January 10, 2013 by The Ubyssey

RETURN OF THE EDITORS sIncE 1918

uBc’s oFFIcIaL stuDEnt nEWspapEr | JanuarY 10, 2013 | VoLuME XcIV| IssuE XXXI

intERESt-FREE LoanS? UBC oﬀers discounted mortgages to draw in top talent p3

THE UBYSSEY

GOING GREENER

LockoUt

LoVE T-Birds teach Canucks “just to have fun”

Dept. of forest science adds “conservation” to their name p3

PuSh

SAMPLER

Our recommendations for this year’s festival p4

Performance art meets ﬁlm at AMS Art Gallery p4

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013 |

YOUR GUIDE TO UBC EVENTS + PEOPLE

What’s on 1210

Tue

OUR CAMPUS

This week, may we suggest...

ONE ON ONE WITH THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE UBC

Geography >>

THURSDAY

Volcano Monitoring Seminar: 4 p.m. @ Earth Sciences Building, Room 5104-06 Jeff Witter of the International Volcano Monitoring Fund delivers a talk outlining volcano hazard mitigation and monitoring work in Guatemala. Free. Tue 1211

Tue 1212

FOOD >>

FRIDAY

sports >>

SATURDAY

Pizza making party: 4 p.m. @ St. Mark’s College

David Wilson has coached the UBC wrestling team since 2006.

The Catholic Student Association will be making pizza, so test your culinary skills. Free.

Tue 1213

paper >>

SUNDAY

Ubyssey production: 12 p.m. @ SUB 24 Most of our editorial staff is away at a national conference. Help us publish Monday’s issue and get free dinner. Tue 1214

UBC REC vs. SFU REC Classic: All day @ Student Recreation Centre and War Memorial Gym

REC champions represent their respective universities in this 6th annual gladiatorial battle to the death. The seas will run red. Visit rec.ubc.ca for more info.

philosophy >>

MONDAY

The Meaning of Life: Why We Can’t Reach a Definition: 8 p.m. @ Coach House (6201 Cecil Green Park Rd.)

Haley M. Sapers lectures on astrobiology, the Curiosity rover, and how we define what it means to be alive. Free.

Got an event you’d like to see on this page? Send your event and your best pitch to printeditor@ubyssey.ca.

Video content Make sure to check out the Ubyssey Weekly Show, airing now at ubyssey. ca/videos/.

U The Ubyssey

editorial

STAFF

Features Editor Coordinating Editor Natalya Kautz Jonny Wakefield coordinating@ubyssey.ca features@ubyssey.ca

Bryce Warnes, Josh Curran, Peter Wojnar, Anthony Poon, Veronika Bondarenko, Yara Van Kessel, Lu Zhang, Catherine Guan, Ginny Monaco, Arno Rosenfeld, Matt Meuse, Hogan Wong, Rory Gattens, Brandon Chow, Joseph Ssettuba. Tyler McRobbie, Sarah Bigam, Stephanie Xu

Managing Editor, Print Jeff Aschkinasi printeditor@ubyssey.ca

Video Editor David Marino video@ubyssey.ca

Managing Editor, Web Andrew Bates webeditor@ubyssey.ca

Copy Editor Karina Palmitesta copy@ubyssey.ca

News Editors Will McDonald + Laura Rodgers news@ubyssey.ca

Art Director Kai Jacobson art@ubyssey.ca

Senior News Writer Ming Wong mwong@ubyssey.ca Culture Editor Anna Zoria culture@ubyssey.ca Senior Culture Writer Rhys Edwards redwards@ubyssey.ca Sports + Rec Editor CJ Pentland sports@ubyssey.ca

CONTACT

Business Manager Fernie Pereira fpereira@ubyssey.ca

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LEGAL

The Ubyssey is the official student newspaper of the University of British Columbia. It is published every Monday and Thursday by The Ubyssey Publications Society. We are an autonomous, democratically Layout Artist run student organization, and all students are encouraged to Collyn Chan participate. cchan@ubyssey.ca Editorials are chosen and written by the Ubyssey staff. Videographer They are the expressed opinion of the staff, and do not necSoo Min Park essarily reflect the views of The spark@ubyssey.ca Ubyssey Publications Society or the University of British CoWebmaster lumbia. All editorial content appearing in The Ubyssey is Riley Tomasek webmaster@ubyssey.ca the property of The Ubyssey Publications Society. Stories, opinions, photographs and art-

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BUSINESS

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work 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. Letters to the editor must be under 300 words. Please include your phone number, student number and signature (not for publication) as well as your year and faculty with all submissions. ID will be checked when submissions are dropped off at the editorial office of The Ubyssey; otherwise verification will be done by phone. The Ubyssey reserves the right to edit sub-

