After a couple long afternoons on the terrace of the Lion and the mandatory ride down the Massawippi River, you might find yourself with a lot of spare time on your hands this spring in Lennoxville. Luckily, the Eastern Townships is at its best in the spring and offers anyone willing to explore it plenty of things to do and see, no matter what you like. Here’s but a couple places and ideas:

Sherbrooke

Yeah, it’s a no-brainer that you can bus or bike into the city and shop around a bit, but it has a lot to offer if you know where to look. The nightlife, concentrated around Wellington and Dufferin Street downtown, has trendy restaurants, cafés, microbreweries and bars. IF you’re looking for the most bang for your buck, I recommend heading all the way down Wellington North, crossing the bridge and finding a group of four interconnected bars right by the St-Francis River. In the same building, you can find a metal show, a punk show and queer couples mingling on a disco dance floor.

For those who are more laid back, there are also numerous walking paths in the area, specifically around Lac-des-Nations, a lake right by the centre, and near the rapids that connect it and the St-Francis. There’s also canoe rentals offered in Parc Jacques-Cartier. Venturing through Downtown and the Vieux Nord neighbourhood, you can find many charming buildings and houses, telling of Sherbrooke’s Victorian era. There are also plans for a large outdoor show this summer at the Nicotek theatre, also right by Wellington St.

North Hatley

A beautiful resort town right on the shore of Lake Massawippi, North Hatley is an evergreen tourist attraction and an official heritage site. The quaint town has numerous Bed and Breakfasts, art studios, waterfront pubs restaurants and boasts a 9-hole golf course. There are literally acres upon acres of parks surrounding it, including beaches and walking paths. One notable park is Dreamland Park, where there are outdoor concerts every Sunday during the summer. On top of this, it is easily accessible via a bike route that passes right through Lennoxville (The Route Verte) and Bishop’s even offers a bike rental service in Patterson.

It all makes for a very nice day trip through pleasant surroundings to a place that’s incredibly picturesque and offers a very distinctive character. Of course, many Bishop’s professors also live in the area, so this gives you the chance to personally annoy them, even in the summer months.

Magog

Much like North Hatley, Magog was, for a very long time, a very popular tourist destination. The city is settled right at the northern tip of Lake Memphrémagog, which extends all the way south to the Vermont Border. To truly understand just how big this lake is, there’s even a boat tour where a tourist can appreciate the many mountains on the horizon and look out for the legendary lake monster Memphré. There’s also shopping to be had on Main Steet, blatantly named Rue Principale, which has boutiques, restaurants and The Piggery Theatre, an English language troupe based in the mostly francophone town.

Stanstead

This border town has a lot of history behind it, what with being split down the middle between Canada and America, specifically on Canusa Street. The architecture in the area is distinctly 19 century, complete with a museum that presents the history of the worlds’ friendliest border housed in a prestigious villa and garden. The town also has a very unique opera house, since it too is split by the border: the audience sits in America while the performers are in Canada! Other beautiful buildings include neo-gothic churches and the old post office, a converted store made entirely out of stone.

The town can also be reached by bike by following Highway 143, but it’s better to make it an overnight trip, given the distance.

Coaticook

For nature lovers and hikers, there’s the Coaticook Gorge. A bridge spans 169 meters over the gorge; it holds the Guinness record for being the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world. The park surrounding it has observation towers to better view the ravine and also has a large campsite, among other activities. In the surrounding area, there are more walking paths in the Baldwin Dicovery Park, offering an excellent view on Lake Lyster, and there is fishing to be had in the ponds and streams. On top of this, the town is home to the Coaticook Milk Company, where you can visit their Dairy Bar and get some very fresh ice cream. You can bike here by following the Chemin des Cantons, also just outside of Lennoxville.

There are a lot of sluts on Bishop’s campus, and they’re here to stay, say this year’s organizers of the first-ever Bishop’s University Slut Walk, Helen Monroe and Risa Kastelic.

