By Brad McLeod
Math department offers “Fractions 101” in order to appeal to lowest common denominator
BURNABY — SFU’s Mathematics is holding a brand new course this semester on the subject of fraction and although it’s been criticized by some as being too simplistic, the department hopes that it will attract students who wouldn’t normally take math.
“Our department has been struggling to keep up our numbers recently, and stupid math jokes alone aren’t really helping us reach out to average students,” explained Dr. Lorne Smith, who’s been assigned the new class this semester “We’re hoping that teaching fractions can help attract dumb art students who might be intimidated by calculus or linear algebra, especially when we cover ‘the fractions of Two and a Half Men’ during week 5.”
While the course is expected to drastically increase the Mathematics department summer numbers, the English department is receiving some residual benefits as this article’s headline is now required reading for a new 300-level course on ‘bad jokes.’
Interview series tells the stories of homicide survivors
Aftermath of Murder: Survivor Stories aims to renegotiate the territory between media and murder
By Dharra Budicha
Photos by SFU PAMR
SFU alumnus Brent Stafford hopes his engaging multi-video series will raise public awareness of the relatively untold stories of homicide survivors. Stafford, a master’s graduate of SFU’s School of Communication and CEO of Shaky Egg Communications, his communication consultancy firm, recently produced Aftermath of Murder: Survivor Stories, an initiative of the BC Victims Homicide (BCVOH) group for Canada’s National Victims of Crime Awareness Week, which ran April 21-27.
A series of exclusive interviews with homicide survivors and members of the support and justice community, Aftermath of Murder: Survivor Stories aimed to “go behind the headlines as survivors share their stories about the loss, grief, trauma and hope for healing in the aftermath of murder.” Between 2007 and 2011, Stats Canada estimates that 493 homicides in BC directly impacted the lives of 60,000 people.
Participants in the series include SFU criminologist Brenda Morrison, speaking on the importance of restorative justice in helping heal homicide survivors, and SFU criminology master’s student Cristina Pastia, who lost her parents four years ago to murder in Romania.
After experiencing considerable outreach for survivors, what compelled these participants to take part in this series was the desire to share their experiences as “part of their healing,” Stafford explained.
“It was surprising how open they were about their journey through trauma. Some felt that healing was unachievable, and they were quite frank about it . . . [but now] they feel the project as a whole has renewed their faith.”
All five of the homicide survivors interviewed speak on how the media influenced and continues to influence them in their processes of healing.
The series, which can be viewed in its entirety online, is “a way to get back,” said Stafford. A 25-year veteran television news producer, Stafford highlights that the media plays a significant role in not only the portrayal of murder crimes, but also the ways in which homicide survivors deal with the trauma of losing a loved one.
“I’m very well aware of how the media profits from murder coverage . . . and tends to focus on the murder event and grizzly details and court trials and offenders,” he continued. “Rarely do we get a picture of the survivors.”
“The media is a double edge sword”, Stafford adds. “If you have a murder, the media can often have a very positive role in terms of the investigation and finding the killer. On the other side, the media’s voracious appetite for details of the murder can cause a significant amount of trauma for survivors.”
Aftermath of Murder: Survivor Stories is an attempt to help survivors regain control of such situations. Under conventional procedures, Stafford says, the media will often go to third party members to get some kind of reaction to a murder if the family chooses not to provide a representative to speak to the media. “It’s critically important that victim survivors drive the bus when it comes to the media,” Stafford added.
Stafford said the main challenge in producing the series was “negotiating the different news values . . . because the audience is different and the goals and strategies are different as well.” With media partners such as The Province, balancing values for high levels of viewership, yet staying true to the series’ purpose, proved possible.
“The school of communication is a dialectic school”, he concluded. “It focuses on language and the power of language as a communication tool more than a definition. Working alongside dialectical critical thinking . . . and negotiating the need to attract viewership, we specifically
built the program to provide stories that mainstream media doesn’t provide.”
SFU announces Community Engagement Centre in Surrey
TD Bank Group donated $750,000 towards the creation of the centre
By Leah Bjornson
Photos by Province of British Columbia
There was cause for celebration on May 3rd when TD Bank Group announced that it was donating $750,000 to SFU Surrey’s proposed “community engagement centre,” to be located at Surrey City Centre Library.
