People

SFU PEOPLE IN THE NEWS - February 25, 2011

February 25, 2011

Media Matters, a report on Simon Fraser University in the news, is compiled and distributed by SFU Public Affairs & Media Relations. This weekly roundup edition lists the main items of known media coverage from 9 a.m. PST Friday Feb 18 to 9 a.m. PST Friday Feb. 25.

NEW TODAY (Feb. 25)

POLITICS

• The Vancouver edition of Metro quoted Gary Mauser, prof emeritus of business, on Saturday’s BC Liberal leadership race:
  “Former deputy premier Christy Clark has polled above her competition heading into decision day, but  . . . Mauser doesn’t think her popularity will be enough for the radio talk-show host to pull out a victory. ‘If she doesn’t get 50 per cent of the first vote, she’s toast,’ Mauser predicted. ‘I think the second choices will determine everything.’
  “‘The focus will be on keeping the party together and not splitting it. That means that (Kevin) Falcon, on the right, and Clark, on the left, won’t be able to win.’ That’s why Mauser thinks George Abbott will end up as the next premier.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/uIRJWs
  
  
• Political scientist Marjorie Griffin Cohen was in the Georgia Straight, as the weekly explored whether the new Liberal leader could lose the next election because of the unpopularity of departing premier Gordon Campbell.
  “She referred to Kevin Falcon, who is said by some to be a Campbell clone, and who is being endorsed by the largest number of cabinet members. ‘If he's the leader, you might have your proposition come true, because he will be the most closely identified with a very unpopular leader,’ Cohen told the Straight in a phone interview. ‘Christy Clark is doing everything she can to distance herself from Gordon Campbell. George Abbott is trying to do that as well, but in a milder kind of way.’”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/NwbWGT
  
  
• Cohen then did an interview on CBC Radio on Wisconsin’s move to erase most collective bargaining rights for the state’s public unions. Her message:
  “These are very draconian laws and while the excuse to cut jobs is blamed on budget problems, many of the measure are simply designed to eliminate trade unions in the public sector.  This type of action should be on the radar in BC.”
  (The Wisconsin measure would give Gov. Scott Walker's administration broad powers to reshape health programs covering low-income Wisconsin residents, and to use borrowing and cuts to employee benefits to plug a $137-million gap in the state budget.)
  
  

ARCHAEOLOGY

• SFU archaeologist Roy Carlson was in a story in the Montreal Gazette on the discovery in Alaska of the remains of an ice-age child, who died about 11,500 years ago and whose remains are the earliest yet found in the North.
  “(Carlson) said the Alaskan research is ‘top-notch’ and will add another chapter to the story of early life in North America.  . . . Carlson said the child's remains and the house site are significant but do not resolve outstanding questions about the ethnicity of people in the North at the end of the last ice age.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/xJyKiP
  
  

BUSINESS

• Report on Business in the Globe and Mail featured Mike Brydon and Peter Tingling, decision-theory specialists at SFU’s Beedie School of Business.
  “They have a question they like to ask when giving presentations to senior management groups, especially to human resources managers. ‘How many here have taken golf lessons to improve their game?’ A lot of hands go up. Then they ask: ‘How many have had instruction to improve their decision making?’ No one raises a hand because, as Brydon and Tingling have discovered, all managers, but especially those in HR, consider themselves to be expert decision makers already.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/PInkRJ
  
  

TECHNOLOGY

• TechNewsWorld.com quoted Herbert Tsang, bioinformatics researcher and instructor in SFU Computing Science, as dismissing fears that the new Apple OS X Lion operating system will mean tighter controls over Mac software.
  "‘Through the App Store, the tight control that Apple has over their iDevices software is notorious,’ Tsang told MacNewsWorld. ‘There is no indication, however, that the [Mac] App Store will be the only way to obtain Mac software. . . . The new integration . . . in Mac OS X Lion is a way to benefit individual software developers. It is an effort to offer alternatives, rather than exclusivities.
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/HPdGGa
  
