LUSU Executive, you ain’t so big

The Argus Staff

The ballots have been cast, counted, and collected, and the new LUSU executive has been decided. Now is the time to sit back, congratulate everyone on campaigns well run, and, of course, give out awards that are vaguely insulting. Hit it.

The Twilight Award

Dan Zeleny

Dan promised to infuse LUSU with new blood as part of his platform, but there was so much talk of blood that it drew the suspicions of some. Also: it was noted that, at the All Candidates Debate, Zeleny had to be invited into the room before he could enter.

The Charizard award

Mike Snoddon

Over his university career, Mike has evolved from a LUSU receptionist to an R.A. to a member of the Board of Directors, and it seems that he’s reached his final stage of evolution, gaining the popular vote and becoming the LUSU President. On the down side, his agility and speed stats have gone way down.

The Pigmaleon Award

Josh Kolic

It is said that being president ages a person at an advanced rate, and this can certainly be applied to the vice presidency of Josh Kolic. Though he only held the position of VP-Finance since late September, Josh has aged from a baggy Che Guevara t-shirt-wearing, flat cap-topped radio DJ to the high school teacher who tells his students that “Mister Kolic is my father,” if his fashion sense is any indication. Is his girlfriend dressing him, or is it his mom.

The Big Brother Award

Chris Valliant

While some would see campaigning from a satellite campus far from the main university to be a handicap, Chris was able to make effective use of teleconferencing to keep an eye on the students; and though some may be somewhat fearful of these tactics, The Argus is completely fine with it, sir, and is thinking only of service in your benevolent name… his name.

The Gentleman Giant Award

Jay Stapleton

Jay is both a fighter and a lover, a poet and a wrecking ball, a gentle soul and a booming voice. The only campaigning person to speak from the diaphragm, his words were slow, smooth, and considered, like the saxophone styling’s of an old blind man.

Creepiest/Most Epic Campaign Poster Award

Edward Paddock

Look, we’re not saying that Edward’s posters kept any of us up at night, fearful to sleep lest we were to awake to see a single massive Paddock-y eyeball staring into the depths of our soul. No, wait. Wait. That is exactly what we’re saying.

The “I’m Friends with Jay” Award

Sara Mackie

We would elaborate more on why Sara got this award, but honestly, we don’t know all that much about her. She seems really nice? She wears a lot of earth tones? See, this is what happens when your two running mates are talkative giants.

The Mr. Rogers Award

Neva Bassingthwaite

The Multicultural Centre happens to share a hallway with The Argus, and more importantly, a grate which is used for speaking, shouting, and generally annoying one another through. Now that Neva, coordinator of the MCC, is in power, we’re both saddened that we’ll have to irritate someone else next year, and a little concerned that she may use some of the things that she couldn’t help but overhear us saying against us. Best neighbour ever. “Won’t you be, won’t you be our neighbour?!”

Most popular places to sleep on campus

Amy Szybalski

News Writer

At an institution dedicated to the education of young adults with sleep schedules that are sparse at the best of times, it is no surprise that there are a variety of great places to sleep on campus. Here are just a few of the Argus staff’s favourite places to crash in between classes.

Couches in the Agora

Everyone knows about the comfortable plethora of couches located near the Tim Horton’s in the Agora. Not only are there a large number of couches in the Agora, but they are all fairly large and very comfortable.

The close proximity of these particular couches lends itself to those who need a quick pick-me up cup of coffee after their quick afternoon nap before dashing to the class they’re five minutes late for. Drawback: there is always something going on in the Agora, presentations, various fairs, poster sales etc., and if you’re the type of person who needs peace and quiet to really relax you may want to consider another location.

Faculty Lounge Couches

The lesser-known cousins to the Agora couches, these couches are located in the sunny hallway on the way to the Faculty Lounge. The picturesque view of serene Lake Tamblyn offers a great drifting off to sleep view of the nature surrounding LU. The mid-winter sun almost always shines in the windows during the day creating a warm comfortable atmosphere.

