Student wears jeans for 15 months
U of A professor finds bacteria after two weeks of wear same as after 15 months
Alexandria Eldridge & Alix Kemp — The Gateway (University of Alberta)
EDMONTON (CUP) — An experiment by one student at the University of Alberta has shown that consumers don’t need to wash their jeans as often as they may have previously thought.
Josh Le wore the same pair of raw denim Nudie jeans for 15 months without washing them. Assistant professor of human ecology Rachel McQueen tested the jeans after 13 days of wear, then again after 15 months, and found minimal differences in the amount of bacteria.
“I was surprised that the counts were actually virtually the same,” she said. “I still expected to find bacteria on the jeans after 13 days of course, but I expected them to be a bit lower than [at] 15 months.”
McQueen also found that the type of bacteria on the jeans, even after 15 months, was relatively harmless.
“I expected to find something like E. coli, [or] some types of bacteria that might have come from the lower intestine or tract, just because of the area that we were sampling, but it was only skin bacteria that we found.”
McQueen explained that the idea to test the jeans occurred after Le told her about his jeans during office hours. She found that the results of their experiment was a good way to show people that they don’t need to wash their clothes as often as they think.
“If everyone didn’t wash a lot of their clothing as often as they currently do, the benefit for the environment is much greater. There’s a huge amount of water and energy usage that occurs in terms of textiles,” she said.
Court grants UVic a CFS referendum
Society hopes a vote can happen by the semester’s end
Kailey Willetts — The Martlet (University of Victoria)
VICTORIA (CUP) — The B.C. Supreme Court has awarded the University of Victoria’s students’ society a referendum on continued membership in the Canadian Federation of Students.
In a Feb. 1 court ruling, Justice Malcolm Macaulay declared the petition submitted by society member Jose Barrios in October 2009 as valid.
“I’m very happy with the decision that came down from the judge,” said society chairperson James Coccola. “It proved what we’ve been saying all along, which was that the counter petition wasn’t valid and the CFS has to give students the opportunity to vote on membership in the Canadian Federation of Students.”
The UVSS decided to file a court petition more than a year after the petition for a referendum was submitted last October. Their claim was based on a counter-petition that was submitted with students asking that their names be removed from the original petition, therefore bringing the required number of student signatures below the minimum percentage.
The CFS response was based on two main arguments: That it was within the purview of the CFS national executive to take the counter petition into account, and that a petition to the court should not interfere with a voluntary organization.
The CFS was unavailable for comment about the ruling before the Martlet went to press.
Content courtesy of the Canadian University Press
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