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Burnaby campus security heightens after student reports assault

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News
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Police sketch of suspect, courtesy of Burnaby RCMP

By: Gurpreet Kambo, News Team Member

SFU’s Burnaby campus community is on high alert due to an incident on the evening of July 14. 

According to alerts issued by SFU News and by Burnaby RCMP, a 19-year-old woman was walking in the forested area on the northwest side of campus, near University Drive West and West Campus Road, when she noticed an unknown man following her. He approached, tried to engage her in conversation, then tried to grab her hand and pull her into the bushes. 

The student was able to escape and ran to the parking lot of the nearby Horizons Restaurant, where she sought help from others. She reported that the suspect followed and continued to try and engage with her, before leaving in a grey or black Acura vehicle.

Burnaby RCMP released a sketch of the alleged perpetrator, and described the suspect as a “South Asian male, approximately 19-23 years old, 5’9, brown eyes, and wearing a black turban, blue long sleeve shirt, grey sweat pants and black sandals.”

In light of the incident, signs were posted around campus and on nearby trails, alerting community members about the assault. According to a report by CTV News, SFU has also increased security presence around campus. 

Burnaby RCMP asked that anyone who might be able to identify the suspect or who may have additional information about the incident,  contact them at 604-646-9999 or Crimestoppers at either 1-800-222-TIPS or www.solvecrime.ca.

Resources for students 

In the event of an emergency situation on campus, SFU recommends calling 911, and/or the campus security emergency line at 778-782-4500. If the phone call is made from one of the direct-line security phones or blue emergency phones located around campus, security will be able to immediately know the caller’s location.

SFU also currently provides a 24/7 service called Safe Walk, where students can be accompanied by campus security to their destination anywhere on Burnaby campus, within a two-block radius of Vancouver campus, or to nearby bus stops on Surrey campus. To request a Safe Walk escort, call the Campus Security non-emergency number at 778-782-7991

Students who wish to access counselling and support services can call SFU’s Women’s Centre at 778-782-3870, SFU’s Health & Counselling Centre at 778-782-5781, or SFU’s Sexual Violence Support and Prevention Office at 778-782-7233. 

Panhandling fines in Salmon Arm make things worse for B.C. homeless population

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Opinions
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Vancouver has the potential to be a great city, but not while our homeless numbers are in the thousands. Photo: Jon Hernandez/CBC

By: Kelly Chia, Staff Writer

Step a few blocks outside of SFU’s Vancouver or Surrey campuses, and Metro Vancouver’s homeless crisis becomes painfully obvious. 

The uncertainty of living day to day without stable housing is stressful enough. Yet by-laws have been introduced to punish homeless people further, like the recent $50 fine in Salmon Arm (the latest region to enforce B.C.’s Safe Streets Act) for panhandling curbside, within 15 metres of a bank machine, in a car, or within a public plaza. 

Instead of squeezing money from those who might not even have it, we need to focus on finding permanent shelter and housing solutions for our city’s homeless population. The way Vancouver displaces its homeless population is a large stain on our collective conscience, and we need to demand more of our local and federal leaders to address this issue. 

Currently, no vacant housing units are renting for under $750 in Vancouver, suggesting a strong link between homelessness and the expensive housing market. While B.C. is investing in rent subsidies to offset the expensive rental rates, these programs are geared toward seniors and low-income families, and aren’t enough to permanently house the number of homeless people in the city. As of June 12, 2019, Vancouver had a homeless population of 2,223 people. 

We also need to acknowledge that Indigenous people are over-represented in the 2019 count: despite only accounting for 2% of the population in Vancouver, more than a third of people counted in the total number of homeless people identified as Indigenous. 

Kennedy Stewart, Vancouver’s mayor, praised the provincial government’s $66 million investment in creating temporary modular housing units, but urged the federal government to pitch in as well. Since October of last year, the federal government has contributed only $300,000 for low-income housing in Vancouver. But the homeless crisis is increasing so rapidly that just to keep up with the ever increasing number of homeless people, Vancouver would need 1,000 new units a year. 

What does it say about our city that year after year, Vancouver is less and less affordable for its residents to live in? That rather than ensuring safe accommodations for the people who cannot afford absurd housing rates, we allow them to slip through the cracks? It says that as a society, we have a baseline for who deserves to live comfortably, and who we are comfortable evicting and endangering. 

