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Around the bases with Trisha Bouchard

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WEB-Trisha Bouchard-Mark Burnham

Clan senior softball player sits down with The Peak

By Clay J. Gray
Photos by Mark Burnham

If you walk out past Terry Fox field on any given day during the spring you are likely to find Trisha Bouchard, along with the rest of the softball team, perfecting their craft. Wearing number 17, the same number as her cousin and SFU alumni Erin Mclean, Bouchard has dominated center field for the last five years.

Even though softball is not that popular of a sport in her hometown Montreal, Quebec, Trisha started playing softball at the young age of five. However it was not until Trisha entered high school that softball became more than after-school time filler.

Becoming laser-focused at age 13 is no small feat on its own, but for this success Trisha points towards her parents. With an engineer for a mother and a police officer for a father, it’s safe to say Bouchard had a structured and highly motivated upbringing.
Trisha had an easy time selecting SFU, since she already had family ties to the Clan and an even easier time deciding to be a business major. However, when Bouchard redshirted in her sophomore year, she found herself adding an unexpected fifth year to her university career.

As a result, Trisha changed her degree option to a joint major between business and communications. Bouchard said, “I had two separate internships where someone advised me to add communications as an area of study.”

Of course her favourite course still comes from her original faculty: Business Ethics with Todd Green. When talking about what made the class so enjoyable, Bouchard indicated that it was the small class size that enabled her to interact more meaningfully with her fellow students.

Trisha said, “It is where I met most of my friends from business. In this class we had all got to know each other and spoke on a daily basis. It definitely broadened my world in terms of business.”

Yet, the demands of softball and a joint major weren’t enough to occupy Bouchard’s time, so she got involved with the Student Athlete Advisor y Committee (SAAC). Then, as she got further into her university career, she took the position of president within the SAAC.

These demands and responsibilities didn’t dissuade Bouchard, as anyone familiar with Clan athletics is aware of the demands placed on the softball team. Head coach Mike Renney has high expectations for his players both on and off the field.

These expectations are welcome for Bouchard, because she expects a lot from herself as well. “Our softball program is demanding,” said Bouchard. “I remember in my freshman year being blown away by the workload.”

But now that she is in her fifth year, putting out that effort has become second nature. She later added, “When I leave this program, I know I can handle anything anybody throws at me.”

The Bouchards also make double use of Trisha’s softball trip by using it as a sort of family vacation. This is because the Clan is usually the team is able to squeeze in one trip out of the year that is a bit more hospitable than the rest of their rigorous schedule; travelling to locations like Cuba, Hawaii, or Vegas.

Often some of the team members’ families will join them on the trip, something Trisha’s family tries to do each year. “It’s always nice to have my family on those trips. I usually only see them between semesters.”

Word on the Street: Anti-vaccination summit.

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EIC
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Q: SFU held a controversial anti-vaccination conference last week. Thoughts?

WEB-WOTS-Attentionseekers

Anti-Vaccine Movement

Room temperature IQs 

“HEY. VACCINES ARE BAD. HEY, HEY, HEY. COM’ON. LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT WHAT I’M DOING. OOooOoH SCARY AUTISM. AWW HOW COME YOU’RE NOT LOOKING?”

 

 

WEB-WOTS-JonasSalk Jonas Salk

Poli-owned

“Well I guess I spent my career injecting people with cow puss for nothing then. Enjoy your leg braces.“

 

 

WEB-WOTS-Kid

 Shirley Chapman

2nd grader

“I don’t know what Human Pa-ba-loma[sic] virus is, but I bet it’s better than shots!”

 

 

WEB-WOTS-TinFoil

Gregory Barnett

Man in tin foil hat

“Anti-vaccination? That’s the single stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.“

 

 

WEB-WOTS-Virus

Rubella

Viral Vector

“I completely agree, vaccination is untested, unreliable and unsafe. We should all just go back to the time-tested treatment of licking doorknobs.“

 

By Gary Lim

Ski Ninjas: Cash Crab

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EIC
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Colour-SkiNinjas-CashCrab

 

 

 

 

By Kyle Lees

See more at Skininjas.com!

Berthouse: Birdbath

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EIC
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Berthouse By Eleanor Qu and Justin Stevens

The Pope Pipe

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EIC
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With the leader of the Catholic Church still undecided (as of March 12th), the eyes of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide are sure to be fixed on the bronze chimney atop the Sistine Chapel. True to tradition, if white smoke is seen rising from the chimney a new pope has been elected and if black, the opposite. But while these two signals are the most well known, there actually exist well over 214 different smoke signals according to documents stolen from the Vatican archives by an unnamed newspaper. Peak Humour is proud to present some of the lesser-known smoke signals.

