Volume XLIII, Issue 8 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 -...

Excellence through education

Kathleen Wynne visits DC, UOIT page 3

Lords throughthe lens

page 22

Photograph by Chris Rego

Photograph by Logan Caswell Photograph by Michael Fletcher

They really grab the fact that so many people died... but what really affects the students are the ages.

- See page 8Volume XLIII, Issue 8 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 - February 1, 2016

Stories profiling learning initiatives at Durham Catholic high schools

- See pages 6-10

Durham'sa great place to work page 3

2 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca Campus

FRONTBACK

OF THE

DC journalism students look at Durham College and UOIT,and beyond, by the numbers and with their cameras

Durham College photojournalist Remona Pillai captured Ridge-backs defenceman Tyler Mayea and his teammates stretching

puck, while Chronicle readers are forced to stretch their necks to the left.

UOIT players

look right,

our readers

look left

Campus chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 - February 1, 2016 The Chronicle 3

Michael FletcherThe Chronicle

The need for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pro-grams is important to opening doors for students who will be looking for jobs after graduating and ultimately shrinking the unemployment rate in Ontario and Canada as a whole.

That’s the message Ontario pre-mier Kathleen Wynne says is be-hind a summit on talent and skills in the new economy hosted by Dur-ham College on Jan. 20.

If workers, employers, govern-ment and educational institutions work collaboratively then we will see constant improvement in the labour force and the skills students are attaining, the premier told re-porters at a news conference.

Wynne was on hand to discuss the accessibility of post-secondary education and what the province of Ontario is doing to make STEM programs in college and university more accessible for students.

STEM programs are some of the most expensive programs offered in post-secondary schools, and accord-ing to the Canadian Federation of Students, the average public debt for students in Ontario is $37,000

after completing a four-year degree. “Access is somewhere we are

really focused on and it’s where we will continue to focus. There are students who come into the system and come out on the other side with

a huge debt load because they don’t have the financial support to deal with tuition rates,” says Wynne.

“The ministry is working with the government to find ways to improve access,” says Wynne.

The premier would not comment further on what her government would be rolling out in the near fu-ture to help combat the debt load and accessibility of post-secondary education.

Peggy Sattler, the NDP’s train-ing, colleges and universities critic, who was also at the event says, “she (Wynne) mentioned that we are far overrepresented in college level at-tainment but we are in fact being outpaced dramatically by other countries.

“Tuition is a huge barrier to access for students. The NDP has called, repeatedly, at a minimum for a freeze on post-secondary tuition rates and then look to rebalancing who is funding post-secondary edu-cation,” says Sattler.

Sattler also says society bene-fits from having a well-educated work force so the government has a responsibility to fund post-second-ary education so people who want to get that education are able to afford to do so.

The summit featured many inf lu-ential speakers including Stephen Carlisle, president and managing director of General Motors Can-ada and Robert Hardt, president and CEO of Siemens Canada. The focus of the summit was to bring these people together to speak about the highly-skilledworkforce strategy the government of Ontario is work-ing on.

Wynne speaks about student futures at DC summit

Photograph by Michael Fletcher

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaking at a Durham College-hosted summit.

Chris RegoThe Chronicle

Durham College (DC) has won the Greater Toronto Top Employ-er award (GTTEA) for the sixth year in a row. The supportive en-vironment that DC has created for its employees is one of the leading reasons for the award, according to DC president Don Lovisa. DC currently has about 700 full and part-time employees.

DC supports not just the staff and students but has a large presence in the community; employees of DC spent 19,000 hours volunteering last year, according to Lovisa.

“We tracked last year the amount of charities that we support as an institution by all of our employees…we were supporting 150 charities, which is pretty amazing when you think about it,” says Lovisa.

Other reasons why DC is con-sidered an excellent workplace are things like the FLEX centre that gives staff a place to work out and medical help through the Campus Health Centre, Lovisa says. The Centre for Academic and Faculty Enrichment also helps employees expand their knowledge.

“This is all about the things we do as an institution ….how Durham College contributes to the commun-ity not only our external community but our internal community,” says Lovisa.

The successes are thanks to the people who work at DC and how much they love what they do and are proud to do it, says Lovisa.

Stephen Forbes and Andrew Maine are professors in the I.T. school that have both gone from part-time work to full-time at DC.

“I consider Durham to be one of if not the leading college in Ontario in terms of the facilities and services available to staff, you just can’t beat it,” says Forbes.

Forbes and Maine are always looking for ways to help people.

“It’s been an absolutely awesome ride, I couldn’t think of a better em-ployer just off the top of my head,” says Maine.

Lovisa is pleased that DC is do-ing well. He looks to the future to see how the college experience can grow and what DC will look like in 20 years.

“There’s always room for improvement, you’re always grow-

ing, you’re always looking for ways to improve as an organization, im-

prove as individuals,” says Lovisa.Medicorp Canada Inc. and the

Globe and Mail issue the GTA’s Top Employer award.

DC wins an award for being a great place to work

Campus job fair offers mentoring and networking opportunities Alyssa BuggThe Chronicle

Students from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) and Durham College (DC) are encouraged to come and net-work with employers at the job fair on Feb. 3, regardless of whether it results in an immediate job.

Canada’s Wonderland, City of Oshawa, electronics manufactur-ing company, Celestica, Paragon Security and various other police and fire services are among the 75 employers recruiting, in the areas of engineering, health care, IT and

technology, among others. DC’s Career Development out-

reach coordinator, Louise Stiles, says job fairs are moving away from the traditional ‘dress up and hand out resumes’ format and have become more of an opportunity to network.

According to Stiles, campus re-cruiters understand students may stop by during the middle of their school day and aren’t expecting a three-piece suit or a resume, they just want to talk with students. She suggests that even if the company isn’t recruiting within a student’s

area of interest, there is still value in coming to talk with the company’s recruiters.

“We just encourage, even if you’ve never heard of a company, to talk with them. Say ‘hey, I’m in this program, do you have that de-partment?’ Just throw it out there and see what happens,” said Stiles. “Students should just be coming to this and learning to talk to strangers in a professional way.”

The job fair will feature booths for each of the employers, some bringing as many as six recruiters to speak with interested students.

There will also be a ‘mentor lounge’, fitted with bar stools and white leather couches, where students will be able to speak one-on-one with former graduates and successful business people about their experi-ences.

Among the 10 mentors available are: DC alumnus Brandon Heard, the creative lead and co-founder of Oshawa-based graphic and web design company, Mediavandal and Sunita Alves, professional engineer, certified life coach and founder of Engineer Your Life Coaching, a company created to help others

find balance between their work and home lives based on strategies she developed from her own experi-ences.

Throughout the year there are various other fairs, such as the part-time job fair in September and the annual Tradesmart career fair held at Whitby campus, but this is the only one of its kind that caters to both UOIT and DC students.

For those interested in attending, the job fair will be taking place on Feb. 3 at the Campus Recreation and Wellness Centre between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.


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The Chronicle is published by the Durham College School of Media, Art and Design, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7L7, 721-2000 Ext. 3068, as a training vehicle for students enrolled in Journalism and Advertising courses and as a campus news medium. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the college administration or the board of gov-ernors. The Chronicle is a member of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association.

EDITORS: Deen Albertini, Sachin Bahal, Andrew Brennan, Alyssa Bugg, Ryan Burden, Logan Cas-well, Megan Chase, Bill Christou, Michael Clark, David Conti, Alexander Costa, Jordan Edmonds, Alyssa Erwin, Michael Fletcher, Jordyn Gitlin,

-ah Pardy, Sherise Peart-Kent, Reba Pennell, Re-mona Maria Pillai, Cameron Popwell, Taylor Prest, Cody Quinney, Amanda Ramlal, Tabitha Reddekop, Christopher Rego, Alexander Ross, Justin Stewart, Marina Tyszkiewicz, Sandhya Visvanathan, Taylor Waines.

How graffiti is shaping our world Cartoon by Alex Ross

The Broken Window Theory is a criminological theory that says maintaining and watching over en-vironments to prevent small crimes can help prevent more serious crimes. It was introduced in 1982 by social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling. This theory implies that graffiti is used to incite fear and encourage more serious crimes if not dealt with. The Broken Window Theory was the real start of society’s views of graffiti as bad.

Even though the arts have in-f luenced each other and helped develop new styles, graffiti is still seen as vandalism. But it shouldn’t be.Despite the disagreements and upsets in the community about graf-fiti and the differences in people’s views, graffiti should be seen as an art form and not a social experiment that showcases people as cattle in a herd. Judging by the average per-son’s ability to draw stick people, most wouldn’t be able to design a tag to save their life. A tag is the

painting an artist puts on a building or other private property, usually an alias or nickname.

While there is graffiti that is simply vandalism, it still grabs the attention of the general pub-lic and skews the views of people to see graffiti as something bad. This skew isn’t without its merits. According to Statistics Canada, 72 per cent of hate crimes are mischief offences. Mischief offences include graffiti, vandalism and other forms of property destruction. Even with paid murals, some people still get upset, despite the artist being com-missioned and permitted by the owner of the building.

The stigma surrounding graf-fiti was established at a time when punks were running around van-dalizing everything in sight. Theses stigmas were appropriate at the time because the vandals would’ve been painting stuff like a red cir-cle-A in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s punk era. The circle-A was spread

around when English punk rock band Crass stumbled upon it and decided to showcase the symbol. The punk vandalism drastically changed to people now trying to give light and colour to the cityscape of greys and burgundies. The artists have become more advanced and do pieces to stir up political con-troversy among citizens. But most people haven’t changed their ideas of graffiti and still imagine big red circle-A’s.

Though some people’s views of graffiti have changed, scribbling profanity doesn’t help.

Graffiti may be a bit of an eye-sore to some people, but to the art-ists and people who appreciate art, the city is a beautiful blank canvas waiting to be painted. Some artists have spent their whole lives practi-cing and narrowing down their style to get a final product, and even once they have nailed down the style, the artists still make changes and de-velop a niche for their work. How-

ever, some artists don’t always set-tle into a single style. Graffiti artist EGS has had an ever-changing style since he entered the scene in 1993 in Helsinki. His pieces vary dras-tically, often to the point of barely being recognizable as his own. Art evolves with time and styles change, even though EGS is a graffiti artist, his work is easily identifiable as art.

