Ainsley Thurgood/Photo Assistant
Remember that you aren’t the only ones who live here though
By: Derek Elliott, Contributor
Every September, the areas of Ainslie Wood and Westdale welcome a new group of McMaster University students who are eager to participate in university life and enjoy living in the area. Truth be told, there really is a lot to enjoy. You will find as you settle into the area that it is a great place to live. It’s very walkable and very convenient, close to Cootes Paradise, with parks and playgrounds, miles of cycling trails nearby, the recently renovated Westdale Theatre, lots of bars and restaurants and of course all the facilities that the university has to offer. You can even hop on a quick bus or train to Toronto, but Westdale has everything one would need.
For those of us who live in this area, the presence of McMaster students adds a spark of life that it otherwise just wouldn’t have. We really do hope you enjoy the few years that you will be living among us.
As a long-time Westdale resident myself, there are a few things I’d ask you to keep in mind.
Please be aware of those around you. Westdale and Ainslie Wood houses not just students, but many families and elderly folks live in the area. Some folks have very young children and some are commuters who have to get up early to travel for work.
Have a good time and enjoy yourself but remember that you need to keep the noise down, especially after 11:00 p.m. Unfortunately the mix of large numbers of young, energetic people, alcohol and/or other stimulants can result in otherwise decent responsible people acting in irresponsible ways. This can make things challenging for the more “permanent” residents of the areas surrounding campus.
In the age of cell phones and social media, a small gathering of friends can quickly get out of control. It happens at least once a year around here. If you’re renting a house and it happens to you, don’t be afraid to call the police for help. If you don’t, be assured that somebody else will and you’ll get the blame for the loud party.
Along the same lines, residents take pride in keeping our yards clean and tidy. It’s part of what makes the neighbourhood a pleasant one to live in. If you’re renting, please keep your yard in a reasonable state — free from garbage and overgrown weeds. When it snows, the sooner you shovel your sidewalk, the easier it is to do. You may be lucky enough to live next door to someone who has a snow blower. Many of us who do just keep going down the sidewalk when we’ve finished our own. In Hamilton the temperature fluctuations cause freezing and thawing which can lead to really dangerous conditions on sidewalks. If someone is injured, the signatory in your house could be held legally liable.
Consider this — if your parents or guardians were living in this neighbourhood, how would you behave? I know you're here for a good time, but please respect those of us who are here for a long time.
Welcome to the neighbourhood and by following these suggestions, we can all live together safely, comfortably and happily.
By Lilian Obeng
Two weeks ago, students and alumni gathered in the streets of Westdale and Ainslie Wood to celebrate McMaster’s Homecoming. After the incident known colloquially as “Dalewoodstock” took place in 2017, residents and university administration were keen to avoid repeating the levels property damage. The McMaster Students Union president also participated in the university’s promotional campaign dissuading students from partaking in the extremes of party culture.
Also two weeks ago, McMaster went viral. A clip of a girl being knocked down, and subsequently trampled by a mounted police officer began to make the rounds on social media. The video was so clear that news outlets such as CBC Hamilton picked it up. The immediate response to the video was to brush the incident off as a moment of drunken hilarity, but this occurrence sheds light on the evolving relationship between the MSU and law enforcement — specifically to the detriment of students.
We have arrived. #homecoming @McMasterU #makegooddecisions pic.twitter.com/VbO9AvUgnW
— HPS Mounted Patrol (@HPSMounted) September 15, 2018
In preparation of Homecoming, the university administration, McMaster Parking & Security Services and the MSU all meet to discuss and determine strategies for deterring improper conduct.
With this in mind, the increased policing of students appeared inevitable. Since St. Patrick’s Day of 2016 — at the very least — police officers have been contracted by the university for additional security. ACTION officers have been consistently and increasingly patrolling the Westdale area whenever celebratory, or potentially inflammatory, occasions take place, often with horses.
