By David Dyck

The Peak: What does Schools Building Schools (SBS) do?

Mike Jackson, Schools Building Schools Director: SBS has two main goals, one overseas and one here in Canada. Overseas, we partner with existing vocational schools in Uganada in order to help them achieve their own goals. We do this by helping them fund infrastructural improvements. Building onto their classrooms and building onto their infrastructure to help them with vocational training. We also help with the process to build onto their residences and wells and other critical infrastructure. In Canada, we are focused on involving youth. One of the reasons the organization was created was to give youth and particularly university students practical hands-on experiences through event planning, fundraising, marketing, advertising, government relations. All that kind of stuff that you hear about in university and you’re working towards maybe having a career in but you would really love to get a taste of it before you get there, just to be able to provide a bit of practical knowledge to students.

P: When was it established? 

SBS: The organization itself was founded in 2009, and its founders are still the president and the vice-president, Craig and Piper. They started the organization as masters students looking to make a difference. The first fundraiser actually happened in Ottawa in January 2010 and from there basically its activities moved out here with Craig when he moved out here to go to SFU.

P: What are some of SBS’s core values?

SBS: There’s a lot of different values we hold dear, but there’s five primary ones that we consider our mandate. It’s that our volunteers learn essential skills applicable to the real world, that education is a universal human right and that if are in a position something about it, we should.  That education should be based on the local economy, basically in Uganda or any impoverished region we would potentially consider. Because what matters most in the developing world is earning a decent income. From the research we’ve done, making money to feed your family is the resounding important thing. That the trades are far too often overlooked, both in developing countries and in Canada. I personally am a tradesman, so that’s one thing I really believe in. It’s one big reason why I’m with SBS. Fifth, that accountability and transparency at all levels are critical, so having a real open relationship with critics, supporters, anyone that wants to be involved in any capacity. We really strive to get people involved, because that’s really what non-profits have to deal with, is issues of credibility.

P: What is the level of need for schools in Uganda?

SBS: As in all developing countries, there’s a need for education. The important facet we help with is, which is also one to grow the local economy, is vocational training. Vocational schools aren’t common. Most don’t receive government funding, most are in disrepair. Depending on the region, primary school is funded by the government, but there’s a real disparity between when you’re an adult and when you finish primary education. We see vocational training as being that avenue for young people, possibly at-risk youth, to have an outlet to make a living or to get trained or get some focus. What we mean by vocational schools, at least in Uganda, means like a BCIT. A school that not only focuses on carpentry or masonry, but also a focus on entrepreneurship, business development, accounting, computer operation. Things needed to get out into the working world.

P: Why Uganda? Will you grow and expand into the region?

SBS: You gotta start somewhere. In all the places that were visited and all the schools that were tested, this particular one in Uganda was chosen as the most suitable. Also because Canada has safety standards of developing regions and Uganda receives a fairly decent grade, and many others don’t. There’s always plans to grow and develop. If other people get involved, SBS will reach out into the region.

P: Why is it important for SFU to get involved?

SBS: We feel it’s important for SFU to get involved, from a practical education standpoint, the opportunities that SBS presents are definitely far reaching. There are clubs on campus that seek a practical goal, ours is another that truly has a global reach. And because we have received significant interest from the students of SFU. A lot of the research we did of the general feeling toward this type of subject at SFU. We did research into our centres of influence, we moved out into hallway chats and groups of students through presentations, basically through the recruiting process, not the levy process. This idea got bounced around a lot at the end of last spring. Through our petition process alone we received almost 2,000 signatures saying ‘yeah, this is a great idea’. In regards to trying a similar levy somewhere else [chuckles], we haven’t ruled it out doing it again, it’s not one we’re actively pursuing. If our affiliate partners wish to take such an action, it would be considered. We have another affiliate staring at McGill University, and if it’s something they look at this as a pilot project and are really interested in it, it would definitely be considered. A deliberation from our executive board would really have to take place to make sure it’s a suitable endeavor. Even for here, we had to we had to make sure the affiliate had the ability to pull it off, and that the level of involvement was high enough to create a suitable environment where we wouldn’t just be kicked off the school grounds.

