May 26, 2020

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MAY 26, 2020 | VOLUME CII | ISSUE I SURVIVING PANDEMICS SINCE 1918

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Students struggle with housing insecurity

What it means to be Asian in Vancouver

COVID-19 amplifies anti-Chinese sentiments at UBC

International students need better support

Canada West season revised due to COVID-19

NEWS

CULTURE

FEATURES

OPINION

SPORTS

THE UBYSSEY

Noisy, nosey and nurturing

An analysis of Vancouver’s nonemergency line during COVID-19 // 14

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MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

YOUR GUIDE TO UBC EVENTS & PEOPLE

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OUR CAMPUS

EVENTS

Niki Najm-Abadi emphasizes community activism

ANY TIME YOU WANT CLIMATE EMERGENCY ENGAGEMENT VIRTUAL COMMUNITY DIALOGUES UBC Climate Emergency Engagement is facilitating a series of community engagement sessions on the climate crisis from May 19 to June 30. The group is in search of diverse voices and perspectives to help shape UBC’s response to the climate crisis. Each session requires students, staff and faculty to RSVP online in order to receive the Zoom link.

START NOW? CHILL Despite the many sourdough starters and workouts flooding social media, it is okay to have a blank schedule. Rest up and take care.

ON THE COVER COVER BY Eisha Sharda

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

U THE UBYSSEY

MAY 26, 2020 | VOLUME CII | ISSUE I

EDITORIAL

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“It’s called ‘community organizing’ for a reason, right?”

Chimedum Ohaegbu Contributor

In the second semester of her second year, Niki Najm-Abadi’s studies as a political science major and a gender, race, sexuality and social justice minor took a more public turn. This was 2017, the year the United States president introduced his infamous Executive Order 13769. Colloquially known as the ‘Muslim ban’ for its targeted discrimination against Muslim-majority countries, the order triggered multiple international protests — including one in Vancouver, which Najm-Abadi co-organized.

Having grown up in Tehran and Vancouver, Najm-Abadi had both a personal and political stake in the protest, saying “my country was on the list.” This was part of what galvanized her — having had relatively little experience organizing­­— to reach out to some of the people she’d met through her degree programs and the UBC Women’s Centre to stage the action.

“It was a pretty life-changing moment,” Najm-Abadi said. “It was snowing, it was so cold and still we had a great turnout. So it was just really moving to bear witness to people showing up, to see solidarity in action.

“That really has led me to where I am and that’s probably gonna keep me going for a while.”

Having just completed her fifth and final year at UBC, Najm-Abadi has continued doing social justice work at UBC in various ways, including publishing work in the Ignite Undergraduate Journal and participating in conferences such as Women Deliver 2019.

Throughout these experiences, Najm-Abadi’s most sustained community engagements have been through the UBC Women’s Centre, where she was co-president, and the Sexual Assault Support Centre (SASC), where she was an outreach worker.

THE WOMEN’S CENTRE AND THE SASC Najm-Abadi’s desire to have more out-of-classroom discussions on the topics that interested her led her to the Women’s Centre, where she got her start as an activist. There, she co-facilitated Consciousness Raising discussion groups, worked to foster community and spent time “making sure bridges [were] built between marginalized folks with different identities.”

In turn, working at the Women’s Centre led her to the SASC. Though she didn’t run support groups there, she noted that her work with

COURTESY JAN XUE AND NIKI NAJM-ABADI

the Women’s Centre and the SASC “definitely do inform each other.”

“I think being involved with a resource group and the Women’s Centre has always allowed me to be in tune with the community of both the people that use the resource groups, but also the activists that organize within there,” she said.

Being involved in different but related communities has served Najm-Abadi well in helping to weather the changes involving the SASC in the last few years — notably its successful unionization and the AMS’s decision to cut the SASC’s support services in 2018.

Both the SASC and UBC’s wider activist community condemned the AMS and its lack of consultation on the cut, causing a swift reversal of its decision.

“I think the team solidarity that I have seen in the SASC staff, especially post-closures, is truly a force to be reckoned with,” said Najm-Abadi, explaining that during that uncertain time, she and her teammates’ mindset was a determined one.

“I’ve learned so much from the ways of [the SASC’s staff],” she said. “I think it’s truly one of resilience and perseverance. Not to romanticize those terms but it really is like, ‘Here is a challenge and it really sucks and we’re really angry, but we’re all going to do something about it.’”

Najm-Abadi stressed that ‘all’ is the key word here, saying that “What happened with the SASC and what continues to happen with the SASC would not be possible without everyone that signed a petition or wrote an email or rallied behind [us].”

“if you’re at a blockade, buying coffee for everyone and checking in with people — making sure that they’re okay.”

“If you’re organizing in a way that people feel like there’s compassion fatigue and people are burning out, and that isn’t being addressed right now … then it ultimately means the future you are creating [is] going to lack that unless that infrastructure is being built,” said Najm-Abadi.

“The future is a byproduct of the present, now, and the present now is how we organize.”

Though she trusts in and takes strength from community care, Najm-Abadi cautioned against using the idea as a way to homogenize diverse experiences, dodge accountability or assume “that any community of activism has all the right answers.”

“It’s really important for us to take leadership from other communities, especially Indigenous communities because we live on their territories.”

COVID-19 has reshaped the ways in which Najm-Abadi and her SASC co-workers take leadership and lend support, too. Like many other resources, the SASC team is prioritizing online and phone services, though they offered these before.

“We did a test webinar workshop,” said Najm-Abadi. “It was certainly nowhere near as impactful as it would be if it was in person, I think, but I also think that there are a lot of accessibility benefits of delivering workshops over the internet.”

ON COMMUNITY

COVID-19 disruptions aside, Najm-Abadi hopes to continue her activism through working in the nonprofit sphere, now that she’s graduated.

“I think organizing is still a really key part of my life as it stands in the here and now,” she said.

While graduation is “bittersweet” for her, Najm-Abadi notes that that’s been mitigated by talking and working with her teammates and “emphasizing the importance of grief in these losses, but also transform[ing] it” into actions that ensure the sustainability of her and her current team’s work with UBC activist communities.

“We’re making sure that the people that are coming after us are supported, that they have the resources and the knowledge that they need to do the work that they want to do.” U

For Najm-Abadi, “community is everything.” Her relationships within and without the UBC organizing community have shaped her ethos as an activist.

“It’s called ‘community organizing’ for a reason, right?” she said. “I, as an individual, don’t have any of the answers — the answers lie within the processes that we’re trying to develop, in the community work that we’re all doing, out of those meetings [and] conversations.”

Structuralized community care is especially important for those involved in the social justice sphere who, due to the intense nature of their work, are prone to emotional exhaustion in many forms.

To Najm-Abadi, community care can range from “physically schedul[ing] some sort of rest” to

LOOKING FORWARD

NEWS

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

EDITORS ANDREW HA + CHARLOTTE ALDEN

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MAKING ENDS MEET //

COVID-19 stoked housing insecurity, students want UBC to step up

The pandemic is only intensifying the instability.

Andrew Ha Web News Editor

Fourth-year sociology major Annette Cho is out of work this summer, but her rent bills haven’t stopped.

She relied on her TA position for income until April when her contract ended. She reached out to her enrolment services advisor (ESA) with her concerns, but they replied saying she should consider taking summer courses to qualify for more student loans. However, she didn’t feel comfortable given how the pandemic has impacted her mental health.

“The hardest thing for me to wrap my head around was the fact that my ESA was like, ‘If you don’t have the funds, you should look into getting another summer student loan,’” said Cho. “Hearing them say that [I] should be looking into another student loan — it’s definitely not what you want to hear when you’re asking for help.”

Many students have lost income streams this summer as COVID-19 has resulted in cancelled internships and shuttered businesses. While

FILE GEOFF LISTER

government supports like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) are helpful, some students don’t qualify and want UBC to provide better financial support for housing.

“It is really unfortunate, but I know that there are lots of other students out there who are struggling much more than I am,” said Cho. A VULNERABLE POPULATION According to a survey conducted

by Undergraduates of Canadian Research-Intensive Universities (UCRU), 73 per cent of students polled across Canada are “worried about making summer rent and utility bill payments.” As UCRU Chair and former AMS VP External Cristina Ilnitchi points out, students are particularly prone to housing insecurity, with many looking for new housing as winter semester comes to a close.

The pandemic is only intensifying the instability.

“Because of the financial precarity and the different challenges that students may be facing right now, this is going to be a particularly

difficult time to deal with housing,” Ilnitchi said.

Cho tried to find a subletter so she could return to her hometown of Calgary, but the search was “almost impossible” because demand was so low. Even if she had found someone to sublet, she expected that she would’ve still had to pay over half the rent.

“That’s actually one of the main reasons that I’m still here, is because I’m trying to figure out if I can get a sublet person, and if I can’t, how am I going to pay for this?” she said.

To combat COVID-19 housing insecurity, the province temporarily froze rent and banned evictions. BC Housing also established in March the Temporary Rental Supplement (TRS) program where tenants can apply for $300–500 per month for rent payments.

But there’s a notable exception to TRS eligibility: renters like Cho living in accommodations owned or operated by educational institutions.

“Universities are public institutions that receive government funding,” a provincial government spokesperson said in a statement to The Ubyssey. “As the temporary rental supplement is intended to support those in housing that does not already receive financial support from government, university-run housing is not eligible.”

The federal government touted the $9 billion set aside for the Canada Emergency Student Benefit (CESB) intended to fill in eligibility gaps for CERB resulting from requirements such as having earned at least $5,000 last year.

The CESB application opened May 15, but before these government supports were even announced, Cho felt that the university should’ve stepped up. “[UBC] definitely need[s] to be doing more because they know that

students are typically in quite difficult positions financially,” said Cho. Still, international students are ineligible for the CESB. Thirdyear architecture student Matias Kubacsek was excited when Ottawa announced the benefit, but was disappointed by the eligibility requirement.

“When it was made clear it was only Canadian students — there’s a very difficult narrative to follow as an international student,” he said.

“The amount of tuition I feel we pay … I think justifies us being in that conversation.”

‘AS IF NOTHING HAD HAPPENED’ For international students, housing insecurity is the tip of the iceberg.

Kubacsek was supposed to return to his home country of Mexico for his grandfather’s birthday in March, but due to growing health concerns with COVID-19 and uncertainty around the extension of his study permit, he decided to stay.

“It was just unsure for me … being in my third year, having anything jeopardize what could lead to my degree,” he said about possible delays to his honours program.

Kubacsek, who lives in Brock Commons, relied on two part-time jobs on campus before COVID-19 struck. Though his parents provide financial support, that’s since been complicated as the pandemic has disrupted finances worldwide, or more simply made it harder for them to visit the bank.

