The Ubyssey Magazine - February 2017

SINCE 1918

FEBRUARY 2017

JEW-ISH P.26 ACCESSIBILITY AT UBC P.32 BLASTING BIAS P.36 FACULTY DIVERSITY: SLOW BUT STEADY P.40

PERSONAL ESSAYS P.08 RECIPES FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD P.18

DIVERSITY

A Sound Experience Dianne Reeves – FEB 22 Noche Flamenca’s Antigona – MAR 12 Anda Union – MAR 26 Max Raabe and Palast Orchester – APR 9

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Contents

008 PERSONAL ESSAYS

010 Farsi at home by Tina Madani Kia 011 How I learned Tagalog by Rachel Ong 012 Twinkie by Helen Zhou 014 Curfew, cricket and Canada Day by Sana Fatima 015 Washed out by Sandeep Middar 016 Ode to the 99 by Alexis Wolfe

018 RECIPES

019 Dadang’s fried chicken by Rachel Ong 020 Gobi-aloo by Maham Kamal Khanum 021 Alfajores by Rocio Hollman 022 Dessert perogies by Tetiana Kosntantynivska

023 POEMS

024 Don’t talk to me about the weather by Annika Steiro 025 Cosmopolis by Camille Brown

026 029 Jew-ish by Koby Michaels

How to call someone out by Jack Hauen

030 030 The value of “PC language� by Michelle Kim

030 Where to get help on campus by Miguel Santa Maria

032 036 038 One in twenty by Marissa Birnie

Diversity in research

by Tushita Bagga

Immigrations by Koby Michaels

040

Faculty diversity at UBC: Slow but steady

by Moira Wyton, Hana Golightly and Julia Burnham

EDITORS’ elcome to the first edition of The Ubyssey’s magazine!

We spent so much time editing this thing that we forgot to come up with a snappy name for it. Maybe next time.

There are too many stories on this campus — way more than we can cover.

The girl struggling to connect to her heritage, while it’s all her classmates can see; the guy who can’t bear the thought of being seen as “too brown”; the girl on the bus who can’t sit down because Johnny Manspread’s taking up three seats. For our first issue, we settled on the theme of diversity because all these stories are stories worth telling.

As The Ubyssey’s coordinating editor and noted straight white dude, this was my time to step aside and let those storytellers shine. I speak for the editorial board when I say we’ve enjoyed reading every piece immensely, and though we didn’t have room to print every submission we received, rest assured yours has impacted us, challenged us

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and made us think. To all who submitted: thank you for your courage, your passion and your wisdom. The world’s a better place with you in it.

One final and important note: we couldn’t have done this without the monumental contributions of our talented staff and volunteers. Every step of this project, from brainstorming pitches to proofing the final product, was touched by the hands of Ubyssey writers, reporters, photographers, illustrators, poets, designers, developers and all the other creative types we can only pay in sushi and beer. You know who you are. We love you so much, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Much love, Your 2016/17 Ubyssey editors Jack Hauen, Aiken Lao, Koby Michaels, Miguel Santa Maria, Sruthi Tadepalli, Samantha McCabe, Samuel Du Bois, Joshua Medicoff, Olamide Olaniyan, Bailey Ramsay and Kate Colenbrander

NOTE

E

Editorial Jack Hauen

COORDINATING EDITOR

Aiken Lao

DESIGN EDITOR

Sruthi Tadepalli & Samantha McCabe NEWS EDITORS

Samuel Du Bois CULTURE EDITOR

Olamide Olaniyan SPORTS & REC EDITOR

Staff Natalie Morris, Matt Langmuir, Bill Situ, Gabey Lucas, Julia Burnham, Sophie Sutcliffe, Rachel Ong, Lucy Fox, Emma Hicks, Jeremy Johnson-Silvers, Diana Oproescu, Stephanie Wu, Emmanuel Villamejor, Moira Wyton, Maia Boakye, Patrick Gillin, Mischa Milne, Sebastian Mendo, Isabelle Commerford, Katharina Friege, Hana Golightly, Lauren Kearns, Oliver Zhang, Jerry Yin, Shelby Rogers, Tristan Wheeler, Arielle Supino, Mona Adibmoradi, Laura Palombi, Jonas Ordman, Eve O’Dea, Malcolm Wilkins, Samantha Searle

THANK YOU Kate Colenbrander VIDEO EDITOR

Bailey Ramsay

OPINION & BLOG EDITOR

Koby Michaels SCIENCE EDITOR

Joshua Medicoff PHOTO EDITOR

Leo Soh

OUR CAMPUS COORDINATOR

Miguel Santa Maria COPY EDITOR

Business Office

Ron Gorodetsky BUSINESS MANAGER

Peter Siemens WEB DEVELOPER

Olivia Law

OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR

Sebastian Miskovic PRESIDENT

Aine Coombs

OPERATIONS ASSISTANT

Staff 007

800

PERSO 008

ONAL Essays We asked students to submit personal essays, and the only requirement was that they had to relate to the theme of “diversity.� We received gold.

Photographs by Joshua Medicoff 009

HOW I LEARNED TAGALOG y parents speak Tagalog at home.

Tagalog is a Filipino language. It’s pronounced [tɐˈɡaːloɡ] like, “tah-ga-log” not “tag-a-long,” like I’ve heard it butchered so many times (all you Filipinos understand the struggle). My parents tend to speak English to my brother at home because he doesn’t really understand any Tagalog words. He probably never will.

“Kumain ka na ba?” (Have you eaten yet?) is something I hear at my house on a daily basis and his answer is always a blank expression. Then my parents repeat it in English and the conversation continues.

They’re not going to bother teaching him anymore, but it’s not his fault — he didn’t have the same experience as me growing up around a Tagalog-enriched environment.

This language is Tag-English, or “Taglish,” according to Wikipedia. This dialect is an intricate mixture of the two languages, accompanied by a heavy Filipino accent that would disappear magically when in conversation with any non-Filipino person. I was quick to notice this when I was younger and I found it amusing.

Here’s an example: • English: Have you finished your homework?

• Tagalog: Natapos mo na ba yung takdáng-aralín mo?

• Taglish: Finished na ba yung homework mo?

All languages have their own versions of this. I’ve heard my Cantonese friends converse with their parents in a similar way and my Japanese friends doing the same.

The only thing about this is that I sometimes refer to Tagalog being “my language,” when it’s really not. It’s my parents’ language. It’s the language of my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, but it isn’t by any means actually my language. I can’t speak Tagalog. I can say a quick “salamat” to someone at the mall or greet my relatives, but nothing more than that.

Taglish isn’t even my language either.

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Written by Rachel Ong

But the weird part is that I can understand everything.

This all started when I was super young — too young to remember, actually. My mom, my lola (grandma) and I would go down to Bellingham, Washington pretty frequently. Little day trips for shopping every Saturday at the outlet stores in Blaine with Van Heusen, Bass, Cost Cutter (yum, fried chicken), and my favourite diner that made a kick-ass grilled cheese sandwich and crinkle cut fries.

During the two-hour car ride, I would sit in the backseat of our 1994 Honda Accord and just listen. Not to the radio, not to CDs, but to the conversation — to the tsismis, or Tagalog for gossip.

I have no actual recollection of the conversations.

All I knew was that words and sounds I couldn’t understand were flying by me at a thousand words a minute. It was a little bit of everything — family, extended family, politics, TV shows, shopping. It was small talk taken to a whole other level as I just sat in the back and absorbed it over the years into my little toddler-sized brain.

One Saturday morning, I woke up, got in the Accord and realized I knew exactly what my lola was telling my mom. And what my mom was saying in reply. And back and forth, and back and forth — the understanding never left me.

I learned other things too, like some family history, recipes and tidbits about people I’ve never even met. I think it was an all-encompassing experience. I call this a unique time period because not only is it a form of inter-generational bonding, but also because it represents a snapshot in time that I can always reflect back on.

This family dynamic is hard to come by, and definitely only existed when I was a child. I like to think of it as a fond memory of my childhood and an interesting, funny way to retain a part of my cultural heritage that would have otherwise been lost. U

One Saturday morning, I woke up, got in the Accord and realized I knew exactly what my lola was telling my mom.

FARSI AT HOME Written by Tina Madani Kia try to constantly remind myself that I owe my parents everything. Every time I have to call customer service for my mom or translate a paragraph for my dad, I remind myself that I would not have any of the opportunities I have today were it not for them. Yet there’s something alienating about growing up in Canada as an impressionable child, expecting my parents to reflect the culture we’re in.

My family immigrated to Canada from Iran when I was six years old. As a small child, you really don’t notice much except yourself. You certainly don’t notice the magnitude of a huge decision such as moving across the world.

As they struggled to orient themselves in a new country, my own transition was not very difficult. Sure, it was annoying having to go to ESL while the rest of the class did things that were more fun. Sure, I was stuck with the only other Iranian girl in my class, who helped me talk to other kids but would also steal my snacks. But none of it really stacked up to my parents who had to learn a new language in their 40s, find a job, a house and rebuild a life at least resembling the one they had before.

I was envious of a lot of things growing up. My parents never signed me up for swimming lessons, or ballet, or any other extra-curricular activities that my peers seemed to be involved in.

My parents were too busy being immigrants and besides, there was no extra money for that.

We didn’t often have dinner together as a family — something I was used to seeing families in sitcoms do and something I very much wanted. To this day, my older sister still attempts to instill these traditions in us by insisting we get a Christmas tree, nagging my parents to have Thanksgiving dinner and trying to explain internet memes to them.

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I’ve made peace with the fact that there are some things I just can’t change. For example, there are two things my mother absolutely does not believe in paying money for: fast food and movies. Every single time I go to see a movie with friends, I have the same circular conversation with her. It goes something like: Her: “But you can just watch a movie on your laptop.”