At the centre’s unveiling, SFU President Andrew Petter expressed hope that the centre would, “enable the university to strengthen its connections with Surrey’s ethnically diverse and growing population. The centre will connect children, adults and local organizations with SFU students, faculty and staff in meaningful ways that will enhance the quality of life for residents of the community.”
The new home of the SFU Community Engagement Centre will be found on the fourth floor of the Surrey library, and will be a place where new Canadians can participate in workshops and courses aimed at inspiring these citizens to pursue post-secondary education with SFU.
The centre will also provide SFU students and staff with opportunities to become involved with their community through programs like Friends of Simon Fraser, which according to their website, “recruits, prepares, and assigns university students as literacy tutors in the Lower Mainland, particularly with [newly immigrated] K-12 students.”
The creation of the centre falls within SFU’s Community Engagement Strategy released at the end of last year on December 29, 2012. The document outlines the university’s strategy to become “Canada’s most community-engaged research university” over the next three years. To assist in the pursuit of this goal, the Strategy proposes certain objectives, such as integrating community engagement in its academic and research goals and plans.
Installing the program at Surrey Campus additionally served the plan by “maximiz[ing] the capacities of [SFU’s] three campuses to enhance the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of communities locally and globally,” but the choice of campus means more than just an even distribution of SFU services.
In 2006, there were 150,190 immigrants living in Surrey. New immigrants comprise 19.4 per cent of Surrey’s total immigrant population, edging out Metro Vancouver’s rate of 18.2 per cent. These numbers become more significant when paired with the statistic that the immigrant population in Surrey has increased by 67 per cent between 1996 and 2006. BC’s overall immigration rate pales in comparison, increasing by a relatively meager 23.9 per cent. Because immigrants are the target demographic of the Centre’s services, it makes sense that the program would be initiated on the campus most closely located to those immigrant populations.
SFU’s Community Engagement Centre was made possible by the large donation from TD Bank Group. The project was unveiled on the morning of May 3rd at the proposed site for the project, Surrey City Centre Library, at 10am. At the event, Frank McKenna, Deputy Chair at TD Bank Group, spoke to the importance of community involvement for the corporation.
“We are proud to open this new centre in Surrey, one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in Canada,” said McKenna. “At TD, it’s important to us to give back to organizations that make a difference in the communities where our employees live and work.” Over the past five years alone, TD’s corporate donations to various causes have exceeded $300 million.
For SFU students, the centre creates another chance to become involved in the community. Brittany Burrill, a tutor with Friends of Simon — which will have home in the new centre — was quoted in Surrey NOW last week expressing her enthusiasm for the new space: “Through working as a tutor with Friends of Simon, I know the value of being involved with the community. I was able to build beyond textbook knowledge and what was required in my classes in order to experience helping real students.”
Word on the Street: Voting
Q: Who are you planning on voting for this Tuesday?
I’ll probably just vote for whoever has the coolest name. That’s what I did last time and thanks to me we now have a ‘Stephen’ as our prime minister!
Michael Smith, Uninformed Voter
I’ve done my research and I can tell you without any hesitation that I’m voting ‘Code Red.’
Stephanie McNeale, Dewmocratic Patriot
Crispy Clark.
Martin Wingles, Thinks there’s a candidate named ‘Crispy Clark’
Wait, we have more than one choice?
Sun Min Yoo, North Korean Immigrant
Well, I want our economy to grow and our kids to be left without a massive debt. Of course, I’m voting ‘Code Red.’
Tom Brown, Doesn’t realize that ‘Voltage’ would be better for the economy
International research team links gene to cancer susceptibility
Study identifies those with gene variant as more at risk for breast and ovarian cancer
Dr. Angela Brooks-Wilson, SFU biomedical physiology and kinesiology associate professor, is one scientist among 448 others who have collaborated on an international study linking variations in a particular gene to increased susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancers.
“This paper is a huge success in terms of international cooperation. That’s what’s really remarkable about this research,” says Brooks-Wilson, who is also head of a cancer genetics laboratory at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.
Published online in the journal Nature Genetics, the group’s work is comprised of 140 smaller studies conducted globally as part of the Collaborative Oncological Gene-Environment Study (COGS) consortium. Each study looks at genes, the differences in gene sequences between individuals, and the effects its diversity has on a disease of choice.
