October 26, 2021

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OCTOBER 26, 2021 | VOLUME CIII | ISSUE VIII FREEING INFORMATION SINCE 1918

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Student Recovery Community opens space on campus

Editorial on BC’s proposed FOI fee

What the posters you buy say about you

How the pandemic impacted our sex lives

Weekend rundown: T-Birds crush Bisons

NEWS

OPINION

BLOG

SCIENCE

SPORTS

THE UBYSSEY

INSIDE SCARY SPOOKY STORIES // 11–15

‘AN ACT OF RESISTANCE’

How UBC students grapple with eating disorders amid little institutional support // 8

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OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

YOUR GUIDE TO UBC PEOPLE

OUR CAMPUS

ON THE COVER COVER BY Lua Presidio

U THE UBYSSEY

Naomi Klein wouldn’t be here without student activism

OCTOBER 26, 2021 | VOLUME CIII | ISSUE VIII

EDITORIAL

BUSINESS

Coordinating Editor Lua Presidio coordinating@ubyssey.ca

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STAFF Aafreen Siddiqui, Anabella McElroy, Andrew Ha, Christina Park, David Collings, Elif Kayali, Farzeen Ather, Iman Janmohamed, Jackson Dagger, Jasmine Cadeliña Manango, Kaila Johnson, Kevin Nan, Kylla Castillo, Lynn Shibata, Manya Malhotra, Matt Asuncion, Melissa Li, Mike Liu, Nathalie Adriana Funes, Owen Gibbs, Polina Petlitsyna, Raina Cao, Regina Hipolito, Ryan Yip, Sam Laidlaw, Shanai Tanwar, Tait Gamble, Tova Gaster, Z. Aazadeh Raja

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We wish to acknowledge that we work, learn and operate the paper upon the occupied, traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwxw̱ú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and səli̓ lwətaɁɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh).

LEGAL The Ubyssey is the official student newspaper of the University of British Columbia. It is published every Tuesday by the Ubyssey Publications Society (UPS). We are an autonomous, democraticallyrun student organization and all students are encouraged to participate.

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“I think [UBC students] should feel really proud.”

Paloma Green Features Coordinator

Naomi Klein wanted to live in Vancouver full-time for a while now. So as her time at Rutgers University — where she was the 2018/21 inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed chair — came to a close, she knew it was time to move to Vancouver full-time.

Klein started at UBC as professor of climate justice this September. Klein is responsible for designing UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice as well as teaching courses. She will teach one graduate class in term two but will take on larger undergrad classes next year.

But Klein wasn’t always focused on climate change; she got her start in activism centred on globalism and capitalism. She distinctly remembers her first protest. It was 1989, apartheid in South Africa had yet to end, Nelson Mandela was in jail

COURTESY ANDREW QUERNER

and The University of Toronto (UofT) — where Klein was an undergraduate student — pension fund was still invested in South Africa. So a group of students decided to occupy the president’s office, Klein was among them.

“Mandela was freed, and apartheid fell soon after. So I think I had a really rosy view of how effective activism is,” said Klein, laughing.

Apartheid wasn’t the only major issue while Klein was a student. The Ecole Polytechnique massacre happened when Klein was in her first year and the Scarborough rapist was active on campus during her time at UofT. “We were scared. We were really, really scared, and we felt our university wasn’t protecting us,” said Klein.

So she wrote about it.

Klein spent much of her time at university writing for The

Varsity, UofT’s official student newspaper. In 1991, she became The Varisty’s features editor and in 1992, took over as editor-inchief of the paper.

“Student journalism did take me, I loved it. It was my university experience,” Said Klein.

Klein left The Varsity before graduating and went straight to a job at The Globe and Mail. But by 1996, she decided to go back to UofT to finish her degree. She ended up leaving the university again to write her first book No Logo.

Klein began to focus on critiquing capitalism and globalization. Klein was aware of climate change, but it didn’t seem that interesting to her until she was forced to come face to face with the scale of the crisis in 2005.

When Klein was working on The Shock Doctrine, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Klein went down to help out and write about the situation. As she witnessed the aftermath of the hurricane, she realized that the climate crisis, globalization and capitalism are inherently connected.

While Hurricane Katrina “was an incredibly painful disaster,” those who had money, cars and insurance were largely okay.

“A lot of people came out better financially, and that happens often after disasters,” said Klein.

Those who couldn’t afford a car to leave the city or who couldn’t afford insurance lost everything. Watching this, Klein learned just how directly the climate crisis and capitalism were linked.

Klein took this lesson and has applied it to her work ever since.

UBC impressed Klein with its commitment to climate action.

When she reached out to the university to see if there was space for her, the answer was ‘yes.’ “And the rest is history,” Klein said.

Klein credits student and faculty activists for pushing UBC to do the work it’s done.

She doesn’t think she would be here without the work of activists.

“I don’t think the [Centre for Climate Justice] would exist without the work of student activists,” said Klein.

Recently, Klein talked to a group of student activists who haven’t been getting the turnout they would like. “I don’t find that surprising and I don’t think we should read it as a lack of interest,” said Klein.

Activism is hard, especially for an issue like the climate crisis where Klein believes societal change is necessary to deal with the impending impacts.

“I don’t think UBC students should feel demoralized. I think they should feel really proud of the fact that they’ve stuck up to their institution,” said Klein. U

NEWS

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

EDITORS CHARLOTTE ALDEN + NATHAN BAWAAN

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STUDENT LIFE //

‘You do belong here. There’s a place for you’: Student Recovery Community opens physical space on campus Elif Kayali Senior Staff Writer

Following years of advocacy, the Student Recovery Community (SRC) now has a dedicated space on campus.

The new location is an important step in making sure students who struggle with addiction or who are in recovery feel welcome on campus, according to Sara Fudjack, SRC program manager.

“I always knew that a dedicated space was crucial to ensuring that students in recovery and who experience addiction … feel included in a campus community,” said Fudjack. Fudjack said the SRC is keeping its location private to protect students’ privacy, given the stigma around addiction and recovery on campus.

The first of its kind in Canada, the SRC initially held meetings all across campus.

“It was honestly just so stressful and students were telling me it just didn’t feel like they had a place that they could call their own,” said Fudjack.

The SRC took all of its programming online when the pandemic hit. But with a return to campus, Fudjack — along with SRC Program Coordinator Jennifer Doyle, Director of Student Health Services Dr. Marna Nelson and Chief Student Health Officer Noorjean Hassam — prioritized advocacy for a physical space again.

“It’s not only going back to campus like other students but [it’s] also returning to a difficult setting for trying to navigate their

recovery,” said Fudjack.

Guy Felicella, a peer clinical adviser with the BC Centre on Substance Use, said having a “therapeutic environment” where people feel welcomed and safe is very important for a recovery community.

“It’s kind of that thing where you walk into a place where you feel comfortable because you know that people are there to support you, and I think that is vital, especially for you guys in a college campus,” Felicella said.

Students also emphasized the community’s need to have a space on campus.

Sylvie Foster, whose name has been changed because of the stigma around recovery and addiction, wrote an article for the SRC’s blog Academics Anonymous, talking about her experience joining the community when it was still having meetings at different locations.

“It was just interesting for me personally to reflect back on just how much the SRC had to jump through hoops or appeal to people or appease people just to get to where they are now,” Foster said.

‘A REAL SAFE SPACE’ Fudjack wants the SRC’s space to be safe, inclusive and welcoming for students. Community members can use the space to relax if they are ever triggered by anything and talk with others who understand their experiences.

“It’s always been about creating a space for a community that’s traditionally very isolated and tends to be excluded and

The SRC’s space on campus. The location is being kept private due to stigma around addiction on campus.

just literally having a physical representation that says to those students ‘You do belong here.

There’s a place for you and you matter,’” she said.

Foster said the space feels like “a real safe space” that allows students to connect better with one another.

“As someone who was part of the SRC before and then also while on Zoom, it’s just a different feeling when you can meet the

people you go to meetings with ... They are people that you get to know well, because you both have this lived experience, and sometimes you just want to keep talking to them,” Foster said.

With the start of the term, the SRC is operating under a hybrid system, with meetings happening Monday through Friday.

“That’s a big expansion of our services, and that is thanks to the space,” said Fudjack.

COURTESY SARA FUDJACK

However, Fudjack said the SRC is already asking for a larger space that could accommodate large gatherings. “[The new space] is a huge step, but it’s not the end goal,” said Fudjack. U Students who are looking to get involved can reach out to the SRC via Instagram or email src. recovery@ubc.ca.

EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION //

Five-year Equity Action Plan intended to be a ‘backbone’ for EDI in the AMS

“I would love ... for it to be embedded in our policies and in our systems of governance.”

Acadia Curah Contributor

After two years of work, the AMS’s Equity Action Plan is just steps away from completion.

The five-year plan is intended to improve the environment of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within the AMS and increase accessibility to the society. AMS President Cole Evans said the plan will ideally ensure that everything the AMS does is “centred around principles of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.”

In early 2021, in partnership with a consultant, the AMS released a survey to the community on equity issues. Since then, AMS Council has adopted the Equity Action Plan as a strategic plan.

The next steps are to finalize equity goals and objectives for this year, develop and finalize an annual cycle for the plan and bring the revised version to AMS Council for approval in the spring to incorporate lessons learned after a year of using the plan.

Maia Wallace, the equity and inclusion lead at the AMS, said it’s

FILE ISABELLA FALSETTI

“detrimental” that this is only the first Equity Action Plan as it’s been needed “for such a long time.”

“I think having it in place is really gonna be a backbone of hopefully a standard way of procedure, treatment, exercising of rights that students can exert, that AMS subsidiaries, resource groups, staff and elected executives can also implement in their day to day lives and in the policies and advocacy that they do overall,” Wallace said.

Evans added that it would help the society better offer services

that serve the needs of the diverse student body.

One aspect of the Equity Action Plan is to implement election spending caps and funding for students during AMS elections. Wallace said this is intended to make running for AMS executive more equitable — and ideally encourage more people to run.

“The issue is less about the spending cap and more about what if you want to run in an election and you might not have $600 on hand to spend on an election. So something ... we can do at the AMS is be more proactive with the financial assistance we give candidates during the election so they can spend up to that spending cap during the election,” Evans added.

This year, the AMS will be focusing on conducting an internal policy review through an equity lens, improving consultation practices and revising the plan to meet the AMS’s current context. Additionally, the society will be hosting events during Pride Month, Indigenous Culture Month and Black History Month.

However, Wallace emphasized the need for internal work.

“I’m not looking for change that is a nice few campaign ... ” Wallace said. “The nitty-gritty change of EDI and this Equity Action Plan is a lot of

behind the scenes work, it’s a lot of nuts and bolts being moved around so that when finally people inherit the work we’ve been taking on ... it has to be stable enough that it’s moldable to the needs and wants of students of the next five years.”

