The Sheaf 22/03/12 - Volume 103 Issue 25

volume 103 • issue 28 • thesheaf.com

Sheaf the

The University of Saskatchewan student newspaper since 1912

March 22, 2012

Campus

Student Health Centre brings fresh food to campus.

Page 3

USSU

Meet the candidates for next year’s exec.

Page 4-5

Sex

Women are still slut-shamed for behaviour men get away with.

CanadaWest Greystone does Greek classic The Love of the Nightingale.

Page 13

Page 6

Concussed

A reflection on a lost brother’s role as hockey enforcer.

Page 10-11

Music

Montreal band Plants and Animals comes to Amigos.

Page 15

(in the red)

USSU to lose more than $200K next year DARYL HOFMANN & ANNA-LILJA DAWSON Place Riel businesses are starting to pay off for the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union, but many of the organization’s own services keep losing money, according to the recently proposed 2012-13 budget.

The USSU is receiving healthy returns from the Place Riel rental spaces currently occupied by Mac’s, Harvey’s, Campus Cove and others.

However, Browsers, XL Design & Print and Copy Central have slipped into deficit.

Overall, the union is projected to lose more than $200,000 in the upcoming academic year. That compares to a loss of $442,845 in 2011-12 and a loss of $278,736 in 2010-11. The last time the USSU did not fall short of breaking even was in 2009-10.

“I think it’s not too ambitious to say that in the next couple years we will [have] true, break-even, surplus budgets,” said Reid Nystuen, USSU vice-president operations and finance, who presented the organization’s proposed spending plan at last week’s student council meeting.

With much of Place Riel closed for renovations from 2009 to 2011, the USSU surrendered a large cut of revenue that pushed the organization’s bottom line into the red.

But with the student centre now operating at full capacity, Place Riel is expected to generate about $947,000 next year, with the union pocketing about a half-million after facility costs.

“We’re seeing that even in the first year of it being completed, it is certainly an investment that is paying off,” he said.

The students’ union also has plans to turn around some of its ailing businesses.

Nystuen says Browsers, which has consistently lost money since 2010 because of a decline in book consignment, will undergo a $415,000 renovation in the summer of 2013.

“The Browsers space will have a totally different look,” said Nystuen, who has been preaching for an overhaul of the coffee shop and bookstore since his time as an Edwards School of Business student councillor.

He says the renovation will

Raisa Pezderic/Photo Editor

Place Riel rent is one of the few money-makers for the USSU. include new flooring, lighting, entrance and bathrooms. The counters along the north and south walls will be removed and the bar will be set to the back.

The goal is to create a “versatile” space that could be used as a coffee shop, lounge and music venue to compliment Louis’.

Browsers will continue selling books for students, but the display shelves will be portable.

“There are still enough people doing consignment that we feel we should still be offering that, but the way we are going to set it up is such that it is not physically built in,” Nystuen said.

To accommodate the revamped coffee shop, XL Print & Design — which has also slumped financially in recent years — will relocate to Memorial Union Building room 103 for an estimated $24,000. XL is projected to lose just over $7,100 next year.

Since 2008, the USSU’s Copy Central has seen usage nosedive by approximately 50 per cent, from 500,000 copies per year to just less than 250,000 in 2011.

The ability to share notes online,

the option of scanning at the library and the fact that instructors regularly upload lectures to PAWS are among the main reasons for the dropoff, said Nystuen.

At the current rate of 15 cents per copy, Copy Central is projected to lose more than $40,000 next year.

Louis’, meanwhile, is expected to turn a small profit of $1,500.

And, Louis’ Beach Volleyball — the closest thing the union has to a cash cow — is set to clear just over $27,000.

Last year at this time, the USSU approved $400,000 to be spent on future upgrades to Louis’, which is now scheduled to happen in May. Renovations and improvements will include new chairs, tabletops, upholstering and lighting. The flooring and paint will also be redone, along with the removal of the booths in the centre of the restaurant to make way for an expanded dance floor.

Student council will discuss and likely vote on the proposed 2012-13 budget at the March 22 meeting.

USSU Net Income By Year

2009 - 10

$12,579 2010 - 11 -$278,736 2011 - 12 -$442,845 2012-13 -$203,233 estimate

2• News

thesheaf.com/news • the sheaf •March 22, 2012

An accident waiting to happen Place Riel’s dangerous transit hubby DARYL HOFMANN - Associate News Editor

A

s the early-morning crush of buses loop through the Place Riel terminal, sleepy-eyed transit riders face their first test of the day — crossing the road.

The bustle of thousands of pedestrians darting between 80 to 100 buses per hour makes the University of Saskatchewan’s transit hub a deadly accident waiting to happen.

In January, a woman was placed on a stretcher and taken away in an ambulance after she was struck in the lane directly in front of Place Riel’s main entrance. Saskatoon Transit said it was the second time someone has been hit by a bus in the area since the hub opened in 2006.

City and university officials have met to discuss safer and more effective options, but a practical short-term fix remains out of sight.

“This is something we talk about with Saskatoon

Transit every year, it is certainly a safety hazard,” said Reid Nystuen, U of S students’ union vice-president of operations and finance.

Nystuen has spent a significant portion of his stint in office meeting with U of S Facilities Management Division and Saskatoon Transit, pushing for better public transportation options for students.

He said both parties are fully aware of the issues that plague the university’s bus mall, but improving the infrastructure ranks low on Saskatoon Transit’s list of priorities.

“Quite frankly, it wasn’t designed to hold the traffic it holds now,” Nystuen said. “And in part, that’s due to the U-Pass.”

The USSU’s universal bus pass, or U-Pass, was implemented in 2008 when undergraduate students voted

80 per cent in favour of making the program permanent.

Since then, student ridership has jumped by one million total trips per year, according to data from Saskatoon Transit.

“It’s also interesting to note that the U-Pass makes up about one-quarter of all of the city’s bus riders, and it only runs for eight months of the year,” Nystuen said.

University facilities management declined to comment when asked if there has been progress made in their talks with the city.

Samantha Braun/Graphics Editor

Let’s rethink this A Class Project F

or a group of U of S urban design majors, going to class this semester has been like going to work for a professional consulting firm. Students have been assigned the task of designing a theoretical world-class transportation facility for the university to use for the next 150 years.

For two months, classmates have researched and mulled over potential models with the help of local architects and city planners, and they are

now prepared to unveil their unofficial design to the public with an exhibition in Upper Place Riel from March 26 to March 30. Financial, physical and political limits were not considered.

Henry Lau, an architect with a fine arts degree from the U of S, who now works for the City of Saskatoon after years in the private sector, was brought in to develop and teach the course.

“We wanted to choose [a project] that is dear to the students’ hearts, and something they would have

emotional attachment to. They use that facility — or lack thereof — everyday, and safety has been a reasonable concern,” Lau said.

What the students have suggested is a multimillion-dollar complex called Varsity Station that spans College Drive and connects the campus proper with College Quarter and the Stadium Parkade. The design includes transforming Cumberland Avenue into a pedestrian greenway, and building a heated, indoor facility with a 24-

News

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com/news

hour coffee shop, restaurant, bike lockers, escalators and showers.

Throughout the process, the class tracked their progress with a website, and the final showcase includes a design film.

Lau said he taught the students how to use professional design software like AutoCad, Google SketchUp, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.

“They will have those skills now, the ones who have stepped up and wanted to learn. And they will become very important to them in the workplace,” he said. “I really wanted to put some reality in this class.”

Chad Reynolds, a fourth-year regional and urban planning student, said it has been refreshing

to actually put some of the techniques he has learnt over the years into practice.

“I know maybe our restraints aren’t realistic because we are working with a 150-year timeline and money is not an issue, but the final result is actually really exciting.”

Charles Olfert is a partner at AODBT, a local architecture firm, and was invited to join in on the design. He says the collaboration of disciplines involved in this project is invaluable to students.

“This is what you should be doing in school,” he said. “This is exactly how it works in the real world.”

T

Editor-in-Chief: Ishmael N. Daro, editor@thesheaf.com Production Manager: Matthew Stefanson, layout@thesheaf.com Senior News Editor: Tannara Yelland, news@thesheaf.com Associate News Editor: Daryl Hofmann, news@thesheaf.com Photography Editor: Raisa Pezderic, photo@thesheaf.com Graphics Editor: Brianna Whitmore, graphics@thesheaf.com

Produce stand brings fresh food to campus

Raisa Pezderic/Photo Editor

Trade in the pizza for some fresh fruit in the tunnel on thursday’s in March.

In theRapid long term Bus Transit he City of Saskatoon has shelved its outdated plan to bring light rail to Saskatoon, and instead will be making a shift towards bus rapid transit, according to an announcement made March 15.

Bus rapid transit, or BRT, is a high-frequency public transportation system where buses stream along main corridors — like 8th Street, College Drive and 22nd Street — in five to 10 minute intervals. Feeder routes deliver passengers to BRT lines, and the system is said to rival the speed and convenience of light rail.

BRT will get students to completely rethink how they get to and from the university once it is built, beginning in 2015, said Alan Wallace, the city’s manager of planning and development.

Fixed along the BRT lines will be a network of hubs where the public will be encouraged to park and ride, grab a coffee or pick up groceries while using the system, he said.

“It’s not a wide stretch of the imagination to assume that maybe [Place Riel] would become one these major transit hubs,” Wallace said.

An apple a day

•3

At this time, though, the U of S Facilities Management Division said they are still unsure how BRT will change the face of the university’s current bus mall.

Bob Patrick, chair of the regional and urban planning program at the U of S, says there needs to be a massive overhaul of the transit hub before the city flirts with the idea of BRT. Patrick relocated to Saskatoon four years ago from the University of Guelph and said he is “appalled” by the current design of the hub. Compared to other universities in Canada, he said, “our transit interchange is a total joke.”

“It actually couldn’t have been built any worse,” he said.

He warned both the city and the university that the current layout needs to be re-evaluated before somebody is badly injured. It is frightening to stand and watch as students are forced to “dodge” moving buses, he said.

“Our entire lives we are taught traffic safety, and then you come to university and it all goes out the window,” he said. “It pisses me off.”

