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From Here Forward shares stories and ideas about amazing things UBC and its alumni are doing around the world. It covers people and places, truths, science, art, and accomplishments with the view that sharing better inspires better. Join hosts Carol Eugene Park and Jeevan Sangha, both UBC grads, in exploring solutions for the negative stuff out there — focussing on the good for a change, from here forward.
[00:00:00] Rumneek: Hi, welcome to From Here Forward, a UBC Podcast Network Podcast. I'm Rumneek and she's Carol.
[00:00:07] Carol: Hello, friendly alumni.
[00:00:09] Rumneek: Carol.
[00:00:10] Carol: Rumneek.
[00:00:10] Rumneek: We both graduated from UBC and this pod frequently hosts UBC faculty and alumni. But what do we really know about our alma mater?
[00:00:18] Carol: Absolutely nothing. Um, besides the fact that they gave us our master's degree, which thanks so much for that.
[00:00:24] Rumneek: It's never too late for them to take it back. But what I realized after talking to our [00:00:30] latest guests, Sheldon Goldfarb and Herbert Rosengarden, is that my UBC knowledge could really use some work, and there's actually a lot more to this place than meets the eye.
[00:00:39] Carol: You know, I had a joke about the eye, but kind of left me, but the conversation really affirmed this fact that I've known about myself, which is, I really don't care about school spirit.
I never have.. Never probably will. But it was really nice, um, to meet people that actually care about an institution and know a lot of quirky facts. It was a lot of wholesome vibes.
[00:00:59] Rumneek: Yeah. [00:01:00] And if the university wasn't going to rescind our degrees after you said that, you, I'm sorry. No school spirit. I feel like they might,
[00:01:06] Carol: I, I am not painting my face, they might consider it.
I don't even know what the school colors are. Okay. I just went there for the education.
[00:01:12] Rumneek: Okay. The views of Carol do not reflect the views of Rumneek Johal. Please don't take my degree.
[00:01:22] Carol: But before we get into the actual conversation, do you wanna briefly explain who Sheldon and Herbert are?
[00:01:27] Rumneek: Yes. So Sheldon and Herbert are both [00:01:30] UBC profs and they've both written books about the university and the university's history over the last a hundred years or so. Sheldon Goldfarb is an archivist for the Alma Mater Society, and Herbert is a professor Emeritus at UBC.
[00:01:44] Carol: Amazing. So two smart people who we somehow convinced to talk to us. Cool. All right, let's jump in.
[00:01:51] Rumneek: Speaking to two people who have experience at length. Uh, what are some maybe pieces of, or one, maybe one fun fact each that you both kind of [00:02:00] recall of trivia about the university?
[00:02:02] Sheldon Goldfarb: Herbert and I have written a book on the history, and we weren't the first.
There was Harry Logan's book in 1957, and then Herbert wrote the book, Here's a Piece of Trivia to celebrate one of the two Centennials or Centenaries of UBC because UBC decided that 2008 was a good year to celebrate a hundred years of UBC because in 1908, the government of British Columbia passed a law saying there shall be a University of [00:02:30] British Columbia.
And so that was celebrated in 2008. Although I said at the time, to the UBC archivist, it was just a piece of paper. There was no actual university until 2015. Until 1915. And then in 2015 at the A M S, we decided we should celebrate that a hundred. Another piece of trivia in the book, I guess would be, um, And I mentioned this in my book, that there was a contest on a sort of competition held by the [00:03:00] Ubyssey student newspaper at a time when Justin McElroy, who's gone onto bigger things.
Justin McElroy was the editor. He liked to do these compilations, these. Like the best this, the best that. And he had a survey of UBC students, what is the most quintessential UBC experience? And it was like a brackets thing, like a basketball brackets. And it, it got narrowed down and narrowed down. And the winner eventually [00:03:30] was storm the wall as the quintessential UBC experience beating out some other, some other quintessential experiences like sleeping in class..
Uh, avoiding rain puddles and making detours around construction.
