By Kiwi r:- The. ' fifth. Germaine. tor.
President 7 ’ University“E ’"of fidictiOn‘”, in‘that though the
Prince Edward Island stood before a mainly full Duffy Amphitheatre and told his audience that his mother was more ,nervo’us about his public lecture then she had ever. been since “my days in the Charlottetown Music ’ Festival.” 7
* The speaker was Dr. David MacDonald, politician, United Church minister, former Tory Cabinet Minister, author, coordinator of logis- -tics for the recent papal visit, director of the Canadian, Relief Effort in North Africa, and the only Islander‘on the short list of six candidates who have appeared at UPEI this term.
These are by no means MacDonald’s only qualifica- tions, but they were included in a long introduction to the candidate,,who talked about Prince Edward Island, the University of Prince Edward Island, himself, and the re— lationships shared by the three.
In order to give his audience “an understanding of who I am”, MacDonald mentioned 7 some of his heroes, including such people as Neillie McClung, Harold lnnes, and Desmond Tutu.
The tall man who has pursued careers in themedia, politics, ' and religion. con—. ceded this was “a dangerous mix”,.but noted that in all three he has had to “grapple with the realities of the P.E.I. experience.”
MacDonald used the Greek word “oikos”, meaning “sense ,of household”, to reflect some of his views towards Prince Edward Island and the rest of the world. As the root word of economics, ecology, and ecumenism, MacDonald said it should remind us of the values underlying all three of theSe areas of study.
The University of Prince Edward Island struck Dr.
Financ
l’nitacnonaidas “having with-
in it a'fun'damental contra-
un'iversity by that anme is only sixteen.years old, the university on P.E.I. began one and half centuries ago with St.’ Andrew’s College and Prince of Wales College.
“The lack of women in leading areas of UPEI” was another concern MacDonald addressed. Though struggling with limited resources, he said, we should not let ba- lancing the books “stand in
the way of other questions,'
such as the role of women.” Quoting the university calendar, MacDonald then
‘addressed the goals of the
university, and named the three major areas which must be dealt with: values, leader- ship, and the search for community. . V
“This period is one in which: there is an incredible struggle with questions of value and moral choice,” he said, referring to famine in places such as Ethiopia occurring at the same time as the arms race, which he called “a wastage of human and material resources.’ ’
“There are interrelated questionsabout how we con- duct ourselves in institutions and discharge leadership” he went on, saying that a new kind of “theology of issues” related to the human con- ditiOn is needed.
As to the search forecom'e- I
munity, MacDonald believes we need to be more conscious
of how to “bring together a
dynamic community” so as
‘to achieve “liberation from
struggles within human spirit and condition.” - In the NewWorld, he feels key issues are those con- cerning the Women’s Move- merit and Latin America. MacDonald is concerned with how “the rest of us (men and. women who are not Latin Americans) are to parti— cipate in this struggle.” He says the Pope himself has gotten into difficulty ad-
ial Aid.
By Dawna N oonan
Legal Studies for Aboriginal People: ' This federal program offersten 3-year scholarships annually to Aboriginal people studing towards a law degree; nin order to increase the number of Aboriginal people in the legal
profession. -
The program also covers financial assistance to attend a pre-law orientation program and a bar admission course as well as Master degrees for a limited number of students.
ApplicatiOns to the Department of Justice Canada for
funding to attend the summer
program at the National Law
Centre must be received by April 12, 1985. Application for funding to attend law school in September must be sent to the Department of Justice Canada no later than July 26, 1985. Imasco Scholarship Fund for Disabled Students:
Open to disabled undergraduate students in any field of
study. A disabled person is ' “any person unable to ensure himself or herself wholly or partly the necessmes of a normal individual and/or social life, as a result of a deficrency, either
congenital or not, in his or abilities.” '
her physical or mental cap-
Eaeh scholarship is valued at $1500. annually. Completed ' . be. ,xived by the Association of Univer-
' tawa by ’June I , I985“. ‘
dressing the issue of subtle forms of oppression such as consumerism and materialism in Western society.
Concluding his lecture, Dr. MacDonald said the search for truth, one of the stated aims of the university, must come from an attempt to “read the condition of the
~ humanspirit.”
When asked how he would improve the status of Women at UPEI, Dr. MacDonald said he was troubled by the
,fact that only equal repre- sentation of the sexes here is in the student body.
“In fact, I believe the Pre- sident of the Student Union this year is a woman,” he said, adding, “She’s Michelle Dorsey — Joe’s daughter.”
During a volley of quest- ions on tenure, Dr. Mac- Donald said he thought a “double standard” exists in that the President has no tenure, while members of the
faculty do. Though he con- A
ceded “academic freedom must be maintained,” he was “concerned that (tenure) is now being used so that people not performing satis- factorily cannot be replaced.”
