ver The Paae 4 Stand Back Continued from Page 3 and that the debate shouldn't have taken place. | disagree and would argue that the sci- entific method itself is a “phi- losophy” and faces problems of its own. Things behave considerably differently under empirical conditions and nat- ural settings. Chaos theory shows that under the strain of all the factors acting on any given “thing” our empirical models breakdown. Then there are the problems of the bias of the investigator. Psychology shows that the prover proves- what the thinker thinks. In other words, if you believe in Creationism, your mind will look for stimuli that affirm this view while disregarding, for- getting and construing stimuli to the contrary. Perhaps it is in the way we frame this problem and others like it, that we hamper our own thinking. Being a neophilic agnostic, Ws PRIZES TO BE WON! MORE INFO: Drop by Student Services reception or call 960-5870 - for more infomation. | prefer to scrap either/or, true/false, Aristotelian logic with these problems and turn ~ to models like that given my mathematician Anatole Rapoport. His four sided logic says that things are either “true, false, indetermi- nate (as of this time), and/or meaningless (forever indeter- minate, because no experi- ence can either prove or refute them.) Perhaps in widening our thinking we can come closer to a “solution” to this dilemma. | end with the words of the wise man Sri Syndasti, “All systems are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and mean- ingless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.” Repeat daily for illumination. Sponsored by: Opinion March 4, 2002 Awaken the sleeping student: An Opinion Column By Joe Bowser My main beef is with the Northern Undergraduate Student Society (NUGSS), and the fact that they blatant- ly refuse to take a stance on any issue, even one so com- pletely obvious such as the outrage of first year grants being cut, which offer debt relief to students already tak- ing out huge student loans anyway. They refused to endorse a protest done by the Prince George Public Interest Group protesting the cuts, simply because it was a “political” matter, even though these cuts hurt students who do work hard at many jobs provided by programs such as Student Summer Works and Work Study. Of course, this is because of the belief that NUGSS must act on the behalf of ALL students. However, | have UNBC FACULTY/STUDENT LOONIE BREAKFAST UNBC Counselling Center Where: Upstairs Cafeteria When: Thurs March 7th 2002 Time: 8:00- 10:00 A.M. never read anything in the NUGSS constitution that stat- ed that it must be the views of all the approximately 3000 students that go to UNBC, one of which up to recently was the Minister of Advanced Education, Shirley Bond. | have no idea of any Union, Society or Student Organization other than NUGSS that operates on this principle. First of all, what is NUGSS? Some people claim that they are a student gov- ernment that is recognized by the University as based on their policy. Others claim that it is a student union. |, how- ever, would like to suggest that it neither of these things and that it is no more viable than the Happy Fun Bicycle Society that is used on the Schedule B forms. They only follow.their constitution by not taking action, and _ not expressing any viewpoint or taking any stance on any issue that someone might have exception with. We can tackle the claim that it is a student govern- ment based on the University policy that states the guide- lines and principles govern- ing recognition of student governments at the University of Northern British Columbia. We can then dis- sect this document very clearly. The first thing that we can examine is the Northern Undergraduate Student Societies own Constitution where they state that they are supposed to represent the views of all students. This is very ambiguous, since by not doing anything at all you are avoiding making a decision. A student society as a stu- dent government can always claim that they represent someone and have a board that was elected on a com- mon platform with clear and concise goals, or they could rush to referendum every time they wish to know what the students want for every issue. Other than the immense amusement it would bring the bitter and jaded members of the student body like myself to see NUGSS operate in this extremely inefficient way, | propose that the student soci- ety actually run correctly with proper slates or more formal- ly, political parties running. This way it is clear that the student's views will be expressed since they will be roughly be the views of the students that they often claim they represent. Besides that, if we have an extreme dislike of the person, we can always force them to resign like what was done to many directors in the long, illustrious history of the Student Society. It’s not like were dealing with the Provincial Government, who won't have recall until October of this year. In addition, perhaps a slate or a political party can gener- ate interest into NUGSS again. In fact, it seemed that last year when the previous slate ran, there was indeed great interest in the society. To be honest, | don’t feel that the people elected were the best choice when they were elected, and | can honestly say that | have not voted for any of them. The thing that angers me about this is that | wish | could have voted for the slate that ran last year, since they seemed to have brought a lot of new energy and a lot of new ideas into a dying, stagnant mess of a Student Society, which likes to say they are a Union but forgets the meaning of the word solidarity, and a Student Government that forgets the meaning of representation. Of course, it takes 4 years to finally realize what hap- pens to be done. It may be too late for me to act, but hopefully someone will read this, gather a list of things that they would like to see accomplished, gather people together and take on the cur- rent powers that be in our own Student Society. That’s all you really need to change the system, since it’s still only the people in NUGSS that are at fault, not the society itself, and if you are too afraid to take on them, how do you expect to stop larger foes.