The rise of consumerism was on the minds of several Nexus writers this year. More of us are becoming aware of how overconsumption impacts the environment, and the climate crisis is becoming more worrisome by the day.
From student editor Lydia Zuleta’s article in May looking at the rise of online shopping leading to the death of department stores to contributing writer Evelyn Jordan giving tips in October to reduce your carbon footprint, students had a lot to say about all these issues.
Malls are slowly dying off in favour of online retailers. Makes sense: buying online is a lot easier than shopping in person. No need to talk to anyone or find someone to ask if the item you can’t find is in stock. Online retailers like Amazon have all of that information readily available. However, the simplicity and convenience of online shopping make it easy to forget about its downsides. Shipping items to each customer produces far more carbon emissions than shipping to a single mall does; the production of cheap items like fast fashion that are thrown away quickly and pollute the environment; the ethics of consumption are coming into question.
It’s no surprise that more and more people are looking to increasingly sustainable and ethical ways to purchase items. Thrift stores and other second-hand retailers are a great way to shop sustainably, selling everything from kitchenware to clothing. Buying used clothes provides customers with unique and affordable pieces while keeping discarded clothing out of landfills, which is more important now than ever before.
Some are even looking to make their own clothing and accessories to minimize their overall consumption and save some money in the process, as Nexus contributing writer Danielle Mier wrote about in October. Knitting a scarf or repurposing an old bedsheet into a dress offers a unique opportunity for self expression and sustainability.
They may not seem like much on their own, but making some of these small changes can have a huge positive impact on the environment in the long run.
-Jasmine Wagstaff, student editorial assistant
Food. It gives us energy; it nourishes our mind, body, soul; most importantly, it brings us joy, even in dark times.
As a student at Camosun, food is super important to how well I do in a class. It’s hard to think straight without sufficient nutrients, which is why it’s important that we talk about it more.
The Camosun College Student Society makes a point to provide students with opportunities for free meals, even offering a generous pantry of complimentary cooking ingredients to students on a tight budget.
This year we’ve had two columns focus specifically on food-related issues and stories (one of them being my own, Food for Thought, found in this issue on page 11). We’ve brought you important updates, restaurant recommendations, and heartwarming tales of food being used for the greater good of humanity.
As my all-time favourite chef and celebrity Anthony Bourdain once said, “Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.” To have the satisfaction of making your own meal and enjoying it with someone close to you, it doesn’t always have to be a five-course event. Just cozy up with some fresh bread and homemade soup, or even a simple pasta with butter, garlic, and parmesan cheese.
As we go into the new year, consider a resolution to make every moment a bit happier by focusing on the little things, like preparing your own meals using fresh and healthy ingredients, and taking the time to appreciate what you’ve made. Don’t just eat, savour. Bon appétit!
-Evelyn Jordan, contributing writer
After a series of federal mandate changes beginning last year brought forth a flurry of post-secondary concerns, namely what could happen to education without sufficient funding, Camosun College received significant backlash to its crisis response: reconstructions, reductions, eliminations, terminations, and, according to some, violations. Conflicts continued this year between the college and the Camosun College Faculty Association (CCFA) as the union attempted to mitigate impact on faculty and students in the wake of lost revenue.
CCFA president Lynelle Yutani spoke with Nexus on several occasions to update students with the CCFA’s efforts to reduce strain across Camosun’s campuses, including better working conditions and an attempt to get the college to engage in open bargaining.
In this year’s last update, Yutani claimed that the college has been overloading classes as the number of sections has lowered with insufficient instructors to fill more. This, going forward, she said, could result in disproportionate struggle for students who cannot afford to adapt or balance their schedules. In our September 17, 2025 issue, she also shared that it’s been a frustrating task for the union to ask repeatedly of the college to follow the collective agreement between the two and to provide transparency on consequential decisions.
Seeking to hold the college accountable in a series of mediations, bargainings, and arbitrations, the CCFA continues to advocate for its faculty and students.
Spokespersons from the college have declined all interview requests to date for stories covering this conflict.
-Lydia Zuleta, student editor
Being a student can mean a lot of different things, depending on who you’re talking to. Here at Camosun we have students of all backgrounds, origins, ages, and experiences. And one thread that ran through the stories we covered at Nexus this year was what it means to be a mature student.