[00:03:45] Rumneek: Okay, so Carol, did you ever storm the wall?
[00:03:47] Carol: No, I actually never did, but I was one of the people that like watched and judged hardcore cuz like, why would you wanna do that to yourself?
[00:03:54] Rumneek: Yeah. I also did not do it, but it's because I didn't have motivation to even [00:04:00] show up, let alone climb things.
So it really wasn't in the cards for me, unfortunately.
[00:04:04] Carol: I mean, that's fair. The only wall that we ever stormed was getting to the bus loop every day cuz that was a battle in itself. But what I found interesting, um, based on the conversation was that UBC has been around since the World Wars question mark.
Like that is old. She's a senior. She is. So here's that conversation.
[00:04:26] Herbert Rosengarten: Well, it has been around for all a fair amount of time now since it [00:04:30] opened its doors in 1915. Um, although it grew rather slowly at first, from the end of the second World War on. Um, expanded quite rapidly in, into a major first a provincial, then a national, and finally a major international university.
And along with that growth comes all the bureaucracy, all the paperwork, all the records. We have a very big and very effective archives department to ubc, [00:05:00] um, which holds so many of the records of the departments. And the activities that have taken place here and UBC has been, uh, has played quite a, a role in the history of the province too, so that you'll find articles about U BBC going way back almost to, well, perhaps to its very beginnings.
There's plenty of material out there for the, for the historian and I would say in the Sheldon I'm sure would agree.
[00:05:24] Sheldon Goldfarb: Herbert's talking about the politics and the economics in that my book, Herbert's book was more [00:05:30] overarching the, uh, university. And mine is, if you can, the subtitle is a History of Student Life.
So I focused on what the students were up to every year, which is, cause I'm, I worked for the Student Society and I went year by year. And so every year I talked about what, what the students were up to. Hazing and initiation, electrocuting themselves, exciting things like that. Throwing themselves in the pond.
Or the engineers pulling off pranks, hanging Volkswagens from buildings or putting out phony art and then smashing [00:06:00] it. They did all sorts of
[00:06:00] Carol: things. Oh, hazing. What is university without the stories of the glorious times of people being hazed and running around. Truly, it is
[00:06:08] Rumneek: a part of the university
[00:06:10] Carol: experience.
It is. And you know, as much as we'd like to judge, the world was their oyster at the time, and so they thought they could just do whatever they wanted to do. But beyond the weird stuff, I didn't know that we had a former Prime Minister who attended U B C, not to mention like the other powerful people that we know in Canadian politics today.
But it is cool that we had a PM.
[00:06:29] Sheldon Goldfarb: We have [00:06:30] Kim Campbell for one, who was the first and only woman Prime Minister of Canada. She was a student here in the sixties and she was on student council. She was a vice president. She was also president of the frosh. Uh, the first year students, uh, a position that no longer exists.
Also, were not supposed to use the word frosh anymore. That's another story. And she ran for election for, for president of the frosh under the slogan, Kim is cuddler and she won [00:07:00] election and got on the student council by being cuddler, I guess, and, and was on council another time as the vice president and then later rose through, you know, she was.
Was she in the social credit party in BC and then she was in the progressive conservatives federally and became Prime Minister? Very briefly. Student council here has produced two prime ministers. There's a third one who wasn't on student council. Student Council has produced two prime ministers, both of whom served very short terms.
The other one was John [00:07:30] Turner. Who was on student council in the 1940s. He was also an athlete. He was a sports writer for the UBC newspaper. He was known in those days as Chick Turner. I'm not entirely sure why. Um, and then he went on to become known as John Turner and became Prime Minister very briefly in 1984, succeeding Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the the other one who is a student here, but.
On student council was our current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who was in the, uh, faculty of education, I think for a [00:08:00] year. So a m s Student Council has produced two actual prime ministers and the grandfather of another Prime Minister, James Sinclair. Whose daughter, Margaret Sinclair married Pierre Elliot Trudeau and became Margaret Trudeau or Maggie Trudeau.
