The effects of Facebook

By Wazi Kunene

Schools around the world are complaining about the social network phenomenon that is Facebook. This came after a meeting with a number of education departments.  The topic of the meeting was ‘Learners today are not competent enough to handle pressure in high learning’.

Digging the digs life

By Gabi Falanga & Jonathan Jones

When it comes to moving into digs, Rhodes students need to be on their toes. Juggling estate agents, landlords, bitchy digs-mates, commission and shopping can be quite tricky, never mind those first time mishaps which always seem to creep up on you at some point. However, moving into digs can be one of the most fun and rewarding times of your life. There is no shortage of Rhodents who have interesting digs tales of some kind.

Making cents of student budgeting

By David Shields

Pic by: Jessica Pike

Kirstin Kyle modelling a hat from Nearly New

University life is full of adventure. It’s a time to party, make friends, discover yourself and, above all, study for a degree. It’s the chapter where responsibility is minimal and finances are non-essential. As students, many of us live hassle-free. In residence, meals are provided and clean linen is supplied every week. In digs, students might not have it as easy, but many say that the sense of independence is worth far more than a ready-cooked meal. Nonetheless, every student is taken care of in some way. The problem with this is that students hardly take time out to access their financial status. With a bit of saving here and there, a world of possibilities awaits them.

Not quite the last word

By Babongile Zulu

Every year brings new tidings and for our very own government, 2009 is no exception. For example, the sudden creation of a new ministry strikingly called ‘Ministry for Women, Children, Youth and People with Disabilities’. Oh, and what about ‘Co-operative Government and Traditional Affairs’. There are actually more than I can write about in this column, but please do Google it, you would be amazed at the changes befalling our country as we speak. Good changes? Bad changes? Well, I don’t know, let us assess the situation shall we?

Grahamstown: going to the dumps

By Gabi Falanga

Grahamstown’s rubbish dump is filling up and new legislation states that no more permits for new landfill sites will be issued. In other words, when Grahamstown’s rubbish dump is full, it is full.

Last year, Rhodes University generated 279 tons of recyclable materials. This is the equivalent of 46 male elephants. This year, in January alone, a staggering 31 tons (5 male elephants) was collected. Mark Hazell, the Manager of Grounds and Gardens at Rhodes, said the amount of recyclables that Rhodes produces is increasing substantially. “We are not even collecting a third of the recycling. If we were, this figure would be more like 1200 tons a year,” he said. This is the equivalent of 1333 cars the size of a VW Citi Golf.

The Dangers of swot week

By Jennifer Moyes

It’s that time of the year again… The time of year when lectures and tutorials cease to exist and you can sleep in until whatever time you want. No, I don’t mean the holidays: I mean swot week. For those first years don’t know about this interesting time of year, here’s a list of the dangerous practices you will find yourself engaging in. For those who do, it’s just a reminder!

One of the greatest problems with swot week is a whole bunch of time and nothing to do in it. The two biggest dangers include too much sleep and a fondness for lazing around watching movies all day. Every morning is spent cocking one eye open and then deciding to tell you alarm to shut its bleeping self up. Then, when you do in fact wake up, you decide that socialising would be a more viable option than actual learning.

Off to a Dream start

By Darren Anderson

The Rhodes Rugby team, also known as the Dream Team, got off to a near perfect start on Saturday, 2 May, by defeating the UCT internal league team, Ikhaya, with a convincing 15-0 score. The score line may have come as a shock to many Rhodents as the general feeling in the Rhodes Great Field stands, prior to the game, was that the Dream Team was in for a thrashing. This feeling was short lived.

CLT 101: Talking to the clitoris

By Paige Knight

With exams fast approaching, I thought I’d make my column a bit more educational. Sex education first needs to start off with a language, so we can communicate. Whether this language will consist of sentences or grunts and moans, is up to you. Critical Language Teaching, better known to linguistic students as CLT, is a method for teaching language. There are four steps to gaining communicative competence, which is the central concept of CLT. A man called Dell Hymes said that linguistic competence was useless on its own. In order to communicate effectively, we must know the rules of the language to be able to use the language appropriately.

Undrstndn Txtn

By Jamaine Chiwaye

Texting is one of those occurrences in the 21st century that no one can grasp in its entirety. Even the Mxit addicts who spend countless amounts of time flexing their thumbs cannot lay claim to total domination of the world of text. However, although we don’t understand everything, it doesn’t stop anyone for one moment. What we don’t understand, we questions. But what happens when the answers are more questions and all you do is find circles with angles? That is when the questions should be answered by Rhodents.