Brooks-Wilson acted as the genetic investigator for a small research group of epidemiologists and biostatisticians conducting OVAL BC (Ovarian Cancer in Alberta and British Columbia Study), one of the many studies examining the link between ovarian cancer and several genetic and environmental variables.
“Several groups in COGS were interested in the TERT gene,” said Brooks-Wilson. “Several groups chose genetic markers in that gene. When that happened, the agreement was that researchers would share the analysis with each other, and the writing of this paper.”
The TERT gene encodes an enzyme called telomerase reverse transcriptase, a molecular helper that is essential to the formation of telomeres, the DNA repeat sequences that cap the ends of chromosomes and protect them as cells replicate.
“Telomeres are like molecular clocks for cells, because each time a cell divides, they’ll shorten a little bit. When you examine the telomeres of older people, they are shorter than those of younger people,” says Brooks-Wilson. “When your telomeres become too short and the cell works properly, the cell is supposed to go into a senescent state where it won’t divide anymore but still do its cellular job to some extent. If senescence fails to happen, you will encounter problems like cancer.”
Because up to 80 per cent of telomere length is genetically determined, analyzing the independent variants in the TERT gene is essential to understanding the science behind hereditary increases and decreases in cancer susceptibility and forecasting who is more likely to be afflicted.
To examine if differences in TERT loci affected cancer predisposition, the COGS collaboration evaluated 104,000 women in breast cancer studies, 40,000 women in the ovarian cancer studies, and 12,000 people carrying BRCA mutations that cause hereditary breast cancer.
In the breast cancer groups, susceptibility to the disease was sampled from the general population having these cancers and a special set of women who were carriers of known BRCA mutations.
“In some circumstances and particularly with these types of studies, you really have to pool together with the community,” says Brooks-Wilson. “Think about all of the background checking and past research needed in order to characterize women who are BRCA mutant carriers. It’s a lot of work, and you need really high numbers of cases and controls to examine factors that are this small.”
The results found an approximate cancer risk increase of 10 per cent with a handful of TERT variants. Although this is only a small difference from the general population, the group’s numbers are conclusive thanks to their large sample numbers.
“When people band together, they gather results that are far more conclusive than they would be if you had conducted experiments alone,” says Brooks-Wilson. “It would be so confusing if you had our 52 breast cancer studies produce 52 small, inconclusive papers. With large-scale studies, you get much more convincing data that is more definite and trustworthy than it would be in smaller studies.”
SFU Heritage Moment #1
May 8th, 1966
Succumbing to public pressure, SFU’s athletic department finally changes nickname to the more conventional ‘c’ spelling.
SFU study criticizes Enbridge’s risk assessment for Northern Gateway Project
Tom Gunton says the risk of oil spills is much greater than Enbridge has predicted
By Alison Roach
A recent study published by Dr. Tom Gunton, director of SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management, projects that the number of tanker and pipeline oil spills for the Northern Gateway Pipeline project will be much higher than Enbridge’s own estimates.
The report, which was released May 2, concludes that the chance of a marine tanker spill over the 30 to 50 year life of the project is between 93 and 99 per cent. The $6.5 billion project plans to put a pipeline through northern BC and a marine terminal in Kitimat.
Aside from marine tanker spills, the study also found that the number of pipeline spills along the 1,160 kilometer pipeline would be up to 15 pipeline spills per year, while Enbridge estimated only one spill ever two years.
Using Enbridge’s collected data of pipeline spills from 2002 to 2010, Gunton claims there are 28 deficiencies in Enbridge’s risk assessment model, leading the corporation to underreport the number of tanker incidents by between 38 and 96 per cent.
“The data set on which they relied on is known to underreport the number of accidents and incidents, and they made no correction for that,” said Gunton.
After pinpointing these 28 deficiencies, Gunton then tried to address them by using alternative methodologies, namely the US Oil Spill Risk Model — the standard model used by the US government to assess oil projects. Enbridge has stated they did not use the US assessment model because it doesn’t take technical advancements that mitigate risk into account.
