October 24, 2017

OCTOBER 24, 2017 | VOLUME XCIX | ISSUE XI INTIMATE CELLO LESSONS SINCE 1918

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THE UBYSSEY

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NEWS

CULTURE

OPINIONS

SCIENCE

SPORTS

How to survive midterms like a stoic

Where’s our referendum for fall reading break?

A shit-ton of gold found in a galaxy far, far away

We’ve been thunderstruck by women’s soccer

Students learn how to save lives with naloxone

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"BARE MINIMUM"

UBC is a maze for students with disabilities. // page 9

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OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

YOUR GUIDE TO UBC EVENTS & PEOPLE

EVENTS

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OUR CAMPUS

Our Campus: Killam Prize-winner Dr. Catherine Corrigall-Brown brings activism into the classroom

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26 THE BLEEDING EDGE SCREENING 4 P.M. @ THE NEST From the award-winning director of Human Harvest (2014) comes a riveting thriller based on real-life events.

FREE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27 AMS EVENTS PRESENTS: SCREAM 9 P.M. @ THE NEST Prepare yourself for one of the largest Halloween parties at UBC. $15 AND UP

Dr. Corrigall-Brown is looking to raise the next generation of activists.

Neha Tadepalli Contributor

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28 LECTURE SERIES #2 - TIME TRAVEL WITH DR. BEN TIPPET 2 P.M. @ BUCHANAN A General relativity and the possibility of time travel.

FREE

ON THE COVER COVER BY Samantha Searle “This cover is making me worried about my future.”

Want to see more events or see your events listed here? ubyssey.ca/events

U THE UBYSSEY

OCTOBER 24, 2017 | VOLUME XCIX| ISSUE XI

EDITORIAL

BUSINESS

Coordinating Editor Photo Editor Jack Hauen Partick Gillin coordinating@ubyssey.ca photos@ubyssey.ca

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Features Editor Moira Wyton features@ubyssey.ca

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Sophie Sutcliffe, Joshua Azizi, Jack Lamming, Tristan Wheeler, Zubair H i r j i , Z a k Ve s c a r a , Charlotte Beaulieu, Iyanu Owolabi, Clare Skillman, Olamide Olaniyan, Negin Nia, S alomon Micko Benrimoh, Samantha Searle, Kristine Ho, Bill Situ, Divija Madhani, Lawrence Ge, Veronica Ciastko, Danielle Olusanya, Liz Wang, Ryan Neale, Mitchell Ballachay, Shelby Rogers, James Vogl, Aziz Sonawa

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Dr. Catherine Corrigall-Brown did not march at the first protest she ever attended, but not because she was lazy — she was so young that her parents had to carry her.

“My mom was very involved in the women’s movement, so when I was little, many of my weekend activities used to consist of them taking me to protests and going to things like ‘protest and pancakes.’”

As a child, Dr. Corrigall-Brown’s aspirations were to become the Queen and then later Prime Minister. Soon, she discovered sociology in first year and was intrigued by the discipline, which she had never encountered before.

“When I sat in the class that first day, I just felt like ‘Yes, this makes sense to me.’ I’ve always been really concerned about inequality, I’ve always been really interested in social change — how we can make the world better, more equal.”

Now an associate professor in the sociology department at UBC who focuses on social movements, Dr. Corrigall-Brown is one of the recipients of the 2016/17 Killam Teaching Prize, which recognizes excellence in teaching at UBC. While very interested in what she was studying, and a self-described keen student, Dr. Corrigall-Brown was very quiet and never spoke up in class — until third year, when a professor confronted her after class and said, “Catherine, next class, I’m going to be waiting for you to say something.”

She forced herself to talk and her university education changed — classes became more engaging as she learned more. As a professor, Dr. Corrigall-Brown noted that she is always amazed by students who speak out in classes that can have as many as 400 students

in them, as it can be daunting in such a large group.

This semester, Dr. CorrigallBrown teaches a large introductory class as well as a smaller upper-level class, a division made possible by the flexibility of her teaching style that earned her the Killam Prize.

“I love teaching, I put a lot of energy into it. I really think it’s a really important part of what we do here, and to get an award for that, which was partly from students, was a really pivotal moment for me.”

The award partially comes from student letters and evaluations, and Dr. CorrigallBrown says she was most affected by these, especially the ones that said she had helped change the students’ view of the world around them and impacted their way of thinking. For her, hearing these comments is something that “reinspires me about what we’re doing in the classroom.”

Dr. Corrigall-Brown doesn’t just want her students to regurgitate information — she wants them to learn ideas and frameworks that they could apply anywhere, not just within the discipline of sociology.

“You want to think about, you know journalism, you want to think about the environment, about philosophy,” she said. “Whatever you want to think about, this is the time to really explore.”

Being a part of “expanding students minds” and teaching them to think more critically are some of her favourite parts of teaching, but the small stuff can still weigh her down.

“The only thing that’s not really fun about teaching is grading. It is very boring. I would say that it’s the least fun for everybody.”

Dr. Corrigall-Brown sees the importance of her main research focus in social movements — particularly why people do or do not participate in collective action

IYANU OWOLABI

— increasing in relevance over recent months with the uptick in the number of protests in Canada, due mainly to unrest and unhappiness with certain politics, climate change and women’s equality. According to her, the nature of these protests have encouraged the population, especially the younger population, to push to have their voices heard.

“Once you go once, you’re more likely to sort of be engaged in your community and out there expressing your opinions and you care more about what happens because you’re in the game now, right — you’re in the discussion.”

She specifically referenced the recent huge counter-protest that occurred in Vancouver against the planned anti-immigration rally as an example of this new activism.

“If there wasn’t that tiny group of people who said they were going to have that rally, you wouldn’t have gotten the 5,000 people out to say ‘we don’t believe in that.’”

Looking to the future, Dr. Corrigall-Brown is working on a project which will hopefully be the basis of another book.

She will follow Facebook groups formed for the Women’s Marches that occurred earlier this year and observe the trends of who stays engaged and continues protesting over time.

Personally, Dr. CorrigallBrown is looking to raise the next generation of activists. Continuing in her parent’s footsteps, she took her three-year-old son to his first protest this August.

“We went to the protest and as we walked up to City Hall and there were all the people there, he says ‘I love protests.’ And I thought, ‘this is wonderful,’” she said.

“It’s very inspiring to see other people over there fighting for what they believe in and I hope they keep doing so.” U

NEWS

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

EDITORS SAMANTHA MCCABE + ALEX NGUYEN

3

PROTEST //

Anti-abortion display met with larger counter-protest Jack Hauen Coordinating Editor

Campus anti-abortion club UBC Lifeline set up its annual protest in front of the Nest last Tuesday morning. They were quickly met by a much larger group of counter-protesters.

About four Lifeline members were countered by more than a dozen pro-choice demonstrators who chanted, carried signs and voiced messages of support to those affected by the display.

The AMS Sexual Assault Support Centre and Speakeasy set up a booth nearby where they handed out bags of candy and provided on-the-spot support to students.

Lifeline executive Irene De Souza said the group wasn’t there to argue, but did have the end goal of changing minds.

“We’re ... just basically asking the question of whether all humans get human rights,” she said.

Counter-protesters say Lifeline’s viewpoint is overshadowed by the group’s use of graphic imagery.

Fourth-year land and food systems student Sophie Draper was among the first to set up in opposition to the display. She said she saw the demonstration and quickly put together a “my body my choice” sign.

“I see this going on every year and I just think it’s a really

insensitive way to have this debate,” said Draper. “I’m all for free speech, but to portray images like this outside our student union building is just insensitive to the women who have to walk by this area on campus, and extremely triggering for a lot of people.”

A passing student put it more simply.

“Fuck you. I don’t want to fucking see this shit on my way to class. Fuck. You!” Following last year’s example, Lifeline’s demonstration again did not include any references to the Holocaust or genocide, as it has in previous years. De Souza said she believes the analogy still holds, but it was distracting from the issue of abortion.

The display still contains graphic images of aborted fetuses, which De Souza said was an important part of Lifeline’s activism.

“No successful social reform movement has been successful by hiding the injustice,” she said, citing Emmett Till and Rosa Parks as inspirations.

Lifeline’s display still received plenty of backlash from counterprotesters.

“It’s disrespectful to women who have had abortions, and who have been raped and anything like that,” said UBC student Petal Vitis. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

“If they want more success of keeping the child, they should be

“They should be ashamed of themselves,” said Vitis.

more focused on funding housing for underprivileged women, or medicine, food and education — more than just saying, ‘You don’t have the right to get rid of

JACK HAUEN

it because it’s alive,’” said student Mackenzie Boates.

Though most counterprotesters said they believed Lifeline had a right to their

display, a group who appeared to be part of the Revolutionary Student Movement held up a large banner with the words “NO PLATFORM FOR HATE SPEECH!” in an apparent attempt to block the graphic images.

UBC student Dacyn Holinda, who was holding the banner, said he doesn’t believe Lifeline should have a right to demonstrate on campus.

“Most students probably agree that they don’t want these images on campus. We’re considering them hateful based on the fact that they’re contributing to violence against women, and they also shame women,” he said. “And the inaction of UBC and the AMS, despite whatever statements they release, I don’t think is enough.”

A Campus Security officer asked students holding the banner to move into the designated counter-protesting space — a spot surrounded by pylons a few metres away from Lifeline’s display — instead of directly in front of the demonstration, which they refused to do.

De Souza said UBC and Campus Security have been helpful and supportive of their right to demonstrate.

“UBC is a really nice campus [for] promoting discussion, which I really love,” she said. “I think that’s really important for university campuses.” U

FEEDBACK //

Students question whether consultation in latest tuition increases made an impact

FILE PATRICK GILLIN

Many students have doubts about the effectiveness of student consultations.

Lawrence Ge Staff Writer

Last week, UBC students received a broadcast email requesting feedback on a tuition proposal for the 2018/19 school year. Some students remain doubtful towards the effectiveness of these consultations.

The proposal itself involves a series of tuition increases that are said to “reflect inflationary pressures” of the university’s operating costs.

This includes a two per cent tuition increase — the legal limit — for domestic students registered in any UBC program,

as well as incoming international students enrolled in any standard rate graduate program or certificate program. Continuing international students from any program will face up to a three per cent tuition increase.

The proposal also recommends increases of 9.2 per cent and 5 per cent for international students who are not enrolled in a UBC degree program. This increase is meant to fix an oversight made by the Board of Governors when they left out international non-degree students in a 2015 plan to drastically increase international undergraduate tuition, according to Cowin.

“This is just for ensuring that everybody sitting next to each other in the same class, if they’re an international student, is paying the same dollars per credit,” said Louise Cowin, UBC’s VP students since 2011.

Cowin suggests that this year’s tuition proposal is reasonable with regards to its scope.

“Truthfully speaking, the inflation cost of the university is higher than the two per cent that we are proposing to increase tuition by,” said Cowin. This restriction comes from a provincial government policy that places a two per cent cap on domestic tuition and mandatory fee increases made to compensate for inflation.

From responses gathered on social media, many students have doubts about the effectiveness of student consultations.

A fourth-year political science major who goes by the Reddit username Quiddity99 expressed his concerns about the sufficiency of student aid and the marginalization of “less well-off families,” though he does not believe his comments “would have any real impact on the socalled ‘consultation.’”

Another Reddit user, lastlivezz from the faculty of science, said that student consultations “felt more like an excuse for them to say the students had a say in the matter, when it is pretty clear we don’t.”

On Facebook, a second-year English student asked, “What is the point of even consulting us about it if the results of the feedback won’t influence the outcome in any way?”

