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Spotlight on SFYou: The HeArt Project

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EIC
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SFYou is a new addition to the features section. It aims to put a spotlight on SFU’s diverse population, including students, faculty, and groups across all the university’s campuses. Got somebody you think should be spotlighted? Email [email protected]!

By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

 

 

The mural is currently hanging in the AQ.

 

More often than not, the effort put into class projects is simply in order to get a good grade. For a team of five students at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, however, a project management class project turned into an opportunity to go out of their comfort zone and make a difference in their city.

It started as a service-learning project, where students were put in groups in order to learn how to autonomously organize and manage projects; what it developed into, however, was The HeArt Project —a photomural designed to raise awareness about local homelessness. “It was really broad,” says Becky Ross, one of the students involved in the project. “[The professor] wanted us to have a lot of creative room about what we wanted to do, and the theme was just serving the community in some way.” One of the students in the group, Gwen, is an exchange student from France and was shocked with the homeless situation in the city. “The rest of us are born and raised in Vancouver, and it was only when she brought it up that we realized that we were kind of de-sensitized to this issue,” explains Ross. “Because we’ve seen it every day growing up in Vancouver, we’re used to it. We wanted to make some kind of an impact.” And so, while their classmates brainstormed networking events, this group of five thought of ways to provide the people of Vancouver with a reminder that homelessness is still a rampant issue in the city.

Another group member added the element of art into the business project by suggesting a project reminiscent of the work of JR — a French street artist and photographer — who had the idea to turn the world inside out through photographs. From this, The HeArt Project was born. “He had this idea of just posting photos of people’s faces with any expression they wanted, just to show a kind of diversity personality artwork,” explains Ross. “The faces are a mixture of people on the street, and of homeless people in Vancouver.” The hope of the group is to create a piece of artwork that would be accessible to the SFU student community, and that would inspire thought, awareness, and perhaps action. “The idea was to remind people about the issue. I’ve never really done too much to help. I know about the issue, but I don’t take a lot of action,” adds Ross. “Our idea is to hopefully remind other students of that . . . hopefully it inspires them to do something about it.”

The project got approval to hang their mural in the Applied Sciences building on the Burnaby campus, where it will hang until they are unable to renew the approval further. “Hopefully it will be up there until the beginning of next semester, so that new students can also see it,” says Ross. Part of the project also includes resources for those interested in getting involved; there will be links to social media websites, where interested individuals can go for information about local charities and organizations that they could reach out to if they wanted to donate or volunteer.

According to Ross, there has been talk of word-of-mouth fundraising to cover costs, with excess money going to donations for Downtown Eastside organizations. “The scope of it is mainly getting the artwork out there, though,” she says.

As for the mural, it will be available for viewing on the Burnaby campus, and its fate after it’s taken down will be decided based on the condition it’s in at that time.


Apathetic excuse

By
EIC
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1

By Mohammed Sheriffdeen
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

Student apathy in our system of secondary and post-secondary education

I have been a TA in the biology faculty at SFU for the last year-and-a-half. In my time on the job, I have worked in both first- and third-year classes and, while I would hardly describe myself as a seasoned, veteran educator, I have nonetheless observed a worrying trend with my students. The capability of every student obviously varies (based on personal abilities, capacity for communication, willingness to seek help, or their work ethic), but an overarching disinterest and disregard for the material is almost palpable: it often appears as if the students quite simply do not care. They are not unconcerned with passing the course, but with fully comprehending the material? Understanding higher-order concepts and their application to other disciplines? Learning anything outside the realm of examinable? No, no and no.

It is difficult to set a finger on the exact point when this apathy kicks in, but it is there. I am not so far removed from being an undergraduate student that I am unable to relate to or recognize the syndrome myself. My first thought was that this attitude was limited to first-year students who had not become fully acclimated to the demands of university courses; however, I have observed this apathy remain in those in their third year. It would be easy to say that such nonchalance is unique to this generation, but it goes deeper than that. Instead of encouraging innovation or creative analysis, our passive secondary school system places an emphasis on standardized testing that evaluates recall. It is breeding a generation of students whose approach to education is compartmental and results-based. Students are conditioned to group knowledge into two categories: “What do I have to know to pass the exam?” and “Irrelevant.”

