Over the Edge ©

September 30 ,2009

News 3

Alice Cooper Said It, Alisha Choumiline Ensures It

ANDREW BAILEY

EDITOR IN CHIEF/ SPORTS EDITOR

Several years ago I took an introductory
Women Studies course. I handed in all
the assignments necessary, including a
dress that I had made as well as a pro-
file of a local woman who had over-
come much adversity in her life. The
local woman was a friend of mine and
the questions that were to be answered
to fulfill the course requirement were
extremely personal so many awkward
moments were lead to. Needless to say
by the end of the semester I was wish-
ing for a time machine so I could go
back and choose a different class and
avoid the dress-making and personal
prying that I had endured. But the time
machine had not been invented yet so
I took solace in the fact that the course
was over and I had completed all the
requirements.

I was vacationing in Kauai, as I am
prone to do during my down time,
when I looked up my marks at an in-
ternet station. A big fat F stared me in
the face for a while before I realized
the connotations. The instructor had
failed me. Now, obviously this was
not the first time I had ever seen an
F on my transcript but this one didn’t
make any sense. I had completed all
the course requirements, done well on
all the quizzes/tests and worked ex-
tremely hard throughout the semester
to complete that course. I could have
been emotional about it, but it was
sunny outside and the waves were ex-

quisite so it was a situation in which
the application of hakuna matata was
unavoidable.

Skip forward a few years, add about a
foot and a half to my dreadlocks and
pass the misery that was the Red Sox
cheating their way to two World Series
Championships, and come to the pres-
ent day. I’m writing my LSAT tomor-
row getting everything prepared for
my law school applications, nothing
to worry about, my grades are strong
and my transcript reflects my awe-
someness, but there’s an F on there
which shouldn’t exist. Apparently law
schools tend to look at your G.P.A.
pretty closely and F’s do not exactly
raise that magic number, and I am not
in Kauai, I am outside the University
of Victoria where the weather is too
inadequate to stimulate hakuna matata
nostalgia.

Why didn’t I fight that mark all those
years ago? Perhaps, I didn’t know how
to. Where would I have gone? Who
would I have spoken to? I did email the
professor directly after receiving the
grade but never heard back. If only I
had known of some sort of mediator at
UNBC, a person, independent from the
UNBC faculty, who would make sure
that all students were treated fairly, an
ombudsperson if you will.

That’s the lead, now for those of you
who have brought your books please
turn to page 14 in your complimentary
NUGSS planners and follow along;
those of you who haven’t picked up a
planner yet, just try to keep up as best
you can.

Alisha Choumiline is the person I
should have spoken to all those years
ago. She is UNBC’s official Ombuds-
person, hired by the good people at
NUGSS. She is super friendly, and
extremely approachable, and it’s her

job to make sure that you, as a student,
are treated fairly. And she’s not just
there for you if your final grade turns
out to be terrible either, she’s available
all throughout the term in a variety of
ways as she explains: “students come
to me for a lot of different things, any
issues they have within the school. If
they don’t know if they can deal with
it or do anything with it they’ll come
to me and ask. Like if they fail a test
and think that it was really unfair that
the failed the test, for example if they
failed the test because the instructor
thinks they copied off someone or
someone copied off them. I go and in-
vestigate. I talk to the instructor, find
out the situation, and make sure there
was fair treatment.”

Outside of academics, Alisha is also
in place to ensure that all students feel
comfortable in the classroom, explain-
ing: “if students feel they’ ve been mis-
treated by an instructor, if they feel
their instructor is singling them out in
the classroom and more or less pick-
ing on them they’ll come to me and
ask what I can do about it. Students
sometimes just ask me to go with them
if they have to talk to an instructor, a
chair, the Dean, they’Il ask me to come
along.”

“I’m just a mediator; I make sure there
is fair treatment. I make sure that the
student understands what’s going on.
If there’s paperwork involved I’ll read
the paperwork talk to the student, make
sure they understand what the paper-
work is about just so everyone has a
good understanding.”

Alisha, who has a Psychology degree
from the University of New Bruns-
wick and a Diploma in Criminology
and Northern Justice from Yukon Col-
lege, is currently an Environmental
Planning student here at UNBC. When
asked how performing her duty as Om-
budsperson while keeping up with her

schoolwork is possible she responds:
“this is the type of job you can actually
take home and sit down and do on your
computer; studying the policies and
regulations. So you can kind of do it
between your courses and studying. I
don’t have much free time but I’m ok
with that. Summers are usually when
I have my fun during the year. I mean
what’s 8 months of the year to work
hard and get things done?”

Working hard and getting things done
seems to be what Alisha considers her
pastime as she spends her evenings re-
searching and getting information, she
states “I don’t know everything, so I
have to do research myself and meet
with people to get the information that
I need to be able to better help anyone
on campus, anyone that comes to see
me.

