RORY MACLEAN
News Editor

Sex was in the air last weekend as young and old donned their flirtiest duds and got all oiled up for Saskatoon’s first naughty trade show at TCU Place.

Billed as an upscale consumer tradeshow, the Taboo Naughty but Nice show also aimed to create a bit of a party.

“It is what people make of it,” said Kevin Collins, spokesperson for Canwest Trade Shows, which sponsored the event.

“ ‘Dynamic’ is probably the best way to describe it. A lot of people come out of their shell, do things they wouldn’t normally do. Some people just come down to have a look; a few giggles.”

Other people, including couples, use the event as an educational experience, he said.

The event featured a series of workshops over the day, including ones on oral sex and the female orgasm. These demonstrations were lead by vendors, so they would usually begin as educational and then quickly veer into a pitch for whatever they were peddling.

And now that you know where the G-spot is, let me show you how to stimulate it with one of our fine glass dildos.

The gawk factor was enough to keep TCU busy Friday and Saturday night, with about 5,000 visiting over the course of the weekend. Shirtless men and women in ill-fitting corsets or bras and panties were plentiful both nights, possibly lured by the $6 drinks as they wandered the aisles among rows of dildos, vibrators, oils, whips and paddles.

“Saturday got really, really busy. For a while it was shoulder to shoulder,” said Collins.

Canwest flooded the city with promotional tickets, otherwise $15 at the door, to ensure the event was busy. This plan provided plenty of exposure, but Collins says they have not yet determined if sales over the weekend were enough to bring the show back to the city.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be coming back or not. It’s not really my decision,” he said.

Canwest has to first hear from all their vendors and make sure they sold enough in Saskatoon. The overall impression from them is positive, though.

There are nine or 10 exhibitors who have booths at every Taboo show, the only event of its kind in western Canada, while others only appear at certain locations.

“I go across Canada with them,” said Viktoria Kalatera, who runs a glass toy booth. “On average, we could be selling up to 500 pieces over a weekend.”

At no less than $50 per toy, this makes the $1,200 booth well worth it. But since Saskatoon was new territory, they were uncertain if sales would be good.

“This is the first time Saskatoon has actually held a sex show, so we weren’t sure what it was going to be like or how it was going to be received.”

On Friday night, business was slow but Kalatera was encouraged that people were curious and asking a lot of questions.

As onlookers walked by, she would thrust a glass dildo — which had been heated with warm water — into their hands to show off one of the selling points of glass toys. They can also be cooled down before use, she said.

“I always tell people to pick them up, play with them in their hands,” she said. “I own five of them at home — that’s me.”

Taboo also provided an opportunity for local group Saskatoon Saskatchewan King Association to educate people on BDSM, which signifies bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.

BDSM can encompass any range of activities but for newly engaged demonstrators Rob Thomas and Allison Carpenter, it focuses on the idea of giving and receiving pain.

“She is submissive to me and I am a dominant, more on a top level, which is described as the idea of bringing physical pain to someone,” said Thomas. “Bottom is the idea of accepting pain but it doesn’t necessarily mean submission. It could just be for sensation.”

Someone who likes to try both top and bottom roles is referred to as a switch. Vanilla is a term for those outside of the BDSM culture.

Carpenter is a bottom, which means she likes Thomas to inflict (controlled) pain on her. Sometimes it is done sexually, as foreplay, though sometimes it is an end in and of itself.

Carpenter said Thomas will sometimes stick 30 to 40 syringes through her skin. For her, it’s an interesting feeling, but not a feeling of pleasure. Sometimes the two will play with a knife, where Thomas will scrape her back with a large blade.

“It’s all about having trust in him not to hurt me and he’s aware of how far is too far,” she said.

For some people this is something they would only do with their partner, but for others it is an experience external to their romantic relationships.

Thomas and Carpenter only like to play with each other, though they used to have an open relationship.

“We had an open relationship for quite a while, but it gets too complicated,” she said. “I like the idea, but when you take everybody’s emotions into play — I mean, it’s hard enough with just two people.”

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photo: Robby Davis / Raisa Pezderic

TANNARA YELLAND
Associate News Editor

Students will soon be asked to devote some time to electing a new executive for the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union.

Election season began on March 8 with a preliminary meeting for candidates, who watched a presentation explaining the purpose of the USSU and the details of each position.

There are five positions open to students: president, vice-president external affairs, vice-president operations and finance, vice-president student affairs and vice-president academic affairs.

