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“Repatriation
Aisha Chaudhry Editor-in-Chief
During her political science and anthropology undergrad at SFU, Dr. Amy Parent was still planning to go to law school. However, as she moved closer to that goal and began taking upper-year political science courses, she found herself caught up in “white, male hegemony.” To her, it seemed like a space where everyone wanted to argue with each other and prove they were right — not one where she felt capable of accomplishing anything truly productive.
Around this time, she attended a Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement meeting — a mentorship program for Indigenous graduate students — where she met “academic rock stars” like Dr. Graham Smith and former UBC Associate Dean for Indigenous Education Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald. After hearing all the graduate students share research they had been working on in their communities, Parent switched to the “dark side,” as she called it. Instead of going into law, she pursued a PhD in education at UBC.
The other thing that sparked her interest in education was her time with the Urban Native Youth Association (UNYA). She worked in about 13 different schools, primarily on the east side of Vancouver, to support after-school programming for Indigenous students and encourage families to engage with their child’s education.
“[I] was recognizing what was happening with our youth, seeing the racism within the school districts,” she said. “But [I was] also seeing them very much engaged with the programming at UNYA and seeing what a holistic education can do outside the colonial system. That also drove some of the questions that I had, and my interest in doing educational research.”
After completing her PhD, Parent worked at SFU and UBC implementing Indigenous education within the teacher education program, where she witnessed a pattern of uncertain-
a member of the Oraon tribe. Despite herself and Minz having diverse disciplines, languages and lands, they both experience the impacts of colonialism in different, yet similar ways. Colonialism manifests uniquely in each region, Parent explained, but its structural forces share many of the same qualities, no matter where you look. Although different, their approaches to the work complement each other well.
“I think we’re always, as Indigenous scholars, trying to move beyond these silos and the compartmentalization that happens when we get placed within these academic settings. We very much want to forefront Indigenous knowledge as transdisciplinary,” she said.
ty among teacher educators when it came to engaging with Indigenous knowledge.
“The first emotion we usually receive is that of fear and of not knowing,” she said. “Sometimes it’s couched in the settler colonial innocent narrative, and other times it’s just full-on fear … But [there is] also a desire to move beyond that.”
A lot of Indigenous knowledge, Parent explained, is centred on ancient origin stories about relationships with spirituality and the natural world, and can be inaccessible to people if they do not put in the time to learn how to treat these stories with respect. Watching people’s reluctance to learn reminded her of her background working with youth — young Indigenous men, she noticed, didn’t want to engage with these “typical types of literature.”
There seemed to be a surge in the popularity of the graphic novel genre at the time — many of them “relevant [to] contemporary issues with Indigenous peoples” — and Parent saw this as a potential solution. Pairing creativity with academic literature, Parent created a course on Indigenous graphic novels and storytelling.
Although she has mostly stepped away from teaching university courses for the moment, Parent is still making strides in the field. Last month, she was appointed a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Co-Chair in Transforming Indigenous Knowledge Research Governance and Rematriation. In this role, she’ll be working to advance research in these areas.
Parent sees her work now as a sort of public pedagogy — communicating “dense, $100 academic terms” to policymakers in order to support larger policy changes needed to “continue supporting Indigenous knowledges [and] language revitalization, as well as our ongoing rights for self-determination.”
Parent’s fellow co-chair is Dr. Sonajharia Minz, a professor of computer science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and
Parent said Minz has been teaching her a lot about artificial intelligence, which they hope will accelerate language revitalization through the development of tools “directly controlled by us, as Indigenous peoples.” Minz’s role is largely focused on Indigenous data sovereignty — the rights of Indigenous people to govern the collection, ownership and application of data about their communities, lands and cultures — as colonial institutions continue to extract and misuse data and misrepresent Indigenous peoples.
While chair, Parent hopes to work with international bodies within UNESCO, the UN and the International Council of Museums to bring forth strong policies for the return of Indigenous belongings.
In 2022, she was part of the delegation that returned her family’s memorial pole back to the Nisga’a Nation from the National Museum of Scotland. At the beginning of the journey, Parent remembers using the word “repatriation,” but has since realized the word is steeped in eurocentric, patriarchal practices.
Parent’s ancestral grandmother, Joanna Moody, had the totem pole carved — she did so at “one of the heightened times of genocide that we would have experienced as Nisga’a peoples,” Parent said.
“Repatriation really doesn’t apply to us as Nisga’a peoples. This should be a rematriation,” Parent said. “Rematriation is not just the return of stolen belongings, but it’s the restoration of our laws, languages, responsibilities and our governance systems as matrilineal peoples.”
While working on the project, Parent said she learned a lot about diplomacy. The delegation did not tell the federal or provincial governments they were going to Scotland to retrieve the pole. Parent laughed while recalling how then-BC Premier John Horgan tweeted one of the team’s negotiators while they were on the plane to find out what was happening. The trip was full of press chaos and many sleepless nights, but Parent said it was the journey of a lifetime — one that made her reflect on her goals.
“The biggest thing I like to tell people is ‘May we make our decisions based on our hopes and not our fears,’” she said. “It’s our hope that’s going to get us one step closer to our happiness and to the outcome that we hopefully want to achieve.” U
really doesn’t apply to us as Nisga’a peoples. This should be a rematriation.”
COURTESY MANDY SHEEN
Education Library’s relocation to Koerner due to low use of physical collections, budget cuts
Lauren Kasowski Contributor
The UBC Education Library’s move from the Neville Scarfe Building to Koerner Library is due to a loss of library funding from the university and low use of the in-person collections. The relocation, which started on June 6, will continue until 2026.
During the transition, all materials will be available through an inter-library recall system that will fulfill requests within one to two business days. In an interview with The Ubyssey , Associate University Librarian for Teaching, Learning and Engagement Julie Mitchell said this is to “minimize disruption to students and faculty that use our collections.”
In December 2024, the UBC Library announced it did not receive all of its supplemental funding from the university. This, coupled with poor purchasing power with the US dollar, created a “significant structural deficit,” leading to the Education Library closure, according to a May 28 statement.
Mitchell could not give the exact amount of money the Education Library relocation saves “because it’s so tied to the US dollar.”
“Quite a bit of the library’s budget we spend on collections,” she said. “A lot of the collections we purchase are in US dollars, because the vendors we work with
SEXUAL VIOLENCE SUPPORT //
are [from the] US.”
Mitchell said the decision to relocate the Education Library specifically was made based on data the library collects, such as gate counts, circulation statistics and equipment usage, among others. Mitchell specified in an email statement that circulation statistics for the Education Library’s physical collection were low, with only 23 per cent of items having been used more than 5 times in the past 20 years.
“We really care about [the library], and we make these decisions very intentionally, using all of the data … that we have
available,” she said. “The specific circumstances of the Education Library meant we could move the collections and services while retaining all of our employees and providing continuity of service.”
Further, Mitchell cited Koerner’s longer operating hours and the “unique disciplinary connections between the collections” as additional reasons for the relocation.
“Co-locating these collections can enhance browsability, elevate the connections between departments and increase potential for interdisciplinary interaction,” she said.
Mitchell said that there will be a public engagement process to help shape the new identity and space of the collection.
“What we’ve also really heard is that the Education Library is quite unique,” she said. “We really want to honour that within Koerner Library.”
As for the space in Neville Scarfe, the UBC Library wrote in its May 26 press release that 110 study seats will remain open during the transition period. Once the library is vacated, the space will become the responsibility of the Faculty of Education, who intend to keep it a “wel -
coming and safe environment for study and community use,” wrote Dr. Jan Hare, dean of education, in an email statement to students, faculty and staff in the Faculty of Education.
“In the months ahead, we will launch a consultative process to reimagine the long-term use of the space, with student, faculty, and community input,” she wrote. Hare also wrote that the Neville Scarfe transformation will begin in September 2026.
This isn’t the first library to have its material and space merged with a larger library to save money. In 2013, the Music Library moved from the UBC School of Music building to the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to cut costs; a similar move happened with the Science and Engineering Library relocating to Woodward Library.
Mitchell did not comment on what could prevent moves like this in the future, but said library staff are “continually making adjustments to services and collections … in response to the budget.”
“What’s important to keep in mind is we’re always doing so in a patron-centred and informed way,” she said.
“Our focus is, and always has been, on maintaining strong services and collections that meet the needs of library users, and maintaining these in a fiscally prudent manner.” U
SASC education department undergoing restructuring amid workshop demand decline
Jeff Lee Contributor
The AMS Sexual Assault Support Centre (SASC) has temporarily suspended operations in its education department for the summer as part of a broader effort to restructure and revamp its programming for the next academic year.
The restructuring, announced on the SASC website, comes in response to a noticeable decline in demand for workshops and programming throughout the past year.
