: Inside This Issue Christmas Greeting...................6 & 7 Student Questionaire.................11 Student Survey...............9 Editorials............4 Letters ’n’ Stuff...............5 Entertainment...........8 Madman Murders Students in Montreal by Andy Riga MONTREAL (CUP) -- Four- teen women are dead after a gun- man went on a shooting rampage through the halls of the Universite de Montreal’s engineering building - December 6th. Saying he was out to get feminists, Marc Lepine, dressed in hunting gear, methodically sought out women and shot them using a .223 calibre semi-automatic rifle before committing suicide, Twelve others -- most of them ' women -- were taken to hospital. The horror of the worst mass- shooting in Canadian history began sometime between 4:30 and 5 pm_ on the last day of classes at the university. Witnesses say Lepine seemed calm when he walked into the second-floor classroom, where stu- dents were giving final presenta- tions for a mechanical engineering course. “He asked the men to leave and told the women to stay,” said stu- dent Stephane Morin, who was in the class at the time. "We thought he was joking -- it was the last day of classes. But when he shot his rifle (into the ceil- ing), we knew he was serious. "When we were in the hall we heard gunshots and we ran to phones to call the police." Genvieve Caudin, a 19-year- old student who suffered a superfi- cial head injury, was on the third floor when she was shot. "I know at least one of my friends is dead," Caudin said. "I’m not sure about the others, some are in the hospital. "] just keep asking myself why he would do this," she said. Police revealed later in the week that Lepine had left a three page letter, which talked about problems with women, and feminists in particular. "He walked into the classroom and said, ’You’re a bunch of feminists’ and started shooting." According to one witness the man said, "I want the women" as he calmly walked through the building. Bodies of the dead and wounded were found on three floors. The gunman’s body was found near four of his victims on the third floor. Some students on other floors panicked when a fire alarm was activated in an attempt to evacuate the building. Sylvie Auger, a first-year en- fj gineering student who was in the building at the time, said a _ group of students were trapped on the sixth floor during the shootings. “We heard the fire alarm go off so we went to the emergency stairway, but wecouldn’t open the door," Auger said. "We thought it was a fire (but then) somebody came running up and told us that a man was walking around on the third floor with a rifle. We finally got out through another exit." That night, Claude Ryan, Quebec’s education minister, inter- rupted debate in the National As- sembly to send condolences to the families and friends of those killed. Calling the killings "tragic," Ryan said the dead students had been "cut down in the prime of their lives." Pipeline Hits New Snag by Marion Drakos The mayors of two municupalities say they won’t give up the fight to stop a natural gas pipeline from going through their watershed. Their latest weapon is zoning bylaws. Both Coquitlam and Port Moody have tailored zoning their bylaws to force the contractor, Pacific Coast Energy Corperation, into public hearings before begin- ning work on the high powered compressor that is required on this end of the pipeline. "If (locating the compressor) requires a zoning change, it’s going to go to a public hearing and coun- cil will sit as long as nessary to hear the public’s concerns about some- thing that sounds like a jet engine and puts out 1000 degrees (F) of heat," said Port Moody Mayor David Driscoll. "This is the last kick at the can for anyone objecting to this pipeline being built," said Coquit- lam Alderman Walter Ohirko. "What this does is take the issue back to square one." Pacific Coast planned on building the nessary gas compres- sor in the Westwood Platteau area. Coquitlam Mayor Lou Sekora said he’s not in favour of a company plan to locate the compressor, which has four 5000-horsepower gas turbines, in the area of a hous- ing devlopement planned by Wes- build Enterprises Ltd. "I certinally don’t want them in my com- munity," Sekora said. Faculty Claims Budget Mistake Reason for Delay in Strike Settlement by Mathew Martin and Tamara Gorin The lengthiness of the Douglas College faculty strike might have been avoided. According to sources within the faculty association, the college Bursar, Peter Greenwood, made a mistake in budget calculations that were the major reason for the strike’s extended duration. Greenwood denies these al- legations, stating that they are "definately not true. I stand 100% behind by numbers." During the strike, faculty repeatedly insisted that their demands were within the College’s budget, which the Administration denied, and was the main stum- bling block in negotiations over wages. The discrepancy between the two sides estimated figures was 15%, with $130,000 representing a percentage point. It wasn’t until. Faculty As- sociation lawyer David Reynolds met with Greenwood, Administra- tion Chief Negotiator Ross Cameron and mediator Bob Mc- Arthy on November 30th that the differences in opinion were finally reconciled. A settlement to the dis- pute followed soon after. Greenwood maintains that it was not miscalculations in figures but "differences in opinion over what the budget included" that made negotiations difficult. Mourners gather in Robson Square to remember the : people who died In Montreal. Victims by T. Clive Thompson (CUP) -- Hundreds huddled in the cold at Victoria College last Thursday to mourn the deaths of 14 women in the Montreal shootings. The group, composed of students, professors, and other community women and men, gathered beneath the university’s statue of a crucified woman. Speakers expressed their horror and sorrow at the shootings, and called the tragedy a direct result of the overall violence against women prevalent in society. "I would like to ask all of you to remember the women who were killed becausé they were women. It was not indiscriminate violence, it was violence against women," said Rabbi Deborah Brin. The crowd cheered as Donna Marchand of the U of T Women’s Studies Students’ Union angrily denounced the shootings. “What do you want before you realize that this is a misogynist culture?" she asked. "I think if this were nuclear warfare, this’d be called a first strike of global significance," Marchand said. "People can relate to att Alice de Woolf, the Toronto co-ordinator of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, said NAC’s Ottawa office received a threatening phone call Thursday moming. A man calledand asked if any women were working in the building, and said "Marc isn’t alone". "This scares the hell out of us," she said. "Men continue to be socialized to deal with stress in their conflicts with women by using violence."NAC has never received threatening phone calls before, she added. Toronto lawyer Mary Lou MacPhedran -- who helped organize the vigil -- linked the Montreal murders with other sexist events that have occurred this year on Canadian campuses, including the Wilfred Laurier panty raids and Queen’s University students mocking anti-date rape slogans. "I don’t think that was just one crazy incident," she said. "This is something that has happened to students and this is something that is surfacing in the student generation in more than one campus across the country." . In the Lower Mainland, several vigils have been held, begining with the candlelight vigil held in the rain the following nightin Robson Square. Universitys and Colleges across Canada have joined with womens groups in orginizing vigils and memorial services. The final memorial being the group funeral held for nine of the victims December 11.