The Sage on the Stage

The classic method of lecturing has been documented for over 800 years, and persists despite being decried by progressives as archaic and non-functional. Why make instructors imprison students in a windowless classroom for or up to two hours while reciting a bunch of text off a slide? In his Time article “Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective”, Salman Khan of the Khan Academy asserts that students are only capable of paying attention for short bursts that decrease rapidly with time. So why continue with this system? Would it be more functional to engage students in a one-on-one manner? Most significantly, why do lectures have such staying power, and why are they present at virtually every level of education? Larry Cuban of the National Education Policy Center calls lectures a product of “historical inertia,” but justifies their existence as flexible and adaptable to teaching techniques. In a 2011 blog post, his discussion on the matter is hinged on the apparent success of the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) technique, wherein teachers quiz students on information as it is presented, and continually prod until they stumble upon the right answer (or break down in tears, presumably). Unsurprisingly, this effort has its drawbacks. It is virtually useless in a classroom packed with four hundred fidgety, bored, and nervous students. Furthermore, any TA or Professor in a smaller classroom knows that its success is not guaranteed. The classic set-up that separates and isolates a teacher from their students creates a hierarchy where the students are subjugates. The instructor has the ability to pick individuals and place them on a hot seat, thereby limiting the meaningful scope of interactions and potentially embarrassing individuals. The ultimate drawback is that students are more hesitant to independently join discussions and shrink into their shells where they are unchallenged. Each individual assumes themselves on the bottom of some mythical and imaginary totem pole, unable to stop the class to request clarification, lest they bring the whole thing to a grinding halt for everyone else. Self-starters thrive in this system, but not all students are equally accommodated. This growing divide, rooted in the lowest levels of education, slowly reaches tragicomic levels.

 

The Disconnect

Freelance artist Brian Cronin has a wonderful style of illustrating progress, using trees to separate characters at either end of a spectrum. The trunks, branches and leaves obscure the intermediate image while doubling as strict borders separating the old from the new; his images often look as though the panes of two separate comics have been spliced together. An illustration for a Technology Review article entitled “The Crisis in Higher Education” depicts the progress made in access to education over the last hundred years: an individual stands at the base of a towering evergreen, banging out mathematical equations on a chalkboard, whilst another is perched on a branch, at least a hundred feet up, tapping away on a laptop. But the man at the base of the tree, fervently scribbling on the chalkboard, could easily represent today’s educators, anxiously trying to reach through and engage their students whose heads are (in this image) literally aloft in the clouds. Unable to maintain focus on the task at hand and too nervous to raise a hand, these students drift away, lost to the educator. But what’s the biggest issue?

They are not engaged. They may be scared of it. They may not know how to do it, or they may lose interest completely.

This mindset rapidly manifests as apathy, and once this barrier is established, it is impenetrable. Students do not go to tutorials when they are not mandatory. They do not do homework assignments when they are not mandatory. They do not read book chapters that are not mandatory reading.  There is little interest in learning for the sake of learning, for refining and developing their intellect or expanding themselves. The same question has been asked consistently in every single tutorial and lab I have ever instructed: “Is this going to be on the exam?”  In the summer of 2011, I conducted a tutorial for a third-year class that was at 1:30 in the afternoon. On the first day of class, when I alerted my students that attendance not mandatory, 25 people showed up. Through the rest of the semester the average group size topped out at five. On three separate occasions, I cancelled tutorials when nobody came. I was a new TA at the time and initially took it as a damning reflection of my own teaching skills. What had I done wrong? I tried to make

the tutorials as interesting and informative as possible. I tried to make them fun. When I addressed my concerns with the instructor, she waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not your fault. That’s just how they are. And I guarantee you the ones who never came to class will be coming up at the end of the semester begging us to change their grade.” There’s the rub: students are trapped in a box that they don’t know exists, and they’re tragically indifferent to its presence.

 

Standardized Testing

Standardized testing is, to put it bluntly, a functionally useless evaluation of a student’s intelligence. Students who fail to hit upon a set of pre-determined points in their answers suffer, as the tests cannot holistically assess a student’s capacity for logical dissection, dissemination, and evaluation of material. Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and short-answer questions are made-to-order, rigidly evaluating a student’s ability to scribble down notes, memorize them with flashcards and coffee, and spew them back out on the page, leaving them behind as they walk out of the exam hall. The obsessive focus on grades eliminates cooperative learning, pitting students against one another to commit their textbooks to memory. It is a system born of convenience, but deleterious in two ways: it does not challenge students to think in broad spectrums, and it hurts students by assuming that all questions have answers. Not all questions have answers. Science is particularly maligned in this regard. Science is a beautiful, abstract field; the more we learn, the less we know. It requires just as much ingenuity as a creative writing class. But it is portrayed as a bunch of boring stuff in musty old books, discovered by a bunch of dudes who died hundreds of years ago.

