Health and dental plan increases to be put to referendum

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March 5, 2014

The upcoming SFSS elections bring with them a myriad of questions to put to referendum, one of which involves potential fee increases in the student health and dental plan.

The SFSS Extended Health and Dental plan was launched in 2008 at a fixed fee of $198. At the time, students voted in a referendum for coverage levels they felt were necessary; however, they also voted for the plan’s price ceiling, a number which the the SFSS board of directors asserts can no longer cover the desired services due to increasing healthcare costs.

Because benefits have already been reduced several times since 2008, the board feels it is necessary to offer students an enhanced plan. The enhanced plan would cost $255, $57 more than the $198 basic plan.

This would not, however, mean that all students would be paying a higher amount for their health and dental. At the Feb. forum meeting, Kristin Foster, Pacific & Western Director at Studentcare, explained that students would have the option of choosing between several different plans.

In addition to choosing between basic and enhanced, students would be able to customize their plans based on individual needs.

A second question being put to referendum would give the board of directors the power to increase plan fees by a maximum of five per cent in any given year. At a meeting on Mar. 3, education representative Gloria Mellesmoen brought up her concerns: “Everything is costing more, and student loans aren’t really giving us more money,” she said. “I’m really uncomfortable with the idea that 16 people can [decide to] increase my fees by five per cent.”

President Humza Khan replied that the board already possesses the power to reduce benefits, which would be another tool in their inventory. “Instead of me making a decision about what benefit to cut, which may affect someone’s life and health directly, I feel more comfortable about making a decision on whether to increase the price by five per cent or not,” he said.

The two questions will be voted on by students in the upcoming elections. The voting period runs from Mar. 25 to 28.

Correction: the coverage for a health practitioner under the Enhanced Plan (i.e. physiotherapist, chiropractor) would be $35, not $135.

Faculty of Applied Sciences Student Union constitution rejected

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EIC

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March 5, 2014

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The Faculty of Applied Sciences Student Union (FASSU) brought a proposal to board last Monday, asking to put to referendum the question of recognizing them as the official student union of their faculty.

Despite the fact that the constitution was reviewed by CPR and Antonio Daling, SFSS student organizer, the board members had several reservations about passing it. Board members brought up issues such as inconsistencies in wording and the question of who would administer a proposed student development fund, which FASSU would create to “support students in extracurricular activities.”

After much discussion, board decided not the pass the motion to put the question to referendum, ruling that the proposal needed more preparation.

Perfect imperfection

By

Peak Web

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March 5, 2014

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While dancers are always searching for perfection, Walter Matteini, co-artistic director of ImPerfect Dancers, explains that they can never achieve it. “True perfection lies in imperfection. Our dancers are all different — like a puzzle, each one completes the other.” The dancers may not be able to achieve perfection on their own, but as a group their combined imperfection brings them much closer to that ideal.

For their first Canadian performance, the company from Pisa, Italy will perform two different works. Istante, choreographed by Walter Matteini, is a short piece for four dancers. The title translates to “instant” or “moment,” and the piece is a reflection on the moment when people truly know themselves. “It’s about a moment where they will be lucid,” said Matteini, “in that moment they will see themselves and realize themselves. That instant is important.”

The Unseen Garden, a new creation also by Matteini, is about a place where we are free to reveal our true identities. “Every person has a secret garden,” explained Matteini, “you never really show how you are.” Although people often hide a certain part of their character, sometimes they want to share with somebody and open up to them, said Matteini. Revealing our weaknesses and our fears can remove boundaries and open our imagination.

“In that moment they will see themselves and realize themselves. That instant is important.”

Walter Matteini, co-artistic director of ImPerfect Dancers

The members of ImPerfect Dancers use their imaginations to add their own interpretations to Matteini’s choreography, but he doesn’t rely on much collaboration, and he never does improvisation.

“I start from an idea and I do research, I read, and after that I start working with the dancers,” said Matteini. Music is also a very important part of the creative process for him: “The music comes first. I never start creating without music.” For his works at Chutzpah, he draws from the works of composers such as Bach, Vivaldi, Max Richter, and Philip Glass.

