Vancouver's Hidden Black History

If you ask either of my parents about black history, you’ll hear a story that isn’t often told around this part of the world. You’ll hear about white families pulling their kids out of public schools and starting their own private academies, or maybe about the KKK handing out pamphlets on street corners and bombing the homes of social workers. They were growing up in Mississippi during the sixties, trying to have normal lives in the heart of the controversy of integration and the Civil Rights Movement.

They grew up with an intimate understanding of the social dynamic of the time, but living in Vancouver, I find myself viewing all of their stories as an outsider looking in. We live in what is arguably the most cosmopolitan city on the planet. How can we really understand what it’s like to live around the intense and pointless hatred caused by rampant racism? Black History Month just passed, but I honestly wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Kevan Cameron may just be the perfect person to help us understand; he’s a slam poet, actor, pro soccer player and black historian with an SFU Bachelor’s degree in General Studies and a certificate of Liberal Arts, but most of all, he’s a storyteller. His talk in the Birch Building on February 19 spanned the better portion of the human timeline, but was focused on the neglected elements of our history.

He kicked things off with a little Shabooya roll call, rolled seamlessly into several poignant speeches delivered by Malcolm X and gave us all a taste of his poetry: “His mighty afro-pick had teeth made of lightning rods from God. Every time he combed his hair, planets would explode, stars went nova and black holes would implode…” He even brought up some of the commonly unmentioned African roots in the Americas, including Olmec basalt carvings of African faces in Veracruz, dating back to pre-Columbian times and Nubian voyages to South America in the early 1300s. “Storytelling is essential to who we are,” said Cameron in a later interview, adding that “every arena and avenue of society has a story to share.” He feels very strongly that the true story needs to be told. Unfortunately, due to centuries of imperialism and misinformation, that story isn’t always easy to find. In researching black history in particular, he says that “it makes sense that you have to dig to find the roots.”

As a matter of fact, Cameron and a former professor of his, Afua Cooper, currently the Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair in the Women’s Studies Department at Simon Fraser University and a Canadian History PhD, engaged The Vancouver Sun in a debate by letter and email over an issue concerning the legacy of BC. They were outraged that the paper made almost no mention of the 600-800 Black pioneers invited to the province in 1858 by Governor James Douglas. These pioneers were offered sanctuary due to American racial persecution and were essential in maintaining an early permanent presence in the region, in particular on Saltspring Island, and by extension are founding fathers of British Columbia as we know it today.

The editors and writers over at The Sun eventually realized their negligence and published an article entitled “Black Pioneers Integral to BC,” which you can read on the Vancouver Sun website at http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=1071761&sponsor.

The writer, Stephen Hume, also points out that Governor James Douglas, or the Father of British Columbia as he is known, was of Caribbean ancestry, and goes on to say that Douglas’s social vision “foreshadows the kind of compassionate, open society that much later reformers battled to attain and whose agenda even conservative governments seek to advance today.”

Though Kevan Cameron is an artist, he speaks from an activist’s viewpoint. In his opinion, Black History Month is essential to understanding society. “We need to utilize this month,” he says, adding that the stories of black history “need to be known and told… [it is] one of the most important to be known in the place we are now.”

One of these forgotten stories is that of Hogan’s Alley, a black heritage neighbourhood in East Vancouver’s Strathcona area, located between Union and Prior street from Main to Jackson Avenue. It was known also known as Park Lane. While the neighbourhood saw some rough periods as a red-light district around 1934, it was also the site of the only Afro-Canadian church, the African Methodist Episcopal Fountain Chapel, established in 1918. The neighbourhood was destroyed in the 70s by the gentrification of Gastown and the introduction of the Georgia Viaduct, but many still hold it as a symbolic heart of the African community in Vancouver.

Jacky Essombe, a professional dancer and instructor, ex-member of the Ivory Coast African National Ballet and a major figure in African cultural events in Vancouver, takes a slightly different point of view. She is an unofficial voice for the black community and recently told the Georgia Straight that “[history] becomes an intellectual debate because it feels safer that way. It’s different to feel the pain of people’s ancestors. And for black people, it’s very painful. You just have to sink into that pain without feeling you have to do anything about it.”

