October 7 2002

EDITORIALS / LETTERS

Over The Edge Page §

Not ‘Un-American, ‘Anti-American’

| want to express my agree-
ment with Stephanie Wilson in
her editorial in the 23
September issue of Over the
Edge. | agree as far as she
went, but she is too timid.

Stephanie wrote that she is
sick of the rhetoric that has
been swirling for over a year
around the “events of 9/11” |
too, was proud to hear my
Prime Minister stand up and
say that the men who pulled
the stunt that saw the fall of the
World Trade Center towers
may have had a motivation
that went beyond suicidal and
homicidal madness. For any-
one who has been to a poor
Third World country it is no
news that our obscene wealth
and power, and the way we
throw them around in the faces
of the poor, spawns resent-
ment. .

For the majority of people of
people on this planet, daily life
is a constant, difficult, danger-
ous struggle to keep feeding,
clothing and sheltering a fami-
ly on less than we pay for a

couple of cups of coffee. Most .

By Elliot Chalmers

Like the mighty sturgeon,
our student society roams the
waters of Canadian education,
thriving despite its total lack of
backbone or any sound skele-
tal structure what so ever.

| don’t claim to be any sort of
NUGSS (Northern
Undergraduate Student
Society) aficionado, but it does
occur to me that there’s some-
thing fundamentally wrong
with the management of ‘our’
society and its resources. Why
do we have NUGSS? Do our
elected officials even know
‘why?

| think most members just
want to know what NUGSS is
doing for them.

First of all, what is it provid-
ing in the way of services?
Where do our student fees go?
Faxing, that doesn’t cost
$200,000 a year, | could be
wrong, | didn’t check that one.
Lockers? NUGSS makes
money off lockers. CFUR and
OTE (Over the Edge) com-
bined take a massive 6.5%*

of their people are exposed to
radio and television. From this
media they know that the
Western officials of the
International Monetary Fund
are forcing their governments
to cut meager services and
sell public to repay debts often
run up by corrupt dictators or
unrepresentative administra-
tions. They see soap operas
and movies that feature fami-
lies living in huge houses, dri-
ving luxury vehicles and
apparently doing nothing to
earn their bread. They are sup-
posed to empathize with the
awful troubles of these rich
people as the cope with nar-
cotics, broken marriages and
such. Put yourself in their
place for a moment and see if
you might not want to bring
these rich people down a
notch.

Add to this the resentment
that foreign religious funda-
mentalists feel when they see
the arrogant West flaunting the
rules and standards that they
see as God-given, and you
have a potent broth in the Petri

dish that is calculated to breed
angry people, ready to pick up
the gun or bomb to express
their anger.

The fact that George Bush
and his cronies are unwilling or
unable to see that their actions
and arrogance germinate the
seeds of terrorism is frighten-
ing. It guarantees that terror-
ists will continue to be hatched
and tiat future terrorist actions
will his Western symbols and
assets.

On 20 September George
Bush submitted his “National
Security Strategy’ to
Congress. In this document he
declared America’s imperial’
ambitions. He said that the
U.S. “has no intention of allow-
ing any foreign power to catch
up with the huge (military) lead
the United Stated has opened
since the fall of the Soviet
Union.” The U.S. will take posi-
tive steps to thwart any state
that attempts to catch up with
this power.

The United States has now
appointed itself as the worlds
policeman, not only enforcing

the rules, but writing them.
They have already shown that
they will not abide by any rules
made collectively by other
countries, even if the U.S. was
a party to making those rules.
They will not participate in the
International Criminal Court.
They will not abide by any
treaties limiting nuclear, chem-
ical or biological weapons as
they apply to the United
States. Rules are for others.
The United States alone has
the right to develop, produce
and use “weapons of mass
destruction”. They refuse to
allow others who are not firmly
in the American pocket to pos-
sess such weapons, as is
vividly illustrated by the
American willingness to kill
hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis who have the audacity
to attempt to produce “WMDs”.
Iraq is surrounded by hostile
neighbors against which they
have a legitimate reason to
wish to defend themselves.
But Bush sees a clear and pre-
sent danger to American ambi-
tions in the Middle East from

A Letter to NUGSS

chunk out of NUGSS'’ total rev-
enues. That's got to hurt. While
the wages, benefits and hono-
rariums of Society employees
take up almost less than 34%.
But what of actual accomplish-
ments? A building maybe.

