SFU researchers could relieve pine beetle problem

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May 27, 2013

Unrest within SFU’s unions not over yet

By David Dyck
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

CUPE 3338 met with the university to continue bargaining for a new collective agreement several weeks ago, but according to the union, no tangible progress was made. CUPE 3338 unit 1, represents approximately 1,000 university staff members in a range of different positions such as library assistants, computer operators, store clerks, and others.

Even though the employees’ current contract expired over three years ago, there has been little progress over negotiations. A CUPE press release quoted CUPE 3338 president Lynne Fowler as calling the university’s last offer “insulting.” And in an interview with Fowler, she described the negotiations as going “very slowly.”

According to CUPE, the “insulting” offer was 0.5 per cent pay increases in the last two years of a four-year agreement. The union claimed that the offer was 75 per cent less than staff wages doing the same jobs at other BC universities.

Although no new meeting has been set up between the two parties as of print time, Fowler stated that this was primarily a result of scheduling conflicts. The university refused to comment on the negotiations; it is university policy to keep any comments private until an agreement is reached.

The last major labour event at SFU happened recently with the signing of a new collective agreement with the TSSU — the Teaching Support Staff Union. The university had been unsuccessfully fighting a bad faith bargaining ruling from the Labour Relations Board since January of this year.

Pollsters not to blame for innacurate election prediction: Angus Reid

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May 27, 2013

Media messages leading up to election could have influenced voter responsibility

By Alison Roach
Photos by Flickr

After the 2013 BC provincial election ended with a surprising Liberal victory, many are looking for something to blame the shock on, and landing on the polls.

Heading into campaigning, the BC Liberals were trailing the BC NDP by a significant 20 per cent, according to the Angus Reid poll, an online poll of 809 BC adults that found 48 per cent of decided voters were confirmed or leading towards supporting the NDP.
However, in reality the BC Liberals — headed by Christy Clark — won a majority government on May 14, winning 44.4 per cent of the popular vote and 50 of the province’s 85 riding, in what CBC News called “one of the most remarkable political comebacks in the province’s history.”

The vast difference between the advanced polling predictions and the results have some pointing fingers at the polls themselves. Angus Reid himself — author of the popular Angus Reid poll and poller for CTV and The Globe and Mail — failed to predict the election results, but doesn’t believe the polls were wrong. His final poll on that Monday had the Liberals still trailing the NDP by nine per cent.

According to The Globe and Mail, Reid thinks the polls simply missed the late Liberal surge, but did say, “I think there’s going to be a healthy skepticism for a while about polling. I don’t think the industry can completely dodge this one as it looks at trying to establish credibility going forward.”

Dr. Joti Samra, a clinical psychologist and adjunct psychology professor at SFU, says the disparity in the polls may have misled the voters themselves, and the message they were receiving in the days and weeks leading up to election day. Samra believes a phenomenon called diffusion of responsibility may have discouraged voters from making it out on election day.

“When we’re place in situations where there’s others involved and we perceive that others will be taking some kind of action toward an outcome, we tend to be less likely to adopt individual kinds of responsibility,” Samra said in an interview with The Peak; “Our sense of individual responsibility goes down as the size of the group goes up.”

Samra suspects that as the public was bombarded with the message of an imminent NDP win, many individuals perceived that their vote would not sway the election away from that outcome.

“People tend to be more likely to take inaction, not necessarily because they’re apathetic about it, or they’re indifferent about it, but because they think that there’s not going to be an impact of their particular behaviour,” Samra explained. She went on to say that if the reports from the polls showed a closer election, the end result may have been different.

According to Samra, the way to mitigate the effect of diffusion of responsibility would be to qualify the messages that we hear in the media leading up to an election.

She concluded, “What needs to be underscored is that it’s a sample, it’s a prediction, and by definition that prediction is not perfect. It has the potential to be skewed by a number of factors, and we really have a real life example of that now.”

Shut Up and Listen: Voting Turnout

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May 27, 2013

SFU students discuss voting turnout in BC, check it out!

Hosted by Estefania Duran

Filmed and edited by Julian Giordano

BCIT considers university accreditation

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May 27, 2013

Currently, the institution is only able to issue a Bachelor of Technology

By Neetu Garcha
Photos by Flickr

VANCOUVER (CUP) — After some BCIT students had problems getting into master’s degree programs with their BCIT certification, the institution is now looking at becoming an accredited university.

