By: Sarah Sorochuk, Peak Associate
SFU’s summer semester has been absolutely thrilling. From the koi pond being evacuated, sucked dry, and refilled to loitering chairs from convocation, to even an abundance of high school graduations, there is never a dull moment.
With convocation came the regular maintenance and the sudden beautification of the campus to impress the incoming guests and persuade them to send their kin here. The event called for nothing but order and elegance. Keeping things neat and tidy for the graduates’ important day. We saw this coming.
But what came as a shock was a random post-convocation bloom. The campus suddenly sprang to life, with gorgeous cherry blossom trees filling the area around the fountain in convocation mall. The entrance to the university next to the lower bus loop had doors instead of wet concrete stairs. It was like the happiness of summer ran over the campus — leaving a trail of trees in its midst.
But then, not even six hours later, the entirety of SFU receives an email stating that the trees are for a movie set. Essentially saying our campus did not change for the better. The next day, the entrance to convocation mall was blocked off due to filming, forcing students to walk all the way up the sketchy stairs next to the parkade. Why can’t we have nice things? The gloom went to bloom and now it’s 50% back to doom. At least we have the cherry blossom trees near the fountain still . . . And yet there continue to be depressing undertones as the movie being filmed is a thriller.
Actor Cynthia Erivo has been spotted on-site for filming. I just hope somebody warned her about the inconvenient detours on campus . . . Nevermind — she’s part of the problem and has a broomstick, so why would she even care?
When we got the message here at The Peak, the news spread like wildfire, crushing the souls of everyone at our publication. Prior to receiving the alert email about the movie set, we (as a team) thought someone was revamping our campus. The Peak began plans to adopt a “cherry blossom” theme to our print publication in the fall — a very costly endeavour that was supposed to meet the excitement of SFU’s apparent rebrand. But after learning the truth; the joy (not Johnson, unfortunately), colour, and ideas all faded away with the happiness of the cherry blossoms.
Now we are stuck looping old ways like SFU is doing itself. The colour was a nice change-up and gave us temporary relief out of the summer depression we have due to taking those pesky little summer courses. The memory of the cherry blossoms expose how we use our time to study and write for the paper when we could be out celebrating life and our free summer one peach bellini at the time instead. I will always remember the cherry blossoms and the memories they instilled in me.
The painstaking knowledge of the beautiful trees not being permanent was enough to break the hearts of countless SFU students, while simultaneously ruining the vibes of the writers at The Peak. How are we supposed to write anything cheery in the humour section if the campus has returned to its original gloomy state?