This is unacceptable. We must demand that federal action against our inhospitable housing market be a priority in the upcoming election. We must ask our federal leaders to pledge to secure more funding to permanently house B.C.’s homeless population so that we can finally proudly say that the West Coast is the best place to live for all people.

 

Campus Highlight: Fruit-Cycle

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Multimedia
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SFU students need to take earthquake preparedness seriously before an emergency situation

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Opinions
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The worst time to be thinking about building your emergency kit is during a high-magnitude quake. Illustration by: Momo Lin/The Peak

By: Jamie Hill, SFU Student

Recent tectonic activity has put emergency preparedness back on the minds of British Columbians — and that’s an important opportunity to revisit how prepared we are for earthquakes.

Two major earthquakes hit southern California on July 4 and 5, damaging buildings, cutting off power and communication, and forcing many residents to evacuate their homes. Around the same time, B.C. was also treated to shaky ground with three consecutive earthquakes near Bella Bella. Though these minor earthquakes on our coast were unconnected to those in California, they’re an important reminder for those of us who aren’t prepared for a major earthquake here in the Lower Mainland. Prepared or not, it’s time to remind ourselves that we live on unstable ground. 

Although B.C. is within the Ring of Fire, an area notorious for its earthquakes, many British Columbians aren’t fully prepared for the risks of a destructive quake. According to a 2017 survey conducted by the provincial government, only 13% of B.C. residents have a “complete” emergency plan. Of Vancouverites who don’t have a plan in place, around a quarter blame laziness.

These emergency plans are especially important for SFU students, who may find themselves on a campus that is unfamiliar or far from home when an earthquake occurs. Imagine being on Burnaby Mountain when the “big one” hits: How would you protect yourself? Where would you go once the earthquake has passed? Without transit or cell service, how would you get down the mountain? How would you get in contact with your loved ones?

Luckily, preparing for an emergency doesn’t have to be difficult. Look through SFU’s earthquake procedures and participate in the ShakeOut BC Annual Earthquake Drill. Explore information specific to your city or your accessibility needs. If you can, prepare an emergency kit with enough supplies to last you through the first few days after a significant quake. Most importantly, make a plan with your loved ones and roommates about what to do in an emergency, so you know how to get in contact with each other and where to meet if communication has been cut off. 

Students rarely plan a week in advance, let alone for an emergency, but going unprepared can have disastrous consequences in the event of a high-magnitude quake. It’s also worth noting that it’s hard to predict when a major earthquake is coming, even though we’re due for one, which means updating your supplies and emergency plans over time is vital. 

These recent local quakes were minor; treat them as an opportunity to prepare for the ones that aren’t.

SFU Snap 2.0: The Latest and Greatest Features

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Humour
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Illustration by Momo Lin

Written by: Tiffany Chang, Peak Associate
Illustrated by:Momo Lin

The SFU Snap app everyone downloads as first-years is great, but what if we had a newer version that connected to Wi-Fi even less often? 

The “Construction Fence Labyrinth” game: This awesome game allows students to show off our creativity by designing new labyrinths for construction fences in Convocation Mall! All you have to do after clicking on the game is drag virtual fence sections and position them however you want on a grid that represents the Burnaby campus. And the best part? Your finished design is automatically entered into the running to win a daily contest afterwards! Whichever person’s design determined as the best one will be shown to the construction workers so they can actually use it for a day! 

The “Better Enrolment Date” counter: This is a running counter that shows every single student who has a better enrolment date than you. It’s a reminder of how all the good courses are being filled up by those lucky stiffs while you’re very angrily waiting for your time to arrive. 

The “Help” feature: A standard “help” feature that has McFogg the dog as an icon. It’s essentially the office assistant “Clippy” from Microsoft, but instead of helping, it gives you esoteric platitudes fit for your academic life. Such as “the darkness in you heart does not wallow underneath the gleaming quality of water fountains,” or “The wisdom you bring into the world will be squandered in court.”

