Armen Karo Student Assoctiation

Kingston - On Sunday, May 2nd, 2010, 40 students from universities across Canada gathered in Kingston, Ontario, for the second annual Canadian Armenian Students' Convention. The convention titled, the "Canadian Armenian Student and his/her Challenges" took place in Kingston's Holiday Inn Waterfront Hotel and was organized by Armen Karo Student Association. The students were invited to represent the Armenian Students’ Associations of their respective universities, and each association had an opportunity to present their successes and failures of the past year. 

The opening remarks were made by the MC of the convention, and Armen Karo Student Association member, Daniel Ohanian, who pointed out the existence of many obstacles to the initiatives taken by Armenian Students’ Associations in various universities, as well as the importance of collaborative work in ensuring the successful engagement of Armenian youth in all aspects of University life.

The first speaker of the convention was Member of Parliament for Kingston and speaker of the House, honorable Peter Milliken. He thanked the organizing body for taking the initiative to bring together youth from different provinces. He spoke about the important role university students can play in the Canadian political arena, and how effective political activism in universities can be. He noted the importance of being conscious of politics in Canada, and being active, in order to influence the decisions made by MP’s such as him.

The Armenian Student Association from each university had prepared a presentation of the work they had done over the past year, and were given the opportunity to present them, bringing to light the difficulties they faced, as well as methods they had found to overcome them. The existence of mutual obstacles became clear, and allowed the students to become better familiarized with the work of other ASA’s.  The main challenges faced were noted, and were later used as topics for the workshop portion of the convention.

The second speaker of the convention, Armen Karo Student Association chairman Kevork Kazanjian, spoke about the role of Armenians students in universities in terms of the Armenian Cause and active forces working against it. He touched on the work being done by the active Turkish lobby funded by the state of Turkey, bringing examples from genocide denial events held in the Ryerson, McGill, and U of T.

The last portion of the convention was the workshop that allowed for discussion of the major obstacles noted from the presentations of the ASA’s. The students were divided into groups to discuss possible solutions to these issues, and presented them to the entire group. The importance of collaborative work between ASA’s became clear, as it became clear that the events being organized in that manner were the most successful.

Daniel Ohanian concluded the convention by thanking everyone present on behalf of Armen Karo Student Association.

In total 11 different university student associations were represented including the Armenian Students' Associations at the University of Toronto St. George Campus, University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, York University, Ryerson University, University of Waterloo, McMaster University, McGill University, Univeristé de Montreal, Concordia University, University of Ottawa, and Carleton University.