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Senate Report

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Photo courtesy of SFU

CELLTR Update

During the question period, Senator Jon Driver responded to a request for an update on the new Centre for English Language Teaching, Learning, and Research (CELLTR) initiative.

Driver spoke to the multilingual nature of the Lower Mainland and added that SFU’s campus community reflects that diversity.

“As a university, we ought to be very proud that we graduate large numbers of students who are competent in more than one language,” said Driver.

“Nevertheless, the English language abilities of some of our students can make it more difficult for them to progress through their programs.”

Driver explained that due to concerns around that difficulty, a committee was formed and taking into considerations their report as well as some parallel examples from other institutions. He came to the conclusion that “the right approach to supporting students for whom English is not their first language is to integrate those supports across the university rather than segregating those supports into a particular functional unit.”

Out of this came the idea for CELLTR, a small unit that would organize and expand efforts to understand the university experience of students for whom English is not their first language.

Senator David Paterson expanded, “What’s new about CELLTR is the integration of research and service delivery.” He also added that the research component would allow the centre to constantly assess the impact of their services and then improve them.

SFU President Andrew Petter added, “It has the potential to create cross-cultural communication that will not only assist with linguistic competence, but also provide educational, cultural, irreversible development that can go way beyond that.”

Board Gags

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By Benjamin Buckley

The GM food debate is more complicated than just GM food

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Photo courtesy of Lindsay Eyink (Wikimedia Commons)

First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I want to congratulate the author of The Peak’s article “Why Can’t We Eat Like Europeans?,” published June 1, with her weight loss and newfound awareness of her diet and lifestyle.

But I feel like GM foods are being unfairly blamed.

The problem is that health issues are so incredibly nuanced and complex that it’s really difficult to tease out what’s really going on.

So what I’m hoping to persuade you is that in a similar way, the GM food debate isn’t as simple as whether GM foods are safe.

Firstly, food is different in North America for a lot of reasons. One of which is the corporate environment that we do our business in. Monsanto, a frighteningly affluent organization, has employed some shady business practices to become a major stakeholder in the American corn and soy market.

The company sues farms that have fields that are accidentally cross pollinated by their GM crops because of the patents that they have on the artificially added genes. Even if their GM crops were perfectly safe to eat, their business practices would still be shady.

So companies using patent law to run competitors out of business is definitely a mark against GM crops. But even if that didn’t happen, agricultural practice isn’t great as is. In order to increase efficiency, huge farms will cultivate the same crop in bulk. This makes economic sense, but it also makes the crop incredibly vulnerable to pests and disease because usually the whole field is genetically the same, GM or not.

Food is different in North America for a lot of reasons. One of which is the corporate environment that we do our business in.

As a result, farms rely on pesticides and other chemicals to a huge degree. In recent years, North America has seen a huge drop in bee populations which have been linked to overuse of these pesticides; we’ve been shooting ourselves in the foot because without bees, we can’t pollinate our crops that we’ve been spraying with pesticides.

Another factor that complicates the GM food debate is that even if a certain food is safe, too much of it still might be incredibly bad for you if you eat too much of it. North American food is much sweeter than its European counterparts, usually due to added sugar. Regardless of whether it comes from a GM crop or not, that added sugar can still lead to increased risk for diabetes, kidney failure, heart disease, and stroke.

So after all of this, it might not even matter whether GM foods are safe because of the myriad of things that surround them. But I did some research anyway.

I’ll confess that I was looking forward to finding something definitive that concluded that GM foods were perfectly safe. But when I read a scientific article that said so, I saw that some of the scientists worked for Monsanto. So I looked again and found another, but the results were inconclusive. Then I kept looking.

What I found in the end was a huge body of work showing that people are actually pretty confused about whether GM foods are safe or not. There seem to be just as many studies that say they’re dangerous as that say they’re safe, and a lot of scientists are saying that more work needs to be done.

