Vote ‘yes’ for the Regional Congestion Improvement Tax
On March 16, ballots will be mailed out to registered Metro Vancouver voters, asking them to vote on an investment plan for the Mayors’ Transportation and Transit Plan. The Transportation Plan promises key transportation upgrades in the region, including extension of the SkyTrain along Broadway, 2700 kilometres of bikeways, light rail in Surrey and the Langleys, B-Line bus services to SFU, a 25 per cent increase in bus service throughout the region, and major bridge and road upgrades.
The upgrades will cost $7.5 million, and the proposed funding source will be a 0.5 per cent Congestion Improvement Tax. This tax has been deemed the most equitable and efficient method to fund critical transportation improvements by economists at HDR Consulting and InterVISTAS Consulting.
A ‘no’ vote would be a real-world example of a tragedy of the commons. Everyone wants to reduce their individual costs, despite the fact that voting ‘no’ would ultimately be harmful to the population at large because of increased traffic congestion and overburdened public transit — both of which would have detrimental effects on the economy. Thus, the tragedy arises; avoiding small costs incurs large costs later. Without the increase in funding gained from a ‘yes’ vote, the regional governments will be unable to meet the growing population’s needs for transportation mobility.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) have a “No TransLink Tax” pledge, and have convinced over 3,000 rational agents to pledge a ‘no’ vote. The basic premise of their argument is that TransLink is a wasteful organization that would already have enough funds to finance the proposed improvements if it managed its money better.
Without a ‘yes’ vote, the regional governments will not meet our growing city’s transit needs.
However, as Brad Cavanagh elucidates in a blog post titled “Referendum Myths: ‘TransLink is Wasteful,’” Translink has reduced annual wasteful spending by $26 million, with only $1.9 million of wasteful spending reported in 2013. Included in the CTF’s assessment of TransLink’s wasteful spending is the $30,000 feasibility study of the SFU Gondola, which is debatable accounting. Even if the CTF’s arguments were valid, the amount of wasteful spending amounts to less than 0.13 per cent of Translink’s annual $1.406 billion budget. Criticising TransLink’s operational costs as a justification to reject the proposed improvement tax is unfounded.
Rather than debating the negligible amount of wasteful spending in TransLink’s operational budget, let’s consider the amount of income that residents would be expected to pay to improve services in the region if the proposed tax were implemented. According to the Mayors’ Council Funding Backgrounder, the average expense to a household would be less than 0.2 per cent of their annual income, and even less for lower income families. This means that the typical family will pay less than $125 annually, and students will pay less than $30 annually. If the referendum is rejected, the Mayors’ Council will be forced to use other fundraising methods to meet growing transportation needs.
As students, a ‘yes’ vote is essential. According to a 2011 SFSS report, nearly 70 per cent of SFU students use transit to reach SFU, and these students will benefit from a positive referendum result. For those who drive, it would mean major road upgrades and reduced congestion.
Improving regional transportation is beneficial to the economy, our standard of living, and our health. If you have not previously voted in a provincial election, go to the Elections BC website and register. Vote ‘yes,’ and let’s bring our regional transportation system into the 21st century.
Universities should market themselves however they wish
Universities often compete with one another for the brightest students and the best athletes. This has led to an era of university branding, where each school tries to sell you their campus life and academic prestige. Understandably, controversy has arisen over the years about what constitutes appropriate content in these campaigns.
Most recently, a 30-second promotional video from the University of Moncton (U of M), which has received more than 180,000 views since being uploaded to YouTube in mid-January, has found itself under fire.
The University of Moncton’s controversial new advertisement
The president of the university’s Association of Professors and Librarians, Marie-Noëlle Ryan, has gone as far as to call the advertisement “pathetic,” suggesting that the video resembles a beer commercial. These harsh comments are all related to one specific scene, in which the camera cuts to two attractive students exchanging saliva between the stacks of the school’s library.