Me: “It’s not the same thing — it’s the experience that’s important.”

Her: “So you’re paying $15 to have an experience.”

At some point it’s not even about culture or immigration but fundamental differences between parent and child.

It’s difficult coming to terms with the fact that there are elements to my person that my parents will never fully understand.

After all, they made me and now I’m supposed to figure things out on my own? As I grow older though, my love for them only deepens as I begin to recognize more and more the sacrifices they have made for me.

Despite all of this, I wouldn’t have wanted to be raised any other way. For everything that I missed or every aspect of Canadian society that my parents did not reflect, the gap was filled in some other way.

While I haven’t exactly embraced my traditional culture, being Iranian means just as much to me as being Canadian. I’m protective of it — no one can take that identity away from me. I recognize this as the pride my parents instilled in me ever since I was a child. Heck, my hand still stings from when my mom would whack me with a spoon if I spoke English to her instead of Farsi.

“Farsi at home,” she still reminds me. It’s one of the things we both agree on. U

Personal Essays 011

Three things that have been said to me regarding “what I am.”

“You act pretty white for a Chinese girl.”

I’ve gotten variations of this several times throughout my life and every time, I find myself at a loss for a response. One time I replied, “Thanks?” I mentally beat myself up later. Since when is being white a compliment?

What does “acting white” even mean?

“You’re like a Twinkie — yellow on the outside, white on the inside.”

I remember this being said to me in middle school, where half of my class was made up of Chinese kids. Other versions of this I’ve heard include Oreo, “black on the outside, white on the inside”; and coconut, “brown on the outside, white on the inside.”

In hindsight, not only do I resent being compared to a disgusting, cream-filled pastry, I also feel fantastically uncomfortable with being described as being “white on the inside.” As if I’m a white person trapped in the shell of a Chinese one. As if I’m innately white and supposed to be white.

“Are you sure you’re not adopted?”

Yes.

012 Personal Essays

TWINKIE Written by Helen Zhou Photograph by Emmanuel Etti ike many kids of immigrants, I have two names. My name in Chinese is 海伦 (Hǎi Lún), which if read aloud, sounds suspiciously like my English name, Helen. I’m not sure which one my mother decided on first. I also don’t know whether it was a convenient coincidence or a part of her master plan for me — that I should have the same name in the two languages that I would inevitably have to straddle, like she thought that having both names would be like having a passport to two different worlds.

In either case, I was cursed from the cradle to be kind of one thing, kind of another, but not quite one without the other.

The kind of double life that I lead as a child of an immigrant is strange. I’m 海

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伦 at home and Helen everywhere else. I switch from speaking English to (stuttering, broken) Cantonese at home. My diet consists strictly of rice and Chinese side dishes at home, and when I go out, I avoid Chinese food like the plague. It’s like when a superhero strips and changes costumes, but I can’t say that my own double life includes capes or supervillains.

It does, however, include some stupid questions, lots of soul searching and a dash of the muddy substance we call racism.

In 1994, my mother uprooted her comfy life as a school teacher in China and relocated to the foreign land of Canada with her husband and parents. She rebuilt her life out of nothing, as thousands of immigrants do when they leave behind their

homes in hopes of a better life for their kids. She worked two jobs, seven days a week, washing dishes at two different Chinese restaurants. She tried to learn English, but eventually gave up because she was exhausted by two full-time jobs and because her tongue doesn’t curl around the jagged syllables of English quite right. In a country where the winters are cold, not speaking the language dropped the temperature another 10 degrees.

When I told her what the doctors said, she rolled her eyes and said, “See? I told you. What a waste of time.”

I smiled. “Okay, okay. Let’s just go home.”

But I couldn’t get the image of my mother bleeding in the ambulance out of my head. She was not a weak woman. Seeing her in a state that was not her usual, energetic one terrified me. Parents are supposed to be invincible.

To Chinese people, I’m what they call a “CBC” — a Canadian-born Chinese. There’s a phrase for it in Chinese, usually accompanied with an undertone of patronization, mockery and disapproval.

Once, I met a family friend who started speaking Mandarin to me. My Cantonese is good enough that I can understand bits of Mandarin if it’s spoken slowly enough, but on this occasion, she spoke rapidly and in long sentences.

My uncle jumped to my rescue. “She’s a CBC,” he said in Mandarin. That was apparently an adequate explanation, as the family friend proceeded to repeat what she said, slowly and enunciating every word as if I were a child.

To the native Chinese, I’m a new breed. A mutant. Not Chinese enough.

My “world history” course in high school focused mainly on European history, with the exception of ancient Egypt. Asian history was never once mentioned.

I realized that whenever I read books, the characters were always automatically white in my mind, unless otherwise stated.

For some reason, my mind decided that white was the default.

Before high school, two of my friends decided they would be trading their Chinese-phonetic English names for “real” English names. Yu Chen became Elise. Mei Fan became Yvonne. They never told me why.

Yet in a room full of white people, I stick out like a sore thumb. I do not look white. I am not white.

As a woman of colour, I make 86 cents for every dollar that a white woman makes, according to Statistics Canada’s 2006 census.

As an East Asian woman, I navigate the dangerous waters of stereotypes that I’m supposed to be passive, exotic and delicate.

I see the media represent Asian females like me as the nerdy best friend, the tiger mom and the submissive girlfriend of the white hero.

When a room full of white people look at me, they see an ideal of what I should be, based on a definition they have readily constructed for me.

A few years ago, my mother was doored by a careless teenager as she biked home from work, and the paramedics called me.

She was lying in the ambulance by the time I arrived, head bleeding slightly and barely conscious. I held her hand and asked her how she felt.

“I’m fine,” she responded in a small voice. “Stupid drivers.”

On the way to the hospital, the paramedic asked me some general questions about her health and told me that the hospital may want to keep her overnight. When I relayed this to my mother, she looked up with as much energy as she could muster. “But I have to work tomorrow! I’m fine, let’s go home!”

I chose not to translate this to the paramedic.

At the hospital, the doctors whisked her through a series of tests and scans. The majority of the eight hours we spent there was in the waiting room, where she switched between holding a supplied ice pack to her head and cursing her bad luck. By the end of the night, the doctors concluded that she was fine and should just take painkillers.

Over the years, my Chinese name has been used less and less. My grandparents are the only ones who use it consistently now. My mother has picked up a little more English after working in a Canadian restaurant for 10 years and she now only calls me 海伦 once in a while.

I’m forgetting bits of Cantonese, which had been choppy to begin with. It will probably keep worsening as I spend the next four years away from my family.

I’m missing traditional Chinese celebrations while I’m 6,000 kilometres away. Worshiping the ancestors, burning incense and fake money as my grandmother mutters blessings under her breath. Eating mooncake and admiring the full moon. Making sticky rice for the beginning and end of summer.

The few ties I’ve had to my heritage are dissolving little by little, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to bring them back.

I am not a Twinkie.

I am not white. I have grown up in a Western society, immersed in Western culture, but that does not make me a white person. I will never be white. I have no desire to be white.

I may not be “Chinese enough.” I do not speak, read or write the language. I know very little about Chinese history.

But my family is Chinese. My ancestors are Chinese. I grew up being taught Chinese values. Therefore, I am Chinese. And being born in Canada, I’m Canadian.

But I am not a Twinkie. My identity is not packed neatly into a cellophane package, predetermined by who you think I am and who you think I’m not.

The first and only time I saw my mother cry was alarming.

After years of weathering, crashing waves and howling storms, she had never complained.

But when she cried, it was because I was growing up. 海伦 means “ship”, built strong and tenacious. I like to think that my mother chose this name in hopes that I too can weather the storms. U

Personal Essays 013

CURFEWS, CRICKET AND CANADA DAY Written by Sana Fatima

have often seen cultural diversity take on the form of stories about awkward school lunches or the struggle to understand social norms for a society that exists two continents away from you, but pops up every now and then when your great-uncle from your dad’s side calls in to check up on the family.

I have often seen cultural diversity portrayed through annual festivals, food trucks and that one girl at the lunch table that can’t have cake because she’s fasting for Ramadan.

Lately, I have seen cultural diversity — at least, cultural diversity that applies to me — being promoted through young rappers in music videos as they integrate puns about Dimple Kapadia into socially conscious lyricism.

Despite these various representations, I still find it quite difficult to summarize cultural differences and diversity without mentioning every single factor that contributes to them. Every time I think about diversity, the self-appointed social commentator, part-time conspiracy theorist and budding sociologist within me wants to critique the way that society practices and engages in cultural diversity.

In fact, in my first draft of this piece, I tried to relate diversity to a metaphor about how cultural clashes are like having two best friends that don’t always get along with each other.

Luckily for the world, I decided to remove that portion because I realized that my experiences don’t always align with that kind of description. I also realized that I can’t come up with metaphors to save my life, and that attempting them publicly will not end well in any scenario.

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014 Personal Essays

Cultural influences vary so much from person to person, so all I can really do is talk about my own experiences and how they’ve shaped my identity. I was born and raised in Canada to parents born and raised in Pakistan, so my childhood consisted of celebrating Canada Day once a year but watching Pakistani news channels every night. We watched cricket matches once in a while, but religiously watched Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. I ate waffles for breakfast, Biryani for lunch and pizza for dinner. If you couldn’t tell already, my childhood consisted less of fighting cultural differences and more of fighting off diabetes.

