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NEWS

172.13 • Thursday, november 28, 2013

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Guelph Campus Co-op celebrates 100th birthday

Co-op hits a century; time enough to reflect on its glory days Michael Long

The University of Guelph is home to one of the oldest student-run co-operatives in North America, and on Thursday, Nov. 21 they celebrated their 100th anniversary at the Bullring. According to Co-op’s website, only Harvard University and the University of Texas in Austin have co-operative bookstores which precede it.

Brenda Whiteside, Associate Vice-President of Student Affairs, made an appearance at the event to hand out free cake and pose for photos with CSA Executive and Co-op staff. Eight large boxes of cake, two massive cupcake tiers, a photo booth, a spin-to-win wheel, and a birthday card were all part of the festivities.

Students affiliated with the Co-operators Centre for Business and Social Entrepreneurship (CBaSE) helped facilitate the event, and have been working with the Co-op throughout the year to develop new marketing strategies.

That the Co-op has been

around for so long is “really a testament to the spirit of Guelph students,” said Kirsten Middleton, Assistant Manager of the Co-op Bookstore. The Co-op currently has around five thousand members on campus. It is best known for operating the bookstore underneath Johnston Hall, though students may be less familiar with long and tumultuous history.

A brief history of the Co-op Inspired by the burgeoning agricultural co-operative movement in rural Ontario, seven students from Ontario Agricultural College founded the Guelph Campus Co-op in November of 1913. The Co-op’s original purpose was to sell textbooks and school supplies to students on campus – a niche that had yet to be filled by the university.

Over the years, the Co-op steadily took on more roles; at its peak it was operating several oncampus tuck shops, two cafes, a pharmacy, a bookstore, and, by the 1960s, several off-campus housing sites.

But that growth came crashing down in 1989. The university had just hired Brian Segal as its new president and Segal almost immediately began to dismantle most of the Co-op’s operations.

The administration started by taking over the Co-op’s University Centre establishments and then, most seriously, decided not to renew the Co-op Bookstore’s lease in McNaughton Building.

The university had ambitions to become the sole bookseller on campus.

The Co-op argued that the takeover would violate the longstanding arrangement the organization had with the university: In 1936, the Co-op traded a valuable patch of land it owned (now War Memorial Hall) to the university in exchange for the exclusive right to sell textbooks on campus for the next 99 years.

In 1990, the Co-op took the university to court over the dispute. It argued that the university was ignoring the prior agreement, and successfully demonstrated that the administration was exercising its power unfairly to establish a monopoly on bookselling.

In the end, the Co-op retained the right to sell books on campus but was relegated to the basement of Johnston Hall. The university took over the bookstore in McNaughton.

While university had legitimate reasons wanting to get a bigger slice of the action on campus, as

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Brenda Whiteside (centre-left), the Associate Vice-President of Student Affairs, and members of the CSA executive (right) stand for a photo in the Bullring at the Guelph Campus Coop’s centennial party, held on Thursday, Nov. 21. well as for thinking it could do a better job running those operations than the Co-op – which by the late 1980s was under a great deal of scrutiny for mismanagement – it had nevertheless reduced the Guelph Campus Co-op to but a shadow of its former self in just two years.

These days, the Co-op is intent on expanding into the housing market. It has recently approved the construction of a new 18-unit apartment complex on College

Avenue West and is still focusing on providing students with as many different book formats as possible.

Though it is unclear what the next century holds for the Guelph Campus Co-op, the mood at the anniversary party was confident. “Onwards and upwards,” said Middleton. It seems attention is squarely focused on what the Co-op has the potential to be, rather than what it once was.

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CSA Food Bank garden gets green light

Organization hopes to provide more fresh produce to beneficiaries Central African Republic falling into chaos The United Nations is urging the international community to intervene in the Central African Republic (CAR), warning that the country is descending into “complete chaos” and could turn into genocide.

Last March, the Muslim rebel group, known as Seleka, replaced President Bozize with their own commander, Michel Djotodia.

Now, armed gangs (mostly former rebel members) control much of the country and continue to launch attacks on scores of villages.

“The CAR is becoming a breeding ground for extremists and armed groups in a region that is already suffering from conflict and instability,” said Jan Eliasson, the UN deputy secretary general.

It is not known how many have been killed in the recent violence.

The rural areas where most of the fighting takes places are simply too dangerous to monitor.

The French government has just committed to supporting the African Union force already operating in the CAR with an additional 1,000 troops.

“We cannot have a country fall apart like that,” French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a Europe1 radio interview.

“There is the violence, massacres and humanitarian chaos that follow a collapse.”

Archaeologists uncover oldest Buddhist shrine A Buddhist shrine has been discovered in a Nepalese temple, which predates the structure previously thought to be the oldest Buddhist relic by a full three centuries.

Archaeologists from the University of Sterling in Scotland say that radiocarbon dating and luminescence techniques date structure to the sixth century B.C. Buddha is thought to have been born in the sixth century and this new find strengthens the chronology of Buddhs’s life, according to Kosh Prasad Acharya, one of the team’s researchers.

The remnants of the wooden shrine were unearthed inside the Mayadevi Temple in Lumbini, where Buddha is thought to have been born. To find it, the archaeological team had to dig underneath existing brick structures inside the temple.

“Very little is known about the life of the Buddha, except through textual sources and oral tradition,” said Durham University archaeologist Robin Coningham in a statement. “Now, for the first time, we have an archaeological sequence at Lumbini that shows a building there as early as the sixth century B.C.” Compiled by Michael Long

Michael Long The university has given the CSA Food Bank permission to construct a small garden on the land behind its headquarters on the north-eastern corner of Gordon Street and South Ring Road. The approval brings the Food Bank one step closer toward its goal of being able to offer fresh, locally sourced produce to its on-campus beneficiaries.

The Food Bank has wanted to construct its own garden for a number of years, but a viable proposal has only recently been developed. On Nov. 2, the Food Bank held a workshop to solicit ideas from the community about what they would like to see in a future garden. Days after that workshop, Food Bank representatives met with the Vice President of Finance and Administration, Don O’Leary, to officially present their idea for the garden.

According to Tyler Valiquette, the CSA’s Local Affairs Commissioner, O’Leary was impressed with the idea and gave the Food Bank the go-ahead for the garden.

The CSA currently leases the Food Bank building from the university, and while the lease includes the green space extending to South Ring Road, changes to all campus land use must be approved by O’Leary’s office.

The future garden will be located on the flat patch of land closer to the adjoining CSA Bike Centre. In order to regulate

soil quality and ensure that the garden is transportable, the garden will be built on five or six raised beds. The portability of the beds was one of the main selling points, according to Valiquette.

“I think they liked the idea that it’s portable,” said Valiquette. “If [the administration does] come up with some plan for that land, we’re able to move [the garden] very easily.”

While the university did not give the Food Bank any specific restrictions, Food Bank coordinators are being careful not to be too ambitious right away.

“I think they liked the idea that it’s portable. If [the administration does] come up with some plan for that land, we’re able to move [the garden] very easily.”

- Tyler Valiquette, the CSA’s Local Affairs Commissioner “We’re giving ourselves restrictions because we don’t know just how much volunteer support we’re going to have,” said Valiquette, adding that he’s not too worried, given that the Food Bank has traditionally been very popular with students. The Food Bank is also hoping the garden will give volunteers a more exciting way of helping out, according to Brittany Skelton, the Food Bank Coordinator.

The Food Bank hopes to employ the expertise of landscape architecture students, engineering

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

This will be the future site of the CSA’s Food Bank garden.

The lease for the CSA Food Bank and Bike Centre (behind the trees) includes this green space foregrounded here. The garden will be constructed on five or six raised, portable beds. students and agriculture students – many of whom are already involved with the organization – to assist in the design and construction the garden.

The Food Bank wants to have the beds constructed by April 2014.

Produce from the garden

will be prioritized for Food Bank beneficiaries, but all students will be encouraged to participate in supplementary gardening workshops. The CSA Food Bank assists some 450 members of the university community annually.

Student housing development moving forward Despite opposition, massive construction project likely underway Gagan Batra Plans are being set in motion for the development of new student housing buildings near the U of G. The corner of Stone Road and Gordon Street, where the Best Western Hotel and Conference Centre is currently situated, is the proposed site for new set of student highrises. According to the Guelph Tribune, the developer, Adobe Varsity Living, which is not affiliated with university, has submitted a preliminary design proposal for five towers that range from six to 11 stories high.

This is a change from the original proposal that sought to build just two large high-rises,

one with 16 storeys and the other with 14. However, the Ontario Municipal Board struck that proposal down and decided to limit height of the buildings to 11 storeys.

The newest site plan application proposes two long residential buildings with five towers rising at intervals out of the buildings. In the coming weeks, the preliminary application will be considered by the city’s internal site planning committee. The purpose of the preliminary site plan is to get the city’s feedback before the developer goes to the expense of doing detailed design work.

These plans have been in the works for some time, and they have been cause for concern among Guelph residents. Two years ago, local residents gathered at a city council meeting to voice their opposition to the new student development.

Most of the concerns about this project were to do with the development disrupting the peace and quiet of the neighbourhood. Additionally, a formal letter of objection to the project had been sent to the City of Guelph, including a petition that contained over 600 signatures.

Community members were not the only ones to voice their concerns about this proposed project. The University of Guelph itself is opposed to the development of the high-rise. According to the Guelph Mercury, the university expressed concerns about the sheer size of the project, stating that the plans represent an “overdevelopment” of the property that would not be compatible with the nearby campus or the adjacent residential neighbourhoods.

Don O’Leary, the Vice President of Finance and

Administration, explained that the university had plans for the proposed site, and once attempted to purchase the property but to no avail. The university hoped to convert Macdonald Hall into academic space while moving those students to the hotel site, all while operating an “executive management school” at the hotel during the summer.

In September, Abode’s Kitchener-based planner, Chris Pidgeon, stated that Abode was hoping to begin construction of these towers during the first half of 2014, and to have it finished in time for the start of the 2015 to 2016 academic year. Despite the backlash from Guelph residents and the concern of the university, this project is nearly underway and students can expect to see construction commence in the near future.

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172.13 • Thursday, november 28, 2013

Guelph gives back AIDS Awareness Week in Guelph post-Thanksgiving Braeden Etienne On Tuesday, Dec. 3, the University of Guelph will be the first post-secondary institution to start participating in “Giving Tuesday.” Giving Tuesday has become an internationally recognized day of philanthropy designed to promote charitable donations and volunteering by marking the beginning of the holiday season. The movement also aims to raise awareness for charities and non-profits, and emphasizes the importance of community involvement.

Giving Tuesday takes place the Tuesday after “Cyber Monday” (and American Thanksgiving). The idea behind Giving Tuesday is to allocate some of the money being spent on gifts for the holiday season toward charities and non-profits across the country. Giving Tuesday started last year in the U.S. and was considered a success, involving the participation of more than 2,500 partners across all 50 states. Blackbaud, a non-profit services provider, processed over $10 million of online donations, and Donor Perfect, another non-profit consultancy, saw a 46 per cent increase in the number of donations, with a 25 per cent average increase in the amount of each gift.

On Giving Tuesday this year, the university will be hosting a “Giving Fair” that will take place between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the University Centre courtyard.

The event will feature a number

of community partners including Habitat for Humanity, the Guelph Food Bank, the Guelph Humane Society, and a variety of other student groups and off campus organizations. The charities and non-profits will be providing awareness about their particular organizations, as well as encouraging student involvement through donations and volunteering across campus and the city.

Brittney Dudar, an Alumni Advancement manager at Alumni Affairs and co-ordinator of the event on campus, explained why Guelph decided to get involved in the movement: “The university decided to get involved because that’s what the U of G does: cares.

The U of G has been named the most caring university in the world.

With our participation in initiatives like the food packing event and Mental Health Awareness week, it only seemed natural to jump on the Giving Tuesday train as well, and we were one of the first Canadian universities to do it.”

Dudar is also encouraging students across campus to get involved. They can do so “by simply attending the Giving Fair and checking out the various organizations they can get involved with, bringing canned food items for the CSA Food Bank drive, purchasing a yummy cupcake, or making a donation to the U of G’s the BetterPlanet Project by texting GTUofG to 20222 to give $10.”

U OF G’S 50th ANNIVERSARY

ACG hopes to encourage testing, awareness and donations for research Sameer Chhabra

The AIDS Committee of Guelph and Wellington County (ACG) launched their annual AIDS Awareness Week campaign on Monday, Nov. 25. Week-long events designed to raise funding and awareness for those living with the degenerative disease will occur throughout the city of Guelph, culminating in a Nov. 30 fundraising dinner at the Red Papaya Thai and Grill downtown.

As a means of providing easy testing options to citizens, the ACG is encouraging those interested to go to Lakeside Hope House Thursday, Nov. 28 for an anonymous HIV/AIDS test. Onsite nurses will also offer pre- and post-test counselling.

