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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE 12
BIT BY BIT
JANUARY 23 – 30 | 2017
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FIRST 90 DAYS
TO DINE FOR
Paul Dangerfield reflects on the past three months as Capilano University's top administrator.
Dine Out Vancouver returns for 17 days of culinary adventure in all corners of the city.
CONTENTS
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04
06
08
Cover Art
News
Campus Life
Sports
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16
19
21
Features
Best of Capilano
Opinions
Columns
THE STAFF
COLUMNISTS
AUSTIN LEGG
THE POLITICIZATION OF FAKE NEWS
Andy Rice EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
editor@capilanocourier.com Carlo Javier MANAGING EDITOR
carlo.capcourier@gmail.com
DANGERFIELD'S FIRST 90 DAYS AS PRESIDENT
2016 READERS CHOICE AWARD WINNERS
HAAAAAAVE YOU MET TED?
LOOKING BEYOND THE HIJAB
Nima Boscarino Tony Stark is a self-proclaimed genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist. Nima Boscarino is not self-proclaimed, but he is a genius, could one day be a billionaire, probably is too handsome to be a playboy and is a philanthropist waiting to happen. Tony Stark is a tech expert, so is this man. The only difference is that Mr. Stark is a comic book character. Mr. Boscarino is real.
Syd Danger
Jessica Lio
Armed with low self confidence and the ability to loop every conversation back to the Marvel Universe, Syd ventures out to bring her fellow geeks news from the fabled outside world. Valar morghulis motherfuckers
Gabriel Scorgie
Christine Beyleveldt CAMPUS LIFE EDITOR
campuslife.capcourier@gmail.com
Kevin O'Neill Communications student Kevin O’Neill is one of Capilano University’s truest stand up students. His dedication and work with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation is both inspiring and impressive. In his column, he’ll be shedding much needed light on some of the issues that Canada’s First Nations communities face. Fun fact: Kevin is the most accessible person I have ever met – you could text himwhenever you want and you’ll get a response.
THE CAPILANO COURIER
VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
artdirector.capcourier@gmail.com Noah Penner MULTIMEDIA EDITOR
multimedia.capcourier@gmail.com Therese Guieb
Wolfgang Thomo ART
Natalie Murray ART
Nhi Hoang ART
Rachel D'sa
WORDS
Alexander Derbas WORDS
Dhia Istiqamah WORDS
Freya Wasteneys WORDS
Cristian Fowlie ART DIRECTOR & LAYOUT DESIGNER
ART
Jacqueline Ranit
specialfeatures.capcourier@gmail.com
arts.capcourier@gmail.com
Annie Chang
WORDS
FEATURES EDITOR
ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR
COVER ART
ART
NEWS EDITOR
Justin Scott
Austin Legg
Juliana Vieira
news@capilanocourier.com
opinions.capcourier@gmail.com
TOUGH QUESTIONS WITHIN THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT
CONTRIBUTORS
Kevin Kapenda
OPINIONS EDITOR
THERE’S NO STOPPING CARMELLE M’BIKATA
Jess Dueck The always wise Jess Dueck is one of Capilano University’s most profound voices, particularly when it comes to all things feminism. She has been instrumental in bringing over some of the most inspiring figures of feminism and human rights to Capilano, and this time, we’ll get to really hear her thoughts on modern society’s favourite F-word.
COMMUNITY RELATIONS MANAGER
community.capcourier@gmail.com POSITION AVAILABLE! BUSINESS ADVISOR
business.capcourier@gmail.com Brandon Kostinuk WEB COORDINATOR
web.capcourier@gmail.com
Kevin Kapenda One of the best things we can do as citizens is to be better informed about the political environment we live in. Thankfully, Mr. FuturePrime- Minister-with- a-Mixtape, Kevin Kapenda, is here to provide some much needed sober second thoughts on the upcoming provincial elections. Expect some harsh, but fair truth bombs from our very own version of the East Atlanta Santa, only much smarter.
THE CAPILANO COURIER is an autonomous, democratically-run student newspaper. Literary and visual submissions are welcomed. All submissions are subject to editing for brevity, taste and legality. The Capilano Courier will not publish material deemed by the collective to exhibit sexism, racism or homophobia. The views expressed by the contributing writers are not necessarily those of the Capilano Courier Publishing Society.
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EDITOR'S DESK
A THREAT TO AMERICA’S THREAD COUNT Andy Rice EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
THE VOICEBOX with Carlo Javier
Nice to see some of you guys attend the Earthworks event last week! Thanks! It was great, really informative, I enjoyed it. Yeah, I can tell.
What do you mean?
Well, the three of you had platefuls of food, one of you had multiple wraps and a boatload of brie!
THE CAPILANO COURIER
Lol I don't know what you're talking about... It's all good, just admit you went there for the food. New number who dis?
The Voicebox is back! If you have any questions, concerns or any other bitchin’ to do, text it over to our boy Carlo at 778-865-2649. “Please text me,” he says. “No one else does.”
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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
The day before his inauguration, scientists named a moth after Donald Trump. I can’t get over the irony. What is a moth, anyway? It’s a pest. A winged insect that eats wool, silk and other fibres – your favourite sweater, for instance. Or… you know, the fabric of America. The similarities don’t end there. Moths are drawn to brightness and Trump revels in the spotlight. Moths pollinate flowers and, judging by his five kids with three different women, it seems as though Trump has done plenty of pollinating as well. And don’t even get me started on the tiny hands/tiny wingspan comparison. The Neopalpa donaldtrumpi moth clocks in at a measly 0.4 inches (nine millimetres) across. Hilarious. However, the real reason Trump is sharing his namesake with something other than a hotel, steak or necktie is that biologist Dr. Vazrick Nazari thought the scales on its head looked like the real estate mogul’s famous hairstyle. As I’m writing these words, the alt-left… I mean top left… corner of my computer screen is occupied by a CBC live feed of Trump being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. He’s literally taking the oath of office at this very second, and it just seems so surreal. This is the same man I tuned into NBC to watch during the much-anticipated debut of The Apprentice back in 2004, before any celebrities were involved and the show created its own stars from the likes of Bill Rancic and Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth. Even then, Trump was all about the catchphrase and like a loyal puppy dog I’d wait through the scripted spontaneity of an entire episode just to hear him say “You’re fired.” A few years later, in an effort to liven up the show, Trump brought in a revolving door of celebrity contestants like Joan Rivers, Gary Busey, Meatloaf and Piers Morgan, to name a few. By season five, his eldest children had replaced Carolyn Kepcher and George Ross, his original advisors in the boardroom. Funny enough, those same children seem to have replaced many of Trump’s advisors from the campaign trail as well. Even scarier, there will be at least one former Apprentice contestant working in the White House. It was revealed earlier this month that Manigault-Stallworth will serve as Trump’s personal assistant and director of communications. Yikes. With every president prior to now, I never really knew who they were or what they were about until after they were formally installed. Granted, I was much younger, but American politics never stuck out as being this memorable or this polarizing. I barely knew there was a George Bush Jr., let alone a Bush Sr., and Clinton was always just the tall guy with the vocal fry who did not-did-not-did-notdid have sexual relations with that woman. Things are much different with Trump. Because he’s been all over my TV set for years, I feel like I’ve known him all my life – and in most cases, that would be comforting. But it isn’t. Even as a kid, I thought he was
completely fake and aloof, which is ironic because so many people are now hailing him as the anti-politician – the guy who’s somehow going to be less slimy and more capable than all the others. He won’t be. All we can hope for is that he might not be any worse. With that said, however, it’s my genuine hope that Trump rises to the occasion as president. It’s in our collective best interest for him to do so. One thing is for sure – I certainly wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. World leaders are controversial public figures, but they’re also people just like you and I. The attacks they and their families face every day are absurd and atrocious, and I’m not talking about the physical ones that are thwarted by the Secret Service. No, I worry about Trump’s feelings. This is a man who wears his insecurities like cuff-links – which is to say, on his sleeve and in the most public of forums. Even if he’s up for the task from a leadership standpoint, I have concerns about his notoriously thin skin. Say what you will about Obama, but the man could take criticism. I don’t think I ever once saw him project his insecurities onto other people, and if he did he certainly wasn’t as petty about it. Trump is different. Underneath his Cheeto-orange façade is a delicate moth who can be easily crushed and mortally wounded by nothing more than a tweet. That’s an element of America’s new president that even a top-notch security detail won’t be able to protect. And maybe that’s why he’s surrounding himself with his family, friends and favourite yes-men – because that’s where he feels the safest. Or maybe I’m completely wrong, but I kind of like where this whole winged insect metaphor is going. I also like the old quote, “politics makes strange bedfellows.” Moths eat bedsheets too, right? That could be interesting.
NEWS
MAKING SENSE OF THE STARS INSIDE US Capilano Universe lecture series returns for its seventh year Christine Beyleveldt CAMPUS LIFE EDITOR
One afternoon several years ago while hiking through Deep Cove, Dr. Leonard George of the of the psychology department at Capilano University was brainstorming names for his new lecture series. He recalled a continuing education course on writing poetry and remembered that a simple strategy to improve a line of poetry was to cut the tail off. Capilano University became Capilano Universe, a series of talks given by faculty members each spring semester at public libraries throughout Vancouver for the interest of the community. Now in its seventh year, faculty members have eagerly signed up to
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PAUL DANGERFIELD TALKS LEADERSHIP AT CHAT LIVE LECTURE Capilano President relishes time to interact with student community in classroom environment Carlo Javier MANAGING EDITOR
Leadership may be associated with apex positions, but for Capilano University president Paul Dangerfield, emphasizing its importance at all levels of an organization is the key towards creating successful environments. On Thursday, Jan. 19, Dangerfield led a ChatLive discussion surrounding the topic of leadership. Although the program
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present on topics from their respective fields of interest now through May. George remarked that he must have been doing something right if Capilano Universe has now had more series than Downton Abbey. He believes that the series has been an overall success because of the passion of the presenters. “I made clear that it doesn’t have to be something based on courses that you teach, what it should be is something that you love to share, that you get excited about sharing with other people. So that, I think, is the engine that powers it,” he said, and that’s why he hasn’t run into trouble finding eager presenters yet. The first of such talks was held at the West Vancouver Memorial Library on Jan. 19, where human kinetics instructor Dr. Jerome Genz spoke on the positive effect of certain health practices on the aging process. The next of eight talks to be given will be what George describes as a musical journey through Spanish and South American history chronicled by music instructor Stephen Boswell at the Lynn Valley Main Library on Feb. 15. Throughout the fall semester, George reviews pitches from faculty members and constructs a
was lightly attended, with no more than 15 students at hand, the CapU president still proved to be engaging and genuinely excited about the opportunity to talk to students about a topic that is significantly important to him. After a brief backgrounder about himself, Dangerfield quickly delved into a discussion on the changing faces of leadership. He particularly cited the shift in some of the world’s most prominent political positions: singling out the diversity among the likes of Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau. Afterwards, Dangerfield focused on the importance of creating spaces and opportunities for people of all sorts of backgrounds, genders, orientations and beliefs to become leaders. Memorably, Dangerfield called out his own privilege and made a point to bring attention to one local CapU leader he truly admires, one of the Filipina employees of Chartwells. "Leadership is not about what you look like, it’s about what you do" he said. For Dangerfield, his ChatLive session
series of presentations that will include diverse and interesting topics ranging from the School of Business to Women’s and Gender Studies. Faculty members are keen to pitch ideas, especially when they are presenting in an area that fascinates them, as long as it doesn’t become too technical. Over the years, George has given many presentations of his own about ancient oracles and modern psychology, as well as his own experience under the tutelage of a medium. That’s the premise of his own talk this year at the Parkgate branch of the North Vancouver District Public Library on Apr. 11. The goal is to host a series of lectures for members of the community at large so new ideas can be shared and discussed, and hopefully enlighten curious audience members. “Every year what I try and do is create as wide a spectrum of presentations as I can,” said George, “Because it’s supposed to showcase the range of passions that Capilano University faculty have.” This year there is the addition of an on-campus event for the very first time, and in keeping with the theme of libraries, the CapU library will host it. Capilano Universe is co-sponsoring
stood for more than just a simple talk about leadership, it was also an opportunity to get back in the classroom and interact with students in close quarters. "I’m a faculty at heart so getting back to the students, getting to spend time with students is critically important and even from a leadership point of view, it helps me reinforce things that we need to do as a society," he said. "This is where I get my energy from, this is what it’s all about, having these opportunities helps me get through every week when I’m dealing with other things that I have to do." One attendant was second year liberal studies student Stephanie Duke. Among the more vocal members of audience, Duke was particularly ecstatic about the subject matter of the ChatLive session. "Its hard to just learn the aspects of leadership so it’s nice to have someone who can kind of just give you a few tips on how to be a better leader," she said. "I don’t think many of us are born with outstanding leadership qualities, but its nice to know that there’s hope for some of us."
their ante penultimate talk on Apr. 22 with the School of Liberal Studies, the School of Communication, and the Early Childhood Care and Education program. Each of the three faculties will present their research in a graduation showcase. George is excited for the upcoming talks, remarking that they offer a very diverse range of topics this year. Human and regional geography instructor Kristen McIlveen and sociology instructor Laurel Whitney will be presenting on the experience and education inside of a women’s prison. The two presenters have been vocal about prisoners’ rights for over 25 years, and over the course of the evening, they will examine how sexism and racism affect female inmates. Yoriko Gillard, a Japanese language instructor, will be presenting on how creative practices act as healing aids for human suffering. This comes from her experience surviving the earthquake that destroyed much of northeastern Japan in 2011. For the full list of lectures, their locations and dates, visit http://capilanou.ca/news-events/ events/capilano-universe/. All lectures will begin at 7 pm and run until 8:45 pm.