There are many pieces of media that take a different view of graf-fiti. Some games even address this issue with different sides of the story. Games like Jet Set Radio, where you play as a rollerblade gang fighting for control of the city by spray painting over other gang’s graffiti, and Super Mario Sunshine, where Mario runs around a city trying to stop an evil Mario that is painting the town. Some other games show-case the necessity of colour in our world like

The Unfinished Swan, and Flower. In the Unfinished Swan, you play as a young boy chasing af-

ter a swan that has escaped a paint-ing in a pure white world and you must capture the swan and finish the painting.

Flower shows a more govern-mental theme as dark iron gird-ers cover the world and a gust of wind carries f lower petals around to brighten the world and rid the dark grip of the industrial beams.

There are as many different kinds of graffiti as there are different kinds of artists. Artists put a unique spin on their art and no two styles are identical. Graffiti is more than just a bored teenager with a can of spray paint It takes real talent to make those murals that society seems to hate so much. If you have ever seen a colourful tag in an alley and you stop for even just a second to look at it, then the artist has achieved what they intended with their art; to make people think.

Alex Ross

4 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca

chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 - February 1, 2016 The Chronicle 5

E.P Taylor’s is a place for many to relax after a day of classes but for me, I had never been there, until now. The first thing I heard before I even walked through the door was people laughing and playing pool and I thought to myself “Yep, I’m in the right place.”

Although I’ve been a Durham College student for a year and a half now, I have to say I’ve never been inside E.P. Taylor’s, one of the DC-UOIT campus bars, because I live out of town.

Today would be my first time. When I walked in I didn’t really know what to expect but what I did notice was that the place was busier than I thought it would be at 11 a.m.

There were people doing home-work, others playing pool, and still more eating. E.P. Taylor’s, found-ed in 1995, is named after Edward Plunket Taylor.

He was a Canadian business tycoon and a famous breeder of thoroughbred horses. He was born in 1901 and died in 1989, at the age of 88. His involvement in breeding thoroughbred horses, led to the development of Windfields Farm in Oshawa. (The property is now under development north of the Campus Ice Centre.)

Taylor was also president of the Ontario Jockey Club from 1953 to 1973. On top of those accomplish-ments, he founded the Jockey Club of Canada.

In 1996, Taylor was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame. As I take in the atmosphere, I no-tice more people coming in. This is because soon the lunch rush is ex-pected to hit, according to manager Mike Dipassio.

The busiest times range from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the slow-est times range from 3p.m to 6p.m, because that is when the college is the least busy, he said.

The busiest night of the week de-pends on what is going on at the bar. E.P. Taylor’s is known for hosting many different events on campus. They have hosted Dirty Shirley’s bingo event, First Blast and Last Blast, which are annual, on top of many other events. They have also been host to different bands includ-ing July Talk.

Not only is E.P. Taylor’s open to Durham College and UOIT, it is also open to the community. By the bar, Sportsnet is playing on TV, plenty of drinks are displayed and while you are away from the pool tables and the noise, you can still hear the buzz vibrating off the walls.

While E.P. Taylor’s is a bar, it is obvious that the student’s safety is of upmost importance.

There are two signs that feature numbers for designated drivers, to ensure that students know they shouldn’t drink and drive. There are also two signs that warn people about the dangers of drinking while pregnant.

E.P. Taylor’s definitely wasn’t what I expected. I expected it to be crowded and make me feel a bit claustrophobic, like I normally do when I am at bars. But overall, I really like the feel of the place in general. “It’s a pretty chill atmos-phere,” said Dipassio.

I would have to agree. It is a pretty chill atmosphere. The staff was very welcoming and it was very relaxed. This is a place I will def-initely come back to. Might as well make my last semester at Durham College one to remember.

When you think fashion, the cit-ies of Paris, New York (NYC) and London are the first to come to mind. But Toronto?

It is a new city in comparison to other fashion capitals but in its youth, it truly nurtures creativity and individuality while putting the city on the global fashion radar.

Toronto’s fashion district in the downtown core is historic and con-tinues to attract creative talent and inf luence global fashion trends.

Toronto is the clean version of NYC. It continues to earn its name as our nation’s fashion capital for three reasons.

First, its world-class fashion week and the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards. Second, a growing roster of retailers and third, the majority of national fashion publications are published here.

While there are also fashion weeks held in Vancouver, Mont-real, and Calgary, they do not carry the same media presence as World MasterCard Fashion Week, the one put on in Toronto.

New York City held its first fash-ion week in 1943, to try and steal the attention being given to French fashion during World War II, as workers in the fashion industry were unable to travel to Paris.

Unlike New York City, Paris didn’t hold its first couture fashion week until 1945 and it was not fur-ther organized by the French Fash-

ion Federation until 1973. According to Natalia Gemperli’s

master thesis, “Fashion World Map-per: Your city on the trend radar,” a fashion capital is a city which has a major inf luence on international fashion trends, and whose economy generates significant output. This can be accomplished with the de-sign, production and retailing of fashion products, as well as events like fashion weeks, awards and trade fairs.

It’s no wonder Toronto took the lead as it has a reputation for having a strong cultural presence amongst the business, financial and enter-tainment districts. The variety of cultural and leisure activities are also benefits.

There are some who would dis-agree, as proved in 2015 when Sta-tistics Canada named Toronto the second unhappiest city in Canada. The report was on relative life satis-

faction in urban areas across the country. Toronto was outranked by Vancouver.

Steve Martin said on a guest ap-pearance on the television show 30 Rock, “you can move to Canada with me. Toronto is like New York, but without all the STUFF.” To-ronto has a reputation for being the “clean New York City” and for at-tracting the best and brightest from across the nation.

There are television shows and movies filmed in Toronto that are passed off as New York City, and there has even been a long-standing debate over whether Yonge-Dundas Square was modeled after Times Square.

What Toronto lacks in history and population density, it makes up for in spirit and promise.

Toronto is a growing, blossoming city whose small corners are home to the beginning of possibilities, un-like historic fashion capitals whose corners have all been claimed.

While there are some who deem it an unhappy place where you work twice as hard for little to no pay-out, it becomes home to more and more Canadians every year.

While cities like Paris, NYC and London are the first to come to mind when you hear the phrase, “fashion capital,” Toronto is quickly on the rise. Moving up three places this year in Global Language Mon-itor’s annual global survey, it is giving those in the Canadian fash-ion industry more of an inf luence globally.

Toronto has youth on its side, as the other fashion capitals have been established, Toronto has the oppor-tunity to be whatever it wants to be.

To express itself – and after all, fashion is more than just wearable art. It is the highest form of self-ex-pression.

Every twenty minutes, the world welcomes 3,500 new human lives but loses one or more of an entire plant or animal species. About 27,000 different species are lost each year, according to the Af-rican Conservancy. But special places like conservation areas and zoos are homes to species that are endangered.

It’s not every day we get to witness a tigress with her cubs, polar bears swimming together or a group of monkeys playing together, but zoos give us that opportunity. All chil-dren have a love for animals and trips to the zoo are always fun. Seeing animals that were from ori-ginally from Africa, Asia and other continents is fascinating.

As a child, you don’t question why the animals are there on display.

But with age and knowledge, people start to realize that zoo animals are forced to live in small-er areas than they’re used to and the animals have also been taken away from their natural habitats.

Although it’s a thrill for people to see animals up-close, zoos are not the best choice for them.

In order for animals to live com-fortably while being in captivity, zoologists need to first understand their needs.

Looking further into the dif-ference of zoos and conservation areas in Africa could help benefit zoos here in Canada and North America, but only if they take some advice on what the animals need.

Wild animals kept in zoos are not your everyday pets. They are a lot more demanding. Zoo animals eat a lot more, need a bigger space to live in and hide. They must also main-tain an active and healthy sex life.

It is common for animals to mi-grate from where they were first

born to another location to find a mate, says Greg Yarrow, a Profes-sor of Wildlife Ecology and Wildlife Specialist from Clemson University. The problem is that animals aren’t able to do this when they’re trapped inside enclosures at zoos.

One tip zoos can take away from conservation areas is to create more opportunities for people to learn about the animals rather than just putting them on display. Conserv-ation areas like the Great Barrier Reef Marine

Park have their wildlife living in a comfortable environment where they’re able to roam freely and hide, if needed. Conservation areas also help protect animals from trophy hunters: hunters who seek out the most mature wild animal they can find. They are proud to display their new trophy prize once the animal is hunted and killed.

A charity in Africa called “zsea”, which stands for Zoological Society of East Anglia, came up with the goal to secure the future for Ban-

ham Zoo located in Africa. Zsea plans to advance their roles in wild-life and environment conservation, education, and animal welfare. Zsea encourages interest and enthusiasm in the study of animals and other wildlife. Zsea also has zoological garden exhibitions for guests. A project the zoo has supported since 1993 is AEECL The Leumur Con-servation.

The World Wide Fund for Na-ture (WWF) is a well-known animal rights organization. They have been around for 54 years and concentrate on specific places for conservation like tropical rain forest, coral reefs, fishing grounds and more: all places that are home to endangered spe-cies. They protect these places by working with the fisheries indus-try to reduce overfishing. The WWF wants tropical places like the Galápagos to use tourism as a conservation tool for the animals by welcoming tourist to see exotic animals.

In Ontario the Toronto Zoo is

part of a conservation, education and research facility. They do a lot of conservation work. One of their most recent jobs was the new hard-carved and colourfully painted exotic animal Conservation Car-ousel. For just $3 a ride, people can hop on the carousel and hear about endangered animals.

The ride shares messages on screens that help educate guests. The zoo also has breeding programs for the sole purpose of sending the animals back into the wild. There is a protected off-site area where the animals are kept in quarantine for breeding then sending back into the wild.

Zoos should be more observant of conservation areas and they should also teach people to admire animals and wildlife.

Despite the minor education at zoos, it would be more worthwhile for patrons to see the animals ac-tually living in the environment that is written about outside of their en-closures.

Opinion

Should we be keeping animals inside of zoos?

RebaPennell

The E.P. Taylor's experience

Amanda

Ramlal

Megan

Chase

Canadian fashion good as NYC

Toronto is like New York but without all the

stuff.