“Our main goal for the week is for the Guelph community to be aware that HIV…does [still] exist in our community,” explained Tom Hammond, executive director of the ACG. “Many lives are impacted by this illness in Guelph and Wellington County, and we still need individuals, communities, and leaders to take action and ensure that the human rights [of those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS]

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

that affect over 34 million people globally. Half of those affected are women, and approximately 10 per cent of those affected are children under the age of 15.

Canada is home to approximately 0.3 per cent of all cases reported globally, but for those at the ACG that statistic is already too high.

“We dream of a time and place where everyone is free to live healthy, vital lives,” states the ACG website.

Though HIV/AIDS is a disease that infects all groups equally, the LGBTQ community has been the hardest hit since the discovery of the disease. In response to this information, and in an effort to prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS in both the LGBTQ and heterosexual communities, the ACG provides free information sessions for those interested.

“It is important to know that we also respond to a variety of other issues including homophobia, other sexually transmitted infections and Hepatitis C - to name a few,” explained Hammond.

“Our main objective is to assist individuals and communities to manage the social effects of HIV.” The ACG plans on ending the week with a discussion on HIV/ AIDS at the Planet Bean Coffee Bar on Dec. 1, which is World’s AIDS day.

Guelph hosts Animal Welfare Judging Competition

Graduate team places first overall; Veterinary Medicine team second Siobhan Speiran

A photographer atop the Johnston Hall clocktower takes a photo of students, faculty and staff forming giant “50” on the Green below. The event took place at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 26. The resulting image will be used on the university’s holiday greeting card and will feature on the university’s fiftieth anniversary website. A gigapan camera was used to create an extremely high-definition, panoramic image to allow online viewers to zoom in across the photo. The photo is just one of many things the university is doing to celebrate its upcoming golden jubilee. The first 500 participants at the event received a free, liveried T-shirt.

are protected and [that] global targets for HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care are met.”

The ACG is a group that began as a task force in 1986, comprised of members from the Guelph Correctional Centre, the University of Guelph, The Ministerial Association, The Gay and Lesbian Community, Stonehenge Drug Treatment Centre, and Concerned Citizens.

“ACG is entering our 25th year of service in our community and continues to be committed to respond to HIV and AIDS locally,” said Hammond.

Among the services offered by the ACG are medical professionals, legal consultants, emotional counsellors, and dieticians to assist those diagnosed with HIV/ AIDS and their families.

“We will do our best to ensure that [those diagnosed with HIV/ AIDS] receive the service that best suits [their] needs,” reassured Hammond. “This may include our volunteer drive to medical appointments, and financial assistance to help pay a bill…because of other expenses.

We will visit [patients] at home or somewhere else in the community, [and] we may be able to help [them] access medication.”

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) are diseases

On the weekend of Nov. 22, the University of Guelph participated in and hosted the thirteenth annual Intercollegiate Animal Welfare Judging and Assessment Contest (AWJAC).

Universities across North America and the U.K. sent teams of up to five participants to compete in three divisions of students at undergraduate, graduate, and veterinary levels. The competition required students to analyze various species of animals, presented in comparative scenarios, to determine which scenario had the better welfare for the species.

Students were then given limited time to prepare and orally present their rationale to a judge.

Guelph did well in the overall scoring. Melissa Speirs took fifth place for the undergraduate team, Meagan King won first place for the graduates, and Chris Hauser received first place for the veterinary student division.

Guelph also scored highest in the graduate student team assessment exercise, second in overall team placing for veterinary students, and first in overall team

placing for graduate students.

First time participant in the undergrad division, Becca Feddema, said: “Being a part of [AWJAC] has been an invaluable experience for me. Not only did I learn a lot about the field of animal welfare, I was able to meet and gain knowledge from many influential people, such as upper year students, faculty, and experts in the field of veterinary medicine.”

The AWJAC began in 2001 when, in a presentation to the International Society for Applied Ethology, the idea of promoting interest in animal welfare science to university students, especially undergrads, in combination with traditional livestock judging, was proposed.

The first contest was held in 2002 at Michigan State University, which Guelph participated in along with three other universities. By 2011, twelve schools were involved with around 84 participants. This year, the species being judged were donkeys, turkeys and mink, and the liveassessment scenario was dry dairy cattle.

With its expansion, the AWJAC has transitioned from having just undergraduate divisions, to now having divisions for graduate and veterinary medicine. It also now covers production, companion,

laboratory, and exotic animals, as opposed to just livestock species.

Teams often prepare for months in advance. Guelph delegates met weekly over the last two months with coaches to perform research, run practice scenarios, discuss current animal care practices, and the welfare concerns involved in a variety of housing, husbandry, and transportation issues.

The U of G’s undergraduate coach, Jacqueline Jacobs, said: “The [contest] is a wonderful opportunity and for educational experience students. Evidence-based reasoning and oral communication skills are vital to success at this contest, and more importantly, any future career the students plan to pursue. As a past participant of the contest, I was able to advance my own knowledge of animal welfare science as well as my reasoning and oral communication skills; as a coach I am happy to share and teach the information and help develop the skills in the next generation of students.”

In a survey presented at the end of each contest, over 95 per cent of participants found the contest to be a valuable exercise, noting that here they learn how to integrate ethics into scientifically-grounded knowledge for interdisciplinary problem solving.

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ARTS & CULTURE

Photographers deliver talk at Guelph Civic Museum

An afternoon with Doug England and Alan Norsworthy Sameer Chhabra

The Guelph Photographer’s Guild (The Guild) was established in 2009 by a group of local artists with a shared interest in photography. Today, The Guild is comprised of 14 permanent members who meet twice a month at the Dublin St. Church to discuss their work and their ideas.

On Sunday, Nov. 24, Doug England and Alan Norsworthy delivered a talk about the Guelph Photographer’s Guild at the Guelph Civic Museum.

“Rather than a PowerPoint, we decided to [have] one of our regular conversations,” explained England.

“All we can talk about is how [The Guild] affected us,” added Norsworthy.

The afternoon’s talk began with a detailed history of The Guild, moving through Norsworthy and England’s individual and shared history.

Before the formation of The Guild, several photographers would meet in local coffee shops as a small club.

They moved to a local pub, finally settling on the Albion Hotel before officially forming The Guild.

“It started out as a small group…

of photographers meeting at the Red Brick Café,” began Norsworthy.

“Eventually the students took over [the café], so we moved to the Fox and the Fiddle…but that close down so we invaded the Albion [Hotel].”

Both Nosworthy and England emphasized the importance of the Internet for enabling expanded connectivity.

“I posted photographs on Flickr and Alan [praised] them,” explained England. “Without Flickr, I don’t think we’d have ever met.” “[The Internet] was a revolution,” added Norsworthy.

Norsworthy made a point of stating that his original venture into photography was through painting.

“I was a painter,” explained Norsworthy. “All of the pictures [I took] were so I could paint them.”

The conversational nature of the talk enabled the two friends to work off one another. Norsworthy provided a detailed history of The Guild while England filled in the anecdotal blanks. “During a windy Art on the Street [a Guelph art festival], I had [my photographs] fly off in the wind,” began Norsworthy. “I don’t think I was there for that,” continued England. “I think I was playing golf that day.” “You could have been, it’s entirely possible,” chided Norsworthy.

The photographers discussed the artist’s paradox: wanting to

show-off one’s work, but fearing criticism. The Guild holds critique groups for photographers displaying their work and hoping for criticism.

“Some of the members didn’t enjoy having their work critiqued,” explained Norsworthy.

“We decided that we’d hold night for people who wanted their work critiqued. For me, it represents everything The Guild is about.”

England mentioned his own personal fears: “I still haven’t brought in my [best work] to the critique groups.”

Throughout the afternoon, England and Norsworthy drew attention to the different ideas that photographers have in mind before they take a picture.

“A lot of my photography is what I react to,” explained England. “It’s what crosses in front of my lens,” added Norsworthy.

“There’s a photographer in the guild who, when I see his work, I ask ‘How did he even see that?’”

Instead of offering answers, England and Norsworthy instead offered that photographers and artists should push their own boundaries to learn from the experience.

“One of the most powerful moments for me was taking portraits of mentally handicapped people and their families,” said Norsworthy. “It pushed my boundaries because I’m not a portrait photographer. For [the

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Doug England and Alan Norsworthy of the Guelph Photographer’s Guild put on a guided review and talk at the Guelph Civic Museum on Nov. 24, sharing their ideas and objectives with members of the community. families], it was the first family portrait they’d ever had. How do you not let that move you?”

England dismissed the idea that professional photographers are difficult to learn from, or that The Guild is a group for the elite. “Everybody’s got something they bring to the party,” said England. Norsworthy echoed this sentiment: “No one [no photographer] hides their secrets;

they’re so willing to share.”

On the topic of their professional futures and the future of The Guild, Norsworthy and England revealed that it’s indefinite. “The future is more of the same,” explained Norsworthy. “If you allow The Guild to open up your ideas, there’s a lot you can see out there.”

“I don’t know, but there’s a lot out there,” concluded England.

ARTS & CULTURE

A to Zavitz

Will Wellington Too Much Stuff in One Room ran from Nov. 18 to 22 in Zavitz Gallery. The exhibit featured the work of eleven artists in third and fourth year sculpture courses at the University of Guelph. I wandered through the gallery with my friend, Ara Khanamirian, an Animal Bio major, talking about each artist’s work in turn. This is a selection from that conversation: Chelsea Sousa - Three coloured plastic frames, mounted along the wall at shin height, spouting long black hair.

Ara: I don’t get this. Is the wall growing hair or is it supposed to be something else? Like, are these supposed to be mirrors, like plastic toy mirrors? And the hair is black, kind of like the evil from the reflection. I have no idea what I’m saying.

Allanah Vokes - In the back right corner, close to the ceiling, a number of metal paper airplanes stuck in the wall by their points.

Ara: These are paper airplanes, but not paper. And they’re stuck in the wall. Is this like a reflection thing, like you’re supposed to look at the shadows? But there’s no, like, special lighting for it, so I guess the piece can change at any time if it is the shadows. They kind of look like pieces of a coffee filter, like if you were to line them all up in a circle.

Ashley Freake - A stack of small blue pieces wedged in the back left corner of the room.

Ara: It’s just a stack of blue bricks.

Will: It looks like children’s blocks.

Ara: Yeah, like the ones you’d find at like a doctor’s office or something.

172.13 • Thursday, november 28, 2013

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It’s blue. I guess it’s, like, mould, maybe?

Will: What do you think of the emotion of the colour blue?

Ara: Calming. Peaceful.

Will: Or, sad.

Ara: No. Not for me.

Lauren Irwin - A structure made of cut and fused metal rings rising to about waist height.

Ara: It’s so frustrating when they leave it all up to you. There should be a plaque saying “The Universe,” or something.

Will: Does it look like the universe to you?

Ara: Kind of? It’s chaotic.

Rachel Kopacki - Strings connected to a speaker are looped through a row of screw eyes and taped to the wall.

Ara: Is this supposed to be an instrument?

Will: I like the look of all the green tape on the wall.

Ara: They kind of remind me of birds. But what’s the purpose of the speaker then?

Will: Maybe something happens when they hit the wall. They’re transformed.

Ara: That’s pretty intense. I was kind of thinking it was like music, and whatever you see on wall is the sound waves, and the birds are like the freedom of music.

Katie Holmes - Two pillars, almost aligned, supporting two roughly cubic structures which contain different things.

Ara: I get the feeling that the piece is supposed to be this guy looking at him and vice versa. And it’s not really supposed to matter about the person looking at the whole piece. You don’t know which side

PHOTO BY ASHLEY FREAKE

Last week, Zavitz Hall held the exhibit Too Much Stuff in One Room, where students from the Visual Arts program showcased their latest creations. you should look, you don’t know if they’re looking at each other, and you don’t know what to do - and it kind of seems like they don’t know what to do either.

Emma McClure - A large, lumpy, pink mass with something protruding from its side and a hole in the top.

Ara: This kind of looks like a tongue, but that doesn’t look like a face. This kind of reminds me of something but I don’t wanna say it. [Mouths the word “Vagina.”] I don’t know.

You said “flesh,” there’s pink, it looks weird.

Will: Do you think it’s sexy?

Ara: No. I’m just confused as to what it’s supposed to be. Maybe it’s a shoe.

Will: Who would wear this shoe, though?

Ara: Probably a really big giant. I have no idea.

Clare Binnie - Beige, paint-splattered coils hanging from a metal pole.

Ara: Well, this one definitely looks like it’s melting.

Will: I was going to say that it looks like a bunch of intestines.

Ara: I was thinking it was more like unmade pizza, with all the stuff on

it, like the cheese.

Will: What about the pole?

Ara: I honestly think the pole is just to hold it up.

Katie Hamill - A frame hanging from the ceiling with what look like glass bulbs around it and a foil square at its centre.

