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Around the Water Cooler

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In case you were too busy dipping apples in honey or waiting in line to pre-order the iPhone 5, here’s what you missed this past weekend in the world of sports …

HOCKEY—This past Saturday, the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the NHL and its players expired. Without a new deal in place, the league is now officially locked out. Reports indicate that the two sides are still far apart in negotiations, so no one is forecasting a quick end to this work stoppage. As the lockout rolls on, expect some NHL players to seek out other opportunities to play this year, especially in Europe. Evgeni Malkin was the first major pawn to drop, signing with Metallurg of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) on Sunday. Pavel Datsyuk also reached an agreement on the weekend to play in the KHL with Ak Bars. The reported deals are signed through the 2012-13 season, meaning that even if a new CBA were reached, the two would remain in Russia. Well folks, the dog days have arrived.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL—The NCAA football season entered its third week this past weekend, filled with a number of standout games. Top-ranked Alabama opened their Southeastern Conference (SEC) schedule against Arkansas and couldn’t have made it look easier. They defeated the Razorbacks 52-0, removing any doubt that they’re currently the top team in the nation. Things didn’t go as well for Matt Barkley and No.2 ranked USC, who were upset by No.21 Stanford. Barkley, the expected first overall NFL draft pick in this year’s upcoming draft, played particularly poorly, throwing two interceptions and no touchdowns. No.5 ranked crushed Wake Forest 52-0. If that result isn’t impressive enough, the Seminoles have outscored opponents 176-3 through their first three games.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL—Legendary Head Coach Jim Calhoun announced his retirement this past week from his position as the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball coach. Calhoun spent 26 years as the Huskies’ coach, building the program from virtually nothing to a perennial national powerhouse. He won three NCAA titles with the program, and exits men’s college basketball as its sixth-winningest head coach. Former Husky Kevin Ollie takes over for Calhoun, but will be in a tough spot entering his first season as coach. UConn is banned from postseason play for the 2012-13 season because they failed to meet the required score on the Academic Progress Report. Here’s to Ollie pulling a Coach Carter.

 

Alex Rohrback scored one goal and added three assists in the win. (Luke Orlando / McGill Tribune)
a, Sports

Redmen roll in home opener and win third straight

by Remi Lu on

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On Thursday night, a confident McGill Redmen lacrosse team took to the field at Percival Molson Stadium for the first time this year, entering with momentum from a decisive 2-0 start to the regular season. The contest was played out in front of a vocal and raucous crowd as the Redmen (3-0) battled against the Concordia Stingers (0-3). McGill led throughout the contest, seemingly scoring at will and dominating all aspects of the game, resulting in a commanding 23-4 win.

Ryan Besse headed the attack with a quick goal just 61 seconds into the match. This goal was special however, as it lifted him into a tie for McGill’s all-time scoring total with 109 tallies. However, Besse did not stop there, scoring another  brilliant to lead off the second quarter, making him the most prolific scorer in Redmen history.

Although Besse’s accomplishment may have overshadowed the result, what really fueled the Redmen to victory was a balanced and constant attack. In the end, an impressive 16 players filled the scoresheet, and freshman Benjamin Follows recorded a hat trick.

Head Coach Tim Murdoch was pleased with his team’s performance and thought the result allowed more of the roster to receive playing time.

“We executed our game plan to set up a slow-paced game that allowed us to run through our offensive sets.  Our nine-goal output in the first quarter resulted from patience and good shot selection,” Murdoch said. “We had the game under control with a 12-0 halftime lead, so this was an opportunity to play our entire roster.”

In addition to Follows’s hat trick, Besse, Rhys Burnell, Richard Klares, Antoine Champagne, and captain Jishan Sharples each scored two goals.

Right from the onset, McGill seemed to control the pace of the game, using patience and precision in their passing. In effect, Concordia’s offence was non-existent throughout the first two quarters, and its defence appeared disjointed and clumsy. This defence, or lack thereof, allowed McGill to take advantage of costly turnovers and finish the half on top, 12-0.

Concordia seemed to come out of halftime having made some adjustments, but their improved play may also have been aided by McGill’s decision to rest its starters. Whatever the reason, the Stingers retaliated with two consecutive goals, midway through the third quarter. This run, however, did not last long. McGill’s Brandon McLean struck just over a minute later, and by the end of the frame any Concordia momentum was lost. The fourth quarter began just as the others did, with McGill forcing its attack amidst a spirited background of home-field chants.

