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Contemporary Alaska Native identities and cultural tourism in Sitka

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Cover of Bunten's 2015 non-fiction book. Image Courtesy of Nebraska Press.

By: Ana Staskevich, Staff Writer

Alexis Bunten is an Native Alaskan (Aleut/Yup’ik) scholar and ethnographer. With a PhD in cultural anthropology in hand, Bunten is involved in Indigenous and environmental foundations including the Native-led hub, Bioneers. Her book titled So, How Long Have You Been Native? (2015) has won the Alaska Library Association Award and gives great insight into the nature of Alaskan tourism and Indigenous engagement within the industry.

As Bunten was working on completing her doctorate in anthropology in 2003, she compiled her research within Sitka into this book that employs a brilliant mixture of ethnographic observation, personal memoir storytelling, and academia. In the book, Bunten details her experiences as a tourist guide for Tribal Tours, a tourism company situated in Sitka, Alaska, as part of her required fieldwork for her graduate studies. She explains that she chose Tribal Tours because it was run by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, of the Tlingit People, and she wanted to work for a nation different from her own. 

The beginning passages of Bunten’s book paint a vivid picture of the coastal town that is Sitka, bringing to life the daily interactions between locals and tourists. Bunten goes on to share her experiences with rivalling tourism companies and even tensions within her group of coworkers. She refuses to shy away from the distasteful encounters with tourists, emphasizing issues of racism, social skins, and colonization by applying personal anecdotes.

However, Bunten’s writing can fall short in various areas by being too repetitive and cumbersome. Her habit of adding detail-heavy, and sometimes unnecessary, passages can disengage readers from the experience. The book otherwise still provides enough perspective to tie up a satisfying conclusion.

So, How Long Have You Been Native? is a perfect read for those who are interested in Indigenous tourism, the politics of labour, and the cultural values of Alaskan Natives.

Board Shorts: June 27, 2019

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Irene Lo / The Peak

By: Onosholema Ogoigbe, News Team Member

SFSS hears presentation on vaccines

Ajit Johal, a clinical instructor at the UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, gave a presentation about vaccine hesitancy and making vaccines available on campus. The presentation was titled “Looking at the unmet need of protecting adolescents and young adults against vaccine preventable diseases.”

Read more here. 

Accessibility Committee at-large reps appointed

The board has appointed Andrew Araneta, Vivian Ly, Ana Lozitskaia, and Mikaela Basile as student at-large members on the SFSS Accessibility Fund Committee for the Summer 2019 semester.

This follows from a discussion from the May 30 meeting about the board developing an accessibility standard policy. SFSS president Giovanni HoSang had provided The Peak with a statement about how the committee would be able to meet and work on developing such a policy for board approval after the appointment of at-large representatives.

Project expense process

Following inquiries from board members, SFSS Executive Director Sylvia Ceacero stated that having the board approve low-cost expenditure requests delayed projects. She reminded the board of the process for expenditures tied to projects: low-cost expenditures are to be processed immediately though her and outlined in their committee meetings. This allows the committees to get their funds approved on time, and the board would still be aware of the funds being used. 

“What I’m getting at is that [. . .] we should have one method,” she said of the request process.

Bill Reid Gallery’s water honours us celebrates connection between local Indigenous women and water

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The inside of the Bill Reid Gallery early on a Friday morning. Alison Wick / The Peak

By: Ben McGuinness, Peak Associate

qaʔ yəxw – water honours us: womxn and waterways is a mixed-media exhibition by a collective of local Indigenous women artists at the Bill Reid Gallery. The exhibition, curated and created by the ReMatriate Collective, blends themes of matriarchy and water, resurrecting the traditional power of Indigenous women amid their intersectional oppression in the colonial settler-state of Canada.

The Bill Reid Gallery, named after and featuring the work of late Haida artist, is an easy-to-miss cultural jewel tucked away behind a cathedral and lush green courtyard just off of Hornby Street. If you go early on a weekday as I did, it is usually very quiet. 

Though as thoroughly modern as any Vancouver fixture, the two-story Bill Reid Gallery is subtly shaped like a traditional big house: a large open area with an arched ceiling, a surrounding balcony forming the second floor; wooden stumps for seats, trunks for display stands, and a totem pole watching over all. No matter what’s on display, the Gallery’s collection of excellent Haida carvings, jewelry, and prints are always on show.

