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News Beat: May 21st

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Facebook terrorist cell hi-jacks profile page

At approximately 1300 hours this afternoon, the sovereign state of one Annie Helgusson’s profile page was viciously and ruthlessly attacked by a rogue cell of Facebook terrorists.

The attack occurred on the outskirts of the Grandview Mall, in the Apple Store district. The extremists were able to access the page after Helgusson failed to log out of a display computer after posting a status update.

Mark Chen, an Apple Store employee and eyewitness, retells the horrifying events.

“They rolled in like sharks smelling blood on the water. It was a slaughter. Fake status updates. They made her like every Nickelback fan page. All 27 of them. They even changed her profile picture. Her profile picture for god’s sakes.”

These events echo other senseless acts of e-violence from the past, including the MySpace Massacre and the #PanAm140.

– Allie Albertson

 

Sunglasses co-opted as chest decoration

Move over, backwards baseball caps and triple-popped polos, there’s a new douchebag accessory that’s sweeping the nation’s tanning salons and gyms at 10:30 in the morning.

Straight from the runways of Jersey beaches, the “sunglasses hanging between your enormous pecs” is the must have look this season since being debuted by prominent douchebag fashion designer Edward Hardy.

Chas Powers, a prominent fashion brah-gger posts about the new look. “Look dog, this shit is tight. These shades right here? Ray-Bans. You gotta spend money to make money, ye-yah. But you put these on your face, you’ll never see them. But right here? Boom. Hanging from the front of this Hardy, like the bitches gonna be hanging off me.”

This craze has sent shockwaves through the douchebag fashion community, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the invention of the double V-neck.

– Bill Bellingham

 

New study shows that dolphin ‘most evil animals’

A new study published by Vatican scientists shocked the world last week, as it was discovered the dolphin is the most evil animal.

Rosa Bianchi, director of the study told The Peak, “We were able to determine how evil an animal was by placing it in a small cage with a human baby. Babies are notorious for their ability to sense the intrinsic good or evil of an animal. We went through a lot of babies.”

“The babies showed the most adverse reaction to the dolphin, more than rats, black widows, king cobras or even mosquitoes. Further study confirms this, showing that dolphins are known to engage in rape and murder for pleasure. No, seriously, go look it up, this part isn’t a joke.

Humans were a notable exclusion from the experiment, “for the same reason you don’t bring Wayne Gretzky to your neighbourhood street hockey.”

– Carl Carlweather

 
By Gary Lim

SFSS board shorts

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EIC
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By David Dyck

Negotiations approved for new food vendors
The Atrium cafeteria will be seeing new food vendors coming in as renovations on the space continue. Two of the vendors that the board has approved for the renovated area are Opa!, a Greek food vendor, and Chartwells, for a Denny’s Fresh Express. “We think that the brand recognition and the amount of foot traffic to the food court will be pretty substantial, so we think there’s a great advantage there,” said treasurer Kevin Zhang about the Denny’s Fresh Express. There will be one more vendor coming in which is yet to be determined.

Health Sciences representative takes leave of absence for the summer
Newly elected faculty representative Tracy Luong has requested a leave of absence for the summer semester. In a letter addressed to the board, she explained that she was offered an extension on her co-op work term during the campaign period. “I am committed to doing my part and contributing to the operations of the board as much as possible,” stated the letter. According to policy, board members are allowed only two months unpaid leave of absence. The board agreed to allow Luong standing regrets to excuse her from meetings in May and August, and a leave of absence for June and July.

The Purity Myth deconstructs the virgin mystique

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EIC
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By Alex Kress (CUP)

Abstinence-only sex ed not only expose teenagers to risky behaviour, but also perpetuates harmful ideas about virginity and sexuality

FREDERICTON (CUP) — Women, imagine a ripe cherry being violently smashed to bits with a mallet. Some abstinence-only educators want young women to liken the violent image to the breaking of the hymen during sex — a vaginal membrane often erroneously believed to signify virginity — in a scene from the documentary The Purity Myth.

So, imagine a mallet to your hymen. Did you wince?