( McGill Tribune / Simon Poitrimolt )
( McGill Tribune / Simon Poitrimolt )

Ultimately, the game ended the  way it began, with the Redmen continuing to run clean and patient plays, and the Stingers’ valiantly trying to keep the onslaught at bay. On the other side of the ball, McGill excelled as well, working together and rotating to cut off Concordia’s plays.

“We did well [on defence], although we allowed Concordia to score a few goals on man-down scenarios in the second half,” Murdoch noted. “Concordia is a new team that has recently entered our league, so we were able to minimize their possessions and rack up a steady stream of goals.”

With the win, the Redmen improve to 3-0 on the season and sit atop the Eastern CUFLA standings. Based on their early play, a return to the postseason seems quite likely, especially after this statement win.

The Redmen are back in action at Molson Stadium on Sept. 22, when they play host to the visiting Queen’s Gaels.

An artist’s rendition of the Phoenix Cluster­—a recent black hole revelation. (www.space.com)
a, Science & Technology

Researchers discover new star cluster

by Jennifer Laura Lee on

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While thousands of freshmen participated in “Discover McGill” as part of orientation last month, the McGill Physics Department took part in some exciting new discoveries of their own.

5.7 billion light years from our humble speck in the cosmos is a galaxy cluster 2.5 million billion times more massive than the sun; a band of galaxies held together by gravity, comprised collectively of over three trillion stars.

Dr. Gil Holder is an assistant professor in the McGill Physics department, worked on brainstorming the algorithms that professors and post-doctorates at McGill use for finding these colossal bodies.

“What I find most amazing is that this enormous object—1,000 times heavier than the entire Milky Way, emitting more X-rays than any other galaxy cluster in the universe, with a black hole at its center that is ten billion times the mass of our sun—has been only discovered now,” he said.

Compared to our Milky Way’s modest star birth-rate of one or two per year, the central galaxy of the appropriately-named Phoenix Cluster forms about 750 new stars per annum—a massive rate, never before seen in our observable slice of the universe. Researchers believe this unprecedented prolificacy can be attributed to unique properties of the supermassive black hole that lies at the centre of it all.

Under typical cosmological conditions, a black hole sucks in surrounding bodies, emitting powerful X-rays and hot energy as a result. This pumps large amounts of energy into the galaxy system, preventing surrounding gas from cooling down to form stars.

“As things fall into black holes, they are accelerated to high speeds and as they run into other things falling, they heat up and irradiate the region around the black hole,” Holder said. The Perseus Cluster is an example of this, as it has been known to periodically produce very low, powerful sound waves that disrupt the process of star formation.

“But we now have a case of a galaxy cluster that has a supermassive black hole, that somehow has managed to not act as a little furnace at the center. This is like the old classic case of ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time:’ we have a black hole that is not doing what is expected, and [is] believed to be natural, which must be an important clue for how these things work.”

The Phoenix Cluster may be a unique glimpse into the early stages of a galaxy cluster in which the central black hole has yet to begin its energy feedback, accounting for the brief spurt of star growth observable today.

The cluster was first discovered by NASA’s Chandra Observatory, whose satellite X-ray images have been able to depict numerous supermassive black holes as they pull in and heat material to high temperatures. As photons pass through the galaxy cluster, they are heated or cooled to temperatures that differ from the cosmic microwave background of 2.73 Kelvins—the uniform temperature of most parts of the universe, established in the remnants of the Big Bang. Large deviations from the background temperature are picked up by facilities like the Chandra, providing clues as to the location of these gas clusters.

The South Pole Telescope, to which McGill University has contributory ties, further measures microwaves of light at the millimeter-wavelength level to detect these same kinds of gas. The location of the South Pole Telescope provides a dry environment that is conducive to microwave detection. In wetter climates, atmospheric moisture absorbs certain wavelengths, like water being heated up in a microwave.

With the astronomy community still abuzz over its discovery, the Phoenix Cluster appears to be just the tip of the astronomical iceberg. Holder said, “It wasn’t in hiding or anything, we just hadn’t noticed it. For me, this really drives home that we have really just started exploring our universe, and you can never tell what you will find out there if you look carefully.”

 

a, Science & Technology

McGill unveils new and streamlined myCourses

by Krishanth Manokaran on

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McGill students are getting a new taste of a refined myCourses recipe this fall. The new myCourses is the product of a two-year process that included focus groups to assess the needs of the course site users, interviews with faculty and students, and finally, finding the right vendor to deliver the website.

