Gait Gatsby should not be a ticketed event

Colin Ahern, Opinions Editor » thecampus.opinions@gmail.com

On daylight savings time

Leo Webster - Senior Copy Editor

For some people, the end of daylight saving time on Nov. 6 gives the gift of an extra hour. For others, it’s the official start of seasonal depression. The time shifts an hour back, and sunset comes an hour earlier, noticeably early for those who live far from the equator. Due to the unpopularity of the time change, there has been discussion of making daylight saving time permanent. The U.S. Congress has recently introduced a bill that would extend daylight saving time all year, keeping the clocks on the summer schedule and theoretically preventing those gloomy winter evenings. According to NBC, 71 per cent of Americans are in favor, although the bill is unlikely to pass. I am in favor of having only one schedule throughout the year because it prevents having to adjust to a time change in the spring and fall, when seasonal change is already pronounced. Like many people, I’ve often thought that daylight saving time is preferable. Having an extra hour of light in the evening makes the afternoon commute easier and allows for more daylight in an average person’s schedule. For instance, most courses and commitments occur in the mid-day, between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., which makes it difficult to get outdoors before dark. Other daylight saving supporters argue that evening sunlight saves energy because people turn their lights on later. However, I recently learned that the schedule in the winter is standard time and daylight is actually being “saved” in the summer. Methods of measuring time are arbitrary, but standard time is closer to a natural rhythm, with 12 p.m. approximately corresponding to the height of the sun. Some proponents of standard time, including the magazine ScienceNews, claim that it is easier to wake up on standard time, since the sun is already up by the time most people have to prepare for school or work. If daylight saving time was extended through the winter, sunrise could be as late as 9 a.m. in Sherbrooke. The crux of the problem is that people are trying to get as much daylight in the winter as in the summer, which is impossible unless you live on the equator. The capitalists of the industrial revolution divided the clock into shifts of work, with no regard for whether it was natural for the human circadian rhythm. With a lot of activism and union bargaining, work has returned to eight hours a day for most people. However, we still have a productivity-oriented society which insists that November and early December need to be a crunch time for students and faculty because it’s the end of term. Neither plan can materialize more daylight, nor can a time change address the real issue of why it’s difficult to get up in the morning, which is usually a deficiency of sleep. After researching the issue, I would prefer standard time all year, since many of the original reasons for daylight savings time are obsolete (it was proposed by Ben Franklin as a joke). Year-round standard time would make the shorter days come more gradually and the early evenings would feel more natural, since summer evenings would also be an hour earlier. I also appreciate having sunlight and tolerable temperatures on winter mornings.

Gait Gatsby should not be a ticketed event Eva Rachert - News Editor

Bishop’s boasts a wide variety of events, parties, and conferences hosted in the Gait. One of the most anticipated events each year is Gait Gatsby, a 1920s-themed party hosted in November. Gait Gatsby has been advertised on the UBishops Instagram, in the student viewbook, and on the SRC website. Last year, students queued outside the Gait for over an hour to get admitted to Gait Gatsby. This year, students did the same — now having to pay for tickets. Gait Gatsby should not be a ticketed event. Students should not have to pay to be admitted to the Gait, especially when the school cannot guarantee that all students who purchase tickets will be admitted and able to order at the bar. Students who attempted to purchase tickets at the door of the Gait waited in lines for upwards of 45 minutes before being admitted. While the school posted that tickets would be sold from 1-6 p.m., they ran out of tickets at 3 p.m., putting students who do not live on campus at a disadvantage. This is reflective of a wider problem of campus events at the Gait ending early — the recent information fair for graduate schools ended over an hour before the posted end time, and the Imaginus poster sale routinely closed 15 minutes before the advertised end time. Student engagement suffers when event times are not adhered to, and since there have been few events on campus this semester, engaging students should be a priority of the school. Additionally, students who lived on campus were offered free tickets to the event, but students off campus had to pay $5. On-campus students who claimed their tickets but did not use them prevented off-campus students from getting tickets. Tickets were sold with an accompanying promise of a photo booth and live band — the photo booth ultimately being a selfie wall and the live band finishing their set early. Students were not given what they paid for. Making students pay for admission involves the Gait in a guarantee that they cannot keep. The school also did a poor job of preventing the scalping of tickets. The Gait posted a warning that counterfeiters on campus were selling fake tickets to Gait Gatsby, but did not post any information about what the fake tickets looked like, how much they were being sold for, or who was selling them. Instead, they promised to sell tickets at the door for people attempting to get last-minute tickets, worsening the aforementioned problem of students queuing to get tickets. The Gait is a student bar, and admission should be free for students. Selling tickets to events hosted at the Gait goes against the spirit of the school, and the ticketing was poorly organised. If events must be ticketed, they must be better organised to allow students to better plan their days. The poor communication with students about the events of the night made Gait Gatsby an inaccessible event for many students.

Turner Studio vs. Centennial

Colin Ahern - Opinions Editor

After viewing The Children’s Hour on the night of Nov. 18, the advantages of a more intimate stage are apparent. The play itself was fantastic, the acting was very moving and the format of the stage proved to be a boon for the play’s themes. The physical proximity of the actors allowed for high visibility of the actors’ expressions without the heavy application of makeup that usually accompanies the theatre. This closeness went very well with the realistic setting and grave subject matter of the play. Theatre typically exercises a certain degree of camp due to its format, often to its benefit. While the presence of camp can be very charming, it would feel out of place in this production. The closeness of the actors removes the need for exaggerated performances and enhances the dramatic nature of this play. I believe that this proximity creates a more desirable stage than the conventional larger theatres. Dramas become more intimate, and performances feel more realistic by the nature of their authenticity. The play feels more like a film in its closeness while maintaining the magic that clings to live performances. Beyond the most recent production, comedies would also do very well in this format because there is more room for nuanced humour. At times, humour in plays feels as though it must be campy or exaggerated. This format allows for better comprehension of fast speech which often facilitates a more witty style of humour. By having the performers and the audience closer together, actors don’t have to compensate as much for the distance with overly enunciated dialogue. These points are not to say that conventional theatre is bad or limited by any means. It seeks only to explore how a different format may be superior. Centennial Theatre’s size provides the advantage of holding more content onstage at any given moment. This magnitude does have the shortcoming of having a cluttered scene at times. This means that if there are many actors onstage at once, then every detail must be shown through large movements or reactions in order to draw the audience’s focus to important information. While actors can often overcome these demands with more precise and masterful performances, it does limit the performer’s full range. This does not limit the performances in a way that necessarily makes them worse, but rather in a way that forces the actors to behave in particular ways that remove their full agency. I believe that Turner Studio’s limited size may seem like a disadvantage at first glance, but actually offers a wonderful opportunity for a more nuanced performance out of the actors.