Barry Hogan, BCIT’s senior director of program development, says the idea has not been pitched externally but there is talk of the institution’s need to make some changes when it comes to program recognition across the country and internationally — or becoming a university.

Hogan told The Link that when BCIT started in 1964 and likely through most of the 1980s, most of the graduates stayed in the Lower Mainland, but this is not the case anymore. “Now everyone is more mobile and we’ve got graduates that are moving around and students that didn’t finish here want to apply their credits somewhere else,” he explained.

Paul Dangerfield, BCIT’s vice president of education, said the talks of BCIT becoming a university came up during discussion of the 2014 to 2019 strategic plan. Dangerfield said the idea was brought up informally over a decade ago. “It’s one of those topics that have been chatted about over the last probably 10 or 15 years at BCIT as other colleges become universities,” he said.

Hogan said when BCIT was given degree-granting status in 1994, the only degree the institution was allowed to issue was a Bachelor of Technology (B-Tech). The idea was brought up informally over a decade ago.

“We keep getting trapped by one of three buckets: we are not a university, we are not a part of the Association of Universities and Colleges Canada and people wondering, ‘What the heck is a B-Tech?’” said Dangerfield. The Association of Universities and Colleges Canada (AUCC) is an organization that represents Canada’s colleges and universities.

There is no national accreditation in Canada, so one province may not necessarily know another province’s policies around accreditations, according to Hogan, and as a result of this lack of national accreditation, there are a few assumptions that institutions tend to default to. For example, “. . . if you’re a university, you must be better and if you’re a member of the AUCC,” said Hogan. “So, we’re getting the short end of the stick.”

Electrical engineering and technology student Harjinder Kandola told The Link that BCIT becoming a university would help eliminate problems students face trying to transfer their BCIT credits to other institutions. “As far as the student perspective goes, I think it would be a really good idea — more so if it were to get recognition and accreditation from the government,” said Kandola.

Kandola personally has looked into the idea of transferring into a degree program at other institutions, only to realize he would have to take at least a semester of bridging courses in order to do so.

“That’s another semester or two down the drain and that’s kind of discouraging to say the least,” said Kandola.“If BCIT was a university I think the transition to a degree program would be more straightforward, rather than taking a bridging program which kind of defeats the purpose of transferring in the first place.”

Dangerfield said the institutions governance structure would not change if it were to become a university. “In our preliminary examination of this process, it appears BCIT would not have to change our current governance structure,” said Dangerfield.

As for the name of the institution, it is not mandatory for it to change to BC University of Technology, or something to represent that it has changed to a university. Hogan said a name change is not appealing to the community because of the brand equity of the BCIT name.

The research is still in the very early stages, but Hogan speculates if BCIT does in fact become a university, it would be about a three year process.

University Briefs

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May 27, 2013

By Kristina Charania

Computer game teaches medical students how to play doctor

University of Alberta students have created an educational computer game that simulates real-life hospital situations to enforce the importance of patient safety and communication between medical workers.
Headed by PhD student Diane Aubin and university alumnus Michael Burden, the team gathered a group of testers to navigate through a set of hospital rounds, respond to doctor queries, and make consequential decisions under pressure in the game.
“The aim of this game is to show students what can go wrong if you don’t talk to people on your team or if you don’t speak up when it’s important,” said Aubin. The game is expected to undergo further testing and an expanded version may be released in the future.

With files from University of Alberta News

Controversial suicide “contagion” theory supported by new study

Startling research co-led by the University of Ottawa’s Dr. Ian Coleman, shows that teens that have experienced a fellow student’s suicide — even if they did not know the deceased personally — are more susceptible to thinking about or attempting suicide themselves, versus teens lacking this “exposure.”
Between 1998 and 2007, the responses of 22,000 preteens and teens were collected from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Among the 12 and 13 year olds analyzed, 15.3 per cent thought about suicide — over four times the number of non-exposed students. Nearly a quarter of these teens knew of a classmate’s suicide by the time they turned 16 and 17 years old.