Through that lens, I took on a piece in October about what going to post-secondary looks like at any age, and in June, contributing writer Emily Welch wrote the cover story “Returning student: On starting over in mid-life.”
Taking a step as a mature student brings the same anxieties as doing it as a younger student does. It involves stepping in knowing nothing about what this story will be, what direction that journey will take you, or if you’ve got the grits to do it all. Being a student means wearing so many hats, maybe even more when you’re a mature student with stories behind you, stories that bring experience you can apply to a school setting.
Taking on a role at Nexus newspaper can give those involved a sense of storytelling that they’re only just beginning to scratch, or maybe they’ve been scratching for some time.
Wearing a new hat in each class brings a different type of student to each moment. Maybe that’s your mathematician hat, or a psychologist hat; maybe it’s a nurse hat, or a student writer hat. Each time you put on a different hat, you unlock a new level of who you are as a student. I might encourage you to always wear your student-of-life hat along the way.
-Shane Levi Jeffery, contributing writer
Mental health is an important and undeniable part of life. This year, I wrote two feature articles and one opinion piece on this topic for Nexus, and I’m joined by my fellow writers, who have many personal and insightful things to say on the matter.
In my first piece for the paper, “The worst cocktail you’ll ever taste: my life with ADHD and anxiety,” I shared my life story and struggles with mental health as well as my hopeful thoughts on my upcoming post-secondary journey. But I’m far from the only person who struggles with these issues.
In our January 22 issue, writer Antaya Schneider wrote a piece called “How my adult ADHD diagnosis unlocked my academic potential.” In this piece, Schneider talked about her struggles with ADHD as well as her massive success in finally overcoming her struggles after her diagnosis.
In that same issue, our student editor Lydia Zuleta wrote about a North American loneliness epidemic. She talked about the societal forces that trap us in loneliness, and the ways we may free ourselves from it. Indeed, it may seem strange to be lonely in a world with eight billion people and unprecedented technological connectivity, but it’s a painful reality for many people.
Just as with physical health, the need to take care of one’s mental health isn’t going away any time soon. As the stigma slowly vanishes and people come together in shared pain and healing, we must remember that we share a world with everyone, and we do ourselves and others no favours by hiding from our pain. We must explore that pain and share those insights so we can all live with healthier minds, in a happier world.
-Tyler Calhoon-Cardinal, student editorial assistant
As the fall semester draws to a close and we prepare to leave 2025 in our rearview mirror, it’s a good time to take stock of some of the changes, both small and large, that have been made this year. Student elections can seem like a piddling little detail in this world we’ve been thrust into, where autocratic behemoths duke it out somewhere in the soaring heights way above our heads, as far removed from daily life as the megalomaniacal gods of the ancient world. However, changes in the relatively small spheres of the Camosun College Student Society and Camosun’s Board of Governors and Education Council can influence monumental tides of change.
If a young ingenue comes to the school to learn about business and has their eyes opened to the wider world by the policies enacted at the school, and then that student goes on to become a titan of industry, which company-wide policies will they implement? If an elected student develops a taste for governance and decides to enter the political circus, perhaps that student will go on to tame the lions of the world.
All this to implore every student to get involved in any way, by adding your name to the ballot, or getting informed and casting your vote. As Plato said to the students at his Academy, “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by inferiors.” Congratulations to the students who were voted in for taking up the mantle of responsibility. Guide us well.
-Nik Ovstaas, contributing writer
In 2025, colleges have taken double the impact from federal cuts and provincial deficits, seeing course offerings reduced and programs serving vulnerable learners directly threatened. In BC, campus mental-health services, disability supports, and accessibility programs now hinge on decisions made by institutional boards navigating a record $11.6-billion provincial deficit. This year, we spoke with two ministers to get their thoughts on the situation.
During an interview with Nexus at a September campus visit, minister of post-secondary and future skills Jessie Sunner acknowledged that “these are all things that are very important, not just at Camosun—across institutions, across the province,” while deflecting responsibility to post-secondary institution boards.
In October, federal minister of jobs and families Patty Hajdu spoke to Nexus and outlined expanded support—interest-free student loans, the Work Integrated Learning Program, and the proposed Lifelong Learning Benefit—while defending caps on international students. Ironically, the loss of international student tuitions is directly impacting said supports for all students.
