February 2, 2012

February 2, 2012 | VOL. XCIII ISS. XXXVII

Hiding alcohol from Justin SINCE 1918

CHAOS at KWANTLEN Impeachments and lawsuits plague Kwantlen’s student union

U VROOM

P6

THE UBYSSEY

Formula UBC team rebuilds for a new season

P8

SWIMMING

SMASHES RECORDS P9

“ ” UBC TAs SHOCKED AND

APPALLED

RAISE POSSIBILITY

OF STRIKE

BEFORE EXAMS

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2 | Page 2 | 02.02.2012

What’s on 2

THU

This week, may we suggest...

Our Campus

One on one with the people who make UBC

FILM >>

Shining Spirit: 3:30-5pm @ MOA Movies! Music! For free! Come to a showing of this award-winning Tibetan documentary, followed by a performance of traditional Amdo Tibetan music by Jamyang Yeshi, the film’s protagonist. Free for UBC students.

3

FRI

POKER >>

5

SUN

MOA >>

ALL-IN for Charity poker tournament: 6-10pm @ Abdul Ladha Gamble away your lunch money­— at least it’s going to a good cause.

This tournament raises money for the Harvest Project, a local charity supporting those experiencing difficult life circumstances.

GEOFF LISTER/THE UBYSSEY

Matthew Emery performing a piece he wrote for violin and piano. The second-year student gets up at 6am daily to compose.

Student composer an early riser Jonny Wakefield Managing Editor, Print

4

SAT

ART >>

A Night of Music and Storytelling: 8-9:30pm @ First Nations Longhouse The First Nations House of Learning presents songs and stories from poet/writer/saxophonist Joy Harjo and artist/songwriter Larry Mitchell.

6

MON

A Green Dress: Objects, Memory and the Museum: 10am-5pm @ MOA Do objects remember? If you’re contemplating this, further your inquiry at this MOA exhibit. Free admission for UBC students.

CITR >> CiTR volunteer orientation session: 6:30-7:30pm Get to know your friendly neighbourhood student radio station and learn about getting involved at CiTR. Pro tip: Their lounge has a beer vending machine.

Seriously.

U

Got an event you’d like to see on this page? Send your event and your best pitch to printeditor@ubyssey.ca.

THE UBYSSEY Febuary 2, 2012, Volume XCIII, Issue XXXVII

EDITORIAL

Coordinating Editor Justin McElroy

coordinating@ubyssey.ca

Managing Editor, Print Jonny Wakefield printeditor@ubyssey.ca

Managing Editor, Web Arshy Mann webeditor@ubyssey.ca

News Editors Kalyeena Makortoff & Micki Cowan news@ubyssey.ca

Art Director Geoff Lister

art@ubyssey.ca

Culture Editor Ginny Monaco

culture@ubyssey.ca

Senior Culture Writer Will Johnson wjohnson@ubyssey.ca

Sports Editor Drake Fenton

sports@ubyssey.ca

Features Editor Brian Platt

features@ubyssey.ca

Copy Editor Karina Palmitesta copy@ubyssey.ca

Video Editor David Marino

video@ubyssey.ca

Senior Web Writer Andrew Bates abates@ubyssey.ca

Graphics Assistant Indiana Joel

BUSINESS

CONTACT

Business Manager Fernie Pereira

Business Office: Room 23 Editorial Office: Room 24 Student Union Building 6138 Student Union Blvd Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 tel: 604.822.2301 web: www.ubyssey.ca

business@ubyssey.ca

Ad Sales Ben Chen

advertising@ubyssey.ca

Accounts Sifat Hasan

accounts@ubyssey.ca

Webmaster Jeff Blake

STAFF

Andrew Hood, Bryce Warnes, Catherine Guan, David Elop, Jon Chiang, Josh Curran, Will McDonald, Tara Martellaro, Virginie Menard, Scott MacDonald, Anna Zoria, Peter Wojnar, Tanner Bokor, Dominic Lai, Mark-Andre Gessaroli, Natalya Kautz, Kai Jacobson, RJ Reid

ON THE COVER:

Print Advertising:

604.822.1654 Business Office:

604.822.6681 advertising @ubyssey.ca

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LEGAL

The Ubyssey is the official student newspaper of the University of British Columbia. It is published every Monday and Thursday by The Ubyssey Publications Society. We are an autonomous, democratically run student organization, and all students are encouraged to participate.

Editorials are chosen and written by the Ubyssey staff. They are the expressed opinion of the staff, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Ubyssey Publications Society or the University of British Columbia. All editorial content appearing in The Ubyssey is the property of The Ubyssey Publications Society.

Stories, opinions, photographs and artwork contained herein cannot be reproduced without the expressed, written permission of The Ubyssey Publications Society.

The Ubyssey is a founding member of Canadian University Press (CUP) and adheres to CUP’s guiding principles.

Letters to the editor must be under 300 words. Please include your

phone number, student number and signature (not for publication) as well as your year and faculty with all submissions. ID will be checked when submissions are dropped off at the editorial office of The Ubyssey; otherwise verification will be done by phone. The Ubyssey reserves the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. All letters must be received by 12 noon the day before intended publication. Letters received after this point will be published in the following issue unless there is an urgent time restriction or other matter deemed relevant by the Ubyssey staff.

It is agreed by all persons placing display or classified advertising that if the Ubyssey Publications Society fails to publish an advertisement or if an error in the ad occurs the liability of the UPS will not be greater than the price paid for the ad. The UPS shall not be responsible for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value or the impact of the ad.

Matthew Emery pulls a stack of sheet music out of a leather case and unfolds it over the keyboard.

“Last week, I came in with this mess of paper,” he says, his fingers wandering over the keys as he scans the page. On it are lines of music staffs, covered with little pencil scratches. He’s been workshopping the piece with his professor and mentor, Dr Stephen Chapman. Scraps of paper are taped over sections that needed tightening up. “He said, ‘Okay, let’s sit down and play this together and work this out.’ I came this week and it’s a million times better. The lines are clearer, the harmonies. Everything’s not cluttered. It’s organized.”

After a few finishing touches, Emery will send the piece of music to a group of musicians who will perform it live on violin and piano in Montréal, Vancouver and Toronto. It won’t be the first time the 20-year-old composition student has heard his music performed live. He’s won numerous national awards for his work, which has also been performed by the Vancouver Chamber Choir.

Emery started playing music early in life. His mother, a French horn player, introduced him to classical music. He started singing

in choir at an early age, before turning to piano. Composition became a way to break the monotony of practice. “Like most kids, I didn’t like practicing,” he says.

“So I just started fooling around, and one day started writing down what I was fooling around with.”

When Emery was 14, his first composition was performed by a youth choir in his hometown of London, Ontario. It was an existential shift.

“You spend months in your room, writing these notes down, and then you hear them live for the first time, and you hear what’s been inside your head,” he says. “Your heart either stops completely or it beats 1000 beats per minute and you get sweaty and everything just melts away, and you’re in this room, you can’t see any audience and it’s just this wall of sound that’s been inside your head that’s now coming out of someone else and going into your ears.

“And so from there, it’s like a drug. You want to hear your music.”

That drive got him to UBC, where he is now studying under Chapman—the head of the music composition department, considered by some to be Canada’s premier composer.

Emery studies mainly theory and composition, two pursuits

Drawing!

that often find themselves at odds.

“You get bombarded all the time with form and structure.

There’s form in music, but it’s also about learning to be expressive, about being creative,” he says.

“You’re playing music that breaks all these rules, and you’re trying to understand that, okay, this is what Beethoven is saying, but in order to do this justice, you have to throw all the rules you learned an hour ago in theory class, and break free of this mold that the school is in to be an artist.”

The life of a composer is an ascetic one. Emery wakes up at six every morning and writes for an hour before heading off to class.

Music is admittedly all he does.

He runs in the same circles as other music students, who unsurprisingly talk a lot of music. It’s an opinionated bunch. There are disagreements over everything— between self-described purists like Emery and more experimental composers who try to break the form. And most of them don’t really know much about popular music (the only modern artist Emery could name was Adele).

But in the dark of the theatre, Emery still gets that same thrill.

“You’re just sitting in the audience, and what’s been trapped inside your head, you’re now hearing,” he says. “And the whole world just stops.” U

U

We always need people to illustrate articles, draw edit comics, and ink our stick and poke tattoos. Contact Geoff Lister for more information

art@ubyssey.ca

News

02.02.2012 |

3

Editors: Kalyeena Makortoff & Micki Cowan

ANIMAL RESEARCH >>

UBC ordered to process animal research information request Micki Cowan News Editor

A provincial ruling will force UBC to make some decisions on whether they will reveal additional animal research information.

STOP UBC Animal Research (STOP), an animal rights group that has been working to get more information publicized about animal research at UBC, received word this week that the university will have to continue processing their requests for information.

The group made a complaint to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) after their requests for information from UBC were stonewalled.

“Earlier last year, UBC appeared to be moving forward with processing some of our requests, and then they sent us a fee estimate,” said Brian Vincent, a spokesperson for STOP. “Shortly after that, UBC appeared to have changed its mind and said no, we’re going to apply Section 3.1.e to everything, you’re not getting anything from us.”

