Data is not finite in the ways that resources such as drinking water are. Data is not something that a country or economy needs to produce, mine or refine. Data is not inherently valuable in itself, as diamonds or barrels of oil are. Data cannot be saved in times of plenty and used in times of scarcity.

Proponents of the metered data use the analogy of water. In countries where a flat rate is charged for a finite resource such as fresh water, this leads to a culture of overuse: people use as much water as they possibly can, simply because if they don’t, someone else will. It’s essentially a use-it-or-lose-it mentality that leads to waste and inefficiency.

In a way, data is the reverse of this. Unused data is inefficient and wasteful. Unused data represents an economy’s sluggishness. We can assume that the more information that’s flowing over the internet, the more valuable ideas are being exchanged and more economic growth can follow.

If the CRTC doesn’t realize that internet use will be the future of a global economy, it will put in place measures that will jeopardize any potential growth to come from inside Canada.

Technological connectedness should be a hallmark of Canadian culture. The CRTC should never again consider plans to meter use of the internet in any way.

Brad Head, the director of academic affairs, and Shanal Prasad, the director of finance, think the KSA should be taking the time to educate students not only about the benefits of the Multipass program but also of the downsides.

“In principle, should students vote on the U-pass? By all means, yes, they should decide if they want it or not,” said Prasad. “But the way it’s been brought up, I totally disagree with.”

Head agrees.

“I don’t think it’s a fair program, I think that we’re benefitting the minimal amount of students,” he said.

“We’re spending $5,000 to push the Multipass through. If students disagree with that, they are allowed a mere $250 dollars to do a ‘no’ campaign.”

Head thinks that the KSA should not be taking a stance on the issue of the Multipass. He thinks that a neutral stance would not only be more representative, but would also “allow for an informed vote, not a forced vote.”

Prasad asked, “Why would [the KSA] take a ‘yes’ position? You’re not really representing your membership.”

Matt Todd, the director of external affairs, has represented the KSA during Multipass negotiations with TransLink.

“The KSA’s job is to create programs and services that it thinks are in the best interest of students to help students make the best of their time to be successful,” he said.

“If we were to create a program and not believe that it’s a good program, that we believe students would want, then we would be doing a terrible job.”

As for the discrepancy in funding between the yes and no sides, Todd writes the idea of unfairness off, saying a no’ campaign hasn’t even been proposed.

“Nobody’s even come forward for $5, $250 or $5,000,” he said.

“If students were actually organizing against the Multipass and felt that this was unfair, then it would be a conversation worth having.”

He points out that the funding numbers aren’t set in stone and could change if need arose.

Prasad managed to stave off the Multipass referendum until March, but a student petition managed to return the vote to its original dates, coinciding with KSA elections. His intent was to take the time to make sure students at all four campuses had been given the facts about the Multipass proposal.

As it stands, Kwantlen students would pay the same $30 fee as other institutions in Metro Vancouver, but for lower levels of transit service that other institutions receive, he argues.

“If you’re getting a half-price bus pass, you’re getting a pretty kick-ass deal,” Todd said.

Todd doesn’t think that the service gap is any reason to vote against the Multipass. “You’re still getting a half-price U-pass,” he said.

Matt Todd says that if the Multipass passes in the referendum, the KSA will lobby the TransLink mayor’s council to increase funding for services in order to address the service gap.

On Friday, Jan. 28, a TransLink table was set up on Surrey campus to provide students with answers to any questions they may have had. According to TransLink, there are no existing plans to increase service to the neighbourhoods surrounding Kwantlen campuses until it can raise the money to pay for it.

Head and Prasad believe that Kwantlen students need to know that they aren’t getting the same service as, for example, students at UBC and SFU are getting.

Voting in the KSA election starts Jan. 31 and runs until Feb. 6. All voting will be done online.

When the polls close at noon on Feb. 6, this year’s KSA elections will be the first to have been conducted exclusively online.

