On Campus

What students are talking about today (October 12th edition)

A Bieber fan attacked, James Franco & #RIP Amanda Todd

Kevin Bieksa (Loxy!!/Flickr)

1. A Vancouver Justin Bieber fan had her night nearly ruined. Simran Mann wrote her name inside a heart with a Bieber reference on a pillar outside Rogers Arena. The problem was that pillar was a memorial for Canuck’s player Rick Rypien. Hockey fans tracked her down on Twitter and unleashed a fury: “Please hang yourself, so I can destroy your grave,” wrote one. Ouch.

2. Speaking of the Canucks, Kevin Bieksa and Daniel Sedin will play a charity game at UBC on Oct. 17. Both men are angry that sold-out tickets are being re-sold by scalpers on Craigslist.

3. Canadians are standing up against bullying with the hashtag #RIP Amanda Todd, in honour of the 15-year-old B.C. girl who killed herself after releasing an anti-bullying video on YouTube.

4. Stefanie Trudeau, the Montreal Police officer known as 728 (in reference to her badge number), is suspended, and the chief is apologizing. Trudeau was criticized for pepper-spraying a group of student protesters in May. Last week, she had a dispute with a man drinking a beer outdoors that ended in four arrests. A recording shows her calling those arrested “red square types” and “rats.”

5. Quebec’s Education Minister Marie Malavoy is planning to cut back on English classes in primary school and add more of the history of the sovereignty movement to the high school curriculum. Some accuse the Parti Quebecois of politicizing education. Where might they have gotten that idea?

6. Undercover cops in New York arrested 21 people who offered drugs as study aids for sale on Craigslist. The defendants range in ages from 22 to 62, and two of them were college students. The drugs seized included Adderall, Ambien, Percocet, Xanax, Valium and cocaine.

7. The University of Saskatchewan owns about 1,800 acres of land in the centre of booming Saskatoon and it’s planning to set aside half of it for residential and commercial leases.

8. Gil Collar, the 18-year-old man on LSD when he was shot by police at the University of South Alabama, was shown on security camera footage with his arms outstretched and his palms open seconds before he was killed. Collar’s family’s attorney says that’s proof their son wasn’t a threat.

9. James Franco can now add a new job to his resume. The actor, director, writer, model, artist, author, and poet will teach a film course at the University of Southern California next semester.

10. The Grid, a free Toronto weekly, has explored the confusion of local students about sexual assault bulletins after a series of incidents on or near York, Ryerson and U of T. Students want to know things that police and schools won’t always provide, like was it unwanted touching or rape?

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