Black — No Pope.

White — Pope.

Gray — Schrodinger’s Pope: the papacy is simultaneously filled and empty.

White followed by black  — Elected pope candidate has in fact been dead for several days.

Pink  — Elected pope turned out to be a woman in drag.

Blue  — Dinner order to Piazilli’s for one Conclave-sized family meal with all the toppings, hold the anchovies, extra cheese. Paying with credit.

Yellow  — Election suspended until the rule that a golden retriever cannot be pope is instated.

Red — Papal coup has seized control of Vatican.

Chartreuse — Non-white pope elected. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s 2013. Just telling you this now so you don’t look surprised when he comes out

White billowing into chimney — Antipope elected

Dark black — Sistine chapel on fire.

An open letter to the person who stole my bookbag

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EIC
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Dear sir or madam,

 

Before I begin, may I be the first to thank you for stealing my book bag? While your act of thievery was neither cunning nor daring, I must thank you nonetheless for taking my bag rather than one of the actual valuables of my fellow editors lying adjacent to it.

Speaking of my bag, it is currently safely back in my possession after I was contacted by Translink telling me they had found it on one of their buses. I do not know what possessed you to leave the bag aboard the 135 bus, but I have my theories.

I imagine you were sitting on the bus ready to pry into my bag with your pig-like hands. But lo and behold, when you found nothing shiny inside (my apologies), in a fit of rage the bag somehow escaped your sweaty trotters. Even more tragic, before you were able to retrieve it you were distracted by some new odour permeating your folds. You then stumbled off the bus in a rush, late for your appointment at the herpes clinic.

But this is just one theory; in another, you step off the bus to skulk around a preschool both hands never visible throughout, and in yet another you have to make it to the dumpster behind Safeway before they throw away the expired eggs. I have many more theories, but I doubt we will ever completely understand what happened, as modern science has only scratched the surface of the effects of syphilis on thinking patterns.

One piece of advice though, rather than leaving the bag inside a bus, next time try throwing yourself in front of one.

But what I’m still struggling to understand (not unlike how you struggle with reading) is why you pinched my bag.

The obvious answer is for money. I must apologize, then, for forgetting to leave my phone or wallet inside my bag. I can only imagine the disappointment you felt when you discovered nothing worthwhile inside it, especially after all the time you spend trying to figure out how to work a zipper.

For future reference, if you are ever again tight on money, might I suggest gainful employment at the dick-sucking factory? Perhaps your estranged mother could give you a reference.

But maybe your motive was not cash, rather the raw unadulterated thrill of getting away with a crime more of ignorance than intellect. If so, I suggest a legally encouraged method of getting your chemically induced jollies. Some sort of gruesome sex act (or in your case, a sex act) perhaps?

Rather than stealing someone’s rightful belongings, try taking a whack at your own genitals, no matter how hilariously, then sadly, then hilariously again deformed they may be. I only tell you to do this yourself because I cannot imagine that any human being or animal being paid any fathomable sum of money would delve into the matted canopy of pubic hair, crusted urine and general disgust in search of your aforementioned sex organs.

Anyways, if my analysis of the situation is completely sound and error-free, let it be recorded in the annals of The Peak that you, my friend, are a ham-fisted, illiterate, piss-soaked, baby penis, obese, pedophile, syphilitic, herpes-ridden, sack of shit garbage eater. However if any detail may be so far as even an iota off then I would greatly enjoy hearing from you.

Warmest Regards,
Gary Lim
Humour Editor

Peakcast #7

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EIC
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This week, editors David Dyck, Alison Roach, Will Ross, and Bryan Scott discuss the SFSS election results and SPORTS! With special guests Clay J. Gray and Adam Ovenell-Carter.

Let’s get physics-cal

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EIC
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physics-cal the peak

Beginner level physics texts need to focus on the facts, no matter how daunting

By Ben Buckley

Why are students in high school and first-year university taught outdated theories?

Physicist Richard Feynman said that if all scientific knowledge were destroyed and only one sentence survived, the most important statement would be the atomic hypothesis: “that all things are made of atoms.” In the 21st century, most people accept that atoms exist, and have some understanding that they’re made up of electrons, protons and neutrons.