AMS Senior Communications and Marketing Manager Eric Lowe said in a statement to The Ubyssey that “the decision to temporarily close the education department and re-strategize was due to a significant decline in the number of workshops requested and delivered this past year.”
“We believe education is a key component to reducing incidences of sexualized violence, and the reduction of workshops last year was a concern.”
While specifics are still under review, the restructuring may include changes to staffing, curriculum and outreach strategy.
“We are re-evaluating our strategic approach to the education
branch of our services, and this is an opportunity to re-think our curriculum and outreach to align with best practices,” Lowe commented. “Through these changes, our current staffing model may change, but current staff have been given pathways and opportunities to return to their roles.”
Despite the changes, Lowe said that survivor support remains
unaffected. The education department does not work directly with survivors, and SASC’s support and advocacy services continue to operate without disruption.
“Survivors remain the SASC’s top priority, and we carefully considered impact to survivors before initiating these changes,” Lowe wrote. “Our support and advocacy department continues to operate
as normal.”
The education department, which traditionally hires and trains student educators during the summer months, will not be onboarding staff as usual this season. However, Lowe noted they are confident in their ability to adapt.
“Students get involved with the SASC throughout the year, and
we have successfully onboarded and trained students whenever they start. While hiring and training student educators over the summer is ideal, we will plan accordingly to effectively train and integrate new student staff into the education department when the time comes,” Lowe told The Ubyssey
The summer was strategically chosen for this pause due to historically low demand during the season.
“Last fiscal year, zero external workshops took place between the months of April and September,” Lowe said. “We have intentionally chosen this time of the year to critically think through the role, scope, and work of the education department.”
Lowe said that student voices remain central to the redesign. “Every decision made by the SASC team is made in collaboration with students and is informed by the survivors who access our service.”
While a firm date has not been finalized, the department is targeting a relaunch in the fall.
“This is a tentative target as we want to ensure the new structure meets the needs of UBC students and is set up for success before relaunching,” Lowe said. U
The relocation to Koerner Library will continue until 2026.
The education department will not be onboarding staff as usual this season amid a review of the current department structure.
SIDNEY SHAW / THE UBYSSEY
SIDNEY SHAW / THE UBYSSEY
UBC discourages its privacy impact assessments’ inclusion on hub created by former staffer
Aisha Chaudhry Editor-in-Chief
The Canadian Privacy Library is a new centralized website to find the privacy impact assessments (PIA) from universities across BC.
Created by former UBC staffer Ian Linkletter, the website hosts 504 PIAs from 18 of 25 BC public post-secondary institutions.
According to the Privacy Library’s website, a PIA is a process that is meant to determine how a program or activity could affect someone’s privacy — PIAs often generate a report which outlines how the technology works, how information is collected and where it is stored, as well as risk factors and mitigation strategies.
In accordance with BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), public bodies like UBC are meant to conduct a PIA when implementing new systems that collect personal information. Among others, UBC has conducted PIAs for Workday, Zoom, and Microsoft 365.
In an interview with The Ubyssey, Linkletter explained that he began the project after noticing institutions were secretive about their PIAs. “I was always curious, as someone with a huge interest in privacy. Like what did the PIA actually say? How is information being handled?” said Linkletter. He filed freedom of information (FOI) requests for PIAs in May 2024 and said many institutions were cooperative. However, UBC was not.
Linkletter said he initially filed FOI requests for UBC documents dating from 2014 to 2024. “I worked with UBC over the following months to refine my request and make it clearer,” he said.
UBC estimated Linkletter would need to pay $6,045 for his request — he attempted to get the fee waived. It was not, but UBC reduced it to $2,045. Linkletter has not yet paid the fee, and as a result, has not received any PIA reports from 2017 onwards.
UBC’s Privacy Matters website has PIAs from 2020 to 2024 available.
In a statement to The Ubyssey, UBC Legal Counsel Erika Brimacombe wrote that a requestor asking UBC to waive fees is by extension asking taxpayers and students to subsidize the costs of putting together the PIA reports.
“We must balance the public benefit of fully subsidizing these costs against the impact on the University’s operations and the cost to taxpayers and students,” wrote Brimacombe. She reiterated that a PIA is an assessment process and wrote that FIPPA requires no final report to be made for a PIA.
Initially, Linkletter had reuploaded the PIAs already available on UBC’s website onto the Canadian Privacy Library. However, when responding to Linkletter’s fee waiver request, UBC stated that no third party had been granted a license to republish the PIAs and that they are protected as UBC’s intellectual property under copyright law. The university also
reserves the right to enforce its legal protections.
Linkletter replaced the reuploaded PIAs with links that lead directly to UBC’s own links. However, he noted the importance of a third party archive — UBC removed a 2018 PIA for Proctorio in 2025 but it can still be found on the Canadian Privacy Library.
Brimacombe wrote that “UBC has not threatened anyone with or taken legal action for reposting UBC’s PIAs.”
She stated that UBC does not prefer third party sites hosting its PIAs, as “PIAs can be reopened and updated as systems or projects evolve, centralizing the Public PIA Summaries on UBC’s website helps ensure that the most current versions are available.”
Brimacombe also said that “UBC’s cybersecurity team advises against the publication of a comprehensive list of all PIAs conducted as this meta-information itself can aid malicious actors in identifying potential targets or vulnerabilities.”
However, Aislin Jackson, the policy staff counsel at the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, noted that private information is not actually in these records, but emphasized that it is important for people to be able to understand their privacy rights, as
it gives them the ability to be free and fully open about who they are.
“Infringing on privacy, even being perceived to infringe on privacy, or people not believing that they have privacy even if they actually, in fact, do — all those things chill people’s expression and reduce their freedom by causing them to self-censor,” said Jackson in an interview with The Ubyssey Jackson also noted that it is unusual to invoke copyright law to protect privacy.
The Copyright Act reads that its purpose is to allow creators a just reward for their creation. In this case, UBC does not make a profit from its PIA reports and neither would Linkletter if he were to republish them. In addition, creations being shared for research, private study or education are not considered copyright infringement under the fair dealing exemption.
She said that everyone who makes an FOI request to see these PIAs has the right to access them, so in theory, Linkletter could publish his lists of FOI requests and people could individually request them in order to see them.
“Ultimately, [UBC is] not able to block anyone in the public from getting the records upon a request. [UBC] can just make it a little bit more difficult,” said Jackson.
In 2020, Linkletter found himself in a similar situation when he was working at UBC. Proctorio — the software UBC used during the COVID-19 pandemic to invigilate exams — filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against him for tweets where he linked unlisted YouTube videos from Proctorio which explained how the company’s proctoring software worked and shared a screenshot from its help centre. This case is still pending.
“It was unprecedented for the Copyright Act to be used as a censorship tool to begin with, but here we are again,” said Linkletter. He also said he had specifically decided to centre this project on public records to avoid possible litigation.
“This UBC case raises … more fundamental [issues] that really strike at the fundamental purpose of freedom of information legislation,” said Jackson.
“If this practice of claiming copyright over FOI materials to prevent them from being more broadly distributed, if that is successful and becomes entrenched, then I think that really could undermine freedom of information.”
Since Linkletter was unable to receive the fee reduction, he said he plans to start his request over with more specific asks that can
be demonstrated to be of public interest — as those requests are more likely to have their fees waived. He also said he would narrow his requests to start from 2017 onward and target heavily used tools like Canvas.
“I’m a librarian, and my whole career involves helping people access information,” he said. Linkletter noted that he’s motivated to do this work to protect students. According to him, the key to this is transparency.
“UBC aggression towards me is an attack on freedom itself. If it becomes normal for scholars like myself to face legal threats for pursuing and disseminating knowledge, it will become common practice,” said Linkletter.
“UBC’s academic freedom policy identifies the pursuit of knowledge as a primary function of the university. This goes completely against that.” U
Editor’s Note: Ian Linkletter and Ubyssey Deputy Managing Editor and Opinion Editor Spencer Izen, in his capacity as an employee of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, corresponded about some of the issues mentioned here in 2024. Izen was not involved in reporting or editing this story.
UBC has discouraged third-party sites from hosting its privacy impact assessments.
ISABELLA MAGGIORE / THE UBYSSEY
The Native Youth Program asks Indigenous teens to tell their own stories
Julian Coyle Forst Culture Editor
The Native Youth Program (NYP) was a part of Amai Campbell-Kamangirira’s life long before she applied to join. Her grandmother and aunt, both Musqueam, spoke of it frequently and positively — they had each enrolled in the program at 15. In 2021, they encouraged her to do the same.
“They were like, ‘Oh, you should do it, you should do it!’ And then I did it and I was obsessed with the program,” Campbell-Kamangirira said. “They haven’t gotten rid of me yet.”
