Temporary Full-Time position

The South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority (TransLink) is one of Canada’s most innovative transportation authorities and our responsibilities continue to grow. It is our unique task to move people and goods in an integrated road and transportation network, while preserving & enhancing Metro Vancouver’s quality of life. 

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When was the last time you went out and bought a CD or a DVD? Yesterday? Last week? Last year even? I can’t even remember the last time I bought a CD. DVDs are a little different for me because there are some movies that I like having in my collection. That being said, I wouldn’t consider myself a DVD collector by any means. I, like many others, get my music or movies over the Internet, but with the downtown location, HMV, closing, I can’t help but feel a little sad that the store won’t be there anymore.

For those of you who don’t know, recently, the British-owned megastore, HMV, closed it doors at the downtown and the Richmond location. The President of HMV Canada says that they are shutting them down due to a lack of revenue and a high amount of debt. The Robson street location especially became too taxing (no pun intended) on the company’s finances because of the rent required to sustain a store of that size. Although HMV is closing its doors at two locations, there are still nine other HMV’s in British Columbia.

With the growth of online shopping and the increased accessibility to movies and music through legal and illegal downloading and streaming, more consumers are less inclined to go out and purchase the physical product. This begs the question, how many people out there really even care that HMV is closing? Itunes, for instance, has made it so easy for someone to purchase the songs or movies they want in the comfort of their own homes. Furthermore, as youth become more tech savvy, I truly believe there will be a time where CDs and DVDs will fall through the way-side like the cassettes and vinyl’s that preceded them. Don’t get me wrong, there will definitely be people out there who will still buy the physical product but they will become harder to find.

Though I haven’t  purchased items from HMV very often over the years, walking by the Robson street location and not seeing the giant HMV sign was kind of depressing because it has been a landmark in the heart of the downtown core. If I ever needed to find a CD or DVD, I knew that the three-story location was bound to have it. However, don’t be sad my fellow consumers, downtown Vancouver is too big of a market for HMV to not have a store and the President of HMV Canada has said they will be opening up a small store soon. In the meantime, you will have to find your CD, DVD and other miscellaneous product fix somewhere else.

Photo from thegamershub.net

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What is the first word that comes to mind when I say ‘cheerleading‘? Flips, jumps, girly and the movie, Bring It On come to mind for me. Although all of those are cheerleading-related, cheerleading has grown from much more than just pumping up the crowd at sporting games. Cheerleading has become a sport of its own.

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The BC Lions Football Club is seeking a motivated and professional Community Relations Associate to join our Community Relations Department. The BC Lions Community Relations Department is committed to creating life-long fans by giving back to our community. The Community Relations Associate position is a fun and engaging start to a career in professional sports.

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When: Dec 9, 2011 08:15 AM – 02:45 PM (Friday)

Where: Windermere Secondary School

Details: C3, a climate change conference, hopes to bring together youth from across the lower mainland and build a connection to the Canadian Youth Delegation in Durban, South Africa for the global climate change talks. Through this, the youth will not only be educated through a wide variety of topics and speakers, but they will also be inspired to take action as active members in their communities. They hope that you will join them in our green revolution!

For more information please visit their website

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Sports tend to be seasonal. For instance, no one plays baseball in the winter and no one plays ice hockey in the summer. Well maybe I shouldn’t say no one, let’s say very few play sports out of season. However for ultimate frisbee players, the weather does not stop them from playing the game.

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When: November 10, 2011 10:00 AM (Thursday) – November 13, 2011 02:00 PM (Sunday)

Where: Camp Sasamat

Details: Interested in global issues? Want to learn more and meet other amazing youth who want to change the world? Come to Symposium!

This November marks the 27th year that the Global Issues Symposium for Youth has been empowering youth to take action on critical global issues. Symposium is an intense experiential learning event for 65 BC high school students (grades 10 – 12). Covering topics such as International Humanitarian Law, refugees, weapons, food security, and HIV/AIDS, volunteer Resource Leaders encourage participants to explore the issues personally.

Symposium does more than just raise awareness about the issues explored through hands-on activities. It also helps youth take action by providing tangible tools through skill-development workshops and networking opportunities. It is not a lecture or a conference but a highly interactive and engaging weekend where participants can feel free to be themselves, ask questions and learn more how our world works. To wrap up the weekend, the Take Action fair helps connect youth with other local and international humanitarian organizations.

