FÉUO SFUOFédération étudianteStudent Federation

CAMPUS REPORTwww.sfuo.ca

New LATTÉS!!

You are being charged $35,00 to split your tuition fees into two payments.

This discriminates against students who don't have the means to pay their

fees in one lump sum. Join the movement.

$35,00… What the !*%@?

Drop Fees committee meetings:

Thursdays at 6 P.M. in Café Alternatif. campaigns@sfuo.ca

Pride Week

Jan. 30 to Feb 7.

Dance Series

Top prize 1000$Get your

sign up sheet at the

SFUO office!

Back Online!

zoomproductions.ca

Video Tube

Find it. Make it. Watch it.

2 MARS 2

VDAYUntil the Violence StopsThe Vagina Monologues

FEB. 12-13$12 Advance*

$15 Door*

Deidre Butters, Advertising Representative phone: (613) 880-6494

fax: (613) 562-5259e-mail: ads@thefulcrum.ca

Check out our rate card online. Go to www.thefulcrum.ca and

follow the link for “Advertisers”.Multi-market advertisers:

Campus Plus: (800)265-5372Campus Plus offers one-stop shopping for over

90 Canadian student newspapers.

The Fulcrum is a proud member of Canadian University Press:

www.cup.ca

ContentsContents

Drop Fees Pt. II

Be stills, my heart

Same ice, new game

The Sex Supplement

NewsNews

ArtsArts

SportsSports

SEX!!!SEX!!!

p. 5p. 5

p. 10p. 10

p. 18p. 18

p. S1p. S1

SFUO launches U of O-focused campaign to lower administrative fees. p. 5

Amanda Shendruk asks Elizabeth May what students can do to combat climate change. p. 7

Jaclyn Lytle interviews Can-rock favourites The Stills. p. 10

Video artist Marc Adornato gets caught on tape by Megan O’Meara. p. 11

National sledge hockey team members visit the U of O. p. 18

Gee-Gees and Ravens clash at Scotiabank Place in the Capital Hoops Classic. p. 12–13

Jaclyn Lytle talks to Marcus McCann about sex in the media. p. S3

Andrea Harris explains why physical dis-abilities shouldn’t hamper your sex life. p. S2

Sex gets raunchier in the dirty word dictionary. p. S6

Th e case against e-voting

Re: “Change through a click of the mouse”TO MY FELLOW student politicians and students alike, I would like to take a moment to voice my opinion on the e-vote that shall be happening in the next few weeks.

Firstly, I would like to call into question how to perform a recount when using a machine to store the votes. Th ere is no manual and anony-mous way to go through all the votes and count them over again. Th is is a computer, storing data in a digital form, which will not change once the elections are over. So asking for a re-count becomes completely trivial. Al-though, how are we to say that these machines taking our ballots are actu-ally counting our votes properly? Take Diebold for example; they claimed that their machines were indeed cor-rect and didn’t contain any fl aws. Elections later, they admitted to fl aws existing within the code that was used to run these machines which as a re-sult could have had drastic eff ects on who won these elections. Now, I do not mean to directly attack the com-pany who is selling this service to us for these elections but they are a com-pany and their goal is to make money. Who is to say that their soft ware is entirely free of bugs and will not lead to any problems?

Another issue that was brought up was whether or not there is any securi-ty risk involved. Recently people have

broken the security that is used for se-cure HTTP connections. So, if some-one really wanted to they could indeed forge the certifi cates that are used by the system. Th ough this would be highly unlikely, that issue still exists.

Two years ago, the Graduate Stu-dents’ Association took on a new way of voting which used an electronic system to count the votes. Th e sys-tem was known as Punchscan, which can be found at punchscan.org. Th is system uses several methods to en-sure that the elections will still be le-gitimate and problems such as buying votes can be reduced. Th ere is infor-mation contained in the frequently asked questions of the Punchscan website that explain the advantages of this system over other digital imple-mentations.

Also, a member of the student pop-ulation who has been in the campus papers a lot lately mentioned that “We do enough things online these days, and ... to make voting more acces-sible and easier for students is a good thing.” Just because it is possible to do something online does not mean that one should. We may think that what we are doing online is secure but things such as identity theft and loss of anonymity still occur.

I was in Montreal last week for the Canadian University Soft ware Engi-neering Conference. During the ques-tion period, a fellow student asked soft ware developer Richard Stallman how he felt about voting machines and e-voting. “I think the reliable,

trustworthy way to vote is on paper,” he responded. It means something when a room fi lled with 400 students and community leaders all applauded to Stallman’s response.

Christopher SaundersFourth-year computer

science student

Not in my village

LIKE A GOOD, informed student, I took a peek at the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa’s (SFUO) iwillrun.ca site (kudos on generating interest, by the way) the other day to get the latest scoop on the referendum questions. I came across the one re-garding the Millennium Village ini-tiative. I’m going to preface my anger with some information about what this is. Basically, it’s a United Nations development project that, if the refer-endum passes, University of Ottawa students would support at a rate of $6 per year for both full-time and part-time students. It’s a charitable organi-zation. And that’s all you need to know. It doesn’t matter if the Millennium Village is a worthwhile, transparent, or sustainable charity. It may very well be. But the fact is that it has nothing whatever to do with my education, or even with the SFUO. Th is $6 would be taken from me involuntarily and given to a charity. I already donate to chari-ties. I choose my own.

I don’t know whose idea this was, but I am off ended that they think they can donate my money better than I can. Membership in the SFUO is man-datory for all undergraduate students. Th at means that if you want to attend the U of O as an undergraduate, you must donate $6 per year to a charity you did not choose. It’s my money, for crying out loud! When will it stop? Take my money to run student ser-vices. Take my money and join a na-tional organization that may or may not be intolerant of my personal views. Take my money and give me an edu-cation. But do not force me to donate money to a charity I did not choose. Surely anyone can see how absurd that proposition is. I am a full-time student and do not have the time to manage a No committee. So I’m writing this here, and will do my best to inform as many people as I can. Please vote no. Please don’t donate my money. Please help me draw the line.

Travis WeagantSecond-year political

science student

An open letter to Allan Rock

DEAR MR. ROCK,I am writing to you in regards to

information I have recently received regarding Professor Denis Rancourt. I completed my undergraduate at U of O and, while I never took a course with Rancourt, I followed his saga through articles in the Fulcrum and word of mouth on campus. I think your decision to fi re Rancourt—a tenured professor—as soon as pos-sible is wrongheaded and harms the reputation of the university as well as general academic freedom. From what I have read, I more oft en than not disagree with some of the politi-cal stances and campaigns initiated by Rancourt. Th at does not, however, mean that he should lose his position. Th e whole idea of tenure is to allow professors to ask challenging ques-tions and conduct fringe research that can better society, but that they may not be able to conduct in a non-ten-ured position due to political reasons. By attacking Rancourt in this man-ner, you are setting a precedent that will harm the research quality of all other tenured professors at the uni-versity, who will now as well be afraid of losing their jobs.

I strongly encourage you to recon-sider your decision. If Rancourt is fi red, I will lose considerable pride in my Alma Mata.

Eitan WaldmanQueen’s University economics student

Another open letter to Allan Rock

MR. ALLAN ROCK,Your dismissal of Professor Denis

Rancourt is infuriating. Professor Rancourt is asking the academic community to question the way stu-dents are traditionally educated and the research that is being produced in this institution. Th is debate needs to happen. And it is an outrage that is not currently happening consider-ing university research is largely pub-licly funded and university graduates occupy the most elite and infl uential positions within our society.

Your treatment of Rancourt has highlighted to me your objectives for this university. It has become clear in my mind that you treat this univer-sity as nothing more than a corporate entity—a diploma mill—sardining as many students as possible into large auditoriums to be talked to at a frus-

Got something to say?

Send your letters to

editor@thefulcrum.ca

Letters deadline: Sunday, 1 p.m.Letters must be under 400 words unless

discussed with the editor-in-chief.

Drop off letters at 631 King Edward Ave. or email

editor@thefulcrum.ca.

Letters must include your name, telephone number, year, and program of study. Pseud-

onyms may be used after consultation with the editor-in-chief. We correct spelling and gram-

mar to some extent. The Fulcrum will exercise discretion in printing letters that are deemed

racist, homophobic, or sexist.

We will not even consider hate literature or libellous material. The editor-in-chief reserves

the authority on everything printed herein.

Jan. 29–Feb. 4, 2009Letters Frank Appleyard

Editor-in-Chiefeditor@thefulcrum.ca 3

Advertising DepartmentBusiness Department

The Fulcrum, the University of Ottawa’s inde-pendent English-language student newpaper, is published by the Fulcrum Publishing Society (FPS) Inc., a not-for-profi t corporation whose members consist of all Univeristy of Ottawa students. The Board of Directors (BOD) of the FPS governs all administrative and business actions of the Fulcrum and consists of the fol-lowing individuals: Ross Prusakowski (Presi-dent), Andrea Khanjin (Vice-President), Tyler Meredith (Chair), Peter Raaymakers, Nick Tay-lor-Vaisey, Toby Climie, Scott Bedard, Andrew Wing, and William Stephenson.

To contact the Fulcrum’s BOD, contact Ross Prusakowski at (613) 562-5261.

Do you think the benefi ts of online voting outweigh the potential problems?

Yes:No:

thefulcrum.ca pollLast week’s results

trating speed for one to three hours at a time. Th e continuous stream of lecture information compounded with endless facts and fi gures com-piled into textbook format busies the students enough to be out of the hair of the professors who are scrambling to write yet another paper that will no doubt be published in a high-end journal viewed by none other than the privileged academic community. Th ese papers will eventually end up in another pricey university textbook. And the race continues.

Mr. Rock, university is considered a place of higher learning and the pride of this institution rests on its ability to educate. In my mind this institution fails in providing students with true education. If the priority of the University of Ottawa were to educate, class sizes would be smaller, time spent with professors would be greater, and true questioning would happen. Th is is not the case, not be-cause it is impossible but because I am coming to learn that this is not the priority of this institution. I am coming to learn that your interests are corporate, and this reverberates pro-foundly throughout the institution.

Your actions have demonstrated to me how you handle dissenting opin-ion—by using your power and privi-lege to silence it. I ask of you to make this debate public.

If you are confi dent that the teach-ing methods and the choice of re-search in this university refl ects the greatest public interest you should be able to speak to this without feeling threatened by Rancourt.

LETTERS continued on p.20

Due to technical diffi culties, last week’s poll will continue for another week. Vote!

University of Ottawa

THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA’S FACULTY OF ENGINEERING INVITES YOU TO THE

PRESENTATIONS — INFORMATION KIOSKS — MEET GRADUATE STUDENTS, PROFESSORS AND THEIR RESEARCH TEAMS — LIGHT LUNCH

www.engineering.uOttawa.ca

Graduate Studies and Engineering Research Day

February 5, 2009 from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.1st floor atrium, SITE Bldg. (School of Information Technology and Engineering)

800 King Edward Avenue

www.thefulcrum.cawww.thefulcrum.ca

NewsJan. 29–Feb. 4, 2009

Emma GodmereNews Editor

news@thefulcrum.ca 5

by Megan O’MearaFulcrum Staff

ON THE HEELS of the Nov. 5 Drop Fees cam-paign to lower tuition fees, led by the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario, the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) has recently brought the focus back to campus in challenging a handful of administration fees it feels need to be abolished or decreased.

Th e fi rst fee being challenged by the SFUO is the $35 administration fee charged to any stu-dent who pays his or her tuition in two semester instalments instead of a single payment at the beginning of the academic year. Th is fee was $40 when it was fi rst introduced in 2000, and the executive of the Graduate Students’ Associa-tion at the time protested the new fee when they learned of its implementation. Before the end of that academic year, students convinced the ad-ministration to reduce the fee to $20.

SFUO VP University Aff airs Seamus Wolfe not-ed that the fee has since inconspicuously risen.

“Th e university uses the fact that we’re on campus for four or fi ve years maximum to

their advantage,” he said. “Two years later, aft er [those] students left campus, the university qui-etly increased it back up to $35.”

SFUO President Dean Haldenby indicated the fee is unacceptable and unjust, which is why the SFUO has committed to fi ghting it.

