The Runner: Volume 8, Issue 10

VOL-08-ISS-10

Feb-2-2016

Breathing heavy since 2009

NEWS

CULTURE

FEATURE

What’s Up, KDOCS?

Learning to LoveYour Blood

Kwantlen Gaming Guild barred from booking Social Justice Space

A sneak peek at three films from KPU’s upcoming documentary festival

The Search for Space Continues

Growing community of menstruation activists seek to destroy period taboo

“This is where everything starts to go wrong” KSA ousts KMUN execs amidst hotel controversy find us online / runnermag.ca / @runnermag / facebook.com/runnerMAG / INSTAGRAM.com/RUNNERMAG

Table of Contents

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News |KGG barred from booking Social Justice Space 04

Kwantlen Polytechnic University will not let the Kwantlen Gaming Guild book the social justice space until further notice. In the meantime, KGG members, whose club often books the social justice space (Birch 208) on Tuesdays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., have been instructed to move their gaming paraphernalia and activities to the smaller, adjacent room, Birch 206.

The Runner is student-owned and operated by Kwantlen Polytechnic University students, published under the Polytechnic Ink Publishing Society.

Arbutus 3710/3720 12666 72 Ave. Surrey, B.C, V3W 2M8 778.565.3801

Culture | What’s Up, KDOCS? 07

www.runnermag.ca Vol. 08, Issue no.10 Feb. 2, 2016 ISSN# 1916 8241

KDOCS is KPU’s annual documentary festival, wherein a variety of documentary films are screened in order to engage with “various and varied communities” through dialogue and critical thinking. We take a sneak peek at three of films featured at this year’s upcoming festival.

The Runner recognises that our work, both in and out of the office, takes place on unceded Coast and Strait Salish territories, specifically the shared traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Sto:lo and Tsawwassen First Nations.

Our name is inspired by the hun’qumi’num meaning of Kwantlen, which is tireless hunters or tireless runners. Just as Kwantlen is adaptable and changing so is The Runner.

CONTRIBUTORS Aida Garcia Aly Laube Ashley Powell Awais Mushtaq Gabrielle Lakusta Hailey Logan Kat Nekuryashchikh Kyle Prince Matt Bremner Nat Mussell

FEATURES | KSA ousts Kwantlen Model United Nations executives 10

The Kwantlen Student Association removed former Kwantlen Model United Nations executives on Nov. 27 on the basis of student complaints about conference and workshop planning, and a failure to prove their democratic election.

Former KMUN president Saed Abu-Haltam disagrees with the decision, and believes the KSA is trying to “politicize” a previous conflict between them.

Pifanida Preet Hundal Renée McMillen Rosa Ojeda Sascia Smith-Jensen Shandis Harrison Theresya Tabert Torin Slik Viktoria Kampbell

OPINIONS | Why not showcase KPU Beer on every campus? 17

Like many workplaces, the staff of The Runner conformed to annual holiday tradition and conducted an office-wide Secret Santa, wherein each staff member gives a single gift to a randomly selected coworker. My past experience with Secret Santa means I know that I can expect one of two things: either a gift so personal I would have never expected it, or a gift card.

COLUMNS | South Korea reconciles with Japan on Comfort Women 18 At the end of December, Japan and South Korea made a historic deal on the matter of comfort women. Japan agreed to pay 1 billion yen ($11.5 million CAD) to victims and their families, and to offer an apology. In exchange, South Korea will agree to stop criticising Japan over the issue, and remove the comfort women statue from the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

Artist Bio Kat Nekuryashchikh is a freelance illustrator currently attending her final year at Emily Carr university. She was born in Perm, Russia, and has spent her childhood there before moving to Canada in 2005. Kat has an avid interest in narrative illustration, speculative fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi, and uses those elements in her personal work.

When not hunched over her sketchbook or drawing tablet, Kat can be found playing video games, Dungeons and Dragons, and even socializing.

Sometimes she even goes outside.

STAFF

Executive Editor

Coordinating Editor

Tristan Johnston editor@runnermag.ca

Samantha Thompson deputy@runnermag.ca @sampthompson

Photo Editor

Managing Editor

Production Editor

Percy Yeung production@runnermag.ca

Staff Writer

Geoffrey Nilson

Connor Doyle managing@runnermag.ca

photo@runnermag.ca

Art Director

Danielle George art@runnermag.ca

Web Editor

Yaunna Sommersby web@runnermag.ca

Kier-Christer Junos k.junos@runnermag.ca @kierjunos Operation Manager

Scott Boux office@runnermag.ca 778.565.3801

Editorial

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From the editor

In response to: “Refugees: At Home and Abroad”

News Briefs TELUS DONATES TO THE VISUAL MEDIA WORKSHOP $15,000 to assist with Princess Margaret Secondary partnership Kris Krüg/Flickr

Geoffrey Nilson PHOTO EDITOR

Let’s just get this out of the way: the homeless situation in Canada isn’t the same as what refugees are experiencing.

Any inference that the experience of Canada’s homeless is somehow analogous with that of Syrian refugees is a simplification and strikes me as deeply problematic. Complex factors go into both homelessness and the global migration of populations displaced by war, and the argument is a giant red-herring thrown into the middle of an already heated debate.

Of course homelessness is an important issue that needs to be addressed, but it is completely unrelated to the current refugee crisis. The injection of homeless-

ness as a counter issue serves only to distract from helping Syrians escape the civil war that is tearing their country apart.

Canada welcomes the refugees, mostly families with small children, not because they have something to offer us, but so they may have an opportunity to live a life free of violence. I know each and every refugee arriving in Canada will offer great things to the nation’s evolving pluralism, but the country does not open its arms because of that. Refugees are not an investment. The obligation to provide shelter to those people battered by war is something more than boosting the Canadian economy. It is about compassion and about a legacy of kindness.

Sometimes it seems the only real outcry about homelessness is in response to completely un-

related policy initiatives. The federal government wants to sponsor refugees or the United Nations wants Canada to increase foreign aid and I hear “shouldn’t we support the homeless in our own backyards before we help out the rest of the world?”

But where was that support when the Vancouver Police Department demolished the tent city at Oppenheimer Park, executing an injunction from the B.C. Supreme Court? Where is that support as major cities all over the country are struggling to develop solutions to a crisis of speculation-fueled property inflation and shortage of low-income housing?

There is a distinct lack of kindness in Canada’s approach to homelessness.

Cuts to national affordable housing initiatives began in the

1980s and the federal government didn’t stop until they were all gone. Mulroney cut housing development and rehabilitation.

Chrétien reneged on election promises for new funding and instead downloaded the cost of housing programs to the provinces. For all its messages of real change, all Trudeau’s Liberals have offered is to “encourage the construction of new rental housing by removing all GST on new capital investments in affordable rental housing.”

Let me just say one thing to wrap this up: it’s going to take a lot more than encouragement to solve the problem of homelessness. It’s going to take real action from the federal government.

what’s up this week (FEb. 2 – feb. 16, 2016)

with Yaunna Sommersby

Tues, feb. 2-Thur,Feb.4

Thur, feb. 4

fri, feb. 5

UN World Interfaith Harmony Week Festival

Artversity Club Meeting

KPU Eagles women and men’s basketball vs. Douglas College Royals

The KPU Multi-Faith Centre is hosting its second annual UN World Interfaith Harmony Week Festival. Stop by the Surrey Main Atrium, the Surrey MultiFaith Office and the Richmond Rotunda throughout the week to participate.

10:30 a.m. – 1 p.m., Surrey and Richmond campuses. Free

Have a passion for the performing arts?

The Artversity Club is having an open meeting and all students are welcome to join. Take a chance and find out what Artveristy is all about.

1 p.m., Surrey campus – Fir 128. Free

The Douglas College Royals are challenging the KPU Eagles on our home court.

Grab some friends, come to the game and spend part of your Friday night cheering on your school.

Women’s game: 5 p.m., men’s game: 7 p.m.

Tickets: KPU students and staff: free, adults: $5, non-KPU students and kids: $2

weds, feb. 10

thur, feb. 11

sat, feb. 13

KPU Science World Speaker Series

Students of Colour for Syrian Refugees

Small Farm Sessions

10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Surrey Campus – Conference Centre. Free

8:30 a.m. – 3 p.m., KPU Richmond - Melville Centre for Dialogue. $20, Register online.

Dr. Laura Weir is a biology instructor at KPU and the next featured speaker in the KPU Science World Speaker series. Weir’s speech is going to cover the “weird and wonderful” world of fish ecology and reproduction.

7 p.m., Telus World of Science. Free

KSA Students of Colour representatives are hosting an event about how we can support Syrian refugees in VancouverGrief and trauma training services will be

The Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems department at KPU is holding its third annual Small Farm Sessions conference. This year, the theme is water management and irrigation.

Gabrielle Lakusta Telus, having previously donated to Kwantlen Polytechnic University, contributed $15,000 to the institution’s Visual Media Workshop this month.

Katie Warfield, director of the VMW, accepted the donation from Telus on Jan. 13 and is excited about the plans for the money.

The donation will go towards an after-school partnership program with Princess Margaret Secondary called the DigitalLens club, or Digital Literacy Education for Novice Storytellers.

The goal is to “challenge the paradigmatic representation of youth in Surrey,” says Warfield. This 12-week program will challenge 15 students to each produce a digital story about life in Surrey.

This program will go beyond teaching students about digital literacy tools. “Kwantlen will develop ties that may enable future partnerships between the Visual Media Workshop and Princess Margaret,” says Warfield. This fits with KPU’s academic plan to provide experiential learning opportunities. “It is going to be an incredible project with wins all around.”

After this program ends in midMay there will be an event to screen the creations. Students, Telus, families of participants, the Kwantlen community, and Princess Margaret faculty will be invited to this event to support the students.

In 2014 Telus also funded the Inside Out Prison program with the KPU Foundation.

News

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KGG barred from booking Social Justice Space The search for a clubs space continues Kier-Christer Junos STAFF WRITER

Kwantlen Polytechnic University will not let the Kwantlen Gaming Guild book the social justice space until further notice.

In the meantime, KGG members, whose club often books the social justice space (Birch 208) on Tuesdays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., have been instructed to move their gaming paraphernalia and activities to the smaller, adjacent room, Birch 206.

The university wants to let other clubs access the room, although a booking list is available for those who would like to reserve a time slot.

“I’m not happy about it,” says

Nawid, a KGG member. “We were doing so well off with this room we had—although, we need more room, in terms of how the club is growing.”

“We were told this room was going to be closed, and then we would get moved over,” he adds.

“But when we came back to school, nothing’s changed. It’s just all our stuff has been moved to the next room.”

KGG executive Tanvir Singh says he’s “very disappointed” in KPU’s stance on this issue.

He says that, as far as the KGG knows, other groups on campus have been complaining about the constant plethora of people in the social justice space.

Still, he believes there is equity when it comes to booking that

space, and that the conflict merely arises between the dual-agenda of the space.

“The way we have it right now—with a club space and social justice space—is just not working for either agenda,” he says.

It is true that the social justice space also was designed to function as a club room. KPU student services defines it as such. But the university said in their email informing the KGG of the new booking situation that Birch 206 was “designated specifically for the KGG.” And now their weekly meetings and their upcoming anniversary party must be in Birch 206.

Singh also sits on the Kwantlen Student Association’s Birch space committee, which discusses ini-

tiatives for the upcoming renovations in Birch building.