Toronto is on the rise to become the next fashion captial

Alex CostaThe Chronicle

Hailey Clapperton, a Grade 12 student attending St. Mary Catholic Secondary

School in Pickering says, “As stu-dents when we leave school and go home we are always surrounded by technology and it’s now becoming something we are starting to incor-porate into our classrooms because its something we use on a daily basis.” About 80 per cent of Dur-ham Catholic District School Board (DCDSB) classrooms utilize some level of mobile interactive technol-ogy including laptops, MacBooks, iPads, smartphones, and iPods. That’s why in 2013, the school board looked to support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and needed a robust, wireless (WLAN) solution that offered good options to secondary schools to make this work. DCDSB chose a company from Aruba and is working with ‘Access2Networks’ from Toronto to deploy the Wi-Fi that most Durham Catholic students use today.

DCDSB serves over 22,000 stu-dents in Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, Pickering, Uxbridge, Port Perry, and Beaverton. Including 200 fac-ulty members, across approximate-ly 50 schools and district offices. BYOD refers to technology mod-els where students bring a person-ally-owned device to school for the purpose of learning. Students are

already technology leaders, BYOD looks to take the technology that students use in their daily lives and make it a normal part of their class-room experience. The school board believes that the initiative shines a light on three areas of development: digital citizenship, enhanced class-room experience and increased productivity.

Today students and teachers can access web-based content, re-sources, experts, and collaboration tools that were simply out of reach without BYOD. Productivity in sec-ondary schools continues to f lour-ish with the increased availability of devices.

Michael Cain, Teaching and Learning Consultant for DCDSB says, "in the past, in order for stu-dents to use electronic devices, teachers would have to book labs, seminars, or equipment months in advance and would sometimes be unsuccessful… with BYOD, it opens up the door for collaboration and

creativity as students have access to their own devices, which are usually up-to-date.”

Two years ago, DCDSB deployed 400 interactive video projectors equipped with Apple TV allowing teachers and staff remote access to content simply using an iPad. It seems we’ve come quite some way from some chalk and a board. Simply put, nothing is perfect and even technology can have its f laws; networks and devices can occasion-ally malfunction. If so, that’s when students and faculty can refer back to the classic pen and paper. In-creased productivity is something that many workplaces are taking seriously, moving forward BYOD highlights how 21st century learn-ing is starting to become effective at different institutional levels.

BYOD means students bring their own devices to school for edu-cational purposes. In the classroom, students use devices responsibly and only with the permission and direc-tion of a teacher or staff member. With increased devices, this results in an increased use of social media. Students are going to live and work in a world where people use their de-vices regularly. They need to learn to use this form of technology safely, effectively, ethically and most im-portantly responsibly and that’s why more emphasis is starting to be put on BYOD. Furthermore, DCDSB’s Code of Conduct and academic in-tegrity continue to apply to BYOD

whether students are accessing information from school or home. Digital citizenship is a major part of learning with technology and sheds light on how secondary students are the future leaders in 21st century learning and teaching.

Class experience has also de-veloped a lot with the BYOD initia-tive. Koula Azinas, a supply teacher for DCDSB, says “the BYOD plan has proven to be crucial for fill-in teachers such as myself, who may not have a background in math per se, but with the addition of web-based educational learning tools, etc., it has allowed me to still have a productive class regardless of the subject.” As mentioned above, many classrooms have integrated projectors with iPad capability to help integrate a new experience. As some DCDSB secondary schools continue to install wireless technol-

ogy (Wi-Fi), teachers will begin to incorporate more digital resources into their lessons. These resources have changed the learning land-scape. At a secondary level, things have changed drastically in terms of enhanced experience and students can use technology to access cur-riculum-based games/apps along with other learning initiatives like note-taking and video creation. BYOD has proven to be so effect-ive for students learning experience that the public school board has decided to follow the footsteps of DCDSB.

Of course, technology alone will not improve learning – but when combined with the right instruction from skilled staff, amazing things can happen. The increased use of technology in classrooms will power up students' success today, and for the future. “Being so accustomed to technology will benefit me a lot heading into my career, employers are already looking for new em-ployees who are tech-driven and using it throughout my secondary and post-secondary studies will only help me further,” says Clapperton. Moving forward BYOD will con-tinue to be involved in the learning of youth starting at a primary level in the coming years. Not only are these students finding out the fu-ture of 21st century learning, but they are discovering how they will be able to adapt in a 21st century world.

6 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 News

Photograph courtesy of Durham Catholic District School Board

Students using electronic devices in the new Bring Your Own Device program at a local DCDSB school. The BYOD program allows kids to

It opens up the door for

collaboration and creativity.

This is part of a series about the Durham Catholic District School Board written by Durham College

journalism students.

News chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 - February 1, 2016 The Chronicle 7

Sherise Peart-KentThe Chronicle

Shivonna Croft did not finish high school. She moved from St. Catharines to Durham

with her mother when her parents split up in her senior year. “Get-ting my diploma in high school just wasn't the right path for me, so I de-cided to go a different direction and I came here,” says Croft.

The Archbishop Anthony Meagher Catholic Continuing Education Centre under the Dur-ham Catholic District School Board has two locations in Ajax and Oshawa.

The school runs nearly 20 pro-grams for returning students each year.

Pathway programs, dual-credit programs and Personal Support Worker courses are just a few of the programs offered.

Continuing Education pro-grams support the argument that the appetite for learning is always present. Far beyond institutional learning, the value of an education can be measured in emotional suc-cesses.

Having a strong sense of self-worth and confidence allows people to know and appreciate their role in society.

Anthony Meagher’s Oshawa location sees more than 300 stu-dents enrol each year. Continuing Education is not only career-driv-en, but can also be motivated by

personal interests and a need for self-improvement.

Even though she didn’t finish high school in the regular way, Croft managed to find an alterna-tive. She says a quick Google search lead her to the Continuing Education head office, where she enrolled shortly after an encour-aging conversation with supportive staff.

The con-ed school works to carve out pathways for returning students from youth to old age. Programs are updated regularly to ensure that they remain relevant and prepare students for the work-ing world.

Romina Cain is responsible for program updates and co-ordina-tion. She is the program leader at Anthony Meagher. Since Septem-ber, she’s had the task of selecting and organizing programs offered along with program development and marketing.

To decide which programs to

update or add, Cain looked to a re-cent development study conducted for the Durham Catholic District School Board’s Continuing Educa-tion program.

“It was a review of what’s going on in continuing education and the options and plan of action to help it grow and essentially f lourish.”

Cain says a number of factors are considered before a program gets approval from Principal Jim Wilson and Vice-Principal Keith Wan.

“There’s a lot of moving parts in putting in a new program,” Cain says, adding that market share, job potential, student need, finances and instructor availability are all considered. “Usually it’s all based on need.”

Needs and wants seem to both tip the scales for students at An-thony Meagher, that is what sec-ondary school teacher Samantha Fortier believes after teaching at the school for two years. Fortier says teaching in con-ed has al-lowed her to learn a lot about the variety of reasons that lead stu-dents to their doors.

Fortier says the biggest chal-lenge in teaching con-ed is at-tendance. “We can start off with upwards of 22 students at the start of the semester. Commitment is a big issue, trying to motivate them to keep coming back can be hard, sometimes you can end a semester with seven or eight,” says Fortier.

“In the regular high school

graduation is almost taken for granted,” says Fortier. She has taught in regular high school for 18 years before moving to con-ed.

Shivonna Croft didn’t take graduation for granted. In order to complete her Ontario Second-ary School Diploma, Croft is tak-ing a dual-credit class, which al-lows her to make up missed high school credits while preparing for post-secondary school.

Croft says the program allowed her to continue her education, which was initially interrupted by personal issues.

Fortier says con-ed students like Croft know what it’s like to have tried and failed for a plethora of reasons through traditional school-ing, and believes that graduation through con-ed is special.

“To see that goal suddenly be-come something that’s now attain-able and then to actually get it is a big thing,” says Fortier.

Unlike Catholic High School, the public and Catholic continuing education programs share similar morals, by promoting positive be-haviour and a sense of responsibil-ity in the community.

“With con-ed it’s a little bit dif-ferent, we have people from differ-ent faiths coming in, we have Mus-lims and we have Hindus,” Fortier explains, adding that religious practices are not enforced at Con-Ed, but the school makes a point to encourage students to ref lect on their faith, love and positivity in

every aspect of life.“It’s the same message, it’s about

reminding people of their duties as a human being in the community.” says Fortier.

Program leader Romina Cain also provides leadership for stu-dents in co-operation with Princi-pal Jim Wilson.

Cain implemented a few new programs at Ajax before being transferred to Oshawa. Cain shares Fortier’s sentiments, believing that it is important to have continuing education programs in place so that people can successfully fulfill their roles in society.

“It’s crucial to extend educa-tion for young people, or for ma-ture students as well who want to go back and upgrade,” Cain says, adding that continuing education programs allow people to develop their skills and prepare for life ahead.

“It’s really important to have that public service out there so that anybody from any walk of life can access education.”

Upon completion of her du-al-credit course, Croft plans to attend Durham College enrolling into the Child and Youth Worker program.

A stop in education however brief, or extended, does not need to be the end of all educational pur-suits.

Education can continue for as long as there are students who are ready to learn.

Photograph by Sherise Peart-Kent



Alternative education shaping student success

8 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca News


Normally when you walk into a high school library you expect to find books and

students and this is true for Father Leo J. Austin Catholic Secondary School in Whitby. But what you will also find in their library in the corner is a memorial made up of donated uniforms and assorted pictures of soldiers who fought in the First World War and Second World War. When look-ing at the various items you may develop a sense of wonder at what these brave men went through and why they fought, and and in some cases, die for their country.

The battle that took place at Vimy Ridge was the first time all four divisions of the Canadian Ex-peditionary Force participated in

a battle. More the 50,000 soldiers died in

this battle and because of the in-credible sacrifices made the monu-ment was unveiled the memorial on 26 July 1936 and the monument is the centrepiece of a 100-hectare (250-acre) preserved park.

The whole point to taking stu-dents to Vimy Ridge is to show respect for those who fell and have

students grasp the impact of a place that holds meaning not just for Canadians but others such as the French. Also to show students what freedom truly costs not just in the world wars, but everyday.

Susan Clancy, teacher and librar-ian at Father Leo J. Austin Catholic Seconday School and Tour Group Leader, has been helping students with every aspect of the trip from planning to getting home safely.

“When we go to these different places there is profound sense of re-spect and they really grab the fact that so many people died, when you see the names on the tombstones but what really affects the students are the ages,” says Clancy.

This trip helps students connect with the past and find what free-doms really mean.

In many cases students walk away with a wider outlook and apprecia-

tion for their roots. The learning aspect is not just

about reading the history books but also going to the locations and feeling the weight of history.