Wallace also emphasized the importance of financial and operative decision-making in addressing equity issues.

“That’s a very untouched area, and I don’t think people realize how much financial decision-making and operative decisions impact KPIs [Key Performance Indicators], campaigns, even outreach ... I think people only think about EDI in terms of advocacy or policy but our core way of functioning really does come from that operative and financial aspect,” she said.

For the future, Wallace hopes that the Equity Action Plan becomes more than simply a standalone plan.

“I would love for it to be embedded in our policies and in our systems of governance, all the way from services to the student union, to student club functioning, to resource groups and interconnecting all of that so it moves as a well-oiled machine and you don’t have to enforce EDI, but it’s embodied,” Wallace said. U

4 | NEWS | TUESDAY OCTOBER 26, 2021 HUNGER //

RAPID TRANSIT //

AMS Food Bank saw 2,500 visits in the last five months

TransLink survey affirms support for SkyTrain to UBC

Alexandra Fuster Contributor

Long lines at the AMS Food Bank have raised concerns about increasing food insecurity at UBC. Though demand for the Food Bank has been rising steadily since 2011, the AMS Food Bank showed an increase from 1,513 visits in the 2019/20 academic year to 2,373 visits in the 2020/21 academic year.

From May 2021 to October 14, 2021, the number of visits skyrocketed to 2,420, according to Student Services Manager Mitchell Prost.

At a recent AMS Council meeting, Prost stated that the AMS is bringing on more volunteers to meet the growing demand. As to why the demand has jumped so significantly recently, Prost credited the COVID-19 pandemic and a return to campus.

“I really do think it’s because we have everyone coming back.

There’s a lot more people on campus and when there’s more people, there’s a lot more folks in need.

COVID-19 has impacted everyone and we really see those impacts in the ability to afford basic necessities like food,” he said.

Food insecurity refers to “inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints” according to the UBC Food Insecurity Initiative. Compared to the Canadian household average of 8.8 per cent, food insecurity affects 35–40 per cent of post-secondary students. In Vancouver especially, an area with a higher-than-average cost of living, students have felt the pressure, worsened by COVID-19 and an increase in grocery and food costs Canada wide.

Since its inception in 1996, the AMS Food Bank has been mandated as emergency relief for students. However, given the rise in demand, the Food Bank is currently allowing students to access

FILE THE UBYSSEY

Anabella McElroy Staff Writer

In the basement of the Life Building, lines often stretch around the corner waiting for the Food Bank.

its services up to 16 times a term.

Prost said this has strained the Food Bank. He said that the AMS Food Bank is continually at capacity and he would like to see more sustainable long-term adjustments toward food security for students.

The best way to accomplish this goal, said Prost, is through partnership and collaboration.

“For the time being, the best way is by sitting on these different university groups and committees and really pushing the university and working with the university to create new initiatives,” he said.

Though the Food Bank receives a stipend from the UBC President’s Office, it operates primarily on donations.

The university recently allo-

cated $65,000 to the AMS Food Bank and has implemented new projects through its Food Security Initiative.

Food Security Program Manager Sara Kozicky said the initiative recently launched the Meal Donation Program, initiated this month with a budget of $480,000, and the Digital Food Hub, a website launching in November 2021.

Kozicky said the latter intends to increase awareness and accessibility around food options.

“We really want to look at alleviating immediate pressures of food insecurity through dignified solutions,” she said.

Though the demand for emergency relief has grown steadily, UBC has set a goal of reducing food insecurity at UBC 50 per cent by 2025. Kozicky

FILE ALEX NGUYEN

acknowledges this goal is bold but stressed that a strong stance is needed to tackle such an important issue.

“It is a bold target and a bold goal. I think it really corresponds to how UBC wants to tackle and address and promote food security within our institution and how seriously we take this complex problem.”

Overall, Prost would like to see food insecurity talked about more openly in order to reduce the stigma and allow for students to access the services they need.

“I think the one thing that we can really do is be more open about conversations about food security, and have it be more normalized as a collective community issue that we’re trying to tackle as a community.” U

ACTIVISM //

1,000 sign petition to increase post-secondary COVID-19 transparency

FILE ISABELLA FALSETTI

UBC and public health continue to resist sharing COVID-19 case numbers.

Samhita Shanker Contributor

Several UBC community members have signed a petition to urge the government of BC, the Ministry of Advanced Education and the BC Public Health Office to increase transparency around COVID-19 cases in post-secondary institutions.

Chris Alemany, a member of the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association, said he cre-

ated this petition due to the lack of communication about cases on campuses after classes had started, especially as BC is in the midst of its fourth wave.

“It’s added stress … not having factual information from trusted sources. It leads to rumours and misinformation,” said Alemany.

As of publishing, the petition has nearly 1,000 signatures.

The petition asks health officials to post notifications of any COVID-19 case on the local

health authority site, to work with post-secondary institutions to provide regular notifications of cases directly to community members and to provide consistent procedures to all faculty, staff and students as to how to notify others in their shared space.

This problem has existed at UBC as well. There hasn’t been much transparency with COVID-19 information throughout the pandemic, and UBC and public health continue to resist notifying community members of COVID-19 case exposures.

As a result, Dr. Jessica Wang, a history professor at UBC, signed the petition.

“I think the information environment has been poor surrounding the state of the pandemic and return to campus … It just seems prudent to put information out, especially since the university is a complex place in which UBC, between students, faculty and staff, has about 70,000 people on campus.”

“As a faculty member, I have no idea how we’re doing as an institution,” added Wang. “It increases anxiety if you don’t provide that information, and it does so unnec-

essarily — t’s unproductive.”

Since the petition was released, there hasn’t been any change.

“We haven’t heard anything, any changes coming in from the government. And that’s really what it’s aimed at, it’s not really aimed at any particular university because they’re all following the same rules,” said Alemany.

As for UBC, Wang suggested some changes that could be made to reassure staff and students.

“What I would like to see is a serious COVID dashboard, with the kind of information that would allow me and everyone else at UBC to see just how well or not well the university is doing in terms of the extent of COVID control,” she said.

Wang also stressed the importance of campus-specific research and information, like how well-ventilated classrooms are to evaluate the risk of transmission.

Since being published, the petition has been signed by several faculty associations (though not UBC’s Faculty Association) including Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria and Vancouver Community College’s faculty associations. U

Ninety-two per cent of respondents to a TransLink survey regarding the SkyTrain extension to UBC indicated support for the project.

Planning for the extension is underway, but the extension has not yet been fully funded. Survey respondents ranked improving reliability and travel time as key things they’re looking for from the extension. An extension of the Millennium Line to Arbutus Street is being worked on, with construction expected to finish in 2025.

Janeen Alliston, director of communications for UBC Rapid Transit projects, said connectivity is one of the biggest benefits of a SkyTrain extension.

“It will connect some really crucial innovation, employment and housing centres across Metro Vancouver, which will contribute to the economic viability of the region,” she said.

If built, an extension to UBC would replace the 99 B-Line, the busiest bus route in Metro Vancouver. According to TransLink, a SkyTrain could move up to three times as many people as the bus.

Survey results show high support for the project across Metro Vancouver, and very high support in the UBC area. AMS VP External Saad Shoaib said he was looking forward to the survey results’ release as the AMS coordinated with TransLink to make sure students’ voices were heard.

Many survey respondents wrote that the SkyTrain is long overdue.

Michael White, associate vice-president of Campus and Community Planning, said the public engagement reflects what UBC has been telling decision makers. “From the beginning of our planning and advocacy, we’ve asked, ‘Why stop short?’ and I think the public is asking the same question.”

Shoaib said the survey will help the AMS and other stakeholders lobby all levels of government to fund the extension, reflecting its wide-ranging benefits.

The next step for the SkyTrain extension is creating a business case, which outlines the full project scope and estimated costs and benefits. The federal and provincial governments pledged 80 per cent of planning funding earlier this year.

White says it’s important the business case is initiated in early 2022 so construction can be continuous from the Arbutus extension to UBC. “If you look at the overall benefits of the line, they’re overwhelming on all accounts.” U

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY | NEWS | 5 COVID-19 //

Spooky, scary safety: How to stay safe this Halloween, according to public health experts Aafreen Siddiqui Staff Writer

With Halloween upon us, we’re all busy trying to figure out what our costumes are going to be this year.

However, COVID-19 hasn’t left the building yet, despite the fact that the provincial restrictions in BC have been eased.

Whether you’re planning on attending The Calendar’s Halloween party or celebrating in your own home, here’s your guide to enjoying Halloween safely this year.

FOLLOW BC’S GATHERING GUIDELINES BC’s Restart Plan has been in its third stage since the beginning of July 2021. Provincial gathering restrictions are generally fairly loose, unless additional regional restrictions are in place.

Indoor gatherings were previously allowed to have 50 people, or 50 per cent capacity, whichever one is greater. However, as of October 25, capacity limits are being lifted for the indoor events where proof of double vaccination is mandatory.

Capacity limits will still be in effect where regional orders are in place, including Fraser East and parts of Northern and Interior Health regions.

As for outdoor restrictions, seated gatherings can now have

5,000 people, or 50 per cent capacity, whichever one is greater.

UBC, among other institutions and public places in BC, requires the use of a non-surgical mask while in public indoor spaces on campus or in residence.

ENSURE EVERYONE IS VACCINATED Dr. Matthew Chow, president of Doctors of BC and a professor in the department of psychiatry at UBC, recommended that people only celebrate with people who are also vaccinated.

“If you’re going to be out at a party, in a closed confined space … only do so with other people that are vaccinated,” he said.

Chow said that people who will be gathering indoors on Halloween are at a slightly higher risk of contracting COVID-19, compared to people who will be gathering outdoors.

“People who are together in tight groups indoors, in areas with poor ventilation, especially among unvaccinated individuals, are at a much higher risk of acquiring COVID-19,” he explained.

Chow also suggested making sure that everyone who attends the event you’re attending is vaccinated.

“There’s gonna be hundreds of people at a party and you have no idea whether people are vaccinated or not. That’s not something that

“If you’re going to be out at a party, in a closed confined space … only do so with other people that are vaccinated.”

I personally want to go to on Halloween night during the fourth wave of the pandemic,” he said.

One way to check the vaccination status of attendees upon arrival is through the BC Vaccine Card Verifier App. This app has been developed by the province of

BC, and is usually used in offices and restaurants by scanning the QR code of the customer.

The app is free and it easily confirms whether people have been vaccinated or not.

Chow also added that making sure everyone is vaccinated

JASPER DOBBIN

before attending an event would be considered a “good act of citizenship.”

