November 19, 2019

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 | VOLUME CI | ISSUE XIII GUT-PUNCHING SINCE 1918

U

P / 04

P /09

P / 20

P / 18

P / 21

NEWS

FEATURES

SCIENCE

OPINION

SPORTS

UBC hires more faculty, funds grad students

Family... whatever that means

Atmospheric pressure affects oil and gas leaks

Board of Governors and transparency

Cherry bomb: making sense of Don’s comments

THE UBYSSEY

Day

NO TR AT

ELF: AT

Y-

OF

C

NO REFLECTION OF MYSELF: GRIEVING AS A COMMUNITY WITH TRANS DAY OF REMEMBRANCE AT UBC // 06

PAGE 2

YOUR GUIDE TO UBC EVENTS & PEOPLE

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY

CAPTURE MIDTERM SEASON

EVENTS

PHOTOS BY ELIZABETH WANG, CHRISTOPHER MA, YIYANG WANG, ZUBAIR HIRJI, TAVLEEN RAMGARHIA

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – 21 BEYOND WORDS: BLACK LIKE ME WED: 7:30 P.M., THURS: 12:30 P.M. @ TELUS STUDIO THEATRE

Tickets are going fast for this performance piece from Jade Solomon Curtis addressing the history of the n-word through dance and emotion. $15 for students.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22 THUNDERSTRUCK: UBC VS. TRU DOORS AT 5 P.M., GAME AT 7 P.M. @ WAR MEMORIAL GYM

Break out your kneepads and put black lines under your eyes, it’s time for the one game per semester that people actually attend! $10 gets students in to attend the pre-game festival and a ticket to what’s sure to be a fierce match.

ON THE COVER COVER BY Elizabeth Wang, Thomas O’Donnell, Lua Presidio

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

U THE UBYSSEY EDITORIAL

STAFF

Coordinating Editor Zubair Hirji, Moe Alex Nguyen Kirkpatrick, Fariha Khan, coordinating@ubyssey.ca Sammy Smart, Bill Huan, Brendan Smith, Diana Visuals Editor Hong, Jordan-Elizabeth Lua Presidio Liddell, Ryan Neale, Sarah Zhao, Charlotte Alden, visuals@ubyssey.ca Andrew Ha, Jasmyne Eastmond, Tianne News Editors Jensen-DesJardins, Maya Henry Anderson and Rodrigo-Abdi, Chimedum Emma Livingstone Ohaegbu, Riya Talitha, news@ubyssey.ca Sophie Galloway, Kevin Jiang, Bailey Martens, Culture Editor Sonia Pathak, Thea Thomas O’Donnell Udwadia, Kaila Johnson, culture@ubyssey.ca Diego Lozano, Keegan Landrigan, Kaila Johnson, Sports + Rec Editor Maneevak Bajaj, Tait Salomon Micko Gamble, Andy Phung, Benrimoh Mike Liu, Anupriya sports@ubyssey.ca Video Producer Jack Bailey video@ubyssey.ca Opinion + Blog Editor Tristan Wheeler opinion@ubyssey.ca Science Editor James Vogl science@ubyssey.ca Photo Editor Elizabeth Wang photos@ubyssey.ca Features Editor Pawan Minhas features@ubyssey.ca

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We would like to acknowledge that this paper and the land on which we study and work is the traditional, occupied, unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/ Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

LEGAL

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

Editorials are chosen and written

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 | VOLUME CI| ISSUE XIII

Dasgupta, Danni Olusanya, Campbell Speedy, Marissa Birnie, Aman Sridhar, Negin Nia, Alex Vanderput, Tanner McGrath, Tara Osler, Zohrah Khalili, Jonathan Harris, Harshit Kohli, Alex Wang BUSINESS Business Manager Douglas Baird business@ubyssey.ca Account Manager Adam McQueen adam@ubyssey.ca

Web Developer Razvan Nesiu razvan@ubyssey.ca President Ali Zahedi president@ubyssey.ca CONTACT Editorial Office: NEST 2208 604.283.2023 Business Office: NEST 2209 604.283.2024 The Nest 6133 University Boulevard Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1

Web Developer Amelia He amelia@ubyssey.ca

Online: ubyssey.ca

by the Ubyssey staff. They are the expressed opinion of the staff, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Ubyssey Publications Society or the University of British Columbia. All editorial content appearing in The Ubyssey is the property of The Ubyssey Publications Society.

Stories, opinions, photographs and artwork contained herein cannot be reproduced without the expressed, written permission of The Ubyssey Publications Society.

The Ubyssey is a founding member of Canadian University Press (CUP) and adheres to CUP’s guiding principles.

The Ubyssey accepts opinion articles on any topic related to the University of British Columbia (UBC) and/ or topics relevant to students attending UBC. Submissions must be written

by UBC students, professors, alumni, or those in a suitable position (as determined by the opinions editor) to speak on UBC-related matters.

Submissions must not contain racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, harassment or discrimination. Authors and/or submissions will

not be precluded from publication based solely on association with particular ideologies or subject matter that some may find objectionable.

Approval for publication is, however, dependent on the quality of the argument and The Ubyssey editorial board’s judgment of appropriate content. Submissions may be sent by email to opinion@ubyssey.ca.

Please include your student number or other proof of identification.

Anonymous submissions will be accepted on extremely rare occasions.

Requests for anonymity will be granted upon agreement from four fifths of the editorial board. Full opinions policy may be found at ubyssey.ca/ submit-an-opinion It is agreed by all persons placing display or classified advertising that if the Ubyssey Publications Society fails to publish an advertisement or if an error in the ad occurs the liability of the UPS will not be greater than the price paid for the ad. The UPS shall not be responsible for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value or the impact of the ads.

Twitter: @ubyssey Instagram: @ubyssey

2

NEWS

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY

EDITORS HENRY ANDERSON AND EMMA LIVINGSTONE

3

EXPERT ADVICE //

AMS Advisory Board struggles to fill seats and begin meeting Sarah Zhao Senior Staff Writer

Since its creation, vacancies and other challenges have kept the AMS Advisory Board from fulfilling its primary function: advising.

As the AMS owns and operates several of its own businesses, the Advisory Board was created to advise the Council on long-term planning in the business side of the organization.

“We’re bringing in [an] outside perspective that [has] been connected to UBC and the AMS in some way in the past. With members that are dedicated and passionate about helping students,” said AMS President Chris Hakim.

There are two student seats and three professional seats on the Board. Although the goal of the Board is to provide the AMS with professional advice, Hakim said that the presence of the two student seats is still critical.

“We still want to keep that student theme of ensuring that students are taking part in all facets of the AMS, whether it be on AMS council or committees, but also the Advisory Board.”

RECENT OVERHAUL Over the first few months of the winter 2018 term, the Advisory Board underwent an overhaul as the AMS implemented code changes in a reorganization of the Board that was designed to improve its productivity.

Some of these changes entailed clarifying remuneration for the Board members in code, implementing the two students, three professional members structure and removing language that described the Advisory Board as an “oversight” body in order to clarify its advisory role.

“A lot of the changes that we made to the structure of the Advisory Board revolved around a clarification of what the goals and objectives are of the Board,” said VP Administration Cole Evans, who was the chair of the HR Committee at the time and worked closely with then-AMS President Marium Hamid to implement these changes.

Since then, however, the Board has not met, despite initial hope that it would be up and running by the end of January 2019.

At the March 28, 2019 meeting of the HR Committee, Evans said that the Board would have its first meeting on April 2. That meeting never occurred because of the sudden resignation of one member.

Another member has since followed suit.

According to Evans, the difficulty is in finding individuals with relevant backgrounds who are “enthusiastic to work with the AMS.” Sitting on the Board is a large commitment for people in management or professorial positions and the relevance of people’s backgrounds is particularly important. “[It has to be] something that we can apply to how the AMS

FILLE JACK HAUEN

The search so far has focused on finding candidates with backgrounds in human resources, organizational behaviour and finance.

functions, instead of just going out and grabbing somebody who has their MBA [and] just sitting them on the board,” said Evans.

THE SEARCH CONTINUES The HR Committee and the president’s office are currently working to fill the seats and get the Board running as soon as possible.

The president’s office is searching for candidates who are interested in joining the Board.

Once they’ve put a list together,

Hakim will report back to the HR Committee and the committee will decide which candidates to put forward to Council, which will then make the decision whether or not to confirm the appointments.

The search so far has focused on finding candidates with backgrounds in human resources, organizational behaviour and finance.

“We generally try to look for professional members or a degree of expertise on the Advisory Board that we feel like hasn’t been built on

the Board just yet,” said Hakim.

He also emphasized the insight that the Advisory Board can bring over the long-term to an organization whose leadership changes frequently.

“I want to make sure that … while AMS executives turn over on an annual basis, we still have members of our community that are passionate about students and bring a critical perspective in the AMS, that they’re there to continue providing us advice on how we can best support students,” he said. U

RATE YOUR PROF //

UBCFA proposes alternatives to student evaluations for measuring teaching performance

“Oftentimes, and especially now that we’ve gone to an online system, the response rates are very low.”

Lisa Basil Contributor

The UBC Faculty Association (UBCFA) has come out against the use of student evaluations in determining tenure and promotions for faculty.

In a blog post made in late October, UBCFA called these forms of evaluation “grossly inadequate” and argued that they are often biased against women

and minority professors.

The post also highlighted alternative evaluation methods, such as peer review of teaching, teaching practices inventories and instructor self-reflection, which the association argued could serve as an effective and less biased replacement of the current model.

UBCFA’s recent post is only a part of its broader push for the university to change the way these evaluations are used. The

FILE STEVEN DURFEE

UBCFA could not comment on the post further as it is still amidst collective bargaining negotiations with the university.

Last year, the UBCFA called for an “immediate, evidence based review of the Student Evaluation of Teaching policy” as a result of a similar arbitration passed by Ryerson University.

The current policy, as outlined by the UBC Senate, states that student evaluations

serve to help make decisions of salary, promotion, tenure and institutional recognition.

However, student evaluations aren’t all that is considered.

Senate regulations also state that this method of assessment is to be used as part of a broader review, but the question is still raised about whether these methods should be used in the first place.

Critics of student evaluations argue against their validity in making employment-related decisions. Dr. Michelle Stack, a professor in the department of education, said the current way student evaluations are used can be quite problematic.

“The current form of them reinforces gendered and racialized ways of thinking and evaluating people,” said Stack.

“It more negatively impacts racialized scholars, women and people that are sessional.”

She also said that studies have found these methods are an ineffective way to measure teaching performance.

“I mean we’re a university, let’s look at the academic research that these [student evaluations] don’t help learning and they don’t improve classroom experience for students in their current form,” said Stack.

In addition to the concern of bias, UBCFA has also pointed to the evaluation’s low response rates as making them an unreliable indicator of faculty performance.

Dr. Sandra Mathison, a

professor in the department of education and the co-editor of Critical Education, said that these low response rates are a big issue for the effectiveness of student evaluations.

“Oftentimes, and especially now that we’ve gone to an online system, the response rates are very low,” said Mathison. “The data that is included represents a relatively small number of students.”

But some faculty have raised the issue as to whether the UBCFA’s proposed alternatives are sufficient replacements to a more student-centred form of evaluation.

Stack said the UBCFA’s proposal doesn’t place enough emphasis on student feedback.

“What I would really like to see, and this I think the Faculty Association needs to do more of, is having students talk about what is going well and what’s not in classes,” said Stack.

In a similar vein, Mathison said that the UBCFA’s proposed changes might not have a sufficient single replacement for student evaluations.

“Even though the FA has offered up some of these other standard forms, I think that I would really exercise caution in saying that there’s any single strategy … that is likely to be appropriate and have the kind of validity for judging the quality of teaching that you would want to use in really serious personnel matters.” U

4 | NEWS | TUESDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2019 FACULTY FEUD //

In President’s Academic Excellence Initiative, UBC prioritizes faculty renewal and graduate student funding faculty member and former chair of the BoG’s Learning and Research Committee.

“Some departments, computer science for example, were much more touched by the increase in international students than others,” said Ghoussoub.

Mac Lean is hoping for a targeted approach to faculty hiring, where departments under stress are prioritized over those with fewer students.

According to Mac Lean, faculty with growing class sizes must dedicate more time to interacting with and providing feedback to students on top of grading assignments, mentoring graduate students and a slew of other responsibilities.

As a result, they’re growing frustrated.

“Highly accomplished [faculty] can move ... retention will become an issue for research faculty if they feel like the teaching piece becomes overwhelming for them,” said Mac Lean.

Chris Hakim, AMS president and member of the ARWG, agrees.

According to him, UBC is lagging behind other institutions that continuously recruit new faculty and provide their graduate students with greater financial support. As a result, these institutions are producing more research and rising in the rankings, he said.

“The more faculty we begin to recruit, the university will be outputting more research, which will increase the rankings of the university. That provides, quote-unquote, ‘more worth’ for a student’s degree at UBC,” said Hakim.

To address all these issues, the PAEI seeks to initiate a massive hiring push, recruiting faculty members at every level over the coming years, according to Holmes.

“I think you will definitely start to see things picking up as early as the beginning of the next academic year, so fall 2020,” he said.

According to Korenberg, an increase in hiring has already begun.

“The current administration is supporting faculty plans that (if the recruiting target is fully realized) will see a further net hiring of 75 positions in 20192020,” he wrote in his statement.

Kevin Jiang Staff Writer

As faculty and graduate student numbers flatline and the undergraduate student body steadily grows, UBC is preparing for an unprecedented faculty recruitment effort.