  

POLICE BEAT

• Criminologist Neil Boyd was quoted in an Ian Mulgrew column in The Vancouver Sun. The column asked: “Why would Public Safety Minister Vic Toews offer us a supposedly tough-on-crime package that will replicate what failed in the U.S. and cost us at least $2.7 billion we can't afford over the next five years?”
  Mulgrew quoted Boyd on a tough-on-crime study done by a former Harper government adviser. The report was savaged by academics as sloppy, distorted research. “Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd finished him off: ‘It's really badly done. It's embarrassing, actually.’"
  Full column: http://at.sfu.ca/GFvbay
  
  

RESEARCH

• The Surrey-North Delta Leader finallylisted SFU recipients of a total of more than $2.7 million in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. The recipients were Brian Fisher of the School for Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU Surrey; Mohamed Hefeeda, SFU Computing Science; Erika Plettner, SFU Chemistry; Steven Holdcroft, SFU Chemistry; Bonnie Gray, SFU Engineering Science; and Jim Mattson, SFU Biological Sciences. The story came from an SFU news release of Jan. 21.
  SFU release: http://at.sfu.ca/EWCzOv
  
  

EARLIER IN THE WEEK

AMELIA EARHART

• There was worldwide media, social-media and blog coverage on how SFU scientist Dongya Yang will attempt to extract DNA from letters of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart in the hope of finally solving the mystery of her disappearance in 1937.
  The Daily Mail in England became the latest mass-market newspaper to do a story on how SFU hopes use the DNA to determine if a bone fragment, found on the South Pacific island of Nikumaroro two years ago, came from Earhart.
  “Researchers have looked at 400 letters between Earhart and other people, finding four letters to her family which could be the most useful as she probably sealed them.
  “Genetic archaeologist Dongya Yang, of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, is leading the project. He will first carefully steam the seals open and take mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from mothers, and nuclear DNA, containing most of our genetic information.”
  
  
• The San Diego Union-Tribune featured Justin Long, “former San Diegan” and SFU Health Sciences student, who sparked the DNA investigation with Earhart letters collected by his grandfather. The paper wrote:
  “It could be instrumental in analyzing three bone fragments, one thought to be from a finger, discovered along with possible makeup bottle shards and other artifacts on the remote South Pacific island of Nikumaroro by members of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.”
  GlobalTV, CTV and multicultural OmniTV came up to the Burnaby campus with cameras to do stories. Yang showed Global the carefully preserved letters and said: “You can see the seal is still here. So that way you could have the DNA still inside this seal.  . . . Theoretically, it should not be that difficult because in most cases, most material we have been working on is a thousand years old.”
  Long was also on TV: “It’s a fantastic mystery. There’s no answer to what actually happened to her. Nobody has found any wreckage. Nobody’s found any body. . . .They believe she eventually landed on an island that then was known as Garner Island.” On that tiny atoll (now called Nikumaroro) what appears to be a finger bone was discovered in 2009. Could it be Earhart’s?
  Yang told reporters: “We are hoping for one year and we should see some result, either negative or positive. And we hope for the positive result.”
  A sampling of the stories:
  Daily Mail: http://at.sfu.ca/CCcGcW
  Union-Tribune: http://at.sfu.ca/TDzOBT
  Time Online: http://at.sfu.ca/mAQuix
  The Canadian Press: http://at.sfu.ca/uyepjy
  The Vancouver Sun: http://at.sfu.ca/AbpKxv
  National Geographic News: http://at.sfu.ca/UhwAGq
  SFU news release: http://at.sfu.ca/kDrzvq
  
  

