Your Other Half

I feel able to write something, but unlike with my previous entries, I have no set course as I type this out. Only a vague notion, really.

I went for a walk outside tonight. The weather is great right now and the scent of the air by the lakeside brought back a lot of good memories of times where I was amidst friends, near a fire, and free to ponder aloud. I think this might be a bit like that.

One thought drifted through my head as I was walking: 'There isn't enough victory in my life.' It was an odd sort of "statement" to hear yourself think before you immediately know what it all means. People love victories, it's true (even if that is a line from Gladiator). Your sports team should win, your political party get elected, your God triumph over evil, your child get first prize at the science fair. Your love endure all trials. People love victories, yes. I don't think I am an exception.

My life isn't all failure, please don't misunderstand. That's not what I'm getting at. I have plenty of good, for which I am all manner of grateful. But there are places where I want to win... and I want to win in all the places I sincerely feel I am getting shit-kicked in.

Now this is where it's probably evident how much I contribute to my own complex of defeat. When do I feel like I'm being shit-kicked? Pretty much every time I watch/read a news related piece of media (even fake news, for two minutes), everytime someone close to me is in pain or trouble, and yes, even pretty much every time I have a conversation with... well almost anybody. Sounds extreme, doesn't it?

Why is it like this, you ask? Why do I look at things like this? It's because of what constitutes a victory for me.

My victories are your victories. People's victories. People's joy. People do not share their joy enough with others. When times get us down we want comfort, and we're concerned with just how we'll fare if we go without it. So, we share our grief with others so that we can continue on and come to joy once more. But, when we come to joy, we do not usually have this same compulsion to share. We think maybe other people don't want to hear about how happy we are. Maybe they'll say, "So what?" Maybe they won't understand our joy, because the same kinds of things don't make them happy. Or maybe when we're happy, we're just content, or even just selfish enough to feel we can 'do this' (joy) on our own.

But I beseech you, any and all of you: For the love of all things that make life worth living, share your joy. Don't just tell people you're happy. Write poems. Paint fucking murals. Do cartwheels, give hugs. Beam. Just do it sincerely and commensurately with your joy, and make no apologies. There is nothing I want more in life than to share life with you, as best I can. I want to share your grief, but please, put the same kind of urgency, the same effort into 'purging' your happiness outwards, because I need your victories. I need your wild, passionate, exhilirating victories. To me, they are nearly as vital as breath.

I have ever been the kind of person to love others amidst their grief and vulnerability. I take pride in this, and it will never change. But there is another half of you that I wish to love just as actively. Temper it not.

"As One Who Serves" Themselves

Today there was a forum held in the Administration/Humanities Building at the University of Regina to explain some recent administrative decisions to the student body. The university administration unilaterally axed roughly 3500 credit hours from the courses offered at two of the federated colleges, Luther College and Campion College, and a number of sessional (contracted) lecturers were let go. The reason for these measures, stated by the university, is that because the enrollment in the federated colleges has unexpectedly and rapidly increased in the last year, the university needs to balance the credit hours back out to help alleviate university debt.

That's the official statement. Now for the admittedly oversimplified, yet pretty damn accurate version as far as I can tell:

First - The university, over the last few years, engages in a variety of construction projects: Two new residence buildings, a kinesiology building, a new lab building attachment, and now there's talk of building a hockey rink/multiplex. In this process they fail to adequately plan out such things like a maintenance budget for the new residences, which is around $1 million a year. The 'self-supporting infrastructure' (paying for itself and more) of the kinesiology building and the new residences obviously isn't working out as efficiently as hoped, or they wouldn't need to resort to these kinds of measures. Long story short - the university dug itself a financial hole.

Second - The normal process that the colleges' and the university faculties collaborate on to plan out class scheduling is circumvented by members of the university administration (note: not faculty or other academic positions) and class restrictions are imposed with no significant consideration of alternative measures.

What's the result here, for students? A lot of upper level classes had to be cancelled. These were classes that were being offered by Campion and Luther so that students could finish their degrees. The university worked out that these courses would be offered by Campion and Luther because main campus could not afford to offer these vital courses to the relatively small class sizes that needed them. A lot of lower level classes were cancelled, too, or amalgamated together, increasing class sizes. For anyone who might not know, larger class sizes = more difficulty for a professor to give quality instruction to all students. Also, a lot of quality sessional profs have been let go. A sessional professor is evaluated based on their performance from term to term. As a result, they typically work very hard and give great courses, because they need that kind of reputation to keep working, and possibly move towards gaining tenure at an institution. Overall picture: Quality of education suffers, while students pay the same amount of tuition, which is now forced to go to main campus, which from what it looks like, sinks a good portion of its budget into barely, if not unsustainable construction efforts.

Personally, I am a Luther student. I switched over from being enrolled at main campus because the way the Luther faculty treated me as a student was noticeably superior to the U of R. I got more personal, quality advising on my academic path, I was made more aware of scholarships and bursaries, and Luther profs have been much more approachable and reachable and helpful on the whole of my experience. As someone pointed out during the discussion forum, this is why Luther and Campion have increased enrollment.

As for the forum, I was impressed with how it ran as a whole. Representatives from both colleges and the university were given a few minutes at the beginning to explain their case, and then a question period was opened to the floor. The representatives from the colleges (the presidents from each) outlined a story that was very much in line with all the 'rumours' I had heard in the previous months via the Religious Studies Students' Association (where some of our members attended faculty meetings). The U of R representative (vice president, on account of the president being in Ottawa to lobby for Federal funding for post-secondary education) contradicted none of these explanations, but very often failed to be specific with the details and reasoning behind the actions being taken. I was impressed with the student body - they would not settle for flimsy, rhetoric-filled responses that provided no real useful information. The U of R Vice President had to stand up and return to the podium several times to 're-answer' a question that was already addressed (very poorly). This is the kind of public, and journalistic integrity that the world needs, and it was heartening to see it happen in front of my eyes.

The 2006/2007 academic year will be a bit of a sad one, as this financial fiasco isn't likely to change by then. More discussion is scheduled for upcoming budgets and financial strategies, and hopefully now that this is out in the public view (where it decidedly wasn't before, deliberately) maybe a more intelligent, creative and fair solution can by plotted out. I really hope the university can do this... the school motto is "As One Who Serves", not "As One Who Serves Themselves and Their Own Immediate Interests". This should be lived up to at all costs.