Arts Editor: Aren Bergstrom, arts@thesheaf.com Sports Editor: Kevin Menz, sports@thesheaf.com Opinions Editor: Michael Cuthbertson, opinions@thesheaf.com Copy Editor: Holly Culp, copy@thesheaf.com Web Editor: Bryn Becker, web@thesheaf.com Ad & Business Manager: Shantelle Hrytsak, ads@thesheaf.com

TANNARA YELLAND Senior News Editor For students who spend all day on campus, the choice of what to eat sometimes comes down to either a cheeseburger or a bag of chips.

But some people traversing the Arts Tunnel this month may have noticed a new option: fresh produce.

“Students as well as lots of Canadians don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables,” said Rita Hanoski, the Student Health Centre’s Health Education Coordinator. She has run a fresh produce stand in the Tunnel each Thursday in March.

“One of the ideas behind bringing a market right to campus is having it available and having it at affordable prices so that students can purchase more fruits and vegetables,” she said.

Hanoski, who says her job at Student Health is to “educate and inform and encourage healthy decisions in all aspects of student health,” organized the weekly food stand to take place now because Dietitians of Canada has declared March nutrition month. She is working in conjunction with Child Hunger and Education Program to provide cheap, fresh produce to students on campus.

The nearest proper grocery stores are the Safeway on 8th Street and Cumberland Avenue and the Clarence Market on the corner of 12th

Street and Clarence Avenue. Each is about a 15-minute walk from campus, and neither emphasizes local produce, which is one of Hanoski’s goals with the campus food stand.

The stand will only be open during March, but Hanoski hopes demand will be great enough to bring the stand back in a more permanent form next year following some data-gathering over the summer.

“One of my hopes is, first of all, to build interest and to get a response from students, so we’re collecting NSIDs from people who choose to give us their NSID when they’re purchasing, and we want to do a little bit of research over the summer as to whether this was something people like, whether they need it, whether it’s needed on campus.”

Hanoski also has plans to add more local produce to the offerings. She has already been able to source local carrots and potatoes.

While prices are subject to some change each week, Hanoski listed some that she said had been largely stable: cucumbers cost $1 each; potatoes cost 20 cents.

If the stand does get revived next year, Hanoski hopes more student groups will help operate it so that Student Health can take a back seat.

“It’s not that we want to run it, it’s that we think there’s a need on campus and how can we meet that need?”

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4• News

thesheaf.com/news • the Sheaf • March 22, 2012

This is the first year that the USSU is also running elections for all college representatives on University Students’ Council. In addition to voting for each of the four executive positions and the student representatives on

University Senate, students will be able to vote for their USC representative on PAWS next week.

Unlike many previous years, almost all of the executive positions are contested: there are three people running for president, and the only position that is uncontested is vice-president student affairs, for which Alex Werenka is running. To acquaint readers with each candidate, the Sheaf asked all eight of the people running this year to explain why students should vote for them.

President

Trevor Paschke

I

5th Year Engineering

want to help the USSU support student groups. Through my experience as this year’s Engineering Students’ Society president I have gained insight into the operations of the USSU and experience that is applicable to the president position. This experience includes working with the Dean’s office, report writing, meeting decorum and public speaking. Most importantly to me, I have had conversations with students that feel disengaged from the USSU. I want the opportunity to increase awareness of efforts by the USSU by utilizing my network on campus and expand my network to include representatives from as many student groups as possible. Additionally, my network of students from different universities in Canada is extensive.

It will be easy to collaborate with students to obtain information about best practices other universities follow to achieve success. If there is a new service proposed, I can reach out to my friends and see if something similar has

been tried, and whether it is feasible.

Most importantly, I recognize that I do not know everything but I know someone who does. I may not be representative of every student on this campus but I know someone who is.

Quiz score:

66% (12.5/19)

David Konkin

President President

O

nce again, students are being invited to take an interest in campus politics and vote on next year’s University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union. Voting will open on Wednesday, March 28 and remain open until March 29 at 4 p.m.

A

3rd

year

s a member of student council, I’ve had the opportunity to engage on a multitude of student issues and found a deep passion for them.

Student governance really can be effective and I want to use my abilities to ensure that it is. There is a need for a strong student voice on issues such as housing, tuition, transit and many more and I believe that I can provide that leadership.

Much of the President’s role deals with relationships, primarily with the province, the city and the university. We need to articulate student needs and concerns to these actors in a constructive way so that we can work with them to solve these issues. In short, I am running to be your USSU President because I believe in my ability to bring positive change for students.

Political Studies

Quiz score:

68% (13/19)

Jared Brown

Student Design Saskatoon Engineering and Society Presentation Competitions Wednesday, March 28, 2011 3:30 - 9:30PM Exeter Room, Marquis Hall, University of Saskatchewan The Saskatoon Engineering Society invites you to watch U of S graduating engineering students compete for over $3500 in prizes as they impress judges from industry with their design project posters and their presentations.

Tickets (including banquet) Students $15 & Non-Students $30 Order your tickets by sending an email to rick.retzlaff@usask.ca by March 26, 2012.

I

4th Year Sociology

am running for USSU President because I believe I bring a much-needed social lens to the operations of the USSU. I have paid a lot of attention to the social undertakings that the USSU has embraced over the past year and I have always felt there has been a lot more that could be done to encourage students, promote safety and utilize creative initiatives to help with student’s everyday life. I recognize there are absent qualities in the USSU and I think I can help shape the organization in becoming one of the top student run organizations in the country. If we have a very strong union for students to get involved with we can provide the means for individuals to take initiative and develop themselves into strong capable leaders for our society.

Quiz score:

74%

(14/19)

The publishing year is almost over, but the Sheaf will continue working over the summer and is always looking for more help. You can contribute at any time, in any way you like. thesheaf.com/contribute

News

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com/news

I

rd year

am running because I

have both a passion for improving the USSU and the experience to back it up. As a member of the Budget and Finance Committee, I was able to see first-hand how student fees were being spent and I came up with ways that this could be improved. I believe in the principle of doing “more with less” and want to bring

this idea to the USSU. Certain areas of the organization could perform more efficiently, such as Browsers and the centres.

Other areas, such as campus groups, deserve more funding and attention because that money goes directly back to the students. Overall I am running on three issues: fiscal restraint, improved communication and campus groups. I have

Honours

Computer Science

in

thoroughly researched all the items of my platform and have the leadership skills necessary to actually get them implemented. Vote for me because I am confident that I can actually make a change to the USSU.

Quiz score:

Alex Werenka 5 Y A &

VP Student Affaris

Steven Heidel 3

Jenna Moellenbeck

I

am a member of University Students’ Council for Edwards School of Business and I feel I am more than qualified for VP Operations and Finance. This year I have been quite involved with the USSU: I’m a member of students’ council, I sit on the academics and the budget and finance committee, and I also volunteer at the Help Centre. I want to take my dedication to the USSU

to the next level by running for an executive position. As an executive member I want to increase student engagement and create a more memorable university experience. One way I would accomplish this is by increasing student engagement and encouraging all students to join a campus club or even start their own. Most importantly, I want to be accessible to students.

This can be done by improving

3rd

year

Human Resources

the comment couch implemented by this year’s executive and having more of a presence on campus. I will be accountable to the students and hopefully enhance their time at the University of Saskatchewan.

Quiz score:

74% (14/19)

F

5th

or the past five years I have worked with and represented students as a Resident Assistant, Resident Advisor and USSU Student Crew/Safewalk Coordinator. I am looking forward to putting the wealth of experience and knowledge I have gained to represent you with the university. It is very important that executive members are aware of what the USSU can and cannot do, as time and resources could be wasted on pursuing goals that cannot be attained. That being said, I look forward to: 1) Giving students a voice in academic issues through the various committees I will be sitting on.

2) Creating a USSU experiential learning program for undergraduate students. Resources are in place for this.

3) Promoting awareness of various policies that affect students’ and instructors’ academic experience.

year Psychology & Crime, Law and Justice Studies

Many students are not aware of these.

4) Advising the university about necessary changes to academic advising (something students are concerned about).

ear

I

rts Science

academic issues and though I find academics interesting I am far more interested in the affairs of students.

I have several ideas of what and where to take this position, but I would love to find out what students want and make it a more involved and community-based process.

Quiz score:

VP Operations & Finance Ruvimbo Kanyemba

th

am running because I believe that this is an effective way to create social change.

This position covers all non-

VP Operations & Finance 84% (16/19)

•5

66% (12.5/19)

Marylou Mintram

I

1st Year Arts & Science

will be committed to ensuring that students will be heard and do diligence on seeking all information pertaining to your concerns. Being an informed liaising between the Student Union and other learning institutions.

What I would really like to do is work for students to ensure that this superb university will provide the best academic experience possible, in hopes that students are supported in achieving their current aspirations. By supporting students in any appeals they may have, and staying up-to-date on provincial and community events, I guarantee to students that I would maximize my potential in creating a learning experience where you get the most benefit.

I believe the U of S holds a key that will unlock the gateway of dreams, and I would like to enhance this by implementing new or assessing existing ideas such as: Coordinating regular networking events Developing a mentorship program Reviewing copyright laws

Making online textbooks feasible option Trying to find a way to decrease the cost of textbooks Reassessing the Evaluations Workshops on obtaining research funds Providing support to campus groups The U of S offers possibilities for learning and growth that are simply unparalleled. Together let’s unlock the potential and maximize what this institution has to offer.

VP AcademicVP Academic Quiz score:

42% (8/19)

Dr. Norman Temple Professor of Nutrition Athabasca University

Quiz score:

58% (11/19)

Edith Rowles Simpson Lecture Series

The Marketing of Dietary Supplements:

Bogus Promises in a Bottle 7:00 p.m.

Tuesday,

March 27, 2012 Frances Morisson Public Library Theatre 311-23rd Street East

www.usask.ca/pharmacy-nutrition

The Edith Rowles Simpson Lecture Series was established in 1971 to honour Dr. Simpson for her years of service to the families of Saskatchewan through her work at the College of Home Economics and the University of Saskatchewan.

This lecture is free and open to the public.

6• Opinions

thesheaf.com/opinions • the sheaf •March 22, 2012

Quit slut-shaming Society holds a double standard on who can express their sexuality KIMBERELY HARTWIG “That girl is such a slut.” It’s a common phrase to describe women and it’s one that needs to stop.

