By Kyle Lees at Ski Ninjas
SFU wrestling earns five medals in Oregon
It’s no secret that SFU’s wrestling team builds success. It starts with head coach Mike Jones, who was recently inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame. And then, to name but two, come Daniel Igali and Carol Hyunh — a pair of SFU grads, and Olympic gold medalists. And now in the meantime, a new pair of SFU students has gold medals to their name.
Not Olympic medals mind you, but gold medals for Clete Hanson and Skylor Davis at the Clackamas Open in Oregon are steps in that very direction.
Hanson won four bouts to earn his medal. Those fights included a semi-final victory over Oregon State’s John Tuck, and he followed it up by besting the NAIA’s top-ranked wrestler Derek Rottenburg, out of Southern Oregon. For all his efforts in the 184-pound division of the tournament, he was named the competition’s outstanding wrestler — a rather nice addition to his gold medal.
Back down the weight class line, Davis won three matches to earn his gold in the 125-pound category. All three decisions were by pinfall, including the final, where Davis had Pacific University’s Ian Hocker pinned before the first period had ended.
As nice as the two golds were for SFU, the Clan also walked away with two silver medals and a bronze. Alex Stemer, competing in the 149-pound division, fell 10–5 in the final to Oregon State’s Nick Schlagger to earn his silver. However, it was Gurjot Kooner’s silver medal that provided the most intrigue.
After Kooner had topped Oregon State’s Jordan Schwartzlander — who had beaten him when the two squared off in November — to earn his way into the 285-pound division final.
Now, it’s not every day you find an inter-school final between two athletes who aren’t on the same team, but that’s exactly what this final was. Kooner fell to Sunny Dhinsa, another SFU student who was wrestling unaffiliated with the Clan.
Rounding out SFU’s medal haul was Burnaby native Max Arcand, who took home the bronze in the 165-pound category. Oregon State’s Seth Thomas beat Arcand in the semis, putting Arcand in a bronze-medal match against teammate Brock Lamb, guaranteeing one more medal for the Clan.
With his bronze, the Clan finished with five total medals, an impressive feat for any team of any sport — Olympic or otherwise.
Don’t be a part of partisanism
By Gustavo Destro
The term ‘partisan politics’ has been a staple of the public lexicon for several decades now; it refers to people who would rather have the government screech to a halt than budge from the beliefs they championed. For a long time such men and women were few and far between. They were the radicals, the fringe of every party, ultimately drowned out by moderates. Regular people did not have a favourable view of such a candidate and they would hardly reach high offices. Not so in the 21st century.
Nowadays we live with constant reminders of how fractionalized the democratic system is. From a Republican-controlled American Congress that will only pass a bill that won’t have any benefit for Democrats, to constant attacks in Canada against the Harper government, to an increasingly disruptive discourse in places such as France and the U.K. over the most minute of political issues.
The worst part of it all is that the very people to blame for all of this are not only the politicians that sling mud across the aisle at each other, but also the people who elect them. Because sometime in the last 20 years, the general electorate took a turn to the bizarre, when we started feeding off of grandiose statements and declarations of faith to the core of the party, sanity be damned; when we started demanding our elected officials to do what is best for ‘me’ and not the collective; when we decided that we would no longer listen to the ‘other side’ because they were always wrong and could not be dealt with. Politics has put one side against the other as if the ‘enemy’ worked for the devil himself, it has turned into something akin to a 17th century religious war, just short of grabbing an axe and a shield.
More bizzare is the fact that this has all come with the explosion of news media and social interaction, which a sane person would assume would make for a better political discourse, since all sides would have the ability to see how each other thought and find a common ground that would benefit all to the greatest extent possible. Not so.
Now I can sit in my living room and watch Fox News, Sun News, and read the National Post and will firmly believe that Obama is a socialist, Jim Flaherty is the coolest dude alive, and the Liberal Party is dead, and I would believe I’m right because three publications agreed. Or maybe I could watch the CBC, MSNBC, and read the Globe and Mail and will just as likely be convinced that Harper is an arts-hating devil-man, the oil sands are actually ‘tar’ sands, and we should raise taxes. Again, who would tell me I’m wrong?