 

 We have low standards

I like to think of a university as a factory: each student enters as a mess of pieces, tools, and oil in buckets, unfinished articles. Universities are by design breeding grounds for an exchange of ideas and the generation of higher functioning human beings. We should be chasing ideals and goals that are lofty and challenging instead of taking “easy” courses to boost our GPA.

That is what our contemporary system boils us down to: results-oriented people without goals, flipping to the end of the book to find out what happens without experiencing the peaks and valleys of the story. This false sense of expectation is engendered in students from their youth — they expect to be gifted a road map, compass, and directions, both in labs or lectures. They expect the material to be spoon-fed to them. However, as a TA, that is not my job. It is rare to come across a student who is engaged by the material and genuinely fascinated by it, by the rhythms and mystery of the universe we live in, the cultures and languages that divide us, the complexities of natural systems, and the human mind itself.

The way material is presented is not challenging: it is a compendium of unexciting facts and figures, definitions, and vague concepts that need to be neatly memorized in isolation. The curriculum fails to engage on an emotional or visceral level, and thus passes through a student undigested. Students might say, “It’s a bunch of useless crap I’ll never have to know again because I’ve already passed the course.”  If that is what education is, then what’s the point? Who cares if you know what the digestive system looks like if you are uninterested in using that information to enhance human perspective? Learning is not a job. It is a privilege, an opportunity for each individual to further the collective of human knowledge. But it is not portrayed as such by the vast majority. Most see it as an obstacle to overcome in pursuit of a piece of paper that reads: “This person has functional intelligence and is capable of rote memorization.”

Our standards are too low. Getting straight Cs is not a challenge. It barely requires an effort. Of course, that may not be the case. Your GPA may be a 4.0, a 3.67, or a 2.48. But what does it really say about you? It does not make a distinction between the gifted, hyper-analytical, and exciting minds of the future, and those simply capable of successful cramming. It is a devalued blanket statement that, in our hypercompetitive global job market, is essentially useless.

 

Fine-tuning the system/ “Education is overrated”

Graduate courses benefit from smaller class sizes, seminars, open-air discussions, and groupthink, which are refreshing and stimulating. They encourage the sharing, processing, evaluation and argumentation of disparate viewpoints. This is a student-based teaching model, one that lower levels of education are sorely lacking. A shift towards electronic teaching and student-run seminars at the secondary level may elevate students’ interest, focus, and comfort within large groups, fostering co-operative learning at a young age. Understandably, this system may not be useful to university classes of mammoth sizes. A lovely idea floated by the Khan Academy suggests to deliver of lecture material outside the classroom by making it freely available to students (which it already is) and spending class time re-enforcing ideas within small groups split amongst numerous instructors (or an instructor and multiple TAs). In adjunction to discussions, students could be encouraged to dissect the material with their peers in an equal-opportunity environment, while working on case studies or problem sets relevant to the curriculum.

The emphasis on grades must be relaxed, removing the fear factor from education and the resulting slant towards compartmentalized studying. I have been told by multiple professors that grad school grades are irrelevant; what really defines an individual is the quality of their work, their ability to construct and phrase arguments and troubleshoot situations while generating novel solutions. A few have taken this stance further. One of my instructors made a rather stunning point to me, which I aim to paraphrase as accurately as possible. “Education itself is overrated. Nothing separates a PhD student from one who has taken his Masters. All it means to me is that you’ve spent a few more years studying some esoteric thing you may never apply in your professional life,” he said. “What I’m after is a mind: a mind that challenges what is presented, a mind that is analytical and actively seeks problems, a mind that does not look at a bunch of facts and takes it as gospel. Life is not a test. You do not get a job simply because you pass a test.”

Whose land is it anyway?

By
EIC
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By Matthew Hiltermann
Photos by Mark Burnham

CALGARY (The Gauntlet) — With all the debate around Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, competing interests fail to question the ownership of the land on which it is projected to be built. One look at a map would suggest that the land is well within the generally accepted boundaries of Canada, however, a closer look says otherwise.
As it stands, treaties have not been established in most of British Columbia, except for Vancouver Island, 2,000 square kilometers in northwest BC and the northeast corner of the province. Therefore, the land on which the pipeline will be built does not technically belong to Canada.

English Common Law, which is the foundation of Canada’s legal system, establishes four bases on which land can be acquired: by military conquest, where one nation takes over another during war; by cession or formal transfer, where a treaty is signed between two sovereign parties, wherein one of them relinquishes sovereignty to the other; by annexation, where one nation unilaterally declares its sovereignty over the other without military action or treaty; and through the settlement of “no man’s land,” a place where no one lives and that no one claims, also known as terra nullius. Canada relied on the fourth premise, terra nullius, to justify its occupation of BC. To deal with the obvious contradiction between the presence of Aboriginal Peoples in BC — like the Dene, Okanagan and Sekani — and the requisite of terra nullius that the land be unoccupied, it has been stipulated that land was unoccupied unless the peoples living there had a concept of land tenure. Research done in recent years demonstrates that the Aboriginal Peoples of BC have a very complex and deeply entrenched concept of land tenure.