“For students being motivated to take part in such a process is much about … knowing that your voice can have an impact,” commented Jan Cloppenburg, a graduate exchange student from Germany.

Cowin said she wants to assure students that “input is taken into serious consideration.” She invites students to come to Board of Government meetings to listen to their level of engagement in student feedback discussions.

Student issues are mainly brought up by the two student members of the Board, but their fiduciary duty is to the Board.

Cowin provided a few examples in which student feedback has affected tuition decisions,

including the tuition cost of the Vancouver School of Economics program, the major international student tuition increase approved back in 2015 as well as a recent development related to the lab fees for a biomedical engineering program.

A major reason why UBC administration bothers to consult students for small-scale proposals is due to Policy 71, set by the Board of Governors in 1994, which mandates that all tuition and fee increases undergo student consultation.

When asked about how the administration plans to increase student engagement, Cowin explained that most changes to the student consultation process have come from AMS and Graduate Student Society’s (GSS) recommendations, which included promoting the consultations more on social media where students would actually see it.

“We have been taking the AMS’s advice as well as the GSS’s advice as to what it is that we should do in terms of our consultation,” said Cowin. “The process this year is a direct result of the input from the AMS and the GSS.” Despite the negative sentiment towards student consultations on social media, Cowin said she’s happy that she received 1,186 pieces of feedback from last year’s broadcast e-mail.

“I’m actually really pleased with the level of engagement.” U

4 | news | TUESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2017 DRUGS //

‘This event is bigger than UBC’: AMS VICE hosts naloxone training party Joshua Azizi Staff Writer

On Thursday, AMS VICE hosted a naloxone training party in the Nest Performance Centre. Through the program, trainers educated attendees about opioids and taught them how to administer naloxone — a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.

The event was hosted in collaboration with Karmik, a local organization that provides harm reduction-based services at events and festivals.

According to AMS President Alan Ehrenholz, the society was motivated to host this event after realizing how common it is for substances in Vancouver to be laced with fentanyl, an extremely strong opioid that has recently triggered a public health crisis in BC due to its high overdose risks.

“In a recent InSite test, 40 per cent of cocaine samples were found to have traces of fentanyl,” he said.

“When we saw a stat like that and reached out into the community and found that there was a real response from the community for appropriate training to respond in emergency situations, it was then that we decided that a training session was a good idea.”

By taking a harm reduction approach to the opioid crisis, VICE is putting the immediate safety of drug users as a top priority.

“No matter what students are doing, there will always be safer

AS ASS THE VARA R E AFT GUE EARS CHE 50 EYRNESTO OF H

and less safe ways to do it,” said AMS VICE Coordinator Alex Dauncey in an emailed statement to The Ubyssey. “We want to provide pragmatic ways to move from high-risk towards low-risk.”

OPIOIDS IN VANCOUVER Before the training began, the event began with a presentation from Karmik’s volunteers that discussed various aspects of substance use in Vancouver. Presenters included Karmik owner and Downtown Eastside support worker Munroe Craig, nightlife organizer Daniyah, UBC Anthropology PhD candidate Hillary Agro, UBC School of Population and Public Health PhD candidate Stephanie Lake, as well as UBC political science student and Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy Vancouver member Chuka Ejeckam.

The instructors asked the audience to view drug users from an empathetic lens and not one that reinforces societal stigmas against them. For example, when discussing the importance of language, they asked people to avoid using derogatory terms such as “addict” or “junkie.”

They then discussed opioids — depressants that can reduce pain, decrease heart rates and provide a temporary sense of euphoria or relaxation when used. Examples of opioids include morphine, oxycontin, percocets, codeine, heroin and fentanyl.

LUIS BUSCA / KARMIK

Because opioids and other drugs are frequently mixed with other substances as a cost-saving method for drug dealers, overdose deaths have skyrocketed in the past five years. Various factors also put drug users at greater risk of an overdose, such as injecting, using alone, mixing substances and having a lower tolerance.

In particular, the instructors warned the audience about using alone and recommended them to either leave their doors unlocked, FREE CONFERENCE

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Featured Speakers: ISAAC SANEY: Professor at Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s Universities. Specialist on Cuba-Africa relations.

WENDY HOLM: Professor of UBC’s International Field

Studies in Sustainable Agriculture. Award winning agrologist, economist, author, and journalist.

HELEN YAFFE: Economic History Professor at the London School of Economics.

HENRY HELLER: Professor of History, Marxist scholar,

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MS. TANIA LÓPEZ LARROQUE: Chief of Mission, Consul General of the Cuban Consulate in Toronto.

MR. WILMER OMAR BARRIENTOS FERNÁNDEZ:

Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to Canada.

MR. WILFREDO J. PEREZ BIANCO: Chief of Mission,

Consul General of the Venezuelan Consulate in Vancouver. PhD in Information Sciences.

GERARDO ALFONSO: Professor of History and Sociology in Havana, and world-renowned songwriter.

develop an overdose plan, have naloxone ready or use under the supervision of a non-using friend.

USING NALOXONE TO SAVE LIVES During a drug overdose, the high abundance of opioids affecting a user’s brain reduces their urge to breathe. If breathing ceases, this can fatally deprive their brain of oxygen. However, when naloxone is administered, it knocks the opioids off of their brain receptors for about 30 to 90 minutes. This can restore breathing in less than a minute and completely resume normal breathing in two to five minutes.

If someone is overdosing, the speakers instructed the audience to call 911 and follow the steps in the SAVE ME protocol — check if they’re responsive, open their airways, provide ventilation via a breathing mask, evaluate the situation to see if more needs to be done, inject one mililitre of naloxone into a muscle, then evaluate the situation and apply more breaths and naloxone if they’re not responsive.

After the presentation, the attendees were taught how to properly use naloxone. Using syringes and ampules filled with saline, they got to practice administering the drug by injecting it into oranges and stuffed animals. Naloxone kits were also given out at the end of the event.

DRUGS ON CAMPUS According to Sgt. Drew Grainger, the RCMP’s university detachment has not seen any evidence of the overdose crisis at UBC. “We have not seized any drugs that are laced with fentanyl and to the best of my knowledge have had no overdoses related to fentanyl on campus,” he said in an emailed statement to The Ubyssey.

He added that they have responded to many incidents on

campus where young adults have overdosed on alcohol, particularly during the month of September when many parties were held with heavy alcohol consumption.

Although Dauncey was not sure how prevalent overdoses are on campus, he nonetheless stressed the importance of distributing naloxone kits to students.

“The drugs students tend to think of as safe — cocaine and MDMA, for example — are more dangerous than ever,” he said.

“Even if they aren’t using those drugs, they will likely know someone who is or be at a party with someone who is. These naloxone kits will travel with students wherever they travel. Many of the students who’ve contacted me about the event talk about their participation in raves or their work on the Downtown Eastside.

This event is bigger than UBC.”

A SECOND TRAINING PARTY? Because the amount of people who signed up for the event far exceeded the Nest Performance Centre’s room capacity, VICE was not able to admit everyone who wanted to attend. However, the popularity of the event has encouraged them to consider hosting a second naloxone training party, though they don’t know when it will happen.

“Apart from the personal engagement that we have received from our Facebook page, we have also had numerous organizations on campus reach out to us for a future event,” said AMS Student Services Manager Marium Hamid in an emailed statement. “We are working closely with all of them to ensure that this event reaches as many people and communities as possible.

“We are [also] looking forward to the gathering feedback after this workshop to further increase our capacity and continue the planning of the future workshops.” U

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY | news | 5 COURT CASE //

The Almestadi trial’s evidence is in. Here’s why both sides are arguing he’s not criminally responsible Samantha McCabe News Editor

Thamer Almestadi, 19, was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon after allegedly attacking a fellow UBC student last October. Over the past two weeks, the BC Supreme Court heard his trial.

The evidence finished being called last week. On Monday, October 23, both the prosecution and the defence presented their written submissions ­— both were in favour of finding Almestadi not criminally responsible. Judge Margo Fleming is expected to present her decision on Thursday, October 26.

Here’s everything that has been heard in court so far.

DAY ONE: THE ASSAULT Much of the first day’s proceedings were spent calling multiple witnesses to the stand to shed light on the morning of the alleged assault.

At approximately 11:30 a.m. on October 4, 2016, an assault occurred against UBC student Mary Hare in her dorm room on an all-female floor of Salish House, Totem Park Residence.

Hare was in her room when she said a man knocked on her door and attacked her when she answered, attempting to choke her and partially slitting her throat with a knife. Hare was taken to Vancouver General Hospital, where she recovered.

Hare barely knew Almestadi before the attack and had had only a brief conversation with him in the weeks prior.

A student witness, who lived on the residence’s third floor with Hare, said she came out of her room along with another hallmate after they heard a woman screaming. The witness, said the two entered Hare’s room to find a man straddling and choking her.

Another UBC student testified that he and a friend entered the room and assisted in separating Hare and her attacker.

Student witnesses agreed that Hare’s attacker appeared “emotionless” and “task-oriented,” and then “dazed” and “confused” after their intervention.

Constable Stan Wong testified that upon searching Almestadi’s own dorm room, RCMP found an opened package of steak knives inside a box.

DAY TWO: POLICE INTERROGATION OF ALMESTADI On the second day of the trial the court saw a three-hour videotaped interview with Almestadi that took place the night of the attack, conducted by RCMP Sergeant Kevin Jeffrey.

Throughout the video, Almestadi and Jeffrey discussed a far range of topics, including the details of the attack, Almestadi’s feelings for victim Mary Hare and his mental state.

Jeffrey and Almestadi talked candidly for some time about religion and motivation.

Almestadi described seeing a “cold face” and a “devil” when he looked at himself in the mirror in his dorm room, and later talked about having hallucinations and thinking that people he passed were looking at him differently.

“I had a dark side to me,” he told Jeffrey.

Almestadi said he thought Hare was pretty and nice, and repeatedly asked how she was doing. At one point, Jeffrey told Almestadi that his questions about Hare shows that he has “a heart in there.”

“Where was it at the time I needed it?” Almestadi replied.

DAY THREE: ATYPICAL DEMEANOUR BEFORE THE ATTACK All of the witnesses on the third day conveyed that Almestadi’s demeanor before, during and after the attack was strange for him.

The court first heard from Lisa Gill, a 28-year-old mother of two, who met Almestadi when he stayed with her family through a homestay program beginning in September 2015.

Gill said that Almestadi was quiet and reserved at first, but quickly opened up to her family, even occasionally watching her kids for her. She testified that she never noticed any mental health problems on his part, and spoke about how he was one of the more high-achieving students that had come through their house.

The court next heard testimony from Adam Casey, 19, a second-year student at UBC. According to Casey, he was picking up mail from Totem Park’s commonsblock when two women came in and said that someone was being strangled in Salish House.

With the help of other students, Casey testified that they managed to get Hare out of the room, with Casey putting the attacker into a chokehold until he was subdued.

Then Casey let the attacker — who he later identified as Almestadi — get into a chair until police arrived.

The court then heard from Jamie Grant, a paramedic who was dispatched to the UBC RCMP detachment to treat Almestadi’s minor arm lacerations.

Grant testified that he asked typical questions that he would ask patients with suspected mental health issues. Almestadi said he had been sleeping poorly and having hallucinations for “about three weeks,” Grant said.

DAY FOUR: ROOMMATE AND THE RA On the fourth day of the trial, the court heard from Noah Bennett, 19, who shared a dorm room with Almestadi before the attack in fall 2016. According to Bennett, the two had relatively different sleep schedules — Almestadi stayed up late to study and woke up later in the morning.

