news // no. 4 New companies and ventures coming up In Vancouver » With new offices opening in the city, a great shift in the economy is predicted Tania Arora Staff Writer he past year saw companies coming up with plans to open offices at new locations or relocate their headquarters to Vancouver. Few recently signed the deals while others are ready to inaugurate the offices. In any case, with companies planning such moves, the economy can be expected to face a great shift upwards. This is great news for many students at Douglas, namely in the tech field. Carlos Arturo Machado Ramos, a student at Douglas College, attests to that fact in an interview with the Other Press. “British Columbia, in particular Vancouver, has experienced a dynamic growth in the IT sector recently,” he said. “There are new companies in the field that have started looking at this region as a potential ‘gold mine’ for the IT sector. Worldwide known companies such as Amazon recently announced a new launch of a big corporate in Vancouver, which means technological, as well as physical infrastructure development for the community and an important employment growth directly positively affecting the local economy. It would also help to strengthen the international ties and connections of people involved in these sort of projects, something that would take Vancouver to an avant-garde position globally.” Canada’s financial hub won't be just Toronto by the end of next decade. Following are the companies who are expanding, setting up new offices, or relocating to Vancouver. lululemon The iconic Vancouver-based multinational clothing retailer got its new headquarters building approved by the city council at the beginning of February. Construction will begin in September 2020 and will use up a total floor area of 593,400 square feet. The new building will be able to accommodate 2,000 employees initially and more as they grow. theotherpress.ca Amazon Last year, Amazon chose Vancouver to open its new headquarters over New York—a decision that some consider lucky for our small city. Although there is no specific opening date, the company’s building, situated at 402 Dunsmuir Street, will open doors to more than 1,000 workers in the downtown area. Shopify The e-commerce platform announced its plan to open a new permanent office in Vancouver and create a great pool of jobs. The company announced its plans to hire about 1,000 new employees. The space will open by the end of the year and will be located at Four Bentall Centre (1055 Dunsmuir Street). Brex The talent pool of Vancouver convinced the US-based financial technology company open its first new international office in the city—at 100 Melville street. The company is involved in creating corporate credit cards, travel programs, and rewards for clients. Zenoti Seems like Vancouver is set to soon become a technology hub. The cloud-based tech firm Zenoti—which is also located in Manchester, Brisbane, Dubai, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Manila—inaugurated its new office in 2020. Companies opening new offices in Vancouver likely means more job openings, araise in income, a raise in standard of living, and an increase in GDP. The companies based outside the city may also be attracted towards Vancouver thereby increasing the possibilities of trade deals. Even though most of the corporations are a part of the tech sector, the job openings are related to all areas (as a company has multiple divisions and each require a workforce), so gear up. Time to brush up those skills and resumes. Ready, set, register...according to your GPA » Douglas set summer registration dates via priority registration policy Atiba Nelson Staff Reporter F students wanting to take classes and surrender their vacations, Douglas College has released important dates for summer registration. According to the Douglas College Dates and Deadlines webpage, 2020 summer semester registration begins March 10 and ends on March 27—and will occur via college priority. As most students are assigned a registration day, college priority may be an unfamiliar term. Approved by the Douglas College Education Council, college priority refers to Douglas College’s Priority Registration (Open Enrollment) Policy, policy number E.AAo1.18. The purpose of the college priority or priority registration is to “value individual responsibility and prize excellence,” according to the policy’s purpose section on the Douglas College educational policy website. Grade point averages (GPAs) are used to order all Douglas students for registration—with a few exceptions. Astudent’s GPA for ranking in priority registration is calculated and assessed to be in one of three categories. One category is all graded Douglas College courses completed. Another category is secondary-school grades from English 12 (or an equivalent course), another Photo by Billy Bui grade 12 provincially-examined course, and Principles of Mathematics 1 (or an equivalent course). The third category is grades achieved in nine credits of BC post- secondary school coursework. Douglas then constructs its registration procedures to give high GPA-earners from Douglas College or elsewhere priority, with returning students trumping new students within the same GPA category. The priority registration policy does have several exceptions. Douglas allows for mature students who have never taken classes at a post-secondary level, as well as mature students who have superior achievement in their life experiences to obtain a better registration date. The policy does not define the term “superior achievement.” However, mature students desiring to take advantage of this allowance must apply for special consideration. Their application will then be judged by the Registrar's Office in consultation with the program area. Additionally, Douglas can grant special priority access “to students in designated groups for whom early registration is institutionally desirable,” according to ‘Section D; subsection 1 of the Priority Registration policy. Students, regardless of registration priority group, have until May 3 to drop a summer semester course and receive a full refund, as classes for the 2020 summer semester begin on Monday May 4. issue 21// vol 46 news // no. 5 BC Government aims to improve lives for post-secondary students » Province announces new grant to ease student loan debt Atiba Nelson Staff Reporter ast month, Finance Minister Carole James delivered the new British Columbia budget for 2020. The budget was hailed as the government’s plan to keep BC moving forward by making life better for British Columbians. One group the government is aiming to make life better for are BC post- secondary students. After already announcing that the government would be eliminating interest rates on current and future BC Government-issued student loans, the BC government announced a new grant that would make post-secondary education more affordable for students. The new BC Access Grant will be a needs-based grant based on a student’s family income. According to the StudentAidBC website, the “BC Access