STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITYThe Peak February 7, 2011 •137/6 • FREE www.the-peak.ca | Cancelling Netfl ix since 1965

Pub renos behind schedule

NEWS 4

“Blood money” hasno place at SFU

OPINIONS 9

University doesn’t teach us anything

FEATURES 18

WIN VANCOUVER CANUCKS TICKETS SPORTS 32

STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITYSTUDENT NEWSPAPER OF SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITYThe Peak The Peak February 7, 2011 •137/6 • FREEThe Peak The Peak www.the-peak.ca | Cancelling Netfl ix since 1965The Peak

Pub renos behind schedule

NEWS 4

“Blood money” hasno place at SFU

OPINIONS 9

University doesn’t teach us anything

FEATURES 18

DOWNLOADING...

FEATURES 20

The unfolding story of usage-based internet billing in Canada

the peak

2 FIRST PEEKFebruary 7, 2011 • Volume 137 Issue 6

THE PEAKMaggie Benston Centre 2900

Simon Fraser University8888 University Drive

Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6

The Peak offi ce is located on the second fl oor of the Maggie Benston Centre, underneath Higher Grounds coffee shop.

General Phone 778.782.4560Business Phone 778.782.3598Advertising Fax 778.782.4343

PEAK CONTRIBUTORS

Lauren Alston (CUP), Jennifer Bednard, Aleks Besan, Kim Bloom-

fi eld, Garret Brezsnyak, Keenan Federico, Graeme Ford, Natalie Gan,

Emma Godmere(CUP), Kevin Harding, Matt Hill (CUP), Kody Huard,

Sebastian Jonas, Ricardo Khayatte, Jordan Kohn, Ariane Madden,

Fingers “Thumbs” McGee, Dan McPeake, Jennifer Overington, Ja-

cob Pacey (CUP), Michael Penney (CUP), Dev Saini, Travis Sandulo,

Al Theuri, Lisa Thomson, Esther Tung, Rexter Vosper, The Riddler,

Kailey Willetts (CUP), Lorenz Yeung

PEAK ASSOCIATESChris Apps, Mark Burnham, Adam Cristobal, Adam

Ovenell-Carter, Julia Kozlov, Andrew MacLachlan, John Morrison III, Ljudmila Petrovic, Sam Reynolds, Shahanah

Shivji, Cedric Tsan, Lucas Westhaver, Meaghan Wilson, Bai Yin, Giovanni Zenone

COPY EDITOR Erika Zellcopy@the-peak.ca

PRODUCTION DESIGNER Bryn Hewkoproduction@the-peak.ca

NEWS EDITOR David Proctornews@the-peak.ca

ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR Kendra Wongnews@the-peak.ca

FEATURES EDITOR Kelly Thoresonfeatures@the-peak.ca

ARTS EDITOR Clinton Hallahanarts@the-peak.ca

778.782.4630

OPINIONS EDITOR Graham Templetonopinions@the-peak.ca

SPORTS EDITOR Matt Leesports@the-peak.ca

PHOTO EDITOR Andy Fangphotos@the-peak.ca

HUMOUR EDITOR Colin Sharphumour@the-peak.ca

BUSINESS / ADVERTISING MANAGERAD DESIGNER, AND PRODUCTION RESOURCE

Larry van Kampenlarry@the-peak.ca

778.782.3598

WEB EDITOR Colin Sharpweb@the-peak.ca

NETWORK ADMINISTRATOR Andrew Yang

PROMOTIONS COORDINATORRamesh Ranjan

promotions@the-peak.ca

DISTRIBUTION & ARCHIVES COORDINATOR Robert Lutener

larry@the-peak.ca

ELECTED COLUMNISTS Rachel Hughes & Gary Lim

THIS WEEK’S COVER ARTWORKAndy Fang and Mark Burnham

HOW THE PEAK WORKSThe Peak is the official student newspaper of Simon Fraser University and is published every Monday. The Peak is a registered non-profit society under the Society Act of British Columbia and is funded by a student levy and is governed by a board of directors. Editors are elected on week 10 of each semester to hold a position for the following semester. Any SFU student can run for an editorial position. Eligible voters are anyone who appears in the masthead. Notice of the time and place of the election will be posted in the ETC section of The Peak in advance.

SUBMISSIONS POLICYThe Peak’s editors reserve the right to edit all submissions for length, as well as stylistic, grammatical, and legal guidelines. The Peak also reserves the right to reprint submissions at any time, in both written and electronic formats. All articles published in The Peak will be published online at www.the-peak.ca. The Peak will not publish content that is sexist, racist, or otherwise hateful or prejudiced.

ETCOff-campus subscriptions to The Peak are available for $56 per year. Requests should be addressed to The Peak’s business manager.

The Peak is a member of the Canadian University Press (CUP), a national organization of Canadian student newspapers.

WWW.THE-PEAK.CALAST WORDETC

Send ur short TXT MSGS to 1 (778) 990-3854 or email to production@the-peak.ca. **Plz include TXT in the email subject line. The Peak will not print submissions considered to be sexist, racist, homophobic, or attacks of a personal nature.

TXT MSGS » Guy looking for Nerdfighters is

so jokes

» Oh , shit. I really am going to be

tormented by a monthly elephant

joke

» What is with the surrey campus

floor and creaking?

» Worst TA line ever: you don’t

need to worry about that”. Why the

fuck am I going to university???

» Hard to convince students to

pay more to support the building

of a SUB when it won’t even be

finished by the time they graduate.

» Accept the 10 million. Beggars

cant be choosers. I bet the protest-

ers are mostly soc majors.

» There is an ape in our hallways

:|

» Yes to fall reading break!! Hope-

fully we’ll get one someday as well.

» Fellow Nerdfighters! DFTBA.

» “I’ll take Awesome Campus

events for 1600, Alex”. Pub Quiz

was great.

» Jonesy’s random fact: bermuda,

jamaica &belize all considered join-

ing the canadian federation0

» Joey! Earth to Joey! Hey are

you in there? It’s your move!

» I am David Proctor

» 0I hear so much crap from stu-

dents whining about less funding,

and probs same peeps protesting

Goldcorp’s donation. Surrsly?

» So Goldcorp gives 10 million to

sfu and we’re gonna have to pay

more to get a SUB? Why Don’t

we just ask McDonalds to sponso,

wht’s another multinational with

disgusting track recod gonna do?

» I love you boo-boo :3

» To the girl in res with the suit-

case and the bag with a huge baby

on it, where were you going and

can I come to? ;)

» When you’re lucid you’re the

sweetest thing.

» we were seriously the SFU Klan

before? I dont wanna know wat the

mascot was

» Glee is only on Sunday for

Super Bowl! Durr!

» I totally pulled a Sam Reynolds

in a parking complex last weekend

» SFU Bathrooms=shitty

NEWSHighland Pub renovations won’t finish until reading breakOrganizational and logistical difficulties have pushed the anticipated completion date back to February 18.

4

By CLINTON HALLAHAN

OPINIONSFair trade is more than just marketing

Cynicism doesn’t help anyone, and it ignores all the good that the ethical growing movement is doing.

9

By NATALIE GAN, DAN MCPEAKE, ALEKS BESAN

FEATURESCertifiably uncertifiable: universities teach us nothing but how to get hiredInstead of providing a transformative educational experience, universities only certify students for the job market.

18

By GRAEME FORD

ARTSThe big, comfy couch

Green Couch Productions brings some much needed visuals to local music.

25

By RICARDO KHAYATTE

SPORTSThe losing streak is over

The Clan picked up a thrilling 95–92 overtime win over the Saints to move back into playoff contention.

27

By ADAM OVENELL-CARTER

HUMOURConflict between Crips and Bloods set-tled by UCLA arts instructor

Sessional instructor Steven Rubix took time out of his day to explain the basics of colour theory.

34

By AL THEURI and COLIN SHARP

33 36

THIS WEEK

the peak

3February 7, 2011First Peek

The Internet is a land of many contrasts. In one part you can find delightful images of baby animals or learn something fascinating about volcanoes. Take the wrong bend, though, and you may find yourself in dark and depraved back-alleys lined with of shock sites and child pornography (this place is also known as 4chan). In order to navigate this mysterious and occasionally unnerving info-tainment superhighway I pres-ent to you The Continuum of Decency. This spectrum pro-vides a range of the debauchery you may discover tailored spe-cifically to webcomics.

As with any good contin-uum, there are two drastically different extremes, which are represented with the webcom-ics American Elf and Electric Retard. I feel confident that the names alone will let you deter-mine which of these extremes is the principled, and which is the debauched. The webcomic I most associate with having a code of ethics and a sense of common human decency is American Elf.

American Elf is a daily diary comic which chronicles the precious moments of James Kochalka’s life and family. The majority of Kochalka’s com-ics revolve around his family’s own dynamics, and are often cherry-picked quotations or situations that contain a cer-tain “Aaaw” factor. As of late

(i.e. since Kochalka and his wife have procreated) American Elf has become a contemporary and more ridiculous Kids Say the Darndest Things.

This is not necessarily an insult, since the content is in-deed enjoyable, and kids, espe-cially Kochalka’s, really do say some hilarious things on occa-sion. With his comic, Kochalka manages to portray a childlike sense of whimsy and apprecia-tion of a fairly jaded and cyni-cal world. Although there is the sporadic depiction of nudity, swears, and other adult con-tent, Kochalka upholds many valued social conventions, such as respect for others, pa-tience with raising children, and the nuclear family unit. Thus, American Elf represents the so-called ‘decent’ extreme of the continuum.

On the opposite end of the spectrum we find ourselves at Electric Retard, a webcomic that’s sole reason for existing is to shock and offend every-one at the same time. To sum up the comic’s content from its very own About page, “Electric Retard is an entrancing comic strip suitable for children. Set in the atypical American sub-urb of Sunny Hills in the town of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Elec-tric Retard depicts the perfectly ordinary lives of freedom lov-ing Americans in their jour-neys to find wealth, love, and happiness.”

The actual content often portrays scenes excessive vio-lence, sexual perversions, rac-ism, sexism, ableism, and naked Hitler, all of which are often combined into one strip. Oh yes, and these offences are usually against children too. At least audiences may take comfort in the idea that Elec-tric Retard is a satirical venture and is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. Due the grotesque nature of this particular comic (it is also entirely drawn and coloured in MS Paint, which is grotesque enough in and of it-self ), I make Electric Retard the contrasted extreme to Ameri-can Elf.

All in all, the Internet is a strange place, which makes it a perfect breeding ground for great, albeit bizarre content. However if you keep your bear-ings and a sense of humour you are sure to be delighted.

The continuum of webcomics decency

COMICS 2.0

WANT TO WRITE IN THIS SPACE? Two columnists are elected in week 11 of each semester. Keep your eyes on the ETC

section of the newspaper for election dates and times. Anyone can run!

From American Elf to

Electric Retard, the Internet

can produce comics

appealing to literally any

demographic

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Andy Fang/ The PeakGuard Ricky Berry is introduced before the men’s basketball game.

27

Rachel HughesElected Columnist

PEAK SPEAK

Ashley LeBourpeau5th-year English

“If I had the option I would, but I wouldn’t change where I was shopping just to find it.”

Andrew Poelstra3rd-year mathematics

“I feel like everything around here is fair trade anyway. So I don’t really make a big effort or think about it too much. I couldn’t really avoid it if I tried.”

Halima Elmi1st-year health sciences

“It’s not really something I always think about. When you’re on the run and you’re just trying to get some coffee, it’s not something you think about. I don’t seek it out.”

Ilhan Abdulla1st-year health sciences

“If the choice was in front of me, but it’s not something that I’m very educated about.”

Q: Do you actively seek out fair trade products?

Ryan LledoCampus employee

“I don’t actively seek it out, but if I have the option in front of me, I’ll go for it. It’s nice if it’s there, though”

5

This spectrum provides a range of debauchery you may dis-cover tailored specifically to webcomics.

the peak

4 NEWSFebruary 7, 2011

news editor David Proctorassociate news editor Kendra Wongemail news@the-peak.caphone 778.782.3597

CAMPUS NEWS

Highland Pub renovations won’t finish until reading break

Unforeseen demolition chal-lenges and municipal red tape have delayed the completion of renovations to the Highland Pub on SFU’s Burnaby Campus.

As the completion slid past the slated January 1 date, project supervisors at the Simon Fraser Student Society, which owns and operates the pub, and at SFU Fa-cilities Management laid blame on permit holdups from the City of Burnaby and renovating a nearly 40-year-old building as the key cul-prits in the delay. The new targeted completion date is February 18.

“Initial mismanagement of the project and the building per-mit were the main hold ups,” said SFSS president Ali Godson. The project has straddled two SFSS boards and the initial designs submitted under former presi-dent Ada Nadison lacked suffi-cient consultation.

“Having heard the concerns of students at the single consulta-tion after the space was designed, we stopped the project until the designs could be reworked with proper consultation,” explained Godson.

Miscommunications with campus services on the part of the 2009 SFSS board was also a culprit. Facilities Management has jurisdiction over the project but was not part of the renovation process until design work had started. “Instead of being able to set the project plan out from start to finish they had to come in somewhere in the middle and try to figure out what had already been done and where we needed to go next,” said Godson.

Permits were also delayed at the municipal level. Applications were submitted shortly before the holiday break and generally take a few weeks to be approved.

Godson notes that the applica-tions “had a few concerns over the proper capacity of the space, and also due to people being on vacations our permits were delayed.”

Godson maintains that coop-eration between supervising par-ties has been exemplary. “There

have been several cases where there was miscommunication be-tween Facilities Management and the contractors. All have been quickly resolved mainly due to the help of [Facilities technolo-gist] Marcos Olindan getting ev-eryone back on the same page.”

SFU Facilities Management project services manager Bill Nel-son concurs, lauding the hands-on nature of the collaboration. “We’re much more involved in the process. We’re meeting once a week to make refinements and changes,” he said.

Despite the delays, Nelson says the project is still on budget, and sees the delays as the conse-quence of working in a building that is made of concrete and al-most 40 years old.

“When you go into a building built in the ‘60s or early ‘70s with countless wires going back and forth, and once you tear the ceil-ings out there is more than you assumed,” he said. One unfore-seen feature of the north High-land Pub was a defunct fireplace,

with demolition revealing prob-lematic holes in the floor and ceiling.

“You have to deal with exist-ing conditions. Renovations are harder,” said Nelson.

The budget for the project has been kept in check by a time consuming process of bids on all trade work. Facilities Manage-ment holds the contracts for the project and seeks outside sub-contractors. “The contractors that Facilities has procured have all been fantastic,” says Godson. “I check on the site daily and all of their work is top notch. It has been a pleasure working with them.”

As a cost cutting measure, old pub furniture has been sent out for re-upholstering and refur-bishing. “All of these pieces take time,” Godson explained.

Despite the difficulties, God-son is confident in the new com-pletion date, though not without reservation. “There is always a chance that something can hap-pen,” she cautioned.

Difficulties with old

concrete and construction

permits have delayed

completion until as late as

February 18

ClintonHallahan

Arts Editor

“We’re much more involved in the process. We’re meeting once a week to make refinements and changes.”

Bill Nelson, Facilities Managemment project services manager

Mark Burnham / The PeakCurrently, the bottom half of the Highland Pub is blocked off for renovations, and has remained that way since mid-November.

the peak

5February 7, 2011NEWS

• Complete 30-Hour Seminars

• Convenient Weekend Schedule

• Proven Test-Taking Strategies

• Experienced Course Instructors

• Comprehensive Study Materials

• Simulated Practice Exams

• Limited Class Size

• Free Repeat Policy

• Personal Tutoring Available

• Thousands of Satisfied Students

LSAT MCATGMAT GREPreparation Seminars

OXFORD SEMINARS604-683-3430

1-800-269-6719www.oxfordseminars.ca

» University news briefsSimon Fraser University — The first monthly Highland Pub trivia night was a resounding success, attracting 20 teams and 120 people, nearly reaching the Pub’s capacity. Organizer Mark Brad-shaw told The Peak that he and Stefan Krecsy were “inspired by the love of trivia and trying to in-ject some culture into the pub on a usually quiet Monday night.”

Ryerson University — Ryer-son’s campus radio station, CKLN, plans to appeal a CRTC decision to revoke their broad-casting license. The station had failed to meet several broadcast-ing standards, and is scheduled to go off the air on February 12.

University of British Colum-bia — A January 30 protest outside the Vancouver Art Gallery called on UBC to stop Parkinson’s research on rhesus monkeys. The university has announced that it has no in-tention of halting the research.

Saskatchewan — The Uni-versities of Winnipeg and Sas-katchewan will recieve fund-ing to develop new methods of producing medical isotopes. Though Canada is a major ex-porter of medical isotopes, the country’s only production fa-cility has repeatedly shut down due to age in recent years.

New Brunswick — Student as-sociations in New Brunswick are protesting possible cuts on top of last year’s $3 million cut to student aid. The province has justified the cuts by pointing to low uptake among students.

Compiled using files from the Canadian University Press.

— David Proctor

SFU’s own assistant professor Kennedy Stewart announced last Wednesday that he is seek-ing the New Democratic Party nomination for the federal rid-ing of Burnaby-Douglas to re-place the outgoing MP Bill Siksay.

Stewart, a tenured profes-sor at SFU’s School of Public Policy, has spent the majority of his life either as a student or around them. He completed his undergraduate degree in his-tory at Acadia University before pursuing a master’s degree in political science at SFU; he also went on to finish the Ph.D gov-ernment program at the Lon-don School of Economics and Political Science.

His presence in classrooms, which spans over 20 years, has influenced the issues he intends on prioritizing: the economy

and education, of which he ar-gues have profound effects on each other.

“The first priority for any [member of Parliament] these days has to be the economy . . . not just in Canada, but around the world,” explained the Nova Scotia native. “Right now, the Conservatives are saying they want to deal with this through tax cuts, and if you ask any economist, [they’ll say] it’s the wrong thing to do. We should be focusing on research and de-velopment [which] ties directly to education.”

“Being a prof, everyday I see there’s been research and de-velopment cuts; for example, there’s been tuition hikes, cut backs in scholarships, and gen-eral defunding of universities that really hurts research and development.”

Stewart further explained how family relations remain a prominent factor when priori-tizing health care.

“My mom is a senior . . . and there are lots of concerns about health, especially as the baby boomers move to retire. We’re going to [face] a lot of pres-sure to privatize our health care system and I think we’ve got to stand against that and protect [our] world-renowned health care system.”

He also noted the failure by the federal government to pro-vide the riding’s growing im-migrant population with inte-gration opportunities such as help with language skills, jobs, training, and recognizing for-eign credentials — something he hopes to change.

His opponent, former North Vancouver councillor and Vancouver Community Col-lege teacher Sam Schechter, said he will focus on sustain-ability, housing, and child-care policies.

While both candidates have been busy talking to current NDP members, Stewart prefers to take a more hands-on ap-proach to stimulating change in the riding.

“I see the pressures every-day and how it’s driving stu-dents to take second and third jobs. One thing that you can do when you’re in opposition is help students organize,” he said. “I think that’s key. I think the MP can facilitate organiza-tions so you can actively get students together to talk about issues, and use that to build networks across Canada and raise these issues in the House of Commons.”

He also emphasized facilitat-ing community growth through fostering a connection between SFU, UniverCity and the City of Burnaby to “make [Burnaby] a better place to live.”

He concluded by returning to the importance of restoring proper student funding within the country. “I have a student loan myself,” he explained. “I don’t own a car, I take the bus every day, I don’t own a house, I put all my money into my edu-cation, and I think, ‘Will I ever stop being a student?’ And the answer is that nobody lets you anymore.”

Stewart previously ran for the federal NDP in the 2004 election campaign in Vancou-ver Centre. The riding asso-ciation will hold a nomination convention to select a new can-didate on February 25.

