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SFYou: Fight for your pride

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WEB-Samonte Cruz-Mark Burnham

By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Mark Burnham

Samonte Cruz grew up in a rural area, so when he come out as queer around the age of 16, he was one of the only queer people that was out at his high school. He endured daily harassment, from being called a “dyke” in the hallway to getting his tires slashed, and these years were marked with feelings of isolation, fear, and loneliness — all of which drew him to helping people later in life. When he was 19, he came out as trans, and his college years were transitional ones.

“I knew that it was wrong for me to be targeted this way, and I didn’t have any community or resources,” he says. Because of this lack of education, his college years were overwhelming; he not only had to come to terms with his own identity, but also to educate everybody around him.
“I think if I could have just focused on myself, I would have been in a much better place,” he admits. It is for this reason that he’s so passionate about providing education and resources as Out On Campus’ office and volunteer coordinator. OOC is looking to change that title to “program and volunteer coordinator” as the position begins to focus more on program development and education.
For some years after he graduated university, Samonte did media-focused work with youth, including with BC-based Access to Media Education Society, which works with marginalized populations to put out media from their perspective. Always an active organizer in the LGBT community, Samonte got hired as staff at SFU’s Out On Campus in 2006.

“Not being a student, I’ve got more resources than some other folks here, whose main focus is going to be school,” he says of his position. “With some of the programs we’re hoping to start, we’re trying to take some of the pressure off of the individuals to be able to feel like there’s some outside support for them, make space for people to not have to be those educators, but . . . if they do want to take an educational role, there is that program for that.”
Samonte shows the same drive in his personal life, no matter what it throws him. Three years ago, he was hit by an SUV and was left with a broken neck, and stuck in an upper body and neck brace for three months. Through the support of his co-workers and the community, he recovered and has since continued his work at OOC, as avid as ever.

The focus lies on education, and OOC members have been going to classrooms to talk about the difference between sex and gender; they’re looking to take it further, however, and expand this into educational programs.

“Even though there are a lot of benefits in Canada, there are still a lot of issues that make it so it’s not safe for people to come out, and it’s gonna take a long time for these issues to be resolved,” says Samonte. “Our hope is that we can break down some of those stereotypes and prejudices that are being perpetuated in larger society, and actually change something on a bigger scale. For us, here, education is the way to do that.”

Why support Out On Campus? “Everybody is affected by homophobia and transphobia, regardless of how you identify. We all have genders and we all have sexualities and the restrictions that are enforced upon queer and trans folks are also enforced against folks that don’t identify that way,” says Samonte. “By working on these issues, it doesn’t just liberate queer and trans folks, it will liberate everyone to be able to express themselves however they want to.”
March 11 marks Queer Awareness Week, which will include workshops on gender identity, a movie screening, and a series of dialogues and panel discussions with some of the campus’s Christian groups.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride to McGill

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EIC
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Students in Quebec have no one to blame for program cuts but themselves

By David Dyck

Be careful what you wish for. Last year, Quebec students wished long and hard for the ongoing tuition freeze in the province to remain intact. They wished it on the streets, sometimes without clothes on, they banged on dishware and decried capitalism, and pinned small red squares to their clothes to indicate how much they were wishing for it.

They wished so long and so hard and so loudly that they finally got what they wanted. An election happened, and a brand new party was put into power, a party that agreed that their wishes were good and valid and just. The freeze was here to stay, and tuition rates would remain the lowest in Canada, in North America even.

Wishes do come true. There is hope for the downtrodden, hungry, poor arts students who wished so hard.
And then the unthinkable happened. A blind spot in all of the wishing came out: money is required to run universities. If the money isn’t there, then one of two things has to happen: either the university must look for funding in other places, or the university must cut costs. Cutting costs means cutting programming, getting rid of staff and administration, and increasing class sizes.

The latter scenario is exactly what is happening at McGill. The new PQ government is slashing $124 million from universities across the province, and McGill is expected to cut $19.1 million from their own budget.

The administration has been lashing out at the new government for “betraying” the students.