The NYP, a summer work-learn program for Indigenous secondary students offered by the Museum of Anthropology (MOA), is the longest-running Indigenous youth program in the country. In 1978, MOA curator Madeline Rowan and Heiltsuk educator Brenda Taylor conceived of the program as a unique opportunity for Indigenous high school students to get involved with museum and curatorial work. They applied for federal funding and hired the NYP’s first cohort of students in the summer of 1979.
Rowan and Taylor led the program for its first 15 years before handing directorship to MOA Curator of the Pacific Northwest Pam Brown in 1994. After Brown’s retirement in 2020, the MOA invited Squamish curator and educator Damara Jacobs-Petersen to take her place.
“[Brown] called and was like, ‘Hey, I know it’s crazy; there’s a global pandemic and the world’s insane, but there’s a couple people here who still remember you,’” said Jacobs-Petersen.
Originally from the North Shore, Jacobs-Petersen had worked as an intern at the MOA in the early 2000s, but left after a few years when it became clear a long-term place at the museum wasn’t in the cards.
“I saw that there was never going to be a permanent full-time position for me here as an Indigenous curator and educator, because the museum just wasn’t set up like that at the time,” she said.
After curatorial stints at various United States institutions — the National Museum of the American Indian, the Tacoma Art Museum — she got the call from Brown and agreed that it was time to come home.
This year, Jacobs-Petersen works in close collaboration with NYP Manager Jacqueline Morrisseau-Addison and Campbell-Kamangirira who, after three seasons of NYP participation since being nudged towards the program by her relatives, now works at the MOA as a cultural interpreter.
The three of them were hard at work, preparing for the incoming NYP cohort, when The Ubyssey spoke with them in the MOA’s open-concept offices. Colleagues and curators shuffled busily, occasionally jumping in to ask Jacobs-Petersen about an email or what she’d wanted them to do with that Māori hook they’d spoken about.
Planning for a given cohort’s NYP experience can be a daunting task. The programming changes from year to year — Morrisseau-Addison’s managerial role is a year-long position that has an extensive impact on the specifics of the NYP’s offerings,
so different yearly managers can lead to vastly different programs.
“The core components [of the NYP] are always tour guiding, a podcast project and art-making,” said Jacobs-Petersen.
A focus on Indigenous craft and construction has been at the core of the NYP since 1979 — the first cohort’s curriculum focused mainly on the use of cedar trees in Coast Salish society — but in recent years, Jacobs-Petersen has placed an emphasis on individual artistic expression. Encouraging students to find creative ways of exploring and expressing their individual Indigenous identities, she said, is an integral part of the program.
“We’ve made drums and woven baskets, but we’ve also done experimental photography and film and done all this other cool stuff.”
The NYP’s podcast project — a flagship part of its programming since 2015 — began as a collaborative initiative with campus radio station CiTR. Students visited the station for lessons on podcast production, with CiTR alum and music journalist Nardwuar giving motivational speeches and interview pointers. For the past three years, the podcast project has been produced in-house at the MOA, with CiTR airing the final product.
Like the NYP as a whole, the character of the podcast project changes each year. The 2021 cohort explored the theme of origin stories — students wrote histories of their nations, conducted interviews with their peers and composed original songs and interludes. The follow-
ing year, students explored their experiences at school and how they intersected with their Indigenous identities.
Tour guide training and practice has been at the core of the NYP since its first cohort wrote and presented lessons to museum-goers on Indigenous cedar use. That focus continues today, with NYP students having the opportunity to plan and execute personalized tours and present with curators on other exhibits, like 2022’s Xicanx: Dreamers + Changemakers
Last November, Jacobs-Petersen created the cultural interpreter position to expand the MOA’s collaboration with NYP alumni and give graduates the chance to continue their work in museum tour-guiding.
The cultural interpreter initiative, said Jacobs-Petersen, is “inviting alumni back into the museum to provide tours that they’ve written themselves that are focused solely on objects from their communities of origin and other belongings that speak to them.”
Campbell-Kamangirira and two of her fellow NYP grads represent the pilot cohort of this program.
“[The] NYP definitely trained me to do this,” she said. “It grew my confidence, and I was able to learn how to start writing better, how to properly give a tour [while] being able to be myself, but also acting professional.”
Many of Campbell-Kamangirira’s fellow NYP graduates share her enthusiasm for the program, but some have expressed criticism, particularly of its overly historic lens and its often-precarious funding
status. In her 2012 book Indigenous Teenage Interpreters in Museums and Public Education, NYP founder Rowan records testimonials from several people who had participated in the program as students or managers.
“A lot of the program is concerned with history but a lot more current issues should be included,” NYP graduate Eileen Joe is recorded as saying. “Some economics perhaps would be a good idea, more on economic development, land claims, and treaties information.”
Also recorded in Rowan’s book, former NYP Manager and Executive Director of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs Don Bain reflected on the insufficiency of academic programs like the NYP in reproducing and strengthening aspects of Indigenous culture in the younger generation. Community and familial networks, he argued in Rowan’s book, must remain at the heart of Indigenous pedagogy.
“First Nations cultural workers in schools aren’t there to define cultural identity of students … just the way you couldn’t define European culture by talking about different European countries in a classroom; the onus is on the parents to instill spirituality and identity in their children.”
Bain was also concerned about the NYP’s lack of stable funding.
“The program does need support, stability. It can’t float from year to year … money is a problem.”
Although these testimonials were recorded nearly a decade before Jacobs-Petersen became
director, financial concerns, she said, are still a major limitation on the NYP’s scope.
“[Funding is a] massive strain. It’s really brutal and heartbreaking that we have to pick and choose what’s most feasible, what we can handle with our limited capacity and budgetary constraints.”
It was only due to an increase in this budget that Jacobs-Petersen was able to launch the cultural interpreters position last year. She has more plans for expansion, she said — a formal network for NYP graduates to connect and return as educators and role models, as well as an increased curricular focus on connections with Indigenous peoples across the globe — but these efforts cost money, for which the NYP relies on external grants.
Mementos of cohorts past adorn Jacobs-Petersen’s office space. Paintings and poems by NYP alum hang from walls and cork boards; a small stingray and turtle fashioned from fishing nets reclaimed from the Torres Strait stand on her desk. Some of these little sculptures are now displayed as part of an Indigenous-led public art installation in Barangaroo, Australia. Despite monetary constraints, Jacobs-Petersen and the NYP remain focused on forging international connections and local understanding for new generations of Indigenous youth.
“This is global,” she said. “I want to see, what does that look like when I take something like this and formalize it into a larger initiative?
… There’s going to be some beautiful synergy. I’ve got some plans.” U
Amai Campbell-Kamangirira, Damara Jacobs-Petersen and Jacqueline Morriseau-Addison.
JULIAN COYLE FORST / THE UBYSSEY
IndieVision hosts backyard screening of student films
Hasfariza Hassan Contributor
On June 14, students sat on picnic blankets around a lit-up projector screen in a backyard in Burnaby.
UBC’s IndieVision was holding its first backyard film screening; students gathered to watch a special showcase of six student-made short films.
IndieVision is a student-led filmmaking club founded by Tibet Karayazgan that gives students the opportunity to bring their scripts to life. Since its beginning in 2023, the club has grown significantly, serving not only as a space where people who love film can come together, but also providing individuals with the freedom to express their creativity through independent productions.
Karayazgan shared his inspiration behind creating the club, emphasizing that indie filmmaking is about working with what you have.
“It’s almost like a game in my head,” he said. “You utilize the resources you have, and you try to shape the best film out of the original story idea that you had. I think in other subfields of [the] arts, there are things that you can do individually. For filmmaking, it’s rather challenging to do everything by yourself. I think the community is one of the most essential things that you could have in the filmmaking context.”
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Around 35 attendees — a mix of UBC students and non-student club members — came together to celebrate the work the filmmakers put into creating these films.
The event opened with Meet Your Maker by Xander Ward, a coming-of-age film that follows a young man who discovers that he was adopted through a fateful meeting with his money-laundering father.
Living Statue by Quinn Funk is the visually quirky journey of a street performer, Mr. Copper Jr., who attempts to fulfill his father’s dream of completing a 24-hour human statue challenge. Through visual street performance and comedic elements, it portrays the story of someone determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and make a name for himself.
Consumption by Conrad Kuhlmann grounded the screening with its depiction of a retired boxer’s addiction after being injured in a traffic accident. Consumption depicts the spiralling of an individual into addiction and trauma; how it slowly consumes his self-identity and choices.
The Best Part of My Life by Anica Zialcita is an emotional, reflective piece that centres on the final moments of a woman’s life. The film invites viewers to ponder and contemplate on their lives and what truly matters to them.
Music to My Fears by Cloe Ro-
mano is a horror-comedy following a woman who hates jazz, only to find herself haunted by a jazz ghost. Filled with jumpscares and music, it explores the intersection of fear and obsession.