Grant will help more than 40,000 low and middle-income students access, afford, and complete public post-secondary education and training each year in BC.” To be eligible for the BC Access Grant, students must be enrolled in part-time or full-time undergraduate studies—whether a degree, diploma, or certificate—studying at a BC public post-secondary institution, and eligible to apply and receive a student loan. There is no application for the grant; however, students have to apply for student aid at their respective BC post- secondary institution. After then they will be automatically assessed for the BC Access Grant. “The new BC Access Grant replaces the BC Completion Grant, BC Completion Grant for Graduates, and the BC Labour Market Priorities grant to provide up-front financial support to students when they need it at the beginning of studies,” reads a posted statement. Up to $1,000 per year is available to part-time students and student enrolled in two-year programs or longer in length, and $4,000 per year is available for students pursuing programs less than two year in length. “[...] for the first time provincial grants will be available to part-time students and students enrolled in programs of less than two years,” said James during her budget speech. The Douglas Students' Union touted the newly announced grant as a victory on their website in a posted statement similar to one posted on the The British Columbia Federation of Students—which is an coalition of 13 BC university and college students’ unions. The statement describes the announcement of the grant as a needed relief. “With tuition fees at an all-time high, student debt in BC continues to grow as students and their families struggle to afford the education they need to enter the workforce,” said Photo of Carole James via Wikimedia Commons Tanysha Klassen, Chairperson of the BC Federation of Students (BCFS) and graduate of Douglas College. Science can help reduce stress following traumatic events, breakups » Montreal-based clinical psychologist reprograms memories Hadassah Alencar The Concordian (CUP) Montreal-based clinical psychologist expanded his treatment from PTSD patients to those who have experienced terrible betrayals in romantic relationships. The innovative treatment can reprogram traumatic memories with the help of a beta blocker drug and therapy. In 2008, Dr. Alain Brunet created a treatment called “reconsolidation therapy,” or the “Brunet Method,” which treats patients with PTSD or victims of crime or terror attacks, such as the one in Paris in 2016. In short, reconsolidation therapy involves therapy sessions in conjunction with a blood pressure drug that alleviates the negative surge of emotions when remembering a traumatic memory. Brunet was a student at the University of Montreal in 1989, when the Polytechnique shooting occurred. He thought that there was a real lack of care for those affected by psychotraumatic disorders after the attack, so that inspired him to find a cure for people suffering from PTSD. In 2015, Brunet turned to treating romantic heartbreaks and betrayals. He worked with one of his former graduate students, Michelle Lonergan. Lonergan worked on the project as her PhD at McGill University. She said this method is “based on this idea that the trauma memory was really at the root of the disorder.” For six weeks, participants in the study took propranolol—a drug normally used for treating high blood pressure—one hour before a weekly therapy session where they read their personal handwritten account of the traumatic event. They would re-read the account every session and speak about the event itself with Brunet. Lonergan said at the end of the study, two-thirds of the participants experienced an overall reduction “in the severity of [...] symptoms and reactions.” While the method may be reminiscent of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for some—a movie where a couple erases the memory of their terrible relationship together—Lonergan said that no memory is lost, only updated. She compares the process to editing an essay. “Let’s say we have an essay on a computer and the essay is written, it’s saved to our hard drive, well when we open the essay and make changes to it and re-save it, then it’s updated with that new information.” The memory we store is saved in two different parts of the brain: the dry element—the factual, visual occurrence— in the hippocampus, and the emotional portion of the experience in the amygdala. When a traumatic event occurs, it activates the adrenergic system (our stress system) to pump adrenaline into our brain. And because of such the memory registers with a stressful, heightened emotional response. When an affected individual recollects the event or experiences a trigger such as what they ate, saw, were wearing, or even smelled during their trauma, it activates their adrenaline to the amygdala. Then, the memory re-creates a surge of uncontrollable negative emotions. This tolls the person’s mental health and wellbeing. “For some people, that system can become overactivated, and that would result in putting an emotional stance on the memory that is just extremely powerful,” Lonergan said. The drug for the treatment isn’t new. Propranolol is popularly used to reduce high blood pressure and heart rhythm disorders, but it has another quality that makes the treatment possible. It’s an adrenergic beta-blocker, meaning that it works by blocking the surge of adrenaline to the amygdala when remembering the traumatic memory. According to testimonials on Brunet’s website, patients described the initial version of their traumatic memory as so emotionally discharged that it feels like someone else wrote it. Kanica Saphan, a sexologist counsellor who works with individuals and couples in Montreal, said that a lot of the baggage people carry from bad breakups is from negative stories they create from their experience. “Tt will become like a story of how we were either ugly, unworthy, or valuable—and that we had something to do with it,” she said, adding that such stories are created for many reasons, including misunderstanding the causes of a breakup. For her counselling, Saphan works by developing a therapeutic relationship with her clients. She uses “talk therapy,” meaning she develops a human connection with clients to work through issues and heal over time. She said she does not prescribe medication, and that while reconsolidation therapy can work for traumatic experiences, she suggested that using propranolol pills could restrain people from learning to use their own internal coping tools. While Saphan hopes the treatment will not add to “pill culture,” where medication is used to treat an excessive range of emotional afflictions, Lonergan said the pill does not mask symptoms. It can provide a significant change, and the treatment is short—roughly four to six weeks. Patients are not medicated long term, Lonergan said. Lonergan suggested that the treatment could be expanded to other areas where people suffer psychological strain from emotionally-charged events.