguments against solutions #1 and #2 are almost the same. The first argument is that by making it so all faculties have to be represented, the elections would be much less competitive in some faculties, while in other faculties there could be many people who really want to be on the board but can't get elected due to being in a very competitive faculty. This could lead to the people that got onto the board easily not taking their job as seriously and not doing as good of a job as currently. This issue is especially compounded in solution #1.

Another argument is where do you stop? Some faculties are under-represented, so you make sure they're represented. But people who live in University residence are also under-represented, with maybe one on the current board. International students are also under-represented, again with maybe one on the current board. What about students who play World of Warcraft? Do they have adequate representation? The point is there is some group that will always be without automatic representation. Under the current system, there is nothing stopping someone that is really interested in getting their viewpoint represented from running in elections and getting on the board. It is better to have people who really want to be on the board get elected than to mandate people to be on it that don't necessarily have an interest in being there.

The third argument against solutions #1 and #2 is an extension of the previous argument. There is a reason that there are a lot of political science students on the board. The board of directors and the elections are very political, and it is natural that political science students would be the most interested in that. By limiting the participation of that faculty in running for director positions, we would be limiting the opportunity of those who are arguably the most interested in doing those jobs from being able to run for them.

As for solution #3, I just thought it up as I was writing this, so i haven't really thought about the arguments against it yet, though I'm sure others will be able to do that for me. The strength I see in it is it doesn't create limits on who can get elected to the board, but it does make sure that each faculty does have a voice on the board.

Maybe an argument against it would be that if you are going to have someone act as a representative for a faculty, why not have that person be a member of that faculty?

A counter-argument to this would be that just because someone is a member of a faculty, doesn't mean they actually consult with that faculty to find out the views of other people within their faculty. By creating an appointed representative for a faculty that is mandated to consult with their appointed faculty, you are ensuring that the representative is actually hearing about the concerns of the faculty they are assigned to represent.

Creating More Executive Positions With More Specific Mandates and Less Hours

The argument for this is currently, the jobs for each of the executives is too broad, and there is too much work for each one of them to be able to do a really good job. By creating more positions it would allow the executives to be more focused in what they have to do and relieve some of the stress associated with be overburdened by too many things. I'm afraid I can't explain it better than this, and I hope someone else can do a better job than I can here.

The argument against this is it will cost more. Hours would be reduced, but I wouldn't anticipate them being reduced enough to financially counter-balance the addition of new positions. The solution wouldn't make sense if this were the case, as there would be the same amount of work to do in the same amount of hours as currently, just more people doing it. Another issue would be, where do you put the new executives? There is only so much office space and new offices would have to found for each new executive.


So this is all I've got. I have laid out all of the issues that I know of, and given the arguments on both sides of the issue to the best of my ability. However, I am not one of the people that brought any of these issues forward, so my hope that people who done much more thinking on them than I have can elaborate on the issues here and even let us know if there are any other issues that may be on the agenda, and hopefully we can get a good discussion going on this!

Rob McDonald

Fair Vote Canada: This site is purposed with trying to change the voting system in Canada to better reflect the population. It educates people on the different voting systems and the benefits of more proportional representation. The specific page I have linked to outlines the different voting systems that may be proposed to change the way we elect our board.

BP Oil Spill, and California's Debt Crisis... Connected?

By now, everyone knows about the catastrophic oil spill in the US Gulf Coast. Labeled the worst environmental disaster in US history, the amount of oil that has already entered the environment is unknown, nor is it known how long it will take to stop the flow of oil into the ocean. Another unknown is how far-reaching the effects are going to be. I have read two great articles about the oil spill that go past the actual oil spill itself and look at more in depth issues the spill reveals. They can be found here and here. For the purposes of this post, I will be focusing on the first of the two articles.

Today, I also read an article in the Globe and Mail talking about California's debt crisis. This is a story I've been following for the past couple years and it looks like it's finally coming to a head. In short, California is going bankrupt, and it might take a bailout on the same scale as the big bank bailouts we have seen in the past couple years to keep the state's essential services operating. This is bad news for the US and the rest of the world, which is still reeling from the previous financial crisis in the US, and is wary that the financial crisis in Greece will create global havoc.

So, other than the far reaching impacts of both, what do these two issues have in common? More than what you might think. To follow my train of thought, we must look at pieces of each of the articles I have linked to to go deeper into each of these issues.

The first linked article states that "while the BP Spill is the biggest single oil spill we here in America have experienced, in terms of overall impact, it's just a drop in our pollution bucket... Even in terms of oil spilled in North America, this disaster is small compared to business as usual: more than 90% of all the oil spilled in North America comes from oil leaked from cars (or poured down drains) finding its way to the sea". Why has the general public not heard about this? Why are people so outraged over the BP spill, yet not the everyday pollution which is far worse?