EDUCATION

• SFU president Andrew Petter was on the Early Edition show on CBC Radio, telling host Rick Cluff about SFU’s community-consultation project, envision>SFU.  Among Petter’s points:
• “It’s listed as the leading comprehensive university and one of the top 200 in the world  . . . but I deeply believe, and I think people at SFU do, that just because you’re doing a great job doesn’t mean you can stand still. . . . We want to be known as Canada’s most community-engaged research university. Some think we already are, Rick, but we don’t want to leave any doubt after this process.”
• “This is a university that really prides itself on its community connections and its community contributions. So what we’re going to do is ask ourselves—but at the same time ask the community—what more can we do. How can we strengthen our contribution to the community, through the education we provide students, through the research that we deliver, both to business but also in addressing social problems, as well as in our physical presence and the kind of public service we can provide in strengthening communities in any number of different ways.”
• “How can we strengthen community engagement is the essence of one of the questions. What are we missing? What aren’t we doing that we should be doing more of? How can we strengthen the quality and impact of our research? We do a lot of research in the community. We address everything from mental health to HIV/AIDS, environmental problems. But I think we could be doing more. I think universities can’t think of themselves any more as ivory towers sitting on mountains, or anywhere else. They’ve got to really think what contribution we can make to the community. And particularly at a time when we’re about to go into a major skills shortage. How can we do a better job of helping kids to find an education that will enrich them, turn them into great citizens, but also give them real job opportunities?”
  Petter invited the public to visit the envision>SFU website at http://envision.sfu.ca, and to leave thoughts their on the future of SFU. The invitation sparked an immediate flood of online comments.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Bob Johnson, a Michigan-based specialist in higher-education marketing, praised as his Link of the Week the envision>SFU website:
  “How can you integrate modern communications technology to engage people on your campus in a strategic visioning process?  Simon Fraser University does that by integrating ‘old’ and ‘new’ elements: Start with a special "enVision SFU" website that asks people to comment on 10 questions. Include a brief but effective president's video of less than 2 minutes. Offer a variety of online response opportunities, from blog comments at the website to Facebook to Twitter. Promote focus group participation and live meetings with the president.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/wVCCOV
  
  
• Janet Steffenhagen’s Vancouver Sun education blog picked up an SFU news release and told readers: “A book by SFU professor Kieran Egan that encourages educators to ‘re-imagine’ schools has won an award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. The book, called The Future of Education: Re-imaging Our Schools from the Ground Up, has won the association's 2011 Outstanding Book Award. Egan will receive the award Feb. 26 in San Diego.”
  Sun blog: http://at.sfu.ca/haboCy
  SFU release: http://at.sfu.ca/GWJHPO
  
  
• The Burnaby NewsLeader told readers: “Joseph Choi, Alex Venetis and Steffi Chua have been hitting the books for three years at SFU's Beedie School of Business. Now they're collecting books for family's that can't afford them. . . . Over the next four weeks the students are hoping people around Metro Vancouver will cull their own book collections to be donated to the Salvation Army's family support services and literacy-related programs.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/dZLIeG
  
  
• Burnaby Now told readers that SFU is working on “a new strategy to fight stigma surrounding mental illness, following new statistics that show up to 86 per cent of mentally ill students don't complete their degrees.”
  The story continued: “The university’s new mental health strategy is also encouraging people to be compassionate to those struggling with a mental illness.
  “According to a 2007 study, 65 per cent of SFU students said they were overwhelmed and feeling depressed. Another 39.4 per cent were so depressed they had trouble functioning.
  “The new plan, spearheaded by SFU's health and counselling services, involves things like updating policies, raising awareness about mental illness on campus, training volunteers to recognize signs that someone may be at risk of suicide, and striking a subcommittee to fight the stigmatization of mental illness on campus.
  Burnaby Now: http://at.sfu.ca/EzxImK
  SFU release: http://at.sfu.ca/IRQXBz
  
  