“For Halloween, I urge people to be careful, listen to the public health advice, get your vaccine, but at the same time, you can also have fun and there are ways to do it safely.” U

UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE //

Faculty concerned over unclear instructions around COVID exposures

The UBC Covid Tracker said they received confirmation of this new policy from seven faculty members.

Jasmine Cadeliña Manango Staff Writer

Faculty have expressed concern online that UBC will allow only department heads to notify students of potential COVID-19 exposures in classrooms — a policy which the university says it hasn’t implemented.

In an October 3 tweet, the student-run UBC Covid Tracker said they received confirmation of this new policy — previously, instructors were able to email their students directly on potential exposures — from seven faculty members, including one department head.

Dr. Darren Irwin, a prof from the biology department, replied to this tweet pledging to his students that he would notify them if such an exposure occurred.

“If I am aware that [my students] have been exposed to a deadly illness in one of my courses, you can bet that I will make certain that they are informed,” wrote Irwin. “I find it shocking that anyone would think we should do otherwise.”

But in an interview with The Ubyssey, Dr. Daniel Coombs, head of the math department, expressed uncertainty about the UBC Covid Tracker’s claims. He was under the impression that instructors were

iSABELLA FALSETTI

offered the opportunity to ask their department head or risk management to notify students on their behalf if they felt uncomfortable doing so themselves. “[Instructors] were asked to report [notifications] to Risk Management,” he said. “No one ever told me that our faculty in math were not allowed to notify students.”

On October 2, Dr. Evan Thompson, a professor from the philosophy department, replied to an earlier tweet from the UBC Covid Tracker with a screenshot from UBC administrators that told instructors to notify their department head of exposures, but did not specifically

prohibit them from notifying their class.

Coombs thinks that it is appropriate to notify students of COVID-19 exposures but the channel they receive this information from is not significant.

“I think as long as the information is still going out … then I don’t think it matters if it comes from the department head or if it comes from the instructor themselves.”

In the math department, faculty members are welcome to notify their class or ask Coombs to do so on their behalf.

“Faculty are welcome to make careful and respectful statements to the class, [while] respecting the [infected] student’s privacy wishes,” said Coombs.

“If one of my instructors … was not comfortable notifying their students and asked me if I would do it, then I’ll be more than happy just to send a brief message.”

Coombs has not directly spoken to anyone outside of the math department about how they are approaching COVID-19 exposure disclosure. He did state that, per their last meeting about this matter, the faculty of science has not been told that communications about COVID-19 exposures needed to go through the head of the department.

In a statement emailed to The Ubyssey, Matthew Ramsey, director of university affairs at UBC Media Relations, acknowledged that some faculty may feel obligated to share information around potential COVID-19 exposures in the class-

room.

“The University’s recommended approach is that these matters should be referred to the Department Head, School Director, or Administrator to manage rather than have the faculty member undertake this additional responsibility,” he wrote.

“We do not anticipate any effect on students from this change. Safety and Risk Services is not engaged in informing of potential exposures on campus, unless requested to do so for contact tracing purposes by Vancouver Coastal Health.”

Ramsey added that from the start of the pandemic, “there has been no expectation” that the university would communicate potential COVID-19 exposures.

Coombs said the number of exposures in the math department has been “very low.” He estimates this number to be below ten. Coombs acknowledged that this number might not be an entirely accurate representation of COVID-19 infections in the department. “[Students may not] know if they’re infected,” he said. “If they’re infected they may choose not to tell their instructor,” which he emphasized was a “bad choice.”

Coombs is confident that instructors would notify him if a student indicated they had been infected with COVID-19.

“The fact that not many notifications are going out is because there are very few notifications being made to the faculty, at least in [the math] department.” U

CULTURE

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

EDITOR TIANNE JENSEN-DESJARDINS

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QUEER & BIPOC LOVE //

Event recap: Online Dating While Queer and BIPOC webinar Kaila Johnson Staff Writer

On October 5, as part of the Artivism: Queering the Self festival, director Bianca Santana hosted Online Dating While Queer and BIPOC: Webinar with Luna Matatas.

The Artivism series is a month-long event highlighting underrepresented voices in the community through both in-person and online events.

Matatas is a sex and pleasure educator with over ten years of experience in sexual health and wellness. She started out the event by giving some background on her online dating experiences.

“I was banned from Tinder twice and I was banned from OkCupid. My interactions with cis men are what got me kicked off of the app. If people were messaging me dumb stuff or rude things or overly sexual things, even if they were boring, I would write back and be like, ‘Hey that message was really vulgar,’” Matatas said.

“The expectation of the community standards is that you report someone if they do something or you block them or you ignore them. Patriarchy has created a certain expectation — or guidelines — for how cisgendered, heterosexual men behave on dating apps. I wrote to [OkCupid] and they said, this is almost word for word, ‘We looked at your messages and we know that boys can be bad sometimes and it’s very annoying to have to deal with them but your messages are not nice and if you continue to act in a not nice way, we’re gonna have to deactivate your account.’ I was like, ‘Hey there Nigel, thanks for giving me your 1950s guide to being a woman, but I’m too busy crossing my legs and discreetly menstruating to worry about the feelings of these random dudes trying to send me dick pics all over these apps.’ This is where we start to see that our experiences are not the same. We get this message that if we just behave better than this wouldn’t happen.”

RACISM ON DATING APPS Matatas said that many apps and dating sites did not always include a way to add an expression of sexual orientation or gender identity. There are apps such as Grindr and Her that cater to specific communities, but Matatas said they do not consider how to protect the most vulnerable people on their apps.

“For a long time it was very acceptable on Grindr to have really racist shit right on their profiles,” said Matatas. “Hinge allows you to select your preferred racial preferences. I actually prefer [the preferences], as a person of colour, because you’re in a position where you are going into a situation where you might experience violence.”

A dating app that Matatas enjoys is called Feeld, created particularly for those looking for sexual connections. This app allows for a wide variety of identification from gender to couple dynamics. She noted that while this app does educate the

FILE KRISTINA HO

For Matatas, someone asking for your ethnic background is a red flag.

community and helps its users navigate dating more safely, Matatas finds it “super white.”

RACIAL FETISHIZATION “When we think about all the times that we accept crumbs because somebody has objectified us for our race, often because of our gender, it becomes an opportunity to really see how low our bar is, and where we actually want it to be,” said Matatas.

Matatas defined racial fetishization as someone objectifying you because of your race, which can show up in different ways.

For her, someone asking what your ethnic background is a red flag. Matatas reiterated that you can always get off of the apps when it doesn’t feel good anymore and to create boundaries with the apps you’re on.

“You get to decide what is a dealbreaker. BIPOC people are always being put in the position of having to educate, it’s okay for you to just unmatch,” said Matatas.

Matatas also spoke of how BIPOC people can fetishize themselves. This could be due to social validation and social power that can come with having a white partner, she said.

“It’s not wrong to want [a white partner] but recognizing

that it’s happening, so that you and your partner can talk about it when it shows up,” said Matatas. “We might also fetishize ourselves to be more attractive to people who we think have power.

[When] a six-foot-three white, blonde, blue-eyed, cisgendered heterosexual man likes my skin and calls me some caramel goddess, maybe that for me feels extra validating because this [person] might not be interested in me otherwise.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you accepting a compliment about your racial features.

Racial fetishization doesn’t have a checklist,” said Matatas. “It’s totally up to you and what makes you feel unsafe or that you’re an object. It’s okay to follow your intuition. It’s okay to take yourself out of that situation and you don’t have to be nice.”

SEXUAL EXPECTATIONS AND HETERONORMATIVITY There are two definitions of sexual expectations, according to Matatas. The first is the pressure to move at a pace that you are not comfortable with. The second is about performance and worrying that we’re not good at sex.

“I have no idea how we talk about consent without talking about pleasure, because if you

talk about consent without talking about pleasure, you’re pretty much just talking about covering your own ass,” said Matatas. “If we’re moving from a pleasure-focused place, then you changing your mind and communicating it [means] I’m going to reward you.”

Being Queer, there can be a pressure to fit into a certain role.

“We might feel that we naturally need to occupy a femme or masculine role, or top role or bottom role. For example, gay men might feel that they have to pick like ‘Are you a top or bottom, right?’” said Matatas. “Whether you’re heterosexual or Queer, we should all be Queering our sex. This heteronormative idea which comes from patriarchy, it’s enforced by white supremacy, it’s also enforced by transphobia and a gender binary.”

According to Matatas, our sexual experience is an opportunity to experience new sensations.

This includes learning about your body’s “arousal elevator.”

“You don’t actually have to have the goal of orgasm or the goal of a sexual release,” said Matatas. “[Try] approaching self pleasure, approaching masturbation, as more about exploring and getting curious about different contrasts of pressure or speed or direction or vibration. Make sure

that you’re using lots of lube to keep things slippery, you’re keeping things well-textured.”

DECOLONIZING BEAUTY STANDARDS Matatas also wants people to acknowledge the assumptions about beauty along with assumptions about other races that are being brought into the dating sphere.

For example, internalized misogyny can reinforce conventional beauty standards.

“I would really challenge you to make a list of your ideal physical person and be really honest,” said Matatas. “How can I subscribe to those beauty standards and expect to show up in this world and feel beautiful? What is that saying about how I feel about myself?”

She reiterated that it is not wrong to have preferences, but it’s important that we examine them. “We’ve got this carrot dangled in front of us that says ‘if you meet these beauty standards, if you date people with these beauty standards, you are going to find love, companionship, acceptance, and great sex,’ and that’s just bullshit.”

“All of this stuff is learned behaviour and we can unlearn it, but we’ve got to recognize where it’s showing up in ourselves in ways that don’t serve us.” U

OPINIONS

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

EDITOR THOMAS MCLEOD

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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION //

Editorial: BC’s proposed $25 fee for FOI requests will hinder access to information at UBC Ubyssey Editorial Board

The BC NDP is trying to slap a $25 fee on Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) — something that would hamper the public’s ability to access information at UBC. Last week, Lisa Beare, the minister for citizen services, brought forward several changes to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) — the legislation that allows journalists to get information from public institutions that they won’t release of their own accord. This includes email correspondence, internal documents, data and much more.

Some of these changes have the potential to improve transparency and accountability in BC: the government wants to add new penalties for those who deliberately delete requested data and mandate reporting when data is hacked. In addition, one amendment proposes a requirement that public bodies not disclose information that could harm Indigenous peoples.

However, the sticking point for The Ubyssey and for many journalists across BC is the $25 fee to file an FOI request.

FOIs have allowed us to tell stories that otherwise would have never been told. In the last year alone, FOIs allowed us to dig into changes to UBC’s cash payment policies after provincial concerns about money laundering, the harmful impacts of Greekrank on Greek life and public health violations by frats.