People always want to be right, and when they have the information in the palm of their hands confirming that they are, everything that goes against it must be wrong. But it’s about time everyone swallowed their egos and dropped the bickering, or else we won’t go much further. It’s time to understand that both the Tea Party and the Occupy movements have legitimate grievances, that both raising and lowering taxes could help the economy, and that the oil sands could be a good thing but that there are also risks that should be taken care of. Let’s find some common ground, or soon enough we’ll all be going for those axes.
Pro-life group got all the free speech it deserved
By Brendan Prost
Mary-Claire Turner’s Opinions piece two weeks ago is a pertinent reminder that the conservatives who screech loudly about free speech usually have the least to say. Any fair-minded person agrees that the morality of abortion is, at the very least, clouded. There is absolutely room in the academic community to have a discussion about these issues, although the sociological necessity of the procedure’s legal accessibility should not be in dispute. But the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) and other anti-choice groups have no interest in free speech or reasoned debate.
Apparently without a trace of irony, Turner in her article chastises the university administration for encouraging students to “silence one’s opponents rather than prove them wrong with logical arguments.” Comments like these betray the ultimate hypocrisy of Turner and others like her. There is no persuasive rhetoric in GAP’s message. Their campaign is simply a tirade of emotionally manipulative and viscerally impactful symbols, designed specifically to shock and appall. They seek to appeal solely to knee-jerk human sentiments, and offer nothing of intellectual substance. There is no intended logic. There is no argument. The cheap and demeaning connotations of the images are obvious.
According to GAP, if you are in favour of a woman’s right to choose, then you are complicit in a gory massacre. If the organization had any legitimate interest in proving others wrong with “logical arguments”, or would like to risk being proven wrong themselves, then they would initiate public discussion forums or something of the sort. But they do not. Their sole focus on campuses across the country has been to demonize pro-choice advocates and psychologically traumatize women who have been, or may potentially be in, the unfortunate position of having to seek an abortion.
The nonsense about the university’s supposed opposition to debate aside, Turner slips further into delusion to suggest that Simon Fraser University is obligated to provide an unmitigated platform to her organization. On display here is the popular conservative free-speech mania and comical martyrdom. In a free society, you absolutely have every right to say whatever you want, however repugnant. However, the public and its institutional arbiters of cultural meaning and reasoned discourse, universities chief among them, have the freedom to marginalize and exclude you at their discretion. There is no law, and there certainly is no right that says you are owed a public platform of amplification and relevance. After all this is what the university, and institutions like it, offer to those who deserve it. No one owes you an expressive outlet, and no one owes it to you to listen.
The academic community, as a bastion of a healthy public sphere, moderates all kinds of important topical discussions. And just as the university community does not welcome Holocaust-deniers or 9/11 truthers, it may see fit to not accommodate GAP. Given the group’s obvious disdain for the values of academia, I think they should be grateful they were given any kind of forum at all
As I mentioned, the morality of abortion is a complex issue. Turner rightly points out that medical science affirms that a fetus is a living organism. And society should be very interested in listening to those who seek to preserve life. But we would be remiss to think that the purpose of GAP and their travelling carnival of mindless brutality are interested in protecting life. There are plenty of uncontroversial ways that human life can be preserved, in which there is no conflict with the rights of other human beings. Starvation, accessibility to clean water, and poverty are all social issues that could easily be addressed by the relatively privileged members of anti-choice groups.
Instead of campaigning for UNICEF or other useful organizations that demonstrably save lives, they waste their time and resources on circulating meaningless and disgusting images. If anyone involved with GAP were truly concerned with saving lives, they would be just as loudly screaming for increased foreign aid to the people dying of hunger in East Africa. We cannot take seriously an organization whose priorities are so vulgar and confused.
It is clear that GAP’s interest is not in life, but control. Control over a woman’s body, control over social policy, and control over public debate. I urge the SFU community, other universities, and the public at large, to recognize the Genocide Awareness Project for what it is: a hypocritical group of control freaks, with a disdain for intellectual conversation, and a tertiary interest in preserving life.