“I think that what happened real-ly comes back to our students when they touch the names and they see what was once a battlefield and is now farmlands,” says Clancy.

Within the school library at Father Leo J. Austin, if you look closely, you will see pictures of the students who have taken the trip to the Vimy Ridge Memorial and how much they all learned from the experience.

“At that time in history the Can-adian f lag didn’t have a maple leaf on it but you can see carvings of maple leaves in the trenches and that really helps the students link to were they are and they can real-ly connect to the memories,” says Clancy.

There is so much projects like this can teach but also have the power to change the way we interact and engage with the world.

Austin students


The Vimy Ridge memorial in the library at Father Leo J. Austin Catholic Secondary School in Whitby.

When we go to these different places there is this profound

sense of respect.



VIMY RIDGE

:



The learning commons provides students with a place to study, socialize, and work with friends or on their own.

New appeal to Pereyma


The learning commons at Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic Secondary School has only been part of the school for a year.

Kyle JohnsonThe Chronicle

What are the first thoughts that come to mind when you think of a learning

commons in a school? Perhaps you think of a great physical and virtual learning environment or maybe a place that has rich information and the best technology. Or maybe even a place where studying and focus can be promoted to its fullest. Well, all those benefits and more take place at the new learning com-mons in the library of Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic Secondary School in Oshawa.

The learning commons has only been in use since the beginning of the school year but there are many reasons why it is going to be bene-ficial for Monsignor John Pereyma. One being that the learning com-mons promotes success as its main goal by providing a place that’s con-venient where students can gather to work or study in peace. Different from your average library, the learn-ing commons contains some of the most advanced learning resources and technology. The last critical reason is that the learning commons is quite simply the future of learning.

The Durham Catholic District School Board announced the plans of this renovation to Monsignor John Pereyma CSS in November of last year in hopes of accommo-dating the new grade seven to twelve program.

This new learning commons will encourage the success of all students in the school. The school librarian, Melody Walters, has many reasons why she thinks the new learning commons will have a positive im-pact on the students.

Walters says that it’s a lot brighter. “Interesting seating and different arrangements fosters group work,” she says. “It has more interesting places for the students to sit and work. They’re not all structural places but more casual places.” Wal-ters adds that the commons creates a different attitude towards learning.

According to the Ontario Librar-ian Association (OLA), a learning commons is a vibrant, whole-school approach, presenting excit-ing opportunities for collaboration among teachers, teacher-librarians and students.

Schools these days are getting very advanced with the technology they provide for students to do work

on. According to the website for the American Association of School Li-brarians, today’s students learn in a dynamic world where informa-tion changes and expands as fast as technological innovation. The technology in the new learning com-mons of Monsignor John Pereyma CSS consists of a large number of technological devices such as iPads, iPods and eBooks. These will benefit the students in many different ways. “Every student has access to a de-vice. They are able to get all their information on a cloud. They don’t need to bring in other devices,” says the school’s principal, Christopher

Cuddy. “They are able to access their school work and anything they’re saving like their own per-sonal work and that allows them to not have to carry around textbooks and carry around paper.”

On top of those two positive as-pects associated with the new learn-ing commons in Monsignor John Pereyma CSS, the learning com-mons will help students in ways that haven’t been used in the past. Not only does the learning commons provide students with advanced technology, the physical environ-ment of the learning commons helps the students learn by providing a

quiet place with minimal distrac-tion.

“The library learning commons is the physical and virtual collab-orative learning hub of the school,” says the OLA. “It is designed to engineer and drive future-oriented learning and teaching throughout the entire school.” These were only a couple ways the new learning commons has and will continue to benefit Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic Secondary School. The learning commons will allow stu-dents to rearrange furniture in order to accommodate planning sessions or secure a quiet place in a corner

or by a window. This movability is key to creating a dynamic learning space.

But will other high schools, or even colleges and universities, real-ize how smart of an investment a learning commons is or will they continue to do things the old-fash-ioned way? Eventually there will be a learning commons in almost every school. The advanced tech-nology and fresh ideas that come with these new learning spaces may soon be mainstream. Until then, if you attend a school with a learning commons, you should take full ad-vantage of it.



Minimal distraction in learning commons

Tabitha ReddekopThe Chronicle

What do kale, chia seeds and black pudding all have in common? They are superheroes in the world of food, prized by healthy eaters for their nu-tritional benefits. Black pudding is a new addition to health food trends. Its recent claim to fame came after a British online health food com-pany called, Muscle Foods, declared black pudding the new ‘super food’ of 2016. British papers, including the Independent and the Guardian, immediately picked up the story. But is this new health food right for Canadians? Despite the alleged nutritional benefits and long history of black pudding, its taste may keep many Canadians from chowing down on this traditional delicacy from across the pond.

The main ingredient in black pudding, otherwise known as blood pudding or blood sausage, is…you guessed it, blood. Yum. Pig’s blood is mixed with onions, oatmeal or barley, along with seasonings and then stuffed into the pig’s intestine. After being cooked, it is often con-sumed as part of a traditional Irish,

Scottish or English breakfast. The dish has been awarded the

‘super food’ title because it is low on carbs and fat, while high in iron. The high iron content from the pig’s blood is one of its chief val-ues. According to The University Hospital of Southampton, the pud-ding contains three times as much iron in one 30-gram piece as a slice of beef three times its size. Iron de-ficiency is the leading mineral in-sufficiency in the world, according to the World Health Organization. But 97 per cent of Canadians are not considered iron deficient, says a 2011 Stats Canada report. Of larger concern, perhaps, is the fact that the World Health Organiza-tion lists the dish as a possible car-cinogen.

Though newly in the spotlight, black pudding is no stranger to the dinner table. It’s known as a break-fast dish from Ireland or England; it is not limited to the breakfast platter.

Many people serve it as a side at dinner or lunch and even as a snack. Even Henry the 8th served the dish at his lavish banquets, along with whale and peacock. The first mention of black pudding

is in Homer’s Odyssey, which was written in 800 B.C. The book de-scribes a stomach filled with blood roasted over a fire, similar to black pudding. Though the pudding has a rich history, rich in taste is an-other story.

Even though pudding may be in its name, it looks nothing like the pudding most Canadians are familiar with. It’s roughly the size and shape of a hockey puck and its spongy appearance resembles an over-sized two-bite brownie. But don’t let its cake-like appearance fool you. The pudding emits a pun-gent odour that is reminiscent of cooked ground beef without any spices. The patty crumbles away when you take a bite, leaving you with a mouth full of dry meat cake. It can be best described as sea-soned-less meatloaf that sat in the sun a little too long.

The cake-like texture mixed with the beefy f lavour is what is most disconcerting about the dish. It is definitely not a first date food. You think garlic is bad on a date? One whiff of your black pudding breath will be enough to send your date running all the way to Ireland.

Though black pudding seems

like a worthwhile investment for countries with large iron deficien-cies, most Canadians will want to stick to other meats for their daily iron needs. But if you prefer your meat in a cake format, dig right in. Black pudding is one trend, like wearing UGGs, Canadians should take a pass on.

If you want to get your hands

on black pudding, here are some places around Durham Region you can get the dish.

White Heather Scottish Bakery: 209 Dundas Street, Whitby.

O’Hara’s Irish Times Pub: 1400 Bayly Street Unit #3, Pickering.

Paisley's - The Wee British Shoppe: 59 King Street W, Bow-manville.

10 The Chronicle January 26-February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca Campus

Mariah PardyThe Chronicle

Gun safety may be a topic of debate, but here on campus the UOIT-DC Firearms Association is giving stu-dents the chance to safely learn how to handle a firearm.

The association is offering the campus’s first Canadian Firearms Safety Course at the Oshawa Shriners Club on Jan. 30-31.

The UOIT-DC Firearms Asso-ciation is hosting two courses back to back. These are the Canadian Firearms Safety Course (CFSC) and the Canadian Restricted Fire-arms Safety Course (CRFSC).

The CFSC and CRFSC are both designed to give attendees a basic understanding of the laws that apply to storing, transporting, as well as safe handling of a fire-arm. Both courses are completed

with a written and practical hand-ling test to ensure that necessary skills and knowledge have been

learned. Josh Haviland, the president of

the UOIT-DC Firearms Associ-ation, says the course provides fun-damental skills needed to ensure safe handling and operation of any firearm that an attendee may come into contact with.

He also says that having a fire-arms license can benefit any indi-vidual that may come into contact with a firearm in their lifetime during employment or for any fu-ture endeavours.

“I suggest individuals take the course because it is one of the greatest sports in the world. Fire-arm owners have a strong base and involvement in lawful sport shoot-ing both recreationally and com-petition,” said Haviland. “This course gives exposure and allows attendees to further explore the heritage and history Canada has

to offer furthering the traditions to future generations.”

To obtain a firearms license an application must be sent to the RCMP. The application cost is $60 for a non-restricted only license or $90 for the restricted license. The costs of the courses are $165 for the CFSC and $125 for the CRFSC.

Haviland says attendees of the courses are safely welcomed into a community with extensive history, tradition and culture that includes both hunting as well as target shooting.

“New shooters routinely are welcomed to ranges across Can-ada with open helpful arms by more experienced range goers,” said Haviland. “I myself have been shown tricks and tips as well as helped numerous young shooters improve their experience and per-formance at the range.”

To complete the course, an in-class period must be attended. The CFSC is a 12-hour class and the CRFSC is six hours. Attendees must also complete and pass both a written and practical handling examination.

Haviland says safety is the asso-ciation’s first priority when hand-ling a firearm.

“To ensure safety at all times live ammunition is not allowed to be present inside the classroom,” says Haviland.

If you are interested in ob-taining your firearms license, visit durhamfirearmcourses.com. Here you can register and pay for the courses online.

For any further questions you can visit both the website or email the UOIT-DC Firearms Asso-ciation at [email protected].

individuals take the course

because it is one

sports in the

Photograph by Tabitha Reddekop

The White Heather Scottish Bakery on Dundas Street in Whitby is one of the few places in Durham that sells the traditional dish, blood pudding.

In for a bloody treat

The Chronicle

Gavin Wright is a student at one of the schools the Durham Catholic District

School Board (DCDSB) operates in the region. Wright is in grade six and struggles with writing and spelling and because of this the DCDSB has provided him the necessary software to achieve his goals.