Like Cho, he thinks that UBC should be doing more to support students. He emailed his ESA and was told to fill in a budget sheet with all his sources of income, but he said it wasn’t reflective of his current situation because it included savings for future tuition payments.

UBC encourages students to

contact their ESAs for possible emergency funding to best accommodate students’ unique situations on a case-by-case basis. The university does list online possible emergencies that qualify, but this excludes upcoming tuition and other fees to UBC. “The overarching goal is to help students on a case-by-case basis as we recognize each student has unique needs and struggles due to COVID-19. That’s why students are being encouraged to contact their ESAs,” said UBC Media Relations in an email to The Ubyssey.

Kubacsek emailed his concerns to President Santa Ono, and Kubacsek eventually was referred back to his ESA. Ultimately, he got one month’s rent waived.

Even so, he says there’s a lack of proactivity from the university in reaching out to students who might not know what support is available.

“I think the only person to ask was one of my profs [who] emailed me. She knew my state and was like, ‘If you need anything, you can talk to me,’” he said. “But then nothing from the university. There was no email saying like, ‘Oh, if you’re an international student, there’s gonna be an open discussion of what you think you might need.’”

Fixes like UBC emergency funding and the TRS are temporary, and rent freezes will end. Cho thinks the university should fill the gap, perhaps by pausing rent until September.

“I think it’s really important that we come together and … show the university that we won’t stand for them just proceeding as if nothing had happened,” she said. “ … Clearly we are impacted by the pandemic and need all the support that we can get, because there are students falling through the cracks.” U

PANDEMIC PROBLEMS //

Students balance health, grades and graduation as they consider skipping fall semester Vera Sudakova Contributor

As university administration plans for fall, self-isolating UBC students around the world are left wondering what their education will look like come September.

Many feel the pain of online classes and have concerns about health, but students are keeping in mind the credits needed to graduate. Will some courses staying online cause anyone to take a semester off? The Ubyssey spoke to four students to find out.

FAR FROM ROUTINE A lack of motivation and lower grades as a result are the most common concerns students share about taking classes online in the fall.

One of the biggest benefits of having classes in person is the campus learning environment. Students also reported what they will miss the most are their favourite study spots and routines with friends on campus.

“I never realized it before, but being surrounded with people who are also learning is a strong, silent motivator to keep your own mind on the course material,” said Henry Huynh, a second-year computer

science major in a message to The Ubyssey.

Students like fourth-year biology, chemistry and computer science major Sameera Gumma also expect to struggle with the lack of a well-defined work routine and accountability for following course materials, especially when professors record all of their lectures and continue to rely on final exams. “[I] found it harder to stay motivated and keep myself accountable,” wrote Gumma in a message.

“I had a 9 a.m. class and so I just stopped waking up early to watch the lectures because there was no point … I started to just push things ’til my exams.”

This is proving to be a bad sign for students like third-year land and food systems student Nicole Ma and their GPAs come September.

“In retrospect,” Ma said, “my grades have been affected.”

A SECOND-CLASS EXPERIENCE But when professors fail to record their lectures, it has major consequences for international students.

“Some profs don’t record lectures, which means not taking into account the time differences for people in other countries,” said

second-year speech sciences major April Poy. “I had some classmates joining the Collaborate Ultra lectures at 2 a.m.”

This is a big deal for students who are paying tens of thousands of dollars to study at UBC. “The biggest impact for me is the quality of education,” said Gumma. “Personally, I feel like online classes are not as good as in person classes, and it’s definitely not what I prefer and it’s not what I want to pay the same amount of money for.”

There is no easy way to fix issues that online classes may pose in the fall, but there is no easy alternative to taking the classes either.

Many students are ending up like Poy, accepting that they might have to take classes online but preparing for the experience to be what she called “annoying and frustrating.”

Likewise, Huynh is not changing his plans, but hopes to grow from this experience. “On the bright side, it can really help me become more independent and better at managing my time — something I recently learned I suck at.”

‘FINGERS CROSSED’ The decision-making process becomes more complicated for

“I just have to do my part in social distancing and keep my fingers crossed.”

upper-year students entering their final semesters.

For Gumma, the decision about fall classes rests on finding a balance between her health, her graduation timeline and maintaining her grades. Despite the potential impact on her GPA, Gumma said she “wouldn’t take a semester off,” purely because she wants to graduate on time.

“Being an upper-year student, it really is a balance between being able to graduate and getting good grades so I can still apply to grad school,” she said.

On the other hand, the possibili-

FILE IYANU OWOLABI

ty of holding fall classes in person is also a cause for concern to students like Gumma, who have to decide if they are willing to risk their health to get an education.

“If the government and scientists think it’s fine to end the lockdown,” she said, “I think that I would just accept the possibility that I might get sick and go back to school.”

For now, many students await updates from university administration and share Huynh’s attitude.

“I just have to do my part in social distancing and keep my fingers crossed,” he said. U

4 | news | TUESDAY MAY 26, 2020 GRIEVANCES WITH GROUSE //

Carbone’s back is now permanently bent forward at a 20-degree angle.

ANDREW HA

‘I really could have died young’: Student grapples with spinal injury recovery, seeks Grouse safety reform Joshua Azizi Contributor

Content warning: this article contains details of a traumatic injury that may be disturbing to some readers.

Second-year forestry student Sara Carbone went up to Grouse Mountain on February 19 for a day of snowboarding with her friends. Around 4 p.m., she exited the mountain’s chalet to meet two friends at the mountain’s peak.

On her way there, she went past a building with a large snowcat in front of it when she slipped on her snowboard and sat down for a moment to regain her balance.

“I was about to stand back up, but that’s when I realized there was something crushing me,” Carbone said in an interview with The Ubyssey.

The snowcat she passed had reversed into her and was running her over.

“I started screaming ‘Stop!

Stop! Stop!’ and when I realized that no one could hear me or see me, I was like, ‘Wow, I’m going to die.’”

The vehicle moved off of her body and drove in the opposite direction — Carbone suspects the driver had no idea she was under

its tracks. Ski patrol attendants rushed towards her and brought her to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with three spinal compression fractures. Three of her vertebrae had collapsed.

As a result, Carbone’s back is now permanently bent forward at a 20-degree angle, although it could worsen slightly over time.

“It’s been really challenging to accept that,” she said. “And I don’t think I really have.”

Since the incident happened, Carbone has struggled to cope with the physical pain and emotional trauma of the injury.

Although she and her family were in discussions after the incident with leadership from Grouse Mountain about possible compensation, Grouse stopped responding to their messages midway through March — around the same time the mountain paused operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over two months later, Carbone’s injury is starting to heal and the physical pain is beginning to subside. However, she still feels frustrated that Grouse has cut off communication with her.

‘I WAS STILL IN SHOCK’ Carbone has experienced frequent severe back pain ever since the incident happened — as a result,

she has struggled with sitting upright for long periods of time.

She described trying to paint a picture for a friend of hers who let her stay over at their house as a gift, but found that it hurt too much to do so.

“I couldn’t even sit at my desk to paint the whole thing without having to lay down,” she said.

“That was just so frustrating.”

To manage the pain, she had to drop two of her five courses and go on leave from her job at the Gallery in the Nest, which later closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She was able to drop the courses without getting Ws on her transcript, but was disappointed nonetheless.

Carbone, who pays international tuition, was also not able to get a refund for her dropped courses. She said it was “infuriating” to have to extend her degree by another semester.

The incident also took a sharp toll on her mental health. She initially felt depressed after it happened because she wasn’t able to go outside, but later on she began to experience anxiety and traumatic flashbacks.

“For quite a while there, I was still in shock,” she said. “In my mind, I felt like I was in danger, like I could die at any moment.

Like I was still trapped under the snowcat.”

Carbone and her family have taken multiple financial hits due to the incident as well. Her parents arrived in Vancouver the day after the incident happened to take her on a planned vacation to Whistler — they took the vacation anyways, but had to extend their trip in order to take care of their daughter.

“It was a ruined vacation,” said Ellen Wu, Carbone’s mother.

“The airline wouldn’t reimburse us for an injury. We had to buy a whole separate new ticket, extra hotel, extra rental car.”

Other costs that Carbone and her family have had to undertake include therapy sessions and private transportation costs, since taking the bus was too painful of an ordeal for her.

REACHING OUT TO GROUSE While Carbone was in the emergency room on the day of the accident, she was visited by a duty manager at Grouse Mountain.

“He brought flowers and he was just helping me deal with the doctors and things like that,” she said.

At the hospital, Carbone said the duty manager told her that Grouse would re-train their vehicle operators, financially cover her mountain pass and listen to her suggestions for how they can

make the mountain safer.

Two friends of Carbone who were in the emergency room with her that day — UBC students Dorian Issa and Bronte Chew — confirmed that the duty manager had made those statements. Chew also provided The Ubyssey with a picture of his business card, which she said he gave her at the hospital.

“He stayed for the whole time until she left the hospital,” said Chew. “It was helpful having him as an adult voice asking what can she do, what can’t she do [and] when can she be seen by the doctor.”

To date, Carbone has not received any compensation for her mountain pass, nor does she know if Grouse has made any changes to its safety standards of operation in response to the incident.

The duty manager did not respond to an interview request from The Ubyssey in time for publishing.

In the weeks after Carbone left the hospital, she and her family had been in contact with Grant Wahl, Grouse’s director of mountain operations, and Alithea Taylor, safety manager.

Emails obtained by The Ubyssey show that Wahl and Taylor had arranged a Skype conversation with Carbone and her family on March 11 to discuss

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY | news | 5

the situation.

Carbone characterized the conversation as “inconclusive.”

“It was a little bit uncomfortable because, for a lot of the call, I was crying and spilling my heart out and being like, ‘I’m sad, you know, and I can’t do things,’” she said. “They would just be like, ‘I’m sorry you’re going through this.’”

Both Carbone and Wu said compensation was discussed during the call and that Carbone was asked how much money she wanted to receive. In response, she said she wasn’t sure and asked Grouse to come up with a figure of their own. They also talked about Grouse’s safety practices, which Wu said that Grouse couldn’t commit to changing — even after the severity of the incident. “[Taylor said] something to the effect of, ‘We may or may not change them,’ and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, you nearly killed somebody and you wouldn’t want to change your safety protocols? That seems really unacceptable.’”

Both Carbone and Wu claim

that Wahl and Taylor said they would follow up with them later on — however, they never heard from Grouse again.

Messages obtained by The Ubyssey show that Carbone emailed Wahl on March 26 and texted him on April 1 to ask for updates on the situation. Both Carbone and Wu claim he never responded.

“I am disappointed in their lack of response and the lack of follow-up,” said Wu. “They said they would work with her. That is, to me, very disappointing.”

