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Over The Edge is the University of Northern British Columbia’s independent student newspaper. Our office is located on the 2nd floor of the NUSC building in room 6-350.

We are an equal opportunity publication which represents students in the UNBC and Prince George community. Our publication supports student writing by welcoming news, arts, sports, culture and opinion articles, as well as photography, comics, and creative writing submissions.

on Twitter, pirates music editing software.

Kanye West’s ego is a well worn subject, but I believe it is worth mentioning that we should stop enabling him. It is clear after his list of half-baked schemes, and whiny rants that no one has been willing to say no to him. This statement is hypocritical, but we need to stop giving attention to him, because he is a delusional, toxic manchild that is somehow a tastemaker in society. Kanye is a shitty example of how to act like a human being, yet his message constantly being broadcast worldwide.

Kanye is obviously successful, his gazillions of albums sold are a testament to this. By his own admission, he can afford furs and houses for his family. His viewpoint that the world should subsidize him because he believes he is the most talented entertainer of his generation is an absurd fantasy. Part of the philosophy behind Tidal is that artists are finally getting paid for their music, but Kanye apparently, as accidentally revealed

er

Over The Edge

in Kanye West getting a ton of buzz. This is a problem.

Brady

oe is Kanye West. The mercurial hiphop artist recently took to Twitter to bemoan a 53 million dollar personal debt.

This debt has presumably been accrued as West has taken on more and more nonmusical projects, like his investment in music streaming service Tidal, and his footwear and clothing lines. Kanye begged rich individuals, most notably Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, to give him money so he can “make dope shit”. This, combined with what has amounted to a nearly month-long stream of consciousness rant on Twitter, has resulted

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UNBC Life BCCFS Breaks Ties With CFS Grant Bachand Team Member

T

he Canadian Federation of Students BC is breaking ties with the Canadian Federation of Students. Over the Edge sat down with Simka Marshall, the Chairperson of the newly formed BCFS or BC Federation of Students to learn more about this break up. Marshall says that the BC branch of the CFS had some problems with how the national organization was conducting its business and various situations were arising, giving great concern to the management of the national organization. According to Marshall, at the BCFS annual general meeting in January, a motion passed to allow local organization within BC to vote on if they wanted to leave the national organization, CFS, but stay apart of the provincial organization, BCFS.

The national organization has not conducted an audit of their financial this year and many students within the BCFS say this shows a mismanagement of the national organization.

Another area of contention is the lack of a written national political strategy by the CFS. An example of a previous campaign run by the CFS is “education is a right,” which was spread across Canada to help bring attention to the rising costs of post secondary education here in Canada.

Here at UNBC this is important because the NBCGSS is looking to join the BCFS, holding a referendum last week.

As of the print deadline for this issue, the referendum results were not available. BCFS has a lot more resources and abilities in the realm of advocating for the rights of students in provincial terms and applying pressure to

the British Columbia government is part of of their core duties. This division is still fresh and many schools in BC are still part of the national organization. The transition from one to the other will take some time and it is unclear if all BC schools will choose to only be part of one group.

It also should be noted that this is not the first time a province has showed dissatisfaction in the national organization.In the past, schools in Quebec made moves to separate from the national organization. If that had any lasting impact, it certainly hasn’t lead the CFS to act any different according to some students.

Time will tell whether this break will be in the best interests of BC students or if it is just internal politics gone awry.

Be Smart With Computer Security Robert Corbin Guest Contributor

A

s new students arrive to begin studying at university, and seasoned students return to continue their studies, most will exchange stories of what they did while they were away. Rarely do students exchange stories of mistakes possibly made while spending time with technology or with their new computers. Several years ago UNBC used to host two separate campus specific wireless networks that could be connected to in any building, a secure wireless network where students would log in with their username and password, and an unsecure network that any device could connect to at will. The unsecure network was only available for a year or so before it was removed to migrate towards a more electronically secure campus.

Having accounts on campus requiring a username and password is a move that intended to make students more electronically aware of security risks present around them while using computers. Unfortunately, for the most part, security at UNBC is treated to a large extent as an unnecessary requirement that makes the simplest things like logging on to social media take longer, and requires remembering passwords and username combinations every day. It is important that students learn the absolute

requirements of security before they move to bigger and better things, because the chances of a hacker or even a coworker gaining access to a private work account is much higher when security is treated as laughable. Every week, after most students have gone home, a careful review of the computers in student labs always reveals accounts that are still logged on under students’ credentials. Anyone that wanted to create a little chaos could access the internet using these computers and could then engage in a number of shady businesses that would then be linked back to the account that was logged in. There have been situations when students have been kicked out of universities for sending threatening messages to colleagues, made possible because of a disregard for computer security.

A major step towards reducing the chances of this is ensuring that when you leave a computer you sign out or lock the computer to prevent unauthorized access. A second important step is to never allow someone to access accounts while logged in as yourself or anyone else. The third step is to rethink computer passwords. Technology and arbitrary computer policies over the past twenty years have made computer passwords extremely hard for users to remember, but extremely easy for computers to guess. A

couple decades ago when computer passwords came into common use with the advancement of Windows operating systems, most users would pick passwords they had used all through their lives that were then easy to remember. The problem with this is that anyone with enough knowledge of social engineering could talk to a user, their friends, or even their family members and put together enough hints and clues to guess a password. Current password requirements telling users that they need at least one uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, and a number or special character to increase password strength, do not understand how computers are used to hack user passwords. Using multiple character sets rarely increases the complexity of a password to a system that can guess a password trying between five million and five hundred million passwords per second.

The main decider on password strength is the length of a password. No computer system will ever be able to guess a password consisting of three or four words one after another and exceeding twenty letters, due to the exponential growth in possible passwords with long length. A bonus for users is these passwords can be custom tailored to be easier to remember, simply pick words that make a story in your mind.

Security is in the hands of the user after all.

4

UNBC Life

Recycle or Die Robert Corbin Guest Contributor

T

he city of Prince George 2 years ago implemented a municipal materials recycling program to decrease the sheer amount of reusable, compostable, and recyclable material that was making its way to the landfill. Those of us that have been around for a while remember the landfill when it was a hole in the ground that needed to be driven into with a pickup truck, while today it is now a mountain stretching more than a kilometre long and wider than half a kilometre.

The very large majority of “garbage” at the landfill consists of largely compostable food, and recyclable materials including aluminum drink containers, bottles and a large amount of recyclable plastic. While working at the landfill in 2013 performing a waste characterization study, an observation was made that the dollar value in drink containers making its way into the landfill at the time would be close to $3 million annually, based on the fact that $110 a week was being made taking in cans and bottles separated from the garbage that was being sorted. Not every dump truck load of garbage was sorted, because the study wanted a best estimate of the quantity of materials going to the landfill and representative samples needed to be taken.

Enter UNBC in 2016. For whatever reason, UNBC with its moniker of Canada’s Green University, has decided that garbage cans should be removed from many of the public spaces on campus, and instead replaced with recycling stations. A few locations on campus, relatively speaking, also have compost buckets as well. In spite of these moves, garbage still exists and needs to go somewhere.

