Capilano Courier | Vol. 53, Issue 8

VOLUME 53, ISSUE NO.8

APRIL 2021 UNOFFICIAL RESULTS OF THE CSU SPRING 2021 ELECTIONS – THE STATE OF STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH – BALANCING BIODIVERSITY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA – DIY: OAT MILK – LIVING WITH REJECTION SENSITIVE DYSPHORIA – THE CAPILANO COURIER GUIDE TO COVID-FRIENDLY SUMMER FUN – DISABLED STUDENTS AND THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION – UNMASKING IMPOSTER SYNDROME – WHY CANADIANS CAN’T IGNORE RISING ANTI-ASIAN RACISM – ODE TO A F**KBOY – HOROSCOPES – AND MORE

letter from the editor

Bye For Now I can’t believe this is my last Editor-in-Chief letter!

ANA MARIA CAICEDO

Editor-In-Chief

As my year with the Courier comes to a close, I’m reflecting on this time last year: I was running for Editor-in-Chief precisely when the gravity of COVID-19 became real as we entered lockdown. I had so many ambitions and plans then—I was relatively unfazed by the realization that we would be putting together this magazine remotely. I didn’t anticipate how all the processes and routines that I had become familiar with from working two years with the magazine would be turned on their head. I overestimated my own ability to cope with this seismic change; I underestimated my own fragility.

I’m flipping through the February issue now, and I’m thinking of how you can’t tell just by looking at this sleek, 60-page long magazine how much work our team of 12 staff pours into each issue. It’s hard to comprehend, I think, by just looking at the magazine, the hours of work, the shot nerves, and the emotional and physical exhaustion that we experienced making this magazine.

I had grand plans for the Courier at the beginning of the year, and while I was able to accomplish some of them, I wasn’t able to do everything I had set out to do. I came to realize that among all my ambitions and goals for this magazine, I had overlooked how fundamental the morale of our team was in accomplishing anything at all.

To our team, I am deeply grateful to each one of you.

We published a strong, stunning and engaging publication in unprecedented and arduous circumstances. Though it might not be visible at first glance, I think our passion for and commitment to this paper, and the things it can provide our fellow students and community, bleed through on every single page.

Joh n Pach kows ky

@salt.the.earth

STAFF editor-in-chief

features editor

Managing Editor

Arts & Culture Editor

news editor

Opinions Editor

associate news editor

Literature & Humour Editor

art directors

Community Relations Manager

Staff Illustrator

Business Manager

Ana Maria Caicedo capcourier@gmail.com

Alisha Samnani manager.capcourier@gmail.com

Alisha Samnani news.capcourier@gmail.com

Bridget Stringer-Holden associatenews.capcourier@gmail.com

Emma Sato Sara Nguyen artdirector.capcourier@gmail.com

Valeriya Kim

Sarah Rose specialfeatures.capcourier@gmail.com

Claire Brnjac arts.capcourier@gmail.com

Megan Amato opinions.capcourier@gmail.com

Sarah Rose

Rain Marie community.capcourier@gmail.com

Gaby Salas businessmanager.capcourier@gmail.com

Staff Writer Joss Arnott

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Alexis Zygan, Cam Loeschemann, David Eusebio, Emma Mendez, Hassan Merali, Jayde Atchison, Kaileigh Bunting, Rain Marie, Wen Zhai

FEATURED ARTISTS

Abby Jocson, Ana Maria Caicedo, Brooke Fusick, Gianmarco Iuele, John Pachkowsky, Rain Marie, Thea Pham

Cover Art

Emma Sato

CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Andrea Alcaraz, Anais Bayle, Alison Johnstone, Cynthia Tran Vo, Geraldine Yaris, John Pachkowsky, Logan David, Mikaela Johnson, Naomi Evers, Rocio Palomar Robisco, Sarah Haglund, Thea Pham, Tiffany Zhong

COLUMNIST PORTRAITS

Emma Sato

VOLUME 53 ISSUE NO.8

NEWS

OPINIONS

Unofficial Results of the CSU

Is the Customer Ever Actually

Spring 2021 Elections

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10

Balancing Biodiversity in British Columbia

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ARTS & CULTURE

and Healing

40

Unmasking Imposter Syndrome

42

The Discourse of Self-Diagnosis

44

The Minimum is Never Enough

46

Why Canadians Can’t Ignore 16

Rising Anti-Asian Racism

The Age of Analogue Audio

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COLUMNS

DIY: Oat Milk

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To Be Annihilated

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Editor Roundtable A Mixtape for the Pandemic &

Living with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

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We're Not Evil: BIPOC Witches

The State of Student Mental Health

Right?

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48

What's Brewing

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Overlook, BC

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Education's New Normal

53

Sexless in the City

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Upstart & Crow: Not Your Typical Bookstore

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FEATURES The Capilano Courier Guide To

“No one could’ve predicted this,” 28

COVID-Friendly Summer Fun Now Wait For Last Year: Disabled 32 Students and the Future of Education

INTERESTED IN CONTRIBUTING? Email capcourier@gmail.com INTERESTED IN ILLUSTRATING? Submit your portfolio or samples of work to artdirector.capcourier@gmail.com

HUMOUR says CapU Student on academic probation for lifting an entire essay f rom Wikipedia

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LITERATURE Adrift

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UNOFFICIAL RESULTS OF THE Newly elected CSU directors and CBPS executives to assume their roles for 2021-2022 school year

BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN Associate News Editor ALISHA SAMNANI Managing Editor, News Editor

The unofficial results of the Capilano Students' Union (CSU) general election were posted on the CSU’s Simply Voting website on Thursday, Mar. 18. There was a turnout of 467 votes.

This elected CSU directors and Capilano Business & Professional Society (CBPS) executives for the 2021-2022 school year are:

Position: President Name: Maia Lomelino Pronouns: she/her, they/them Statement: I am honoured and excited for the opportunity to keep working with the students as CSU President! I thank everyone who trusted (and voted?) for me, and I can't wait to start working with the new Board of Directors to improve students' lives at CapU. Position: Vice-President Equity & Sustainability Name: Meshelle Duncan Pronouns: she/her/hers Statement: I'm very excited to be elected as Vice President Equity and Sustainability. In my elected position I'm ready to listen to students’ experiences and needs to then utilize the privilege of my new position to have the tough conversations and work to make the necessary changes at our University.

Position: Vice-President External Name: Aryanna Chartrand Pronouns: she/her Statement: I am so thankful and honoured to be elected to serve as your VP External. I look forward to, and am committed to supporting and representing all Capilano University students. Together, we can ensure that the CSU and our stances relating to our external relations are founded on integrity and reflective of our students.

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CSU SPRING 2021 ELECTIONS Position: Vice-President Finance & Services Name: Akira Yamagishi Pronouns: he/him Statement: A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to exercise your voice this election! You have placed your confidence in us, and in return we shall hold that responsibility to the highest standard. We will continue to work towards the CSU’s strategic goals and advocate for all members.

Position: Vice-President Student Affairs Name: Zabir Montazar Pronouns: he/him/his Statement: I am grateful for the confidence and trust everyone showed upon me to be their voice. I intend to lead us to greater heights and accomplish all that I have set out to do. With your help, I can ensure we all have a wonderful time at Cap. Position: International Students Liaison Name: Nandini Sharda Pronouns: she/her/hers Statement: I am ecstatic at the prospect of working with such committed members of Capilano Students Union. During my elected term, I aim to accomplish more engagement opportunities for students, create supportive and secure environment for them and give them a sense of belonging to Capilano where they feel free to express themselves.

Position: Mature & Parents Students Liaison Name: Mayumi Rosanna Izumi Pronouns: she/her Statement: I am excited to be serving my third term as the Mature & Parent Students Liaison. This term I would like to reach more of my Collectives, engage them in fun online events, and ensure their inclusivity in CapU’s campus community.

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Position: Queer Students Liaison Name: Juliette Purkiss Pronouns: she/her Statement: I'm so honored to have been chosen for this position, and incredibly excited for the months ahead!! I look forward to bringing a voice to all LGBTQ+ students at CapU and I promise to work tirelessly to leave a positive impact in everything I do.

Position: Arts & Science Representative Name: Clara Duwel Pronouns: she/her Statement: I’m so enthusiastic and grateful to get the opportunity to represent you! My goal is to ensure that every student feels like their concerns are valid and taken seriously. I’m here to bring your voice forward and assist in creating an inclusive and supportive community. Let’s get things going!

Position: Business & Professional Studies Representative Name: Terrence Alanis Pronouns: he/him/his Statement: I'm very grateful to be elected to the CSU Board of Directors as the Business and Professional Studies Representative! To Cap U's aspiring business professionals, I'm ecstatic to get to work and to unconditionally support the best interests and rights to the best of my ability; my "door" is always open 24/7.

Position: Sunshine Coast Campus Representative Name: Brigid Mychael Pronouns: she/they Statement: What can I say? I’m stoked to be re-elected for Sunshine Coast Campus Representative! This term, I plan on working towards strengthening the kálax-ay campus community and voice. Some possible initiatives on the horizon involve regular office hours and an accessible online presence for Capilano students on the Sunshine Coast.

Position: At-Large Representative Name: Joel Gilani Pronouns: he/him/his Statement: I am looking forward to working alongside the amazing and passionate team that our student body has elected. I hope to leverage my position as a CSU representative and as a member of the university's Board of Governors to amplify student voices in addressing issues of equity our campus faces.

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Position: Capilano Business & Professional Society Vice-President Name: Ishita Sharda Pronouns: she/her/hers Statement: I am extremely thrilled to be elected as the Vice President for Capilano Business and Professional Society in my first year at CapU! It’ll be an incredible opportunity to represent our diverse Business students, discover exciting work-experience opportunities for them and help formulate new policies with the CBPS. Position: Capilano Accounting Association President Name: Enis Besirevic Pronouns: he/him Statement: I am grateful to be elected as President of the CAA. I look forward to planning a year full of exciting events and working with my team to deliver more opportunities to accounting students.

Position: Capilano Communication Association President Name: Sophia Kara Pronouns: she/her Statement: I'm so excited to have been elected as your Communications Association President! I want students to know that I am intent on giving them a year full of fun events with other students, faculty, and communication professionals. I'm always open to suggestions and feedback at sophiakara@my.capilanou.ca!

Position: Capilano Legal Association President Name: Alice Price-Stephens Pronouns: she/her Statement: I’m very excited and honoured to be elected. Thank you to everyone for the support! I’m looking forward to continuing the CLA’s mission as a valuable resource for students in connecting with the legal community.

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THE STATE OF STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in feelings of stress and anxiety in young people across Canada JOSS ARNOTT Staff Writer ANAIS BAYLE Illustrator

“I didn’t know I was depressed when I was quitting school,” said Bella Matungo, a former Capilano University (CapU) student who decided not to return to university last fall. “I was feeling demotivated and not interested in doing anything.”

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Matungo explained that when classes transitioned online, she found it difficult to maintain engagement with the material. Rather than return in the fall semester, she decided to press pause on her education and focus on her own mental wellbeing. In the interim, Matungo started a radio show called A Lonely Mind, on CFUV 101.9 FM. “When I was going through a very difficult time, the only thing that could keep me grounded was music,” she said.

From 8 pm to 9 pm every Tuesday, Matungo reaches out to listeners and encourages a positive conversation about mental health through her music.

Keith Lam, a CapU counsellor, discussed how the disappearance of socialization led to a lack of rejuvenating energy, as Lam describes it, amongst young people. This has led to difficulties with motivation for many. “[Students] need more time to do what they normally do...It takes you much longer to read a paragraph. You don’t speak as well as you used to. You don’t eat as well as you used to,” said Lam. “[Maybe] you get irritated, or frustrated more often. You get in arguments with your family or friends, but you normally don’t. That implies something might not be going well.”

“When you’re suffering and you’re in a dark place, it's scary,” said Matungo. "Not only for you, but for the people around you.”

Lam encouraged students who felt they might be experiencing a mental illness or have self-diagnosed themselves in the past to reach out to a professional for guidance. “That would be them saying, ‘I have something that concerns me, I need to talk to talk to someone to be sure,’” said Lam.

She isn’t alone. Sixty percent of young people, between the ages of 18 and 24, are reported to have experienced deteriorating mental health brought on by the long-term effects of quarantine and isolation—with 19 percent of those reporting an increase in suicidal thoughts and feelings.

These statistics are from a nationwide survey conducted by the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) in partnership with researchers from UBC that emphasized the erosion of mental health in Canada.

Dr. Emily Jenkins and Dr. Anne Gadermann have been examining the mental health implications of the pandemic since last May and were principal investigators in the study released by the CMHA. The two investigators, as well as research fellow Dr. Kimberly Thomson, explained that the results of the nationwide survey illustrate young people are experiencing disproportionately higher amounts of stress and anxiety compared to other age groups.

The survey also illuminated the ways in which people are successfully coping with the pandemic. Canadians are staying mentally healthy by walking outside, getting exercise and connecting with family or friends via phone and video chat.

Lam described a scenario where a student spoke to him about difficulties with her workload in a recent counselling session. “She was doing well last fall, but [then] the exhaustion set in…You just can’t keep doing this alone.”

Lam relayed that students often come into his counselling sessions with feelings of stress and anxiety—feelings they hadn’t experienced before lockdown. “There’s no separation between study, work or entertainment,” said Lam, explaining how working at home can often become monotonous. “[It’s] one thing and then the other—you have no breaks.”

According to Lam, the best way to deal with the homogenous nature of the pandemic is to create boundaries. These can be anything from a new change of clothes to switching rooms, the important thing is to reintroduce transitions between activities that have become tangled.

If students are concerned with the well-being of friends or family, it’s best to share their observations with these people in a way that conveys concern, not judgement.

“Ask how they are doing,” said Lam. “Don’t feel one has to do it on their own—help is available.”

If you’re interested in booking an appointment at CapU’s counselling service, you can visit their website at www.capilanou.ca/student-life/support--wellness/health--counsellingservices/counselling-services/.

