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Benet Davetian didn't waste any time after receiving his MA in Sociology at Fall Convocation.
He started a journal called Atlantis, and devoted the first issue to a critique of the Maclean's magazine rankings of Canadian universities, which once again place Concordia last in its category. In the essay, he excoriated the magazine for overrating privileged universities, ignoring outstanding departments at less fortunate institutions, neglecting good teaching and failing to consult students.
Then Davetian set about distributing his views as widely as possible. Atlantis went to all faculty members, newspapers (including towns whose universities rated poorly), other Quebec rectors/principals and Maclean's itself. A copy centre near the downtown campus paid for 10,000 copies of a shorter version.
Davetian is well placed to defend Concordia as a second-chance university. He came here as a mature student after failing university the first time around. This time, his GPA for his BA was 4.12, and for his MA, 4.13, including a book-length thesis. (A perfect GPA, rarely attained, is 4.3.) He also did a minor in creative writing, producing a prize-winning book of fiction, The Seventh Circle.
On graduation, he was awarded a Commonwealth doctoral fellowship for study in the U.K., the University of Toronto Doctoral Connaught Fellowship, and a SSHRC fellowship, among others. He is currently teaching sociology and doing doctoral research at Concordia.
For a copy of Davetian's journal, please contact him at davetian@generation.net