Personally, I am not bothered by the kiss, as it was not the clear focus of the ad, but rather an example of campus life. Selling the college lifestyle can be an integral part of good university marketing. Most students are looking for more than just degrees out of their college experience, and it is okay to acknowledge that. The video tried to strike a balance between working and playing, which is exactly what most of us in university do.
Ads that try to please everyone come across as boring and are ultimately forgettable.
When criticism surrounding the ad began to surface, Marc Angers, the university’s director of communications and marketing, defended the ad by saying that the research they conducted showed that post-secondary students considered lifestyle a factor when selecting an institution to attend in the fall. Despite its critics, Angers stands by the ad.
It should go without saying that no ad will ever please everyone. This fact, in turn, makes trying to regulate these campaigns useless. U of M wanted to grab our attention, and it worked. When given full creative control over the ad, the school was able to generate something that would get college applicants talking. Ads that try to please everyone are boring and ultimately forgettable.
By letting universities advertise themselves as they want, we allow for a one-of-kind ad that will speak more to the actual university, and the experience of attending it.
All in all, it seems university branding has become an integral part of the recruitment process. Despite all criticism, the University of Moncton should stand by their ad. Universities should always have the ability to market themselves as they wish. If some institutions want to create youthful ads that break norms, more power to them.
SFU Masterpiece: “Portrait of a Woman in a Renaissance Costume with Cadmium Middle”
Editor’s note: Following a statement by the First Nations, Métis and Inuit Student Association (FNMISA), on behalf of Māori students, The Peak acknowledges this piece, written by Brad McLeod, was written from a colonial perspective and failed to consider the oppression of Indigenous peoples through colonization, and the historic practice of cultural theft and cultural appropriation. This article excludes Indigenous voices, and only references Māori face tattoos once, in passing, in the entire piece. This piece incorrectly dismisses the cultural significance and history of these tattoos as artistic inspiration. As written by FNMISA, these face tattoos are sacred, and this portrait features “inappropriate and incorrect application of it to a portrait of a white woman.” Further, FNMISA adds, it “proudly appropriates the most sacred aspects of their culture for the entertainment of the non-Indigenous majority.” The article does not represent the values The Peak strives to platform, and none of our current staff have worked on, or were aware of this article.
As a publication, we would like to formally apologize for platforming a piece that causes harm. We acknowledge that the media as a whole has contributed to the oppression of Indigenous peoples, and we seek to always be mindful of how media often removes Indigenous narratives from their publications. Further, The Peak would like to thank FNMISA for bringing this piece to our attention and credit them for their call to action. This is to clarify that The Peak does not want to take credit for these amendments and our public apology, but rather to thank FNMISA for their hard work and advocacy.
Every day thousands of students flood the hallways outside of the SFU Art Gallery at the Burnaby campus. Over the years, the exhibits inside, which have held the works of many brilliant artists, have been glanced at by countless young eyes who briefly look over them before rushing to class.
Although the Gallery may not receive even close to as many visitors as the much more popular (and compulsory) lectures taking place across from it, art remains an important fixture of all three of our campuses. Even if the majority of SFU students have never set foot in any of our art galleries, expressions of creativity are unavoidable at our school.
In particular, the Academic Quadrangle is filled with many paintings and sculptures located on its many walls. While most passersby rarely stop to take a good look at them, there are some pieces that make everyone take notice.
“Portrait of a Woman in a Renaissance Costume with Cadmium Middle,” located at the bottom of the stairs in the south-west corner of the AQ 4000 level, may just take the cake when it comes to grabbing your attention. Whether your reaction is one of confusion, wonder, or fear, the 10 foot tiled depiction of a regal female figure with a facial tribal tattoo has become one of SFU’s most notable campus characters.
While it may now proudly hang at SFU, its origins trace back to the 1980s and New York City, according to its creator, Graham Gillmore, who spoke with The Peak about his career as an artist and about his now-famous SFU painting.
Walls and Women
“The piece reminds me now of Mike Tyson!” Gillmore exclaims while trying to recall the details behind a painting he hasn’t thought about in years.