But looking through an average first-year physics textbook, you’d think that atoms were a frightening new discovery reserved for advanced students.

The textbook from my introductory university physics course doesn’t mention electrons until page 564, and doesn’t cover the working of elementary particles until the last tenth of the book.

Most introductory physics courses teach the same topics in a similar order. Students first learn classical mechanics, like Newton’s 17th-century mechanics describing the motions of macroscopic objects, mainly celestial bodies and projectiles, or the classical electromagnetism, encapsulated mostly by James Clark Maxwell’s 19th-century equations.

Newton and Maxwell’s theories helped to advance science, and remain a useful approximation of reality, but they are flawed. Both the classical theories predate the proof of the existence of atoms and completely ignore their existence, a glaring omission if I ever heard of one.

So again, why are fledgling physicians taught these outdated theories? Modern theories require more complicated mathematics and are ver y counter-intuitive; classical theories are mathematically simple, and, it is argued, provide a safe introduction to physics. They are lies that happen to be easy to teach.

Because of this, authors and educators often treat relativity and quantum mechanics as spooky, mysterious ideas that no one truly understands. Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. A basic understanding of the principles of modern physics is well within the grasp of a motivated high school student. Even the mathematics involved are only slightly more complicated than Math 12, at least for simple problems.

Left to our own devices, humans are terrible physicists; even with “classical” problems, it took geniuses like Newton and Maxwell to come up with theories that came even close to describing reality. If their theories were really intuitive, undergraduates wouldn’t struggle to learn them. If schools are going to teach a counter intuitive theory, they might as well teach the correct one, rather than clutter students’ minds with falsehoods they have to unlearn.

The top priority of a science class should be to teach the truth. We must get used to the world of relativity, quantum mechanics, and atoms. It is, after all, the world we live in.

If we don’t wise up, our concerns will get U-Pass’d over

By
EIC
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WEB-upass-Mark Burnham

By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Mark Burnham

Of course students want a cheap U-Pass. Of course students want more buses. Of course students want buses to run at more convenient times and until the wee hours of the morning.

Most of us are struggling financially, and we’ve all felt the “will I get off this winter hell mound?” fear. But let’s get real: TransLink isn’t going to invest more resources into an area that, because of the U-Pass, they continually receive a flat rate from.

Right now university students pay $36 per month for their U-Pass, which is $16 less than a highschool student pays for a monthly concession pass that will likely not take them out of the zone they and their school reside in. Given SFU’s large commuter basis and satellite campuses, it’s likely we will be using our extremely discounted pass to travel in all zones, or at least two.

Assuming Translink’s pricing for its regular adult monthly passes doesn’t leave a huge profit margin, for every U-Pass being made use of, they’re losing out on a potential $88–$134 per student. Multiply that by the 25,000 students currently enrolled at SFU and that’s a lot of money.

A lot has been said about the Gondola project, much of it negative. Some are concerned about the impact it will have on the protected environmental area it will run through (although, if you’ve looked out the window while riding the 145 lately, you’ll notice clear-cut patches striping the sides of the mountain, so perhaps this work is already under way).

Residents of the Forest Grove area it will run over are concerned with having a gondola flying over their houses every 20 seconds during peak hours. But TransLink has said “there is not approved funding at this time for the Burnaby Gondola Project.” Right now the Gondola is probably third in line behind both the Evergreen line and the proposed subway on the Broadway corridor.

These projects will likely be heavily subsidized by fees levied at car owners, which seems fair. Both routes are heavily congested even in off-peak hours.

Freeing up lanes makes sense for drivers, but when’s the last time you saw stop-and-go traffic coming up Burnaby Mountain Parkway? Drivers won’t want to fund this project because it doesn’t affect their commute.

If we’re serious about improving transit to Burnaby campus, it’s time we start rethinking the implicit value in our discounted passes. It wouldn’t be heinous to siphon some funds from UniverCity’s residents considering the added property value the Gondola would create for them, but ultimately it’s the students who will benefit the most from it. More than a costly outdoor stadium, I’d wager.

We’ve had a sweet cheap ride these last 10 years with the Universal Pass, but maybe it’s time we started paying our own dues. Increasing U-Pass costs to the equivalent of a concession pass is still more than affordable, and if that helps free up some extra cash for TransLink to throw a few more buses our way in the meantime or a Gondola along the way, all the better.