We also were the first outlet to question the lack of COVID-19 data at UBC — reporting spurred by information found in documents we requested under FIPPA. At UBC, this new fee would implement yet another barrier to accessing this information — which is already difficult as it is.

UBC takes a notoriously long time to respond to FOI requests.

In the last few years, none of our FOIs have been returned within the allotted thirty days outlined in the act.

In late January 2021, we filed an FOI request for one specific email. We got that email in May. They’re allowed to extend time, but often at UBC, the deadline passes and no word comes from the university.

This is not to slight the people who work within UBC’s Access and Privacy office — as of 2018, UBC was the most FOI-ed university in Canada.

This may still be true — in our correspondence with the staff that work at Access and Privacy at UBC, they often say they have a significant backlog of requests they’re working through.

But implementing a fee is not an answer to understaffing.

In a press release sent out by the government on the FIPPA amendments, Jennifer Burns, UBC’s associate vice-president, information technology and chief information officer, was quoted saying, “UBC welcomes these proposed amendments. They will substantially increase the privacy

At UBC, this new fee would implement yet another barrier to accessing this information.

and security of personal data with more robust and resilient services by allowing us to select the most secure and effective solutions.”

“We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with the government on changes that will boost the competitiveness and efficiency of B.C. postsecondary institutions while helping protect our students, faculty and staff,” Burns wrote in the press release.

However, Michael McEvoy, the BC information and privacy commissioner, strongly opposed this new fee in a letter to Beare, writing that he was “unable to understand how this amendment

improves accountability and transparency when it comes to public bodies that operate in a free and democratic society.”

There’s a question of governance here as well — members of the Board of Governors said this is the first they’ve heard of these changes, even as a UBC administrator is quoted saying the university as a whole supports them. There is even concern that this issue may not even be within Burns’ purview.

For us at The Ubyssey, this would create a financial barrier to information. $25 per FOI adds up quickly, and it’s four or five times

FILE ZAK VESCERA

higher than the fee in most other Canadian provinces.

John Horgan told reporters on Thursday, October 21 that the fee has not yet been finalized.

We urge Horgan and the BC government to reconsider this fee.

At a time when faith in public institutions — including universities — to provide information in the public’s interest is wavering, it seems strange that the government would attempt to make themselves seem even more unaccountable.

So, to UBC and the BC NDP — do better. U

ADVICE //

Ask Iman: The relationshipped and the relationshipless

Time alone is gold and it doesn’t have to be time spent being lonely.

Iman Janmohamed Columnist

Dear Iman, My best friend recently got a

boyfriend and has been spending an awful lot of time with him. She cancels our plans and prioritizes him, sometimes she’ll even invite him to hang with us last minute. I am happy for her, however, I just

FILE MAHIN E ALAM

wish she made more time for me.

What should I do?

Talk to her! Bite the bullet and bring it up — nothing ever gets better by keeping it in.

Open communication can be (and often is) difficult, but by airing out your frustrations, you’ll be able to better understand each other’s viewpoints while crafting a plan on how to move forward.

If you hold everything in and don’t say anything, someone will get unnecessarily hurt, whether that’s you or your best friend.

While talking with your friend, it’s important to acknowledge that it’s tough to be in both positions — the boyfriended and the boyfriendless, the relationshipped and the relationshipless. It’s difficult being the friend left out and it’s difficult being the friend who learns that they are unknowingly leaving people out. It’s important to keep your conversation fair and balanced. Even though you’re upset, you need to listen to what your best friend has to say. She could have completely thought she was spending tons of time with you or she could know that she needs to put more work in, but you’ll never know until you talk to each other.

You also need to keep in mind that new relationships will change the dynamic of old friendships and that’s okay!

Things are always changing and it’s natural for things to be different. It is a hard pill to swallow, but your relationships would also change if you were

dating someone, too. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a different thing.

LEAN INTO THE DIFFERENT! Time alone is gold and it doesn’t have to be time spent being lonely.

You can hang out with yourself more (which is often better than usual when you romanticize it properly), pick up a new hobby or two, make some new friends or join that club you’ve been eyeing at Clubs Day for years. Learning how to spend time with yourself is important, so you might as well take this opportunity to do so.

So yes, this situation sucks and there’s no way to get around it without a good old chat. But keeping open communication and making the best out of a less than prime situation can make everything a lot easier and better overall.

At the end of the day, your best friend is still your best friend and for good reason, too. Yes, it hurts to be pushed aside but there’s no way to get pulled back up if you don’t take matters into your own hands and talk it out.

You’re doing great. Keep it up!

Do you have a burning need for advice from a stranger? Yes! Well, send your questions, queries or problems to advice@ubyssey.ca, or submit anonymously at ubyssey.ca/ advice! U

FEATURES

COORDINATOR PALOMA GREEN

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

‘AN ACT OF RESISTANCE’ How UBC students grapple amid eating disorders with little insitutional support Tina Yong

Content warning: This article contains mentions of eating disorders For those lucky enough to have stayed with their parents through the early months of the pandemic, quarantine is remembered as a period of indulgence — of baking banana bread, concocting whipped coffees and staying home from the gym. For me, it was a time of sickness, but not from COVID-19.

My plans for senior year and first year were completely upended, sending me on a desperate search for control. I felt trapped, not just physically within the four walls of my house but within the confines of an illness that made me both think obsessively about food and deprive myself of it.

Having abundant time to make choices about food and to notice even the most minute changes to my body quickly unearthed disordered eating habits and body dysmorphia, both of which I always had under the surface, but had previously been drowned out by the fullness of pre-COVID-19 life. Behind closed doors and with no distractions to keep them at bay, they fermented and festered.

While a deadly virus raged in the outside world, a pandemic was happening in my own body.

I told no one and tried my best to hide it from my family, which only isolated me further from the only social support I could access. Even as I returned to campus this fall and socialized with more people in a week than I had in all of last year, the loneliness never subsided. I was still all alone with my disorder — or at least it felt that way.

Awareness of eating disorders has experienced a surge in recent years, largely due to efforts made activists, survivors and schools to bring this mental illness into public consciousness. But as the psychiatric disorder with the highest mortality rate, it is still often misunderstood, its dangers understated and its victims dismissed.

I AM NOT ALONE Jennie can’t remember a time when she wasn’t comparing her body to her peers. By the time she was ten years old, she already thought of food as ‘good or bad.’

Jennie is a UBC alumna and asked to remain anonymous as she hasn’t told everyone in her life about her eating disorder.

As Jennie moved up in the school system, her relationship with food and body image got progressively worse.

In high school she begged her parents to send her to a weight loss clinic, where she lost weight rapidly, just as they had advertised. But no matter how much weight she lost, it didn’t make her feel better about her body. Jennie was eventually kicked out of the clinic for not losing enough weight, and that’s “where the cycle of eating disorder behavior stemmed from.”

Bernice Hong, a second year, has a similar story.

When Hong was in high school, she wanted to lose weight, so she adopted a healthier diet and was doing so sustainably. But after a classmate made a negative comment about food to her, dieting quickly devolved into disordered eating habits like calorie counting.

“I started understanding what calories were and I had the mindset of ‘the less the better,’” Hong said. “But I would pass it off as healthy eating. I was in denial.”

Hong’s friends and family grew concerned, and halfway through high school, she committed to recovering. However, much like most recovery journeys, it has not been a linear one, and the risk of relapse is always omnipresent.

Jennie, unlike Hong, didn’t talk about her eating disorder until she was in university. At UBC, Jennie found a community she was able to open up to and in which talking about mental health issues was accepted.

“On campus, you hear way more conversations about mental health, especially from students and student leaders,” Jennie said. “I felt like I had more language for it and I started reading about [eating disorders].”

Illustrations | Lua Presidio Dr. Carl Birmingham, a professor and researcher in the faculty of medicine, noted that the transition to university can expose young people to a great risk of developing an eating disorder because of new sources of stress and unpredictable schedules.

“People don’t get to eat what they want, they get to eat what they can,” Birmingham said.

“They don’t plan, they just react. And reactive eating isn’t good.”

The impacts of an eating disorder are not neatly contained within mealtimes; they bleed into nearly every aspect of life.

For me, thoughts about food and weight were all-consuming — they concocted a loud, cacophonous background track that played on repeat in my head without respite, making it hard to rationally process anything else.

Exam season and the onslaught of academic stress it brought sometimes triggered Jennie’s symptoms even during periods when she thought she had them under control. Without the language, diagnosis or support system, requesting accommodations posed a daunting challenge.

For Jennie, the kindness and flexibility that professors offered made a world of difference.

She said that the type of no-questions-asked extensions and exemptions that professors sometimes gave were “wonderful.”

Aside from trying to keep up with school, the pressure to socialize in university can also facilitate exposure to triggering influences. Recovering from an eating disorder often requires insulating yourself from negative attitudes towards body image and food, which becomes difficult when you interact with so many people.

For Jennie, this was especially true.

Jennie joined a sorority in her second year and found that some aspects of Greek life gave rise to body image issues. “​​While I really valued a lot of the really wonderful women I got to meet through in a sorority, I really detested a lot of parts of it,” Jennie said.

Jennie said that there existed an invisible hierarchy whenever their sorority interacted with men from fraternity houses; it would become apparent when men were only interested in talking to women who looked a certain way.

Sororities would also prioritize certain girls to be in promotional photos, which only highlighted the underlying sizeism that persisted despite individual efforts made by sorority members to be inclusive and body positive.

Engaging in student leadership was also a double-edged sword for Jennie’ recovery. While it boosted her confidence and shifted her sense of self-worth away from her body, being a public figure on campus meant receiving unwarranted comments.

“People that you don’t even know, when you put yourself out there, feel entitled to ... comment on your body,” Jennie said.

While Jennie felt it would’ve helped a lot of people, she never spoke publicly about her eating disorder because she worried that people would look at her differently and only focus on her body, “[which was] a very troubling idea for someone who already thinks a whole lot, and too much, about their own body.”

When the pandemic started, Jennie found it much harder to manage her eating disorder due to a general state of being “down about the world” and isolation from her support networks.

“It hadn’t been that bad for many many years since before I came to university,” Jennie said.

However, it was also the intensity of this experience that prompted Jennie to finally go to counselling.

During the course of the pandemic, eating disorders in Canada spiked as treatment centres saw a significant increase of patient intake, particularly adolescents.

Birmingham attributed the uptick to the “tremendous stress and isolation” that people were experiencing.

“People we see that have eating disorders, many of them have gotten worse. There’s just so much stress on them, they can’t see their friends, they can’t go out,” Birmingham said. “Even people who have been well for 10 years or 20 years, we see [they] are now ill again.”

8

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY | FEATURES | 9

DISORDERED EATING, DISORDERED TREATMENT When I realized that I had an eating disorder, I went to UBC Counselling, who referred me to UBC Student Health Services, who referred me to UBC Psychiatry, who referred me to a practice that specialized in eating disorders. I’m still on the waitlist.

