ARTS & LIFE
Blossom Festival Sponsors save cherry blossom festival after coming to the brink of cancellation. P7
ONLINE SPECIAL
CAMPUS
Campus Prank
Low-waste refills
Police report filed after two YouTubers disrupted a class to promote OnlyFans. P3
A mobile van aims to reduce waste by refilling household products. langaravoice.ca
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MARCH 30, 2023 • VOL. 56 NO. 6 • VANCOUVER, B.C.
Petition resumes in foyer Teacher shuffled away from RBC By ROY FANG
A Pickleball players ask for more court spaces P8
After an explosion in pickleball interest across Canada, South Vancouver players are campaigning for more facilities. TY LIM PHOTO
No TikTok bans for now
B.C. post secondaries on alert for cybersecurity breaches By MATEO MUEGO
M
any post-secondary institutions in B.C. are being cautious with TikTok after the federal and B.C. governments banned TikTok on all governmentissued devices. While dozens of U.S. colleges and universities, including Florida A&M University, have banned TikTok from their schools, most B.C. postsecondary institutions have only issued warnings for the time being. Langara, Douglas and UBC have cautioned their communities about the use of TikTok, citing cybersecurity risks. On March 14, Langara issued a warning to faculty and staff and said the college would evaluate the risks. At the moment, there are no plans to prohibit the app on postsecondary institutions’ networks for students, said Melody Wey, communications manager for the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and
Future Skills. the case of smoking gun, it's the case The main fears surrounding of loaded gun.” TikTok are the fact that the app Instead of banning TikTok from collects data from its users and is school devices, and students from connected to China. using the app at school, Beznosov “[TikTok] collects as much data suggested post-secondary instituas any other tions alternately social network“improve the ing apps,” said awareness of the “TikTok is not the UBC computer risks” of using security profescase of smoking apps that collect sor Konstantin user data. gun, it's the case Beznosov. “The C u r r e n t l y, only difference the only postof loaded gun.” is that TikTok secondary instiis owned by a tution in Canada — KONSTANTIN BEZNOSOV, UBC COMPUTER SECURITY PROFESSOR company located to ban TikTok in China.” is Saskatchewan He said universities and colleges Polytechnic. should not panic and that governMark Dawson, manager of public ments are more anxious about what affairs for Langara College, said TikTok could do with the collected TikTok is popular with Generation data versus what they have actually Z, so it can be useful to connect with done with it. current or future students. “There’s a difference between According to Statista.com, over 40 what the company says they use it per cent of TikTok users are aged for and what they actually use [it] 18-29. This overlaps heavily with for,” Beznosov said. “TikTok is not the Langara student population, of
which 69.4 per cent are under the age of 25. Langara’s TikTok account is currently the smallest of its social media accounts and the only one not advertised online or on campus, according to Dawson. The account has under 600 followers while the college’s Twitter account has nearly 3,000 followers. Its Instagram has 22,500 followers and its Facebook account has 34,000 followers. “It’s only one of many platforms, and there is significant overlap between the platforms among users,” said Dawson. Dawson said many colleges and universities are focusing on growing their social media presence on other platforms because TikTok is less educational and informative than others. “Social media users should pay close attention to the terms of service and how their personal data might be collected or accessed,” Dawson said this week.
Langara instructor has resumed petitioning in the A Building foyer as he has for the past 20 years despite an incident two weeks ago when he and a student were told by security to vacate. The pair, petitioning to have RBC removed from campus due to its fossil fuel investments, were told they needed permission to talk to people in the hallway and were ejected from the foyer March 6. Since then, Bradley Hughes said he’s had no further issues. “We’ve set up the table for petitioning twice without any inference from security,” said Hughes, a physics and astronomy instructor and a member of the Langara International Socialists. On March 6, Hughes and student Amaranta MacAllister had set up a table directly across the hall from the RBC lounge when a guard asked them to leave. MacAllister said the guard told them they were engaging in solicitation and that was not allowed at Langara. “Which I find very interesting,” said MacAllister, a Langara history and English student and also a member of the socialists club. “What exactly is RBC doing with their little room in the foyer there?” According to Langara’s website, RBC On Campus is an educational centre, offering banking resources and financial advice to students. It remained unclear where the directive to shut down Hughes and MacAllister came from. “I did get an email from a person in the security department saying they would look into this, but nothing further,” Hughes said. Langara’s security department did not answer why Hughes and MacAllister were told to leave March 6. In an email to the Voice, Ashamdeep Dhillon, Langara’s protective services coordinator, said the pair was permitted to set up further away from RBC later in the week. “As per our Respectful Workplace policy, opinions may be expressed freely when done in a reasonable and courteous manner,” she wrote. “Those collecting signatures for a petition were permitted to set up closer to the cafeteria later in the week where their petition would not make other employees uncomfortable. See langaravoice.ca for full story