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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