The creative atmosphere at ImPerfect Dancers is one of mutual respect. “We don’t ask the dancers to be a family,” said Matteini, “they are not obliged, but if it happens, it’s good.” Ina Broeckx, co-artistic director adds, “There is a lot of community; it’s not like we are the directors and they are the dancers. We spend so much time together. Everybody is at the same level, but we demand respect.”

With a similar kind of respect for the audience, Matteini and Broeckx aren’t too concerned with whether people like the works, but they do hope that they evoke some kind of emotion.

“When we do a creation, we hope people like it, or they can hate it, but we hope they discuss it,” said Matteini. Broeckx continued, “The most important thing is that people discuss it and talk about the work. It’s like a painting — it can be different for people — it’s subjective.”

The company, in all its imperfection, is very excited to come to Vancouver for their Canadian premiere.

ImPerfect Dancers will perform as part of the Chutzpah Festival at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre March 6 to 9. For more information, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Risky Business

By

EIC

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March 3, 2014

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Daniel Shapiro, Dean of SFU’s Beedie School of Business

Controversy in the cohort

Some SFU students recently found themselves in financial distress — and we’re not talking about student debt here. A deficit of information regarding the changes to the Masters of Science (MSc) in Finance program, offered by SFU’s Beedie School of Business, has been causing significant controversy within the faculty over the past few months.

The 2013/2014 academic year brought big changes for the program, including a new academic chair with a distinct vision for the degree’s future. As rumours circulated about a shift from the current quantitative (empirical) program to a more qualitative one, the program’s administration attempted to alleviate student anxiety surrounding the changes.

However, concerns still remain following the failure to renew adjunct professor Anton Theunissen’s contract for the new year. Students in the program are arguing that the faculty has made serious and flawed allegations concerning Theunissen’s professional behaviour, including a disputed allegation by the Beedie School of Business Dean, Dan Shapiro.

“No one else has been willing to tell me what this terrible thing is that I have done.” – Anton Theunissen, former SFU adjunct professor

The controversy began last April, when the Beedie administration decided not to renew Theunissen’s contract, with associate dean Mark Wexler citing issues of locality — Theunissen was originally from Wall Street and often worked out of New York — and graduate placement. Following Theunissen’s termination, the program’s academic chair, Andrey Pavlov, decided to step down, resulting in a sudden vacancy in his position and a disruption of vision for the faculty.

“My goal with the program has always been to place people, people who graduate, [into] good jobs in finance,” Pavlov explained. “Every decision we’ve made has been driven by this.

“Anton Theunissen, he was in charge of placements,” he continued. “[He’s a] very experienced guy from New York who really has been in the financial industry for a long time, who has done great things for the companies he’s worked with. So in my view he was a key success factor.”

When it became clear to Pavlov that the department would not retain Theunissen, Pavlov announced his resignation as academic chair. “I’ve always said without Anton, I wouldn’t know how to run this program,” Pavlov said. “I can’t do it, so I asked to step down.”

Theunissen outlined his own vision for the program to The Peak in a conference call from New York. “My main vision was to put the program on the map such that when we made these initial forays into these tier one markets, that we could build on the reputation of the initial people we placed in those markets, and that we could create a reputation for the program as being one which people would take seriously.”

Theunissen said, “We were placing people in top tier financial services institutions where SFU had been completely invisible [. . .] We were on a path for putting SFU on the map.”

Theunissen has placement data for approximately 127 students from the program who have found jobs in Vancouver, Toronto, Beijing, New York, and Tehran, among other cities, since 2005. Of the 9 students in the 2012/2013 cohort who had graduated by the end of 2013, six students are working — all in Vancouver.

A shocking statement

On Dec. 2, concerned students met with Beedie School of Business dean Dan Shapiro to inquire as to why Theunissen was not returning to the program. Azhvan Ahmady, one of the MSc students who met with Shapiro, reported that after approximately an hour of heated discussion, Shapiro explained that he did not renew Theunissen’s contract after hearing disturbing complaints about Theunissen from students.

When The Peak asked Theunissen about the reasons his contract was not renewed, he replied, “I don’t have access to all the information because it has been denied to me.”

According to Theunissen, he received an email from Shapiro stating that he wanted to make some structural changes to the program, and that the school would not be renewing their contract with him. Shapiro also told him that a group of students had met with Wexler and had complained about him.