But professors are questioning how the university got into this situation to begin with.

Earlier this year, UBC President Santa Ono launched the President’s Academic Excellence Initiative (PAEI), which he described in a statement to The Ubyssey as “the largest recruitment of faculty in the history of UBC.” The initiative will aim to increase the hiring of professors and teaching faculty, as well as address the financial needs of graduate students, many of whom straddle the poverty line. “[Academic renewal] will be achieved through a targeted increase in the UBC professoriate through new positions over the period to fiscal 2026/27. This is in addition to necessary annual hiring to replace retirements and general attrition at both campuses over the 7 years of the PAEI,” wrote Ono. To facilitate this goal, the Board of Governors (BoG) formed the Academic Renewal Working Group (ARWG) in June, a temporary advisory body that will serve to evaluate the issues at play and recommend strategies for improving the conditions of graduate students, hiring faculty and investing in teaching infrastructure.

“The current administration has taken academic renewal seriously and made it an overriding strategic priority (one of 4 or 5 core priorities of Dr. Ono and his team),” wrote BoG Chair Michael Korenberg in a statement to The Ubyssey.

The ARWG will spend this academic year consulting with the community and fact-finding, according to Max Holmes, a Vancouver BoG student representative and member of the ARWG. The ARWG will then report to the BoG by June 2020 with its recommendations on how to proceed with academic renewal.

“This is going to change the face of the university over the next 10 years and beyond. So it’s going to be very important that we get feedback,” said Holmes.

A STAGNANT PROFESSORIATE

For every professor at UBCV in 2009, there were 21.4 students. By 2018, that number increased to 26.5 students per professor.

According to a report provided to the BoG, numbers of total faculty at UBC Vancouver (UBCV) have shown modest increases over the past 10 years, growing from 2,477 to 2,565 between 2009 and 2018.

But in the same timespan, numbers of the professoriate — specialized faculty members occupied with teaching and research — actually decreased from 1,889 to 1,845.

In contrast, student numbers at UBCV rose from 40,425 in 2009 to 48,893 full-time equivalents in

2018. Of this number, graduate students at UBCV have remained relatively stable, growing roughly one per cent per year.

This meant that for every professor at UBCV in 2009, there were 21.4 students, but this increased to 26.5 students per professor in 2018. The issue is even worse on UBC’s Okanagan campus, where the ratio leaped from 20.6 to 33.3 students per professor in that same period.

According to Dr. Mark Mac Lean, who recently

announced his resignation as the undergraduate chair of mathematics, the discrepancy in student-faculty ratios hits both groups hard. He expressed that larger class sizes afford students fewer opportunities for feedback and one-on-one support.

“The student experience will degenerate because if [there’s] one thing students crave, legitimately so, it’s feedback on their work and thinking,” said Mac Lean.

This year, for the first time in his career, he has seen students locked

ARIEL QI

out of essential courses due to large class sizes and long waitlists.

“We should have the capacity to, ideally, meet the demand for any qualified student to take a program … that’s a bit of pie in the sky for me, but I think it’s a good philosophy to have,” said Mac Lean.

Certain departments like mathematics and computer science are disproportionately affected by a lack of faculty, according to Mac Lean and Dr. Nassif Ghoussoub, professor of mathematics, a Vancouver BoG

BELOW THE POVERTY LINE According to Hakim, graduate students play a central role in producing research for UBC and are critical to UBC’s success as an academic institution. But high tuition costs, low stipends and a rising cost of living in Vancouver have driven many to the poverty line.

“The university needs to recognize that [graduate students are] the backbone of their research enterprise,” said Nicolas Romualdi, president of the Graduate Student Society (GSS)

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY | NEWS | 5

and member of the ARWG. According to him, figures from the GSS’s currently incomplete funding survey show that graduate students make $22,000 per year on average — a figure on par with minimum wage in BC. UBC PhD students are afforded a minimum yearly stipend of $18,000 — which is below the BC poverty line of $18,213 — while master’s students make less and professional-stream graduate students make nothing at all.

“Despite the minimum stipend policy, we’re still seeing graduate students very much struggling with food insecurity issues, housing affordability issues and ultimately many of them being below the poverty line for BC,” said Holmes.

Many graduate students are forced to work a second job on the side to make ends meet, said Romualdi. On occasion, graduate students are engaged in full-time research in addition to classes and teaching assignments, all while working another job.

“If you want to get the best graduate students out there, you’re going to need to offer better funding packages … and you need to continue to improve their funding so they can thrive.

Because it doesn’t make sense to attract the best students ever if they’re going to be put in a situation where they have to be working at Save-On-Foods to make ends meet,” he said. “[Bringing] every graduate student above the poverty line should at least be the goal. I don’t think it’s acceptable for us to have anybody below that line,” Holmes echoed.

While he declined to speak on the specific goals of the working group, citing confidentiality, Romualdi said the GSS will be fighting to make tuition free for all PhD students at UBC.

According to Romualdi, the university should change to a model where graduate students are contributing not through their fees, but through their research.

‘RED FLAG’ But some worry that the PAEI will be too little, too late.

A longtime advocate for action against faculty stagnation, Ghoussoub has been speaking out about frustrations with the university’s delay in responding to the problem, the composition of the ARWG, faculty representation on the Board, among others.

Following a series of public confrontations with Korenberg in committee meetings, he resigned as chair of the BoG Teaching and Learning Committee in its September meeting.

“I really think we need an investigation into how a university like ours can get into this situation [of stagnant faculty numbers],” said Ghoussoub. “… I think it’s a failure of the Senate for not foreseeing this discrepancy [of student/ faculty numbers], failure of administrators who got us to this situation and a failure of the Board for not really following up.”

Korenberg agreed, emphasizing that the issue has been around long before the current administration.

“I don’t know why hiring of professors stagnated for a decade.

Frankly, that was before my time on the board and, to the largest extent, happened before the current administration at UBC,” wrote Korenberg.

Ghoussoub also expressed concerns over the composition of the working group, which was decided solely by Korenberg and BoG Vice-Chair Sandra Cawley. In particular, he had questions about

ARIEL QI

The initiative will aim to increase the hiring of professors and teaching faculty, as well as address the financial needs of graduate students, many of whom straddle the poverty line.

what qualified someone to be on the ARWG and was frustrated that he wasn’t included in the group.

In an interview with The Ubyssey, Korenberg said that when composing the group, his main priority was to be inclusive of all the groups impacted by academic renewal by selecting

“The university needs to recognize that [graduate students are] the backbone of their research enterprise.”

ARIEL QI

leaders and representatives of those groups for the ARWG. He also explained that he chose BoG faculty representative Dr. Charles Menzies, the current chair of the Learning and Research Committee and vice-chair of the Indigenous Engagement Committee, over Ghoussoub to include Indigenous representation in the proceedings.

“The desire was to try to be inclusive of people on a representative basis,” he said. “… I don’t want you to be perceiving that there isn’t respect for Nassif … He absolutely is a champion for highlighting the failure of the university to grow the professoriate for a decade.”

Korenberg and Cawley also co-chair the ARWG — a move Ghoussoub saw as overstepping the BoG’s boundaries and into academic affairs, which is the territory of the Senate and administration. By doing so, he said it set a “dangerous” precedent for future chairs, who may cite Korenberg’s actions to encroach further into administrative and senatorial affairs.

“It’s a major step backward in terms of governance. This is an administrative issue. The chair of the board cannot chair an academic renewal committee … so for me, this is a red flag,” he said.

In response, Korenberg said that academic renewal is a broad project, parts of which fall under the jurisdictions of administration, Senate and the BoG. He also noted that the ARWG is just an advisory committee without ultimate decision-making power.

It is the responsibility of administration and the faculties to act on plans and targets.

“The inherent intersectionality of the matter, and the fact that this represents one of the most significant strategic priorities / focuses for the University and the Board, means that the Board is compelled to do what it can to be responsive to and constructive in its evaluation of the priority.

It was on that basis that the Board, by unanimous resolution, authorized the Board Vice-Chair and Chair to serve as Co-Chairs of the Academic Renewal Working Group,” wrote Korenberg.

Mac Lean also raised concerns.

After calculating UBC’s budget spending, he found that investments into research and teaching have flatlined over the last three or four budgets while spending in areas like administration has seen “enormous increases.”

“I’m not convinced that [money is currently] going to research and teaching and learning,” said Mac Lean. “…

Counselling services and pretty much every service that affects [students’] ability to be successful at the university is also under stress. So what are we spending our money on?”

According to Korenberg, however, funding for academic renewal has now become a priority and funds will be sourced from endowments and fundraising work to put into this initiative.

“I certainly found that the focus on learning, research and the mission of the university has taken a significantly positive upward share of mind at the board, singularly because of the focus Nassif, Charles Menzies and John Klironomos, as the current elected faculty representatives in the board, bring,” he said. U

CULTURE

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY

EDITOR THOMAS O’DONNELL

6

‘I COULDN’T SEE ANY REFLECTIONS OF MYSELF’ //

Grieving as a community: Trans and gender-diverse UBC students on Trans Day of Remembrance Thomas O’Donnell, Moe Kirkpatrick, Zhi Wen Teh, Edith Coates, Madison Jones, Miles Justice, Yasmeen Gruno, Fruin Pow Culture Editor, Staff Writers and Contributors

Death is a heavy topic that all of us would rather not think about. So how do we celebrate a day dedicated to remembering violence and death in our community? For many, Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is a solemn day. A day to think on the friends and family we have lost, a day to think of the ways the system has let us down.

But it also gives us an opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come. It lets us talk about our shared experiences as Trans and non-binary people. It gives us a time and a platform to voice our criticism and protestations.

Everyone experiences gender differently. No two people’s transition is the same and no two people experience remembrance in the same way.

This piece contains material that may be triggering to some, including mentions of slurs, suicide, death and dysphoria.

ZHI WEN TEH Growing up in Malaysia, you could only be a boy or a girl.

Everyone kept saying I was a girl and I believed them for most of my life. My natural tendencies labelled me as a ‘tomboy,’ but it was assumed to be a phase. I was supposed to grow up to be a woman and so most people kept telling me to be more lady-like.

They kept calling me a boy and I would angrily tell them I was a girl. Looking back, my connection to womanhood was tenuous. I never felt like I could relate to the girls. But I wasn’t a boy either.

I didn’t have the language to explain what I was feeling. I couldn’t see any reflections of myself. As I started going through puberty, I desperately wished I could switch between being a boy and a girl — and then I wished people would just see me and not a girl.

Even after learning about Trans people, I was very hesitant to consider myself one of them.

I didn’t feel like I was ‘Trans enough.’ It was a long journey for me to finally answer the questions I kept asking myself. I didn’t fully come out as non-binary until the beginning of 2019.

I consider myself extremely lucky. My family is accepting of my queerness; my deviancy never warranted violence and I’m privileged enough to be able to study in Canada. Others aren’t as lucky. Malaysia is extremely hostile to Trans people, especially Trans women. My Trans Day Of Remembrance is keeping my Trans sisters, brothers and siblings back home in my thoughts. It is knowing that I can’t be myself back home and most of the world. It is making an

effort to affirm that I exist, I’m alive.

On this day, I will continue to fight for our siblings who no longer can.

MOE KIRKPATRICK TDOR was never a big thing to me until last year.

In high school, I didn’t have a physical Trans community. I knew every November that TDOR was happening, but it didn’t feel special — I was angry all year round. Besides, I went to Catholic school. It wasn’t as if there was a way for me to grieve. I was just furious and hurting and defensive constantly.

At my last university, where I did have that in-person community, I didn’t want to think about TDOR. There were vigils held by the LGBT group on campus — we didn’t go. I had just met other Trans people who I loved and cared about deeply.

I didn’t want to think about transphobic violence. I wanted to pretend that we would all be safe.

But TDOR was and is not about me. It’s about the victims, my siblings, whose deaths I did not want to face.

Last year, when the SASC panel for TDOR fell through, the Pride Collective held a memorial or discussion group for Trans people in the Nest.

The room was large, but we were small in it. There were so many empty chairs. Just being there, among other Trans people, and the conversations we had — it made me feel like I was being unraveled.

It was unbearably good to grieve outside myself. Both to grieve with other people and to grieve other people.

Now, I think of that night and I think of Leelah Alcorn, who died 15 minutes away from where I lived when I was in high school.

I wish she could have gotten to have something like that.

ANONYMOUS TDOR is a difficult subject to think about. We’re so lucky, especially growing up today in Vancouver. My friends are alive and I’m alive. I know many others didn’t have it so good.

We’ve come so far as a society and a country on Trans issues, but there’s still so much pain and fear.

My cousin was called a faggot and attacked on the streets in Vancouver. My friend was kicked out of the house. I don’t know a single Trans person who hasn’t thought about killing themselves.

I feel genuine fear when I step into a public washroom because I’ve heard all the horror stories of harassment and assault.

TDOR is a day of pain, but also a day of strength. We’ve come far as a community and somehow we’re still here.

MADISON JONES I feel like I’m still very much a

‘Baby Trans,’ in the way that I started questioning my gender identity in January and it hasn’t been that long. So I don’t have a whole lot of experience to compare. I’ve had very much mixed experience being here at UBC — and I’m not entirely sure whether that would have been different if I would have been on another campus or if I would have just been living in the city of Vancouver.

Trans Day of Remembrance is completely new to me. It makes me feel very somber, very reflective. I just feel like I’m sure it’s the same for other people in the Queer community who aren’t Trans, who are some other acronym, feel a very similar way about being disjointedly disconnected from their own history. Not knowing those historical figures, those pioneers that paved the way for us to be able to identify it and be as we are today. It’s just that it’s hard to get that information.

