THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN’S MAIN CAMPUS IS SITUATED ON TREATY 6 TERRITORY AND THE HOMELAND OF THE MÉTIS.
THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN’S MAIN CAMPUS IS SITUATED ON TREATY 6 TERRITORY AND THE HOMELAND OF THE MÉTIS.
TANNARA YELLAND
Associate News Editor
2009 began with a shake-up in the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union executive when vice-president external affairs Nicole Kenney resigned.
Kenney ran for the office on a platform of sustainability despite the fact that the external affairs office is intended solely to lobby governments on behalf of students. She viewed her election as a student-given mandate to pursue her goals, and ran into conflict with some of the executive for this.
Then-USSU president Josie Steeves brought up issues surrounding Kenney’s office hours and defended the USSU’s habit of taking a politically neutral stand on issues that arose on campus. Kenney had commented, “In no political arena are individuals neutral,” which Steeves took issue with.
The position remained unfilled until the elections replaced the executive for the 2009-10 school year.
Joanne Horsley, the former USSU victim advocate, was fired from the post on Feb. 5.
The move came barely 24 hours after Horsley was published in the Sheaf expressing some concerns over the proposed changes to her office.
The USSU had received legal advice that, since Horsley did not have the proper credentials, she could not technically advocate for clients.
Horsley had not received permission from the USSU to speak to the Sheaf; when she informed Steeves and USSU marketing and services manager Jason Ventnor, Ventnor told her not to do so again.
Then, after the article with her interview was published, she was fired. This was viewed by many as a direct result of Horsley’s critical comments about the changes to the victim advocate office, though the USSU would not discuss this.
In response to this and other issues such as Nicole Kenney’s resignation, one of the representatives for the College of Arts and Sciences on the University Students’ Council, Sheila Laroque, resigned her post.
The USSU subsequently changed the title of the position to the Student Crisis Support Service.
The 2009-10 USSU vice-president external affairs, Chris Stoicheff, successfully oversaw the formation of a provincial lobby group over the summer.
The Saskatchewan Students’ Coalition is the first group of its kind in Saskatchewan but was preceded nationally by a similar group in Nova Scotia. Originally consisting of the USSU, the University of Regina Students’ Union and the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology Students’ Association, Stoicheff has been working to get the First Nations University of Canada and the Gabriel Dumont Institute involved in the coalition.
From updated action plans to vaccine clinics to absentee forms, H1N1 was an omnipresent force in fall 2009.
University officials were quick to roll out an updated plan for the containment of the H1N1 pandemic, and news spread quickly when it was reported that some students in the Voyageur Place residence had confirmed cases of the virus. But as newsworthy as the disease was, it was remarkably tame and few serious cases arose.
The new method for students to miss class in case of illness, wherein they brought in a form and were not required to have anything signed by a doctor, may have helped lazy students more than sick ones, though that remains to be proven.
In late November, Saskatoon-Humboldt Member of Parliament Brad Trost circulated a petition expressing his opinion that the Canadian government should withhold funding from the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, which works around the world to promote safe sexual practices and to prevent sex-related crimes.
Trost’s complaint is rooted in the fact that the IPPF performs abortions on women who ask for them, and will mention abortions when counseling pregnant women on their options.
USSU VP Chris Stoicheff took issue with this and the USSU circulated their own petition, which two MPs agreed to read in Parliament. Their petition claims that because of the IPPF’s important work in the developing world, Canada should not cut its funding for the organization.
After an article on the subject was published on the Sheaf’s website, it was inundated by anti-abortion activists comparing the IPPF’s founder, Margaret Sanger, to Hitler and bemoaning Canada’s “culture of death” that has allegedly led to three million abortions in the last 30 years. The article quickly became the most-commented one on thesheaf.com, with the vast majority of the commentors coming out against the USSU. Comments on the article are now closed.
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photo: Flickr / Jordon Cooper
photo used under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license