Regardless, Black History Month commemorative postage stamps are being released to help with the resolution of this difficult history, featuring the first black man and woman to hold public and political office in Canada, Rosemary Brown and Abraham Doras Shadd, respectively. With such a sterile approach to the dark side of African history in Canada, it is no wonder that Kevan Cameron and Jacky Essombe are working so hard to get the real stories out into the minds of Vancouver citizens. Black history isn’t just the history of black people, it is the dark history of humanity: the things people don’t like to talk about because of the personal pain they fear it will cause—the things ordinary everyday people try to block out of their minds to remain sane. Black History Month shouldn’t be like a history class, full of dusty dates, stamps and empty facts. It is also the time when we need to open up to the pain of the oppressed, and lament the wrongs of their oppressors.

Not Just Desserts

Who can eat at a time like this? The meal is brought to your table, a delicious free dinner with everything you wanted; but, as is standard practice, you have to eat it while facing the room where you’ll soon be put to death. It is the ritualistic concept of the last meal; the ultimate gift bag before you have to leave the party of life.

It’s nothing new to civilization. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese were all sympathetic to a hungry person about to be executed. It’s somehow in the human DNA. It must have been evolutionarily beneficial for monkeys to share bananas with other monkeys they planned on killing to lessen the guilt.

Whether or not you believe in capital punishment, you’re bound to agree that a last meal is a deserved courtesy. Even Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, got to eat two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream before being executed and meeting the big psychopath in the sky.

However, depending on where the execution takes place, the last meal may or may not be to the prisoner’s utmost satisfaction. For example, although Jimmy McNulty of The Wire tries his best to solve Baltimore’s highest homicide rate in the country, the state of Maryland doesn’t even offer a last meal to prisoners on death row. And in Florida the price of ingredients for a last meal cannot exceed $20. Most states replace lobster with fish, and filet mignon with T-bones.

If you want to do it right, the best meals offered to condemned criminals are in the state whose name is synonymous with extra large portions. Texans are evidently proud of this fact—they are one of the only states to list the final meal requests of all executed prisoners on-line.

For example, Larry Hayes, a Texan inmate convicted of shooting his wife in the head eight times, ordered “two bacon double cheeseburgers, French fries, onion rings, ketchup, cole slaw, two diet Cokes, one quart of milk, one pint of rocky road ice cream, one pint of fried okra, salad dressing, tomato, and onion.”

And Kia Bexar, who shot the clerk of a Stop-N-Go for $23, chose “four fried chicken breasts, onion rings, fried shrimp, french fries, fried catfish, double-meat cheeseburger with grilled onions, strawberry fruit juice, and pecan pie.”

And then there’s contract killer Richard Williams, who ordered “two chili cheese dogs, two cheeseburgers, two orders of onion rings with French dressing, turkey salad with French fries, chocolate cake, apple pie, butter pecan ice cream, egg rolls, one peach, three Dr. Peppers, jalapeno peppers, ketchup, and mayonnaise.”

With nutritional factors being moot, it’s no surprise either that none of the meals were particularly healthy. Yet while some chose complete gluttony, others selected more particular, unique meals. Like John Elliot, executed for killing a young girl with a motorcycle chain, who only had “hot tea and six chocolate chip cookies.” Or Stacey Lawton, who shot owner during home invasion and only wanted a single jar of dill pickles. Or Kenneth Gentry, who murdered someone to steal their identity, and had “a bowl of butterbeans, mashed potatoes, onions, tomatoes, biscuits, chocolate cake and Dr. Pepper with ice.”

Overall, the majority of inmates chose hamburgers over steak, ice cream over cheesecake, and fried chicken over cordon bleu—pure comfort food, a trademark of human nature.