The “Dirty Bathrooms” tracker: This one gives workers at SFU a comment platform where they can describe in excruciating detail how disgusting the bathrooms are. If there are puddles of God-knows-what on the floor or disturbing garbage they’ve found, this is the place to find out! The feature does not allow the workers to notify when the washrooms have actually been cleaned, because a built-in algorithm prevents people from engaging in any communication that positively contributes to students’ quality of life by deleting said communication right away. So, in the end, it truly enhances the experience of knowing already that we’re walking into a john with unflushed toilets or of being welcomed with nasty smells, now that people are completely aware of all the other nauseating things in said johns. 

The “No Studying Area” feature: During busy times of the school year like midterms or finals, sometimes it’s not easy to find a place to study or eat. This feature is a large collection of photos taken over the years, showing a bird’s-eye view of all the study areas entirely taken up.

SFU Name Generator

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Humour
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Illustration curtesy of Flickr

Written by: Kitty Cheung, Staff Writer 

First Initial:

A – Spicy

B – Depressing

C – Grey

D – Dank

E – Sleeping

F – Grimy

G – Engaging

H – Reddit-Scrolling

I – Concrete

J – Sleep-Deprived

K – Caffeine-Addicted

L – Studious

M – Renaissance

N – Concrete

O – NCAA
P – No-Headphones
Q – Cranky

R – President 

S – Skipper
T – Academically-Advised

U – Mountainous

V – Bothered

W – TA

X – Tim

Y – Irritated

Z – Final

 

Last Initial:

A – Quadrangle

B – Avocado

C – 145

D – Tuition

E – Mezzanine

F – Snow-Hazard

G – Transit

H – Pond Water

I – Koi

J – Raccoon

K – Office Hours

L – Canvas Discussions

M – Alternating-Construction-Pathways

N – SFU Snap

O – MyExperience

P – Cornerstone

Q – UniverCity

R – Bus Loop

S – Convo mall

T – Canvas Discussion

U – Construction Noise

V – Not-So-Quiet-Study-Floor

W – Co-Op Workshop

X – Term Paper

Y – Temporary Tiles

Z – SUB

 

Number of Years at SFU:

1 – Petter

2 – Erikson

3 – McQuadrangle

4 – Woodward

5 – Fraser

6+ – Goldcorp

Student Masterchef: Surprise Mystery Box Challenge

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Humour
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Illustration by Alice Zhang

Written by: Ana Staskevich, Staff Writer
Illustration by: Alice Zhang 

As students, we all know how tedious buying groceries and meal planning (actual meal planning, not buying a pizza and rationing it for a week) can be. Not all of us are pro-chefs; in your darkest hour, when you haven’t found a good recipe or gone grocery shopping in days, that’s when the Surprise Mystery Box Challenge test begins. What are some ways you can make dinner from the scavenged ingredients you find in the crevices of your house? 

Payday Is Tomorrow And This Is All I Have

Ingredients:

  • 1 lone egg that got left behind in the carton
  • 2 stray packs of ramen that you locked away in your bedside drawer as a last resort
  • Some pieces of ham that have been chilling at the bottom of your fridge for like months but you insist they’re still good

This is far from the meal of champions, but it is a traditional staple of broke-ass student cuisine. The inspiration for this Mystery Box comes from having $5 to your name and waiting for the next direct deposit to hit.

The end result should be hastily thrown together and presented without thought, much like an undergrad essay. 

First, cook the ramen as instructed on the packaging, most of us will know when it’s done based on muscle memory. After the hot water softens the noodles to chewable, the egg is added in to cook with them, although the yolk usually doesn’t boil properly and it becomes one with the ramen-water (delicious!). Cutting up some questionable bits of ham adds a bit of extra protein, and they work as a perfect garnish to an already low-budget ramen bowl. 

Eleven’s Instant Eggos

Ingredients:

  • 3 freezer burnt Eggo waffles
  • ½ of a remaining pack of dino chicken nuggets you had to hide from your roommate
  • A sliver of butter that has been thriving and solidifying in the freezer from the renter before you  
  • A bottle of honey that you stole from the work office kitchen during a time of emergency

Sometimes you really want to have breakfast for dinner, but on a budget. Luckily, this Mystery Box has the perfect contents to battle the cravings of greasy diner food. 

