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Campaign calls on SFU to become first living wage university

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WEB-living wage-Vaikunthe Banerjee

The Living Wage campaign celebrated its launch last Wednesday

By Suyesha Sthapit
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

Last Wednesday, the Living Wage SFU Campaign formally launched with an open event in the West Mall Complex Atrium. The event was attended by approximately 45 faculty members, students, and community members. The Graduate Student Society, SFPIRG, and local unions CUPE 3338, the BCGEU, and the TSSU support the campaign.

SFU’s Living Wage Campaign is a project that aims to ensure that every individual employed directly or indirectly by SFU is guaranteed a living wage. This is the amount of money two people working full time (35 hours per week) need to earn per hour to support a family of four. Presenters at the launch of the campaign included distinguished alumnus Mae Burrows, SFU professor Dr. Marjorie Griffin-Cohen, Living Wage for Families campaign organizer Michael McCarthy-Flynn, and CUPE 3338 business agent John Bannister. The launch event highlighted the findings of a study the campaign had undertaken which focused on the working conditions for the lowest paid workers at SFU.

For Metro Vancouver, the living wage has been calculated to be $19.14 per hour for 2012. This does not include things like home ownership, saving for retirement, a savings cushion, the cost of a holiday, or the cost of caring for someone disabled or severely ill.

A living wage at SFU would increase wages for research assistants, child care workers, food service workers, and janitorial staff. McCarthy-Flynn reminded the audience that “These people are all around us but they are invisible. We are working to make them visible.”

According to the campaign, low wages are one of the key reasons for child poverty in BC; 48 per cent of children living in poverty in BC live in families with at least one adult working full-time. According to political science professor Dr. Marjorie Griffin-Cohen, “No parents working full-time, full-year jobs should have to choose between rent or childcare, food or healthcare.” SFU’s Living Wage Campaign is calling on SFU to implement a Living Wage clause in all its new contracts for employment as well as in its tenders to external subcontractors, in order to lift its low-wage workers out of poverty.

The research conducted among SFU’s low-wage workers found that 73 per cent earned less than a living wage, 57 per cent did not get paid for their overtime hours, and only half had benefits included in their employment. According to one of the workers surveyed, “I feel like I can’t provide for my family. I have to struggle to pay for food, housing, electricity and food bills. Sometimes I have to go to the food bank for food.” Another said, “I literally live paycheck to paycheck and budget my finances to only meet bare necessities.”

Cohen stated, “BC has one of the highest poverty rates and child poverty rates compared to other provinces in Canada,” and that the women were particularly affected, earning $2,700 per year less than the Canadian average. Bannister highlighted that one of the major concerns of
the campaign is SFU’s current practice of subcontracting to external companies to provide cheap labour. McCarthy-Flynn explained the reasons why has the campaign chose SFU to become the first living wage university: namely the audience of SFU’s status as one of the best employers in BC and in Canada; its vision to become an engaged, progressive university, its commitment to fair trade products, and its role as a leader in education, innovation and social change.

According to McCarthy-Flynn, “We have taken the university at its word that it wants to achieve these things and the Living Wage sits at the heart of all these concerns.” Many of the top American universities, including all of the Ivy League institutions, have become living wage employers.

Among the several questions that were brought up during the event, one was how much becoming a living wage university would cost. Flynn admitted that the campaign isn’t sure of an exact amount, but he extending an invitation to the university to explore this question as a community.

He stated that several other institutions found that the actual amount was surprisingly low. For example, it cost the City of New Westminster only 0.25 per cent of their annual budget to become a Living Wage employer. The university administration has received the SFU Living Wage Campaign’s research report, which representatives stated they are looking into and will comment on soon.

COLUMN: Godwin's law, meet Onderwater's law

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By Eric Onderwater

Disagreeing with public opinion doesn’t make someone racist

In the public debate of today, most people have come to a common understanding of certain things. Left or right, intelligent or stupid, many people choose to abide by certain conventions when they debate and discuss opinions and ideas.

For example, it is a common convention to define the terms (words, expressions) of a debate. It is also a common convention while debating to argue about the ideas that are in play, instead of attacking the people who agree with certain ideas. Just because someone is wrong does not imply that they’re a complete idiot, or vice versa.

Another, less-known convention is found in disciplines such as political science and history. This convention refers to the so-called “Hitler Argument” based on Godwin’s Law. It goes as follows: whoever refers to Hitler and the Nazis first in a debate automatically loses the debate.

Why? Well, because comparing a set of ideas (or a person) to the Nazis is almost always intellectually cheap. It so quickly becomes an ad hominem attack, directed at people instead of ideas. Too often it is simply an emotional deflection, or an appeal to paranoia, rather than a careful argument of logic and facts.