“It punishes the poorest students, or those who can’t aff ord to pay the tuition in full,” he said. “[It] is contrary to having a social conscience, which, in my opinion, the university should have.”

Another fee that the SFUO is challenging is the $10-a-day administration fee—which starts out at $50 the first day and goes up to a maximum of $100—charged to any student who registers for the semester after the dead-line.

“There seems to be so many students be-ing nailed with this [fee],” said Wolfe. “Every single time you try to get something from the administration, they treat you like a customer that they should be trying to extract money from.”

The SFUO has been meeting with repre-sentatives of the administration, namely U of O VP Resources Victor Simon, to discuss the administrative fees.

“Th e $35 fee is charged to cover the cost of performing two transactions rather than one for the payment of tuition fees,” Simon explained via email. “Th ere are no plans to adjust or change this fee for the 2009–10 academic year.”

Th e SFUO hopes that by fi ghting these fees,

not only will some of the costs to students brought on by the university be eliminated, but that the Drop Fees campaign will increase in profi le and relevance in students’ eyes.

“As much as it is a provincial—and to some extent a federal—fi ght we’re trying to bring home this campaign to make it tangible to our students,” said Wolfe.

Drop Fees campaign returns to campusAdministration fees challenged by SFUO

by Frank AppleyardFulcrum Staff

THE UNIVERSITY OF Ottawa is preaching safety aft er two students were injured in a minor explosion in the Biosciences Complex on Jan. 21.

Th e incident occurred aft er a 24-year-old male graduate student synthesizing cyanuric triazide in a Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation lab took the chemical into the lunchroom to show another student. While there, the mixture exploded injuring him and a female undergraduate student and shatter-ing two windows. Emergency crews cordoned off the building and de-contaminated the students involved. Both students were treated for chemi-cal burns and cuts from fl ying glass.

According to a Jan. 22 email sent to chemistry students by Faculty of Science environmental health and safety offi cer Andrew Zlotorzynski, cyanuric triazide is “shock sensitive and thermally unstable and should be treated with precautions aff orded to potentially explosive materials”. Az-ides are commonly used in automo-bile air bag systems.

Mike Histed, director of the U of O’s offi ce of risk management and environmental health and safety, in-dicated that the university is conduct-ing an investigation into the incident.

“We need to establish what the causes were, why it happened, and what did not go right so we can re-pair those issues so they don’t happen again,” he said.

When asked about the student’s de-cision to take the experiment into the lunchroom, Histed was diplomatic.

“I can’t speculate to his reasoning but … the rule we have here at the university is that chemicals and food are not to be mixed,” he said.

Zlotorzynski’s Jan. 22 email re-minded science students to take all necessary safety precautions.

“Please remember that when working in the lab we have to be prepared and counting on good luck is not an option, especially when working with dangerous ma-terials,” the email read. “Next time it can be you.”

According to the email, neither student involved was wearing safety glasses.

Andrée Dumulon, director of com-munications for the U of O, expressed her regret for the incident, saying, “It’s always unfortunate that these things happen.”

Damage to the building is expected to exceed $500.

Minor explosion occurs in Biosciences lunchroomTwo students suff er

minor injuries in chemistry mishap

photo by Frank Appleyard

photo by Martha Pearce

Emergency personnel arrive on the scene following an explosion at the Biosciences Complex on Jan. 21.

www.athabascau.ca/standout

6 \\ NEWS \\ 01.29.09 \\ www.thefulcrum.ca

by Len SmirnovFulcrum Contributor

THE WORLD’S FIRST student expedi-tion to Earth’s southernmost continent will give several University of Ottawa students the opportunity to study polar geography up close and personal. Th e expedition, scheduled to take place Feb. 12–28, will take one geography profes-sor and 10 students from the U of O to Argentina’s southern tip and then to the Antarctic Peninsula, where they will explore the polar ecosystem and endure 24-hour daylight in temperatures of be-tween -30 and fi ve degrees Celsius.

Th e trip is structured as a fi eld course and brings together 54 university stu-dents, 17 high school students, and 19 educators. Th e majority of the partici-pants are from Canada—in particular, the U of O, the University of Alberta,

and the University of Northern British Columbia—but students from Japan, Germany, and the United States are also taking part in the trip.

Th e participants will begin their journey on a chartered ship from Ush-uaia, Argentina. During the two-day voyage through the Drake Passage, stu-dents will receive lectures from experts on board regarding various aspects of Antarctica. Once in Antarctic waters, students have the option of complet-ing one of three specialized courses on glaciers, geology, or Antarctic tour-ism. Luke Copland, a U of O geogra-phy professor who will be teaching the course on glaciers, emphasized the ad-vantages of the trip.

“You can do commercial trips with big companies, but on these they don’t teach you anything,” he said. “You can sail past, but you … actually can’t land, whereas with our trip we can get off the ship up to six times per day.”

Several U of O students have made similar trips north to the Arctic region in the past. Others developed an interest in the region aft er attending geography classes at the university.

by Emma GodmereFulcrum Staff

FOR THE FIRST time in two years, the student arbitration body at the University of Ottawa convened on Jan. 22, this time to resolve confl icts between the latest Board of Adminis-tration (BOA) decision to implement e-voting and the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) constitution.

Shortly aft er the BOA’s Jan. 11 meeting, where board members passed the decision to implement e-voting for February’s SFUO elec-tions aft er extensive debate, Faculty of Education representative Myriam Berubé voiced her concerns about e-voting to the Student Arbitration Committee (SAC). Berubé appealed the decision on the basis that it was unconstitutional.

“Everybody seemed to be wonder-ing if really it was according to the constitution, because in the constitu-

tion it doesn’t say if [SFUO elections require] a paper ballot,” she said. “We were wondering if the elections could be contested on that, so I decided to bring it forward to the [SAC] just to see if everything was in order, if ev-erything’s fi ne, and we can either go through with it or not.”

Along with potential constitutional inconsistencies, Berubé also brought up several security concerns in her appeal.

“Th ere’s no [identifi cation] for the voters, like in person,” she said. “You can just forward just your student number and the [identifi cation num-ber] that’s been sent by the e-voting program to vote for somebody else ... and that was more a concern alto-gether if that could allow more people to vote more than once.”

Th e SAC convened on Jan. 22 for the hearing with Berubé and SFUO elections employees and released its decision the following day. Student arbitrators Brendan Clancy, Guil-laume Pelegrin, and Samantha Green concluded that the constitution did not implicitly or explicitly state SFUO elections were obligated to have paper ballots, that e-voting will not allow the transfer of votes and therefore does not confl ict with the constitution, and

that e-voting also does not prohibit the possibility of a recount.

Wassim Garzouzi, SFUO elections’ chief information offi cer, was pleased with the SAC’s decision.

“We’re extremely satisfi ed with the results; it is what we expected and it was the right decision in the end,” he said. “It confi rmed the decision of the elections bureau, the elections com-mittee, [and] the Board of Adminis-tration, and now we have the Student Arbitration Committee’s decision on top of all those bodies that took the previous decision. I think it adds le-gitimacy to our initial decision.”

He indicated there continues to be misinformation circulated surround-ing the security and confi dentiality of e-voting, and that the elections offi ce will be working to inform students of the online process.

“We’re confi dent our information campaign is going to be aggressive. We’re going to inform students on how they can vote [and] where they can vote ... and it is a completely se-cure system, which guarantees confi -dentiality,” he said.

Despite the SAC’s decision on the appeal, the e-vote debate is slated to be brought to the table again at the BOA’s Feb. 1 meeting.

E-voting decision challengedStudent Arbitration

Committee convenes for fi rst time in two

years

Spending February down southU of O students

embark on 16-day Antarctic expedition

“Th e expedition is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity,” explained Tyler de Jong, a third-year geomatics and geog-raphy major who will be embarking on the expedition. “Th ere’s a great feeling of remoteness in Antarctica that you can’t feel anywhere else in the world. It’s a place I [have] always wanted to go.”

Sierra Pope, a graduate student in geography who is also departing on Feb. 12, has experience with cold and barren regions. She took fi eld courses in the Yukon over the last two sum-mers and is planning to conduct research in Northern Ellesmere for three weeks in the summer of 2009.

“It’s not somewhere where most people will ever have the opportunity to go in their lives,” she said. “Just

thinking about it, within the space of three to four months, I am going ba-sically from the bottom of the world all the way to the top.”

Antarctica is currently experienc-ing extensive climatic changes, which are most prominent on the western half of the continent where tempera-tures have increased by approximately 0.1 degrees per decade in the last 50 years. Th e expedition coincides with the International Polar Year pro-gramme, running from March 2007 to March 2009, which is focused on the renewed scientifi c interest in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.

“Th ere’s been a lot of scientifi c in-terest recently because the poles are such an interesting element of the

climate atmosphere and also because we have newer methods for looking at these areas,” said Pope.

Copland has made three trips to Antarctica in the past, but is excited at the prospect of sharing his new ex-perience with the students.

“You look at it with a new eye through the students who are seeing it for the fi rst time,” he said. “Th ey just get so blown away. All this stuff that you talk about in the classroom fi nally makes sense. As a professor, it’s kind of neat to see the things you take for granted.”

For more information about polar expeditions for students, including the 2009 university trip, visit student-sonice.com.

Ten U of O students will be heading south for February—far south, to the shores of the Antarctic.photo courtesy studentsonice.com

by Amanda ShendrukFulcrum Staff

ELIZABETH MAY DIDN’T win a seat in Par-liament in the last federal election, but that hasn’t stopped the leader of the Green Party of Canada in her crusade against the climate cri-sis. On Oct. 2, 2008, May published her sixth book, Global Warming for Dummies, which she co-authored with Zoë Caron. But May herself is no dummy—her interview with the Fulcrum is proof positive.

Fulcrum: What do you think the role of uni-versities should be in the global climate-change movement?

May: A key role for universities is to speak out, and the role for youth on university campuses and high schools is really to demand change. So the more that university students are able to fi nd time in the course of all their studies to also be active on climate issues, the better. It’s essential.

Th e University of Ottawa is located in Can-ada’s political centre. Do you think that the

university’s students have any unique respon-sibilities or opportunities that they should be capitalizing on?

Th ere certainly is the opportunity. It’s much easier to go up to Parliament Hill to fi nd politi-cians, to speak to them, to hold meetings and conferences. Th ere probably is not enough connection between Parliament Hill and the University of Ottawa. Th e potential that you mention is huge.

Keeping in mind that the majority of students are strapped for cash, what should they be do-ing right now to develop good, environmen-tally conscious habits for later?

Don’t buy a car. If you want to save money through your lifetime, the decision when you’re young not to own a car begins to dictate and shape how you think about your life … Th e ben-efi ts fi nancially are just simply enormous, but they change the way you think about [fi nding an apartment or house] … So I found it extraor-dinarily helpful not owning a car.

Does writing letters to politicians in concern for the environment actually work?

Yes, it does. When I worked in the offi ce of the minister of the environment, in the mid-80s, every letter that came in was considered to rep-resent the views of thousands of people who be-lieved the same things but don’t take the time to

write … Letters to the editors of newspapers are very valuable [too] because politicians see them and it can aff ect the kind of coverage a newspa-per decides to give to an issue.

What can you say to students or young people who are transitioning from a time of being idealists and having time to focus on climate issues to a time of having a job and a family, and starting a life full of responsibilities?

If you’re thinking about your children’s future and if you understand the issue, you realize that the only obligation of a good parent is to protect the planet so your children [won’t inherit] an unlivable world … So good par-ents are active on the climate crisis; that’s just how it is. And when people are making that transition, I’d say stick to your guns [and] principles. Of course, the hard part for stu-dents these days is when they leave univer-sity they’ve already got large debt loads. And we’ve really got to address that because that’s a crisis. It reduces people’s scope of choice and freedom of action. If you want to work for [a non-governmental organization] and do good work, but you won’t make enough money to pay off your student debt, it becomes a prob-lem. You say that students, young people, they have less to lose. The flip side of that is, young people have the most to lose. I’ll be probably dead by the time the worst of this hits if we do nothing … The spectre of this crisis worsen-ing is much more severe for younger people

than it is for older people.

