Sackville Pride Parade creates ‘special and meaningful’ moments for first-time marchers
Sackville showed its Pride last Friday afternoon, with a brief but well attended double flag raising and march from the Mount Allison campus down to the Tantramar municipal office on Main Street.
CHMA was there and brings you some of the voices from the crowd of over 100 Pride marchers, starting off with organizers Marshall Campbell and Hannah Saulnier, from Mount Allison’s Catalyst student group, who helped organize the event.
“Pride is really important to me because it shows that we’re not afraid of the people that feel that we don’t belong or that we don’t have a right to exist and to express ourselves,” said Campbell. “So I’m really happy to see how many people came out today.”
The all-ages crowd was a mix of Pride veterans and first-timers, many of whom were moved by the outpouring of support and love for the queer community.
“I have lived in areas that have been extremely bigoted and homophobic,” said first year Mount Allison student Catherine, who was attending her first ever Pride event. “I never thought I’d be able to experience this, and now I am.”
“It makes me very emotional to just see people from every age demographic,” said Catherine. “It’s really inspiring and really hopeful.”
Another round of MASU’s Green Investment Fund means another $20k for sustainability projects in Tantramar
Back in 2009, the students of Mount Allison voted to chip in $10 each per year towards a Green Investment Fund (GIF). Since then, students have collectively funded dozens of sustainability projects at the school and throughout the Tantramar region. Over the years the GIF has funded solar panels on the shed at the Tantramar Regional High School, the replacement of halide light bulbs with LED alternatives on the Mount Allison campus, and the purchase of acres of degraded forestland for long-term restoration, among other things.
Issac Acker is a fourth year Biology student, and the Sustainability Coordinator for the Mount Allison Students’ Union (MASU). With the deadline for this year’s funding applications approaching next week, CHMA spoke with Acker to find out more:
The GIF collects roughly $20,000 each year, depending on student enrolment, and that pot of money can go to a number of small projects, or one large project, says Acker. It all depends on “the quality of the projects that have been submitted, and what the sustainability committee decides,” he says.
And the projects are open to anyone in the community. “That’s what I love about this project,” says Acker. “It’s not so much just based solely on campus, but we can reach out to many different nonprofits and other organizations in the greater area.”… Continue
Students’ union apologizes after issuing ‘misinformation,’ the latest in an election cycle marked by mix-ups
The Mount Allison Students Union has issued an apology after releasing incorrect municipal election information on social media.
It was the latest in a series of mix-ups during the municipal election cycle, which was also marked by erroneous mailouts from Elections NB and a mysterious flyer that appears to have violated the Municipal Elections Act.
The mistake meant that some students were unable to vote, according to MASU. It’s unclear how many people were actually affected.
Municipal elections took place on Monday, forming the first-ever council for the new town of Tantramar.
But some would-be student voters were led astray by “Municipal Election GOVT [get out the vote] posts on Instagram” that contained “misinformation” about election times, according to a statement from MASU.
Opening and closing times for the local polling site were essentially reversed, a MASU official said in an email.
“The substance of the error was quite basic, it seems that the time was posted was “7 [a.m.]-10 p.m.” rather than “10 [a.m.]-7:30pm” (which was the accurate time),” said Suchet Mittal, VP Communications and Marketing.
“As far as I am aware, we only received one official complaint which was received over Instagram. However, we are aware that other students were also affected by the issue, although the actual numbers we have only reach 3-5 students. We predict the actual impact was closer to 10-12 students being impacted, as best we can estimate without any real data.”… Continue
Mt A retakes top spot in Maclean’s rankings; school poised to keep growing, says Boudreau
Mount Allison University is hosting an open house today for potential new students, just a week after getting another feather in its cap from Maclean’s magazine’s long-running ranking of Canadian universities. For the 23rd time in the 32 years that Maclean’s has been publishing rankings of Canadian schools, the magazine gave Mount Allison the number one spot in the primarily undergraduate category, made up mostly of smaller universities.
“It is a nice number to have kind of in our back pocket,” says Mount Allison Students’ Union president Rohin Minocha-McKenney. “It is an area of pride, because at the end of the day, all of us in the Mount A community, whether [we feel] good or bad about Mount A, we do have some level of pride in what is here, and what we all contribute to the community.”
“I think we do deserve it,” says Minocha-McKenney, referring to more than just the formal institution. “There’s a lot of great things that happen at Mount A and even Sackville in general, that makes this the best undergraduate university experience in Canada.“
Not that there’s not still room for improvement, says the MASU president. “We do have places to go. But I would say that people care in our whole community, and that care that goes in to our community and into Mount A, I think that’s why we really deserve number one.”… Continue
As advanced polls open today, MASU hopes last fall’s provincial voting fiasco won’t discourage students from voting
ADVANCED VOTING KICKS OFF TODAY
Advanced polling for the federal election is open today from 9am to 9pm at the Tantramar Veterans Memorial Civic Centre, and will continue through to Monday September 13. After that, the next chance to vote in person will be election day, Monday September 20.