He told the court that besides getting less sleep and seeming a little more stressed than usual — at the time, it was midterm season

at UBC — he didn’t notice any change in Almestadi in the days leading up to the attack.

The court next heard from Janani Rangarajan, 20, who was a student residence advisor (RA) during the 2016/17 school year.

Rangarajan said that when she ran into Almestadi — who was one of the residents under her care during the time — a few nights before the attack, he seemed stressed and said that his school and social lives weren’t going well.

Rangarajan testified that after a conversation with her student supervisor and the full-time staff supervisor of Totem Park, it was decided that she would ask Almestadi about whether he was depressed or considering self-harm.

During that conversation, which took place another day later, he assured the RA that he had never considered self-harm, but that he was feeling “paranoid and nervousness” — they discussed counselling services that he might want to go to.

DAY FIVE: FELLOW ENGINEERING STUDENT On the fifth day of the trial, the court heard from witness Mohammed Ashik Abrar, a 21-year-old second-year student in chemical engineering. During the fall of 2016, he lived alongside Almestadi in Totem Park’s Salish House — they frequently smoked cigarettes outside the building and studied together in the commonsblock on occasion.

According to Abrar, they never had deeply emotional conversations, but he had talked to Almestadi about the stresses of being first-year engineering students and missing their hometowns.

During midterm season — around when the attack occurred — Abrar said that he had inferred that Almestadi was not doing too well in his classes, and sometimes had to skip lecture to study in order to catch up.

Crown Counsel Daniel Porte pressed — was this particularly unusual?

No, everyone in the program is almost always under incredible stress, Abrar answered, seeming incredulous at the question.

“None of us were doing well.”

According to his testimony, Abrar studied with Almestadi in the middle of night during the early hours of October 4, 2016 — the day of the attack.

DAYS SIX AND SEVEN: TESTIMONY FROM ALMESTADI In a two-day testimony, Almestadi said he was starting to experience paranoia and an inability to concentrate, as well as poor sleeping patterns and a decreased appetite when he began classes at UBC in September 2016.

Since the beginning of the fall term, Almestadi testified that he started thinking his math professor was addressing him in particular when making comments to the entire room of more than 80 students. He also had thoughts that people were looking

FILE AIKEN LAO

The Crown said it feels “there is evidence to find that Mr. Almestadi is not criminally responsible, [and it] would ... support that finding.”

at him and talking about him.

On October 4, he testified that after a night spent studying without sleep, he was in math class when he once again thought that his professor made a comment directed at him.

Shaken, he went back to his room and listened to an audio track from the Quran that tells the story of a cow being sacrificed by a village on Moses’s command.

Almestadi said he became confused and related several of the qualities of the cow in the story — its youth, for example — to Hare, and that prompted a “sense of urgency” that propelled him to go attack her.

After getting a steak knife from a package he had recently purchased, he went to look for Hare. From there, his memory of the attack is spotty and scattered — but what he did recall aligned with the story told by various witnesses, including Hare herself.

Almestadi said he “did not consider” that killing Hare would have been morally wrong at the time, due to his confused state.

At the end of his testimony, Porte asked Almestadi if he had anything to say to Hare, who was sitting with her mother. Almestadi turned to Hare and said, “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m sorry. I really am.”

DAY EIGHT: PSYCHIATRIST’S TESTIMONY On the last day of the trial’s evidentiary period, a psychiatrist further testified to the mental state of Almestadi.

Dr. Jeannette Smith, a psychiatrist with a focus in forensic psychiatry and criminal responsibility, spoke to the demeanour and mental state of Almestadi garnered from the four times she assessed him. She said

she believed Almestadi had been suffering from a brief psychotic episode (BPE) in the days before, during and after the attack.

Smith explained that the delusions and “clear disturbance in function” Almestadi experienced in that timeframe as part of his BPE were most likely triggered by stress.

After meeting with Almestadi’s parents and one of his sisters in late October, she learned that they had noticed a change in his demeanour about one week before the attack took place, and that there was no family history of mental illness.

His mother had also noted that “he sounded sad and alone” in the week prior.

Smith testified that she supported the conclusion that Almestadi was not criminally responsible for his actions.

“I’m confident that he was mentally ill at the time,” said Smith, who also ruled out intoxication as an explanation of his behaviour because no evidence of substances were found at the time of the attack.

“He understood at the time that he was attacking Mary, that he was trying to kill her,” she testified when asked as to his awareness of his own actions and their morality. “I don’t think he stopped to consider whether it was right or wrong … his mental illness rendered him unable to appreciate that what he was doing was wrong.”

According to Smith, Almestadi should continue to be monitored in order to see if symptoms recur.

After finishing the crossexamination, the Crown said it feels “there is evidence to find that Mr. Almestadi is not criminally responsible, [and it] would ... support that finding.”

Judge Fleming is presenting her decision on Thursday, October 26. U

CULTURE

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

EDITOR SAMUEL DU BOIS

6

STIFF UPPER LIP //

Stoicism for everyday life: Surviving the struggles Samuel Du Bois Culture Editor

Your best friend betrays you for political gains. The essay that you spent hours working on comes back with a 51 per cent. A new driver runs over your foot with their BMW. You look in the mirror when you wake up in the morning and feel a deep, chilling sense of philosophical dread.

Maybe you should consider adopting the great philosophy of stoicism to help you get through your exhausting life.

To help you get a basic, functional knowledge of the philosophy and how you can use some of its concepts in your exhausting, tempestuous life, we’ve put together a little guide to help you understand what stoicism is and how you can cherrypick its most convenient ideas.

WHAT HAVE YOU ACHIEVED ON YOUR FRONT PORCH? Stoicism was founded in the third century BCE by Zeno of Citium, whose name sounds like a character from scientology.

The philosophy’s name comes from the Greek word stoa which means “of the portico.” This was because Zeno gave most of his philosophical lectures from the painted portico of his house, which was sort of like his front porch, making the creation of stoicism the most — and probably only — significant thing to ever happen on a porch.

Stoicism’s influence spread quickly and became immensely popular in the Hellenistic world and

Roman Empire. It has since been largely misinterpreted by urban, lumbersexual hipsters who saw “stoic” on a bottle of beard oil and thought it sounded right for them.

The commonly held misconception is that practitioners of the stoic life are cold, passionless, repressed people who are secretly waiting for the warmth of a lover to melt their glacial soul and show them what it means to be a human again.

Stoics don’t burst into tears and storm out of rooms with their fists clenched. Stoics don’t smash everything in the printer room when the paper jams for the third time. Stoics don’t get drunk and end up making poor life decisions.

Obviously, they are just repressing their natural human tendencies to fuck everything up, and inevitably, they will snap under the pressure.

Wrong! In fact, if executed correctly, the stoic life will help you to become happier and more in control of your hectic, completely baffling existence that you only pretend to understand.

THEY’RE NOTHING BUT A PASSIVE SUBSTANCE TO ME NOW For you, a student with their shit falling apart at every turn, stoicism can bring a level of serenity and calm that you’ve previously only ever felt when summer finally arrives. It is about accepting the laws of fate that move the world around you and doing what you can to take charge of your own destiny by acknowledging what you can control and what you cannot.

INGRID SCHAEFER

You’re not contemplating death enough.

Say you’re walking down Main Mall and you pass by someone you thought was a friend, except you recently discovered that they were posting mean things about you on a finsta next to lots of poop emojis. You might be tempted to confront them, engage in some fisticuffs or challenge them to an honourable duel, but the stoics would tell you that this

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is not the solution that will make you happiest.

Stoics believe that concepts like good and bad aren’t real, except when they pertain to things that we can control. So what that backstabbing former friend of yours did is not bad because it is not something you could have controlled. Good and bad are internal. It is good to maintain equanimity and calm. To respond emotionally by throwing a stats textbook at their head would be considered a moral bad.

By acknowledging what that sad excuse of a person did and allowing it to throw off your equanimity, you have given them some control over your life.

Instead, the stoic solution would be to use logic, focus and constant reflection to work through complex issues in order to find the most rational solutions. Rather you might simply wave hello to them and continue on your way to class, completely unphased. By not allowing yourself to be affected by it and maintaining your moral character or prohairesis, you have done a moral good.

STOIC BY DAY, HEDONIST BY NIGHT Obviously not all of this is going to gel with your hedonistic lifestyles. If you followed the stoic ways studiously, all those beers and coolers you throw back would become soothing camomile teas and glasses of water. Seeing as one of the main effects of being drunk is a reduced amount of control over yourself, drugs, alcohol and whatever else you can ferment or compress into a capsule would be considered a moral bad. Stoics would argue that the pathos — an amoral reaction — would undermine whatever pleasure you got from your craving.

That being said, some of the principles can still apply. Simply by knowing yourself and your limitations, then considering the risk versus rewards of ingesting certain substances, you are exercising some level of control over how fucked up you are actually going to get.

This way you can wake up the next morning knowing that you brought this upon yourself… fool!

WHERE DO I GET THAT SWEET RUSH THAT ONLY BAD DECISIONS HAVE BROUGHT ME? If you’re wondering what you gain from all of this — apart from the feelings of happiness, control and having your life together — wonder no more.

To be emotional is to be stuck in the “passion” of life. And you have to understand that in third century BC’s terms, passion means anguish — not what you feel when you are about to have sex or make a stirring speech. The stoics believe that this is amoral and can only bring you pathos. Whereas a moral character will be made happy by eupatheia, which is that feeling your parents always hope you have when you said no to drugs.

To be free from your unending passion and achieve a state of apatheia — without passion — you need to not do things like get into fist fights with people in the basements of Totem Park or take molly and try to write a midterm.

By following the four cardinal values of wisdom, courage, justice and temperance; being very introspective and logical, as well as contemplating your inevitable and likely painful death while also remaining in the moment — or by just doing a few of those things and still having a few beers on Fridays — you might make the four-year grind toward that sweet, sweet degree just a bit easier for yourself. U

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY | CULTURE | 7 EAST VAN IS BEST VAN //

How to eat the world in Hastings-Sunrise Zak Vescera Senior Staff Writer

The typical Thunderbird doesn’t go to Hastings-Sunrise very often. In the northeast corner of Vancouver, it’s as far from campus as you can get without stepping on SFU turf. Luckily “as far as you can get” in Vancouver is about an hour bus ride, and while Hastings-Sunrise is primarily residential, this relaxed corner of town is well worth the visit.

GETTING THERE I will argue to my dying day that the 14 is the greatest bus line ever conceived on this good earth. This golden chariot of the proletariat goes through the liveliest neighbourhoods and the quietest, the youngest and the oldest, the richest and the poorest, all in the space of an hour. The 14 is the great equalizer — a symbol of what makes Vancouver great — and it’s also a direct line to Hastings-Sunrise from campus.

Don’t believe me? Believe the theatre kids. The 14 has a longrunning play in its name centred around the kind of characters you meet on an average ride. Commit a serious Vancouver social faux pas and actually talk to your neighbour. That’s right — with words and everything.

In eight years of taking the 14, some of my favourite encounters are ex-marines, a herd of ravers who mooned the driver in unison and a kid so high that he accused a Danish tourist of invading Canada. It’s magic.

Or you could just take the 7, I guess.

EATING If you’re looking for a place to sit down, the faux-retro Red Wagon is the neighbourhood’s bestknown restaurant, with a Sunday brunch line that stretches around

Welcome to the greatest ride of your life.

the block. Guy Fieri ate here once and didn’t hate it — but have you ever seen Guy Fieri say no to a piece of food? Kinda throws his credibility into question, no? Anyways, get the pork belly sandwich.

