The Runner Volume 10, Issue 17

JUNE 12, 2018 VOLUME 10, ISSUE 17 KPU’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER

DESPERATE AND

MAKING DO A lack of access to licensed child care leaves B.C. parents frustrated

NEWS

Student Organizations Publish Report on Campus Sexual Violence

page 4

CULTURE

KPIRG Hosts Disability History and Culture Workshop

OPINION page 10

Conservative Students Deserve Better Representation in Campus Media

page 13

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STAFF 04

NEWS | Student Organizations Publish Report on Campus Sexual Violence

A common issue noted by the student organizations was the under-reporting of sexual assault cases, with only an estimated 33 of 1,000 incidents reaching law enforcement.

Editor in Chief

Aly Laube editor@runnermag.ca

Managing Editor

Connor Doyle managing@runnermag.ca

Staff Writer

Braden Klassen staff@runnermag.ca

Community Reporter

Ashley Hyshka community@runnermag.ca

Production Manager

Sarah Kraft production@runnermag.ca

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FEATURES | Parents Scramble for Affordable Child Care in B.C.

Without access to licensed child-care facilities, parents must either spend a considerable amount of money on babysitters or take a risk on leaving their children in unlicensed facilities, which can often be unsafe.

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CULTURE | KPIRG Hosts Disability History and Culture Workshop

“Unless you specifically take Disability Studies, this is not something you’re ever going to learn about,” says Q, who led the workshop. “Even if you do take Disability Studies, you’re often getting it from an abled point of view.”

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OPINIONS | Conservative Students Deserve Better Representation

It’s no mystery that, even in some of the most conservative areas, universities tend to be islands of liberalism.

Because of this, it’s important to ensure that reasonable conservative voices are heard in student media.

Photo Editor VACANT

Hashtag KPU Post on Twitter or Instagram about or around KPU and you could be featured!

Art Director

Nicola Kwit art@runnermag.ca

Web Manager

Alex Rodriguez web@runnermag.ca

Operations Manager Scott Boux office@runnermag.ca 778-565-3801

CONTRIBUTORS Marcus Barichello Kristine Hui Tristan Johnston @RESLUS Lincoln Saugstad Melanie Tan

COVER BY Melanie Tan

Arbutus 3710/3720 12666 72 Ave. Surrey, B.C, V3W 2M8 778-565-3801 www.runnermag.ca Vol. 10, Issue no. 17 June 12 // 2018 ISSN# 1916 8241

All submissions to The Runner are subject to editing for style, quality, length, and legality. The Runner will not publish material which the editors deem to be harmful or discriminatory. The views expressed within the publication are not necessarily those of The Runner staff or of the Polytechnic Ink Publishing Society.

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

EDITORIAL

FROM THE EDITOR

WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS MONTH

Student apathy is enabling scandals at KPU Aly Laube | Editor in Chief Kwantlen Polytechnic University has seen its share of controversy over the years, whether it’s full-on criminal activity within student groups or a lack of transparency within the university administration. Again and again, we’ve witnessed student dollars abused and allocated without consultation with those trusting that their money will be well-spent.

At this point, scandal has become part of our reputation as a university, and this year alone The Runner has reported on more than a few of them.

The first came in February when Codie Hindle, KPU’s manager of sport, recreation, and health, was charged with sexual interference with a minor. The incident in question allegedly took place in 2010, when Hindle was working at an overnight summer camp. He appeared in court on Feb. 20, and although the aftermath remains unknown to the public, there is currently an interim manager serving in his absence.

In April, The Runner reported that the founder of the Kwantlen Public Interest Research Group was being sued by KPIRG for fraud. Allegedly, this individual made payments to himself without the knowledge of his coworkers, totalling approximately $112,000. Now he is believed to be in Vietnam, and he gave The Runner “no comment” when we asked him for an interview. To complicate things, since the KSA saw fit to withhold KPIRG’s funding, the research group feels that they will be unable to take their former employee to court to recover the money they allegedly lost.

Around the same time, KPU’s Board of Governors decided to increase tuition for international students by a whopping 15 per cent. You can read more about that in this issue of The Runner, but in short: The university doesn’t receive government money for enrolling inter-

JUNE 12 LAUGHS AT LUNCH

The Kwantlen Student Association is inviting the KPU community to an hour of comedy, featuring a performance by standup comedian, Chris James! Join in for some free fun, laughs and popcorn.

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm, Grassroots Cafe, free

JUNE 19

HARM REDUCTION WORKSHOP

(Nicola Kwit) national students, and with a recent influx of students from countries like China and India, KPU says that it will be unable to accommodate them without getting extra money to do so. Increasing tuition was their method of securing those funds, but students—international or domestic—were not consulted about this decision.

None of this is the fault of students, at least not directly. It’s the responsibility of those in power to use that influence ethically, and to immediately own up if they fail to do so.

However, a culture of student apathy at KPU sends the message to those in power that you can get away with anything here if you’re sufficiently neaky. If you’re careful, you might get a bunch of students who simply don’t care enough to protest your actions.

That’s the message we have been sending since the very first “Reduce All Fees” scandal in 2006, when a slate of student politicians were believed to have misused about $2 million in student fees and ultimately got off scot-free.

Play your cards right and you can take our money without consent or consequence. This past year has served as a testament to the fact that these occurrences likely won’t stop happening anytime soon.

Shrugging off scandal will do nothing but attract more in the future. Our money and our dignity are on the line, and whether or not you’re proud to be a KPU student, you deserve to be treated with respect and honesty by institutions with million-dollar budgets and control over your education.

Go to meetings for student groups. Read their minutes and releases. Stay up to date with what’s happening through your school newspaper. Most importantly, think hard about what kind of institution you want to be a part of, what kind of student you want to be, and which connotations you want employers to associate with the degree on your resume when you leave.

NEWS KPU Senate Approves BRIEFFinal Kwantlen Polytechnic University is in the process of finalizing its next five-year academic plan. KPU Provost and VP Academic Salvador Ferreras presented a summary of the plan at the KPU Senate meeting on May 28.

The plan, which is accompanied by a document called Vision 2023, will provide the guiding principles and policies for the university to adhere to as it grows over the next five years. A draft of the document indicates that there are nine goals which the university will be dedicated to pursuing over the next five years. These goals are organized into four different categories: experience, sustainability, creativity, and quality.

The plan also contains several strategies for accomplishing these goals, and addresses topics that will become more relevant as KPU continues to develop. This includes accommodating international students, creating

open education policies, focusing on Indigenous relationships and decolonization, and even introducing graduate studies programs.

“Although this may seem like a daunting task, we of course won’t embark on everything all at once,” Ferreras said at the May 28 meeting, adding that “some parts of it are actually already underway or well in development.”

In addition to the other strategies, Vision 2023 also puts a focus on the increasing the digitization of teaching and learning. One of the methods of accomplishing this is preparing for the ongoing changes being made to the K-12 curriculum in B.C., which will conclude in 2020 alongside new Grade 11 and 12 curriculums.

According to the academic plan, KPU will continue to invest in and support open education, which grants students access to educational materials for free. The school is also planning on expanding and developing its programs and resources for international

Learn how to respond to an opioid overdose in this free naloxone training workshop with Fraser Health’s Erin Gibson. The workshop is one of the first installments in KPIRG’s summer organizing school program.

2:00 pm - 4:00 pm, Birch 250, free

JUNE 21 HOME SWEET HOME

KPIRG is holding a showcase for four queer, migrant slam poets from different corners of the earth. Each will share their thoughts and feelings on home, migration, and poetry.

4:00 pm - 6:30 pm, Surrey campus (room TBD), free

JUNE 23

WESTHAM ISLAND HIKE

Join Sustainable KSA for a nature hike to Westham Island’s George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary. They will also be going to Emma Lea Farm for strawberry picking. Shuttle transportation is provided to the event and back to campus.

9:00 am - 12:00 pm, Westham Island, $8 - $15

JUNE 27

CANADA DAY CELEBRATION

Version of Vision 2023

Braden Klassen | Staff Writer

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students, as international enrolment has skyrocketed recently.

Ferreras also said that KPU has started the process of creating graduate studies, or Master’s programs, in several faculties.

“The Senate accepted the creation of an office of graduate studies, which lays out the pathway for us to develop actual graduate programs,” he said. “Maybe two years from now we’ll see the proposal for the first graduate program here.”

Vision 2023 also stresses the importance of accountability from staff, faculty, and the administration to ensure that students receive quality education. Ferreras explained that the new plan has come with new methods and metrics for judging KPU’s progress toward achieving these goals, which the university had been developing and improving since it published Vision 2018.

KPU International and the KSA are organizing this year's Canada Day Celebration. The first event will be held on the Surrey campus, with a second event to follow in Richmond on the 28th. Both events are only open to KPU students, staff, and faculty members.

11:00 am - 4:00 pm, Surrey campus, free

JUNE 29

KITSILANO PICNIC & GAMES

Join KPU International for summer fun as they head to Kitsilano Beach for a picnic and games. There will be a return bus to both the Richmond and Surrey campuses.

Tickets are non-refundable.

10:00 am - 6:00 pm, Kitsilano Beach, $5

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NEWS

Canadian Student Organizations Release Joint Publication on Campus Sexual Violence

Shared Perspectives evaluates how well universities across the country address instances of sexual assault on campus Kristine Hui | Contributor While sexual violence can occur to anyone in any place, students are particularly vulnerable to such behaviour while on campus. To address this problem, the B.C. government passed Bill 23, which requires all post-secondary institutions in the province to implement policies that prevent and respond to instances of sexual assault.