Zhi Wen Teh

FRUIN POW I came out as transmasculine less than a year ago. The only reason that I was able to do so was the support of other students that are out as Trans at UBC. My self-confidence and empowerment came from our friendships and not at all from UBC as an institution or place of education. Being Trans at UBC is only a positive experience for me because of the community that has been built by Trans students.

Throughout the year, I read and hear stories of the injustices that Trans people face around the world. I seldom express the anger or sorrow that these injustices make me feel, attempting to prevent these emotions from infringing on other peoples’ lives. I may share articles on social media or have conversations with other folks who are also viscerally aware of the oppression of the Trans community.

However, I never give myself enough room to show my own personal pain. Transgender Day of Remembrance has become the one day a year where I allow myself to feel and experience what I have suppressed all year.

It is also a day where I only allow myself to be around other Trans folks. It is my day of grief, anger, distress and anguish from the abuse and murders that our community is subjected to, around the world.

The rest of the year, I consciously try to turn these emotions into action, energy to educate others and effort to communicate the severity of these injustices.

If you are reading this and you are not Trans, give us room to express our pain without asking what we are feeling. Also, I urge you to encourage other folks to read this edition of The Ubyssey or google other TDOR articles written by Trans folks.

Moe Kirkpatrick

Anonymous

Madison Jones

Fruin Pow

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUA PRESIDIO

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY | CULTURE | 7 EDITH COATES Now that I’ve started transitioning, I get the feeling that all my friends like me more.

I bet it’s because I’ve started liking myself more. It’s part of a general theme of me feeling comfortable in my own skin after years and years of not really liking myself. My outside is starting to look like the person I am on the inside, which is great. Sure, I still get called “sir” or “that guy over there” by people every once in a while, which hurts, and I get stared at now and again, which isn’t fun for a reclusive computer programming student like me — but I think it’s worth it in order to be myself.

For me, TDOR is a time to reflect on how lucky I am that I’m able to do this and to acknowledge all my precursors and contemporaries who had this opportunity taken away from them.

Edith Coates

YASMEEN GRUNO

Yasmeen Gruno

Miles Justice

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUA PRESIDIO

“Our task then is to push these further — not only with respect to TDOR but also in the many ways we recount and confront violence. None of us are innocent.

We must envision practices of remembrance that situate our own positions within structures of power that authorize violence in the first place. Our task is to move from sympathy to responsibility, from complicity to reflexivity, from witnessing to action. It is not enough to simply honour the memory of the dead — we must transform the practices of the living.” — Sarah Lamble The Queer experience is, well, a queer one. Most of us share an understanding of isolation, alienation, trepidation. We rally together to fight for our right to exist as we are and yet we get caught up on things like the word “queer.”

It makes sense — it’s very valid.

These things have meaning and importance to people, rooted in lived experience and they deserve time and attention. But so do people. And it’s about

time we all paid attention to the experiences of those pushed to the margins and held offstage for the convenience of a lulled audience.

Queer people fall into that category. Trans people are cast along with them. I think it is a bit of a disservice to spend inordinate time on diction and semantics when people are still out living the experiences our words often fail to describe, when people are still dying because of them. Literally and metaphorically.

I’m infinitely grateful I’m in a place, physically/socially/ culturally/spiritually/emotionally/ economically — you name it — where I can sit and reflect on semantics: on my experience, on our experiences. But too many still do not have that privilege. Too many have been robbed of ever having the chance.

Learn, reflect, become more aware. Be curious. Be kind. And if you’re fortunate enough to be here, act upon it. Live it.

“It is not enough to simply honour the memory of the dead — we must transform the practices of the living.”

But how?

Together.

Always.

MILES JUSTICE I met R in my first year at UBC. We lived together in residence.

They were studying social work and it suited them — they had a huge heart and deeply cared about people. They were also the first Trans friend I had. Instead of studying, we would sit in the living room and talk about everything Queer, which was so all new to me beyond the internet. They were patient, well spoken, caring and knowledgable.

R took their own life over winter break.

There have been at least 38 documented cases of murder of Transgender people internationally in the past year alone. This doesn’t include suicide — almost half the population of Transgender youth attempts suicide. I stopped reading Queer news because of the amount

deaths being reported.

I used to try to lessen the pain of grief by telling myself that they went to a better place. Jai and my other lost Trans siblings may have gone wherever they believed in, but the truth is that they would be better here, alive, experiencing and changing the world.

Over the past two years, my sadness has been replaced with anger. I am angry about the deaths of my friend and siblings.

I am angry about the pain in my community. I am angry about cisgender people’s widespread ignorance. I am angry at the bigots in power and I am angry at the bigots that support or excuse their transphobia.

I also fear each of those things.

My dream is to live in a world where we feel safe, where children aren’t picked apart for their gender, where we can exist as ourselves without oppressive and damaging societal expectations. I hope I live to see that happen.

Today, we remember those who we have lost to transphobia.

R, although I knew you for only a short time, thank you for being such a pivotal person in my life. I wish you could join us for TaGI. I visited Hart Park. You would get a kick out of Janelle Monáe’s album. Rest in power.

FINAL THOUGHTS The Ubyssey would like to thank everyone for their contributions for this article. TDOR can be a deeply personal subject to talk about. In writing on this subject, you had to focus on the fears that you have to put in a box to be able to live your life freely. We have asked you to think about what we’d all rather not think about.

We have asked you to let us share your grief. We asked you be open and visible for a predominantly cis audience. We asked you to do the work we don’t want to do.

Words can never make up the loss that is felt in the Trans community, but with your words you have let people see and feel how we feel and live.

Thank you.U

WWW.REGENTDENTALCENTRE.COM 2681 W BROADWAY, VANCOUCER, BC V6K 2G2

November is Transgender Awareness Month.

SHEREEN LEE

8 | CULTURE | TUESDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2019 ‘WHO WE WANT TO BE’//

A timeline of recent Trans issues at UBC MARCH 3, 2017: RAISING OF PRIDE FLAG MARKS BEGINNING OF PRIDE WEEK

UBC to host events honouring Trans Day of Remembrance despite rocky history Thomas O’Donnell Culture Editor

This year, UBC will be hosting community building events in the days around Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). Besides creating space for Trans and genderdiverse students, the university will also be trying to regain trust with a community that some feel they have wronged.

Taking place on November 20, TDOR seeks to honour the lives of Transgender people who have died and open a wider conversation on the impacts of transphobia.

Started in 1999 to honour the life of Trans woman Rita Hester, the day has grown to an internationally acknowledged day of collective grieving.

“The specific day is in relationship to reflecting really on those Transgender people who have lost their lives and who continue to face violence and discrimination due to transphobia,” said SaraJane Finlay, UBC’s associate VP Equity & Inclusion (E&I). “But it’s also an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the lives of the Transgender people in our community.”

November is Trans Awareness Month and the week leading up to TDOR — November 13 to 20 — is Trans Awareness Week.

The E&I office has planned events for Trans Awareness Week.

On November 19, they will be hosting a Get Connected event for Two-spirit, Queer and Trans students centred around discussions of 2SLGBTQIA+ representations in pop culture and media. With Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) UBC, E&I will be doing a movie screening in the Nest of My Name Was January which details the life of January Marie Lapuz, a Trans woman of colour who was murdered in her home in New Westminster.

There are also events planned to bring greater attention to TDOR to the wider population.

“There’s also going to be some awareness raising being done in the UBC Life building. That’s over the 19 and 20 of November,” said Finlay.

She also quoted the work and events being held by the Pride Collective and Sexual Assault Support Centre (SASC), which will be hosting a QTBIPOC Community Care Circle on the 19th.

Finlay also advocated for students to look for events happening outside of UBC. “There is also a ceremony that happens downtown at the Carnegie Community Centre on the 20th,” she said. “We’ll be encouraging people to

participate in that.”

BUILDING A SENSE OF COMMUNITY Many of E&I’s events are focused on building a sense of community with Queer and Trans students.

“A few years ago, we took a really deep dive into the undergraduate experience survey data and really pulled it apart by all the different demographic categories so that we had a good idea of what groups of students were having a really different experience and perhaps not as positive as an experience,” said Finlay.

“When we looked at that, we realized that there was work that we could be doing with particular groups of students and that there were also particular areas of the university where we could build up really strong partnership, which would offer the opportunity to make some real changes for the students’ experiences.”

E&I saw that there were two major groups of students who were having a hard time connecting. One of them is Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, while the other is Queer and Trans students.

Part of the work E&I does to facilitate that community building is creating opportunities to have students connect across faculties. “[We are] building community amongst groups of students from across the university who may not have had the opportunity to meet each other who may think that they were the only person like them within their program,” Finlay said.

“One of the things we know from the data we have is that students who identify as Trans or gender non-conforming tend to feel less comfortable on campus, in their department or in their class.”

FACING CRITICISM But while these initiatives were going on, UBC has also been criticized for hosting speakers who are known for giving transphobic comments.

In particular, the university was pulled out of the Vancouver Pride Parade this summer for providing space for a June talk by well-known anti-SOGI speaker Jenn Smith. The talk also faced backlash from the multiple campus groups.

In response, Finlay said E&I has tried to prioritize the communities in their work.

“I think from the very beginning of this sort of recent controversy, we have been trying to keep our focus and attention on our community and

THOMAS O’DONNELL

community members,” she said. “To be as clear about the values that are important in the work that we do.”

To build back the trust of Queer and Trans students, Finlay said she is dividing the office’s work into two categories: the symbolic and then the more tangible.

“The symbolic work we can do is about having these opportunities to support reflection and celebration.

But do those instances of reflection and celebration and recognition of the diversity of the population that’s here at the university, do those actually go any way to changing things — and I would argue they are only one piece,” she said.

“We can have those sorts of symbolic moments and recognition but we have to be doing all the other kinds of work as well.”

For instance, E&I successfully advocated for the inclusion of students’ chosen name on class lists and the removal of gender markers from those lists.

“We have to be thinking about the kind of language that we’re using, we have to be thinking about the way in which we construct our curriculum, teach our classes, build up our system and if we’re not looking at those through an equity lens as well,” she said.

“The other [work] is just the kind of celebratory side and it’s often easy to do the work of celebration.

It’s much harder to do the work of culture and systems change — and through that, that’s where the hard work is and where we need to be focusing.”

‘THEIR LIVES MATTER’ Historically, TDOR has mainly been observed by members of the Queer community, which means sharing in collective grief and thinking on ways to create meaningful change for marginalized communities.

But the labour to create that change shouldn’t only come from those communities.

“Our Transgender students, our friends and our colleagues, they’re part of our community. Their lives matter,” said Finlay.

“I also think it’s a real mark of privilege being able to ignore the discrimination and harassment that Trans people have faced. We should be thinking about what it means when we ignore parts of our community, when we look away when people are being harassed.

When we don’t stand up and say, ‘That’s not appropriate, this is a member of our community, this is my friend, this is my classmate.’

“I don’t think that’s who we want to be.” U

The Pride Collective re-raised the Pride flag outside the old Student Union Building, over a year after the flag was burned down.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018: U SPORTS CHANGES PARTICIPATION POLICY FOR TRANSGENDER STUDENTATHLETES U Sports approved a new policy that allows Transgender student-athletes to play for the team of either their gender identity or the sex they were assigned at birth. Coming from the governing body of Canadian university sports, this policy also applies to UBC athletes.

OCTOBER 15, 2018: UBC FORMALLY UNVEILS ITS PRIDE INSTALLATION First announced in summer 2018, UBC’s plan to bring a Pride installation to campus was not without issues. First, the Pride Collective raised concern about the project’s original name — LGBQ and Trans Pride installation — due to its separation of Trans people from the larger community as well as its exclusion of Two-Spirit individuals. There was also a call to include the black and brown stripes, which honour the community members of colour. Subsequently, UBC incorporated this feedback into the installation’s design and unveiled it on October 15.

DECEMBER 10, 2018: STUDENTS RALLY AGAINST A SMALL ANTI-TRANSGENDER DEMONSTRATION Known anti-LGBT activist Bill Whatcott and two other individuals held a small demonstration outside the Nest, but were quickly drowned out by a counterprotest by students.

Whatcott also specifically misgendered Transgender activist Morgane Oger, after already targeting her with transphobic flyouts during her runs for office. Oger filed a human rights complaint against him in 2017 and their case, which Oger won, was held the day following the demonstration.

MARCH 28, 2019: STUDENTS COUNTER TRANSPHOBIC SPEAKER EVENT WITH PEACEFUL TEACH-IN Meghan Murphy, a feminist writer who was banned from Twitter for making transphobic comments and misgendering Trans people, held a talk on campus at the invitation of Students for Freedom of Expression. In response, around 75 students gathered at

the Pride Installation to show their solidarity with Trans community members before moving to Buchanan for the teach-in.

JUNE 19, 2019: STUDENTS AIR GRIEVANCES ABOUT UPCOMING TALK BY ANTI-SOGI SPEAKER JENN SMITH’S TALK AT THE UNIVERSITY UBC held an event called Get Connected: Queer, Trans, & Allies Community Night, in which students shared their frustrations with the university’s decision to host a talk by well-known anti-SOGI speaker Jenn Smith.

JUNE 23, 2019: UBC COMMUNITY MEMBERS HOLD A RALLY IN PROTEST OF JENN SMITH’S EVENT During the lead up to the talk by speaker Jenn Smith, there was a backlash from community members and groups like the Faculty Association and the Association for Administrative and Professional Staff.