Liberal Propaganda

By Matthew Edwards

After four years of Rhodes life, I’ve seen my fair share of marches, protests and demonstrations. Hell, I’ve even taken part in some. But to be completely honest, the most recent one took me completely by surprise. Literally. I wasn’t looking where I was going and I almost walked into a girl lying across the library quad.

Graduation into the global economic crisis: Practice advice for students, hippies and revolutionaries

By Kate Jackson

Pic By: Desiree Schirlinger

Rhodes students live a sheltered life, tucked away in the Eastern Cape, far from the stress and responsibility of the ‘real world’. One could say that, for some of us, the closest we get to a disaster is the Union running out of creme soda on a cane train night, and that our most pressing responsibility is dragging ourselves out of bed for a dawnie the morning after. Watching the news readers report on stories about things such as swine flu and the global economic crisis is somewhat surreal, as if these are echoes from another world – a stressful world, and one far removed from the daily concerns of a Rhodent.

What’s Your Flavour?

By Ithuteng Mashabela & Wazi Kunene

Pic: Jessica Elizabeth Pike

If you’ve ever heard someone talking about studded chocolate or ribbed strawberries and cream, the chances are they weren’t talking about ice cream. If you pop into your nearest pharmacy, you could find these titles in the condom section. I bet you never imagined that your favourite ice cream flavours could one day become condom flavours, right? Activate hit the streets, chill spots and common rooms of Rhodes campus to get the students’ take on condoms.

Barking up the Right Tree

By Gabi Falanga & Sarah Kobal

Pic: Simone Armer

Emotions shift into overdrive and blood begins to boil as you watch that straggly puppy with the big brown eyes running aimlessly around town. As you watch him, you think angrily to yourself, “Shouldn’t the SPCA be here to rescue this pup?”

After numerous complaints from concerned Grahamstown residents regarding the apparent incompetency of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), Activate wondered if there was valid reason for this or whether they were barking up the wrong tree?

Someone Took My Cheese

By staff reporters

Pic: Kirsty Hall

There have recently been murmurs of protest within the student body with regards to the recently down-sized breakfast menu in residence dining halls.

A big factor has been the removal of the cooked food option from menus on all days except Sundays. Originally, cooked foods were taken off the breakfast menu entirely, to be replaced with continental-style breakfast platters, but a compromise has recently been made to allow for the serving of hot foods, such as eggs and cooked tomato, every second day. On the days when cooked breakfasts aren’t served, yoghurt portions have been added to the breakfast menu instead.

Additionally, new rules have been set in place with regards to portion sizes and many feel as though they are being short-changed by the University.

Freedom of Facebook

By Kutloano Kunutu

In early January of this year, a man from Eldorado Park, Gauteng, became the first known man in South Africa to be arrested and charged with crimen injuria. Crimen injuria is an offence committed when a person deliberately injures another’s reputation. He had been posting derogatory and defamatory messages on his wife’s friend’s Facebook wall after she reported him to the police.

Facebook is a social networking site, offering people the chance to communicate with other people in their chosen networks. It allows for self-expression and the famed, or rather misused, ideal of freedom of speech.

Who is the Greenest of Them All?

By Babongile Zulu

They say that charity begins at home and, since Rhodes will be our home for about three or four years, it’s time we did charitable things right here to lower our carbon emissions and make Rhodes a better and greener place. Activate investigates how green we really are on campus.

Going green. Save the earth. These are both slogans that are creeping into our everyday existence because now, more than ever, there needs to be a movement towards saving the earth’s natural resources. Sadly, they will all run out one day and then we’ll be left with nothing. There is a definite move towards being environmentally friendly, but how does our own fine campus fare in this endeavour?

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“Rhodes is not perfect, but it is not a hellhole either,” comments Kyle Langley, SRC Environmental Representative. He says that, while our campus may be lacking in being more environmentally conscious, there is some good work being done in order to improve the state of affairs. He is, for example, worried that the University’s recycling material is not being fetched often enough.

Head of the Department of Environmental Sciences, Charlie Shackleton echoed Langley’s sentiments, saying, “Many dimensions exist to being eco-friendly. Therefore, it is not surprising that the University does well in some and poorly in others,” he says. Examples of being on the road to full environmental awareness, he mentioned, are commitments to a green campus and indigenous species. Other areas of progress include the ground and gardens department using bio-diesel in their lawnmowers. Another, less physical, development is the student forum’s approval in 2007 to introduce an environmental portfolio to the SRC body. Unfortunately, there is a lack of institutional commitment to reuse and recycle paper and envelopes, as well as inadequate infrastructure to monitor water and energy use per building. As a department, however, they are doing their bit. “For example, we have had a postgraduate look at paper streams within the University and make recommendations on how paper use can be reduced,” says Shackleton.