One former McGill history and economics professor told The Bull and Bear, “Instead of taking on the responsibility for the province’s horrible economic performance by increasing their own debt, the PQ has been trying to transfer this responsibility to the universities.”

Yet no one seems to be linking these two very obviously cause-and-effect events. The university isn’t blaming the student strike. The PQ isn’t. Everyone is blaming the government, an easy scapegoat.

And maybe this former prof is right. Maybe the PQ should have taken the 124 million-dollar bath to think about what happens when you grant the wish of hundreds of Quebecois arts students who can’t do math. But who loses out? Someone else’s budget has to be slashed instead, or the province increases its debt.

Of course, it would be too easy to look at the real problem — there’s a tuition freeze. That tuition was supposed to be unfrozen, a plan already rolled into the 2013 budget, but it never happened. Now McGill — and every other post-secondary institution in la belle province — is suffering.

If you give a child all of the candy it wants, it will get sick because it doesn’t know any better. The child might not like it, and might cry and fuss and plead, but the fact is that that is preferable to the consequences that unlimited candy will have on the health of the child. The student strike displayed ignorance about how the real world works, and the subsequent budget cuts are the very real fallout from wishful, fantastical thinking being made into policy.

Peakcast #5

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EIC
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A special edition of the Peakcast where the ladies from the office discuss International Women’s week.

Peakcast #4

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EIC
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Editors David Dyck, Will Ross, Rachel Braeuer, and Gary Lim discuss humorous issues and more!

Quvenzhane Wallis won’t stop asking everyone she knows what a “c***” is.

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Peak Web
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By Gary Lim and Alison Roach

HOUMA, Louisiana — Uncomfortable silence and dry-mouthed stammering permeated the sleepy neighborhood of West Hollow, Houma yesterday night. When nine-year-old Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis asked her entire family over dinner what a “cunt” was.

The Beasts of the Southern Wild actress explained that she had heard the word on a news report about herself and was curious as to what it meant.

The entire situation stems from live coverage of the Academy awards last Sunday online by satirical news source The Onion, who tweeted: “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhane Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013”

The comment was met with ferocious backlash on Twitter, with many users condemning the satirical website’s use of the word “cunt” to describe a child. Since then, the The Onion has issued a public apology to the young actress for the 102-character character defamation.

Currently attitudes in the Wallis household are divided on how to handle the situation. Father Venjie Wallis Sr. and siblings Vejon and Venjie Jr. think it best to tell her the truth, while mother and sister Qulyndreia and Qunyquekya opt for vehemently denying any knowledge of the word until she forgets about it or gets tired of asking.

Qulyndreia, her mother, spoke to The Peak regarding her daughter’s inquisitiveness.

“Quvenzhane’s a nine-year-old girl. How, I ask you, could it be appropriate to teach her that word? To a child?! She has so much promise; my child, a Best Actress nominee. Did you know she’s been even been cast to play little orphan Annie in the movie Annie (2014)? Quvenzhane has a bright future ahead of her, and exposing her to this kind of language at such this age, it’s a bad influence. Lindsay Lohan learned the word [REDACTED. WE CAN PRINT CUNT. BUT NOT THAT. – Ed.] on the set of Parent Trap. Look at her now. ”

As of Tuesday morning, Quvenzhane Wallis’s investigation of the word’s definition is still ongoing with the family remaining tight-lipped. After a near miss involving a Google search, the young actress has been grounded from the family computer for the foreseeable future.

Sources have also reported a sighting of Wallis focus-grouping with other neighborhood children to see if any of them know the meaning of the word “cunt.” Currently the group speculates it be some kind of toy, animal or power ranger.

As of press-time, Wallis and several neighborhood friends have created a new jump-rope rhyme consisting of the word “cunt” repeated over and over to the tune of “Twinkle, twinkle little star.”

Getting agro over Argo et al

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Peak Web
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WEB-argo copy
By Will Ross

The Oscars were almost over when their insidiousness reached its peak. First lady Michelle Obama was brought in to present best picture, delivered some platitudes about how these films prove “love can endure against all odds” etc., and handed the best picture Oscar to Argo.