So what I think it boils down to is this: if you’re a politician, pass laws that prevent agricultural companies from screwing farmers over, if you’re a farmer, try to use as few pesticides a possible, and if you’re a person who cares about their health, eat a healthy diet. But at the end of the day, blaming health problems on GM foods, or calling them universally good or bad, is oversimplifying something very complicated.

Bard on the Beach brings Shakespeare to life

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EIC
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One of the goals of festivals such as Bard on the Beach is the promotion of the works of William Shakespeare. This is promotion not from obscurity, but from the negative association so many link with his name — so often related to the difficulty or perceived inaccessibility of his texts.

One can only applaud such goals. Shakespeare, perhaps more than any other literary figure in history, has too often suffered the groans of kids in school who see him only as a laborious chore, the barrier to a good mark or an easy semester. Most are introduced to him at an early age, and the only remnant they retain of a Shakespearean education is the difficulty of his text. Many adults will surely have similar memories and complaints.

The reason why this happens varies, though much of the reaction can be linked to how Shakespeare is taught in school. This is where festivals like Bard on the Beach are meant to help. Show Shakespeare in a setting other than a classroom, and his greatness can be more easily pinpointed, free from the pressures of getting a good grade.

This year’s Bard on the Beach certainly has the plays to achieve this goal. King Lear, ranked among Shakespeare’s best, touches on emotions that stick long after its end — which is a reason so many struggle to read it or act it. Every generation has found something different in it, something else to remember from it, from the difficulties of aging to the pangs of unreturned love or the forgotten cruelty a child can levy on their parent.

Love’s Labour’s Lost, a much lighter and more comical play, is a personal favourite. Its central theme is whether the pursuit of study can be seen as so noble that its students are willing to forgo youthful love for it. 

Another comedy to be performed at this year’s festival is The Comedy of Errors. If the title seems familiar it is because the phrase itself, like so many of Shakespeare’s lines, has entered our general lexicon permanently. The play is one of Shakespeare’s earliest, but the language and humour is so inviting that, like King Lear and Love’s Labour’s Lost, it counteracts the image of a boring and unexciting Shakespeare.

Moving away from plays written by Shakespeare, and in a list of delights one can expect from Bard on the Beach, is Shakespeare’s Rebel. This stage adaptation of C.C. Humphrey’s successful novel follows the life of John Lawley, a man stuck in the centre of the politically revolutionary fervour of Elizabethan England. Among Lawley’s many goals, he wants to continue his job as a fight choreographer for the plays of Shakespeare.

The larger context of the play also helps to shed light on another aspect of Shakespeare: as universal as his plays and characters are, they also had something to say about the age he lived in, a fact this play highlights in between inspired duel scenes and exciting glimpses of a past era.

Shakespeare’s greatness lies in his ability to articulate your own thoughts and feelings better than you could. Whatever joys or woes colour your life, there is a brilliant passage from Shakespeare related to it. To read his works is to find a collection of characters, to borrow a line from his friend and contemporary Ben Jonson, “rammed with life.” If Bard on the Beach can do something to display this, then they will have achieved their goal.

Puppy Therapy at SFU Woodwards!

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EIC
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SFU hosted another puppy therapy event, this time at Woodwards! Learn a little bit about the dogs personalities and what it is like to train and foster this pups!

Created by Paige Smith and Abigail Markowitz

Special thanks to SFU Health & Counselling

Burning Man documentary finds success and Leo nominations

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Leo nominees Joel Ashton McCarthy and Bryant H. Boesen, the co-directors, producers, and editors of Taking My Parents to Burning Man. Bryant, who along with his parents were the stars of the movie, says the experience was spontaneous, dusty, and emotional. They were nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary Program, Best Direction in a Documentary Program, Best Picture Editing, Best Sound Editing (by Robert Phaneuf).

Joel and Bryant were classmates at Vancouver Film School and used to team up to make stoner comedy movies. Joel noted that they are “very different people, but are drawn together because of their creative nature.” Of course, being on the same artistic wavelength enabled them to work on 10 different projects together during their time at VFS.

