Lady T-Wolves get Extra Present and some Coal for Christmas. Over the Christmas break, the UNBC women’s basketball team scored a major triumph, knocking off the top-ranked team in BC en route to win- ning a major mid-season tour- nament in the Lower Mainland. The Northern Timberwolves were led by first year student Christina Neufeld of Fort Nelson, who played a key leadership role after two starting players, Nicole Kerr and Laura Foster suffered knee injuries. By: M.B. Pepsi Supports NUGSS The Pepsi Bottling Group in conjuction with Campus Canada (Beaver Ltd.) is giving 10 cents of every can or bottle sold between Monday, Jan. 29 and Friday, Feb. 16/01. Please support your Student Society from purchasing Pepsi from the vending machines or the cafeteria. Thank you to Pepsi for their continued sup- port to UNBC studenis. Apathy and University Go Hand in Hand With the NUGSS Bi-Election set to happen in a couple of weeks. Words that will not be flashed around will hopefully include recount, chad, he/she is the new [enter ‘NUGSS’ position here] and 2 minutes later, it’s too close to call. Of course knowing the voter turnout for student elec- tions is not always very good. Usually under 10% of the student population of UNBC vote. Whether it was because you didn’t have time to learn who was run- ning or who’s speech you could actually listen to (yes, we all can’t skip class to go to the speeches). Perhaps it is the apathy with which we suffer from, | know | suf- fer from it. My name is Mel and I’m apathetic. Even when | know who has been hominated, there is some- thing inside me, that doesn’t really care. Yet somehow, | feel | should care. Are these not the people that will make decisions for us at some NUGSS meeting in the future. Yes, they might be if they are voted in by the stu- dent body. Summer Camp Jobs in the U.S.A. Lakeside Residential Girls Camp in Maine—Visas Arranged Counselors: Combined childcare/teaching. Must be able to teach or lead one or more of the following activities: gymnastics, tennis, swim, sail, canoe, water ski, arts (including stained glass, sewing, jewelry, wood, photo), dance, music, theatre, archery, wilderness trips, field sports, equestrian. Service Workers: kitchen, laundry, housekeeping, maintenance & grounds. Non-smokers. June 17 to August 23. Attractive salary (US) plus travel allowance. Visit our camp on our photo website: http://homepage.mac.com/kippewaforgiris/ To Apply: Applications are available on our website: www.kippewa.com or contact us at the numbers listed below for a staff brochure and application. Kippewa, Box 340, Westwood, Massachusetts, 02090-0340, U.S.A. e-mail: kippewa@tiac.net | tel: 781-762-8291 | fax: 781-255-7167 Would we really vote more if we followed the example of UBC’s activities? | was reading the Vancouver Sun, Thursday January 18th. | open up the paper to the next section, two things caught my eye, one an old friend half-naked in the paper (continued on page 6) Marketing the mind: students the hottest market target By Dave Crothall and Christy Lightowlers, The Martlet VICTORIA (CUP) - Asking a grade three class to construct a Nike shoe complete with swoosh logo may sound absurd, but it has happened. As schools in North America renegotiate their principles on private sponsorship, compa- nies as powerful as Nike are stepping foot inside the class- room. Marketing to students in North American schools has always meant big business as today’s teens make up approximately 25 percent of North America’s population. Market Source, a US-based marketing firm that openly advocates the commercial- ization of schools, claims that there are 70 million con- sumers born after 1979. Aiming a question at such “Fortune 500” clients as Microsoft and Pfizer, Market Source asks, “Can you afford to miss out on that much business?” With television viewing at an all time low, marketing firms are looking elsewhere to cap- ture the attention of the young mind. Today, schools in both the US and Canada are adopting Channel One: “edu- cational programming” every morning where students are subjected to two minutes of advertising. In return the school is allowed to use the audio-visual equipment in other classes. The growing trend is obvious, schools have become com- placent in treating students as clients and consumers, as opposed to citizens with a right to an education free of commercial influence. School textbooks have covers featur- ing multiple advertisements. School cafeterias are com- monly home to fast food restaurant kiosks which are more expensive than cafete- rias and, in many cases, do not accept lunch vouchers available to lower income kids. In an effort to manipulate a trend, marketing firms will use people as “walking infomercials.” These people will wear, eat or drink their sponsors product in addition to promoting the products by word of mouth. The “walking infomercial” phenomena recently gained attention in the US when two New Jersey students decided to become “spokesguys” for prospective companies. Hoping to acquire sponsor- ships to cover the cost of tuition, Chris Barret and Luke McCabe, 17, agreed to sport branded clothing, host brand- ed parties and drink branded beverages. McCabe even vowed to brand himself with a corporate tattoo for the right price. As part of any agreement that the two sign with corpora- tions, there will be a code of conduct with which they must abide to. According to the pairs publicist, Karen Ammond, “The corporation will now become the parent” With many schools in need of more funds for a growing stu- dent body that is receiving less public financial support, what can be done to give young people a commercial- free zone for their studies? No Logo author Naomi Klein argues that we need to acknowledge the tremendous buying power held by North American schools. The pri- vate-public partnership between schools and corpo- rations can be used to exert pressure on corporate ethics. “Young activists have begun to use their status as sought- after sponsorees to retaliate against forces they consid- ered invasive on their cam- puses -to begin with,” says Klejn. “In this volatile context, a par- ticularly aggressive sponsor- ship deal can act as a political catalyst, instigating a wide- ranging debate on everything from unfair labour conditions to trading with dictators.” At the University of Victoria, the senate voted to refuse scholarship money from Shell because of their alleged human rights abuses in Nigeria. According to Klein, other solutions can be found in alternative media, such as Adbusters and Ralph Nader’s Commercial Alert. One example of the power of student activism occurred in 1993 at Ottawa’s Carleton University. There, PepsiCo made a vending deal with the campus, much to the displea- sure of the students. The stu- dents researched PepsiCo and discovered the compa- ny’s dealings in Burma, the brutal dictatorship now called Myanmar. PepsiCo was pro- ducing and selling its soft drinks there, as well as being invested in an openly anti- democratic-owned Burmese bottling plant. Members of the Free Burma Coalition and universities worldwide requested additional informa- tion from the Carleton University students, which resulted in rejected contracts between PepsiCo and Harvard in 1996. The spread of information eventually led to such a considerable world- wide student boycott that PepsiCo announced its total disengagement from Burma in January 1997. Tactics akin to Adbusters’ “culture jamming,” educate readers about the hidden truth underlying advertise- ments. Even though corpo- rate sponsoring of schools and people provides each with the necessary finances to survive, the control that these corporations exert is tremendous. Perhaps the largest fear of the increasing commercial- ization of schools and youth is what Klein calls “the colo- nization of the mind.” We must realize that ad-free space, which doesn’t advo- cate an idea or doesn’t try to sell us a product or doesn’t encourage us to increase our heinous rate of consumption, is necessary space and we have every right to have it.