Morbidly idiosyncratic, the last meal is interesting for the same reasons that murderers are constantly represented on television, in books, and in the media. Even though they compromise a very small portion of society (Vancouver’s murder rate is 2.41 per 100,000 people), the general public is fascinated by homicide. Vice Magazine recently reported that a Toronto food delivery service is capitalizing on the fact, charging $20 to have replicas of the last meals of famous serial killers delivered to customers’ houses. Whether it’s the Robert Pickton case or watching an episode of Matlock, violent crimes always seem to pique curiosity.

Last meals are unique features that define a depth of personality. They reflect more of the inmate’s character, further defining them as real people in the minds of the hungry public. Somehow it’s easier to understand someone when you find out that they like to eat dill pickle chips as well. Many inmates decline to eat anything before being executed, and even this signal of anxiety and suffering becomes something we relate to. Texan Robert Madden, executed for murdering two people (one of whom was his own son), asked that his last meal be given to a homeless person.

Good food really is the best temporary pleasure in life, an instant reminder of how sweet some of the things in life can be. The delicate balance of well prepared pho or the brilliant gluttony of all-you-can-eat sushi are classic examples of the happiness behind flavour. Aside from rock-your-body orgasms, eating good food is the most enjoyable and satisfying part about being human. Even though last cigarettes are now forbidden, and a cold beer is out of the question, it’s somehow reassuring to know that even if you’ve been convicted of killing dozens of children, you’ll still be offered a delicious meal before getting pushed out the door of life.

Sex throughout the ages.

On any sunny day at Wreck Beach, the sand is seething with men and women of all shapes and sizes, some in swimsuits, but mostly naked. This appears to be sexuality at its peak: slightly naughty nudists secretly hoping to catch a stranger’s eye. However, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sex, would disagree. The way she entered the world was far more scandalous than Wreck Beach and the Taboo Sex show put together. So what can this Goddess, who emerged from the foaming semen of her father’s castrated testicles, teach today’s lovers about how sex has changed? She can serve as a reminder that X-rated sex is nothing new; in fact, it has actually been toned down significantly.

Sex in Ancient Greece from the early 6th to the 4th century was more than a way to pass the time on a Friday night. The act of sex was considered to be an art form, and even beyond that, an act of worship towards Aphrodite. Prostitution was a sacred event back in these days; having sex with Aphrodite’s female priestesses (more commonly known as hetaerae) was one form of worship. Making Aphrodite happy was a lucrative thing in those days, since many Greeks believed that she was responsible for how much sex they had, as well as for procreation. Girls who had sex for money weren’t looked down upon as “whores” or “hookers” at that time, but rather, they were viewed as invaluable priestesses of Aphrodite, the sex momma herself. Prostitutes were the most important women in Greece, well educated and free to leave their homes at anytime to go see plays, attend banquets, or participate in debates.

An ancient Greek sex life wasn’t complete without a little bestiality as well. This was not just an occasional rowdy romp, either; there is evidence of frequent instances of humping horses, sleeping with snakes, and engaging with elephants. Men had sex with dogs, cats, and pretty much any other animal that they could work into their bedroom. This was not viewed as disgusting or degrading; it was actually elevated in ancient Greek artwork. These were paintings that were framed inside the house, and displayed as fabulous works of art. One of the most famous paintings was Michelangelo’s Leda and the Swan, which is a depiction of a swan and a woman engaging in sex. In Ancient Greece, having sex with animals actually proved that you held a high status in society.

It wasn’t only the 4th to 6th century Greeks that had sex practices that would be deemed unusual by today’s standards. Take the Romans of this era for instance. Not only did they engage in vigorous amounts of prostitution, but they also promoted incest. Women and children were all viewed as the husband’s “belongings,” which aided in making it completely acceptable for men to sleep with their wife and their children, often even at the same time. During the annual Bacchanalian festivals to worship of the Roman god Bacchus (the god of wine), exuberant displays of both heterosexual and homosexual intercourse were encouraged. The festival revolved around orgies, nude dancing, and incredible amounts of drinking and sex. Over-reproduction became quite a problem, logically, which lead to the invention of the first contraception. The two weapons of choice for birth control were mouse dung in the form of a liniment, or pigeon droppings mixed with oil and wine—both of which were applied to the female.

