Other Press

February 26, 1990

 

 

Some Simple

Requests..

Our Father, Who art on HIgh
(the 4th floor), hallowed be Thy
game. Thy Kingdumb has come,
Thy will has been done (beautiful
new tile in the Commons), here at
Douglas College. Give us this day,
our small request, in our Commons,
as itis in Thy Office. Forgive us our
past littering, as we forgive those
who have smoked and littered
before us. Lead us not into more

The.Other Press

The Other Press is a democrati-
cally run, autonomous

newspaper serving : Douglas Col-
lege since 1976. It publishes

 

Production Co-Ordinator
Matthew Martin

Kym
Contributors
Betty Cheung, Paul Dhalla,
| Cathy Nelson, Christine Heale,
Louis Richardson, and a bunch
of other folks whom we love and
feel great affection toward, but
it’s late, you’re new to the collec-
tive, my child is screaming and I
can’t for the life of me remeber
your names. Sorry.
Reading Collective
You

The Other Press is Located at
Room 1602 of the New
Westminster campus of Douglas
College. Drop by and see us
sometime... You’ ll like us.

 

 

 

Editorial Co-or. note: th

 
  

Please forgive the signin
oncourse. Please. At least yo
read it now.

 

and deeper trash, but deliver us
from all filth with a few ashtrays
and garbage cans. For Thine is The
Kingdumb, The Power and The
Finance, Now and Forever. Amen.

 

We CAN Do
Something

We all like to breathe. Most of
us enjoy drinking a cup of tea of
coffee, also. What do the two ac-
tions have in common? Why does
it make a significant difference
whether it’s one cup a week or three
cups a day? Styrofoam is the link-
ing ingredient.

Our cafeteria currently offers
only styrofoam cups for any hot
drink. Styrofoam is a petroleum
based product, consequently, each
time we choose to use this environ-
mentally unsafe product, we
choose less breathable air. We con-
tribute to the contamination of the
land and the water in New
Westminster, Burnaby and all of
BC.

Bring a mug, kick the
styrofoam habit and inhale more
freely.

Louise Richardson

Oversight
Offensive

The handbook prepared by the
Douglas College Student Society is
a very useful little book. It has the
names of places to eat, places to
shop and places to see naked
women parading around.

Listed in the handbook under
"Pubs" are Mugs & Jugs and Rosie
O”’ Grady’s. Both places feature
female exotic dancers and that im-
portant fact is not listed under the
address. Mugs is described as a
"great place to celebrate," and
Rosie’s has what the writers of the
handbook call "live entertain-
ment."

I find the advertising of these
pubs in student material to be of-
fensive. I am not offended because
I am a woman, I am offended be-
cause I am a human being who does
not condone the exploitation of the
human body and who does not
think that either sex should be
viewed as only a sexual object.

I am not accusing the writers
of the handbook of being sexist. I
can easily believe that it was an
oversight to include these places on
the list and I am sure that since it
has now been brought to their atten-
tion the handbook for next year will
not encourage students to patronise
bars where there are strippers of
eithér sex.

Marion Drakos

Vegetarians
Like to Eat
Good Food

Too

To ICL Foods (operators of the
cafeteria ):

I would like to bring up some

concerns that I have about the food |

served inthe cafeteria

I do not eat meat of any kind:
neither red meat, chicken or
seafood. I am finding it increasing-
ly difficult to find meals in the
cafeteria that service my needs
nutritionally, aesthetically, and
financially.

The meals served in the
cafeteria for vegetarians are con-
sistently the same. There are no hot
entrees. That leaves a vegetarian
with the option of having some
salad, which is astronomically
overpriced when compared with
the non-vegetarian entrees, or
eating a sandwich. Of all the
sandwiches availiable in the
cafeteria there are two I can eat:

cream cheese or egg salad. Oc-
casionally, there will be a bowl of
soup that I can eat. Considering my
financial position (I am struggling
on a student loan), I most often find
myself eating a sandwich. I am
quite often at the College for long
periods of time because of my
course load, and therefore I end up
eating sandwiches all the time.
That is not what I’d call nutrionally
need eating.

 

 

 

 

And on another level, it is real-
ly disapointing to know that you
will never get to eat a hot meal as
long as you are at the College. Like
Ihave mentioned before, I am at the
College for long periods of time, so
I don’t get many hot meals. I am
tired: of the cafeteria

another’s personal preference.

I am sure you will find (as I
have discovered) that not only
vegetarians eat vegetarian food. If
adish is prepared with care as to the
way it looks and tastes, people will
buy it because it is good, and also
for a change of pace from dishes
with meat.

