Letters to the editors

Editorialize responsibly

Dear Editors,

Re: “Child porn charges justified” (Journal, Jan. 29, 2009)

Over the past year I have found myself frequently puzzled by the content of your paper’s editorials. Your editorial board has been granted a unique opportunity to publish its views on almost any topic it chooses, with the rationale that your experience covering campus issues gives you a greater depth of understanding than the average student. Given this opportunity, I am surprised that you should choose so often to comment on issues that have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on our university or its students.

When you choose to editorialize on a banned Super Bowl commercial or on a child pornography case in Pennsylvania, your opinion is no more deserving of the space than that of the next student. In fact, your editorial positions on such issues are often so uninformed as to indicate that members of your editorial board could not have actually read an article on the issue before submitting their own thoughts. I’m sure, however, that you have too much respect for yourselves as journalists for this to be true.

In the case of the child pornography editorial mentioned above, your group chose to editorialize on information presented in a two-paragraph introduction to a much longer New York Times article about an alarming increase in teenagers using cell phones to harass one another. If reading 40 words at the top of a 1,000 word article, as you did in this instance, is enough to believe you understand an issue, I would suggest a need exists to immediately re-evaluate how you select editorial topics. I can only hope your lack of knowledge of this issue explains how you could come to the ridiculous conclusion that the students mentioned in the editorial deserve to be convicted of trafficking child pornography.

I urge you to focus your editorials on issues of direct relevance to students, as you do in nearly all other sections of your paper. Given the turbulent times we now find ourselves in, consider writing about how we can improve our own community before wasting your breath on external matters.

You have been given the power to impact student opinion in a singularly powerful manner. Please use it wisely and demonstrate you take seriously the accompanying responsibility.

Laura Mouck

ArtSci ’07

There’s no place like CASA

Dear Editors,

Re: “Students not at home in CASA” (Journal, Feb. 9, 2009)

As one of the AMS Assembly members who unanimously voted for Queen’s to observe CASA, I wanted to set straight some factual inaccuracies in Nick Day’s opinion piece. First of all, Queen’s did not join CASA as a member. What we did is join as an observer. This doesn’t cost students a cent, and allows the AMS to see firsthand how effective CASA is by attending the lobby conference this year. Our observer status lasts a year, and then if we want to be full members, there will be a referendum on the issue, as required by our constitution. This would be a clear referendum stating that we would be joining CASA and list the fee for doing so.

Our decision to observe came democratically. The fall plebiscite was a launching point for exploration. Assembly created a Federal Alignment Committee to look at both options, and CFS and CASA presented to Assembly. Based on the evidence presented to us, every democratically elected member of Assembly thought that CASA was a better fit for the AMS.

As for the arguments that CFS is needed to tackle social issues on our campus, I don’t think that people elected by other universities should be interfering in the local affairs of Queen’s. Further, the AMS takes the correct stance that our student government does not have the ability to represent us on issues unrelated to post-secondary education in general or Queen’s in particular. The AMS has no right to express an opinion on my behalf on the merits of a carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade system, or take on the Mid-East conflict, and neither should my provincial and federal lobbying groups. Students who want to lobby the government on non-education issues should do so through one of the multitudes of NGOs that exist just for that purpose rather than creating a false consensus through student government.

CASA is the best federal organization for Queen’s, and I hope all Journal readers will support joining if it goes to a referendum next year.

Kevin Wiener

ASUS rep to the AMS

ArtSci ’12

Views on sex too negative

Dear Editors,

Re: “More love, less sex” (Journal, Feb. 27, 2009)

I agree with Miss Larocque that the “love” portion of the Journal’s most recent Love & Sex Supplement is underrepresented. Further, abstinence is a choice that many individuals make and it deserves equal attention. In past years the Journal has included articles on love and living together and on Valentine’s Day alternatives, which made this supplement more well-rounded. The Journal should consider including articles featuring alternative views on love and sex for future supplements to better appeal to its entire readership.

However, your letter does not ring with the well-meaning tone of one who truly desires better representation. You condemn the idea of having sex because it feels good and somehow manage to equate it with excessive alcohol and drug consumption. Sex, drugs, alcohol … rock and roll!—terrible sins, all of them!!

Sex can be fulfilling and enjoyable—heck, it’s even good for you. Consent, respect and enjoyment are essential in any sexual relationship. Love may be a factor, or it may not. The Journal was representing a perfectly acceptable, for lack of a better word, side of sexual relationships.

