Results tagged “yorkuniversity”

PHOTOGRAPHY: Hot Docs, the largest documentary film festival in North America, is branching out into the world of photojournalism today with the opening of World Press Photo 09. This exhibition will display the best photographs chosen from the World Press Photo Foundation’s annual worldwide photojournalism contest. Out of over 90,000 photographs from photographers of over 100 different nationalities, 196 striking images were chosen and will be on display until October 24. Allen Lambert Galleria, Brookfield Place (181 Bay Street), 7 a.m.–10 p.m., FREE.

This Thursday, the Toronto Transit Commission will sit down to approve conceptual layouts for York University and Sheppard West, two of the new stations on the future Spadina subway extension. The details are outlined in the meeting's agenda, and some of the more significant points in the plans are after the jump.

     

Out of sight, out of mind.

Yes, there are Torontoist writers who remember York's 2000/01 CUPE walkout a little too well. So when 2008 rolled around, and students were once again barred from classes for the duration of a ridiculously protracted strike, certain impressions of a scholastically bereft university flooded to mind: lots of beer, lots of hangovers, tumbleweeds blowing through Vari Hall, and a gleeful student body celebrating sweet, hedonistic sloth.

After eighty-five bitter days, government back-to-work legislation has brought the CUPE 3903 strike at York University to its ignominious end.

It took a few days, but just moments ago back-to-work legislation finally passed at Queen's Park to force an end to the York University strike, with the Globe reporting that classes will resume Monday. Way to go, CUPE.

Dalton McGuinty announced this morning that he is a little over a day away from introducing back-to-work legislation to immediately force an end to York University's strike. According to a statement released on the Ontario premier's website, McGuinty feels that "there is no reasonable prospect of a negotiated settlement between York University and CUPE Local 3903. The sides are in a clear deadlock, and despite our best efforts to bring the sides together, that has not changed." "Having exhausted all other options," McGuinty writes, "I will be recalling the legislature as of Sunday at 1 p.m. for the purposes of introducing back to work legislation. I am asking MPPs from all parties to provide unanimous consent for immediate passage of the bill so that students can get back to school this week." [via 680 News]

York University administration had hoped that a supervised vote of CUPE 3903 members yesterday and today would result in an acceptance of the school's settlement to end the months-long strike. But results from the vote just came down the wire from CUPE, and all three voting units have declined the offer, with 61.7% of the first unit, 59.3% of the second unit, and 70% of the third unit voting "No." The university quickly responded, quoting York President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri, who said that “The clock has run out on CUPE...I will be working with the deans and Senate Executive to prepare plans to further extend the academic calendar to ensure that students complete their fall and winter terms. This will mean reducing or, if need be, cancelling the summer term.” Tick tock.

It shouldn't really be news to anyone (except for maybe Maple High School's guidance head Joanne Brown), but the Star is reporting a 10.8% drop in overall student applications to York, and a 15% drop in the number of students who ranked York as their first choice for schools they wanted to apply to. Which is sorta funny, because U of T—which saw an increase both in number of applications and number of those applicants ranking the school their first choice—is the school that's trying to cut their undergrad numbers. The most impressive rise in first-choice applicants, though: OCAD. Applications to the school are up 5.5%, and the number of first-choice applicants is up 20.8%. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all.

In the war of attrition that is the strike at York University, York officials have played their trump card: they have requested that Ontario's minister of labour direct a supervised CUPE 3903 membership vote. According to the university's website, school officials believe the union's management has created an unnecessary stalemate and that it refuses to offer any conciliatory terms its members might accept. York has stated that it has opted for this measure because CUPE 3903 has refused to take all outstanding contract obligations to binding arbitration, which would end the strike. Separate votes will be required for each of CUPE 3903's bargaining units (contract faculty, TAs, and GAs) and a voting date has yet to be determined by the minister of labour.

Hunger—which we caught at TIFF and again at the European Film Festival—is perhaps the most tactile movie we have ever seen. The impressionistic docudrama chronicling the prison hunger strike by IRA soldier Bobby Sands and the conditions leading up to his decision to take such extreme action, is all about the body and the things that go into, come out of, and are done to it. The film, the feature debut by British artist Steve McQueen (not that one), thoroughly deglamourizes the notion of deliberately starving oneself, by forcing you to confront the physical consequences of the act; it does for this method of suicide what 2:37 did for wrist cutting.