Upon entering, I found myself revisiting Bill Reid’s materials and struggling to locate the qaʔ yəxw exhibit. The program informed me that this was intentional. The exhibit was placed to flow organically with the usual offerings, and the inclusion of a carving, Reflections by Veronica Rose Waechter (Gitxsan), and beadwork was intended to blend the women’s work on display into the, typically male-dominated, world of public carvings and mixed-medium Indigenous artwork.

You know you have landed on the exhibit, however, when you come across the photography pieces. The works of ReMatriate Collective adopt branded iconography to take scenes of First Nations women at work in the water and form a statement about celebrating and giving power to these taken-for-granted labours. We Are Enough and The Space In Between by Lindsay Delaronde (Mohawk) and Dionne Paul (Nuxalk/Sechelt)feature two Indigenous women in intimate moments of energy and knowledge transference. The multi-part works in St’langng Laanaas Clan by Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena) are strong yet vulnerable portraits of artist Audrey Siegl (Musqueam), creating space to remember her sister Maria Siegl and the many other Indigenous women lost to different violences in the province.

The Space In Between by Lindsay Delaronde (Mohawk) and Dionne Paul (Nuxalk/Sechelt). Image from the Bill Reid Gallery courtesy of Alison Wick.

These photography pieces stand out from the permanent collection at Bill Reid, yet the damp, muted, and unmistakably West Coast green colours, along with the deep darks that capture the nooks and crannies of the subjects’ skin, somehow make these pieces perfectly at home next to Reid’s works. 

The themes of matriarchy and life-giving water are present all through the exhibit, and the distinction between these two themes is intentionally fluid. For local First Nations like Tsawwassen, water is a major feature of the land and of livelihood, but the exhibit also aims to reclaim its connection to the women who are made of water, live from the water, and are fundamental to life like water. In these pieces, water represents a reconnection to the land and summoning the power of ancestors to overcome today’s oppressions against Indigenous women.

The qaʔ yəxw exhibit is fairly small, so it may be worthwhile to combine your visit with the next upcoming feature at Bill Reid. SFU students are admitted for free, so the space is well worth being acquainted with. I encourage you to make time for this celebration and showcase of local Indigenous women and sacred connections to water — you will not leave disappointed.

qaʔ yəxw – water honours us: womxn and waterways will be featured at the Bill Reid Gallery until October 2, 2019. SFU students and Indigenous peoples enter for free.

Need to Know, Need to Go: July 1–5

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FIC's Breaking the Silence poster image. Courtesy of FIC.

By: Alison Wick, Arts Editor

FIC Art Exhibit on Mental Health, July 2-5

On Tuesday, July 2, the Fraser International College is hosting an opening reception for their art exhibition, Breaking the Silence: Reflecting on Mental Health. The event is sponsored by My SSP and keep.meSAFE in collaboration with guard.me insurance and seeks to start open conversations about student mental health and well-being.

The exhibit will feature “paintings, poetry, music, sculpture, film, and more” according to Nadine Dodd, the media contact for the event. Additionally, a performance and discussion will be held every lunch hour during the week-long run of the exhibit. The event and exhibition are meant to connect FIC students, and the SFU community at large, over the real struggles being faced by those living and learning at SFU. The work is entirely done by FIC students, staff, and instructors.

The Breaking the Silence: Reflecting on Mental Health exhibition will open on Tuesday, July 2, from 12 to 2 p.m. and the exhibit will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the rest of the week in FIC Lounge 2200.

Clueless at the Vancouver Art Gallery — July 3

For the second time, the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) is hosting eight Summer Movie Nights at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) plaza. The free summer series is kicking off this Wednesday with a screening of ‘90s cult classic Clueless. The event is outside and open to all ages — although the shows start after sundown, which is 9:20 p.m. this week. The DVBIA is putting on a film every Wednesday until August 21 in the recently renamed šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ Square on the North Side of the VAG between Howe and Hornby.

This is one of many outdoor film screenings happening in Vancouver this summer. The Evo summer series with Fresh Air Cinema is back every Tuesday from July 2 to August 20 at Second Beach in Stanley Park, Sunset Cinema is returning to Queen Elizabeth Park on July 17, Waterfront Cinema starts July 11 at Canada Place, and other weekly series throughout the Metro Vancouver area will be showing free outdoor films all summer. The R2R Film Festival for Youth is also bringing back its Outdoor Summer Film Series in August, showing three independent festival films and hosting animation workshops at Ron Basford Park on Granville Island.

