Athletics director joins drug task force

Waterloo’s director of athletics and recreational services, Bob Copeland (right), is among “a powerful and high profile list of football experts, stakeholders and community leaders” named to serve on a national task force about the use of drugs by football players.

The Task Force on the Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Football was created by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, and will be chaired by Jack Taunton, who was chief medical officer for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for last year’s Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. He’s also medical commissioner for the International Olympic Committee.

“Jack Taunton is the perfect person to chair this kind of a task force,” said Paul Melia, president of the CCES, calling him "a strong proponent of True Sport, sport that is values based and value creating".

The task force was set up in response to incidents and scandals in Canadian football last year, particularly the doping violations that led to the withdrawal of the Warrior football team from Ontario University Athletics play in the 2010 season. Copeland was in the spotlight as Waterloo responded to that experience, and announced “a path forward to build a football program that is sustainable, successful, and which upholds the integrity and values that are expected of student-athletes who compete for Waterloo”. The athletics department has launched a number of educational programs aimed at athletes in football and its other sports.

That’s the background to his membership on the national task force, Copeland said: "We have tremendous insight to share based on our experience and the subject matter experts we have consulted across North America. I am confident that significant change will take place regarding anti-doping in Canadian football based the decisions made at Waterloo that brought unprecedented scrutiny on this problem. I was very encouraged by the collective will of the task force members at our first meeting in both acknowledging the breadth of this issue, and the need to change how we do business to effect change."

The CCES group, announced in December, includes executives from other Canadian universities, government, and the Canadian Football League; several current and former players, among them All-Canadian Sébastien Tétreault of the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees; and Matt Torigian, chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Service, which was involved in investigating aspects of the doping scandal earlier this year. (His predecessor, former chief Larry Gravill, played a more direct role in the football controversy, as one of two people who conducted a review of the situation and exonerated the Warrior coaches from blame.)

“This is a very talented and professional group of concerned sport leaders who are determined to rid football of the use of performance enhancing substances,” says Taunton. “In order to have an effective anti-doping program we need to better understand the culture of the sport and then work with stakeholders and the players to understand what will work to shift the culture.

“Football is an important part of our Canadian culture — it is played in communities across the country by children and young adults. We want to ensure it is a healthy and safe environment for our children, one where they can be the best they can be without feeling pressured to resort to performance enhancing drug use.”

He said the task force’s first meeting, on December 3, “was charged with energy, insights and a real commitment to finding and implementing solutions that will have a positive effect on the sport of football”, and agreed that much of its “action plan to rid the use of performance enhancing drugs in tackle football” will be ready for implementation before the beginning of the 2011 Junior Football, university and college seasons.

Summarizing the past year’s difficulties, the CCES says it has issued anti-doping rule violations against 11 Canadian Interuniversity Sport football players from various institutions: four for admitting to the use of a prohibited substance; six for the use of a prohibited substance, including the world’s second hGH positive finding; and one for refusing sample collection. Substances included tamoxifen, testosterone, stanozolol , winstrol, methyl-1-testosterone, clomiphene and hGH.

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It was a jolly zombie Christmas for somebody, if you can believe everything you see in the latest video from the Film Creators Club. (Exam season was never this undeadly.) The Unaccompanied Minors provide seasonal music for the video, and now their ambitions go further; they're looking for support in a contest, "The Best Life", that would have their story "featured in popular BlackBerry social media sites". Deadline for votes is January 15, when the top 30 entries will move on to another round of competition.

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White Coat day in white weather

The School of Pharmacy holds most of its classes and other activities at the health sciences campus in downtown Kitchener, but for its White Coat Ceremony, to be held on this wintry day, nothing less than the Humanities Theatre on the main campus will do. Laura Manning, director of advancement for the pharmacy school, explains: "The White Coat Ceremony is a formal welcome to our newest students. It serves as an induction into the profession of pharmacy and an important step in the development of conscientious and compassionate health professionals. Family and friends of the students will watch as they are formally presented with their lab coats, take a student pledge of professionalism, and are addressed by leaders of pharmacy professional organizations." The event is by invitation only, and starts at 5:00 this afternoon.

About 300 staff members in the plant operations and food services departments, represented by Canadian Union of Public Employees local 793, will be eligible to vote tomorrow afternoon on the ratification of a new employment contract with the university. Neil Murray, the university's director of staff and labour relations, says a tentative agreement was reached on December 23 by negotiators working with a labour ministry conciliator. Details of the agreement aren't being made public until members of the union have voted on it. CUPE 793 has been without a contract since the previous pact expired last April 30.

The Federation’s One Waterloo campaign has put out a call for photographs that illustrate diversity. “We want you to show us,” says Nicole Joron, student program coordinator for the Feds: “what does diversity mean to you? We’re calling on members of the Waterloo community to pull out their cameras and start shooting.” Photo submissions can be new or old, and range in subject matter. “If you have a landscape or abstract shot that you think best describes diversity, then send it in. We’re hoping to spark people’s creativity and encourage them to push the boundaries of the typical diversity definition.” (And here’s a definition: “The One Waterloo campaign recognizes personal differences and engages the campus community in a dialogue about diversity. The organization envisions a campus where differences are not just recognized, but celebrated.”)  The photos will be compiled and showcased in a gallery event in the spring term. Photographers of all skill levels are encouraged to submit photos, the Feds say. Every photograph that is used for the event will receive one entry into a draw for a $250 gift certificate from either Henry’s or the University of Waterloo Bookstore. Photographs can be posted to the One Waterloo group on Flickr along with a short explanatory paragraph; the deadline is January 14 at 4 p.m.

The staff association is offering discount tickets for Chicopee Ski Resort in Kitchener again this season. • The Waterloo Banking Project, aimed at creating student-managed financial services for students, is looking for executive members (details are on its blog). • Information systems and technology says it will be distributing Internet Explorer 8 from the Windows patching server, for those computers that subscribe to it, as of Monday, January 10.

Keystone Campaign calendars for desks across campus “were supposed to be mailed out” just in time for the new year, at the end of December, says Ryan Jacobs of the development office. “Then they were supposed to be mailed out today. Now, however, due to some technical difficulties, people won’t be receiving them until Monday. One wouldn’t think this is particularly newsworthy — but it turns out that the calendars are hugely popular, and people have begun calling to ask where they are.” He says he’d like to “put people’s minds at ease and assure them that they haven’t been inadvertently missed from the mailing list (or some other such tragedy)”. Meanwhile, in the absence of the calendar, take note that today is, umm, the twelfth day of Christmas.

CAR

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