Ubyssey October 4, 2010

Intensely concerned about our fruit cups since 1918

toronto cupcake authorities: tokyo police club hungry for childcare change

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OCTOBER 04, 2010 • volume 92, number x • room 24, student union building • published monday and thursday • feedback@ubyssey.ca

It’s time to slam jam raptors hold intrasquad game at ubc Ian Turner sports@ubyssey.ca The Toronto Raptors held an intrasquad match at the War Memorial Gym last Sunday.

“Every year, we try to get away from Toronto,” Raptors head coach Jay Triano said, after the game. “[UBC basketball head coach] Kevin [Hanson] and I have talked for several years about us coming out here.”

Triano, who was Simon Fraser University’s basketball head coach from 1988-1995, is the first and on ly Canadian to coach an NBA team. Along with University of Southern California graduate DeMar DeRozan and Andrea Bargnani, Triano got the loudest cheer from the crowd.

About 2000 people showed up for the scrimmage, leaving 1000 seats empty. Some students may have been turned off by the $15 tickets. However, money flowed both ways: at h a l f- t i me, t he R apt or’s brass presented UBC VP of Students Brian Sullivan and

Thunderbird Athlete Council members Emily Grainger and Amelia Rajala with a cheque for $10,000 to be put towards UBC’s genera l schola rsh ip fund.

Other UBC athletes saw the floor as well. Between the first and second quarter, UBC guards Alex Murphy and Nathan Yu participated in a three-point shootoff. They were each assigned to one fan, who was gunning for a Whistler season pass. Murphy and his fan got six three-pointers. Yu’s crew got three.

The game itself wasn’t full of such goodies: dunking was kept to a minimum. The Raptors don’t have a superstar, but DeMar DeRozan did show why he’s beginning to be dubbed the franchise’s face by Toronto’s media. On Wednesday, DeRozan & co. will face off against the Phoenix Suns, who are led by Vancouver Island native Steve Nash.

The next day, the Raptors will fly back east, which means that BC native Triano won’t be able to attend the Shrum Bowl even though he’d “love to go.” U

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News

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No change in childcare crisis

NEWS BRIEFS

UBC adds 108 new spots, but demand for service as high as ever Micki Cowan Contributor Despite the fact that UBC is already the largest childcare provider of any university in North America, many UBC parents and childcare workers argue that the program leaves much to be desired.

Grad student and mother of two Dafna Zur said that she is unsatisfied with the status quo.

“The wa it i n g l ist is st i l l horrendously long,” she said.

“Women in general and students in particular must be given t he opportunit y to go back to work; the government seems to want to prevent that through limited care providers and unaffordable prices.”

Zur got on the list as soon as her child was born, yet she still had to wait two years for daycare. Because Zur and her husband were new to Canada and didn’t have any family in Vancouver, they had to scramble for babysitters in the meantime.

UBC Asian Studies professor Stefania Burk found herself in the same situation.

“I got on the waiting list when I was three months pregnant, [but] it took two years to get a spot,” she said. “[With] one year maternity leave, that’s still one year we had to provide outside care. I had to move my mother here when I had to come back to work because it was the only way that we could afford to have full time care that we thought was reliable.”

“When we opened a number of programs last year, the waiting list still stayed at 24 months,” said UBC Director of Child Care Darcelle Cottons.

“What happened is we opened up 108 spots last year and we thought we would take on our waiting list. [It] went down from

Many children wait years for a spot. hazel hughes photo/The Ubyssey

1600 to 1400 and by Christmas it was back up to 1600.”

Despite heavy subsidization, cost remains a crucial consideration for many parents.

“From a student perspective, infant care is $1055 a month, but if we were charging full cost recovery it would be more than double that,” said Cottons. “Parent fees just pay the teachers’ salaries, teachers’ benefits, and [for] the toys and equipment.

Staff are not overly paid, the average is about $18-18.50 per hour.”

According to Cottons, the university is implementing a number of measures to ease the

burden on parents. She said that recent renovations have helped reduce the wait time.