That’s exactly the reaction these educators want from young women; the hope is if women thought about having sex before, they’ll think twice about it after that gory display.

However, that’s not exactly accurate. The documentary, which is based on Jessica Valenti’s book that exposes the failures of abstinence-only education and aims to dispel the argument that a woman’s value is based on her virginity, claims that abstinence-only education actually provokes the opposite effect.

It doesn’t work. And worse, the film says 80 per cent of abstinence-only education contains false information. As a result, teens are engaging in high-risk sexual behaviour. They’re not armed with the knowledge that they can contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs) from unprotected oral and anal sex, but what they are told is that vaginal intercourse before marriage is off limits.

You can see the confusion here.

The Purity Myth screening at the University of New Brunswick, funded by the University Women’s Centre and the UNBSU women’s liaison, exposes the fanaticism of “a moral panic over sexuality” in the United States and the rhetoric that’s spewed in schools at the cost of taxpayers — $1.3 billion since 1996 — despite 82 per cent of Americans supporting proper sexual education programs.

And then, there are the purity balls. These archaic, downright creepy ceremonies involve young girls — sometimes as young as six or seven years old — and their fathers. The girls get dolled up in ball gowns with fancy up-dos and makeup and pledge their virginity to their fathers until marriage; their fathers dress in tuxedos and pledge to protect their daughters’s virginities until they’re married.

It’s unsettling, to say the least. These girls are being identified as sex objects as young as six; they don’t even know what sex is. “Women are still led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs — literally,” said Jessica Valenti, producer of the film. “There’s this antiquated notion that fathers own their daughters’ sexuality.”

The segment on pop star Jessica Simpson was particularly disturbing. Evidently, she pledged her virginity to her father in a purity ball. Then she married Nick Lachey and had free reign to ravish him, much to her dad’s delight.

“We’re celebrating the fact that she can do it ‘till she’s blue in the face,” said Joe Simpson, smiling, after his daughter’s marriage.

Shudder. Weird.

The film touches on other subjects surrounding virginity like “legislating chastity,” via the Republican effort to defund abortion and the Plan B emergency contraceptive, and vaginal rejuvenation surgery, which has become the fastest growing form of plastic surgery in the U.S.

While it would’ve been interesting to see the documentary extended to include commentary from young adults who have received abstinence-only education, the film was effective in relaying its overall message: women must be regarded as having more depth to them than what’s between their legs. They have brains, compassion and power.

The discussion following the film raised some shocking anecdotal information about sex education in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, or rather the disappointing lack thereof. One woman said she recalled that the guidance counselor who was in charge of teaching sex education at her school chose not to because he felt it conflicted with his religion. Megan Glenwright, women’s liaison for the UNBSU, said she recalled having very minimal sex education and not being able to keep track of the pregnant girls at her high school.

It’s clear that a dialogue needs to begin in New Brunswick about the importance of sex education, especially with this province’s recent outbreak of syphilis, which continues to worsen. Each woman has a right to remain a virgin, of course, but it shouldn’t be at the risk of ignorance about sex.

Fusion Kitchen employs immigrant women as teachers

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EIC
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By Esther Tung

Cooking class series created by SFU students seeks to help women develop job skills and share their recipes

Back home in Pakistan, Shahnaz Asfar had been running a kindergarten for students who came from low-income families for over five years.

Six months ago, she left the school in the hands of one of her trusted teachers, packed up her belongings, and moved to Vancouver to be closer to her two sons. Asfar had taught in Pakistan for over two decades, but her prior experience and certification were not recognized in Canada. Towards the end of her Early Childhood Education and Montessori courses, a friend who worked for Immigrant Services mentioned Fusion Kitchen to her, a new social start-up that was looking to employ immigrant women to teach cooking classes on their own culture’s cuisines.

“Fusion Kitchen is a platform for these women to develop transferable skills, self-confidence, and have an opportunity to gain Canadian work experience,” says Chantelle Buffie, co-founder of the venture.