There has been much criticism given to the moment: Argo, a tale of ingenuity and the triumph of US diplomacy, was considered a surefire winner. Selecting FLOTUS as the presenter seemed indiscreet. And the faux-apologetics of host Seth MacFarlane’s endless misogynist tirades have rightly taken a shellacking.

But to blast the Oscars for a sensational political kumbaya or sexist sluggery is to miss the forest for the trees. The real outrage was in Obama’s parade of platitudes, all the more so because it didn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

The speech was a capstone in the grand delusion of the Academy Awards, an event that purports to “recogniz[e] the year’s best films” (oscar.com’s words), ones that “broaden our minds” (Obama’s). But it operates as little more than Hollywood self-promotion. The movies with the biggest advertising budgets for award campaigns (in Argo’s case, around $10 million) are the ones that get nominated.

It’s not that Oscar choices are, as critics often hold, “political.” The individual votes of Academy voters are not made public, sparing them from political repercussions. The problem is precisely the opposite: the Oscars are a willfully apolitical event, voters do not have a comprehensive, international knowledge of cinema in their given fields, and they are by and large quite happy to vote for the most-promoted movies instead of seeking out the best and most groundbreaking ones.

In light of the winners and nominees, to suggest that Academy voters’ thought processes are political is to give them too much credit. The ceremony aims to indulge as low a common denominator as possible while still wearing a veil of sophistication and respectability.

After all, why would a ceremony purporting to showcase the worthiest cinema dedicate roughly 15 minutes of airtime to James Bond montages and songs? Does James Bond need the exposure more than, say, Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been jailed and banned from filmmaking by the government, and yet still makes films that are smuggled out of the country in protest of censorship and totalitarian oppression? Or is that a little too political — and too foreign — for the Academy’s tastes?

The one non-English language film that escaped the “best foreign film” ghetto, Amour, pulled down a few nominations, including Best Picture. Impressive for a film whose point runs opposite to Michelle Obama’s description: love does not, and can not, and should not “endure all.” But on Oscar night Amour was neutered and rebranded, from a ruthless and stark depiction of love and death to a Hallmark drama with all the nuance of a Nicholas Sparks movie.

The nomination of Amour probably had more to do with the incumbent respectability it earned at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012. There it won the Palm d’Or, often viewed as the real top prize of cinema. Cannes is a hotly anticipated festival and subject to immense industry pressure, yet its juries preserve its integrity time and time again, rewarding ambitious, difficult films that leave a lasting mark on the entire art form.

Regardless, the Oscars aren’t likely to change their ways anytime soon. So next time, I urge you to look at the prizewinners of other ceremonies — like the Berlin Film Festival, or Cannes, or even a film critics circle. They don’t have the same hype or spectacle, and there may not be many movies you’ve heard of, but the best awards rarely have the most dollars behind them.

TED comes to Vancouver

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Peak Web
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the peak ted

The celebrated talk conference to be held here in 2014

By Kelli Gustafson
Photos courtesy of Kris Krug

An announcement earlier this month revealed that the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) will be hosting their 30th anniversary in Vancouver in 2014, running from March 17-21. TED is an annual West Coast conference that invites some of the world’s top “thinkers” to give 50 or more talks on “ideas worth spreading,” spanning the four day conference. Topics range from groundbreaking scientific discovery to analyses of current events to child-rearing philosophy. Past presenters have included Bill Gates, Colin Powell, Al Gore, and Sir Richard Branson.

The TED conference has been traditionally held in Long Beach, California; however, organizers have decided to move the location to the Vancouver Convention Centre for 2014 to celebrate their anniversary. Organizers suggest on the TED website that Vancouver acts as an ideal location for this conference: “Vancouver, a city that’s itself an inspiration — cosmopolitan, energetic, innovative, yet with unrivaled natural beauty.”

In a statement given by Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, he spoke highly of TED, stating, “Having the TED organizers choose Vancouver as their new home is a big vote of confidence in the creative entrepreneurs, social
innovators, and community leaders who make Vancouver a leading-edge city.”