With files from The Ottawa Citizen

Six year broadcasting contract will expand university sports coverage

A new partnership between Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS)’ and Rogers Sportsnet includes increased coverage of men’s and women’s university sport until the 2018–19 academic year. In particular, the arrangement is meant to boost the profile of CIS basketball and hockey and include broadcasting of the Mitchell Bowl, the Vanier Cup, and the Uteck Bowl. By the end of the agreement, Sportsnet could air over 27 CIS events on a yearly basis.
“This . . . will help elevate the CIS brand and provide our 11,000 student athletes, 700 coaches and 54 member institutions the recognition they deserve,” says Pierre Lafontaine, chief executive officer of CIS.

With files from The Varsity

SFU alumnus narrowly misses “best job in the world“

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May 27, 2013

Recent grad Salina Siu made the top 25 for Tourism Australia’s Chief Funster

By Alison Roach
Photo courtesy of Salina Siu

When Tourism Australia announced they were holding a contest for six dream jobs, they received 620,000 applications from 196 countries. The most popular of the six positions was Chief Funster, with over 20 per cent of applications going for the position.
The Chief Funster job is a year-long position where the winner will review festivals and events, tweet and blog about their experiences, and be a “Sydney VIP,” all while getting paid to live and play in Australia.

Among all those hopefuls was Salina Siu, a 24-year-old SFU grad with a passion for social media, marketing, and event organization. Sui graduated last October with a degree in business and a minor in publishing. “I took a lot of marketing classes, I took a social media class, so that stuff helped me develop my skills for trying to run for Chief Funster,” said Siu.
Siu made it past the first two rounds of cuts in the competition and into the top 25 before missing out on the top three. Two of the applicants still in the running are American, while the third is from the UK.

Applicants for the Chief Funster position were required to post a 30-second video introducing themselves and why they were right for the job. Siu was told about the competition by a friend, and decided to give it a shot. “I obviously wanted to try, even though I didn’t want to get my hopes up because I was sure it was a very difficult competition, but I thought I would submit the video and see what happens,” Siu said with a laugh.
Siu herself has a YouTube channel, where she gives do-it-yourself tutorials on t-shirt cutting and alterations, using only a pair of scissors. Siu explained that she actually didn’t know much about YouTube before she started, but noticed a lack in those type of videos and wanted to learn how to make videos herself.
Two years later, Siu has over 30 videos and 60,000 subscribers internationally. “That was kind of the kickstart to me thinking ‘wow, social media can do a lot.’ It’s really grown into a community,” she said.
The second round of the competition asked the remaining applicants to get as much PR and high-profile endorsements as possible in two weeks. “I had to write a press release, I had to get people to help me contact newspapers and try to get media appearances. That was really good experience for me, learning about PR,” Siu explained.
Siu appeared on CTV, 104.9 SONiC radio station, the Global News website, and several local newspapers. She also managed to score endorsements from Global BC meteorologist Wesla Wong, and SFU President Andrew Petter, who created a video in support of Siu. “I’m really glad we have such a great president who is willing to do silly things . . . Even though I’m an alumnus now too,” said Siu, “I never knew how fun he was!”
Even though Siu’s time in the contest has now ended, she isn’t going to let the opportunity go to waste. “I got so many PR appearances that it’s definitely going to help me in the future. It’s going to help my portfolio, and it’s going to be online still. I’m really happy for that, for what I’ve accomplished,” said Siu.
For now, Siu is focusing on her own projects back home. She’s currently working on a social media conference called “OMG Social Media,” along with fellow SFU students Lesley Yuen, Cindy Cheng, Grace Yang, and Christina Buiza. The aim of the conference is to give small business owners who are not well-versed in social media an overview of what they need to know in a world of tweets and blogs.
The day-long event will be held on Aug. 15, at SFU Segal Graduate School of Business downtown, include speakers and experts on social media, and host 100 attendees.
Beyond that, Siu plans on continuing to grow her YouTube channel, and to plan for travelling in the future. “I definitely want to stay in social media and marketing because that’s my passion, [and] I do definitely want to travel, even though I’m not going to be able to go on this trip,” Siu said. “I do one day hope to go to Australia, and see the world.”