Inspired by similar walks which have taken place globally, Monroe and Kastelic decided to host the walk as a precursor to their production of The Vagina Monologues which they co-directed.  The “sluts” gathered outside Turner Studio Theatre and marched to Happy Hour at the Gait on Thursday March 15.
The original Slut Walk was held in April 2011 in Toronto.  People of all kinds took to the streets to protest comments made by Toronto police officer, Constable Michael Sanguinetti that implied that women “should avoid dressing like sluts” to protect themselves from sexual aggressors.  The Toronto Police Service swiftly apologized for Sanguinetti’s comments, saying that they “did not reflect” TPS training.  But the movement was already underway.

Originally organized by two York University students, Heather Jarvis and Sonya Barnett, they were joined by three other organizers in as the event snowballed beyond their wildest imaginings.  Slut Walks have now taken place across Canada, the United States, and around the world, including a particularly raucous Slut Walk of about 500 protestors in New Delhi, India.
The main message of the Slut Walk is to reclaim the word “slut,” similar to other marginalized groups that have reclaimed words once used to offend, hurt, and abuse.  More importantly, it is to change the cultural bias that blames the victims of sexual assault, instead of the perpetrators: wearing so-called provocative clothing does not mean one is “asking” to be raped.
Says Kastelic of the event: “We wanted to host the Slut Walk in order to create an event that both men and women could participate in, in order to promote awareness of sexual assault. The event consists of people gathering in attire that they feel comfortable and sexy in. The idea is that people should be allowed to wear whatever they please without fear of being sexually assaulted.”
About 20 students arrived for the walk, and more joined in as the event progressed.  Both Monroe and Kastelic are confident that “the movement will grow in years to come and become a staple in the Bishop’s University community.”
The Vagina Monologues, written by Eve Ensler, were presented with resounding success in The Gait on Tuesday March 20 and raised over $700.
If you missed the local event, the next upcoming Slut Walk is being held in Toronto on May 26.

I almost took pictures of campus last week and mailed them to my American friends, because that’s just how nice the weather was. They tend to think that as soon as you cross the border, everyone suddenly lives in an igloo and rides a polar bear to school; even though up here it would totally be a moose.

Everyone was in a great mood last week. The sun was shining, and people were hanging out with their friends on the deck in shorts and tank tops. It was 30 degrees out for at least one day, which is weird weather for Lennoxville in March (the cold grey we have now is more typical), but it was absolutely gorgeous.

What is it exactly about a beautiful day that puts us in such a great mood, though? Is it just because we’re happy we can wear less clothing and the world is bright, or is there actual science behind this mood lift?

MSNBC Health tells us that some people suffer from SAD, which stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and has been linked to the shorter daytime hours of winter. Experts believe the disorder stems from the upsets in circadian rhythm caused by the brains perception of less daylight in the winter. This alters with serotonin, the hormone responsible for mood swings.

People without SAD are affected by weather changes too, though. People are naturally sympathetic to their environment, so when it’s sunny, we feel happier.

Even though it’s grey again, feelings and emotions are controllable. You can still listen to Bob Marley and the Beach Boys even when it’s cold and drizzly, or even on those horrible Monday mornings when you wake up and there’s snow…this writer is still a little bitter about that.

They’re called memes. (Pronounced meems, not may-may or mee-mee.) They are many indicators of what a culture and what a society is all about, like music, clothes, literature, movies and television. But as we move forward into the 21^st century, memes are becoming the indicators by which our cultural values are judged.
What memes are, essentially, is the manipulation of cultural icons, advertisements and tropes usually in an amusing way, in the form of pictures and videos—this is an “art” that anyone with a computer can create. A popular example of a meme is the parody of the Dos Equis commercial “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” People replace the usual line with something like “I don’t always clean my room, but when I do, I’m expecting to get laid.”
Memes are evidence of our globalized world.  They simply wouldn’t be possible without the internet.  But like all the pros of globalization, there is a cost.  The sheer number of memes created every day is monumental.  Take in to account that because anyone—with or without a sense of humour—can create a meme, and you are bound to run into a few bad ones.
Memes at best can be time-consuming, and at worst can be mean-spirited and cruel.  Some memes feature pictures of real people: we know him simply as “that jerk guy in the hat” or “that crazy girl making a stupid face” but technically, we are using their likenesses illegally.  And for you grammar junkies out there, beware!  Typically, meme-makers don’t care about the rules of English language.  Expect to see a lot of cringe-worthy mistakes, because people just don’t care.  This is, after all, the LOL-generation.
The other sad thing is that, typical of this generation, we’ve taken a concept that isn’t ours and claimed it as our own.  Few people know that the term meme was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene.  He was comparing the evolutionary-like way ideas spread from person to person, and it can be argued that the “first” identification of memes were in catchphrases, slogans, fashions, and tunes.  So basically, a funny or popular meme will propagate quickly, and a crummy meme will go “extinct.”
Memes are a sign of where humour is going in this society.  It is a form for the creative, the quick-witted, and is accessible to almost everyone.  But there will always be the crass, the shallow, and the inane memes.  We might get a good laugh out of them, but I tend to think that if, centuries from now, an alien race were to judge humanity by its memes, they would be less than impressed.