While wait times are usually long at this time of year, the service offers Same Day Appointments for emergencies, which can be booked by calling 604-984-1744 during office hours. The website also has mental health resources for students at www.capilanou.ca/student-life/support--wellness/health--counselling-services/ counselling-services/resources-for-students/.

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BALANCING BIODIVERSITY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA How climate change is impacting B.C. wildlife and what to do this Earth Day to help KAILEIGH BUNTING Contributor ALISON JOHNSTONE Illustrator

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For decades, scientists have sounded the alarm loud and clear that climate change is an urgent threat to our planet.

Rising temperatures and increasing natural disasters have already seriously impacted many ecosystems in Canada and are undoubtedly a consequence of human-caused global warming.

The report stressed that the threat of increasing temperatures is still a concern for Canadian wildlife. Furthermore, this widespread warming is expected to intensify weather extremes across the provinces, such as the devastating forest fires seen in the past three summers.

While pinpointing the exact actions required to promote a healthy planet can be difficult, Earth Day (April 22) is an opportunity for people to find resources, get educated, and begin to make meaningful changes to their lives.

It can be challenging to focus on optimistic findings with so much negative media coverage surrounding the damage that has been done to the environment.

CapU biology professor Dr. Thomas Flower is exploring how wildlife can adapt. In his most recent lecture for the Capilano Universe series, Can Life Adapt?, Dr. Flower explores how climate change has affected biodiversity in B.C. and looks at specific instances of wildlife adapting to environmental change.

Unlike many headlines seen in recent years, Dr. Flower is optimistic that individual change has, and continues to, make a difference in the battle against climate change. The message of urgency and the desire to make change “is driven by people recognizing the importance of [climate change] and then putting people into power who take that seriously,” said Dr. Flower, who has seen success in similar environmental concerns

over his lifetime. He also highlights the sweeping changes occurring worldwide to decrease emissions, such as major countries, such as the United Kingdom, committing to all-electric vehicles by 2050 and an overall reduced global dependence on fossil fuels.

“Climate change is really normal for Earth—we’ve had periods of time when we were ten degrees hotter than we are now, and we’ve had periods of time when the entire Earth was frozen,” explained Dr. Flower. He stresses that the major problem with current global warming is that it is human-induced and is occurring at an extremely fast pace. Wildlife can genetically evolve and change its behaviour to promote survival, but will they adapt quickly enough?

Dr. Flower says that not all animals will be able to adapt, such as B.C.’s Sockeye Salmon, which need cold river water to reproduce each year successfully. Rising temperatures mean warmer water, and unlike mammals, fish can’t control their body temperature to adapt to this change.

“Eventually those salmon in those warm waters just can’t live anymore,” Dr. Flower explained, adding how the decline of the species would have a cascading effect on the surrounding ecosystems.

The environment is highly interconnected, and a decline in one species is almost guaranteed to harm another’s longevity.

Connecting to B.C.’s Sockeye, Dr. Flower explained that a rapid decline in the salmon population would mean a lack of food source for the resident killer whales (Orcas) that inhabit the West Coast’s waters. The Ocean Wise Conservation Association highlights that nutritional stress has already had a negative impact on the southern resident population, who reside in the waters off the coast of

B.C. In contrast, Dr. Flower mentioned that some species have already adapted, such as certain species of Douglas Fir and the Yellow-Bellied Marmot—both of which are native to B.C. Finally, it is crucial to consider the impact climate change will have on urban life worldwide. Luckily, in British Columbia, “most of our direct resources…are not going to be drastically impacted by climate change,” said Dr. Flower, indicating that the average urban resident may not notice any urgent lifestyle changes in the immediate future.

That being said, Dr. Flower emphasized how the increase in global temperature will affect the world’s water: “Our future will be one where water has a much higher value.” This would lead to the damming of more rivers in Southern B.C. and likely damage more habitats.

This Earth Day, Dr. Flower encourages people to think about living sustainably, which can be controlled by everyday choices consumers make. “We have to shift towards a model where the amount we take out is the same as the amount we put back into our environment,” he said, encouraging a circular economy that is kinder to the planet and all of its inhabitants. Dr. Flower suggested buying more second-hand items, reusing products until they are no longer functional, and properly recycling materials as avenues of positive change that individuals can take. Reducing dependence on single-use plastic and remembering to bring reusable shopping bags are additional lifestyle changes that will make a difference in creating a healthy planet. “I think the battle is nearly won with climate change,” said Dr. Flower, encouraging folks to stay committed and optimistic about the Earth’s future.

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Jo h n Pach kows ky

@salt.the.earth ­14

John Pach kows ky

@salt.the.earth F E AT URED A R T

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Editor Stories in Silence ALISHA SAMNANI Managing Editor, News Editor

When I think of what this academic year brought the Capilano Courier, I think of the countless articles containing “due to COVID-19…” or “...postponed indefinitely.” I think of the months of anguish everyone has gone through—our masthead included.

As an editor, this is nothing new: part of my job as a journalist is to absorb the pain of those suffering. While it’s an immense privilege being entrusted with these stories, it can be physically and mentally draining. I spend my time “listening” to people’s voices—in interviews, in emails, in informal discussions… So it shouldn’t be surprising that the sudden silence is crippling.

During my time at the Courier, I’ve spent so much time endlessly cultivating and uplifting underrepresented voices that I’ve neglected my own. I’ve spent much of this year feeling frustrated and mourning the numerous lives that have been irreparably changed.

As many of my friends would tell you, I’m not one to open up easily— so how do I release all my stress? I sing. Whether it’s something I’ve heard on the radio or lyrics I’ve scribbled down in haste, creating music sends me to a place where I’m at peace with myself and the world, however temporary.

While physically collecting people’s stories is still out of reach, I’ve come to terms with the transient silence. While it seems like nothing, I can still hear plenty—whether that’s the whisper of the wind or the myriad of raindrops cascading upon my window as I write this.

Much like the stories I’m so used to hearing, the music of the world fills my ears with hope—no matter how long it lasts. ­16

our editors What’s gotten andemic through this p r? publication yea

Ode to the Word Processor MEGAN AMATO Opinions Editor

I don’t consider myself particularly good at many things. I can’t hold a note to save my life—or read a note to play an instrument. There is not an ounce of rhythm in this pathetically fragile-for-my-age body to dance. I have no artistic skill, unless you count the doodles of eyes and flowers in the margins of all my written work, and I can’t manage to get past a grade school level of math. The one talent—if you can call it that—I do have is a decent grasp of the English written word, whether it be through writing or editing. Not only am I good at editing, I also love it.

Despite my self-proclaimed proficiency, I must admit that word processors have helped streamline my job as an editor working on multiple projects across different platforms—from Microsoft Word and Google Docs to organizational and creative programs like Scrivener and add-ons like Grammarly that offer more comprehensive suggestions. Each of these programs offers functions that have helped me organize projects, provide editorial advice, copy edits and proofreading while creating avenues to work collaboratively.

Despite being an essential editorial tool, word processors aren’t perfect. Sometimes they create problems, don’t understand the context in which something is written and can enforce colonial or ableist language or want to edit out the voice of a manuscript or article. Word processors are to be used and appreciated—but they can never replace an editor.

Roundtable GERALDINE YARIS Illustrator

CLAIRE BRNJAC Arts & Culture Editor ALISHA SAMNANI

Managing Editor, News Editor MEGAN AMATO Opinions Editor BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN

Associate News Editor

Lost Some Friends, Gained a Sister BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN Associate News Editor

I write this on the anniversary of lockdown, as I grab more coffee and sit down at my desk to stare blankly at my laptop screen—basically my life for the past year.

I never really realized how much of a social person I am until it was all taken away. Suddenly, there were no more late night library sessions with my friends. Within a month, I’d exhausted every variation of “Hey, what have you been up to?”

Luckily for me, I started as the Associate News Editor at the Capilano Courier in August. Alisha Samnani, the News and Managing Editor helped train me and always made time for calls to help me edit my first few pieces, but I had no idea that those few calls would turn into hundreds more, not only to edit pieces, but also to play games and chat about life.

Alisha and I met for the first time last summer, but she’s someone I feel like I’ve known my whole life. Someone who is always there for me—day or night, rain or shine. Not to be unappreciative of the supportive friends and family that I do have, but it’s been a tough year for everyone and I’ve definitely fallen out of touch with many friends.

Our phone calls and our socially-distanced walks around Lafarge Lake—where we joke about ducks liking peas—have been one of the highlights of the past year. I couldn’t have asked for a better News Editor or a better friend.

I’ve lost some friends, but what I’ve gained is something much more valuable, I’ve gained a big sister. I mean, she’s always wanted a little sister—I just hope I’m not as annoying as the job description typically requires.

Creating Bad Art CLAIRE BRNJAC Arts and Culture Editor

Editors everywhere can attest to that point in the editing process where words start blending into each other—where you make an edit and then delete it because you’re not totally sure you’re right.

Usually these moments happen in the dead of night, and since I’ve started this job last August, I’ve realized there’s only one thing that’ll clear my brain long enough to start working again.

I create something badly.

I have made terrible macarons that are both lumpy and bad-tasting. I have made many middling-to-terrible attempts at oat milk, and have eaten many undercooked Pillsbury sugar cookies in my year as an Arts and Culture editor. I have started many projects, most of which languish in my arts and crafts basket under my bed. I’ve written so many frustrated poems I could fill a novel, and while most of them will never see the light of day, I enjoy creating them.

There is something freeing in giving yourself the freedom to mess something up. While editing, you want an article or a piece to work so badly that you tweak it forever trying to find the best version of it—but sometimes that perfect state can’t be reached. In order to clear my mind and see a piece as it really stands, I create something else and let it sit on its own. Not everything has to be perfect. Some things just have to be done, and then you can start again.

A R TS & CULT URE

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A Mixtape f or the Pandemic

JOSS ARNOTT Staff Writer CYNTHIA TRAN VO Illustrator

& The f o e A g Ana io d u logue A

Part One: A Mixtape for the Pandemic.

The modern-day mixtape bridges the existential gap between digital and physical worlds. While a mixtape may not hold the same significance now as it did in 1983, the craft is still very much alive despite the digitization of the medium. When done in the true sense, regardless of the time period, the mixtape is a collage of feelings that form a story or embody a thematic ideal. Each song is a sentence whose cadence creates a narrative of the creator’s making. Finding the right tracks, selecting an order that resonates, maintaining a flow and crafting a proper pace—these make mixtapes an art form.

Yes, in 2020. I didn’t even ask for it; it was just… there,

In tribute to a year that screwed me harder than the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge ever could, I’ve crafted a mixtape for the pandemic. I’ve dedicated two songs to every month, from January 2020 until March 2021, with a bonus track for April. There’s no way to truly capture what a mess these fifteen months have been.

Regardless, I endeavoured to capture the feelings of dread, hope, anger, grief and love that so defined this rocky period of our lives.

I pressed the big button with an arrow on it. It went *Thunk*

under the tree. I remember thinking, ‘I have AirPods— when will I use this?’ I decided to look through the tapes that were part of the gift anyway. Among that small starter collection was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” Curious, I pulled the tape from its casing and slotted it into the yellow Walkman.

The cover shut with a satisfying click, and then all I had to do was hit play.

I heard an electric pop, a static sizzle and then…

And then there was sound. Such a sweet sound.

Part Two: The Age of Analogue Audio.

I sat there, completely floored as a guitar from 1984 echoed out through cheap headphones directly into my ecstatic brain.

I got a Sony Walkman for Christmas.

In those first five seconds, I was hooked.

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In the digital age, things tend to feel intangible. The digitization of schooling will surely become a classic example of this. Theoretically, online classes don’t differ much from in-person teaching—but in reality, the two aren’t comparable. The classroom is an environment: the whiteboard is seen, the teacher is heard, and the desk is felt

beneath bored fingers. It’s flawed but real, and we lose that realness when things go online.

Analogue audio is, similarly, a tactile experience. You can hold a tape in your hand and watch, as magnetic tape slowly spools out from side A to B. Dropping a needle onto a spinning LP feels right, as does the buzz a CD makes as it’s inserted into a car deck. Pressing ‘play’ on Spotify, just doesn’t feel the same as holding music in your hand.

Simply put, it pleases our monkey brains to press a big button.

Music is not a typical form of escapism like most other entertainment.

You don’t go anywhere when listening to music. The brain doesn’t shut down; it spins up. A connection forms when you slot in a CD or un-sleeve an LP. What happens is you begin to actively listen as music becomes more through a physical medium. That’s where the magic in music lies—not in the background but as a piece of the moment.

It’s easy to write this all off as nostalgia for a dead era. The inherent fallacy of arguing in favour of analogue audio is that it’s better than digital audio, but this isn’t an argument for quality. What matters is that a moment is enjoyed.

Music is music, after all, the medium doesn’t change the song. But the medium does make the experience, and now more than ever, it’s important to find things in life that make the world feel special. The age of analogue audio died before I was ever born, but hell, it’s a wonderful memory to hold onto right now.

Scan the r code fo Spotify andemic p 's s s o J ! mixtape

A R TS & CULT URE

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Do It Yourself: Oat Milk Oat milk is cheaper, easier, and better for the environment than other milks, so why not dip in?

CLAIRE BRNJAC Arts & Culture Editor

Last month, Starbucks launched a new oat-milk specific drink— the Iced Brown Sugar Oat Shaken Espresso—to relatively positive acclaim. Chatime, a global bubble tea brand, also recently released their version: the Brown Sugar Oat Milk tea, which costs around $7 per cup. Especially important since the abundance of COVID-19 layoffs, one can save money by making their own oat milk at home.

Step 1: Gathering Materials

Oat milk, made mostly of rolled oats, ice water, and some flavouring, is extremely inexpensive to make and is absolutely delicious  in coffee, frozen in milkshakes or slightly frothed for a latte. Compared to the huge water consumption needed to make almond milk and the ozone-destroying emissions in the making of cow milk, growing oats take up 80 per cent less land area and water consumption than all other milk alternatives. Start-to-finish, it takes two to three minutes to make a great oat milk if you’re prepared beforehand.

