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Don’t sink the SUB, just this one

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By Kim Burgess

When I started at SFU in January 2009, there were whispers of a student union building — undefined, and uncertain, but the possibility did exist. It was something that the student society was thinking about, but nothing was anywhere near to a decision. Then three weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, comes the Build SFU initiative, with architectural plans, a funding outline, and a stadium all set up and in place. The news of a SUB for SFU is not unwelcome, however I have two major problems with the Build SFU project as it stands now: a lack of student consultation and the stadium.

The list of documents on the Build SFU website would lead you to believe that a comprehensive study has previously been conducted by the SFSS in regards to a new building. A review of these documents shows that this is not the case. The 2008 student consultation by past president Joe Paling spoke to approximately six students and asked the single question of (and I quote) “What kind of stuff do y’all want to see in a SUB?”

The 2009 food services consultation focused exclusively on a SUB building placed in Convo Mall, not in the athletics building, and this holds true again for the preliminary architectural sketches from Bing Thom Associates. Space committee meeting minutes from 2008 to 2010 are linked online, but have restricted access (something that doesn’t fill one with confidence for a transparent process). The consultation that was supposedly conducted by the current board has never been released.

Finally, the Build SFU site does provide a link to a comprehensive consultation process — one used by UBC’s Alma Mater Society.

The UBC process involved a student advisory committee to oversee consultation, a preliminary consultation of over 1,000 students, and more than a month of themed consultations as to what should go into the space — before any architectural drawings were created. It is easy to see how the current board has drawn inspiration from the UBC plan — the referendum and the tiered funding structure. The giant piece of the puzzle that the SFSS is missing is student consultation.

Build SFU is not a consultation process — it is about creating buy-in for the project as it stands now. Students are being asked what they would like to see included in the building, sure, but are not being asked what their priorities are. The current process will only generate a list for organizers to pick and choose from. A web survey that visitors to the Think Tank are being encourage to fill out, called “What do YOU want in your student union building”, contains nine questions — five of which are focused on collecting demographic data. Of the remaining four, three ask specifically about your interactions with the Build SFU brand — have you gone into the Think Tank and visited the website?  What did you think?  The final question gets around to asking your opinion: “Any comments? Ideas?  Suggestions?  Jokes?”  The SFSS may have been talking about the project for long time, but they haven’t been talking to students. For anyone to say that they ‘just know’ what students need is paternalism at its worst.

The major thing missing from this review of past SUB documents has been any mention whatsoever of a stadium. The stadium does make a brief appearance in the 2010 Burnaby Mountain Development Plan — prepared for the university, not the student society. This brings up the major question of why the student society is planning to pay for the building of a new sports stadium instead of the university?  A brief search through the student society website shows that clubs centering around sports and recreation are not administered through the student society at all — they are specifically directed to the SFU recreation department.

Call it SFU federalism if you will, but the separation of power between the university and the student society is very specific. The SFSS covers all matters wherein students govern themselves: clubs, department student unions, issues, and advocacy. The university governs everything else. While students do have input into university governance, final decisions and responsibilities lie with the university. This is the case with athletics and recreation — funding, facilities, teams, and equipment.

Having the student society build a new stadium creates a dangerous precedent at SFU by making students responsible for the construction of amenities. The student society didn’t pay to have the track refurbished last year and they didn’t pay to redo the Southwest AQ washrooms. What happens when there is a need for more space in the library?  Will the SFSS fund that too?

I have decided to vote ‘no’ on the Build SFU referendum question. This does not make me a scrooge, or a Debbie Downer; this is not the equivalent of me taking my ball and going home. I support the idea of a student union building — more space for study and for clubs is something that I believe is needed at SFU. But without consultation, and without the removal of the stadium I cannot support moving forward at this time. The SFSS executive should take a cue from the university in this matter and seek to engage the student body in a meaningful way.

Voting ‘no’ on this referendum will not kill the SUB. Voting ‘no’ will send the message that SFU students deserve to be consulted extensively before we hand over $65 million for a project that is outside the scope of the SFSS’s responsibilities. This referendum is the first time that SFU students have been asked how they feel about the SUB — and I am voting ‘no’ to show the executive that I deserve a proper consultation.

First-years excluded from SFSS political ecosystem

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By Benedict Reiners

The SFSS is having its elections this week, with voting taking place online from March 20 to 22, and by now, most candidates are in the swing of their campaigns, telling everyone they support this or oppose that. However, despite this fervor in campaigning, many first-years are left asking what good it is to know someone’s platform when one doesn’t know the actual roles of the positions which each is aiming to fill?

The entire electoral system in the SFSS seems oriented to those who already know the workings of the SFSS and its operations, or in other words, not first-years. Though candidates have been quick enough to point out their platforms, however vague, there has been very little effort to inform each student of the roles that will be taken on by each position, no matter who gets elected to them.

Though one can find the job description of each role online, if one looks for a while on either the SFSS website or the site for the SFSS elections, the SFSS and those running for office therein have not partaken in any significant endeavor to make these known, with candidates instead focusing their attentions to making posters to put all over campus, or videos on YouTube.

This forces first-year students to look at each candidate’s platforms without the aid of contextual knowledge of each race’s position. This is something that should be seen as detrimental to the operations of the SFSS, and would be in its own best interest to address.

In fact, this is particularly the case because it not only creates first-years who don’t know the process in which they are participating, but creates a new series of second-years who won’t know the process next year. If we want to make sure that more students are voting in the future, the SFSS needs to make better efforts in the future to engage first-years. One way in which this can be done is by addressing more issues currently pertinent to first years.