Wilson pins down wrestling at UBC Raul Arambula Contributor

UBC wrestling coach David Wilson’s first foray into sports was playing goalie for his junior high school’s hockey team in Springhill, Nova Scotia. He quickly earned the nickname “Red Light,” because whenever the opposing team would score a goal, a red light above the net would blink on. “Once you get a nickname like Red Light, that’s when you know that hockey is not for you,” said Wilson. Instead, Wilson moved on to the school’s wrestling team. In the beginning, he said, he was not really good at the sport. He considered himself a “creative and unorthodox wrestler. They would show me a move, and I would just make it my own.” It wasn’t until high school that he met good coaches who introduced him to the art — and technique — of wrestling. “I started to love wrestling … and technique,” he said. “I loved doing a move that no-

body else was thinking.” He quickly excelled in the sport, and after graduating from high school, he was one of Atlantic Canada’s top young wrestlers. Wilson was recruited by Concordia University, where he joined the Montreal Wrestling Club. In the years that followed, he wrestled under the tutelage of renowned wrestling coach Dr. Victor Zilberman and trained alongside Olympic medalists. Despite his love of the sport, Wilson admitted the wrestling world is brutal. “Many quit after high school. There’s no money on this. There’s no dream to play professionally. You can dream to go to the Olympics, which only handfuls actually get to go.” In 2006, Wilson came to UBC and volunteered to become a wrestling coach. He was the one who single-handedly started the university’s wrestling program. “I made it into a club. We practiced and received support

from parents. We had a small budget and we went from there.” In the years that followed, Wilson has worked to establish the club as an official UBC varsity team. There have been plenty of negotiations, but he has seen no concrete results. “They never saw wrestling as part of a roster of sports,” he said. “We lobbied with them about wrestling and we’ve been doing that since I’ve been on board.” Under his guidance, the Wrestling Club has become a centre for student wrestlers from countries around the world, including Japan and Argentina. Wilson even invites his Olympic class friends to teach his students some moves and skills. Wilson emphasized that wrestling teaches far-reaching skills. He motivates his pupils daily to work hard and not give up. “If you excel on the mat, you can excel off the mat.” U

1. Send us your flash fiction & poetry

JANUARY 10, 2013 | Volume XCIV| Issue XXXI

Ad Sales Ben Chen bchen@ubyssey.ca

Josh curran photo/ THE UBYSSEY

missions for length and clarity. All letters must be received by 12 noon the day before intended publication. Letters received after this point will be published in the following issue unless there is an urgent time restriction or other matter deemed relevant by the Ubyssey staff. 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 ad.

2. Get published The Ubyssey’s annual creative writing contest is open for submissions! Send us your original, unpublished works of flash fiction and poetry. You could be published in the paper and win some cold, hard cash.

RULES

• Email submissions by Feb. 1, 2013 • 300-500 words for flash fiction • 1 page or less for poetry

Visit ubyssey.ca/literary/ for full submission guidelines.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013 |

EDITORS WILL Mcdonald + laura rodgers

Money >>

Sustainability >>

WHO GOT THE MONEY?

UBC GIVES $11.8 MILLION IN INTEREST-FREE LOANS “UBC requires [Student SHHS TOTAL COSTS: Housing] to take out $8 MILLION LOAN internal loans for building PAYMENT 10% new residences from the UBC endowment, and charges profit seeking levels of interest on these internal loans of $18 MILLION approximately 5.75%. UBC INTEREST OTHER BACK TO UBC is lending to a part of itself $51 MILLION and requiring a highly profitable return.”

13 LOANS VALUING

$500,000+ $600,000+ 7 CURRENT AND FORMER DEANS Arts, Science, Sauder, Medicine, Law

IN TOTAL: 47 LOANS TO UBC’S HIGHEST PAID

REFERENCE + DATA: STUDENT HOUSING REPORT, ALMA MATER SOCIETY 2012, UBCINSIDERS

COLLYN CHAN GRAPHIC/THE UBYSSEY

Interest-free loans for faculty, admin total $11.8 million Arno Rosenfeld Staff Writer

UBC’s practice of offering interest-free housing loans to recruit select faculty is more widespread than previously known, according to information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The university currently has outstanding personal loans totalling $11.8 million offered to administrators and top-level faculty. The Ubyssey has also learned that the loans, administered by the UBC Treasury and referred to as “interest-free” by human resources, do in fact have interest charged on them. UBC Treasurer Peter Smailes said that the faculty of the individual given the loan picks up the tab for interest. “We don’t charge the individual, but the actual faculty pays for it,” Smailes said. For example, in the case of university librarian Ingrid Parent, the UBC Library pays the interest on