As I got older though, especially once I graduated high school — or made a Twitter account, whichever came first — I started noticing things in my life that always rerouted back to cultural differences. The way that I spoke, the way that I introduced myself, the differences in the way that I talked to men and women, elders and kids, friends and strangers. It was as if two conflicting sides of me were struggling to make it to the forefront. If someone asked me about my opinion on LGBTQ rights or the pro-choice movement, the liberal Canadian upbringing that I had received wanted me to pipe up and say something, but my Pakistani influences made me hesitate. I would find myself staring in awe at the people that looked like me and talked like me, but didn’t have to consciously compromise between their conflicting beliefs.

Out of all the things that compose my culturally diverse household, the part that affected me — and still does the most — is the way that different ideals and norms shape my beliefs. My culture is what shows me how to behave, what I should expect from relationships and what kinds of roles I should play in my life. Sometimes I wholeheartedly embrace these ideas and sometimes I just can’t bring myself to accept them.

For instance, while I highly admire the community and family-oriented customs of my Pakistani side, most of the arguments that I have with my parents revolve around my 10 p.m. curfew and the social treatment of different minorities in our society (which, although they fall on quite different ends of the spectrum, both get me super heated). Sometimes we see eye to eye, and sometimes the differences in our generations and cultures make me question everything that I’ve unquestioningly believed up to that point.

Cultural diversity is defined by differences and the essence of difference is that it helps you distinguish yourself from the rest. The more I get older, the more I realize the importance of distinguishing yourself and shaping your identity — whether it’s the countries that surround the hyphen in your nationality or the pronoun you want to be called. Your identity is how you define yourself to others.

I may look a little confused when someone asks me about my hobbies — which is primarily because I still can’t decide whether or not Netflix qualifies as a hobby — but understanding and appreciating both of my cultural influences is what allows me to share parts of my life with others in a more self-aware and self-loving way. U

WASHED OUT

hitewashed is a weird thing to be during a generation gap, especially when you’re from a small town. All my life, I’ve struggled with looking Indian but “feeling white” — as if skin colour had a direct correlation to personality. I don’t speak Punjabi, I’m not religious and I’m not all that involved in Indian culture, but my skin isn’t pale. I didn’t fit into any box and I never felt like I truly belonged to either group.

I grew up in Cloverdale, which is a part of Surrey. If you’re not from the Lower Mainland, that may not mean much to you, but Surrey certainly has a reputation. It has a large Indian population and there’s a generally negative stereotype associated with people there.

However, while Cloverdale is technically in Surrey, it was drastically different from the rest of the city when I was growing up — I always referred to it as the Calgary of BC. Case in point, we’re known almost exclusively for our annual rodeo. An actual rodeo.

With lassos, spurs and cowboys , the whole nine yards.

I was one of very few coloured people growing up both in school and extracurricular activities. I was referred to as an Oreo, a coconut, a white person trapped in a brown person’s body — the list goes on. Nobody was attempting to insult me, nor did I ever find it offensive. It was merely an observation and I embraced it because that’s honestly how I felt at the time. Your character is in part a reflection of your environment, so how could I not feel white if that’s all I’d ever been around?

The majority of my friends in high school were white — not because I sought them out because of their skin colour, but because we had a lot of things in common. I had hung out with a group of Indian girls in my school, but whenever I was with them, I didn’t feel any connection. We were simply different.

The idea of someone thinking that I was “too brown” was terrifying. I’d grown up with people constantly joking about kids from Surrey, disregarding the fact that we were basically from Surrey.

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Written by Sandeep Middar

I also didn’t want to be mislabeled. I thought I knew who I was and I didn’t want other people to think differently because of what they saw when they looked at me. Because of this, I would never introduce myself as being from Surrey for fear of assumptions about who I was. Instead, I would specify that I was from Cloverdale, or fib and say I was from the whiter, neighbouring city of Langley.

I wasn’t the only person who did this. I knew a couple of white friends who would always say they were from Surrey because they thought if they told people they were from Cloverdale, they’d be perceived as rednecks. The first time someone had told me that, I felt relieved. I wasn’t the only person who was ashamed of the box that someone would put me in.

And as horrible as it sounds, even white people felt the same. I think people forget that nobody wants their identity to be taken from them, regardless of whether they’re a minority or not.

Coming to UBC was eye-opening. It’s not that I hadn’t been around a diverse crowd before, but it’s a much different experience to be fully immersed in an environment with so many different types of people all at once. You come to realize that nobody really fits into their box. Even though your heritage and your environment are huge influences, they can’t define who you are. We all take pieces from around us and use them to build ourselves, and everybody ends up as a different mismatch of their surroundings. Different people take different things. I’m from an Indian background, but I don’t speak my mother language. I grew up going to a rodeo every year, but I hate country music.

People inherently see things from certain cultures and associate them with any person who confirms their visual bias. But everybody grows up in different circumstances and the outcomes of different people’s characters reflect that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s really no such thing as being whitewashed — there are only varied perceptions of what it means to be a person. U

Personal Essays 015

hen you enter the back doors, take the blue card out of your wallet and tap the card on the spot the sign indicates. that a couple of dollars will be deducted from your blue card and despite this transaction feeling abstract, it feels vaguely like you’re fulfilling your responsibility to something larger than yourself — you are keeping the machine going and keeping yourself accountable to it.

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the next part could go one of two ways — there is either a seat open for you, waiting to carry you from this side of the city to that side, or there isn’t. when there isn’t — when the memory of someone recalling a 99 experience and characterizing it with the image of sardines packed in a can lights up in your

brain — you will stand, containing yourself into the smallest amount of physical space possible, pretending this is totally okay with you. apart from a somewhat hollow, disaffected or perhaps slightly unsatisfied look on your face, give no indication that your body is pressed up against the bodies of four others whom you have no desire to look at or acknowledge and would likely press charges against had you experienced such an invasion of personal space anywhere outside of this exact context. where should you place your eyes? if you’re standing, it’s important to find a window — look out the window. you have seen the buildings on either side, in the order they occur, countless

ODE TO THE 99

Written by Alexis Wolfe

times, but for the purpose of disassociating from the complete absurdity that is your physical existence at the moment — and to make everyone around you feel at ease with your predicament and their own — just watch the names of stores pass by you again and again. go further — pretend this window opens you up to the most interesting set of images you’ve ever seen in order to avoid being tempted to look around you — to enter your current physical reality. when the bus stops and herds of passengers see the vehicle you’re inside, with strangers packed together, all somehow avoiding the acknowledgment of it, look toward them with disempowered concern. it’s mostly in the eyes — anything beyond the eyes is going too far. feel a wave of cognitive dissonance pass over you — you feel fortunate to be on the wagon. they can’t seem to fit, they’re left outside, waiting. you, feeling the limbs of strangers pressing against your own, breathing air that is heavy and imbued with qualities of smell and density that remind you of the worst parts of your species, you should experience a sense of gratitude — they are out there, moving freely in space with the ability to turn their heads without locking eyes with someone two feet from their face. yet they want to trade places but you don’t — you’re going somewhere and they’ve been shut out. when a woman sees 1.5 square feet available at the door of the bus — space intended to be kept open to not hinder the automatically operating door — you look over your shoulder as she calls out to detached crowds within to make room. “can you move down?” she calls, followed by an automatic voice ringing through the intercom: “please move to the rear of the bus, please move to the rear of the bus.” the door rings three times in varying pitches — the doors try to close, the sensor goes off and she waits for us to follow automated instructions so she can inch forward. “please move to the rear of the bus.” everyone is responsible and yet nobody is — we earned this spot, we poured hot coffee down our throats and forgot to put our contacts in, and now we’re here and she’s there. we don’t owe her anything. she gives up, the doors won’t close with her stepping on the sensor, so she steps down, doors close and we collectively lurch forward. don’t pay attention to them, her or the man who is sitting crosslegged in the back of the bus on the platform behind the seats. he is monologuing, he has a captive audience. what isn’t being said is that all parties are thankful for his disruption. our ears — depositories for his disjunctive modernized, personal odyssey involving prison, daily doses of laughing gas and five hour energy and sermons about the singular energy tying us together. but

make no note of any of this. you and those who surround you, with the exception of the girl sitting so close she failed to avoid engaging him, will treat the performance art at the back of the bus like its caught in a screen. imagine that there is a clear glass window between you and the performer and make little effort to be seen seeing or hearing the expression of something real at the back of the bus. but remain fully conscious of it — it’ll be the most interesting thing that happens to you this week. but don’t look his way. instead, take the act carried out on the screen behind you and transpose it into text in the screen closest to you. tweet your favourite parts, incarcerate the experience in language and toss it into the cyber-void. you’re allowed to share the absurdity, but be careful not to acknowledge it in real time. if at some point a seat near you opens up, take it without any regard for others who the seat may be more suitable for. they have heavy laptop bags, arthritis and are trying to study while standing, but you — you have to read wallerstein before your lecture, so take a seat. have there ever been so many people locked into a space producing so little sound? probably not. but this wont’t last. the 28-year-old libertarian in your fourth-year research methods class enters the back doors, sees you, asks why you have not replied to his messages and presumptively takes the seat that just opened next to you. you and him have now entered the realm of entertainment. he says things you cannot not respond to, he talks politics with a noncommittal and chaotic tone so despite it being 8 a.m., you can’t help but engage him. you and him now occupy the soundscape of a rectangular cell holding approximately 50 individuals. your conversation should probably try and stay within the bounds of what is deemed appropriate — considering the political climate and ungodly hour — but it doesn’t. talk about putin, talk about your qualms in academia and the rpg-style echo chamber you sometimes feel it may be. everyone knows now — maybe they don’t care, or maybe they care deeply and will doxx us both online in a similar way you did to the free man sitting cross-legged on laughing gas five minutes ago. whatever your predicament, the moment you enter the doors of the 99, you are on the stage. whether you fall into the supporting cast, lead role, a background silent role or a disembodied viewer, you’re caught in the panopticon until the very last stop. you’ll exit and light a cigarette to shake off the feeling only to board the mobile cacophony of absurd detachment in several hours — and then do it again the next day — rinse and repeat twice a day for several years or until you have nowhere to go. U

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A collection of dishes that hold special significance to the people who make them — because the quickest route home is through your stomach.

