The daily habit that contributes to my success is … Taking an hour away from screens to have a bath in the dark.
The greatest challenge of my career has been … The uncertainty of not fitting into a “box.”
My first job after graduation was … Building the entrepreneurial mentorship program Venture Mentoring Service at the U of A!
My favourite emoji is … I think it’s praying hands, but I see it as a high-five.
If I were to change professions, I would be an ... Investigative journalist.
Asked & Answered with Ashlyn Bernier, ’06 BSc, ’11 PhD, ’13 MBA, tech startup finance and operations director. Read the full interview at ualberta.ca/alumni
March 2018 Published since November 21, 1910 Circulation 3,500 ISSN 0845-356X Suite 3-04 8900 114 St. NW University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2J7 Advertising www.f-media.ca
The Gayway Issue Editor-in-Chief Jamie Sarkonak
News Editor Sofia Osborne
Cover Photo by Rosty Soroka
Managing Editor Raylene Lung
Staff Reporter Nathan Fung
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Contributors Nadia Sadiq Jeraldine Chong Feo P-S Shay Lewis Soyoung Yu Nicholas Villeneuve Olivia deBourcier Julia Heaton Calvin Chan Claudia Kulay
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Copyright All materials appearing in The Gateway bear copyright of their creator(s) and may not be used without written consent. Volunteer Want to write, draw, or shoot photos for us? To get involved visit gtwy.ca/volunteer for more information.
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THE SYLLABUS NOTES
THE QUAD
02
06
Five Things For...
Q&A
Expanding your entertainment horizons to include more diversity.
A chat with Dan Riskin, the host of Daily Planet and an alumnus of the U of A .
03
08
Beyond the Bachelor Meet Rohan Shyne Dave, the founder of Shades of Colour, a community support group for LGBTQ people of colour.
04
Point / Counterpoint Should police officers be allowed to participate in Pride parades?
05
Worth It or Not Worth It
Club Profile Introducing the university's K-pop club.
DIVERSIONS 26
Illustration Strip Check out these sweet ghosts.
At the Podium A critical look at diversity in the SU Elections.
29
11
Caption This! What are these hockey boys saying? You tell us. And win free stuff.
Our writers weigh in on whether politicians and capitalism have a place in Pride.
Behind Closed Doors A hidden legacy of animal experimentation.
21 MARCH 2018 | 1
Notes | Five Things For
FIVE THINGS FOR:
Diversifying Your Watch List BY NADIA SADIQ | ILLUSTRATION BY JERALDINE CHONG
Sense8 TV SHOW
Welcome to Night Vale NETFLIX
SHARING IS CARING
Created by two trans women, this series is about a world where humanity has evolved into two different species: Homo sapiens and the sensates. Eight people from across the world discover that they share feelings and experiences while running from an organization that wants to kill them. The cast includes PoC and LGBTQ characters.
She’s Gotta Have It TV SHOW
NETFLIX
PANSEXUALITY
Circling back to his first film, Spike Lee (and a ton of amazing women writers) brings it to the 21st century. Brooklyn artist Nola Darling navigates having three lovers, breaking into the art scene, and remaining independent while her lovers vie to be her one and only. Oh, and she’s pansexual. With a diverse cast, the show tackles current issues for women.
2 | GTWY.CA
PODCAST
LOVECRAFTIAN
DARK HUMOUR
Set in small town America, Night Vale is where a glow cloud that drops dead animals is on the PTA, the dog park is offlimits, and hooded figures steal babies. Cecil Palmer, the local radio host, narrates the adventures while gushing about his crush, Carlos the Scientist. A love story in what could literally be hell.
My Mad Fat Diary RELEVANT
BRITISH
TEEN COMEDY
Starting on the day she's discharged from the hospital, the show follows Rae through therapy, friends, body image, and the struggle of mental illness. A refreshing change — the fat girl dates cute boys without having to lose weight. Based on the teenage diaries of Rachel Earl, this show intersperses heavy topics with comedy. g
Thelma MOVIE
FOREIGN FILM
TEEN LOVE
Psychological thriller meets teenage love story. Coming from a super religious family, Thelma heads to college, only to fall in love with fellow classmate Anja. While processing these feelings and trying to get closer to Anja, Thelma also has to deal with her new found psychokinetic powers. Very Carrie-esque.
Beyond the Bachelor | Notes
BEYOND THE BACHELOR:
Fostering community with Shades of Colour BY VICTORIA CHIU | PHOTOS BY FEO P-S
What do you do when the supportive community space you need doesn’t exist? Sometimes, your community has to create it. Having completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta, Dave is now a graduate student of counselling at City University. He aims to bring inclusivity and accessibility into all areas of his work. As a queer, transmasculine, genderfluid therapist of colour, this manifests in the support he provides queer PoC clients during his current practicum. But his work in support goes much further than formal therapy. Dave is also a facilitator and co-founder of the community support group Shades of Colour. The group, which meets biweekly in cafés and other accessible spaces, serves as an accessible and inclusive resource for queer, trans, Indigenous, Black, and other people of colour. Now approaching its third year running, the grant-funded
group provides food and transportation for attendees and works to invite QTIPOC Edmontonians into a group where their identities are represented. “There are many spaces for queer people in which the majority of people accessing those spaces are white,” Dave says, “which can mean that queer people of colour feel less comfortable or safe sharing their experiences.” The biggest part of Shades of Colour is providing a space where all can feel welcome, acknowledged, and valid. While the group definitely does provide support and therapy for those who need it, it mainly functions as a way for attendees to find a sense of community, a sense that Dave notes is incredibly important. “Giving an open space to people who are new to Edmonton, new to the community, where their identities are actually represented is huge,” Dave says. g MARCH 2018 | 3
Notes | Point / Counterpoint
POINT / COUNTERPOINT SHOULD POLICE OFFICERS BE ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN PRIDE PARADES? Should the fuzz join the fun or stay home?
