November 24, 2011

No girl wants to do a bunny SINCE 1918 November 24, 2011 | VOL. XCIII ISS. XXIII

UTHE UBYSSEY

HAS UBC BEENHANDCUFFED?

WHEN IT COMES TO THE FUTURE OF POLICING IN OUR PROVINCE

SECURITYUNION FILES COMPLAINT

DRINKINGSPECIAL

P9

P3

P6

P3

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LITTLECREATIONBIG PUPPETS

2 | | 11.24.2011

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THE UBYSSEY November 24, 2011, Volume XCIII, Issue XXIII

LEGAL

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

Veronika KhvorostokhinaContributor

“Free time?” said Wendy Holm with a laugh. “Well, that’s an em-barrassing question.”

Holm, a professor at the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, has just come back from studying co-operative economics in Spain and is now hurrying to speak at the Occupy Vancouver site. Her work goes far beyond the classroom. The course Holm teaches at UBC takes place more than 2000 miles away from the actual campus—in the fields of Cuba, where her students learn about organic and cooperative agriculture.

Wendy Holm is more than “just an instructor.” She is a renowned economist and agrologist—a branch of soil sciences related to crop production—as well as a consultant on environmental and social issues.

Holm was born and raised in Long Island, and she would prob-ably still be on the east coast if her parents hadn’t taken her on a trip to Vancouver. That’s where

she fell in love with agriculture.Ever since she got her MSc

in agricultural economics from UBC, Holm has lived and worked in Canada. Now she is a natural-ized Canadian citizen.

“The first time I drove through BC was when Trudeau was in cabinet, and I was really, really impressed with what he was doing,” she said. “I thought, ‘If I ever have kids, I want to raise them here.’ So, in six weeks from that first visit, I packed my life onto my TR4A and moved to Canada.”

But as time went by, Holm grew more and more disillu-sioned with Canadian agricul-tural policy.

“We used to treat our farmers with a lot of respect. They had real political power, they had sup-port from the government. Now we treat them like dirt, and it is a critical concern to issues of food sovereignty, food security and sustainability.”

Holm admits that in her past life she probably was a farmer, but in her heart she has always

felt like an educator. In 2005 this fortunate alignment brought her to UBC, where she developed the Cuba-based Land and Food Systems program.

According to Holm, Cuba can offer quite a few lessons of suc-cessful agricultural development.

“This course is about impor-tance of cooperation and sustain-able systems,” said Holm. “Cuba is a leader in the development of communities that cooperate and return economy back to the people.”

In case you are still not pack-ing your shades and comandante T-shirts, Wendy Holm has one piece of timely advice.

“Don’t settle. Travel. Look outside of Canada and see what’s happening in the world. All is possible if you go for it.”

When not traveling, teaching or trying to save the world from food crisis, Wendy can be found fly fishing or, in her own words, “casting from a pebbly shoal in the middle of a river or in a canoe with the rod and the dog on an early morning.” U

Holm: a food security sovereign

Our Campus One on one with the people who make UBC

Holm divides her academic time between taking students to Cuba and teaching sustainable urban agriculture at UBC.ALEXANDRA DOWNING/THE UBYSSEY

Got an event you’d like to see on this page? Send your event and your best pitch to [email protected].

What’s on This week, may we suggest...

CHARITY>>

FRI25 DUDE >>

SPORTS>>

MON28

ART >>

UBC MUSIC>>

UBC REC’s Lace Up for Kids From 6pm–2am at Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Arena, UBC student organi-zations are joining to raise $85,000 for the United Way’s School Out.

If You Make Art in a Forest...: 4pm @ NoMass Gallery This exhibit directs the classic “if a tree falls in the woods” question at contemporary art. In addi-tion to works by a dozen local and international artists, Michael Nicoll Yahgulaanas and Kirsten Wicklund will present a number of dance and multimedia works that deal with contemporary po-litical issues. For those who enjoy their art sans BS.

UBC Film Society presents The Big Lebowski BZZR Garden: 7pm @ the Norm TheatreDress in Lebowski attire, bring 2 pieces of ID and party hard at this 19+ event, Dude. $3 for members, $6 for others. Doors open at 7pm and the movie starts at 8pm.

UBC Percussion Ensemble: 12pm @ Barnett HallThe UBC Percussion Ensemble will perform what we can only as-sume will be a series of hour-long, face-melting drum solos. Check out this chilled out concert series.

THU24

SAT26

SUN27The Grey Cup @ BC PlaceHaven’t gotten your tickets to the biggest event in the CFL season? Well, just watch it on TV like a nor-mal person. If you just wanted to see the new stadium, save some money and check out the Vanier Cup on Friday.

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NewsEditors: Kalyeena Makortoff & Micki Cowan

11.24.2011 | 3

Andrew BatesSenior Web Writer

Contract negotiations that have led to whispers of a provincial police force have students thinking about what kind of service they are getting from the UBC RCMP.

The contract between the pro-vincial and the federal government that provides RCMP services in BC expires next March. But the federal government announced that if their proposal wasn’t signed by November 30, the government would withdraw the Mounties, ef-fective in 2014.

Because UBC is not a municipal-ity, policing is automatically done through the RCMP—and if the con-tract ends, so does UBC’s policing service.

“There was some discussion from the students at least about looking to switch away from the RCMP and looking to pull up the [Vancouver Police Department],” said Board of Governors student representative Sean Heisler. “Most of it is around special occasion licences and liquor licensing...the sort of ad-hoc admin-istration of rules, and being espe-cially zealous in their enforcement of some rules and letting others sort of slip aside or not pursuing them as hard.”

Since the retirement of former Staff Sergeant Kevin Kenna, the RCMP have had administrative staff shortages and are looking to streamline the process for apply-ing for those licences. It’s been difficult to get any, according to Hans Seidemann, Engineering Undergraduate Society VP Communications.

“We’ve had all of our [large] SOL applications denied this year,” he said. One was denied because too

many groups with “Engineering” in their name had applied for licences and the RCMP judged them all as one organization. The Liquor Control and Licensing Board (LCLB) have since reversed the decision.

“The provincial policy doesn’t re-quire the RCMP to use a whole ton of judgment in approving or denying a request,” Seidemann said.

According to Seidemann, the RCMP are working on a solution, including sending routine requests to the LCLB and creating a consul-tation body called the Committee for the Approval of Public Events, which would include police and stakeholders and provide a public forum for decisions.

“I had a really good conversa-tion with Sergeant [Dave] Jones the other day,” Seidemann said. “There’s a great deal more transparency in that structure than anything that’s happening now.”

But the issue of resources is im-portant to policing. “UBC is a pretty unique place in that there’s a lot of activity every Friday or Saturday night. It’s a lot like the Granville Strip downtown, where you have dedicated policing,” he said, “So I think it’s unreasonable to expect that they’re going to be able to do the job that’s asked of them unless they have the staff to do that.”

According to Hubert Lai, univer-sity counsel for UBC, the RCMP’s 17

members is an increase from what was seen 10 years ago. “Obviously, as a citizen, we’re always happy to have more policing services avail-able to us, but certainly we are appreciative of the improvements being made and we don’t have any specific complaints,” he said.

Although UBC doesn’t have the same representation as a municipal-ity, Lai said that if the provincial government had to abandon the RCMP, everyone would be in the same boat.

“Every area within provincial jurisdiction would have the same issues,” he said. “[We’d all] be trying to find some form of replacement policing service.” U

UBC to award honourary degrees to Suzuki and Molina

UBC will be awarding two honourary degrees at their fall congregation ceremonies on November 25 and 26.

Nobel laureate Mario Jose Molina will receive an honourary degree for her work in chemistry in identify-ing the threat of chlorofluorocarbon gases to the ozone layer and focus-ing public attention on this environ-mental issue.

Former UBC zoology profes-sor David Suzuki will be receiv-ing an honourary degree for his work on popularizing science and environmental issues. Suzuki is the co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

U of T launches ambitious fundraising campaign

The University of Toronto has launched the largest university fund-raising campaign in Canadian history, setting a $2 billion goal. It comes shortly after UBC announced a $1.5 billion campaign in late September that briefly set the bar for Canadian universities. They raised $760 million in advance.

“I think every university has found the last two or three years a little slower this side of the border,” U of T President David Naylor told The Globe and Mail. “That’s why it makes so much sense to marshal your forces, get your messages straight and get out there. To simply bob along in slightly choppy waters seems defeatist.”

Nursing program may increase emphasis placed on GPA

Due to a recent study, UBC nurs-ing administrators are deliberating over whether they should put more weight on GPAs when considering applicants. GPA is currently weighted at 60 per cent.