MIDDLE EAST

• André Gerolymatos, historian and commentator on international affairs and security, did a lengthy interview on the Bill Good show on CKNW. The subject: unrest in the Middle East, and Muammar Khadafi’s brutality in Libya. Key points:
• “The youth factor is a prime ingredient in what is motivating the events in the Middle East. Because, what perhaps the listeners may not know, is that 60 per cent of the population of the Middle East, all the Middle Eastern countries, is under the age of 24. These are the people who use Twitter and Facebook, e-mail, they get on the internet. It’s a whole different generation that communicates in a whole different way, and this is why it has caught the leadership by surprise. First In Tunisia, we saw how much difference youth can make. By using these new contraptions, Facebook and Twitter and all these means of mobilizing people on a mass level, they can be done effectively and quickly. And, of course, they got the grand event in Cairo. . .  .
• “If it can be done in Egypt, it can be done anywhere. It’s being done in Libya. Because Khadafi has completely forgotten how he got to power, which was by quick coup, in a country whose entire population lived along the coastline; it was mostly tribal, they had just discovered oil, there was very little wealth. He took power with a handful of guns and about 25 men. But since then Libya has changed dramatically. . . . And the youth is no longer so dominated by tribal culture. . . . I mean, there’s still tribes in Libya, but even those tribes are beginning to turn against him.”
  
  
• Gerolymatos was asked on CTV News if the U.S. could step in and topple Khadafi. “No, the only thing they could ultimately do is impose sanctions on Libya which will actually hurt the Libyan people. So they can not intervene militarily to stop the bloodshed that going on.”
  On Khadafi’s use of violence Gerolymatos said: “He has a lot of mercenaries he's hired doing a lot of the killing. They don't really care—they're not Libyans themselves—so this is what is keeping him in power so far. (But) I think he's going to fall. I don't think he's going to survive this. You know, it's just a question of time how long he's able to stay in power.”
  
  
• In an earlier interview on CTV News, Gerolymatos discussed the number of regimes in the Middle East that face some sort of upheaval.
  "One critical factor is that all these countries are very poor and in most of them the regimes themselves benefit from revenues from petroleum." He named Bahrain as the closest to some sort of revolution.
  "The difficulty with Bahrain is that the ruling sheikhdom is Sunni and most of the population living there is Shi'ite. People are not demanding the removal of the monarchy; they want more jobs, more opportunity and they want to share more of the power. I think the monarchy knows that and they will be able to have enough reforms—at least that's what they're saying so far—to contain the revolution.”
  
  
• Graham Fuller, adjunct history prof and former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, was on the On the Coast show on CBC Radio, discussing Libya and Khadafi: “There’s a tipping point, and I think he’s just enraging more people than he can suppress.  . . . My sense is, after 40 years of this, and watching the demonstrations and problems in all sorts of neighbouring countries, that I don’t think the protesters are going to go away quite that easily. . . .. So I think the handwriting is really on the wall. The question is, how difficult and painful does he want to make it?”
  
  
• Fuller’s interview preceded a public forum at which Fuller discussed his new book, A World Without Islam.
  Fuller: “A World Without Islam actually says that, if you look at the really deep grievances of the people in the region . . . that these grievances would be really infuriating to anybody who lives in those areas, whether you’re Muslim or Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or whatever. . .  . If you say the problem is not Islam, as I argue it is not essentially Islam, then you’ve got a much more complex problem. Now we have to negotiate: ‘What’s gone wrong; we have to set things right.’ But don’t simply  . . . stick a label on it and say it’s their problem, not ours.”
  
  
• Fuller also spoke with host Simi Sara on the Roy Green show on CKNW, saying (among other things) that the "obsessive desire" of the U.S. to intervene in the Middle East has failed.  He said there’s a need to let the local populations “grow up” and deal with their own issues. While the situation in the Middle East has gone from bad to worse, it is providing an opportunity to the people to speak up.
  