Unlike previous elections, which occurred only on one day and involved physical ballot boxes and voting booths, voting will be conducted online from noon on Jan. 31 to noon on Feb. 6.

But there are concerns among KSA Executive Board members that the door for breaking the rules is wide open.

KSA Director of Academic Affairs, Brad Head, sees problems with the online voting system, predicting a lower voter turnout. “Many students don’t vote already… many students don’t go onto their myKwantlen account,” he said.

Head is also concerned about cheating.

Since voting traditionally took place at stationary voting booths in years past, computers that will now be used for voting are required to be “stationary.” In other words, candidates are barred from simply walking around campus with a laptop and asking people to vote.

KSA Director of Finance, Shanal Prasad, has similar concerns.

“There is so much potential for things to go wrong,” he said. “What if a group of people have a giant party and they have a laptop there and they get all their friends to come and vote?”

KSA Director of External Affairs, Matt Todd, said it’s also against the rules for a candidate to walk around and offer candy bars in exchange for votes, something that was just as likely under the paper-balloting system.

“We already live with that risk, we just have different packaging on the risk,” Todd said.

(The distribution of food and drink is a violation listed in KSA elections Regulations document on their website and candidates are held responsible for the actions of supporters. According to KSA regulations, “the candidate accepts full responsibility… that any offenses committed by campaigners shall be deemed to be offences committed by the candidate.”)

As for benefits, Todd said it is much cheaper to put the vote online. And because it is cheaper, it is possible to run the election over more days and, he hopes, capture more voters. As well, there are no “bad ballots” online, and tabulation of votes is automatic.

This year, there are 59 candidates running for various positions in the KSA. This is the largest number of candidates to have run in a single election at Kwantlen. “It means people are paying attention and actually care enough to participate,” Todd said.

Here is a full list of candidates (link is to a PDF.)

Hello, Africa! is being held at Kwantlen’s Surrey Campus on Monday, Nov. 15. The event will be “an evening of African words, wisdom, song, dance, drumming, crafts, food and drink.” Photo by Jeff Groat

Hello, Kwantlen, Africa’s calling.

Hello, Africa! kicks off International Education Week at Kwantlen on Monday and features a keynote address from UBC sociology Professor Kogila Moodley.

“This event came about as a result of myself and two colleagues going to Kenya this summer,” said Joan Nesbitt, who is part of Kwantlen’s criminology faculty and is an organizer of the gala.

“The three of us went to Kenya to look at the feasibility of setting up international field schools there,” she said. Part of the grant that paid for the trip to Kenya included a community dialogue session back at home, leading to Hello, Africa!

Moodley’s address is titled “Gandhi & Mandela: Reconciliation in Divided Societies” and is expected to touch on themes of building dialogue between local communities in the developed Western world and the continent of Africa, or the global south at large.

Nesbitt and her colleagues are in the very early stages of setting up international field schools in Kenya and Tanzania, where Kwantlen criminology or sociology students may be able to go on exchange.

Monday’s event is meant to highlight the importance of exchanges and of sharing educational resources between communities. It is sponsored by Kwantlen’s criminology department.

Moodley, according to the Hello, Africa! program, is professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, where she was the first holder of the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Studies.

Kwantlen creative writing student Mark Funston crafts new sounds using old poetic forms. His style of sonic poetry is a cousin of slam poetry, and Funston likes to add his own twist using traditional forms such as the villanelle or the triolet. Each has a unique internal rhyme scheme that adds to the “sonic” qualities of his work. Photo by Jeff Groat

[audio: SonicPoetry.mp3]

Ever since the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, people have been tuned into the world of contemporary poetry after Shane Koyczan’s “We Are More” performance. Kwantlen Student Mark Funston isn’t a slam poet, but his work is like Koyczan’s in that its author’s voice breathes it to life.