Because hallway traffic is sparse and the couches are relatively secluded the noise level tends to be fairly low. Listening to your favourite tunes on your iPod can easily block the occasional walker out. Drawback: the sun not only makes a warm atmosphere, but it can occasionally get a little too hot, and the brightness can be a little overwhelming.

Argus Office

You can take your pick of where to crash; we have 6 very comfortable couches, and even a few blankets. Old newspapers hold three of the six couches up, and there is a slight chance that you may be swallowed up while you sleep, but they are extremely comfortable, and just scream to have someone sleep on them.

You have control over both the sound and light levels and traffic in the office is limited. Drawback: members only. To have access to the Argus couches you have to be a member of the paper, so become a contributor.

Chief returning officer: “The results didn’t change”

Stacey Goyan

News Editor

While Mike Snoddon was able to walk away the victor in the LUSU presidential election on Friday, February 12^th, but he did not do it by much.

Snoddon edged out Kolic in an extremely close race, winning by a mere 10 votes. Snoddon held an 18% lead over fellow presidential candidate, Dan Zeleny.

Neva Bassingthwaite claimed the Vice President Student Issues position with a 31% lead over contender Sara Mackie. Chris Vaillant of Orillia took home the Vice President Finance election with a 5% gap between himself and Jay Stapleton, and roughly 7% more than Edward A. Paddock.

Orillia also overwhelmingly supported the proposed universal bus pass. The future of the Orillia U-Pass now rests on Orillia city council’s decision to upgrade their bus service. The referendum had a 24% voter turnout, while the executive election brought in only 14%.

Due to the small margin between Snoddon and Kolic, Chief Returning Officer, Tomas Valiquette says that a recount was needed to verify the results, as required by the Lakehead University Student Union constitution.

Kolic, however, conceded the race, leaving Snoddon the victor.

Valiquette says that the recount needed to take place anyway.

“It still had to happen as a legality,” said the CRO. The LUSU constitution requires that a recount must take place with a voting margin of 2% or less.

After the official results were released, some students began to suspect the high rate of spoiled ballots reported. In all races over 20% of the ballots were deemed spoiled and invalid.

In some races, over 200 ballots were considered spoiled. Some students criticized the CRO’s checkmark only policy as being too strict.

Valiquette said in an interview on Friday that a recount has been done and the results have not changed.

“There was no discrepancy between the totals that we had Friday night (February 12^th) and the totals of the recount,” said Valiquette.

“The funny part about this is with the “X” ballots, we actually kept track of what they were and even if we did count “X” ballots, the results didn’t change. The people that won [actually] won.”

Otherwise, Valiquette says that that the integrity of the elections committee should be respected.

This year’s ballot count was limited to only individuals designated to scrutinise the ballot counting and those actually counting ballots. Valiquette says that the night of the ballot count was social but also productive.

So what accounts for the over 20% spoilage rate? Valiquette says that some students just don’t want to vote, or at least not for a candidate.

“Part of it is people who are just spoiling their ballots for the fun of it.” The CRO said that some ballots circled the word ‘abstain’; however, any markings on the ballot other than an X resulted in a spoiled ballot. An abstention on a ballot would be a blank ballot.

Other ballots were clearly spoiled with markings or write in names.

The results of the election have been acclaimed and await ratification from the board of directors. The CRO felt that it was one of the fairest elections on campus and that there should be no issues with ratification.

“If there is any problem with the ratification, the student union should lose faith in the board.”

Photo by Jeff Luo

Gwynne Dyer asks if Obama is up to the task in recent talk

Ian Kaufman

Features Editor

Gwynne Dyer may be the most accomplished Canadian you’ve never heard of. With newspaper columns in 45 countries, an Oscar-nominated documentary, a boatload of books, TV shows, and radio series tackling international politics, Dyer is the consummate cosmopolitan intellectual.

With that sort of background, it is not surprising that his visit on February 12 packed ATAC 1003, with a teleconference room across the hall about half full. The crowd, of a significantly riper vintage than the usual university class, did not go home disappointed. Dyer’s wit, insight, and complete lack of political correctness make him a compelling speaker: not everyone can expound on the disastrous consequences of war and have a room in stitches in the same sentence.