[spacer height="20px"]Initially, there was a half-hearted attempt by dispersed student groups to call attention to the increased policing going on at McMaster. In spite of the MSU’s purported dissatisfaction with the situation, this issue was shelved. Subsequent board of directors failed to recognize the danger this presented to all racialized people at McMaster.
The push towards policing was spurred on by our Ward 1 councillor Aidan Johnson.
Johnson, who is not seeking reelection in October, ran on a platform of deliberately increasing police presence on ‘student streets.’ He also expressed support for hiring Mohawk students to help patrol the Ainslie Woods and Westdale neighbourhoods — an idea that the city and McMaster are not in opposition to.
Why does any of this matter? Essentially, students are being used as an ‘easy’ source of revenue — a concerning fact when financial security is tenuous for many of us. Students are ticketed at such a disproportionate rate that the MSU must roll out multiple by-law education campaigns. We are also deliberately exposing vulnerable populations to uncritical surveillance.
The fact of the matter is that certain groups in our society have been historically disenfranchised by law enforcement. Heightened police presence is an inherent threat and a reminder of the power dynamics present in Hamilton.
It is plausible that our student leaders were unaware of this history, but ignorance is an insufficient excuse when police officers unnecessarily parade horses through students and cause bodily harm. We as students have forgotten our initial outrage, and allowed ourselves to uncritically parrot back the talking points of out-of-touch administrators. Our MSU president, however inadvertently, used her image to promote the policing of students and advance the university’s public relations campaign. This doubly highlights the need for the MSU to find ways to retain institutional memory. Our advocacy needs to be much stronger than this.
Ultimately, the response to Homecoming was overblown. We as students empathize with the desire the City of Hamilton, residents and the university has to contain rowdy, disruptive teenagers. We should wholeheartedly reject the notion that the solution lies in policing.
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In about a month, cities all over Ontario will hold their municipal election, elections which will dictate the political landscape for these cities for years to come. The results of this election can bring all sorts of changes to the neighbourhood and yet the city offers little to students to participate, further exemplifying that the city of Hamilton doesn’t care about McMaster students.
Voting stations are scattered all throughout Westdale and Ainslie Wood, mostly at churches and public schools. The voting station for McMaster University’s address, 1280 Main Street West, is at Binkley Church, which is 1570 Main Street West, far away from any major student residences.
For first-year students living in on-campus residence, putting a voting station on campus would not only allow them to vote with ease, but it would also help foster an interest in municipal politics and stress the importance of participating in the electoral process at all levels of government.
It’s not as if having a voting station on campus is unheard of; during the 2015 federal election, McMaster University had a voting station which allowed students to vote on campus. I was a first-year student at the time, and I distinctly remember my classmates excitedly voting for the first time because of the convenience.
There is also little evidence of any sort of outreach program by the city. There has not been any major social media campaigns promoting the election and outside of some postering in Westdale and Ainslie Wood, there is no trace of the election in these neighbourhoods outside of candidate campaigning. The McMaster Students Union has launched its usual voting campaigns, but the job of getting students invested in municipal politics should not fall on the student union.
The Municipal Election is Monday, October 22 - in addition, there are 5 ADVANCE poll dates available for voters. Full Election details: https://t.co/tt4eeHHe9x. #HamOnt #HamiltonVotes18 pic.twitter.com/4rcLntjLa1
— City of Hamilton (@cityofhamilton) September 20, 2018
McMaster students time and time again prove that they’re politically engaged; we consistently have one of the highest voter turnouts for our student union elections and have a multitude of candidates at every level of student politics. There are even two recent McMaster graduates running in the municipal election.
The city of Hamilton has a contentious relationship with McMaster students, as evidenced by their rather extreme reaction to last year’s Homecoming block party in Westdale. During the whole frenzy surrounding that event, the city seemed to have forgot that the party was immediately cleaned up the next day by a group of volunteers.
This year, the city of Hamilton increased policing in student neighbourhoods, despite there being little evidence of such a party happening again.