Renovation plans for Surrey campus could include knocking down the walls between the second floor Birch building rooms, replacing the area with a cafeteria, and turning the old cafeteria into a potentially larger student space.

At least that’s what people are saying. These are among the most recent suggestions to remedy the historic scarcity of student space at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, for it will be a few years before the student association erects the student union building.

The Birch space committee’s ideas currently include a women’s centre, meeting rooms for students and clubs, offices for the Kwantlen Public Interest

Research Group and the KSA’s records coordinator, among other things.

Singh is pushing for a club space, and says that anyone advocating for student life should be pushing for the largest space possible.

Geoffrey Nilson

Progress for Evergreen line and Surrey’s LRT Transit system to expand in coming years Sascia Smith-Jensen CONTRIBUTOR

The new Evergreen SkyTrain line is set to be up and running in early 2017. In Surrey, the Light Rail Transit system is being re-shaped to find a better funding source. Coquitlam, Port Moody and Surrey all anticipate new tracks of connectivity in the Lower Mainland.

Originally set to begin service in 2015, unsteady soil between the Coquitlam and Port Moody sections of the Evergreen Line pushed the twokilometre-long tunnel boring back by over a year. With the boring now complete, the line will open next year and run from Lafarge Lake-Douglas station to VCC-Clark via Lougheed Town Centre station.

“We’ve been waiting for Evergreen for my adult life, since I was a student at SFU,” says Richard Stewart, the Mayor of Coquitlam. “We’re really ecstatic that it’s finally getting to Coquitlam.” With the original project proposed in the 1990s, the Evergreen Line will connect the North East Sector of Metro Vancouver to the existing Millennium, Expo, and Canada Lines.

TransLink

When the tunnel boring was first halted, Mayor Stewart knew that the project’s completion would be pushed back. “High pressure combined with wet sand sloughed into the [boring] machine. It was stuck in one spot for six months while they tried to solve it,” says Stewart. “During that six months we knew the critical path toward the summer of 2016 was out of the window.”

According to Statistics Canada, the population of the City of Coquitlam in 2011 was 126,456, an increase of 10.4 per cent since 2006. Similarly, Port Moody saw a 19.9 per cent increase in population to 32,975 people from 2006 to 2011.

“We now have more than enough population to support the line,” says Stewart. “It really is a game-changer in a lot of ways.”

In Surrey, the city is working to come up with an alternate solution to fund the proposed LRT. The LRT would be an upcoming reality if the 2015 transit referendum had passed, and would link Surrey City Centre with Guildford, Langley, and South Surrey.

“When we get LRT, it’ll connect a lot of the centre’s of Surrey: Guildford, Surrey Centre, Newton, Fleet-

City Of Surrey wood, and going onwards to Clayton Hill and Langley,” says Randeep Sarai, the Liberal member of parliament for Surrey City Centre. “It connects a lot of communities together, and that is vital to Surrey.”

Sarai explains that the federal and provincial governments will move ahead with the project once the surrounding cities find alternative ways to fund their part in creating

the LRT line.

“Within Surrey, 70 per cent of people commute and work within [the city]. They don’t actually connect necessarily with Vancouver, so it’s an internal commute,” says Sarai.

“To make that commute a lot easier, a lot more commuter friendly, a lot greener, I think light rapid transit or any other configuration along with the SkyTrain is the proper answer.”

An LRT line would also help to put Surrey on the map as an environmentally conscious city, while adding a convenience factor in transportation. With an expected 195,000 people living within walking distance of the line, the hop-on hop-off service will also bring a high volume of traffic to local businesses.

“It allows a lot of easy access in and out, and it helps businesses along the route a lot more,” says Sarai.

“It’ll take a lot of cars off the street,” says Sarai. “The ease of use is prevalent and evident and people will start using it a lot more.” The City of Surrey estimates that within the next 30 years, it’ll see 300,000 people move to the area, making the LRT system an essential addition to the city.

Currently, TransLink is working on a 10-year investment plan to come up with an outline of a pay structure for the project. vSurrey will hold the third phase of public consultation in 2016, which will focus on the public’s involvement and elements of the station designs.

Culture

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The Man in the Mirror Matthew Bremner With nothing but a stage prop and his own experiences, Kwantlen psychology alumnus Kevin Kokoska plays the roles of two very different looking young men, both trying to overcome harmful insecurities and perceptions of self-worth.

The Mirror Test, written by Kokoska and told in roughly the span of an hour and a half, draws from his experience working at a “wellness

centre” for overweight youth in California this past summer. But while the basis of the narrative derives from Kokoska’s real experiences, for the sake of telling an engaging story the volume of the dramatization of the characters was turned up a notch.

“I was taking some themes that I thought were important and revving them up to make a point,” says Kokoska. This, however, did little to subtract any sense of realism or authenticity to the story—in fact it was quite the opposite. Kokoska brings a sharp wit to the stage. For the major-

ity of the play, which deals with some heavy subject matter that many may find relatable, the audience was laughing.

The humour was honest and self-aware and at no point seemed forced. It brought a levity to the characters which not only made them more relatable, but easy to root for.

Despite this being his first foray into the performing arts, Kokoska displays a very grounded sense of who his characters are, even when they weren’t based off his personal life.

The “mirror test” that the play’s

title refers to is a real psychological test developed by Gordon Gallup Jr. in 1970. The test involved placing an animal in front of a mirror and observing its reaction to its own reflection. This test was designed to gauge the animal’s level of self-awareness.

When the subject looks into the mirror, is it aware that it is looking at itself and, furthermore, will it understand what it sees?

Kokoska explains this test to the audience in the opening of the play by acting as a chimp taking part in the test, all while being narrated by an offstage voice which bares similarities to that of David Attenborough. The whole segment was really quite funny and did well to set up the theme for the rest of the play.

The play was hosted by the Cultch, a theatre in Vancouver. It is a small and very intimate venue which both helped and hindered the performance.

A one-man play is about as intimate as it gets with an actor, and it’s multiplied when they are roughly only 10 feet away from you performing for what looked like about 30 to 40 people. During the quiet moments, you could hear people shift in their seats with deafening clarity.

This heightened awareness to every word and inflection in Kokoska’s voice made many important and personal lines of dialogue much more poignant, but the wind was taken out of their sails quite easily when, for example, someone’s phone goes off in the front row and all of your focus is taken off Kokoska and placed on a

Courtesy of KevinnKokosa

Kwantlen grad’s one man play tackles the subjects of self-image, self-worth, and acceptance

muffled James Bond ringtone.

Despite a few minor hiccups, the show went quite well and many people left the theatre impressed and eager to talk about the play in the Cultch’s bar area.

“I’d like to keep acting, but I don’t know how that will look,” says Kokoska, who just became a registered clinical counsellor. “I would like to find a balance between acting and a therapy job.”

Based on his impressive performance and obvious understanding of the human psyche, either pursuit would be a well-served by Kokoska’s ambition.

KSA hires new Events Coordinator

Matt Hunt hopes to create a sense of student presence at Kwantlen Torin Slik

CONTRIBUTOR The Kwantlen Student Association has a new events coordinator once again. Matt Hunt has joined the team, and he’s ready to use his past experience to make Kwantlen Polytechnic University a much more friendly campus for students to enjoy.

Hunt spent four years working for the Children with Intestinal and Liver Disorders Foundation as a fundraiser. At Ch.I.L.D, Hunt organized many events designed to bring in money for the organization.

Unlike with his previous position, as events coordinator Hunt is now responsible for using the resources available to the KSA in order to create high energy events for the benefit of the student body. Although the purpose is slightly different, the planning of events is nearly identical.

Hunt’s ultimate goal as event coordinator is to create a sense of student presence on campus.

“A lot of people have gotten the impression that Kwantlen is a commuter school,” says Hunt. “You come, you do classes, and then you

go home. The KSA has brought me in to engage students to stick around after class.”

The forthcoming events which Hunt will be responsible for are still in the initial planning phases, but he says the Grassroots Cafe is going to be a big part of it. Hunt notes that the Grassroots already hosts the monthly poetry slams, and he thinks it would be “cool” to host other live events there.

One idea was having a regular open mic night. Another was bringing in live music, perhaps a battle of the bands.

In addition to putting forth his own ideas, Hunt really wants to understand what the students desire for each campus. In order to do that, he plans to reach out to the students through online surveys, social media, and the KSA website.

“Word of mouth is great, but it only works so much,” says Hunt.

Understanding the demographics of the school is something Hunt says is very important to putting on successful campus events. “There’s no point throwing an event where nobody is going to show up,” he says.

Two of the most important qualities for being an events coordinator are good communication skills and the ability to perform multiple tasks at once. Hunt says his past experience in fundraising, as well as his time with team sports and being in a band, has allowed him to develop these skills.

Hunt was part of the University of the Fraser Valley soccer team for four years, and he helped organize events for the school as well. In order to run these events smoothly, he had to be able to multitask.

“Some jobs you come in, you sit in your desk and you do this, this, and this before noon. An event planner is not like that,” says Hunt. “Being a successful event coordinator, you have to be able to a dozen different jobs at the same time.”

Ultimately, Hunt plans on making Kwantlen a place students will want to be rather than a place they have to be to get an education. He encourages all students to share with him ideas on how to do that.

Courtesty of Matt Hunt

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New KPU course delves into work of popular musicians Instructor says icons show us the potential within ourselves Preet Hundal CONTRIBUTOR

“We come out of the womb singing with our heartbeat; we are musicians the second we enter the world,” says Jodi Proznick, the instructor of a new course at Kwantlen Polytechnic University called the History of Popular Music.

Proznick believes that music is “one of the greatest tools in creating connections and transcendent thought,” and can “positively transform situations and mindsets.” It was this viewpoint on the power of music that led her to create this unique course which “teaches students the history and impact that music and popular figures surrounding it has had over time.”

“Music is a universal language that can touch us on the deepest of levels,” claims Proznick. “So much of our identities we tie into the music that we like.” As part of her class,

Pifanida

students are said to learn and gain insight on the roles that music has had in areas such as “technology and business.”

The course itself “primarily focuses on American music” and deals with a broad range of genres such as “rock, hip-hop and psychedelic.”

Proznick, who herself works “primarily as a jazz musician,” is a wellknown face to many in the Lower Mainland. She says that her biggest claim to fame was that her record was nominated for a Juno in 2008.

Proznick hopes students will gain an appreciation for “genres outside of what they already like,” and see iconic figures in music as positive role models that any of them can be like.

She states that icons such as Madonna and David Bowie “do outlandish things unapologetically and it makes us all less afraid to be ourselves. That’s their gift to us . . . in these artists we see our own poten-

tial, and that’s why we get so excited about them.”

“Madonna is no different from any person in the room, she just made the decision to be Madonna,” says Proznick. “Students should ignore the voices telling them that they are not enough. These characters in pop music are an invitation to all of us to be authentically and unapologetically ourselves.”

Proznick elaborates, however, that “many feel the need to worship these icons” and that “we need to stop looking at celebrities as figures that we cannot ever be like. They’re human beings . . . the intention is not to separate ourselves from these people but see ourselves in them.”

Proznick hopes that this course will be offered in many semesters to come and on different campuses.

She recommends that anyone should take the course, while “people who really love music would get a lot of it.”