Point: Pride Isn’t For Them
Counterpoint: Moving Forward
BY SHAY LEWIS
BY EMMA JONES
Pride was born out of resistance — it was originally (and in many cases still is) a protest against police abuses and state laws. In many ways, the police practices that caused issues for so many in the LGBTQ community have not changed, and intersectional violence that affects so many LGBTQ people of colour persists as well. Police still inspire fear, anxiety, and stress simply by being there as police because of the oppression they represent. This literally discourages LGBTQ folk from coming to the Pride parade. Comparatively, if LGBTQ police officers and their allies show up out of uniform and not representing the police, they get to participate without making it more difficult for others too. You would think this approach would be in-line with the goals of police forces, as it builds personal connections between their officers and the LGBTQ community without imposing themselves on it. Even if asking LGBTQ police officers to not come to Pride in uniform was as harmful to those officers as their presence is to others, I would still prefer it. This is because police officers have chosen to be police officers, they’ve chosen to work for an organization that has a lot of negative impact on marginalized communities. Comparatively, those very marginalized communities did not “choose to be marginalized”, they didn’t ask to be LGBTQ. In the balance of harms, we should prefer those who haven’t been afforded choice and agency. Moreover, being a police officer is about protecting people, even if it is from the police themselves. That means police officers have taken on the burden of making sacrifices to protect our marginalized communities, a sacrifice they should be willing to make in this case as well.
Some police officers, particularly those who identify as members of the LGBTQ community themselves, recognize the historical (and often still-present) oppression that the police force has come to represent. That’s why they want to be at Pride. I agree that it’s incredibly important for queer folk to feel safe, especially at Pride. Part of the larger battle to secure their safety, both at Pride and in the broader society, has to be reform within the police force. That starts with an improved conversation between police officers and members of the community. It starts with police officers making a definitive statement that they recognize the
4 | GTWY.CA
oppression they have enabled, and that they want to do better. It starts with police officers declaring that they too are going to be part of the movement to make the world a better place for LGBTQ people to live. There is no better way to do this, at least symbolically, than to have police officers in Pride parades. Having out-of-uniform police officers doesn’t carry the same weight of that declaration. Particularly in the case of police officers who are LGBTQ themselves, it sets a dangerous precedent to suggest that someone must choose between being a police officer and being a member of the community. The best way to improve the policing of a community is to ensure that the police reflect the makeup of that community, and having queer police officers is a crucial step in ensuring that police forces don’t perpetuate the same marginalization that they have in the past. We shouldn’t discourage LGBTQ people from being police officers if they choose to do so, especially when they are so often at the forefront of reforming those institutions. g
Worth it or Not Worth it | Notes
WORTH IT -ORNOT WORTH IT PRIDE EDITION
Two writers weigh in on whether it's worth it to invest time, money, and emotion into the following.
Rainbow Products
Taking Notes by Hand
BY SOYOUNG YU
BY EMMA JONES
Going into stores and being represented is very important for so many people who identify as a minorities and face oppression. Rainbow-themed products are a great way for companies to show their support for the LGBTQ community. Although rainbow capitalism is problematic, at the end of the day, it helps people to celebrate diversity. Representation matters, not only in the media, but also in daily lives. WORTH IT.
Churning out notes on paper while trying to keep up with your prof droning on is a surefire recipe for hand cramps. Put those speedtyping skills (gained from writing essays and dragging exes in group chats with your BFFs) to good use and do yourself a favor in class. Plus you’re able to save to the cloud and never lose those notes, thereby avoiding a frantic scramble the night before a midterm. NOT WORTH IT.
Pulling an All-Nighter
Politicians at Pride
BY NICHOLAS VILLENEUVE
BY NICHOLAS VILLENEUVE
The temptation is powerful to stay awake studying your heart out, working through the night to dump four months of coursework into your head. Sometimes those extra hours might give you the edge on answering that short-answer section. But going to bed at a proper time and showing up for the exam half-prepared is much better than studying all night and having your brain perform like a brick during the exam. NOT WORTH IT.
In the 21st century, it has never been easier for politicians to gain popularity points by instantaneously sending sympathy tweets or saying something completely outrageous. Pride parades are by far the most tangible and easiest for any politician. All you have to do is show your face there to the cameras, and for impressionistic liberal kids, that's all the photographic proof they need to mark you in the "cool dude" category. WORTH IT. g
MARCH 2018 | 5
The Quad | Q&A
Q&A | The Quad
A Journey of Discovery
Q&A with Dan Riskin, host of the Daily Planet WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVIA DEBOURCIER Dan Riskin’s unique career has led him from studying bats in Costa Rica to being the co-host of Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet. Born and raised in Edmonton, Riskin completed his BSc in zoology at the University of Alberta and studied bat biology for the rest of his academic career. He completed his Master’s at York University, a PhD in zoology at Cornell University, and did postdoctoral studies at Boston University and Brown University. Riskin went on to work in television, which included hosting the Discovery Channel series Monsters Inside of Me, after which he became the one of the hosts of Daily Planet where he and his co-host Ziya Tong deliver daily science news from Canada and around the world. We spoke to Dan from his office at the Daily Planet in Toronto.