The conference is expected to attract an audience of approximately 1,200. Those interested in attending must undergo a competitive application process, and once selected by the TED panel, a single ticket will run attendees approximately $7,500 USD, according to the TED website.

While the main TED2014 conference takes place in the city, TEDActive2014 will run concurrently in Whistler. Both events will share the simple theme of “The Next Chapter,” with the idea of looking back at the significant developments of the past 30 years to give some insight into what’s ahead. Tickets to the Whistler event are estimated at $3,750 USD.

Talks will also be available to view for free on the official TED website, and many past talks can be found on YouTube. For those who seek a less expensive in-person TED conference experience, SFU has its own incarnation of the TED conference, TEDxSFU.

TEDxSFU is an independent TED event, however it is still licensed by TED. TEDxSFU was founded by SFU student Michael Cheng and was first held in the fall of 2011. Cheng said in an interview with The Peak, “The event is open to the public, but we always make an effort to ensure a portion of SFU-related speakers and attendees [are given priority].”

TEDxSFU provides a similar experience and environment as any other TED conference, as attendees must still undergo an application process to be a part of the audience. TEDxSFU will host its third conference at an unconfirmed date this year.

Green phones could assist Canada's aging population

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Peak Web
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WEB-cellphone-Mark Burnham

An SFU computer science team is working to redesign smartphones to support more advanced applications

By Amara Janssens
Photos by Mark Burham

Alexandra Fedorova, an associate professor in Computing science, along with her team have been awarded $442,000 over the next three years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to help lead the way in smartphone development. According to Fedorova’s proposal, smart phones are becoming increasingly available to the world, “with over one billion users projected by 2013.” She has observed that mobile technology is becoming very powerful and could have larger societal benefits.

Fedorova’s team has recognized that the use of smartphones in the health care sector could reduce costs, as the phones could be used to automate certain tasks that employees would otherwise conduct.

“The advantage of this device is it can do a lot of things, like measure your heart rate, or detect if you’re falling, if you’re unstable, if you’re off balance, it can help you navigate,” Fedorova stated, “and it’s with you all the time.” Having smartphones with highly sensitive applications for health care providers could help navigate patient’s homes, and automatically take records.

In order for these applications to work in this capacity, smartphones need to be operational for 24 hours a day, not the nine hours at best they last today. To combat this challenge, her team will study where smartphones are expending their power and energy. “The main culprits right now are radio, wifi, or cellular radio, and cpu and screen,” Fedorova described. “We want to understand how to manage these components better so they don’t use as much energy as they are using now.”

Fedorova further explained that the algorithms that decide when an application can “go in a low power state” are not very well tuned. It proves challenging for her team to finely tune these algorithms, as certain applications need to stay on longer than others. According to Fedorova, the algorithms would need to be “very dynamic,” and must allow for the “cooperation between the system and the application.”

Another area of development her team will research with the grant is how to allow for “fall detection algorithms” into smartphones. This would help Canada’s aging population who are most likely to fall. These fall detection algorithms would use the phone’s accelerometer to perceive if the user has or is falling. The phone could then automatically call for emergency or medical services to assist. However, this would require reworking the current systems used in smartphones, to detect slight accelorometer variations.

Through the redesigning of the system, a myriad of potential health care applications could be developed. “We are not designing the applications, we are more interested in redesigning the system to work well for those applications,” Fedorova explained.

University Briefs – Feb. 25, 2013

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Peak Web
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University of Regina to designate 10 gender-neutral washrooms

After two years, UR Pride has successfully campaigned to have gender-neutral washrooms assigned across the campus. “The premise of the washrooms would be that anyone, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation … has access to this space,” Leah Kesier, executive director of UR Pride told The Carillon. UR Pride noted that harassment often occurs in washrooms for those who aren’t filling society’s “gender expectations.” The official launch day has not yet been announced, but UR pride has been working closely with the University of Regina.