One example of how this is not being done is the current debates over the finances of the Highland Pub. Although the finances of the SFSS are relevant to all students, the fact that the debates are centering over those of the pub largely excludes many first years from any significant interest, as most are still underage. This means that any changes that are made to the operation of the pub will not have an immediate effect on many first years, a significant limit to any enthusiasm they could muster towards the matter.

Furthermore, a fairly small amount of attention seems to have been paid to informing students on the impact that the student union building (SUB) and its related costs will have on those of us still in our first year here at SFU. The project will add significant costs to tuition for students at SFU, something which will be most pronounced for first-years, who, of current students, will be forced to pay the most. However, most attention seems to have been paid towards selling the project to students, rather than educating, which was admittedly mildly predictable, with the information sessions being put on by the SFSS, the organization responsible for the project. The SFSS should commit to not only listening to students, but also to ensuring that they are fully informed on the issue in order to formulate educated opinions, based in knowledge of what the project will mean for both them and for SFU.

It’s time that the candidates recognize that student elections are only truly open when people voting know the implications of their votes, and that comes with education. Let’s hope the candidates we elect this week recognize the difference between education and handing out campaign posters.

Don’t vote for Renew SFU

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By Juan Tolentino

I thought I would have been content observing this year’s SFSS election cycle from the sidelines, satisfied that the general tenor of the campaign would be beneficial to the student community as a whole. However, recent developments have prompted me to speak out about an alarming entity that has burst into the political scene, like a beast lying in wait in the fog.

Most of you by now have seen the posters of a new slate called Renew SFU, which serves out ready-made slogans about “diversity” and “going to the students”. Such sloganeering would not be so bad (and in fact pretty standard) if they didn’t paper over some very ugly aspects of what it is they really stand for: a reversion to the outdated left-wing politics of the previous decades that has so hampered our society’s ability to function the past.

Renew SFU claims to value diversity of opinion. That’s a very strange claim to make when one comprises a slate, the very existence of which implies some kind of coherence (dare I say, unity) of views and ideology. Furthermore, if Renew were really as diverse as it claims to be, it would draw on students from many different sectors of the university.

In reality, it seems that most of their political base is found within the Sociology and Anthropology Student Union and the Labour Studies Student Union, which, if SFU’s data is up to date, represent less than 300 declared majors (In contrast, the student unions who support Build SFU, a favourite target of Renew, represent over 4,000 declared majors).

Renew SFU says that the Build SFU project was forced upon students from the top down by an unaccountable board of directors. My first reaction to this is to wonder whether they are talking about the actual SFSS or merely a fantasy version they have concocted in their minds. The board of directors is, in fact, the most accountable governing body in the whole SFSS, since the entire undergraduate student population elects them. Certainly, they are more accountable than 11th-year undergrads like the labour studies forum representative who, by the very nature of his appointment, only serves the particular interests of a small portion of the larger student community.

In fact, if you actually bother to read the SFSS constitution (which I have, several times), you will note that the board is, by law and by fact, the sole representative of the interests of all SFU undergraduates. Perhaps Renew’s ‘progressive’ ideals are too rarefied to be committed to a legal document.

Renew SFU claims that it will rebuild trust in our student institutions. I wonder how they are supposed to do that, given who they are and what they represent. Renew SFU is not representative of the members of the SFSS but are, in fact, a small clique of activists with homogenous views that are unhappy with the daring, bold trend of having regular, apolitical students (which comprise the vast majority of undergrads) take charge of an institution in which they, the privileged “progressive” class, have long had a stranglehold.

They believe that experience in radical activism that the vast majority of students do not care about counts as solid credentials in university relations. They don’t seem to bother with standards concerning conflict of interest: witness how their IRO candidate proudly declares his previous employment with Out on Campus, which is run by the SFSS. Somehow I don’t think having an employer representative with such blatantly close ties to his employees is going to work out too well for student interests.

They don’t even seem keen on basic logic: their treasurer candidate cleverly puts forward his arts education and commitment to “avoid blaming workers” as being superior to “business-minded” approaches, since apparently cow-towing to union interests is so much more important than making sure students as getting the most from their fees.

Despite first impressions, I have no particular delight in penning such a negative screed about a particular group of people, but I feel that it is necessary given what is at stake: independent, capable, ideology-free governance in a form of government that sees so little of it.

So, I say again: don’t vote for radical politics. Don’t vote for false ‘progressivism’ as opposed to the real progress we have made in the past few years. Don’t vote for Renew, and keep the SFSS yours.

The rise of financial masochism

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By Ryan McLaughlin

I generally agree that, as Trudeau famously proclaimed, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Most know this simple rule as ‘different strokes for different folks’. After all, what right do we have to tell people with unusual desires what is fine for them to do in the privacy of their own homes?  With that being said, even I am sometimes aghast at what some sickos get up to.

Increasingly, an unusual fetish has become popular among students at SFU and elsewhere called financial masochism. This is where students get some sort of inexplicable sexual kick out of arguing that tuition fees are at the right level. Much like Goldilocks, these twisted individuals derive pleasure out of a middle ground where tuition fees are not too high and not too low, but just right. Some even go so far as to say that tuition fees aren’t high enough. I am aware that it is the style of the day to argue against your own economic interest, but I think it’s clear that this has gone too far. Someone needs to tell these folks just how dangerous their lifestyle choices really are — they might actually convince someone of something.