The Gateway: What drew you to study science? Riskin: I was not headed for science at first. I wasn’t doing well in my science classes in high school so I used my drama background to create a character that was a nerd and pretended I was that character. I would go to my science classes in my nerd character and take diligent notes and study really hard and whenever I started to think about other stuff, I’d try to get back into character. Then by the end of that little exercise, I began to like the science stuff so I got into sciences at the U of A. I had this really charismatic prof for Zoology 120, Reuben Kaufman. He studied tick hormones. He was so gung-ho about it, he wouldn't shut up about ticks. I thought he was hilarious so I took more biology classes and the other profs were also really charismatic and fun and loved their organisms. I kept taking biology classes and at some point I said, “Itl looks like I have enough bio credits to get a bio degree.” When did you start studying bats? I read a book when I was in high school about bats. And when I started taking biology classes at the U of A, whenever there was a report due on something, I would always make it about bats because I had already read one book so it would save me a lot of time on researching. The more I learned about them, the more I liked them. When I finished my undergrad I contacted the guy that had written that book — he worked at York University and he invited me to come do a Master’s with him. Then he sent me to Costa Rica
where I caught bats with suction cups on their wrists and on their ankles, really good looking bats. How did you go from being so academic to ending up in science communication? It goes back to that drama background that I had from high school at Victoria School. It really never left me. But having a strong foundation in how to be onstage served me well when I was a grad student presenting my stuff at conferences. I could really nail giving a scientific talk. One day I was working as a postdoc on my bat stuff when I got a phone call from a TV production company and they said “A friend of yours recommended you to us because they said that you're really good at giving talks at conferences and we want to know if you'd be good at presenting stuff on TV.” I did a show called Evolve on the History Channel. Then I hosted this show about parasites called Monsters Inside Me. That show has been a huge success around the world. That was my foot in the door. And based on that show, I got invited to be on late night talk shows like Dr. Ross, Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson, all that crazy stuff. How does working in television differ from other forms of media? It’s really cool and fun. I mean, it takes a little bit of getting used to if you're coming from an academic background because when you're doing science you’re digging so deep down these wormholes and you’re really just obsessing over the minutiae of things and you get to know one little piece of territory better than anyone in the whole wide world.
With TV, you never go that deep. That can be frustrating at first but when you shift your focus from trying to get your audience to understand the science to trying to make your audience enjoy the science; it really takes a lot of the pressure off. Why is it important to you that people enjoy science? I think that the function of good science communication is to encourage curiosity, and to role model curiosity. Because the process of doing science is not about the answers you get. You can get it out of a textbook and its just a bunch of facts and there’s nothing magical about it at all. But there’s something about being curious and having an unanswered question. If you can capture people in a way that seeds their imagination, it also captures what it means to be a scientist. It turns young kids into better scientists and it makes people who are taxpayers more supportive of their tax money going into scientific endeavors. That’s why I think the enthusiasm for science matters. What’s your favourite species of bat? That’s a very difficult question. There are 1,300 different kinds of bats so what I tell myself is that I’m allowed to change my mind all the time so right now, lets go with the naked bulldog bat from southeast Asia. They basically look like they've been shaved. They’re big, they crawl on the ground really well, they have these lice that sit on their skin and eat their skin and they apparently smell really good. That’s a bat that’s on my mind for sure. g MARCH 2018 | 7
The Quad | Club Profile
Jackpot: Introducing the K-Pop Club BY JULIA HEATON | ILLUSTRATION BY LAURA LUCAS
When Amna Zafar started university in 2015, she hoped to find a club where she could connect with students who loved the same Korean music and TV that she did. There was no K-pop club in 2015, but two years later, Zafar worked with other students to create one herself. The Daebak (which means “jackpot” or “big win”) UAlberta K-pop club was founded in October 2017. The club is a space for students interested in Korean music, dramas, or any other part of Korean culture. The student group holds social meet-ups for students to get together and discuss different topics in Korean culture. These meetings are also a chance for students to play games and relieve stress. “In my first year, I was at clubs fair, and I looked everywhere
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for a K-pop club,” said Zafar, a third-year biology student and president of the club. “I grew up in a small town with a lot of Caucasian people that had never heard of K-pop, so I thought at university I’d meet people who like it too… but there wasn’t one.” After her disappointment at not finding an existing K-pop club in first year, Zafar began to gather other interested students. She met third-year human ecology student and club secretary Hiranyaa Sahadevan in an East Asian Studies class when she noticed Sahadevan’s K-pop phone case. “I was like ‘Oh, you like K-pop too,’” Zafar said. “And on the way back from class, I was like ‘So do you want to start a club?’” “And I was like ‘Yes girl yes, you got me,’” Sahadevan said. The club now has six executive members and held their first Annual General Meeting in November.
Club Profile | The Quad
“We were worried that not a lot of people would come out,” said Sahadevan. “The thing about K-pop is that a lot of people are quite closeted about liking it.” The meeting’s organizers hoped to have at least 10 people show up to their first meeting, and were surprised when over 40 students showed up. “We kept having to bring in more chairs,” Sahadevban said. “More people just kept coming in.” Third-year chemistry student Veronica Shim is the vicepresident (external) of the group. She reached out to students in her Korean class, and thinks that excitement about the club spread from there. “We didn’t even advertise properly,” Shim said. “It was mostly just word of mouth.”
The club set up at club’s fair for the first time at the beginning of winter semester. They’re also hoping to host dance workshops, collaborations with the Korean conversation club, and larger events based on games from Korean variety shows, including a running man hide-and-seek-based game at the end of the school year. Sahadevan, Zafar, and Shim hope that the club can be a place for students to meet each other and discuss their shared interests, just as Zafar had hoped to find in her first year. “It doesn't matter if you’re a new fan, or an old fan,” Sahadevan said. “We’re very open to anyone, even people who are just interested in learning about what K-pop is.” “We love everyone, we’re very open,” Zafar added. “We just want to talk about what we love.” g
MARCH 2018 | 9
Take a break without even leaving campus!