P: As SBS grows, will volunteers be sufficient, or will it have to hire professional management?

SBS: The SFU chapter should most likely always be students. Our mandate is to provide experiences to student volunteers. We’ve been doing it 100 per cent volunteer to date, however, if there comes a time where we forsee a circumstance where we have to hire professional management for accounting and legal purposes, something of that nature, it could be a consideration. As per our constitution recognized by the Canadian government, we are mandated not to spend anything over 20 per cent of our budget on administration. That goes to say for the entire organization. Part of what we were talking about to the SFU community is that their levy won’t be used for administration. And we’re beholden to that. That’s one of the main things we wanted to get across.

P: The levy passed with 11 per cent voter turnout. What are your thoughts on that?

SBS: It sucked, man. Student politics, it’s funny. Coming into all this, there was a lot of contentious issues this year, and we weren’t exactly sure how that would play out. We experienced a ton of support. Yeah, it sucked, we were hoping for at least 20 per cent turn out, at least for our question. It’s really too bad. But hopefully through this process some of the students might wake up and start getting involved.

P: The United Way does collection at SFU without a levy. Should more charities be going this route?

SBS: It’s a very fine line to walk. From my opinion, charities should only look at doing the levy if they’re intimately connected within the community. And also that they believe that the students will connect with the cause and embrace the organization. It was and still is our hope that the current success and unfortunate subsequent notoriety will further propel students to asking questions and getting involved with SBS in whatever capacity.

P: Are there any plans to deal with continuity and volunteer turnover?

SBS: Yes. The way that the general donation scheme is presented to the organization, the organization has ultimate oversight about where any dollar goes. The organization itself has a number of people who have been working since its beginning. These are all members of our executive board or heavy contributors to our affiliates. We’re looking at doing and pretty far through the process of creating a board of governors with people that are contributors to the community, people of high character and high standards that can oversee and direct some of the actions of the organization. People such as lawyers or doctors, or even professors.

P: Do you have a goal for monies raised? When that goal is reached, what is the plan for the levy?

SBS: There is no set goal at this time because the levy operates under the purview of the student population. As such, it is up to the students to help direct where and for how long these funds are donated. This is a fact that the skeptics have minced or ignored since we started this initiative, I mean, it’s come up over and over and over again, what’s going to happen, blah blah blah blah, precedent, all that kind of stuff. We would very much like every student at SFU to get involved, period. This is a student run initiative. If students really want to direct the money to help provide vocational infrastructure in Somalia or the DRC, then so be it. This is student money. They should be, and are, afforded every opportunity to oversee its dispersement. If after a semester or three or 10 years they want to change how this works, it will be up to them to stand up and vote. Of course we’ll explore every avenue. If we have a petition brought to us of a good section of the student body, then of course. This is student money, this is the students chance to get involved and if they don’t want to be a part of it, it’s not our goal to keep them.

P: Rotunda groups (including The Peak) collect money on a levy, but are autonomous and are not subject to the same auditing process the SFSS is subject to. Nevertheless, Rotunda groups are subjected to an auditing process overseen by the SFSS. Are you subject to that same auditing?

SBS: Definitely. I’ve heard of that happening, not with the Rotunda groups, but actually the SFSS, and we were like, this is a great idea. We’re totally involved in this. As long as somebody wants to audit it, as long as they’re professional and not some 10-year-old going through all the books. Of course. We have nothing to hide. At any time, if the students feel it’s necessary, then by all means.

By Michael Cuthbertson

SASKATOON (CUP) — So, you want to save the planet. But which of our so-called eco-friendly behaviours really save the earth, and which only save face?

The answer is simple: things that don’t leave a carbon footprint (or any type of pollution) actually save the planet, while anything releasing pollutants damages the planet.