Improv and Artversity at KPU

The Book Club is Before Us

Finding ways for students to share their performing art talents

Writing prof’s novel is the inaugural choice for KPU Reads

Viktoria Kampbell Previously, students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University wishing to take part in theatre, dance, singing, or improv were left with few avenues on campus to showcase their talents. Improv groups, in particular, are growing in popularity at large universities across North America, with the largest presence in the United States.

With its popularity slowly starting to creep across the borders and branching out to more schools across Canada, could we use a group like this at Kwantlen? Perhaps, seeing as how a few enterprising KPU students have come together to create a club for students hoping to get involved in the field of performing arts.

“I feel that there are so many talented KPU students and they need a

Thereysa Tabert

club to represent them,” says Argel Monte de Ramos, co-creator of Artversity. “This will be the mother club of all future performing arts clubs.”

Artversity is a way for students to take performing arts of any variety— dancing, singing, acting, improv— and bring it to the group. “There are no prerequisites to joining Artversity and we will not be conducting any auditions,” says Monte de Ramos.

“In fact, we are encouraging everyone to join.”

At the end of every semester there will be a variety show put on to showcase the talents of the club members, but if you can’t wait that long, every month there will be open mics for all students to come, practice, perform, and enjoy.

Beyond the borders of the campus, there are other student groups with similar goals.

“The two active college/university groups in town are UBC Improv

and 11:07 at Trinity Western,” says Angela Galanopoulos, a Vancouver Improv performer, actor and voiceover artist.

UBC will be hosting their annual IMPULSE Improv Festival from March 16-19. The festival consists of four teams from UBC, as well as teams from all over Canada and the USA. The festival is four nights of workshops with various instructors, networking with talented improvisers locally and globally, and “nonstop improvised hilarity.”

Artversity has no competitions set for the near future as it was only recently created. With a community of university groups though, there is great potential.

Meetings are every Thursday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Fir 128. For more information about Artversity, contact argel. montederamos@kpu.ca.

Gabrielle Lakusta Aislinn Hunter, award-winning poet and novelist, shared the prologue and first chapter of her newest book, The World Before Us, at KPU Reads on Jan. 20. Hunter, who is also a creative writing instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University was accompanied by president Alan Davis, who provided the reading.

Following Davis’s reading there were two major announcements.

The first was that the event signalled the launch of KPU’s new book club, which will start with readings from Hunter’s novel. The second was for the establishment of the First Chapter Contest, where students can submit the first chapter of their book to win a manuscript consultation with Hunter.

Every seat at the inaugural KPU Reads was full, leaving excess attendees to stand listening in the back.

“I spent the summer reading this book,” says Davis of the decision to launch KPU Reads with Hunter’s novel, “and at one point I had to email Aislinn to say, ‘I don’t want it to end.’” The World Before Us is Hunter’s sixth book and has already received multiple awards including the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for 2015.

The book is about Jane, an archivist in London trying to solve the disappearance of a woman who vanished over 125 years ago. Hunter insists that it’s not a mystery book, but that “[She] wanted to talk about how the past is always with us ... the idea of trauma and how sometimes, one moment can just change your life.”

The book club is going to read and discuss Hunter’s novel one-third

at a time. “The conversations at one level are about what’s happening in the book and then a little bit of help if you are trying to write yourself,” says Hunter. The goal for the book club is to get together not only students but also staff on campus.

The First Chapter Contest is an opportunity for students interested in writing to get professional advice on the first chapter of their book. If an entire book was completed, Hunter could also offer coaching and more advice on what’s working and what needs improvement.

The first meeting is taking place Feb. 13 at KPU Surrey Library, more information can be found at www.kpu.ca/ reads/book-club.

Geoffrey Nilson

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What’s up, KDOCS? A sneak peek at three documentaries featured in KPU’s upcoming festival KDOCS is KPU’s annual documentary festival, wherein a variety of documentary films are screened in order to engage with “various and varied communities” through dialogue and critical thinking.

Ivory Tower Awais Mushtaq CONTRIBUTOR

Ivory Tower, one of the documentaries to be featured at KDOCS, exposes the true cost of a university education—namely, the overwhelming, and sometimes unconquerable, burden of student debt.

One of the keynote speakers at the KDOCS Festival on Feb. 20 will be Kathy Corrigan, who will use her time to address the value of a university education and the current problems that exist with the post-secondary education system of British Columbia.

As the official opposition spokesperson for advanced education, Corrigan’s interest to participate in the festival lies in what had pleased her about the documentary.

“I think a lot of the themes [in Ivory Tower] are certainly relevant in British Columbia,” she says. “I can’t speak to the student debt crisis in the United States, which was the focus of the documentary, but I do know in Canada that even though tuitions are not as high as they are in the U.S., students in BC still have the highest debt load of any province in Canada.”

As Corrigan explains, one of BC’s most fundamental problems in postsecondary education is that is has been “severely underfunded.” In fact, according to her, the BC Ministry of Education has not only had its funding frozen, but has also faced reductions in funding, which has put “tremendous pressure on places like Kwantlen and other institutions around the province.”

This situation has led universities to “find other ways of revenue, and to think of everything in terms of funding rather that providing the best advanced education” says Corrigan. For her, a “corporate model” of education, where universities act more like businesses than avenues of learning, is a natural result of schools “increasingly being dominated, or at least influenced, by managers as opposed to educators.”

Accessibility is another a concern to Corrigan. She criticizes the move by the provincial government “to stop the free provision of adult basic education and English language courses at postsecondary institutions” as shortsighted, and ultimately harmful to non-English speakers.

In Corrigan’s words, these issues have caused the province to lose sight “of the wider goal of post-secondary education.” Without action, it is possible the scenario depicted in the documentary Ivory Tower will be as true for Canada as it is for our southern neighbours.

Fractured Land Awais Mushtaq CONTRIBUTOR

“My life is basically in conflict between trying to live a traditional lifestyle on the land and being compelled to engage with modernity,” says Caleb Behn, star and subject of another upcoming KDOCS feature, Fractured Land.

Behn, a non-practicing lawyer currently working for his people in Northeastern BC, allowed filmmakers Damien Gillis and Fiona Rayher to follow him over the course of five years as he gained the “tools to protect [his land] from contemporary threats.”

The resulting film is about Behn’s conflicting obligations to both participate in his culture and to protect it as he journeys through law school to fight fracking on Native lands.

Originally from the Northeastern British Columbia portion of Treaty No. 8, and now the Executive Director of Keepers of the Water movement, Behn’s involvement in the film began early on during his education as a lawyer when Fillis and Rayher found him in law school and followed him for five years into practice.

As Behn recalls, life before law school and the documentary was fairly remote. “After my undergraduate degree I went straight home and just worked for my people,” he says.

“But my life was one of constant battle with industry and government, and as I got really tired of it I decided to get better tools, which took me to law school.”

Now Behn’s work often leads him into 60-hour work weeks for the purposes of protecting the land.

This, despite the fact that, according to Behn, he’d much rather be spending time with his grandmother in the “bush.”

“I live in the sacrifice zone, so my life [used to be] a lot more landbased,” he says. “But the more educated I get the less time I have to be on the land, which is really sad—but that’s the price you have to pay.”

Despite the hardships of being

filmed over the course of five years, an experience which Behn says “almost killed” him, he agreed to participate in the documentary because he believes it was “a story that had to be told, because people in the south don’t know what it’s like,” in his home.

“Most people think of these issues as left versus right, but they’re way more complicated and that truth is illustrated by the world that I live in,” says Behn.

Ashley Powell The Mask You Live In Aida Garcia

CONTRIBUTOR The old concept of what “being a man” looks like, or what masculinity should mean, is the issue explored in KDOCS documentary The Mask You Live In. The film seeks to explain why raising young men, under our current concept of masculinity, should be seen as troubling for everybody.

Gender and gender roles are a tricky subject to discuss—first of all people have to agree that something is wrong and change is needed for the better.

“I want to encourage people of

all genders to invest time and energy into thinking about how society has an effect on them,” says David Hatfield, a practitioner who works with men of all ages and is featured in the film. “Men, for example, are pressured to hide our true emotions and our uncertainties. That ‘hiding’ can become so natural, and talking about it becomes harder the older a guy gets.”

According to Hatfield, we live in a society that still struggles to implement change, especially when that change conflicts with long-held traditions like gender. “Western society, from a psychological and behavioral perspective, would be an adolescent if it was a person,” he says. “Our ideas of gender, appearance, and age are still pretty rigid. We want to fit

in and at the same time develop our own sense of identity.”

“We have a lot of intelligence and awareness, yet we still have a need for labelling behaviors quickly. Our culture contributes to gender identity roles and that makes it hard to stay fluid and not be afraid of change,” says Hatfield.

Projects such as The Mask You Live In encourage people of different age groups, cultures, and beliefs to start a conversation regarding the issues they face in their everyday lives. “I see men struggle with vulnerability,” continues Hatfield. “I see it a lot and I don’t think the way society tells them to deal with it should be done that way.”

“I want men to know that feeling vulnerable is not a feminine trait . . .

I want everyone to see that there’s a real hunger for places where men can be honest and open about their feelings.”

We need to make sure that just like we all have our own insecurities and issues, we are not alone in our quests towards self-improvement.

We need to make sure that everyone has a place where they can come in and let their concerns out; otherwise, we may never know how much certain labels, behaviors or expectations affect the people in our communities.

KDOCS will take place on Feb. 19 and 20. More information is available at kpu.ca/kdocs.

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KSA ousts Kwantlen Model United Former KMUN exec Abu-Haltam believes decision was both

The Kwantlen Student Association removed former Kwantlen Model United Nations executives on Nov. 27 on the basis of student complaints about conference and workshop planning, and a failure to prove their democratic election.

Former KMUN president Saed Abu-Haltam disagrees with the decision, and believes the KSA is trying to “politicize” a previous conflict between them. The KSA executives maintain that their removal was based on the completely unrelated issue of complaints and an absence of election documents.

Abu-Haltam, speaking to KMUN’s board positions initially said, “A lot of these positions were made through elections.”

But former KMUN vice-president Aaron Philip later confirmed that there weren’t any to begin with.

“It was never appropriate for us to hold elections,” says Philip.

“There was never any question of having enough people to challenge the leadership or want[ing] it to go in a different direction.”

Abu-Haltam and Philip explain that KMUN was without a traditional club structure that features a regular president, vice-president, and treasurer. KMUN is modeled after the actual United Nations and adopts their executive structure. But still, on paper, they filled out the traditional executive structure in their club renewal form.

to which Abu-Haltam on Oct. 2 replied, “Please disregard the renewal application.”

On the basis that their club doesn’t exist because of their incomplete application, Abu-Haltam argues that it negates the KSA’s decision to oust him.

“I can’t fire you from a job you don’t have,” he says.

The absence of elections means that KMUN’s executive positions were not validly filled. But McGowan says that even then, they’re merely an inactive club and are still privy to the regulations.

The other student complaints had to do with what Abu-Haltam calls “completely voluntary” information workshops KMUN had scheduled for students in a MUN4500 class, a joint creation of KMUN and KPU. Abu-Haltam says that he and other KMUN staffers showed up at the first two weekly workshops for their full three-hour durations. But he says that no students showed up, except on the first day where he says, “We had two people show up for a very short period of time and then they left.”