“It’s a long process,” Sharon Roy, McGill Director of Content and Collaboration Solutions, said of the project to renovate the site.

“Each faculty was interviewed, along with students, who expressed the need to have more opportunities to collaborate, and have a consistent view across courses,” Roy said. “So we found out what all of those [needs] were and wrote a very long document, sending it out to all the major vendors.”

In February of last year, each vendor was called to do a demonstration, and the McGill community was invited to give their feedback. After a little more refinement,  the vendor most popular among reviewers was the Desire2Learn hosted version, according to Roy.

Desire2Learn, or D2L, is a vendor based in Windsor, Ontario, and is used at more than 450 institutions around the world. “What we’re finding [to be] the big difference about D2L is that the interface is much more modern—much more what you’re used to seeing—so it’s much easier to find things.”

Students seem to agree. “It looks less cluttered and more spaced out now,” Steven Li, a third-year chemistry student, said.

The site has a lot of new offerings. Maggie Lattuca, Manager of Educational Technologies—part of McGill Content and Collaboration Solutions­—sat down with the Tribune to discuss these new features. One feature is a personal locker for students and instructors. The locker can be used to store files from any course.

“So far it’s not that big—only  1,000 KB—but we are working to make it bigger,” Lattuca said. “What’s more interesting is the group locker, which is assigned by professors to students in a group to make it easier to share files with each other.”

In addition, there’s a new profile section in myCourses. Students can post a profile photo of themselves under ‘My Settings.’

“It’s a part of the whole trend online, to have a presence online,” Lattuca said.

Two of the most helpful features in the new software are notifications and the myCourses calendar.

In the previous version, professors could post notifications that popped up when students logged into WebCT. However, these notifications disappeared after the first viewing.

Now, students can choose to receive their notifications by email or text message, by changing their settings in ‘Notifications,’ also under ‘My Settings.’ This makes it easier to receive important notifications like room changes.

The myCourses calendar has also been revamped to synchronize with students’ other personal online calendars.  For example, students with Google Calendars can use the ‘subscribe’ feature to sync information from myCourses with their calendar.

In what Lattuca calls “a really cool feature for students,” users can click on the link on a Google Calendar and be taken right to MyCourses for more information about an assignment.

Scheduled downtime for the new myCourses will now follow a much more regular routine. Monthly downtimes are posted on the McGill IT website; the first one will be on Oct. 14th from 1:00a.m.-7:00a.m.

For those struggling with the changes, there are numerous online video tutorials, as well as a large number of knowledge-based articles on the McGill website to help students adjust to the new myCourses.

MyCourses plans to use an online survey to get feedback on the software from students around mid-October. Lattuca hopes a number of students will participate.

a, Science & Technology

Don’t panic

by Krishanth Manokaran on

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As the add/drop period comes to an end, students seem frantic to get those last spots in their desired classes. These 13 days of testing the waters provide a good sense of what the classes are like, but the pool can only hold so much. Instead of refreshing Minerva every second to see if there’s an available spot, use this simple checklist to help increase your odds of registration success.

Waiting list

First and foremost, get yourself on the waiting list (if the class has one). You may be depressed to find yourself 24th on the list, but sit tight and keep going to the class. Students have gotten into classes from much further back on the list.

Advising

If the former isn’t available, go straight to the top and talk to an academic advisor. They aren’t the gatekeepers to a course, but advsors have dealt with a lot of questions about getting into a specific class or lab. They’ll let you know what your options are.

Professors

Moving down the list, talk to the professor or coordinator. If the class is full, ask them about alternatives. Sometimes, classes are offered again in the winter, or have two sections; while the professor might not be the same, the content will be.

Schmoozing

A class is only full because of the other students, so why not talk to them? Social media has made it much easier to be a cohesive student population. Chances are that Facebook and many other social media sites have a group for the McGill students in your year or faculty. A simple post in search of someone considering dropping a course can go a long way towards getting you a spot—especially if it’s seen by about a thousand people.

Patience

As we enter the last few days of the storm, patience is key. As the freestyle musician Nayobe said, “All good things come to those who wait”—McGill add/drop is no different.