Vincent was referring to Section 3.1.e of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), which exempts records from applying to rules in FIPPA if they contain research information on faculty members, teaching or research assistants, or other persons carrying out research at a post-secondary education facility.

But the decision made by the OIPC adjudicator, Jay Fedorak, was that while many of the items of information STOP was requesting could be protected by UBC, some

were applicable under the code.

The three items of information the adjudicator found to not fall under the section were lab inspection reports conducted by the Canadian Council on Animal Care, the source of primates used at UBC, and names and affiliations of members of the Animal Care Committee.

“The most important thing is this ruling does not require [us] to disclose more information about animal research...It’s about whether these records are subject to request,” said Paul Hancock, Access

TA PAY >>

TAs rush to find union agreement Andrew Bates Senior Web Writer

After a year and a half of little progress, TA contract talks could escalate quickly.

On Tuesday, executive members of CUPE 2278, the union representing teaching assistants at UBC, held an emergency meeting to update members about “drastic” changes to the bargaining situation. They emerged after 90 minutes of discussions vowing to meet again on February 15, and raised the possibility of calling a strike vote.

“We have been bargaining under the understanding that [UBC is] operating under a net-zero [increase] mandate. We recently found out that some people [at UBC] are being paid increases while some are not,” said CUPE 2278 President Geraldina Polanco. “There is money, they’re just not going to budget money for us.”

The union pointed to the Schedule of Remuneration and Expenses Paid to Employees, which showed a 9.33 per cent increase in take-home pay for UBC President Stephen Toope from 2010 to 2011.

“When I first heard about the financial injustices that were going on, I was shocked and appalled,” said Molly Campbell, a Master’s student in Land and Food Systems. “I really hope we can mobilize all TAs in the university and make everyone aware of the situation.”

But Lucie McNeill, director of Public Affairs, said that the faculty and management have not had an increase in base salary, which may not be reflected in renumeration documents. “It’s not a secret, [the net zero mandate] is widely known,” McNeill said. Toope has not taken an increase in base salary in four years.

CUPE will be returning this week

and Privacy manager at UBC. “Once the issues are addressed, then we need to gather it, then we need to review it and then we need to come to a decision on what to release,” he said.

UBC will have 30 calendar days to decide what steps it will take.

“You’re looking at a David and Goliath situation here...It’s encouraging, given those odds, that we [may] actually manage to compel UBC to reveal something,” said Vincent. U —with files from Justin McElroy THEFT>>

SUB basement thefts from clubs still unresolved

GEOFF LISTER/THE UBYSSEY

Ashwini Manohar Contributor

A large number of TAs are graduate students and are represented by the Graduate Student Society.

COURTESY OF FLICKR

to bargaining with the information, and will have a membership meeting on February 15.

Proposals by both sides have included a number of changes to the current contract, including separating a TA’s employee duties from their student duties, and making a threat of academic harm for TA complaints worthy of a union grievance. UBC and CUPE have been negotiating since the current collective bargaining agreement expired in 2010.

Until now, they’ve been negotiating on non-monetary issues. The union aims to finish those negotiations this week before moving on to monetary issues, which include obtaining wage parity with TAs at the University of Toronto.

Wages for UBC TAs are only $29.54 per hour compared to $39.92 at U of T. “I still have a lot of questions, but a general sense of anger,” said Ryan Davison, a PhD student at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.

“It’s more of a value principle that the same value of work is valued more at U of T than UBC.” “UBC doesn’t compare itself to SFU or UVic or the colleges,” said Polanco. “They compare themselves to U of T. They say that they’re a world class university, then we want to be treated as though we’re employees of a world class university.”

“It’s a little bit hard to compare,” McNeill argued, noting that at some schools, hourly rates are higher but

hours per week are lower. “We want to make sure we’re competitive and fair across the whole spectrum, not just one institution.”

McNeill remains hopeful. “The discussions are progressing, they’re respectful, they’re productive, I hear,” she said. “I understand that the parties have reached agreement on a number of non-monetary issues.

Obviously, the university’s priority is to conclude successful negotiations...

We work for and hope for successful negotiations as soon as possible.”

But the union is worried that budget deliberations won’t be addressed until the summer. “Our labour power is certainly more valuable when there’s a lot of teaching and TAing that’s being done on the campus,” said Polanco. U

New animal research data revealed

Staffer from UBC sentenced to house arrest

Professor’s technology brings the sun inside

UBC student allegedly assaulted

UBC released new information on Monday, January 30 about the purposes for which animals were used in research and educational activities in 2010.

The information includes a breakdown of six purposes, and what proportion of UBC’s animals are used for each: basic research (64.9 per cent), medical research (27.1 per cent), regulatory testing (1.2 per cent), education (1.4 per cent) and breeding (5.4 per cent).

This information was released to supplement a prior report stating how many animals were used for research, what species they were and how invasive the research was.

John Mwotassubi, who stole $460,000 from UBC while employed as a financial manager at BC Children’s Hospital, has been sentenced to two years of house arrest.

Mwotassubi stole the money over seven years by writing fraudulent cheques to a consulting company that he owned. The theft was discovered in 2010.

Mwotassubi will be required to pay back the money, and Judge Ronald Fratkin stated that public shame will also serve as a punishment: “He’ll be the guy that stole the money from the Children’s Hospital. That’s how he’ll be remembered.”

A technology developed by UBC physics professor Lorne Whitehead is set to go into commercial production.

Whitehead developed compact sunlight collectors and a prism light guide, allowing sunlight to be collected from the outside of a building and transmitted through pipes to light up the interior.

Plans are underway to incorporate the technology into prefabricated building panels leading to substantial energy savings. The technology has already been used in demonstrations at BCIT, and is set to be incorporated in the Oregon Sustainability Centre in Portland.

An alleged assault has left a woman paralyzed from the waist down and her family devastated.

Jin Ying Ni, who was just a few courses away from completing her Certified General Accountant designation, was allegedly assaulted on January 14 by her husband, Mark Jia, and at time of press remained in hospital.

The two met while both attending UBC. An article in The Province quoted Ni’s mother at a news conference, who said that “the incident destroyed [Ni’s] life.” Jia has been released on bail, and has been ordered not to enter the hospital where Ni is being treated or have any contact with Ni. U

News briefs

Part of being a club at UBC is managing finances, which translated this December into the club offices becoming a target for theft.

The UBC Yoga Club, Dancing Horizons and the UBC Brewing Club became victims of theft this December. The clubs, located in the SUB basement near Copyright, had cash boxes with several hundred dollars stolen. In one instance, a small laptop was taken.

Kathy Yan Li, president of the UBC Brewing Club, lodged a complaint with AMS Security right after the theft occurred. “They said that we weren’t the first people to report that and there had been one or two cases earlier that week. I’m a bit annoyed about that because they should’ve warned us,” she said.

But AMS Security manager Shaun Wilson said that although one report was filed earlier than the other two, “nothing in that report gave notice that we could expect the other two offices to be stolen from too.” Because the thefts occurred within a week and at a specified location, AMS Security now sees a connection in the incidents.

Since the incidents, various security measures have been taken to prevent further thefts, including reangling existing security cameras in the targeted hallway.

“Please keep your [door lockbox] code confidential. Also the policy is that we don’t advise you keep valuables like laptops or large amounts of cash or cash at all in the club rooms,” added Wilson.

“The problem is that there are no security cameras here, so we can’t actually see who comes into the clubs,” said Vicky Hoang, treasurer of Dance Horizons.

The clubs, for the most part, have written off the loss and moved on.

“We’re now considering buying a safe, just because it’s safer—no pun intended,” said Reisz. U

4 | News | 02.02.2012 SUBSIDIES>>

Low subsidies, high taxes for graduates Post-secondary graduates contribute more taxes than they were subsidized Arshy Mann Managing Editor, Web

A new study argues that students aren’t the freeloaders that some might believe them to be.

“Paid in Full: Who Pays for University Education in BC,” published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), has found that British Columbians with a post-secondary degree contribute more to the public coffers through future income taxes than it would cost taxpayers to pay for their entire degrees now.

“There seems to be a conventional wisdom...that students are subsidized and they should stop complaining about high tuition fees because really taxpayers pay for their education,” said Iglika Ivanova, an economist with the CCPA and the author of the report.

“But because [post-secondary graduates] earn more money, they end up paying more taxes. The question is how much more do they pay in taxes and is that enough to cover the upfront costs of their degree.”

In the study, Ivanova compared how much it costs to fund a fouryear degree to the expected lifetime income tax contributions of a university graduate. The higher earnings of degree-holders combined with lower rates of dependence on

welfare or employment insurance meant that students more than end up paying their own way.

“A lot of people, when you talk about lowering tuition fees, think you’re saying you want to subsidize education,” said Ivanova. “But you’re not really subsidizing it. They pay.”

According to her findings, governments could cover the entire cost of tuition twice over and would still be getting a bargain.

The CCPA study didn’t take into account the various other ways that degree-holders contribute to the economy, such as by paying higher consumption taxes and contributing to economic growth and innovation.

Ivanova embarked on the project in order to update a previous CCPA study done by UBC economist Robert Allen in 1998, which came to a similar conclusion.

She was interested if Allen’s findings still held at a time when tuition rates increased substantially and British Columbians were paying less in taxes.