“Because I struggle with my spelling, and writing, my laptop has Word Q and Dragon.Word Q helps me spell and Dragon lets me speak into it and my words come out. Kurzweil helps with my read-ing because it will read what I scan into it,”said Wright.

Kate Remiz, a Student Services Coordinator of Assistive Technol-

ogy, said the school board is using voice to text and text to speech software such as Dragon Natur-ally Sound, Kurzweil, and organ-izational software Such as Smart Ideas to help students reach their full potential.

Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) is one of the text to speech software Ramirez has been rec-

ommending for students who are not proficient at typing or may have issues with mobility.

With DNS students can use their voice to perform tasks such as search the web, send emails, and write documents with Microsoft Word. Kurzweil is another text to speech software that the DCDSB is using to help its students. With Kurzweil students can listen to their textbooks being read to them on their devices.

“Text-to-speech software is well-received by our classroom teachers and teachers are support-ive of our students who use tech-nology to support their learning. A common misconception about our students with unique learning needs is that they are unable to meet the demands of the curricu-lum. This is not true. These are

really smart students who, with the support of Assistive Technol-ogy, are able to problem-solve, col-laborate, and share their thoughts and ideas,” said Remiz.

Remiz says she has also faced challenges in implementing the technology.

"In terms of assistive technol-ogy, there can be some challenges. Research shows that if a student isn't ready to have a piece of as-sistive technology, then they won't use the assistive technology and will revert back to using paper and pen.

"Therefore, our team of Assis-tive Technology Specialists take time to assess the needs of our stu-dents to ensure they are ready to receive the technology.

"Once the assistive technology is in the hands of our students, the

Assistive Technology Specialists train the students to use the differ-ent assistive software. Our students are always supported by the Assis-tive Technology Team, as well as by the Program Support Teachers and the Classroom Teachers in the schools,” said Remiz.

A 2007 survey done by Statis-tics Canada, found that 3.2 per cent of Canadian children have a learning disability and in a 2012 survey Statistics Canada found 2.3 per cent of adults ages 15-24 reported having a learning dis-ability.

According to the Learning Dis-abilities Association of Canada, assistive technology can bene-fit children such as Wright with learning disabilities by improving their confidence and self-esteem, and independence.




Photograph by Sean Heeger

Sean HeegerThe Chronicle

If you don’t know about Ajax, Ont., chances are you’ll hear from a resi-dent that it’s quite a nice place to live. This town by the lake is home to an ever-growing population of almost 110,000 people, and some of the nicest communities east of Toronto.

But Ajax Town Council has recent-ly come up with a five-point plan to take care of a problem some residents didn’t know it had. This problem happens to be cleaning up an abundance litter. These steps include: Improving infrastructure (removing around 500 garbage only receptacles, and adding more visible recycling bins), increasing the awareness of litter,

encouraging community pride and involvement, enforcement of laws surrounding litter, and keeping areas like parks and frequented public spaces clean.This plan, coined the “Anti-Litter Action Plan” aims to divert 83 per cent from landfills by using recyc-ling and organic waste removal. Currently, the Town diverts about 50 per cent of its garbage, according

to the town’s environmental sustain-ability co-ordinator, Jade Schofield. Marilyn Crawford, the ward one councillor for Ajax, is aware that most people wouldn’t realize this is an issue. “This isn’t always noticeable but when someone has a bottle they don’t want to carry, or a piece of trash they missed throwing into the garbage can that they don’t want

to pick up it becomes a problem for everyone and that means we need to take care of it,” said Coun. Craw-ford. Last year the town spent over $390,000 on litter cleanup which equates to almost a one per cent tax hike.According to waste audits over 373 tonnes of garbage and 250 tonnes of recyclables were collected last year.

Cleaning up the litter in the Town of Ajax


Slap tagging new fad among street artistsAlex RossThe Chronicle

The city tries hard to keep the streets clean from vandalism and hide the passion of its less conven-tional citizens. Artists are very pas-sionate people and everyone does not always appreciate their method of expression.

There are many different forms of graffiti. Some pieces are small and inconspicuous, while others can span entire buildings and their main purpose is to attract the atten-tion of people walking or driving down the street. Although there is such thing as gang graffiti, it is not the only type, and should not be seen as the norm for graffiti artists.

Graffiti isn’t just about painting on buildings or carving your name on a bathroom stall. There are many pieces of beautiful work cov-ering the streets of any major city that are far from the workings of gangs.

“I think that people just associate graffiti with the wrong thing most of the time,” says local artist Sever. Sever is based around Oshawa and has many contacts and friends with-in the graffiti community.

There is more to graffiti than so-ciety gives it credit for, says Sever. “Don’t get me wrong, there is such thing as gang graffiti, but that’s not the stuff that’ll make me stop on the side of the road and think ‘shit, that is unbelievable.’”

There is an initiative happening

in Toronto called Lovebot and the goal is to inspire people and show that they’re loved. The movement started as a project of local Toron-tonian Matthew Del Degan, an OCAD University graduate. The movement has grown beyond the small project he started and is now known as the Global Love Invasion.

“He does it to remind people of love and kindness,” says Julia In-vacic. “I am a Lovebot leader along with a few others who help drive

the Love Invasion to its max poten-tial.” Ivancic is an artist based out of Mississauga, who often goes to Toronto to meet with the Lovebot groups and keep in touch with her community.

The group makes large concrete robots to capture people’s eye and also smaller more manageable posters and stickers to slap on walls around the city. “I’m just in the small group of people that help him out. We make concrete lovebots

every summer in the blazing heat… It’s hard labour, but we also help cut out posters for him and organize the products,” says Ivancic.

The workers with the Lovebot movement may be trying to get their name out into the city, but it’s for a good cause. Some artists deface buildings and signs just to get their names out into the city with no posi-tive effect, and often a negative one. Ivancic says artists should have in-tegrity when making graffiti pieces.

“I think graffiti should stick to the back alleys,” says Ivancic. “But art-ists want everyone to see their name so they will try and get anything visible to the public from the road.”

However, using stickers may be a lot quicker and much lower risk of being caught, some artists, like Ivancic and Sever believe it is cheat-ing. “It only takes three seconds, compared to a tag that takes ten seconds and a throwie that takes two to three minutes,” says Ivancic.

Having the pre-loaded stickers with small tags do offer the artist more time to add details and make them more personal. Even though the artist can put more time into the sticker it takes away from the ef-fort that writers, people that tag by hand, put into each piece of work. Not only do other artists look down on the stickers because of the easily printable mass-produced stickers and the community doesn’t ap-preciate the sticky paper and goop left behind on walls, according to Ivancic.

The competing artists don’t think printed stickers that can be easily slapped with little effort make for fair competition.

“It’s cheating, and an easy way out to getting your name up,” says Ivancic.

There is much controversy in the graffiti community regarding stick-ers and painting and whether they are a more or less effective way of getting noticed. to property and not appreciated by the community.

Photograph by Alex Ross

Graffiti artist CROS is one of many artists that use the slap tagging method. Most often found on signs and utility boxes to be noticed.

16 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca Campus

Photograph by Sachin Bahal

Many Canadians worry as the loonie now trades for about 68 American cents.

Zombies, blood, and media conferences Alyssa BuggThe Chronicle

The loud screech of an air raid siren fills the air of a dimly lit room as a zombie appears from the darkness. This wasn’t a scene from The Walk-ing Dead or a zombie movie, this was the atmosphere of the Zombie Blood Drive, created by a group of second-year Public Relations (PR) students at Durham College.

The Zombie Blood Drive was just one example of the mock media conferences conducted by PR stu-dents as part of the second year of the PR program.

According to the PR program co-ordinator, Lynn Gough, the project serves to provide students with the venue to create a media conference as close to real-life industry stan-dards as possible.

Gough came to the PR program more than 15 years ago after serv-ing 10 years with the CBC as a journalist and as a press officer for MarketPlace and The Fifth Estate. With her she brought the experience and knowledge of what skills are in-tegral for students heading into the industry.

“I knew that students needed to have a real-life experience if they were going to go out there and work with journalists and give the journalists what they need,” said Gough. “[For the conference] they have to transform this room. When I used to work at CBC, I sometimes had a theatre or sometimes a small boardroom. You have to make it in-viting for journalists and you have to be able to pitch your cause.”

The media conference project is three-fold:

The proposalDuring this step, students are re-

quired to choose a real-life organ-ization, conduct thorough research and interviews with the organiza-tion and pitch the idea to Gough.

The Zombie Blood Drive group-came up with the idea when team member Sam Pender was looking into giving blood at the time. The idea to represent Canadian Blood Services came about with the goal of obtaining a greater amount of young blood donors. With the

younger demographic in mind, the Zombie Blood Drive idea followed close behind.Preparation

Once approved, students begin to brainstorm ways to present their event or cause to the media.

This includes a media kit, which includes a list of ten journalists, which students were required to contact and invite to the media conference.

For this part of the project, the Zombie Blood Drive group pre-

pared a media kit using a large en-velope with ‘Confidential’ stickers, giving it an official, government case file feel about a zombie out-break. The group included a promo-tional poster, stickers, T-shirt and press release within their kit – all original works by the group. Conference

For the media conference, stu-dents were required to “transform” the room, announce their event or cause and bring in a speaker rep-resentative for the organization,

which, according to Gough, helps put a story to the cause and creates a story for the attending media.

The conference is where the Zombie Blood Drive group went all out. They hosted their conference in one of the photo studios on campus, which gave it a dark, “industrial” feel and had someone walk around dressed as a zombie.

Melissa Smith-McGuire, terri-tory manager for Durham Region at Canadian Blood Services, came in to speak about the importance of donating blood and sharing her own story about needing a life-sav-ing transfusion.

If the zombie theme wasn’t enough, their conference wasn’t without its excitement.

“It was kind of funny because someone ended up fainting during our presentation, and our guest speaker like ran out and kind of saved the day,” said Lisa Presta, an-other member of the Zombie Blood Drive group. “At the end of the con-ference, we had people asking if that whole thing was scripted. It wasn’t.”

According to Presta, the event took a lot of time, teamwork and co-ordination to plan, but she feels the experience was invaluable to her career.

“It was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. I came out of the whole thing feeling really accom-plished and feeling like I gained tons of experience for the real world,” said Presta. “Being able to work in a team is so important in the cor-porate world, and I am so thank-ful all of my team members Sam Pender, Eddie Rhodes and Dylan Cooper who helped knock it out of the park.”