Chromosomes: The ENCODE Project seeks to unravel mysteries of the human genome. (www.mun.ca )
a, Science & Technology

Translating the human instruction manual

by Bharat Srinivasa on

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Humans are a complicated bunch. We all have different hopes and aspirations, likes and dislikes, dreams and realities. We like to think of ourselves as the most complicated and advanced species on this earth.

Given this presumed complexity, the results of the Human Genome Project—a massive effort to record every sequence of human DNA, and a precursor of the ENCODE project—showed a pitiful number of protein coding genes, which came as a surprise.

The Human Genome Project was expected to demonstrate that humans have a huge number of genes in our DNA, but as it turns out, we have only about 21,000 protein coding genes. Drosophila, the annoying little flies that hover over our overripe fruit, have 15,000. Daphnia, a water flea barely visible to our eye has 31,000. So what makes a human so complex?

The Human Genome Project was intended to uncover the blueprint of our species—the instructional manual that would tell us who we are and how we work. Disappointingly, the information discovered was incomplete; the project gave us only the index page of the human instruction manual. These 21,000 genes that set us apart account for little more than one per cent of our entire genome. The remaining 99 per cent  is often referred to as ‘junk.’ Identifying a role for this ‘junk DNA’ was the task undertaken by the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) consortium.

The ENCODE consortium, formed soon after the publication of the Human Genome Project, includes 32 research groups and 440 scientists. ENCODE published their work in 30 journals earlier this month.

One of the key findings of the ENCODE project was that a large portion of our genome has a functional role—as high as 80 per cent, though some believe this number is exaggerated. According to critics, the real proportion of our genome that is functionally active is around 20 to 30 per cent.

Nevertheless, this functionally-active portion of our genomic expanse is encoded for multiple regulatory sites, thereby controlling the production of the previously identified 21,000 genes.

“Think of these regulatory sites as switches,” Daniel Tessier, vice-president of the Technology Centres at McGill University and Genome Quebec, said. “The Human Genome Project gave us a two-dimensional version of the human genome, while ENCODE gives us a three-dimensional version of our genome. We now know the regulatory hotspots that control our protein coding genes.”

The preliminary data from the ENCODE project was first published in 2007. Since then, advances in techniques and tools have enabled researchers to further delve into the vast expanses of our genome. The work involved investigating how the four nucleotides: A, C, T and G—the backbone of our DNA—form regulatory sequences that interact with other sites of our genome.

The work published this month arises from studies on multiple laboratory cell lines, “the appropriate model system,” according to Tessier, “since we can’t really go around sampling humans.” The work of the ENCODE project is far from complete, and the next steps will involve human samples.

“For instance,” Tessier said, this would involve “taking two different biopsies from a person suffering from cancer, so that we can compare and contrast changes in the regulatory regions, and how these relate to the development of disease.”

Tessier said that work such as this could lead to personalized medicine.

“In 10 years, we might all have a little chip in our health care cards that holds our personal human genome sequence,” he said. “Personalised medicine is a buzzword right now, but it is what the future holds. This work sets the foundation for the future, similar to how we are now enjoying the fruits of technology that were created a couple of decades ago.”

There is some criticism leveled at the ENCODE consortium, notably on their broad definition of ‘functional’ that resulted in the large figure of 80 per cent. Additionally, according to CNN, the ENCODE project has already recieved over $288 million in funding. Given the amount of work left to fully map out the three-dimensional structure of our genome, completing ENCODE could be costly. Despite these drawbacks, researchers argue that the data coming out of this project are fundamental to understanding the true nature of our genomes.

“The Human Genome Project was an endeavour similar to putting man on the moon,” Tessier said. “It is just as elaborate, extravagant and forward thinking.”

This month’s deluge of data on the ENCODE project is only the beginning; there are still an infinite number of questions to be asked about the vast universe that lies in each and every one of our cells. The ENCODE Project puts us on the cusp of an incredibly exciting phase in our understanding of the human species.

(Simon Poitrimolt / McGill Tribune)
a, Creative

Vol. 32 Issue 2

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Check out some of the photos from Issue 2 of 2012-2013!

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a, Features

FEATURE: Free Education Goes Online

by Leigh Miller on

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Many McGill students see recorded lectures as an invitation to take courses from the comfort of their sweatpants and couch. While many students just don’t want to get out of bed, professors at Stanford and educational researchers are thinking bigger: why not offer a course that can be taken from a remote village, a retirement home, or a high school library?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer students free education, accessible from anywhere in the world. All a student needs is an internet connection.