Born in North Vancouver in 1963, Gillmore created “Portrait of a Renaissance Woman” in 1989 as a part of a series he did for a group show at 49th Parallel, a non-profit Canadian gallery located in the heart of Soho at 420 West Broadway in New York.
The Emily Carr graduate (1981–85) moved to the city in 1986, after already having established himself as one of Canada’s brightest young artists. He says that the vast amount of time he was forced to spend waiting for subway trains served as a key part of the painting’s inspiration.
“Have you ever had a close look at those tiled walls at the older downtown stations?” he asks, explaining that “over the years, tiles fall off or are damaged and replaced by new ones with slightly different colours or sizes.”
It was this kind of “additive and reductive editing” that really intrigued Gillmore and he became fascinated with the “gradual evolution of surface through some kind of modular process” including “the shapes of graffiti that have been painted out, over and over again.”
He decided to explore this idea in combination with another source of inspiration, one that he discovered in another somewhat atypical place.
“I found several prints of etchings, images of portraits of Queens at a flea market,” he explains, saying that he wanted to incorporate a newly discovered engraving technique and use them as a reference. “The series really came together when I decided to incorporate the tattoo onto an engraving [. . .] this tautology paved the road for the entire series.”
Linking the two concepts, Gillmore explored the idea of “the Queens series as though they were engraved onto the tiled walls of the NYC Subway,” and through this process, the AQ’s most talked-about portrait was born.
Crafty Gillmore
While Gillmore said that he does not know Michael Precious, the man who donated the painting to SFU, he believes he is a very generous person and that there is no better place for it to hang than in a university.
The placard beside the painting, on the other hand, isn’t quite as perfect. According to Gillmore, the word ‘Cadium’ in the title “Portrait of a Woman in a Renaissance Costume with Cadium Middle” is not a word he invented, but he says it is simply a misspelling of the word Cadmium.
As for the piece’s subject matter, while Gillmore admits that he finds it difficult to recall where his mind was at so long ago, he says that his focus on ‘the Queens’ “stemmed from an early interest in female personality types.”
He says that he was particularly interested in “women in positions of power, or at least women who perceive themselves to be influential.” As for the inclusion of “Maori tribal tattoos” upon them, he says that he believed that they “seemed to both glorify and subvert their identities, complicating our notions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ identity.”
In the years following his creation of the painting, Gillmore has continued to cement his stellar reputation across Canada, the United States, and Europe. His work can be found in numerous private, corporate and public collections across the globe.
Of his process, he says that “art has always been a vehicle for escape and self reflection,” and that his “practice has evolved through trial and error, repetition, revision, back firings and a hands on in the trenches kind of bone-headedness.”
While “Portrait of a Woman in a Renaissance Costume with Cadmium Middle” is just one of many brilliant creations Gillmore has given to the world and a distant memory for its creator, at SFU it will continue to serve as one of our most beloved works of art and be silently appreciated by many who, like Gillmore, often find themselves in the trenches of bone-headedness.
A press release from my passive aggressive roommate
ROOMMATE LIFTS A FINGER AROUND THE HOUSE, DOES NOT DIE FROM EXHAUSTION
Rumours That Roommate Is Physically Incapable Of Taking Out The Garbage Called Into Question
VANCOUVER, BC, March 2, 2015 — Despite months of speculation from Francine Stromberry that her roommate is unable to contribute to housework in any way or form, the 22-year-old was shocked to come home to an apartment that was slightly cleaner than when she had originally left.
“At first I thought I was in the wrong apartment,” said Stromberry. “It was by no means clean or anything; only marginally more than I had left it in the morning. My roommate had done the dishes — which were mostly his anyways — and I think he might have washed the floors, but honestly that could be rainwater from the window he left open. Still!”
Stromberry and her roommate, who unfortunately became acquainted when she was stupid enough to answer a Craigslist posting, have been living together since last October — though Stromberry claims that “it feels like it’s been years” since she’s enjoyed a clean apartment. Originally Stromberry thought her roommate was just compulsively messy, but she’s now convinced that he might actually suffer from some form of disorder that causes him to leave dirty clothes in the living room and use her hand towels for makeshift floormats in the bathroom.
