David Webb, a York University graduate and employee, has been slowly but surely erasing his $20,000 student loan without completely cramping his lifestyle, begins a story in The Globe and Mail Feb. 25. “I should be finished within the next year,” the 33-year-old said proudly. Webb is a member of the class of 1995, a group saddled with student debt but which is paying back the loans more quickly than those who graduated before them, according to Statistics Canada. “Whenever I came into extra money, that’s where it went,” he said.
Doing police checks would be daunting
Social workers tend to be overworked these days and face a daunting task to review files that in some cases can be inches thick, said Karen Swift, director of the School of Social Work at York University’s Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies in a National Post story Feb. 25 about doing police background checks on relatives before they get custody of endangered children. The story was written in the wake of circumstances leading to the death of five-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin last November after being placed in the custody of grandparents who both had previous convictions for assaulting their own children.
On air
- Joseph Mensah, social science professor, York University’s Faculty of Arts, discusses research he has done that shows black people are subjected to racism in the workplace, on “Here and Now” (CBL-FM), Toronto, Feb. 21.
- Robert MacDermid, political science professor in York University’s Faculty of Arts, discusses a York University study of the last provincial election that suggests as many as 600,000 residents were left off the final voters list, on “Global News” (CIII-TV), Ontario, Feb. 23.
- Selwyn Pieters, an Osgoode Hall Law School student at York University who recently won a racial profiling case, discusses racial profiling, on “Crispo” (I-CHAN), national, Feb. 20.