As it turns out, the third premise, annexation or assentation of sovereignty, can’t be taken when dealing with Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 explicitly states that the “Nations or tribes of Indians, with whom we are connected . . . should not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of our dominions and territories as not having been ceded to or purchased by us . . . Any lands whatever, which not having been ceded to or purchased by us as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians.”
Section 25 of the Constitution Act of 1982 affirms the rights and promises made by the Royal Proclamation of 1763. This means that sovereignty can’t be asserted over Aboriginal Peoples through military means, annexation or assentation of sovereignty. Aboriginal land, and therefore sovereignty, must be formally surrendered through treaty under Canadian law.[pullquote]The land on which the pipeline will be built does not technically belong to Canada[/pullquote]
Most of the land in BC, with the exception of the territory covered by Treaty 8, the Nisga’a Final Agreement and the Douglas Treaties, does not belong to the Canadian government. This creates problems for Enbridge, since a considerable part of the Northern Gateway’s proposed plan transverses this land. Furthermore, according to the Royal Proclamation, the Canadian government is constitutionally obliged to prevent the exploitation of lands that have not been given up through treaty. It follows, then, that the Northern Gateway project would be in direct violation of both Canadian law and aboriginal rights, according to both the Royal Proclamation and the Constitution. Because Aboriginal Peoples have retained sovereignty over their land, we are not dealing with an issue of majority rules. If so much as a single nation along the route is opposed to the construction of the pipeline, the entire process will be stopped in its tracks.

As it stands, Enbridge can’t build the pipeline, nor can the federal government unilaterally give the go-ahead to build unless treaties are established or each individual nation agrees to the process. In the meantime, the Northern Gateway pipeline will remain a pipe dream.

Genetically modified foods unquestionably dangerous

By
EIC
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Fatal exposure tests of rats to GMO foods don’t bode well for us

By Kai Yang Shiao
Photos by Ben Buckley

Time and time again, the ongoing debate regarding the application of genetic engineering of food supplies has largely failed to bring many key facts into the spotlight. Nov. 12’s point/counter-point was no different. The subsequent examination of these facts will provide strong support for the idea that that the current genetic engineering does not employ the precautionary principles it should.

GMOs are often touted as resistant to various pests and acts of god, such as droughts, and therefore must be the new norm in human societies across the world. Those in favour of GMOs often fail to consider the implications of their large-scale introduction into the mainstream agribusiness industry. It is commonly known that the wide application of pesticides has subsequently resulted in the development of future immunity by agricultural pests.

It’s Darwinism at its finest: initially, GMO plants may possess implanted genes that produce poisons to ward off potential predators and kill the vast majority of pests. Over time, however, the surviving pests reproduce and therefore pass on their resistant genes to their offspring. In accordance with the principle of natural selection, these favourable traits will eventually proliferate throughout other members of the entire species until they develop complete resistance to these plant-produced pesticides.[pullquote]Rats fed NK603 genetically modified, Roundup-resistant corn developed massive mammary tumours, with 70 per cent of females dying unusually early.[/pullquote]

To make matters worse, their massive introduction would promote genetic uniformity as opposed to genetic diversity, and therefore make them vulnerable to the new generation of pests that, unlike their ancestors, will now be resistant to the effects of pesticides and put strains on the global food supply. Therefore, the idea that GMOs can somehow solve the recurring problem in agriculture of plant destruction once and for all is fallacious. Pests are constantly adapting to their environment in order to ensure their future survival.

Another issue of crucial importance is lab work with respect to GMOs. In the scientific world, rats are often used as surrogates in place of humans for testing various pharmaceutical, agricultural, and household substances. Because humans and rats are descended from a common ancestor, it is no surprise that rats are widely known for certain genetic and therefore biological similarities to humans. Therefore, the effects of such experiments, positive and negative, will likely also be experienced by humans.

With this principle in mind, scientists conducted an independent study in which a group of laboratory rats were fed NK603 Roundup-resistant genetically modified corn developed by Monsanto. The other group of laboratory rats served as a control group, given conventionally cultivated corn by the researchers. Scientists were astonished by the wide variety of detrimental health impacts that immediately appeared in the former group of laboratory rats. They ranged from massive tumours to organ damage, and even premature death in 70 per cent of the females. While experiments such as the aforementioned one regarding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) continue to be relatively scant, the alarming results of the experiment casts doubt on the wisdom of large-scale efforts to introduce GMOs into our diets.

