Students at Mohawk College are campaigning for the school to introduce sharps disposal containers in washrooms.
The Change.org petition campaign, being led by a group of six Mohawk students in their final year of the social service workers program, currently has over 100 signatures.
Vince Soliveri, a campaign organizer, said the petition is driven by safety concerns and a desire to de-stigmatize the use of needles.
Currently, Mohawk College does not have sharps disposals in washrooms.
Instead, there are signs asking students not to flush needles down the toilet or put them in the garbage.
“Because it is so stigmatized, people do not want to have that conversation,” Soliveri said. “Telling people to cap needles and take them home is a pretty harmful way to go about the situation.”
Soliveri first started thinking about the subject when a harm reduction worker from the AIDS Network came in to speak to the crisis intervention class in November.
“[The harm reduction worker] brought up that Mohawk College is branding itself as a safe and inclusive space for anybody and having a sticker like that on the wall is stigmatizing for those that use needles and do not really to create a safe and inclusive environment for people who do use needles for any reason,” Soliveri said.
The project team members began serious work on the project in January.
Soliveri has a particular connection to the issue as well, being a placement student with the AIDS Network in downtown Hamilton.
These experiences make him confident about the feasibility of installing sharps disposals.
“It does not really come at an expense other than a little bit of labor screwing the sharps container and mounting it on the wall. That is really the hardest part of it because everything else is provided by other agencies in the city,” Soliveri said.
The AIDS Network currently runs a “Community Points” program in collaboration with Hamilton Public Health Services, where the organization picks up needles and drops off sharps disposal containers around the city by request.
For the rest of the semester, the team will be working out the exact details of a potential sharps disposal program. They are also planning a public outreach phase.
After that, they will bring their plans to the college administration.
“This is probably a project that will go beyond our time as students,” Soliveri said. “We finish school in April, and we are hoping by then, we can at least have a pretty good set of signatures in our petition that we are circulating around members of the Mohawk community.”
Soliveri is hopeful that the petition could have lasting effects beyond Mohawk.
“We are hoping if this project is successful and people are into it and understand the value, that it can be used as a framework for other places in the city,” Soliveri said. “And that could be as big as a university or that could be as small as your local café, just letting people understand that the process is not as daunting as people think it is.”
A sharps disposal system at Mohawk would not be the first of its kind.
Ryerson University is planning to install sharps containers in over 500 washrooms in university-owned buildings following a successful pilot project last January.
McMaster lacks sharps disposal containers in its washrooms. McMaster Associate Director Health Safety and Risk Management Lisa Morine said the university regularly inspects the campus and sees no present need to implement sharps disposals in washrooms.
The Mohawk College online petition can be found at https://www.change.org/p/get-sharps-containers-at-mohawk-college. To contact the Community Points program for disposal of sharps or for harm reduction supplies, call 905-546-2489.
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When Jess completed her undergraduate degree, she found herself at a crossroads. Look for an entry-level position in primary health care? Or pursue additional studies to streamline her career path?
Having decided to take the further education route, Jess began her search for a graduate certificate program that would provide the experience she needed to make her resume stand out. She found the right fit in Hamilton at Mohawk College and enrolled in the Mental Health and Disability Management Graduate Certificate program.
"My degree gave me a solid foundation, but I knew I needed practical skills and workplace experience," says Jess. “With so many opportunities to learn outside of the classroom and get involved in the community, Mohawk’s graduate certificate program checked all the right boxes for me."
As a leader in experiential learning, Mohawk’s graduate certificate programs prepare you, in one year or less with experience you will use in the workplace. Embedded in all programs are learning opportunities developed in cooperation with industry partners, such as capstone projects, work placements, and interactive simulations. These partnerships formed between industry, colleges and universities are key to students leaving with relevant skills for today's job market.
As a university graduate, these opportunities to specialize and gain industry-relevant experiences can build on your degree and make a difference in your job search. In fact, 88.6% of Mohawk grads find employment within six months of graduating. *
Securing a job in a field directly related to your undergraduate studies? Consider a graduate certificate program that complements your existing knowledge base.
Interested in working in an industry that’s entirely different from your university major? Your bachelor’s degree is the key to being eligible for a diverse range of graduate certificate programs.