  
• Tamir Moustafa, international studies prof, (and author of The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt) wrote an article on Egypt for the Comparative Constitutions Project.
  He noted that Egypt has set up a constitutional-reform committee, and “the proposed amendments thus provide the first concrete test of whether the military’s stated commitment to a break from the past is credible.”
  But, he pointed out: “The military has clearly excluded representation from those groups that organized the January 25th democracy movement and indeed from almost all political trends, not to mention the fact that there is not a single woman appointed to the committee.”
  Full article: http://at.sfu.ca/kPlyTZ
  
  
• Meanwhile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation began a story with this: “With regimes across the Middle East and North Africa in turmoil, it'd be easy this week to assume that the world was an increasingly dangerous place. Not so, says Professor Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Report Project at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.”
  Mack said in an interview: “If you look at the number of high intensity civil wars and they're 90 per cent of all wars today, they're down by about 80 per cent compared to the end of the Cold War. And then if you look at the number of people that are getting killed in wars around the world, they've been declining since the early 1950s. And in the 1950s the average war killed about 10,000 a year. Today the average war kills less than a 1,000 people a year. So wars have become less frequent and they've become less deadly.
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/MEiWFo
  
  

CYBER-BULLYING

• On Pink Shirt Day (for the Feb. 23 anti-bullying campaign) Wanda Cassidy, associate prof in SFU Education, was interviewed on the BC Almanac show on CBC Radio, and took calls from a couple of listeners. Her main messages: 
• “Cyber-bullying is sometimes overlooked when schools address the problem of bullying.
• “Cyber-bullying occurs more often with girls than boys and often takes place within ‘friendship groups’. Boys, on the other hand, are more likely to send sexual messages or dirty jokes to someone they wish to bully.”
•  “Cyber-bullying is devastating to victims. Our research shows that young people can become suicidal, depressed, anxious.  It is devastating to adolescents who are vulnerable to what their peers and friends think of them.”
• “Educators and parents need to engage young people in finding solutions and give greater priority to the discussion of cyber-bullying and technology use in schools, rather than just address it once a year on Anti-Bullying Day.”
  
  

NZ EARTHQUAKE

• SFU earth scientist John Clague was in a story in the UK’s The Guardian, talking about the killer earthquake in Christchurch NZ.
  “John Clague, an expert in natural hazards at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, said it was unclear what caused such serious damage to modern buildings, but said the answer could be the ‘liquefaction’ of the ground when the shaking began.
  "‘Liquefaction is a huge problem in Christchurch because the city is built on an alluvial plain, on sediments that are vulnerable to liquefaction,’ Clague said. ‘When shaken, these sediments transform into a liquid, causing irregular settlement of the ground, which is extremely damaging to buildings and buried structures, like water lines.’"
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/VjgICO
  Clague was also on The National on CBC-TV: “Scientist John Clague says this quake was likely itself an aftershock from a much bigger one that hit in September, but in part because this one was shallower it packed a bigger punch. ‘It really is location, location, location. If your epicentre is close enough to a large urban area, you're going to get these type of effects, the damage, the injury.’”
  Clague was also quoted in Singapore’s TODAYOnline.
  
  

POLITICS

• Doug McArthur, public policy prof, showed once more why he was a 2009 winner of the SFU President's Award for Service through Public Affairs and Media Relations. He did, for starters, a string of interviews on the BC Liberal leadership race:
• Speaking with CKWX News 1130, McArthur looked for the final battle to be between George Abbott and Christy Clark. "Clark may get more individual votes but lose after big urban members' individual votes are reduced to one-tenth or one-twentieth of a vote, or less", under the Liberal party's new preferential voting system.
• He also pursued this point on CFAX Radio, Victoria, saying Abbott may win when second-choice votes are counted under the preferential system. "It's an extreme variation from one-person-one-vote and will thus be seen later to have been an unfair system. Especially if Abbott wins with something like 10,000 individual votes less than Christy, which may happen. It will leave large suburban members feeling pretty badly treated by their party.”
• In a CBC Radio interview, McArthur said the Liberal race is different from most in that support from cabinet ministers doesn't count so much "because cabinet members are almost as unpopular among Liberal members as in the public because of the failed HST introduction."
• Talking to the Sing Tao newspaper, McArthur noted that Finance Minister Colin Hansen has created a provincial budget so that there is room for new leader to cut the HST to 11% from 12%, to try to buy support in referendum. "So expect a 1% cut in HST in March or April."
• McArthur did similar interviews on radio stations in Fort St. John and in Vancouver, the latter reaching the Chinese-Canadian community.
• And he was on CBC News as it looked at Vancouver’s Olympic Village. The condo units are selling fast (after 30% price cuts) but the city still stands to lose millions.  McArthur’s message:
  “Every step along the way the city has either ignored market and commercial realities, misunderstood them, or tried to manage the market, which it can't do.  It is time to move all of the properties onto the market, which is now strong, save the costs of keeping very high units empty, and get this sorry saga behind us.”
  