Ingredients & Materials (Makes one liter of oat milk): 1 cup rolled oats 4 cups of ice water (the colder, the better) Blender Nut milk bag (cheesecloth or an old t-shirt would suffice) Flavourings (vanilla extract, maple sugar, etc.)

Large mixing bowl Jar Funnel

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Get all your materials ready at the same time to make the process as quick as possible. For this batch, I used two tablespoons of maple syrup, one teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt alongside my oats and ice water. Using ice-cold water is incredibly important to keep the texture of the oat milk as non-slimy as possible, so keep the ice cubes in as long as possible. While you’re at it, prep your nut-milk bag by placing it over a large mixing bowl—you’ll be glad you did later.

Step Two: Blending

Step Four: Pouring and Enjoying

Blend the oats, the flavourings, the water, and the salt for no more than 20-30 seconds. Make sure to keep this process relatively fast— letting the oats soak for longer than they have to will make your milk slimy and unpalatable. Twenty seconds is all you need to get the oats incorporated enough, and then turn it off.

Step Three: Draining the Oats

Transfer your oat milk from your mixing bowl to a jar, bottle, or reusable container of your choice. I had an old Avalon milk bottle lying around, so I used my funnel to pour the oat milk into my container and then stashed it in my fridge for safekeeping.

Oat milk is relatively hardy, but like all things, it goes bad over time.

Homemade oat milk will start to go off after about a week in the fridge, but check the smell and consistency to make sure. Separation in your oat milk is normal—just give your milk a quick shake to reincorporate it before serving.

Pour the oat mixture through your already-prepared nut-milk bag.

Make sure not to squeeze the oats through the nut-milk too hard, or the milk texture will get slimy. The oats will still have a little bit of liquid in them after squeezing, so let the bag sit in an empty measuring cup to drain further. After the oats have been squeezed into your mixing bowl, you can use the oat remains to make cookies!

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To Be Annihilated How a science-fiction film opened my eyes to body horror CLAIRE BRNJAC Arts & Culture Editor JOHN PACHKOWSKY Illustrator

Before Annihilation, I had never walked out of a movie.

I remember standing in front of the movie theatre doors hyperventilating, rubbing my sweaty hands on my jeans as I debated about going back in. The staff watched me as I looked into the neverending depths of the Dippin’ Dots machine, trying to pump myself up. The emotion I was feeling wasn’t fear or even my everpresent anxiety disorder. It was discomfort—it was exhilaration.

Annihilation is a 2018 science-fiction movie loosely based on a novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. It focuses on a strange bubble, referred to in-universe as “The Shimmer,” that encapsulates a coastal area off of Florida and is growing steadily. Within this zone, animals merge and meld with fauna and with each other, creating giant crocodiles and delicate white deer with flowers growing out of their antlers. It gets more and more sinister as a group of scientists venture into The Shimmer to document its growing radius and for the main character, played by Natalie Portman, to find her missing husband.

Part cosmic body horror and part science-fiction, it’s exemplified best by a scene early on where Oscar Isaac, the husband, shakily cuts open another scientist’s chest to reveal his organs swimming around like eels.

In Annihilation, nothing stays the same. Everything is moving and shifting and changing around the protagonists—even their fingerprints change patterns after prolonged exposure to The Shimmer’s alien influence. It’s one of the many horror films, like Black Swan and The Fly, that deal with the human body as a warzone, where the protagonists have to confront their bodies changing without their consent into some other, more animalistic form. At the end of the movie, we aren’t sure if Natalie Portman’s character is even entirely human or if she’s been changed irrevocably into another animal.

This conceit, as it turns out, hit me in a way I didn’t expect. I had read the book, where the characters went nameless, and the plot focused around a cosmic being writing on the walls of a twisting cave. I wasn’t expecting the movie to diverge into its own nightmare.

Before Annihilation, the emotions I felt watching movies were usually garden variety—sadness as someone died or broke up with their true love, happiness at a reunion or a good dance sequence, laughter at a good joke, sometimes secondhand embarrassment at a cringy

scene—and I would largely forget them as time went on. This level of visceral discomfort was new. I marvelled at it as I stood outside of this theatre, this deep, gut feeling that something was wrong. I was and still am a fan of horror as a genre—scary video games like Five Nights at Freddy’s and the Silent Hill playable teaser are two fond memories of my growing up, as well as movies like The Ritual and It Follows— but Annihilation hit a nerve that I hadn’t known existed, one reserved for imminent, unavoidable personal danger, and of inescapable strangeness.

I remember the exact scene in the movie that made me leave. The main characters were strapped to chairs with gags on, and the human antagonist of the film at the time, played by Michelle Rodriguez, was asking everyone about the disappearance of another scientist on their team. She suddenly hears the scientist calling outside, and she runs to intercept her. The audience can hear only silence, and then a twisted version of the scientist’s voice calling for help. With the remains of a human skull fused onto the side of its face, a boar comes into their room, limping with the changes to its unwilling body. The boar calls for help in a parody of the scientist’s voice, sounding like an animal pretending to be another animal with just discordant noises. Like a parrot mimicking a dead person’s voice.

I slammed my hands over my ears, unwilling to process what I was hearing. I had a sickening realization of what was about to happen, and I was unable to stop it. I rushed out of the theatre, and I stood in front of a Dippin’ Dots machine, and then I left entirely. I didn’t watch the end until it came out on Netflix a year later.

Annihilation is not the most well-made movie, nor the best-acted. It takes only the central premise of the incredibly well-written book and creates its own world around it. But even after all of that, it has stayed with me consistently. Not a week goes by that I don’t think about it, and there is not a work of fiction I’ve made that hasn’t had some aspect in it. Even now, especially with COVID, there remains a familiar creeping fear that something within you is changing without your permission. That you can do everything you can to stop it, but you will change anyway.

Something in Annihilation changed me. I think if I look hard enough, I can see my fingertips changing patterns, slowly and surely, and I don’t think I want them to stop.

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LivingwithRejectionSensitiveDysphoria Will I ever overcome the agony of criticism?

RAIN MARIE Community Relations Manager

It is 8:00 am and I am sitting in the corner of my stuffy Grade 12 English class anxiously waiting for my teacher to return the results from last week's exams. I feel like I don’t deserve my seat in the classroom. When I was nine, I was moved from my public elementary school to a gifted charter school after my occupational therapist (OT) thought it would better serve my needs. Everyone attending the school had been through mandatory IQ testing to see if they belong in gifted education, and there I was, not done the testing, feeling as if I got a free pass into a school where I don’t belong. I feel like  school was never easy for me.  I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Dyspraxia at the age of 5. As a female-presenting person, I was very lucky to receive my diagnosis at such an early age.

This is unlike the experience of most female-presenting people, such as Claire Brnjac, Capilano Courier’s Arts and Culture Editor, who mentions that she was officially diagnosed with ADHD when she was a junior in high school. She was late to the game getting diagnosed, and only really got started after a school therapist suggested it due to her failing marks.

Even with the benefits of an early diagnosis, I also experienced social isolation. At age six, I was taken out of class to visit a school OT for the first time. While the other students sat in class and learned about addition and subtraction, I sat alone in a room matching colours with shapes. These are the kind of activities you would expect to be given to a toddler. This was the beginning of my personal experience with rejection. I didn’t see myself as ADHD or Dyspraxic or even just a student with different needs; I saw myself as the names I heard yelled at me by the other students: annoying and attention-seeking.

ADDitude Magazine, an online news source on ADHD, defines Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) as an “intense emotional response caused by the perception that you have disappointed others in your life and that, because of that disappointment, they have withdrawn their love, approval, or respect.” The same sinking feeling of shame a neurotypical person may feel from rejection, or something as simple as getting called out for speaking out of turn during class, can feel like a life-shattering event to one with RSD. We begin to learn to apologize ferociously for any mistake, and avoid any situation that might bring rejection. Many people with ADHD experience ostracization growing up, both prior to and following their diagnosis.

Capilano University (CapU) student Danae McLean describes their experience: “I thought I was a misfit, despite having friends. I don’t know how much of that was regular playground dynamics, anxiety disorder, or ADHD making me think everyone didn’t like me.”

Doctors and psychiatrists are only starting to recognize the ways in which cisgendered male-centered medical practices are preventing women from getting the diagnoses and support they need. Due to the way female-presenting people are socialized from birth, they may 24

present with different behaviours that are not encapsulated within a diagnosis based on a masculine standard. Women are more likely to suffer more with symptoms of RSD, anxiety and depression, and the constant pressure to be perceived as “normal”. Brnjac comments on this phenomenon: “It's not a secret that we [female-presenting people] get diagnosed less often than our male counterparts... I know more women getting tested now in their early twenties than I did when I got diagnosed at 17.” Unfortunately, this is the reality for most female-presenting people with ADHD. Our innate desire to fit in and not be perceived as weird or different causes us to mask our symptoms. Often when we go and seek a diagnosis later in life, it’s overlooked when it doesn’t match the textbook definition of what ADHD looks like in men.

“Masking” is a skill that many neurodivergent people unconsciously learn and is a common practice in women with ADHD. From a young age I learnt how to mimic the body language, facial expressions and speech patterns of my peers without ADHD in order to avoid rejection and social isolation. Now, I study acting professionally.

What is acting if not complex mimicry? While pursuing acting in the Acting for Stage and Screen (ASAS) program at CapU, I learnt that the acting world is full of female-presenting people like me. In my conversations with fellow ASAS student McLean, I discovered that many people who face struggles with inadequacy and rejection turn to the arts as a place where they can thrive and feel confident in their achievements and failures.

Coping with rejection without the constant feeling that one misstep can turn the entire world against you is, in my experience, a lifelong process. It involves learning what sets off those feelings of rejection, and how to take a step back from these triggers before continuing forward. “I always think people are mad at me. I have to remind myself to take a breath and re-evaluate to avoid being toxic to my loved ones. I often reach out to friends separate from certain situations or altercations and say ‘hey feeling down, need affirmation’ and I have friends who come to me for the same thing,” describes McLean.

Some simple strategies for coping with RSD can be reminding your peers of your specific need and, as Brnjac reminds us, the importance of “Learning to sometimes just look. [...] I've learned that I can do anything for one second—I can open that email and look if I just force myself to. Just rip the bandaid off; it's always not as bad as I was fearing.”

For students seeking an ADHD diagnosis, those just diagnosed and those who have lived many years with a diagnosis, remember that there is always someone out there who will listen. Despite the fear that we may receive more rejection or be perceived as weak for seeking help, people are generally far more open and accepting than we give them credit for. You are not alone in your journey with acceptance of rejection, there are always people out there ready with open arms to support you and provide accommodations for you.

Upstart &Crow:Not YourTypical Bookstore ALEXIS ZYGAN

Contributor

In August 2020, a brand new literary space opened in Vancouver with a vision to do more than just sell books. "I like the partnership we have created with people. There is that buzz you get connecting with humans through stories," said Zoë Grams, co-owner of Upstart & Crow Literary Arts Studio.

Upstart & Crow resides between art studios and artisans on quaint Granville Island. Grams and co-owner Ian Gill hope to bridge the gap of literary hubs in Vancouver. A city with a vibrant publishing scene depends on spaces where writers muse and collaborate. “Like many bibliophiles, we dreamed about opening up a literary space and certainly from my perspective, we actually have few literary spaces,” said Grams. Working alongside Grams’ architect dad they brought their vision to life, constructing wooden tables and floor-to-ceiling shelving, with an upstairs loft designed for a writer in residence.

Their vision for Upstart & Crow is to cultivate an environment where people engage in storytelling and gather for workshops. Upstart & Crow's Indigenous Library Partnership promotes reading by supplying books to Thistalalh Memorial Library, located in the coastal town of Bella Bella on Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) territory in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Despite the loss of foot traffic during COVID-19, Granville Island is a prime tourist destination. Since opening in August 2019, Upstart & Crow managed to establish community relationships with their neighbours and engage with local bibliophiles.

The book subscription program from Upstart & Crow creates a customizable reading experience that fits an individual’s specific literary material desires by providing them with a handpicked book from the catalogue every month. The books will be on the theme of self-care, escapism from anxieties, travelling to space, or whatever else seems like a good fit. Even though not every selection will be perfect, Grams has been delighted by feedback where readers felt seen. "We

Inspiring bookworms to rekindle their love for literature through curated collections

want to introduce people to stories, books and ideas they wouldn't have considered otherwise," he said. Upstart & Crow also showcases books translated to English from other languages in addition to supporting homegrown talent.

Many folks are switching to digital mediums to connect with literature—such as e-readers or audiobooks—others prefer physical books. It is imperative to acknowledge how colonial culture gives precedence to written work. "Reducing the [divisions] between different types of storytelling mediums will just continue in the 21st century," said Grams. Even though the publishing industry predicted a decline in sales when e-readers emerged, that has not been the case according to the Association of American Publishers 2019 report.

People continue to purchase books from bookstores such as Upstart & Crow for a rich sensory experience. What matters is that people are connecting with stories regardless of whether it's through indigenous spoken words, girthy adventure novels, or e-books.

Upstart & Crow's retail model focuses on selling stories printed on paper. "I think the main thing is not being intellectually stauvish about storytelling mediums; all storytelling is valid and should all be celebrated and cultivated," said Grams.

For folks like myself, who never read for pleasure during university due to an overwhelming workload, there are ways to embrace the joy of reading once more. Firstly, it is okay to take a break from anything if it is not serving you at that moment. "Don't sweat it. Read what appeals to you most at the moment, any genre or style. Don't feel like you have to go from beginning to end,” said Grams. “Dip in, and eventually, you'll find that book where you stay up way too late reading it. That will happen; just be patient about when that click comes again."

Upstart & Crow is open five days a week, Tuesday through Sunday, from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.