Although Duke mildly lamented the small attendance, she was eager to entertain the idea of increasing engagement by having more topics that appeal to a broader range of students. "I think if there’s interesting topics people will always want to talk about it, so if you start talking about politics, stuff like that, people are just naturally drawn to those topics, so its easy to get a good discussion going." ChatLive marked a near end of the week responsibility for Paul Dangerfield. After a busy week, the CapU president admitted that the session might have been the very highlight. "I love it. Honestly, I’ll probably look back on this very busy week and say this was the best hour of my week."
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intensify, and result in many demanding residences to relieve commute times. “Hand-in-hand with the housing initiative is also addressing transit too, because the two are connected,” said Dangerfield. “So what housing has actually done is generated a really good dialogue about transit and we are now at the table with municipalities in the North Shore to be a part of those solutions. It’s been really exciting. We’ve got a ton of work to do on housing and transit, but we are now a part of the group advocating for both of those things.”
TOO MANY SOLUTIONS TO DECLINING ENROLMENT CHALLENGE
HOW CAPILANO'S PRESIDENT IS USING CAMPUS FEEDBACK TO ADDRESS UNIVERSITY'S CHALLENGES Building relationships and taking a stand on big files has defined Dangerfield's presidency early on Kevin Kapenda NEWS EDITOR
Earthworks, both on the employee and student end, have been really engaged and committed to sustainability initiatives,” he said. “I’m proud of the work that’s been done, but I’m excited that we already have this culture where [sustainability] is important as we look at the future of the university and our goals and have a core group that can lead us there.”
ALL IN ON CAMPUS HOUSING AND TRANSIT
"In 2012 CapU had 8,525 domestic students. Last year, the university had 6,635 domestic students, a 23% drop." early childhood education and paralegal. So, what we have to do is get the word out there to domestic students and support them once they’re here.” According to the Ministry of Advanced Education, in 2012 CapU had 8,525 domestic students. Last year, the university had 6,635 domestic students, a 23 per cent drop. While surrounding institutions similar to CapU in size and scope, such as Douglas College, Langara College, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, have seen slight drops in enrolment, none have seen their head counts fall by more than five per cent. With that said, better transportation now and housing some years down the road could be what the university needs to increase its student population once again.
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One of the lasting and perhaps unanswered questions by Dangerfield’s predecessor was about Dr. Kris Bulcroft’s position on campus housing and what actions she would take to make it happen. Although the creation of housing in CapU is still a question mark, it has been made clear that the administration views it as a key priority and a catalyst to growing the institution. “What’s really made me feel hopeful, I think, is that through initiatives that have been started by the CSU to bring attention to all levels of government and into community, and then the work the administration has been able to do over the last couple months talking with the municipalities, I think there’s now a significantly better awareness about how important housing is,” he said. For Dangerfield, any housing that does get built won’t solely be for students, but for other members of the university community who could benefit from living at CapU too. “I’ve been championing housing, not only for students, but for employees too, because they have to cross those two bridges and we have many new employees who are in the same situations as our students.” While housing has taken much of the spotlight in recent months, Dangerfield believes the issue is closely related to transportation, as traffic concerns and projections claiming gridlock will only
THE CAPILANO COURIER
It’s hard to believe it has been just over three months since Capilano University swore in its third president, Paul Dangerfield. During his tenure, issues such as housing, transit, sexual violence and misconduct, as well as sustainability and declining enrolment have been cast into the light and designated as priorities for Dangerfield, the administration and the wider CapU community as a whole. Familiarizing himself with the campus and its many faces has been the biggest highlight for Dangerfield so far. “Every day I have the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people – it’s one of the benefits of this job, whether I’m meeting students, faculty, staff or some of the managers here,” said Dangerfield. “Just getting to know the entire community and every corner of the university – I walk about all the time, pop my head into classrooms, go to the Sportsplex and watch games, go the theatre and watch performances. There’s always something to do.” As with when he first started, building relationships and understanding the needs of the different stakeholders on campus remains paramount for Dangerfield, something he’s managed to focus into
a long-term vision for the university. “Building relationships and getting the operating plan going. We’ve been putting together what I call an operating plan. A plan about where we want to go in the future,” said Dangerfield. “We’ve actually engaged the entire university community and asked, ‘What are the things that are most important to you? What are the priorities? What do you want to achieve this year, and in the coming years?’ Getting them to put that down into a plan and use that to inform our priorities for next year, and the resources we’re going to allocate to them.” Among the biggest changes to happen under Dangerfield’s stewardship include CapU’s brand refresh, which was unveiled last fall. The new logo features odes to the Indigenous history of the university and the unceded land it sits on, something Dangerfield is proud of. “It’s a very bold, exciting logo that obviously reflects the history of the university and our important relationship with Coast Salish peoples.” Dangerfield also sees the new brand as an opportunity to garner new attention and hopefully turn glances into applications. “I really see the brand refresh – launching the new logo is an opportunity to rally the university and the community here on the North Shore as we look at the university’s future, said Dangerfield. “It’s also a great platform for us to have those conversations about where we want to go in the future and bring attention to the university because we’ve got some pretty exceptional programs here.” Dangerfield, who was spotted at Earthworks’ networking event and evening lecture last week, is also happy to be leading a university that is renowned for its efforts in promoting sustainability. Last semester, CapU received an award for reducing its greenhouse gasses, an accomplishment Dangerfield is ready to build on. “As for lowering greenhouse gasses, I think it reflects the work, that groups like
Though the issues facing CapU are few and quite clear, solutions to problems such as declining domestic enrolment couldn’t be more plenty, ideas Dangerfield is revelling in. “I think one of the biggest challenges for people who are in my position is that there are always too many good ideas. When we went out to the community with the operating plan, we asked for people’s input and got a lot of fantastic ideas, with problems being identified as well,” said Dangerfield. “The biggest challenge going forward is that we don’t want to ignore those opportunities and challenges, so we’ve got to find ways to acknowledge them and keep them on the back burner per se, then find ways to bring them to the forefront.” While Dangerfield is committed to increasing academic options at CapU, including reworking the core curriculum to feature Aboriginal education components for all students, he is confident enrolment will pick up because the qualities of our existing programs speak for themselves. “For domestic students, we’re hoping the brand will create the awareness. We have 12 amazing degrees here that are all known,” said Dangerfield. “Many are some of the best in the world, including jazz,
CAMPUS LIFE
WHO YOU
UPCOMING EVENT Fifth Annual Uncapped Rail Jam Christine Beyleveldt CAMPUS LIFE EDITOR
On Thursday, Jan. 26, the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) will host the fifth annual Uncapped Rail Jam. The Cedar courtyard will be transformed into a replica ski slope for Capilano University’s talented skiers and boarders to show off their skills. “Cap has many international students who may not be used to the cold and snow, so it's an interesting event for all students and staff to watch,” said student organizer Carmina Tioseco. That’s what makes it so appealing each year and has allowed the event to grow into something that students and faculty can look forward to each January. It began as a classroom project for change in 2013 and has since evolved into an annual event with live music and food. Each year, the student organizers use the event to
GETTING AHEAD OF THE COMPETITION Career Services aims to fulfill needs for career development Therese Guieb
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COMMUNITY RELATIONS MANAGER
Graduation. It’s the day most students patiently wait more than four years for, the day that will finally make all of those sleepless nights, stressful group projects and unhealthy diets worth it. It’s the day that a piece of paper, promised before even registering in post-secondary, will reward promising, young pupils with their dream jobs. It’s also the day most students will find out that these were false promises. Career Services at Capilano University is offering students free workshops that cover the foundation of successfully starting a career after their post-secondary education. The workshops, which are hosted annually, are designed for all students in any programs at CapU. “At the moment we have 10 workshops. It covers the whole career development component, starting with career exploration,” said Career Services manager Eileen Wang. According to Wang, the workshop topics were devised to align with the cycle of career development. “Any career development takes process. For example, you cannot be a successful job searcher if you don’t have a clear career goal or you don’t have sufficient tools for employability,” she noted. Although Career Services advisors already consult with students in person, Wang suggests that these workshops are opportunities for students to interact with each other, which can make the information easier to digest. “If you put in the effort, just 10 times for 10 hours, you pretty much have a foundation for career development. I would highly recommend all students make that effort to go,” Wang continued. “Face to face, learning in a group, it can create invaluable learning opportunities and you can immediately ask questions."
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promote a cause. This year, Tioseco has chosen to tackle social justice and align with the Chill Foundation, a nonprofit organization that uses board sports to provide developmental skills for youth. “They focus on the resiliency of their participants to help them reach their full potential and see that there is a path out of their circumstances, whatever that may be,” said Tioseco adding that there will be a representative from the Chill Foundation present at the Rail Jam to speak to students about their goals for creating positive social change. The CSU will also be collecting second-hand ski coats to redistribute to youth who can’t afford their own. Above all, the Rail Jam is supposed to be fun, but each year it promotes a great cause as well. “If an event or anything can impact even five people, that's five more people today that know about the cause than yesterday,” said Tioseco. For more information, visit their Facebook page: CSU Uncapped Rail Jam for Social Change. Any students who wish to ski or board at the event must sign up by Jan. 25.
Employers occasionally change their recruitment processes. As a result, job hunting has become more difficult. Individuals are now required to find innovative ways to obtain interviews, let alone a job. One of the topics that will be covered this semester involves creating an online portfolio to market one’s skills and experiences to attract future employers. How to Write an Eye Catching LinkedIn Summary is one of two of their LinkedIn-focused sessions. “With the development of media, most recruiters are now recruiting through LinkedIn,” explained Wang. “Before, we only told them how you can set up an account. Now, we teach them how you can have a vast presence in terms of what you put there to attract employers.” Despite the growing demands for more qualified graduates, CBC reported earlier this month that the unemployment rate in BC dropped to 5.6 per cent last year compared to 6.2 per cent in 2015. This result shows a positive outlook for the working class. BC Student Outcomes, a department of BC Stats, which collects data from former post-secondary students, surveyed 2,206 CapU graduates between 2014 and 2016 and found that an estimated 85 per cent were in the labour force. “I was surprised we had such a high number,” said Wang. Neighbouring institutions such as Kwantlen Polytechnic University sit on par to CapU in the rate of employed graduates, while Emily Carr University has an employment rate of 87 per cent. Though using Career Services will not result directly in a dream position, it is a service that will give individuals the fundamental principles they need to succeed in their career of choice. “We definitely want [students] to take advantage of our resources because it’s free and there is in-person support,” said Wang. The workshops will run from Jan. 17 to March 22 in Cedar 344. Students are advised to register for the workshops prior to attending due to the limited space. Career Services are only able to accommodate 20 people for each session. Registration and additional information about the workshops can be found at Capilanou.ca/Access-Student-Workshops.
Ted Hamilton talks the uses of education and his mysterious back tattoo Christine Beyleveldt CAMPUS LIFE EDITOR
Dr. Edward Hamilton, affectionately known as Ted, has an air of mystery about him. The co-chair of the School of Communication introduced himself as an Adonis to the crop of freshman entering the program at the Capilano University Street Party (CUSP) in Sept. 2014, and he has been a favourite of many students ever since. Mostly, Hamilton teaches media studies, public speaking and communication ideology, but he has a penchant for music. His musical tastes differ to suit his moods and activities. Generally, he enjoys psychedelic space rock from the 1970s. The psychedelia drives his writing process. “I don’t care about genre, but I like to feel like I’m surrounded by it and it’s squeezing me in some way,” he said. But it was the institutional aspects of music that fascinated him when he was a student. Originally a pupil of English literature, Hamilton concentrated on the media and the institutional aspects of popular music when he was told about the magical world of communication studies. Many years later, he can now proudly say that one of his proudest moments was creating the Bachelor of Communication Studies degree program at CapU. Hamilton has two ideas about what education should be used to achieve. Primarily, education should be used as job training to bolster the labour markets, but it should also be used for personal enhancement. For example, in his course, Society and New Media, he says that having an interest in digital media as a cultural thing will allow students to participate in conversation that won’t necessarily provide skills to put on a resume, but rather critical thinking skills that can be applied to learning other skills that are generally harder to develop, like analytical reasoning. Hamilton has given numerous talks nationally and internationally about these ideas of the university as a social institution, and tries to apply those ideas about what an education’s purpose should be in his own classes. “I tend to think that there’s three things that can help people balance these notions in my classes,” he said. “I try to make it as intellectually challenging as I can but also as entertaining as I can. I don’t feel the need to separate education and entertainment. If people don’t take pleasure in coming to class, having a laugh every once in a while, then it’s hard to get people to focus on those things you’re trying to exercise in them to develop their critical thinking skills.” Circulating the communication department at CapU, there is a rumour that Hamilton is in possession of a back tattoo. “I have many back tattoos as a matter of fact,” he said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. He is well aware of this rumour and likes to keep up the fascination that surrounds it. “To me, [the back tattoo] envelopes the concept of mystery which is important for teaching. You have to provoke people’s sense of wonder if you want to learn anything. If people are cynical they can’t learn anything, but if you create ambiguity and questions in people’s minds I think that opens people up to learning… Whether or not I have one, you know, I might. That is almost beside the point. You will never know.”