“Some people have speculated that we have so many graduates now [and] that university education isn’t what it used to be. Maybe it no longer has a payoff for students,” she said.

“But by and large we continue to find that almost every field of study, including things that you would

GEOFF LISTER/THE UBYSSEY

In the graph, darker bars represent male, and ligther bars represent female.

think have no practical value, like humanities, pay for themselves.”

Visual arts was the only discipline that didn’t cover its own cost, because artists tend to earn considerably less than their peers in other professions.

Ivanova went on to argue that because many prospective students experience “sticker shock” when confronted with the high cost of a university degree, they may decide

AWARDS>>

Profs awarded for research

UBC announces its 2011 faculty awards

to pass on higher education and that governments are therefore missing out on the potential tax revenue.

“So why are we putting barriers to education for so many people by having high tuition fees instead of making sure that everyone who wants to can get an education and contribute to society?” she said.

Zach Crispin, chairperson for the BC wing of the Canadian Federation of Students, argued that ADMISSIONS>>

Application website crashes at deadline

Micki Cowan

Laura Rodgers

News Editor

Contributor

UBC has announced its 2011 faculty research awards, with awards going to research on topics ranging from HIV to computer screens.

The Jacob Biely Research Prize, which is awarded to an active faculty member with a distinguished record of research, went to Julio Montaner for his work in the field of medicine.

Montaner has been researching HIV for “at least a few decades” and is best known for his contributions to the development of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).

His group was central to the creation of the HAART cocktail, which was unveiled at the 1996 International AIDS Conference in Vancouver. Since then, Montaner and his colleagues in Vancouver and the United States have treated thousands of HIV-positive people in BC and millions around the world with HAART. “BC today has driven morbidity and mortality to an all-time low; the number of new HIV diagnoses in BC is down by greater than 60 per cent and the trend continues to go downwards,” he said.

Montaner said he hopes winning the award will shed light on the issue and garner support.

“BC has been blessed by the support that the provincial government has been able to give us but...we haven’t been able to convince our colleagues across the country or at the federal level that [HAART] is the way to go.”

Wolfgang Heidrich, winner of the Charles A. McDowell Award, has been recognized for his excellence in “pure or applied scientific research.” His research is

Applying to university is a nervewracking process to begin with, but some prospective UBC students were given yet another reason to worry on the eve of their application deadline.

At approximately 10:30pm on January 30, the second-to-last day UBC applications were accepted, prospective students logging in to submit their applications were unable to do so. When all they wanted was to submit their information and then breathe a sigh of relief, a server outage crashed the online form.

Surrey high school student Shayne Kelly had saved his application earlier that evening, then tried to submit it after the outage occurred.

“It was definitely confusing as to whether my application was submitted or not,” he said in an email. “I ended up refreshing the page over and over again, [and] got a few different error messages.”

Kelly was not the only student frustrated by this incident. “Of course when I decide to leave [my] UBC application until the last minute, the site has ‘technical difficulties’ and crashes,” tweeted applicant Megan Gallant.

UBC still does not know the reason why the server outage occurred. “[UBC Academic Services] are investigating, but they’re not exactly clear as to the cause of the disruption,” said Sam Saini, Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions.

“We can’t confirm right now if it’s because of increased server load or increased applications being submitted at one time,” he added.

According to Saini, this sort of outage is unprecedented. “Not to my

COURTESY OF MARLIS FUNK

Julio Montaner has received an award for his research on HIV treatment.

in computational imaging and displays, where he works to codify optical and computational methods.

“For example, in standard photography we just have light projecting through a standard camera lens onto an image plane and then we obtain a photograph,” said Heidrich in an interview with The Ubyssey.

Heidrich has been researching in the field at UBC for ten years. More recently, he has been working on 3D displays.

Heidrich said that it’s a great honour to win the award—not just for him, but for his graduate students as well. “It’s not just me sitting in my office and coming up with formulas and things like that. Every individual project has a very strong involvement by the graduate students, so I see it as a recognition also of theirs,” he said.

The President’s Award for Public Education through Media was presented to Alfred Hermida of the

School of Journalism for sharing research expertise via the news media.

The Killam Research Prize goes to full-time faculty members in recognition of outstanding research and scholarly contributions. Recipients from the Faculty of Arts included Neil Safier from history, Jessica Tracy from psychology, Barbara Dancygier from English and Dominic Lopes from philosophy.

From the sciences, winners included Mark MacLachan from chemistry, Nemkumar Banthia from civil engineering, Randy Gascoyne and David Huntsman, who both study pathology and laboratory medicine, and Victor Leung from electrical and computer engineering.

Along with the research awards, ten fellowships were awarded to assist faculty members on a recognized study leave. U

decision-makers should take heed of this study.

“I would definitely hope that [governments] would take a look at the data that’s been presented here by the CCPA and at least choose to freeze and work towards reducing tuition fees in the short term and really think fully about getting rid of financial barriers to post-secondary education,” he said.

He also pointed out that the study demonstrates that the net gains to the public treasury from higher education have actually been decreasing.

“The fact is that when we used to have a more progressive tax system, those numbers were higher,” he said.

“As we move to reduce tuition fees and increase the tax base through a progressive tax system, students are going to be paying for their education more times over and we can actually increase the quality of it at the same time.”

Ivanova emphasized that regardless of how high tuition fees are, students end up paying for their degrees one way or another—it’s just a matter of when.

“It’s economically feasible and fairer to ask graduates to pay for their degrees through taxes after graduation rather than asking them to pay through high tuition fees up front.” U

knowledge, I can’t remember a server outage that prevented us from collecting applications,” he said.

The server outage continued until about 3am. By 6am, applicants were already reporting on Twitter that their applications were going through without a hitch. “OMG... submitted [my] UBC application,” wrote prospective student Jeffrey Baldwin via Twitter at 5:41am.

Kelly was able to log back in after the outage was fixed. “I was quite relieved once I could finally log in and see that my application had been processed,” he said.

Enrolment Services hopes that lengthening the deadline to February 1 at 11:59pm has made up for the outage.

We can’t confirm right now if it’s because of increased server load or increased applications.

Sam Saini Associate director, Undergraduate Admissions

Saini claims that Enrolment Services has the situation “in hand” right now, and the application form has been restored to full functionality. He also confirmed that no application information was lost during the outage.

UBC isn’t sure how many students were affected by this issue, but will continue to look into how to prevent this from happening again.

“We will continue to investigate, to ensure students aren’t [again] put in a rather unfortunate predicament,” said Saini. U

National

02.02.2012 |

ALBERTA >>

U of A student embezzles $27,000 April Hudson The Gateway (University of Alberta)

EDMONTON (CUP)—A student embezzled more than $27,000 from a faculty association at the University of Alberta, according to a statement released January 23 to Faculty of Business students.

In their statement, the Business Students’ Association (BSA) revealed that $27,745 was stolen from a BSA bank account over the course of the summer, a fact which the association became aware of in August 2011.

When asked, the BSA said they could not comment on the investigation or the identity of the student, but BSA President Kimberley Menard said that the association is working with the Students’ Union to ensure that this does not happen to any other clubs in the future.

“Our internal controls are pretty tight already,” Menard said. “We’re just making sure that if an error is made in the future, we’re able to catch it sooner.”

The BSA statement said the student in question acted alone, although all transactions are supposed to require two authorized signatures. Menard was unable to elaborate on how the student was able to act on their own, although the BSA statement indicated it was due to a bank error.

Students’ Union vice-president academic Emerson Csorba confirmed that the Students’ Union and the BSA have been working together with the Office of the Dean of Students to investigate the issue.

“We’ve been doing a lot of investigating over the last few months, just in terms of looking at the financial procedures of the BSA,” Csorba said.

“The BSA has been handling this well over the last few months, and we’ve been working with the dean of students to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again, and at the same time that something like this can’t happen to other faculty organizations.”

According to Csorba, the Students’ Union learned about the embezzlement in early December.

“I wouldn’t say that the BSA kept this to themselves,” Csorba said. “When something like this happens, it can be a bit startling just because of the magnitude. But

RYAN BROMSGROVE/THE GATEWAY

The identity of the student responsible for embezzling $27,000 could not be released.

we’ve had a pretty good relationship in terms of working with them—I’d say that [our] relationship is characterized by trust.”

Csorba added that the issue has remained confidential until recently because the student had launched an appeal regarding a Code of Student Behaviour charge.

Although she couldn’t comment on the specifics of the case, Deborah Eerkes, the university’s discipline officer, clarified that in cases of theft or embezzlement, an appeal could be launched once it is determined that the student violated the Code of Student Behaviour.

The appeal board would read over the case and come to a final and binding decision.

“There would be all kinds of things to take into account, like how much was stolen, whether the student was already involved in paying it back,” Eerkes said.

“The range of sanctions [begins with] restitution, but also [includes] things like a conduct probation, or various levels of suspension. Expulsion would be the worst that could happen.”

Elaine Geddes, associate dean

for the Faculty of Business’s undergraduate program, stressed that the individuals involved in the investigation are obligated not to provide any information about the student in question.

“People are criticizing the BSA for not identifying this person,” Geddes said, adding that under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Code of Student Behaviour and other university regulations, the BSA is not permitted to do so.