Imagine a great big Venn diagram — you know, the one that looks like boobs. On the left boob you have “Things that are good for society.” In this category you have stuff like building a giant Slip ‘n Slide through downtown Vancouver, mandating a 20-hour work week, or adding the right of a weekly visit to Happy Time Exotic Massage down on Hastings in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. On the right boob you have “Things that are good for the economy”. In there is stuff like outlawing recycling (punishable by death), mandating an 80-hour work week, and turning the elderly into Soylent Green to feed the 12-year-old Guatemalan labourers in our Nike factories. Then, right in the middle where the boobs overlap, there is a special place where all kinds of wonderful things exist. This is that location where things are miraculously both good for society and good for economy. In that cleavage lays the prize: reduced tuition fees. Society benefits from lower tuition because people who deserve to get an education can. The economy benefits from the existence of skilled doctors and lawyers and astro-physicists and people who got an arts degree.

Unfortunately, over the last few decades, we’ve been doing not that. While public funding accounted for 84 per cent of university operating budgets in 1977, it now accounts for just 57 per cent. Over the same period, tuition fees have risen from 14 per cent of operating funding for colleges and universities to over 34 per cent. It’s hard to believe, but there was once a time when student fees were simply an afterthought to Canadian students.

As fees for university have increased, the necessity of university has as well. Sympathizers for high tuition fees often claim that it is only the government’s job to ensure a basic education from kindergarten through grade 12, but this promise used to mean a lot more than it does now. Being educated to grade 12 was once all that a person needed to exist in society, but this is simply not the case anymore. The promise of a ‘basic’ education, quite frankly, is no longer fulfilled only with a high school diploma; it probably includes a largely unfunded bachelor’s degree as well.

No one is saying everyone should get to go to university, after all, someone has to cook my McNuggets. However, the test for who should get to go to university shouldn’t be how wealthy your parents are, it should be, well, a test. If you get good enough grades, you should get to go to university no matter what. If you do poorly on your exams, it shouldn’t matter how much money you have, you should not be allowed in the doors of any Canadian institution lest you infect the intellectual purity of the place with your stupid.

What young financial masochists fail to realize is that if students don’t fight for their share of the pie in society, someone else will take it. Students could learn a lot from the old, for example. The government recently flirted with the idea of raising the retirement age and every old person’s head simultaneously exploded. Maybe if students made a bit more of a fuss about stuff, we could get some wealth redistributed in our direction for once.

The sad story of student apathy, and how we can fix it

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By Katie Maki

Bold posters have recently lined every square inch of the walls around SFU. Those smiling faces have looked back at you, promising integrity and experience, and you have wondered what it’s all for. Based on what the walls of the school look like, you would think that everyone is buzzing about the SFSS general election — but barely anyone gives a damn. Is it the students’ fault? Not entirely. The SFSS is largely to blame for the lack of enthusiasm surrounding politics here at SFU. With better communication and distribution of information on the part of the SFSS and its candidates, student excitement over the election might actually begin to reflect the frenzy of posters.

Politics influence every aspect of a person’s life, but student politics can be somewhat of a challenge to explain. Although it may not sway what you eat for lunch or what route you take there, the SFSS is a multi-million dollar organization that is funded with student money. Its leaders have the power to influence anything from the pub menu to the health and dental plan coverage. Furthermore, the SFSS represents student interests to university administration, potentially contributing to what SFU spends its money on.

If student politics influence students’ lives in so many ways, it may come as a shock to know that only a very small number of students vote in these elections. SFU’s commuter school reputation could be at fault for this lack of interest. However, students have lost sight of the bigger picture. If the voter turnout for an election is only a marginal portion of the student population, then students that have been elected to the SFSS are not really speaking for the majority. Things that affect your everyday student life are reflected by who you choose to represent you, and it can all change with a simple check beside ‘yes’ or ‘no’ — why would you ever choose not to vote?

However, there is a small population of students that stay really informed and up-to-date on the issues. Not surprisingly, this number of informed students often increases with election issues that students really care about. Last year, for instance, the U-Pass campaign helped produced a voter turnout approximately four times higher than the year before. It has been speculated that the SUB might have a similar effect of boosting voter turnout this year as well. However, such a temporary increase in student engagement doesn’t solve the overall problem with students getting informed.

This problem of being uninvolved has somehow been woven into the mind students at universities all over. Arry Dhillon, a current at-large representative for the SFSS who has been involved in 10 elections, spoke about his experience at Selkirk College. “Nobody knew about the student society at all
. . . Students didn’t know what they were voting for — they just knew me. That’s why they just wanted to vote,” he said. “That’s how I see a lot of [elections] going.”

This lack of involvement and knowledge could be a symptom of a dominant student attitude towards university nowadays. “People are more focused on their studies — which is a good thing, it is what they’re here for,” Dhillon said. “And so they don’t really care to get too informed. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that nobody has approached them to care.”

Dhillon suggests that a major problem for involvement is how student politicians approach students. But how would the SFSS go about informing the student body? “[Information on the SFSS positions] is somewhat hard to find for an average student. You see a poster on the wall that says ‘election coming up, get informed’,” Dhillon said. “But how many people actually go on that website at the bottom of the poster and get informed?” Although posters with detailed information sound appealing, he also explains the dilemma behind too much information. “At the same time, to fully explain what each of the 16 positions do, you would need a poster the size of a wall,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know if anyone would read that anyways.” Emails and posters seem to be how the SFSS distributes information, but how many people actually read every email they receive, or poster they see? “Students get emails from the SFSS and SFU all the time. Nobody is going to check them,” Dhillon said. Throughout Dhillon’s experience with student politics, he believes a person-to-person approach to communicating campaign platforms, issues, and ideas to students can go a long way to getting them interested and informed.

