the

ther Press

Volume 23 © Issue 21 © March 10 1999
Room 1020-700 Royal Avenue
New Westminster, BC

V3L 5B2
submit@op.douglas.bc.ca
general@op.douglas.bc.ca
Fax//604.525.3505 or
604.527.5095
Phone//604.525.3542

David Lam Campus
Room a3107
Phone//604.527.5805

The Other Press is Douglas College’s
autonomous student newspaper.
We've been publishing since 1976.
The Other Press is run as a non-
hierarchical collective, which
means that if anything goes wrong,
none will take the blame. Expect us
to pass the buck.

The OP is published weekly
during the fall and winter
semesters and monthly [as a
magazine] during the summer.
When we manage to publish at all.
In this case, we blame technology.

We receive our funding
from a student levy collected
every semester at registration,
and from local and national
advertising revenue. But, if you
really want it, we'll give you your
money back. Please, don’t ask.

The Other Press is a member
of the Canadian University Press
(CUP), a cooperative of student
newspapers from across Canada.
We adhere to CUP’s Statement of
Common Principles and Code of
Ethics—not that we claim to
understand them, we just stick by
them.

The Other Press reserves the
right to choose what to publish,
and what not to publish, but
usually we print everything,
unless it is racist, sexist or
homophobic. If you have any
quibbles with what we choose,
maybe you should get your lazy
butt down here and help. No,

really. We can use the help.

Coordinators

Athletics ~ Hamish Knox
sport@op.douglas.bc.ca

Coq. Athletics ~ Mike Quong
Culture ~ Jen Swanston
a&e@op.douglas.bc.ca

Coq. Culture ~ Ryan Kuzek
Coquitlam ~ Lorenzo Sia
coq_coordinator@op.douglas.bc.ca
CUP Liaison ~ Cathy Tan
cup@op.douglas.bc.ca
Distribution ~ Pierre Florendo
Features ~ Annette Martin & Jen
Swanston -
features@op.douglas.bc.ca
News ~ Annette Martin
news@op.douglas.bc.ca

OP/Ed ~ Tom Laws
opinions@op.douglas.bc.ca
Coq. OP/Ed ~ Michael Cox
Photography ~ Dave Tam
photo@op.douglas.be.ca

Photo Assistant: Kristina Holtz
Production ~ Bodie Duble
production_co@op.douglas.bc.ca
Webslinger ~ Mark Smeets
op_web@op.douglas.bc.ca

Employees

New West Advertising ~ Vacant
ad@op.douglas.bc.ca

Coquitlam Advertising ~ John Morash
Bookkeeping ~ Zahra Jamal
Production Resource ~Joyce Robinson
production@op.douglas.bc.ca
Editorial Resource ~ Corene McKay
ed_res@op.douglas.bc.ca

Contributors

Jimminhanada, Sarah, Tom's
Chemistry Homework, the
BioHazard baggie by the Law
Courts, those halycon days of yore,
a veratil fluid whose boiling point
remains a mystery, cuastic cleaners
that don’t really clean stuff,

 

 

 

2 March 10 1999

Devil’s Advocate

 

A different take on March 5

Devil's Advocate

Women’s Day. Bah humbug. If
women had any more of a
cakewalk through life, if the law
didn't bend over backwards to
accommodate them, if the rest
of the world didn’t bow to meet
their commands, they would no
longer be labeled “women” or
“womyn” but Yahweh or Allah.

Perhaps a few years ago
women could not get impartial-
ity in the eyes of the law, but
now the roles have been re-
versed and it is nearly impossi-
ble for a male to have fairness
on his side before a judge.

The most common argu-
ment that women are “op-
pressed” is that men have the
option of leaving a female after
conception, and having the
mother left with a child to care
for. There is new law being
written by women that will
decimate any type of fair play
established in the court system.

There are literally hun-
dreds of cases of women suing
men for breach of contract. The
story usually goes that the men
agreed to marry the women, and
later on dumps her and marries
someone else. There is no
written contract, and a verbal
contract usually will not suffice
for a court of law, but somehow,
these women win the lawsuits.
There are no children involved,
and the man did not get her
pregnant and leave, he just
didn't keep his promise of
marriage.

Even if there are children
involved, say if the man got the
woman pregnant and then left,
women still seem to be winning
lawsuits.

In itself, this probably
wouldn't be so bad if men could

Letter

 

countersue and have a hope in
hell of winning.

There are four such
countersuits that were tried,
three laughed out of court, and
one pending. The one pending
goes thus:

A man and a woman were
together for many years, and
children were discussed early on
and it was decided that they
weren't wanted. The man wore a
condom and the woman took
birth control,-so both parties
were equally responsible for
preventing a mishap like preg-
nancy to begin with. However,
they both agreed that neither
wanted a child at that time in
their lives and that if such an
unlikely occurrence would
happen, the fetus would be
aborted. Whether you believe in
abortion or not is irrelevant
here. The man’s condom broke,
and the woman forgot to take
her pill for three days out of the
week, and thus got pregnant.
When she told her partner, he
was under the impression that it
would be aborted as discussed.
She, however, changed her mind
and decided to have the child.
In itself, her changing her mind
is fine, every human in the
world should have that right,
but it was her deception which
is evil. Her partner had told her
before that he wanted nothing
to do with a child, and so he left
the relationship, which is also
fine, as he had made his inten-
tions quite clear at the begin-
ning. The woman, however, felt
that he should pay for his half
of the DNA and filed a paternity
suit to get child support and,
surprise surprise, won. The man
was outraged. When he came
before the judge, he told him of

their agreement, and the woman
verified it. But the judge still
decided in her favour.