Grouse Mountain communications manager Julia Grant said in a March 17 email to The Ubyssey that due to the current suspension of operations at Grouse as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic — as well as “a number of things” the resort has been working through internally — she would not be available for an interview.

Multiple further requests for comment were met with no response until Grant reconfirmed on April 23 that “Grouse Mountain will not be providing a comment for this piece.”

‘I REALLY COULD HAVE DIED YOUNG’ Now, Carbone’s injury is less painful than it once was and her mental health is beginning to improve, even if the incident still disturbs her when she thinks about it.

“I’ve never really considered that dying young was a possibility, but now I’ve really seen that first hand it’s like, ‘Wow, I really could have died young,’” she said. “It could have happened.”

Moving forward, she’s most interested in seeing Grouse improve its safety practices to make sure what happened to her doesn’t happen to anyone else.

“I was told by [the duty manager] there that there are blind spots in those vehicles, and I think that’s really problematic,” she said. “If there are blind spots in the vehicle, they need to have multiple people operating them.”

Ultimately, she hopes that the mountain takes action in response to what happened.

“I’m not really sure what’s happening at this point, but I just really hope they do the right thing.” U

COVID-19 TIMELINE

MAY 11 UBC to split between online and in-person instruction this fall Despite this announcement, most faculties so far have announced they will be exclusively online and are not requiring students to be in Vancouver. Faculties are slowly releasing their own specific plans.

As of publishing, science, forestry, business, kinesiology and engineering will be fully online, while arts and law will be mostly online with some small in-person classes/events.

MAY 20

MAY 15 Application opens for the Canada Emergency Student Benefit On April 22, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $9 billion in student COVID-19 support, after many students were ineligible for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. Students can now apply for $1,250 a month through the Canada Emergency Student Benefit. The $9 billion in support also includes the creation of the Canada Student Service grant and up to 116,000 jobs.

Nest reopens doors after closing on March 17 The Nest reopened on March 20 — initially planned for March 19, but AMS President Cole Evans said the society needed an extra 24 hours to clear up a “couple health and safety things.” The opening will happen in three phases, with the first phase including the physical reopening of the space, takeout dining and limited services.

The second and third phases include sit-in dining with physical distancing and the gradual increase of in-person meetings and (small) events.

JUNE 1 TransLink to resume bus fare collection On May 4, TransLink announced it will be resuming bus fare collection and front-door boarding after cancelling fares on March 20. TransLink has lost $75 million each month since that date, and restarting fare collection is estimated to provide TransLink with $2 milion a month. The U-Pass has been suspended for the summer.

After the incident, Carbone has faced academic and financial repercussions.

ANDREW HA

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUA PRESIDIO

CULTURE

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

EDITOR DANNI OLUSANYA

6

UBC Students on Asian Heritage Month ‘Toto, I have a Feeling We’re Not in Vancouver Anymore’

What it Means to Be Asian in Vancouver …

EMILY LEUNG

MALEEKAH AR-RAHIMAN

The mental spirals and freshman fifteens of first-year hit us hard.

Feeling that we deserved a much-needed weekend getaway, my friends and I headed from Vancouver to a vacation home in the city of Parksville. Our weekend was one for the books: ‘friendly’ cooking competitions, reality TV marathons interspersed with pillow fights, and some not-sosubtle racism at a neighbourhood pool. As the days passed, it became increasingly apparent that we as Asian-Canadians did not belong.

I was sporting a Korean-inspired

fringe at the time, which seemed to warrant additional attention such as textbook ‘Are you from China?’ racial comments. To our surprise, my response was nothing more than a smile. This reaction stemmed from the same source that differentiated me from this community: my Chinese identity. In these moments of discrimination and ignorance, I could not help but recall the classic Chinese fable, ‘The Frog in the Well.’ The story follows a sheltered frog that believes he is living in paradise at the bottom of a well, unaware of the world that exists outside of the familiar walls. I was hopeful that the

story ending would also play out in real life, where the ignorance resulting from living within a secluded bubble would one day dissipate as people come to realize how much culture, diversity and tradition awaits beyond their local environment.

Despite the room for additional growth, I pride Vancouver for acknowledging the valuable multiculturalism that our communities are built upon.

I am glad to call this city home.

For one month a year, there is a warm gesture to remind us that our diversity is a matter of celebration. U

dim sum — even when I’m not entirely sure how to use them, all because they remind me of home.

I always get myself a carton of sweetened soy milk — one time when my dad picked me up from the airport for the holidays, he told me that he made sure to stop by the grocery store late at night to pick up soy milk because he knows that it’s my favourite.

My parents have always been slightly awkward about showing affection, but since I’ve left home, they’ve been slowly improving. I still think about that car ride with my dad sometimes when I buy my

own soy milk, and I try not to cry in the middle of the dairy aisle.

Even though I’m usually not that hungry when I walk into the store, I end up salivating at everything in the hot food section. It’s hard to keep myself from picking up ten different things when I know I’m going to have to suffer through Grand Noodle Emporium’s food before I’ll be able to make it to T&T again. The grocery store can’t replace my parents’ cooking or my brother’s sarcasm or my family’s love, but I guess it’s good enough for now. U

T&T SARAH ZHAO Walking into T&T feels like coming home. I always go in with a list of what I need, but I inevitably leave with way more than I planned to buy, staggering back onto the bus while carrying my grocery bags filled with random Asian snacks. When I walk through the aisles, I pick up random products that I recognize — the 皮蛋 that’s in my dad and brother’s favourite type of 粥, the sausages that my cousin used to make by hand, the 小笼包 that I always make sure to order at

British Columbia born and raised, what does it mean to be Asian to me?

Being Asian to me is dressing up for Eid and going to my grandparents’ house indulging in the plentiful snacks!

Being Asian to me is driving from Langley to Surrey to catch the latest Bollywood flick to grace the screen.

Being Asian to me is having the girls next to you in Grade 1 stare at your naan, chicken and chutney with their noses turned up and away, uttering ‘Eww how can you eat that.’

Being Asian, to me, means feeling the joy and happiness of seeing other Asian cultures and traditions being celebrated, from Diwali to Chinese New Year to Vaisakhi in the streets. It is a privilege to live in a place where we can all celebrate in peace!

Being Asian to me is going to McDonald’s in a saree before a wedding, and feeling the awkwardness of being the most done-up brown thing there.

Being Asian, to me, means knowing at the end of the day that the whole community is there for each other, ready to face the good and the bad side by side.

British Columbia born and raised; this is what it means to be Asian to me! U

My name has meaning FARIHA KHAN

My name has meaning Do not mispronounce it.

Why should I have to be Ashamed of correcting you?

Why should I have to Make my voice small And under my breath say “Actually, it’s...”

No, I want to be loud.

And I want to say That the “h” in my name is not silent.

Neither is it replaced with a “y”

SPEAKING IN RED ANDREW HA I ate cherry tomatoes the day my language came back to me. It was after my morning online classes, and I’d taken to waking up just in time to join each lecture ten minutes late while I lay halfconscious between my sheets. The filmy skins coated my tongue and the seeds burst between my teeth.

I spat them out like the Cantonese

words I tried to speak with my mom. Not something I was used to being on campus every day just the week before.

I should’ve brushed my teeth before I trekked to the pharmacy.

Behind my face mask, I felt tomato bits stuck in my mouth. But I couldn’t let anybody know they were there. I had to prove myself through the fluency of my English that I was from here just like

everyone else. That I was not the other.

My tongue was stained red after I got home and took off my mask.

Luckily, that’s not something my family cared about. Although I felt hyper-aware of the words I was becoming re-accustomed to, my mom stuck her tongue out at me without a second thought.

I spoke red for the rest of the day. U

Oh, you’re angry with me?

Because I was arrogant?

No, you’re ignorant For not wanting to correct your mistakes.

My name has meaning It means to be happy Do not mispronounce it I do not want to correct you twice U

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY | culture | 7

Byelingual NICK PANG “Hey Nick do you speak Chinese?”

“Of course!” I say defensively for no reason. “I’ll have you know that I was born in China and I went to one of the top primary schools in my city.”

“Okay chill dude. What does this thing say then?”

“Oh. Um, yeah it’s like that thing. Like that one famous Chinese thing, you know?” I stammer, trying to buy time.

“Uh, no.” “操” (“fuck”) Being in Vancouver often means I’m told, either directly or indirectly, that I don’t belong as a Canadian. To give myself some

peace, it becomes easier to identify as “only” Chinese, which means my ability to speak Chinese has become quite a fragile point of pride.

However, after being in Vancouver for so long, I find myself struggling to tell my mother about my day in Chinese, bogged down by English jargon and unable to explain my studies to my grandmother and giving up on reading Chinese altogether.

As time goes on, I grow more and more frustrated as I helplessly watch my Chinese slowly slip away.

To me, speaking Chinese is my way of finding community, expressing myself to my family and exploring my culture

O 观世音 bless my stolen tongue ZHI WEN TEH

? gong gong ?死?? 舅姥爷 :// television heterosexual nuclear family Body, fenced between blood and soil upon oceans between borders as the stones skip along the distorted ripples, their gargled words tattooed in the chinks of my tongue. ?? Kongfuzi? 风水 ?? Sun Wukong?Laozi :// neoclassical gates that lead to ivy league :// bastions of meritocratic liberal societies Condemned to prisms refracting their polished lenses into porcelain statues.

Evangelize, wrest your knees down, our Eden wants your honey. ?Mao?? 共产主义? Tiananmen :// O Britannia, let the sun never set on the empire :// God bless Your Majesty and Manifest your Destiny I gaze upon Frankenstein’s hands with your eyes.

You only see the sun’s shadow on the moon.

I can’t see myself in the signal’s static.

I speak but I only hear your cadence. :// Bàba, how do you say this word in Chinese? snow falls from the plum blossom as I steal the fare to the river Styx and burn it at the altar to my ancestors to bless my tongue dipped in 文 wén 献 xiàn / 化 huà U

unfiltered by Western lenses.

Speaking Chinese meant that I was at least worthy of something, even if the city would never accept me.

Recently, I’ve become incredibly grateful to the emergence in popularity of Western media featuring Chinese people, local and online groups where Chinese diaspora can find community using English as a common language, and those around me who embrace Chinese people, cuisine and culture. Although I’m becoming byelingual, I hope that one day I can feel Canadian despite being Chinese, and I can feel Chinese despite having to Google Translate phrases behind my family’s back. U

How I Will R aise my Kids GRACE NIE 1. You will attend Chinese school. You will be a better candidate for the workforce and be able to communicate with relatives whom I cannot understand.

2. You will learn piano. You will develop fine-motor skills to become a surgeon and have a creative outlet to express your internal discourse.