Today I propose another rule of debate or common social convention in response to multiple articles published in The Peak over the last month. One article, published Feb. 3, alleged that all opponents of the “Idle No More” protests were “racists.” Another article, published Feb. 17, alleged that all those who oppose the continued status quo of government handouts to Aboriginals in Canada were “best friends with a concept [called] racism.”

It is unfortunate that both of these authors feel the need to resort to accusations like racism to push their particular views. It should be universally acknowledged that the status of Aboriginals in Canada is one of the most important debates in Canada today. Both writers have valuable things to say, and important opinions to contribute.

But neither author is correct in smearing opponents of their views as “racists.” While it is certainly possible that a number of their opponents may actually be racist, it is highly unlikely that the vast
majority of their opponents are. Opposing government handouts to native Canadians does not make you racist. Neither does opposing “Idle no more.”

So, let me propose a new social convention, in order to regulate debate. It goes like this: the person who first calls his/her opponent racist instantly loses the debate. Why? This is due to the same reason cited for the “Nazi” rule. “Racist,” at least in Canada, is too often used as an insult or epithet, instead of as an argument. Stop calling people names and please start debating their arguments. It is insulting when someone decides to smear your name instead of properly interacting with your ideas. Too many people think that they have license to smear their opponents as “racists.”

If you want to call someone a racist, how about doing your homework before you do, just to make sure? Otherwise it’s just cheap rhetoric, and I’m getting a little tired of it.

Getting hit in the nuts fucking hurts

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the peak nuts

Just saying what everyone should already know, but doesn’t

I take it you’ve noticed the headline. But before I start, I have to share an anecdote to give the appropriate context. Last Friday, I was riding the skytrain with a friend when she slapped me for making an inappropriate joke about certain races and their proclivities. While the slap was not particularly hard, she asked if it had hurt. When I said no, she berated
another male colleague of ours for losing his shit when she had previously punched him in the balls with the same measure of force.

At which point I lost my shit. I mean up until that point, I’d thought everyone knew that getting struck in the testicular region fucking hurts. But apparently to a certain penisless population percentage (about 50 per cent) that fact might not be as clear as I’d like it to be.

I’ll start by saying getting hit in the nuts probably isn’t the worst pain; it might not even be the worst thing out there. I’ve never been sucked into an airplane turbine, but my guess is it’s probably worse than a swift kick to the old boys. This way we don’t have reopen the “which hurts more” debate: childbirth, or a knee in the family jewel. The reason for that is because pain lacks quantifiability. Without empirical pain units (which I’ve termed Godfuckingdammitwatts) we can’t compare pain
between two different events or people. Not to mention that emotional pain is a whole different can of worms. So that argument will remain closed.

Anyway, when you get hit below the belt, you don’t feel it at first. When you flick someone in the nose, they feel it immediately. You get flicked in the beanbag, you might have 10 to 15 seconds before the pain hits. This time is reserved for you to comprehend all the poor life choices that have lead up to this moment. Maybe you shouldn’t have been standing over that teeter-totter. Perhaps there were safer things to grind down than a hand rail. Hanging that pinata at waist level, not your best idea.

But in this trepidation, there’s also hope. The faint hope that you didn’t in fact get hit in the twigs and berries. Maybe it was just a graze, or maybe your thigh got mos — OH GOD, NOPE. FULL-ON HIT. YEP. THE EGGS ARE SCRAMBLED. GOING DOWN.

As for the pain, it’s what scientists call “referred pain,” similar to the pain in your left arm resulting from a cardiac episode. It hurts, but not where the injury actually occurred. In this case the pain permeates your whole torso, making it feel like someone is swapping around your organs. It’s seven or eight body blows, it’s thunder, it’s an elephant sitting on your chest. Nausea and loss of breath and vision are possible symptoms, depending on the amount of force.

Immediately after contact is made, you might have noticed in every YouTube video of someone injuring their wedding tackle, the owner of said tackle hunches over and Quasimodos it. This is an evolutionary reflex. Your body is trying to protect your nethers from whatever the hell just happened.

This evolved because back in the time of dinosaur vacuum cleaners, selective pressures were such that protecting your junk is more important than your ability to defend yourself from, say, velociraptors. Women reading this article, now you know: getting hit in the nuts really does hurt that much. Men reading this article, you may now return to your full upright positions.

Core values do not make a government

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the peak core values illustration

Principles are a much more valuable means of holding parties accountable

By Brandon Taylr (University of British Columbia Okanagan)
Illustration by Ben Buckley

Mohammed Sheriffdeen’s Feb. 18 article, “What are ‘values’ anyway?” asks perhaps the most contentious question in modern politics.