Photographs by Jack Hauen

DADANG’S FRIED CHICKEN Written by Rachel Ong

adang was the loyal and trusted cook, house companion, and domestic helper at mom's household when she was a kid,” said my dad.

She wasn’t related to my mom, but she was basically family. She lived at my mom’s house and was a pseudo-mother-aunt type figure. She was wonderful at cooking, and knew every single person’s favourite food.

Fried chicken, although not traditionally Filipino cuisine, was often associated as a favourite comfort food in the Philippines. This still applies to many families and households now, which is why a box of Church’s Chicken or a 12-piece bucket of KFC is always on the dinner table at a Filipino party. And no

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dinner is complete without a big bowl of steamed white rice.

“Dadang made fried chicken many times for me when I visited mom’s house when we were still dating,” my dad recalled. “I guess you can say that it was a signal that she approved of me. You know, that courtship stuff?”

My parents first started making this recipe when I was very young, and eventually taught me how to make it as well. I remember it being fried on the patio of our apartment several times a year, but not usually more than that. It was a special request kind of food, made for special occasions like birthdays, Easter lunch and Christmas time.

“The secret ingredient is… nothing,” said my dad. U

Ingredients

Chicken wings and drumettes, about 3 lbs 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 1/2 tablespoons salt 1 teaspoon pepper Canola, grape seed or coconut oil for frying

Preparation

1. Pat chicken wings dry.

2. Place salt, pepper and flour in a Ziploc bag, and mix thoroughly. Add in chicken pieces and dredge to coat by shaking bag. Do 2 to 3 batches.

3. Heat oil to 375 degrees F. Fry for about 12–15 minutes until crispy. Fry a few pieces at a time and ensure that all pieces are immersed in oil.

4. Drain on paper towels to remove excess oil.

5. Serve hot.

Optional: A dipping sauce made by mixing banana ketchup and Worcestershire sauce can be served alongside the chicken wings — just stir together to taste.

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GOBI-ALOO Written by Maham Kamal Khanum

he initial whiffs of Tim Horton’s are an exciting change when you move from Pakistan to Vancouver. But as winter kicks in, nostalgia of spicy, home-cooked food engulfs your mind on the way back from class. In such moments of longing, I seek my all-time favourite recipe: cauliflower-potato curry, also known as gobi-aloo. From Pakistan to UBC, this recipe means home and family to me. Its appetizing smell fills my kitchen almost every other week.

The lengthy list of flavours that give South Asian food its characteristic essence is not the most convenient to assemble when cooking between classes and assignments.

But with a few common ingredients, gobi-aloo provides a staple for any veggie-loving South Asian home, run by the motto of hearty, healthy lunches. Have it as is, or pair it with a steaming bowl of boiled rice, airy chapatti or crisp toast, and you’ll have a stomach full of goodness for the day. The best thing about it is that you can replace cauliflower with almost anything such as okra, squash or even peas, and it’ll be equally delicious. U

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Ingredients

1/2 cauliflower head (cut into small florets) 3–4 medium yellow potatoes (cut into chunks) 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 1/2 teaspoon red chili powder 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder 1/4 teaspoon salt (adjust to taste) 2 tablespoon oil (coconut, vegetable, canola or olive oil) 1/2 cup water

Preparation

1. Heat oil on medium heat in a wok or shallow saucepan, and fry cumin seeds until they crackle.

2. Add potatoes and cauliflower, then coat in cumin seeds. Sauté until vegetables are well-coated and beginning to fry.

3. Evenly sprinkle red chili powder, turmeric powder and salt. Continue to sauté until vegetables are coated in spices and turn yellow.

4. Fold in the vegetables in spices while adding splashes of water to form steam in the pot. Make sure there is just enough for vegetables to steam in. Be careful not to flood them.

5. Place the lid over the pan, leaving a small area uncovered for steam to release, then cook on low to medium heat for 15–20 minutes until potatoes are tender.

6. Taste a small potato or cauliflower floret to check if there is enough salt and spice. Add more if vegetables are bland.

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ALFAJORES Written by Rocio Hollman

I

was born down south in soccer-crazed, mate-drinking, Tango-dancing Argentina, but I have lived my whole life in Raincouver. Yet I feel every bit as Argentinean as I do

Canadian, partly due to the various Argentinean foods my family prepares. This recipe makes what we “albicelestes” call alfajores. They are quick and easy to cook, and make the perfect comfort food. Add extra dulce de leche if eating after a bad grade. U

Ingredients

300g corn starch 200g flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 150g sugar 3 egg yolks 1 tablespoon of cognac (or some other liquor) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 tablespoon of lemon zest Dulce de leche (or if you prefer, some sort of caramel/Nutella for the filling) Coconut shavings

Preparation

1. Sift the cornstarch with the flour and the baking powder.

2. In a separate bowl, beat the butter with the sugar until it is creamy. Add the egg yolks one by one, the cognac and the sifted ingredients from Step 1. Incorporate the vanilla extract and the lemon zest, then stir well. Join the ingredients to form the dough.

3. Sprinkle the tabletop and rolling pin with flour, then roll the dough until it’s 1/2 cm (0.2 inches) thick.

4. Cut the dough 4cm (1.6 inches) in diameter with a cookie cutter. Place the “tapitas” (cookies) onto a baking pan (the pan should be buttered and sprinkled with flour).

5. Cook in the oven at 180°C/350°F for 15 minutes. Let the tapitas cool and then join them with the dulce de leche.

Roll them in the coconut shavings.

6. Recipe makes 25 alfajores. Enjoy!

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DESSERT PEROGIES Written by Tetiana Konstantynivska

hen I was little, I couldn’t wait every year to spend a summer in a very small Ukrainian village located at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. All of my best childhood memories are about time spent in this village with my grandmother, who loved teaching me secret traditional Ukrainian recipes.

Varenyky — also known as perogies — quickly became my favourite dish and my love for them remains to this day. I loved cooking varenyky with cherries, as my grandmother had a huge cherry tree in her garden. I would wake up early in the morning to pick cherries from that tree and I would cook varenyky for breakfast.

Of course, I could never cook varenyky as well as my grandmother did. Even when I followed her recipe exactly, the taste just wasn’t the same. Once, I asked my granny about the secret of varenyky preparation.

I’ll never forget her words: “Sweetheart, I always add a pinch of love when cooking.” U

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Ingredients

4 1/2 cups of flour 2 teaspoon of salt 2 tablespoon of sour cream 2 eggs 1 egg yolk 1 cup of warm milk 2 tablespoon of sugar 400 grams of sour cherries (without stones)

Preparation

1. In a bowl, stir together flour, salt and sour cream. In a separate bowl, whisk together butter, eggs, egg yolk and milk. Stir ingredients into the flour until well-blended. Cover the bowl with a towel, and let stand for 30 minutes.

2. Pit cherries.

3. Separate the perogie dough into two balls. Roll out one piece at a time on a lightly floured surface until it is thin enough to work with, but not too thin so that it tears. Cut into circles using a cookie cutter, perogie cutter or a glass.

4. Brush a little water around the edges of the circles and spoon cherry filling into the centre. Sprinkle cherries with sugar. Fold the circles over into half-circles and press to seal the edges.

5. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Drop perogies in one at a time. They are done when they float to the top. Remove with a slotted spoon.

6. Serve perogies plain or with sour cream on the side.

7. Recipe makes enough for four people. Enjoy!

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Poetry Illustrations by Maia Boakye

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Don’t talk to me about the weather Written by Annika Steiro

Don’t talk to me about the weather: trivial, pointless, utterly disinteresting weather.

How disgustingly impersonal, how socially dead.

Instead Tell me what traumatized you as a child.

I’ve always hated moms that manage sports teams— stop telling me to stop eating all the oranges, Sandra.

Explain how you and your best friend became best friends.

My best friend and I were both hating on swimming, nine years later we teach it together because we’re hypocrites.

Let’s talk about how fucked up it is to be a woman.

Do your boobs look like udders without a bra too?

I haven’t taken my birth control in weeks.

I’ve given up.

Or ask me about the scar on my right index finger.

Maybe then you’d know why I don’t stand on swings, or really put myself out there as much anymore.

024 Poetry

Don’t talk to me about the weather.

Tell me the worst thing you’ve kept from your family.

In high school, I used to put apps on calculators for my friends to help them cheat.

I appreciate you accepting that as my answer to that question by the way.

We can talk about embarrassing moments. You can open up.

I have a picture of eight-year-old chubby me in a cropped eagle costume.

Don’t talk to me about the weather.

Tell me your favourite word.

Bookkeeping, because of the two o’s, k’s and e’s.

Explain an inside joke to me.

Penis related?

Thank God. You are incredibly interesting.

And if you talk to me about the weather, I will miss out on you.

Cosmopolis Written by Camille Brown

We walk through crowds thicker Than our skin, Molecules of all tones and textures, Ninety-nine point nine percent the same.

Our eccentricities mingled, Soaking in our drinks, Sprinkled in our plates of food, Tabled multitude under pub lighting.

The lull in our voices, Estranged ears bridging Paths across oceans and seas, Gifting new alphabets to our neighbours.

A crack in our eggshell heads, Gaping for all to peak through, Swirls of all colours, Where language is but faรงade.

