2 September 30, 2013 · Volume 145, Issue 5FIRST PEEK

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C A N A D I A NCOMMUNITYNEWSPAPERAWARD 2013

September 2013 may have marked a shift in student life at SFU with its Fall Kickoff Con-cert, but our university still fails to come to terms with the pros-pect of alcohol consumption at pivotal on-campus events.

On the surface, it seemed as though SFU was the host of something vaguely resembling a typical university event — a concert with a huge turnout and a sound system overcom-pensating for lost times. I didn’t know about the concert until my friend phoned me up, and I was really excited for a mo-ment, until learning it was a dry event. Why should a concert at a university be dry?

BC maintains that 19 is an appropriate age for individuals to consume alcohol responsibly and legally. The provincial gov-ernment bans the consumption of alcohol in public places (e.g. in parks and on streets) unless there is an event such as a fes-tival, whereby businesses with a liquor licence can serve alcohol.

Liquor laws stipulate that minors are not permitted to enter bars or clubs, and are not permitted to purchase alcohol from any institution — private or public. Therefore, with all this considered, alcohol could very well have been served at the concert.

Legislation at SFU dictates that liquor licences can be ob-tained as a “Special Occasion Licence.” Matt Zo and the wel-coming of fall semester and to “da uNi lyfe” sound like one such special occasion. Based on this legislation, there is abso-lutely no reason that the con-sumption of alcohol by legal adults during the concert could not have been planned for.

By requiring a Special Oc-casion License for all events with alcohol, responsibil-ity is ensured because the re-quest needs to be processed by a liquor store first and by the RCMP thereafter. With all these steps clearly laid out, I do not understand why the concert was a dry event.

Even though minors were present at the event, measures could have been taken to acco-modate all age groups if alcohol were to be served. Wristbands could have ensured minors weren’t served, so steps could have easily been taken to make a minor’s presence known to security. This is the case at any other concert involving alco-hol, and can easily happen at SFU as well.

It’s exactly this absence of regular formative social activ-ity in SFU’s campus life that creates such a lack of post-secondary social atmosphere.

Moreover, it plays a large role in why many students never think of committing more time to the institution, joining clubs and unions, or even consider living on residence.

SFU’s “no fun” approach to on-campus social activity can also affect how students carry themselves. There will always be a feeling that they have not reached a higher level of re-sponsibility by virtue of SFU’s strictly controlled social envi-ronment; perhaps they will ul-timately resent the institution itself. Many of us already resent the strict policies — we bicker about it under our breath and shift uncomfortably when our UBC friends tell us about their pep rallies and beer garden BBQs.

Students would feel signifi-cantly more attached to the university if SFU catered to more than just academic obli-gations. Students would begin to develop a meaningful and more personal attachment to the institution if it allowed them the freedom to make their own choices, and the trust to make the right decisions.

Maybe this is too much to ask, but I can guarantee that when alcohol is placed before a mature, responsible student, like those found at SFU, no ill-effects would result. This in-cludes large-scale concerts like the one we just had.

So the next time SFU plans to throw a concert, it better make sure to stock up its liquor cabinet, because I can assure you a thousand newly-legal stu-dents will make sure to plan ac-cordingly if SFU doesn’t.

3FIRST PEEK September 30, 2013

4 news editor Alison Roach associate news editor Leah Bjornsonemail / phone news@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560NEWS September 30, 2013

For the first time in history, SFU students will compete in the For-mula Society of Automotive En-gineers West competition — an event organized by the engineer-ing association, SAE International.

The SFU Formula club is tak-ing part in the annual student race-car design competition, which includes competitors from approximately 200 univer-sities across North America, in-cluding UBC, UVic and the Uni-versity of Alberta.

The competition requires students to build a Formula One inspired car, which includes fea-tures such as four wheels and an open-wheel design, a small engine equivalent to that of a street bike, and an air-intake

flowing through a 20 mm re-strictor. These requirements limit the vehicle’s power, allow-ing students to focus on making it as light as possible.

“SFU didn’t have any big, com-petitive projects for engineers to take part of,” says George Ioan-nou, a member of the group. “We decided we could get it started so we could get students involved in something that’s more competi-tive, and not just for fun.”

The most prominent advan-tage of the club’s car is its alumi-num chassis, says Ioannou: “Ev-eryone else uses steel, so that will give us a little bit of an edge on weight.”

The team is composed of two four-person groups: one

responsible for electronics and control, made up of students Ioannou, Spencer Steele, Batu-han Atalay, and Richard Doug-las; and one for design and build, including Gustav Louw, Tyler Docherty, Michael Brini, and Colin MacDonald.

Most teams in the SAE com-petition are comprised of 20 to 30 students, according to Ioan-nou, and have about a year to work on the project; SFU’s team, however, is much smaller and only has eight months.

“We wanted to do this as a club when we first started,” ex-plains Ioannou, “but people were hard to come by.” The car initially started as a capsule project for fourth-year engi-neering students, but is evolving to a club as more people begin to take interest in it, he said.

Being a first-time car, Ioan-nou said the group isn’t aim-ing to win the competition just yet. “We want to up the expo-sure, so people can know that we’re around and we’re here to compete,” he said. Ioannou

believes this will bring the group more members, sponsors and funds, giving them more lee-way to make everything “more customizable.”

To become a true contender in the future, the club is vying for accessible space for stu-dents. Steele’s family shop in Maple Ridge currently holds the vehicle, but it is a long distance from the Surrey-based engineer-ing program.

The group recently pro-posed using the former building for the Shell gas station on the Burnaby campus, which is cur-rently being used as a studio for wood-carver Jackie Timothy and as a storage area for totem poles from Nahino Park.

According to Steele, the team has sent a proposal to SFU with the hopes of sharing this space with Timothy, SFU’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Club, and other student clubs with projects that are in need of space on campus.

Steele says that the Formula Club is asking for the space, at least temporarily as the building of the Student Union Building may inter-rupt their plans to use it, however, even if the Treehouse location is chosen for the new SUB project, he estimates the group would still have “a couple years” to use the area.

“We want to bring all these stu-dents together in one place,” says Steele. “We could have as many as four cars at any given time being built in a shop, and perhaps over a hundred students from different faculties being involved.”

The group’s proposal for the space is currently being analyzed by John Driver, SFU’s VP Academic and Provost, says Steele. In the mean-time, the Formula Club will con-tinue to work on their project and give it their best at the competition next June.

5NEWS September 30, 2013

On Sunday, Sept. 22, thousands of Vancouverites braved heavy rain to take part in the Walk for Rec-onciliation, the final event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commit-tee’s (TRC) week-long gathering in the city. The TRC’s mission is to facilitate and provide healing for First Nations peoples affected by the sad history of Canada’s resi-dential school system.

During the TRC’s time in Van-couver, hearings were held where stories from former students of res-idential schools and their families were shared and recorded as evi-dence. The week culminated in the Walk for Reconciliation, which fea-tured Dr. Bernice King, daughter of famous activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as the keynote speaker.

King spent the weekend in the province, spending some time on Vancouver Island on Saturday with Chief Robert Joseph of the Gwawaneuk First Nation and his daughter, Karen Joseph, Executive Director of Reconciliation Canada. At the walk, King spoke about the importance of not giving up on the healing process.

“My father said something very powerful about progress. He said, human progress is neither au-tomatic, nor inevitable,” she said from a stage. “Even a superficial look at history reveals that no so-cial advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle.”

King’s words, which came only a month after the 50th anniver-sary of her father’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, kicked off the four-kilometre walk that saw an estimated 70,000 people walking through downtown Vancouver, including approximately 200-300 SFU community members.

King has, no doubt, inher-ited the skill of powerful oratory from her father. “This is no time for apathy or complacency,” she said. “This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”

King continued, “This requires leadership action on all fronts in

Canada, from political and gov-ernment, corporate, faith, edu-cational and community leader-ship, because, as I said, we are all in this together. We are tied in an inescapable network of mutu-ality, caught in a single garment of destiny and what affects one person here in Canada, no matter their background, directly affects all indirectly.”

The TRC is a fact-finding com-mission that was set up between the federal government, victims of residential schools, and various

churches that operated the schools themselves. Canada’s residential schools were notoriously abusive, forcibly separating many First Na-tions from their families, native languages, and culture.

Dr. George Nicholas, an SFU professor who taught on a reserve near Kamloops and who spoke at the TRC hearings in 2011, recounts it as a powerful experience.

“It was a very humbling expe-rience when I spoke at the meet-ing, filled with 400 to 500 people at least. And it was an opportunity for me to at least start giving back so much of what I had learned from [the people], and which have really shaped my feelings of heritage.”

Though he believes the TRC is a valuable resource in the jour-ney for reconciliation, Nicholas does have some reservations about the permanence of the

effects elicited by events such as the hearings or the Walk.

“For me, reconciliation is not just saying you’re sorry, it’s doing something about it. And it really bothers me at one level that while the idea of reconciliation is great, and it makes people more aware of and sensitive to these issues, ul-timately . . . it seems to be a pass-ing thing,” said Nicholas. “You par-ticipate in the walk, you listen to lecture, you visit communities, and

you benefit from that, but then a week or a month or a year later, not much has really changed.”

The most important role Nich-olas sees the TRC playing in rec-onciliation is that of a hub of lis-tening, a place for those survivors and their families to come forward and connect with government, forcing government to keep the promises and commitments they have made to the communities and individuals who suffered due to residential schools.

“They’re the thorn in the side,” said Nicholas, “[The TRC] is pro-viding a voice to individuals who are not being heard . . . [who] can turn to the TRC as being their spokesperson. And by continuing to prod and poke at the govern-ment and its various organiza-tions, it gets the message across that [they’re] not going away.”

6 NEWS September 30, 2013

Board voted to send a letter to the Ministry of Advanced Education requesting special consideration for the funding of the $65 million Build SFU project. The project needs to be financed in order to be completed on time, and the SFSS currently doesn’t have the capital to secure funding. In order to receive a lower in-terest loan, the university has agreed to back Build SFU by providing an income guaran-tee, but are unable to hold that much debt on their books as a government reporting entity.

The letter, which has been vetted by university admin-istration and is to be sent out on Monday, requests that the Ministry considers support-ing SFU’s request to income guarantee the Build SFU loan. The object of the effort is to ensure that the student-financed project, which will climb to a cap of $90 levees per semester, incurs as little interest as possible.

TransLink is currently reviewing its policy on public arts after the recent outcry drawn from the an-nouncement that $615,000 is to be spent on three public art installa-tions at Skytrain stations. Trans-Link approved the installation of pieces at Main Street-Science World, Metrotown, and Commer-cial-Broadway stations, as part of an upgrade to the Expo Line.

Nancy Olewiler, TransLink board of directors chair, defended the practice of paying for art at different points of the transit sys-tem, but said that the method of selecting pieces and the amounts spent are to be reviewed, accord-ing to Burnaby Newsleader.

Gordon Price, a former mem-ber of Vancouver City Council and the current director of SFU’s City Program also defended the concept of public art pieces at transit stops, saying, “For other cities like Vienna or Helsinki that are on the list of most livable cities [in the world], these ques-tions wouldn’t even come up.”

He continued, “If the city didn’t consider high architec-tural design or pubic arts, the public probably would be, if not outraged, [saying] ‘What are you thinking?’”

For Price, who also served on TransLink’s board of directors in 1999, the issue is one of quality of life. “Infrastructure shouldn’t just be nuts and bolts,” he stated, “It should be about, how can we make city life better? What can we do to add to the quality of life, not the quantity of life, if everything is measured in dollars or even in cents?”

Price also pointed to the art pieces inside YVR airport, such as “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, The Jade Canoe,” that give the airport its reputation for award-winning architecture and art collections.

“What we are saying to people is if you come by plane, you are someone we have enough [money] for and we’re going to make our air-port an attractive place, but once you’re on transit, that’s for poor people,” stated Price. “We don’t want to say that. That’s why we have public art policies.”

Price believes that contri-butions should be put in from both the public and the private sector towards projects such as this, and pointed to the provin-cial government’s willingness to spend large sums of money on art galleries and projects around the province.

Bryan Kinney, an SFU crimi-nology professor, pointed to the positive emotions that transit users could experience from the art installations, as a prod-uct of our evolution.

“From running around on the grass for thousands of years . . . we evolved to a point that we ap-preciate the ability to see open spaces as a defence mechanism and as a hunting advantage,” Kin-ney said. “People tend to feel bet-ter when they are in open spaces

. . . Artwork has a similar effect. When there is artwork, I would feel it is a pretty safe area.”

The hefty $615,000 price tag is the main reason why people object to the project. Thesea re funds which critics say could be used for a practical transit proj-ect, such as adding another bus route or lowering transit ticket prices, which have steadily in-creased over the last few years.

TransLink has recently an-nounced the cancellation of

several fare discount programs, such as FareSaver tickets and the Employee Pass Program, to come into effect in 2014. Spokesman Bob Paddon said the programs were found to be unfair during an internal review, according to CTV News.

For Price, the question boils down to value. “The real ques-tion is, how do you value your public transit? Does it have dignity, respect, or is it valued the same way as we value other things?” he posited.

“Think about the amount of money government spends on an election campaign,” said Kin-ney, “Millions of dollars to get ad spaces to tell us one group is better than the other. What good does that do? But that’s the cost of modern society.”