Th ere are many roadblocks for people who are fi ghting global warming. Regardless, you seem to be really positive. How do you remain so optimistic?

I’m quite convinced that we have time. I’m also convinced we don’t have much time … If we don’t reduce by 2015, I don’t know how I’ll re-main optimistic aft er that. So I have to stay very focused and very committed to making sure that occurs … My only reason for optimism right now is Barack Obama … [He] has made it very clear that he wants to act.

Th ere is a lot of information in your book. What is the most important thing you want people to take away from it?

If there’s something I hope people get from it, it’s that it’s not too late, but we don’t have much time. If you take that away and say, with the time we’ve got left , what are we going to do? Th ere are lots of tips in here for what individuals can do. Th ere are lots of tips for what governments can do. I’m hoping that it will make a diff erence.

Most importantly, what is your favourite colour?

Blue. I know I should have said green. But I have to be honest, my favorite colour has been, and always will be, blue.

www.thefulcrum.ca // 01.29.09 // NEWS // 7

Climate crisis crusader

The Fulcrum talks shop with Elizabeth May

Green Party leader Elizabeth May knows climate change: her new book, Global Warming for Dummies, aims to educate people about the developing global crisis.photos by Ian Flett

8 \\ NEWS \\ 01.29.09 \\ www.thefulcrum.ca

U of A researchers to study green-house gases via satellite

EDMONTON (CUP) – THE WORLD’S FIRST satellite designed to observe concentrations of greenhouse gases was launched Jan. 23 from Tane-gashima, Japan, and the University of Alberta has been a major contributor to the project.

Th e Greenhouse Gases Observa-tion Satellite, known as “IBUKI”, is a joint project of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the National Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Ministry of the Environment of Japan.

Petr Musilek, an associate professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Arturo Sanchez, a professor with the Depart-ment of Earth and Atmospheric Sci-ences, will be representing the U of A’s and the province’s perspective on the initiative.

Sanchez says the satellite will pro-vide a clearer map of the emissions hanging over Alberta’s oilsands. Th e satellite will orbit over the province every three days, and both Musilek and Sanchez plan to compile the data in conjunction with geological infor-mation and ground data. Eventually, Musilek would like to be able to create a model that would track the emis-sions across Alberta.

—Kirsten Goruk, Alberta and Northern Bureau Chief

Law profs mull over constitution

MONTREAL (CUP) – SEVERAL CANADIAN LEGAL professors and philosophers met at l’Université de Montréal on Jan. 21, shortly before the return of the House of Commons, to discuss the events that led up to the prorogation of Parliament in Decem-ber.

All agreed that Prime Minister Ste-phen Harper’s actions in December lacked legitimacy.

Stéphane Beaulac, from l’Université de Montréal, said the proroguing was an “abuse of procedure” and the Gov-ernor General should explain her ra-tionale for allowing it.

Université de Québec à Montréal’s Hugo Cyr said the Conservatives can-not consider the results of the last election a win and claim the authority to govern.

Maxime St-Hilaire, a PhD law stu-dent at Université Laval, suggested enacting rules for the head of state to follow in these situations.

Th ey were among 40 scholars to sign a document arguing that the Governor General should have re-fused the prorogation request and instead asked the opposition to form a government.

Nine University of Ottawa law professors also signed the state-ment.

—Giuseppe Valiante, Quebec Bureau Chief

News in brief

If you’re reading this, you have the attention to detail we need in our proofreaders.

Come to 631 King Edward Ave.on Tuesday evenings to keep

the Fulcrum error-free.

by Laura ClementsonFulcrum Staff

AS MILLIONS AROUND the world gathered around television sets on Jan. 22 to watch Barack Obama take the oath of offi ce of the president of the United States, University of Otta-wa social science students Kyle Simu-novic and Ethan Plato witnessed the inauguration up close and personal.

Along with 25 other U of O stu-dents, Simunovic and Plato drove to Washington, D.C. the day before the ceremonies. Th e two students—who organized a bus to carry everyone across the border—were also lucky recipients of two tickets to the inau-guration, which placed them 500 feet from the balcony where Obama made his fi rst speech as president. Simu-novic emphasized the enthusiasm he felt from the millions of onlookers behind them.

“Th e excitement would build up and you could feel it rumble off the Capitol,” he said.

Despite the sheer volume of the enthusiastic crowd, as soon as the new president spoke, the millions of people in attendance quickly became quiet to hear what they had long been waiting for.

“[Obama’s speech] was like therapy for everyone that was there. Th ere

was a huge relief from all of the frus-trations built up over the past eight years. Once the speech was over, it was like a deep breath the world let out,” said Simunovic.

Th e idea to head to D.C. came to the two students in November. Af-ter reading an article in a December edition of the Washington Post about

the many Facebook groups set up by Canadians wanting to attend the in-auguration, Plato contacted his uncle, who had connections in D.C. Plato’s uncle received two tickets to the cer-emony and passed them on to the two students. Th e rest of the Ottawa trav-ellers were among the estimated three million people watching the inaugu-ration ceremonies from the National Mall.

Despite the preparation of the trip to D.C., the two organizers ul-timately ran into problems when the bus arrived in front of Thomp-son Hall with fewer seats than what they had originally ordered. Unfor-tunately, several students who had originally signed up for the trip had to stay behind.

Both Simunovic and Plato said they would relive the experience in seeing Obama speak, if the opportu-nity returned. As a fi rst-year student at the U of O, Plato never thought his university experience would lead him to such an opportunity.

“I’m just in fi rst year so this is quite a start, and I’m not going to stop with just this,” he said.

Approximately three million people crowded the National Mall to witness Barack Obama’s inauguration.photo courtesy Kyle Simunovic

“The excitement would build up and you

could feel it rumble off the Capitol.”

Kyle Simunovic

From Ottawa to Obamarama

Two lucky U of O students witness Obama’s

inauguration fi rst hand

www.thefulcrum.ca // 01.29.09 // NEWS // 9

OttawatchBudget 2009 grants some wishes

THE CANADIAN POST-SECOND-ARY community was promised bil-lions of dollars in new spending in the budget of a federal government desperate to please.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty presented the 2009 Canadian federal budget on Jan. 27 in Parliament, an-nouncing that the government is at-tempting to spend its way out of the recession. The Conservatives are in-vesting in projects they are betting will pay off in a recovered economy years down the road. This spend-ing means that the government will go into deep deficits for at least the next four years. If all budget proj-ects are implemented as proposed, the government expects a federal deficit of $33.7 billion for the 2009–10 fiscal year. The government does not expect to reach a federal budget surplus again until 2014.

Th ere are several elements in the budget that directly impact students and post-secondary education in Canada. Chief among these is the $2 billion budgeted towards “deferred maintenance and repair projects” at post-secondary institutions. In ad-dition, the budget provides Public Works and Government Services Canada with $250 million over two

years to “undertake an accelerated in-vestment program to address deferred maintenance at federal laboratories.”

Th e budget also promises an ini-tiative called the Youth Employment Strategy, which will invest a two-year targeted funding of $20 million to the Canada Summer Jobs program.

Other post-secondary elements in the budget include a promise of $150 million for the Canada Foundation for Innovation in 2009–10 to support their Leading Edge and New Initia-tives Funds Competition, a program

which searches for new, innovative Canadian infrastructure projects.

Th e foundation will also receive another $600 million for “future ac-tivities” such as a launch of “one or more new competitions” by Decem-ber 2010.

As well, the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Wa-terloo will receive $50 million towards the “construction and establishment of a new world-class research facil-ity.”

—Carl Meyer

photo by Carl Meyer

If you’re reading this, you have the attention to detail

we need in our proofreaders.

Come to 631 King Edward on Tuesday evenings to keep

the Fulcrum error-free.

band plans to head straight back into the studio.“Th e month of February we’ll be staying in-

side and recording,” Corbeil explains. “Th ere’s a bunch of new songs that we’re going to go work on in the jam space and we’re going to start re-cording stuff . We want to put out an EP soon

and hopefully put out [another] record as soon as possible [too].”

Th e Stills and the Sam Roberts Band play the Bronson Centre Th eatre on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31. Tickets are sold out.

Arts & CultureJan. 29–Feb. 4, 2009

Peter HendersonArts & Culture Editor

arts@thefulcrum.ca 10

by Jaclyn LytleFulcrum Staff

IT’S BEEN ALMOST a decade, but Canadians are still in love with Montreal alt-rock group Th e Stills. Touring in support of the band’s Au-gust 2008 release Oceans Will Rise, bassist Ol-ivier Corbeil spoke with the Fulcrum about how the band got started, how he feels about the tour, his favourite Ottawa late-night spots, and what it was like to open for Paul McCartney.

All of the current members of the band are Montreal natives, except drummer Julien Blais, who hails from Rimouski, Que. Th ey all met as teenagers, and formed Th e Stills in 2000. In the summer of 2002, at the urging of friends in the Big Apple, the band packed up to check out the New York City scene, where they snagged their fi rst record deal.

“[Lead singer] Dave [Hamelin] and [lead gui-tarists] Tim [Fletcher] had a bunch of demos and songs that they had kicking around togeth-er,” recalls Corbeil.

“Two old friends of ours that lived in New York heard what Tim and Dave were doing and they said ‘Why don’t you guys get a band to-gether and come down here for the summer?’ I [had] been playing music with Dave and Tim for years and years and years before this hap-pened [so] they called me and we found our fi rst guitar player, Greg. So we went down to New York and started playing at all the clubs in Brooklyn and Manhattan and eventually a lot of people got interested and not long aft er that we signed a record deal.”

Luckily for Th e Stills, their New York gamble paid off . Th e band found success with the release of their fi rst EP, Rememberese, in June 2003 on New York City-based Vice Records. Th e band went on to release the hit albums Logic Will Break Your Heart in 2003, which featured the popular singles “Still in Love Song” and “Lola Stars and Stripes”, and Without Feathers in 2006. Th ese two albums—coupled with extensive touring—helped the Montrealers gain momen-tum and popularity. Th e band developed a solid fan base in Canada and the U.S. and even caught the attention of former Beatle Paul McCartney. Th e Stills were off ered the opportunity to open for McCartney at the July 20, 2008 concert to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City, where they played for a crowd of almost 300,000.

Th e Stills’ third full-length album, Oceans Will Rise, is their debut on Toronto label Arts & Craft s, who handles other Canadian alternative groups like Broken Social Scene, Stars, Apostle of Hustle, and Feist.

“Th e fact that we changed our record label doesn’t infl uence the art at all,” says Corbeil. “It changes a bit how it all goes on and who we talk to on the phone, but that’s about it. If there’s any diff erence in the sound, it’s certainly not because we changed labels.”

Corbeil noted that the band experimented with their sound on the new album. Th e mem-bers attempted to branch out to include a larger variety of diff erent types of sounds, such as cre-

ative organ-like accents on “Don’t Talk Down”, and a tribal-sounding drum beat, paired with pining vocals on “Snakecharming Th e Masses”.

“I really like ‘Being Here’. It’s probably one of my favourites. A lot of people are relating to it, and that’s good,” he says. “I also really like the song called ‘Panic’ … We had all the stuff really put down before we went in to record, so we had a really clear idea of where it was go-ing before we laid it down and recorded it. Th e writing process is ongoing, always. Th at never stops.”

Th e band is currently touring with fellow Ca-nadians the Sam Roberts Band.

“[Th e tour is] fantastic,” says Corbeil. “Th ose guys are some of our best friends, so it really makes the tour fun. We all know each other really well; we played hockey with all of them. Th ey’re really good buddies. We share our jam space back home in Montreal with them. It’s re-ally a close-knit amazing family we have with them, so the tour [has been] great.”

Th e tour will bring both bands to Ottawa’s Bronson Centre for shows on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31.

“We’ve played a bunch of times in Ottawa,” says Corbeil. “We always have an amazing crowd playing in Ottawa, not only because it’s close to home, but also because it’s a cool city. I actually have a good time there. Every time we go there we end up going out late, having a bunch of drinks, and meeting super-cool people. We all really like it a lot.”