NEWS BRIEFS Man missing from UBC hospital found Cory Krushell, a 21-year-old patient at UBC Hospital, was found on Tuesday after he went missing for three days. Krushell disappeared after he left the hospital for a walk last Saturday night. He was found Tuesday when a Coast Mountain Bus Company driver recognized him at the UBC bus loop around 8 a.m. According to Sgt. Peter Thiessen of the RCMP, it appears Krushell went to Surrey and back, but details of his trip are unknown. “At this point we haven’t been able to determine where exactly he went and why. He required some medical attention first,” Thiessen said. UBC graduate may have violated probation for Stanley Cup riot UBC graduate Camille Cacnio has been accused of violating the terms of her probation for participating in the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot. Cacnio was sentenced to two years of probation for participating in a riot. Cacnio was caught on camera taking men’s clothing from Black and Lee Formal Wear on Jan. 15, 2011. Her sentence included 150 hours of community service and a 10 p.m. curfew. Cacnio has a court date scheduled for Jan. 14. U

her $600,000 housing loan. Parent is tied for the largest loan with Sauder School of Business Dean Robert Helsley, whose faculty is also paying the interest on his loan. UBC defends the practice of offering the loans, currently numbering 47, as common among top universities and essential for attracting quality professors and administrators to Vancouver. “Because of the cost of housing in Vancouver, UBC would be unable to recruit outstanding faculty without some kind of housing assistance,” Vice-President Human Resources Lisa Castle said in a December interview. Offering interest-free loans is not a common practice in recruiting employees in the private sector, according to Denise Baker, associate dean of the Sauder School of Business and an expert in recruitment. “I am not aware of very many companies who offer interest-free loans,” Baker said. “If it does hap-

pen, it is at the very high executive level and would be negotiated and not standard practice.” Other universities in Canada vary in their approach to offering loans to their faculty. Simon Fraser University has a process for offering subsidized loans to their faculty. But Doug Thorpe-Doward, SFU’s director of academic relations, did not comment on whether SFU offered any interest-free loans in the model of UBC’s executive loan program. Dawn Palmer, associate vice-president of human resources at Langara College, said she was unaware of any such loans being offered to Langara faculty. However, Palmer noted that in her previous human resources job at Provincial Health, the hospital she worked for offered such loans to attract doctors to Vancouver. A spokesperson for the University of Toronto said in a written statement, “Some of our divisions may use [interest-free loans] as a re-

cruitment tool.” The spokesperson added, “It is not a program run centrally at the university.” AMS VP Academic and University Affairs Kiran Mahal said the university needs to get creative to make housing more affordable for students, not just faculty and administrators. A great deal of the rent students pay for housing on campus is used to pay interest on money loaned from the UBC Endowment to UBC Housing. Mahal said that the university could save students a significant amount of money on rent if the university cut the interest rate for student housing. “The same consideration needs to be given to students.… We face exactly the same constraints of the Vancouver housing market … and don’t have as high earning potential as these top-level administrators. So it’s time for the university to look at student housing the same way,” said Mahal. U —With files from Neal Yonson

Medicine >>

Health-related programs to integrate Ming Wong Senior News Writer

Dietetics and dentistry may not have much in common at first glance — but that’s about to change at UBC. The university is working to integrate a wide variety of health-related disciplines, from nutrition to kinesiology to nursing to medicine. “What we really want to do is to have people in health professions work together, train together, do research together,” said Hugh Brock, associate provost of academic innovation. UBC’s goal is to have a model that reflects the global trend of patient-focused health care. Instead of having patients be treated by different health professionals for separate diagnoses, the patient would be treated in one spot by a team. The buzzword is “interprofessional,” and UBC wants that idea to be prominent in its health-related education, practice and research. The basic structure of all the faculties will remain the same. But the Schools of Nursing and Kinesiology will be moved out of the Faculties of Applied Sciences and Education to undetermined locations. Other changes include a joint admissions office for the health professions and streamlining services such as IT and human resources.

Forestry renames department to include word ‘conservation’

2 LOANS VALUING

23%

“Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy — we teach similar courses. We do research in similar areas,” said Chuck Shuler, dean of the Faculty of Dentistry. “The concept is how can we get all these people who are now separated by ... faculty type barrier[s], how can we get them talking together and be productive.” Shuler sees potential in Dentistry collaborating with dietetics. “What you eat is probably related to how [many] cavities you have and things like that, and we don’t have a good link to them [at the moment].” At one point, UBC considered a super-sized “Faculty of Health” for all disciplines. But Brock said that idea has been scrapped, with the university focusing on integration instead. Ideas currently being discussed include integrated teaching on topics such as ethics, collaborative research among different disciplines, and clinical placements with trainees. “I think that students can hope for a more coordinated approach to training future health care professionals,” said Brock, putting emphasis on going out to the field in teams. Currently, the operating budget for the Faculty of Medicine is larger than all of the other health professional departments combined. Shuler isn’t too worried

that Dentistry and other smaller departments will be compromised, but he acknowledged that others might feel differently. “In an academic institution, you’re always protecting your territory, like turf wars. So I think there probably are some [faculties] that are resisting, but at this point … it’s too early to say.” Cindy Pan, a second-year pharmacy student, likes the idea of seeing more interprofessional practices within the health disciplines, but she said she’s concerned that those practices may be happening too early for students who don’t have enough depth in their studies. “One of the drawbacks of trying to encourage this collaboration so early on is that you don’t know enough about your own profession and you don’t know the boundaries of your own profession,” she said. “I think that will be kind of cool, to get to know people from different faculties and stuff like that, and to get a different outlook on things,” added first-year kinesiology student Claire Boothe. Brock said the announcement of the integration will be made later this month. He is hopeful it will be implemented by the summer. “There’s pretty good consensus that health care of the future will be very different from health care of now, and UBC needs to move in that direction.” U

Ivan Yastrebov FILE PHOTO/THE UBYSSEY

The Faculty of Forestry rebrands for greener image.