Abu-Haltam says the “trend” of near-to-zero attendance at these “voluntary” workshops made KMUNers think, “We don’t need [the workshops].”

The third workshop on Oct. 20 ran from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m, where only Philip showed up. There, Philip says he showed up between 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., leaving after an hour because he says, “there was nobody

“ We were just told to fill [the form] to the best of our abilities and then we could do things by ourselves,” says Abu-Haltam. “This is from the previous executives.”

There is an expectation for all clubs to hold elections, but KSA vicepresident of external affairs Alex McGowan says the KSA doesn’t micro-manage each club and check if they’re operating democratically.

It’s only when investigations come around that they take action.

When KSA vice-president of student life, Manpreet Bassi, investigated the student complaints on workshops and KMUN’s non-compliance with election regulations in November, she added in her report that KMUN “successfully renewed” themselves as a student group in October, which is the deadline month for annual club renewals.

But email correspondence on Sept. 30 between KMUN and KSA clubs coordinator Kendell Kitt shows that Kitt pointed out the incompleteness of their renewal form,

there.”

But two students had plans to attend.

Later that evening, those two students messaged Philip on Facebook saying they “were at the room at 1:15 p.m. and again at 2:30 p.m. … We were sitting in front of the library around then too. So crazy that we must have just missed you.”

Philip apologized and offered the students his phone number and other ways to get their questions answered.

The student complaint Bassi added in her report also alleged that, “The level of negligence displayed by the club has caused a fellow student in the class to formally withdraw.”

Was KMUN negligent?

“Of course not,” says Abu-Haltam. “The entire experience of model UN is voluntary. You have these students that have a passion, they’re doing it because they love what they do,

Kier-Christer Junos STAFF WRITER

and they have this Model UN bug that they want to pass onto others. ” Abu-Haltam says what actually caused that student to withdraw is that her family was in town and that she had Cirque du Soleil tickets.

KSA president Allison Gonzalez says the KSA addressed many student complaints about the class and declined to go into details for the sake of students’ privacy.

Abu-Haltam maintains that the KSA’s decision was both “unjustified” and “not politically correct.” He doesn’t believe that Bassi’s emails to KMUN during the investigation process were really for the reasons stated in her report.

Instead, he thinks the KSA was trying to “politicize” a previous conflict.

The Sheraton Contract

KMUN has existed for one reason since its inauguration in 2012— to hold an annual conference and simulation of the United Nations.

This would typically happen in the conference centre on Surrey campus.

But Abu-Haltam and another former KMUN member had a different vision for 2015. They wanted to move the conference to a hotel—namely, the Sheraton on 104th avenue in Guildford.

“This is really where everything starts to go wrong,” says Philip.

It was found that a 50 per cent discount was available at the Sheraton because of a KPU connection, so they drafted a contract with the Sheraton. They asked the previous KSA executives to cover the $2,000 deposit, and the executives approved it. But it was up to KMUN to raise funds to help cover the costs.

At the time they anticipated those costs to be $12,200.

The other board member was primarily responsible for fundraising, but Philip says that member decided to leave KMUN without providing their former colleagues a fundraising plan.

When the KSA and KPU administration asked KMUN in a meeting about their position with the required funding for the Sheraton,

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Nations executives “unjustified” and “not politically correct” Abu-Haltam said they were, “nowhere near our targets for funding.”

Blame was quickly placed on Abu-Haltam, Philip says, as he never informed KSA general manager Jeremy McElroy that Abu-Haltam’s fellow member had left the team.

Gonzalez says that KMUN only had to budget to hold the conference at KPU, but Philip says they were “instructed to produce a budget to move the conference from the Sheraton to KPU, to cancel the contract, and include the costs associated with cancelling it.”

Cancelling the contract would have cost $10,581. That’s over half of the hotel’s required minimum profits from the deal.

“When that happened,” explains Abu-Haltam, “The KSA went and questioned, ‘What do we do now? There’s this money that we need to pay for the Sheraton as of cancellation fees. And the KMUN club is responsible to fundraise until this money is brought forward.’”

“We said, ‘Well, we did not break any policies … according to your policies, we’re not legally bound to fundraising and paying.’”

The KSA regulations do state that no recognized student groups are to accept any legal obligation for the KSA—including when it comes to contracts.

Abu-Haltam and Philip blame McElroy for signing the Sheraton contract negligently, citing his absence at a meeting about the contract as a factor. They accuse him of breaking a KSA regulation on contracts: “The VP Finance & Operations and any one of the VP Services, the General Manager, and the VP External are the only individuals who can bind the Society to a legal contract.”

Abu-Haltam and Philip’s inter-

pretation of the clause is that the KSA vice-president of finance—Gaurav Bhulla, at the time—should absolutely be a party to legal contracts in conjunction with McElroy.

Bhulla never signed the Sheraton contract. But the language doesn’t necessarily mean two signatures are needed. An equally viable interpretation is that anyone mentioned in the clause could bind the KSA with one signature, including McElroy.

McGowan and Gonzalez believe the KSA upheld the spirit of that regulation since the KSA executives gave McElroy a directive to sign the contract. They had investigated the previous executives’ decisions, and since the contract could outlast their terms in office, it was figured that it would be best form to have McElroy, a staff member, sign the contract.

“In this particular case, my signature was the only one on the Sheraton contract,” says McElroy. “However, the contract in its entirety as well as the approval of the event, and the approval of the budget went through the approval of the executive committee, got the proper assent and was agreed to and that was done through our regulations.” On the day the contract was signed, McElroy also notes that no other executives were available in the office to sign the contract.

“We did offer to fundraise,” claims Abu-Haltam. “But, for some reason, they decided they did not want to work with us anymore. And we said, ‘That’s fine. The offer still stands, let us know when you need it.’ And we moved on. We had a con-

ference to run.”

But McElroy says that the KSA asked them for help and that they didn’t take responsibility.

Abu-Haltam believes the removal of KMUN executives in November was the KSA’s attempt to “politicize” this issue. McGowan maintains that the KSA simply doesn’t have time to do such a thing.

That KMUN was even allowed to operate with invalid officers or an absence of elections is something Philip attributes to the student association’s “unrealistic expectations” of clubs. He posits that many clubs on campus likely don’t hold elections or keep minutes. In fact, he suggests such things are burdens.

Philip says he joined KMUN, evidently, not to keep minutes, hold elections, or fight the KSA. He joined for the same reason why he thinks most people join a campus club— they’ve got passion for it.

Danielle George

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Learning to Love Your Blood

Growing community of menstruation activists seek to destroy period taboo Samantha Thompson EXECUTIVE EDITOR

& Aly Laube

CONTRIBUTOR

I

remember the first time I got my period. I was 10 years old, and it came right before school. I was sent to class with a note for my teacher, in which my mom explained what had happened. When I nervously handed over the letter, my teacher responded, “Congratulations!” and gave me a hug. Suddenly I felt better—maybe this weird thing that had happened was something I should be celebrating, after all.

There are many people throughout the world who menstruate, yet in most societies it remains a stigmatized topic, something we shouldn’t talk about in public. Recently, however, there has been a growing trend of menstrual activism, where individuals are seeking to reframe our discussion and understanding of menstruation.

2015 saw a throng of hashtags that addressed the stigma surrounding periods, including #LiveTweetYourPeriod, #HappytoBleed, #EndtheTaboo, and #MenstruationMatters.

Each hashtag served as an outlet for menstruators to tweet about their periods and bring conversations that normally remain hidden right into the public consciousness.

This shift is occurring locally as well—Lana Friesen, Sabrina Duventru, and Jennilyn Carson are currently organizing the Blood Cycle Conference, which will occur in Vancouver later this year. The conference will address menstrual health, sustainability, and taboo, and aims to make information and options about peri-

ods more accessible.

“The conference is for people curious about alternatives to the predominant understanding of menstruation; for people who want to believe that menstruation doesn’t have to suck, be painful, be shameful, be embarrassing, or be humiliating,” says Friesen. “It is for people who want to be a part of re-writing the meaning of ‘periods’ from taboo to holistic.”

Friesen cites a number of events as catalysts for pushing a different approach to menstruation, including Rupi Kaur, who posted a series of menstruation-themed photos only to have them allegedly removed multiple times by Instagram.

“As I engage with other menstruators around the world, there is a shared ‘awakening’ where people are realizing that an intimate relationship can be built with one’s period, and that your body should not be a victim in its own natural processes,” says Friesen. “We are revelling in various discoveries we’re making about our own bodies and a process we’ll have approximately 450 times in our lives.”

Menstruation 101 For many people who menstruate, their early period years hold powerful (and often amusing) memories. For Seraphina Sterling, a student at Simon Fraser University, that moment came when her grade seven class was planning a trip to Splashdown, and her period arrived the

night before. For the first time, she’d need to use tampons.

“So there I go into the bathroom, box of tampons in hand, and sitting on the toilet I start to read the little information pack inside, you know, the one that talks about toxic shock and dying,” she recalls. “So I’m thinking to myself ‘Great, now I’m on my period, going to go bleed through my swimsuit, and then die of toxic shock.’”

These fears around periods can be common, but our understanding and conversations around menstruation change as we get older as well.

Kristen Gilbert, a sexual health educator at Options for Sexual Health, says that in grade four, when puberty is introduced in the health curriculum, the period sounds like an awesome experience. By high school, periods mostly come up for discussion in the context of birth control. As the personal experience of menstruators change, so too do their questions and the way they absorb information.

“In my practice I have always found women to be eager to better understand their bodies and how menstruation works, and to welcome discussions related to their menstruation experiences specifically,” says Wendy Norman, a family physician from B.C. Women’s Hospital. She reminds us that menstruators can discuss any concerns or questions with their physician and have them answered.

“Sometimes menstruation can be associated with or reflect changes within the uterus or hormonal sys-

tems within the body,” she explains.

“For example, a menstrual period is more likely to be heavy … or with stronger cramps in the cycles shortly after menarche (the beginning of menstrual cycles and fertility), during early adolescence and prior to the first full term pregnancy.”

In her position, Gilbert speaks to students about their bodies and delivers the standard learning outcomes about sexual health that are mandated by the B.C. Ministry of Education.

To explain menstruation, she draws a uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, cervix and vagina on the board. She describes how the egg is released and travels to the uterus, and notes that the uterus lining is created each month, in case a pregnancy occurs. When an ovum doesn’t meet a sperm, the lining is shed. The shedding of this lining, as menstrual fluid, is the period.

“I explain that folks need something to catch the menstrual fluid, so I show them a pad,” says Gilbert. “I demonstrate how to peel off the backing, and show them how it sticks to the underwear. Everyone leans forward to get a better look when I demonstrate!”

In her fourth grade demonstration, Gilbert explains how to use pads, tampons, and reusable pads.

She typically introduced a menstrual cup later on, as she’s found that it’s often difficult for young people to imagine using them.

But, she notes, “Because young people tend to be very environmen-

tally conscious, they are always very interested in my super-cool reusable pads with spaceships on them.”

It’s Just Blood Our evolving relationship with menstruation has also begun to affect the availability of menstruation products. Lunapads, a Vancouverbased company that’s been around since 1993, is working to provide menstruators different options for managing their periods.

“There is no question that the topic of menstruation is taboo, to varying degrees, all over the world,” says Christa Trueman of Lunapads.