Last year’s election was a mere formality with only one person running for each position, all being acclaimed. However, there were at least eight candidates present at the initial meeting this year and by the time candidates are finalized on March 15 there could be more — or fewer, if some of the potential candidates fail to show that they are in good standing with their colleges. The fact that there will likely be more than one candidate for some positions promises to make debates and voting more interesting for everyone involved.

The 2009 election was criticized both because only one candidate ran for each position and because no women were in the running. However, at least one of the potential candidates for this year’s election is a woman.

Campaigning begins at 12:01 a.m. on March 17, giving candidates one week to get their faces, names and messages to students before voting begins on March 24.

Look for signs advertising candidates’ debates in the coming weeks.

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KRISTY RYDZ
The Uniter (University of Winnipeg)

WINNIPEG (CUP) — Sarah-Kate Salmon readily admits she spends a large part of her day attached to her cellphone — yet she’s terrified of talking on it.

“I’m texting from 8 a.m. until 12 a.m.,” the Grade 12 student from Winnipeg said. “I could text someone, ‘I’m madly in love with you,’ but I can’t talk on the phone. It’s awkward.”

While Salmon likes to tune into her favourite TV shows and uses Facebook to procrastinate from homework, not all of her media exposure has been positive.

On her 15th birthday, Salmon was the victim of a physical attack by a group of teens — one girl and three boys — that put her in the hospital with a concussion.

“She kind of just kicked my head until I bled out my ear,” Salmon recalled.

After a friend told her a video of the attack had been posted on YouTube, she was forced to deal with the horror again.

“I thought, ‘What if this gets around?’ Then it just struck up the fear of it happening again. The situation just kept replaying in my head,” Salmon said.

It’s this complicated relationship between teenagers and the media that is the focus of a new study from Washington, D.C.’s Kaiser Family Foundation called “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8–18 Year Olds.”

Reporting increased levels of entertainment media usage, with an average of over seven hours daily, the study has found a correlation between low levels of personal contentment and heavy users of media. Of the respondents, 21 per cent were identified as heavy users, meaning they consume upwards of 16 hours of media per day.

Taking into account variables such as age, race, parent education and single- versus two-parent households, contentment is measured by how the participant responds to questions like whether they often feel sad, get into trouble, are bored, get good grades and if they have a lot of friends.

According to Michael Zwaagstra, a high school teacher and research associate at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, the study’s findings prove what he has seen for years.

“Time spent playing video games isn’t time spent socializing,” he said. “When you ask students, ‘How do you feel after you’ve spent all night playing games?’ The universal response is, ‘I feel terrible. I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing.’ ”

Zwaagstra advocates for more time spent on the fundamental skills of reading and writing in the earlier years in place of technologically-focused classrooms.

“We seem to be jumping (to) the latest gadgets instead of focusing on the basics,” he says. “If you have someone that already struggles with making friends, it makes it that much easier to avoid social interaction.”

Brad Stelmach, a guidance counsellor and psychology teacher in Winnipeg, sees the impact of social media in his office daily.

“Kids will come in to be counselled and (will) be crying, in distress. But their cellphone will buzz and they’ll answer it right away,” he said.

After helping students deal with the effects that Facebook statuses and text messages have on friendships, romantic relationships and bullying, Stelmach acknowledges that each individual has different predispositions and thresholds for media addiction.

“Technology is a great thing when it’s used in the appropriate way,” he said. “Sure there’s going to be a correlation (between heavy media use and discontentment), but is it going to impact everyone the same? No.”

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photo: Jill Brown

RORY MACLEAN
News Editor

Five days for the homeless, where five students from the Edwards School of Business spend five days living outside to raise funds to help homeless people, begins next week, running from March 14 to 19.

“The main focus of the event is to increase awareness of youth at risk and of youth homelessness,” said Reem Matlak, local event organizer.

Five days for the homeless started in Alberta in 2005 and has been held in Saskatoon every year since 2008. The Saskatoon group is trying to raise $12,000 to donate to the Saskatoon downtown youth centre, EGADZ.

“They will be sleeping outside throughout the week,” said Matlak. “They have to attend all their classes, they don’t have access to showers on campus and they cannot have any flow of income.”

This year’s participants — John Irwin, Lisa Book, Gaelen Andrews, Megan Orr and Arianna Berthold — cannot pay for meals with their own income. All their food must be donated during the fundraiser.

“They’re given a sleeping bag and pillow. They use that throughout the week,” she said. Technology, including cell phones and laptops, is not permitted.

The five Edwards students must also wear the same clothes over the course of the challenge. They are allowed to trade in their sleeping bags and pillows for an emergency meal, if things should get tough.