U-Pass hike: Students fighting the 25 per cent increaseChris RegoThe Chronicle

DC-UOIT students have to wait until February to see if the U-PASS cost will increase by 25 per cent.

A Durham Regional Transit Executive Committee (DRTEC) was held December 2 to decide on the possible increase to the U-PASS.

The Student Association (SA)

went to share its thoughts and had three buses filled with concerned students.

DRTEC decided to delay the de-cision on the U-PASS due to stu-dent concerns about what the cost increase could mean for them and what it could do to tuition costs, ac-cording to SA president, Jesse Cul-len. The decision could be made at the meeting to be held in February, Cullen says.

“It was a small victory for stu-dents but we still didn’t get the result we wanted. We wanted a ‘no’ vote but a postponement is definitely bet-ter then a ‘yes’,” said Cullen.

Those at the meeting spoke out about how this increase could be a serious deterrent to potential stu-dents and how it could affect the number of new applicants to DC-UOIT.

Maxim Alaghar, a first year DC

engineering student, is concerned about what the 25 per cent increase could mean for him and his fellow students.

Currently, students pay $103 per semester but if the cost goes up it will go to $120 per semester and may increase to $135 by the sum-mer of 2017.

“It’s a terrible idea. The students will have to pay more and the school will probably not include it into the

tuition,” said Alaghar. According to several students,

many are unaware of what is hap-pening within the community.

The U-PASS increase affects all students, whether they use the bus pass or not.

If the motion to increase the cost passes, then it will be moved to the Financial and Administration Committee and then to the Region-al Council for the final decision.

The highs and lows of the loonieSachin BahalThe Chronicle

The fall of our dollar against the U.S. buck may not be such a bad thing for some.

While for others, it may seem like the worst thing in the world.

One Canadian dollar trades at around 68 American cents. Peter Stasiuk, an economics professor at Durham College, says “The low dollar isn’t always a complete disas-ter, just some sectors of the economy won’t do as well.”

Stasiuk says that one of the main causes for making our dollar tumble is the cost of Canadian oil exports. The oil that we sell to other coun-tries is mainly produced in Alberta.

Since Canada is producing more oil than what is being consumed, that has caused the price of oil to go

down. That mean there isn’t much demand for the Canadian dollar, according to Stasiuk.

Stasiuk also says that the issues with oil in Alberta aren’t going to affect Ontario as much but we should expect lower gas prices.

He says, “It’s not the end of the world but for some sectors, it will be a challenge, for Alberta it’s a tem-porary end of the world.”

Oil companies aren’t the only ones who are going to be affected by the low dollar. He says compan-ies that have to buy their materials and import them from the United States, will be hurt because it will cost them more to import.

There are some industries that will benefit from the low loonie. Sta-siuk says exporters of goods will be at an advantage because the more

Canada exports, more money will be coming into Canada rather than going out.

The same goes for Canadian companies which supply U.S. in-dustries. Stasiuk says that those American companies are going to buy more from Canadian suppliers than from suppliers in the U.S. be-cause it will be cheaper for them.

Stasiuk says that Canadians won’t be be travelling to the U.S. as much but American tourists will be coming here and they’ll be buy-ing things from us and that’s more income going into the Canadian economy.

“People who stay in Canada and spend money in Canada and they earn Canadian dollars, it won’t make any difference what the dollar is,” says Stasiuk.

Photograph by Lisa Presta

(From left to right) Public Relations students Samantha Pender, Dylan Cooper, Dillon McGregs (the zombie), Lisa Presta, and Eddie Rhodes hosted The Zombie Blood Drive.


Photograph by Amanda Ramlal

Linda Marco is Durham College's new associate vice-


Vietnam, is a country rich in hist-ory, is investigating new education-al programs for development. With this in mind the newly formed Hau Giang Community College’s presi-dent Ha Hone Van, and his team, visited Durham College (DC) re-cently to learn all about DC’s farm-ing and agriculture programs.

The visits opened on October 27th with a meet and greet with DC president Don Lovisa and president Mr. Van. With gifts exchanged, the Vietnamese visitors were ready for tours of the DC campuses.

The purpose of the visit was to help create a new academic pro-gram for the Vietnamese commun-

ity college that focuses on industry engagement in Vietnam.

Wendy Smith, a professor at Dur-ham College, is part of this initia-tive. “They are not organized like we are and we are helping them to develop a curriculum,” says Smith.

DC staff went to Hau Giang Community College in November 2015 and plan to go again in Febru-ary 2016 to learn from their college framework and to see how DC best practices can help support their cur-riculum development process.

The visitors took tours of the Greenwood Mushroom Farm in Ashburn and Algoma Orchards in Clarington to see how these in-dustries work in Canada. The tours illuminated how DC has created a positive relationship with industry and the roles DC students play in

the agriculture industry as well as what they bring to the proverbial table.

President Van claims that Viet-namese colleges are not currently organized to create relationships with industries within Vietnam due to strict rules put in place, by the their government. Van also claims with new programs in place Vietnamese students may be able to change the industry from within and as such would create a more open market, not just for agricul-ture, but also within other fields of industry.

“It’s been really interesting and I am really fascinated to learn how they do things, I am astonished to how similar it is and it feels good to be able to help them build their own strategies,” says Smith.


DC has plans to visit Vietnam

Survey suggests that downtown Oshawa is safe for allTaylor WainesThe Chronicle

Is The ‘Shwa safe for LGBTQ members? The Durham LGBTQ Communities Involved Commit-tee asked both those who identify as LGBTQ and straight men and women this in a survey.

Members of the LGBTQ com-munity came forward after experi-encing verbal homophobia and one incident of property damage in a hate-related crime, which initiated the survey.

“The results of the survey showed that the feeling of those that iden-tified as LGBTQ and the general public were about the same,” said Mark Hammann, co-chair of the Durham LGBTQ Communities Involved Committee.

Overall, the perception is that downtown Oshawa is safe.

Hammann said he was surprised to see that of the 262 respondents, 21.5 per cent identify as being LG-BTQ in the survey.

“That’s high because the con-sidered average is about 10 to 15 per cent of the population,” Ham-mann said.

Though many felt downtown Oshawa is safe, more women cited it as being unsafe than men, with 72.1 per cent of women saying they felt safe compared to to the 80 per cent of men.

Another trend was time of day, as more people said it was more unsafe at night than in the day time.

“Is this standard across the board for other communities or is this unique to Oshawa?” Hammann asked.

Hammann says the survey brought up more questions that will need more research.

From poorly lit areas and prop-erty owners not taking care of their buildings, questions remain about how to improve the downtown, he said.

The next step, according to Ham-mann, is to create more safety for LGBTQ members downtown, in-cluding but not limited to, training business owners in the downtown core.

The committee held an event January 19th, at the Arts Resource Centre in Downtown Oshawa, to speak to the community about the survey results, but no members of the community showed up

Hammann said that the com-mittee is not discouraged at the turnout.

“My take is that people were pleased with the results of the sur-vey and therefore did not attend,” said Hammann.

With Hammann’s questions an-swered, he says the committee is willing to work with any other com-munity groups to conduct similar surveys.

The report has been made avail-able to anyone who would like to read it, and councillors and the mayor are aware of this study, Hammann said.

Amanda Ramlal The Chronicle

Durham College welcomes back alumna, Linda Marco, as its new associate vice-president Office of Development and Alumni Affairs. Marco graduated in 1988. She says she is delighted to come work at the college and have the opportunity to better things for the students.

Her role in the Office of Develop-ment will be to manage the school’s development portfolio. That in-cludes fundraising for the college, whether it be scholarships, new buildings or equipment. She will also be working with the Alumni office, which maintains contact with more than 73,000 graduates, and keeping them connected with the college.

“Once you graduate from Dur-ham College you are an alumnist for life. Some choose to be active in their role as alumni and some do not,” she says.

Marco will be looking for new ways to inspire Durham College graduates to stay connected with the school. She wants to see a more integrated approach between alumni and fundraising. She says they currently work with what feels like two separate organizations but she wants to bring them together.

“I really hope that students look at me and see me as a graduate of the college and know that they can do anything that they want to do in life,” she says. “The fact that I’m a graduate makes it really special.”Durham College president Don Lovisa says, “we are thrilled to welcome Linda back.” Marco says she never thought she would be come back to the college. But she feels grateful Lovisa has put his faith in her for this role.

Marco graduated from Durham College with a public relations diploma as well as a fundrais-ing management certificate from Ryerson University in 1993. Marco

says she learned how to write well, gained great organizational skills and learned how to manage rela-tions while she was in school.

“To this day, I still use the skills I learned,” she says.

Some of her favourite past fund-raising experiences were working as Director of Development for the Children’s Wish Foundation from 2002 to 2011. She has worked with Scientists in the School, which helped elementary school students further their education in science. She has also and raised money for capital projects at Lakeridge Health Foundation.

Marco believes her communi-cation skills are what got her these jobs but her love for both people and fundraising is what helped her progress over the years. She says 30 years of experience has led her to this role.

“I’m really excited to be back! I really feel like I’m coming back… I’m coming home,” says Marco.

New vice-president hopes to inspire students to stay connected

18 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca Entertainment

Entertainment

Mariah PardyThe Chronicle

David Bowie left a mark on the world with his iconic fashion state-ments and changed the world of fashion with his ability to push the conventional boundaries and intro-duce out of the ordinary trends.

Gender Bending In the late 1960’s Bowie intro-

duced the idea of it being okay for men to wear dresses and to dress outside of the social “norms”. Bowie demonstrated this in his The Man Who Stole

The World album cover where he was seen wearing a satin gold and blue gown.

He also incorporated gender bending into his look with a face full of makeup ref lecting one of his most popular personas, Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy Stardust

Remaining as one of Bowie’s most memorable personas, Ziggy Stardust completely jumped over “casual dress” in the 1970’s and introduced a number of trends.

Bowie made face painting, eye patches and leotards not only a

memory from your childhood but a fashion movement by incorporat-ing different patterns and symmetry into his look.Berlin Bowie

In the late 1970’s, Bowie took a

simple and tame look compared to his glam Ziggy Stardust wardrobe he styled just a few years before.

This look consisted of high-waist-ed trousers and loose T’s and an oc-casional sailor hat.

Capes for a HeroBowie lived up to his famous hit

“Heroes” with his choice of ward-robe: a cape.

He bedazzled his audienceand made the cape a signature look.

Coloured SuitsThroughout the years, Bowie

stood out with his coloured suits. He showed the world that even one of the most traditional outfits can be worn with a little spunk.

