Home-schooled kids have hurdles to clear

In an article on how home-schooled kids fare when it comes time to enter the post-secondary education system, Canadian Press turned to York’s Rob Tiffin, vice-president, students, for comment in an article published Aug. 10 by the Standard-Freeholder in Cornwall. “The approach the universities have taken is: really, we do need to have some quantifiable information on these students, because essentially grades are the best predictor of success at university,” he said. Tiffin added he’s beginning to see an increasing number of home-schooled students coming through the application process.

A sharp reduction in university graduates with IT and MBA degrees, coupled with a buoyant economy, has seen corporate recruiters competing fiercely to snap up the best of the best, reported the National Post Aug. 10. At the same time, corporations are paying greater attention to vetting those they do recruit. “There is no question competition is becoming quite intense,” said Monica Belcourt, director of York’s Graduate Program in Human Resources. “What they are also doing is spending money up front to ensure they are getting the right person rather than having to spend even more down the line to repair the damage done by hiring the wrong one.”

There are some glitches in the women’s basketball schedule and the usual transportation hiccups, but overall, chef de mission Patricia Murray is pleased with the organization of the 2005 Summer Universiade in Izmir, Turkey, reported Canadian Press in a story published Aug. 10 in The Record of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. The 23rd Summer Universiade brings together 9,000 university-aged athletes from 170 countries. Even the heat has cooperated, Murray said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Canada won three medals at the last Summer Universiade in Daegu, South Korea. “We’re trying to achieve at least as good as results, or better than, from the last games,” said Murray, director of sport and recreation at York. “We should be better this time. With the level of athletes we’re certainly a much stronger team now than we were. It’s not  since 1993 that we’ve had a team as strong as this one.”

 ‘Anybody can have a gun’ in northwest Toronto

Paul Nguyen was filming a music video one day for a local Jane Street and Finch Avenue West rapper when a guy approached, lifted his shirt and revealed a sawed-off shotgun strapped to his body, reported The Globe and Mail Aug. 10 in a front-page story about gun violence in Toronto. “He was showing it off,” said the 2004 graduate of York University’s film program and a 15-year resident of the Jane-Finch neighbourhood. “Anybody can have a gun here. Pistols are easy to get.”

Ontario Power Generation Inc. has been named as the lead defendant in a $50-billion lawsuit filed by a York professor and two others that alleges the provincially owned utility polluted the air with emissions from coal-fired plants, damaging the health of Ontario residents, reported The Globe and Mail Aug. 10. OPG and 20 US electricity firms are named in the lawsuit seeking to certify a class action in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Lawyers filed the lawsuit on behalf of three plaintiffs: Elizabeth May, the executive director of environmental group Sierra Club of Canada; Hamilton public health consultant Kimberly Perrotta; and Christopher M. Robinson, a professor of finance at York’s Atkinson School of Administrative Studies.

Toronto pediatrician Rasiklal Morzaria, 62, appeared in Scarborough court Tuesday where he was formally charged with sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a 13-year-old male patient, reported The Toronto Sun Aug. 10. Morzaria was released on $30,000 bail and will appear in court again on Sept. 9. Morzaria was a member of York’s Board of Governors from 1992 to 2004 and serves as an honorary member on the board’s academic resources committee and the student issues roundtable, the Sun noted.