“What he said to me was that they felt I was teaching only to the top 20 per cent of the class, and that I was favouring these students,” said Theunissen. In addition, Theunissen says Shapiro told him that the program was tough and did not cater to the local market.

Theunissen was therefore surprised to hear from students that Shapiro told them he had other reasons for not renewing Theunissen’s contract.

“I’ve always said without Anton, I wouldn’t know how to run this program. – Andrey Pavlov, former academic chair

“Instead of just sticking to the story he had told me [. . .] he then made statements pertaining to the fact that I had engaged in unprofessional behaviour which was so grave that he couldn’t discuss it in public, but it was in fact what precipitated my firing,” said Theunissen. “And to this day I have no idea what he is referring to, and he has not told me and no one else has been willing to tell me what this terrible thing is that I have done.”

Ahmady told The Peak that when they asked Shapiro why he had chosen to make the faculty changes, “he said something happened that was kind of, horrible, [so] he couldn’t resist doing the changes. At the time I right away asked him if he knew whether the concerns [about Theunissen] were correct and accurate, and he said to a degree, yes.”

He later elaborated, saying, “His exact words were ‘the nature and the form of the complaints was initiating the changes, and what they [students who made the complaints] were saying was disturbing.’”

When Theunissen confronted Shapiro, he received a very different response. “He said, ‘I said nothing of the kind. I didn’t say anything to impugn your reputation or your character,’” reported Theunissen. “And then I said ‘Danny, the students recorded a great part of this meeting . . .’ He stopped, he paused, and he said, ‘Oh, well I was being bullied at the meeting and I may have said things I didn’t mean to say.’”

Theunissen then asked Shapiro to send a retraction of the statement to the students who were at the meeting, which he agreed to. “To this date, he has not done so,” said Theunissen.

Shapiro declined to comment when contacted by The Peak, saying that Wexler and Jan Simon, the interim academic chair, had already “fully represented [his] views.”

In that capacity, Wexler explained that the non-renewal of Theunissen’s contract was purely a strategic decision. “This change was due to the fact that we were and are still interested in increasing the key components of the course to as much internal faculty as possible,” said Wexler. “There was nothing particularly worrisome about his portfolio.”

He explained that a key issue in the department had involved placement numbers, which he says were not high. “Anton should be proud. When he did get individuals jobs, they got substantially good pay,” Wexler explained. “My difficulty was not, let’s get rid of that — my difficulty was, how can we run this program where a small number of players get good jobs, while the rest get [fewer jobs]?”

The future of the program

Questions remain unanswered surrounding the failure to renew Theunissen’s contract. However, student concerns over program changes seem to have been addressed for the time being.

After Pavlov announced his resignation, Wexler took over as acting academic chair until Simon began his term as interim chair on Feb. 1. As the 2013/2014 academic year saw a new captain at the program’s helm, the change in administration began to create anxiety within the MSc in Finance program.

“We are not subtracting anything [from the program]. We will be adding some material.” – Mark Wexler, associate dean, graduate programs, Beedie School of Business

Many of the students in the program are international, a majority of whom come from China. These students, who face fees significantly higher than those of domestic students, became concerned that a change in the program’s direction would leave them with a different degree than what they had paid for.

“To me, it’s a good idea having more programs,” said Ahmady. “But let’s make it for people in a program where it is suitable [. . .] [These changes suit] something in the MBa category, and they should fit there. We just have to pay for all of the costs.”

Laleh Samii, a fellow student, added: “At this point, it’s a matter of trust. You may hear something from them, but they act differently. Even if they say that they want to add something to this program, they haven’t acted the way they should have. They didn’t have any plan. Plan first, then act.”

Wexler assured The Peak that this was not the case.

“We are not subtracting anything. We will be adding some material,” he explained. “Essentially, the early perception and anxiety that arose around [the change] was because when you add certain things, people assume that you are obviously going to dilute, simultaneously, and that was never it.”

Wexler and Simon are planning to add a third stream to the program, which already allows students to focus on either investments or risk management. The new stream, corporate finance, would have more qualitative options for students.

After explaining the changes to students in an announcement on Jan. 5, Wexler said, “the complaints have diminished a great deal.”