What about the election this week? There are only three candidates from the current board running for election — a number which Dhillon regards as “kind of low” — indicating that students may already be headed in the right direction in getting interested and involved in student politics. Although the general population may lack the knowledge of the system, more new faces are seemingly getting involved, which could really help in changing the dynamics of the SFSS.

Community seems to be SFU’s main issue. With President Petter’s recent motto swap, to “engaging the world”, students in this election have begun to step up to the challenge. But why don’t we take it a step further? If the small chunk of people that are informed could expand into a larger group, SFU might be able to get a sense of community back. Currently, community is lacking because there are so many different faculties and because SFU is strewn out across three campuses. Every student is going in a different direction. If all students could come together by having one united vision, such as for Build SFU, we could have a large number of students from different faculties all working together. If more students began to vote and get their opinions out there, the election results could represent a wider audience.  Involvement could change the role student politics currently play.

The overall question is whether or not student politics can get to where it should be, despite where it is now. It all rests upon the shoulders of the student body and who is elected. If this year’s votes turn out like the year before, we may see a big change in the dynamics of student politics at SFU and a community may begin to form. That is, if those elected will try and change their strategy. With only a day remaining for campaigning, it’s time for those candidates to really step it up. “If [a candidate] actually goes up to [students] and talks to them about [the election] and puts a face to what everything is, then they get way more interested and involved.” So what’s the solution to SFU’s lack of student involvement with the SFSS? Put a face on politics.

Highland Pub deficit

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SFSS owned and operated Highland Pub has been losing student money for years

By Jennifer Bednard
Photo By Mark Burnham

Running a chronic deficit, SFSS Food and Beverage Services continues to soak up hundreds of thousands of dollars of student funds with no solution in sight.

It will come as a surprise to few who have come in during the day or on Monday or Tuesday nights that the Highland Pub is not the most popular food option around. But what many people don’t know is just how much money goes into keeping it open. SFSS Food and Beverage Services (which includes The Ladle, Higher Grounds Coffee, the Highland Pub, and catering services) has been losing significant amounts of money for years. Everyone has a different idea as to why, and no one seems to be able to come up with an effective solution to change the trend.

And it is a trend — SFSS Food and Beverage Services has consistently lost money in each fiscal year for as long as most people can remember. However, over the past few years the problem has worsened. According to audited financial records publicly available on the SFSS website, SFSS Food and Beverage Services lost $68,487 in the fiscal year ending in 2008, $219,793 in 2009, $131,064 in 2010, and $314,167 in the fiscal year ending in 2011. In addition, as of 2010, building operating costs were no longer added to the list of expenses. “That was approximately $90,000 a year,” said Keenan Midgely, current SFSS treasurer. “So if you add that to $314,000, you have approximately $400,000 that food services is costing us. When you start breaking down the numbers of how much it costs each student per year, it’s close to $15 per student [to keep the services running].”

Of course, this deficit includes all of SFSS Food and Beverage Services. “It’s not just the pub — and that’s really important to make the distinction,” said SFSS president Jeff McCann. General opinion may implicate the pub, but there is no publicly available breakdown of the numbers. In fact, up until this fiscal year, no individual records for each of the different food and beverage services existed. “We’ve finally got a breakdown of the items and the cost of the actual goods,” said Midgley. “We actually didn’t know where we were losing the money. Everyone points to the pub, but we don’t know that for sure. My opinion is it’s the pub, but we haven’t actually run the numbers.”

In spite of the fact that there is little indication where exactly the SFSS Food and Beverage Services are losing money, everyone seems to be able to find factors that they believe are at fault for the deficit.

The rise in food prices is one of the factors for the deficit cited by current executive board members McCann and Midgely. In 2008, food accounted for 34 per cent of Food and Beverage Service’s cost of sales. Compare this to 2011 when food accounted for 37 per cent of cost of sales, or the current fiscal year where food has so far accounted for nearly 39 per cent of cost of sales. “Costs are going through the roof,” McCann said. “We’re starting to even see suppliers tack on fuel service charges because of having to come up the mountain.”

The recently expanded menu is also a factor in food costs. “Why is our menu so massive?” asked McCann. “It’s because we’re trying really hard to please everybody, and I think that part of what we’re going to have to accept is that we can’t. It’s a massive menu and it’s not effective. If we had a guy flipping Canadian burgers and someone else frying — and that was our entire operation — we would make money.” Yet, as SFU student Debra Mackinnon points out, menu options such as vegetarian dishes are already limited. “I do think I’m personally to blame a little. I’m a picky eater — but there are, like, four vegetarian options on the menu. Maybe two more, if you include a salad without certain things.”

 

“Why is our menu so massive? It’s because we’re trying really hard to please everybody, and I think that part of what we’re going to have to accept is that we can’t. It’s a massive menu and it’s not effective.”

– Jeff McCann, SFSS president

 

Another factor Midgley points to is the current collective agreement with CUPE 3388, which expired in April 2010 and has yet to be renegotiated. “There’s a web site with an average of 200 food and beverage operations and their wages, so I took that average and compared them to our wages, and the annual difference would be approximately $150,000, just in wages. And then, also, in the industry, lots of workers don’t get benefits, or they get partial benefits. Here, employees get 100 per cent benefits, and that’s pretty costly to the organization.” Medical, dental, and extended medical plans are provided for the 16 permanent full-time employees at a cost of approximately $4,500 each. In addition, the SFSS will match employee contributions to RRSPs to a maximum of $40 per pay period — which adds up to over $1,000 per employee each year.