In their official statement, the BSA wrote that the embezzlement was made possible because of a bank error in setting up ATM privileges when the signing authorities were changed for the 2011–12 year.

“The bank changed provisions on the BSA student account, which was done without the knowledge of the rest of the students,” Geddes explained. “We believe the bank is at fault. Whether or not we’re able to do anything about that is an open question at this stage.”

Geddes added that the BSA has rules in place that should have prevented this from happening. “What they need to do [now] is provide

some way of catching mistakes of this kind before they turn into what this turned into,” Geddes said. “But it should never have happened in the first place, considering the safeguards they already had.”

More than half the stolen money was recovered, but Geddes could not provide a precise amount.

“I have been involved in this from day one, and these students [in the BSA] have done their best to try to properly safeguard the financial resources of students in the School of Business,” Geddes said.

“It’s unfair what they’re being required to go through now, because they have been victims of a crime, and they’re being re-victimized all over again.”

University of Alberta Protective Services director Bill Mowbray confirmed that the student implicated in the embezzlement was charged under the Code of Student Behaviour, and added that the Edmonton Police Service still has a file open for this case.

The police officer in charge of reviewing the case was not available for comment before press time. U

Nation of Israel was scratched from the surface of several globes WINDSOR (CUP)—University of Windsor officials removed three globes from a library on January 11 after being notified that Israel had been scratched from their surfaces.

The chance of the vandalism being random is highly unlikely, as closer examination revealed the only alteration to all three globes was the absence of the nation of Israel. The globes have been in this condition for at least the past three years despite student complaints, according to third-year law student Gavin Wolch.

Wolch, who is Jewish, said he noticed the problem a few years ago after seeing someone else’s complaint posted on the library’s question board.

Newly elected TRU student rep sues university The Omega (Thompson Rivers University)

Anti-Israeli vandalism in University of Windsor library The Lance (University of Windsor)

KAMLOOPS>>

Devan C. Tasa

ONTARIO >>

Ashley Quinton

5

“I looked at it and I added one.

Nothing was done about it,” he said.

“I saw [the globes] and it was frustrating, but it’s really hard to get angry at someone else’s ignorance.”

Peter Zimmerman, head of information services, has worked at the Leddy Library—where the incidents occurred—for the past ten years and said he had never come across a complaint about the globes. The library does keep complaint records, but not going back far enough to verify Wolch’s claim, he explained.

“I’ve checked recent complaints up until last semester, and I haven’t found a record of a complaint in the nature of what has been raised,” said Zimmerman.

“We are taking this very seriously—it’s a pretty upsetting incident,

We’re on a very multicultural campus and the fact that there is that kind of blatant ignorance...in full view in the library is offensive.

Jenna Bontorin First-year political science student

and it’s certainly something we would have responded to. Some of [the globes] are from the 50s and that’s really disappointing.”

Though the motives of the vandals are unclear, many consider it an act of racism. “It seems like

the obvious conclusion—I’d say it’s likely more politically motivated,” said Zimmerman.

“We’re on a very multicultural campus and the fact that there is that kind of blatant ignorance...in full view in the library is offensive,” said first-year political science student Jenna Bontorin.

Regardless of when a complaint was filled, library staff are aware of the issue now and have taken the appropriate steps to resolve the issue, said Zimmerman.

The globes may not make their way back to their home in the library, but Zimmerman ensures every avenue to repair or replace them will be explored.

Requests to photograph the defaced globes were denied by library officials. U

KAMLOOPS, BC (CUP)—A recently elected student representative of Thompson Rivers University’s Board of Governors and Senate is in the midst of suing TRU for 16 different claims.

“It’s difficult to determine what the claim is,” said John Hogg, the university’s lawyer, in court on January 20. “He’s claimed almost every tort in the textbook.”

Adrian Miller, who was elected by students in an online election held between December 8 and December 22, says in legal documents filed to the court that the university failed to reasonably accommodate his disability and medical problems, the nature of which were left unspecified.

Miller’s documents go on to say that when he went to senior TRU officials to ask for help in receiving accommodation, they ignored or squelched his complaints and failed to apply university policy.

The documents also say that TRU sought to make Miller miserable so he would leave the university.

The university has denied the allegations. “[Miller] knows these allegations are false, unnecessary, scandalous, frivolous and vexatious,” stated a legal document filed in response to the lawsuit.

The university’s documents also claim that TRU properly investigated any complaints and that Miller failed to use internal processes to seek a remedy to his complaints even after being told about them.

According to the legal documents filed by Miller, he is asking TRU to pay $249,999.99 in damages, write a letter of apology to him, pay for university and living expenses from September 2007 to the time his lawsuit is completed, pay for all future post-secondary education and admit him unconditionally to the Faculty of Law with a full scholarship in compensation for his troubles.

Miller has faced legal issues in the past. When confronted

by Kamloops reporters about a previous mischief conviction, he told them it was the result of a prank done when he was on the University of Northern BC’s basketball team in 2007. But Kamloops This Week found out that Miller was not part of the team.

Court documents revealed that he was convicted of damaging an apartment in Prince George from which he was evicted. The documents do not mention anybody being accused besides Miller, who claimed a girlfriend did the damage. Miller was also arrested January 19 on an outstanding warrant on a new breach charge, but was released a few hours later.

Despite Miller’s legal battles, Thompson Rivers University Students’ Union (TRUSU) executive director Nathan Lane said that TRUSU will treat Miller like any other duly elected student representative to the Board of Governors and Senate.

“We [will] set up a meeting with each one of [the newly elected representatives] in the coming month to let them know that we are available as a resource and that we are happy to work with them on issues of institutional governance.” U

6 | Feature | 02.02.2012 The Kwantlen Student Association is a mess of lawsuits, impeachments and firings. How did the situation become so bad?

When a student union goes to hell

by Brian Platt

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE RUNNER

Scenes of the protests after a November 30 Special General Meeting impeached 13 councillors of the Kwantlen Student Association. The legitimacy of that meeting is now being contested in BC Supreme Court.

A

ll student unions have scandals. It’s what happens when politically inexperienced young people gain power over millions of dollars. Few elections occur without squabbles, and personal attacks are common at student council meetings.

But when it comes to scandals, no student union in the country holds a candle to the Kwantlen Student Association (KSA).

The KSA has seen a gauntlet of court cases, boycotts, firings and security incidents in the past decade, but 2011 brought an almost unfathomable level of dysfunction and deceit.

Imagine a student union that was suing five of its former directors and staff for alleged mismanagement of $2 million in student fees.

Then imagine the sister and cousin of one of the accused were elected as directors to that student union’s executive without revealing to voters that they were relatives.

Next, imagine that the new directors removed the lawyers in charge of the case, were exposed by the campus newspaper for their family connections—causing one of them to resign—and then still terminated the lawsuit before it reached a conclusion.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

On November 30, Kwantlen students held a Special General Meeting (SGM) at which the entire executive board and 13 councillors in total were unanimously impeached. The meeting was interrupted by a pulled fire alarm and was monitored by RCMP and campus security.

Now, as the interim executive

starts its term, one of the ousted directors has filed a petition to the BC Supreme Court, alleging that the SGM was illegitimately convened.

Lawsuits are nothing new to this student union. In the past year, the KSA has been involved in at least five separate BC Supreme Court cases and racked up well over $250,000 in legal fees (the AMS, with a budget five times the KSA’s size, has spent just over $20,000 in the same period). It has fired its general manager, banned councillors from its offices and been in multiple disputes with the university administration and the campus newspaper.

But to really get a sense of how this student union ended up this way, and to understand the reasons why, one needs to start at the beginning.

You might want to make sure you’re sitting down before reading on.

The trouble begins Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) is a decentralized school, spread over four urban campuses in Surrey, Richmond, Cloverdale and Langley. It has a student population of roughly 18,000, and the KSA takes in more than $3 million per year in student fees.

The KSA Council has 19 voting positions, including an Executive Board made up of five elected directors. The KSA president, however, is not elected by students. Council appoints one of its own members to this position, which primarily consists of being the public spokesperson of the society.

The Kwantlen campus newspaper is called The Runner. As with many universities, but especially

with smaller ones, the circles of student politics and student journalism overlap at KPU. This year, The Runner’s news editor is Matt DiMera, who was an unsuccessful candidate in the February 2011 KSA election. Although his recent political candidacy raised some controversy, DiMera went on to win two national student journalism awards for his coverage of the KSA. Many of the details below come from stories from The Runner, though the student union’s tribulations have been covered in many major media outlets.

The bulk of the KSA’s troubles began in May 2005, when Aaron Takhar became the KSA’s director of finance as part of the “Reduce All Fees” (RAF) slate. Takhar was then appointed as chairperson of the board (the chairperson runs KSA Council meetings unless a speaker is appointed, which is not usually the case).

That September, the KSA held an SGM that featured $13,000 in prizes, including an $8000 tropical vacation.

A 200-page document containing sweeping bylaw changes was voted in. The number of elected student representatives was halved and the remaining ones had their terms doubled to two years. Four elected students were expelled from Council.

By January 2006, the Executive Board’s pay had been increased by 130 per cent.

Takhar did not run for re-election in 2006. He was instead hired as an “executive advisor.”

In August 2006, documents were filed in the BC Supreme Court that sought to overturn the results of the September 2005 special meeting,

reinstate the expelled students and declare the most recent election null and void. The documents were filed by the four students who had been expelled from Council.