Other institutions like Trinity Western University and Douglas College also cancelled his planned talks.

However, UBC allowed the talk to continue, justifing its decision as upholding freedom of expression. In response, community members rallied in opposition on the day of the event. The RCMP detained three counter-demonstrators, but released them after questioning.

JULY 8, 2019: UBC IS PULLED FROM VANCOUVER PRIDE PARADE FOR HOSTING JENN SMITH In response to UBC’s decision to host Jenn Smith, the Vancouver Pride Society rescinded the university’s invitation, citing its “decision to provide a platform for transphobic hate speech.” UBC members could still march if they did not show affiliation with the university.

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019: AMIDST POTENTIAL SECURITY RISKS AT PRIDE, STUDENTS DOUBT UBC’S COMMITMENT TO A ‘POSITIVE SPACE’ Ahead of UBC Pride on September 6, social media activities of Jenn Smith and members of Soldiers of Odin (SOO) — an anti-immigration, anti-Muslim group — raised concerns about their possible presence at the event. In particular, students doubted the university’s ability to maintain a positive space due to its track record of hosting speakers that make communities feel unsafe. Smith and SOO members ultimately didn’t show up.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 Family... whatever that means

9

Family... whatever that means THE UBYSSEY’S CREATIVE NON-FICTION SUPPLEMENT

from the editor The stories contained in this supplement weren’t easily written.

Hacking and slashing through sometimes-painful memories and translating sentiments so personal into words comes naturally to very few. The final hurdle is a harshly lit surgical theatre, where your work is laid for classmates, TAs and perfect strangers alike to poke and pick apart. The trust in me and The Ubyssey at large shown by those who submitted is humbling.

After spending countless hours organizing these stories, I have one request: allow these pieces, and the authors behind them, to make you re-examine your own connections. Some of these stories elicit warmth, having you reflect on time spent cooking dinner with Mum or shooting the breeze with a friend. Others will leave you feeling a bit colder, wanting for the same reassurance and relation that the author lamented losing. Suspend the minutiae and search these pieces for what resonates with you. If you’re not careful, you might end up changing your definition of family… whatever that means.

Pawan Minhas

Design by Lua Presidio Watercolour by Serra Uncu

10

Family... whatever that means Tuesday, November 19, 2019

It’s Like Looking in a Mirror Words by Ozioma Nwabuikwu Illustration by Alex Vanderput I’ve always (loudly) insisted that every single person in my family looks exactly like me. That we’re practically twins.

This is a bit of an exaggeration. Don’t get me wrong, there are similarities — my dad and I look very alike and my older sister and I look pretty similar. But I find one trait that slightly ‘appears’ in me that loosely ‘matches’ those of my younger sister and moth-

er, and I run with it. You can imagine how many eye rolls and sighs I’ve gotten from them.

Calling myself their twin is more for my benefit than theirs. My family has seen the worst parts of me, so much that it’s almost embarrassing to remember what I’ve put them through sometimes.

And yet they still choose to love me. They give me the benefit of the doubt no matter how many times I

break it. So seeing them in me, calling myself their twin is a reminder to see myself in their eyes — to forgive myself again and again, to be kind to myself, to keep pushing even when I can’t. It’s a way to honor their love and I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t see them in me. They’ve given me a love greater than I could ever imagine and that’s one of the reasons I get up every day. U

Clean Rice Words by Zohrah Khalili Illustration by Lua Presidio Rice is life. I don’t say that as a joke or lightheartedly because back home it is. For most Afghans, having rice on the destarkhu is the difference between starving and sleeping with a full stomach.

Enhanced with cumin, sugar or saffron, it sets the tone for most of our dishes — the smell dancing through the house, covering my clothes.

Fragrant. Fluffy. Delicious.

There’s a lot that goes into that rice. A lot of love, a lot of effort and a lot of family. It would bring us together. Rice in Afghanistan comes mixed with debris and we would

often gather to clean it. One of my warmest memories is from cleaning rice at my Auntie’s home to the sound of deer-hide drums and folk songs.

I can still feel the heat of the sun on my dark hair and see the crinkle under my mother’s eyes. I remember trying not to move to the melody because when I did, the clean rice would get re-mixed with the pebbles. Sevenyear-old Zohrah took her responsibility very seriously.

Today, rice is bittersweet. It never tastes as good here in Canada with a family of five as it did in Kabul in a party of hundreds. There

just isn’t the same amount of love. Rice here comes pre-cleaned and you never get to make those memories. It’s starched and too pristine.

Perhaps that’s why there’s a disconnect between my own and my siblings’ relationship with rice. To them, we have it too often. “Why can’t Mum make Canadian food?” It’s not a luxury or a staple — it’s boring.

To me, rice is one of the few things I still have from home. Even though I’m Canadian, when someone asks where I’m from, the word Afghan spills out of my mouth like clean rice onto the floor. U

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 Family... whatever that means

11

Moments in Time Words and photos by Diego Lozano It’s hard to say what and who family is. Family’s one of those things that varies by person and, strictly speaking, it doesn’t have to be people related to you by blood. Maybe it’s not even a certain group of people — maybe family is more than a select few. Maybe it’s the way you feel when you know you’re surrounded by people (or pets) that love you unconditionally for who you are. There are endless people that make me feel welcomed and loved and these are just a few of the moments I felt that love, smile or no smile. Even the couch where my grandpa used to sit is, now and forever, love.

12

Family... whatever that means Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Tracing Roots Words by Tara Osler Illustration by Ella Chan FAMILY: “A taxonomic rank in the classification of organisms between genus and order.”

I am part of the Hominidae family, Alongside every other human, Orangutan And chimpanzee.

Every extant And extinct ancestor Is the answer To the question I don’t remember asking.

The vestigial tendon in my wrist Vestigial teeth in my jaw Vestigial and somewhat misplaced longing For something I don’t fully understand.

Sometimes I think about the bones In the passage tombs in Ireland If you could scrape some DNA from them They would probably mention my name Somewhere in that code.

Is there something of them in me?

Is the turn of my ankle bone A relic of some relative A few centuries removed?

Sometimes I feel like I’m just built of artifacts And trinkets from some Other era, A collection Of leftover emotions DNA scrapbook Layers of evolution Tied together by ancient heartstrings.

Are the bog bodies my family?

Where in the human tree Is my place?

I start the entries of my diary by saying, “to the future archaeologist who reads this:” ­— to my descendants: I hope you can fit me somewhere In the history of our family, Of our humanity.

From Minutes to Miles Words by Kaila Johnson Illustration by Joyce Chung

0.1 MILES AWAY

You became my friend because I was crying on the playground. The memory is fuzzy in my brain, but we’ve been inseparable ever since. After school, I tried to stay at your house as long as I could until I received frantic texts from my sister on my whereabouts. We discovered One Direction in your living room and learned all about them in one afternoon. Out of the five phone numbers I memorized, yours was one of them.

0.2 MILES AWAY

If I ran to your house, I could get there in a minute. You’d open the door puzzled as I stood there catching my breath. Two of our friends lived on your street and we would walk back together from their houses on sunny afternoons.

One year for Mother’s Day, I gave your mother white orchids that stayed alive for longer than we expected, but I don’t remember what I gave my own. I went to a different middle school than

you for a year but that didn’t change how many afternoons we spent at the park down the street.

I opened up to you on the swings in Grade 8 and you gave me tough love — what I needed to hear, but not what I wanted.

14 MILES APART

My family moving to an adjacent city became my excuse for isolating myself. I’d already felt distant from you. We had one class together in Grade 10 and I tried to hold onto every minute. I’d avoid going ‘home’ because I hated it. It felt like my life was ripped away from me when my habits of terrible communication and keeping people out of the loop seemed to be the cause of losing you.

I thought you were constant because you were my best friend.

4.7 MILES APART

I moved back to the same city, but was excluded from group chats and pretended to understand inside jokes. I became closer to people

that were acquaintances but still tried to tell you things about my life. Even if I called them my close friends, it didn’t sound right coming from my mouth.

149 MILES APART

I didn’t plan to be in Canada for university and you were there when I learned what UBC was.

Someone asked me who my best friend was and I didn’t have an answer. I’d send you memes or funny tweets that you’d enjoy, and you’d reply, but you’d never send any my way.

142.3 MILES APART

You started your first semester three weeks after mine and I went to visit during Remembrance Day weekend. We sat in uncomfortable silence for longer than I anticipated. I don’t know if you’re waiting for me to say the obvious or afraid to start the conversation. Sometimes you act in ways that are similar to me and I don’t know how we lost our way. U

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 Family... whatever that means

13

To my dad at sea: I don’t like crab Words by Andrew Ha Illustrations by Alex Vanderput

I

watch you from the other side of the table as you pick up a whole crab. Coral crimson, the angry end product of a wok-steamed demise. My aunt and uncle are over for dinner, but they’re familiar so you’re in your worn after-work sweat pants, T-shirt over your round belly. You tear off the carapace with a crunch — conclusively hollow, a knuckle cracked right next to my ear. You would’ve eaten the olive-green paste under the shell a few years ago, but you’ve started watching your cholesterol. You decide on a leg. Another snap, firecrackers popping as you crush it open against your back teeth. Late October wafts cool, dry air in through the window, foreboding, the tail end of your fishing season nearly gone and taking my appetite with it.

I look down at the severed crab limb on my plate. Mom’s put it there — she’s telling me to eat more, as moms do. I glance over and catch your hard eyes. I’ve never liked crab, not when I was a child, not now. Not like you do.

The crab is one of the many you harvested earlier that day from the Georgia Strait. You and your brother hauling up each cage, letting out the crustacean gems within before discarding the trap back overboard. A museum display empty, new exhibit coming soon. Filled anew in a day or two, or as new as can be for your jaded eyes.

You started after you finished high school here in Vancouver, I think. Catching crab has been your task from late summer to early autumn, seven days weekly, pre-sunup to sundown, for as long as you’ve been Dad and I, your son.

When you came to Canada, even before you moved to the west coast from that farm in Alberta, did you know that you would become a crab fisherman? We all have dreams, what were yours? Who were you in high school with your English tinted with Cantonese and a stain of Quảng Ninh, yellows turned zellows on your tongue? Before you were Dad, when you were just Phuong?

D

ungeness crabs are popular in the Pacific Northwest, but their domain extends as far north as Alaska, following the coast just up to the wispy Aleutian Islands arcing into the ocean. What protects their mild, sweet flesh is a palette of a shell, brown soil tinged with purple and flecked white like

a freshly fertilized garden. But their undersides, like a human palm, are a soft mirror that reflects the shallow beige sands they inhabit.

To me, Dungeness crabs are lonely creatures. They live in solitude since they leave their mother’s egg pouch as larva. While their claws clack toughness in morse code, they’re homebodies hiding in eelgrass so they won’t have to rely on their exoskeletons to fend off the sea.

They bury themselves in the seafloor when frightened. I wonder how a crab feels when it’s never been cosier with the sand grains, where the ocean above only continues on in imagination.

It was early one summer in elementary school when you drove us to the marina in your pine green Ford pickup. The one that smelled of tobacco and exertion — I remember the ache in my arm as I cranked down the window. I settled in the cabin of your ship that day while you worked out on the deck. I emerged only to relieve my bladder, as you’d told me, against the side of the neighbouring boat. I was sheepish even though no one was around, but you grinned at me from your own makeshift toilet next to mine.

Back in the cabin, the sun laid a golden blanket against the breeze nipping outside. The air was close, warm. Me in the sand. The bench along the back wall that you’d reupholstered with squeaky grey leather, faux I knew because with none of a cow’s wrinkles, it glinted smooth. I’d expected a pirate’s wooden spoked wheel — it was my first time ever on a boat — but it was polished steel, it could’ve belonged on a bus. I sat with my knees up to my chin behind the wheel. It didn’t occur to me that I would ever need to use a steering wheel because you were the one to drive me those days, from school to piano lessons, to Chinese school early Saturday mornings. I fell asleep with sun through the windshield on my cheek. You were braving the chilly air outside, but Chairman Mao looked after me, his card-sized photo hanging from a string braided royal red in the corner of the cabin.

A

t dinner, your plate is a graveyard of discarded shells. Your wine glass is on its second or third

empty, at first I can’t tell which. But you’ve been blessed with blush, it’s in our blood, and your flushed skin spells out glass three for me. “He said that Mao was a dictator,” you tell my uncle, voice poised. “He doesn’t understand what Mao has done.”

It’s true. It’s come up before, when I was flippant enough to challenge your undying loyalty to the homeland, my zeal rising up again with Hong Kong protesters on TV the previous night. The sharp tip of the crab leg on my plate points back up at me, accusatory, upset with me for not picking it up. Mom glances down as I place it back on her plate, and I take my dishes to the sink. Goosebumps cover my bare arms — I’ve yet to relearn how to dress for the undecided October weather.

You can’t catch crabs when it’s too cold. Not only does the government forbid it, but the creatures are simply less active. The summer warmth draws them out for mating season, but their passion wanes with the sun until the crabs revert to cold loneliness. With winter comes isolation. Dungeon, Dungeness, the adjective form of prison. The crabs are named for a small fishing community on the coast of Washington state, something I only learned recently. When I was younger, I thought the two words were connected, but I didn’t think much of it then.

There are bars between us, Dad, but which of us is trapped in the cell while the other roams free?

