More than 100 years after the first Women’s Day demonstrations were called by the Socialist Party of America, Mount Allison hosted a week of events for International Women’s Day. Though the name and the specifics of the day have changed, women’s issues remain at the core of the conversation.

National Women’s Day was observed for the first time in the United States in 1909. It reached the international stage in 1911, through a strong push by European social democratic movements and political parties. Today, it aims to facilitate a discussion surrounding the facts that, while much progress has been done since the dawn of IWD, women are still facing unequal pay compared to men and are still underrepresented in the realms of business and politics. Globally, the health and education of women remain worse than that of men and violence against women remains at epidemic levels. It is celebrated as a national holiday in several countries across the world.

“Although physically [women] are the majority group on campus, I still feel like our voices aren’t heard as loudly and taken as seriously as we would like them to be,” said Katharyn Stevenson, the president of the Women’s and Gender Studies Society. “There needs to be a better sense of community and solidarity among female students here in order to successfully tackle and raise awareness about the issues that we face as the female student body.”

A panel on effective allyship kicked off the week of events on March 2. A talk on feminism, disability and communities was held on March 4. The Women in Leadership Conference, held on March 6 and 7, closed the week-long celebrations. International Women’s Day was officially recognized a day later. A talk about survivors of sexual assault in conflict zones, meant to be held during the week, was tentatively rescheduled for March 19.

“One of the things that I have been happy to see with the variety of events that we’ve kind of placed under the broad umbrella of International Women’s Day this year is that it’s bringing together a variety of different groups that are interested in issues of race and racism on campus, aboriginal students on campus, sexism, homophobia, disability,” said Leslie Kern, director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program.

“The broadly transformative agenda has to involve thinking about all sorts of groups coming together, acknowledging our differences, but also thinking about the ways in which we can’t just seek to transform the university to be more friendly to women.”

Kern was one of the women whom participants had an opportunity to converse with during a speed networking activity, held as a part of the Women in Leadership Conference. Other Mt. A participants included sociology professor Erin Steuter, Director of Alumni Relations Carolle de Ste-Croix, and the government of New Brunswick’s legislative co-ordinator, Melissa O’Rourke, among others. O’Rourke was MASU president in 2013-2014.

“[Women’s issues] are something that we should be thinking about every day, but it’s nice that there is a week dedicated to everybody coming together, putting their heads together and seeing what we can do to move forward,” said Eilish Elliott, co-coordinator of the Women in Leadership Conference.

Elliott and Heather Webster,  this year’s MASU president, initiated and organized the conference, which was the week’s largest event.

Held in Wallace McCain Student Centre, the conference included workshops on self-promotion and networking, engaging audiences and volunteer leadership, a presentation, a panel discussion and a keynote address by Nancy MacKay, director of stakeholder and community relations at CN.

“[The conference] was really motivated by me noticing a lack of women in student politics at Mount Allison, but also across the country,” said Webster. “We need to be encouraging women to take on leadership roles in residence, in clubs and societies and to just serve as leaders in the community.”

During her talk, MacKay focused on the under-representation and under-valuation of women in business, political and community circles. MacKay has had a 40-year career, holding various positions in both the public and private sectors.

“Many women have entered senior leadership roles, but the number of them that have been appointed to the highest position is still relatively small and they are not the ones providing the leadership of Canadian universities,” said provost and vice-president academic and research, Karen Grant.

“[Universities] are still very gendered organizations that have a long history that goes back to monastic times and the history of that remains. It may not be as overt as it was in previous times, but it’s still there,” said Grant.

Not all onlookers thought this focus had universal appeal.

“A lot of the rhetoric was about you trying harder and you pulling yourself up by the bootstraps,” said Sharoni Mitra, a fourth-year international relations student in attendance at the keynote. “[It] applies to some students at this school. I think it is aimed at traditional leadership roles and it ignores a lot of the really great leadership that is done at this school by women.”

Events at MacKay’s keynote also raised the concerns of students.

“I felt as though she did not really give any sort of direction concerning how to be as successful as she is and simply talked about her accomplishments,” said Maureen Adegbidi, a second-year international relations student who participated in the conference. “I was also very  disappointed when she did not attempt to refute a comment made by an audience member about women not doing enough to cement their place in leadership roles.”