Many students have gotten fed up with hunting around

carleton.ca

trying to find a garbage can and resort to throwing their garbage into the recycling bins. Everything is recyclable, however humanity has entered into a quasi-state where there is no will to recycle something unless there is money involved, or someone else has paid for it to be recycled.

Diabetics have to test their blood glucose levels multiple times a day and every time they do, there is garbage in the form of strips of polyester plastic with blood on one end and enzymes embedded in the plastic. Most people thinking about this will stop and say “EW!” but does that make this non recyclable? No, but the answer is also complicated.

Recycling today mostly takes reusable or recyclable materials and recycles them into non recyclable materials that undergo a single use then are disposed into a landfill. This way of thinking is very outmoded and outdated. As the new Prime Minister Trudeau has already said, “This is 2015”.

To recycle a polyester blood glucose test strip, some added procedures need to be performed, but it can still be recycled.

To start with, it must be washed in some fairly harsh chemicals, or autoclaved to ensure anything living on it will be dead before it is further processed. From there a series of

chemical reactions will have to be undertaken to reduce the plastic into starting compounds which could then be crafted into another recyclable material. As simple as that sounds, there is money involved in purchasing the chemicals, to getting someone trained in their use, to making sure that maintenance has been performed on the equipment so that it will not break down. Because there is money involved, it is deemed easier to throw it in the garbage. The Students for a Green University club would like the investors involved with UNBC to divest from oil stocks and invest in industries that are deemed safer for the environment. While this is a noble cause, it is outlandish to do so at a point when the throw away generation of forty years ago is making a comeback with actions that are deemed so much simpler than recycling.

The more oil based materials are thrown away, the more oil extraction is needed to produce these based on a cheap and proven technology. Yes continuation will lead to the destruction of the human species, but that seems to be far off so politicians don’t think it is important enough to worry about. More and more you can hear the saying “I’ll be dead so why should I care”. This attitude needs to change ASAP.

UNBC Senate Passes Non-Confidence Motion Grant Bachand Team Member

transparent for the Senate to do, and in line with what they are fighting against.

T

he UNBC Senate voted this Wednesday to determine the body’s confidence in current chair of the UNBC Board of Governors, Ryan Matheson. The motion carried, stating that the Senate has no confidence in Ryan Matheson’s leadership. This vote is symbolic and does not have any power to remove Ryan Matheson from his position as Chair of the Board of Governors, but signifies a massive divide within the university’s leadership.

The vote was conducted in private, and some senators were opposed to the secret ballot. Much of the opposition from members in the Senate were around the secretive methods the Board of Governors allegedly used when picking Moore as UNBC’s next Chancellor. One Senator remarked about this being not open and

This comes after a long battle between different groups at UNBC over the James Moore appointment. Many have expressed that the Board of Governors is “out of touch” with the university community. The discussion went on for a long time over this issue. An issue of a “shadowy” group known as the “Senate Caucus” was brought up by President Daniel Weeks. This group was accused of “whipping votes” of senators and not being part of the official Senate, or its processes. The members of the Senate Caucus stated that the group is not aimed to whip votes but to have frank discussions. Members also stated that they were offended by the remarks of the president and asked for an apology.

Regardless of what happens next, this will surely go further to divide the institution.

By Levin C. Handy (per http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.04326) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

You don’t have to sit in school to stand among greatness.

UNBC Life

Present

Silver Codgers

Hamilton Woods Guest Contributor

Idris Clarke Guest Contributor

As we looked outside

Decided the other night

We saw everything we could have been doing

after a smidge of a fright

Things that we should be doing, really.

that I wanna be an old fogie one of them crusty oldies

We shouldn’t feel this panic seizing our

than frequent the crag

muscles when

with skin dripped baggie faces

we come home because we know that

and lightning in their eyes.

all we have to do is more Doing I wanna be one of them old ones We think about the future because the present evades us

one of the ‘prodigal sons’

Goals float in our minds that are seductive

silver codgers

Only then, we think, will we be happy in the present

that say

But the future becomes present, and that dream

back in my day...

is never as gilded as it was in our minds I want to be from a golden age What happens when the Doing stops

just; not one filled with beige

What happens when we just take a moment to realize

mines gonna be full of colour

that this very moment is so singular and beautiful

and won’t be duller than I make it.

And so we walked We walked

I’m gonna be a silver cragger

And walked

one who looks real haggard

And for a moment

but can still send a route

As the snow crunched and twigs snapped

with wrinkly feet in wrinkly boots

and the wind let out an exhale That we finally felt at peace.

That’s my plan.

I’m gonna be that wrinkly bloke with wiry brushes for brows and that smiling knowing frown that says back in my day...

› Thomas Edison: The world’s most extraordinary failure never gave up.

Thank goodness.

open. online. everywhere. go.athabascau.ca/online-courses

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6

Student Voice

Safe Spaces on Campus Robert Corbin Guest Contributor

H

ere at UNBC, a large amount of work has been put into the campus so that nearly everyone can feel safe, or can have a sense of belonging. Areas on campus from the Pride Centre to gender neutral washrooms have been installed with the express purpose of providing space where people that have traditionally felt persecuted, can exist in peace, even if only for a short time.

With this in mind however, UNBC has really done nothing to provide a space for students that are deficient in daily snuggles with a soft and fuzzy pet. Dog, cat, rodent, and even bird lovers that feel lonely after grueling lectures on calculus, group theory or even wildlife ecology, have nowhere to turn so that they can feel at home again. Though at UNBC we as students are surrounded by other students at nearly all times, there are still many times that we break down, or crack a little on the inside because there are no unconditional animal hugs available on a daily basis.

UNBC should have a space dedicated to puppies and kitties, with a small side area for guinea pigs, gerbils, hamsters, rabbits, and even rats or mice. In speaking with colleagues,

this has been addressed as a positive change that would alter not only the expectations and perceptions of students looking to go to a post secondary institution, but also a change that would open the doors to additional training and coursework that could be offered through UNBC. Canada has only a small number of veterinary schools across the expanse of this country, and perhaps another one that could be a refuge for baby moose or elk that are orphaned should be opened.

Complaints have noted that there wouldn’t be regular staff to feed, take care of, and even to clean up after the animals.

While these are legitimate concerns, dozens of students jumped into the conversation and offered to do it, and even remain at UNBC paying tuition in the summer so they could continue. There were also rotating offers saying that it could be a drop in service to walk dogs or take care of the other animals, more like a first come first served idea. Thus far in Canada, the only university that was previously known for its animal populations was UVic, which was also ranked as the number one location in the university community of Canada to go for the binge drinking parties. Sadly, they recently implemented a cull to remove the nearly 2000 wild booplesnoots that lived on campus nearly six years ago. Because of this, now the University of Victoria is a binge drinking campus that does not offer wild hangover bunnies to make students feel better and get to class.