Once the tour wraps up in early February, the

"Every time we go [to ottawa] we end up going out late, having

a bunch of dr inks, and meeting super-cool

people."Olivier Corbeil

Snake-charming the masses

photo courtesy Cian Farra

The Stills hit Ottawa’s Bronson Centre

www.thefulcrum.ca // 01.29.09 // ARTS // 11

Carleton University offers more than 100 graduate programs for you to choose from:

n 28 engineering and design programs including industrial design; electrical, computer, aerospace and biomedical engineering

n 19 public affairs programs including international affairs, public administration, journalism and political science

n 32 science programs including computer science, biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics and earth sciences

n 29 arts and social sciences programs including public history, behavioural neuroscience, music and culture, and linguistics

n MBA and PhD in Management programs

Benefit from our convenient location in the heart of Canada’s capital, the option to study full- or part-time, and over $30M in financial support.

Find out why a Carleton graduate program is right for you. Visit our website for more information or to apply today.

WITH 100+ GRADUATE PROGRAMS,

carleton.ca/graduate-studies

CARLETON HAS A PROGRAM THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

by Megan O’MearaFulcrum Staff

HAVE YOU EVER wondered what the ByWard Market was like when it was littered with horse-drawn bug-gies in 1912, or what the Parliament buildings looked like when they were engulfed in fl ames in 1916? Th e latest collection of digitally restored photos from local video artist Marc Adornato features these images among many other depictions of Ot-tawa’s history. Th ese photos aren’t on display in a gallery; rather, they can be found on the walls of the Clock Tower Brew Pub (422 MacKay St.) until March 15.

“I used to think that gallery ven-ues were the way to go as an artist, but I really started getting discour-aged by the people showing up to the openings, [because] it’s always the same people,” says Adornato, a video broadcast technician for the House of Commons who started creating art in the early 1990s. “I thought ‘there’s got to be something more.’ I wanted to get my stuff out there to the rest of Ottawa.”

Aft er this realization, he began showing his work at coff ee houses

and other alternative venues in order to appeal to those who don’t frequent art galleries. Aft er setting up a web-site and uploading his original and interpreted videos, along with other projects like his restored photos, Adornato has found that his largest fan base is online.

“It’s tough in this city, because it’s such a small city and there’s not a whole bunch of stuff going on in the way of video art,” he explains. “It really doesn’t matter where you are anymore when you’re a video artist, though, because most of my audi-ence is online.”

Visiting Adornato’s website (ador-nato.com), it’s obvious that these restored photos are just a small seg-ment of his imaginative work. His collection of videos include re-cut speeches by George W. Bush, a fi lm of Adoranto destroying a keyboard while wearing a gas mask, and—his latest work—Adornato setting an electronic singing fi sh on fi re.

His art has involved other media as well. He once ripped up over $3,500 in Canadian currency to make Cana-dian and American fl ags, and he has also dabbled in painting, photogra-phy, and acting.

“Th at’s part of the reason why I’m really pushing [the historic pho-tos] because it’s really out of track with what I usually do; my website is mostly crazy robots and weird sci-fi -

ish kind of creepy stuff ,” says Ador-nato. “[Restoring these photos] has really taken off as a side business, but it’s more of a hobby than creative.”

Adornato’s art usually has a mes-sage related to current world issues.

“I think our art should refl ect what’s happening in our society and culture,” explains Adornato. “Too oft en artists are making art that can only be understood by snobby artist people. When I go to make a piece I really think about how the audience

is going to look at it; I usually don’t even know what the piece is yet.”

Over the past 10 years, Adornato has brought many political and sci-entifi c issues, such as war, leadership, cloning, advancing technology, and the collapsing environment into his art. Now that Barack Obama is in the White House, Adornato predicts a coming shift in his work.

“I’m hitting a new phase … I know that that chapter is over, of Bush and fascism, and now there’s something

that’s happening in society … an evolution,” he explains. “I don’t attri-bute that all to Obama, but he’s kind of like the spark that would ignite the fi re in a room full of gas that’s been building.”

Until the fi re spreads, however, Ardonato plans to continue with his historic restorations.

“I’ve been going into the archives and digging out old fi lms of Ottawa, and I’d kind of like to zoom them into the future.”

Reproducing awarenessMarc Adornato explores controversial issues with

innovative video art

photo by Martha PearceMarc Adornato’s artwork is as varied and experimental as his facial expressions.

12 \\ CAPITAL HOOPS \\ 01.29.09 \\ www.thefulcrum.ca

by David McClellandFulcrum Staff

BY THE END of the fi rst half, it was basi-cally all over for the Gee-Gees men’s basket-ball team.

Taking on cross-town rivals the Carleton Ravens at Scotiabank Place in the third-annual MBNA Capital Hoops Classic, the Gees were dealt a crushing 87-72 defeat to the number-one ranked Ravens. Following two wins on the road in Kingston on Jan. 23 and 24, both teams were tied for fi rst place in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) East division with 13-1 records going into the game.

Th e fi rst quarter featured a close, physical battle with the two teams trading baskets. Th ough the Gees jumped to a quick six-point lead, the Ravens battled back and took con-trol at the end of the quarter to take a 19-13 lead. Carleton carried control of the game

into the second quarter, opening a nine-point lead at one point. Th ough Ottawa put together a rally midway through the quarter, they still trailed 38-30 at halft ime.

Physical play was the order of the day in the second half, and the Gee-Gees struggled to close the gap. Fift h-year centre Dax Des-sureault stepped up for Ottawa during the third quarter, add-ing seven points to help pull the Gees within fi ve, trailing 59-54 going into the game’s fi nal quar-ter. However, the Ravens’ lead would prove to be insur-mountable. Ottawa was unable to build momentum during the fourth quarter, and fell 87-72 to the Ravens.

Gee-Gees head coach Dave DeAveiro said that the problem for the Gee-Gees was capitalizing on the op-portunities. they were presented.

“I think we got some good shots [off ] in the third and fourth quarter, we just didn’t

[sink] them,” DeAveiro said. “Every time we needed a big shot we didn’t make it, every time they needed a big shot they did. Th at’s champ, that’s what they’re number one in the country right now and that’s what we’re try-ing to [become].”

Dessureault, who left the game with four minutes remaining aft er picking up his fi ft h

personal foul, said that the Gees didn’t play well enough on defence to win.

“Just defence, we weren’t on the same page. Sometimes I didn’t rotate to the right man, other guys didn’t have very good outside defence, so they got a lot of easy baskets that way,” a dejected Dessureault said af-ter the game.

Fift h-year guard Stu Turnbull had an ex-plosive game for the Ravens, leading both teams in scoring with 29 points. DeAveiro was not surprised by Turbull’s performance.

“Stu Turnbull is one of the best players

in the country. He’s intelligent, he’s craft y, and we don’t have an answer for [him] right now,” said DeAveiro. “He gets great shots, he makes great baskets [and] when you’re a fi ft h-year guy that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

Th e Gee-Gees are now looking forward-sto a chance at revenge, as they will meet the Ravens again on Feb. 21 in a season-ending match-up.

“When they come to play Ottawa, we need to get that win,” said fourth-year guard Josh Gibson-Bascombe, who had 18 points for the Gees. “We’re going to be playing harder than ever.”

For his part, DeAveiro didn’t want to start worrying about their next meeting until fur-ther down the road.

“I’m not even thinking about Carleton, we’ve got a lot of games before we play them again,” he said. “Our focus is to win our re-maining games, and we get ready to play them again at the end of the year.”

With the loss, the Gee-Gees fall to second place in the OUA East with a 13-2 record. Th ey next play Jan. 30 at 8 p.m. when they take on the York Lions at Montpetit Hall. Tickets are $4 for students.

ClassicallyClassically

Gee-Gees fail to contain explosive Carleton off ence

crushedcrushe“Stu Turnbull is one of the best players in the country. He’s intelligent, he’s crafty, and we don’t have an an-swer for [him] right now.”

Dave DeAveiroGee-Gees head coach

Gee-Gees centre Dax Dessureault scored 13 points and fouled out of the game late in the fourth quarter.

87-7287-72UOUOCUCU

by Laura ClementsonFulcrum Staff

THOUSANDS OF UNIVERSITY of Ottawa students came out to support the Gee-Gees for the third annual MBNA Capital Hoops Classic on Jan. 28. Th e game has brought out massive crowds in the last two years, but this year topped them both, breaking the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) record for a regular season basketball game with 10,523 fans piling into the arena.

Th e snowy Ottawa weather didn’t stop students from making the trip to Scotiabank Place in Kanata, although it did make for a lot of empty seats at the start of the women’s game.

Once the stragglers slowly began to fi lter in, the long-time rivalry between the two schools was quickly reignited, with both sides trying to outdo each

other with the loudest cheers and best signs. Th e Gee-Gees promotions team was out in full force, rallying the U of O faithful behind the Gees. Promo team member Viona Pham explained that an important part of the job is giving out T-shirts and getting the crowd pumped.

“It’s really important for the spirit of the university to be here tonight,”

said Pham. Th is year’s attendance of 10,523

eclipsed last year’s mark of 9,124 and the 2007 CIS record of 9,720, setting the bar high for Gee-Gee and Raven fans in future years.

Also in attendance were Student Federation of the University of Otta-wa (SFUO) President Dean Haldenby and VP Social Joël Larose. Haldenby

felt the weather dampened the arena-fi lling potential of the women’s game, but was nonetheless proud of the spirit he saw.

“It’s a great time for us to come together and fi ght the Ravens,” said Haldenby.

As a student leader at the U of O, Haldenby wouldn’t have missed the action.

“It’s important for me to show that all students should be out here sup-porting the Gee-Gees and bring a little Gee-Gee pride to our games” he said.

Th e men’s team got a boisterous welcome from fans as they ran on court through clouds of smoke. From that moment on, the energy from both players and fans alike hit a non-stop high.

In between whistles the crowd was entertained by trivia games, shooting contests, and a crowd favourite—the mascot dance-off .

Th ings got a little heated off the court at halft ime of the men’s game when a group of Raven fans invaded the Gee-Gee zone, but any potential problems were quickly broken up by security.

Rob King of the Jockey Club—the Gee-Gees supporters club—felt that the Gee-Gee fans in attendance gave rival Raven fans a taste of Garnet and Grey pride, saying, “We showed them who’s boss.”

“Carleton may have us in numbers, but they defi nitely don’t have us in heart,” he added.

www.thefulcrum.ca // 01.29.09 // CAPITAL HOOPS // 13

by Sarah LeavittFulcrum Staff

WHAT STARTED OUT as a sure win soon crumbled into a crushing defeat for the Gee-Gees women’s basketball team, as the lady Gees cracked un-der the pressure of a record crowd at the Capital Hoops Classic against the Carleton Ravens on Jan. 28. Th e spec-tre of playing in the cavernous Scotia-bank Place apparently proved to be too much for the Gees, who wilted in a 62-53 loss to their cross-town rivals. Going into the game, both teams were tied in the Ontario University Athlet-ics (OUA) standings at 10-5 and were battling the Toronto Varsity Blues (11-5) for the top spot in the East Di-vision.

Th e Gees opened the game at their best, displaying solid defence and dominating on the boards. Th e Gar-net and Grey off ence kept pace with their smothering defence, with Kyrie Love and Kelly Weir each collecting seven points. At the end of the sec-ond quarter, the Gees sported a 32-25 lead, having dominated the Ravens throughout the fi rst half.

But there was a dramatic turn-around at the beginning of the sec-ond half, with the Ravens emerging from the dressing room brimming with newfound confi dence. Ottawa’s off ence sputtered to open the second frame, allowing the Ravens to claw their way back and take the lead.

“We came out with a game plan at the start of the third quarter and they took us out of it,” said Gees coach Andy Sparks. “We didn’t do the little things. Th ey physically took it a little faster and we couldn’t respond to that. We tried to get in a screen and they got us out of it, we tried to get through and they smashed us. Th ey deserve full credit for it.”

Sparks commended Ravens for-ward Ines Jelic for her role in the win.

“[She] had an excellent game and really dominated the inside,” Sparks said of the fourth year forward, who netted 18 points and seven rebounds.