Values are the foundation upon which entire representative bodies are built. The Conservative Party of Canada values small government and the continuation of the status quo for the sake of societal stability. The Liberal Party favors a balanced government that is meant to free the middle class from intrusion, thus empowering them to succeed and create a prosperous nation. The NDP want to socialize certain institutions to maintain their public integrity and balance the playing field for the economy. That’s what the big three parties want, but it is not necessarily what they end up delivering.

The Conservative Party of Canada’s back-office spending has increased by eight per cent, to the tune of $5.3 billion, while cutting “front-line” services that actually benefit Canadians. Countless lawyers, judges, and police officers have highly criticized the removal of vital funds from the federal prison system, meant to rehabilitate prisoners and decrease recidivism. Each move they have made is meant to placate their core voter base. Conservative values are seen in the short-term, where they can point to manageable and incremental change to appear like they are moving forward with their party’s stated agenda. The Chinese National Offshore Oil Company takeover, imported and federally subsidized labor, as well as their nearly tyrannical omnibus budget bills, have all challenged the foundational merit of Canada.

The Liberal Party of Canada is newly revitalized with a strong leadership race. Justin Trudeau has made the empowerment of the middle class his top priority. Despite growing up as part of a dynastic Canadian family, he has modeled himself as a class warrior, out to preserve the driving force of the Canadian economy: the single-home family. However, he has provided no details on how he will tailor policy to answer these claims. It is, again, a more rhetorical than pragmatic response to the needs of Canadians.

The New Democratic Party of Canada has similar issues now that they have lost Jack Layton to champion their cause. They have responded to waning poll results — likely due to the rise of Trudeau — by criticizing the pro-business agenda of the Conservative Party. If the NDP were to rise to power and business was not entirely stifled by tax increases and a laissezfaire foreign policy, the rise of organized labor will threaten the stability of the working class jobs currently available in Canada.

Politics in Canada have become the local strip mall. Each party has its own storefront with catchy colours and slogans on the front window, but their stated values are in no way indicative of their actual policy.

We have to be more critical and skeptical of our government to evoke any real change beyond the incremental tediousness that Harper’s Conservatives have offered. They have maintained a stable economy in trying times and, right now, that’s all people really care about. But, as the world economy
continues to move forward, so must we. If nondescript values are our calling card, we stand to lose our identity entirely. Instead of asking for values, which Sheriffdeen mentioned are highly fluid, we need to start asking for principles.

If we continue to chastise the government for not having consistent values, we have entered a war of prominent ideologies. Principles, which are not fluid, need to guide the policy of a party. Let us make Canada a nation of principles, not values, and face the world with pragmatism and problem solving in mind, instead of playing to the voter base for the sake of the next election.

The Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP could stand to learn a few things when it comes to the ideals of governance, and should realize that values are meaningless without core principles to guide them.

French, Canadians, do you speak it?

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WEB-vk jackson-mark burnham

If you don’t live in Quebec, probably not, nor should you have to

By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Mark Burnham

Memo to the Parti Quebecois: Bill-14 can reduce English-speaking Quebecers’ rights all it wants; it’s not going to add legitimacy to a language that, outside of Quebec, is virtually useless, nor is pandering to French speakers in a non-french speaking province going to help out your political party.

The bill seeks to increase French use in Quebec, and if enacted, would remove the bilingual status of some townships. If more than half of their residents speak French primarily, it will stop being a bilingual area and all services must be offered in French, forcing local workers to either brush up their French skills or lose their jobs.

However unfortunate this is for English-speakers in these smaller areas, Quebecers have a legal right to their language, and this bill would simply reinforce what was established in the British North America Act 1886 and the Charter in 1982. But what about languages in the rest of Canada?

French as a second language is virtually useless in most areas of Canada. It might look cool on a resume, and is required for a Government job, but that’s where its mystique ends. Universities outside of Quebec only require a language (that’s any language, including sign language) at a Grade 11 level to qualify for admittance. Unless you live in Quebec, the only province where French speakers outnumber English speakers, you will be fine with just English and your grade 11 level of Deutsch-sprecken.

According to 2001 census data, English and French are the predominantly spoken languages in Canada, with English spoken by 21 million and French spoken by seven million. Chinese languages follow in third place at 855, 000. But this isn’t necessarily indicative of Canada as whole; Quebec’s French-speaking rates skew the nation’s overall statistic.

