The SFU Archives are one of the rare treasures of SFU that the majority of SFU students are unaware of. So here’s a little video to showcase some of the neat stuff they posses, how an archive works, and the research benefits of an archive.
Created: Julian Giordano
Contact: [email protected]
Score: open source
Payments can now be partially relieved for people with incomes above the thresholds of the existing student loan interest relief program
VANCOUVER (CUP) — The B.C. government has unveiled a new “repayment assistance program” to help university graduates repay their student loans.
Student loan payments can now be partially relieved for people whose incomes are above the thresholds of the existing student loan interest relief program. B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced the new assistance plan Monday as part of her “families first” agenda.
“Eligibility is determined based on income, student loan debt and family size,” said Ministry of Advanced Education spokesperson Baljinder Jacques in an email.
According to Jacques, the repayment assistance program ensures that those paying back student loans will not need to give more than 20 per cent of their monthly income toward provincial student loan repayment.
The program is an adjustment to a previously existing provincial student loan relief plan. Under the new plan, those unable to repay their loans can apply for what is called Stage 1 relief, in which the province will pay a portion of the borrower’s interest.
After five years on interest relief — or if someone has been repaying their loans for 10 years in total — they can apply for Stage 2, at which point the government can pay down some of the principal on the loan. If the full loan is not paid off after 15 years, the government will relieve what remains.
But B.C. NDP post-secondary education critic Michelle Mungall doesn’t think the new repayment options go far enough.
“It’s just the reannouncement of an existing program that’s had a few changes to align with the federal government program,” said Mungall. “It’s not substantive. It’s not addressing the major issues around student debt and affordability for post-secondary education.”
Mungall said her party would prefer to see more money go toward grants that students can apply for while they’re still in school, rather than student loan relief after they’re finished.
“B.C. still has the highest interest rate for student loans in the country,” she said. “This program doesn’t address any of that.”
After graduating from UBC this May, Justin Dirk hopes that the new program will keep him from being overburdened with debt. “I guess it would help me. I plan on traveling and gaining some life experience before I decide what I want to do with my life. I may go to grad school and rack up more debt, in which the relaxed [payment] load would help.”
Dirk continued, “Going into your adult life with more debt is never a good thing. I would prefer lower tuition so that coming out of university, especially in Vancouver, with high living costs, I would be able to have the means to live here and not worry about more debt and debt payments.”
By David Dyck
Concert planned for fall
The board is looking into the feasibility of hosting a concert event to take place this coming fall. According to member services officer Humza Khan, the board is searching for someone to take care of logistics, production management, strategic marketing development, budgets and revenue targets, sponsorships, and staffing. The board is expecting a detailed proposal from a prospective company that will go to the executive committee this Monday to finalize at board later on this week.
“The estimated budget that we received so far is around $100,000,” said Khan.
Clubs days to expand into Freedom Square
The events committee recommended to board that the fall 2012 Clubs Days event be expanded to include Freedom Square, the area between Convocation Mall and the AQ. Typically, the three-day event takes place only in the covered Convocation Mall. Arts and social sciences representative Alia Ali expressed concerns that the area could be rained out, as there’s no cover there.
Khan replied that the open area will only be for clubs who register late. “Every year we get at least 15-20 clubs [that register late] . . . they come in, shout at you, and have no space.” Only if convocation mall is fully booked will the society use the space in Freedom Square. “We’re not going to go all out and spend money on tarps,” said Khan.
Highland Pub adapting to new liquor laws
Servers can now be fined up to $575 on sight for serving minors, senior organizational advisor Colleen Knox told the board. “It’s something to be very wary of. You might experience a little more IDing going on in the bar,” said Knox. “They’re supposed to ID if members look under 25. We encourage them to do it all the time.”
Knox added that there are also changes to special occasions permits that make the server liable for serving alcohol to minors.
“We’re going to be hosting a lot of events in September and October, and you might be inclined towards bringing an underage friend,” said Khan. “Please don’t do it, because if something goes wrong, Lorenz [Yeung], Kevin [Zhang], and I are on the liquor licenses, as well as Colleen [Knox].”
Khan added that from his personal experience, DSUs and student clubs will have underage students working as volunteers, who only volunteer for several minutes before going to the bar.