Photograph by Mariah Pardy

The late David Bowie expressed himself and introduced iconic fashion statements to the world.

Alex RossThe Chronicle

Every month the Robert McLaugh-lin Gallery (RMG) hosts a myriad of events and workshops for its mem-bers. On the second Thursday of each month they hold a critique, called Crit Crowd, for local artists who are either established in the community or simply first time artists looking for help.

This past Crit Crowd was only the second critique held by the RMG. Greg Murphy, the Dean of the school of Media, Art and Design at Durham College, hosted the first critique on Dec. 10th.

Each month RMG gets a differ-ent facilitator who has a ‘name’ in a professional capacity in the arts community.

“My personal goal was to get people together to create an en-vironment that is so supportive of each other,” said Leslie Menagh, RMG manager of public programs and ArtReach, who also took on the role of the local art professional.

The group meeting is meant to feel as safe as possible for the artists.

“Everyone is in a state of vulner-ability and put their artwork out against a wall and walks around,” said Menagh. “It’s sort of like a show and tell.”Menagh keeps all of the criticisms on a positive note to try

to help the artists further their work, either on the specific piece or with their style in general.

According to Menagh, the goal of the critique is to keep an art school

vibe where everybody helps each other by giving positive feedback about their work, something that is hard to come by as an artist work-ing alone.

The qualifications for the pieces to be shown are very lenient. They can be any medium or style, how-ever the majority of them are paint on canvas, said Menagh.

There were good and bad things related to the majority of paint on canvas.

Some of the good was that the people critiquing knew what they were talking about.

However, the bad was that there were less fresh eyes to the medium, said Menagh.

There were many different styles of painting at the critique and even a few different pieces of work other than just paintings.

The crowd even varied in age with some high school students in attendance all the way up to people in their 60s.

The wide variety of people in the group didn’t make the critics treat each other differently. It was a very accepting community with little to no classist, ageist, or sexist segregation.

However, there was an over-whelming amount of jargon being used, with terms like value shift and movement being thrown around like everyday words.

Only four artists participated in last month’s critique, about half of the people of this event, according to Menagh.

She hopes the great increase in visitors and participants will help the program grow and become a more popular place for artists to come for help with their work.

Photograph by Alex Ross

Mike McGowan (right) explains his piece titled 'six' to the group at Crit Crowd at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Other artists, like Suendrini

Show off your artwork and get critiqued at Crit Crowd

David Bowie: Out of the ordinaryLegendary singer was a fashion icon

Entertainment chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 - February 1, 2016 The Chronicle 19

20 years after Toy StorySachin BahalThe Chronicle

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been 20 years since the release of Toy Story.

In those two decades, two sequels have been released (with another coming in 2018), two television spe-cials have aired and three of Dis-ney’s theme parks around the world have a Toy Story-themed attraction.

In the first five days of Toy Story’s release (on Thanksgiving weekend, November 22nd 1995), it earned over $39 million.

It placed first at that weekend’s box office and it stayed at number one for the next two weekends.

Toy Story was the highest-gross-ing domestic film of 1995, beating out Batman Forever and Apollo 13.

The film gained a total of more than $362 million worldwide.

It also was the third high-est-grossing animated film after The Lion King (1994) and Alad-din (1992).

What makes the film’s story so compelling is the length of time it took to make, the size of its small production team and the fact that it was the first feature-length film done by computer animation.

Toy Story ushered in a new era of computer-animated films. Com-puter-animated films are the new normal.

Toy Story hit the big screen in 1995 but the seed for the idea for creating a computer-animated film started in the early 80’s with John Lasseter, Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith.

While Lasseter was working as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation, two of his friends at the company showed him the lightcycle scene from the movie Tron.

In this scene, Flynn, Tron and Ram are being chased by a group from the Master Control Program.

Lasseter was blown away. It got him thinking about making a fully computer-animated film.

He pitched the idea to Disney executives in 1984 but his idea was rejected and he was fired.

The executives believed the only reason to use computers for anima-tion was if it made it cheaper and faster to produce.

Lasseter went to work for Lucas-film in 1984. He worked as part of The Graphics Group in the com-puter division where Catmull and Smith had been working since 1979.

The Graphics Group team con-sisted of about 40 employees, includ-ing Lasseter, Catmull and Smith.

The Group was spun off as a corporation in February 1986 and became Pixar Animation Studios.

Pixar was founded by Catmull, Smith and Steve Jobs, who helped financially with an investment. This was shortly after Jobs was fired from Apple Inc.

With Pixar in place, Catmull, Smith and Lasseter could work on whatever they liked, including the early stages of a full–length com-

puter-animated film called Tin Toy which was the basis for Toy Story.

Lasseter created Tin Toy, a com-puter-animated short while at Pixar in 1988.

Tin Toy showed off the Pixar Image Computer's capabilities. The computer had been developed while the founders of Pixar were at Lucasfilm.

Tin Toy would go on to win the 1988 Academy Award for best ani-mated short film; it was the very first computer-generated film to do so.

Tin Toy gained Disney's attention and the new executive team at The Walt Disney Company, including CEO Michael Eisner and chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, in the film de-partment.

Computer animation was some-thing they hadn’t seen before.

Disney was still producing 2D-animated films at the time, such as The Little Mermaid (1989) and Oliver & Company (1988).

Tin Toy got Disney interested in striking a production deal with Pixar.

The idea was Pixar would do the animation while Disney would dis-tribute and market the film.

This was the chance for Lasseter, Catmull and Smith to fulfill their shared dream of creating a comput-er-animated film. That film would be Toy Story.

Toy Story was the highest-gross-ing domestic film of 1995, beating out Batman Forever and Apollo 13.

The film gained a total of more than $362 million worldwide.

It also was the third highest-gross-ing animated film after The Lion King (1994) and Aladdin (1992).

Twenty years later, Toy Story still has a 100% rating on the review aggregator site, Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 9/10.

The critic consensus for the site about the film is, “Entertaining as it is innovative, Toy Story reinvigor-ated animation while heralding the

arrival of Pixar as a family-friendly force to be reckoned with.”

Reviewers of the film hailed it for computer animation, voice cast and its ability to appeal to a number of different age groups.

Roger Ebert’s review compared the film’s innovative animation to Who Framed Roger Rabbit by saying, “both movies take apart the universe of cinematic visuals, and put it back together again, allowing us to see in a new way.”

Toy Story was ranked 8th on TIME’s “Best 10 films of 1995” and in 2011 was named one of the “25 All-TIME Best Animated Films.”

The film received and was nom-inated for numerous awards, one of which was given to John Lasseter, who received an Academy Special Achievement Award in 1996 “for the development and inspired appli-cation of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film.”

Computer animation has become increasingly more popular because it was something that audiences had not seen before and Toy Story was the first real experience for mov-ie-goers.

With Toy Story, Pixar ushered in a new media.

Pixar is continually working on new computer-animated films and shorts.

Even Disney has made the tran-sition to producing only comput-er-animated films.

They are no longer making trad-itional animated films.

Most animated films you see nowadays will be computer-gener-ated. Pixar brought in this new era of movies and they are leading it, with Disney at a close second.

So here’s to the 20th anniver-sary of Toy Story, the world’s first feature-length computer-animated film.

It will only be a few short years until the 30th anniversary. Until then, in the words of Buzz Light-year, “To Infinity and Beyond!”

Photograph by Sachin Bahal

Jeff Dunham returns to Oshawa with sold-out show

Alyssa ErwinThe Chronicle

Jeff Dunham returned to Oshawa headlining the GM Centre. But it’s what – or who – was in his suitcase that sold out the venue.

Dunham, an American comed-ian and ventriloquist, stopped in Oshawa on January 15 during his Perfectly Unbalanced tour bringing with him a grumpy retiree, a dead terrorist, a redneck, a miniature version of himself, and his pur-ple sidekick, Peanut, all of which Dunham claims to be “politically incorrect.”

Dunham announced his tour back in late September of last year

and many attendees, including a couple from Toronto, rushed to “score the best seats in the house.”

William Balfour, the marketing and group sales manager for Spec-tra Venue, announced that there was “a limited amount of tickets” being sold a few hours before the 8 p.m. show.

However, those tickets quickly sold out. Dunham opened the show with a video montage showcasing the highlights of his career.

Once on stage, Dunham enter-tained the audience with stories of the newest additions to his family, his newborn twin boys.

However, it was not long until he was joined on stage by a bitter

old man, Walter, who mocked the 53-year-old father of five for his choice to have children.

Although the show had a few hiccups, such as Dunham’s crew leaving the industrial humidifiers back at his last show in Michigan.

Dunham expressed he was thankful for his crew after they found him replacement humidifiers “to his taste” at a local Walmart in the forms of “Spongebob Squarep-ants” and “Hello Kitty.”

Dunham was quick to turn his hitches into new jokes that were brought up by many of his puppets throughout the show.

Dunham found many oppor-tunities to laugh with the crowd whether he was laughing at his own jokes, chasing a miniature version of himself, mocking the audience, or accidentally launching a puppet across the stage.

Dunham assured the roaring

crowd that he was “a professional.” Dunham ended the show with a

“group selfie” and a thank you to Oshawa for “another great night in Canada,” and for “believing in the magic” of ventriloquism before

launching miniature Peanut dolls across the venue. After his perform-ance in Oshawa, Dunham headed to Ottawa for his next show at the Canadian Tire Centre Saturday, January 16.

Photograph by Alyssa Erwin

20 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca Sports

Thursday, Jan. 28UOIT Men’s Hockey vs Carleton 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Jan. 29DC Men’s Basketball vs

Georgian 8 p.m.DC Women’s Basketball vs Georgian 6 p.m.UOIT Men’s Hockey vs RMC 12 p.m.Oshawa Generals vs Barrie

Colts 7:35 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 31Oshawa Generals vs Ottawa 6:05 p.m.

Games in your backyard

SportsEuropean baseball on the rise

Jordan EdmondsThe Chronicle

Baseball is always considered a North American sport, however, the first recorded game of baseball was in Surrey, England in 1749. Since then America, Canada, Japan and various other countries have become the real hotbeds, leaving Europe behind. With soccer being huge in Europe, it is often hard for baseball to become a first choice. “People in Europe don’t always want to watch a long and sometimes slow game, they would rather watch soccer,” said Klijn, a 2nd baseman for the Haar Disciples of the Ger-man Bundesliga.