The first class, which was held on May 4, was sold out with an attendance of about 18 people. Participants split up into smaller groups and learned the recipes under Asfar’s direction. “People really enjoyed learning how to cook from an actual person from the actual culture, rather than some professional chef,” says Buffie.

“I love cooking very much, and I wanted to share my recipes,” says Asfar, who is now 60 years old, adding that she enjoyed teaching kindergarteners as much as adult students in the class.

Buffie met Sonam Swarup through Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) SFU, a business club on campus with an entrepreneurial spirit. Both held executive positions on SIFE for the past year, but Fusion Kitchen is a separate project, brainstormed during a social entrepreneurship class. Picking the demographic to help was the difficult part. At first, they considered targeting immigrant women who had come from a past of domestic abuse, but then broadened their scope to include all immigrant women because of complications surrounding their women’s situations. Both Buffie and Swarup are first-generation Canadians, so immigrant women seemed like the natural choice.

The two women received $1,000 in start-up funds from SFU Beedie as part of a competition in the class, and also got a grant from Ashoka Youth Venture. Neither Buffie nor Swarup keep any money made from the class fees, which were $65 per person for Asfar’s class. Both students juggle this on top of work and their other extra-curricular activities.

Once the cooking classes finds steady legs, they would look into having external individuals to come in and teach certain skills to the women, such as the logistics of running a class, says Buffie. As one of their first teachers, Asfar will continue to act as a peer mentor to other women who will come to teach some of the classes.

“Come hungry, come curious”, advises Buffie on Fusion Kitchen classes in a blog post. Keep up-to-date on Fusion Kitchen’s next cooking class at http://thefusionkitchen.com.

Women’s Centre still needed to protect women’s rights

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EIC
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By Marion Roberts

In response to the article on the nature of both women’s and men’s centres published in last weeks edition of The Peak, I appreciate the endeavor to appropriate points and discussion around multiple issues. However, some arguments could be seen as a bit out of context. For example, it was stated that women are more likely to make more money than men due to, as it was suggested, more females receiving undergraduate education than males. However, despite legal rights within the work force, women are still projected to make 70 per cent of a male’s wage.

The statement that on-campus women are “the furthest thing from marginalized” is also fallacious, as it measures whether a demographic receives prejudice by how much of the population it occupies. The point made is, “because there are more female undergraduate students, females must surely be free of marginalization.” This is hardly well founded evidence, as although women occupy a greater percentage of our population in general than males in Canada, if you simply look into an introductory sociology textbook here at SFU, women will still be classified socially as a marginalized group. That is because of discrimination that still occurs today, as measured by the Global Gender Gap Report in 2011. This report measured economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment disparities between genders. Canada ranks number 18 behind the U.S. and many European countries.

Academic journals, supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, have found that women on campuses are at greater risk of sexual assault than women in the general public. Within other reports is the reiteration of the need for education of the public on campuses about issues surrounding women and their vulnerabilities in our society as a gender and being a marginalized demographic.

The Women’s Centre is not about the “rejection of men”—there is a co-ed space, which exists as a place for students to sit down, and has a great collection of books about oppression issues. Half of the space is allocated as women-only because there are no other spaces on campus where a female can go and avoid being surrounded by the demographic they are most likely to be victimized by: males. This is not to blame or send hate towards males, but pragmatically women on campus may need that space where they can lock the door for safety reasons while studying.

Feminism is not solely about women. It is a discussion of sex and gender wherein issues of masculinities and femininities are brought up for males amongst males, males amongst females and vice versa.

Movie review: The Deep Blue Sea

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EIC
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By Will Ross

This 1952 stageplay crosses over to the reel for a second time, but with little interpretation on the filmmaker’s end

As do many plays on their way to the screen, The Deep Blue Sea would have worked better with a shake-up. At a story level, the film owes a debt to its playwright, perhaps to a fault. Even Terence Davies’s world-class direction doesn’t make filmic the talky, gut-spilling nakedness that surely hits harder coming live from flesh and blood on a stage.