Instead of fighting in court, Takhar and the rest of the RAF agreed to a new election.

Forensic analysis The October 2006 election saw the expelled students take power, and they immediately went to work.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accounting firm, was commissioned to do a forensic audit on Takhar’s reign.

The auditors recovered thousands of deleted emails and pored over financial documents. The results were explosive.

The audit reported that nearly $150,000 of student funds had been paid out without supporting documents. This included $67,000 paid to a consulting firm called AST Ventures, which Aaron Takhar later confirmed to Maclean’s that he was the sole director of upon incorporation. (AST are also Aaron Takhar’s initials).

Furthermore, the audit showed that during that time, the society gave out $620,000 in loans that “appear high-risk,” many of which were unsecured. Another $200,000 loan was given from a fund that was supposed to be used only for KSA health and dental expenses.

The report goes on to include many details about election manipulation and missing financial documents. The audit’s allegations have not been proven in court. (The audit can be seen in full on The Ubyssey’s website.)

In August 2008, the KSA sued Takhar and four other members of the RAF party. The press release accused the five members of “fraud, embezzlement and mismanagement,” though the actual BC Supreme Court case would only address “wrongful transactions” and “breach of fiduciary duty.”

Calm before the storm The KSA then stayed relatively quiet until spring 2011—though it should be clarified what “relatively quiet” means for the KSA. In March 2008, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) sued the KSA over procedures for a proposed referendum, and won. Next year, the KSA sued the provincial wing of the CFS over representation on CFS-BC’s board, and won.

A boycott of KSA Council began on September 30, 2010, by Council members who supported recently ousted chairperson Reena Bali.

Council was unable to meet quorum for almost four months, which delayed important decisions on the U-Pass and a new student union building.

In February 2011, just before the results were announced for the February 2011 election, the KSA’s general manager, Desmond Rodenbour, was fired “with cause.”

The decision to fire Rodenbour was debated publicly at an open Council meeting, and then voted on. It was based primarily on a management audit commissioned in January.

Six months later, Rodenbour sued the KSA for wrongful dismissal. But by that point, the society had much bigger problems to deal with.

02.02.2012 | Feature | 7

On February 14, 2011, the results of the KSA election were announced.

Among the winners were Justine Franson, the new director of operations, and Nina Sandhu, the new director of finance.

It would eventually be revealed by The Runner that Franson was Aaron Takhar’s sister and Sandhu was Takhar’s cousin (Sandhu also uses the last name Kaur). This had not been disclosed to voters.

Months later, a KSA lawyer stated that Franson and Sandhu informed Council of their conflict at the first Council meeting, but there are no minutes publicly available that show this happened.

The new councillors took office on April 1, 2011. On that day, the Executive Board told the KSA’s lawyers to “cease all activity pertaining to the RAF case until further notice.” Franson was made “the sole liaison with KSA legal counsel.” The minutes showed that the motion had been moved by Sandhu.

Within the first month and a half, the KSA Council banned one of its councillors from being in the KSA offices, raised executive work hours by ten per week, gave executives a 40 per cent pay increase and banned all recording devices from Council meetings.

On July 29, The Runner dropped the bombshell that both Franson and Sandhu were related to Takhar. The Surrey Leader later confirmed their report.

The Runner was unable to get any of the Executive Board to comment on the revelations, and at one point RCMP officers were called to force Runner reporters to leave the KSA office area.

Shortly after, Runner reporters began visiting houses, using the addresses submitted by KSA executives to the BC Corporate Registry. At the address given for Justine Franson, its habitants knew Franson but said she had never lived there. When they visited Aaron Takhar’s house, Runner reporters said that Sandhu answered the door and then shut it immediately. Sandhu told The Ubyssey that this never happened.

As outrage grew and major media outlets picked up the story, KSA President Sean Bassi released a statement on the KSA’s website. It said that Franson and Sandhu “understand the appearance of a possible conflict.” The statement went to say that, “both have, and continue to abstain from any decisions pertaining to the civil actions against former directors.”

However, the minutes from the April 1 Executive Board meeting clearly show that Sandhu moved the motion to cease legal activity and that Franson was made the sole legal liaison.

Franson resigned on August 13 and refused to speak with the media.

The final step August ended with the news that Rodenbour was suing for wrongful dismissal. On September 1, the KSA sued a website called “KSA Truth,” which was printing rumours and allegations about the KSA. On September 16, university administrators put a halt to the KSA’s planned by-elections, citing clear interference in the chief returning officer’s duties by elected KSA officials. The by-elections had included a referendum question which would combine many of the special student fees into one general fee, giving the KSA significantly more freedom with its funding.

Five days later, KPU’s Board of Governors officially halted progress on a new student union building because of the “disputes” within the KSA. A month later, KSA Council held

a closed-door meeting at which they officially terminated the lawsuit against Aaron Takhar and the other RAF members. It was justified as a cost-saving measure. “We’ve heard [the students’] concerns,” said Bassi in a statement, “and we’ve listened.”

The Runner ran an editorial with the all-caps title, “OUTRAGE.”

The students fight back On October 21, the KSA sued the student newspaper at Simon Fraser University over an article published about the turmoil. In the meantime, Kwantlen students began collecting names on a petition in attempt to force the KSA executives out of office.

Christopher Girodat, a student senator who was the Executive Board’s most persistent opponent on Council, presented a 277-signature petition to Council that, according to the KSA’s bylaws, mandated an SGM. The meeting was intended to impeach 13 councillors and prevent them from running in future elections.

In his report to Council on November 18, Bassi addressed the petition. “The majority of students do not think an SGM at this time is beneficial, meaningful, or necessary.

In fact, my discussions with some students who were misled into signing the petition has led me to believe that there were sleazy tactics used to obtain signatures.”

An SGM was conducted at the Surrey campus at 2pm on November 30. Sandhu alleges that this meeting was not properly convened, but the BC Supreme Court has yet to rule on this.

KSA bylaws stipulate that an SGM needs 250 people in attendance, and votes need 75 per cent in favour to pass.

After a few interruptions, including a pulled fire alarm and a “noxious substance” released in a hallway, the impeachment question was passed with 352 students in favour and zero against. Bylaw changes were also passed.

Five transitional Executive Board members were appointed without pay and instructed to hire a general manager and hold an election as soon as possible. However, the court has barred the Executive Board from doing this until it settles the question of whether the SGM was legitimate.

The day after the SGM, the impeached Executive Board members were given letters by campus security on university letterhead and instructed to leave the campus, according to The Runner.

On December 5, a protest was held against the new executives and the university administration. The protest was led by Aaron Takhar himself.

What went wrong?

It will still be weeks, possibly months, until the KSA’s affairs reach any kind of normalcy.

Jonathan Tweedale, the lawyer representing Nina Sandhu, has argued in court that under the KSA’s bylaws and the Society Act, Christopher Girodat and the rest of the petition leaders did not have the authority to convene the SGM on their own.

Sandhu referred most questions about her time as director of finance to Tweedale, but Tweedale is focused on the case at hand. “The press has focused on the substantive dispute between the incumbent director group and the critics of the incumbent director group,” said Tweedale, “but that very interesting dispute is not an issue that is going to be resolved in the court [with the current case], that’s an issue for the society’s members to determine.”

While the question of the SGM’s legitimacy is being settled, there is

another one worth asking: how did this student union become such a mess? And could something like this happen to any university?

Girodat, the senator who helped organize the petition to hold the AGM, was interviewed by The Ubyssey before the SGM impeached the 13 councillors. “The friendship issue is probably at the height of the problem. Two thirds of Council are very good friends with each other.

At Council meetings we have all of these directors having pre-meetings in the executive office, so they know exactly what’s going to happen and how they’re going to vote and everything.”

“If you look back at past minutes,” said Jennifer Campbell, who is serving with Girodat on the interim Executive Board, “there’s pretty much four of us who would oppose, and everyone else was always in favour.” But Campbell also pointed out that slates are banned in the KSA, and there’s no proof that the likeminded councillors had coordinated ahead of the election.

Girodat argued that the KSA Council structure makes it easy for majorities to push an agenda through. The Council is made up of representatives from the four campuses, not from different faculties.

“I think in terms of making it so you have more diversity of opinion on Council, and a broader range of student voices, faculty representation could be one way to do that,” said Girodat.

The society is also particularly ripe for being targeted by political blocs.

“The KSA is sort of an anomaly,” said Matt DiMera, The Runner’s news editor. “There’s lots of schools where it would be really easy to take over your student union, but they don’t have any money. But the KSA actually has a decent-sized budget for being a small student union.”

What compounds this problem is the difficulty of enforcing the Society Act when rules are broken.

Matt Todd, the 2010 director of external affairs, pointed out that any violation of the Society Act requires going through civil court to address. But launching a civil lawsuit is often prohibitively expensive if you’re not able to access the student union’s legal funds.

Jeff Groat, the coordinating editor of The Runner, said that councillors are also often unable to express real dissent on Council.

When a speaker is appointed, meetings are run according to a neutral set of rules. But over the past year, and in many other years, the meetings have been chaired by a member of the Executive Board—in this case, it was Sandhu.

