Roll Model

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June 10, 2013 · Volume 144, Issue 6

CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2013

FIRST PEEK

One of my favourite stories I like to share is my coming out story as a lesbian. It’s amusing to most people, but most of all it’s kind of hilarious while still being personal. It’s a way of expressing myself freely to the person I am interacting with without holding back by introducing who I really am on a personal level.

What is problematic is that even in our present culture, where marriage equality is slowly being achieved, there is still that fear of self-expression and the struggle of acceptance within the individual due to society’s perceptions of what is normal.

Coming out is already a hard process and it is a different experience for everyone who has come out and for those in the process of coming out. Though one might think this seems to be a one-time instance, the fact is that once you identify yourself to be out of the heteronormative binary, you are automatically signed up to live a life where you will have to come

June 10, 2013

out more than once.

Since we can’t all just wear a sign with our preferred identity labels, it becomes more of an exhaustive task for the need to come out and explain yourself in various occasions. First in the list: Family and friends.

They are usually the first people to receive the news flash that you are gay.

I’m sorry to break it to you, dear friend, but the coming out process does not end with just these two groups. Even in simple daily life encounters like spending time in the workplace, going shopping for clothes or the quick trip to the doctor can become an uneasy or scary situation to disclose your orientation.

I once went to see a new doctor for my annual checkup and had to disclose that I am in a same-sex relationship.

There was a moment where I almost felt not proud of who I am, which one should never feel! There is always a fear in the back of my mind that if this person does not like me, I may be harmed or get turned away

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from necessary health services.

Another time is when I went shopping for bow ties and dress shirts in the men’s section of H&M. I suddenly had to explain to the salesperson that I was buying dress shirts “for my brother” as I tried them on.

But the trickiest situation is the workplace. Sometimes it is hard to know if your work environment is safe enough to disclose that information, because your job could be on the line, as well as your personal safety. There is the possibility of getting bullied in the workplace if colleagues and employers find out about your sexual orientation.

In my experience, I tend to separate my career life and my personal life due to these unknown consequences and the fact that I don’t really have to. Being out for three years now, there is still uneasiness when I am out in the public with my partner, even in a queer-friendly city like Vancouver. There is the fear of being judged and harmed, which makes coming out more of a scary experience than feeling true to yourself.

I long for an ideal society where the process of coming out can be embraced as a simple discussion topic just like telling somebody of what your cultural heritage is or where you originally grew up.

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NEWS

Esteemed women in our community are challenging how cities function by claiming that municipalities create ineffective policy when they fail to address issues through a gender and equity lens.

On May 30, SFU hosted the Women Transforming Cities (WTC) Conference: Designing An Ideal City For Women And Girls.

The Conference was designed to bring together elected officials, academics, urban designers and planners, and others interested in transforming our cities into places where women are more involved and where the municipalities keep minorities’ needs in mind when designing policy.

The Conference was strategically held before the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Annual Conference and Trade Show, which took place last week from May 30 to June 3. The event allows community members to come together to discuss the planning and infrastructure of their cities and towns.

At issue at the WTC event was the need to make cities work for women and girls, regarding all the things that cities provide (housing, safe streets, transit, and more). However, creating change is complicated by the difficulty of coming up with recommendations on which municipalities can be held accountable.

“Unless there is a specific strategy in place, there is no incentive for municipal governments or corporate governance to think about how their policies, their budgets, these kind of things affect women and girls and marginalized communities,” said Dr. Tiffany Muller Myrdahl, Ruth Wynn Woodward Junior Chair in SFU’s Gender and Urban Studies Department for the 2012-2013 academic year, and an organizer of the event.

The purpose of the conference was to create implementable recommendations, bring forward and raise the

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news editor email / phone

Alison Roach associate news editor news@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

Leah Bjornson

profile of various issues, and look at questions like sustainability through a gender lens. A gender or equity lens is a tool that organizations can use in their regular operations to attempt to view an issue from someone else’s perspective, be it of a specific gender, race, or social group.

According to Myrdahl, using a gender lens means thinking critically about how the city works and asking questions such as who is it working for, who is participating, and how responsive are municipal leaders to marginalized communities. By way of illustration, one could look at Vancouver’s Greenest City 2020 Action Plan and analyse how this initiative affects the household.

“When you look at, for example, composting and doing more recycling . . . that relies on the unpaid labour of the household,” said Muller Myrdahl. “Part of doing a gender lens is asking, What kind of extra work are we putting on the household, and who is going to do that work? . . . What kinds of support do the people in the household need to make this policy actually work on the ground? That’s the kind of question that is often left out of those large scale action plans.”

In her keynote speech, Muller Myrdahl brought further focus to the need for both individuals and municipalities to change how they think about policy. Entitled “Interventions for Feminist Urban Futures,” the speech considered how we frame the stories we tell about cities.

To demonstrate her point, Muller Myrdahl brought up the example of Little Nest, a Vancouver haven for foodies and families alike. The breakfast and lunch beacon, which is nestled just off Commercial Drive, is facing closure because of a 50 per cent rent increase. Instead of challenging why these policies exist, which Muller Myrdahl hopes to have them do, the press has mainly been telling sob stories of the small cafe.

“When I hear about situations like that, what it tells me is that we’re taught to frame our municipal politics and the way cities work around finite resources that we have to fight over, and in terms of the commercial landlords, cities presume that there is very little way to intervene in private interests, private property,” said Muller Myrdahl. “My point is, well, that’s just one way of thinking about how the different stakeholders in our cities can come together.”

She continued, “It’s not just about profit margin; if we’re serious about retaining neighbourhood culture and listening to the folks in the neighbourhood, listening to the residents and the business owners and all these different stakeholders,

then policy needs to reflect the role that commercial landlords have in shaping the culture of neighbourhoods.”

However, such policy change does not come easy. “There are fantastic consultation processes for getting people involved, but if they have no teeth and if the cities do not have any incentive to follow what people are saying, then what’s the point?” asked Muller Myrdahl.

“Then you’re just disenfranchising people who already feel like they’re powerless.”

To illustrate the importance of engagement, Muller Mydahl referenced a recent event which might alarm involved citizens.

On May 16, the City held an Open House on Vancouver’s Regional Context StatementOfficial Development Plan (RCS-ODP) to plan legislation governing urban development in Vancouver. Only 22 people participated in the Open House, and this event will not be held again for another 30 years.

Muller Myrdahl lamented the city’s failure to engage the public, concluding, “Apparently the city is moving away from that strategy [of participatory engagement] and is looking toward a much more top-down set of processes . . . it’s very concerning. The focus needs to be on process, not just product.”

NEWS

June 10, 2013

Kruger’s goal now is to become the face of Lise Watier’s Something Sweet perfume, and to show our society how to broaden its narrow view of beauty. Online voting for the competition ended June 8, and the top 5 contestants out of nearly 400 are now put before a panel of judges who will decide who will be the face of Something Sweet. At press time, Kruger was sitting comfortably in first place. The contest will announce the winner in July.

While she first sent in her picture just for fun — actually, at the suggestion of a friend — Kreuger quickly realized that the competition could provide a larger opportunity.

SFU student Jessica Kruger is challenging what our society currently considers as beautiful. The 20 year old Coquitlam native is currently in first place in the Lise Watier Something Sweet modeling competition, to become the face of the cosmetic line’s new perfume. Kruger also happens to be in a wheelchair.

When she was 15, Kruger worked for a house painting company as a summer job. While on the job, Kruger had her accident. “I was two stories up and I actually fainted and fell off of the ladder,” she explained. “From that fall I broke my neck in 4 places, and that led to my spinal cord injury . . . It was a pretty big life change.”

It’s now been five years since her accident, and Kruger has spent the time recovering. Of the first years after the accident, she said, “I didn’t really go through the typical mourning that someone would have after something tragic like that happens, just because I was so focused on doing my rehab and getting back into the swing of things, getting back to school. I never really took the time to think about what happened, but the second and third year after I got back into everything it began to hit me. I definitely struggled with it for a year.”

Through recovery was a long process, Kruger says her life now is even better than it was before.

“I’m definitely at the point where I’m just as happy now as I was before, and I’ve totally accepted that having that accident has

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changed my life for the better in so many ways and opened up so many doors for me,” she said. “It’s not something that I can be upset about; it’s just given me so many incredible opportunities.”

Kruger is now going into her fourth year at SFU, where she majors in English and hopes to later on get her PDP certificate and become an English teacher.