The department is also currently in the process of calculating their personal carbon footprint and when the results have come through, they will look at ways of reducing it. Additionally, they have set up recycling bins in the department and have invited other buildings on the St. Peter’s campus to recycle along with them.

Another step towards being an eco-friendly university was the appointment of Environmental Officer, Nikki Kohly. At the moment, this it is on a temporary basis. “Being eco-friendly is something which needs to filter into everybody’s consciousness,” says Kohly. She feels that it is not a problem that can only be tackled by an individual, it needs institutional and student support. Kohly says that a good place to start would be Orientation weeks, when the first years are still very receptive to many issues.

In terms of energy consumption, some highlight the Tickertape around the Africa Media Matrix as a contested issue. Joe Alfers, technology manager at the department, says that the Tickertape is a device designed to run at all times. So, as much as people would like to see it switched off at night, it is just not possible. “It is part of the design concept of the whole building. In fact, the systems and technology were designed to run continually,” says Alfers. There is streaming media projected onto the plasma screens around the department and also projected onto computer screens. In terms of energy efficiency, the department uses florescent light bulbs which consume 30% less energy. The rule in the department is that all personnel and staff must switch off the lights in their offices before going home. “In short, energy efficiency was always in mind when this building was being planned,” concludes Alfers.

So what can you and I do in order to become more eco-friendly, you might ask? Next time you are browsing the Internet, go to www.carbonfootprint.com. Find out what your unique carbon footprint is and how you can go about lowering it. Print using the recycling paper at the computer labs – it will only cost you 10 cents! Do not leave heaters burning through the night. Do not leave your lights on when you are not in your room. The possibilities are endless.

A wealth of environmental information can also be found at the University’s website under the “Environment” tab.

Langley has this advice: “Think twice and educate yourself. We have a beautiful campus, so just appreciate it.” Now in his second year of being the SRC Environmental Representative, Langley hopes to collaborate with residences more intimately, to work closer with Green Revolution and Social Solutions (GRASS) and to generally raise awareness. “We just need to stick and work together,” he says. Shackleton’s advice is that students need to both support and challenge the SRC environmental councillor to be active. Langley also needs to constantly communicate concerns about inadequate environmental performance across all University structures and committees. However, as Kohly poignantly puts it, “change does not happen fast”. But, Rhodents, we will get there.

Filling gaps in the market – and along the pavement

By Babongile Zulu

Without even having to enter a store, Grahamstonians can buy bags, sunglasses, earrings, caps and much more. All this is available by simply strolling down High Street. Vendors sit under their umbrellas come rain or shine, selling their goodies for as little as R5. Grahamstown’s informal traders are filling a gap in the market for affordable goods, which any student can appreciate.

To the Point with Kholosa Loni

By Ithuteng Mashabela

Activate reporter, Ithuteng Mashabela speaks to SRC President Kholosa Loni about her recent appointment and her plans for the year ahead.

So, how did you feel when you discovered you were the new SRC president?

I was really excited. It’s an enormous honour, but I think I’ve gotten over the initial hype. Now it’s all about the work. There’s a lot of planning to do once you realise the magnitude of the responsibility that you’ve been entrusted with.

You’re the first black female president too. What does that mean to you?

I think it’s wonderful, but I don’t think of myself as simply the ‘first black female president’. I’m the SRC president, that’s the crux of the matter. I do feel, though, that it is important that I raise the bar and set the standard for those who come after me.

How has your time as a member of the SRC in 2008 prepared you for this position?

I’ve grown a lot during this time. I’ve gained a greater understanding of the workings of the University system. I’ve also grown more confidence as a speaker. I’m more assertive and my people skills have improved and I’ve learnt to liaise and network quite well.

Keeping it safe at Rhodes

By Daniel Charvat

For everything that Grahamstown is, with its character and small town lifestyle, it’s important to remember that it is still just another town in crime-ridden South Africa, where being street-wise is your most valuable asset. O-Week (that would be the week you’re currently in, while half-heartedly reading this newspaper before the next introductory talk), is the one week that will remain in your memory as the most memorable week of your university life. Trust me, looking back at your year 10 months from now, you’ll see what I mean. Last year a girl was allegedly raped in O-Week, just one case of the 94 reported incidents of rape in Grahamstown last year.

Circus Adventures with Andrew Buckland

By Kutloano Kunutu

Pic: Joni Els

If he wasn’t already, Andrew Buckland has become one of Rhodes University’s coolest lecturers. Why? Well, he and his son, Daniel, joined the circus. Not just any circus, the Rolls Royce of circuses: the Cirque du Soleil.