But now seems to be the time for baseball in Europe to thrive. A steady f low of European players are getting signed by Major League or-ganizations. And it’s only a matter of time until a European born play-er makes a huge mark in the MLB. With talk of MLB playing a game in Europe by as soon as 2017, this indicates that baseball in Europe could be set to reach new heights.

Euro League Baseball (ELB) is set to kick off in 2016. It will be the first year that a professional base-ball league in Europe runs with teams from multiple European countries. There are currently two professional leagues in Europe: the Dutch Hoofdklasse and the Italian baseball league. This ELB however, will be a true ref lection of the best teams in Europe. So far, there are three teams from Germany, two from Holland, two from France, one from Italy, one from San Marino and one from the Czech Republic. Philipp Wuerfel, editor in chief of Mister-Baseball.com, a website dedicated to European baseball, says, “The big clubs in European baseball are moving forward with huge strides and would like to make money out of their passion for the sport.” So according to Wuerfel, who lives in Germany, the only way to make money is a profession-

al league.The best teams in Europe will

mostly be made up of homegrown talent, but there will be opportun-ities for overseas players, if they can pay travel and living costs.

Europe is a very attractive pros-pect for many foreign players and there are already a number of so-called ‘import’ players scattered around in different European teams. Playing in Europe gives them a different experience and is also beneficial for the teams. The players are often asked to help with coaching local children to help grow and improve the game, which is a win-win situation for all sides.

Zach Stroman, formerly a European player in England and currently a 1st baseman at Wau-bonsee Community College in Illi-nois, agrees that Europe can attract overseas players. “If the exposure is there, American players will be interested as they want to travel and play overseas, I don’t think the level will be as good, however,” he says. The idea of a true professional league is one that excites many, and it shows that baseball in Europe is making huge strides.

Another indication that base-ball in Europe is on the rise is the fact that the MLB have identified the continent as the next place for a major league game. There are already advanced talks with the operators of the Olympic stadium in London, England, about hosting the first ever MLB game in Eur-ope. Baseball is still the only major American sport yet to host a game in Europe. “That stadium, the way it’s built, actually is big enough for a baseball game. It’s not perfect, but it has some real potential,” said

MLB International’s Clive Russell back in 2012 in an interview with the Telegraph. The fact that Europe is being considered for the game is an indication of how much baseball has grown. It also indicates that the MLB feel there would be enough fans to seat a 54,000 capacity sta-dium. This is even more surprising as there are only three other sta-diums with a larger capacity in the world. Philipp Wuerfel is one of the many who feels it is realistic to ex-pect an MLB game in Europe in the not so distant future. He has a great deal of knowledge about the game in Europe; his site has information on everything to do with baseball around the continent.

“I believe it’s realistic to think about MLB games in Europe in the next five years,” says Wuerfel. “Major League Baseball is always looking for new markets and teams have played in various locations in the last couple of years. If they find a great location in a major city,

which they can promote easily, they will go for it.”

The MLB European academy is something I have a close connection to, as I was a member of training camp in both 2012 and 2013. The MLB academy is for the top 50 European prospects from across the continent and it gives the players ex-posure to professional scouts. Many former major league players have coached the camp including; Barry Larkin, Steve Finley, Tom Gordon, Dale Murphy, Wally Joyner and Bruce Hurst. Seventy-five players have been signed by major league organizations since its inaugural camp in 2005. Clearly, the talent is there. In 2013, Italian Marten Gas-parini was signed for $1.3 million by the Kansas City Royals. This was the highest signing fee a European player has ever received. Three players from the European acad-emy have also played in the MLB: Italian Alex Liddi for the Seattle Mariners, German Donald Lutz for

the Cincinnati Reds and another German born player Max Kepler for the Minnesota Twins. Kepler made his debut this year after hav-ing a fantastic season in AA with the Chattanooga Lookouts.

German pitcher Sven Schüller was signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2013 and is currently playing at the rookie level for the organization. He spoke to me dur-ing his off-season training and gave his opinion on the chances available for European players to get scout-ed. “Overall I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult to be seen in Europe but there aren’t a lot of chances, so make sure you don’t get overlooked. I think getting signed out of Europe is a combination of preparation and luck,” he said. Seventy-five players in 10 years is a clear sign that Eur-ope is going in the right direction and has plenty of talented players.

These talented players often play for their home nations. Inter-national competition and ranking is a clear indicator of how good a country is doing. Five countries from Europe are in the top 20 of the world baseball rankings, Neth-erlands are fifth, Italy 11th, Spain 17th, Germany 18th and Czech Re-public 20th. This shows that Euro-pean countries can compete with the top countries in the world. The premier 12 took place this month in Japan and Taiwan. It was a com-petition for the top 12 ranked na-tions in the world; Netherlands and Italy were Europe’s representatives. Netherlands managed to make it into the quarterfinals but eventu-ally lost to the U.S.A. With many players in both the Italy and Neth-erlands squad playing in their native countries, it was a great showing many of the other teams had ex or current pros. Great Britain national team player, Richard Klijn, felt it was a great achievement.

“Both Holland and Italy did Eur-ope proud and proved that they can compete with the best of the best,” says Klijn. “Although they didn’t win it will help grow the sport in Europe.” By European nations com-peting at the highest level possible and teams being included in the top 12 in the world, this shows that the game is improving and is clearly on the rise.

There are many positives coming out of European baseball. However, the continent as a whole still has a lot of work, if it wants to compete with the biggest nations.

Photograph by Phrake Photography

Sven Schuller, a German-born baseball player takes the

America's pastime heats up across the pond

I believe it's realistic to think about

MLB games in Europe.

Sports chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 - February 1, 2016 The Chronicle 21

The two-way coach Michael FletcherThe Chronicle

Peyvand Mossavat has been named master coach of both the men’s and women’s soccer programs for the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) Ridgebacks.

Scott Barker, manager of inter-collegiate athletics for UOIT, says they are excited to have Mossavat, who has guided the women’s pro-gram to strong results taking over on the men’s side.

“We have really liked the suc-cess he has had with the women’s team and the direction he has taken them,” says Barker.

Barker says UOIT was looking at its options for the vacant head coaching position and when they realized they could afford to bring Mossavat on in a full-time role with both programs it was something they were open to pursuing.

“The decision to bring Peyvand in as master coach took the better part of two to three months to figure out,” says Barker.

Mossavat has been able to lead the women’s team to four consecu-tive OUA playoff appearances and a bronze medal in 2014. Over the last two seasons Mossavat has also pushed the women’s program to a 21-7-4 record.

The men’s head coaching position became vacant when former coach Vaso Vujanovic announced his re-tirement after coaching on a collegi-ate level for over 30 years, including the last six years with UOIT.

“I am very excited to be in this position, coach Vaso and his staff

laid out a lot of groundwork for this team. Going forward that makes my job easier,” says Mossavat.

The opportunity for Mossavat was something he didn’t expect would happen nor was it a goal he had set out to achieve.

“This wasn’t something that I really saw coming, my main focus before this was on the women’s team,” says Mossavat.

Mossavat says he is thankful for the UOIT community for all of the support he has received since join-ing UOIT and having this oppor-tunity presented to him.

Mossavat and the Ridgebacks are currently in the process of select-ing members for the men’s coaching staff.

Photograph by The Athletic Department

Peyvand Mossavat is now coach of both the men's and women's UOIT soccer teams after the retirement of former men's coach Vaso Vujanovic.

Competition heats up at Sports Business Conference

We have really liked the success he has had with

the women's team and the

direction he has taken them.

Andrew BrennanThe Chronicle

You can always see a person’s true competitive nature when playing against them in a sport. Perhaps the only thing more competitive than sports itself is the business surrounding it.

Joe Krizman and Colin Latch-ford are two students who want to enter the world of sport business. That’s why they were keen to co-chair the 6th annual Sport Busi-ness Conference at the DC-UOIT Campus Recreation and Wellness Centre.

“I think part of the reason we’re so passionate about this conference is we can really empathize with the people in this room,” says Krizman.

One of the guest speakers was Jennifer O’Neill, a coordinator of interuniversity sport programs at Wilfrid Laurier University.

She says her one goal was to reach out to the students and tell them there is a job out there for them. She hopes they were able to take something from her story and apply it to their own lives, she says.

Latchford says students may not realize the opportunities there are in sports. The conference provided them with an opportunity to ex-plore what the world of sport could mean to them, he says.

One of those opportunities in-volves charity work. This year’s Sport Business Conference was able to raise approximately $4,500 towards Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities.

The master of ceremonies for the Nov. 24 event was Mike Arsenault. Arsenault is a graduate of Sport Business Management and is cur-

rently the weather anchor for Global News.

“It’s nice to come back full cir-cle and kind of give back and pay it forward, because that’s essential. Especially for those looking to get into the sport or media industry,” says Arsenault.

The conference contained two separate panel discussions.

The first included Joe Birch, sen-ior director of Hockey Development and Special Events for the OHL, Blake Corosky, president of True Gravity Baseball and Michael Cvit-kovic, a representative from Pan Am Sports Centre Inc.

The second panel featured the manager of intramural sports at York University, Sarah Broderick

and coordinators of interuniversity sport programs at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ryan Lannan and the aforementioned Jennifer O’Neill.

Keynote guest speakers included former president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, Paul Godfrey, and president and CEO of Frame-worth Sports Marketing Incorpor-ated, Brian Ehrenworth.

Ehrenworth says something like this may have helped him find his true passion earlier in life, and says his goal was to pass on the message of hard work and perseverance.

Photograph by Andrew Brennan

Co-chair's of the 6th annual Sport Business Conference, Joe Krizman and Colin Latchford, are looking to enter the world of sports business.

I think part of the reason we're so

passionate about this conference is we can really empathize with

the people in the room.

22 The Chronicle January 26 - February 1, 2016 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca Sports

Durham basketball: The road so farIt has been mixed results for the Durham College basketball program. The women's team has gone 5-4 through its first nine games, the men have not fared as well, going 4-9 through 13. These photos are highlights from both the men's and women's games against the George Brown Huskies recently.

Clockwise from top:

Christoff Pierre (2) tries to get around a defending player

Roynelle Meredith (24) charges through the opposing team to score

Kayla Marshall (23) gets ready to set her team up

Rashaun Bennett (34) jumps over two defenders to put his team ahead.

Photos by Logan Caswell

Volume XLIII, Issue 8 chronicle.durhamcollege.ca January 26 -...

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