There it was. Tipped over on its side, door slightly ajar, turning heads on Sentinel Road. The blue Port-o-Potty that once stood in solidarity with York University's TAs, GAs and contract faculty, has fallen. Toppled by a regime that some have called "Angry Undergrads With Something to Say," or "Bored Undergrads Who Get Drunk and Break/Tip Shit," it's clear that the message is... unclear.

It's nearing the end of November. For Ryerson and U of T students, this means the dawning of final exams—a time when the only heavy drinking students engage in is downing rounds of extra-large double doubles, the only game of musical chairs is the one for the last vacant chair in the quiet section of the library, and a two-hour nap constitutes a good night's sleep. Well, not for York kids, who are still stuck wondering if the tuition they paid a few months ago was a lost gamble—but that's old news. In Monday's meeting, a proposal review between CUPE 3903 and a mediator for York [PDF], the only real progress, was, well, setting up another meeting. Next Thursday, at the start of the fourth week of the strike, 50,000 students will find out their fate when university meets union—either that, or they'll find out if finding out about their fate is going to be further postponed.

It's official: class at York University is cancelled until further notice, as TAs, grad students, and faculty are all on strike as of midnight tonight. The Globe ominously notes near the foot of its article that "the striking York workers belong to the same group that were involved in a bitter 11-week strike in 2000-2001, the longest ever at a Canadian university." Super-long Christmas/Hannukah break!

THEATRE: Puppeteer troupe The Old Trout Puppet Workshop will be presenting their project Famous Puppet Death Scenes at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. The Dora-nominated production explores what happens when extremely well-crafted puppets get annihilated. The show runs until October 16. Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill Street, Building 49), 8 p.m., $20-$30

The Varsity Blues’ forty-nine-game losing streak is officially yesterday’s news. They must’ve enjoyed their first victory since 2001, because two weeks later they won again, a notable accomplishment for a football program that hadn’t won a game in almost seven years. It was also a highly symbolic victory: as the seconds ticked away, a torch was passed in Canadian university men's football.

ART: "Off Camera" is an exhibition at the new Filmport Studios, featuring more than 200 works from 50 artists currently working in the Toronto film industry. The reception tonight will include musical performances and a silent auction, and did we mention you get to go inside Filmport Studios? Filmport Studios (Studio 7, 225 Commissioners Street), 6 p.m.–1 a.m., FREE.

As orientation weeks get ready to overwhelm Toronto's many post-secondary institutions, there is one question more important than the hemming and hawing over academics, new friends, and leaving home: who will have the best Frosh Week concert?

Photographed by Nadia Halim in a women's washroom in the food court at York Lanes, on the York University campus. She writes "Seriously, there are some grave issues in our society surrounding death and dying, but this graffiti just made me giggle uncontrollably. It's that top sentence especially."

This what a bioterrorist looks like, according to the FBI. Dr. Steven Kurtz (right) is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an art and theatre collective co-founded by Kurtz and his late wife, Hope. In May 2004, the Kurtzes were preparing a piece called Free Range Grains, which allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms, when Hope died of heart failure...

Last year, 26-year-old Ines Markeljevic had an idea. Why not try and set a Guinness World Record for the most people doing the Thriller dance?

In order to help raise funds for their excellent Toronto Upstairs exhibition (on now, until October 25), Art @ Liberty and the Side Space Gallery on St. Clair West invite you to eat your words.

While going to York University may seem like a giant hassle (Torontoist recommends you pack a snack for the trip), this year’s Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture is shaping up to be worth the drive or TTC ride to York.

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will appear every Friday night.

One of the pillars of the TTC's plan to trim its budget is to cut some twenty-one "poor performing" bus routes. But what, exactly, is a "poor performing" route? As it turns out, transit whiz Steve Munro claims, it sure isn't what the TTC says it is: "in a flat fare system," he writes, "it is impossible to allocate fare revenue in any way that makes sense and produces meaningful comparisons between routes."

Pity sex may have gotten some of us through university, but Loree Erickson, a York University PhD candidate and photographer/filmmaker, is determined that it’s not a phrase which should be associated with the disabled.

Next in our series of Torontoist Poetry Contest poems of Honourable Mention is “In Transit” by Peter O’Donovan. Other poems that received Honourable Mention are “Velocity,” by Jenny Sampirisi and Matthew Tierney's "The Man who Knew from Cool"; Prathna Lor’s “((de)fragmentation.)” is coming soon. Our winning poem was "Eaton's Effluviad" by Gregory Betts.

At left: stills from Dr. Strangelove. At right: re-creations by Kristan Horton.