Synchronized, Fingertips on touch screens A tap away from Budapest, Abu Dhabi or Brazzaville.

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Jew-ish Written by Koby Michaels Illustrations by Rohina Dass

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I

would not consider myself a religious person. Honestly, I don’t understand how anyone could think of me as religious. So when I ask friends for class notes because I’ve missed a lecture due to a religious holiday, I always get weird looks.

I’m Jewish (emphasis on the “ish”). I practice occasionally, follow some traditions, but mostly I don’t think about it. Growing up, this was especially true; causal Judaism was all around me. There was no reason to think about it or question it. Since arriving at UBC, I’ve spent more and more time thinking about religion. It’s not that I’ve had a religious epiphany or found God, but the diversity of religion and faith at UBC has forced me to be conscious of my faith, family history and traditions.

Mostly, I think about religion’s role in my life and the lives of students around me. What role does religion play on a 21st century university campus?

WEIRD LITTLE BOX

I grew up keeping kosher (mostly). My public high school in the suburbs of Boston had Jewish holidays off because such a large proportion of the town was Jewish. I had a bar mitzvah. I went to temple for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I celebrated all, but only, the major holidays.

A day or two after arriving at UBC, I bumped into two rabbis on campus. I had yet to realize I’d left my bubble in the terminal of Boston’s airport. Rabbi Chalom (pronounced sha-lom) Loeub helped me hang a mezuzah — a piece of parchment in a decorative box inscribed with verses from the Torah — on my door. I didn’t think anything of it.

The next day, I was studying with my door open and someone popped their head in to ask what the box on my door was. They seemed genuinely curious.

“Weird,” I thought. Everyone knows what a mezuzah is.

The same thing happened the next day, and the day after.

Sometimes it was friends coming over to hang out, other times it would be neighbours and other residents asking when I had my door open. On more than one occasion, I had very drunk people knock on my door in the middle of the night to ask about my “box.”

Over my first few months at school, I had experience after experience that was new to me. First I missed class for some holidays and asked for notes. None of my classmates knew what the holidays were. Then someone offered me some pork and I said no thanks, I don’t eat pork.

“You don’t like pork?”

“No,” I responded, “I don’t really eat it.” It took a little while to explain why.

All of these experiences were positive. Genuinely curious people would ask thoughtful and respectful questions about

my customs, traditions and beliefs. I’d answer them, appreciative of people taking the time to listen, and in return, I’d learn about their own religions and histories.

I never stopped to try and poke holes in the bubble that I lived in. I assumed everyone got Jewish holidays off from school and everyone knew what Hanukkah was about, what a mezuzah is and that it’s not a hat, it’s a kippa.

I didn’t pop my bubble, my bubble was popped for me.

STUDENT VS. RELIGION

“In this day and age, everyone is used to having things instantaneously. I feel like religion needs to catch up with that kind of framework,” said Rabbi Chalom, the Chabad rabbi on campus whom I often go to for services. “[Judaism] promotes hard work paying off. There is a saying in the mishna (a rabbinical text): ‘with painstaking effort comes great reward.’”

Rabbi Chalom (the Hebrew word for peace, hello and goodbye) also spoke of Judaism’s views on questioning as important on campus. “Asking questions in Judaism is the pinnacle of its existence. Without questions, who are we?”

This questioning is certainly something I’ve taken to heart — just ask my mom how annoying I was as a child. It’s that same questioning that led me to pursue a degree in science and is foundational to my work as a journalist. Being a student and being Jewish are synonymous to me.

Yahya Abdihadi, the president of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) on campus and a fellow third-year biology student, sees his faith’s role in his studies a little differently.

“The biggest thing for me is discipline and I think that’s something every student needs.

There are some days you don’t want to finish that assignment — you’d much rather sleep or you’d much rather go out,” said Abdihadi. Learning discipline from praying five times a day has helped him become a better student.

But in other ways, the role of religion in our lives and as students is very similar.

“We believe everything you do can become an act of worship if you do it for the right reasons. Our studies become an act of worship. Our enjoyment becomes an act of worship, given a) you’re doing it to please God and b) you’re doing it for the betterment of yourself and humanity,” said Abdihadi.

“From a Muslim’s perspective, Islam is ingrained in every activity we do throughout our day.”

Like myself, being of a certain faith and being a student (or human for that matter) aren’t separate.

WHAT’S THE POINT?

Not all of my experiences on campus have been positive, although I’ve been very fortunate to have experienced very

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the world, but at the same time, we can have a harmonious relationship,” said Abdihadi. “The biggest thing is not to divide and say this is a Muslim, this is a Jew, this is an atheist, but rather to understand the differences. The only way to do that is by taking the time to understand different religions and understand your fellow classmate’s viewpoint.”

EAT

So how do you build that respect and understanding?

In Judaism, we have an answer to that question. “Feeding people. The fastest way to a person’s heart is through their stomach,” said Rabbi Loeub. “Anything that’s centred around food offers a little anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, during my three years at UBC, there have been multiple reports of swastikas and other anti-Semitic symbols drawn or carved into campus building and properties. There have been multiple instances when Jewish friends or acquaintances have had to call the police because of real or perceived danger to themselves or their property because of their religion.

Other religious campus members have had similar experiences. A Muslim chaplain I talked to said that his family members had been told to “go home.” They are Canadian.

No one I talked to wanted to focus on these events, myself included. Discrimination, hatred and prejudice are definitely not the point of religion on a modern university campus. Religion is about the exact opposite.

“Even if the person is not pursuing a particular faith or religion ... I see that there is value to that person in being in an environment where there are others who may have a different outlook on life,” said Abdel Azim Zumrawi, a former Muslim chaplain at UBC and an adjunct professor in Forest Resources Management. “If anything, that person, living in that environment, that awareness will help them later in life.

University is just a reflection of society.”

Being exposed to new and different people, customs, traditions and viewpoints is a learning experience as much or more than any lecture, exam or project. “[Religion shows people] how to be a mensch,” — a person of integrity — “how to be respectful and cordial and understanding that there are people of different faiths and cultures and backgrounds, and not to be judgmental and be positive-thinking, not to judge a book by its cover,” said Rabbi Loeub.

“The best part of UBC is that we are inclusive. I might not see eye to eye with you 100 per cent on everything in

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good conversation.”

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is one of the most important holidays in Judaism. Growing up, I’d always attend services and then have a big meal with family and friends with all sorts of traditional foods — brisket, apples and honey, tzimmes, kugel. Living in Vancouver, away from family, it hadn’t felt like the holidays without family, friends and my mom’s food.

This year, I got the crazy idea in my head to cook all the food my mom made (for the first time) for my friends, roommates and Ubyssey coworkers. Most everyone who came had never celebrated Rosh Hashanah before. Being able to share my traditions, food, prayers and holidays with curious friends was one of the best moments of my time at UBC. Talking about our traditions and childhoods (and how delicious brisket is) allowed me to share my life with my friends and learn about their lives and cultures.

Writing this piece, it became even clearer to me that religion means something a little different to everyone.

But two things were constant in the conversations and ring true in my own head: religion adds a valuable voice to academic conversations — from politics to literature, to yes, even science — and religion teaches empathy, understanding and respect.

But most of all, and perhaps most simply, in the words of Zumrawi: “I think it’s what we make of it.”

Build that respect by spending time and building relationships with people of different faiths, backgrounds and believes. Want to learn about Judaism? Send me an email (kobymichaels@gmail.com) or come into the office (Nest 2208) and ask if I have time for a coffee. Let’s share a meal and a conversation. Let’s learn from each other and build mutual respect. U

HOW TO CALL SOMEONE OUT Written by Jack Hauen Photographs by Rachel Green

No matter your political affiliation, someone in your life is going to say some dumb shit at some point and you’re going to want to tell them. Here’s a quick guide on the best way to call someone out (or in).

Criticize the behaviour, not the person

“You’re a racist” doesn’t exactly make people willing to change. Avoid an immediate defensive reaction by structuring your statement around what they’re doing, not who they are. For instance, “Hey, what you just said was actually a little racist, and here’s why.” Generally, people are more receptive to criticism when they don’t feel attacked.

Be specific

Again, people are more willing to change when they know exactly what they did wrong. “You’re being racist” tends to shut people down or make them dig their heels in. “That statement about X was racist — here’s why” is a much better option if you’re looking to educate.

Don’t condescend

There’s nothing more infuriating than being talked down to. If someone made a legitimate mistake, let them know!

But try not to treat them like a child in the process.

Decide whether to call out or call in It’s a subtle difference, but a potentially important one. Calling in puts a focus on “pulling folks back in who have strayed from us,” as Ngọc Loan Trần from Black Girl Dangerous writes. The difference between calling out and calling in? A little more patience and compassion. That’s not to say you can be compassionate when calling out, but sometimes it’s more important to hold people accountable than make sure nobody’s feelings are hurt. It’s up to you to decide what’s best for each situation.

Consider waiting until you’re not angry

This isn’t a tone-policing thing — it’s about how to get your message across most effectively. If you feel like the best way to call someone out includes your full emotions about it, go right ahead. But if you feel like you need a little more time to compose your thoughts about the situation — maybe write down a couple points — then that’s probably the way to go.

Be prepared for the worst

Hey, sometimes you deal with some real garbage people.

That’s life. If you’ve done your best and someone is totally unwilling to change, you can hold your head high, no matter the result. U Jew-ish 029

“PC language” exists for a reason Written by Michelle Kim

or anyone keeping up with American politics, one term has probably caught your attention — political correctnes or rather, the lack thereof. Being politically correct is a general avoidance of potentially offensive language, especially when it comes to topics such as religion, sex and race.