Board passed a motion to fa-cilitate the Build SFU bursaries, which is the option for students with high financial need to receive their levee fees towards the project back, through SFU Financial Aid and Awards. The office processes applications and gives out awards for schol-arships and bursaries through the SFU Student Information System.

By going through the Fi-nancial Aid and Awards system currently in place, Build SFU will be able to put the refund money for students who are in financial distress into an ac-count with Student Services to dispense, of which the remain-der can then be rolled over from year to year. The Build SFU levy will go into effect Jan. 2014, and will start at $10 per semester. The cap for the Build SFU bursary is set at three per cent of the project’s budget, which works out to $2 million over the lifetime of the project, though board indicated that percentage will be discussed in the future.

7NEWS September 30, 2013

On the morning of Sept. 24, students, faculty, friends, and family gathered across all three SFU campuses to participate in the country-wide phenomenon that is Terry’s Cause on Campus. Waving banners, cheering, and flaunting school spirit, runners and walkers alike joined to-gether in a 5km trek across cam-pus to raise money for the Terry Fox Foundation.

This year, SFU raised $13,441, with over 34 teams ranging across faculties and campuses. Teams went all out; some ran for fun, some for school pride, and others for loved ones and coworkers who had won or lost the battle with cancer.

One such team was the Ge-ography Climatologists, who ran in memory of Owen Hertzman, an SFU co-worker who passed just three weeks ago. Each team-mate carried an image of his face while they ran, and held it high as they crossed the finish line.

During the opening ceremo-nies of the run, Christine Tull-och, who is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English

at SFU, received a Gold Medal Award for courage in the face of adversity. Participants watched as Tulloch was given three terms’ free tuition at SFU, a $1,000 cash prize, a gold medal, and a plaque in honour of all that she has done for youth and young adults facing the war against cancer, while winning her own fight against leukemia.

Following routine blood test-ing, Tulloch tested positive for leukemia at age 19. She under-went several medical proce-dures including bone marrow biopsies, blood transfusions, and chemotherapy. Tulloch went into remission one month later, but was administered two more years of chemotherapy to ensure the cancer would not return.

Tulloch still deals with the side effects of her cancer treat-ment, suffering from chronic migraines, high blood pressure,

a weakened heart and increased risk of other cancers.

Tulloch finished treatments in August of 2009, and is now on her fourth year of univer-sity and the path to graduate. Tulloch has volunteered for or-ganizations such as Balding for Dollars, SFU Club for the Cure, and Camp Goodtimes, and has personally earned over $40,000 for the cause.

After school, Tulloch plans to major in clinical counseling, and become a counsellor for other cancer survivors. Diag-nosed at similar stages in their lives, Tulloch said, “Like Terry, I believe that a world free from cancer is possible, and I prom-ise to continue to fight for this dream, just as my hero Terry Fox did, until this dream is a real-ity.”

Since Terry Fox’s monumen-tal Marathon of Hope began in 1980, over $600 million has been raised in his name. In 1999 Terry was voted “Canada’s Greatest Hero” and in 2004, he claimed “Canada’s Second Greatest Hero of all time.”

Terry’s Cause on Campus, which began in fall of 2012, has spread across Canadian univer-sities, and colleges from SFU to the Memorial University of Newfoundland. During this event, students from all over work together to make a differ-ence in the lives of cancer pa-tients at home and abroad.

8 NEWS September 30, 2013

A Canadian research team led by an SFU professor has launched the world’s first interactive web-site, which aims to help Cana-dians understand how critical environmental influences are on their health.

The Canadian Environmen-tal Health Atlas’ main purpose is “to illustrate the myriad of ways the environment affects our health” via not only its physical characteristics — air pollution, industrial plants, or tobacco smoke — but also its social, cultural, and economic ones. Atlas does so by exposing the user to case studies that in-corporate maps, graphics, vid-eos, and infographics.

The lead scientist for the project, SFU Health Sciences Professor Bruce Lanphear, ex-plains how a major problem in today’s understanding of dis-eases is that everything is treat-ment oriented — current studies seek to cure disease and reduce symptoms, rather than focusing on prevention. Lanphear be-lieves the focus needs to shift to altering the environmental influences that the public is exposed to, as these are what trigger disease (in combination with genes).

“To help people understand if we want to prevent the chronic diseases that plague us, we have to understand and address the environmental influences that we’re surrounded by,” said Lan-phear. “It’s not enough to create drugs or new medical technolo-gies. We’ve got to understand how to deal with environmental hazards that we’re all exposed to on a regular basis.”

The idea for a health atlas originated in 2008, when Lan-phear and several other experts were asked to serve on a panel

that discussed linking health and the environment for Health Canada and Statistics Canada. What came out of the conver-sation was the idea to create a database that was accessible to students and the educated public, so that experts and re-searchers could try to impact public discourse.

Lanphear feels that this site is distinguished from similar

databases in three ways: it invites experts to share their research through case studies; it incorpo-rates interactive graphics; and it operates with objective data.

Despite having launched the site, Lanphear feels the team still has a long way to go. “We’ve re-ally just scratched the surface,” explained Lanphear. “If we’re going to do this right, we’ve eas-ily got another five years.”

“We’ve put up 12 different topics and we hope to put up one or two topics for the next eight months,” said Lanphear. “Be-yond that we’re going to continue to find funding, and we’d really like to expand it from a Canadian environmental health atlas to a world atlas, because so many of the studies and so much of the information is deeply relevant to other parts of the world.”

9NEWS September 30, 2013

WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE IN THE WORLD?

As far as Vice President Research Mario Pinto is concerned, “So-cial sciences and humanities rock at SFU.” The university re-cently received a total of $3.5 million in federal grants for both research areas.

In the two years since the launch of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC’s) Insight and Partner-ship grants, SFU has consistently ranked above the national average in almost every category in terms of application success. This year, 34 per cent of SFU applications were successful, compared with 21 per cent across Canada.

Pinto attributed this to the skills of several grant facilitators on board, positions which were created eight years ago as part of a strategic plan to increase SFU’s research prestige.

The $3.5 million will be distrib-uted to 28 research projects who

applied under the Insight and In-sight Development categories. Grants are given to a project over the span of between three and five years. The research to be under-taken spans the gamut of the soft science disciplines, from language and learning in children, to per-suasion in online environments, to the creation of an archive fo-cused on lesbian knowledge.

Kirsten McAllister, who will be receiving about $85,000 over a pe-riod of three years, said that her funding included the salaries of the three graduate students on her team. McAllister is researching the intersection of human rights viola-tions between Asian countries, such as during times of war, in order to broaden the Asian-Canadian per-spective on these topics.

Maureen Hoskyn received the largest grant, at just under $500,000,

for her research on the develop-mental differences in cognitive functions in children who speak more than one language.

Total funding levels from the SSHRC, which includes types of grants other than the Insight cat-egories, has remained steady over the last five years. In contrast, the natural and health sciences at SFU have seen total funding from their respective federal grant institutions steadily increase.

Earlier this year, the SSHRC also awarded SFU approximately $5.4 million in Partnership grants, which are given to joint research ventures between universities or with another institution. Two proj-ects received just under $2.5 mil-lion each, one looking at the role of the arts in social change, and the other, a seven-year effort at preserving Aboriginal culture and language. Two more projects re-ceived about $200,000 each.

SFU’s reputation has seen marked advancement in the last decade, jumping from 28th to 12th place on the QS World Rank-ings list for Canadian universities. In Times Higher Education 2013 rankings for universities under 50 years old, the university came in second in Canada and 30th in the world. Sixty per cent of both lists’ criteria are based on research and research influence.

10 opinions editor Tara Nykyforiakemail / phone opinions@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560September 30, 2013OPINIONS

For all the things PEI fails to ac-complish, the Maritimes’ little brother does do one thing right — student loans. Since October 1, 2012, all student loans in the province have been given with a zero per cent interest rate, as op-posed to the system most often adopted which sees interest rates beginning to accumulate soon after a student graduates.

BC — and all of Canada — would greatly benefit from implementing this system as a means to alleviate the ever-in-creasing amount of student debt.

However, this change to BC student loans requires students to face the reality that the gov-ernment isn’t going to step in first; the government will not start using taxpayers’ dollars to cover a greater portion of tu-ition costs. Rather, tuition will continue to outcompete infla-tion in a horrible race result-ing in more students having not enough money and being forced to turn to the dreaded student loan system.

As it stands in BC, this gen-erally much needed financial assistance comes largely free of charge until the day a student trades in the warm bed of aca-demia for a colder-by-compar-ison shower of reality. At this point, the former undergradu-ate is left with a veritable tick-ing time-bomb of financial re-sponsibility. In BC, the average student loan upon graduation is approximately $35,000 — which is well above the national average of $27,000.

It does not have to be this way, nor should it. Unlike the majority of other loans, student loans are taken out with the ex-pectation that the recipient will create a positive externality for our society. Therefore, student loans should not be subject to the same restrictions of a nor-mal loan.

Despite arguments to the contrary about certain degree programs, those taking out stu-dent loans are doing so with the intention of joining the skilled

workforce. As such, the govern-ment should treat these loans as an investment in the future of our economy.

Moreover, a person tak-ing out a student loan is in the process of increasing his or her earning potential. Payscale Canada reports the median sal-ary of a person with a Bache-lor’s Degree and less than one year of experience in their field at just above $40,000. How-ever, once those with degrees enter the five to nine year mark, their median salary is around 1.5 times higher at approxi-mately $60,000. As a result, the

risk that they will default on the loan would be significantly lower if the burden of incurred interest did not exist.

If creditors need assurance about repayment once a stu-dent graduates, they can turn to another island’s solution as further evidence against stu-dent loan interest. Australia — along with its superior vot-ing system — simply mandates that citizens pay off their gov-ernment-issued student loan as a percentage of their income once their annual earnings rise above $40,000.

This removes the necessity of interest, and further reduces the risk associated with student financial aid. Australia’s website on education directly states that “the government is not trying to make profits off of your loan as a bank would.” Why would we as BC students not want the same

respect and esteem for our edu-cational pursuits?

A low risk, high reward loan from the government to a stu-dent should come with a zero per cent interest rate because of the tremendously beneficial nature of the investment. Being that society as a whole gener-ally benefits from an increase in the skilled workforce, and that tuition costs are not likely to lower or stagnate any time soon, it’s only logical that the government ceases to charge interest on student loans.

11OPINIONS September 30, 2013

Wolfville (CUP) — Every sum-mer, many students find their way around the world on unique volunteer opportunities in de-veloping countries. From Ghana to Ecuador to India, Student Volunteer Abroad Programs (SVAPs) aim to bring develop-ment to impoverished countries through volunteering and stu-dent leadership. We commend our peers for their hard work in these faraway countries, and assume that these programs present valuable and successful methods by which we bring aid to desperate communities.

But these programs, how-ever noble in their intent, are merely a new method of the imposition of Western values

of development and progress through programs that offer bet-ter opportunities to the individ-uals volunteering abroad than they do for those they are sup-posed to be helping.

SVAPs present a new mani-festation of the “white man’s burden.” We send our students across the world like the mis-sionaries of old, to “dirty” im-poverished places that lack those holy institutions of de-mocracy and development.

These are institutions that we have been raised to idealize, much the same as the missionar-ies of old idealized Christian values. Like those missionaries, we build schools and aim to improve the communities by imparting our own

values and knowledge, which we promise to be of great global value.

These SVAPs are not nec-essarily motivated by the sup-posed altruism we imagine — in fact, recent research actually suggests the opposite. In Re-becca Tiessen’s 2012 study on the motivations of Canadian students who volunteer abroad, “personal growth was the moti-vation most often indicated as very important,” as indicated by 55 out of the 68 participants in her sample.

They also highlighted the “luck” they associated with being born in Canada and the developed world. As Tiessen herself notes, this suggests that these Canadian student volun-teers see the developing world as “unlucky” — they assume that volunteering is a good way to reverse the fortunes of the unlucky, paying little regard to the global system they perpetu-ate and benefit from, which constitutes the real foundations of the “unluckiness” of the de-veloping world.

However, these neo-colonial endeavors are not merely perpetu-ated by students, but are embod-ied by foreign aid institutions at a higher level. The Canadian Inter-national Development Agency (CIDA) is a government organiza-tion that funds foreign develop-ment programs. A large portion of CIDA’s funds are actually directed towards various forms of SVAPs.

This means that much of our foreign development money is being spent on sending Canadian students abroad for their own personal growth while keeping them safe and secure amongst the dangerous unlucky. So once again, these programs are remi-niscent of the state-funded mis-sionaries sent to bring Chris-tianity to the “heathen masses” scattered around the globe.

This is not to condemn those students who do volunteer abroad or to suggest that the work they do is without any benefit whatsoever to the communities they aim to help. What is important, though, is to note our own selfish attitudes underlying some of the noblest looking programs we fund.

Moreover, we should not sim-ply abandon these enterprises and leave the developing world alone altogether. As the famous post-colonialist author Aimé Césaire said, “for civilizations, exchange is oxygen.” The important question is whether the way that we exchange knowledge and goods with other nations is the most equitable and fair way of interaction and trade.

To this end, the answer is sim-ply no. Whether we like it or not, we help to maintain a global system which perpetuates increasing dis-parities of power and wealth. Even when we aim to alleviate the symp-toms of this systemic inequality, our efforts amount to little more than self-beneficial endeavors that perpetuate neo-colonial ideals of development.