I'm beginning to think that it
should be called the Northern
Undergraduate Student
Building Society. That seems
to be where all the money an
attention are going. Is there
another mandate? Does
NUGSS have any other pur-
pose? Working at its present
capacity, why on earth would
the Student Society need its
own building? | guess it would
provide a good place to draft
up plans for another building.
To what ends? It’s like a
nuclear power plant that only
generates enough electricity to
turn on the lights in the control
room. What’s the point?
Another goal is to promote
NUGSS to students. This is
another troubling redundancy.

CFUR, OTE and PGPIRG
each have a clear purpose, a

clear direction. Both CFUR
and OTE belong to larger,
nation organizations despite
their ‘lack of northern. pres-
ences’. They have significantly
smaller budgets, and they
accomplish significantly more.
They don’t exist merely to per-
petuate themselves. So there’s
no lack of role models.

Secondly, what kind of rep-
resentation are we getting?
Where do our votes go?
NUGSS seems to be unable to
understand the idea of democ-
ratic representation.

On several occasions, I’ve
heard NUGSS to be non-parti-
san. Of course this makes per-
fect sense, since students, like
many other  non-sentient
beings, have no desire to be
seen as politically active. But
it's important to not forget that
ignorance,.apathy and inverte-
bratism are not the same as
non-partisanism. What kind of
a fire needs to be lit under this
organization to get it to roll
over?

Officials have pawned off

their inactions on not wanting
to cater to ‘Special interest’
groups. NUGSS’ definition of
‘Special interest’ would seem
to entail any person or group
not sharing their narrow mind-
ed, if not bizarre goals. Being a
member of a faculty makes me
a slave of special interest,
apparently. As does playing
sports, or having hobbies. |
don’t suppose being a NUGSS
elected official would make me
part of a special interest group.
A little Orwellian, don’t you
think.

Just recently I’ve witnessed
NUGSS officials using threats
and various other intimidation
tactics to silence its critics.
This is an obscene violation of
every principle NUGSS should
be standing for. It’s beyond dis-
gusting. | feel ashamed to be a
student under this NUGSS
regime.

Don’t get me wrong. |
strongly believe that a student
society is, or at least should
be, an integral part of an insti-
tution of higher learning. It’s

Iraq so its government has to
be destroyed.

For this and other reasons,
my feelings go beyond being
“un-American”. | am not afraid
to say that | am now “anti-
American”. This does not
mean that | hate Americans. |
used to be one and | spent
over three year as a soldier in
their army. That does not pre-
vent me from detesting their
government.

The country that was sup-
posedly founded on_ high
ideals was actually built on
foundations of genocide of its
native population and slavery
of Africans. They have been
hypocrites ever since. They are
the greatest danger to
Canada’s sovereignty and the
very existence of Canada as a
country is in jeopardy.

If you agree with this, you
will like Uncle Don Reads the
Comics on CFUR_ every
Wednesday at 11:30 AM. | am
Uncle Don.

Jim Loughery,
angry student.

because of this that | feel that
something must be done. If
NUGSS is to represent us, it
can’t stand idly by while stu-
dent need a voice.

Take a stand, do something,
show me, show all of us that
you’re worth it. Show us why
you’re here. And here’s a little
hint, NUGSS isn’t just here to
make sure that NUGSS is still
here tomorrow. NUGSS is
here to provide students with
representation and services, it
has done neither. NUGSS
feeds off of you.

This is why | am calling for
the immediate resignation of
all NUGSS elected official.
Why not hold NUGSS
accountable for its inaction?
Why not demand something of
the people who represent us.

*all numbers valid as of the
last available Financial
Statements