Gondola delay ignores danger, inefficiency
I think humanity took a major downturn when we started paying for things before delivery. At least when the producer of goods has to prove their product is real and worth paying for I have the option to back out. Once they have my money, what motivation is there to make me satisfied?
Such as it is with TransLink, it seems. With revenue guaranteed for years with the last U-Pass referendum, the improvements that begin and end with the abortive gondola project will likely be trotted out at renewal time every few years, only to be rescinded as a non-priority when we have no choice but to cough up the dollars. Such as it is with the latest delay in the gondola project, and the last hope of some lasting new transit infrastructure on campus for what I’m sure will be at least a decade.
We’re as tied to TransLink now as a junkie is to their dealer. As more and more of this campus is sold off to build condos that few students can afford, parking spaces climb in price and scarcity. With little other option to physically put us on the hill, SFU is at the mercy of TransLink, a company continually proving themselves indifferent to the poor service offered to a captive customer base.
The complaints are well weathered at this point. A person standing at the secondary bus loop during peak times can expect a few 145 route busses to pass them by until they are so inclined to head up to the primary Cornerstone loop. Entitled much? Not when those peak times have bowed to the increasing population of the SFU student body, peak hours now extending from around 3:00 p.m. to past 6:00 p.m. A great number of these commuters to Production Station are simply taking the train one stop to Lougheed Station, a problem easily remedied by study and reallocation of bus resources. If there is a more overburdened route outside of the 99 B-Line I’d be surprised.
As I’ve written before, the 145 line is twinned with the 135 line, resulting in a backlog the most cursory of audits would reveal. While busses start stacking up around 8:30 a.m. at Production Station, the true test occurs a couple of hours later when everybody has class to attend. By that time, traffic has started accumulating on East Hastings, resulting in 20-minute delays on both lines. Now you and 300 of your nearest and dearest get to hang out in a well-intentioned wind tunnel bus stop at Production for 30 minutes to make a 10-minute trip.
Long bus waits are common, but as my junior high gym teacher always said, we’re looking for improvement, not perfection. Five years of depending on bus service to Burnaby campus and the only evident change is for the worse. I’m sure frequenters of the 143 to Coquitlam would agree as TransLink just abandons them on the weekend.
There is a major issue of safety, as well. Packed like sardines in these busses, the drivers manically attend their schedules and fly down a parkway we all just assume will take around one life per year. One patch of ice or driver drifting into oncoming traffic is all it will take. When will the overstressed transit solutions and lack of road improvements claim a bus full of kids? Will their flowered memorials be enough to convince TransLink and the university that the current solution is as unsafe as it is ineffective?
Right now, students stand at an impasse with a transit provider stretched to its limits deprioritizing them now that we’re fully dependent, and a university bound and determined to sell off all of its parking space to developers while packing classes to their limit. Multiple administrations have ignored the fact that the logistics of moving people on and off this mountain are at the heart of SFU’s problems. They’re running the risk of making a school on a mountain exactly as daunting as it sounds.
Kill retail rudeness with smiles
By Michelle Seo
In the retail industry, employers constantly emphasize the importance of customer service. No, scratch that: they want ‘above-and-beyond’ customer service. With so many competitors selling similar goods and services, companies now spend considerable money and effort to train their employees to not only sell, but to make the customer experience extraordinary.
So what does ‘extraordinary’ customer service entail? Well, from my experience, a lot of smiling. Yes, smiling till my cheeks literally ache. When I look over at my coworkers, they have that same smile plastered on their faces — their mouths wide open and teeth showing. As we walk by each other, our eyes meet with a mutual understanding (our facial expressions do not change). Exceptional customer service also means introducing myself and asking, “How may I help you?” or, “How was your day?” When the customer leaves, I close our conversation by acknowledging my appreciation for them choosing our company, and I wish them a wonderful day and to take care until we meet again. Then the next customer walks up — here we go again.