Beyond school, Kruger is also a the only female member of the

BC provincial wheelchair rugby team, and the youngest female player in Canada.

Wheelchair rugby is a notoriously vicious sport, so rough that it’s been nicknamed “murderball.” One comment on a Reddit thread about Kruger in r/vancouver described it as what would happen if “rugby had sex with a demolition derby, and the baby came out top-half human and bottom-half death machine.”

“I love it,” said Kruger, who started playing the sport shortly after her accident. “It’s definitely not hard being the only girl; [the others] totally make me feel like I’m part of the team. I don’t even notice that I’m the only girl most of the time.” Kruger also currently works with WorkSafe BC, speaking at schools and conferences about the importance of workplace safety.

“I realized how much attention it was getting from the community and how I could actually do something to make a difference . . . It became more of an opportunity to educate people on disabilities and to show society that somebody with a disability could be seen in an advertisement or commercial,” Kruger said.

Kruger’s message has certainly captured the interest of a huge audience, with stories on her being featured in the Huffington Post, The Province, and CTV News. “It’s been a hundred percent positive, I haven’t heard anything negative,” she said of the feedback she’s received. “I mean, there’s been posts about it on Reddit, and Reddit isn’t always reknown for being politically correct or anything like that, and even those have all been positive for the most part. I certainly cannot complain; it seems like even strangers are behind me.”

The top comment on the same Reddit post about Kruger reads, “It’s great that BC has so many awesome women with disabilities to be role models . . . but if you’re a 15-year-old girl who’s just become paralyzed in a car accident, the person who might change your life is the girl in the wheelchair who has awesome style and even does modelling.”

6 NEWS

June 10, 2013

By investigating how life began on Earth about 3.7 billion years ago, Unrau is doing just that. His main work revolves around the hypothesis that RNA played a substantive role in the early evolution of life. This theory, developed

by Sid Altman and Thomas Cech in the 1960s and coined in the 1980s, is known as the RNA World Hypothesis.

Questions like “What is the purpose of life?” and “Where did we come from?” have captivated humankind for as long as our species has been alive. Now, supplemented with a key research grant, an SFU scientist may be on track to helping answer the questions of life’s origins.

Peter Unrau, a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at SFU, is the recipient of one of this year’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Accelerator Supplement (DAS) awards. The award, valued at $120,000, is part of a $413 million national research funding announcement supporting thousands of researchers across the country who, according to NSERC, are investigating “high risk, novel or potentially transformative concepts and lines of inquiry.”

“DNA is where we store our genetic information,” explained Unrau. “And we convert that into RNA by transcription, and once we have that RNA it gets translated by the ribosome into proteins, which are the machines that keep us alive . . . The problem with the model is that it doesn’t explain where we came from. Proteins are very useful, but where did the first proteins come from?”

To solve this puzzle, the RNA World Hypothesis proposes that RNA molecules were the first complex molecules, existing even before DNA and protein. RNA stores genetic information like DNA, but can also catalyze complex chemical reactions just like an enzyme protein. Therefore, scientists propose that it may have been able to carry out the necessary functions for creating life.

Unrau explained, “There’s a lot of critical machines in the cell that are not actually protein based, for example, the ribosome. It’s responsible for protein synthesis and yet its made out of RNA, not protein.

This suggests a way that evolution could have worked really early in evolution. You could have had this machine made out of RNA which was responsible for making proteins that one by one replaced the RNA catalysts of the RNA World. If this picture is true then you should be able to catalyze all of the reactions that are catalyzed by proteins today using only RNA.” To support the hypothesis, Unrau and his team are trying to find evidence that “machines” that can do the kinds of reactions, that would have been important in such a world, can be built out of RNA.

“We’re trying ultimately to make a system that can evolve on its own, built out of RNA, and that would stand on its own,” said Unrau. “It would be a parallel example of a living system that would have no history connecting it directly to life we have today, and so from that point of view it would be a good example of what kind of things are really important in living

systems and what kind of things are not important.”

Such research could potentially lead to answering larger questions of the existence of other life in the Universe. “Right now theres a really open and exciting scientific question which is how common is life in the Universe, and its either really common or we’re really lucky to be here.”

NEWS

June 10, 2013

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Build SFU project manager Marc Fontaine presented a site evaluation document to Board that evaluated eight sites on their value to students as the possible home of the future student union building. Criteria included closeness to transportation and academic buildings, potential for “pass-through” opportunities, and possible risks and costs related to each site. Though unfinalized, the document pinpointed the lower bus loop and the current site of Parking Lot E as the strongest contenders for the site.

Fontaine also announced that the results of an extensive evaluation of the Lorne Davies Complex — which was previously the strongest contender for the site — showed that the building is in too poor of a condition to be the home of the future SUB. Due to structural, capacity, and relocation issues, the building is no longer under consideration.

A report published on May 23rd by the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC) has reopened the debate as to whether or not the “war on drugs” is a justified one.

The CDPC is a partner project with the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction (CARMHA), a research centre based at the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU Vancouver. Its members include policy experts such as executive director Donald MacPherson, a health sciences professor at the University. The national coalition is based out of SFU’s Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction.

The CDPC’s report criticizes the aggressive stance of the Harper government’s “war on drugs,” claiming that instead of emphasizing law enforcement and punitive responses, the government should really be focusing on a harm-reduction approach.

“While countries all around the world are adopting forwardthinking, evidence-based drug policies, Canada is taking a step backwards and strengthening punitive policies that have been proven to fail,” stated a summary of the 112-page report from the CDPC. The CDPC is now suggesting a new direction for the federal government, one that includes the decriminalization of all illicit drugs, including crack cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. According to the coalition, the subsequent deemphasizing of the legal response would make room for an emphasis on safe injection and support sites.

According to the Calgary Herald, Donald MacPherson, director of the CDPC and an adjunct professor with SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences stated, “We’re doing this to improve public health and safety, not create a free-for-all. What we have now is a free-for-all.” MacPherson coauthored the report along with Connie Carter, a UVic graduate of the Department of Sociology.

While there are safe injection sites in Vancouver, such as the well-known Insite, there is

an alleged lack of awareness and funding that is seriously impacting the amount of service it can provide, something the CDPC is quick to criticize.

“Where sound and relatively safe treatments exist, provincial governments and health authorities drag their feet because of outmoded ideas about some drugs or shortsighted concerns about finances,” read the summary of the CDPC report.

The CDPC gave statistical evidence for the need for what they call a “radical new direction.” According to the report, cannabis possession charges have increased by 16 per cent

from 2001 to 2011. In the aftermath of the report’s release, the Harper government was asked for their opinion on this and other approaches to Canada’s “drug problem.”

“Our government has no intention of legalizing or decriminalizing any harmful, illicit substance — including heroin or crystal meth,” said Sean Phelan, a spokesperson for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, according to The Province.

He continued, “We are pleased with the considerable progress made toward meeting the goals of the National AntiDrug Strategy, which seeks to prevent illicit drug use, treat those with illicit drug dependencies, and combat the production and distribution of illicit drugs.”

Calgary Police Staff Sgt. Tom Hanson, speaking on behalf of the Calgary Drug Unit, also disagreed with the findings of the report, stating that “criminals would just find another way to make money.” He also mentioned that police have been trying their fair share of progressive strategies, often sending addicts to treatment rather than a jail cell.

The board passed the approval of a sublease agreement with Guadalupe Restaurants Inc., which allows the company to take space in the MBC food court, to operate under the name “Guadalupe Homemade Burritos.” The society has received a security deposit from the restaurant, and Financial Coordinator Vanessa Kwong said they were given a “standard form of lease.” The company is owned by two brothers who were trained in Texas TexMex fare, and will focus exclusively on Tex-Mex style burritos. With the opening of the restaurant, The Ladle will cease to offer their veggie burritos.

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8 NEWS

This past week, SFU was host to a talk with Steven Standing Wolfpaw Kakinoosit, one of the founding members of Idle No More BC. Organized by Left Alternative, an action group at SFPIRG, Kakinoosit was part of a “Beyond Ownership: Continuing North American Decolonization” event aimed at raising awareness of decolonization, speaking to its ties with the Idle No More movement.

Kakinoosit is Woodland Cree from the Suckercreek First Nation in Alberta, born and raised in Prince George, BC. As an Indigenous and human rights activist who has been working with Idle No More in BC since its fruition, he has organized, spoken, and taught communities about the movement on the local, national, and international level.