And then they had Justin way back in 1971 and then he became Prime Minister. So that's the prime ministerial connections at, uh, at ubc and the a M s. I
[00:08:25] Rumneek: like our odds. Uh, it also teaches me, Carol, that, uh, you need to be on [00:08:30] student council if you wanna start your political career. And, uh, being cuddly is a good politician's slogan, apparently.
Uh, who would've thought names are are rarely given without reason, especially in institutions like, Ubc, um, that are so long standing. So what is the story behind how the UBC Thunderbirds, uh, came to be called the Thunderbirds?
[00:08:54] Sheldon Goldfarb: So why are we the Thunderbirds? Uh, and we were almost the seagulls. Because [00:09:00] in the 19 at, at first, UBC didn't have a nickname and didn't have a mascot.
It was just ubc. I mean, we, we played sports. We had a rugby team, and I think hockey and rugby was bigger than football in those days. Anyway, we had teams playing sports, um, but they had no nickname and. The sports, uh, sports editor on the UBC newspaper said, well, this is no good. We're playing against tigers and bears and lions and their, their fan yell out, go Tigers.
And we have to say, [00:09:30] go University of British Columbia. And this is just awkward. And so he invited students to suggest names and there was a vote and there were lots of names suggested Prowlers Seagull. He liked Thunderbirds. Anyway, there was a vote by the students and they voted in favor of seagulls, and the UBC sports department said, oh, you must be kidding.
We're not gonna call our team the, uh, the seagulls. So in the best traditions of democracy, if you don't [00:10:00] like the results of one election, have another. So they, uh, they had a second vote in which they really pushed, uh, Thunderbird. And this time the Thunderbird won the election, and so starting in 1934, Um, Thunderbird was the name used by UBC's teams, Thunderbird being an indigenous term, referring to a powerful mythical creature.
And no one thought in those days to ask permission to use an indigenous [00:10:30] term. And so that's where 1948 comes in. That's what Herbert was mentioning at the Homecoming football game, a Thunderbird football game in 1940. There was a chief from one of the indigenous groups, I can't remember which one now. Uh, chief SCO, who officially gave permission to the ams, which dms in those days, the students ran the athletics program.
[00:10:54] Carol: Every university has a Latin motto that they've taken on for themselves, but U E C decided that it wanted to [00:11:00] be super fancy and have its own unique motto. I feel like
[00:11:04] Rumneek: UBC would be the kind of school that has its own fancy Latin
[00:11:07] Carol: motto. I mean, she's bougie. Anyway, here's Herbert on that. It's
[00:11:10] Herbert Rosengarten: a good question because it, I think it came from the mind of our first president, Frank Wesbrook, who worked with the College of Herald's in London to get a crest, the ubc.
And of course every crest has to have a motto. And I think he came up with that motto. It it, I don't think, if you look it up, I don't think it belongs [00:11:30] or that it's taken from any famous classical text. But Frank Wesbrook wanted to create a university for the people, as he said, and so he devised this Latin term to est, meaning, well, some people say it means it is yours, meaning that the university belongs to the people who live, work, and study in the university.
Now. I think it's a very app. Motto, of course is, can also be and has been translated as it is up to you. [00:12:00] Uh, sometimes rather ironically, but nonetheless, it stood the test of time and I think, um, we will continue to use it. Although it doesn't appear as much as it used to do, it seems, I think today, to be rather old-fashioned, to be quoting Latin mottos.
Nonetheless, it's a part of the university's.
[00:12:19] Sheldon Goldfarb: It used to be on the UBC logo where, where now you see the letters, ubc. That's where it used to say to a, and I thought when they, when the university switched, I thought, [00:12:30] oh. Don't do that, but, but they didn't ask Nikkis. Alright.
[00:12:35] Herbert Rosengarten: Yeah, I agree with you, Sean. It should be there.
Um, but I think it's, it, it seems perhaps too old fashioned to the people who run the show today.