Contrary to what Theunissen claims Shapiro told him, Wexler said, “We don’t think [the previous program] was a failure, but we think that we’re going to move with what they gave us in a new and different direction, using their past momentum.”

“I hope to have a more global, diversified, engaged program.” — Jean Simon, senior lecturer in Finance, Beedie School of Business

That different direction will involve plugging the program into SFU’s career placement, continuing to organize placement trips to Toronto and New York, and inviting professionals from Asia. The program will also attempt to target their largely international cohort with programs on intercultural relations, resume writing, and interview skills — opportunities that previously did not exist.

Simon explained, “I hope to have a more global, diversified, engaged program. A program where people 10, 15 years down the road still talk about it. They’re still in contact with people, and they feel that it has made an impact in their lives professionally but also in the person they are.”

He concluded, “They will be proud to have earned that program because that program has given them a lot of options, but also influenced the person they want to be. I think that’s what makes a great business school different from just getting a diploma.”

This story is ongoing. If you have further information on this issue, please contact the editor here.

SFU recognizes outstanding alumni

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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Last Wednesday, the SFU Alumni Association celebrated the 2013 Outstanding Alumni Awards with a swanky night at the Four Seasons.

The evening featured a sitdown dinner, speeches from university officials and Alumni Association organizers, and honoured four noteworthy SFU ex-pats: Krista Guloien for athletic achievement; Lance Uggla for professional achievement; and Howard Sapers and Tim Martin, both for public service.

The event saw a few hundred of SFU’s best and brightest current and former students — and one Peak representative — fill up the Park Ballroom of the downtown Vancouver hotel. The evening was hosted by Renee Filippone, a former SFU communications major and current host of CBC News Vancouver Weekend.

In her introductory speech, Filippone described growing up in Burnaby, always seeing SFU “in the distance [. . .] this magical place always shrouded in cloud.” Both Filippone and her sister later attended the university, a place she said gave her “the ability to learn, and the ability to be a critical thinker.”

President Andrew Petter took to the podium for a short speech in which he enumerated many of the recent accomplishments and ongoing projects of the university. He announced that, since its September launch, SFU’s 50th anniversary “Power of Engagement” fundraising campaign has raised $140-million of its $250-million goal.

“What it means is if you have $110-millions burning a hole in your wallet, we can reach that goal tonight!” joked Petter. “And please, don’t hesitate to interrupt me during dinner.”

The night’s air of dreamy nostalgia reached a crescendo as the four award winners each took to the stage to accept their awards.

The event saw a few hundred of SFU’s best and brightest current and former students.

Guloien, who came home from the 2012 Olympic games in London with a silver medal for women’s rowing, was first introduced to her sport at the ripe age of 21. At the time she was a student at SFU, and was lauded for her personal philosophy that being driven and being feminine are not mutually exclusive.

Uggla, who recalled flopping down to study beside the AQ pond on sunny days, was awarded for professional achievement. He was recognized for his business Markit, which, since its inception in 2003, has grown from a small company in a converted barn in the English countryside, into an international behemoth, boasting 3,000 employees and 20 offices worldwide.

Members of the public service were well represented by Sapers and Martin, who now work as the correctional investigator appointed by the Canadian government, and an ambassador and diplomat, respectively.

Sapers was recognized for his work advocating for the rights and fair treatment of those within the Canadian correctional system. Reminiscent of SFU, he shared recollections of his time at the pub, and of somehow finding himself on the board of directors of the student society.

Martin, who has represented Canada diplomatically in Argentina, Paraguay, and Colombia, credited his undergraduate experience with setting him on his life’s path — particularly his involvement in the 1979 Latin American Studies field school, where he met his wife of 33 years.

“Thanks, SFU!” Martin laughed.

The event broke up around 9:30 p.m., with attendees happily warmed from the inspirational tales of post-post-secondary success as well as complimentary table wine.

Meet the New Boss

By

EIC

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March 3, 2014

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Jacques Chapdelaine first came to Burnaby as a starry-eyed 18-year old some time ago. He returns as the SFU football team’s new head coach this year, almost 34 years after first stepping onto Terry Fox Field.

Then, he was a slotback for the Clan — and things were quite different in 1980. Mount St. Helens had just erupted, Quebec barely remained part of Canada, and you could still smoke on an airplane.

