CELEBRATING 20 1 0
1910
YEARS
volume CI number 34
the official student newspaper at the university of alberta
www.thegatewayonline.ca
thursday, february 17, 2011
inside
Dizzying up the Goo Goo Dolls Johnny Rzeznik takes a break from his music to talk to The Gateway about American culture. a&E, Page 14 kaitlyn menard
WORK IT Exorcism, directed by Catherine Medynski and pictured above, was part of The New Works Festival, which takes place February 15–20 at the Timms Centre for the Arts. Presented by the U of A Drama Department, the festival is a chance for young and emerging writers to showcase their work.
President addresses hardship Topics at address include furlough days, provincial funding, and morale Ryan Bromsgrove News Staff
The upcoming robot invasion Matt Hirji responds to IBM’s psychopathic Jeopardy!-playing computer Watson. opinion, Page 13
Week-long break There will be no Gateway on the stands next Tuesday and Thursday as we take a break for Reading Week. Look for a new issue on stands March 1.
University of Alberta President Indira Samarasekera delivered encouraging words and defended decisions in the first State of the University Address of her second term in the Myer Horowitz Theatre, Tuesday afternoon. Samarasekera talked about the difficulties involved with the lack of provincial funding, furlough days, and how the university has weathered the recession. She also turned to the university’s future, saying, “we are developing [...] in spite of resource constraints,” but denied accusations of growth for the sake of growth. She mentioned successes such as the Festival of Ideas, International Week, and the university’s role in the international community. “[We have] physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider,” Samarasekera said. “We are the only North American university, one of only seven worldwide, working on rebuilding education in Iraq.” After a 30-minute speech, Samarasekara answered questions,
starting with a defence of the sale of her $930,000 house to the university. The combination of low housing prices and the need for a university president to be able to entertain guests near campus are what prompted the Board of Governors to suggest the sale, she said. During the question period, Chair of the Department of Agriculture, Food, & Nutritional Sciences Erasmus Okine voiced a concern regarding morale among the faculty. “Coming from a personal point of view and as chair of the [AFNS] department, the feeling is [that] we are emphasizing the big stars — to the detriment of the normal, hard-working faculty, NASA [NonAcademic Staff Association] staff, etc.,” he said. “I’ve now grown a fairly thick skin, and a perspective that I’ll never keep everyone here happy. But if I can make a significant effort in expressing that appreciation and making everyone feel that you don’t have to be a Wayne Gretzky, that your contributions are valued, I think that I’d feel good about it,” Samarasekera said in response.
“One of the great dangers of being a university president is that you hear selective voices; you hear the loudest voices, you hear the most disgruntled voices, and you don’t hear all of the voices,” she admitted. Okine also brought up the provincial government’s funding of the university as another issue. Samarasekera identified difficulties regarding the public’s perception of the university, noting that “the taxpayers of Alberta have to continue to believe that we are good value for money, and that they should continue to compensate us competitively.” She also defended the merit system and explained that a lack of funding from the provincial government can make things difficult. “We have to find those resources to reward meritorious performance, which means we have to lay people off in order to do that. And that’s not easy, when you have a colleague down the hall who may no longer have a job, in order for us to honour the merit system that we have.” Please see address Page 3 also see editorial Page 8
Discovery may lead to better cancer screening Simon Yackulic
Deputy News Editor
Strengthening your body against cancer could one day be comparable to protecting yourself from the flu, according to University of Alberta researcher Roger Leng. Leng, a researcher in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, hopes that his findings in protein research could eventually lead to people seeking preventative measures to fight cancer before it breaks out, instead of relying on desperate aftermeasures like chemotherapy. “The idea is people already have a lot of options for treatment, like gamma radiation treatment. And that treatment just relieves people from their pain. Or people from being uncomfortable. But the idea here is to boost yourself to be able to fight the cancer,” Leng explained. Please see cancer Page 4