By Graham Cook
Topics researched included the history of the Tla’amin hunting dogs, where people moved after the great fire of 1918, and how and where people lived
An Archaeology field school featuring graduate students from SFU and universities from across Western Canada worked on excavating an ancient village on the Sunshine Coast with the goal of creating an atlas of the region and Tla’amin history.
Members of the Tla’amin First Nation, University of Saskatchewan professor Keith Carlson, and SFU archaeologist Dana Lepofsky led the group.
“There were basically six instructors and five students, so it was an amazing ratio,” Lepofsky told The Peak. “They had a week of classes at the beginning that combined archaeology and history . . . so really the whole point of the field school is to combine these different kinds of knowledge.”
She further stated that these first-week lectures occurred at the reserves where they were living, and that in the second and third weeks the students began choosing topics that the Tla’amin First Nations said they wanted to know about.
Lepofsky explained that these historical topics included “the history of their hunting dogs, the history of where people moved after the great fire of 1918, or how and where people lived.”
During the research of their chosen topics, students spoke with community mentors and those living in the area in order to put together plates that will be in the historical atlas. Lepofsky stated that that they will have, for example, “plates on houses thousands of years ago to the present. . . . There’s a whole series of plates that we have planned.” When the students were not conducting these interviews on the reserve, they were spending a week at a time excavating a 2,400-year-old village.
A number of the students involved, Lepofsky said, “were history students who had never done archaeology before but they were being led by SFU PhD student Chris Springer and were loving it. . . . These are people who love history but have only worked with text.” Lepofsky explained that they plan involve raising the capital necessary to create the atlas.
SFU has been working with Tla’amin First Nations for about five years in archaeology and heritage projects. Lepofsky said that they hope to continue and expand this work and that they believe “that every archaeology, [native studies, and history] student in Western Canada should take this class, because it’s really a blending of different kinds of knowledge.”
By David Dyck
Simon Fraser Student Society health plan will change from Sun Life to Desjardins
At a Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) board of directors meeting two weeks ago, the board decided to move forward with negotiating a new contract for the undergraduate health and dental plan. The board cited a cheaper rate and an increase in student claims as the reason why they were switching from Sun Life to Desjardins, to take effect in the fall.
Although the society is getting a cheaper rate per student, students will actually see very little change in the short term. The rate that each undergraduate pays each semester is set at $198, and that amount has been set by referendum. However, since the offer from Desjardins is below $198 per student over two years, this will give the society a reserve fund to build up over time.
“That was our idea and our logic behind it, and that’s why we wanted to build up funds, because there are countless opportunities in which we could use or implement these funds for future students,” said Humza Khan, the SFSS member services officer.
Khan told The Peak that since 2008 when the society began the health and dental plan until 2011, the number of claims has gone up significantly. “At this trend, right now, no insurance company is going to want to work with us because we’re only charging $198, whereas the claims we do are way above that. So insurance companies know beforehand that if they work with us they’re going to be going into a loss.”
According to Khan, the society was faced with two options: to go back to referendum and raise the amount that each student paid, or to cut benefits. “If a certain benefit is no longer there, then no one can claim it, and that would have cut down our costs.”
But Khan said that he preferred not to do either of those things, opting instead to change providers entirely from Sun Life to Desjardins, a company that is “relatively new to the healthcare industry, and they want to expand westwards. . . . Knowing that SFU is such a big market — 30,000 plus students — in a competitive marketplace these days, they want to excel, and that’s why they came up with a very competitive price that no other provider could beat. From their perspective it’s probably an investment, from our perspective we’re getting the best deal, so it works out for everytone.”
This deal was brokered with the help of studentcare.net/works, a company made up of former student politicians that liaises between the student society and the insurance company. Khan said that they’re an important component of the society.
“It’s really essential that student care or a middle party has one representative from each institution, for example SFU, that comes back to us and teaches us what previous boards have done and how we need to carry out our duties. They’re not just a middle person, they’re a guide as well.”
This week’s Peak Humour took a turn for the Serious. With serious results!
Dear Gary,
I’ve had a mess of trouble with my garden lately. I was only able to get my cucumbers planted last week and just yesterday some kind of cat or raccoon broke in my yard and tore down all my trellises. There go my long beans for the season. Most recently, I caught these nasty black globs (slugs!) crawling their way towards what’s left of my vegetable patch. What am I supposed to do now?