Visit www.redcross.ca/bcyouthsymposium, check out their fan page at www.facebook.com/bcyouthsymposium, email symposium@redcross.ca or call 604-709-6651 for more information!

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October is quickly coming to an end and we all know what that means, Halloween!

It’s that time of year again when everyone frantically figures out what or who they are going to be on this annual holiday. Some go to a costume shop and buy ready-to-wear outfits while others enjoy making their own. All in all, it doesn’t really matter how or where they got their costumes, all that matters is they dressed up.

Choosing a costume can be hard to figure out, especially for guys, but for girls, it seems easy. “I don’t know. I just have to wear something sexy,” said one of my friends. As I spoke to more girls about their costume ideas, something dawned on me. Every article of clothing that these girls said they were going to wear are culturally perceived as ‘skimpy’. I never really thought about it until then but I realized that most girl costumes are highly sexualized. What happened to the days when Halloween was about goblins, ghosts, zombies and vampires? Was it ever really like that to begin with? Nonetheless, it seems to have become a social norm for girls to wear provocative outfits this time of year.

“I don’t think girls are any sluttier now than before. I think girls just want to have a better costume than everyone else and being sexy just comes with the territory,” said Susanna, one girl I spoke with. On a daily basis, most girls watch what they wear because they are scared of what others think. If they are going shopping, for instance, and are wearing something that shows a lot of skin, they could be subject to moral criticism. But on Halloween, it gives them a chance to show off all the skin they want without worrying what others think due to the nature of costumes.

“It’s the one day of the year where I can wear whatever I want without people judging me for it” responded Ashley. Perhaps not all girls wear provocative costumes to gain the attention, most do it because it’s something fun to do and it makes themselves feel good.

Conversely, some males think girls are judged more for wearing more clothes than wearing less on Halloween.

“You can’t expect a girl to go out in a fully-robed costume like the Grim Reaper anymore. If they did people would be like “what the hell”,” said Tom.

Halloween has always been about scaring others and getting free candy, but maybe I’m just being naive in thinking Halloween is still about that. As a child, Halloween is mainly about trick-or-treating and candy, but as we get older, the meaning of Halloween changes. The sexual appeal of Halloween becomes a more prominent feature.

Personally, I do not object to the sexual nature of girls’ costumes.

Photo from www.elephantjournal.com

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Remember the first time you played dodgeball as a kid? You’re standing at the line waiting for the game to begin and once the game commences, adrenaline kicks in and you’re throwing and dodging balls all over the place. Ever wish you could relive the excitement? Well you can! Dodgeball has become more than just a game you played when you were a kid. It is a growing recreational sport.

Starting in 2004, the Vancouver Dodgeball League (VDL) began as a small drop-in sport, but ever since, the league has grown in players, teams and popularity. When I spoke to Jeff Phung, a VDL regular, about how he heard about VDL, he said, “some of my friends’ older siblings started the league and passed it down to their siblings and friends and then it just took off from there”. Word-of-mouth seems to be the common trend when asked how they heard about the league. Furthermore, because the league requires each team to have a minimum of two girls playing at all times, there is a healthy balance between guys and girls in the league, which has contributed to the league’s popularity.

Dodgeball is just a game and players play recreationally but the sport does harbour the competitive nature in a lot of people. “I play for fun but I always try to win” said Phung. I asked Catherine Hwee, another dodgeballer, if she played the game for other reasons than “it’s fun” and she said that she played because it “acted as a stress reliever”. Throwing a ball as hard as you can at someone, that seems like a pretty good stress reliever to me.

However, VDL has become more than just something recreational. VDL is a non-profit organization that is run by volunteers to keep the league going. Through the years, the league has helped raise money directly and indirectly by giving charitable donations to various organizations like the BC Cancer Foundation, The Canadian Red Cross and BC Children’s Hospital. VDL also holds blood drives every seaosn and encourages their players to donate and help out. “We’re always open to helping out good causes, helping out the community and giving back wherever we can” said Mark Williams, a VDL executive.

The combination of reflex, motor skills and strategy makes dodgeball more fun than a lot of sports. No matter how old you are, how fit or unfit you are, male or female, if you want to do something fun and exciting, dodgeball is right for you. Remember, “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!”

Photo from www.vdldodgeball.ca

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WHEN:             Saturday, October 1, 2011 — 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

WHERE:           1386 Cartwright Street, Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia

DETAILS:         The Craft Council of BC invites you to join them to explore Granville Island while discovering their local craft artists and the contemporary craft they create. They will visit craft artists’ studios and galleries on the island while engaging in lively discussions around the intersection of craft, heritage and aesthetic. Through this exploration of contemporary craft, these everyday objects will reveal secrets about their local and shared heritage.

