Thursday, March 6, 2014

Page 1

W W W .W E STERNGAZETTE.C A • @UW OGAZETTE

Western partner firm eyes Hamilton expansion >> pg. 3

thegazette In the bog down in the valley-o since 1906

TODAY high -4 low -9

TOMORROW high 2 low -6

CANADA’S ONLY DAILY STUDENT NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED 1906

THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2014

VOLUME 107, ISSUE 79

O-week’s drinking problem Lights! Camera! Western and Huron differ in philosophies

Zombies! Action! Iain Boekhoff NEWS EDITOR

Nyssa Kuwahara GAZETTE

PICKING UP YOUR BUS PASS IS MORE FUN WITH A BEER. Students line up to pick up their bus passes during O-Week in this file photo. Though Western has an officially dry O-Week, Huron University College does not. The question of which approach is safer remains unanswered.

Stephanie Grella GAZETTE STAFF The stringent rules of a dry Orientation Week are meant to prevent students from drinking. It’s unclear, however, how effective these rules are for promoting a safe and welcoming environment for first-year students. According to a 2009 Statistics Canada survey, about 30 per cent of females and 40 per cent of males between the ages of 18–19 are heavy drinkers. While organizing a dry O-Week demonstrates Western’s attempt to offer all students an equally safe and enjoyable time, imposing an alcohol ban — on first year students as well as residence staff and sophs — has not stopped students from accessing and consuming alcohol in the past.

As we like to refer to it at Huron, our O-Week is not wet, but ‘damp.’ — Nicholas Barrow

Vice-president student life at Huron University College

“In my experience, there were students who did comply with the dry O-Week policies, and there were those who did not,” says Eric Pattara, a past residence soph and head soph for Saugeen-Maitland Hall. “Of the students who did participate in drinking, I would imagine that they at least did so discretely, such as in their rooms or in other residences.” In terms of alcohol consumption

FREE TEETH WHITENING WITH COMPLETE EXAM AND CLEANING

policies in many Western residences, alcohol consumption is prohibited in public spaces and permitted only in each of the student’s room, according to Western’s Alcohol, Smoking and Pornography policy. During O-Week, however, alcohol is absolutely prohibited in residences, whether in a dorm room or in the hallways. “I don’t exactly think that a wet O-Week would moderate or improve the alcohol consumption that takes place on campus,” Pattara says. “I remember each year with training we were shown the numbers of alcohol-related hospitalizations that occurred during past O-Weeks — including those that took place before the dry O-Week policy was implemented — and that number >> see DRY pg.2

Have you been hearing about zombies seemingly everywhere lately? Well, good news, you aren’t going crazy — it’s actually happening. Zombies, who you may recognize as the mindless walking dead creatures who occasionally feast on humans, have penetrated popular culture to such an extent that they now garner university courses dedicated to them — even at Western. Barbara Bruce, adjunct professor in Western’s Department of Film Studies, has taught a few zombie studies classes at Western. She said they have proven popular among students and she has to turn away students because the classes fill up so quickly. Students may be curious to find out more about zombies because of the plethora of attention they get in the media. In the past few years, zombie films like World War Z, Zombieland, World’s End, Warm Bodies and Survival of the Dead have generated hundreds of millions in revenue, a popular television show The Walking Dead, and there have even been news headlines reporting on so-called zombie attacks, like the one in Miami in May of 2012. Zombies have also crept into academia. According to the Wall Street Journal, book distributor Baker and Taylor said that in the last five years there have been 20 new scholarly books with “zombie” in the title, compared to 10 in the preceding five years. JSTOR has 39 articles referencing zombies since 2005, versus seven in the preceding 10 years. Bruce explained portrayals of zombies have been historically rooted in cultural and societal anxieties of that age, starting with the original zombie from the

voodoo Caribbean tradition. At the same time that White Zombie, the first feature length zombie film, came out in 1932, America had recently invaded Haiti and the film depicted the black population rising up under the influence of some exotic drug. “The point is, the zombie as a figure, is a polysemic symbol, meaning it can represent different things at one and the same time, it can symbolize so many different things,” Bruce said. “All of them typically have to do with wider cultural anxieties about how our society, our Western culture is developing and evolving.” Since then, zombie movies have focused on such cultural anxieties as the Cold War, invasion from outer space, fear of the rise of mass culture, terrorism and scientific innovation. “That’s the big thing that comes out of [George] Romero, is the idea that Western culture is becoming so materialistic, so consumeristic, that we prey on each other to try to feed ourselves […] cannibalism as a metaphor,” Bruce said. “How capitalism is based on the idea of exploiting and using other people in order to profit to get ahead.” And now, the focus is on young people’s obsession with technology and how it alienates them from the world. “If you look at a film like Warm Bodies, it’s very much linked to young people and their dependency on technology,” Bruce said. “So, what are our smartphones and our laptops and all these things doing to us as a culture, particularly young people? How it alienates them, isolates them, how we’re a culture that’s losing touch, becoming alienated as communities break down because of technology — that’s absolutely what that film is expressing through the zombie figure.”

• Family and Cosmetic Dentistry • • New and Emergency Patients Welcome • • Insurance Plans Accepted for Direct Payment •

www.dentalstudiolondon.com


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.