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Brooke Fusick

@brookefusick ­2 6

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G ian marco I u e le

@giannimarx F E AT URED A R T ­2 7

The Capilano Courier Guide To COVID-Friendly Summer Fun From punch needling to painting and bubble tea, The Capilano Courier staff share unlikely survival tools and activities to help you get through another summer of COVID-19 ROCIO PALOMAR ROBISCO Illustrator

Ode to Bubble Tea BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN Associate News Editor

It’s hard to think of something specific that got me through this past year and that might help me get through the next. Having already written a piece for the Arts & Culture section about my gains and losses of friends during the pandemic, I decided that I’d write this piece about bubble tea. It’s definitely gotten me through some tough days.

I’m not too sure why, but it’s something about the sweetness of the tea combined with the chewy texture of the pearls that make me love this drink so much. It’s calming and the idea of going to get a cup after finishing a paper or as a break boosts my motivation in surprising ways.

A year and a half ago, I was in Victoria with some friends, and they wanted to go get bubble tea. I had never had it before so I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

Calling my first bubble tea experience life-changing is a bit of a stretch, but it’s my go-to way of rewarding myself now. Bubble tea also became a coping strategy that I can now turn to without the guilt of spending money unnecessarily, or guilt about the calories—both of which I’ve struggled with for some time now.

A friend of mine tried bubble tea once and said that the pearls were mushy and comparable to what he’d imagine eyeballs taste like—so maybe it’s a bit of an acquired taste. To me, though, treating myself to a bubble tea and walking down a few blocks to the closest location is calming and completely resets my mood for some reason.

I have been trying not to go anywhere or see anyone due to the lockdown, but my little walks to go grab a bubble tea—even though it was something I rarely did prior to COVID—have been one of the highlights of my year and something I plan to keep doing.

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Walking CL AIRE BRNJAC Arts and Culture Editor

As the days get longer and hotter, my urge to get out of the house intensifies. It might be because of the insane heating in my room, which seems to permanently hover around 30°C. So, to beat the heat, I’ve started walking around my neighbourhood. I originally started this as a way to build up to jogging, an activity I’ve always admired others for doing, and something that might be helpful for my health.

Jogging could help me run to a bakery for a doughnut, or stop by my friend’s house for coffee.

This is not as easy a feat as I first thought it was. Walking depends a lot on the weather which, in Vancouver, is generally not great. I tried my first walk in the rain and found myself battered from all sides until I was shivering and damp ten minutes later. I put on my three layers of polar fleece and sweatpants and tried again, much to my dissatisfaction.

I soon learned what the real draw behind walking was—getting to listen to music and be in my head for a while. There is very little a walk doesn’t help with in terms of figuring out your emotional state.

If you have to cry, you cry. If you want to dance through a good song, find yourself on a deserted street and have a ball. If you want to run for no reason other than feeling your legs underneath you relishing in the fact that you can move, then there’s very little stopping you from sprinting down the street as fast as you can. Going on a walk, for me, is one of the only places I can exist without artifice.

My advice for surviving this summer, as more and more people get vaccinated and more stores open up, is to walk. Wander with no destination or walk to a bakery with purpose. You’ll feel good either way when you make it home. And who knows—maybe you’ll end up jogging too.

Socially Distanced Movie Nights RAIN MARIE Community Relations Manager

I have never been particularly good at keeping up with online communication. I hardly remember to text or call, and sometimes when I receive a text I will mentally reply and forget to actually send it. Because of this, it’s safe to say that when the pandemic hit I had to relearn my entire communication style.

Keeping up with social activities is an important part of caring for one's mental health, especially in a pandemic when all those activities need to be online. As we reach what is hopefully the final stretch of lockdown, I reflect back on the importance of one of my favourite online social activities—online movie nights.

At the end of October when Dr. Bonnie Henry extended lockdown guidelines to no longer allow outdoor gathering or a small social bubble—I, like the rest of the BC population, had to start getting creative with my social life. These past months one of my biggest lifesavers has been a semi-regular online movie night with my friend Gabrielle. Every couple of weeks we’ll pick a movie from our watchlist, pull it up on whatever streaming site or online movie database we can find it on, set up a discord video call, and hope that we hit play at the same time.

However simple of an act this may seem, it helped me feel like I’m not trapped alone in my day-to-day life, while still allowing the flexibility of spontaneous movie night rather than strictly planned times. Although I hope I’m able to enjoy my movie nights with Gabrielle in person soon when we are finally allowed to hang out in person again, a little part of me will miss the peaceful, easy nature of watching a movie together from the comfort of our own rooms.

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THE CAPIL ANO COURIER GUIDE TO COVID-F RIENDLY SUMMER F UN

Punch Needling Whatever Catches My Fancy ANA MARIA CAICEDO Editor-in-Chief

When my best friends and roommates moved out last fall, my house was in a state of limbo. Some decorations and remnants of them lingered—reminders that my friends were no longer here— and I realized my home no longer felt like one. Exasperated from a mounting pile of homework and nothing to keep me distracted, I decided I was going to give my house a makeover. I painted plant pots, made a tiled table, framed torn-out pages of the Capilano Courier—but nothing so far has been as satisfying as making my punch needle rug.

I first got into punch needling in December, when I was too broke to buy the $400 tufting gun I wanted (not to mention, too impatient to wait the four-month shipping time). I’ve put endless hours into this rug now, punching through lectures, podcasts and zoom calls with friends. The work is starting to take shape, and my lovely wool rug of pastel blobs and squiggles is nearly done. It’s fulfilling to see this piece materialize as I work on it, and empowering to know I can put something as seemingly complicated as a rug into existence.

So, as you push through another COVID-19 summer, I recommend you pick up punch needling and make something for your own spaces. It’s relatively inexpensive and easy to do, and will ease a busy mind like nothing else I’ve known.

MEGAN AMATO Opinions and Columns Editor

I am notorious for taking up a hobby and skill, researching its history, culture and variation from authors globally until I know the ins and outs of it and run out of energy to actually do said hobby or skill—or I move onto whatever catches my fancy next. Maybe I love the chase, scouring the internet and library to find the right bits of information.

This hyper-fixation of mine, while not great for actually finishing much, allows me to immerse myself into whatever I am doing—RIP to my husband, who disturbs me while I am doing whatever thing at the time—and go days or weeks without coming up for air. This love of fixating on something is perfect during a time when we are all stuck inside for the most part.

In 2020, I had big plans to take up many projects. Most of them went unfulfilled—coding, sewing, diary writing, wreath making, to name a few—as depression reigned for large swaths of the year. But the few things I did manage to stick with brought me bouts of, if not joy, contentment.

I spent months protecting my hydrangeas from the ivy menace, vigorously checking their stems for the sneaky vines. I played the w for weeks at a time, buying multiple expansion packs and learned every cheat and secret. I spent days searching the internet for jobs that matched my friend’s preferences, ignoring my own work. I got absorbed by writer Twitter and TikTok. I learned as much as I could about the endangered Southern Resident killer whales, portal fantasy, and the history of herbariums. I read countless series after series and wrote a book in a month that I had been ignoring for a year.

This summer, I have big plans. I recently moved somewhere with many hills and walking paths, and I plan to map them all along with the birds I see along the way. Anxiety has kept me from driving for too many years, but I think it’s time to try. I want to take up kayaking and learn the local marine life. I hope to name every tree, plant and animal I see from memory and discuss whether the brush on the side of the road is native or not. I will doubtlessly start researching half of them and give up once the time comes to do—*cough* driving *cough*—but I look forward to being submerged in the meantime.

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THE CAPIL ANO COURIER GUIDE TO COVID-F RIENDLY SUMMER F UN

Push Start SARAH ROSE Features, Humour & Literature Editor

It’s no secret—Courier readers may already be familiar with this from some of my previous work here, but from the moment I found myself with a controller in my hands, I’ve loved video games.

Playing games with my friends both online and alone helped me stay connected to my creative spirit and the people I care about.

This past year, my boyfriend and I solved the puzzle of death itself as Manny Calavera in the classic adventure of Grim Fandango. We watched the magical story of a father and son unfold in God of War, and hunted down every trophy in the adorable Astro Bot. But I also fell into a world filled with demons floating between the line of good and evil in Demon’s Souls and battled the mysterious beast plague in Bloodborne. Without realizing it, I found myself inspired to finish a collection of loosely connected poetry. Launching myself into this new small project, I put together a complete chapbook in about a week and shared it in a forum where a fellow fan donated $15. Using the money to buy Deep Rock Galactic, a close friend in Calgary and I now spend at least once a week drinking beer and making jokes soaked in drilling innuendo.

I’m grateful for the opportunities and life-long friendships my love of gaming has brought into my life over the years, but this last year has really helped me appreciate it in perhaps a new light. This pandemic has taken from a lot of people a sense of connection, that fundamental thing sitting at the heart of all stories and human experience.

As we shut off our screens in the coming year and cautiously venture back outside, I know I have those I’ve shared a grand adventure with waiting for me on the other side.

New Way of Seeing ALISHA SAMNANI Managing Editor, News Editor

Everything about the world we knew changed overnight.

Many of us have spent the past year adjusting to entirely new ways of living and working. Some of us have had to cope with unprecedented amounts of sickness and loss. The future—while now hopeful for many—is still uncertain. I don’t know about you, but there have been moments where it’s hard to see past all the stress and anxiety of the past year.

One of my favourite things is storytelling—connecting with others. This connection has been difficult through the isolation of a pandemic, and with the Capilano Courier on hiatus over the summer, it’s bound to be even less likely. However, the pandemic has given me another way to connect: not only with others but with myself. I paint—or at least, I try.

Like writers, painters tell stories. These stories seemingly appear out of nowhere—each evoking emotion through the weaving of colours and words. My favourite spot to paint is outdoors, and during the summer I’ll have no excuse. In the morning, while most of the world is still, I often sit on my porch, my notebook and paints in hand.

I painstakingly add and remove colour from the paper, layer by layer, returning to nothing but my thoughts and the sweet summer air as my canvas dries. The paint pigment glides effortlessly through the water, taking my anxiety with it. As I swirl my paintbrush in the water, I close my eyes and listen to the sea of feathers ruffling in the soft summer breeze. The cloudier my water cup gets, the calmer I feel.

So much has been out of our control over the past year, but what we can control is this: Whether it’s writing, painting or living through a pandemic, we can take a moment to shift our vision to something that’ll spark a bit of joy—even if only until the paint stops swirling.

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Now Wait For Last Year One year on from the COVID-19 accessibility crisis, disabled students reflect on uniformity and where we fit in the future of education SARAH ROSE Features Editor EMMA SATO Illustrator

The first time I dropped out of school was at the end of eighth grade— the same grade my dad did. My undiagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) earned me a different label: failure.

Still too young to legally drop out and too old to be taken pity on as a kid falling through the cracks, the system leaves disabled students like me in a state of aequilibrium indifferentiae—the exact balance between two actions. The only choice we have left is to escape.

In March 2020, everything stopped. Like waking up inside the eye of a hurricane, the new era of COVID-19 heralded, for the first time, a complete disruption of education globally. Accessibility considerations suddenly became a Hail Mary. Things like virtual access to classes, lecture recordings and online quizzes became automatic.

“We’ve been asking for these changes for decades, then suddenly it just happened overnight,” explained June Reisner, the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) Accessibility Justice Coordinator. After COVID, accessibility features that disabled students like Reisner had been asking about for decades suddenly became the default, like recorded lectures and moving all quizzes online (online quizzes don’t need to be scheduled with accessibility services and can more easily allow students to use any accessibility software they need). “It really illustrates how society values different lives,” she added.

For better or worse, the online switch seemed to disproportionately affect disabled students. Emerging research warns that the aftershocks of the pandemic will manifest as a serious mental health crisis. As the year wore on, Reisner describes how her mental health began to sink. “Online classes led to more isolation, not that disabled students had that much support from faculty [to begin with],” Reisner said, explaining how having accommodations for exams can only help so much when things like pop quizzes were never designed to be accessible to begin with. Whether the idea of returning to normal in the fall will be a return to shutting disabled and marginalized students

out of education or a once in a lifetime chance to make fundamental change remains the question of who is willing to listen.

Attempting to recreate the classroom experience virtually exposed how exclusionary it already is to marginalized students. In the process of streamlining some accessibility needs, remote learning has been accompanied by a sharp increase in patients seeking diagnoses and support for developmental disabilities like autism and ADHD. One American autistic and ADHD second-grader smashed his computer screen in frustration; another ADHD sixth-grader was sent to prison for missing class.

Students with developmental disabilities like ADHD are more likely to come from low-income families. Breaking the cycle of generational poverty among disabled students means ripping it out at the root well beyond the walls of the classroom. Disability assistance maintains structural violence and mandatory poverty, and now Bill C-7 prioritizes ending disabled lives instead of supporting them.

Educational institutions, in all their meritocratic theatre, don’t offer equal opportunity so much as they snowball existing disadvantage and oppression.

Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador are the last provinces still clinging to secondary school diploma exams. Last year, Alberta Education made sitting the 2021 provincial diploma exams optional and cancelled all provincial achievement tests—something they’ve only done a handful of times in the past. Only six percent of students chose to write the exams.

Whether or not these major exams have ever been accessible to begin with isn’t the first thing that comes to mind for the students who took the opportunity to abandon them. Grade 12 student Juana Arturo offered no obfuscation of why she opted out of sitting the exams: “I think standardized testing in general, it doesn't test your intelligence.

It tests your wealth,” said Arturo in an interview with CBC.

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NOW WAIT FOR L AS T Y E A R

Exams like provincial diploma exams are often described as a critical moment that determines students’ futures, yet they don’t measure competence as much as they do privilege. In every test section of the college entrance SAT exams in the United States, moving up an income category is associated with an average increase of 12 points. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada’s educational system is more effective than most other countries in compensating for income inequalities.

However, a 2010 study from the Toronto School District showed that nearly 60 percent of “gifted students” came from the three highest income deciles, with a full quarter from the highest income group alone.

Historically, the difference between growing up with a gifted designation instead of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) comes down to postal codes. Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, says growing up gifted doesn’t happen by accident. “[Gifted students] end up there because their parents have the resources, [and] have been mobilizing these resources to craft a certain kind of childhood from the moment these kids are born,” he said in an interview with The Walrus.