The last film, Always Forever by Tibet Karayazgan, ended the night by exploring the realm of time travel through the story of a struggling law student who must return to her previous life to amend a karmic debt.
Last September, IndieVision hosted a pitching session where they chose the scripts that would go on to be produced and feature in their June backyard screening. Although there were many submissions, the executives of the club were only able to select a few that resonated with them. In early October, the selected screenplays were finalized and the first film, Music to My Fears, was shot in mid-November. Meet Your Maker was filmed on consecutive weekends later that month. After a break in December, the rest of the films were shot in January.
If you missed the backyard screening, but still want to support your local movie-makers or even get involved with the club yourself, IndieVision plans to showcase its members’ work again in a second screening on September 4 at Cineworks, a non-profit in Vancouver that supports independent filmmakers. U
The Roaming Peach Blossom Spring — Wuxia and myth at the Richmond Art
This summer, the Richmond Art Gallery is hosting The Roaming Peach Blossom Spring from June 28 to August 24. Curated by Rebecca Wang, the exhibition features work by Shanghai-based artist Qiu Anxiong and Vancouver-based artist Howie Tsui.
Works by both artists are installed throughout the space. Anxiong’s animation project, The New Book of Mountains and Seas, is displayed on a customized small 6.5-metre screen. One of the first elements visible is a set of light boxes featuring lenticular prints — images that shift depending on the viewing angle. The gallery shares space with
a separate exhibition, Enigmas & Dreams: Works on Paper, by Chinese Canadian artists Alvin Jang and Anna Wong.
“The Peach Blossom Spring,” for which the exhibition is named, is a famous fable from fifth-century China about the search for a surreal utopia. The phrase is sometimes used to describe an idealistic place or an unreachable dream.
“[The exhibition is] about the fantastical worlds that [the artists] create in which they re-imagine contemporary events through mythology and martial arts fiction,” Wang said. “They also complicate the idea of longing for refuge or searching for sanctuary by presenting a world that is both utopian and dystopian.”
Wang said that her addition
of the word “roaming” to the exhibition’s title represents the diasporic experience. This focus on the diaspora came naturally, she said, “because [her] own artistic and curatorial practice both deal with diasporic identities.”
Currently pursuing a master’s in critical and curatorial studies at UBC, Wang curated the exhibition as part of her program’s practicum component, which requires students to organize an exhibition from start to finish. This includes drafting a proposal, finding a venue, inviting artists and submitting a paper about the curatorial process.
The spirit of Wang’s curatorial work draws “references [from] artistic techniques and philosophical thought from the Song Dynasty,” of
which her hometown, Hangzhou, was the historic capital.
Anxiong’s animation, a foundational element of the exhibition, is primarily expressionistic in nature, relying on visual allegory and symbolic imagery to explore environmental and civilizational themes.
He draws inspiration from The Book of Mountains and Seas, known also as Shan Hai Jing, a collection of mythological and geographical texts from China, dating back as early as the fourth century BCE. His work keeps the spirit of the classic, while adapting it to contemporary concerns and the medium of animation.
While planning her exhibition, Wang decided to reach out to Anxiong because she had written a research paper on his work in 2023.
“I didn’t know I was going to do an exhibition on his work [at the time], but later, when I started to brainstorm for the project, I was like, already there’s so much research on this artist and work, why not try to reach out to ask,” she said.
“When [Anxiong] was in university in the early 90’s in China, he intentionally embraced everything Western as was the ethos of the time because it was assumed to be better,” said Wang. “After the six years he spent in Germany, he was re-drawn to classical Chinese texts and the traditional art forms.”
A section of the exhibition features prints of fantastical creatures from Anxiong’s The New Book of Mountains and Seas. The creatures are portrayed as if glimpsed for the first time in distant, mythical lands. Each print is embedded with an inscription written in classical Chinese, with English translations
provided beside the artwork. The descriptions evoke the tone of ancient chronicles.
Tsui’s pieces draw on a different aspect of cultural memory. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Nigeria and Canada, his work heavily references Hong Kong films and TV series, particularly the wuxia (martial arts) genre.
Wang explained that Tsui employs the wuxia genre to reclaim vanishing Hong Kong landmarks, as arenas of martial arts fantasy and resistance, offering a subtle critique of cultural erasure. For example, in Tsui’s work “JUMBO,” he reimagines the martial wuxia of novels such as The Condor Trilogy within the vanished Kowloon Walled City of Hong Kong and the floating restaurant Jumbo Kingdom.
Tsui’s works feature a multitude of unusual different art mediums. “Spectral Residue” stands out in particular for its use of incense smoke along with ink and paint. The floor in front of the piece was full of burnt matches, leaving a tangible piece of the artistic process for viewers to look at.
Together, the works in The Roaming Peach Blossom Spring offer a timely reflection on identity, displacement and cultural memory. Through mythology, genre storytelling and experimental media, the exhibition draws connections between past and present, home and exile.
For Wang, the exhibition represents not just an academic milestone, but a personal and curatorial exploration of diasporic experience — one that continues to evolve across borders, mediums and generations. U
Students sat on picnic blankets around a litup projector screen.
COURTESY INDIEVISION
“The Peach Blossom Spring” is a famous fable from fifth-century China about the search for a surreal utopia .
DYLAN JOHNSON-BAYER / THE UBYSSEY
Adyesha Singhdeo Contributor
Koro Pacifico celebrates Filipino culture in song
Arianna Aportadera Contributor
Up-and-coming Filipino choir
Koro Pacifico is set to give their debut performance on August 9 at the Good Shepherd Church alongside fellow vocal groups
Male Ensemble Philippines, Shepherd’s Voice Chorus and Himig Kabataan. The concert will feature a variety of Filipino composers but will also explore non-Filipino music through a Filipino lens.
“It’ll be a big celebration of Filipino music and culture, and pretty much just getting a lot of friends together and celebrating,” said fourth-year UBC voice performance student Carlo Santos. He got involved with Koro Pacifico as a tenor singer after meeting Choir Director Joanne Acasio in the UBC University Singers.
“We like to explore all different kinds of music from the choral canon in addition to Filipino music,” he said.
A 26-person ensemble spearheaded by Acasio, Koro Pacifico began with a passion for uplifting Filipino culture in Vancouver’s music scene. The idea of forming a choir came to Acasio in August 2024. While reminiscing with a group of friends about their lives in the Philippines, she decided to take a leap of faith and begin her own choir.
“My idea was to form a Filipino group, an adult choir, here, and really focus on Filipino music because I wanted to explore more of the not-so-famous Filipino compositions and really bring it [to Vancouver].”
Acasio began her career with a degree in music education from the University of Santo Tomas (UST), a Manila institution famous for being the oldest university in Asia. There, Acasio joined the UST Singers, which eventually allowed her to conduct and pushed her to pursue a master’s of arts in music from the same school.
In 2022, while visiting family in Ireland, Acasio met the conductor of the Vancouver Chamber Choir, who inspired her to apply for her second master’s in music conduct-
ing, this time at UBC.
“That’s when I decided, ‘Okay, I’ll take this as a challenge. I’ll really be a conductor now’ … My former master’s was in conducting too, but I was studying during the pandemic, so not a lot of practicals.”
For Acasio, Filipino choirs intertwine elements of the nation’s culture through dance and costume. This is a fundamental part of Filipino music that she aims to share with her newfound community in Canada.
Santos shares this sentiment.
“I moved to Canada when I was four years old, so I was very removed from Filipino culture,” he said. “At times I was the only
Filipino person in my class … It wasn’t until university [that] I started getting into Filipino music.”
Acasio and Santos stressed the importance of a holistic view of Filipino culture, as opposed to a Manila-centric idea of the country’s music, to ensure that all members of the choir and the audience are represented and celebrated through performance. Viewers can expect music from the three island groups of the Philippines: Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
“We get to talk a lot about the repertoire choices that we make as the singers. It’s a very collaborative process. I feel we try to
have an open discussion about the pieces we perform, why we’re doing them, and we try to cover all different parts of the Philippines,” said Santos. “It’s not just Tagalog repertoire.”
Santos said that Filipino music is “impassioned,” often covering topics of romance, yearning and hardship, encompassing the Filipino experience. These are themes Koro Pacifico hopes to amplify through their performances. The choir aims to uplift the Filipino community through their music, to be the bridge between the “the singers and [their] homeland,” said Santos.
“I think this choir will be a cool vessel for inviting a lot of
people in the Filipino community to listen [and] hear … the sounds of our culture and country, as well as bringing a lot of non-Filipino people over and introducing them to what our sonic identity is,” he added.
Santos’s passion for singing extends far beyond reaching an audience. It’s about strengthening the relationship he has with himself, his family and his culture.