In the end, the SGM was the only real option for students who were furious at what they saw happening. Yet it’s still unresolved whether they managed to do this in a legal way.

Campbell has hopes that the KSA will rebound eventually.

“I think we’re very unique in that we have four different campuses, and four different populations where views can come together and see what works best for the whole of the student population.

“If the right people are in power, they can work together and make it thrive.” U

The cast

Chaos reigns

Aaron

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Nina Sandhu 12 The 2011–20r of o ct e ir d KSA til she finance, un hed at was impeac er 30 b the Novem oes g o ls A .

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pherdat stoGi hriris CCh ro t a d o Gir tlen On the Kwanh ic Senate, wh unofgives him an KSA n ficial seat o to st Council. Lo human Jaspinder G of for director airs academic afflped ctions. He the e 11 ary 20 le e in the Febru on signatures to forc e iti th et n p o 7 ts 27 si w get 30 SGM. No November tive Board. cu xe E interim

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iMera N ew s e d Bobby itor of The fairs in Padda for d Runner. Lo s two na the Februar irector of ex t to covera tional journ y 2011 elect ternal afali io g e of t he KSA sm awards ns. Won for his .

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE RUNNER

Culture

02.02.2012 |

8

Editor: Ginny Monaco

FOOD >>

Food with Tyler McRobbie: Health vs. convenience

GEOFF LISTER/THE UBYSSEY

Tyler McRobbie Columnist

CHRIS BORCHERT, JOSH CURRAN AND GEOFF LISTER/THE UBYSSEY

The Formula UBC team is aiming for a “bad-ass” design for their new car, which they will race at a competition in June of this year.

CARS>>

Reinventing the open wheel with Formula UBC

Andrew Bates Senior Web Writer

For some, Saturday is a day to relax or catch up on things from the rest of the week. But for students involved with Formula UBC, it’s time to head to the garage.

Composed of about 25 students from first year to graduate—mainly mechanical engineers—Formula UBC is a club that designs and builds an open-wheel race car over the course of two to three years.

Their last car took two years to build and was raced in a Formula SAE competition in Fontana, California in the summer of 2011. Organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the competition judges not only the car’s performance and design but also the team’s ability to market the car to a simulated board of directors.

“There’s a lot of design that goes into the car, there’s also a lot of marketing that goes into the car,” said Michael Rooney, co-leader of the Formula UBC team.

“Basically, we’re trying to make a car that will perform well but would also be economical to build at some point.”

The team placed 54th out of 83 last year and is looking to move up in the ranks when they go to Lincoln, Nebraska in June.

“This year’s car was basically formed with everything that went wrong with last year’s car,” said Rooney, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student. “In past years, UBC’s done really well at design competitions in California, so we’re really aiming to be at least 20, even 30 positions above last year.”

Formula UBC’s previous car was designed by one team and built by

another, leaving those involved in building and exhibition without knowledge of how or why some design decisions had been made, according to Rooney.

“We put it together and really had barely got it running before making it to competition,” he said. “After that, we knew exactly what was wrong and what we needed to do for the next car to be successful.”

The design process needed an overhaul, according to Rooney.

“Usually when you make a car, you make small changes here and there... but you wouldn’t change much,” he said.

“They did a complete redesign from the ground up after 2008.”

The team is aiming for a “bad-ass” feel with the body design and character of the car, which has only been modeled on a computer so far.

“Every car for me has a face,”

Rooney said. “I think it’s going to look pretty mean.”

The work is hard. Rooney said he spends about five to six hours on the car every Saturday.

“We need a lot of manpower and a lot of man-hours goes into each car,” he said.

“Sometimes it can be pretty stressful, but others it’s nice to be able to work, you know, you’re working with your buddies and other students.”

After three years with the club, Rooney said his favourite part of the year has been imparting knowledge to new members.

“Everybody that’s there is willing to learn, they want to be able to put something towards their car. They’re there to invest their time, not to just twiddle their thumbs,” he said.

“Everybody on the team is basically just best friends with each other.” U

WRITERS>>

UBC grad Andrew Westoll talks nominated story Will Johnson Senior Culture Writer

UBC graduate Andrew Westoll is an award-winning writer and primatologist. He recently penned the book The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary. The Ubyssey sat down to chat with him about the book, which was recently nominated for a Charles Taylor nonfiction prize.

The Ubyssey: What originally compelled you to write about the chimpanzees of Fauna Sanctuary?

How did you get hooked up with Gloria Grow?

Andrew Westoll: I’d heard about Fauna 12 years before...but it fell through when I got the job to study monkeys in Suriname for a year.

So I went to the Upper Amazon, and forgot all about Fauna. Then, ten years later and now a freelance writer, I was looking around for my next magazine piece, and Fauna popped up on my radar again. After two phone calls with Gloria Grow, I’d been invited to move into Fauna and write the biography of her chimpanzee family. I think my background in primates was what convinced her I’d do a good job with her story.

U: How did you react when you found out you’d been shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize? How familiar are you with the work of the other authors on the list?

W: I was amazed. And immediately giddy. That was a fantastic longlist.

It could have gone so many different ways. And to be on the same list as Wade Davis, whose first book came out the year I was born and who has been an inspiration for me since I started writing, was a thrill.

U: You graduated from the MFA in creative writing program at UBC. Four of the five authors on the shortlist came from the same program. Do you think that’s a coincidence? And how did that program help to hone your craft?

W: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of good writers come out of the UBC program. My time there was transformative for me. I had left science, and I was desperate to find a community of support as I set out to become a writer. But I do think it’s a coincidence that we are all on one shortlist together. Next year there could well be no one from UBC on any of the shortlists. It’s just been a

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Andrew Westoll says his time in the UBC creative writing MFA program was “transformative.”

very good year for the program.

U: What were some of the lessons and realizations you gleaned from working with Gloria Grow and her chimpanzees?

W: One, animals are incredibly resilient, humans included. Two, chimpanzees can suffer psychological damage in almost exactly the same way humans can. Three, there are a select few people in this world

who can give their entire self to their passions and their beliefs, and Gloria Grow is one of them.

U: What’s next?

W: I’m exploring a few different projects at the moment, waiting to see which one has the legs for a book. All my ideas these days revolve around the human/animal relationship. Who knows when one of them will win out? U

As those of us who haven’t been living under a rock probably know, Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide recommends eating between five and ten servings of fruits and vegetables each and every day.

It’s the mantra many have heard since primary school. Although US public schools now consider pizza to fall under the classification of “vegetable,” students at UBC are clearly not as easily fooled.

Two longstanding complaints from students question both the lack and the cost of healthy food options across the university. But is there really a shortage of healthy options, or are students just distracted by the smell of freshly baked cookies and pizza emanating from the SUB? Jessica Landing is the promotions and outreach coordinator for Sprouts, the vegan eatery in the SUB basement. She asserts that there indeed aren’t many options as of yet, but that “for the [current] demand there is enough.” She argues, “If there were more options, they wouldn’t survive because there isn’t that demand.” While some would prefer to see more choices, they alone wouldn’t be able to support them. Landing suggests that the issue reflects how people currently value their health: “People favour convenience, and convenience is correlated with fast food.”

And convenience certainly is a compelling factor. Faced with demanding timetables and days made long by tedious commutes, many UBC students are left susceptible to the convenience and undeniable tastes of such AMS-run outlets as Bernoulli’s, Pie R Squared, and Blue Chip Cookies. Long lunch hour lineups at these venues have Landing questioning how much people actually value their health. They are, after all, home to some of the unhealthiest menu items on campus.

So is there a problem with the food on our campus? For students like Landing, who are willing to pay a bit extra or wait a bit longer to know that their food is healthy, there isn’t much to complain about.

But should everyone else have to sacrifice convenience just for the sake of health?

Landing disagreed with this idea by acknowledging the fact that several of the on-campus restaurants, whether AMS-owned or otherwise, have healthy, quick options on their menus. And indeed, it’s not terribly hard to see that an organic multigrain bagel with hummus and vegetables from Bernoulli’s fits the criteria for being both healthy and convenient.

But until more students actively choose to support the more healthoriented restaurants, little change will come. In the meantime, obesity rates just keep on climbing. U

Sports

02.02.2012 |

9

Editor: Drake Fenton

SWIMMING>>

CanWest gold for the UBC swim teams

With two teams loaded with talent, UBC hopes to bring home CIS gold next Colin Chia Staff Writer

It was a successful weekend for UBC’s varsity swimming team as they brought home both the men’s and women’s Canada West championships from Edmonton.

In his first season as head coach, Steve Price was happy he was able to continue the Thunderbirds’ winning tradition.

“The expectation of me coming in here was not only that could I try to bring the program up, but also recapture the dominance that we had in the 90s,” he said.

UBC topped the women’s standings with 949 points to University of Calgary’s 830, while the men’s team had 861 points to the University of Alberta’s 744. Each team has now won two consecutive Canada West championships.

Savannah King was named athlete of the meet after winning three gold medals, one silver and one bronze. Martha McCabe, who is preparing for the Olympics in London this summer, beat her own record in the women’s 200 metre breaststroke. She finished with a time of 2:22.40, which beat the record she set last year of 2:22.57.