People say freezer burns often render the food nearly inconsumable, but you can’t afford to have taste buds. For this Mystery Box, the waffles are first put into a toaster to warm them up. The butter is used to grease the pan (over medium heat) so you can fry the shrivelled-up dino nuggets. Then, since you’re too lazy to do the pile of dirty dishes in your sink, you can just flip over the lid of the pan and eat your waffles and golden-turned-charcoal nuggets off of that like the animal you are. Once the honey is drizzled on, it really brings the meal together — chicken waffles à la mode! Bone Apple Tea!

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

Ingredients:

  • 2 slices of white bread that are starting to look a bit funky, but you can just cut off the weird bits
  • 1 hot dog wiener that you have been saving as a prized possession this past week
  • Mustard and ketchup packets at the bottom of your backpack that you got from the cornerstone A&W 
  • Leftover butter (optional)

Honestly, this Mystery Box might be a recreation of a typical elementary school lunch program meal, but it still slaps. Good hot dogs are hard to come by, so sometimes all you have to work with are slices of Wonder Bread and a disappointingly sized wiener. But worry not: these Mystery Box contents are not without a proper end result.

The pieces of bread can be buttered up so as to avoid dryness, and the hot dog wiener is simply placed between the two slices. Mustard and ketchup (relish is too bougie to be included here) go on the wiener to get rid of that cardboard taste. While the meal is one that is pretty hard to hold, a truly needy student will definitely not discriminate in eating it. 

Canada’s Engaged in Construction University

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Opinions
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Text by: Nicole Magas, Opinions Editor

Welcome to sFU, Canada’s Engaged in Construction University! Study with us on our beautiful Burnaby Mountain campus where the picturesque landscape is perfectly framed by stacks of steel scaffolding. Here, your education will be only a small part of your experience — literally, you will barely be able to hear your lectures through the endless drilling into concrete.

At sFU the friendships you make will last a lifetime. The people you meet in your cohort are destined to follow you to the same group therapy session to dissect the trauma of the trench-like conditions of navigating our university.

Our graduates are primed to enter the working world with a host of important life skills, including but not limited to: ignoring loud, unwanted noise; quick adaptability to rapidly changing, dynamic environments; and the patience of a saint to get through even the most trying of life’s challenges.

At sFU, our tuition rates are adjusted to account for the quality of your education: the more obstructive construction projects we start, the higher your tuition will be!

So come join us at sFU, where our quad only has three walls, but at least our students have their iClickers.

Photo by: Chris Ho/The Peak

Need to Know, Need to Go: July 15-19

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Arts
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Tess Liem. Image Via CBC.

Tess Liem and Guests at Massy Books July 18

Massy Books is a bookstore at East Georgia and Main St. that puts on (and supports) a lot of really unique and interesting literary events, from book launches to poetry readings, so I recommend following them online. One of these events is a poetry reading this Thursday, July 18, featuring Tess Liem accompanied by Shazia Hafiz, Adèle Barclay, and David Ly. 

Liem is currently a Montreal-based poet, whose work deals with a variety of subject matters. From death and mourning and obituaries that won’t ever be heard in Obits. to deep intrapersonal reflection in Tell Everybody I Say Hi, Liem explores the breadth of her human experience.

Tess Liem and Guests at Massy Books starts at 7 p.m. at Massy Books and is free to attend but, as the event is held within the bookstore, space is limited. The downstairs event space is also accessible to differently abled peoples and a floor plan is available here.

African Descendant Music Conference July 19

Organized by the African Students’ Association in collaboration with the African Descent Music Festival, the African Descendant Music Conference is an all-day event and conversation about creating music as African Descendant people in Vancouver. The event will feature Canadian artists like Jully Black as well as international artists Dr. Jose Chameleone (from Uganda) and Zahara (from South Africa).

The event is meant to create dialogue among the public and academic communities about the challenges facing African Descendant artists in Vancouver, and to discuss the artistic community’s needs with the Vancouver Music Strategy (a municipal report on the local music scene and artists needs). The conference also seeks to discuss and make connections to the issues that these artist additionally face globally. 

The African Descendant Music Conference will take place July 19 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at SFU’s Harbour Centre campus. The conference is open to students, faculty, staff, and the public for free though registration through eventbrite is encouraged.

