To be involved or not to be involved

Arriving on campus for the very first time can be very overwhelming. There are so many new people to meet, class schedules to figure out, papers to sign, things to unpack, and the list goes on. It seems that as soon as you get somewhat settled, advertisements for clubs and extracurricular activities are posted. The first reaction is to focus on getting used to university life before getting involved in anything extra. That was my reaction, and during my first semester, that philosophy worked great. I was able to focus on my school work, build friendships within my dorm, and get a decent amount of sleep. But once I got into the swing of things, I began to want to do more extracurricular activities. There were still lots of things to participate in; however, the events that I wanted to be involved in (ie. Campus Rep) were no longer available. I had missed the application date. Now, with only five weeks left of school, I look back on my first year and see all the things I loved and all the things I wish I had done differently. One regret is that I didn’t get as involved as I would have liked.

Being part of a club or participating in extracurricular activities is a great way to meet new people while finding your place in the Redeemer family. Activities such as intramurals and the outdoors club are perfect for students who want to remain active while enjoying some friendly competition with fellow students. Other clubs such as City Kidz and Kids Club allow you to be God’s hands and feet while working with inner city kids. The options are endless. So, take it from me, even though university may seem intimidating and overwhelming, don’t be afraid of trying out clubs and events. They will be times you will remember forever, and the friendships you make while participating will be some of the best you’ve ever had. So to answer the question, “To be involved or not to be involved?” Well, I think you already know – be involved. You won’t regret it.

My Touch Football Story Has Been Cut Tragically Short

Redeemer has indoor touch football intramurals. They're going on in the gym this March. When you have a body type like mine and you quit your highly physical job to study, keeping active is incredibly important, and if you're easily bored the way I am, sometimes the treadmill just doesn't do it for you. Competitive touch football can.

The league is known as the ReDeemA Rough Royals Indoor Touch Football League. Unfortunately that's not a typo, and the part of me that wants to eventually make a living with my writing is struggling not to lambast these people for spelling Redeemer like that, but I'm going to let it slide for the time being, because the games are fun and the jocks that run them are really nice. The word jock is a little bit antiquated, but entirely applicable in the case of one of the guys running these games, Josh Erikson. Josh is a jock, through and through. I almost never see him outside of the weight room, and I'm relatively certain that he's some sort of jock vampire and that if he ever does leave, he'll melt.

I've gotten along with Erikson and his jock friends the way I never did with the jocks in high school. I'm pretty sure it has at least something to do with the fact that I'm now dealing with grownups, but I think there's more to it than that. We make a big deal out of social mobility on this blog, and while I haven't had the on-campus familial experiences that Shailene has, I have noticed that Redeemer's student body doesn't demand that everybody belong to one and only one of those archetypal social groups the way my old high school did. This place doesn’t run on stereotypes, and so I don’t have to be a jock to enjoy touch football. And I do very much enjoy touch football. Or…I did.

The human foot is a delicate, beautiful creation of Our Lord. It has 26 bones in it. It also has 33 joints, 107 ligaments, and 19 muscles. I mention this because on Monday, I was at a Tae Kwon Do Club meeting doing some light sparring, when my delicate and beautiful creation of Our Lord collided with the rudimentary mass of unrelenting bone and cartilage that was my opponent’s elbow. As one might guess, it was not the elbow that came out of this encounter worse for the wear. I’m pretty sure at least one of those 26 bones in my foot is broken, and sadly, this may mean that my touch football career is over. It was fun while it lasted.

Join the Family

In today’s culture, many people have a hard time defining family. Traditionalists would say that a family consists of a husband, wife, and children. A more modern definition considers a family to be a group of people who live together and care for each other. Now, I’m not about to attempt to create the most accurate definition of a family, but I do want to share with you the family life at Redeemer. Perhaps one of the things you are looking forward the most about being at university is living on your own and being independent from the rest of your family. Well, I hate to break it to you, but when you join the Redeemer community, you agree to belong to the Redeemer family.