“There were all of the quintessential warning signs that something was seriously wrong with my roommate,” explained Stromberry. “Most of the time he seemed lethargic and slept through large parts of the day. He’d constantly eat my food in the fridge, even though ‘Francine’ is clearly written on the packaging, so I think something might be affecting his cognitive memory, you know? I mean, what other possible explanation could there be for him being such a lazy, inconsiderate slob?”
Stromberry has yet to extrapolate what the recent cleaning incident could mean for her existing theories about his sluggishness being an illness, but she remains hopeful that he hasn’t just been taking advantage of her this whole time. This all, despite a note in her roommate’s handwriting on the counter saying, “I did the dishes. You’re out of milk and eggs and shampoo too, btw :)” Stromberry says that she isn’t ruling out the possibility that a third-party broke into the apartment, did some surface-level cleaning, and left without taking anything.
“Honestly, it sounds more believable than him actually doing the work himself,” sighed Stromberry. “Is that a thing? Do burglars sometimes break into a home, take pity on the person who has to put up with a messy roommate, and then just tidy things up a bit? I’m not ruling anything out at this point. There has to be a first time for everything.”
At press time, Stromberry’s roommate was unavailable to comment on the development, since he was too busy using her Netflix account to watch cartoons on her television.
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For more information, please contact Francine Stromberry at [email protected] or send a maid service to help. Stromberry has also started an Indiegogo campaign meant to help find a treatment for her roommate and people like him who seem incapable of doing a single damn thing around the apartment.
Out of Love
By: Denise Beaton
The two Valentine’s Days I remember best were when I was not in love. They bookend my first serious relationship, the first Valentine’s Day I was in a couple, and the first Valentine’s Day I was single.
For the majority of my life, Valentine’s Day meant my parents’ anniversary, a wedding all of my family attended except for myself. My mother, previously married, did not place much faith in the institution. She married again for my father’s sake. To drive the point that the legal union was out of romance and not necessity, they went to the courthouse on February 14.
My oldest brother and sister attended, with my other brother also (quite noticeably) attending in utero. I came to know Valentine’s Day as an occasion for couples, where one person acquiesces to the wishes of the more romantic half.
In 2007, I had my first “real” job at The Bargain! Shop (the “!” was mandatory, and sometimes pronounced with a click of the tongue) and on February 14 I went to my shift after high school, donned a red polyester smock and nametag, and sold half-price discounted Valentine’s Day bargain!s.
It was also the year I had my first “real” boyfriend, but I was not expecting anything for Valentine’s Day. I had only celebrated by sending sweet text messages on the hunk of cracking plastic that was my Nokia flip phone.
Still, I suspected that I was the more romantic half of our couple, and every time the bell on the door to The Bargain! Shop jangled I would greet the entering customer with a fleeting look of disappointment followed by a forced smile.
When I arrived home I had come to terms with my lacklustre Valentine’s Day. I consoled myself by rationalizing that it was largely an invention of Hallmark — or The Bargain! Shop’s version, Hallnote — and to spend it working in a store was the most appropriate way to celebrate something so commercial.
I was shocked to walk in to my mother’s smiling face and a huge bouquet of wildflowers. I called my boyfriend to thank him, girlishly twirling the long spiral cord of the home phone around my fingers.
He had intended to just drop them off, but my mother demanded that he come in, choose a vase, and trim and arrange them himself. We had only been dating a few months, and I was more impressed that he would spend a half hour alone with my intimidating mother. I didn’t love him yet, but I would by spring.
And I did, for five years. Our calm, easy relationship ended with a dramatic, difficult breakup. High school sweethearts either grow together or, more often, grow apart. February 14, 2012 marked my first adult Valentine’s Day single. I don’t really remember the Valentine’s Days in between; they passed with the standard flowers and meals and cards.
In 2012 I had three new roommates: Sarah, a PhD candidate, and her two inbred cats, Stanley and Phoebe. I lived in my home province of Prince Edward Island at the time, where many barn cats with twisted family trees ended up at the Humane Society.