Ara: So, at first, I thought you had to look at it from straight underneath, just because of the angles. And then I realized that it’s not perfectly straight, like the squares. So it’s kind of like an optical illusion, because it looks straight from the peripherals, but once you get right in it, like right in the eye of the project—is that a term? Kind of like the centre of the tornado—you can tell that it’s not centred. I don’t know if it was supposed to do that. It’s pretty cool.

Nicole Jacobs - Two loose-knit fabric sacks with a heavy round object in each, hanging from frames to the ground.

Ara: That one kind of looks like a uvula.

Will: I thought it kind of looked like a scrotum.

Ara: I was going to say that, but then it has only one ball. I’m just

looking at the shadows now. Even for the frame, the shadows kind of match the actual centrepiece. It’s weird. Maybe it was meant to be put that way.

Will: Or maybe it was totally accidental.

Ara: You never know with art.

Sarah Graham - Huge, intersecting square frames with yellow tubes snaking around them.

Will: I’m thinking of these two [Sarah Graham and Lauren Irwin] as companion pieces, because that one [Lauren Irwin], even though it’s metal, is very smooth and organic looking and this one is sort of the opposite.

Ara: That one definitely looks more frail or more fragile. This one kind of looks like, no matter what you do to it, it’s not going to budge. It’s a fact. That’s what it is. It’s not going to change because that’s what it is.

Or it could be an interpretation of rules. Wait, you’ve got to hear me out on this. A rule is supposed to be something solid, something you should always follow, but it always has the back door, the exception to the rule, and that’s what I think these tubes are.

Postcommodity: a trans-disciplinary arts collective

Watch this space Ian Gibson

As part of the Big Ideas in Art & Culture Lecture Series on Friday night, a brilliantly articulated transdisciplinary art collective called Postcommodity presented in downtown Guelph.

The night happened in association with Musagetes, the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area (CAFKA), and Postcommodity; the quartet from Southwestern United States, comprised of Cristóbal Martínez (Xicano), Kade L. Twist (Cherokee), Nathan Young (Delaware/Kiowa/Pawnee) and fourth member, absent, Raven Chacon (Navajo).

Postcommodity’s multi-media work incorporates video, visual and sound, and is informed by an insatiable re-imaging of post-consumer aspects that expose specific cultural aesthetics of the binary between Natives and the “West.”

By revealing a psychopathology of colonization, the artists were able to establish a visual binary between political sovereignty of the colonizers and the subjugated.

Situated within a NorthAmerican context, this unique post-modern multi-media lecture was a combination of cultural perspectives, accompanied by a slideshow that displayed several visual highlights of their exhibits worldwide. Their work showcases a thematic trans-disciplinary intersection of both post-colonial theory and criticism that resulted in showing how people create and understand a sense of place.

An example of this was shown in their first slide, called Do You Remember When? Pictured was the floor in a museum, and in the middle, a rectangle the size of an average kitchen table was cut out of the floor revealing fresh dirt.

From the artists’ perspective, there is no escape from using the land. Thus, suspended above, is a microphone dangling from the

ceiling, listening to the Earth - if only the Earth could speak.

For Postcommodity, the rhetorical practice of going to sites is deliberate in creating interventions that lead to complexities and confusion. Valorizing spaces that stimulate a sense of hybridity and ambiguity for the viewer actuates the nuanced discourse of post-colonialism. This begs the question: What assumptions do we share with each other?

One concern Postcommodity has is the adverse affects of cultural tourism, where they struggle with trying to avoid using Native art as “natural history.” In another exhibit, called Mother Teacher Destroyer, the artists displayed how the social conservatism of the Christianization of shame, which has imposed sex values into the Native culture.

With having Western thought as a reference to critique, the artists illustrated how “native women are cultural saviours.”

A popular artistic tool employed

by Postcommodity is the use of diorama. This theatrical device

was employed in another piece called Radiophonic Territory. This lit-up confessional booth, first displayed at Nuit Blanche, worked as a “transducer” for the all-night festival. The use of a three-dimensional interactive mobile device was broadcast over a FM radio station to communicate a person’s candid truth and reconciliation.

This curatorial “bureaucratic construct” is not only a diffusion of knowledge, but also reveals a particular insight into the connection of people and the kinds of communities that can be built with art.

In a series of community-drive events located at the border between Mexico and the United States, Postcommodity created a fence of large vinyl “scare eye” balloons. The Orwellian Repellent Eye (2011) of black, red and yellow concentric circles works as a “semiotic vehicle” based on an ancient Cherokee symbol. The installation of the predatory eye is also a counter-narrative to the obsolescence often associated with American products. By creating

a dialogical framework, the double consciousness of the Repellent Eye is symbiographical. Thus, in critiquing the institutional narratives of Western culture, the piece also finds inspiration in the victims of a postconsumerist world.

Fans will look forward to Postcommodity’s forthcoming conceptual installation called Repellent Fence (2014). This long-term project will be built along a two-mile stretch of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s homeland, currently divided by the Mexican and American border.

Sandwiched in the ephemeral moment of the radical immigration discourse, the Repellent Fence reveals the border acting as an imaginary construct theatre.

The intention of this art is to rebuild a narrative on the trans-border knowledge of the Mexican publics movement of people, capital, cultures and ideologies. The artists will highlight how the media perpetuates the immigration madness by experiencing the anxiety of an occupied militarized space.

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ARTS & CULTURE

Grassroots + Art + Guelph: Silence

Jessica Avolio

Self-described as “Guelph’s portal for adventure new sounds,” Silence is a hub for experimental and improvised sound art in the community. Events include musical acts, a monthly concert series, the occasional improvisation session, handmade music nights, and other unique and interesting workshops.

The Ontarion spoke with Ben Grossman, founder of Silence, about the inception of the initiative, where he mentioned how he used “a funding system called overdraft” when he chose not to pursue any outside investments to get the project off the ground.

Grossman had been involved in other arts initiatives in Guelph, but had found himself discouraged by the whole system, and was looking to start something different. After thinking about this project for a long time, “I felt

like if I wanted to make something happen, I’d just have to make something happen, and I did. And I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it, so I just started pretending that it was happening,” said Grossman.

While Grossman developed the concept of Silence, a local performance artist named Ron Gaskin came up with the name.

“I just made some little cards and started putting them around stuff, and posting enigmatic things without any reference to who I was - and it worked,” said Grossman. “I started getting emails from people saying ‘Have you heard anything about this Silence thing? What’s going on?

Who is that?’ - It felt like a fantastic little prank.”

At that point, artists began contacting him from Toronto, California, Berlin, New York all asking if they could take part in the initiative. With Silence

gaining a bit of traction, it began to fill a void in the music scene, at least “it certainly fills a void for me personally,” Grossman said.

The main idea behind starting Silence was “to create an environment or community or an entity that would support and foster work in experimental music and sound,” stated Grossman. His goal was not to connect it to a particular genre but, “to make it about all kinds of music...with some aspect that pushes the envelope a little bit aesthetically: in terms of practice, in terms of the rigors of actually making or listening to the music or the sound.”

He admits on his utilization of the word ‘experimental’ that he is “using it fairly naively,” explaining that the word operates in a way that is pseudo-scientific, and not in reference to the genre of experimental music. Grossman’s idea of experimentation

involves projects that “haven’t been done before, or at least you haven’t done before, or under circumstances that are unusual or different, or using different materials.” As both a creator and listener taking part in these experiments, “you might not quite know what’s going to come out of the other end... you’re looking for a surprise or some sort, or you’re looking for something new, something to be challenged.”

Speaking from a personal perspective, Grossman described this type of experience as what he is always looking for in music and art, something that makes him ask, “What the fuck’s going on here? I don’t understand this.” A feeling of your preconceived notions about music and art being challenged, something that forces one to say, “I thought I really understood what music was about’...this is different and

it’s making me question things, and I like that,” said Grossman. His goal with Silence is to create this sort of space where these experiments and questions happen.

As for Grossman’s plans, he wants to “keep it going without going insane.” But his future goals for Silence are to build a bigger audience, create a greater diversity of programming, and to reach out to the Guelph community through workshops and educational activities. “It sounds kind of naive, but I’d love to really keep doing what we’re doing, and do it better,” said Grossman.

“More is more, right?” Grossman asked. Ultimately, he wants Silence “to be a place where people can come and hang out, and learn, and start making stuff.” And now that he has a little proof of concept, and a year under his belt, “it’s probably time to go legit.”

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat RCMPI production a success Emily Blake From Nov. 20 to 24 at the River Run Centre, Royal City Musical Productions Inc. (RCMPI) presented its version of the classic musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with music by Tim Rice. This was the first Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly, and it is based on the biblical story

of Joseph and his coat of many colors from the book of Genesis.

Throughout the plot, Joseph faces many challenges, including the jealousy of his 11 brothers (talk about a big family), being sold into slavery and landing himself in jail. However, Joseph keeps on dreaming of a better future, and perseveres.

The cast and crew of the RCMPI production were incredibly talented and put on an amazing show that was enjoyed by all. It was upbeat, lively, fun, and had the perfect touch of humour.

RCMPI’s production showcased all of the traditional features of Joseph, with an Elvis-like character as the Pharaoh, and the wealthy Potiphar’s palace set in the roaring twenties. The audience was whisked away to a Western saloon, a Parisian café, the swinging sixties, and the Caribbean, all within the hour-and-a-half musical production. Songs sampled many different genres including country-western, calypso, pop, and rock ‘n’ roll. The dance styles also varied, ranging from ballet to tap.

1984: ROOM 101

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

From Nov. 18 to Nov. 23, the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph put on 1984: Room 101. Ironically held in MACK 101, the show took the classic novel 1984 by George Orwell and put a modern day twist on it to create something of their own.

The cast was composed of many talented vocalists and actors, including a few students from the University of Guelph. The talented Patrick Stiles returned to his roots in the lead role of Joseph, having performed with RCMPI in his first musical over 20 years ago.

Emily Young, a fourth year voice music education student at Wilfred Laurier University, was mind-blowing as the narrator. Other stellar performances included the campy Potiphar (reminiscent of King Herrod from Jesus Christ Superstar), Joseph’s 11 jealous brothers (who added a touch of comic relief), and the Pharaoh.

The brilliant ensemble,

orchestra, and dancers were equally impressive. The children’s choir was especially adorable and brought a youthful quality to the production. Additionally, the multiple costume, lighting, and set changes set the perfect tone for the musical, ending perfectly with rainbow streamers that were released during the finale.

While exiting the theatre, the audience members were abuzz with praise - gushing about the high energy the performance exuded. The entire cast looked as though they were having a blast from start to finish, and on top of this, they performed wonderfully.

The performance was nothing less than a stunning success.

ARTS & CULTURE

172.13 • Thursday, november 28, 2013

The Strumbellas

STYLE PICK OF THE WEEK: HEATHER PAGE

A performance which provided the audience with a stompin’ good time Emily Jones

Heather Page was a great example of fusing casual winter style with a bedazzling personal touch. Page wore slim fitting khaki corduroys, a vintage crew neck roots sweatshirt in forest green with a blouse adorned with a beaded collar. Her knee high brown boots and striped beanie were great cool weather additions.

set - but they know how to tug at people’s heartstrings. Something about their music is extremely raw and heart-felt. As an audience member, you have no option but to become consumed in the stories they share through their music. There is something about the fusion and harmonies of five voices at once that creates an upheaval of energy - a sense of connectivity not every band can induce in their stage performance.

An old favourite “Rhinestones,” was a crowd pleaser, and the new and impressive “End of an era” had the audience singing along.

The band also did a cover of Modest Mouse’s “Float On,” which was excellently done.

The Strumbellas definitely know their own talent and their audience very well. They were able to keep the show packed with excitement until the very end.

They bring back an older style of authentically inclined artistry that is fresh while at the same time, classically wholesome.

SEE PHOTO REEL ON WWW.THEONTARION.COM

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

The enthusiasm and passion the Strumbellas evoke in a room is astonishing. They are a definite Guelph favourite, and will likely continue to be for years to come.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: STRANGE DAYS (1967)

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

The 2013 Juno-nominated folkrock band, The Strumbellas, headlined a show at eBar in Guelph on Nov. 21 and provided the audience with exactly what they were looking for - an evening filled with dancing and interactive musical enjoyment. The eBar was packed with people from 8 p.m. on, who were waiting for the show to begin.

The evening was filled with a collection of different styles of music, all which were connected to indierock, and some that were infused with a raw folk sound.

The Strumbellas were the act that the audience was waiting in anticipation for, and it was obvious that they were serious about seeing one of their favourite bands, considering the fullness of the crowd did not deplete

until the Strumbellas finally came on stage at 12:30 a.m. The band apologized for the late start, but it was clear they supported their three opening acts and were very thankful for the reception from the crowd. While the three opening bands were playing, different members of the Strumbellas took turns at the merchandise table interacting with their fans.

The Strumbellas as a group is made up of six members, each one of them plays an instrument and evokes a different personality. They formed as a band in Toronto but all originated from Lindsay, Ontario.