Tracing the beginnings of Idle No More to events in July 2012, fueled by a group of four women in Saskatchewan, the moment that really got the ball rolling for Kakinoosit is when over 150 chiefs were denied their treaty rights to be present at the debates preceding a decision on Bill C-45.

The bill, when passed, reduced the number of federally protected waterways in Canada.

For Kakinoosit, a move away from the often ignored treaties is an important step towards decolonization and Indigenous sovereignty; regrettably, with the passing of Bill C-45 and C-38, the treaties are one of the few legal documents remaining that protect traditional Indigenous lands.

Decolonization is, by definition, the dismantling and undoing of colonialism. In Canada, the 11 numbered treaties originally began as agreements between the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the reigning monarch of Canada. The responsibility on Canada’s end has since been transfered to be that of the government acting on the Crown’s behalf, but the existence of the treaties refers specifically to a colonial past.

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Health Sciences Faculty Rep Dhylan Verzosa presented the plan for an Anti-Stigma for Mental Health Campaign, which will focus on increasing awareness and decreasing stigma around mental health issues facing students. The Anti-Stigma campaign will create an PSA on the history of mental health to disseminate around campus, and follow up with an outreach portion of engagement and interaction with students. The SFSS contribution for the project is suggested at $2,500 to be taken out of the advocacy budget, pending FASC and board approval.

While the treaty system is intended to provide a system for equitable redistribution of assets, Kakinoosit asserts that this has not been the case. “We signed [the treaties] as one nation to another,” he stated. “And that hasn’t been respected.”

Decolonization is an old idea, with roots that can be traced back to the 13 colonies revolting against the United Kingdon. This movement has gained impetus within the last century; India, Pakistan, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, and Iceland (to name a few) have

all fought for and achieved independence from their colonizers.

Though sometimes a difficult concept for some to imagine in a Canadian context, there is a historical precedent set, given its own independence from Great Britain.

The biggest problem according to Kakinoosit lies not in decolonization itself, but rather in the process of rebuilding something that would follow. “The real job is when we start applying the lessons that we’ve learned from taking the oppressor out, because there are lessons to be learned from our oppressor: what to do and what not to do,” he said.

Kakinoosit is a self-described traditionalist, and pointed out that decision making methods before colonization were sometimes more democratic than present systems that leave communities stuck in a space somewhere between traditional and colonial.

He urged Indigenous people to return to their traditional systems

of governance, a right protected by the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“The chief and council system is not our traditional governing system, regardless of what anyone will say,” he contended. Kakinoosit also argued that the imposition of the system is not only part of the reason why there is a rural urban divide in the Indigenous community generally, but also why the democratic process on reserves is questionable at best.

“When you set up a majority rule on reservations, what you find is that it ends up being a name game . . . it’s nepotism,” he explained. In a traditional clan system, such as was used in Kakinoosit’s Cree nation, Okama, or hereditary leaders — male or female — were selected by clan mothers based on who had the best interests of the community at heart. If they ever lost the respect of the community, they would no longer be considered a leader.

“It’s difficult to imagine,” offered Kakinoosit, who alleged that under this system, there would be no leaders in Canada.

Kakinoosit spoke about how the reservation system itself sets up divides between on-reserve and off-reserve Indigenous communities, creating urban ghettos where a large majority of Indigenous people live. He cites one of the responsibilities of Idle No More as bringing off-reserve Indigenous people back into the conversation in the push for decolonization.

Above all, a respect for and inclusion of a multitude of voices, Indigenous or not, within the movement was articulated, with a stipulation. “We want to make clear that it is paramount that we [Indigenous people] lead this movement,” says Kakinoosit, who referenced other moments in history where Indigenous activism has been written off as communities responding to “outside agitation” from non-Indigenous groups, maintaining that “we need our allies.”

Kakinoosit ended the evening by describing moments where ethnic and cultural differences fall to the wayside in Canada, such as when Sidney Crosby scored the goal in overtime during the Canada vs. America 2010 winter Olympics hockey game. “If we could capture that moment again, that would speed up the whole process of decolonization like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.

OPINIONS

Religion, much like preference in sexual fetishes, is a matter of choice that should be respected as long it is not forced on anyone or inflicting non-consensual pain. There are situations where these stipulations are less concrete, an example being the recent acquisition of The Centre for the Performing Arts by the Westside Church. Though this purchase will likely be a good choice for the congregation, it poses a serious threat to the artistic and cultural community of Vancouver.

The Vancouver Sun reports that the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), an event with a vast number of volunteers and supporters that was to take place at The Centre, has had their booking cancelled abruptly as of last week. This leaves mere months for the festival to find another venue capable of meeting their size and accessibility requirements.

The Goh Ballet is also left without promise of a location for their annual performance of The Nutcracker. While the two groups represent different mediums, they both represent artists with a passion and an ability to breathe life into their shows. While Vancouver receives lackluster reviews when it comes to entertainment, VIFF and the Goh Ballet prove Vancouver does have an artistic side worth protecting.

Since its creation in 1995, The Centre has been the stage for a variety of performers from diverse walks of life. It has provided a place for the community to congregate and appreciate the dramatic, comedic, and musical feats that are the product of years of dedicated work. Though it is commonly associated with public performances, The Centre plays an important role to others in the community who utilize the venue, like the various secondary schools who rent it for graduation ceremonies.

The Centre is a venue that accepts those entering for who they are, and does not discriminate upon anyone deciding to attend an event. While the Westside

opinions editor email / phone

June 10, 2013

Church undoubtedly works to create community, its scope is not as inclusive. The church has publicly expressed objections regarding several topics, such as homosexuality, abortion, and women as elders in the church, which can make members of the community feel unwelcomed.

Sermon notes entitled “Two for One” are posted on the Westside Church’s website and denounce the act of divorce as shameful and wrong. As the child of a divorced couple, I have firsthand knowledge of

the discomfort that exists when navigating the religious world while not quite fitting the values laid out by a congregation.

I remember seeing a Christmas play with my mother at a local church that capitalized on the importance of parents staying together because it’s the right thing to do. We stopped attending that church soon after.

Most religious groups do have definitions of morality and righteousness built into their sermons and placed as strong recommendations, if not requirements, for their congregation. This alone is not an issue, as everyone has a right to believe what they will. The problem arises when these beliefs create a division on the community.

The Westside Church buying The Centre for Performing Arts takes a venue rich with

Tara Nykyforiak opinions@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

diversity and turns it into one with rigid values that exclude or cause discomfort for many in the community. Vancouver is home to a population boasting an acceptance of differences.

The Centre is an element of this, a place recognizing performing arts as an important part of the city’s culture belonging to everyone. Though the

Westside Church creates inclusive space for those identifying with the congregation, it fails to resonate with the greater community and is therefore inflicting a problem Vancouver has not consented to.

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10 OPINIONS

be crossing any stage.

With the amount of student fees lumped together and tossed at us every September, you’d think the cost of convocation would be lumped into those.

While it’s true not everyone will want to cross the stage and rent regalia, lack of use doesn’t stop SFU from charging a number of other fees.

A post-secondary education may be the ticket to higher earning potential, but not before your institution bleeds you dry.

After you’ve finished your last assignment, you think it’ll be all downhill — you feel as free as you did the first time you coasted down a hill on your bike after getting your training wheels off. Then you apply for convocation and realize that unless you’ve got over $100 just kickin’ it in the bank, you won’t

Distance students still have to pay gym membership fees and UPass fees. Health insurance is compulsory, too, unless you opt out, and even then you pay upfront and get a refund. What makes convocation any different?

I haven’t looked into whether there is a rationale behind these

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fees, and frankly I don’t care to.

Do they argue added administration fees? Added work for the registrar’s office? I could understand if this wasn’t a regular occurrence, but these ceremonies happen every year, twice a year, without fail.

Making students foot the bill because SFU employees have to do extra work twice a year that I’m assuming is outlined in their job descriptions is asinine. That’s like a clothing store charging a service fee one week a year while they do inventory because their employees have to put in extra hours. If it’s a regular element of doing business, it should be factored in from the beginning, not added to your bill as you walk out the door.

Why didn’t I plan for the cost of graduation, you ask?

Shouldn’t I accept responsibility for my degree? Yes, I should.

But SFU should also clearly provide me with this information. If you check the “apply to graduate ” website, it tells you

to check out the “deadlines and fees” website to find out more about applying to graduate.

