Bursary barring native students rejected

Atrocious. I wonder how many were flagged as inappropriate and how often. The sane voices were few and far between.

I bet it was probably just some asshole white supremacist social reject who didn't even have the money and knew it would be rejected, and just wanted to stir shit up in the media.

University's ask to see the colour of your money. With the way the markets are these days $500k wouldn't generate that large of an annual return.

genstrike wrote:

Fidel wrote:

Ya, nobody should be stirring up shit with a perfectly good SaskaTory government running things. How many years in prison did Brad Wall's former co-workers get nailed with?

What?  I don't even know what the hell you are talking about.  Are you trying to imply that I'm a Saskatchewan Party supporter?

All I asked was how many years Grant Devine's crooks spent in the crowbar hotel? You dont have to answer that if you dont want to. It was an open question to anyone who wants to field it.

The context seems a little odd, that is all.  First, there was the "stirring up shit" bit which was almost directly lifted from my post immediately above it, so it appears to be directed at me.  Second, the provincial government wasn't even mentioned in this thread prior to you bringing it up, so it is a bit of a non-sequitur.  However given my experiences with you on this forum, I don't think it is an innocent non-sequitur.

"Ya, nobody should be stirring up shit with a perfectly good SaskaTory government running things" seems to be implying that I only oppose these people because they are stirring up shit while a friendly government is in power, which is false because I don't consider the Saskatchewan Party to be a friendly government and I oppose this bursary not because of whatever political party is in power but because it is racist.

Also, it seems kind of odd that you are bringing provincial governments into a thread on universities when you have in the past denied that provincial governments are responsible for education.

If you honestly want to know the answer to that question and it isn't about this bursary, perhaps you should start a new thread asking the question because it's a little off topic.  Or look it up yourself, I can't imagine it would be too hard to find and figure out.

Bursaries are bullshit American-style funding for post-secondary anyway. The writer of that article had plenty of opportunity to describe the larger context in which this neoliberalized situation with PSE is played out in Canada since the 1990s - and that's wrt how federal core funding for PSE across Canada was reduced by successive Liberal governments to the tune of several billion dollars since 1993. And they chose to focus on the insufficient crumbs students are forced to scramble for to pay for their education in this Northern Puerto Rico. Boo hiss to the white racist couple as well as the so-called news media for even giving them the time of day.

Ze wrote:

I never read online comments on mainstream media sites any more, they are a magnet for idiocy, no matter how "liberal" the site may be otherwise. Don't need to read them to guess what they say in any case. 

The irony is that had there been no restrictions, odds are 99.9% that any bursaries would go to non-aboriginal students anyway. But as the story says, the potential donor was looking to make a (racist) political point more than anything else. 

Yes I couldn't agree more. I try to find "alternative" (what I like to call sane really) media anyway to read generally, but I think comments under most stories in mainstream media like this one do unfortunately represent the most outspoken idiots as opposed to those with even average intelligence.

As for scholarships or bursaries in universities, I would have to say from what I can remember most do indeed go to non-aboriginal students. Not necessarily because student awards in university are somehow inherently discriminatory but rather due to a number of factors such as fewer aboriginal students being present in university (compared to non-aboriginal groups), as well as of course fewer awards available specifically to aboriginal students.

Subvertisement wrote:

Yes I couldn't agree more. I try to find "alternative" (what I like to call sane really) media anyway to read generally, but I think comments under most stories in mainstream media like this one do unfortunately represent the most outspoken idiots as opposed to those with even average intelligence.

Myself, I'm happy to think it's the outspoken idiots that write those comments.  If such views really represented the average person, I'd be too depressed to live.

I'd like to know how someone who graduated from the U of S with a nursing degree at about the same time that I graduated is able to give my alma mater a bursary of 500 large.

Al Q, I have been looking for that thread where I asked you about the map, but I cannot find it. Do you remember what thread it was in and did you answer me?

I can't imagine living a long life, having a lot of money to give away, wanting to give it away... and being controlled by animus and spite.

Thanks RP!

G. Pie wrote:

Timebandit wrote:

Or could be she won a lottery, who knows? 

I'm leaning towards genstrike's theory that she never had the money.  I mean, seriously, what reasonable person wouldn't know that such terms would be unacceptable?  And, yeah, I know, she doesn't sound very reasonable so change it to:  What unreasonable person wouldn't know that?

You'd be surprised.  Honestly, I don't doubt this woman exists because I've met people like her.  They honestly feel that they've had to work harder and that education is something we just hand to aboriginal people out here.  Yeah, she's full of shit, but this perception exists and persists. 

That's weird...I'm going to delete your last two posts, Timebandit, since they seem to be a repeat of an earlier one.  Glitchy glitchy!

skarredmunkey wrote:

I'm probably not the only one who can remember being an undergrad and hearing the occasional joke that the only way to get a scholarship for PSE - aside from being at the top of your class or faculty - was to be aboriginal, disabled, female... etc, etc. The jokes were ugly and mean, but widely felt.