Will McDonald News Editor

A department in the Faculty of Forestry is giving itself a facelift. On Jan. 1, the department of forest science changed its name to the department of forest conservation science. Department head John Richardson said the name change reflects the department’s focus over the last few years. Only three of the department’s 20 faculty members have degrees in forestry. “Forest sciences itself kind of has the implication of thinking about growing trees better to have more trees cut down.... Very few of us are actually doing things like that,” said Richardson. Conservation is usually considered to fall under other departments, such as biology, ecology and botany. But Dean of Forestry John Innes said the faculty plans to work with other disciplines rather than overlap. Innes added that the name change is related to the faculty’s image as a whole. “The name change may increase the numbers of students who are interested in [conservation], because they don’t necessarily find it when they are searching for potential courses at UBC,” said Innes. “That’s something we have been working on fairly carefully over the last three or four years, trying to ensure that people understand what we actually do.” Innes said the changes toward sustainability were happening through the whole faculty, but Richardson said he didn’t think the faculty as a whole would change its name to reference sustainability. “The world of forestry is just too big and it just didn’t seem to fit for the faculty. But it does fit well for our department within Forestry,” said Richardson. “I think there’s just too much momentum.… I think that’s going to just stay the way it is.” Third-year kinesiology student David Bai thought the new name was a good idea. “Everybody wants to be green nowadays. Green has ceased to be just a colour and more of an adjective, so [it’s] great for them,” said Bai. Innes said the faculty continues to work on its perception in campus. “I’m hoping that the image we’re conveying is one of stewardship of a finite resource. We are trying to … get over that we are concerned about sustainability and sustainable management of resources and we’d like to get over that we go well beyond forest,” said Innes. U

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013 |

EDITOR ANNA ZORIA

performance art >>

Break the fourth wall at the AMS Art Gallery

Film-influenced performance art pieces will be interactive, thought-provoking Rhys Edwards Senior Culture Writer

will feature audience interaction. There are also sculptural and filmbased elements: during the show, each artist will be arranged in tableaux-vivants around the gallery space. At certain points, the artists will “come to life” to perform their pieces, which make use of photography, film projection, digital manipulation and even VHS. “With film and performance art, film is not experienced in real time, whereas performance art is,” noted Dreisinger. “So it’s interesting to mesh the two and make it live, without making it theatre.” Although the event will not feature viscerally shocking performances, the organizers hope that In a Celluloid Garden will be a non-linear, thought-provoking experience that leads to further creative experiments in the future. “I think of performance as ritual,” said McCloskey. “The roots of performance are in ritual, and in ritual you create a space that is dreamlike. It’s extra-sensory.” U

he term “performance art” is much maligned, and little understood. It often conjures up confused, alienating imagery: rambling provocateurs reading poetry, smearing their bodies with a variety of liquids and injuring themselves while solemn-faced audiences look on. On Jan. 15, several visual arts students hope to change this preconception. In a Celluloid Garden, a special event held in the AMS Art Gallery, will feature a series of live performance art informed by the medium of film. A live screening of Stanley Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut, will follow. The event is open to the public. “We left it deliberately open so that it wouldn’t be closed off or esoteric to people who just wanted to check out the gallery space,” said Katherine Enns, a performer in the show and a fourth-year BFA student. “It’s also kind of fun because no one that I know of really knows what performance art is. It’s a really vague definition,... so it’s kind of fun to give people that ability of, ‘Here, this is what performance art is,’ and expose them to that.” According to Olivia Dreisinger, a volunteer at the gallery and one of the performers in the show, In a Celluloid Garden will expose the public to performance art and promote connections between

kai jacobson/The UBYSSEY

In a Celluloid Garden will exhibit at the AMS Art Gallery on Jan. 15.

In a Celluloid Garden will exhibit at the AMS Art Gallery on Jan. 15. Performances run from 6-7 p.m., film screening from 7-10 p.m. Entrance by donation.