Th e Gees ended the game having shot a dismal 6.3 per cent from be-yond the arc, aft er failing to connect on any of their 10 three-point at-tempts in the second half. Th e Ravens on the other hand shot 42.9 per cent from beyond the arc over the course of the game, tearing apart the Gees faltering defence. Centres Katie Lau-rie and Hannah Sunley-Paisley were the lone bright spots for the Gees with 11 points apiece.

Sparks was looking to the future on the heels of the loss.

“Carleton takes it to another level. Th ey’ve been together now for 18 months, we’ve been together for six and you can see the physical diff er-ence,” said Sparks. “We have to go back to the drawing board. But it’s one game and we have to take it as one.”

Th e Gee-Gees next home game is against the York Lions on Jan. 31 at Montpetit Hall. Tip-off is at 6 p.m., and tickets are $4 for students.

Capital disappointment

CIS attendance record falls at Capital Hoops Classic

Gees collapse under Hoops pressure

Gees collapse under Hoops pressure

crusheded Gee-Gees guard Tanya Perry struggles to get her shot away amid a pair of Ravens defenders.

photo by Alex Smyth

photo by Frank Appleyard

photo by Alex Smyth

62-5362-53UOUOCUCU

14 \\ ARTS \\ 01.29.09 \\ www.thefulcrum.ca

by Peter HendersonFulcrum Staff

MICHAEL MUCCI’S MUSIC is like nothing you’ve ever heard. Th e Guelph musician’s music, performed primarily on a single acoustic guitar, blends infl uences from jazz, classical, folk, and blues to form an intricate, layered sound that expands the idea of what one man and 10 fi ngers can create. Mucci, who grew up playing in punk and hardcore bands, credits the legendary 1950s guitarist John Fahey with inspiring him to create the intricate guitar ballads he plays.

“[Fahey] took [his signature style] from a lot of old blues traditions,” says Mucci. “Like delta blues and things like that, and also a little bit of clas-sical in there as well. He was a fan of classic music, so his whole thing was to try and make the guitar like an or-chestra. It’s got those bass melodies, the treble melodies, all in one. I think he’s the biggest infl uence, and anyone who plays this music is always in his shadow.”

Mucci’s sound is similar to Fa-hey’s, and the idea of creating a sym-phony within the confi nes of a guitar is something he takes to heart. His

songs are mostly arranged for one guitar, but his complicated, fi nger-picked melodies encompass the full range of his instrument’s expression. Mucci is performing a free show at the Avant Garde Bar on Jan. 29 in support of his debut album, Under the Tulip Tree.

Under the Tulip Tree, released in October, is Mucci’s fi rst full-length. He produced and recorded it on his own, which is a departure from the norm for most musicians—solo or otherwise. Mucci, however, thought it would be a challenging and educa-tional experience.

“Th e way things are today, it’s so accessible and so easy to do it your-self,” Mucci explains. “Th ere’s a steep learning curve, and I’m still learning. Obviously, you learn every day. From the recording standpoint, I was a lit-tle intimidated to go into a studio. I didn’t think I could do it in one day and I didn’t want to end up in a huge money pit. Being able to do it at home made me able to work at my own pace, and do it whenever I felt the moment was right.”

Under Th e Tulip Tree was released by Tall House Recording Company, Mucci’s own label. Right now, Mucci is the sole artist on the label and also its sole employee, but he hopes to ex-pand Tall House’s roster in the near future. He also wants to use his ex-perience producing Under the Tulip Tree to work with other artists as a producer.

“I liked the whole process of do-ing it myself,” says Mucci. “I’ve always wanted to try and start a record label, and a good way would be to release my own records. Hopefully, one day, I want to start releasing records for other people—musicians that I enjoy watching and listening to. Th at’s what I’m aiming for.”

Founding a record label and maintaining a solo career are big time commitments for Mucci, who applies the knowledge he learned in an undergraduate degree in biology in his job as the phytotron coordina-tor for the University of Guelph (a phytotron is an enclosed greenhouse used in the study of botany). Mucci enjoys having an outlet for both the scientifi c and artistic sides of his per-sonality.

“I’ve always had a little bit of an ar-tistic side, and the more you practise, the better you get. I think it’s practice and cultivating the left side of your brain, giving it a good workout every once in a while. It’s also a release from the rest of my life, from [my work]. When I’m playing guitar, I don’t think of work at all. It’s totally a release from everything.”

Mucci calls his trips to other cities for show s“weekend tours”, and he hopes that he’ll be able to continue doing them throughout the year. He also has ambitious plans for his musical future.

“I’d love to play with other people again,” Mucci says. “I always learn from playing with other people. It’s

a great experience. Touring—[in] 2009 [it’s] going to be a little diffi cult to get away, but hopefully in 2010. I’d like to go east and make it all the way to Halifax, because I’ve never been to the east coast of Canada. I’ve got some recording projects in the

works, too, that may see the light of day in 2009 if things pan out.”

Michael Mucci plays a free show at the Avant Garde Bar (135 Besserer St.) on Jan. 29. For more information, visit avantgardebar.ca.

Complex compositionMichael Mucci’s

guitar sounds like a symphony

by Peter HendersonFulcrum Staff

IT’S TOUGH FOR bands to stay together—even the Beatles didn’t last more than a decade, and their fi nal years together were more strained than Rod Blagojevich’s relationship with the truth. Canadian rockers Gob have been rocking hard since 1994, re-leasing hit albums like 1998’s How Far Shallow Takes You and 2001’s World According to Gob. Th ey’re bringing their high-energy show to Maverick’s on Jan. 31.

Although the core songwriting duo of Tom Th acker and Th eo Goutzina-kis hasn’t changed during Gob’s 15-year existence, the band’s turnover at the bass player position rivals the suc-cession of drummers in Spinal Tap.

“It’s funny, because people will bring up member changes, and it’s like ‘No shit, it’s impossible to keep a band together forever,’” says Th acker. “Somehow, we’ve just stayed together. Gabe [Mantle] has been in the band for a long time, [he’s] our second drummer. We had good luck there,

but we’ve gone through a bunch of bass players. I guess there’s a certain chemistry—most bands that I’ve wit-nessed are pretty dysfunctional. I’m not saying that we’re any diff erent, but somehow we keep it together. It’s a mystery to me, too.”

Gob’s latest album is the self-produced Muertos Vivos, released in November 2007. A darker record that layers angry, introspective lyrics over heavy, distorted guitars, Muer-tos Vivos is a sonic departure for the band, as it pulls metal influences into Gob’s traditionally punk rock sound. Their evolution as musicians is comparable to that of fellow Ca-nadians Sum 41, who also moved from pop punk to more mature and heavier lyrics and instrumentation on their recent albums. Both bands have a common thread aside from their musical development—Thack-er plays guitar in both, though he operates as strictly a tour compan-ion with Sum 41.

Th anks in part to Th acker’s other commitments, there was a four-year lay-off between Foot In Mouth Dis-ease and Muertos Vivos.

“Aft er [Foot In Mouth Disease], we toured for about a year and a half,” Th acker explains. “Th en a number of things changed—we left our label, our management [changed], we got a new bass player. All those things slowed

down the momentum a little bit, you know, while we were writing the latest record. [Th eo and I produced] a re-cord for another band at the time [By-athread’s Th e Last of the Day Dreams], and that was the deciding factor in us producing our own record.”

Th e band began recording Muertos Vivos in 2006, but it didn’t go smooth-ly. Th acker suspects supernatural in-terference.

“Th ere was this one point where we had all this snowfall in Vancouver, which is—was—unheard of before global warming, ironically,” recalls

Th acker. “Th e power went out where we were, and it took days to come back on. We ran out of food, and it was cold in the house, and we had to have someone come rescue us and take us back to civilization. All kinds of shit went on—it was like the gods were trying to keep us from recording this record.”

Divine vengeance aside, Gob’s cur-rent Canadian tour is by no means the last we’ll see from the band. Th e four-year layoff between albums is defi -nitely an anomaly, and Th acker sees another release in the near future.

“We want to release [a third] single from the record,” says Th acker. “We want to put another [song] out, we don’t care if it’s the biggest hit in the world—we just want people to hear it. We want to start working on [anoth-er] record basically right away. We’ll be writing on this tour, and aft er this tour, and we’ll record a record as soon as possible. We don’t want to make people wait like the last time.”

Gob plays Maverick’s (221 Rideau St.) Jan. 31. Tickets are $18. For more in-formation visit mavericksbar.com.

Canadian rockers Gob won’t let

anything stand in their way

photo courtesy Michael Mucci

Unstoppable Gob

photo courtesy Laura Barclay

www.thefulcrum.ca // 01.29.09 // ARTS // 15

Good Good BadBadFilm FilmSlumdog Millionaire Paul Blart: Mall CopA F

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE TELLS the sus-penseful and intriguing tale of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a young Indian man from the slums who makes his way onto the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and, surprisingly, begins to win. As he progresses towards the fi -nal prize, a series of fl ashbacks show how Jamal went from a kid with no future to a man on the verge of wealth.

Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle, is based on the novel Q and A by Indian author Vikas Swarup. Jamal’s complicated life is revealed over the course of the fi lm, including his rocky relationship with his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal), the death of his mother, and his quest to fi nd the girl he fell in love with as a young boy, Latika (Freida Pinto).

Danny Boyle’s directing is nothing short of brilliant. He shoots the vibrant streets of Mum-bai in dizzying shots that take full advantage of the colourful beauty of the Indian locations. Mumbai itself is a co-star of this fi lm, a vibrant

metropolis that lives and breathes. Boyle’s di-recting—with help from co-director Loveleen Tandan, who did many of the Indian location shots—and the cinematography by Anthony Mantle make the pure visual experience of Slumdog Millionaire awe-inspiring through to the closing credits.

Th is fi lm would be phenomenal even if it was completely silent, but a strong script backs up the stunning visuals. Th e fi lm boasts realistic and engaging dialogue, and the acting is solid, espe-cially considering that the majority of the cast are non-actors or have little professional experience. Patel, Mittal, and Pinto are all excellent, and the children who play their younger counterparts in the fl ashback scenes really shine.

Slumdog Millionaire is ultimately a story of hope—that ruthless killers can fi nd redemption, that young love really can succeed, and that sometimes an uneducated man from the slums can have all the right answers.

—Eleni Armenakis

PAUL BLART (KEVIN James) is a dedicated mall cop, resigned to his life of protecting shop-pers aft er failing the police exam. His simple life is turned upside down when a team of back-fl ipping master thieves break into the mall, and Blart is the only one who can save the day. Basi-cally, think of Paul Blart: Mall Cop as an unfunny and uninteresting remake of Die Hard.

Steve Carr, the fi lm’s director, was responsible for the shining cinematic classics Daddy Day Care and Dr. Dolittle 2. In Paul Blart he uses the same safe, goofy, slapstick style as his previous movies, and though low-brow humour could have saved Paul Blart, Carr decided to give the fi lm all the of-fensiveness of a live-action Disney movie. Kevin James is the only recognizable face in the fi lm, yet even his expansive girth isn’t enough to carry the fi lm for more than 10 minutes.

James’ weight issues are at the centre of the fi lm, as every joke revolves around his obesity in some way. Some overweight actors can poke fun at their own rotund fi gures, but here it seems like that was the one and only joke the writers could think of. Chris Farley made his gut funny,

but Kevin James unwit-tingly makes his gut a sad indicator of the deg-radation and humilia-tion some people will put themselves through for a laugh.

Th e only good thing about Paul Blart: Mall Cop is that the complete and total lack of substance or entertainment will put you into a deep, coma-like sleep that will leave you feeling refreshed when you wake up 90 minutes later. Th at this movie has been number one at the Canadian box offi ce for two weeks only insults our collective intelligence.

—Hisham Kelati

Some overweight actors can poke fun at their own rotund fi gures, but here it seems like that was

the one and only joke the writers could think of.

Th ursday, Jan. 29Women’s volleyball: Ottawa vs.

Toronto Varsity Blues. 6 p.m. Montpetit Hall. $4 for students.

Film event: Bride Wars with snacks and prizes. 5:30 p.m. Empire

Th eatre. Rideau Centre. $10.

Friday, Jan. 30Play: Life Aft er God. 8 p.m. Arts

Court. 2 Daly Ave. $20 for students.

Men’s basketball: Ottawa vs. Laurentian Voyageurs. 8 p.m.