If you remove Quebec from the 2001 equation, French speakers would only outnumbered Chinese speakers by about 100, 000. West of Manitoba, Canadians are more likely to speak Chinese than French. It’s not surprising, then, that businesses are looking for employees that speak languages other than English or French, especially in BC, where both Chinese and Punjabi speakers outnumber French speakers 6–1 and 5–2 respectively.

Thomas Mulcair recently used Vancouver’s Chinese New Year parade as a platform to decry businesses “requiring a language other than French or English” as a qualification. This pro-French pandering is unsurprising, considering the NDP’s gain in seats is largely because of Quebec’s support in the last election. While the larger implications of this requirement may hint towards unethical business practices in some cases, looking for employees who speak a language other than French or English makes sense, demographically speaking. When I worked at a bank, I only used my grade 12 French skills once to help a Quebecer on vacation with her Visa. Punjabi and Chinese got used constantly however. When I applied originally, I got passed over twice because I couldn’t speak Punjabi, Hindi, Mandarin or Cantonese, despite the fact that I knew two people in managerial positions.

A day into the job, I understood why having Punjabi or Chinese as a second language wasn’t just valuable, but necessary: I couldn’t help a large portion of the clients because I couldn’t communicate with them. Days where only two people with a non-French second language were working meant a long line up and people eventually getting impatient and deciding to take their chances yelling frustrated requests at me in languages I didn’t understand. No amount of French was going to help.

Quebecers have every right to maintain their cultural identity, and if Bill 14 helps them maintain a shared sense of culture rather than put people in small communities in a compromising situation, fine. Have your Royale with cheese and Bill 14.

However, as we gear up for election season, it would be nice if politicians would commit to resolving real issues, like questionable hiring practices and safe working conditions, instead of using them as a platform to pander for votes.

Africentric curriculum can't teach every black history

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the peak black history

Canada’s black history is very different from America’s

By Atta Almasi
Photos by Enokson/Flickr

EDMONTON (CUP) — Eighteen years after the House of Commons officially recognized the creation of Black History Month in Canada, the debate still continues among educators, students, parents and the general public about the effectiveness and relevance of the continued February celebration.

Two recently-opened Africentric schools, which are publicly funded, profess to integrate “the diverse perspectives, experiences and histories of people of African descent into the provincial-mandated curriculum.” Some see them as a reasonable attempt to teach children of cultural contributions year-round, but there are better alternatives to accomplish these goals.

First off, the initiative doesn’t come from within Canada. It’s adopted from America, where the reality is that there are more young, black men in prison than enrolled in post-secondary education. The problem with adopting this educational approach from the United States is the failure of the Toronto District School Board administrators to recognize and acknowledge the relative differences between the black population in Canada and the black population in the States.

African-Americans are a relatively homogenous group as the vast majority descended from slaves brought to America hundreds of years ago, while black Canadians are a diverse group that, apart from long-standing established black communities in places such as Nova Scotia, are relatively recent immigrants. They arrive here from places such as Barbados and Botswana.

And unlike African-Americans, black Canadians make up a much smaller portion of the wider populace of the country. Furthermore, African culture and history are so diverse that it is difficult to teach them. Inferring that there is a singular “Africentric” perspective is both ignorant and ludicrous: there are the Arabs living in Egypt and Sudan; the Chinese, South Asian and Portuguese diasporas residing in countries such as Mauritius, Tanzania and Angola; the many different linguistic and cultural groups that make up the majority of sub-Saharan Africa — too many to categorize in one paragraph, let alone one perspective.

Instead of promoting Africentric schools, we should encourage the contributions of African Canadians to Canadian history, arts and culture, politics, business and other respective fields through a non-Africentric curriculum. The goal of increasing “high self-pride” and better integration into Canadian society can be better and more effectively achieved if we shift away from the dominant African-American history and civil rights during Black History Month.

Gun bans aren't the answer

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WEB-3D printer-Mark Burnham

With 300 million guns in the United States alone, how could a ban prevent tragedies?

By Michael Jarosz
Photos by Mark Burnham

The tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut is the latest shooting spree in America. Many citizens and politicians are finally saying enough is enough. But what is the most effective way of bringing about this change? Obama has proposed an assault weapons ban, while the National Rifle Association (NRA) has proposed armed security guards in every school. If you are Canadian, chances are you agree with Obama’s stance and
you think the NRA is crazy. But if you think about it rationally, setting politics aside, the NRA’s position has a lot of merit. Let’s start with something we can all relate to: SFU. What if a madman would target our
school just like in Newtown, or Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal? While Canada already has quite strict gun control laws, it is still possible to legally acquire many types of guns and illegally get hold of many others.