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SPORTS
MEN’S VOLLEYBALL TEAM FACE TALL TASK AHEAD Crucial stretch could dictate Blues’ playoff hopes Carlo Javier MANAGING EDITOR
Currently sitting at six wins and 10 losses, the Capilano Blues men’s volleyball team find themselves fighting an uphill battle to secure their first playoff berth since the 2013-2014 season. Fortunately for the Blues, the competitive Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST) conference not only leaves a small margin of error, it also minimizes the separation of teams. After 16 games, the Blues stand only two points behind the fourth seed – the lowest denominator they need to claim to punch their tickets to the provincial tournament. This season has given the young Blues their fair share of ups and downs. The team has alternated losing streaks with winning streaks, and has been unable to gather momentum other than a four-game run in early November. The issues with consistency, however, can be attributed with the team’s incredible youth. The roster features only three players with at least two years of experience on the collegiate level of athletics – they don’t even have a single fourth-year, much less a fifth-year
– PAUL YATES
player. Despite this, the Blues’ youthful exuberance has had its moments. This season, the Blues have staked their claim as the only team to hand a loss to the vaunted program of the Vancouver University Island Mariners – an unforgettable home win that saw the Blues coming back from the brink of defeat on Nov. 18. “I think that because we have had some very strong finishes to games we can use that confidence that we can play with and beat any team in our division,” said secondyear setter and co-captain Simon Friesen. “It's a lot easier said than done, but we are aiming and on track to reach our peak potential during provincials.” One of the silver linings for the Blues as they prepare for the crucial stretch towards the provincials is their play in close games. This season, the Blues have managed to
pull off the victory in three out five games that came down to the wire, exhibiting their poise and maturity under pressure. “This team is also very strong defensively, so if we can continue to develop the other parts of our game then we will be very difficult to play against,” said Friesen. The youth of the roster has also created a tighter bond for the team. For Friesen, the way the players coalesced as a unit stands as one of the more meaningful developments of the season. “What has surprised me about this team so far is how quickly we were able to bond and become really good friends off the court,” he said. With eight games left in the season, the Blues are looking to put it all together and make a strong impression in arguably the most crucial portion of the year. They are two games out of the fourth and final
playoff spot, and their next games are slated against the College of the Rockies Avalanche, a team with an identical 6-10 record. “In my opinion the way we get to the next level of play is by being more consistent in our energy level,” said Friesen. “We are a team that plays best when we are having fun, so if we can keep our spirits high on the court we will have a better chance to be successful.” The road won’t be getting any easier for the Blues, as the rest of their games are set against higher seed teams, but the games still have to be played and confidence in teamwork can be as strong a weapon as any. For Friesen, the team’s unity, just might be one of their biggest trump cards. “This team is one of the closest groups I have ever been a part of, and it helps us to practice and play as one group.”
NEW YEAR HAS WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL TEAM FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS Blues look to sustain momentum as next run of games hold playoff implications Carlo Javier
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MANAGING EDITOR
It took a while but the talented Capilano Blues women’s volleyball team seem to have finally started to scratch the surface of their true potential – and it couldn’t have come at better timing. After falling to the University of Fraser Valley Cascades before the winter break, the Blues have come roaring back by winning four straight in conference play, and winning two out of three exhibition games in San Diego. Now at 11 wins and five losses, the Blues sit comfortably in the third seed of the Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST), tied with the Vancouver Island University Mariners, and just two points behind top-seed Douglas College Royals. “I think everyone just realized we only have a couple months left, so why hold back,” said fifth-year setter and team captain Sarah Hughes. “Everyone has the same end goal in mind and I think as we inch closer to the end it gets girls really excited and it makes them work harder.” The Blues’ play has been paced by a solid mix of steady veterans and upstart
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newcomers. Fifth-year right side hitter and two-time All-Canadian Kira Sutcliffe continues her excellent Blues career by once again ranking as among the best offensive players in the PACWEST. As of week-nine of conference play, Sutcliffe places in the top five in both kills and total offense. Third-year middle blocker Danae Shephard continues her ascent as one of the PACWEST’s premier defensive forces, once again ranking in the top three in blocks. One of the team’s bright new additions has been third-year transfer Tyneille Neufeld. The left side hitter and libero quickly became one of the team’s key rotation players, and has also made herself visible in a variety of stat sheets. For Hughes, the surging Blues have benefited most from the terrific play of the entire collective. Veterans and young players alike have been consistent in contributing toward the team’s goals.
“Honestly, I think everyone has had her shining moments where they have stood out,” she said. “Throughout the season, everyone has worked equally hard and everyone pushes each other everyday to be the best they can be which is awesome to see.” Over the winter break, the Blues were not only able to recollect and recover from the initial grind of the season, they were also able to take time out to further bond and train as a team. The Blues travelled to San Diego for a small minicamp that saw the team win two out of three exhibition games. “It was super helpful,” Hughes said about the break. “We still have practices and workouts but it’s nice to have a little break to regroup. It’s a good time to get all the kinks out because there is no pressure with having games.” The Blues are now entering a crucial stretch in their schedules as they look to
carry their momentum all the way to the provincial tournament. Their final eight games are set against teams in contention for the final four playoff spots – including the Mariners and the Royals. Focus is going to be key in their arduous road to the playoffs. Hughes attests that the team would need to work on minimizing in-game errors in the upcoming stretch – a habit she believes will develop in their impending practices. “I think this will start happening more at our practices. If we keep everyone accountable of their errors during practices, it will help during games.” Once the Blues put it all together, they offer a group of players that can be as dangerous as any come playoff time. We are a very hardworking team with lots of talent,” said Hughes. “Sometimes I think the girls forget how good they can be.”
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THERE’S NO STOPPING CARMELLE M’BIKATA Capilano Blues steady forward is leading the way with dominant post plays Carlo Javier MANAGING EDITOR
– PAUL YATES
been a big deal for us and to try to limit the ball from going inside.” For M’Bikata, the Blues’ elite defence has been the sum of the terrific work that the team has been doing, as well as the scheme that the coaches have devised. She particularly singles out their chemistry on the defensive end as arguably their best tool. “Our communication when there’s screens, calling out screens, switching things that we’re supposed to switch, staying on when we need to stay on.” The undefeated Blues still have a long road to go before they reach their endgoal, but coming close to gold last year has provided the team with an insatiable desire to compete and claw their way to the PACWEST championship. “Most of us last year were able to play in the championship game; really off that we got a taste of how it feels to play, and
obviously, the step back for not winning,” M’Bikata said. “We know what it takes to win. Just focusing on the little things in practice and making sure we get better with the little things and control what we can.” Beyond the Blues’ basketball goals is a message that head coach Ramin Sadaghiani has instilled with the team, a mantra that stays with every player, starter or bench. “Ramin always tells us that yeah ball is great and what not but you’re also a student first and keeping up your grades is important,” M’Bikata said. The Blues continue their five-game home stand on Thursday, Jan. 26, where they’ll put their 10-game winning streak on the line against Quest University Kermodes. They play the Langara Falcons on Friday, Jan. 27, and tip off for their final home game of the season Feb. 2, against the CBC Bearcats.
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decimation of the Columbia Bible College (CBC) Bearcats on Jan. 7, finishing with a season-high 26 points, missing only one of her 12 attempts on the floor. She also added seven rebounds, six of which were on the offensive end. A week later, she led the Blues past the Camosun Chargers 7439, to a tune of 20 points and 13 rebounds. The Blues won their 10th straight victory in a home game against the Vancouver Island University Mariners on Jan. 14. After putting up 19 points and seven rebounds, M’Bikata was recognized as the PACWEST Basketball Athlete of the Week, as well as one of CCAA Athletes of the Week. It’s not all offence, though. The Blues forward has also been playing a key role in the team’s best facet: their defence. “The focus this year, is to try to get the ball outside and not let the ball inside too much,” she said. “Fronting the post has
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Double and triple teams are nothing new for Carmelle M’Bikata. All her life, the fourth-year forward of the Capilano Blues women’s basketball team has played the role of an offensive focal point. Being at the top of the opposing team’s scouting report is nothing new to her. “I’ve always been seen as one of the top offensive players so I’m comfortable doing that, and being seen as that,” M’Bikata said after a Tuesday afternoon practice. The undefeated Blues have romped through the Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST) conference behind stellar defence and consistent scoring by committee. The team features four players in the league’s top 10 scorers. At the top of the list is the steady and dominant inside presence that’s helped pace the Blues to an impressive 10-0 record. At 16.7 points and 7.0 rebounds per game, M’Bikata has been a reliable rock in the Blues’ offensive scheme. Her back-to-the-basket game has been damn near unstoppable. Her face-up game and quickness gives defenders fits. If teams decide to run double teams, M’Bikata is more than comfortable sharing the rock, “People are starting to double team me and it gives other people the opportunity to score when I kick it out to them.” Whether it was intended or not, her game has been particularly conducive to the Blues’ offensive barrage from the outside. Simply put, teams cannot afford to let M’Bikata have her way in the post, but doubling her creates openings for the Blues’ host of 3-point shooters. If they miss, M’Bikata and frontcourt mate Karyn Nelson are more than reliable in cleaning the glass, particularly on the offensive end. Like any great player, M’Bikata put in the work in the off-season. She cited mini-workouts and strict weight room routines as among the priorities on her plate this past off-season. Bringing up her physicality was also a focus. After 10 games, not only is M’Bikata leading the PACWEST in scoring, she also ranks fourth in rebounds. To add to her list of accomplishments, she also currently ranks second in the entire Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) in field goal percentage, making an extraordinary 67 per cent of her attempts – a stat made even more impressive considering her high usage rate. “This year, I focused more on my consistency to finish and my percentage to be higher when finishing around the basket,” she said. After a relatively pedestrian showing (at least to her lofty standards) against the Douglas College Royals on Jan. 6, M’Bikata has come surging back with arguably three of her best games so far. She led the Blues to a 40-point
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FEATURES
- ANNIE CHANG
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Christine Beyleveldt CAMPUS LIFE EDITOR
news. If people didn't read it, it wouldn't be as dangerous as it currently is.” If fake news is defined as the intentional spread of misinformation to influence public opinion, we see it every day already in advertising. People are also
“If there was a lie told to win an election it could be verified and stopped, but some of these lies today can go viral, that’s the unique phenomenon.”
disagreeing with the conventionally held perspective results in being labelled. King proposes a solution to the rise of fake news that would not see tightened social constraints. Rather, he suggests institutional reform. Citizens need to be better educated to determine for themselves what is falsehood rather than relying on the media or the state to tell them. Journalists also need better resources so they can properly investigate sources. By operating on a business model, the media has turned into a 24-hour news stream that produces quantity of content over quality of content. Instead of competing with rival outlets to publish first, if many of the stories containing false or misleading information had the chance to be properly investigated before publication they would reveal an entirely different story. Unfortunately in a world where news is being updated constantly, only half the story is made available and the blanks are filled in later. Schietel points out that half the problem is people using any news source to back up their own personal biases. “If there is a news angle they don't like or a story breaks that discredits their beliefs, they can just find a news source that will support them, or worse yet, create that news source,” she said. Finding a source, whether it is truth or not, to back up one’s own biases was yet another problem identified on the campaign trail. When opposing factions refuse to engage in debate and brand their opponents as liars to prevent them from speaking out, freedom of speech is jeopardized in such a way that most people would not consider acceptable in a democratic society. When speech that goes against the conventional ruling is oppressed, it isn’t eliminated – it festers. Polls weren’t able to predict Trump’s victory in the US election because so many of his supporters were afraid to voice their opinions. They were labeled deplorable and their speech was censored because much of what Trump said was non-conventional without even taking into account the accusations of racism and sexism. The same scenario played out in Britain on June 23. The island nation voted to separate from the European Union, and the result was a shock to many of its opponents. Supporters of Brexit were silent until they reached the election booth. As the world descends into chaos, the common person is obliged to give up their freedom for the sake of controlling the hysteria. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said on Last Week Tonight that, “You shouldn’t change your behaviour because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we’re afraid, it means we don’t care about those values very much.” Misinformation has the power to destroy the common person’s trust in the media, but if the hysteria can’t be contained, we’ll soon find ourselves in a situation where we no longer have the right to speak out, and that’s a far more frightening prospect than hearing lies from our politicians.