Clueless will be playing in the šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ Square on the North Side of the Vancouver Art Gallery and is set to screen after sunset which is expected to be around 9:20 p.m. on the third.

Woodward’s Community Singers weekly Thursday workshops

Originally formed in 2009 in anticipation of SFU Woodward’s opening, the casual choir has moved from Harbour Centre to Woodward’s to its current space at SFU 312 Main St. Since February, this weekly workshop has been running there every week with support from SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. 

The class is free, neither sign-up nor experience is required, and drop-ins are encouraged. The workshop is run like a choir rehearsal, with a director instructing the usual 25–30 participants. The style of music sung in the choir includes “gospel, folk, popular, and contemporary traditions,” according to their event page, and it’s further described as “informal, fun, playful, and profound.”

They operate year-round, but the Woodward’s Community Singers are entering their last month of weekly workshops for the summer, so there are only four more chances for intrigued novice or experienced singers to join.

The Woodward’s Community Singers workshop is this Thursday, July 4, at 6 p.m. on the ground floor of 312 Main St (access from Cordova entrance). They will meet at the same place and time on July 11, 18, and 25 (the final day).

Kwadacha by the River screening: consent, consultation, and colonialism

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The Kwadacha community has been suffering the effects of the unapproved dam project for 50 years. Image courtesy of Lantern Films.

By: Alison Wick, Arts Editor

Kendra Strauss, director of SFU’s labour studies program, described the W.A.C. Bennett Dam as one of many contemporary resource projects where “wealth [is] generated through dispossession.” In her introduction for the screening of Kwadacha by the River, Strauss talks about the realities of resource exploitation projects — of who benefits without loss, and who loses without benefit.

Kwadacha by the River is a 20-minute documentary about the W.A.C. Bennett Dam project and its impacts on the Kwadacha nation and community. The dam was a massive energy engineering project in the 1960s in northern B.C. that involved damming and flooding the Peace River. The area affected is as large as France.

The screening was held at the Vancouver Public Library’s Central branch on Tuesday, June 18, and was put on by SFU’s labour studies program, department of sociology and anthropology, department of english, and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. 

The event, Strauss continued, is a result of her and her colleagues participating in the Decolonizing Teaching: An Integrated Seminar Series and Grants Program. She says that the distribution and circulation of this film came up in post-seminar discussions as a concrete way for them to use their institutional privilege to create space for Indigenous Peoples and their experiences. The evening was comprised of some introductions, the screening, and a Q&A discussion about the film, the dam, and the many other resource exploitation projects like it.

The film mixes archival footage, personal interviews, animation, and images to tell the story of this dam, the flooding it created, and the damage it has caused. Opening with stories and images of how the river was before the flooding and its importance to the Kwadacha people, we come to understand the short timespan of this project and its destruction. This is very recent history. The river as it was before is living memory, as is the ignorance and ill intentions of BC Hydro.

When a river is flooded, a lake is not created — an area is flooded. The film shows how these are two very different environmental changes as the “lake” created by the flooding is unusable. The water is dangerous, full of debris, and so big that it actually changes the weather. The fish from the lake cannot be eaten and animals drown in it because it is too large and treacherous to cross.

Elders and community members also recount the lack of consultation and notice that was given to them concerning the project. Some people had to evacuate their campsites while others returned from trips to find their vehicles and houses underwater. The flooding buried traditional traplines, plants and medicines, grave sites, and more under metres of water that was never meant to be there.

“We never got nothing out of it, just suffering,” says one elder at the end of the film. 

“The lake, it changed a lot of lives and we’re still feeling it today,” says another. 

The film ends by showing the facts that, initially, BC Hydro promised that the community would receive free power from the project, but this promise has never been fulfilled. The community is today powered by a diesel generator, which they pay BC Hydro for.

The short film was actually funded by BC Hydro, Lantern Films co-founder and film director Dave Shortt informs us. BC Hydro was updating the dam’s visitors centre and approached the production company to create a film for the centre. Although the company was skeptical of the project, they ended up negotiating with the electricity company to make the film an equal collaboration between Lantern Films and the Kwadacha Nation. They even secured that the final words and decisions about the film would rest with the Kwadacha community, meaning BC Hydro had no creative control over the film. The short documentary could thus be a true reflection of the perspectives and experiences of the Kwadacha community.