Three main providers of the online goods are Coursera, edX, and Udacity. All three have been in the news lately, with recent profiles of the sites and their founders in the New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR. The attention is focused on the rapid ascent of these online courses and what that may mean for the delivery of higher education. Indeed, Udacity calls itself “a growing group of educators and engineers, on a mission to change the future of education.”

A New Way to Educate

Rising demand for higher education coupled with increasing costs led universities to look for smarter ways to deliver courses.

Better teaching techniques mean courses can be scaled to reach more students without losing quality. MOOCs can be used to develop these techniques as they are open-source, online platforms.

One area where MOOCs might break through is “flipping the classroom,” a teaching technique by which content is learned outside of class, and classtime is used for problem solving. In the past, this content would have come from a textbook, but now, instructors can use the growing library of online lectures provided by MOOCs.

Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, co-authored a study that concluded students in a “flipped” large-enrollment physics class learned more than twice as much as their peers in conventional lectures.

“The traditional lecture is simply not successful in helping most students achieve mastery of fundamental concepts,” writes Wieman in his charming article “Why Not Try A Scientific Approach to Science Education” on science20.com.

The MOOC Experience

Students in massive McGill courses (e.g. any course held in Leacock 132) are familiar with the components of a MOOC: recorded lectures, discussion forums, and assignments graded by computers. MOOC providers seek to improve on these teaching tools with the help of pedagogical research. One classic education problem is the limited short-term memory of the human brain. The average McGill lecture presents more information than a student is physically capable of absorbing. Most students work around this problem by reviewing slides or notes to remind themselves of information.

Since MOOC lectures aren’t limited by scheduling or room availability, information can be presented in small, 10-18 minute segments. This allows students to absorb the information at their own pace.

Constant feedback is another strategy that MOOCs use to help students. In-lecture quizzes evaluate comprehension every few minutes. Since assignments are graded instantly, students can re-submit them until they receive full marks. The focus is on mastery and not initial success.

All these forms of feedback could be used in a conventional class. Unfortunately, that’s not the case in many McGill courses. A student might wait weeks between learning a concept and getting back a graded assignment; by that time, the professor has probably moved onto a new topic.

One area where MOOCs fall short is their lack of personal interaction. MOOC sites have tried to compensate with discussion boards and social networking for users who want to start study groups in their own cities. The lack of personal interaction means lecturers can’t ensure that students are turning in their own work—a huge obstacle for MOOCs hoping to provide credit to students.

Another problem for MOOCs is providing a wider range of subjects. Computers can easily grade assignments for basic computer programming or engineering classes, but essays are another story.

To solve this issue, MOOC providers are experimenting with a system of peer-reviewing. Students practice grading until they are able to match the score the professor would give on a series of assignments. Every assignment is graded by five students who have passed the marking test, and the final score is an average of the five marks.

Will McGill Launch a MOOC?

The rise of MOOCs shows that universities and educators are eager to experiment with new teaching methods.

The growing list of big name universities that have embraced the MOOC trend means schools should ignore it at their own peril.

The University of Virginia sees such potential in MOOCs that board members temporarily ousted president Teresa Sullivan in June, only to reinstate her two weeks later. Emails between board members reveal that her percieved lack of aggressive action on developing MOOCs contributed to their call for her resignation.

In an interview with the Tribune, McGill Director of Content and Collaboration Solutions Sharon Roy said that McGill has established a working group to learn more about MOOCs and whether they are right for the university.

“We’ve just started investigating MOOCs and what kinds of opportunities they might provide and what would be involved in setting them up,” Roy said.

Although the work group is still in its early stages, Roy said McGill already has online teaching capabilities.

“We’re really familiar with online learning technologies at McGill. We make really extensive use of it,” she said. Roy noted that while online courses have their advantages, many students have commented that there is no substitute for one-on-one time with a professor.

“We haven’t been aggressive in developing online learning courses where there is none of that contact between instructors and students.”

Another challenge is the cost of setting up the courses. “They’re not free—that’s for sure—and as you know we want to be very careful with where we spend our money and how we spend it,” Roy said.

In the meantime, McGill students can benefit from the growing list of MOOCs already available.

Finding a MOOC

This fall, courses on all three sites are free, though you must pay Udacity a small fee for a certificate that confirms you took the class. Edx has plans to implement a similar fee. Udacity also charges businesses to view the resumes of top students in certain classes—students pay nothing to give their resume to Udacity. Both Coursera and Udacity use a social networking site called Meetup to organize study groups. Montreal groups on both sites have already scheduled meetings this month.

