1. Coady Receives Funding to Support Sixty Worldwide Internships
Ben Gehrels
Contributor
The Coady Institute recently received funding from the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA) to send 60 lucky applicants to placements all around the
world such as Egypt, Nepal, and Rwanda. If you are between 19 and 30 years of age and
have recently graduated from a postsecondary institution or are underemployed, you may
be eligible to apply. The program is called Youth In Partnership, and will progress in
three cohorts of twenty placements each, between March 2010 and March 2012.
Matt Chisholm, 4th year Political Science, has recently returned from South Africa
on a 140 day trip on a separate, though closely related, Coady-funded program. He very
emphatically encourages recent and soon-to-be graduates from StFX to apply for the YIP
program, making it clear that the funding for the trips is taken care of by the Coady.
“I remember sitting in my first-year development studies class,” recalls Chisholm,
“and someone came into the class to talk about these development internships, and I
thought to myself, like you know, I’d love to do it, but there’s no way in hell I would ever
be able to afford it. As a student, you just don’t have the time to fundraise. Little did I
know that three years later, I would get this opportunity at my door.”
As Chisholm happily discovered, the funding through CIDA and the Coady
covers the entire cost of the placements. Natalie Abdou, the Coady’s Youth Programs
Coordinator, states that “the CIDA provides all of the funding, $15000 per intern. There’s
$3000 that go towards administrative costs for the coordination of the placement, and
there’s another $12000 that is for costs specifically related to things like costs of
transportation, vaccination, visas, and of living in-country.”
As Chisholm point out, however, the applicant is responsible for budgeting their
costs while in-country: “I was well-fed, well looked after,” he says, “but I’m also
responsible for paying my rent, when I’m there [with the money provided through
CIDA]. I had a rubric to follow, as far as funding is concerned, and it taught me a lot of
financial responsibility, dealing with that money.”
The Youth In Partnership program is designed specifically to benefit recent
graduates and underemployed people under the age of 30. “The internships are not
travel,” Abdou cautions, “they are a job, a job in a cross-cultural environment.”
But jobs, of course, can be fun.
“Interns often find the experiences challenging and also rewarding,” explains
Abdou. “They tend to gain a lot from it.”
In addition to the time spend in-country, successful applicants participate in a two
week training session before leaving Canada, and a two week debriefing session once
they have returned. Abdou says that “part of what we do during our debrief is we provide
an opportunity for our associates to process what it is they’ve experienced, and to also
look at the skills and expertise they used, and how that might apply to future positions
either within Canada, or within International Development in general.”
The funding received this time around will unfortunately expire in March 2012, at
which time the Coady will reapply to CIDA for more funding. Abdou explains that the
most effective way to ensure the continued existence of programs like YIP is to raise