“Lunapads has worked to combat these ideas by developing reusable products that allow menstruating people the opportunity to become more acquainted with their cycles and flow by having them interact with the products and their bodies in a way that’s far more intimate than your typical ‘use it and toss it’ culture of disposables.”

According to Lunapads’ website, there are approximately 73-million menstruating people in North America, and each of those people will throw away 125 to 150 kilograms of disposable menstrual products in their lifetime. Because most menstruation products come with plastic as part of their packaging, these products will take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

Lunapads has a number of products, including reusable pads, the DivaCup (a menstrual cup), and an

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Danielle George

assortment of underwear including leakproof and “period panties.”

However, one of the greatest barriers that Lunapads faces is getting customers to get over the “ew factor” of having to wash the menstrual blood out of their reusable pads, or rinsing the menstrual cup out.

“Using a DivaCup is actually very moving to me,” says Aleks Besan, one of the coordinators of Women Action and the Media Vancouver, who recently began using the menstrual cup. “It totally turns me into a real sap, as I lovingly peer into the contents it collects, and I actually feel pretty darn proud of my body for all the hard work it is doing. Disposable products made me feel like my period experience was also that—disposable.”

The menstrual cup (there are several varieties) is folded up and then inserted into the vagina to collect menstrual flow. Once inside it opens up and typically can be safely worn for up to 12 hours at a time.

Reusable pads, conversely, are used in a similar way to disposable pads—they snap onto your underwear and, when you’re ready to change to a new one, just put on a new one and place your other one inside a water resistant carrying case to be washed later. This process is likely where the “ew factor” comes from, but Trueman reminds us that at the end of the day, it’s only blood.

“We often get questions about what ‘special’ methods need to be employed to ‘safely’ launder Lunapads, and we have to remind people

that it is only blood—the same blood that comes from the body when you accidentally cut your finger chopping veggies or fall off your bike and scrape your knee,” says Trueman.

Feminization of Periods When my teacher congratulated me on getting my first period, she also said, “Welcome to womanhood!” Unfortunately this is characteristic of many conversations around menstruation, reinforcing the belief that menstruating is an inherently feminine activity, exclusively experienced by women. This is false, but yet when you look at most advertising for menstrual products, or read posts about periods, much of it is geared towards cis-gender girls and women.

“A society that feeds heterosexual male desire will not even come close to comfortably acknowledging that some men and gender variant folks get periods too,” suggests Besan.

Some trans men, genderqueers, gender variant and non-binary folks have their periods too, and some women don’t have their periods for a variety of reasons. The de-association of sex and gender is another aspect that many menstrual activists are fighting for.

“I see a shift happening in the collective consciousness of the menstrual activist community. People are posting simple reminders that it is not only women who bleed, and slowly this is changing the language chosen for posts—rather than talking

about women all of the time, people can start talking about menstruators,” says Friesen. “There’s a concerted effort by some to widen the scope and include non-binary in the movement, although I would say we have a long way to go before that’s pervasive.”

A company called THINX is also hoping to address a need in the trans* community—a line of underwear that aims to address the needs of trans men who menstruate. Lunapads also explicitly addresses gender inclusivity on its website.

Although some discussion is occurring surrounding the feminization of menstruation, Friesen argues that there is much more that needs to be done to include non-binary individuals in the conversation.

For example, a 2014 article in Everyday Feminism written by Wiley Reading explores his experience with menstruation as a trans man: “My body is its own thing. It does what it does, and that’s fine. Getting my period is painful and bloody and messy and annoying, but it doesn’t have to make me feel like less of a guy,” he wrote. “The amount of pain I hear from trans men related to their periods is substantial. But by talking about it and degendering it, we can lessen the pain. Menstruating doesn’t have to be a girl thing.”

Destroying Taboo “I had a lot of shame related to my period in my early twenties,” says Friesen. “I remember dating

someone who saw a freshly made stain on my pants as I had just started my period in that moment. The sneer on his face coupled with, ‘That’s disgusting,’ really upset me. I felt humiliated that my body would ‘let me down’ or that I wouldn’t be able to know exactly when it was going to happen.”

An article on Al Jazeera by Erika Sanchez reminds us that these feelings of humiliation are often as a result of “ menstruation taboo … [that] is a deeply ingrained form of misogyny.” Women are often told that their bodies are acceptable if they’re sexually desirable—Sanchez cites Rupi Kaur’s photos as a recent example, because her photos were censored while highly sexual photos of women were not.

“In a society that has so hypersexualized women’s bodies, discussing the very real, messy, painful aspects of what our bodies are and do ruins an easily consumable fiction,” says Besan. “It also ruins a ready-made script for how to act in a society that clearly values and credits women more when they fit conventional standards of beauty, and don’t trouble these.”

Although everyone experiences their period differently, Trueman says she would like to get to a point where menstruation is seen as a normal, natural thing that happens to roughly half the population every month.

Regardless of how someone feels about their period, the growing community of menstrual activists mean

that there are more opportunities for people to engage in public discussions about what menstruation means to them, and to work together in addressing menstruation stigma.

“There is so much support from others, and people reach out in ways that show they really just want to see you succeed,” says Friesen. “I think that’s because we share a common goal— eradicating the negative view of menstruation and replacing it with a positive one.”

Friesen points out that menstruation is just one of the ways the female body is shamed—there’s also breastfeeding and aging. “[It’s] always met with the attitude that hiding it, controlling it, and interfering with it is better,” she says. “I think it’s important we break free from this attitude ... eventually I see a world where we don’t need to do this anymore, a world where the shame has evaporated and been replaced with casual acceptance—where you mention your period, and you shrug.”

“Talking about our menstrual cycles normalizes the conversation overall, and this conversation really should already be fully accepted,” says Besan. “We need to model the kind of world we want to live in, and if we want to live in a world where patriarchy doesn’t police what and how we talk about sexuality, reproduction, gender, bodies, appearances, and so much more, [then] we need to be writing the scripts ourselves.”

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The Ceremony of Myself Your body is sacred Anonymous

Danielle George

I starkly remember the first day I got my period. I had to go to the bathroom at 4 a.m. in the morning and as soon as I saw red in the toilet bowl, I burst into tears. I felt the beginning of something daunting, as if a new, unexplained responsibility had been placed on my shoulders... and I did not want it. I scratched at the door to my parents’ bedroom and woke my mom. Her tone with me was firm and coldly professional as she reached under the sink to tear off the plastic backing of a pad, sticking it to the inside of my underwear. I felt like I was wearing a diaper, and I craved emotional support of a type my tired mother didn’t seem to register was needed.

In many ways, this resembles the tone with which I’ve had to continue to face the mantle of womanhood—so often, I wish for the ideal of curling up in mummy’s arms and being soothed by reassurance only to find that the world moves too fast and the burden is too strong and all of us women are collectively tired from having to simply be strong all the time. Women carry so much weight and navigate emotional labour in all forms of relationships, while the mainstream expectation is that we bear this all with a stiff upper lip and, no matter what, keep the ugly stuff under wraps.

My period to me is like a waitsfor-no-one exclamation mark fighting to give voice to this “ugly stuff,” the murky inner workings that through a direct metaphor explain why it is that women have held the weight of the world for so long, so often unacknowledged.

My period is also a routine personal test. I experience an intensity in my overall emotional state and capacity as my period approaches, every month. I have an existential “what the hell am I doing here?” few days during which I question everything, and every bit of myself. I have come to see this painful monthly test as a gift, though, for I am reminded of my fallibility and the cyclical nature of life. It is full of beginnings and endings, of stages and phases and perpetual change. I am starting to accept that there will always be temporary piques in pain and loss, followed by temporary joys. My body is a testament to this.

I also spent many years wishing my period was regarded as more of a special circumstance —because really, what a miracle it is, what a renewal, what a big chunk in so many people’s lives that happens for so many years and includes so many emotions. One particularly visceral experience in my life gifted me with an acknowledgment of the sacredness of my period, and by extension my womanhood.

Several years ago, I was in an abusive relationship. One night, I

had a particularly invasive experience with my abusive ex-partner.

There had been many building instances of violence in various forms in our relationship, but that night was perhaps the first night that I actually fully realized that I was being abused. A lightbulb came on as my threshold was crossed. I remember lying in bed that night stunned and unable to sleep as my ex drifted off beside me.

The following morning I rushed to work still stunned, realizing that my period had just started too. It was a special day during which the organization at which I had just newly started working —a group that largely provided social services to indigenous folks in the city—had organized a medicine picking outing where staff would collect plants that could be used in ceremonies with clients year-round. On this excursion to an area outside of the city, I was taught that I could not pick medicines for anyone else but me that day—my period made me the exception. The teachings from indigenous elders on our staff team cautioned all of us that a woman on her Moon Time is seen to already be in the most powerful kind of ceremony possible, a renewal that would strip any medicines picked of their healing properties.

As I gathered medicines on my own, slightly away from the rest of the group, I confronted the juxtaposition of the worthlessness I had felt in how my ex had treated me and my body, and the immense power that I had just been introduced to in my Moon Time through the generously shared traditional knowledge of the first peoples on Turtle Island. This teaching offered me an alternative understanding of my own power at the most necessary time, and it threw into sharp relief so many intersecting aspects of my privilege and my oppression in the pairing of these two intense events, side by side. I felt a yearning within my core to embrace the burning woman soul I felt rise up in rage inside of me.

At the time, I barely knew her.

Years later, I have made many gains in welcoming her into more and more moments of my existence.

And with every one of my periods now, I remember the smell of sage, I remember the gift of being told that I was in my own ceremony already, of being welcomed to share in this sacred understanding. I thank all of the women and brave gender warriors who have come before me, and all of the strong survivors who keep going, keep fighting, and keep graciously opening their hearts to others who come their way. I thank the fact that there are actually long lineages of traditions and stories that celebrate women and femininity far more than the western, imperialist, neoliberal world ever has.

And I thank my body for surviving too.

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Pacific Centre security alarm demonstrates our true colours Is “innocent until proven guilty” just for show?

Aly Laube

CONTRIBUTOR In Canada we claim to believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. We proudly strive to demonstrate acceptance towards all of our nation’s cultures. Judging by what happened to three British tourists on Jan. 12, however, those ideals are only words, not likely to translate into action.

At Pacific Centre Mall, two men and a youth described as “Middle Eastern looking” were reported to the Vancouver Police Department for suspicious activity. In this case, that activity was photographing the mall’s entrances and exits. That was enough to raise the eyebrows of security guards, who notified the VPD. Shortly afterwards, the alert was leaked to the public through a police bulletin.

Although the Chief Constable did repeatedly note the presumed

innocence of the suspects, it mostly went unheeded—Vancouverites took to their smart phones in a flurry of hashtagged panic.

An article on the event by Vancity Buzz didn’t do much to calm the waters. The thumbnail for the post— which has received over 79,000 shares—features a close-up of an illuminated police siren. It also included photographs of the three men with their faces exposed.

While all that was going on in cyberspace, Mohammed Sharaz, his son, and his son’s friend were sitting unawares in their house. Sharaz stumbled upon the reports about the three suspicious men in the mall, and upon realizing that he was one of the men in question, immediately phoned the police to explain.

As it turns out, the two photographers spotted with him were undergoing treatment for visual impairments. They take pictures of the world around them so they can see

it better by zooming in and out. The photos were also taken for the sheer sake of sentiment, to “show [their] family and [their] friends,” when they return home to Manchester, England.

