Mayor Watson proclaimed last week to be Bullying Awareness Week, but I don't think Transit Commissioners received the message. The province of Ontario defines bullying as "a form of repeated, persistent and aggressive behaviour... in a context where there is a real or perceived power imbalance." On Wednesday, November 16 at the Transit Commission meeting, commissioners patronized, bullied, and insulted students who had the audacity to suggest the city and OC Transpo may be wrong in calculating the UPass as revenue-neutral at $180 per semester.

In 1988, Carleton University divested from apartheid. Sadly, in 2011, Carleton University is fundraising for apartheid. According to the Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNFC), Carleton President Roseann Runte will be an "honorary co-chair" of their annual Negev Gala. Further, Carleton is listed as a "proud supporter" of the evening. When SAIA-Carleton learned of this, we were quite surprised. Considering we have spent the past two years highlighting our institution's complicity in the Israeli occupation -- through our divestment campaign -- we never thought our president would brazenly associate herself with an organization like the JNFC.

When I learned from the Ottawa Citizen that Carleton is a "proud supporter" of the Jewish National Fund's (JNF) annual Negev Dinner, and that president Roseann Runte is an honorary co-chair, I was incredibly disappointed.

Although it would appear that Runte is attending a benign religious fundraiser, Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) believes the JNF is one of the principal organizations responsible for the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately for our community, Carleton administration is demonstrating an awful record of failing to acknowledge or respect Palestinian human rights.

The Post-secondary Education in Crisis conference recently took place in Ottawa.

James Turk, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, presented 'Universities in crisis: What are the problems and what faculty and students can do.' This is a video of his presentation.

On March 29, 2011 students, faculty, staff, alumni and community allies made a significant stride toward divestment at Carleton University in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) first launched our campus-based pension fund divestment campaign in January 2010. The student-led campaign was motivated by the 2005 call from Palestinian civil society "to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel [. . . ] until it fully complies with the precepts of international law."

In Ottawa, students from Carleton University have spent years building a grassroots movement for social justice in Palestine. Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) at Carleton University launched a campaign over one year ago calling on the university to divest its pension fund from four companies that are complicit in breaches of international law and human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, followed by the implementation of a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) policy.

I was told in one of the few sex education classes that I had in high school that I should negotiate sex "when I'm vertical, not when I'm horizontal." For those of you who are unsure of what this little tidbit of advice is getting at, it means that sexual boundaries are best defined in thoughtful, reasoned conversation outside of a sexual context. Fair enough.

But then I was told that "when I'm horizontal," my hormones would go crazy and I would be unable to discern if I was comfortable with what was happening. The combined force of mine and my partner's hyper-active hormones might in fact lead me to do things I'm not comfortable with at all.

On Nov. 10, Carleton University's undergraduate and graduate student associations jointly filed a court application to force the university to fulfill its legal obligation and remit the fees it holds "in trust" for each association. The outcome of this precedent-setting legal case has serious implications for student activism not only at Carleton, but throughout Canada.

The university claims it's simply trying to please its auditors, but the university's real motivation is to put each student association on a shorter leash, making it less desirable for students to speak out in ways that could potentially cause embarrassment to the university.

Students Against Israel Apartheid - Carleton (SAIA) is a student activist group at Carleton University that has taken a stance: to stand up for human rights and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

SAIA is neither a race nor religion based group because our respective backgrounds make no difference; on the contrary in fact, they help unite us. One of the most important events that SAIA plans each year is Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), which takes place during the first week of March.