This event is FREE and open to youth between the ages of 17 and 24.

Space is limited. Please register for the Imagined Community Project at https://www.dollarsatwork.org/EventsAtWork/EventLogin.aspx?EventCounter=269

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On October 15, Interuniversity Conference on Education (ICE) 2011 will be happening simultaneously at McGill, McMaster, Quest, UBC, and Waterloo. During this event, a speaker from each university will be shown at all other host universities over a live internet video stream, showcasing a talk on the topic of innovating education. An interactive discussion across all universities will be facilitated throughout the event over Twitter. Following these talks, UBC’s ICE will engage its delegates in a series of talks, panels, and workshops on topics spanning from the knowledge versus skills debate, the future of evaluations and grading, and the use of problem-based learning in the classroom. These diverse topics will aim to engage not only post-secondary students and professors, but also both high school students and teachers, as well as the general public interested in innovating education.

For more information on ICE 2011, please visit their website at http://www.cisa-acei.ca/ice

Photo from cisa-acei.ca

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Have you ever wondered why university students pay so much for their university tuition? To be honest, I never really gave it any thought. I would see the amount owing, go to the bank, pay it off and never think twice to why I paid so much. It was not until the beginning of this semester that I realized that not only do I pay more money than I used to, I am not gaining anything more from the services. Yes, I realize I’m in my fourth year at SFU and am taking upper division courses now but the jump in tuition fees is insane. So I started to do some research, talked to some peers and realized that tuition and fees are at the top of the many university students complaint. As universities increase fees, yet at the same time decrease services, it makes me wonder what SFU does to make more money off of its students and here’s some things I found:

First of all, there have been substantial cuts to courses and tutorials. Many courses that I took in the past or courses that I wanted to take in the future are no longer offered on a daily basis due to the lack of funding for professors. I could understand if a course never filled up and was cut, but I look back to when I took courses that are no longer offered today, it was always a full lecture and there were students on the waitlist which meant that there was a demand for the course. It makes no sense for the university to cut it now but because of professor salaries, SFU decided to cut it from its academic calendar. You would think the amount of tuition that a student pays should be more than enough to cover the professor’s salary. Apparently not.

Furthermore, most courses require students to go to a tutorial component alongside the lecture component of the course. However, the amount of tutorials offered for a course is decreasing due to cuts, which mean more and more students are crammed into one tutorial session, lessening the amount of one-on-one learning time between the Teacher Assistant and the student.

My second find has to do with residential students. I’ve personally never lived on residence before so this never affected me but some of my friends have. Did you know that first year res students do not get a kitchen in their room but older res students do? I don’t get how you can offer older res students a kitchen yet not offer it to a first year res student. As if they didn’t spend enough already for living on residence, here’s the real kicker, a dining card is $1200 per semester. By not giving first year res students a kitchen, SFU is basically forcing students to go out and eat or spend an extra $1200, all of which cost more than if they cooked in their own kitchen.

Finally, this is my personal favorite, FAN and FAL, ever heard of it? No? Don’t be shocked. Many students haven’t either but for some, they are courses that SFU requires certain students to take. FAN, Foundations: Numeracy (FAN X99) and FAL, Foundations: Literary (FAL X99) are for undergraduate students who didn’t do so hot in high school Math and English. These students need to take either FAN or FAL, or both in order to fill the university numeracy and literacy requirements, even if they aren’t majoring in anything math or English related. I understand why the university makes students take these courses but here’s where they have a hand in your wallet. These two courses are 4 units each and are counted towards your cumulative grade point average but are not counted towards your total units taken required for graduation. So if you think you have 120 units and are ready for graduation, think twice, you only have 116, which means you still need to take at least one more course, which in turn means more tuition! Also, 4 credit courses cost more money to take than 3 credit courses and because FAN X99 and FAL X99 are listed as 4 credit courses, you’ll be paying more for a course that doesn’t count towards graduation.

At the beginning of every semester, I dread looking at the “future due” portion of my student information page because it meant my savings account was going to a significant hit. I’m beginning my fourth year of my post-secondary career and it never ceases to amaze how much I owe. If I were to grade SFU on their different cash grab schemes, they would get an “A” in my books.

Photos from www.icould.com, www.myuniversitymoney.com and www.boomerandecho.com

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