Félicitations! Some of the winners of French studies student prizes gathered for an awards ceremony on Oct. 7.

York's Department of French Studies in the Faculty of Arts presented its annual student awards for the 1997-98 academic year on Oct. 7, 1998. Attended by faculty, staff, family and friends, the awards ceremony recognized 11 students who were honoured for excellence in academic achievement.

The Associate Dean of Arts, Sheila Embleton, presented the department prizes awarded to recognize outstanding academic achievement in each of the three areas of the French studies curriculum: Language, Literature and Linguistics. Recipients of these prizes are selected from all four years of study. Prize winners are:

1st year Language Prize -- Stephan Yung Hing Hin; 2nd year Language Prize -- Maria Pok Shin; 2nd year Linguistics Prize -- Nadia Vita; 2nd year Literature Prize -- Giuseppe Esposito; 3rd year Language Prize -- Jocelyne Fouineteau; 3rd year Linguistics Prize -- Tanya Grimaldi; 3rd year Literature Prize -- Julie Lavalle; 4th year Language Prize -- Shari Stoch; 4th year Linguistics Prize -- Jackeline Montenegro; and 4th year Literature Prize -- Evan Taylor.

In addition, the Chair's Prize for the top graduating student was presented to Roni Felson by Department Chair Raymond Mougeon. The Convocation Prizes for outstanding academic achievement in three specific areas were also presented:

The Ambassador of Switzerland to Canada Book Prize, awarded to an Honours French Studies student in his/her graduating year, who obtains the highest cumulative Grade Point Average and the highest French Studies GPA, was won by Roni Felson.

Shari Stoch was the recipient of the Donald Jackson Book Prize, awarded to an Honours French studies student in his/her graduating year, who obtains the highest French studies GPA including at least two grades of "A" in the final year.

And the Hédi Bouraoui Essay Prize for the best essay by a French studies student in third or fourth year went to Jackeline Montenegro, and was awarded by Prof. Bouraoui.

SOCCER STARS: Yeomen soccer player Irvin Studin (photo left) is hoisted in the air by his teammates. Yeowomen player Denise Hosey (photo right) edges out an opponent who is racing for the ball.

by Marylyn White

Denise Hosey and Irvin Studin have more in common then being the captains of the York women's and men's soccer teams, respectively. Both athletes are Academic All-Canadians.

In order to become an Academic All-Canadian, one must be a competitive CIAU (Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union) athlete and maintain an A average. Hosey has done this by competing with the Yeowomen soccer squad and maintaining a GPA of 7.90. Studin, also a soccer player, holds a GPA of 8.13.

"I'm very proud of my academic success," said Hosey. "I work hard to achieve my marks, and therefore I'm happy I have been able to do so well."

Time management is the key to balancing athletics and academics, Hosey said. The Faculty of Education student also believes that hard work is the best way to achieve success.

Her success, however, is not limited to academics. Rookie head coach Shane Altenstad says "(Hosey) is an excellent two way player. She has an exceptional ability to win very tough tackles defensively, and to quickly start the transition to the attack. This ability requires great fitness and stamina and she stands out on the team in those areas."

Studin, an exceptional student in the Schulich School of Business, has been playing soccer with the Yeomen for four years. Although he has been a leading goal scorer for the team, he has also made time for his academics.

"Studin's success on and off the field is a matter of public record," says Eric Willis, head coach and master of Stong College. "As an Academic All-Canadian for three straight years, (Studin) has set a standard that has been met only a handful of times in the history of York athletics."

However, it's not just Studin's ability to hit the books that makes his success extraordinary. It's the combination of athletics and academics that truly make him stand out.

"The combination of OUA and CIAU all-star recognition and an A academic average in the challenging Schulich School of Business is a strong testament to (Studin's) talents," says Willis. "In addition, this year he has been honoured by being selected as team captain, and has responded by playing some of his best soccer as a Yeomen."