In order to celebrate the work of students doing research across the university, The Campus went snooping for some interesting projects.  While only two of them are to be featured as research week posters, we thought we’d take a look at some “behind-the-scenes” research that is moving the university forward.

Maxime Pelletier

Most students would consider one research assistant position enough of a workload, but Political Science Honours student Maxime Pelletier is just fine with two.

When asked how he manages to get through all of his assignments, Pelletier is frank. “My strategy is to look at the next thing I have to do and do it,” says Pelletier laughing.

While his two research positions involve two quite different concepts, both center around public policy and how government affects its citizens on a personal level. Pelletier’s first job is a research assistant with Professor MacKinnon-Edwards, whose main area of research is political economy. The project examines pay-day loan services and how they are being regulated in Canada. As Pelletier explains, pay-day loan companies may charge a seemingly low usury fee for short term loans, but what would be considered criminal rates if calculated as long-term loans.

“If you took [these rates] and applied it to the long term, it would be closer to 2000%,” explains Pelletier. The “grey area” of new government regulation is the focus of the paper, which Pelletier hopes to be co-published with MacKinnon-Edwards.

Pelletier’s other research involves examining Loto-Quebec’s online gaming portal, as part of a research committee, which is coordinated by his teacher, Dr. Catherine Paradis.

While constantly busy, Pelletier sees a huge benefit to his studies at Bishop’s for offering research assistant positions to students. “If you’re going to grad school it’s very useful,” admits Pelletier. “Everything I do is very interesting.”

Kristy Cleghorn

A series of web shows on fashion site Vice.com is the subject of scrutiny for Kristen Cleghorn, a sociology student researching the way in which the site’s Fashion Week Internationale is showing international fashion in a Western lens, something of concern for the Honours Student.

For her second Honours research paper, Cleghorn is providing close criticism of Internationale, which has featured fashion week events in such places as Nigeria and Cambodia, all available online through the magazine’s website.

“My project is more about the ways in which the show uses fashion as a vehicle to compare the countries to Western countries,” explains Cleghorn.

The project is part of a class with Professor Mary Ellen Donnan, who has a doctorate in sociology. Cleghorn is able to go beyond the theory taught in her first years of university.

“It’s really nice to be able to take that to something that I like,” says Cleghorn. “I appreciate finding the relevance in my studies. “

Vice magazine originated in Montreal and moved to New York City ten years ago. While the show takes a sarcastic look at fashion, according to Cleghorn, the view is argued to be through a Western lens that does not adequately address the culture and traditions of the countries presented.  This is where Cleghorn’s own interest in fashion meets her criticism of the program.

“I like the idea of seeing other parts of the world through fashion, but when you’re only looking at these parts of the world in a particular lens, there’s really good potential for negative reinforcement of stereotypes,” explains Cleghorn.

“We’re setting standards in the West and they have to measure up.”

John Partington

1) Could you briefly explain the steps of getting the cast of 1girl5gays to Bishop’s University?