Montpetit Hall. $4 for students.

Saturday, Jan. 31Women’s basketball:

Ottawa vs. York Lions. 6 p.m. Montpetit Hall. $4 for students.

Roller Derby Bout: Bytown Blackhearts vs. Montreal Sexpos.

7:30 p.m. Norm Fenn Gym. Carleton University. $10.

Sunday, Feb. 1Men’s hockey: Ottawa vs.

Concordia Stingers. 3 p.m. Sports Complex. $4 for students.

Monday, Feb. 2Film: Labyrinth. 9:15 p.m.

ByTowne Cinema. 325 Rideau St. $9, $6 for members.

Tuesday, Feb. 3Concert: Manhattan on the

Rideau. 12 p.m. National Arts Centre. 53 Elgin St. Free.

Wednesday, Feb. 4Lecture: Lloyd Axworthy.

7:30 p.m. National Gallery of Canada. 380 Sussex Dr.

$10 for students. Tickets available at Unicentre room 204 or online at

alumboutique.ca.

Thryllabus

The Thryllabus needs lots of events to remain so thrilling.

Email features@thefulcrum.ca with suggestions.

The Fulcrum staff meetings:

Thursday at 2:30 p.m.

631 King Edward Ave.

New volunteers always welcome.

www.thefulcrum.cawww.thefulcrum.ca

THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS were an-nounced on Jan. 22, and as usual, what didn’t make the list is more interesting than what did. Th e Dark Knight, a critical and commer-cial success that grossed $531 million in North America alone, didn’t receive a nomination for either Best Picture or Best Director. Forget the nominations and awards it received from the Directors Guild of America, the Producer’s Guild of America, and the Broadcast Film Critics Association. Forget that it’s currently number fi ve on the user-selected Top 250 Films list on imdb.com, the biggest and best movie information site. Forget that it made the year-end lists of dozens of critics. According to the members of the Academy, Th e Dark Knight wasn’t one of the best fi lms of the year—its only

nomination in a major category is Heath Led-ger for Best Supporting Actor.

In the past, the Academy has shied away from more successful fi lms and chosen to recognize movies like Crash, which won the 2005 award for Best Picture despite the mega-success and awards-show domination of another fi lm re-leased that year, Brokeback Mountain. Given the quality of some of the other Best Picture nom-inees—Frost/Nixon, Milk, and Slumdog Million-aire are all phenom-enal movies—it’s acceptable that a big-budget sum-mer blockbuster doesn’t deserve the publicity generated by an Oscar win. But what, then, is the story behind the nomination of Th e Curious Case of Benjamin But-ton? Th at overlong, gimmicky love story with a US$150 million budget and near-ubiquitous marketing campaign doesn’t deserve any more publicity, but it’s been nominated for 13 Acad-emy Awards. So, perhaps the lack of a nomina-tion for Th e Dark Knight in either the Best Pic-ture or Best Director categories can be explained some other way.

I think, in the end, it all comes down to cold, hard cash. Th e worldwide box-offi ce take of Th e Dark Knight is almost US$1 billion, and it will surely exceed that mark with its limited re-release on Jan. 31. For some strange reason, many people are turned off by success. Pulp Fic-tion made over US$200 million worldwide—at the time, the highest-grossing independent fi lm ever—yet neither Quentin Tarantino nor the fi lm received any Oscars. At least Tarantino was

nominated; unlike Steven Spielberg, who was ignored by the Academy despite a Best Pic-ture nomination for his fi lm Jaws. Th e original sum-mer blockbuster grossed US$470 million world-wide, which, when adjusted for infl a-

tion, is a whopping US$1.8 billion in today’s dollars. Jaws is widely regarded as a perfect fi lm, and remains the highlight of Steven Spielberg’s illustrious career, but its success must have doomed it come Oscar time. No matter what, success engenders hatred, and it’s easy to see how this aff ected Th e Dark Knight. If the movie had grossed $300 million instead of $1 billion, it

likely would have been nominated. Meaniwhile, Benjamin Button will barely make back its bud-get, and that somehow makes it Oscar-worthy.

Chuck Klosterman, in his brilliant Esquire essay on guilty pleasures, destroyed forever the idea that any cultural consumption can be called a guilty pleasure. “It never matters what you like,” he writes, “what matters is why you like it.” Th e members of the Academy could take a lesson from these words. So what if Th e Dark Knight was a massively successful cultural phenomenon that captivated audiences world-wide? So what if it made more money than all of last year’s Best Picture nominees put together? It’s still the best fi lm of 2008, and Christopher Nolan’s brilliant direction—though maybe not the best of the year—anchored a fi lm that will be remembered years aft er we forget Benjamin Button.

I’ll still watch the Oscars, but I know the best and brightest will be passed over because of some misplaced feelings of envy and jealou-sy. But if Heath Ledger doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, every member of the Academy can expect a visit from a certain black-clad vigilante, or at least a portly student journalist in a similar-looking, but ill-fi tting suit.

613-252-2311arts@thefulcrum.ca

16 \\ ARTS \\ 01.29.09 \\ www.thefulcrum.ca

KITCHEN PARTY

$4.49* KEITH’S IPA AND KEITH’S RED

PLUS LIVE ENTERTAINMENT

3LITRE TABLE KEG TO SHARE *AVAILABLE FROM 7PM TO CLOSE

$18.99

STA

RT

S A

T 9P

M

(20 oz)

WEDNESDAY NIGHT EAST COAST

PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

D’Arcy McGee’s is a registered trade-mark of PRC Trademarks Inc. Used under licence. ©2008 Prime Restaurants of Canada.

44 Sparks St • 360 Moodie Dr 260 Centrum Blvd

GON

www.primepubs.com

You’ll never eat brunch in this town again

Oscars shmoscars

Peter HendersonArts & Culture Editor No matter what, success engen-

ders hatred, and it’s easy to see how this affected The Dark Knight

... Benjamin Button will barely make back its budget, and that

somehow makes it Oscar-worthy.

University of Ottawa

www.socialsciences.uOttawa.ca scsgrad@uOttawa.ca

Why choose the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Social Sciences for graduate studies?

Funded research: the University of Ottawa is ranked third in Ontario and seventh in Canada when it comes to funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Financial support: over $18,000 a year for 4 to 5 years for doctoral students, and over $16,500 for master’s students.

Bilingual environment: programs offered in English or in French, the choice is yours!

More than 240 professors and 19 graduate programs.

Graduate studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences

here.

by Anna RocoskiFulcrum Contributor

HOCKEY IS CANADA’S most popular sport, but it’s not possible for everyone to play it. Th at’s where sledge hockey comes in, which let’s peo-ple play the game without needing to use their legs.

On Jan. 23, the world championship-winning Canadian national sledge hockey team held a sledge hockey demonstration at the Sports Complex arena. Th e team holds demos and workshops with the goal of raising the sport’s profi le in Ottawa.

“It defi nitely does not receive as much cover-age [as regular ice hockey], which is a shame, but it’s getting better,” said Marc Dorion, a for-ward with the team. “Right now, [Hockey Can-ada is] working with us to get more coverage. Th e coverage is getting better, [but] it’s demos and workshops that raise the awareness and get people [knowledgeable] about the sport.”

Sledge hockey is a variation of ice hockey invented in Sweden during the early 1960s. It involves players strapped into a sled-like con-struction called a sledge with two skate blades underneath, which allows individuals to play sitting down. Th e player carries two shortened hockey sticks, each with a hockey-stick blade on one end and an ice pick on the other, which allow the player to move the sledge around the rink while otherwise controlling the puck nor-mally.

“Th e rules really don’t diff er that much; there are just a few modifi cations to [them],” ex-plained Dorion.

Th e most notable diff erences are fi ghting and tripping: both are strictly forbidden in sledge hockey.

“Fighting is not tolerated,” said Dorion. “We can get a little rowdy in the house leagues and

have a little bit of fun, but generally there is no fi ghting in sledge hockey. In international play there is zero tolerance for it, and if you do fi ght you’re ejected from the game and you’re ejected from the tournament.”

Dorion feels that if people were exposed to the sport, they might fi nd it appealing.

“People watch sledge hockey less [than hock-ey],” he said. “But I think when they actually fi nd out about it there is a little bit more interest because it’s something new and something dif-ferent. So they want to learn about it. Th ey just

need to know someone in the community that is involved with the sport or they need to know of an event that is in the area.”

Dorion and the rest of Team Canada will be traveling to the Czech Republic to compete in the fi ft h International Paralympic Committee Ice Sledge Hockey World Championships, which are scheduled to be held May 5–16. Last year’s gold medal winners have high hopes for this year.

“We’re looking [forward] to the [World Championships], of course,” said Dorion. “We are taking it month-by-month. We usually have

a training camp or a tournament every month. But our ultimate goal this year is Czech Repub-lic in May.”

Curious about sledge hockey? Check out house league games on Friday nights from 6:30–9:30 p.m. at the Jim Durell Complex at 1264 Walk-ley Rd. Team Canada practices every Wednes-day from 3:45–5:15 p.m. at the Bell Sensplex on 1565 Maple Grove Rd. Kanata. Both practices and house league games are free and open to the public.

Jan. 29–Feb. 4, 2008

David McClellandSports Editor

sports@thefulcrum.ca 18SportsThere’s more than one way to play

National sledge hockey team members

visit the U of O

The Canadian national sledge hockey team won gold at the 2008 Ice Sledge Hockey World Championships.photo courtesy Hockey Canada

Women’s volleyball shuts down Ryerson

THE GEE-GEES WOMEN’S volleyball team notched their 12th victory of the season on Jan. 24 against the Ryerson Rams in Toronto.

Th e Rams have just two wins so far this sea-son and have only won twice against the Gees in their last 10 meetings. Ottawa was domi-nant once again, leading from start to fi nish in the straight-set victory (25-23, 25-16, 25-17). Fourth-year middle Joanie Beauregard-Veillette and third-year left side/rightside hit-ter Aminata Diallo led Ottawa with seven kills apiece.

Th e Gee-Gees hold second place in the On-tario University Athletics East division and have a chance to secure home court advantage for the playoff s when they return to Toronto to play the Varsity Blues on Jan. 30 and the fi rst-place York Lions on Jan. 31.

—Ben Trenaman

Men’s hockey shocks No. 2 UQTR

THE UNIVERSITY OF Ottawa men’s hockey team started their weekend road trip on Jan. 23 with a surprising 3-2 win over the second-ranked nationally Université du Québec à Trois Rivières (UQTR) Patriotes, but came crashing back to Earth the next day, dropping a 5-2 deci-sion to the McGill Redmen.

In the fi rst period against the Patriotes, the Gees outshot the home team 13-9 and out-scored them 3-1 in the fi rst period. Th ird-year forward Keven Gagné, second-year forward Ryan Gove, and fi rst-year forward Matt Methot all scored for Ottawa. UQTR responded in the second period with a power play goal. In the fi nal frame, Gee-Gees goaltender Riley Whit-lock withstood a fl urry of 16 shots to preserve the win for Ottawa.

Against McGill the next day, third-year de-fenceman Matt Desjardins gave the Gees an

early lead, but the Redmen responded with two goals. Fourth-year centre Dan McDonald tied the game in the second period with a short-handed goal, but McGill took the game with three unanswered goals in the third period.

Ottawa remains last in the OUA East with a 9-9-4 record. Th e Gee-Gees’ next game is at UQTR on Jan. 30.

—Andrew Hawley

Th ird period meltdown sinks women’s hockey team

THE GEE-GEES WOMEN’S hockey team bent and then broke in an 8-0 loss to the number-one ranked McGill Martlets on Jan. 24. Ottawa held McGill to a 2-0 lead aft er two periods, but could not contain the powerful McGill squad in the third.

Th e Gees were outshot 10-4 by the Martlets in the fi rst period, but kept the game tied un-

til McGill scored a demoralizing goal with less than two minutes to go.

In the second period, the Gees continued to hold on. Despite being outshot 14-0 and taking four penalties, Ottawa surrendered a lone power play goal and headed to the dressing room down 2-0.