Other favourites are Tamam, a laid-back Palestinian restaurant whose name literally means “delicious.” Accurate advertising — the grilled eggplant and halloumi is $8 of perfectly cooked heaven. Down the street, Petit Saigon is the kind of phở restaurant you wish your

FILE DUCAN CAIRNS BRENNER

neighbourhood had. Wash it down with a Vietnamese coffee — iced and with condensed milk — and ride that caffeine high for the rest of the day.

Commercial Drive may have been recently crowned Vancouver’s Little Italy, but the real dolce vita is around these parts. Start at Felicia’s: you might have to wait to get one of her famous calzones, but that’s because she handmakes all of them. An Italian’s kitchen is their castle, and brother, you’d best respect that she takes her damn sweet time.

Right across the street is Bianca-Maria, an Italian deli with all the crazy Tuscan culinary voodoo that my Italian relatives won’t stop talking about. Pick your bread, spread, meat and cheese, and they’ll make you a panini on the spot. Venture down the street to Cannoli King for dessert.

Speaking of dessert: Pine Tree Bakery makes a scrumptious coconut bun for less than a buck apiece. Grab half a dozen and share with a friend. If you didn’t bring a friend, remember that you’re your own best friend and eat half a dozen coconut buns anyway. Self-love is important.

Just want coffee? Saunter down to Pallet Coffee Roasters, grab a coffee, pastry, a friend and get cozy. Again, if you didn’t bring a friend, you’ll have to get cozy with yourself. Stare into the void.

Face your demons.

SIGHTS TO SEE

East Van isn’t so spoooooooky.

GoToVan / Flickr

Whew, that was a lot of demonfacing. Good work. Now take a walk down to Pandora Park and enjoy the fact that a park named after a mythical Greek box of nightmares and torment could be so damn cute. Keep on walking down to the light industrial zone by the water and check out the closed-down Roger’s Sugar Factory. It’s beautiful in a post-apocalyptic kind of way — if you’re into that. Or just look at the ocean, free country.

Next, make an obligatory stop at The Flag Shop. As you may have guessed, they sell flags.

But, like, every flag. Want to rep the small midwestern state you’re from? They have that flag.

Liechtenstein? They got it. St. Stanislas? That’s not even a real

country and they still probably have it. Hell, if you have the money, you can get them to make your own custom flag. You could be declaring a sovereign state by this time next week. Hasta la revolucion, baby.

Autumn in Vancouver means 1) red leaves, 2) pumpkin spice, 3) people talking incessantly about pumpkin spice and 4) people talking about how they hate people talking about pumpkin spice. It also means Fright Nights at the PNE. Go pay someone $22 to scare you shitless — it’s funnier and cooler than adding muchneeded fibre to your diet.

STOCK UP THE PANTRY If you’ve been subsiding off of top ramen for the past three weeks, this is your chance to break free.

Hastings-Sunrise is home to huge Chinese and Italian communities and they brought their incredible cuisine with them. Whether it’s authentic Pugliese olive oil or quality shumai, this is your chance to take a permanent ride into Flavourtown.

Plus, your roommates will think you’re cultured and whatever.

Hit up the legendary Bosa Foods to find the closest thing to Italian heaven on the West Coast.

Afterwards, get an espresso at neighbouring Ethical Bean Coffee to really live that European fantasy. Proceed to pay way too much for said espresso because you’re not actually in Europe.

Roll down to East 1st and visit T&T to experience the closest thing there is to true love. The supermarket chain offers a huge selection of foods from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand. Your fridge — and life — will never be the same. U

8 | CULTURE | TUESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2017 MOCKTAILS //

Party4Health: A good cause that’s over-hyping itself Veronica Ciastko & Samuel Du Bois Senior Staff Writer & Culture Editor

Editor’s Note: At the end of the article, we’ve included a factchecking section where we clarify the legitimacy of some claims made

by Party4Health.

I’ve never gone to a party and chosen to stay sober. Drinking, to me, is the essence of partying — the party’s real core. On nights when I haven’t felt like drinking, I’ve stayed in. Simple as that.

Party4Health, a UBC club founded in January, is trying to break up that codependent, party-substances relationship by advocating for super-fun, sober parties.

When I spoke with the group’s founder, Jacques Martiquet, I was skeptical.

The mission of Party4Health is simply that: for your health. This means no drugs or alcohol. To explain why, Martiquet pointed out some sobering facts (pun intended): “In Canada, alcohol hospitalizations just exceeded hospitalizations for heart attacks,” and in BC specifically, “we have the fentanyl crisis,” which is on track to kill 1,400 people this year.

Martiquet put it bluntly: “It’s never been more dangerous to try drugs.”

But Martiquet believes subtracting substances from partying doesn’t inherently make for a lame party.

At Party4Health’s parties, “you get those endorphins going and see those incredible smiles [and] it just resets your mental health

and physical health,” Martiquet explained.

This idea repositions partying as a tool for relief and stress management, rather than a vice.

Martiquet believes partying should be used for its “revitalizing” purposes, although, admittedly, this is a subjective view of what it means to feel revitalized. There are some mornings, when I’ve woken up with a crushing headache and queasy stomach but felt, with total certainty, the previous night was exactly what I needed.

On the other hand, how can I be sure that it was truly my idea to drink? It’s true that the forces that push substance use are strong.

“Social norms are in play, there’s peer pressure, a pressure to belong, and there’s people’s upbringings,” said Martiquet, who also talked the presence of intoxicants in pop culture.

Few musicians would be caught dead singing about sobriety. Party4Health’s countercampaign against these powerful social norms is to simply plan a superior party.

“We throw events so extraordinary and novel they undermine the necessity for drugs and alcohol in partying,” Martiquet said, insisting that at their parties, “people are actively engaged in present reality with the people around them. People don’t feel judged, they behave mindfully and courteously. They respect the environment in a ‘leave no trace’ manner and they get naturally euphoric.”

Martiquet used the phrase “natural euphoria” several times throughout our interview. I’ll

Feel some “natural euphoria” and party sober. Or don’t.

admit, it made me cranky, just as so much of Vancouver’s yoga/ hippie/meditation/wellness scene makes me cranky. It’s not that I don’t believe in natural euphoria (I feel it hiking, talking to people I love, etc.), but it’s a buzzword that sometimes belies hard science.

Martiquet’s response showed a conscious effort to distance the group from the aforementioned insufferable wellness scene. “We don’t, like, bring shamans or healers to our events.”

Something Martiquet and I saw completely eye-to-eye on was with

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Vancouver’s reputation as a “nofun city.” Martiquet believes that Party4Health “is basically the best thing that could happen for the tourist industry in Vancouver.”

They’ve had loads of success so far. When I interviewed Martiquet, he noted, in a rush of what you might call “natural euphoria,” that they’d been on the news three times that week.

Their last event was on October 6 in the Nest and was called “Party Safari.” It was a full day, with a morning rave at 7 a.m., a guided campus “party tour,” a flash-mob-style silent disco in the library and lectures about the benefits of “natural euphoria” from professionals.

It seems like Party4Health’s heart is in the right place, and alcohol/drug abuse in party culture is undoubtedly an issue that merits caution and education. Just be careful not to get too sucked into the hype.

On their Facebook events they describe themselves as “the future of partying.” But most students will probably still get their euphoria elsewhere.

FACT-CHECKING AND CONTEXT Claim: “In Canada, alcohol hospitalizations just exceeded hospitalizations for heart attacks.”

Mostly true: The statistic that Martiquet references comes from a report by the Canadian Insitiute for Health Information (CIHI) entitled “Alcohol Harm in Canada: Examining Hospitalizations Entirely Caused by Alcohol and Strategies to Reduce Alcohol Harm.” While the statistic itself is accurate, the context that Martiquet uses it in is a misrepresentation of the report.

By referencing this in the context of student life and party culture, he implies that this statistic is in some way a representation of the harm that alcohol has on this particular social scene and demographic.

The reality is that three out of four hospitalizations that were entirely

COURTESY UBC

caused by alcohol were related to mental health and addiction rather than as a result of excessive drinking in a social setting.

By this math, no more than approximately 19,250 of the 77,000 people reported to have been hospitalized in Canada last year due to alcohol poisoning can be considered relevant statistic too. That still fails to take into conisderation the age demographics and economic factors which the report also factored in.

Because this report does not directly focus on students, and instead seek to draw conclusions about the Canadian population as a whole, it cannot be considered a valid statistic for Martiquet’s cause, beyond observing the general harm that excessive alcohol consumption can have.

Claim: “It’s never been more dangerous to try drugs.”

True: This is absolutely true.

With the opiod epidemic showing no signs of lessening, the dangers of taking recreational drugs are greater than ever before. There’s plenty of information online that documents this fact.

Context: Natural euphoria The idea of a “natural euphoria” is one often used in the context of yoga, meditation and exercise. It is best understood as the rush of dopamine that your brain recieves when experiencing pleasure.

While an attendee of a Party4Health event is very likely to experience this sensation, calling it “natural” can be misleading because of the inherent associations people will make with the popular natural health movements.

The reality is that “natural euphoria” is a term that could be applied to almost any feeling of pleasure that is not caused by drugs or alcohol. Eating a really good burger, listening to your favourite album or having sex would yield something that could be called the same thing. This means that Party4Health’s claims are not incorrect, but they do hype-up the term considerably. U

FEATURES

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

EDITOR MOIRA WYTON

"BARE MINIMUM"

How students with disabilities navigate UBC Words by Sophie Sutcliffe Art by Samantha Searle

C

ameron England usually doesn’t have that hard of a time getting around campus in his wheelchair, but there is one incident that sticks out.

“My residence, Gage, they decided that they wanted to do a renovation of the courtyard and to do that, they closed the front entrance to my building, which is the only accessible entrance to my building because it’s the only automatic door,” said England, who is a fourth-year political science major, the AUS representative to the AMS and who lives with cerebral palsy. “It did make life … a lot less independent ... I couldn’t go through doors on my own. ” England said that after he made “a bit of a stink” about it, an area was cleared at the side of the construction fences so he could use the front doors again, but according to him this path was partially made up of uneven grass and dirt.

“I actually got stuck at one point. I thought there was a piece of solid ground where there wasn’t and it turns out there was mud and I just got dug in,” said England who, as he can walk short distances, was able to make his way to the front desk to ask for help freeing his chair.

“Two people who had come by had actually managed to get it out of the hole before a staff worker had come … It was the middle of the night so I understand ... but it was still a frustrating experience.”

UBC explained that complications made it difficult to initially leave an accessible route.

“We make every effort to accommodate all students at all times and encourage any student who has concerns to get in touch with us right away,” said Andrew Parr, managing director of Student Housing & Hospitality Services, in an emailed statement to The Ubyssey.

“The front door of Gage Apartments was temporarily unavailable (for three days) due to work to improve the courtyard for student use ... Unfortunately, efforts to find another door were complicated for a few construction reasons (sprinkler pipes in the way, another door not being wide enough).”

While England’s specific case would likely be a rare exception in terms of building accessibility, it is just one example of the many roadblocks that students with disabilities in all forms face at UBC. Although

UBC has a policy — Policy 73 — that governs academic accommodations for students with disabilities, many students say that there are still many challenges they face, usually due to a university that was not designed with them in mind.

“There are some policies that you usually don’t really need to review for a very long time — things like financial policy in the university sometimes can wait a little bit — but this is a policy that deals with equity and inclusion,” said former AMS Vice-President Academic and University Affairs (VPAUA) Daniel Lam, who made reviewing the policy part of his campaign platform this past spring.

