The Eyeopener: Volume 54, Issue 5

Volume 54 - Issue 5 November 11, 2020 theeyeopener.com @theeyeopener Since 1967

CLASS OF COVID-19

COVER: JES MASON/JIMMY KWAN

PHOTO / ILLUSTRATION: JES MASON

Will this year’s first-generation students ever cross the stage?

2

ARTS & CULTURE

Students rally for distinguished Black RTA professor after Ryerson fails to renew her contract Filmmaker Christene Browne on her experiences navigating RTA as a Black educator and lack of representation in institutions

By Manuela Vega Growing up in Regent Park in the 1980s, Christene Browne and other young Black filmmakers were committed to telling stories they didn’t see in mainstream media, calling it “cinema of duty.” Since then, Browne has allowed herself to create more personal and experimental pieces, but says her work maintains an underpinning of race and racial injustice. “It’s part of my soul,” she says.

With the release of Another Planet in 1999, Browne became the first Black woman to direct a feature film in Canada. She’s written three novels, received international praise for her films and continues to sell her five-part documentary series Speaking in Tongues: the History of Language, which features some of the world’s top linguists, including Noam Chomsky.

In 2016, Browne began teaching RTA media production courses—namely documentary production and a thesis class, known as a practicum. In the practicum course, students work in groups to produce projects that meet professional media standards.

When fourth-year media production student Keemya Parsa met Browne, Parsa felt that “RTA found a gem.”

“The way she would instruct and the things that she believes in—because a lot of her work goes around diversity, inclusion, social issues—[inspired people],” said Parsa. “A lot of people who [relate to] marginalized experiences…were drawn to her.”

As a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3904, Unit 1 and a contract faculty member for the past four years, Browne reapplied to teach the practicum course each year. But in June, when Browne tried to reapply, she realized the job application was no longer available to CUPE members.

Wondering why that was happening, Browne reached out to the RTA School of Media.

“I said, ‘Look, I would really like to continue with my students,’” Browne said. And I brought up the issue of the types of projects that…I was advising, and the students who wanted me to be there.”

Browne said the chair, Kathleen Pirrie Adams, responded with an email that said priority was always given to full-time faculty, that nobody promised her she would be teaching practicum and project development and practicum aren’t related courses. The email did not address the nature of students’ projects or their concerns, Browne said.

Ryerson Faculty Association (RFA) members have first access to available

COURTESY CHRISTENE BROWNE

courses, Ryerson said in an email to The Eyeopener. The school added: “courses that are not assigned to RFA members then become available for CUPE Unit 1 Contract Lecturers.”

Browne wondered who would continue with the groups, saying RTA doesn’t “have that much representation in the faculty” to instruct students pursuing these kinds of projects.

Previously, she taught the project development course that precedes practicum each winter. There, she worked with a hand-picked selection of student projects to help them plan and manage, additionally providing guidance at these projects went into production.

All six projects Browne chose centre around the experiences of people from marginalized groups, such as racialized, Indigenous and queer communities, according to Browne and students who spoke with The Eye.

“I’ve seen so much hypocrisy—faculty just saying pretty words while doing nothing”

agreed. He explained why Browne is “instrumental” in an email to Pirrie Adams, RTA director Rick Grunberg and Faculty of Communication and Design (FCAD) dean Charles Falzon.

Yang felt other instructors wouldn’t care about his project and “wouldn’t be educated enough” to help him create the short film “with the nuance that it needed.”

Additionally, when he pitched his project last year, Browne was the only advisor who wanted to take it on, said Yang.

“I felt like…white professors didn’t want to look at [my story] because they were like, ‘This is too hard, this is too intense,’” said Yang. “Christene was the only one that took a chance on me and was like, ‘No, you should make this. Because this is truthful.’”

The news about Browne arrived as the world reckoned with antiBlack racism and advocates everywhere pushed for racial justice.

Just days before, Falzon sent a mass email about FCAD’s commitment to adiversity and solidarity with the Black community.

“I just thought it was so much hypocrisy,” he said. “I’ve seen so much hypocrisy—faculty just saying pretty words while doing nothing.”

