jetting two new floors ileen Velthuis ews Editor DC’s New Westminster campus will be getting o new floors after all, the college recently nounced. The college had been planning to build a fifth d sixth floor at the New Westminster campus in 001, but those plans had to be postponed when e provincial government announced its capital eeze in September 2001, deferring $42 million rorth of capital building projects at a dozen col- pees around BC. Some of the affected colleges cluded the University College of the Fraser alley and North Island College, as well as DC. Last month the college received notification that e funding had been reinstated—the freeze was ted and the plans to expand could go ahead. onstruction is planned to begin in the spring of 003 and be completed by the fall of 2004. “This is good news for students around the rovince who have been waiting for new and pdated facilities for the last year,” said Jaime atten, BC Chairperson for the Canadian ederation of Students. But for some DC students, the new addition hises the question of whether the money would evin Groves ritish Columbia Bureau ew Westminster campus be better spent in a different way. “T think by closing the Thomas Haney campus they are ripping off students in Maple Ridge or even farther out of good education ... if the budg- et isn't big enough to keep one campus open how can they afford to spend a million to renovate and add to another one? It doesn’t sound like it was intelligently thought out,” said DC student Jenn Thompson. DC’s expansion will cost 5.3 million, with only part—4.3 million—coming from the govern- ment. The 2,260 square metre expansion will add room for a Learning Technology Centre, which will, according to a DC press release, “consolidate most campus computer labs into eight 40-seat rooms.” The new section will also include seminar rooms, breakout rooms, technical facilities and bookable faculty offices. The new classrooms will free up some of the existing classrooms, and create room for as many as 750 new full-time equivalent students. The expansion will be built over part of the Royal Avenue side of the north building. Keep reading the OP for future expansion updates. Scott Ritter Speaks in Vancouver rges Canadians to voice concern to their IPs ANCOUVER (CUP)—There is no justification br attacking Iraq because the country possesses no eapons of mass destruction, Scott Ritter said. Ritter, a member of the United Nations weapons spection team that oversaw Iraqi disarmament fter the Gulf War, was in Vancouver to participate a panel discussion criticizing U.S. President reorge W. Bush’s current hardline stance on Iraq. “We have a drunk at the wheel of American for- ign policy,” Ritter said to the laughing crowd of ,600 people. “Let’s pull the key out of the ignition efore he drives the vehicle over a cliff.” To help stall the drive for war, Ritter clearly and loquently indicated that Iraq never possessed a uclear weapon. That's because Iraqs nuclear weapons program, hich tried to provide the highly enriched uranium eeded for the fissile core of a nuclear bomb, was the ne area his team thoroughly eradicated, said Ritter. He added that for Iraq to possess a nuclear bomb ow would require a complete reconstruction of the nctory infrastructure his team dismantled up t 998 when inspectors left, which would cost billions, f dollars and require tightly controlled and easily aceable technology. “Until someone can demonstrate that any of this has happened, you don’t have a threat,” Ritter said. Ritter also addressed criticism that his team was only 95 per cent sure they destroyed all of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, such as Sarin gas, mustard gas and Anthrax. He said the uncertainty results from his team’s extremely high standards after Iraq failed to disclose its entire infrastructure for both programs. “While logic would say that this piece of scrap metal is probably the two bombs we haven't accounted for, we can’t give it to [Iraq] because they lied to us,” Ritter said. “This missing five percent could be important but I’m telling you right now it’s not.” While his team wasn’t willing to give Iraq a clean bill of health, Ritter said they were willing to say the country had been fundamentally disarmed so the United Nations would lift economic sanctions, responsible for the death of halfa million Iraqi chil- dren according to 1999 UNICEF statistics. That brought the discussion back to what really motivates the US desire to invade Iraq. Federal New Democrat MP Svend Robinson, who also sat on the panel, suggested the current push for war centres around US President Bush’s personal desire to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power. “This is about Bush Jr. finishing what his father started,” he said. But Ritter denied that claim. He said the drive for a regime change in Iraq comes from a public accept- ance of the perceived Iraqi threat in the aftermath of 9/11. “So the American public, scared, has empowered the President to wage war in their name,” Ritter said. “[America] has allowed a group of neo-conservatives to callously implement their own agenda.” To help stop a war, Ritter called for greater respect among all nations for international law as outlined in the United Nations charter, including the US “That's the vision I want to represent,” he said. And Canada can help make that vision a reality through communication with electoral representa- tives, not street activism, said Ritter. “You're not going to facilitate change in a revolu- tion or in taking to the streets,” Ritter said. “You have to stand up, look your government in the eye and hold them to account for what they do in your name.” page 3 ©