Th e roof caved in during the third period, opened by a power play goal by McGill just 27 seconds in. It only took another minute for the Marlets to score again, and later add four more goals in exactly three minutes during the mid-dle of the period. Th e fi nal shot count favoured McGill 39-8.

Despite the loss, Ottawa remains in second place of the Quebec Students Sport Federation with a 5-5-2 record. Th ey next play Jan. 31 when they host the Carleton Ravens at the Sports Complex. Tickets are $4 for students, and the puck drops at 7 p.m.

—Andrew Hawley

Around the horn

www.thefulcrum.ca // 01.29.09 // SPORTS // 19

THE CAPITAL HOOPS Classic is one of the most exciting times to be a journalist covering university athletics in Ottawa. It’s only matched by covering a team on a long playoff run. Th e Classic, which was on Jan. 28 this year, is also obviously an exciting time for fans: the event has smashed Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS) attendance records for men’s basketball, with well over 9,000 attending each year since its inception in 2007.

All this is great, of course, but the problem is

that it never seems to generate any real change in the Gees’ fanbase. And yes, I’m sure that any of my regular readers are probably groaning and thinking, “Here he goes on about fans again”, but hear me out. If we can get 9,000 people out to Scotiabank Place, which is over 20 km from the University of Ottawa campus, why can’t we get at least some of that crowd out to games here on campus?

Last year, the weekend aft er the Capital Hoops game, I attended a Gee-Gees home game against the University of To-ronto Varsity Blues in Montpetit Gym. At the time, the gym could hold just over 1,000 fans if both bleachers were in use (there have been renovations since then—the capacity is now just 850). However, only one set of bleachers was out, and it was barely half-

full. It didn’t make any sense to me. Even if a majority of the fans at Scotiabank Place a week prior were Carleton supporters, that still leaves at least a couple thousand Gee-Gees supporters, so where did they all go?

I’ll grant that the allure of seeing the Gees play at Scotiabank Place against our archrivals plays

a role in the large numbers of fans at the Capital Hoops Classic, but surely something can be done to get them excited about oth-er games, too. Th is event is perhaps the best opportu-nity to build fan loyalty among U of O students, but so far it seems to

be mostly falling fl at. Hyping the Capital Hoops Classic is all well and good, but we should be hyping other regular season games too, regard-less of who the Gees are playing.

So this is my challenge to both Sports Ser-vices and Gee-Gees fans in general: Let’s build from here. Most university athletics programs in Canada would kill for this kind of high-pro-fi le event, and we should use it to create a fan base, and not allow this level of fan support to be a once-a-year occurrence.

Women’s hockey division update

Following my column on reorganizing women’s hockey last week, Gee-Gees head coach Shel-ley Coolidge informed me that there are some changes in store for the Quebec Student Sports Federation (QSSF) conference. L’Université de Montréal is currently planning to fi eld a team, beginning next season, while a working group with Canadian Interuniversity Sport is research-ing interlocking play between the QSSF and Ontario University Athletics. With any luck, we should see some exciting changes in women’s hockey over the next few seasons.

sports@thefulcrum.ca613-562-5931

Lighting the lamp

Where do we go from here?

David McClellandSports Editor

Hyping the Capital Hoops Classic is all well and good,

but we should be hyping other regular season games too,

regardless of who the Gees are playing.

FINE ART

MUSIC

FILM

PHOTOGRAPHY

FANTASY

GIANT-SIZED POSTERS

FRAMES & HANGERS

1000S OF POSTERS

WILDLIFE

date

place

THE

SALEPOSTER

9-5

hours

last day

Feb. 3 & 4

Univ. Centre -

9 - 6

Outside Auditorium

The Fulcrum Publishing Society

The Fulcrum Publishing Society will be holding its annual general meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 6 in Desmarais Hall, room 1160. There will be pizza and refreshments provided.

The meeting will be dealing with the society’s audit, electing fi ve (5) student directors to the FPS Board of Directors for the 2009–10 year and proposed amendments to the Society’s bylaws. All U of O students have a vote. Come and use it!

All proposed motions will be posted at www.thefulcrum.ca/business seven (7) days prior to the meeting. Visit the site for more in-formation, or contact president@thefulcrum.ca.

LETTERS continued from p. 3

Your reactionary approach to deal-ing with Rancourt’s opinions indicates to me that you are not able to substan-tiate these claims. Rancourt speaks openly about his views and how he substantiates them. He publishes every correspondence that he has with the administration. I would expect, and ask for, a similar level of transparency from you and your institution.

I would like to encourage you to refl ect upon your very powerful posi-tion as president of Canada’s Univer-sity and remind you that you are in service to all Canadians.

I look forward to hearing your re-sponse and would gladly assist in the facilitation of a formal debate.

Amy TeperMaster’s science candidate

Ridding the campus of anti-Semitism

FOR THREE WEEKS running, La Rotonde and now this week, the Ful-crum, have published articles quoting physics professor Denis Rancourt as he accuses the U of O administration, particularly Allan Rock, of being controlled by the “Israel Lobby” and infl uenced by the Jewish students on campus. Th is accusation is blatantly anti-Semitic. As well, this conspiracy theory is ridiculous and only serves to undermine the intelligence of the student body. I applaud the university administration for their courage in fi ring this individual. Anti-Semitism has no place on our campus.

Rebecca MargelFourth-year biology student

Let the games begin with Campus Battle ’09, where Rogers customers duke it out to win a private concert for their school in April. It’s open to universities across the country, so cast your vote today and may the best school win. Contest ends March 1.

Text BATTLE to 4869 orvisit facebook.com/campusbattleContest ends March 1, 2009. No purchase necessary. For full contest details, visit rogers.com/urticket. Nokia and Nokia Nseries are registered trademarks of Nokia Corporation. TMTrademarks of Rogers Communications Inc. used under license. © 2009 Rogers Wireless.

NO

KIA

N95

8 G

B

RGW_N_09_1002_B1_B.indd 1 1/9/09 4:54:14 PM

Friday afternoon journalism workshops

Im in ur website, Im in ur website, steelin’ ur newz.steelin’ ur newz.

www.thefulcrum.cawww.thefulcrum.ca

Send images of your kitty to production@thefulcrum.cato be made into house ads.

The Fulcrum is hosting free weekly workshops for students hoping to learn the craft of print journalism.

All workshops begin at 1 p.m. and take place at 631 King Edward Ave.No registration required. All are welcome to attend.

Jan. 31 - Photojournalism

20 \\ LETTERS \\ 01.29.09 \\ www.thefulcrum.ca

Jan. 29–Feb. 4, 2008Opinion Michael Olender

Executive Editorexecutive@thefulcrum.ca 21

The post-strike case for a U-Passby Pam HrickFulcrum Contributor

FOR THE LOVE of all that is good in this world, when will it end?

Variations of this question—many containing unprintable expletives—are on the lips of thousands of Ottawa students and residents as the city en-ters the eighth week of a seemingly endless transit strike.

What are we going to do when it ends?

Variations of this question—many also containing unprintable exple-tives—are now on the lips of city councillors and OC Transpo man-agers as they contemplate the very serious challenge of how, once the strike is over, to draw riders back into a transit system with which they’re none too impressed, and one that they have learned how to reduce their dependence on over the past several weeks.

Councillors and OC Transpo management are right to be preoccu-pied with this issue, especially since the aft ermath of the 1996 transit strike demonstrated that it can take years to rebuild public transit rider-ship to pre-strike levels. Th ey will have to act in good faith and employ targeted initiatives to mitigate the strike’s eff ect in this regard. It is for this reason that the city would be wise to take another look at imple-menting the universal bus pass re-cently proposed to City Council by the Student Federation of the Uni-versity of Ottawa (SFUO). If the City of Ottawa passes on the U-Pass, it would be squandering a spectacular opportunity to restore confi dence in the transit system among students, retain pre-strike riders, and increase student ridership exponentially over the next few years.

Th e post-secondary student popu-lation is one of the demographics that has been most aff ected by the transit strike. In my experience, however, I’ve found students to be both resilient and resourceful. Th e shuttle bus ser-vice provided by the University of Ot-tawa has eased the burden of getting to and from campus for those who normally rely on transit, but it hasn’t necessarily made it easier for students to get to work or other off -campus ac-tivities. Still, many have managed to get around, largely by carpooling or walking.

All of this is to say that the city would be foolish to assume that post-secondary students will automati-cally return to public transit when the strike ends, especially if the worst of winter has passed. City funds need to be allocated to eff orts to restore student ridership aft er the strike. Th e implementation of the U-Pass has not only the short-term benefi t of getting students back on the buses in the fall, but also the long-term benefi t of be-

ing a potential catalyst for ridership growth in this demographic over the next few years.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the city has realized the enormity of this opportunity. Th e ideas City Coun-cil are currently considering to draw post-secondary students back to the bus include a fi xed period of reduced or free fares once transit service is re-stored, as well as reduced prices for semester and year-round passes. Th e problem with the short fi xed-period discounts is that they seem to work only so long as they’re off ered, with ridership decreasing following the promotion. Th is was evident in the wake of the 1996 Ottawa transit strike when ridership fell by four per cent in February once full fares resumed and by 2.3 per cent in March. In the short term, discounts on semester and year-round passes may have a slight restor-ative eff ect on ridership levels but many students may also think twice about buying such a pass if the strike has taught them they can manage to get around without one.

Th e U-Pass pilot project off ers a much better alternative in the short- and long-terms for both students and the city. Undergraduate students at the U of O would receive the ser-vice they voted to pay for during last year’s referendum. Th e city would be able to ensure a stable ridership base for the 2009–10 academic year and open the door for universal bus pass programs to be implemented at other Ottawa post-secondary insti-tutions within two to three years, all while demonstrating good faith in its relationship with Ottawa student unions—a relationship whose recent history can be described as rocky at best.

Perhaps the greatest realization City Council has failed to come to re-garding the U-Pass is that if it is not implemented this year, the program will likely be dead for the next decade. Council is lucky to have had two con-secutive SFUO executive teams, U of O students, and staff members work diligently to secure a $125 levy per full-time student per semester for the U-Pass and attempt to negotiate an

agreement with OC Transpo for its implementation. With all the eff ort that has gone into making this proj-ect a reality, if the door is slammed on it now, no executive or group of

students is going to be inclined to dedicate its time to try again any time soon. And rightly so—the term of an SFUO executive member is too short and there are too many competing priorities among students to commit to fi ghting for what would be viewed as a lost cause.

So while those of us outside of City Council and the Amalgamated Tran-sit Union leadership cannot provide any defi nite answer to the question “When will the strike end?” we can

certainly help City Council with the question “What are we going to do when it ends?” Th e clock is counting down towards an early March dead-line for the U of O to include the U-Pass in the 2009–10 student fees and ensure its implementation for the coming academic year. Th is gives City Council only a small window of opportunity to revisit this program and make it a reality. I encourage members of the U of O community to contact their councillors, Mayor Larry O’Brien, and OC Transpo management to tell them that fund-ing the U-Pass pilot project with a portion of the millions the city has saved during this strike would be a step in the right direction to restore ridership and faith in Ottawa’s public transit system.

Oh, and when you do so, feel free to employ as many unprintable exple-tives as you like. A decision by Coun-cil to pass up this opportunity would warrant using a few.

illustration by Devin A. Beauregard

If the City of Ottawa passes on the U-Pass, it would be squandering a spectacular

opportunity to restore confi dence in the transit system among students, retain

pre-strike riders, and increase student rider-ship exponentially over the next few years.

22 \\ OPINION \\ 01.29.09 \\ www.thefulcrum.ca

YEP.YOU’VEGOTMUMPSGETMUMPSANDYOU’LLSPEND9DAYSINISOLATION.Mumps is a very contagious disease that can cause serious complications.Catch it and you’ll have to spend 9 days inisolation.4 out of 5 young adults are not fully protected.Make sure you are.Get the mumps catch-up vaccination.

Find out more at Ontario.ca/mumps or call 1-866-559-4598

Paid for by the Government of Ontario

by Katie DeClerqFulcrum Staff

EVER WONDER HOW close you were to getting an A? Th e diff er-ence of one or two percentage points can decide whether we fail or pass a course. It can also make or break a scholarship, and can completely sink a graduate studies application. So, when fi nal grades are posted and stu-dents see only letter grades, some stu-dents are frustrated that their grade—originally calculated as a number by the professor—is represented as a letter, which refers to a range rather than an exact number. Let me put it this way: What is a B? A B can be any-where from 70 to 74 per cent. An A+ is anywhere from 90 to 100 per cent.