Though statistics are lacking in this area, it can be assumed that after long weekend hours spent partying, classes likely contained fewer than expected numbers of students after the cull. One other safe space on campus that in the past has been provided by making large numbers of friends and establishing protected study areas where backpacks and bags can be safely watched is a safe sleeping space. In the past there were very comfortable well worn in padded chairs that were delightful to lie down on, and would quickly pull unwary travelers into a soft dreamland. However, these extremely comfortable chairs were removed to make way for the new, shiny and uncomfortable plastic couches and chairs. These new chairs offer very little back or neck support to anyone that happens to doze off for even a short while. Theories as to this move abound, but most mention the large number of students that were being woken up by security while on the old chairs. The running theory goes that security got so fed up with waking up students that a plan was hatched to replace the comfortable chairs that were easy to sleep on with expensive uncomfortable ones.

It is quite rare these days to see students napping, although it does still occasionally happen. A safe sleep space on campus should be provided where one could check in their belongings, and sleep for a time between classes on those marathon school days to help stay sharp for the next class.

Syria and the Movement of Change: Opinion Monique Gendron Team Member

S

ince the start of this semester, several of my classes have been talking about the refugee crisis. The movement of refugees, the causes of their displacement, how the world has been handling this calamity.

To tell the truth, no one on the world stage has been doing a good job of managing this disaster. The European Union has contributed some significant monetary help for “relief and recovery assistance” to the millions still in Syria, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are many people knocking at their front doors, in desperate need of help.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled their country, uprooted by civil war and terrorism from all warring sides. To stay in Syria was dangerous, but that is not to say that the journey to leave their torn land isn’t any less dangerous. Crossing the

Mediterranean sea is perilous at best, especially in overcrowded boats. Over 3,000 refugees have died making the crossing from Libya to Italy, and the Aegean crossing has claimed over 700 lives by itself (bbc.com). Driven by desperation, the refugees will risk death for the hope of a better life for themselves and their families.

However, in response to these attempts to enter Europe, many EU governments have opted to instead discourage refugees from even trying to enter. Between 2007 and 2014, the European Union spent 2 billion euros on upgrading border patrols and high-tech security (youtube.com, Kurzgesagt).

They have been actively shutting down smuggling networks, but not reopening any alternative means of attaining mainland Europe. Many countries are immediately deporting any people who entered illegally without even offering them a chance to apply for asylum either within

their country or in another. The U.K. government even shut down life saving programs such as Mare Nostrum, which was designed for preventing the very deaths on the ocean that we are seeing today (hrw.org, Kurzgesagt).

Not all the European Union are closed to refugees, however. Germany has thrown its doors open to the population of refugees, unconditionally accepting all asylum applicants, and is urging the rest of the Union to do the same. In doing so, they are not being weak, nor are they providing opportunities for terrorist attacks or propagating Islam throughout the modern world. They are providing a place of safety, a refuge. They are proving the extremists wrong by being kind and welcoming.

I think that the rest of the world could learn a thing or two from Germany, the ‘aggressor nation.’

Student Voice 7

The Case of Small Pockets

popsugar.com

Robert Corbin Guest Contributor

A

s human beings living on this world, everyone usually needs clothing. Be it to protect oneself from the environment, or creatures that live in nature, much like those that live in the far northern reaches of The Territories do, or as a means of exclaiming to the surrounding throngs: I’m interesting, I’m available, or even I’m colour blind. Most fashion designers that tend to cater towards the male side of their customer base tend to produce monotone simple coloured articles of clothing that aren’t likely to force a man to have to consult with a female friend to find a name for a shade of dye that is beyond the standard male 16 colour vision settings.

Several other notable things present in men’s clothing would be that the fabrics tend to be fairly heavy, and there is no such thing as too many pockets. Cargo pants are a fantastic invention that prevent people from having to stop while preparing to leave their house and say “I don’t think I can carry that with me today; I don’t have space.”

duluthtrading.com

A pair of pants with thirteen to fifteen pockets, and with pockets hidden inside other pockets? This is a veritable man’s dream. At some point in the splitting of the fashion industry into equal and opposite halves however, while one side accrued a lifetime supply of pockets, the other side had donated all their pockets away.

Women’s fashion for the most part is strangely devoid of pockets, and in many cases makes use of imitation pockets consisting of a small line of stitching above a small fold of material. This creates a small bulge that would be seen with a real pocket, minus the pocket and serving no actual material use. Many have theorized that this was a move devised in a closed door meeting between fashion big-wigs and purse manufacturers to force women to buy as many purses as possible.

Unfortunately without organization, or large moves by women’s groups to fix this problem, the chances of fashion designers announcing that usable and sizable pockets are coming in the next iteration of fashion are slim to none.

Women everywhere have experienced at least one, but usually many times of sliding a hand with keys or loose change down to what they assumed was a pocket on inspection in a store; only to find out it is actually an optical illusion. The key or change then in a fit of shock tends to end up on the ground while she frantically searches around the garment, trying to find a real pocket that could hold these items. Women that have adapted to these experiences will shrug, sigh, and exclaim “at least I have this nice purse that is nearly large enough to smuggle a medium sized dog inside.” The problem with shifting items from pockets that are fairly close to the body; on pants or sweater, to a purse that typically dangles at the end of an outstretched arm,

unbc.ca

is that over time as that bag with nearly limitless holding potential will get heavier and heavier, and will eventually risk damaging to one’s posture and possibly doing other harm.

Critical analysis of that last sentence by men and some women would say: simply don’t carry that much stuff around, and while that would make sense, there are times when you need to carry a week’s worth of clothing with you to the mall. How many items in apocalypse movies has the female lead been holding a purse, but didn’t have fresh underwear?

Clearly a lack of critical insight here, though I jest, and yes no single person should be carrying tens of pounds of junk with them everywhere they go. Unfortunately as students, we all do this in the form of textbooks, pens, paper, notebooks, loose change, packages of gum and whatever else we happen to have picked up while roaming around school.

Due to this reason, we feel unfairly targeted when people say don’t carry so much junk with you. So I ask you, the readers: side with me in agreeing that women’s clothing should have large and usable pockets. Break the monopoly on storage space held by the purse manufacturers, before the next apocalypse happens if possible.

8

Opinion

La Loche Deserves Respect, Not Judgement Linda Glover Guest Contributor

F

ebruary is upon us; yet, I remain captive to the images staring back at me, in wonder of the beauty that once existed. I can’t leave them. They are the portraits painted

by Fort McMurray artist, Russell Thomas, in honour of the victims of last month’s shootings in La Loche, Saskatchewan. The colours of these once vital lives haunt me, like they should every Canadian whose heart continues to beat. But there is something else.

used to report that information needs to change. Writers are privileged to have their voices heard, but with that privilege comes a responsibility, not just to report, but

I am angry.