So the question remains why, despite being a relatively small population, gifted students are approximately three times more likely to drop out of school, at the same rate as students with learning disabilities—and between both groups, the most cited reasons for dropping out are disengagement and failure. The emotional undercurrent between these two groups of students is the fact that so many of them see school as alienating and irrelevant to their future.

Like myself and so many other disabled students, Reisner shared that she also dropped out of high school in her senior year due to her disability.

As the virtual curtain call looms for the past year of online classes, Reisner reflects on her journey from disabled drop-out to soon-tobe graduate with a psychology degree: “I still haven’t graduated high school.” Unlike other young graduates, university wasn’t something Reisner assumed would be in her future, even now as she discusses possible plans for a master’s degree in clinical psychology. “Some universities don’t care about that, but places like [The University of British Columbia] do,” said Reisner.

Students like Reisner and myself carry an immense weight that hangs over the achievements we’ve clawed from the jaws of educational privilege. My future success was the furthest thing from my mind after I graduated high school in 2012 and fielded a rejection call from the Mount Royal University Journalism program. The admissions officer informed me that my English grade was one percent below the admission threshold. I was also six senior credits short after dropping Physical Education 12 because a mere seven months prior, my jaw was being reconstructed in a high-risk surgery in Florida. I tried to compensate for my lack of credits by attending two high schools simultaneously while barely having the ability to physically speak. At that moment, I don’t remember saying anything before listening to the line go dead. Eventually, I pocketed my phone, still wet with tears.

Armed with 12 years of overdue federal child support payments while living on the floor of a friend’s basement, I dove into upgrading ­3 4

my high school courses immediately after graduation. Reisner also started attending CapU as a continuing education student, taking several upgrading classes before applying to the Psychology program.

Despite completing my upgrading courses with exceptional grades, it still wasn’t enough to qualify for admission to Mount Royal University. Disabled bodies naturally exist in rebellion. No matter how hard I kept fighting, I couldn’t compensate enough for 12 years of being pushed out of education, of being constantly forced into the margins.

“Going through school, so much of your worth—basically all of your worth—is equated to your achievements,” said Reisner. “You’re going to get into this university; you’re going to get this award; you’re going to get on the honour roll—it’s just false. There’s so much more, and now that I’m out, I can really see that in a way that I couldn’t see when I was a teenager because they wouldn’t let you see it that way.” Her voice is always even, but presence and conviction bleed through.

“It was such a harmful thing, especially as someone who is diverse, because you’re just not going to necessarily perform in those ways.”

Kids become the expectations set for them. “If your achievements are this very narrow range of expectations, it just causes kids to lose all value in themselves,” said Reisner. Gifted, like troubled, is just another uniform, a self-fulfilling prophecy. All those years of report cards that mourn “wasted potential” eventually become statistics about future criminals, about generational poverty—about disability. When I left my upgrading classes almost seven years ago, I told myself I would never go back to academia. That was the third time I dropped out, until my therapist at the time convinced me to try penning an essay that eventually became my letter of admission to the Creative Writing program at Capilano University (CapU).

Whether we fight within the system or outside of it, education maintains a chokehold on our futures. Canadians are among the most educated people in the world and according to Statistics Canada, over half of the population between 25 to 64 has post-secondary qualifications. Twenty-seven percent have the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to only 14 percent of disabled Canadians. Yet, the dropout rate among some of the lowest income postal codes is well over 50 percent—that isn’t an accident; it’s by design.

After combing through almost a decade of data, three researchers in Ontario determined that being gifted makes no discernable difference in overall achievement by the end of high school. Women of colour are the most likely demographic to have postsecondary education, while their white male counterparts are the least likely, despite dominating gifted classrooms. As the uniform lacks evidence for improved performance, so does the data suggesting student segregation by perceived ability alone affects performance.

Less than a decade after disabled Canadians fought for their right to be included in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 11-year-old Emily Eaton won a three year fight with the Courts for her right to share a classroom with her peers. It was the first time the Canadian justice system acknowledged that forced segregation by ability invariably results in discrimination.

CapU has a long history of being regarded as a commuter school— the in-between for dropouts, upgrades, and a place to get easy A’s

NOW WAIT FOR L AS T Y E A R

to transfer into a real ‘brand-name’ institution. The kind of prestige following these Canadian Ivy Leagues mirrors the pathos of the gifted child, and that’s precisely what parents and students buy into.

A researcher at Stanford demonstrated that prestige did not affect educational outcomes. The most significant experiences impacting graduate fulfillment, according to the researcher, are professors who make learning exciting and demonstrate care for their students, mentorship and encouragement to follow through on personal goals, meaningful projects that span multiple semesters, and extracurricular activities.

I’ll never forget the Philosophy professor who told me critical thinking could change the world and let me discover I could excel at logic problems despite my learning disabilities. Having the representation of a disabled English professor with a highly acclaimed career mattered to me immeasurably, and the Communications professor who opened the doors of his class to me even though I was missing the prerequisites is the reason I can work today. Reisner shares this sentiment: “Community support is so validating [when education] is constantly invalidating you.”

I also can’t forget the professor who demanded I go to a clinic to get a sick note with the flu to reschedule an exam and wouldn’t let me use the washroom during an exam. Or the professor who told me I was too competent and intelligent to have ADHD after disclosing my diagnosis. When you’re disabled, opportunity and achievement will always be shadowed by ableism built into your success.

As public-school enrolment continues to decline, the free-market education model has, as per its capitalistic dogma, punctuated great opportunities with great oppression. The next year is fertile ground for hundreds of potential thinkpieces and studies into the ‘lost COVID generation’ of students—they’ve already begun to trickle in. The kinds of losses being measured—and for whom—will undoubtedly be standardized test scores, attendance and drop-out rates. The solution is not more segregation and hierarchies. Relying on historical repetition during this time of academic upheaval will undoubtedly result in the struggle for accessibility being relegated to the footnotes, and it’s happening right now.

In November, Manitoba introduced the Education Act (Bill 64) heralding the biggest overhaul to the structure of the province's entire education system in 60 years. “COVID forced us to recognize our system’s huge disparities,” said Education Minister Cliff Cullen in a news conference. Bill 64 will further centralize Manitoba’s education system, slashing 37 school boards into one central body, similar to what New Orleans did in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. In some areas within the province, over 60 percent of children live in poverty.

Perhaps it’s hardly coincidental that Manitoba’s students also rank the lowest in math and second lowest in reading. Further centralization will create more standardized testing and less representation for the most vulnerable students, allowing those who are already marginalized to get pushed further into the background.

Change has to happen on an institutional level. When we build systems that perpetuate homogeny and hierarchies, they must be dismantled from the inside out before making an honest attempt at equity. For Reisner, centering accessibility now more than ever

as rapid change sweeps education is critical if we’re serious about dismantling the prejudice that has been there since its inception. “[Accessibility] shouldn’t be a bonus thing, it’s just equity.” Focusing on diversity and celebrating it, instead of pushing it out as much as possible, means better outcomes for all students.

“In real life, you encounter diversity every day,” said Reisner. “Even if you’re not someone who has a disability, you’re going to encounter someone that does, and you’re going to have to know how to work with them and have to value them as a person.” At CapU, five percent of respondents in a campus-wide experience survey conducted by the CSU identified as having a disability, despite 11 percent reporting that they’ve experienced inaccessibility on campus. At face value, it suggests the possibility of an invisible population of disabled students who aren’t disclosing their disabilities. It also brings into question how deep inaccessibility at CapU is embedded into the experience of other marginalized students, especially Black, Indigenous and lowincome students.

One study suggested that of 100,000 disabled students enrolled in postsecondary education, only a quarter of them were registered to receive disability-related services. Some students know the accessibility services available on campus can’t adequately address their needs, but the act of disclosure itself is a personal choice that often hinges on our acceptance of ourselves and our disabilities.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the academic landscape isn’t designed to facilitate equitable opportunities for disabled bodies.

There has never been a valid incentive not to provide accommodations for all students regardless of whether they have a documented disability or not. Yet professors still deny requests for accommodations under the imaginary banner of “fairness” or make students feel ashamed for asking. The educational body needs to address how rigid uniformity always leads to discrimination, but also that exceptions have always been the rule because they benefit everyone. Everyone is entitled to accommodations, because every life is challenging in different ways. As Jay Dolemage writes in Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education, it’s not possible to imagine a future of academia without first acknowledging the idea of disability: “Instead, educators have to recognize these very foundations and future as being built upon ableism, and as—literally—being built upon the bodies of disabled people.”

Before Reisner was elected, the position of Accessibility Justice Coordinator was vacant from June until the fall. “With the transition [of students] going back to [physical] class, this is a critical time to advocate with teachers unions,” she expressed. But as the year concludes and Reisner prepares to move on, unless someone runs in the fall, the position will sit vacant once again. The progress for accessibility at CapU, and education as a whole, hangs in the balance as precariously as ever.

Reisner tilts her head, for a moment the garish glow of the late morning sun fills her bedroom from the window of our Zoom call.

“To a certain extent, you have to force yourself through the system that exists [just to] get to a place where you can question it and change it, and people will actually take you seriously.”

F E AT URES

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Abby Jo c s o n

@craboozled ­3 6

Th ea P h am

@theapham_l02 F E AT URED A R T

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Rai n Mar i e

@paperjjam ­3 8

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IS THE CUSTOMER EVER ACTUALLY RIGHT? People are the worst part of service jobs JAYDE ATCHISON Contributor SARAH HAGLUND Illustrator

One year ago, we collectively slid our windows open at 7 pm and cheered as a thank-you to all essential workers. We were all saddened by the sudden lockdown, but we came together to demonstrate appreciation for those that risked their health and wellbeing to help us stay afloat. Posts on social media about the importance of being patient and kind to essential workers were shared on stories and timelines. We agreed that kindness was the solution to surviving everything.

But the pandemic lasted longer than our patience, and new protocols began to eat away at our tolerance for change.

What was supposed to be a two-week fling with the virus became a year-long affair, and we finally began opening up “non-essential” environments. After 163 days of being laid off in September, 37 books and 132 home workouts, I donned my personalized lifeguard hoodie and went back to interacting with the general public. As much as I enjoyed my first summer off since elementary school, I was ready to be more productive with my days.

At first, people were accommodating to our new regulations and incredibly thankful to be able to swim again. While I cleaned every high-touch surface between groups, I was met with smiling faces waving away my apologies for the weird times. I was naively convinced that the pandemic

had changed all the regular crabby patrons for the better. This train of thought didn’t last long.

After the novelty of returning to the recreation centre again wore off, people took their COVID frustrations out on the people most easily accessed—the lifeguards. Demands to open the change rooms, allow more people to swim per session, and clean faster were thrown at me each shift. Whenever someone approaches me with a COVID protocol complaint, I want to remind them that I did not create the virus, nor do I have any control over how we operate. If the company was a ladder, my position is the lowest rung. Once upon a time, I only looked out for pool safety, and now I am a part-time lifeguard, part-time sanitizer.

I understand that people are tired of altering their whole lives, whether it’s to swim, shop at their favourite retail locations or go for brunch. We all want to return to a level of normalcy, but until that day, we need to be mindful of those in public service jobs. Every shift we work, we risk our health so that people can access the things they enjoy but don’t necessarily need. Being asked to wear a mask is not unheard of anymore, yet I still receive backlash from the ladies in the locker room when I remind them they are within six feet of each other and need to put one on.

Yes, Barbara, even while you change your clothes.

Society is often told “the customer is always right” when it comes to service jobs. I want to kick that sentiment straight into the dumpster, light it on fire and send it straight to hell where it belongs. Employees are just trying to keep everyone safe, even those who don’t always seem to deserve it.

Demanding we allow you to stay longer or bend our rules “just for you” is not helping anyone, including your greedy self. If you find yourself waiting two minutes longer than you usually do to access the space, try to breathe and remember—we clean so thoroughly for you.

The pandemic has opened up a new portal that allows us to see people’s true nature.

Some of my patrons are as close to angels as I will ever get, and they give the term “understanding” a new meaning. However, taking their anger out on the employees with no authority seems to be the new normal for others. I have seen a shift in employees standing up for themselves (professionally, of course), and we are no longer allowing people to get their way simply because they said so. We are becoming more critical of what is more important—the sale or the wellbeing of employees. I only hope that when the masks come off for good, we remember the customer is not always right—they’re just loud.

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WE’RE NOT EVIL BIPOC & LGBQT+ BIPOC witches are just trying to heal EMMA MENDEZ Contributor ANDREA ALCARAZ Illustrator

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Too many people think they know what being a witch is, what they look and act like, who is a “good” witch or a “bad” witch, but trust me when I say that most people don’t know. Although witchcraft and spirituality are experiencing a strong resurgence into the public eye due to feminism, the persecution, demonization, and stigma of witches is far from over.

Some witches in parts of the world experience this more severely than others, and privilege dictates how this impacts us. But BIPOC witches, especially those that are also LGBTQ+, are still continuously demonized by mainstream media and the public, are underrepresented, and face racism, queerphobia, and transphobia both outside and within the witchcraft and spiritual community. Not quite welcome or accepted within any community but the one we create for ourselves, and even then, things aren’t perfect.

As a Queer, mixed-Indigenous “mestiza,” “Latinx,” and Mexican-Canadian, growing up in my Catholic household was strange to me. For twelve years, I recited my nightly prayers, went to church here and in so-called Mexico, visited the Basilica of La Virgen de Guadalupe, prepared for and did my first communion, etc. I followed the imposed tradition of being Catholic. My experience isn’t exactly that different, so why am I and so many other BIPOC people, especially women and femmes, witches?

Witchcraft, spirituality, and Brujeria to me and many other BIPOC and BIPOC LGBTQ+ witches, has always been about reclaiming our power, healing ourselves and our ancestors, as well as extending that to our communities. While some of us are taught our traditions from parents and elders, a lot of us have to go the extra mile to reconnect and reclaim; for me, it was the latter. I felt no connection to Catholicism or organized religion.

I felt hollow, as if I had lost something. As I grew older, I learned the reality of my history and that my family was Catholic because of the violence of Spanish colonialism.