Matlak says the point of the fundraiser is not to make these students suffer, but to use visible homelessness as a marketing gimmick to shine the spotlight on EGADZ and its programs.

“Instead of just having a poster on the wall saying these people are at risk, (you’re) going to see these people outside,” she said.

If weather dips below -15 C, participants will be allowed to stay inside.

Those interested in donating can do it online at fivedays.ca, or look for the group in the Arts Tunnel.

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file photo: Michelle Berg

ASHLEIGH MATTERN
Editor-in-Chief

“Don’t get caught up in being a woman in business, get caught up in being in business,” said Arlene Dickinson, owner of Venture Communications and best known for her role on CBC’s Dragons’ Den.

    “Thirty or 40 years ago, women fought hard for a right to sit at a business table. Now we should be fighting hard to be competent at the business table, and no longer characterize ourselves as women at the table but as business people at the table.”

   Dickinson was at the University of Saskatchewan on March 4 to speak to 21 student entrepreneurs — all of them women. She had a lot of advice for business people in general, but much of the conversation was geared towards women entrepreneurs specifically.

   Gabrielle Scrimshaw, a fourth-year Edwards School of Business student, asked what advice Dickinson would give her 20-year-old self. The question elicited a long pause from Dickinson.    

“It probably would have been to eat less when I was pregnant,” she responded, which elicted a laugh from the mostly 20-somethings at the lunch.

“I am not kidding. You pay later on for what you did to your body,” she added with a laugh. “That’s a very girl thing to say but it’s very true.”

   She went on to say that she would also tell herself not to take everything so seriously.

   “I thought that every decision was monumental and if I made a mistake then that would be a mistake forever. And what I’ve learned is that the mistakes are actually learning experiences.”

   It was the first piece of advice of many to come during the hour-long lunch meeting.

   Dickinson is the only woman on the panel of successful business people on the Dragons’ Den panel. Other panelists include Jim Treliving, owner of Boston Pizza, and U of S graduate W. Brett Wilson, owner of Prairie Merchant and founder of the W. Brett Wilson Centre on campus, which provided the opportunity for the lunch with Dickinson.

   Now in its fifth season, the format of Dragons’ Den is similar to the American Idol format, but instead of getting up in front of judges and singing, the contestants get up in front of prospective investors and pitch their businesses.

   The business people on the panel seem heartless at times, and many of the contestants walk away rejected, but Dickinson says sometimes that’s what it takes.

   “You can be aggressive without being bitchy; you can be strong without feeling like you don’t have a right to be.”

   Despite her assertion that women should think of themselves as business people first, she admitted there are differences between women and men. For example, Dickinson pointed out that more women start businesses than men, but more men stay in business and go big with that business.

“We’re the people that when the parents get sick we quit our careers. When we have children, we quit our careers. When our husband needs to go to school, we quit our careers. And that’s unfortunately the genetics that you’ve all been born with, and it’s not a bad thing; there’s a lot to be said for moms who stay at home and raise the next generation. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be business people too.”

   In 1988, Dickinson started as at Venture Communications, and by 1998, she was the owner. The Dragons’ Den intro says she has made “tens of millions of dollars” but it isn’t all about successes.

Carlene Deutscher, Wilson Centre marketing coordinator, asked what Dickinson has learned from her failures.

“Divorce has taught me a lot. That’s a big failure; I consider that a failure. Not being successful in marriage has taught me a lot about myself as a person…. My biggest failure in business was taking too long to figure out that as an entrepreneur I couldn’t do it myself.”

   After living in Austrailia, Scrimshaw was inspired to start her own business, importing clothing from Australian designers for her proposed store Indulge, which she hopes to open this summer after graduating.

Scrimshaw said she could relate to Dickinson.

   “She wasn’t intimidating or rude or checked her Blackberry every two minutes. She came around and she shook all of our hands,” said Scrimshaw. “Those are the sort of relationship management things that people who are really successful, they get it. She was human. For everything else, she cut the BS and she got right to it.”

As for the female-tailored advice, Scrimshaw said it was nice to hear a successful woman talk about her experiences.

    “We can’t say that (men and women are) equal because we’re not, we’re different. We have to acknowledge those differences and work with them…. Women have strengths that men don’t have.”

Words of wisdom from Arlene Dickinson

“We (employers) check Facebook to find out what’s going on with the people we hire…. You each have a brand and you each have an obligation to manage your brand and no one else will do it for you. If you don’t manage a brand, it will manage you.”

“Nothing beats face to face communication.”

“You need to find where your strengths are and then shine. Don’t be afraid of what you know, but don’t let your insecurities personally drive your business behaviour either.”