Their independently released debut album was titled My Father was a Hunter, and their latest album that was released last month is titled We Still Move on Dance Floors.

What sets the Strumbellas apart from other acts is the honest and reflective lyrics they provide alongside their excellent artistry. These musicians know not only how to entertain a crowd - the entire bar was one their feet dancing throughout their whole

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C O U R T E S Y P H O T O

Strange Days is the follow-up to The Doors’ self-titled debut album.

Though not as commercially successful as their debut, it might be their strongest and most artistically coherent album. Surreal and disorienting at times (“Horse Latitudes”), yet hauntingly beautiful (“Moonlight Drive”), it epitomizes the band’s divergent approach to the hippie love and flower power of the 1960s and instead presents a complex, critical view of the turbulent era of social upheaval, in part through Jim Morrison’s poetic vision. “Strange days have found us/And through their strange hours/ We linger alone,” Morrison croons in the title track, setting a haunting tone for the rest of the album.

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SPORTS & HEALTH

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Up-and-down season continues for basketball Andrew Donovan Women The Guelph Gryphons women’s basketball team hosted the Ryerson Rams and the Toronto Varsity Blues on Nov. 22 and 23. The Gryphons handily beat the Rams 76-53 on Friday and lost a nail-biter to the Varsity Blues on Saturday, 76-73. The women now sport a 3-5 record this season.

Third year forward, Katherine MacTavish, led all Gryphons scorers with 18 points and six rebounds, followed closely by Erica McFadden, who put up 16 points and three assists in the win.

This win can be attributed to solid, timely shooting by Guelph, but more importantly,

to the success of the women on defense where they held the visiting Rams to just 18-61 (29.5 per cent) in field goal attempts and 1-6 (16.7 per cent) from beyond the three point line.

Though the first quarter featured evenly matched play from both sides, the Gryphons went into the second up five and never looked back from that point on.

Guelph capitalized on size matchups, particularly using the 6’0” MacTavish and 5’11” Julia Tennent, which earned them the edge down low and solidified the 23 point victory over the 2-5 Rams.

The Saturday, Nov. 23 game versus the Varsity Blues was drastically different than the night before, with two evenly

matched teams going headto-head at the W.F. Mitchell Centre.

Again, the Tennant and MacTavish matchups down low were a key factor in Guelph staying in contention with the then 0-6 Varsity Blues. Dana Van Balkon and MacTavish both put up 20 points and Guelph shot well from the floor, going 27-58 through four quarters.

Unfortunately, Van Balkon fouling out with 3:55 left to play in the fourth quarter forced Guelph to ramp up their play, which originally resulted in shrinking the Varsity Blues lead. However, with time running down, the Gryphons were forced to foul the Varsity Blues, who sunk 17 free throws in the night to sink Guelph late.

Men The 2-6 Gryphons hosted the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) #6 ranked Ryerson Rams (7-1) on Nov. 22, in what ended up being a comfortable win for the Rams, 81-68.

Guelph’s Jack Beatty led the Gryphons with 13 points and five rebounds on the night, but ultimately, the Gryphons were outplayed by the likes of the game’s leading scorer, Jahmal Jones, who amassed 35 points for the Rams.

Though Guelph got out to an early lead, a poor shooting performance saw the Gryphons shoot just 38.7 per cent from inside the three-point line.

A silver lining from the weekend’s first game was Guelph being able to outscore the Rams in the second and third quarters by

scores of 15-14 and 23-20.

In the game on Saturday, Nov. 23, Guelph handled the Varsity Blues quite efficiently in a 78-53 win that saw Guelph outscore Toronto 50-29 in the final 20 minutes to solidify the win.

Guelph’s Zachary Angus led all scorers with 24 points, and Beatty chipped in with another 13 points and eight rebounds.

Though Guelph only shot 39.7 per cent field goals on the game, their defense held Toronto to just 28.6 per cent shooting – a major factor in the win versus the Varsity Blues.

The men’s and women’s teams will travel to McMaster on Wednesday, Nov. 27 to take on the Marauders, starting at 6 p.m., before returning home on Saturday, Nov. 30 for a game versus Laurier, beginning at 1 p.m.

LEFT AND RIGHT PHOTOS BY WENDY SHEPHERD, CENTRE PHOTO BY SARAH DRURY

Men’s and women’s basketball had up-and-down weekends, as the end of the first half of the season is almost over.

SPORTS & HEALTH

172.13 • Thursday, november 28, 2013

Men: Assume the position

The stigma surrounding males practicing yoga and why it ought to be broken Andrew Donovan

There was a time in sports when athletes would celebrate victory with a beer and a cigarette; interestingly enough, this is also how they mourned losses. Iconic black and white pictures depict a time when the dangers of smoking were unknown and any evidence supporting the dangers of smoking was ignored by the Babe Ruth’s of the sports world.

Today, the athlete has changed ten-fold. Athletes are bigger, stronger, faster, and taller. Their off-time is spent in gyms and in film rooms studying their opponent. The life of an athlete doesn’t end with the season, it is a 24/7/365 commitment that includes social media, endorsements, photo shoots, and public relation events that earn them those contracts that have more zeroes on the end of them than most computer codes.

Now, the athlete is evolving further, and the next generation of sports icons will have a new weapon in their arsenal: yoga.

Earlier this month the National Post ran an article out of London that told the story of the Australian national rugby team that was in a Yoga studio in Manchester not even 48 hours after a victory over

England in the League World Cup. “It’s not just about lying around on a mat,” said Mark Bitcon, head of performance for the U.K. national rugby team. “It’s an intense physical workout which has numerous positive benefits. There’s a lot of work with weights in rugby, plus intense, competitive action. In the past, we tended to neglect the flexibility aspect, which is very important for a 250-pound athlete.”

Sports nowadays are demanding athletes be more dynamic in their physique and yoga has been front-and-centre in developing these dynamic athletes.

However, yoga still possesses a stigma around it for some male athletes.

“What happens is, a guy who doesn’t know about it associates it with things like Pilates or aerobics,” said Adrian Hummel, a yoga teacher in Maryland. “They think of it as a women’s workout…It’s almost a joke when guys say, ‘I don’t think I can do yoga because I’m not flexible,” Hummel says.

“It’s like saying, ‘I’m too weak, so I can’t lift weights.”

Danny Poole, a yoga teacher and a former yoga trainer for the Denver Broncos, recognizes the stigma around yoga, “Athletes with big muscles take a regular yoga class and it kicks their butt and they tend not to come back…our egos are deflated because we can’t do some of the poses,” noted Poole.

The recognition of the stereotypes and stigmas around yoga forced Poole to adapt the activity to his

clients, making sure not to begin with poses that some big and muscly NFL players simply couldn’t do.

Poole is noticing results. In the year he spent with the Broncos, the ten players he trained in yoga avoided injury.

According to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, preventing injury is one of many proven benefits to yoga. Yoga has been found to benefit patients being treated for diabetes, AIDS, post-traumatic stress and multiple sclerosis.

Ryan Giggs of Manchester United, a player some regard as being the greatest player to ever play in the Premier League era, has credited yoga and ballet as being the reason why, at 40, he is still able to play soccer at England’s highest level.

Poole did express that the key to getting men into yoga is tailoring it around their personalities and character. Men, for the most part, can do without the music, the chanting, and the awkward and intricate poses yoga is known for.

James Haskell, forward on the England national team, sums up the marketing strategy needed for yoga in order to attract a more diverse, but equally as important demographic, “I’m not there to get my chakras aligned — I use yoga to give me an advantage in my game and keep me on the field.”

So, lads, skip the chakras, the incense, and most of all, the stigmas.

Yoga is here to stay, and if you want to sustain a dynamic and healthy life – yoga needs to be for you.

11

PHOTO BY NICHOLAS A. TONELLI

On top of flexibility, yoga has been found to reduce the risk of injury for male athletes, which is why the activity is gaining so much traction from top athletes around the world.

Advanced stats and the Leafs Caleb Dallman Statistical analysis of sports is nothing new. The big-budget movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, told the story of the Oakland Athletics – a down on their luck and cash-strapped organization – and their return to relevancy due to a general manager armed with a calculator, a belief that talent is quantifiable, and the idea that certain players put into certain positions will typically provide similar results each time. Advanced statistics in baseball is now the standard, but for hockey, it is uncharted territory.

The most basic advanced statistic in hockey is called ‘Corsi,’ named after Jim Corsi, the goaltending coach of the Buffalo Sabers. Corsi is, in essence, a shot differential statistic. It measures shots for (whether it hits the goaltender, goes wide, or gets blocked) minus shots against. The idea behind it is that the team that is shooting most often has the puck most often. The correlation between high Corsi and high puck

possession time is incredibly strong. Players that have a high Corsi tend to have the puck more often.

So how does this bring us to the Leafs? Let’s look at some of the team Corsi stats for the best teams in the league: Los Angeles - 57.5% Chicago - 56.4% St Louis - 53.9% San Jose - 53.9% Boston - 52.1% The Leafs, are at the bottom of the chart, sitting at 42.4 per cent – and the problems don’t stop there. When the season started, the Leafs won seven of their first ten games, with 17 per cent of their shots ending up as goals.

For reference, Sidney Crosby’s shooting percentage in the NHL sitting around 14 per cent. It is very doubtful that the Leafs, as a whole, are better at putting the puck in the net than the best hockey player in the NHL today.

After those first ten games, the Leafs’ shooting percentage has dropped to roughly 8.6 per cent, which is just about league average, and their once lethal offense has seemed to dry up. Although

the Leafs have been winning more often than not, the statistics seem to indicate that this is not sustainable, and a regression to the mean is inevitable. The last few games, such as the 6-0 blowout at home to an injury-ridden Columbus team, have shown that the type of game the Leafs have been playing is not a formula for consistently winning.

So, why have the Leafs been winning, even though the stats seem to show otherwise? The simplest explanation is the absolutely superb goaltending duo of James Reimer and Jonathan Bernier. The two goaltenders combined give the Leafs a .931 save percentage, which is good for fourth best in the NHL, and was holding the top spot until the aforementioned game against Columbus. As well, the Leafs’ special teams for both power play and penalty kill are top 10 in the league, something that has been the Achilles’ heel of previous Leafs squads.

There is, however, some good news. Like any other statistic, things always seem to even out after time. Although the Leafs do have a laughably low

Corsi, it will probably climb as the Buds recovery from injury issues and begin to gel as a team. The season is still early, and coach Randy Carlyle has

talked at length about making the Leafs a better puck-possession team. Hopefully the Buds take his instructions to heart before the season is lost.

Fair November

PHOTO BY ANDREA CONNELL

(Above and below) Judy Anderson of Kukucaju mixed media painted on wood. As a graduate of OCAD and U of G, Judy shows work that is playful and quirky, with inspiration from things that amuse her.

This year, Fa anniversary with Kicking off on Thu the weekend, the eve University Centre and craft sales in officially start their from local artisa

PH

Are you a fan of Settlers of Catan? $75.00 to spare, Masterpiece (a c wooden items) has you covered.

Bluefrog Creations specialize in glass bead wearable art.

Katie McLellan, eclectic media artist and creator of fibre arts, showcases whimsical mobiles.

A beautiful set-up attracts shoppers to

air November celebrated their 39th their annual jurried handcraft sale. ursday Nov. 21 and running throughout ent brought in hundreds of people to the to take part in one of the largest arts Guelph. Shoppers had the chance to r holiday gift shopping with unique gifts ans and small-business entrepreneurs.

A variety of mugs from Blue Iris Studio features a specialization in ceramic and porcelain creations

HOTOS BY WENDY SHEPHERD

If you have an extra collection of unique

Jazzy Sox, in a wide variety of colours, line the walls of the Meaford Wool booth.

o the wide array of Wine Jellies and Jams available at Tracy’s Wine Jellies.

Beautifully carved canoe paddles by W. Bruce Smith.

Beautifully crafted wooden watches at the Oceana Patina booth.

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SPORTS & HEALTH

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge prostate cancer Andrew Donovan In what has been a month chockfull of different Movember events and campaigns, one of the last to take centre stage was the “Dodge for Balls” dodgeball tournament hosted by a group from HROB*3100, who were tasked with designing a fundraiser for Movember.

The tournament featured eight teams and was hosted in the Field House on Saturday, Nov. 23. The round robin tournament featured prizes for the winner of the tournament, which ended up being the Cleveland Steamers, and for the team with the best spirit, which was the team that yours truly captained, Occupy Ball Street.

“The project was to organize a fundraiser…to reach our goal of $1000,” said Catrina Atwater, one of the event organizers. “So far,

we have made around $1500.”

The money raised at time of press release was prior to the fundraising money that came from Bobby O’Briens Irish Pub in downtown Guelph, who hosted all you can eat wings for $11.99 and donated $5 from every order to the cause.

The event ran from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. and this reporter can be the first to attest to the unexpectedly grueling nature of tournament dodgeball.

“Out group picked dodgeball because we thought that a lot of people would have fun playing.