Every so often, I get customers who aren’t afraid to show rude, negative attitudes. They’re having a bad day. While they are waiting in line, I look over my current customer’s shoulder and, evidently, they are scowling at every person and thing surrounding them. Then, there are those who simply want minimal interaction with you, refusing to even make eye contact. Or, the ones who toss their payment cards at you. Some customers become so upset during the conversation that they look at your name tag, say your name aloud, and demand to speak to the manager immediately, while vigorously shaking their index finger in the air.
I reckon that most of us have been in similar situations. Many students work part-time jobs that require servicing, whether it is waiting tables or working at a retail store. I personally work for a financial institution and have had my fair share of difficult customers. And lo’ and behold, I not only learned about managing and controlling conflicts, I acquired a better understanding towards people and human nature. The first week into my current job, a customer yelled at me and made me feel so incompetent, I considered quitting.
Why would someone, a complete stranger, who I met for the first time, openly express her temper at me when I’m only trying to help them? Perhaps, being strangers, she had less interest in my feelings because she was consumed in her own. Or, maybe, there was an unpleasant event in her life, such as a death in the family or loss of a job. There could be a million explanations for her dreadful mood that day, but the bottom line is, I decided to not let it get the better of me. As a matter of fact, I’m glad it happened.
Ten months down the road, I came up with my own golden rules for ‘above-and-beyond’ customer service. Behind everything they taught me, I decided that having a genuinely positive attitude produces the best service. When I smile, I don’t smile because I have to; my day just seems brighter when I’m smiling and I love people smiling back at me.
On a side note, I think customers can tell you’re faking a smile — you’re facial muscles look awkward. When customers express frustration or dissatisfaction, I approach them with empathy and wish for their day to get better. Around 90 per cent of the time, the customer reveals a slight smile before walking away.
Looking back, I admit there were occasions when I was that rude customer having a bad day. Now being on the other side I am more aware of my attitude towards others in the service industry. Golden rule number one — treat others as you would like to be treated. You can’t argue with that.
Being better: Where did our empathy go?
By Denise Wong
In late October, the story of Yue Yue went viral. The surveillance footage from Foshan, China was posted online and depicted two cars that drove over Yue Yue’s tiny body in the marketplace where her parents worked; neither driver did so much as stop to see what they had run over. Eighteen civilians walked right past Yue Yue, who was bleeding to death on the ground, without even a hint of concern on their faces. They did not stop to stare; they did not stand in shock and contemplation for even a second. Eighteen people merely shot a glance in her direction and continued to walk away — one of which was a motorcyclist who rode around her, as if a baby lying on the ground crumpled in blood was no more than a rock to avoid. Yue Yue was left unattended on the ground for seven minutes before a garbage lady moved her off to the side and called for help. She received intensive medical care at the hospital but died seven days later due to brain failure.
Just imagine: what if that was your child? Would you be able to walk away as if it was nothing? If you can’t even imagine walking away from your own dying child, then you probably won’t be able to walk away from any dying child — right? Here’s the problem: those 18 citizens who walked by Yue Yue with no reaction whatsoever, would undoubtedly have an entirely different reaction if that was their child bleeding on the ground. Yet because this child was not their child, it was somehow treated as if it were not a child at all. This kind of reaction is known as moral disengagement, a severe disconnection leading to an inability to empathize with another. Jeremy Carpendale, a professor from SFU’s psychology department, recalls an example in World War II where a man declared his love for children, and yet he was responsible for the deaths of half a million Jewish children because he somehow failed to recognize Jewish children as children. Empathy occurs when people are able to relate and put themselves in another’s position despite all possible racial, ethnic, cultural, and other differences. Therefore empathy is absent when one allows differences to distance them from another. In extreme cases, it causes people to behave like Nazis in World War II or the extremely desensitized 18 people in Yue Yue’s case, but it happens in small everyday events as well.
Take, for example, illegally downloading music over the Internet versus walking into a store and stealing something. Many more people are guilty of the former offense because when you actually have to walk in and physically take something without paying for it, it somehow feels a lot more like you’re breaking the law. Maybe it’s the physical act, or maybe it’s the possibility of being seen by the store clerk or other shoppers, but regardless, there seems to be a disconnect. Somehow, stealing music on the Internet doesn’t register in our minds as ‘stealing’ the way that physically taking something from a store would.