Sincerely,
Abby Berman from North Burnaby
Dear Abby,
Slugs, eh? Well I don’t really do any gardening per se, but I guess you could always just pick them out of your garden. With some rubber gloves and like a bucket, then you could pour them down a storm drain. I wouldn’t recommend cutting them up, they might be like worms and by cutting them up you could just be making more of them.
I remember seeing on TV that if you leave a Tupperware container with half a can of beer out, the slugs climb and drown themselves. I don’t know if it has to be the Tupperware brand, but you’re better safe than sorry. Ooh, and salt. I definitely know that they don’t like salt, it causes them to dissolve. So maybe try sprinkling some of that on your plants. All in all, you’re probably better off Googling it.
Hope that helps!
Gary
This week’s Peak Humour took a turn for the Serious. With serious results!
Burnaby Mountain Park introduces new drinking fountains.
In a crowded ribbon cutting ceremony last Saturday, the Burnaby Mountain Park Board inducted four new drinking fountains. The fountains have been under construction since mid-April, when they voted on what the park would spend its maintenance budget on.
The stainless steel water dispensers feature such innovations as an in-built refrigeration unit, a no-touch foot-operated button ,and a second dispensary nozzle ideal for refilling pet bowls and hand washing.
The newly installed fountains are stirring up a buzz amongst park visitors. Gurjeet Brar, a regular at the park, spoke with The Peak about new drinking fixtures. “These new fountains are great. I don’t know if the water is the same as the old ones, but it definitely tastes crisper. ”
Copy center to extend summer hours
Citing a marked increase in the demand for printing, copying and lamination, the SFU Copy Centre has announced that they will be extending their regular work hours for the remainder of the summer semester.
Copy attendant Rowena Dressler talked with The Peak about the necessity of the increased hours. “It seems like every week there’s some new event that needs new flyers, posters, and pamplets for printing and lamination. Not to mention the endless stream of students printing out notes for classes. It was just untenable to get all that work done in that amount of time. The new hours should fix that.“
The copy centre will be open from 10:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. extended from their normal 10:00 A.M. to 3:30P.M. hours. The copy centre will still be closed Fridays.
This week Peak Humour took a turn for the Serious. With serious results!
President attends Question and Answer session for Engage SFU program.
Daniela Elza
Daniela Elza is a local poet with a prolific CV and writing accolades from magazines, anthologies, peer-reviewed journals, literary contests and prizes. Elza received her doctorate from SFU in the philosophy of education and her thesis was nominated for the 2011 distinguished dissertation award from the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies. She has also been awarded the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation medal this June.
Elza’s poetry has appeared in well-known anthologies such as Rocksalt, Verse Map of Vancouver, 4poets, and the Enpipeline Anthology. She has more than 150 poems published in more than 100 different publications. Her own poetry collection, the weight of dew, was published in March.
She is also the Vancouver/Lower Mainland Regional Representative for Federation of B.C. Writers and Vancouver editor for the Pacific Poetry Project, a forthcoming anthology from Ooligan Press, based in the U.S.
On June 28, Daphne Marlatt received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, presented annually for outstanding literary career in British Columbia. SFU professors Stephen Collis, Wayde Compton, and Jerry Zaslove were in attendance for the 19th annual presentation at the Vancouver Public Library, and also spoke in celebration of the centenary of George Woodcock’s birth. In addition to the $5,000 prize, Marlatt’s name will be added to the Writer’s Walk on the north plaza of Library Square downtown.
Marlatt was the SFU writer-in-residence when the Department of English revived the program in 2004 with help from professor and author Roy Miki. Much of Marlatt’s writing focuses on memory, immigration, social and cultural boundaries, and feminism. The hard-to-find Opening Doors in Vancouver’s East End: Strathcona, published in 1979 and edited by Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter, was re-released last year along with nine other classic Vancouver titles as part of the city’s 125th anniversary.
Marlatt’s prolific career spans writing fiction, non-fiction and poetry, teaching, edititng literary magazines, and writer residencies across Canada. She has authored more than 20 books, was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2006, and received the 2009 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for The Given.
This week’s Peak Humour took a turn for the Serious. With serious results!