“Whenever I FaceTime my grandparents living in the Philippines … having them hear me sing something that they can understand means so much to me. [I’ve] definitely grown a greater appreciation and love for the motherland,” Santos said. U
Singers on a bangka (a Filipino pontoon boat).
ABBIE LEE / THE UBYSSEY
Koro Pacifico began with a passion for uplifting Filipino culture in Vancouver’s music scene.
COURTESY JOANNE ACASIO
VOICES UNHEARD: BC children are struggling to access speech therapy
Words by Vicky Nguyen
Illustrations by Ayla Cilliers
A child speaking their first words is often a special occasion. However, for families of children with speech and hearing disorders, it can be a source of anxiety, and the shortage of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in BC is limiting families’ opportunities to receive timely intervention.
The Government of Canada’s 2021 Job Bank found that around 1,500 SLPs and audiologists served a population of 5 million people in BC. According to data collected from 2019–2023 by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, BC’s ratio of SLPs to residents was fourthto-last in Canada, with 26.3 per 100,000 residents.
Delays in accessing these services can affect children’s developmental stages. Around eight to twelve per cent of Canadian preschoolers have some form of language impairment, and seven per cent of Canadians have developmental language disorders, which can lead to communication difficulties that persist beyond childhood, impairing social relationships and learning abilities.
“There’s a shortage of both SLPs and audiologists in the province, and that shortage is leading to a lot of families not being able to access services,” said Chelsey Chichak, an SLP and president of Speech and Hearing BC, an association of SLPs and audiologists advocating for lifelong speech and hearing services.
According to Chichak, wait times for families to access speech services can be up to one year, even in densely populated areas like the Lower Mainland. In rural or Northern BC, some children aren’t able to access support before kindergarten, sometimes waiting up to three years for public services, with some communities not having any private services as a possible alternative. Indigenous communities are especially affected by the shortage of SLPs due to many reserves being in remote locations.
Government-funded speech and language services provide free screenings for children up to five years old. Due to long waitlists for public services, Chichak sees many families forced to turn to private services — because
speech, language and swallowing services are not covered under BC’s Medical Services Plan, the rates can sometimes reach hundreds of dollars per hour out of pocket.
“We hear from families [on the waitlist] that they’re often stuck in limbo … not knowing what they could do to be able to support their children,” said Chichak.
However, those who can afford private services often aren’t more optimistic.
“It’s rough out there,” said Annika Fong, who graduated from UBC’s master’s of speech-language pathology in 2024 and is currently an SLP in a private practice, primarily working with
children. She notices that many families — even after receiving free assessments for children under five — still rely on private services to address their children’s conditions. The waitlists for private practices can take just as long as the ones for public services do, she says — and even if a family can afford a few private sessions, speech therapy usually takes time to produce results.
“A lot of the time, when we see these kids, they’re going to need therapy not just for the $600 or $1,000 that the parents get from their benefits, but for a lot longer,” said Fong. “For especially low-income families, that’s really hard … It’s really sad.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF EARLY INTERVENTION
Speech and language development skills are formed during the first few years of life, with language development starting prenatally. Children who have access to speech and language therapy earlier tend to have better results than those who access it later, so early intervention by SLPs and audiologists in a child’s communication is crucial for ensuring proper development.
Dr. Paola Colozzo, an associate professor and interim director of UBC’s School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, says the goal of early intervention is to help
children develop their ability to communicate, regardless of the modality.
According to Colozzo, as children are exposed to multiple environments, they develop communication skills for social interactions, ranging from listening and speaking to reading and writing, which enable them to develop friendships and participate in daily activities. She stresses the importance of helping a child find a communication system that works for them.
“Some children will use their natural voice. Other children might use sign language or might use other means of communication. So that’s the goal of early intervention — to help that child gain those supports and to continue to develop their communicative abilities,” said Colozzo.
while completing clinical practicums in community settings supervised by qualified professionals.
In a province with a population of over 5.7 million as of 2025, UBC has a huge demand to meet as the only formal SLP training program. Fong said that everybody in her cohort at UBC was hired before graduation, with employers
for employment, with many having served communities outside of the Lower Mainland for the last decade. Clinical placements take place all over the province — like in Campbell River, Nelson, Kitimat, Quesnel, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek and Haida Gwaii, to name a few — as a way to try and address the lack of SLPs in Northern BC. Many graduates
future SLPs. The organization also engages with policymakers — namely the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Children and Family Development, Chichak said — to discuss ways the provincial government can be supporting SLPs.
According
“Despite a child appearing to have normal speech patterns, there could be issues flying under the radar. For instance, a child may be able to say phrases, only for parents to realize they’re copying things they’ve heard on their favourite TV shows and not actually producing their own phrases. Fong sees many parents and caregivers who don’t fully understand what neurodevelopmental disorders like autism look like and are unable to identify potential signs in their child’s behaviour. By the time they’ve caught on to the fact that there may be an underlying condition to look into, the child is already in elementary school and has missed the period where they could’ve accessed a free assessment. Even after making it through the waitlist, speech therapy itself can be a long process, and it may take some time before parents start to see results. Fong says that parents tend to come into an appointment believing that SLPs are “some sort of miracle worker” who can immediately correct their child’s speech. But Fong has to help them realize that they won’t see immediate change, and that verbal communication isn’t always the end goal. For non-verbal children, she might try to introduce an augmentive and alternative communication device to the child — this could be low-tech, like photos or an alphabet board, or high-tech, like a program on a tablet or laptop. Overall, she wants to meet kids where they’re at by finding a way they can proficiently communicate, even if not verbally.
“[We] need to shift the conversation,” said Fong. “Early intervention isn’t about correcting children. It’s about affirming their way of being and ensuring the adults around them know how to connect and really listen and support their children.”
EXPANDING THE PATHWAY AT UBC
As of 2025, the only speech-language pathology master’s program in the province is at UBC, where students are offered a mix of theory and practice to prepare for their career. Students apply after completing a four-year undergraduate degree at an accredited university, passing prerequisite courses and gaining experience shadowing SLPs and audiologists. The program, which spans two years, allows students to take graduate coursework in human communication and clinical speech-language pathology
to Chichak, wait times for families to access speech services can be up to one year, even in densely populated areas like the Lower Mainland. In rural or northern BC, some children aren’t able to access support before kindergarten, sometimes waiting up to three years for public services.
Chichak believes that in order to increase access to services going forward, training is key and an additional expansion in Northern BC is needed. “We still need to look at supporting programs up in the North, because the barrier of being able to move and attend school down on the West Coast is going to be a challenge for a lot of families and a lot of people who might be wanting to join our profession,” she said.
“The hope from there would be that those individuals would then return back to their community … That would help with some of our retention and recruitment in the North, [as] it’s really hard to be able to support people in moving there and staying there … We need to support people in their communities.”
in both public and private services trying to “snatch [them] up.”
After receiving a funding increase from the provincial government in 2014, the program jumped from 23 to 36 seats — a 56 per cent increase in capacity — and remained at that number until just last year.
In 2024, it was announced that the program would be expanding again, but in a new format. In partnership with the University of Victoria, UBC now has a master’s of speech pathology cohort of eight additional students who receive their training in Victoria, bringing the total number of seats from 36 to 44.
Students in both the Vancouver and Victoria cohorts cover the same material — there’s a digital element to the classes which allows students and instructors on both campuses to interact in real time.
Colozzo is excited about the increased capacity of the master’s program, also noting that having a presence on Vancouver Island is an asset. She believes that the new teaching spaces and equipment, along with the expanded network of clinicians across BC, will allow students to have rich learning experiences in diverse communities.
According to Colozzo, the vast majority of graduates remain in the province
tend to work where they trained, she said, with many students gaining more awareness of the option to work in certain areas during these rural placements. Organizations like Speech and Hearing BC partner with UBC to make sure the program can access placements in all their desired areas. Chichak said that because burnout is common among SLPs, it can be difficult to ask someone to take on the extra responsibility of working with a student. However, she believes UBC offers “a wide variety of classes and opportunities, both on the practical side of things and on the research side of things,” that sets students up for success and puts them in a position to actually be an asset to the SLP they’re assisting.
REDUCING THE BURDEN
As part of her role as president of Speech and Hearing BC, Chichak advocates for systemic changes that would increase access to communication, hearing and swallowing care. This involves working with members of the organization to reach out to local MLAs, health authorities and UBC administrators — anyone who plays a role in increasing access to treatment possibilities and training
But while increasing the capacity of the UBC master’s program would be ideal, Chichak believes it won’t be happening anytime soon. In the meantime, she proposes that being able to access services from internationally-trained professionals could help decrease wait times. Currently, SLPs who were trained outside Canada and wish to practice in BC must undergo a full assessment by the College of Health and Care Professionals of BC, including meeting certain academic requirements and completing practicum hours. Chichak believes this process should be expedited, as the length and cost of the application are only further exacerbating BC’s shortage. Not only would the increase in internationally-trained SLPs shorten wait times — it could also reduce SLP workload and prevent burnout, which would increase retention rates.