“Usually policies are reviewed every 10 years … so the fact that the university hasn’t reviewed that policy for almost 20 years is quite problematic.”

The policy itself is generally broad but in essence reflects the university’s recognition of its “moral and legal duty” to provide academic accommodation to students with disabilities. The policy also says the “provision of academic accommodation shall not lower the academic standards of the University.”

Some aspects referred to in the policy show its age, such as the frequent reference to the “disability resource centre,” a centre which no longer exists on the Vancouver campus and was replaced by Access and Diversity.

The Ubyssey took a deeper look at the roadmap the policy lays for the approximately 2,800 UBC students registered with Access and Diversity, and how other university policies shape the experiences of students with disabilities at UBC — some of whom have been granted anonymity for this piece due to concerns about receiving further accommodations and attending graduate school in the future.

SEEKING ACCOMMODATION If exams weren’t bad enough, students with disabilities often have added stressors when it comes to getting accommodations. While one of the more common accommodations is extra time on exams — where students have to remember to book each individual test or exam at least a week in advance online — this is not the only academic accommodation that can be granted, and others can be more difficult to coordinate.

One of these issues arises from exam

deferrals for medical reasons. Allison, a combined science major who lives with centralized pain syndrome and arthritis, often has to defer her exams due to flareups, but has found some problems with these deferrals within the chemistry department.

“I usually just have pain for maybe three days that’s very intense, and then it’ll dampen down a bit, so I’ll usually write it within the next week,” said Allison. “With the chemistry department … if you have your class in the second term and you defer your exam, you cannot take it until either the end of the summer or in January … [I don’t] think that’s fair, because [students] need a lot of these courses to continue with their other courses.”

Janet Mee, the director of Access and Diversity, which provides individuals on campus with disability-related accommodations and support, said that the point that Allison brought up is an issue that they are constantly looking at.

“Writing an exam is not an easy and quick process …. Depending on the course, [it] can take up to nine hours. And so asking an instructor to write a different exam for a student three days later is often just logistically not possible,” said Mee, who explained that this is why the university currently expects students who receive a standing deferral to write either the next time that exam is offered or in the formal exam period in July.

But, in terms of missing prerequisites, Mee said that while they “try to look as creatively as possible at different kinds of alternatives… one that has really not been possible is to allow students to take a course without a prerequisite.”

For students with disabilities on a graduation deadline, the complications of not having one or multiple pre-requisite courses can be far-reaching and even damaging to pursuing their intended course of study. Allison says that a huge challenge she is currently facing is in getting into her preferred major.

“People with disabilities ... have issues getting into a lot of the different majors because, one, they cannot make the grade requirements and that is a must … but [also] one of the classifications of an honors is [taking] 30 credits [per winter session] …. I don’t think I take anywhere near that. I take three classes per term,” said Allison, who is

9

10 | features | TUESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2017

still considered a full-time student because she is registered with Access and Diversity.

“We do have a process to accommodate students with disabilities that, for disability-related reasons, [were] unable to meet the course load requirements but were otherwise qualified, and consider each request on its own merits and facts, taking into account the unique circumstances of the individual and the program,” said Mee in an emailed statement to The Ubyssey.

“A number of students have now been admitted to the honours programs in Science.”

Allison, however, was skeptical of this.

“I was told by science advisors as well as my disability advisor … that you have to meet [the requirements] once you get in the honours program,” she said, noting that she was also told that if she could still take the courses offered by an honours program she wouldn’t be allowed to be considered as a student taking fewer courses than required.

“It is interesting, because … it’s kind of vague.”

While Policy 73 states that the university has the responsibility to “ensure that persons are not denied admission on the basis of their disability” and to “make its courses or programs accessible to students with disabilities in accordance with the Human Rights Code (BC) and the Canadian Charter [of ] Rights and Freedoms,” it doesn’t specify what this includes or how this relates to honours programs.

FLIGHT RISK Accessibility barriers to students with disabilities at UBC aren’t only academic but physical as well.

“There are still some buildings that are not universally accessible,” said Mee. “In some cases, it’s almost impossible to retrofit a building, and International House is a really good example of that. We’ve looked at it multiple times over the last ten years to think about how we could improve the accessibility of that building, and structurally it’s just not possible.”

International House — which houses Go Global and International Student Development — was built in 1958 and has four levels but no elevator. For a student with a physical disability, accessing study abroad or immigration resources is a challenge when special arrangements have to be made in advance to meet off-site and outside of drop-in hours.

Mee said that Access and Diversity has a list of priority buildings to retrofit and that it immediately

prioritizes buildings where a specific UBC community member needs access.

“If it’s a student who requires access to a building because their class is located there or they have some other requirement to be in the building, we will move that function to another building,” said Mee. Another issue with building accessibility on campus is the availability of washrooms, particularly for those with chronic illness. “[It’s] a problem in certain buildings …. There’s just a lack of sufficient washrooms,” said Gabi Rosu, a second-year combined science major who lives with Crohn’s disease. “If there’s a lineup, I’m going to have to say, ‘Can I please cut in front? I have Crohn’s, I’m gonna crap my pants.’ It’s really embarrassing.”

Mee said that access to sufficient washrooms is also something they are working on. “We’re currently auditing all of the washrooms on campus just to get an updated list of where all of the washrooms are located. In the last year [or] year and a half, upgrading our washrooms has been a priority around accessibility.”

BEYOND WITHDRAWN Even as students prepare to leave UBC, the implications of receiving accommodations can have an impact on their future plans.

Lisa, a third-year standing student in geography, brought up withdrawals as an academic matter that can have serious implications for post-graduation opportunities.

“UBC has no transcript distinction that says that this was a withdrawal versus this was a medical withdrawal or an extenuating circumstances withdrawal, so it’s exactly the same on your transcript if you’re someone who had a sudden health crisis and needed to be hospitalized, as opposed [to] if you pass the add drop date [and] decided ‘you know what, I have taken on too many courses,’” said Lisa, who has had to withdraw from courses in the past due to mental health-related hospitalizations.

“That’s something that I’ve noticed that a lot of other universities do have that distinction, which can make a big difference in things like grad school applications.”

However, medical withdrawals — which would need to be implemented at the UBC Vancouver Senate level — may not be the best solution, according to Mee. “There are some students that would prefer to have the designation of medical withdrawal rather than just a regular withdrawal, [but] other

students would prefer not to have that designation as it outs them [as having a disability],” said Mee. “What we do is we support students in writing a letter to any grad school they’re applying to if there are issues around the number of withdrawals that they’ve had and they’re concerned about that on their transcript.”

However, Lisa also said that these medical-related withdrawals have been inconsistent financially. While she has never received a tuition refund after withdrawing from a course, she knows those who have.

Without the refunds, disabilities could become even more costly.

“In my case, I was told that there’s nothing we can do for you. So it seems like there’s just some discrepancy there, which I’m suspicious of I guess [between] what they have to help you with and what they can help you with,” said Lisa.

“In my experience at UBC as a student who’s been struggling with health issues, I feel like there’s very much a culture of doing the bare minimum they are required to, and also not telling you about what they can do for you so that you don’t ask for those resources.”

Mee said that while she could not comment on an individual case, “we would look at the merits of every case [based] on the unique facts of that case… but typically a student who receives a medical withdrawal would not be granted a refund of their tuition.”

And many students feel that the burdens placed upon them go beyond being an adult and into onerous, expensive and time-consuming tasks to obtain the correct documentation to receive accommodations.

After England’s wheelchair was stolen on campus last year, he went to the AMS health and dental office to get reimbursed for a replacement, but was told that his documentation wasn’t recent enough.

“I would understand if that was for someone with a broken leg or a concussion or something that goes away, but this ain’t going away,” said England of his disability.

England said that he is still in the process of obtaining new documentation, which will require him to find a new general physician in the area as well as a physiotherapist — something that he is worried may be a financial burden.

“My parents had a really good extended health plan back in the day. So I was able to get a lot of that covered anyway,” said England, referring to the documentation he used to register with Access and Diversity before his first year at UBC.

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY | features | 11

“Now that’s more of a me thing, but back [in] 2014 [I] wasn’t really concerned with that.”

According to Policy 73, for new students with a stable condition, usually no more than three years can have elapsed between the time of the assessment and the date of the initial request for accommodation.

This provision means that those diagnosed with conditions as children must spend the money for recent documentation to acquire further accommodations.

SHOWING ITS AGE As students continue bringing up these issues, it becomes increasingly noticeable that Policy 73 hasn’t been revised recently.

Dr. Izabela Schultz, a professor and director of the vocational rehabilitation counseling program at UBC, said that policies like it “need to be reviewed every five or six years, because this would certainly allow enough time for some new research, evidence or even clinical evidence to emerge in certain areas.”

Student advocacy groups also have a policy review in their sights.

Alan Ehrenholz, AMS President, said that the AMS first targeted Policy 73 as a key policy for review by the university in 2014.

“We’ve been three years or so where the VP academics have been working or pushing for this.”

A comprehensive review planned for this fall has, however, been delayed and may not be as groundbreaking as initially thought. The revised policy will still essentially be a UBC-specific reflection of federal and provincial disability law.

“It was up for review just prior to the university beginning the process around the sexual assault policy, so there were some delays related to some other priorities,” said Mee. “The policy itself is a reflection of the BC Human Rights Code …. So even if we didn’t have a policy, the same duties would still apply, and that may be one of the reasons it hasn’t been reviewed in some time.”

Although it’s unclear if this will change after the review, with the policy as is, the process

of getting accommodations can sometimes be a challenge as it requires a significant amount of documentation and paperwork.

“I have to say that these forms that are used for universities, they are not overly simple. And sometimes the requirements for the assessment may not be easily understood as well. So I think there is a role in simplifying it,” said Schultz, who clarified that she thought that UBC did not stand out as having any unusual practices relating to disability.

“The onus is definitely on adult students and adult employees to do it on their own, and feel empowered ... But that would depend on the assertiveness of this individual, on the skill set they have for dealing with this particular situation. And certainly individuals who are recently traumatized, either psychologically or by a brain injury, may not even be able to get through that process without assistance,” she said.

Schultz also added that this process could become a significant burden on a student, especially when added to the pressures of transitioning to university.

“A transition from secondary school to university is a tough one the way it is,” said Schultz. “So if we add a disability on top of an already challenging developmental life transition, and dealing with that disability requires dealing with paperwork that’s overwhelming, that’s difficult to understand … I would say that these young people just entering or transitioning to university definitely need help.”

TWISTS AND TURNS If the processes weren’t complex enough, stigma and discrimination — which Schultz says can prevent people from seeking accommodations and advocating for themselves in the first place — are also in the mix. According to the 2015 Academic Experience Survey, of the four per cent of UBC students who self-identify as having a disability, only 67 per cent are registered with Access and Diversity.

“I heard it from a number of individuals with non-visible

disabilities, especially mental health but [also] people with brain injuries, that they’re afraid to disclose their disabilities,” said Schultz.

“Because there’s this parallel fear of being outed as someone who has a mental health problem due to stigmatisation, we will have people not disclosing it and getting themselves into very challenging work situations that will cause their mental health to deteriorate.”

The stigma of living with a mental health condition is so pervasive that Lisa asked for anonymity for this article on the basis that she “would like to go to grad school some day.”

“And as much as I’d like to be able to be open about that kind of thing, it just seems like having my name linked to that in a Google search is too much of a risk,” she said.

In addition to stigma, students also say there is a lack of understanding around how much disability can impact people’s lives.