The beauty in these portraits is juxtaposed with my disappointment at the lack of compassion in the ongoing media coverage since the January 22 shootings that claimed four lives and injured many others; specifically, the relentless cliché describing La Loche as a community of dysfunction festering beneath a blanket of alcoholism and addiction, suicide, unemployment and poverty. Despite its apparent truths, which I would be naïve, arrogant and heartless to diminish, if only for the people who suffer its effects, I don’t recall community condemnation used in conjunction with any other school or mass shooting in our country’s history, and there have been many.

Considering this, we would do well to take pause and remember that in every broken person there exists greatness, and in every tragedy there are heroes. I say, be one. Seize the opportunity to tell us more of the local leaders and everyday people, the elders and youth, the teachers and others, who have stood tall to make a difference. Theirs are the stories that inspire change, that lift up rather than knock down. Tell us a different story from a more proactive angle.

Strength breeds strength. It empowers. And empowered people are capable of anything, especially crawling out from under blankets.

And, in answer to the question posed to Nikki Fraser, a Kamloops mother, by Justin Trudeau during a CBC special, Face to Face with the Prime Minister, which aired two days after his visit to La Loche—“Indigenous lives matter…why should I have to say this in 2016?”—it’s because little has changed.

The template used to report any tragedy in an Aboriginal community too often remains the same as it has for decades: The cliché. And, sadly, the assertion that these social ills—global, I might add—are the crux of every tragedy that strikes an Aboriginal community, that they are an Aboriginal community, in turn an Aboriginal person, only serve to further demoralize its people. The message: If-it-is, you-are.

The people who are living this devastating loss deserve better: They are human. We, as citizens, receive our information primarily through the media, and the template

The people of La Loche possess incomparable strength and resilience and compassion. I know this because they woke up the next morning: I can’t imagine that I could. And then, spotlighted on a stage in front of a country who didn’t care about them the day before, they went about the business of taking ckom.com care, of holding each other up as they prepared for the heart-shattering task of honouring and burying their dead, of moving minute-by-minute into a new reality, their future, thrust upon them by this tragedy.

Let’s honour the lives of Dayne and Drayden Fontaine, Marie Janvier and Adam Wood, the injured, their families and friends, the community of La Loche, our human family, ourselves. In 2016, we need to change our focus and live our hope, our humanity.

act upon the opportunity to invoke change. And, for too long, for the most part, in this light, we’ve failed.

Seventeenth century anthologist, John Bodenham, wrote: “In a little place is hid a great treasure, and in a small hope a boundless expectation.” Four centuries later, his wisdom could not be more relevant: It is the only way to move forward. We have to acknowledge all truths yet focus on the treasure and the boundless expectation within the small hope, to expect and gain progress.

I am no different than the people of La Loche, and neither are you: I, too, have great hope and dream of a better future. But, in this one moment, I’m left to wonder about the portrait not painted, that of the troubled 17-year-old boy, currently alone in a prison cell and awaiting his fate. We will likely never understand the why of January 22, but I, for one, wonder, if it was a result of ‘if-it-is, you-are?’

If the template had changed, would he have realized his treasure, known boundless expectation? Would his, and his community’s, fate have been different?

UNBC Life 9 unbc.ca

An ‘Interest’ing Dilemma Robert Corbin Guest Contributor

T

he purpose for using banks as a means of storing money traditionally used to be for the added security provided by an institution housing your money, preventing anyone from being able to pick it up and leave without a trace. This added security created several different job openings in the form of security guards as well as bank robbers. In the current era of technological marvels, bank robbers have been forced to become computer hackers due to the high input cost of bank heists and the low chance of success.

Since the world financial crisis of 2008, banks have become less and less customer centred, while increasing fees to higher and higher levels. The customers have for the most part accepted these changes without questioning at what point enough will be enough.

which has the same risks as an RRSP but without the penalties for removing the money before retirement.

Student loans as of the last check were charging 7% interest, with the possibility of it increasing if the Bank of Canada raises their lending rates. Similarly most credit cards that

In 2006, and with the assistance of a Scotiabank “high interest savings account” which at the time provided 3% annual interest, a mere $500,000 in the bank would provide enough interest to pay rent, car insurance and buy a significant portion of a year’s worth of groceries. Since 2008 with lending rates falling quickly while interest charged has skyrocketed, the average savings account nets the customer anywhere from 0% to 0.05% interest. This however must be taken with the facts that banks have invented new charges with the sole purpose of gouging customers. With the fees added on, it no longer makes financial sense to have a basic savings account if the balance is less than one hundred million dollars, since even a cold hard million in the bank will only net $41.66 in interest per month.

RRSPs are constantly being thrust on people left right and centre, without the public being made aware that a basic RRSP is based on market conditions, and if the market falls, your principal investment is not guaranteed.

The meaning behind this is that if the market decreases in value, the money you invested can shrink, or in severe situations disappear. The closest fix to this situation was the introduction several years ago of the tax free savings accounts. In a TFSA, any tax earned is not taxed ever, and the money invested is guaranteed to never drop below the amount put in, unless the TFSA investment is switched over to a high risk investment portfolio

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has made some preliminary efforts to rectify the situation by completely eliminating student loans and replacing them with student grants. As the very soft voiced student loans advocacy groups say at the bottom of their lungs “education shouldn’t be a debt sentence” even though supporting these

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are aggressively marketed towards students as a population have interest rates set at or near 29%. With these thoughts in mind, and with banks constantly posting large earnings reports and high fiving themselves for raking in so much money investing the money of others, the purpose of a bank has fallen from a financial institution that would pay back its customers with a portion of their investment every year, to suit wearing criminals that punish you for seeking to have some security for your money.

It is sad that the meme that states “in capitalist America, bank robs you!” is so valid today, while no regulations at any level of government are trying to fix this fractured system.

student groups has led to consecutive tuition increases across the province every year since 2009. The way that financial systems should be run is to adjust fees, prices, and interest paid based not only on the availability of jobs in an area paying a living wage, but also based on the economic performance of the country and province.

Credit card companies should not be able to charge an interest rate above the interest paid on a basic savings account, or that charged on a basic mortgage.

This is a system that would decrease national debt, while also decreasing national stress.

10

Culture

Mental Health and Sexual Assault: Part III Grant Bachand Team Member

M

ental health is something that causes a buzz with some groups, and stigma with others. Here at UNBC we are fortunate enough to have services on campus for students that help us deal with many of the challenges that come our way being a student. That however is not always the case when people leave the university or live in the greater community of Prince George. In Prince George, Northern Health is the all encompassing deliverer of health care.

People have come far in reducing the stigma around mental health over the last 10-20 years, and even though things are getting better, they still have miles to go. Organizations dealing with mental health still need to improve greatly with how they treat people with mental health and those who advocate to make things better get more than a couple road blocks to contend with.

Over the Edge sat down with someone who has first hand knowledge of the mental health services in Prince George and gave the truth about the mental health world that not everyone might know. Penny-Lynn Davidson sits on an organization known as the Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council. It is an organization that is made up of Consumers of Mental Health services in Prince George, working to improve those services and create a community for people who have a mental illness. In order to utilize mental health services people must go to various doors to get into the system; a doctor, the critical response unit, or the emergency room at the hospital if it is serious enough.