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inherently attracted to gossip, which is how tabloids make their money reporting misinformation. “If there was a lie told to win an election it could be verified and stopped, but some of these lies today can go viral, that’s the unique phenomenon,” said King. The clickbased model used to produce media revenue online uses algorithms, which means that content a reader is more likely to click on will be prioritized in their newsfeed. If a person has clicked on a fake news website before, the algorithm will register that website and expose it to the reader again, knowing that they are likely to click on it. “I doubt that we would have ever imagined this would be an issue before the advent and dependence on technology and instant news,” said Scheitel. The espousing of fake news was a minor concern in the 1990s when the Internet was thought to be enlightening, but with time it has proven to be a platform for false information to spread uncontrolled. The distributors of news are hitting walls throughout Europe as well. Facebook came under fire in November for running up against Germany’s hate speech laws, which would require the social media platform to remove any and all content deemed hate speech by the state within 24 hours of it being brought to attention, but the platform has struggled to remove just 46 per cent of flagged content. Freedom of speech is already censored in limited ways, ways that are deemed acceptable by most. For example, perjury, lying under oath in a court of law, hate speech and slander are forms of speech that have severe consequences associated with them. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of such speech, but people should be able to experience those consequences firsthand when it doesn’t pose a threat to democracy. What politicians can do is call out misinformation where they see it. “Most famously, a couple of months ago Barack Obama was in Germany alongside Angela Merkel and he made quite a point that fake news goes to the heart of liberal democracies,” said King. “Him calling out fake news is different than actually creating policy around it.” In such a scenario, propaganda would run rampant. Already we are exposed to the state’s ideology, and
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Fake news is seemingly everywhere. It has been for a long time, but nobody cared about half-truths and little white lies or celebrity gossip until they threatened the establishment. Perhaps it marks a cultural shift where people are beginning to recognize falsehoods for themselves, in which case society is already on a better path. But the more likely scenario is that fake news, and the hysteria that surrounds it, is a threat to liberal democracy. A deeply worrying trend with fake news is the state’s desire to monitor and control the flow of false information in an effort to eradicate it. Most recently, Italian Antitrust Chief, Giovanni Pitruzella said that independent bodies must be set up to remove fake news from circulation and impose fines on anyone who is caught distributing it. Essentially, social media organizations that distribute the information can’t be trusted to curtail fake news, so the state must take charge. This comes after Prime Minister Matteo Renzi lost a referendum on constitutional reform in December, and stepped down from his post. “A core tenant of liberal democracy is that we can deal with facts, so the fundamental danger of fake news is that it undermines the principles of a liberal and pluralist democracy,” said Conrad King, an instructor of political science at Capilano University. King believes that the state’s desire to take control of the media is an unsettling but necessary measure that must be taken to prevent the circulation of false news. However, if politicians are going to become involved in scrutinizing the media, their role must be a marginal one, and those involved in deciding what to censor must be non-partisan. If an elected official such as Barack Obama were to be the deciding factor in what is deemed false and what is deemed truth, all opposition to the party’s platform would be censored. “[Whereas] the antitrust chief, if he’s doing his job, which is institutionally nonpartisan, shouldn’t care whether Renzi’s in power, he should be caring about the tenants of democracy,” said King. Throughout the 2016 election campaign, opposition to the Obama Administration was slandered, and as a result there has never been greater furor or hatred for an incoming president. King also pointed out that we’ve already seen the dangers of an elected official such as Trump deciding what’s fake and what’s not when he pointed fingers at CNN on Jan. 11 – the media is silenced by the regime. “Truth in journalism is a fundamental estate that upholds our liberal democracy, so in a way it’s absolutely necessary,” said King. “Fake news shakes the core ethics journalism was built on. However, that is just one part of the problem,” added freelance reporter Leah Scheitel. “The other part is the insatiable appetite for fake
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FEATURES
YOUR NEW WALLET HOW BITCOIN HAS CHANGED THE MARKET Gabriel Scorgie FEATURES EDITOR
Art by Austin Legg CONTRIBUTOR
t some point in time, either at a family dinner or talking hypothetically among friends, we’ve heard or said the phrase, “If I could go back in time, I’d invest in Apple/ Google/Amazon.” In our heads, buying Apple stock back in 2002 seems like the perfect get rich quick scheme. Little did we know that just seven years ago, almost all of us missed an investment opportunity that would’ve made Apple look like peanuts. When Apple had their Initial Public Offer in 2002, they traded at $23.30 a share. For $100 you could’ve safely bought four shares of Apple stock. Today, after all the splits and growth the company has undergone, your initial four shares would’ve turned into 56 and you could sell those for $6,664. Now, a $6,564 profit and over 6,000 per cent Return on Investment is hardly something to scoff at. However, after a decade-and-a-half of holding onto the stock, you’re hardly rolling in money. You’d have to have invested around $10,000 to be able to retire off of it. In 2010, a new kind of currency hit the market. Known as Bitcoin, “It was the first cryptocurrency to use the blockchain. That is why it is the biggest,” said William Choi, a Bitcoin investor who is also currently designing a website for the currency. When Bitcoin started, it traded at $0.05 a coin. $100 of Bitcoin back then would’ve given you 2,000 coins. Though the market has been extremely volatile, Bitcoin currently trades at $834 a coin, meaning those 2,000 coins would now be worth $1.6 million, making that initial investment the deal of a lifetime. “I’ve always known about the existence of Bitcoin but I never knew too much about it until recently,” began Choi, “I first got involved with Bitcoin after I got hired at Vanbex as a full-stack developer. I was in charge of creating websites where blockchain transactions happen and to know how to do that I would have to know a bit about the digital currency. I currently now own a few Bitcoin but only keep them as an investment rather than to use them to purchase goods or services.”
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DOWN THE SILK ROAD
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In the early days of Bitcoin, if anybody had heard of the currency it was likely connected with the Silk Road. The Silk Road was part of underbelly of the Internet known as the Deep Web. It was only accessible through .tor and .onion programs, but once you were there, access to the most horrible parts of humanity were just a click away.
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“The reason the site was so popular was because it essentially doubled down on anonymity,” said Alexandre Thompson, a Bitcoin investor. The funds were essentially untraceable and .tor client masked your identity. The site was mainly known as a place to get high quality drugs delivered. However, the FBI also discovered much worse content such as snuff films, child pornography and assassination contracts. In 2013, when the FBI arrested Silk Road creator Robert William Ulbricht, he was charged with money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic narcotics and procuring murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. Since the site shutdown, the FBI has seized over 150,000 Bitcoin from the site, worth over $130 million today.
CRYPTOCURRENCY HISTORY Though Bitcoin may be the first modern cryptocurrency, the idea has been around for over two decades. It could be argued that prepaid Visas and E-Gold are both early iterations of cryptocurrency, as both allow the owner to remain anonymous and secure. Any form of currency that bypasses banks and keeps the user anonymous can be considered a cryptocurrency. What makes Bitcoin different is that not only does no bank or credit card company run it, nobody runs it at all. Bitcoin is able to be completely decentralized because of a technology known as blockchain, a system that stores one piece of information in multiple places. It also serves as a public ledger, posting all Bitcoin transactions to their website, blockchain.info, as they happen. “How money was exchanged on the Internet before, was that there had to be an intermediary,” began Choi. “This is because, when you send something over the Internet, it only sends a copy of it. When you send a PDF over to your friend Bob, he receives a copy of it, but you also keep a copy on your machine as well. This does not work for money because if you have $500 and you send it to Bob, you can’t keep $500 on your machine as well. This is why an intermediary comes into play to keep track of how much money everyone has. This could be a risk to people’s money because if Paypal or a bank gets hacked, everyone’s money gets screwed.” Choi explained that when currency gets sent over the network, every node in the chain updates the sums. This means that in order for Bitcoin to get hacked, someone would have to break into every node in the chain simultaneously – something considered impossible. “So not only does Bitcoin make transactions
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anonymous because it is user to user, but also much safer.” Blockchaining also solved the biggest problem digital currencies were facing – duplicating. “Just like any other currency, there is a maximum number of Bitcoin and there is an exchange rate with other currencies,” said Choi. Before Bitcoin, any other digital currency that tried to get popular suffered from the fact it could be easily duplicated, rapidly devaluating the currency and making it unsafe to invest in.
HOW TO GET BITCOIN
FUTURE OF BITCOIN
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currency, in order to tax it. “The agency’s guidance said that people should treat their virtual currency as property, rather than currency, for tax purposes. If a person buys a Bitcoin for $200, for example, then sells it later when its value has risen to $400, the $200 in gains are supposed to be recorded to the tax authorities,” read a New York Times article. However, because of the high amount of anonymity Bitcoin provides, most people who are serious about evading taxes and keeping their money private will be hard to find.
THE GENESIS BLOCK To this day, nobody knows who came up with Bitcoin. In November of 2008, someone under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto, published a paper online titled, Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System. Two months later, the Bitcoin network came into existence with the launch of the first Bitcoin client and first transfer of coins with Nakamoto mining the first block, now known as the Genesis Block, for a reward of 50 coins. Many news outlets, including the New Yorker have tried to find out who Nakamoto really is. Nobody has been successful, and the odds of ever finding out are getting increasingly slim as their involvement with Bitcoin appears to have ended in the middle of 2010. In 2011, Nakamoto told a bitcoin user that they had moved on to other things. Despite the success of Bitcoin, Nakamoto appears to have no inclination to step forward and reveal their identity. Instead, they choose to revel in their anonymity, much like their currency has afforded others to do.
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There are several ways to get Bitcoin. “You can purchase Bitcoin through a currency exchange site. As Bitcoin is becoming more popular, there has been more unique ways of getting Bitcoin as well. For example, some cities have ATM machines where you can exchange your cash for Bitcoin straight into your Bitcoin wallet,” said Choi. Some nearby schools such as SFU and BCIT have added these Bitcoin ATMs to their campus. A Bitcoin wallet is software that manages your incoming and outgoing transactions. The downfall is that the software can be tricky to understand and maintain in the beginning. Ironically, there are now third party services that offer to maintain your wallet. Before Bitcoin became so accessible to the public, one of the ways people obtained the currency was through mining blockchains. “Mining isn't that efficient as there are places in China doing it in bulk,” said Thompson, “You primarily need GPUs to calculate prime numbers. You would run a mining protocol and then it would work on creating these calculations. There were lots of Bitcoin from this at the start, not as many now.” The genius behind it is that every time a mine is successful, a new block in the chain is created and used. “Once a block is mined, every new transaction happens on the most recently mined block,” said Choi. Computers must solve a complex mathematical equation and the miners are often highly educated in network systems and invest a lot of money into their venture. “It takes one average computer over 10 years to mine a block, but with dedicated blockchain mining servers, a new block is mined roughly every 10 minutes. The computer who mined the block gets rewarded with a few Bitcoin. It is also how Bitcoin currency is made,” said Choi. Currently there are over 15 million Bitcoin. To prevent the currency from inflating, there is a hard cap of 21 million that cannot be exceeded.
In the beginning, Bitcoin was unknown and not overly useful. There was almost nowhere to spend it and few people saw the potential it had to increase in value. Today, many major stores accept payment in Bitcoin. People can buy a new computer, or plane tickets with it. There’s even a site that lets you shop on Amazon using Bitcoin. Choi, however, maintains that the real value is as an investment. “It has the biggest blockchain and it’s hard for other cryptocurrencies to overtake the number of people who already use Bitcoin. It’s all about supply and demand. A lot of people want to use the new cryptocurrency and see the potential in it. That is why the price is going up. Currently, Bitcoin is only in its start-up phase. Once bigger organizations start to use it, the value of Bitcoin will only continue to rise.” Thompson shares Choi’s sentiment. “I currently use Bitcoin as an investment, as the value of Bitcoin is predicted to rise soon. The general use of Bitcoin is simply as a new form of Internet currency. It is safe and anonymous and that is why there is such a high demand for it,” said Thompson. Though Thompson is only a part-time investor, Choi works directly with Bitcoin. “I am currently working on websites that need to access the blockchain to make Bitcoin transactions,” he explained. Every single transaction that happens is stored on the blockchain. “Let’s say you have five Bitcoin. There isn’t actually five Bitcoin under your name, but a history of the transactions you have made with Bitcoin.” As an example, Choi said that if you were to buy ten Bitcoins and use five of them, your wallet balance would read simply as five bitcoin. It would look at the blockchain and then calculate the equation +10 – 5 = 5 to show your balance. In order for a website to be able to accept Bitcoin transactions, it has to be connected to the blockchain so it can perform the proper arithmetic. Choi makes that connection. Currently, there are debates about whether or not someone should have to pay taxes on Bitcoin. In November 2016, the IRS requested the records of 3 million Bitcoin users in order to track down people who avoided paying taxes last year. They’re doing it by going after Coinbase, a company that buys and sells Bitcoin. Coinbase and other companies like it are required by regulators to record and track the identities of people who use their service. In 2014, the IRS declared that Bitcoin was to be treated like property instead of
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ARTS & CULTURE
VISIONS OF SUCCESS Vancouver-based alternative-rock band releases EP with a reformed sound. Rachel D’Sa CONTRIBUTOR
Vancouver-based band, Mellt, recently released their new EP titled Visions on Jan. 12, captivating the Lower Mainland with their hypnotic melodies. The local artists have been painting the area with colourful tracks since the summer of 2014. Formed in a West Vancouver basement, the four-piece alternative-psychedelic-rock band currently consists of Chris Smith (lead vocals, guitar, keyboard, bass), James Porter (guitar, bass, keyboard, vocals), Jamie Turner (drums, drum pad) and Nikki Lax (bass). The group vigorously recorded their first self-titled EP that summer, releasing it on Bandcamp in January of 2015. Mellt has performed at a range of Vancouver venues from university stadiums, to bars and pubs, and classic house ragers. They have opened for acts such as Oh Wonder and Vince Staples and landed a radio interview with Y57 for Coop Radio 100.5FM in March of 2015. “The
group is both really a serious endeavor and passion project,” said Smith. As a student in the highly competitive and well-known Capilano University Motion Picture Arts (MOPA) program, lead vocalist Smith has found himself in a difficult position balancing both his full-time commitment to the intense school work and all that comes with being in an up-andcoming band, including late night gigs, keeping up with social media and writing and recording music. “I manage with a whole lot of sleepless nights,” Smith said while cracking a smile. “I try my best to manage time the best I can when it comes to the heavy course load with school, the band, and other factors, but the lack of sleep is necessary at times.” With MOPA being such a creativity-heavy program, Smith recognizes the benefits from the experience he has gained at CapU. “By being in a program like this, it’s made me a more technical person, and made me more attentive to the writing I do both within the program and creatively outside, with the band,” he said. The newly reformed sound heard on Visionshas been getting positive reviews, being well-received by both older fans and listeners tuning in for the first time. “With Visions, Mellt is starting something new. Our sound is edging more into a psychedelic sort of sound with more electronic vibes,” Smith said, comparing Mellt’s past sound to the new EP.