A

s I pull my sweater from the back of my chair, egress underway, Mom asks me why I didn’t eat any crab. After 19 years of me, both of you still try. You two try your best, as all parents do. “Maybe later,” I say, slipping out of the kitchen draft and into wooly warmth. Crab will likely never be for me, but maybe later, I hope that we’ll meet again safely ashore. U

14

Family... whatever that means Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Mangiare Calabrese Words by Salomon Micko Benrimoh Illustration by Rachel Cheang 1. Dice up a head’s worth of garlic cloves and two onions, not too thinly because you don’t want it to burn in the pot.

In a Mediterranean household, there is nothing more important than food — it’s how a family communicates and stays close. Growing up in a Moroccan-Italian house, we were no exception to the rule.

My brother and I always had the freedom to go out or hang out with friends, but we always had to be home for dinner. If we weren’t, then there had to be one hell of a good excuse. But we never wanted to skip out on dinner.

Our parents weren’t chefs — a long running joke of my father’s was that he “didn’t know how to cook.”

It’s passion like theirs in the heart of Mediterranean food that makes it so good and why most, if not all, of my favourite memories growing up revolve around food.

From as soon as I could see over the counter, I remember helping my mother make lasagna or holding the cutting board down as my father butchered a leg of lamb.

What might be strange to some was second nature to me. With my family back in Montréal, all I have to do to get a taste of home is make the food I saw being made in front of me for 19 years. A family favourite being one of the most simple: Pasta.

The keys to a good pasta dish is simplicity and fresh ingredients. Screw up one of those and you can forget about it.

2. Turn up to medium-high heat and give a big pot a healthy coating of olive oil (Note: “Healthy” for southern Italians is probably excessive in the eyes of everyone else).

3. Drop in the onion and garlic. Once par-cooked, add a healthy dose of tomato paste along with a bit of paprika.

4. My mother is from Calabria, the tip of the boot in southern Italy, so we’d add a ton of crushed up chili flakes and/or olive-oil-soaked chili peppers at this point. It’s ok to skip this part, especially if you don’t want to get an ulcer.

5. If you plan on adding meat, do it now. You can never go wrong with pork bones and Italian sausage.

6. If you want to make meatballs, you’re going to want to get a mix of ground pork and beef. Mix in a bowl with some chili flakes, Italian herbs and just a bit of oregano and paprika. The one thing that is absolutely needed are bread crumbs, as they’ll keep the meatballs from getting dry.

7. Form the meatballs in the palm of your hand, starting out with a puck and making it rounder and rounder until ball-shaped.

8. You’re going to want to bake these until they’re brown on the outside but still raw in the center, adding them to the sauce after the tomatoes.

9. Add the aforementioned tomatoes to their bed of cooked onions, garlic (and/or meat).

10. The only way you can mess this up is by getting bad canned tomatoes. Do yourself a favour and buy some that are from Italy. It’ll be a dollar more than the local supermarket variety but infinitely better. If you want to treat yourself, get a can of San Marzano tomatoes.

11. Crush up your tomatoes with a wooden spoon and let your sauce simmer for anywhere between 45 minutes to a whole day. If you need to make a quick sauce, leave it on high heat, constantly stirring so that the water boils off faster.

12. Sprinkle in some Italian herbs and oregano and serve with the noodle of your choice. Make sure to take off a minute from the noodle’s cook time for a perfect al dente.

Bonus points for blasting Frank Sinatra throughout this entire process to give it an authentic Goodfellas vibe.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 Family... whatever that means

15

Start expecting positive Queer stories Words by Thomas O’Donnell Whenever I tell people about coming out, the first question I usually hear is “How is your family taking it?”

I find this question so bizarre, like, what do you want to hear from me? As soon as I say, “Um, pretty well I think. They’re really supportive,” the questioner seems disappointed, as if they wanted to hear some tragic Queer story.

Don’t ask how my family is “taking it” —

there’s nothing for them to take. When you say that, it makes my coming out seem more dramatic than it really is.

Narratives of unsupportive families tend to dominate media and Queer conciousness. Due to the sheer amount of bad things I’d heard, I was really scared to come out to them. I had done all the mental work, preparing myself to hear “You’re disowned,” or “You’re not our

child anymore,” only to be met with open arms and eager, if sometimes clumsy, acceptance.

I know that I’m lucky to have the family I do and that my experience is not universal.

But I think the more we normalize families’ unconditional acceptance of their children, the less people will be afraid to come out.

Supportive families should be the standard, not the exception to the rule. U

The truth is…

Words by Sabine Gaind Illustration by Alex Vanderput I used to dread family gatherings.

Something about them just — Ugh. They’re too frequent, and we barely even know each other anyways, so what’s the point?

And I see that you’ve noticed it, too: in the way we started greeting each other with more tenderness, and laughing louder at the dining table, and waving goodbye with bittersweet smiles.

Yet, the words I need to say, they get stuck in my throat.

— is all I can say

Today was fun.

but, in recent years, I’ve noticed something.

Learning about each others’ thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, personalities and quirks.

As we get older, and move away from each other to different schools around the country and move on from each other to lead different lives, our bonds (somehow) become stronger; our memories (for some reason) start to mean more.

Learning to understand one another in a way we never made an effort to way back then.

I’ll miss you.

Maybe all it took was

physical d i s t a n c e for us to bridge our emotional distance.

I look back and regret all those years spent not appreciating each other and recognize how close we could have been, and now that I know you well enough, I think that we could be friends.

Or at least, the type of family you don’t dread seeing on holidays.

We should do this more often.

And I hold on to the hope that another family gathering is only a lifetime away.

16

Family... whatever that means Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Why Disney Moms Die Words by Camille Lemire Illustration by Ayesha Diwan WHEN I WAS A KID, I used to get frightened watching Disney movies with my mom.

For some reason, in all my favourite movies, all the moms are dead. It seemed as if the main character’s mother needed to die for them to become the hero they need to be to save themselves or their family or the world — to stand at the sunset of their Happily Ever After. So I would watch Snow White and Beauty and the Beast and Bambi with my mother. During the movie I would grab her hand and see it felt like nothing couldn’t fit into her long fingers.

It felt like we were shaking hands as if we were making a deal, a promise, that we would never be apart.

I can still feel her palm against mine.

“CAMMY,” MY MOTHER COOED, over 10 years later. “Cammy, I am so proud of the person you’ve become.”

My cheeks felt hot. I was 17 and awkward and my long-distance mother was validating me over the phone. I mumbled, “Thanks, Mom.” I had stopped living with my mother before I turned 10, instead moving in with my father and my stepmother (something that all my fairytale favourites would have feared). Together, we moved to Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. And then to Calgary. And then to Seattle.

And my mother, who held my hand as if she could anchor me to this world, became a voice in a little silver box I talked to once a week.

Here I was on the phone with the woman who had birthed me. We discussed the college acceptances I had heard about over a month ago and hadn’t told her about.

I told her about each of the schools and where they were. I did not tell her that one of them was my ‘Dream School’ — a fantasyland fine-arts school in Boston. I did not tell her about the financial worries, about being scared to move away from Dad and my stepmom and about my fear of doing long-distance with my partner.

“Cammy, you are a dreamer whose dreams

are coming true,” my mother gushed after I gave her a list of universities that she knew nothing about. “My princess, I want to give you something.”

My mom then explained to me that she had secretly been saving money up for me to go to university. Tens of thousands of dollars to give me the future she had always wanted.

And suddenly I was a kid again, curled up on the couch next to my mother. Her palm in my hand was warm and firm and alive. I gripped the phone tighter as she spoke, as if it was her long fingers reaching out to comb my hair.

“Mom,” I said. “Mom, you don’t know how much this means to me.”

Her smile seemed to coat her words. “I have devoted my life to you, my princess. This is the least I can do to make your dreams come true.”

IN DISNEY MOVIES, YOU DON’T

actually see the protagonist’s mother die — you are just given context that she’s gone, like a breath in the wind.

My dad called me while I was at home, a week before I had to declare which university I’d attend. Calls in the middle of the day were not out of the blue; we had been talking about money a lot lately.

“With the money Mom has been saving for me,” I would say.

“I can afford to go to my Dream School.”

I said it like a gospel. Like a mantra. I said it like it was my destiny.

“Honey, we need to talk about Mom.” My gospel paused on my tongue. “What about Mom?” “Well, I really took to heart the conversations we have been having about your university opportunities,” Dad told me. “So I called your mother to discuss the details further and… I’m sorry, Cam.”

“Sorry for what?”

In Disney movies, you don’t usually see the protagonist’s mother die.

“Your mother … wasn’t exactly truthful with you,” my dad explained, gently. “There was never any money to begin with.”

In Disney movies, you are just given context that the protagonist’s mother is gone — like a breath in the wind. Like money from a vault. Like a mother’s hand in yours.

I MOVED TO UBC a few months after that. I do not remember much of the moving process except that my dad drove and my stepmom kept smiling at me in the rear-view mirror.

I thought about how, as a child, my mom used to hold my hand to let me know she wasn’t going anywhere. My stepmom was smiling now to let me know it was okay to move on.

After my parents left, I sat in my dorm, listening to students in the hallway, moving their things in, awkwardly introducing each other and trying to figure out where the hell they were supposed to eat dinner.

That’s when I get a call from Leila.

Leila and I went to high school together and both found ourselves starting at UBC that year.

We spent some time with each other the summer after graduating to get to know each other.

Looking back, those short encounters were like an awkward blind date with the love of your life.

That first day at UBC was the beginning of our love story.

When Leila tells this story, she always says she texted me. She probably did — Leila has a better memory. But when I think back to that day, to my stepmom’s rear-view mirror smile, to sitting on my stiff dorm bed in the swirling sunshine, to my things populating this Martian landscape, I hear Leila’s voice clear in my head. My parents are gone, and I have nothing to do. Want to hang out?

I HAVE A PHOTO OF LEILA from that day. She sits on a log at Wreck Beach, facing me while the sun washes over her skin, like honey over wood. She smiles at me, her eyes bright in a way that eyes are bright when you are 18 because nothing scares you.

We stumbled down the hundreds of steps to the infamous nudist beach on campus. We talked about the people we have been our whole lives, the people we want to become and the things we want to do. We joked about frats and how we would never enter one (a promise we broke the very next night).

As we chatted, orange and pink swirl through the periwinkle sky, bleeding this colourful cacophony into the fluffy clouds that dot the sky.

The sun faded along the horizon, the ocean whispering harmonies along to the nudists howling at the sun as it sets. It is the sort of sunset that would infiltrate your Instagram feed, yet felt like the apocalypse. Like being reborn.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Mom: Accept Call or Reject Call.

For a long time, family meant phone calls. It meant trusting that someone was holding the phone like it was your hand, like it could anchor your relationship together no matter the adversity you faced. It meant believing their sunshine through the dial tone, that each mile of distance was just another bump in the road before your fiery sunset Happily Ever After together.

I looked at Leila, at her flurry of brown hair dancing in the wind and her smile as warm as the apple crisp she expertly will cook in our second year.

I put my phone in my pocket. I’d already got a call from family that day. U

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 Family... whatever that means

17

Portrait of Dorm Room, with Brothers, in the Year Words by Moe Kirkpatrick Before I Left 1.

Seventeen boxes of tea. The banned rice cooker on the windowsill. Blue shards from the kettle we broke two weeks ago, fighting over the last Oreo.

Umbrellas dripping on the linoleum and no place to put my shoes. Yes, I know this isn’t going to last.

2.

This winter, the slats of your bed fall through one by one, until nothing is holding you up. We have no tissues, no paper towels. You cry into napkins.

Our boyfriends break up with us and our friend groups break up with each other.

You have panic attacks in the shower that I have on the bus.

How are we supposed to know what will break and what will last?

First year, you were too scared to talk to me. I went to bed early, in my own dorm. I never sang “Be My Escape” at three in the morning, so loud I thought for sure, this time, we would get a noise complaint. I never would have dared.

3.

That year, we sit on your broken bed until the last leg snaps. We take the trash out.

We eat cake on the only birthday I’ve ever wanted to be alive. Next year, I will have transferred halfway across the country.

You say the green air mattress is always mine, even though it has a hole in it, the edges stitched up with masking tape.

Busted, whatever. It’s mine, you say, as long as I want it.

Waiting Words by Bailey Martens Illustration by Lua Presidio Content warning: This essay contains references to death and chronic illness.

T

he Ambulatory Care building at BC Children’s Hospital was my playground.

It contained all of my wildest germ-free adventures, from the carefully crafted pirate ship housing a large fish tank to the Canucks’ playroom, with pucks plastering its walls.

But most of my time was spent in waiting rooms.

As I hobbled down the poorly lit hallway, passing oncology and hematology, I would reach the physical therapy clinic.

Inside, I would make my way to the reception desk.

“Miss Bailey, how are you today?” Mrs. Liz, the receptionist who knew my name, favourite colour and chart by heart since I was 11, welcomed me each and every visit.

I’d place my hands on the wooden ledge in front of a large glass window that I was barely tall enough to reach.

“I am here for my 3:30 with Tori,” I said as I would pass my small blue card through the window.

Normal people have health cards, sick kids get blue cards. Blue cards are punched with all the information the hospital needs: date of birth, address, allergies and so on.

After spending a lot of time in the hospital, you know a 3:30 p.m. appointment actually means a 3:45 p.m. appointment but you need to get there for 3:15 p.m. in case, in some alternate universe, they’re ready early.

But I was not the only one there at 3:30 p.m on Tuesday. In the third chair from the left, a small, moon-faced boy would arrive, like clockwork. We’d never exchanged pleasantries but I held my breath until he arrived, just to make

sure he was okay.

He had cancer, or what looked to be cancer.

His dark sunken eyes and bald head showed a fight that was far from over. It had already taken his right leg, just above the knee.

Sometimes we would make eye contact and immediately look away like our lives depended on keeping our distance.