various clubs and organizations on campus. “[We wanted to] foster an actual community on campus,” remarked Dreisinger, who is a fourth-year English honours student. Although the artists come from different backgrounds and majors, they share a common experience: they all took VISA 390, the new performance art class in the departments of art history and

visual arts. UBC is one of the only institutions in Canada to offer this course at an undergraduate level. Now, In a Celluloid Garden will provide an opportunity for the artists to collaborate outside of the classroom and engage with the public. Hailey McCloskey, a senior anthropology student who will also be performing in the show, remembers her experiences with

em>

the course fondly: “Learning about performance art [as] a different conceptual way of presenting ideas opened the ways that you can interact with an audience, and create a ground that is kind of obscure but also very accessible.” In a Celluloid Garden will be the first performance-based show at the AMS Art Gallery, which often hosts exhibitions of student work. Several of the performances

push festival >>

Performances to PuSh you through the second semester

Jane Jun Staff Writer

Ride the Cyclone

I, Malvolio

For many, January is the most depressing month of the year: the glitz and glam of the holidays has subsided, and the cold weather has set in. But lucky for us Vancouverites, The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is here to liven the city up for the ninth year in a row. We’ve combed the choices at PuSh 2013 to bring you our top five recommendations in entertainment, humour, drama, dance and performance. Still not convinced to shell out dough for the tickets? PuSh is an acronym for “persist until something happens” — and if that isn’t a poster on your dorm room wall already, then it should be.

Feeling nostalgic about high school? Ride the Cyclone might bring up some memories, as it tells the story of a high school chamber choir from Uranium, Saskatchewan that falls victim to a fatal rollercoaster accident. A fortune teller brings them back from the dead for one final performance, in which each member is given a chance to tell the world about their dreams and ambitions. A darkly humourous and musical masterpiece, Ride the Cyclone covers a multitude of genres, including hip-hop, Broadway and cabaret. If you’re into Glee , musical drama and coming-of-age stories, then this show will be worth checking out.

If you’re taking Renaissance studies or any course that requires research of Shakespeare, then I, Malvolio will provide a lighthearted segue into your term. In this hilarious re-make of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night , celebrated U.K. theatre artist Tim Crouch turns the spotlight on Malvolio, a lowly steward fooled into thinking that his one-sided love for his mistress, Countess Olivia, is finally being returned. By the end of the play, your opinion of this typically ridiculed character might be changed forever.

Haptic + Holistic Strata

Are you often tempted to skim a few passages while reading? Then perhaps you need to pay a visit to the Human Library, where you are guaranteed to find a book that you literally can’t put down. The Human Library, organized by UBC MFA grad Dave Deveau, offers “human books” in a variety of genres, from schizophrenic to sex therapist. The concept is simple: over the course of several days, the Vancouver Public Library will host 30 human books, who will be available for “check out” by the general public. When a visitor “checks out” a human book, he or she will have the opportunity to have a one-onone conversation with the person behind the title. One thing’s for sure: the person you end up choosing is bound to be more interesting than that macroeconomics textbook on your shelf.

If the constant grey of Vancouver rain is getting you down, then perhaps witnessing layers of colour unfold onstage for an hour will lift your spirits. In his performance show, Haptic + Holistic Strata , Japanese artist Hiroaki Umeda dazzles with his use of strobe lighting, booming music and a variety of dance forms from ballet to street. Umeda, who began dancing at the age of 20, also has experience as a choreographer and a sound, image and lighting designer. Using his vast range of skills, he aims to bring literally sensational experiences to his audiences: think So You Think You Can Dance on acid meets performance art.

Human Library

Sad Sack, By Night Watching the rain drip down the windows of Koerner Library day after day can get you down. Sad Sack, By Night fully explores that feeling. Organized by Vancouver artist Vanessa Kwan, the show features an artistic expression of West Coast depression. Guest entertainers include a variety of Canadian talents, such as former host of CBC radio show Nightlines , David Wisdom; radical psychoanalyst Andrew Feldmar; and Canadian musical duo Hello, Blue Roses. The performance hopes to provide the audience with a welcome escape from the gloom and melancholy of the rainy season. U

More online For show locations and ticket prices, visit pushfestival.ca.

photo courtesy of push

I, Malvolio is a fiendish reimagining of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013 |

EDItor C.J. PENTLAND

KaI JacoBson/thE uBYssEY

there’s sweet hockey still rocking the pit.

Pubs hoping for NHL to boost business Laura Rodgers News editor

ED nG/thE uBYssEY

the canucks and the thunderbirds take to the ice for hockey practice.

T-Birds, Canucks together at last Two teams practice side by side during NHL lockout C.J. Pentland Sports + Rec editor

While the Vancouver Canucks were locked out of their NHL season, the players needed to do something to stay in game shape. Some went to Europe and others back home, but a select few decided to stay in Vancouver — and more specifically, at UBC, alongside the UBC Thunderbirds men’s hockey team. The Canucks won’t be on campus much longer, as NHL training camp starts up next week, but their time here has been well received by all. Not only have the Thunderbirds received an unprecedented wealth of knowledge — learning face-off tips from

