the Volume 23 « Issue 22 DSU vs Prez DC's student union and col- lege president at cross-purposes March 24 1999 Casting Pearls Book launch gucuses wt by Creative crud vecome massive Writing department composites of their every experience, ANNETTE MARTIN STORY & PHOTOS Sacrifices to Hewlett-Packard since 1976 finally put out sensation and feel- ing. Court Caldwell’s lyrical, well-paced narrative of a young boy conquering a . ae oe eee See hat was this? Candle- We tables, wine, black-clothed young people and poetry reading? Aha! A 60’s-style beat club on campus? : No, an enthusiastic book launching for Pearls 18, the 1999 edition of work by Douglas College Creative Writing students. Instructors, students and guests assembled on Friday March 19, to read poems, essays and narratives and to celebrate their accomplish- ments. Elizabeth Bachinsky read her three enigmatic poems, including a long stream of “Creative Writing instructors with Rudy | ped BS: LS daily fear in public— while losing another battle in bed at night—was warm, funny and touching. When Christy Smith read her story, ‘The Red Cavalier; she demonstrated how a bitter disillusionment in life could be redeemed from total bleakness with a wry sense of humour and the perspective lent by distance. Special guest, 1999 Writer in Residence Rudy Wiebe, winner of the Governor- General's Award for both fic- tion (The Temptations of Big coe. Author Rudy Wiebe and Creative Writing instructor Mary Burns Bear) and non-fiction (with collaborator Yvonne Johnson, Stolen Life: the Journey of a Cree Woman), addressed the audience before reading from his own work. “Obviously, I'm not a recent grad of anything,” he ebe at Pearls 18 launch quipped. “But in a sense you're always a young writer. Always trying to write something unique and inter- esting.” He told the audience, “Even when writing a lot, you never know if you'll write some- thing else as good.” He believes ~ it’s the gift of spoken commu- nication that lifts humans above plant and animal life, and that the next marvellous thing to speak- ing is reading and writing. “Tf you want - to be a writer at all, you first have to bea Please see Weibe on pg. 3 LOO AANA NARA AIA ARAMA RIO ANNETTE MARTIN osters, postcards, faxes, letters to P»: Premier of the province and some inappropriate telephone calls have all played a part in what appears to be a huge misunderstanding between the Douglas College Student Union and college president Susan Witter. Why and how this spat flared up is not clear. At a February forum, in response to questions from the floor regarding fund- ing for more equipment, Susan Witter said two things that might have trig- gered the panic. First she commented on the fact that student levy fees (from the student union) had risen nine percent in the past year, and secondly she said, “The BC government's right to impose a fund- ing freeze imposes the right on them to make up the gap in funding needs. The Public system needs adequate funding.” Following publication of these com- ments in the Other Press, Amanda Wheeler, vice president external of the student union, wrote a letter claiming that the college president had, “chas- tised the Students’ Union for not caring about students’ already high debt load and spoke [sic] against the tuition fee freeze blaming it for the lack of funding in the post-secondary system.” The student union then started a poster campaign. Over a photograph of Witter, the 11x17 posters posed the question, “Why is she lobbying against the tuition fee freeze?” The posters displayed the presi- dent's name, title, alleged base salary, Please see DSU on pg. 3