It may seem harmless at first, just something said after one too many drinks, but what lies beneath is a fear and resentment of female sexuality. In the simplest terms it’s an example of slut-shaming.

Simply put, slut-shaming is the act of shaming or attacking a woman for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings or acting on sexual feelings. You might think that by 2012 all notions of the Fallen Woman and of shaming people for their private sex lives would be long gone — but you would be sorely mistaken.

Slut-shaming is still prevalent, and with women’s rights emerging as a subject of heated debate in the American primaries over the past few months, it has become an even more visible issue.

One of the main issues of debate is whether birth control should be covered by health insurance. Although this is an issue that most directly impacts women, they have largely been absent from the conversation. When Georgetown University Law student Sandra Fluke testified about using birth control, she was quickly labelled a slut and a prostitute by right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Name-calling is a tried and true method of silencing women and that was what Limbaugh and everyone else who participated in slut-shaming Fluke was attempting to do. For some, a woman who is comfortable talking about sex is a scary thing and opponents are quick to go on the offensive by hurling any insult to try to shut her up.

What is interesting is that there is no male equivalent for words such as slut. Whereas the arsenal for shaming women for their sexual behaviour includes words such as “whore,” “tramp” and “skank,” there is no word to shame a man for the same actions.

The absence of a common male equivalent for words such as slut shows society’s perspective on the issue: that men are incapable — that slut is a role only a woman can fill.

The word slut always brings to mind the

Radio host Rush Limbaugh and other reactionaries should have no say on women’s sex lives. picture of a woman, scantily clad, because a picture of a slutty man simply doesn’t exist.

Words like slut and whore remain strictly feminine, perpetuating the double-standard where men are championed for having sexual encounters with many different partners and women are ridiculed and degraded for doing the same thing.

It’s easy to forget just how much power words have and how much they can hurt someone else. It’s also easy to forget how much influence words have on younger generations. Words like slut and whore aren’t just adopted by adults but are used by girls and boys in high school and younger.

This has negative effects not only on girls

but on boys as well. Both grow up thinking that girls need to behave a certain way and adhere to certain codes and if they don’t it’s OK, and almost necessary, to beat them into place with words.

It’s scary to think that a 10-year-old who may know nothing about sex can already bear the label of slut because she doesn’t act a certain way. Kids have a much looser grasp on the meanings of words and their implications than adults do, making it easier for them to fling around words like tramp and skank without realizing the stereotypes and messages they are enforcing.

Sex is personal, and as long as it’s safe and consensual, it’s no one else’s business besides

Donkey Hotey/Flickr

those taking part in it. It doesn’t matter whether your bedroom door is a closed or revolving one; others have no right to judge you for your sex life.

It’s important to remember that words like slut and whore are loaded and bring oppression and a sexual hierarchy with them.

A woman isn’t a slut because of the clothes she wears or the number of men she sleeps with. A woman is a slut because society can’t cope with a woman being comfortable expressing her sexuality. Having respect for a woman means respecting her choices and her ability to make those choices and never calling her a slut because of them.

Multi-Faith Chaplains Association The Munti-Faith Chaplains Association has an office on campus, and we are here for you! If you’d like to see a chaplian, stop by our office at MUB 118 (on the main floor of the Browsers/Louis’ building) between 10 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Monday to Friday. We’d be glad to see you!

ABORIGINAL ELDERS WALTER And MARIA LINKLATER 966-5790; 382-0630 pat.olesiuk@usask.ca Aboriginal Students’ Centre ECUMENICAL (Anglican, Presbyterian, United) NANCY YEE 966-8500 ecum.chap@usask.ca www.facebook/chaplain.usask.nancy www.twitter.com@chaplainnancy Memorial Union Building 118

HINDU COMMUNITY DR. G. LAKSHMAN 955-0872 lakshmang@innovationplace.com JEWISH CANTOR NEIL SCHWARTZ 222-6061 cantorneils7@aol.com Memorial Union Building 118 LUTHERAN (and Multi-Faith Coordinator) REV. PAUL SARTISON 653-2509 luth.chap@usask.ca Lutheran Campus Centre

MUSLIM DR. SYED IBN IQBAL 880-1715 syed.ibniqbal@gmail.com Lower Sask Hall 21 ROMAN CATHOLIC MICHAEL MACLEAN 966-8931 mmaclean@stmcollege.ca STM, rm 224 MADELINE OLIVER 966-8940 moliver@stmcollege.ca STM, rm 242

UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC LAURIE FRIESEN 244-7720 ucyouthministry@gmail.com Sheptytsky Institute FR. ANDRÉ LALACH 966-8930 alalach@stmcollege.ca STM, rm 245

Follow the Sheaf on Twitter @TheSheaf1912 and find us on Facebook as The Sheaf Publishing Society.

Pop in and see a chaplain!

Honour laws too archaic

•7 The good and bad in religion

Moroccan rape victim saw no justice

Faith offers emotional support, sometimes

Opinions

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com/opinions

Saharauiak/Flickr

Moroccan laws hold tradition and honour in a higher regard than justice.

Religion offers community, but is it worth it?

ALEXANDER QUON

KAMELLE MACINTYRE

A 16-year-old Moroccan girl commits suicide; her reasons for doing so are almost as shocking as the act itself.

About a year before Amina Filali’s death, at the tender age of 15, she had been raped by a man 10 years her senior. Her family’s response to this tragic and destructive event was to preserve their family’s honour by forcing her to marry her rapist.

In any modern society, being forced to marry your rapist would be considered at minimum despicable or more likely a crime. However, as is common in rural areas of Morocco, it is traditional to marry the victim to the criminal to preserve the honour of the victim and to “resolve” the damage caused after the violation. The worst part is that this archaic tradition is backed up by Moroccan law.

Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the rapist of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution. The marriage between Amina and her rapist was presided over by a Moroccan judge. One year later, Amina Filali committed suicide by eating rat poison in her husband’s house.

Honour is somewhat of a foreign term in Western culture; Canada may be a land of immigrants but once people come here and adapt to the culture, the concept almost always disappears. Yet many parts of the world still operate on the assumption that to preserve one’s honour is of utmost

We Want

importance.

There is of course a deeper issue at stake in the “honour” law; sexual equality is nonexistent in Morroco. As is apparent from the forced marriage of Amina to her rapist, women have absolutely no say in their daily lives. Men have complete and utter control, backed by the state-run legal system.

Honour laws don’t have any place in the 21st century, let alone laws that excuse gender-inequality and sexual violence. That all cultures are equal does not however make them the same; each puts pride in different aspects of life. For Canada it is in the letter of the law as well as equality for all. In Morocco, it is ostensibly the principles of tradition and honour that are valued over other considerations.

It’s not uncommon in many cultures for the women to be blamed for their own rape, but this does not excuse the abandonment of a child to her rapist. Amina’s family is now without a daughter. The death of a young person is always a tragedy, no matter what the circumstance but this is made all the more tragic because it could have been avoided.

Many people think about religion in a blackand-white way. Believers say that religion is the only way to save yourself and get to paradise.

They believe that religion is wholly good.

Atheists believe that religion is a lie, stymies thinking and poisons science. They believe religion is inherently bad.

After attending an evangelical church for a few years, seeing the worst of believer behaviour, then leaving the church and reading every anti-theist book I could get my hands on, I have come to one conclusion: Religion is both good and bad. Moreover, there is a short story that perfectly captures what is both good and bad about religion. It is not in the Bible, nor was it written by Christopher Hitchens. It was in a book of religious stories given to me by my grandmother to commemorate my first communion.

The name of the story is The Peanut Butter Hamster.

A little girl’s hamster, named Dusty, goes missing. She is upset and tells this to her Sunday school class. They then pray for Dusty to come back. She is comforted by them. Before church, she tells her plight to another churchgoer who is a veterinarian.The veterinarian tells her to put out a plate with peanut butter and then she will find Dusty eating the peanut butter.

Sure enough, Dusty turns up. The girl tells her Sunday school class and the story ends with them thanking God that Dusty came back.

If you’re skeptical of religion, you will notice the main flaw in the story. God had

YOU To Participate In The Sheaf

Annual General Meeting

4:30 pm Monday, April 2, 2012 Room 108 Arts 1) Call to Order 2) Call for Quorum

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3) Approval of Agenda 4) Approval of Minutes - April 4, 2011 5) Society Report 6) Financial Report -Auditor’s Report - Reappointment of Auditor 7) Proposed Bylaw Amendments 8) Election of Directors 9) Other Business 10) Questions and Comments 11) Adjournment

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nothing to do with Dusty’s return. The real hero of the story is the veterinarian who used his knowledge about rodents’ affinity for peanut butter.

That is the problem with religion: its complete dismissal of scientific knowledge. But even as the hamster story showed, scientific knowledge broadens human understanding and helps people live better lives.

But the story also shows something else: that the girl was distressed about the loss of a beloved family pet. The other members of the church comforted her. She felt less alone and this alleviated her sadness. Also, another church member helped her in her time of need. This showed the good of religion that, oddly enough, is not really explained a lot by believers.

Religion provides a community of people that will help and comfort you in your time of need. I experienced the good parts of religion as well as the bad. I attended an emotional Bible study session where the topic of homosexuality came up. I told the others that I was bisexual and I was told to repent or else. I never went to church after that.

So The Peanut Butter Hamster lives on in my memory but not on my bookshelf. What happened? During my atheist, God-hating phase I re-read the story, realized that God got all the credit, and threw it out in a fit of rage.

Now I wish I had it back as a reminder that sometimes things are so complex that they defy our attempts to fit them into neat boxes. I like to think if it were on my bookshelf it would serve as a reminder of both the love and hate that religion brings to the world.

THE SHEAF

Any proposed motions, changes to this agenda, or amendments to the Society Bylaws must be submitted to the Chair of the Board of Directors, in writing, by 3:30 p.m. Friday, March 30th to: The Sheaf Publishing Society Inc. Room 108 MUB 93 Campus Drive Saskatoon SK, S7N 5B2

Membership with Impact

The Sheaf is seeking candidates with established business, ethical and leadership expertise to join its Board of Directors. Potential candidates must be University of Saskatchewan students. They should be aware that Board of Director meetings are regularly scheduled once a month from September - April.