“We are constructing two daycares. The university just approved the final bit of money at the last board meeting. The capital cost outlaid by the time we hit next September is nearly seven million dollars, between the AMS’s contribution to the 2009 construction, [as well as] the University Neighbourhood Association and the university [itself],” said Cottons.

According to AMS VP External Jeremy McElroy, UBC currently subsidizes about 8 per cent of the cost, while 12 per

cent is through community and private grants that the university applies for and 80 per cent of the cost is borne by the parent. This is up from 67 per cent in 2006.

To help combat these rising costs, in 2008 the AMS set aside a million dollars out of the Capital Projects Aquisition and Construction Fund (CPAC) to be given over ten years, or $100,000 per year, he said.

McElroy claimed that the real financial issue is a lack of governmental support.

“Adjusting the overall cost for the parent is another huge thing, and the only way that will ever happen is if we can get provincial commitment on operating grant funding for childcare facilities.”

Graduate Student Society (GSS) President Arvind Saraswat said that the GSS is also working hard to make sure the government understands UBC’s childcare needs.

“We are lobbying the provincial government to provide greater support towards accessible childcare on UBC campus.

We discussed our concerns regarding the lack of accessible childcare at UBC with the Minister of Advanced Education & Labour Market Development, in our meeting last year,” he said.

“We co-hosted a childcare conference in May 2010 to highlight the current situation, build partnerships and inform the community.”

Cottons argued that the high land value at UBC makes it impractical to build child care facilities on campus. The university’s location on a peninsula with a park separating it from the city is also an issue that makes UBC’s childcare situation unique in Canada.

“It’s just that it really is the job of the government to be doing it.

It should be considered part of the public education system.” U

Success for Asian immigrants not equal?

New UBC study argues female Mandarin speakers four times as likely to succeed Crystal Ngai Contributor If you’re a Chinese immigrant, you’ll be better off if you’re female and a Mandarin speaker— at least that’s what a new UBC study claims.

Professor Lee Gunderson, who has studied the academic achievement of immigrant students since 1989, argues in a new study that female Mandarin-speaking students are four times more likely to succeed in high school than other Asian students.

Gunderson, along with doctoral students Denis Murphy Odo and Reginald D’Silva greeted

new immigrant families and acquired permission to thoroughly assess their children on various measures before they were placed in schools from kindergarten to Grade 12. Gunderson managed to isolate 400 Asian students during the course of the study.

“We look at those who were eligible to go to university, and the most successful students in this group were the Mandarinspeaking girls,” he said. They were four times more eligible for university than Cantonese immigrants from Hong Kong because they were able to maintain a 76 per cent or higher average in secondary school.

Gunderson said the reason Mandarin-speaking females were doing better in school was because their families were more economically affluent than those of the Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, and had more support from tutors.

“It depends on how much educational scaffolding a family can provide,” he said. “Many more Mandarin-speaking families were able to afford to send their children to tutors.”

Martin Wang, a second year civil engineering student who immigrated from Beijing in 1998, is skeptical of the study.

“I f i nd it rid icu lous i n t h e c om p a r i s on b e t w e e n

Mandarin-speaking Chinese and Cantonese-speaking Chinese because it [makes the assumption] that all Mandarin speakers have a high social status [and] more money, and that Cantonese people are poor with lower social status,” he said.

However, Gunderson believes that the Mandarin-speaking students who arrive here with an aff luent socioeconomic background will continue to do well in school.

“Mandarin speakers who continue to arrive from the People’s Republic of China are of high socioeconomic status and have lots of money to support their children.” U

CUS investment conference set to proceed The Commerce Undergraduate Society (CUS) has decided that the Canadian Investment Conference will go ahead despite the sudden resignation of the founder and chair of the event last month. According to minutes posted by the CUS, the Board of Directors voted 4–3 (with 5 abstentions) to “fully support” new chair Ethan Gold in running the conference, for fear that if it did not go forward or was rebranded, the CUS image would be tainted.