The Future of Higher Education?

It’s still unclear what role MOOCs will play in the coming years. Will they remain a niche for pure learning, come to replace universities, or wither under financial pressure? Certainly, they are already forcing universities to re-think the value of higher education.

The internet has led us to expect free information, and free education seems to be the next logical step. With that said, however, will students be willing to continue to pay thousands of dollars for classes they can take free online?

Yes, say many MOOC site founders and educators, as the true value of a university lies in the campus environment. Students are paying for the chance to meet one-on-one with their professors, study with a diverse group of peers, and benefit from the university’s network.

One thing is clear—MOOCs are still growing in popularity. Over a million students have already registered to take one this fall. Whether this will lead to an exodus out of class and back into bed, only time will tell.

[divide]

Coursera

Coursera was founded by two Stanford professors and is backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The site stresses the social good of MOOCs: “We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions.”

The site offers classes from an impressive list of schools including Caltech, Princeton, and Stanford. Another school offering classes on the site, the University of Washington, will be the first to give students credit for Coursera courses.

Notable course: Modern and Contemporary American Poetry is an example of a MOOC that can’t use computers for grading. Assignments will be graded by peer evaluation.

Edx

EdX is a joint venture between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. The site uses an open-source online learning platform to offer courses from MIT, Harvard, and UC Berkley.

According to the site: “Along with offering online courses, the institutions will use edX to research how students learn and how technology can transform learning—both on-campus and worldwide.”

Notable Course: 6.002x Circuits and Electronics was the first course offered by MITx and boasts a diverse classroom. According to the edX site the course attracted more than 150,000 students from over 160 countries and those certified in this course range from 14 to 74 years-old.

Udacity

Udacity is an online university founded by three roboticists, as they call themselves, one of them a Stanford professor. Rather than partnering with existing universities, it deals directly with instructors to find content for courses.

Udacity offers a free job placement program through partnerships with more than 20 high tech companies.

Notable Course: Artificial Intelligence taught by Sebastian Thrun is one of the original MOOCs. Thrun decided to offer the Stanford class online in 2011 and was shocked when it attracted more than 160,000 students.

Lola Rosa Xpress and Bamboo Bowl now open to students. (Alexandra Allaire / McGill Tribune)
a, News

Renovated Gerts and SSMU cafeteria feature new options

by Christos Lazaris on

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Following a summer of renovations, the Student Society of McGill University (SSMU) Building now features a new selection of restaurants in its second-floor cafeteria as well as a refurbished Gerts bar. While SSMU executives have been planning changes to Gerts for three years, the new restaurants in the food court were only selected within the last year, after the previous tenants’ contracts expired.

According to Shyam Patel, former SSMU VP Finance and Operations, the bar in Gerts was relocated to the center of the room to allow more efficient service through a better use of space.

“Before, the bar was sort of against the wall … It took up a lot of space,” said Patel, who was involved in the decision-making process for the renovation. “There are more seats now, it’s on the opposite side of the room, and it’s shaped like a horseshoe.”

The new shape of the bar is designed to facilitate the movement of the Gerts staff, and to help them serve more customers faster. Other changes include the removal of a wall to make room for a kitchen, where food is now sold.

Despite the changes, Gerts Manager Natasha Geoffrion-Greenslade said efforts were made to ensure that Gerts still felt like the same bar students were used to in previous years.

“My one hope in this project was to preserve the essence of Gerts while updating it a little bit, giving it a fresh look,” Geoffrion-Greenslade said. “But it definitely still feels like Gerts.”

SSMU President Josh Redel estimated the cost of the renovations to be around $450,000.

Unlike the student bar, the second floor cafeteria has not changed its layout. The cafeteria’s three restaurants have been replaced with three new ones chosen by SSMU executives over the past year—Lola Rosa Xpress, Bamboo Bowl, and Bocadillo.

The new tenants of the SSMU cafeteria have signed a one-year, short-term contract, so that SSMU executives can receive student input regarding what they like or dislike about the new selection of restaurants, enabling them to adjust accordingly for the following year.

“[The contracts are] just for the year so that we can actually get student consultation,” SSMU VP Clubs and Services Allison Cooper said. “We really want to gather information on what students want in their cafeteria, and if they want the [restaurants] that we selected.”