The study, published in Nurse Education Today, tracked 249 stu-dents and found that previous aca-demic achievement was the most reliable predictor of nursing course grades and graduation.

The research was co-authored by now-retired UBC instructor Marion Clauson and led by Jennifer Timer, who collected data on 249 students in the nursing program between 2002 and 2006.

UBC-O to increase geothermal heating on campus

Aside from new academic buildings, which are already using geothermal technology to heat and cool, existing Okanagan campus academic build-ings are being retrofitted for heat from geo-exchange.

The geo-exchange system, which uses the natural energy of the earth, is estimated to avoid putting approximately 38,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere over the next 25 years.

“The geo-thermal system serves as the foundation of our emissions and energy reduction strategy on campus,” said Jackie Podger, Associate Vice President, Finance and Administration. U


The union representing AMS Security workers has filed a com-plaint to the Labour Relations Board over what they allege are unfair labour practices.

According to Jarrah Hodge, a communications representative for Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union (COPE) Local 378, the AMS allegedly attempt-ed to switch the status of AMS Security employees from full-time and permanent to temporary.

“The reason why this is prob-lematic is that as a temporary em-ployee, it’s a lot easier to be let go, so our position is that this is bar-gaining in bad faith,” Hodge said. “It’s a way of threatening their livelihoods and intimidating them while they’re considering joining a union.”

However, the AMS wasn’t able to confirm or deny the allegations. “I’m not really in a position to com-ment too much on what goes to the labour board or any goings on with the negotiations until it’s all over,” said AMS President Jeremy McElroy.

In September, AMS Security employees began a push to union-ize over concerns regarding salary and benefits. They voted to join COPE 378, but are not technically members of the union until an ini-tial agreement is reached with the AMS and approved by members of the security staff.

“We’re in the middle of collec-tive bargaining, and it’s a process that’s going to take us through the next few weeks, if not the next few months,” said McElroy. “So both sides are going to take certain posi-tions and are going to try to get the most out of this agreement.”

No AMS Security staff could be reached for comment for this story, as COPE counseled them not to speak to the media. “Right now, the employer really could discipline them or really fire them for saying anything,” Hodge said. “They have a lot of leeway and discretion on that.” U

Faculty of Arts attempts to limit science credits for undergraduates

Since UBC is not a municipality, it is automatically the RCMP’s responsibility to police.COLIN CHIA/THE UBYSSEY

News briefs

Scott MacDonaldStaff Writer

The Faculty of Arts has recent-ly passed a motion to limit the amount of science credits that Arts students are able to take.

However, the proposed changes will be investigated by the Senate before they can become official policy.

These changes are meant to address the concern that Arts stu-dents can earn their degree with little focus on the arts disclipline.

“It was actually possible to get an Arts degree, a BA at UBC, with having taken nine credits of Arts courses or in some cases only six or three,” said Justin Yang, Arts Undergraduate Society president and student senator.

“They really thought about what the value of an Arts degree was, and if people are doing this, it’s not really an Arts degree.

“So they wanted to tighten up on that.”

While this is potentially a large issue for the Faculty of Arts, the

number of students actually ex-ploiting the system and taking the bare minimum of Arts credits is limited.

“They [used] the registrar’s records to see how many students this actually affects and it’s not that many.

“It’s my feeling that Arts stu-dents wouldn’t be taking a lot of science credits for the majority of their programs,” explained Yang.

This motion is not meant to limit Arts students in their studies, but rather to address the concern of

fringe cases and act as a deterrent to those who would take advan-tage of the current Arts policy regarding science credits.

The main concern is how this will affect interdisciplinary stu-dents, as well as those pursuing dual degrees.

“I personally am not in support of decisions which may impede this,” said student senator Carolee Changfoot.

“I am still looking into the exact implications it will have on keep-ing the dual degree option open.”

But Yang said these issues have already been addressed.

“I [raised] the question, espe-cially for dual degree students, if this makes it harder at all and they assured me that it wouldn’t.

“I know that it’s a concern also for students in math and computer science, but the dean has already addressed those concerns.”

Ultimately, Yang said no one should be worried.

“I know there’s some talk about what’s going on...but I don’t see a problem with it. It makes sense.” U

Negotiations put UBC RCMP in limbo Labour complaint filed against AMS

PETER WOJNAR/THE UBYSSEY

POLICE >>

COURSES >>

UNION >>

4 | News | 11.24.2011

UBC to open offices in India, strengthen partnershipsWill McDonaldStaff Writer

UBC is opening two offices in India to improve its connections with one of the fastest growing countries in the world.

The offices are meant to facilitate partnerships with Indian universi-ties, businesses and government. According to the dean of the Sauder School of Business, Daniel Muzyka, they will help UBC build much-needed relations with India.

“India and China are going to be major forces over the next 50 to 100 years as they continue their devel-opment…but we haven’t had rela-tions in India, and that puts some immediacy on it,” said Muzyka.

“I think UBC’s really at the forefront here at opening an office and the links with India have been increasing,” said UBC Executive Director International Helen Pennant.

Indian universities themselves haven’t been able to keep up with the rapidly growing Indian popula-tion; the country currently has a shortage of both universities and professors.

Pennant hopes the offices will re-sult in more Indian students coming to Canada and working with Indian universities as they develop.

“It is very hard, because you’ve seen those numbers [on the demand for education in India], it’s a huge

gap. And we can’t fill it on our own. We can only help with a small, com-parative number. In taking more Indian students, we’re helping to fill that gap,” said Pennant.

“I think, really, the biggest im-pact we can have is helping faculty to develop their skills,” Pennant continued. “The vast population of India, they’ll stay in India for their education, which takes us back to the point about partnerships. That’s the way to really engage in India, is to work with Indian universities as they develop.”

UBC currently has partnerships that focus on exchanges with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmadabad and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur.

Sauder has announced new part-nerships with the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIMB) and the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras.

According to Muzyka, the partnerships will involve student exchanges, faculty exchanges, joint research and the development of joint programs. However, he em-phasized that the partnerships have no set course.

“We’re not making specific com-mitments. We’re developing com-mitments that will be appropriate and a lot of it is going to be organic. So it depends upon the kinds of

research faculty want to do. It de-pends upon student exchange that enhances the value for our students and theirs,” said Muzyka.

“It’s about an exchange of value. Not just what Sauder can benefit from, but also as we learn and share our ideas in India that they’ll get value out of it.”

Pankaj Chandra, director of IIMB, is hopeful about the partner-ship with Sauder.

“IIMB can enable Sauder to ac-cess to one of the most vibrant, exciting and happening economies in the world. In turn, IIMB will gain access to the global reach of the Sauder School of Business. As such, we believe our coming together is strategically important to both the institutions,” wrote Chandra in an email to The Ubyssey.

According to Pennant, UBC’s of-fice in Delhi will be run in partner-ship with the University of Toronto and provide a link to the Indian government.

“The University of Toronto is at about the same stage in its connec-tions with India and wanting to do a lot more…We’ve got a stronger pres-ence together than individually and they have very similar interests,” said Pennant.

The offices are scheduled to open in January.

“We’ve got a window of opportu-nity,” said Pennant, “and that’s what we’re taking.” U

Arshy MannManaging Editor, Web

Bill 18, which brought the province into conflict with universities’ fac-ulty and staff associations, will not become law—at least for now.

The bill looked to amend numer-ous acts related to post-secondary education in BC, but was pulled before second reading by the Liberal government. Now it won’t be back up for discussion until the next leg-islative session starts in spring 2012.

However, it was only a handful of the 57 proposed amendments that stirred controversy. Five of these would affect the University Act and the College and Institutes Act, al-lowing universities’ boards of gover-nors to expel elected faculty, student or staff representatives if approved by a two-thirds majority.

They would also bar elected members from serving as board chairpersons and prohibit faculty or staff representatives from sitting in executive positions of organiza-tions involving collective bargain-ing or dispute resolution with the university.

“Nobody seems to quite know where this has come from,” said Michelle Mungall, the BC NDP’s critic for advanced education. “I think it’s just unreal that they have included these sections that are in-herently anti-democratic, complete-ly inappropriate and destabilize a century of tradition.”

Organizations such as the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators (FPSE), the BC Government and Service Employee Union and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), have strongly opposed the amendments. They’ve encouraged their member-ship to send letters to the ministry.

The ministry has received over 1000 letters in the past 2 weeks.