The contract also contains clauses concerning raises and assigns a minimum number of hours employees must be paid for per week. “Through our collective agreement,” Midgley said, “employees are entitled to COLA (cost of living allowance) so every year that goes up. Also, when hired, student [workers] are guaranteed eight hours a week. So, if it’s during exams or other times, we might not need all those hours, but we still have to give these hours.” McCann adds that minimum hour requirements prevent management from scheduling workers depending on how busy the pub is. “[In a normal pub], if you are slow one night, you cut people, right? Or you have several people on call. With the collective agreement, you can’t have that flexibility, and what that creates is where, if you schedule three people for a certain night, if there are five tables, 50 tables, or no tables, you’re paying three people.” McCann explains that this creates a situation where the cost of labour becomes a “fixed cost.”

However, Lorna Avis, a server at the Highland Pub who has spent 10 years in the industry, believes that the scheduling and terms of the contract are fair, especially for the part-time workers. “There’s a lot less freedom being in the union,” she admitted, “but also better wages — which takes a lot of the pressure off tips. Working in a student environment, if we didn’t have that [higher wage and minimum hours requirement], I think that the pub would be losing staff — just quitting — a lot. Because tips, you know, understandably aren’t as great as at a pub downtown.”

 

“Working in a student environment, if we didn’t have that [higher wage and minimum hours requirement], I think that the pub would be losing staff — just quitting — a lot. Because tips, you know, understandably aren’t as great as at a pub downtown.”

– Lorna Avis, Highland Pub server

 

John Bannister, union representative for CUPE 3388, also believes that the current contract is not the pub’s main problem. “I keep hearing that [the contract is the problem]. But more to the point is that they [the SFSS] go and they do a massive renovation, and then the next board comes in and then they do a massive renovation . . . Last year they closed or were partially closed during the playoffs. These are management decisions, and the union really questions them.”

It is difficult to know who to blame for any alleged issues with management, however, since the structure governing food and neverage Services spreads responsibility through both food and beverage management and the SFSS. “The way it works is that we have a general manager, John Laurin, and he oversees all of the operations of the food and bev services as a whole. We also have an HR person, [Colleen Knox],” said McCann. “Between the executive committee, which directs the day-to-day operations of the society, and the commercial services committee, we direct or make recommendations to Colleen or John, depending on the topic, about the operations.” But McCann stresses that SFSS board influence over pub operations is very limited. “No board members are allowed to direct any food and bev staff, and that’s a really important thing.” This means that any ideas that come from the SFSS must be negotiated through food and beverage management before they are implemented — which can be helpful because the managers’ years of experience can turn the idea into a successful one. McCann evidently values the management staff’s ability to provide the experience and expertise necessary to run Food and Beverage Services, arguing that the board couldn’t do it on their own — but this emphasizes the fact that management and other permanent employees need to also be held accountable for the pub. “You cannot hold a board accountable because we don’t have the experience,” he said. “We hire people to have that [experience] and do that for us. If we want to see there be, for example, a St. Patty’s Day event, that’s the type of autonomy or control that we have [over the pub]. We want to see Toonie Tuesdays — we can do that. We can talk about what the structure should be. But in terms of the overall vision and that mandate, the accountability has to fall with people who are here year after year — and that hasn’t been the case.” John Laurin, the current general manager of Food and Beverage Services, declined an interview with The Peak without Jeff McCann’s permission, which was not granted. Colleen Knox was also unavailable for comment before publication.

 

“You cannot hold a board accountable because we don’t have the experience. We hire people to have that [experience] . . . In terms of the overall vision and that mandate, the accountability has to fall with people who are here year after year — and that hasn’t been the case.”

– Jeff McCann, SFSS president

 

If the reasons SFSS Food and Beverage Services are losing money are unclear, the solutions to the problem are equally elusive. Current SFSS board members caution that though solutions may seem simple to outsiders, the realities of the situation are much less cut and dry. “I think everybody, especially now with elections around the corner, says, ‘Oh, I’m going to fix the pub’,” says Midgley. McCann is even more critical. “I think that it’s a very complex situation that people boil down to that one time they threw an event some place downtown and it was really successful, or to their narrow perception of their eating or dining, or drinking experience. I see this with all of the candidate platforms. And I’m tired of it. Get over it. You don’t know [the situation].”

All of this attention over the last little while is something new for SFSS Food and Beverages when, historically, the biggest problem has been lack of oversight from the SFSS board. “Some boards get elected, and they don’t touch the pub. They don’t look at it. They don’t talk about it. They don’t care,” McCann said. “The commercial services committee never even met some years.” In addition to the way financial records were previously kept, which did not distinguish the money flows of different food and beverage operations, there have been no outside consultations since the 1990s. This is currently being remedied with a currently ongoing review by outside consultants familiar with the industry, however.

Now, SFSS Food and Beverage Services face the opposite issue: in the election platforms printed last week in The Peak, many of the executive candidates mentioned campus food options in their platform, several of which referenced the Highland Pub directly. All of these different visions beg the question of what exactly is the role of SFSS Food and Beverage Services in student life, and what is the role of the Highland Pub?

“It really all depends on the board of the day and what their feelings are on it and what approach they want to take, and how they view the pub — whether they view it as a service or a business or a not-for-profit where you just try to break even,” Midgley said.

