Re: Campus voting sites axed, Jan. 16
It is appalling that university students will be unable to exercise their democratic and legal right to vote at a registered polling station…oh, wait.
There are a number of legal polling stations around campus, likely within a block or two of all student residences, and certainly within a ten-minute walk of campus. Given that all you need to vote is your driver’s license and signature, and you can’t walk for more than 10 minutes without seeing a poster advertising the Elections Canada website, how much more bending over backwards is necessary to get university students to vote?
Presumably there have been elections held during a school term before, and the number of polling stations set up is a reasonable reflection of the number of students who actually vote. If your right to vote depends on your being aware and interested enough to take twenty minutes out of your day next Monday, then that is fine with me.
Caroline D’Angelo
[For students whose permanent address is outside their current riding, alternate documentation confirming residency in that riding is required. -Ed.]
• I find it commendable that our SAC has taken the time to try and improve the voting opportunities for the students on campus. However, the efforts seem to be directed only at the students who live in the Trinity-Spadina riding. Students who live in residence at Victoria and St. Michael’s Colleges vote in the Toronto Centre riding, and to my knowledge attempts to open special voting stations in that riding were not initiated.
Hopefully SAC can work with Elections Canada to develop a plan for the next election in which students in all affected ridings can have better access to polling stations.
In the future, SAC should direct any commentary regarding issues like this to the bodies that are responsible. The decision to pull polling stations is the direct responsibility of Elections Canada, and not of any of the candidates. SAC should at least attempt to promote itself as being impartial, and sending out press releases with not-so-subtle attacks on specific candidates would seem to undermine that impartiality.
Kristen Munro
Victoria College student
Re: Turning back on Skule,
Jan. 10
Building bridges to ENG girls
This article highlighted a concern that the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering takes very seriously: recent indications of declining undergraduate enrolment of young women into engineering.
However, the story does not place this issue in sufficient context. Among the 15 Ontario undergraduate engineering programs, our faculty currently has the highest average percentage of female enrollment over four years of study, at 22.8 percent. This figure rose from 0.35 per cent in 1960 to an all-time high intake of 29 per cent in 1998.
Further, in terms of female graduate enrollment in our faculty, the trend is upward, at 25.4 per cent of our total graduate enrollment. The growth in female Ph.D. enrollment has been particularly strong over roughly the time period that female undergraduate enrollment has declined somewhat.
We must develop new means of attracting young women to the diverse, socially meaningful and often lucrative paths that a career in engineering can offer them. We at the faculty welcome the input of students and colleagues in engineering and at U of T broadly on this issue.
Tas Venetsanopoulos
Dean, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, U of T
Reader response criticism
Re: The rock or the hard labour, Jan. 10
I normally deride your paper as one written for its writers, so when you put together an issue that utilizes rather than ignores your position as U of T’s largest student newspaper, it’s only fair that I congratulate you on your fine work on the Jan. 10 issue.
From your cover stories on student candidate(s) to the intramural sports coverage, you produced an excellent issue that should typify the type and range of your coverage for all issues. I would like to send my compliments to two of your writers who consistently produce solid, informative work: Allison Martell and Matt Ventresca.
My usual beef with The Varsity rests in its continued failure to localize issues to the U of T student body. Mr. Borowiec obviously knows and cares a great deal about the plight of unskilled labourers in developing countries (as all of us probably should), but his writings are ultimately useless without explicitly bringing the story back to U of T and its students.
Keith Dell’Aquila
Anthem AWOL
I was shocked by the lack of the “O Canada” at the beginning of the recent Hart House all-candidates forum. Our national anthem is a thing of beauty and of pride, something that we sing before any event held for the betterment of Canadians-be it a political event or a hockey game. I was outraged that the moderator and organizers were completely oblivious and that Olivia Chow, the first candidate to speak, also did not notice that there had been no anthem. It made me seriously wonder how amateurish she really is as a candidate, or if her party, the NDP, take demonstrations of our national pride seriously.
Stephen Mancer
Quo Vadis?
Many Canadians, including Prime Minister Paul Martin, have tried to renounce absolute truth in the mistaken belief that there exists in Canada a separation of church and state. However, there is no mention in Canadian law of any such separation. On the contrary, Canadian law has from its formation been compatible with Judeo-Christian principles.
Canadians can no longer remain indifferent to a Liberal government that bases its morality and value judgments on personal whims. Voters will have an opportunity to voice their disapproval in the upcoming election and put an end to liberal tyranny in Canada. May they choose wisely!
Paul Kokoski