Colleges and universities had until April 2017 to put these policies in place. In the year since then, the Alliance of BC Students (ABCS) has partnered with seven other student organizations across Canada to publish a research paper called Shared Perspectives which, in part, evaluates the effectiveness of those policies.

“The idea for this collaborative research paper came out of a joint meeting between the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) and many provincial student advocacy organizations,” explains ABCS Chairperson Caitlin McCutchen, who also serves as the president of the Kwantlen Student Association. “Addressing sexual violence is a top priority for students across the country and we all decided to write a paper on how each of our provinces is addressing this issue.”

A common issue noted by the student organizations was the under-reporting of sexual assault cases, with only an estimated 33 of 1,000 incidents reaching law enforce-

ment. This statistic in the paper is primarily attributed to victim-blaming, a lack of education on consent, and fears of reprisals or being ignored after reporting.

The authors of the report emphasize the need to create spaces where students feel comfortable disclosing details of sexual violence on campus. Additionally, many of the student organizations involved recommend that universities provide more inclusive prevention and response services for marginalized and underrepresented groups such as Indigenous and LGBTQ+ students.

In the portion of the publication written by the ABCS, McCutchen and her co-authors found that Bill 23 “lacks substantive defining principles,” which has led universities to implement “different programs, workshops, and resources … to actualize their policies.”

The alliance recommends that the province fund a comprehensive action plan which includes “guiding principles and procedures, with a focus on prevention work, education, and support services.” The intention of this is to make the development and implementation of sexual misconduct policies more uniform throughout the province.

In terms of changes specific to Kwantlen Polytechnic University, McCutchen “would love to see a dedicated staff person to help implement KPU's sexualized violence and misconduct policy, disclosure training, and create consent and disclosure campaigns.”

“I know KPU says they’re working on this, but we as a community need to address on-campus sexual violence at a more prompt rate,” she adds.

According to an article in Maclean’s which surveyed over 23,000 undergraduate students from 81 Canadian schools, more than 20 per cent of female students, 46.7 per cent of LGBTQ+ students, and 6.9 per cent of male students have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. Approximately half of those assaults occurred while they were

attending university.

“Instances of sexual violence are still so high on university campuses because rape culture and misogyny are still so prevalent in our culture, as is a lack of understanding of consent and safe and healthy relationships,” says McCutchen.

With the ABCS, she plans “to lobby the government to help assist post-secondary institutions who are struggling to fully implement their sexual violence and misconduct policy.”

Shared Perspectives is a report published jointly by the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, the Alliance of BC Students, and six other student organizations across Canada. (ABCS)

Despite a Hold on KPIRG’s Funding, the Lawsuit Against Its Founder May Still Go to Court KPIRG organizers are still exploring the possibility of serving papers to Hossein Tristan Johnston | Contributor The Kwantlen Public Interest Research Group’s current legal dispute with founder Richard Hossein is currently on hold following the Kwantlen Student Association’s revocation of its autonomy agreement.

KPIRG Director-at-Large Simon Massey says that he and his team chose not to serve papers to Hossein to initiate a lawsuit against him as they had suspected that the revocation of the autonomy agreement—which, in part, dictates how KSA collects and remits KPIRG’s funding—was a possibility.

“You file a claim with [the B.C. Supreme Court] and then you have a year to serve the person you’re filing a claim against, and that’s a process,” says Massey. “We have not done that yet. We have chosen to hold off on serving the individual because we wanted to see what would happen with the autonomy agreement.”

As KPIRG filed the civil claim in March of this year, it has until March 2019 to take further action against Hossein.

In the past, KPIRG received around $250,000 annually from student fees. However, because the KSA voted to withhold its funding, the group has only the money in its reserves to sustain its operations. Given KPIRG’s typical expenses, this will likely run out in about a year.

Until then, Massey says that KPIRG will continue to pay its staff members and will keep

holding events in fulfillment of its mandate.

“We’re trying to find if it’s a possibility to [continue the legal case], but looking at where the budget is, without funding, I don’t think it would be something we could do while also fulfilling the purpose of KPIRG,” he says.

KPIRG’s legal counsel has informed its staff that it is still possible to serve Hossein with papers despite his last reported location being Vietnam. However, the group has yet to decide whether or not it will pursue this option.

“Going after the money is tricky,” says Massey. “It’s not a guarantee that we recoup it or that we get it back. Even if we get default judgement, then we’ve won in court and we’re down the cost in legal fees.”

Elizabeth Edinger, an associate professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC, echoes KPIRG’s sentiment that attempting to recoup the allegedly lost fees might not be worth the cost.

“My assumption is that the defendant has fled to Vietnam without leaving any assets behind,” she says. “If the defendant has no assets in B.C., then in order to get the B.C. judgement enforced, [KPIRG] would have to find the defendant—now a judgement debtor—and get [the jurisdiction the defendant is in] to recognize and enforce the B.C. judgement. So it’s an expensive process.”

Edinger also clarifies that extradition wouldn’t be on the table, as the claim against Hossein is civil and not criminal.

The KPIRG office at 7380 King George Blvd. in Surrey. The group has been renting out space off-campus since 2016. (Braden Klassen) Massey says that he understands the frustrations of KPU students who might view the civil claim as more evidence that their student societies can be embezzled without consequences.

“I’m not going to speak too freely [...] but yes, I totally empathize with those feelings,” he says. “If we still had our funding agreement, we would still be [fully] pursuing this.”

As reported previously, KSA President Caitlin McCutchen believes that withholding KPIRG’s funding is the best way for KSA

Council to address the situation between KPIRG and Hossein.

“We consulted with our legal counsel on this and I just think it’s important to make it clear that this isn’t terminating KPIRG,” McCutchen told The Runner last month.

“We’re just [revoking KPIRG’s] fees until things get sorted out with them.”

Massey adds, “I think everyone is trying to do what they think is right for the students and for their society.”

NEWS

Richmond Farm School Plants New Roots for the 2018 Season

The program has been revamped to focus on small-scale urban farming Ashley Hyshka | Community Reporter The City of Richmond has struggled recently with how to best use its acres of farmable land. While the debate rages on, KPU’s Richmond Farm School has begun focusing on its own solution to the problem.

For its 2018 semester, the school has been redesigned to focus on small-scale urban farming to meet the needs of Vancouver’s changing environment. “[It] provided us a great opportunity to focus on small, super intensive, organic, hand-powered agriculture,” says Daniel Garfinkel, an instructor in KPU’s Institute of Sustainable Food Systems.

The school, which sits in South Richmond, currently enrols 14 students, about 95 per cent of which are female. The program runs for nine months, with one day of class instruction per week, but the farm itself is open seven days a week. This allows students to drop by during the weekday for a more encompassing educational experience.

Garfinkel says that students learn “a huge diversity of things” through the program, including how to make seed selections, farming and growing techniques, how to get involved in farmers markets, and business planning.

One problem that the program encountered was that there’s a lack of usable land in Metro Vancouver. While the farm school in Tsawwassen sits on 20 acres, the Richmond Farm School has only one acre. Because of this, Garfinkel says that working within the program encourages creativity.

“The idea of needing epic amounts of space for food production is flawed. It’s a broken system. It’s broken thinking,” says Garfinkel.

“We don’t need to feed millions of people. We

Daniel Garfinkel of KPU's Richmond Farm School believes that small scale urban farming has great potential for local communities, posing in front of a small garden tended by the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems (Ashley Hyshka). just need to feed our community.”

Garfinkel says that roughly half of the food grown at the school goes to feeding students, staff, and volunteers. The remaining half gets donated to various charities which help marginalized communities, including women’s and Indigenous groups in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

“Our plan was just to feed the students but we’ve got the student labour. We’ve got the means to do so, so why not just produce a little bit more with what we already have so we can feed our community as well?” he says.

The original plan was to only grow a handful of crops, but due to the students’ passion, they now grow 25 different crops, including garlic, tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce.

Another reason for the program’s focus on small-scale farming is that there is high demand for it. Garfinkel says that community members lamented that there was no such course in existence in the past, so when the

program was created last November, it was very well-received.

“That response from one of our programs was the first time ever that we’ve gotten that type of hype,” he says. “That really told us, ‘There is a need for this. People want this.

People are really hungry for this. Let’s fill in that gap.’”

Garfinkel himself has only been a farmer for 10 years. He was educated at the Tsawwassen Farm School, where he dreamed of teaching about agriculture to the next generation of students.

He says that the farm school’s purpose is to provide students with the opportunity to learn and develop new skills that will enable them to take a life path that’s fulfilling to them.

“We just focus on empowering students, empowering their knowledge, empowering their experiences,” he says. “I’m just like, ‘No, fail! Fail as much as you can, because every failure is just a learning opportunity.’”

The donation is part of the association’s mandate to help students in need

Students applying for awards or bursaries can expect to have a little more help coming their way starting this year.

The Kwantlen Student Association has given $221,000 for funding scholarships, bursaries, and grants to the KPU Foundation.

After making the donation, the KSA stated in a press release that it was a means of giving back to students in need.

According to the release, “many students who apply for financial assistance end up with their needs not being fully met by government loan programs, so the KSA’s awards help make continuing their education possible.”