“Martha McCabe is by far our number one prospect. It’s great that she’s using the university season as a launching point into her Olympic year,” said Price. He also noted the contributions of the team’s rookies, with first-year Rebecca Terejko winning a silver medal.

COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA ATHLETICS

The men’s and women’s teams pose with their new banners. Tommy Gossland and Martha McCabe both set records at the meet.

At the end of the competition, Price won the women’s coach of the year award. “I really appreciated that. It’s a selection by your peers, so for those guys to recognize the work I’d done with the women’s team was pretty special,” he said.

On the men’s side, Tommy Gossland was the stand-out, winning seven medals, six of them gold.

Gossland also set a new Canada West record in the men’s 100 metre freestyle with a time of 49.28, besting Chad Hankewich’s University of Calgary record of 49.46 set in 2007.

“To get on the podium for all seven events is pretty amazing,” said Price.

Gossland joined Kelly Aspinall, Rory Biskupski, Craig Brazier and Duncan Furrer as the men’s Canada West all-stars. Brittney Harley, Savannah King, Heather MacLean,

Martha McCabe, Fionnuala Pierse, Grainne Pierse, Rachelle Salli and Tera Van Beilen were named to the women’s all-star team.

The goal for the Thunderbirds now is to win on the national stage at the CIS championships in Montréal, held February 23-25.

UBC last won the women’s national championship in 2009, while the men haven’t won since 2008. Both national titles have since been in the hands of the University of Calgary, and the challenge will now be to reclaim them.

“Calgary’s still a really strong team, and the next step is to take the results from CanWest and try to take the championship,” said Price.

“It’s a different meet. When you have the entire country there, it’s a little harder to get the points and a little harder to get on the podium. So you really have to be on your game, especially on the relays.”

And while Martha McCabe— Canada’s 2011 female swimmer of the year—has all but booked her ticket to London, there are a few other members on UBC’s swim teams that have goals that go beyond the national level.

On the men’s side, Tommy Gossland and Rory Biskupski both hope to represent Canada at the Olympics. As well, the men’s team has pair of imports looking to make a splash at the international stage; Duncan Furrer and Kevin Chu are both vying to represent Switzerland and China, respectively. U

LACROSSE >>

A new club beckons lacrosse enthusiasts

GEOFF LISTER/THE UBYSSEY

Despite playing Canada’s oldest sport, UBC’s lacrosse club is still in the formative stages.

Nic Roggeveen Contributor

It is strange that Canada’s oldest sport appears to be a product of the sports created after it. It combines the speed and power of football and hockey with the endurance and strategy of soccer and basketball.

We are talking, of course, about field lacrosse.

While UBC boasts varsity teams in all of the aforementioned sports, field lacrosse—Canada’s official summer sport—is noticeably absent.

A few dedicated lacrosse lovers, however, are doing their best to change that.

“Last year, in February, I was missing the sport a lot and I got together with a few guys I knew and started a lacrosse club,” said Dan

Millar, a second-year mechanical engineering student and co-founder of the newly minted Thunderbird Lacrosse Club (TLC).

“Mostly through word of mouth we’ve been growing the club, expanding it and trying to find new players,” he said.

This past November, the TLC was officially constituted by the AMS—thanks in large part to the passion and vision of Millar and two of his friends, Sam Neuharth and David Hammond. Millar said there had been previous attempts to form a lacrosse club on campus, but for various reasons all of those ventures came up short.

While this group has had comparatively more success establishing a lacrosse club than others, the fledgling team still faces many challenges.

In addition to constantly looking for new recruits and “struggling at the goalie position,” procuring competition has been quite a chore.

“We were working on setting up games with Washington State; unfortunately that fell through due to a field-use issue,” Millar said.

“We’ve been working to get playing with other universities in the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association.

There are a few teams; Simon Fraser has a team, and so does the University of Western Washington.

We’ve been trying to get some games with some local clubs too, but at the moment we’re really not quite ready for a competitive schedule. Hopefully, next year we’ll be really ready for that.”

The new club has high hopes for the future. Millar and his fellow TLC executives hope one day to see the club join the varsity ranks at UBC. “That’s the ultimate goal,” said Millar. “I don’t know how long it’ll take, but I’d love to see it happen.

I’d love to see it happen while I’m still here at UBC.” The club consists of 20 men and women with varying degrees of experience and talent, and is constantly looking to add to that number. “You don’t need any experience to come out; we’d love to have every player we could grab. A few of the executive members even started out without any [experience],” said Millar.

“There are very few people I know who have tried lacrosse and it was their sport within a year.” U

The Thunderbird Athletics Council’s Athlete of the Month

GEOFF LISTER/ THE UBYSSEY

After dominating at the Canada West, Gossland hopes for CIS gold in February

T

he athlete of the month for January is Tommy Gossland. Gossland is a fifth-year veteran on the men’s swim team, and this past weekend he was phenomenal at the Canada West championships.

He won six gold medals and set several records. Grossland achieved three personal bests at the meet, which translated into two Canada West records and one UBC school record. He

was also an essential part of the men’s 4x100 free relay, in which he swam a strong last leg in the race.

Gossland’s success in the pool helped the UBC men’s swim team win the Canada West championship for their second consecutive season.

—Thunderbird Athletics Council

Opinion

02.02.2012 |

10

Editor: Brian Platt

Elite universities need dynamic student bodies Editor’s Notebook Justin McElroy

DAVID MARINO/ THE UBYSSEY

The Last Word Parting shots and snap judgments on today’s issues Does UBC need a spiffier name?

Last month, the University of Western Ontario decided to drop everything from its name that would lead you to believe that it’s in London, Ontario. Administrators felt that its name was too provincial for an international university, so in a great unveiling, UWO became “Western University.”

There’s a lot of prestige when you can market yourself as a global institution; it helps you in the rankings, and international students bring in great wads of money. UBC has developed its reputation internationally, but are we really happy with the name? Yeah, it combines two international-sounding words (“British” and “Columbia”), but perhaps we can jazz up our title a little more to make sure that prospective students know what we’re all about.

A few possible suggestions: To reflect UBC’s chilled-out West Coast sensibilities: the University of Now. To reflect UBC’s status as the world’s most sustainable place ever: The Sustainable Institute of Research in Sustainability.

To attract ski bums with rich parents: The University of Whistler, Vancouver campus.

All we’re saying is, let’s be open to some creativity here. We could throw off all the baggage associated with sleepy old BC, and make this university the sleekest, sexiest, money grabbin’-ist university in the country.

The UBC swim team deserves more recognition Last weekend, the UBC swim team went to Edmonton and won the Canada West championships. Again.

It’s something they’ve done for many years during a 15-year reign of dominance in Canadian swimming.

UBC produces more world-class swimmers than any other school in this country, and you’ll see full proof of that during the 2012 Olympics in London this summer. That’s nothing new; it’s been this way for over a decade. But the amount of praise

they get from the university is much less than other elite sectors of this campus.

Such is the fate of those in the separated silo of sports at UBC. The university’s research is given heavy publicity, and rightfully so—but it’s unfortunate that we often give our athletic acheivements only cursory attention.

UBC should strive to celebrate the achievements of those that come here to research butterflies as much as those who come here to swim them.

A few lessons from the Kwantlen debacle The long and absurd saga of the Kwantlen Student Association (KSA) over the past six years tells us a few things about student unions.

First, it reminds us that the AMS isn’t so bad. Despite a few publicly embarrassing acts by executives or a few thousand squandered student dollars, there’s nothing at UBC that resembles the incompetence or the viciousness of the KSA. Not even close.

The second lesson to learn is the importance of student journalism. It’s highly unlikely that the true identities of Justine Franson and Nina Sandhu would have been revealed if it had not been for The Runner, a small and relatively young paper. The mainstream media doesn’t have time to hang around campuses and find out what’s really happening.

And finally, it makes us all very thankful that we didn’t choose to go to Kwantlen.

Good news for gender diversity, but let’s not be too satisfied The AMS executive has historically been dominated by males, most of them white. But after this election, it will have two females for the 201213 school year, with the election of Caroline Wong as VP Administration and Kiran Mahal as VP Academic and University Affairs.

It is the first time since 2007-08

that we will have two women in the executive.

What does The Ubyssey think about this? About time! Gender diversity is something we should not only desire on Council, but expect.

Yet the vast majority of our student union presidents have been male, and a female majority on the executive is extremely rare.

While this is good news on the gender diversity front, it’s only a small step. The AMS needs to constantly be thinking about how to lower the barriers not only for gender, but for all the different aspects of diversity.

The Ubyssey mounts a case for thieves, then abandons it As our news section chronicles in this issue, the SUB has had a rash of thefts recently.

At this point, you might expect an editorial giving tips on how to protect your stuff and condemning the despicable thieves. But is that what you turn to The Ubyssey for? No. You turn to us for cutting edge perspective, swear words on the front page and snarky comments about people in power.

So let’s consider the benefits of stealing. Of course, if you’re the one doing the stealing, the benefits are clear: you get things and don’t have to pay for them.

But is society better off with people stealing things?

It prevents complacency, for one thing. Having thieves out there keeps us on our toes—especially in the library, where falling asleep can mean waking up with a missing backpack.

Perhaps most importantly, the presence of thieves among us is a reminder that there are lot of assholes in the world, and while we need to trust the goodness of strangers every so often, we should also keep a certain level of cynicism.

