KSA calls for by-election candidates

The KSA is calling on students to run in the Oct. 27-30 by-election to fill 23 spots currently open at the student association.

Jobs range from director of events and student life to First Nations liaison. The only criteria are that you have to be a current Kwantlen student and, if running for a liaison post, you must “self-identify” with the group.

Nathan Griffiths, director of operation, said that running for a position is “the best way to create positive change in the KSA and at Kwantlen.” He encouraged those running to get out, talk with students and listen to their concerns. “There is a direct correlation between how much campaigning you do, how many people you talk to and the amount of votes you get.”

Students who want to run have to collect signatures from 25 Kwantlen students and fill out an application form, which can be picked up at any KSA office or downloaded from http://kusa.ca/index.php?pid=222.

A list of available KSA positions, and responsibilities that go with various positions, is available in the KSA by-election advertisement. (Link at right on this page.)

All nomination applications are due Oct. 15 at 2 p.m.

Westerman honoured for support of Kwantlen, students

Margaret Westerman, a retired teacher and active volunteer, has received an honourary membership from the KSA for her contributions to the university.

Westerman and her husband, Ernest, sold a large portion of their land in Surrey to Kwantlen in 1982. Although they could have sold it to developers, they opted instead for the university so that a campus could be built on the lot.

Kwantlen President David Atkinson said that without the land and support from the couple, the school would not be where it is today.

“Kwantlen has flourished,” he said. “If it had not had a sense of place, I suspect none of this would have happened.”

Westerman, who still lives next door to the school, was humbled by her honourary membership and was adamant that the students of Kwantlen have done far more for her than she has every done for them. She added that since her husband’s death in 1984, the presence of students and staff have had a calming effect.

“I’ve had 24 years alone in that house, but I haven’t felt lonely once…just seeing those students is what keeps me going.”

Ernest Westerman’s family set down roots on the land when they arrived in the province in 1919. In 1948, after the couple returned from their honeymoon, they built a house by hand to solidify those roots. The small house, on 126th Street between the two parking lots on the west side of campus, is still home to Westerman.

Westerman said that she has no intentions of ever leaving the house and wants to continue her relationship with Kwantlen.

“I hope to die there, and if I don’t, I hope my spirit dies there.”

Jammin’

They ripped it up in Cloverdale Friday, at one of the biggest KSA-sponsored events of the semester. Kwantlen students and other music fans turned out for headliners Sloan, Daniel Wesley and Ten Second Epic — and other bands — at the all-ages event. We’ll be adding to our coverage over the next few days. To start, here’s a photographic look at some what happened.

For the fans, Cram Jam another success

There was no shortage of sound in Cloverdale Friday, where Kwantlen students, locals and other music fans gathered for the third annual Cram Jam, one of the biggest KSA-sponsored events of the semester, complete with an enticing line-up of indie, punk, alternative and rock artists from across the country.

At 2 p.m. Friday as the festival is scheduled to begin, the sun is gleaming outside the venue, but the site is practically empty, with the exception of a stage crew, a few volunteers, security guards and members of the Kwantlen Student Association running about the venue finalizing last-minute details.

“We need to get the first band on now if we want to stay on schedule,” said Vanessa Knight, the KSA’s director of events. “It’s a festival. Things never run as planned.”

The opening band hit the stage near 3 p.m. Full of energy and completely disregarding the lack of audience, the four pre-teen boys who’ve named themselves Childsplay start off this year’s festival with some original songs and a cover of the Ramone’s first hit single, “Blitzkrieg Bop.”

“How do you feel playing for a bunch of university students?”

“It was cool,” says 12-year-old vocalist, Mishel Salum, wearing crisp, skinny jeans, a studded belt, bright white trainers a paint-splattered shirt and a skinny pink tie. “It’s so exciting.”

Levin Faber, the 13-year-old blonde-haired drummer, adds: “I’m allergic to hay, but other
than that it was awesome.”

Besides the stifling scent of hay bales and horses, as would be expected at a rodeo grounds, the venue couldn’t have been better. If the crowd were larger that is.

“We’re expecting 600, hopefully,” says Knight. The goal was 2,500. The KSA overestimated ticket sales and the venue never fills up to even a fourth of its capacity.

For the next several hours, local talent – Versus the Nothing, Tenant and Exit 200 – play for a small, but supportive crowd as the audience slowly builds. Near 7 p.m., The Fury rip up the stage. With guitarist Jonathan Wu and female vocalist Chase in the mix, the band sets up the rest of the evening.

“We’re only hoping for it to get bigger and better every year,” says Kathryn, site manager and coordinator for Cram Jam. This is the first year that the festival has required a ticket for entry and that it is open to the public and not just Kwantlen Students. “An event of this magnitude takes a ton of planning and preparation. We have a number of staff working on it full-time who have been working on it for about six months,” she says.

