Students, faculty, artists and activists debate the merits of funding education through the profits of the extractive industries

On Wednesday, Nov 24, over 200 people from the Downtown Eastside (DTES)
and the Simon Fraser University (SFU) communities, gathered at SFU’s
Woodward’s campus for a panel discussion on Goldcorp’s $10 million
donation to SFU, which helped complete the construction of the
Woodward’s campus.

The donation has raised concerns among groups working on a wide
variety of issues, including, but not limited to, Canadian mining
abuses, academic freedom, gentrification of the DTES, and the erosion of
public education. In response to this donation, which among other
things meant a renaming of the centre which houses the School of
Contemporary Arts at SFU, a group of students, faculty and activists
came together to form a group called SFU Against Goldcorp and Gentrification – SAGG which formulated four demands to address the many facets of this issue.

The event on Nov 24 was called Framing Cultural Capital
and was organized by the Visual Arts Student Union at SFU: it was an
attempt at addressing some of the concerns mentioned above through
dialogue. The panel was moderated by Jeff Derksen from the Department of
English at SFU and it consisted of Ian Angus (Department of Humanities,
SFU), Alexandra Henao (SFU Against Goldcorp and Gentrification), Cecily
Nicholson (Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre), Irwin Oostindie (W2
Community Media Arts) and Jayce Salloum (Vancouver-based visual artist).

Read the full Vancouver Media Co-op article here