Loudly expressed negative views on sex keep people from asking questions to get the information they need to have healthy relationships. The Love & Sex Supplement was the Journal’s attempt to get some of this important information out there.

Kate McIntyre

Sci ’10

End the occupation of Aghanistan

Dear Editors:

Re: “Why the Canadians should stay” (Journal, Feb. 27, 2009)

Evan Cooper urges Canadians to press on with the White Man’s Burden of deciding for Afghans what sort of government and society they ought to have, by force of arms.

He recites a litany of falsehoods in support of his hyperbolic warmongering—that Afghanistan was behind the 9/11 attacks; that the people Canadian troops are killing in Afghanistan are members of Al Qaeda; that this imperialist adventure is about liberating the women of Afghanistan; that the “Taliban” are trying to export Wahhabism to North America.

Cooper falsely equates the anti-government “insurgents” of today with the former Taliban government. In fact, the insurgents are composed of a variety of forces, most of whom are not religious fanatics and don’t even call themselves Taliban.

The history of Afghanistan is a history of foreign interference. The original Taliban were recruited, trained and funded by the U.S., the U.K., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as a proxy army to fight the Soviet Union. The government that the Taliban overthrew in 1996 (with the assistance of foreign military aid) was a secular one that recognized freedom of religion and gave equal rights to women in education and employment. Once the U.S.-backed Taliban were in power, women teachers and doctors were reduced to begging in the streets to survive.

Cooper wants to continue this shameful tradition of interference by having our armed forces prop up the unpopular, U.S.-backed Karzai government, composed of drug gangsters and warlords who brutalize and oppress girls and women and who preside over a corrupt and reactionary justice system that hands out death sentences for insulting Islam. To talk of today’s Afghans as a “newly liberated people” as Cooper does, is a cruel hoax. Afghans do not regard Canadian troops as liberators, but as a foreign army of occupation, doing the bidding of the USA.

Afghans who had never heard of Canada before now curse our name for killing and maiming civilians. Meanwhile Evan Cooper assures us the assault on Afghanistan is making Canada safer!

Jeff White

ArtSci ’67

Sutherland recognition commendable

Dear Editors,

Re: “Honouring Robert Sutherland” (Journal, Feb. 27, 2009)

Congratulations to the Board of Trustees and the Queen’s community for the decision to honour Robert Sutherland for his generous contribution to Queen’s and, moreover, his being the first black man and perhaps the first “person of colour” to graduate from a university in British North America.

The renaming of the Policy Studies Building to Robert Sutherland Hall also honours Queen’s. I am glad that the Queen’s trustees recognized this.

Ken Ohtake

ArtSci ’71

Athletics yet to respond to information request, criticisms

Dear Editors,

Re: Queen’s Athletics

In my Feb. 10 letter, I challenged Queen’s Athletics to provide finances for individual varsity teams but received no response. I do know the Gaels’ golf team receives $3,000 in annual funding from Queen’s Athletics from a varsity budget approaching $3 million and it is my hope that, following my example, other varsity teams can provide financial information, beginning with football. Consider: AMS students face a 91.6 per cent increase ($120) in mandatory Athletics’ fees, spread over three years, on top of the current $131 fee. With tough economic times, we need a precise handle on specific costs, and Athletics must be accountable by performance for stakeholders’ funding.

Unlike other departments, Queen’s Athletics does not have an independent grievance process for conflict between varsity coaches and athletes. I informed current Athletics Director Leslie Dal Cin in 2007 but received no response. At SGPS Council on Feb. 10, which Dal Cin attended to present information on Athletics, I repeated this point and again received no response. I challenge Queen’s Athletics to join the 21st century, and to respect the rights of its athletes by developing an independent grievance process through open consultation with ALL stakeholders by 2009-10. We constantly hear the slogan “Evolution of Queen’s Athletics,” but respect for athlete’s rights must evolve too.

Last year’s Athletics Review stated there have been no official complaints by Queen’s varsity athletes concerning coaches in the last 25 years. This is false. There have been two major complaints from athletes which were extensively reported in the media—1997 men’s hockey and 2002 men’s basketball—leading, after investigations, to immediate termination of those coaches. In July 2007, I informed Principal Karen Hitchcock, and other university leaders since that time. Since review authors Janice Deakin and Bob Crawford dealt personally with the 2002 men’s basketball situation, they must explain this lapse further, on the record.