Bryant was adamant that the movie should be called Burning Boundaries, an idea that Joel was vehemently against, even going to the extent that he would only do the movie if the title was changed. Bryant said that the was a ‘passion project’ in which he wanted to take the values and mindset of Burning Man and show them to the world.

When his parents told him that they were planning to go to Burning Man, he was ecstatic and wanted to capture the experience through their eyes. At first, Bryant’s parents said to him, “we are not gonna be in your dumb reality show,” but they soon realized that since they were going anyways it would be great to support their son’s project.

Joel and Bryant had been out of school for only two months when they decided to take this on with no financial resources and a crew of eight people, including Bryant and his parents.

They started shooting in the summer of 2012 and took over year and a half to edit, which paid off when the film premiered in California in April 2014. When the film was nominated alongside other feature documentaries that had bigger budgets, they instantly became the underdogs.

After selling out their first eleven consecutive screenings, the film won the Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary at both the 2014 Sonoma International Film Festival and the 2014 Newport Beach Film Festival. Two kids that spent $10,000 competing with films whose budgets were exponentially bigger goes to show what eager film students can achieve when they put their minds to it.

Of course, a project like this does not come without its challenges. Joel said that the biggest shock was the weather, as 2012 was the dustiest year in Burning Man’s history; the two were afraid that all the expensive cameras were going to be destroyed with dust. After surviving their personal Mad Max environment, the second challenge was recording audio in windy conditions.

Bryant also shared a couple other obstacles that arose before even beginning the film. A week before Burning Man, his mom broke her ankle but, lukily, was able to pull through. A friend who was supposed to lend them an RV bailed on them and they were forced to find another means of transportation. They ended up with the beautiful green school bus that is featured in the film.

For Bryant, not much writing was required because Burning Man has a story arc of its own. All they needed was a rolling camera and attentiveness to spontaneity. Joel said that their film offers the audience an idea of how big Burning Man is, and how inclusive its community is.

When his documentary course instructor asked how things were going, Bryant replied that everything was falling apart. The instructor asked quickly whether they were filming it. When a nervous Bryant replied with a “yeah,” the instructor affirmed enthusiastically: “Great, that’s your movie.”

Taking My Parents to Burning Man will be showing at the Rio Theatre July 12 to 15, leading up to their theatrical release on iTunes July 17.

Leo Awards 2015: Behind-the-scenes film geniuses honoured

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The Leo Awards are about celebrating excellence in the film and television industry of British Columbia. The first leg of the 2015 Leo Awards took place on June 6 at The Westin Bayshore Hotel, where local technical geniuses were celebrated.

Ellie Harvie (Mrs. Bubkes in Some Assembly Required) wasn’t able to attend due to an emergency family issue, but Veena Sood (Mrs. Rashid in Little Mosque on the Prairie) rose to the occasion and was kind enough to co-host with Paul McGillion (Dr. Carson Beckett in Stargate: Atlantis). After an exquisitely hilarious bit alluding to actors as assholes, the long awaited celebration of technical talent kicked off.

Eadweard was the winner of four Leos: Best Makeup, Best Costume Design, Best Hairstyling, and Best Production Design. Kathy Howatt, the make up designer for the film quipped, “If anybody is talking to Josh [Epstein, Eadweard’s co-writer and producer], can you tell him he owes me therapy for all the merkins I had to apply?”

Violent, the second winner in the motion picture category, received three awards for Best Cinematography, Best Picture Editing, and Best Visual Effects.

Dead Hearts, a short drama, took home three Leos for Best Production Design, Best Make-Up, and Best Costume Design.

In the category of Dramatic Series, The Flash’s episode “Going Rogue” took the Leo Award in Visual Effects.

Among the documentaries, Jordan Paterson and Norm Li won Leos for Cinematography and Picture Editing for Tricks On The Dead: The Story Of The Chinese Labour Corps In WWI.

It was a lovely night of many stars, peer appreciation, and heartfelt gratitude.