Most sick kids are afraid of dying and leaving weeping mothers and fathers behind. I sure was, or am.

“D

on’t take her out yet,” my anesthesiologist said in her thick Scottish accent.

My IV stopped dripping. I was pumped full of drugs that would give me the best shot at remission, again, but the pain was too much to bear. I could barely catch my breath with the tears gushing from my eyes.

“I can’t bring you out like that, Bailey. Your parents are terrified and they cannot see you like this. It will break them,” she said. “So you are going to sit here for as long as it takes for you to pull it together.”

I eventually wiped my tears and reunited with my parents. They were quickly phased out of my treatment plan, leaving it to someone who still needed to be driven around to chart the course. It broke them to see me struggle and broke me to see my heroes buckling.

So I would head back into the physical therapy clinic waiting room as my mom headed to a coffee shop for the third time that week.

I

have seen it all. Puffy eyed mothers cradling their infants as their children stopped receiving treatment. Fathers donating

medical equipment to the clinic after their child no longer needed it, for one reason or another.

The air was sterile and our hearts beat a bit faster with the tension of wanting to be friends while wanting to reduce the harm. Our whole lives we’d heard ‘Do no harm’ from doctors and we were just trying to do our part.

Osteosarcoma? Ewing’s Sarcoma? Would they make it?

Waiting rooms are filled with stories.

Soft tissue boxes sit gracefully on end tables for parents who found out that there is nothing more they can do for their child or moms who can’t hold back as their son or daughter takes their first steps, sits up on their own or come to terms with never walking again.

Waiting rooms are meant for crying, holding your breath and being invited into the most intimate parts of others’ lives. Joining a family bigger than your own.

Christopher and his mom brought Christmas presents for his friends who were patients during the holidays. He had just started kindergarten.

Abigail had snuck juice boxes from the Ronald McDonald House pantry and ended up in time out.

One day, my nameless waiting room friend didn’t show up and I never saw him again. To this day, I don’t know if this nameless friend got better or is six feet under. I don’t know if his parents had to buy a child-sized coffin or if he is a vibrant young adult.

But I am more stable and still here, waiting for death to finally catch up and grab me by my throat, yanking me down onto the linoleum floor that they try so hard to keep clean. U

OPINIONS

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY

EDITOR TRISTAN WHEELER

18

THE LAW //

Letter: Debunking UBC’s legal position on fossil fuel divestment Stepan Wood Contributor

As Ubyssey web news editor Henry Anderson reported recently, UBC continues to resist divesting its $1.75 billion endowment from fossil fuels.

Around 80 per cent of the endowment is held in charitable trusts, which the university has a fiduciary duty to manage in accordance with their terms and in the best interests of their charitable purposes. The other 20 per cent is the university’s own money, which it must manage in the best interests of the university. The university claims that these duties preclude fossil fuel divestment.

I can understand why UBC’s lawyers and bean counters want to be cautious, but there is a good argument that fossil fuel divestment is consistent with — and might even be required by — the university’s legal duties.

First, there is an increasingly strong case that fossil fuel divestment is financially prudent.

Although divestment from a given sector or country can increase financial risk by reducing portfolio diversification, fossil energy is increasingly viewed by financial and economic experts as a risky investment.

The financial community itself is increasingly recognizing climate change as a material financial

risk, urging its incorporation into corporate reporting and questioning the viability of fossil fuel investments. To this extent, fossil fuel divestment is a logical result of incorporating environmental, social and governance risks into investment decision-making, which is clearly permissible for both charitable trusts and UBC’s own funds.

Second, there is a good argument that continued fossil fuel investment is inconsistent with the university’s best interests and its duties as trustee of charitable endowments.

Traditionally, the way to serve the best interests of a trust’s charitable purposes was by maximizing financial returns. But it is now accepted that a trustee may make ethical investment decisions if they do not increase the trust fund’s financial risk.

So if the trustee concludes reasonably that fossil fuel divestment will not jeopardize financial returns, it may go ahead with divestment.

Moreover, a trustee may not make investment decisions that conflict with the trust’s charitable purposes.

It is hard to square continued investment in carbon-intensive industries — such as fossil energy — with the charitable purposes of UBC’s endowments, which must surely include advancing UBC’s basic purpose of “pursuing excellence in research, learning and engagement

to foster global citizenship and advance a sustainable and just society across British Columbia, Canada and the world.”

It is increasingly clear that fossil fuel investment conflicts with advancement of a sustainable and just society.

It is also inconsistent with fostering global citizenship, if global citizenship includes respecting the overwhelming international scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change and the international community’s commitment to limit global average surface temperature increase to well below two degrees Celsius.

There is also a good case that fossil fuel investment is inconsistent with the university’s purpose of advancing the pursuit of knowledge and the free exchange of information and ideas, in light of the mounting evidence of fossil fuel companies’ active dissemination of public misinformation about climate change.

In short, if an investment conflicts with the purpose of a charitable trust, it must be avoided regardless of financial considerations.

These same arguments apply to UBC’s management of its own money — the remaining 20 per cent of its endowment. It would be hard to argue that investment strategies that conflict with UBC’s stated purposes of advancing

FILE CHERIHAN HASSUN

Divesting from fossil fuels is not as complicated as UBC says it is, argues Wood.

a sustainable and just society, fostering global citizenship and avoiding misinformation are in the “best interests of the university,” the legal standard required by the University Act. The preceding points apply to UBC’s endowment generally.

The case for divestment is even stronger for UBC charitable trust funds with specific purposes related to health promotion, environmental protection, poverty alleviation or other priorities that will be compromised by climate change.

A 2015 legal opinion by a leading lawyer in the UK, where trust law is similar to ours, concluded that fossil fuel investments may be impermissible for such trusts since they conflict with the trusts’ purposes. The same

report concluded that fossil fuel investment might also be impermissible if it alienates the trust’s beneficiaries — especially UBC students and faculty, in our case — or otherwise impedes achievement of the trust’s objectives and lacks financial justification.

Dozens of universities, most in jurisdictions with laws very similar to ours, have joined the fossil fuel divestment movement.

It beggars belief that all of them are acting on bad legal advice. U Professor Stepan Wood is the Canada Research Chair in Law, Society & Sustainability and Director of the Centre for Law & the Environment at the Peter A. Allard School of Law. A longer version of this comment was published on the Centre’s blog.

RECORDING //

Editorial: Does the UBC Board of Governors care about transparency?

“If passed, this ban on recordings could fundamentally shift the way The Ubyssey does our job.”

The Ubyssey Editorial Board

You would think UBC Board of Governors (BoG) would be interested in maintaining transparency and accountability, following years of criticism around bad governance.

This month, its governance committee has proposed several changes to the board meeting rules and practices. Among small wording changes brought forth by UBC legal counsel Hubert Lai is a change that would ban everyone, except the board secretariat, from

recording meetings.

If passed, this ban on recordings could fundamentally shift the way The Ubyssey does our job of breaking down convoluted, bureaucratic policies and bringing them to the attention of the students, staff and faculty who are impacted the most.

UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan, with the former being almost its own city, are effected by these policies. That’s around 70,000+ students, staff and faculty on both campuses. The university handles an operating budget

of roughly $2.1 billion and an endowment fund of $1.71 billion.

As a student newspaper with a hyperlocal mandate, we focus almost solely on UBC when other Vancouver-based news outlets often cannot.

While the board does livestream the full meetings, they do not livestream the committee meetings which are arguably where most of the important debate and discussion about specific policies takes place.

With that, our news team has tried to attend and live-tweet every

FILE ALEX NGUYEN

single BoG meeting over the years to hold the university accountable.

But despite our best efforts, it is obvious that live-tweets — required to be packed into 280 characters each — cannot convey the full nuances and complexities of fast-paced meetings that are often full of bureaucratic lingo.

As a result, our recordings have allowed us to make sense of the discussions being had at the highest level of university governance to accurately inform the community members they affect the most. In fact, our

reporting on UBC’s sexual violence policy, tuition increases, food insecurity and endowment divestment have relied on the discussions held at BoG meetings and our recordings play a huge role in helping us get the facts straight.

And we are not alone in our frustration.

After Dr. Charles Menzies — a Vancouver faculty member on the Board — criticized the motion on his blog, there has already been public pushback from a number of other governors.

Notably, Board Chair Michael Korenberg himself tweeted about his appreciation for The Ubyssey’s work, calling the proposed change “unacceptable.”

When questioned by Menzies about how the proposal came to be, Korenberg said he was “unsure.” Jeanie Malone, a Vancouver Board student representative who is also a member of the governance committee, similarly expressed that she was “very surprised” by this motion.

More importantly, Board policy GA8 solidifies the university’s commitment “to the principles of accountability and transparency to the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the University and to the public which is served by the University.”

Together, we hope that the motion will be dismissed when it comes up for discussion at the November 22 meeting.

If not, how solid is this commitment when this proposed change would fundamentally impacts our ability to increase accountability and transparency? U

FROM THE BLOG VIOLENCE //

The Dingbat: How to hit the books this finals period Tianne Jensen-DesJardins Contributor

STEP 2: FIND A FLAT SURFACE TO PLACE THEM ON

With finals right around the corner, it’s time to buckle down and crack open those textbooks.

If you’re anything like the average UBC student, you’ve probably left all your studying until the last minute.

You’re probably frantically Googling tips to help you get good grades without the hassle of spending hours upon hours reviewing. Lucky for you, after reading this, you’ll have all the information you need to hit the books and get the grades.

This step may feel a little self-explanatory, but trust me, finding the right flat surface to put the books on is crucial. A great example would be those neglected tables outside of Stir It Up Café in the lower floor of Buchanan A.

STEP 1: ACQUIRE THE NECESSARY BOOKS You’re not going to benefit from some science book if you’re taking speculative fiction or poetry, so choose the book or books carefully. An easy way to accomplish this is to take a look at that handy syllabus you got in the first week of classes — and then promptly lost or forgot about — and check under the required reading section.

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY

EDITOR TRISTAN WHEELER

STEP 3: FINDING THE CORRECT BAT For this step’s fulfillment, I would recommend a baseball bat. It could be a wooden bat, a metal bat or a really strong plastic bat, so long as it can withstand a good whacking it will suffice.

STEP 4: HITTING THE BOOKS Take the tool and grasp the handle. Take a deep breath, raise the bat and think about all the stress you’ve endured so far this semester. Now, as you exhale, bring the bat down on the assembled books.

Congratulations, you’ve successfully hit the books. U

19

EATING HEALTHY //

How to ditch the dreary freshman 15

FILE JOSHUA MEDICOFF

We’re here to your rescue!

Harshit Kohli Staff Writer

Maybe you’re a first-year student who’s starting to realize that this newfound freedom has led to you discovering your eternal love for different kinds of unhealthy food — especially pizza — and now those nice pants you got when shopping for college feel a tad tight. Or maybe you’re an upper-year student who tells all the first-years to be wary of cookies unless they want to live with regrets Anyhow, no matter who you are, we’re here to your rescue!

DON’T EAT PIZZA EVERY DAY Seriously, don’t. Everybody loves pizza from the bottom of their heart — but if you eat enough of it, that heart won’t be functioning for very long.

EAT A NICE BREAKFAST

eyes now, but you really do need to sleep. Yes, for everything.

Absorbing all that midterm material or keeping a couple pounds at bay, you need it. Well, if you’re like many of us here, you probably can’t get a full night’s sleep, which means 7.5 to 9 hours, just in case you have the time.

Instead, you can try to take naps during the day — 20 minutes and you’re golden!

Skipping breakfast can make you hungrier later in the day which means you’ll end up eating more and that’s probably going to be a lot of chips and salsa. So, set aside a quick 20 minutes to have something healthy like eggs, whole-grain cereal, or nuts. Don’t forget to eat an apple or two — unless you like going to the doctor.

EXERCISE

SODA IS HERE TO STAY

This is a no-no, so the next time you open that pack of cookies, ask yourself if you’re even hungry. Even better, stock up on some smart snacks: carrots and hummus, apples and peanut butter or Greek yogurt.

There’s nothing better than sugary drinks to make sure you’re not going to fit in your favourite outfit.

It’s easy to forget that these drinks have calories that won’t disappear as quickly as you finish those cans of Coke. Keep yourself hydrated with water, drink low-fat milk or have some tea if you want to be fancy.

SLEEP I know everybody’s rolling their

I know it feels like you blink and a week is gone, but physical activity can work wonders for your overall health. So maybe try to fit it into your schedule?

DON’T EAT BECAUSE YOU’RE BORED

OTHER RESOURCES You can always use the amazing internet to find out more, but also did you know there’s a dietician you can meet or contact online if you live in UBC residences? Well, if you haven’t, now’s the time! U

DARKNESS //

A meditation on November and why it’s bad, and not good, but also kind of good at the same time

Students must confront November.

Tait Gamble Senior Staff Writer

The start of a new school year holds many promises.

In September, UBC students descend upon campus powered by enthusiasm, emboldened by their healthy sun-kissed skin and their spirits high from four months of academic repose. With Imagine Day and the Welcome Back BBQ, it’s an optimistic month of new

FILE ZUBAIR HIRJI

beginnings, only wavering slightly in the final days as students consider: Is it October already?

October is Thanksgiving for many, a time for family, friends and food. With the onslaught of midterms, October also means the annual return of a student-wide desire for a reading week. Around mid-October, we see a decline in temperature and increase of cloudy, rainy days.

Cuffing season commences and

like crocuses in Spring, infatuated pairings of students sprout up along Main Mall, on benches and in libraries. October ends on a bang with Halloween. The month has been long enough, full of academic reality and challenge.

