After filling out applications and preparing for interviews, students recently received notice of their acceptance to selective programs including Global Studies, Political & Social Thought, Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law and the Honors Politics program. Each of the programs’ applications involved submitting a resume, a transcript and faculty recommendations.
The Honors Politics program was the most competitive pool and had seven more applicants than last year, accepting just six students out of 30 applicants. As for the other selective programs, PST accepted 22 out of 56 students, PPL accepted 26 out of 107 students and Global Studies accepted approximately 220 out of 472 students for six different tracks. This includes the new track of Global Commerce in Culture & Society — a program that Phoebe Crisman, director of global studies and professor of architecture, says will investigate the social, cultural and historical impacts on the global economy. Last year, Global Studies accepted fewer students — 185 out of 340 applicants. All other groups’ yield rates remained relatively the same.
According to John Owen, chair of the politics department and professor of politics, earning a politics degree is important because of the foundation these classes provide to make students better participants in the world at-large. Currently 699 students are politics majors compared to 775 from last year.
“These degrees, we believe, equip students to be good citizens by educating them in how politics at various levels – community, city, state, nation, world – works,” Owen said. “We also try to get our students to understand why so much human interaction is political – that is, involves competing interests and ideas about what would be a good or bad public order. We try to teach our students to seek explanations for political outcomes, so that they can think clearly about how to work for the common good.”
Owen also noted that the politics department is participating — along with the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Miller Center of Public Affairs — in the University’s Democracy Initiative — which seeks to study and strengthen democracy around the world — by devoting faculty to teach classes related to the Initiative or get involved with Democracy Labs that are funded by the Initiative. In addition to faculty participation, Owen wants students to have a chance to participate in the Initiative.
“We hope that, as the Initiative grows, we’ll be able to involve more of our students in its programs,” Owen said.
Second-year College student Alex Williams was one of the six students to be accepted into the Honors Politics program. Williams said he was ecstatic when he got the news and is looking forward to small discussion-based seminars.
“I’m a really big proponent of small seminars in which you get to really challenge other people’s views and iterate your own, and clearly articulate your ideas and be challenged on those, because I think that’s how people really develop as speakers and thinkers,” Williams said. “I think it represents the crux of what a true liberal arts education should be.”
However, selective majors mean that some students will not have the chance to pursue a track that attracted their interest. Colin Bird, director of PPL and associate professor of politics, discussed why the programs must take a small number of students to make the program productive.
“If you have more than 12 or 13 people in them, it becomes very difficult for students’ theses to get enough attention,” Bird said. “They write a 35 to 40 page thesis in the context of that Capstone seminar which is run as a kind of workshop … The feedback from their classmates, input from their Capstone instructor and assistance from their advisor makes them produce a tight, nice well argued cogent thesis.”
This thesis is one of the aspects of the PPL program that Bird hopes students will appreciate when they graduate.
“I really hope that the PPL students can go out into the world with the kind of critical capacity to detect and expose bulls—t — and there’s an awful lot of bulls—t,” Bird said. “And being able to carefully analyze things that people say, and point out where reasoning is faulty or premature or flawed. That’s not only a tremendously valuable skill in the workplace. I think it’s also a tremendously important thing for democratic citizenship.”
Despite these selective programs producing the necessary qualities for democratic citizenship by teaching students how to analyze and combat alternative facts, Bird doesn’t see how the number of accepted students could increase due to a lack of resources — both monetarily and in the number of teachers. Sidney Milkis, director of the politics honors program and professor of politics, notes that the most effective way to allow students to think critically is through conversations in small classes.
“We develop a sense of community, and a kind of special relationship with faculty that really makes possible a deep immersion in the most interesting and important political questions,” Milkis said. “So, if we expand it the program would lose its character. There’s a dimension of scale that’s involved in providing this kind of education. But, you know, to be perfectly candid. I think about that and I wonder if at some point we might think about expanding it to 10.”
Bird agrees with Milkis and notes that large lectures don’t foster the same type of critical thinking development that small discussion based seminars allow.
“It just doesn’t work if you’ve got 150 in a big lecture class,” Bird said. “You can lecture them about how to think clearly but unless the students themselves are engaged through the school moderated discussion, then they aren’t in fact going to develop the skills of thinking critically.”
Bird also notes that the size of accepted students could not increase because the Politics department is still looking to fill positions that have been left in recent years.
“The politics department has lost quite a few staff members in the last few years because of departures, tenure denials and retirement and the College hasn’t even replaced them,” Bird said. “Without additional staff … it’s not going to happen so I can’t see it expanding beyond its present size given current staffing.”
Owen also wishes that the politics department could have a larger faculty group but understands the limitations that the University has to satisfy each academic area’s needs. However, the politics major is one of the most popular majors at the University with over 600 majors currently.
“Like most other departments, politics would love to have more faculty,” Owen said. “We press our case every year, but we fully understand that the College’s resources are not unlimited and that the deans must make difficult decisions … That said, for a faculty of 37, we do have a large number of majors.”
According to Bird, the changes necessary to expand programs such as PPL won’t be happening anytime soon.
“Trying to interrupt the momentum that’s built up behind this institutional edifice of the early 21st century research university it’s a little bit like trying to stop an oil tanker with a rowboat, you know, it’s got all of this institutional momentum behind it,” Bird said. “And all of the resources are tied into faculty lines that are connected to particular departments and disciplines … This is not unique to U.Va., it’s an absolutely standard thing.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