* * *
live theatre shows mainstage concerts gallery exhibitions
All the details:
www.ualberta.ca/artshows Twitter: @UofAFineArt
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.� - M lala Yousafzai
Be the one teacher.
kingsu.ca/education
At the Podium | Feature
At the Podium:
Diversity in the SU Elections BY SOFIA OSBORNE PHOTOS FROM THE GATEWAY ARCHIVES
MARCH 2018 | 11
Feature | At Being theHeard Podium
“There are a lot of factors that play into the lack of confidence, especially when your closest family would tell you ‘I don’t think you can do it.’” – Vivian Kwan, Vice-President (Student Life) 2015-16 12 | GTWY.CA
At the Podium | Feature
When I was covering the Students’ Union elections for The Gateway for the first time, I attended a candidates' forum in Lister Centre... It was 2016. Vivian Kwan, who was the vice-president (student life) of the University of Alberta's Students' Union that year, was moderating the forum. I sat down at one of the cafeteria tables and I heard the guy next to me scoff: “What is she wearing?” Her dress was tight and above the knee. I thought it was a nice dress, and I told him so, but he just rolled his eyes. As the vice-president (student life) of the Students' Union, Kwan's job included advocating to solve campus residence issues, planning events, and supporting student groups. She spent long days voicing the needs of students, as well as going to meetings, committees, and boards. That didn’t seem to mean anything to the guy sitting next to me. Between 2005 and 2016, 25 per cent of the candidates in SU executive elections were female. This year, there are six women running for executive positions — it’s the most to run in the last 10 years. This year, researchers from the Students’ Union released a report called “Identity Matters!” that lays out the differences between the experiences of candidates. They surveyed 1,957 undergraduate students, as well as targeted surveying of faculty association executives and councillors. The project also did 15 interviews with Students’ Union executives from the last five years. The researchers tried to uncover how gender, race, sexuality, and the intersections of these identities influence students’ confidence, desire to seek office, and experience as student leaders. They found that gender and race had the largest impact on students in governance, working together and apart to affect students.
It took Kwan a long time before she even felt prepared to run for an executive position in the first place. She was a science councillor and helped run two student life campaigns before putting her own name on the ballot. “It’s kind of funny looking back,” she recalls. “It took me a good two years and a bit to think that, ‘Hey, maybe I’ll look at running for a student executive position.'” At the time, her hesitancy didn’t seem strange. She used to think she was just nervous to be responsible for 30,000 undergraduates and only wanted to be completely confident in her ability to represent them. However, once she started talking to her male colleagues, she found that confidence didn’t seem to be as much as an issue for them; they would say, “I decided to run because someone said I should.” Their decisions were spontaneous — not calculated. When Kwan would tell people she was planning to run for the SU, people asked: “Aren’t you worried that you’ll be seen as too aggressive?” They would comment, “Running for (an executive position) is a lot of responsibility, are you sure you’re ready for that?” Even her mother doubted her ability to win. “There are a lot of factors that plays into the lack of confidence, especially when your closest family would tell you ‘I don’t think you
Vivian Kwan, VP SL 2015-16 can do it,’” Kwan says. But she's glad she ran for executive. For Kwan, the hurdles didn't stop after elections night. As a woman of colour in a leadership position, she says she found that the university's administration didn’t value her opinions and ideas as much as those of her white executive colleagues. “I don’t want to put it that way, but that was the experience I had,” she says. She would go into meetings with senior university administrators where they would ask a question and Kwan would respond, but the administrators would repeat the question to her male colleagues. This happened almost daily. “Asking your male colleague who’s white to confirm what you said was true was basically insulting,” she says. Two years later, Kwan now works as an undergraduate program advisor for the Faculty of Science. Being on campus makes her an accessible resource for other leadership-oriented students looking for campaign advice. Women who are considering running in elections will come to her and talk about experiences that made them feel uncomfortable. Such experiences include comments about their clothes, their appearances, and their voices. “But this is normal, right?” they ask her, unsure if they have grounds to be upset. Her answer: what they were feeling was valid. Questions about how to navigate elections take Kwan back to her 2015 campaign for the vice-president (student life) seat. While on the campaign trail, her team had her redo her poster photos — they said her pants were too tight in her original campaign poster photoshoot. Guys she talked to while campaigning said they’d vote for her because she’s cute. Remembering how normalized these comments were, Kwan tells women who are running their feelings of discomfort "should always be true."
DECEMBER MARCH 2018 2017 | 13
Feature | At the Podium
but didn’t want to pretend or claim to have the answers. “It was weird to do class talks and try to say, ‘Hey you should elect me because then I can raise women’s voices and find a way to elect more women.' And the answer would be: Why don’t we just elect more women and not elect you? And that’s a very fair point.”