2. awareness about the programs benefits in the Antigonish and StFX community, and
around Canada in general.
“The more that young associates from the program are coming back and sharing
their experiences, not only in the Antigonish community and the STFX community, but
with the whole Canadian public in general, the better. The more we can reaffirm that
these programs are having an impact on providing young Canadians with the opportunity
to launch their careers, while also contributing specifically to development practice, and
also providing young Canadians with the opportunity to broaden their perspectives, the
more that we can reinforce the positive outcomes of these programs, the stronger the
likelihood there is that they won’t get cut in the future,” declares Abdou.
Although recruitment for the first cohort has already closed, the second cohort
will run from August 2010 to March 2010, and the third will run from August 2011 to
March 2012. Visit the Coady’s website at http://coady.stfx.ca/youth/apply/ later on in
February for details of when and how to apply for the next opportunity.
Mini Moes Stops Selling Groceries
Ben Gehrels
Contributor
Gone from Mini Moes this year are the bacon and eggs, loaves of bread, bags of
candy, tampons, boxes of Kraft Dinner, soups, and peanut butter tubs. In their place is
extra seating: a pair of tables and several chairs.
“I miss them!” said Emily Hirrnish, a second year Nutrition student, when asked
about the absence of the groceries. “When I was in a pinch, I could get what I needed
there.” All she had to say about the extra seating was that “nobody uses it.”
Jean Delorey, an employee of Mini Moes since it opened, said she was surprised
to see the grocery items removed: “They did sell well,” she explained. “Students will
come in this year and they’ll want the bread or the eggs.” Delorey wasn’t sure what had
motivated the administration to make the changes. All she could say was that “when we
came back to work this year, they just said ‘Okay, all this stuff is going.’”
Brendan Ahern, a 3rd year Arts student, pointed to the competition that places like
Shopper’s Drug Mart pose for a relatively small store like Mini Moes. “I would think
they got rid of all their grocery stuff because there’s places downtown like Shoppers
Drug Mart which sell basically the same stuff, only more of it,” said Ahern, adding that
he “never saw a lot of students buying the groceries there.”
Along with the removal of most grocery items from Mini Moes, however,
students living in Apartment-style Residence had to buy more DCB (Declining Cash
Balance) up front this year than in previous years. When asked if the conflictual nature of
the two moves had elicited student complaints, Delorey nodded: “We had customers
coming in looking for the stuff and they’d say well we’ve got extra DCB this year, what
are we going to spend it on?”
Noreen Nunn, Director of Residence Services, explained that there were several
factors behind the increase in DCB. Most importantly, she cited an increase in the cost of
food: “Any student who is going to a grocery store right now knows that they are paying
a lot more for food than they were last year,” she declared. “Well, so are we.”

3. Though Nunn could sympathize with student frustration at the apparent increase,
she asserted that “We actually don’t think it is [an increase].” The amount of DCB
current residents were forced to purchase this year was determined, she said, “based on
the average amount of DCB purchased in the past by residents of the apartments.” Nunn
asserted that, instead of simply raising the cost of living in residence to meet the
requirements of “the university budget,” the idea behind the greater amount of DCB was
to “at least give [students] something they can use.”
Keith Publicover, the VP recruitment and student experience and acting Dean of
Students, wasn’t available for comment on the administrative rationale behind the
changes at Mini Moes, or the impact these changes are having on those students forced to
buy greater amounts of DCB up front this year.
The Arts Are Harder Than the Sciences
Ben Gehrels
Contributor
Taken seriously, there is no harder degree to succeed in at StFX than an Arts
degree. I say “taken seriously,” because I believe that Arts is also the easiest program at
StFX to coast through and still pass in. Slackers have given us a bad rep.
In Science, there’s a right answer and a wrong answer. If you slack, you fail.
In Arts, we deal with the abstract and the undefined; all we ever have are opinions
or theories backed up with textual examples (at least in English, anyway). There is never
a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer, per se, so it’s harder for professors to fail students outright.
Also, cheat-sheet resources like Spark’s Notes let students think they don’t actually have
to read the material.
Most Science students point to the far greater time they spend in class and labs as
proof that they’re embarked on the harder academic path. I disagree: more class time
does not necessarily equal a tougher degree. In fact, staying motivated outside of class is
arguably a lot more difficult than listening to a prof or working through a lab. Serious
Arts students, I would argue, spend far greater time working, reading, and staying
productive outside the lecture hall than Science students. As such, they face the more
difficult task.
Doing well in the Arts is like winning a fight blindfolded. You have a vague idea
what you’re doing, and you definitely know you’re in pain, but you’re never really sure
what’s going on until it’s over and they’ve let you out of the hospital.
To take an Arts degree seriously and succeed in it requires extraordinary
dedication and focus. It’s reading at least four or five hours a day. It’s skipping the Inn
for the library. It’s working your ass off just to stay on top of the weekly readings for
your classes, let alone those who have to research and write a thesis.
What makes a serious Arts degree so difficult is that the monumental labour
poured into it in no way produces or ensures an equivalent output in terms of GPA. I have
an awful suspicion that professors in the Humanities actually don’t know what a 90 is.
Getting a B+ in Aristotle is like getting an A+ in Marine Biology.

4. I’m generalizing here, and there will always be exceptions, but I stand behind my
claim: taken seriously, there is no harder degree to succeed in at StFX than an Arts
degree.