12 OPINIONS September 30, 2013

I love live music. I love when sound waves completely fill a space, when I can feel the vibra-tions in my chest, when I can look up and watch a performance — an artist in the zone, transcend-ing. I love the community feeling, the thrill when one feels con-nected. I love discovering some-thing new, something I’ve never heard: a sound reminding me that innovation isn’t dead. And I fuck-ing love to dance.

When I arrived in Vancou-ver, I was excited to check out the music scene. It’s the Pacific Northwest, after all, and I know there’s great music here. I started looking for bars and clubs with a good live music setup. I know Vancouver has larger venues — the Commodore, Rogers Arena, BC Place, etc. — where bigger acts can play, but I was (and still am) looking for a spot featur-ing local artists that successfully marries music and community.

The Electric Owl is a good smallish concert spot, but that’s really all it is. The Libra Room on the Drive attracts some pretty awesome jazz, but the band is relegated to a corner sur-rounded by tables. It’s a sit-down spot, and nothing more.

One night, after some searching on Yelp, I wound up at The Railway Club. It’s a cool little place, cramped in an attic sort of way, and has some le-gitimate character. I love the toy train looping around the track on the ceiling, the dim red light-ing, and somewhat dingy car-peting. The band performing

that night was what I would call a jam band: a cute, yet quirky girl singer jumping, bounding, and body-rolling propelled by the sounds emanating from her bandmates. They were fun, if not technically perfect; it was impossible not to move, and I found myself grinning as I watched sweat and spit flying.

This is the first bar I’ve been to in Vancouver where a stranger said hello to me (excluding drunken come-ons). We got to talking, and I asked him where he went to hear local stuff. He re-sponded with a non-answer: the Railway Club sometimes, but he said that mostly the good local stuff is underground.

I’m gonna be frank: I think the term “underground” is bullshit. An underground music scene means an exclusive scene, one that’s hidden from the masses. I understand the ro-mance of such an existence for the musician and their “true” fans — only seeing bands that know and appreciate you — but it leaves the rest of us out in the cold. It also means the music can only go so far, and will only ever reach a set number of ears. It’s impossible for a bring-people-together music scene to thrive when the majority of the good stuff is kept out of reach.

There’s a spot called Kingston Mines in the States that’s open until 4:00 a.m. every day. It’s got two stages, and the funk, blues, and Motown are absolutely in-credible. You’ll find old biker dudes, aged trophy wives, and enthusiastic twentysomethings — among others — bopping along to the jams, populating the dance

We’re all familiar with the tales of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Awesome guys, amirite? Be-lieve it or not, there’s a new age crew in action, and they’re paying it forward via expired parking meters. A new group of “Robin Hooders” in Keene, New Hampshire is putting coins in other people’s parking

meters before the time on them runs out.

Robin Hood and his Merry Men provide a note under the windshield of each lucky recipi-ent. Their notes read: “Your meter expired; however, we saved you from the king’s tariffs.” I don’t know about you, but I would love to be living in Keene, New Hamp-shire right about the time on my parking meter reads 0:0.

As it turns out, the city of Keene isn’t too happy with the new Robin Hood and his Merry Men and is suing them for their actions. The city is asking the court to prevent the group from entering within 50 feet of parking enforcement agents, since they are preventing the city from writing up tickets. Last time I checked, though, kindness in the form of small

change isn’t illegal or shunned by anyone.

Moreover, I can guarantee that those fortunate enough to have been on the receiving end of the group’s actions are grateful not to have parking tickets. The Robin Hooders defend themselves by saying the only reason the city is so upset is because they’re los-ing money. This should be a case closed, in my books.

floor, gyrating their hips, and leaning against the bar convers-ing. The tiny kitchen in the back cranks out towers of onion rings until 3:00 a.m. daily. It’s a com-pletely unselfconscious spot, and it’s fucking magic.

I have no desire to dwell on the past. Kingston Mines is merely an example of what I think is lack-ing in Vancouver — a place where artists can share their music with anyone and everyone. My plea to the Vancouver music community is to let outsiders in. Venues need to know that there are plenty of music lovers out there, and that if you foster a music scene, people will come. And they’ll spend.

13OPINIONS September 30, 2013

It was late at night when an old friend from my hometown started talking to me through chat. She lives in the Philip-pines and I am in Vancouver. At some point in our conver-sation, I started typing slowly, struggling to figure out what I was trying to say and how to say it in my mother tongue. Then an alarming realization hit me — I’m starting to forget my na-tive language.

This encounter got me think-ing how much my native lan-guage has slipped away from

me in my eight years in Canada. Philippines is my motherland, I am Filipino, and our language is called Tagalog.

I grew up in a nation heavily influenced by Western culture, meaning that the English lan-guage was never foreign to me at all; so even though English is our second language, Tagalog is still the main language spoken around the country.

At home, with my family, I speak my native tongue but Eng-lish when interacting with people outside — the means by which one has a functional life as an im-migrant in a city like Vancouver.

Though my situation can be considered a form of North American assimilation, I don’t want to claim that. Vancouver is a melting pot of diverse cultures, and to isolate the English lan-guage as a form of assimilation would be unjust.

One of the first things I learned in high school social studies when arriving in Vancou-ver was the term “assimilation.” It is defined as the amalgamation of a minority group to the domi-nant society or culture.

The term stuck with my immi-grant self during that time. I was de-termined that I wouldn’t let myself be assimilated by North American culture; I would not willingly give up my Filipino identity upon mov-ing here, and I think that any immi-grant would protest against being purposely assimilated or giving up their identity entirely.

Language is said to be a huge identity marker, and once

that is lost, many question one’s capability of claiming to be part of such identity. However, I be-lieve that losing the ability to speak one’s native language, does not take away the ability to belong to such culture. There are many factors at play when defining an identity, such as race and tradition, language is just one of them.

Many forget their native lan-guage after years of living in a for-eign country, but remain deeply attached to their roots and culture in other ways. Language is just one of the ways in which individuals can express their heritage.

The only problem surround-ing the issue of losing or not knowing your native language is the shame of forgetting it and the guilt for not being able to pre-serve it. It may seem like a be-trayal to your own culture, but it all boils down to the individual’s will of retaining his or her na-tive language. As long as the in-dividual recognizes the problem, it can be resolved in many ways.

I am now a Canadian citi-zen on paper, but I am also still Filipino because of my roots. Whenever someone inquires about my identity, I proudly identify myself as Filipino while delivering my response in Eng-lish. Language is an important identity marker, but we have to take into account that it is also just a medium for practicality, and tool that can help when trying to have an efficient con-versation in the new country you live in.

Dear editor,

Re: The Peak and advertising

Earlier this month, Leah Bjornson wrote an article titled “Bright ideas for shifting your body clock” — an article discussing one individual’s sleep-related work.

What bothered me about this article is that it directs readers to a service and even provided the website of the service. My issue stems from my experience of not being permitted to include web addresses of activist groups — such as No One Is Illegal — in my articles written for The Peak. What message does this convey of what our student newspaper stands for?

The organization I just referred to helps provide resources to combat racist immigration policies. They are an organization that represents the other side of “the story” — that is the side of immigrants who are imprisoned, who will

never have their own voice heard in the media, and who are stripped of their rights. However, the newspaper would privilege the voices of paying advertisers over a manifestation of their own voice.

I’m not saying newspapers don’t need money to operate, and that accepting money for publishing advertisements doesn’t help make this possible; but I expect a university publication to acknowledge that to refuse to “advertise” the website of an activist organization while advertising services and products either in their articles or in ads themselves presents not just a contradiction, but a political choice.

Now to be fair, I have written and read many articles in The Peak advocating support for one cause or another. In that sense, The Peak is “political.” It still makes no sense, though, that the paper should shirk away from “advertising” a political cause

while publishing the website of a service and also publishing actual advertisements.

Newspapers often make decisions like this to remain “objective.” There is a point, however, when one must stop being “objective” and start being fair; that the paper spreads the word of a service in this way, and not a cause working toward the goal of making real people’s lives better, is evidence of a severe perversion of the paper’s concept of its responsibility to the public.

I’m not saying The Peak has somehow perpetrated this in a conscious way, or that the editors individually lack a sense of responsibility; I would simply like to see the editors prepared to ask themselves — and others — the hard question of what message they are sending, and to aspire to be even better journalists than they already are.

Those of us saying objectivity is an important value must also agree that news and opinions

media — some would say especially opinions media — play an important role in our democracy. Furthermore, it’s the news’ responsibility not just to convey the news, but to keep those who could potentially abuse their power in check.

To the ends of resolving this contradiction, I recommend that the editorial board of The Peak take the necessary steps to evaluate its political responsibility, and to put into place explicit, accessible guidelines as to what this responsibility is or is not. Does this paper want to be respected for entertainment value — or for daring to make a statement every now and then?

Sincerely,

Joseph LeivdalSFU student

1414 features editor Max Hillemail / phone features@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560FEATURES September 30, 2013

So begins the tagline for Michael Hings-ton’s debut novel The Dilettantes, the latest take on the campus novel which takes place inside the offices of SFU’s very own student newspaper. Hingston, a freelance journalist and weekly columnist for The Edmonton Journal, is a former Peak editor himself, and remembers his days at the paper with equal parts fondness and embar-rassment. “I’m not able to distinguish my time at The Peak from my time at university,” he recalls. “It was really linked for me.”

The novel, which has received glow-ing reviews from such publications as Quill and Quire and The Winnipeg Re-view, centers around Alex and Tracy, two of The Peak’s editors who are forced to contend with a pesky daily, Metro, stealing their already dwindling readership. Hingston wrote the novel partly as a tribute to his experiences at the paper.

“I wanted to come up with some way to crystallise that experience, so I wouldn’t just forget it, because I knew it was a unique time in my life,” he says.

“Pretty late into my degree, a couple of months from graduating, I had this realization that I’d subliminally been gathering this material, living out this really strong story.” He also cites the university as being central to the book’s appeal. “I think the campus and the culture at SFU is really interesting, and I find it more interesting the further I get away from it.”

Having graduated in 2008 with a degree in English Literature, Hingston began his career in journalism as a free-lance writer for a variety of publications in Edmonton. His work has since ap-peared in The Globe and Mail, National Post and even Vancouver’s own Georgia Straight. The Dilettantes is Hingston’s first foray into the world of fiction, and boasts a confident writing style that con-trasts with his lack of formal experience. “I don’t think I’d ever finished a short story before this novel,” he laughs. “It was really the first thing I tried.” When

I ask him if he has plans to continue writing novels, he responds, “Deciding to take that plunge again feels a little masochistic. But it’s pretty tempting.”

It’s hard to blame him for being hesitant to start again: the publishing process can be unforgiving, especially for a debut novelist. “When the fifti-eth agent says ‘no’ to you, there’s a part of your brain that says, ‘maybe this is nothing,’” he says. Luckily, the stars aligned, and The Dilettantes was picked up by Freehand Books, a publishing company based in Calgary. The novel was released on September 10 of this year, just in time for the fall semester. “Every step of the process has been a miracle . . . I learned stuff as I went and I made it better as I went along, but I really didn’t learn on a basic level what the book was about until the publisher had accepted it.”

Above all, Hingston says persever-ance and a good work ethic are the keys to a successful career in writing. “The people I really respect and glob onto as a writer are not even neces-sarily novelists; it’s more the work ethic that I find that I respond to. It’s people like Louis CK: every year he re-news his act, he forces himself to write something new. There’s something you learn from just finishing, standing back and looking at it, and then just jumping into the next thing.”

However, constant reinvention is central to the writing process: whether you’re working at The Peak or The Ed-monton Journal, you need to be able to maintain a steady flow of ideas and creations in order to make a living. Thankfully, Hingston seems to enjoy it.

“I really find myself just wanting to be constantly producing, and constantly throwing new ideas out there and just seeing what sticks,” he tells me.

Since its release, The Dilettantes has attracted attention from former Peak staff and contributors alike. Anyone who has ever written for our paper will surely recognize more than a few of the book’s references: the Spider-Man notebook, the inanity of covering Clubs Days, the difficulty of spotting our of-fices on the map.

On his blog, Books in the Kitchen, Hingston has photos from his time at The Peak, where he held positions as Opinions Editor, Copy Editor and Arts Editor. “It’s an amazing experience to be given that much freedom,” he says, “to have all of your weird 3:00 a.m. ideas put into a printing press that is gonna make ten thousand copies of this thing that you just thought up.”

Once the interview is done, he asks me how much the office has changed since he worked there. But after speak-ing to him and reading The Dilettantes, I struggle to think that it’s changed much at all.

15FEATURES September 30, 2013

The year was 1980. Fred Brathwaite, an art student at New York’s Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, had just returned to the borough from an art showcase at the Medusa gallery in Rome. Brathwaite — better known as Fab Five Freddy, after the Fabulous Five, the group of graffiti artists to which he belonged — had been involved in a show focused on New York’s thriving community of graf-fiti artists. The museum’s curator, Carlo Bruni, described the movement as “an art so strong, it hurt people.”

Graffiti had only begun to get recog-nition in the art world in the late seven-ties — in the dilapidated New York streets that Freddy made his canvas, his work was seen as vandalism by the moral majority, not to mention the NYPD. As one of hip-hop’s original four elements (along with DJing, emceeing and b-boying), tagging may have been the slowest to gain public approval. New York Mayor John Lindsay began a “war on graffiti” in 1972, focusing money and resources on capturing and ar-resting artists, whom he antagonized as “insecure cowards seeking recognition.”