Better yet, we could look into alternative forms of fundraising for the project. But it’s pointless to lobby TransLink for more services and resources when we continue to pay less for more.

SFU hosts Vaccine Resistance Movement event, despite controversy

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EIC
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WEB-Vaccine-sanofi pasteur-flickr copy

Some worry that the venue gives undue legitimacy to the group’s claims

By Sheila Bissonnette
Photos by Sanofi Pasteur / Flickr

Given the extensive media coverage surrounding Vaccine Summit: Vancouver 2013, an event held last Tuesday night in the Fletcher Challenge Room at SFU Harbour Centre, the turnout may have left the Vaccine Resistance Movement organizers disappointed.

The scant attendance of approximately 55 participants at the large venue may be indicative of the lack of support in numbers for the anti-vaccine movement. An estimated 93 per cent of the population routinely chooses to get vaccinated in order to prevent infectious outbreaks.
Eliza, who preferred to keep her last name out of print, is the parent of two-year-old Bailie and seven-year-old Jessica, and falls within the majority category of parents who choose to vaccinate their children. “I don’t think the issues they are addressing are improvement of vaccine quality in a collaborative effort with the pharmaceutical companies, or even the fact that we may be over-vaccinating our children. It is such an extreme stance to say you are completely anti-vacination.”

The panel of experts at the event consisted of parents with autistic children and several naturopathic representatives who spoke about the negative impacts of vaccination and the alleged scientific link to autism spectrum disorder.

“The reality is that we cannot prove vaccines are not related to autism numbers spiking in the past 10 years or so,” stated one parent (who prefered to remain anonymous), who uses natural immunity methods such as breast-feeding for extended periods of time and probiotics to prevent infectious diseases.

“We have to be more careful about vaccinating our kids every chance we get without knowing fully the effects of what we are injecting into their bodies. I know people who have kids with autism and believe me, it is not easy.”

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a condition that impacts normal brain development and affects social relationships, verbal communication skills, and developmental milestones. ASD common characteristics include, difficulties with communication and social interaction, repetitive interests and activities, inability to tolerate sounds and unusual attachments to objects or routines.

“These parents want answers,” stated Joel Lord, the head of the Vaccine Resistance Movement.

Although advertised as an open debate, questions from the pro-vaccine attendants were met with laughter and heckling. The efficacy of the polio vaccine was questioned by several presenters, as was the use of vaccinations for preventing the spread of smallpox.

In his closing speech, Lord made a plea for parents to use natural immunity as a means of protecting against infectious outbreaks and to resist vaccines. When asked why he chose SFU as a venue for the event, Lord stated, “We respect SFU and obviously our work infuriates a lot of people, we chose SFU because this work deserves what a university offers.”

The event had originally been advertised at a suggested donation rate of $25, however those who were unable to pay were turned away, “because we need to make the money back paid for security,” mentioned one event organizer.

A Simon Fraser spokesperson confirmed that the group was charged an additional $760 in order for the university to beef up security for the event.

Recently the university has come under fire from the media regarding the decision to rent space to the anti-vaccine resistance group. Major media outlets have been keen to cover concerns over SFU’s decision to allow the Vaccine Resistance Movement to hold the anti-vaccine rally at the downtown campus.

The SFU rental agreement holds no clauses preventing groups from renting the meeting space on the university grounds. In an interview with The Peak, SFU president Andrew Petter defended the decision to rent space for the event, stating “The university is a public forum, where any groups can rent space to hold events.” He continued, “The university has a policy which supports freedom of expression. This does not mean that we agree in any way with the views expressed.”

SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences spoke out on the issue, posting an open statement saying “The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) was surprised to learn that SFU has rented space to the ‘Vaccine Resistance Movement’ for their Summit 2013 on our Harbour Centre Campus.

“Renting space to outside organizations for events such as these is done without any academic oversight. FHS disavows any support or affiliation with this event, which we believe to be anti-science and contrary to good public health practice.”

The official statement was followed by a link to the BC Centre for Disease Control page on vaccine safety, and a personal statement of FHS dean Dr. John O’Neil, who expressed concern that “the public may interpret this as an indication that SFU supports the perspective of the VRM. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

He went on in his statement to declaim the scientific evidence used by the VRM to assert that autism is caused by vaccines, pointing out that the scientific paper on which the claims are based was written by a researcher with a plain conflict of interest, and the evidence falsified. The paper itself was later labelled as an “elaborate fraud.”

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Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us: [email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024

Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us:
[email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024