The origins of this project stem from a phone call with Dr Riddell this past summer. I had expressed an interest in doing an Honours thesis in my final year and she decided to supervise my project. We both agreed that while I would complete the traditional thirty-page research paper, adding a public scholarship dimension to my independent study would be an interesting way of getting people excited about and involved in undergraduate research. We chose to bring the cast and producer to Bishop’s, so I posted on Ian, Ish, David, and Phillip’s Facebook pages and made a Twitter account to tweet an invitation. In a couple of days, I was in contact with an MTV Canada publicist discussing the terms of the event.

2) What gave you the idea for a poster? It’s been noted that very few Humanities students use posters, why do you think that is?

I’m definitely a visual-oriented person and posters are an effective way to spread the word. For me, putting a face to an event makes it easier to remember. They’re nice to keep afterwards as well.

3) What does the research mean to you?

My adventure into queer theory has been personal and mostly self-directed, and this project embodies that experience: the exciting breakthroughs and the stressful setbacks. Through this research, I’ve been able to engage with English as a profession and plan my future. I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of very talented people over the past year with this interdisciplinary project – it’s been fun.

4) What is something Bishop’s students can gain from attending your event?

1girl5gays: Bishop’s University Edition is about celebrating difference and promoting diversity. The event will introduce audiences to new theoretical perspectives and encourage them to consider new ideas. Critical conversations about sexuality, sexual orientation, and queer politics are important for the culture of BU. Through informed dialogues, we can foster awareness and acceptance in the University community. It’s time that an event like this happened at Bishop’s University.

The cast of 1girl5gays will be at Bishop’s during Research Week.

Jerome Quintin

Jerome Quentin is not simply shooting for the moon, no, that would be far too close. Instead the young Physics major is aiming for stars much further away from our galaxy- binary stars to be precise.
While Quentin has only been at Bishop’s for just over a year, he is currently studying stars that are light years away. Binary come in many different shapes and forms, but in the star world this consists of two starts orbiting around each other.
Quentin is studying a certain category of binary stars with one main sequence –or alive- star, and one neutron –or dead- star. The evolution of these star systems is the central research behind one of many projects assisted by Dr. Lorne Nelson. While the evolution of these binaries is still widely unknown, Nelson’s project is guiding Quentin to use physics to compare simulations and observations of star evolution, primarily through studying irradiation, the emission of accelerated particles that change the main sequence star.
Quentin’s interest in astrophysics began at a young age. “I was always interested in physics and math,” he recalls. “In fifth grade of elementary school I already tried to compute the speed of planets around the sun.”
The journey to this research began as a summer research assistant with Nelson. The research began with an introduction to a complex code from the University of California Santa Barbara, called MESA. “Part of this huge code is the binary evolution [formula],” explains Quentin of the code. Now using complex computer simulations, Quentin is trying to explain the similarities and differences between what is simulated and what is observed.
The internship led Quentin to a trip to MIT in Boston with Nelson, where he was taught by a student there how to use the complex code. Now he is in the laboratory with Nelson analyzing the results.
The opportunity to do research at an undergraduate level is important for Quentin in order to pursue graduate studies. Set to have his work co-published with Nelson, Quentin has also received word that he has received B.E.S.T. funding to present the future paper in conferences across North America. The stars seem to be aligning for a bright year for Quentin, minus the neutron stars of course.

Julie Petrin

When Julie Petrin is not busy pursuing her major Neuroscience in Biology, she’s busy analyzing saliva and blood samples for cortisol levels. It’s all in the name of stress, or in this case, stress prevention.
Petrin is working with Bishop’s Estelle Chamoux to analyse cortisol levels, a way of measuring stress in her sixty study participants. Completing her analysis as an honours project, Petrin is part of a much larger study that is examining whether a linguistic barrier is causing difficulty for Anglophones in the Townships to access health services. The study is wide-ranging and is taking place in conjunction with many professors from Bishop’s and the University of Sherbrooke, who are studying 1000 Anglophones and 1000 Francophones in total. The project is aimed at examining the number of barriers that English Quebeckers face, from access to see a doctor who speaks their language, to the information available from health clinics through brochures and pamphlets.
It’s something that Bishop’s students may not necessarily think about with a bilingual clinic on campus, but cuts to hours in small community clinics across the region are bound to effect the population. The question of service in your own language becomes even more important when one is given serious news of illness such as cancer, but can’t understand their doctor.  It’s so important to have healthcare, and if you don’t know what’s going, I can imagine how terrifying it would be to not fully understand what [the doctors] are saying,” says Petrin.
Originally Petrin planned to go into Multiple Sclerosis research. Diagnosed with relapse-remitting MS in her mid-teens, Petrin grew up interested in learning more about the disease and helping others, all while also part of a long term study on the disease sponsored by the MS Society of Canada, as well as working to assist in research in this field.
Now Petrin wishes to apply to medicine. An interest in public health care has developed as she sees the benefits of her research for people living in this community. Hoping to break the vicious cycle of stress caused by limited access to health care, Petrin is working towards addressing the important access to service in one’s own language, which is becoming an issue that could mean life or death.