The whole process took more than six months, during which my condition continued to accelerate. Having to lock myself in the closet so my family couldn’t hear my therapy calls certainly didn’t expedite the process.

I considered telling my friends, some of whom also exhibited disordered eating symptoms.

But because eating disorders are inherently competitive, those who most understood what I was going through also felt like the worst people to tell.

A large part of why I wanted to dig deeper into eating disorders at UBC is because I wanted to know if this dysfunctional system was the only source of recourse for people like me, who had no one else to talk to.

I found that aside from Student Health Services and UBC Counselling, neither of which are equipped to professionally treat eating disorders, UBC Student Recovery Community has a new peer support program focused on eating disorder recovery.

Jennifer Doyle, a program analyst at UBC and lead of the peer support group, emphasized the importance of peer support, which could be more accessible than clinical treatments that sometimes require a diagnosis.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), a scale used to classify and diagnose patients, used to require that patients have a “body weight less than 85% of what is expected” to receive a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa.

The criteria for anorexia was revised to allow diagnosis of individuals who are at a “significantly low weight” in order to grant more physician discretion. Atypical anorexia, which is when an individual presents the same symptoms as those with anorexia nervosa but don’t fall into underweight categories, was also added to the DSM-5 in 2013.

However, physicians still often look at weight criteria as a means of diagnosis. This means that many people with larger bodies and higher weights are often barred from a diagnosis and thus treatment — even if they suffer the same symptoms.

“It’s difficult when your eating disorder doesn’t necessarily match the expectations you have of what it should look like,” Jennie said.

“If you have a bump on your arm, everyone knows [that]. But when you have an eating disorder, what do they see that they can understand?” Birmingham questioned. “This makes getting better much worse, if no one even thinks there’s something wrong with you and yet you feel so depressed and anxious, it’s hard to get help.”

However, even if someone does overcome these barriers and seeks help, Birmingham claimed that “there’s very little help around.” He said that the provincial eating disorder program faced cutbacks due to funds being prioritized for COVID-19 relief.

Even as the BC government recently announced new funding for eating disorder programs, Birmingham pointed out that the programs aren’t “set up in a way that people could use them” because they often require patients to take time off of school and work.

Birmingham said that UBC should bring back the eating disorder program he led under the department of psychiatry, which was cut more than ten years ago. He also suggested that researchers with lived experiences of an eating disorder should be recruited to conduct research with the department of psychiatry.

For those with eating disorders, Birmingham recommended going to Student Health Services and searching for local recovery programs and non-profit organizations. For those looking to support friends and family who have an eating disorder, he said it’s best to “try to just listen” without judgement.

Data about eating disorders among UBC students is not publicly available, but Noorjean Hassam, the chief student health officer, speculated that most eating disorders are not merely about nutritional illiteracy or body image.

“It’s a way bigger problem than what one campus can manage,” Hassam said. “I think we have to hit it at all different points in order to tackle it as a problem that I see as a societal problem.”

What made the biggest positive impact on Jennie’s recovery, according to her, was the work student leaders did to normalize conversations surrounding mental health and faculty who understood that “students’ lives don’t begin and end in the classroom.”

“I feel like when your peers are the ones who speak up about these issues, it really makes a big impact,” Jennie said.

Jennie said that she had to seek out resources for herself, which proved to be a good learning experience, but not an accessible one. Hong also said that UBC could do a better job of outreach.

Even with the institutional support that was available, Jennie felt that she didn’t take full advantage of it because she wasn’t ready to confront the fact that she had an eating disorder, partially due to stereotypical messaging about what someone with conditions like anorexia is supposed to look and act like.

Hong felt that it was hard to find the resources UBC has.

“What I do think they could do better is advocating for it or posting about it or just something to make it known that they do have resources,” Hong said.

Hassam said that one of the things on her agenda was ensuring that students have knowledge of available resources, but she thinks that it’s “more than just the knowledge.”

“You need to get that information at the time that you need it, and then you need the kind of comfort and safety to access those services,” Hassam said. “So there’s just many layers we need to work on.”

A ROCKY PATH TOWARDS RECOVERY Having a toxic relationship with food feels inescapable because it’s not a relationship you can ever leave. At least three times every day, I am forced to confront my disorder head-on and tune out the voice in my head that tells me to fear food.

However, hearing the stories of Hong and Jennie, I realize how much each of our journeys overlap and that makes me feel less alone. Knowing that we, and many more students, are all survivors of this ruthless illness fills me with hope.

Eating disorders thrive in secrecy and breed behind closed doors. Talking about this for the first time on a public platform feels like putting all my personal relationships and reputation in jeopardy. But it’s an act of active resistance against an illness that has held my body and mind hostage for the past two years.

Standing up to an eating disorder can look like telling a friend, going to counselling and giving yourself unconditional permission to fuel your body so it can function the way it’s designed to.

Most of all, it requires knowing that your body is not the enemy, the disorder is. U

FROM THE BLOG

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

EDITOR THOMAS MCLEOD

10

ROOM DECOR //

Who you are based on what you bought at the poster sale Iman Janmohamed Senior Staff Writer

Waiting in line too long, spending too much money and being a little too overhyped; the poster sale in the Nest is a UBC rite of passage.

Posters are a great way to decorate your space and an even better way to let everyone who comes into your room know what your favourite band is without even having a conversation about music.

Basically, the posters you buy say a lot about you as a person — whether you like it or not.

TARANTINO! The poster sale is 100 per cent film bro heaven. I couldn’t even count how many Pulp Fiction, Wolf of Wall Street, Joker and Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood posters there were. For $12.00 and a 45 minute wait in line, you can become a certified asshole.

And if you are one of those assholes, I have three questions for you.

1. Do you really think Tarantino is a god?

2. What are your thoughts on his foot fetish?

3. Can you please drop your film studies class? I’m on the waitlist and I really need another

three credits this semester.

WELCOME TO THE PARTY We all know this poster. Some of us own it and some of us have bought it. If you’re the person who bought it, how does it feel to BUY a Communism poster? With money? Some communist you are!

If you got your hands on a sweet, sweet hammer and sickle poster, you probably love Instagram infographics, are obsessed with AOC and definitely bought your copy of The Communist Manifesto on Amazon.

I mean, when you have Amazon Prime, you might as well.

EW… SPORTS If you bought any of the sports posters, you love routine, wake up by 6:45 a.m. every morning and your drink of choice has got to be a lime White Claw.

Basically, you’re boring.

Try going outside the box next time, you might like it.

WE CAN DO IT! Did I buy a Rosie the Riveter poster?

Yes. But it was done in a post-

Basically, the posters you buy say a lot about you as a person — whether you like it or not.

modern, girlboss, English literature major, Fiona Apple, intersectional, iced coffee, Ramona Flowers, Jennifer’s Body, y2k, feminist way, so IT’S FINE. If you did the same, you should watch Booksmart. I think you might relate a little bit too much to Molly. I mean, I do!

Also, we should become

friends. We’re a bit insufferable but in a good way.

ROCOCO? I HARDLY KNOW HER! The art section of the poster sale is interesting. From Monet to Dali to Van Gogh — you have options.

If you bought any of these

FILE BRIDGET CHASE

posters, you’re probably an art history major. You probably think that The Smiths are underground.

You probably hand roll cigarettes and exclusively drink IPAs. You’re probably a fuckboy.

And you definitely bored your Tinder hookup to death while talking about dadaism.

Sorry, I don’t make the rules. U

FITTING IN //

In on it: How people cope with missing the joke really doesn’t seem like the time, but I think this is their way of coping with having missed the joke. They find other people with the same haircut, the same genitals (of course), the same skin tone and the same loafers and they make sure that they’ve all got matching T-shirts and sleep in the same house and they say to the world, as one loud, drunk, united force, “No, you missed the joke!” And then they laugh really loud and shotgun a beer. Ha, ha! Take that, everyone else! Man, those guys really belong here, huh? Now those guys get it.

FIRST YEARS Here’s my analysis of the many ways people try to make it look like they know what’s going on here.

Kate Cunningham Contributor

The Eric Andre Show is fun if you... well... are Eric Andre.

But for the guests it’s... uncomfortable. For the most part, none of them are really in on the joke.

As I squeezed my bodacious seat into a teeny-tiny, much-lessbodacious seat at my very first lecture at UBC, the discomfort reminded me of something. It reminded me of the bemused expressions on the faces of every one of Eric Andre’s guests.

I was a giant in my chair and nobody else appeared to be having this issue, nor did they seem bamboozled in the slightest when the instructor fumbled with his microphone for ten minutes before acknowledging

us, or when he requested that all 100 of us introduce ourselves to each other through our masks (the hall was filled with unintelligible noise, so don’t ask me anybody’s name, major or favourite part of summer break). I felt like a guest on The Eric Andre Show, in that it was absurd and alienating. I was half expecting the prof to stand up without notice and karate chop the lectern in half. Why was I there?

I assume that it’s around then — just before the chopping — that Eric Andre’s guests start to realize: this is a joke. And I am not in on it. What’s worse? I don’t even know what the joke is!

I’d bet that Eric Andre’s guests are given the same vague pitch as UBC students before arriving: It’ll be fun, it’ll look

FILE GEOFF LISTER

good on your CV and you might be harassed, but we do have a security team. That’s it. No one really sets the actual joke up for you. No one tells you about the tiny desks or the sweaty host that will inevitably tear his clothes off and scream in your face or the moment-to-moment purpose of being there, the punchline.

But I don’t believe that I’m the only one who feels as though they’ve missed some detail very pertinent to success. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels like they missed the joke.

Here are some ways I’ve observed others dealing with not being ‘in on it’:

FRAT GUYS They love to fricken gather, huh!

I won’t be the first to say that it

Drinking. And desperate small talk that I envy as much as I despise. I wish I wanted to make small talk, but I don’t, in any way, wish that I was as lonely and sad as I was in my first year of university. You win some, you lose some. Living in residence appears to be the best way for first years to convince themselves that they are in on the joke. After all, how could you miss the joke when you live at the comedy club?

TRANSFER STUDENTS So they’re less exciting to make fun of than the frat guys. Maybe that’s just because I am one.

As such, I feel the need to tell everyone I meet that, “I’m in my second year... but really I should be in my third, UBC just wouldn’t accept some of my credits from Capilano!” I bore myself each

time I say it, but I want people to know that I’m not a little baby, dammit! I am a capable human being with poise and a goddamn clue! But also can you please tell me how the hell I’m supposed to make friends here and where is the Geography building and also where should I study and where should I eat lunch and why does everyone else already have several pals?

On my first day I ran into two other transfer students from Capilano. I reintroduced myself and even made plans with them.