However those doors can sometimes be challenging for people to open, especially if you are from a low-income household. Once in the system you will be referred to either a psychiatrist or counselor, and given a case manager.

However, referrals can take months to be processed and during that time you will have to learn to cope with whatever mental illness you have. The reason why it takes so long for the referral to get you an appointment with a doctor or counselor is simply a lack of resources and a huge demand. Before you think Prince George is falling behind the rest of the world, Davidson says Prince George is one of the better communities. In Vancouver people can sometimes wait years to see a mental health professional.

Once in the community, there are many different groups that can help you cope, build a support network, and heal. However, according to Davidson that also gives way to one of the biggest problems in the mental health field in Prince George:groups not working together. The big

problem revolves around control. An example Davidson used was that Northern Health might not want to refer a patient to the Canadian Mental Health Association because they want to remain in control of that patient.

The reason why these groups like to remain in control of a patient and have no interest in working together with other groups is because of a couple various factors, but one of the biggest is because they all receive their funding from the same “pot”, according to Davidson.

Northern Health distributes the funding for all mental health groups in Prince George and therefore controls how these organizations operate. One of the fears is that if the different groups support various projects then their funding could be cut, thus making things harder on the organization. The budget for funding of mental health does not grow to accommodate the different organizations.

Funding is not the only part of the picture when it comes to the many mental health groups working together.

Information dissemination is something that according to Davidson does not happen. Once a month the various mental health groups in Prince George get together and talk about challenges in their field with the Northern Health Authority. The information collected at these meetings is supposed to be distributed to all frontline staff members in order to help them do their job more effectively. Davidson says that just doesn’t happen,

“Northern Health isn’t terribly interested in what the advisory board has to say. It isn’t of much concern what these organizations have to say in regard to their policies.

The Consumer Council’s idea to help solve that problem is to bring in a third party advocate who can help people who suffer from mental health related issues navigate the system, to lobby various groups on the person’s behalf, and other various duties. In January 2015 the Consumer Council put out an information package to all the various mental health groups in Prince George to get their input on the idea of this advocate and, according to Davidson, not a single group got back to them.

They wanted to get the various group’s input on what they would want to see for the role of the advocate and how they could make that program work. Maureen Davis, the executive director of the Prince George branch of the Canadian Health Association, spoke to Over the Edge about the idea of an advocate. She believes that we need to ensure that we are not duplicating services that are already in place.

An example she used is if a person is wanting to speak to a review board about funding an advocate is not appropriate for that but if someone spoke with legal aid that would be.

Dave Halikowski, president of the British Columbia Schizophrenia Society, said his position was that Prince George would greatly benefit from a third party advocate.

Halikowski would like to see an advocate that has a similar role as the one for children. He would hope the advocate would come from the province directly and not Northern Health. The hope is the advocate would be independent. Halikowski stated that, “We get a lot of our funding from Northern Health and if we start complaining about Northern Health and the way they handle the services, it jeopardizes your funding. It is as simple as that.” That way they don’t have to worry about “towing the party line” or else they would lose their funding.

Over the Edge attended a Consumer Council meeting where Mayor Lyn Hall was in attendance. Mayor Hall gave a couple comments about how the City of Prince George can work with the Consumer Council. Hall believes that working to get an advocate in Prince George would be something the city could look at through their social planning department, which was “decimated” by the former council. Currently, Chris Bone is in charge of that department. The city is trying to reach out to the community in order to understand different needs of groups like the consumer council and see if there is a place or the city to work with them.

In the end this advocate would simple help people figure out how to navigate a very complicated system. It is important to understand that some people who suffer from mental illness can advocate on their own behalf. The advocate is there to help those people who can’t always help themselves. Davidson said that when you suffer from a mental illness sometimes it takes all you effort just to get out of bed, and you can’t spend hours waiting in a line to speak to a government agency.

According to others on the Consumer Council for a person to get up and complain to the hospitals complain department when they suffer abuses from hospital staff is like a parolee

Culture 11 complaining to his parole officer about his drug-dealing neighbor.

People fear retribution from the staff at the hospital if they complain about how they are treated. The third party advocate is not a new idea the consumer council tried once to get an advocate in Prince George. They brought their request all the way to the BC government finance committee and was turned down. They are now trying again but using a grassroots movement to get their idea off the ground,

they are looking to the people of Prince George to help them build support for this idea. They are setting up tables around Prince George and asking people to help support this endeavor and them to help bring an advocate to this community. According to the Consumer Council if you have a problem in this town with Northern Health, there is no one in Prince George who isn’t paid by Northern Health to turn to and people cannot advocate against their employer.

In the end of this three part series we hope that readers have a better understanding of mental health and sexual assault issues. They are dynamic and complicated problems where a lot of the main issues they face concern stigma. The stigma of shame which lingers over these issues, and in the end there should be no stigma. As UNBC students we are fortunate to have as many services here at the university to help them in case we are in an emergency. However that is not the case for many people who are in Prince George, who suffer from mental health related issues and are victims of sexual assault. If you need to reach out and get help the services are here to help you if you need it. In the end we need to take the opportunities that we have at UNBC and go out and create opportunities in our community for those who might not have them.make sense. We are a very sexualized society, but we do not deal with it in a healthy way or talk about it openly.

12

Culture

The Life of Pablo, Reviewed By A Feminist Who Doesn’t Care That Kanye is Sexist Jordan Tucker Guest Contributor

K

anye West is a cultural juggernaut. He’s the only person I can think of, other than Donald Trump, who can dominate the mainstream news cycle for months at a time through sheer force of personality and not get boring. His very existence is performance art. So I’m here to say that I’m a feminist and I’m a music lover and I don’t give two flying fucks about whether Kanye is sexist or not. I don’t care if he’s nice, or if he’s punching photographers. Because that is not the point of Kanye West. The point of Kanye is to be Kanye. As Kanye said in one of his many recent tweets, “I’m an artist… the definition of art — or at least my definition — is to be able to see the truth and then express it…”

The conversation about Kanye is often similar to the way we speak about women. He’s “emotional”, prone to “outbursts”, “crazy”, “irrational”. He does not meet our expectation for the behaviour of a successful person. We expect successful people to behave like the economic systems we ascribe to — calculating, about the bottom line. Kanye is honest, above all. He shares his fears and his vulnerabilities. He is lewd, and often embarrassing.

But underlying all of this is an authenticity and genuine intelligence that borders on emotional genius. The man is simply incapable of filtering himself to almost any capacity (I say “almost” because he sort of stopped himself from interrupting Beck at the Grammys last year).

I value Kanye from a feminist perspective, independent of his sexism. I realize that this is a tricky line to walk.

I don’t like his sexism, but I cherish the ways he puts himself out there. To me, Kanye West’s misogyny is almost besides the point, and to condemn him for that would be to undercut the very tangible cultural value he provides in other ways. With that in mind. here’s a track-by-track review of The Life of Pablo.