Brittany Jakubiec, a master’s student at the University of Prince Edward Island, presented her thesis on women in leadership in the university setting and the barriers and support systems experienced by women, along with the impact of gender on leadership during the conference. According to her findings, gender inequality remains salient in academia.

Adegbidi said Jakubiec’s presentation was one of the most interesting parts of the conference, but criticized the conference as a whole, citing a lack of intersectionality.

“I definitely think this conference existing is a good thing, but it also needs more work if it wants to genuinely impact students,” said Adegbidi.

The conference held its own panel discussion, which provided an opportunity for participants to hear from the experiences of Mt. A alumni Sandy MacIver, Ainsley Chapman and Jill Rafuse, who provided some insights into their own paths in becoming leaders. Sarah Leblanc moderated the panel. The discussion centered on the current lack of women in leadership roles and the things that can be done to encourage more women to take on those roles.

While praising the organizers for taking on this initiative, Stevenson raised concerns about the inclusivity of the conference.

“It’s about becoming a leader in the business world. Not to say that that’s not important, because women need to be represented in all sectors, but it’s kind of getting to be an old conversation,” said Stevenson. “Unfortunately, although the events this week and the conference this weekend are great initiatives, I feel like it could be a more intersectional – a more inclusive approach.”

These issues, said Elliott, were something that both she and Webster considered when planning the conference.

“Heather and I both believe that for there to be change, there does need to be a deeper solution, there does need to be a discussion about the broader issues that are preventing people from moving forward besides just those individual things that are keeping them from reaching a leadership role.

“Obviously it’s not an ideal solution, but I think it’s also something that can start a broader discussion and that engaging with the people that may take a more radical stance, that’s a way that we can all move forward,” said Elliott.

Students and faculty in the fine arts  are happy to have found a new home in the Purdy Crawford Centre for the Arts, despite still settling into the new space.

“It’s a lot more work-conducive space,” said fourth-year fine arts student Krista Gunn. “We’ve got a lot more natural light, a lot more room to spread out and a lot more room for larger installation projects.”

“Having come from the basement of Hart Hall where the sculpture studio used to be, this is worlds and worlds of improvement,” said sculpture and drawing professor Adriana Kuiper. “In terms of things like scale, students are making bigger work now because they can and that’s part of what sculpture is about: scale, or being able to walk around something and not necessarily hanging it on a wall, or pushing it up against a wall.”

“Everyone keeps saying it’s such a big building for such a small faculty, but back in the Gairdner, we were always tripping over each other and there would be a lot more disputes over space,” Gunn said.

While most of the building is in use, some issues with the facilities remain. Problems with the ventilation system have prevented students from using the photographic darkroom, forcing them to travel back and forth between Hart Hall and the PCCA to develop their film.

Mount Allison’s vice-president finance administration Robert Inglis said the university has plans to resolve the ventilation issues over the summer. The ventilation, said Inglis, is a priority for the university.

Inglis said that the ventilation problems are not particularly unusual given the building’s recent construction.

“In any new facility, there are lots of outstanding items,” said Inglis.

The building was supposed to be fully operational for its intended September 2014 opening.

Other finishing touches, such as more couches in the main atrium, are also in the works.

The university’s goal is to have the entirety of the building up and running for September 2015.

“We can do work during the year too, but summer is a key time for anything significant to get done,” Inglis said.

With students often cutting through the building, the Purdy Crawford gets more visitors than the Gairdner did. Fine arts students have taken advantage, displaying their work in the atrium. The atrium will serve as official gallery space, and a committee of faculty members has been chosen to act as curators.

Over the years, students and faculty were able to personalize the Gairdner and make it a space of their own. This is still very much an ongoing process in the PCCA, said third-year fine arts student Hailey Guzik.

“It’s going to take time for people to learn to live in this space,” said Kuiper.

The addition of official gallery space is a step forward in making the centre a place where people are comfortable working and socializing.

“People are still pretty tentative to make their mark in this space,” said Guzik. “But I think over the coming years, it will really start to become more of a home.”

After a drawn-out election cycle, Mount Allison students elected Dylan Wooley-Berry as the Mount Allison Students’ Union’s president for the 2015-2016 academic year.