The deadlines are clearly outlined, but the fees aren’t.

These aren’t disclosed until you’re logged into SIS clutching your credit card and fighting back tears thinking about the balance you’re carrying. Only then do you discover the $30 they normally charge becomes $80 if you miss the deadline, for a total of $84.73 after tax.

“At least it’s over,” you think, scouring your webmail for invitations to paid linguistic and psychology studies, contemplating checking Craigslist to see how much people will pay to kiss your feet while factoring in

the cost of a pedicure. But then you receive an e-mail informing you the regalia rental cost is $30 ($157 if you want to buy the robes — “virgin for life” bumper stickers are extra, though).

What is this crap? Are graduands also secretly signed up for convocation fight club, where the first rule is you don’t talk about the fees associated with convocation fight club?

Assuming your degree takes you four years to complete, and you attend all three semesters a year, you pay student fees 12 times while going to university. If the cost of convocation is $60, SFU could charge you $5 a semester and not put you deeper in the hole at the end of your debt-gree.

Don’t want to convocate? We should put those funds in a pool for people who need the financial assistance, so everyone who wants to convocate can, just like any other “maybe you’ll use it, maybe you won’t, but pay for it anyway” fee we incur.

OPINIONS

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve stumbled home on a Friday night, only to find my brother and his friends in their nigh on eighth or ninth hour of Dungeon Mastering. I can, however, say that not only have I had to tag in for an exhausted adventurer and assume the role of Orgrim Flamecrash or Dank the Well-Hung, I’ve actually enjoyed it.

Now, I don’t consider myself a geek. I wrestled all through high school, was captain of the soccer team, and played sports five days a week. However, this doesn’t mean I don’t like video games, Game of Thrones or even the occasional MMORPG. Heck, I even played World of Warcraft for a good while. There are many people who also enjoy these activities, many of whom don’t identify as geeks.

The truth is geek clubs aren’t just for geeks anymore. You don’t need to be lurking around campus shouting, “Leeroooy Jenkiiins!” (I might be kind of a geek) while wearing your gold Triforce medallion to feel like you fit in.

Nor should you feel ashamed if that is exactly what you’d like to be doing at this moment. What you should realize is that even though you might be hesitant about admitting you occasionally want to storm castles and defeat dragons, chances are there are many people who like the exact same things.

To find out just how common these interests are, try checking out the Altered Reality Club (ARC). Like many clubs at SFU, the ARC provides opportunities for students (and even some TAs) to meet new friends with similar interests. Such interests can range from tabletop gaming, to weekly screenings of Firefly, to

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playing werewolf at ARC’s various icebreakers and sleepovers. Even if there’s just one thing that you enjoy sharing with others, be it Simulators or Bleach or just a creative mind, that’s reason enough to be a part of the club.

In fact, the ARC could be bringing “geeks” and “nongeeks” together by making geeks emerge from their dark, brooding

basements to socialize in the light of day, while giving nongeeks a less stigmatized venue in which to interact. I know when I was WoW ’ing around, me and my Gnome Warlock, Rutabaga, (you heard me), were stuck on my family’s computer to interact with pixelated warriors; if I had been able to hang out with other normal kids who liked the same game, I think I would have felt a bit better about playing it.

That’s one thing I like about these social “geek” clubs: games like Dungeons&Dragons, unlike some video games, force you to flex your creative muscles and

play with other people in person.

It doesn’t hurt that, unlike when you get stuck in a video game at an impass or an impossible puzzle, you have the choice here to SMASH THAT PUZZLE AND BURN IT AND “SAY FUCK NO I AIN’T DOING THAT ,COME UP WITH A BETTER PLAN, DUNGEON MASTAH!” By fading the line between geeks and non-geeks, clubs like the ARC are helping not just nerds, but everyone, to feel more comfortable in their own skin.

Maybe it just takes a couple latenight D&D sessions to realise that these “geeky” games are things we could all potentially enjoy.

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According to the Report on Learning Outcomes and Assessment Working Group last updated on December 2012, a learning outcome is “an area of knowledge, practical skill, area of professional development, attitude, higher-order thinking skill, etc., that an instructor expects students to develop, learn, or master during a course or program” that can be measured by “quantitative or qualitative assessment models.” I’m not entirely sure how one qualitatively assesses attitude, but let’s just say it’s my good luck I’ll be crossing the stage on Thursday.

The same document indicates that this model is being adopted because of growing concerns around the return on investment (ROI) of any given degree. “The challenge for many is how to best invest limited resources in developing one’s skill sets for a successful and rewarding career within the parameters of a selective marketplace that demands highly specific qualifications and abilities.”

It indicates that these changes are a direct result of a Task Force on Teaching and Learning that started in 2008 and ended in 2010, which found that the University should focus more on

student experience generally. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to focus on the student experience, but is applying a secondary assessment model really a way to positively affect student experiences?

Charles Bingham, a tenured professor in the Faculty of Education who worked for years with learning outcomes as a high school teacher, thinks “learning outcomes are the ‘highschoolification’ of university.” BC elementary, middle and high schools have had Prescribed Learning Outcomes in place for decades. If you’re wondering how these affected your initial educational career, think back to standardized provincial tests, with their decrees that “this section will demonstrate a student’s reading comprehension skills” (and our abilities to fill in circles with only pencil).

The reason we have standardized, provincial testing is because of learning outcomes. The province made these necessary as a way to accurately measure the progress of all students. Arguably, since their adoption, Dogwood Diplomas didn’t increase in ROI. If anything, the value of a high school diploma has fallen in the last few years, so why would learning outcomes at a tertiary educational level add ROI to our degrees?

Many students don’t remember a time before WQB requirements. I, on the other hand, was part of the very first year of the new program. It was brought in to make students more well rounded, and therefore more appealing to employers. After all, what good is an English student who can’t add or subtract in base seven?

Unlike Learning Outcomes, WQB meant we had to take extra courses. Our predecessors didn’t have to take an intro to poetry class, or some other W-designated course to get their degree in engineering science. When I was a first-year, older students would rue not taking their first-year requirements earlier, as they were now stuck with a bunch of biology majors who didn’t care about the Victorian bildungsroman, they just needed a credit.

Then departments starting making special WQB courses so that students could fulfill their requirements, like “The Physics of Sound” (aka waveforms and behaviours for art student idiots, PHYS 192), “Metrics and Prosody” (aka counting beats per line of poetry, ENGL 212).

Am I or my peers any more well rounded, therefore hireable, than those who came before us? Declining youth employment rates and a burgeoning generation of boomerang kids suggest otherwise. Adding more diverse courses and increasing the workload didn’t help add ROI to our degrees, so why would adding a second level of assessment?

Back in 2009, SFU was just a “membership candidate” in its first year with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) — like a pledge at the coolest American fraternity. This was and is still a big deal for the university, as it guarantees our athletes more visibility and scholarships and more funding for the school generally. It was is also the same year our application to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) was accepted.

Never heard of the NWCCU? They’re an American accreditation body approved by the NCAA that oversees colleges and universities in Alaska, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah, as well as Capilano University in North Vancouver, and now SFU. In order for SFU to become a member of the NCAA, we had to go through the process of becoming accredited by an approved accreditation body, hence the NWCCU. SFU is already accredited by one local organization that isn’t NCAAapproved. Its seal can be found on the SFU homepage right beside the NCAA

logo. Soon, assuming we complete the necessary steps to becoming accredited, a third seal will be added.

One of the 20 things the NWCCU looks for in its institutions is student achievement, which they measure through identified and published “expected learning outcomes for each of its degree and certificate programs of 30 semester [sic] or 45 quarter credits or more.” Just as a reminder: the results of the TFTL that suggested student experience needed to be focused on, the supposed rationale behind implementing learning outcomes, weren’t published until 2010, a year after we applied to the NWCCU. If you look at the Capilano University website, you’ll see “student learning outcomes” listed for every program. Under the English Associate Degree program, one of the learning outcomes listed is that “students will be able to draw upon knowledge, judgment, and imagination in work and life.” Unless TAs start taking tutorials to coffee shops to play Cranium, I’m not sure how one could measure, qualitatively or quantitatively, a student’s ability to draw upon their imagination in life.

As an editor, I’ve received four unsolicited articles about experiential learning, either through Co-op, directed studies or another format, meaning four students felt so strongly about it that they wrote and fired off a full article.

