Last week, two incidents of racism were reported after Queen’s students turned in posters vandalized with racist messages and signed by stormfront.org, a white supremacist Internet group.

They say you can tell if someone’s a genius from early on. If that’s the case, I’m a little bit worried about my own genius—let me tell you a story from my childhood.
One day in kindergarten, my teacher asked us to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up.
Being an ambitious little bunch, my classmates drew all kinds of cool pictures envisioning their bright future—doctor, astronaut, flight attendant—you name it, they drew it.

AMS Vice-President (University Affairs) Julia Mitchell is conducting an audit of Orientation Round Table (ORT) spending following allegations of financial mismanagement by this year’s ORT Co-ordinator Ryan Shoemaker.

In my opinion, it’s pretty indicative of the place sports—particularly those of the Queen’s variety—hold on this campus. To be fair, my own feelings in first year weren’t all that different. I went to many Gaels’ hockey games, lured by the promise of a former NHL star as head coach but somehow managed to avoid caring too much about the rest of the campus teams.

Thursday morning’s AMS election results brought new meaning to the democratic mantra “every vote counts.” Team Radcliffe-Wang-St.Clair became next year’s AMS executive when the ballot recount ended shortly before 7 a.m.

Since the first day I took on the role as a photographer for the Journal up until this point, I’ve been sworn at, yelled at, smiled at, frowned at, laughed at, threatened and hit by various objects. All of this has happened while still at the Journal house and not actually out on assignment. When I was actually on assignment, I’ve been covered in mud at the Grease Pole, hit by a puck at a Gaels game, violently threatened by drunk people during Homecoming, and generally regarded as the creepy guy who takes pictures. This, I guess, is all part of the job—to visually document events that may be printed in the media for others to see. Let’s be honest—it’s awkward, creepy, and rather invasive but was it always this way?

Team Radcliffe-Wang-St. Clair’s commendable priorities, demonstrable leadership skills and engaging platform make them the team best suited to take charge of the AMS next year.

I almost wasn’t going to write this signed editorial. I was afraid admitting what I’m about to admit might expose me as more of a nerd than I would like.
But in the end I had to write it. My choices were between a cheesy reflection on my past four years at Queen’s and a rambling piece on moral responsibility in which I reference Uncle Ben from Spiderman.

A 90-page report released this week recommends Canada stay in Afghanistan and refocus its NATO-led deployment to emphasize diplomacy, reconstruction and training of Afghan forces. The report was written by an independent panel headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley.

On March 16, 2005 the AMS Board of Directors cancelled the After-Hours Childcare (AHC) service that had been in operation since 1995. The service provided weekend and weeknight childcare. It was decided that the money collected from the AHC’s $1 opt-outable fee would go to either the Ban Righ Centre or Queen’s Day Care, but neither service ever received a cheque.

The federal government needs to come through on its tough-on-crime stance by decreasing the number of weapons—registered or not—on the street. The O’Keefe incident and similar tragedies will only be anomalies if such events stop happening.

On Dec. 15 Engineering Society Vice-President (Operations) Rob Macnamara released his report on how to improve Clark Hall Pub and EngSoc. Unfortunately, it lacked concrete suggestions as to how to get the pub open, first.