An outrage! Somehow the
same law that allows a woman to
change her mind does not also
allow for a man to change his.
The verbal agreement that is
held so dear in women defend-
ant cases is thrown out the
window when the defendant has
a penis.

Feeling he was wronged,
the man countersued the woman
for breech of contract. He was
not out to ruin her, and sued
only for the amount of child
support he would have to pay
every month because of the
woman winning her lawsuit. He
stated, in the exact same
manner as women do when they
sue a man who promised to
marry them and didn't, that the
woman did not hold up her end
of their agreement. He said that
merely because he believed she
was telling the truth when she
said she would abort, he should
not be held liable for the child
she, on her own, decided to
have. The case will probably
never make it to court, and will
probably be laughed out like the
others.

And the old argument
about judges giving custody to
mothers more than fathers in
divorce cases still applies,
although this number is, theo-
retically, going down. But there
was a case a few years back, |
where a prominent business man
divorced his wife because site
had become addicted to heroin
and was selling their assets for
cash, and he tried to get cus-
tody of his children for obvious
reasons. The court, however, felt
that the heroin addicted single

mother would be a much better
parent than would a father with
a stable home life and assets
enough to provide necessities
for his children.

And then there are the
men’s clubs. In Edmonton,
Alberta about ten years back,
there was a place called the
Derrick club, which was a place
for men to go and smoke cigars,
watch hockey or football, and
just generally be pigs and slobs
together. Because that’s what
men do. Women, however, felt it
was sexist for there to be a place
where men could go, and women
weren't allowed. They felt it was
such a danger to their being, to
their womanhood, that they
lobbied until a court ruled that
it was sexist for men to have a
place where only men could go.
In addition, males are not
allowed into things like the Girl
Guides for example, but females
are allowed into Boy Scouts.
Female doctors can examine a
man without anyone else in the
room, but a male doctor has to
have a female present.

Why? Because all men will
rape women. All men want
nothing but hardcore anal sex
and will stop at nothing to get
it. All men are evil. All men
want is to disgrace and defame
females, and all males want
nothing better than to destroy
women.

Wake up. Instead of

' making people friendly laws, we

make gender specific laws.
Instead of having places for
people to gather, we make places
for men and women, or just
women to gather. But don’t dare
say a woman is sexist.

 

A message from the DSU

At the President's Forum, held
February 25, 1999, the college
president, knowing the Students’
Union executive were attending
the Special General Meeting, .
chastised the Students’ Union
for not caring about students
already high debt load and
spoke against the tuition fee
freeze, blaming it for the lack of
funding in the post-secondary
system. ;

We would like to take this
opportunity to set the record
straight. The tuition fee freeze
that students in British Colum-
bia have been benefiting from
for the last three years has
nothing to do with the lack of
funding for post-secondary
institutions. The culprit behind
the lack of funding is the
Federal Liberal government who
has cut $7 billion from funding
to post secondary education in
the last three years.

the Other Press

The BC Government is one
of only two provincial
goverments in Canada that has
not forced students to make up
for the lost funding through sky
high tuition fees; further, they
are unique in being the only
Provincial Government in Canada
that is making education a
priority and attempting to fund
it adequately.

Unfortunately, no matter
how much the BC Government
invests in education, if the
Federal Government is insistent
on hacking and slashing the
education budget, provincial
governments are going to have
less and less to work with each
year.

Administrators, placing the
blame on the only provincial
government that is making
education a priority, are not
doing their research and are
doing more harm to the fight for

accessible, affordable, fully
funded public education.

The President's comments
regarding the Educational
Technology Fee ($50) that the
Student's Union refused to hold
a referenda for, when we were
willing to take our members’
money for Performing Arts and
Activities and Intramurals ($9),
are also equally uninformed. —

As your Students’ Union
we have representation on as
many college committees for
which we can find interested
bodies. Our representatives have
consistently seen money wasted
and misspent by these commit-

‘tees. An unproven, yet interest-

ing, example comes from the
Educational Technology Forum.
Laptops were bought for faculty
use but could not be accounted
for - when an informal survey
was done, by Students’ Union
staff, it appeared that the lap-

 

tops may have been misallocated
to the administrators and people
in the Computer Systems
Department who have not only
one desk computer per person
but a laptop as well, the same
kind as the missing faculty
laptops. So, while administra-
tors can have their choice of
which computer to use, ten to
fifteen faculty are huddled over
one computer.

While the Ed Tech Forum is
not the only place in the college
where money appears to be
wasted and misspent, this
particular situation supports our
mistrust in handing over lump
sums of our members money to
the college, who will not allow
students any real imput into
how this money is spent.

The decision making
process, for how fees are spent,
is where the real difference lies

continued on page 3