But by the beginning of the 1980s, the tides had turned. Freddy was rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in the art world: he had befriended Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well members of new wave bands such as Blondie and Talking Heads, from a stint as a camera operator on TV Party, a local public-access cable show. Basquiat had similarly begun his ca-reer as a graffiti artist in New York, under the imprimatur SAMO, which stood for “same old shit.”

His star rapidly rising, Freddy co-cu-rated a show at the Mudd Club in Tribeca.

Called “Beyond Worlds”, the show fea-tured his own art as well as Basquiat’s and that of several other notable figures in the graffiti subculture. It also featured some unusual guest musicians. Freddy invited several of the Bronx’s biggest hip-hop stars to play, including Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation.

The punk rockers who attended the event felt an immediate kinship with the hip-hop performers: both subcultures had found a way to turn the frustration and disillusionment of poverty, prejudice and violence into powerful art. “It was a treat for basically both groups of people, that they were checking out a completely other cultural group,” Freddy said in The Hip-Hop Years, a BBC documentary. “It was like two groups of people at a zoo looking at each other, you know what I’m saying? It was really amazing.”

Ruza “Kool Lady” Blue, a local club owner and entrepreneur, was among those attending the event who were deeply im-pacted by the hip-hop sound. “That was when my mouth dropped and hip-hop re-placed punk for me in terms of main musi-cal interests,” she wrote in an article for Electronic Beats. “In the eighties, there was no hip-hop scene in downtown Manhat-tan. But there were DJs, emcees, b-boys, b-girls, dancers and graf [sic] artists scat-tered all over the place up in the Bronx, so I basically went up there and dragged them all downtown, and organized them.”

Though the hip-hop club that Blue organized began at a tiny hole-in-the-wall reggae club named Negril, the par-ties quickly outgrew the space, and were moved to The Roxy, a popular nightclub in Chelsea. The club’s hip-hop nights were

emceed by Fab Five Freddy, and featured performers such as Bambaataa, Grand-master Flash and the Furious 5, and the Rock Steady Crew, as well as graffiti mu-rals and dance competitions. Some nota-ble guests included future producer Rick Rubin and three young men who’d go on to form a group called the Beastie Boys.

Freddy’s friends Harry and Stein had also done their part to propel hip-hop into the mainstream: Blondie’s 1981 hit single “Rapture” included a rapped final verse, the first to appear in a mainstream pop song. The first lines are a tribute to Freddy and the scene he had shown them: “Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s fly / DJ’s spinning, I said, ‘My, my!’” Hip-hop had found its way into the posh discotheques and dance clubs of downtown Manhattan for the first time.

Meanwhile, hip-hop records had steadily gained popularity since the re-lease of “Rapper’s Delight.” Kurtis Blow’s single “The Breaks” had become the first hip-hop record to go Gold. Blow was a featured performer on Soul Train, a popu-lar music variety show which spotlighted jazz, soul and disco musicians. This was hip-hop’s first notable TV appearance: suburban kids across the country had been exposed to a thriving new art form without ever leaving their living room.

But as the commercial success of “Rapture” faded and 1981 gave way to 1982, many began to think of hip-hop as a passing fad. The genre’s stranglehold on North American culture and radio waves hinged on two groundbreaking singles from two of the Bronx’s foremost talents: Afrika Bambaataa and Grand-master Flash.

Though the hip-hop parties at The Roxy were host to a wide array of talent — including Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and some of the earli-est performances from Run–D.M.C. and Madonna — Afrika Bambaataa stood alone. His skill and creativity overshadowed his competitors, and he was dubbed by partygoers as the “Master of Records,” a title to which he is still sometimes referred.

One of the keys to his suc-cess was his idiosyncratic musical taste. Since the early days of the Zulu Nation, Bambaataa had taken to washing and peeling the labels off of his records, in order to dis-suade copycat DJs from aping his beats. “You can take music from any kind of field like soul, funk, heavy metal, jazz, calypso and reg-gae,” Bambaataa told Davey D in a 1995 interview. “As long as it’s funky and has that heavy beat and groove, you can take any part of it and make it hip-hop.”

Weary of Sugar Hill Records — the foremost label for hip-hop art-ists at the time — Bambaataa signed to Tommy Boy, a relatively obscure indie label run by music journalist Tom Silverman, to record “Planet Rock” with a branch of the Zulu Na-tion called the Soulsonic Force. The single, released in April 1982, was in-fluenced by the electronic music that Bambaataa had been introduced to during his tenure at The Roxy, in-cluding acts such as Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

“That was the record that initi-ated that it wasn’t just an urban thing, it was inclusive,” Silverman said. “That’s when hip-hop became global.” Achieving mainstream success and underground credibility in equal mea-sure, “Planet Rock” was arguably hip-hop’s first crossover hit — and Bam-baataa’s competitors took notice.

Sylvia Robinson, Sugar Hill’s head honcho, enlisted Ed “Duke Bootee” Fletcher to write a single to rival Bambaataa’s. She pitched the track, titled “The Message,” to her most talented group, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five — but they were

hesitant. The song’s socially con-scious lyrics and downtempo groove were unlike any hip-hop records being made at the time.

“We didn’t actually want to do “The Message” because we was used to doing party raps and boasting how good we are and all that,” says Melle Mel. Though the other four members of the Furious Five refused to perform on the track, Mel eventually relented and recorded the song with Duke Bootee. Sugar Hill released the record under the Furious Five moniker any-way; apart from Mel, the group’s only contribution to the single was a spo-ken word skit tagged on to the end of its seven-minute runtime.

The track was a hit: though it didn’t chart as highly as “Planet Rock”, the song’s overt political themes won the group — and hip-hop — unprec-edented critical praise and attention. “Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge / And I’m trying not to lose my head,” was the song’s refrain, a

culmination of a lifetime’s worth of struggle that resonated with many Americans during the Reagan era. Hip-hop had been given a new voice.

“The Message” also served to cement a shift in hip-hop that had begun with “Rapper’s Delight” three years previous. Emcees had come to the forefront as the stars of hip-hop, with DJs beginning a slow retreat to the background. As David Hinckley wrote in the New York Daily News, “It confirmed that emcees had vaulted past the deejays (sic) as the stars of the music.”

Grandmaster Flash and the Furi-ous Five would go on to record one more hit single — the anti-cocaine anthem “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” — before their untimely breakup in 1983. Bambaataa would continue to make records well into the 21st century, but would never match the incendiary impact of “Planet Rock.” Sugar Hill Records declared bank-ruptcy and went out of business in 1986. Rap music had weathered the rise and fall of its first genera-tion. Its second would be defined by three familiar letters: MTV.

From the first music video the station ever aired — “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles, an ironic choice — MTV established itself as a force to be reckoned with. Begun in the sum-mer of 1981, MTV’s focus was rock- and pop-oriented: genres like funk, soul and country were seen as relics of the past and unsuitable for the fast-paced show-manship of music videos.

It’s fitting, then, that the first hip-hop group to gain airtime on the network would do so with a track called “Rock Box”, whose video featured three men clad in leather jackets rapping to an elec-tric guitar riff reminiscent of Van Halen. The group was Run–D.M.C., a trio com-prised of Joseph “Run” Simmons, Dar-ryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels and Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell. They would go on to become the first hip-hop group to go Platinum, to tour the US, to be nomi-nated for a Grammy and to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone.

The group’s third album, Raising Hell, is generally considered one of the most influential hip-hop recordings of all time: produced by Rick Rubin and Run’s brother, Russell Simmons, the LP hit number three on the Billboard Hot 200, and its lead single — a rap version of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” — was the first hip-hop track to crack the Top 5. “We was (sic) going around selling out Madison Square Garden and all the big venues,” D.M.C. told NPR. “It all hap-pened so fast.”

Run–D.M.C.’s unexpected success al-lowed Rubin and Simmons to establish Def Jam Records, a label which focused primarily on underground rap artists with a degree of authenticity. “Up until the time of Def Jam, pretty much most of the rap records at the time were R&B records with people rapping on them,” Simmons recalled in an NPR interview. “I think one of the things that separated our records from the ones that came prior was that they had more to do with what the actual hip-hop culture was like. The goal was to capture the energy you felt at a hip-hop club.”

Def Jam would go on to release some of hip-hop’s earliest classics, such as Pub-lic Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill. Its two founders eventually parted ways: Rubin founded Def Ameri-can and would go on to become one of the most sought-after producers in the industry, while Simmons would strike a distribution partnership with CBS/Co-lumbia, becoming one of the richest fig-ures in hip-hop.

Fab Five Freddy had just finished promoting the first hip-hop motion pic-ture, Wild Style, which he had made with his partner Lee Quiñones and writer-director Charlie Ahearn. Ahearn, a local artist and documentarian of graffiti cul-ture, was immediately out of place in the Bronx hip-hop scene. “I never saw anyone that was from downtown or that was white hanging out in any place that I went to,” he said in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. “Everyone always thought I was a cop.”

Filmed over the course of a year and featuring major players such as

Grandmaster Flash, the Rock Steady Crew and The Cold Crush Brothers, Wild Style was a worldwide success. The film and its soundtrack spread the word of hip-hop across the globe: what had once been a localized movement had become a worldwide phenomenon. Fab Five Freddy would remain integral to the culture in the years leading up to 1987, when he was approached by MTV to host a new music video program called Yo! MTV Raps.

Premiering in August 1988, the program’s pilot episode featured Run–D.M.C., Eric B. & Rakim and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. For seven years, Yo! MTV Raps would be critical in bringing hip-hop to audiences across racial, gen-der and class lines. By the time the show aired its final episode in 1995, hip-hop was a multi-billion dollar industry.

One of the most popular and criti-cally acclaimed hip-hop groups of all time, Public Enemy, quickly gained noto-riety on Yo! MTV Raps for their challeng-ing, politically charged lyricism and dis-sonant, hostile sound. “We felt there was a need to actually progress the music and say something, because we were slightly older than the demographic of rap art-ists at the time,” Chuck D — the group’s emcee — told The Progressive. “Those in power didn’t know what to make of us, but they knew we had to be silenced.”

Public Enemy wasn’t the only rap group at the time to attract negative at-tention — hip-hop’s controversial lyrics had inspired a legion of detractors, angry parents and offended politicians who objected to the profane, violent and often misogynistic lyrics of rap groups like the 2 Live Crew, whose 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be would become the first LP deemed legally obscene. For two years, purchasing the album in Florida was considered a criminal offense.

The most culturally accepted hip-hop artists at the time verged on bubble-gum pop: MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” were non-threatening party hits. But Public Enemy’s socially conscious approach to hip-hop had inspired several acts — such as De La Soul, Nas and A Tribe Called Quest — to write raps which focused on social issues such as racism, poverty and drug use. Incorporating jazz and pop in-fluences into their music, these groups used hip-hop to change the world, one breakbeat at a time.

Meanwhile, hip-hop was making waves on the West Coast: an LA rapper named Tracy “Ice-T” Marrow almost sin-gle-handedly pioneered the sub-genre gangsta rap, which primarily consisted of profane, autobiographical accounts of violent crime and drug abuse. Southeast of LA, in the working-class city of Comp-ton, local DJ wunderkind Andre Young had adopted the nom de plume Dr. Dre and formed the influential gangsta rap outfit Niggaz Wit Attitudes (N.W.A.) with a group of Californian emcees, including O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson.

California had built a hip-hop cul-ture comparable to that of New York — it was only a matter of time before the two would become rivals.

The members of N.W.A. were barely out of their teens when they released 1988’s Straight Outta Compton, a testosterone-fueled mission statement of violence and rebellion. Its single “Fuck tha Police” — a heated criticism of police brutality along racial lines — inspired the FBI to formally warn the group’s label against further missteps. But its impact went far beyond government cautions: the album would eventually go Platinum and catapult the group’s stars, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, to in-ternational fame.

But gangsta rap had yet to fully cap-ture the public eye. It wouldn’t be until the police beating of Rodney King, an African-American construction worker on parole for robbery, was leaked to the public that hip-hop would evolve into its most con-troversial iteration.

King’s beating was the inciting incident for the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the largest race riots the nation had seen since the sixties and the culmination of decades of institutional racism in police departments across the United States. Maxine Waters,

the Representative for the 19th district of California, said of the eve of the riots, “The anger you see expressed out there in Los Angeles is a righteous anger.”

“Cop Killer,” a protest song recorded by Ice-T and his heavy metal group Body Count, was promptly blamed for the in-surrection. President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle publicly spoke out against the track, and used its controversial lyrics as a springboard to condemn the genre in general. “Rap is really funny, man,” Ice-T told Rolling

Stone in a feature interview. “But if you don’t see that it’s funny, it will scare the shit out of you.”

But by the end of 1992, the release of Dr. Dre’s wildly popular solo debut The Chronic on Death Row Records cemented what many already knew: the era of gang-sta rap was in full swing.

Two of the genre’s most popular fig-ures eventually fostered a professional rivalry that would result in both of their deaths, and mark a sea change in hip-hop’s culture. But they began as friends:

Christopher Wallace and Tupac Shakur, both born in New York, met while Shakur was acting in the film Poetic Justice, and immediately connected. “Gemini thing,” Wallace — a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. — said in a later interview. “We just clicked.” The two both blended aggressive exteriors with sentimental leanings; their approach to hip-hop highlighted both the hardest and softest sides of the genre.