So who is there to protect us? Our school has 24/7 security, but would that be of much help? It turns out that security guards in Canada are not allowed to carry firearms outside of their own home. The only exception is if they transport money in those heavily armored vehicles. That’s right: the safety of money is more important than the safety of students and citizens.

Security guards at universities are just as helpless as students when it comes to gun crime. What good is it to arm only the police when everyone is already dead by the time they show up? The idea of schools being “gun-free zones” with unarmed security guards makes about as much sense as declaring a building to be a “no fire zone” and then removing all the sprinklers and fire extinguishers.

The other option, a ban on gun sales, is nothing more than a feel-good idea with little grounding in reality. First, there are already over 300 million guns in the United States alone. A gun ban isn’t going to make them magically disappear. Second, prohibition doesn’t work; you need look
no further than alcohol prohibition in the 1920s or the drug wars of today for affirmation.

Want a more relevant example? During World War Two, German forces couldn’t prevent the Polish resistance movement (comprised largely of civilians)
from arming itself. The Poles designed and produced an inexpensive, home-made machine pistol that could be made in small workshops by inexperienced
engineers. Almost 70 years later, you don’t think people could do the same? And even by today’s standards, it’s about to get a whole lot easier.

One of the hottest new industries right now is 3D printing, a technology set to revolutionize small-scale manufacturing. Gun components have already been printed and assembled into an AR-15, the same weapon as was used in Newtown. The parts were assembled and fired six times before failure; not bad for a $2,000 machine, and on the first try. What this means is that access to guns and ammunition for the common civilian may become as easy as printing off a downloaded file you got from eBay. Good luck imposing a ban on guns in such a world.

Having said all this, I do support reasonable levels of gun control, like age limits, cooling off periods, background checks, mental health checks, and even pharmaceutical checks. But the reality is that gun control alone isn’t going to cut it, especially if we look at the technology that will be available to us in the future.

With this in mind, the NRA’s proposal makes a lot of sense. Because when you really think about it, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Universal University

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the peak univesal university

The gaps between SFU and Senegal are surprisingly small

By Leah Bjornson
Photos by Eleanor Qu

If when you think of Africa, the first image that comes into your head is a rag-clad orphan from a World Vision commercial, think again.

Before my trip to Senegal in West Africa last summer, I definitely had certain misconceptions that were echoed by my friends and family: “Leah, are you going to live in a hut?” “Leah, are you sure you’ll be protected from lions?”; and “Leah, what about Kony?”

As you can probably guess, I was neither attacked by lions nor kidnapped by Kony during my stay in Senegal, a country far away from those dangers. More dangerous by far was the lack of conventional utilities, which is not a factor in Canada. Nevertheless, I lived in relative comfort, and was joined by 11 fellow Canadian students and 12 Senegalese students who were there to collaborate on Uniterra’s International Seminar.

Every summer, Uniterra (a collaborative of World University Service of Canada and the Centre for International Studies and Cooperation) offers 12 Canadian students the opportunity to participate in a field project in a developing country. The participants, in collaboration with students from the host country, conduct research on development issues that support the work of one of Uniterra’s twelve partner organizations in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. During this time, the students take part in a cultural exchange while developing their skills as field researchers.

While a great portion of our time was spent doing research on three key issues — food security, youth employability, and the social and solidarity economy — what most influenced myself and the other Canadian participants were our experiences with the Senegalese students.

After living together for six weeks, it became very clear that despite certain cultural differences, we shared many things in common: we laughed at the same jokes, played the same games, and loved to explore Dakar’s diverse nightlife. Ultimately, we were just a group of happy, engaged university students.

But what does it mean to go to university in Senegal? As a second-year student, I feel like I have a fairly solid grasp on the SFU university experience. But despite the complaints I hear about how the AQ looks like a prison, or how the radio tower is like Sauron’s Dark Tower, SFU has a certain charm in which we take pride and call our own. On the surface, university in Senegal may resemble Canadian higher education, but there’s a myriad of differences that distinguish the systems in the two countries from each other.

Senegal and Canada
The Republic of Senegal, located on the westernmost tip of Africa, covers a land area of almost 197,000 square kilometres and has an estimated population of about 13 million. To put this into perspective, the country could fit into British Columbia 4.8 times, whereas its population is three times that of BC. For more than five million people in Senegal, Wolof is their primary language. However, once a French colony, Senegal’s official language is French, which is mainly taught in school.

Students in Senegal have a “School Life Expectancy” of eight years, meaning that in the span between primary school and university, most people in Senegal only receive eight years of education.
Compare this to Canada’s school life expectancy, which is 17 years. This results in about 25 per cent of Canadians over the age of 25 holding university degrees; in Senegal, on the other hand, only 0.5 per cent of the 13 million population graduates from university (with another 6,000 enrolled in polytechnic and professional schools; however, graduation
rates are missing).