Visions became a project at the beginning of the summer of 2015, where it was recorded in Smith’s basement, and was later mixed in Fader Mountain Studios in Vancouver with Kieran Wagstaff. “Kieran was great to collaborate with… Great guy, really.” But the process wasn’t all smooth sailing. “The hardest part about [Visions], was just how long it took. The entire process took a year and a half,” said Smith. “My car got broken into and my laptop was stolen in Seattle, when I was there visiting some friends, so we had to re-do a lot of stuff.” Throughout the four track EP, Visions creates soundscapes using 70s-sounding bass with a brighter attack, and warm, filled-out keyboard and guitar parts. “As he floated up, he saw his own two eyes,” sings Smith in the first song titled “Glow.” The spacious-sounding tune creates a
trippy sort of space, resembling an outof-body experience. Throughout the rest of the EP with songs “Keep Us Apart,” “Ocean” and “Fool of You”, Mellt locks in a good groove with laid back drumming, funk-inspired guitar flourishes, ethereal keyboard and echoey phrases – all wrapping the audience in a hallucinatory blanket. “Our musical influences for Visions include artists like Tame Impala, Foals, Glass Animals and even Radiohead,” said Smith. The vocals are reminiscent of the forceless sound heard on Tame Impala’s 2010 album, Innerspeaker, with sweeping sounds of reverb and delay. “The inspiration behind the EP was the love of making music together. We kinda wrote it as we recorded. Re-recorded, rerecorded, re-recorded,” Smith recalled with a laugh. “My favorite song has got to be “Fool of You.” The rest of the band, I’ve heard, also really likes “Keep Us Apart”,” he added. Mellt held their release party for Visions on Jan. 14 at The Media Club, along with guests Mr. Stee and Fat Purple Fig. With a great turnout, the night met Mellt with the success we’re likely to see continue in their musical endeavours to come. Stream Visions on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and all other official stores and streaming services, including their new website: www.Mellt.ca.
because most of the time its only sponsored people, teams, or brands that go there,” he explained. According to Moir, most skateboarding films to come out of Vancouver aim to be premiered at the Rio Theatre, but Norts took an unconventional, but ultimately fruitful route of premiering at the Penthouse Strip Club. The crew was able to get their rental fee waived off after bringing in nearly 200 people and accounting for tremendous liquor sales. The release of Norts 2 earlier this year brought in approximately 300 people. “All that starting from just a small group of friends skating in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, and then moving out
to East Vancouver along with knowing people, networking and meeting people, that kind of just started the whole image,” Moir said. Despite the painstaking filming process, Moir keeps Norts as genuine as possible. The film has an abundance of falls and its host of reaction scenes add a sense of naturality and a down-to-earth type of comedy to the entire product. In terms of marketing, physical copies of Norts were sold for $10. Norts 2, on the other hand, will be available in local skateboarding shops for $5. “There’s definitely no reason to try and profit. Sure I’d love a bit of profit, but that’s not my goal whatsoever. My goal is to just let people see a video that we filmed for almost a yearand-a-half and put a lot of work into,” said Moir. “It’s still a passion project. It might be better known now but it’s still just an independent, friendly video that I don’t want to gain profit from.” Although Moir fully understands the geographical and economical boundaries that inhibit Vancouver’s skateboarding culture from transcending its current state, he knows that every endeavour in a passion project is still very much worth a shot. “There’s a lot of skateboarders in Vancouver that kind of try so hard to make it,” he said, “Whereas the best Vancouver skateboarder has about 5,000 of himself in California.” “As much as I would love to be a filmmaker for Nike and travel the world, realistically, I just want Norts to be seen as a crew of skateboarders in Vancouver that have fun, don’t take themselves too seriously, but can still make an entertaining and well-made video.” It’s almost representative of the very principle of skateboarding: get up, no matter how times you may fall, and keep on skating.
WE THE NORTS Kick, push and coast with North Van-based skate crew Carlo Javier
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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
MANAGING EDITOR
John Moir knows that unlike the cities of California, Vancouver isn’t conducive to prospering great success in skateboarding. It’s just that he didn’t let that stop him and nearly a dozen friends from producing Norts, one of the most popular skateboarding videos to come out of North Vancouver. “[Skateboarding is] like my favourite thing in the world, it’s the one thing I’m really passionate about,” he said. Nearly two years after the original Norts video, Moir and his friends are celebrating the launch of Norts 2, with its physical release impending before the end of January. Moir is a recent graduate of Capilano University, completing his business marketing certificate last fall. His roots, however, are deeply ingrained in the North Vancouver culture. One might even recognize the hyper-local slang he used as title for their film. “A nort is kind of like a local term for a dork,” he said. Having spent his formative high school years at Seycove Secondary, Moir and his friends found a sense of attachment and nostalgia with the slang. Essentially, the skateboarding crew stripped away the negativity associated with “nort” and turned it into an emblem. A skateboarding film is akin to a hiphop cypher, or a basketball highlight reel. A skater’s footage is condensed into a strict allotment of time that is ultimately included in a greater mash up of scenes. Each skater is also granted their own background music to accompany their
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reel. Then, respective footage of everyone is spliced together to compile an hour-long skateboarding film. For Moir, production for the first iteration of Norts began in spring of 2013. The group even found a way to shoot footage for a side video in Shenzhen, China in April 2014 – to accommodate an aesthetic desire for vibrancy. Little did they know that a simple skateboarding trip to China had serious ramifications on boosting their rep. “Some of our friends are sponsored and are really good, while we’re just average dudes that work normal jobs or go to school, so when people saw that we’re going to China, they thought that was pretty cool,
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SETTING THE TABLE TOGETHER West coast tastes meet community values at North Van’s, The Village Table. Jacqueline Ranit CONTRIBUTOR
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Hottest Picks of Dine Out Celebrating its 15th anniversary, Dine Out Vancouver continues to be the largest festival to celebrate food and drink in Canada. Set to begin on January 20, this year’s line-up boasts over 280 participating restaurants and 102 exclusive culinary events. To help you manage this year’s festival, we’ve put together our hottest list of restaurants and events that are not to be missed.
Craft Beer and Tacos Tour Dates: January 20, 21, 26, 27, 28 / February 2, 3, 4 Where: Inside Waterfront Station, 601 West Cordova St. Cost: $98.25 Dineoutvancouver.com Take a guided ride through historic Gastown and stop by popular local craft breweries like Big Rock Urban Brewery while enjoying, what else? Tacos! Hosted in part by Tacofino, this tour is sure to be a night you won’t remember.
Kitsilano Brunch Crawl Date: January 22 Time: 10am to 2pm Where: Silk Road Tea, 2066 W 4th Ave Cost: $52.50 Dineoutvancouver.com The best meal of the day in arguably one of the best neighbourhood’s in the city, this crawl presented by Vancouver Foodster features pancakes, waffles, eggs benny’s, smoothies, and all the best that brunch has to offer.
Bay Moorings, North Shore Where: 6330 Bay St., 2nd Floor Cost: $30 Baymooringsrestaurant.com With mouth-watering desserts like peanut butter chocolate cheesecake, tiramisu sponge cake and vanilla bean panna cotta, there’s plenty to look forward to at this new Italian Seafood restaurant on the North Shore.
Timber, Downtown Where: 1300 Robson Street $20 Timbervancouver.com Known for Canadian comfort food, Timber by Chef Chris Whittaker is the place to enjoy a bison sirloin, maple ice cream, and an affinity for red plaid.
Torafuku, Chinatown Where: 958 Main Street $30 Torafuku.ca Intended to be shared between two people, this fresh tasting menu takes your typical Asian cuisine to the extreme with torched pork belly, fuku-style laksa and yuzu gelee. It’s the perfect meal to test your palette – and your partner.
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If you’re on the prowl for something new to try at this year’s Dine Out Festival, held from January 20 to February 5, look no further than the North Shore’s own, The Village Table. Nestled in cozy Dollarton Village, this west coast inspired eatery is famous for their local brews, scenic views and hearty menu featuring organic, glutenfree and sustainable seafood options. With premium beef sirloin, chipotle glazed steelhead and flourless chocolate cake featured on their affordable $30 menu, The Village Table offers more than a place to satisfy your after-class cravings – it’s a welcoming spot for locals to come out and share a wholesome meal together. After 25 years in the industry, head chef and owner, Seth Adler started this local diner with what he knew best – food. “I wanted to create a menu that reflects the place where we live,” said Adler, who has worked his way up from being a dishwasher to now being a restaurateur, “food that people living in this area would appreciate.” As a father raising two young girls in the Deep Cove community, Adler knows the importance of being involved in one's community, which has become a defining value for his business. Apart from supporting local events like the Penguin Plunge, the spring fair and hosting barbecues at the nearby high school, The Village Table surprises members of their community with gift cards when they come by for a bite. “This is where we live,” said Adler, “therefore we should contribute, do our part, and give back.” Currently in the works of opening a second location, Adler is like all stressed restaurant owners who face a slump after the peak holiday season. During a period where most individuals keep resolutions to eat healthier and eat out less, city-wide initiatives like Dine Out Vancouver are designed to restore business. Not only do they serve to stimulate sales and promote tourism but large-scale events like this also enable community-based, local eateries like The Village Table to succeed. So, take a break from your resolutions and support your favourite local restaurants by participating in this year’s Dine Out festival. With three course meals ranging from $20 to $40, there is a diverse collection of cuisines to experience and enjoy. Reservations vary from restaurant, but can easily be made through Dineoutvancouver.com. Bon appetit!
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The Fish Shack, Downtown
From crab and prawn Hush Puppies to Fried Chicken Oscar, this seafood spot offers something for everyone, not to mention an oyster selection that will make you never want to leave.
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Where: 1026 Granville St $20 Fish-shack.com
BEST OF CAP
BEST OF CAPILANO
BEST FUNDRAISER 1) The Harvest Project (Global Stewardship) 2) Stuff the Bus (Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Student Association) 3) Blood is Blood Campaign (CSU)
READERS CHOICE AWARDS 2016
WINNERS
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We asked and you answered! The results are in for the 2016 Best of Capilano Readers’ Choice Awards. Thanks to all of the CapU students who submitted ballots – we were pleasantly surprised to learn that we do, in fact, have readers after all.
BEST PLACE TO STUDY 1) Library 2) Maple Building 3) Fir Building / Nat & Flora Bosa Centre for Film & Animation (TIE)
BEST CSU COLLECTIVE 1) Capilano Queer Collective 2) Students of Colour Collective 3) Environmental Justice Collective
BEST PLACE TO NAP 1) CSU Maple Lounge 2) Library 3) Writing Centre / Fir Building (TIE)
BEST EVENT 1) CSU Uncapped Rail Jam 2) CapU Street Party 3) CSU Boat Party
CAMPUS LIFE
BEST VIEW 1) Birch Building, top floor 2) Nat & Flora Bosa Centre for Film and Animation, top floor 3) Cedar Building, top floor
SHOPS AND SERVICES
We will be presenting each of the finalists and first-place winners with certificates at a special event on Feb. 2 in the CSU Library Lounge from 6 to 8:30 pm. There will be non-alcoholic beverages and light snacks available. All students, staff and faculty are welcome to attend.