It’s easy to be offended, ashamed, and disappointed by what happened to the three men, but at this point, it’s difficult to be shocked. In a country where Islamophobic fear-mongering has been a silent but ever-growing undercurrent, instances like this have become increasingly common. It’s clear that there wouldn’t have been nearly as much coverage or concern if the men had been of any other ancestry, but not according to the VPD police chief Adam Palmer. He stated that what happened on Tuesday was absolutely not racial profiling.

“Regardless of what race these people may or may not be, that’s not really the issue. The issue is that we weren’t planning to go public with it at all,” he said, at a news conference.

But there’s a reason why this case was leaked instead of the countless others that security files every year— folks are scared of terrorists, and the media continuously reinforces that terrorists are “Middle Eastern looking.” As a result, innocent civilians are falsely accused of being a threat to the safety and security of others.

However, by doing so, those accused are being put in danger themselves.

“I’ve got a child that’s 14 years old . . . it’s going to cause him some trauma,” commented Sharaz, during an interview with CBC News.

If tourists cannot feel safe visiting this country, its citizens cannot either.

That does not happen in a healthy democracy. Neither does traumatizing young, visually-impaired visitors with discriminatory accusations.

Danielle George

#OscarsSoWhite, or, to boycott or not to boycott

La Loche Shooting is Not Part of an American Trend

People of colour discuss the lack of diversity in nominees

A tragic, isolated instance should not be conflated with America’s problems

Greg Hernandez/Wikicommons Aly Laube

CONTRIBUTOR The Academy Awards seldom fail to present boundless glitz and glimmer, but on the diversity front, they’re undeniably lacking. Less than 150 people of colour have been nominated over the past 87 years.

The Academy’s questionable nominee picks have been a topic of discussion for years, yet they’ve become particularly apparent now in 2016.

Every one of the acting nominees on the list this year was white, as were most listed in other categories.

It’s easy to point fingers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—which includes the Oscars’ voting membership—for this overwhelming whiteness. After all, they decide who will be nominated and who will win an award. According to a 2012 study conducted by the Los Angeles Times, 94 per cent of the

voters in the AMPAS were Caucasian, which doesn’t help their case.

It’s unclear how drastically that percentage has shrunk over the past four years, but judging by the minimal increase in non-white nominees, it can’t be by much.

Before the controversial nominees were announced, the Oscars had already hired actor/comedian of colour Chris Rock to host the 2016 award show. Despite this, Rock referred to it as “The White BET Awards” on his Twitter account and consequently got Jada Pinkett-Smith’s attention.

She also took to Twitter, suggesting that “people of colour refrain from participating [in the event] all together.”

Thus 2016’s boycott of the Oscars was born.

On Martin Luther King’s birthday, Pinkett-Smith posted a followup video reinforcing her decision and encouraging others to do the

same. By doing so she received an enormous amount of support, and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite started trending on Twitter for the second year in a row. However, some people of colour disagreed with PinkettSmith’s campaign. Ex-Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actress, Janet Hubert, responded to her video: “There’s a lot of shit going on in the world that you all don’t seem to recognize. People are dying. Our boys are being shot left and right.

People are hungry. People are starving. People are trying to pay bills.

And you’re talking about some motherfucking actors and Oscars. It just ain’t that deep.”

Hubert’s side of the argument did gain some steam. Whoopi Goldberg recommended boycotting films lacking diversity rather than awards ceremonies, seeing as it makes a greater economic impact. Others suggested that making a fuss over the lack of diversity was disrespectful to the current nominees, and that perhaps white people simply make the best movies.

Still, for the most part, the public was demanding apologies and action. And they did receive it—the president of AMPAS, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, stated: “I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes.”

She then promised to “alter the makeup of [their] membership . . . and bring about much-needed diversity in [the] 2016 class and beyond.”

In response, Jada Pinkett-Smith tweeted that she is “look[ing] forward to the future.”

Kyle Prince

CONTRIBUTOR A Canadian town already plagued by high suicide rates stepped into the spotlight on Jan. 22 when a school shooting left four dead and seven in critical condition.

The shooter, a teengaer who cannot be named due to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was part of La Loche, a self-described Dene community numbering under 3,000, where suicide rates have skyrocketed to three times above the national average, according to CBC. Although we don’t have much information, people are still drawing links between this incident and the shootings that seem to happen more regularly in America. However, I’m going to come right out and say that no, this sort of thing isn’t common in Canada.

To put it into perspective, there are more school shootings each year in the U.S. than there are in the entire history of Canada—and for most of those years, there were at least four times as many as we’ve ever had here in the north. Before 2016, the amount of school shootings we’ve had could have been counted on one hand.

This doesn’t downplay the seriousness of the incident, but it does pull us away from the fear embedded in the American psyche that parents are up in arms about.

So no, there’s no connection between this isolated event and what goes on in America. They might be our downstairs neighbours, but there must be some fundamental difference between the two countries, at least in respect to events like these.

CLS Research/Flickr

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The Singular “They” The next step in the evolution of the English language?

CONTRIBUTOR

Advance apologies to those who were hoping that “on fleek” or “squaaaaaaaaaaad” would make the cut. On Jan. 8, the American Dialect Society declared that the singular form of the pronoun “they” is their word of the year for 2015.

In English, “they” typically refers to a group of people, but the singular form of the word takes the place of the somewhat unwieldy phrase “him or her” and its several variations. For example: “If someone reads this article, tell them they can give themselves a pat on the back,” or: “Did someone just leave their copy of The Runner lying around on this table?”

One of the reasons this is seen as a significant change in language is because it neither identifies the individual as male or female. The singular “they” has therefore been welcomed by individuals who identify as genderqueer or nonbinary—those who may feel that the terms “he” or “she” do do not apply to themselves. Rather than excluding them or forcing them to choose to align themselves along a binary, they may identify, or have others refer to them, as the singular

“they.” For example: “I really enjoy that artist’s work, they are clearly gifted.”

It’s not just the American Dialect Society that has recognized the growing importance of the singular “they”—social networking website Facebook now allows the use of “they” as youe personal pronoun so your peers will get notifications such as, “Wish them a happy birthday.”

The changing usage of the word “they” exemplifies how the English language is in a constant state of flux, evolving with the needs of English-speaking society. According to Neil Kennedy, an english professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, this should be seen as a positive thing.

“Language that does not change is either dying or dead,” he says.

“Human experience is paradoxical in that many experiences are old as human beings are. Falling in love, falling out of love, fathering a child, burying a parent. Much of human life carries. If language isn’t changing under the pressure of those experiences and ideas to help people better understand these things, then there’s something wrong.”

This doesn’t mean that everyone who speaks the language is

onboard with how it is evolving.

Kennedy himself is concerned for how English is adapting in modern society.

“Language like any species waxes and wanes, goes through periods of health and strength and vitality or weakness,” he says. “I don’t think we’re living in a very good age for language. I don’t think people hear the words they write, I don’t think they feel the words they say. There’s a lack of connection to language . . . there are so many words and acronyms we use that are so ugly without realizing their ugliness. Ugly language we use debases our soul.”

Along with ‘they” being their word of the year, the American Dialect Society’s category for “most useful word” of the year included the term “zero fucks given” as a nominee. In addition, the term “on fleek” was a—some would say unfortunately—candidate for their “most likely to succeed” category.

Perhaps the coup de grâce: the Oxford English Dictionary’s choice for word of the year was an emoticon. In Kennedy’s words, “This is prostitution and a sell-out.”

Should we be worried about the future of society? The possibility that we are slowly losing the ability

to use sophisticated language?

“The one thing about the future is, it’s not going to be what we think,” says Kennedy. “It’s sad. I do see students who express themselves with personality and energy but I also see very low standards, skill, or ability with language.”

In the end, it’s up to us as English speakers to avoid using mundane language that stems from laziness

and texting culture. The singular “they” being awarded word of the year is an example of how language can be used in a sophisticated and progressive manner. If we, as a society, evolve language in a positive manner, perhaps we can avoid the English language apocalypse that looms over our future.

Rosaura Ojeda

Preet Hundal

Attack on Syrian refugees not the first hate crime in Canada Nation has long history of discriminating against others Renée McMillen CONTRIBUTOR

When the Muslim Association of Canada held a welcome night for Syrian refugees on Jan. 8, an unknown man on a bicycle ambushed a group of 100 people with pepper spray. Paramedics and firefighters treated 15 people from the attack.

As the story spread, so too did the idea that the event was a hate crime. Unfortunately, hate crimes are anything but new to Canada or the world. Hate crimes are verbal or physical assaults motivated by prejudice, intended to intimidate, harm or terrify the person who is assaulted and the entire group to which the victim belongs.

Nawal Addo, a Syrian amongst the group hit by the pepper spray,

said, “Syrians have seen enough of their land, they didn’t leave it by choice . . . Canadians should know better.” The assault raises arguments of as “us versus them,” and “Canadian values,” these are not new issues—they were around well before we began welcoming Syrian refugees to our country.

Soon after the attack was reported, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, “This isn’t who we are— and doesn’t reflect the warm welcome Canadians have offered.”

With this we return to the question: What are Canadian values?

We have the highest per capita rate of immigration in the world. Indeed, immigration has always been pivotal to our economic success, yet hate crimes run abound.

It seems our diverse and cul-

ture-rich country is not immune to prejudice. Canada is a mosaic of world cultures where we encourage our new neighbours to bring their culture and customs with them when they enter the country.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, mass migration was the answer to tens of thousands of immigrants who fled to North America. Regardless of the success of farms and businesses developed by these new Canadians,“They were deemed dangerous, their lands and possessions were confiscated and they were interned by the thousands into concentration camps during World War I,” says Ehor Boyanowsky, a criminology professor from Simon Fraser University.

This was a confinement that did not end until 1920.

Hailey Logan

Hate crimes are a part of a long history of prejudice in Canada.

Hate crimes are actually against the law, as outlined in our criminal code. Under Section 319 it reads, “It is illegal to communicate hatred in a public place by telephone, broadcast or through other audio or visual means.” The same section also protects those being charged with a hate crime should their choice of words be valid or an expression of religious opinion.

Despite this, hate crimes still occur in Canada. In 2014, Statistics Canada reported the majority of hate crimes were racially or ethnically motivated. Only 13 per cent of the reported hate crimes were motivated by hatred of sexual orientation.

In June 2015, same-sex marriage became possible anywhere in Canada and the United States. Facebook showed millions of rainbow photos of members supporting and celebrating this. It was a far cry from what was reported to statistics Canada in 2011 regarding hate crimes against the gay community.

Seventy-five per cent of hate crimes in Canada were committed against males, 85 of which were victims due to their sexual orientation, and almost half of those men were under the age of 25. These statistics are alarming when you consider the grief and damage that occurs to

the mental and emotional stability of those victims.

The first step to not repeating our history would be to learn from it. In the face of hatred, if we do not take action it will persist. A hate crime is an attack on tolerance and human decency. When something happens we have two choices: we do nothing, or we do something about it.

As Canadians, with our country being held in such high regard for welcoming immigrants according to Immigration Canada, it is about time we stop seeing what’s different about us and welcome everything that is the same. Unity is the best strategy we can use against hatred.

Hate crimes only give us this opportunity to recognize the lesson we seem to keep missing. All we can hope for now, in regards to the hate crime outside the Muslim Centre, is that it will be dwarfed by the positive and generous actions of the millions of Canadians across the country.