Let’s face it — PC language has gotten a bit of a bad reputation over the years. It has been under fire by political media for suppressing free speech and promoting the idea that “minority groups can do no wrong.” But as with anything in life, balance is key — we cannot allow the extremists of PC language users to make us forget the absolute necessity of it in our lives.

UBC is synonymous with diversity, as is the city we live in. We don’t label our actions as politically correct but, without prompting, we show courtesy to one another, demonstrate respect for different beliefs and at the very least, we all show tolerance without hostility. We are considerate of those around us, and do not express our opinions at the expense of others. No one would accuse UBC’s diversity to be based on falsities, but genuine, altruistic acceptance and this is the heart of PC language.

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PC language doesn’t prevent us from developing our own opinions on sensitive issues or from expressing them. However, it teaches us to speak with a level of respect — it is a standard of required eloquence if one wishes to communicate with another. Within the realm of conscientious expression comes open and healthy discussion of sensitive topics that need to be addressed in order for us to grow as a community. It allows us to find solutions without falling into potholes of hurt feelings and senseless arguments over thoughtless words. Through this, UBC is opening up discussions on topics such as rape or gender equality, none of which would be possible without this basic level of mutual respect.

By falling into the trap of being anti-PC, we not only risk hurting others, but unconsciously inculcating our mind into understanding hurtful and prejudicial beliefs to be ordinary and acceptable. It is because of the overwhelming diversity of our 50,000 students that UBC is what it is — not only should we protect this, but we should allow it to grow. PC language simply means maintaining respect for one another. Even if it doesn’t come naturally now, keeping an open mind and through consideration for one another, it is certainly something we can achieve. U

SAFEWALK Safewalk is the AMS’s transportation service for students or visitors who feel unsafe walking on campus by themselves at night by picking them up and accompanying them home. The AMS’s most used service, AMS Student Services Manager Hussam Zbeeb approximates that 80 to 100 students use Safewalk per night in the fall.

Unfortunately, it suffers from misuse — students occasionally bother the drivers for unrelated requests, or are absent from meet-up points without notice. But misuse has plummeted since new penalties were imposed in November 2016 that include suspending a repeat offender from Safewalk for an entire term.

SPEAKEASY Speakeasy is the AMS’s peer support counselling service. There, students are free to talk about personal issues to trained student volunteers in a non-judgmental, private environment.

The service stands as one of the least-used by students. Despite this, Zbeeb emphasizes that it’s about quality rather than quantity.

“We’re looking at 20-ish drop-ins per month, but when we’re looking at the depth of engagement in those drop-ins, it far exceeds anything else we offer,” said Zbeeb, noting that the AMS still intends to improve its performance.

VICE The newest addition into the AMS portfolio, Vice is tailored to students wanting to balance their substance use of alcohol, smoking and technology.

“We’re going to have peer dialogue sessions where students come in and it’s going to be a low-barrier session where we chat about relationships with alcohol and such. The idea

WHERE TO GET HELP ON CAMPUS

WRITTEN BY MIGUEL SANTA MARIA

is that it isn’t a place where we go for formal counselling,” said Zbeeb.

SEXUAL ASSAULT SUPPORT CENTRE (SASC) Although its primary mandate is to assist survivors of sexual assault, the SASC offers other features to educate students and promote prevention. Their services include emotional support groups, educational and outreach programs, and legal and medical advocacy. The centre also provides various contraceptives and pregnancy tests for free.

In an earlier interview with The Ubyssey, former SASC manager Ashley Bentley emphasized that the need for their services is constant -- this is especially true since the centre’s usage rates skyrocketed in 2015.

“When I say that sexual assault is an epidemic, I don’t say that lightly. We’re seeing an increase in the number of people accessing [the SASC’s] services. In terms of creating that cultural change, and making sure that survivors and people who have caused harm are getting the support they need, we do need more,” said Bentley.

Students are encouraged to volunteer for SASC’s office services or outreach efforts.

off-campus resources such as self-directed skill-building tools, workshops, academic support, group therapy, individual therapy, physician and/or psychiatric care,” said Dr. Cheryl Washburn, director of Counselling, in an emailed statement. “Emergency appointments are available on a same-day basis for student in crisis.”

Washburn also added that over 1,400 students so far have attended initial consultations in this fall term so far. Fifty-seven per cent of student wellness plans included referral to self-care and self-directed skill building tools; 24 per cent to group therapy programs; 39 per cent to on-campus counselling; and 15 per cent to off-campus counselling.

However, the service also has a reputation among students for reports of insensitive counsellors and wait times that can exceed two weeks. Washburn hopes to initiate more improvements in the future.

“We’re currently implementing key elements of a new collaborative service delivery model, designed to minimize barriers to help those seeking assistance and to provide the most effective services,” she said.

ACCESS AND DIVERSITY (A&D) UBC COUNSELLING The first time students show up for an appointment, they’re asked to do an initial consultation with one of their wellness professionals, as well as an online assessment.

From there, students and their counselors develop a wellness plan to best suit their needs.

“The wellness plan may include on and

Access and Diversity helps ease barriers students face while studying at UBC due to their disabilities, cultural beliefs, financial problems or mental health issues.

The service currently supports over 2,600 students, including 520 new clients so far this term, according to Janet Mee, A&D’s director. Over 35 per cent of students supported through Access and Diversity

are managing a mental health condition, she said.

The department is seeking expansion and further accessibility of their services through more collaborative means, especially through contributions from students themselves.

“There are a number of [peer programs] that support student mental health and wellbeing, including the wellness peers, the equity ambassadors, the emergency medical aid team and the suicide awareness ambassadors,” said Mee.

STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES (SHS) Student Health Services is the primary care clinic for UBC students. They offer a wide range of services that you would usually get from a family physician. Apart from the usual services related to physical health, the SHS also provides specialist services that involve psychiatry and dermatology as well as free naloxone kits to prevent fatal overdoses.

The service has also made efforts in health promotion on campus, particularly through its Nurses on Campus program that features registered nurses from the clinic in booths across campus offering advice to students on the health questions they may have.

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of services. Others, like the AMS Foodbank or the Emergency Medical Aid Team, can be found at students.ubc.ca or ams.ubc.ca/services. U Where To Get Help On Campus 031

Written by Marissa Birnie Illustrations by Jerry Yin

ONE IN TWENTY HOW STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES NAVIGATE CAMPUS LIFE 032 One In Twenty

ccessibility on campus is something most students don’t think about. But for many students with a disability, accessibility barriers can limit their full participation in university life and hinder academic success.

According to the 2015 Academic Experience Survey and Report by the AMS, “just under one in twenty undergrads identify as a person with a disability.”

In a self-reported survey, four per cent of students identified as someone with a disability, compared to three per cent in 2014. Of those four per cent, the most common disability was a mental illness at 44 per cent, followed by chronic health at 33 per cent, neurological disabilities at 30 per cent and physical disabilities at 22 per cent.

According to the survey, one third of students (67 per cent) who identified as disabled were registered with Access and Diversity. Of those, 74 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with the services offered by Access and Diversity. Eighteen per cent were not.

A

campus. They also offer sign language interpreting, alternative formats of print materials such as braille and a variety of other accommodations.

Evguenia Ignatenko is a second-year psychology student and the president of the Disabled Students Association. The group recently had students answer the question, “What do you want people to know about disability?”

Some of the responses included, “not all disabilities are visible” and “just because I have a mental illness, doesn’t mean I’m crazy — just because I have a learning disability, doesn’t mean I can’t do well in school,” according to Ignatenko.

ACCESS AND DIVERSITY Access and Diversity provides academic, financial and physical accommodation for students with a disability. Students must register to receive services, which requires medical documentation.

UBC is governed by Policy 73, which recognizes the university’s “moral and legal duty” to provide academic accommodation for students with a disability in accordance with the BC Human Rights Code and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Academic accommodations provided

by Access and Diversity include extended exam times and note-taking services, as well as financial services like grants and priority access to housing for students whose needs cannot be met off

While Ignatenko feels that Access and Diversity are “pretty good,” she believes that “they’re understaffed and it can be quite slow for them to get back to you. It can take two business days [and sometimes] they won’t get back to you unless you email them again.

“With the amount of people that need help — and it’s only going to grow — they need more than what they have now.”

Ignatenko said that some students have told her about negative experiences with Access and Diversity where the staff come across as dismissive.

“That is not necessarily a personality trait of the staff. I think it comes from the

fact that they’re understaffed and they’re all stressed. They can’t take the time that they need for themselves so they can deliver the services they’re paid to deliver,” she said.

Access and Diversity recently added two new staff members, bringing them to a total of 16 employees.

Annalise Fischer, a fourth-year German and creative writing student, uses Access and Diversity’s exam accommodations and said she feels mostly satisfied with their services, although she reiterated Ignatenko’s concerns about staffing.

“They just don’t have enough people. The shortest amount of time I’ve had to wait during drop-in was about 20 minutes and the last time I was there to take a midterm, other people had come for drop-in hours and the wait got up to about an hour,” she said.

Janet Mee, Access and Diversity’s director, noted that wait times for students are considerably prioritized.

“Currently we have drop-in hours every day, and on Mondays and Wednesdays, we have six hours of drop-in. That does mean sometimes that [students] are waiting for a period of time to get in and see an advisor. For a new client they might wait about 10 days to see an advisor, but if a student comes to dropin hours they’re seen that day,” she said.

Access and Diversity currently supports over 2,600 students and has seen 600 new clients since August 1, according to Mee — almost double the number of new clients from last year.

They have received funding for three new full-time advisors in the past two years, but “the numbers of students that are coming forward seeking support has grown at the same time that our staff has grown,” she said.