The findings dispute the claim that opposition to the use of such technology is simply based on scare-mongering and has no substantial basis. There is already substantial evidence suggest that a sober second look before incorporating GMOs into the mainstream food supply across the world.

Don’t shoot the mistress

By
EIC
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Changing attitudes and shifting social scenes requires us to reevaluate our love of monogamy

By Susan Currie

The Nov. 13 edition of The Peak’s “High infidelity” feature looked at The Mistress, a show that tries to de-vilify the “other” woman. Sarah J. Symonds, hostess of the program, believes that much of the problem lays in the lack of self-esteem held by mistresses, women who seem to fall upon married men and, oops, start engaging in sex with them. Symonds did this twice, so she would know right?

Symonds’s suspect sincerity aside, programs like The Mistress merely dance around the issue that should be under scrutiny when discussing the failing institutions of monogamy and marriage. This article also pointed out that the social and geographical climate of Vancouver makes it ideal for would-be adulterers. This may be true; Vancouver is a city teeming with people, most of whom just wanna get laid — been on OKCupid lately? Also noted is Vancouver’s oft-spoken of shell of a dating scene — I reiterate, been on OKCupid lately?

What I’ve observed is that the old method of dating, courting multiple people at a time and ceasing when a formal “dating” relationship has been formed (old-school monogamy), has seen its days. The more socially liberal we are about sex, the more willing people are to create hasty commitments with very recent dating partners. New monogamy has, in many ways, become synonymous with immediate co-dependency. Think of monogamy as wheat: originally we ate a lot of it, and it was generally wholesome and good, but now, after years of genetic modification, your local Safeway has over twenty different products labeled “Gluten Free,” because eventually it got out of hand.
I’ve been chastising monogamy, but it’s not really monogamy that irks me. Being emotionally and physically committed to one person is just groovy. The problem is the fear and ignorance with which people view the other options, options that work in a changing social-sexual climate. Swing, polyamoury, open-relationships — these are all viable options, rarely discussed because the closed-dyad is the hinge on which a great deal of our social assumptions swing.

Do women who become the mistresses of married men just have bad self-esteem? Are all men who cheat scoundrels? It’s hard to say, many of them probably do/are. Will open relationships and the revolution of the North American relationship structure abolish adultery and infidelity? Absolutely not; people make bad decisions and we don’t always know why. It will provide some people with non-co-dependent options, and perhaps that will cease this supposed “eruption” and growth in adulterous behavior in Vancouver. Perhaps the evolution of the sexual/romantic relationship in North America is required for a city like ours where overwhelming options, or overwhelming isolation, can be anybody’s ticket to dubious decision making.

The point of an open relationship is open communication about desires, needs, and interests. We no longer rely on marriage and monogamy for sex and safety, and thus our relationships and reliance on monogamy has changed. Fidelity and honesty with our partners should be an assumption we make, but fidelity and honesty is not monogamy’s domain alone. Being open doesn’t mean that cheating cannot happen. It very well can. What it does mean is that the option to discuss a non-traditional relationship is available and non-taboo. Bonus, when monogamy is not a default option, you can choose it instead of being assigned to it, if that’s how you swing.

We should go no fault

By
EIC
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It’s the reason other provinces’ insurance rates are substantially lower than ours

By Paul Hurst

In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, car insurance is completely “no fault.” This means you cannot sue Saskatchewan General Insurance or Manitoba Public Insurance for money for “pain and suffering” from a car accident.

The insurance rates in those two provinces are substantially lower than in BC. In BC, the “no fault benefits’ are fairly limited. This is because there is universal health care to cover you for medical treatment. ICBC and BC Medical overlap coverage if you are at fault. You cannot sue yourself, so you cannot claim for “pain and suffering” if you are responsible for the accident.

If you are not at fault, it’s a completely different story. In BC, you have the right to make a ‘tort’ claim against the other driver if they are at fault and responsible for your injuries. Since ICBC covers the at-fault driver under their third party coverage (you are the third party in this case), you make your claim against ICBC.

An injury adjuster may settle with you, or you may be unhappy with that process and end up in court. To my understanding, your plaintiff lawyer will claim upwards of 30 per cent of any settlement with ICBC.

Because of the costs of personal injury claims against ICBC every year, the cost for insurance in BC is higher than Saskatchewan. Somewhere in the range of 60 per cent of your third party insurance premiums go towards paying injury claims.