There are two answers to this question. The first is that the BP spill is very visible, very sudden, and effect a specific geographical region and specific people. It is very easy to get angry when you can see the damage being done and who and what it damages in a very short time-frame. The other reason is very similar. There is only one very visible bad guy. It is BP that was in charge of the rig that collapsed which caused the oil spill. It was their lax safety practices that led to the disaster. It is easy to angrily point our fingers at BP and says "You did this!" However, you do we point our fingers at for the everyday pollution? Who is most affected? What exactly is the damage to the environment and where is it? These questions aren't as easily answered. We are all part of the society that is responsible for this pollution. Does this mean we should be pointing our fingers back at ourselves? That we should all abandon our jobs and our cars and live in little homesteads in the woods? Not so fast, the worldchanging article adresses this point:

"In failing to see that the BP Spill is a symptom, we also make it easy to blame the wrong people for the failures of the systems we now use. I've read dozens of pieces parroting the opinion that the BP Spill is all of our faults; that because we all use oil, we've all been responsible for making this happen. That's just stupid. Leaving aside entirely the fact that this particular spill itself appears to be the result of unethical and possibly criminal leadership within BP, the simple fact is that we continue to use so much oil largely because Big Oil, the car companies, the road-building lobby and sprawl developers have engaged in one of the largest sustained political efforts in history to keep us using as much oil as possible by blocking climate legislation and gas taxes, fighting smart growth laws and new public transportation investments, stalling higher mileage standards in new cars, channeling trillions of dollars into new roads and auto infrastructure, gutting water- and air-quality laws, even (arguably) getting a former oil man (George W.) elected, which resulted in a war for oil and general atmosphere of climate denialism. We burn oil in such astonishing quantities because those who profit from selling and using oil have all but run the American political system for the last ten years, and exerted decades of dominant influence before that.

In that light, our personal behaviors are essentially meaningless, especially if they aren't part of a larger effort to identify ways of changing our cities, transportation, agriculture and energy systems to function much more sustainably. If we want to change our impacts, we need to change our systems, on a scope we almost never talk about, stretching through essentially every aspect of our society."

Based on the arguments given in the article, the problem is that big business has too much influence on government decision making. This is a big problem, but is that the extent of the problem? If we just don't allow big business to tell government what to do, will everything be alright? Can we even do this? To answer these questions it is useful to look at the California debt crisis.

The reason California is in the precarious situation it's in is because people's fight against many forms of taxation since the 1970's. It costs more and more to provide services for a growing population, but the tax revenue hasn't grown at the same rate. "Americans have been “brainwashed” into believing they pay a lot of taxes ... In fact, they are among the least-taxed people in the Western World, particularly if they’re wealthy" states the Globe and Mail article. California residents want the services, but they are not willing to pay for them.

This situation reveals two issues. The first is that the wealthy aren't carrying their weight in paying taxes. This points to the theory that the wealthy and big businesses have too much influence on government being true. But what the previous statement really points to is a bigger underlying problem. People do not want to sacrifice their own income and comforts to allows government to provide all the services that they want to see government provide. The general public is not seeing the bigger picture. Most people focus on their own economic situation, and trying to get ahead in any way they can. The motto of today's China sums it up the best: "It is glorious to get rich."

The real problem at the base of each of these issues can be derived from China's new favorite pastime. We are a society that is focused almost exclusively on economic progress, and we need to change our values... fast. Until we change our fundamental values, any move to separate business from government won't gain any traction, because our societal values as they are right now, are exactly the same values of big business.

If we valued a sustainable healthy environment to live in, BP wouldn't have been allowed to skimp on safety precautions. We probably wouldn't have developed a society based on polluting technologies in the first place. And the only way we are going to move our society away from these polluting technologies is if our society as a whole changes what we value most away from the economy.

The same can be said for the California debt crisis. If people changed there values from a me first financial perspective, to a perspective that values health, education and community support services instead, the state would have much less resistance to the taxes needed to pay for these things.

Both of these crises are the fault of society at large. By places our values in a me first economic system, we are setting ourselves up for many such catastrophes. We need to look into our collective mirror and ask ourselves what we really value. This includes each individual and business, but especially the media and government. Because if we don't change our societal values quickly, we might lose all those things that really are more important than our pocket books, like our natural environments, our schools and our health care systems.

Rob McDonald

Worldchanging.com is a nonprofit media organization that covers the world’s most innovative solutions to the planet’s problems, and inspires readers around the world with stories of new tools, models and ideas for building a bright green future.