“I remember sitting in the non-smoking area, which was immediately behind the smoking section,” says Chapdelaine, of his first trip to both Simon Fraser University and the West Coast. “I was thinking how, in a plane going some 700 miles per hour, is smoke not coming into the non-smoking section?”

Chapdelaine ended up on that plane after committing to SFU without ever having visited the campus. “It was an interesting process,” says the Sherbrooke, Quebec native. “I went to an evaluation camp with the [CFL’s] Montreal Alouettes way back in the day, put together [to showcase] players as a recruiting tool.

“The only school that contacted me was Simon Fraser, and that was all I needed to hear.”

“The only school that contacted me was Simon Fraser, and that was all I needed to hear.” – Jacques Chapdelaine

Chapdelaine freely admits it took longer than he would’ve liked for his college career to get going: “The first few games I didn’t play, so that wasn’t so good,” he laughs. “But when I finally got on the roster, it was [better]. It was a great decision at the time, and I’ve never regretted it.”

He has little reason to. After starring as a receiver for SFU, he was drafted fifth overall by the BC Lions in the 1983 Canadian Football League (CFL) draft. Despite an up-and-down playing career, he excelled on the sidelines as a coach of several teams at varying levels.

Chapdelaine has over 20 years of CFL coaching experience, but in 1999, as head coach of the University of Laval Rouge-et-Or, Chapdelaine took the school — now one of the premier programs in Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) — to its first Vanier Cup title. He also has three Grey Cups to his name, the most recent as offensive coordinator of the BC Lions in 2011, a position he held from 2010-13.

Needless to say, winning is something Chapdelaine has grown accustomed to.

The same can’t be said for the team he joins, however. The Clan football program is at a precarious point in its development, having stagnated somewhat last season after exceeding expectations in 2012. Dave Johnson, who Chapdelaine is replacing, had gone just 20–44–1 in seven seasons as the Clan’s head coach, split between the NCAA and CIS.

Clan fans are hungry for a winning season and Chapdelaine believes this year could be the year. “I really think we have the ability to have a winning record,” he says, cautiously. “I think we can challenge and compete to be at the top of the conference, but so many things have to fall into place for that to happen. [We] have to have a little luck on our side.

“It doesn’t help when we get 11 guys to run at each other and see who’s going to come out healthy.”

He’s not speaking out of hand, either. Chapdelaine studied the Clan thoroughly throughout the hiring process, and is familiar with the type of competition his squad will face. For instance, BC Lion linebacker Adam Bighill, who joined the Lions during Chapdelaine’s tenure with the team, is a two-time CFL all-star and played for Central Washington University, one of the Clan’s biggest conference rivals.

Clan fans are hungry for a winning season and Chapdelaine believes this year could be the year.

“Throughout the process, I had a fairly solid understanding of the calibre of the conference, of the skill that’s here at SFU [. . .] and perhaps even some of the things I’d look at changing,” he says.

Members of the SFU football program have been preaching a need for change for a long while. Chapdelaine’s winning experience could be the life raft for a program that’s been treading water for too long, but it was a loss that spurred on the decision.

Chapdelaine’s Lions’ season ended in a 29–25 defeat at the hands of the Saskatchewan Roughriders during the West Semi-Final in Regina. “We were chartering back to BC [after the loss], and actually an SFU alum, [TSN’s] Farhan Lalji, was sitting right behind me [. . .] He told me the SFU job had opened up, and he knew I had an interest in college jobs in the past, so I took some time to think about things.”

The Lions’ last game was on Nov. 10. Three-plus weeks later, and Chapdelaine had left the club. On Feb. 4, Chapdelaine was hired as head coach of the Clan.

Apparently, there’s something about this guy and fateful flights out West.

Clan impress at GNAC Championships

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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While Burnaby Mountain was hit hard with snow last weekend, the Clan track and field teams were hard at work in Nampa, ID representing Simon Fraser at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) Indoor Championships.

The Clan would come home with two GNAC titles after the two-day competition, as well as a fifth-place team finish for the men, and a seventh-place finish for the women.

The men’s distance medley relay (DMR) team got things started for SFU, as Travis Vugteveen, Daniel Kelloway, Cameron Proceviat and James Young ran for the event title, in just 10:07.79.