3. You will have a math tutor. You will be top of your classes and have the confidence to excel in STEM fields, where I couldn’t.

4. You will tell me about your day. You will map out how productive you have been and allow me the opportunity to validate your hard work and every success.

5. You will help me cook because we have food at home. You will avoid wasting money on restaurant food and enjoy the remnants of ginger, garlic and peppercorn on your clothes.

6. You will watch and read content from cultural icons of my time.

You will gain a balanced appreciation for the arts to complement your university application and become inspired by the wits of Ali Wong, David Chang and Awkwafina.

7. You will support me during your Chinese lessons. Your structured childhood will help me reach my full potential because your 老老 and 老爷 were exhausted and didn’t have the means to raise me the same way I will raise you. U

A Family Meal THERESA WONG In 2019, Chinese New Year fell on a Tuesday, so I wasn’t able to go home to celebrate with family. No matter, the multiple days of feasting had toned down since my childhood when my grandparents were still alive. I trusted now that I was in college, my mother would not be “taxing” the red pocket money my relatives left for me. Anyway, there was no time to lament: there was sliced pork to be bought.

And, by God, they had better have fish tofu in Richmond, and seriously, Daniel,

I chastised from the backseat, how could you almost forget the gas canisters?

We rushed, the three of us, cramming T&T bags into the backseat — I hope the steam bun pigs do that thing — oh, where the filling squeezes out the nose? — yeah — and drove to my basement abode, where we were met with a frown.

Don’t you know how long the soup base takes?

No, my mom always does it!

Presently, there was a dispute over the need for green onions — what do you mean your family doesn’t put them in??? — and someone was sent to correct the error.

A desk was added to the dining table, desk chairs commandeered, too. Fliers were papered over the crack between the tables, a shoddy pot carried out to crown the gas stove. There were knocks at the door, everyone sat down and finally, green onions bubbling reassuringly in the steaming broth, we dug in. Chatter filled the room. I hardly knew some of the people there — oh! You’re Cantonese, too?

— yet it was, in some comforting, familiar way, its own family meal. To add or not add green onions, it hardly mattered, there was more that bound us together than that. U

FEATURES

EDITOR BAILEY MARTENS

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

8

BEHIND THE FACE MASK How COVID-19 amplifies anti-Chinese sentiments at UBC Words Andrew Ha Photo Elizabeth Wang Design Lua Presidio

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY | Features | 9

F

ourth-year accounting major Flora Jin remembers walking along Marine Drive on the way to Wreck Beach in March — around when UBC had just switched courses online to support COVID-19 physical distancing.

Concern around the pandemic hadn’t yet reached fever pitch, so no one wore a mask except for her. But for Jin, a Chinese international student, the walk made her feel like an outcast.

“As the only one who was wearing a mask, and being Asian … I just feel like a lot of people were staring at me and tried to walk past me or keep a distance from me,” she said.

“And that was really awkward for me, to walk among people who [were] not wearing a mask and just staring at me.”

Step outside now and mask-clad faces are more common than not. But what remains the same is the anti-Chinese sentiment that COVID-19 has only exacerbated.

A quick search on the r/UBC subreddit brings up a plethora of discriminatory comments. One commenter questioned why Chinese students are so “egregious” at not integrating with the rest of campus, and another was surprised that BC was not harder hit given the number of Asians who the user said were bringing the disease over.

One Redditor asked point blank: “Is it just my experiences or are some Chinese international students just rude?”

According to the BC Human Rights Tribunal, racism “is a belief that some people are better than other people because they belong to a particular race or ethnic group.”

When these Redditors place negative stereotypes on Chinese students, they are perpetuating racial discrimination, even unknowingly.

Similar beliefs have led to increased violence, threats and harassment as the pandemic progresses.

But closer to home, COVID-19 has drawn attention to veiled discrimination on campus against Chinese students, largely fuelled by misconceptions — particularly with Chinese international students, who make up the largest demographic of internationals at UBC. HIDDEN PREJUDICES The university’s 2019 Undergraduate Experience Survey reports that while 90 per cent of white students feel that “students of my race/ethnicity are respected on this campus,” the number drops to 72 per cent for Chinese students.

Associate VP Equity and Inclusion Dr. Sara-Jane Finlay said that this isn’t specific to UBC, but speaks to a broader societal issue: “We live in a culture where whiteness is the norm.”

According to the 2019 AMS Academic Experience Survey, just over a third of all students reported ever experiencing race-based discrimination. But the stat for Chinese students was higher — 50 per cent of Chinese students reported discrimination, and the number rises to 63 per cent for Chinese international students.

Julia Burnham, former AMS VP academic and current student senator, said that she “wouldn’t be surprised” to see an increase of reported instances of discrimination in 2020 survey results given international conflicts affecting Chinese students on campus — like the Hong Kong protests or the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s a need to recognize that all of this fear and anxiety around coronavirus is being unduly placed on Chinese people,” said Burnham.

Dr. Benjamin Cheung, lecturer in the department of psychology, said he has not had any students approach him about racial discrimination from fellow classmates as of late.

Still, he recounts a story of one of his students — a Chinese international student— who was walking in west campus when a passerby yelled at her to go back to China.

“Absolutely, this can manifest really anywhere that you have intercultural interactions with each other — which is literally everywhere on campus,” said Cheung. #HATEISAVIRUS Online, Chinese students are fighting back. Nick Pang, pharmacy student and student senator in his fifth year at UBC, posted a selfie wearing a mask with #HATEISAVIRUS written on it. The photo is part of a trend to raise awareness about anti-Asian racism during the pandem-

ic, especially those who brave both discrimination and health risks while working in essential services.

UBC prides itself on being an international university with a diverse student population, but especially under the veil of internet anonymity, prejudice from the greater community still exists. Pang said the surge in racist incidents isn’t indicative of anything new, but rather has given pre-existing anti-Asian sentiment an outlet.

“It revealed some people’s deep, dark secrets that they’ve always had,” said Pang.

Take the Lennon Wall in the Nest, where students are welcome to post sticky notes in solidarity with Hong Kong activists. Before the AMS closed the Nest in mid-March, someone had written messages blaming China for the novel coronavirus, which was incorrectly referred to as the “Wuhan virus.”

UBC The Enlightenment of HK’s Phoenix Au-Yeung, a member of the group behind forming the wall, suspects that the messages were a response to the Chinese government’s silencing of coronavirus whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang. When non-geographic alternatives like ‘COVID-19’ and ‘coronavirus’ exist, calling the bug the ‘Wuhan’ or ‘China virus’ associates Chinese people and those who look like them with the disease, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination based on appearance, said Cheung.

50 per cent of Chinese students reported discrimination, and the number rises to 63 per cent for Chinese international students 2019 AMS Academic Experience Survey

“It spreads from just calling it the place of origin to generalizing it to everyone who has any sort of perceived attachment to that term. So it no longer becomes the China virus as a virus that happened in China, but rather it’s a virus that comes from China and Chinese-looking people,” he said.

“And I think that’s the biggest danger.”

BENEATH THE MISCONCEPTIONS Misconceptions about Chinese international students contribute to cultural divides. Online comments and the Lennon Wall message represent some of the main negative perceptions of Chinese students that exist on campus, and Chinese international students are particularly subject to negative stereotyping.

On average, a domestic arts student pays $5,500 per year in tuition while their international counterpart pays $39,500 — over seven times more. This gap, coupled with the UBC Board of Governors’ 2015 decision to raise international tuition by nearly 50 per cent over the following three years, has added to what Cheung said is the idea that international students are all rich.

That’s far from reality for many internationals like Jin, who has had to work multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet with rent and tuition.

“There’s definitely a lot of perception where you hear, ‘Oh, you’re a Chinese international student. Oh, you pay

so much. Oh, you’re rich,’” she said. “But at the same time, I’m not. I’m paying more but then I’m at the same financial level as a lot of other domestic students.”

And when the university relies so heavily on international tuition, forecasted to be $507 million in revenue for 2019/20 without considering the effects of COVID-19 compared to $386 million for domestic, Pang said it’s “counterintuitive” that the university would support them financially.

“If you’re using that to balance your budget sheet, why would you allocate more resources to support that?” he said.

“It minimizes them as this horde of people coming to UBC with all of their money, and just not being real students. And I think that’s really harmful because it almost reduces them to [where] their success isn’t deserved,” said Pang.

Yet another belief about Chinese international students often expressed online is that they tend to stick to themselves and don’t integrate with the others on campus.

But for international students adjusting to new cultures, languages and education systems — all while miles away from family and friends — being around other international students, not necessarily even of the same ethnic background, helps with change.

“It’s a matter of comfort, and I think anyone deserves to have that level of comfort wherever they are,” said Cheung.

“We’re not gonna force somebody to participate if that’s not what they want,” added Finlay. “But we do need to make sure that the options are there for people to be able to engage in their studies in the way that best suits them, best supports their learning while they’re at UBC.” CHANGING THE CULTURE Racial discrimination on campus is governed by Policy SC7, which outlines what constitutes discrimination and the investigation process following a complaint. But in the case of online comments where there is no one to investigate, or when the person facing discrimination does not want an investigation, what can the policy do?

Finlay said the university understands that not everyone may wish to launch an investigation, and for those, there is a “full suite” of alternatives to resolve issues such as mediation or conflict resolution.

Despite this, Burnham said that the “complaints-driven” nature of the policy hampers its ability to shift a broader culture of discrimination.

“They are reactive by nature because they are only really enacted when someone comes forward with a complaint of discrimination … It’s tricky to have that be catchall for all the instances of discrimination on campus.”

That’s where the Inclusion Action Plan (IAP) comes in.

It’s UBC’s 2019 strategy to improve inclusivity and is a part of the university’s 10-year plan, Shaping UBC’s Next Century, which aims to improve inclusion on a systemic level, including hiring, academics and university decision-making.

“The kind of culture change that it speaks to and the kind of embedding of equity and inclusion into policies, processes, programs — that’s a long-term strategy,” Finlay said.

Questions remain over how this will affect students as departments are at liberty to implement the plan how they see fit for their unit, but Finlay said the flexibility allows for units to consider what they can tangibly do. Units will also report progress annually to the Equity & Inclusion Office.

But in the meantime, Pang stresses the need for culturally sensitive supports for international students. A former residence advisor, he recalls the difficulty of communicating the resources he could provide through residence life to students who were new.

“That idea of knowing everyone on your floor, being really close to your RA is a very Western philosophy.”

As the pandemic stretches norms and reveals racial tensions on campus, empathy is more important than ever.