Additional meetings are scheduled as required. Directors will be elected at the AGM. All are welcome to attend!

8• Opinions

thesheaf.com/opinions • the Sheaf • March 22, 2012

Real vs. fake environmentalism We’re too quick to label things eco-friendly

A call to positive action NATAHNA BARGEN

Conserve your earth: buy a shirt to fill out your excessively large wardrobe.

MICHAEL CUTHBERTSON Opinions Editor I truly care about saving the planet. But like most people, I don’t like listening to environmentalists. They tend to sound hostile towards humanity. Deep down, some probably want to say we’re all murderers, killing Mother Earth by living in a highly-industrialized world.

They may be right. But it’s a closed issue that the Earth is screwed and our fossil-fuel age is largely to blame. Even people who don’t give a shit understand we can’t pollute the Earth so much if we wish to preserve it for the younglings.

It’s time we start asking a more solutionoriented question. Namely, which of our socalled eco-friendly behaviours really save the earth, and which only save face?

The answer is simple: things that don’t leave a carbon footprint (or any type of pollution) actually save the planet, while anything releasing pollutants damages the planet.

So I find it ironic when people congratulate themselves for buying eco-friendly products.

“Buying” and “eco-friendly” are contradictory terms. It doesn’t matter if you buy an energy efficient computer, a snazzy cruiser bike or

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an organic cotton t-shirt. You still bought something, and a lot of machines had to be powered just so you could have that product.

The only time a consumer is literally being eco-friendly is when they abstain from buying a new product in the first place.

Thus, if I see a girl riding a brand-new $600 cruiser bike down Broadway, and behind her I see a dirty hobo digging through the trash for pop cans, I remind myself who is actually saving the planet. It’s the guy who didn’t just purchase a fancy new manufactured item.

This about sums up why real environmentalism, such as carbon-neutral living, is rejected in favour of the fake, feelgood environmentalism people embrace. Real environmentalism requires you to live like a bum. That means buying very little, buying second-hand and getting by with what you already have whenever humanly possible.

Last June I was technically homeless, living in a forest about an hour’s walk from Nelson, B.C. Naturally, after spending weeks living amidst the trees and birds and lakes, I couldn’t help but feel that nature was far more sacred than I imagined back in the city.

Living in the woods, your eyes sharply divide everything into two categories. First, you see the eternal creations of this world; things like mountains and forests and wildlife that look exactly the same in 2012 as they did a million years ago. Second, you see products of human creation — juice boxes, bars of soap and bug spray.

Living in the civilized world, we hardly acknowledge how intrusive these human creations are to nature. If you see an empty chip bag on a city sidewalk you think, “Well, that’s an eyesore but no big deal.”

When you’re in the forest, walking through pristine wilderness, that same chip bag becomes a powerful, even scary representation of what civilization really does to nature. You realize that even though we can hide our trash outside the city and our pollution way up in the atmosphere, it still damages some part of the Earth.

This reality is largely forgotten in our urban existence. When we buy something, it’s hard to

Jonathon Mcintosh/Flickr

visualize the entire industrial process it took for that product to reach our hands. And it’s equally difficult to quantify the amount of ecological destruction our purchases cause.

Personally, unless I stop to think about how damaging my consumption is, I grow complacent with the very sort of environmentalism I’m bitching about. I reassure myself that I bike and recycle and buy things that are eco-friendly enough.

Several years ago I bought some Converselooking “No-Sweat” shoes that were made from 100 per cent recycled materials. I fancied this a purchase of the highest ethical order. My smugness was palpable.

Six months later the shoes pretty much dissolved.

After that I bought Nike sneakers. They were probably made by a child, but I expect they’ll last me several years. And in the long run, if I kept buying shoddy No-Sweat shoes, I would be doing greater harm to the Earth (though not supporting slave-labour which is a whole other can of worms).

There’s an important environmental lesson in my parable of the shoes. When you have to buy something, buy something that will last. Get a bike you’ll use for 20 years. And if it’s even possible today, stick with your computers and digital gizmos for longer than 18 months.

Slowing down consumerism may not constitute real environmentalism, but it’s realistic environmentalism. I realize some people don’t care for nature and think the wilderness is just like, boring and cold and shit.

Unlike some environmentalists, I’m not here to say, “Unless you live off the land, you’re making mother Earth shed tears of acid rain.”

I respect that damaging the Earth is as human as breathing. I mean, every time we exhale we release greenhouse gas into the air.

By making thoughtful consumer choices, however, we can mitigate our ecological damage — without reverting to the deplorable existence of our hairy, cave-doodling ancestors.

No one could have missed the explosion of Kony 2012 this month, and certainly no one could have missed the controversy it created, resulting in many a heated argument had over smoking keyboards and furrowed brows.

The popular consensus, as it is with all such debates, is that the cynics must be of infinitely superior wisdom and all those who were naively inspired to be a part of change in their generation must be simple-minded and use words such as “like” and “totally” as every second word in their everyday speech.

I do not want to get into the Kony 2012 debate. I am sure you can guess what side I am on, but I am not likely to change your mind any more than you could change mine. The more significant part of the story is what has happened since the video came out.

On March 15, Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children and the face of the Kony 2012 viral video, was seen acting irrationally, running around naked and screaming in San Diego, Calif. There were hearsay reports courtesy of TMZ that at one point he was seen masturbating in public.

Well, isn’t this just perfect timing for all the critics to pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves on a job well done for spotting the "crazy."

When I read this report, I was shocked — and then not so much. We live in a dark and aggressive world where every part of a person is picked apart and analyzed, critiqued and degraded. How many celebrities have the media driven to the edge? How many politicians?

Humanitarians? Now, with social networking and the Internet keeping everyone connected with everyone’s personal business 100 per cent of the time, this aggression has permeated all aspects of life.

People should question things. People should investigate, remodel and recreate to find the best solution to every problem — that is our duty as citizens of the modern world. However, the opposition rarely plays clean anymore. When the critics came out to have their say about Kony 2012, they did not focus on creating a better solution; they focused on tearing apart what existed, callously beating down the people involved. I blame them for Russell’s alleged mental breakdown and all those who have been destroyed before him by similar means.

We know so much about everyone and everything that we should feel more connected to one another, but I would argue the opposite effect has taken place. We understand the facts and trivia about a person, but lack the empathy and compassion to see the real human being underneath.

And for organizations and causes trying to address real needs in our world, we as a society are more concerned with finding fault in the people behind these organizations than focusing on the problems themselves and working together to find the best solutions.

What we have seen with the backlash and bickering that ensued from the Kony 2012 video is a sad depiction of humanity. Unfortunately it is not the first example, and it won’t be the last.

If you are a regular naysayer, I want to ask you what you are doing with all your pessimism?

Who have you helped today and who are you going to help tomorrow?

To the go-getters out there, I ask you the same questions. Whatever your disposition is in life, you must do more than just attack those who hold disparate views from your own. You must question new ideas and potential solutions, but I hope that you will be inspired to do this proactively rather than angrily and help our generation create a better legacy than the one we are currently leaving behind.

Opinions

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com/opinions

•9

Ban on gay men’s blood misguided Potential donors should be screened on basis of behaviour, not orientation TANNARA YELLAND Senior News Editor In the mid-1980s at the height of the AIDS scare, nations around the world banned blood donations from gay men. At the time, this made sense: people didn’t know much about how HIV/AIDS spread or what could be done to stop it. One of the things they knew for certain was that gay men — along with prostitutes and intravenous drug users — were contracting the virus at much higher rates than the general population.

Almost 30 years later, though, we live in a very different world. We now know how the virus spreads and how to safeguard against infection. Testing has been refined such that certain types of tests, namely Nucleic Acid Tests, can detect HIV within two to three weeks. There is no need for the kind of blanket donor ban that focuses on a person’s innate characteristics, like sexuality, rather than how safe his or her behaviours are.

Simply put, people’s sexual orientations have no bearing on whether or not they are likely to have HIV. What puts gay men at higher risk of HIV infection is that anal sex is significantly more likely to lead to the spread of infection from one partner to the other. However, condom use is about 79 per cent effective in preventing HIV infection during anal sex, and medication can reduce the likelihood of transmission by as much as 99.9 per cent.

With figures like this, it becomes clear that the focus should be on excluding donors who do not practice safe sex rather than on all gay men.

European Parliament/Flickr

According to Canadian Blood Services’ current policy, this arm could not belong to a sexually active homosexual male.

Canadian Blood Services still has a ban in place on donations from any man who has had sex with another man since 1977; this is, for all intents and purposes, a lifetime ban on gay men giving blood. It is homophobic and misplaced. While it is true that homosexual men make up the largest portion of HIVinfected Canadians, it is not true that gay men are inherently more likely to have the virus.

Bowing to pressure from gay rights groups, Blood Services has considered changing this policy: allowing men to donate if they have not had sex with another man in the past five to 10 years. This is effectively the same as a lifetime ban for gay men, but disguises

itself as a more progressive policy. It should be scrapped in favour of a rule that actually targets the behaviours that put people at risk of HIV infection.

It is well known that sharing needles for drug injection and engaging in unprotected sex are the two most common ways of passing the HIV/AIDS virus on.

Organizations like Blood Services rightly screen for people who have used intravenous drugs or had unprotected sex in the past year, and excludes them from donating.

But the key difference here is that these people are not banned forever. Someone who has neither had unprotected sex nor used

needle drugs in the last year is free to donate blood, because Blood Services assumes — rightly — that any infections they have will be detected by the rigorous screening process every single donation is subjected to.

Meanwhile, all gay men are assumed to be as risky to the community as people who share needles and have unprotected sex.

Or, to be more precise, all gay men who are sexually active. To request that someone forgo sex, an integral aspect of a healthy adult life, in order to donate sorely-needed blood is ludicrous and backward, and Canadians should hold their institutions to a higher standard.

10•Sports

thesheaf.com/sports • the sheaf • March 22, 2012

Hitting home T

his past November I lost my brother Lyndon Kenny to suicide.