University Experience
Of course, the daily routine of a Canadian student differs by program, but
in order to earn an undergraduate arts degree at SFU—without co-op or other additional programs — students can graduate within four years, assuming they take a full-course load for two semesters of the year (usually from September to December and January to April). Universities in Senegal take on a similar two-term system, which runs from November to February and March to June.

Divergent is Senegal’s higher education system, which is organized
into three cycles: the Licence, which takes three years, is equivalent to an undergraduate; the Maitrise or master’s degree takes an additional two years to complete; and the Doctorat is completed in 3 years, but only after students study for and receive a Diplome d’Etudes Approfondies (DEA), which takes about a year.

For most typical SFU arts students, the school day begins anytime between 8:30 a.m. and 5:20 p.m. After rolling out of bed and either walking, bussing, or driving up to campus, we settle into our lectures of anywhere between 50 to
250 students. The rest of the day might be spent in tutorials (of 15–20 people),
in Mackenzie Cafe, or in the line outside of Renaissance, engaging in sports and other activities, or at work for those of us with part time jobs. Overall, students spend on average anywhere between eight and 16 hours per week in class and study as much or as little as they like.

In Senegal, students get up at seven in the morning, have breakfast, and leave for class by 7:45. Because personal cars are rare, students either walk or take a taxi to school. I’ve ridden in enough Senegalese cabs to decide that walking might be the safer course. Imagine screaming though a tunnel at 85km/h watching the road fly by through the hole in the floor while your cabbie tries to re-close the backseat, right door. Just try.

The students’ first class is held in one of the large amphitheaters, where 1,000 or more students sit in whatever space is available, even if that means in
the aisles or near the back doors. Unfortunately for latecomers, this huge room
makes hearing the lecturer extremely difficult if you’re seated near the back.

Thankfully, tutorials and labs facilitate the learning process, where only 50—60
students are in attendance. After an hour and forty-five minutes of lecture, students have a quick break before their next class. At noon, most have lunch
and rest until their last two classes of the day, which go from 2 p.m. until 6
p.m. In total, students spend anywhere between 30 and 48 hours per week in class and around 16 hours per week studying at home.

No arts student at SFU would wish for a schedule like this, and despite problems finding open classes by their enrollment date, most can avoid a ridiculous
schedule. So, why would a Senegalese student create such a timetable? The answer is they don’t. Not only are Senegalese students not allowed to create their own schedules, but also their professors, classes, and timetable are chosen by the administration. When asked if he had input in his course schedule, Ousmane Kone, a student at Universite Cheikh Anta DIOP de Dakar laughed, “J’aimerais bien mais malheureusement je n’ai pas cet honneur la. . . .” Meaning, he would have liked to, but simply never had the honor.

Another interesting complication found in all universities in Senegal concerns
exams. At SFU, exam time is a period of late-night studying, multiple coffee breaks, and intense cramming to ensure success in courses. However, failure in one course is just that: one course. In Senegal, the exams in June cover all the material you’ve learned since the beginning of that school year in November. If you don’t pass this exam, you get one more shot in October. However, if you are again unsuccessful and the course is important to your degree, you may have to spend the entirety of the next year retaking that one course before progressing to the next year in your program. Talk about pressure.

I’m not sure whether I would prefer to be a student in Senegal or a student in Canada. It’s true that flexibility seems to be lacking in Senegal’s system of
higher education. But considering that 52 per cent of SFU students have an average debt of 21k, a lack of flexibility may be a price you’re willing to pay for government-funded education.

Employment Opportunities
The typical SFU student is at school for one main purpose: to eventually get a
good job. Even still, 61 per cent of SFU students are employed while in school, and 26 per cent of these are working more than 20 hours per week. In Senegal, it is extremely rare for students to have part-time jobs. “No one has the time,” says Aminata Ba, another student at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar. “But I do a lot of work around the house on the weekend, when I’m not doing schoolwork.”

In a country where the unemployment rate is upwards of 48 per cent, and youth unemployment — youth being defined as anyone between the ages of 18 and 35 — can reach an astounding rate of 65 per cent, it is little wonder that students hope their degrees will lead to job opportunities. Unfortunately, finding a job is not always easy.

The students we spoke with cited a recurring problem, namely a lack of connection between their education and the skills required to get a job. Sound familiar? Another issue concerned the saturation of students studying for certain careers. Imagine if a hundred students were studying to be doctors, but only one job opening existed for new doctors in all of Dakar. The only solution I envision would resemble something out of the Hunger Games. In the end, too many students are studying to be in professional careers (such as doctors, lawyers, and businessmen) and are ignoring the openings in many diverse and interesting fields.