Similarly, Fong hopes to eventually see more funding from the government to increase SLP services for families. She emphasized the importance of establishing funding structures that can support flexibility in how SLP services are delivered — she believes allocating resources toward virtual care could make it easier to connect with clients in rural areas. Fong also pointed out that people working with an SLP are sometimes concurrently seeing a counsellor, occupational therapist or other health professional. It’s difficult for the care team to find the time to actually collaborate and it would be worth investing in making this possible for more families.
“I just hope we can move toward a model of universal or tiered access to communication support, one where children don’t need a diagnosis or wait 18 months just to be seen,” she said. “We need more publicly-funded SLP positions in community health [and] early childhood settings.” U
Opinion: What should the university be?
This is an opinion article. It reflects the contributor’s views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion
Saskia Tholen Contributor
Saskia Tholen is a graduate student in political science at UBC. Her main research interests are in democratic theory and critical theory.
I told myself I knew the signs: the perfect grammar paired with an awkward, disjointed structure, the missing citations, the bizarre subheadings, the vague, robotic language. The tendency, as another TA put it to me recently, to “use all the right words without actually saying anything.” But these are the obvious cases, and when used carefully, generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini are now virtually undetectable in writing.
These tools have become ubiquitous on college and university campuses. Research finds that the majority of Canadian post-secondary students are using AI in their schoolwork, and some international studies report numbers as high as 86 and 92 per cent. At UBC, 78 per cent of students surveyed this year said they use AI to support their learning, including 56 per cent who use it at least once per week. And it makes sense! AI tools are huge time-savers, and many students find that these tools improve the quality of their work — and as a result, their grades.
Schools are scrambling to respond. Like many institutions, UBC has published general principles that weigh the benefits and risks of AI use, but practically, the response has largely been a matter of individual judgment. Course policies vary widely: some professors have tried to ban AI completely, others allow it for research and process work but not writing, and still others actively encourage their students to practice using it. No one has figured out how AI fits into existing rules about academic honesty, how it affects the grading scale or how to enforce policies, given that AI use seems impossible to prove definitively.
I’ve had students who submit sophisticated, grammatically flawless essays online but can barely string a sentence together when asked to write by hand. I’m sure the essays are written with AI, but I can’t know for certain. Which should get the higher grade: success by plagiarism or a poor but honest effort? No one seems to have an answer.
In a recent piece for New York Magazine aptly titled “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College,” James D. Walsh chronicles the explosion of AI use in higher education. Describing the experiences of one student who reported using AI in all her essays, Walsh writes:
“I really like writing,” she said, sounding strangely nostalgic for her high-school English class — the last time she wrote an essay unassisted. “Honestly,” she continued, “I think there is beauty in trying to plan your essay. You learn a lot. You have to think, Oh, what can I write in this paragraph? Or What should my thesis be? ” But she’d rather get good grades. “An essay with ChatGPT, it’s like it just gives you straight up what you have to follow. You just don’t really have to think that much.” […] Later, I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what “makes us truly human.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. “I use AI a lot. Like, every day,” she said. “And I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”
A technology starting to feel like a necessary and unquestionable part of life is a symptom of its ubiquity: we can’t really imagine living without it. It seems illogical not to use AI, when students have absorbed the message throughout their schooling that high grades matter more than anything, and when everyone else is using it too — there’s definitely
a social contagion effect at work. Once you begin cutting corners, it’s hard to imagine voluntarily taking the long way around just for the sake of the antiquated “beauty” of thinking for yourself.
Soon enough, though, the long way around is no longer an option, because technologies — all technologies, digital and otherwise — rewire our brains over time. Studies are already linking AI to declining critical thinking skills, especially among younger users, and the long-term effects are unknown. It’s one thing to make a strategic choice not to exercise a particular cognitive faculty because there’s a more efficient option available, and quite another to risk losing that faculty, or parts of it, altogether.
I hear the alarm bells from nearly every professor I ask: “the students can’t read, they can’t write, they can’t think anymore,” they tell me. The effects of AI are hard to untangle from the lingering impacts of the pandemic on mental health, attendance and learning outcomes. However, few seem to doubt that AI — despite its valuable potential to make education more personalized and adaptive, and to take some of the work from teachers’ overfilled plates — is doing serious damage to students’ literacy.
On the other hand, it’s com -
mon among both students and professors to think of AI as a neutral tool that just needs to be harnessed responsibly. It’s certainly an appealing argument: AI is coming whether we like it or not, but we can get ahead by learning how to use it to our advantage. This advantage is connected to employability: integrating AI is supposed to help tailor our “human capital” to what the new world of work is going to demand, and this, far from diminishing our value, will make us more productive and less dispensable.
We’ve been having the same misguided conversation about the internet and social media as “tools” for years, as if you can separate the instrumental benefits from the basic mind-altering character of the technology. This logic is partially symptomatic of a culture that believes being good at working the system makes you a master of it, and that adapting to disruption is a virtue. It’s a dehumanizing culture, a culture of precarity, a culture of resignation — not to mention a culture that has abandoned workers. But this logic also depends on a kind of wilful ignorance about the nature of the technology and about the scale and scope of the disruption it’s going to cause.
It isn’t just that AI is reshaping our minds. Consider this: eventually, humans will be written out of the equation altogether. Walsh mentions that AI’s potential to take over the task of grading students’ assignments, in addition to writing them, threatens to reduce “the entire academic exercise to a conversation between two robots — or maybe even just one.” But the problem is more fundamental than that. From the AI’s perspective, generating knowledge just means infinitely recombining existing data. “New” knowledge no longer means original knowledge. And what happens when the data being infinitely recombined — the content of the assignments, to put it one way — are themselves artificial creations? Already, more than half of online text is generated or translated by AI. The process becomes perfectly self-sustaining: to borrow words from a professor in my department, AI threatens to collapse knowledge production itself into an artificial mind endlessly “eating its own shit.”
Will being “good at ChatGPT” save any of us in this scenario — our jobs or our souls? U
Read the full opinion essay online at https://ubyssey.ca/opinion/ what-should-the-university-be/.
“Will being ‘good at ChatGPT’ save any of us ... our jobs or our souls?”
Illustration by Abbie Lee / The Ubyssey
Life is a highway, ha-roscope is your GPS
Elita Menezes & Kyla Flynn Science Editor & Humour Editor
Every new adult summer romance novel involves at least one road trip! So buckle your seatbelt and practice your driving safety skills with this set of signs for the signs of which sign you are based on your sign.
ARIES
No left turn. An inconvenient sign, always perpetually at the intersection wherein you most wish to turn left. The people yearn for left turns, but do not give in to temptation. Restraint is key. Do what’s right.
TAURUS
Road work ahead? I sure hope it does. This month’s ha-roscope projects that you are 92 per cent likely to encounter one vine reference and 8 per cent likely to be kidnapped and hung on the wall of a first year’s dorm.
GEMINI
Stop sign. It’s time to pause and
REAPING IRL? //
reflect on the journey to come. Much like the stop sign, you must remember to stand your ground and set boundaries. Or just cut that shit out if you know what I’m saying. If you think I’m talking to you, I am.
CANCER
120km/h speed limit. Freeeeeeeeeeeee bird yeah *sick guitar riffs.* Do with this info what you must.
LEO
Playground zone. It’s time to connect with your inner child. Go start a business selling Rainbow Loom bracelets at recess for prices ranging from 25 cents to 2 dollars, depending on the complexity of the project. You wouldn’t want to overcharge, but inflation is hitting the market and you have a business to run.
VIRGO
Construction zone. You’re a work in progress right now. That’s alright! Find some people with access to industrial power tools and start building yourself up again.
LIBRA
Yield. Hey, some other people need to be in traffic right now. It’s time for you to let them enter the intersection. Your time will come. Enjoy life from the sidelines. (But not the sidewalks, stay off those.)
SCORPIO
Exit. Okay, you’re going really fast right now, but you need to lock in and switch lanes so you can make it off the highway and get where you’re meant to be. This elegant swerve off the main road requires care, diligence and, oh, wait. You just missed it back there. Oopsie.
SAGITARRIUS
Deer crossing. STOP!!!!!!! THERE’S A DEER ON THE ROAD!!!!!!!!!
CAPRICORN
No parking. Hey, you might feel like you don’t belong, or like all the places that want you are just interested in the loose change at the bottom of your backpack. But park
in someone’s driveway if you must. Everything’s gonna be okay.