The community was involved at the filmmaking level as well. During the Q&A, Shortt and community member Cathy Warren talk about how the film’s animated sequences were created by youth at a community high school during animation workshops. Mitchell McCook, the third speaker on the panel, who works for the Kwadacha Nation, also expressed the collaborative and community centred nature of the project. Rather than going into the community and extracting information, the production gave skills and power to the community.

In the discussion following the film, direct comparisons are drawn to projects like the Site C Dam. The conclusion is that these projects follow the same trajectory as the W.A.C. Bennett Dam: being approved and built without Indigenous consent or proper consultation, benefiting big corporations, and harming the Indigenous communities whose unceded territories these projects exploit and profit from.

The short film is an accessible, compelling, and vital piece of filmmaking that tells a story most British Columbians don’t know about but are deeply connected to. The evening itself was a timely discussion about how the Canadian government and resource companies have yet to truly learn and change from their past mistakes.

Kwadacha by the River will be available to take out from the SFU Library soon. You may find it in our W.A.C. Bennett Library stacks in July.

Board Briefs Thursday, June 27

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RESLUS/ The Peak

By: Paul Choptuik, Coordinating News Editor

SFU Burnaby parking rate changes

At the latest Simon Fraser University Board of Governors meeting on June 27, Mike Cordoba, alumni order-in-council, spoke about changes in the SFU Burnaby campus’s parking rates that will come into effect July 1. 

 

Stating that these changes were in response to increases in the regional parking tax, Cordoba noted that it provided an opportunity to “rebalance current lot prices slightly,” to encourage more even usage across SFU’s parking lots.

Daily hourly rates will be increasing by $0.25, while the increase in daily max rates will vary. Monthly permit parking rates will also be increasing, with the notable exception of Residence West Lot, which will see a $9.88 reduction in the monthly rate. The exhaustive list of changes can be found online on SFU Parking and Sustainable Transportation’s website.

“It should be noted that SFU has not increased its permit parking rates since 2013 and the hourly rates have not increased since 2010, except for special increases in North Lot in 2018 to encourage parking in other lots,” Cordoba also stated.

New certificate programs announced

Christopher Lewis, order-in-council, reported that as per the recommendations made to the Board of Governors by SFU Senate during their meeting on May 21, three new program proposals were approved.

They are the Certificate in Creative Technologies in Digital Journalism within the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, the Certificate in International Studies in the School of International Studies within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Graduate Certificate in History in the department of history within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. 

All programs will be effective Spring 2020.

SFU joins the International Sustainable Campus Network 

Martin Pochurko, vice-president of finance and administration, reported that SFU had joined the International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN).

Pochurko noted that this involves a commitment to the ISCN’s charter, which can be found online. According to the ISCN, “signatories to the charter commit to follow and support five calls to action.”

These include “[embedding] sustainability in all aspects of the university” and  “[creating] an environment that cultivates resilient, empowered, caring and engaged students, staff, and faculty who will contribute to the health of people and places.”

SFU is the second Canadian university to join the network of over 90 universities worldwide, including Princeton, Harvard, and UBC, the last of which was the first Canadian university to join the network.

Lot 21 Approved

Porchuko also reported that Lot 21, a proposed housing project for mature students, had been approved. 

“We’re glad to see that moving forward, 90 units will be built in UniverCity,” stated Porchuko.

When complete, the project will target graduate students and students with families, a point that had been clarified by president Andrew Petter.

“One little correction: it says here ‘targeting grad students with children.’ In fact, it’s targeting graduate students and students with children.”

 

SFSS Board hears presentation on potential vaccine outreach services

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Chris Ho/ The Peak

By: Paul Choptuik, Coordinating News Editor

Ajit Johal, a clinical instructor at UBC’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and owner of immunize.io and TravelRx, gave a presentation to the SFSS Board of Directors on vaccines at the June 27 meeting. Johal has had previous experience working with Sylvia Ceacero, SFSS executive director, on advocating for vaccinations for seniors.

With the overall goal of raising awareness and potentially bringing mobile vaccination services to SFU, Johal detailed which preventable diseases university students may be at risk of contracting, which vaccines are publicly funded, and which ones are not.

Highlighting the resurgence of measles, the risk of meningitis on university campuses, and the risk of contracting diseases like hepatitis and traveler’s diarrhea abroad, Johal illustrated the particular dangers to students.

Noting the gaps that some students may have in their vaccination history, or a lack of records making it unclear, Johal pointed out that the SFU Student Drug Benefit Plan allows for $150 per year for vaccine coverage. 

“That’s coverage on the table that you could utilize to access protection for vaccine preventable diseases,” Johal added.

