Printing fees: Nexus’ March 17, 1997 issue disclosed that student printing fees may be on the horizon. At the time the school reported having wasted 1,400 sheets of printed paper from a single printer in one week. The Student Printing Working Group responded to this news saying it might be necessary to impose a pay-per-use printing fee.
Animal cloning: This issue includes news of the first ever animal to be cloned. This story then looked at some of the concerns that this raises, including some serious ethical questions with the potential to attempt human cloning. The first of many claims of cloned humans came from Clonaid in 2002, but was never proven due to refusal to test DNA, and was eventually claimed fraudulent. In Canada it is now illegal to “knowingly create a human clone” under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.
The Spam is still out there: In one article in this issue, a student writer excitedly shared that most computers on campus have access to the internet. In his words: “Camosun students can access this marvel of technology for FREE!” He encourages students to use “the net” to help with writing papers, but also fondly says that you can find a lot of cool stuff on the internet. The piece ends with a list of web pages for readers to check out, his favourite being smalltime.com/nowhere/findthespam, which, astoundingly, still exists.