To date, the KSA has donated more than $650,000 to the KPU Foundation. This most recent donation was made in addition to a total of over $100,000 that the KSA has given to students through different awards and hardship bursaries.

According to KSA VP Finance and Operations Joseph Thorpe, funds for the donation

CFS Launches Campaign to Abolish Interest on Student Loans Ashley Hyshka | Community Reporter

KSA Donates $221,000 to Endowed Student Awards Braden Klassen | Staff Writer

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came from the KSA’s financial reserves, which have been building up over time.

“We were accumulating a lot of reserves because either students weren’t applying for funding, or we over budgeted,” says Thorpe.

“So we released a lot of those reserves from different worksheets in order to donate and create awards because we are a non-profit and that’s our mandate.”

The KSA already offers a myriad of awards, including those for various faculties like Arts, Health, Design, and Trades and Technology.

The student association also helps fund education for international students, Indigenous students, students with disabilities, and students who are single parents.

Thorpe says that the KSA and the KPU Foundation share a focus on helping student minorities as well as the students who most demonstrate a need for financial support.

The KPU Foundation was incorporated in July 2000 as a charitable organization under the B.C. Societies Act and has since managed millions of dollars of funding initiatives like

program development and financial aid.

The foundation receives funding from a number of sources besides the KSA, including an $8,000,000 pledge donation from Chip and Shannon Wilson in 2014. That donation was used to fund some of the construction of the Chip and Shannon Wilson School of Design on the Richmond campus.

When students apply for bursaries, scholarships, or awards online, they can submit information that designates whether or not they are eligible for various awards.

“When you apply for scholarships and awards, you actually apply for every single award that the KSA offers. Then, if you fit the criteria, you’re offered that award,” says Thorpe.

He adds that the KSA also gives the KPU Foundation certain criteria to follow for selecting students to be given the awards.

“The KSA is probably going to continue making as many awards as we can to help out students,” he says. “It’s part of what we do as an organization—[to] utilise anything we can in order to support students.”

The Canadian Federation of Students is launching a campaign called “Not In Our Interest” to urge the federal government to eliminate interest rates on the Canada Student Loans Program.

According to the CFS website, Canadian students currently owe $28 billion in debt to all levels of government, and the federal government alone is slated to profit $862.6 million this year off of the interest on that debt. For reference, interest rates for student loans are often higher than those for mortgages.

Peyton Veitch, the national treasurer for the CFS, says that this situation constitutes a “debt crisis” in Canada.

He believes it is “immoral” for the federal government to profit “off the backs of students” by collecting interest on student loans, and stresses that there are more fair ways to fund post-secondary education.

Four provinces have already eliminated the interest rates on their provincial loans, with British Columbia slated to become the fifth.

“Eliminating the interest rate on the Canada Student Loans Program is something that the federal government could do tomorrow if it wanted to,” says Veitch. “And it would save students who are struggling to repay their loan thousands of dollars.”

He explains that Canadian students are graduating, on average, with $28,000 in student debt. For students who will spend years paying off these debts, interest rates alone can add thousands of dollars to an already hefty loan.

“That means that students who can’t afford the full cost of their education up front, who have to rely on loans in order to pursue a post-secondary education, end up paying more for the same education than their wealthier peers,” he says.

Veitch adds that, thus far, the CFS campaign has received a lot of attention from students, media, and the general public, and he personally believes that the message is beginning to resonate.

As the 2019 federal election approaches, Veitch says the CFS will continue to pressure the federal government to offer interest-free student loans. To this end, the CFS has already met with the Canada Student Loans Program administration and has reached out to the office of the Minister of Finance and the office of the minister in charge of the program.

“85 per cent of Canadians believe that students are taking on too much debt to pursue a post-secondary education,” he says. “Eliminating interest rates—it’s something that doesn’t just benefit the Canada Student Loan Program …. It’s something that benefits the community as a whole.”

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NEWS

Report From Inclusion BC Sheds Light on Disturbing Treatment of Special Needs Students

“Stop Hurting Kids II” found that seclusion and restraint methods are being used against schoolchildren Ashley Hyshka | Community Reporter School is typically seen as a safe haven for children. Tragically, that may not be the case for some special needs students across the province, according to a recent report from advocacy group Inclusion BC “Stop Hurting Kids II” follows up on a report originally published in 2013. The data was collected through widespread surveying of parents and guardians of children with special needs.

“There’s widespread use of seclusion and restraint in a whole variety of ways being used on children with special needs in B.C. schools,” says Faith Bodnar, Executive Director of Inclusion BC. After the first report was published, members of the group had hoped that the problems it identified would be addressed, but five years later they were “extremely troubled and disturbed to see that it’s continuing to happen in a widespread and systematic way.”

According to the report, some students were restrained by cuffs or tied to chairs, secluded from other students for hours or days, or were physically assaulted by faculty.

Bodnar says that the reasons for the abuse are complex, stemming partially from a lack of resources and partially by ignorance about how to care for special needs children.

She adds that she would like to see a provincial training program to provide methods of nonviolent intervention and monitoring of reported incidences. She says that only 19

out of 60 school districts in the province have policies on seclusion and restraint. “[It’s] kind of a wild west out there when it comes to these kind of practices,” says Bodnar. “It’s indicative of a cultural bias that says it’s okay—it’s still acceptable—to treat children with special needs this way.”

The report states that, in some cases, abusive practices are used on children on a weekly basis. Bodnar believes that these statistics are evidence that the issue is not being handled properly.

The ramifications of abuse are “significant and traumatic,” she adds. Children can suffer life-long physical pain and psychological and emotional trauma as a result. This affects not only the children, but also their families and the other schoolchildren who witness the abuse.

Parents who participated in the survey said that, after suffering such abuse, their children showed symptoms of anxiety, depression, aggression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a lack of confidence.

Special needs children are less likely to report their abuse, and Bodnar says that schools rarely inform parents of abuse that takes place on the grounds. Often, either parents discover it for themselves or someone else tips them off. According to Bodnar this is a “fundamental betrayal felt by parents that their children aren’t safe in school.”

Minister of Education Rob Fleming expressed concern regarding Inclusion BC’s report and said that he remains committed to supporting schools and special needs children.

“I’ve directed the ministry to ensure all school districts read this report and review the current provincial guidelines and then ensure they have local policies and clear standards in place to address these practices by the end of the year,” wrote Fleming in an email to The Runner.

“We will also work with Inclusion BC and other education partners to develop an inclusive education action plan that focuses spe-

cifically on improving services for students with special needs,” he adds.

Bodnar says that the organization is grateful and appreciative of Minister Fleming’s leadership. She explains that, when the original report was published in 2013, the existing Minister of Education did not take any formal measures to address the issue.

“I think we’re seeing some positive movement here in B.C.,” she says.

Faith Bodnar, Executive Director of Inclusion BC, says more action needs to be taken when it comes to the treatment of special needs children in B.C. schools.

(Submitted).

Polytechnics Canada Welcomes New CEO

Sarah Watts-Rynard will soon be the leader of one of Canada’s largest polytechnic school partnership organizations Braden Klassen | Staff Writer Polytechnics Canada, an organization that connects polytechnic post-secondary schools across the country, will be under the management of a new CEO as of July 30.

Sarah Watts-Rynard, who is presently serving as the executive director for the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum (CAF), will replace current Polytechnics Canada CEO Nobina Robinson. “[Sarah Watts-Rynard] has shown commitment to evidence-based policy advocacy and is a consensus builder as well as a very adept manager of not-for-profit organizations,” Robinson wrote in an email to The Runner.

“She has grown CAF in her seven year tenure into a highly regarded research forum for apprenticeship, building new alliances and partnerships along the way,” she wrote. “[Watts-Rynard] knows how the federal government works and has a host of new ideas about how to take Polytechnics Canada to new heights as the association enters a new phase.”

Helping polytechnic schools interface with the federal government is one of Polytechnic Canada’s primary roles, which is a major reason why Kwantlen Polytechnic University became a member in 2016.

KPU is only one of two Polytechnics Canada members in B.C. The other is BCIT, which was a founding member of the organization

in 2003, when it was known as the Association of Canadian Polytechnic Institutes.

The majority of their member schools are in Ontario, with a few in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

“Our membership in Polytechnics Canada is a key component in our federal government relations strategy,” wrote KPU President Alan Davis in an email to The Runner on June 1. “Its advocacy efforts are key to getting the story about the polytechnic advantage in front of national decision-makers.”

Member representatives get a chance to meet face-to-face at annual conferences, the most recent one being hosted by Sheridan College in Toronto. Representatives from several research-oriented organizations with a focus on innovative technology, science, industry, and business were in attendance.

Federal ministers Navdeep Bains and Kirsty Duncan also attended and gave keynote speeches at the conference.

According to Polytechnics Canada, next year’s event is scheduled to be hosted by KPU. “Polytechnics Canada conducts public

policy research, development, and analysis to support its members,” wrote Davis. “This essentially puts KPU at the table in Ottawa, ensuring that federal decision-makers are aware of the benefits we offer in areas such as applied research and innovation, apprenticeship, international education, and work-integrated learning.”

Polytechnics Canada publishes news releases, academic op-eds, research, and policy papers that support the mandates and goals of its member institutions. The organization also helps connect businesses and research interests with members, which can lead to opportunities for students through apprenticeships or internships.