We Are the City’s Violent return

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May 27, 2013

By Max Wall
Photos by Kirsten Berlie

It’s been four years since We Are the City released their last album, In a Quiet World. Filled with revisited eighth-grade demos and songs about squids, it nevertheless showcased a very promising talent, leading the band to win the Peak Performance Project grand prize of $100,000. Enter 2011’s High School EP. Initially conceived of as the work of a Gwen-Stefani-covering fake band, complete with t-shirt headdresses and false names, We Are the City decided to put out the album as an official release.

With Violent, the trio’s forthcoming full-length, the band carries the trajectory from their debut into outer space. Filled with Eno-esque ambiance and hard-hitting compressed drums, Violent navigates wide moves over complicated young-adult terrain. The album’s lead single “Baptism” was tagged the lengthy “progressive alternative” on Soundcloud, marking a progression from the abbreviated “prog-pop” descriptor attached to the High School EP.

The material from Violent is indeed more full and lush, willing to dive deeper and go longer than High School. Though the band still does not sound progressive, We Are The City seeks to move past the constraints placed on them in a way that embodies the original progressive ethos. Constantly tinkering with their musical equipment, Violent applies studio reverb to cheap Casio keyboards, and control 80s drum machines with polyrhythmic metronomes. I met Cayne and Andy from the band at their Commercial Drive home to discuss the record.

The Peak: For the last album you did as the fictional band High School, you revisited your high school experiences. Is this a record where you’ve moved on to explore more of a young adult experience?

Andy: Yeah, I think that’s actually a really good way to look at it. This album is a pretty fair interpretation of where we’re at, or at least where our thoughts are at. High School was very much a retrospective album, and this one is looking at where we are now. It’s introspective. I would say that’s a really fair assessment.

Cayne: It’s “Nowtrospective”.

The Peak: Speaking of High School, do you think those guys have another album in them?

A: Cayne and I were just talking about this.

C: I have pitched another album, yeah. We’ve had two conversations about it in total and they’ve been three years apart.

A: We’re on different sides of the fence. Cayne thinks it should definitely be that way.

C: Well not definitely, I’ve just pitched that it might be fun to look into doing another High School EP between this full length and the next. It would be like an evolution of High School — this sort of Jekyll and Hyde band type deal that’s really two bands within one band, and keep confusion going because confusion is interesting — at least to me if not to anyone else.

A: Well those are great points, I just think that it would actually be less confusing to do another High School album.

C: Well High School as it is now would be less confusing, but I’m talking about a reimagining of High School. It’s a conversation for the brainstorm table for sure. We’ve talked very briefly about it. Right now, it’s like you know when you’re doing thumbs up and down, how you can do sideways thumb? Well, it’s probably like as close to thumbs down without being thumbs down as possible.

A: Thumbs diagonal.

C: It’s at like 6:32. South-Southwest.

The Peak: So not counting the High School detour, it’s been four years since you last released an album. What was it like to hold on to songs for that long?

A: It’s really funny because we did hold on to songs, and we thought we had a few songs, maybe four or five songs and ideas.

C: Big ideas too, like “Oh man, we’re saving this up” kind of stuff. We had three truly finished songs that we had performed live and told people would be on the next album. We told each other that we only need to write seven songs because we have three songs!

A: And we didn’t use any of them. It wasn’t actually that long before we recorded that we were still holding on to them, telling ourselves that they would definitely be on the album.

C: The only song from that batch that we actually used remained a total demo until the very end, and it was still the one we worked on last. It was just a demo to us. Everything else we started writing around January of 2012 — all the chord progressions and melodies and lyrics, but before that, the summer of 2011 was when most of the rhythms were written.

The Peak: So what was the one song that made it onto the album?

C: “Punch My Face.” We wrote the song about the time when Andrew and I got in a fistfight, not with each other, but with some dudes at the Peachland elementary school.

A: Keep in mind it was totally one-sided.

C: Got in a fistfight means we got punched out. I got knocked out, and Andrew got kicked down and beat up. I got a black eye, and if you listen to the lyrics, its actually kind of comedic because the song opens with “Punch my face” as the first lyric — it’s very literal. Those guys fought us based on the fact that we wouldn’t let them take a little BB gun that Andrew had borrowed from his little brother.

A: In retrospect, I wish I would have just gave it to them.

The Peak: So you recorded with Tom from the Zolas at his new studio, Monarch. How was that experience different than recording at Vertical, or the Armoury, or Blue Wave for the last records?