An error in the ballot setup, omitting the option for voters to abstain in the second round, made the results of the first election invalid. According to MASU bylaws, voting must be held under a preferential voting system, which entails that voters should be able to vote for one candidate and abstain from the other, abstain from both, or list candidates in order of preference. The Jan. 26-27 election allowed for students to list candidates in a preferential order but did not allow voting for a single candidate. Neither Wooley-Berry nor his opponent, Piper Riley Thompson, received the necessary 50 per cent plus one (vote) of the ballots cast during the first round of voting. The second round of voting could not be counted because the system did not let voters opt out from voting for a second candidate.

Because of the erroneous ballot, a second round of voting was held for the presidential election.The presidential runoff election followed a simple “yes/no/abstain” formula, with Wooley-Berry as the only candidate on the ballot.

“I am both relieved that the election is finally over, as it was much longer than anticipated,” said Wooley-Berry.

“I am excited that I can now begin to work with Heather [Webster] on transitioning into office and to being to work towards accomplishing all that the incoming executive set out to do.”

Voter turnout was at 38.9 per cent, according to an email sent by MASU president Heather Webster. Turnout was 12 per cent lower than during the earlier 2015 executive election. 63.03 per cent of voters voted “yes,” while 32.04 per cent voted “no,” and another 4.94 per cent abstained.

“I am very happy to see Wooley-Berry elected at last. This is a very exciting time for the students’ union. We can now move forward with transitioning,” said Webster.

For the first time in MASU’s history, a concrete transition plan has been drafted for the incoming executive, said Webster. “They will job shadow, read past reports, have meetings with members of the university community, attend sessions with experts in post-secondary education, and have sessions where they will bond and set goals as a team.”

“I believe that next year will be extremely productive and that students will see our union accomplish many goals and complete many projects,” said Wooley-Berry.

Divest MTA participated in Global Divestment Day for the second year in a row. The initiative aims to pressure institutions to remove their investments from the fossil fuel industry. Divest MTA organized initiatives to foster support, build awareness and send a clear message to the university that they want to make fossil fuel divestment a reality at Mount Allison.

Last year, the bulk of the initiatives focused on building awareness around the issue, said one of Divest MTA’s co-ordinators, Emma Jackson.

“This year we’ve made really significant progress so I think for us, we’re moving beyond this awareness stage of our campaign,” said Jackson. “We are willing and wanting to collaborate and to work with the Board of Regents to make this a reality.”

This was reflected in the rally which took place on Feb. 13 in front of Centennial Hall, which houses most of the administration’s offices. A group of approximately 25 students and community members regrouped to engage in chants, pressuring the university to divest. “This year we’ve made really significant progress so I think for us, we’re moving beyond this awareness stage of our campaign,” said Jackson. “We are willing and wanting to collaborate and to work with the Board of Regents to make this a reality.”

The rally that took place on Feb. 13 in front of Centennial Hall, which houses most of the administration’s offices, reflected this. A group of approximately 35 students and community members gathered to engage in chants.

“The objective there isn’t to be angry or in any way sort of antagonistic,” said Jackson. “It really is just to show that students are supporting this and that there are students on the ground that want to see it happen.”

While the rally was at the core of Global Divestment Day’s events, the organizers still planned some awareness initiatives. Members of Divest MTA also handed out orange squares and stickers showing support for the divest movement.

“We’re pretty pleased with how everything went. It was short, it was sweet, it was wonderful to see so many people out. So much positive energy and support around campus was really, really wonderful,” said Divest MTA co-coordinator Lauren Latour.

As the rally was taking place, Jackson and Latour brought a report to Mt. A President Robert Campbell and Vice-President Finance and Administration Robert Inglis, presenting both ethical and financial arguments for divestment. The report was drafted by a committee of seven students involved with Divest MTA.

The report will be forwarded to the investment committee, said Inglis. The committee oversees Mt. A’s endowment and pension funds. Inglis said it is the committee’s responsibility to ensure the university’s funds are invested in a profitable way.

“Any investment committee, including Mount Allison, is a fiduciary or a trustee and has fiduciary responsibility towards the funds under their purview,” said Inglis.