But their mutual respect quickly turned into a heated rivalry: after being robbed and shot outside a Man-hattan studio, Shakur, better known as 2Pac, immediately suspected Wal-lace and his labelmates on Bad Boy Records. Defecting to Death Row Re-cords, the label Dr. Dre had begun with businessman Marion “Suge” Knight, 2Pac pledged allegiance to the West Coast and began to exacerbate the already existing tension between the East and West.

Battles between rappers in the hip-hop community were nothing new: one of the most historic had taken place at Harlem World in 1981, when Kool Moe Dee wiped the floor with Busy Bee Starski on wax — Starski’s smooth pace was no match for Dee’s verbal spitfire. But Dee and Starski had kept their duel strictly musical; 2Pac and Biggie had no such preoccupations. For their part, Suge Knight and Sean “Puffy”

Combs, Bad Boy Records’ CEO, came to verbal blows on several occasions.

In response to Biggie’s song “Who Shot Ya?”, which 2Pac interpreted as a personal attack, the rapper released “Hit ‘Em Up”, a merciless diss track whose music video in-cluded stand-ins for Biggie, Puffy and Bad Boy alumnus Lil’ Kim. The feud had gone from industry secret to media frenzy. With the pressure of their duelling coasts be-hind them, the duo’s rivalry had reached a boiling point. There was nowhere left to go but down. “Fear got stronger than love,” Tupac told Vibe magazine. “Niggas did things they weren’t supposed to do.”

On Sept. 7, 1996, Tupac was shot in Las Vegas — he died six days later in the hos-pital. That same year, The Notorious B.I.G. was in a car crash that led to the rapper walking with a cane for the rest of his life. On March 9th 1997, Biggie was shot four times in Los Angeles; he died immediately.

Hip-hop’s two most popular figures were gone in an instant, a fate Biggie him-self had predicted in the eerily prescient “You’re Nobody (‘Til Somebody Kills You)”, the final track on his last studio album, Life After Death. As Dorian Lynskey, a col-umnist for The Guardian, wrote, “The two murders, both still unsolved, comprise the defining drama in the history of hip-hop.” No matter which side they were on, ev-eryone in the hip-hop community knew things would never be the same.

No one knows for sure whether the murders of Biggie and 2Pac were related in any way to the East/West rivalry, although many assumed that this was the case — the rising popularity of inter-net forums spawned a variety of theories and possible sus-pects. Gangsta rap had monop-olized the hip-hop market with boasts of violent crime, but no one had ever died as a result. If nothing else, the deaths of Big-gie and 2Pac cast a shadow over the community. The popularity of the gangsta persona would never fully recover.

Instead, the result of the poi-sonous coastal rivalry had ushered in a new era in hip-hop: the age of the entrepreneur. Self-made rap-pers like Jay-Z and Kanye West, achieved fame and fortune with little street credibility. Both Death Row and Bad Boy fell into obscu-rity, to be replaced with Def Jam, whose relevance resurfaced at the turn of the century. The Internet would eventually render many

hip-hop labels obsolete, as in-creasing numbers of fans would dig for hip-hop gold on the world-wide web.

Hip-hop has since come to dominate the radio waves, in-corporating electronic and R&B influences. The 21st century has seen hip-hop become the most popular music genre in the world: listeners across the globe have found ways to use hip-hop as tools of education and cul-tural learning.

From its inception to the present day, hip-hop has been a vibrant art form that touches

people and gives voice to the voiceless. It began as a way for inner city kids to escape the bleak housing projects of the Bronx and express themselves to an audience that had brushed them aside. Over the past few de-cades, hip-hop has become one of the most powerful art forms of all time, a sounding board for artists from myriad ethnic back-grounds and walks of life.

18 arts editor Daryn Wrightemail / phone arts@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560ARTS September 30, 2013

Nick Thorburn has always been a tal-ented lyricist and musician — from his early days with The Unicorns, to his solo projects, and now his current band Islands — Thorburn’s ability to write catchy, imaginative songs has been a constant.

While the release of Islands’ previ-ous album A Sleep & A Forgetting re-ceived underwhelming reviews, it was praised for its simple, heartfelt feel; the album was something different and that was appreciated. Having seen this album performed live, I can per-sonally vouch for the incredible musi-cal talent of all members in the band.

While it can be said that Islands is a great band with a creative lyricist, such talent was, unfortunately, not translated into their new album Ski Mask. Opener, “Wave Forms,” is the best track on the album but, being the first track one listens to, sets listeners up for a disappointment for the rest of the album. The songs that follow are no more than decent.

“Becoming the Gunship” begins with a cool drum beat, but dissolves into an overly simplistic melody. Other songs such as “Nill,” fall short under a weird Broadway-style tune. Overall the album has some interesting beats and decent lyrics, but ultimately nothing new.

If this had been Islands’ first album, the reviews would read better. However, because we’ve become used to a certain standard of excellence, it’s an overall disappointment to get an album that doesn’t feel like it had much thought put into it. Regardless of the overall letdown, Ski Mask is an easy listen for new fans, and old fans can just be happy Thorburn didn’t join another band, as he claimed he had on Twitter earlier this year.

With the release of Kid A, Radiohead tore themselves apart and rebuilt. As the dust settled on Y2K and the phrase “twenty-first century” started to lose its

lustre, the Oxfordian quintet’s highly anticipated follow-up to OK Computer gave a world of new centurians a post-modern vocabulary through which they could express their thoughts, fears and predictions for the future that lay ahead of them.

Teeming with the tension of old world versus new — not unlike its pre-decessor — Kid A broke every rule in the book and came out unscathed on the other side. Thom Yorke’s extrater-restrial vocal modulations became as much of an instrument as Johnny Greenwood’s encrypted electric guitar or Phil Selway’s tin can drums. Impres-sionistic ambience shared the spot-light with acoustic balladry and pitch shifted electronica, and somehow it all came together as one cohesive whole.

Considering how gleefully Kid A stuck a wrench in the band’s own hype machine, its placement on Best Albums of the Decade lists — where, more often than not, it sits comfortably at the number one spot — surely has Yorke and company cracking a smile.

The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2, Justin Tim-berlake’s follow-up to his triumphant comeback album earlier this year, be-gins in media res. In contrast to part one, which slowly sunk its teeth in with the groovy opener “Pusher Love Girl,” Timberlake’s new LP doesn’t mince words — from the animalistic auto-tune of “Gimme What I Don’t Know (I Want)” to the eight bit afrobeat of “True Blood,” 2 of 2 wastes no time im-mersing its audience.

The albums are undeniably similar, and a little repetition is to be expected. After all, they’re intended as two halves of a whole — even if Timberlake waited

to clarify this point until after part one had been released. Like The 20/20 Ex-perience, Timberlake’s newest leaves no stone unturned, exploring every nook and cranny of each song to the point where the average track length is around seven minutes. It’s a dubious feat for a mainstream pop album, but Timberlake, as charming and suave as ever, is the perfect artist to pull it off.

Still, as the dust has begun to settle on Timberlake’s return to FM radio, 2 of 2 feels like a rehash that never con-vincingly argues for its own necessity. Sure, early single “Take Back the Night” is classic JT, and Drake’s featured verse on “Cabaret” is electrifying enough to blow Jay-Z’s phoned-in “Murder” guest spot out of the water, but the album retains all the issues of its predecessor — weak lyrics, unnecessary bloat, and a cheesy production.

Even though each song is impeccably performed, and the inevitable radio edits will be as easily digestible as anything in Timberlake’s catalogue, the album still fails to introduce anything new to the mix. For all of its shortcomings, part one could defend itself on the basis of years of Timberlake withdrawal; however 2 of 2 has no excuse.

The fact that it was released only three years after OK Computer, an album that garnered its own shared of hyperbolic accolades, has done wonders to solidify the Myth of Radiohead.

Kid A is ultimately an LP that couldn’t have happened were it not so eagerly anticipated. Radiohead rein-vented themselves to the point of un-recognizability, and the result was not only their best and most fully realized

work, but one that set the tone for the decade to come.

From its opening moments to the heartbreaking final notes of “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” Kid A is the sound of a future we’re currently in, an album that might be even more necessary now than the day it was released.

19ARTS September 30, 2013

The Dilettantes by Michael Hingston takes place at a uni-versity’s student newspaper, and, as a frequent contributor to my university’s newspaper, I was instantly intrigued. As I read more about the book, I became suspicious of the coincidences I encountered; the cover blurb described a “west coast campus” and a student paper also called The Peak. Turns out it was re-ferring to the very same paper you’re holding now.

The Dilettantes follows fourth-year students and Peak editors Alex and Tracy as they near the end of their degrees at SFU. The main conflict arises when the free daily paper, Metro, gets approved for on-campus distribution. Alex, as Features editor, is distraught and convinced that the arrival of Metro will sink The Peak. To add insult to injury, Metro’s sole correspondent seems to get the scoop on all campus gossip, including a Hollywood star re-turning to university.

Sprinkled throughout are snapshots of life as a university student and a 20-something in the 21st century. Alex grapples with his cynicism and lack of sex life, Tracy flounders after the end of a long-term relationship, and we get a glimpse of some of the behind-the-scenes drama at The Peak offices.

As the characters walked around campus — from coffee-shop to bookstore, classroom to tutorial, rez to library — I could distinctly picture the routes in my mind. The descriptions of Arthur Erickson’s architecture, encounters with film crews on campus, and the bumpy bus ride up the hill felt all too familiar.

I swelled with a bit of pride reading about the campus, but noted that readers who haven’t attended SFU would be able to easily follow Hingston’s colour-ful prose. Although the com-mentary on the state of the uni-versity and an apathetic student

population was predictable, it was well done.

These fourth-year characters feel incredibly authentic because Hingston wrote exactly what he saw firsthand, “I have been writing [the manuscript] since my final years at SFU,” explains Hingston. “I started taking notes on observations and routes, and how people interacted.”

The novel takes place in the recent past, during 2008-09, which neatly coincides with when Hingston graduated from SFU with an English Honours degree. He was also a contribu-tor, editor, and columnist at The Peak during his undergraduate

career. His experience and re-search have created a precise snapshot of university workings, including student government elections and production night on Fridays at the paper.

The book itself is lovely and includes fictionalized course outlines, a map of the Burnaby campus, and even text mes-sage screenshots. Hingston’s wit is paired well with the cam-pus tale of Peak vs. Metro, and includes feuding clubs, broken hearts, and Pub Night hookups. With hidden tidbits of The Peak and SFU that would slip by most readers — such as playing with the paper’s tagline — The Dilet-tantes is an enjoyable read.

One of the characters, Alex, is cynical of other stu-dents and resistant to change, yet recognizes his aloof atti-tude as cold and unapproach-able. Alex eventually realizes he needs to “pass the torch,”

which Hingston says is unique to a student paper. “You’ve built something up [as an edi-tor] but it’s not like a workplace — the subsequent person can just change it, or may not even know your process exists.”

Talking about inspiration, Hingston says that he did chan-nel parts of himself in obvious ways, but moved away from the original influences over time. “I only attended Burnaby cam-pus, and it was an interesting and isolated space,” he says. The film crews, so-called “commuter campus” status, and the inferi-ority complex between SFU and UBC all piqued his interest. “I thought it would be a cool back-drop for a campus novel, and I don’t think a student paper has been done before, at least not a Canadian campus.”

The Dilettantes is officially available as of September 10, 2013, but copies can also be or-dered directly from Hingston who will not only autograph them, but also write a behind-the-scenes tidbit within the pages. Each comment is unique and Hingston says he’s lost count but has not repeated any.

When pressed for some of the insider information, Hingston mentions the character Steve, an editor at the paper, who cre-ates anagrams of his own name instead of recruiting real con-tributors. Steve was based on an actual editorial incident while Hingston was at the paper, but they didn’t figure it out until after the editor was gone.

20 ARTS September 30, 2013

It probably wouldn’t surprise many people, upon meeting Mat-thew Good for the first time, to find him withdrawn and some-what sullen. This is the man, after all, who sold shirts embossed with the message “I Heard Matt Good is a Real Asshole.” Good’s music isn’t exactly bubble-gum pop, either; he is well known for his introspec-tive yet anguished lyrics.

It is a rainy afternoon in down-town Vancouver, and Good fits in with the atmosphere. Today, however, he is sullen for a reason: “He’s sick,” says Paula Danylevich, Good’s publicist, as we walk into his hotel room. “But don’t worry, he’s not contagious,” she adds.

Remnants of room service lit-ter the doorway. By the looks of it, Good enjoys mussels — there is a tower of shells piled high on a plate. He sits at a small table, wearing his signature glasses, with his laptop open in front of him. Like the carnage of shells heaped outside the door, Matthew looks as if he has seen better days.

“I have borderline pneumonia, and I am on a ton of medication. It’s not fun,” Good says as I sit down. He sighs as we shake hands, but brightens up once we begin talking about his new album, Ar-rows of Desire.

Unlike Good’s current con-dition, his new album has a lot more pep. Departing from the slower, ballad-filled albums like Hospital Music or Vancouver, Ar-rows of Desire gets back to what made Good famous in the first place: rock n’ roll.

“It’s a back to basics record. Coming off how heady Lights of Endangered Species was, it was something I wanted intrinsically to do . . . when I sat down to write it, I wanted to get back to the roots of the matter,” he says.