Cody Bondarchuk, VP Ops Fi 2015-16
Cody Bondarchuk was one of Kwan’s colleagues. He was vicepresident (operations and finance) in 2015-16 with Kwan. He also ran for president the next year, but lost. When Bondarchuk talked to me about his experience as a Students' Union executive, he mostly talked about his allyship and support. As a gay man, he’s experienced his fair share of discrimination, but campus had at least felt like a bit of a bubble. As a candidate, he didn’t feel like his sexuality stood in his way — in fact, there have been many LGBTQ students who have ran in, and won, Students' Union executive elections. Success in leadership by openly gay men isn’t even limited to the Students' Union at the U of A: the university’s chancellor, Doug Stollery, and board chair, Michael Phair, are openly gay men. Bondarchuk’s feelings echo the findings of the “Identity Matters!” report, which found that sexual orientation didn’t significantly affect students’ confidence or desire to seek leadership positions. The report speculates, and Bondarchuk agrees, that this could be because sexual orientation isn’t something as visible as race or gender. Sexual orientation can be hidden or masked — not that it should be. Bondarchuk said he never felt the need to conceal that part of his identity during campaigning or as an executive. As a candidate, and as an executive, he struggled more with how to be a white male wanting to make the university a more inclusive place for other genders and races. He wanted to talk about equity
One thing the “Identity Matters!” report didn’t cover is the experience of international students, who despite making up about 20 per cent of U of A’s student population, have never held an executive position in the Students’ Union. This doesn’t mean international students never run for positions, though. Last year, Rabib Alam, an international student from Bangladesh, was one of three candidates in the vice-president (student life) campaign. It was a race that he ultimately lost. There are significant roadblocks that keep most international students from running. To keep their study visas, they must be full-time students, which means they need to take at least three courses per semester. For a Students’ Union executive, whose Google calendars are usually a solid block of activity from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every working day, that’s nearly impossible. Most executives take one course per semester, and some even enroll and then drop this single course so that they’re still technically considered a student by administration. International students sometimes face barriers that can make it harder and more intimidating to connect with students during the campaign period. It’s hard to come off as personable to domestic students, Alam says, when you aren’t perfectly fluent in English, or when you don’t have the same background to refer to. He says he always felt he “vibed” more with people of colour than with white students. “I don’t know if the other candidates felt that way too, but I did,” he says. “Maybe it’s a cultural thing. Maybe I’m able to connect with them, though I never really talked about butter chicken with
Rabib Alam, VP SL Candidate 2017 14 | GTWY.CA
At the Podium | Feature
another brown guy,” he laughs. Alam doesn’t know how the Students' Union could have helped with this barrier because “it starts at the roots,” he says. If international students arrive at the U of A and don’t feel comfortable leaving their cultural communities, he doesn’t see how their communication skills will improve, or how to get them involved with the general student population. This especially pertains to involvement with something like the SU. It’s not that international students don’t care — many just choose to focus on their own communities. Alam points to the Chinese Students and Scholars Association elections. “They do a heck of a job,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve seen any other student group put on an election like the CSSA, so that should tell you (that) these guys do care about elections, and they care about democracy. But when it comes to another platform like the Students' Union where it’s general students as opposed to their Chinese student body, that’s when the equation becomes a bit different.” For Alam, it was the mental health issues and international student tuition hikes that drove him to become involved with student politics. And although he’s personable and speaks perfect English, he still lost when it came to student governance over and over. In his second year, he ran to be an Engineering Students’ Society executive and lost. He managed a campaign for Students' Union vice-president (academic), and they lost. And he lost when
he ran to be the vice-president (student life). “I would still encourage international students to run,” he says. “You may not be the most confident about your speech, you may not be the most confident about connecting with someone, but you know what? That’s how you learn. You do it once and you lose, you get up and do it again.” Most of all, Alam wants to see an international student in an executive position. “They’re the ones that feel the hit at the end of the day,” he says. “They’re the ones who can’t afford a ticket home when these international tuition hikes happen.” With domestic students in charge, Alam says he hasn’t seen changes for international students so far: tuition is still rising, and mental health is still deteriorating.
From 2010 to 2014, female students were in a similar position, with no women being on the Students' Union’s executive. This meant that 56 per cent of the student population was not represented when it came to gender. In 2014, Navneet Khinda was elected the vice-president (external). She was a self-described “keener” who had ran for Students’ Council in her first year, with the encouragement of older students she’d met through student groups. After a few years as a councillor, and a year away from Students' Council, Khinda finally ran for an executive position in her fourth year. For years at this point, people had been asking her to run for the vicepresident (external) seat, but she had always said no. She felt like she needed to wait until she was almost perfect to be able to run. “It was 100 per cent true for me that I over-prepared for everything,” she says. “I wanted to make sure I knew all the facts so that no one could discredit me... I don’t want to say women are doing something wrong — maybe men should prepare more.” But when Khinda actually started campaigning, she found people focused more on her appearance than her platform. “In elections you get a lot of comments, and it’s so off-hand,” she says. “In my first election, there was a campaign forum or something and someone in the hallways after stopped me and was like, ‘Hey Nav, maybe next time you shouldn’t wear a sleeveless top when you’re on stage.’ I was like, ‘What the fuck.’ That was really jarring... It’s kind of degrading. You put so much effort into research, analysis and your platform, and then someone talks to you about what you look like. It’s really disheartening.” Khinda won that race, and the next year she was elected Students' Union president for 2015-16. Holding office came with its own comments. “People would say, ‘Navneet’s too polished, or she’s too rehearsed.’ But if I don’t rehearse or prepare, then I’m unprepared or
“You may not be the most confident about your speech ... but you know what? That’s how you learn." – Rabib Alam, VP SL Candidate 2017
MARCH 2018 | 15
Feature | At the Podium
Navneet Khinda, President 2015-16
“It’s kind of degrading. You put so much effort into research, analysis, and your platform. Then someone talks to you about what you look like.”