Okay, this editorial is probably a case of contrarianism run amok.

We should also acknowledge that if it had been any of our stuff that got stolen, we’d be absolutely furious. U

How much should the grades you get in high school matter? And how much should those grades determine where UBC will evolve as a university?

Those are the questions this school wrestled with over the past few years as it made its transition to broad-based admissions.

The debate is not about whether UBC should care if you played trombone in Grade 11 or Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. It is about whether they can take the steps needed to truly become the elite, world-class university they so dearly wish to be.

Let me explain.

There are many reasons why UBC doesn’t quite match up to the Ivy League, and many reasons why plenty of talented Canadian students want to go to McGill, Western or Queen’s rather than here.

But one of them is the perception that we’re a degree factory. That you go to UBC to study hard for four years, get a shiny piece of paper and leave.

Much of this is UBC’s doing, of course. If you have an admissions process that only cares about grades, if you have a campus that’s hard to live close to, if you have an administration that compartmentalizes faculties, if your main financial incentives are based on high school grades (as was the case with the now-departed President’s Entrance Scholarship), then students are trained to value certain things when they get here.

But the fact remains that you don’t become a degree factory without the consent of the people inside the factory.

Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail hit the nail on the head in his column earlier this week: “As undergraduate admission standards have shot ever further skyward, the student body has been something of an intellectual—and some would say cultural—monolith.

“Yes, the students are unquestionably bright, but many are nerdy, high achievers consumed with one thing: marks. Consequently, the student body has become increasingly unidimensional, dominated by brainiacs void of any curiosity about all that university life can be.”

Here’s the thing: he’s right. If you talk to alumni or read back issues of The Ubyssey, you’ll notice this university used to be much livelier. It had students less preoccupied with marks while still making amazing contributions to society.

It’s different now, for many reasons. It’s different because as tuition and the value of a degree has risen, the desire of students to spend time on pursuits not directly related to studies has fallen.

It’s different because as the cost of living in Vancouver has skyrocketed, more and more people spend more and more of their time on buses, removing them from campus.

But it’s also different because students who get 80 to 90 per cent in high school are becoming an endangered species here. Many smart high school students come from all types of backgrounds and have many different extracurricular pursuits. They

probably could get 95 per cent if they needed to, but they have other priorities. And it’s much harder for them to get into UBC than before.

(And a note: UBC is not different because there are more Asian students who care about marks than in the past. This university has been on the forefront of attracting outstanding Asian students from outside Vancouver for 20 years, inside Vancouver for decades longer, and always will. Those who accuse UBC of not being commited to racial diversity are, frankly, race-baiting without tangible evidence.)

As a result, while UBC has grown and improved by leaps and bounds in the last three decades, the dynamism of the student body has stagnated.

And that, as much as anything else, will need to change if this university is to become the “elite” institution it so desires to be.

A school needs all types of students to have a well-rounded, stimulating centre of higher learning. We need more curious, rabble-rousing, eccentric people—people who can do more than recite numbers and please professors. We need students who want to start their own businesses and make their degree worth something, even if they aren’t hired right out of school.

So what can UBC do? There are three main things that come to mind.

First, they can hope the provincial government starts to really care about post-secondary education, and puts billions more into UBC over the next decade.

Alright, big laugh there.

But seriously, there are three simple things. One is to sharply increase the amount of housing for students and faculty while decreasing the price, so that the cost of Vancouver doesn’t become an impediment to attracting quality people.

Another is to continue to build the endowment to rival those in America, so UBC can ensure finances aren’t an impediment for any students or faculties that want to embark on the grand academic endeavours that make universities great.

And the third thing they need to do is take more control over who comes here. The difference between a 73 and 83 per cent student in high school is fairly stark. The difference between 83 and 93? Not nearly as much. Grades aren’t the only mark of a great student who will do great things for a university, and the more tools UBC has at their disposal to select students, the better.

The Sauder School of Business made the change to admissions years ago, and while I can quibble about the hive-like, sometimes creepy culture around the faculty, the commitment to a full range of engagement, academic and otherwise, starts before they even come here—and the results speak for themselves.

From them, we know what the future can look like on campus. UBC has become the first major university in Canada to adopt broad-based admissions across the entire campus, and if they implement it correctly, it will be a game changer.

This discussion means little to us.

We’re already at UBC. But we might be pleasantly surprised at what this place is like when we come back to the (newly-built) alumni centre for our ten-year anniversaries.

I suspect that UBC’s change on admissions will be a big reason why. U

Scene

02.02.2012 |

11

Pictures and words on your university experience

MOVIES >>

Oscars continue “white saviour” film trend

We should think critically about what we watch—not whitewash history Melodramatic Musings Will Johnson

Television legend George Takei posted an alternate poster for the Academy Award-nominated movie The Help on Facebook recently.

Rather than the title, the poster read, “White People Solve Racism.”

And then, as a kicker: “You’re welcome, black people.”

I should state right away that I haven’t seen this movie, nor do I plan to. And it’s not because I’m not interested. I actually really like Emma Stone and Bryce Dallas Howard, and I think Viola Davis is one of the most talented actresses working today. She deserves her nomination, and with any luck she can beat reigning queen Meryl Streep.

I also haven’t read the book by Kathryn Stockett, though I understand it does a marginally better job of balancing its depictions of American segregation in the 1960s.

A few of my friends have tried to convince me to give it a chance. But the reason I won’t buy a ticket to see The Help is that I don’t want to support institutionalized racism.

For those of you who are new to the controversy, here it is in a nutshell: this movie, no matter how well-intentioned, is revisionist history that casts white people as the saviours of poor, simple black people.

For other examples of this trend in movies, which are often called “white saviour movies,” see The Blind Side, Gran Torino, Dances with Wolves, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Green Mile and even Avatar.

The Help may only be the latest in a long line of these movies, but now it’s been nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. It stands to make a lot more money. (It’s already made more than $100 million.)

And audiences are walking out of theatres feeling sniffly and inspired, though they haven’t stopped to consider the implications of what they’ve seen.

Here’s the thing. I am, like the protagonist of this movie, an

Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers.

Statement made by the Association of Black Women Historians ultra-privileged white person with little or no knowledge of the historical context. So I’d like to share some observations from people who know a lot more than I do.

Here’s a statement from the Association of Black Women Historians: “Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores and trivializes the experiences of

black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.”

Okay, and here’s another from actor Wendell Pierce, who played detective Bunk Moreland in the hit HBO series The Wire. He described

The Help as “passive segregation lite that was painful to watch.” Pierce took his mother, who had raised a number of white children years ago, and she found the movie to be “an insult.”

He later tweeted, “Watching the film in Uptown New Orleans to the sniffles of elderly white people while my 80-year-old mother was seething, made clear distinction... the story was a sentimental primer of a palatable segregation history that is Jim Crow light.” He added that Hollywood often wants films that depict black experiences as long as they include a “great white saviour.”

Now, I understand that a lot of people really enjoyed this movie.

Many thought there was nothing wrong about it, and some even found it touching.

I’m not trying to take that experience away from you. I just think we should think more critically about the entertainment we’re consuming, and consider the potential consequences.

There’s an interesting dialogue to be had here. And that’s what I’ll be watching closely. U

Staff meetings are Tuesdays at noon. Stop by and learn the internal workings of the media machine.

U

12 | Games | 02.02.2012 40- Skewness 43- Jewish scholar 45- Brooklyn’s _ Island 46- Flat roofing tile 47- Lease holders 50- Engage in textual misprision 51- Single things 52- Pith helmet 53- Actress Ruby 54- Group of eight 57- Chancy 62- Tolkien ogre 63- Midway alternative 64- Bert’s buddy 65- Fish eggs 66- Sherpa’s home 67- Chairs Down

(CUP) — Puzzles provided by BestCrosswords.com. Used with permission.

Across 1- Arabian republic 6- Falls short 11- Family man 14- Hersey’s bell town 15- Capital of Jordan 16- Afore 17- Senate attendants 18- Cheers waitress 19- Adult males 20- Blunted blade

22- Healing plants 24- Exacted retribution 28- Pleasing 30- Inhabitant of Tripoli 31- Hebrew prophet 32- Agent 33- Wife of Akhenaton 37- Attila, e.g.

38- Rich cake 39- _ de mer

1- Mouth, slangily 2- Writer LeShan 3- Periodical, briefly 4- Chemical ending 5- Posy; 6- Washed out 7- French friend 8- _ little teapot...

9- PC linkup 10- Athletic shoe 11- Brit’s discharge 12- Staggering 13- Compact 21- Compose 23- Endure 24- A, as in Athens 25- Infectious agent 26- Black-wooded tree 27- Greek goddess of night 28- Towering 29- Aha! 31- Joyous 33- Short letters 34- Permeate 35- Small hand drum 36- Greek epic poem 38- Canvas shelter used on camping trips 41- Future doc’s exam

42- Rainy season 43- Dwells 44- Cabinet dept.

46- Apex 47- English royal house 48- Diciembre follower 49- Bridget Fonda, to Jane 50- Standard for comparison 52- Skater Lipinski 55- Friend of Fidel 56- Faucet 58- Metal-bearing mineral 59- Kind of fingerprint 60- Obtain, slangily