It is a competitive but fun sport, this way we could encourage team spirit and we knew that we would get a successful turnout, which we did,” added Atwater.

The atmosphere was electric, with all teams sporting that fun yet competitive nature Atwater spoke of.

Everyone was in on the cause; even the referees and organizers were equipped with fake moustaches and high spirits.

Movember began in Adelaide, Australia. The first time the world was made privy to the moustache inspired adaptation of the eleventh month was in 1999, when a group of about 80 men decided to sport moustaches throughout November in hopes of fundraising for a cause originally unknown.

As Movember grew, so too did participation, expectations and ideas. In 2003, the idea to raise money for prostate cancer was incepted by a group from Melbourne, and the event has grown ever since.

As of 2012, the Movember Foundation had 1.1 million registered moustache growers, and numbers have climbed steadily

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Dodge For Balls, a Movember inspired dodgeball tournament, took place in the Fieldhouse on Nov. 23 to raise funds for prostate cancer, as this life-size version of Nintendo’s Luigi depicts. since the event began.

Now, Movember is a staple at the University of Guelph and, with events like the Dodge for

Balls involving both sexes, Mo Bros and Mo Sistas all have a reason to support the cause and have fun while doing so.

Preventative healthcare starts with you Human Health and Nutritional Sciences “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?” Chances are, most of us have heard the phrase from this popular song many times before, and have perhaps even lamented over it at some time or another.

There are so many things in life that we don’t fully appreciate until they’ve been taken away from us.

Unfortunately, one of these things is often our good health.

Consider the widespread prevalence of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and lung diseases in our society. Otherwise known as the “Big Four,” representing the leading causes of preventable death and disability in Canada.

That’s right, preventable: the majority of Canadians have at least one risk factor for a chronic disease that is within their power to control.

Lifestyle factors such as poor eating habits, physical inactivity, excessive alcohol, insufficient sleep, smoking, and stress are all things that if left unchecked, can have a huge impact on one’s risk of developing various illnesses, both mental and physical.

Many young people are of the mindset that disease is something that happens later in life. The reality is that now is the time to make lifestyle changes and form good habits.

As students, it can be difficult for even the most health oriented of us to juggle the demands of midterms, assignments, extracurricular and social activities, all the while finding the time to exercise on a regular

basis or to eat well-balanced meals.

Yet, diet and exercise are just two of the things that are absolutely critical to our well-being, both in the long term and in our day to day life.

Hippocrates once said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” In other words, our nutritional habits have a direct impact on our overall health, and what we eat can either act as medicine or poison.

Healthy eating is not about giving things up and depriving yourself of your favourite foods; rather, it is about mindfulness, balance and moderation. Strive to increase your consumption of fresh and minimally processed foods like fruits and vegetables, whole grains such as oatmeal, quinoa and brown rice, and lower fat protein sources like

legumes and fish. On the other hand, limit your intake of foods that are higher in calories, saturated fat, salt, or added sugar.

In the case of physical activity, scientific evidence has demonstrated that exercise can prevent the development of cardiovascular disease, various types of cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and depression, just to name a few. In this regard, exercise truly has the potential to be a powerful form of medicine, as well.

The Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines call for at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic activity per week.

Aim to spread your activity out over several days of the week in order to get the most benefit.

Taking the stairs instead of the elevator and walking or biking to

campus are just two examples. Here on campus we also have a wide range of recreational activities, fitness classes and facilities, as well as intramurals, available to us.

There are a multitude of resources on campus that can provide further information and services to offer support for our health and wellbeing, such as attending student-organized Academic Symposia, Student Health Services, the Wellness Centre, the Athletic Centre, and the Multi-Faith Resource Team.

In implementing healthier lifestyle habits, the key is to start with small and simple changes. Without a doubt, taking a preventative and proactive approach to your personal health and wellbeing is one of the most important things that you will ever do for yourself.

True grit: work ethic pays off for U of G’s Tyson Frost Andrew Donovan If you see Tyson Frost from beneath a sweater and coat, sipping on a Booster Juice in the University Centre, you probably wouldn’t peg that the man under the layers is a five-foot-eleven, 220-pound esteemed wrestler for the University of Guelph - though his cauliflower ears elude to his participation in some form of hand-to-hand combat.

If you see Frost in the gym, you wouldn’t know that his Tonka Truck physique, honed over years of dedication to the sport of wrestling and lifting weights, is recovering from a torn ACL (major ligament in the knee) that all but ended his wrestling career.

Despite what little you may know or see of Frost, know this: he’s not a quitter.

It was in 2011, in Brazil and wrestling for Team Canada in the gold

medal match, where Frost’s career was at its most paramount moment.

This was also when the silver medalist unknowingly tore his ACL. “In the gold medal match I felt my knee buckle a little bit. I didn’t really think anything of it, I finished second in the tournament and when I came back I took about a month off to recover. I started training again after the month and I felt my knee was a little sore, so I went to get a doctor to look at it and he said he thought my ACL was torn,” lamented Frost.

“I was like ‘no way,’ I was still training on it and walking on it,” exclaimed Frost. At just 20 years old, youthful invincibility is still embedded in the psyche of the athlete.

“I got the MRI results back and it was torn, and the CIS rankings had gone out the week before and I was ranked second…and the guy that ended up winning the CIS’s that year was the guy I beat to

represent Team Canada for the Pan-Ams,” explained Frost.

Frost went in for surgery and the procedure went well.

Almost certain that his career as a wrestler was over, there was still an obligation to the gym, and Frost wasted little time in re-commencing his treacherous weightlifting program as he recovered.

“If you asked me six months ago if I would be back wrestling again, I’d have said there was no chance…I felt like life was pushing me in another direction. So I focused on my grades and I didn’t even think of coming back until May of this year,” said Frost.

Corey Jarvis, for9mer Canadian Interuniversity Champion for the University of Guelph and a close friend of Frost, called up his former roommate to ask him if he could train with him at Guelph’s club gym. “[Jarvis] gave me a call and

asked if I could come out. He said he was short ‘big guys’ to train with,” said Frost.

After some hesitancy and doubt, Frost felt he owed Jarvis for all he had done to help him in Guelph in years past. Queue fate.

Frost started wrestling again, and much to the surprise of himself and his coaches, he was doing quite well. “My coaches said ‘alright, maybe you should give it another go,’” Frost said with a grin and body language that implied that the rest of the story is living history. “Here we are in November and I’ve wrestled three tournaments. I won my first one back, which was the Greater Toronto Open, I won my second one back, which was the Western Open, and then I got second at the senior provincial championships.”

The dedication Frost shows to his training cannot be understated.

There was never a time when his torn ACL meant defaulting on his work in the gym or in the classroom. The senior has high, yet realistic, ambitions of getting into a Master’s program here at the U of G. Couple his time focusing on studies with a five-day a week training schedule and a serving job at Fionn MacCool’s, and it’s clear that Frost has no visible uncertainties with priorities in life.

The OUA wrestling season is set to continue in the Winter ’14 semester and at the rate of Frost’s recovery, and what he calls his “competitive spirit,” there is no telling what the future holds for this wrestler who exemplifies the truest definition of what it means to be a student-athlete in university. While the Pan-Am Games may be a long shot, Frost remains humble in his recovery and abilities to wrestle, saying, “We’ll take it day-by-day.”

LIFE

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Making a gas powered vehicle electric

Students of Laurier and Waterloo take on a great challenge as consumer habits shift to electric cars Melanie Michener

Walking around the Stone Road Mall in Guelph, you might see a sign that says, “Recharge your electric vehicle free while you shop!” - finally, we are seeing a shift from gas guzzling vehicles to a more elegant breed of vehicles run by electricity. The elegance of no spills at the pump leaving your hands stained and smelling of pure gasoline; the elegance of

no exhaust puking out fumes; and the elegance of an almost noiseless vehicle making our roads more enjoyable.

The market for electric cars continues to grow and the prices continue to decline as mass production takes its economic toll.

The growing interest in electric cars as an alternative to gas vehicles is exactly why students from Wilfred Laurier and the University of Waterloo have taken it upon themselves to transform a typical gasoline powered vehicle into one run by electricity – and the car of choice is a Chevrolet Malibu.

You may have seen this car before, as it is a highly standard make in Canada which gets

around 450 kilometres per tank of gas. Once these students are done with the Malibu, it will be running on mostly electricity.

The team chosen to assemble the vehicle is comprised of about 20 engineering students, each of whom has an important role in the building and transformation process of the vehicle. The team is referred to as the University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team (UWAFT). Why do this you ask?

They are competing in EcoCar2, a North American wide competition comprised of 13 schools, where only two of which are from Canada (the other Canadian school being the University of Victoria in British Columbia).

Any team who can transform a gas car into a car run by electricity is a winner in my books. Although winning would be nice, the students involved have another noble motive for this project: to promote electric vehicles in Canada.

What better way to promote electric cars than to get bright young students and future designers of our country interested in this green initiative?

Global warming is an undoubted fact, and it is solutions like the electric car that will allow our consumerist habits to continue in a less harmful way. Technology is changing, and it is up to consumers to make sure technology is changing in the right way.

Demand sustainable production methods and products by buying responsibly, and future Guelphites will thank you (and so will your gas bills).

Next time you’re in the market for a car, you know what decision is the right decision: the elegance of no gas pumps and oil stains in your driveway; the elegance of free charging stations while you shop (hopefully for sustainable goods). Choose the electric car and help not only yourself in the long run, but all of us.

To the members of UWAFT, although we may rival you and your school in many realms, we support you in this mission you have set out on.

Reconsidering holiday shopping at the dollar store Andrea Connell This time of year asks us to believe in the unbelievable - rednosed reindeers, tiny toy-making elves, a gift giving fat man, and the disciplined holiday budgeter.

Yes, a mythical creature who started a holiday savings account last January and contributed to it on a regular basis, thus amassing hundreds of dollars to splash out on Christmas gifts.

But for those who may have not planned a year ahead, the dollar store may be a really tempting place to start shopping, and there are bargains to be found that will make decent gifts - Betty Crocker baking pans, silicone oven mitts and a bamboo cutting board would be perfect for the chef or baker on your list.

Though, however tempting

the price, there are just some gifts from the dollar store that shouldn’t show up under the Christmas tree.

Gaming bundle for Nintendo Wii - especially if you want the game stylus and the sensor bar to last more than an hour and not burst into flames due to cheap and shoddy wiring.

Bruschetta. Fresh food and dollar store are not two phrases often found together. Bruschetta is toasted Italian bread drizzled with olive oil and topped with fresh tomato, garlic and onions.

Operative word here being “fresh,” not “dried out crusts,” encased in a carton, nary a tomato in sight. This is not bruschetta. I’m not sure what it is, so learn to make your own.

Snow carpet. This is not the snow sled you know and love. This baby is so thin its razor sharp edge will cut your chin like a rogue piece of paper, and chances are good it won’t survive a run-in with a snow covered log at the bottom of the local toboggan hill.

Knock-off toys. If your niece or nephew wants Lego blocks or My Little Pony swag, do not give them a cheap knock-off. They know the difference and they will hate you. I’m still bitter about a fake Meccano set I received one Christmas long ago.

Potpourri. Usually purchased for their flowery, spicy fragrance dollar store bags of potpourri have taken an unfortunate six-week journey across a salty ocean on a container ship swamped harshly

and often with fishy sea water, leaving a smell that just does not go away. Cinnamon it ain’t.

Personal massager. This $3 intimate device with the “flexitouch massage head” is made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC).

Remember PVCs, the evil toxins that have caused reproductive disorders and cancers in mice?

PVCs have since been banned in children’s toys, but apparently not in adult ones.

Condoms. Ask yourself how long have those things been on the shelf? Think it’s hard to study with a hangover? Try cramming all night with a bawling child as a roommate.

No-name pharmaceuticals. Do you really want to take the chance

on a no-name diarrhea medicine?

Is your gut bulletproof? If it were, would you be reaching for such a medicine?

Burglar alarm. Don’t trust your valuables (including laptop, desktop, TV and phone) to this $2 item. It is possible in the case of a break-in the thief will steal this device as well - just for a laugh.

Chocolate imported from China.

Up until 30 years ago, most Chinese citizens had never even tasted chocolate. Four years ago, Cadbury pulled chocolate made in its Beijing factory off the shelves due to high amounts of the industrial chemical melamine found in the milk.

The best chocolate in the world comes from Belgium, Switzerland and France. Read the label.

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LIFE

www.theontarion.com

Google slammed on dead body

Google Maps depicts disturbing image from crime scene Steve Spular

About two weeks ago, Jose Barrera of Richmond, California, discovered an image that was visible on a satellite view with Google Maps. Apparently the image was that of his 14-year-old son Kevin Barrera, who was murdered on Aug. 15 in 2009 – the same year that the photographs were taken

by Google Earth, in the proximity of the murder scene. The picture shows a police cruiser and a small cluster of people standing near what appears to be a dead body close to the railroad tracks.

