Selling paper bags. Counting soup labels. Promoting good study habits. Arguing both sides of a legal case in Canada’s most prestigious moot court competition.

For second-year Law student Shanelle Manhue, all that is part of extracurricular life at Carleton.

Take the paper bags, for example. She sold them at $5 a pop to raise funds for the campus edition of Relay for Life, a fundraiser sponsored by the Canadian Cancer Society. Each bag was decorated, lit from the inside by candle, and used to decorate the Field House at evening receptions honouring cancer survivors and their families. ”It was a time for them to get together, remember their fight with cancer, and celebrate that they beat it,” she says. “It turned out really well.”

As part of the relay’s finance committee, she also sorted, counted and rolled donation money. She remembers having to sort out one bag with $150 in coins. “People who brought cheques were very much appreciated,” she laughs.

But that was good preparation for the soup labels. For the past two years, Shanelle has volunteered for Carleton’s Day of Service, and this year was assigned to a local agency that teaches literacy skills. She helped prepare activities for young clients, but also counted some 4,000 Campbell’s soup labels the agency could cash in to buy computers.

During her first year, she was a wellness representative for the Health and Counselling office, promoting residence sessions aimed at helping students adjust to university life. “First-year students are stressed out. They’ve moved out of their parents’ house, are in a foreign city, and don’t know how to cope,” Shanelle says.

She benefited from the speakers herself, she says, learning how to avoid being overwhelmed. “In high school I’d lock myself in my room for days before exams. But I now realize I can take a breather once in a while – walk, read a book, watch TV, anything to take my mind off studying. And it helps me to remember what I was studying for those four hours before.”

But her biggest activity is surely being part of Carleton’s moot court team, organized by the Law Student Society (CULSS). As one of a dozen members, Shanelle spent the last few months preparing to argue a case at Osgoode Hall Law School, in an annual undergraduate competition that attracted a record 52 teams this year. Though she’d been a member of CULSS, she admits she wasn’t really involved until she tried out for the team.

The team prepared for the competition by practising mock trials based on actual court cases. After finding out in mid-February what this year’s case would be, Shanelle and the others researched both sides. Participants weren’t told what side they would have to argue until five minutes before they were to appear in court. “It was very intense, very fast-paced,” says Shanelle, “but it was so much fun.”

Here involvement in CULSS goes up a notch next year when she’ll head the finance portfolio.

Shanelle’s extra-curricular activity has always been on the upswing. She says she wasn’t active in extracurricular life until Grade 12 – and even then, just to have something for her resume. But after participating in a Salvation Army toy drive and organization of the senior prom, she says, “I thought it was incredible, amazing.”

Until high school, Shanelle wanted to be a doctor (“and then biology happened”), but a career test suggested a career in law. “I watch a lot of CSI, some Law and Order,” she says, “and it’s exhilarating. It’s my passion.“

Pointing to work she’s done with the Wrongful Conviction and Injustice Association, Shanelle says: “The legal system, which says it’s to be helping people, is hurting people at the same time. I want to fix that.”

Michael De Luca (left) and Eric Vallillee were named among the top ten distinguished oralists at York University’s 7th annual Osgoode Cup.

The Faculty of Public Affairs congratulates Carleton University’s law team for its outstanding performance at the 7th Annual Osgoode Cup, a moot court competition held at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School on March 12 and 13, 2011.

Sponsored by the Carleton University Legal Studies Society (CULSS), Carleton’s team included Michael De Luca, Shelbi Dippold, Evan Hamilton, Devin Harm, Christina Hebert, Shanelle Manhue, Laura McIntosh, Sinini Sibanda, Tanya Treciokas, Eric Vallillee, Layla Warsame, and Sarah Willis, all enrolled in Carleton’s law program.

Comprised of two students each, the teams competed in the largest Osgoode Cup in history, which included 46 other teams from universities across Canada.

The De Luca-Hamilton and the Vallillee-Harm teams advanced to the finals along with 6 teams from other universities. De Luca and Vallillee were named among the top ten distinguished oralists.

Adrian’s course explores three human rights systems – the Americas, Africa and Europe.  Students examine one human rights violation in each of those areas, and trace it from the ground all the way the United Nations.  Far from relying on readings and textbooks, Adrian presents her students with real life case studies that include a woman in Argentina whose three children have disappeared, and child soldiers in Africa.