LOCAL NEWS

SFU prof in NDP nomination race

Kennedy Stewart intends

to stop the Conservative

agenda and focus on the

economy and education

Kennedy Stewart is calling for an emphasis on the economy, education, health care, and immigration in the Burnaby-Douglas riding.

Image courtesy of Kennedy Stewart

“I put all my money into my education, and I think, ‘Will I ever stop being a student?’ And the answer is that nobody lets you anymore.”

Kennedy Stewart, prospective NDP candidate

Kendra WongAssociate

News Editor

the peak

6 February 7, 2011 NEWS

Cognitive psychologist Veronica Zammitto is breaking new ground in the relationship between psy-chology and game design by using emotional and physiologi-cal reactions to determine player response to games. Through the B.C. government’s MITACS pro-gram, which connects academic research with the businesses that depend on it, Zammitto has been able to apply psychology to im-prove popular games such as EA’s NBA series.

Zammitto believes that psy-chology is extremely applicable to gameplay. “Games are primar-ily a form of entertainment, which involves emotional and cognitive activity,” she said. “Psychology is the discipline that understands these human characteristics.” Re-search on games from a psycho-logical perspective allows game developers to create games with a smoother logical and visual flow.

Most of the existing research

has been done on the first person shooter genre, where quick reac-tions are necessary and a cum-bersome or confusing system can lead to frustration. However, Zammitto holds that there is a benefit to psychological research in any game genre. “I consider that methods for data collection can be applied to multiple genres, but the findings are very differ-ent,” she said. “The idiosyncrasy of each type of game shapes the emotional reactions.”

Reactions to a game are mea-sured in many different ways, from quantitative techniques such as measurements of galvanic skin response and heart rate, to quali-tative methods such as interviews with participants. Combining dif-ferent methods allows research-ers to figure out not only what a participant’s reaction to the game is, but why and how that reaction comes about. The game developer can then react accordingly to fix

problems or develop new game-play systems.

Zammitto has also observed that many things that affect player experience are not present on the screen. “It has been found that there are different affective re-sponses for different platforms,” she explained. “In general, input devices . . . have significant con-siderations on interacting with the game, each of them have strengths and weaknesses. They indeed change the way that players inter-act with the game.”

“It’s not the same playing a game sitting at your desk with the computer than laying on the couch with a controller, than wav-ing your hand in front of the TV.”

In spite of the fact that re-search in game design is becom-ing ever broader, it is still difficult to pinpoint what exactly creates a well-designed game. The industry acknowledges that it is impossible to create a gameplay system that will appeal to everyone; rather, they aim for “demographic game design”, which is when a game is tailored to the needs of a specific group of players.

“It’s necessary to understand the gamers that you’re targeting,” Zammitto explained. “You have to know who they are and what they want.”

RESEARCH NEWS

EA to use SFU psychologist to improve game design

Jennifer BednardSFU Student

Veronica Zammitto says

cognitive psychology can

be used to make video

games better for players

CAMPUS NEWS

Twenty students, seven days, 10 universities, and one goal. Last week, post-secondary students across Canada spent 168 hours liv-ing in their campus libraries in a nation-wide effort to raise money for educational opportunities in de-veloping countries.

Second-year psychology and criminology student Kymberly McGarvie and third-year anthro-pology major Laura Baird dedi-cated the past week from January 27 until last Thursday to eating, sleeping, and studying in SFU’s Bennett Library.

The volunteer pair were two out of 20 students across 10 Canadian university campuses participating in the Live-in for Literacy event, which aims to collectively raise

$27,000 to donate to Room to Read, a program which will then donate the funds to the construction of six libraries in rural India.

Participant universities in-cluded Queen’s, Laurentian, Mc-Master, Memorial, and York, as well as the University of British Colum-bia, Ottawa, and Toronto (Missis-sauga and St.George).

During the seven consecu-tive days that students lived in libraries, they were still expected to attend classes and go to work; however, they were restricted to having two people at the desig-nated living area to promote the cause; all of their time spent in the living areas were documented live online.

They used the library’s wash-rooms, took showers in the gym locker rooms, and received food from friends and staff members. Chartwells also sponsored SFU’s event, contributing $500 for the pair to purchase food.

Despite the fact that this is SFU’s first year participating in the event, by day six, McGarvie and Baird

managed to surpass their personal goal of $2,500.

“We tried to ask every single per-son who came in,” said McGarvie of the success of the event. “If you ask someone, ‘Do you have any spare change?’ they might come by and drop it off. It definitely adds up at the end of the day.”

She also attributed their success to the outrageous spectacle of living in a tent on campus. “It’s a matter of getting people’s attention.”

While living in the library had its restrictions, McGarvie noted that the media room provided some after hours entertainment. “We could do whatever we wanted at night,” she laughed.

After the seven-day challenge, with the help of 20 student volun-teers, the pair managed to raise $4,098.14, nearly double their origi-nal goal. The nationwide Live-in for Literacy event ultimately fell short of its fundraising goal.

Live-in for Literary originated in 2005 at Queen’s University with the student club, Discover the Reality of Educating All Minds (DREAM).

Kendra WongAssociate News Editor

Two volunteer students

living in Bennett Library

surpass fundraising goal

Combining research methods allows researchers to figure out participants’ reactions to games.

Kymberly McGarvie and Laura Baird ate, slept, and studied in the library for seven days.

Andy Fang / The Peak

Open Mon. To Fri. 11 am - 1 amWeekly Features

INSALATA ARANCIABlood orange and honey mandarin segments, braised ciopollini onions

on artisan greens with out balsamic reduction and our lemon vinaigrette.

$10.99

CAPICOLLI SANDWICHGrilled capicolli, house roasted garlic marinara and melted mozzarella

on a toasted ciabatta served with fries or salad.

$11.99

PESTO PENNEPenne rigate tossed in our creamy basil pesto served with garlic toast.

$10.99

Daily Drink Specials

$3.75 Sleeves

$9.99 Jugs of Highland Pub Lager Every Day

*For information on booking events, both small or large, contact Brandon Chalmers at pubevents@sfss.ca

Moon Pants Improv

7 PM

MONOPEN MIC

NIGHT

7 PM

WINGS$0.25

DJ Joe Bars5 PM

PCC presents...

Ground Shaker 3

9 PM

LUST &

LOVE

Valentines Day Party

8 PM

TUE WED FRITHURS

The Peak proof of purchase

Students live in library for fundraiser

the peak

7February 7, 2011NEWS

CAMPUS NEWS

Business students from as far away as Europe and Asia con-vened at SFU’s Harbour Centre campus and the Segal Graduate School of Business last week to participate in the CaseIT busi-ness case competition.

“CaseIT is an international undergraduate management in-formation system business case competition,” explained CaseIT chair Brian Luong. “We’re trying to attract the best and bright-est in strategic case analysis to come and converge in Vancou-ver, share ideas, and promote the knowledge of management information systems.”

“Everything is completely student-run,” explained vice-chair Ryan Torio. “It’s organized by undergraduate students at Simon Fraser University — ev-erything from the venue search-ing to the sponsorship to all the marketing materials is all done by students.”

Sixteen teams were involved in the two-round competition. Each team is presented with a business case and locked in a room for 24 hours to delib-erate on it and prepare a pre-sentation. “We basically strip them of all the technology that they brought and give them a deliberation kit made up of the essentials — paper, pens, and pencils,” explained Torio. “We give them a laptop that is closely monitored for security reasons, and they build their whole case from scratch throughout that 24 hours.”

All 16 teams then present their cases at Harbour Centre, where four teams are promoted to a second round to present again at the Segal School. The winner of the competition is an-nounced on Saturday, the final day of the competition (after The Peak goes to press).

Although teams are not al-lowed to leave their rooms dur-ing the 24-hour deliberation period, they are well cared for:

participants stay in the luxuri-ous Pan Pacific Hotel at Canada Place, thanks to sponsors in-cluding SFU Business, the Chief Information Officer Association, IBM, and Coast Capital Savings.

“That can all be attributed to our sponsorship team,” said Torio. “They worked very hard . . . We’ve definitely had a lot of support as far as the business community goes.”

In addition to the competi-tion, competitors have the op-portunity to attend dinners, social events, discussions with industry leaders, and tour the city. This year, participants also attended a corporate func-tion that Torio described as “a unique networking event . . . we have a lot of company represen-tatives coming and students and it provides them the opportu-nity to mingle with each other and make connections.”

The competition has had in-ternational participation since 2007; institutions that sent teams this year included Carn-egie Mellon University in Pitts-burgh, Pforzheim University in Germany, Universitå Bocconi in Italy, the National University of Singapore, and the Universiti Kuala Lumpur.

“Case competing is always interesting,” commented Luong. “It’s just really interesting to be able to apply your knowl-edge from school. Students often grind their noses to the book and we get tested, but . . . when you’re participating in a case competition and you have to apply those skills and that knowledge to a real-life business scenario, it makes learning eas-ier and more applicable.”

OTTAWA (CUP) — New findings from Statistics Canada suggest young immigrants may be bet-ter integrating into Canadian society than normally thought.

When compared to their Canadian-born counterparts, immigrant kids are more likely to get their hands on a univer-sity degree later on in life. Ac-cording to the January 25 study, which used census data from as far back as 1971 and as recent as 2006, immigrants who arrived in Canada at age 12 or younger were more likely to have gradu-ated university by the age of 25 than their Canadian-born peers.

Miles Corak, a vice-dean of research at the University of Ottawa, explained that this children-specific study is im-portant, as past research on new Canadians has normally yielded more negative conclusions.

“A lot of public policy discus-sion [concerns] how immigrants integrate into Canadian society, and we’ve documented how poorly they’ve done relative to their Canadian counterparts,” said Corak, who is also a profes-sor of economics.

“What we’re seeing, though,

here and in several other stud-ies that focus on the children, is that when we want to think about integration and success, we should be thinking in a little bit more of a longer term,” he continued. “And what we’re see-ing again and again is that the children of immigrants are mak-ing a very positive contribution in society.”

The degree gap proved to be particularly significant for young boys in the 1980s — 32 per cent of male childhood im-migrants who arrived in Canada around that time had a degree by the time they were 25 to 34, compared to 20 per cent of their Canadian-born counterparts. The study indicated the pat-tern was similar among women, whose university-educated pop-ulation across both groups also increased more quickly over time, compared to their male peers.

“The increasing educational stock of the successive immi-grant cohorts from countries that value education is echoing into this generation and is giv-ing their kids this extra push or head start that they need,” ex-plained Corak.

Does this mean immigrants who arrive in the country later in life will face a more difficult situation?

“The very difficult times, as you can imagine, are when you come as a teenager,” said Corak. “It becomes much harder to

learn a language fluently when you’re older and the tipping point for that is around the age of puberty. But you can imag-ine all kinds of other challenges happening in the teen years … high school is a lot more diffi-cult to integrate into than pri-mary school.”

Children who immigrate at a young age, Corak said, are able to take advantage of certain benefits.

“They get the best of both worlds: they’re getting the heri-tage and the support from their parents, and yet they are suf-ficiently adaptable — and our schooling system actually has a lot to do with this as well.”

Corak pointed out that while this study provides some posi-tive news, it also provides an op-portunity to take another look at how we deal with immigration policy in Canada — and where we can improve.

“One of the things we learn from studies like this is that im-migration policy is also social policy, it’s also family policy, it’s also education policy,” he explained.

“There really is a need for broader coordination between the federal government and the provinces across this whole area — so if one department or one ministry is changing immigra-tion rules, [it is] going to have an impact for other governments and other departments years down the road.”

CaseIT competition,

organized by SFU

undergrads, attracts

competitors from all over

the world David ProctorNews Editor

“When you’re participating in a case competition . . . you have to apply those skills and that knowledge to a real-life business scenario, it makes learning easier and applicable.”

Brian Luong, CaseIT chair

NATIONAL NEWS

Family support, flexibility

at young age considered

helpful factors Emma GodmereCUP Ottawa Bureau Chief

Those who immigrate at a young age are more likely to graduate from university by the age of 25 than their Canadian-born peers.

Andy Fang / The Peak

SFU business competition attracts international talent

Young immigrants more likely to graduate university: StatsCan

the peak

8 February 7, 2011 NEWS

© 2011 H&R Block Canada, Inc. *$29.95 valid for regular student tax preparation only. Cash back service included. To qualify for student pricing, student must present either (i) a T2202a documenting 4 or more months of full-time attendance at a college or university during 2010 or (ii) a valid high school identification card. Expires December 31, 2011. Valid only at participating H&R Block locations in Canada. SPC Card offers valid from 08/01/10 to 07/31/11 at participating locations in Canada only. For Cardholder only. Offers may vary, restrictions may apply. Usage may be restricted when used in conjunction with any other offer or retailer loyalty card discounts. Cannot be used towards the purchase of gift cards or certificates. **If H&R Block makes any error in the preparation of your tax return that costs you any interest or penalties on additional taxes due, although we do not assume the liability for the additional taxes, we will reimburse you for the interest and penalties.

$2995

$tudent pricing

For just $29.95, walk in with your taxes, walk out with your refund. Instantly. You’ll also get a free SPC Card to save big at your favourite retailers.*

JOB NAME: TS ‘11 YOUNG ADULT NEWSPAPER - ENGLISH

ART DIRECTOR COPY WRITER CREATIVE DIR. PRINT PROD. STUDIO MGR. ACCT. MGMT.

DOCKET/AD#: 10-HRB-047-BW-SP-E-1

DATE STARTED: Jan 17

ARTIST: CS

REV#: 3

LASER %:

DISKED:

LIVE AREA: –

TYPE SAFETY: –

TRIM: 8" X 10"

BLEED: –

BW

NEWSPAPERS:

EXCALIBURBROCK PRESS

hrblock.caFollow us on Twitter and Facebook

we make taxes easy maximum refund**

free SPC Card

VICTORIA (CUP) — The B.C. Su-preme Court has awarded the University of Victoria’s students’ society a referendum on contin-ued membership in the Cana-dian Federation of Students.

In a February 1 court rul-ing, Justice Malcolm Macaulay

declared the petition submitted by society member Jose Bar-rios in October 2009 as valid. The CFS had asserted that a counter petition that sought to have names removed from the original petition had brought the number of signatures below the threshold that allowed a referendum.

“I’m very happy with the de-cision that came down from the judge,” said society chairperson James Coccola. “It proved what we’ve been saying all along,

which was that the counter peti-tion wasn’t valid and the CFS has to give students the opportunity to vote on membership.”

The CFS’s response was based on two main arguments: that it was within the purview of the

CFS national executive to take the counter petition into ac-count, and that a petition to the court should not interfere with a voluntary organization.

Ma c a u l a y a d d re s s e d both these arguments in his decision.

“Individual members like Barrios seeking to obtain suf-ficient valid signatures on a pe-tition in the fall of 2009 would not reasonably have expected that otherwise valid signatures on a petition were subject to

Society hopes to hold vote

by end of semester Kailey WillettsThe Martlet

PROVINCIAL NEWS

Court grants CFS referendum to UVicbeing withdrawn. It is impos-sible now to determine if having that information would have im-pacted Barrios’ decision to stop seeking more signatures when he did,” wrote Macaulay in the ruling.

Macaulay said there was no evidence to suggest that “second petitions”, as they were referred to in the ruling, were a long-standing practice of the CFS.

“The CFS submission that it was permitted to take the second petition into account must fail,” he wrote. “The national executive of the CFS invoked a process that was not contemplated by the by-laws in effect at the time and, as a result, applied an irrelevant con-sideration in determining that the petition was not in order.”

Although Macaulay acknowl-edged that courts are traditionally hesitant to get involved in disputes in voluntary organizations, he elaborated that “in the case at bar, there is no doubt that the interests at stake are sufficiently important to warrant the intervention of the court. Because individual mem-bers cannot opt out of member-ship in the CFS, the petition and referendum process represent the only means by which undergradu-ate students at UVic can partici-pate in a decision as to their mem-bership in the CFS.”

The CFS was not available for comment as of press time.

“The next step is for us to send a letter to the CFS asking them to put forward their two mem-bers to the referendum oversight committee,” said Coccola, who will be one of the UVSS’s two representatives.

“Once that’s done we can begin talking about when a ref-erendum can be held. Our hope is that one would be held this se-mester but the timelines are very short so we’ll have to get moving very quickly.”

However, there are still techni-calities that could cause delays.

“There are a couple of issues that are outstanding,” explained Coccola. “For example, the CFS is claiming we owe them a fairly sub-stantial amount of money, which we dispute. I would not be sur-prised if that came up.”

As of the most recent billing, the UVSS has spent approximately $45,000 in legal costs. However, the judge has awarded the UVSS par-tial costs, predicted to be around $10,000.

The SFSS held a referendum similar to the one the UVSS is cur-rently planning in 2008, and voted 66 per cent in favor of leaving the CFS. The two organizations have been locked in a legal dispute over the result ever since.

The UVSS has spent about

$45,000 on legal costs.

the peak

9OpiniOns opinions editor Graham Templetonemail opinions@the-peak.caphone 778.782.4560

Charlie Sheen

Martin Sheen

»WOOHOO

»BOOHOO

- Gary Lim

After reading last week’s opin-ion piece that accuses fair trade of being “just a clever market-ing campaign” [Fair trade only fairly good,” January 31], I felt compelled to make certain clar-ifications. It is true that living in an age of consumerism and ma-terialism we need to take these sorts of claims with an eye of skepticism. We need to be wary of advertising gimmicks such as green-washing that capitalize on what is trendy.

Yes, big businesses and cor-porations are recognizing that there is a growing demand for more ethical products, and yes, big names such as Starbucks have profited by deceptively claiming to be in cahoots with the fair trade movement.

The fact that Starbucks uses fair trade as a marketing tac-tic, though, does not render fair trade “just a clever marketing campaign”. Corporations and companies will always be on the prowl for consumer fads to exploit; this is not reasonable grounds to devalue all the work and hard-earned achievements of fair trade advocates.

The objective of the fair trade movement from the beginning has been to increase sales for struggling small-scale farmers in developing countries. Working with corporations such as Star-bucks and Cadbury, who have overwhelming market power in their respective industries, may make some stomachs queasy, but at the end of the day fair trade is not fighting to win the hearts and

minds of corporate CEOs.Walmart, remember, is not

the organization certifying the coffee you see in their aisles. Credible national bodies like Transfair have this responsibil-ity, so the fact that Transfair’s stamp of approval is beginning to appear in more and more places just means that buying ethical products won’t require that you bike for an hour to get to that quaint bohemian store in that far, obscure corner of town.

Critics are quick to de-nounce fair trade’s legitimacy by arguing that fair trade keeps countries producing what they have a comparative advantage in. Thus, the argument goes, farmers will always be farmers and therefore will be perpetu-ally poor. Asking why they don’t roast their own beans and keep their coffee for domestic con-sumption is a weak and dan-gerous argument for several reasons.

Without getting into the economics of it all, ask your-self this: what poor farmer

could afford to drink steaming cappuccinos and give up their one source of income in order to consume it? Coffee farmers gain much more from selling their beans to coffee roasters than from drinking what they produce on their own.

Further, if the rest of the world were to stop drinking coffee then keeping the toils of one’s labour could work. Trade will only be obsolete once Ca-nadians stop munching on chocolate and oranges, stop wearing silk, and stop consum-ing in the way we have become accustomed to.

Coffee beans can only be grown between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The in-herent value of trade is that in the exchange, both sides receive something they do not have. The idea is that it is an equal exchange because we both ben-efit. Except that, in our era of so-called free trade, systemic exploitation leads to unequal and unjust terms of trade. This is the battle fair trade is fighting.

Fair trade is not a marketing ploy. Of course, it needs to be ad-vertised on the market — what doesn’t? But to debunk this myth, go to the very cooperatives and farms where certified fair trade coffee, tea, sugar, flowers, quinoa, et cetera are produced. Speak to the very farmers who have been empowered, supported, and given a voice through fair trade.