Conclusion
The realities of university in Senegal and Canada raise valuable questions of life after graduation, some of which apply to students in both countries. If a university degree is meant to be universal and students at SFU and in Senegal are in the same place when they graduate, where do the differences lie?

Is it that employment opportunities are better in BC? While our unemployment rate is drastically lower than that of Senegal, hovering at around 7.4 per cent, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told that an arts education only needs to teach its students how to say: “Do you want fries with that?”

That being said, even if there are more jobs available, are our universities preparing us to actually do them? Co-op and other work placement programs at SFU are trying to bridge the gap between training and application (a rift that exists in both Canadian and Senegalese higher education), but still have a hard road ahead. The commonality of such problems can be surprising, but lends hope to the idea that if a solution is found in one country, perhaps it can be applied to others.

It’s amazing what we can learn about each other by stepping outside of our
boundaries and immersing ourselves in a different world. Although we might think that we share nothing in common with youth in Africa, in reality we’re all in the same place as university students trying to find place in a struggling economy, and we’re all faced with the same pressures to succeed. The struggle now is to overcome any “World Vision” stereotypes and collaborate to make higher education work better for the students it serves.

LAST WORD: 2020 Vision – The International Olympic Committee's hazy recommendation to remove wrestling

By
Peak Web
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0

WEB-womens wrestling-mark burnham

By Clay J. Gray
Photos by Mark Burnham

The morning of Feb. 12 greeted the world’s wrestling community with a firestorm of texts, tweets, posts, blogs, and press releases: the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had announced that they were to remove wrestling from the 2020 Olympic program.

I was still in utter disbelief, yet sure enough, the IOC’s official press release confirmed their recommendation that wrestling be removed from the list of core sports for the 2020 Games.

How could the IOC exclude wrestling, a sport that had been present in the ancient games? How could they oust a sport that has been in every modern Olympics since the third modern Olympic games in 1904? How could they cast aside a sport that was represented by 71 countries in the 2012 games?

Still, there is a glimmer of hope. Wrestling had been demoted to a shortlisted sport, a list also comprised of baseball/softball, karate, roller sports, sport climbing, squash, wakeboarding and Wushu. All eight shortlisted sports will have the opportunity to make a presentation for their inclusion in the 2020 games. The catch: the presentation is to the IOC’s executive board, the same board that just recommended wrestling’s removal.

I do not intend to belittle the accomplishments of any athlete or the amount of work required to make it to the elite levels in any sport, but
much of my incredulity is targeted at those that remained on the list of core sports. Sports like equestrian, modern pentathlon, and sailing are elitist and exclusive to people of means, with each sport calling for expensive equipment and facilities; wrestling, according to the official Olympic website, requires only wrestling boots and a singlet.

The more I read of its history, the less I understood the IOC’s decision. Within the Olympic Games there is a project known as the “Olympic Spirit.” According to Juan Antonio Samaranch, a board member for the IOC, this project intends to “give more people a chance to experience the Olympic Games.” If the Olympic Spirit project is committed to friendship, honor, peace, fair play, and glory how could the IOC recommend removing a sport brings together over 180 nations? The internet was soon flooded with opinions as to why the IOC would have made such a recommendation.

Some people claimed it was political power play by western nations to alienate Middle Eastern nations; others pointed to a corrupt IOC, citing the blatant conflict of interest of Samaranch (also the first vice president of the Union International de Pentathlon Moderne) in voting to keep the modern pentathlon instead of wrestling.

According to reports from the IOC and The Associated Press, it was the corruption and sexism present in the Federation Internationale des Luttes Associees (FILA) — the international governing body for wrestling — that really motivated the IOC’s decision. The IOC pointed to the absence of athletes on FILA’s decision-making bodies, a nonexistent women’s commission, and a few other omissions from FILA’s policies and practices.

Although these issues are legitimate concerns and should be rectified to ensure wrestling moves forward in the spirit of inclusion and fair play, they simply do not justify the outright removal of wrestling from the Olympics. Furthermore, the IOC citing corruption and ineptitude in FILA’s board is nothing more than a fallacy of composition; it is implied that since the FILA executive board and its policies show signs of corruption and sexism, then the sport as a whole must also be corrupt and sexist.