At 7 p.m., in the beer garden, the atmosphere is buzzing with excitement.

“Who are you here to see tonight?”

“Obviously, Daniel Wesley,” says 24-year-old Carry Bradford, who celebrated her birthday at Cram Jam.

As festival goers, mostly 20-somethings, help themselves to $5 pints of Granville Island Ale and raspberry Growers cider, the Cram Jam vibe is beginning to look up.

“We just got here and we’re having an amazing time,” says Sam Robertson, a 20-year-old student at Kwantlen Surrey Campus.

On stage, Will Currie & The Country French, an indie folk band from Waterloo, Ontario adds a different vibe to the evening. The band originally got together in a small room in the basement of the music faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University. Will Currie, lead vocalist and founder of the band, skillfully plays the piano on jazzy, uplifting tunes as drummer Aaron Mariash holds the beat during their set with a charming smile on his face throughout. The songs Surprising Me and Friendly Fire are crowd favorites and they sing along.

“It’s the final day of our tour,” says Mariash with a sigh, as the band packs up outside the Agriplex. “This tour with Sloan has definitely been the highlight of our time together as a band.”

Inside, rock band Ten Second Epic puts on nothing less than an epic show, with more head-banging involved than at a Slipknot gig.

As Daniel Wesley finally makes his way onto the stage, nearly everyone in the crowd is swaying, smiling and singing along to his lyrics, lost in the moment. Fans seem to be mesmerized by his Sublime-meets-Jack-Johnson-esque sound. Sing Dance, his hit has the crowd screaming and firing up lighters and cell phones and waving them in the air.

And then it’s time for the final act of the evening.

17 years after they started, Sloan has still got what it takes to wow an audience. Older members of the audience are singing their lyrics word-for-word, dominating the front of stage alongside the younger generation. The quartet closed off the evening leaving the crowd with exactly what they came for, if not more.

The music, for the most part, was brilliant. Cram Jam was filled with a blur of amazing acts and the sound was incredible. The venue was the only downfall, being far too large for the number of fans.
But it was definitely a music festival of sorts. Indie kids and rockers alike went home more than satisfied, with their heads filled with an abundance of abrasive rock tunes and alternative sounds.

Inspired by family, Daniel Wesley makes a splash

Daniel Wesley, a critically acclaimed singer, songwriter and guitarist won the 2007 Fox Seeds award and had the most requested single in Vancouver, and this is just the beginning for Wesley. Touring with The Trews and opening for Tom Cochrane, Daniel Wesley is making waves across the country with his mellow, beach-style rock music that leaves fans wanting more.

Wesley grew up in Langley, with his older brother, two younger sisters and a little brother. Wesley’s father worked, while his mom quit her job as a nurse to be a stay-at-home mom. The family had a huge influence on his music.

“My family’s been fostering kids for 20 years almost. It’s been a big part of our upbringing,” said Wesley. “I think it’s really helped us get a good perspective on some things.”

Wesley first got into music at a young age. He remembers piling into his mother’s Volkswagen van with his siblings, cranking oldies and singing along.

“It was fun times, there was a lot of love in that van,” Wesley said. “Then I’d start singing in the shower and just enjoying things like that. My brothers and sisters and I would put on Michael Jackson and we’d wear Michael Jackson jackets and jump around and sing.

“It was just all about love, and music is all about love and it just kind of registered. Then you grow up and realize that some things are more important than other things, and music has been one of the best things in my life.”

Before The Daniel Wesley Band, he was in a heavy rock band and began “getting sick of that type of music. I wanted to do something different,” he said.

“This project is like an inspiration of life. Sometimes my life has had dark periods, sometimes there’s happy periods. And I just want to be a happy person. Sometimes I did bad things to myself and other people, and I just wanted to turn over a new leaf and really do good things, and this whole thing, Daniel Wesley, was the start of it.

“I started writing songs that made me happy and they ended up being reggae, beach kind of songs.”

Wesley finds his inspiration from his family, friends and his girlfriend. “If I’m happy, and the things in my life are good, then my music’s going to carry that along,” he said. “That’s the most important thing to me; having good relationships with the people that mean the most to me.”

The band was having some difficulties getting along in earlier tours which resulted in changes with drummers, but they think they have finally got it right with Mark Luongo on bass and Josh Carlsen on drums. “We’re all getting to a point now, where we pretty much found the guys that are going to be playing with us,” Wesley said.

“We’re going to be doing lots of the States before Christmas, we have our album released in Japan and we want to go to Australia and the U.K.”