[00:12:43] Rumneek: I also find it interesting that UBC had a fancy Latin motto at the same time they were doing. Not so fancy things like hazing.
[00:12:51] Carol: You know what they say Rumneek do as the Romans did. Nobody said that. I'm kidding.
Um, but what really got, I feel like [00:13:00] someone did say that, whatever. Anyway, like, okay. What really got me was that some of the hazing practices included electrocution, like literally with electricity here.
[00:13:10] Sheldon Goldfarb: Sheldon, well, I could show you a picture of the electrocution if I could find it. Um, there were many
[00:13:17] Herbert Rosengarten: times when there were many times when I would like to have been able to use it myself, but not, I guess.
[00:13:24] Sheldon Goldfarb: Um, oh, there it's, I don't know if you can see, you see that picture? [00:13:30] That's, that's somebody hooked up to a battery, two batteries with current being run through them. And by electrocute I don't mean they killed them. They, I, I, they got a little jo. But this was like around 1917 getting, uh, your initiation and it was called initiation.
There was the initiation into UBC and people would be made to wear funny clothes. Uh, one year, I have a picture, one year students are wearing green dunk [00:14:00] caps. First year students, they'd be required. Sing the UBC songs. There's a song, hail UBC and other, the students don't do this anymore anyway. They, um, or they be made to run, go on their hands and knees and have cold cream rubbed on their faces and all sorts of, uh, activities.
But I don't know, we're supposed to make you a. Better person or better able to attend university. It, uh, the authorities kept saying, don't do [00:14:30] these things. And, and even the a m s student council said, we're, we're gonna ban it.
[00:14:34] Herbert Rosengarten: Well, I think if you, uh, talk to, um, People in the fraternities, such as they are today.
I think most of the fraternities have disappeared, that that's the place where these things may have survived. But in most places in Canada and the US these practices have been se severely discouraged because they've often led to very [00:15:00] serious consequences. Um, while. Possibly there, there's a survival of that practice in secret.
It's not something that is talked about anymore, but hazing was a way of becoming part of a, the in-group. And I mean, you can understand the motive behind it, but it, it, it's not found or it's very rarely practiced now, thank goodness. I think.
[00:15:25] Sheldon Goldfarb: And there's less, there's less of the pranking than there was. It's partly the demographics [00:15:30] have changed. In the old days, the engineers were all young men who liked to get drunk or at least like to drink. I think they prided themselves on not getting. But their song was, we are, we are, we are the engineers. We can, we can demolish 40 beers. So I've spoken to an engineer recently, said, oh yeah, I did my 40 beers.
But there's a lot more women in engineering now. I think that's changed the culture. Um, there's no more lady cadaver ride, that's for sure. That's where the engineers paraded a naked woman around campus riding [00:16:00] on a horse in honor, supposedly a lady Godiva in the medieval era, and that stopped.
Interestingly. Aft. I mean, there was lots of complaints about that. There were lots, um, a m s council, you know, told the engineers don't do this and tried to impose penalties. The university administration tried to impose penalties. Nothing really stopped it until 1989 when sadly you had the massacre in Montreal, the women engineering students.
And after that, the engineer stopped and they [00:16:30] said, we, we didn't think this was appropriate anymore. So, um, you know, one good thing out of that, Although that was, you know, a horrible thing, and I don't know, the engineers, they pulled off some great pranks in the past. They were often hoisting Volkswagens.
They even went down to San Francisco. They attached a Volkswagen to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. And, uh, per surprisingly, or not, the, uh, authorities in San Francisco we're not impressed, we're not happy, didn't like this. More recently, the [00:17:00] engineers have not, have not been successful. You know, they, they got caught a couple of times trying to put up Volkswagen.
So there you go.
[00:17:07] Carol: Here's my favorite part of the conversation. So I'm not sure if I was the only one who didn't know, but there was a literal sex crusade in the seventies. How about that?