  
• Looking farther afield, McArthur did a 25-minute interview on CKNW, with host Simi Sara. Among other things, he noted how the working classes and the poor now are joining in protests in Middle Eastern countries. He cautioned about relying on Egypt's military to support peaceful change to democracy, and said that while protests are spreading to other countries in response to those in Egypt—each regime is different and therefore the responses and outcomes will be different.
  
  
• The Burnaby NewsLeader looked at the Feb. 25 race for the federal NDP nomination in Burnaby-Douglas, where MP Bill Siksay plans not to seek re-election. One of the candidates is public policy prof Kennedy Stewart, an unsuccessful NDP candidate in the federal riding of Vancouver-Centre in 2004.
  “If he wins the nomination, Stewart said he’d utilize modern techniques to poll constituents and even hold electronic town hall meetings to find out what issues are important to them.
  “Ultimately, Stewart said, the best way to get elected or re-elected is to work hard on behalf of constituents. ‘Even if people voted NDP in the past, you can’t expect them to vote NDP just because you ask them to vote. You have to give them a reason to vote for you and again, that’s what Svend (Robinson) and Bill did.’”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/uppRmX
  
  
• Political scientist Anil (Andy) Hira was on CKNW, talking about Canada-U.S. relations as (i) the Harper and Obama governments move toward new border security arrangements, and (ii) the U.S. proposes to levy entry fees on Canadians crossing the border (unless by car) and to levy special "security" charges on freight entering the U.S. Hira noted that the political and budgetary climate in the US helps to explain the border fee proposal. He also commented on the deleterious economic effects that increasing transactions fees can have on both countries' highly integrated economies.
  
  
• The Toronto Star reported on a ban on cocoa exports from Ivory Coast, beset by a stalemate between rival presidents, and quoted assistant prof Morten Jerven of SFIO International Studies. “‘It’s a risky move,’” said Morten Jerven, a professor at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University who specializes in African economic history, of the export ban. ‘This is one way of putting pressure on (incumbent president Laurent) Gbagbo, but I don’t know how effective it will be.’”  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/atDNug
  
  
• Mark Wexler, business ethics prof, was quoted in a Vancouver Sun blog in which writer Doug Todd looked at the BC Liberal and NDP leadership races, and wondered: “Is niceness a curse in leadership?” "In politics, business and other walks of life, Wexler concedes a responsible person is frequently forced to allow his or her values to be tainted, particularly in the short term. . . . They are sometimes compelled to do harm to achieve results. But leaders should never just settle for immoral behaviour. As Wexler says, the best ones are those who agonize over it."
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/nZIzgv
  
  
• The Vancouver Sun reported that developer Ryan Beedie paid for two polls that suggest a victory by Christy Clark in the BC Liberal leadership race could split the party's centre-right "free enterprise" coalition. And in an e-mail to organizers for candidate Kevin Falcon, Beedie “raised the spectre of a Clark victory prompting enough B.C. Liberal supporters to defect to the small B.C. Conservative Party, allowing the New Democrats to win the next election.”
  The paper added: “Beedie, whose links with Falcon go back to their days as students at Beedie, whose links with Falcon go back to their days as students at Simon Fraser University in the late '80s, has recruited businessmen to back Falcon's campaign.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/nAhEua
  
