Photo by Cole Breiland

Board of Governors stalls on tuition; Braun construction stops

Stacey Goyan

News Editor

Students will not know how much they will be paying for tuition next year until at least April, according to university administration. Judging from trends across the country, students should expect their tuition fees to go up.

The board of governors, which is the body responsible for managing most of the university, was supposed to discuss tuition last Thursday; however, the issue is being deferred until the next meeting in early April.

Board of governors member, Ann Dumyn announced to the board that the committee had not finalized tuition fees; thus, the final amounts would not be released until April at the earliest.

Student representative Maggie Ryan spoke out to the board, arguing that putting the tuition announcement during exam time might result in a backlash from students.

The board responded by stating that the budget committee was waiting for guidelines from the provincial government to complete their budget and finalize tuition details for next year.

This year, the province’s “Reaching Higher” program ended, which capped tuition increases at 5%. The government has yet to put out a new guideline by which universities can base their tuition prices.

While Ontario universities wait for the new guidelines, other universities in Alberta, New Brunswick, and British Columbia have all raised their tuition fees.

At the University of New Brunswick, administration added new fees, which students argue are being used to bypass a tuition freeze.

The University of Calgary approved the highest possible tuition raise under the provincial regulations.

Lakehead revealed its financial disarray in December when university officials bypassed faculty collective agreements to withhold four days pay from university employees.

During the meeting, Vice President of Finance and Administration, Michael Palowski, announced that construction of the Braun building has come to a halt due to building code disputes with Thunder Bay city hall.

Palowski said while insurance would cover restoring the building to its original state, the university is looking to include a ventilated space for smudging ceremonies to be held. It wasn’t stated when construction would resume.

During Maggie Ryan’s LUSU address to the board, she discussed the results of the recent election and many events the student union has run in the recent months.

One board member challenged the student union’s policy requiring the LUSU executive to work out of the Thunder Bay office. Chairperson Kevin Cleghorn reminded the board that LUSU was autonomous from the board of governors, and these decisions are the discretion of the student union.

Photo by Cole Breiland

LUSU to have operational policy review completed

Stacey Goyan

News Editor

As 6 o’clock came and went, it did not look good for the board of directors. Despite holding the annual general meeting in The Study, the student union was struggling to get enough students in attendance for the meeting to begin.

However, after much student wrangling by directors Steven Ackroyd, Mary Chang, and David Bates, the meeting was able to get underway.

President Dave Grad chaired the meeting, which wrapped up relatively quickly.

A representative from BDO Dunwoody, Blair Smith, gave a report about the financial welfare of the student union. According to Smith, LUSU is in relatively good shape, despite the fact that last year ended with a $31,000 deficit.

The only motion presented at the meeting was by director Louise Haukeness, which would require the student union to complete an operation policy review within the 2010 school year. The review would seek out a member of the Faculty of Business to complete the review or, if unwilling, would seek three proposals from the business community.

Haukeness said her motion stemmed from issues with the previous executive that the board was made aware of over the year, including credit card misuse, non-payment of accounts, and a debt left for this year’s executive that has caused financial project problems.

Vice President Finance Josh Kolic made an amendment to the motion, extending the deadline to 2011.

The motion drew mixed responses. Chief returning officer Tomas Valiquette felt many of these issues were dealt with as a result of policy changes. Other individuals argued that LUSU already has structures in place to deal with these issues.

Only one student, who felt seven years without an external operational policy review was too much, spoke on the matter. The motion passed and will be dealt with by the budget committee.

All three executives gave reports to the student body on their activities over the year. The executive then took questions from students and concluded the meeting.

Grad commented on the AGM, saying he was content. The LUSU president acknowledged that he cut his president’s report a little bit shorter than he would have liked, but wanted students to ask more questions.

Grad reflected on his year in office positively, stating, “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished with Trevor and Josh. I think we’ve done a lot with spending very little.”

Grad will remain in office until the end of April when new president Mike Snoddon will take over.

Photo by Cole Breiland

Students participate in food security focused issues

Erin Collins

Last Thursday, visitors to the Agora were met with a mosaic of posters and presentations. This colourful display, the fourth annual Food Security Research Network (FSRN) Forum, presented the fruits of student, staff, and community research in regard to food security in Thunder Bay.

The forum lasted from 10 am till 5 pm, with a movie showing offered in the evening. The executive chef behind the event, Dr. Connie Nelson, began the forum four years ago, and is currently the director of the network.

“The major theme here is that students are being given opportunities in seventeen different academic disciplines to engage with the community around building the local food system,” explained Dr. Nelson.

“The focus of the [Food Security Research Network] is to build the local food system, not just in a commercial way, but so our students can get out there in the real world.”

Dr. Connie Nelson credits both her upbringing and professional experience as motivating factors for the development of the network.

“I was fascinated by how research has proven over and over again how healthy communities make healthy individuals. This is a real switch for us because most systems concentrate on the healing of the individuals to heal the community. With my own background in farming, I wanted to focus on building a local food system here in Thunder Bay.”

When asked to give an example of the many ongoing projects, Dr. Nelson talked about how a third year English class was contributing to food security.

“Students in creative writing took on four community groups in Thunder Bay and developed the materials that would help these local food producers. The students were so pumped! They’d never had English like this before. They were able to use their English skills and apply them in the real world.”

Meanwhile, Tom Grinnell, Dr. Nelson’s graduate student, provided insight as to how students in social work were contributing.