Now what do I mean by the “Redeemer family”? I mean a group of young adults who care about one another whether they know them or not. Perhaps some examples will help demonstrate what I am trying to say. First, I will tell you a story about my dorm. One night, one of my dormies, who had gone to work in the library, went missing. She had apparently left the library and told someone that she would be back in a few minutes, but it had been two hours since she had left and she had left all of her stuff in the library. As soon as we heard that our dorm sister was missing, we dropped what we were doing to go look for her. Even the people who were just visiting our dorm joined the search party. Eventually, we found her, talking to a friend in the art gallery. Although this story is slightly embarrassing on our part, it gives you a good idea of how willing Redeemer people are to drop everything when someone is in trouble (whether it be real trouble or not).

Another example of the Redeemer family occurred this weekend when we decided to go shopping. Unfortunately, it was raining so by the time we reached the bus stop we were soaked. When we got on the bus, we were greeted by other Redeemer students who were also going to the mall. As one of my friend’s was complaining about his wet socks, another Redeemer student on the bus handed him a dry pair of socks. Even though we didn’t really know those students, they were still willing to help us be more comfortable.

I don’t want you to think that the Redeemer family is so caring to the point of suffocation. Just know that when you need someone to talk to or someone to help you, you’ll always find a willing hand. There is a place for everyone in the Redeemer family, which is why this year’s slogan is “I belong”. I encourage you to find your place in the Redeemer family and experience what Christian fellowship among young adults can do for you.

Child of Adoption

I’m a child of adoption. I was adopted by my family a couple weeks after my birth in 1983. In 1983, unborn babies still had legal recognition of their Section 7 Charter Rights to life and security of the person. I don’t have enough information about the circumstances surrounding my birth to say whether I would or wouldn’t have been aborted had the procedure been legal, but I’m glad I’ve always lived in a country where I had the right to life, even when I was still being knit together in my mother’s womb. R. v. Morgentaler changed all that, but that didn’t happen until 1988. I have very vague memories of going with my parents to abortion protests when that case was being debated in the Supreme Court, so you could say I’m a child of this issue. This is my issue. I am pro-life.

I’m part of the Redeemer Pro-Life Club. We’re hosting a movie night at the Rec Centre on March 2 at 9:30 PM, where we’ll be showing Juno, an Oscar award winning drama about a unique teenage mother who makes the right decision about her unborn child. In the fall, the club organized Life Chain, an annual North-America wide event where pro-lifers gather in silence to pray for the nation and an end to abortion. I didn’t make it out to that one because I was standing in a Life Chain in front of McMaster Hospital, but I heard it was a success. In the future, we’ll be hosting another movie, this time a documentary called Blood Money, which explores some of the inconvenient facts behind the abortion industry. It’s a good club, we have productive meetings and I think we’re doing really well, because despite the fact that most Redeemer students are probably default pro-lifers, it’s important for all of us to be educated on the issue, and I think that’s something the Pro-Life Club does very well.

The timing of this post is not a coincidence. Recently, a couple of major newspapers have been covering an investigation into Redeemer’s policies surrounding academic freedom. Some of the comments on the editorial pages and web articles about this investigation highlight the concerns of some citizens that Redeemer is a sanctimonious bubble of indoctrination that suppresses dissenting thought. It isn’t, but that’s another article. What we are, however, is an institution that favours one side of this issue. We don’t have a pro-choice club. In the past, we’ve had openly pro-choice speakers such as Stephen Lewis come to the campus. We’ve had debates and dialogue about the issue, and will almost certainly continue to do so. The discussion unlikely to change the institution’s view on the issue or result in a pro-choice club being chartered here, but we're up front about that.

How does our policy stack up with those of other universities? Carleton University’s student association recently revoked the campus pro-life group's club status. Protesters there were arrested after attempts to set up a pro-life display on campus. The Universities of Calgary, Victoria and Guelph and McGill have all taken the similar measure of stripping their pro-life group of its charter. Also at McGill, a pro-life speaker named Jose Ruba was prevented from speaking by disruptive protestors who chanted, sang, and blocked the stage, finally resulting in the arrest of two demonstrators. All around this country, pro-life dissent is being forcibly silenced arguably because pro-choice groups aren't interested in having the same dialogue that we entertain here.

At Redeemer, nobody gets arrested or shouted off campus for having the wrong opinion. Maybe you could make the argument that we suppress pro-choice opinion. As a Christian institution, there’s a small extent to which we probably do, but we stand in stark contrast to some of Canada’s other institutions in one way: we’re honest about it. We're honest about who we are and what we believe, and we're not scared of a little Socratic dialogue.