Compared to other universities, such as Queen’s University and the University of Western Ontario, McMaster students are downright boring. Could you imagine the number of volunteers that would be necessary to clean up Western’s FoCo or any other similar event? McMaster volunteers were able to clean up Dalewood Street in a single Sunday.
McMaster students are an important part of the Westdale and Ainslie Wood community, and yet they are blamed for issues like landlord negligence, made obvious through the city’s decision to increase by-law policing in Ward 1, despite multiple students pointing out that by-law maintenance usually falls under the landlord’s jurisdiction.
The city of Hamilton does little to limit the movement of talent away from their city, and instead antagonizes students. Putting voting stations on campus would not only allow more students to vote in this upcoming election, it would also act as an act of good faith; the city offering an olive branch in the form of the electoral process.
Like a lot of McMaster students, I enjoy living in Hamilton. It’s been my home for over three years now and I would prefer to stay here when I graduate. But the city’s failure to even attempt to engage young people in municipal politics only illustrates that our voices are not important to them. If the city expects students to stay in Hamilton, they’re going to have to completely revamp their approach to municipal elections.
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Voting may change drastically in Hamilton, as the Ontario Municipal Board votes on how the city ought to divide up the city’s ward boundaries.
The discussion began earlier this year after city council hired a third party consulting firm to review the current ward boundaries and how they interact with population distribution throughout the city.
The firm created a series of different suggestions based on their own research, but city council ultimately scrapped these suggestions in order to adjust the boundaries themselves. They have focused their efforts on ensuring suburban residents have more representation in city council.
Local citizens have taken issue with this process, some accusing the councilors of gerrymandering, or the process of dividing up geographic areas to give a politician more political control.
One of the main issues at hand focuses on whether ward 1, which includes Ainslie Wood and Westdale, should be split up and absorbed into ward 13, which is the ward representing Dundas.
Joey Coleman, a local journalist, has expressed concerns about splitting up the student vote throughout two different wards.
"We are affected the exact same way by decisions made by council, and often times, disproportionately so. These may range from issues regarding by-law enforcement, to housing regulation, and investments or divestment in transit."
Chunky Ibe
President
McMaster Students Union
“The Dundas councillor has no reason to effectively represent student interests as the students are a small segment of ward 13 with their potential votes (even if they voted at the average of 40 per cent, which they do not) diluted among 30,000 residents of Dundas,” Coleman wrote in an analysis from Oct. 11.
At the Oct. 25 OMB hearing, McMaster Students Union president Chukky Ibe spoke against the ward 1 split, arguing that the McMaster is a cohesive community of interest.
“We are affected the exact same way by decisions made by council, and often times, disproportionately so. These may range from issues regarding by-law enforcement, to housing regulation, and investments or divestment in transit,” Ibe said. “This community is first of campaigned too, and then disproportionally targeted, and scapegoated for political gain.”
Within his delegation, Ibe referenced the specific issues affecting students, such as transit and policing which affect students disproportionately.
“When the major bus route is altered through McMaster, or service reduced in the summer, it is this community that feels the brunt of it. When our councillor Johnson worked to increase the presence of student by-law officers patrolling our neighbourhoods, it is our students that pay fines close to 700 dollars,” he said.
Ibe expressed particular concern about the student neighbourhood’s access to city funding, particularly the Area Rating Reserve Fund. This $1.5 million fund is given to wards 1 through 8 in order to help facilitate local infrastructure projects.
If the ward 1 split is approved, students who live in ward 13 will lose access to this project, as the largely suburban area of Dundas does not receive this funding, instead relying on property taxes to pay for these projects.
“Taking away a significant part of our community will weaken the incentive, elected officials have to heed the concerns of their constituency. We lose our critical mass in one regions, and in the other region, our population becomes deeply insignificant, further entrenching this negligence by council on the issues that matter to us,” Ibe said.
The OMB has previously voted that students count as a community of interest. In Nov. 2013, the OMB voted that the main student neighbourhoods in Kingston were their own cohesive communities. The OMB will release their decision as soon as possible.