At a previous emergency board meeting, Khalil Kassam, a secondyear Commerce student, was removed as CIVC chair and replaced

by Gold. In a presentation to the board, Gold and marketing director Kriti Dixon repeated the need to sell enough tickets, priced at $25, to break even. The CUS has committed up to $49,000 to CIVC, which is scheduled for November 12–14.

Record check backlog prevents student placements

(CUP)–A four-month long backlog on criminal record checks from the Toronto police has caused a stressful start to the school year for nursing students across the province.

The students require the background checks in order to begin their clinical rotations, which are a part of their degree programs.

The backlog has been caused by the RCMP’s new require ment that criminal records be processed federally, said Const.

Wendy Drummond of the Toronto Police. Processing background checks federally means a more thorough search with enhanced security features, such as fingerprinting to verify the person’s identity.

At Humber College in Toronto, around 80 of the school’s 1600 health sciences students were affected by the changes, but most students have successfully started their placements.

Grunting in tennis leads to success?

Young tennis players who emulate Maria Sharpova’s shrieks as much as her backhand may be on to something.

UBC psychology professor Alan Kingstone is co-author of a study in Public Library of Science ONE which studies the effects of grunting or shrieking before hitting a tennis ball. According to their findings, a ball stuck along with a loud grunt can travel an extra two feet before an opponent is able to respond. It also caused more decision and accuracy errors for competitors. U

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culture

editorS BRYCE WARNES & JONNY WAKEFIELD » culture@ubyssey.ca ASSOCIATE ANNA ZORIA » associate.culture@ubyssey.ca

Straight up, no chaser: Rum and Vodka at Somerset hazel hughes Contributor Those involved with the dramatic arts will at some point wrestle with the dilemma of whether to pursue film or theatre. It doesn’t matter if you’re an actor, a director, a writer or a technician; it’s a decision everyone makes.

For Brian Cochrane, a second year MFA student at UBC and the director of the upcoming show Rum and Vodka, the choice was simple.

“I love the immediacy of live performance. Even if we do a hundred performances of Rum And Vodka, each one will be slightly different and it will ultimately be a unique experience for each audience. This is what makes theatre and music so special in my eyes.”

Rum and Vodka is the tale of a young man—played by Jules Mercier—who is married with two kids. Stuck between adult responsibilities and youthful urges, he travels through Dublin searching for life’s answers in countless pubs.

“This play is almost the simplest form of theatre and ironically it was the hardest play I’ve ever directed,” said Cochrane. “There’s

no character-on-character conflict to build up momentum, so I had to figure out how each line would trigger the next, which is a challenge when trying to keep it dramatically interesting. You don’t want the audience thinking, ‘Why don’t I just read this?’ You want the audience to feel like they had to come to the theatre to see it.”

Brian met Jules Mercier in the BFA acting program in Saskatoon. He has directed Mercier before and has acted alongside him a number of times.

“When I read Rum and Vodka, I instantly thought of Jules.

He is the right age and the right person. The character in the play does so many terrible things, but you still want to root for him anyway, and Jules has this very likable quality—kind of like a lovable jackass.”

Connor McPherson, the writer behind Rum and Vodka, is one of Cochrane’s favorite playwrights.

“I’m not going out on a limb here, he is one of the best English language playwrights of today. He is stupendous. He wrote this play when he was twenty years old. When I came to grad school I had a short list of playwrights whose works I wanted to work on

and Connor McPherson was right at the top,” he said.

“I believe that in literary theatre, if the play is good, then just stay out of the way,” said Cochrane. “That’s my top secret directing method.

“If you’ve got a good play, and good actors, then you really won’t have to do much other than give them a nudge here and there.”

Cochrane’s real passion is writing. “Playwriting is my ultimate goal. If you’re a writer, you just have to write every day—which is the hardest thing to do. I’ve written a couple plays and it feels like they are really crappy for a long time, but the more you do it, the more you learn to trust yourself.” U Rum and Vodka runs at the Dorothy Somerset Studio Theatre from October 7–9. The show starts at 7:30 and tickets are $10, or $5 for students.