  
• The news-and-commentary website of TheTyee.ca carried a guest column from Donald Gutstein, adjunct prof in SFU Communication. “If Kevin Falcon wins the BC Liberal leadership contest on Feb. 26 and becomes premier, will the Fraser Institute help him craft his first budget? . . . The wealthy, led by developer and long-time Falcon friend Ryan Beedie, lined up to support his leadership bid. Peter Brown's name was on a list of Falcon endorsers. And Beedie is a recent addition to the Fraser Institute's board of directors. The Fraser Institute-Falcon partnership is in place, and Falcon's heroes must be watching.”
  Full column: http://at.sfu.ca/fqQYiR
  
  

GAS PRICES

• Marketing prof Lindsay Meredith was on GlobalTV, talking about the impact of rising oil prices triggered by events in the Middle East.
  “There’s a real problem here. Consumers are holding record levels of debt—never been higher in our history. And now you get a situation perhaps where food prices take off, which is what they’re doing. Or energy prices take off, and that’s happening too. And in the end you get consumers who are very badly squeezed, who have no safety cushion of cash around. Then everything goes and takes a deep dive. You’re in big trouble.”
  
  

POLICE BEAT

• The Vancouver Sun reported that the name of the 18-year-old charged in Laura Szendrei’s murder is being circulated online—although he cannot legally be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act as he was just 17 at the time of Szendrei’s slaying.
  “Stuart Poyntz, an assistant professor in Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication, said it is not surprising that teens are revealing the identity of the accused online given the way they use Facebook and other social media to communicate. . . . Young people think they are communicating privately on a ‘peer-to-peer forum,’ he said. But in reality, these online forums are public and ‘they are violating laws and legal practices, but they don’t see it that way.’”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/XHaBIO
  
  
• Clinical psychologist Joti Samra was in demand by media to talk about how a driver could flee after a fatal hit-and-run. This following the hit-and-run death of a Good Samaritan woman—and the woman she was trying to help—in Port Coquitlam on Saturday.
  The Province, for one, quoted Samra:
  “Assuming that it's a true accident, the reality is . . . even from the perspective of the person that caused the accident, it can be quite traumatic and cause an acute stress reaction. . . . The fight-or-flight response is something we're exposed to when we are faced with extreme and traumatic events. Our body kind of goes into a shock, it doesn't know what to do."
  The Province: http://at.sfu.ca/LoHqgc
  
  
• Criminologist John Lowman was mentioned in a Maple Ridge News story about the dismissal of a charter challenge launched by a man arrested in a sting targeting the sex trade in Maple Ridge. The man challenged the solicitation law, saying it violated prostitutes’ rights because it made their work more dangerous.
  “As the case proceeded through court, expert witnesses, including Simon Fraser University criminologist John Lowman, were called to testify. One of Canada’s leading experts on prostitution, Lowman reluctantly testified that his research found an increase in violence against sex trade workers since the new law came into effect.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/IxmtVC
  
  

SFU RELEASES

• The Alberni Valley News and the UK-based science website of PhysOrg.com picked up an SFU news release on SFU researchers combine bacterial genome analysis with social networking surveys to track down the puzzling origins of a tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in a BC community.
  “Thanks to this combination of social-network surveys and genomics, we were able for the first time to link a TB outbreak with an increase in crack cocaine use within a community,” said SFU microbiology professor Fiona Brinkman.
  (The BC community was not identified in the research paper, to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. But The Vancouver Sun said the TB outbreak affected 41 people in Port Alberni. The Alberni Valley News told readers: “Although the name of the community isn't named other media are reporting that it is Port Alberni.”
  Alberni Valley News: http://at.sfu.ca/UqKCtc
  The news release: http://at.sfu.ca/JHwGee
  
  

LANGUAGE

• The Montreal Gazette told readers: “Quietly, without fanfare, English-speakers are disappearing from (rural) regions where the roots of both language communities run deep.”
  The story included: “Rural anglophones rate barely a mention in most histories of Quebec, says Jack Little, a professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.
  “For example, the settlement of the Eastern Townships by American pioneers from 1792 onward gets less attention than it deserves, Little says. ‘I was struck in 1992, the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Eastern Townships, that most places would have had a celebration. It would have been marked. It would have been written about. It was completely ignored.’”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/BLvBDx
  