We got pad thai together and had a really lovely time. Hm… Oh. Hey! Am I getting it now?

They asked if I’d attended orientation — I hadn’t. After experiencing Capilano’s orientation in my first year I swore them off. But then I remembered that I don’t go to Capilano anymore because I thought that UBC would be more interesting and exciting to be a part of. So maybe the world isn’t so much to blame here. Maybe I’m covering my ears every time someone tries to tell me the very joke that I’m griping about not being ‘in on.’

EVERYONE ELSE Existing seems to be their secret.

When I see some rando sitting against a tree by the Life Building with their laptop out in front of them, squinting through the sun to see something (surely) fascinating, I always think they’re just another UBC student who’s in on the joke more than I am. So maybe, just maybe, everyone else feels this way when they see me, too. U

ILLUSTRATIONS KYLLA CASTILLO | RAINA CAO

DESIGN MAHIN E ALAM

12 | SCARY SPOOKY STORIES

Night Terrors CHEL SEA SEABEA BRUNO

Sometimes I wake up to spiders in my bed.

They cover every inch of my sheets, creating a quilt of hairy legs and beady eyes.

I can feel them crawling underneath my duvet, traveling up my legs, over my torso and into my mouth. I stop breathing, praying they will stay still. Their little footsteps tickle the back of my throat.

When that doesn’t work, I start screaming. I kick my legs up, throwing my blanket onto the floor, but it doesn’t matter. The spiders are still there. The more I scream, the more they stay, clawing my skin. They won’t leave and they’re all over me and no one is helping and I can feel my lungs collapsing and…

They’re gone.

I’ve had night terrors for about five years. Night terrors are not the same thing as sleep paralysis. My dad has sleep paralysis and it’s a whole different bag of worms — or spiders.

Like sleep paralysis, I see the imaginary in real life, typically while I am half awake.

I’ve had a wide variety of visitors over the years. There was a black cat. It was very cute, except for when it tried to claw out my eyeballs. There was the man in the shadows.

He stayed stationary and didn’t provide much entertainment. Not big on conversation. Still creepy, in a ‘weird guy staring at me’ sort of way. I even had a proper demon once. Like the total package with six eyeballs randomly placed on its amorphous body that leaked into the air like smog.

But unlike sleep paralysis, I am not a prisoner of my own body. I can fight, but with little success. I flail my limbs, wriggling on the bed and yell until my throat gets sore.

Having night terrors is okay when you’re at home. Your parents rush into your room and, once they see you are okay, they kiss you on the forehead and say goodnight.

Having night terrors is less okay when you live in dorms. Roommates don’t appreciate being woken up by screeching. So, I have learned to shut up when I have night

terrors. See a creature? Close your eyes, don’t scream and take five deep breaths in and out.

I have a single room now, but I still practice self-control. I don’t want to freak out my neighbours.

I just woke up and I can hardly see a thing. It must be late since the only light is coming from under the doorway. As my eyes dart around, I notice someone. They have no distinguishing features except for a snarled grin that extends from ear to ear. Standing above me, their heavy breathing brushes my face.

I close my eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I can feel their breath getting closer. It’s humid, putrid, like an abandoned butcher shop.

Breathe in.

The condensation is dripping down my cheek onto the sheets.

Breathe out.

Their hand is on my wrist. Their nails are digging into my flesh.

Breathe in.

I think they’re saying something, but I will not listen.

Breathe out.

They’re not real.

Breathe in.

Their nails are puncturing my skin.

Breathe out.

I can feel pressure in my chest begging to escape.

Breathe in.

I’m biting my lip. I won’t scream. I squeeze my eyes until all I can see are purple dots.

Breathe out.

It’s not real. You can open your eyes now.

But if it’s not real, why is there blood dribbling down my fingers?

And if they’re not real, why are their nails still stuck in my wrist? U

SCARY SPOOKY STORIES | 13

Haunted Love T I A N N E J E N S E N - D E S JA R D I N S As I floated through the window, I briefly noticed the scattered jack-o’-lanterns on the porch.

With a gossamer sheet draped over me, I felt like a proper ghost for the first time since my death back in the spring. Time hasn’t been the same since I crossed over, but I wasn’t going to let tonight slip by me. It was my first haunt, after all, and I was going to commit every moment of it to memory. With only one night a year to haunt, I knew exactly where I was headed.

She was sitting at her desk, her laptop screen revealing a mostly written essay. The light from the screen painted her face a pale white, highlighting the dark bags under her eyes. Had she lost weight? Her favourite sweater hanging off her shoulders seemed a little looser than I remembered it.

Even though I wanted to spook her, I wanted to make sure she got her homework done first. Peeking through her things while she finished up, I spotted a familiar photo on her side table. It was a framed childhood photo. The two young girls held watermelon rinds in front of their mouths in mock smiles. Bathing suits and dripping hair completed the summer image.

Beside the photo sat trophies from soccer tournaments won. There was even a single chess trophy, from back before being a nerd wasn’t cool. A thin film of dust covered everything except the photo frame.

Next, I rifled through her closet. Last year, I would have been angry to find my old t-shirts hanging up here, but now all I can feel is sadness. As I reached out to touch the wellworn fabric of my old camp tee, I watched my transparent sheet pass through the shirt. There was nothing left for me here.

I floated back out of the closet and settled over the bed. She was still typing away on her laptop, occasionally flipping through a book for quotes. As the hours ticked by, I felt a sense of calm settle over me. Watching her almost felt like being alive again.

I startled as she closed the laptop and stood up. I thought I was the one doing the spooking this year. I watched as she rolled her shoulders and checked her phone before approaching the bed. I shifted over as she pulled back the covers and got in. I watched as she reached out for the photo frame, almost in routine fashion, as if she’d done it a million times. I watched as the tears started to drip down her face.

And then with a gentleness I’d never known when I was alive, I reached out and wiped a tear from her face. It takes a lot out of a ghost to cause something to happen, and it would be years before I’d gathered the energy to do it again, but I had to let her know that I was here.

I had to let my sister know that I hadn’t left her. Not on purpose. U

Agoraphobia S H A N A I TA N WA R It is a dark and stormy night.

I can hear the wind howling from inside the box.

“Call me back, your connection is kind of sketchy.”

The lights flicker and I hear the call end. That simple, really. Just a little bit of rain and suddenly the whole city’s wiring is failing. It reminds me of a macrocosmic motherboard gone wrong.

I press the buttons on the box and hear it groan as its familiarly foreign machinery begins to grind in its familiarly foreign motion.

Somehow, getting into this box every night doesn’t seem right, no matter how many times I do it. It’s always too small — or maybe I’m just too large for it, even at a mere five-foot-two. It feels and looks like a coffin, but I tell myself to trust the box no matter how many ominous noises it makes. If everybody gets into one every night then so can I. It pings and then stops. I freeze inside the box.

I clutch my phone like it’s the hand of somebody

I trust. Except it’s just a device and it’s a dark and stormy night.

The city’s wiring is failing.

It seems like centuries before my heartbeat finds its rhythm again, keeping time with the humming of the box. It has begun to make sounds again, and I feel a little bit at ease to move around. My cramped muscles begin to ease.

It’s never comfortable but I tell myself I have to get used to it. That’s what my friends say too.

Well, everybody says that, really. Everybody has to get into the box at some point, except they don’t think of it as a coffin like I do.

Suddenly I hear the snap of electricity and feel my stomach drop to the floor of the box. My groceries clink across its metal surface, spilling out of the bag as though in slow motion. I collapse as the box hurtles back to the earth’s surface, carrying me down with it.

As I said, it’s a dark and stormy night. The city’s wiring is failing. And I’m an agoraphobe in a broken elevator. U

14 | SCARY SPOOKY STORIES

Dreams and Reality ISABELLE DINA

Ever since I was a kid, this weird thing kept happening to me.

It started happening when I was 12 , around the same time I started reading horror books. I always loved a book that could make my skin crawl, one that was so scary it gave me a rush of adrenaline after every sentence I read. It got hard to kick the addiction. I started reading the books everywhere I went. I couldn’t even put down Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (my favourite at the time) at my own 14th birthday party.

The problem was that the horror from the books bled into my real life.

The dreams started happening as soon as I dove into my first horror novel. The novel was about a ghost that haunted a family of four and wanted revenge on them for moving into its old house. Soon enough, the ghost would appear in my dreams. The dreams were so vivid that I felt like I could touch what was around me and like the ghost could attack me at any time.

But I hadn’t had any dreams in a while.

With my parents off on their annual trip to visit my grandparents in Vermont, I had all the time I wanted to catch up on some spooky reading back at home. Staying home alone this year was a present for my 16th birthday. Living in Minnesota, it gets pretty cold. This fall’s transition into winter had been the coldest I’d ever experienced.

It was getting dark outside so I turned the fireplace on. To keep myself warm, I brewed a cup of earl grey tea and decided to have a night just for myself. My favourite thing to do on cold winter nights is, of course, to read.

I knew it was a bad idea, but I decided to curl up next to the window with my favourite thriller novel. I was just getting to the part where the killer was down the hall from the main character hiding in a closet.

The hairs on my neck stood up as I read each line. The villain in this story had the freakiest description: a tall, lanky man with no face who tends to walk in robot motion.

A noise to my left started ringing through my ears. I was startled to realize that I had dropped my book and my mug of tea. My parents would be so upset if they found out that I stained their brand new carpet during my first time alone in the house. As I got up to clean, I heard a voice whispering my name. I turned around but no one was there. I kept walking to grab some paper towels, when I heard it again.

This time I froze.

“Who’s there?”

No response.

It was probably just my mind playing tricks on me. I mean, I was just reading one of the freakiest novels I’d ever read.

“Annie, turn around.”

I swiftly jumped to face the other direction. The back door of my house was wide open and a figure was lurking in the doorframe. With the lights off I couldn’t see who it was but I didn’t care. I started sprinting up the stairs to my room. I closed my door and locked it behind me.

That’s when I realized; it was the man from my novel.

No, this can’t be happening.

How could he be here, in my house? This wasn’t a dream. It just couldn’t be.

I felt a sudden shove on my shoulder and the next second I found myself laying back on the couch, opening my eyes, where I was reading in front of the fire, my book and mug both still on the floor. It was dark in my house, the only light was coming from the fire itself.

“Did you have a good sleep?”

“Yes mom, I just dozed off and then I—” Wait — my mom is in Vermont. I feel breath on the back of my neck and I begin to slowly turn my head around. It was the man from the novel standing right in front me.

“Hey Annie, want to play a game?” U

SCARY SPOOKY STORIES | 15

Pumpkin K Y L A F LY N N

Every year, my aunt would carve pumpkins for me.