We can show Syrians—and other nationalities immigrating and settling into Canada—how our communities can rally. We are a country rich in the tradition of welcoming a world of cultures and people to make up the mosaic that is Canada.

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A Shortlist of Women in Comics Danielle George - ART DIRECTOR France’s yearly comics festival, The Angoulême, is taking heat from critics after releasing from the community they tossed out the list but admit to no wrongdoing, citing efforts to ited to the single time they awarded the lifetime achievement award—The Grand Prix—to the comic books industry is full of talented female artists who regularly produce some of

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Lumberjanes by Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis and Noelle Stevenson (Boom Box) Lumberjanes is a story that follows five girls, Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley at Lumberjane, a scouting camp for teenages.

While there they learn skills such as knot tying, firemaking Yeti fighting, snowshoeing, and giant falcon hunting. Tasked with uncovering the mystery of “What the heck is going on around here??” and attempting to save the world in the process, Lumberjanes is an action-packed graphic novel that proves once again having female leads does not hinder sales. In an interview with ICv2, a comic news website, Shannon Watters admitted that the series was only intended to be 8 issues but, due to it’s popularity, Boom! studios will be publishing it indefinitely.

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a shortlist of 30 comic book artists that contains no women. Bowing to pressure elevate female artists in the past. One can only presume that those efforts are lima woman sixteen years ago. Despite what the organizers of the festival may think, the greatest comics available. Here are just a select few to add to your collection.

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Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (Harper Collins) Before becoming lead artist on LumberJanes, Noelle Stevenson initially created Nimona as her senior thesis. The story follows a spunky teenager, Nimona, as she becomes the sidekick to the evil Lord Ballister Blackheart. While Blackheart has his doubts at first, Nimona’s go get em’ attitude, combined with her nifty shapeshifting ability, convinces him to let her stick around. The story exists within the “gallant knight versus the evil-doer” trope but successfully subverts it, making a classic story archetype feel fresh.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon) Set in Iran in the 1980s, Persepolis tells the story of Marjane Satrapi’s childhood during the Islamic revolution. During this turbulent time in Iran, Satrapi recounts her experience as an adolescent adjusting to the changing political climate. Persepolis is another example of how diversity in comics is a win for the masses. It humanizes history as we follow a young girl and her real encounters with revolutionaries and the horrors they faced in prison.

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Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner Books) Fun Home is a great example of how inclusivity towards LGBT women in media can give us amazing works of art. Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel is an autobiographical account of her life growing up as a lesbian with her closeted gay father. One of the many things Fun Home has going for it is the use of secondary storytelling. In the novel, instead of telling the reader about her father’s anal habits, Alison actually shows us. In a scene where Alison helps her father wash some dishes, she illustrates her point by having a static shot where he cleans the same fork for four panels.

Ms. Marvel by Sana Amanat (Marvel Comics) Ms. Marvel has the unique privilege of being the only comic on this list released by one of the great comic titans (DC / Marvel).

The newest iteration of the Ms. Marvel franchise takes place after the events of “Inhuman”, where dormant genes are awakened in average people, giving them superpowers. A unique twist in this title is that Ms. Marvel has been written by a woman for quite a while. G. Willow Wilson had been working on the original version of the character until Sana Amanat, the creator of the new Ms Marvel, pitched the idea of writing about a superhero with a Muslim American experience.

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A PINT of Kwantlen Why not showcase KPU beer on every campus?

Geoffrey Nilson PHOTO EDITOR

Like many workplaces, the staff of The Runner conformed to annual holiday tradition and conducted an office-wide Secret Santa, wherein each staff member gives a single gift to a randomly selected coworker. My past experience with Secret Santa means I know that I can expect one of two things: either a gift so personal I would have never expected it, or a gift card.

While I’m totally the gift-cardguy, there are people with creativity. A few years ago a coworker bought me a small punch and die set to make my own guitar picks.

I remember being struck by the thoughtfulness of her giving.

I had the same feeling this year when I was given a 64oz Growler filled with Oatmeal Stout from the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Brew Lab by Staff Writer extraordinaire Kier-Christer Junos, because if there’s anything that I love as much as poetry and punk rock, it’s craft beer. I can’t proclaim to know anything at all about beer, but after a trip to the U.K. about 10 years ago, I fell in love with dark, flavourful ales and that KPU Oatmeal Stout reminded me of a beer I’d sampled

at the Cains Brewery in Liverpool.

Such is the evocative power of taste to transport through memory and time. This KPU brew transported me back to Liverpool: low light of the north England gray, salt of Merseyside in the air. I got to thinking: what else am I missing that KPU has to offer?

Wouldn’t it be great if the vast talent of Kwantlen students, such as those in the KPU Brew Lab, could be showcased across all the campuses? Imagine taps on every campus serving KPU Brew Lab selections. I’m sure students might have heard about the Brew Lab from a friend or by reading The Runner’s profile, but there is no better way to experience beer than to taste it.

Unfortunately, Brew Lab sales are currently only at the Langley campus for limited hours per week and this makes it difficult for students without transportation to enjoy the product of the Lab’s labour.

Many students I have spoken with criticize the transitory nature of KPU. The complaints frequently stem from the fact that the institution has few spaces students can really call their own, spaces where students engage with each other and the great work each is doing

in their field of study. Yes, fine art students have galleries to display their creations and political science students have an undergraduate academic journal to showcase their research, but neither of these fosters a sense of Kwantlen community

outside of their respective departments.

I’d like to see spaces where students can engage with each other in a liberated way. I wish I could pop into Grassroots at the Surrey campus (or maybe even our very

own student pub) to grab a pint of the Brew Lab’s finest after an evening class. Nothing would be better for the Kwantlen community than conversations spilling from the classroom into the barroom and continuing into the night.

Danielle George

Nuclear disarmament unlikely, but possible There are many barriers in the way of a global nuclear disarmament Torin Slik

CONTRIBUTOR North Korea’s recent claim of nuclear warhead testing has brought up the discussion of worldwide nuclear disarmament once more. The possibility of a nuclear-free world is something that could potentially happen, but there are still many important barriers to

discuss before making it a reality.

The idea of nuclear disarmament is not a new issue. The consequences of nuclear weapons were highlighted to the public in 1954 when a nuclear warhead was tested in the Pacific. The radioactive fallout from this test ending up causing the death of a Japanese fisherman, as well as contaminating the rest of the crew.

Nat Mussell

It’s important to realize that one of the primary reasons countries like America and Russia have nuclear weapons in their arsenal is as a method of deterrence. The concept here is that if someone attacks them, they have the power to retaliate with nuclear weapons. This would cause irreparable damage to the attacker, and no one would think about launching an assault against such a country.

The most prominent example of this was the Cold War. No major large scale engagements actually occurred, but the destructive potential both sides had ready was more than anything in the past. Both sides stockpiled nuclear weapons, enough to annihilate the other many times over. If either side had decided to bring their full arsenal forward, the world would be a very different place today.

Getting governments to willingly give up their weapons of deterrence is a very difficult prospect.

It’s kind of like having two people pointing guns at each other. Neither one of them is going to put down the gun until the other does, but neither of them is going to be willing to put their own gun down first. Catch 22.

Prominent, politically powerful people have historically called for nuclear disarmament, however.

President Ronald Reagan said in his 1984 State of the Union speech

that, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”

However, when it came to actually putting those words into action, Reagan did not follow through. When Randall Forsberg, a young defense and disarmament researcher, launched the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, Reagan fought it thoroughly.

The New York Times quoted Reagan as calling the people who supported the freeze campaign a group of “honest and sincere people,” being manipulated by “some who want the weakening of America.”

If somehow countries were willing to agree on disarming their weapons at the same time, there is still the issue of trust. How do each of the countries trust that the others will go through with the disarmament? If widespread disarmament is going to happen, a global organization would have to be responsible to enforce it. It likely would have to have equal representation from each country involved in the disarmament to assure equality.

These barriers to disarmament will only be solved if countries actively work towards finding a common solution. They have to want it to happen.

But what about the places that don’t want to cooperate? In order to convince these places to disarm, economic sanctions or even military operations would likely need to be used. The risk of such actions might have dire consequences.

Ultimately, nuclear weapons give a country power, and power is a very difficult thing to give up once you have it. Right now, countries with nuclear weapons don’t only hold the power, they strongly believe they need it to keep themselves safe.

What if countries didn’t feel the need to have destructive power to keep themselves safe? What if we could change the world culture to one of cooperation?

If complete nuclear disarmament is going to happen, the best way is to make nuclear weapons no longer have a purpose. In order to render nuclear weapons purposeless, we have to change our culture.

Of course, this is probably one of the most difficult and improbable things imaginable. While the average person probably wants nothing but a productive and peaceful life, there are always a select few that seem to ruin things for everyone.

It’s these people that make it seem like we need super powered weapons to keep ourselves safe, especially if they have them too.

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Going Global South Korea reconciles with Japan on Comfort Women Tristan Johnston COLUMNIST

At the end of December, Japan and South Korea made a historic deal on the matter of comfort women.

Japan agreed to pay one billion yen ($11.5-million CAD) to victims and their families, and to offer an apology. In exchange, South Korea will agree to stop criticizing Japan over the issue, and remove the comfort women statue from the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

The agreement can be seen as a win for diplomatic techniques.

Remember that at one point, Japan owned Korea. And while it maybe be unrelated, I can’t help but notice that South Korea’s current president, Park Geun-hye, is the first female president in the country’s history.

This news is welcomed by almost everyone. Park stands to gain politically in South Korea for extracting an apology from the Japanese government, as well as several million dollars in reparation funds.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gains in Japanese politics for demonstrating long-term thinking, and making himself look better among Asian countries; demonstrating that he’s not a historical revisionist. However, some of the 46 remaining comfort women aren’t satisfied with the deal. Many of them have said that their goal isn’t money, but a formal and public apology from the Japanese government, as well as the removal of historical revisionism from Japanese historical textbooks.

“If one’s mother, one’s younger sister, or siblings, were taken as comfort women and met sexual abuse in Japan, I don’t think anyone would forgive that,” says Tomiko Okazaki, who was Minister of State for Social Affairs and Gender Equality from 2010-2011 in the Japanese Diet (parliament).

“In agreements between Japan and Korea, they said let’s put a close to all the damages,” explains Okazaki. “Also, Japan says these things wouldn’t be questioned—it’s been decided in the Japan-Korea agreement. But at that time, was the comfort women problem made clear? Nobody knew about it, did they?”

The problem of comfort women has been the thorn in the side of Japan-South Korea relations ever since World War II. It was during the period from roughly 1850 until the end of WWII that Japan behaved as an imperialist nation, ruled like a dictatorship via the emperor. At the height of its time as an empire in 1942, Japan controlled 7.4-million square kilometres of land, that’s the same size as Canada excluding Quebec and the Maritime provinces. During this time, Japan annexed and colonized several countries in the region, such as Indonesia, parts of China, Burma, Thailand, Taiwan, and of course, Korea.

Shandis Harrison

Korea was one of the states that Japan had annexed fully, meaning Japanese citizens could travel there like it was another prefecture.

Unfortunately, the Japanese army didn’t treat the native populations with much dignity. “Comfort women” is actually euphemism for “prostitute,” and between 20,000 and 400,000 women were comfort women for the Japanese army. This number has a vast range, as it depends on who you ask.