“We used that model to estimate marine oil spill risk, and based on that, the model shows that there is a 95 to 99 per cent chance of a tanker oil spill from the Northern Gateway Project, over the operating life of the project,” explained Gunton. Enbridge has forecasted one tanker spill every 250 years, while Gunton using the US model has forecasted a tanker spill every 7 to 17 years.
The current cost estimate of a major oil spill is between $5 to $22 billion. There is also a cap of $1.2 billion on compensation that’s provided under various programs, meaning that in the case of a major oil spill, the majority of the cost of clean-up and damages would be borne by government and the impacted parties.
Enbridge has declined to accept liability for damages caused by tankers spills and pipeline spills, another issue that concerns Gunton. “People keep asking the question: ‘Well if Enbridge is so convinced that there’s no risk, then why are they unwilling to accept the cost of the damages?’”
In the case of a recent Enbridge pipeline spill in Michigan, the damage costs will exceed a billion dollars. A tanker spill would have much more impact that a pipeline spill.
Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines has since responded to Gunton’s study on their website, with a post entitled, “Flawed study, flawed conclusions.” The main concern pointed out about the study is that the information contained in the report was not presented during the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel (JRP) process, a process that puts potentially environmentally hazardous projects under public process where the panel members receive and consider all the information on record.
However, Gunton says this claim is inaccurate. “We did actually submit much of this evidence to the hearing process over a year and a half ago. It was subject to cross-examination, and Enbridge raised no concerns about this evidence at that time,” said Gunton. He has acted as a witness for the Coastal First Nations organization during the JRP process.
The evidence in the report was updated based on more recently released information, and Gunton stated that it was released as soon as it was completed. This new information will not be admitted to the JRP process, as all evidence was required to be submitted a year and a half ago.
“The JRP is going to be forced to make a decision on this project based on inadequate scientific information on the risk of oil spills,” said Gunton. He also pointed to problems within the Canadian regulatory system for projects such as this as well as this problem in the JRP process for allowing this sort of discrepancy of scientific analysis.
In Canada, the risk assessment for a project such as the Northern Gateway Project is done by the project proponent, in this case, Enbridge. “In the United States this would have been done by independent scientists, who don’t have a potential conflict of interest in promoting the project,” said Gunton. “That’s certainly what we need in Canada.”
John Carruthers, president of Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines, has publicly dismissed Gunton’s report, saying that it does not take into account new technologies, and that bodies such as Environment Canada, Transport Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard, and the Department of Fisheries have all reviewed and accepted the Enbridge methodology, according to The Vancouver Sun.
Gunton countered, “The problem is there is no accepted methodology in Canada like the United States. This is the first major project that we’ve looked at that involves major tanker traffic.”
Enbridge says vs. Gunton says
Enbridge: The spill probability numbers are inflated: the author uses oil throughput volumes that are nearly 40 per cent higher than those applied for in this project which also inflates the number of tanker transits using these inflated volumes.
Gunton: We actually used the volume numbers they applied for, provided to us by Enbridge. We do a sensitivity analysis with higher volume numbers, which are that numbers that Enbridge says are the designed capacity of the pipeline. We do the sensitivity analysis with higher numbers, but the basic analysis is using the numbers provided by Enbridge.
Enbridge: The pipeline failure frequency methodology adopted by Mr. Gunton is flawed, and does not approximate what would be deemed a best practices approach to the scientific risk analysis of a modern pipeline system.
Gunton: The US Oil Spill Risk Model was just recently updated and incorporates impact of mitigation measures such as double-hulled tankers and uses of tugs in high risk areas.
Enbridge: Mr. Gunton based his failure frequency analysis on a small subset of historical failure incident data. Why would he limit the source of his data to two pipelines with incidents not reflective of the industry experience and not reflective of the new technology proposed for Northern Gateway?
Gunton: The pipeline statistics we used are based on Enbridge’s pipeline system, which Enbridge says does exhibit best practices, in management best safety practices. It is a relatively new, and what we’re using is Enbridge’s actual performance over the last 10 years, and we’ve seen no improvement. We see no reduction of risk over that period in Enbridge’s own statistics.
Enbridge: We question why Mr. Gunton chose to exclude this report from the JRP process when he has had ample opportunity to submit evidence through his longstanding relationship with registered intervenors Coastal First Nations. He could have also tested our risk assessment evidence through this lengthy, rigorous and transparent process, however, both he and Coastal First Nations chose not to.