According to Davis, because of the efforts of Polytechnics Canada, members have also received an increase in federal funding over time.

“Those higher education institutions that share this mission, like KPU, have a tremendous story to tell, not just locally or regionally but nationally and internationally,” wrote Robertson. “Polytechnics Canada can help

Nobina Robinson, the current CEO of Polytechnics Canada, who will be replaced by Sarah Watts-Reynard at the end of July. (Jana Chytilova) tell that story, especially changing the older mindsets of federal decision-makers who think that Canada's post-secondary strengths are solely based on its university network.”

She continues, “Canada has a world-class polytechnic system, and Polytechnics Canada wants its members to celebrate that.”

FEATURES

7

Parents Scramble for Affordable Child Care in B.C. A lack of access to licensed child care in the province leaves parents and guardians frustrated

Marcus Barichello Four months before the birth of their first child, Julia Smith and her husband registered their names on wait lists for licensed child-care programs. Last November, after 16 months of waiting, the only change in their situation was their daughter’s age and the fast-approaching end of Smith’s maternity leave.

“I’m on 14 wait lists and I haven’t heard a positive response from any of them,” Smith said in an interview late last year. “I’ve looked for daycare places everywhere between Simon Fraser University and downtown, so most of Burnaby and most of Vancouver. That’s two cities and still we can’t find anything. It’s just mind-boggling.”

The search for licensed child care in British Columbia has become increasingly difficult for families as they look for a safe program for their children. The wait lists for these programs have become so long that often the only remedy offered is for women to sign up as soon as they know they’re pregnant.

The Cost of Child Care According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the median cost for licensed child care is more than $1,300 per month in Vancouver. In addition, a report entitled High Stakes by West Coast Leaf found that “the inadequacy of the [B.C.] child-care system has impacted [parents] and their children— undermining their safety, well-being, and human rights.”

Without a safe and affordable option being made available to working families, one parent is often forced to sacrifice their career path, potentially inflicting financial stress upon the household.

According to Smith, the pressure of simply waiting for a response is enough to drive parents mad.

“It’s so frustrating,” she says. “I’m going back to work. My husband works full time. We need child care.”

Unfortunately, Smith’s frustrations are shared by parents all over the province who are dealing with the same problem.

“We put her on, gosh, I don’t even know how many lists—maybe five or six,” says Kate Spence, a mother of two. “Others were full and didn’t even have space on their waitlist really [and] said not to bother.”

Without access to licensed child-care facilities, parents must either spend a considerable amount of money on babysitters or take a risk on leaving their children in unlicensed facilities, which can often be unsafe.

In B.C. any child-care program that provides care for three or more children must be licensed, and their employees must submit to criminal record checks. However, in a 2013 article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Adam Miller says that workers in unlicensed child-care programs don’t need to get criminal record checks, and that even the facilities themselves can be unsafe for young children.

Spence now relies on an expensive nanny to take care of her children while she’s working because she fears the potential dangers of unlicensed programs. This approach, she says, is breaking the bank.

“When we have her for two and a half

days a week, it is costing us almost $1,700 a month, which is more than my paycheck,” she explains. “We had to ask my parents for help because it’s just way too expensive. We’re two working professionals—I’m a teacher and my partner runs her own business in finance—so it’s really ridiculous that we have to ask our parents for help. We’re almost 40.”

While she and her family are “trying to save every penny” to afford a new place to live, she says that spending thousands of dollars on child care every month makes it “impossible to save.”

Could $10 per Day Take These Worries Away?

Sharon Gregson, a prominent advocate for the $10-per-day child-care system, says that “families are desperate and making do with a patchwork of solutions” when they shouldn’t be.

“For many families, they don’t know that things can be different, that child care is done differently in other parts of the country and other parts of the world,” she says.

Gregson believes that the government needs to take the initiative in creating a more effective child-care system in British Columbia, and suggests that the $10-a-day child-care plan backed by the B.C. NDP is the solution.

“Investing in lowering parents’ fees and capping parents’ fees, creating more licensed daycares, and improving the wages and education opportunities for early child-care educators—that is the solution,” she says. “It’s not rocket science. It’s right there in front of us and now we just need politicians to make the initial investment to get that system built.”

Gregson believes that the changes the NDP have made and plan on making over the next three years are the right steps to achieving a better system, and she’s not alone in this belief. Both Spence and Smith have fundraised and volunteered in support of the $10a-day plan.

“I’m a public-school teacher and I don’t rely on parents to pay my salary, so I don’t know why, in the early years, we’re expecting parents to foot the bill,” Spence says. “I think that having educators that are well-educated and well-compensated—not by parents. but by the government—would be a huge thing. Then I think there would actually be incentive for people to work in early childhood education.”

For Connie Vicars, the owner and manager of Strawberry Patch Children’s Centre in Langley, the biggest problem contributing to the lack of space in licensed child-care programs is staffing. Like Gregson and Spence, Vicars believes that the government needs to get involved, but she’s concerned that the NDP won’t prioritize doing so with their $10a-day plan.

Two initiatives that they could take, she proposes, are encouraging students to enroll in early child-care education programs and raising the wages of early child-care educators before creating more spaces.

“They need to spend money on the facilities they already have before they create 30,000 new spaces,” she says. “You can’t make all this new space and spend all these millions of dollars doing that when there’s no staff to put in it. Help the ones that are closing because they can’t afford to have staff.”

Gregson argues that people like Vicars are “not very familiar with the plan because [it

(Nicola Kwit) Parents brought their children to an address that Premier John Horgan gave in Vancouver. Horgan spoke about the party's commitment to childcare. (flickr/BC NDP) does] includes more incentives for early childhood educators to go into post-secondary for their [Early Childhood Educator training] and it also includes workforce recruitment and retention strategy and a strategy to attract more ECE back into the workforce who have left for other fields.”

Many financial experts have found that the plan could potentially be economically beneficial. According to a Conference Board of Canada report, “every dollar spent on expanding Early Childhood Education results in $6 of economic benefit.” One analysis by Robert Fairholm and Lynell Anderson claimed that it would boost government revenue by $1.3 billion. The analysis also concluded that there would be approximately 39,200 more working mothers and a 1.7 per cent increase in B.C.’s overall employment rate if the plan were implemented. This, according to the report, could result in a net profit of $3.9 billion, or 1.6 per cent of the provincial GDP. When the NDP-Green coalition began, both parties agreed to create a universal child-care program, but they took different approaches to meeting that end. The NDP campaigned on the $10-a-day plan authored by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates and the Early Childhood Educators of BC, while the Greens wanted to expand preschool to include three and four year-olds and provide more financial support for stay-at-home parents.

In February, the NDP and Greens unveiled their compromise with the BC 2018 Provincial Budget, which included all the proposed changes to the provincial child-care system.

The plan costs $1 billion and the main changes to the current system are new benefits of “up to $1,250 per month per child” for families and “up to $350 per month directly to licensed child care providers to reduce fees.”

According to a Global News article covering the plan, $630 million goes towards these two changes, and that they will “replace the existing child care subsidy offered under the BC Liberals.” The $350 reduction in fees have been in effect since April, while the new child-care benefit will be implemented in September.

The rest of the money goes towards cre-

ating 22,000 new licensed child-care spaces, training new child-care educators, and assisting current licensed child-care programs and workers. These changes will take place over the next three years.

The government will spend a little over $1 billion over the next four years to implement all the changes. In addition, the province will receive $153 million from Ottawa because of the new Early Learning and Child Care agreement.

Although this plan is not a universal childcare system, the provincial government does believe that the changes “will set the province on the path” to eventually achieving a universal system.

Relocating or Waiting for Change Despite the coming improvements, parents of young children are still struggling in the province’s current system.

Spence says that she and her partner were excited to pay for extra-curricular activities like swimming lessons for their kids, but may not be able to because they spend so heavily on child care.

“It just kind of restricts what you thought your kid’s childhood would look like,” she says.

Spence now has her oldest daughter enrolled in a preschool program, but it only runs four hours a week and does not give her the flexibility to continue working full-time.

For other families, the issues with B.C.’s child-care system are a cause to relocate.

Smith says that she knows some families who “are going to leave the city because they can’t find child care, [and] when they do find it, it’s so expensive.”

Smith was lucky enough to get her child accepted at the beginning of this year into a licensed program, and with the newly-introduced fee reduction program, she says her family's situation has changed drastically.

8

FEATURE

KPU’s International Tuition Hike Divides Students and Administrators University officials say the 15 per cent increase was a necessity, but student representatives feel there should have been greater consultation Aly Laube | Editor in Chief

When the KPU Board of Governors voted on March 28 to raise international tuition by 15 per cent, they received an immediate backlash from members of the Kwantlen Student Association. By April 5 the KSA had released a statement saying that it was “disappointed” with the increase in tuition, and with the fact that the Board did not consult international students before voting.

In order to facilitate a conversation about the increase to their tuition, the KSA’s vice-president university affairs, Murdoch de Mooy, organized a drop-in consultation session for international students on May 28.

Although there were only about a dozen students in attendance, many more voiced their opinions online. De Mooy says he plans to present the data he gathered, with no names attached, to university administration for discussion and review.

He also notes that many international students he talked to didn’t fully understand how the increase would affect them, and that they were worried they would have to pay the full 15 per cent increase starting in September.