Mee recognizes that students can face long response times via email. “I think for all of us, email is a challenge. It does take time to go through those emails and respond to them,” especially since “students are coming forward with some pretty complex concerns via email,” she said.

One In Twenty 033

While Mee cannot comment on Ignatenko and others’ concerns about specific staff members, she encourages students to speak with her or other staff to address their concerns.

Anne Liao and Tracy Windsor are facilitators for Kaleidoscope, a campus peer-to-peer mental health support group.

Kaleidoscope’s facilitators identify as having lived experiences with mental health issues. Both Liao and Windsor are registered with Access and Diversity, and have used exam accommodations.

Liao feels that student groups like Kaleidoscope “lower the barrier of access” to students who are too intimidated to access professional services. “Students will more likely come to peers, and we’re more readily relatable … because we’re students ourselves,” said Liao.

“Students are clearly feeling a need for spaces on campus to talk about mental health,” said Windsor.

“It’s really hard to set an appointment with my [accessibility] advisor,” said Liao. According to her, appointments are sometimes not available for several weeks and students are advised to go to drop-in hours, where the wait time can be from around 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how busy it is.

PHYSICAL SPACE Academics are not the only barrier faced by students with a disability on campus. UBC is like its own miniature city, and as with any city, poor planning can cause accessibility issues.

UBC adheres to the BC Building Codes, which regulate accessible building requirements. Accessibility in this case means that a person with disabilities is able to reasonably access buildings and use their facilities.

Some of the specific design requirements state that there should be “access from the street to at least one main entrance” as well as accessible washrooms. Knob handles are no longer permitted in new buildings, as they can be difficult to maneuver for someone with a physical disability. This means that some of UBC’s older buildings like Hennings, with its heavy doors and hard to twist knobs, do not meet all of these requirements.

The Vancouver Campus Plan, adopted by the university in 2010, outlines the strategies for the management and administration of UBC’s properties in support of the university’s strategic plan and academic goals.

One of the goals of the plan is to “provide direct access for people with disabilities.” The plan recognizes some of the physical accessibility barriers on campus, ranging from long distances between buildings, hard-to-access pedestrian routes and the fact that older buildings lack accessible entrances. The campus plan notes that high-use areas will be more likely to receive accessibility upgrades due to limited funds.

Students can use the UBC Wayfinding tool to find accessible pathways and entrances, although this information can be difficult to find. First, one must select a building and then click on the “Footprint Map” that reveals more detailed accessibility information, including the number of elevators, which entrances are accessible and the best route to get there.

Not all buildings are fully accessible and it can be frustrating to find the appropriate entrances.

034 One In Twenty

“It’s not very visible,” said Liao.

“International House is one of the least accessible buildings on campus,” said Ignatenko. There is no elevator, rendering the upper floors inaccessible. International House is home to the offices of Go Global, the Dr. Simon K Y Lee Global Lounge, International Student Development and more.

“What they did for some students that would need to go [to the building] … they would schedule an appointment and the advisor would come to them, but that just means that the person with a disability cannot access the same kind of casual drop-in hours,” said Ignatenko.

“It’s just another hassle to put on a disabled person.”

CRITICISM FACED BY UBC The university is clearly taking steps to improve accessibility on campus with Access and Diversity and other services. They recently announced plans for an accessibility shuttle in conjunction with the AMS and Campus and Community Planning.

UBC has been subject to human rights complaints alleging discrimination based on disability. While many of the complaints were dismissed, some went through and the complainants were awarded damages.

In 2015, Dr. Jessica Dunkley, a deaf woman, was awarded $35,000 by the BC Human Rights Tribunal after it was determined the university failed to provide a sign language interpreter during her medical residency program.

In 2016, the tribunal found that UBC had discriminated against former medicine student Dr. Carl Kelly by failing to accommodate his ADHD and learning disability. He was awarded $75,000.

Some students feel the university can and should do more to provide reasonable accommodation for students with a disability.

Fischer wants the university to better communicate to students what resources are available and where to find them. “So many just don’t know where to look,” she said.

To help with communication, Access and Diversity have recently hired a term employee who is developing a series of videos to help students understand the services they offer and save time during meetings with accessibility advisors.

“For example, [the staff member is working on] a video around how you access exam accommodations so that an advisor doesn’t have to spend time in a meeting talking about an administrative process,” said Mee. Liao and Windsor feel that a lack of psychiatrists and long waiting periods at UBC Counselling can be addressed.

“I don’t know if the university is really focusing on long-term solutions for students with disabilities. I think they’re mostly focusing on short-term [solutions] like stress balls and mental health, and fun time doggy de-stress,” said Ignatenko.

She also advocates for a fall reading break, something many universities have but UBC does not.

“I feel like that could be very beneficial to people that are feeling, at this time, very bogged down with projects and homework.

Finals are coming up, but midterms aren’t done for everyone, so it’s a very difficult time for people,” she said.

“Around this time, everyone starts wondering, ‘Why is mental health so bad for students?’ It’s because we have a ton to do.” U One In Twenty 035

BLASTING BIAS

Written by Tushita Bagga

ntonya Gonzalez, a PhD student studying developmental psychology at UBC, conducted a study on reducing racial bias in children with the help of stories. Her goal was to try to change children’s perceptions of racial out-groups — people who don’t look like them.

“Even as early as age five or six, children have an unconscious race bias wherein they prefer their in-group. They also often have biases against stigmatized racial groups within their society,” said Gonzalez.

In the control group, children heard stories about positive white exemplars. In the experimental condition, they heard stories about positive black exemplars. The study found that children aged nine through twelve, after hearing a story about positive black exemplars, did not unconsciously show a preference for either racial group, at least temporarily. Gonzalez is currently investigating the long-term effects to see just how long the ramifications last.

“We live in a society and a community where there is a lot of tension felt by different social groups, so that was something that I sought to investigate and to try to reduce those tensions and biases, especially in children,” she said.

Gonzalez is just one of many academics studying issues of diversity at UBC. Across campus at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, Dr. Isabel Grant — professor and co-director for the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies — has conducted significant research on consent and reforming sexual assault law for mentally disabled individuals.

Her research showed that women with mental disabilities face difficulties at every stage of the criminal justice system. In her paper, “Sexual Assault and the Meaning of Power and Authority for Women with Mental Disabilities,” written with Janine Benedet, she argues that “existing Criminal Code provisions in Canada are inadequate to address this type of exploitation because courts have consistently failed to recognize that such abuses of power and trust are fundamentally inconsistent with any notion of voluntary consent.”

Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc has been studying what are called “resilience factors” — things in young people’s environments and relationships that help them survive despite discrimination, violence and trauma. She talks of health inequities where for some reason or other, certain social groups have less access to healthcare, don’t take well to the treatments offered to them or don’t have the opportunity for achieving the greatest possibility of health for themselves. Social elements often play an important part in determining an individuals’ health.

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036 Blasting Bias

“You have to think about the groups that aren’t always as visible but who experience some of these health issues, and trying to understand what it is like for them. Over the years as well, my clinical practice as a public heath nurse working first with homeless street involved youth, and then with youth involved with pregnancy, recognized the strengths that so many young people have,” she said.

Focusing on the problems, said Saewyc, is not only depressing, but doesn’t give one the full picture.

“Many of them are surviving despite incredibly toxic environments and the terrible experiences that they have had,” she said.

Saewyc’s research for her paper, “School-based strategies to reduce suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and discrimination among sexual minority and heterosexual adolescents in Western Canada,” shows that heterosexual boys are less likely to have suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide when their school has long-established, anti-homophobic policies and gay-straight alliances (GSAs).

“We had seen higher rates of suicidal ideation and attempts among LGB teens and through our analyses, we were able to connect that higher suicidality to stigma and discrimination — being bullied and experiencing discrimination because you were gay or because people thought you were gay,” she said.

A solution to reduce the experience of homophobia and bullying was for schools to create inclusive schools and to implement anti-homophobic rules. Another solution was to create GSAs. “One of the things that we had to recognize was that there was a certain number of youth who identified as heterosexual who also experience discrimination because people think that they are gay or because people are using homophobic bullying, pejorative terms to harass them — not because they are gay, but because being gay or lesbian or bisexual is somehow and by calling someone that, you are insulting them,” said Saewyc.

The research shows that being bullied for whatever reason is extremely harmful to a person’s mental health and that a link exists between experiencing that kind of violence, discrimination and rejection, and suicide attempts.

“We thought, ‘What about those straight kids that are perceived to be gay?” said Saewyc. So she took a look at the effects of homophobia on straight youth and found that heterosexual boys were less likely to indulge in suicidal ideation if they went to a school with long-established, anti-homophobic policies.

Saewyc, Gonzalez and Grant are only three researchers at UBC studying issues related to diversity and the social sciences. U

“We live in a society and a community where there is a lot of tension felt by different social groups, so that was something that I sought to investigate and to try to reduce those tensions and biases, especially in children.”

- Antonya Gonzalez, PhD developmental psychology

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IMMIGRATIONS:

The only Canadian Written by Koby Michaels

W

hen I immigrated to the United States, I was only a few months old. My parents and I weren’t running from civil war, religious persecution or a violent dictatorship. My dad had gotten a job offer, and he, my mom and I were following the

opportunity.

I can’t say the same about my grandparents. When they arrived in Canada in 1948, they had just survived the Holocaust. My grandfather had escaped from the Nazis on a march from one concentration camp to another. My grandmother had fake papers and worked as a maid for a Christian family.

When they arrived in Canada, they left behind the horrors of a genocide, the countries and languages they knew, and the graves of their parents and most of their siblings.

When I arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, we had a house, my dad had a job and we spoke the language. Sure, we couldn’t get coffee from Timmies — but that’s a not a large price to pay.