Fortunately, with that directorial world-classery behind it, The Deep Blue Sea’s emotional nudity survives diminished, not crippled, but it’s only when Davies takes the material to places only cinema can go that it very nearly becomes a pretty important film.

The plot — insofar as it matters, for this is a story of disclosure, not turning points — concerns a woman in post-war London who cuckolds her loyal and affectionate but passionless husband, and leaves him and his wealth for a veteran pilot with whom she has fallen in desperate love. But no two parties want the same thing, and all three wrestle with the choice between solitary boredom and self-destructive devotion.

Perhaps Davies could have done with a little less devotion to playwright Terence Rattigan’s words, as The Deep Blue Sea feels like a film built around its source instead of into it. Davies’s eye for period visuals is unsurpassed, but too often his flowing, elliptical style feels locked into a lengthy dialogue exchange. When that style does emerge via a scene’s hazy chronology, or an aesthetically imposing shot, the Terence Davies that made Distant Voices, Still Lives comes into clear view, and the film is better for it.

This is not to say that the film is a brilliance-punctuated bore, as the cast makes the talking more than worth it. Rachel Weisz’s work as Hester is absorbingly frank and needy, and Tom Hiddleston projects self-righteousness with verve, and some unfortunate exaggeration. Best of all, Simon Russell Beale takes his cuckold’s noble weaknesses from disrepair to resolve with a grace that gives in his third-place screen time the first-place prize among the performances.

At the head of all this is an opening sequence that is confusing, and disorienting, and handily the best part of the film. The staging, cutting, and sound design of this sequence form a tour-de-force of craftsmanship; indeed, the first ten minutes are astounding enough to earn a price-of-admission-worthy moniker. It’s a bravura reminder of Davies’s true capabilities, but instead of settling for good melodrama, the rest of the film could have been an equally radical rethinking.

SFU provides four players for CFL draft

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EIC
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By Benedict Reiners

Eskimos, Stampeders, and Tiger-Cats all pick from SFU’s Clan

On Thursday, May 3, the Canadian Football League held its annual Canadian College Draft. This day was particularly important for four SFU students who were drafted by CFL teams, tying SFU with the University of Calgary as the university with the most contributions for the draft this year.

Historically this trend is hardly an anomaly, with SFU being the Canadian university to have the most players drafted by the CFL at 189. This includes Luca Congi of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Doug Brown, a defensive legend with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, who retired this offseason. In addition, SFU also holds the record for providing the most players to be chosen in the first round, at 31.

Although no SFU student was taken in the first round this year, where linemen such as first overall pick Ben Heenan dominated the selections, Justin Capicciotti was the first SFU athlete selected. The Edmonton Eskimos chose Capicciotti, a defensive lineman for the Clan, in the second round.

Last season Capicciotte tallied 30 solo tackles in nine games with the clan, along with 36 assisted, as well as 10 sacks, 16 tackles for a loss, and two forced fumbles. On special teams, he added a blocked kick.

In addition to Capicciotti, both offensive lineman, Bradley Erdos, and defensive back Adam Berger were both selected in the fourth round, 27th and 30th respectively. Erdos, slected by the Calgary Stampeders, played in all 10 games with the Clan. It is speculated that he will likely return to SFU next season to play in his senior year. The Calgary Stampeders also selected Berger, who played in nine games for SFU last season, while tallying 46 tackles and six for a loss, along with one sack. In addition to this, he led the team in interceptions with three, two of which were returned for touchdowns.

The final member of the Clan selected was running back Daronn “Bo” Palmer, who was taken by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the fifth round, 33rd overall. Palmer played in all 10 Clan games in 2011, with 1274 yards rushing, along with 8 touchdowns on the ground. In addition to this, he tallied 182 yards receiving.

Although no members of the Clan were selected in last year’s CFL draft, the results from this year make it clear that SFU is firmly on the radar of the scouts throughout Canada’s professional league.

SFU receives Fair Trade campus designation

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EIC
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By Kelly Thoreson

SFU becomes the second Canadian campus to receive official recognition from Fair Trade, after UBC

SFU’s decade-long struggle for formal commitment to providing Fair Trade products on campus has come to a close. On May 4, the university announced that it had been recognized as the second Fair Trade Campus in Canada, following UBC’s designation in May 2011.