Unless GAP is on campus, getting unsolicited articles on the same topic doesn’t happen very often.

If the rationale behind learning outcomes is an emphasis on the student experience and in having marketable skills post-graduation, the logical solution would be to focus on experiential learning, through Co-ops or otherwise, that allow students to learn and achieve

Right now, it’s unclear how learning outcomes will alter student experience at SFU. One iteration of the plan released by the office of Jon Driver, the VP Academic, stated that learning outcomes would be faculty specific, while another suggested creating a set for every course offered. An April 25 memorandum to Senate discusses establishing learning goals (which are not the same things as learning outcomes) for academic units and programs.

Realistically, it’s the instructors that will be affected by this the most, in the sense that they will be the ones responsible for filling out the forms and / or doing the actual assessments.

While the same report indicates the resources available to professors during this initial stage, it’s unclear who will be completing the assessments in the long run, or what resources will be made available to them.

Given that the TSSU only recently came to a collective agreement with the University, learning outcomes and the additional work they warrant seems like it could be a major source of contention in the near future. As well, this could change how professors and TAs teach. “If you have a professor who is towing the line . . . you may find that person is teaching to the learning

real-world experience, not assessing learning outcomes for the same courses a department has always had.

Realistically, though, the timeline of events seems to indicate that learning outcomes have more (let’s be real, everything) to do with our NCAA membership.

This isn’t to say that that is bad by any means — the funding and notoriety that follow membership is hardly a negative thing. However, it does connect learning outcomes to a larger theme our school has been dogged with lately: bad faith.

“Do [we] want NCAA to be driving the fact that this is where we’re headed?” asks Kruger-Ross. “If we do, that’s fine,

outcome rather than giving students a chance to go deeply into the subject matter,” asserts Dr. Bingham.

One area that has the most to lose with the implementation of learning outcomes is experiential learning, especially Co-op. “There’s no way I could write a learning outcome for what my student is going to do at her internship,” Dr. Bingham states outright. Some may suggest simply writing learning outcomes broadly, but “If you write them broadly, they mean nothing.” In the case of experiential learning, learning outcomes are “somewhere between restrictive and vacuous.”

It’s reasons such as this that have Matthew Kruger-Ross, a doctoral student in Curriculum Theory and Implementation: Philosophy of Education program, wishing professors would take more of an active rather than passive role. “It would be interesting to see the faculty say ‘Okay, we’re going to do this, however, we’re doing it our way.

We’re going to reappropriate learning outcomes.’ That feels better to me than ‘no.’” He’s worked with learning outcomes for many years and says that when then these kinds of programmes are rigidly followed, “it doesn’t take you to a very happy place.”

but we should be pretty explicit in what we’re doing.” The issue here isn’t that SFU is trying to implement a new system. It isn’t the first nor should it be the last time SFU changes the way it assess student achievement.

Let’s face it, our system of gradients of pass vs. fail isn’t much better than a learning outcomes approach. Rather, the issue lies in a purportedly “world class university” trying to pass off the prerequisites for an athletics association membership as beneficial to students’ future.

The membership should warrant the efforts involved in getting accredited. Why, then, the bait and switch?

14 FEATURES

At the end of the Rotunda Hallway (or at the beginning, if you’re coming from residences and West Mall) lies the SFU Women’s Centre, a pro-feminist, sex-positive, pro-choice, trans and intersex inclusive, anti-racist space. It’s a second home to some, a place to microwave lunch for others, or somewhere verboten for others.

“I was definitely hesitant to come into the space, and mainly because I didn’t really know what existed beyond that door,” explained Biftu Yousuf, a fourthyear criminology student who is now a collective member and volunteer at the Centre.

Another volunteer, Stephanie Boulding, also remembers her hesitations: “I said ‘I don’t have time to do this!’ and then I started doing it, and it turned out I did — I made time.”

While spelling her name for me, she signs it.

The Women’s Centre

collective meets from 2:15 to 3:45 p.m. every Monday this semester in room TC 3013. “Collective makes the decisions — we’re a consensus-based decision making group,”said Negin Alavi, another collective member. Everything the Centre does is agreed upon by all collective members. If a consensus can’t be met, then it doesn’t happen.

Not surprisingly, when you think of the Women’s Centre, most people immediately think of Nadine Chambers, the Centre’s volunteer coordinator.

“Nadine is the glue that puts our decisions into practice and reality,” Alavi explains.

Despite only having parttime hours with her official title and being a part-time student herself, Nadine is a constant around the Centre, so “people end up thinking she owns the space. She must have an incredibly amazing title,

June 10, 2013

and profit immensely,” Alavi concludes.

When I ask about Nadine, the room lights up while she herself casually backs away.

Later she reveals that she actually had another meeting to be in while she was there making sure everything was going great. The stories the collective members share with me second that this ever-busyness with her is a regular occurrence.

Yousuf, who is a single mother, volunteers with three different organizations, is a full time student, works part-time, and trains for and runs marathons for charity; yet, despite her busy schedule, she explains how Nadine’s schedule still puts her to shame.

If you ask Nadine about her involvement with the Centre, she’ll be quick to tell you she just sees out the wishes of collective. She chalks up people seeing her as the flagstone

of the Centre to her visibility, while flipping a stray dread over her shoulder.

Despite their efforts, many seem to misunderstand the role the Centre and its volunteers play on campus. “Some people, haven’t actually been in the Centre because [they’ve] got this ‘version of it’,” explains Boulding, who emphatically adds she wants to tell them “Come, join!

Walk in! Just say hi!”

Alavi agrees and explains how she wishes people understood how important a role male allies play in the Centre.

She also wants “people who don’t identify as feminist, but who are interested in learning more, to come here. And I want them to know they won’t be judged . . . we’d be happy to clarify and give more information.”

For Yousuf, it was the first time she came into the office that sealed the deal. “[Nadine

and I] sat right there” — she points to the small love seat in front of Nadine’s desk — “and I was like, ‘wow, this is the beginning,’ and it just went from there and it’s been amazing since then.”

If, after reading this article, you’re still afraid to walk through the doors and find out what the Centre is all about, know this: at an appreciation event collective members, volunteers and local community activists got together at Tamam, a local Palestinian restaurant.

The laughter of the group was so loud, the area the group was in had to be closed off from the rest of the patrons.

A good third of my interview is just laughter, and the rest is peppered with sarcasm and witticisms.

“This one time, Bill Murray came to the Centre . . .” is only one of many stories they shared with me.

OPINIONS

President Obama’s National Defence speech on May 23 has sparked a greater interest and debate on US facilitated drone attacks aimed towards eliminating high-ranking terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.

According to the New America Foundation, American drones have killed 55 known Al-Qaeda leaders or affiliates in Pakistan since the advent of their use in 2004. In other words, this technology has apparently successfully hindered many terror plots that could have catastrophic for the United States — possibly even Canada — with relative ease and low cost in comparison to conventional military options.

However, the use of drones has a major drawback: they result in civilian casualties often crudely referred to as “collateral damage.” In Pakistan, the civilian and unknown casualty rate was about 11 per cent in 2012, while the civilian casualty rate over the course of drone usage in Yemen has been between 3.2 to 8.9 per cent.

Arguably, the rates are lower in comparison to the countless civilian fatalities that may have resulted had Al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders been left to their designs. But the loss of innocent lives in countries targeted by drones has serious repercussions, specifically the radicalization of civilians, which cannot be overlooked.

Since the beginning of their use, drone attacks have alienated civilians in Pakistan against the American government. About 60 per cent of those polled in Pakistan’s tribal regions — the main target area for drones — have expressed support for suicide attacks against the US military. More people, especially relatives of victims, are joining militant groups; when terrorists are

June 10, 2013

targeted by drones and civilian life is lost, it inspires individuals to join terrorism.

This is true about homegrown terror as well. We’ve seen the terror suspects of recent attacks in Boston and London cite US wars in the Middle East or attacks on Muslim lands as impetuses for their extremist acts.

These individuals maintain the questionable perception that US military operations, including drones, as an indication of American hostility towards their countries or religion. This perception is further exacerbated by the discrepancy in civilian casualty numbers claimed by US government officials and those circulated by news reports or local civilians, fuelling feelings of mistrust and hostility towards the US.

However, civilian hostility in Pakistan or Yemen is not directed solely at the US government. Many, if not most, Pakistani and Yemeni civilians are aggravated at their government for being unwilling or powerless in stopping the strikes from taking place, resulting in greater political, economic,

Standing up for yourself takes courage, but standing up for others requires true grit.