Studin will really have to be on the ball, as the Yeomen attempt to be the first OUA team to make the CIAU championship three years in a row and hopefully win gold in the process.

Studin and Hosey have contributed more to York then they were ever called to do. By heading up the varsity soccer teams and maintaining their academic excellence, they have shown by example what it truly means to be Yeomen and Yeowomen.

by Don Evans

"These are some of the issues I used to work on, and will work on again," stated Lorna Marsden by way of beginning her brownbag research seminar, titled "Revisiting the Advent of New Machines in Small Offices, on Tuesday, Oct. 6 at Atkinson College. Marsden, aka the President of York University, was introduced by series convener Luigi Bianchi as a professor of sociology in York's Faculty of Arts and Atkinson College with an impressive list of publications, "mainly on women and work and technology."

In her current capacity as University president, she has little time for research, Marsden noted, before discussing a study of the workplace that she had conducted while a professor at the University of Toronto. The study was "based on a historical moment in the early 1980s" when new technology in the form of personal computers and digital copy machines was being introduced into the workplace. Some of the results were published in Marsden's article, "New Machines in Small Offices: Gender, Technology and Communication," Canadian Journal of Communication (Vol. 15, No. 3/4).

In 1982-83, Marsden carried out a study of technological change in a number of small organizations, both for-profit firms and not-for-profit operations, all within an easy drive of the Greater Toronto Area. The study entailed interviewing all of the people working in each office, from managers to clerical workers. "I was interested in the hypothesis that the new technological 'revolution' would change the old hierarchies, including gender hierarchies, in the workplace," Marsden said. She was interested, as well, in the motivations of managers in purchasing the technology and in workers' perception of the effect of the technology on their work, she said.

At the height of the public debate about personal computers in the early 1980s, said Marsden, "when the machines and their effects were being discussed and reviewed," she interviewed every clerical worker in every firm she studied about their view of the new computers and the training entailed in operating them. She found "absolutely no-one" who feared either one.

A study of the feminization of the clerical workforce between 1911 and 1921 demonstrated that, just before and after the First World War, the role of clerical worker shifted to women, while at the same time, the role of male middle-manager emerged.

Ever since the 19th century, the typewriter "has played a central role in the lives of women," Marsden said. "George Gissing's 1893 novel, The Odd Women, dealt with the introduction of the typewriter in the workplace and with women in Victorian England, who set up a typing school to train young women 'with light, supple fingers' in its use.

"From the original Remington to the personal computer, typing has been a source of income for women," she said. "As girls, we were very much encouraged to learn to type. Indeed, I made my living at it for years."

When Canadians bought into the innovative new machines, "they also bought into the whole package -- the machines, the management team, the scientific management principles and, very often, the foreign managers, as well," said Marsden. "The result has been a dearth of scientific innovation in Canada. ... We import 95 per cent of the technology we use."

In the case of computers, which originally were designed for military purposes, "the military design was built right into the concept of the machine," and resulted in the steep organizational hierarchy still common in many companies, Marsden indicated. "Women in the secretarial pool are the factory workers of the white-collar organizations."

Meissner's classic 1969 study, Technology and the Worker, Technical Demands and Social Processes in Industry, defines the technology of workplaces by stating that "these material things (their presence, shapes, and interconnections) are the product of designs," noted Marsden. When the worker walks into the Ross Building, for example, the technology is already there. "It came out of somebody else's mind. You have to cope with what you find."

The period when she carried out her study was a time when digital machines and their effects were being widely discussed and reviewed, Marsden said. A few years earlier, in the late '70s, claims were being made about "a revolution in women's lives." Women's permanent attachment to the paid labour force was seen as having resulted in "a whole new world for women, [one wherein] the status of women had changed."

When they enter the workplace, women encounter gender subjectivity, Marsden said. "Their social role is very widely understood and stereotyped." At the same time, sexuality, as distinguished from the stereotyping of males and females, is an important factor, especially in the small workplace. "It underlines authority. For some, it symbolizes domestic relations," she said.

