Invasions of Privacy

Once in awhile, you’ll see a scrawled out response to one of Zoom Media’s stall-door advertisements. Etched in the plastic case or in sharpie overhead, someone’s mad about having ad-space stare them down during their intimate moments; Someone, and the University of Montreal.

UOM Administrators announced in June 2001 that they wouldn’t be renewing the hundred-thousand dollar annual contract with the company due to internal pressure.

“Bernard Motulsky, the university's director of public relations, said the decision came because pressure from within the university led to the creation of a committee that recommended monitoring advertising content.”

“The debate over advertising at the university reached a climax when history professor Thomas Ingersoll resigned last February in protest. "How can I enter a classroom to give my lecture about the history of American feminism, when outside the door is superbly mounted an ad showing a fragile young woman, vulnerable, nearly nude, ultra-feminine, hawking perfume?" he wrote in his letter of resignation.

Many teachers and students have since come forward to express their support for Ingersoll's decision.

"The messages ads vehicle are in direct contradiction with the independence of thought we teach in our classes," said sociology professor Denise Couture.”

--The Peak

http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/2000-2/issue8/ne-looads.html

It’s getting hard to find a public restroom without ads. Many restaurants and cafes’ have also taken advantage of the advertising potential for their busy facilities, not to mention cinemas, terminuses, airports—you name it. But what makes post-secondary schooling institutions different?

Although Zoom Media is a from-Quebec business, many have come to associate it with the influence of other multinational corporations. A book called Challenging McWorld (Tony Clarke, Sarah Dopp) compares Zoom Media’s active role in campus life to that of Aramark’s; a private company responsible for the cafeteria provisions of both school cafeterias and prisons.

In spring 2000, Concordia University students touted the wish to “pee freely”, calling a referendum on the matter of their contract with the ad company.

“While the majority of Zoom's ads have been foot-tall, poster-shaped billboards in hard-to-pry-open metal frames, the company has recently started placing video monitors above urinals and in stalls to make their pitches even harder to ignore. Says Claude Breault, director of communications at Zoom Media, "People, when they go to the washroom, they have to do their thing. They can't just walk away.... And really, we're the only media that can say they're face to face with a client."

Face to face with a client – who's excreting wastes from his or her body. Oh, sure, we can see the appeal to an advertiser of that image. (Actually Zoom can't even claim to be the only company doing so, since NewAd Media in Toronto does the same thing, but let Breault have his delusions.)

Zoom Media has signed up Rogers AT&T, a division of Rogers Communication, as its exclusive client in the Ontario test market.”

-BadAds.org

Going to the bathroom has become an industry because of NewAd and Zoom, now not only dealing in the 1-foot door ads but, in more regal public spaces, televised ad screenings. I’d like to know if Zoom and NewAd execs have televisions in their bathrooms, or if they’d be willing to let us in.

Trent University had its own bathroom conflict.

“During the summer of 2000, Trent University entered into a four-year binding contract with Zoom Media. Within six months, spray paint and magic marker had become common fare in the washrooms, the TCSA and all college cabinets had voted to terminate the contract, and Trent administrators had admitted that the contract was a debacle.

During the past three years, Trent has not received even half of the yearly $18,000 because less than 50% of the contracted ad-frames have been installed, and those that are up frequently do not carry paid advertisements.

Whenever charity ads appear, such as the Breast Cancer Foundation, Terry Fox Run, or United Way, Trent receives zero dollars from Zoom.”

“Representatives from Students for Ad-Free Education (SAFE) say they are pleased that the ads are coming down. SAFE argues that Zoom advertising increases consumer culture on campus, compromises academic freedom and contributes to the commodification of education. As one member notes, “Using racism, sexism and classism to sell products, many of Zoom’s advertisers -- like Ford, Tampax/ Proctor & Gamble -- also pollute the environment, test on animals, harm women’s health and violate human rights.”

“Challenging McWorld” is available to read free via GoogleBooks.

Comment: Why The Daily maintains a boycott list

By Martin Lukacs

The most precious of the mainstream media’s self-serving myths is that their prime responsibility is relentlessly uncovering uncomfortable truths. In reality, the only thing relentless about them is their pursuit of profit.

Newspapers are major corporations offering a product to audiences. But contrary to common perception, people buying the newspapers are the products being sold to advertisers. Mainstream newspapers make little money from actually selling papers – but they generate, on average, 75 per cent of their income from advertising.

When news has only a marginal role as a product, crusading journalism and information that undermines advertisers’ interests tend to be excluded. Since this advertising system emerged a century ago, working class, social-democratic, and radical papers have been progressively strangulated for lack of advertising support.