All-female adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross impresses

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EIC
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Classic Chic Productions has a mandate of performing classic plays with all-female casts — they credit themselves as “chicks bringing class to the classics.” Last year’s production of The Winter’s Tale was very well-received, and this year they’ve taken on the classic tale of desperate salesmen, Glengarry Glen Ross.

The intimate venue of The Beaumont Stage allowed for the audience to be engrossed by the fast-paced, razor sharp dialogue, and I was extremely impressed with the way these ladies were able to convey the masculine gestures of these domineering male characters. It would be easy to take a play like this, especially when done by a female cast, and have it turn out cheesy or over the top with exaggerated gesture, but that was not the case at all.

Shelley Levene (Colleen Winton) is in the middle of a bad streak of luck and needs to catch a break, but office manager John Williamson (Marci T House) is not willing to help him out. The opening exchange between these two characters was nuanced and full of just the right amount of masculine bravado, right down to the minute changes in their facial expressions. I knew right away that this play was going to be superb.

Each character was very well defined, and the whole cast gave exceptional performances. I particularly loved Richard Roma’s (Michelle Martin) monologue about the meaning of life that hooked a potential customer at a bar before Richard quickly slid a brochure under his nose. As these men show, it’s all about setting them up properly before you ask them to sign the contract. Back at the office when the same client came to see him, Dave Moss (Corina Akeson) was smooth as silk in his attempts to defer a meeting where he knew the client wanted to cancel.

Meanwhile, Dave has a plan to move up in the world of sales, aided by the unlikely accomplice George Aaronow (Suzanne Ristic). Their conversation about a potential robbery of the office was another highlight of the show, as Dave guides George through a hypothetical scenario the whole way, until he finally realizes what is being implied: “Are you saying you’re going to rob the office? I thought we were just talking!”

I was so captivated by the performances, the lengthy conversations of the first act flew by, and the scene in the office held my attention with its impeccable timing and characterizations that never wavered. What a spectacular achievement by this talented group of women.

Glengarry Glen Ross is presented by Classic Chic Productions from June 6 to 27 at the Beaumont Stage. Tickets are $25 at the door or $23 plus service fee online. Visit classicchic.ca for more information.

Surrey names SFU students and alumni in Top 25 Under 25

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"Top 25 Under 25" winners - Surrey Board of Trade

During its fifth annual reception on May 28, the Surrey Board of Trade (SBOT) recognized the initiatives of select youth in Surrey, aged 25 or younger.

The ‘Top 25 Under 25’ award honours individuals based upon their business or community achievements, demonstration of leadership, and community involvement. The following list highlights the eleven SFU students chosen by SBOT for the award.

 

Ridge Pinto — Business (Entrepreneurship and Finance)

Recipient of RBC’s Students Leading Change Scholarship, Pinto currently works as an intern at Microsoft. His future plans include either attending law school in the Fall of 2016 or potentially going back to an internship employer.

“It’s humbling to be recognized amongst Surrey’s youth; as a proud Surrey resident, I owe a lot to a city and to a community that have provided me with so much. I hope one day to return the favour.”

 

Deepak Sharma — Sciences (Behavioral Neurosciences)

Sharma currently works alongside a former teacher organizing a TEDxSurrey conference to showcase the youth of Surrey. He is also the VP Student Life at the Simon Fraser Student Society, as well as an advocate for the #WESayYES student led campaign, encouraging students to vote “yes” in this year’s transit plebiscite.

“The honour of being recognized as one of Surrey’s Top 25 under 25 is very humbling and motivating. It’s a recognition that speaks to the community of supporters, mentors and role models who have without hesitation always taken out the time to assist me in all my accomplishments.”

 

Felicia Rafael — Alumni

Rafael is the President of Beneath One Sky, a non-profit group from Vancouver devoted to conquering poverty in our neighbourhood and around the world, and she currently sits on the Surrey Christmas Board. She is developing a volunteer program within the organization that will focus on engagement with disadvantaged children which she hopes to launch the program in the next two years.