Many fair trade advocates have done this and have come home with stories re-affirming that while the fair trade sys-tem may not be perfect, it is most definitely and undeniably strengthening communities and bettering lives.

READERCOMMENTS

Send in your READER COMMENTS to opinions@the-peak.ca, or tweet them @peakSFU!

»» There»is»a»Peak»stand»at»Surrey»

campus»that»hasn’t»been»updated»

since»November.»You»know,»just»in»

case»I»want»to»read»the»News»from»

three»months»ago!»

»»»»»Put»the»Peak»on»all»the»stands,»even»

at»Surrey!»I»like»The»Peak,»and»would»

like»to»keep»reading»it,»please.»Don’t»

make»me»have»to»work»just»to»find»it»

each»week.»»

»

-»“Slim”»Shinji

»» Corporations»and»companies»will»

always»be»on»the»prowl»for»consumer»

fads»to»exploit;»this»is»not»reasonable»

grounds»to»devalue»all»the»work»and»

hard-earned»achievements»of»fair»

trade»advocates.»

»

-»Sarah»Childs

»» Fair»Trade»may»not»be»perfect,»

but»it’s»not»just»a»marketing»ploy!»It’s»

silly»to»criticize»Fair»Trade»for»keeping»

these»people»generationally»employed»

as»farmers»—»it’s»called»having»an»econ-

omy.»You»can’t»build»to»a»more»varied»

job»market»without»a»solid»foundation.»

»»»»»And»it’s»even»sillier»to»suggest»that»

farming»is»synonymous»with»poverty.»

Western»farmers»can»become»very,»

very»wealthy.»Fair»Trade»is»working»to»

bring»these»sorts»of»opportunities»to»

farmers»around»the»world.»

»

-»James»Ingrid

»» I»think»it’s»a»real»shame»that»

SFU»cancelled»Robbie»Burns»Day»

festivities.»SFU»should»be»proud»of»

its»Scottish»roots.»

»»»»»As»home»to»one»of»»the»most»

celebrated»bagpipe»bands»in»the»

world,»I»don’t»see»how»the»ad-

ministraion»couldn’t»spring»for»at»

least»a»modest»Robbie»Burns»Day»

ceremony.»

»

-»John»Morrison»III

READER RESPONSE

Fair trade is more than just marketing

Natalie Gan, Dan McPeake, Aleks BesanSFU Students

Palestinian women grind coffee using traditional methods.

Cynicism doesn’t help anyone, and it ignores all the good that the ethical growing movement is doing

Corporations will always be looking for fads to exploit; this isn’t grounds to devalue all the achievements of the fair trade movement.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress

“Any day I’m not Charlie Sheen is a good one.” These are the words I live my life by. I mean, when I’m having a terrible day, a day where the world is just shitting all over my plans, I just take a deep breath and put things in perspective.

Sure, my problems might be bad, but at least I’m not a thrice-divorced convicted wife beater strung out on blow.

Also it seems that every time something bad hap-pens to Mr. Sheen, my own life gets a little cheerier, a phenomena that I be-lieve the Germans call “Scheendenfreude”.

The best part is any mis-fortune that Chuck incurs is undeniably his own fault, wiping away any lingering traces of pity.

Keep on shinin’ Charlie, you crazy diamond, you.

Oh Marty. Marty, marty, marty. I’m so sorry about your son Charlie. He’s brought shame to the family name, and not even your real family name, the fake show business-y name that you had to use because your own sounds too, ahem, ethnic.

The question now is how do you rectify such a situation? I know what Don Coreleone would do if someone disgraced his family’s name. They’d be sleeping with the fishes faster than you could say “Two and a Half Men”. Now I know he’s your son, but you need to look at the bigger picture.

Image a world sans Char-lie, the advance we’d have made in the fields of comedy and human decency. Wait, you’ll do it? Huh, I thought it’d take more convincing, but whatever.

You grab the rope and I’ll get the lye.

February 7, 2011

the peak

10 February 7, 2011 OPINIONS

The recent article on the group SFU Against Goldcorp and Gentrification’s protest at the downtown campus highlights a very disappointing disconnect between the board of gover-nors and the SFU community at large — the body that this board is supposed to be representing.

In particular, I’m disap-pointed by student rep Arry Dhillon’s naïve regurgitation of standard lines — that the pro-testors were scary, that they were going to hurt people, and especially his assertion that ending the meeting and walk-ing out was the “brave” thing to do.

Worse still is Dhillon’s argu-ment that the board was will-ing to meet with SAGG. Were this the case, it would have been clearly communicated to SAGG — and I don’t think it was. It’s more likely that the board internally agreed that it would be willing to hear from a representative, but neglected

to tell anyone. One of SAGG’s reasons for protesting was that the board had refused to dis-cuss the issue of dirty corporate money being used to fill in gaps in university funding. It’s quite hard to start a discussion when one party has been refusing to talk for a very long time.

When I was an undergrad at SFU, I served two terms on the board of governors. What would likely have happened, if the board had communicated a willingness to meet over Gold-corp’s disgusting gift of bloody money, is that SAGG would have presented a very strong case about the horrible ethics of accepting Goldcorp’s cash.

They would have argued that by accepting the donation, the board has sold out SFU’s claim to ‘think of the world’, entirely.

The board would have listened, and would have pleasantly told SAGG that the concerned students and faculty and staff didn’t understand the situation.

In this case, I think it’s the board of governors that doesn’t understand the situation. There’s a line to be drawn in accepting corporate money. I don’t think an allegedly public university should be accept-ing any, but it most definitely shouldn’t be accepting money from a company that allegedly destroys indigenous lands, al-legedly persecutes community organizers, and then uses its ill-gotten gains to buy a good reputation. Would SFU accept money made off blood dia-monds? Judging by its response to concerns over the Goldcorp cash, it seems the answer might be yes.

The brave thing for Dhillon and the board of governors to have done would have been to admit that there are some real problems with this particular infusion of corporate cash, and to actually commit to discuss-ing it. It is not brave to claim to be afraid of a bunch of nonvio-lent protestors with a band and gold glitter.

Remember, SFU: you claim to think of the world. Let’s work on this.

Would SFU accept money made off blood diamonds? Judging by its response to con-cerns over the Goldcorp cash, it seems the answer might be yes.

The SFU board of governors

isn’t being “brave”, it’s

deliberately avoiding debate

on their decisions Kevin HardingSFU Alumnus

GOLDCORP DONATION

Blood money has no place at SFU

Bai Yin / The Peak

Fraser Nelson / The Peak

Some estimates put the number of protesters as high as 200.

Many SAGG protesters came prepared.

Positions open:Executive Positions: President; Treasurer; University Relations O�cer; Member Services O�cer; Internal Relations O�cer; and External Relations O�cer.Faculty Representatives: Arts and Social Sciences; Applied Sciences; Business Administration; Communication, Art and Technology; Education; Environment; Science; Health Sciences.Two (2) At-Large Representatives.

Nominations open Monday, February 21st at 8:00 am.Nominations close Monday, March 7th at 12:00 pm.Campaigning begins Monday, March 7th at 12:00 pm.Campaigning ends Monday, March 21st at 11:59 pm.Voting takes place online March 22nd, 23rd, 24th.

Students who wish to become candidates should pick up and submit

Commission, Maggie Benston Centre 2240. Nomination forms will also be available online during the nomination period. Campaign budgets may not exceed $50. Candidates for Treasurer are subject to criminal record checks.

In accordance with by-law 17, petitions for referenda must be received

to the Board of Directors. To submit a petition, contact Ali Godson,

by the Independent ELectoral Commission by Wednesday, February 23rd at 12 pm. All petitions for referenda must �rst be submitted

President: pres@sfss.ca.

Election Rules and Regulations�e general election and referenda is governed by the Society Constitution, By-Laws, and the Electoral and Referenda Policy (R-17). �ese documents are available at http://elections.sfss.ca.

For more information, please contact Chief Electoral O�cerChen Shen at ceo@sfss.ca or visit http://elections.sfss.ca.

Exceptional Leadership Experience

real-world projects are only limited by your imagination and available

self-directed learners with a strong desire to serve their fellow students and the university community.

the average Co-op job. If you want impressive leadership credentials on your CV, student society leadership is for you.

Discover Your Leadership Potential

provided on the job. Board members have a team of experienced

and meetings. Student leaders have the support to challenge themselves and learn new skills through hands-on experience.

Job Description

SFSS Constitution. You can choose to run for an Executive or Faculty/At-Large position on the Board.

Notice of 2011 General Election

may receive a stipend of up to $1,750 per month.

Faculty and At-Large directors tend to focus on supporting

40 hours per month and may receive a stipend of $585 to $725 per month.

Where do I Apply?

by your peers. Visit http://elections.sfss.ca for more information.

We Want YOU On Our BoardAs a director of the SFSS, you could be a leader of a multi-million

OU On Our Boa

the peak

12 February 7, 2011 OPINIONS

When I started my post-secondary education, I didn’t know much. I panicked over my first paper that was 10 pages, and I felt intimidated in my first class when I heard there was such thing as a double major. Even after 6 years, I still feel that way from time to time. At least I can take solace in knowing that I am not the only one.

The thing about university is that we surround ourselves with experts in the hopes of becoming experts, and in almost every case the endeavour is successful. Our profs and peers help sculpt our personalities, minds, and opin-ions until we have focused our knowledge like a laser beam. We become interested in stuff and passionate about issues, often very passionate. We take action, get involved, and feel like citi-zens. Hooray.

But honestly, I’m getting tired of that shtick. There are times I find myself awash in a sea of bullshit with political currents tearing me left and right and no facts in sight. Maybe it’s the people I surround myself with, but it seems like you can’t even ask someone about stuff anymore without them tacking

their opinion into the preface. I understand that people have their reasons to feel so passionately about things and I really do ap-preciate their enthusiasm, but they often go to tortuous lengths to em-phasize that something is bad, and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Let’s illuminate this resent-ment with a few examples that serve to highlight my ignorance across a spectrum of issues, the first of which is this new UBB thing. I didn’t really get it, what it meant, or its implications. I figured if I have to pay more I don’t like it, but I have friends who are in the know with this stuff, so I asked. Why not, right?

What I got was a diatribe about government regulation and the need for a free market approach and I think something about in-novation was thrown in there too. I had been under the impres-sion that UBB meant that some-one — ostensibly the government — would be regulating my inter-net. Another friend opposed this, and I received a similarly styled rant from him about corporate greed and everything going to the shitter. I left the whole affair

as I had entered it, not knowing what UBB is, what it means, or its implications.

Another example: Egypt. I had no idea what the hell was going on over there. It’s on the news 24-hours a day and I still didn’t get it. So, during some casual face-creep time, I noticed a friend posted a link called “Everything you need to know about Egypt”. “Perfect!” I thought, and I clicked. My excite-ment quickly turned to disdain as my screen was filled with the blogged ravings of a self-indulgent egg shell walker whose attempt to show the world how ‘aware’ they were made them read more like someone who gets offended for fun. I pressed “back”, no wiser than I had been before.

I am aware that in these and other scenarios, I could have just looked up the info myself, done some research as I have been trained to do; I could have figured it out for myself. But, there are just some things I don’t really care about and I take solace in knowing I am not the only one.

This is not meant to be the crescendo of apathy. Rather, it’s a call to arms for all the neutrals out there. We are those who change our minds and can have our opin-ions swayed by argument.

We are those who see things from both sides and who from time to time just aren’t sure what to think. It’s those times we need our friends the most, to keep us informed in frank and honest mat-ter, going light on the bullshit. It’s embarrassing enough just asking, so make it quick. That way you can get on with your seething, and we’ll smile and nod.

We are still friends, after all.

Alexandra Tse’s article [“‘Too Asian’ is the wrong question,” January 24] about the Maclean’s article on Asian students in our university system is the first piece of commentary on the subject that I’ve liked. (I also liked the Maclean’s apology to readers who felt upset by their misinterpretation.)

Alexandra correctly assessed that most of the responses to the Maclean’s article missed the point. Rather than claiming birth-right entry into a global economic system and rather than being jealous of Asian immigrants, we would do well to remember that our land is stolen and our cur-riculum was designed to be infe-rior when viewed through inter-national levels of operation.

I am not saying that Canada would be better off by import-ing the entire high school cur-riculum of France; we can have a curriculum that supports re-laxation and leisure, if we want to. We are also within our rights to continue to foster a national disdain for an intellectual elite that is loyal to the nation. How-ever, we would do well to re-member that there are some na-tions that do see the advantage in having a happy, productive intellectual elite. We would do well to note the methods being put in place in Shanghai to gen-erate an intellectual, socially networked elite. Do you think educators in Shanghai are say-ing, “Let’s have a relaxing cur-riculum with ample playtime every evening and weekend”?

Some Canadians have been internationally competitive for decades. During the mid-‘90s,

Jonathan Borwein announced in the Center for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics that he would take a day off. Everyone in the lab was shocked. Work ethic and responsibility are traits that our international friends respond well to, and some Canadians do develop these traits. It is time for those of us who have the volition to start responding to globaliza-tion with our work ethic, respon-sibility, and vision. It is time for us to take serious account of the real world we are living in, see where we want to be in that real world by when, and take the steps that obtain our aim.

Ravi Menon, the permanent secretary of Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry once said that the two “-isms” that best describe Singapore’s approach to education are pragmatism, an emphasis on what works in practice, and eclecticism, a will-ingness to adapt to the best prac-tices from around the world.

My friend recently asked me whether I thought it was okay to force unwilling nations to practice eclecticism and I re-sponded by referencing the new infrastructural support for responsible freedom that the government of British Colum-bia is inventing. On the table is a discussion about giving students the freedom to learn their choice of foreign language based on where they see their future — obviously those Ca-nadians who see a future in Canada will learn French and English, while other Canadians who see their futures as being international will have the free-dom to learn the additional lan-guages that interest them, ac-cording to their abilities.

I agree with Alexandra Tse that it is time to raise the level of our conversations about eth-nicity and multiculturalism by a few notches. We might also start to identify best practices that we have seen in our own multicultural lives, and share these with each other while practicing eclecticism. Let the uninterested retain their right to refuse these new practices together with their responsibil-ity for accepting the predictable consequences of freely making free choice. At the same time, we must educate the market rather than marketing education.

I like scenarios in which the people have more than a fair chance to adapt to our new world comfortably and peacefully.

LOSING INTEREST READER RESPONSE

Fence-sitters of the world, unite

To compete, Canada must be willing to work

I’m just tired of it. We become interested in stuff and passionate about issues. We take action, get involved, and feel like citizens. Hooray.

It is time for those of us who have the volition to respond to globalization with our work ethic, responsibil-ity, and vision.

Those of us who just

don’t have the energy to

get so worked up about

politics have to stick

together to survive

Chris AppsPeak Associate

Straddling the fence has a long and storied history. Image courtesy of Paul W.

Jennifer OveringtonSFU Student

If immigration is changing

the standards in our

universities, then it’s our

responsibility to rise to

the occasion

the peak

13February 7, 2011OPINIONS

Years ago, after my first SFU chemistry midterm, my profes-sor opened the lecture with a poll. He asked those planning to attend medical school to raise their hands and, of course, several hundred eager hands shot into the air. His lesson was harsh but true: “You are not all going to make it.” I doubt that he knew how correct he was for this batch of SFU students, especially those with aspira-tions of attending med school at UBC.

My question to UBC has never been about the need for students to meet high stan-dards; of course we want the best of the best for our hospitals and doctor’s offices. My ques-tion is why there is such a dis-proportionate number of SFU students rejected each year. According to last year’s roster, there were approximately nine UBC students for every SFU student accepted into the UBC Faculty of Medicine, and yet, UBC has only an approximate one-and-a-half times the stu-dent population of SFU.

Where does this discrepancy come from? Perhaps it is sim-ply the case that more UBC stu-dents apply, or that those UBC

students who do apply are that bit more qualified. Still, per-haps there is a discriminatory grading policy that keeps the vast majority of SFU students out and lets a much larger frac-tion of UBC students in.

There will always be a natu-ral tendency for UBC to favor their own students and there are two fundamental reasons for this. One: UBC wants to. Two: SFU allows it happen.

It would be easier to heap all the blame onto the UBC ad-missions board, but where does SFU fit in this? Where is the responsibility to support their students and to promote equal opportunities for entry into any graduate program? The truth is that the difficulty arises with a single number: 4.33. By not fitting into a traditional grad-ing scheme, UBC takes on the responsibility (or the opportu-nity, depending on your point of view) to create a transfer guide.

The UBC-to-SFU grading scheme caps an SFU student at 90 per cent (where 4.33 = 90 per cent), leaving a 10 per cent gap that proves almost insur-mountable for most SFU stu-dents. I suppose what kills me is not so much that UBC con-siders an SFU student 90 per cent as competent as his/her UBC counterpart, but that SFU seems to as well.

The reality is that medicine is a competitive program and the GPA difference between accepted and rejected often comes down to mere fractions of a percentage point. Until SFU learns to fight in its students’ best interests, each bright-eyed med-school hopeful is walking into a four year trap.

UBC medicine is moving towards a more and more aca-demically focused admission process, and with every step they take in that direction, SFU students are left further and further behind.

Sebastian JonasSFU Student

The UBC-to-SFU grading scheme caps us at 90 per cent, where a4.33 = 90 per cent. Most SFU students find this insurmountable.

UNIVERSITY TRANSFERS

Is UBC med school biased against SFU?UBC’s med school prioritizes

its own applicants to an

absurd degree

Come in Dog Fort.We have Opinions!

Dog Fort?

Don’t worry Red Lobster.Dog Fort’s got you.

opinions@the-peak.ca

Dog Fort, come in!

the peak

14 February 7, 2011 OPINIONS

Over the past number of weeks a populist movement against usage based billing (UBB) has been steadily building. Opponents of UBB, who favor net neutrality — government regulation that re-quires all data online to be treated equally — breathed a collective sigh of relief when Minister of In-dustry Tony Clement announced Tuesday he would review recently passed laws that would permit UBB.

A review of UBB resulting in the reversal of the new statute is not a certain thing, but using Clement’s block of the Saskatch-ewan Potash Corporation take-over as a case study, it is likely that we will see a regulatory flip-flop. In the instance of Potash Corp, Clement took the populist side over that of the corporation, seemingly ignoring any critical ar-guments for allowing the takeover to go through. Although this case is different in many ways, it is safe to believe that Clement will again side with this populist movement without examining the argument

that perhaps further government regulation will perhaps stymie in-ternet innovation.

An argument often put for-ward by opponents of UBB is that Canadians lack consumer choice when it comes to ISPs. UBB, in their opinion, further deprives consumers, as ISPs that buy wholesale bandwidth from providers such as Bell now have their supply costs dramatically increased, which limits their competitive advantage. Ontario-based ISP TekSavvy, which is wholly dependent on wholesale bandwidth from Bell, is caught in the middle of this. The anti-UBB crowd thinks that the solution to this telecom deficiency is to regu-late ourselves out of it.

The Canadian Radio-televi-sion Telecommunications Com-mission (CRTC), which falls under Clement’s ministerial portfolio, is notorious for put-ting up roadblocks to impede customer choice. An example of their bureaucratic bullying can be found in the case of Wind Mo-bile. Despite having the green light from Industry Canada, the byzantine ownership restrictions imposed by the CRTC delayed Wind Mobile’s launch by nearly

half a year. Naguib Sawiris, the Egyptian technology entrepre-neur who is backing the project, went as far as to call Canada a “telecom backwater” because of our extensive regulations. In this case, consumers were worse off because of hefty government regulation.