If you have logged into Facebook or Twitter within the last week you will be familiar with the KONY2012 campaign. A not-for-profit group called Invisible Children organized this campaign. However, most recently the “not-for-profit” part has been under severe criticism for its financing of the campaign and outdated footage.
The 28-minute video has been viewed over 68 million times, as of March 10, and shows no signs of decreasing popularity. The American charity created the film to “make warlord Joseph Kony famous.” Kony is the leader of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) guerrilla group. There are claims that in the 26 years of operation, he has abducted 60,000 children.
Just a few days ago many had no idea who   Kony was. The general population was unaware of the kidnapping of countless African children, particularly in Uganda. Mutilation and violent behaviours are promoted among some men in the country, while some women are turned into sex slaves. Contrary to the video, Kony has relocated after being chased out of the country. It is  now believed by some sources that he is in the Central African Republic. The LRA forces have weakened to just a few hundred members.
“It is the right message, but it’s 15 years too late, ” said Col. Felix Kulayige, a Ugandan military spokesman.
Kony has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2005 on several charges, including crimes against humanity. The US government designated the LRA a terrorist group after 9/11. In 2008, the US began actively supporting the Ugandan government in an effort to capture Kony. In October, 100 combat-equipped troops were deployed to support this effort.
The video shed light upon the situation with chilling clips and Hollywood-style filming. The video is an example of social media’s ability to generate a buzz. KONY2012 boasts one of the fastest viewing rises on YouTube. With a few clicks, the video was shared to millions of people.
Bishop’s has taken several initiatives regarding this issue. Scott Strickland, a political economy major with a minor in international studies spoke on the popularity of this hot topic. “I recognize that having mass public support for this kind of issue is an exceedingly rare occurrence,” said Strickland.

“It is therefore an opportunity to translate this support into strong political pressure on the Canadian government to get them involved with the issue, and force them to reassume their role as a purveyor of human rights at the international level,” he continued.
Strickland, well versed in politics, acknowledged the importance of constructive criticism. Sure, some of these human rights activists may be fresh on the scene, but their concerns are still valid. The criticisms and promotion of KONY2012 bring forth the idea that the citizens can make a difference. Though many sites critique the finances of the not-for-profit organization, none question the importance of capturing Kony. Our generation aims to generate change, whether it is the improvement of organizations or the safety of the international community. Strickland notes that these critics “set an expectation of accountability and transparency for the development oriented organizations.”
The group at Bishop’s is dedicated to ensure the Canadian government drafts legislation, through financial, technical or diplomatic means, that would aid the international effort to arrest and prosecute Kony.  Several universities across Canada also aim to spread awareness of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

MONTREAL (CUP) — A crowd filled the Indigo bookstore in Place Montréal Trust Feb. 2 to hear former Montreal Canadiens goaltender and politician Ken Dryden talk about his book, The Game, and weigh in on the concussion crisis currently rocking the hockey world.

The event was put on as part of Canada Reads, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-run endeavour to choose and promote Canada’s best books. The Game, released in 1983, recounts Dryden’s memories of the pressures of being a goaltender in the National Hockey League. It also takes an in-depth look at the Montreal squad that took home the Stanley Cup in 1979.

Dryden went from speaking of his earliest moments playing the sport to discussing the speed and intensity of how it is played today.