Briar MacLean proved just that when protecting a fellow classmate from a knife wielding bully. “I heard the flick,” he said, “and I heard them say there was a knife.” At this point, Briar took fast action and pushed the would-be assaulter away from his potential

15

and social instability — a fecund environment for terrorist groups to seize control over regions, further their doctrine, and recruit politically and financially aggrieved individuals.

Of course, the US drone program has its benefits, and its use is even necessary to hinder and eliminate difficult-tocapture terrorists who pose immediate threats to Western and foreign lives. However, in order to tackle the root cause of radicalization for many individuals, the American government needs to focus on countering the drones’ detrimental impact on the lives of civilians affected by the strikes.

This involves placing greater restrictions on the use of drones, and co-ordinating with the foreign governments in providing aid to families of victims, establishing schools, employment training programs, and medical facilities in efforts to stabilize areas that have been hit, as well as deter alienated or poverty-stricken individuals from joining militant groups.

Further collaboration with the Pakistani or Yemeni government and military is necessary to alleviate hostility towards the US, improve civilian trust in the capabilities of their local government, and relieve the political and economic instability that results from drone attacks.

Otherwise, the drone program runs the risk of creating more hostility and distrust in those whom it involves.

victim. Briar’s mother, Leah O’Donnell, raised her son to always stand up for himself and for others, and her teachings inspired him to help save another middle school boy from getting his throat slit. In this dog-eat-dog-world, we should praise those such as Briar MacLean for answering the call to action and doing the right thing to save others.

Who the fuck punishes a boy for preventing another boy’s throat from being slit? Apparently those in positions of authority at Sir John A. Macdonald junior high school. When they found out Briar MacLean intervened in the situation, he was brought to the principal’s office for the remainder of the day and was scolded for his actions: “We don’t condone

heroics in this school,” said the vice-principal to his mother. If you’re anything like me, your jaw is on the floor right now in disgusted disbelief. It’s fortunate that Briar was such a brave boy and saved his fellow classmate from potentially life threatening injury. But hey, if their child in danger, I bet they’d appreciate their kid’s classmate wanting to “play hero and jump in.”

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ARTS

Tavola restaurant, a cozy little Italian joint, has its home in the West End on Robson St, and it’s got to have one of the most welcoming patios in town. The restaurant receives a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Yelp, and part of this can be attributed to their reasonably priced yet high quality dishes. Tucked on the quieter end of Robson underneath a few overhanging trees, the restaurant is often bustling with guests enjoying a bottle of wine. The dishes are simple, sticking to the basics, and this is precisely why they succeed.

Try a classic, like the gnocchi with brown sage butter, and pine nuts.

arts editor email / phone

June 10, 2013

Color Magazine presents Hotel Takeover, a ramp party at The Burrard Hotel on June 15. What is a ramp party you ask? Well let me tell you! The Jamcouver 2013 skate teams will be announced, and there will be an actual skateboard ramp with “special features” to boot. The evening will consist of live music, artist rooms, food, drinks, and visuals. Expect performances by Humans, as well as DJ Genie, My!Gay!Husband!, Cherchez la Femme, Dale Evans, and Mandy-Lyn. If you get there before 9 p.m., you’ll catch the garage party and record release. Tickets are $35 for the entire evening.

The Cinematheque is holding its 5th annual Open House on June 15, at 12 p.m.

There will be tours and activities, followed by free, all-ages screenings at 2 p.m. They’ll be showing Charlie Chaplin’s Easy Street with a live piano accompaniment by Sara Davis Buechner, as well as a showing of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! Guests will have the opportunity to attend guided tours through the projection booth, the Film Reference Library, and the West Coast Film Archives. The afternoon will also hold a film poster auction, a silent-film activity, and a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. Plus, everyone gets a complimentary bag of popcorn!

ab

out

Centre A introduces its new gallery space in Chinatown with the current exhibition by Khan Lee, titled hearts and arrows.

According to the Koreanborn, Vancouver-based artist, the title of the exhibit refers to the labour involved in an artist’s creation, and the intricate faceting of cut diamonds.

Lee’s video work depicts the entire process of a man making an ice carving, recording the convergence of time and space, as he follows the artist’s daily routines and frustrations.

The exhibit will be running until July 27.

Daryn Wright arts@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

The West End Farmers Market, the Trout Lake Farmers Market, and the Kitsilano Farmers Market have all been open for a couple of weeks now, and this Saturday, June 15, the Kerrisdale Village Farmers Market will also open its stands. There are tons of different types of vendors, including farm vendors, ranging from Fort Langley Garlic to Jane’s Honey Bees.

There are also prepared food vendors, including Dundarave Olive Company and Earnest Ice Cream. You will also find some craft vendors, as well as miscellaneous service vendors offering services ranging from bike repairs to massage therapy. Check out the closest market to you, or venture into the city for some market hopping.

ARTS

If the only reason you can stand to be in Metrotown is for the soft serve frozen yogurt, be prepared to spend more time on the hill this summer. Yeti Yogurt just opened its premier Canadian location at Cornerstone, and it blows its competitors out of the water.

The Washington-based and family-owned yogurt chain, opened its doors on campus in mid-May and is set to open a second location in North Vancouver shortly. The choice to open on Burnaby Mountain first came down to luck, according to Shafiq Jiwani, the location’s manager and an SFU alum. He hadn’t liked what his realtor had shown him but had heard there was some development happening on the mountain, saw the space, and the rest is history.

Becoming part of the community is a focus for Yeti Yogurt and Jiwani, whose staff of 14 consists entirely of SFU students. Jiwani wants Yeti to be a place where people can come, relax, and just hang out.

Yeti Yogurt boasts a range of flavours that rotate seasonally. That’s where the comparison ends. The dairy products used are all local to Vancouver, something important to Jiwani.

Rather than pay a 250 per cent tariff on American sourced dairy products like other purveyors of frozen treats, Yeti yogurt found a local company whose product matched their standards and is growth hormone-free.

Yeti has at least 16 flavours available at all times, which include low-fat, non-fat, lactose free, and vegan (soft serve

June 10, 2013

sorbet, which I didn’t even know was a thing) options, with any potential allergens conveniently listed beside the flavour’s pull-handle. While an emphasis is placed on incorporating local raw materials, real and fresh ingredients are equally paramount.

Flavours are made from actual fruit extract, and options like red velvet cake have actual elements of their namesake in them, besides the colour red.

Did I mention it was selfserve? Don’t get too excited, though: you have to pay by weight. They also have mochi in different flavours and those weird “berry” pearl things everyone seems to like so much, as well as all of the toppings you’d expect and then some. Cinnamon toast crunch? Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Sweetened condensed milk? Yes, please.

When I went, I loaded up with as many flavours as I could, which were still good even after they all melted together into brown soup. I thought my

favourite was going to be the Greek plain and strawberry because it was the smoothest in texture (probably because of the fat content, but whatever), but the Washington Green Apple flavour was the dark horse that won this race.

It’s vegan (it’s actually sorbet, not frozen yogurt), and it’s amazing: just the right balance of tangy and sweet without any of the crystallization you might expect from a fruit flavour. It was so creamy I thought for sure it was yogurt until I checked the website to make sure I had gotten the name correct.

The banana flavour — which

too often tastes like the Penicillin we had crammed down our throats after getting another public swimming pool-induced ear infection as children — is a subtle and grown-up flavour which pairs ridiculously well with the Himalayan Chocolate flavour you have the option of twisting it with.

If you’re on campus and

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you’re starving and want something cool, I can’t recommend this place enough. While I was there, a machine tech confided in me that of all the companies whose equipment he repaired, Yeti’s Yogurt was by far the best.

I have to agree — you can’t really go wrong with cold sweet things, but even I was surprised by how right this was.

18 ARTS

As a newcomer to Vancouver, it’s been wonderful to see how much this city loves the arts.

For instance, the prevalence of the film and television industry is one of this city’s coolest aspects. But as a lover of live performance, I’ve found myself asking on more than one occasion, where’s all the good (affordable) theatre at?

Catherine Ballachey, SFU alum and member of Resounding Scream Theatre happens to have an answer of the best variety: live theatre event Hive: the New Bees 3. Ballachey, along with her partner in crime Stephanie Henderson, has been hard at work over the past few months producing this innovative show. I sat down with Ballachey to chat about all the delightful details.

