International students and anthropology professors are having a lot of trouble understanding Dalhousie University’s Accent Clinic. Formerly called the Accent Modification Clinic, the university service was founded four years ago to help students improve their English. But its controversial purpose raises several questions about race, class and the stigmatization of people from other places. Martha […]
Sarah Poko
Posted inNews + Opinion
Small town, global minds
Helen Timbo, 21Dalhousie University, third-year, statistics and chemistryOriginally from Sierra Leone, Timbo’s lived in Halifax for eight years and is the current president of the Dalhousie African Student Association. Her first taste of Halifax was when she arrived in the winter of 2008. “When the cold hit me, I screamed and didn’t want to go […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Ted Upshaw’s dedication
Ted Upshaw is gigantic. At six-foot-six, the 60-year-old towers over the average person. But his sunny disposition is more reminiscent of the Big Friendly Giant than the “fee-fi-fo-fum” variety. Robert Graham (Ted) Upshaw became the first African-Canadian to be a commissioned inspector by the RCMP in 1999. Now working as a public safety advisor with […]
Posted inLifestyle
Homesick for the holidays
I’m sitting in my room, a sheet of yellow paper resting on my lap with the list of things I need to pack before I go home to Nigeria. I can hear my roommate in her own room, conversing softly in Japanese with her friend over Skype. Unlike me, she won’t be going home for […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The realities of dating as a queer minority
[Image-1] Growing up, Mateo Ferguson knew that things wouldn’t be easy for him as a gay black man. He’s part of a minority in a minority, living in a town that can be ignorant and sometimes even hateful of both. The 19-year-old has remained “optimistic,” though. Like many other gay students, he uses Grindr. For […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Big mom on campus
[Image-1] The faint circles around Nicoletta Dini’s eyes don’t diminish the glow in her smile as she watches her son run around the playground. His curly hair bobs playfully as he climbs up the slide and sits gingerly at the edge. Dini is a 25-year-old single mother trying to balance her three-year-old son, Luca, with […]