As I learned that my Indigenous ancestors were persecuted for their spiritual practices and converted to survive, I knew that I needed to honour and connect to my ancestors so our lineage could begin to heal from the centuries of colonial trauma.

It’s been almost four years since I really started walking this path, and still I haven’t been able to find a community in so-called BC. I’ve tried and tried again, joining local Facebook groups, seeking out local events, all in hopes of becoming a part of an in-person community eventually, but nothing. All I’ve been able to come across is white Wiccan-centered witch spaces, riddled with blatant cultural appropriation and failure to recognize the damaging narratives and actions perpetuated by “enlightened” people. It’s the first thing I see when I enter these spaces. I’ve had to look outside the local community to find my safe space, and although it’s virtual, I feel incredibly blessed to have come across the powerful and kind witches I have. They may be thousands of miles away, but they give me hope, love, empowerment, and a reminder that I’m not alone.

BIPOC witches—especially LGBTQ+ BIPOC witches—and spiritual practitioners have historically been severely persecuted, demonized, and in many ways still are. We are only deemed “acceptable” (in theory) within the witchcraft and spiritual community if we practice European (or heavily European influenced) spirituality and witchcraft, like Wiccan practices. Yet even then, we are pushed out, told we don’t belong.

But when we choose to reclaim our ancestral practices, to come back to our roots, our power, we are portrayed as exotic, evil, “savage,” “uncivilized,” the list goes on.

Only to then find our practices, our traditions, being exploited, twisted, used and claimed by the very white people who demonize us. Our traditions and practices are whitewashed, stolen, then sold right back to us. And to someone like me, who doesn’t have access to much knowledge on my own ancestral practices, sometimes it’s all I can find. To say it’s a slap to the face is an understatement. We deserve to be able to reclaim our practices in peace, without judgement, and without fear.

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UNMASKING IMPOSTOR SYNDROME The irony of feeling like I’m the wrong person for this piece isn’t lost on me...

ALISHA SAMNANI News Editor, Managing Editor MIKAELA JOHNSON Illustrator

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I was on the phone the other day when I was asked a question: would you rather be able to fly or have the ability to become invisible? Without hesitation, I chose flight—although if you were in my shoes, you’d understand that it wasn’t much of a choice. Why choose a superpower that I already possess?

Unfortunately, I’m not alone. Many BIWOC feel the same way while walking through life. Being constantly spoken over and having credit ripped away from you will do that to a person.

It’s not unusual for me to present an idea that’s met with lukewarm or disapproving tones, only to have someone else co-opt my idea shortly after and receive a chorus of praise.

Psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes coined the term “impostor phenomenon” forty years ago, describing it as “internal experience of intellectual phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” In other words, it’s the sensation of feeling like a fraud in your industry, role or position— regardless of your authority, credibility or accomplishments.

You attribute your success to sheer luck and often minimize your accomplishments in the process.

What’s important to remember about Clance and Imes’ study is this: their sample was alarmingly homogeneous. I’m talking about a group of majority white, middle to upper class, and highly educated women. More recent studies demonstrate the link between racialized identities and impostor syndrome, but even these fail to recognize that for BIWOC, racism and sexism are interwoven into a basket of oppression.

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, representation matters.

Multiple television shows, such as New Girl, or Two Broke Girls, classify ‘girl’ as a white person—that’s what’s considered the norm. Anything else is considered niche. If you’re already living in a society that constantly questions your right to belong, is it any surprise that you’re even more likely to be impacted by impostor syndrome?

The representation of BIPOC in North American media recycles a handful of cliches. In New Girl, there’s Cece—the South Asian woman who serves as a sidekick to the main white character Jess.

She is highly sexualized throughout the series and is given little character development until much later into the show. In Two Broke Girls, the two characters of colour seem like little more than caricatures. And of course, there’s always the generic Asian kid whose only role is to be the nerdy, shy side-kick with little to no storyline. They’re great at math. They often play either the violin or the flute. I resented their one-dimensionality.

Improving representation in the media isn’t enough. We need to place more BIWOC in positions of power in the real world. I remember signing up for my classes last semester: a friend and I were so excited that one of our classes had an instructor that looked like us. It was one of the rare instances in all our years of school—from kindergarten to where we are now—we could recall having a BIPOC teacher. So rare that neither of us needed a full hand to count how many instructors of colour we’ve had— collectively. Being a student at Capilano University (CapU)—or any institution, for that matter—has its challenges for everyone.

These challenges are amplified when you are a BIWOC. We have to work twice as hard to get half as far. You don’t get to be mediocre. Those are the lessons you learn as a BIWOC navigating the world.

A common experience many of us share is having others doubt our abilities. My friends and I have regaled countless stories wherein an instructor, a classmate, or a boss have praised our “surprisingly good English,” which in itself makes it clear we are somehow different. Many BIPOC, especially those who have parents that have immigrated or have immigrated themselves, speak multiple languages. Consider how you might feel taking a foreign language class. Are you able to express yourself as wonderfully as you are in your first language? How’s your accent?

Now, this isn’t to say BIPOC are not or will never be good at English. In fact, most of us are excellent at it. Unfortunately, no matter how perfect our English is or how straight our hair is, there’s always a haunting feeling of never belonging in so-called Canada as a non-white person. BIWOC are othered by mainstream North American culture, both in Hollywood and in real life. These numerous microaggressions, only a couple of which I touched on above, may seem like nothing to some of you.

But imagine this: each microaggression is equivalent to stepping on a tiny little thumbtack. Together, they’re piercing.

BIWOC are by no means a monolith—but we are linked by our experiences navigating stereotypes that prevent us from reaching our full potential. We need to create a culture for BIWOC that addresses systemic bias and racism, rather than simply telling BIWOC to “have more confidence” and attempting to fix imposter syndrome. Perhaps then we can start calling impostor syndrome by what it really is—unmasking it once and for all.

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THE DISCOURSE OF SELF-DIAGNOSIS Self-diagnoses can be problematic, but unfortunately, for some, it’s the most accessible option HASSAN MERALI Contributor LOGAN DAVID Illustrator

“I’m kind of OCD about keeping my room clean.” The average person may not see any problem with a remark like this, but it’s infuriating for someone with ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder (OCD). While many people who have OCD do engage in compulsive cleaning, a preference for cleanliness is not equivalent to the anxietyinducing obsessions and exhausting compulsive rituals that come with OCD. For people who have been clinically diagnosed with OCD, or any mental illness for that matter, it can be frustrating to hear people flippantly use these terms in casual conversation. As advocates and public health professionals break down long-standing stigmas about openly discussing mental health, it’s becoming more and more common to hear people talk about their mental health issues, especially anxiety and depression.

One reason this is becoming more common is that rates of anxiety and depression are being reported among young people. This is happening because of advances in medicine, the fight

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against stigma around suffering from and seeking treatment for mental illness, and societal factors like precarious work and climate change. Additionally, most mental health issues present themselves before the age of 25, which is also around the same time that many young people enter the post-secondary system. On top of that, Millennials and Gen Z are talking about mental health more than previous generations.

This is a positive development, but as people feel more liberated to discuss their mental health issues, labels like ‘anxiety,’ ‘depression,’ and ‘ADHD’ are thrown around more liberally. The use of these labels by people who haven’t been clinically diagnosed can be troubling for those who have. For example, it can be aggravating for someone who has sought treatment for ADHD to hear a friend say, “I’ve never been to a doctor, but I definitely have ADHD; I have such a hard time concentrating and sitting still.”

ADHD isn’t all bouncy legs and switching browser tabs; it’s an impairment of executive functioning that can lead to many

different things not typically associated with ADHD, like addiction and substance abuse, financial difficulties, low self-esteem, and hyperfixation.

Although it may feel justified to lash out and tell people who seemingly toss around diagnostic labels like they’re trendy slang to cut it out unless a doctor has given it to them, it’s absolutely not. There are many reasons that someone with mental illness might not have been diagnosed by a doctor—for one thing, there are varying degrees of severity for every illness, including those affecting the brain. Just because someone’s anxiety hasn’t interfered with their life enough to send them to a doctor doesn’t mean they don’t suffer from anxiety.

Not everybody who needs medical help has access to the resources to get it. In Canada’s so-called “universal” healthcare system, a mental health professional’s costs are not automatically covered. For a visit to be covered, patients have to get a referral from a doctor, and if they do get one, they’ll likely be waiting months or even years for an appointment. Some people get lucky

and have family doctors who can help treat mental health issues, but many family doctors aren’t capable or competent in treating mental health issues. There are also the many societal barriers that extend into healthcare (like racism, language, sexism, etc.) that make it harder for people to get their symptoms taken seriously by medical professionals—just ask some of the women and 2SLGBTQIA+ people in your life how many times a doctor has dismissed their pain. There’s also the incredible amount of stigma remaining around seeking treatment for mental health issues, not to mention the difficulty of navigating the maze that is mental health care in Canada.

for some, it’s more accessible than a visit to a doctor.

For those who can’t—or prefer not to— seek help from a medical professional, self-learning and personal research can be empowering. Reading the accounts of people who have documented their struggles can help connect shared experiences and the clinical language that the medical profession uses to reach diagnostic conclusions. To be clear, reading on WebMD and Reddit forums is not a safe or accurate way to reach a diagnosis—but

I completely understand the impulse for people who have been clinically diagnosed with a mental illness to challenge the apparent dilution of diagnostic labels by those casually, but we shouldn’t. In the grand scheme of things, it’s unfair and wrong. Not everyone can get a formal diagnosis from a doctor, and until everyone has the option to, we shouldn’t be policing the way others tell us about what they experience.

Self-diagnoses are a mixed bag. On the one hand, a visit to a physician isn’t necessary for someone to suffer from an illness— part of the function of a diagnosis is to gain a signifier to explain to others what we experience on a daily basis. On the other hand, a self-diagnosis is an easy way to mistake symptoms caused by other factors with having an illness that you may not have. It also can confuse and offend people when you improperly identify with a medical condition that brings them a lot of pain and distress.

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THE MINIMUM IS NEVER ENOUGH The CSU Living Wage Campaign is f ighting for better working conditions in BC JAYDE ATCHISON Contributor NAOMI EVERS Illustrator

When the pandemic arose, and companies were forced to shut down or turn to remote delivery methods, the world had an awakening about workplace conditions. When jobs were lost, and CERB became the only available income for some, there was a realization that minimum wage workers were making more money with their government payout. Two thousand dollars was deemed the appropriate amount to live off of across the country, yet minimum wage workers previously worked overtime just to scrape by. When I was a student, I watched my friends struggle to find work with flexibility for their class schedule and that paid enough to afford their rent. One of the most convenient jobs a friend managed to snag was with the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU). She worked split shifts around her classes, enjoying the ease of working and studying on campus while earning more than the minimum.

The CSU became a certified Living Wage Employer in 2017, with the help of their Executive Director, Christopher Girodat.

They began their Living Wage Campaign to create awareness and advocate for change within the province. A common misconception is that minimum wage is enough to live on, but according to the Living Wages for Families Campaign, Vancouver requires an hourly rate of $19.50 per hour—while our current minimum wage was just recently increased to $14.60 from $13.85 last june. The cost of tuition, transportation, rent, food and textbooks all adds up, and minimum wage is not enough to comfortably afford them all.

For students that are not fortunate enough to rely on their family for tuition, rent or living arrangements, living wages are

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necessary to get through their degree. When I first moved out, I worked two or three jobs to stay afloat with all my bills—and I wasn’t unique. I have watched friends hustle between their nine to five to their five to nine–and go home to study until dawn, just to do it again the next day.

Many companies offering practicum space do not pay their interns, which can create barriers for low-income students.

When I was looking for a practicum in my last semester of university, I didn’t even bother looking at in-office jobs because I was unable to take time off from my paid workplace.

I was lucky to find a woman that started her own public relations company where I could submit work to her on a more flexible timeline (right before or after my opening shifts). My practicum experience was unpaid, but I didn’t have to quit my day job or miss rent payments.

Many university programs require a practicum or co-op to graduate, which is only feasible for those who are financially able to produce free labour. This can have negative consequences when it comes to job advancements, graduation or even completing a program. Low-income students that have to decline an unpaid internship can miss opportunities to network and learn from experienced employees in their field. This perpetuates a cycle of privileged students gaining traction in their studies and career, while others are left to climb the corporate ladder at a much slower rate. Students that underneath the glass ceiling with mental illness, race, language, cultural or disability barriers are faced with more of a struggle. When we graduate, people expect us to have approximately 30 years of experience for an

entry-level job. Without a practicum under your belt, it can feel like you are never going to first choice of applicants.

There are many avenues to advocate for change within the province, and one of the most accessible is contacting local policymakers. The CSU encourages all students to reach out to their local MLA to let them know living wages should be a provincial standard. Policymakers are unable to create palatable change if they are not aware of the demand. A form letter was written and is available for all students to access the CSU campaign website. I know what it’s like to be busy with classes, homework and life circumstances. Having a form created to make it easy for everyone to use their voice takes the pressure off those who feel like they don’t have time to make a difference.

Students are frequently forced into working conditions that do not reach the standards under the current employment legislation. All students and young people should know their rights as employees. This can include confirming when you will be paid for stat holidays, who to talk to about overtime pay and how to check your pay stubs for accuracy. Unfortunately, some employers count on younger people not knowing their rights and continue to cut corners. We also need to move past the stigma of talking about money. When coworkers discuss their income openly, they can know how much they are worth to the company, how much to ask for and work together to create change.

A list of certified living wage employers can be found on the Living Wages for Families Campaign website, www.livingwageforfamilies.ca/living_wage_employers.

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Why Canadians Can’t Ignore Rising Anti-Asian Racism and Hate Crimes in the U.S. Even your worst neighbour won’t make your bad look good WEN ZHAI Contributor TIFFANY ZHONG Illustrator

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the long-standing racism and hate crimes against Chinese and other Asian groups more visible in the US—and Canada too.

ear to ear—and later received about 100 stitches—while riding the NYC subway to work.

shooter’s motivatons were due to his sex addiction, rather than racial. The director of the FBI agreed.