Gunton: Much of the information in the report was submitted by us as evidence in the JRP process in December 2011, and was subject to cross-examination by Enbridge in September 2012. The evidence is uncontested. What we did was updated and did more research based on more recent information, and that’s what this report is based on and it was released as soon as we completed it.
Comments taken directly from the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines website.
Despite recent tolerance trend in sports, Cloverdale Rodeo to remain a closeted gay rodeo
Local Rodeo expected to continue living a lie.
By Brad McLeod
CLOVERDALE — Despite the growing trend of “acceptance of others” in sports, organizers of the Cloverdale Rodeo are still claiming that their event is “not a gay rodeo,” indicating that the rodeo will remain in the closet when it opens this weekend.
Although the sports landscape is changing rapidly with NBA player Jason Collins becoming the first openly gay active North American major league athlete, and persistent rumours that even an NFL player might soon come forward as being non-homophobic, apparently not every athlete or sporting event are ready to be honest with the public.
“We’re just not a gay rodeo, those are part of a totally separate association that we are not affiliated with,” claimed an organizer of the Cloverdale Rodeo, furiously trying to cover up the event’s true nature, “We’re a good old-fashioned family rodeo, we don’t have any problem with gay rodeos but that’s not what we are.”
While these lies may have been enough to satisfy most rodeo-goers who just want to keep their heads down and pretend that there aren’t any closeted rodeos around, others have spoken out in support of the rodeo just coming out already.
“I’ve been to that rodeo and I can tell you without question that its not being honest with itself,” explained Joe Sherman, a gay rights activist and self described owner of a Gaydar system “Have you seen the kind outfits people are wearing at that thing? Tight shirts, skinny jeans, chaps . . . mind you I’ve never been to any other rodeos but I can’t believe that any straight men would honestly dress like that.”
While The Peak can neither confirm nor deny the dressing habits of heterosexual men at rodeos, even the mere possibility that the Cloverdale rodeo could be a gay rodeo has been enough to set off some vicious comments from Christian fundamentalists excited to be given an opportunity to be angry.
“If what I think I might have heard could be possibly true is indeed correct, then the Cloverdale Rodeo might possibly be walking in direct opposition of God,” explained Michael Patterson, an upset Surrey pastor. “I can’t believe that the place I go to watch wholesome things like barebacking, bull riding and team roping could also be involved in gay activities!” Aside from a few negative reactions from some non-progressive cowpokes, most people have shown either indifference or support for the rodeo whether it comes out or not.
“What do I care if a rodeo is gay or not?” asked one man The Peak spoke to on the streets of Cloverdale “I don’t care what it’s sexual orientation is, as long as it’s an entertaining, competitive, high-level event with only white people, I have no problem with it.”
While the rodeo’s coming out could have offered great publicity and served as an excellent deflection away from any animal rights concerns, those in charge of the rodeo have continued to deny the truth by grasping at straws by saying that the event “isn’t a gay rodeo, it started in 1945 which is before gay rodeos even existed, so there’s no way they could ‘come out’ whatever that means, I don’t even understand.”
SFU Backhanded Compliments
This is a social project intended to counteract POSITIVITY at SFU.
E-mail a backhanded compliment to [email protected] and we will publish it anonymously.
To the person who asked the professor at the end of my History 204 lecture if there were going to be tutorials during the first week:
“Thank you for reminding the professor to tell us that we in fact did have to go to tutorials this week. He said that he had completely forgotten about them and that if you hadn’t reminded him we would’ve had the first week off. Thanks for looking out for everybody and making sure that I didn’t have to spend a whole extra week sleeping in on Fridays.”
To the girl on the 135 bus in the red jacket and blue shorts:
“I was having a really long, terrible day until I got on the bus and got to hear your music blaring out of your headphones. Listening to whatever Lady Gaga song you were playing come through your tiny, shitty speakers really saved me from accidentally falling asleep and catching up on some of the sleep I missed last night.”
To Nathan Antonio
“Last night I thought I was going to have to just stay home and watch TV all by myself without having anyone barge in and tell me how much Frasier sucks, then change the channel and eat all the leftover chinese food I was saving for lunch tomorrow. Thanks, buddy!”