In contrast to the Greeks’ and Roman’s patriarchal views of sex, a very different culture arose in ancient Mesopotamia, from the early 5th century to the early 6th century. Instead of the belief that men ruled their children, wives, and animals, Mesopotamia was the other way around. Ishtar, the primary goddess of Mesopotamia, was the ruler over everything: sex, life, birth, health, and even war. This matriarchal society viewed war as belonging to Ishtar, which translates to war belonging to the females. After a war was won, the typical celebration was a victory feast, served to the lounging women by their male servants, followed by a night of victory sex.

These cultures certainly weren’t the only ones with liberal sex lives. In ancient Indian culture, raunchy sex was not only practiced, but it was written down for future generations to enjoy. The Kama Sutra, a famous book by Vatsyayana, is one of the survivors of these works of literature. It details the 64 “acts of pleasure,” complete with diagrams and how-to instructions. While it is widely accessible today, in Ancient India, this book was not made available to everyone. A person’s sex life depended on the caste they were born into; people of the higher castes had access to this book, along with all the other diverse sex literature. However, for those in the lower castes, there were set restrictions on sexual behaviour. This was an extreme sexual hierarchy: the higher the caste, the more information was available about sex, and there were abundant options for how to practice it. Bestiality, transgenderism, homosexuality, and necrophilia were common. Those that ranked high got everything, as far as sex was concerned.

Eventually, all of this raunchy sex slowed down as the crusades came. Religious beliefs suppressed sexuality, and by the time of the Victorian Era, the purity of the wife figure was promoted, which led to an extreme lack of sex throughout all society. According to English journalist Marcus Field, once-a-month sex was generally considered more than enough for a man and wife to engage in, and much beyond that was viewed as immoral and striking away from the norm. Little or no marital sex ended up leading to more prostitution, and unlike in ancient Greece, prostitution was not seen as an art form, but as an act of necessity. The “purity” of the Victorian wives led to a society inhabited by less than two million people with over 80,000 of them prostitutes, many of whom inherited innumerable STDs.

Comparatively, today’s cyber-sex and X-rated sex shops aren’t quite as extreme as bestiality and legal prostitution. However, these ancient cultures were ridden with rape cases, unhappy marriages, and sexual diseases. In current times, though certain fetishes still abound, many of these ancient sexual conventions are frowned upon, and some, most notably bestiality, are even illegal.

Classical complexity

The four members of the Fringe Group—Jonathon Bernard, Martin Fisk, Brian Nesselroad and Daniel Tones—were perched like pigeons over their instruments, hunting and pecking on bongos, congas, snare drums, marimbas, cymbals, triangles and what looked like the head of Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Inspired by Balinese Gamelan and South Indian music, the precarious piece was arranged in a 23 beat rhythmic cycle and sounded like a roomful of grandfather clocks set with oddly pitched pendulums, each ticking and tocking. I was confused. Unsure of how to approach this strange music, I looked to my date for advice, but she was asleep. “So this is classical percussion,” I thought.

The program for the February 15th performance at the Capilano Performing Arts Theatre suggested that the Fringe Group draws inspiration from world music, but this roster had a distinctly Indian focus. I scoffed, put off by the Western classical sense of a stage show, with its emotionless posturing and Petri dish approach to music. In defense of classical, Jonathon Gordon, who also performs with the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Orchid Ensemble and the Vancouver Island Symphony, would later explain: “It’s our job to bring them to life with as much passion or fire and sensitivity as required by the piece itself. That’s our job as interpreters… we’re simply the middlemen between the listener and the composer.” So I began to listen—sheepishly aware of my aural ignorance and unfortunate Britney bias—as students from the Capilano Jazz Percussion Ensemble took the stage for Catch 21, a South Indian piece by Trichy Sankaran. The piece featured a cycle of 21 beats in vocal and clapped percussion, nervously delivered. It was an example of Carnatic music, one half of the main sub-genre of Hindu music, done in the gāyaki or singing style.