Johal also noted that, board willing, there could be opportunities for students, especially those in the health sciences, to collaborate on an awareness program or even help in a mobile clinic.

“Health sciences, it would be good to collaborate with them to design some educational material [ . . . ] we don’t want them giving people unsolicited medical advice, they could always shadow any of our healthcare professionals.

“They can certainly help people with intake forms.”

Concluding his presentation, Johal stated his desire to work with the SFSS in particular to create a “healthy campus.”

“We are looking to work with the [SFU] Student Society to provide education, awareness of these diseases, working to create onsite clinics, run programs, partner with health science students, partner with other disciplines in healthcare,” Johal elaborated.

After the presentation, the board asked a number of questions.

Nick Chubb, applied sciences representative, asked whether Johal would need money from the SFSS. Johal clarified that he was not looking for money, just support.

“It would be good to have health science students volunteering,” Johal reiterated.

“It’s not just pushing people to get vaccinated, we also want information too. So even if people just want to have a conversation, they want to ask questions, they have access to that too.”

Tawanda Chitapi, vice-president finance, asked Johal what the best way of raising awareness was in his experience, with Johal responding that he has found word of mouth to be the most effective.

“Students will talk to one another like, ‘Hey, I just got this vaccine, it was super easy. I just went to this place at this time,’ and that’s what happened with workplace staff. That’s how we drove up immunization rates.”

Christina Loutsik, vice-president student services, asked what resources could be distributed and about human papillomavirus (HPV), which had not talked about in the presentation. 

Johal thanked Loutsik for the question, telling board about the World Health Organization’s (WHO) campaign to end HPV causing cervical cancer. He added that the National Advisory Committee on Immunization wanted people, regardless of age, to be immunized.

“There is a catch-up program for those born in 1994 or later, those born before, it would be a private vaccine,” Johal added.

Shina Kaur, vice-president university relations, inquired about international students who may not have attended high school in Canada and received the same vaccines.

“International students, they get caught up on everything. What the health units do for them is they just immunize based on history, it’s a blank canvas and they update everything, unless they can produce records,” Johal responded.

Concluding the discussion, Ceacero suggested a small working group could be formed to explore this partnership.

“If the board is agreeable, Ajit and I will connect again, and involve Christina, and involve other board members who are in health sciences and we can have a little working group to figure out how to move ahead with this, I think it could be very beneficial to our students.”

Students shouldn’t need to be policed into respecting quiet study spaces

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Take your crinkly snack bags and your loudly whispered conversations some place else Photo by Andres Chavarriaga / The Peak

By: Kitty Cheung, Staff Writer

Last week, a fellow student sat beside me in the sixth-floor computer lab of the library and proceeded to watch a sports commentary video on YouTube. With the noise leaking from their earbuds, I couldn’t help but look up from my screen, distracted. This person then pulled out a family-sized bag of potato chips from their backpack and munched, loudly. They weren’t pulling out single chips to snack on discreetly, either. These were face-stuffing handfuls that left their entire palm encrusted with chip dust. 

Aside from the obnoxious crunching of both the chips themselves and the crinkly bag that contained them, this student would also lick the chip powder from their hands and then continue to handle the keyboard and mouse of a communal computer. Half in the voice of Damian from Mean Girls, I thought to myself, “Do you even go here?!”

Shuddering in my seat, this led to me to think about what better policing measures could be put in place to ensure that designated “quiet” study spaces actually remain quiet. Should students in the surrounding area give death glares to silence the perpetrator? Should incessant chattering between desk partitions be followed by passive-aggressive shushing? Should a level five offense of high-volume trap music leaking from headphones be acknowledged with a polite tap on the shoulder or an eraser thrown at the head? 

Ridiculous proposals aside, there shouldn’t be any need for quiet study spaces to be policed by security guards or the like, because we as students should understand how to not be obnoxiously distracting assholes. 

Hear me out. Most of us studying on this campus are university students. In other words, we should all have some basic knowledge of adulting and therefore know how to respect each other. Designated quiet study spaces can be a productivity paradise; based off of our individual study habits, there’s a reason why we choose to seek refuge in a silent area. Why tarnish the sanctity of this space with the crinkling of your granola bar wrapper? Why choose to hold a 40-minute loud-whispered conversation with your friend if you could talk literally anywhere else, for example, the staircase a few metres away? 