Lyndon was a very good hockey player. He was drafted by the Brandon Wheat Kings of the Western Hockey League and he was not only a highly-skilled defenceman and strong skater, but also the toughest person I have ever known.

His ability to scare opponents and produce gamechanging hits and fights was unparalleled for someone of his age.

Unfortunately, this enforcer style of play made my brother vulnerable to multiple concussions and, therefore, more susceptible to depression.

Enforcers are the designated tough guys on a hockey team. Players in this role often struggle with depression not only because they suffer numerous and severe head injuries, but also because they must deal with the pressure of fighting almost every game in order to keep their spot in the lineup.

Lyndon was no exception.

My brother became addicted to alcohol and drugs at an early age. His addictions carried on through most of his life, even with multiple stints in rehab centres.

He was not a drug addict like those on TV shows, though. He hardly let it show in his personal life. He was the most loving and caring person I knew and was constantly looking out for others.

He struggled to explain his problems to me and our family, however, and for a long time he turned away from those closest to him — as the archetypal tough guy, he tried to cope with his struggles alone.

It was only recently that Lyndon came to understand that he needed help. He began to open up to our family and made an effort to guide me down a better path of life than he had taken.

He had been drug- and alcohol-free for two months

by SHELDON KENNY

before he took his own life on Nov. 1.

The depression and anxiety proved too much for him.

Only a few weeks before his death, Lyndon left a comment on a sports medicine website indicating his struggles.

“I’m 27 and have been on a serious decline since [my] early to mid teens,” my brother wrote.

“I have had hundreds of blows to my head since I was around age five. Most occurred from my reckless style of hockey throughout my teens. Here’s a list of symptoms I have — Lack or loss of knowledge, insight, judgement, self, purpose, personality, intelligence, opinion, reasoning, train of thought, motivation, relationships, thinking, humour, ability to process information and learn, organize, planning, communicating, finding speech, decision making, visualizing, interest, sensitive to sound, ears ring, trouble sleeping, head aches, PCS [Post Concussion Syndrome] etc.”

Lyndon’s comment ended with an appeal: “Protect yourselves and loved ones! What a scary situation. I feel so bad for my family.”

His final wish came in the form of an unsent text message intended for me. Lyndon wanted to have his brain donated to research at the Boston University School of Medicine so we could have the answers he had sought for years.

CONCUSSED

A

concussion is defined as a short-lived loss of brain function due to head trauma. A direct blow to the head is not required to sustain a concussion; any sudden and jolting motion to the body that causes the brain to move around inside the skull can do the same.

For a concussion to occur the brain must bump against the skull, which can cause bruising. In some cases the brain will rotate inside the skull, and when it rubs against the bony surface of the skull it can shear off brain nerve fibres. In all cases there are no visible injuries to the brain that an MRI or CT scan can detect.

In addition to blurry vision, dizziness and confusion, the symptoms can be much worse: difficulty sleeping, a sensitivity to noise and light, nausea, ringing in the ears, trouble concentrating, difficulty tolerating alcohol or stress, difficulty speaking, communicating or

understanding instructions, long- or short-term memory loss and a decreased sex drive.

People suffering the after-effects of concussions can also exhibit changes in behaviour including aggression, stubbornness, anxiety and depression.

These effects may be noticed for a week or more after a concussion, but with Post Concussion Syndrome one might deal with the effects for months depending on the severity and treatment of the concussion.

With each concussion suffered it becomes easier to sustain another, and with multiple concussions the symptoms and side effects become more obvious.

With repeated head injuries, one can develop CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

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Sports

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com/sports

•11

CHRONIC TRAUMATIC ENCEPHALOPATHY

L

yndon was adamant that he suffered from CTE. He knew everything about it and the pursuit of the answers he needed led him to many medical professionals who could have helped him. However, he was extremely frustrated by every doctor’s complete refusal of his claims and he was angry with himself because he felt like he could not explain to them exactly how he was feeling.

It has recently been released that legendary professional hockey players Bob Probert and Derek Boogaard both suffered from extreme cases of CTE, which is no doubt directly related to their roles as enforcers.

When a team needs something to give them a momentum boost, enforcers are counted upon to go out and get a big hit or to get in a fight.

This physical playing style leads to more blows to the head, resulting in concussions.

But the evidence does not stop with Probert and Boogaard.

Rick Rypien and Wade Belak both committed suicide this past summer after lengthy battles with depression.

Both players played a tough game and they no doubt suffered many concussions.

While we have yet to hear the results of the tests performed on Lyndon’s brain at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy in Boston, it is obvious looking back at all the conversations we

THE FUTURE

A

Brianna Whitmore/Graphics Editor

fter witnessing my brother go through all he did, all I want is to see a higher level of understanding for concussions. They are deadly.

The cultures of all sports, not just hockey, need to change to adjust for this growing problem. Most importantly, the stigma of being the one to leave a game due to a concussion needs to stop because, in hindsight, the ones who take a step back and admit that there is something wrong are the tough ones.

I would be lying if I said I was not scared for myself.

I’ve played a lot of hockey in my life, have suffered a number of hard hits to the head and have been knocked unconscious twice.

had and the symptoms he listed that he had battled with CTE for a long time.

CTE is a degenerative brain disease most commonly found in athletes who have a history of repetitive brain trauma. It is a variant of dementia with symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s, such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, and may appear months or years after initial trauma — unlike Alzheimer’s, however, it does not develop genetically.

It’s uncertain how many concussive injuries it takes to develop this brain deterioration, how severe the concussions must be for symptoms to begin and how long it takes symptoms to start developing.

Upon studying the brains of deceased individuals, researchers have diagnosed CTE as black spots on the brain tissue, which is the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau.

Poor recovery of head trauma is linked to this protein when it is found in excess in the fluid that surrounds the brain.

Sadly, there is no known way to reverse the effects of concussions. Even sadder is the fact that CTE can only be diagnosed after death.

As of 2009, only 49 cases of CTE have been researched and published by medical journals.

However, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, which was founded in 2008, recently began a clinical study of over 150 former NFL athletes aged 40-69 and 50 athletes of noncontact sports of the same age, all of which are still alive and participating in sport. The goal of the study is to develop methods to diagnose CTE before death, which can hopefully lead to a cure in the future.

In the past few years I have dealt with depression and anxiety and, although it can’t be proven, the fact that they may be a result of my concussions is a very real possibility.

I have also started to notice that I am dealing with some of the same symptoms that my brother felt he was experiencing. I have noticed a loss of personality, intelligence, motivation and humour. My ability to learn and communicate has decreased and I have had trouble sleeping.

I hope for my own and my family’s sake that I am simply reacting to the loss of my brother, but right now I cannot be certain.

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12• Sports

thesheaf.com/sports • the Sheaf • March 22, 2012

Underdogs film shows at Roxy Theatre Documentary recounts Huskies 2009-10 championship season COLE GUENTER Members of the 2009-10 Huskies basketball team reunited March 15, but rather than meeting on the court, they were checking tickets and greeting people at the Roxy Theatre.

The former squad was ushering fans for the premiere of Underdogs, a feature-length documentary film that captures the journey their team took en route to becoming Canadian Interuniversity Sport national champions that season.

The players, along with everyone else in the theatre, soon took their seats in anticipation for the film that combined intimate interviews from coaches, players, parents and Huskie alumni with game footage to create more than just a basketball story. The documentary retells a season’s worth of unique personal and team narratives, culminating in the Dogs winning the club’s first-ever CIS title.

“We are two years removed from the championship, but when you see the actual events [on screen] it’s like you are at the games again,” said Greg Jockims, the Huskies’ head coach for the championship run, in an interview with Global Saskatoon. “The movie really does a great job of capturing the overall feel, and all the things that led to the championship.”

The film doesn’t shy away from negative things that went on during the season either. The team of that year had dedicated the season to former teammate Brennan Jarret, who tragically died in 2008 due to complications with testicular cancer. The issue was often referenced by players as something the team rallied around, and that they could feel his spirit guiding the team through their magical season.

Shockingly, the team started the 2009-

Tom Simes/Five Stones Films

Showron Glover and Michael Linklater.

10 campaign with a 4-4 record before they discovered their true potential. Once they did though, they seemed unstoppable, only losing one game in the rest of the regular season and going undefeated throughout playoffs.

Underdogs is named after the generally low expectations for the team that year, even after they had made it to the national tournament.

Sports analysts gave the team a five per cent chance of winning the title coming into the tournament, which only fuelled the players’ drive to win and prove everyone wrong.

The team did exactly that by winning their first two games of the tournament before facing the University of British Columbia

Thunderbirds in the national final, a team they beat in the Canada West final but were still expected to lose to. With terrific footage borrowed from the TSN television coverage of the tournament, the final moments of the game are beautifully captured in the film. As the Huskies won the final game, the Roxy Theatre audience erupted in cheers.

The excitement of the crowd was something that Art Unsworth, father of two of the players on the championship team, thought was a true testament to the quality of the film.

“It was a good film, and it was amazing how the crowd really got immersed into it.”

It was the first of three showings of the film

and was also high school appreciation night as many Saskatoon High School basketball teams were in attendance. Coach Jockims gave a speech following the film stressing to the young basketball players that the success of that season was due to a close bond between the players, the work ethic of the team and each person’s drive to achieve his best, and the “never give up” attitude that led the team through their toughest times.

Copies of Underdogs are available at the U of S bookstore for $20.

Huskies take sixth at nationals Provost and Vice-President Academic Brett Fairbairn and Vice-President Finance and Resources Richard Florizone will hold a town hall to discuss the university’s financial position.

Join us at 11 am in Convocation Hall on Tuesday, April 3.

Everyone is encouraged to attend.

www.usask.ca

Cougars pull away in consolation final KEVIN MENZ Sports Editor Third time’s not a charm for the Huskies women’s basketball team.

The University of Saskatchewan team fell 64-60 to their provincial rival Regina Cougars in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport fifth-place consolation match March 19 at the University of Calgary’s Jack Simpson Gym. It was the third meeting between the squads this year, and although the Huskies lost all three they saved their strongest performance for last.

Saskatchewan got off to a slow start, falling behind 14-7 midway through the first quarter. A late burst capped off by two Dalyce Emmerson foul shots, however, put the Dogs up by two going into the second frame.

