issue 30// vol 46 news // no. 5 College calls for nominations » One student position available on Education Council Atiba Nelson Staff Reporter he Education Council is looking fora new student member. Douglas College’s Education Council, which is mandated under the British Columbia College and Institute Act, posted a call for nominations notice on the college’s main page. The current call is the third call for nominations for the vacant student seat on the 20-person council. Typically, four of the voting council members are students; however, with only three students elected to the council, the college is seeking a fourth and final student member. The current student members are Rachelle Andrews, Ariel Ataiza, Sherlyn Tang, and Manvir Heer. The term of this group ends on August 31, 2020. Then on September 1, a new group consisting of Gurpaneer (Jinia) Kaur Mand, Peter Curson, and holdover Ariel Ataiza—who is also Director of Membership Development for the Douglas Students’ Union (DSU)— start their term in office. The council's terms of reference state that to apply to be a student member of the Educational Council, a student must be “recognized to be enrolled and in good standing in a course or program of studies at the institution.” Douglas deems that a student enrolled in a one credit course and in good standing with the institution is eligible. However, the student cannot be directly employed by the college. Students have until 4 pm on July 8, 2020 to submit nominations for the vacant student position. Interested students must submit 15 completed nomination forms (one from each nominator) to Admin Officer Mary Cope, and a brief election platform statement to the College Registrar, Rella Ng. A bolded rule states: “Do not send fifteen (15) separate emails.” Nominated students can then campaign, and Douglas students can electronically vote a new student member to the Educational Council. Douglas aims to start student voting for the vacant student position during the campaign period from July 14 to July 21. The Educational Council meets monthly, with the last meeting occurring virtually via Microsoft Teams software on June 15, 2020. The approved May meeting minutes show that the council discussed several program revisions and received updates on the fall 2020 term from President Kathy Denton Photo by Greg Salter via Wikimedia Commons_1 4 and Associate Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs Sarah Dench. “until we know exactly what the guidelines and directives are for post- secondary institutions, instruction will continue to be delivered on-line,” Dench said according to the May minutes. THE NEWS ON FAKE NEWS » Protests good; Trump rally bad Timothy Easling Contributor Dr. David Agus was quoted in multiple Trump rally articles by the outlet: “CDC ¢¢ the people who come to the rally, they don’t care about them except as a photo op, because they're going to kill some of them and some of their family and friends,” Art Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU Langone Health and CNN medical contributor, said during an appearance on CNN Newsroom in the leadup to Donald Trump’s Tulsa rally. Reports similarly critical of the health consequences of such a large gathering were run by many major media groups. CBS News medical contributor certainly does not have guidelines for large gatherings of over 10,000 people. I don't know of any state guidelines that would enable that,” he said. Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute, called the then-upcoming Trump rally “an extraordinarily dangerous move for the people participating and the people who may know them and love them and see them afterward,” in an NBC piece. Meanwhile, massive public gatherings related to defunding the police and Black Lives Matter—some outnumbering Trump's own rally— received a slightly different response from the major outlets. A CNN feature pushed a different line: “However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of black people in the United States,” read a letter signed by over 1,000 “health professionals.” “Prepare for an increased number of infections in the days following a protest,” continued the same source. “Provide increased access to testing and care for people in the affected communities, especially when they or their family members put themselves at risk by attending protests.” The report was a contrast from the Trump rally line of “they’re going to kill some of them.” The Washington Post also showed a lack of consistency between the events, running pieces such as this lengthy article entitled “After week of protest, Saturday expected to bring largest crowds yet to Washington’ that contained zero mentions of any health considerations. Even coverage of smaller towns yielded no health mentions—as seen in pieces such as this one from CBS. While TikTok teens trolled the ticket numbers, almost no outlets even mentioned the protesters outside the Trump rally. No reliable data has been reported on how many were scared off by the angry mob—although, as even seen in the Washington Post, there was quite a crowd attempting to block those wishing to go to the rally. But for all the media talk of irresponsible Trump supporters (just over 6,000 by most counts), it seems a great number of them are as safe as the papers would like them to be; Fox’s stream alone reached over 7.6-million people. The campaign’s own digital platform reportedly yielded another four million. As obvious from these two sources, there are many more unaccounted for watchers missed and purposely unmentioned by the media. Much reporting is also intentional misrepresentation. “So perhaps it made him feel better when the Tulsa crowd—his crowd—applauded after he theatrically drank a glass of water onstage with only one hand and didn’t dribble any of it on his tie,” read a piece from the Washington Post. Out of context, it appears as though Trump is getting applause simply for taking a drink. However, when you watch the entire clip in context, Trump was making a joke—a joke the audience found hilarious. The only way for a different perspective to be seen was to watch the applause and drinking by itself with no context (a very poor journalistic practice) or by viewing the entire clip and writing the piece to be intentionally misleading. The entire video can be found here. It’s quite similar to Trump’s CNN parody that Twitter removed in June. No one thought it was a real newscast (Jim Acosta of left-wing CNN even using that knowledge in a question during a White House briefing the next day: “When you share fake videos like that, doesn’t that make you fake news?”) and there were several intentional misspellings, but the media reported it as Trump trying to mislead the public; CNN tweeted at Trump: “We'll continue working with facts rather than tweeting fake videos that exploit innocent children. We invite you to do the same. Be better.” Meanwhile right-wing outlets such as Fox called the video “satirical.”