FPSE President Cindy Oliver stat-ed in a press release that they would be willing to fight the bill all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

“If this legislation passes, Christy Clark will effectively be dictating to our members who they can and can’t elect as their representative on the Board of Governors,” she wrote. “It is more than just an affront to our democratic rights; it’s a full-on attack of our freedom of associa-tion rights that are spelled out in the Charter.”

Minister for advanced educa-tion Naomi Yamamoto believes that the opposition to the bill is a result of miscommunication and that the bill itself would in no way dilute the rights of elected board members.

“Bill 18 absolutely values, and [the] government values, the participation of students and staff and faculty on the boards,” she said. “We are only preventing or making it ineligible for an elected member to serve on the board if that person is involved in negotiating terms of their contract,

or the terms of their service, on be-half of their association.

“Right now there’s no way of removing an elected member if the person is in a conflict of interest or their conduct is not considered professional.”

Yamamoto said that the amend-ments weren’t a result of any specific incidents, but did note that “there have been some circumstances that have caused us concerns, especially when that board member has shown really poor judgment in a criminal matter and there was no way for the board to remove that member.”

She also stressed that nothing in this bill gives the province the right to remove elected members, unless two-thirds of a board recommends it.

However, provincial appoin-tees make up the majority of every university board, and when their votes are combined with those of a university’s president and chan-cellor, they have the two-thirds majority required to eject an elected member—with UBC being a notable exception.

Mungall believes that this would give the province an unprecedented say in who can represent students, faculty and staff at post-secondary institutions.

“The only people who should be able to remove somebody who is elected are those who elected them,” Mungall said. “And students should be very concerned about that. Do they think government appointees ought to have the right to remove their representative?”

Yamamoto said delaying the bill will give her “an opportunity to further discuss [the bill] with some of these organizations that are con-cerned,” and went on to say that she already met with CAUT last week.

“I have been on a college board and served as board chair, and that was Capilano College at the time. And I can tell you that the participa-tion of the education council or the faculty and the staff or students is absolutely valued [and] I am in no way trying to diminish that.”

Mungall believes that the Liberal government should drop the con-troversial amendments and move forward with the rest of the bill.

“There are sections in this bill that are desperately needed right now. And to put in something con-troversial with something that the rest of the house agrees with is just bad governance.” U

Controversy delays Bill 18 amendments

To put something controversial with

someting that the rest of the house agrees with is

just bad governance.

Michelle MungallBC NDP

BC Premier Christy Clark and UBC President Stephen Toope attend the opening of offices in India.COURTESY OF BC GOVERNMENT

UWas the Bill 18 story too hacky? Would you rather read about robots and so-lar trash cans? Write for us and make it happen.COME BY THE UBYSSEY OFFICE SUB 24, FOLLOW THE SIGNS

INDIA >> GOVERNANCE >>

Arshy MannManaging Editor, Web

With unemployment for young people in Canada at record highs, there’s at least one field that is in dire need of new entrants: aviation.

With baby boomers retiring en masse and increased demand from the developing world, over 97,000 pilots will be needed in Canada and the United States alone over the next two decades.

Despite the need, Marion Harris, the student services coordina-tor at Coastal Pacific Aviation, which works with the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) to offer a Bachelor’s of Business Administration (BBA) in aviation, said that the number of students training to hit the skies is actually dropping.

UFV’s BBA in aviation is one of a handful of programs in Canada that allow students to gain a commercial pilot’s licence concurrently with a bachelor’s degree.

“We’re certainly not running at capacity by any stretch,” she said, adding that they currently have 55 students enrolled in the program. “We could take on again as many students as we have right now...But again, there [are] big things holding students back.”

The biggest of which is money; UFV’s four-year aviation degree costs approximately $95,000.

“It’s such a big financial commit-ment and we are in the firm belief that it has become more difficult for people. There’s probably a lot of people out there who would really be good at something like this...but sometimes the financial end of things is just too big,” she said.

“Yet you’ve got companies like Air Canada retiring a large group of people. You’ve got countries like China and India that have huge demand to the tune of 2500 pilots a year. You’ve got to create those people from somewhere.”

Harris said that student loans in BC cover less than half of the costs for the program.

“The government isn’t keep-ing up as far as we’re concerned with what student loans would be required to do a program like this,” she said. “There isn’t enough money for them to do this.”

Despite the glut of available jobs, once students do get their pilot licences, they still have to pay their dues.

Most go on to either fly small planes in northern Canada or work as instructors at flight schools.

Dave Field, who recently gradu-ated from the program, said that the situation can be tough for young pilots.

“You have these huge costs [for] getting the licences and once you do get [them] you typically don’t make very much money as an

instructor or even as a pilot for a small carrier.”

Field, who paid for his education through a combination of familial support, summer jobs and loans, said that the goal of most new pilots is to build up flight hours.

“As a pilot right out of flight school working your way up to that bigger and better job, hours are re-ally the currency. A lot of airlines have hour-minimum requirements to get a job,” he said.

And, according to Field, some companies are willing to take ad-vantage of that fact.

“A lot of skydiving operations don’t pay their pilots anything. [They] fly for free because they want a position where they can be building time, which, for me, I don’t agree with.”

Despite the difficulties, Harris said that aviation continues to be a

lucrative career.“There’s a lot of first officers out

there making $100,000 to $120,000. And there’s a lot of captains out there making the high $100,000s to $200,000. But that’s not coming when you’re 20 or 30 years old—that’s coming when you’re in your 40s or early 50s when you’re mak-ing that kind of money.”

She maintains, however, that people shouldn’t choose aviation for the money.

“There has to be a passion. It’s not something that you found last week, I don’t believe,” she said. “I think it’s something that someone had in them probably since childhood.”

And Field, who said that he has wanted to be a pilot for as long as he can remember, agrees.

“You have to be passionate about flying and aviation to do this, be-cause it’s a huge sacrifice.” U

Desperately seeking pilotsDespite stubborn unemployment, few students choosing aviation

Tannara Yelland CUP Prairies & Northern Bureau Chief

SASKATOON (CUP)—Aboriginal students are one of Saskatchewan’s largest untapped economic assets, according to a new study done for the Gabriel Dumont Institute.

In the study, Eric Howe, a University of Saskatchewan econom-ics professor, combined individual monetary and non-monetary ben-efits with societal benefits such as higher tax revenues. He calculated a $90 billion benefit to Saskatchewan if more aboriginal people were to get university degrees.

Howe said there are several strategies to mitigate the education gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. These range from relatively inexpensive strategies, like making high school equivalency tests available on or near reserves, to larger, more financially significant commitments. However, Howe feels the most important factor in im-proving the lives of aboriginals isn’t money, but perception.

“The most important thing we should do is have a change in the verb tenses we use in our discus-sion,” Howe said. “If you talk to a lot of aboriginal people, they will explain why they are where they are using past tense: residential schools, being lied to on treaties, being eco-nomically marginalized. It’s hard to talk about how we’re going to go forward when we’re talking in the past tense.

“Likewise, a lot of non-aboriginal people will confine themselves to talking about the present tense: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, crime rates, all sorts of social pathologies in the ab-original community,” he added.

“Just like we can’t do anything about the past, we can’t do anything about the present either. So we need to switch to the future tense and learn to talk about what kind of Canada, what kind of Saskatchewan we’re going to bequeath our children.”

Province aims to up aboriginal enrollment

SASKATCHEWAN>>TRADES >>

Lee RichardsonCUP Ontario Bureau Chief

TORONTO (CUP)—The future of visual arts studies at Queen’s University is uncertain as enrol-ment for the school’s bachelor of fine arts (BFA) program has been suspended for the next academic year.

The halt to new admissions is due to of a lack of resources, ac-cording to an announcement made by associate dean of arts and sci-ence, Gordon Smith. But according to some arts faculties, the an-nouncement potentially reflects a larger opposition towards the fine arts at universities in general.

The dean’s office sent an email assuring students that the school will “continue to assess” the BFA program. But according to faculty, there has been no guarantee that the current program will return.

“The idea is that we reconfigure and remodel the program,” said BFA printmaking professor Otis Tamasauskas. “But if we reconfig-ure, then it’s not going to be the

same program.”The announcement cites a lack

of resources, including a retire-ment within the program and fi-nancial difficulties, as the reasons for suspension of new admissions.

“Other units are also vulner-able, not just us,” said fine art undergraduate chair Jan Winton. “We’ve experienced really, really severe cutbacks, university-wide, for the last three years...it’s been

something that we’ve seen coming down the line for a long time.”

Students in the BFA program have been told that their cur-rent degree won’t be affected. But members of the student body and faculty have spoken out against the decision and created petitions in support of reconsidering the decision.