  

ATHLETICS

• Four members of the Clan basketball teams were named to the 2010-11 Great Northwest Athletic Conference basketball academic all-conference team. SFU men’s basketball student-athletes Zack Frehlick and Chris Paredes, along with Clan women’s basketball players Anna Carolsfeld and Kristina Collins, were recognized for their academic accomplishments.
  SFU news release: http://at.sfu.ca/ihPHhM
  
  
• Former Clan men’s wrestler Arjan Bhullar was named Sport BC’s University Athlete of the Year. Bhullar finished his SFU career this past spring, winning the 2010 NAIA National Championship at 285lbs.
  SFU news release: http://at.sfu.ca/cRLXLW
  
  

• National Post and The Vancouver Sun reported that winners of the 2011 Governor General’s Awards in visual and media arts include David Rimmer, a Vancouver-based experimental filmmaker who has taught at SFU, UBC and Emily Carr.  Recipients receive a $25,000 prize.
  Wrote National Post: “(Rimmer)had just quit graduate studies at Simon Fraser University and decided to apply for a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. ‘I got the forms and I came to the section that said: discipline. Painting, sculpture, print-making, poetry, design,’ he said. ‘I got my felt pen and I drew a little box. I wrote ‘experimental film,’ and I checked the box off. ‘To my utter amazement, I got a grant [for] $3,700.’ Since, Rimmer, 67, has created more than 40 films and is respected for his work in Canada’s avant-garde film movement.”
  National Post: http://at.sfu.ca/TWuraf
  Vancouver Sun: http://at.sfu.ca/jERfKk
  
  
• The VancouverObserver.com did an advance story on a March 16 concert of the music of “legendary Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer”.  The news-and-commentary site added: “The composer, who will be in attendance, coined the term ‘soundscape’ and established the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University in the early 1970s.”
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/BbOFxM
  
  
• National Post ran a story on how “listening to U2 might be good for your health.” It looked at a paper co-authored by SFU Geography prof Paul Kingsbury, Cool aid? Health, well-being and place in the work of Bono and U2.
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/RDOiYY
  
  

ALSO IN THE NEWS

• The Ottawa Citizen and the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal picked up from last week’s Vancouver Sun a story on SFU’s “cruise control for runners.” Quoted was Mark Snaterse, who came up with the idea with fellow biomedical physiologist Max Donelan. "You can set the preferred speed for your run—say, 10 km in 50 minutes—before you head out.”
  Sun story: http://at.sfu.ca/BGxtzv
  SFU release: http://at.sfu.ca/gxeowI
  
  
• The Edmonton Journal picked up a Vancouver Sun column on a study showing that from 1998-2009 average weekly wages for federal public servants outstripped those of other workers. The story quoted Herbert Grubel, prof emeritus, SFU Economics, as saying in 2010: "If the incomes of public sector workers were equal to those in the private sector, fiscal deficits of [federal and provincial] governments would be lowered by at least $19 billion."
  Sun column: http://at.sfu.ca/RdYkYA
  
  
• The African Development Bank appointed Mahamudu Bawumia as its resident representative for Zimbabwe. Bawumia earned a PhD in economics from SFU in 1996.
  Full story: http://at.sfu.ca/xkDOtC
  
  

 MORE LINKS

• Simon Fraser University news releases can be found online at: http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media_releases/
• The university newsletter, SFU News, is also online, at: http://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/
• You can sign up for RSS delivery of our news releases at:http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media_releases/rss/index.xml
• About SFU: http://www.sfu.ca/about/index.html
• Facts and Figures about SFU: http://www.sfu.ca/facts/
• Also available online: information and reports from SFU president Andrew Petter: http://www.sfu.ca/pres

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