The 64-year-old multi-Vezina Award-winner spoke about the drastic change in speed in the game now compared to when he donned the Habs jersey 33 years ago.

“If you look at a full game from the 1950s, one from the ’70s and one from today, you’d think, ‘Oh my God, that game is unbelievably slow,’” he said. Dryden recalled there was no phrase like “finishing your checks” back then because the other player would be too far away.

“If you did [finish your check and hit somebody], you would have had to go 10 or 15 more feet,” he said. “[It] was so obviously interference that it didn’t happen.”

Dryden felt that players’ improved conditioning and increased size were factors that have changed the game significantly.

“It’s the combination of a game that goes a whole lot faster, and players that would be an average of 25 pounds heavier now, and in very good condition, so the force of collisions is that much greater,” said Dryden.

In light of this, he believes that 50 years from now, people are going to be looking back, wondering how irresponsible the athletes of today could be. “Do you know what happens with a brain inside of a skull, with collisions? It’s similar to throwing a Super-Ball on a squash court,” he said

Dryden tended goal for the Canadiens between 1970 and 1979, winning six Stanley Cups and five Vezina Trophies in that period as the league’s best net-minder before retiring from hockey at the age of 31.

Dryden pursued a number of different fields after his NHL career, publishing several books, working as an executive for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and serving as a MP for the Liberal Party from 2004 to 2011.

Dryden’s not the only one who’s worried about the state of the game, however. Gordon Bloom, associate professor of sport psychology at McGill University, joined Dryden at the talk and noted that all this hitting in the NHL is having an impact on children as well.

“If professionals are showing a lack of respect by not playing the game the way it used to be played, it carries down, and I’ve seen it in minor hockey,” said Bloom.

In fact, Lisa-Marie Breton, who plays for the Montreal Stars of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, has kept away from watching men’s hockey because of this intensity.

“I don’t watch the NHL because I find there’s not enough passes or nice plays. The guys are just smashing into the boards,” said Breton, who also works as a fitness trainer for Concordia University. “In women’s hockey we don’t have body checks; we have contact which is only along the boards, in the same direction.”

Hélène Campbell’s life is not just a lung story. It is a survival story. A do-whatever-it-takes story. Social media has been her friend as she takes matters into her own hands. Instead of being patient, she has chosen to be proactive.

A quick glance at the news shows both the positive and negative attributes of social media. The social media revolution is just getting started. Twenty-year-old Hélène Campbell from Ottawa sure knows how to grab the attention with her Twitter campaign. She has become known for her website “A Lung Story”.

Twitter’s popularity has been on the rise within the past year. The small bursts of information called Tweets allow users to send out messages quickly. Twitter is a platform directed toward cause and action. Campbell demonstrated this perfectly.

Campbell desperately needs a new set of lungs after developing idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis over the summer. The lung disorder has damaged Campbell’s lungs severely. It all started when she was fourteen – she was diagnosed with asthma. Like most asthmatics Campbell continued on with daily life. In the summer of 2011, she found simple tasks increasing difficult. Campbell visited her doctor and began several tests. The asthma diagnosis changed rapidly into the life-threatening cancer she now has. She requires a double lung transplant and has moved to Toronto with her mother while she awaits the transplant.

Since the diagnosis, Campbell’s life has changed in many ways. She has been in touch with several celebrities including Justin Bieber and Ellen Degerenes. Campbell has set sights on raising awareness about blood and organ donation.

After Bieber tweeted to her, registration on Ontario’s Trillium Gift of Life Network website (beadonor.ca) saw 1,300 new donors sign up.

On Thursday, Ellen’s producers tricked Campbell by telling her that they wanted to set up a Skype interview with them. Instead, Ellen popped up on the camera, doing the interview herself in front of her studio audience. Ellen told her 3 million or so viewers she was so moved by Campbell’s video that she wanted to meet the courageous woman.

“You actually are sending this out not to help yourself, but you want to help others,” Ellen said. “And you asked me to help you get the message across, so I want to help you do that.” Ellen, notoriously full of surprises, made another promise to Campbell.