AQUARIUS
A singular orange traffic cone. What does it mean? Why is it in the middle of the road? Who left it there? Tbh idk. Your month is a mystery to us both. Good luck.
PISCES
Railway crossing. Listen very carefully to what we’re about to tell you. In exactly 19 days, you are going to CHOOOO-CHOOOOOOOOOO WOOSHHHHH CHUG CHUG CHUG U
Fighting for my life: Course registration lets me live out my 2010s YA dystopian protagonist dreams
I like to consider myself a warrior of sorts. I’ve fought in many battles (trying to get Taylor Swift tickets) and taken some Ls (I couldn’t get them). As course registration season comes to an end, I look back upon one particularly brutal battle: second-year course registration. Internet connections were lost, waitlists were joined and schedule layouts looked like shit. After what felt like an eternity deep in the trenches of Workday, I came out waving a white flag of defeat. I had hoped that this year would be better. After taking some time to reflect, touch grass and contemplate whether or not they actually tried to make Workday
suck or if all of this is just the natural consequences of Zoomclass-taking COVID grads hitting the workforce, I’m ready to tell my story: one girl, some shitty cell reception and a game. A hungry game. A hunger for a decent schedule, I mean.
In true YA doomsday fashion, course registration exists in a hierarchical model that not only preys on the weak but creates its own prey. What do I mean by this? Obviously that second-years are District 12. With the worst course registration time slots, it makes sense why they have so much crazy in their eyes. As a former second-year, I can tell you it’s the worst by far, not just because you’re dead last, but also because no one prepares you for it.
Imagine: you just finished your first year at UBC — memories were made, classes were attended, three hundred new Instagram followers (that you’ll never speak to again but if you run into them on your way to class you’ll do the awkward smile wave thing) were acquired. Nothing in the world could bring you down! But then, you get the email. At first, you don’t open it thinking it’s just the AMS sending you their 10,000th daily email about the Skytrain petition. But then, you see the subject line. You have been reaped (assigned a timeslot) for The Hunger Games (course registration). Hands trembling, you check the date you’re set to register. To your horror, it says “late July.” Absolute whiplash compared to the comfy June timeslot you were gifted last
year. You scramble to come up with a decent schedule only to be met with a cruel Workday message saying all your required classes are full. Moral of the story? Second year is brutal with no mockingjay in sight.
But wait! Like every corrupt YA world, the trials and tribulations of registration don’t end there. Not even the smart kids can escape this cruel fate — District 11 would also be second-years, but the academic weapons. How gracious of UBC to grant you a 20-minute head start in exchange for selling your soul to a TA with way too much control over your GPA. Truly the Peacekeepers of our time, serving “justice” via “feedback” laced with condescension. And though third-years could be equated to Districts 10 through 7, no one is safe in the games.
The catch here is class size. Cramming 20 students into a tiny Buchanan B classroom is already inhumane, but becomes a bigger problem when a bunch of burntout fourth-years with terminal cases of senioritis need those precious few seats to graduate. Checking Workday every other second to see if the remaining two spots in that one class that fits your timetable perfectly have been taken is about as humbling as finding a dinky little cave to hide in while seasoned Career Tributes (big scary professional killers for those uneducated in TheHungerGames franchise) prey on you and your downfall.
Though first-years have registration time slots I fantasize about, they are not on the top of the teenage dystopian food chain either. Yes, they’re second on the priority scale. Yes, they’ve got lots of
course options. However, my dear reader, this is all rendered null and void by the dreaded first-year engineering schedule. Now, I’m not in engineering and frankly, I value my hair too much to consider it. (I wonder if the Capitol would consider gifting Rogaine to tributes in need?) But I do have first-hand experience with the horrors of the first-year eng schedule through my first-year roommate, who then dropped out and became a pilot (shoutout roomie if you’re reading this). Let me spare you the gory details: there’s no reason to envy first-years.
And though the impulse may be to envy fourth-years — UBC’s “Careers” (or lack thereof in this case) — with their priority registration and “relationships” with “advisors” and “professors,” it’s important to remember that they might just have it the worst. They are still victims, they too have been chewed up and spit out by the greater evil that is course registration, so we should give them grace. We should… But I’m not going to since all the classes I wanted got filled by fourth-years! Remember: don’t harbour too much resentment towards them, because once that last year finishes, they’ll graduate and once again be at the bottom of the priority registration barrel, but this barrel is much much worse because it’s the metaphorical barrel called the job market. And don’t even get me started on grad school applications.
Good luck seniors, you’re going to need it. And may the odds be ever in your favour this registration season. U
Tbh idk. Your month is a mystery to us both. EMILIJA V. HARRISON / THE UBYSSEY
You have been reaped (assigned a timeslot) for TheHungerGames (course registration). AYLA CILLIERS / THE UBYSSEY
Nilsa Nilli
Contributor
Rec Centre North set to modernize recreation at UBC
Colin Angell Contributor
You can stop holding your breath: the new Recreation Centre North officially opened its doors on July 2 to fitness fanatics, intramural champions and everyone in between.
Situated north of the UBC Life Building, the more than 9,300 square-metre, LEED gold-certified “Rec North” features fitness spaces spread over 4 floors, including 3 gymnasiums and a 200-metre track amidst its studios and weight rooms. The facility also features office space for UBC Athletics & Recreation.
“It’s a complete transformation,” said Managing Director of Athletics & Recreation Kavie Toor in an interview with The Ubyssey, speaking to how the project seeks to improve the capacities of fitness at the university.
“We did feel [that] we were underserving our community,” said Toor.
As the first of four projects outlined in GamePlan — UBC Athletics & Recreation’s 20-year strategic plan — the initiative cited the university’s limited 0.03 square-metres of fitness space per student as the reason behind the construction of a new recreation space.
Other projects included in
HISTORY IN THE MAKING //
GamePlan are renovations to War Memorial Gym, as well as a new Thunderbird Stadium and an enhanced baseball field.
Following an AMS referendum to levy student fees for a new recreation centre, the initiative was approved by the Board of Governors in April 2017. $22.5 million was raised from student fees, while the rest came from private
contributions and the university.
Vancouver’s SHAPE Architecture provided initial design plans in 2019, incorporating student feedback to maximize natural lighting and reduce noise levels through high ceilings, tall windows and offset floors.
Working alongside the Rick Hansen Foundation who certified the building as accessible, Toor
said that they “would share some design concepts with them” to “get some feedback [and] expertise” on ensuring the building is inclusive.
“Between the [UBC Life Building] and this building, there are lots of fair access points … [that] came from feedback from that crew,” said Toor.
UBC Properties Trust announced on June 4 that the build-
ing had received its occupancy permit and was officially handed over to both UBC Athletics & Recreation and the AMS, who will ultimately share responsibilities for the facility.
“[The AMS’] contributions are all over this building,” said Toor. “When we were coming towards funding challenges, the track was at risk, and the AMS in particular really leaned [into it] in a significant way, [saying], ‘We really want the track preserved as part of the project.’”
“[The AMS supported the project] not only in terms of the design and concept and original funding, but also [by advocating] to make sure the core vision remained intact.”
Toor said that the AMS and Athletics & Recreation are currently meeting to organize a booking system for clubs to access the facilities’ studios and gymnasiums.
The project has faced numerous setbacks. As of June 27, UBC Recreation’s website still lists its anticipated completion date as “late 2024” — something that Toor accredited to “trade delays.”
“There’s some things that we learned that were out of our control … thankfully, we were able to … make sure that the project was delivered in the way we had originally envisioned, albeit a little later than we had also envisioned.” U
Chanreet Bassi first-ever T-Bird drafted to the PWHL
Elena Massing Features Editor
Long after the last puck drop of the year, despite still being months away from next season, UBC women’s hockey history was being made this summer.
On June 24, Chanreet Bassi became the first Thunderbird to be drafted to the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL). She’ll be joining PWHL Vancouver, an expansion team formed alongside a new Seattle team this spring.
In her six years on the team and five seasons on the ice, she’s racked up more than a few accolades.
She helped the T-Birds win three consecutive Canada West championships, even scoring the game-winning goal in overtime in the 2022 Canada West Final. As head coach Graham Thomas described, her talents on the ice have been a major factor in the team’s success.
“She’s got a lot of grit, she has a lot of skills,” he said. “[She is a] great playmaker [and a] great skater [with] great hands and a great shot.”
Bassi is a four-time Canada West All-Star and is the current all-time career point leader for the ‘Birds, tied with Tatiana Rafter. Now, she is setting PWHL records before the season has even started — she’s the first South Asian player to be drafted to the league.
“[I’m] so happy for her. I think she’s a very hard worker. She’s come from a tough background
where she has really had to put in a lot of work and earn … everything that she’s gotten,” said Thomas. “She’s been training like a pro for a long time now, so it’s great for her to be given this opportunity.”