BEST BUILDING 1) Birch Building 2) Nat & Flora Bosa Centre for Film & Animation 3) Library Building
BEST PLACE TO PARK 1) Beside the Cedar Building / Beside the Fir Building (TIE) 2) P2, near the Bosa Centre 3) None! Free parking on Lillooet Road.
BEST FOOD FRANCHISE 1) Subway 2) Tim Hortons 3) Good Earth Coffee House
An afterparty will follow at the Portside Pub in Gastown, from 9:30 pm to late. (No cover!)
BEST HANGOUT SPACE 1) CSU Library Lounge 2) Library 3) Cafeteria
BEST CLUB 1) Capilano Communications Club 2) Capilano Billiards Club / Pen and Paper Club (TIE) 3) Persian Students Club
BEST COFFEE FRANCHISE 1) Tim Hortons 2) Good Earth Coffee House 3) Starbucks
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BEST CSU SERVICE 1) uPass 2) Used Book Sale 3) Health and Dental Plan
BEST THEATRE PRODUCTION 1) Rocky Horror Picture Show 2) A Christmas Carol 3) Cabaret
BEST CAPILANO BLUES STUDENT ATHLETE (MALE) 1) Devan Woolley 2) Salah Hawsawi 3) Keith Jackson / Hassan Phills (TIE)
BEST STUDENT ASSOCIATION 1) CapU Marketing Association (CAPUMA) 2) Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Student Association (TRECSA) 3) CUBES / IBA / Capilano Accounting Association
BEST CAPILANO UNIVERSITY SERVICE 1) Counselling and Learning Support 2) Health Services / Career Services (TIE) 3) Writing Centre
BEST PERFORMANCE SPACE 1) Blueshore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts 2) Arbutus Theatre / Bosa Centre Theatre (TIE) 3) Harold Kirchner Music Studio (FIR 113)
BEST CAPILANO BLUES STUDENT ATHLETE (FEMALE) 1) Brittany Wertman 2) Kolby Richter 3) Kira Alexa / Mika Chow / Tyneille Neufeld (TIE)
MOST LIFE-CHANGING PROFESSOR 1) Michael Markwick 2) Kym Stewart 3) Carolyn Stern / Lloyd Michaels (TIE)
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
BEST PERFORMING ARTS ENSEMBLE 1) Exit 22 Productions 2) Nitecap 3) A-Band
ACADEMIC & ALUMNI
BEST VISUAL ART PIECE 1) Naked Lady statue on the trail 2) Trees in CSU Library Lounge / Capilano Courier covers (TIE) 3. Totems outside Kéxwusm-áyakn
BIGGEST CHANGE-MAKER 1) Jullian Kolstee 2) Taylor Wilson 3) Paul Dangerfield
ATHLETICS
BEST STUDENT POLITICIAN 1) Jullian Kolstee 2) Elie Lubendo 3) Sacha Fabry / Amina El Mantari (TIE)
BEST FILM/DOCUMENTARY 1) Help Wanted (Jacquile Kambo) 2) Connecting Through Culture (Samantha Huang) 3) Maple (Jasleen Kaur)
BEST CAPILANO BLUES SPORTS TEAM (FEMALE) 1) Basketball 2) Volleyball 3) Soccer
MOST BUZZ-WORTHY ALUMNUS 1) Daniel Dubois / Cristian Fowlie (TIE) 2) Jacquile Kambo 3) Brittany Barnes 17
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BEST CAPILANO BLUES SPORTS TEAM (MALE) 1) Soccer 2) Basketball 3) Volleyball
THE CAPILANO COURIER
BEST MUSICIAN/BAND 1) Mike WT Allen 2) No Island 3) Siobhan Waldock
MOST LIFE-CHANGING CLASS 1) CMNS 355: Intercultural Communications 2) PADM 305: Problem Solving and Decision Making Skills: Policy Analysis for Local Government Professionals 3) PHIL 102: Introductory Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality / LGST 124: Organizational Behaviour (TIE)
OPINIONS
HATEFUL RACISM LEAD TO CHICAGO KIDNAPPING AND TORTURE TRAGEDY Racist obscenity is a two-way street Alexander Derbas CONTRIBUTOR
The recent kidnapping and torture of a mentally disabled 18-year-old Caucasian male by four African-American youth sparked outrage and disgust across news and social media networks everywhere. A live-streamed Facebook video depicted the four youth attacking, humiliating and verbally abusing the young white male who has attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia. The victim was tied up, beaten, forced to drink toilet water and kiss the floor. He also sustained cuts to the scalp. A $300 ransom was demanded from the victim’s mother by one of the suspects and, three days after the victim was last seen by his parents, he was found walking outside – bloodied, injured and confused.
According to CNN correspondents, the four convicted suspects – Jordan Hill, 18, Tesfaye Cooper; 18, Brittany Covington, 18 and Tanishia Covington, 24, have each been charged with committing a hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and felony aggravated kidnapping. Unfortunately, although the nowconvicted suspects can be heard screeching “Fuck Trump!” and “Fuck white people!” in the video, there seemed to be an initial hesitancy from some to call this a hate crime. For example, political strategist Symone Sanders stated the attack was not a hate crime and that “context matters”, but later changed her stance on the issue after the suspects were convicted, declaring that it was a hate crime. In contrast, American politician and former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stated on Fox & Friends that, “If this had been done to an AfricanAmerican by four whites, every liberal in the country would be outraged and there would be no question that it is a hate crime.”* Still, the act was secretly condemned from all corners of the media. Even President Barack Obama addressed the situation, expressing his dismay with
“hate crimes of the despicable sort”. So why do some not see this as a hate crime? According to some people, it was an act of revenge caused by “built up” or “internalized” racism that created anger in these black individuals due to many years of discrimination they had endured or witnessed their community endure. Some think racism can only be something enacted on minorities by majority populations because of the concept of “oppression” that continuously hinders minorities in an effort to control them. Nevertheless, people with this perspective don’t condone the actions of the accused – they just believe that this was the product of built up, repressed psychological racism. Nobody is immune to racism. Hateful behaviour can be imposed on any individual regardless of their race or ethnicity. And we need to see this act for what it is: a racist hate crime that deserves severe condemnation and punishment. Screaming “Fuck white people!” and “Fuck Donald Trump!” are targeted attacks on this man because of his Caucasian race, mentally disabled status and political leanings – all of which are protected under the American constitution. Heinous acts like this happen
because of our distinct upbringings – people learn from and are influenced by their environmental and home settings, including those who teach us how to act and behave. These criminals indicated clearly that they have negative racist views that caused them to commit this despicable act. Regardless of political issues, this is a racist hate crime that should be acknowledged as such and not covered up. Racism is a two-way street – it can and does happen to people from all walks of life. * Editor’s note: In October 2015 in the state of Idaho, a 19-year-old white football player was charged with brutally raping a black, mentally disabled teammate with a coat hanger. The attacker had also abused the victim during football practices and allegedly forced him to learn a KKK song, among other racist attacks that were cheered on by coaches and teammates. Prosecutors are now claiming that the attack was neither a sex crime nor racially motivated. The attacker will completely avoid jail time – instead, the expected sentence is two to three years of probation because the Deputy Attorney General doesn’t think it’s appropriate for the attacker to suffer the consequences of a sex offender.
MAKING ENDS MEET IN A PART-TIME ECONOMY Lack of full-time jobs is a problem Gabriel Scrogie
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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
FEATURES EDITOR
Many people at Capilano University don’t know this, but going to the dentist is expensive. Just a simple teeth cleaning service costs more than $200 and if you have cavities or any other problems, it can cost over $1,000. It’s not a problem for anyone who has at least one parent with a decent job because their insurance plans cover dental expenses for the family. Hell, if you’re a full-time student at CapU then you qualify for Health and Dental through the CSU. However, once you’re out of school it will be up to you to pay for your own health care and dental bills. The good news is that most full-time jobs offer some sort of insurance plan. The bad news is there are fewer and fewer fulltime jobs available. Since 2009, the number of full-time jobs available has declined each year. There are a number of reasons why this is a problem. One is obviously that parttime jobs don’t offer people coverage or insurance like full-time jobs do. It also means these part-time employees have much less job security since they won’t be on contract, and they’ll most likely have to get a second job, then balance both schedules just so they can afford to pay for basic expenses. We’re lucky in Canada that even without any health insurance, we can get basic care for ourselves through the provincial medicare plan. Having to put off going to the doctor because you can’t afford it is like listening to your parents
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-JULIANA VIEIRA
talk dirty to each other – you should never have to experience it. There are still gaps in the system that having a full-time job with an insurance plan can fill. Dental, for example isn’t covered by the Federal Government. So maybe you ate too much chocolate over the holidays and now your tooth hurts when you bite, but it doesn’t hurt so much you want to spend $300 getting it fixed so you just ignore it until it becomes a bigger, more expensive problem.
For recent graduates, they will find that there aren’t a lot of jobs available in their field of study. The cliché of spending thousands of dollars on a degree just to be splitting duties between a coffee shop and a retail store will become a depressing reality. Also, part-time tends to pay substantially less than full-time as most employers don’t want to pay someone $20 an hour to come in three times a week. There’s no easy way to create
full-time employment for people. In the fields of work that students find themselves in, such as retail and service, there isn’t a need for a high number of full-time employees. It’s worth studying why other industries are growing but new full-time jobs are created at a rate of less than one per cent a year. Until then, the only option people have is to stretch themselves thin working multiple jobs and to brush and floss their teeth before bed.
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Changing the narrative around muslim women Dhia Istiqamah CONTRIBUTOR
What does the world really want from Muslim women? Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint. In Western society, the hijab and women who wear it are constantly politicized. We’re expected to prove that we are are empowered and autonomous, yet scrutinized and questioned for doing so. We are always either too covered or not covered enough, too extreme or too progressive. But our existence shouldn’t be a perpetual source of controversy – we shouldn’t have to defend our every action, simply for being in the public eye. Last year, Noor Tagouri, a young Muslim Libyan-American who pioneers as the first American hijabi news anchor, made world-wide headlines after appearing in Playboy magazine. Tagouri broke the Playboy stereotype by being covered hear-to-toe in accordance to the Islamic standard of modesty. Yet, rather than discussion about her work as a journalist and activist, she received a lot of public backlash and criticism, largely in the form of slutshaming and disapproval for her choice to work with Playboy. Was her intention of representing Muslim women in the media really worth the controversy? I can disagree with Playboy magazine’s famous history of exploiting women’s bodies and question their attempt to rebrand themselves as an empowering force, but still respect Tagouri’s choice to use the platform to affect change. It was appalling to see the disrespectful responses and slutshaming that Tagouri received.
POLY-TICKS: GETTING RID OF THE SYSTEM’S WEAK LINKS Are human politicians so last year? Freya Wasteneys CONTRIBUTOR
In pop culture, many hijabi women are trying to showcase themselves to the world in a way that’s different from how they’ve been portrayed. But in everyday life, the hijab is still far too often mistaken as an invitation for complete strangers to impose their ideas about your existence and lifestyle on you. When people question constantly whether a hibaji woman’s parents (specifically, their fathers) forced them to wear the hijab, it can feel like there’s a “correct” answer that we have to give to pass a test. It’s no lie that most women who wear the hijab likely do so because they grew up in religious surroundings, but it seems people forget that the way anybody thinks, acts and presents themselves is naturally influenced by their parents’ upbringing. I chose to wear the hijab myself, but it’s fair and logical to state that my choices are influenced by my parents’ teachings. Regardless, when hijabis are continually expected to defend themselves and their choice to wear it, it can feel like no answer is good enough. We shouldn’t have to strongly defend that it was our own choice to prove that we aren’t oppressed, just because it makes someone else more comfortable. Last year, I collaborated with my school to participate in a “World Hijab Day” event on campus – a fairly liberal environment – to promote understanding about the tradition and facilitate cultural exchange. Yet the event received backlash when many students thought that it was to impose the idea of wearing a hijab. Others expressed that Westerners shouldn’t imitate other
cultures’ traditions or participate in cultural appropriation (never mind what the student who actually wears a hijab thought). Ironically, the hijab is a practice that isn’t limited to any race or ethnicity - it can be practiced by anybody, anywhere around the world. Either way, the public perception couldn’t move beyond judgement and scrutiny. I also recently began working at Victoria’s Secret. The typical response to this is people thinking that my goal is to make a political statement about their branding style, which some people
may see as degrading towards women. In reality, just like many of my peers at this stage in life, I only wanted a job that pays well and a supportive environment. When, as a society, will we be ready to shift the focus from the hijab to the actual person? Let’s stop asking women who wear the hijab to speak for all hijabi women – to explain themselves for simply existing. We can change the way we look at Muslim women and see them for who they really are – humans.
