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