In fact, only new and re-admitted international students will have to pay the full 15 per cent for the upcoming fall semester. Those who are currently enrolled at KPU will have their fees increased by 7.5 per cent this fall, with a further 6.98 per cent increase coming in September 2019.

“Some of the students didn’t understand this,” says de Mooy. “They didn’t know, so having this consultation is important to ensure that they’re informed and not feeling thrust upon.”

Gurpreet Sabharwal, an international student and the KSA’s Surrey campus representative, echoes the reactions heard by de Mooy.

“No one expected this increase,” he says.

“Our parents will pay our fee increases, so you can imagine that international students go back to their home countries and say that their fee increases by 15 per cent—it’s very hard for their families to digest this.”

According to the KSA’s press release, the 15 per cent increase in fees will cause international tuition to rise from $572.20 per credit to $658.03 per credit. This totals $19,741 for international students taking a full course load during the fall and spring semesters. By comparison, domestic students pay $139 per credit.

To help those who will be struggling to pay for their education as a result of the raise in

fees, Sabharwal suggests that KPU offer better financial and emotional supports for international students.

Another international student, Karan Saggu—who hopes to run for a position on KSA Council in the fall—is currently relying on student loans to get through university and is unsure of whether or not he will be able to adapt to the increase alone.

“I’ll probably have to ask my parents, and they’re not really rich either,” he says. “My parents are from a middle-class family, so I don’t know where they are going to get that money from.”

While he acknowledges that an eventual tuition increase was inevitable, he feels that a 15 per cent increase will put too much of a burden on international students all at once.

He says that he would like to see a cap on how much international tuition can be raised in a single year and, like Sabharwal, thinks there should be more university initiatives designed to help international students succeed.

“The problem is that KPU has a lot of facilities but no one knows about them,” he says.

“Students can get involved in the Senate meetings and they can apply to be a part of the committees. No one knows about that.”

De Mooy believes that a driving reason behind the Board of Governors’ decision not to consult with students before raising international tuition was because they knew there would be significant pushback.

“They believed students would just say ‘no,’ so they thought it was irrelevant to ask students’ opinion on it,” he says.

KPU’s provost and vice-president academic, Salvador Ferreras, says that the university voted to increase international tuition to maintain a high quality of education for its student body.

“The provincial government doesn’t give us one penny for international students. They only pay us for a delivery of a certain number of [full-time equivalents] for domestic students,” he explains. “Anything that we do beyond that is something that we have to raise money for. There’s no other source from which to find that funding.”

Paying for services such as academic advising, the multi-faith centre, and peer tutoring also puts financial pressure on the university, says Ferreras. In particular, he cites staffing the learning centre and the KPU International office, as well as compensating recruiters

and agents abroad, as motivations behind the vote to increase tuition.

Recruitment officers for KPU work in various markets around the world—such as those in India, East Asia, and the Middle East—to “liaise with various agents and do orientation sessions for the agents and for prospective students in those countries,” according to Ferreras. Some of their duties are to attend post-secondary fairs, hold workshops on how to enrol at KPU, and help international students get their paperwork prepared in order to come to Canada.

Even when they do arrive in Canada, KPU pays for further support for students who don’t have a place to live or an understanding of Canadian education and culture.

Ferreras points to the university’s upcoming Vision 2023 document—which lays out a series of goals for the administration to meet over the next five years—as an example of how KPU expects to offer more facilities for international students in the future.

“In the academic plan there’s a whole section for international students and how we’re going to support them,” he says. “In order to do that, however, we need some more money.

We need some more resources, and we think that—if they have that much of an interest in our institution—they’ll be willing to pay a little bit more to ensure they get the quality that they’re looking for.”

Although he acknowledges that there was no official, open consultation offered to international students at KPU about the tuition increase, Ferreras says that information gathered by employees like advisors and staff working at orientation was kept in mind while the Board of Governors deliberated on raising international fees.

“We don’t survey them; we just talk to them directly,” he says. “The administration, at certain times, has to make decisions that are unpopular. One of those unpopular decisions at all institutions is having to raise tuition.”

KPU is not the only post-secondary institution in the province that has recently raised the price of tuition for international students.

On March 20, a little more than a week before KPU’s Board of Governors voted, the Board of Governors for the University of Victoria passed a budget that will raise tuition by 20 per cent, with another budget proposed that will raise them a further 15 per cent next year.

According to an article in the Globe and Mail,

the University of British Columbia raised tuition for international students by more than 10 per cent for three consecutive years, finally slowing to a two per cent rise in 2018.

Ferreras affirms, however, that he and his colleagues on the Board of Governors did not consult with these institutions before raising international tuition at KPU. “We made this decision based on our needs for our students,” he says. “We get less government funding per the body of students than we would expect. We’ve brought that case to the government many times and it seems like something that’s very difficult for them to do at this point because we’ve become a very big institution, and I’m not sure what their plans are on a provincial level. Nevertheless, we have cost pressures because of that.”

International enrolment, both at KPU and across Canada, has increased dramatically over the last decade. Between 2010 and 2015 alone it rose by 68 per cent at KPU, with most of those students entering into the Faculty of Business. These high are numbers are due in part to a 2012 provincial mandate called the International Education Strategy that intended “to position the province and its residents to benefit even more from the social, cultural, and economic opportunities that flow from international education activities.”

Earlier this year, KPU made headlines when it announced that it would place a cap on international enrolment for the rest of 2018 due to the unprecedented number of applications it received in January and February alone. At the time, Ferreras told The Runner that the university hoped to focus on providing the international students it had already accepted with the best education possible.

“If you don’t plan carefully, you run out of room, you run out of instructors, or you run out of the capability to provide both the delivery and the support for the students,” he said.

While de Mooy says he empathizes with the position that KPU is in, he believes that the university still should have consulted directly with the international student body before raising their tuition.

“My main concern was that people weren’t feeling listened to,” he says. “As the Kwantlen Student Association, we want to make sure that every student doesn’t feel like they’re being ignored or somebody’s just trying to steal their money.”

Murdoch de Mooy and David Piraquive, two members of the KSA's executive committee, held a consultation session about the international tuition increase. (Aly Laube)

Gurpreet Sabharwal, the Surrey campus representative for the KSA. (Braden Klassen)

Karan Saggu, who is in his second semester at KPU, is concerned about adjusting to the 15 per cent tuition increase. (Aly Laube)

KPU Provost and VP Academic Sal Ferreras defended the decision to raise international tuition. (File photo)

10

CULTURE

The Kwantlen St. Market Moves to a New Location

Vendors say foot traffic is better than at last year’s spot Tristan Johnston | Contributor The Kwantlen St. Market is back once again for the summer, this time in a new location with free parking. It will be held every Tuesday until October from 12:00 to 4:00 pm in Minoru Plaza, just outside of the Richmond Public Library.

In the past, KPU’s own farmers market took place in the large parking lot of the Richmond campus. While convenient for students, it didn’t draw in as many members of the general public as organizers had hoped. The new location is close to the busiest mall in Richmond and is within steps of the public library, art gallery, swimming pool, ice rink, and running track.

“It was on campus for the last two years and the traffic flow just wasn’t cutting it,” says Lindsay Dodds, a fourth-year sustainable agriculture student. “This place here is much better. There’s a lot more walk-by traffic and it has more of a market feel. When we were on campus, it just felt like a Kwantlen event and [people] assumed it was some sort of student thing and would just completely bypass it.”

Despite this, the market has always been a big hit, especially amongst KPU students and faculty members.

“Sometimes we do sell some of this stuff on-campus, and students do love it, especially the design wing,” says Dodds.

All of the produce sold at their stand was grown in Richmond, whether it was greens from their terraces on campus or other foods from their farm on Gilbert and Dyke. Soon, they will be across the street from the Garden City Lands, on Garden City Road. Produce sales go back into the Sustainable Agriculture

Laurie Mercer came all the way from Langley to sell his baked goods to Richmondites and KPU students. (Tristan Johnston) program to be used for seeds and research equipment.

“People remember us from last year, which is great,” says Piper Kenney, a third-year student in the same program. “They come and seek us out, sometimes we get Kwantlen alumni that want to come and support Kwantlen students. They love seeing us here, and love talking to us as well, which is great.”

“Anything we can do to get fellow Kwantlen students to eat fresh, organic produce, the better. Because it’s good for them and it’s good for us too,” laughs Dodds.

However, it’s not only students and student groups managing booths at the events. A ven-

dor selling upcycled jewelry, made by taking discarded materials and making them look new again, was also present at the market.

Laurie Mercer of Langley-based bakery Sweet Thea is happy to see a farmers market in central Richmond.

“We do have a lot of Richmond customers that come to the Steveston farmers market, plus we do Chinese New Year at Aberdeen Centre, so we’re delighted that there’s one in central Richmond too,” he says. “It has been missing for a while.”

Mercer explains that the application process to be a vendor is rigorous. Consistent with rules at other farmers markets in B.C.,

the application page states that “all vendors must be personally and actively involved in the production of all products available for sale at the market.” These sorts of rules are designed to uphold the community nature of the market.

“Food is sometimes very dangerous. It comes from a long ways away and we’re all trying to do our best to reduce the impact on the environment and our own habits,” says Mercer. “Eating locally created products is good for our future, and so it’s worth your support.”