Arrows of Desire does exactly what Good intended. Funda-mentally, the album is quite rem-iniscent of Matthew Good Band, which dissolved in 2002. Good’s solo work has careened away from good old-fashioned rock for quite some time, and a return

to his roots could have proved disastrous. Reflecting an earlier sound can often come off as re-petitive drivel or make the artist seem as if he is trying to recap-ture his glory days of yesteryear and escaped youth.

Arrows of Desire defies the odds, though. With punched-up,

slightly distorted guitars, basic drumming, and a powerful vocal performance, Arrows of Desire is an anthemic piece that is famil-iar, but not the exactly. Good has managed to do what others have failed at — return to an original sound without illiciting a com-pletely cringe-worthy response.

Religious references seem to spot the album with songs like “Via Dolorosa”, “Arrows of Desire” and “Hey, Heaven, Hell,” but Good shakes his head, waving off any no-tion of spirituality in the album: “I am secular humanist,” he states. Al-most as if to emphasize his rebellion from rigid guidelines, Good lights up a cigarette and inhales deeply.

“Via Dolorosa,” he says, ex-plaining the references, “has

the historical context of Christ . . . but it also has a literary sense of the passage into suf-fering. This song is more about the crisis of humanity. It’s about

any kind of trial that you have to endure, or any trial that you cause others to endure. It’s [about] the madness that re-sides in those realities.”

Brimming with metaphor, Ar-rows of Desire is a not the average sex, drugs and rock n’ roll album. But Good isn’t exactly a normal rockstar, either. He currently lives on a ranch in Mission, BC, with his wife and three children. Instead of tales of drunken shenanigans and pretty women, Good shares stories of family life: “My oldest daughter broke her arm yesterday. She got thrown from her horse, but she was tough about it,” he says.

Don’t expect Good’s simple, less-than-rockstar lifestyle to stop him from making music, though: “You don’t have the choice to stop when you are an artist. It’s not just something you can shut off . . . As long as I can somehow make re-cords, I will make records.”

21ARTS September 30, 2013

September brings with it a host of novel adven-tures, each more inter-esting than the last. And so it goes with the recent onslaught of Swarm open-ings, the two-day festival of artist-run exhibitions, though one of these stood out from the rest.

Found on Granville Is-land, Malaspina Printmak-ers Society is usually the place to go for the finest in contemporary printmak-ing. But during the month of September, avant-garde silkscreens and woodcuts gave way to a flurry of re-sponsive works by First Nations artists.

NET-ETH: Going out of the Darkness, co-curated by Rose M. Spahan and Tarah Hogue, coincided with the National Confer-ence hosted by the Truth and Reconciliation Coun-cil of Canada, which ran from Sept. 18 to 21.

In some cases, the work that was presented brought to light the gov-ernment’s assimilation policies inherent in the boarding school system that was put into place in

the 1870s, with the help from then-existing mis-sionary schools.

Chris Bose is a multi-disciplinary art-ist — and member of the Nlaka’pamux / Sec-wepemc Nation — who presented three digital images that combined historic photographs with symbolic refer-ences to the abuses that took place within this mandatory institutional framework.

In one of these, The Only Good Indian… (2012), two mounties are shown with religious ico-nography, raging flames, skulls and the ever pres-ent Canadian dollar. This work attested to the com-plexity of the issues being addressed, while stating outright the resentment that is still felt amongst many modern-day First Nations communities.

Other artists took a more personal approach

to the healing process. The series of works by Jada-Gabrielle Pape, for example, displayed a palpable sensitivity to-ward the community leaders that emerged from the Residential School system.

Here, the mixed media works on handmade paper combined similar imagery to that found in Bose’s work: old school photographs and Coast Salish symbolism, though the treatment and in-tent was quite different. Pape’s expressive pieces exuded a sense of vul-nerability, paying tribute to the resilience of fam-ily and the Saanish and Snuneymuxw Nations.

The variety of ap-proaches taken by the more than 20 contempo-rary and traditional First Nations artists were pre-sented at three venues, including the concourse gallery of Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and the Urban Aboriginal Fair Trade Gallery at Skwachàys Healing Lodge, located in Vancouver’s Down-town Eastside.

NET-ETH, which ran through Sept. 29, brought together a congregation of art-lovers and visiting students, and was an in-tegral part of a process of healing taking place this bustling fall season.

22 ARTS September 30, 2013

The Emerald, an old-school Las Vegas style lounge and restaurant, opened its doors this past week. Located on the edge of Chinatown, the place features three separate areas: a bar and lounge area, a din-ing room, and a semi-private boardroom-style long table. The interior is extravagant, with white linen tablecloths, bear skins rugs, and deep-set booths and the menu features prawn cocktails, waffle fries, spaghetti and meatballs, and much more. The exterior is rather unassuming, especially compared to the interior, save a simple quote from Frank Sinatra: “The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.”

Guess what this Saturday is? It’s the first Saturday of October! That means the Cobalt is offering its once monthly Electric Circus, a 90s night featuring some of the best music of the time. There are also perfor-mances by your favourite drag kings, queens, bur-lesque dancing, and other special guests. There are also guest DJs every month, and sometimes they bring in camera crews just to make it feel a little more au-thentic. Dig out those crop tops and hair gel.

Feel like taking a cruise? Well, this metaphorical boat ride won’t leave the harbour, but it will be a good time. Paul An-thony’s Talent Time: Fake Boat Cruise is going down Oct. 2 at the Biltmore Cabaret. Acts in-clude one-man-show Andrew Johns, comedian Simon King, a 9-year old opera singer, au-dience video submissions, and much more. There’ll also be a house band and a Cover Charge Piñata too. Cover is $8 and the show begins at 9:00 p.m.

This weekend, check out the second annual Vancouver Art / Book Fair. Taking place Oct. 5 and 6 at the Vancou-ver Art Gallery, the fair will be presented by Project Space, a local bookshop, publisher and alternative art hub. The fair is a two-day festival of art-ists’ publishing that features nearly a hundred local, na-tional, and international pub-lishers of magazines, zines, digital, and other experimen-tal forms of published mate-rial. Exhibitors include Atelier Olchinksy, Brick Press, ECU Press, Or Gallery, Western Front, and more. It’s free and open to everyone, and it’s the only one of its kind in Canada, so it’s definitely worth check-ing out.

This is a special kind of treat this week, as the author Mi-chael Hingston is in town and he’s going to be reading from his new book The Dil-ettantes. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s a book about a little university newspaper known as The Peak. Yes, that’s right, we’ve got a book about us! But this isn’t just shameless self-promotion, this is about Hingston! He’ll be reading at Pulpfiction Books on Main St. at 6:30 p.m., Oct. 4. Thea Bow-ering, author of the story col-lection Love at Last Sight, will also be joining him.

For 36 hours, Mississauga na-tive Tommy Taylor was part of the largest mass arrest in Cana-dian history at the G20 protest. Twenty-three of those hours were spent with almost 40 other men in a 10 by 20 foot cell, without suf-ficient food or water. Yet, Taylor was starkly reminded of his privi-lege as a straight white male: out of all the prisoners, he, by far, was not the worst off.

Young women were unlawfully strip-searched, and male officers would pointedly watch them use the doorless port-a-potty. Queer and “queer-looking” detainees were segregated. In Taylor’s own cell, two Aboriginal men were

unfazed by the situation. “Wel-come to our club,” one said.

And so, vested with the power of public approval, Taylor recounts this story to the audience in a 75-minute play. Do not go in expecting a play in the traditional sense; it’s more like a long monologue.

There is no artistic pretense, no dramatic silences, and no sec-ond-hand embarrassment from watching someone overact. It’s storytelling at its barest bones. Except for a 15-minute stint where volunteer extras storm the stage to recreate the crowded conditions of the cell, Taylor sits at a table, and tells you his story from the start as if you were a very patient, quiet reporter.

You Should Have Stayed Home doesn’t warrant the “I should have stayed at home” jokes. Taylor is telling a significant story for our time, turning a personal account into a highly political presentation of the police force’s broken system of accountability — very few of-ficers at the G20 protest were ever

charged, despite external reviews stating that there had been a gross violation of the 1,100 people who were arrested.

Though the monotony of lis-tening to someone talk for an hour and 15 minutes never hits excruciating — he sure does a lot better than most of my profs — one man’s voice doesn’t have quite enough punch for some-one with certain expectations of entertainment.

Much of the script is word-for-word recitation of the gone-viral 11,000-word Facebook note that Taylor wrote after returning home from the detention center. For someone who has already read

it, watching the play is practically redundant. But if you’re a person who considers yourself politically aware, You Should Have Stayed Home is worth a go.

As of the first run of this show in Toronto two years ago, many Canadians still had no idea about this version of events that had happened.

“It was my first time being on the other side,” Taylor says and recounts seeing a police officer lying through his teeth to a tele-vision reporter about the treat-ment of protestors at the rallies. Since then, he has been closely following the cases of the officers who had been at the G20 protests. Many retired before they could ever be charged, others went on paid leave, and others escaped unscathed by their actions.

Taylor began to realize that there was no way that he could forget about the events at G20, even if he wanted to. “The things I saw at G20 just keep repeating themselves, at Idle

No More, at the Québec student protests, everywhere.”

Western society has increas-ingly demonized the protester, with help from the police, media depictions, and government, Tay-lor continues. During the Occupy protests, any addicts or mentally ill people that the police picked up were given a choice — to go to jail or be taken to Occupy. And so the camps were flooded with people who should have been in rehab or therapy.

“The very fact that so many forces are at work to devalue protests should show the value of protests. But you don’t fight that hard against something that doesn’t work.”

23sports editor Adam Ovenell-Carteremail / phone sports@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560SPORTS September 30, 2013

It was a start that no statisti-cian predicted, but one that Dave Johnson believes has been four years in the making. The head coach of the Clan foot-ball squad has led his team to a dominant 2-0 start to their sea-son, besting conference pow-erhouses Humboldt State and Central Washington University on the road to begin 2013.

“We have seniors now who played here in 2010 and had a difficult first season getting beat by those teams by huge margins,” explained Johnson. “It became a personal challenge and they have dedicated them-selves to training and compet-ing even harder than ever.”

The Week 3 game against CWU started strong for the Clan as they opened the scoring on the first drive with an 18-yard field goal by kicker Chad Heer-spink but the home team struck back at the end of the first quarter with a 65-yard touch-down following an SFU pass-interference penalty.

The score remained at a stalemate for the majority of the second quarter before a CWU drive late in the period got the home side within striking distance of the Clan endzone, but a strong defensive line led by linebackers Casey Chin and Mitchell Barnett was able to turn the momentum around and back down the field.

The turn of direction fuelled the Clan offence to another drive similar to their first of the game, resulting in Heerspink recording his second field-goal of the game, this time from 26-yards.

The score was 7–6 for the Wildcats heading into the third quarter and, after trading punts with the home team, the Clan fell further behind following another long touchdown strike—this one of 46-yards—late in the period. But the game was far from over as the best plays of the game were still to come for the Clan.

In the fourth quarter, run-ningback Chris Tolbert, in his

first season with the Clan, was able to convert the Clan’s first touchdown of the game, and would move the score to within two points, prompting Johnson to go for a two-point conversion play. SFU was able to capital-ize as Bobby Pospischil caught the pass from quarterback Ryan Stanford, another player in his first season at SFU, to tie the game at 14 apiece.

With the clock counting down safety Chandler Gayton forced a Wildcat fumble on the three-yard line giving the visi-tors the chance they needed to

end the game. Moving down the field, SFU put themselves into position for a trick-play, and the Clan executed flaw-lessly as a screen pass to back-up quarter-back Ryan Blum went uncontested resulting in pass to Tolbert for a 27-yard touchdown and the extra point to follow. At 21-14 the Clan re-corded their first victory in the Ellensburg stadium over the Wildcats since 1980.

The strong start to the season has sparked increasing inter-est into the Clan’s program, and the team received their first ever vote in the American Football Coaches Association poll. The Clan also rank seventh nation-ally in passing average with 378 yards per game following their second victory of the season.

SFU also has two national category leaders on their roster

as Chin is leading in intercep-tions, with two in his two games this season, and Barnett has two fumble recoveries in two games leading that category as well.

Chris Tolbert also received recognition following his team’s 2-0 start, winning the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Co-Offensive Athlete of the Week award. The junior trans-fer was key to the Clan’s second victory, catching four passes and rushing for 106-yards on the day, including two total touchdowns.

Moving forward the Clan will look to continue their 2013 success at home as they play at Terry Fox Field for the first time this year. The Clan host conference rivals Western Or-egon, who they have yet to beat at home or on the road, at their 2013 home opener.

“They are easily the biggest team we will play this year, but we just need to take care of what we can take care of,” said Johnson of Western Oregon. When a team is unbeaten, scoring wins against the two top-ranked teams in its conference and still has much to improve on heading into its home opener, the only place to go is up. “It’s been nice to have such a great start,” said Johnson, “but . . . we need to execute on offence and fill gaps on defence and if we do what our system requires it will be successful.”

24 SPORTS September 30, 2013

The SFU men’s soccer team bat-tled for two big wins on the road this past week as they retained their perfect record in the young 2013 season. After a perfect 4-0 non-conference start, the Clan headed south to Montana and Idaho to open their Great North-west Athletic Conference (GNAC) season with games against Mon-tana State University — Billings (MSUB) and Northwest Naza-rene University (NNU).

The two teams have proven difficult competitors in the Clan’s past, and this trip proved no different as the men were forced to finish both games in comeback style.