My family and friends back home have been worried about me. Luckily, I haven’t personally encountered any extreme cases—but it doesn’t have to be personal to feel threatened, especially when those targeted are people who look just like me. The emotional, mental, and psychological burden is overwhelming.

The physical harm has been the most visible, but the mental and psychological trauma to the Asian community has been enormous. In 2020, hate crimes against Asians in major US cities increased 150 per cent despite the overall crime rate falling. Most Canadians wouldn’t want to believe similar hate crimes have happened on this side of the border. However, A police report shows anti-Asian hate crimes went up 717 per cent in Vancouver in 2020 while the overall hate crimes increased by 97 per cent. If anyone finds these statistics are staggering, wait until you learn that many anti-Asian hate crimes were not classified as hate crimes unless the perpetrator voices their actions are racially motivated. Even more go unreported.

More disturbing was the police spokesman’s near justification saying the shooter was having “a really bad day,'' an excuse painfully similar to the “temper tantrum'' the police said caused the murder of the 84-year-old Thai elder. After this spokesman’s history of anti-Asian racism was uncovered and he was removed from the case due to public outrage, his sheriff defended him saying he had a “difficult task before him” and added the spokesman had “personal ties to the Asian community.”

What’s horrifying is the perpetrators didn’t even bother to conceal their crimes committed in front of groups or open public places. My blood boiled when I researched anti-Asian hate crimes since the beginning of COVID-19 and tried to count but eventually had to give up because there were just too many.

Gender also plays into verdict. If the victim was a woman and the assault could be classified as a sexual crime, the attack wouldn’t be categorized as an antiAsian hate crime. According to Stop AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) Hate, more than two-thirds of their cases were from women victims.

It’s the vulnerable that have been targeted the most, such as the 84-year-old Thai elder in California who was pushed to the ground and died or the 91-year-old man violently shoved to the ground in Oakland’s Chinatown. In one horrific case, an 89-year-old woman was slapped before set on fire in Brooklyn by two men. And a 61-year-old man was slashed on the face

This intersection of race and gender was highlighted in the eight people murdered in Atlanta on Mar. 16, six of whom were Asian women. What’s chilling was that the shooter went to three locations intending a massacre and was on his way to the fourth before he was stopped—this was still not classified as an anti-Asian hate crime. The police spokesman claimed the

Thanks to the fuel from the former US president who used “China virus” and “Kung-flu” to refer to the Coronavirus, a new violent wave of sinophobia, antiAsian racism and hate crimes has gained enough momentum to create a separate pandemic. Living in one pandemic is difficult enough; imagine living in two simultaneously.

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Basically, the spokesman’s not racist; he was just having a hard day—oh, and he had an Asian friend. Oops. Words are cheap, and the lives of victims were made cheaper.

Media also afforded more humanity to the shooter as CNN visited his grandparents but misspelt and mispronounced the victims’ names and the New York Times empathized with his “shame of lust.”

Despite rising media attention, antiAsian hate crimes are not new in the US or Canada. Chinese and Asians have been repeatedly targeted under discriminatory laws and racist governments, especially when scapegoats were needed. After the Chinese Exclusion Act—the only discriminative law in US history to date that targeted a specific race or nationality— was signed in 1882, many attacks and massacres were perpetuated against Chinese immigrants, such as the Rock Springs Massacre in 1885 that left 28 dead and the whole Chinatown looted and burnt to the ground.

Like the US, racism against Chinese and Asians has a long history in Canada. It’s explicitly in the genes of the effort to establish a white British Columbia (BC). In 1871, BC joined Canada with the promise of building the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), built primarily by “cheap, diligent and faithful” Chinese labourers. They worked the most dangerous tasks yet were paid half or a third of their non-Chinese co-workers, and hundreds to thousands of them vanished along the way.

As soon as CPR was completed in 1885, the Chinese Immigration Act was passed. The act required all Chinese immigrants to pay a head tax ($50, later raised to $100, then $500) and restricted them from certain occupations. The subsequent Chinese Exclusion Act in 1923 banned Chinese immigrants until 1947. These legislations, followed by more than 100 other racist policies and regulations, prevented existing Chinese immigrants, mostly married men, from bringing their families to Canada, cutting them from family and cultural ties for decades. In 1967, Chinese immigrants were finally admitted under the point system (which is still racist because some countries have more points than others) that is still in place today.

This history’s brutality and scale made the racism and hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic almost seem unnewsworthy. It’s just history repeating itself: the return of the “yellow peril” coupled with xenophobia inflamed by extreme nationalism. But if anyone is tired of hearing about anti-Asian hate crimes, try to imagine living it every day.

Canadians may seem less racist against Chinese/Asians at first glance, partially because Canada can never rival the US for media attention. But Vancouverites should be reminded that local media didn’t hesitate to call out “China Virus.”

In the face of the openly violent antiChinese/Asian racism in the US, Canada and BC appear to possess more sanity.

However, it is fragile and needs to be protected while the hate crimes and various microaggressions here still need to be addressed. No matter how much worse your neighbour is, your bad is still bad. And precisely because you have a bad neighbour, you need to be vigilant so as not to fall susceptible to its influence.

Chinese Canadians didn’t have voting rights until 1947. That means Chinese Canadian soldiers in World War II fought and sacrificed their lives for Canada without citizenship or voting rights. And Chinese children were bullied in school and were scared of going outside of Chinatown.

Gim Wong, a WWII Canadian air force veteran, was more than 80 years old when he reflected on his childhood and was still brought to tears.

The federal government only apologized in 2006 for the $23 million head tax collected from 82,000 Chinese immigrants and in 2014, the BC premier apologized for the province’s anti-Chinese past and more than 100 racist laws and policies.

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What's Brewing?

The life-giving, world-changing power of red bush tea

CAM LOESCHMANN Columnist

In the Cederburg region of South Africa’s Western Cape Province, rooibos and other members of the Faboideae subfamily have grown for generations.

Rooibos has appeared in the news throughout the last few years—though you may have missed it due to our current world circumstances. In late 2019, the Khoi and San peoples of South Africa won a monumental legal battle that named them as holders of traditional knowledge that fuels the enormous, global rooibos industry. “[This] agreement recognizes that the rooibos and its use is part of the San and Khoi people of South Africa’s traditional knowledge, and that its exploitation and commercialization by the rooibos industry should come with adequate compensation,” says the World Justice Project.

According to the Mail & Guardian, representatives of the Khoi and San have been fighting for recognition of their knowledge since at least 2010, but given that Dutch settlers have been poking around in South Africa since at least the 1700s, this battle is clearly like an iceberg that we only see the tip of today. About 300 white commercial farmers cultivate 93 per cent of the planted area of Cederburg’s unique rooibos farmland.

Let’s back up for a moment.

The subfamily Faboideae is related to legumes and is native to a few specific places in South Africa, where the summers get hot and dry enough for these picky plants to thrive. The Cyclopia genus is also known as honeybush, and the Aspalathus genus is known as rooibos. As brewed beverages, they are very similar. Both have dusty-red coloured leaves, a sweet fragrance, and a deep red colour when they hit the water. Their flavours are also similar, although rooibos tends to taste

more earthy and nutty, while honeybush— like the name suggests—brews a little bit sweeter, with a fruity or floral note. They are both naturally caffeine-free, making them excellent nighttime brews.

The Khoi and San people have presumably been making use of these plants’ incredible host of health benefits since time immemorial, but due to the oral nature of pre-colonial history and systemic oppression of non-white people in South Africa, there is much that is simply not known. Ben-Erik van Wyk and Boris Gorelik in the South African Journal of Botany write that, “Statements that rooibos tea is a traditional drink of Khoidescended people of the Cedarberg (and “poor whites'') are correct but we have not been able to trace this tradition further back than the last quarter of the 19th Century.”

There are multiple reasons to drink rooibos and honeybush infusions. The main and most tangible benefit of rooibos and honeybush is that they are warming and restorative while being naturally caffeine-free. This makes them safe for any age, at any time of day, for those with even the strongest sensitivity to caffeine. Decaffeinated black or green teas from the tea plant will still retain an intangibly tiny amount of caffeine—Teadog says usually less than 2 per cent—due to the way caffeine is stored among the plant’s molecules. Rooibos and honeybush, as well as most others labelled “herbal tea”, however, have no caffeine content whatsoever. These plants need no harsh decaffeination process and suffer no modifications to flavour.

Ariane Lang for Healthline evaluated several health claims of honeybush. Among other, less substantiated claims, honeybush held up in scientific trials that tested the benefits of its high antioxidant content. These included relief for diabetes, bone loss, some types of

cancer, and effects of sunburn and aging on the skin. Mary Jane Brown, also for Healthline, found similar benefits in rooibos.

“Antioxidant” has turned into a bit of a buzzword in the last few years, but these chemical compounds are genuinely beneficial for human consumption. Lone oxygen atoms in our cells, called “free radicals,” can cause damage if not neutralized—and that is where antioxidants come in. Dark fruits, nuts and whole grains are packed full of these essential chemicals.

Beyond what has been studied in lab conditions, the anecdata would suggest that rooibos and honeybush cure everything from insomnia and eczema to the common cold. “Rooibos runs in my veins,” says one of the people interviewed in Rooibos Restitution, a documentary exploring the historical context for South Africa’s landmark decision to monetarily compensate the Khoi and San people for their traditional knowledge of these plants.

It is incredibly important that we have historical and political context for the foods we eat and the beverages we drink. For everything that we take for granted, there is probably a people group that pioneered its use and was exploited to keep overhead costs low. Knowing who brings you the foods and drinks you love is the difference between a mindless first-world consumer and a thoughtful global citizen.

Take a moment to consider the origins of things you take for granted. Who works the hardest to bring them to you, and who makes the majority of the profit? None of us can say our impact on this Earth is wholly positive but let's make sure our impact isn't completely negative, either.

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Overlook, BC: Canine Counterfeits

DAVID EUSEBIO Columnist

Coming from a suburban neighbourhood in Ottawa, it was remarkable to see houses in remote areas around the Lower Mainland.

When I see homes in the BC wilderness, I usually assume three things: it belongs to a retiree, it’s abandoned, or it’s a shack for some Walter White wannabe. While it’s fun to fantasize about the next drug kingpin residing in BC, there was a time when a remote cabin on Vancouver Island actually housed a shady operation.

likely Baltic Farm and Orchard Association, the equipment. After accidentally pushing a food co-op that had plans to buy land in his cane into a pile of leaves, he discovered a southern California for growing fruit trees. hole beside a tree trunk with all the gear. The The establishment had an advertisement in “genius” of Leon proclaimed by the Colonist a Baptist periodical that listed several co-op was starting to lose credibility. directors, including Marneek and Litchen.

Additionally, Leon bought five acres of land The US secret services concluded that in Beaumont two years before relocating the bills were photographed perfectly for to BC for $700 USD. If you ask me, that’s mass-reproduction. I guess that custompretty suspect. made darkroom wasn’t evident enough.

However, there was a secret ingredient that The men’s time in BC was short, for Marneek made the counterfeits indiscernible from In the spring of 1911, an abundance and Swanson were found and arrested a year real banknotes: dog hair. It was reported of counterfeit $10 American bills were later in Chicago, and Leon was still at large. that Leon and his minions used dog hair reported throughout the United States. to achieve the threaded texture of the From California to New York, these bills The Victoria Daily Colonist soon reported banknotes, making the counterfeits look were everywhere. The operation was virtually that their operation had been halted. What’s more legitimate. Strangely, there were no impossible to trace because the prints were interesting is where the hostility in the traces of dogs around the premises. All this coming from BC. One year before, Latvian ar ticle is directed toward: “Vancouver equipment was to be used as evidence in immigrant Albert Leon arrived in BC from Island has lost from among its residents of Leon’s trial.Meanwhile, authorities back LA after fleeing from Russia for his anarchist many diverse nationalities a genius whose in New York were ahead of Glover when beliefs. He was in his mid-twenties, slim, and ability to manufacture spurious currency Marneek and Swanson gave them a tip to looked like a mix of Bing Crosby and Lenny has successfully been pitted against the go to New York. They took a trip to The Big from The Simpsons. He’s probably the closest shrewdest of American bank cashiers.”

Apple and found Leon about to board a ship we’ve gotten to a real Walter White in BC. for British Guiana. Authorities took him in, Marneek and Swanson confessed that the and Leon lied to the police about being in He bought a place on Nootka Island, located counterfeit bills were an effort to raise funds Kansas City to buy goats. Authorities called on the west coast of Vancouver Island. for the Russian revolution and that ten other bullshit and got ready to lock him up, but What started as a bachelor pad turned Russians were heading for Nootka Island. not before offering him a meal. He refused, into a frat house once his Russian buddies Clearly, they got the party invitation too late. stating he was “a vegetarian.” At least we joined him. These included Fred Marneek, know where the dogs didn’t go.

Rudolph Swanson, and Oscar Litchen. Upon US secret service agent W.A. Glover went to arrival, he had a pleasant time meeting Leon’s place in Nootka, but no one was there. After chatting with authorities, Leon pleaded his neighbours, explaining that he was He complimented their residence, reporting guilty to counterfeiting money. It seems “setting up a colony of Russian anarchists.” that Leon and his men made themselves a Glover’s efforts became a waste of time, but Great introduction. nice vacation spot with a cabin and a garden. at least he got to see the bears! Leon and The cabin had a DIY darkroom for processing Marneek were sentenced to ten years at The team perfected a meticulous system for photos which Glover described to be “almost Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas, while counterfeiting, and their banknotes travelled perfect.” However, none of the equipment Swanson only got five years. Litchen was off fast in America. At this time, the banks issued was in sight. Glover and his agents had to scot-free for cooperating with authorities. banknotes—it wasn’t until 1913 when the do a bit of scavenger hunting after finding Leon spent time in prison practicing a new first Federal Reserve banknotes started a chart with a marking to a hidden area artistic talent: painting. While his art was circulating. While it sems Leon established where, supposedly, the photo-processing successful at the institution, his biggest his money-making factory in BC, he likely equipment was buried. At this point, Leon accomplishment was probably discovering started in LA. was starting to look less like Walter White that he didn’t need dog hair to create a and more like The Riddler. counterfeit masterpiece—bedsheets did the Victoria’s Daily Colonist reported that Leon job just fine. had a section of land near Beaumont, LA, Glover couldn’t follow the instructions, so he where the operation began. This estate was and the other agents spent hours looking for ­5 2

Virtual Reality: Education's New Normal

HASSAN MERALI Columnist

Will we ever go back? Last March, a deadly pandemic seized the world and post-secondary education had to adapt its operations to new public health orders. We went from congregating on campus to learning at home, trading breakout discussions in classrooms for breakout rooms on Zoom. But now that BC aims to have everyone vaccinated by the summer, the government has told schools they can re-open campuses for the fall semester.