Local Activist Leads KPIRG Disability History Workshop Workshop leader Q spoke about the history and culture of disability activism Braden Klassen | Staff Writer In 1957, archaeologists from Columbia University discovered a cave burrowing into the side of a mountain in the Bradost range of northern Iraq. The cave, now commonly known as Shanidar Cave, contained several interesting artifacts and a collection of remains belonging to Neanderthals who were estimated to have lived in the area 35,000 to 65,000 years ago.

The first of these bodies, a man deemed “Shanidar 1”, had suffered severe physical injuries throughout his life which left him half-blind, deaf, and likely paralysed on his left side. He was also missing part of his arm, possibly from a childhood illness, and likely had to contend with a debilitating limp.

What truly intrigued the researchers, though, was the degree to which he had healed and how he had lived to a relatively old age. They surmised that the other Neanderthals that Shanidar 1 lived with must have put significant effort into caring for him, and likely regarded other disabled members of their community with profound care and respect.

This was the first of many stories that Q, a local activist and disability workshop facilitator, shared with students and community members at the Disability History and Culture 101 workshop presented by the Kwantlen Public Interest Research Group.

“Unless you specifically take Disability Studies, this is not something you’re ever going to learn about,” says Q. “Even if you do take Disability Studies, you’re often getting it from an abled point of view.”

They have been leading workshops on this subject for nearly a year, beginning at BC Children’s Hospital and branching out as the popularity of the events grew.

“I always found disability history to be really interesting. There are so many things that are just really badass, to be frank,” says Q. “The disability community is really badass and doesn’t get recognized as such, and I wanted people to know that, so I started branching out.”

They believe that this kind of education is important for people to understand the importance of accessibility. Q has a genetic illness that makes their joints dislocate easily, which is why they use a wheelchair. They also have cancer, identify as being on the autism spectrum, and live with mental illness.

In the workshop, Q and others spoke about the communities and cultures that have arisen from activism led by people living with disabilities. They touched on the subversive Cripple Punk movement, disability representation in the media, and the criminalisation of disabled people through the “ugly laws”—laws that, up until the 1970s, punished people with visible disabilities for going out in public.

KPIRG Director-at-Large Simon Massey says that providing this kind of education to KPU students is a valuable part of what KPIRG does. He points to one of KPIRG’s action groups, Disability Action Movement Now, as an example of ways that the research group supports disability advocacy in the community.

KPIRG itself is currently the subject of controversy as one of the group’s founders and employees allegedly defrauded the student-funded organization of almost $112,000.

This breached an autonomy agreement that KPIRG had with the Kwantlen Student Association, which voted to stop remitting student-collected funds to KPIRG in April.

Massey says that, despite this, he believes that KPIRG will continue to facilitate events “for at least a year.”

“It’s tighter, obviously, because we don’t have that incoming source of revenue,” says Massey. “But throughout the whole process we’ve had a lot of discussions, and we knew that no matter what happens, we’re never going to let it stop us from fulfilling our mandate. We’re never going to let it stop us from providing sources of social and environmental justice and activism on campus.”

Chay Usison, a KPU student who sat in on the workshop, says that she enjoyed it and plans to attend similar KPIRG events in the future.

Disability workshop facilitator, Q, specializes in teaching about the history and culture of people who live with disabilities. (Braden Klassen) “I came in and I ended up learning a lot and it was amazing,” she says. “Hearing about how different cultures react to people with disabilities was also interesting to learn about.”

CULTURE

Psychology Department Hosts Bi-Annual Research Conference

Connecting Minds featured research from undergraduate students across Canada Lincoln Saugstad | Contributor Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s psychology department hosted their bi-annual research conference, Connecting Minds, on the Richmond campus on May 18 and 19. The conference saw students from across Canada present psychology-based research they conducted while earning their undergraduate degrees.

Dr. Cory Pedersen, the chair of the psychology department and the lead organizer of the conference, explains that Connecting Minds was specifically designed to be a showcase for undergraduate research.

“Generally speaking … the research presented at conferences is graduate research, and work that’s done is by long-standing academics. Undergraduates have a very big challenge to get their research accepted at a conference and usually don’t have a lot of knowledge about what conferences are [or] how they work,” says Pedersen.

The research presented at this year’s conference covered subjects like the effects of music on memory, whether students should choose their own groups when doing assignments, and the sources of stress among resident and commuter students. Research was presented in the form of individual or group presentations.

One student, Katheryn Johnson, who is in her final year at KPU, examined the effect of anthropomorphizing the environmental cause of composting and the role of psychological factors related to it. This involved putting faces on compost bins to see whether this would impact people’s likelihood of using them more or not.

“I found that guilt and empathy extended as a significant predictor for all of the faces,” she says. “The happy faces in particular made people feel happier and have a more positive

Dr. Adele Diamond addresses the audience during her keynote speech at the end of the Connecting Minds conference. (Lincoln Saugstad) mood … [which] was a significant predictor for composting.”

She did the study for her honours thesis and hopes to continue her education with a graduate degree in counselling at UBC. Another staple of Connecting Minds is a lecture from a well-known figure in the field of psychology. This year, the committee invited Adele Diamond, who has been recognized as one of the “2,000 Outstanding Women of the 20th Century” and one of the“15 most influential neuroscientists in the world today.”

Dr. Diamond is currently the Canada Research Chair Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at UBC and a member of the Royal Society of Canada. Her research focuses primarily on improving the awareness and treatment of two mental disorders: Phenylketonuria and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

According to Dr. Pedersen, Connecting

Minds is the only national undergraduate research conference of its kind in Canada.

“Most [conferences] are specific to the institution. For instance, if the University of Saskatchewan hosts an undergraduate conference, it’s usually just for students at the University of Saskatchewan,” he explains.

“What makes Connecting Minds unique is that ours is a national undergraduate conference …. It’s open to students from across the country and across the United States, and that is not typical.”

The conference has hosted undergraduate presenters from as far away as Kentucky and Ontario, though most tend to be from the Lower Mainland, Alberta, or Washington.

The next Connecting Minds conference is expected to be held in 2020.

A KPU creative writing instructor’s new book of short stories is available now from Anvil Press

KPU creative writing instructor Jen Currin recently published a book of short stories entitled Hider/Seeker. Though this is Currin’s first collection of short fiction, she has previously published four books on poetry and has won multiple awards for her writing.

“The collection works with characters who are spiritual seekers, people who are looking for some spiritual truth or truths in their lives,” says Currin. “There are also people who are hiding, that are not consciously looking for spiritual truth in their life.”

Currin often explores these spiritual truths via complex relationships between people.

“Writing about [the] diversity of relationships and the complexity of relationships is really at the heart of the book,” she says.

One of the stories that best exemplifies this is “Beach Story”, which follows two characters who have deep feelings for—and issues with— one another.

“Both of [the] characters are hiding in some

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition Sails into Metro Vancouver

Ashley Hyshka | Community Reporter

Hider/Seeker Explores Themes of Interpersonal Relationships and Spirituality Marcus Bartichello

11

ways,” Currin explains. “They’re both hesitant to admit the truth, which is that they can no longer be together because they want different things out of life. They’re so drawn to each other that they’re still trying to make something work, but as a writer, I hope it comes across [that] it’s not going to work.”

“I think there’s a level of denial which is so familiar to most humans,” she adds.

Currin’s stories are moving and emotionally rich, displaying tragic relationships or situations that require the characters in them to persevere. This often leads to heartbreaking endings where the characters are left seeking a human connection.

Currin says that the book is heavily fictionalized, though she does draw upon emotional events from her life.

“I’ve had a lot of experiences. A lot of them were great. Some of them were not. I think it’s all fodder for the practice,” she says. “If you have the point of view that this is all learning, I’m here to learn. Then the way in which you approach even devastatingly painful experi-

ences is different.”

Currin has been a creative writing instructor for years and says that she has learned a lot from watching her students grow and develop.

“I’m very grateful to work with them,” she says. “Getting to experience and learn about their processes and their work—it gives me more empathy for the struggle and … more insight into the diversity of the practice of writing and the diversity of stories that are out there.”

Now that the book is finally finished, Currin is relieved. Although she still scribbles and makes edits in her finished copy, she is relieved that the hours of writing, editing, and revising has come to an end. She says that she’s ready to celebrate her accomplishment with friends, colleagues, and even former students.

Over a century after the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the stories of its approximate 2,228 passengers are still being told to the world. From June 23 to January of next year, they will be told by Richmond’s own Lipont Art Centre.

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition will transport visitors back to 1912 by displaying recovered artifacts and room recreations.

According to Toni Zhang, the executive director of the Vancouver Lipont Art Centre, it took two years to bring the Titanic exhibit to Richmond. Premier Exhibitions, an Atlanta-based company, approached the Lipont Art Centre in 2016 after successfully showing the exhibition in Victoria in 2007.

Zhang explains that, coincidentally, Premier Exhibitions approached them about showing the exhibition when the Lipont Art Centre first opened in 2016.

According to Premier Exhibitions’ website, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition is a travelling show which originally started in 2001 and has been seen by millions of people in cities such as London, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Orlando. This is the first time that it will be visiting Metro Vancouver.

In total, 121 artifacts, including White Star Line china and passenger belongings, will be on display. Extensive ship room recreations of passenger cabins and corridors, the ship’s grand staircase, and a memorial wall will also be available for viewing.