For Jess, combining her undergraduate degree with a graduate certificate has given her the confidence that she’ll have both the knowledge and the skills to help fill gaps that exist in primary health care environments.
Ready to go further? Explore Mohawk College Graduate Certificates today and find the one that’s the right fit for you.
* 2017-18 KPI Student Satisfaction and Engagement Survey
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It is a move that should have happened years ago, but nonetheless, it is here.
In a press release, Ontario University Athletics (OUA) announced a partnership with Stretch Internet to create OUA.tv – the central home for streaming the league’s football and basketball games. Previously, individual schools would broadcast the games on their websites. McMaster used their athletic domain, marauders.ca, to stream games, while some schools used YouTube services or alternative domains. More sports will be added in the future, per the OUA, and championships for volleyball, rugby and soccer will be featured.
With OUA.tv, fans don’t have to scour through Twitter feeds to find stream links or deal with a bombardment of ads on athletics pages. Instead, it’s a one-stop shop. According to the press release, you only have to go to one place to watch the game of your choosing.
OUT WEST
To say this is a positive step for the league would be an understatement. Atlantic University Sport and Canada West have already successfully implemented similar programs and as the reality is fewer and fewer students are buying cable packages, the OUA’s desired market cannot watch the broadcasts on Sportsnet. When the Score was more than just a website and super-app, they would stream games online and put together a fantastic product, but that ceased when Rogers bought out the channel and rebranded it to Sportsnet 360.
But the relationship between Sportsnet and OUA football appears to have follow the same trajectory of a summer fling – beautiful at the start, full of effort and promise, before slowly falling apart and becoming nothing worth maintaining. While nothing is official yet, the OUA released their football schedule in April, but Sportsnet was not mentioned in the press release once.
And that is probably for the better anyways. OUA.tv may seem unconventional in comparison to a TV deal, but there are a ton of awesome nuggets that come with the new program and a seeming lack of handcuffs. For one, games will now be archived immediately after the conclusion of the game, meaning you can easily access a highlight or catch up on a game that you missed. This is especially beneficial for media who may not have been able to catch the game but still want to report on it, or die-hard fans that want to be able to watch all games. Last season, games were all played on similar timelines – usually 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. tip-offs – making it impossible to catch both games if you were attending one.
There will also be live stats with the game, catering to a new generation of fans who use statistics to understand the game more than ever before. Live stats also means that you will not have to turn up the volume and pray the announcing crew gives you the score once a minute. Muting without consequences.
And if those were not enough to perk your ears, Stretch Internet stated that you can use Google Chromecast or Apple TV to stream the game to a television, which is one of the minor aspects of the announcement but could actually be one of the widely appreciated aspects in five years. If you’ve ever had more than two people try to watch a game before, I am sure you know what I’m talking about. A 13 to 15-inch screen does not cut it for an intense playoff basketball game. On the other end, you’ll be able to watch games on tablets and smartphones – an embracement of modern digital culture.
THE CATCH
For all the positives, there remain some questions. While the issues range in importance, the wary student audience will magnify any obvious quirk or negative aspect to OUA.tv. One of the major problems will be streaming quality.
Right now, that quality varies from borderline unwatchable to 720p. Ryerson and Queen’s have put together very professional products, while others schools have been a downright embarrassment. You can imagine the OUA will put some pressure on those schools to beef up the quality, but that could be a tough ask of those with smaller budgets.
Then, there is the issue of staffing the broadcasts. At McMaster, the department struck a deal with Mohawk to use co-op students to take the lead on broadcasts. A major shout-out is in order for the athletics and recreation group since the broadcasts were sleek, had multiple camera angles and were orchestrated well. But not every school has that luxury, and it remains to be seen how a school would be able to corral the bodies necessary for doing a broadcast.
Finally, the problem of commentary: the OUA press release states that all games will have a play-by-play and commentary team. Sure, this seems like a minor issue and it was mentioned above that live stats mean you can mute them. But a broadcast team should not be bad to the point of muting. Avid followers of CIS athletics probably have a sore neck from nodding, and the criticism is true. Broadcast teams are usually one or all of the three: uninformed on the sport or league, biased, and/or reluctantly broadcasting. Having someone with any of those three qualities drastically diminishes the professionalism of the product, and it would probably be better to have just the sounds of the gym than two talking heads.