“What if the virus started in your country, and it’s your country against the world? Your own nationality against the whole world, how would you think about that?” said Jin. “It’s not one country against each other — it’s the world against the virus.” U

OPINIONS

10

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

EDITOR SAM SMART

LEFT BEHIND //

Letter: UBC needs better support for international students during the COVID-19 pandemic Silvana Martinez Contributor

International students make a fundamental contribution to the maintenance of the university in its material and ideal forms.

Our tuition money goes in all sorts of directions and broadly contributes to UBC’s aim to be a leading public research institution, from which a variety of people, not only students, benefit greatly.

International students also provide many diverse perspectives and opportunities for intellectual and cultural exchange, ones that benefit the whole UBC community.

I ask that you not leave us behind during this crisis.

I want to highlight UBC’s international students’ diversity in a different light: the ways in which a global pandemic can affect the livelihoods of each of the 17,225 international students across both campuses. Whereas some students can travel home with few repercussions, this is not the safest option for many others. Having our Canadian student visas can make the biggest difference on how hard we’re hit by the consequences of COVID-19. Therefore, I argue that under these circumstances, staying in our place of study is often the best, and sometimes the only option that can assure our safety and wellbeing.

However, with this in mind, other factors such as financial security must be recognized. Such is the case both for students who have stayed in Vancouver and those who have gone home. One of

the most poignant anxieties that international students share under this pandemic is the fluctuation — and often devaluation, as in my case — of our home currencies.

These fluctuations are, of course, a big worry for us and our families.

Regarding these financial matters, I must be clear. Paying international tuition at UBC is no small investment. Students from all over the world come to UBC, eager to learn and grow personally and professionally. They place deep trust in this institution so as to pay up to seven times the amount a domestic student does.

This trust includes our own and/ or our parents’ savings and our dreams of graduating as first-rank professionals in our fields.

Like many other students, I embarked on the mission of learning outside my hometown to broaden my scope about the world and learn about myself. But fulfilling this aspiration is costly.

Most of us are probably aware of Vancouver’s real estate problem and the difficulties of finding yearly affordable housing. Students are especially vulnerable when facing Vancouver’s rent, and as an international student, the situation is often more precarious when contracts vary and we have no relatives to go to. On this topic, I’d say that anything that can help ease this monthly pressure will be greatly appreciated, both for students that have stayed and those that would love to come back for in-person classes once this is allowed.

Furthermore, given the

sudden and necessary shift to online classes for these upcoming academic terms, I find it unfair that both Canadian and international students are not charged the same amount for the same kind of experience in education.

Not being on campus, a huge amount of our education is taken away from us as international students. We have invested in the immersion of a different cultural landscape and the in-person spontaneity of meeting unique individuals: our fellow students, professors and any other person whom we can interact with far away from home. Unfortunately, online classes provide much less than the top-tier global education we typically pay for, and this is not the price we should be paying for the product we are getting in return.

Finally, I would like to point out the fact that merely for being international students, we do not deserve to be ostracized from programs that benefit Canadians.

As international students, most of us don’t qualify for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, given that many don’t work during the school year (many can only work full-time in the summer). Many don’t qualify for the provincial BC Temporary Rental Supplement either, such as those living in UBC housing, which does not fall under the Residential Tenancy Act. Moreover, international students don’t qualify for the Canada Emergency Student Benefit. The only listed benefit for international students is allowing

ARIEL QI

“I ask that you not leave us behind during this crisis.”

those who work in essential services to extend their hours beyond the previous limit of 20 per week during an academic session.

There is little we can do when we lack a permanent residency or Canadian passport, but this does not mean we should be left behind to deal with our hardships alone, especially economic. I understand that we may not be the economic priority in the plans of the federal government, but this is why, as an institution, we need our university to step up and support us.

Santa Ono’s April 3 statement on COVID-19 announced the Student Emergency appeal, but this resource was not mentioned in the international students FAQ on COVID-19.

I believe many students are not familiar with this option, for there was no explicit reaching out to international students about this possibility. Whereas we know we can always contact our enrolment services advisors in case of a financial emergency, hardships may not always manifest themselves immediately under these circumstances, and reaching out for help is not the same as receiving some compensation.

We chose UBC because it was a place to make our own. Now we need our university to show that they support and value us in this community. U Silvana Martinez is a third-year human geography major.

THERAPIST SHOPPING //

Mind Your Mind: How to find the right counsellor Daphnée Lévesque Mindfulness Columnist

Therapy or counselling, whichever you prefer, can be helpful for many reasons. For me, it has helped with learning new coping skills and ways of relating to others in the world. It has taught me how to regulate my emotions, how to be assertive and how to self-soothe during stressful times.

Therapy can also help you with your relationships, family traumas and mental health disorders, like anxiety, depression, etc.

The first rule of thumb to remember is that individuals might not click with the first counsellor/therapist they meet, and that is totally okay.

Counsellors have different backgrounds and areas of expertise, and they may treat a specific population as well.

Just because a counsellor has credentials and fancy letters after their name does not mean that they are the right counsellor for you. Finally, research has shown that a good therapeutic alliance, the quality of the relationship between you and the therapist, predicts better outcomes.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve been ‘therapist shopping.’ That being said, I know exactly what

I’m looking for. If this is your first time accessing counselling, here’s a few tips on how to get started and important factors to keep in mind.

Most often, therapy or counselling appointments are not covered under provincial healthcare (for example, BC’s Medical Service Plan), unless the therapy is provided by a hospital or outpatient program, nonprofit organization or community services. Therefore, one thing to keep in mind is cost. At UBC, all students can access counselling through UBC counselling services or the Empower Me program at no cost. Check with your insurance if any therapy/counselling is covered, either by a registered clinical counsellor (RCC) or registered psychologist (R. psych). Even if you are accessing private therapy, it doesn’t hurt to ask the therapist if they offer sliding scale options.

If you would like to consider paying privately for a therapist, you can use the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors website and you can locate a private psychologist through the BC Psychological Association. When searching for a counsellor/ psychologist, you can use filters to search for a counsellor in your community that specializes in the topics that relate to your

concerns. There are hundreds of therapists out there, so I suggest making a list of counsellors that work near your preferred location. The UBC Psychology Clinic also has a list of therapy resources.

Based on my own lived experience, sometimes finding the right fit is a bit of process.

To make things easier, I would suggest connecting with the counsellor directly before booking a first appointment, thereby saving time and money, as well as increasing the chances that it will be a good fit the first time around. Keep in mind that it’s okay to be picky. For example, ask yourself, “what gender would I prefer or feel most comfortable with when it comes to finding a therapist?”

A good therapist will be open to responding to emails or offer free phone consultations. Then, you might want to describe your situation and disclose what you are struggling with. You don’t have to disclose everything. Again, the goal is to get a feel and see if you click with them. Ask questions like ‘What are your areas of expertise?’

‘Do you treat individuals who struggle with (your concerns)?’

‘What are your approaches?’ ‘What would a therapy session look like?’

In the past couple weeks, I’ve been ‘therapist shopping.’

I suggest you connect with a few therapists and interview them. Then, make an initial appointment with a therapist that might be a good fit. Also, don’t pay too much attention to a therapist’s background education. It’s all about organic connection and feeling validated and understood.

As a youth who struggles with mental illness, I’ve had my fair share of therapists. I have found that finding the right therapist has made a huge difference, and

FILE STEPHANIE WU

it was worth the time and effort.

I really do believe that a strong relationship and connection is so important when it comes to getting help.

Good luck with your therapist shopping! U The authors of this column are not mental health professionals.

If you need additional support, please contact Student Health Services, Sexual Assault Support Centre and/or the Wellness Centre.

In case of an emergency, call 911.

FROM THE BLOG

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

EDITOR SAM SMART

11

THRIFTY FOOD //

ZOOM UNIVERSITY //

Ideas for celebrating Basic tips for bountiful baking on a budget your graduation from home Sam Smart Opinion + Blog Editor

MAYA RODRIGO-ABDI

We are living through some really bad times. When things are bad, a lot of us turn to creative outlets to manage stress, and a lot of people have started baking while isolated at home because it takes some time, varying levels of effort and it’s a valuable skill that builds the more you do it.

While baking can be really fun and therapeutic for some, it can also be pretty inaccessible when you’re on a budget, you’re living in a small space or all the grocery stores around you are completely out of staples like flour, sugar and eggs. Here are some tips for baking as a student on a budget, and hopefully you can find a baking project that brings you joy through a tumultuous time.

A resourceful student can still find a way to celebrate their monumental achievement.

Jonathan Harris Contributor

Maybe you’ve spent years working hard at UBC, having countless long nights fuelled by dreams of your eventual degree. Maybe you’ve attended a few graduation ceremonies before and over the course of the year it sunk in: pretty soon, that would be you. Maybe you knew someone who was graduating and you were excited to support them at the ceremony.

That’s rough, buddy. But even now, a resourceful student can still find some way to celebrate their monumental achievement.

THROW A ZOOM PARTY Some would call drinking alone at home a sad way to celebrate, but if it’s during a Zoom call in your dressiest attire, that’s another story. We have all been forced to learn how Zoom works anyways, so you might as well put it to good use. Turning what once was conferencing software into a party platform is a fitting celebration. This is a cheap and accessible option. If worse comes to worst, you’ll still see your friends.

JUST DO HALLOWEEN AGAIN As someone who hasn’t yet graduated, I’m sure half the fun is the dress up. The garments really cement the feeling of a special

LEARN TO PLAY GRAD MUSIC

SAM SMART

USE WHAT YOU HAVE When you look in your cabinet or fridge, take stock of what you already have. Things like flour, sugar, oil, butter, eggs, vanilla extract, baking powder or soda, yeast, chocolate (bars, chips, cocoa powder, anything) and oats all are staples that you likely have one or two of. If you only have flour, baking powder, oil and cocoa powder, you can make a mug cake! If you have oats, butter and chocolate, you can make some nobake chocolate oat balls. Consider if you can make something with what you already have so you don’t have to spend any more money.

SAM SMART

MAKING SUBSTITUTIONS

FILE ARIEL QI

do need to consider what you’re changing so it doesn’t end up ruining your food.

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occasion. If you don’t want to drop $30+ on a graduation ensemble, with some creativity, a Halloween costume can be free.

In your own home, no one can stop you from celebrating your graduation while you’re dressed as a sexy whatever-you-havelying-around.

“Pomp and Circumstance” is far more often referred to as ‘that song they play during graduation.’ It is ubiquitous.

Just the sound of it stirs feelings of accomplishment. You can inspire yourself in that manner by learning to play it on whatever instrument you have. And if you don’t have an instrument or experience, the year is 2020.

You can purchase a kazoo for $5, anything is possible.

Nothing can simulate the complete graduation ceremony experience and it is awful that you won’t get a proper ceremony after all of your hard work. We can’t replace the inspiring feeling of a well-written farewell address, though videos with titles like “Inspirational Speech Compilation [2 hours long]” may come close.

