Choose your seat

carefully

By Siavash Emamzadeh

ne of the biggest decisions
O= make in college, along

with the teachers you choose
and the courses you enrol in, is where
you sit in class. Should you opt for the
front or the back? Which will earn you
the best mark? Some of the answers to
these questions are obvious, but some
may surprise you.

Now, I’m no big shot researcher,
but I do have several years of college
attendance under my belt and a whole
lot of seating experimentation. Sitting
at the front is usually the popular
pick for students in the hunt for As
and Bs. Chances are that they believe
sitting anywhere else will render them
distracted. This is generally true, as
sitting in the back or center has led me
to lose track of the lecture; I tend to
get engaged in a conversation going
on ahead of me for example. Also,
different profs have different styles of
writing; some may jot down obscenely
small words and symbols on the board,
while others may not. So in certain
cases, it is extremely important to be
as close as possible to the board in
order to copy down accurate notes.
Otherwise, as you can imagine, it will
have a direct impact on your mark.

Just as how seeing is vital, so is
hearing. I’ve had professors that stutter
frequently, skip words altogether
or speak in a very low voice. So
obviously, unless you’re a confident
lip-reader, you will want to consider
sitting a little closer to the professor.

A widely-held belief is that by
sitting at the front of class, a student
will meet other hard-working students.
This is not necessarily true, as I have
met plenty of dedicated people while

sitting elsewhere. There can be several
reasons that account for this. First of
all, it appears to me that a considerable
number of dedicated students also
happen to be introverted, or in simpler
terms, shy. As a result, they prefer to
remain seated at the rear of the class,
where they are not subjected to a lot of
attention. Conversely, the class goofs
actually seek attention, so they sit right
at the front of the class. Generally,
these are not the most committed
students.

Another belief is that teachers help
students sitting at the front significantly
more than they do those sitting at the
back. This is a myth because teachers,
especially in college, specifically make
sure to involve those in the back. It’s
common knowledge among them that
a lot of back-dwelling students like to
avoid participation. Needless to say,
it’s not pleasant but it is beneficial
when you’re one of those students, as I
can attest to.

Finally, if your classes are at close
intervals, make sure you consider
sitting next to the door. Every time
class ends, I see people shuffling and
packing like the first one out wins
a car. This, of course, means that if
you’re one of those people, your notes
will be incomplete. By sitting next to
the door, you have more time to pack
and have to spend less time weaving
through the crowd of students and
exiting, thus giving you more time to
copy down notes.

In the end, where you sit
depends on what you value, but to
say that sitting at the front of the
class guarantees a high mark is a
misconception.

Hey, I’m a living proof of that.

 

Bivaro

Braidwood inquiry only
further damages RCMP

By Garth McLennan

he inquiry currently being
Tecate into the death of

Polish immigrant Robert
Dziekanski has done nothing to
absolve the RCMP in the eyes of the
public.

Dziekanski, as almost everyone
will be able to recall, was tasered by
RCMP officers at YVR airport on
October 14", 2007. Dziekanski, 40,
had arrived from Poland to move to
Canada. He was supposed to meet his
mother at the airport but became lost
for over nine hours and never met up
with her.

Eventually Dziekanski lost his
cool and began flipping over chairs
and dropped a computer. The police
were called and within 30 seconds of
their arrival, Dziekanski was hit with
the first of five taser blasts.

A bystander video captured
the scene as the events unfolded.

It shows the four officers arriving

and motioning to Dziekanski, who
raises his hands above his head and
begins walking away. The police

then surround Dziekanski, who has

a stapler in his hand. A few seconds
later, he is tasered multiple times and
jumped on by the police. As a result
of this and the massive public outrage,
retired judge Thomas Braidwood has
convened an inquest into what exactly
happened that night.

Recently the four RCMP officers
in question were called to testify,
and the testimony from Constable
Gerry Rundel was very telling, but
not in a good way. Rundel claims
that Dziekanski “picked up a stapler
and he started clenching his fists and
putting the stapler up above his head,
motioning...making motions with it
towards us. At this point, Constable
Millington had pulled out his taser and
activated it.”

Hmm, that’s an interesting
recollection there, Gerry; the only
problem is it didn’t happen. The
video, which can be seen on YouTube,
shows clearly that while Dziekanski
did indeed have a stapler in his hand,
he never raised it above his head in a
threatening manner. In fact, he never
raised it above his head at all. He
never raised the stapler or brandished
his fists towards police. That never
happened. There is video evidence to
support that. Shown the video at the
inquiry, Rundel still maintained his
fictitious version of the events. He
lied, plain and simple.

As the inquiry continued, it
was found that the officers tasered
Dziekanski five times with jolts of
50,000 volts, including at least one

e ae

   

directly to his skin for nine straight
seconds.

Now, Dziekanski was acting
irrationally and was clearly distressed
but that does not justify such a blatant
use of excessive force by the police.
The video shows that he was no threat
at all, and eyewitnesses who were
present at the time have all stated that
Dziekanski didn’t threaten them and
that none of them felt like they were in
danger.

So how could this have been so
different for the four police officers?
They encounter an exhausted man with
a stapler that is not threatening them in
any way, shape or form, and Constable
Rundel “fears for his safety?” With all
due respect, that’s a joke.

Four heavily armed RCMP
officers have surrounded a guy and
they feared for their safety because of
a stapler that was never even raised or
brandished? Well, if that’s true then
these guys picked the wrong career.

Now I’m not out to bash police
officers. The vast majority of law
enforcement officials are terrific
people who do a spectacular job. But
the fact that these four cowards, who
won't be charged and won’t even
admit that they made a mistake is
reprehensible. To try and shift blame
on other people and agencies, as
Rundel did in his testimony, is just
unacceptable.

These four officers were clearly
out of line and went more than
overboard. Judging from the video
evidence, if holding a stapler and not
speaking English is all that is required
to get tasered up to five times for
lengthy zaps, then I wouldn’t want
to be here for the 2010 Olympics. If
what these four police officers did was
completely by the book and allowed,
then what are we spending $900
million on Olympic security for?

This entire series of events was a
tragedy, and the four officers knew it.
They were dead wrong in what they
did, and the Braidwood Inquiry proves
as much.

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