The way to solve Canada’s ISP insufficiency is not through regu-latory flip-flopping but to let the free market work its magic. Cad-vision, which was once a titan in the Calgary ISP market, was built by a recent university graduate who was fed up with the current offerings from ISPs in the city. Cadvision was fuelled by the lack of innovation in the ISP market, and despite being built for only a paltry sum, grew exponentially and offered ADSL services years before any other provider could. Regulation didn’t create this suc-cess story, the market did.

The market force that is UBB is causing innovation within the small ISP sector. Realizing that they need to be immune from the whims of government that allow for potential price gouging these firms have started to invest in their own infrastructure that will allow them to bypass Bell or other bandwidth wholesalers. It might be that these independent ISPs invest in new technology that would allow them to deliver a better product than what they had previously.

What will make any internet innovation flatline is if providing this service suddenly becomes unprofitable. If the CRTC en-forces a price cap, this will limit the money there is to be made in delivering the Internet to con-sumers and thus limit incentive to innovate. Just as interest in fuel-efficient vehicles such as the Toyota Prius skyrocketed when the price of gas was high, the threat of high-priced bandwidth will create incentives for compa-nies to try and bypass the big ISP cartel.

What will stymie this inno-vation is if Clement decides to reverse the CRTC’s decision on UBB. Small ISPs will then lose the incentive to fight for their survival — to innovate. Perhaps in the near future high-density population centers like down-town Vancouver or Toronto will be saturated with a variety of ISP options from 4G wireless, to fiber to the premises. If the consumer demands more options to access the Internet and the current play-ers in the market don’t offer this, someone will step in and inno-vate. It has happened before and it will happen again.

The CRTC is notorious for putting up road-blocks to impede consumer choice.

Sam ReynoldsPeak Associate

USAGE-BASED BILLING POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING

UBB will improve innovation Attack ads just hurt voters

ST. JOHN’S (CUP) — As the fed-eral government prepares to table its budget for the upcoming fis-cal year, Canada’s political heavy-weights have begun throwing punches over corporate tax cuts and stealth fighter jets.

While party leaders have stated they would like to steer away from an election, new at-tack ads produced by the Con-servatives imply the possibility of a political showdown. The ads focus on the leadership de-ficiencies of Michael Ignatieff, including his time living outside Canada. This demonstrates the escalation of negative attack ads, a technique already perfected by our neighbours to the south. Playing dirty seems to be part of an accepted platform in Ameri-can politics.

Republican spin-doctors like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove wrote the playbook on negative cam-paigning as a cornerstone of electoral politics. The approach is basic but brutal: use any trick at a party’s disposal to drag the reputations of political opponents through the mud. It revolutionized the perception of political market-ing and set a new tone in the com-petitive process that is at the very core of Canadian federalism.

Plenty of examples demon-strate how Canadian politics have been influenced by this strategy, one used with varying degrees of success.

During the 1993 federal elec-tion campaign, the Progressive Conservatives were trailing con-siderably in public opinion polls. Worn down by a series of unpop-ular moves orchestrated under Mulroney’s watch, the Tories de-cided to respond by smearing Lib-eral leader Jean Chrétien.

They decided to highlight Chrétien’s facial deformity in a televised ad. The ad got significant coverage and appeared on a num-ber of news broadcasts, creating considerable uproar among Ca-nadian voters. Leading Tory strat-egists like Allan Gregg faced harsh criticism over their Republican-styled tactics.

In the 2006 federal election, the Liberals released a series of attack ads in an attempt to paint Stephen Harper as a right-wing extremist. They used a series of question-able quotes — often taken out of context — that focused on his de-sire to increase military presence in major Canadian cities, and his personal inclination to rid the health care system of women’s abortion rights.

A party’s survival depends on donated money and subsidies received from party funding. We shouldn’t be using taxpayer dollars from the public purse to squeeze out negative ads that attempt to push wedge issues instead of legit-imate policy discussion. If political parties want to change public per-ception and sway voters, it should be done with some basic decency and accuracy.

Let’s ensure that political ad-vertisements focus on the sub-stance of national concerns and not the personalities of our po-litical figures.

Public policy is the frame-work of our society, and nega-tive campaigning should be removed from the political blueprint.

When our electoral

process becomes a

no-holds-barred slug

fest, everybody loses Michael PenneyUniversity of Newfoundland

With the future of UBB

uncertain, it’s in the best

interests of Canadians to

support the CRTC and the

rights of business

A print ad attacking former Liberal candidate Stéphane Dion.

Image courtesy of Sachyn

• •

••

•

American spin-doctors like Karl Rove wrote the playbook on nega-tive campaigning as a cornerstone of electoral politics.

the peak

15

February 7, 2011COMMUNITY PHOTOS

A presenter speaks at the 2011 SFU Leadership Summit.

A protester from the SFU Against Goldcorp and Gentrification (SAGG) tries to disrupt the SFU board of directors meeting.

A masked protester participates in the SAGG protest at SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue.

Shahanah Shivji / The Peak

Cédric Tsän / The PeakFraser Nelson / The Peak

Hey shutterbug!

Submit your photos to

photos@the-peak.ca

Submit your photos to

Date: Jan30,2011

Client: PorteDevelopment,Origin

Project: EverythingIncluded

Job #: 2011010POR_OriginAd

Media: ThePeakSFU

Size: (FullBleed10”x14.5”)VerticleFullPage

Colours: FullColour

Note:

Origin Presentation Centre (Corner of University High St. and Tower Rd. opposite Nesters)

Noon-5pm daily, closed Friday.

Discover new life at www.liveorigin.com or call 604-320-3386.

• 10% interest on your deposit toward your new home purchase. Eight times better than GIC returns! Offer ends Feb 28, 2011.

• Get in on “the ground floor” of a growing neighbourhood with a paced growth strategy and limited to several hundred homes per year.

• A well designed home and excellent long term investment.

• Transit pass just $30 month.

Sales by disclosure statement. P27 Developments Partnership 380-1665 W Broadway Vancouver 604-732-7651.

Red Dot Real Estate Marketing Ltd. 224-3388 Rosemary Hts Cr, Surrey, BC 604-531-8500 E&OE. Prices subject

to change and availability. Prices exclude applicable sales taxes.

2 bedroom from $329,000

2 bedroom + den from $389,000

3 bedroom from $479,000

Penthouse 2 bedroom + loft from $459,000

The right place for you. Own an eco-friendly home just steps

from SFU University, a new elementary

school and all the conveniences and

amenities you’ll need. With spectacular

outdoor recreation and amazing views,

Origin offers luxurious finishings and

unique floorplans, all at prices more

affordable than in Vancouver.

2011010POR_Origin_Jan25_Peak_(10”x14.5”)_P1.indd 1 1/31/11 2:53:33 PM

the peak

17

February 7, 2011Community Photos

Fans celebrate as the men’s basketball team defeat their opponents.Devoted fans cheer on the Clan at last Thursday’s game.

The SFU men’s basketball team line up for pre-game national anthems.

Athletes react to the action during SFU’s game against St. Martin’s University.

Bai Yin / The Peak Bai Yin / The Peak

Andy Fang / The Peak

Andy Fang / The Peak

the peak

18features editor Kelly Thoresonemail features@the-peak.caphone 778.782.4560FEATURES

February 7, 2011

L et me just warn you right now: if you are an educa-tional romantic, if a high-

school teacher changed your life, or if you loved Dead Poets Society, the ideas in this article will prob-ably offend you.

The jury is in and the verdict is out: university doesn’t teach students anything! Yet another re-search paper was tossed onto the steaming pile of academic consen-sus on this issue. A ripple of mild embarrassment spread through the tertiary education sector before being obscured from view in the Sunday issue of the Vancouver Sun.

But wait! Hold on! Surely this is a real issue. I mean, a lot of peo-ple are affected by this. If people aren’t being educated at univer-sity, doesn’t this mean thousands of university students are being ripped off? Aren’t employers being deceived? Shouldn’t our public ser-vice fail, run as it is by mere high school graduates with meaningless letters after their names? Where is the terrible fallout from this?

Strangely, there hasn’t been any fallout. In fact, on the contrary, uni-versity seems to be working just fine and dandy. Typically, students who receive a university degree go on to have better paid jobs than those who do not. What’s more, employers generally find that grads are more productive workers. De-spite the recent research, we know these things to be true. Certainly we aren’t likely to see waves of

people dropping out of university, businesses boycotting students with university degrees, or the government withdrawing funding to undergraduate university pro-grams. Least likely of all are we to see universities overhauling their current teaching methods.

So, we have a paradox. On the one hand, university typically doesn’t improve student’s minds. On the other hand, university seems to help just about every-one who has anything to do with it. How can we reconcile these two observations?

One possible explanation emerges from the murky depths of economics.1 Yep, that’s right. You’re about to read something about economics. Don’t panic, I’m going to make it as painless as possible.

The idea with the model below is to see if we can start with some fairly reasonable assumptions about ‘rational’ workers and em-ployers and then end up with a model in which universities help people despite failing to actually teach them anything. Keeping in mind it is just a model, this can

give some useful insights into what might be going on in the real world.

Imagine that there are only two types of people in the world:1. Workers who are high-productivity.2. Workers who are low-productivity.2

There are also only two types of jobs in the world:1. Skilled jobs. Only high-produc-tivity workers can do these sorts of jobs effectively.2. Unskilled jobs. Anyone can do these.

Now, let’s just run with a few other assumptions:– Skilled jobs are better paid than unskilled jobs.– Workers know if they are produc-tive or not.– Employers have no way of telling if workers are productive or not until after they hire them and pay them their wages.3

So, skipping the math and the detail, what ends up happening in the model? Well, realising that employers can’t tell the difference, low-productivity workers all fudge their resumes and apply for the better-paid skilled jobs. This turns out to cause horrible inefficiencies. The employers end up hiring the wrong people half of the time and so the output of the whole econ-omy drops, wages are lowered, and society in general ends up being worse off.4

What do universities have to do with all this? Well, imagine if

Certifiably Universities teach us nothing but how to get hired

Uncertifiable

WRITTEN BY GRAEME FORDILLUSTRATED BY ADAM CRISTOBAL

1. Well… the murky depths of second year economics. If you have studied economics, you might be angered by how imprecise I am with this model. I’m just trying to get the general ideas across in easy-to-understand terms.2. Brave New World flashbacks much? It is difficult for a model to take into account the full gambit of human difference, so we settle for this politically incorrect simplification.3. This isn’t as ridiculous an assumption as it may sound. Often it is difficult for an employer to know if a worker is right for a job until after they have been through training and worked for a few months.

This seems to suggest that an undergraduate degree is essentially a four-year IQ test/en-durance trial rather than an education.

the peak

19February 7, 2011FEATURES

a university can offer a service where they can certify high-productivity workers as ‘skilled’. They can charge high-produc-tivity workers a fee, put them through a whole lot of tests that they know only high-productiv-ity workers can pass, and then give them a gold sticker. Low-productivity workers know they can’t pass university, so they don’t bother to go.

With universities in the model, all the people who go to university get better-paid jobs, graduates are higher produc-tivity, and universities seem to be generally useful institutions working for the public good. And yet: universities don’t ac-tually teach anyone anything in the model. If the real world works anything like our model, then this seems to resolve our paradox! This means good news and bad news.

Good news: Paradox resolved! Hooray!Bad news: This seems to sug-gest an undergraduate univer-sity degree is essentially a four-year IQ test/endurance trial rather than an education.

The model shows that it is not necessary for university to educate students in order to be providing a valuable service. It is sufficient for universities to merely certify students as having a given level of productivity.

Is this a disturbing idea? I hope you think it is. To me, the whole point of going to univer-sity is that it should be a trans-formative experience. I hope to leave university a better sort of person than when I entered, both in terms of my character and my preparedness to enter the workforce.

However, the educational transformation of students is merely a secondary goal of uni-versities. Certification is their

core function. What this means is that students who really wish to receive a transformative edu-cational experience are often frustrated by university and seek a transformative education else-where by volunteering or taking other classes outside of univer-sity. Some students instead seek out those rare professors who are somehow able to find the time to operate transformative class-rooms while still fulfilling the re-quirement to publish or perish. The other harder and usually fruitless alternative is to fight for reform from within the university and classroom itself.

Reforms need to make their way into classrooms themselves. Any university student can tell you that listening to lectures is about the least engaging method of education possible. Mild dis-cussions in tutorials that don’t even require an understanding of the readings are similarly un-inspiring. It seems absurd that little attempt has been made to experiment with other forms of education.

Superior methods of assess-ment, teaching, and learning do exist. In an (extremely un-usual) course I recently took at my home university in Austra-lia, I was amazed by how much more can be learned when such methods are employed. One of the assessments for the course required each student (in groups of two) to prepare and facilitate a full two-hour tutorial for the rest of the class. This required the facilitator to read broadly on the topic before setting weekly readings for the class. The ex-pectations were that this tutorial would not simply be the stan-dard ‘directed-discussion’ ap-proach typically employed by lecturers and tutors, but instead it must involve individual, small group work, and large group discussion. A great deal of free-dom was granted, and originality of method rewarded. The result was that tutorials throughout the course were of an excellent stan-dard and highly engaging. This also reduced the workload for the tutors and the professor. Further, by acting as a teacher, this was an excellent learning experience for

those preparing the tutorial.I do not propose that this is a

good approach for all courses. I am illustrating that better meth-ods of learning and assessment do exist, and that we simply aren’t brave enough to try them. Oral assessment is another method

that is not used. This really baf-fles me. You can read a five-page essay by someone and really have no idea if they read Shakespeare’s Measure to Measure or simply the Wikipedia article. However, if you sit down and have a discus-sion with someone about it, you

can figure that out in about 60 seconds.

If we want our university experience to be improved, we need to start by recognising that the change isn’t going to come from the outside. At the moment, universities simply do not need to educate students in order to appear to operate effectively. The only way that this will change is if students demand it. Encourage your classmates and your pro-fessors to experiment with their teaching and assessment meth-ods and encourage the inclusion of interdisciplinary content in your courses. Fill out those stupid course assessment forms and fill them with demands for unusual, experimental, and interesting methods of learning and assess-ment. And while you’re waiting for the monstrous university bureaucracy and governance to slowly digest this, be sure you are getting your transformative edu-cation elsewhere.

experiment with other forms of

ment, teaching, and learning

methods are employed. One of

the topic before setting weekly

proach typically employed by

dom was granted, and originality

sion with someone about it, you cation elsewhere.

The transformation of students is merely a secondary goal of universities. Certifi-cation is their core function.

If we want our uni-versity experiences to be improved, we need to start by recognising that change isn’t going to come from the outside.

4. Economics majors may realise that the unskilled workers can actually be better off. There are good reasons why this may be true in the model, but not in the real world. (e.g. higher taxes lead to better social security network) but it isn’t really necessary to go into that here.

the peak

20 February 7, 2011 FEATURES

It lasted only a week and a half, but the furor that

spread throughout social web sites with high concentrations of Canadian users was difficult to miss. The previously obscure jargon of UBB (usage-based bill-ing) became common knowl-edge to hundreds of thousands of internet users as posts and articles predicted Canada’s im-minent collapse into an online ghetto with online access more typical of the Third World than the First. Outraged internet users plotted amongst them-selves with ways to fix the dam-age that had been done, with solutions ranging from online petitions and Facebook status campaigns to class-action law-suits and mass rallies in the streets. Ten days later, however, the outrage transformed into celebration in response to a government message originally distributed through the prime minister’s Twitter account.

What started this contro-versy? Why did so many thou-sands of people get caught in the tide of outrage? How did it end so suddenly? Most importantly, has the situation that caused the outrage truly been resolved?

The mass outrage started on Tuesday, January 25, after a long-awaited decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commis-sion (CRTC) — an arm’s-length government body that is re-sponsible for regulating and supervising Canada’s broadcast

and telecommunications sys-tems — including internet ser-vice providers (ISPs).

Under the system that the CRTC had set up as the Internet was gaining popularity in the 1990s, the four major Canadian ISPs, which own the vast major-ity of Canadian internet infra-structure, are required to lease use of their networks to smaller, independent ISPs. In large part, this arrangement was intended to ensure that there would be a sufficient amount of compe-tition in the ISP market, since an oligopoly of only four com-panies would easily be able to organize into a cartel and artifi-cially drive up prices.

The major ISPs have been wanting for years to implement usage-based billing, in which heavy internet users are charged a greater figure for the greater level of network resources that they use. However, in order to do so, they would need the in-dependents to adopt a similar scheme — if only the big four were pricing their services in this manner, the independents could easily undercut them by offering unlimited Internet for a similar or lower price. Ac-cordingly, the major ISPs peti-tioned the CRTC to allow them to charge the independents in a usage-based model, which would allow them to set a mini-mum price for all ISPs that oper-ated on their infrastructure.

Many independent ISPs were alarmed by this proposition; a large proportion of them based their business model on pro-viding cheaper internet access

than the major telecoms. They asked the CRTC to require the major ISPs to offer them a 50 per cent discount on their provider’s comparable usage-based billing rates, so that they could have more flexibility in their pricing.

On January 25, the ruling was finally returned: independent ISPs would get a discount, but it would be much smaller than requested — only 15 per cent. The changes were to take effect on March 1.

Backlash against the decision was swift and strong. Thousands of posts protesting the arrange-ment appeared on forums, mes-sage boards, and social network-ing sites. All over the Internet, Canadian users began planning ways to register their displeasure and coordinate their efforts to get the decision overturned.

One of the central points in this effort was the Stop The Meter online petition, created by Openmedia.ca, which had 41,000 signatures when the CRTC decision was announced. By February 3, that figure had grown to over 279,000.

“The independent internet service providers were created to be a check on [the four major ISPs] so that the pricing struc-tures would even out in favor of the consumer,” explained Openmedia.ca communications manager Lindsey Pinto. Follow-ing the CRTC decision, how-ever, major ISPs are “able to im-pose this internet metering on their independent competitors,

which basically means that these independent competitors no longer provide a check on that market and that these big four telecommunications com-panies are able to say how much the Internet is going to cost.”

This ability to unilaterally set the price of internet access in Canada was not the only moti-vation that the big four had for establishing such a scheme. “We have internet service providers that also own content,” point out Pinto. “For example, Shaw owns Global, and Bell is in the process of acquiring CTV. There are [online] services like You-Tube that allow people to cre-ate that same kind of televisual content. So in addition to want-ing to generate greater revenues from the Internet, they’re also protecting their television inter-ests and their content interests from competitors.”

A particularly striking ex-ample of this is the case of Netflix, an American company that has recently begun to offer unlimited on-demand stream-ing of movies and TV shows to Canadian customers. This service competes with both the big four’s television hold-ings and their own on-demand

video services. Because Netflix streams its video over the In-ternet, a usage-based billing scheme would allow an ISP like Shaw to charge users for the bandwidth used to watch a Net-flix movie, driving the price of such content up substantially and pocketing the difference. If users did not want to pay extra for this bandwidth, Shaw would be able to allow its customers to pay a flat rate for its own on-demand video service, making it difficult for new business models like Netflix to succeed.

Most usage-based billing schemes charge consumers a flat rate for a certain amount of bandwidth per month and add an extra fee for each giga-byte by which users exceed that cap. Most of the online outrage was directed towards perceived price-gouging in this arrange-ment. Partially this was directed toward caps that were too low: for instance, Bell’s basic inter-net package offers 25 gigabytes of bandwidth per month — enough to stream only 8.3 two-hour HD movies from Netflix, without allowing for any other internet usage of any kind.

Primarily, however, public scorn was directed at the in-flated pricing of bandwidth ex-ceeding the cap: the same Bell plan prices extra bandwidth at $2 per gigabyte. “The compari-son that we’ve been hearing a lot from public policy advisors, et cetera, is that it costs [ISPs] between $0.01 and $0.15 per gi-gabyte, and that they’re charg-ing overages of one to four dol-lars,” explained Pinto.