Fair Trade is an internationally recognized organization that certifies products, such as coffee or chocolate, where producers receive fair compensation. The criteria required to become a Fair Trade campus includes serving only Fair Trade certified coffee at all vendors directly controlled by the university or student government; clearly marking all Fair Trade products at these locations; promoting Fair Trade; and maintaining a committee to enforce these standards.

The vendors who have agreed to adhere to these standards include all SFSS food and beverage operations — such as Higher Grounds, the Highland Pub, and the Ladle — as well as outsourced providers Chartwells, Triple O’s, and Renaissance Coffee. Tim Horton’s hasn’t agreed to commit to these requirements, but they have internal ethical purchasing policies of their own. Independent Cornerstone businesses aren’t required to adhere to these rules, but many of them offer Fair Trade products. Executive director of ancillary services Mark McLaughlin is motivated to continue with Fair Trade initiatives on campus, however. “We haven’t reached the finish line,” he said. “We’re just out of the starting gate, and just watch us. We’re really going to try and push hard on this.”

Outsourcing all of its food operations to third parties such as Chartwells, SFU faced challenges convincing vendors to switch to Fair Trade products. UBC, on the other hand, operates their own food programs. McLaughlin explained that SFU will help blaze a trail for universities across Canada in a way that UBC might not have, because the majority of institutions also outsource their food operations. Nezam Alavi, a former Engineers Without Borders member essential to reigniting the Fair Trade movement on campus, would like to see other universities follow the examples being set in BC. “With Vancouver being the first [major Canadian] Fair Trade city, and UBC being the first [Canadian] Fair Trade campus, SFU shows that the West Coast is really driven on these issues. I think it’s time for those on the east coast to show what they’ve got.”

The pivotal point for the student-led initiative for Fair Trade at SFU occurred in 2011 when President Andrew Petter held a “hallway chat” to discuss possible improvements to the university. The event was crashed by a group of student representatives from various campus groups dressed as superheroes demanding a commitment to Fair Trade products at SFU. Alavi argued that it was important for students to be leading these demands because they are the main consumers on campus. Jeff McCann, SFSS university relations officer and member of the Fair Trade Committee, agrees with the importance of student involvement and suggests that students follow the example set by the “Justice League” of superheroes. “Students should be empowered to make statements about things that they want changed about the campus community,” he said. “Vocalize that and get that in the hands of somebody who can make a difference.”

Search continues for WebCT replacement

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EIC
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By Graham Cook

Project team releases report to guide the process on to the next phase

Following a consultation process which took place over much of the previous academic year by the WebCT Replacement Project team, the results have now been released. The report, titled “Principles and Needs to Inform the Determination of a LMS [Learning Management System] at SFU”, outlines what the group found to be needed in a replacement for the current system. The replacement process was prompted by Blackboard’s decision to phase out the program at the end of 2012 and is occurring across North America.

The report stated that 21,000 students used WebCT during the Spring 2011 semester. Of these students, over 6,600 of them, a number higher than anticipated, participated in a student survey that ran throughout January 2012. Also, an “admittedly limited” group of 16 students, ranging from first years to graduate students, took part in face-to-face consultations. Most of these 16 were described as stating that “WebCT is more difficult and cumbersome to use than they would like,” as well as pointing out that the system does not operate well on mobile devices.

The report deals extensively with assessing what the university needs in a new LMS. Quoting feedback from the consultation process, it states that “one size does not fit all when it comes to learning management systems. So we need to be able to customize our systems.” It concludes by emphasizing that, among other points, the new system must advance “learner-to-content, learner-to-learner, and learner-to expert teaching and learning.”

Mark Bachmann, communications officer at the Teaching and Learning Centre, spoke with The Peak about the recent release. He described the document as “a compilation of the responses we got from the students as well as faculty and staff,” with the overarching goal of receiving commentary from everybody involved in the academic community at SFU. Bachmann also added that the number one priority mentioned during the consultation process was flexibility. He credited this to the movement that has occurred from desktops to more mobile devices, adding that it is impossible to predict what will be in place three or five years in the future. Therefore, his position is that the new system must be able to address these changes.