– Navneet Khinda, President 2015-16
16 | GTWY.CA
At the Podium | Feature
not professional,” she says. “There are instances where I was called ‘too nice’ and ‘too much of a doormat’ but at the same time ‘way too bossy.' I'd hear people say, ‘She doesn’t take other’s opinions into account.’ It’s always hot and cold, there’s no in-between. You don’t really get to be a full person.” As an executive, Khinda had to play multiple roles. She was involved with student governance, but at the same time she was advocating on behalf of students to the university's administration, as well as the provincial and federal governments. In her early 20s, figuring out how to be respected and heard by senior administrators was a lot of work, but it was vital to doing her job as a student leader. Bondarchuk, who served as an executive during Khinda’s presidency, told me that “women, and especially women of colour, have to prove so much." "It’s so frustrating to see someone like Navneet Khinda, who is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met, be talked to in that way, especially at something like the Board of Governors," he adds. "She could run circles around all of them and was likely the smartest person in that room and she carried it well too. That’s the problem, women are considered rude if they call out sexism, which is stupid obviously.”
The representation of women in the Students’ Union, and in the organization's elections, has been well-documented. The same can’t be said for racial and sexual minorities. The “Identity Matters!” report is the first study of its kind to try to put together the puzzle pieces of gender, race, and sexuality when it comes to undergraduate student politics. It is just the first step. There are many barriers to running for an executive position. They may have to do with identity, or fear, or the confines of a student visa. To anyone who feels like they could never be an executive, Khinda says they should ask themselves why they don’t want to run. If it’s because they don’t have the knowledge or network, she encourages them to get involved with a campaign. This glass ceiling, she says, gets baked in at the student politics level and only amplifies as one ascends the political ladder. If you lose, she says, so what? You’ll still learn something. And if you win, that’s even better. “Someone has to call the shots,” she says. “So why can’t it be you?” g
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Behind Closed Doors: A Hidden Legacy of Animal Experimentation
18 | GTWY.CA
BY CALVIN CHAN ILLUSTRATION BY LAURA LUCAS
Behind Closed ++++++++ Doors | Feature
MARCH 2018 | 19
Feature |Behind Closed Doors
Jyoti Singh, a fourth-year physiology student presses a cold metal scalpel into the soft flesh of a newly euthanized lab rat. The sharp edge pierces the skin with little resistance as warm blood trickles down her purple nitrile gloves. Singh must work quickly but delicately as she separates the hind legs from the rest of the body. From there, she can isolate the saphenous nerve that relays sensory signals from the foot to the spinal cord. She believes that diabetes might impair this nerve connection. To test her hypothesis, she must extract the nerve intact; the slightest tear or the softest pinch could damage it and render the rat’s sacrifice meaningless. Singh is one of dozens of researchers at the University of Alberta who use animals for biological research, a practice that has been legally recognized since the 1870s. According to a 2005 study from the journal Alternatives to Research Animals, an estaminated 115 million animals are used in medical experiments every year. Singh has cut open more than two dozen laboratory
This is the reason she refuses to name her rats anymore. In her line of work, she can’t afford to be sentimental. Though it’s never easy watching an animal suffer, Singh insists that if society wants better treatment for diabetic patients, it’s the price that has to be paid. “To study how a disease works we have to induce it in an animal, otherwise there’s nothing to study,” Singh says. “That’s what the ethics guidelines and the protocols are here for, to ensure that it’s being done in a way where the animals are in the least amount of pain possible.” Prolonged exposure to high blood sugar can cause nerve damage, leading many diabetic patients to lose sensation and motor control in their arms and legs. Because most nerve cells can’t be replaced when they die, Singh’s research focuses on finding ways to retrain surviving nerve cells to take over the jobs of their deceased counterparts. Using diabetic rats as a model, she has found that blocking select protein activity in surviving
animals in the past four years. The U of A’s animal facility is practically her second home; the animal care technicians are much like her second family. “Not everyone is comfortable using animals in research. It’s definitely a difficult topic to tackle,” Singh says. She’s worked with both mice and rabbits, but settled with Nile grass rats because of the way they experience diabetes. By placing them on a high fat and low fibre diet, the rats develop insulin resistance within the first two months. With time, the rats experience all five stages of type 2 diabetes, similar to a human patient. “When I first got the rats from our research collaborators they were already 18 months old, so they were really fat. They had eye problems, cataract problems, and organ failure. Because of how diabetic they are, some rats develop liver tumors and we see toxins accumulate in their urine,” Singh says. “They’re really sick and it can be hard to watch.”
nerve cells can encourage them to fill in for damaged cells. Now, Singh is looking to test drugs that can target these proteins and improve motor control in rats with severe diabetes and other neuropathies. She hopes her research will one day benefit those suffering from diabetes and other neurodegenerative diseases. “Either you can do this type of research or you can’t,” Singh says. “In the beginning, I used to get quite emotional, but now I’ve stopped feeling.” 95 different institutions in Canada use animals in their research programs, including major Canadian universities such as the University of Toronto, McGill University, and the University of Alberta. However, there are no legislations or policies in Canada requiring any of these institutions to release statistics on research animals. The nature of the animal’s role in medical research and the experiences of the animals themselves remain behind closed doors. “Most students are not aware, unless they’re directly involved in those research projects, how animal experimentation takes place at the U of A campus,” says Susan Hamilton, one of the U of A’s associate vice-presidents of research. Hamilton’s area of specialty is the humanities and social sciences. To understand the reason behind this lack of transparency, Hamilton has dedicated her career to studying 19th century
20 | GTWY.CA
Behind Closed Doors| Feature
scientific literature, when physiologists would dissect human and animal bodies to understand how they worked. Animal research was brought into England from neighboring countries in the 1870s. In 1873, Scottish physiologist David Ferrier published a paper on cerebral localization while working at King’s College Hospital. Splitting open the skull of a living monkey, Ferrier applied electrical stimulation to various regions of the brain to map out its function. Universities began training students on the topic, and animal labs could receive government funding. Then in August of 1874 at a British Medical Association meeting, French physiologist Eugene Magnan injected absinthe into dogs to induce epilepsy to educate the audience on the adverse effects of alcohol. The account was reported in Animal World that summer, a journal published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty. In the article, Frances Power Cobbes, founder of the world’s first anti-vivisection organization, argued that these experiments posed a moral danger to society. In 1875, Cobbes advocated for the regulation of animal use in medical research. In the summer of 1876, the Cruelty to Animals Act was passed. “The act eventually comes to be known as the vivisectors charter,” Hamilton says. “It was supposed to be an anti-cruelty law, but it in fact facilitated scientific experimentation because of the administrative process that comes into being.” Under the Act, scientists no longer had to disclose their use of animals to the public, and instead regulated themselves. The number of animal experiments in Britain more than doubled by the end of 1876. This legislation set the framework for other countries looking to regulate animal experimentation.