Nine days of outrage

Tuesday, January 25

Who will win the web war? We may have won the current user-based billing

battle, but there is no telling who will win the war

Written by David ProctorPhotos by Andy Fang

“In addition to [ISPs] wanting to generate greater revenues from the Internet, they’re also protecting their . . . content interests from competitors.”

the peak

21February 7, 2011FEATURES

Car Accident Injury

Let us help you recover from ICBC.

Do NOT settle for less.

FREE Consultation

Percentage Fees Available

Call Steve Anderson 604-736-9791Personal Injury Lawyer

The absurdity of this in-flation was highlighted in an image that began circulating on the Internet early last week. The creator of the image had calculated that if one were to purchase a 160 gigabyte solid-state hard drive (roughly $300, or $1.88 per gigabyte), fill it with useful data, and spend $10 on next day shipping to send it from one part of Canada to another in 24 hours, they would pay $1.94 per gigabyte to have effectively sent themselves that data at just over 15 megabytes per second (a common speed for Canadian internet connec-tions). In other words, it would be cheaper to purchase an ex-pensive hard drive, express-mail it to yourself, and then throw away the drive than it would be to pay Bell’s cover-age fees for the same amount of bandwidth.

One of the industry’s pri-mary arguments in favour of the new arrangement is that government intervention in the operation of such compa-nies represents an unjustifi-able compromise of the normal operation of the free market. “That is the opposite of what’s happening,” responds Pinto. “By allowing big ISPs to con-trol how smaller ISPs offer their customers prices and other metrics, we’re basically stifling that competition and we’re eliminating the check that was once there.”

The major telecoms have also defended the practice of high-priced usage-based bill-ing as necessary to allow for

maintenance and expansion of Canada’s internet infra-structure, but Pinto again dif-fers, stating, “that doesn’t have much to do with usage. It indi-cates a general need for more revenue rather than a need to introduce a particular system of pricing.” She added that tele-communications companies are “incentivized and partially publicly subsidized to lay down the lines.”

Indeed, although modern internet infrastructure is now relatively cheaply available to the major ISPs, they have been slow to implement it, allowing Canadian users to continue using outdated technology, even as countries like Japan and Norway are able to offer in-ternet users 100 megabyte per second connections at rates cheaper than those in Canada. “We are now 23rd out of the 25 OECD countries in terms of broadband speed and afford-ability,” observes Pinto. “We’re falling behind the rest of the world. It’s not great.”

With the specter of an elec-tion looming large before the federal political parties, it is not surprising that the NDP and Liberals seized the oppor-tunity to align themselves with the tide of populist outrage that followed the CRTC’s January 25 announcement. Both the Lib-erals and the NDP have added pages to their party web sites

coaching users on ways to as-sist in the effort to get the CRTC ruling overturned.

Seven days after the decision was published, however, some-thing surprising happened. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s official Twitter account was updated with a post: “We’re very concerned about CRTC’s decision on usage-based billing and its impact on consumers. I’ve asked for a re-view of the decision.”

Two days later, Minister of Industry Tony Clement con-firmed what many Canadians had been hoping for: also via his Twitter account, he confirmed that he would ask the CRTC to review their decision, and that if they did not overturn it on their own, the Conservative govern-ment would do it for them.

The message boards that had been teeming with outrage over usage-based billing mere hours before quickly shifted to an at-mosphere of guarded celebra-tion. “I think it is an excellent step in the right direction,” said Pinto, but she also tempered her enthusiasm: “We’re not sure ex-actly what this means. We know that the Harper government is going to ask the CRTC to over-rule a decision related to inter-net metering, but we’re not sure if that’s going to relate to the structure of what usage-based

billing is going to look like, or whether that’s going to overturn internet metering and band-width caps in their entirety.”

“This is the government going to the CRTC and going, ‘You have to make a favourable decision on this or else we’re going to over-turn it.’ What constitutes a fa-vourable decision for the govern-ment is up in the air.”

The following day, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finck-enstein appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Sci-ence, and Technology with a defiant attitude that surprised many observers. He stated that the CRTC would delay the im-plementation of usage-based billing for two months, giv-ing independent ISPs until at least May 1 before their pric-ing structures would be altered. He also stated that “I would like to reiterate the commission’s view that usage-based billing is a legitimate principle for pric-ing internet services . . . The

vast majority of internet users should not be asked to subsi-dize a small minority of heavy users. For us, it is a question of fundamental fairness.”

As of this writing, the specif-ics of the Harper government’s plans remain unclear; accord-ingly, those fighting against us-age-based billing are encourag-ing the public to persist in their efforts. A public letter from Mi-chael Ignatieff has exhorted Ca-nadians to sign the Openmedia.ca petition and spread the word on social media. Additionally, Openmedia.ca is encouraging participation in a national day of action later this month.

Although the anti-usage-based billing movement has scored a major victory, a histor-ically unsympathetic govern-ment and a defiant CRTC seem to present a threat that will last into the future. The story that will change the face of the In-ternet in Canada has reached a dramatic climax, but it is far from over.

The end of the controversy?

“We are now 23rd out of the 25 OECD countries in terms of broadband speed and affordability.”

the peak

ArtsFebruary 7, 2011

22arts editor Clinton Hallahanemail arts@the-peak.caphone 778.990.3854

SFU film grads Kial Natale and Dylan Innes have taken first prize for creating a 60 second version of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

The short, Scott Pilgrim vs. 60 Seconds, was made for the first Virgin Radio Fake Film Festival, took the top prize of $10,000 with their adapta-tion. It attracted the attention of the original film’s director, Edgar Wright.

Natale previously made waves by creating a trailer for a fake, gritty Pokemon movie en-titled Pokemon: Apokelypse.

“We were shocked at how viral this video went — being picked up by major global pub-lications was a huge honour,” said Natale. The video was fea-tured on Mashable.com, Col-lider.com, TheAwesomer.com, and was heavily tweeted.

Vancouver filmmakers sub-mitted 197 films to the con-test. Submissions were voted on by the public with a short-list of 20 screened at the award sceremony. At press time the YouTube video was just shy of 100,000 views.

» SFU film grads win $10,000

-Clinton Hallahan

Arts NEWS

When New Music Express critic Ben Hewitt popped this album’s cherry, he called it “gothic, but not goth.” Hewitt is valid to differentiate the two, seeing as there is a fine line between the flying buttresses of a 14th century cathedral and the near-exclusively black wardrobe and eye makeup of the 21st century teenager. One look at Esben and the Witch’s debut album’s cover, and it seems to scream repacked goth music. That said, if critics dis-count marketing, it’s clear that Esben and the Witch do not seem to be all that concerned about either aesthetic — but-tress or bustier. Apart from the fact that the band’s moniker is derived from a Danish fairy tale, they’re about as gothic as Amanda Seyfried in that new Red Riding Hood movie.

When I listen to a band for the first time, I just listen.

No album art, no frills: just music. The result is an hon-est impression determined by the music and the music alone

— I hope it is, at least. Think of it like new criticism in lit-erary studies, only instead of

doing away with authorship and biographical tid-bits, you toss out marketing, a.k.a. ‘what the band wants you to think it is’, and you’re left with the music, a.k.a. ‘what the band actually is’. This isn’t necessar-ily a “better” approach, just a useful one, particularly when it comes to debut albums. Turns out Esben and the Witch’s Vio-let Cries sounds like the ille-gitimate child of Ladytron and Explosions in the Sky, but that isn’t to say this band isn’t on to something exciting.

Violet Cries is a wonderfully haunting album, and Rachel

Davies’s voice weaves between the instrumentals effortlessly in a manner that is ambient rather than eerie. It doesn’t leave you bored, but it’s noth-ing new. We’ve all heard similar voice overlays before, similar deconstructed yet accessible melodies, similar soaring gui-tar lines that bleed into cym-bals in a weirdly anthem-esque fashion.

It’s Ladytron, except not excessive. It’s Explosions in the Sky, except not drawn-out. It’s Evanescence, except not terrible. And there’s no shame in that.

ALBUM REVIEW

Violent CriesEsben and the Witch follow

up a lauded EP with a

worthy full-length debut.

Just don’t call this dark,

layered electro goth Adam CristobalPeak Associate

Davies’ voice weaves between the instrumentals effortlessly and is more ambient than eerie.

Clocking in at just 32 min-utes, Monotonix’s second full-length album combines the frenzied, tour-ravaged vocals of Ami Shalev, the fuzzed-out chug of Yonatan Gat, and manic tempos of Haggai Fershtman into a cy-clone of screeching rock. Energy is in no short sup-ply here: Not Yet careens wildly, and no track is any-thing less than fodder for the

fire-starting chaos of their fabled live shows. Make no mistake: this is music for wild parties and spilling beers.

Thankfully, the Israeli trio rarely lets the chaos interfere with songwriting. Each track is a controlled burn, and the potential for hectic monotony gives way to an array of strong riffs and scream-able choruses (“Before I Pass Away” is one infectious example). Not Yet is truth in album-art advertising: three guys playing raw garage rock that’s clever enough to know when to quit, and unpre-tentious enough to leave their audience exhausted, spent, and happy.

-Lucas Westhaver

Label / Drag City Released / 01.25.2011

B+

Clove cigarettes and Bauhaus just distract from a strong debut. Image courtesy of Matador

B

ARTS REVIEWS

» Not Yet Monotonix

I have a deep love for the special brand of craziness in Japanese games. That geo-graphical area of the indus-try adheres to relatively tra-ditional design ideas but infuses them with innovative contexts or incredible style. It is not very often that gam-ers get to play as the annoying and greedy shop owners in an RPG, worrying about noth-ing other than the almighty

dollar. So thanks, Japan.Developers EasyGames-

tation essentially bolted to-gether a management simula-tion (e.g. Rollercoaster Tycoon) and an isometric dungeon crawler (think: Diablo) to great effect. The simplicity of the chibi-style graphics and dialogue belies the complex-ity of the gameplay. The player character, Recette, must jug-gle buying and selling prod-ucts to adventurers passing through town to gain profit, like any good capitalist. To gain better items, the player can accompany warriors into random dungeons which turn the experience into a simple hack and slash. This game is definitely for a particular niche. But, if you enjoy anime styling and capitalism, the ex-perience will be enjoyable.

-Giovanni Zenone

B+

» Recettear An Item Shop’s Tale

Studio / EasyGameStation Released / 01.01.2011

Peak ArtsCropping out

the good partssince 1965

the peak

23February 7, 2011ARTS

»» Bayonetta

Hey faithful Peak readers, do you like crazy, nonsensical sto-rylines? Do you want to fight an-gels on the side of a clock tower that is careening down the side of a mountain? Would you like to play a character that has guns in her stiletto-heeled boots, which are completely unnecessary be-cause she is already has two in her hands, and is 6”5? Then you need to look into Bayonetta, a product from the insane minds at Platinum Games.

Everything about this styl-ish action game oozes flair and sexuality, with a concept that is all its own. Throw in an amaz-ing fighting system overseen by Hideki Kamiya (Creator of the Devil May Cry series) and there is no question as to the game’s awesome quotient. Finally, if you were a fan of Sega during the late ‘80s and ‘90s, then be prepared to become nostalgic.

-Ljudmilla Petrovic

STUFF WE LIKE

If you were to have told me five years ago that 2011 would find me groovin’ to Iron and Wine’s new funked-out album, I would have gently suggested you shut your “American Mouth” and find some-thing more profitable to bet on. And yet Kiss Each Other Clean, the new release from the always exqui-site but predictably monotonous Sam Bean has me eating my hypo-thetical words.

Building on the success of The Shepherd’s Dog, Kiss Each Other Clean displays Beam’s artistic ver-satility and previously unknown penchant for risk taking. When I hit play, the crunchy distortion had me convinced that somewhere along the line a CD swap had occurred.

In this new release, Bean’s heavily metaphorical, irreverent musings on love, faith and capi-talism find a new home with an unfamiliar ‘70s funk sensibility. To his credit however, the album manages to retain the lush, unex-pected arrangements that have so

deservedly earned Beam his repu-tation as a thoughtful craftsman.

Regrettably, Kiss Each Other Clean relies on the same atmo-spheric coherence of Iron and Wine’s previous releases. Thinking

particularly of the filler tracks “Half Moon” and “Run Rabbit Run”, Beam still hasn’t quite got the care-ful editing bit down.

By the eighth cut, “Big Burned Hand”, the wailing sax and puls-ing bass have indisputably entered boogie territory. The final track, “Your Fake Name is Good Enough For Me” just about howls to be compared to “Split Feelin’s” off the great hard bop saxophonist, Hank Mobley’s ‘60s album, Soul Sta-tion. The downright jazz-infected riffs are both unashamedly joyful and a contrast to the clever mel-ancholy and religious iconography

that more obviously preoccupies this particular release. The album is however a weaker vehicle for Beam’s raw honesty and storytell-ing gifts which were showcased so perfectly by his previous musically sparser offerings.

It will be interesting to see how well this more electronic effort stands up to the stripped down acoustic shows Beam so favours. Kiss Each Other Clean’s soulful sound and jazz and funk references have me charmed, but the pop has me concerned about a possible hit-seeking trajectory for the decidedly un-establishment Iron and Wine.

ALBUM REVIEW

Kiss Each Other CleanIron and Wine troubadour

Sam Beam returns with

a jazz-laden, quirky

departure from his norm

Sam»Beam»is»talkin’»‘bout»the»funk»(and»fuzz)»in»his»latest»release.

»Sarah»MarriottSFU Student

Kiss»Each»Other»Clean»displays»Bean’s»previously»unknown»penchant»for»risk»taking.

Image courtesy of FX

A-

ARTS REVIEWS

»» The»Green»Hornet

While political incorrectness is a spoke of the entertain-ment wheel, the juxtaposition of Britt, a frustratingly useless asshat with underdog sidekick Kato, a supercool, Chinese karate-fu and mechanic god exaggerates their personas so much they become unlikeable. Their interactions are beyond painful to watch, particularly when they’re vying for the attentions of token hot girl

Lenore. Even Christoph Waltz falls flat in portraying Chud-nofsky, a boss villain that nei-ther rivals nor subordinates take seriously, and makes him look lamer than intended.

The premise of The Green Hornet is reduced to a thinly-veiled excuse to exploit the dude appeal of the Black Beauty, their souped up su-percar, boosted even more in 3D. The story reeks of cliché as it progresses choppily, and all opportunities to develop any kind of theme in the story gives way to squeezing as much badassery as possible. With character and plot de-velopment at an all-time low, the only redeeming feature of the movie is the constant on-slaught of explosive action and awesome fight scenes. A true dick flick.

-Esther Tung

DDirector / Michel GondryRelease Date / 01.14.2011

»» Garden»State

Andrew, an emotionally stunted and troubled young man who re-turns to his hometown after nine years, then meets and falls in love with an eccentric girl, Sam, who is both an epileptic and a patho-logical liar. If you get right into it, Garden State is a mediocre movie at best, one big Hollywood cliché masquerading as an offbeat inde-pendent film, and choking on its own quirkiness. But this is more than made up for by the impec-cable acting and the powerful themes that are conveyed in the most charming and honest way.

You’re drawn into the story from the very first scene and taken through the protagonist’s coming-of-age from his perspec-tive in a slow buildup to the poi-gnant final moments of the film. It’s easy to see how this came to be a generation-defining movie. And don’t forget the killer soundtrack!

In the big wide world of medio-cre Canadian indie bands, one name reigns supreme. However hard they try, Hey Rosetta! still lacks the spunk of Stars and the sing-a-long-a-bility of Said the Whale. And the similar punc-tuation doesn’t make up for the fact that they’re just not as tal-ented as Hey Ocean!.

Seeds, the third effort from the east coasters, sits smack dab between unmemorable

and forgettable (but you know, like, in a good way). I popped the CD in at work last week, and it provided some pleasant enough background noise, but I can’t think of a single standout track today.

–- Wait! I just found the liner notes, and on top of the usual drivel, they kindly included a piece of organic paper (is that even a thing?), with seeds in it! Which I can use to grow “car-rots or rapeseed” (now, that definitely can’t be a thing…)! I can bring life to the dark base-ment that we call the Peak of-fices! Well, this just changes ev-erything. ‘A+’ for greatest liner notes ever. Seems fair.

Sorry, what was I saying about the music again? Oh yeah — unmemorable. That was it.

-Erika Zell

C+

»» Seeds»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»Hey Rosetta!

-Dan McPeake

Label / Sonic RecordsRelease Date / 02.15.2011

the peak

24 February 7, 2011 ARTS

What is

Dialogue?

UNDERGRADUATE SEMESTER IN

DIALOGUEhttp://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/undergrad

The Semester in Dialogue offers a different approach to learning:

This program is open to all SFU students.Applications are now being accepted for:Summer 2011: Wilding VancouverFall 2011: Religion, Spirituality, Contemplative Inquiry, and Social ActionApply by February 21, 2011.

Explore pressing public issues through interdisciplinary approaches

Engage in active, discussion-based learning

Interact with a network of experienced and accomplished leaders from a variety of sectors

Focus on improving communication skills

Collaborate with students from diverse backgrounds in a small class setting

For more details, find us on facebook, or visit:

ZonoscopeBy Cut Copy Like The Killers without the giant mouths that never shut, Cut Copy made a name for themselves in the early part of the mil-lennium by listening to far too much New Order and deciding dance rock needed to be at least a little sad. In that sense they’re standard, but their quality is at least above par. That and they don’t go around calling Radiohead a bunch of nimrods. Way to alienate people who buy records, The Killers.

Latin American Film FestivalFebruary 8 to 9 Burnaby CampusThe Latin American Stud-ies Student Union (yes, that exists) will be screening films from the fabled land of Mex-ico. The first day features Viaje Redondo (Round Trip) in AQ 3005 at 12:30 p.m. and La Mitad del Mundo (Half of the World) in the Undergrounds at 7:00 p.m. Second day festiv-ities include La Sangre Ilumin-ada (Enlightened Blood) and Partes Usadas (Used Parts) respectively in the same time slots. Part of SFU Inter-national Week.

Hip Hop Poetics with Los MigrantesFebruary 9, Burnaby CampusMBC2205DJ Su-Comandante and Stahz Grandson hit the turntables after the SFPIRG annual gen-eral meeting to bring some socially conscious hip-hop to SFU. Admission is free with snacks and refreshments avail-able. Space is limited, first come first serve!

SFU Model UNFeburary 11-13 Harbour CentreA three-day conference about global issues and international relations by students and for students. Defend your coun-try’s policies and oppose any-thing that goes against them.

» EVENTS

» MUSIC

» ON CAMPUS

The EagleStarring Channing Tatum After all the movies I’ve seen, I was downright sur-prised the first time I saw an Italian person. I thought Romans all looked like Russell Crowe. The Eagle refers to a fabled standard that was lost in a swamp somewhere with Channing Tatum’s dad. Will Tatum’s pectorals find his father and the golden bird so idol-ized by flagging empires? Will an Italian ever play a Roman general? Will Don-ald Sutherland shave off that beard he’s sporting that makes him look like homeless Santa? We can only hope.

» MOVIES

Test Drive Unlimited 2 (Xbox 360/PS3/PC) January 25 Does the very act of releas-ing a sequel to Test Drive Unlimited imply that it was limited? There are jokes I could make here about The Neverending Story, but I’m a professional and wouldn’t do that to my audience. I have class. The Test Drive franchise has been the perennial driving/sandbox stepchild, and for a world coming off Red Dead Re-demption and Just Cause 2, it has major shoes to fill.