“To me, it almost feels like it’s rigged,” said Tamasauskas. “They say one thing about we don’t have the resources—but we do have resources, we have full enrolment every year.”

The offices of both the principal and Smith did not immediately re-spond to requests for interviews.

The suspension of the pro-gram for the 2012–2013 academic year, along with the Nova Scotia government’s review of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, has led to questions being raised in art circles about the future of arts and humanities education in Canada.

“It’s a concern for all of us teaching in this sector, in art and

design schools, across the coun-try,” said Caroline Langill, associ-ate dean at OCAD University’s Faculty of Art.

The future of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design is also in question. The school is facing a $2.4 million shortfall and is cur-rently under review by the Nova Scotia government. While merging with another school was initially proposed, the university’s board of governors voted against the idea and are now awaiting a province-com-missioned report that is expected to evaluate the school’s future.

Langill said art programs are valuable to universities as they educate students in a broader way that doesn’t necessarily train them for certain careers.

“It’s the hidden knowledge and the hidden breadth of knowledge that’s acquired when you’re study-ing art that’s a huge loss,” said Langill. “What are the implica-tions of us taking this out of the university? What does it mean if we are no longer able to study that?”

ARTS EDUCATION >>

National11.24.2011 | 5

Future of BFA at Queen’s in question

Baby boomer retirement has left a huge demand for new pilots—a field projected to need 97,000 new entrants over the next two decades.MARCUS OBAL/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Queen’s will no longer admit undergrads tp the BFA program, citing “a lack of resources.”DAVID ELOP/THE UBYSSEY

6 | Sports | 11.24.2011

Drake Fenton Sports Editor

Each year, the final buzzer blares and for one team it sounds like a death knoll.

With the end of a season, there is a crushing sense of finality. There is something terrible about closure, something horrific about the realization that occurs mere seconds after the final game of the year. Hope ceases to exist; the land of second chances dissipates, leaving in its wake a hollow chamber that echoes what could have been, a reality inexorably fixed within the minds of a team that failed to grasp it.

Yet every so often, there is a team that finds a way to cheat closure. Year after year they stare the finality of losing in the face and re-fuse to submit. They string together victories and the insatiable desire for victory perpetu-ates their unblemished record.

We call these teams dynasties.Currently, the UBC women’s volleyball team

is in the midst of a historic run—four consecu-tive national championship victories, and a re-alistic chance of capturing their fifth this year.

They entered the season with a No. 1 CIS ranking, a team loaded with talent, includ-ing last year’s CIS player of the year Shanice Marcelle, and after the first few weeks of the season they are the only team still undefeated in the Canada West (6-0).

Regardless if they emerge victorious this season, this team has proven itself to be a formidable dynasty in Canadian university volleyball, and accordingly, a certain question must be asked.

Is this the greatest dynasty in UBC history?

Since the CIS became a country-wide collegiate association in 1961, UBC has captured 80 national titles, the most of any school in Canada. In the last 40

years, there have only been 6 years when UBC did not win a national title.

According to UBC Athletics director Bob

Philip, a dynasty doesn’t necessarily mean consecutively stringing national titles togeth-er, and sustained success warrants labelling a team a dynasty.

In this regard, teams such as women’s field hockey are worth considering. Since 1998, they’ve won eight CIS titles, though no more than two of them consecutively. The men’s basketball team is another honourable men-tion. Each year they are a contender at nation-als, and routinely are one of the top teams in the Canada West, but they haven’t won CIS gold since 1978.

Yet, there are only three teams in UBC’s history that have been remarkably dominant for consecutive years. They are in a class of their own.

Other than the volleyball team, the other two teams with comparable pedigrees of suc-cess are men’s soccer (four straight CIS titles) and the men’s and women’s swim teams (ten straight titles).

Setting a precedent: men’s soccer

Simply put, UBC’s soccer team sets the gold standard for top-flight collegiate soccer in North America. The team’s success is unri-valed in both the CIS and the NCAA. Not only did they win four in a row from 1989-92, but in 1993 they barely lost the CIS final, falling to the University of Sherbrooke on penalty kicks.

“The year we lost to Sherbrooke we out-played [them] pretty drastically and rolled a ball off the post in the last minute or two, and the game remained tied,” said Dick Mosher, the head coach in those years. “We got beat in penalty kicks, and if we would have won those, we would have won six in a row be-cause the next year we beat Alberta 5-0 in the final.”

Greg Zorbas, the head coach of Laurentian University during that era, whose team lost 2-1 to the Thunderbirds in the 1990 national semifinal, perhaps best summarized UBC’s dominance.

“UBC is by far the best team in Canada, and the second best team is their junior varsity team and the third are the guys that tried out and got cut,” Zorbas said in Don Wells’ book on the history of UBC athletics, Flight of the Thunderbirds.

Not only did UBC win five titles in six years, but they also won three in a row from 1984-86. This is without precedent in Canada, as no other team in CIS history has ever won three in a row. Even in the NCAA, only one team has won three in a row: the University of Virginia, who won four con-secutive titles from 1991-94.

A part of the team’s success can be at-tributed to a persistent will to win. During their four-peat, they went on a streak of 52 consecutive victories.

“Having a fair amount of success breeds a certain amount of confidence in the players and you get that idea that you won’t be beat and I think that attitude pervaded the team,” said Mosher.

That confidence was something Mosher pointed to when discussing how his players kept themselves at the top of their game even when they were pushed to the brink—on the precipice of closure.

“Confidence and knowing that if we played to the end the result was going to be positive, because a lot of those games in those finals were overtime games, games won on a penalty shot, games where we were tied but we had to win to advance to the final and we scored in the last three minutes.

“Things were certainly falling right but you get a combination of luck in there and you get an unwillingness to accept defeat. Teams took us a number of times to the last three or four minutes and we still survived.”

Mike Mosher, the current men’s soccer coach, Dick Mosher’s son and a player for UBC during the early 90s, recounted one of those nail-biting moments when UBC was on the cusp of their dynasty being jeopardized.

“In 1991, I remember it was the 89th minute

against McGill and if we tied the game we were out, and in the 89th minute we scored and our centre back Gary Kern got the cross in,” said Mike Mosher. “I mean, how many times will a centre back do that? It was just desperate times; last minute of the game he gets the cross in right down on the other team’s goal line and that was the winning goal that put us into the final.”

Kings and Queens: men’s and women’s swimming

Despite the dominance of men’s soccer, the UBC swim team set a standard that may prove impossible for any team to replicate. For ten years straight, from 1998 to 2007, both the men’s and women’s teams won the national championship. The women would go on to win their 11th in 2008.

In the history of North American col-legiate sports, only five other teams, in any sport, have won ten or more consecutive national championships. All of those schools were in the NCAA, and of those schools, only two were not NCAA Division III. Louisianan State University women’s outdoor track and field team won 11 straight titles from 1987 to 1997, and the University of Arkansas men’s indoor track and field team won 12 straight championships from 1984 to 1995.

But UBC’s swim team was unique because both the men and women won 10 in a row. The only time this has been done in North America was by the men’s and women’s swim teams of Kenyon College. The women won 17 straight from 1984 to 2000 and the men won an unbelievable 31 straight from 1980 to 2010.

Though it has outstanding achieve-ments, Kenyon is a small liberal arts school in Ohio that competes in NCAA Div III. In their conference, the North Coast Athletic Conference, there is not a single school with more than 3000 students.

“I know how hard we worked to get that record,” said current UBC head swimming

The UBC women’s volleyball team is in the midst of a historic string of four consecutive national championship wins. With the possibility of winning another, is this the best team in UBC’s storied athletic history?

DYNASTY

FEATURE>>

GEOFF LISTER/THE UBYSSEY

11.24.2011 | Sports | 7

coach Steve Price, who helped coach the program during their dynasty years. “I can assure you, if you blink once you will lose that championship, and that is what happened in 2007-08. They didn’t lose it by much, but they have been second ever since.

“I think you realize it when you are on the other side of the line. When you are just below that line you see how hard it was to actually maintain that....Now that I am past it a bit and look back, I [have] to go, ‘Wow, that was pretty amazing.’”

While the swimming team had its share of close calls—there were a few championships eked out by a small margin of points—the pro-gram routinely steamrolled their competitors.

In a sport that is dependent on strong individual performances, UBC’s roster was loaded with world class talent. Brian Johns, who swam for the men’s team near the end of their run, captured a CIS record by winning 33 of 34 events. Kelly Stefanyshyn won a gold medal in the 100 metre backstroke at the Pan Am Games in 1999. Brent Hayden went on to win a gold medal at the 2007 world cham-pionships, the first Canadian to do so in 21 years.