Both ministers acknowledged the paradigm shift of higher education that students were experiencing in 2025: established student support systems are evolving into increasing expectations for student independence while they also become subjected to financial cuts to institutional support. Both ministers were aware of student challenges while making clear that maximizing sustainable solutions requires all of us to step up to this strange and still unfolding new reality for work and education.
As Canada builds independence, students must also work to embrace theirs.
-Simon Swanek, contributing writer
Post-secondary institutions across Canada dealt with enormous financial fallout from the federal government’s cap on international student study permits this year. And while it still feels like a bit of an elephant in the room, the resulting chaos in post-secondary boardrooms spells it out very loud and clear: international students were keeping the province’s post-secondary institutions in a financially stable position with their tuition fees. Those fees aren’t held to an annual cap like domestic students’ fees are, and, in an entirely related and unsurprising turn of events, Camosun recently announced that its budget, halfway through the current fiscal year, features a deficit $2.2 million higher than originally anticipated.
But it’s okay, the federal government has placed further restrictions on international permits (see page 3), and the province has yet to step in with any significant assistance (and during an interview with Nexus earlier this year, federal minister of jobs and families Patty Hadju was very blunt in saying that “in terms of reversing that [initial] decision [about international study permits], no, that’s not going to happen.”), leaving institutions like Camosun to mutter out through clenched teeth rote messages of cautious optimism that just slide over everyone’s glazed eyes amidst this new-normal dumpster fire, viscosity as low as on-campus spirits, with staff quietly disappearing and student services vanishing in midnight moves—so much of what we knew from just a few years ago now outlined in chalk.
This upcoming year will be a tipping point, and the glass-half-full messaging from institutions will either come to fruition or the holes will appear like in so many dollar-store prankster cups, with—you guessed it—students drowning in the deficit.
-Greg Pratt, managing editor
For drivers, parking is an essential campus amenity. When you’re in a hurry, finding a space can lead to tension, anxiety, and impatience; when you, fortunately, get one and can now continue your day, everything comes to ease. Parking is a journey of its own, and parking at Camosun’s Interurban campus has definitely been challenging for campus community members this year. The parking lot is always busy, with rows of parked vehicles sometimes spilling out of parking stalls.
Parking at the campus is not solely a problem for students—it’s also difficult for staff and visitors, where they either get a spot but arrive late to class or find parking far from campus. It alters their routine to the point where it becomes a source of worry and concern. Some people have come up with their own solutions, like getting to school early to help with finding a parking spot, parking off campus, carpooling, or using public transit.
Interurban’s parking issues continue to persist without a solution in sight, with factors such as construction and a growing student population challenging the ability to arrive to class on time. Articles published in Nexus discussed this matter earlier in 2025, and, unfortunately, there haven’t been any extraordinary changes; it seems only as if the issue got bigger and bigger each day.
Parking is important for the student experience, and now we can just hope that future changes help parking become more viable for members of the Camosun community in years to come.
-Marian Restrepo Galindo, contributing writer
In late 2024, Greater Victoria’s music scene felt the loss of one of its most renowned community spaces: The Victoria Event Centre (VEC).
With more than 20 years of service under its belt, the VEC was a staple amongst musicians, comedians, drag performers, and more. It served as a venue for local artists and a safe space for anyone who needed it. For many, it was a home away from home.
The sudden closure of VEC, due in part to a 40-percent rent increase, left a noticeable gap in the city’s arts and music scene—a gap which Al Smith and Christina Morrison were more than happy to fill.
Earlier this year, Smith and Morrison opened The Coda, a new venue and a spiritual successor to VEC, located in Hermann’s Upstairs.
With strong ties to Hermann’s Jazz Club, Smith and Morrison’s decision to create something in the same space that was both distinct and complementary was, well, no decision at all.
As more and more venues lose their place in the shadow of a changing city, it’s important to welcome new additions when they come along. Not only that, but it’s important to sustain them. It’s important to show up.
The opening of The Coda served as a beacon of hope for Victoria’s live music scene. As we enter into the new year, we can only hope that more continue to follow in its footsteps, further showcasing the resilience of art, personal expression, and community.
-Ashley Hagel, contributing writer