There’s also still time to register to vote by mail. To do so, electors need to fill out a form online at the Elections Canada website, before 6pm on Tuesday September 14.
To vote in person, you’ll need a piece of government-issued ID, or else two other documents identifying you and your address.
Mount Allison students can either vote in the Beauséjour riding, or cast a ballot for another riding that they consider their home riding. To vote in a riding other than Beauséjour, students need to take action before 6pm on September 14. They can either request a mail-in kit by that time, or they can go vote in person with a special ballot at the Elections Canada office.
In Sackville, Elections Canada is located at the Sackville Curling Club, on 22 Landsdowne.
Students voting in Sackville will need to show their current address along with other voters. Students who have just moved to residence from outside of the riding can get a letter from the university confirming their current address.
MASU TRIES TO GET OUT THE VOTE, DESPITE PROVINCIAL ELECTION FIASCO
Mount Allison Students’ Union (MASU) VP External Hannah Ehler says though she feels the rules around student voting in the federal election are very clear coming from Elections Canada and student organizations, she is still worried that events in the provincial election last September may have left some students discouraged.… Continue
Mt A hikes tuition another 3%, allocates more financial aid in latest budget
Mount Allison has released its budget for next year, and it includes a 3% hike in tuition and residence fees. Annual tuition for the next academic year will be $9,440 for Canadian students, and $19,040 for international students.
CHMA spoke with newly elected Mount Allison students’ union president Charlie Burke, to get her take on the new budget.
Burke is “disheartened” to see the tuition hike, but also appreciative of some items in the budget. “Financial aid is getting quite a big increase of over $700,000, and we’ve got some of our budget advocacy asks,” says Burke. “But overall, I think we’re still quite concerned about how tuition is going to affect students.”
The budget includes a 14% increase in funding for student financial aid. In a news release, Mount Allison says funding has also been allocated for key student services areas including international recruitment, sexual violence response and prevention, and diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus.
“One of our asks was higher compensation for RAs and assistant dons in residence,” says Burke, “and those were increased by $1,000, which was really great to see, because that’s something that we’ve been advocating for a very long time.”
“And we saw an investment into EDI [equity, diversity and inclusion], for the Black Student Advisor position. So that position now is year round, and fully funded by the university. And as well, they’re also investing some of that money into sexual violence prevention.”… Continue
After student voter suppression, union calls for more training and an apology
Student vote suppression can’t be rectified, but lessons will be learned for next time, says Elections NB
A Mount Allison student leader says she’s heard mostly negative feedback from students about participating in last Monday’s provincial election in Sackville.
Mount Allison Students’ Union VP Sydney Thorburn set up a survey last week asking students to share their experience voting. The survey asks when and where students voted, how satisfied they were with the experience, and includes space for students to give a detailed description of their experience, if they feel comfortable. Thorburn says the intention is to bring those testimonials from students directly to Elections NB.
“We don’t feel comfortable with ourselves if we let this go and don’t follow up with it,” says Thorburn. “Just so much unfortunate and outright bad things happened on Monday towards students—that suppressed the student vote—so that we feel the strong need to follow up with them.”
Thorburn says she hopes that future elections will see more training for staff at polling stations, especially training focussed on the rules as they apply to university students.
On Monday, dozens and possibly hundreds of students were either turned away or advised that they were breaking the law if they proceeded to vote.… Continue
Students concerned about rising costs for mostly online learning
By Erica Butler and Meg Cunningham
Mount Allison students will be facing more than just increased tuition costs in September, says Student Union president Jon Ferguson.
Ferguson is concerned for students experiencing hundreds to thousands more in unexpected residence fees on top of the tuition increase.
He explains that students are no longer able to share rooms due to COVID-19 risks.
Click to listen:
“There’s a lot of students that were going to be in double or triple rooms and they had to upgrade to single rooms. In certain scenarios it would be somewhere from $500 to $1000 for a lot of students that would have to upgrade. If we’re talking about the worst-case scenario, you’re looking at an upgrade of well over $2000. I think it was closer to $2500 or actually even higher for one student living in residence for those eight or nine months.”
Mount Allison’s media relations officer Laura Dillman says students who are impacted “will be able to apply for bursary assistance based on financial need.”
Mount Allison student Alison S. is concerned about the increased tuition fees for herself and fellow students.
Alison could not find a summer job due to COVID-19.
She is relying exclusively on student loans to pay for the increased tuition and fees this year, which she says is, “very unsettling.”… Continue