Sonic poetry is the name Funston uses for his work, and it is phonetically charged with both old and new style. By playing with classical poetic forms, with rigid rhyme schemes and structures, he is able to add an extra layer to his work.

Funston has completed his minor in creative writing at Kwantlen, but is not considering launching a career as a professional poet.

KSA director of external affairs, Matt Todd, is concerned that students will need to wait even longer for a U-Pass. Todd hopes the U-Pass referendum will be held in February. Photo By Jeff Groat

A week ago, the Kwantlen Student Association postponed a referendum on the U-Pass as negotiations hadn’t reached a conclusion before a target date set by TransLink set. This week, the negotiations were finalized, pending working out details in a couple areas.

The result is a recommendation that students vote in February 2011 to accept or reject a U-Pass.

One area that still needs to be worked out is the wording of the contract to include Adult Basic Education (ABE) students in the U-Pass program. ABE students are mature students who did not graduate from high school but are upgrading some education to continue in university education. Originally, these students were not included in the U-Pass program, since ABE credits do not count as regular full-time credits like most other courses do.

Another, more finicky area, concerns students who withdraw from courses after they receive a U-Pass.

Hypothetically, it may be possible for a student to register for one class, receive a U-Pass, then withdraw from that class. In this case, TransLink would charge Kwantlen an additional $50 to make up the difference between a U-Pass and a regular one-zone buss pass, as this person would no longer be considered a student at Kwantlen.

The problem lies in the fact that Kwantlen does not have the means to collect this fee from the student, and is wrestling with the question of whether a student can be prevented from registering for classes before paying back the institution.

Matt Todd, the Kwantlen Student Administration’s director of external affairs, said, “the university has this dilemma of would we really prevent somebody from furthering their post secondary education because they didn’t pay for their U-Pass?”

At the table, Kwantlen failed to negotiate an increase in the exemption limits from one to five per cent, something that Kwanten believes is a problem unique to the Fraser Valley.

“Because most of those students [in the valley] go to Kwantlen, we feel that this is a problem that is special to Kwantlen,“ Todd said.

The student association expects roughly five per cent of students will want to be exempt from paying for and using their U-Pass, because of a lack of reliable and frequent transit access in some communities of the valley. These students would be forced to pay for a U-Pass that they are likely to not use.

“We don’t think that’s fair to students,” Todd said.

According to Todd, there are two options: “Better service or exempt those students.”

If approved, the U-Pass system will be a two-card system for at least two years or until TransLink implements a smart-card electronic fare system.

This means the KSA will incur the costs of redesigning new student ID cards that include some features required by TransLink, as well as the U-Pass card itself. There are other expenses for implementing the U-Pass, such as hiring staff to deal with the new program, training staff and buying new software. All these costs are paid by participating schools and only an increase in student fees would pay for this.

“They have come to the table, they’ve made a big investment, but I don’t think [the province] realized how much it was going to cost,” Todd said.

Todd is recommending that the referendum be held in the first week of February next year.

Indian-born author Anosh Irani appeared at this year’s Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival, and read from his new novel, Dahanu Road. The reading took place at an event called Home Grown, which featured several Vancouver-based authors and poets. Irani moved to Vancouver from Mumbai, India in 1998 to study creative writing at UBC. In 2009, he was writer-in-residence for Kwantlen’s creative writing program. He has has received a number of Canadian literature awards for his plays, novels and poetry.

Video by Jeff Groat and Amanda Punshon ]]> http://www.kwantlenchronicle.ca/2010/10/video-anosh-irani-has-a-way-with-words/feed/ 1 http://www.kwantlenchronicle.ca/2010/10/opinion-increasing-minimum-wage-makes-sense/ http://www.kwantlenchronicle.ca/2010/10/opinion-increasing-minimum-wage-makes-sense/#comments Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:44:33 +0000 Jeff Groat http://www.kwantlenchronicle.ca/?p=3376 It’s time to raise the minimum wage in B.C. — the province’s students have it hard enough.