Have there been similarly ugly (or worse) situations involving other Gaels’ teams during this 25-year time span, which have not yet been accounted for!? Frank Dixon

ArtSci ’90

Golf captain, 1987

Promotion of Israeli Apartheid Week designed to “intimidate”

Dear Editors,

Re: Israeli Apartheid Week

This letter is to express grave concern about the upcoming “Israeli Apartheid Week,” and particularly about the manner in which this political event is being promoted on our campus. The phrase “Israeli apartheid” is itself polemical. The conduct of Israel is not the subject of this letter, but whatever one’s views on that topic, the evocation of South African apartheid is an inaccurate analogy and seems designed to further support for the boycott of (among other things) Israeli academics and artists. More disturbing still are the posters advertising “Israeli Apartheid Week.” These are little more than agitprop, and pictorially accuse Israel of deliberately murdering civilian children in the occupied territories. This accusation is a calumny. It is difficult to imagine that this University would permit posters trading in the reverse stereotypes (protesting, say, a supposed “Palestinian terror regime” and picturing a Palestinian strapping a bomb on a child).

Free and frank political discussion is healthy for a university. But the trappings of “Israeli Apartheid Week” do not contribute to such a discussion. Rather, they are designed to sloganeer and intimidate. At York University, members of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid triggered a near riot outside of the office of Hillel, during which anti-Semitic slogans were shouted. Police intervention was required. To my knowledge, no member of the Coalition has publically denounced this outrage, which was reminiscent of anti-Semitic chants at recent protests against the war in Gaza and the odious boycotting policies of Sid Ryan and CUPE Ontario. These incidents have shamed Canadian universities in the eyes of the public. In response, several of our sister schools have banned the most inflammatory of the posters advertising “Israeli Apartheid Week.” This step, unfortunately, has only fuelled overheated complaints about a “campaign of repression,” including the truly Orwellian complaint that the academic freedom to agitate for the boycott of their fellow academics has been threatened.

I myself am a free speech libertarian and I do not call for this poster to be banned. I am instead exercising my own free speech rights in order to criticize it. Anticipating one of the more relentless denunciation tactics of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, I will further divulge that I am not now, and never have been, a member of any pro-Israel organization.

Jeffrey Collins

Associate professor of history

Queen’s University

Don’t freeze top salaries, reduce them

Dear Editors,

Re: “More faculty cuts to come” (Journal, Feb. 27, 2009)

I am a Queen’s alumnus and, although I live in the Kingston area, I don’t follow the happenings at Queen’s very closely. However, I cannot help having noticed all of the construction going on in the campus over the past few years and I’ve wondered about how the University was affording this. I’ve also seen the calls for retirees to come to functions where they can be encouraged to spare what they can to support the institution. Times must be tough when these folks are being hit up for donations.

Last week, I happened to pick up a copy of the Journal, in which I read of the University’s significant financial challenges, including a drop of $139 million in the value of endowments due to the world financial crisis. For Queen’s, the Journal reported, this has led to the decision to cut faculty positions and to temporarily suspend the National Scholar program which supports young researchers. Furthermore, the Principal was on record as saying that salary and benefits will have to be reduced. The situation is apparently so dire that, leading by example, the salaries of the principal, vice-principals and deans are to be frozen. Ouch! But then I read that the principal’s salary is $370,000!

A visit to the salary disclosure section of the Ministry of Finance’s webpage (http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/publications/salarydisclosure/) gave me further illumination. In 2004, the salary of the Principal of Queen’s was reported as $148,750, comparable to similar positions at other Ontario universities. Then, in 2005, it jumped to $306,425 and has climbed ever since. If you look at the most recent disclosure page, the salaries paid to the principal and several top administrators at Queen’s are remarkably higher than similar positions in other Ontario universities, where the salaries continue to be between $150,000 and $200,000.

In the financial and automotive industries, top executives are expected to accept salary decreases, not just salary freezes. It is accepted that the top echelons cannot be expected to continue to enjoy very high levels of remuneration while asking for reductions in salaries from the rank and file. If the financial situation is as bad as is being reported, why shouldn’t the same principle apply at Queen’s? Such downward salary adjustments at the top might also go some way towards preserving faculty positions or funding for young researchers.

Stephen Dukoff

ArtSci ’86

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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