I find it ironic when people congratulate themselves for buying eco-friendly products. ‘Buying’ and ‘eco-friendly’ are contradictory terms. It doesn’t matter if you buy an energy efficient computer, a snazzy cruiser bike, or an organic cotton t-shirt. You still bought something, and a lot of machines had to be powered just so you could have that product.

The only time a consumer is literally being eco-friendly is when they abstain from buying a new product in the first place.

Thus, if I see a girl riding a brand-new $600 cruiser bike down the street and behind her I see a guy digging through the trash for pop cans, I remind myself who is actually saving the planet. It’s the guy who didn’t just purchase a fancy new manufactured item.

This about sums up why real environmentalism, such as carbon-neutral living, is rejected in favour of the fake, feel-good environmentalism people embrace. Real environmentalism requires you to live like a bum. That means buying very little, buying second-hand and getting by with what you already have whenever humanly possible.

Last June, I was technically homeless. I lived in a forest about an hour’s walk from Nelson, B.C. Naturally, after spending weeks living amidst the trees and birds and lakes, I couldn’t help but feel that nature was far more sacred than I had imagined back in the city.

Living in the woods, you divide everything into two categories. First, you see the eternal creations of this world; things like mountains, and forests and wildlife that look exactly the same in 2012 as they did a million years ago. Second, you see products of human creation — juice boxes, bars of soap, and bug spray.

Living in the civilized world, we hardly acknowledge how intrusive these human creations are to nature. If you see an empty chip bag on a city sidewalk you think, “Well, that’s an eyesore, but no big deal.”

When you’re walking through pristine wilderness, that same chip bag becomes a powerful, even scary representation of what civilization really does to nature. You realize that even though we can hide our trash outside the city and our pollution way up in the atmosphere, it still damages some part of the Earth.

This reality is largely forgotten in our urban existence. When we buy something, it’s hard to visualize the entire industrial process it took for that product to reach our hands. And it’s equally difficult to quantify the amount of ecological destruction our purchases cause.

Personally, unless I stop to think about how damaging my consumption is, I grow complacent with the very sort of environmentalism I’m bitching about. I reassure myself that I bike and recycle and buy things that are eco-friendly enough.

Several years ago, I bought some Converse-esque “No-Sweat” shoes that were made from 100 per cent recycled materials. I fancied this a purchase of the highest ethical order. My smugness was palpable.

Six months later the shoes pretty much dissolved. After that I bought Nike sneakers. In the long run, if I kept buying shoddy No-Sweat shoes, I would be doing greater harm to the Earth (though not supporting questionable labour practices, which is a whole other can of worms).

There’s an important environmental lesson in my parable of the shoes. When you have to buy something, buy something that will last. Get a bike you’ll use for 20 years. And if it’s even possible today, stick with your computers and digital gizmos for longer than 18 months.

Slowing down consumerism may not constitute real environmentalism, but it’s realistic environmentalism. Unlike some environmentalists, I’m not here to say, “Unless you live off the land, you’re making mother Earth shed tears of acid rain.” I respect that damaging the Earth is as human as breathing. I mean, every time we exhale we release greenhouse gases into the air.

By making thoughtful consumer choices, however, we can mitigate our ecological damage — without reverting to the existence of our hairy, cave-doodling ancestors.

By Benedict Reiners

Recently, plans were passed to build a new student union building at SFU Burnaby campus. With a multi-million dollar plan like that on the line, one would have expected there to be some sort of response in terms of voter turnout. However, when all the votes were counted up, only 11 per cent of eligible voters participated in the decision that will cost students an estimated $65 million over the coming years. Furthermore, of that 11 per cent, only approximately 54 per cent voted in favour of the project, meaning that of all total eligible voters, fewer than 6 per cent actually voted for the project, suggesting that the student government functions as more of an oligarchy than a democracy. Our current quorum requirements are too low. This needs to change.