Bob Philip recounts attending one CIS championship meet and discussing the chances of winning gold the next day with the team’s former coach, Tom Johnson.

“Johnson told me, ‘Bob, we can’t lose to-morrow even if we don’t show up. We have so many points; nobody could get enough points to beat us.’”

UBC’s new darling: women’s volleyball

For the past four years UBC has won national championships in every way imaginable. In 2008, in the CIS final against Montréal, they pulled off a nail-biting comeback, overcom-ing a 2-1 deficit which included an extra point victory in the fourth set. In 2009, they over-came an average 7-5 start and a No. 5 seeding to take home the gold. Then in 2010, they had a perfect record going 25-0 en route to their third title.

Yet for all their success, are they compara-ble to the behemoths that came before them?

They have yet to establish an unprec-edented streak like their counterparts. The University of Alberta won six straight

women’s volleyball titles from 1995 to 2000. And while they have won as many consecu-tive titles as soccer, before winning in 2008 they were shut out from CIS gold for 20 years.

“We had a fair long run where we were the perennial bridesmaids,” said head coach Doug Reimer. “We were always a strong program but had a decade of narrow losses in the na-tional championships.”

And while their streak is nowhere near the level of what swimming accomplished, this dynasty has a few things in their favour.

They play in a very competitive Canada West conference that has 11 teams.

“Even making the national championship is far from a given,” said Reimer. “All it takes is losing two matches in the Canada West fi-nal four, and there you are playing teams that are usually ranked no worse than sixth in the country.”

On most occasions the only competition in the Canada West for swimming was Calgary, who was also UBC’s arch-rival in the CIS championships. Price said that the swim teams would use the Canada West to vault their teams into the CIS final and wouldn’t attend it fully rested.

“We typically have our players qualified for the CIS championships by December,” he said. “So we used [the Canada West] for a dif-ferent purpose.”

And while the Canada West was still com-petitive in men’s soccer in the early 90s, the level of parity wasn’t close to what it is now. Mike Mosher agreed that the overall skill set of players and teams has risen since then and that it would be very difficult to replicate the success of that dynasty today.

The final divide between volleyball and swimming is the primary difference between the two sports. Volleyball is a quintessential team sport, whereas swimming, for the most part, is a sport of individuals.

“[Swimming] is an accumulation of in-dividual achievement as opposed to a team sport,” said Philip.

With the consistent turnover of athletes every year, the volleyball team must contend with not just new people, but players in com-pletely new roles.

“By no means is [winning] a given because you are not dealing with the same players in the same role. It makes it challenging...

because we need a lot of time to develop those players with those new roles,” said Reimer.

Yet Price contends that the team elements of swimming are vital to winning titles as the point spread at the CIS level is different from the international level. He said a win doesn’t create an exponential point disparity, so hav-ing depth on a team is integral.

“You can’t do it on the back of one or two. They can have some individual success but this is by far the most team oriented of any other level of our aquatic sport,” Price said. “[The players] all recognize when they come to the pool that they have to be there for each other and they don’t want to let each other down because they know how important that one extra performance can be for the championship.

“You can’t have anyone weak on your squad if you want to win that championship. They all have to contribute.”

Fred Hume, UBC’s athletics historian, was silent for exactly 20 seconds when asked which team he thought was the greatest dynasty in UBC

history.It seemed like he wouldn’t give a decisive

answer; the merits of each team made it im-possible to claim one as better than another.

Finally, the unprecedented success of the swim team forced his tongue into motion.

“I would probably put swimming at num-ber one,” he said. “You just kind of look at it and say, ‘Gosh, that is truly amazing.’”

Yet, Hume’s indecision speaks volumes about how amazing the accomplishments of these three teams are. They all share commonalities: they rewrote record books, dominated their respective sports, and more importantly, forestalled the brutal sting of closure.

But in the discourse of UBC’s greatest dy-nasties, women’s volleyball still has an ace up their sleeve. They haven’t lost.

“The program is building and developing and strong,” said Rayel Quiring, a fifth-year on the team who has been part of every championship. “I think we are not satisfied with four…and I fully expect to be a part of a dynasty, whether or not it is the greatest of all time or not.

“I think history still has to be written.” U

The women’s team after their 2007-08 CIS title win

UBC volleyball coach Doug Reimer

I think we are not satis-fied with four [champi-onships]. I fully expect to be part of a dynasty, whether or not it is the greatest of all time or not.

Rayel QuiringFifth-year UBC outside hitter

UBC men’s soccer coach Dick MosherRICH LAM/UBC ATHLETICS

From 1998 to 2007 both the men’s and wom-en’s swimming teams won ten CIS national championships. No other team in Canada has ever accomplished that.

From 1989 to 1992 the men’s soccer team won four consecutive national titles. No other soc-cer program has done that. Their closest com-petition? Themselves, winning three straight from 1984 to 1986.

Since 2008 the women’s volleyball hasn’t lost a national championship. They went undefeated in 2010, to complete a win streak that extended to 40 games.


RICH LAM/UBC ATHLETICS

The Best?There are plenty of contenders for the “Best Dynasty” title in UBC Athletics. A look at some of the university’s strongest programs.

Women’s volleyball

Men’s soccer

The swim team


CultureEditor: Ginny Monaco

11.24.2011 | 8

Ginny MonacoCulture Editor

“Sometimes people forget they have a body,” said Dana Claxton.

Claxton teaches VIST 390-Performance Art, a new class in UBC’s visual art department. While the class has a lecture and history component, Claxton said that she spends the most time on “the idea of stillness, of the artist being present. We’ll do differ-ent exercises just looking at each other, even to be engaged in eye contact.

“One of the things to get across is that performance art is alive and action-oriented,” she said.

The performance art class first ran in the 2011 spring semester as a “special project” with Claxton as the instructor. After the suc-cesses of that first incarnation, the department went through the formal process of having the class officially offered as part of the degree program. Only a hand-ful of Canadian universities offer

performance art as an option to undergraduates; many do not draw the distinction between “perfor-mance art” and the “performing arts.” As Claxton said, “Theatre is lovely, but I’m not teaching theatre.”

Claxton, a respected artist in her own right, was an ideal choice to lead the class. Her work, across a variety of platforms, has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival and Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“[Performance art] is not this obscure practice. We’re teach-ing art,” she said. “We’re teaching visual art, sculpture, digital art, painting, installation, drawing. Performance art is another facet that demands attention, that needs to be taught.”

While enrolment is currently capped in the low teens, Claxton is “open to students from other departments taking the class as well, who have a reason they want to take it. I think performance art really opens people up.

“It exposes you to all kinds of ideas. It’s raw. It’s very real.”

Visual arts student Kathy Yan Li took the class when it was still under the “special project” distinction.

“I’m definitely more confident about myself and my body as a per-former, simply because the class was so inclusive and so different. As an artist I defintely have less boundaries,” she said.

“It allowed me to conquer other

things, things I never thought I could have done.”

The intimacy of the class allows for greater freedom of expression from the students. “The body is part of the art itself,” explained Claxton. “You’re looking at the artist. The artist becomes the work.”

Over the semester, students are expected to complete three as-signments in a series of different mediums.

“There’s a whole genre of per-formance art that works with blood work,” she said. “This is the first class students are taking and I don’t think that’s an area we need to go yet. There’s a stream of bodily fluids, there’s a stream of gestures, there’s a stream of stillness.

“With any practice of art, it takes time to really build a body of work, to hone your craft. It’s the same with performance art.” U


Halfway through the origin story of Turtle Island—widely known as North America—the narrator of A Little Creation is interrupted by her grandmother when she describes it as the creation of the world.

“There could have been no con-cept of time,” the grandmother says. “This is the story of the cre-ation of our world.”

Misremembering plays a large part in Creation, a new UBC Theatre show at Freddy Wood that runs Thursday to Saturday. The play blends and retells multiple aboriginal creation stories from different traditions using puppets. The story is framed as a flashback to the narrator’s youth, when she herself was told the stories.

“I wanted to tell a story that I was familiar with, that myself or other people of mixed blood can relate to,” said Vanessa Imeson, the playwright and designer.

“As we progress, the story comes to reflect the storyteller more and more and less about the traditional elements and more of who we are as a people.”

The characters tell the story—a light-hearted tale about how animal spirits create an island for the first woman to live on—by substituting the details from their childhood recollections with more recent memories.

For example, the Sun is said to have created the woman because, as the grandmother puppet help-fully suggests, it didn’t have anyone to text. Coyote is said to own a su-shi shop just off 4th Avenue.