Problems arose this summer, however, when one of the planned tenants dropped out, requiring executives to find a new business to fill the empty space in the cafeteria.

“It was a big change from the original plans,” Cooper said. “One of [our original choices] fell through, so we had to find a third one. It was hard to get a new tenant so last minute, but we’re generally really excited.”

Lola Rosa’s Manager Pascal Hourriez emphasized the restaurant’s assortment of healthy, home-made, and freshly-served foods.

“We have a restaurant on Milton already, and we want to respect its image as much as possible,” Hourriez said. “Our mission is to be the best vegetarian restaurant for non-vegetarian people.”

Communications student Joceline Andersen expressed appreciation for the vegetarian emphasis in the new selection of cafeteria restaurants.

“I liked that there were lots of vegetarian options,” Andersen said. “It’s better than what I expected. I expected something mushy and bland, but it was good!”

a, Opinion

Why I eat organic

by Bea Britneff on

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I prefer to buy organic products as opposed to non-organic products.

“Why?” you might ask. Although the concept of “organic” is an attractive one, it is an expensive diet and lifestyle to uphold. Some people wonder if it really makes that much of a difference.

However, the “expensive” argument is a fair one. It’s true that many organic products are outrageously over-priced and are therefore inaccessible to those working with limited budgets. With only these short-term costs in mind, then sure, how does one justify buying organic? Why spend $5.79 (plus tax) on two litres of organic Lactantia milk when you can spend $2.85 on two litres of Québon?

The thing is, I have learned to think in the long-term. I choose to go organic—not for the sake of making a statement, but because of my own beliefs regarding quality, the environment, and my personal health. In my opinion, these concerns demonstrate how buying organic foods can make a significant difference in one’s diet.

I believe the quality of organic foods is higher than that of non-organic foods. To this day, I still remember when my dad presented me with what I like to call “the strawberry test.” He first asked me to taste a non-organic strawberry. It was a little dry, but a decent strawberry nonetheless. He then asked me to try to the organic strawberry. I was delighted by its intense sweetness and juiciness; it was certainly more satisfying for my palate than the first.

These differences in taste are largely a result of different agricultural practices. For instance, organic fruits and vegetables are often grown in soil containing better micronutrients and genetic diversity. As a result, they are much richer in flavour. I derive a lot more joy from cooking and eating if my food is of a higher quality.

Similar to local farming, organic farming methods have also been proven to be significantly more environmentally sustainable than conventional farming. This is because they use less fossil energy, conserve more water in the soil, and increase the efficiency of energy use per unit of production.

Take the case of livestock. For example, organic, seasonal grazing systems have proven to be more efficient because the animals eat more grass and less grain, leaving more grain available for humans to consume. Organic meat production has also been shown to emit fewer greenhouse gases. Taking into account the numerous environmental challenges our planet is facing today, I feel that I am doing my bit for the earth by eating in a manner than is more eco-conscious and sustainable.

The most notable reason why I eat organic foods is for my own personal health. I feel infinitely more comfortable purchasing products that have not been subject to pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones or bioengineering­—the effects of which are transferred to our bodies when we consume those foods.

While organic farming is not completely pesticide or fertilizer-free, the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers is strictly limited or forbidden altogether. These limitations on pesticides have positive implications for the nutritional value of the foods in question. Produce grown organically or without pesticides has been proven to contain higher levels of anti-oxidants, vitamins A, C and E, phosphorus, and potassium.

Although a recently published  Stanford study contested these findings and other health benefits of eating organic, I think you’ll always find studies that suit your own preferences. That being said, I like buying organic produce because I think it gives me a better chance of receiving the important nutrients my body requires.  Furthermore, I believe it decreases the amount of harmful chemicals entering my system.

I am most religious about buying organic dairy products, because I know that they were taken from cows that have not been treated with antibiotics or growth hormones to increase milk production. When so many cancers and other illnesses are hormone-dependent. I simply want to avoid having any more hormones in my body than what is natural. The case is similar with meat and eggs.

With these three main concerns in mind, it wasn’t hard for me to cement my commitment to the organic movement. Maybe it’s because I hail from British Columbia, where the prevailing culture is, supposedly, “eat green and love nature.” Geography aside, I do think we have a lot to gain from eating organic, and it is my hope that governments and companies will do more to encourage organic practices.

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