“It can be kind of boring learning about institutions,” says Adrian. “But if you engage the students in the first week with a real person, a real family, a real set of circumstances, who take cases to the regional domestic courts, and from there to the regional human rights system, and from there, they take it to the UN, then the understanding and engagement is different.”

Adrian has also included an anthropological perspective to the course through the inclusion of resistance hip hop.

“It brings in that voice of resistance,” says Adrian, “and it fits in very well with the human rights themes, because it brings in someone who’s commenting on what’s happening.”

Adrian encourages her students to listen to resistance hip hop and apply it to the themes they are exploring the course. The “extra-credit challenge,” involves finding a piece of hip hop resistance music, and submitting it to Adrian for discussion in class.

“I have between two and six different submissions, typically.  They have to give me the link and the lyrics and they have to write a paragraph on why they think that this particular song is important for us to listen to, and they have to make the case for it,” she says. “And at the beginning of class they come up to the front and they explain why they’ve chosen this song and how it links to that week’s themes or readings, or our general discussion.”

Adrian has also arranged for Roméo Dallaire to visit the class to discuss his book, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers.

“He’s going to speak about child soldiers in Africa, which is exactly what we’re studying,” says Adrian. In preparation for his visit, she screened the documentary film, Blood Diamond. She hopes that Dallaire, having worked with regional human rights systems in Africa, will be able to show her students some practical realities, as he sees them.

Introduction to Law is a required course for the ArtsOne cluster, Human Rights and Democracy. The cluster focuses on politics, law and human rights, and the relationship between them.

"I selected this topic because it seems important to me to recognize that science has a life outside out the laboratory." Hamilton is the fourth recipient of the Faculty of Public Affairs Research Excellence Award.

Since 2007, the Faculty of Public Affairs has honoured faculty researchers with the Faculty of Public Affairs Research Excellence Award.  Recipients are awarded a good-sized stipend, or a modest stipend and a teaching release.   In either case, the successful applicants are asked to organize a lecture or launch a symposium some time during the following academic year on the topic of their research.

Sheryl Hamilton, FPA’s fourth recipient of the award, is busy preparing for her symposium, Knowing Bodies – Bodies of Knowledge, to be held on March 4th.

The symposium will focus on biotechnologies, and how they are rewriting how science understands the human body.  “These knowledge practices exceed the laboratory and can be found in film, in literature, in the mass and social media, in policy analyses, and in law,” says Hamilton.  “The meanings we ascribe to, and inscribe upon, the body in these various sites of cultural production open up powerful questions of politics and ethics.”

As Canada Research Chair in Communication, Law and Governance, Hamilton’s appointment crosses the disciplines of journalism, communication and law.  As a result, it was no surprise that her proposed research topic would take a multi-disciplinary approach.

“I selected this topic because it seems important to me to recognize that science has a life outside of the laboratory,” she says.  “It is impacted upon by the law and also is primarily witnessed by the public in media and popular culture.  Each of the scholars presenting in the symposium takes an interdisciplinary approach to biotechnological issues.”

A group of interdisciplinary scholars will be exploring the politics and ethics of biotechnology in a range of cultural perspectives. Presentation topics will include reproductive technology, security screening, human cloning, orphan drugs, genetic science in film, and representations of scientists, among others.

The symposium will be of interest to faculty, graduate students and senior undergraduate students who are interested in science and technology studies, law and science, cultural studies of science and technology, critical analysis of biotechnology policy, or, more generally, as Hamilton points out, “in the ways in which we understand science in a myriad of other social locations.”

The day will begin with breakfast at 8:30 p.m. and run until 2:30 p.m., and  followed by a celebration at Baker’s Grille to launch the book, Becoming Biosubjects: Bodies, Systems, Technologies, co-authored by Priscilla Walton and three of the symposium’s participants, and recently released by University of Toronto Press.

Further details on the conference will be available on the Faculty of Public Affairs web site in the coming weeks.

Vincent Kazmierski is a professor of law at Carleton University.

Source: The Edmonton Journal
Date: January 11, 2011
By: Karen Kleiss

Excerpt:

Carleton University law professor Vincent Kazmierski studies the operation of access to information laws in Canada and says observers such as judges and information commissioners have noted both active and passive resistance to open government among both politicians and bureaucrats.

“What information commissioners have noted is that politicians, the leaders of government, have not made it clear enough to the bureaucracy that the Access to Information Act is to be valued and protected,” he said.

“There are people within the civil service who are committed to open government, but unfortunately it only takes a few to undermine the system.”