(I didn’t point out all the ways he’s sexist in each track, because ain’t nobody have time for that.)

1.Ultra Light Beam, ft. Chance the Rapper This is probably what Kanye’s referring to when he says this is a gospel album. As in “Only One”, Donda West, Kanye’s late mother, is impersonated as a gospel singer: “I know that you’ll take good care of your child”. Chance the Rapper has a moving verse about fatherhood and fame — “my daughter looks just like Sia, you can’t see her”, referring to pop star Sia’s habit of hiding her face to cope with anxiety. The production is moving, and as per standard Kanye, goes from dissonant electronic hums to sparkling backing trumpets. Kanye is doubling down on his Christianity here, calling for faith.

2. Father Stretch My Hands pt. 1 Here we go, now we’re getting into the beats! Kanye starts the track with a call for redemption: “if I ever instigated I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” moving gospel women take over as the crescendo builds, the beat kicks in, and Kanye says, “Now if I fuck this model, and she just bleached her asshole, and I get bleach on my t-shirt, I’m gonna feel like an asshole/Nah, I don’t really wanna think about it.” This effortless kick-flipping between self-reflexive spirituality and seemingly low-brow obsessions with sexual and sartorial pleasures is one of my favourite things about Kanye. He’s multi-faceted and refuses to separate the aspects of his personality that may seem like cognitive dissonance to some.

The ability to hold multiple contradictory ideas in your head at once is no small feat, and to paraphrase Lewis Carroll, Kanye has often been a hundred different people before breakfast.

3. Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2 This song (featuring a sample from swaggerman Desiigner, about all the broads he’s got in different cities) has a weird mish-mash of boisterous misogyny and confession. Over a desperate synth beat, Kanye apologizes to a woman for not calling her back, “same problem my father had”. Then Kanye returns to Yeezus-era politico: “All his cash, market crashed/Hurt him

bad, people get divorced for that”. I was a little bit upset when I first heard this album, wishing for more political commentary, but have changed my tune after multiple listens. It’s still there, but Kanye has returned to funneling through 808’s & Heartbreaks-style emotional lenses, which, from a feminist perspective, I can’t help but applaud.

4. Famous This track opens with Rihanna. Rihanna is great. Next up, a grand Kanye declaration: “for all the south-side n***as that know me best/I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/I made that bitch famous”. Now, taking credit for Taylor Swift’s success entirely is a little bit presumptive, noisey.vice.com

Student Voice 13 as well as assuming they’re going to have sex because of it, but apparently Taylor Swift herself came up with the line. In one of Kanye’s many tweets, he said he was told that she had said it during a dinner with a mutual friend. Kanye can be a jerk, but I don’t think he’s dishonest, and her publicistissued statement about misogyny after the fact seems a little bit unfair, considering she apparently had a phone conversation with Kanye and okay’d the line. I liked Taylor Swift’s synthy dream of a last album, but her overall persona is a little bit saccharine for me: it seems to teeter too much between wounded doe-girl and empowered woman to be anything but contrived. Like, you’re the most popular musician alive right now, stop whining about how the boys hurt your feewings. Try drying your eyes on a Calvin Klein model’s boxers or something, you’ll feel better. Her feminism has always seemed to be a bit of a marketing strategy for me. I’d much rather listen to someone who is authentically a total D-bag (Kanye) than a syrupy album about minimizing your personal power when it’s convenient to get boyfriends.

Taylor Swift makes me want to blow chunks.

I’m a bad feminist, I know, I know. As well, this song features both Sister Nancy and Nina Simone on the outro, and until Taylor Swift starts promoting black female artists as much as Kanye does, she can stay in her corner with her talks of “sisterhood”. Yeezy is problematic in how he treats women, but musically, he practices intersectionality.

5. Feedback Kanye goes back to Yeezus’ roots, with some great dissonant synth backgrounds here. He also references Gospel’s origins, “you heard about the GOOD news?” He demands that people ‘wake up”, referencing the Black Lives Matter movement, “hands up we’re just doing what the cops taught us.” This line is tragic, echoing unarmed black teen Michael Brown’s pleas to the police officer who subsequently shot him. “Hands up, then the cops shot us”, he says, outlining the helplessness faced by people whose only crime is existing in their own skins. This is Kanye’s most political track on the album: later on, he says, “rich slave in the fabric store picking cotton”.

As a rich man, he has more opportunity than most black men, but here he suggests that he’s still subject to many of the forces of white hegemony, especially in terms of his endeavors in clothing design.

6. Lowlights ...is a pared down piano-backed gospel intro to the next track. It talks about God. Whatever.

7. Highlights An earlier version of this track featured Madonna in place of Young Thug, and it was a lot poppier. I think I liked the Madonna version better. It sounded like something indie-electronic boppers Purity Ring might make in another Danny Brown collaboration, and had an upper end that sounded like shredded confetti. Sonically, I think the Young Thug collab fits better with the rest of the album’s frenetic masculinity. Also, the line about wishing his dick had Go-Pro is hilarious. Near the end of the track, a booming, boisterous beat that mimics Young Thug’s well-rounded baritone segways into a great opportunity for Kanye to deliver a really kicky verse… which he completely wastes to talk about over-eating, his trainer, and whomever his brother-in-law is sleeping with. I get that Kanye is approaching middle age, and he’s all about family now. This song is about how the banality (or, Kanye’s version of it) is restful and awesome and wonderfully ordinary. I get it. But every time I think of how awesome this beat is I get angry at him for doing it disservice. Part of what made earlier Kanye efforts great was that his overblown ego was matched only by his chronic insecurity — both fed into each other and created each other like some cosmic snake eating and crapping itself for eternity. Now that domesticity has tempered his insecurity, he’s got his ego, and no need to make clever, manic verses.

I think. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.

Either way, this verse is lazy and I hate it.

8. Freestyle 4 Oh hell yes. Beautiful, eerie, high-strung violins open, contrasting anxiously with a raspy-voiced open. Gothic highs contrast with manic industrial vocals from Kanye. The tempo gets more and more frantic, as the beat shifts into something that sounds like a hospital heart monitor. Then… a sound like an error message, and it’s done. This would have fit right in on Yeezus, but the mid-highs are a lot more complex than a lot of the darker strainings on that album. Also, Kanye pleads

with a prostitute to bring her price down, presumably because he’s $53 million in debt.

If I could make out with this song, I would.

9. I Love Kanye It’s almost as if Kanye anticipated criticism for his lazy-ass verse on ‘Highlights’. I can’t explain to you how perfect this song is, or how brilliantly self-aware and tongue in cheek Kanye can be when he needs to.

Suffice to say, I’ve memorized this, and plan to include “I love you like Kanye loves Kanye” in my wedding vows to whatever sap I trick into marrying me. Also, that little giggle at the end? Absolutely precious.