At UBC, for instance, food and beverage services run by the Alma Mater Society (UBC’s student society) must at least break even in order to stay open. However, McCann believes that it is difficult to base SFU’s food and beverage services on the experience of other campuses. “You look at Queen’s U — [which has a] huge campus population that lives in the surrounding area; UBC has the same thing. You live in Kits, and you’re that much closer, and so it’s that much less of a trek [to UBC’s pubs]. There’s accessibility in terms of that. You can go to a pub night and not have to worry about making a SkyTrain home.”

McCann argues that there needs to be a clear mandate on whether the pub is a service or a profitable business — or whether it is both. As president, however, he has had one main focus. “With the Food and Bev Action Plan,” he explained, “my focus has been ‘butts in seats’, because if you’re going to lose $300,000 — fine. Let’s at least have the place be full. I think we need to get back to a place where you stop by the pub after class, and you see people you know. That’s community.”

In the same vein, Midgley discusses the pub as an extension of student space. “I think it is definitely student space, but I think it could be used a lot more efficiently. I would personally like to see more students in there during the day. I know the downstairs area and the loft are closed for the majority of the daytime. That’s a lot of space, and on a campus where there’s not a lot of space, I think we should have students in there.”

Yet not all students agree that the pub should be considered student space and paid for accordingly by students. SFU student Jessica Fickell says, “I’ve actually been quite a few times. Living on residence, it is definitely is a place you go. But the pub isn’t the main priority for our money. I mean we’ll get together anywhere, realistically. Maybe if they had opened the lower part . . . Instead of opening the extra bar down there, if they had opened up the area as a student lounge, for anyone to go to, maybe that would have been better. Right now, they’re going to do that student union building — or they’re going to try. But what about these kinds of spaces?” However, as with all issues of student space on campus, the lower level of the pub is also a bit more complicated than it should be. The liquor license for the pub, which is owned by SFU, is for the pub as an entire space. Therefore, the bottom floor — regardless of whether the new bar was built or not — would still be licensed to serve alcohol. This puts the SFSS in a sticky situation because the space could be used more efficiently, but getting a new license with different stipulations — such as a food primary license — could be hairy, and getting rid of the license on the bottom floor altogether would mean that it could never be accessed by those drinking in the pub.

It seems that, overall, what the Highland Pub is guilty of is an attempt to be too many things, to cater to too many people. Sitting in the pub during the day, the place feels like a restaurant that caters to all ages. Coming into the pub during an event night, however, the place feels more like a student pub — lively, full of students, and with drinks flowing freely. Though no one explicitly mentioned it during the course of the investigation, my personal feeling is that the pub plays these multiple roles simply because no other business or service is stepping up to the plate. The Ladle and Higher Grounds Coffee both provide very specific services, but on a campus where space of every kind is extremely limited, the pub is forced to do double or triple duty in order to accommodate all of the different things that students want from it. The Highland Pub is a student employer, a restaurant with a diverse menu, a student pub that serves cheap beer, and a venue for club and DSU events. The pub is a service, a failing business, a meeting place on campus, and an SFSS problem child, all depending on who you ask. There are myriad opinions, but they all boil down to a few simple facts: SFSS Food and Beverage is losing money and student fees are keeping it open. Whether or not you agree with it, no matter what you believe is the cause, this is the current state of affairs and we can expect no change in the near future unless it narrows its scope — which might not happen until another business or service lightens the pub’s load.

Abolish the SFSS

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By Clinton Hallahan

These are my endorsements for the SFSS election, but I’m not sure why I’m doing them. That puts my endorsements in league with the election itself — something we do without really knowing why, or really wanting to. That loud indifference toward our struggling democracy has never been as clear as it is in 2012.

There’s usually a forest of posters on this campus, but that has been reduced to a sad bluff in 2012. New kids might look at the number of posters with shock, but back in my day you could barely see the grey of the concrete (there was also much more snow, and walking through that snow, uphill both ways). This is partially due to the shockingly low number of candidates for each category. The two most important positions (arguably) on the board, the member services officer and the internal relations officer, will be chosen by a simple acclamation vote for lack of interest, as will every department representative except science (which, admittedly, has a candidate willing to die for the position).

Even more than usual, the debates were a sham. The number of regrets and statements given instead of, you know, actual attendance by candidates was depressingly high. At this point, we expect SFU students to exhibit their Olympic-caliber not-giving-a-shit skills, but usually candidates at least buy into the pageantry. This time, as students in Surrey and Burnaby both looked on with confusion and a lack of interest, most of what they saw was Independent Electoral Commission chief Ali Godson reading tepid statements in absence of a warm body. It was embarrassing.

Worse still was the student attendance at the debates. I put less than 75 people at peak at the Burnaby debates who were not candidates or IEC officials, or just eating lunch in the Atrium cafeteria. More than half of these straggled out midway through, leaving maybe 20 around by the time referendum questions were ‘debated’. If we broke 10 civilians in Surrey my count was way off. So where do we go from here?

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that if you stand in a group of political science majors for long enough, the probability of someone remarking that non-participation is as good as a vote against the system provided approaches one. At this point, SFU is loudly proclaiming that the SFSS is an organization it wants no part of, which no longer needs to exist. My question is, why don’t we give students what they want?

The entirety of the SFSS (and much of total ‘student participation’ at SFU) is run by a circle of people that I estimate to be lower than 300. There’s brackish between different organizations, with many ‘ambitious’ students sitting in more than one position. But when only five per cent of the electorate comes out to vote, as they did in 2007, that circle of 300 represents a healthy chunk of the roughly 1,500  students that percentage delineates.