Really, the concept of a quiet study space is simple. If you’re having trouble understanding the courtesy of studying quietly in a space shared by fellow students, if you need someone to launch their pen at you to figure out how to behave in public, then buddy, there’s a whole slough of problems that are plaguing you (and unfortunately, others around you too). 

Please, for my sanity and for the sanity of our fellow silent studiers, learn how to respect these spaces or else don’t ruin them for others.

 

Wild animals shouldn’t be punished for existing in their natural environments

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Giving back more wilderness to bears is one way to avoid altercations in the future Photo courtesy of Nathan Denette via Global News

By: Nicole Magas, Opinions Editor

On June 24, picnickers at Burnaby Mountain Park were visited by a black bear. The bear tried to get into their backpacks for food and when challenged, the bear swiped back. The picnickers reported minor injuries from the incident, and the bear left without further bother. 

The next day, what was believed to be the same bear was caught eating garbage in a residential neighbourhood. The bear was subsequently put down for exhibiting “unusual bear behaviour” and for having lost its fear of humans. According to conservation officers, this behaviour removed all hope of relocating the bear to another area.

To kick off the list of things that are wrong with this situation, let me just say that the bear wasn’t exhibiting “unusual behavior.” The bear was exhibiting regular bear behavior in that it was searching for an easy source of food. Arguably it was the picnickers who were exhibiting unusual human behavior by leaving the security of their urban environment and venturing into the territory of wild animals — not to mention their decision to confront a large predator.

On that note, the inability to rehabilitate the bear because of its “habituation to humans” highlights just how pervasively humans have encroached on wild areas. That there are no environments far enough away from human habitation to place a bear safely paints an alarming picture of the pitiful lack of truly wild spaces, even within our vast nation. 

Conservation officials note that black bears have been sighted over 2,200 times in the Lower Mainland this spring alone. The number of reported sightings continues to grow as bears recognize human habitation as sites of easy food. This permeable boundary between human and bear territory points to how humans have altered the environment such that either the bears’ normal food sources are too scarce or human food sources are too easily accessible.

The further we sanitize the remaining pockets of wild space for human recreation, the more we must expect that encounters with wild and potentially dangerous animals will occur. We cannot allow our solution to this issue to be killing or enclosing what few apex predators remain. We as humans have the unique ability to rationally alter our behavior to find creative solutions to environmental hazards. 

As students on Burnaby Mountain, we live and study alongside a host of wildlife, and we must always be conscious of the impact our presence here has on the local fauna. It is fundamentally wrong to expect bears to stop doing bear things in the areas where bears live. Instead, we need to do the human thing and find a way to coexist with wild nature. This ultimately may mean withdrawing from it altogether.

 

SFU Tuition Freeze Now sets plans for the rest of summer 2019 at general assembly

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Andres Chavarriaga/ The Peak

By: Onosholema Ogoigbe, News Team Member

On June 26, members of Tuition Freeze Now held their third general assembly chaired by Annie Bhuiyan, an undergraduate student. The meeting was held in the Robert C. Brown Hall.  Its objective was to create a schedule for their July activities and update attendees on the group’s recent activities. 

Attendees were split into groups of two and asked to brainstorm ideas about what a charter for Tuition Freeze Now would entail. The two groups were encouraged to think about what TFN stands for, what the organization’s standards should be, and what they want from the province and/or the school. At the end of the brainstorm session, it was decided that TFN stood for affordability, feminism, and anti-oppressiveness, amongst other things. They highlighted that what they wanted from SFU was different from what they wanted from the B.C. government — for example, tuition freeze versus government tuition funding. However, they also acknowledged that there were some similarities, such as an “outlook change.”

 According to Bhuiyan, Tuition Freeze Now currently has members at the University of Victoria, University of British Columbia and Langara College. Bhuiyan mentioned that the main tool for cultivating solidarity amongst the chapters would be engaging them in the planning of the charter. She highlighted the need for solidarity, stating that now that Tuition Freeze Now was growing, “they are a part of the movement too and I don’t want to leave them out.” 

Bhuiyan also brought up the need for Tuition Freeze Now to host social events as a tool to build solidarity amongst its members and other chapters. SFU community member Corbett Gildersleve had suggested a potluck as a social event Tuition Freeze Now could hold in the Summer 2019 semester. The subject of a possible date for the event was brought up and it was agreed that the event would be held in late July.

The meeting ended with a discussion about the possibility of Tuition Freeze Now hosting a debate amongst federal party leaders. However, this project is still under development.

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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