Photos from the ceremony can be treasured for a lifetime, and although the graduation Instagram filter isn’t bad, it can’t beat the real thing. These are hard times for all of us, but trying to celebrate won’t hurt. U

SAM SMART

While baking can be really fun and therapeutic for some, it can also be pretty inaccessible when you’re on a budget.

Sometimes the store is out of eggs.

A few handy substitutions can be flax seeds, mashed banana or applesauce, which are likely more readily available in your house or local grocery store. If the store is out of all-purpose flour, maybe what you’re making can use whole wheat, gluten-free or pastry flour instead. Just make sure you look into whether the substitution ratio is 1:1 or if the substitution even works. Baking is a science, so you

Some comments on recipes are like ‘I substituted heavy cream for water and it turned out horrible!’ or something unhelpful like that, but some comments where people share substitutions or alterations they made to recipes can really help you if you’re wondering whether or not an ingredient or step is necessary. Recipes are usually tested a few times to make sure they’re right, but home cooks everywhere can also help guide you through their experiences.

like cakes, cookies, brownies and more. If you only have eggs, there are recipes for fudgier things like brownies that only require eggs as a leavener. If you only have yeast, you’re better off making bread. If you have no leaveners but you do have flour, you can make unleavened breads like matzo, lavash, roti and tortillas.

CONSIDER YIELD It’s really important to consider how much you’re making of this recipe. Do you want to halve the recipe to save ingredients and have a smaller, more personal-sized yield? If the recipe is difficult to divide, consider sharing what you make with your roommates or neighbours or even freezing or refrigerating uneaten portions. It’s important to make sure you don’t waste what you made by letting it go stale or mouldy. Bonus tip: stale bread makes amazing French toast. That’s the whole point of French toast.

SAM SMART

SOURDOUGH CAN BE A WASTE I know it looks so enticing to make sourdough starter when all your friends are posting their bubbly, fermented messes on Instagram.

But sourdough requires being fed with flour every day for a while, and every day you will have to discard some of your starter before feeding it. It requires a lot of flour to get to the point where you can use your starter for a loaf of bread, and that loaf of bread will still require a lot of additional flour. If you want to make bread, I highly recommend just using store-bought yeast, if you can manage to find any. If you already started on your starter, you can use your discard to make things like pancakes, crepes and crackers, to name a few.

LEAVENERS Leaveners are pretty important in baking, because they dictate how your product rises. If you have baking powder or baking soda plus eggs, you can make lots of pastries

SAM SMART

DON’T WASTE YOUR EXTRAS If you had to go out to buy flour, sugar or a leavener of some kind, there’s a really good chance you have a lot of it left. Baking powder eventually loses its leavening power, flour expires after a few years and eggs expire pretty fast.

Think about what you can do with the ingredients you have and when you have to use them by. If you have a lot, definitely consider using it again by making more with what you have, more of what you made on another day or even experimenting in small batches.

If worse comes to worst, you can always be the reliable roommate that has some extra flour lying around. U

SCIENCE

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

EDITOR MYLA WHITE

12

BIG BOIS //

UBC researchers capture animal activity on camera during BC parks closures Grace Wang Contributor

BC’s provincial park closures due to COVID-19 have presented UBC Forestry’s Wildlife Coexistence Lab (WildCo) with a very interesting opportunity to collect data on wild animal activity without the presence of humans.

Dr. Cole Burton, assistant professor in the department of forest resources management and principal investigator of the WildCo Lab, sees the closures as an experiment “to try and understand how wildlife [respond] to having a lot of people versus having no people [around].” The lab has been collaborating with BC Parks to study how wildlife, particularly terrestrial mammals, are affected by recreational activities like hiking and camping.

The data sampling in Golden Ears Provincial Park and the adjacent Malcolm Knapp Research Forest started in the summer of 2019 with 60 camera traps taking pictures of roaming animals.

WildCo has been collecting the images so it can analyze and understand where wildlife are and how their behavioural patterns are changing in relation to human activities.

Since the parks have been closed to humans, the photos collected by WildCo are showing encouraging signs that cougars and black bears are using trails normally filled with human activity. People in parks can cause the animals stress and displace them from areas with valuable

food sources.

One series of snapshots shows a female cougar and her two cubs on a well-travelled trail in Golden Ears Provincial Park.

The two cubs have a faint spotted pattern on their coats and are likely around two years old, meaning they’re nearing the age of leaving their mother to be on their own. According to Burton, all three look healthy which is a good sign that the animals have adequate access to food.

“The animals seem to just be happy to be strolling down the trail,” Burton said. This indicates that the animals are less stressed than usual.

Burton speculates that during the park closure, the reduction of human activity will be good for animals as they will be able to move more freely and have greater access to food. In addition — since many animals reproduce in spring — the closure could help their populations by leading to increased reproductive successes.

During the park closure WildCo has collected many exciting photos confirming species in Golden Ears Park. While the lab had an idea of which species inhabit the park, the new photos have been able to confirm the presence of some species. One of the more exciting images is of a spotted skunk, a rare skunk species native to southwestern BC. However, there may not be major changes for wildlife over the short term period of park closure because they are already well-adapted to avoiding people in

COURTESY MICHAEL PROCKO/WILDCO LAB

Since the parks have been closed to humans, the photos collected by WildCo are showing encouraging signs that cougars and black bears are using trails normally filled with human activity.

the park.

“Even though we may not see them when we’re out there, it’s important to remember that they’re there,” said Burton.

“We might see more wildlife activity during the day because there aren’t people there to disturb wildlife,” Burton continued. When there’s a lot of human activity wildlife can shift their behaviour to become more nocturnal. “[But] time will tell how much

of that we can capture with our cameras.”

WildCo’s camera-trapping method is considered to be a non-invasive way of acquiring data as researchers can learn about animal behaviour in a way that doesn’t cause the animal stress.

By acquiring more information on elusive species like cougars, researchers are able to understand more about their ecology. This knowledge can be used to better inform conservation activities.

In order to promote human– wildlife coexistence and to inform management and conservation activities, WildCo needs enough images to be able to understand animal behaviour and population response. Yet some people have been vandalizing or stealing the cameras, likely out of privacy concerns.

“People can still have their recreation and parks,” Burton said.

“But we don’t have to do that at the expense of the health of the wildlife.” U

BIG DATA //

Vancouver doctors developing a new AI tool to predict COVID-19 infection

AYRA FAIZ

The lungs of COVID-19 patients appear white and hazy in X-rays and CT scans, in comparison to healthy lungs which appear more transparent.

Vik Sangar Contributor

An open-source artificial intelligence tool is being developed to predict the presence of a

COVID-19 infection in patients— and it’s happening right here at UBC. Dr. Savvas Nicolaou, professor of radiology at UBC and director of emergency and trauma imaging at

Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), and Dr. William Parker, radiology resident at UBC and VGH, are co-leading a project to develop an open-source AI application which may be able to predict the presence, severity and complications of COVID-19 infections. The tool utilizes X-ray and CT scan images as training data.

The project is being funded by the UBC Community Health and Wellbeing Cloud Innovation Centre (UBC-CIC) and is in partnership with Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing and database storage platform.

Radiologists, residents and UBC medical students alike are collecting and analyzing CT scans from COVID-19 patients from around the world. These collected images will be used to create and train the AI model which will predict the presence and severity of COVID-19 and other lung diseases.

Currently, there is no existing tool that predicts the disease’s severity and clinical impact in various patient groups.

“The medical challenges with COVID being such a new disease … is that it generates very unique fingerprints of what pneumonia looks like, or [what] lung infection

looks like,” said Dr. Kendall Ho, VGH emergency physician and UBC-CIC academic director. “And so when we look at those X-rays or CT scans, we can pick up in our eyes what might be some of the characteristics.”

The lungs of COVID-19 patients appear white and hazy in these images, in comparison to healthy lungs which appear more transparent. Thousands of images have already been collected, but according to Ho it will take tens of thousands before a project relying on AI becomes completely accurate.

Once the project is fully developed, it will pilot at VGH with the aim of being used in routine diagnostic procedures to increase the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnoses.

Though the community has high hopes that the pandemic will not return, it is likely that there will be multiple future outbreaks of COVID-19 before we have a vaccine developed which will help establish herd immunity. That’s where the AI model comes in.

According to Ho, the image database will help in diagnosing the disease more accurately, recognizing its presence more quickly and providing patients with optimal

care based on their stage of illness.

This will assist in them being able to recover in a more predictable way.

“It’s fantastic to be able to get a group of scans of patients with different diseases at different stages of disease, so that we can then identify not only the pattern that’s very typical of COVID-induced pneumonia, but also help us to understand the stage of disease as it evolves,” said Ho. “[This will] not only help us to manage the patient better, but also help us to predict the disease and how severe they can get.”

Some patients have been admitted to the emergency room with abdominal pain, stroke and acute chest pain, which are atypical symptoms of COVID-19.

However, after analyzing their CT scans it was clear they were infected with the virus due to the presence of prognostic indicators, or characteristics of a patient infected by a disease. These patients all had white, hazy lungs.

“We have excellent support around UBC with different faculties, different students wanting to step up and support different faculty members who want to support this project. So it becomes an exceptional learning experience for all of us,” said Ho. U

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY | Science | 13 HELPING HANDS //

UBC alumni develop platform to help small businesses navigate financial aid during COVID-19 pandemic

Clockwise from left: Ali Serag, Alberto Cevallos, Kelso Curtis and Salman Alam.

Myla White Science Editor

“We’re not first-line responders.

We don’t have any medical expertise [but] what we do have are tech skills,” said Ali Serag, a UBC computer science alumnus in an interview with The Ubyssey. “So, how can we help?”

A line of reasoning echoed by UBC students and faculty alike, this question has spurred a group of UBC alumni to put their financial and technological skills to work in an effort to help local small

businesses suffering from the effects of COVID-19.

CovidImpact was built with the intention of helping small businesses navigate the dense network of news and government programs that have emerged in the wake of the pandemic.

The application — developed

by Ali Serag, Alberto Cevallos, Salman Alam and Kelso Curtis — aims to curate government aid and news applicable to impacted small businesses. CovidImpact also contains a business assessment tool to simulate a company’s runway—

COURTESY ALBERTO CEVALLOS

the amount of time left before a business runs out of money.

Serag and Cevallos met during their undergrad, where they began working on personal projects together and found they had a complementary workflow. All four students eventually founded a startup in the financial technology sector, which has proven to be invaluable throughout the development of CovidImpact. The business connections the team members have garnered through their work in the sector gave them insight into the issues local small

businesses were encountering, which have only been heightened after the spread of COVID-19 in Canada. “[We] kept hearing the same thing again and again from local business owners,” said Serag. “Like, ‘When are they going to announce relevant support for us?’ or ‘When is the government going to create a funding program that’s targeting me? How am I supposed to pay my rent?’ … People kept on saying ‘My revenue is going down and I’m losing everything.’ For us, it was absolutely disheartening.”