If ICBC converted to a total no fault system, several things would happen:

1: Quite a few lawyers would be out of work.

2: You would not get a large cash settlement if you were injured.

3: You would not go to court to get money, thus the courts would be less backlogged.

4: The amount of coverage under mandatory no fault coverage would expand, so that you would likely get better medical treatment, wage loss, and other automatic benefits.

5: Quite a few ICBC staff might be out of a job.

6: Any claim you make would be far simpler and more automated.

7: The amount you pay for car insurance would be substantially less than what you pay now.

8: The chances of ICBC going bankrupt would be reduced. Since this is a possibility, the cost of the government bailing out ICBC could be onerous.

9: There are procedures in place in Saskatchewan and Manitoba to handle severe injuries, so looking to those two provinces as templates would make sense.

10: In Manitoba, the public is given the choice to add a tort coverage package to their insurance. This was the first time since the 1970s that people in that province could claim for personal injury. Surprisingly, few choose the option, as they are quite happy with the no fault system they have now.

If BC switches to a no-fault system, there will be endless political debate prior to any changes being implemented. A change may be precipitated by an economic crisis that puts ICBC into bankruptcy. Since much larger insurers like AIG have gone bankrupt, it’s possible it could happen to ICBC. The cost of injury claims was in the billions of dollars per year, and it’s the ratepayers who own cars that foot the bill.

Ultimately, it’ll be you who decides, so you might want to educate yourself further on no-fault insurance.

Undergraduate issues are linked to current labour unrest

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EIC
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By Michael McDonell

Issues that undergrad students face are linked just as closely to current educational policies as what TSSU members have experienced over the 29 months leading up to their new contract. The length of time this took, and the fact that CUPE 3338 workers still don’t have a collective agreement, is not a good sign for having undergraduate issues addressed anytime soon. In the meantime, the list of issues continues to grow: rising tuition fees, cutbacks in provincial funding, ever-increasing student loan debt and high interest rates are only the most visible ones.

In a climate of austerity, students are forced to pay more tuition for their education, while having less time with university faculty, and funding is being cut to university budgets in a number of areas. Similar cuts have happened in secondary schools, where the BC government forced teachers to accept a contract (under the ‘essential services’ clause) which reduced funding, increased class sizes, and attacked teachers’ wages and working conditions. Ask the students who mobilized in Quebec earlier this year: these attacks are interconnected.

In Canada last year, the average student graduated with roughly $27,000 of debt, partly owing to the fact that tuition fees have doubled from their 2002 level and quadrupled what they were in 1992. Currently, close to 40 per cent of SFU’s operating budget comes from tuition fees (slightly above average for universities now — double the 1988 amount). Student loan interest rates in BC are the highest in Canada, at prime plus 2.5. This costs the average student nearly $8,000 extra on a 10-year repayment plan, while other provinces have already eliminated student loan interest. Moreover, in BC, there has been no coherent provincial grants system since 2005. As a result, less than 10 per cent of student loan debt is repaid by the government, unlike Manitoba (46 per cent), and Quebec (42 per cent). SFU should be at the forefront of defending student access to public education, but has instead acquiesced to these provincial cutbacks.

There are many outstanding issues at SFU. One striking example is building maintenance: according to the Graduate Student Society’s report on deferred maintenance, the university has allowed its Annual Capital Allowance to be cut 91 per cent between 2008–09 and 2010, even though the majority of buildings are in poor condition and a nearly 400 per cent increase is still needed from 2008 levels. This is why you saw buckets on the floor in the West Mall Complex as water was dripping from the ceiling.

But it is not that the university lacks money, far from it. To put this in perspective, SFU administrators’ pay has skyrocketed in the last decade. The average wages of the President and four Vice-Presidents of SFU (who oversee Research, Academic, Finance, and Legal Departments) is more than two-thirds higher than Members of Parliament in Ottawa. Admins in general have seen a 45 per cent salary increase in the last eight years, while Master’s TAs have gotten next to nothing without taking serious job action. This is bad both for the quality of our tutorials and for our future in graduate school, where most of us will be if nearly three-quarters of new jobs created in the next five years will require post-secondary degrees.

The current policies at SFU harm not only TAs, TMs, precarious sessional instructors, and campus workers, but the very undergraduates on whom SFU’s operating budget increasingly relies. And yet, channels for students to express their needs do exist: the SFSS Advocacy Committee (and several other committees), which is part of the Where’s the Funding?! Campaign; department student unions, which have members sitting on departmental committees and send paid representatives to the SFSS Forum at least once a month; and action groups at SFPIRG that can undertake projects and raise awareness. We need to continue to support groups on campus (like CUPE 3338) while they fight for their rights, to demonstrate that we know these issues are linked to issues in the educational system in general. Solidarity has to be broad in order to be effective.