During intermission, Ian March, one of the seven performing students, would explain that he had also never been exposed to this kind of music before, and though he found it daunting, it showed him the richness of the Indian rhythmic tradition. “You take these rhythms,” said March “fuse them together… it [brings] you right to the source.” I began to imagine the Ghandarvas, divine musicians of ancient India who played classical music for the Gods in their palaces.
Then Neelamjit Dhillon joined the Fringe Group on the stage. A past Capilano Jazz graduate who focused on the saxophone, Dhillon has since gone on to study traditional Tabla drumming with Ustad Zakir Hussain. Hussain is widely considered the most accomplished Tabla musician in the world and has countless awards and accolades, including a Grammy. He is also the founding member of Tabla Beat Science project and a longtime collaborator of Mickey Hart, the legendary drummer from the Grateful Dead.

With the Fringe Group providing a structured backbone in the sound garden, Dhillon shattered all my sensibilities about the austerities of classical music, Indian or otherwise. With furious passion, he played in the Punjab style, sweetly stuttering through several compositions by Bob Becker, Niel Golden and Payton MacDonald, all students of guru Pandit Sharda Sahai of the Benares gharana, or school. The dimensions of the music approached quantum complexity. In “The Rebirth of Hindu Music,” Dane Rudhyar wrote: “Every race or tribe had its own distinctive cry… the resonance of the psychic matrix of the human selves.” The meaning of this was made apparent in the polarization of the two schools of music, Indian and European, joined on the stage in distinct expressions.

Later, Dhillon would say: “It’s reflected back at you… All music really has a spiritual component, it all depends on the aesthetics of the performance… Indian music is more open…it’s ok to show emotions while performing, while in the western classical tradition it’s not…but we can put these things together and try to look at things as a whole, not always trying to separate things but trying to bring them together.”

The performance closed with the famous Marimba Spiritual by Minoru Miki, which contemplates the famines of Africa. With music of such depth, grace and complexity, it is impossible to summarize a performance like this with words, and as with my snoring date, it will prove inaccessible to some, but Bernard sympathizes with us curious neophytes still learning how to listen: “It’s like opening a door…have a little look, have a little smell…the door is opened and they can go as far as they want.” For him, playing with the Fringe is “like we’re playing in the park, in the sandbox.”

Neelamjit Dhillon can be seen with the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra on March 14th at the Chan Centre, and the Fringe Group will perform on March 20th and 24th with Carmina Burana and the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Chorus at Kwantlen U.

-Kevin Murray

Our house is in the middle of the street

If the middle class can’t afford a house, the youth are doomed.

“Ordinary people in BC can no longer afford to buy ordinary homes,” reported The Tyee on February 10. Housing is a problem for any Vancouverite, but housing for a student that is just graduating is nearly impossible. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not a problem that has arisen from the recent economic downtown. Rather, unaffordable housing in BC has been a growing trend for most of the new millennium.

What is particularly worrying for the generation of “college-age” students in BC is the apparently decreasing possibility of ever owning a home with the same relative ease that most of our parents did. For generations, owning a home was the norm. My immigrant grandparents bought a home in Kamloops in 1966 that cost them $12,000. Foreigners who spoke little English, they had relatively low-paying jobs but were able to pay off their mortgage in an astounding four years. Twenty-two years later, my parents purchased a home in Burnaby for $135,000. Today, approximately 20 years after that, the average market value of a similarly ordinary home in Metro Vancouver is $484,211.

Economists at TD Financial Group released a study in 2003, asserting that “one in five households in Canada is still unable to afford acceptable shelter.” This problem is further compounded in the Metro Vancouver area, which boasts the fourth most unaffordable housing market among all those in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Australia.