The advertising dependency raises a troubling dilemma. Newspapers may publish critical stories but simultaneously print advertisements promoting excessive consumerism or habits that render environmental destruction acceptable. We might read an article urging us to reduce our ecological footprint, and then scan an advertisement about discount airplane flights. An editorial exhorts us to cut emissions; ads seduce us into raising them.

By receiving money from these companies in return for access to their readers, some would argue that newspapers become complicit in their misdeeds and crimes. The Daily has the choice of being an exception to this structural failing of newspapers – not because we have special insight into the world’s workings, but because we receive a $3.75 student levy every term.

This money pays for printing and delivery, rent, insurance, and a modest stipend for the editorial staff. We still rely on ads to pay expenses such as telephone, utilities, equipment maintenance, legal council and accounting services. But while major corporate newspapers would sink if they entertained the idea of rejecting advertising, The Daily can put its foot down.

In the past our boycott has included nearly a dozen categories of advertising, but we’ve had to slash the list this year to just three: the Canadian army, oil companies, and pharmaceuticals.

The Army lures students into service with promises of free education; overseas they dress up their war of aggression in Afghanistan as heroic adventure. Oil companies greenwash their work speeding along the melting of the ice caps, and try to convince us that “global warming alarmists” want to revert back to the horse-and-buggy age. Pharmaceutical companies make enormous profits by preying on vulnerable students, over-medicalizing their anxieties. Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is banned in Canada, but pharmaceuticals try to evade regulation by resorting to veiled advertising.

At The Daily, we know we can’t fully stem the bilious tide of nasty advertisements. But we can refuse to deliver our readers to the very groups and corporations our editorial pages decry.

A Lesson Well Learned

This Vacant Space was Brought to you by MoreToLife!

TIME WARP!
tickticktickticktickticktick: 5 months ago!

During fall 2007 on the anniversary of the Dawson school shooting, certain executive student union planners decided to throw a party with guest performances by Metric and K-OS.
This event was organized by an entertainment company, a company the student union was proud enough to be working with to print the name of in big letters on all the event hand-outs, posters and across the DSU window. This entertainment company was MoreToLife (MTL).

Why bring it up? Is MTL guilty of sweatshop allegations, stock market manipulation, tax evasion?
No, nothing like that.
It just doesn't exist.

MoreToLife never really existed beyond print.

The entertainment company's webpage (now down) was a leased domain poorly built from a shockwave.com website template. The About Us, Contact and Bio portions of the site were all text box fill-ins that weren't properly filled in (typos, company jargon, blanks, you name it). The site gallery of events planned by MTL were all pictures of event scenes...but of one event, and they were all pictures of the same people at the same club.
The site had every tell-tale sign of unprofessional webmastery, poor marketing language and lousy work done to cover its source trail; it looked like a scam site. The sort of website devised by the same people who rent out offices at Square Victoria and hire people with classified ads to rip people off in Hawaii.

If our student union actually paid this company for event planning, it didn't do very much comparative shopping around. What it did have was one very valuable asset: A DSU executive invented it.

Politics with Yining Su

"I enjoy politics as a spectator sport, but at Dawson, it's difficult to watch sometimes. I can't help but imagine the political happenings at Dawson in a different setting, and I wonder if anyone other than a bunch of students would be getting away with some of this stuff.

Take last week's referendum, for instance. Let's put aside whether the "yes" side or the "no" side was right and imagine if say, in the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty, the Parti Quebecois has announced that the vote would take place two weeks after it was called.
Then, imagine if anyone who wished to campaign for the "no" side had to go through a committee made of up Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard.

I don't mean to compare Charlie Brenchley to Parizeau and Bouchard to Sheina Levy. That's not a nice thing to say, and Charlie and Sheina are good people who want to do the best for Dawson, but you have to see what is wrong with letting two totally partial and biased people decide what the "No" campaign can or cannot do.

Holding a vote is certainly part of the democratic process, but it is not all. A referendum is certainly better than a free-for-all in Conrod's, but to be truly fair, the DSU Executive Council needs to plan a longer campaign period and allow the "No" side have its say.

That's all over an done with, though. But elections are coming up. We'll be heading to the polls, about 10% of us, anyway, this time to vote for President, Executive Secretary, and VPs Finance, External and Recreational. That will be another chance for the EC to do things right. It will be another chance for students with integrity, who want to make a difference, to run for a position. It will also be a chance for the Dawson population to take their local politics seriously and vote responsibly.
I wish I could say I thought all this is possible. Unfortunately it already looks to me like it is going to be another heck of a mess."