So how do people acquire morality and the ability to empathize? Most would answer that it starts in childhood, where parents play a fundamental role in teaching their kids right from wrong. According to Carpendale, “The usual approach is, a kind of person-on-the-street idea: how do kids become moral? Their parents teach them. And, well, of course there are exceptions to that. We all know kids don’t always obey what their parents tell them. In fact, sometimes that’s a good thing.” So the idea of learned morality is not a consistent solution because sometimes kids grow up and learn to think for themselves, sometimes they make better decisions learning from their parents, and sometimes they don’t.
Another possible answer is that people are just naturally moral, an approach that focuses on moral exemplars: saint-like people who are exceptionally moral. Studies found that it wasn’t that these people engaged in high-staged reasoning all the time, but that it was part of their natural thought process. There was nothing else they could have done because doing something else would violate the person they are. Many people in China say they hesitate to help injured people for fear of being blamed for causing the harm. These fears aren’t unfounded: several high-profiled cases have ended where good samaritans were ordered to pay hefty fines to the individual they helped. While this may have been a contributing factor to the apathy shown by the 18 citizens that ignored Yue Yue, I am convinced it is no more than an after-the-fact poor attempt at justifying immorality. Fear of apprehension doesn’t stop you from gasping at a bloody baby. In fact, when the garbage lady (who was the 19th person who saw Yue Yue, and the only one who called for help) was interviewed, she responded, “I didn’t think of anything at the time, I just wanted to save the girl.” In urgent situations, there’s no time for higher staged reasoning and logical planning — most people follow their gut instinct, a fight or flight response.
But what makes a person fight and what makes them flight? Are some people just naturally good and others naturally apathetic? If that’s true then do we call it a day and say, “Well! I guess it’s just who that person is!” and let them be? Do we just put all the immoral people on an island and leave them there to do whatever damage they might do because there’s just no hope for them? That doesn’t seem right either. Wanda Cassidy, a professor from SFU’s education program says, “Aristotle, 2,000 years ago was talking more about virtues, but he’s saying ‘How do you become courageous? How do you become loving and all these things?’ You become by practicing those habits of good behaviour, those habits of courage, those habits of love, those habits of whatever we’re trying to cultivate.” According to this belief, morality is something that has to be practiced. Perhaps we must constantly remind ourselves of how to behave and how to treat others properly so morality becomes second nature.
Social interactions also play a big role in moral development, a kind of trial-and-error method of learning. Eventually we learn through repeated social interactions with peers and people in general, that if we react morally, then good things will happen. For example, kids like to play together and as a result they must figure out a way to get along. “If you’re going to have friends, you have to learn to treat them properly, otherwise you’re not going to have any friends — which isn’t fun,” Carpendale explained. “So they work out a way of getting along with each other, which is based on moral principles even through they would have no clue about it if you asked them at that point. Some years later they could reflect on it and maybe talk about it, but first, what happens is they just work it out on a practical level, so there’s practical morality there before you get into what Kholberg was interested in, this kind of moral reasoning.”
But back to my original question: what makes some people compassionate and others dispassionate? What makes some people fight and others flight? Well, it certainly isn’t as simple as childhood upbringing, and it’s probably wise to discard the notion that there is some simple answer or formula to follow when it comes to empathy. Maybe it begins with parental role models; maybe its some gratifying experience where a child shares with another and suddenly realizes how good it feels; maybe it’s a natural reaction that stems from who you are as a person; or maybe morality is something that we must practice to perfect.
As for me, these questions of morality and immorality, empathy and apathy, serve more as a wake up call than anything else. Maybe that’s what angers us, when people don’t do the right thing because, to some degree, we think morality is supposed to come naturally for everyone. Just like the 18 passersby in Yue Yue’s case, it angers us because the right thing to do seems so obvious to us, and we think that helping her should have been a natural reaction. But maybe we need to realize that morality isn’t innate, and that making right decisions don’t just come naturally. Maybe it’s better to question ourselves in the face of such monstrosity, than to condemn the action or inaction of others, because it begs the question: are we really that much better?
