
True to a campaign promise of the AMS executive, the Campus Activities Commission is offering a series of extra-curricular courses called ‘Q College.’ For a reasonable fee, students can take advantage of instructional seminars in such topics as Shiatsu massage, American Sign Language, web-design and mixology (i.e. drink mixing).
A $3000 grant from the Accessibility Task Force is helping to off-set the cost of the courses, which should offer students many interesting, helpful and social nights of hands-on learning.
The instructors are not professionals but students, qualified as they may be, and the certifications participants will earn won’t be worth much more than the P&CC paper they will likely be printed on. It is obvious that, if you want to learn serious web-design or Sign Language, you might want to go elsewhere, like a college.
But that’s not the point. What Q College will offer is a friendly, non-confrontational, happy-smiley place to scratch the surface of web-design or learn how to shake a decent martini. All that can be expected from the organizers of Q College is a good time and a useful skill. The courses will not be academic, nor will they be professionally run. They will essentially be meetings of the mixology club or the Shiatsu society.
And so what happens when the AMS gets around to naming this series of club-meetings? They come up with Q College, as if the best way to identify flaky fun courses at a university is to label them “college.”
Heaven forbid that the AMS should try to compete with the noble Queen’s faculty; but to run a few college courses? That should be no trouble whatsoever for us clever university types. Right?
The Q College courses will be a great time for all. Bright-eyed university students will take a break from their serious work and get to relax with some easy college learnin’ as they massage each other’s backs and trade html secrets.
But the name Q College was a bad choice. Q U would have been better, and it rhymes with the response you will get if a St. Lawrence student ever hears about this.
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