[00:17:17] Rumneek: Yeah, how about that? And I, I think I personally could have lived without asking Herbert or Sheldon about this, because I am extremely awkward, but my girl Carol never shies away from literally anything.
[00:17:29] Carol: Okay. But you [00:17:30] have to admit, like at a university sex crusade, like those are things that you would never put in one sentence anyway. Here's that history.
[00:17:37] Sheldon Goldfarb: So the Campus Crusade for Christ, um, was looking for recruits, you know, people to become born again Christians, and they paraded around campus with signs saying dynamic sex.
And when asked, they said, well, if you become a Christian, if you come to Jesus, that's what you'll get. Dynamic sex. And the Lutheran minister on [00:18:00] campus said, That's not Christianity. But anyway, so that's, that was the dynamic sex thing. That was just a sort of, uh, campaign slogan by a born again Christian group wanting to recruit followers.
But quite amusing, I thought, did it work? Oh, in what sense did it produce dynamic sex? I can't vote for that. Did it win them recruits, it, got them publicity. I dunno if it, I dunno if it got them recruits.
[00:18:25] Herbert Rosengarten: I think it was the, actually the title of a lecture in a, in a series of lectures [00:18:30] given by the campaign, uh, campaign that Sheldon's referring to.
And they were using it as, as he says, as a means of attracting students to the campaign. Um, crusade it, I think there were three or four lectures in the week, and this was the going to be sort of, if you'll excuse the term, the climax of the series. And, and so was it successful? Yes. It, it drew people in and it actually, I think it got a front page, um, article in the Ubessey, [00:19:00] so you'd have to say it was successful.
Yeah.
[00:19:02] Rumneek: And clearly we're still talking about it because that definitely got Carol's attention to
[00:19:07] Sheldon Goldfarb: see the police. That's right.
[00:19:09] Herbert Rosengarten: 50 years later.
[00:19:11] Carol: Yes. Not to take a hard pivot from Sex Crusades, but since from Nick and I never stormed the wall, we wanted to ask Herbert and Sheldon how this became a UBC tradition.
[00:19:22] Sheldon Goldfarb: It, it's a bit. Controversial when it started because if you go to storm the wall now they, they talk about [00:19:30] having begun in 1978. And so when I did my book, I thought, okay, let's, let's get storm the wall in the book. Let's look at the newspaper in 1978. And, and find out, you know, the first storm, the wall, there was nothing and nothing.
In 1979, the first time I could find storm, the wall was 1980. And then I spoke to Nester Corins. Nester. Corins was the longtime head of, uh, intramurals. He was the one who brought Storm the wall to ubc. And I [00:20:00] said, nester, I don't understand. I can't find any evidence from these first two years. It's supposed to have started in 1978.
And he thought about that and he said, Yeah, I told them we started in 1978, but I realize now that's a mistake. They first heard about Storm of the Wall was at some other university, one, someone in the intramurals department or the athletics department. Was at another university, visiting another university and saw that they had this storm, the wall competition running, climbing walls, swimming, whatever.
I'd never done it myself, so I don't know, [00:20:30] and thought, let's do it at ubc. And Nester thought it was a good idea, but it took them a year to plan it. And then they were ready to go in 1979 in the fall of 1979. But people said, you know, we already have so many events in the fall every year. Like there was something called the Arts Relay and.
Now there is the trek. There's a trek race too, I think. Anyway, they said, why don't we wait till the spring and we'll do it in the spring? And so the first one was actually in the spring of 1980. I've tried to convince the storm, the wall people [00:21:00] that, so you really began in 1980, but, and they say, oh, okay.
But they still say 1978. So that's how storm the wall began. I
[00:21:07] Herbert Rosengarten: remember many years. Going with some concern or other to visit with the vice President students? Uh, I think the office was then called Student Affairs and sitting in her office waiting and waiting and she didn't show up for ages. Um, and then finally the door opened and in she comes.