The same can’t be said for my grandparents. They moved in with siblings. My grandmother worked at a tie factory, where she was paid per tie, and dealt with a boss who offered her extra money for sexual favours. My grandfather worked as a waiter and went to school. They both had to learn English. With the money from waiting tables and the tie factory, my grandfather graduated accounting school, near the top of his class in the province, and opened a small firm. Forty odd years later and they had three kids, all graduated from medical school.

Then I came along and with my parents, I moved to the US. One of my earliest memories is taking the train into Boston — we lived just outside city limits — with my mom to renew our green cards. We waited in line for what felt like hours before speaking to the immigration official. A little while later we walked out, permanent residents for another decade.

One day in high school, I missed class for a day to go into Boston and become a citizen. A few months of paperwork, an

oath and a bunch of signatures later (I didn’t have to take a test because I had been in American schools my whole life) and they handed me a flag.

“Congrats,” the woman behind bulletproof glass said.

“You’re an American.”

Growing up, I was always the only Canadian in the class.

In my cozy, white, upper-middle class New England town, I was usually the only immigrant in the room. Being Canadian, as silly as it sounds, made me different. Now I work in a newsroom where half the editors are immigrants. I’m the norm.

In Canada, 40 per cent of the population is first or second-generation Canadian. This diversity strengthens Canada and communities around the world. Research says having more women in boardrooms increases profits. It says more diverse groups come up with more innovative and successful solutions to problems. Almost half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. The fact is that diversity is a positive force in the world. It can be really, brutally hard — but it makes you, me and our community stronger.

Here at UBC, we know this. We’re one of the most diverse campuses on the planet in one of the most diverse cities in the world, in a country that ranks in the top 20 for diversity.

We have our problems, our hatred and our bigotry, and we could certainly work to be better. But we have it good. We reap the benefits of our diversity in our education, in our relationships, in our economy and even in our food.

Today, more than we may want to admit, standing up for this diversity is important. Go out and learn about new cultures. Make friends from different religions. Learn a new language, try a new food. Sit down with people you disagree with and listen. Build your empathy everyday, any way you can. From this empathy, we draw strength and can build a better, safer and more peaceful world. U

The fact is that diversity is a positive force in the world.

038 Immigrations

Immigrations 039

FACULTY DIVERSITY AT UBC: Slow but steady

Written by Moira Wyton, Hana Golightly and Julia Burnham Illustrations by Yuko Fedrau

ave you ever sat in a class with an instructor who looks like you standing at the lectern? Your chances of answering “yes” are much higher if you belong to certain demographics.

In an institution with students of as many genders, abilities, ethnicities and sexual identities as UBC, diversity might seem like a non-issue — until you take a closer look at its faculty.

The increase in hiring of female faculty to the tenure stream from 35.4 to 46 per cent from 2010 to 2014 is a step in the right direction, but disparities are still seen at the tenure and administration levels. As of 2014, 9 per cent of deans and 23 per cent of department heads were women.

It should be noted that no data exists — yet — regarding the number of faculty who are diverse in terms of ethnicity, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation.

“What’s important is that our community, our students, can see themselves reflected both in the faces of the people that are standing in front of their classrooms,” said Sarah-Jane Finlay, associate vice president of Equity and Inclusion. “You can have diversity without excellence, but you can’t have excellence without diversity.”

In the interest of opening a discussion of what and from whom students learn at UBC, The Ubyssey dove into policy and personal conversations with administrators — including President Santa Ono — to uncover what diversity means to UBC, how it intends to improve and why this should even matter.

H

SO WHAT’S UBC DOING ABOUT IT? Tuition increases and leadership snafus have certainly kept UBC busy in the last few years, but many of the policies that are changing the demographics of faculty members have been silently affecting change.

Currently, UBC has implemented a variety of programs — ranging from the gender pay equity initiative to its unconscious bias training programs for recruitment committees — which adminis040 Faculty Diversity at UBC

trators claim are leading the way in Canada for actively ameliorating faculty diversity within universities.

“If you were to look at any of the strategic plans or academic plans that have been put in place … you’ll see that diversity is really a central value that is held by [UBC],” said Finlay. “That’s both in terms of the diversity of our students [and that] of our faculty and staff.”

The gender pay equity initiative, spearheaded by the Equity and Inclusion Office, is one such project. Initiated in 2007 and published in 2013, the initiative collects and aggregates data on differences in salaries, lengths of time between promotions, and the impacts of leaves on men and women faculty members.

“UBC was one of the first institutions in Canada to do that in recent history, and it has happened at other institutions since,” said Finlay. “It’s really a key component of the broader strategy to diversify the faculty [at UBC].”

But even if the university is headed in the right direction, diversification of its faculty won’t happen overnight. Many administrators, however, are confident that UBC’s commitment to making data-based policy decisions will increase its chances of success.

“I think like all institutions, things move slowly,” said Dr. Jennifer Love, who began her term as senior advisor to the provost on women faculty in July 2016. “What I find really helps is data.

You have to be able to have an argument that is robust, because if you start making policy changes on information that is not robust … you could have unintended consequences.”

In the spring of 2016, UBC conducted an equity census in order to collect data on its faculty beyond gender. Despite being obliged to report on the demographic groups prescribed by the Government of Canada — women, people with disabilities, aboriginal people and visible minorities — UBC collects data on faculty members who are sexual minorities as well.

Love has high hopes that a quantitative understanding of diversity is going to help UBC locate its areas for improvement and act more efficiently.

“We’d like to be able to take the equity census information and basically roll it into a visualization software that is made anonymous, and then we can start looking at the broader questions than just men and women,” said Love. “This would allow us to have an honest assessment of where we are in the university with respect to faculty diversity.”

OPTIMISTIC BUT A WAYS TO GO Margot Young, chair of the Faculty Association Status of Women Committee and professor in the Peter A. Allard School of Law, said that while UBC has many structures in place to address issues of inequity on campus, productive measures can take a long time to be put in practice.

Historically, the Status of Women Committee has provided much of the driving force behind gender equity movements for UBC faculty, including the campaign to appoint a senior advisor to the provost on women faculty. In October 2016, Young published a response to UBC’s Draft Sexual Assault Policy through her position as committee chair, calling attention to the policy’s shortcomings including its lack of commitment to timeliness in handling cases.

The committee, in her opinion, has been instrumental in putting pressure on the administration to be more responsive to equity issues faced by female faculty.

Young highlights the importance of gender and racial representation as issues that face institutions indiscriminately across society. Diversity issues in the macrocosm of society can be examined at a microscopic level on campuses, positioning campuses as an excellent place to create structural reform.

For Young, the diversity conversation is especially important in light of current political movements that have given rise to protectionist and populist rhetoric.

“Today, we live in a moment [of] sexism, racism and hatred of those who are different than ourselves,” she said.

In this framework, the diversity issue at UBC can be thought to represent one case study in an important global conversation, one which may give institutions of higher learning a unique ability to address issues of equity and representation.

Young highlights the lack of numerical representation of Indigenous and racialized scholars as a key issue faced at UBC. In her eyes, “the struggle of diversifying” takes place not only within disciplines, but across the university.

While universities must confront a range of issues surrounding diversity on campus, Young believes that many of these problems have similar roots and can be addressed through similar administrative structures.

“Each of these issues are discrete issues that need singular attention, but they aren’t siloed in terms of the structures of the systems that account for them. You can tell very coherent stories about why you need a sexual assault policy, why you need a pay equity policy, why you need an anti-harassment policy — they are all pieces of the same structure,” she said.

While diversity at UBC has a long way to go, Young is optimistic for the future.

“There is real expertise, awareness and a kind of smart consciousness amongst many of the faculty who work in this area.

We have good in-house talent to help us deal with these issues.”

Evaluating the importance of faculty diversity at universities can be a deeply personal reflection on one’s own experiences in academia.

“Our life experiences are very much shaped by gender and ethnic identities and the way people categorize us — and the opportunities we have are shaped by those things,” said Jennifer Berdahl, a UBC professor of gender and diversity leadership studies who theorized that former president Arvind Gupta’s hasty departure may have been due to a “masculinity contest.”

Berdahl believes that a diverse faculty allows a greater representation of role models for the diverse student body.

“Women tend to suffer in programs where there are primarily male faculty teaching them. They don’t see themselves in the discipline or they don’t think of themselves as being as capable of that subject if the message is that men primarily can do this,” she said. “If you have role modelling in the classroom of the faculty, it suggests to everyone that this is an equal opportunity game and everyone is capable of pursuing these kinds of lines of inquiry.”

The importance of a diverse faculty can also be seen in cases of sexual assault and harassment on campus. Berdahl cites a “chilling effect” in these cases if students can only voice their concerns to an all-male faculty.

President Santa Ono is no stranger to the struggle for diverse faculty, knowing that he is one of the most underrepresented minorities when it comes to university presidencies as a man of Asian descent.

“I’ve actually experienced being one of the first to be an Asian during different stages in my progress as a faculty member and as an administrator,” he said.

Ono also noted that while fighting for more representation of certain groups is a constant struggle, universities are, by definition, diverse.

“For example, UBC has 18 different faculties, and professors in each of those faculties think about problems and the society in different ways. As opposed to an institute that only has physicists or only has biologists, one of the great advantages of a university is that we have this group of diverse individuals that look at the world with different lenses and with that different expertise. That diversity is really the differentiating feature of universities that really makes them the ideal places to educate the next generation.

“Students learn from watching individuals in their act, and having a diverse faculty is probably the best education a student can receive — to be inclusive and to be part of diverse teams that can really positively affect civilization.”

We’ll drink to that. U Faculty Diversity at UBC 041

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