To remember the lives lost in the Titanic disaster, a replica boarding pass will be given to each visitor at the beginning of their tour. On the pass is the name of a real Titanic passenger, and at the conclusion of the tour, visitors learn whether their assigned passenger survived or died during the sinking of the Titanic.

“It’s to give you the experience of a real passenger on the ship,” says Zhang.

Between 1987 and 2010, Premier Exhibitions made eight dives to the wreck of the Titanic where it lies 12,500 feet down at the bottom of the North Atlantic, nearly 600 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland. The company owns the rights to the wreck of the Titanic and has recovered 5,500 artifacts designed to educate the public and protect the ship’s legacy.

Zhang believes that the most important message for visitors to keep in mind during their tour of the exhibition is that the Titanic’s passengers were real people. They will view the story of the ship through the eyes of its passengers, including the approximately 1,500 who perished the night of the sinking.

She adds that the Lipont Art Centre wants visitors to learn about the human spirit and ability “to learn from our mistakes and how we carry on [educating] our kids.”

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OPINION

The Runner Debates: Should Universities Inform Parents About a Student’s Mental Health Issues?

Making parents aware of their children’s depression and

Keeping mental health issues private protects students

Ashley Hyshka | Community Reporter

Braden Klassen | Staff Writer

anxiety can potentially save lives

In university, students are forced to balance full course loads and part-time jobs with financial, social, and emotional lives. It’s no wonder, then, that mental illnesses typically begin to manifest in our late teens and early twenties.

There are almost never easy answers when it comes to helping those who struggle with depression or anxiety, but one of the biggest debates surrounding the topic is whether universities possess the right to inform parents if their child is showing signs of mental illness.

I can understand why a third party alerting a university student’s parents about the state of their mental health could be considered a breach of privacy. But consider this: In March 2010, Jack Windeler committed suicide while attending Queen’s University. According to a Globe and Mail article, “his parents had no idea he had stopped attending class, withdrawn socially and was depressed.”

Six years later, in December 2016, Canadian student Graham Burton committed suicide while attending Hamilton College in New York.

What’s the commonality between these cases? The students’ mental health problems were known to faculty, but their parents only learned about it after the deaths of their children.

Many parents are ignorant of their child’s mental health problems because of the stigma that’s still attached to mental illness and receiving treatment for it. People with mental illnesses are often afraid to tell friends and loved ones about their hardships due to a fear of being ostracized, ridiculed, or told that it’s “all in their heads.” Therefore, parents are often the last people to know that their child is suffering.

These students do not need to suffer in

silence. With therapy and/or medication, a person suffering from mental illness has a chance to be happy, healthy, and lead a full life. A university student suffering from a severe mental illness likely won’t possess the psychological wherewithal to get help.

In these situations, they must have an adult intervene on their behalf.

Over the years that a student spends attending university, their professors get to know them. They learn about their students’ work ethics, social lives, and personalities. Therefore, when one of them starts socially withdrawing, skipping class, or exhibiting other out-of-the-ordinary behavior which could be indicative of a mental illness, chances are that the professors will notice.

According to the Globe and Mail article, laws currently allow for “privacy to be breached—read: contacting parents or guardians—only if a student poses an imminent danger to themselves or others.”

This is a step in the right direction, but I believe that university faculty have a moral obligation to inform the students’ parents when they’re made aware of their severe mental health problems regardless of whether or not they’re at immediate risk of harming themselves or others.

The student might be angry or upset that their privacy was breached, but when they receive treatment and their lives improve, they’ll be grateful.

We should strive to alleviate the suffering of others whenever possible. And if the only way to achieve this goal is to violate a student’s right to privacy so they receive the treatment they desperately need, then so be it.

(Nicola Kwit)

from stigma and discrimination

It’s difficult to address the question of whether universities should be able to circumvent the right to privacy to inform guardians of a student’s mental illness.

There are certainly good intentions behind the argument that parents should be able to know if their child is struggling, but this belief ignores the reality that breaking confidentiality can result in unintended negative consequences.

Stigma is a very real and persistent issue for those who deal with mental health problems. Fear of being dismissed or looked down upon in any way is a powerful motivating factor in keeping those who struggle with mental health issues quiet about their experiences.

It also undermines and disrespects the independence of the student, taking their agency and self-determination away from them at a time when most people are trying to take on more responsibilities and develop their own self-reliance.

Canadian privacy laws already include an exception that allows for a breach in a student’s privacy if they become dangerous to themselves or others. Hypothetically, the case can certainly be made that informing parents or guardians that a student’s mental health is in decline might prevent the situation from reaching that point.

This begs the question, though: Who gets to decide the point at which it becomes clear that the most responsible thing to do is to supersede a student’s right to privacy?

University faculty or committees? Counsellors? The student’s peers?

It’s difficult to decide who has the most authority to definitively say, “This person needs help and the best way to do that is to tell their parents, even if it’s completely against their wishes.”

Generally speaking, trained profession-

als like counsellors, psychologists, psychiatric doctors, and nurses are forbidden by law to share details about their patients’ health without their express consent. What makes the treatment of university students any different?

For many, addressing personal mental health concerns is already a complicated undertaking. It can take years of constant hard work to find the right kind of help in order to begin recovering, and everyone has their own unique situation and path to take.

The idea that a “one size fits all” type of policy about reporting mental health issues to parents would work seems untenable.

However, universities would likely have to do just that in order to make changes that would otherwise be violating students’ civil rights.

What we need is policy that is context-sensitive and considers the wishes of the student.

The reasons behind their desire not to tell their parents about their situation could be critically important to them, and this should not be ignored.

We do not currently live in a society where it can be guaranteed that people with mental health issues will be regarded with the same level of respect as everyone else. Believing that the most helpful course of action is to tell parents or guardians about a student’s mental illness relies on the heavy assumption that the parents will be understanding and supportive. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

The student may be hiding their situation from their parents out of fear of being ostracised or facing outright hostility. Whether or not that actually turns out to be the case, breaching their privacy may potentially do more harm than good.

Until society at large can start treating mental health issues like most other health issues—completely free from stigma and judgement—it will remain valid and important to respect the privacy of all patients, including students.

(Nicola Kwit)

OPINION

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Conservative Students Deserve Better Representation in Campus Media As written by a Red Tory and former editor of The Runner Tristan Johnston | Contributor It’s no mystery that, even in some of the most conservative areas, universities tend to be islands of liberalism. Because of this, it’s important to ensure that reasonable conservative voices are heard in student media.

It certainly isn’t hard to find reasonable, intelligent and non-bigoted conservatives in broad Canadian media, such as Andrew Coyne, David Frum and Tristin Hopper (no relation). Unfortunately, finding similar voices in university newspapers is much harder.

With Doug Ford and Donald Trump in the news, conservatism has recently gotten a pretty bad rap, and deservedly so. Trump in particular has guaranteed that, at least in the U.S., voting for the right-wing party is synonymous with endorsing Muslim bans, kicking transgender troops out of the military, and building walls. The extreme has found itself in the mainstream.

However, I would suspect that the average person who voted for Stephen Harper did so because they preferred lower taxes, a greater ease of doing business, and perhaps, more esoterically, the idea that people should become stronger instead of society becoming softer. Most conservative-leaning people in the country probably don’t really care what

their neighbour looks like.

I feel that there’s a great number of young people who are turned off by backwardness on social issues and just want more careful economic policies. I have found, very anecdotally, that there are many people in Ontario right now who hate the provincial Liberals there but hate Doug Ford just as much and wish that there was an option closer to the middle.

Right now, the extremes of both ends of the political spectrum are the loudest. We need to get people with more balanced voices to be heard, because the extreme is never reasonable. Someone needs to explain why a pipeline might be good for the economy, or why lowering business tax rates is good for the average worker. Someone needs to explain the logical motivations behind voting Conservative without making swaths of people look stupid using straw man arguments.

During my time as the editor of The Runner, it was very difficult to find someone to write the kind of conservative-leaning opinions we wanted to see. After all, some 20 per cent of university-aged students voted conservative in 2015. My uneducated guess is that they’re all in the School of Business and simply couldn’t be bothered.

Admittedly, I often felt like a right-winger

when I went to work. No one ever accused me of being racist or anything like that. But my single lifetime vote for the Conservatives (in 2011) was the only such vote cast by anyone in the office, it seemed. When it was time to talk about how bad Stephen Harper was, I was the person who felt the need to explain that calling him a fascist was ridiculous to the

point of absurdity.

In campus publications, students shouldn’t fear conservative representation as something one sees on Breitbart or Rebel Media, but rather as a reminder that there are a lot of people who have different philosophies than them, and that there are often sound reasons for holding those views.

Tristan Johnston, The Runner's resident devil's advocate and "small c conservative" pundit. (Photo by Braden Klassen, art by Danielle George)

The Do’s and Don’ts of Public Transit in Metro Vancouver For some reason we still need to be taught transit etiquette Ashley Hyshka | Community Reporter It’s rush hour in the city, and between your bus being late and the rude passengers you’re already ready to call quits on the day. However, if every single commuter in Metro Vancouver were to follow my handy list of transit do’s and don’ts, getting to work or school would no longer be such an unmitigable chore.

The Do’s Common courtesy seems to be a forgotten art.

On public transit—especially in densely populated areas of Metro Vancouver—overcrowded buses and trains, traffic, delays, malfunctioning SkyTrains, and even the weather can cause frustration.

The most important thing to remember on these days is to remain calm. You can drink away your frustrations later.