And what comes next? While December means exams, it is bookended by the winter break, an encouraging and total recluse from academia.

But before this, students must

confront November.

Here’s what I know about November. It comes after October.

It’s the eleventh month of the calendar year. It’s the third month of term. And that’s about it.

With midterms mostly over, and the daunting task of final projects and papers, not to mention finals, sits squarely on the horizon, students are challenged as much of the September enthusiasm and spirit that fuelled October has now

been spent.

But what have we got to look forward to? First, let’s consider that November means the onset of winter. A close rival to sweater weather, winter in the Pacific Northwest encompasses heavy rain, rubber boots and umbrellas.

You’re hard pressed to find a day in November when you don’t greet the outside world in raincoats and functional yet stylish layers of fleece.

Another element of this month is the tendency of many to grow out their facial hair in support of the Movember campaign, which aims to support men’s health. Peers, professors and strangers on the street get creative with their facial hair for an important cause and a little bit of self-expression.

November is also significant to students and UBC as Remembrance Day (November 11) and Veteran’s Week (November 5 to 11) take place. This November will be the 68th year UBC has commemorated Remembrance Day by hosting a ceremony. According to the UBC website, the Ceremony serves as an opportunity for members of the UBC community to come together to “honour and remember all those who served in times of war, military conflict and peace.”

Finally, November marks the end of term. Students celebrate the end of the month with the annual Polar Bear Swim hosted by The Calendar at Wreck Beach. Hey, maybe November has much to offer after all... U

SCIENCE

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY

EDITOR JAMES VOGL

20

NOVEL NEUROSCIENCE //

Mood and anxiety disorders share brain abnormalities Arveen Gogoani Contributor

With mood and anxiety disorders proving to be growing global health challenges, research at UBC has revealed that patients with mood and anxiety disorders share the same abnormalities in brain regions associated with emotional and cognitive control.

The research — led by Dr. Sophia Frangou, professor in the department of psychiatry at UBC — provides insight into how those abnormalities relate to symptoms.

Most disorders relating to mood and anxiety have a “significant degree of comorbidity, sequentially and cross-sectionally,” said Frangou.

This means that someone diagnosed with anxiety as a teenager could have depression during their 30s and individuals can have symptoms of anxiety and depression that fulfill both diagnoses.

“There was a big question as to whether the distinction of these disorders into separate entities could be supported by biological data … whether mood and anxiety disorders could be put together in a cluster instead of being considered as completely separate,” she said.

The researchers analyzed brain scans of patients with established diagnoses of mood and anxiety disorders of varying severity. At the time of study, most patients had been unwell for at least a few years.

The study found large similarity in regions affected by the disorders — there was no brain network differentially associated with each.

The researchers also looked at brain regions in relation to symptoms. Patients were asked to carry out tasks associated with different neural networks while their brains were scanned.

“The regions that seem to be affected … involved cognitive control.

In order for us to function adaptively in the world, there has to be brain mechanisms that allow flexibility in thinking, meaning we can voluntarily stop and switch,” said Frangou.

Abnormalities in regions associated with stopping and switching mental activities show that these disorders involve brain elements beyond will, meaning individuals cannot simply engage willpower to stop symptoms.

“What seems to be a pervasive change is the fact that they have significant problems in engaging the brain regions that are involved in voluntary control or behaviour, emotional behaviour, thinking behaviour,” she continued.

Patients with mood and anxiety disorders also tend to be more emotional and the study does show increased emotional activity in patients. However, the finding is not robust due to research limitations.

“Because emotional response is so contextual, we think that when people are doing more dry tasks

Looking forward, the research has tremendous implications for treatment.

in the scanner, the fact that they are generally more emotional is not captured as well because a lot of the stimuli … it’s not really that emotion-generating,” said Frangou.

Looking forward, the research has tremendous implications for treatment.

“If we find that individuals have this problem in this control in one part of the prefrontal cortex, we [could] train them to use another part of the prefrontal cortex as support. We have

created a potential preventative intervention,” she said.

Frangou emphasized the need for more research before making definitive statements about potential treatments. She wants to understand the evolution of disorders — whether people are born with brain complications and, if so, whether this determines clinical outcomes or whether the brain can adapt.

“We have had findings in people at high risk of mood disorders, for example, who do not become

@RESLUS

sick because the brain develops other mechanisms to overcome the control problem. So, we want to understand why that happens in some people and why it doesn’t in others,” she said.

“Resilience and adaptive mechanisms come under the umbrella of brain plasticity,” added Frangou. “So, we are trying to understand a little bit better how the plasticity of the brain can be used to support and prevent mental illness.” U

PERNICIOUS PETROLEUM //

Changes in atmospheric pressure can affect oil and gas leaks in unaccounted-for ways

During periods of descreased pressure, the previously trapped natural gas is more easily able to leak.

Myla White Contributor

Emissions from leaky oil and gas wells can be heavily influenced by changes in atmospheric pressure, a new UBC study has found.

However, current monitoring methods do not account for these fluctuations and may be leading to inaccurate measurements of methane emissions.

Fugitive gas emissions — the process of gas flowing outside the

surface casing of an oil or gas well — are a major environmental concern that can lead to groundwater contamination, explosive conditions in the gases found between soil components such as minerals and organic matter and increased greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Without adequate monitoring, levels of gas migration may be over- or under-estimated, skewing the prioritization of remediating leaky wells.

The experiment, led by UBC

CAT HARTT-TOWLE

geological sciences PhD student Olenka Forde, ran over the course of 24 days at the Montney resource play in northeastern British Columbia. The location has been home to considerable amounts of oil development since the 1950s.

For five days, thirty cubic metres of natural gas was continuously injected twelve metres below the ground surface. The depth and rate of well leakage, two major influences on gas migration, were controlled by the researchers to

isolate the effects of barometric fluctuations. During and after gas injection, atmospheric pressure and leakage of methane (CH4) were constantly measured.

Forde’s team found that while increases in pressure inhibited the migration of soil gas to the atmosphere, “when barometric pressure decreased, CH4 effluxes rapidly increased, at times greater than 20-fold in less than 24 hours.”

Periods of increased pressure tend to compress soil gas and push natural gas deeper underground. During periods of decreased pressure, the previously trapped natural gas is more easily able to leak into the atmosphere. This phenomenon most heavily impacts sites with a deep water table, an area below ground where soil is permanently saturated with water.

Currently, vehicle- and equipment-based measurements are used to monitor methane emissions at a regional scale.

These measurements do not identify gas migrations in individual oil wells. The study results conclude that multiple measurements must be made over time to ensure an accurate average quantification of fugitive gas emissions. Hydrogeological conditions and long-term changes in barometric pressure should also be taken into account when monitoring leaky wells.

Furthermore, in analyzing pressure deviation Forde’s team showed that “subsurface storage and barometric pressure fluctuations can lead to conditions that allow CH4 effluxes to occur after a leaking well has been repaired.” These findings are of special interest for monitoring abandoned oil wells.

Currently, 41.9 per cent of BC oil and gas wells are inactive or abandoned. Of the total number of wells in BC, only 17.4 per cent have been given a Certificate of Restoration document certifying that an abandoned well meets regulatory restoration requirements.

As of December 2018, there are 25,424 oil and gas wells in British Columbia. Approximately 30 per cent of BC wells have been found to be leaking. Of these leaking oil well sites, the top nine per cent were responsible for a majority of methane emissions. British Columbia is currently the only province in Canada that enforces oil well monitoring.

“Globally there are few regulations to monitor fugitivegas migration at oil and gas well pads,” said Forde. “Our results provide a framework to better understand, target and constrain fugitive gas migration at oil and gas well pads and will help mitigate risks for aquifer contamination, explosive hazards and atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions.” U

SPORTS+REC

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY

EDITOR SALOMON MICKO BENRIMOH

21

CHERRY POPPIED//

Letter from the Editor: The problem with Don Cherry Salomon Micko Benrimoh Sports Editor

I swear that I am not exaggerating when I say that I jumped up so high my head touched the ceiling.

I remember running to my mother yelling at the top of my lungs “We won! We won! We won!”

While not the biggest hockey fan, she still shared some of the excitement of what had just unfolded. But it was my father who was just as emotional as I was. We both sat in front of the TV with the biggest smiles on our faces as they handed out the gold medals and played the national anthem.

Sidney Crosby scoring the Golden Goal at the 2010 Olympic men’s hockey final against the USA will forever be one of the most memorable moments in my life.

I like to think that for my father, an Arab-Jewish immigrant from Morocco, it was as well.

For a man born just north of the Sahara, he loved Canada’s pastime on ice. Hockey was the way we connected with each other and how he was able to connect with Canadian culture himself. He came to Montréal, the birthplace of hockey itself, and was lucky enough to see the likes of Guy Lafleur, Ken Dryden, Larry Robinson and many more grace the coveted ice of the old Montréal Forum.

Even on my mother’s side, a family of Southern-Italian immigrants from a small village in Calabria, two of my cousins played minor hockey with one even getting an invite to the NHL draft. The first in my family to have been born in Canada, I even played a few seasons of house league.

We didn’t change who we are.

My cousins would leave their sticks in my aunt’s garage next to that

Cherry’s remarks, as well as a lot of comments surrounding them, have no place in hockey.

winter’s stock of tomatoes. Friday Shabbat dinners would sometimes start late because my father and I were glued to the TV watching the Canadiens. We are Italian and Moroccan, but hockey is what helped us feel Canadian.

That’s the beauty of hockey, how it can bring people together. When Crosby scored that goal, upwards of 80 per cent of the entire country had at least watched part of the game. When the Humboldt Broncos tragedy occurred, an entire nation mourned in unison while raising over $15 million dollars for the victims’ families.

Through good times and bad, hockey has been able to bring out the best in people in this country.

And that’s what Don Cherry has failed to recognize.

By now, the remarks Cherry

made toward immigrants in the lead up to Remembrance Day is old news. In case you missed it, the longtime Coach’s Corner host stated “You people that come here … whatever it is, you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you could pay a couple of bucks for a poppy.”

This is not the first time that Cherry has made fiery or problematic comments. The 38year veteran broadcaster had been known to always speak his mind regarding matters on or off the ice.

But history aside, the comments that he made towards immigrants in Canada were deservedly the final straw for him at Sportsnet. Cherry has since stated that “the silent majority” supports what he said and that it is just the “minority” that is being more vocal against him. While

@RESLUS

hard to believe, it doesn’t change the fact that by making those statements, you are ignoring the ability and nature of hockey to unite all Canadians across racial, religious and any other social divide.

Cherry is more than entitled to his own personal opinion surrounding people wearing or not wearing poppies in November, but to bring forth a position that will only divide viewers on a program that has brought people together for decades is uncalled for. Through 38 years working in broadcast, through decades of NHL games, Stanley Cup runs and Olympic finals, that’s something Cherry should have been able to recognize.

But what is just as infuriating are some of the responses to Cherry’s comments, most notably those made by CTV’s Jessica Allen, who

stated she doesn’t “worship at the altar of hockey,” that those who did “all tended to be white boys who weren’t, let’s say, very nice” and that parents should do something more worthwhile with the money they would spend on minor hockey.

Again, Allen is entitled to her own opinion but she is generalizing youth hockey players across the country and excluding marginalized and immigrant communities in a way that is not too different from what Don Cherry did.

The likes of Cherry and Allen’s comments are turning hockey into a political battleground and leaving out immigrant communities which are being fought over, many of whom have grown to love the game as much as both sides of mine have.

When I look back at the videos of the 2010 final, I love to watch a compilation of reactions to Crosby’s Golden Goal. It shows reactions spread across family homes, bars, restaurants and the city streets of major cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

Do you know what I see when I watch that video? I see tens of millions of people from all types of different backgrounds, people whose families have been here for centuries or months, all cheering in fervent excitement over a gamewinning goal that would go down in the annals of Canadian hockey history.

Hockey doesn’t have to be political all the time, especially when those who make it political are leaving out key populations that make up this country. For the countless immigrant families that dedicated parts of their lives to hockey like mine, hockey is the platform we use to connect with Canadian culture, not be separated from it. U

IN MEMORIAM//

What Eli Pasquale was to those he coached will not be forgotten

Brendan Smith Senior Staff Writer

In the February 10, 1981 issue of The Ubyssey, the featured sports story was about the results from a set of games between the UBC and University of Victoria (UVic) Vikes men’s basketball teams the previous weekend.

The magnitude of the series went beyond the traditional rivalry, as the UVic men were the defending Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union (CIAU, now U Sports) champions in basketball, and had beaten UBC in their previous matchup by 36 points.

But thanks to what sports writer Scott Macdonald called a “pathetic” shooting performance from UVic, UBC was to pull off the upset at War Memorial.

That loss would only be the second last time UVic would lose a conference game in the next three years, as they would go on to win six consecutive CIAU championships between 1979 and 1986.

One player who was responsible for five of those championships was guard Eli Pasquale who, it should be mentioned, did not have a “pathetic” performance that night as he led his team with 16 points.

To this day, the legacy of Eli

Pasquale and those UVic teams from the 1980s is well known, which was why it was heartbreaking to learn about his passing on November 4.

As someone who grew up playing basketball in Victoria, I was fortunate enough to not only have played and worked for him, but to also have lived in the same neighborhood.

As a coach, he was a terrific mentor to his players who were mostly teenagers or younger kids.

Eli created an environment where everyone felt included in a way that gave us a break from the social insecurity we faced at school.