“The passion I have for my children, which is unconditional love, is the same passion I have for my business. Nobody was going to take me off that path. If you just have a job or you create a business because you feel like you should, you won’t succeed.”

“My mentor is the person sitting right next to me…. Never be afraid to ask the person sitting right next to you about themselves. You’ll be amazed at what you learn.”

“You will never be strong mentally if you’re not strong physically. The best stress relief I have happens to be running. I weight-train and I run.”

TANNARA YELLAND
Associate News Editor

Building on his presentation from last year, University of Saskatchewan Provost and vice-president academic Brett Fairbairn discussed the importance of innovation in universities.

The annual Provost’s academic agenda address allows the Provost to speak to the university and to discuss the direction in which he would like to steer the academic course of the school. For his 2009 address, Fairbairn chose to talk about the role of universities within a larger context, that context being the public interest. Fairbairn saw his address this year as a continuation of sorts of that talk, because innovation is an important factor in being dedicated to the public interest.

“ ‘Innovation’ makes some people uncomfortable,” Fairbairn said in his introduction. “It’s a bit of a buzzword, and it’s good to be skeptical of buzzwords.”

But as he went on it was obvious that to Fairbairn, innovation is far more important than it is trendy. He emphasized the need for innovation as a way to stay current and to improve the U of S, saying that often the greatest changes come about in times of need, such as now, rather than in times of comfort.

He attributes this to people’s tendency to take success as a sign that what they are doing at the time is working, rather than as a sign that changes they had made were good and that they should continue to change and tweak their operation.

Three areas of innovation where the U of S is succeeding, according to Fairbairn, are Aboriginal engagement, internationalization and new, interdisciplinary approaches to programs. He specifically mentioned several initiatives enacted in the ’70s to include Aboriginal students, such as Aboriginal law and the Indian Teacher Education Program, as well as new undergraduate programs being pioneered in the colleges of nursing and education.

But, he insisted, the university should be looking to change and improve what it is already doing rather than to add new programs.

An audience member said the U of S is positioned well to hire impressive faculty members now because it was not hit as hard by the financial crises of the last two years.

While Fairbairn acknowledged the truth in that, he stressed that adding new people and programs is the opposite of what he feels the university should be doing at the moment.

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photo: Robby Davis

EMMA GODMERE
CUP Ottawa Bureau Chief

OTTAWA (CUP) — While its title was “Leading the Way on Jobs and Growth,” the Conservatives’ March 4 federal budget offered little for students seeking such prosperity in the near future.
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TANNARA YELLAND
Associate News Editor

Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s March 3 Speech from the Throne left many questions unanswered. Luckily, the federal budget was released the next day to answer some of them.

Jean spoke mostly about the economy, an important subject the world over as countries like Greece and Spain struggle to recover from shockingly severe recessions and as Canada itself continues to see negative effects from the financial meltdown of the last two years. It was also a timely subject as the federal budget was released the next day. What Jean’s speech hinted at or vaguely addressed, the federal budget set out in far more concrete terms.

University of Saskatchewan political studies professor David McGrane says this is generally the way such speeches are structured.

“What’s interesting,” he said, “is the way it attempted to set up the budget and frame the federal government’s action.”

Jean’s claim that there will be a smaller, leaner government was then displayed in the budget, where foreign aid is set to finish expanding in the coming years and there will be no new stimulus funding after last year’s $30 billion is fully apportioned and spent. McGrane says that if there actually is a move toward a smaller government, it “could be seen as a historical turning point.”

Keeping the Canadian economy functioning and making it stronger will require, Jean said, “a return to fiscal balance.” However, she said this will be possible without making drastic cuts to existing services.

“Balancing the nation’s books will not come at the expense of pensioners. It will not come by cutting transfer payments for health care and education or by raising taxes on hard-working Canadians.”

In addition to not providing any more stimulus spending, Jean said balancing the budget will require the government to restrict program spending in general, including freezing the wages of Members of Parliament and the prime minister. And while she reiterated Canada’s dedication to sending aid to Haiti, her message of fiscal conservatism is at odds with increasing aid obligations. This has led some political commentators to speculate about whether aid programs garnering less publicity will suffer as a result.

Probably because the speech was focused on how the government would cut back on spending and balance its budget, Jean devoted almost no time to talking about students. McGrane says he thinks this is because students cost governments millions of dollars in loans and often do not vote, especially Conservative.

“Why would the government make promises to them?” he asked.

However, McGrane says the government does deserve credit for pouring money into construction on campuses across Canada.

“It doesn’t really help (students) out with loans or tuition, but it’s something,” he said.

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