On the women’s side, Rebecca Bassett, Kayla Leanna, Sarah Sawatzky and Kirstin Allen’s combined time of 12:16.58 was good enough for second place.

On the field, Dkay Ayivor was the Clan men’s next top finisher on day one as the sophomore finished third in the long jump with a season’s best of 6.77m, while senior Mercedes Rhode came in sixth in the women’s long jump competition.

Day two yielded even better results, highlighted by Sawatzky, who maintained her first-place seed in the 800m event, coming out on top in a time of 2:08.57. Sawatzky’s winning time also improved her ranking in the NCAA Division II to second place, where she still sits two weekends away from the NCAA Championships.

Natasha Kianipour had a top finish in her first GNAC appearance with a third place finish in the women’s 60m dash, while sophomore Emma Chadsey had her first podium finish for the Clan with a third place run in the 3,000m in a time of 10:25.40. In the mile, SFU’s Kirstin Allen and Rebecca Bassett finished fourth and seventh respectively.

SFU’s male sprinters also had an excellent weekend at the championships. Kelloway followed up his DMR title with a third-place finish in the 400m in 49.10 seconds. Fellow freshman Joel Webster had success in his first conference championship with fourth- and sixth-place finishes in the 200m and the 400m.

Vugteveen and Proceviat earned more all-conference honours after their DMR victory: Proceviat finished fourth in the 800m final while Vugteveen earned a fifth-place finish in the mile. James Young followed his teammate finishing eighth in the mile and freshman Oliver Jorgensen nabbed the eighth spot in the men’s 3,000m final.

The Clan women also had three athletes earn all-conference honours in the triple jump, a first in program history. Freshman Ella Brown was SFU’s top finisher in second place, followed by Kye Fedor in fourth and Robyn Broomfield in fifth.

Luca Molinari placed sixth in the weight throw competition as the Clan’s sole thrower attending the championships.

The Clan have one more weekend of indoor competitions as they hope to qualify for the NCAA Division II Indoor Championships held in early March.

Meet CLIVE: an environmental fortune teller

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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Combining 3D game engines and spatial data, researchers from SFU and the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) have developed an interactive geo-visualization tool that illustrates the geographical past and predicts future impacts of rising sea levels and coastal erosion.

Coastal Impact Visualization Environment, or CLIVE, allows its audience to virtually fly around PEI and view coastlines from 1968, 2010, and their projected locations for 2100. CLIVE can be viewed on computers, HD TVs, and even smartphones.

The tool predicts that if the patterns of erosion and rising sea levels continue, up to 1,000 homes on PEI could be destroyed within the next 90 years.

What began as a summer research position in PEI for SFU environmental science student Alex Chen resulted in the creation of the first three-dimensional platform for presenting the raw evidence and impacts of climate change to the general public.

Adam Fenech of UPEI recognized Chen’s keen interest and skillset and urged him to combine the high-resolution spatial data of PEI’s coastlines with a game engine called Unity 3D, creating the foundation for CLIVE.

In order to predict the future effects of rising sea levels and erosion on PEI’s coastlines, the team of two students and two professors analyzed elevation images and climate models, and conducted a great deal of research in international and local climate change studies.

According to co-developer Nick Hedley, director of SFU’s Spatial Interface Research Lab, “[CLIVE] literally provides an interface between scientific models and citizens in society […] providing a way to see and explore the data, without dumbing down the science.”

By allowing citizens and stakeholders to actually see the impact of climate change on their coastlines in a 3D environment — rather than just hearing about it through the news and in environmental reports — the creators of CLIVE hope to engage more people in dialogue and stimulate preventative action.

Hedley urges his students to combine good spatial analysis with gaming technology: “If you take out the guns and sci-fi, replace them with good data, put them in a 3D game engine environment, you’ve got a very powerful environment in which to represent 3D spatial phenomena, and then interact with them.”

The tool was recently presented to officials from both the provincial and municipal governments in PEI, with the hopes that they might utilize it as an educational and planning tool.

CLIVE has been designed as a “modular conduit”: when equipped with regional data, it should be able to foresee the future of any coastline. Although the first version of CLIVE only encompasses PEI, Chen and Hedley are currently attempting to identify the most suitable, high-definition spatial data of BC’s coastlines.