NATO flag should be flown on Remembrance Day

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EIC
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By Dan Peach

The piece “SFU should not hoist NATO flag” published by Cedric Chen in the Nov. 5, 2012 edition of The Peak displayed a great degree of insulation from reality. I do, however, commend the author for writing his opinions down and publishing them, no matter how misguided they are. The use of NATO to project the power of the West, including that of the much-maligned USA, has been of great benefit to us as a country, and is part of what allows genuinely dissenting pieces, such as Chen’s, to be published without the author having to worry about being executed, disappearing, or having to navigate censorship systems such as the Great Firewall of China.

I recognize that there are problems with the Western media, with NATO, Canada, and the West as a whole. I doubt any sane person would deny this. However, I challenge Chen to present and implement an alternative to NATO that would be of more benefit to Canadian society as a whole and be practical to introduce. The NATO flag should, without a doubt, be flown on Remembrance Day, as the men and women who have fought under it should be remembered for defending our Western way of life, helping other nations to maintain or achieve it, and keeping our enemies occupied far from our homes.

War isn’t clean. It isn’t a perfect solution to any problem and it certainly isn’t something we should desire or aspire to. It often results in the deaths of innocents and non-combatants. I’m saddened that journalists were killed when the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Depending on the source of information, this was done either by accident or because it was providing a signals facility for the enemy, specifically to a man wanted for war crimes. I assume that Chen is just as saddened by the Tarnak Farm friendly fire incident that resulted in the deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan (the first Canadian deaths in a combat zone since the Korean War) who were fighting under the NATO flag. And I’m sure that amidst a busy schedule of flipping off NATO flags, Mr. Chen found a moment on Remembrance Day to honour these soldiers and the many other Canadians who have died fighting for us, no matter what flag they did so under.

For all its costs, sometimes war is the only effective method left to us to protect our way of life or that of our allies. Remembrance Day is about remembering the horrors of war and honouring those who have fought to maintain our way of life, with all the imperfections and unique freedoms it entails. In fact, I think I will take advantage of one of the freedoms that NATO soldiers (and many others for that matter) have protected for us and other countries to state the following: Cedric Chen, your “nation’s grudge” has no place in determining what is honoured on Canadian Remembrance Day. While I respect your right to publish it, the article was ignorant, crass, and disrespectful, and I hope someday you feel ashamed of your words and the gesture you made at the NATO flag.

Miriam Margolyes brings the women of Charles Dickens to life

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EIC
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The worldwide tour of Dickens’ Women celebrates the bi centenary of Dickens’ birth

By Monica Miller
Photos by Prudence-Upton

Although she is best known to youth as Professor Sprout from the Harry Potter movies, Miriam Margolyes is much more than that. She is a British stage, screen, and voice actor with numerous awards, nominations, and even an Order of the British Empire for her work in drama.

In the Olivier Award-nominated production of Dickens’ Women, Margolyes explores the man through his work — with character sketches, short readings, monologues, comedy, and commentary on his life. Originally premiering the show at the 1989 Edinburgh Festival, Margolyes has been on tour with Dickens’ Women since January to celebrate Charles Dickens’s bicentenary.

The one-woman performance, which boasts depictions of more than 23 characters, traces Dickens’s life, from childhood to marriage and ultimately to death. That life is much different than the jovial artist persona he maintained for the public.

 

Write What You Know

“[Dickens] could write about the underbelly of society because he came from it,” Margolyes narrates, addressing the audience plainly. She explains that he was born into the lower middle-class, but was a social climber. In Dickens’s world, class and social standing were not necessarily the indicator of a good or bad character. Margolyes uses her incredible talents as a voice actor to convey region, class, attitudes, and the judgment of the characters portrayed. Most of his novels came out in serialized releases, but Dickens made more money from dramatic readings than publishing work; this is one of the reasons performing Dickens’s work, like Shakespeare before him, is so captivating.

“One of my particular pleasures is to isolate voice,” Margolyes explains on the phone from her hotel in downtown Vancouver. Working with Sonia Fraser to create the script, Margolyes uses a simple set, lighting, and pianist accompaniment to bring Dickens’ Women alive.

“One of the powerful things about Charles Dickens is his strong moral conviction. If he thinks someone is bad, you can tell immediately.” Margolyes selected a variety of characters both famous and obscure from the novelist’s large body of work, combining comedy, pathos, disgust, satire, and social commentary.