Suffice to say, I’ve memorized this, and plan to include “I love you like Kanye loves Kanye” in my wedding vows Right here is where I tentatively forgave Kanye the artist for every stupid, ignorant thing he’s said, just like we all forgave Justin Bieber for being the literal human personification of a dildo because he put out an album full of bangers. Pop culture fans are fickle and superficial nerf herders.

10. Waves This song is currently the most-streamed song on the Billboard charts. You go, Glen Coco. I think it’s kind of boring so I’m not going to get too into it. Basically, it’s got a mellow bed that sounds almost like it could be backing a slower Beach Boys track and is emotive. It definitely carries the gospel theme. Chance the Rapper and noted awful person Chris Brown are on this track.

I can mention me”, which is a testament to the power of choice that only the mostelegantly self-destructive may dream of. As usual, Kanye manages to extract the best work from his collaborators: The Weeknd sounds almost operatic here. There’s a really dissonant backing vocal that I can’t identify that sounds like Nirvana played on a record player at the wrong speed: it’s disorienting and really adds to the sense of a complete loss of control alluded to by the lyrics. This song is a masterpiece.

12. Real Friends Well, if Kanye ever decides to put out a children’s album, we’ll know what it’ll sound like. This is a testament to the difficulty of maintaining lasting relationships — reminiscent of “Welcome to Heartbreak”. Kanye gets more personal here, talking about being a deadbeat relative: “How many of us are real friends to real friends?” This track begins a hilarious later theme of this album: Kanye fucking hates one of his cousins. This dude apparently stole a laptop from Kanye, and Kanye says he loves him still. I don’t believe it.

13. Wolves This track initially featured Sia and Vic Mensa, but they were replaced by an outro

by Frank Ocean (hi Frank, where’s the new album?). It’s haunting, with a background singer making Tagaq-esque unearthly ululations. It’s also the type of song an English major salivates for, full of Biblical allusions. “What if Mary was in the club/Met Joseph surrounded by hella thugs.” This is the closest that Kanye comes to reconciling his lofty spiritual aspirations, family, and with his high-wheeling lifestyling. It’s near mystic, and it feels like growth. A gentle piano accompanies Frank Ocean’s thoughtful intonations on how precious life is.

11. FML This has backings that sound like autotuned church organs, and rat-tat-tat sparse snare beats. It’s super effective! Kanye says here that his wife, Kim Kardashian, probably doesn’t like it when he sleeps with randoms, which we can all relate to. The beat gets denser and The Weeknd comes in for the chorus, “Wish I would go ahead and fuck my life up/Can’t let them get to me/And even though I always fuck my life up/Only

14. Silver Surfer Intermission This is a voicemail that addresses Kanye’s beef with Wiz Khalifa about the album’s former title “Waves” — the guy who came up with the “wavy” movement, Max B, is giving Kanye his blessing. Kanye West’s newest alter-ego: a vindictive Regina George.

Student Life Kanye continued...

Book Review: The Circle

Jordan Tucker Guest Contributor

David Powe Guest Contributor

15. 30 Hours Featuring lo-fi punk-folk bass riffs, this is the closest thing to a mellow R&B/rock mashup track on the album.

Kanye outlines his domestic activities, and then reveals that he drove thirty hours to see a girlfriend. Also Kanye seems to be bad at open relationships.

16. No More Parties in LA OHHHHHHHHHHHHH KENDRICK. The entire album could have been just this one song and I would have been totally fine with it. Kanye’s verses sound like he’s in his twenties again, and the beat and mixing are super old school and whole-sounding in a way that amplifies the angular quickness of Kendrick’s rapping. “Erykah Badu me” is going to be my newest Tinder pick up line, I think, and Kendrick’s talent forces Kanye to step up his game. He uses quicker flows he hasn’t used in years here. Shout out again to the silent collaborator, Kanye’s cousin: “And as far as real friends, tell all my cousins I love ‘em/Even the one that stole the laptop, you dirty motherfucker”.

That guy must be terrified.

17. Fade Oh my god it’s finally over. This took forever. In this track, Kanye’s vocals are mixed in such a way that they’re not at the forefront: the result is a cohesive banger that puts one in mind of the massive cave-bang rave in the third Matrix movie. It’s got an echo-y pulse over a dense beat and multiple gospel voices organically contrasting the more techno notes that become sparser and sparser as the track, well, fades to a close. It’s a great closer that weans you off of the whole experience.

Of course, I loved this album. Kanye’s

problematic, he’s complex, and he’s a genius. More importantly, he’s not going anywhere.

If I want a nuanced and informed opinion about rape culture, misogynoir, and the intersection of celebrity and gender politics and perceptions, I’d read bell hooks, or Roxane Gay. Kanye West doesn’t have a phD in Gender Studies.

That’s not what his function is in our society. That’s why we have, you know, a multiplicity of public intellectuals who DO comment on his activities. I don’t know where we got the assumption that our cultural provocateurs have to be everything to everyone.

At some point in our cultural legacy we went from pantheons of gods to pantheons of celebrities, where their personalities are more invented than real. This fills a vacuum — when we discuss the ways Miley Cyrus has failed or succeeded recently, we’re creating a communication shorthand for the ways we expect young women to behave.

When we discuss Kanye West’s most recent antics, we’re having a coded conversation about what black masculinity means in this decade. I can listen to this album ten thousand times and get something new from it every time — I don’t necessarily like what I’ll hear, but we have to be able to entertain multiple perspectives to actually have dialogue that is meaningful.

The Life Of Pablo is complicated, and yes, at times, misogynistic. But I will take that any day over something inauthentic and easy to digest.

Happy studying and happy listening!

I

just read a fascinating book over the Christmas break that had me thinking quite a bit about the direction social media is headed. The Circle is a book written by Dave Egger. It follows Mae’s introduction into the Circle; an innovative business that has a certain attitude toward their employees. Everything is going fantastic for Mae as she begins this venture into this utopia, this world that is personalized for her and has seemed to have thought about her every need.

Ergonomic desks and chairs, personalized glass walled offices that displays weather, news and family photos, a medical plan that implants a chip and records everything from her blood pressure, to glucose levels, and it even has free yoga. You name it and this place has thought of it. It lives by the motto that community comes first and the work follows later.

The computers work within 3 different circles; community (within work), work, and personal (at home). You personalize each of these by adding people who matter, like your mom or brother and even those who don’t, like Donald Trump. You also need to comment and post things on all three networks in order to be truly recognized by your employers, it shows your commitment to work. The biggest point they wanted to make to Mae’s work efforts was that if she didn’t participate in her work community than she might as well be working at

some other mundane business that doesn’t look after her “needs”. It gets to a point where as she continues to try her best by participating in the three circles, she becomes helplessly consumed by it.

While she begins to focus on rallying up her “points” the business is revolutionizing how politics and capital punishment is conducted and it all has to do with, monitoring. Monitoring politicians, to ensure they’re doing clean business and monitoring the streets to keep the safety of the civilians from rapists and murderers.

While Mae, a hard worker that she is, has been a big part of her work community, they ask her to be a part of the pilot project for the monitoring plan and asks Mae to suit up with a camera around her neck that will make her even more convenient to the world. This is where things begin to get good.