Against MSUB, the home team opened the scoring in the first half, something that didn’t sit well with the Clan, lighting

a fire under the team’s offence as the men worked to return the favour. The reply came early in the second half as Chris Barg-holz connected with an Alexan-der Kleefeldt pass to net SFU’s first goal of conference play.

The importance of the win was evident as both teams bat-tled relentlessly throughout the 90 minute match: MSUB

received seven yellow cards and the Clan were awarded four.

At the 75th minute mark the Clan took the lead as transfer Johannes Hallman scored unas-sisted to clinch the win for the visitors. It would be his first goal of the season, but not his last as he would be able to find the back of the net in the second game of the weekend as well.

Two days later after their con-ference-opening win, the Clan took on NNU, the only West Re-gion team to have bested them in 2012. Again, the visitors found themselves down a goal in the first period, but fans saw history repeat itself as SFU was able to pull off an-other come-from-behind victory.

The Clan struck early in the second half once again, as only

two minutes into the period Hallman struck a Robert Hyams pass for his second tally of the weekend. This time it was Carlo Basso that ended the scoring in the match, netting a ball from goalkeeper Brandon Watson, for his second of the season.

The freshman netminder re-corded eight saves in the game to allow the Clan to improve to a 6-0 record.

Following the successful start to their GNAC campaign the SFU men have retained their top spot on the National Soccer Association of American NCAA Division II coach’s poll. It is their second consecutive week at the top of the rankings, after they opened the season ranked third.

The men will be aiming to improve to 8-0 as they host South Dakota School of Mines in their GNAC home opener then Saint Mary’s University two days later before returning to the road as they look to con-tinue a fourth dominant season atop the GNAC and in the NCAA Division II.

Prior to the season kicking off, Shel-ley Howieson, head coach of SFU’s women’s soccer team, prophesied a worst-case scenario: starting a defender in goal.

It didn’t take long for it to come true. However, with fresh-man defender Teagan Rae Soro-kan in net, the Clan earned their best finish of the season last week, a 0–0 double overtime draw against Northwest Nazarene.

After last year’s starting goal-keeper — and Great Northwest Athletic Conference saves leader — left the team late in the offsea-son, Howieson was stuck in a bind with two freshmen netminders left to compete for the starting spot.

After one went down with a freak concussion in practice, the vet-eran head coach was left with one first-year goalie.

In case you haven’t guessed where this is going, that lone keeper, Simone Tessler, injured herself, forcing Howieson to turn to Sorokan to guard the net.

And against the Northwest Nazarene Crusaders last Satur-day, in her second consecutive start (the first was a 2–0 loss to MSU-Billings), she earned her first career shutout — and the team’s first of the season — mak-ing five saves through the double overtime match.

“Teagan played really well,” said Howieson after the match. “So many of our players battled their hearts out in this game. The second leg of this road trip is tough so full credit to our team for coming away with a tie. The back-line really held strong and played through some injuries. We’re pleased with the effort. Now we need to get home after a long road trip and get pre-pared for Thursday evening.”

Thursday marked the team’s home opener, ending a grueling

opening stretch of the season where the Clan played four straight on the road. The result, unfortu-nately, was another loss — a 2–0 setback against Saint Martin’s Uni-versity — but Sorokan again held her own, allowing only one of the two goals scored, and making a couple of impressive saves.

Sorokan has been a bright spot for the Clan, otherwise going through a tough transitional year.

Despite being a concern for any Clan fan, starting the back-line player hasn’t been the team’s big-gest issue. The Clan have scored only one goal this season, and until they figure their offence out, it likely matters little who’s be-tween the pipes.

But again, this is a transitional season for the team, so struggles are expected. As evidenced by the team’s best finish of the young

season, the team’s defence has tightened up significantly since being thumped 6–0 in the season opener. There have also been signs of improvement on offence as well (junior midfielder Ali Trenter hit the post late against Saint Martin’s).

The breaks haven’t been going the Clan’s way, but they’ll come. Until then, the Clan will have to roll with the punches, and with Soro-kan in net.

25SPORTS September 30, 2013

The 2013-14 National Hockey League season has not even begun, yet the NHL’s incon-sistent discipline is already in mid-season form. Brendan Shanahan, the NHL’s Director of Player Safety, has a tendency of handing out erratic suspen-sions and this has never been more evident than during the 2013 preseason.

Two stick-swinging inci-dents from the past week are at the forefront of this discus-sion, specifically Vancouver’s Zach Kassian breaking Ed-monton’s Sam Gagner’s jaw by wildly swinging his stick after a missed hit, and Toronto’s Phil Kessel’s violent, deliber-ate slashing at Buffalo’s John Scott. The difference between each incident however, is the intent to injure.

Even though both players were suspended, the severity of each shows the NHL’s inability to levee down appropriate dis-cipline. Kassian was suspended the rest of the preseason, plus an additional five regular sea-son games, while Kessel was only suspended for the remain-der of the preseason.

Kassian’s play was danger-ous, reckless and even moronic, but he did not mean to hurt Gagner; he just lost control of his stick. Kassian’s teammate Dale Weise was also suspended for the rest of the preseason for an elbow to Taylor Hall’s head, which occurred in the same game. Weise’s hit, a deliberate one to Hall’s head, is the type of play the NHL vehemently decries and wants out of the game, and yet they gave Weise a lesser penalty compared to Kassian’s freak accident.

The intent to inju re in Kes-sel’s two-handed slashes at John Scott’s leg is quite appar-ent. One slash in self-defense is understandable, because Scott — a 6’8”, 270-pound be-hemoth — was unnecessarily trying to come after the much smaller Kessel. But the second attempt was obviously to harm Scott: at this point, Scott was already subdued by Kessel’s teammates before he wound up for the second strike. An at-tempt to injure another player should result in a heftier sus-pension than an accident.

In the video where Shana-han explains Kassian’s suspen-sion, and describes the hit: “Kassian comes to a spinning

stop, recklessly swinging his stick and striking Gagner in the face and breaking his jaw.” Sha-nahan cites Gagner’s injury, which was revealed after the game, and the injury had no con-sequence on the play itself, which should make it irrelevant, con-trary to what Shanahan seems to be suggesting in the video. Kas-sian’s suspension was based on the injury and not the action.

In the Kessel suspension video however, Shanahan notes that Kessel engaged in similar stick swinging incidents pre-viously in the same game, yet Shanahan says Kessel has “no history” of supplemental disci-pline. While the no supplemen-tal discipline fact is true, Shana-han has showed that Kessel has a very recent history of attempts to injure, although no suspen-sions. Shanahan also states that Scott was not hurt, thus the lighter penalty.

These two ideas seem back-wards to me. An attempt to in-jure with no injury merits a lesser suspension, while an ac-cident with an injury deserves more? The attempts to harm other players are the dirty plays the NHL is trying to get rid of, yet Kessel walks away from try-ing to harm Scott and others without missing a single regular season game. Meanwhile, Kas-sian misses meaningful games for an errant stick. It should be the other way around. The NHL’s inconsistent discipline simply comes down to incompetence and hypocritical ideals.

Tough and physical play has always been a great leveler, ir-respective of the sport. While it doesn’t abrogate skill or finesse as factors separating victory from defeat, controlled and sys-temic physicality elevates com-petition from a mental and phys-ical perspective.

Enshrining violence within the rules however, as it is in hockey, simply encourages a de-structive spiral that reduces the game from its true form. Violence escalates from an aggressive mindset to a mindset of aggres-sion, and we as fans are simply treated to a spectacle of barba-rism that undermines the true qualities of the game. Simply put, it’s a waste of time, it’s dangerous and we should get rid of it.

An article in The Peak two weeks ago addressed fighting in hockey, advocating its con-tinuance and importance to the game’s fidelity as a deterrent to ‘illegal’ violence. Let’s disregard this NRA-esque ‘fight guns with more guns’ mentality momen-tarily and talk about the game.

Hockey is unique in that the boundaries of acceptable physi-cality are extremely relaxed — it is often unclear exactly where the line lands. As a player stepping onto the ice, it’s impossible given the NHL’s case-by-case subjectiv-ity to know what constitutes ac-ceptable versus unacceptable; this is a massive failure on the part of the league to draw bright-lines.

Coming from a Canucks fan, it’s easy to write off the follow-ing as sour grapes, but the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals was the worst officiated series I’d ever watched. It was impossible to tell what a foul was and what wasn’t — the officials themselves appeared unsure as to when to blow their whistles. The most surreal mo-ment of indecisiveness was the ejection of Aaron Rome (never before labeled as a “dirty player”) in Game 3.

The lasting memory for me was the zebra leading him to the penalty box, before realizing Nathan Horton was seriously in-jured. The official then promptly sent Rome to the dressing room and issued a ten minute major and game misconduct. I blew a gasket – why did he change his mind? What elevated the offense to that extreme?

This is the NHL’s idiocy: the intent to injure is irrelevant to the degree of discipline. Instead, the injury resulting from the action is the dominating fac-tor. Aaron Rome copped a four game suspension in those finals for a borderline late hit while Brad Marchand rained punches with no repercussions as no in-jury resulted.

This inconsistency is why goonism and fighting thrives in the NHL. That reckless and dangerous hits may be ig-nored if the victim is fortunate enough to get up and skate away simply feeds into a mind-set of violence and aggression and demands that players take the proverbial law into their own literal hands.

But fighting demeans the sport. Hockey can still be the physical and violent game for which purists salivate, but fight-ing is bush league tomfoolery that adds nothing substantive. In the moment fights may excite and raise energy levels, but so do goals, big (and legal) hits, and stunning saves.

The international game, for instance, bans fighting and uses much stricter officiating stan-dards, and often produces thrill-ing, memorable hockey games such as the 2010 Olympic gold medal game. The thrill of sport, pure and unadulterated, is what I as a paying fan, want to see. I can pay five dollars for a beer league game to watch halfwit self-proclaimed ‘enforcers’ chase each other around the ice to throw punches.

26 SPORTS September 30, 2013

It took a grand total of six games for the new SFU volley-ball regime to top its win total from a year ago. After dropping their season opener, the Clan have rattled off five straight vic-tories, including two last Sat-urday against other BC-based teams, en route to a 5–1 early-season record.

The Clan swept the Capilano University Blues three sets to none, before doing the same to the Douglas College Royals that evening.

The Clan were actually forced to play catch-up early on. Down 5–1 early in the first set, the Clan won eight of the next 12 points to take a lead they would never relinquish. They took the first set 25–17, never trailed in the second set (a 25–13 victory) and overcame an 11-all tie in the third to take the set 25–18, and the match 3–0.

Against the Blues, captain Kelsey Robinson scored 12 kills, easily a team high (Madeline Hait, second on the team, had six); junior Alanna Chan led the way in digs with 15, though sophomore Helen Yan also hit double digit digs with 10.

In the late game against Doug-las, Robinson would again lead the offense, recording 11 kills in the victory, though she had help — fellow captains Amanda Renkema and Brooklyn Gould-Bradbury had 10 kills and 38 assists in the game, respectively.

“They’ve been fantastic,” said head coach Gina Schmidt of her captains. “They were voted captains after just four days, and they’ve done their best to live up to that honour. They’re amazing in the locker room, but their play on the court is proving they can be leaders by example too.”

The Clan trailed only once in their straight-set victory over the Royals: in the third set where Douglas scored the first point. Other than that, it was smooth

sailing for the Clan, taking the three sets 25–17, 25–18, 25–20.

“I thought we had a great team effort consistently through-out the weekend,” she said after the match. “We used several dif-ferent lineups but whoever was out there played their role and played it well.”

But her players were quick to turn the praise around to their first-year head coach, “Coach Schmidt has done an amaz-ing job,” said Gould-Bradbury. “I think all of the new players

along with the coaching staff have brought a whole new at-titude and a new aggressiveness to the court.”

The new attitude has paid off early in 2013: in their five-game win streak, the team has lost only one set.

However, competition will only get tougher from here on out. The Clan’s non-conference portion of the schedule is offi-cially in the books, and confer-ence play will be the true test of how the team stacks up.

“These past few games have been good trial runs for what’s coming,” said Schmidt of the upcoming GNAC schedule. “You can prepare and practice all you want, but there’s no real way to simulate that level of competition. We’ve been able to play different lineups and see what works best, and hopefully this early success will translate into more along the way.”

Already off to a blazing start, the women’s cross country team picked up the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Team of the Week award following their performance at the Erik Anderson Invitational in Spokane, WA. The men’s and wom-en’s sides had excellent weekends at the meet, racing top competition from three divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Led by captain Lindsey Butter-worth, the Clan women finished first among all Division II com-petition, besting teams from the West Region and the Great North-west Athletic Conference (GNAC) over the 5km course. They also finished second overall, beating Division I schools, Gonzaga and Washington State, and losing to only one other Division I program, Lipscomb University.

Butterworth was SFU’s top finisher with a fifth-place overall run, while fellow senior Kirsten Allen followed closely behind in seventh. They finished one-two in Division II competition, and Allen picked up GNAC Athlete of the Week honours. It was Allen’s second consecutive seventh-place finish. Butterworth won the same

award the weekend before for her performance at the Sundodger In-vitational, and will be looking to continue her dominant season at the top of the GNAC.

The women’s three other point scorers at the Erik Anderson were Kansas Mackenzie, a 2012 All-Regional racer, freshman Rebecca Bassett in her second-ever col-legiate race, and track and field All-American Sarah Sawatzky. The competitors finished in 12th, 23rd and 24th respectively.