And that makes it easier for anyone to
come to me and ask me questions be-
cause I know who to go see for certain
questions, or who to contact, or how to
get the information that’s needed be-
cause I’ve done the research.”

Anybody who considers working
through three quarters of a year and
only relaxing for one quarter is the
kind of nuts that is necessary to get re-
sults in this type of field, which makes
Alisha an extremely effective Om-
budsperson. When asked the ever im-
possible question of whether she feels
her presence is beneficial at UNBC
Alisha responds:

“T believe it is very beneficial, I find
instructors, chairs, Deans anyone
within the school, even students, act
differently if they have a mediator, an
advocate, in a meeting sitting down
with them. Things are done a little dif-
ferently, more professionally even, and
that’s very beneficial for any type of
situation.”

Those interested in talking to Alisha
can find her in the NUGSS office where
she now has an office all of her own,

a definite improvement from the past
as she explains, “when I started here
I didn’t have my own office so I was
in the library for office hours which
didn’t work so well. I didn’t have as
many students stopping by. I found a
lot of students didn’t know that I was
even on campus. So it was a service
that I found a lot of people didn’t know
about before, but now that I have my
own office it seems to be getting out
there quite a bit.”

We’re down to the last 100 meters so
let’s gear down here and change the
pace. Aside from ensuring fairness
and protecting the rights of UNBC
students, Alisha is also in charge of
UNBC’s food bank and Emergency Fi-
nancial Aid. We’ll start with the latter.

The Emergency Financial Aid is for
UNBC students who have been de-
clined a loan by the UNBC Financial
Aid department. Alisha explains that
this aid is “not for tuition, or books,
it’s strictly for students who find them-
selves in an emergency and don’t
have enough money for rent or food
or anything that has to do with living
expenses. It’s only a small amount but
sometimes it really helps people out.”

This aid comes in the form of a bursary
and therefore it is not to be paid back.
But as this is the case, not everybody
qualifies as Alisha states: “we have so
much [money] put aside every year
and we have guidelines to follow. So if
they have dependants, if they’re single,
if they live with their parents, that kind
of stuff we look at and then I decide
how much the amount they receive
should be.”

Alisha also tends to the Food Bank
which, she explains, is “open to any-
one and everyone. Undergraduate and
Graduate students come and use it.
We don’t take names. We do keep it
documented though, how many times

The Politics of Fear

SHELBY PETERSEN
NEWS EDITOR

In today’s fast paced world, where
news of an event can spread across the
globe in a matter of hours, it doesn’t
take much for the top headlines to fade
into the recesses of our minds, forgot-
ten forever. There are some news stor-
ies, however, which seem to permeate
the upper echelons of popular news
culture and pepper the daily headlines
with their prominence.

The HINI1 virus (colloquially know
as Swine Flu) is just such an event.
Globally, more people die each year
of the common flu than are expected to

die of Swine Flu. Moreover, the deaths
accredited to the HIN1 virus seem to
speak loader to the government’s in-
ability to adequately provide proper
health care facilities for Canada’s min-
ority populations (such as the Aborig-
inal Community).

We are far better prepared, in this cen-
tury, to deal with a health care crisis
than ever before. The technology and
quality of healthcare experts in the
world today are far better than they
have ever been, making any compari-
sons to previous pandemics hard to
corroborate. Furthermore, there are
institutional procedures in place for
dealing with and containing epidem-
ics such as Swine Flu which were not
before.

Even UNBC has a four level Pandemic
Plan (we are currently at level one)
detailing exactly what will be done
should individuals around the school
develop any flu like symptoms. More-
over, the influenza virus seems to do
be most dangerous amongst malnour-
ished, closely populated communities
making it a bigger problem for the

world’s lest developed countries.

That being said, is the Swine Flu pan- |

demic more a pandemic of fear than |

anything else? Governments around
the world are making plans and prepar-

ing for, what seems like, the coming |

apocalypse when the world is brim-
ming with global injustice and strife.
Wouldn’t these government efforts be
better spent on ending the genocide
in Darfur, or ensuring the people of
Afghanistan and Iran have fraudu-
lent-free elections? Shouldn’t there be
more concer for the coming destruc-
tion of the Maldives and her people as
ocean levels continue to rise? Or can
the people of the Western world only
expend money for aid and prevention
when it is their fate in the balance?

The fear of H1N1 is just another fad,
and it too, will come to pass just as
SARS and countless other plagues
have. But, for now, H1N1 will prove
as a welcome distraction from our
world and its many problems. After
all, viruses have vaccines and geno-
cides do not. And what it comes down
to, is that it is a lot easier to worry
about problems with foreseeable solu-

en

PHOTO BY REZA AKBARI