With an end to lockdown measures in sight, we should examine how the pandemic trend of remote learning will play out long term in postsecondary education.

college courses called Massive Open Online Courses. Pundits prophesied that they would be the end of brick and mortar educational institutions. That didn't happen, remarked the faculty member, because young people want to meet and hang out with other young people. ut that was many technological developments ago, before cell phones and social media and video chat.

While some students have enjoyed the benefits of taking classes online—such as not having to commute and being closer to the comforts of home—others have been struggling. Some not only prefer learning in a physical classroom, they need in-person instruction to learn effectively. Staring at a screen all day is taxing on the body, and let’s not forget that some people lack the resources to do school online properly in the first place.

While online school has removed some barriers, it stands to deepen others. If there’s one thing industrialized countries have learned in the last decade of digital development, it’s that the Internet has not been the great equalizer that it was promised to be in the ‘90s. The inequities of our society are not mitigated by technology, they are exacerbated. Systemic racism, ableism, sexism, misogyny, and antagonism toward 2SLGBTQIA+ folks have made their way online, and are magnified by the networking effect of social media. Algorithmic biases perpetuate As with every technological development, societal inequities and discrimination, and people will say that this is the new normal. surveilling students in the name of academic Tech evangelists will argue that since we have integrity has worrying privacy implications. the technology to do so, and it’s proven that it can be done, online learning should be a big Moving education online comes with its own component of school going forward. This is a dangers. Instructors will be expected to live fatalistic argument that relies on capitalism’s stream or record their lectures, leading to implicit drive to make everything cheaper and adverse outcomes in education like it has for more “efficient.” so many other fields where communications technology has proliferated. For example, The truth of the matter is, normal is whatever students and institutions might start selecting we as a society normalize. There are many instructors, consciously or unconsciously, technologies humans have developed that based on how "telegenic" (read: hot) they we don’t use, or use sparingly, because we’ve are. Lectures will become media content, decided the traditional alternatives are better. and instructors that are more exciting and Moving school online just because we can entertaining are going to be more popular over prevents people from deciding how they learn others who aren't. As with any platform, the and work. It’s up to us to fight back against most extreme content rises to the top. the commodification, technologization, and bastardization of education. Despite all A number of questions arise: Will video lectures prophesies, the future is what we make it. The be the intellectual property of the university, or question remains: are we up for the fight? will instructors own the rights to these videos?

Will instructors be considered independent

Not every part of going to school was able to be moved online. Some of the amenities students have access to when they’re on campus simply can’t be moved online. Others, like counselling and instructor office hours, are better when they’re accessed in-person. Although they’ve done the best they could, post-secondary institutions and student unions have struggled to fully replicate the recreational activities that make up campus life that are a key part of the post-secondary experience.

One of the biggest lessons of this pandemic is how much people need the small, everyday in-person interactions that we all take for granted—small talk with acquaintances and classmates, opportunities to mingle and meet new people, hanging out in the same place as others.

This brings to mind a conversation I was a part of about e-learning a couple of years ago. A faculty member remarked that there was a lot of hype in the '90s about free online

Will we ever go back to fully in-person classes?

Will it all be online, or perhaps a hybrid model of online/in-person attendance? Does it really matter which it is?

contractors, furthering the inequities of precarious sessional work by making teachers part of the gig economy? Will educational institutions be consolidated, or taken over by Big Tech? Will this impact unions and solidarity groups on campus?

Moving a significant part of school online for all students would be a mistake. In-person meetings are a fundamental aspect of the learning experience. There’s something about being in the same space as other people that immerses a person in an experience that can’t be replicated with technology—no matter how many advancements are made. Whether it’s being able to read body language or just the comfort of being close to others, we benefit from hanging out IRL. All of my best experiences at CapU have been on campus, hanging out with friends in the library or cramming for a test with classmates before an exam. I wouldn’t have gotten to meet any of the amazing people I’ve met or had any of the incredible experiences I’ve had at school had it been online.

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Sexless in the City: Ode to a F**kboy

JAYDE ATCHISON Columnist

As the sunrise lit up his living room and his hands lightly pulled on my waist, he told me, “I didn’t realize how much I was going to miss you.” All I heard was, “I missed you,” and I was wrapped around his little finger all over again. We had a handful of dates and agreed to exclusivity without labels, but after a vacation that took him out of the city for a few weeks, communication became few and far between. Three weeks would go by, and mentally, I would accept that he wasn’t interested anymore, and I would tell myself to move on—but then the R2D2 text tone I set for him would sound, the corner of my mouth would upturn, and I knew I was still strapped in this rollercoaster.

I became addicted to the dopamine rush of seeing his name pop up on my home screen, asking me when he could see me again. My best friend still laughs about the time I nearly threw my phone off the balcony because I received the first “thinking about you” and was shaking with excitement. She would then shake her head and ask why I was so happy to hear from someone that seemingly threw their phone into the ocean after sending one message. It was because every time I saw him in person, I basked in his compliments and forehead kisses instead of remembering his bad communication.

I made excuses for his every twist and turn.

His job was much more hectic than mine. He was exhausted and barely had time to sleep.

He was so good to me when we finally did see each other. I never grew tired of coming up with reasons why he wouldn’t see me more than once a month. What kind of relationship could we have when we only saw each other every four to seven weeks, with little to no check-ins between? The rational side of my brain knew that we had no hope in hell, but my tender, bleeding heart kept telling me to hold out. Our chemistry was undeniable, and I wasn’t ready to throw it in the hazmat bin just yet.

Maybe I didn’t invent believing you could be why someone would change, but I took the trope to new heights. I found myself bailing on friends if there was even a slight chance he might call. I feel nauseated when I look back on the nights I sat waiting on my couch with my legs freshly shaven while my friends were sipping wine on the beach.

Not only did I waste a leg shave just to be stood up, but I wasted a potentially hilarious night with the people that always took me into consideration.

Every single day this man told me, without using words, how he truly felt about me— and I refused to listen. Self-esteem? Never heard of her. It took six months of drowning in this situationship for me to pluck up the nerve to ask what the hell was going on. I told him I liked him, but I wanted to eventually be in a steady relationship and experience more of a commitment. I explained that if this wasn’t something he was capable of giving me, that was okay, but I was going to start dating again because I didn’t want to be caught in this casual cyclone anymore.

Once I stood up for myself—and didn’t have a heart attack in the process—I began to question why my type was “emotionally unavailable.” I knew I was a catch and a half, but the people I went for couldn’t seem to see that. After hearing me complain about my lacklustre affairs over brunch, my friend slammed down his fork and told me I had “an anxious attachment style and kept going for avoidant partners—wasn’t that obvious?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so he dragged me to the closest book store and encouraged me to buy Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller.

read a book about “keeping love,” as if it was as easy as keeping my freezer stocked with dairy-free Ben & Jerry’s. He asked me to trust him and proceeded to sell me on the book with a cult-like conviction.

After taking the quiz at the beginning of the book, it confirmed that I did indeed have an anxious attachment style. The theory of attachment styles is not just a self-help concept but a large part of psychology.

Attached brings to light the three main attachment styles (anxious, avoidant and stable), how to recognize yours, how to look for the signs that can lead to toxic relationships and how to let go of the cycle you may be stuck in.

After binge-reading all 273 pages, I came to terms with my pattern of chasing after avoidant people. I joined the cult my friend started and began pushing the book on anyone that had fuckboy/girl drama or just general relationship turbulence. It sounds like it’s too good to be true, but reading Levine and Heller’s words gave me the confidence to use effective communication and let romantic suitors know what I was looking for and needed in order for the relationship to move forward. I used to be terrified that talking about my feelings would scare people away, but I now know that a stable person isn’t easily frightened off by the “i” word—intimacy.

I can’t promise that I won’t be conned by another fuckboy in the future, but I am satisfied with my strength to walk away, sans anxiety, when a man shows me how little I mean to him.

Self-help books often seem too hoaxy and get-rich-quick for my liking. I expressed this to my friend along with my hesitation to

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An a Mar i a Cai ced o

@anamariacaicedo_ 56

F E AT URED A R T

“No one could’ve predicted this,” says CapU Student on academic probation for lifting an entire essay from Wikipedia JOSS ARNOTT Staff Writer THEA PHAM Illustrator

NORTH VANCOUVER, BC — “No one could've predicted this,” said Kyle Geiger, an Interdisciplinary Studies student at Capilano University (CapU) in a statement to university press early Monday morning. Geiger stands accused of plagiarizing an essay entirely from Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia hated by teachers the world over for making education and research easy, accessible and straightforward. Geiger's statement came moments before he was dragged away by his raging West Van mother, who at the time of the interview stated she was “about ready to beat his ass.”

“Integrity is everything,” said the Dean of Fine and Applied Arts, Sean Knight. “If he’d stolen it from Britannica, that would be one thing, but the fact that he used Wikipedia is completely unforgivable—I can’t believe we axed studio art for this.” CapU recently adopted a hardline policy towards academic indiscretion after an independent study revealed that over half the faculty were using falsified credentials.

“I should’ve just used an essay mill like everyone else,” Geiger lamented, adding that his Point Grey friend Brett Harington had warned him, “only poor people use Wikipedia. If you get caught, you can’t come to my yacht party in April because dad says it’ll look bad.” Geiger has since been unavailable for further comments.

In an off-the-record conversation at Seymour’s pub, Knight was much more relaxed. “I love Wikipedia,” the professor said, playing with a napkin. “It’s how I teach most of my classes.” (Don’t tell him we told you that.) Geiger is reportedly set to appear in the Birch cafeteria for a hearing later this week. His lawyers were confident they could win the case without incident, provided they could secure the necessary funds to bribe CapU once again.

HUMOUR

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ADRIFT SARAH ROSE Features Editor VALERIYA KIM Staff Illustrator

Mom always said I had a silver tongue, and now I had a silver jaw to match. The cast made talking difficult, but I still found ways to talk myself into shitty, morally ambiguous affairs. If there’s a more ironic way to represent feeling like a dick than being a frequent flier to America’s dong, I’ve yet to find it. Florida’s iconic peninsular location attracts a lot of folks who are at the end of their rope.

I met Travis, the wife-beater-wearing, beercan philosopher of his own Zulu nation on a small municipal beach in the oppressive spring heat. He didn’t bother asking about the cast, the duct-taped combat boots or the oversized t-shirt from my de facto lover.

He tossed me a frisbee and asked what was wrong.

We walked barefoot in the hot sand. Somewhere along the line, I forgot how to tell the truth to foreign hippies, that he had called me from the train tracks and refused to move until I lied about moving on.

Travis shook his head. “Whatever it is, stop living in the past, girl.

You gotta stay on top of what’s right in front of you,” and in the garish glare of the sunshine state, the palm hit me like a train.

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LIT ER AT URE

Virgo Aug. 24 - Sept. 23

Libra Sept. 24 - Oct. 23

scorpio Oct. 24 - Nov. 22

Sagittarius Nov. 23 - Dec. 21

Capricorn Dec. 22 - Jan. 20

Aquarius Jan. 21 - Feb. 19

Pisces Feb. 20 - Mar. 20

Aries Mar. 21 - Apr. 20

Taurus Apr. 21 - May 21

Gemini May 21 - Jun. 21

Sending you good vibes, wherever you are.

You’re nestled away, working at being a better you. You suck at it, but that’s okay. <3 :)

What’s the verdict? Are you gonna punk out and let this be the thing that keeps you down or are you gonna ******* tear apart some ***** ****** and ******? That’s what I thought!

Give unto others. No, you’re not their mom.

Yes, they need to get it together. No, you’re not benevolent for tolerating someone.

Yes, you deserve good things. Kiss yourself goodnight tonight.

Pleased to announce that you are nice. We are all proud of you. Try being nicer. Not too nice, Pisce—just be nice like water with ice. This was personally written by Dr. Seuss.

Pucker up and gimme a kiss! You deserve it.

Your hard work has paid off and you’re tired.

My prediction is that won’t stop until you die.

Cancer Jun. 22 -Jul. 23

Give yourself a minute. Just wait. Like yeah, that could be it—but what if it’s not? I’d rather eat a denim jacket than let you make this mistake. It doesn’t have to be like this. :/

Teach your dog sign language. Learn a skateboard trick. Diversify your palette with some canned beans and Veuve Cliquot.

Get out there. The world is your oyster.

When you stare into the abyss too long, it stares back at you. But, when you lead an abyss to water, you’ll teach it how to fish. Meet me at the end of the universe when you find the moral here.

You imbue the most mundane situations with curiosity and surprise. I want you to listen to Drake to calm your nerves. I don’t care if you don’t like him. Just hold on, we’re going home.

Being first is something you’re good at. But remember to temper this talent of yours; first one to heaven is a rotten egg.

Throwback to that time you thought about eating something that wasn’t edible. You love the thrill of the chase. The forbidden temptation of slime videos.

leo Jul. 24 - Aug 23

This month, you’re going to be doing a lot of introspection. Smell your upper lip for a second. Do you need to brush your teeth?

It’s likely that even if you don’t think so, you should.

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@CAPILANOCOURIER

capi lan o cou ri er VOLUME 53, ISSUE NO.8