Manny Malhotra and how to play the point by Dan Hamhuis and Kevin Bieksa can only be beneficial — but the ’Birds have also been heralded for their positive impact on the Canucks. By allowing the Canucks to practice with them, the T-Birds were able to keep the pros in shape for the upcoming season. “It was great; we’re really thankful just to be part of a team throughout this past couple of months,” said Canucks captain Henrik Sedin. “It’s been huge for the couple of guys who’ve been staying here. We’re thankful; they kept us sharp in practice and I think it’s going to help us.” Sedin also praised the high level

of the T-Birds’ skill. “I think [their skill level] would surprise a lot of people,” said Sedin after a practice on Tuesday that was led by UBC head coach Milan Dragicevic. “A couple times you relax a little bit and they deke you and make you look foolish. They’re good players. “They got a good chance here, going to school and getting to play hockey at the same time, and they’re strong.” Sedin added that the Canucks actually learned a thing or two from their less experienced counterparts on the ice. “[We learned] just to have fun,” said Sedin. “For us, just to be a part of the team, they’re having a

lot of fun and that’s what you have to do, no matter where you play. Whether it’s here or if you play for the Canucks, you have to enjoy the game.” The Canucks’ involvement on campus even continued off the ice: they spent an afternoon taking on the CIS No. 1 ranked UBC women’s volleyball team in a scrimmage. The lockout wasn’t an ideal situation for anyone involved in hockey, but it’s clear that both sides here were able to make the most of it. UBC won’t be getting their name etched on the Stanley Cup if the Vancouver Canucks manage to take it home in 2013, but they’ll know that they had a hand in helping them reach their goal. U

Now that NHL players will soon hit the ice, campus businesses are hoping to thaw out last term’s lacklustre bar profits. The AMS’s student-run businesses have lost close to $100,000 since last May, with the Pit Pub in the SUB sustaining some of the largest losses. AMS VP Finance Tristan Miller points to the lack of hockey games being shown on TV as a factor. “It has had an effect, and a negative effect,” he said. Miller also acknowledged that there are other reasons why sales at SUB businesses went down; for instance, he cited the massive construction sprouting up around the building. As for what happens after the puck drops again, Miller can’t be sure how much things will bounce back, but he’s optimistic. “We would imagine that we’ll see some recovery on hockey nights,” he said. Mahony & Sons Public House on University Boulevard also took a hit last term, which they blame squarely on the lack of NHL action on their TVs. “Sales dropped a percentage or two in the evenings between September and January, for sure,” said Mike Mahony, the pub’s general manager. “People [used to] line up to come in and watch the game, have a beer. The big hockey fans were definitely not as present,” he said. Has the Irish-themed haunt made up for what they lost in hockey-night sales with crowds coming to see other sports like rugby and soccer? Not quite. “You have fans in every sport, [but] obviously in this city, in this country, hockey is by far number one,” Mahony said. As for the students who used to come out to watch the games, they’re looking to make up for lost time as well. Fred Kim, a thirdyear UBC psychology student and enthusiastic Canucks fan, is just relieved that he’ll get to watch NHL hockey again. “I’ll be going to a lot of bars, of course,” he said. Kim added that he usually goes to Mahony’s rather than the Pit to watch games, but it’s usually his friends’ choice and not his own. “I’m just glad that [the lockout] is over, as dirty as it was,” he said. U

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013 |

stuDEnt VoIcE. coMMunItY rEach.

LAST WORDS

stUDeNt liFe >>

Being a cynical student is a cop-out

PARTING SHOTS AND SNAP JUDGMENTS ON TODAY’S ISSUES

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PRESENT

by Kurtis Lockhart

ILLustratIon rIcharD KIM/thE uBYssEY

do SmaLLER dEpaRtmEntS bEnEFit FRom REbRandinG? So, the department of forest science is changing its name to the department of forest conservation science. This, on some level, is perfectly demonstrative of the current identity crisis the entire forestry industry is currently undergoing. The department’s quick move to refocus and update their image is a positive for students; too often, when job markets shift, the universities filling their ranks lag behind in how they educate students. But the change also demonstrates the identity crisis a lot of UBC’s — and other universities’ — smaller departments are undergoing. What goes on within the Faculty of Forestry isn’t so different from what goes on in the Faculty of Science, but the smaller faculty hasn’t always enjoyed an equal reputation, fairly or not. The same could be said of the School of Kinesiology (another quickly morphing school, which was until recently human kinetics) and many others. Sometimes, structural boundaries are important for less prominent disciplines that struggle to assert their identities. Will the change in name make the department formerly known as forest science more sustainable, in terms of money and acclaim? We’ll soon find out.

UmbRELLa mEdicinE pRoGRam not tHE bESt nEWS FoR SmaLLER dEpaRtmEntS Despite being seemingly reasonable, peaceable folk, academics are locked in a turf war. The university system, with its subdivided faculties and departments, tends to breed somewhat myopic thinking. Researchers study in their own little corners, with next to no contact with other ways of thinking. When the boundaries of their little kingdoms are threatened, they get aggressive. That’s a shame when it comes to academic programs, which benefit from sharing information and incorporating new perspectives. But it’s really bad news in medical fields. Anyone who’s been to Imagine Day knows about UBC’s system of medical feifdoms. There’s the School of Kinesiology, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The

Faculty of Dentistry — each with distinct entrance requirements, courses and cultures. The human body doesn’t have such rigid divisions, and it’s become harder and harder for some of the separate faculties to justify their continued independence. That’s why it seems like a good idea to move UBC’s medical disciplines under one larger umbrella medicine program. It’s unclear how much of this move is based on facilitating interdisciplinary research and how much is based on cost cutting. Some admins in the smaller faculties are probably not too keen to lose a bit of autonomy. But hopefully the end result is that bureaucracy is no longer put before healthy bodies.