It is time for student government to realize that we should start to look beyond just the percentage of the votes that referenda questions receive, and start to look at the larger picture. Perhaps it is time that we initiate a system that allows certain referendum questions, particularly those that will put new costs to students, to be required to garner a mandate-worthy turnout of total eleigible voters. This would entail the creation of a threshold for minimum support over the whole undergrad population, meaning that not only would a referendum question, like that regarding Build SFU, require 50 per cent of the vote to pass, but also a defined percentage of the total undergraduate population to express such in the election. This percentage could even start out relatively small, with a modest 20 per cent already implying the representation of more than three times as many students. However, as engagement would rise, this number would ideally rise as well, as initially it would still be but a fraction of what would be required for a majority.

In addition, such a program would introduce actual incentives for groups involved in student governance, to encourage and seek out further public engagement, instead of purely theoretical ones, which seem to be all that is in place currently. This would push candidates and proponents of initiatives to engage the student population not only because of the desire for more representative democracy in student government, but also because of the necessity of doing so in order to achieve their end goal.

This would force the SFSS and the interest groups behind such initiatives (i.e. Schools Building Schools) to seek out and actively engage students in new ways, and show a degree of innovation in student engagement, something that will prove necessary if the SFSS plans on representing more than 10 per cent of the SFU undergrad population.

Some may argue that such a policy would prevent anything from being done within the SFSS. However, such an argument is fundamentally flawed. If that were so the SFSS board would be unnecessary, and we could decide everything in the style of a plebiscitary democracy, with regular referendums and public initiatives. However, as that is not the case, as it is clear that the SFSS board could still act for students the same way they would in any other term, and that only referenda questions would be greatly effected. It’s a small price to pay for a more representative student government.

Sometimes in an election, the biggest message can be found not within the successes and failures of certain candidates or initiatives, but with the successes and failures of the election itself. Applying that notion to the last election, it is clear that SFU student politics seem heavily oriented to simply getting enough support to pass a motion, or to get elected. With school politics oriented to such a degree on getting enough popular  support, it’s time we increased what enough means.

By Bryce Warnes

VANCOUVER (CUP) — Peeked Interest is a website for people who are afraid of talking to people they are attracted to. The way it works is, you sign up, and then you post photos you have covertly taken of strangers you want to fuck. The strangers will (maybe) go on the website and see that someone they don’t know wants to fuck them. Then they might contact that person. Hopefully, in the end, everyone gets fucked.

Peeked Interest was invented by a University of Victoria grad named Darryl McIvor. Right now, the site’s scope is limited to the University of British Columbia and UVic campuses.

I have been spending a lot of time on Peeked Interest lately, checking out pics of my fellow students as they rush around campus, busy not knowing they are being photographed by strangers who want to fuck them.

Peeked Interest is totally groundbreaking, but it isn’t perfect. I’ve spent enough time studying the site in-depth, and I know exactly what it needs to achieve true greatness.

One thing that’s absolutely essential is some sort of virtual currency, perhaps called PeekBux, which you can purchase through Paypal with real-world money, but also accrue through online activities.

Say you really like this one person, you could earn extra PeekBux by taking lots of photos of them. This will encourage people to keep tabs on their crushes, and develop the sort of micro-celeb web-cults that Gen Y is all about.

The website would be more interesting if you could track certain individuals and see pics of them doing various activities, like hanging out with friends, going on night-time jogs, visiting their families, towelling off after hot showers, et cetera.

Once you’ve earned or bought PeekBux, you can spend them on special services, like “VIP Access” to certain crushes, which lets you find out where they live, their phone numbers or what types of medication they’re on.

I understand, though, that having people snapping pics of you all the time could begin to feel intrusive. That’s why, if you catch someone photographing you, you can report them online, and they will be fined some of their PeekBux. This will encourage your fans to take pictures while behaving tastefully and concealing their activities, maybe by hiding in bushes near your first class of the day, or installing a surveillance system that is rigged to take a photo of you every time you leave your house.