"President Clinton has made this dilemma clearer than ever before."

In conducting her study, Marsden was curious to know how managers and workers perceived the new technology that was being introduced in the workplace. "Virtually everybody you talked to talked about [the machines'] efficiency," Marsden said. However, as we now know, "Neither lower costs nor higher productivity has been achieved by these new machines."

Consistent with the small size and technological settings of the firms under study, in general, the relations between the boss and the secretaries were largely positive. "There was a simple hierarchy with direct control based in part on ownership and skill, but clearly delineated by gender and sex differences." The bosses described the secretaries, regardless of age, as "the girls," and relations were typified by a paternalism that saw bosses calling their secretaries by their first names, while it was not uncommon for bosses to be addressed on all occasions as "Mr."

As part of her investigation of the impact of computers on gender relations, Marsden visited a small real estate appraisal firm several months after the owner, inspired by demonstrations of computer equipment at an industry conference in the United States, had stopped on the way home and bought a small computer and printer, on credit. "When I arrived in the office, they were still sitting in boxes on the office floor." The boss, wishing to take advantage of the greater productivity promised by the computer, faulted his "secretarial family," two middle-aged women he described as "the girls," for not having figured out how to set up and operate the equipment, though they had received no training in its use.

When Marsden returned six months later, the equipment had at last been installed, "at enormous expense," in the owner's office. The owner himself had not learned to use the computer. Instead he would call in a secretary and dictate information to her so that she could "input" it. In effect, the machine was being used as a typewriter. When asked why the computer was in his office rather than in the secretary's workspace, the owner's response was couched in terms of gender and hierarchy. He was the boss, he said, whereas she was a secretary and a woman.

In another case, that of an engineering firm engaged in complex custom jobs in metal manufacturing, the owner, an engineer, saw the possibilities in computer-assisted design and returned to university to study computer science on a part-time basis while he designed the system for his business. In addition, each member of the office staff was sent to the local community college to learn the basics of computing and how to run the equipment.

The system was shared by the clerk entering inventory, the clerk running payroll and financial records, and the senior secretary/receptionist, whose traditional responsibilities included communicating the status of repeat customers' orders. In the hard-copy system, the secretary would simply check the file and pass on the information over the telephone. Now, however, if the computer was being used for inventory or payroll, she could not longer get access to the system.

"One night at 6:30, I found the secretary writing up a set of written entries on the state of the orders, which she kept in her desk drawer," Marsden said. "She had a set of parallel records so she could maintain social relations with customers. Though this was probably the most congenial workplace I'd been in, she begged me not to tell the boss. Despite their close, friendly relations, she was afraid to let him know what she was doing. The boss thought he was making all these decisions."

York hosts conference on young workers and precarious employment

The Centre for Research on Work and Society (CRWS) at York, in conjunction with a number of national and local trade union and community organizations, is holding a conference to bring together students, young workers (union and non-union) and trade union and community decision-makers to confront the grim employment future for young people, and the need for a coordinated strategy to turn the tide. The Next Working Class: Young Workers and Precarious Employment, will be held on Nov. 14 and 15 at Osgoode Hall Law School. The keynote speaker is Bob White, president of the Canadian Labour Congress. Panellists and other speakers include: Leah Casselman, president of OPSEU; Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, and Sue Collis, organizer of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. For more information or a conference agenda, call the CRWS at (416) 736-5612.

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Fine Arts professor exhibits in Saskatchewan

A photographic installation, Myths about Beginnings/Myths about Ends, by York Fine arts professor Jon Baturin, opened last week in Saskatoon. It will be on at The Photographers Gallery in Saskatoon until Nov. 7. An opening reception and artist's talk were held on Oct. 16. Baturin is a professor of photography and printmaking. He is a practising artist and curator who has exhibited his artwork across Canada, and in Mexico. For more information, call (306) 244-8018 or email: tpgal@ quadrant.net.

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Celebrate the opening of Mediate@York