Dyer’s starting point for the talk was this: “Historically, periods when power shifts from one country or group of countries to another are accompanied by great wars. When the Spanish ceased to be the superpower and the French took their place, there was fifty years of war. When the French finally lost that role to the British at the end of the 18^th century, we had twenty years of revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The First and Second World Wars were about the challenge to British, French, and American dominance by the rising powers of Germany [and Japan in the second case].”

To avoid a similar conflict between the U.S. and China, what must the Obama administration do? The most important thing the President has done, Dyer says, is to support fuel-efficiency legislation. If successful, it could force American automakers to meet the standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2016. Currently, the average car gets around 21.5 mpg. If these measures pass, Dyer believes the U.S. could eliminate its reliance on Middle Eastern oil within about five years.

Secondly, a fair international agreement on climate change is needed. Dyer insists Obama is serious about the issue: “This guy gets it. The fact that he hasn’t done much about it is a reflection of the very difficult position he is in, both with a recalcitrant congress and a largely disbelieving public.”

Any deal must paradoxically be “amazingly one-sided” to be fair. “The deal has to acknowledge that we foreclosed any possibility that they can develop the way we did,” Dyer says. “So industrialized countries [must] accept very deep cuts right up front; the developing countries don’t cut their emissions – at best, they cap them about where they are now.”

Dyer is confident – sometimes surprisingly so - in Obama’s ability to resolve these issues, pointing to his de-escalation of brewing conflicts with Russia and Iran. However, he sees a nation-sized roadblock in the President’s future: Afghanistan is now “his war”. In little more than a year, Obama will have increased the number of American troops in the country from 30,000 to 80,000. Dyer points to parallels between Obama and another reforming President, Lyndon Johnston, who gave up on running for a second term due to the unpopularity of the Vietnam War.

The war in Afghanistan could “destroy” Obama because, according to Dyer, it is unwinnable. “No western army has won a war in a third-world country against a nationalist opposition since 1945,” he points out, despite dozens of such wars being waged. Afghanistan in particular is well-versed in wars of attrition: “Five foreign armies have invaded it in the last 150 years. Four of them have been whipped and sent home with their tails between their legs, but we believe that for some reason – because our hearts are pure, I suppose – it’s not going to happen to us.”

In short, Obama’s work is cut out for him: work out an international climate deal, transition to clean energy, extract America from the Middle East, and avoid a seemingly inevitable conflict with China. More to the point, he must convince Americans to accept their country’s decline from superpower status, something most are loath to even consider: “To smooth the path, accept the inevitable, reassure Americans that the inevitable isn’t terrible […] I think that may be, historically, his most important role.”

Students gather for the annual celebration of northern LGBTQ pride

Amy Szybalski

News Writer

“The goal of Pride in the North is to celebrate queer pride,” said Dexter Darrah, Director of Pride Central.

Pride in the North is a week of events that take place from February 22^nd to the 26^th. The weeklong celebration acts as a statement of pride in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered and queer community.

“Thunder Bay doesn’t yet have a queer pride festival in the summer like other, bigger cities, and since Pride Central only operates September through April, this is the next best thing.”

“Pride Central has been running Pride in the North for as long as I can remember. I started volunteering at Pride in September 2004, so this will be its sixth year at least, but it’s probably quite a few years older than that.”

“Pride in the North is important to the community of Lakehead University because we strive for safe space across the entire campus,” commented Darrah.

LUSU has created several of what Darrah calls “safe places” across campus, including the Gender Issues Centre, The Multicultural Centre, and Pride Central.

When asked what value Pride in the North holds, Darrah said, “This annual celebration of queer people reminds all of us that we live, work, and study at a university where a variety of sexualities and genders are part of our community.”

The theme of Pride in the North 2010 is “pride in your body,” so this year’s goal in particular is to reinforce pride in sexual and gender diversity, but also to contribute to the self-esteem of people with diverse body types.

Monday, beginning at 11am, an open house will be taking place in Pride Central –UC 0019– where people will be able to drop by find out about Pride in the North and chat with Canadian University Queer Services Conference delegates.

