amp US n ews EDITOR RICHARD HODGES THE VOICE, THURSDAY, MARCH 21,2018 3 By JAMES MCLAUGHLIN ow turnout amongst voters under 25 only helps perpetuate the belief that political parties don’t care about youth issues, says Langara College political science instructor Paul Prosperi. Langara political science instructor Paul Prosperi said that young people don’t have a great record of voting and thus are suffering in representation. “T think what the parties do is they make a cost-benefit analysis of where it’s best to focus their time, their mon- ey, and their energy,” Prosperi said. “And that’s with people who have a his- tory of voting.” Prosperi said that politicians take notice when certain demographics ab- stain, and that’s why most Canadian political parties underfund their youth wings. During the last B.C. election, only 35 per cent of those 18 to 25 cast a ballot, compared to 74 per cent of those 70 to 75. “The best predictor of future behav- ior is past behavior, so they look at vot- ing records, and I think parties make the logical conclusion [not to heavily fund youth wings],” Prosperi said. Prosperi disagrees, however, with la- belling youth as disinterested. “Apathy I don’t think captures it,” Prosperi said. “If you ask young people what they think about issues, they’re engaged but they may not demonstrate that engagement through the ballot box. Young people take part in protests, they take part in social media cam- paigns and they’re conscious of what’s happening around them.” JAMES MCLAUGHLIN photo Elections BC will signing up prospective voters for the May 14 election from noon until 4 p.m. in the Langara Students’ Union Building. Disengagement a feedback loop Provincial election focuses on using government resources to target ethnic votes, but don’t expect the same courting of apathetic youth Marissa Lawrence, project co-xordi- nator for the SFU Public Square, is hosting a talk on democracy on March 25. She hopes to inspire prolonged civic engagement amongst youth, recent im- migrants, and low-income residents. “Engagement for us means feeling connected with local community issues and feeling connected to one’s own mu- nicipal or provincial government,” Lawrence said. “It’s feeling a sense of belonging to the issue at hand and to the structure that can help move that issue forward.” Lawrence said that the talk aims to go beyond simply recruiting voters, adding that the lecture is about “being able to say ‘this is my government.” NDP leader Adrian Dix has floated the idea of allowing youth over 16 to register to vote ahead of voting at 18. HOW to vote REGISTER If you're Canadian, over 18 and a provincial resident for more than six months, you can register over the phone, online, or in person on election day. FIND YOUR RIDING Remember that you're registered to vote in your last registered riding, not necessarily your current one. So before you go vote, confirm that you're not still on the record as living at your old hourse, or even worse, your parents’ house. D2L problem identified, fix to come soon Company claims issue is from storage system errors By MARIE-ANDREE DEL CID hile faculty and students con- Wii: to find it difficult to use D2L as Langara’s online course management system, the company in- sists a fix is on the way. Langara switched to Desire2Learn last year, replacing Blackboard as the school’s online system. However, D2L continues to cause challenges such as being unable to download databases, upload files or load pages without the system crashing. Virginia Jamieson, the public rela- tions director for Desire2Learn, said the last outage occurred in D2L’s data centre on March 4, 2018, lasted up to nine hours. They have have been oc- curring approximately every fifteen days since December. “Our teams have conducted an in- depth investigation into the issue,” said Jamieson. The issue was traced back to authentication errors in the logs of the cloud-based infrastructure systems. Jamieson explained that the third- party that provided the infrastructure has screened the issue and is working with D2L partners to fix the problems. Jamieson also added that D2L plans to be much more responsive in the future with catching these issues before they occur. Anthropology instructor Carol Ma- cLeod said D2L’s problems continue to be frustrating, “The system never worked well, but now things have gone from bad to worse, and we can’t log on- line,” said MacLeod. “I find that D2L is taking up huge amounts of time as I add so many resources to the site. My online course eats up two-thirds of my weekend.” MacLeod has started incorporating online course material into her lec- tures, yet laments that the hardware is too poorly maintained to fully take ad- vantage of the D2L system. Political science student Ravneet Dhadli said D2L can be just as frustrat- ing for some students as for instruc- tors. “Tt’s not easy to access files, which is a flaw,” Dhadli said. “One night, I was not able to access a document when my assignment was due, and I had to rely on a classmate who luckily had down- loaded it.” lf a Philosophers’ Jam ends, does it cease to be? Former Langara instructor Alister Browne to wrap up successful monthly spring series with talk on fairness By JES CUNNINGHAM sphers’ Jam is arriving as the spring semester comes to a close. The monthly James include a brief speech given by a guest speaker, and is later followed up by an open discussion period and refreshments. Retired Langara philosophy instruc- tor Alister Browne will be giving a talk entitled “What’s Fair?” at the final Phi- losophers’ Jam Thursday. Browne will be touching on the im- portance and evolutionary importance of fairness to humans, along with tak- ing a look at theories of John Rawls, a political philosopher who also touched on justice. The season began with Langara phi- T: finale of the Langara Philo- losophy instructor Kurt Preinsperg’s talk titled How We Create Life’s Mean- ing. The talk covered several aspects of finding happiness in ones life and cre- ating a life plan to discover that happi- ness. Preinsperg has spoken at two of the Philosophers’ Jams, and attended sev- eral since current philosophy chair John Russell and instructor Dale Bey- erstein created the Jams two years ago. Preinsperg said that Russell “breathed new life” into the philosophy programs extra-curricular activities, admitting that he also finds them edu- cational. “The Jams give me an incentive to sit down and write out a coherent talk on topics that are fermenting in my mind,” he said. “it’s nice [providing those] ideas to the public.” The second Jam of the semester in- volved Wanda Morris, executive direc- tor of Dying with Dignity, an organiza- tion that advocates medically assisted suicide, whom Preinsperg called an in- spiring and courageous woman. “T was on the fence about euthana- sia, but after hearing her talk I think I'll support her stance,” said Preinsperg. Jam co-ordinator and philosophy in- structor Alex Boston was worried that this talk would result in many protest- ers, and was surprised when the only protests were that Morris’ point did not go far enough. Morris agreed. “I felt frustrated, and wonder if I could have made my point clearer,” Morris said. “I would love another chance to do it.” Though the Jams this semester largely incorporated human perspec- tive on life, the theme was unintended. “TThey] aren’t necessarily themed, we're trying to get a balance on some more philosophical and social justice topics,” Boston said. The final Philosophers’ Jam will be taking place on Thursday, March 21 at 7 p.m. in A194, the faculty and staff din- ing lounge located through the cafete- ria. JES CUNNINGHAM photo Instructor Kurt Preinsperg kicked off the jams.