Going Global Celebrities trip over themselves to name drop marginalized groups and causes at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards >> Pg. 6
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WESTERN UNIVERSITY • CANADA’S ONLY DAILY STUDENT NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED 1906
TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2015
London’s largest clothes swap this week
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TOMORROW high -8 low -14 VOLUME 108, ISSUE 54
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Olivia Zollino NEWS EDITOR @OliviaAtGazette
Local business Swapculture and EnviroWestern have partnered up to host what they are hoping to be London’s largest clothing swap. The event aims to help students, charity and the environment alike through the one-day event on January 18. Jeremy De Mello, co-owner of Swapculture, said that the event will be beneficial for students who are searching for frugal finds. “It’s a great opportunity to shop, but also save money,” De Mello said. “We like to say it’s like shopping but better.” Students looking to participate are expected to donate 10 pieces of gently used clothing between 12–1 p.m. the day of, along with $10. After volunteers sort through the clothing, students can come back to the venue between 3–5 p.m. to take away as many articles of clothing as they desire. “Whether or not you’re looking for a full wardrobe or just one missing piece, we probably have it,” De Mello said. Swapculture co-owner Jennifer Hao previously hosted a swapping event last year in Vancouver. The test-run had 300 people attend and 15, 000 articles of clothing. After the event, 80 bags of clothing were donated to charity. De Mello said that any leftover clothing from the London swap will be donated to Big Brothers Big Sisters. Additionally, a portion of the proceeds will go to EnviroWestern. De Mello said that the response has been universally positive. “Entrance is $10, so when you compare that to the cost of clothing from basically any store, that is a solid deal,” he said.
Inside
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Poster victim blames, says student
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Engineers Without Borders hosts panel on poverty
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Cosby comes to London
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Free movies at Western Film
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Eunhae Chung * WESTERN MUSTANGS
HOME IS NOT WHERE THE HEART IS. The Mustangs lost for the first time at home this season Saturday, falling 5–2 to the Carleton Ravens. Read the full story pg.7 >>
‘Sixth sense’ in blind individuals confirmed Hamza Tariq NEWS EDITOR @HamzaAtGazette
Blind individuals can use echolocation to aid with their mobility and identify objects and obstacles in their environment, a new study conducted by Western’s Brain and Mind Institute has confirmed. “Echolocation in a blind individual can serve to some degree … to provide them with the kind of information that sighted people get from vision,” said Melvyn Goodale, senior author of the paper and director of the Brain and Mind Institute. Most blind people perform echolocation by making a loud clicking sound with their tongue. Others have learned to do it by clapping their hands, jingling keys or even by finger snaps. Some blind individuals have taught themselves to echolocate while experts have taught others. While echolocation is a powerful
Melvin Goodale, Director of Brain & Mind Institute
tool that blind people can exploit in their daily lives, many schools looking after blind people have historically discouraged its use. According to Goodale, echolocation has been stigmatized in the past, probably because of the loud noise that blind individuals make to use it. Echolocation is a learned trait and that is why previously most schools have chosen to teach the use of canes or guide dogs, but not echolocation. Everyone is sensitive to echoes
and even sighted people use echolocation to get to know their surroundings. “If I led you blindfolded into a big cathedral like Notre Dame for example — you would know that you were in a large building,” Goodale said. “Compared to say if you were led blindfolded in a small closet — you would be able to hear the differences in the reverberations from the walls if you walked around.” For the purposes of the study, Goodale and his team employed a common size-weight illusion that sighted people usually fall victim to. For example, a kilogram of lead somehow feels heavier than a kilogram of a fluffy pillow even though they are the same weight. “We put people in a situation, where they were confronted with objects of different sizes all of which weighed the same. We had them pick them up with a string that was attached to a pulley, so they never
actually touched them,” Goodale said. For blind people who couldn’t echolocate, everything felt the same. Ironically, the blind people who could echolocate fell for the same illusion as the sighted people — they thought that the small object weighed more than the big one. According to Goodale, all blind people can learn to echolocate, whether they were born with a congenital disease or were blinded later in life. However, not all of them are able to harness their ‘sixth sense’ because they never learned or were never taught to echolocate. This trend is now changing with research being conducted in this area by the Brain and Mind Institute and other labs around the world. “Our research and the research of other laboratories, and groups that have been promoting this has I think led to more and more use of echolocation amongst the blind,” Goodale said.