The director of academic community engagement for this project, Martin Laba, also commented on the report. He described his role as being “front and centre on consultation, interpretation, and ultimately implementation of the needs and aspirations of those in the academic community throughout SFU.” Laba outlined the importance of an in-depth and comprehensive consultation process in getting a sense of what is important in the future of educational technology at the university. He also added that the new Learning Management System must be driven by the priorities of teaching and learning with a strong focus on participation and engagement. He explained that it should be more of a Learning and Management System with new enhancements to expand the student experience.

In addition to the two cornerstones mentioned by Bachmann and Laba — flexibility, and teaching and learning — the document also outlines three more principles. These include integration capability, ease of use, and portability. Further suggestions were echoed by third-year history major Keerth Kumanan, who shared with The Peak that while he was not aware and did not participate in the survey, he feels that “a secure and reliable system that can allow students to submit assignments online” should be implemented.

Bachmann also pointed out that WebCT will not simply be shut down at the end of 2012, but will instead continue to work with all courses and content still accessible. As far as an approximate date for the change to take place, he mentioned that at some point in 2013 the administration will begin phasing courses over. He continued to explain that rather than a mandatory process, it will be ongoing, and will most likely begin with new courses and instructors that request for their courses to be migrated.

The project will be moving on to the next phase, “selection and implementation planning,” for a new LMS in June 2012.

Mandatory gym class for computer science students under fire at BCIT

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EIC
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By Kevin Willemse

Students circulating a petition to end the weekly physical education requirement

BURNABY, B.C. (CUP) — Computer Science Technology (CST) students at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) are speaking out against a physical education component of their program, a requirement not asked of students in any other program at the institute. The unusual practice has some students complaining of discrimination.

Students enrolled in the CST program have to spend 45 minutes per week in the gym as part of their course, with little supervision or guidance, other than being expected to break enough of a sweat to convince the instructor to sign an attendance and participation sheet.

“It’s ridiculous,” said BCIT Student Association of School of Computing and Academic Studies chair Marwan Marwan. “We’re adults, we should be given the option of how best to look after our health and spend our time [at BCIT]. We’re being lined up like schoolchildren with a piece of paper for our instructor to sign, so that we can be let out of [gym] class.”

CST students can be held back from course graduation if their sheets are not signed off on by the end of the semester. For this reason, attendance is high, though it has been reported that many students simply find a quiet spot to stay out of sight and catch up on schoolwork until handing their sheets in for signing.

“This sometimes forces students to lie to their instructors [about exercising] because they know they simply have more important things to do,” said Marwan.

Some students have said that their biggest concern is a feeling of discrimination caused by the mandatory nature of the course, which has led to a petition to abolish it from the CST program. Alex Lee, who acts as the BCIT Student Association’s School of Computing councillor, believes that enforcing the class as a CST prerequisite is simply unfair.

“We feel that it’s really important to bring fairness and equality across the board for all BCIT students, but currently that’s not happening because we are forced to have mandatory gym,” Lee told The Link. “It’s something that’s not forced upon anyone else.”

Marwan and Lee agreed that the practice of isolating CST students for physical education is based on stereotypes. They said that if it was in the best interests of students, those studying finance, business, or even the natural sciences could be similarly characterized as leading the sedentary lifestyle associated with information technology professionals.

“The idea actually came from [the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology] a few years back, where it was very well received,” says Brian Pidcock, the associate dean of CST.

According to Lee and Marwan, 90 per cent of petitioned students have signed against the class.

“The course will come under review at our upcoming executive meeting . . . and this would probably be considered a minor change,” Pidcock told The Link.

“CST students feel they should participate in physical activity on their own terms and in their own time, since that’s the respect and courtesy given to students in all other BCIT faculties,” said Lee.

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Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us: [email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024

Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us:
[email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024