Campbell and Inglis were receptive to the ideas brought forward by Divest MTA’s co-ordinators, said Latour.

“Because we are better able to argue the moral side of things, [the report] does touch on it a lot. It does touch on the environmental factors, but we have several sections on things like returns and how divestment has positively affected different universities who have divested. We try to touch on the financial side of things as much as possible,” said Latour.

Latour said a meeting has been scheduled with the Board of Regents’ investment committee. If the committee supports the idea of divestment, they could then bring forward a recommendation to the Board of Regents. The university’s governing body would then vote upon the measure.

“When I think of divestment, I think of the question ‘Can you do it?’ as opposed to ‘Should you do it?’ Those are two different questions that the investment committee will have to consider,” said Inglis.

But even as much progress has been made, those asking institutions to divest still face significant barriers.

“It’s not only a moral and ethical responsibility, it is a financial and fiduciary one as well,” said Latour. “But that’s a hard argument to have with people who potentially have close ties with fossil fuels, or are accountants themselves. It’s hard to argue that we’re by no means the experts, but that we have information that they maybe don’t have.”

A rally calling upon the university to divest for fossil fuels was the first of its kind to happen at Mt. A. Orange squares are becoming increasingly visible and for the occasion, orange X’s were drawn on snowbanks throughout campus.

The Mount Allison Faculty Association recently passed a motion to support Divest MTA in their efforts to lobby the university to divest from fossil fuels. The motion also instructed the pension committee to launch a discussion regarding a potential option to divest in MAFA members’ investment portfolios.

“[Divestment] is symbolic and it’s a question of at the very least to remove your own complicity from the activities,” said international relations professor Dave Thomas. “It’s a way to build a movement of people who have this, at the core, this idea that we are uncomfortable paying for and profiting from a particular set of activities.”

“If the goal is to actually change the way Mount Allison does things, the core challenge will be convincing the Board of Regents and the upper administration that it’s a good idea, or that it’s necessary,” said Thomas. “Even to acknowledge that maybe this is something the university should think about I think would be a success.”

When students and community members first walked into the room, blankets of various colours, patterns and shapes were laid out in no particular order on the floor, slightly off centre. The narrators, three members of Canadian Roots Exchange, invited everyone to stand on the blankets. Participants were told they were standing on land initially inhabited by Canada’s aboriginal peoples, before the arrival of European settlers.

Each blanket represented the territory occupied by a specific nation and participants represented members of that community. Your position within the blanket area also affected the outcome of the activity: those facing north, representing Canada’s Inuit populations, faced a different outcome than those facing west, representing the country’s Métis peoples. A number of participants were handed scrolls, written as fictitious first-hand accounts. Periodically read out loud, they added a personal aspect to the narrative.

At first, the narrators, playing the role of European settlers, spoke of collaboration between indigenous peoples and Europeans. But as the narrative progressed, land was gradually taken away and things looked increasingly bleak for Canada’s aboriginal populations. As the blankets became smaller, participants became increasingly isolated. Some were told to step off the blankets, while some were told to move in a completely separate portion of the room. There was no longer any talk of collaboration. Rather, aboriginals were dying of illnesses brought by Europeans and were taken away from their families to attend residential schools. At the end of the activity, there were about 10 participants left on the blankets. Everybody else had either died of an illness, had been taken away, or had decided to move out of the reserve.

“Even if [participants] do know about the history [of indigenous relations], they still come out pretty shocked, just feeling heavy and guilty,” said Killa Atencio, a member of Canadian Roots Exchange. Atencio, a resident of Listuguj, Que., was one of three representatives from Canadian Roots Exchange.

The blanket exercise, held on Friday, Jan. 23, was developed by KAIROS, a Canadian faith based humanitarian organization. It aims to demonstrate through the use of blankets Canada’s colonial history and the evolution of our relationship with Aboriginal Peoples.

“It hits home for me because I understand, that’s the kind of environment I grew up in. The stories aren’t news to me,” said Emma Hassencahl, a member of the Aboriginal Support Group and resident of the Tobique Band.

A debriefing session followed the exercise, where all participants, sitting in a circle, had a chance to share their thoughts on what they had just experienced.