VFm pRocESS nEEdS to opEn Up, not GEt moRE inSULaR It’s early January, so it’s time again to start up a yearly discussion in UBC politics: how can we fix the Voter Funded Media project, which gives a pot of money to independent blogs that cover the AMS elections? There used to be a wide variety of blogs and print media that sprung up to cover the elections and bid for some of that money, and for a while they were even paid continuously, outside of campaign periods. But we’re far past those days. Last year, long-time blogs UBC Insiders and AMS Confidential were the only serious entrants in the contest. Two hundred dollars also went to a personal blog that posted just once before voting closed, but mainly because no blog can earn more than 40 per cent of the prize winnings. The situation, to put it mildly, could be improved. So how can we find independent people that are informed and want to pour their time into covering the election — people who don’t work for The Ubyssey and aren’t in an AMS Council-related conflict of interest? Opening the contest to councillors is not a good option; the point is to create independent views so that students can become informed. Councillor blogs can often amount to content made and read by the insular political class that VFM is trying to open up. Having an elections coordinator spin their wheels trying to pique the interest of a personal blog from UBC Blog Squad is not enough. The program cannot depend on interested, informed people

magically appearing; it must develop them. These publications need to be run like clubs and publications: teams that are engaged and informed on what’s happening outside of the elections period and are constantly bringing in new people, so that when writers graduate, their shoes are quickly filled. Continuous VFM funding would help with that. And yes, this is an annual request of ours. But the larger problem is that the VFM program is annually under-promoted and under-planned, and the people who run it have made no effort so far to create a self-generating blog scene. If they don’t, how many more years can the program run with the same two and a half blogs?

LockoUt a miSSEd oppoRtUnity FoR Ubc atHLEticS The lockout is over! Hooray. It means we’re going to have NHL hockey back on our screens. However, it also means that non-professional teams will be handing the spotlight back over to those big league clubs that have been out of action for the last few months. The UBC Thunderbirds could have used the extra attention. They’ve got a 6,000-seat rink that would be among the best arenas in the B.C. Hockey League if it housed a Junior A team. Not only that, but most of their players come from the Western Hockey League. It’s high-quality hockey. Yet, they consistently draw only a hundred people or so each game. We’ve written before that Athletics has difficulties overcoming student apathy when it comes to attendance. At the beginning of the year, everyone was talking about the opportunity to draw fans orphaned by the lockout to UBC games. It’s clear that the opportunity was missed. The Bieksa Buddies game was wonderful and all of the elbow-rubbing between the locked-out NHL players and UBC athletes this year did a lot to increase awareness of the program, but the charity game was clearly a spotlight for the professionals. It didn’t yield much by way of increased attendance at CIS league games. UBC’s hockey teams are better than ever this year, and with beer and a relaxed atmosphere, they can be surprisingly entertaining. But UBC has missed an opportunity to tell the campus that. U

We’ve all been in that awkward situation in class: the professor asks an extemporaneous question of his students — a question that is usually mind-numbingly easy — and stares, waiting for an answer. Waiting… Waiting… As the silence deepens and the professor’s face becomes more austere, the tension builds. At first it’s uncomfortable, then painful, and then excruciating. Ultimately, at its zenith, the tension reaches a degree akin to having the Cruciatus Curse performed on one’s man bag. “WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY ANSWER?! COME ON PEOPLE, WE KNOW THIS ONE!” I think a Jerry Seinfeld joke nails it on the head: I read a thing that actually says that speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. I found that amazing: number two was death! That means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy. We fear a public display of our ineptitude. Is what I’m going to say smart or stupid? Right or wrong? Insightful commentary or bombastic and self-aggrandizing pontification? I know that this will all be decided by my audience before I’m done speaking. But of course, there’s always that one person who ultimately steps up and ventures an answer to the professor’s question — which I’ve now long forgotten, sitting and stewing in what seems to be an eternity of internal angst. And this person is, invariably, an idiot. “Why did they even bother?” I scoff. But this is what I don’t understand. Given that I know that public speaking gives the average human being some serious voice-cracking, finger-quivering, fight-or-flight-inducing fantods, why is my first instinct (and that of many others) cynicism and dismissive contempt?