It takes the threat of losing the U-Pass to get a paltry 23 per cent out to the polls, as occured in 2011, and even the months long debacle of CFS defederation only brought 17 per cent to voting booths. I’ll never forget the by-election results night that erupted into rapturous cheering when it was announced when the turnout was about seven per cent for key referenda. As one of the few people who actually paid attention this year, I will predict we don’t break 10 per cent. These numbers are simply untenable for a multi-million dollar society, and for a mandate to manage that much of your money.

The University Act says we require a student society to represent our interests, but it is becoming obvious that our interests are not the ‘services’ and ‘advocacy’ that have been gradually read into the duties of such an organization. If we define our interests as ‘saving the money we would spend on a student society to get us out of this glorified degree mill a touch faster’, I don’t think a jury could convict us. The undergraduates (and the grads of the GSS, who are having similar participation problems) have spoken, and their deafening silence makes it clear we must investigate a de facto abolishment of the SFSS.

This isn’t to say there aren’t people trying to do good things, but there just isn’t enough participation to justify any major projects or initiatives anymore. A truly progressive, radical campus would have the courage to listen to the vast majority of students and not the vocal, tiny minority perpetuating it all for CV entries. Shut it down, is what they’re saying, and for the first time, I agree with them.

If there’s a silver lining in this, it’s that my endorsements and the votes of the few are just votes for who gets to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. A silver lining for those elected? They’ll get to rule with a knowing smile, with any criticism leveled at them waved off with a line from a pop punk bard: “If we’re fucked up, you’re to blame.”

 

PRESIDENT

 

Should win: Lorenz Yeung         Will win: Lorenz Yeung

The only presidential candidate to show up to the Surrey debate, and the only one who has seen the way SFSS sausages are made. As a former MSO, maybe he can be the one to convince SFU that the SFSS is actually a thing that exists.

 

TREASURER

 

Should win: Michael McDonell

Will win: Kevin Zhang

McDonell seems engaged, if a bit obsessed with a private education vendetta his election wouldn’t really allow him to attack much. Zhang has been fairly invisible as ERO, just like at the Surrey debates.

 

UNIVERSITY RELATIONS OFFICER

 

Should win: Jeff McCann         Will win: Jeff McCann

Continuity is a rare thing in the SFSS, and we really need all we can get, especially if that $65 million dollar building goes through. I can’t wait for Besan to shed the slate holding her back and run for president.

 

EXTERNAL RELATIONS OFFICER

 

Should win:

Stephanie Boulding

Will win:

Meaghan Wilson

Our terrible debate structure aside, Boulding was the only one to show some real poise and maturity, avoiding asking Meaghan Wilson about her sleep habits. Didn’t attend the Surrey debates, but who the hell did.

 

MEMBER-AT-LARGE

 

Should win:

Ashleigh Girodat

Will win:

Ashleigh Girodat

The only member to show up with ideas in a race where one candidate was absent for both, and where one candidate openly admitted the position was next to useless. I am fully aware I’m supposed to pick two.

Federalization, Europe, and the EU

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By Gustavo Destro

In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte stated that “peace between European nations would have become easier [if] the United States of Europe [were] a possibility.” Many times in the past, men have considered the possibility of a united Europe that would create unity between the various nations.

Now, over 200 years later, we are seeing its effects, and national leaders are still in constant conflict with one another, just as they were at the times of Napoleon. But they have put away their warhorses, and the weapon of choice is now a whole lot of finger wagging. What the technocrats who brought about the European Union as we know it today failed to do, though, was learn from the lessons of the French emperor: for Europe to be united, it requires a strong leader. To do it through war, as history has shown, is difficult; to do it through diplomacy, as we are now seeing, has proven just as challenging. But it’s not impossible.

When the crisis in the Eurozone reached its nadir last year, some economists asked themselves why, never bringing cultural differences into the discussion. But that is exactly the reason why the EU is struggling: it is trying to pretend every country is like Germany, fiscally, and politically, when the truth is they are not.

Countries like Italy and Greece have never been fiscally sound, so when they were brought into the Eurozone, who expected them to suddenly become fiscal hawks and tackle all their problems for the sake of the union? It made no sense to expect change overnight, or change at all. To say that Italy and Greece are worse at managing their economies is not racial or supposed to ‘rank’ nations, it is a simple historical fact. For a union to have a single currency, it must also have a single monetary policy throughout.

But Brussels — the headquarters of the EU — apparently got the memo last year, and demanded tough fiscal change in both Italy and Greece. The problem was, these countries’ leaders — already facing internal pressure — had no intention of implementing such unpopular measures. What happened was unprecedented. The leaders of Italy and Greece both agreed to step down, but with one caveat: they would do so as soon as the economic measures imposed by Brussels were passed by their parliaments. Both measures passed, both leaders stepped down, and their successors were both hand-picked by Brussels.

The EU headquarters had not only succeeded in implementing the fiscal change they wanted, but they also replaced two state leaders who were hostile to their demands with two men who would have their ear more easily. It’s fascinating since the current fiscal policy and the leaders of both Italy and Greece were not elected or chosen by their people, yet no one has come out with chants of trampled democracies.

Maybe, if the implementation of Brussels-mandated economic reforms is successful, future decisions made by the EU headquarters can carry more strength and impact, and more power can, in the future, go to a central government. It sets a precedent, and shows that, for all its differences, a European federation with a single central government may not be met with as much resistance as some have previously thought.

Napoleon would be proud.