I would say in this case, the comments you see on the bottom of the news item are much more representative of opinion on the matter than you think.

Certainly easier for a seventeen year old to understand than the notion that white middle class students have had their own advantages along the way, and will continue to have.

And more psychologically satisfying.

remind wrote:

Yes, white male privilege knows no bounds, and when it is challenged in anyway, to play the victim is much easier, than facing your privilege.

In this case,  poor white students ARE victims - victims of lack of investment in PSE by the state.

Although I suppose it's also much easier for you and I to wag our fingers and scream 'racist' rather than try to address the real root causes of why some poor people and poor white people especially would cling to their reactionary senses of entitlement in the first place.

500_Apples wrote:

Poverty is not the same issue as racism and the fact one of them gets addressed does not mean the other is being ignored.

There is a major poverty angle that wasn't addressed on this thread until Fidel correctly pointed out that there is a larger divide-and-conquer, PSE retrenchment context in Canada. If it wasn't for the enormous inequality of access to PSE, there would be no grievances for this anonymous donor to be tapping into and manipulating to make a racist point.

The fact that this woman exemplifies white privilege is a truism, isn't it?

500_Apples wrote:

There are lots of programs at the government and university level to help low-income students, which vary in quantity and quality depending on where you are.

Is there anyone from the CFS on babble who can set 500_Apples straight on the issues facing PSE students in this country?

500_Apples could be suggesting that there is lots of help for low income students accessing PSE .... who have graduated secondary schools with very good to excellent academic grades. Canada does do a decent job of coughing up money, busaries and the like for those kids to attend PSE, which would be a crying shame if it wasnt true.

But some young people are not academic ringers out of the starting blocks, like your's truly was not. And those kids are in the majority. Many grow up in poor families, and yet many still have a desire and thirst for higher learning. Canada does a lousy job of providing equal access to these young people. There are two price tags for higher ed in Canada: one for those who can pay the balance off asap and quite another for those who must take out student loans and pay highest interest rates in the developed world on their student loan debt ball and chains for upwards of a quarter century or more after graduating, and whether they find a good job or not.

I flunked my first calculus exam with flying colours. I thought to myself, I dont belong in that class, and I'm just not smart.

[url=http://malcolmallen.ndp.ca/node/74]A Big Miss on Making Canada Competitive by Malcolm Allen[/url] February

Quote:

According to the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL), Canada has a fundamental data gap in assessing post-secondary education capacity versus labour-market needs, and we have no useful picture of the country's private providers of post-secondary education. Unlike most developed countries, Canada lacks a national agency of quality assurance in the post-secondary education system. As the CCL notes in their Post-secondary Education in Canada: Strategies for Success (2007) report, the current linkages between post-secondary institutions and the labour market are insufficient, contributing to mismatches between demand and supply in the labour force.

For its part, the Government of Canada did recognize the need to address the infrastructure deficit in our post-secondary institutions with a dedicated $2 billion toward dealing with Accumulated Deferred Maintenance (ADM). However, according to Association of Canadian Community Colleges, if Canada's 150 colleges and institutes of technology are to produce enough graduates to satisfy the current shortage of advanced skills, $7.5 billion is required now for infrastructure upgrading, facility expansion, and teaching equipment. The scary fact is that the current infrastructure deficit does not reflect the increased demand for post-secondary education that will inevitably peak as unemployment numbers drop to historic levels in the coming years.

The feds in Ottawa arent even trying. The Liberals' tax cuts were unprecedented in Canadian history. And these clowns in power now, and with Liberal support, cut corporate and federal taxes by another $9 billion. Meanwhile very little was put into boosting post-secondary funding to the provinces in the last budget. Post-secondary funding is so eff'd up in Canada it's beyond being a joke anymore.

It was quite a downer for me then. I remember going for long walks and trying to decide what in hell I was going to do next. I called a friend of mine who I hadnt seen while he was out of town earning a math degree, And he tried to console me. He asked me what the problem was, and I just said, "Everything about it" He explained something about derivatives and integrals in easy terms, and it was like a light turned on in my head. Suddenly what was so mind boggling for me became clear. I was interested all over again. Went back at it and was able to salvage a B grade as well as gave myself a new feeling of self-respect that I'd never known before. It was a wonderful feeling. I went back to basics and re-taught myself all those little algebraic rules that I just never bothered to learn in highschool, and I realize now it was a mental block and self-taught notion that I couldnt do math. I worked really hard and sometimes at the expense of other courses I was taking just to learn more math. I aced the next course and advanced calc. I realized a lot of it is mechanical and memorizing formulas. It was the first time I'd ever really done my math homework from problem 1 through 33 or whatever. My friend's best advice was to get hold of the corresponding solutions manual for the text.   Discrete math was a bugger for me, too, and I experienced pretty much the same up and down roller coaster learning curve. I'd just never learned how to learn and how to work hard at it. It was a real thrill for me, because I rarely enjoyed school atmosphere in primary and secondary grades.

Hm, violence as an anti-racist education tactic. Why haven't I thought of that already?