“You know what’s so funny?

I’ve met a few people saying the same thing: ‘I went looking for theatre and couldn’t really find it,’ but we’re here looking for you guys,” says Ballachey.

At its most basic level, Hive: the New Bees 3 is a theatre exhibition featuring original performances by several up-andcoming Vancouver companies.

“We recruit everyone in February, then it’s up to them to create as they will. We’ve been having monthly visits to the venue so the companies can come and see their space, and then it’s up to them to create.”

Hive: the New Bees 3 is the sixth production of its kind.

The Progress Lab, a group of professional Vancouver theatre companies, produced the first three Hive events. “They were the original 12 companies that did this and then we kind of adopted it from them and did the emerging artist version.” That’s where the “New Bees” part of the title comes into play. “The last of the original Hive installations, they hired a lot of emerging artists to work with them in the hopes of passing it on.”

What distinguishes Hive from other theatre productions — and makes it a truly unique

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experience for audience members and actors alike — is the sheer chaos (in the best sense) of the production. Eleven theatre companies will perform original works simultaneously in one building, the Chapel Arts on Dunlevy (a former funeral home).

Ballachey describes the experience: “The audience comes in, they get a map with all the different companies and where they are in the space, and where the bar is, of course — very important. It turns into a party, right? The chaos is what livens it up. It’s the audience’s job to go and find the performances.”

She describes performance styles as coming in three(ish) forms: the short, repeating 10-minute piece; the installation piece that continues throughout the night; and the roving piece that goes in search of its audience. She warns that things can get a little competitive insofar as seeing the piece you want to see, but adds that there are multiple nights of

performance as well as incentive deals for repeat patrons.

“More often than not, the competition enlivens the audience because you kind of have to fight for what you want to see. It doesn’t often happen that audience members come for just one piece, they usually come open to everyone.”

“People who come to Hive seek out something unconventional, something a bit different.” Unconventional seems like it might be an understatement, as halfway through our chat, Ballachey divulged a bit of a spoiler alert regarding this year’s Hive: live tattooing!

“I won’t say who it is, but you will see an actor get tattooed in front of you.”

“We told [each company] that their piece would be their introduction to the community, so it should represent the work that they want to do, their identity. I think it reinforces [the production as a whole]. If each piece is so different from the next, it shows the diversity we have in the growing arts scene so we really encourage them to take risks.”

She’s not kidding about the diversity factor: musical work, movement and dance, improv, cultural themes and audience participation are all likely discoveries at Hive.

Hive is really just a big, inyour-face party for all art-lovers. “As bleak as this is,” says Ballachey, “it’s really hard for us to make a living these days and it often gets very, very competitive in the arts industry. And this kind of puts all of that aside and helps us celebrate each other’s art without

worrying about who’s going to get funded.”

Ballachey also has high hopes for attracting people outside the arts community.

“We had this beautiful moment last year where these two guys were just walking around in the neighborhood and they saw this commotion. They were compelled to go and see what the commotion was about and realized it was a bunch of young people doing theatre, bought tickets, stayed all night and had a blast. I wish that could happen more, people taking a risk with this sort of thing, you know?”

Hive: the New Bees 3 runs from June 11 to 14 at Chapel Arts. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $15 on opening night, $20 on Wednesday and Friday, and by donation on Thursday. For those readers looking to save a little, there is a $10 preview performance on Monday, June 10. For more details, visit hivenewbees.wordpress.com.

ARTS

On their fifth release as a group, Camera Obscura have their shy, nostalgic twee pop aesthetic down to a science: each one of their records have seen the group capitalizing on their ‘better to have loved and lost’ balladry and tender guitar work, all brought home by Tracyanne Campbell’s clear-cut, subtly Scottish vocals.

Where some bands seek to chart new territory with each release, Camera Obscura are content to hone their craft.

Borrowing from twee titans Belle & Sebastian and Heavenly and spinning lyrical webs of literary lovers and youthful rebellion, the Glaswegian group seem to improve with each release.

Desire Lines continues this trend, improving on 2009’s My Maudlin

Lou Reed was a former electroshock patient and occasional drug dealer who played guitar the way Ornette Coleman played saxophone. John Cale was a classically trained violist with an ear for

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Career with catchier hooks, sweeter swan songs and stronger wordplay than ever before.

Album highlights “Cri Du Coeur” and “Desire Lines” are among the band’s strongest tear-jerkers: both hinge on Campbell’s impassioned delivery and charming but not contrived lyrics. On the other end of the spectrum, the summery guitar licks of “Everyday Weekday” and horn-bolstered chorus of “Do It Again” could challenge the band’s most muscular pop hooks.

To be fair, Desire Lines does have a learning curve: early tracks “This Is Love (Feels Alright)” and “Troublemaker” are among the most lethargic on the album, and on initial listen had me worried that the album might break the band’s decade-long winning streak. Fear not, prospective listeners: after a slow start, the album finds its legs with the lovely synth-led “William’s Heart.” It’s all uphill from there.

Though the group’s best songs appear elsewhere, their elegant approach to songwriting has never been more consistent or focused. Camera Obscura are firing on all cylinders, and Desire Lines sounds like nothing less than the work of a band at the top of their game.

the avant-garde. Sterling Morrison was a guitarist and reluctant bassist with a rock-and-roll spirit. Maureen Tucker was a keypunch operator who played along to the drums on her Bo Diddley records after work.

When Andy Warhol first heard these four play together as The Velvet Underground at the Cafe Bizarre in New York, he knew he had found the house band he was looking for.

He adopted them, had them play at his now-legendary studio The Factory, and his celebrity status gave them the creative freedom they needed to create one of the most audacious, unconventional albums of all time.

The Velvet Underground & Nico is an album about drug use, BDSM, prostitution and race, played by a band with no FM radio aspirations. The music is loud and unconventional, bathed in reverb and tape hiss, and it sounds like a live recording. Though Warhol is credited as producer, the real praise belongs to John Cale and engineer Norman Dolph, whose mixes range from the tense and claustrophobic to the lush and elaborate.

Obsidian is the second album by Will Wiesenfeld as Baths, but for those who’ve come to know the artist from his 2010 debut Cerulean, it’s barely recognizable. The album’s opaque cover artwork seems to both betray and espouse the music within: Obsidian is at once a much more accessible and much darker record than its predecessor.

Where Cerulean was a glitchy, experimental album with a happy-go-lucky tone, Obsidian is a collection of pop songs about death, meaningless sex and apathy.

Recuperating from a battle with E. coli which stifled his songwriting abilities, Wiesenfeld channeled all his frustration into his lyrics, which are disturbing to say the least. The album opens with a

Warhol’s biggest contribution to the album was persuading The Velvets to allow German-born fashion modelturned-singer, Nico, to join the group.

Her rich, enunciated vocals give gravitas to songs like “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Femme Fatale,” inspired by Reed’s experiences with Warhol’s flamboyantly Bohemian social circle.

The album’s standout track however, is its seven-minute centerpiece “Heroin,” which is still one of the most compelling and moving songs ever written about drug use. Tucker’s drumbeat and Reed and Morrison’s twin guitars wax and wane to mirror the experience of a heroin high. Other songs like the viola-led “Venus in Furs” and barrelhouse-piano “I’m Waiting For the Man” are among the best the band ever wrote.

Although it took decades for The Velvet Underground & Nico to earn its deserved “essential” status, the album’s daring subject matter and experimental soundscapes still have the power to thrill new listeners. Few albums have had this much influence on music, and for good reason.

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vocoder drone over a whispered stanza: “Birth was like a fat black tongue / Dripping tar and dung and dye / Slowly into my shivering eyes.”

Later, on album highlight “No Eyes,” Wiesenfeld waxes poetic over emotionless and non-quite-consensual sex. Not exactly congruent with the accessible, The Postal Service style electro-pop the album borrows so heavily from.

But somehow, Wiesenfeld’s disarming honesty and unsettling imagery complement the album’s uncommonly beautiful electronics perfectly.

“Incompatible”’s failing relationship fable is framed behind a gorgeous aural landscape, and Wiesenfeld’s tender vocals are all the more affecting when he sings: “You don’t do anything with your life / Fascinating, terrible, your stupid idling mind / I could prod your hurt all night.”

As horrible as it sounds, E. coli might have been the best thing that could have happened to Wiesenfeld’s musical career. His brush with death has driven him towards thematic ground that few performers today are willing to explore.