frustrations of the current democratic system. This sense of unease has spawned a number of suggestions which range from gentle system “tweaks” to borderline anarchy, and many are calling for political reform. Some, such as Vice writer Sue Brideshead, say the system is outdated, even archaic – a constitution which has gone largely unchanged since the 18th century. Brideshead suggests we modernize, and proposes that we do away with the oligarchy, replacing human politicians with a technological system that allows the people to play a more active role – voting on individual issues and policies using, say, a smartphone. Perhaps the idea sounds absurd, but Brideshead is not the first, nor the only, person to look towards technology for an answer. Technocracy Inc. is a company that was founded in 1931 to promote Howard Scott’s ideas and has been trying to replace politicians with technology for decades. While pointing to technology may seem overly simplistic and convenient, the main issue is that far too many people do not feel their voices are being heard. Many are frustrated with ‘the system’ and feel their efforts to affect
change are futile. But is getting rid of politicians the real answer? After all, if politicians are the product of a broken system, then perhaps we should go to the root of the problem and make a concentrated effort to fix the aspects of the system that are causing the most distress. Booting the politicians out of the equation seems premature, and potentially unnecessary. The idea of having a healthy, functioning government is often dismissed as an idealists’ myth, but there are countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland who seem to have it figured out. It is important to remember that while replacing the politicians with technology guarantees change, it does not necessarily guarantee improvement. Many people are so focused on their need for a quick solution that there is little effort towards fixing what we already have. Roslyn Fuller, author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Purpose and Lost Its Meaning, suggests we look to 440 BCE Greece and the origins of democracy. Fuller believes that reinvigorating the spirit of political engagement is the only way
to incite real change, but suggests we use technology as a tool rather than viewing it as the only solution. This vision combines ancient practices and modern technology. Fuller believes that by returning to the essence of democracy, we can give people a more direct role in decision-making and return the “power to the people.” She points to emerging practices such as virtual open town meetings and participative budgeting, which several American cities are already experimenting with. By giving citizens a chance to voice their ideas and opinions will provide more avenues of engagement, and revive what has become a collection of corrupt capitalists and distant elites. We do need to rethink the system and the role of politicians, but let us be wary of the polarizing swing of change. In its purest form, the role of the politician is to act as a voice for the people. As the people, it is our job to make our voices heard, but also listen to those around us. We need to return to the roots of democracy and make collaboration a priority, otherwise we will simply be repeating the same mistakes in a different context. Let’s first give people a chance.
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At times, the government can seem like a wasteful and inefficient industry – one that is unfair and inequitable for the people. At least that’s what Howard Scott, an American engineer and founder of the technocracy movement, believed. He imagined a world in which scarcity was eliminated and technology provided a solution to the world’s economic issues. In the immediate aftermath of the recent US election, many of us experienced an outpouring of despair and disillusionment from friends, family and even those who work in the media. It’s fair to say that, in these moments, Scott’s ideas felt justified. More than two months have passed since the US election, but many are still looking for solutions to deal with the rising
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-NATALIE MURRAY
LOOKING BEYOND THE HIJAB
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COLUMNS
THE WEEK IN GEEK Nintendo dares us to move with their new console Syd Danger
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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
PROFESSIONAL GORON ELDER IMPERSONATOR
When I was a young pre-teen I walked, no, strutted into EB Games clutching my measly allowance and ziplock bag of Gameboy Advance cartridges to my chest. The Nintendo DS had just been released, and I had been waiting in line all day with my dad with the hopes that I could pawn off all my old games and afford the fancy new portable dual-screen console. As I spread my games across the table, I had a moment of hesitation and picked up my favourite game at the time, Zelda: The Minish Cap. I still remember playing it, although to be fair, it’s difficult to forget a game that includes a talking green duck hat and the ability to shrink down to a miniature size and break-in to innocent townsfolk’s houses. Luckily, I ponied up and purchased the DS when Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass was released and I spent most my high school classes pretending to work, but instead playing basically the same dungeon over and over again. Nintendo had got me under their thumb, and to be perfectly honest, I’m still there. This week, gamers of the world rejoiced – and then very quickly turned skeptical on Reddit – at the release of Nintendo’s newest console, the Nintendo Switch. To give you a quick summary, the Switch is a gaming console that gives you the option between being a massive nerd in the safety of your own home, or taking that nerdiness out to the outside world with a screen large enough that it’s not even a little bit discreet. At $400, it’s no small purchase, but I really wasn’t paying attention because the assholes had already hooked me in to buying their PSP garbage with the promise of a new trailer for Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A complete departure from the past Zelda titles, Breath of the Wild is an open world platform that features new combat mechanics, gorgeous graphics and Epona. Which is all I want anyways. Along with Breath of the Wild a slew of new games were announced. Including Super Mario Odyssey, a game which has Mario running around with regular-looking human beings and is way more disturbing than you would think. There’s also a game where players literally just punch each other to death with giant elastic arms, aptly named Arms. I know you’re probably shaking with excitement at this point, but unfortunately this is when Nintendo dropped the bob-omb: if you want to battle your friends online with the Switch, you’re going to have to pay. Monthly. Every month. Do you not think I have enough bills, Nintendo? It’s the only mail I get. I don’t need a condescending sideways glance from my mailman when he hands me my monthly bill from Nintendo Online, okay? Club Penguin Magazine gets me enough of those. The sad fact of the matter is I can complain all I want, but I already know I’m going to get the Switch. The thought that I could miss out on a Zelda game, especially one as different for the franchise as Breath of the Wild, gives me worse nightmares than the horrific moon in Majoras Mask. However, my years on this planet since the release of the DS have hardened me, and I can confidently say I won’t be that total loser standing in line at EB Games hoping to get my hands on one of the first consoles. I’ll just pre-order it instead.
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-SYD DANGER
@CAPILANOCOURIER
@CAPILANOCOURIER
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I CAN CODE YOU THE WORLD The double-edged sword of technology Nima Boscarino COLUMNIST
In February of 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer faced off in a best-of-six chess match against Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. In a nailbiting battle between man and machine, Kasparov managed to defeat the supercomputer with four victories and two losses. One year later, an upgraded Deep Blue returned to challenge Kasparov, and the worlds of chess and technology were shaken as Deep Blue became the first computer in history to defeat a world chess champion. In board games, the “final test” for Artificial Intelligence has been the ancient Chinese game, Go. While the rules of Go are elegantly simple, the 19by-19 grid on which the game is played gives rise to a complexity which is almost mind-numbing. Dwarfing chess, Go possesses more possibilities than the total number of atoms in the visible universe. If you’d really like to see some of the crazy numbers associated with Go, take a look at the “Go and Mathematics” article on Wikipedia and scroll down to the “Legal Positions” section. Deep Blue defeated Kasparov using “brute force” methods, which simply meant that to decide its next move, the computer would look at every possible move for the next 10 to 20 moves, and then pick the move which would bring it closer to a state of victory. The fairly limited number of moves in chess allowed the supercomputer to do this, but it’s simply not possible to use the same strategy in Go. In some people’s opinions, a computer could never rival a professional Go player. At high levels, professionals make decisions with what can only
DROPPING THE F-BOMB Exploring the tough questions within the feminist movement COLUMNIST
research. We’re living in an era where the links between virtually every field of study are becoming more and more visible every day, and the value of interdisciplinary research is impossible to ignore. Technology is helping us solve problems, but we’re also seeing many new issues exacerbated or even spawned by the influence technology has on our lives. From Monsanto’s GMOs, to drones in war zones, to our ever-shrinking sense of privacy under surveillance, we’re seeing otherwise amazing technology being used to oppress and profit.
As soon as we peek into the world of technology, we’re hit with a barrage of strange concepts, opinions and jargon. What does “Artificial Intelligence” even mean? Do we really all have to learn to code now? Why are so many people mad about Apple dropping the headphone jack? In this column, we’ll be discussing questions like these, looking at some of the weird and wonderful niche communities on the Internet, and even getting our hands dirty playing around with some data. So, spin up your floppy disks, put on your green-tinted hacking goggles and get ready to read about some tech.
4, 2016. Most memorably, until the wee hours of the morning on Nov. 8, many sat, champagne-in-hand, expecting that 2017 would be the year that the United States would celebrate its first woman president. Womp womp. Feminism may have been one of 2016’s favourite buzz words, but those of us seeking to live out feminism in our daily lives can attest to the fact that behind the veneer of celebrity endorsement is a painfully fractured movement. My decade learning from some of Canada’s most active women’s liberationists has taught me, among many other things, that if there’s one thing feminists have in common, it’s the fact that women standing under the feminist banner agree on very little. Indeed, many Millennial feminists interpret Critical Race Theory scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality to mean that we should reject the idea that a truly inclusive feminism should centre women at all, and instead should fight against all oppressions of all people. Dropping the
F-bomb at parties – or at the bar, or in the classroom, or in the workplace – gets one into trouble quickly. This is because when readers close their eyes and picture a “feminist,” chances are each one is thinking of a different type of person, espousing radically different politics. I stumbled across the independent women’s movement in my late teens when I became friends with a single mom who was in the process of exiting Vancouver’s sex industry. I met Trisha Baptie, who later covered the Robert Pickton trial as a citizen journalist during a time where I needed somewhere to be and, more importantly, I desperately needed a story of hope to latch onto. When I first began building relationships within a branch of Vancouver’s feminist community, I had to hit the ground running. “Ignorance” doesn’t even begin to describe my lack of feminist chops when Baptie connected me, shortly after I graduated high school in 2005 with bad-ass feminists doing critical work: activist Cherry Smiley of the Thompson and Navajo nations, head
of the Canadian Association for Sexual Assault Centers Lee Lakeman, Meghan Murphy, editor of Feminist Current. I was lucky that they tolerated me at their events, with my scarcity of knowledge and my culturally appropriated footwear. More than 10 years – and several catastrophic encounters in the Twittersphere – later, I’m a bit more comfortable traversing the massive chasms between branches of modern feminism. It’s precarious shit, but I hope you’ll join me for the remainder of the semester as I explore some of feminism’s most divisive subjects: What is “gender” and how do various sects within the movement define it? In opposition to Trump, should feminists hold their nose and join other equality-seeking movements even when these groups demonstrate misogynist behaviour? How do we navigate sexual expression in a society that oppressively hypersexualizes women and girls? I would also love, when possible, to answer readers’ questions as they pertain to feminism. Tweet me @jess_fbombdrop.
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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
I’ve been known to drop the F-bomb at parties – which is, perhaps, why I don’t get invited to many of them anymore. One would think that “feminism” would be a welcome conversation piece amongst my peers given that feminism reached peak pop-culture visibility in 2016. If I were to ask readers to close their eyes and picture a feminist, there would be a wealth of public figures to choose from. In September of last year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed on as an ambassador to Emma Watson’s “He for She” campaign. Beyoncé offered up a definition of feminism to the readership of ELLE in a rare exclusive published April
be described as “intuition”, and how could a computer ever be described as “intuitive?” To everyone’s surprise, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo became the first program to beat a top-ranked professional Go player in 2016! Why does this matter? To most of the world’s population, Go and chess are just board games, so why are all these companies and researchers sinking so much money and effort into developing these programs? It turns out that the same technology used to beat humans at chess and Go is used for tons of other things, such as recognizing songs with Shazam, driverless cars and cancer
THE CAPILANO COURIER
Jess Dueck
-NHI HOANG
COLUMNS
FIRST NATIONS FIRST Tsleil-Waututh Nation faces environmental dangers amidst refineries and pipelines Kevin O'Neill COLUMNIST
Located along the Burrard Inlet within Deep Cove, North Vancouver, the TsleilWaututh Nation (TWN) is a small First Nations community of approximately 500 people and have thrived off the lands within their territory. However, the Chevron Refinery and the approved Trans Mountain Kinder Morgan pipeline will have deleterious effects to the water and the land. It will set us (the people at TWN), and the neighbouring communities back centuries when you take the potential hazards from oil companies into consideration. The people of TWN have been battling the Kinder Morgan pipeline since 2014 when they filed their first lawsuit. It is not in their best interest for this controversial pipeline to go through their territory, as they are already feeling the negative side effects of the Chevron Refinery. Currently, the people of TWN are vulnerable to the harmful health effects of the refinery, which emits toxins to both the air and the water. With the pipeline approval, the toxins will only worsen. What Kinder Morgan intends to export is oil, which will be shipped from Burnaby to China. However, it’s not just oil, it’s crude oil. Both dilbit and bitumen, which will be in these pipelines, will cause tremendous damages to the residents that live closest to the oil leak, when one occurs. It’s known that Kinder
LEGISLATURE WATCH Like Trump, facts don’t matter in BC Kevin Kapenda
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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
COLUMNIST
This May’s provincial election will be historic for several unfortunate reasons. Not only will it be the first time in which a BC premier’s partisan stipend has drawn the ire of major investigative newspapers such as The Guardian and The New York Times, this race will be significant because facts – indisputable data, evidence or testimony won’t matter. Instead, fear and ideology will dominate our already highly polarizing campaign, leaving money as the potential decider come May. From the outside looking in, it’s difficult to understand why British Columbians rate Premier Christy Clark so poorly, with only 33 per cent approving (56 per cent disapproving), yet are primed to return her government to a fifth successive mandate. However, after seeing Donald Trump get elected with a higher popular vote than his approval rating, it’s become clear to me that, like the United States, facts don’t matter much here either. Last October, the education minister
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-WOLFGANG THOMO
Morgan has not gone more than four years without an oil spill. Through various events, protests and media representation, the TWN have been gaining support from a variety of organizations in the battle for them to gain their sovereignty, rights and titles. At a Stop Kinder Morgan rally on Nov. 19, 2016, well-known and respected TWN elder Amy George said, “That’s just one problem with tankers – leaks and spills happen, bitumen stays toxic in water 70 to 100 years. That means we’d be breathing eight different deadly gases.” The elders have been showing the younger generations that we need to protect the environment since water is a critical part of living – we need to protect it. Some of the bitumen will sink, and
that cannot be cleaned up, some will float, and most of the oil will spread and deteriorate the livelihood and wellbeing of the marine and human lives in its path. However, the National Energy Board has approved such a controversial and unnecessary pipeline, the sole decision as left to the federal government, where they have broken their promises to keep pipeline expansions away from this territory. With the Liberal Government approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline, there is a strong possibility that it will inevitably bring damaging effects to the people who live along the route. To First Nations people, water is a commodity of life, it has always been a part of them, and it is used for more than a source of
living. When water is tainted, it becomes unusable. To ensure the safety of the TWN territory, the Nation developed a new department that would ensure that the public would hear their voice. This department is the Tsleil-Waututh Sacred Trust Initiative, whose main purpose is to disseminate information regarding the battle against Kinder Morgan. It is critical that the public sphere helps TWN in their fight against Kinder Morgan, as it is not in the best interest for many who live in Vancouver. When we fight together, and stand and raise our voice, it will be easier for the Federal Government to hear our voices, and they will understand that we will not accept this form of excommunication.
