MONTREAL/October 2, 2003—
The Outstanding Student Award is presented to a student who demonstrates leadership qualities while contributing to student life. This year's first Outstanding Student Award recipient is Youri Cormier, BComm, BA 03.
Concordia, as all great institutions of higher learning, aspires to produce leaders of tomorrow, and, more than any other Canadian university, is a place where students of varied backgrounds and beliefs come together to learn. Youri Cormier represents those principles, as a bright, idealist student leader trying to make the world a better place ó even if occasionally going against the grain. In his own words, Youri was ìone of those rare business students who actually wants nothing to do with the capitalist order of things.î While at Concordia, Youri combined his studies in international business in the John Molson School of Business with the multi-disciplinary policy studies program at the School of Community and Public Affairs, taking a critical look beyond economics to its social and ecological impacts.
Youri sometimes also cast his critical gaze upon Concordia. He led an energetic student political life and throughout his tenure as student representative on University Senate and the Board of Governors in 2002-03, he was a regular, dissenting voice. He distinguished himself at Concordia through thoughtful commentaries and essays published in the student newspapers. He tackled issues such as racism, freedom of speech, peacekeeping ó and proposing to trade the Ottawa Senators for the Senators in Parliament. We think he was joking.
At the School of Community and Public Affairs, Youri is warmly remembered as being ìoff the wall,î extremely bright and articulate, and very determined to fight against any injustices he perceives. He could be a little . . . vehement . . . in his views, but he always considered valid points from the other side. His academic advisor says Youri could easily have graduated with great distinction had he focused solely on academics.
Influenced by such diverse writers as Mill, Marx, Sartre, Ginsberg ó and J.K. Rowling ó Youri was an accomplished member of the Concordia Debating Society for three years and in January 2002 was on the Gold Medal debating team at the Commerce Games. He can dissent in French, too: In March 2002, he was on the team that took the French Language Canadian National Debating Championship. That summer brought him to Johns-Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was a teaching assistant at the Center for Talented Youth. The world can look forward to more young activist leaders moulded by Youri ó depending on your views, this will incite either hope or horror! It's great to take pot-shots at someone who's not here to retaliate.
This past summer, with about a dozen others from the grassroots network Sierra Youth Coalition, Youri set out on bicycle from Vancouver to Cancun, Mexico, to raise awareness on the impacts of trade liberalization and on the WTO negotiations that took place in September, and to discuss alternatives such as local agriculture, fair trade and new forms of entrepreneurship. Further evidence that this involved activist and citizen lives by what he believes in.
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