The team hopes that CovidImpact can satisfy the need for a single platform that streamlines current information available to suffering small businesses. The website offers information on applicable financial aid from Canadian provincial and federal governments and utilizes News API to curate headlines relevant to small businesses.

While the team claims the response to the application so far has been great, they have big plans for building on and expanding it in the near future. They hope to expand the platform so that business owners can apply for aid directly from their site — eliminating the need for them to sort through complex and

oftentimes confusing government applications.

The outpouring of volunteers in response to the site has made these plans a lot more feasible.

“Some people just came up to us and said, ‘We want to add a chatbot functionality to it.’ So they’re working on that,” said Cevallos.

“That’s one of the ones I’m really personally interested in.”

Since the platform was launched, people from all parts of the UBC community have contacted the team hoping to contribute their time and skills to building the platform.

“We were absolutely blown away by the response. Within a day of launching, messages just started pouring in with people from all backgrounds wanting to jump in and help, from code ninjas to wordsmiths that didn’t know how to write a line of code … but were talented at writing or making posts on social media,” said Serag.

“We even got some messages from professors and startups wanting to contribute.

“It was super heartwarming seeing how everyone was coming together. Although we’re socially distancing, all sorts of people virtually are converging and that was really beautiful to see,” he added. U

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION //

CAN Youth Network’s SciComm Division works to make science information accessible during a pandemic Sanjana Subramanian Contributor

In recent months, the world has seen a surge in both COVID-19 cases and information pertaining to the virus. With several media outlets quick to jump on the bandwagon and cover not just the outbreak’s trajectory, but its causes and consequences as well, Canadians have been caught in an onslaught of conflicting information. The CAN Youth Network’s Science Communication (SciComm) Division was launched in April to help keep youth connected and find information from reputable sources during COVID-19.

The CAN Youth Network is an online platform with the goal of engaging and facilitating collaboration between Canadian youth. The SciComm Division aims to cover multiple aspects of the outbreak, such as healthcare services, medical insurance and mental health. Comprised of science students from universities all over Canada, the members share an equal passion for empowering youth and building healthy scientific communication practices.

“Everyone on the team noticed that there was a lack of scientific information that was reliable and accessible easily to Canadian youth without a background in science,” said Sila Rogan, a genetics and physiology student at UBC and the co-chair of the division.

Sebastian Steven, a recent health sciences graduate from Carleton

University and co-chair of the SciComm Division, echoes Rogan’s sentiment. “There is a wide variety of health illiteracy, which is quite fair because not everybody gets the same opportunities to build it,” he said.

Keeping these challenges in mind, the team put out their first project, COVID-19 Mythbusters. The resource addresses misconceptions about government policy and hygiene practices using science.

The team scans through Instagram, Twitter and various other news outlets weekly to garner a better understanding of the recurrent misinformation being broadcast about the coronavirus or about any terminology that might seem unclear. The members’ collective expertise was used in conjunction with polling information from peer-reviewed sources, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other public health agencies to consolidate facts relevant to personal and societal health.

It was crucial to the team that they refrain from simply being a directory of sources for the audience to sift through without proper comprehension. This experience highlighted to the Division’s team members the importance of accessible and engaging language when communicating scientific information.

The Division hopes to continue using their online presence to highlight scientific progress in Canada regarding COVID-19. With their upcoming projects, they hope to bring forward efforts by Canadian scientists in developing a vaccine and engaging in other COVID-related

research.

“We are also hoping to highlight some young Canadian scientists through this because we are, at root, a youth platform,” said University of Ottawa physiology student and SciComm Division member Julia Miles.

Beyond the pandemic, the team members are hopeful to resume their work with scientific literacy by adapting their current approach to different themes that might hold sustained relevance, such as the climate crisis. Current projects include a video series that allows viewers to know more about how graphs should be interpreted and what the publication process for scientific papers is like, to equip the general public with skills to verify information themselves.

“The ultimate goal is to help young people develop their scientific literacy skills so that they are able to do some of the work that we are currently doing in going through media and finding the right sources,” said Marisha Boyd, a behavioural neuroscience undergraduate at UBC and the division’s VP External.

In the three weeks since they were first formed, their projects have received some positive responses from colleagues and their peers. The hope is to expand their target audience further using Instagram and Twitter, which are currently most frequented by the youth their resources are targeting.

The members remain optimistic about achieving this through their provision of bite-sized facts on

EISHA SHARDA

“Everyone on the team noticed that there was a lack of scientific information that was reliable and accessible easily to Canadian youth without a background in science.”

accessible platforms.

“I’m really happy that I can use my science skillset to reach more people and have a positive impact during this not-so-positive time,” said Miles.

For the SciComm Division members, this project is a great way to utilize the skills they’ve developed in class and in the lab to assist their communities in developing the hard skills valuable in not only postsecondary education but even as

people get older and continue consuming information.

“Sometimes it’s very easy to get down about what’s happening right now and forget that there are really good people out there doing good work,” Rogan said.

“Seeing the passion everyone on the team has for this work has personally been a mood booster for me.”

“It’s been great to have a new social circle and build skills while making an impact,” added Steven. U

14 | Science | TUESDAY MAY 26, 2020 CHANGING TIMES //

Noisy, nosey and nurturing: An analysis of Vancouver’s non-emergency line during COVID-19 INCREASED

Edith Coates and Myla White Contributor & Science Editor

As Vancouver settles into a ‘new normal’ of physical distancing, telecommuting and taking classes online, these new patterns are affecting everyday life and the operations of the city.

The Ubyssey analyzed the content data on the city’s non-emergency phone line, available through Vancouver’s open data portal, to catch a glimpse of how things on a municipal level have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2009, the City of Vancouver has run a call centre line that can be reached at 311, or by email and VanConnect, an app run by the city. The centre fields questions and complaints on subjects ranging from noise, broken traffic lights, to largeevent-planning and issues of homelessness. Since March, the centre has also taken calls relating to COVID-19. Data on 311 interactions published by the city is one resource we can utilize to see just how operations in the city have changed during the pandemic.

COVID-19 INTERACTIONS The city’s records arrange COVID-19-related interactions with the centre into 26 different categories, which include complaints about physical distancing violations, referrals to different organizations and inquiries relating to the pandemic.

Interactions relating to physical distancing — complaints, violations and inquiries — have increased from March to April. As well, more specific inquiries such as for business community

support, donations and for volunteering have increased.

Inquiries about COVID-19, interactions related to COVID-19 cases and referrals to outside organizations have mostly decreased from March to April.

In total, there have been more than 11,500 COVIDrelated inquiries to 311 through March and April 2020. The most reported interaction type was for COVID-19 cases, coming in at 41 per cent of the inquiries.

OTHER INTERACTIONS Outside of interactions specific to COVID-19, hardly any of the call types have been unchanged between March and April of 2019 and 2020.

Total interactions in March and April 2020 are down from what they were in March and April 2019, and the total number of “complaint” interactions isn’t significantly different. However, there was a decrease in interactions relating to events, filming, traffic and transit, and an increase in interactions relating to noise complaints, homelessness, donations and volunteering.

For example, Arbutus Greenway inquiries by phone have increased 68 per cent over the last year.

The Arbutus Greenway is a nine-kilometre walking and biking path stretching from False Creek to the Fraser River and attracts thousands of car-free commuters every day. Given the amount of citizens who have made the move to working from home and have chosen to avoid taking public transit during the pandemic, 311 may have seen this increase in inquiries about the greenway

as Vancouverites look for alternate transportation and recreation options.

On the other hand, given the broad nature of the homelessness and urban issues category, it would be inappropriate to speculate about whether the changes in call types were due to the pandemic or to a number of other factors during this time.

The City of Vancouver has been working with Vancouver Coastal Health and BC Housing to establish resources to reduce the risk of those experiencing homelessness being exposed to COVID-19, such as providing hygiene services and securing hotel rooms as temporary housing options.

However, as Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has acknowledged numerous times over the past three months, BC isn’t currently facing one pandemic, but two. The opioid crisis is still classified as a pandemic within the province, and those experiencing homelessness are particularly at risk to opioid-related harms. As such, the change in homelessness and urban issues-related inquiries cannot justifiably be pinpointed to the COVID-19 pandemic. In cases such as these, the 311 data only acts as a window into much more complex issues.

There are countless factors that have gone into the trends seen in these records — the pandemic has impacted almost everything about daily life. Raw numbers like these cannot fully describe everything that Vancouverites have gone through in the past three months. Yet the data can provide a glimpse into just how both day-to-day interactions and overarching systems have been affected by COVID-19. U

DECREASED

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARRTHY THAYAPARAN

Traffic-related interactions

Complaint-related interactions

Homelessness-related interactions GRAPHS BY EDITH COATES

SPORTS+REC

MAY 26, 2020 TUESDAY

EDITOR DIANA HONG

15

HOCKEY //

Heartbreak in Halifax: UBC men’s hockey reflect on U Sports national championship

FILE SALOMON MICKO BENRIMOH

T-Birds getting ready before Winter Classic 2020.

Brendan Smith Contributor

Kyle Becker was excited. It was the night before his team played their first game in the U Sports men’s hockey national championships against the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds. Because the game was in the morning, Becker was getting ready for bed early when he heard some people outside his hotel room.

Maybe the people were players from one of the two teams who had lost earlier that day, he thought.

Then he noticed the people were running. There was something going on, but Becker continued to get ready for bed.

UBC goalie Rylan Toth did not hear the people in the halls because he was having dinner with his parents. Many of the parents and friends had made the cross-country journey to Halifax to surprise the team. It was a nice surprise considering UBC was the team who had travelled the farthest to make it to nationals — literally and figuratively.

Finishing the season as the fifth seed in the Canada West, not much was expected from the T-Birds in the playoffs. In fact, none of the players on the roster had won a playoff series in the Canada West division before this year.

Yet not only did they beat Mount Royal University Cougars in the first round, but provided the upset of the year with a stunning victory over the

University of Alberta Golden Bears to clinch their spot in the national championships.

A key player in that series against Alberta was Toth. In the first game, the UBC goalie made 51 saves to steal a 3-2 overtime win for UBC. Then after getting pulled in the second game, Toth bounced back in the third with another 40 saves to help his team win the series and eliminate the defending champions in their home arena.

Toth was looking forward to continuing his solid play against the number one ranked team in the country and help his team with their impressive run.

But as he was finishing his dinner, Toth found out the run was over.