Jose Barrera was disturbed when he saw this picture and complained to a CNN affiliate, and stated that he would also complain to Google Maps and state lawmakers in California if necessary. Brian McClendon, Vice-President of Google Maps, has stated that his company does not usually change

their images but will aim to do so in about eight days because of the special circumstances of the Barrera case. McClendon has informed the Barrera family that his company will comply with Barrera’s request to have the image removed and will do so in a timely fashion.

This case brings to mind that there are lines that are crossed when Google Maps begins snapping pictures in their quest to map our planet. In this case, Google Maps is behaving as a good corporate citizen in that they have agreed to have the image removed in a relatively timely fashion, and have shown remorse for having the image on the site. It is likely Google was not aware of the meaning of the picture when it was captured more than four years ago.

There are many privacy and security concerns that are arising as technology continues to become more powerful, and images become clearer with the improvement of the technology of high-resolution cameras. The very wealthy in our society, as well as the politically powerful,

often do not want their privacy mapped out for the world to see.

In some cases, rich citizens in the United States have prevented Google Maps from taking pictures in their private enclaves, where their fenced-in communities have been able to block Google Maps from mapping their properties.

As drone technology improves – and may soon be in the hands of people throughout the world – terrorist groups could use increasingly sophisticated technology and Google Maps to find undefended targets. If that happens, the courts will have to determine whether Google Maps carries any liability.

It should be noted that the American military has been able to prevent Google from capturing its military installations on the grounds of security, all while the United States has carried out the most sophisticated espionage activity the world has ever seen, according to the revelations made by Edward Snowden. This is ironic but not surprising.

Many Germans have already

You’ve probably seen this on Pinterest Alyssa Ottema If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a long list of people you’re supposed to buy nice holiday presents for, and a bad habit of spending your money on silly things like food, rent and tuition. At this point in our lives, we’re old enough to recognize that we want to shower those we love with expensive gifts, but young enough to not yet have the means to do so. So, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been conveniently ignoring your holiday shopping list, hoping that it will either (a) magically buy itself or (b) magically disappear.

Do not fret, broke and uncreative one. The Internet has many ideas for presents you can make with only a few dollars, a few hours, and the patience of a saint. The most important thing to remember when attempting these home-made holiday gifts is to keep your expectations low. You will cuss, you will break things, you will end up more stressed than if you had just bought all of these presents and spent next semester working off the debt. Your version will not look like the version on the computer screen, because the majority of us do not have the hands of Michelangelo.

But, you will have saved money – and it will be so, so worth it.

DIY Decorated Mugs You’ll Need: - Oil based paint Sharpie(s) - Dollar store plain white porcelain mug(s) - Oven

Using the Sharpie(s), decorate the mug(s) in whatever pattern you like/think the receiver of your gift will like. When you’re done, put the mug(s) on a baking sheet in the oven, preheated to 350 F, for 30 to 45 minutes – and that’s it! These mugs will be safe for hand washing, but warn whoever you’re giving the mug(s) to that the designs probably won’t last through a round of dishwashing. Bonus points for making a whole tea set!

Note: If you use a regular permanent marker to decorate on porcelain, it will wash off instantaneously. Spend the extra dollar on an oil-based paint Sharpies.

You can get them at Wyndham Art Supplies downtown, and as a bonus, they last longer than the average permanent marker.

DIY Holiday Ornaments You’ll Need: - 1 c. flour - 1/2 c. salt - 1/2 c. water - Rolling pin (or a heavy text book) - Toothpick (or a pen) - Dollar store cookie cutters (or a large amount of talent with a knife) - Paint, glitter, and other fun things (all available at the dollar store) - Ribbon or string - Oven Mix together salt, flour, and water until dough is formed. Knead the dough for about 3 minutes. Roll out the dough, or flatten it with a heavy textbook, until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Use the cookie cutters, or your knife talents, to cut desired shapes out of the dough. Use a toothpick

or pen to make a hole at the top of the shape. Place on to a cookie sheet and bake in the oven, preheated to 250 F, for two hours. Remove ornaments from the oven and allow them to cool completely. Decorate with paint or glitter or whatever else.

When the ornaments are decorated and have dried completely, thread a piece of ribbon or string through the hole at the top.

DIY Snow Globes You’ll Need: - Mason jar(s) - Little plastic animals, trees, or whatever else you’d like to put in your snow globe - White and silver glitter - Hot glue gun and glue sticks (also available at the dollar store) - Water Using the hot glue gun, glue the animals or trees or whatever you chose to the lid of the Mason jar.

It also helps to glue the parts of lid together at this stage. Fill the jar with glitter and water and screw on the lid.

You can also seal the lid with hot glue at this point, if you like – and that’s it!

These gifts are great because you can easily tailor them to the person you’re gifting them too, rather than giving a generic gift basket or card. You can also find almost all of the supplies for these gifts at the dollar store, which keeps these gifts budget friendly. The only thing you’ll be losing in large quantities is your sanity, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s more important to keep your heart or your wallet happy.

PHOTO BY CRAIG BAERWALDT

In their attempt to create a virtual map of the world, Google Maps has recently been criticized for publishing an image of a murder scene. This controversy is prompting discussions on the issue of privacy and surveillance in the digital age. shown great resistance to Google Maps entering their country, as their watchdogs are on high alert.

As time goes on, issues about privacy and security will

continue to snowball as technology advances and becomes cheaper to utilize. All that we can be sure is that “Big Brother” is not going away any time soon.

OPINION

Selfies spur discussion on self-identity and authenticity Stacey Aspinall Anyone who’s ever indulged in any form of social media will be familiar with the 21st–century term “selfie,” defined as a self-portrait typically taken on a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to social media.

Recently, it was selected as the international “Word of the Year”

by Oxford Dictionaries, based on an astounding 17,000 per cent rise in its use from a year ago.

So widespread is this phenomenon that it’s hard to imagine a time when this word wasn’t on the tip of every web-savvy twenty-something’s tongue. Indeed, there’s been a recent succession of articles (and blog posts, unsurprisingly) debating the merits of selfies, and opinions are divided on whether they’re an empowering form of self-expression, or a harmful trend that is evidence of attention-seeking, narcissistic behaviour.

In the article “Selfies Aren’t Empowering. They’re a Cry for Help,” published on Jezebel.com, Erin Gloria Ryan writes: “Selfies aren’t empowering; they’re a high tech reflection of the fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness.” The sole purpose of these portraits, often taken by young women, is to present the subject’s face in a flattering way. The photo is then flaunted on social media in an attempt

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Do you “like” me?

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to gain attention, “likes” and compliments based solely on the individual’s appearance.

Ryan argues that selfies are the byproduct of a culture that devalues women’s intellects and achievements, and instead emphasizes their physical attributes, further perpetuating the objectification of women. “Young women take selfies because they don’t derive their sense of worth from themselves, they rely on others to bestow their self-worth on them — just as they’ve been taught,” Ryan wrote.

However, despite Ryan’s harsh critique of our sexist “selfie” culture, she also admits to participating in it: “I’ve posted selfies to Facebook, and Twitter. I always feel bad about it; it always takes several tries to not look stupid, and even now, I kind of hate all of them,” said Ryan. Taking “selfies” with a sense of detached irony may be mildly irritating, but it’s also evidence of how pervasive they truly are — even if you’re skeptical, there is still pressure to put your best face forward.

When I look at photographs I’ve taken of myself, I often don’t recognize myself in the image. There are so many artistic techniques that shape a photograph, and I’m often critical of how the deliberate use of framing, composition, and lighting can be used to craft an image, rather than capture one.

Even driver’s license portraits — characterized by dull, flat lighting, head-on perspective, and the subject’s neutral expression — are meant to artlessly catalogue the subject’s features, but still distort their appearance (these mug shots are universally unflattering).

There is no such thing as an objective, authentic portrait, especially when you act as both photographer and subject. A selfie is not a simple snapshot of what you look like at a given moment in time. It’s often a calculated effort to enact an identity that may have little legitimacy outside of the digital realm, depending on how much artistic license you take in enhancing your appearance specifically for the image.

Selfies might be the ultimate symptom of postmodern malaise; a form of self-expression fit for a self-obsessed and attention-deficit generation. Whereas Andy Warhol infamously predicted in 1968 that, “In the future, everyone will be

world-famous for 15 minutes,” today anyone with Internet access can achieve 15 seconds of microfame within their social media networks.

Are people who take selfies selfobsessed or merely self-possessed?

The way people perceive us, for the most part, is out of our control. But in the time it takes for the shutter to snap, you can create an image that represents how you want to be seen, effectively making your self-identity into a product to be marketed on social media (a form of self-promotion otherwise known as personal branding). This commodification of self is advertising at its finest – and although there isn’t money being made, the

revenue is our self-esteem.

However, this striving to attain social capital comes at a cost, because authenticity is at stake.

Deriving self-confidence from selfies is a false attempt at fulfillment that creates an irreconcilable distance between your true self, and the idealized image you present – and it’s in this chasm that our deepest insecurities reside.

that the ideal body is one which is extremely thin and that, once a woman achieves this image, everything else in her life will fall into place. She will finally get her Prince Charming, her social life will be livelier than ever, and she could never be happier.

A new study published on PLOS ONE has revealed that when women are shown pictures of other women with ranging body sizes, participants quickly become more comfortable with varying sizes. This implies that if the media portrayed more diverse body sizes in advertisements, movies, and soon women would be more accepting of the fact that bodies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, not just size “zero.” This would be a great step towards giving women the chance to accept and love their bodies for what they are, instead of comparing themselves to unrealistic and images that may

be damaging to self-esteem.

When the women were shown photos of anorexic women in the PLOS ONE study, attitudes towards these images also became more positive. “Showing them thin bodies makes them like thin bodies, more, and showing them fat bodies makes them like fat bodies more,” said Lynda Boothroyd, a psychology researcher at Durham University in England who led the study. What women see in the media is what women will accept as the “norm,” which many will devote themselves to attempting to emulate. But what if there was not just one single size that captured the essence of perfection? Imagine watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, but instead of seeing extremely thin models with larger breasts being categorized as “plus size models,” real plus sized models, as well as

women with varying body sizes ranging from super thin to super curvy, were walking down that same runway.

The idea sounds foreign and is hard to picture because society is so used to the same body type flooding the media, but it is not an impossible one. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is just one of the many campaigns trying to introduce this idea of showing real diversity among women and altering the definition of beauty. Based on the findings of the global study “The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report,” Dove launched the campaign for Real Beauty in 2004. The study revealed that only 2 per cent of women around the world describe themselves as beautiful. In 2011 the study was revisited, questioning over 1,200 ten to 17 year olds to see what had changed. The study revealed that 72 per cent of

the girls said they felt tremendous pressure to be beautiful, and that only 11 per cent felt comfortable using the word beautiful to describe their looks.

The campaign began a global conversation about a need for a wider definition of beauty, as media’s definition of beauty was limiting and unattainable. The campaign made many efforts to change the definition of beauty into a source of confidence, not anxiety. Dove developed the Self-Esteem Fund as an agent of change, creating more open-minded commercials to inspire women to become open to changing the definition of beauty. If women can collectively decide that this is the type of message they want to see in the media because they are tired of the limiting standards on what can be defined as beautiful, they could use their agency to start a change.

PHOTO BY STACEY ASPINALL

“Selfie” has been named the Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries, but it is worth examining why documenting our appearance through digital self-portraits has become such an important component of our social media identities.

The views represented in the opinion section do not necessarily reflect the views of the Ontarion nor its staff.

Widening the definition of beauty

Diverse bodies in the media could alter selfperception in the best way possible Diana Kurzeja

It’s a Sunday night and you’re sitting on the couch watching your favourite television show.

During the break, a commercial comes on starring a sun-kissed blonde on the beach wearing a tiny bikini that covers not-somuch of her very tiny figure.

All you can think of is, “Whoa, I wouldn’t mind having a body like that.”

Does this sound familiar? If it does, you’re not the only one.

It’s not news that the media constantly bombards society with images of very slim-figured women, and not much else. Women are fed the notion

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OPINION

www.theontarion.com

Climate change in Canada

Antonio Corkovic

The Rob Ford scandal has been garnering immense attention from the Canadian and international press.

Meanwhile, the press has failed to give the same attention to the fact that Canada has been internationally condemned as one of the world’s worst polluters. A recent European report, released to coincide with U.N. climate talks, ranked Canada 55 of 58 countries in terms of tackling greenhouse gas emissions. The three countries we beat? Iran, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. It is perhaps even more troubling to hear that it has been estimated that by 2020, the tar sands will be polluting as much as 140 countries combined.

To say that the Harper government would be performing poorly is an extreme understatement. We can only remain hopeful that one day we can achieve the goal of surpassing Saudi Arabia as a greener country. At the moment things look bleak, as our federal government is fighting to keep the status quo in favour of the oil industry.