Yes — for me. In some households, Christmas was the holiday to await, an advent calendar counting down the days, chocolatey treats eaten in anticipation. But in mine, it was Halloween.

Tall grass would wave in the autumn breeze as I stepped out on the porch to fetch the morning paper. There, each day, for the whole month of October, a pumpkin would sit proudly on the dirty doormat, some intricate design or message carved into its cheery flesh.

When I was five years old, it was often a toothy jack-o’-lantern, or a letter a day, spelling out messages like “BOO” or “GRR.” My squeals of delight, hitting the same tone and frequency of the pigs we kept ‘round back, would make my aunt grin, an unfamiliar expression against her weathered skin.

I never knew when she had the time for this, but that was part of the magic.

At eleven, the theme was princesses. Every single one immortalized on a pumpkin along with tiaras, slippers and fairies too. It was as if Auntie was reading my mind. That year I watched Beauty and the Beast twelve times, Cinderella ten and Snow White seven — in retrospect, it was not my mind she was reading, rather, it was the constant blaring of the television informing her of my obsession. That Halloween night, when the sun had set over the farm, and we headed home from the Smith’s annual party, a beautifully detailed pumpkin rested on the porch, sizeable and decorated like a carriage. I dropped my bag full of candy, tiny heeled feet stopping in their tracks. “How did you do it?” I said, brown eyes wide with wonder.

“I didn’t do anything,” she stroked the pumpkin’s flesh, admiring her craftsmanship. The photo of me next to it, in my Cinderella dress, is still hung by a magnet on Auntie’s fridge.

As I grew up, pumpkins continued to be our thing, my aunt and I. I figured they were acquired through our pumpkin-patch-owning neighbours in exchange for a dozen of our fresh eggs a week for the month of October — or at least, that was how many Auntie sent them every Sunday, a silent “thank you” for the pumpkins. Then, I surmised, she’d carve them and stash them on the property somewhere — probably in her toolshed, while I was at school, or doing chores, or mucking about with my friends.

When I was fourteen, I started to receive letters alongside the pumpkins, which were all carved in Taylor Swift or Twilight themes that year. Never signed, the letters were always anecdotal and heartfelt. My aunt would summarize how the year went — what she was proud of me for, how I’d grown, her hopes for me — it was sweet. It is sweet.

In fact, I look forward to them every year.

At twenty, Halloween this year feels hollow.

In my humble loft, fluorescent lights flickering just enough to be bothersome, and the shower running just a little too cold, I hear my neighbour’s radio blaring, always set to some station where someone is constantly winning a hundred dollars or concert tickets to groups I don’t particularly care for. A result of my moving out and 2,000-ish miles away, this year there are no Halloween parties with the Smiths, no waving blades of field grass, and no smiles from my aunt as I burn my tongue on cinnamon-dusted apple cider, rocking on the creaky porch swing. Even the air here is different, lacking the fresh farm scent I’d actually grown to miss during my time alone. I think the grey walls of my apartment would look much better painted bright, pumpkin orange.

Suspending my homesick fantasies, the doorbell rings. I open it a crack, my eyes making their way down, focusing on the lively orange pumpkin on my doorstep. I pick it up and rush inside, dialling my aunt at record speed. How did she pull it off? My cheeks raise, laughter interrupting the city noise. She picks up on the first ring.

“Hi Auntie, it’s me. I just wanted to say, thank you so much!”

“Always lovely to hear your voice. I’m not one to reject praise, but,” she paused, “why am I the recipient of such gratitude?”

“The pumpkin, Auntie, I got it,” I say.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Auntie, don’t. Seriously, thank you. I miss you.”

I roll my eyes, her dedication to maintaining her ruse not surprising — she’d only been pretending it wasn’t her for 20 years.

“I miss you too,” she says, “but love, it was always the neighbours that gave you those pumpkins — Johnny and Beth, you know, that sweet old couple from two doors down. They just adored you.”

“But Auntie, Johnny passed in March, and Beth lost the patch in July.” I’d flown back for the funeral and everything. I spin the pumpkin around, examining the design.

“Exactly,” Auntie said. “So what are you going on about?”

The pumpkin reads, FOUND YOU! “Auntie?” The line goes dead.

Dread washes over me, the opposite of a summer splash-around in the farm sprinklers, the chill all too unwelcome.

I didn’t lock the door.

A hand grasps my shoulder, tight.

“I’ve been watching you for a while now, Pumpkin.” The grip tightens, breath hot on my neck.

“Happy Halloween.” U

16 | SCARY SPOOKY STORIES

Don’t make friends with the portraits L AU R E N K A S OW S K I

My first-year roommate and I were determined to check off as many things on The Ubyssey’s ‘103 Things to Do at UBC’ list as we possibly could. We decided to check two things off in one night (“18: Make friends with the portraits in that bougie section of IKB — you know the ones”; and “19: Avoid the Halloween Pub Crawl at all costs”) by studying for our chemistry midterm on Halloween.

The library was eerily quiet that night as I entered with my Starbucks drink in hand. There were no sounds of keyboards tapping, no pencils scraping against paper, no quiet sniffles coming from students. The place was abandoned. I didn’t think too much of it — at least it meant I’d be able to find a seat.

I walked by the Chapman Learning Commons desk on my way to the Ridington Room, passing by the librarian. They were sitting with their arms crossed, covering their stomach with their bag.

Their skin was pale, almost sickly looking. I can still remember the way their voice croaked out, “Don’t stay too long.”

I turned around to ask them about their comment, but they were gone. I walked into the study room. There was only one light on, illuminating the corner near the spiral staircase. I made my way into the corner where my friend was sitting before shrugging off my rain jacket.

We had just started studying when I felt a whisper of cold air whizz past my head, like someone had whispered something in my ear. I looked around but we were alone. I brushed it off and continued studying.

A few minutes later, I felt a shiver go down my spine, as if someone had traced their fingers over each and every one of my vertebrae. My eyes darted around, but nothing seemed out of place. I returned to my notes, but something still felt off.

Suddenly my coffee tipped over, drops of cold brew spraying across the table like pumpkin-cream-flavoured bloodshed. I jumped out of my seat and my friend laughed. “I just bumped my leg on the table. Are you that scared of the storm?”

they asked me. I looked out the window to see flashes of lightning outside. I slowly shook my head and we got back to studying.

Another lightning flash broke me out of my daze and I glanced at the clock. It was nearing midnight. The librarian’s words rang in my head and I began to pack up my things.

As my friend started to do the same, I noticed some movement on the wall behind them. Wait, on the wall? I stopped realizing that I did indeed see movement on the wall. The portraits were moving, like something out of Harry Potter. But the closer I looked, the more I realized these weren’t like the magic movies of my youth — these portraits were ghastly. They had lost all their colour, except for a greenish glow outlining their figures. The once-ornate gowns were now torn and their friendly smiles had shifted to sinister smirks.

I hastily grabbed the rest of my stuff and backed away from the walls. I watched in horror as the portrait of Walter Gage leaned out the frame. In slow motion, his hand slowly reached around to cover my friend’s mouth, pulling them backwards. I shrieked and he looked up at me.

“They stayed too long. They’re one of us now,” he said, the corners of his mouth curling into a smirk. My friend’s eyes were wide as they were dragged closer and closer to the frame. I stood frozen as they disappeared into the portrait.

There were crisp scratches on the wooden frame from where their fingers had gripped the side in desperation.

The other portraits around me started to move, their laughter closing in around me, surrounding me. The glowing bodies of past chancellors and presidents reached out to me. The bony fingers of Robert H. Lee brushed the material of my sweater, and my legs jumped into overdrive.

My heart jumped into my throat as I ran out of the room. I don’t remember releasing my breath until I was outside the library walls.

I can still hear their laughter every time I walk past that room. U

SCIENCE

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

EDITOR SOPHIA RUSSO

17

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS //

Partnered in the pandemic: Sex, stress and darker trends Aafreen Siddiqui Staff Writer

Content warning: This article contains mentions of intimate-partner violence.

As the lives of Canadians are shaped by the pandemic, so is their willingness to get down and dirty (hand sanitizer notwithstanding).

The Ubyssey sat down with a UBC researcher to learn more about how the most intimate side of the lives of Canadians has changed due to COVID-19. As researchers set out to learn more about partnered dynamics during the pandemic, from sexual behaviour to desire, they also uncovered some difficult truths.

‘ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER’ A recent study found that partners who cohabited during the pandemic reported less sexual activity than couples who lived apart.

The study was conducted from April to August 2020 on over a thousand Canadians aged 19 to 81 through online questionnaires.

Dr. Lori Brotto, the head investigator of the study and a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at UBC, spoke about the findings.

“Early in the pandemic, there was speculation that [the lockdowns] might improve sexual behaviour, that it would increase it,” she explained

in an interview. “There was, again speculation, that since people were at home so much more and with their partners ... that they would be channelling that into sexual activity.”

Contrary to Brotto’s prediction, the likelihood of actually having sex appeared to follow a more unexpected trend for those with a live-in partner.

“In reality though, what we’ve found … [is] decreased sexual activity, that [the pandemic] had the opposite effect of what was originally speculated,” she said.

Brotto said that the key variable associated with the decreased sexual activity was “whether a partner lived with you or not.” While those with live-in partners were having less sex, partners who did not live together reported increased sexual behaviour. “[The] clichèd saying that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ is definitely true when it comes to sexual desire,” according to Brotto.

STRESS AND SEX Brotto explained that potential reasons for the unexpected reduction in sexual behaviour could be increased “financial stress, emotional stress, work stress, child-rearing stress” and other stressors.

She also said the heavily gendered responsibilities in household chores could play a role in reducing sexual activity and desire between couples. For context, during the pandemic, women who worked

Whether you had a live-in partner or not, the pandemic may have had an impact on your sex life.

either from or outside of the home were more likely to report that they engaged in most of the childcare, according to a June 2020 data set by Statistics Canada.

Brotto suggested a few ways to overcome the negative impact of the pandemic on sexual behaviour, such as talking to a licensed sex therapist or a family doctor, as well as reading books that describe strategies for couples.

THE DARK SIDE TO SEXUALITY Brotto’s study also revealed some

darker trends. According to her data, the risk of sexual coercion by a romantic partner increased for those who were cohabitating when greater COVID-19 stress was reported.

However, this was a relatively small group within the couples sampled in the study.

“While overall rates of sexual coercion were low in this study, consistent with what we’ve seen in past pandemics, COVID-19-related stress did lead to increased rates of sexual violence,” said Dr. Brotto in a UBC press release.

The study noted that the initial

FILE THE UBYSSEY

uptick in sexual coercion did not appear to continue to increase over the course of the pandemic, setting this trend apart from the observed rise in intimate partner violence over the same time period.

With the lives of partnered Canadians being impacted, Brotto warned that these trends on sexual behaviour will impart a “legacy” worth noting.