Furthermore, the IOC listed low interest, low attendance, and low ratings as further justification for giving wrestling the boot. Yet wrestling is present in 180 countries and has millions of active athletes around the world. Wrestling also sold 113,851 of 116,854 available tickets in London and had an average of 23 million viewers. Meanwhile, the Modern Pentathlon remains a core sport while being present in only 108 countries, and had an average viewership of 12.5 million — which wrestling almost doubled.

Even though wrestling is for the majority an old boys club, women’s wrestling may prove to be its most crucial partner for success. Twenty years after the creation of the first committee for women’s wrestling, it had grown to an Olympic sport — though some people still see this as a work in progress, pointing to the unequal distribution of medals amongst the sexes, and bemoaning the fact that women only have four events to the 14 events for men. Olympic wrestling follows two styles: freestyle and Greco-Roman. For each style, male wrestlers are allotted seven weight classes ranging from 55 to 120 kilograms. Sadly, there is currently no female Greco- Roman wrestling to help balance this lopsided equation, giving FILA a small justification for the unequal medal count.

However, the decision by FILA to include only four women’s weight classes — instead of the customary seven — in their Olympic Program pins the organization flat on its back. The only way for FILA to combat these allegations of sexism is to include all seven-weight classes that exist at every other women’s wrestling tournament.

Inside of the first week after the IOC’s fateful press release the president of FILA, Mr. Raphael Martinetti, had tendered his resignation. Olympic preservation committees had been formed and the battle lines had been drawn: wrestling had one last chance to remain in the Olympics.

In May of this year, the IOC executive board will reconvene in St. Petersburg, Russia to receive presentations from the eight shortlisted sports for the 2020 Olympic Games. The IOC will then review the presentation and deliver their final decision at their 125th session in Beuno Aires, Argentina on Sept. 10.

Wrestling is an ancient sport, an institution that unites men and women from 180 countries around the world. It doesn’t cost much to join so whether you grow up on a farm in Saskatchewan or in Khuzestan Province of Iran, you have a relatively fair chance to access a wrestling program.

If the IOC can’t see that wrestling belongs in the Olympics, then the executive board should all have their eyesight tested.

The great porn experiment

By
Peak Web
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0

UBC lecturer contests the anti-pornography myth

By Justin Fleming

VANCOUVER (CUP) — For anyone who has seen Gary Wilson’s TEDx talk “The Great Porn Experiment” or his YouTube video series “Your Brain On Porn” — or even simply wandered the halls of the subreddit r/NoFap—masturbation may seem like a recipe for a libido-sapping descent into erectile dysfunction and mental illness.

The stigmas around masturbation are many, and pornography is obviously seen as a vehicle or gateway for masturbation. Gary Wilson claims in his videos that Internet pornography is a far more potent force than its predecessor, the pornographic magazine, and is having devastating effects on many areas of young people’s lives.

In his TEDx talk, Wilson stated that symptoms of a porn addiction “mimic” ADHD, social anxiety, depression, performance anxiety, OCD and a host of other
mental disorders. “Guys never realize they can overcome these symptoms simply
by changing their behaviour,” said Wilson.

He goes on to say that healthcare professionals should be screening for porn addictions first, rather than treating patients showing signs of mental disorders.

But Jason Winters, a sessional lecturer on human sexuality in the department of psychology at UBC, finds Wilson’s claims troubling and unethical.

“There is no research showing that Internet pornography causes mental disorders — none,” Winters wrote in his class blog. “Psychological problems
and mental disorders can lead to problematic porn use as a means to cope and self-medicate. “Wilson is simply presenting his ideology as fact,” wrote Winters, “and in this case, it’s dangerous.”

Wilson claims porn can cause desensitization through brain rewiring and can result in men being unable to achieve and maintain erections with a partner. Anyone who has ever been stricken with an unresponsive member in a time of need will tell you that this is can be a confusing, frustrating and emasculating experience.

But Winters offers a few alternate explanations: A) “The more orgasms you’re
having, or the longer you’re stimulated before one, the longer it will take you to fully sexually recharged. If you’re masturbating to porn for an hour and your partner wants to have sex hours later, you are not going to respond as strongly.”

B) “A man whose main sexual partner is always or mostly himself is likely to feel anxiety when with a real partner. Anxiety is a boner-kill.”

C) “Some men will grip themselves in a certain way when they masturbate. When they’re with a real partner, the sensation can be different or not as intense. This can lead to erectile dysfunction or delayed ejaculation.” Attempting to eradicate porn only drives it underground, Winters said.

“The best thing that can happen to porn is to make it mainstream,” said Winters. “Then we can criticize it, evaluate it, and it becomes more legitimate . . . far better than it hiding in the shadows. “They’re extrapolating on poorly done studies and kind of making shit up; it’s driving me crazy.”

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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