My friends described him as someone who was always fair and cared about each and every player that he coached, adding that he was a role model and a “light” for basketball in Canada.

And while we knew that we were not going to play in the NBA, what Eli taught us on the basketball court could be applied to whatever we choose to do as adults.

I still remember working his camps in high school and watching the campers go silent once Eli began telling his story.

For those who don’t know his story, this is a brief summary: a boy becomes passionate about basketball around puberty and then, through a

relentless devotion to the game, that same scrawny kid from Sudbury goes on to win five CIAU championships and a gold medal at the 1983 Summer Universiade, beating a United States team led by future hall of famers Charles Barkley and Karl Malone in the semi-final.

It was a story I’d heard countless times yet one that still resonated because of its message that through hard work and discipline, great things can happen to anyone.

One time during a practice, I remember Eli decided to defend us each, one-on-one, full court.

Keep in mind that my teammates and I were spry teenagers and Eli had supposedly been ‘retired’ from basketball for years. Yet that still did not prevent him from stopping us from scoring by stealing the ball, or in my case, blocking my shot.

That humbling experience remains a fond memory.

Another one is when I talked to coach this past summer. It was only a couple years after he and his wife had moved into a house one street over from where my parents lived, so I would usually see him when I was home on break. It was nearing the end of the summer, and I remember that we were both out for a walk and enjoying the nice weather. At that time, I was

concerned about the upcoming semester, and rather saddened by the end of another relaxing summer, so it felt nice to hear someone ask how you are doing and wish you good luck at school in the fall. It was

a small but meaningful interaction that showed he was someone who looked out for his players outside the arena.

After all, that is what the best coaches do. U

Pasquale led the Vikes to victory in the next game of that 1981 series.

FILE ARNOLD HEDSTROM

22 | SPORTS+REC | TUESDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2019 CLIMATE IN CRISIS //

Climate Comeback illustrates the roles athletes can take in combating the climate crisis Brendan Smith Senior Staff Writer

Less than a month after the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Marni Abbott-Peter was in town for the 1996 Summer Paralympics.

As a member of the Canada women’s wheelchair basketball team, Abbot-Peter would help lead her team to the gold medal, beating the Netherlands in the final. It was the secondconsecutive Paralympic gold medal for the Canadian women’s wheelchair basketball team and they would later extend it to three after capturing another gold medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Since then, no other Canadian team has accomplished this feat.

A few years after retiring, Abbot-Peter was approached by Grace Nosek, student director for the UBC Climate Hub, about appearing in a video.

“Grace asked me if I would be interested,” said Abbot-Peter in an interview. “It sounded like a cool project so I said yes.”

Released this past October, the video was called Climate Comeback and was meant to highlight the connections between perseverance in sport and climate justice.

In the video, athletes describe a significant moment in their sporting careers, such as a lifechanging injury or devastating loss, that propelled them to be more resilient and eventually led them to success.

As executive producer of the project, Nosek explained that the idea for the video came from the conversations she had with her father. “[I had] been trying to think about interesting ways that engage people,” she began.

“And my dad, from outside of Philadelphia, went regaling me of these tales of these elaborate comeback that the [Philadelphia] Eagles would make.

“And I started to see parallels with how we don’t know what is going to happen with the future in climate, but there’s these real stories of the triumph of human will in sports comebacks, particularly coming back from injury, and coming together with your team and making this beautiful thing happen out of defeat.”

Nosek notes that the hub also has previously held Climate Ambassador workshops with UBC Athletics, mentioning that turnout for the events is usually high.

“What we have been trying to do is tailor an entry point for [athletes] to come in and to know how they can use skill set and their platform to really advance climate justice,’’ Nosek said, adding that the overall goal of UBC Climate Hub is to empower new audiences to become ambassadors for climate justice.

Another athlete in Climate Comeback was Aspen Ono. A master’s student in environmental science at UBC, Ono felt that getting involved

Sport and climate justice are much more closely related than most people would think.

with UBC Climate Hub was a great opportunity to connect her school work with previous experience as a competitive figure skater.

When asked why other student athletes should get involved in climate justice projects such as Climate Comeback, Ono suggests that the popularity of studentathletes can make them role models in initiating climate action.

“Student athletes, especially at the university level, are one of the most visible groups on campuses,”she said. “[Studentathletes] are role models whether [they] like it or not, [so] why not be role models in other realms.”

“If [climate justice is] something you care about, and you have a voice, and you have a platform, why wouldn’t you use it.”

At the end of the video, three phrases referring to actions that an individual — ­ whether they are an athlete or not — can take to advance climate justice appear: (1) voice your climate concerns to friends and family, (2) volunteer for climate organizations, and (3) vote.

Ono explained the last point was especially pertinent given that the video was released just before the federal election.

And although Ono does not deny that recycling and being environmentally friendly are important actions, she believes that the video was more about encouraging climate activism.

“If we talk about being environmentally friendly or being green, people immediately say ‘Oh I need to recycle’ or ‘Oh I need to be an activist,’” she said.

“To show your climate activism is to vote for people who are going to change the system because when we change regulations, and when we change the politicians and power, they can change the systems, and

that puts regulations on the big industries that are actually the biggest contributors.”

“So systemic change and saying voting is being a climate activist was something I think we were really trying to demonstrate [in the video].”

In the press release for Climate Comeback, UBC Climate Hub outlined the current situation

ALEX VANDERPUT

regarding the climate crisis, including an announcement from the United Nations that there is less than 11 years to minimize the impending consequences from the climate crisis.

Although the Hub is optimistic that people, especially studentathletes, are ready to take climate action to prevent these consequences, there are still

skeptics about the relevance of the climate crisis.

But what better way to try and unite people in the fight against the climate crisis than through the world of sport? A world that has proven itself time and time again as one that can unite people over one cause or event and one that spawns role models that the next generation look up to. U

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 TUESDAY | SPORTS+REC | 23

WEEKEND RUNDOWN Attieh, Oxland shine in weekend sweep for women’s volleyball Tanner McGrath Staff Writer

After losing three straight games, the Thunderbirds bounced back by sweeping their weekend doubleheader against the University of Calgary Dinos, winning in straight sets on both Friday and Saturday night.

The two wins bring the T-Birds’ conference record to 5–3.

The ’Birds looked fresh coming off their Canada West bye week, jumping out ahead early to take a 10–5 first-set lead Friday night. The Dinos would come back to tie it, but the ’Birds fought off the comeback and took the first set 25–19.

The next two sets ended up being more of the same, as the ’Birds won the second set 25–20 and the third set 25–21.

Saturday night’s match certainly tested the ’Birds more, as they were tied with the Dinos at 12–12 in both the first and second sets.

However, in both sets, the ’Birds dominated the Dinos down the stretch, eventually winning the first set 25–19 and the second set 25–15.

The Dinos came into the third set with renewed energy and at one point led the ’Birds 16–12. However, third-year Gabrielle Attieh led the comeback, picking up four kills on the way to tying the set 16–16 and then picking up two more as the ’Birds won the set — and the match — 25–20.

Attieh was unstoppable both nights, posting a combined 36 kills and staying on par as one of the highest scoring players in Canada West. Additionally, Kayla Oxland entered the doubleheader third in Canada West in assists, and posted another 76 combined over the weekend.

“We got beat up pretty bad two weeks ago,” coach Doug Riemer said.

“But we had a bye weekend and a lot of time to prep, and I think we saw some real progress this weekend, especially tonight, in terms of our play.

“Overall, we should be encouraged.”

Thunderbirds women’s volleyball looks forward to another home doubleheader next weekend against the Thompson Rivers WolfPack. U

AMAN SRIDHAR

Gabrielle Attieh spikes the ball to the Dinos’ side.

SCORE BOX Sport

Home

Score

Away

Friday, November 15

1–4

UBC

UBC

7–1

Lethbridge

UNBC

80–63

UBC

UNBC

96–78

UBC

Women’s Volleyball

UBC

3–0

Calgary

Men’s Volleyball

UBC

3–0

Calgary

Lethbridge

0–5

UBC

Women’s Hockey

Tyler Sandhu scored four goals over the weekend, leading the T-Birds to their first sweep of the season.

SALOMON MICKO BENRIMOH

T-Birds earn first weekend sweep of the season Diana Hong Staff Writer

The UBC Thunderbirds finished the weekend with the back-to-back win against the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns, getting a 7–1 win on Friday and 5–0 shutout on Saturday.

Needless to say, head coach Sven Butenschön was satisfied with the team’s performance this weekend.

“I think we’ve been playing really good hockey. We haven’t been getting the results, so the challenge for the team was just doing what we are doing. Eventually you are going to start scoring goals and get the results you are looking for. The only challenge we gave them was to stick to it,” Butenschön said.

Friday’s game was all about team captain Tyler Sandhu, who scored four times on the power play and earned his first career Canada West hat trick.

The T-Birds carried the momentum through to Saturday’s game, starting off strong with a first goal by Quentin Greenwood just under three minutes into the first period. Colton Kehler added another in the first period, which was assisted by Sandhu and Austin Glover.

Although the T-Birds were up by 3–0 by the end of the second period, they kept the Pronghorns away from their end and preserved Patrick Dea’s shutout.

Backstopped by great defensive

play, Maxwell James finished off the game with his second goal of the weekend off assists from Carter Popoff and Austin Vetterl, giving the T-Birds a 5–0 win.

Butenschön hopes the team will continue this positive momentum for next weekend, when the T-Birds face the Mount Royal University Cougars.

“I know we had some tough days in the beginning of the year … if those losses at the beginning of the year taught us to play the right way when we go to Mount Royal, then that’s important … They [have] a highly offensive team, so we are going to have to be good defensively and it’s going to be a really exciting weekend for us,” Butenschön added. U

Men’s Hockey Women’s Basketball Men’s Basketball

Lethbridge

Saturday, November 16

Women’s Hockey Men’s Hockey

UBC

5–0

Lethbridge

Women’s Basketball

UNBC

62–80

UBC

Men’s Basketball

UNBC

66–88

UBC

Women’s Volleyball

UBC

3–0

Calgary

Men’s Volleyball

UBC

3–0

Calgary

24 | GAMES | TUESDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2019

COURTESY KRAZYDAD.COM

COURTESY BESTCROSSWORDS.COM

CROSSWORD PUZZLE

#UBYSSEYHASTIKTOK To keep relevant with the youth, we now have a TikTok account.

Visit our TikTok @theubyssey for memetastic vids.

Notice of Development Permit Application - DP 19034

Public Open House TEF4

Join us on December 5, 2019 to review the proposed Technology Enterprise Facility 4 - an addition to the existing group of TEF buildings which provide market office and lab space for UBC research partners.

Date: Thursday, December 5, 2019 Time: 4:00 - 6:00 PM Place: Atrium, Pharmaceutical Sciences Building, 2405 Wesbrook Mall Plans will be displayed for a 13-storey office/lab building with a tenant rooftop amenity space, ground floor commercial retail units, one level of underground parking, and courtyard landscaping.

Representatives from the project team and Campus & Community Planning will be available to provide information and respond to inquiries about this project.

For further information:

N

ACROSS 1. Mosque leader; 5. Way out there; 9. Architectural piers; 14. Hindu queen; 15. Nixon pal Rebozo; 16. Animal; 17. Aardvark’s prey; 18. Symbolic; 20. Deep-space energy source; 22. Feel bad; 23. 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet; 24. Current choice; 26. Extended family unit; 28. Inhabiting caves; 32. Get back for; 36. Summer mo.; 37. Continue a subscription; 39. Continental identity of a Chinese person; 40. Soared; 42. Grandmas; 44. Origin; 45. Curved letters; 47. Flowering tree of Hawaii; 49. Second-century date; 50. Impede; 52. Singalong; 54. Milne creation; 56. Woodwind instrument; 57. Ralph Lauren brand; 60. Scale notes; 62. Ancient; 66. Drupe; 69. Island feast; 70. Belle or Bart; 71. New Age musician John; 72. Opera singer Pinza; 73. Skater Harding; 74. Fictional governess; 75. Curtain holders;

DOWN 1. Kirkuk’s country; 2. Hindu lawgiver; 3. Projecting columns at end of wall; 4. Book of prayers; 5. City of northeast Scotland; 6. Not masc.; 7. Benny, Björn, Anni-Frid, and Agnetha; 8. Piece of history; 9. 1972 treaty subj.; 10. Proximity; 11. London gallery; 12. Sale condition; 13. Work with acid; 19. Jazzy Fitzgerald; 21. Rent-___; 25. Artificial waterway; 27. The second Mrs. Sinatra; 28. More secure; 29. It’s often taken after exercise; 30. Toss, as one’s cookies?; 31. Hawaiian state birds; 33. Bridget Fonda, to Jane; 34. Some Celts; 35. Break up; 38. Yippee!; 41. Guns, knives, etc.; 43. Bask; 46. Hit sign; 48. Awestruck; 51. Tip, in a way; 53. Trial balloon; 55. Poker Flat chronicler; 57. Hey!; 58. Camp Swampy canine; 59. Mortgage, for example; 61. Chop ___; 63. Greek liqueur; 64. Put down; 65. Couples; 67. Big time; 68. Leb. neighbor;

U

did you know that . . .

Dolly Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” in the same night.

— Laura F. Send your best facts to visuals@ubyssey.ca to be featured in next week’s issue!

Please direct questions to Karen Russell, Manager, Development Services karen.russell@ubc.ca 604-822-1586

Can’t attend in person?

Online feedback on TEF4 will be accepted until December 12, 2019.

To learn more or to comment on this project, please visit: planning.ubc.ca/vancouver/projects-consultations