A central element of the play is its puppets, used primarily in the scenes telling the origin story. Representing animal spirits and other characters, they complement physical acting and range from small hand puppets to four-foot-tall papier-mâché skeletons.

The actors, many of whom had never worked with puppets before, received a training seminar with a professional puppeteer at the start of production in August.

“He told us to breathe and to be one with your puppet, and of course, this sounded absurd, and I kind of giggled a little bit,” said Lisa Smith, a second-year Law student

who was a professional actor in Newfoundland before coming to UBC.

“I realized that you get really attached, you know. It is an art in itself. I have a whole new apprecia-tion of it.”

The run time of just over a half-hour belies the scope of the show, which was moved from Black Box Theatre to accommodate its size.

“The running joke with the peo-ple upstairs is, it’s A Little Creation, but a huge production,” said Alexander Carr, an MFA scenic design student who plays Turtle. “There is a lot packed into the 30 or 40 minutes in this show, it’s just

non-stop.” The show, which is Imeson’s

MFA design thesis, was the script she pitched upon applying to the program.

It will be presented as a work-shop production, which means it could evolve further.

“It’s exploded into this very large, somewhat terrifying produc-tion which will be hopefully amaz-ing,” she said. “I just hope people have fun with it.” U

A Little Creation starts at 7:30pm Thursday through Saturday, with a 2pm matinee on Saturday. Tickets are free.

MFA play explores Turtle Island with puppetsArts Briefs

Vancouver musician Randy Ponzio found deadLocal Vancouver musician Randy Ponzio was found dead last Saturday. Ponzio, who had been reported missing since November 15, was found in a house in the Downtown Eastside. Despite no immediate signs of trauma, Vancouver police are treating the death as suspicious.

According to the Vancouver Sun, “Ponzio’s body was located after police received a call that a body had been found in a room of the Balmoral Hotel in the 100 block of East Hastings.”

Ponzio, who was 35, won a song search contest run by Shore FM for his song “For the People.”

Artists petition for Resale Right

The Canadian Artists’ Representation/le Front des art-ists canadiens (CARFAC), which is the Canadian association of visual artists, is lobbying the federal gov-ernment to add the Artists’ Resale Right (ARR) to the Canadian Copyright Act.

First introduced in France in 1920, the ARR would entitle artists to receive five per cent from public sales of their work through auction houses and commercial galleries.

Today, 59 countries worldwide have legislated this right, including the entire European Union. “This royalty is based on the ongoing market value of an artist’s work and won’t cost tax payers a cent,” said April Britski, national director of CARFAC.

CBC announces Canada Reads selection

CBC has announced the five fi-nalists in its 2012 Canada Reads competition.

Canada Reads is CBC’s annual battle of the books, where five Canadian personalities each select a book they want Canadians to read. They defend their chosen book in a series of debates until a winner is declared.

The theme for 2012 is “True Stories” and is about finding the memoir, biography or work of liter-ary non-fiction for the entire coun-try to read.

One of the finalists is The Game by Ken Dryden, which tells the story of his 1979 season with the Montréal Canadiens.

New app travels through Vancouver’s history

The Canadian Encyclopedia has launched Vancouver In Time, a new free app for Apple devices highlighting many little-known stories from the city’s history.

The app allows users to navigate through 45 stories, including the story of Gassy Jack, the rise and fall of Vancouver’s punk scene and the unsolved murder of two children in Stanley Park in the 1890s.

It also includes a “then and now” feature which contrasts historical photographs with present-day im-ages. Vancouver In Time is the first in a series, with a similar app for Toronto coming up next. U

Student Kathy Yan Li said VIST 390 allowed her to open up as an artist.DAVID MARINO/THE UBYSSEY

THEATRE >>

ARTS EDUCATION >>

ALEXANDRA DOWNING/THE UBYSSEY

New performace art class breaks boundaries

Actor David Kaye brings the Coyote character to life in UBC Theatre’s A Little Creation.

The body is part of the art itself. You’re looking at the artist. The artist becomes the work.

Dana ClaxtonInstructor, VIST 390

FACEBOOK

11.24.2011 | Feature | 9

FREDERICTON (CUP)—Thirty sec-onds can change everything.

Over time, Dianne Sheehan has pieced together what happened to her son Nick before he fell to his death from a residence window at St Francis Xavier University in March of 2009.

She knows it was shortly after 9pm when he fell. She remembers, three hours later, receiving the knock on her Fredericton home’s front door that every parent dreads.

She knows he was partying that night and took drugs. Nick didn’t have much experience with drugs and his body had a psychotic reac-tion when he took them.

His friends have told her Nick was standing outside a room on the fourth floor of the university’s Lane Hall residence, talking to a female resident.

From what Sheehan understands, 30 seconds later, her son was dead.

More than two years after Nick’s death, Sheehan still doesn’t have all the answers about what happened that night—and she realizes she may never have them all. But she’s come to terms with what happened.

“I would have loved to have called my son that evening, but it wouldn’t have changed anything,” she said.

“He was a good kid who was a hard worker who made an error in judgment.”

The Sheehans aren’t the only family mourning the loss of a son.

On September 6, 2011, 19-year-old Jonathan Andrews was found un-responsive in his Acadia University residence room after a night of heavy drinking. He was transported to the QEII Health Science Centre in Halifax, where he later died.

In October 2010, St Thomas University (STU) student Andrew Bartlett died from an accidental fall in his apartment building after a night of drinking, which police de-termined was a contributing factor to his fall.

Bartlett, 21, had just made the school’s volleyball team and had been at a rookie party meant to initi-ate new team members.

Like Sheehan, Andrews and Bartlett weren’t characterized as party animals in obituaries and by friends after their deaths. In all three cases, it appears as if some-thing went terribly wrong.

Their deaths have been a wake- up call for university administra-tors in the Atlantic provinces, some of whom are asking if they can do more to steer students away from partying and excessive alcohol consumption.

In a country where, according to the Canadian Study on Substance Abuse, students are binge drinking on a regular basis before they reach university, some are saying the problem goes beyond universities.

Jonathan Andrews was a scholarship winner who played rugby, swam and loved to travel. His obituary

says he worked three jobs in high school to be able to travel to places his parents hadn’t been able to visit.

While attending Western Canada High School in Calgary, he would give what was left of his lunch to homeless people hanging out around the dumpster behind the school.

Andrews died the day before classes were set to begin at Acadia University, where he was going to study science.

His obituary says the last thing he told his parents was that he wanted to make as many friends as possible during those first two weeks.

Acadia’s orientation week activi-ties are dry, but residences are not, university spokesman Scott Roberts said. Drinking games are prohib-ited and only residents older than 19 are allowed to have alcohol in their

rooms.The investigation into Andrews’s

death was conducted by the RCMP, and Roberts said he isn’t in a posi-tion to release more details than are already available.

“The only thing that I have as information...is what the RCMP re-ported at the time,” he said.

Since Andrews’s death, the uni-versity has asked Dr Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief public health officer, to investigate what policies are in place at Acadia to discourage binge drinking and which ones can be improved.

“Our plan is to receive his report in whatever form it comes and share it with our community and imple-ment changes that we can,” Roberts said.

Almost a year later, the topic of Andrew Bartlett’s death is still uncomfortable on the St Thomas University

campus.Bartlett, who was from the small

tourist town of St Andrews, New Brunswick, was supposed to gradu-ate last May.

Friends said he planned to become a teacher and loved STU so much that he didn’t want to graduate.

He’s been remembered as some-one who made friends quickly and by another friend as the most re-sponsible person she knew. His fam-ily, who declined to be interviewed for this story, have set up a scholar-ship fund and hold an annual golf tournament in his name.

Bartlett was proud to have made the volleyball team in his final year and friends remembered him skip-ping trips to the campus bar to go to practice.

He was with his team during his last night at an initiation party that started on campus.

After Bartlett’s death, reports of the party led to an investigation by the university. Then-university president Dennis Cochrane made it clear the team wasn’t responsible for Bartlett’s death, but suspended the men’s volleyball team from playing for the rest of the season for violating the university’s hazing policies.

The university also drafted a new code of conduct after Bartlett’s death, which could penalize stu-dents for inappropriate behaviour on campus or off campus, if they are representing the university in some way.

Barry Craig, Vice-President Academic at STU, said Bartlett’s death wasn’t the trigger for the new code of conduct—but it certainly ac-celerated the process.

“That wasn’t the first time we thought of this, that wasn’t the first time we had an alcohol-related incident,” he explained. “But it was certainly the one that said, right, okay, we can’t keep putting this off. We have to deal with this.”