Thomas sees UBC as a great training ground for women who might be considering going pro, especially with the PWHL now having a Vancouver-based team.
“We’re really excited to have a
team in our backyard,” said Thomas. “It’s motivating for the young players out there, but it’s also motivating for our athletes.”
Although Bassi is the first Thunderbird to be drafted to the PWHL, she’s not the first to play in the league. Former T-Bird Rylind MacKinnon played for the Toronto Sceptres last season — making the roster in training camp after going undrafted — and will be joining the Boston Fleet
next season.
“There is a pathway for players, especially right in UBC, right in Vancouver,” said Thomas. “This is a place where you can have a lot of success. You can get a great education, but you can also have a chance to further your career and play professionally.”
The pandemic allowed Bassi an additional year of eligibility, giving her extra time to grow as an athlete.
“I needed a little bit of time to mature,” Bassi said. “Especially with the [PWHL] getting announced two years ago, it solidified me … being able to use my extra year.”
Even as she departs from the Thunderbirds, Bassi’s education continues.
One of the things she is most looking forward to about the PWHL is observing how the women on her new team — many of them seasoned professionals — approach the sport.
“They have a few Olympians, a bunch of girls that have won in a lot of different leagues,” she said. “Just learning and taking from what those girls bring to their day-to-day basis is what I want to do.”
“It’s a little bit of an adjustment, with the pace of play. But I think … having a lot of time this summer, it’s nice to get up to that pace a bit, and obviously try to train with some of the girls that are already in the league to get my foot in the door and get up to speed.”
This summer, alongside training for the upcoming season, Bassi will be coaching youth hockey — passing along her knowledge to the girls on the team while also standing as a testament to the new, exciting opportunities available to them in the future.
“The girls that announced the PWHL Vancouver team [were on the team] that I coached in spring hockey, which is pretty cool,” she said. “It was a little full circle moment there.” U
The brand-new Recreation Centre North, which opened on July 2.
New PWHL Vancouver draftee Chanreet Bassi outside her now-former home ice.
SIDNEY SHAW / THE UBYSSEY
ELENA MASSING / THE UBYSSEY
How Project Seahorse is confronting illegal wildlife trade
Hasfariza Hassan Contributor
Around five million seahorses were seized from illegal trade over the span of a decade, according to a recent study exploring seahorse trafficking globally.
The study was conducted in part by researchers from Project Seahorse, a UBC-affiliated organization aimed toward finding sustainable solutions for seahorses that are under threat from wildlife trade.
According to Project Seahorse’s website, seahorse trade is composed of three main markets: ornamental display, traditional medicine and curiosities. Dried seahorses make up the last 2 markets and 95 per cent of the overall trade. Dr. Sarah Foster, a research associate at the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries at UBC, is one of the organization’s co-leaders.
According to Foster, the motivation behind the study was to investigate the effectiveness of seahorse trade suspensions and raise awareness of the issue among governments. In the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), seahorses are allowed to be traded through sustainable and legal means. Researchers found that despite seahorse export bans and suspensions, a large amount of illegal trade is still happening.
“Governments often declare
policies, declare actions [and] declare intentions that are in the right direction of conservation,” said Foster. “But if they don’t actually take the action to implement those declarations, to bring them to life on the ground, then they don’t mean anything.” Project Seahorse works with countries to facilitate policies that are more than declarations of good intentions — ones that can be meaningfully implemented.
In the paper, the data was collected from online records of seahorse seizures that occurred from January 1, 2010 to April 29, 2021. These records were taken from existing databases from Project Seahorse, OceansAsia, TRAFFIC and verifiable media sources reporting on the interception of seahorse trade.
Foster pointed out that not all international trade gets intercepted and reported, which emphasizes the lack of transparency regarding seahorse trade.
“We really were finding the tip of the iceberg in our data, and yet we still uncovered five million animals worth thirty million Canadian dollars involving sixty countries,” Foster said. “So if that’s the tip of the iceberg, it makes you think ‘What is really on the ground?’”
Foster said one of the biggest barriers to sustainable seahorse trade is traceability, which ensures that information moves with the
CONTRACEPTION & FAMILY PLANNING //
animal throughout the supply chain. According to Foster, when an exporter applies for a trade permit, traceability allows them to have key information about the seahorses, including which fishery they came from, where they were caught and the method they were caught with. This information can be used to determine whether the trade was carried out through sustainable means.
In targeted fisheries, Foster noted the option of setting quotas on how many seahorses can be removed from the wild. Leaving pregnant seahorses out of the trade until they give birth can also help preserve the next generation of seahorses.
Another quota that Project Seahorse has explored in target fisheries is imposing a minimum size limit of 10 centimetres to ensure that juvenile seahorses aren’t being traded. In the past, Project Seahorse has worked with Hong Kong traditional medicine traders to issue a letter asking traders not to trade seahorses less than the minimum size requirement. Foster said that traders can be important allies in ensuring that management tools are enforced.
Project Seahorse is set to take their research to the international community at the upcoming CITES Conference of the Parties this
December in Uzbekistan. According to Foster, the topic of seahorse trade will be on the agenda, making governments aware of the issue and efforts geared toward finding solutions.
“It’s a wake-up call to all governments everywhere to pay attention to this problem, and also a need for more coordination among countries to make sure they’re working together to figure out a solution.” U
Fertility awareness: Understanding the symptothermal method
being solely on the individual, according to Shroff. The third component, which is also often done by a partner, is checking the cervical os — the opening of the cervix — for changes in its position, openness and texture.
Shroff said she has used this method herself and first encountered STM while volunteering at the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective. There, it was taught as a feminist tool for body literacy.
“Very few sort of messages in our world are about, ‘Hey, would you like to know about the rhythm of your body?’ ... Most of the messages we get are that these things are dirty and icky, [that] they smell bad,” said Shroff.
Shroff and her team conducted research across Canada, focusing on people aged 15–45, to explore individuals’ experiences with contraception and their awareness of STM.
ly unknown among the general public.
“The first barrier is that very few people know about it. I have now been doing talks here in Canada … I have done some international webinars, and people from Europe, the African continent, Asia and Latin America who attended these talks … also knew nothing.”
Factors such as limited awareness, lack of clinician training and minimal commercial investment have contributed to STM’s lower visibility in mainstream healthcare.
“It’s not a money-maker. You’re teaching people how to do something. Once they learn how to do it, they could do it for life.”
Harleen Randhawa Contributor
The sympto-thermal method (STM) is an evidence-based fertility awareness technique that allows individuals to track their natural menstrual cycles, offering an alternative for those trying to conceive or avoid pregnancy.
Dr. Farah Shroff, a public health researcher and professor from UBC’s department of family practice in the Faculty of Medicine, leads a research team that is exploring STM as a fertility aware-
ness-based approach to contraception and family planning.
“The science behind the sympto-thermal method essentially relies on the high-fidelity relationship between cervical mucus and fertility,” Shroff said. The menstrual cycle creates changes in this mucus which indicate fluctuations in fertility. “The whole technique is based on identifying the ovulatory phase.”
The STM offers a non-invasive, low-tech alternative to hormonal birth control and intrauterine devices. The method involves track-
ing cervical mucus and observing the mucus’s consistency, texture, colour and smell. “When [an individual] urinates, she just has to look at the toilet paper and wipe the cervical mucus off the toilet paper and look at its [qualities] … It’s essentially like a science experiment — she is looking at her mucus every day and recording that,” said Shroff. Alongside this, individuals track their basal body temperature using a specialized thermometer, which can be done by a partner to shift responsibility away from
“We’ve interviewed about 60 people … The number one form of birth control they’re using is the condom, and that’s working quite well for them. And absolutely, the condom is a good form of birth control. It’s excellent for sexually transmitted infection prevention,” said Shroff.
She also shared that many participants were unaware of STM but expressed interest when they learned more about it. STM’s eco-friendly nature requires no packaging, no pharmaceuticals and minimal tools. Although STM has benefits, it remains relative -
Her team aims to offer a series of three STM courses, including a certification course through UBC’s midwifery program. Another one of these will be an online course designed for the general public, with the goal of making it widely accessible to learners around the world. The third would be a science course geared toward secondary and post-secondary students, detailing the menstrual cycle and the impact cyclical changes can have on fertility.
Shroff envisions a future where more individuals and couples can access an empowering, side-effectfree and sustainable approach to reproductive health.
“This technique offers people freedom … to be able to really enjoy their bodies, enjoy their sexuality, enjoy their fertility.” U
“If that’s the tip of the iceberg, it makes you think, ‘What is really on the ground?,’” said Dr. Sarah Foster.
BRIELLE LESAGE / THE UBYSSEY
“The whole technique is based on identifying the ovulatory phase,” said Dr. Farah Shroff. ELITA MENEZES / THE UBYSSEY