“The fourth year social work theory class has been working with community organizations on the Odgen-Simpson Veggie Project” said Grinnell. “They have a large garden on Simpson’s Street that used to be a vacant lot. The project brings the community together to take care of the garden and distribute the produce.”

Dr. Nelson has had great success in developing the Food Security Research Network and intends to continue to engage the community, students, and university in food security initiatives. One of her goals concerns the addition of an alternative agricultural training program to Lakehead, allowing students to work with and learn from the farming community.

“This is my dream and my baby,” laughs Dr. Nelson. “But if you don’t have the passion of both the students and the community, the dream can’t fly. It takes everybody to make it work.”

Students voice concerns and election results ratified in short meeting

Stacey Goyan

News Editor

Thursday’s board meeting was uncharacteristically short and sweet, with a very relaxed board and a relatively small agenda.

Several Orillia students attended the meeting via videoconferencing to voice their concerns about the potential fee increase at the satellite campus.

Lakehead administration is looking to increase the existing Orillia athletics free from $25 to $40 to build a new athletics facility for the campus. As well, administration wants to create a new health fee of $40 to develop a health and counselling centre at the satellite campus.

The board of directors held off voting on the issue last week to seek opinions from Orillia students.

The LUSU executive emailed an opinion survey to students at the Orillia campus seeking feedback on the potential rise in fees.

Some students felt $40 was too much for an athletics fee, and that professional year education students ought to be able to opt out. Other students felt the fees would be beneficial and agreed with the amounts.

President Dave Grad stated that he had received over 80 responses to the survey.

Grad reminded the board that administration will be looking for a response on the issue soon.

Chief returning officer Tomas Valiquette was on hand to report the results of the recent election and referendum. The board ratified the results, making Mike Snoddon, Chris Vaillant, and Neva Bassingthwaite the new executive-elect.

Vice President Finance Josh Kolic commended Valiquette on one of the “fairest elections in Lakehead history.”

The meeting concluded with an “in camera” session.

Balancing privacy: national border security faces old challenges with new technology

Amy Szybalski

News Writer

Living in a country that shares the world’s largest unprotected border with the United States is not always easy. Illegal traffic and trade frequently cause major issues with security and personal freedoms for people on both sides of the border.

In a lecture entitled “Enhancing Border Security and Reducing Transnational Crime,” Dr. Margaret Kalacaka, Canadian International Council (CIC) Fellow and Assistant Professor of Geography at McGill University, presented this issue, highlighting the flaws in our system, as well as possible technological solutions.

Smuggling has always been a problem, and since 9/11 the various protections put in place have made travel safer, but at what cost?

People are more frequently delayed for unnecessary reasons while travelling, and Dr. Kalacaka shared both first and second hand experiences in which new security measures negatively affected travellers.

One experience involving one of Dr. Kalacka’s colleagues was quite surprising. As Kalacka recounted, “I have a colleague who did his PhD at the University of Connecticut, but he holds a Costa Rican passport. In order for him to travel to and from the United States when he was doing his fieldwork, he was required to hold a special visa for foreign students studying in the United States.”

“Because he had been studying for multiple years, he had multiple forms, and coming in from Miami, he accidentally gave the form that expired. The officer at that point had a choice: he could have said, ‘listen you have given me an expired paper, do you have a current one?’ But rather than doing that it was ‘you have to go through further inspection.’”

Following several hours of interrogation, he was allowed to go on his way. However, he missed his connecting flight.

“Personally my worst experiences have been driving into Canada,” Kalacka shared. “I remember crossing the border in my car, and having an officer try to ask me questions from quite a distance while I was approaching in my car.” Kalacka was searched when she failed to answer questions she had not even heard.

The amount of people being affected by this security treatment has only increased as paranoia has grown. With advances in security technology moving so rapidly, peoples’ privacy has become more of a concern.

Even though border security has increased at key patrolled border crossings, there are large distances between crossings where there is no viable way to control cross-border traffic, due to terrain.

Because of the unruly terrain, determined smugglers succeed more often in the trafficking of illegal drugs, weapons, and humans. New technology can help lessen these numbers, but without a large increase of manpower, the border crossings in these areas cannot be controlled perfectly.

Education students are aiding the community

Erin Carter

Over 100 residents of Thunder Bay have been treated to free hot chocolate over this last week at the Water Street Bus Terminal. At first surprised and then overwhelmed by the generous gift, the residents kept coming back to the same question — “why?”

Over the last five weeks, 22 Outdoor Ecological & Experiential Education (OE3) students in the Faculty of Education have made it their mission to inspire and invite compassionate action.

From free hug campaigns to hot chocolate blitzes, the students have shown ‘acts-of-kindness’ that they hope have promoted compassion around campus and the greater community of Thunder Bay. The project has garnered a great deal of media attention.

The Acts of Kindness project, which is being referred to as the A-OK project, was born after students met to discuss what to do for their authentic group project.

Despite having minimal resources, they wanted to have maximal impact and contribute to creating a more just and sustainable world. After discussing the endless possibilities, the group creatively merged their ideas into one big project that could facilitate their diverse interests and skill set.

These students hope that by tapping into their own generous human spirits, they will effect positive change in their lives and the lives around them. The idea is that when kindness is shared, healthy relationships are formed, community connections are nourished, and people are inspired to pass kindness on.

To find out more about the AOK project visit http://project-aok.webs.com.