Running with the momentum, the Huskies expanded the gap and took a 32-21 lead.

The Cougars weren’t ready to fall, though, and pieced together an 8-0 run before narrowing the score to 34-30 at the break.

Regina regained the lead midway through the third, going up 42-40 after Carly Graham drained a three-point shot.

The squads continued to exchange buckets until the Cougars pulled away with only one minute remaining in the game.

Down 59-60, Regina took advantage of a few missed Huskies shots from underneath the bucket and sunk two consecutive layups as well as a foul shot to seal the four-point victory.

Saskatchewan head coach Lisa Thomaidis said that while her team did have opportunities to win the game, the Huskies should be proud of their play.

“When it was all said and done, we still had two shots... to take the lead at the end of the game and they wouldn’t go down,” said Thomaidis. “We competed with the No. 1 ranked team in the country and a lot of the time we had two first-years and two second-years on

the floor. It was just a phenomenal performance from our kids.”

Regina, the top-ranked team in the country, downed the Huskies by 11 points in each of their last two meetings.

Huskies sophomore guard Kabree Howard, who put up 11 points in the game, said she was surprised to see the Cougars in the consolation final and not competing for a medal.

“If you had told us at the start of the weekend that we’d be playing them for fifth, we probably wouldn’t have believed you,” said Howard.

“We thought that they’d be playing for first or at least third tonight.”

“They’re great competitors and they’re always fun to play against,” added Emmerson, a rookie who led her squad with 16 points. “We know people on their team. It’s always a great battle. We would have liked to win at least one game against them.”

The head coach of the young Saskatchewan team, which graduates veterans Mary Hipperson, Amy Lackie and CIS all-star Katie Miyazaki, is optimistic that this experience at nationals will help prepare her players for a sixth consecutive CIS Final 8 appearance next year.

“This will be huge for us moving forward and hopefully we just continue the trend,” said Thomaidis. “The second-year kids that played such a pivotal role on our team this year did so because they got to go to nationals last year.

This was nothing new for them.... Hopefully the same thing will happen next year — the new kids get in and they get the same experience.”

The Huskies’ earlier two games on the weekend saw Saskatchewan lose 73-70 in overtime to the Ottawa Gee-Gees but rebound with a 58-53 win over the McGill Martlets.

The Windsor Lancers defeated the UBC Thunderbirds in the tournament final to claim their second consecutive national title.

Arts •13

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com/arts

Greystone Theatre goes Greek The Edible Woman a The Love of the Nightingale gives facelift to classical myth delectable satire BLAIR WOYNARSKI

Raisa Pezderic/Photo Editor

Tereus (Jordan Svenkeson) caresses Philomele (Alana Pancyr) after cutting out her tongue.

BLAIR WOYNARSKI If birds could speak, oh the lyrics they would weave. The final instalment of Greystone Theatre’s season tackles ancient Greek tragedy combined with modern political commentary — along with a healthy dose of sex, violence and excitement.

The Love of the Nightingale

by Timberlake Wertenbaker is a retelling of the old story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses about the tragedy of Philomele and Procne. Philomele’s sister Procne is married to Tereus, the king of Thrace. However, Tereus decides he is in love with Philomele, so he rapes her in a moment of emotional vulnerability, then cuts out her tongue when she promises to spread word of the rape.

Philomele, without a voice, must construct an elaborate plan to wordlessly accuse Tereus. And then eventually everyone is turned into birds. That’s ancient Greece for you.

But Wertenbaker takes this simple — if gruesome and somewhat peculiar — myth and spins it into a politically resonant tale about freedom, social justice and marginalization.

Nightingale is what director Dwayne Brenna calls “total theatre” — it encompasses “acting, dance, song, acrobatics, fight choreography, sex and violence.” There are two worlds being balanced within the play: the old world of ancient Greece (the script draws from fragments of a lost tragedy by Sophocles) and a modern, feminist world that ignites a fire in the central character.

“Philomele is a symbol for truth,” said Alana Pancyr, the fourth-year acting major who plays the lead role.

“She is someone who says what [she] feels.”

Despite the tragedy that the character undergoes, Pancyr is quite insistent that “she isn’t a victim” because she stands up for herself and is never successfully silenced.

Brenna chose this play in large part for its strong female roles, which is a rare thing in a classical context.

The text brings to bear the strength of female sexuality, and poses the female character as an “observer of male beauty” in a notable role reversal, especially contrasting with the Greek tradition. Consequently, Brenna “tried to get out of the way” to let the actresses engage with the characters.

Danielle Spilchen, who plays Procne, enjoyed working under Brenna’s process, finding that it was “all about exploration of scenes, finding [the character] organically in yourself.” While it was difficult to imbue these mythical Greek characters with a modern sense of realism, Spilchen said that Wertenbaker’s script made the job easier.

Nightingale utilizes many stylistic elements of Greek theatre with a twist of modernity. The classical Greek chorus is present, but rather than being dull, monotone spectators, they have their own layers of complexity and, in Brenna’s words, “a political axe to grind.” There is a play-withina-play, which affords the opportunity

to play with more rigid classical acting and mask-work, which then notably contrasts with the greater psychological dimension of the larger play.

Brenna acknowledges the challenge for the actors of performing on the sparse classical stage, relying on their voices and bodies to communicate. But this also allows the freedom to explore different styles of performance, incorporating fight choreography and dance. A gymnast even came in to coach the actors on a particularly acrobatic scene.

Amid the grand performance, there is a distinct political message that seems eerily prescient of our present day society. Brenna described the message as “the importance of speaking truth to power.” For Pancyr, Philomele stands for the silenced minority — which is, of course, a subject of increasing attention these days.

Spilchen said that when the audience comes to attend the play, she expects them “to laugh, to become uncomfortable, and to think.”

Ultimately, the play is about “what happens when someone is silenced.

Are they really silenced or do they have to work that much harder to be heard?”

The Love of the Nightingale plays March 21-31 at 8 p.m. at the John Mitchell Building (except Sunday).

“Thank you, it was delicious.”

This line succinctly captures the essence of the play in which it appears, the recent stage adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “proto-feminist” classic The Edible Woman. Canadian playwright Dave Carley’s script works as a satire of marriage, gender roles and relationships in general, and while it does not push the politics of these issues to their full extent, the play’s many facets offer plenty of enjoyment.

Live Five’s latest show takes a look at the fast-paced and restrictive world of 1965. In a nameless urban centre, the main character Marian begins to feel her life slip away. She takes central focus as a reasonably solid fixture amid a world of spiralling insanity. She has her world shift on her when her “confirmed bachelor” boyfriend Peter suddenly proposes to her, at the same time as she finds herself attracted to eccentric stranger Duncan. Meanwhile, her flatmate Ainsley has concocted a plan to get pregnant by posing as a coy virgin and seducing lothario Len. The play presents a mixture of flavours. The bland, starchy textures of hopeless domesticity balance out the arresting spice of illicit sexuality.

More than anything it’s bittersweet.

The sweetness comes from the great chemistry of the cast and the warm comedic touches throughout, while the bitterness comes from the way Marian loses her grip on life.

Rather than taking a starkly naturalistic take on the 1960s, The Edible Woman plays more to the stylized side. Part of the play comes in narrative form, with Marian breaking away to comment on herself in the third person. Saskatoon theatre veteran Josh Beaudry’s direction plays gingerly with the relation between Marian’s mind and her outside world, never quite answering the question of how the insanity of one feeds into the insanity of the other.

The set design, by current University of Saskatchewan design student Jenna Maren, is simple and fluid. As Marian sluggishly hauls furniture on and off stage, far from breaking character, it emphasises the drudgery of her existence. Maren works within the technical limitations of the Refinery by having a few set pieces constantly moving on and off, undergoing subtle personality changes overtop a banal urban landscape. The only problem is that the one permanent fixture of the set is a shelf upstage centre that does not

interact with characters directly but continually draws attention.

The cast is entirely composed of U of S drama department alumni.

Lauren Holfeuer commands the stage as Marian. She is required to play the grounded and logical character among the other eccentric personalities onstage, but also to dissociate from herself. She begins to lose her own freedom of choice and begins to empathize with food to the point where she can’t eat, and Holfeuer plays this mental break with subtle propriety, not losing her force of personality.

The supporting cast works together to add a variety of comedic touches. Josh Ramsden plays the young “man’s man” fiancé Peter: work-centred, self-involved, and emotionally detached. He deftly balances the roles of the smooth professional and emotionally immature man-child, as well as putting forth some very bold physical comedy.

Cassidy Thompson has tremendous stage presence as Ainsley’s typical blunt, man-eating self, and particularly clever comedic timing when she’s playing chaste. Grahame Kent uses his insidious charm to play Len, the predatory urbane sophisticate, while he also has a talent for flying into rages. Kristen Holfeuer plays three supporting roles: she has a hilarious, almost slapstick, turn as desperate-for-love “office virgin” Lucy, but her shrieking “Wicked Witch of the West” landlady and drag performance as college stoner Trevor grate on the viewer very quickly.

Finally, there is Chris Hapke, in a lighthearted departure from his role in East of Berlin, who plays nice guy Duncan with some very odd habits.

He has excellent chemistry with Holfeuer in their unconventional affair, and he charms the audience with his handsome, slightly insane but still strangely disarming persona.

Even though The Edible Woman takes a view of relationships as either being normal and suffocating or unusual to the point where one is not sure if they are relationships at all, its pervasive humour prevents it from being a pessimistic play. It could be more pointed in its satire of gender roles, but it ultimately doesn’t need to be. The ingredients work together to form something that is satisfying and leaves you with a good taste in your mouth.

The Edible Woman plays at the Refinery (609 Dufferin Ave.) March 22-25, at 8 p.m. Tickets available at the Refinery box office.

There are only two issues of the Sheaf left this year so be sure to contribute before it’s too late. arts@thesheaf.com

14• arts

thesheaf.com/arts • the Sheaf • March 22, 2012

We Need to Talk About Kevin is tedious

Annual USSU film festival returns

Psychological horror drama with Tilda Swinton overrated

COLIN GIBBINGS

These two put a lot of work into developing a convincing family scowl.