“I can’t wait for you to have your transplant. And as soon as you do, we’re going to fly you and your mom out here for our show. And I’d love to hang out with you backstage. We’re going to dance together. We are going to dance together, you and me, okay?” she said.

Campbell told CBC Radio One’s Ottawa Morning she was blindsided by the interview with DeGeneres. She said her mother knew about the call but was instructed not to tell her daughter.

“I had no idea. If I had known, I wouldn’t have worn what I was wearing. I was so nervous, I couldn’t even talk,” Campbell said. During the interview Campbell asks her mom to turn her oxygen up. Talk about a surprise!

She added that her support system has been strong, despite a lot of ups and downs due to her illness. She has a difficult time breathing and often feels weak as her lung capacity drops lower and lower.

Campbell’s journey is available for the public to follow. She has been using Twitter, Flickr, and her own personal website to tell her story. Social media has come a long way from the days of Myspace. It is a way for many different people to connect or rally together.

There are a lot of first year University students who profess their desire to “save the world” or, generally, make the world a better place. It’s a different story, however, when you find someone who will go out of their way and take time out of their lives to do some good for a less fortunate region of the world. Bishop’s own Samantha Silva is one such person.

Silva comes from Brampton, Ontario. She began her first year of studies in Education at Bishop’s when she stumbled upon a sign advertising the Mae Sot Project. The project aims to provide education for children in the poverty-stricken Thai-Burmese border region, where education is limited. Several other students at Bishop’s have made the same trek to Thailand to teach, and have returned sharing great experiences of learning and making a difference.

When Silva looked up the program, she decided she wanted to help as well. “I realized how amazing an experience like this would be, and how much I wanted to go,” said Silva.

After her application was approved, she and the other volunteers going to Mae Sot wasted no time in their preparations. Since then, they’ve been doing everything from sales of Thai products in the SUB lobby to selling fish as pets to students: all in the name of helping a less fortunate region of the world. Silva has been doing her own research as well, learning phrases in Thai and Burmese, to prepare for what Thailand will hold.

While participating in Mae Sot, Silva and her colleagues will teach children, most likely high school-aged. While many people choose to volunteer abroad after finishing university, Silva and several other students are proving that you don’t need to wait until you have a degree before you can make a difference. The project holds a special place in her heart, as her mother’s family is Burmese and is very excited for her to go.

It’s bound to be a once in a life time experience- not only will there be Thai students, but also refugees who are fleeing from other countries who often end up in Mae Sot. “It’s going to be extremely different than here at Bishops!” says Samantha.

The Mae Sot group will be continuing their fundraising efforts on campus in the months to come.

On Thursday, Feb.  from 4 to 7 p.m., the Gait was pulsing with music and the excited chatter of artists, environmentalists, and viewers alike. It was home to Bishop’s University’s first Art Flows Contest.

The seven pieces of art exhibited all centered on water conservation, specifically the ban on plastic water bottles here at Bishop’s.

Central to the event was Lauri Lidstone, an intern at the university, who said that the idea behind the show is to “educate people that water is a public human right,” and to draw attention to the ways in which plastic water bottles hurt our environment. As some of you may remember, in March 2010, the university passed a ban on plastic water bottles. The idea for the show is credited to one of the students who helped carry the motion for the ban.

First-year student Yolanda Weeks, the organizer of the event, said she had been planning the show since around October and that she was “happy with the turnout.” People bustled in and out of the Gait all night, putting the show at an approximate head count of 100 at a time. Weeks, a student of fine arts and psychology and a member of the school’s Environmental Club, told the Campus that she hopes the Art Flows contest will become an annual event. Artist Kathryn Hansen, creator of two pieces at the contest, said she was “happy” with the contest, and when asked if she thought it would become an annual event, said “I can see it. Why not?”

The winner of the contest will have his or her art placed behind water fountains on campus to remind people of the need to conserve the important resource, along with an information plaque. The judges are two unnamed professors from the Fine Arts department.

Organizer Yolanda Weeks has a pro tip for all students interested in conserving water by not using plastic bottles: “Glass bottles all the way.” Congratulations, artists!

Seven pieces of student-made art concerning water conservation were displayed at the Gait, and the winner was announced shortly after.