Loscil and Secret Pyramid at SFU Woodwards July 20

Vancouver musician and contemporary artist Scott Morgan, known by his stage name Loscil, has been making music and soundscapes in Vancouver for the last 20 years. Loscil is Morgan’s electronic and ambient music project — an exploration of electronic music abstracted. Secret Pyramid, another Vancouver-based musician, has been described (by Discord in 2015) as having music that sounds like “micro-focused drone arrays and fuzzed-out ambient floods.”

This coming Saturday, the two will be performing two sets at the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Woodward’s. On the event page discussion, Morgan has called the event a “a very subdued release party” for his upcoming album Equivalents, which will be officially released in August. At the performance, Morgan will be selling a limited number of pre-release copies of the album.

Doors for Loscil and Secret Pyramid will open at 8 p.m. and the show is set to start at around 8:30/8:45 p.m. You can purchase tickets for $15 online, and some tickets will be available at the door, though advance tickets are encouraged.

Art you can feel but can’t touch at Sweet Dreams: A girl’s Reality

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Arts
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(From left to right) McLaughlin, Baeza, and Shelby at the opening of their exhibition. Photo by Kelly Chia / The Peak

By: Kelly Chia, Staff Writer

On Friday, July 5, Langara College students Emilia Baeza, Shelby, and Miho McLaughlin opened their exhibition, Sweet Dreams: A girl’s Reality, at the Interurban Gallery. The work they put in to curate a safer space to express and explore their identities as women was immediately clear upon entering the gallery, and made for a unique and memorable show.

The atmosphere of the gallery felt warm, friendly, and engaging, as Shelby and invited musician Kyross’s music echoed throughout the room. The composition was really interesting, often accompanying the notes with unconventional scratching sounds. Often, I’d hear long, low bass notes that would make me feel as though I were underwater. The low, soothing tones definitely contributed to the comforting space that Baeza, Kersey and McLaughlin nurtured.

The works at first glance seemed playful and expressive. That Fuzzy Thing, a piece by Baeza, looked like a furry cushion strapped onto a canvas. Baeza’s mixing of mediums in her works drew me in closer to better see the subtle transitions in media, like canvas to yarn. Visceral Nude was another mixed media piece that stunned me. Baeza later explained to me that it was created to express the invisible wounds that sexual assault and trauma leave behind. The canvas was truly intimate and haunting and the pieces looked like they were stretching beyond their canvases. Without being able to physically touch the works, we could feel their texture, their weight.

This is a sentiment that Shelby echoed, describing her pieces as materials forced out of their comfort zones. She is particularly proud of her watercolours as well as her two screen print pieces, Dogs and untitled (North America).

“I kind of just dismissed all the rules of screen printing and just assaulted the screen and paper,” Shelby says. “My professor at the time said to me, ‘You did everything I told you to do and everything I told you not to do.’”

McLaughlin’s prints and sculptures, on the other hand, tended to be more illustrative. Her sculpture piece, Booty booty booty, walking everywhere, especially caught my attention. It took me a while to realize that the shoes were ceramic; the piece even incorporated real shoelaces to add to the illusion. McLaughlin was very proud of the piece, stating that she had a lot of fun making them. “My favourite part is seeing people respond to it. The shoes are my first attempt at sculptural ceramics and also the first time to incorporate other materials to my work.”

McLaughlin said she draws her inspiration from feminine themes and fashion. “With ceramics I am interested in sculptural pieces where I can incorporate fabrics and laces. . . I find fashion design takes amazing creativity and to make art based on fashion has sparked countless ideas for me.”

For Baeza, this exhibition is incredibly important, as it is the first one she has organized with her peers. She “loved working with [McLaughlin] and Shelby . . . [they] all have spent countless hours in the studios studying art together and that is reflected on how seamlessly the show came together.”

Despite feeling so safe in this space, I was reminded of exactly why we needed it when my friend and I exited the gallery. Leaving the gallery and walking to dinner, my friend and I were catcalled multiple times as we walked. Having not experienced it in awhile, my grip on my friend tightened as we went to dinner together.

I thought of how women are taught to minimize these fears because it is our reality. I cannot yell back or defend myself for fear of escalation, so I have to pretend like I don’t care and am un-bothered by things that scare me. To have a space where women can feel safe is such a beautiful and important thing, and I was reminded of that by this exhibit.

Sweet Dreams: A girl’s Reality will be open for all of July at the Interurban Gallery. The Gallery’s hours are Wednesday to Saturday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

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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