True, people have a choice of where they want to live. The argument that people should live where they can afford to does have a certain amount of validity. However, that does not mean that we should let Metro Vancouver become a region for only the rich, who can “afford” the insane housing prices. While this has occurred in small municipalities such as West Vancouver, it is not an applicable model for a metropolitan area. The potential for massive problems arises when blue-collar workers that a city relies on cannot afford to live in that city, and instead are forced further and further out in the suburbs.

The downsides to urban sprawl that allows for more affordable housing are numerous, including increased traffic congestion and pollution, as well as loss of farmland. The latter issue is more relevant than ever, as The Province recently reported that Fraser Valley farms are by far the most productive in the country.

The situation is not hopeless. The TD economists, at least, are in agreement that government action is required. While it is widely accepted that the housing market works in cycles, as does the economy, this type of speculations leads to the laissez-faire attitude that nothing needs to be done, since the market will correct itself. While this may be true for the bigger picture, it neglects the needs of British Columbians now.

The gap between what average families can afford and what homes actually cost is growing, despite a recent fall in housing prices due to the recession. So if you don’t currently own a home, you have a while to wait. Ideally, stick it out in your parents’ basement for as long as you’re in school (or as long as you can handle it), since renting a place in Vancouver makes about the same economic sense as living out of a seedy motel. On a personal level, the only solution to this problem is money, so besides living at home until you’re in your 30s, perhaps the second best advice I can give is to go the way of Oliver Twist.

Campus security

Every day, holed up the news office, The Courier staff witnesses the constant pacing of the campus security guards, who walk past the window a couple times an hour. Always checking. During the day, it seems somewhat excessive.

However, those who have experienced the campus after dark know that it feels a little different in the evening. In November 2008 Courier article, Director of Building and Grounds, Ian Robertson, stated that “most instances of concern [on campus] have been domestic disputes.” True as this may be, it is little comfort when walking quickly through the forested campus after a night-class that lets out at 9:30pm. There has to be a first time for almost everything, after all.

Capilano University is a very program-oriented school, with particularly well-regarded jazz and film programs. For many of these students, the resources available on campus are essential for the work they do in their classes, such as film sets and equipment or studio space for the IDEA program. With daily schedules that would leave your average University Transfer student in awe, it is common to find these vocational program students working on campus and pushing the official 11:00pm campus lock-up deadline.

The school’s security does not reflect the students need to be on campus late at night. As of February 27, the Capilano Students Union (CSU) decided to lock its doors at 7:00 pm, instead of 11:00pm like the rest of the campus. The initiative was brought forward by security guards who were concerned about another the safety of the new projector, given the break-in that occurred in November 2008. The CSU building is the first safe stop for students coming out of the forest. In a worst-case scenario, at least there is a lockable bathroom in the lounge, and areas to hide. Thus, it seems odd that student safety is being potentially sacrificed for the security of an electronic device (albeit an expensive one) that has a cage built around it.

The security buzzers that can be found around campus sound good in principle, but they have their flaws also. At least one still has not been installed since they received an upgrade in November of 2008. Furthermore, the functionality of the buzzers is questionable. For a student to deem it necessary to hit an alarm buzzer, the situation would likely have to be an emergency. However, in a dire emergency, it is greatly unlikely that someone would be willing to wait at a security box for help to come – they would probably be running the hell away from whatever the problem is.

Ideally, students should be able to phone security anytime for any safety problem. They can, in theory, however in reality no one knows the number. It is not posted anywhere on campus, apart from the school’s website. Calling security from a cell phone is a far more practical option than waiting helplessly at a buzzer.

It has been acknowledged that the security at Capilano is not by any means perfect – Vice President of Student and Institutional Support Patrick Donahoe, along with Ian Robertson, conducted a walkabout of the campus, largely to address lighting and sightline issues.

However, in future plans, the nature of Capilano University and it’s borderline nocturnal student body should be taken into greater account. For the time being, I will do my part by leaving you with the campus security phone number: 604-984-1763. Program it into your cell phone, and don’t be afraid to use it.