AREN BERGSTROM Arts Editor

Sometimes directors and actors work at cross purposes, causing a film to be disjointed and aimless, regardless of a clever scene here or a good performance there. Unfortunately, such cross purposes plague We Need to Talk About Kevin and are likely responsible for much of its failure as a film.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a celebrated psychological horror drama that follows Eva Khatachadourian, a reluctant mother, as she deals with her demon-seed son Kevin and the aftermath of his horrific actions at school.

The film has no fixed timeline and jumps around to moments before and after Kevin’s crimes with no discernible pattern. The sequencing of events merely reflects Eva’s fragile mental state. She is as much consumed by the horrors of Kevin’s childhood and her failure as a mother in the past as she is by the aftermath of his crimes she deals with in the

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Tilda Swinton, the pale, androgynous actress known for her roles in The Chronicles of Narnia and Michael Clayton, plays Eva. Swinton is a fascinating actress; she carries this film and gives an impressive performance despite its failings. This is because We Need to Talk About Kevin is most interesting in its exploration of Eva’s depression and hatred for her child, Kevin.

Eva never wanted to have a child and from the early moments when baby Kevin refuses to stop crying, we realize she hates the kid. In one hilarious scene, Eva is out with Kevin in his stroller and takes a break beside a jackhammer in the streets of New York City, basking in the machine’s loud noise as it drowns out her child’s wails. The scene is extremely honest, but little touches like this are few and far between and can’t save the film from its glaring tonal mistakes.

One major error is that director Lynne Ramsay seems to think this is a horror film.

She makes the film impressionistic and fills it with stylistic flourishes. It’s as if she intends to pummel the audience into terror through exaggeration and the relentlessly depressing tone of everything occurring onscreen.

While Tilda Swinton plays the character as though she’s in a psychological drama about a mother dealing with the devastating consequences of her son’s horrific actions, Ramsay does the subject matter an injustice and mistakenly gives it a horror genre treatment. Swinton mines a fascinating situation and explores the question of whether parents have any responsibility in the actions of their children. Unfortunately, Ramsay doesn’t seem at all interested in actually exploring this question. She’s too interested in her stylistic touches.

For example, everything in the film is splattered with red — red blood, red sandwich jelly, red paint, red tomatoes, red lamps, red chairs, red cans in a grocery store.

Everywhere Eva goes, she is surrounded by red. This is meant as a way to skewer the perception of the events; we are supposed to be seeing everything as Eva sees it, and because she is fixated on the blood her son spilled, everything gets a red tinge. However, instead of its desired effect, the oversaturation

supplied

of red just becomes a running gag. Ramsay intended horror and instead produced camp.

In another scene, Eva is terrorized by children in Halloween costumes on her way home from work, and all the while Buddy Holly’s “Everyday” plays on the car radio.

This is meant to be terrifying but is instead laughable. In almost every scene involving other people, the townsfolk just stare at Eva as though they are characters out of Village of the Damned. There’s nothing wrong with these tropes in genre movies, but not in this context.

In essence, Ramsay is playing camp horror seriously and the result is a film that is repetitive and preposterous.

Perhaps the film’s biggest sin is that Kevin is a B-movie villain. Instead of a complex portrait of a sociopathic child, he is merely a demon seed. He is evil from the moment he is born and no action of his makes us question that designation. This would be fine for a genre film, but for something exploring such challenging subject matter, it is reductive and a little offensive, as if it were explaining away Columbine by saying the killers were merely “bad seeds.”

Exploring whether Eva is at all responsible for Kevin’s development becomes a lost cause. There was never any chance for Eva to teach Kevin to be good since he’s pure evil from the get-go, and her obsessing over her own responsibility is fruitless.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a film that had potential, but the dissonance between the subject matter and the execution leads to a disastrous outcome. There is nothing wrong with making a film exploring an absolutely evil individual, but don’t use that individual to explain away complex and challenging subject matter that is rooted in real life. The evil acts that occur in real life can never be so easily explained away by the conventions of the horror movie genre.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is currently playing at the Roxy Theatre.

The USSU Film Festival is back for its 11th year and organizers couldn’t be more excited to see what short films students have produced.

The festival was created by Louis’ staff as a way to showcase the talents of young filmmakers on campus. Organizer and Louis’ manager Dan Smolinski describes the event as a way for students to “show their films in a group setting and drink some beers at the same time.” The event continues to grow successfully each year.

The attitude and tone of the experience is causal and fun — stress free. Contenders submit films between 30 seconds and five minutes long to the USSU office. The films have a discrimination policy that keeps them safe and free of anything too controversial. They range from comical to artsy and intense. What will draw the admiration of the crowd, however, is anyone’s guess.

“The first year I took park in the festival, we had shown our film at a comedy show and it received a standing ovation. It didn't get one vote at the film fest,” said Smolinski of his early involvement with the festival before becoming organizer. “I thought that was hilarious.”

Whereas winners were chosen by popularity in previous years, this year’s festival will feature a group of judges to determine what films will receive awards. The use of impartial judges is a response to complaints last year that the show was a “popularity contest.”

One of the judges is Rawlco Radio’s creative director and radio personality Craig Silliphant, who also writes for Planet S magazine.

“I think a USSU Film Festival is a stellar idea,” Silliphant said. “I've always been a film nerd, but there wasn't a lot of opportunity in Saskatoon during my years at the U of S to partake in something like this.”

Students today, of course, have access to more resources than Silliphant likely had in his salad days.

“The rise of technology has put the power of film into the hands of student auteurs, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to offer,” he said.

Silliphant also offered a few words of advice for perspective filmmakers: “Everything starts with story. It doesn't matter how avant-garde or straightahead a film is — if there's not a strong story, you don't have a movie.”

As for why this little festival is worth supporting, Smolinski says that simply, “the festival is fun, first and foremost, but it’s also amazing to see people interested in the art form and what they come up with.”

Prizes include:

1 2 3

st place

Panasonic Blu-ray home theatre system $500

nd place

Panasonic HD Camcorder $400

rd place

Panasonic SD Camcorder $300

The 11th Annual USSU Independent Film Festival takes place 7:30 p.m. on March 26 at Louis’.

arts

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com/arts

•15

Plants and Animals embark on exhaustive tour Montreal group tours on the back of their new album The End of That MATTHEW STEFANSON Production Manager As much as any other job, music can be a grind. With the hectic schedules that most independent bands set for themselves, making a living at it can really take its toll.

Matthew Woodward, the drummer for Montreal’s Plants and Animals, sounds like he’s been touring for months.

“We just played South By Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, which was a complete gong show,” said Woodward on the phone from Victoria, B.C. The band — composed of Woodward, guitarist/bassist/jack of all trades Nic Basque and lead vocalist Warren Spicer — just performed a hectic five shows in three days at SXSW. Their time at the festival didn’t allow the band to slow down, said Woodward.

“There’s a show everywhere, there’s a bar everywhere in Austin, there’s a parking lot everywhere in Austin, and anywhere there’s an open space people set up a stage.

It’s a zoo. It’s a zoo of music.”

Their tour began only weeks ago, shortly after the release of their new LP The End of That, but with over 30 dates still to come they have no rest in sight. Of course, this is nothing new for a group that has been playing and touring since 2005.

“After an album release, you hit the road pretty hard,” said Woodward. “That’s a busy time and then it tends to gently peter out over a while and then you record and put out another album. At the very simplest, that’s the way album cycles work for us.”

Though The End of That was just released, Woodward says the songs may find new lives over the course of the tour. “We spent a lot of time rehearsing before this tour in Montreal, but we do end up developing things on the road.

There’s no better place than in front of an audience for finding out what’s working and what’s not.”

The album began to take form last winter in Montreal. The group recorded in a local studio, laying down basic groundwork for what would eventually become The End of That. After a period of practicing, recording and tweaking what Woodward describes as being “almost like working every day,” the band packed up and headed to France.

There, in a small community outside Paris, the band returned to a studio called La Frette where they had recorded years before.

“It’s a world-class studio that also happens to be in a beautiful house that you sleep in, eat in and smell the breeze in,” explained Woodward.

The album itself is an evolution for Plants and Animals. The band tried to achieve a continuity on this record that was lacking from their previous two LPs. “The tones are really consistent from song to song and through the album,” said Woodward. “Nic’s guitar especially, he’s got this certain sound that sort of threads the whole thing together.”

Even though the album contains that continuity, Woodward resists attempts to classify The End of That under one specific musical genre or time period. “Some songs are dry and kind of R&B-ish, and that has a ’70s feel, and there are other ones that we recorded in the big living room upstairs that have more of a grandiose feel.”

When compared to their previous albums, The End of That definitely has a unique sound. The group’s effort to craft an album that sounds like the same collection of music from start to finish is evident, but the group’s focus remains on crafting great music regardless of what comparisons they might draw.

“This one, maybe in its simplicity brings ’70s references to people’s minds, but we tried to still keep it contemporary,” Woodward explained. “We’re not trying to be in an era that we’re not.”

Looking to the future, Woodward

Guitarist Nic Basque power steps his way through a set. says the band has found a comfortable sound with this album, but that they’re not done working.

“I hope we don’t get too conservative because it’s a lot more interesting to keep changing than to recreate over and over again.”

Now that the album is out, the group is focusing entirely on the tour. Until the end of April they’ll

Misogyny in video gaming Sexist apologists abound in the community THILINA BANDARA For as long as graphics in video games have been realistic, people have criticized video game developers for the vulgar or crass depiction of women. Comically hyper-sexualized female characters are usually written off as marketing tools to pander to younger audiences, and because (so the argument goes) nobody is really hurt in the process, it is often ignored.

Misogyny in gaming is often argued on the basis of pure aesthetics.

But the issue of misogyny in gaming is not just predicated on character design anymore; it has grown into something more systemic that frightens me as a gamer. It took a blatant act of laser-guided abuse to understand how many layers there are to sexual harassment in gaming.

As part of their promotion for Street Fighter X Tekken, prolific game

developer and publisher Capcom funded a reality show called "CrossAssault" where competitive Street Fighter and Tekken players compete for $25,000. It only took one episode of the show for a female competitor, Miranda "Super Yan" Pakozdi to be inundated with lewd sexual comments from the live-chat viewers, fellow competitors and even from her own coach, Aris Bakhtanians, a well-known champion of the fighting game community. She went on to forfeit the match and lost her chance at advancing.