He feels this debate re—
Candidate Eliot speaks
‘_Univer$ities as Gates of Freedom
By Carolyn Ryan
Slippery roads and cold temperatures kept many away from the laSt public lecture in the search for UPEI’s next President, but the show went on, Monday night at the Duffy Amphi- theatre. ‘ '
Dr. Charles Eliot, now Chair of Classics at Mount Allison University, expressed some hesitation at starting to speak after a complimentary introduction by UPEI Pro- fessor Satadal Dasgupta, but plunged in, warning, “Even a lion can be shot with a single bullet.”
The introduction was necessarily long. Eliot has a PhD in Classics from the University of Toronto,
taught for fourteen years at -
the University of British Columbia, was professor of Archaeology at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece, and now teaches at Mount Allison.
As well, he has been Vice President Academic, Faculty Association President, and Secretary of Senate at Mount Allison, president of the
Federation of New Brunswick -
Faculty Associations, ' and held positions for four years on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.» Eliot spoke without notes the small audience, looking back over his experiences on these bodies to conclude that universities today (need direc- tion, balance, and nerve.
He camerhe saw, he Was seen
flects a larger question of the way in which the university is to carry on its functions. When asked what he would do to improve relations be- tween the university and the community, MacDonald said he wasn’t sure he was the one to do so, and said the Presi—
public lecture February 18. Left,
dent should not be solely involved in relations between the university and the com- munity.
In a fact, .he said that in the long term it was “dan— gerous for the president ton become the only representa-
can I ate Dav MacDonald answers a question during his MacDonald: right co-chair of the Search
Committee for President Wendell Deagle.
“Mount Allison is a uni- versity without direction,” said he, “while UBC is losing its balance and during my time with the SSHRC we were accused of a lack of nerve.”
The lack of direction in Canadian post-secondary education may come from a confusion in the liberal arts debate, said the Indian-born scholar with the British accent.
“Noone today can ascer- tain what we should be taking,” he said, citing per- ennial preoccupation with perceived contradictions -be— tween literacy and numeracy, computer technology and traditional studies. a
“Our uncertainly is an unravelling of our existence, to the point where there is a possibility of losing our con- stituency (the students)” he said.
Eliot thinks people are led to believe that liberal arts is “a set of books laid down in the fifth century B.C., or the nineteenth AD.” and do not realize that liberal arts changes with a society, to reflect current culture and thought as well as traditional.
“All these studies are needed for the liberation of the undergraduate,” he said.
Eliot spoke with feeling of the threats to balance which funding cuts pose, using the case of UBC as illustration. « “That university has a beautiful campus, but under- neath it is paralyzed by a government trying to make it smaller,” he said, mentioning
the 5 per cent cut in funding the institution has to absorb this year and next.
One junior government official even suggested that a small college consider drop- ping the departments of Anthropoloy, Music, Fine Arts, and Law, causing a public outcry which had little effect on government policy.
“It’s a time when people are trying to save what they can, for the university will soon shed blood,” Eliot explained, asking listeners if UBC can continue to pro- mote the spiritual, cultural and economic life of British Columbia under such cir- cumstances.
Eliot sees Province House as a native example of ba- lance which Prince Edward Island should remember: “lts style is owed to the traditionss of another con- tinent, and its fabric to the local environment. Yet it remains a place of dis- cussion.”
Passing on to the question of nerve, Eliot said the SSHRC was accused of let- ting the government tell it how to operate when it sun- ported Canadian Studies as a discipline.
“It was right to suggest to Canadians that there was nothing wrong with studying Canada,” Eliot said, “but we made the decision for a poli- tical reasbn —— to get money for the programs.”
Eliot applaudscriticism of the SSHRC for- accepting
government a. money
-— page 3 —
MacDona/d vies for President
tive of the university.”
He encouraged ideas such as the establishment of free tuition for Islanders over the age of sixty (the Centennial Scholars program), and the establishment of an Island Studies Institute.
strings attached, saying it was the first time university agencies had approved and passes a “carefully-articu- lated government policy.”
“I applaud the criticism, but not the fact we didn’t have (Canadian Studies) before this,” he concluded, saying there were times when one must say “No,” to government for the sake of standing up to a principle.
Eliot went on to relate this situation to the title of his lecture, “The Gates of Freedom”.
He told of a Persian siege of a Greek stronghold in 480 B.C. when 300 Greeks gave their lives willingly, holding off the attackers until
their countrymen could regroup and defeat the much stronger army.
He also spoke about a 1973 student occupation of a Greek technical university six years after military colonels ‘ had taken over the govern- ment.
“We middle-aged people didn’t object to this regime, but 10,000 students did,” he said, telling how the govern- ment shot at the demon- strators for two days in November of that year.
Yet by the spring of 1974, he said, freedom had come back to Greece, “because students had nerve, and the power to say “No”.
This he said, was the final
I objective of a university — to develop young people’s powers of critical analysis,
‘and 'thus create in them the _
power to say “No. ”