Without giving up too much about what happens next, I wanted to express the parallels between what is happening with Google and Facebook and our own society because it’s paramount.

We have developed so much need to be on such networks because of their convenient nature to make what has made us successful as a species too easy to do. You’ve all heard this before, that we may be losing what being social and connected actually means.

I have noticed that I am becoming so needy to what is expected out of everyone

and everything that if I can’t get what I want in a split of a second or if it is not perfect.

I think… how can technology fix this? I have begun to live this fast paced lifestyle that doesn’t slow down to climb a tree anymore or go call on a friend to play outside. The personality of a phone call or an unannounced knock on the door is going out of style.

I miss these components of my former childhood and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back again, it’s just too damn convenient to message you now! I even prefer to get an update through a wall post to see how they’re doing and what they’re up to.

The Circle consumed Mae and had distracted her to a point where all she wanted to do was use the gift of being social and waste it all on pleasing someone else. The Circle then used their distraction and control to try and monitor the world. Google Earth is already showing us how this could be a possibility and we already have surveillance on many of our streets. Are we getting distracted with convenience that we’re losing what makes us wild or adventurous?

This book sparked my imagination of what a world would be like if we could keep such inventions under control, understanding its purpose and limiting it, so it doesn’t limit us. I hope you give it chance to spark yours too, or thank you for letting me do it for you.

Sports 15

Procreational Neglect: Part 2/2 Amanda Ramsay Guest Contributor

M

y father once admitted to me that he’d hated the calluses because my mother deserved nothing but gentleness. “And that’s why I’m glad you’re going to university, Michael,” he’d said. “Your woman shouldn’t ever have to get used to rough handling when intimate—only a gentle touch will do for a Finnegan woman.” I remember he’d grinned but the memory of it is vague, I can’t see past his current heartache.

“However,” the judge says. “Should I find him guilty of spreading his genes in the same way that one might be guilty of knowingly spreading sickness, then all of his,” he pauses. He presses one hand to his cheek, seeming in thought. “Then his issue, would also have to be destroyed.”

The judge sits back to allow the term to resonate with Hannah, he seems expectant.

I am a part of his issue. If my sister succeeds then I too would have to be destroyed. I try to pour my anger and my hatred for my sister out of my eyeballs, staring at her back.

Standing abruptly my father bumps the heavy oak table forward half a foot. “No,” he says firmly. “Your honour, please!” His hands stiffly clasp together and press into his breast. A tear begins make its way down one cheek, visible to me only because it catches the sunlight from the windows.

Hannah’s sallow eyes widen and she slowly stands on her side of the courtroom. She looks back and forth between my father and the judge, confusion fills her face. Both of her counsel pale. “What does that mean, your honour, what is issue?” says my sister.

Dad looks at the judge and steps out from around the table. “May I tell her?” his voice is an octave higher than usual. Slowly he turns to my sister, more tears visible. “Issue means progeny.” To her continued confusion

he adds, “offspring, Hannah, children!” A sob escapes and he begins again, “Please Hannah,” he pleads, “Not just me. This is about Michael,” his hand stretches out in my direction. “Your other sisters,” he swings his hand in front of him to the right of the courtroom and highlights two large families with young children. “What about your nieces?” he pleads. “Ruling in your favour would mean their death, Hannah!” He sobs, each one rocks his body. Turning back to the judge he says, “please, your honour, not children. They’ve done nothing wrong.

I’m to blame, I guess.” He collapses into the wooden chair and it scrapes piteously on the floor, “just me.” He shakes his head violently side to side twice and stares at the top of the table in front of him.

over the patches of hairs that stick out in shaved tufts. She lowers herself into her chair with her hands still on her head.

Silently crying, the judge says to himself, “Yes, the children.” The microphone barely picks up each word. He clears his throat forcefully and takes on a face that does not match the single tear present and hanging off of his chin. His mouth straightens into a line, “Now, for the legal ramifications of this decision. The whole country could take on legal suits against

is steadied by my hands, one on each of his shoulders. Both counsels stand in uniform, one hand grasps the wrist of the other in front of their bodies. Each one of them bows their heads as if awaiting a benediction.

“It is my ruling that the defendant not be guilty of Procreational Negligence, for the following reasons: that the loss of rights to individuals affected by this decision, and the resulting courts cases created by the precedent of this case, would suffer more than the individual’s ignant.de

I grab him from behind, my arms enfolding him completely around the shoulders.

It’s awkward leaning over the bar, but it’s for comfort’s sake. Not only for his comfort but for my own, I hold him tightly.

This time he doesn’t shrug me away.

“You did nothing wrong, Dad. I love you.”

I whisper in his ear. “I’m happy you’re my dad and I’m glad I’m not some test tube baby.” I throw as much disgust at Hannah as I can through my eyes. An unbearable lump in my throat makes it hard to swallow my anger. Like looking through an aquarium, my tears threaten to spill over onto my cheeks.

The collective mood in the room is different now. More sniffling and more creaking comes from the benches but not a single whisper emanates from behind me. It’s as if everyone disappeared and here we are, alone at our most vulnerable.

Hannah is still standing but her eyes slowly float to the floor. She shakes her head from side to side and it gains momentum until she raises her hands, as if she physically needs to intervene. Her head stops moving and tears are visible on her face as she uses her hands to feel her scalp. Fingers dance

their parents. Parents would have to be able to prove that they either had no previous knowledge of disease in their family or would have to resort to aborting all children they conceive of naturally. By naturally I mean through the act of intercourse and then labour.” He places both hands on his face for the span of one minute and adds, “Those who oppose, would have no choice.” He says ‘choice’ deliberately slow.

The judge picks up the gavel and bellows, “all rise.” The microphone produces a moment of deafening feedback and takes a moment to clear. Everyone in attendance stands; Dad

rights to be born free of genetic disease.”

He lowers his voice only slightly. “And Hannah,” he says and looks her in the eye. “I am sorry for your suffering, truly I am.” The slam of the gavel deems my father and I, worthy of life.

Amanda Ramsay is a local writer and business owner attending classes at UNBC to finish a degree she started eight years ago. Her background is in marketing and advertising for corporations and non-profits. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions for Amanda, she can be reached at info@ poplarideas.ca.

Coffee Break Filbert Cartoons

By Anthony LabontĂŠ

Writing Club Cover Contest Attention students, This is your extreme overlord speaking.

My minions, the Writing Club, and I have decided to have a cover contest for the student anthology, which I am sure you have all submitted something to, and the winner will receive a free copy of the book. Requirements are that it must be original; it can be any kind of art: photo, drawing, painting etc. It must be scanned and sent to unbc.anthology@ gmail.com by March 16. The title is Insert Title Here and our themes are: strange realities, memories/dreams, living world/dead world, home, or a topic of your choice.

I repeat we are holding a cover contest. Submit or perish!

All the love.

Writing Club

In Memory Of Qingli Liu 1996-2016