MARCH 2018 | 21
Feature | Behind Closed Doors
In Canada, animal experimentation was formally regulated in 1968, when the Canadian Council for Animal Care (CACC) was established. The CCAC is Canada’s organization for oversight of animal ethics and care; it enforces a licensing and inspection system for all animal experimentation. For most Canadian universities, including the U of A, ethics approval comes from internal animal care and use committees, which operate under CCAC guidelines. At the U of A, animal care and use committees are made up of 12 to 13 members each, composed primarily of scientists
22 | GTWY.CA
such as department chairs, faculty members, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students. By Alberta law there must be a veterinarian present, and by CCAC requirements, at least one layperson to represent the Canadian public. For a research project to receive ethics approval, all members of the committee must vote yes, otherwise, the proposal is sent back for revision. Complaints from modern-day animal rights groups maintain, however, that there is a problem when it comes to the inaccessibility of animal research statistics. Each year, the CCAC publishes blanket statistics summarizing the total number of research animals used in Canada. In 2016, 4,308,921 animals were reported as being used in scientific research, with the top three species being fish, mice, and cattle respectively. But like the UK, Canada does not require institutions to publicize details of animal experiments. This means the exact number of animals used at any specific Canadian university, and the nature of the experiments they’re used for, are rarely disclosed. For Hamilton, this comes from the lack of transparency legislated in the 1870s. But for those in the CCAC, the figures are hidden simply to avoid potential misinterpretation. In 2016, fish replaced mice as the most used research animal in Canada. The jump from 1.2 million fish in 2015 to 1.6 million fish in 2016 was interpreted by many animal rights activists as a dramatic increase in fish dissections. But Craig Wilkinson, a U of A veterinarian and member of the CCAC’s public affairs and communications committee, explains that this wasn’t the case. The majority of these fish were kept for breeding purposes. Scientists needed embryos and eggs for genetic studies like adding and removing genes to observe how cells behaved in a developing organism. Adult fish were rarely experimented with. “Things like this take quite a long time to explain and a lot of institutions have these types of nuances,” Wilkinson says. “Because universities are concerned that people might misinterpret the data, they’d rather refer to the CCAC compiled averages and people can draw their inferences from that.” For many modern-day activists, the argument only further emphasizes the need for transparency. The concern was at the forefront of the 2010 STOP Animal Research protests at the University of British Columbia. Activists filed formal freedom of information requests to UBC for details on animal use in their research programs. In 2011, UBC became the first publiclyfunded university to release its research animal statistics. These statistics are released annually online, and include numbers of species and individual animals used in research; the site also lists the types and relative invasiveness of the experiments animals were used in.
Behind Closed Doors | Feature
Several universities are following suit. Brock University released its animal use statistics on its website in 2015 and students at Queen’s University are urging their institution to do the same by filing similar freedom of information requests. While these reports continue to disturb many animal-rights advocates like Ash Hulewicz, a fourth-year Environmental Studies student and president of the U of A Vegans and Vegetarians Club, she’s glad that there’s an attempt to be transparent. “A call for transparency is essential for promoting social change, we can’t question a process if we don’t know what the process is,” Hulewicz says. She’s hoping the U of A will similarly step up to break that legacy of invisibility. “All we know is that animal experiments require annual ethics approval and must follow university regulations, but what are these regulations?” Hulewicz asks. “Why is that information not more transparent? How many animals? What kind of animals? What are they subjected to? Just saying that there are policies in place to mitigate any discomfort an animal might feel tells me nothing about what the animal is actually experiencing.” For Chloe Taylor, an animal ethicist and associate professor in the U of A’s department of women and gender studies, the lack of transparency is a tactical move by the CCAC to keep students and staff in the dark. She argues keeping institutions from publicly sharing information on animals in research programs makes people less likely to challenge the system. “I think people are assured that because there’s an ethics requirement, we can just assume that things are being done properly,” Taylor says. “But if everyone could see the animals and what’s happening to them, I think there would be a lot of protests and no university wants that.”