“There’s like, no awareness … I wish that people would just realize that it’s not so easy to deal with it, the physical pain and the problems,” said Rosu of her Crohn’s disease. “They don’t realize that the physical pain leads to mental issues like depression … how can you not be depressed when you can’t eat what you want, you’re in pain all the time?”

Allison emphasized that while she does get accommodations, these can often come short due to the design of the course, and something as significant as not getting extended times on labs and not being excused from iClicker marks can have an impact.

“I know they’re not worth much, but it still makes an impact, and it’s still in a way a discriminatory thing when they don’t allow you to reweight that type of grade. Like they don’t, I asked them first year, first term about that type of thing because I am absent often enough for it to make a difference [to my grades],” said Allison.

“People don’t realize that people with disabilities, whether they’re invisible or not … that could be why they’re not the best of their class and stuff like that. And they don’t get the full picture about it.” U

OPINIONS

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

EDITOR EMMA HICKS

12

PARKING //

Letter: Is the MacInnes Field Parkade justified?

Eric Jandciu, Ashley Welsh and Jackie Stewart Contributors

On September 27, Andrew Simpson, UBC’s vice president of finance and operations, released new expenditure guidelines for all faculty and staff “to improve transparency and enhance stewardship of public funds.”

Included were four guiding questions intended to help people make responsible decisions when spending university money.

We tried to answer these questions for the proposed parkade under MacInnes Field — and what we feel is a rushed — $12.5 million project with insufficient time and capacity for consultation from the UBC community. If UBC goes ahead with a parkade under MacInnes Field, it will be breaking its own expenditure guidelines.

Here’s what we found:

faculty, residents, etc. — to the businesses in this part of campus are already here. They do not need parking. Besides, shouldn’t safety take priority over the financial viability of shops and restaurants? C+CP should have asked the consultants for a more realistic model and the Board of Governors should not have made their decision based on meaningless data from C+CP. Another reason we feel that this is an unjustified expense is simply that there is already enough parking space on campus.

In a September 8, 2017 email from UBC Parking, we were told that during some periods of the year, Health, West and North parkades fill up. However, we assume that means the three other parkades — Rose Garden, Thunderbird and Fraser River — and the surface lots do not fill up completely. So, it appears that the current parking

FILE PATRICK GILLIN

The site for the new parkade.

How the new parkade will fit into campus.

DOES THE EXPENSE NEED TO BE INCURRED AND IS THERE VALUE FOR UBC? Short answer: No. One of the justifications Campus and Community Planning (C+CP) provided for the parkade — for example, on page 1 of this document and page 3 of this document — was that visitors to the businesses in the area need street parking. However, Bunt & Associates Engineering Ltd., the consultants hired to crunch the numbers on the demand for parking, based this requirement on the “industry standards” for on-street parking needed in a commercial area.

UBC is not a commercial area.

Saying that street parking for the nearby businesses is important does not apply to a university campus as it might to a suburban mall or a busy city centre. Although, countless jurisdictions in other parts of the world have vibrant city centres that are exclusively accessible to pedestrians and cyclists, so this argument is weak even for city centres.

Also, bike lanes and bike traffic were entirely absent from the consultants’ multi-coloured traffic flow model. In addition, as a recent post on UBC Insiders clearly and succinctly stated, almost all of the customers — students, staff,

happen through Central’s private parkade. But surely there is a way to develop an innovative solution that would make the best use of existing infrastructure. Can the Central parking stalls not be separated with an additional gate? If that’s not possible, it is disappointing that C+CP didn’t have the foresight to build the existing parkade with a way to connect to the proposed parkade so that a single driveway solution would have worked.

Was this sort of long-term thinking not being done when the “master plan” for the University Boulevard area of campus was presented a few years ago? More on that later.

confused because on one hand, UBC promotes its supposed commitment to sustainability — we hear no end to claims that this is a green place to work, study and live — but on the other hand, the university is encouraging more car trips to campus by building a new 200-car parkade in the middle of campus.

How are these two things consistent with each other? As UBC Professor Dr. Charles Menzies states, “there is a certain irony involved here.”

WOULD THIS EXPENSE BE CONSIDERED EXCESSIVE/ UNREASONABLE FROM THE GENERAL PUBLIC’S VIEW?

Short answer: Hard to say.

This is a difficult question to answer because UBC Properties Trust and C+CP are not forthcoming with data. For example, questionnaires were collected online and at the open house for the MacInnes parkade. However, C+CP did not release the results of this “consultation.” The UBC community has no idea what feedback this project received and if the report passed along to the Board of Governors was representative of that feedback. This is not a transparent

IS IT AN ARM’S LENGTH TRANSACTION (I.E. NO CONFLICT) THAT CONFORMS TO SOUND BUSINESS PRACTICE?

COURTESY UBC

options meet the needs of the community.

IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE THAT IS LESS EXPENSIVE BUT STILL APPROPRIATE, SAFE AND CONVENIENT? Short answer: Yes. Since the parkade is not needed in our opinion, the most appropriate and safe alternative would be not to build it at all. Even without a parkade, there are daily conflicts between private vehicles, buses, pedestrians and cyclists in and around the trolley bus loop. This problem has been documented many times. In fact, C+CP recently added camera-enforced “No Stopping” signs, which acknowledges that there is already a problem in the trolley loop.

Adding another entrance that leads to a 200-car parkade will only make this matter worse.

There is also a more complicated answer to this question. At the recent open house for the MacInnes parkade, the project architects said that their first idea was to combine this parkade with the parkade under Central, which already has an entrance off of University Boulevard. But apparently because Central is market housing, its underground parkade needs to be secure. The architects said that access to public parking can’t

Short answer: Yes. For the reasons above, we feel that there is no clear need for this project and that even if there was, alternative safe and convenient options are available. Therefore, we think the general public will be confused about why money is being poured into this project. We feel that the public may also be

Even stopping in the bus loop is an issue, how is parking going to work?

ZUBAIR HIRJI

community engagement process.

Michael White, the associate VP of C+CP, was asked by one of the authors — Eric Jandciu — by email on September 19, 2017 when this information would be made public, but he did not reply.

Now, let’s go back to that 2015 extensive consultation that was done for this part of campus. There was no mention of any of the surrounding buildings needing parking. Plus, the feedback received from the campus community during the consultation brought up no concerns about parking. On page 6 of the report, respondents said they wanted to see strategies to minimize noise, fumes and vibration. They want to see good pedestrian and bike connections, not more vehicular traffic. Why the sudden change? And why not release the recent parkade consultation feedback? While these two things do not necessarily mean there is something sketchy going on, it does seem like C+CP is trying to hide something or at the very least not adhering to best practices for engaging the community.

Let’s also not forget that the open house was on the first full day of classes of the new academic year.

The online consultation period was the last two weeks of summer — when staff and faculty are especially busy and/or not even on campus — and the first week of term, when everyone on campus is very busy.

These dates might have been good if the goal was to minimize community engagement, but not if the goal was to obtain representative feedback.

Given the new expenditure guidelines and the details provided here about the lack of need for a new parkade, confusing priorities, poor optics, questionable procedures and availability of alternate options, we look forward to hearing how Mr. Simpson can still justify a parkade under the new MacInnes Field. U Eric Jandciu and Ashley Welsh work for the UBC Science Centre for Learning and Teaching. Jackie Stewart is a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry.

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY | opinions | 13 FALL READING BREAK //

Editorial: Where are we with our fall reading break?

“If UBC isn’t going to give us a fall break, then the services need to be more readily available.”

Ubyssey Editoral Board

For years, UBC has been talking about implementing a fall reading break — and for years, they’ve stayed there: talk. No action.

We published an editorial last year arguing that UBC students deserved a fall reading break, but we have yet to hear any updates.

UBC’s Senate has had chance after chance to pass a fall reading break, but nothing has come of it. What seems to be blocking us from getting a few extra days off is the fact that we will lose teaching days, meaning we will either have to start classes before Labour Day or tack on Sundays as a possible exam day in December.

THE CONFLICTS UBC FACES In September 2015, The Ubyssey published an article titled “Policy changes may be coming to help students with mental health issues” referring to Policy 73, known as Academic Accommodation for Students With Disabilities, which hasn’t been revised since 1999.

UBC’s standard practice is to

review policies every five years.

Students with disabilities are defined in the policy as students who: “have a significant and persistent mobility, sensory, learning, or other physical or mental health impairment which may be permanent or temporary; AND experience functional restrictions or limitations of their ability to perform the range of life’s activities; AND may experience attitudinal and/or environmental barriers that hamper their full and selfdirected participation in life.”

The policy does not refer to mental health as a disability.

In the same article, Lina Castro, the then-AMS Mental Health and Well Being Commissioner, said, “It seems that the highest traffic for counselling services is right around November and October. [A] short break in that time would be very beneficial for students, especially students coming in, really stressed out, getting adjusted to their firstyear courses.”

Two months later, in November 2015, Jenna Omassi, the then-AMS VP academic and

university affairs predicted that we would have a fall reading break by now.

“To be perfectly honest, students that are looking for something to be happening right now — it’s not happening. The academic side of this institution moves at snail pace,” said Omassi.

“I predict we will see a fall reading break in 2017.”

Unfortunately, we’re still not there.

ONO’S QUIET ADVOCACY NOT ENOUGH Santa Ono has not been quiet on his experience with mental health. In a recent TedX talk, Ono revealed that he tried to take his own life twice and has struggled with mental health since he was a teenager.

Ono also did a Facebook livestream with Cheryl Washburn, Director of UBC Counselling Services and Kathryn Gretsinger, Senior Instructor at UBC Journalism.

During the livestream a student asked why the university hadn’t implemented a reading break in term one.

IYANU OWOLABI

Ono replied, “I would love that kind of situation. This is one thing that the President and Vice Chancellor cannot do on his or her own. It’s something that is controlled by the faculty Senate. I can say that it is under conversation right now. But there is a committee and it has to come to the full faculty senate and I’ll make sure that it stays on their agenda. That’s where we are now, but it’s something that unfortunately I cannot do on my own.”

Washburn also had some input on the topic stating, “the most [students come to counselling services] in October or November.”

Doesn’t sound like a bad time for a break.

BEYOND ONO Since 2010, many schools across Canada have made this change — whether that means a two-day break plus the weekend or a full week off from school. This year, the University of Western Ontario had their first week-long fall reading break after Canadian Thanksgiving and the University

of Toronto (U of T) will see their first fall reading break in November.

The University of Calgary also just announced on Thursday that they have officially implemented a fall reading break for 2018.

Both schools cited the main decision behind the implementation was to reduce students stress and improve wellbeing.

At U of T, the implementation came after a referendum held on campus the school saw an overwhelming amount of votes for a fall reading break.

“Over 90 per cent of students who participated in the referendum voted in favour of a fall reading week, with 6,112 votes for the ‘yes’ side and 491 votes against,” reported an article from last November by U of T’s campus paper, The Varsity.

Of Canada’s top 15 research universities, 11 have some sort of fall break. UBC, McGill, Queen’s and Laval are the four still without.

Below are the school breaks for the remaining 11: University of Alberta (November 13+14-17, attached to Remembrance day holiday on the 13) University of Calgary (to be started in 2018) Dalhousie University (November 6-10+13) University of Manitoba (October 5-6+9) McMaster University (October 9-13) Université de Montreal (October 23-27) University of Ottawa (October 23-27) University of Saskatchewan (November 13-17) University of Toronto (November 6-10) University of Waterloo (October 9+10-11) University of Western Ontario (October 9-13) Even UBCO has a oneday break that leads into the Remembarance Day long weekend. Why hasn’t UBC followed suit?