The Stanford Prison scam

“I felt as though 200 daggers were being thrown at my back,” said Capilano psychology professor Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani at the Capilano Psych Club’s most recent event. He was describing the moment he stood up to question the scientific value of a historically important, if shockingly unethical, study in human behaviour. The study in question was Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Project, a famous yet controversial “experiment” on human aggression that is standard curriculum for entry level psychology in universities. Jhangiani confronted Zimbardo last November at Kwantlen University, where he was a visiting guest speaker, right after the renowned Stanford psychologist’s standing ovation.

In the summer of 1971, Zimbardo conducted a study at Stanford University in California on the psychology of prison life. He put an ad in a newspaper calling for male volunteers. The men chosen were divided into prisoners and guards. Zimbardo, who played the role of superintendent, debriefed the guards on the rules of how they could treat the prisoners. He gave them license to dehumanize them using all means except violence. A police car was then sent to surprise the prisoners by arresting them in broad daylight in front of their families and neighbours for the charges of burglary and robbery. The men, who were all college students, were brought to the prison that had been constructed in the basement of the university, then searched, stripped naked, and deloused. For the next six days interactions between the prisoners and guards grew increasingly hostile.

Although all members of the study were officially allowed to quit at any time (which some did), because of rumours allowed to circulate in the prison, several inmates believed that they were locked into their commitments and suffered abuses against their will. The study involved both psychological and physical abuse, including homophobic slurs, cleaning toilets with bare hands, and spending time confined in a closet. After six days, at the insistence of his girlfriend, Zimbardo terminated the study because the situation in the mock prison had degraded to a point where psychological harm to the participants had become a concern. Illustrating this danger, one “prisoner” reflecting on his experiences in the study said: “I began to feel that I was losing my identity … the person who volunteered to go into this prison … because it is a prison. It still is a prison to me.” Despite the premature termination of the study, Zimbardo concluded that the results demonstrated that a situation involving hierarchical power structures can taint the average person’s conduct and sense of morality, thus changing fundamentally good people into tyrants.

Most psychologists agree that the ethical standards of the Stanford Prison Project were reprehensible. At the time of the study, psychology guidelines for the protection of participants had not yet been formalized. Zimbardo himself admits that many of the details in his study were morally questionable at best. Jhangiani’s complaints, however, are not aimed at the ethics of the study, but rather at its scientific merit, or lack thereof.

Jhangiani begins his critique of the prison study by pointing out that from the beginning there were problems. First of all, despite Zimbardo’s consistent assertion that the study was an experiment, it clearly wasn’t. Experiments, by definition, must have a control group and independent variables. That is, they must have a comparison group where conditions are kept steady and an experimental group where variables are manipulated to show their impact. Jhangiani also highlights that Zimbardo directly interacted with participants during the study and therefore could have unconsciously influenced outcomes. Beyond this, all efforts should be made in studies and experiments to keep the sample group representative of the target population. An advertisement calling for volunteers for a prison study isn’t likely to attract a random sample of the public. Furthermore, from the 75 applicants, the 24 used were not chosen arbitrarily, but specifically, for their lack of mental illnesses, criminal records, or histories of recreational drug use. Incidentally, when researching the applicant questionnaire given by Zimbardo, Jhangiani uncovered that the men who completed the study scored above average on aggressiveness, Machiavellianism (manipulative tendencies), and authoritarianism. Authoritarianism scores were four times higher for those who finished, and this reflects an overall willingness to obey superiors and oppress subordinates. In other words, these were the kind of guys who, with a little authority and a taser in hand, could have proven quite dangerous. From the 24 chosen, Zimbardo used a coin flip to randomly assign the men to their roles; however, for only partially documented reasons, from the two groups of 12, only nine in each group were used. From the nine prisoners, five requested and were granted the right to exit the study before its termination. The nine guards remained in the study until the end. Jhangiani states that from this tiny, unrepresentative group, Zimbardo has made sweeping generalizations regarding human nature and the power of situational forces.