“This blowhard doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground,” I might think. “Keep your insignificant thoughts to yourself.” Or I resort to the ad hominem: “Nice mullet, goth. You look like Rod Stewart procreated with a raven. Perhaps you ought to think twice before voluntarily offering yourself to speak.” When I know, in reality, the speaker who I have just reflexively almost instinctually ridiculed has probably thought more than twice about whether they should venture an answer. Then it hits me why more people don’t offer an answer to in-class questions. It’s because of douchebags like me. This realization comes in a sudden wave: the speaker is, in fact, not an asshole, but rather a person brave enough to face his or her ultimate fear. And I am not an incisive comedian full of trenchant wit and snide remarks that deserve laughter, but a pitiful loser that deserves the contempt that I showed the speaker. This newfound respect surprises me at first, but after thinking about it, it becomes self-evident. After all, any action worthy of admiration requires courage to stand up and speak. To voice one’s opinion. To engage. He showed balls. I showed nothing. It’s easy to be a cynic; it’s easy to sneer. However, that cynicism is something convenient to hide behind a cop-out. It’s infinitely more difficult, on the other hand, to stand for something. To risk something. To put something on the line. To be vulnerable. My resolution, then, is to think of this the next time I get the impulse to sneer, and perhaps turn my sardonic and penetrating powers of observation on myself. “If I’m so clever,” I may ask, “why didn’t I answer?” U Kurtis Lockhart is a new columnist for The Ubyssey. In Remembrance of Things Present, he rambles about the daily occurrences of university life. He previously wrote for The McGill Daily as a culture columnist during his undergrad years. Follow him on Twitter @kurtislockhart.

aNiMal research >>

Ending UBC animal research a difficult but necessary process

LETTER In your Jan. 2 editorial, you stated that Stop UBC Animal Research “is regrouping as the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society of B.C.” In fact, Stop UBC Animal Research is and always was a campaign of the 1927-founded ADAV Society. The ADAV’s scientific argument against animal experimentation holds equal weight to the obvious ethical argument, and your readers are encouraged to examine its ultimate expression in a preface written by Jane Goodall, Ph.D., to the book Sacred Cows and Golden Geese by Doctors Ray and Jean Greek. While your editorial decrees that “animal research at UBC isn’t going away any time soon,” Dr. Goodall’s words will illustrate the urgency

of Stop UBC Animal Research’s mission and its outspoken goal. Just as the ADAV worked with the B.C. SPCA to end pound seizure in this province, and pressured UBC to end “dog labs” for third-year medical students, we expect the entrenched scientific community (as Dr. Suzuki termed it in his message of support for us) to balk at the notion of change. The massive increase in the number of animals suffering the highest levels of pain at the hands of UBC researchers — at a time when other jurisdictions are scaling back animal research in favour of human-based, relevant approaches — show that, as you say, we indeed have our work cut out for us. —Anne Birthistle ADAV Society/Stop UBC Animal Research campaign

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013 |

pIcturEs + WorDs on Your unIVErsItY EXpErIEncE

HACKÉDEX

PIC OF THE WEEK

YOUR UBC WORD OF THE WEEK

InDIana JoEL GraphIc/thE uBYssEY

CIRS

The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) opened in the fall of 2011. In 2012, it was dubbed the most sustainable building in North America. The $37 million brainchild of professor and associate vice-provost of sustainability Dr. John Robinson, CIRS is called a “living laboratory.” The building is designed to produce more energy than it consumes; it is net positive in energy, water quality, operational carbon and structural carbon. Faculty and students use CIRS to advance sustainable initiatives.

@StephenatHome The University of Arizona is oﬀering a Minor in Hip-Hop. And if you go on to grad school, you can get your Doctorate in Dre. @e_jarrett Quote of the night, “Students don’t care what the AMS is doing...” #amscouncil @kathrynLatta Currently wandering through what I take to be smooth ER in the cell shaped building that is BioSci #UBC CAUSE I’M VANILLA #UBC

tweets of the Week

@overheardatubc Drunk boy to drunk girl: “Do you have any hot chocolate?” “I AIN’T GOT NO HOT COCO CAUSE I’M VANILLA” #UBC

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canucks defenceman Kevin Bieksa welcomes cory schneider back to canada at thunderbird arena on Jan. 8.

What i live like now Giving up resolutions since 1918

EXERCISING

Gonna work out and get a bangin’ bod. But you know, I can do that later.

GET SLEEP

Wait — there’s a paper due next week? I can do that the night before.

VEGETARIANISM Meat? What’s that? Vegetables are healthy. save the animals and the environment!

SAVE MONEY ahahahah.

First person to enter The Ubyssey oﬃce and debate the validity of the CUPE 116 strike with Laura Rodgers gets 100 free copies of the paper. Great for reading or making paper airplanes! COME BY THE UBYSSEY OFFICE : SUB 24 FOLLOW THE SIGNS

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this Week at the norm Wednesday 9–sunday 13 Looper: 7 p.m., 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students, $2.50 for FilmSoc members. Learn more at UBCﬁ lmsociety.com

In 2074, a killer who works for the mob of the future recognizes one of his targets as his future self. Looper stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as the younger and older versions of the protagonist. also featuring Emily Blunt and paul Dano. Rated 14A | 119min