“In the team group chat, [team captain] Jerret Smith texted that the tournament was done,” he said. “So, we went back to the hotel and met up with the team and the coaches were like ‘Yeah because of what’s going on they had to cancel [the tournament].’”

During the week, players and coaches believed that the tournament was going to be played, but once the COVID-19 pandemic forced major professional sporting leagues to postpone their seasons, everyone knew the inevitable was coming.

UBC head coach Sven Butenschön remembers the coaches meeting when he first heard the news. “I got a text at maybe 9 o’clock at night on Thursday, saying ‘All the coaches report to this room at the

hotel’ and then the guys who were running the tournament told us at that moment,” Butenschön said. “It was a pretty sombre, devastating meeting. It was something that I’ll never forget.”

After hearing the news, Butenschön then called a team meeting to explain the situation to his players.

“I just felt bad for the older guys, [but] they took it well,” he said, referring to the fifth-year players Becker and Austin Vetterl. “They understood the gravity of everything.

It was so global, the whole world is changing it was kind of hard to even think about hockey. I could see in their eyes — Kyle and Austin’s eyes — that they understood how massive this was and I got some strength from them because they handled it really well.”

As a graduating player, Becker was still saddened by the decision.

“I was pretty devastated,” Becker said when describing his first reaction to the news. “We were really upset about it and everybody else, I feel, was the exact same way about not getting the final chance to see how we ranked against all those top teams.”

Throughout the season, the T-Birds were never considered one of those top teams. At the start, there was some optimism that the team could compete for homeice advantage in one of the early rounds of the Canada West playoffs.

However, the first few months were filled more with injuries than wins,

and the team struggled to score on a regular basis.

There were some bright moments. A strong home series against the lowly University of Lethbridge Pronghorns showed promise, but the team remained on the cusp of the playoffs and a sweep by the University of Regina Cougars in early January felt like the final blow to an already lost season.

The T-Birds kept battling, though. After a big 6-2 win over the University of Manitoba Bisons in the Winter Classic, the team started to gain some traction and finished the season with enough points to secure a playoff berth. From there, wins against Mount Royal and Alberta proved they were capable in the playoffs and they could win against contending teams.

Doubts were again raised after their performance in the Canada West final. In both of the games against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies, the score was competitive, but at times the T-Birds looked overwhelmed and outplayed. Moreover, entering the tournament as the lowest-ranked team reinforced the belief that the team was far from a championship contender.

Then again, this team was never one to back down from challenges.

THE UNDERDOGS Few thought that this T-Birds team was going to be the first UBC team since 1977 to qualify for nationals,

but that didn’t stop them from proving them wrong. While some could say that the ’77 UBC team had more talent, they did not win a playoff series — this year’s team won two.

When asked what made the team succeed in their underdog role, Butenschön said it was because the team was motivated to win.

“We were sick of losing, sick of not meeting our expectations [while] knowing we had enough in our room to get the job done,“ he explained, mentioning that the team getting healthier, solid goal-tending and varied scoring were critical to the team’s success down the stretch. “[Going to nationals] is something you talk about in training camp and you set [as] your goals,” Butenschön added. “Our league is so competitive.

Usually we’ve got 4 teams ranked in the top 10 in Canada — it’s such a difficult conference to get out of.

“For us to beat Mount Royal, beat Alberta and go to the finals, it was a huge accomplishment and everyone was just so proud of the way the group battled together and came together in the end.”

Of course, these accomplishments mean a lot more when you are in your last year.

“Every year you play at UBC, you want to make nationals,” said Vetterl, the other graduating player on the roster. “But then the fifth year [is] just so much bigger because it’s your last year and you want to go out the right way. You want to go out [and] leave the program better than when you got there.

“Playing Alberta in the second round and beating arguably the best team in all of Canada was a great feeling and being able to go to nationals in my fifth year was a dream come true.”

Although Vetterl thought the tournament was going to be cancelled, he was disappointed by the fact that he would not get another chance to play with his teammates.

“I was devastated because I wanted to go out with my teammates and if that meant we lost [the] first game on Friday, at least I was out there with my teammates and got to give everything I had and got to lose with my best friends,” he said. “I didn’t get that opportunity, but it still was a great ride.

“Our team [still] got there and knew we deserved to be there.” U

BENCHED //

2020/21 Canada West season revised due to COVID-19 Diana Hong Sports Editor

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Canada West has revised the upcoming 2020/21 season.

“The revised sport formats reflect the financial constraints our members will find themselves in as both a direct and indirect result of COVID-19,” said Canada West President Clint Hamilton.

This change in format has affected the 2020/21 season for the T-Birds.

UBC men’s football will only have five games in total, one game against each team — three games

fewer than usual.

Soccer will each have 10 games for both men and women teams, which consists of two games per team and one additional game each against two teams.

UBC women’s rugby 15s will be participating in four games, two fewer than last year’s season.

Field hockey for both teams will each be eight games, which is two double round-robin tournaments.

Hockey for both teams will have 20 games, including additional 4 games against Trinity Western University for UBC. There will be a total of 16 games for both men’s and women’s basketball, cut down

from 20 last year.

Volleyball will be playing in a total of 16 games for both men and women.

All Canada West championship sports, including cross country, golf, swimming, track & field and wrestling, will continue during the 2020/21 season.

“We remain hopeful that we will be able to compete during the 2020/21 season and deliver an excellent university sports experience for our studentathletes,” said Hamilton Playoff formats, as well as the conference regular-season, for the 2020/21 season, will be released at a later date. U

Quentin Greenwood during Winter Classic 2020.

FILE SALOMON MICKO BENRIMOH

16 | Sports+Rec | TUESDAY MAY 26, 2020 FOOTBALL //

Four T-Birds landed a spot in the 2020 CFL Draft Diana Hong and Mike Liu Sports Editor & Contributor

The 2020 Canadian Football League (CFL) Draft was held on April 30 with some of the top football prospects in Canada available to be selected. For four Thunderbirds, this marks the first step in their professional journey.

“This is only the beginning for me, but it’s definitely a big step. So I’m happy to be able to accomplish it,” said Trivel Pinto, who joins a powerhouse Calgary Stampeders team and has made the Grey Cup finals in three of the last four years, with one title during that span.

For Pinto, his selection in the second round at 12th overall made him the highest UBC draft pick since offensive linesman Dakoda Shepley was taken 5th overall in 2018 by the Saskatchewan Roughriders. “[I’m] looking forward to being back on the field with the team again. Just being able to practice again with some like-minded individual people working towards the same goals as me, and eventually winning a championship,” said Pinto when asked what he’s looking forward to his first CFL season.

Pinto’s last campaign with the T-Birds was record breaking,

setting the single-season record for most receptions of 67 and leading the conference in all-purpose yards.

The next T-Bird taken was defensive back Stavros Katsantonis, 36th overall in the 4th round by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

He finished his UBC career with three All-Canadian first team appearances, a Vanier Cup in 2015 alongside Pinto and he was named the 2017 Canada West Outstanding Defensive Player of the Year. Katsantonis finished his last season with the Thunderbirds tied for the conference lead in interceptions.

Fellow defensive back Jean Ventose soon joined Katsantonis on the Tiger-Cats, being selected in the 6th round at 56th overall.

Starting his football career with the University of Calgary Dinos, Ventose transferred to UBC to wrap up the last two seasons of his Canada West career, earning a spot as a stalwart on the UBC defensive line.

The final T-Bird selected in the CFL draft was Tom Schnitzler, a defensive lineman with the 72nd overall pick by the Tiger-Cats in the 8th round.

Transferring into UBC from his junior football team in Saskatoon,

Pinto in action for the Thunderbirds in 2018.

Schnitzler made an immediate impact and looks to translate his defensive prowess into the professional ranks.

With the four T-Birds selected in this year’s draft, this brings the total of T-Birds picked in the CFL

draft to 19 under head coach Blake Nill’s 5-year tenure with the UBC program.

The T-Birds look to rebound next season after a disappointing year, which saw them finishing at the bottom of the Canada West

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standings. They will miss the contributions of these key players, but UBC has many promising players waiting in the wings, ready to take on the rest of Canada West.

The 2020 CFL season has yet to be announced due to COVID-19. U

RECREATION //

How to stay active during a global pandemic losing their living room to a squat rack.

Rating: 2/5

tuition with that sponsorship money!

Rating: 4/5

TIKTOK DANCES

JUST DANCE, DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION AND MORE!

Move over, Charli D’Amelio, a new TikTok star is coming!

TikTok dances serve as an entertaining way to get some kind of exercise in. Whether you’re learning how to ‘hit the woah’ or ‘throw it back,’ you’ll be sure to break a sweat eventually.

If you’re feeling particularly bold, you may even want to post what you’ve learned for all your friends to see. Who knows, maybe you’ll pay off your next semester’s

There are multiple ways to stay active during a global pandemic.

Semeion Wong Contributor

Whether you bought a gym membership on January 1 and never returned to the gym, or you run five kilometres up and down the stairs at Wreck Beach for a warm-up, staying active in times of social distancing is difficult.

Here are some ways to stay active during a global pandemic!

YOUTUBE WORKOUT VIDEOS You’ve heard it all: ‘Get Abs in 2 Weeks,’ ‘20 Minute Fat Burner!’ and ‘HIIT Workout to Torch Calories!’

YouTube workout videos are the modern-day at-home aerobics DVDs. Upbeat music, brightly coloured leggings and an instructor

who never seems to sweat no matter how many crunches they do.

Whether you’re on day three of Chloe Ting’s two-week shred or Cassey Ho’s seven-day glute challenge, there’s an endless stream of workout videos that pop up daily.

They’re usually equipment-free and come in a variety of difficulty levels.

Rating: 5/5

GOING FOR A WALK While going on a walk may not seem as exciting as doing a thousand pushups, it’s still a great way to get some fresh air and take a break from long online lectures. How else is someone supposed to get their steps in if they’re not trekking across campus anymore?

At the end of the day, any

IRENE ZHANG

exercise is better than no exercise.

Just make sure that you’re staying two metres away from others at all times!

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MAKESHIFT AT-HOME GYMS Can’t go to the gym anymore?

Upset that your membership got refunded? Why not bring the gym to you instead?

Whether you’re doing squats with your old textbooks or you have an extra $3,000 lying around for a Peloton bike, you may want to consider turning an unused area of your house into a gym of sorts.

The one downside is that your roommates or family members may not be too happy about

Whether you still have a copy of Just Dance 4 for the Wii or you miss the good ol’ days of playing Dance Dance Revolution in your living room, games that involve dancing are another way to get in your daily exercise.

If you don’t happen to have a console or a copy of the game, dancing along to gameplay videos on YouTube may be an option!

Rating: 5/5 (+1 for nostalgia). U