Kind-hearted Sarah adopted two of them: small, grey tortoise-shell Phoebe and greasy, dark, golden-eyed Stanley. Under her gentle attention they became healthy and confident, though they still had their quirks. Stanley tripped over his large paws, and his snaggle teeth protruded past his bottom lip. When he was pleased, his chin would be slick with drool.
That was how I found him outside of my bedroom door on February 14, making his sick seagull-sounding squawks of joy. He was sitting next to a box of chocolates. “Sarah,” I texted her, “I think your cat is trying to woo me.” I was touched by her thoughtfulness. The requirement of any surprise is a lack of expectation. This is difficult to achieve on Valentine’s Day, where expectations are the engine of how it is celebrated.
This Valentine’s Day, I will be at a long-term care residence. I’ve worked there as a research assistant, conducting a critical ethnography for the past year. I’ve spent time with husbands and wives who care for their spouses with advanced dementia.
One man visits his wife every day for lunch. When she looks away she forgets he is there, but he always beams when she looks back. He knows how she likes her food cut up and presented, what music she enjoys listening to, what clothes she prefers to wear.
When she looks back, she seems pleased and surprised that things are just so. Her husband lives between the spaces of her attention, though soon even her recognition and wonder will be gone.
Giving usually entails some element of taking. As givers we collect recognition, thanks, and praise, even if it is after the fact, over the phone, or attributed to a cat. The two Valentine’s Days I remember best were when I was not in love, when my expectations were subverted.
This Valentine’s Day I will be with couples who are not split by those who are more romantic, but by those who remember. And their partners will give all the same, anonymously, without thanks or witness, without possession or ego.
SFU softball team ready to fight back
Following a difficult 2014 season, the Clan softball team has set their sights on improved results and strong team unity.
The women will put a tough campaign where they finished with only four wins in 39 games behind them, but will take the experience and adversity into a fresh start under head coach Mike Renney.
Injuries hampered the entire campaign for the Clan, often forcing young players into unfamiliar positions in order to play for survival. Despite this, the coach is confident that his younger players have benefitted from this playing time and versatility for future games.
“Last year was a perfect storm, said Renney. “We had some unforeseen injuries, and had lost some key veterans we were relying on. That, combined with the losing a good graduating class from the year before meant we were really young. [. . .] The flipside of that is that a lot of the young athletes who normally wouldn’t have got the playing time were battle-tested, and certainly should be better for it with experience moving forward.”
Returning for the Clan is key pitcher Kelsie Hawkins who will surely provide some much needed veteran presence — Hawkins was redshirted last season because of an offseason injury. The Victoria native led the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) in shutouts during her 2013 season, eventually being named a GNAC first team all-star.
Also returning from an injury-shortened season is starting shortstop and team captain Danielle Raison, who was given an honourable mention for the 2014 GNAC all-star selections.
“[Danielle] went down with a key injury halfway through the year, and she’s returned to form for her starting position,” added Renney. “But we’ve got added depth now because of the players that have had experience. [. . .] More time in different positions for certain players has given them more of a repertoire and versatility off the bench.”
Just two wins in conference play during 2014 spells another challenge on the horizon for the Clan, but recent additions to the team will surely bolster their available options. Samantha Ruffett (Brampton, ON) and Jessica Tate (Georgetown, ON) will join the Clan from the Brampton Blazers as catcher and left-handed pitcher, respectively. Also among the Clan’s new faces are the local talents of outfielder Sierra Sherrit (Richmond, BC), and power hitter and utility infielder Brooklyn Smith (North Vancouver, BC).
Renney believes that minimizing runs against the Clan will be crucial to their goal of reaching the top four and ultimately the playoffs.
“Our conference is a very competitive one, and there are no games you can take lightly,” he said. “We have to climb a bit to get into the top four, and everything is up from here on out.”
The Clan will begin action on February 7, when they travel to face the Hawaii Pacific University Sharks.