Make sure to thank your bus driver. It might sound bizarre, but just remember that, like your Starbucks barista or restaurant server, they are also performing a job for you and therefore deserve to be thanked. It’s the Canadian way, eh?

Also remember to keep music and personal conversations at an appropriate volume. I shouldn’t be able to hear your music over my own, and the 319 to Scott Road isn’t a rock concert.

The Don’ts One of my biggest pet peeves is people who sit on the outside seat of the bus or SkyTrain, blocking the window seat. Another one is

people who place their purse, backpack, or groceries on the seat beside them, preventing other passengers from sitting down. Remember my handy rule for this situation: One seat per ass.

Don’t cut in front of the line when waiting for the bus or the train. This includes people sitting down on bus stop benches—if you’re not actually holding your place in line, then you’re not in line. Everyone else has to wait to board, so unless you’re the Queen of England, get to the back of the line and wait your turn.

Did you know that invisible force fields exist in the back half of all city buses? Apparently, it’s this invisible barrier that prevents people from moving to the back when the bus gets full. Seriously, though, when the aisle is packed with people and more are struggling to board, or the bus driver flips on that annoying “Please move to the rear of the bus!” announcement, walk up the bloody stairs and make more room for other passengers. The stairs won’t bite.

Also, don’t try to push your way onto the SkyTrain while other passengers are trying to disembark. I’m sure you can wait another three seconds.

Finally, the first group of seats on the bus or SkyTrain are reserved for priority passengers, meaning the elderly, people with disabilities, or parents with strollers or young children. It always astounds me how, when these passengers board, young and able-bodied people sitting in the priority zone often refuse to move or stare at each other like deer in headlights until the bus driver tells them to move. Kindly offer them your seat. The generosity might just brighten their day.

The Obvious The role of public transit is to get passengers from one place to another. Some people, however, forget this and unleash their douchebaggery on the unsuspecting public.

I have been on transit and witnessed belligerent people verbally threatening passengers and bus drivers, and I’ve even seen a passen-

ger physically assaulted with a hammer just two feet in front of me. Verbal and physical threats don’t belong anywhere, but they especially don’t belong on public transit.

So follow these transit rules, Vancouver, and you’ll have a wonderful trip across this beautiful city. Or just insert your earbuds and ignore everyone.

(@RESLUS)

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COLUMN

Artist Spotlight: My Sister Maria

Singer-songwriter Maria Barrington-Foote discusses vulnerability and growing with her music Aly Laube | Editor in Chief My Sister Maria’s first record feels weightless and whimsical, but nowhere near superficial.

At face value, it’s a collection of piano ballads written over some of the most dynamic years of Maria Barrington-Foote’s life, composed and recorded on the piano she grew up playing in her father’s house in North Vancouver.

The record is entitled Cocoon, and as an official debut, it’s an exciting promise of what could come out of the project as it continues to materialize.

The songs are deeply personal and sincere.

With four tracks, for a total of about 15 minutes long, getting through the record is an easy experience, but not an unremarkable one. My Sister Maria’s unpredictable writing style and off-the-floor production is at once fresh and familiar.

The whole thing was recorded with one microphone in an afternoon, with the only vocalist and instrumentalist being Barrington-Foote.

“I have to be more grounded, going and performing on my own, and so I feel more mature.

I feel more like a young woman performing now,” she says. “Before I felt like a girl with a lot less confidence, and now I can just be very,

very vulnerable and brave at the same time.”

The first song on Cocoon, “La Moustache”, is about the embarrassment that Barrington-Foote once associated with “growing up as a young girl with a moustache.” The second, “White Lie,” is about the toxicity of being dishonest with yourself and others. “Am I Awake?” was written on a guitar after Barrington-Foote returned to Vancouver after living in the Okanagan, and explores how jarring returning to a big city can be. The title track is about having to move on from an unsustainable relationship she was in with an older man.

“The pieces that I write and like to play are like diary entries, and they help me, and did help me at the time in which I was going through either traumatic or depressive or anxious states,” she says. “Singing them, they’re like my mantras. They’re helping me heal and they’re helping me reaffirm and let go.”

Barrington-Foote and her brother, James, were raised with a children’s musician for a father who inspired them to create and express themselves. In his home, they wrote and recorded music together for years, but “weren’t progressing in the way that [they] wanted to” as a duo.

When James started hosting shows around the city, Maria asked him to start booking her

as a solo act, and My Sister Maria was the name to first appear on a poster.

“It feels organic in that way,” she says.

“James has always been my strongest support.

He knows my songs and he has parts for every song and harmonies. He’s been my biggest fan.”

She expects that, for My Sister Maria, “It’s only a matter of time before other musicians join in.” Bass, flute, violin, and percussion are some of the instruments she’s expecting to record for her next releases.

Maria Barrington-Foote, originally from North Vancouver, recently released her first record as a solo artist. (Aly Laube)

Afterthought: Trudeau Ups the Ante in Bid to Nationalize Trans Mountain

The federal government’s $4.5 billion wager stokes both capital and political risks Braden Klassen | Staff Writer On May 29, the federal government purchased the embattled Trans Mountain pipeline project from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion. Their strategy is to re-sell the project as soon as possible, so as not to incur the extra $7.4 billion it will take to finance the construction of the project.

Regardless of whether or not you support the building and completion of the pipeline, and whether its construction is funded by taxpayers or the private sector, Albertans and British Columbians alike have to concede that this will perhaps be one of the most influential decisions the Trudeau government has made.

It has the ability to sway how the public will vote in the next election.

However, the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline project—which some pipeline protesters have bitterly dubbed the “Justin Trudeau Memorial pipeline”—wasn’t a spurof-the-moment decision.

If you voted for the Liberal Party in 2015, you also voted for this pipeline to be built.

Supporting energy projects like Trans Mountain was an integral part of their election platform, presented alongside a litany of other measures which would bring more environmentally-conscious regulations to energy projects like Trans Mountain.

Some of these measures the government has followed through with. With others, they have not. For instance, in 2016 the government published the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, which will set a nationwide mandatory carbon pricing plan. This is a significant step towards reducing carbon emissions nationwide.

(Nicola Kwit) However, they have failed on their promises to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, to re-conduct a review of the Trans Mountain pipeline, and to restore protections by the Navigable Waters Protection Act that had been discarded by the previous Conservative-led government.

For those familiar with the patterns of the Canadian government and its failure to take action against climate change, this is thoroughly unsurprising. Over the past two decades, Canada has missed target after target of emissions reduction goals, and it’s clear that this time will be no different.

According to a study done by senior economist Marc Lee with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Trans Mountain

pipeline would be instrumental in adding up to 84 metric tons per year in extracted carbon despite our country’s reduction efforts.

Not only is the federal government completely disregarding the commitment it made to the Paris Agreement in 2015, but it’s actually using billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in order to ensure that it doesn’t come to fruition at all.

This is no longer just a problem for selfish, polluting neoliberal oil barons and rig-pigs who can’t tell the difference between spilt bitumen and spilt milk. This is no longer just a problem for the hypocritical eco-warrior agitators who happily drive to and from work alone dressed head to toe in lycra and polyester but

can’t stomach a pipeline being built in their backyard.

This is now everyone’s problem. The federal government has made it everyone’s problem by spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money on it.

An issue that once only concerned the governments and people of two provinces, a Texas-based oil company, at least 133 First Nations communities, and the Supreme Court of Canada now concerns every taxpaying citizen in the country.

Everyone has a stake in the outcome of this drawn-out debacle, and with an election year looming, the federal government is more invested in it than ever.

PROCRASTINATION HOROSCOPES

Sagittarius Nov. 23 - Dec 21

Capricorn Dec. 22 - Jan 20

Aquarius Jan 21 - Feb 19

Pisces Feb 20 - Mar 20

Do not reject satan and all his temptation. This is no time to be making enemies.

Aries Mar 21 - Apr 19

This week you will become a titan of industry. A teen titan of industry. A Teen Titans Go! of industry. Sorry about that.

Taurus Apr 20 - May 20

Gemini May 21 - Jun 20

Cancer Jun 21 - Jul 23

Leo Jul 24 - Aug 23

Virgo Aug 24 - Sept 23

Libra Sept 24 - Oct 23

You’re hideous and spiteful when left to your devices.

Feral Peacocks! Descend! Upon Affluent Canadiana!

Citizens! There Is No Time! To Preserve Your Pre-Peacock Lives!

Literally any problem you have with a coworker can be solved with “blunderbusses at dawn.” That’s straight from the Geneva Convention.

SUDOKU

Look for the answers in the next issue of The Runner.

Last issue’s answers.

You think you’re big. You think you’re so big, but you're not big. You know what’s big? Fuckin’ Jupiter.

Don’t dilly dally! Don’t dilly dally a day in your goddamn dife!

Press “F” to reflesh.

Halfway through the inaugural solipsist support group meeting you realize how much of a fool you were to expect others to join you.

Do not give your child a silly name like Kayfabe.

Name them something normal, like, Engelbert Humperdinck.

Remember that you are not, in the traditional sense, a “person.” You are a memory that only exists when the real you remembers. Now have a wonderful acid trip.

Scorpio Oct 24 - Nov 22

Venus and Mars dance in your sign as the constellation Orion looks on with a knowing smile, sipping light from the stars of the Ambrosia galaxy. You will get herpes next Tuesday.

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