Of all the places Wesley plans to go, he is most excited to see Brazil. His brother lived in Brazil for a year, and Wesley missed out to work on his music, which paid off in the end.

“It’s a really new chapter for us,” said Wesley. “It will be really cool once it becomes more of a worldwide thing, but just because I want to see the world, just like everyone else.

“I want to have a career as a musician, and I want to make the best music I can make. I think the best musicians are the people that end up being famous. It’s something I’m willing to cope with. I think I’m a capable person of dealing with it, but it’s not something I’m really looking forward to or looking for.”

At Cram Jam, Wesley’s voice penetrates the Cloverdale Agridome. He breaks only to take a sip of beer or to change his guitar. When Wesley performs, it’s hard not to notice the swooning girls, and it’s not just because of his tattooed arms or curly blonde hair; it’s his flawless voice.

“I see some familiar faces,” he says, before pulling out his first guitar, which is just one out of the four he will use. He begins to sing and the crowd sings along with him.

“I like it because they sing our songs with us. When that started happening for us, that was really, really neat,” said Wesley. “It’s something I’ve always wanted.”

Epic performance gets crowd off the bleachers

Ten Second Epic, the Edmonton rock-and-roll band, got the crowd off the bleachers with songs from their album, Count Yourself In at Kwantlen’s Cram Jam Friday. If you haven’t heard of them yet, you should count yourself in.

With three music video’s getting airtime on MuchMusic, performing on Much on Demand and MTV in Canada, Ten Second Epic is ready for more. Their new album, Hometown, will be released in January.

The band started six years ago. Patrick Birtles (drummer) met Andrew Usenik (singer) at school. Birtles lived in the same neighbourhood as Craig Spelliscy (guitar) and they grew up playing music together. Spelliscy went to a different high school and met Sandy MacKinnon (bass) who knew Daniel Carriere (guitar.)

Everyone thought “we work, we get along, and we can write music together,” said Patrick Birtles. “This is going to happen.” And it did. Ten Second Epic are now full-time working musicians.

Birtles remembers the first time a Ten Second Epic song was played on radio. He sang along and air drummed to the beat while driving in his car. “I felt kind of like a tool celebrating my own song so much,” he laughs, “but you got to do what you got to do.

“Every milestone becomes its new highlight,” said Birtles. “Whether it’s hearing your song on the radio for the first time or seeing your music video on TV for the first time. It just sort of trumps the radio thing and then you have an interview live on MuchMusic. It’s even one more step.”

Ten Second Epic currently tours in a van and they’ve learned to stay out of each other’s way, but they’ve also learned “how to piss people off really easily,” he jokes. When the band fights, it’s mostly about who gets to ride shotgun. “It’s always really stupid things and we always feel dumb for doing it.”

The band member’s girlfriends are understanding of life on the road. “You come home from tour with a pretty high phone bill but that’s about the worst of it,” said Birtles.

Without their friends and families support, Ten Second Epic doesn’t think they would have accomplished what they have.

Success does have its downfalls. “My friends are proud of me, but it’s tough because I’m on the road so much,” said Birtles. “It’s almost alienated myself from some of my friends. I feel bad, but it’s something I’ve committed myself to.”

Ten Second Epic has just finished recording its second album and, Birtles said, “it’s simpler” but didn’t come easily at first.

They wrote and recorded the whole album and scrapped it. “We felt like we achieved the same we already experienced, and we wanted to go further than that,” he said. They rewrote the album from scratch and think it’s bigger and better. “It’s an experience I wouldn’t change for the world,” said Birtles.

Through their six years together, and their latest album, they’ve “learned to play together as a band,” said Birtles. “A cohesive unit, as opposed to five different members just contributing to a song.”
Ten Second Epic gets the crowd moshing with their high energy show. MacKinnon and Spelliscy bang their ’80s rock-and-roll hair to the beat, while Usenik bounces around the stage, belting out every lyric without running out of breath. Birtles claims that he still gets nervous before every show, but you can’t tell.

It is clear that Ten Second Epic lives up to their reputation of a band headed for the spotlight. “I’d love to be famous. How can you hate some random person coming up to you and asking for an autograph?” Birtles said. “It’s like, the greatest feeling in the world.”

17 years later, Sloan still rocking

It’s been 15 years since Sloan’s first album went gold in Canada and, 10 albums later, Sloan is still rocking like it’s 1993.

Two years after the Canadian band from Halifax formed in 1991, Sloan debuted its first full-length album, Smeared. Their 10 albums include such hits as If it Feels Good Do it, The Good in Everyone, Underwhelmed, All Used Up, The Rest of My Life and Money City Maniacs.