This was Maria [00:21:30] Clave, who was former head of computer science at U B C and then subsequently VP students and then dean of Science. And in each case, the first woman to hold those appointments. Um, she, um, She was about half an hour late for the appointment. She was, um, I know it's not appropriate to say this about a woman, but she was covered in sweat.
She was wearing shorts and a tank top shirt, and she apologized for keeping us waiting because she'd just been [00:22:00] storming the wall. And I think she'd been part of the computer science team. I don't know how they did, but I figured if they had managed to persuade the VP students to join their team, they had a very good chance of winning no matter how well they actually stormed the wall.
Uh, Maria Kla incidentally, uh, was a very vigorous, a very, um, energetic vice president and dean. Um, she's gone on to. President of Harvey Mud College in California, which is [00:22:30] quite a big deal. But in any case, she was the first, and as far as I know, probably the only vice president at UBC who has stormed the wall.
[00:22:38] Carol: Rumneek and I are former journalism students, like we like to say every single episode. So we naturally wanted to ask about the UBA C or the ubc, however you pronounce that name, and why you cannot find a print copy from 1990.
[00:22:52] Sheldon Goldfarb: The reason it didn't publish that year is because, well, you have to understand, the UBC newspaper started out.
The newspaper of the Amms of [00:23:00] the Student Society of Student Council. Uh, it was started in 1918, uh, just three years after UBC opened, and at the a m s was founded in 1915, at just a couple of weeks after U VBC opened, and for a while. The A m S published a monthly, a literary journal, and they had no name for it.
They called it Yuba C spelled differently, U B I C E E. And then they decided they needed something more, you know? Up to date and [00:23:30] not just once a month. So they, they said, we're gonna get you the hot news every week. And they created a newspaper called the ubc, spelled the way it is now, U B Y S S E Y, which combines u ubc, the University with the Odyssey, because I thought they, I guess they thought they could write like Homer or something like that.
And so they were. For many years, and they were, but they were the a m s newspaper and the a m s would name the editor. And that was fine for [00:24:00] a while. But after a while, the newspaper began to gain a little bit of independence, not real. And I mean, officially they were part of the a m s, but they seemed to become very critical of the a m s and also, especially in the sixties.
The sixties were a wild time. If you wanna ask about a wild time in ubc, it's the 60. And, um, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll, the UBC became very radical. And from that time, culminating in the nineties, early nineties, the UBC would be, the headlines would be raunchy [00:24:30] or full of four letter words. They, they'd run articles like how to get on the bus without paying.
They'd run things that slandered a m s executives. The a m s began getting complaints from alumni saying, why is the student newspaper saying all these nasty things and what, what's going on with that? And eventually the a m s had enough and said, okay, we're, we're gonna step in officially, you're still our newspaper.
Although what had happened over the years was the AMS deferred to the, the [00:25:00] UBC staff and let the staff choose their own. The Amms student Council said, okay, this year we're gonna choose the editor. And they named an editor and the staff at the UBC refused to work with them and the editor anyway, then said, I can't do this.
And, and, and, and stepped down the a m s tried to find a second editor, but it also didn't work. And so essentially it was a stalemate. And for a whole year there was no UBC newspaper. The other newspapers sprang up. There'd already been a rival newspaper, which was less radical called campus. [00:25:30] It began publishing and it was the only paper publishing in that only student newspaper publishing in that year.
And it's the paper the a s would use to announce referendums and things like that. Um, but eventually there became a movement to bring back the UBC and freedom of the press and whatever. And so there was a refer, the, the A m S agreed to hold referendum at which students could vote to pay a fee directly to the ubc.
And the UBC would be an independent in entity and the referendum. And [00:26:00] UBC came back to life this time as an independent, not part of the a m s. And that was in the fall or the summer, maybe of 95.
[00:26:08] Herbert Rosengarten: Um, when we were, uh, looking for materials for the hundred year history of ubc. We also turned to the UBC newspaper quite often because it was often the only place where you could find.
