( Photo: C.J. Roussakis )
The Charlatan’s Candice So talked to Carleton student Nicholas Osborne, who is also vice-president (academic) for the undergraduate Carleton Computer Science Society and Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) computer science councillor. He discusses his campus involvement, how he got interested in student politics and what he wants to do after he graduates.
This is an abridged version of the interview.
The Charlatan: What year and program are you in?
Nicholas Osborne: I’m a third-year computer science student with a minor in mathematics. I’m also the [(CUSA)] rep for computer science and I’m also the [Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG)] rep, which I am through being the vice-president (academic) for the undergrad society for computer science.
TC: What made you want to get involved with student politics and government?
NO: It sort of came out of necessity. I’m actually not that politically driven, I know which comes as a shock, but I saw a situation that I didn’t agree with, and because I was so upset with the way things were being run, that’s sort of what drove me to get involved, hoping that I could go in and change what I didn’t like about the way the structure’s set up now.
TC: Can you tell me more about the situation?
NO: It wasn’t any particular situation. It sort of spawned originally out of when I was living in residence in first year, and there were a lot of issues with the campus network. Basically once every half hour the Internet would drop for about 45 minutes. It was awful. And I wasn’t sitting on [the Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA)] at the time, but I was persuaded by the president of RRRA at the time to chair an ad-hoc Internet service review committee where I worked with CCS (Computing and Communications Services) to diagnose and fix the residence issues. So that was sort of my first foray into student politics, running that committee for RRRA. And from there I got persuaded into running for CUSA, and it all sort of propagated from that point.
TC: This year, you’ve also been helping Bruce Kyereh-Addo with his campaign.
NO: Yeah. One of my interests in computer science is new media, so things like social networking and using these tools to promote people and places. So I was actually approached by Nick Bergamini, who had been running on the Demand Better slate and who [was] aware of my interest in new media and had asked me to run the new media campaign within the election. So we were responsible for all of their Facebook and stuff that went out for their campaign. And after all the stuff happened with Bruce [Kyereh-Addo], I sort of stayed on just to help out, because I didn’t agree with what had happened to Bruce [Kyereh-Addo].
TC: Have you been involved with past campaigns?
NO: Not directly, other than my own personal campaigns to run for these various positions. Last year, in my second year, I was indirectly involved with the RRRA campaign in getting Meera Chander, Cameron McKenzie and Kailey [Gervais] elected for RRRA.
TC: Do you find the elections to be different than from in past years, given all that happened to Kyereh-Addo?
NO: The issue with elections at Carleton is that there’s always sort of an overarching interested body who has an interest in seeing what the outcome is. And there’s usually people in the background making sure certain candidates win. This has been going on since I started at Carleton. I think this year they showed their hand a bit more than in previous years with the disqualification of [Kyereh-Addo]— and Cameron MacIntosh. Both presidential candidates were disqualified. I found that this year, elections were much more strict in terms of what you were and weren’t allowed to do. I thought that was more to protect the candidates that they wanted to win from candidates who had a shot at winning by using new and unconventional campaign techniques.
For instance, as the new media co-ordinator for the Demand Better slate, we had shot a whole bunch of viral videos, only to find out two hours before the campaigning started that we weren’t actually allowed to use any audio/visual material. So we had spent hours creating these really, really fantastic videos and we couldn’t show them to anyone. And to this day, they’ve been locked away, which is really upsetting. . . . It came as a surprise to us.
TC: So things like these that seem unfair, have they led to your more active role in Kyereh-Addo’s campaign?
NO: Yeah, exactly. The more that I feel that [Kyereh-Addo] has not been treated fairly, the more I see the problem with the syste” and the more I feel compelled to stand up and say, “No, this isn’t right, we need to change this.’ And that’s why I’ve been such a huge advocate for this with Bruce [Kyereh-Addo] as our president campaign, because at the end of the day, [Kyereh-Addo] won democratically. And it’s not fair to not give him his title.
I was permitted to record [Kyereh-Addo’s constitutional hearing], which I made available on the Internet, so that anyone who’s interested in the ordeal can follow it, so there is that transparency. Because I think that one of the biggest issues with a lot of the student governments on campus is that there’s no transparency. There’s a small group of people making the decisions without the influence or even letting their constituents know what is going on.
TC: Can you tell me a bit about DC++?
NO: I can speak to the community aspect of DC++ . . . being a community tool for residence users to communicate with each other. DC++ is a service that we run on campus, primarily for residence users, but it’s also available to the rest of the campus. And one of the features of the service that we run is that it provides sort of public forum chat, where anyone can log in anonymously, and say what they want to say. And what’s grown out of that is a strong community where specifically residence users build friendships and relationships and it’s a chance for them to get to know each other from different buildings.
This has proven useful in the past when dealing with residence issues on a large scale where students were led to believe that certain things happening to them in residence were isolated incidents, like noise complaints and issues with vacuum cleaners, only to find out after expressing their frustrations on DC++ that this was a larger problem. And them being able to band together to get the support that they needed to challenge the problem that we were having and to overcome it.
TC: Was DC++ used at all with Kyereh-Addo’s campaign?
NO: It was by the other administrators. I myself, because I was on [Kyereh-Addo’s campaign team, could not use it . . . At the same time though, the other slate also used the tool to express their interest in the other slate winning.
TC: Does it have a specific name, though, for residence students?
NO: Most students just call it DC++. It’s technically Carleton Hub. The web address is carletonhub.com. We have about 1,500 unique users, so it’s just over half of residence, and probably about 600 users at any given time.
TC: As an administrator, do you regulate things or is it a free forum?
NO: There are some sort of general rules regarding slander and abusive content, but other than that, we don’t censor any ideas or anything. We don’t pretend to be a democratic body on campus. I mean it’s very rigid. We are the administrators, we run this show, if we don’t like what you’re doing, you’re gone. It is our private property, DC++, we’re a private entity on campus. We’re not forcing anyone to use our service, so you’re sort of using it at your own risk . . . If you see something you don’t like, that’s your problem. But in terms of the chat, we don’t censor any ideas. You’re free to say whatever you want to say. You can speak out against us if you’d like. We’re not trying to stop that.
TC: And it’s sort of a hobby?
NO: Yeah, it’s sort of a hobby project. A few of us are in computer science, so it was us in first year thinking, “how can we build a community together?” especially being in residence first year, so it started to spawn out of that. I’ve been out of residence for two years, but I continue running the service.
My two sort of main interests are music and computers. So things that I do, like radio and new media, are a way to combine my interests with the Internet and Internet culture. Most of the applications that I do in the real world with new media is music-related.
TC: Is that what you hope to do after graduation?
NO: It is, actually . . . . It’s such an emerging field that I’m not sure where I’m going to go with it. But there’s definitely work there.