Dickens’ Women draws parallels between his real life and the lives crafted on the page, driving home the well-worn cliche “write what you know.” Aspects of his mother, sisters, wife, lovers, and the other women in his life can been glimpsed within the females on the page: Mrs. Pipchin from Dombey and Son, motivated by the woman he boarded with as a child; Flora Finching from Little Dorrit, based on the lady who spurned his love as a young man; Mrs. Mcawbir from David Copperfield, inspired by his mother and the keeping up of appearances; and a whole host of  “young, beautiful, and good” 17-year-olds in tribute to his deceased sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth.

True to her style, Margolyes speaks plainly to the audience with comedy and wit. She even addressed our hesitation to interrupt the performance with applause: “You can clap now” — and we did.

 

Relevence for Canadian students

Charles Dickens, like many great artists, has a worldwide allure and a sense of timelessness apparent in his work. He wrote about the realities and torments of life and relationships, and the constant struggle of good versus evil.

“Humanity is the same in different countries,” remarks Margolyes. “The same concerns of life, love, fear, and betrayal attack people wherever they are.

“Like any great artist, he had universal appeal,” says Margolyes, citing Leonard Cohen as a contemporary Canadian example. “The problem with students [today] is they flit around — everything they receive is from the screen, and very little is from the printed page or direct eye contact,” Margolyes laments. “Young people today are terribly deprived because they don’t even know they are.”

 

On The Town

Dickens’ Women finishes in Chicago, after which Margolyes will fly back to London in time for Christmas Eve. In early January, she will be returning to Australia, where she will have two months rest and finally become an Australian citizen. Then she will begin filming the second season of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, a television drama series based on detective novels by Australian author Kerry Greenwood.

You can clap now.

SFU Author Spotlight: Poetry Abound

By
EIC
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By Monica Miller

Catherine Owen is a Vancouver poet who completed her BA and MA at SFU (1997–2001) in English Literature, writing her thesis on poet Robinson Jeffers. She is the author of nine collections of poetry and has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Owen has been nominated for a variety of awards including the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the ReLit Award, the Gerald Lampert Award, and in 2009 her poetry book Frenzy won the Alberta Literary Award.

Owen’s most recent book of poetry is Trobairitz, published by Anvil Press and released Oct. 27, 2012. Inspired by the metal scene and her extensive research of medieval culture, Trobairitz has both a 12th and 21st-century flair. Owen has in-depth experience with both subjects: she was in metal bands in Vancouver and Edmonton for eight years, and researched medieval culture for six years.

“It was compelled by my desire to write poems on the disparities between male and female creators in the [metal] scene, as well as by the music within medieval poetic forms,” She says about Trobairitz. A “trobairitz” is a female troubadour from the twelfth century.

Following the launch, Owen went on a 10-date tour across Canada, performing and selling copies of the book and other Trobairitz merchandise. She is excited about many things coming down the pipeline for the book, as well as other projects. A woman of many talents, Owen is not only an author and musician, she is also a photographer and model.

“[Currently] I am working on a collection of poems about the Fraser River, a blackened-doom [heavy metal] project called Medea, some essays on grief, and a photographic collaboration with Paul Saturley known as Pandemonium.”

 

 

Colin Browne is a professor at SFU’s School of Contemporary Arts, in addition to being a published author and a documentary filmmaker oft invited to national and international festivals. Browne is a pivotal individual in the local arts scene, co-founding organizations such as the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters, the Audio-Visual Heritage Association of BC, and the Kootenay School of Writing.

Browne completed his MA in English at SFU, and uses poetry to articulate how he perceives the world and the places around him. Early on in life, he was inspired by Dylan Thomas, Kenneth Patchen, and Robinson Jeffers. Browne’s work has been nominated for the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, and his most recent book of poetry, The Properties, was published with Talonbooks this spring. In the book’s introduction, Browne writes, “Poetry begins when the properties of things — and the correspondences among them — reveal themselves through language. . . . All times and places exist simultaneously.”

“For me, history always has one foot in the personal, intimate history of a family.” Several poems continue the examination of the documentary form begun in The Shovel (Talonbooks, 2007).

Browne is already working on his next book of poetry, which will examine “the surrealiste fascination with Northwest coast and Alaskan art,” an area he’s been researching for several years.

“Last year [I] wrote a catalogue essay for the VAG’s surrealiste exhibition The Colour of My Dreams entitled ‘Scavengers of Paradise,’ ” says Browne. “I have a feeling the book will have the same title.”

Browne teaches the School of Contemporary Arts’ fourth-year film production courses, screenwriting, film studies and critical writing in the arts.

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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