His music has also undergone a parallel, but antithetical evolution: an unruly combination between sonic beauty and lexical gloominess makes Obsidian one of the most fascinating and courageous albums released so far this year.

20 DIVERSIONS / ETC

June 10, 2013

STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

June 10, 2013

COMMUNITY PHOTOS June 10, 2013

photo editor email / phone

Vaikunthe Banerjee photos@the-peak.ca

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22

HUMOUR

June 10, 2013

humour editor email / phone

Brad McLeod humour@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

HUMOUR

ANDALUSIA, AL — The world of mass produced salted legumes may never be the same again following an announcement from famed snack food conglomerate Planters Peanuts.

After several decades, the long awaited follow-up to the company’s flagship product “Mixed Nuts” was finally been debuted last Friday, the new line of “Segregated Nuts.”

Industry sources say the new product will contain all the same ingredients found in the classic mixed nuts in the exact

June 10, 2013

proportions. The only difference is now each individual species of nut will be partitioned into its own separate compartment to prevent any unwanted mixing or commingling.

Company vice president and CEO Thaddeus Suffield, dressed in an immaculate white Sunday suit and sipping a mint julep, greeted reporters last Tuesday on a specially built porch outside Planters World Headquarters in Andalusia, Alabama.

“We at planters believe that while the general consensus nowadays is that nuts should be allowed to mix as they please,” Suffield explained, “there are still some people who would prefer it the pecans kept to the pecans and the almonds to the almonds.”

“Some of us long for the good old days when it was a man’s God-given right to determine how familiar he wanted

his Brazil nuts to get with his pine nuts without the union gov’ment cramming down our throats.”

Pausing to pour himself another drink, Suffield continued, “I don’t want to bore you nice folk with all high-falutin’ science speak , but our food scientists have assured me you won’t find so much as an acorn’s fart mixed in with the pistachios.”

“These fine folks know what they’re doing. We’re not paying these people peanuts, keep sure of that,” added Suffield, guffawing loudly while holding an empty glass.

“Damn greasy pistachios.

Why I remember a day when you could enjoy the pristine purity of grabbing a handful of peanuts without biting into some bland walnut. Hic! Now you listen here boy, if the Macedamias ever get the vote, it’ll be absolute anarch – ” “The press conference then had to be cut short due to a ‘peanut emergency’ which only Mr. Suffield himself could take care of” explained one of the Planters representatives who came onstage to take the microphone away from him.

Meanwhile, market analysts are already predicting steady gains for Planters throughout the next quarter with segregated

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nuts already testing well with those people who like to pick all the M&Ms out of the trail mix the fuckers.

24 LAST WORD

features editor email / phone

Rachel Braeuer features@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

June 10, 2013

he Burnaby campus has been the only post-secondary institution I’ve ever known since I started my undergraduate career. I slogged through my degree before enrolling in graduate school and joined the Teaching and Support Staff Union as a Teaching Assistant to pay the bills, all the while holding a positive image of the University. Then I began to pay attention, and that image fell apart.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that universities have become increasingly corporatized in behavior and organization. The facts are simple: public funding has been shrinking for some time, forcing universities to get more creative and take their cues from corporations as to how and where to raise and allocate funds. While it seems like a natural progression, the central conceit that governs universities versus corporations is indisputably at conflict — the latter driven by profit, and the former driven by idealism.

Universities have always occupied a lofty niche in society that has allowed them to weather ever changing sociopolitical and cultural landscapes. Schools ought to be non-profit organizations, run with the express intent of advancing human understanding, knowledge, the advocacy of intellect and the stimulation of thought.

Perhaps this is starry-eyed idealism, and all the intellect in the world doesn’t power projectors when bills come due.

But the people now running the show at these institutions are from a corporate background, and their inexperience in understanding what actually defines a university is telling. SFU is not innocent of this cultural shift, and it signals a definitive disconnect in what we think universities are versus what they really are.

There is a general knee-jerk response to the word corporate; accusations of commodification of people, the environment, memes, social causes, and even disease (breast cancer being a particularly drawn-from well) — these dominate grassroots social movements and the media, especially in BC. But does it actually matter if the university as we know it is no longer a time honoured institution with only the most noble of goals? Don’t corporations, ultimately, produce valuable items? Being a corporation doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is a misleading, faceless Goliath

with a hyperactive PR department . . . does it?

Take Mediacorp’s listing of the Top 100 Canadian Employers. SFU has enjoyed a catbird seat over the last decade, making the list for six straight years. It’s quite the feat, and if you pay any attention to SFU’s PR campaigns and job advertisements, it won’t escape your notice. But how accurate a representation is this listing of the university, or any of the other businesses selected?

Mediacorp’s scouting strategy is, at best, flawed. The process is driven by questionnaires filled out by each applicant’s HR Department, without input or feedback from actual employees; it’s akin to a child gleefully filling out their own report card. But, for the sake of this argument, let’s narrow our focus.

SFU has been ranked as “very good,” in employee engagement and “above average” with reference to communication. Mediacorp judges specifically highlighted annual performance reviews, as well as in-house satisfaction surveys and exit interviews conducted

by SFU. They also state on their website that feedback is encouraged by inhouse newsletters and an intranet site.

Surprisingly, in its last three years of rankings, the judges failed to note (or SFU failed to notify) that a number of unions working on campus remained without a contract. The Teaching and Support Staff Union concluded negotiations last December after two and a half years in limbo, only after the union enacted a work stoppage that threatened to delay delivery of final grades to students.

Even more severe, CUPE 3338 — encompassing clerical and library staff, lifeguards, programmers, buyers and store clerks, amongst others — have remained without a contract for three years now. SFU was found guilty of bargaining in bad faith in January of this year by a Labour Relations Board, a decision that the University appealed for over three months before the LRB upheld the original ruling in April.

In their most recent contract offer, the university offered a package which,

including two years of the BC Government’s zero wage mandate for public workers, offered a retroactive increase of 0.5 per cent over each of the last two years of a four year contract; far below the current rate of inflation and, in essence, a pay cut.

Contrasted with other BC universities, which have long since settled their labour issues, the offer was blasted as “insulting”

by CUPE 3338 president Lynne Fowler.

But isn’t this common knowledge? Apparently, not to Mediacorp.

SFU has also been feted for vacation pay that starts at three weeks, increases to four weeks after an employee’s first year, and may reach six weeks for long-standing employees (according to Mediacorp and SFU’s HR department). However, TSSU members are limited to two weeks of paid vacation at the beginning of employment, and longstanding members are not offered any escalators for time employed or performance.

escalators, the University instituted a cap on the number of semesters during which an individual could receive a TA position, which results in graduate students who rely on such positions to pay for their schooling to find work offcampus, often delaying the completion of their degrees.

Given that the average time taken for a Ph.D. student to complete their thesis work varies between 5-7 years with no external conflicts, this is a significant issue for a number of students and an absolute non-starter for international students who are unable to work offcampus, requiring them to assume an even more crushing student debt load.

However, this still does not address the issue of sessionals and continuing students who are, in essence, long-term workers with no potential senioritybased perks or security. Are these the actions of a Top 100 Employer? You decide.

I don’t want to indemnify SFU as some sort of uncaring corporate giant, but a disturbing trend has taken root at the core of the University. A focus on profit ahead of academia scuttles the very concept of a university, and challenges our expectations of what a

When contacted by The Peak for a response, Scott McLean of the Public Media and Relationships Office stated diplomatically that “the TSSU had an opportunity to address vacation pay during the last round of negotiations.” Scott Yano, involved in the TSSU’s contract committee during the negotiations, was nonplussed by the comment, alleging that “The TSSU had the opportunity and took it. Stunned silence was the only reply.” The TSSU was further, according to Yano, pressed to file a grievance to receive statutory holiday pay. When asked to respond to these allegations, McLean politely elected to decline.

Additionally, to avoid the issue of long-standing workers with seniority

school is. It ought to be a public service and the source of an individual alumni’s identity — a brand that they carry as a part of themselves for the rest of their professional careers.

A privatization of said brand does nothing to enhance one’s credentials, despite private and federal attempts to commodify the culture of schools. The core influencing public and university policy needs to be the cadre of academics and faculty, creating an environment conducive to learning and discovery, instead of endless labs dedicated to product testing and the fostering of a consumer culture.

Demand change. Because the status quo isn’t good enough.