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Rum and vodka: hard drinking and hard thinking. PHOTO COURTESY UBC THEATRE

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Let them eat cake Tokyo Police Club talk touring, baked goods

TPC in fighting form. photo courtesy tokyo police club

Ginny Monaco Contributor At their earliest shows, Tokyo Police Club would hand out cupcakes to the audience as a sort of thankyou for attending. In 2005, before the POP Montreal show that attracted so much attention, I got one of these cupcakes. Now it was time to return the favour.

So when I was given the opportunity to interview guitarist Josh Hook, I came prepared with one of Vancouver’s greatest offerings: cupcakes. “I’m surprised you remembered,” he laughed. “Clearly not enough bands give out baked goods.”

It shouldn’t be surprising.

When a band you’ve seen playing at the local Optimist Hall is suddenly on Letterman, you’re going to remember something like cupcakes.

Newmarket, Ontario isn’t known for a lot of things. Jim Carrey was born there, Eric Clapton’s father died there and Tokyo Police Club are the new hometown heroes. “It’s a good place to grow up,” Hook said. “I mean, I love going back up to Newmarket, but I don’t think I could ever repeat a life there.”

The band is touring in support of Champ, their second full length record. It’s been received with the same excitement as their first EP, A Lesson in Crime. Hook describes the new album as being a more organic production. “On [our first full-length album] Elephant Shell, the writing process became really fragmented. With this one we were thankfully in a position to ask for eight months just to write.

To me, it sounds more like everything we wanted, to see the songs all the way to the end.”

For Josh, one of the best things about Champ is how it has confirmed the band’s place in the Canadian music scene. “[The media

has] finally dropped the ‘Young Canadian upstarts,’ now we’re just ‘Canadian band.’ That was a small victory.”

In August, Tokyo Police Club opened for the masters of the live show, The Flaming Lips. “When we were on, Wayne [Coyne] was setting off confetti cannons behind us. We were in the middle of maybe our third song and I looked over there. He’s just sitting on a chair in his full suit, with his confetti cannon. I didn’t get nervous until that moment.”

There isn’t any reason for the band to be nervous. What their concerts lack in confetti, they make up for in enthusiasm. The audience happily claps and harmonizes with singer David Monks, and it feels like the way Tokyo Police Club should be experienced. Their records manage to capture all their energy, but the music works best as a sing-along.

The tour behind Champ is proof of Tokyo Police Club’s mounting success. Besides the European leg of the tour, the band is performing their first shows in Des Moines, Iowa, and other small cities. “We’re playing Webster Hall in New York, so we’ll bring the production we have now. It does feel ridiculous when you show up in Kansas City with your bus and all your lights. But it makes sense when we’re on the coast!”

Besides reaching into the smaller markets with their brand of joyful indie rock, there’s room for the band to dabble in entrepreneurship. “[Keyboardist] Graham [Wright] has this idea for a cupcake shop. Actually he just has a name, the Toronto Cupcake Authority. He doesn’t really know anything about baking.”

I told Josh that it wasn’t a bad idea. It’s always nice when a band sticks to their roots. U

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Agenda for October 5th Staff Meeting 1. Introductions 2. New Members 3. Video Editor Responsibilities 4. Hootenanny II Update 5. JHM Awards Discussion 6. WPNCUP Election 7. Coordinator Elections 8. Staff Retreat Update 9. New Coffee Machine 10. New Business Staff meetings are every Tuesday at noon. All UBC students are welcome to attend. justin mcelroy | coordinating@ubyssey.ca

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opinions

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editorial Blood donation policy is discriminatory A court ruling last month defended Canadian Blood Services’ (CBS) policy of barring men who have had sex with other men from donating blood, prompting the Canadian Federation of Students, among others, to resign from a CBS queer consultation group. Is the rule discriminatory? We think so.