WHERE ARE THE CAMPUS RESOURCES? While the various mental health resources on campus also cannot make a difference in implementing a fall reading break, they are the places on campus that students go to to find solace.

The main argument for a fall reading break centres around student well-being, but resources such as UBC Student Health Services, the UBC Wellness Centre, Access and Diversity, and UBC Counselling Services have been under constant scrutiny from students complaining that it takes months to get appointments with them.

If UBC isn’t going to give us a fall break, then the services need to be more readily available to support students who need it.

At the end of the day, it’s up to Senate to listen to students.

There is widespread support for a fall reading break and for a school that boasts being “a place of mind” UBC is looking toothless these days. U

FROM THE BLOG

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

EDITOR EMMA HICKS

14

BUCKET LIST SHENANIGANS //

99 things to do at UBC: Relish in the smell of wet student Tristan Wheeler Senior Staff Writer

#57 – Sit on the bus and gasp for air through the wet dog smell of fellow drenched students

Wash your pants people.

PATRICK GILLIN

Smell is the sense that most embeds itself in your memory.

There have been many moments where I’ve smelled a certain perfume, food or natural aroma that transports me to a time in my childhood. Which is why the student-produced smell of wet dog is so beautiful to me.

As Lynryd Skynyrd once sang, “Oo that smell, can’t you smell that smell,” and that smell that surrounds you is sodden, shivering students who have forgotten that dryness isn’t just a type of comedy used by humour columnists.

It brings me to a time that a part of me has forgotten and that time is the day prior.

Every morning, getting onto the bus full of soaked 20-somethings takes me all the way back to yesterday — a time full of innocence, ignorance and torrential downpour. Sitting down, I remember the simpler times of 24 hours previous where I was doing that exact same thing. This daily reminder that I haven’t had a day without rain in recent memory is like a soothing kick to the groin slowly putting you to sleep.

The description of the smell wouldn’t encompass its essence.

A sweet and sour aroma that is distilled from stress, rainwater and fuck everything.

It’s unmistakable. Like benevolent mustard gas, it fills

the iron tube with its power.

The wonder of the wet-student smell is that you are adding to it, you’re partaking in the communal stinkification. #58 – Repeat every rainy day until the end of April The true fun of this comes from the fact that we live in Vancouver and this will be an every day occurrence. The rain just pours down forever. There’s even a point where you say to yourself, “Doesn’t rain turn to snow at some point or something?” and my answer is simply: not here.

There will not be a dry commuter for the next four months and every bus will just smell staler and staler until we finally see the sun again in April or August. One of the two. U

YOU CAN STAND UNDER MY UMBRELLA //

Remember what Rihanna taught you and show off your umbrella etiquette Zak Vescera Staff Writer

campus knows how to use a goddamn umbrella.

Ah, autumn. The leaves are tumbling down, all of my friends are slowly breaking down under the pressure of midterms and Vancouver — and everyone in it — is drenched.

If you know anything about this city, it’s that a good six months of each year is devoted to a neverending monsoon. Any sunlight you see is just Mother Nature playing with your weak human feelings before she ruins your outdoor birthday party with a thunderstorm.

But despite the realities of Vancouver life, no one on this

1) Opening your umbrella We get that you’re excited to show off your Hello Kitty print umbrella.

We would be too if we had one. But for the sake of whatever heathen gods you worship, be careful with that thing. Don’t open your umbrella when you’re close to other people: you’ll either a) annoy them or b) poke their eye out, rendering them half-blind and making their other senses only marginally stronger in exchange. Either way, not a good time.

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The 99 B-Line is already a crowded mess of pressed-up bodies, weird smells and general uncomfortableness — think a nightclub minus the music and booze. Don’t make it worse. Close your umbrella fully before you enter and give it a good shakeout beforehand — I’ve seen a lot of fluids in Vancouver buses, you don’t have to add your own. Also, do not open your umbrella as you’re leaving the bus. You’ll spray everyone waiting to board with a mix of rain and 99-juice.

3) Holding your umbrella Remember when your elementary school teacher told you how to properly and safely hold scissors?

You clearly don’t, because you’re walking around campus holding umbrellas like you’re in fencing class. Put the pointy end towards the ground. The only reason you should be brandishing your umbrella is if you’re performing a tasteful tap dance routine.

Otherwise, no dancing in the rain.

4) Shake it like a polaroid picture (but not at me)

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Shake your umbrella like Andre 3,000 is commanding you. But just like you wouldn’t blast Outkast in the middle of a funeral (although that would be kind of awesome) there’s a time and a place to shake it. That place is outside, and that time is not when other people are walking by. Shake it, don’t spray it.

And for the love of UBC’s lovely cleaning staff, don’t shake it out inside. Over half a million people died from slipping and falling in 2013. If you make a surface slippery, you’re basically attempting murder.

5) Passing If you’re passing someone else with an umbrella, the taller

Umbrella etiquette is a way of life here at UBC.

person should raise theirs to avoid a collision. It’s that simple. Do the vertically challenged a favour.

6) Bigger isn’t better Too long have the small umbrellas suffered under the tyranny of big umbrellas. Unless you’re shepherding a small family, there’s no reason for it to be that big.

You’re forcing everyone else to move around you through sheer force like some kind of Hobbesian umbrella dystopia. We’re better

FILE ROCIO HOLLMAN

than this. You’re better than this.

Consider downsizing, or be a kind enough soul to let us smallumbrella folk pass in peace.

7) Remember what Rihanna taught you If you’re walking with someone in a deluge, make like a good girl gone bad and let them stand under your umbrella (ella ella, eh etc). We’re all suffering on this mortal coil together, so we might as well try to get through it as dry as we can. U

SCIENCE

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

EDITOR NIVRETTA THATRA

15

NEUTRON STARS //

Don’t try paying tuition with gold from a galaxy far, far away Gabriel Robinson-Leith Contributor

How’s your bank account doing these days? If you’re feeling a bit panicked — or, you know, hyperventilating constantly — with second term’s tuition deadline just a few months away, you were probably thrilled about recent news from a galaxy far, far away.

Nope, we’re not talking about Star Wars. On October 16, 2017, astronomers from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory announced that they had detected the collision of two neutron stars 130 million lightyears away in the galaxy NGC 4993.

More importantly, upon further analysis of the data, astronomers determined that the merger of these two neutron stars smashed particles together fast enough to create nearly 300 septillion kilograms of gold.

If someone were able to bring it all back to Earth, this amount of gold would be worth about 100 octillion dollars today. That’s $100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000.

Feeling desperate enough to try gold digging in galaxy NGC 4993?

We understand the temptation.

NGC 4993 — with that much gold and a roll-off-the-tongue name, who wouldn’t want to make the trip? But please, don’t.

Although this detection of

gravitational waves paves the way for a new age of gravitationalwave astronomy and new ways to find answers to our biggest cosmological questions, you’ll probably die trying to get to NGC 4993 on a student budget.

Let’s talk about what it would take to make the 130 million light year journey. Getting down to the nitty gritty of interstellar travel, we have a few options.

The most viable option for intergalactic gold retrieval would be the use of a solar sail. A solar sail works by absorbing the energy from photons emitted by sun or some other powerful radiation source.

These sails can hypothetically harness the energy from solar winds to travel up to about ten per cent the speed of light or just over one million kilometres per hour.

In May 2010, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency launched IKAROS, an interplanetary spaceship that has been bouncing around the solar system powered only by the power of the sun. In December 2010, IKAROS passed

by Venus after only six and a half months of space travel.

In order to make it all the way to NGC 4993, you would need a solar sail approximately 10 million times larger than IKAROS, which could cost upwards of 800 billion dollars to produce. In order to get this sail moving at high enough speeds, you could boost your solar

Somewhere out there, two neutron stars smashed together to produce 300 septillion kilograms of gold.

sail with a giant laser powered by massive nuclear fusion generators.

Building these nuclear reactors would only cost about two trillion dollars — pretty cheap compared to your investment return on the retrieved gold. The last limiting

factor that stands in the way of payday is time. At ten per cent the speed of light it would take about 2.6 billion years to make the trip.

If you somehow launch the most successful Kickstarter campaign in history and also manage to extend

FILE LUA PRES ÍDIO

your lifetime to half the age of planet Earth, then congratulations, you can make it to NGC 4993 and can claim 300 septillion kilograms of gold for yourself.

Now it’s up to you to figure out how to bring it all back. U

STICKLEBACK //

Profs measure evolution with artificial ponds on campus

Dr. Dolph Schluter, UBC professor of zoology, has been working with threespine stickleback for over two decades.

Julia Wong Contributor

If there remain any naysayers of evolution, we have measurable proof of its development right here on the UBC campus.

Dr. Dolph Schluter, UBC professor of zoology, has been working with a biological system of threespine stickleback for over two decades, providing insight on the stages in which evolution occurs and contributing to our knowledge of species diversity.

Schluter’s lab has access to 20 experimental ponds located near the Centre for Comparative Medicine. Each pond measures 25 metres by 15 metres and are shallow at one end, sloping down to six metres at the deepest.

“The reason why I work on stickleback is because I’m interested

in the origin of species — how new species form and how they become different from one another.

I’m especially interested in the role of ordinary adaptation to environment,” said Schluter.

In most of the lakes that the threespine stickleback inhabit in British Columbia, there exists a single species of stickleback.

COURTESY DOLPH SCHULTER

Aerial view of artifical ponds.

However, in a number of lakes there exist two separate species of stickleback — open-water dwelling stickleback and bottom-dwelling stickleback.

The evolution between the two species has happened fairly quickly, and has occurred independently more than once in similar situations.

“That might not sound like a lot, but these lakes are only about ten thousand years old. These species are only found in these lakes, so they represent some of the youngest species on earth,” said Schluter.

“In these lakes that contains just a single species, we have almost every intermediate stage represented between one species and two. It’s not often that you catch the process of new species forming at the stage where almost every intermediate is still available.”

NYS DEC / FLICKR / CREATIVE COMMONS

The bodies of water that house two separate species of stickleback are similar in that they are all coastal lakes that were submerged at the end of the ice age. As the weight of the ice was removed, the water from the sea eventually became the small freshwater lakes that are the homes of the pairs of stickleback.

“What we’ve shown is, even though these species have originated separately several times, if you take one of the open-water dwelling males from one lake, and a female from another lake, they’ll mate with almost the same probability as a male and a female from the same lake. So the traits that causes them to prefer to mate with their own kind and prefer not to mate with the other kind in the same lake — these traits have evolved repeatedly,” explained Schluter.

That the open-water stickleback and the bottom-dwelling stickleback will not interbreed, though they inhabit the same body of water, is a litmus test for whether the two constitute separate species or not.

“There is much more known about the genes than when we first began,” said Schluter. “And it is now possible when we do experiments to actually track changes and measure evolution across a generation.”

In these lakes, the stickleback usually have one predator, the cutthroat trout, and no other fish species occur in the lake. Lakes with such low diversity make them highly susceptible to invasions by other species.

“The stickleback are the most highly endangered group of fishes in the country,” said Schluter.

Sticklebacks are considered endangered even though there are a considerable number of them in the lakes which they inhabit.

This is because stickleback are so fragile; any other fish species or aquatic organisms that are introduced to the lakes will affect stickleback survival.

Schluter warned that even seemingly benign species like catfish can be harmful to stickleback.

“People inadvertently or deliberately move other fish species or aquatic organisms from other lakes into those lakes that contain the [stickleback] species pairs. In the case of Hadley Lake, someone introduced catfish into that lake and there are no stickleback in there anymore.