Zimbardo, in fact, has built his career on this study. In recent years, for example, he has published a book called The Lucifer Effect, which again discusses his conclusions from the Stanford Prison Project. He continues to reference the study on speaking tours, and he was even called on by the American government to testify as an expert witness in the case of Abu Ghraib, the US military prison in Iraq, using the results to defend perpetrators of abuses.

Jhangiani is quick to point out that Zimbardo has engaged in scientifically sound research during his career and that this is not a personal attack, but rather a challenge to bad science that has had a significant impact on both the field of psychology and the mainstream understanding of situational influences. Jhangiani also uses the example of genocide as a reminder that, in fact, situations can overpower personalities, but he insists the Stanford Study has nothing to add to this discussion.

Since Jhangiani’s encounter with Zimbardo, he has developed a much more in-depth critique of the study and now plans to submit his findings to a peer reviewed journal. Perhaps Capilano U’s first psychology cage match is on the horizon! A more recent replication of the Stanford study, usually referred to as the BBC Prison Experiment and designed by psychologists Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher for the BBC in 2002, was modified to address all of the scientific flaws in the original study. It has served to further validate Jhangiani’s dissenting viewpoint because its outcome was vastly different than Zimbardo’s version.

Whereas the title of Zimbardo’s new book, The Lucifer Effect, alludes to the transformation of good into evil, Jhangiani likes to affectionately call his critique the Bruno Effect. This title pays homage to Giordano Bruno, a 16th century philosopher who dared, in his support of new science, to suggest a universe in which the planets revolved around the sun, publicly questioning the generally accepted belief that the Earth was the centre of the universe.

Our work toward sustainability

The Might-E-Truck is soon to be Capilano’s new facilities vehicle. This small-scale dump truck is an all-electric vehicle that financially and mechanically outperforms combustion vehicles, though it only has a top speed of 40km/hr. The truck is just one part of Capilano’s many new initiatives towards a greener and more sustainable campus. Behind these changes is Cap’s Energy Manager, Susan Doig.

Lowering Capilano University’s carbon footprint is Doig’s main priority. In 2010, the B.C. government will bring the new Carbon Neutral tax into action, which means the more emissions we generate, the more money we pay the government.

Capilano’s goal is to reduce its carbon output by 15% by 2010, which according to Doig, is a big goal. “We want to reduce how much we have to pay,” continued Doig “but it’s also the right thing to do as a society.”

Also on Doig’s docket is a “pilot project with food regional diet based on the 100 mile diet but with a bit larger a distance.” She explains that Capilano is “one of [Aramark’s] leading schools.” We are getting the more sustainable and environmentally friendly choices at our school, such as fair trade coffee, as a testing ground of Aramaks future choices as a corporation. According to Mathew Harris, the Capilano Student Union’s Environmental Liaison, the issue of students’ choices of food “fell to deaf ears” in his dealings with Aramark. However, Matthew applauds Susan’s efforts and thinks that “someone in admin trying to make changes is good.”

Doig is always looking for student volunteers. She is currently looking for help to teach the community about recycling and composting. “We want to have people stand at the recycling bins to coach others where things go.” The school is working towards a zero waste initiative and having students helping other students learn at the recycling stations could be very effective.

Volunteering isn’t the only way to help out. We “want to open up dialogue [about sustainable practices],” says Doig, “the entire college community [should be] sharing in the conversation and students are a large part of our community… [so they] should come forward with any suggestions.” These issues need to be talked about and the more voices involved, the more ideas and solutions will be voiced.

“Anything in the direction of meaningful change on campus and not green-wash is a great change,” continues Matthew. “What [Doig] has done on a small scale is good.”

For next year, Doig is planning a scavenger hunt. This competition is aiming to “connect sustainability in the Olympics with sustainability at Capilano University.” Each team competing will have five people, and the winning team will receive five tickets to the men’s snowboard-cross qualifications/final. “We’re still developing what the hunt will look like,” says Doig, but some things too expect are “hunting for things, taking photographs and something skill-testing near the end.” This event will need volunteers and competing teams, so look for more information in the fall.