Um, written a documentation of a particular event, a speech, um, uh, some kind of problem that arisen. The UBC was [00:26:30] often our only sourced, so it was very helpful to have that paper there. So, yes, the new, the UBC is sometimes a thorn in everybody's side, but by and large, I think it's been, uh, a great aid to, certainly to university historians, but also I think as a reflection of changing times, changing attitudes and the source of a lot of fun.
Interest for everybody who uses it, who, who consults it. That was
[00:26:54] Rumneek: a great piece of history and also describes the kind of journalism that I personally like to do, which [00:27:00] involves being a thorn in people's sides.
[00:27:02] Carol: It's true. I don't, I like to be the pedal, but you like to be the thorn. But for a final word, from Herbert and Sheldon directly, we wanted to know how they've seen UBC change over the many, many,
[00:27:13] Herbert Rosengarten: many, many years.
Well, I think UBC is a much more student oriented university than it was when I first came here. Um, but in terms of public perception, perceptions of UBC by people outside the university, I think there are [00:27:30] several times in its history when perhaps changing demographics, changing politics have affected the way it's appeared to the world.
But UBC was even then, um, the major university in the province. Um, and it, it attracted all the best students from the high schools and so on. It was a, the place where everybody wanted to send their kids, but it was a provincial university. It wasn't until David STR came that, um, we started to [00:28:00] look beyond our borders and to think of ourselves as having, uh, an impact nationally because David Strong Way brought with him a very strong research orient.
He wanted UBC to be at the forefront of researching, particularly in science. And, uh, his own background as a geologist working for nasa, I think inspired him with that. And he pushed UBC into expanding in the area of scientific research in ways that it hadn't. [00:28:30] Dreamt of doing before. So starting around the mid eighties onwards, I think UBC's started to make its weight felt in national councils, um, in terms of getting research scientists, touc come here and by winning large grants, by winning contracts, by becoming a force to be reckoned with, um, as, as a source of scientific discovery.
And I think that's probably how UBC sees itself today as a major research. And, and, uh, the university, [00:29:00] not with just a national, but with an international
[00:29:02] Sheldon Goldfarb: impact. It's dramatically changed. Now. Now we have an indigenous culture month. Now we have, there was an indigenous student, elected president of the Amms, uh, 20 years ago.
But even, but more recently than that, there's been an acceleration in the most recent, uh, referendum we held, we, we created a, a constituency just for indigenous students. So like we have got art, science, engineering, and now you'll have the indigenous students. That definitely changed from the early [00:29:30] days after the sixties.
In the seventies, things changed like that. The demographics of the university changed too. For one thing, that there were like 400 students in year one and now there's 60,000. But also the, uh, ethnic diversity. I mean, if you take a look at the a m s executive now, They're all Asian, whereas if you look 50 years ago, it's, they're all white.
So there's been quite a change there too.[00:30:00]
Well,
[00:30:01] Carol: that was a lot of fun and now I'm gonna tell, Everyone I know that UBC had sex crusades cuz that's what I obviously took away from this conversation. I
[00:30:09] Rumneek: resent that they told us that because you are never
[00:30:11] Carol: going to let this go. Nope. And you know I may be 26, but I'm still 19 at heart. In all seriousness, I think this conversation does go to show that sometimes the most random and interesting places are in your backyards or so I think the saying goes.
Any last insightful comments from Remick Jo? I would just say
[00:30:29] Rumneek: stay [00:30:30] curious. Oh, and tomb est, or whatever, and however it's pronounced. Oh, that was the motto. Carol, thank you for finally joining us in the year of 2023.
[00:30:42] Carol: I was like, what is she saying? Well, tickle me inspired.
[00:30:45] Rumneek: I don't want to tickle you actually.
Thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling the feels, please drop us a review.
You can also [00:31:00] find me on Twitter @rumneeek with three E's.
[00:31:02] Carol: And me at @caroleugenepark.
[00:31:04] Rumneek: Today's episode was recorded at CiTR Radio and engineered by Hina Imam. From Here Forward is an alumni UBC podcast produced by Podium Podcast Company.