The Harper government has been continuing to allow unchecked expansion of the tar sands through increasingly dangerous methods, such as hydraulic fracturing. Recent legislature aimed at emission regulation in Alberta failed due to heavy

pressure from oil lobby groups, most can only go on for so long. A shift to a notably the Canadian Association of greener world is already well underPetroleum Producers (CAPP). CAPP way, and the fight for real climate is fighting tooth and nail to disal- change policy and removed depenlow social responsibility to affect dence on fossil fuels has only just their corrupt business models. begun. For the first time ever, enviThe alarming part is that the battle ronmental groups and NGOs walked for oil isn’t only being fought in out of the Warsaw U.N. climate talks, backrooms and press conferences: citing frustration, lack of productiva disingenuous endeavor between ity, and the “perceived closeness of Canadian Geographic and CAPP governments to industrial lobbies.” would allow them to educate our These leaders and CEO’s are fightyouth on an oil-industry-spun ing to keep the present state of affairs picture of what Canada’s energy that weighs entirely in their favour. future will look like, with little to These environmental groups have no regard for the environment. therefore decided that their resources The ludicrous notion of allowing oil should instead go towards educating lobbyists to teach our youth about the people on how to press their own energy is something most Cana- governments for real change.

Admittedly, this is exactly what I dians would expect to hear from some crooked Texas congress- am asking from all of you. Write to man – not their own politicians. your local MP, MPP, mayor, premier, A poll by Angus-Reid showed that minister, councillor, the office of the majority of Canadians believe in Stephen Harper, and anybody else human-caused climate change more who needs to hear the message loud than their U.S. or U.K. counterparts. and clear. Show them that we will Climate change is internationally not take let apathy or greed block proven science, and should not be progress for resolving one of the a matter of personal opinion (as is greatest challenges of our modern exemplified by the Australian Con- times. It is up to us to take our futures servative government). However, back into our own hands.

The Harper government will not the fact that Canadians support climate change efforts says a lot about look at one letter from an environhow our federal government is mental activist and decide to change choosing to misrepresent the people. their policy and position. However, The entire world knows that bla- millions of letters, peaceful demontant disregard for the environment strations, press coverage, and acts

PHOTO BY GERALD SIMMONS

Canada has been internationally condemned as one of the world’s worst polluters, ranking 55 out of 58 countries in terms of tackling greenhouse gas emissions. of environmental civil disobedience (such as the New Brunswick fracking incident) will all contribute positively to a louder and more focused voice. The primitive age of resource exploitation for profit is coming to an end, and the age of sustainability is on the horizon.

We must become facilitators of this transition, and since it seems that our government is ignoring dissent, we must therefore raise our voices unanimously. The issues

at hand are simply too important to not become popular culture, and we must all be activists in our own right. While those who benefit from the status quo will build roadblocks, we will inevitably come out triumphant. An old Aboriginal proverb says: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” We have betrayed future generations, and if any reparation is possible, we must commence it now.

OPINION

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Common myths about eating disorders Carleigh Cathcart With the university’s terrific implementation of a Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW), alongside the publication of a viral opinion piece highlighting the benefits of “Dating a girl with an eating disorder,” I find now to be a fitting time to confront some common myths/misunderstandings about those suffering from eating disorders.

Like any mental illness, eating disorders are shrouded in misconception. The stigmas, apathy, and potential consequences of being open about any disorder often keep people within the realms of painful silence.

That’s not how it should be - and thankfully, projects like MHAW seek to change this unfortunate dynamic. In the mean time, we can each do our part to address the misunderstandings of mental illnesses. This is my part.

Myth #1: Only (rich, white) girls get eating disorders

This is ridiculous. Though the majority of those with eating disorders are females, and there are admittedly certain demographics that seem to have higher proportions of sufferers, eating disorders can and do affect both genders, all races, and every section along the class spectrum. It is also important to note that a person need not be “thin” to have an eating disorder. Eating disorders are not defined by the body size or shape of those affected, but by the disordered patterns that accompany them.

Myth #2: They just do it for attention This could not be further from the truth. In fact, those who are close to people with eating disorders will tell you that they often do whatever it takes to keep it hidden. Baggy clothes, avoiding eating where they can be seen, and making up lies (“Oh, I just ate. Thank you though”) are all activities adopted to hide one’s struggle. Mental illness is one of

the loneliest kinds of pain, and the above actions are certainly not those of someone trying to attract all the attention they can.

Myth #3: It’s all about the food Actually, eating disorders have almost nothing to do with food.

Eating disorders are a control mechanism – often, a sufferer feels a loss of control in all or almost all other areas of their life, and turns to strict control of food (in whatever form) to gain some of that control back. Having that sense of mastery or discipline over food pseudo-compensates for the helplessness they often feel towards other aspects of life.

Myth #4: It’s just a phase.

False. Bell-bottom pants or a teenage adversary to one’s siblings are phases, but eating disorders are serious, real, and - if left to their own devices – severely detrimental. The physical consequences can be painful and permanent, and the emotional disturbances are just as

bad. In fact, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. It is dangerous to treat eating disorders (and mental illnesses in general) with complacency, because like any physical ailment, the gradual progression of symptoms can be harmful, and heartbreaking.

Myth #5: Why don’t you just start eating again?

I personally find this one the most repulsive. Do you really think that someone with an eating disorder would keep all the emotional agony and physical pain alive, all the isolation and hopelessness abundant, if they could just reach for the phone and order a pizza? No - it doesn’t work like that. You wouldn’t tell someone with a broken ankle to just suck up the pain and wait for it to heal. It’s called an illness for a reason, and to treat it otherwise is to lack compassion (and teem with ignorance).

Myth #6: Recovery is impossible

It is ironic that amongst all the indifferent outlooks people cast on eating disorders, the concept of recovery from one is viewed as unattainable. Thankfully, that is absolutely not the case. As one might guess, it certainly requires a lot of hard work (on the part of both the person and their support network of family, friends, and others), but it is viable and is 100 per cent worth it. There are many resources available for those suffering or those who have a loved one they suspect is suffering. On top of this, initiatives like MHAW seek to begin the journey of eradicating the stigma attached to seeking help.

Physical and mental illness should not be so vastly contrasted. After all, the brain is just another organ in the body, and a problem with it in no way reduces the person whom it affects. To all those who are suffering from an eating disorder - or any mental illness - please listen when I say: you are not alone, nor should you be.

Hipster racism is not so hip Emily Blake The use of ironic, satirical or socalled ‘hipster’ racism has become fashionable in pop culture and mainstream media. Many modern celebrities, sitcoms, and music videos have contributed to its popularity. Those who support this trend argue that by using racism ironically exaggerates how ridiculous its continued existence it. Conversely, there are strong arguments as to why even the ironic use of racism is harmful and contributes to deeprooted prejudice.

In an article on Jezebel, Lindy West discussed how hipster racism has become a trend among educated, white, middle class folks. These individuals believe that their desire to not be racist makes their use of ironic racism acceptable. However, according to West, racism mutates itself over time, and now it hides in plain sight.

It continues to exist in systematic inequalities, language about work ethic and state’s rights - and now in irony. Although certain elements of racism, such as slavery, are no longer acceptable, the prejudice behind them has not disappeared.

Many animated sitcoms make use of racialized stereotypes for political purposes. The theory behind this satire is that the exaggeration and mockery of stereotypes weakens their power in society.

However, regardless of this intent, there are many who find humour in these shows precisely because of the mocking of groups or individuals that they are intolerant of. As a result, the use of these stereotypes for comedic value only further

contributes to their normalcy.

It is also important to consider who is producing this content. The creators of these shows are often upper class, white, heterosexual, cisgendered males who have never had to face the types of prejudice that they are mocking. This means that they cannot fully understand how these jokes may affect certain groups. There are also many cases where prejudice is taken to such an extreme that it fails to come across as satire at all.

The music industry is also rife with recent use of hipster racism.

Feathered headdresses and other traditional Native American clothing items have become very fashionable. Artists who have sported this trend include Gwen Stefani, Lana Del Rey and Ke$ha.

Lady Gaga has also been appeared veiled in public. It is problematic that these individuals do not belong to the cultures that they are sampling elements from, and therefore do not fully understand the meaning behind these items of clothing.

Miley Cyrus has also faced a lot of criticism for cultural appropriation, using her all-black backup dancers as objects in her music videos and performances. Many critics were horrified when she repeatedly slapped the backside of a faceless backup dancer with a particularly sexualized and racialized body in her controversial VMA performance. Furthermore, Cyrus was quoted as saying that she wanted her hit song, “We Can’t Stop,” to feel ‘urban’ and ‘black.’ The singer has since responded to critics but has failed to examine how her behaviour may be contributing to

deeply entrenched racism.

Lily Allen has also been raising eyebrows for her use of ironic racism in the lyrics and video for her new single, “Hard Out Here.” The song is intended to be an empowering response to sexism and racism in the music industry, directly taking aim at Robin Thicke’s misogynistic hit, “Blurred Lines.” However critics have argued that Allen’s use of scantily clad, dark skinned backup dancers when mocking sexism in rap videos also further contributes to racial stereotypes.

The problem with ironic racism is that we are not living in a postracist society as some would like to believe. On the contrary, prejudice and intolerance are alive and well. While on the surface a white celebrity wearing a headdress, or a running joke about a Latina maid in a sitcom (such as in Family Guy), may seem harmless, cool, or even funny, these examples have deeper negative consequences. These stereotypes and behaviours come from a long history of systematic racism, and using them fashionably or for humour merely contributes to their acceptance and normalization.

This does not mean that these celebrities are bad people. Humans are prone to make mistakes and are deserving of forgiveness. The best that we as individuals can do is to educate ourselves and be critical of our behaviour and the content that we consume. Ask yourself who benefits from the use of racism and who may be hurt by it? It is only through education and critical analysis that we can truly begin to eradicate prejudice in our world.

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OPINION

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Rubbish bins and garbage binge Where does all the garbage go?

Ian Gibson There are three types of garbage that are categorized in Guelph: organics, recyclables, and actual “garbage.”

For three decades, Guelph has been a pilot city for new ways to separate waste. The original project, dating back to 1987, was the “blue box” program. Completely unheard of at the time, Guelphites were cajoled not only into dividing their garbage, but also having to “think” about how and why trash becomes split. This issue still plagues many in Guelph, particularly out-of-town students at the university.

Now, of course, most people in Guelph are well aware of the ways in which to separate their trash.

Cellophane wrapper in the “clear” bag, used prophylactic and banana peels in the “green” bag, and tissue boxes in the “blue” bag.

The Ontarion recently had a chance to ask Heather Connell, Guelph’s Solid Waste Resource Manager, about the “ins and outs” of where our local garbage actually goes.

The costly biodegradable program may perhaps be more “moral,” Connell said, but the more efficient cost-effective way to rid us of garbage is through the “bury or burn” method.

When asked what percentage of garbage is composted or goes to the landfill, Connell said that “in 2012, the City achieved an overall waste diversion rate of 68 per cent, exceeding the Solid Waste

Management Master Plan target of 65 per cent by 2016. Since implementing the SWMMP in 2008, the City’s residential diversion rate has increased by 30 per cent.”

As a result of a number of new City of Guelph initiatives - which include the opening of the Organic Waste Processing Facility, new sorting procedures for the recovery of glass, the recycling of construction and demolition materials, and electronic waste recycling - the diversion increase has been effective.

In 2012, the City achieved an overall waste diversion rate of 68 per cent, exceeding the Solid Waste Management Master Plan target of 65 per cent by 2016. Since implementing the SWMMP in 2008, the City’s residential diversion rate has increased by 30 per cent.

- Heather Connell, Guelph’s Solid Waste Resource Manager According to Connell, the Organic Waste Processing Facility that processes Guelph’s organic waste into clean, nutrient-rich compost may be costlier, but “it is the responsible thing to do in order to reduce climate impacts, divert waste from landfill, and create clean compost that can be put back into the earth.”

COURTESY PHOTO

As a result of a number of new City of Guelph strategies, we have seen an effective diversion of garbage in the city. This chart compares the weight in tonnes in 2008 versus 2012 for organics, recyclables and garbage.

A new initiative that Guelph has been implementing is the use of waste-carts instead of plastic bags. At a total cost of $8.8 million, the waste-cart program will help in decreasing Guelph’s carbon footprint. With a $1.3 million grant from Waste Diversion Ontario, the Continuous Improvement Fund will include automated trucks, ultimately resulting in having the need for fewer trucks and drivers, saving the City “$460,000 annually,” said Connell.

When asked how the city plans to get people to comply with the rules, Connell revealed that the city has in fact passed the Waste Management By-law, which is enforced by waste compliance by-law officers. In addition to the “garbage police,” Connell said that the “new automated collection trucks are equipped with a camera to view waste material emptied into the appropriate compartments. This camera will identify improperly sorted items, and Solid Waste Resources staff will follow up with home owners or

Balancing the seesaw

Roma Boogaczewicz

Many students who are enrolled in full-time studies at the University of Guelph simultaneously hold a job. Whether working to pay for school or simply to have extra spending money, these students must learn a very valuable skill: time management. Not only must they manage between school and work, but also friends, family and any extracurricular activities.