The Japanese haven’t been as forthcoming about their atrocities during WWII as the Germans were for theirs. When I lived in Berlin, there was an abundance of monuments and museums dedicated to the people that were killed during the Nazi period. There is even the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a sculpture that takes up an entire city block. Holocaust denial is currently a crime in Germany, as well as several other European countries.

Visiting Tokyo last December, it was difficult to find anything similar, and some in China and Korea will quickly mention Yasukuni shrine. While the shrine is for all who died in service of the Empire of Japan, even the thousands of soldiers who were drafted against their will, it also commemorates several “class A” war criminals. Every time a Japanese Prime Minister visits the shrine, angry headlines show up in Asian newspapers.

Regardless, attitudes towards history and gender are changing in Japan, though slowly. And while many of the remaining comfort women and some South Koreans are unsatisfied, the recent deal between Japan and South Korea should be seen as a textbook example of good diplomacy.

This article couldn’t have been written without the help of Nuvjit Sidhho, who translated interview audio from Japanese to English.

Artist Spotlight An Interview with Nik Pang of Failing Street Aly Laube

COLUMNIST You wouldn’t guess that geography would play much of a role in a pop punk band.

However, Failing Street frontman Nik Pang has a fascination with maps and, “likes knowing where [he is], both literally and figuratively.” Since he began bussing around the city as a child and was forced to know where he was going, his interest only grew. Years later, it led to the name.

“I thought it’d be cool if I could name a band after a street because you don’t see a ton of those, so I went on Google Maps to search random cities just for that,” says Pang. “As it turns out, there’s this major street in Portland called Failing Street, and I thought, ‘Wow! This really sums up my life right now.’”

Failing Street is a five-piece band consisting of two guitarists (Duncan Losin and Nick Coco), a bassist (Ryan Brown), a drummer (Noah Stroscher), and Pang. They dropped their first EP, Geology, in July and followed that up with Silver Tongues and Silver Globes, a five-track release which came out November of this year. Like their previous work, the new record is fast-paced and in-your-face.

“The sound is definitely pop punk,” said Pang. “It’s familiar enough that anyone who’s into Blink-182, Neck Deep, or bands like that will probably like it, but I feel like we have our own sound. We always try to make things our own.”

The new EP was recorded with Vincent Diep, who the band met onstage with All Time Low, one of modern pop punk’s supergroups.

“When I wrote ‘Picnics’, I sent the demo to Vincent for a second

opinion,” says Pang. “He thought it was really solid so he offered to help us out to record a song or two with the setup he has in his house.

He’s one of those guys who can just make things sound good.”

The cover art to Silver Tongues and Silver Globes also pays homage to the end of Pang’s last relationship. It pictures a small silver globe—a birthday present from the ex—in flames. For the sake of catharsis and closure, Pang and his friends “doused it in gasoline, lit it on fire, and that was that.”

“I enjoyed it a lot. Maybe more than I should’ve,” Pang admits with a grin.

Because of the personal nature of the record, Pang wrote all of its songs. However, there is more opportunity for collaboration within Failing Street in the future. Pang’s style depends on “tell-it-like-it-is lyrics and simple song structure,” two staples of pop punk, but he feels like it’s “a little stale.” For that reason, he’s eager to welcome the influence of other band members’ writing styles.

“Nick brings more of a guitardriven side, whereas I play drums, and he can write these crazy fiveminute songs. He’s very good at making things melodic. Ryan’s also a very good writer of fiction, so he

can add a new element of storytelling and keep the lyrics from being too in-your-face. Duncan and Noah haven’t expressed too much interest in that, which is fine, but it’ll be neat to go forward with just the three of us and see what happens.”

The future looks like an opportunity for growth with Failing Street, which makes sense; the band’s only been making music officially for a few months. Instead of releasing a full LP, they’re planning on continuing to publish EPs every so often, just to keep the band active. They’re hoping to tour as well, though nothing’s set in stone. For now, they’ll be playing local shows, writing, and practicing as much as they can.

“Everyone in the band actually cares about it, which is really great. We’re all dedicated to making things sound good, which you don’t find a lot. There’s always one guy who holds everyone back, but everyone in Failing Street is really dedicated,” says Pang. He’s been in bands since he was a young boy, and Failing Street shows the most promise thus far. As members of Surrey’s small art scene, they’re looking forward to expanding into the Lower Mainland, Metro Vancouver, and even as far as Vancouver Island.

Procrastination

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19

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SUDOKU No. 140

Horoscopes

Medium

8 9 2

1

Previous solution - Easy

5 3 2 6 8 1 7 4 9 Sagittarius Capricorn 6 2 4 5 3 8 Dec. 1 22 - Jan 20 Nov.723 -9Dec21 4 8 help 1 that 7 man, 3 he9can’t6stop 5 Remember 2 Somebody when smoking crack in a movie signified the crossing learning 3 2 about 7 Zoroastrianism!

4 6 8 9 1 of 5an irretraceable threshold and a 9 4 6 1 5 3 8 2 character’ 7 s total loss of control? Of course you don’t, you’re a fucking 1 5 8 9 7 2 4 6 ostrich.

3 2 6 4 5 9 7 1 3 8 8 9Pisces 5 3 1 4 2 7 6 Aries Mar8 20 2 6 5 9 Mar 7Feb 120 - 3 4 21 - Apr 19

5

6

7 4

SUDOKU No. 139

5 2 6 7 2

5

7 3

1 1 8 5

8

89

Easy

7 3

in the next issue.

4 6

Previous solution - Very Hard

9 4 3 2 1 6 5 8 7

1

3

5 7 6 4 8 3 9 1 2

1 2 8 9 7 5 4 6 3

7 8 9 5 2 4 6 3 1

2

3 1 4 8 6 9 7 2 5

6 5 2 7 3 1 8 4 9

8 3 5 6 9 2 1 7 4

4 6 1 3 5 7 2 9 8

2 9 7 1 4 8 3 5 6

2 4 6

8 will be published 5 The solutions here in the next issue.

Previous solution - Very Hard 4 2 To complete Sudoku, fill the board 9 5 1 7 3 6 8 4 2 by entering numbers 1 to 9 such 4 7 2 891 5 3 6 9 that each row, column and 3x3 box contains every number uniquely.

3 6 8 9 4 2 5 1 7 2 4 9 5 8 7 6 3 1 9 For many strategies, hints and tips, 1 8 7 2 6 3 9 5 4 visit www.sudokuwiki.org 6 3 5 4 9 1 2 7 8 5 4 7 6 5 9 4 6 7 8 1 2 3 If you like Sudoku you’ll really like 8 1 6 3 2 4 7 9 5 and our other puzzles, Apps 5 4 ‘Str8ts’ 7 3 2 3 1 5 924 8 6 and books. Visit www.str8ts.com

© 2016 Syndicated Puzzles

by entering numbers 1 to 9 such that each row, column and 3x3 box contains every number uniquely.

7 6 5 4

3 7 6 8

9

be published here in the next issue.

2 The solutionsTowillcomplete Sudoku, fill the board

4

8

7

For many strategies, hints and tips, visit www.sudokuwiki.org If you like Sudoku you’ll really like ‘Str8ts’ and our other puzzles, Apps and books. Visit www.str8ts.com

© 2016 Syndicated Puzzles

Easy

9

You will meet a woman at a bakery. You eat that cheese sandwich Mrs. She complete will ask to borrowSudoku, your car. If youfill Yanashowska or I wiLL BEAT YOUR ASS. To the board give it to her, she will drive down to by entering numbers 1 to 9 such Mexico and run over a man named that each row, column and 3x3 box Juan.

contains every number uniquely. © 2016 Syndicated Puzzles

2 4 3 6

Gemini strategies, hints and Cancer For many tips, May 21 - Jun 20 Jun 21 - Jul 23 visit www.sudokuwiki.org

Rule #1 for Hype Men: Ask them It was your mother, your Presbyterian if they’re “ready for this.” Rule #2: mother, who first taught you of the IfQuestion you their likereadiness.

Sudoku you’ll rejuvenating really like power of a loved one’s ‘Str8ts’ and our other puzzles, death. Apps

Aquarius Jan 21 - Feb 19 This beef between you and Drake has been a long time coming.

Taurus Apr 20 - May 20 A second mouth opens at the back of your skull and begins shouting all your innermost, unspeakable thoughts.

Your coworkers try admirably to pretend they don’t hear it, but they do.

Leo Jul 24 - Aug 23 All fic is fanfic.

and books. Visit www.str8ts.com Virgo Aug 24 - Sept 23

Libra Sept 24 - Oct 23

You are an upstanding citizen who has “Zut alors, Carlton!” -- The French never broken the law. You were last Prince of Bel Air. seen far away from here, baring no identifiable marks or scars. You are a known ally of puppies.

Scorpio Oct 24 - Nov 22 Next time you’re in England just shout “GOR BLIMEY” and ask for the Queen.

S’like saying hello there.

notice of nomination &

KSA

GENERAL

ELECTION

february 18 & 19, 2016 Each voter must show a valid Student ID to receive a ballot

Nomination forms will be available between Tuesday, January 19 at 9 AM and Monday, February 1 at 12 PM at the KSA Member Services office at each campus or online at the KSA web site at www.kusa.ca/elections. Potential candidates are urged to read and understand the requirements of completing the nomination forms.

If there are questions, they should contact the Chief Returning Officer.

Completed and signed nomination forms must be delivered in hard copy with original signatures (not electronically, by fax or by email) to the Chief Returning Officer or her delegates by Monday, February 1 at 12 PM. No late submissions will be permitted, except per Section XI Article 3 of the KSA Regulations.

Nominations Open

Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 9 AM

Nominations Close

Monday, February 1, 2016 at 12 PM

All Candidates Meeting

Wednesday, February 3, 2016 at 2 PM

KPU Surrey | In Fir 322

General Election Polling

Thursday, February 18, 2016 & Friday, February 19, 2016 | 10 AM – 7 PM

KPU Langley | In the East Building in front of the Bookstore KPU Richmond | In the Rotunda KPU Surrey | In the Lobby of the Surrey Main Atrium KPU Tech | In the Student Lounge by the Cafeteria

Ballot Counting

Friday, February 19, 2016 at 8 PM

BEST WESTERN PLUS Langley Inn | 5978 Glover Road, Langley

Election will be held for these positions:

Campus Representatives (4 positions) • • • •

KPU Langley Campus Representative (1) KPU Richmond Campus Representative (1) KPU Surrey Campus Representative (1) KPU Tech Campus Representative (1)

Constituency Representatives (7 positions) • • • • • • •

Aboriginal Students Representative (1) International Students Representative (1) Mature Students Representative (1) Queer Students Representative (1) Students of Colour Representative (1) Students with Disabilities Representative (1) Women’s Representative (1)

Faculty Representatives (14 positions) • • • • • • •

Chip and Shannon Wilson School of Design Representative (1) Faculty of Academic and Career Advancement Representative (1) Faculty of Arts Representative (4) Faculty of Health Representative (1) Faculty of Science and Horticulture Representative (2) Faculty of Trades and Technology Representative (1) School of Business Representative (4)

For more information on the KSA general election, visit

www.kusa.ca/elections

Chief Returning Officer | Corey Van’t Haaff

Kwantlen Student Association | Cell: 604.889.5437 | Email: kwantlencro@gmail.com