Dear Yining Su,
OMFGWONDERFULLOFFLECAKESLOVEYOU.

That being said, your analogy of the referendum was right to the point and couldn't have been put any better.

The Controversy Continues

Issue 18 Thursday February 18^th 2008 News Page one of the Plant: the headline story by Erika Dryer came fully equipped with sensationalist headline and just as hollow as a coconut.

A week afterwards, our referendum coverage is as in-depth as it’s ever been; no wonder students feel little or no conviction about its results. Declaring continuing controversy the running story on unfortunate referendum mishaps draws a lot of attention, but not to any of the running issues.

Every article relating to the controversy is a collage of he-said she-said and leaves readers feeling pretty dry. Dyer acknowledges the general out-of-the-loop feeling shared by most students. The proclamation posters on every single bulletin board in the college declare that 77% of students voted in favor of federation, when 89%* of students walking by still don’t know what’s going on.

(*89% of eligible voters did not head to the ballots during the voting period)

Above the headline is a half-page photograph taken by Dryer of DSU employees distributing the “free”* ISIC cards to students who came to pick them up from a table decked in CFS pins and sitting in front of a campaign board, just in case they still needed convincing. Nicola White is also quoted in large; acknowledging the ‘No’ committee’s disqualification as a result of a breach in referendum rules. What the article doesn’t say is that the committee was disqualified four hours after the deadline for committee submission, leaving the ‘Yes’ campaign the only running committee during the last one and a half hours of the referendum. Dyer also nicely summarizes the federation’s intentions, dropping several causes the CFS strives to campaign on behalf of.*

(*Read: “On CFS Privatization of Public Services”)

(*Read: “Come Celebrate the Martyrdom”)

Page 06 (“Voices)

A word from the DSU

Rhetorical language is afoot! Here are some obligatory excerpts from the DSU’s victory statement:

“Last week the members of the Dawson Student Union voted with an overwhelming 77%* in favour to join the CFS. We would like to thank...”

Here’s a quick “re-cap”: You get Free Card! This card encourages you to purchase services from businesses within the CFS umbrella. We can now claim we own these services even though we’ve sacrificed all of our own autonomy to the federation.

“Overwhelming 77%” of “the members of the Dawson Student Union” implies certain falsehoods. An appropriate grammatical correction would be “6% of the members of the Dawson Student Union”, but that doesn’t sound as good. Something that sounds better and that would not be technically false would be “77% of students who voted said Yes!”, but that would lead students to ask which one in ten friends actually went and voted.

"Just What's so Wrong with Ads?"

“Why would a group of people complain incessantly about advertisements that aren't necessarily profane or offensive, help local businesses, are informative and provide funding for our school's services? Just because you don't find them pretty, doesn't mean they're not there for a reason.”

There are indeed many reasons for advertising in public space. Atwater metro's thirty-foot Ipod ads thoughtfully take the opportunity to target commuting students, helping fund metro maintenance and expansion. Advertising for businesses is a simple and easy way to generate revenue, but it has its downsides.

Relying on advertising revenue creates dependence in public institutions on private business for their services. Universities and Colleges across Canada depend on their unions to moderate private influence and maintain the establishment priority of education. However, when student unions become corporately aligned with businesses in contracts, certain student liberties once taken for granted become expendable.
Student groups (that provide services such as newspapers, clubs, events, outings, sports activities and current event activism and much else) affiliated with the unions also become dependant and restricted according to the contracts taken on by the funding-hopeful unions. Profits from these activities also often return to the union, disallowing student groups from re-investing and expanding and developing on their own terms.
Student groups aspiring to update equipment, launch events, adjust wages or basically act in any form of autonomy are subjected to the legal tenure of the advertising rights of sponsor businesses.
Reliance on private funding from business through student unions therefore handicaps the groups who wish to provide student services. Funding cuts and selective portrayal in the advertisement-based newspapers then punishes actions on behalf of student groups that can be considered competitive or threatening to the union’s clients.

This is a prime reason why student unions as well as all groups working to benefit the school community should maintain absolute minimal reliance on private enterprise. Though it seems feasible to take advantage of campus space in order to help bolster student services, one learns quickly of the choke leash involved. In the current referendum dispute is a double bind: the CFS leash as well as that of private partners, extended clearly to the paper and security team. We as students should not reward a union that sacrifices student power in exchange for funding that effectively works against itself. We should especially not by quietly accepting what is essentially an advertising contract that we don’t benefit from. This is the basis of this opposition group: working to help the student community through student measures and not relying on businesses that really only want our money even at the expense of public education.