“There’s going to be lingering consequences on mental health and probably on sexual health [due to COVID-19] for quite some time,” she said. U

INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE //

‘Pandemic within a pandemic’ : Intimate partner violence on the rise

Experts have characterized the rising IPV as a “pandemic within a pandemic.”

Aafreen Siddiqui Staff Writer

Content warning: This article contains mention of domestic violence and intimate partner violence.

As the number of COVID-19 cases went up over the course of the pandemic, so too did the reported cases of domestic violence, also known as intimate partner violence (IPV).

A variety of different behaviours can be considered IPV. According to the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces launched by Statistics Canada in 2018, IPV can

include psychological, physical or sexual violence.

Experts have characterized the rising IPV during the COVID-19 era as a “pandemic within a pandemic.” The Ubyssey sat down with resident experts on sexual behaviour and IPV to learn more about this trend and what living in a pandemic means for survivors.

IPV AND STRESS The COVID-19 pandemic left many Canadians stuck insides their homes to accommodate pandemic

RAINA CAO

restrictions. What followed was a spike in reports of IPV. One CBC article reported that Canada’s Assaulted Women’s Helpline saw nearly a 65 per cent increase in reports of domestic violence from October 1 to December 31, 2020 compared to the year before. The article reported that calls to police regarding IPV-related incidents also went up.

Dr. Lori Brotto, a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at UBC, and Karen Mason, co-founder of the Supporting Survivors of Abuse and Brain

Injury through Research (SOAR) project — an initiative between UBC Okanagan and Kelowna Women’s Shelter — both described the role that pandemic stress played in increasing cases of IPV. “Stress can exacerbate the tendency to engage in, or elicit [IPV],” Brotto said.

This is supported by one recent study in the Journal of Public Economics. Upon surveying 13,000 Spanish women, it found that both the lockdowns and the economic stress due to the pandemic were associated with increased IPV. Similarly, a study done on an American sample saw that stressors related to COVID-19 were linked to an increased risk of experiencing IPV over the course of the pandemic.

Other publications have also explored how social factors intermingle with this “pandemic within a pandemic.”

A study published in the Council on Foreign Relations described the role social factors played in priming the spike in IPV, writing that “growing unemployment, increased anxiety and financial stress, and a scarcity of community resources set the stage for an exacerbated domestic violence crisis.”

victims at a greater risk of severe physical abuse, like traumatic brain injury. She stressed that the potential for victims not realizing that they have sustained a brain injury is “particularly alarming.”

In a perspective article published in The Journal of New England Medicine, the authors highlighted a study that described a more than 50 per cent drop in reports of IPV in the spring of 2020. However, the authors argued that this observation was not a sign for optimism. “Experts in the field knew that rates of IPV had not decreased, but rather that victims were unable to safely connect with services,” according to the article. To note, this observed decrease exists alongside the increase in reports experienced

by Canadian support services last year, emphasizing the complexity in IPV trends.

Mason also emphasized the role that the pandemic played in limiting access to crisis support.

She explained that social distancing also disconnected victims from meeting with their support groups where “they may [have] been working on a safety plan to leave the relationship.” U

LOCKED UP IN A CRISIS

For immediate crisis support, call toll-free service VictimLinkBC : 1-800-563-0808 To contact Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office at UBC : 604-822-1588 To contact AMS Sexual Assault Support Centre at UBC : (604) 827-5180

Mason said that the increase in cases of IPV may be due to the victims being stuck in their homes with their abuser during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

She highlighted that this increase in the incidence of IPV puts

SPORTS+REC

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY

EDITOR DIANA HONG

18

BISONS BE CRUSHED //

Weekend Rundown: Men’s soccer makes it to playoff

T-Birds brought home some wins this past weekend.

Ubyssey Sports Writers

Welcome back to Weekend Rundown, your place to stay up to date with all of the different Thunderbirds teams!

MEN’S SOCCER SECURE CANADA WEST PLAYOFF SPOT UBC men’s soccer finished off their regular season this past weekend with a record of 4-2-6 and a place in the playoffs after managing to secure a victory over the University of Victoria Vikes.

The league leaders proved to be a real challenge for the T-Birds during the first of their double header in their season finale. With the midfield clogged with Vikes players, UBC was quickly met with pressure, preventing the build-up of any promising opportunities.

Scoring opened in the sixth minute of play as Vikes’ header found its way into the back of the net. UBC goalkeeper Bennet Mckay is credited with stopping a handful of UVic attempts on target during the eventful first half.

In the thirty-fifth minute, however, Victoria added to their lead with a goal coming from the foot of Isaac Koch.

The T-Birds showed their attacking talent in the second half, but their attempts to score were unsuccessful.

Coming off of their 2-0 defeat, UBC was quick to respond the following night.

A flurry of goals came early on in the game. UBC added Jackson Farmer to the scoresheet after his goal in the second minute and Tristan Nkoghe made no mistake in putting away two goals before the ten minute mark.

UBC dominated possession the entire game, patiently playing around the Vikes. Their diligence

was rewarded in the ninetieth minute with a goal from Stefan Colbow after a lovely through ball from Sebastian Dzikowski.

With this vital victory, the T-Birds have a chance to prove themselves this weekend in the Canada West playoffs.

ANOTHER CLUTCH FOURTH QUARTER COMEBACK FOR UBC FOOTBALL The T-Birds rallied late for the second-straight win of their season this past Saturday at UBC. With 1,273 fans in attendance in the chilly drizzle, the T-Birds came out firing hot in the first quarter against the Manitoba Bisons. Led by the offensive play of wide-receiver Trey Kellogg and quarterback Garrett Rooker, UBC promptly got off to a 17-0 lead.

After their quick start, however, the T-Birds offence had difficulty regaining their stride and went scoreless for the second and third quarters. Though Manitoba was able to capitalize on this lull, scoring 24 points taking the lead, UBC’s defence was formidable.

Kyle Sampson had a particularly noteworthy showing with six total tackles and one sack for 11 yards.

In a manner eerily similar to their October 16 victory against the Regina Rams, UBC let it all come down to the fourth quarter where they would pull out a clutch win against the Bisons.

With less than five minutes left in the final frame, UBC defensiveback Dustin MaGee intercepted the Bisons’ quarterback Sawyer Thiessen’s pass to regain possession for UBC. The T-Birds’ offence would take it from there. Down 19-24, Rooker and running-back Dane Kapler marched the offence downfield, resulting in a sixteenyard pass to Trey Kellogg for his third touchdown of the game.

FILE ISABELLA FALSETTI & DIANA HONG / COLLAGE BY DIANA HONG

The win was Manitoba’s first loss of the season, and it leaves UBC tied at .500 with the University of Alberta for third-place in the Canada West division.

Despite their rocky start to the 2021 season, this young T-Birds team has shown admirable poise recovering from two late-game deficits.

Here’s hoping they will be able to continue their winning trend.

Their next game is on the road against the University of Calgary on October 30.

MEN’S HOCKEY TRUMP BISONS TO REMAIN UNDEFEATED Over the weekend, the Thunderbirds came out on top in a tight series against the University of Manitoba Bisons, remaining a perfect 4-0 record this season.

On Friday night, Bison fans were treated to two quick powerplay goals to begin their home opener.

Devon Skoleski started it off by finishing a stunning passing play to give Manitoba the early lead, but it was short-lived as the T-Birds tied it up just five minutes later on a man advantage of their own.

The teams remained tied through the second period thanks to an impressive showcase of goaltending from both sides.

Early in the final frame, Quinn Benjafield confidently shot the puck through traffic and beat Bison’s goaltender Liam Hughes to kick off a wild period of back-and-forth scoring.

With just under four minutes left, Tian Rask crashed the net to score the game winning goal, giving UBC the 4-3 victory. Rylan Toth stopped 31 of 34 shots in the win and was key in limiting Manitoba’s second chance opportunities.

Toth did not take the net on Saturday however, as UBC head

coach Sven Butenschön handed the reins to first-year goaltender Ethan Anders. At the other end, Bisons’ goalie Jeremy Link took to the crease for Manitoba.

Special teams were once more an important factor in the game, with the Bisons again scoring first on the man advantage.

Bisons added another powerplay marker late in the second period, when Linden McCorrister jumped on an Anders rebound to put the Bisons up 3-2. Anders seemed to settle in better in the third period and he was able to keep UBC in the game with several important saves.

With under three minutes to play, defenseman Ryan Pouliot walked in from the point and beat Link to tie the game, sending UBC to overtime for the first time this season.

The two teams lined up for five minutes of 4-on-4 hockey.

Halfway through the extra period, Jake Kryski was charged four minutes for slew footing, and UBC headed to an important 4-on-3 penalty kill.

Just moments later, Scott Atkinson found room and created a short-handed 2-on-1 for UBC the other way. Chris Douglas buried the one timer past the Bison’s netminder to give the T-Birds another 4-3 win, and improve the teams win streak to four games.

Next week, UBC returns home to face the Grant MacEwan University Griffins at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird arena and the team will aim to remain undefeated.

WOMEN’S HOCKEY TAKES THE WIN IN SECOND GAME AGAINST THE MANITOBA BISONS Following a 2-3 loss against

Manitoba Friday night, the T-Birds emerged victorious on Saturday afternoon.

The T-Birds started strong in the first period, with rookie forward Grace Elliott from White Rock, BC, scoring her first career goal at 5:49, with assists from Chanreet Bassi and alternate captain Rylind MacKinnon.

Second-year defender Kennesha Miswaggon, from Cross Lake, Manitoba, put the second point on the scoreboard with assists from Joelle Fiala and MacKinnon at 9:15.

Fiala, a third-year transfer student from Robert Morris University, earned her first U Sports career goal with an assist from Chanreet Bassi at 14:20, to finish the first period with a 3-0 lead for the T-Birds.

The first goal of the second period came halfway in, when second-year defenseman Camryn Gillis scored the sole goal for Manitoba.

The T-Birds quickly proved to Manitoba that they would not take another loss, however.

At 13:29, Bassi, a second-year from Lake Country, BC, scored a fourth goal for UBC with an assist from Elliott and MacKenzie Kordic.

Less than a minute later, at 14:26, rookie defender Sophia Gaskell scored UBC’s fifth goal with an assist from Fiala.

In the third period, both teams’ goaltenders and defence lines fought hard. Manitoba goalie Eirn Fargey blocked all seven shots directed at her. For UBC, Elise Hugens, a first-year from Sherwood Park, Alberta, blocked all four shots.

The T-Birds will face the MacEwan University Griffins this Friday in Edmonton, which is also their first U Sports meeting of the season. U

OCTOBER 26, 2021 TUESDAY | GAMES | 19

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20 | CULTURE | TUESDAY OCTOBER 5, 2021