“The activity was very emotionally powerful. It was so different than learning it in a textbook in school, because you actually felt these emotions,” said Sébastien Engelmann, a third-year student. “It brought those things to life and that was really interesting, just to see how everything was taken away from us so quickly and then very little was gained back. It didn’t seem right what was given back,” said Engelmann.

Mount Allison’s Aboriginal Support Group organized the activity in collaboration with Mount Allison’s Centre for International Studies. About 30 people attended the exercise.

Organizers were pleased with the turnout.

“It’s really nice to see a big group of people, because you can separate the [blankets] more, which causes more of an impact when you see three people taken away as opposed to just one,” said Atencio.

Canadian Roots Exchange’s mission is to “build bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in Canada by facilitating dialogue and strengthening relationships through leadership programs.” The organization’s teams travel all across Canada to host events like the blanket exercise and are made of both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

The third annual Mansbridge Summit brought a group of 40 Mount Allison students together with academics, artists and Mt. A’s Chancellor Peter Mansbridge to discuss the role of a public broadcaster in modern society. Throughout the summit, students played a key role in shaping the debate. The Jan. 16 event was structured around a series of roundtables facilitating discussion between students, three panellists and the chancellor, in which students were tasked with coming up with the questions that Mansbridge would later ask the panel.

“I felt the structure of the whole thing was very well done. They put a lot of thought in allowing us to have time to talk to the panelists before, have our ideas, discuss it for a couple of hours, and then we got to talk to Peter Mansbridge himself about it,” said Carlie Fyfe, a second-year political science major.

This year’s theme was particularly relevant to the chancellor’s work as the anchor of CBC’s flagship news show, The National. “I kept trying to distance myself from my real job, but it’s hard. Obviously, things come up, and you want to say something,” said Mansbridge. The CBC had a rough 2014, a year that saw the broadcaster cut its programming and a widely condemned handling of the Jian Ghomeshi scandal.

The panellists were Lydia Miljan, political science professor at the University of Windsor and senior fellow at the Fraser Institute; Marshall Button, actor, director and artist in residence at Moncton’s Capitol Theatre; and David Myles, singer-songwriter and host of CBC’s The East Coast Music Hour with David Myles, who is also a Mt. A alumnus.

The panel, which was open to the general public, sparked lively discussion on the role and  mandate of a public broadcaster, in this case  CBC. Panellists, in particular Myles and Miljan, clashed views frequently through the discussion. While Myles focused primarily on the CBC’s mandate – putting ratings aside – Miljan said that the CBC should focus solely on ratings in order to determine which shows are viable.

“The sole pursuit of ratings inherently makes the mandate difficult to pursue when the mandate suggests minority voices,” said Myles. “Why play Acadian music to Anglophones? There is value in that. In New Brunswick, we should all be listening to each other’s music all the time. It’s a way of understanding each other’s culture, but does it fit into a ratings-based mandate? Probably not.”

Miljan was invited in order to provide an alternative perspective. “One of my goals was that I wanted to bring somebody to campus that usually would not be brought in to speak at Mount Allison,” said Steven Black, Mt. A’s Mansbridge Summit intern. “That took shape perfectly with Lydia [Miljan]. Conservative through and through, partner at the Fraser Institute, but fiendishly intelligent and very articulate. She really did a great job of getting the students to think,” said Black.

Myles, who was recently hired by the CBC to host his own radio show, was worried that his presence, along with the presence of Mansbridge, who is one of the most recognizable faces of the CBC, would skew the discussion and lead to a stale debate. However, as soon as he met the other panellists, he was reassured that the discussion would not simply be a praise of the CBC. “[Miljan] is totally informed and she shares the opinion of a lot of Canadians. It’s really important. If people are going to figure how [the CBC] is going to look like in the future, they have to be ready to face all those arguments that she is presenting, which I think are valid,” said Myles.

“I think you need that kind of energy to make a panel work,” said Mansbridge. “At a certain point, it’s pretty clear where everybody’s coming from, so once you get beyond that, you can actually start to get some constructive discussion going on… it was clear where people stood, but they put that aside and had some good, constructive thoughts that weren’t all based on ideology,” said Mansbridge.

 The chancellor noted modifications that were brought to this year’s summit, such as the smaller number of students allowed to participate. While the past two years have seen between 60 and 65 students partake in the program, this year’s summit was capped at 40 participants.