Both species are completely gone,” he said. U

SPORTS+REC

EDITOR LUCY FOX

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY

16

PHOTOS BY PATRICK GILLIN

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY | news | 17

THUNDERBIRDS FIND THEIR SPARK AT

THUNDERSTRUCK

Elizabeth Wang Staff Writer

Underneath the spotlights at Thunderbird Stadium, the women’s soccer team put on a show for the Thunderstruck fans on Friday night and solidified their dominating presence going into playoffs — defeating the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) Cascades 3-0.

The T-Birds made sure that play was in their favor from the very beginning on Friday evening.

Within just 40 seconds of kick-off, forward Jasmin Dhanda chipped the ball past UFV keeper Emily Harold and put the ball in the back of the net off a pass from her attacking partner Aman Shergill.

The goal not only gave the ’Birds the early lead, but pushed Dhanda into top spot as all-time leading scorer in Canada West history.

In the following 30 minutes, the Cascades showed strength in the face of adversity, defending hard against UBC’s attacks and notching two scoring attempts for themselves. In response, the T-Birds turned up the heat too.

Shergill would be the first to take advantage of the ’Birds newfound fire, as she put the ball past Harold in the 39th minute. Unfortunately, her shot hit the post, allowing UFV to escape another UBC goal.

Shergill got the chance to make up for it though early in the second, when she earned a penalty kick in the 55th. The fifth-year veteran shot the ball into the top right corner of the net, extending UBC’s lead to 2-0. Fifteen minutes later, she would widen the gap to 3-0 with a shot from just outside the six-yard box — assist credits went to forward Danielle Steer.

“For the personal [goals], honestly, it’s just doing what I can for the team and for this team to win in anyway,” Shergill said postgame.

PHOTO BY PATRIKC GILLIN

The Cascades wouldn’t be able to close the gap and the Thunderbirds ended the match with a convincing 3-0 lead.

Together, the T-Birds made 19 shots in the game, eight of which were on goal.

“It was a great game. Everyone was on point, we all played our game, we all fulfilled our role.

Everyone was behind the ball when we needed to,” Shergill said of the team’s performance. “If we lost [the ball], we were all over it and we won it back and we capitalized on everything.”

Saturday evening’s match was no different, as the ’Birds defeated the Trinity Western Spartans 2-0.

The win sets UBC up for a home playoff game this weekend against the sixth place team in the Canada West Prairie Division.

Looking forward to the playoffs, Head Coach Jesse Symons said, “We just have to keep doing what we are doing and hopefully get back to the national championship.”

The team’s first playoff game will take place next Friday, October 27, at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium. U

18 | Sports + Rec | TUESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2017 NAMES TO NOTE //

Overcoming irony: Jeff Groh embraces academic and athletic demands TICKLING THE IVORIES

Lucy Fox Sports Editor

What brought you to UBC — the academics, an adventure away from home, or is it a place where you can continue doing the activity you love? For Jeff Groh, senior member of UBC’s crosscountry and track teams, it was a combination of the three.

“I think [the academics] is what really drew me here. But then fortunately ... we had this coaching shift [in track and cross country] and now — not that it wasn’t strong before — but the team has ended up being a really strong program ... It’s been a great fit sort of without me even realizing that at the outset,” Groh said of his decision to make the move to Canada.

The Hummelstown, Pennsylvania native had little connection to the West Coast before attending UBC. As he explained, his university plan was just to see a new part of the world that could accommodate his three main interests: biology, music and running.

UBC fit the bill — even though other schools caught his eye for athletics, the combination of opportunities here brought the American north of the border.

What was less anticipated was the struggle to find a balance between academics and athletics, which hit the distance runner hard in his first years on campus.

FROM STRUGGLING TO STABILIZING Having navigated first-year tribulations successfully, Groh faced a tough decision in his second year when the workload of running, science and music had pushed him to his limits. With

“This is what I chose to do.”

“I was a little bit uncertain about my priorities”

a heavy course load, practices and meets to navigate, he made an impossible decision for any athlete — leaving his sport.

“I was a little bit uncertain about my priorities and decided to try taking a year off of racing. That was a sort of a difficult decision but I had the support of coaching staff and my peers,” Groh explained.

Yet, with that newfound schedule space where athletics used to fit, the Pennsylvanian came to realize that athletics was a larger piece of himself than expected and a piece he couldn’t leave behind.

“Ultimately I didn’t want to have to sacrifice something that I love doing for something else that I love doing,” he explained.

From there, Groh rejoined the track team for the last spring season, looking to regain his

ELIZABETH WANG

footing within his running career — but things wouldn’t go as planned. After starting back with his training, the Lower Dauphin High graduate hit a bump in the road as he over-trained and partially tore his Achilles.

Though he was still mobile, the injury set him back in his training as running caused him discomfort for several months.

Beyond the physical toll, the irony of his injury also took a mental toll.

“I made a conscious decision to return to track after having quit and then upon doing so was just further prevented from racing, so it seems like there’s sort of a narrative of things getting in the way, whether that be school or injury,” he said.

Even so, after months of recovery Groh is back for the next chapter

ELIZABETH WANG

of his UBC story. Today, he is back on the cross-country roster, having competed in his first race just two weeks ago. All the while, he continues to carefully manage his athletics and his course work in both biology and music.

EVOLUTION AND ORGANISMS Through the trials of first and second year, biology surfaced as the primary focus for Groh’s academics. With a fascination around organisms and evolution, the third-year honours biology student has found his place in plant biology.

“It’s super cool. I guess its somewhat niche, there aren’t — to my knowledge — any other people in plant biology specifically but it’s really just a sub-specialization within honours biology,” Groh explained. “It’s phenomenal really, I mean UBC has some of the best biologists and botanists in the world so it’s a great place to be studying.”

With his hyper-specialization, Groh has had the opportunity to join in on several research projects on campus. Currently, he is working with two different labs in the Biodiversity Research Centre on two separate projects under the supervision and mentorship of Dolph Schluter, professor of evolutionary biology in the zoology department.

The first, as Groh explained, is investigating bionic interactions between species and how that drives the formation of new species; the experiment is being conducted in experimental ponds on the south side of campus, with stickleback fish caught in the wild.

On the other hand, the crosscountry athlete is also working on a project considering “whether or not hybridization between two native wildflowers in BC has led to the extinction of a local population … the population of interest is just outside Marble Range Provincial Park.”

Due to practicality and with a timely graduation in mind, Groh has moved more so into the science realm for his degree. Still, music continues to play a part in how his story is unfolding.

Beyond his talents in the lab, the distance runner can also tickle the ivories — and he does it quite well. Having played the piano since childhood, he honed in on his musical education in high school and never looked back, taking that passion to the classrooms and performance halls of UBC. In his first years here on campus, Groh was the namesake for the UBC-based jazz trio the Jeff Groh Trio. As he explained, the group was recommended by the music department to play at several community and campus engagements. His most memorable performance? Playing an original composition at the unveiling of the piano in the Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre.

“That was really cool, the President was there and the donor was there and Robert H. Lee was there with his family,” Groh recalled. “… It was touching that I was asked to [perform], that I was recommended to the ceremony organizers and then I had a chance to perform my own composition in front of some people who are really important in the UBC community.”

As the commitments and trials of honours biology and athletics continued to iron out, music — on an academic basis — has been put on the back-burner for now. That said, Groh explained that he does have some performances lined up for this winter, including a performance in the rhythm symposium held at the School of Music.

Though he has taken biology as his focus this term out of necessity, music is still a passion that shines through.

“I sort of believe that everyone in some way is passionate about … whatever gives their life meaning and music I think is a very common outlet for people to relate to their life in a meaningful way… I just feel fortunate that I had the opportunities to explore that avenue for expression.”

Whether that’s music, biology or running, Groh continues to put his best foot forward on the track, in his labs and his classes. A tough course load for anyone — let alone a varsity athlete — the third-year runner continues to have a positive attitude towards his current university experience, though admitting it has its hardships.

“It is stressful, but you know I predicted that and my attitude is overall very positive I would say,” he said.

“The balance is just kind of the best you can do. It’s been important for me to sort of recognize that ... this is what I chose do.” U

OCTOBER 24, 2017 TUESDAY | sports + rec | 19 FOOTBALL //

Road success: T-Birds strike gold in second straight away game Bill Situ Staff Writer

After a tight 29-25 victory over the Saskatchewan Huskies last weekend, UBC’s football team successfully stood their ground once again on Saturday afternoon, squeezing past the Manitoba Bisons 17-16 on the road.

The win puts the ’Birds on a two-game win streak — both from away games.

Manitoba was the first to get onto the scoreboard early in the first frame with a field goal by kicker Brad Mikoluff.

After that, and thanks to solid defence by both teams, neither team scored any points until the final three minutes of the period. At that point, T-Bird star receiver Trivel Pinto saw his moment in the spotlight, making an 80-yard play to score the first touchdown for UBC. In the third quarter, the Bisons retook the lead with a touchdown by offensive lineman Anthony Daley and another field goal by Mikoluff.

Toward the end of the frame, though, the ’Birds responded with a field goal

by Greg Hutchins, narrowing the Bisons’ lead to 13-10.

Manitoba had another touchdown chance in the final minute of the first half, but the score remained unchanged as T-Bird linebacker Stavros Katsantonis caught an interception on Bisons

Fixtures Sport

Home

Score

Away

Rugby (W)

Calgary

44-12

UBC

Basketball (W)

UBC

68-75

Alberta

Volleyball (W)

UBCO

1-3

UBC

Ice Hockey (W)

Regina

3-4

UBC

Soccer (W)

UBC

3-0

UFV

Ice Hockey (M)

UBC

4-2

Regina

Soccer (M)

Trinity Western

2-1

UBC

Volleyball (M)

UBCO

1-3

UBC

Friday, October 20

Saturday, October 21

Saturday’s match was a low-scoring affair.

quarterback Des Catellier’s pass at UBC’s end zone.

The ’Birds would finally take the lead at the start of the third with a touchdown by second-year Cole Meyer. On the Bisons’ next possession, Katsantonis caught a second interception on Catellier’s pass at the end zone, taking away another scoring opportunity from Manitoba and holding UBC’s marginal 17-13 lead into the final frame.

The fourth quarter again saw just one scoring play, which came from another field goal by Mikoluff.

Katsantonis also recorded his third interception of the game later in the frame, but UBC wasn’t able to get on

PATRICK GILLIN

the scoreboard on any further plays.

The match up would end with UBC just one point ahead of the Bisons, taking the 17-16 win.

Although the game was a low-scoring affair, the ’Birds offensive line did record some impressive numbers. Running back Ben Cummings racked up an impressive 143 yards, while Pinto caught 136 yards from quarterback Michael O’Connor.

With the win against the Bisons, the ’Birds now hold a 5-2 record and place second in Canada West. They will return to their home field next week to take on the Regina Rams for their final regular season game. U

Field Hockey (M)

UBC

3-2

Vancouver Hawks

Football

Manitoba

16-17

UBC

Basketball (W)

UBC

66-62

Thompson Rivers

Ice Hockey (M)

UBC

3-2

Regina

Rugby (M)

Seattle RFC

14-36

UBC

Basketball (M)

UBC

107-77

Seattle

Volleyball (W)

UBCO

3-1

UBC

Soccer (M)

UFV

1-3

UBC

Ice Hockey (W)

Regina

1-0

UBC

Soccer (W)

UBC

2-0

Trinity Western

Volleyball (M)

UBCO

1-3

UBC

UBC

13-26

Lethbridge

Sunday, October 22 Rugby (W)