» GAMES

The Chicago CodeAirs MondayRebounding quickly from the heartbreaking cancellation of 2010’s best new show, Ter-riers co-creator and The Shield mastermind Shawn Ryan re-turns to television with a new cop drama. Starring Austral-ian newcomer Jason Clarke and featuring a creative team rounded out by Tim Minear (Firefly, Angel, Wonderfalls) and Charles McDougall (Sex and the City, The Tudors, Big Love), The Chicago Code aims to bring some intelligence to Fox’s brainless winter schedule. New episodes this week:

Monday-House-How I Met Your Mother-The Bachelor-The Chicago Code

Tuesday-Southland-Glee-The Good Wife-Lights Out

Thursday-Community-30 Rock-The Office-Parks and Recreation-Archer

Sunday-Big Love-Bob’s Burgers-Californication

Justified2010’s second best new show returns to FX this week. Tim-othy Olyphant is back in a cow-boy hat chasing bad guys, and it is as sweet as it sounds.

» TV

the peak

25February 7, 2011ARTS

The Zolas feat. Ashleigh Ball and Ben Worcesterbit.ly/f8PdF9The Vancouver prog rock-ers strip down to the basics and bring together friends from Hey Ocean! and Said the Whale.

Henry & The Nightcrawlersbit.ly/gfasz2Local buzz band with stay-ing power hit the couch and play quietly for once.

» Best of Green Couch

These days we hear a lot of talk about buying local produce and the many organic and free-range products that we should be putting into our bodies, yet rarely do we hear about the local music we should be putting into our ears.

In August 2010, Vancouver production company Green Couch Productions opened up its living room to emerging talent. They’ve come up with a very unique way of captur-ing music at its most raw, by plunking artists down on a green couch with, as producer and host for Green Couch Ses-sions Matthew Nagler puts it, “just one camera and one shot”. That’s it. No hiding behind production or editing on these

sessions. What you see is what you get.

It seems that the Vancouver music scene is developing noto-riety for its integrity. Jonathan Krauth, producer/director for Green Couch Sessions, admits that music in Vancouver is “not seen as a business, it’s seen as an art these days.” And that’s exactly the experience that one takes away from watching videos on the Green Couch Sessions website.

“When we showed up…there were like eight people helping out and I couldn’t quite put together exactly who was officially part of the team. They were just so gung-ho. It’s like a gift,” said lead singer and guitarist Bob Sumner of local Vancouver band The Sum-ner Brothers about their latest

experience at The Green Couch Sessions.

When asked about the local music scene in Vancouver, Sum-ner says, “We’ve been playing for six years now and there’s this community feel that seems to be coming together. I don’t know if that’s just me and the fact that I’ve just become aware of it or that it’s something that’s actually starting to happen.”

“Everyone kind of knows each other,” says Krauth. Vancouver seems to be breeding a new type of artist; its performers are a tight knit community distinctively true to itself with the Green Couch staff as its biggest fan. “We watch the videos all the time,” art director Michelle Allan says laughing, “and with that in mind, we’ve seen how the sessions have really developed since the first shoot in August.”

Their latest video recording that is coming soon from the surprisingly mobile Green Couch Sessions website is by local art-ist and Peak Performance Project finalist, Adrian Glynn. Glynn per-formed a few songs off his soon to be released full-length album at a “submarine-looking metal tunnel thing” somewhere in the Vancou-ver Olympic village.

“They like to work off the cuff

to a certain degree which I like,” said Glynn when asked about the rather large camera crew that came to film his Green Couch Session. “I was surprised at how many people there were. There were more than seven people there and everyone seemed to have their own camera.”

Although Glynn has been busy touring in the U.K. and through-out Canada as a solo performer and as part of the spoken word collective The Fugitives, his hometown Vancouver seems to be showing signs of musical growth thanks to local initiatives like Green Couch.

“I’m from Vancouver,” Glynn elaborates. “I can’t say I chose to come here for the music scene but that being said, it actu-ally feels like a scene. It didn’t feel like a scene before. There’s something in the air that feels like something is happening. You talk to people who aren’t in the music industry in Van-couver and they’re listening to local acts and that’s exciting. I think that’s when you know you have some kind of music scene on your hands. They’re talking about The Zolas or they’re talk-ing about Bend Sinister. Our little Vancouver’s growing up.”

PLUSH PERFORMANCES

The big, comfy couch

Green Couch Sessions aims

to inject a little honesty and

comfort into the Vancouver

indie rock scene. Just come

over, grab a guitar, and pull

up a chair

Matthew Nagler, Michelle Allen, and Jonathan Krauth want you to sit on their couch. Bring fertilizer. Image courtesy of Green Couch Productions

Ricardo KhayatteSFU Student

“It didn’t feel like a scene before. There’s something in the air that feels like something is happening.”

Adrian Glynn

@PeakSFU

the peak

26 February 7, 2011 ARTS

THE PEAKS OF 2010The Peak waxes poetic on our favourite art of 2010. We do this in February because we are punk rock.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Red Dead RedemptionRockstar seems to do no wrong. The developer that brought the depraved, mur-der simulator Grand Theft Auto has evolved into some of the best storytellers in the busi-ness. So, what happens when a world-class developer tunes their engine and moves their writing style to a potent and untapped genre? The answer is 2010’s game of the year, Red Dead Redemption.

Every aspect of Rockstar’s wild west revenge tale bleeds atmosphere. The first time I guided John Marsten along a dusty trail and the sun rose over the mountains, I real-ized how much care went into crafting this world. The char-acters represent archetypes of the genre, but each is ren-dered with flair and personal-ity that makes them instantly memorable. One of the de-fining features of the game is its soundtrack. Every track is driving, brooding, and incred-ibly well crafted. The presenta-tion is top notch, and conveys a Western experience on par with a Sergio Leone film. It would be easy to write the game off as “GTA 4 on a horse”. To do so would be a disservice to its developers. Rockstar San Diego realized many of the problems from GTA 4 and tuned the mechan-ics for smoother combat and travel mechanics. The story missions are varied and the numerous ‘Stranger’ side missions will steal hours of your time. The gameplay is solid from beginning to its transcendent ending. Rock-star proves that the Western is alive and well, and delivers the best gaming experience of 2010. Runners up: Mass Effect 2, Starcraft 2, Super Meat Boy, Darksiders.

-Giovanni Zenone

Winter’s BoneJust when the cynicism over mini-majors calling their films “indie” was threatening to overshadow some outstanding small productions, along comes the home run second feature from director Debra Granik to put the term back on every-body’s lips. With the newly re-expanded best picture category at the Academy Awards seem-ingly throwing nominations at major Hollywood productions, it’s comforting to know that quality is being recognized once again, no matter the budget. Winter’s Bone has already been anointed as one of the year’s best films by collecting most of the awards thrown its way, but it’s one of those strange instances where the awards it earns not only satisfy onlookers, but buoy them. Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes (Eastbound & Down, Deadwood) anchor a gritty story of poverty, loss, and parental failure that bal-ances all the emotion of Cop-pola with the quiet thrills and action of Scorsese.

When Ree Dolly’s (Law-rence) father goes missing and can’t show up to a court date, a bail bondsman comes knock-ing, informing her it’s up for repossession if she can’t find him. With two siblings and a mentally vacant mother to pro-vide for, Ree embarks on a noir journey into the underworld of America’s rust belt in decline. Taut, gripping, and memo-rable, Winter’s Bone is uniquely American in that its merits are entirely evident and being rewarded for them. Ree is the hardened female Daishell Ham-met should have written and her existence elevated Ameri-can film in 2010. Runners up: Black Swan, Four Lions, The So-cial Network, The American.

-Clinton Hallahan

Antony & CleopatraBard on the Beach For those that enjoy classi-cal theatre, Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony & Cleopa-tra really hit the spot. The venue (performance tents by the beach) gave the stage an intimate feel, and the sunset in the background provided the powerful his-torical drama with a certain atmosphere that could not be accomplished in an en-closed theatre. The director chose to con-centrate a bit more on the relationship between Marc Antony and Cleopatra, with the bigger concept of po-litical turmoil serving more as a backdrop than a focus. While this wasa huge gam-ble to take on a historical piece, it managed to work, again in part due to the sim-ple setting. Having said this, however, the play was by no means ignorant of the histori-cal background, nor was it badly researched; the details were a little unclear, but the toll of the war occurring in the play was explicit, so this did not take away from the play as a whole. Cleopatra was portrayed as a power-ful, sensual, and emotional woman, while Antony was much more passive, almost serving as a character foil for the neurotic Cleopatra.

While the ending, with a misunderstanding that leads to the suicide of both Antony and Cleopatra, came off a tad melodramatic, the general mood was success-fully conveyed and stayed pretty true to Shakespeare’s classic play. Runners up: Singing in the Rain (The-atre Under The Stars), It’s A Wonderful Life (Arts Club).

-Ljudmila Petrovic

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye WestWith the year at an end, we’re left to look back and figure out not only which artists and al-bums were the most entertain-ing, but which had the most to say. In 2010 that figure was undoubtedly Kanye West. From the egotistical optimism of his College trilogy, to the bizarre (and ingenious) synthetic pop of the self-destructive 808s and Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy gives us the bravado of early Kanye drawn through the lens of the guilt and anger established in 808s. Fan-tasy sees him perched upon his Mount Olympus, glorious in his debauchery and excess.

Gone is the upbeat, self-conscious wit of “All Falls Down”, and in its place we’re given “All of the Lights”, “Run-away”, “Hell of a Life”: all fic-tional stories, but heavily pes-simistic, claustrophobic, and allegorical. While the spotlight always follows Kanye, he gener-alizes, unafraid to toss around narratives and political com-mentary. When he announces his inadequacies he isn’t just talking about himself anymore: the images are grandiose, the metaphors more universal. Fantasy is a contradictory story of excess and perversion, and of the guilt and isolation that accompany modern success. Giving his final word to the po-etry of Gil Scott-Heron, Kanye’s intentions are clear: to produce a work of modern significance, to capture American excess in all its downfall and contradic-tion, and for that he’s earned album of the year. Runners up: Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus, Plastic Beach by Goril-laz, The Archanoid by Janelle Monae, Marrow of the Spirit by Allagoch.

-Lucas Westhaver

TerriersThe single season club is a rari-fied place for dead TV shows to go. Many shows never get a sophomore round, and many don’t even get to finish their first season. But for a show to reach cult status in 13 episodes and be mourned as loudly as, say, Arrested Development or Firefly is an accomplishment in itself. That Terriers, the buddy detective dramedy love child of Ted Griffin (Matchstick Men, Ocean’s Eleven) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield, Angel) man-aged to do so in a cable land-scape overpopulated with worthwhile dramas, makes it one worth remembering. Starring a familiar face in Donal Logue (Grounded For Life, Blade) and relative new-comer Michael Raymond-James (True Blood, Black Snake Moan), Terriers was the smart, edgy counterpoint to the mostly frivolous Bored To Death. It was a show that nailed the balance between being laugh out loud funny and heart wrenchingly emo-tional while never making each beat so defined as to be jarring. It was everything Weeds once was and what True Blood tries so hard to be. Arguments as to the awful name aside, Terriers was in a class of it’s own. Fans of the Robert Downey Jr. comeback vehicle Kiss Kiss Bang Bang who clamored for the snappy dialogue and Boston Legal style man-love finally had their prayers answered with a pilot and subsequent se-ries that begged for attention that never came. In the grave-yard of shows cut down be-fore their prime, the Terriers mausoleum looms large and is mourned. Runners up: Jus-tified, Archer, Sherlock, Louie.

-Clinton Hallahan

» THEATRE » MOVIES » MUSIC » GAMES » TV

the peak

27sports editor Matt Leeemail sports@the-peak.caphone 778.782.4560SPORTS

February 7, 2011

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Clan strike down the SaintsSCOREBOARD

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY CLAN

95

ST. MARTIN’S UNIVERSITY SAINTS

92 » GAME IN A FLASH

The losing streak is over and now the Clan are right back in the thick of the playoff hunt in the GNAC.

Ricky Berry’s trey with six seconds left in the game forced overtime, and the Clan’s 13 points in the extra frame was enough to defeat the visiting St. Martin’s Saints, moving the Clan to 2–9 in GNAC play.

Brown and Berry combined for 71 points, while freshman swingman Ibrahim Appiah reg-istered a season-high 13.

The three Clan players, as well as junior forward Zach Frehlick, all played over 36 min-utes each.

SFU also hosted Western Or-egon on Saturday.

» SFU MAN OF THE MATCH

The Vallejo, California na-tive led all players on the court in points with 36, finishing 12-for-21 from the field and 4-for-9 at the three-point line. He was also made a team-high eight free throws. More importantly, Brown’s electric three-pointer in overtime to secure the vic-tory lifted the SFU crowd at the West Gym out of their seats.

#35 — JUSTIN BROWN

Playing a team with only three more GNAC wins than themselves, the Clan had arguably as good a game as any to pick up their second con-ference victory.

Of course, another way of look-ing at it is that they were playing a team with four times as many victo-ries. That was evident early on, and the Clan did themselves no favours to start the game — they couldn’t shoot, they couldn’t cover, and they couldn’t (and it seemed like at times just wouldn’t) rebound. Entering the game, SFU had the worst point differential in the GNAC and their play early on was indicative of that stat, as the Clan found themselves down by as much as 11 before the

first stanza was halfway done.But how quickly things can

change. As quickly as the Clan lost control of the game early, they seemed to get it back as fast as you can say “Ricky Berry”. Down 20–10 midway through the half, some sort of switch was flicked on, and that switch wears number 34. Berry, the Clan’s, and arguably the GNAC’s best player, spearheaded a 19–7 run, actually putting the Clan ahead briefly. The small, but appreciative crowd, had hope. As the first half buzzer sounded, SFU found them-selves down only 45–39.

As good as Berry was in the first half though, and as close as SFU had kept the game heading into the half, it was quickly becoming clear the rest of the Clan would have to step it up if they were going to keep themselves in it. As the teams headed to the dressing room, the Saints had three players in double-digit scoring; the Clan with just one, that being Berry. But as more and more fans came spilling into SFU’s West Gym to start the second half, so did the baskets for the Clan’s other superstar, Justin Brown.

In the first two and a half

minutes of the second frame, Brown scored six points to lead the Clan on an 8–2 run, and back into a tie ball game. But the prob-lems that plagued the Clan early, and got them trailing in the first place, reared their ugly head again, as turnovers and an inability to re-bound put the Clan in yet another hole. At this point, you wouldn’t be wrong thinking there are only so many the boys in white could dig themselves out of.

Hopefully you’re not the betting type though, as this time, SFU beat the odds.

An 11-point deficit, and an im-pressive 28 points (through regu-lation) from St. Martin’s big man Blake Poole weren’t enough to keep the Clan from storming back to tie the game. Naturally, it was Ricky Berry capping off the comeback with an electrifying three-point basket with less than 10 seconds to play, tying the game at 82 apiece and sending the game to overtime. Not to be overlooked, however, was the play of freshman Ibrahim Ap-piah. He was his usual rebounding-machine-self, but he also posted a season-best 13 points, before

fouling out late in the game.Head coach James Blake had

high praise for the Montreal native, but did note he still needs time be-fore he’ll meet his potential.

“He’s going to be real special in this league,” said Blake. “It’s going to be really hard to stop him.”

Here in the present though, not enough can be said for the play of Berry and Brown.

“Unbelievable,” said Blake in reference to his team’s two super-stars. “I wish the school knew that, and the community knew how lucky we are to have them.”

The 13 points the dynamic duo posted in overtime would be enough to lead the Clan to a nail-biting 95–92 victory over a team they’re chasing for the final playoff spot.

It was unquestionably the most exciting game of the season for the fans, but more importantly, the win over a team they’re chasing vaulted the Clan back into playoff contention.

“We’ve got to show that we can beat those teams, and we have,” noted Blake. “We’ve got something to play for now.”

Brown and Berry help the

Clan end lengthy losing

skid by stumping the

Saints in overtime

Clan guard Justin Brown (35) provided the overtime heroics, draining a three-pointer with 18 seconds left to play, powering SFU to a 95–92 win over St. Martin’s University.

Bai Yin / The Peak

Adam Ovenell-Carter

Peak Associate

G

the peak

February 7, 2011 SPORTS28ATHLETE OF THE WEEK

Short stature, big competitor

If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.SFU women’s basketball head

coach Bruce Langford admits that when the Clan were recruiting new players two years ago, New West-minster’s Kia Van Laare wasn’t ex-actly high on his priority list.

“Kia contacted me in grade 11 about coming here,” recalled Langford. “She was a little girl then — well, she still is — but she was younger. I didn’t see Kia’s skillset matching our philosophy at the time; she’d dribble the ball an awful lot and she was tiny. I told her if she’d needed help getting to a school we’d give her advice.”

Langford continued: “In grade 12, we had several coaches con-tact us and I told them she was the most improved player in the prov-ince and she grew as well, physi-cally and in games. Well, I told peo-ple so many good things about her they asked me, ‘Well why don’t you just talk to her?’”

In the end, Van Laare did make that call to Langford; it worked out well for both sides, too, as Lang-ford had lost several players in the NCAA eligibility abyss and needed as many players as he could get.

For Van Laare, she had wanted to go to SFU for quite some time. “Playing for SFU has been a dream for me; I came to camps and went to women’s basketball games since I was a kid and they were always role models to me.”

The freshman guard enter-tained offers from UBC, University of Regina, and the University of To-ronto, among others, but SFU was her goal from the get go. The pres-tige of playing for a storied pro-gram like SFU women’s basketball was too tantalizing an offer for Van Laare to pass up.

It’s safe to say Langford’s thank-ful that she’s wearing red and white. Despite being a fresh-faced rookie only a year removed from high school basketball, Van Laare has improved remarkably fast in the last couple of weeks, especially from the three-point line.

Following the Clan’s disap-pointing Barbara Rae Cup loss to UBC back in December, Van Laare was just 3-for-16 in the four GNAC

games which followed, leaving a dismal 18.7 per cent on her stat line.

In practice, Langford encour-aged the young guard to shoot more. He knew there was nothing lacking in competitiveness; the head coach says Van Laare has a burning competitiveness that few possess. All that was needed to get her game going was a vote of confidence.

After that, the New Westminster product’s game began to take off. It started in the January 15 game against Western Washington where Van Laare posted a career-high 17 points, going 3-for-6 from beyond the arc. A week later, in the Clan’s first-ever GNAC win versus Alaska Fairbanks, it was Van Laare who led the team in scoring with a 21-point performance, this time going 5-for-9 at the three point line. In her last five games, Van Laare is shooting more and doing it all with a swagger to her game, connect-ing on 19 of her 37 three-point at-tempts, which is just better than 50 per cent.

To be as effective as she has been this season was a bit of a sur-prise for Van Laare, who admits she didn’t know what to expect when she entered her first training camp. Perhaps the rash of injuries that have limited the team to just seven players and forced Langford to up Van Laare’s minutes from the 20–25 range to 25–30 has been a reason she’s played with this much confidence, but Van Laare is happy to contribute nonetheless.

“When my shots start falling, I get more confidence,” Van Laare said. “It might be luck, but I just feel like I can drive to the hoop and play well.”

Added Van Laare: “I know I’m a rookie and it’s a learning process and I’m going to make my mis-takes but the good thing is I can get right back out there and improve right away.”

That’s a pretty mature playing attitude for someone who isn’t yet legal to drink.

Van Laare hopes to eventually grow into a leadership role as she continues to contribute on the scoreboard in her team’s inaugu-ral season in the NCAA, and if she does, it’ll be because her competi-tive drive fuels her.

“The reason Kia has this suc-cess is because of who she is,” said Langford. “She’s such a fiery and competitive player, and she doesn’t let anything get in the way of her goals and desires.”

Not bad for a player who nearly got away. Maybe it was all just meant to be.

Freshman guard Kia Van

Laare is proving that youth

doesn’t mean a thing in

GNAC basketball

Matt LeeSports Editor

Andy Fang, Mark Burnham, and Bai Yin / The PeakClan freshman Kia Van Laare has exuded a competitive fire which has helped her adapt to the NCAA remarkably quickly.

the peak

29February 7, 2011SPORTS

CLAN COMMENTARY

Where have all the Clan fans gone?