Snow Day

On February 2, 2011, Redeemer experienced its first snow day for the 2010-2011 school year. Usually, the first thing that crosses a person’s mind when they hear about a university having a snow day is, “Why have a snow day when so many students live on campus?” It’s true. Most students could just bundle up and trudge through the knee-deep snow to get to their classes, but there are three other reasons for having a snow day: 1) many professors and staff members can’t get to the school 2) commuter students don’t want to drive on dangerous roads 3) snow days make every university student happy.

Some students enjoy snow days because it gives them time to work on essays, study for midterms, catch up on sleep, or postpone the test that was scheduled for that day. Other students love snow days because of all the free time. Me, I tend to fall into the “free-time” category. One of the first things my dorm mate and I did on that snow day was play in the snow. It was then that we learned that the area around our dorm has many snow drifts; some as deep as our thighs. Then we heard that some students had made a tunnel in one of the giant snow drifts. That tunnel was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Now, I’m not one for small spaces, but crawling through a snow tunnel is definitely worth it. In fact, my friends and I were so inspired we decided to make our own tunnel. It didn’t turn out as well as we’d hoped, but we had a great time trying to dig it. All in all, that snow day was a much needed break from school and a welcome distraction.

Good People To Work For

I have some news. There's opportunities to do a lot of fun things on this campus. You'll find many of them documented in this blog, and of course there's many more that we haven't yet written about. However, the dominating activity in the life of any responsible university student (and even most of the irresponsible ones) is attending class. Most university advisers will readily tell you that you're going to have to commit at least 40 hours a week to reading and homework if you hope to be successful in post secondary education. 40 hours is a full time job. That's why those extra-curricular activities we write about are referred to as such, because they're extras, indulged in by those of us whose job is to go to class, read books, and learn about the world. Why is choosing this institution for four years of full time work (that's what it is, it's your job) a good decision? Well, going on what I've experienced so far, our professors know their subjects through and through.

For example, the history department has Dr. Kevin Flatt, a younger instructor whose lecture style leaves room for discussion of some of the funnier points of history, like the revolutionary Protestant act of disobedience that would later become known as The Sausage Incident of 1522, or the life and times of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDrunkard. While keeping his lectures humorous and engaging, Flatt manages to provide information that fits into a meaningful modern context, bringing history to life and giving it relevance today.

Then there's Dr. Darren Brouwer, a chemistry professor. Science can be a delicate area for Christians to practice in. Lean too far one way, and you're likely to be ostracized by your fellow scientists, who as a community have adopted a decidedly secular worldview in their studies. Lean too far the other way, and you've adopted that view yourself. When I took chemistry with professor Brouwer, I watched him walk that fine line between those two extremes and produce the most honest presentations of scientific facts I could have hoped for.

There are more outstanding professors. I'll set aside some blog space, someday, to document the outstanding performances of professors Klassen, Boersema, Smid, Koyzis, and the rest. They've all done their part at providing me with a comprehensive, up to date educational experience. If this is my job, I couldn't ask for better bosses. I don't know why I'm here or what I'll be doing when I'm done. My professors can't teach me that, I have to get that from God. But maybe that's what my job actually is: learning what I need to know for whatever it is God has for me next. The professors here are the right people to teach me just that.

The Fourth Annual Faith and Social Justice Conference

This weekend was the Faith and Social Justice Conference, the fourth annual event hosted by Redeemer's Social Justice Team. The speaker I saw there, Greg Paul, gave a discussion about social justice, his history in inner city ministry, and offered some insights to those in attendance about what we're doing and how we can do better. There was a number of presenters and opportunity to learn about a wide variety of topics. I'm sure most of you know how a conference works, and since you've likely grasped that this conference was about faith and social justice, you probably have a pretty good idea of what transpired this past weekend. The conference was especially beneficial, I thought, because of its ability to be relevant to people who aren’t majoring in Missions or Social Work. I've worked in social justice positions in the past, and while I recognize the need for God's people to be the hands and feet of Jesus, I'm not entirely sure that I'm called to direct participation in that area of the Church's vast cultural mandate. Even so, attending the event was enriching and meaningful. It opened my eyes in a lot of ways, and I’d definitely recommend attending next year’s conference, even to those with little interest or experience in the area of social justice.