News. Learning Centre open for summer semester By Dylan Hackett, News Editor ouglas College’s premier tutoring service, the Learning Centre, is active for the Summer Semester but with limited hours of availability at David Lam campus. The Learning Centre is available free to all students registered at Douglas College and provides tutoring and mentoring in all areas of study done by professionally-certified tutors. “We have three kinds of tutoring. There’s drop-in tutoring where you can come in for a half hour and we'll just work with you on a project, there’s ongoing tutoring which is a regular meeting of an hour per week. It not only is project work but is also for skills for success in your course. For people writing essays we also have online tutoring,” said peer tutor and Other Press Humour Editor, Liam Britten. While formal sessions make up the bulk of the Learning Centre’s service, tutors also help students who come by with quick questions. “If you want to come in and ask a quick question, like how to cite something, we have a ton of handouts for all kinds of grammar issues and for science and math but especially for citations,” explained Britten. “[Citations] are probably the biggest thing people have. Professors, especially for first year courses, could do a lot better of a job of helping students with citations of various styles and I find we pick up the slack a lot of the time in those situations.” The Learning Centre is always looking for new tutors to add to its rosters. “There’s a real need for more science students to get involved, more math students to get involved and, especially in Coquitlam, more nursing students,” said Britten. “There are no volunteers at the Learning Centre. Peer tutoring is the entry- level position. This isn’t the case at all places. SFU only has volunteer tutors, no paid tutors.” “It is a paid position. You spend three semesters there. You Students protest in Montreal Quebec students continue to rebel against tuition hike By David Hollinshead, Staff Writer uebec students protesting planned tuition hikes were met with force from riot police Tast Friday on the streets of Montreal. The protesters, whose demonstration was recently declared illegal by police, were offered to have the provincial government's $1,625 tuition hike spread over a span of seven years instead of the proposed five. Protesters promptly rejected the concession. In 1990, the Quebecois Liberal Government, controlled by Robert Bourassa increased tuition from $500 to $1,600; a raise that would hike up $280 annually over four years. The tuition raise was not received positively, as thousands hit the streets in protest, but was unable to turn the decision. Six years later, the streets were full of 100,000 protesting students after the Parti Quebecois education minister Pauline Marois attempted to raise the tuitions again by 30 per cent. She changed her mind after seeing 4 the reaction given, announcing a tuition freeze until 2007. Once the Liberals came back into power, it seemed as though they planned for a war to break out between them and the student body. Nine years later, the Liberal Government again enraged students, deciding to cut $103 million from financial aid. Two hundred thousand students, doubling the protests of a decade previous, came out in protest, and once again, in a few weeks, the decision was changed. Once 2007 came around, the Liberals took advantage of the freeze ending, and intended to increase tuition $500 over a five year period, meeting another negative reaction, but the movement stayed. In 2010, Line Beauchamp became the education minister in the cabinet shuffle, and a year later, Finance Minister Raymond Bachand announced that Quebec was again to raise tuition fees, beginning in September 2012. The plan was to raise tuition by $325 annually over five years. The total increase will amount to $1,625, raising Quebec tuition to $3,793 in 2017. Despite this raise, the tuition in Quebec will remain among the lowest in Canada. Following this decision, students began campaigns against the tuition hikes, with several peaceful rallies held in Montreal in an attempt to apply the pressure to the government to change their minds. However, on February 23, 2012, a student was pepper-sprayed at another protest rally, and less than a month later, a student was wounded in the eye by a police officer during an altercation. The student, Francis Grenier, become the face of the rebellion, invoking students to wear a patch over their eye in tribute to him. Students then protested on the Champlain Bridge during rush hour to apply further pressure upon the government; each student was fined for this act. The students’ protesting activities have become more and more elaborate and destructive. The outside of the Beauchamp office will be among the highest trained or certified tutors in the country or even in North America. You get to meet a lot of great people. If you’re tutoring someone in your own academic aspirations you get to relearn a lot of stuff. “The best thing for a peer tutor to have coming in is good marks in the courses you plan on tutoring and you have to have a lot of patience in most cases. Flexibility is really key because when you're tutoring people they learn in different ways and you have to adapt to that and a positive attitude is the other thing. Some people don’t learn at the same rates as others but you have to treat everyone as if they are going to succeed. You have to give everyone a fair chance to succeed in their courses.” The Learning Centre is open five days a week during Summer Semester at New Westminster Campus and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at David Lam. Online tutoring requests are available 24/7. Itis available online at www. douglas.bc.ca/services/learning- centre.html. was painted red and used as a rally point. Four government officials’ offices were vandalized by Molotov cocktails. When it finally looked as though the violence would end, the talks broke off, and in another rally, students were arrested and fined. Currently, the situation is at a standstill. The student looked to renegotiate with the government, but were turned down.