Alternately, some people will find that they are not getting enough attention. For instance, when I first went on Peeked Interest, I expected approximately half the photos to be of me, with comments like “hey sexy luv ur sexy walk its sexy” and “you have amazing hair.”

To make a long story short, I was disappointed.

That is why, with PeekBux, you will be able to hire others to snap pics of you. You get the attention that fuels your will to live while skilled mini-paparazzi will be able to make PeekBux on the side when they are not busy following attractive people.

These changes should not be too hard to implement, and I really believe they will make Peeked Interest a legit game-changer. Peeked Interest could allow us to take our first world problems to the next level and tweet about the paparazzi following us to the grocery store, laundromat, and public washroom.

Only then will we, Generation Y, reach our apogee.

By Erin Wyllie

Dear Jeff McCann,

Thank you for introducing yourself, . It’s the perfect time to let all the students know as you’re on your way out of office for the year. We need to clear some things up. You claim that students aren’t engaged, that we’re “apathetic”, and we “don’t give a fuck.” I think we need to find the source of this student pathology, so we can fix this, maybe during your next year in office as university relations officer.

I kindly request that for every finger you point at the “lazy students”, you turn around and question your board for what they have been doing to get students jazzed about student politics. It’s a two-way street to get students involved and, at the moment, it’s only going in one single direction: a dictating board that does not foster democracy.

This past school year I’ve been quite involved in program, faculty, and university-wide organizations. So, naturally, I’ve been incensed by the past year’s activities. Why have the recent elections garnered high voter turnout but a sore turnout of candidates? Why has the board — ‘16 student leaders’ — turned into 14 student leaders?

Let’s read between the lines here: students want to get involved, just not in our university politics. I’ve been to board meetings, to forum, and to your office. After all I’ve done to get involved I can say that it’s not a nice area to be occupying. No one wants to speak when there are snide smiles behind your back. Students don’t want to run for office because, when it comes down to the wire, your ethics change to finish a project. Participants don’t want to vote if you barely look up to count who is for and against.

Moreover, the article in The Peak illustrates my point. The finger is pointed solely at the students. Yes students do need to be proactive and want to get involved; however, if there is no progress for what they are doing, if the position they occupy has little to no meaning in the process, then what is the point? Why should a student give hours of their time to a process that does not encourage their participation? There are a select few individuals on campus who are so passionate about these issues that they are willing to forego time, and experience unpleasant environments if it means something might get done in the future. But you’re right, most students do not, and I can’t say I blame them.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s make student politics an exciting and inclusive experience for all students.

Here are my recommendations for what should happen next year. If anyone feels the same, let’s work to hold our representatives accountable. Let’s engage. Let’s chat in the hallways, and let’s reignite the community in SFU.

First, forum should not be chaired by an SFSS board member — it’s an absolute conflict of interest. The chair sets the tone for the meeting and manipulates it to the board’s interests.

Second, forum should reclaim the power that it’s let slip away. I hear rumours of a time some years ago when SFU’s student politics were controlled by forum and the board had to answer to this currently spineless body.

Third, more consultation. Yes, this word’s been thrown around a lot, so let’s take notice. We want consultation. Why is the Build SFU think tank closed now? After the big push to get students to vote ‘yes’, we’re finished with that fish bowl of a room? I want consultation day and night. I think that each committee needs to be tasked to investigate the best way to consult students and how students’ interests align with the committee. Let’s broaden these spaces and allow for all students to participate.

Fourth, Craig Pavelich needs to be instated as IRO. I was at the board meeting when this was being discussed and the issue was shied away from and those with the loudest voices in the room became the only ones. The board’s main reason for not instating him is to adhere to policy. Where was this reasoning with the other policies the board violated last year? Craig was voted in by the student population. 1,002 students voted yes and 310 no for his acclamation. Democracy spoke, and the board quieted its voice.

Thank you for hearing my concerns and I will see you at the next board meeting. I look forward to discussing my concerns and those of the students in the future. Because, yeah, I am one of those students who does ‘take this shit too seriously’.