C: I think that a huge difference was not necessarily for us, but for Tom. Tom had this new life, this new light coming out of him because he was just so excited to record there. It was just like a real accomplishment for him to finish that studio and he was just so excited [to record] and really willing to do longer days and not cut corners. So, the biggest change was Tom’s attitude. The Armoury and Blue Wave are beautiful studios that are big and have lots of gear, and in that way Monarch is very similar to them. Definitely the experience is made by the engineer and so Tom, his hands were on fire, moving at the speed of light, it was wizardry.

The Peak: You chose to name the new album Violent. What made you choose that title?

C: The original thought came into my mind when Andrew and I were at this get-together with a friend in White Rock. We were talking about music, about dynamic changes in music, and in passing the word “violent” was used. It just struck a chord with me, because Andrew, David, and I had so many conversations about what we wanted the album to be, and how we wanted the sounds to change, and the dynamic range we wanted to shape the flow of the album. At that point, we had written the songs and were in the process of recording, and they were shaping out to be very dynamic. We had high hopes for dynamics, and high hopes for lots of sounds: the quietest quiets, the loudest louds, and just colourful chord progressions. So, that’s one aspect of it. The word “violent,” for us, at least for me, is represented in my mind by beauty and a kind of passion. Definitely on the other end the process of making this album has been, in a sense, a little violent because of all the changes going on and the long time it took to write. Changes within ourselves and within our lineup of members, only two changes in the lineup, but still pretty emotional. We had the gain of some friends, and the loss of some friends; we moved around a lot. We wrote the album in two houses that were slated to be torn down. One was this octagonal house that surrounded an indoor pool that was totally moldy. We had a lot of experiences that were very vibrant, and left colourful memories. It was an array of colours that is best described in my mind as Violent.

Peak Week May 27 – June 1

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May 27, 2013

Eats

On May 27, The Acorn chef Brian Skinner will be cooking at Edible Canada as part of a Guest Chef Market Dinner series. Guests will be able to enjoy a multi-course seasonal dinner paired with special wines. Skinner will talk a bit about his use of vegetables and how to treat them with care. And if you can’t make it to this event but are interested in Skinner’s artisanal and delicious use of vegetables, you should definitely head over to Main St. and check out The Acorn very soon.

Beats

Christopher Smith and In Medias Res will be taking the stage at the Biltmore Cabaret this Thursday May 30. Christopher Smith is a Vancouver local with alternative indie rock sounds, sharing the night with In Medias Res, another noteworthy local group. If Christopher Smith and In Medias Res were wine and cheese, they’d be perfectly paired; as musicians, the two acts complement each other in their ambient, and sometimes experimental styles. It’s definitely a night of Vancouver music that is not to be missed.

Theats

Strange Magic: The Films of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder is running until June 24 at The Cinematheque. This film series highlights the Golden Age of Film, the period between 1929 and 1959. The stylistic devices and narrative techniques developed during this era have remained influential for cinematic art forms to come. Some films being shown include Ninotchka directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Ball of Fire starring Barbara Stanwyck, and Midnight directed by Mitchell Leisen.

Elites

This Thursday, May 30, BookThug presents the Vancouver launch of Kim Minkus’ Tuft and Stephen Collis’ The Red Album at People’s Co-op Bookstore. Minkus’ poetry considers the future and challenges us to “observe the green elite” and “iceplants bloom in the monotony of paved paths.” Collis, who is an English professor at SFU, launches his first novel, which questions historical authenticity and authority. Divided into two parts, The Red Album begins with narrative and ends with a section of documents, including essays, memoirs, a short play and a filmography.

Treats

The Vancouver Chinatown Night Market is back! Running now until Sept. 8, with an opening night on June 1, stop by on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. Located on Keefer St. between Main and Columbia, this year’s market is going to see a bit of a facelift: with a mix of old and new, imports and originals, and mainstream and hand-made, the market has something to offer almost everyone. Some vendors include China Cloud (jewelery and art), Duchesse Vintage (clothing and homeware), Community Thrift and Vintage (sunglasses), Mellifera Bees (artisanal honey) and much more.

Arts About Town: humanities student union launches inter/tidal vi

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May 27, 2013