BC’s expansive and relatively diverse geology, compared to PEI’s much smaller and majorly sandstone coastlines, will require some slight customization to the next version of CLIVE.

Fraternity hosts Rock Paper Scissors tournament

By

EIC

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March 3, 2014

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The university’s first Rock Paper Scissors tournament was held over Feb. 24 and 25 and aimed to promote a message of anti-bullying.

SFU’s Alpha Kappa Psi, aided by Tau Kappa Epsilon and the Latin American Student’s Association, hosted the event in conjunction with anti-bullying week, with funds going to the Red Cross.

Players could enter the competition by donation and then had the chance to play for a cash prize of $50. The tournament was broken down into multiple rounds and players were placed into a bracket, battling it out until a winner emerged.

According to organizers, one of the goals of the event was to bring out the “inner child” and break down the sort of negative thinking that breeds harmful stereotypes — to make the point that it isn’t “uncool” to play games and have fun. The tournament was meant to be a fun and unique way to send an important message.

Alpha Kappa Psi president Kayode Fatoba explained, “It’s easier to have a pub event, to party and get a lot of people to come out that way,” but the club wanted to try something different.

Fatoba spoke to how it is easy for people to be negative about an event such as this: “We had individuals who initially would come and be like, ‘This is so stupid.’ Well, that’s really what we’re trying to change, and then they’d be like ‘Oh, makes sense! This is pretty awesome.’”

The Peak caught up with the tournament’s champion, Amrit Jawanda, who said, “It was nice to do something a bit out of the ordinary. [. . .] I didn’t know something as simple as [rock paper scissors] could actually get people together and [be] so much fun.”

The tournament was meant to be a fun and unique way to send an important message.

He also shared his personal strategy that won him the game: “Get in people’s heads. Mess them up.”

As part of the awareness component of the tournament, organizers from Alpha Kappa Psi wore pink ribbons and white shirts on which people could write their own comments about bullying.

Pia Fresnido, the club’s service chair, said that people “could write anything, from insults that have been thrown at them, to positive things like how they can overcome the bullying.”

Organizers were surprised and pleased with the turnout of between 20 and 30 students. They were able to raise $25 in donations. Fatoba said, “While that isn’t much, we figured we’d have to match it. Our hope was just that people would come out and have fun.”

He continued, “It’s about promoting a culture whereby any aspect of student life -— whether it be video game tournaments or card game tournaments — should be seen as exciting [. . .] [and about] reaching out to all sorts of people at SFU.”

Viktor Yanukovych quits public life

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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KIEV — After going missing for several days following his embarrassing and highly publicized removal from office, Viktor Yanukovych has announced that he is hereby “quitting public life.”

The decision, which has been compared to other recent statements from Hollywood celebrities like Shia Labeouf and Alec Baldwin, is apparently a result of Yanukovych’s exhaustion from the pressures of the media, fans, and enraged protesting citizens.

“It’s all too much, the cameras in your face 24/7, the people outside your window every night, the never ending barrage of molotov cocktails,” he explained in his final public address on Ukrainian national television. “I just want to live my life.”

“I’m not going to go on TV anymore or do magazine interviews, and most importantly I’m not going to International Court”

– Viktor Yanukovych

While Yanukovych would later clarify that by “life” he meant “life as the all-powerful dictator of Ukraine,” he confirmed that no matter what happens to his career he will no longer make any public appearances or even talk about his private affairs.

“I’m not going to go on TV anymore or do magazine interviews, and most importantly I’m not going to International Court, that place is sure to be a media-shitstorm,” Yanukovych clarified. “It’s over, I’m done with all of it, I’d just like to get my palace back and then fade back into obscurity like everyone else.”

Although Yanukovych’s has been called out by some as performing a “publicity stunt” and by others as being “a despicable tyrant who I will kill with my bare hands if I ever see him,” from all accounts he seems excited about his new life.

“God, it’s stressful here, I might try to get away from the country completely for a little while,” Yanukovych reportedly told reporters following his final media address. “Maybe I’ll leave and go to the United States to become an actor or something, that’d be a nice change of pace.”