“I am humbled to receive this honour, and thank my parents and friends for their love and support. This honour not only represents what I have done but really it represents the entire BOS team, who have worked so hard and so passionately these past 5-plus years.”

 

Shantelle Medel — Health Sciences

Medel is one of the founders for the organization the Beneath One Sky Community Support Society. She just completed coordinating the “Walk and Learn Program: Engaging and Inspiring Seniors and Youth,” which she hopes to sustain and carry into the future. She is also the jewelry designer for her business “A Vintage Enchantment.”

“It is an honour to win the Top 25 Under 25 award as it recognizes and is a reminder that transforming your passions into reality is key to helping you grow as a leader and in providing support and opportunities for our community.”

Lourence Singh — Business (Accounting and Finance)

Singh is the founder of an importing company Lorcorp as well as a Sponsorship Specialist for SOAR Philanthropic Society, a non-for-profit student-run organization that provides scholarships to high school graduates entering post-secondary institutions who are in financial need. He is also the Logistics Manager for Soap for Hope, and a licensed realtor.

“It was truly an honour being recognized among a group of such talented and passionate individuals who all strive for personal growth while making a positive impact on society. The award reinforces my entrepreneurial spirit and will drive me to attain continued success.”

 

Naina Grewal — Business and Communications

Grewal has been volunteering as a radio show host at Red 93.1 FM, working on a show targeted towards children and youth.

She is also part of the SFU Student Ambassador Club and has been a guest speaker at events throughout the lower mainland. For the future, Grewal plans to step into the world of broadcasting and media while continuing to serve her community.

“Knowing that my efforts as an engaged community member and volunteer are recognized and appreciated serves as a pillar of moral strength. It is truly a humbling and inspiring experience and a memorable stepping stone to keep moving forward in the right direction!”

 

Jeremy Pearce — Criminology and Sociology

Pearce created “Transit Watch,” a program aimed at improving transit safety in Surrey, after being inspired by a class presentation. Recently certified as a Canadian Mental Health First Aid Instructor, Jeremy hopes to be employed as an RCMP officer in the future.

“This award means a great deal to me. It is humbling to be recognized among the other [award winners] who have all accomplished so much in their lives and have all contributed so greatly to benefiting their community in whichever way their passion allows.”

 

Sean Warwick — Interactive Arts and Technology

Warwick is the founder and coordinator for “Away From Keyboard” (AFK), a game development symposium, and is currently a teaching assistant in the foundations of game design in the School for Interactive Arts and Technology. His plans include entering the gaming industry and gaining experience, as well as working towards a position as a game development instructor.

“Receiving this award meant a lot to me. It proved to me that the time and effort I spent creating AFK was worthwhile and will continue to have a positive impact on SFU and SIAT after I graduate.”

 

Rhythm Tang — Business

Tang is a Beedie School of Business student. She manages Hunger Actions, a four-week interactive workshop series that empowers low-income families in Metro Vancouver with the knowledge to lead a healthy lifestyle on a tight budget.

“It isn’t easy being an entrepreneur, but being awarded the Surrey Top 25 Under 25 Award has led me to realize that hard work and dedication really pays off in the end. It is only with the ongoing support from my Hunger Actions and Enactus SFU Team that we were able to create such a large impact in the lives of low-income parents and their children.”

 

Rizwan Qaiser — Business (Entrepreneurship and Innovation)

Qaiser was one of the the co-founding president of SFU’s Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Association (IdEA). He is also a research assistant in the Beedie School. Qaiser hopes to explore the role of the university in the process of becoming an entrepreneur and look for barriers at an institutional level. For the future, he is looking to create a cheaper alternative to motion control equipment for filmmaking using robotics.

“I wish it was more of an opportunity to acknowledge to the professors who have helped me and the team at IdEA SFU. The only reason it makes me feel better is because of my mum; as an international student it is almost as a confirmation for all the hard work.”

Peak Speak: Is Vancouver Boring?

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The Peak asks SFU Vancouver students if they think the city is boring.

Created by Paige Smith
Special thanks to Max Hill

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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