At 5pm, following the open house, a march around campus will beginning at the bus stop in the Agora.

Tuesday, Queer Valentines will be taking place in the study from 11am to 4pm for those who missed Valentines Day in Thunder Bay because of reading week. Also on Tuesday Pride Central will be hosting a special edition of their weekly Gayme Night in Pride Central 5pm to 8pm.

Wednesday events include two workshops, both beginning at 7pm. David Ivany from the Gender Issues Centre will deliver a workshop about the impact media has on how we see our bodies in AT 1010, while David Belrose from Rainbow Health Ontario will deliver a workshop on how to can improve your health care provision to queer clients in AT 2015.

On Thursday, the Thunder Bay Restaurant will play host to Pride Bingo, which also includes board games and food.

Closing off the week on Friday, a potluck brunch will take place in Pride Central from 11am to 1pm to give students the opportunity talk about having pride in their bodies. In the evening, The Gaiety, a social including a drag contest where the King and Queen of the North will be crowned, will take place at the Finlandia Club at 8:30pm. Advanced tickets are on sale now at Pride Central for $3, or you can pay $5 the night of.

First successful treatment of cancer with a nanosytem

Anthony Marrelli

Argus

A team of researchers in California and Massachusetts have developed a “cocktail” of different nanometer sized particles that work in concert within the bloodstream to locate, adhere to and kill cancerous tumours.

Michael Sailor, researcher at the University of California (UC), says that “this study represents the first example of the benefits of employing a cooperative nanosystem to fight cancer”. He is the primary author of a paper describing the results.

In their study, they developed a system containing two different nanomaterials the size of only a few nanometers, or a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, that can be injected into the bloodstream. One nanomaterial was designed to find and adhere to tumours in mice, while the second nanomaterial was fabricated to kill those tumours.

These scientists and others had previously designed nanometer-sized devices to attach to diseased cells or deliver drugs specifically to the diseased cells while ignoring healthy cells. However the functions of those devices, the researchers discovered, often conflicted with one another.

“For example, a nanoparticle that is engineered to circulate through a cancer patient’s body for a long period of time is more likely to encounter a tumour,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, a physician, bioengineer and a professor of Health Sciences and Technology and a co-author of the study.

“However, that nanoparticle may not be able to stick to tumour cells once it finds them. Likewise, a particle that is engineered to adhere tightly to tumours may not be able to circulate in the body long enough to encounter one in the first place.”

Currently, when a single drug does not work in a patient with cancer, a doctor will commonly administer a cocktail containing several drug molecules. That strategy can be very effective in the treatment of cancer, where the rationale is to attack the disease on as many fronts as possible.

Drugs may sometimes work together on a single aspect of the disease, or they may attack separate functions. In either case, drug combinations can provide a greater effect than either drug alone.

Treating tumours with nanoparticles in the same way has been challenging because immune cells called mononuclear phagocytes identify them and yank them from circulation, preventing the nanomaterials from reaching their target.

The first particle being used is a gold nanorod “activator” that accumulates in tumours by seeping through its leaky blood vessels. The gold particles cover the whole tumour and behave like an antenna by absorbing otherwise benign infrared laser irradiation, which then heats up the tumour.

In the experiment, after the nanorods had circulated in the bloodstream of mice that had epithelial tumours for three days, the researchers used a weak laser beam to heat the rods that attached to the tumours.

This sensitized the tumours, and the researchers then sent in the second nanoparticle type, composed of either iron oxide nanoworms or doxorubicin-loaded liposomes. This “responder” nanoparticle is coated with a special targeting molecule specific for the heat-treated tumour.

Think of them like soldiers attacking an enemy base, the gold nanorods are the Special Forces, who come in first to mark the target. Then the Air Force flies in to deliver the laser-guided bomb. The devices are designed to minimize collateral damage to the rest of the body.

While one type of nanoparticle improves detection of the tumour, the other is designed to kill the tumour. This study is important because it is the first example of a combined, two-part nanosystem that can produce sustained reduction in tumour volume in live animals.