“[This year’s summit] was another step forward in terms of the progress of the program,” said Mansbridge. “Of the three years, these were the most focused group of students. When we sat down this afternoon, they knew exactly what they wanted out of this. I was very impressed right away.”

An arbitrator has resolved most of the outstanding labour issues between Mount Allison’s administration and faculty. The decision gives new insight into the issues that caused the three-week strike earlier in 2014.

The awards resolved differences between faculty and the administration on compensation, sabbaticals and the length of the new collective agreement. An impasse on SETs was sent back to the parties for another chance at negotiation.

Arbitrator Kevin Burkett finalized his decision Nov. 17. The two sides still need to sit down together and approve of the text of a new agreement.

“I don’t think there’s a strong feeling one way or the other about who won or who lost. I think people are saying ‘it is what it is,’ and we move on,” said Robert Campbell, Mt. A’s president. Mt. A communications staff told The Argosy that Campbell would not be in a position to discuss specifics of the arbitrator’s ruling or the collective agreement.

Arbitration for the full-time collective agreement dealt with university proposals to force the use of SETs in hiring, tenure, and promotion and evaluation decisions, and sabbatical deferral for some faculty; a faculty proposal for salary increases; and disagreement on how long the new collective agreement should last. Burkett decided on restricting payments in lieu of benefits, compensation and contract length for the part-time collective agreement.

Burkett cut a middle path on money, awarding full-time faculty salary increases for the next three years, and a boost to part-time compensation.

Full-time faculty received a 1.75 per cent raise from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014, two per cent for 2014-2015, and 2.25 per cent effective July 1, 2015.

Part-time faculty will see their per-course stipends increase from 8.75 to nine per cent of the full-time salary floor in January.

The parties are currently in the process of working out retroactive pay and benefits.

Burkett awarded a three-year collective agreement, rejecting a university request for a four-year contract. While the administration sought stability, Burkett noted a lack of precedent and strong union opposition. Mt. A’s faculty have never had a four-year collective agreement.

Nearly one-third of the decision’s text dealt with how much faculty would be paid, but salaries, said MAFA President Loralea Michaelis, were not among the issues that ultimately triggered the strike.

Money was not as important as matters of tenure and promotion, sabbatical review, intellectual property and teaching evaluations to the faculty.

Ironically, many of these issues were not included in the final submissions to arbitration.

“The ambitious changes that the employer was seeking in this round of collective bargaining, which put us on the picket lines last year, were not settled through the arbitration decision. They were withdrawn in the course of bargaining, during a couple of sessions that were held in mid-August,” Michaelis said.

The issue of SETs, which was sent to arbitration by the university, may not be resolved until mid-2015. Burkett declined to decide on whether to incorporate SETs formally into the university’s evaluation and promotion mechanisms, writing that the “complex, multifaceted and divisive issue … goes to the heart of what Mount Allison University is as an institution.” He will make a decision if no agreement is reached by June 30, 2015 or a later date agreed upon by the parties.

Right now, most faculty applying for tenure voluntarily submit SETs as part of their applications. The university “argues that the voluntary use of SETs by individual faculty members does not sufficiently inform university decision-making,” Burkett wrote. It proposed to make the questionnaires a mandatory part of applications for tenure or promotion. The Mount Allison Students’ Union indicated its support for mandatory inclusion of SETs in 2013.

Faculty balked at the idea.

Faculty have a number of reasons to object the mandatory use of SETs, or “anonymous student questionnaires.” Among them are concerns about statistical validity and interpretation, a lack of scholarly consensus on the best uses for SETs, and a fear that using course evaluations in hiring, tenure and promotion decisions “will select for white males, dressed in suits, for whom English is their first language, teaching easy courses.”

Burkett sided with the university on a proposal updating collective agreement language on deferred sabbaticals for individuals nearing retirement.

The abitrator decided against a faculty request for what Burkett called “signing bonuses” of $1,000 for part-time and $1,800 for full-time faculty, for the university to pay professors’ shares of their benefits plans for the strike period, and the creation of a $100,000 bursary fund for students using money faculty said the university saved during the strike.

With files from Richard Kent.