On Sept. 26, Sloan was the headliner at the Kwantlen Student Association’s Cram Jam, one of the many stops on the tour to promote the band’s latest album, Parallel Play. By Oct. 1, Sloan will have done shows in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Jay Ferguson, vocalist and guitarist, said that over the years it’s gotten easier for the band to get along on the road. “It’s like a family; you have to learn not to get on anybody’s nerves.”

Today Sloan has the Internet on the tour bus, “so we don’t talk to each other that much any more,” he jokes.

The Internet isn’t the only addition to the bus. Ferguson said, “Kids seem to be the main difference,” between touring now and a decade ago. “Everyone has kids or a home,” he said. The band members miss their kids a lot while they’re touring.

Sloan has traveled the world, making stops in Australia, Japan, Europe, Spain and the U.S. One of the band’s favourite destinations is Japan. Ferguson said the band loved the culture shock of Japan, and the fans that waited for them at their hotel. The fans gave them presents and sang along to their songs word for word. He said, “It was like a mini-version of Beatles mania.”

Sloan’s sound is unique, with a mixture of The Beatles sound and some harder rock and roll. They’re “a do-it-yourself kind of group,” said Ferguson. On each record, each of the members of the band has written three or four of their own songs.

It may have been hard for a Canadian band from Nova Scotia to make it internationally in the ’90s but it’s getting less difficult. “There’s so many Canadian bands that have done well internationally,” said Ferguson, largely because of touring and then word-of-mouth through the Internet. “I mean you still have to be good, make good records, put on a good show.”

“It’s not like we’re the new, hot band on the block,” said Ferguson, “so it is a little more difficult. We make good records and have an awesome fan base. There’s no records I’m not proud of.”

The ’90s was a decade of one-hit-wonders and grunge. “Many of our peers from the early ’90s broke up,” said Ferguson. “The fact that we exist is our greatest accomplishment.”

Before Ferguson gets off of the red velvet couch, he said, “I hear the fries at the venue are fantastic!” While Ferguson looks forward to the fries, the fans in the audience look forward to a taste of Sloan.

At one point, a pumped-up fan begins crowd surfing, shoving himself towards the front. Patrick Pentland, guitarist and vocalist, says, in true rock-star style, “If you come over here, you’re out, okay?”

As the band plays, Ferguson dodges a flying shirt, thrown up by a female fan, and condom balloons bounce from person to person inside the Cloverdale Agridome. Seventeen years later, and Sloan’s still got it.

KSA rejects no-fees referendum, changes the rules

(This article has been corrected in response to comments.)

Kwantlen students would have been able to vote to have all KSA fees reduced to zero if all had gone as planned for Robert Mumford. 

They won’t get the chance. In response to the former KSAer’s petition for the referendum, a quick amendment to KSA regulations has prevented the idea from ever going on a ballot. 

Mumford proposed a referendum question that, if approved, would have drastically changed the fee system that is now in place and that currently costs a full-time student $43.75 per semester. Under his new fee structure, that would have been reduced to zero. A second proposed referendum question would have asked if students favoured a new fee system that would have directed fees to groups other than the KSA. 

To have a question appear on a KSA referendum, you must collect 250 signatures from Kwantlen students. Mumford did that, and submitted the petitions to the KSA on Aug. 1.  

The first referendum question Mumford proposed was that fees for academic and trades students – excluding fees for the health and dental plans, and for the Canadian Federation of Students and the Canadian Federation of Students-BC Component – be reduced to zero.

The second question, which was based on students approving the first one, proposed a $3 per credit fee, with half of that going to the Kwantlen Foundation, one-third going to the Kwantlen Student Life & Development department, and the remainder being split between the Kwantlen Athletics department and the Kwantlen Learning centres.

On Sept. 4, according to minutes from their meeting, the KSAs executive board KSA council rejected Mumford’s petitions, stating that they were “not in order as the changes require specific amendments to the KSA’s bylaws.”

The board also voted to change its bylaws regulations so that no referendum question can be put forward “(seeking) to increase or decrease existing fees of the Society by more than fifteen percent in any given fiscal year.” 

A second change says that referendum questions that direct fees to any organization other then the KSA are not allowed.

Mumford believes his proposals would have resulted in almost no changes in a student’s day-to-day routine.

“I don’t think the students use the KSA for anything except for maybe a free agenda. Most of their events are basically just handouts of free food,” he said.

He noted that most students he spoke to reacted positively to the petition. 

“One girl said she would go on a date with me [if it went through]…. But basically, the reaction from most students was giggling or laughter,” he said. “They didn’t think it was actually possible to not pay the fee.”

A spokesperson for the KSA could not be reached for comment.

« Previous Page