undemocratically fired Vancouver School Board chair Patti Bacchus to distract from the government’s starving of schools and political disagreements with Vision Vancouver. Over the past year, the Minister of Health has publicly lamented overdose deaths as the fault of Ottawa to deflect from his unwillingness to provide communities with the resources needed to combat the opioid (fentanyl) crisis, which took 914 lives in 2016 and a record 142 in December. Meanwhile, the premier unsurprisingly announced that Kinder Morgan had met her five conditions for the TransMountain pipeline, one of which includes sufficient consultation with First Nations, something First Nations leaders Grand Chief Stewart Phillip and Tsleil-Waututh Chief Maureen Thomas might disagree with. After months of spin, deflection and mistruths, it is now evident that no amount of facts or evidence will ever stand in the way of this government’s ideological reshaping of BC into a regressive, libertarian bastion. With all the distractions and misrepresentation of truth, coupled with the manipulation of independent officers, like the ethics commissioner Paul D. K. Fraser, whose son works for the premier, it has made it difficult for most to hold this government to – well, anything really. When the premier is making upwards of $270,000 in extra money,
known as her “Liberal leader stipend”, from corporate donors who are directly invested in projects Clark has influence over, like Petronas (LNG) and Kinder Morgan (TransMountain pipeline), any claim that she is working in the public interest ceases to hold much water. With politics now being done out of the BC Liberal headquarters in Vancouver and the reception halls of luxury hotels, rather than the people’s house in Victoria – the only standard to which the premier can be judged and wishes to be judged by, is the impact she’s having on you as a ratepayer and not as a member of a community. A member who sees the disparate impact her capitalist policies have had on most British Columbians, but as an isolated individual who only cares about having a job and paying fewer taxes. The impact of Clark’s approach to political action is best represented in her obsession with regressive, single-payer taxes and revenue sources such as rising Hydro, MSP, ICBC premiums, provincial sales tax and the “carbon tax”, which all fatten the government’s coffers at the expense of the poor. As these expenses that don’t factor in the ability of people to pay keep increasing, the Liberals have made income taxes so low, the Centre for Policy Alternatives found in 2011 that BC now collects more revenue from sales tax than it does from citizens’ incomes, a
reality that overwhelmingly benefits high earners who just so happen to love Clark. One reason why Clark prefers “head taxes” over progressive forms of taxation is probably because most people pay them, assuring increased revenue every time Hydro or ICBC rates increase (p.s. they’re going up!) However, most of all, Clark’s regressive taxes, epitomized by her revenue negative carbon tax, mask the inconvenient realities of her “strong economy” and very “insecure tomorrow” where, despite low unemployment in the province, many are not earning enough to support our not-so-progressive, flat tax income system. Whether you want to call it a factfree BC or post-truth coast, the reality is evidence doesn’t really matter in this province anymore because Premier Clark has made life “more affordable” and refused to raise your (income) taxes. With one in five children living in poverty, and 15 per cent of all British Columbians facing similar hardship, the words of Rosemary Brown, “none of us are free, until we’re all free”, couldn’t be more relevant. The question is now, will British Columbians buy into selfish spin, or vote for stronger communities?
CALENDAR
23 MONDAY
GREASY SPOON DINER 43 WEST HASTINGS STREET 5:30 PM TO 10:30 PM / $95 Mark Singson is one of Vancouver’s dopest rising chefs. He founded FAM Inc., a space for local chefs to collaborate. Getting tickets to this pop-up diner not only feeds you, but it also helps fund A Better Life Foundation, a group that provides food for members of the community who may not be as privileged. Mark Singson is also Filipino. Marc Singson is awesome.
27 FRIDAY
TUESDAY
A TRIBUTE TO NEW ORLEANS
The screening is all about some of the most influential, groundbreaking and unforgettable films to ever be produced in British Columbia. On this day, they’ll be showing the work of director Robert Altman, with the movies McCabe and Mrs. Miller and That Cold Day in the Park. I have never heard of these films, but then again, I’m no Noah Penner.
BLUESHORE THEATRE 8 PM TO 10:30 PM / $27+ The Blues will be playing another home game on this night against the Langara Falcons, but if you want a different kind of blues, this might be it. New Orleans is considered to be the birthplace of jazz, but I associate it more with that Cajun Country episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. Either way, the only thing that’ll be missing here is some southern cuisine.
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS INFO NIGHT
BLUES VOLLEYBALL HOME GAMES
LIBRARY BUILDING, ROOM 321 7 PM / FREE One day Capilano University’s business school will get a similar level of recognition as the Beedies and Sauders of the world. However, in the words of the great Aragorn son of Arathorn, “But it is not this day!” Just watch until campus change-maker Scott Barkemeyer donates a large fortune to what will surely be the most attractive school of business in BC.
28 SATURDAY
PATRON TEQUILA PAIRING EVENT
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
BIRCH BUILDING, ROOM 323 11:30 AM TO 12:45 PM / FREE I for one need to go to this. The only thing stopping me from attaining celebrity status is my mediocre pronunciation of the English language – why do you think I’m writing this shit and not reciting it?
PLACE DES ARTS 6 PM / $41 (SUPPER AND CONCERT) I’ve been trying to get a job at Place Des Arts for a while now and these guys are not entertaining me. So, guess what, I’m just gonna start working for them now. Here’s a promotion for their celebration of Scotland’s national bard! The night will include performances of Rosie Carver, Blackthorn and a special guest piper.
29 SUNDAY
METHOD MAN FORTUNE SOUND CLUB 9 PM / $65+ Method Man is bringing Redman along for another overpriced show by a couple of (let’s be real) washed up Wu-Tang rappers. The last time the entire clan was here, these guys charged damn near $250 for their show at The Orpheum. You think you could see Meth for much less? Think again, these tickets go up to $250 too. Shit,
TALIB KWELI
WORRIER TO WARRIOR
VENUE 8 PM / $35+ Talib Kweli used to ride with Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey). In their years of collaboration, Mos Def always got the credit, in the same vein as how Andre 3000 was always the more revered between him and Big Boi. We need to start rethinking the Talib Kweli and Mos Def situation because, unlike Mos, the great Talib Kweli did not and probably won’t go crazy. Props to Talib.
SEMPERVIVA LIFESTYLE STORE 1 TO 3:30 PM / $55 Well that’s a minor tongue twister. Worrier to Warrior is all about an individual healing experience, overcoming anxiety and any issues that may be inhibiting you from succeeding and living a fuller life. It involves breathing exercises, yoga, meditations, visualizations, affirmations – whatever that is… On a Sunday afternoon for $55? I’d rather just have a drink.
VINCE CARTER’S BIRTHDAY
THE CAPILANO COURIER
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ELS PRONUNCIATION: SPEAKING SMOOTHLY
SPORTSPLEX 6 PM / $2 Look at all these home games! The schedule is basically begging for students to attend the games! Really though, if you have never caught a volleyball game, it’s actually of the most criminally underrated sports in terms of viewing pleasure. I’ve seen these athletes clear 40 inches on a single vertical leap, which almost reminds me of myself, to be honest.
A CELEBRATION OF ROBBIE BURNS
LEGACY LIQUOR STORE 7 PM / $35 Or you can just go to this and enjoy an exciting three-course pairing of some dandy looking cocktails... Maybe have a shot or two, or three of tequila while you’re at it. Is it really that hard of a choice? Sure the info night might be free, but did I tell you the pairings are with a yet-to-be-revealed special local Mexican dining mastermind?
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BLUESHORE THEATRE 11:45 AM TO 12:45 PM / FREE Not many things are more enticing than the words “free” and “concert.” This one focuses on the works of Mozart and Beethoven, performed by Nancy DiNovo on violin, Carolyn Cole also on violin, Marcuz Takizawa on viola, Heather Hay on the cello, and yours truly, Carlo Javier, dropping bars on some Mozart. It’s free!
THE IMAGE BEFORE US
THE CINEMATHEQUE 6:30 PM / $11
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FREE CAP CLASSICS CONCERT
EVERYWHERE ALL DAY The soon-to-be second greatest Toronto Raptor of all time will be turning 40 this year, in what could possibly be his final year in the NBA. This is a public call for the Raptors to retire the man’s jersey. And if VC somehow continues and drags his old ass for another year, pay the man all the money and have him in the Raptors uniform one last time. Also, bring back the purple dinos.
SPORTSPLEX 6 PM / $2 After a week off from games, your Capilano Blues basketball teams are back in action against the Quest University Kermodes. The Blues women look to continue their 10-game winning streak, while the men look to bounce back from a tough loss against the Vancouver Island University Mariners last time out. Expect the good people of the Human Kinetics program to sell some (uncooked) burgers at the concession.
TALIB KWELI BY JAMES JEAN
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VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
BLUES BASKETBALL HOME GAMES
CABOOSE
HOROSCOPES
THINKING CAP
Q:
IF YOUR BIRTHDAY IS THIS WEEK:
Happy Birthday.
How do you feel now that Trump is President of Canada? "Afraid. I’m terrified for my friends and family down in the States." Katie Second-year Costuming
LEO (JULY 23 - AUG. 21):
AQUARIUS (JAN. 21 - FEB. 19):
Love means different things to different people. However, none of those definitions include you.
This week, each waking moment will be more painful and torturous than the last.
PISCES (FEB. 20 - MARCH 20):
"At first I thought there was potential because there’s a whole team around him that can help him, but I think it affects people when you have a role model who doesn’t respect everyone."
VIRGO (AUG. 22 - SEPT. 23):
Time to stop asking for things and start taking them.
Every time you start to talk, you’ll start to feel sick to your stomach. That’s food poisoning for ya..
ARIES (MARCH 21 - APRIL 20):
Bria Wilk Third-year Motion Picture Arts
LIBRA (SEPT. 24 - OCT. 23):
Now has never been a better time for a new imaginary friend.
Nobody is going to lose any respect for you. Though technically you can’t really lose what you never had.
"We don’t have a president, we have a prime minister.." Rahim Himamov, Fourth-year International Business
TAURUS (APRIL 21 - MAY 21):
SCORPIO (OCT. 24 - NOV. 22):
Run. Hide. Don’t come out until you hear it’s safe.
Just when you think you’ve lost all will to live, you’ll find an untapped well of strength that will soon also be gone.
GEMINI (MAY 22 - JUNE 21):
"It can’t be too bad. People always pester him about the things he says and how he uses his Twitter, but at the end of the day he has to answer to Congress."
SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 23 - DEC. 22):
By some magical stroke of luck, food will appear in your fridge after you open it a third time.
We all expected more from you.
Nicholas K., First–year Arts & Sciences CAPRICORN (DEC. 23 - JAN. 20):
CANCER (JUNE 22 - JULY 22):
The stars have aligned and determined that you are, in fact, an asshole.
They’re going to say that you’re crazy. Ignore them, that microwave doesn’t know what it’s talking about.
TO ADVERTISE in the Courier’s pages, please contact us by phone at 778-855-9942 or email Andy Rice, our editor-in-chief, at capcourier@gmail.com. We are proud to offer discounts to non-profit organizations and North Shore customers. A full media kit with sizes, rates and deadlines is available on our website, CapilanoCourier.com. Classified advertisements up to 50 words are free for students.
Puzzle 1 (Medium, difficulty rating 0.48)
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SUDOKU
VOLUME 49.5 ISSUE NO. 12
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Industry-Focused Master’s Degree Competitive Scholarship Opportunities
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INFO SESSION JANUARY 25
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