The video is painful to watch as she gets verbally harassed, and even smelled, by Bakhtanians.

After she tweeted about her discomfort, Bakhtanians’ justification for his actions made heads spin all over the Internet. When Justin Rae, Twitch.tv’s Community Manager, asked him on a later episode, “Can I get my Street Fighter without the

sexual harassment?” He replied, “You can't. You can't because they're one and the same thing. This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of the culture. If you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community.... It doesn’t make sense to have that attitude. These things have been established for years."

The outlet that reported on this first, Giant Bomb, got its share of blowback from the community, criticized as being one-sided and unfair with their reporting. Many commentators argued that it was Bakhtanians just being Bakhtanians, and trash-talking really is part of the competition.

16

Gaming cont. on

be driving to a different town every day, playing a different bar almost every night, and Woodward says that despite their packed schedule they look forward to returning to Saskatoon.

“I couldn’t imagine driving across the prairies without stopping in and playing at Amigos. The crowds there are always really

laviddichterman/Flickr

good.” Woodward paused to let out an extended yawn. “Rowdy,” he concluded.

Plants and Animals play Amigos Cantina on March 29.

16• arts

thesheaf.com/arts • the Sheaf • March 22, 2012

Gaming under the radar: Dear Esther A voyage in a paper boat without a bottom TORIEN CAFFERATA

“Dear Esther. The morning after I was washed ashore, salt in my ears, sand in my mouth and the waves always at my ankles, I felt as though everything had conspired to this one last shipwreck. I remembered nothing but water, stones in my belly and my shoes threatening to drag me under to where only the most listless of creatures swim.”

Do you remember what happened to Esther, Donnelly, Paul and Jakobson on the road to Damascus? Because I sure don't, and I've finished the game. The real question is, have I failed a puzzle or have I simply “played” a digital poem? Dear Esther poses these questions and more while, in a smooth English accent, sweetly declining to answer any of them.

You begin at the shore of what you later learn to be an island of the Hebrides, Scotland, and a narrator introduces you to an abandoned lighthouse with the above quotation. Your perspective is first-person and presumably you are either the narrator or following in his footsteps as you wander the dreary, desolate, serene world while he reads letters written to someone named Esther.

With no apparent objective, you chart your way around the island listlessly, hearing only the spacious, ambient piano score and the occasional foreboding words of the narrator who seems to recount the story of a tragic car accident featuring Esther and the other three characters mentioned earlier.

Mind you, the narrator does this through abstract, poetic fragments weaving in more metaphors and Biblical allegory than anyone could possibly make sense of. However, considering some of these story fragments generate randomly and there are a few slightly different paths you can take to the ending, the game is clearly intended for multiple playthroughs — especially as it clocks in at a mere two hours.

And just how do you play it exactly? It sounds like an inane question, but so far the description seems like something much closer to a film than a game. Is it even a game?

Much like your journey in the game, the production of Dear Esther had simple, skeletal beginnings. It was originally created as a free PC mod of Half-Life 2 by developer thechineseroom in 2008, which was just a research project at the University of Portsmouth then.

The mod reached cult status and after winning Best World/Story at the IndieCade Independent Game awards in 2009,

Dear Esther is all about the poetry, the visuals and the gloomy nature of this island of the Hebrides, Scotland. thechineseroom began re-developing Dear Esther as its own full-fledged PC game, with an extended story and a complete overhaul of the visuals and level design, making it less confusing for players to find their way around. And here I was about to complain about getting lost too many times.

With enough community support, the remake was released on Feb. 14 and since then has been gaining immense critical acclaim in addition to winning the Excellence in Visual Arts Award at the Independent Games Festival. Now it certainly sounds like a game doesn’t it?

What makes it feel less like a game is when you actually play it. Yes, you can move and look in all directions as in any first-person shooter, however you cannot jump, crouch or interact with any object at any time in the game. On a functional level, this can be tiresome as I often found myself stuck on rocks and forced to spend much of my time re-tracing my steps.

Even when you venture into a dark cabin, your flashlight turns on by itself. The only tool at your disposal is a slight zoom via mouse click — as if your character is squinting at some minute detail in your surroundings. As you explore the island, you stumble upon all sorts of clues to the story: broken car parts, photos, Bible

verses in luminescent paint on the walls and underwater hallucination scenes. And a few ghosts. Did I mention this game was surrealist?

It often feels less like playing a game and more like reliving a memory. True, it is still an interactive environment insofar as your movement through the space cues music and narration, and your capacity for observation determines how well you can unravel the cryptic story, but despite its lack of clear direction, the game is still very linear.

And much like a memory, the environment will occasionally give you slightly different information than the last time you played it, but the story is largely the same and you end up in the same place. The world, like the tragic event you are trying to unfold, is static and unchangeable but full of enticing secrets.

All you can do hike through the desolate past and observe.

You may even find yourself taking screenshots of clues to piece together later while you attempt to reminisce with the narrator who pulls you through his experience, his identity oscillating between every character as he reads the letters, becoming increasingly distraught and ambiguous, the music becoming heavier, more orchestral and emotive. This is no puzzle game. This is literature; the narrator is

Gaming

15

cont. from

It takes only five minutes on Xbox Live and three comments on any video game-related YouTube video featuring a woman to realize that this kind of sexist rhetoric is everywhere gaming communities are. While many in the fighting game community are upset for being singled out, it is disgusting that this behaviour exists at all and that there is any sort of defence of this kind of conduct, excusing it as some sort of tradition.

Bakhtanians and the other guilty competitors have since apologized, and gamers have moved on, but as long as the industry grows to include more than just adolescent males, more of this insular fight club mentality will come to the forefront. Gamers know these attitudes are everywhere. Wait until everyone else does.

Is a public shaming good for the industry?

Generally, no. Nobody wants to be represented by the loudest, craziest members of their community. But it might take just that for

Supplied

the author, you are the reader and both of you are the protagonist.

And if games can be called digital literature, this title would be literary fiction. How on Earth then does it keep you entertained? I will admit the game requires patience, but I was surprised to find how engaged I was simply walking around with no pressure from external goals or judgements of my performance — I likely have the natural beauty and enigmatic artifacts of the island itself to thank for that.

As you can tell, you need to be in the right mood for this. Though it’s only two hours for a single playthrough, this game is not for someone looking for a flashy physics puzzle or bubble-gum shooter, but if you’re having trouble deciding between your English homework and playing a video game, try curling up with Dear Esther. There are no points, no winning or losing, and no rush; just eerie beauty and mystery. And when you’re finished, just be sure to ask yourself: What do you remember?

Dear Esther is currently available for Windows on Steam.

the 20-somethings who still use half-baked apologies to finally grow up and realize it needs to stop.

One does not have to look far for first-hand accounts of sexism, racism and homophobia in the gaming community. For years, feminist gamers and even peer-reviewed literature have expounded the types of discrimination in gaming but nobody really seems to care. When it is actually done in front of a camera and then blatantly brushed aside as “boys being boys,” that takes a special kind of entitlement.

To those who subscribe to Bakhtanians’ thoughts on the fighting game community tradition, it’s really this simple: sexual harassment is not a tradition worth conserving.

I hope gamers, in all communities, realize that feeling entitled to malicious trash-talk is inherently repugnant and come to the conclusion that competition only gets this ferocious when you are not playing a game for fun anymore.

And we are at an unfortunate point where as long as abusive heckling is condoned, for some, games will never be fun.

Comics

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com

•17

xkcd.org

whiteninjacomics.com

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18• Crossword

thesheaf.com/crossword • the Sheaf • March 22, 2012

Across

1- And so on 4- Falafel sauce 10- Annoyance 14- At a great distance 15- Humbles 16- Architectural pier 17- Law enforcement agency 18- Divided into four parts 20- “Slippery” tree 21- Goya’s “The Duchess of _ “ 22- Slow growth 23- Actor Romero 25- Author of fables 28- Vane dir.

29- New Mexico art colony 30- Bay 31- Breezed through 32- Absolute 35- Baseball stat 36- Howe’er 37- Pertaining to a congress

Down

44- Immense 45- Roman god of the underworld 46- Primordial giant in Norse myth 48- Classified items 49- Holder 50- Appliance brand 51- Film composer Stevens 53- Career golfers 55- Court call 56- Incapable 59- Moo goo _ pan 60- Arthur Ashe’s alma mater 61- Think 62- From _ Z 63- Bump into 64- Living room 65- Adult males

1- Result 2- Picture 3- Incarnadine 4- Golden Horde member 5- Biblical brother 6- Ribbon about the crown of a hat 7- Sharon, e.g.

8- PBS benefactor 9- Belief system 10- Constituent 11- Proclaim 12- Rendered senseless 13- Sampled 19- Uncommon sense 24- Climb 26- A collection of articles 27- Inflammation of the ear 30- Lined up 31- Assumed name 33- Assn.

34- Cry of discovery

37- Rhythmic flow of sounds 38- Small bone 39- Directional ending 40- King’s staff 41- Fantastic 42- Dental filling 43- Striped 44- Brand of diazepam 47- Allotted amount 49- Resistance unit 50- Fall bloomer 52- Exactly 54- Aware of 57- Lulu 58- Writer LeShan

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thesheaf.com

29 $ave big

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Climb a tree and throw your poop at passers-by!

Puzzle provided by BestCrosswords.com. Used with permission. For a daily electronic crossword, go to thesheaf.com/crossword.

Misc

March 22, 2012 • the sheaf • thesheaf.com

CAMPUS CHAT

CANDIDATES’ EDITION

“Cinema.”

Ruvimbo Kanyembo

•19

WHAT SORT OF BUSINESS WOULD YOU LIKE TO BRING TO CAMPUS?

“A farmer’s market type of deal.”

Alex Werenka

“Quiznos because it’s my absolute favourite restaurant.”

Steven Heidel

“Bouncy castle.”

“Booster Juice.”

“Grocery store.”

Trevor Paschke

David Konkin

Marylou Mintram

“Liquor store.”

Jenna Moellenbeck

“Shuttle service after buses stop running.”

Jared Brown

20•

thesheaf.com/advertise • the Sheaf • March 22, 2012