The Clan men’s team is con-tinuing to improve in 2013 as well as they had another excellent showing at their second competi-tion of the season finishing fourth out of all Division II competition.

Captain James Young, coming off a red-shirt season in 2012, led the team over the 6km course fin-ishing seventh out of the Division II competitors. It was his first fin-ish atop the Clan leaderboard this season, with sophomore Cameron Proceviat following closely behind. Proceviat was the Clan’s top racer at the season opener, and rounded out the top-ten in Spokane.

Stuart MacDonald, Aus-tin Trapp and Oliver Jorgenson rounded out SFU’s top-five finish-ers to nab the fourth place team spot, crossing the finish line in

17th, 19th and 20th in Division II competition respectively.

The Clan will be looking to con-tinue their strong performances in the upcoming weekends starting with the Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto, CA and two more open meets before turning their atten-tion to the championship season.

After the GNAC qualifying meet SFU will aim to return to Spokane where the West Region and NCAA Division II champi-onships will be held in early No-vember. The women are already ranked second in the West Re-gion and sixth nationally and will be looking to improve on those rankings as the season progresses while the men will look to keep the speed coming when the Clan travel to California.

27DIVERSIONS / ETC September 30, 2013

Across1- Types of electrical current5- Winning the race10- Puts on14- Film spool15- Disney deer16- Warhol actress Sedgwick17- Concert halls18- Extraterrestrial19- Starchy food grain20- Neuron22- Forest makeup23- Acknowledgment of debt24- Aries abbrev.25- Official permit29- Mental33- Smells34- Numbered rds.36- Cigarette brand37- Leg38- Occupied39- RR stop40- Resistance units42- Lots and lots43- Headey and Olin45- Whats-his-face 47- Class where you learn ser, estar, and haber

49- Goddess of dawn in Greek mythology50- Round Table title51- Aquarium buildup54- Emperor60- Glance61- Old French expres-sion meaning “good-bye”62- Mentor63- Stuffing herb64- Battery type65- Footnote abbr.66- ___ about (approxi-mately)67- Cool!68- Sand hill Down1- “East of Eden” brother2- Relinquish3- Antlered animal4- Musical instrument

keyboard5- Calculating device6- Patriot Nathan7- Rabbi Hirsch8- Cain’s victim9- Loud noise10- Oil extraction device11- Comics canine12- Pleasing13- Gets the picture21- Seemingly forever22- Attempt, a score in rugby24- Org.25- Company emblems26- Boise’s state27- Punctuation mark28- Muse of love poetry29- Hammer parts30- Egyptian president Mubarak31- Tiny amounts32- Conflict35- Ref’s decision

38- Soviet news agency41- Athletic shoe43- Hideaway44- Livid46- Her partner would be a buck48- Pretended51- Too52- Not a gift53- Caged dancer54- Romeo’s last words55- Flaky mineral56- Heating fuel57- Ballerina’s skirt58- Algerian seaport59- Govern61- Romney’s wife

 

 

 

 

Hope  to  see  you  there!

CLASSIFIEDS@THE-PEAK.CACLASSIFIEDS@THE-PEAK.CACLASSIFIEDS@THE-PEAK.CACLASSIFIEDS@THE-PEAK.CACLASSIFIEDS@THE-PEAK.CACLASSIFIEDS@THE-PEAK.CACLASSIFIEDS@THE-PEAK.CA

Simon Fraser Student Society

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

October 23, 2013 • 2pm MBC Conference Rooms

29September 30, 2013COMMUNITY PHOTOSSeptember 30, 2013

photo editor Mark Burnham email / phone photos@the-peak.ca

30 humour editor Brad McLeodemail / phone humour@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560HUMOUR September 30, 2013

NEW YORK — In a brief moment of honesty, American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault announced to report-ers that the company’s recent financial difficulties had to do with attracting “the wrong kind of customer.”

The majority of American Express’s customers were well-to-do, successful young adults with a good sense of financial stability — people Chenault described as the “leaching, filthy, undesirables” of the credit card industry.

“What we need more of are irresponsible, impulsive spenders who don’t know where their next paycheck is coming from,” Chenault explained to reporters, mo-ments before announcing that he would be pulling all American Express advertisements from Public Radio, the History Channel, and the NY Times to shift their focus to the Fox News network, TLC, and Pop music radio stations.

“Let’s face it, we make our money from people who can’t pay their bills on time. The kind of people who buy high-heels or basketball jerseys without thinking about the consequences. Why would we advertise in a newspaper? That just does not make sense,” Chenault noted before confirming that he didn’t care whether or not his customers could read, what mattered was that they bought stuff they couldn’t afford. “People who pay their bills on time are not the kind of people our company wants to be associated with.”

American Express’s new ad campaign “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out,” launches later this month.

VANCOUVER — Thanks to the seemingly endless events and promotions designed to bring awareness to and research cancers, the disease is becoming more and more treatable, a development which has thrilled not only those fighting cancer and their fami-lies, but also the collection of autoimmune diseases known as Lupus erythematosus.

Lupus, a disease that has always been left in the shadow of even the most obscure forms of cancer, is apparently very excited at the possibility of becoming tomorrow’s “it” illness after scientists crack this whole cancer thing once and for all.

While Lupus is aware that even if somehow all cancers are cured, it’s going to have a tough road ahead of itself with many diseases in a position to challenge it’s ascent to superstar illness fame.

According to scientists researching it, however, Lupus isn’t too concerned about any of its challengers especially the once popular AIDS epidemic which, despite continuing to affect a considerable number of lives, has kept a low media profile of late.

Even though Lupus is confident that cancer research will progress to the point where they become the top-dog of “Runs to conquer . . . ” it has been reported that they have donated millions of dollars to cancer researchers under the name “Anonymous” just in case.

ATLANTIC CITY — The recent crowning of a new Miss America pageant winner made history as, for once, the honour was not given to a white, thin, able-bodied, stereotypically gorgeous woman but to someone who is all those things except white.

Nina Davuluri, a 23-year old Indian-American woman, took home the crown and according to many observers demonstrated the amazing increase in toler-ance of Americans towards minorities who look good in bikinis.

After years of feeling discriminated against and un-derrepresented in activities that only rely on looks and don’t require any intelligence or the ability to memo-rize the spelling of words, many Indian-americans say nowthanks to Davuluri’s win they now feel truly accepted in their nation.

“It’s a huge moment for us” explained Harry Chi-ma, a young, perfectly chiseled Indian-American man, “My whole life I’ve felt like people only looked at me as an equal, but now it finally looks like people are going to take me seriously as being a superior specimen.”

Davuluri’s historic accomplishment has apparently inspired people beyond her own community, with even the most neglected minorities now believing that they can do anything they set their mind to as long as its attached to an attractive body.

THE LATEST HEADLINES FROM AROUND THE WORLD THAT ARE MAKING HEADLINES AROUND THE WORLD LATELY

31September 30, 2013HUMOUR

BURNABY — Despite being really excited when they first got the idea and were just playing around with ideas, the Build SFU team has re-portedly cancelled the SUB proj-ect to “do something else, some-thing fun.”

According to those who have been watching the group closely, the SUB project seemed to be going along fine, as Build SFU members enthusiastically talked about all the things they were going to put into the space before things turned for the worse.

“Restaurants, comfy couches, arcade games” were reportedly talked about in their meetings just a few weeks ago by excited Build SFU members without tak-ing breaths as they ran around the room jumping up and down, writing on the walls of their fort (nicknamed the Think Tank) with magic markers, making giant posters and playing with their ‘re-ally cool model of SFU that has a little AQ and everything!’

Then, seemingly out of no-where, everyone involved in Build SFU got tired and just quit.

“I don’t know what happened exactly, they were all smiles last time I saw them,” third-year stu-dent, Frank Danstro told The Peak in a disappointed tone. “I thought they really liked SUB building.”

According to sources close to the Build SFU students, the group did like SUB building until it took a sudden turn for the worst last week when they were joined by the architects they had hired, Perkins+Will.

“From the first question, it seemed obvious that this wasn’t

going to work out,” said second year business student Tom Fergus who sat in on the meeting.

“The architects just asked what their vision for the SUB was and they immediately all starting wildly yelling all at once ‘THE SUB WILL BE MY PLACE TO THRIVE’, THE SUB WILL BE MY PLACE TO

NETWORK’, it wasn’t a very good way start . . .”

Once the Build SFUers were calmed down and they started to discuss the more practical ele-ments of the SUB, things started to get even worse.

“I remember Perkins+Will were trying to talk square footage

but the students just kept asking if they could get pool tables, which then reminded one of them about air hockey tables and then foos-ball and on and on . . .” Fergus continued shaking his head, “I think they finally gave up on the SUB after they asked the architects ‘oh can we get a slide . . . UBC’s getting a slide . . . come on, please, please, please!’”

After Perkins+Will politely re-jected the slide idea, it became clear that the students weren’t re-ally all that interested in actually building a SUB building and their over-tiredness started to show.

“There were a lot of tears and a few temper-tantrums, but in the end they just decided that build-ing a SUB was ‘stupid’ and ‘not fun anymore’,” explained an executive for Perkins+Will. “I’m not sure if any of them will be back, maybe they just need to sleep it off.”

While Perkins+Will and the university are fully prepared to go on without the students in-volvement — but still using their money — they’ve threatened the Build SFU team saying that if they don’t get their act together they won’t be building “the Treehouse” that they had been asking for.

32 LAST WORD features editor Max Hillemail / phone features@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560 September 30, 2013

There was once a time when the use of photography and video recording was ex-clusive to media outlets. This day has come and gone. We live in a society where virtu-ally everyone has access to at least one recording device, some of which have the ability to post pictures and videos directly to the Internet, even as images are simulta-neously being recorded.

This means every action can be made available immediately for public judge-ment and scrutiny, and one of the most controversial uses of this new technology is in regards to law enforcement.

Law enforcement professionals have always been under a great deal of public scrutiny. As the son of a now retired 23-year veteran of the Vancouver Police De-partment, I grew up hearing about how much officers were responsible to the citi-zens they served and protected — at least as far as my dad was concerned.

I have also spent the last six years working as a security officer at Rogers Arena, the home of our Vancouver Ca-nucks. While I am not officially consid-ered law enforcement, I am in charge of enforcing the rules of the building, so there are some relevant crossovers.

I have been videotaped and photo-graphed numerous times at the arena dur-ing the course of my duties. We were taught to expect this, and trained to respond in an appropriate manner. Like the police,

we have no legal authority to prevent re-cordings of incidents, and we did not at-tempt to do so. Instead, we were trained to shape the narrative being created in a way that would help the audience comprehend what was happening.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with the widespread use of video and pho-tography by the public is that it very rarely paints the whole picture. In most cases, the cameras rarely capture the individual we are dealing with has throwing the first punch or making the threatening remark that requires us to intervene in the first place. The only way to measure if the level of police force is appropriate is to have all the information, which we do not get from many of these videos.

While I will not deny that police brutal-ity does happen, in many instances the accusation stems from a lack of knowledge or understanding of the situation. Viewers do not get the full picture and, as a result, make assumptions that do not always re-flect reality.

I feel that we need to have an under-standing of why some officers react nega-tively to being videotaped while making an arrest or during other incidents. Imagine

yourself at your own workplace. It is an average day when, out of nowhere, some-thing goes horribly wrong. Now imagine yourself trying to deal with what is now a highly stressful situation, while 20 people

you’ve never seen before show up and start recording you.

I’m guessing you would be pretty upset, and would probably ask them to turn their cameras off despite having no legal right or authority to do so. This is not an attempt to excuse the behaviour of officers who have threatened arrest for such things; but it is important to put yourself in their shoes and imagine what it must be like to have the most stressful and tiring portions of your work day filmed and posted online for public consumption.

Having said that, I do not believe that it is a bad thing for officers to be videotaped by the public. This practice can greatly im-prove the safety of our police force; after all, very few people are willing to commit a crime when they know they are on camera.

Ironically enough, controversy has risen in recent years over proposals that police officers should be allowed to carry pocket sized cameras to record interac-tions with the public and arrests from the officer’s point of view. Such video record-ings can be extremely helpful in the pros-ecution of cases, and can provide a valu-able perspective when evaluating police conduct.

Of the large body of evidence brought forth for the trials of the participants in the Stanley Cup riots of 2011, much was video and photographic evidence taken with smartphones and tablets. In my own experience, video footage of an incident that took place at Rogers Arena one night

helped us defend against a legal suit for use of excessive force, as the video taken captured the entire interaction.

Furthermore, such videos — if used properly — can be highly effective train-ing tools. I know during my training as a security officer, and also during my father’s time with the Vancouver Police Depart-ment, we would watch videos of different situations, both where things had gone right and things had gone wrong.

It is useful to be able to analyze situ-ations secondhand and figure out how

things could have been improved. Some-times it can be helpful, especially for new recruits, to see what happens when things go wrong and how easily a dangerous situ-ation can be avoided.

Easy access to recording devices is the reality of the world we live in. Since there is no legal recourse for officers, or any-one else for that matter, who are being re-corded, it is important to respond appro-priately. Telling people to stop filming or threatening to take cameras away will only make them want to film more.

New training is required for today’s of-ficers. They need to be made aware of how to use these recordings to their advantage, and shape the story in such a way that the audience understands what is happening. And for all of you would-be documentari-ans out there, keep in mind that the people you are filming are doing a job that is dif-ficult at the best of times. Take your record-ings for the right reasons.