A BETTER PRODUCT
And really, that is what the OUA.tv project comes down to: a move towards a professional product. All major sport leagues have this kind of system to accompany their television contracts, and the OUA joins that company with this deal. The content will never come close to the level of the pros or their NCAA counterparts, but the production just might. OUA.tv could be a catapult, taking a league that is largely an afterthought in the minds of students into the conversation of something worth paying attention to, and possibly, eventually, paying for.
On Feb. 3, Hamilton Health Sciences, a billion-dollar consortium of hospitals and health care providers, got a new boss.
Rob MacIsaac left Mohawk College, after five years as the school’s President, to take the helm of Ontario’s second-largest healthcare system.
MacIsaac came into the role with considerable experience as a leader in public service and a history of successful management but no healthcare experience.
“It’s a big learning curve for me but I’m enjoying it. There is lots of great support here,” he said. “In the early going, the best strategy is to listen and learn, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”
He continued “The board obviously didn’t hire me because of medical expertise. They hired me to lead the organization and those [leadership] are skills I’ve been working on for a long long time.”
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MacIsaac also notes that his experience in public service will be valuable.
“I’ve been working in public service for about 20 years. I have a lot of skills that I bring from those other public service jobs into this job,” he said. “I enjoy policy and I enjoy trying to make my community a better place—that’s what brought me here.”
Before becoming the President of Mohawk, he also served as the Chair of GO Transit and Presto operator Metrolinx. Before that, he was a City Councillor and then Mayor of Burlington.
Depending on performance, MacIsaac will earn between $540,000 and $650,000 annually. This is not, at all, far off from the salary of outgoing CEO Murray Martin who took home $647,465 in 2012.
The job will not be without its challenges. MacIsaac identifies two major issues that he, and the rest of the healthcare industry, will have to deal with in the coming years.
“We have the emergence of two mega-trends…we have a rapidly aging population and at the same time the provincial government is running a deficit,” he said.
Meeting the needs of an older population on a potentially smaller budget will be the biggest test for the industry, according to MacIsaac.
Despite the challenges, and still learning the ebbs and flows of healthcare world, MacIsaac is optimistic about his tenure as CEO.
“I’m really excited about the job. I think it’s going to be a challenge. It’s a wonderful opportunity,” MacIsaac told the Spectator.
Mohawk hits record full-time enrolment
Ministry seeks feedback on education reform
The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities has asked students to respond to minister Glen Murray's proposed reforms on post-secondary education in the discussion paper entitled "Strengthening Ontario's Centres of Creativity, Innovation and Productivity." Sept. 30 was the last day for student governments including the MSU to draft written responses. Responses will be made publicly available this month. Watch for an online update on the critical responses by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA).
Mental Health Innovation Fund launched
The Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities announced that a $7 million per year fund will be established for mental health support on campuses. The fund, available until 2015, will identify gaps in current mental health support services, promote best practices and encourage liaisons between communities and on-campus mental health support. The ministry is accepting proposals from universities, colleges and student groups who wish to benefit from the fund this month. The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) urged the ministry to set up such an initiative in earlier this year, and representatives say they're pleased with the result.
The announcement comes in the midst of McMaster's 'Stomp Out Stigma' week dedicated to raising awareness about mental health. In a 2009 National College Health Assessment conducted at McMaster, 50 per cent of students polled said they "felt overwhelming anxiety" and 56 per cent said they "felt things were hopeless."
McMaster First Nations Student Association engages community during annual Powwow
The McMaster First Nations Student Association hosted its 4th annual Powwow last Friday outside the John Hodgins Engineering Building. In addition to raising the profile of McMaster's First Nations community through performances by local singers and dancers of the Ojibwe tribe, the Indigenous Studies Program hosted a send-off for retired elder-in-residence Bertha Skye and professor Hayden King, who will leave for Ryerson. The two were recognized by the First Nations campus community with an honour dance.
Gift from Indian government unveiled at Gandhi Peace Festival at City Hall
A new statue of Mahatma Gandhi was presented at City Hall for the 20th annual Gandhi Peace Festival in Hamilton. The statue is a gift from the government of India and the Indo-Canadian community, and drew emotional responses from attendees of Saturday's celebration. McMaster University received a bust of Gandhi last October during Mac Peace Week. It is located outside President Patrick Deane's office in Gilmour Hall.