Everyone loves to support a win-ning team and students have had their fair share of winning teams at SFU. However, it’s hard to get student-athletes to compete even harder than they already do. With attendance at most Clan games slumping, SFU Athletics needs to create a draw for fans to come to their games and to do that, the in-game product needs to be cleaned up a bit.

To their credit, SFU Athletics has done a solid job. They give out prod-ucts from sponsors to fans during the game, have merchandise and refreshments for purchase, and play decent music during breaks in play.

However, certain things need to be taken to the next level. The in-game promotions that are executed include a free-throw shooting con-test (basketball), a shoot-from-your-seat contest (basketball), a field goal kicking contest (football), and a make-as-much-noise-as-you-can

contest, amongst others. The win-ning fan usually gets a prize from a sponsor. That’s great and all, but ul-timately the fan is going to consume that good and not think twice about the SFU Clan.

What’s needed is a product that the fan can take home as a souvenir and can bring back with them to a game. Normally, when you go on vacation, you buy a souvenir in re-

membrance of that trip. With these games, a product that the fan can take home, place on their table and say, “Man, I had a great time there. Maybe I will go back again!”

SFU Athletics partially hit the mark by giving out thundersticks with “Simon Fraser University Clan” labelled on it at major events. Now, they need to take it a step further by giving out other items such as tow-els or foam fingers at every game.

Another step further would be to give out t-shirts to every fan in attendance. Clothing is not only tangible, but can be continuously consumed as opposed to a bottle of Powerade. A fan will take a t-shirt

home and likely wear it at some point. At worst, the next time they wear it will be at a Clan event, when-ever they choose to attend one next. At best, they wear it around campus on occasion and to games. It’s easy marketing that helps promote stu-dent support for a team and shows a little team spirit.

Branding this line of clothing from SFU Athletics and supplying it for sale at the SFU bookstore, where all other SFU apparel is sold, would be another good option. Moreover, having a sea of red in the crowd with everyone wearing red Clan shirts would be a pretty nice sight to see.

Music is played at Clan events and while NCAA rules prohibit music or noise being played over gym speakers during play, contrary to what is done in the National Basketball Association, it shouldn’t stop organizers from playing ap-propriate music. What I consider appropriate would be music more catered to sporting events instead of to house-warming parties. Don’t get me wrong, I think “Jessie’s Girl” is a decent song, but it should probably be replaced by traditional jock jams such as “Rock and Roll II” by Gary Glitter, “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones, or even a more contempo-rary choice like “All I Do Is Win” by DJ Khaled.

The Clan hit the mark by playing one certain song, “Shipping up to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys

for player introductions and they kept that song consistent. Now they need a song to play at the end when SFU wins and keep that consistent.

Other figures that add to the fan experience include the presence of alumni and more importantly, the presence of cheerleaders and a mascot. After a seemingly long hia-tus, the SFU cheerleading team is back and has been at work for re-

cent Clan events. However, prior to this season, I only recall them mak-ing it out to some football games and SFU women’s basketball’s “Breast Game Ever”. A cheerlead-ing team is an asset to any college sports organization.

Furthermore, the presence of a mascot can turn games into ex-periences. Whether it’s a photo op with groups of first-year fans or the unfortunately fortunate accident of being the victim of some hilarious mascot bloopers, a mascot can en-hance the entertainment value for most fans. Considering that SFU cheerleading doesn’t get funding and SFU’s mascot, McFogg the Dog

may or may not get a paycheque for his (or is it her?) effort, these are tiny costs that can have a big impact.

Lastly, any event is better when liquor is involved. Jokes aside, stu-dents are more willing to come out and support their team if there is li-quor around. What brings students to Highland Pub? It’s certainly not the atmosphere. Serving alcohol at Clan events gives students an al-ternative to hanging out at the Pub. Not only will they get their weekly dosage of alcohol but the entertain-ment of being at a Clan event. Many of SFU’s new foes in the NCAA often have beer gardens at their football games; is it too much to get some-thing like that? Of course, the pri-mary draw should be the athletes in action and that should be the main focus, but as an added attraction for fans, alcohol served at events, likely in the VIP area where fans can still watch the game from the windows. A higher charge would be paid to be in the VIP area and the organizers could simply restrict alcohol con-sumption to within that area.

In any case, improving the in-game product and making sure that fans feel like the game was more than worth attending will ensure long term success in growing some kind of a fan base. I think if you ask any of our athletes, they will say that fans make a big difference and giv-ing every effort to make games as enjoyable as possible is worth it.

There are ways to establish

a dedicated fan base for

SFU Clan events; it just

takes a little creativity

What’s needed is a product that the fans can take home as a souvenir and can bring back with them to a game.

It’s not uncommon to see a far-below-capacity crowd in attendance at Clan athletic events. Andy Fang / The Peak

Ramesh RanjanPeak Associate

Jokes aside, students are more willing to come out and support their team if there’s liquor around.

the peak

30 February 7, 2011 SPORTS

126 West Cordova St.

Vancouver, BC V6B 1E4

LOCATED AT THE NEW WOODWARDS

CAMPUS

604 682 2000w-dental.ca

LOVE YOUR SMILE

NEED DENTAL?!NEED DENTAL?!

dental& wellness centre

We accept SFU student plans

Please bring in this adfor your free whitening with new patient exam and cleaning

ACTIVE SFU

What constitutes a healthy student diet?

“Now Meaghan, have you fin-ished your vegetables yet?”

My parents would utter that phrase to me almost reflexively throughout much of my childhood. I can remember spending hours sit-ting at the kitchen table alone, just my vegetables and I. One of the many house rules established dur-ing my youth was that no one was to leave the kitchen table until they had finished their entire dinner. In my house, what that actually trans-lated to was, “Meaghan, until you have licked that plate clean there will be no Family Channel for you.”

Last week, I had the chance to speak with SFU’s own registered dietitian Rosie Dhaliwal. My main objective was to determine what exactly constitutes eating healthy. From what I’d learned through home and school was that to eat healthy you must eat all of your vegetables and refer to Canada’s Food Guide. At first glance, it seems straightforward enough.

However, when you’re dining out on campus, what are the odds that you’re going to whip out a handy dandy Food Guide from your back pocket? Regardless of that, how will you even know if what you’re order-ing constitutes one or two servings of meat and alternatives?

“When you’re eating at home, try to familiarize yourself with what half a cup of rice or half a cup of pasta even looks like,” said Dhali-wal. “You’ll soon realize that it’s

quite a lot smaller than what we are generally getting when we are served out at a restaurant.”

Continued Dhaliwal: “Another thing that I recommend is eating according to a plate model. It’s a visual which comes from the Ca-nadian Diabetes Association. Basi-cally, if you imagine your plate, half of it should be vegetables, a quar-ter should be your protein source (fish, meat, beans, or tofu), and the other quarter your starchy foods (rice, pasta, or other noodles). So when you’re dining out at, let’s say, the Dining Hall, I would encourage that you ask for portions that you think are appropriate. You can al-ways share some with a roommate or save some for later.”

Should we be looking at foods based on their calories? Dhaliwal was quick to tackle this long-stand-ing question. “When you look at the Food Guide, you’ll notice that there are no calories listed anywhere. When you pair eating healthy with being active you’ll see that there are numerous benefits. You can improve your concentration, sleep patterns, immunities, and reduce the risk of chronic disease. There are many studies out there that have proven that by simply eating break-fast it improves both concentration and memory.”

We see advertisements everyday that cause us to think that food is only healthy if it tastes like card-board. Is it possible to have the best of both worlds?

“Healthy does taste good. If there are foods out there that you don’t enjoy eating, then don’t eat them just because you consider them healthy,” explained Dhaliwal. “I will often meet people who will begrudgingly eat a bowl of oatmeal and hate it the whole time. To me that doesn’t make sense.”

So does this mean that the ma-jority of my childhood was wasted away sitting at a kitchen table? Not necessarily. What Dhaliwal is get-ting at is that we still need to be eat-ing out of the four main food groups from Canada’s Food Guide.

“If we use the guide to eat the recommended servings, we can easily satisfy all our micro and macro nutrient needs,” said SFU’s registered dietician. “Basically, you don’t just need to eat spinach be-cause some cartoon about a sailor with amazing muscles used to eat it. You can make up your own mind about what you want to be eating and only eat those foods that bring you satisfaction.”

Does it matter when we eat our meals? Dhaliwal was quick to an-swer this oft-asked question.

“We should be eating every three to four hours. Starting with breakfast two hours after we’ve woken up. We should continue with that pattern for no matter how long. Even if that means you’re eating at 10:00 p.m.”

Continued Dhaliwal: “Many people are obsessed with the image of either slimming down or bulk-ing up. But the trick is to just think healthy and not necessarily thin.”

If you are interested in getting to know more about nutrition and healthy eating, then one of the best sources found here on campus is SFU’s The Dish, a nutrition blog that is hosted by Rosie Dhalial with the goal of spreading awareness about nutrition. “The Dish is trying to de-bunk a lot of the myths out there about dieting and muscle building. It’s about science-based informa-tion,” added Dhaliwal.

The traditional belief that

healthy foods can’t taste

as good as unhealthy

foods just simply isn’t true

We see advertisements everyday that cause us to think that food is only healthy if it tastes like cardboard.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever eaten on campus? Send your stories to:

sports@the-peak.ca(It’ll be anonymous, we promise. Maybe.)

Meaghan WilsonPeak Associate

Organic fruits and vegetables are not a common purchase for SFU students.

Image courtesy of students.sfu.ca

the peak

31February 7, 2011SPORTS

One and a half million Canadians watched the coverage of the All-Star Draft two weekends ago. One and a half million! That’s a pretty staggering number, especially considering how little the all-star festivities mean.

CBC also noted an outstanding 56 per cent increase in viewership of the All-Star Game itself, with a whopping average of 2.4 million viewers. It’s safe to call the event a success, and you can bet your be-hind the format will return next year. But was the on-ice product re-ally that much better?

It’s not often you’d call an 11–10 hockey game a snoozefest, but like prior all-star games, this one was indeed a snore. It’s only a matter of time before the new format be-comes old, and the fans lose interest in it all over again.

Brendan Shanahan and the NHL deserve credit for their attempts to better the experience. The draft was fun, the skills competition is always enjoyable for both fans and play-ers alike, and at least the game had some worthwhile storylines, such as the Sedin twins playing on opposite teams for the first time in their lives (insert dramatic gasp here).

And in a world where cash is king, adding another aspect (the draft) to a weekend dedicated to making money — and adding one that attracts as many viewers as the draft did — is a stroke of genius. Yet, while all-star weekend was indeed a fiscal success, it’s hard to say the rest of it was, too.

The issues with all-star weekend clearly do not lie in its star power. Unlike other best-on-best tourna-ments, it’s hard to call what those

stars play “hockey”. It is hockey in the sense that there are hockey players with hockey sticks pushing a hockey puck up and down a hockey rink, but it’s not the game we’ve come to love.

There’s little on the line aside from pride, and as a result no player is going to risk injury to himself or someone else by blocking a shot or laying a body check of any kind.

The end result is something you’d likely find in one of Gary Bett-man’s fantasies — a wide-open con-test with little-to-no defense (and little-to-no emotion), and a score reminiscent of a basketball game.

Everything about the event screams gimmick, and this year’s NHL “Guardian” project didn’t help one bit in that regard.

Until the event actually means something beyond pride and comic books, it will continue to go down that path.

In football, every player who makes it to the Pro Bowl — the NFL’s version of the All-Star Game — is guaranteed $22,500. The prize for the winning team? A whopping $45,000 per player.

In baseball, where the Sum-mer Classic is played between the National League all-stars and the American League all-stars, the win-ning conference is granted home field advantage in the World Se-ries. The NHL could adopt such a policy, because in a game with as much ebb and flow as hockey, play-ing at home makes a monumental difference.

And so it goes for the NHL, stuck with a game completely void of any meaning without having any avail-able resources to give it some. So what to do?

The NHL, and TSN in particu-lar, did their best marketing the event, going so far as to feature a mock draft featuring Twitter all-star and Phoenix Coyote tough guy Paul Bissonnette. TSN went wall-to-wall with their coverage, even creating a brand new set for the All-Star Draft.

That said, this space would be well-wasted elaborating on the ri-diculous half-hour preview show to the most frivolous draft in NHL his-tory, but the network did well in get-ting people to legitimately care who

went first and, perhaps more so, who went last. But, as Spider-Man 3 taught us, not even big names and big marketing — not even Stan Lee — can save a questionable product.

Admittedly, it seems a bit silly to be making such a fuss over some-thing so trivial. If only the NHL saw it that way, maybe we wouldn’t have to be subjected to such rubbish (and by rubbish I mean a thinly-veiled attempt at squeezing as much money out of us as possible). At the end of the day, the league has little it can do to make the all-star festivities meaningful, but they have done a respectable job (for the time being) at making it worthwhile, both in terms of our entertainment and their profit.

For now, the NHL can reap the benefits of its novel format, but as always it’s just a matter of time be-fore our shiny new toys grow old and dull; before we want something new, again.

NHL COMMENTARY

All-Star Game still an all-star snoreGive the NHL an ‘A’ for

effort, but the overall

execution of the All-Star

Game leaves something to

be desired

At the end of the day, the league has little it can do to make the all-star festivities meaningful, but they have done a respectable job.

Daniel Briere’s goal on Cam Ward during the All-Star Game was one of the few entertaining moments of the night.

Image courtesy of NHL.com

Adam Ovenell-CarterPeak Associate

Adding another aspect (the draft) to a weekend dedicated to making money — and adding one that attracts as many viewers as the draft did — is a stroke of genius.

Pro sports all-star game ratings of 2010-201114

13

12

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

NHL ASG NBA ASG NFL Pro Bowl MLB ASG1.48 6.9 13.4 12.1

Viewe

rs (M

illion

s)

the peak

32 February 7, 2011 SPORTS

CANUCKS

GIVEAWAYCONTEST

TICKETS

The Peak is giving away TWO TICKETS to the Vancouver Canucks vs. Dallas Stars game on February 19! Enter to win by completing our CANUCKS CROSSWORD CONTEST below and dropping it off in our purple mailbox at MBC 2901 (Located just below Higher Grounds Coffee Shop at the Maggie Benston Centre). The winner will be randomly selected Thursday. Make sure you put your name and e-mail on the back! Limit one entry per person. GOOD LUCK!

1

12

2 3 4 5

6

7

9

8 10

12

11 13 1514

16 17 20

1918

21

22

23

24 25

26

27

28

29

ACROSS1. This former Canucks GM (last name) acquired Roberto Luongo in 2006.3. Mason Raymond played for the Camrose ________ in his junior days.6. Canuck players Smyl, Linden, and Naslund all had this done to their jersey numbers.8. This player (last name) is often referred to as the first Sedin “triplet”; played from ‘98 to ‘03 with the Canucks.11. Scott _______ was taken by the Predators from the Canucks in the 1998 Expansion Draft.13. OHL team where Canucks prospect Cody Hodgson played.16. In the 2007 playoffs, the Canucks defeated the Dallas Stars in ______ games.18. Affable former Canucks backup from Latvia; he’s currently the goalie coach for Washington Capitals.20. Daniel Sedin and Ryan Kesler are often good choices to get one of these in a game.22. This former Canucks goaltender was nicknamed ‘Backup Bob’ (last name). 23. The number worn by Kirk McLean, Peter Skudra, Johan Hedberg, and’Bobby Lu’.24. He wore number 12 for the Canucks and is now a member of the club’s front office.26. An alternate captain for Vancouver; also played for USA during the 2010 Olympics.28. Last name of former player and front office member Steve and current player Jeff.

DOWN1. The Canucks compete in the __________ Division.2. Luongo and Schneider both tend this.4. Current Canucks winger Jannik Hansen is from this country.5. The first name of the player whom the Canucks traded to acquire Markus Naslund back in 1996. 7. Don ______ is a former Canuck captain who played with the team from 1972 to 1980.9. Henrik Sedin became the first Canuck to claim the _____ Trophy for league MVP.10. Electric winger Pavel Bure wore this number for the Canucks for many years.12. Protective equipment which is worn on a player’s hand.14. He became just the second Canuck to score 50 goals in one season in 1995-96 (last name).15. Stalwart Canuck blueliner (last name) who leads the franchise in points by a defenceman.17. Naslund and Kovalchuk chased a puck out of the arena in an ad for this company.19. ____ Tikkanen played 100 games for the Canucks from 1995 to 1997.21. Ryan Kesler is a favourite to win the _____ Trophy this season.25. Some Canucks players call Mason Raymond this nickname. 27. Henrik Sedin won this award last year, too.29. Name of the Vancouver Canucks’ mascot.

THE PEAK’S

the peak

33February 7, 2011CLASSIFIEDS

• Intensive 60-Hour Program

• Classroom Management Techniques

• Detailed Lesson Planning

• ESL Skills Development

• Comprehensive Teaching Materials

• Interactive Teaching Practicum

• Internationally Recognized Certificate

• Teacher Placement Service

• Money Back Guarantee Included

• Thousands of Satisfied Students

Teach EnglishOverseas

TESOL/TESL Teacher TrainingCertification Courses

OXFORD SEMINARS604-683-3430/1-800-269-6719

www.oxfordseminars.ca

Come relax and eat a warm, healthy, delicious vegetarian lunch, in a cozy elegant surrounding.

For only $5 you can enjoy a full 5 course meal!Join us every Tuesday and Wednesday from 11:30 A.M to 2:30 P.M,at the Forum Chambers in the Maggie-Benson Building. (one story under the Higher Ground Café)

VEGGIE LUNCH!Try something new!

FREE CLASSIFIEDS are available to SFU students for personal use. Thirty words maximum. Drop by The Peak offices in MBC 2900 to put in your ad, or go to our website: www.the-peak.ca or email: classifieds @the-peak.ca. One ad per person. All others: $12+GST per week, prepaid, for 30 words. Each additional 10 words: $1+GST. Five ads or more for the special price of $8+GST per ad. Cash or cheque only please.Make cheques payable to: Peak Publications Society, mail it with the ad, attn: Business Manager. For paid ad inquiries, phone 778-782-3598.