Even though some experiments don’t have the technology to go animal-free, U of A microbiologist Lisa Stein says that most of the time, animals are only used because scientists are entrenched in ancient training. “We’re teaching students the same methods we were trained on, and they’re the same methods that our supervisors were trained on,” Stein says. “We’re essentially using 1950s knowledge in our highly specialized fields, and because they produce results, we feel like there’s no need to improve. But it’s a stupid reason.” Even for molecular biology labs that don’t use laboratory animals in their studies, most molecular methods still rely on animal products. Serums needed for growing cells are harvested from the blood of fetal calves, and antibodies used for detecting biological molecules come from immunizing rabbits or mice and collecting their blood. For Stein, these methods are not only archaic, but also unnecessary. By replacing traditional methods with modern techniques, she was able to make her research laboratory animalfree for “only a marginally higher price.” Stein explained that common serums used in labs can be replaced with synthetic alternatives and that animal antibodies can be swapped out using aptamers, a type of synthetic DNA product that can selectively bind to target molecules just like antibodies. Likewise, Stein explains that many animal models used to develop treatments also have modern substitutes. The study of phage therapy, treating infections using viruses that kill bacteria, can now be modeled in waxworms instead of mice. Stein feels that many of these animal-free methods aren’t being adopted by most laboratories because of a modern case of scientific elitism, that is, the idea that only scientists have the expertise needed to accurately evaluate animal research. “People rely on the animal care and use committees to provide checks and balances, but I’ve sat on those before and it's just people sitting around justifying their ancient training. There’s no incentive for anyone to seek nonanimal alternatives or to discontinue animal use,” Stein argues.
MARCH 2018 | 23
Feature | Behind Closed Doors
The U of A’s Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC) is mostly made up of scientists and requires only a single member of the lay public to represent the broader Canadian perspective. Experiment applications are split between four committees: agriculture and livestock, which oversees experiments performed on large animals including pigs and cattle; biological sciences, which includes population studies and field work; and two seperate biomedical committees to evaluate studies performed on small animals including mice and rabbits. ACUC members like Craig Wilkinson say scientists are the most represented demographic because of their knowledge and expertise. “People are uncomfortable when they think about animals being used in research, it’s human nature, and I’m glad people have that type of compassion,” Wilkinson says. “But people can be assured that those of us in animal research are also animal lovers and we want to make sure that the animals we use are being cared for as well as we possibly can.” Animals are housed in sterile, climate controlled facilities, and their bedding, water, and food are replaced on strict schedules. The CCAC also mandates that ethics reviews be guided by principles of the three R’s – reduction, replacement, and refinement – to ensure animals are only being used in cases where it’s essential and necessary.
Wilkinson explains that statistical modeling is done to determine the minimum number of animals needed to produce convincing data. Veterinarians intervene and experiments are halted when animals become ill. Biopsies and ultrasounds replace surgeries where possible, and drugs are delivered through food or water to eliminate the discomfort of injections. When the time comes to euthanize the animal, proper anesthetics must be administered first. “As a vet, sometimes I see people’s pets be in far more discomfort than we would ever allow an animal to be in (during) research,” Wilkinson says. “I think that if people knew how much time, effort, and money went into providing quality care for animals they would be a lot less worried about than what activists say they would.” Animal rights advocates like Taylor and Stein argue that having scientists regulate scientists is a fatal flaw: Taylor points to a case in 2010 as an example of how research took precedence over ethical concerns. A Canadian research team led by professor Jeffrey Mogil at McGill University videotaped the facial expressions of mice experiencing 14 different pain-inducing procedures to understand how the animal expressed pain. Tails were immersed in hot water, mice were injected with mustard or acetic acid, and nerves were damaged via surgery without
Behind Closed Doors | Feature
anesthesia. When the study was published May 2010 in Nature Methods, a prestigious scientific journal, animal rights advocates complained, calling the work “frivolous,” “unnecessary,” and “unethical.” The CCAC defended the study, claiming that it provided insight into how mice expressed feelings of pain, and could be useful in assessing mouse welfare. But for Taylor, the fact that this study could have passed an ethics review was both laughable and deeply disappointing. “These types of experiments have no value or merit to it, it has no impact on improving human lives. Anyone could have seen that. Just because something hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it’s truly worth doing,” Taylor said. “But of course scientists would defend it — people who volunteer to be on these committees are those who actually have a stake in scientific research and they’d want to protect that. If the public knew more about how animal research was done and could be more involved in the process, things like this would never happen.” In order for change to take place, Taylor feels that the push has to come from within scientific circles. It’s a sentiment echoed by Stein, who believes that the reason animal experimentation remains so heavily used is due to institutional inertia: the more people there are doing things a certain way, the harder it becomes to drive change.
SHAW Conference Centre March 5-7, 2018
The EPCOR Stage is a unique opportunity to learn more about climate change and its potential impact on our city, with three days of presentations from renowned experts and thought leaders. Tickets are free so register today! Full program details at:
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“It’s a lot easier to keep with the 1950s standards, because it's hard to change, but it's possible to modernize biology,” Stein says. “When we turn our attention to efficiency and alternatives, the world changes. It just takes a certain number of people wanting to move in that direction to make it happen.” g
Diversions | Illustration Strip
Student Admission: $10 ($8 Matinée) Metro Cinema is a community-based non-profit society devoted to the exhibition and promotion of Canadian, international, and independent film and video. metrocinema.org
Leprechaun - St. Patrick’s Day
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When Dan O’Grady returns to the U.S. after stealing some Irish leprechaun’s pot of gold, the leprechaun follows him. O’Grady manages to escape and trap it in a crate, held there with a four leaf clover. Ten years later the leprechaun is accidentally released and goes on a murderous rampage to reclaim his gold.
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March 30 - April 3 After 15 years, Greg Sestero and Tommy Wiseau are finally back on screen together...like you’ve never seen them before.
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The cartoon lineup is always a mystery, but you’ll see both faves and obscurities spanning the 40s through the 80s, all punctuated with vintage commercials and PSAs! Adult: $16, Student/Senior: $14, Child 12 & Under: $12 - Admission includes cereal. Metro passes: only Silver Screen passes accepted.
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