The decision was part of a lawsuit against Kyle Freeman, an Ontario man who had donated blood after unknowingly contracting syphilis. CBS sued him—and won—for $10,000, which they claimed was the cost of removing his blood from circulation, based on the fact that he had lied on his registration form. The CBS policy prohibits any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 from donating blood because they identify this group as being a high risk for HIV. It is true that homosexual men have a higher likelihood of having AIDS. And the screenings that CBS runs on blood samples during the donation process aren’t 100 per cent effective at detecting HIV. However, that doesn’t mean that this sort of discrimination is valid. While there are risks, a blanket ban sends a terrible message, and fails to seek any sort of middle ground which protects Canadians. The policy institutionalizes the practice of treating all men who sleep with other men as a sort of poisonous element whose blood is to be avoided in all cases. But not all men who sleep with other men pose a higher danger. There are plenty of men who are having sex with only one male partner who are far less of a risk than heterosexual men who engage in sex with multiple partners.

The Ubyssey would like to see changes to this policy. Men who have sex with a new male partner could also be required to go through a longer screening and testing process. The CBS would benefit from not only an improved image, but also an increase in its number of eligible donors. In the past, CBS has made public call-outs for donations during times when its blood supplies became dangerously low. The Globe and Mail reports that the number of students boycotting CBS over the past year led to a ten per cent drop in university blood donations. All those donors could return, and more, with just a few policy changes. wheels on the bus loop go round and round UBC is a commuter university. Despite all efforts to shape UBC into a “University Town,” the reality is that the vast majority of students will continue to commute here—many for more than two hours each day—for the foreseeable future, which is why the building of a new bus loop is such an important issue.

To give credit where credit is due, Campus and Community Planning (CCP) has been treating it as such. Despite this, there are a number of ways in which the consultations process is falling short. The first thing the CCP isn’t addressing adequately is cost. Despite serious design flaws, it wasn’t student opposition that killed the underground bus loop, but insufficient financing. Yet if you look at the proposed options, both the first and second choices include underground components where buses will lay over. These will inevitably require large capital costs for construction, but CCP isn’t releasing what they would estimate these to be. How can we be sure that the money is there for these ventures? By not bringing cost to the front of the discussion, CCP is setting up a possible exercise in futility.

At the end of the day, what we’re likely to get is a modified version of option one, which would essentially make the current bus loop facilities permanent. By routing more buses through campus, option two would generate too much opposition from residents in the UNA neighbourhoods. Similarly, option three is unlikely to get much support from the AMS because by stretching out the loop along Wesbrook, it diminishes the much-vaunted “sense of arrival” at the new Student Union Building.

This is all fairly regrettable. Students need better bus coverage around UBC, which has one of the largest campuses in North America. And an elongated, downtown-style loop would provide some interesting opportunities for turning Wesbrook into a more student oriented area, through coffee shops and other amenities. But this whole conversation is moot if it turns out we don’t have the cash to build one of the options. At the end of the day, it’s money that makes the wheels on the buses go round. U

Not pictured: Bill Murray. Virginie Menard Graphic/the ubyssey

columnists

Paid vs Aid campaign doesn’t encourage compassion Paul Bucci pbucci@ubyssey.ca Congratulations. The Christians on campus continue to create the most interesting and engaging debate at UBC. Left-wingers, take note: students respond to financial incentives when considering moral dilemmas.

Of course, that’s the problem. It’s also a trite and poorly framed debate.

For those of you who don’t know, Campus for Christ, through the vehicle of MyCravings, have created a “Paid vs Aid” contest on campus.

On October 7, they’ll be drawing the name of one UBC student (nearly a thousand have entered the contest).

Upon winning, you have a choice of either donating your $1000 winnings to one of three aid groups, or paying your tuition.

The contest is designed to distill the choice between self-interest and altruism into a distinct and public action. If you choose tuition, you are necessarily denying a personalized

group of needful third-worlders the essentials of life.

If you choose any of the groups, you are not only denying yourself $1000 of tuition money, you’re denying the other two groups the means for survival. They even go as far as to name them, creating actual people you’re choosing to deny, rather than an abstract demographic. What a weighty moral dilemma.

