Crystal's Life on Paper

STMSU gives up Coke money for second year

I wrote this last year, but it got picked up the Uwatch.ca, which is a group "Advocating for universities in the public interest." I thought it was very cool when I found it, which was an accident. So here it is:

Saskatchewan students say no thanks to Coke dough – again

We have The Sheaf at the University of Saskatchewan to thank for this story about the student council at St. Thomas More College who are starting to make a tradition of declining some easy-but-sleazy money from an exclusivity deal the campus-wide student union cut with Coke in 1998:

STMSU gives up Coke money for second year
by Crystal Clarke
The St. Thomas More Students’ Union (STMSU) has once again rejected the money owed to them from a controversial deal the USSU had made in 1998. The students’ society revisited last year’s council’s decision to decline the allotted $1400 and decided this year will be no different. In total, with the money carried over from last year, the group has declined $2800.
“Last year, the Campus Ministry gave [the STMSU] a package that came to them from Development and Peace about the bad business practices and the terrible things that Coke was doing in other countries,”said Adam Day, STMSU Vice President of Academics. “We decided as a group that it was wrong for us to take money from a company that would do that kind of thing.”

Based on this information, a Coca Cola committee was formed to do research in order to help the STMSU council make an informed decision about the money. This year another group was set up to take on the same task, but also to raise awareness to students about the injustices that Coca Cola are doing.

“We also felt it would be disrespectful to the previous year’s council if we went against their decision to not take the money and decided to take the money,” said Brennan Richardson, STMSU Member at Large. This is something that this committee is trying to change. “If we would have taken it this year, we would have to take last year’s money as well,” noted Alice Collins, another STMSU Member at Large that sits on the Coke committee.

The majority of the STMSU council felt that it would have been hypocritical to take Coke’s money since STM is a Catholic college and follows a certain human rights and social justice agenda. “We have to find a balance between serving students and representing the values inherent to the Catholic college that we represent,” said Richardson.

In terms of taking the money and donating it to good causes, like the suggested Tsunami relief fund, they decided against that. “In a way it would only be helping Coca Cola because thatús the way a major corporation like Coca Cola presents a good public image is they advertise their charity contributions,” Richardson said. “In fact, the amount of money they actually put into these things is minimal for them. [This money] is ‘peanuts’ compared to how much they make. It’s not that they have a humanitarian effort, they are just trying to convince the public that they are an environmentally friendly and community-friendly corporation.”

One example of the committee’s research was based on water-issues. “There is also issues with Coke going into certain areas in a Third World country, setting up on a stream or body of water and then using that water for bottling. The water that ends up getting to the people is the waste. So people are getting seriously sick and they are selling Coke cheaper than water, to get people to drink their product,” said Day. “The best-known example of this is Kerala, India. It was reported by BBC, talking about a farming community in Kerala, where Coke established a bottling plant. They dried up the water-bed. All the arable land was useless,” added Richardson.

“By us not taking the money, we may not be serving our students as well as we possibly can, but we are representing their ethics and values,” said Toma. “We’re not the only group on campus or in Canada that has declined their money,” added Day. “Hopefully we can apply pressure the Board of Directors to not sign the Coke deal again,” said Richardson.

As for the future of the STMSU and the Coca-Cola issue, “It’s a stance that we would like to see keep going, even with [the STMSU’s] inevitable turnover,” said Day.

The group hopes that a permanent committee will be put in place to lobby against Coke. A goal for the group is to increase awareness about Coke and serve as a model student group against the company.

Posted: 2005-02-02 033, 2005, 05:%i Wed
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Nobel Prize winner says education key to success

Written by Crystal Clarke

Thursday, 21 October 2004

Wangari Maathai got word about her newest accomplishment, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, as she was planting trees in a rural area in Africa. She is the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the first person in the history of the Nobel Prize to be recognized for environmental activism. Eventually Norwegian television caught up with Maathai and she commented, “I am absolutely overwhelmed and very emotionally charged, really,” she said. “The environment is very important in the aspects of peace, because when we destroy our resources and our resources become scarce, we fight over that. I am working to make sure we don’t.” In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, a program that is carried out primarily by women in the villages of Kenya to plant trees in lieu of the deforestation problem that Africa has been undergoing. The program also taught rural women about the relationship between deforestation and erosion, paying them a small fee for the trees they planted. Maathai earned undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Biology in the United States, before returning to Kenya to get her PhD, making her the first woman in east and central Africa to do so. She also became the head of the veterinary medicine faculty at the University of Nairobi, another first for a woman to head a department in the country. She attributes her accomplishments and passion on education: “The privilege of a higher education, especially outside Africa, broadened my original horizon and encouraged me to focus on the environment, women and development in order to improve the quality of life of people in my country in particular and in the African region in general.” Maathai has not always had it easy. Over the past five years, she has been beaten and jailed for her activism of tree-planting and speaking out against the deforestation in her country. However, in 2002 she was elected to parliament and was appointed to the position of Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife. Her latest accomplishment of winning the Nobel Peace Prize includes $1.3-million (U.S.) and will be presented to Ms. Maathai on December 10 in Oslo, Norway.

Sassy Slean to Serenade Saskatoon

Written by Crystal Clarke

Thursday, 17 November 2005

Sarah Slean’s performance, entitled “Intimate and Solo” promises to be a great sit-down show. Slean’s newest album Day One is a masterpiece, full of amazing lyrics, music, and artwork. A couple of years ago, Slean decided she needed a break from the world and took a hiatus in a cabin for a few months, writing, painting, and figuring herself out. I’m sure many of us 20-somethings would like to do this, but I doubt we would come out with anything as amazing as Slean’s fourth album. Slean is a sassy artist who tells lots of stories while on stage, and not just with her songs. When I saw her at the Regina Folk Festival this summer, she did a great job of mixing up her songs with quirky stories of being alone in that cabin. I’ve heard her described as a Canadian Tori Amos and I would mostly agree with that. However, Slean has an air about her that makes her seem like a person just like everyone else, who just so happens to be an incredibly talented pianist, writer, and artist. What struck me the most about her when I saw her live in Regina was her relationship with the crowd. Despite being an early act in the evening, she held everyone’s attention and had people swaying to her music as they sat on their blankets on the ground, laughing with her jokes and eccentric remarks. I also made a very wonderful discovery, which was unknown to me before that evening – her musical abilities. She studied music formally at the University of Toronto (after deciding against going into Medicine), but decided she wanted to play her own music. That she does – and very well I might add. Last April, she was nominated for the 2005 Juno Award for Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Day One. Her first single off the album “Lucky Me” is a great up-beat song that has good rhythm and vocals that are sure to bring people to their feet, if any song will. Other songs on the CD include the self-titled track, as well as “Vertigo”, and my personal favourite “Out in the Park”, a song giving the vision of a wacky woman in a park who is “conducting the birds/ trying to remember which bicycle’s hers.” If you like sit-down shows that are live and “intimate”, I highly recommend checking out the show on Thursday at Louis’. Perhaps you’ll see me there: “I’m taking my seat, oh lucky me.”