Please reconsider your menus
so the concerns of vegetarians are
met. I know that there are a lot of
us around the College, and I know
that we are tired of sandwiches or
salad.

Tim Crumley

Dear Other Press,

Are you guys (sic) a bunch of
High School grads or what? Your
date of publications on your last
issue is January 15th 1990. Great
eh. Please do not Publish my name.
I fear reprisals form my romper
room friends.

Name Withheld (obviously)by
Request

Ed Co-or Note: Aside form
your dificulties with grammar and
punctuation, you made a glaring
mistake. The date on the issue in
question read "January Sth,

management’s disregard tor 1990." Great, Eh?

 

Cleaning of Closets Needed to Avoid Future
Problems

Over the past two months or so there has been the usual continuous in-fighting that any post-secondary
student can come to expect with relative frequency of their student council/society within the D.C.S.S. itself.
It all started because of the strike. Our elected representatives were ill prepared for any si ike, forget about the
doozy we were faced with. While having quite a bit of foreknowledge of the possibility of1 ~ strike, the society
still cannot be blamed in entirety for their lack of preparedness for such an event. No one really new until the
last minute what the heck was going on.

What they can be held accountable for is their lack of maturity in dealing with all of the incidents that
have occurred in the past four months. These people have a very hard time working with each other. Granted,
within the society, for the first time in a long time, there is a very wide range of political beliefs, ranging almost
the entire political spectrum, (although I have yet to meet fascist on this year’s society) and because of this
people may have a hard time making themselves understood. This is to be expected to some extent. But the
lengths to which some people are going is not.

First of all, if people are supposed to work together, they don’t call each other assholes during committee
meetings. Secondly, if things aren’t going the way of any given individual, they don’t throw tantrums in the
middle of said meetings either. Thirdly, in order for the Society to be effective, members can’t just withhold
their vote until something they feel strongly about comes up on the agenda -- students elected their
representative in the hope that their rep would represent them all of the issues, not just some. Most important
is the recognition that people make mistakes, often stupid, but they should not be crucified for it.

Two events in particular have been disturbing. One is the way the Society has dealt with the entire issue
of the ombuds office. The other is the choice of, and the very apparent reasons for hiring, the new
Ombudsperson.

The Society lost sight of the original complaint against Laura Zieglar in their attempts to get to the bottom
of the incident. Yes, Laura should have thought twice before telling Merrilyn Houlihan to get the answering
machine from the Ombudsoffice. Frankly, Merrilyn should have known better in the first place--she’s been
around long enough to have realised the error in doing so. And irregardless of whether or not the tape in the
answering machine was listened to, the real issue is the breach of confidentiality that occurred the second she
walked in that office door without first telling the ombudsperson they were going to do so.

Instead of focusing on this, the Rep. committee set out to discipline Laura Zieglar. And so, a committee
was set up to investigate the incident, and this committee found her guilty as charged. Fine. But the committee
was made up of the Chair, who is supposed to be impartial, the Ombudsperson, also supposed to be impartial
and the President, again impartial. It is a fact that Keith and Aias are known not to get along, that Aias and
Laura didn’t get along, and that Keith sided with Laura from the very beginning. Something tells me this
committee could not have been that effective, both as a working unit and as an impartial body. Knowing this,
I question the Rep committee’s rational in putting these three people together to work, especially considering
the Chair is the only one without a known ax to grind.

The other problem mentioned above was the reason Keith Olstrum was hired for the position of
Ombudsperson. While Keith doesn’t make his political leanings the stuff of public knowledge, it is known
that he is not exactly left of centre. Which is fine. What is not fine, however, is that one of the reasons he got
the position was his political beliefs. He was hired to balance the left-wing influences on the society, which
certain members of the Hiring Committee felt were becoming too strong, and this is completely unacceptable.
The Ombudsperson is supposed to be a beacon of impartiality and confidentiality to students, someone they
can go to with complaints and know that he/she will empathize with them, no matter the nature of their
complaint or their political affiliations. Those students include members of the Student Society. The members
of the Hiring Committee were playing politics at the expense of the student body.

Several solutions could be offered up here, but one will suffice at this time. The Ombudsperson’s "interim
report" makes a number of allegations and recommendations. The Society should take them seriously, look
into Keith’s findings and do some housecleaning. The executive elections are coming up in just over a month,
and the Society should hand the new executive a clean slate, free of this year’s problems. If things need to be
changed, change them. One idea is to look into the feasibility of updating the Society’s constitution to fit the
needs of the present.

The only way to keep such a report from being made again is to do some serious and thoughtful work.
While a lot points in the report are be being questioned, (and rightly so), there are some that could be considered
quite valid. This must be addressed and dealt with accordingly.

Tamara Gorin