Except it’s not.

I’d take the money. Why wouldn’t you? There, potential winner, take the money for yourself. You’ve got one guy, Paul Bucci, on your side. I’ll be the devil on your shoulder whispering immoralities in your ear. After the contest is done, let’s grab a drink or twenty and burn a bible or two.

R idiculous ant i- Christ ianisms aside, the contest defeats itself by making a personal moral decision public. No matter how else you look at it, the decision is framed by what other people think. So, we’ll learn that people tend to act nicer when

guilted into it. Great. Even as a frame for debate, it falls f lat due to the same question.

Beyond that, giving to aid groups is in no way an especially altruistic or even a good action. The money goes to GAiN Canada, a division of Power to Change, an international non-profit. There is considerable debate in the aid industry over whether these organizations affect real change.

An important thing to note is that according to an investors kit by MyCravings, this project is part of a campaign costing roughly $1,070,000.

Now, I get that running organizations costs money, and $1,070,000 for a national campaign isn’t that bad, but it raises the question of how many lives choosing evangelism has cost?

And $1000 for aid? That doesn’t buy real social and political change overseas, but it is a significant portion of your tuition.

Real compassion isn’t bought. If you’re trying to promote a genuine ethical shift, it’ll cost more than $1000. U

Campus for Christ asking wrong questions Blake Frederick Columnist The question that Campus for Christ is posing to students on campus this week is whether they would pocket $1000 and put it towards their tuition, or donate $1000 to aid efforts in developing countries, if presented with the choice. Further, the organization is actually going to draw the name of a student at random and present them with this situation to see what they will choose.

I assume that Campus for Christ hopes that by running this contest they will spur some kind of campus debate about the balance between self-interest and charity. While this is a worthy cause, I think their campaign is somewhat misguided.

Their contest does not encourage the right type of discussion on the difficult

issues surrounding aid to developing countries. The aid organizations that Campus for Christ has chosen to highlight seem to be worthwhile, highly effective causes. Who would argue against giving money to build shelters for earthquake victims in Haiti?

Not all aid is good aid, however. The US pledged $1.15 billion to help Haiti rebuild after the earthquake. Nine months have passed and the people of Haiti haven’t seen a single dime of that money.

The International Monetary Fund has been giving loans and non-payable aid to countries for decades, but the aid they give comes with conditions. Countries receiving money must abide by Structural Adjustment Programs, which commonly require them to privatize national services such as health care and education and degrade environmental standards by

implementing free trade regimens.

This tied aid has done significant damage to these countries, and in most cases has caused an overall reduction in their GDPs. Instead of asking whether to give aid at all, we should be asking what kind of aid is good aid. We should also be investigating the reasons why these impoverished countries need aid in the first place. Let’s focus on the historical effects of colonialism and unfair international trade regulations, for example, instead of asking students to alleviate poverty with their tuition money.

Campus for Christ is well intentioned and hopefully their contest will have a positive effect. By not encouraging students to discuss the politics of aid, however, they are unlikely to shed much light on the causes of and remedies for global poverty. U

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sports

editor IAN TURNER » sports@ubyssey.ca

Longboat: 3000 students become voyageurs Allana Isaacs Contributor Celebrating its 25th anniversary, and with over 3000 students having participated, the Day of the Longboat is now recognized as one of the largest voyageur canoe races in North America.

With less than adequate preparation, and with the cold, wet conditions dampening morale to the point of some not wanting to compete, the students who go on to win epitomize the underdog, especially when you consider that to win one must have raced three times in the span of two days.

Those who win get a miniature longboat from which one can drink champagne. It’s not much, but it helps compensate for all the blisters.

Taking such a prize home would be the cherry on top of the icing on the cake, and not coming last or capsizing would be the icing. But for me, just getting to take part is the cake, plain and simple. And I’m a sucker for cake. U Team “Suck It” seen here approaching the beach in the final minutes of their match. alex micu photo/the ubyssey