The draft code addresses hazing, although Ryan Hamilton, a hazing expert at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) says it could take more than a set of policies to elimi-nate it from university campuses.

“People die every single year be-cause of things related to hazing and usually related to alcohol at univer-sities,” he said. “It happens year, af-ter year, after year. You would think that if somebody dying was enough, it would stop happening.

“The reality is, it’s not a simple problem to solve,” he continued. “Drinking is a legal act, alcohol is readily available [and] there’s a culture within universities where alcohol is promoted. You can’t walk around the campus without seeing drink special signs.”

This year, for the first time, UNB asked Hamilton to meet with every varsity sports team to talk about hazing at the beginning of the year.

“I wish it was enough. I wish the educational interventions that I pro-vide were enough to stop [hazing] but I think it’s more complicated than that,” he said.

“It takes a lot of people seeing the problem and working toward solu-tions than a policy document or a one-hour session.”

Other administrations are taking steps to mitigate the risks associated with binge drinking. Three students died at Atlantic universities in the past few years. Queen’s University in Ontario went as far as to ban alcohol in first-year residences dur-ing welcome week following the death of two students last year. The Queen’s policy banned alcohol, even if the resident was of legal age.

The circumstances are differ-ent at UBC, the university said. According to Janice Robison, a spokesperson for UBC Housing, it’s a question of culture.

“[Queen’s has] had some tragic circumstances to deal with, and I know they’re very serious about wanting to change their campus community culture as it relates to the over-consumption of alcohol,” she said. “[The ban] creates an op-portunity for some reflection about that.

“Banning alcohol from our resi-dences during Firstweek is not our policy and we’re not anticipating that this will be our policy,” she said.

For Dianne Sheehan, one of the hardest parts of losing her son Nick was dealing with the way he died.

“You get a stigma attached to a tragic death and as a family it’s [hard] to deal with that.”

At St Francis Xavier, university administrators aren’t eager to link any changes to university policy to Nick’s death.

“We’ve been on a path of man-aging behaviour and educating students. We’ve been on that path even before the tragedy of the stu-dent falling from the window,” said Keith Publicover, the university’s vice-president of recruitment and student experience.

“Our work in educating students and reviewing policy and procedure is not linked to that incident.”

And while Sheehan likes the idea of having codes of conduct that guide student behaviour, she’s not convinced they can prevent another death like her son’s from happening.

“A code of conduct would be wonderful, but you can’t follow these kids every second of the day,” she said.

Her youngest daughter has just started her first year at the University of Ottawa. People have asked her if she’s calling her daughter every day because of what happened to Nick. But she’s not worried.

What does worry her is that no one in her daughter’s residence held a meeting to talk about responsible drinking after Jonathan Andrews’s death last month.

“When something like that hap-pens, I don’t think it needs to be a huge lecture, but I think it should be brought to the kids’ attention,” she said.

“It’s nothing more than a re-minder to kids to think before you drink: be cautious and make smart decisions.”

It will take a long time to change the culture around drinking, which Sheehan said is a different type of drinking than when she was in university.

Until then, the best advice she can offer students is to be smart about the choices they make.

“Kids are going to be kids no matter what. You pray to God you taught your kids the right things and that they’ll use their judgment.”

—with files from Jonny Wakefield

A slew of alcohol-related tragedies have struck universities in eastern Canada.Is binge drinking becoming the new norm? A special feature from the Canadian University Press. Karissa DonkinThe Aquinian (St Thomas University)

Do we drink too much?

GEOFF LISTER/ THE UBYSSEY

OpinionEditor: Brian Platt

11.24.2011 | 10

A concrete solution for UBC’s governance

Honeydew: Well, after a long wait and endless parody trailers, it’s final-ly time to play the music and light the lights. The Muppets are back on the big screen! Are you excited, Beaker?

Beaker: Meep meep meep.

H: Yes, well said! But we all know the travesty that was 1999’s Muppets from Space. It lost a lot of money, Beaker. And for a time, it seemed as though we might never see the Muppets on the big screen again, which would be heartbreaking.

B: Meep meep. Meep meep meep meep meep meep meep.

H: You’re right. People need to make sure they actually show up at the theatre and support this film, lest it be the final gasp of the Muppets

forever. Don’t torrent it, don’t wait for Netflix. Go to the theatre while you can!

B: Meep meep meep meep meep.

H: I know, $50 million is a big bud-get for this movie, so we’ll need all the support we can get. Otherwise, Statler and Waldorf won’t be the only ones heckling.

B: Meep meep. Meep meep meep meep meep. Meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep.

H: Beaker! That’s a horrible thing to say about someone’s mother. You must watch your manners.

B: Meep.

H: That’s better. Now, please, let me finish. We know how fun it is to watch Muppet Labs and the Swedish Chef and everyone else on Youtube. But if you don’t pay up for this film, that’s the only place you’ll be seeing them in the future. U

Did you know that sometime in the next couple of years, people who live on campus will debate what sort of local government we’ll have for de-cades to come?

It’s true! And you’d never know it from the deafening silence.

It has been nearly two years since the provincial government took over jurisdiction of UBC from Metro Vancouver and pledged to work with the university to find a long-term solution for governance.

So we’re going to get something new. Which is good, because what we have—a variety of small asso-ciations and advisory boards, but a university that has the final say on all building, zoning and development—is less than ideal.

But what shape will this new municipal monster take? Will University Town have a mayor, or just an advisory council? Will UBC have guaranteed seats, and if so, how many? If in the future somebody wanted to build a bar/yoga studio/bowling alley on campus, who would approve that? Could UBC have a veto if they didn’t like the idea? Will students have guaranteed represen-tation, or be ghettoized? What lands will be included? What powers will be included?

These are important questions that should be debated, because they will determine the way the non-academic lands of this campus grow for years to come. Every stakeholder should come forward with proposals and grand ideas for the future. It isn’t every day that a population of over 10,000 people gets to figure out how to be governed.

However, People In Charge, most of whom are normally very sensible, seem content to wait until UBC comes forward with a proposal.

This is a mistake.It’s a mistake because when UBC

comes forward with a governance plan—and Campus and Community

Planning has been preparing one for many, many months—it will favour UBC’s long-term interests and give short shrift to the concerns of people who actually live here. It may actu-ally give UBC-appointed people a majority of seats on a quasi-council.

This would give the university maximum flexibility moving for-ward, and limit the actual power any governing body has. If the only group that proposes a comprehensive plan is UBC, then the provincial govern-ment will ultimately pass into law a document which gives UBC 90 per cent of what they want. Public consultations will have little effect because most of the work was still done behind closed doors.

This is not to begrudge our univer-sity. They were given this land from the province 100 years ago, told they could do what they want with it, and built up a billion-dollar endowment. They like the status quo, because the status quo works for them.

But of course, nobody forced them to build a city here. They did, and now the people who live here would like some real democracy, please and thank you.

In any case, it’s important that we, as a community, start debating ideas for the future of this pseudo-city and not wait for UBC to propose some-thing. This paper has been saying so for 18 months, and to date nobody has stepped up with a real, compre-hensive idea.

So why not me? Next week, I’ll outline a scenario for how UBC could be governed. We’ll call it “The McElroy Plan.” It will brainstorm a future UBCity where students have a voice, permanent residents have a real local government, UBC has a degree of control over the process, and people who live here have an ac-countable government.

People can look at the McElroy Plan, steal parts they like for their own proposals, deride the entire thing as simplistic or naive, or just completely ignore it.

But at least something will be out there. And after two years of people talking about governance but doing nothing to move the debate forward, that, in itself, is a good thing. U

Editor’sNotebook

JustinMcElroy

The Last WordParting shots and snap judgments on today’s issues

Pay up to see MuppetsPerspectives>> Dr Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker

The gall of the University of Toronto

Last month UBC launched a fund-raising campaign with a goal of $1.5 billion. The University of Toronto saw their bet, and raised them. This week, U of T announced plans to raise $2 billion and has called it “the largest fundraising campaign in Canadian university history.”

Are you going to take that, UBC? U of T must not be allowed to one-up us in anything.

Our two universities are partner-ing in opening an office in New Delhi; UBC must secretly open offices in Mumbai and Bangalore, and make these offices even nicer. A new of U of T study has found a new way to predict multiple sclerosis; it’s time for UBC to cure MS once and for all. Another U of T study has brought new research to light about the domestication of the soybean; UBC must now domesticate its own bean, called the Toopebean, and make it bigger than any other bean in the world.

