Ashima Shukla
What we must confront: Living with Long COVID
December 18, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer The first winter of the pandemic, I was in Shanghai visiting my family when the first news reports began circulating — something about a new pneumonia, a city in lockdown. Within days, my family and I had boarded a flight to India, seeking temporary refuge. Three days before our flight back, India closed its borders. Airports emptied. Around the world, our lives shrank to the size of our homes. For millions around the world, it meant grieving in isolation, watching suffering multiply. It meant exposure to the deep inequities of our world, where access to…
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Indian Student Federation’s Diwali brings students and families together
November 11, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer On October 10, SFU’s Indian Student Federation (ISF) hosted a Diwali celebration at Crown Palace Banquet Hall in Surrey. The event, held in collaboration with the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS), featured live dance performances,…
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Latin music is integral to our playlists
November 11, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer I was first introduced to Latin music in grade nine, when I began studying Spanish. Somewhere between the syncopated percussion, rhythmic guitar strums, and magnetic vocals, I fell in love with the music. Around that…
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SFYou: Sarah Law
November 11, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer A recent SFU graduate with a master’s of arts in sociology, Sarah Law currently works as the director of community engagement of the feminist science and technology lab Doing STS. She is also an organizing…
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Remembering Kulbir Kaila
November 10, 2025Interview and translations by: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer Written by: Petra Chase, Features Editor Kulbir Kaila worked at SFU for 17 years. On July 28, she died at the age of 61 while working a cleaning shift on the Burnaby…
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The myth of a “correct” English keeps us policing ourselves
November 10, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer When my family moved out of India a decade ago, I landed in an American school in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was a bizarre reality to comprehend: students with MacBooks connecting to Apple TV projectors in…
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SFU cleaning worker dies during shift, amplifying long-standing calls to improve working conditions
November 10, 2025By: Hannah Fraser, News Editor (writer and interviewer), and Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer (interviewer and translator) Since 2020, Contract Worker Justice (CWJ) @SFU has been leading the push for better working conditions at the university. At the heart of the…
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We are the folk: the 48th Vancouver Folk Music Festival returns to Jericho Beach
July 17, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer From July 18–20, the salt-kissed shores of ʔəy̓alməxʷ / Iy̓ál̓mexw (Jericho Beach Park) will become a living, breathing experiment in togetherness — a place where folk music exists not merely as a genre but as…
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Despair and devotion: a review of Fairy Creek
July 15, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer The year is 2025, and the world is in chaos: marked by economic instability, growing authoritarianism, ecological collapse, and an ongoing global erosion of human rights. In this moment, Fairy Creek arrives not just as…
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SFPIRG’s Organizer School builds grassroots power through political education
July 14, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG) is currently hosting Organizer School, a 10-week political education program that focuses “on the theory and practice of political organizing and mass movement building.” The program takes place…
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