While general grades may be satisfac-tory for some, most students want to know precisely what their marks are in order to plan for future courses, adjust their work habits, or satisfy curiosity.

I recently chased aft er percentages and found that the process to retrieve them was a headache. In order to see marks as they are originally calculat-ed, students must take the initiative to call or email their respective professors or departments. To continue with the process depends on the procedure set forth by the professors, who all have diff erent methods of allowing students to see their grades as percentages and the grade breakdowns. Some invite you to attend offi ce hours and others direct you to visit the department. Th is

can be extremely irritating as offi ce hours may confl ict with your new class schedule, and many professors are not available outside that specifi c time slot. Further diffi culties arise when professors are transitioning between offi ces. A few professors only have an offi ce when they are teaching, and must transfer to a new offi ce in second semester, which makes them diffi cult to contact. Strangely, this transition is done at the beginning of a new semes-ter in which students are desperately trying to get a hold of all their profes-sors, and not during the two weeks of winter break. But know this, whatever the diffi culties, every student has the right to see their fi nal examinations or mark breakdown, and a professor will never refuse a request. If it’s impos-

Scrap letter grades

by Peter HendersonFulcrum Staff

UNIVERSITY IS SUPPOSED to be about learning—at least, that’s what we’re told. Classes are about develop-ing critical thinking, broadening your knowledge, and learning the skills to become an intelligent and eff ective professional in whichever fi eld you’ve chosen. You know what doesn’t chal-lenge, engage, or teach me? Stupid assignments from by lazy professors. I don’t know if they do it out of bore-dom, inattention, or just plain cruelty, but every student has a horror story and it’s time for it to stop.

Like most of my fellow students, I care deeply about my grades. I want to succeed, I want to learn, I want to broaden my horizons. Please explain to me how labelling a map in a sec-ond-year history course teaches me anything about anything. I realize that it’s important to have a geographical context for the ideas and issues dis-cussed in any given history course—that’s why there’s a map in the front of the textbook. No, it’s not important where each and every river or moun-tain range is and no, that information is in no way useful. Understanding the broader cultural and political context of the Italo-Abyssinian war and how it contributed to the armed confl ict that led to the North African front in the Second World War is useful, but I have yet to be tested on that. Ap-parently it’s far more useful to know which desert is where.

Another scourge of hard-working, critical-thinking students is the group project. I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am, and now I’m saddled with Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and the to-

ken intelligent student? Th anks pro-fessor, I’ll get right on transcending the crippling mediocrity of my peers to hand in an A+ project. What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything. Th ere’s no way to gauge the work ethic or talent of the people you sit in class with, beyond avoiding the know-it-alls at the front and the iPod-sporting slackers at the back. Th e people in my group projects have been chosen en-tirely on their proximity to my chair when the assignments were handed out—there’s no other foolproof way to choose, and it’s always the luck of the draw. Getting stuck with a dead-weight group member means a bad mark for everyone, so what’s the point? Stop marking me on the tal-ents of the people around me, and actually challenge me with individual assignments.

Don’t get me started on peer evalu-ations, either. If a member of your group is useless and lazy, and, like me, you can’t help but tell them as much, why would they give you a positive evaluation? Th ank you for basing the marks that will determine large de-cisions in my life on the opinions of people in third-year political commu-nications classes who don’t know the meaning of the word “ideology”.

Th e professor-student relationship is about give and take. You want me to come to class and pay attention? Start by caring about your job, challenging your students, and actually having a passion for teaching. Don’t hold my hand, don’t underestimate my intelli-gence, and instead give me something that will make me care about the subject to which you’ve devoted your life’s work. And please, never make me colour a map again.

HECKLES: Your pedagogy sucks

sible for a student to get together with the professor, some will send marks as a percentage via email. Th is raises a question: if professors are willing to send the marks through email, then what is the trouble with posting per-centages on InfoWeb instead?

Further, students also need to re-alize that they are not the only ones feeling overwhelmed. Professors’ in-boxes are packed with emails from concerned students wishing to meet and review the fi nal examinations, and responding isn’t in a professor’s contract. As one professor put it, they “don’t get paid to answer emails”. However, most professors do con-sider it part of their job, and will take the time to answer in a timely fash-ion out of courtesy to students. Once you have been able to get a hold of the professor, it’s then up to the student to fi nd the time to go to their offi ce. If your heart is set on seeing your fi -nal exam as well, the process becomes lengthier, as the professors are asked to deposit them at the department, and must go and retrieve them before a student comes to their offi ce. Hon-estly, neither professors nor students have the time to go through this pro-

cess, so why lengthen it with silly rules regarding where to put the exams?

Th is whole system is as tedious as it sounds. Seeing mark breakdowns and fi nal exams will always require legwork, but posting percentages instead of letter grades on InfoWeb could save both professors and stu-dents time and anxiety. Everything is associated with percentages anyway. Scholarships, for example, do not ad-here to letter grade ranges; the $4,000 prize can be renewed only if a student attains an average of 94 per cent or above. If these students are getting a vague A+, how can they be sure they met the bar? Similar problems also arise with eligibility for other univer-sity programs and extracurricular ac-tivities. If percentages were posted on InfoWeb, students wouldn’t be forced to scamper across campus in the mid-dle of winter to fi nd out if they were one or two percentage points away from their goals. Students would be able to see precisely what mark they got in the course, and grade point av-erages in grade reports could still be calculated. It just seems that turning a number into a letter is hurting more people than it helps.

Frank ‘pile driver’ AppleyardEditor-in-Chief

editor@thefulcrum.ca

Ben ‘fusion’ MyersProduction Manager

production@thefulcrum.ca

Michael ‘drill’ OlenderExecutive Editor

executive@thefulcrum.ca

Martha ‘amazon’ PearceArt Director

design@thefulcrum.ca

Emma ‘bent spoon’ GodmereNews Editor

news@thefulcrum.ca

Peter ‘bumper cars’ HendersonArts & Culture Editor

arts@thefulcrum.ca

David ‘dancer’ McClellandSports Editor

sports@thefulcrum.ca

Sarah ‘game’s on’ LeavittFeatures Editor

features@thefulcrum.ca

Danielle ‘jellyfi sh’ BlabLaurel ‘jockey’ Hogan

Copy Editors

Amanda ‘pump’ ShendrukAssociate News Editor

associatenews@thefulcrum.ca

James ‘rodeo’ EdwardsWebmaster

webmaster@thefulcrum.ca

Jessica ‘scarf’ Sukstorf Volunteer & Visibility

Coordinatorvolunteer@thefulcrum.ca

Megan ‘sockets’ O’MearaStaff Writer

Alex ‘spoons’ MartinStaff Illustrator

Inari ‘butler’ Vaissi NagyJiselle ‘plumber’ Bakker

Ombudsgirlsombudsgirl@thefulcrum.ca

Travis ‘the usual’ BoisvenueOmbudsboy

ombudsboy@thefulcrum.ca

Nicole ‘turtle’ GallStaff Proofreader

Robert ‘victory’ OlenderOn-campus Distributor

Deidre ‘t-square’ ButtersAdvertising Representative

ads@thefulcrum.ca

Ross ‘shocker’ PrusakowskiBusiness Manager

business.manager@thefulcrum.ca

Volume 69 - Issue 19Jan. 29–Feb. 4, 2009

phone: (613) 562-5261fax: (613) 562-5259

631 King Edward Ave. Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5editor@thefulcrum.ca www.thefulcrum.ca

Recycle this paper or we’ll release the sex tape.

Staff

Dave ‘dutch rudder’ AtkinsonEleni ‘deck chair’ Armenakis

Ania ‘can-opener’ BulaLaura ‘brute’ ClementsonKatie ‘cowboy’ DeClerq

Des ‘scissors’ FisherGarret ‘sitting bull’ Fisher

Ian ‘spread eagle’ Flett

Andrea ‘pretzel’ HarrisDaniel ‘delight’ Harris

Andrew ‘mastery’ HawleyPam ‘cowgirl’ Hrick

Hisham ‘wheelbarrow’ KelatiJaclyn ‘twister’ LytleCarl ‘plunger’ Meyer

Kaitlin ‘backpack’ Milroy

Muse ‘smurf’ MohammedAnna ‘lotus’ Rocoski

Maria ‘ear muffs’ RondonÉmilie ‘houdini’ SartorettoLen ‘intersection’ Smirnov

Alex ‘under the hood’ SmythAlana ‘bow and arrow’ Sucee

Ben ‘oyster’ Trenaman

Contributors

fDirty minds since 1942.

Jan. 29–Feb. 4, 2009Editorial Frank Appleyard

Editor-in-Chiefeditor@thefulcrum.ca 23

Rethinking student representation

IF YOU ASK University of Ottawa President Allan Rock—or any mem-ber of the administration—what the institution’s mandate is, you can be

assured that the reply will indicate the uni-versity exists to serve students’ needs, and that students are at the heart of the school’s motives.

And that’s the right answer.However, statements such as these feel

empty, betrayed by the disparate sentiment projected by dismally poor student repre-sentation in the U of O’s decision-making process. Th ere are a grand total of two stu-dents—one undergraduate, one graduate—sitting on the university’s Board of Gover-nors (BOG), the assembly responsible for the school’s overall governance and man-agement. Th ese two students represent the views of 35,000 students in dealings with the university administration—a heady task made all the more diffi cult by the fact that they are only two easily overlooked and eas-ily overruled student voices on the 32-mem-ber board. In recent years this situation has strangled student input on debates such as tuition increases, allocation of space, and campus development and expansion—mat-ters that directly aff ect undergraduate and graduate students alike. Such token repre-sentation is not only ineff ectual—it is an af-front to students who desire and deserve a meaningful say in their university’s future.

Th e need for student voices in debates and discussions held in the U of O’s upper echelon is simple to encapsulate: How can the BOG truly work in students’ interests when there are only symbolic student voices included in the debate? It is incomprehen-sible to believe that a board with members oft en many decades removed from the ex-periences and issues of their wards shall be left to dominate the discussions and debates surrounding the future of the university. It’s a cruel scenario: the detached but infl uential guiding the passionate but insignifi cant.

In the past the BOG could hide behind its ivory-tower composition by arguing that students simply didn’t take an interest in the management of their university. And they would be right. In 2007, only two un-dergraduate students sought election to the single BOG seat available to them. Hardly an overwhelming turnout, and hardly evi-dence supporting a case for increased stu-dent representation on the board.

However, this year the university has no such argument. With 10 students in search of the lone undergraduate seat on the BOG, there is a clear desire among students to play

a role in the management and administra-tion of the U of O. Th ese are students who have voices, visions, and priorities, just like the current board members. But what sets them apart is that they are in touch with the student experience, and their voices speak on behalf of thousands. Th e sudden interest in the BOG is not a chance phenomenon. Th ere is a growing sense that the only way for a student to get the ear of the admin-istration is to sit on the board—a situation that marginalizes the very students the uni-versity claims are its priority.

Calls for the university to overhaul its board structure are not unfounded. Th e University of Toronto features six under-graduate and two graduate student seats on its 50-plus member board, the University of British Columbia has seats for three students on its relatively small 21-member board, and of the University of Waterloo’s 34 BOG members, fi ve are students. Meanwhile, the

U of O fi nds seats in the boardroom for two students on the 32-member BOG.

While none of the other schools let stu-dent voices overwhelm the boardroom de-bate, they show students that their input is meaningful, and their presence is more than halfh earted pandering.

With so much student interest in the BOG, now is the ideal time for the university to re-assess its structure in an attempt to do more than just recognize U of O students as patrons of the institution. It is time for the BOG to acknowledge students’ interests in their own university, and provide them with meaningful opportunities to get involved in the decision-making process that aff ects their education.

Students have shown that they’re inter-ested in leading the university. Th e univer-sity now must show that it is truly interested in the students’ leadership.

editor@thefulcrum.ca

illustration by Devin A. Beauregard