Category Archives: Campus
Top 16 Talon-Approved Initiatives on Campus
By Anne Kessler, updated from “The Top 10 Talon-Approved Initiatives on Campus” by Urooba Jamal Do you find yourself rapidly muttering expletives under your breath every time you engage in any type of mainstream media? Have the phrases “in solidarity with,” “hegemonic,” and “social construct” come to replace filler words like “um” and “like” in […]
Frontlines Beat Pipelines 2: Supporting The Unist’ot’en Through Creative Resistance
The first week of school brings more than just the familiar and notorious whirlwind of welcome back events, parties, and Imagine Day-related hysteria. It also conjures up the long legacy of on-campus colonial violence and misogyny that sometimes rears its head in traditions like Frosh. The Sauder School’s “Pocahontas chants” of 2013 readily come to […]
Beginning to Win: Amsterdam, Red Squares and the Student Struggle
“Yeah, fuck the neoliberal narrative!” These are the words that introduced us to Dutch student activist Judith Baten, one of the main organizers of the student movement, the Nieuwe Universiteit, at the University of Amsterdam. Regardless of the fact that she had been averaging 2 hours of sleep for the last week, Baten was full […]
Policy as Prevention?: The Political Science Student Association Anti-Sexual Harassment Proposal
Trigger warning: This article discusses victim blaming, rape culture, misogyny, and sexual violence. From highly publicized events such as the Dalhousie dentistry scandal, to the wave of unsolved assaults at UBC in the fall of 2013, to Emma Sulkowicz’ anti-rape mattress carrying activism, discussions surrounding rape culture, gender-based violence, and sexism on campuses across Turtle […]
The Problem with Social Work
My name is Morgan Yee, a name that is representative of both my Chinese and Caucasian ancestry. I am in my last term of my Bachelors of Social Work at UBC, and am specializing in child welfare. I grew up in the small, primarily First Nations community of Hazelton, British Columbia, on the traditional lands […]
The Enduring Silence of UBC’s ‘Hunting Ground’
Several months ago, a UBC student who had been sexually harassed told me that while university administrators publicly insist that we should openly confront and discuss such incidents, the real message they habitually, directly deliver to those who have been assaulted is, “Shh.” The student laughed and her eyes widened as she drew her index […]
Homelessness is Not a Choice
I am deeply indebted to the Coast Salish people, the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations on whose unceded lands I think, teach, learn, and write. With my heartfelt gratitude. It is springtime again and the Five Days for the Homeless Campaign has recently concluded at UBC. The campaign’s website states that student participants had to […]
UBC SPHR Press Release: UBC’s AMS Officially Opposes Campus Boycott and Divest Campaign
Vancouver, BC – On March 4, 2015, the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) student union, the AMS, voted to officially oppose the boycott and divestment campaign put forth by on-campus student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). The campaign seeks to implement the BDS movement at the student union level at the university that […]
Zionists are not your enemy
How divestment activists at UBC can win over Jewish students and fight oppression more effectively
One needs to repeat that what in Zionism served the no doubt fully justified ends of Jewish tradition, saving the Jews as a people from homelessness and anti-Semitism, and restoring them to nationhood, also collaborated with those aspects of the dominant Western culture (in which Zionism exclusively and institutionally lived) making it possible for Europeans […]
How BDS Won at Concordia University
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement is not about hate, although that hasn’t stopped UBC Hillel from spending more than $4000 on posters and incessant Facebook ads. BDS is about the human rights of Palestinians, and about stopping the companies which participate in the oppression of Palestinians – those which provide “security” services, armaments, […]