With files from The Carillon

Education program applicants drops at UWindsor

In Jan. 2013, the University of Windsor reported a drop of 13 per cent in the number of applicants to the education program compared to 2012. The university noted this as part of a current downward trend in the number of students pursuing education as a career in Ontario. Geri Salinitri, the acting dean of UWindsor’s Faculty of Education, stated that there are more people graduating from teaching programs than teaching positions available in the province of Ontario. Many graduates who are hired often work part-time for six years or more before receiving a permanent position. This has led to many pursuing teaching jobs in other provinces where wages are much higher. UWindsor has extended the fall 2013 education program admission deadline to Mar. 11, 2013.

With files from The Lance

McMaster University and librarian being sued for $3.5 million

The publishing company Edwin Mellen Press is suing McMaster University, along with a librarian, for libel damages. In 2010, the librarian, Dale Askey, wrote a series of blog posts criticizing Edwin Mellen Press as being unprofessional, and questioned the quality of their publications. In June 2012, the publishing company filed legal action against Askey as well as McMaster University as a co-defendant and demanded the posts be taken down. McMaster, however, fully supports their librarian and his posts.

With files from The Silhouette

SFU discusses BC Budget Day

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Peak Web
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WEB-SFU public square-Alison Roach

A new SFU Public Square series looks at propserity in BC

By Alison Roach
Photos by Alison Roach

Last Tuesday was BC Budget Day, the day of the budget lockup in Victoria where Finance Minister Michael de Jong delivered and explained the provincial government’s planned balanced budget for the next three years. In attendance at the lockup was Jock Finlayson, the executive vice president and chief policy officer at the Business Council of BC, an organization that represents 250 large- and medium-sized BC companies. However, after leaving Victoria, Finlayson made his way to SFU Harbour Centre, where he served as the keynote speaker at the first event in a series of three entitled the BC Population ProsperityInitiative (BCPPI) Spring Dialogue Series, presented by SFU Public Square.

The theme of the Tuesday night event was right in line with the events of the day: “From Good to Great, Nurturing Small Business Growth in BC.” Both Finlayson and Nancy Olewiler, the director of the School of Public Policy at SFU, spoke about the current climate for business in BC, and the difficulty facing small business owners in turning their small companies into large ones. Finlayson pointed out that the amount of small businesses in BC is far above the national average, with a disproportionately large number of British Columbians counting themselves as self-employed, one-person businesses. Fiftyfive per cent of BC businesses have fewer than five employees. However, this translates into a larger amount of low income people, a problem in an area like Vancouver where affordability is an issue.

“The public has great affection for small businesses,” said Finlayson in his presentation. “Sometime it seems that our governments would prefer to keep them small.”

Finlayson’s remarks centred around the importance of creating a climate that allows these small businesses to grow into medium-sized, or even large companies, and changes in policy that could stimulate innovation, creativity, and business growth. “Adopting a tax structure that rewards success and encourages companies to grow is also critical,” he stated.

Olewiler acted as the discussant for the evening, alternately agreeing and disagreeing with Finlayson’s claims. She emphasized the importance of making BC a more attractive place to start a business by lowering the tax rates, arguing that the influx of people moving to BC would widen the tax base, and result in higher tax revenues.

She also called attention to what she considers the worst tax decision recently made, the deharmonization of the HST. The return of the PST, according to Olewiler, will actually put more tax on product components for businesses, rendering production costs much higher than can be found elsewhere in the country. Olewiler concluded, “Incentives to be in BC go down.”

After the speakers finished their comments there was a brief Q&A period, followed by half an hour of public dialogue, where attendees worked in small groups to discuss the ideas laid out in the presentations. With a facilitator and note-taker at each table, the results of this dialogue will be posted on the BCPPI and SFU Public Square websites for those interested.

Two more BCPPI Dialogue events are scheduled. One held on March 26 will discuss Aboriginal education needs, and the final one on April 23 will focus on community engagement. All the dialogues are held at SFU Harbour Centre, and require registration.

Shauna Sylvester, the executive director of SFU Public Square, said of the dialogue driven event, “The SFU Public Square is a signature initiative of our community engagement . . . and we always say that it’s only as good as the people who get involved.”

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Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

For advertising inquiries: [email protected]
For promotional inquiries: [email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society