The balancing act is not as easy as some may think. Although student jobs are very accommodating toward class schedules, time to do school work is never actively taken into account. Any volunteering or sports must also be fit in to your own time; although, realistically, each of these commitments have individual schedules that may change slightly from week to week,

disrupting any pattern that was first established.

This kind of precarious balancing act of schedules forces schoolwork to be put on the back burner. As students, we may not always be prepared for class because we are behind on the week’s readings. Therein lies a worrisome danger of working while studying: falling behind in school. Since it is never anyone’s intention to fail classes, working students use all unoccupied free time to catch up on schoolwork.

However, socializing is also an important part of our lives as university students. Catching up with friends, going out and letting your parents know you’re alive and well is important for 18 to 25 year-olds. Even though we pretend to have mastered independence, there is a constant craving for the love and support that comes from

maintained relationships.

Don’t be fooled: balancing being a student and working will not result in a failed social life or bad grades. There are many students who have mastered the skill of time management and are successful in all aspects: school, work, relationships and extracurricular. I can proudly say that I have somehow managed to create a balance of my time between the people and activities that are important to me, on top of working and my studies - yes mom, I am eating and sleeping too!

The simple reality is that the initial combination of school and a job is tricky to accommodate. So, to all the other students and professors out there: do not be quick to judge students as unprepared or lazy slackers.

We are simply trying to figure out how to properly balance the seesaw lifestyle we are living.

tenants to address any questions about Guelph’s sorting system.”

Connell said that to encourage people to be more self-sufficient, the City of Guelph promotes waste reduction initiatives by encouraging residents to participate in five programs. These include: Take It Back directory, Bike Reuse Program, Goods Exchange Weekend, Waste Diversion Education Centre, and

Home Composting. Of course, on campus, there is also the “Move Out Madness” and the “Right Foot Forward” program offered through the University of Guelph.

Clearly, we all have a role to play in managing our waste. Connell said that “the City of Guelph is taking a leadership role in waste minimization and diversion for a sustainable, service-focused and economically viable future.”

EDITORIAL

Guelph needs a stronger core curriculum

Students need 20.00 credits, or as many as 40 courses, to graduate from the University of Guelph with an Undergraduate (Honours) degree.

Yet should a student choose to major in History, for example, the undergraduate course calendar obliges them to take just five mandatory ‘core’ courses.

Put differently, 87 per cent of their cumulative course load is optional, notwithstanding a few ‘select-one-of’ and ‘take-the-following-amountof-X-level’ limitations.

University departments, particularly in the arts and social sciences, are doing a disservice to their students by allowing for so much choice, and as such, coordinating a more structured and comprehensive core curriculum should be a priority for this university. Already, many other post-secondary institutions have realized that it is insufficient to let students direct the course of their own education. Students, left to their own devices, will dabble in a little bit of everything, while not learning much of anything at all.

While an education that covers a broad range of subjects is

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172.13 • Thursday, november 28, 2013

important, so too is structure: To get the best of both worlds, the University of Guelph should develop a strong core curriculum that includes many courses from many subjects, arranged within a system that allows for the material from one course to build upon the next in a fluid manner.

This ‘core’ should be mandatory for all undergraduate students, and all departments should adapt the principle of limiting choice for the sake of fluency so that by the time students reach their final year, they can be reasonably confident they have received a well-tuned education. All too often do upper-year students flounder and become dejected upon realizing that their education has been directionless and unsatisfactory.

Cathy Davidson, a Duke University professor and interdisciplinary-studies expert, calls the existing system a “the duck, duck, goose model.”

“We’re great at giving people dribs and drabs of a little bit of everything; we’re terrible at showing students how they’re connected,” she said to the Globe and Mail. “If you learn a little

programming and a little calculus, what does that have to do with [a] little ancient Greek?”

Those subjects might have a lot to do with one another, but those connections are more quickly appreciated when they are taught in a classroom. Teaching students to understand those connections is exactly the purpose of a highly prescriptive core curriculum.

A core curriculum would be representative of what the university feels every student needs to know, and every institution would be able to distinguish itself by the unique qualities of its core. Guelph, for instance, might choose to focus on international development and the biological sciences.

The U of G’s Bachelor’s of Arts and Sciences program might be a start in the right direction, in the sense that it is an attempt at a comprehensive education, but it too falls victim to the appeal of giving students excessive choice. A better path to follow would be the “Great Books Programs” offered by universities across the United Sates, including the University of Chicago, and in Canada by the University of King’s College.

Complicating matters is the fact that, right now, universities are under tremendous pressure to churn out students with specialized skills, ready for the ‘real world.’ A universal core curriculum appears to be at odds with that mandate, and so combined university-college programs are proving to be an attractive alternative. These combined programs let students divide their time between learning hands-on skills and studying theory.

But it is yet unclear if specialization is really what employers are looking for. Businesses frequently bemoan the fact that recently graduated employees lack vital, general skills. Increased specialization does not help remedy that problem, and nor does it satisfy those students who are determined to pursue a degree in the arts or the humanities, irrespective of the economic climate.

Students, if they can relate to what is described above, should make their dissatisfaction be heard in the classroom. For in the end, while a lack of specialization can be remedied down the road, a desultory and illspent university career cannot be so easily shrugged off.

LETTER TO EDITOR

Day in a Chair

On Nov. 6, we saw 13 campus community members partake in the event “Day in a Chair.” This event set out with the intent to draw attention to campus accessibility for individuals requiring mobility devices, and hopefully in extension, all forms of accessibility needs. It is understandable why some people may find an event like this to be problematic in that it is not a true representation of what it is like to require the use of a wheelchair permanently.

Barry Wheeler, a CSD advisor, strongly supported the initiative, saying it “promotes positive education around accessibility issues and daily challenges.”

He told the story of Guelph’s Mayor, Karen Farbridge, doing a similar event several years ago where, “her eyes were opened to non-accessible curb cuts, shops, restaurants, and some tangible things were repaired as a direct result of this day.”

Participants were asked to go about their typical day, but were encouraged to try several challenges they may otherwise not have done. One great example was Kimberly Snider who took a city bus to the Stone Road Mall and tried some weights at Goodlife Fitness.

Organizing the event couldn’t have happened without Cyndy McLean from the Guelph

Accessibility Project and Samantha Jones, an Applied Human Nutrition student. We were all pleased with how the event played out. Personally, I was most impressed with the level of commitment everyone showed.

To satisfy insurance policy, we gave the option for participants to stretch during a one-hour ‘reprieve’ time. Unanimously, everyone chose to stay in their wheelchair to get the most out of this experience as possible.

Participants were: Alastair Summerlee, Brenda Whiteside, Nathan Lachowsky, Fatima Chlelait, Chris Archibald, Charles Hamilton, Tyler Valiquette, Kimberly Snider, Jessica Adams, David Alton, Laura Nanne and Jordan Eyamie Check out #dayinachair for some photos and tweets about their experiences.

Julia Forster Academic & University Affairs Commissioner Central Student Association

Have a question, comment or complaint?

Send us a letter to the editor at ontarion@uoguelph.ca.

Deadline is Monday at 4 p.m., 300 word max.

The Ontarion Inc. University Centre Room 264 University of Guelph N1G 2W1 ontarion@uoguelph.ca Phone: 519-824-4120 General: x58265 Editorial: x58250 Advertising: x58267 Accounts: x53534 Editorial Staff: Editor-in-Chief Jessica Avolio News Editor Michael Long Arts & Culture Editor Emily Jones Sports & Health Editor Andrew Donovan Associate Editor Stacey Aspinall Copy Editor Alyssa Ottema Production Staff: Photo & Graphics Editor Wendy Shepherd Ad Designer Justin Thomson Layout Director Stephanie Lefebvre Office Staff: Business manager Lorrie Taylor Ad manager Al Ladha Office Coordinator Vanessa Tignanelli Circulation Director Sal Moran Web Editor Alexander Roibas Board of Directors President Heather Luz Treasurer Alex Lefebvre Chairperson Michael Bohdanowicz Directors Bronek Szulc Harrison Jordan Sohrab Rahmaty Anthony Jehn Shwetha Chandrashekhar Contributors Gagan Batra Emily Blake Roma Boogaczewicz Carleigh Cathcart Sameer Chhabra Andrea Connell Stephanie Coratti Antonio Corkovic Caleb Dallman Sarah Drury Braeden Etienne

Julia Forster Ian Gibson Eric Green Human Health and Nutritional Sciences Diana Kurzeja Melanie Michener Siobhan Speiran Steve Spular Will Wellington

The Ontarion is a non-profit organization governed by a Board of Directors.

Since the Ontarion undertakes the publishing of student work, the opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Ontarion Board of Directors. The Ontarion reserves the right to edit or refuse all material deemed sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise unfit for publication as determined by the Editor-in-Chief. Material of any form appearing in this newspaper is copyrighted 2011 and cannot be reprinted without the approval of the Editor-in-Chief. The Ontarion retains the right of first publication on all material. In the event that an advertiser is not satisfied with an advertisement in the newspaper, they must notify the Ontarion within four working days of publication. The Ontarion will not be held responsible for advertising mistakes beyond the cost of advertisement. The Ontarion is printed by the Guelph Mercury.

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FUN PAGE

COMMUNITY LISTINGS THURSDAY AT NOON Concert Series. Student Soloist Day, Thursday November 28th, 12pm. Mackinnon Room 107. Free!

University of Guelph Jazz Ensemble at Manhattan’s Pizza Bistro and Music Club, Thursday November 28th at 8pm.

Thursday, November 28th, 7:00 PM. History Lives Here: Amazing Airmen. Ian Darling, journalist and author who grew up in Guelph will speak about the ordeals Canadian airmen endured during WWII from his book Amazing Airmen: Canadian Flyers in the Second World War. Concert Winds Ensemble at UC Courtyard. Friday, November 29th at 7pm.

Holiday Sale Saturday December 7th. 10-2pm, Shelldale Centre Auditorium. No Admission fee. Tables are still available for more Artisans /Home Retailers, if interested contact Tyson Porter (t_porter@outlook.com or 519-824-6892 x224) Buy authentic hand-crafted art objects directly from Haiti! Partners With Purpose charity Christmas Sale, 10am to 4pm, Saturday Dec. 7 and Sunday Dec. 8 at Fergus Market (195 St. David Street South, Fergus). All proceeds go to PWP programs in Haiti.

BestCrosswords.com

Across 1- Newsboy 9- Although 15- Submissive to authority 16- Taken care of 17- Located 18- Playing marbles 19- Small child 20- RR stop 21- Anatomical passages 22- End in ___ (draw) 24- Ford flops 28- ___ Dawn Chong 29- Assessor 31- Follow 32- T.G.I.F. part 33- Fellow 34- Vernacular 36- Excite agreeably 38- Meat-balls 40- Chooses 43- Adult males 44- Leg unit between tarsus and femur 45- Sliding compartment of furniture 47- Exploit 48- Bivalve mollusk 50- Burt’s ex 51- Throat problem 53- Part of UNLV 55- The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet 56- Pale yellow liquid 58- Covered with scaly spots 60- Fly 61- Brief joke 62- Tantalizes

63- Noble woman

Transition Guelph’s 5th birthday celebration, December 7th at A.N.A.F. Club 344, 6:30pm. Cover is pay-what-you-can at the door. Pot luck, open mic, drum circle, cheap drinks, dancing, and local bands The Rolling Blackouts, The Rozell-Carraro Outfit.

SUBMIT your completed crossword by no later than Monday, December 2nd at 4pm for a chance to win TWO FREE BOB’S DOGS!

Guelph Contra Dances at St. James Anglican Church, 86 Glasgow St N. Second Friday every month. 8:00pm. Admission $10.00 Free parking. No partner or previous experience necessary. www.guelphcontradances.com

Down 1- Mail-related 2- Of the absence of life 3- Peevish 4- Web address ending 5- Narrow inlets 6- Superior 7- Continuously 8- Pay stub abbr.

Last Week's Solution 9- Al Jolson’s real first name 10- Filibuster figure 11- Defeat 12- Intestinal 13- Repeat 14- Throws 23- Les ___-Unis 25- Least fresh 26- Viscounts’ superiors Congratulations 27- Country singer to this week's McCann crossword winner: 30- Office of a bishop Lisa Gordon. Stop by 34- Hairlike structure the Ontarion office 35- Sherpa’s home to pick up your prize!

37- Member of the Conservative Party 38- Restless 39- Sluggishness 41- Black and white 42- Governing bodies 43- Variety of grape 45- Dealer in cloth 46- Waterways 49- Actress Verdugo 52- Periods 54- Structure for storing grain 57- Bandleader Brown 58- High hit Mon: Closed Tues - Sun: 11am - 10pm 59- Loud noise

Draw your favourite thing about the holidays here:

www.samurasushi.ca