3 Bedroom Condo, Avail immed. Perfect for students, bottom of the hill on bus route. $1350. Please call for details 780-238-6988. f6

Researchers at the Behavioural Neuroendocrinology Lab are look-ing for participants who are cur-rently trying to conceive. If you are interested or would like more information, please contact us at neuro@sfu.ca f6

Looking for first year math help? I have tons of experience tutoring/TAing various math courses! con-tact: caa14@sfu.ca f7Writing an Essay? Stuck? Editing expert with 14 years experience. Ba. SFU, Certified Teacher/Tutor & Technical Writer. Call 1-250-317-7486 (Kelowna) or Check out my website @ www.thehomeworkhel-per.ca and email me. f9CALCULUS TUTOR with 13 years teaching experience, 5 years in Taiwan. B.Sc. Honours, Dalhousie. The skills my students develop last for their lifetime. Jennifer.Overing-ton@gmail.com – cell 604.771.8403 f7 MATH GOT YOU SCARED? NEED TO PASS THAT MATH/MACM COURSE? Contact Scott Cowan for all your Math/MACM tutoring needs. Competitive rates, extensive experience and great past reviews! scottc@alumni.sfu.ca f6Professional proofreading ser-vices for essays, assignments. Have Ph.D. and 10 yrs experi-ence. Guaranteed to upgrade and polish your assignments! $25/hr. Kvlee18@yahoo.ca. 604-837-1016 f13Get your event noticed. Sell those textbooks. Find a roommate. Sell your Pokemon collection. Advertise your services. The Peak classifieds cost you nothing and gets your message to the SFU commmunity. Submit your classified ad! What have you got to lose. Free to SFU Students. www.the-peak.ca/submit_classified. Deadline: Wednesdays at 2:30. Get your event noticed. Sell those textbooks. Find a roommate. Sell your Pokemon collec-tion. Advertise your services. The Peak classifieds cost you nothing and gets your message to the SFU commmu-nity. Submit your classified ad! What have you got to lose. Free to SFU Stu-dents. www.the-peak.ca/submit_clas-sified. Deadline: Wednesdays at 2:30.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 7Highland Pub: Moon Pants Improv at 6 PMAncestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History. 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm. Con-tact: Edith Lo: lo@sfu.ca. Additional Information: www.cic.sfu.ca. Free and Open to the Public. Please reserve online at: www.sfu.ca/reserve

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 8Highland Pub: Open Mic Night at 7 PMLatin American Studies Student Union – Vancouver Latin American Film Festival **FREE**. AQ 3005 @ 12.30pm – “Viaje Redondo”, Undergrounds @ 7pm – “La Mitad del Mundo”MEd Information Session. 5:30pm - 6:30 pm. SFU Surrey Campus, Room 5140. http://www.edd.sfu.ca. Fall 2011 MeD Programs. Free Admission. RSVP to: cgp-rsvp@sfu.ca

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 9Highland Pub: Wicked Wings Wed’s 5 PMLatin American Studies Student Union – Vancouver Latin American Film Festival **FREE**.AQ 3005 @ 12.30pm – “La Sangre Iluminada”, Undergrounds @ 7pm – “Par-tes Usadas” CAC’s 8th Annual Dating Auction for Charity 2011. 11:30 AM- 2:00 PM. SFU CONVO MALL. Cost: Bid for your favourite auctionee! All proceeds go to the Canadian Cancer Society. Organizing club: CAC (Canadianized Asian Club) For more information: http://auction.caconline.caArcheology Student Union Annual Meet and Greet. 6:00pm - 11:30pm. Saywell Hall room 9152SFPIRG AGM. With Hip Hop performances by Los Migrantes. Agenda: Annual Report, Financial Statements, Bylaw amendments. Find out about your student-run social justice centre. Wed Feb 9th, 3-5:30pm. Grad Lounge, MBC. More info: www.sfpirg.ca

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 10Highland Pub: Punjabi Culture Club Presents... Ground Shaker 3. 9 PMCanada Research Chairs Seminar Series. 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM. Burnaby Campus, IR-MACS Centre, Applied Sciences Building, rm 10900. http://www.irmacs.sfu.ca/events/crc-seminar-series. The Canada Research Chairs Seminar Series. Speaker: Dr. Eldon Emberly, Canada Research Chair in Materials and Structural Biology, Department of Physics, SFU. Admission is free.SFU Outstanding Alumni Awards. 6:00pm - 10:00pm. www.sfu.ca/alumni/outstanding. Join members of the Alumni Association and the SFU community for a special dinner event at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver in celebration of the 2010 Outstanding Alumni Award recipients. 2010 Outstanding Alumni Award Recipients: Mr. Norman Ar-mour, BA ‘87 - Arts and Culture, Ms. Mae Burrows, BA ‘72, MA ‘96 - Service to the Com-munity, Mr. Jim Chu, BBA ‘86 - Public Service, Dr. Alan Rugman, PhD ‘75 - Academic Achievement. Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver. 791 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC. Dress: Business AttireTickets (includes two bottles of BC wine per table): $125 per person I $900 per table of eight. Master of Ceremonies: Sheryl MacKay, Host of North by Northwest, CBC Radio One. For more information and to register, please visit: www.sfu.ca/alumni/outstanding

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 11Highland Pub: Lust & Love Valentines Day Party 8 PM CAC’s 8th Annual Dating Auction for Charity 2011 AFTERPARTY. 10:00PM - 3:00AM. BARNONE NIGHTCLUB. Cost: $15 TICKETS EXPIRE AT 11:30PM (email: external@cacon-line.ca) Organizing club: CAC (Canadianized Asian Club). For more information, visit http://auction.caconline.caIMC Colloquium Series. 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM. Burnaby campus, IRMACS Centre, Ap-plied Sciences Building, rm 10900. http://www.irmacs.sfu.ca/events/IMC_Colloquium. Speaker: Dr. Steve DiPaola, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, SFU. Admission is free.SFU Model United Nations. Friday February 11, 2011 through Sunday February 13. 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM. www.sfumun.org. This is an annual event that happens every early Spring. The annual student-run SFU UN simulation will take place at the SFU Harbour Centre. It is open to all university students, also from outside SFU. Prices vary, but go

from $50 - $70 per person. Find detailed information about prices on our website www.sfumun.org. sg@sfumun.org

UPCOMINGREADING BREAK - MONDAY FEBRUARY 14, 2011 - FRIDAY FEBRUARY 18, 2011 - No classes.MONDAY FEBRUARY 14 FENV Dean’s lecture series, spring 2011: KarenKohfeld. 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM. http://www.fenv.sfu.ca/upcoming-events/. Burnaby campus, Halpern Centre, rm 126. “Iron, Ice, Salt, and Carbon: The Great Reorganization of the North Pacific Ocean since the Last Ice Age”. This lecture is free. Light refreshments will be served. It would be greatly appreciated if you could please bring your own coffee mug.TUESDAY FEBRUARY 15EdD Information Session. 5:30pm - 6:30 pm. http://www.edd.sfu.ca. Fall 2011 EdD Information Session. Free AdmissionInformation Session: EdD Leadership K-12 & EdD Environmental Learning. 5:30pm - 6:30 pm. http://www.edd.sfu.ca. Fall 2011 EdD Program. Free Ad-mission. Location: SFU Surrey, Room 5360. RSVP to: cgp-rsvp@sfu.caWEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 16Information Session: EdD Transformational Change. 5:30pm - 6:30 pm. http://www.edd.sfu.ca Fall 2011 EdD Programs. Free Admission. Location: SFU Vancouver, Room 1505 RSVP to: cgp-rsvp@sfu.caTHURSDAY FEBRUARY 17 SFU Women’s basketball vsAlaska Fairbanks. 5:15 PM - 7:15 PM. athletics.sfu.ca. At SFU’s West Gym.SFU Men’s basketball vs Northwest Nazarene. 19:30 - 19:30. athletics.sfu.ca. SFU’s West GymSATURDAY FEBRUARY 19Staying Healthy: Bad Habits, Goals and Happiness. 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM. www.sfu.ca/seniors. Vancouver campus, Harbour Centre, Fletcher Challenge The-atre, rm 1900. Staying healthy is a complicated process, defined by our past,

our present, and our expected and shared decisions about how to live. Do we choose short-term pain for long-term gain? Or rather, do we indulge in fleeting but much needed pleasures? In this forum, we will discuss new insights from the emerging field of health psychology about what influences our everyday decisions about how to stay healthy, and how our health depends on our life pursuits, goals and happiness. Georgia Pomaki, PhD, is a research scientist spe-cializing in Health Psychology. There are no reservations for this forum; seating is available on a first-come-first-served basis.SFU Men’s Hockey vs. Thompson Rivers University. 8:00 PM. www.sfuhockey.com. Come out and cheer on the SFU Men’s Hockey team continue their de-fence of the B.C. Intercollegiate Hockey League championship when they take on Thompson Rivers University on Saturday, February 19th. All SFU students and staff can receive $2.00 admission at the door with their University ID. All SFU home games are played at the Bill Copeland Sports Centre, located at 3676 Kensington Avenue in Burnaby. The arena is a quick 15-minute ride from cam-pus on the #144 bus.SFU Women’s basketball vs Alaska Anchorage. 5:15 PM - 7:15 PM. athletics.sfu.ca. At SFU’s West Gym.SFU Men’s basketball vs Central Washington. 19:30 - 19:30. athletics.sfu.ca. SFU’s West GymTUESDAY FEBRUARY 22Co-operation, negotiation and cheating in human reproductive interactions. 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM. Burnaby campus, Halpern Centre, rm 126. Speaker: Charles Crawford. The talk is free and no registration is required. Info: 604.926.5186. Reflections on a World Without Islam- Graham E. Fuller. 7:00 PM. SFU Vancou-ver Campus, Joseph and Rosalie Segal Rooms 1400-1410, 515 West Hastings Street. www.sfu.ca/ccsmsc. The Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures present Graham E. Fuller, Simon Fraser University ‘Re-flections on a World Without Islam’. CO-HOSTED BY HELLENIC STUDIES (SFU) Book signing to follow.THURSDAY FEBRUARY 24Canada Research Chairs Seminar Series. 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM. Burnaby campus, IRMACS Centre, Applied Sciences Building, rm 10900. http://www.irmacs.sfu.ca/events/crc-seminar-series. The Canada Research Chairs Seminar Series. Speaker: Dr. Nilima Nigam, Canada Research Chair in Applied Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, SFU. Admission is free.FRIDAY FEBRUARY 25Black Box Series. 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM.SATURDAY FEBRUARY 26Black Box Series. 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM.SFU Men’s Hockey vs. the University of Victoria. 8:00 PM. Come out and cheer on the SFU Men’s Hockey team continue their defence of the B.C. Intercol-legiate Hockey League championship when they take on the University of Victoria on Saturday, February 26th. All SFU students and staff can receive $2.00 admission at the door with their University ID. All SFU home games are played at the Bill Copeland Sports Centre, located at 3676 Kensington Avenue in Burnaby. The arena is a quick 15-minute ride from campus on the #144 bus.Peak Collective Meetings every Wednesday at 11:00 a.m., MBC 2900 underneath Higher Grounds. Come and get involved, yell at us, praise us, and sit on our new leather couchesSFU Students: Submit your campus event to www.the-peak.ca/submit_classi-fied. It’s FREE!

SFU CAMPUS EVENTS (Brought to you by The Peak & SFSS)

GET YOUR EVENT NOTICED!SUBMIT IT TO:

www.the-peak.ca/submit_classified

the peak

34humour editor Colin Sharpemail humour@the-peak.caphone 778.782.4560HUMOUR

February 7, 2011

This week’sPeak Humour

has been analyzing this for a long time, and after countless taste tests, can fi nally believe that it is in fact not butter.

Children’s Stories / Andrew MacLachlan (SFU)

6.5 / Jacob Pacey and Matt Hill (MacMedia)

Reports out of the fine arts depart-ment at the University of Califor-nia, Los Angeles (UCLA), are sug-gesting that long-warring gangs the Crips and the Bloods may have put their issues behind them, and it is all thanks to art.

It was early on Thursday morn-ing when the leaders of the infa-mous Los Angeles-based gangs were tricked into attending a seminar held by Steven Rubix, a sessional instructor for UCLA’s fine arts program, after being told they could win a timeshare at Lake Tahoe. It was at this meeting that Rubix shared his eye-opening re-search on the nature of colour.

Key to Rubix’s lecture was a section devoted to the mixing of colours. It was then that he men-tioned that blue and red combine to form violet, commonly known

as “purple”. Representatives of the gang were shocked, as they had been led to believe that blue and red, the respective identifying co-lours of the Crips and the Bloods, combined to form “violent”. In fact, this had been the basis of their long feud.

“To be honest, I was shocked that they had yet to figure some of this stuff out,” said a bewil-dered Rubix. “All these years, all the crime, all the annoying-as-hell suburban kids pretending to be hard-asses, and it was all because of one typo. One fucking typo.”

The Los Angeles Police De-partment initiated the seminar after coming across an odd se-lection of evidence during a drug raid last October.

“After entering the premises we came across a page torn out of a children’s textbook in which the unfortunate typo had been cir-cled,” said Detective Miguel San-tos. “Our team began an in-depth investigation into the colour theory and immediately found more and more examples of the misspelling throughout notebooks, computers,

and Facebook status updates.”The forensics department was

able to determine that the page was the oldest artifact showcasing the misspelling. It was then traced to a first grade arts and crafts book that was used throughout South-Central LA. This was a stroke of luck however, as the only reason they caught this was that it hap-pened to be ‘Take Your Daughter to Work Day’, and the daughter of one scientist happened to recognize the textbook she used at school.

The textbook, which was first published in in the late ‘60s, has faced increased controversy since the news came out. An anonymous source at the publishing company told The Peak, “Look, that book has sold millions of copies, and they went all around the world. That typo was in every single one of them. I’m not trying to say that a specific racial group is dumb or anything . . . I’m just saying . . . why didn’t any of the white kids start fighting? I’m just saying . . .”

The Los Angeles School Board is looking at updating their textbooks for the first time since 1967.

Feat accomplished without

busting a cap in a single ass

Al Theuri andColin SharpOne of us is black

Conflict between Crips and Bloods settled by UCLA arts instructor

Andy Fang / The PeakSteven Rubix hopes to parlay this accomplishment into a full-time job.

Finance committee: Kim Bloomfi eld, Garrett Brezsnyak, Keenan Federico, Kody Huard, Jordan Kohn, John Morrison III, David Proctor, Travis Sandulo, Lisa Thomson, Graham Templeton, Dexter Vosper, Lorenz Yeung

Usage-based billing on degrees, resulting in tens of dollars of cash infl ow

Clan athletics staff to be replaced by Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod with tracksuits as payment

Replace bagpipe band with spoon band

Demand all tuition payment be made with Goldcorp brand gold bricks™

Introduce Battlestar Galactia tourism

Creation of 1,000 new work study positions at SFU’s new license plate plant

Grades distributed by auction

Rebrand school as “Pepsi Presents SFU”

Discontinue washroom cleaning and maintenance

Cost-cutting measures for SFU’s 2011 budget

ALREADY DONE

the peak

35February 7, 2011HUMOUR

I should be a villain in The Dark Knight Rises

VILLAIN’S VOICE

What can make you doubt reality, change your perception of time, and fuck up a superhero? The an-swer is you, Christopher Nolan. You have done those things.

After months of speculation that Batman would be pitted against my intellectual prowess in the upcoming film The Dark Knight Rises, you went ahead and carelessly threw Catwoman in the mix. Are you truly insane?

Just think about this for even a second. I mean, the appeal of your last film, Inception, was that it forced the audience to think. Surely you want the same thing from your Batman films, and yet you haven’t contacted me. Are you kidding me? You do realize that there is no one that can match the scale of my intellect. I continually test the limits of Batman’s capacity for logic and reason. What does he have to do when Catwoman is involved? Try and suppress his

leather fetish? Re-fill a prescrip-tion for allergy medication? Get her spayed by Bob Barker? The film will be over before the end of the first act.

I just ask that you realize that involving me in this film is a logi-cal decision. Forget about my un-paralleled mental abilities for a minute, and you will see that this even makes financial sense. The last time audience’s were submit-ted to Catwoman it was despised. What convinced you that Cat-woman would be a good idea? I’m of the firm belief that you simply must be pussy whipped.

Nolan, you’ve forced my hand. I’ve done something to ensure the failure of your film. Should you unravel the puzzle I’ve laid before you, perhaps it can be salvaged, but I doubt it. All I can tell you is that I will waste Catwoman if you stoop to this level.

I took a shit on Anne Hatha-way’s porch. Riddle me that.

The Peak found a letter that

was sent to Christopher Nolan

The RiddlerProfessional Nemesis

What does he have to do when Catwoman is involved? Try and suppress his leather fetish?

Tall Awkward Brown Guy / Dev Saini (SFU)

CAMPUS COMICS

Id and Ego / Lauren Alston (The Gateway)

Single Panel Comic Seeking Partner / Andrew MacLachlan (SFU)

Ski Ninjas / Fingers “Thumbs” McGee (The Argus)

the peak

36 February 7, 2011 LAST WORD

Egypt and Tunisia are practically on fire with protests, Jordan has a

new prime minister, and South Sudan has voted to become an independent state. People all over the world are exercising their right to citizenship and political choice. All of this crazy political upheaval in the rest of the world certainly had me thinking lately about our own situation in Canada: what are we doing right? Where can we improve?

The answer to the latter came to me rather quickly: our foreign policy. In the past decade Canada has lagged in our upholding of international human rights and well being. Because of this lag in policy, Canada actually lost our seat on the United Nations Security Council this last fall. While the reasoning behind the loss are far too complicated to get into, there is one case that stands out in my mind as a particular violation against human wel-fare. Canada still exports the toxic carcinogen asbestos to Third World countries, seem-ingly without any remorse for the cancer and deaths caused by the substance.

Asbestos is a crystalline mineral mined mostly in Que-bec that was once used in fire retardant suits and gloves, as well as building insulation and even household items such

as lawnmowers and hairdry-ers. When it was discovered in the 1960s that yellow and blue asbestos contributed to in-creased cancer rates, bans and restrictions were placed on its use in First World nations, drying up the billion-dollar industry in a few short years. Research has since concluded that there is no known “safe” exposure to asbestos fibers of any kind, including the white asbestos currently mined in Canada.

However, instead of follow-ing the international call for an outright ban of the carcino-gen, Canada chose to seek new markets in the Third World. Industrializing nations such as India and Brazil started to import asbestos from Canada at alarmingly high rates. The government of Canada rec-ognizes the tremendous risks associated with mining, use and exposure to all forms of asbestos — risks such as lung cancer, asbestosis, and meso-thelioma — yet for decades the Canadian government has resisted the prohibition of, or even standardized regulation on, white asbestos exports.

When France imposed a ban on white asbestos in 1998, Canada took them to inter-national trade court to argue that asbestos was safe in “con-trolled use” situations and that the ban was wholly unfair to

international trade of the min-eral. Canada lost the battle, but has continued to wage war against the prohibition of asbestos as an outright in-ternational ban has ever been reached.

When it was proposed that asbestos be placed on the list of Prior Informed Consent substances as per the Rotter-dam Convention, which would require importing countries to give consent to the accep-tance of dangerous goods like asbestos before receipt, Can-ada fought tooth and nail to make sure it was not put on

the list. And this strong posi-tion has not gone unnoticed by other developed nations. In fact, while the USA and United Kingdom have worked to-wards asbestos bans, Canada has been forced to ally itself with nations that have been known for tremendous human rights abuses such as Israel.

When confronted with the issue, the Canadian govern-ment continually purports what they call “controlled use” of the product, whereby spe-cific safety regulations can be enacted to prevent the in-creased risk of cancer associ-ated with exposure to asbestos. However, what the government fails to recognize is that many of the developing nations we export to often do not have many of the basic workplace safety standards or workers compensation benefits en-joyed in First World nations. Workers are even often oblivi-ous to the harmful effects of the substance. India, for ex-ample, recognizes asbestosis as a work-related disease but does not recognize lung cancer or mesothelioma as they are related to asbestos in the work place.

On top of poor worker rights in these nations, inaccu-rate or shoddy record-keeping often keeps work-related ill-nesses swept under the rug, making illness tracking near

impossible for doctors and re-searchers. Additionally there are often huge shortages of properly trained safety inspec-tors in industry who would be able to work to prevent in-creased unnecessary exposure to asbestos — if they really must use it in the first place.

So why are we still exporting this highly dangerous mineral if the risks are known and we are hesitant to use it ourselves? The answer is disappointingly simple: money. The asbestos industry of Quebec has some very powerful lobby groups working in their name who are easily able to sway the govern-ment in their favor. While the market for asbestos in Canada is nearly nil, the money that can be made in the Third World is apparently worth more than the lives that will be lost as a result of the use of such a carci-nogenic material.

Canada’s reputation as a country that looks out for the little guy and stands up for human welfare is being tarnished as the government continually undermines scien-tific, legislative, and interna-tional consensus that places asbestos as one of the world’s most carcinogenic occupa-tional substances. It’s time to call an end to this, and to demand that our government stand up for what’s right in-stead of what’s easy.

A dark spot on Canada’s international image

Canada still exports the toxic car-cinogen as-bestos to Third World countries, seemingly without any remorse for the cancer and deaths that it causes.

Written by Ariane Madden