6 THE VOICE, THURSDAY, OCT. 29, 2015 EDITOR TANYA COMMISSO Campus pub not practica hile I don’t think you'd find Wi sustained opposition to the idea of a Langara College campus pub, finding the space to make such a venture a reality is the real bar- mous with college life. But if you’re rier. searching for pints 3 ‘y eX Beer, in many on campus, your | 3 eo circles, is synony- t only option is Lan- tga 7! ; gara Sushi Café. , ef That’s right, if you haven’t noticed, 0 Pl N 10 N there isno campus SQTT DRAKE pub at Langara. Campus _ pubs, which are often run by student organizations, are not big money makers. The Simon Fraser Student Society’s Highland Pub, with a maximum capac- ity of 400 people, has been losing mon- ey for years. The SFSS Food and Beverage Ser- vices, which operates the pub, lost nearly half a million dollars in 2018, ac- cording to SFSS financial statements. That being said, last January, stu- dents at SFU voted to keep the pub open despite the ongoing deficits, in part because it provides a sense of com- munity. In its newest form, The Pit pub at UBC is nearly 7,000 square feet, or a third of the size of the entire Langara Students’ Union building (SUB), and is housed within a r4 4 250,000 square foot facility with a vari- . ety of food choices. Sometimes Okay, so maybe I wish we go the route of having a privately Thad a run pub. We still unicorn to have the problem fly me over of space. Who gets kicked out to make space for a pub? The library? The gym? Maybe we can afford to lose traffic, too classroom space? I have nothing against wanting a place on campus to kick back and chill with some brews in the wake of mid- terms. Sometimes I wish I had a uni- corn that could fly me over traffic, too. The experience would be great, and there are social benefits to a campus pub, but unless we are willing to get an- other new building or take away from the services currently available in the SUB, then I don’t even see the point in having the conversation. We want to hear from you Got a different point of view? Write to us. Problems with something we've said? Let us know. Think we got a fact wrong? Tellus. Journalisin instructor Erica Bulman oversees The Voice. Email her at ebulman@langara.be.ca Costumes: sexy or squat ith Halloween just around the corner, Canadian wom- en have about two choices when it comes to picking out a store-bought costume: endure a mild chill, or risk hypothermia. Will it be raining? Fear not! There’s a sexy firefighter costume out there that'll keep the rain from snuffing out your outfit’s fire! Near freezing? A scantily clad Elsa from Frozen ensem- ble will help you let it ... all hang out! Perusing racks upon racks of cos- tumes, it becomes clear that our choic- es are limited almost entirely to risqué version of institutional uniforms or sexualized takes on pop culture char- acters. What’s alarming isn’t necessarily the sexualization—though I for one can’t wrap my head around the sexual- ization of Minions, but maybe that’s an- other conversation all together. What is alarming is that the costumes mar- keted to women don’t even offer the op- tion to dress as anything other than sexed-up. After all, em- powerment lies in the ability to choose what you feel most comfort- able wearing. And when it comes to women’s Hallow- een costumes, that choice is simply not there. Sure, you could always make your OPINION TANYA COMMISSO own costumes or purchase more conservative ones traditionally mar- keted towards men (ie. an actual repli- ca of a police uniform), but the question remains: why should you even have to? Is the convenience of picking out a costume off the rack to suit your tastes only reserved for the male population? Is the concept of choice considered too big a responsibility to offer those with uteruses? Maybe empowerment should only be reserved for those women who feel empowered by dressing sexy. To be clear, this isn’t to say sexy cos- tumes should be taken off the market or considered inferior to their classic counterparts. The problem here is that by only offering one style of costumes— short, tight and barely there—the as- sumption being inadvertently made by manufacturers and retailers is that all women want the same thing, and in making that assumption, alienating any woman who doesn’t. And that’s just so unsexy. DEN Ie .- FO MANY cHolces. \+/ OO ave N ves m 1¢ bd os Io SEAN LEE comic Bike licences? That's whack. ever heard in your life right from the get-go, so bad that they should be filed under ‘G’ for garbage. Then there are those that are so poorly thought out and executed that they are on par with Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. S:: ideas are the worst you’ve cower there wes OPINION an alleged incident JASON HAMILTON between a cyclist and a_ pregnant woman that prompted one city councillor to suggest one of those legendary bad ideas: bike licenses. You can’t make stuff like this up. Apparently, affixing an easily remov- able license plate to bikes will not only prevent theft and make it easier to track down stolen bikes, but it will also instantly make every bike on the road that much cooler with personalized li- cense plates! I can see the personalized vanity plates now... “BykLif,” “B4itsCL,” “NtAHpstr,” the possibili- ties are endless. Has someone cut off your steel lock and stolen your bike? Don’t worry, they probably won’t be able to take that li- cence plate off in the same fashion, and youll have it back by the end of the week! Pretty soon, we will need licence plates for walking, running or anything that involves humans in motion. ’'m sure those with no fixed address would have no problem paying for a licence plate on a bike they probably didn’t in- vest much in, if at all. The level of enforcement this idea would take would tie up valuable police resources and be nearly impossible to enforce. In contrast, the Vancouver Police De- partment just launched the 529 Garage bike registry in a well thought out, community-based endeavour to com- bat bike theft—an idea that actually carries weight, and is offered at no cost to the owner. But, if we’re going back to the sub- ject of bike licenses, perhaps a good ad- dition would be to require cyclists that share the road to have insurance. They could have little tiny stickers to go on their little tiny license plates! This would surely not only protect the cy- clists, but it would protect everybody involved in a bike accident. In the future, people should run ideas by their friends to find out if a great idea like this one should be shared with the world, or rather rolled in a rug, chained up and left at the bot- tom of the Fraser River to swim with the fishes. The Voice is published by Langara College's journalism department. Editorial opinions are those of the staff and are independent of views of the student government and administration. We welcome letters to the editor. They may be edited for brevity. Your letter must include your name and phone number. HOW TO REACH US PHONE 604-323-5396 FAX 604-323-5398 E-MAIL thevoice@langara.bc.ca DROP-IN Room A226 Langara College There is a mailbox at the entrance of the journalism rooms. SNAIL MAIL The Voice 100 West 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. V5Y 226 WEBSITE wwwiangaravoice.ca EDITORIAL STAFF MANAGING EDITOR Sara Rabey PAGE EDITORS PAGE 1 Bailey Nicholson PAGE 2 Michael Lylyk PAGE 3 Jocelyn Aspa PAGE 4 Erin Boe PAGE 5 James Smith PAGE 7 Anna Dimoff PAGE 8 Mona Butler MANAGING WEB EDITOR Alex Hoegler WEB EDITORS Kelvin Gawley Bryan Mc Govem Owen Munro Ethan Reyes Tony Su Xiao Xu COPY/WEB EDITOR Dustin Godfrey REPORTERS Ben Bengtson Jake Costello Scott Drake Rumana Dsouza Jason Hamilton Murray B. Hunt Sean Lee Vincent Matak Rosemary Newton Serena Pattar Nancy Plechaty Seyedmostafa Raziei Kate Richardson Anne-Sophie Rocet Mark Stuart Kevin Underhill Tessa Vikander Bridgette Watson Julia Wickham Kathryn Wu Contact us: Online at langaravoice.ca Twitter: @LangaraVoice