Screw you, Toronto.

The gall of the Universal Music Group

Grooveshark is a site that lets you stream music uploaded by other us-ers. It’s also what we use in the of-fice whenever we need good tunes in the background.

Universal Music Group is one of the largest music labels in the world. It has just announced a lawsuit against Grooveshark of upwards of $15 billion. Grooveshark feels it can win in the courts, but given previ-ous judgments against other sites that depend on users sharing their files for free, Grooveshark’s chances don’t look very good.

Here at The Ubyssey, we believe that artists should be properly compensated for their work and that stealing is wrong and so on. But damn it, we like Grooveshark. It’s so convenient!

So even though you’re stand-ing up for a very justifiable cause: screw you, Universal.

Teacher’s Assistants at UBC deserve to be paid more

You probably don’t know that Teacher’s Assistants on this campus have been without a contract for over a year. A strike/lock-out isn’t in the cards, but TAs have to be less than thrilled that UBC’s proposal gives them a grand salary increase of zero per cent.

TAs at UBC are fairly well paid, but those at U of T (which is this university’s main competitor) are paid more. And given how expen-sive housing is in this city, our TAs should be paid more than at other universities.

UBC often references the fact that the absurd cost of living in Vancouver makes it difficult to recruit world-class faculty. Well, it also makes it difficult to recruit world-class graduates, and they’re the ones doing quite a bit of the teaching for undergraduates (aka: the majority of people on this campus).

So while the TA union may not be publicly advocating for higher wages, we’ll do it for them. Yes, there are the occasional issues with low accountability, but in general we want our TAs to be well-paid and stress-free.

Occupy Vancouver pays the price for disregarding election

If last week’s civic election had a clear loser, it was the left of centre Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE). The party, which was in a power sharing alliance with Vision Vancouver, was wiped off council and the parks board.

We couldn’t help but notice a bit of irony in how former COPE coun-cillor Ellen Woodsworth, in defeat, declared that her party would come back from this drubbing.

“We are a 40-year-old party. We are a movement,” she said. “We are the 99 per cent.”

There’s plenty of blame to go around for this defeat—an espe-cially aggressive NPA campaign, a second billing to the mega-spend-ing Vision, a firebrand pick for

council in Tim Louis. But perhaps the most conspicuous target is Occupy. For whatever reason, the movement has largely eschewed the electoral route to change—la-beling those who suggest otherwise as centre-left sell outs. If anything, trying to align themselves with the deteriorating movement blew up in COPE’s face.

The result? We’re left with a developer party holding the reins of power. The only check on Vision is a first time Green councillor, as opposed to a slate of candidates who are experienced in fighting for neighbourhoods and the homeless, and who have consistently voted against Vision’s development plans.

So keep writing off the ballot box, Occupy. See where that gets you.

This movement was not supposed to be about tents

One reason for Occupy’s failure to positively influence the election (at least in regard to their own goals) is that in recent weeks, they’ve com-pletely lost the narrative. The brunt of their effort has been spent on a futile effort to allow themselves to keep their tent city indefinitely. Instead of coming up with new and innovative ways to fight income in-equality, they’ve picked a fight they were doomed to lose.

We are happy that Vancouver hasn’t witnessed the violent con-frontations between occupiers and police that some American cities have seen; by and large, the Vancouver occupiers have packed up and left when the courts asked them to. But if this becomes just a game of whack-a-mole with the courts, with the tent city moving each time a new injunction comes down, the Occupy movement in Vancouver is dead.

Having a park or city square filled with tents doesn’t achieve goals. If Occupy wants to stay rel-evant in the political discourse, it needs to take advantage of the net-work built up within the camp and use that to mobilize around specific actions. It’s time to forget the tents and move on. U

INDIANA JOEL/THE UBYSSEY

UBC President Stephen Toope hears of U of T President David Naylor’s fundraising plan.

11.24.2011 | 11ScenePictures and words on your university experience

The 25 Queries close out fire sale

The 25 Queries of Student D is an attempt to answer 25 pressing ques-tions posted anonymously by a com-menter on The Ubyssey’s website. For the introduction to this column, and to read the original comment, visit ubyssey.ca/opinion/the-twen-ty-five-queries-of-st432udent-d/.

The 25 Queries of Student D is reaching its expiry date. After three months of answering Student D’s questions, I am running low on irony and facetiousness. Such re-sources are finite.

In the interest of ending this sor-did business, I’ll be cramming the rest of the queries into the next two articles. Here’s the first.

14. an explanation on the function of each UBC department, like the plant operation shit

UBC Plant Operations runs the mulching systems used to convert Wesbrook Village senior citizens into low-emission biofuel. Most of the buildings on UBC campus are heated with the remains of pen-sioners and the semi-solid fluids scraped off the floor after fraternity parties. David Suzuki approves.

15. an explanation on the nature of each course, may be feedback from students“Feedback?” Quit playin’. All you want to know about UBC courses are which ones you need in order to graduate and how easily you can coast through them, get your piece of paper, land a career and afford a new iPhone every year until you die. Don’t act like you’re here to learn.

16. how the fuck is AMS spending the money

Most of it is going up their noses. The AMS execs are uniformly ad-dicted to cocaine and obscene acts of ultra-violence. The new SUB has a sex dungeon especially designed for the execs, featuring enormous mirror-top tables and industrial-strength titty clamps (“Soviet style,” if you’re down with the lin-go). Don’t even try to fool yourself into believing they’re working for the betterment of students. It’s all about fat rails and titty-welts.

17. who the fuck voted YES to the new SUB

Everyone with a conscience. It’s about the children. Would you want the next generation of UBC stu-dents passing their breaks between classes in this sticky shit-grotto?

18. why the fuck is UBC accepting so many students

New standards. Back in the day, you only went to university if you were rich, white and male. Now they’re letting anyone in.

20. what the fuck is wrong with people who make noise at 1:00am in the rezOh, that? They’re just busy having more fun than you.

21. where to buy weed, rumour says totem

Call me.

24. how much do people editting “The UBC Report” earn

What is this? What are you talking about?

25. musical and theatre performance news

It is not within The Ubyssey’s bud-get to stage weekly vaudeville per-formances reporting the news.

If you’ve seen Justin McElroy shred The Lion King on a Casio, though, you’ll understand how much we wish we could do this. U

I’m really bored of answering these questions, so let’s finish this sordid business

Deep in your heart of hearts, you know this to be true. VELKR0 PHOTO/FLICKR

HUMOUR >>

The 25 Queries of Student D

Bryce Warnes

You’d be this smug too, if you wrote for Culture

WRITE FOR THE UBYSSEYGinny [email protected]

12 | Games | 11.24.2011

Across

1— Conscription org. 4— Tree of the birch family 9— Antlered animal 14— “The Bells” poet 15— Mislead 16— Big name at Indy 17— Egyptian cobra 18— Alamogordo’s county 19— One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author 20— Dilapidated 23— St. crossers 24— Sky light 25— Lets up 28— Hit on the head 30— Buddy 33— Large drinking bowl34— Describes a gently cooked steak 35— East of Eden brother 36— High—speed separator 39— Gets the picture 40— Wall St. debuts 41— More cunning 42— Computer key 43— 1982 Disney film 44— Biases 45— Fine hair 46— Jack of Rio Lobo 47— Development of a cancer

54— Income source 55— Blew it 56— Altar in the sky 57— Hives 58— Actor Christopher 59— Baseball club 60— Hickory nut 61— Blender brand 62— Extra—wide shoe size

Down

1— Disagreement 2— Cubs slugger Sammy 3— Equinox mo. 4— Skin emollient 5— Petrol units 6— Exploits 7— French 101 verb 8— Board’s partner 9— Eskimo boot 10— ____ a million 11— _____ buco (veal dish) 12— In the public eye 13— Trick ending? 21— Spuds 22— Lou Grant star 25— Divert 26— Bundles 27— Early Mexican 28— Ecclesiastical rule 29— Scraps

30— Boston hockey player 31— Man of many words 32— Lulus 34— Bank takeback 35— Blazing 37— Wispy clouds 38— Inhabitant of Oahu, Mind-anao or Java 43— City in S Arizona 44— Arm cover 45— “Band of Gold” singer Payne 46— “Snowy” bird 47— Attention 48— A Baldwin brother 49— Adopted son of Claudius 50— Metal containers 51— Kemo ______ 52— Dies _ ____ 53— Fill completely 54— Dine

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

UWriteShootEdit CodeDrinkCOME BY THE UBYSSEY OFFICE SUB 24, FOLLOW THE SIGNS

November 24, 2011

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