It seems that our esteemed student trustee Michael Ceci has taken issue with my characterization, in a pro-CFS opinion piece published in your paper, of the Board of Trustees being dominated by corporate types—bank executives to be specific—who have a vested interest in seeing our tuition and our debt continue to rise.

Mr. Horkins contends that the University Board of Trustees is “dominated by bank executives with a vested interest in our rising debt.” A cursory look at the biographies of the members of the Board (queensu.ca/secretariat/trustees/bios.html) show that only five of the 44 members currently have any form of relationship to a bank organization. Mr. Horkins displays an ignorance of the tuition framework by using a simplistic catch-all to explain a complex issue.

I was first in line for Queen’s Players tickets last Thursday and I want to apologize to everyone further back. People numbered seven and eight cut in line. I knew it and although I talked to them about it and asked them to leave, come number time I failed to do anything about it. People numbered nine and ten were kind enough not to point it out as well, although I’m sure they were aware of it after spending close to seven hours in line with the first six of us.

I fundamentally disagree with Garrison’s view that “It’s not very productive to continue the weak argument that the two [Homecoming and Aberdeen] are separate. Queen’s has to accept that the two go hand in hand and find a solution that is going to impact both.” To assert that Aberdeen is a result of Homecoming simply because the street party occurs after Homecoming starts is not just a weak argument but a logical fallacy.

I was appalled to read “City wants Queen’s to foot the bill” which outlined city council’s decision to have Queen’s pay all extra costs for municipal reinforcements during homecoming. The council’s actions betray a clear prejudice against the Queen’s community and many remarks about its students were totally unreasonable.

First, I agree with Eddie Ho’s conclusion that the administration of this university is not responsible for policing costs associated with the Aberdeen Street party. However, I take issue with most of the rest of his assertions. If he thinks it is a fact that Queen’s attracts “the top students and researchers from around the world,” I fear he has swallowed a little too much of the Frosh Week Kool-Aid. Queen’s is a great university, but it’s a large-ish fish in a pretty small pond.

Whether it’s students frantically trying to type every word that drops from the instructor’s mouth, back-row slackers mindlessly playing solitaire or professors reading aloud the text of their Powerpoint slides, Lisa Jemison suggests that the introduction of the computer into the classroom has undermined the personal connections that once made university classes special places to be.

As a graduate student here at Queen’s, I am not proud of the events that seem to inevitably occur each Homecoming weekend. I freely admit there are a number of students out there who make terrible choices, doubtlessly fuelled by the hype of what they mistakenly assume to be ‘tradition.’ However, this feeling of shame is nothing to what I would feel if I had chosen to be represented by Lakeside district councillor Dorothy Hector.

I would like to congratulate the Journal for the article “Fairing well in the workplace” from the Oct. 2 issue. Your discussion of the Career Fair recently hosted by Career Services was informative and interesting. The article contained several reflections on the event provided by students. I value those reflections and they have been included in our post-event discussions. In particular, I would like to address those made by an ArtSci student.

In your editorial, you defend Columbia University’s decision to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and deride those who opposed his appearance as having closed minds. You state: “There’s a huge rift between Western ideologies and those promoted by leaders such as Ahmadinejad, but that rift won’t be reconciled unless open discussions are welcome on both sides.”