reer

 

By Siavash Emamzadeh

ook, I know exercise is good,
| but the climb up to and into
Douglas College’s New
Westminster Campus is insane. This

‘is coming from a guy who exercises

regularly and avoids daily intake of
junk food.

For those of you unfamiliar with
the New West campus, here’s a picture:
As soon as you step off of the

SkyTrain premises, a nice juicy slope
greets you. There, in the far distance,
awaits Douglas College, sitting
comfortably in its fixed position.
You’ve got to scale this hill all the way
past a traffic light and cross the street
a couple of times until you’ve arrived.
But that’s where the real nastiness
begins; there are like a million stairs to
ascend outside of the college and it’s
déja vu inside the campus.

Being a C+ physics student, I’m
privileged with a basic knowledge of
how the world works. As a result, I
know that your backpack-compounded
weight and the ground’s friction (and
possibly the wind) require a great
amount of walking strength. That
means the heavier your backpack is, the
more difficult it is to walk. And since
this is a college we’re talking about,
you’re required to carry a whole lot of

 

textbooks and whatnot.

But wait, there’s more! Once
you manage to get up the stairs to the
entrance, almost crawling, you’re met
with another set of stairs to get to the
second floor. And they’re not short
steps; they’re wide and tall steps made
for the likes of the Incredible Hulk.

Now, anyone who’s taken a math
or physics class knows that you need
to bring heavy textbooks to class every
day. Well, what do you know? Math
and Physics classes are on the top
floors!

Here’s another problem: going
up the hill and stairs leads to profuse
sweating.

Naturally, being a considerate
person, I don’t look favourably upon
leaving a puddle of sweat on class
chairs, but do I have a choice? I don’t
even shed like this after I’ve been under
cats-and-dogs-like rain (and that’s
saying a lot, if you know Vancouver).

Plus, if the professor ever calls
upon me and every head turns in my
direction, the water works could be
interpreted as anxiety from some kind
of foul play. It’s not a pretty sight, I'll
tell you that much.

Finally, there is the psychological
effect. Doesn’t the sequence of getting
to the campus by riding the SkyTrain,
descending stairs and then an escalator

create one basic feeling? I think it
promotes a sense of relaxation. Think
about it: resting on a nice and comfy
SkyTrain seat, lulled by the gentle
cradling, then letting gravity do the
work as you go down stairs and are
carried by an escalator.

Then, like a teasing horror flick,
you’re met with a terrifying contrast:
the never ending hill. It’s enough to
give you a headache and ruin your
whole day. In fact, I’m convinced that
if they get rid of the hill and somehow

 

     

level the whole place up, there is going
to be less fatigue and therefore higher
GPAs, mark my words! Otherwise, it
would benefit students if there were
water stops on the way to the college,
like marathons. The college’s design
engineers should hand out the water.

In conclusion, here’s some advice:
the next time you meet some veteran
mountain climbers, tell them you go to
the campus and in no time, they'll be
hailing you like you’ve climbed Everest
blindfolded.

 

Campbell pulls the wool over our eyes again

By Garth McLennan

ell, it looks like B.C.
Premier Gordon Campbell
is up to his old tricks again.

As part of his new deficit spending
program that is meant to inject some
life into the B.C. economy, Campbell
came out and loudly proclaimed that
he and all his cabinet ministers would
be taking self-imposed ten per cent pay
cuts to help cut back costs.

At first glance, this appears to be a
significant chunk of change. However,
it works out to being just another truth-
distorting public relations scheme.
When you take a look at the fine print,
it turns out that Campbell and the rest
of his cabinet are indeed taking ten per
cent pay cuts. However, the cut only
applies to their bonus pay, not their
base salary. I guess Campbell forgot to
mention that at his press conference.

The annual salary for a B.C.

MLA is about $100,000. All cabinet
ministers get fifty percent of that in
bonus pay. For Campbell, as premier,
there is a ninety per cent bonus. So if
you only remove ten per cent of the
bonus money, then the average cabinet
member only loses $5,000 per year.

  

That works out to just a 3.3 per cent cut
in total pay. For Campbell, who brings
in approximately $190,000 per year,
the pay reduction amounts to only 4.7
per cent of his salary. Wow, I guess the
public didn’t need to know that.

Now I know this is tough to
swallow, but don’t worry, members of
Campbell’s government will have to
somehow survive on the raises of up
to 43 per cent that they voted to give
themselves last August, and a 54 per

cent pay hike for Campbell himself.

If you’re shaking your head at
this point, you shouldn’t be surprised.
Sneaky tricks and out-of-touch
decisions are becoming Campbell’s
specialty.

Those massive pay raises that
Campbell awarded to himself and other
high-ranking Liberals were announced
right at the beginning of the 2008
Summer Olympic Games in a weak
attempt to hide the unpopular raises
from the public.

One of the enduring controversies
of 2008 for the Campbell government
was the introduction of the now
infamous Carbon Tax that was brought
in at a time when gas prices were
at a record high. Aside from being
ridiculously unfair and painful for
drivers, Campbell proved to be one
of the province’s biggest hypocrites
shortly after the tax was brought in.
With British Columbians screaming
at him to remove the tax, Campbell,
wearing his customary smug,
condescending smile, continued to
spout off about how green he was
while at the same time completely
ignoring complaints about many of
the biggest polluters in heavy industry

being exempt from the tax. He then
topped it off by flying to Beijing for the
Olympics in a carbon spewing private
jet.

The Vancouver Olympics have
been another public relations beater for
Campbell. Now, I’m as big an Olympic
fan as anybody, but even the most die-
hard fans have to question some of
Campbell’s numbers. Campbell is still
arrogantly maintaining that the Games
will cost just $600 million in total, this
despite the fact that the cost for the
new Olympic sliding centre in Whistler
came back at $100 million on its own.
Come on, Gordo, even you can do
better than that.

While spending into a deficit isn’t
necessarily a bad thing to jumpstart
the dead slow economy, Campbell
was telling everyone who would listen
just two months ago that B.C. would
never go into a deficit on his watch. We
should all just forget that one, right,
Gordo?

Campbell better smarten up, and
fast. The public isn’t nearly as stupid
as he seems to think we are and if he
keeps forgetting that, he could very
well lose the election in three months
and find himself out of a job.