Jeff McCann leaves the presidency a winner

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By Sam Reynolds

As orange leaves in autumn, the posters that currently adorn the walls of SFU show that the campus has moved into another election cycle. While talk of a possible student union building and other ballot measures up for referendum dominate campus political discourse these days, we should pause for a moment to remember one of the more notable student society presidents of yore — the political wunderkind Jeff McCann.

It was not seven months ago when people were counting the days until they could declare McCann “was not [their] president”. The plan was impeachment; the venue was the SFSS AGM, but unfortunately for McCann’s detractors — a cabal of union operatives, professional students, and geriatric hanger-ons — this grand coup in the name of the staff who were under the SFSS’s employ, and not the people whom the society was mandated to serve, never materialized.

The ‘crime’ that earned McCann the ire of this small but vocal group was not the instillation of some cruel dictatorship, but the attempt to implement some private-sector sensibility into an incredibly bloated public sector apparatus. During her time at SFU, our current premier tried to trim the same Leviathan, but it reared its ugly head and had her impeached.

McCann and his administration suffered through continuing rallies, in which the staff, made up of administrators and white-collar workers, tried to paint their plight in a romantic caricature, likening themselves to the coal workers of America or other defining labour movements of the previous century: vulnerable workers versus corporate fat-cats.

In the end, unfortunately, the fat cats that occupied the offices of the SFSS executive — students who earn approximately $21,000 — compromised on the demands of the union and ended the lockout. While the exact terms were not ideal, they put the society in a better financial position then it was in before and was a symbolic step in ending the gravy train that was the SFSS staff employment conditions.

This play by McCann was perfectly fitting of the supposed radicalism that makes this campus unique. The plight of the student society is not unique to SFU: student governments around the country are often beholden to staff complete with the protection of a union and a long institutional memory. In many cases, the answer to the question “Who governs?” is nebulous at best.

McCann and his executive’s efforts in demanding accountability by trying to reign in a student society that spent recklessly on wages deserve a strong salute. Let us hope, however, that his successors don’t undo his work.

SFU scientists study atomic fingerprint

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By Sam Reynolds

CERN scientists make inroads on studying trapped antimatter

In a groundbreaking experiment at Europe’s CERN laboratory, a Canadian-led team directed by an SFU researcher has trapped anti-matter particles of hydrogen for long enough to study them in hopes to finally discover the secrets of the mysterious atoms.

“This is the first time that anyone has ever interacted with an antimatter atom,” wrote Mike Hayden, an SFU physics professor and lead in the project, in the journal Nature.

The team was able to observe the “atomic fingerprint” of an antimatter particle, a major breakthrough as scientists previously struggled to explain why it existed at all with the data that they had.

“We’ve performed a measurement. We’ve tried to look for what you might call a sign of a fingerprint of this atom,” Hayden told CBC News. “You could think of it like trying to communicate with this atom, or manipulate it.”

Other Canadian researchers involved with the project are from the universities of Calgary, Victoria, York University, and TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle physics lab based at UBC.

While antimatter may be familiar to most as science fiction lore, researchers have long attempted to produce it in a laboratory and hold it steady enough for observation. First discussed in the 1880s by British physicist William Mitchinson Hicks, the term was coined in 1898 in the journal Nature. A formalized paper was published in 1928 by Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, and antimatter was first discovered in a laboratory, as anti-electrons, or positrons, four years later.

Antimatter is made up of particles that have an opposite charge from matter, with the remaining characteristics remaining the same. When matter and antimatter collide, both particles are destroyed by the energy reaction that occurs as a result.

This destruction makes antimatter particularly challenging to observe, as matter — which annihilates it on contact — makes up the majority of the Universe.  In order to prevent the contact of matter and antimatter to allow observation, Hayden and his team used a device that suspended antimatter in a magnetic trap, keeping it away from the sides of the containing unit which is made of matter.

This device was the product of a CERN based group called the ALPHA collaboration, of which SFU researchers were also involved.

To trap and observe antimatter researchers combined anti-protons with anti-electrons to form a cloud of anti-hydrogen atoms. Last year, the team managed to trap antimatter for an unprecedented 16 minutes.
According to the paper published in Nature, the team then exposed these anti-hydrogens to high frequency radio waves while changing the strength of the magnetic trap to try and force them to escape, tracking their movement and patterns as they did.

“We end up getting images of tracks left by these particles, and we can lay these tracks all out and figure out where the common origin is, where did this little explosion occur,” Hayden said in an interview with the National Post. “What we see, of course, is that sure enough it comes right from the outside edge of our trap, where we expect them to come from.”

Scientific literature suggests that after the big bang, matter and antimatter were being rapidly created at a frenzied space as the universe expanded and cooled. Thus, having an outline of the “atomic fingerprint” as well as observations of an antimatter particle would give scientists new clues to the genesis of the universe.

“One of the reasons we want to study the spectrum of the antihydrogen atom is to look for clues that might shed light on a baffling mystery,” Hayden said to The Peak. “Everything we know about physics suggests that large quantities of matter and antimatter should have been created in the aftermath of the big bang”.

“So what happened? Where did the antimatter go? Trying to get to the bottom of this mystery is enormously important in physics and astronomy.”

“If we can see any small difference (between hydrogen and anti-hydrogen), maybe we can get some idea of why there is this preference for matter in the universe,” Tim Friesen, another Canadian researcher involved with the project said to the Calgary Herald.

“This experiment opens the door to precision comparisons of matter and antimatter,” said SFU PhD candidate Mohammad Ashkezar in a press release. “Eventually measurements like this will reveal clues that may help solve one of the deepest mysteries in particle physics.”