Past practicum projects at Ryerson have rarely told the stories of racialized people; racialized characters have often been given “subordinate roles,” said Browne. As more racialized students pitch their own stories, Browne sees it as her role to help them make their projects a reality.

“Part of being a person of colour in North America is that you’re invisible, you’re ignored, so when you see yourself reflected on the small and large screen, you feel like you exist,” said Browne. “It’s a validation of you as a person and you as your story.”

Browne’s student Sam Yang—who is working on a short film that deals with race, sexuality and gender—

“POC will never get hired” This isn’t the first time Browne has felt RTA has ignored her credentials. She said she’s applied for at least three full-time positions, two of which were tenure track positions, and has never even received an interview, despite her credentials lining up perfectly or exceeding that of the job. Browne said she has raised her concerns to RTA in letters.

“It’s like I’m invisible,” said Browne.

“That’s how Black women are treated in institutions, so it’s no surprise.”

In one case, CUPE launched an investigation that found Ryerson did indeed fail to hire Browne when she should have been approached to

teach an RTA course, said Browne.

There was an emergency posting for a documentary production course, which Browne had taught before, but Ryerson did not approach her to teach it, she said. According to Browne, the move goes against the union’s collective agreement with Ryerson which states that wherever possible, a contract lecturer “with the requisite qualifications who does not have a Full Sessional Appointment” should be approached first to fill an emergency posting.”

The result of the investigation means Ryerson must compensate Browne and give her seniority points as if she had taught the course, Browne explained.

Ryerson did not provide comment in response to Browne’s situation, citing confidentiality around human resource issues in an emailed statement.

CUPE also did not provide comment, citing confidentiality issues.

Browne added that she’s had similar issues applying to teach image arts courses. Hiring managers cited seniority as why Browne wasn’t hired.

“I believe if the hiring departments keep falling back on this reason, people of colour will never get hired since the people who have been there the longest and have the most seniority are mainly white folks,” said Browne.

Browne said she has applied for a tenure track position which, unlike CUPE positions, offers job security and better pay. “I believe I should get paid what I’m worth,” she said.

During a discussion about the lack of race representation in FCAD, dean Charles Falzon suggested to Browne that the solution would be, what he called, an FCAD-wide “token course”—only open to Black students, said Browne.

Browne added that at a later date, Falzon told her she could apply to teach it, but didn’t explain the content of the course or who would

develop it. She said she found this problematic and insensitive.

While Ryerson didn’t directly discuss this topic specifically, they said the university “is committed to the equitable, intentional and ongoing engagement of diversity within every facet of university life, including continuing to strengthen our efforts to address racism and discrimination of all forms on our campus.”

Similar sentiments from Black staff are well-documented in the 2010 Anti-Racism Taskforce Report and the Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review report (ABRCCR) published in July 2020.

In the ABRCCR, Black staff cited systemic issues like pay disparities, inability to move up the ranks, being passed over for promotions and being on contracts long-term.

Black staff also reported “having their experience and years of service treated differently from their white counterparts” and having criteria for open positions changed on them.

“Christene was the only one that took a chance on me” While the ABRCCR does not provide clear recommendations for how to deal with these issues, the 2010 Anti-Racism at Ryerson Taskforce Report recommended that the university collect data on CUPE sessional instructors; that CUPE experience be considered relevant in the RFA hiring process and that Ryerson consider a formal conversion process for CUPE faculty to transition to tenure-track status.

Ryerson has since begun collecting diversity self-ID on CUPE instructors, which it shares with deans to “diversify the CUPE complement,” Ryerson said in an email.

However, the university noted that while CUPE instructors’ teaching experience is relevant to department hiring committees, job postings will have other criteria—such as an active research program and service obligations—which it says CUPE instructors may not be able to fulfill given “the duties of a contract lecturer are primarily limited to teaching activities.”

“A formal conversation process for CUPE contract instructors that would transition them to tenurestream positions would need to be addressed in collective bargaining,” Ryerson said. “The university could not unilaterally implement such a process.”

3

ARTS & CULTURE & NEWS

RSU lays off five fulltime staff members

COURTESEY CHRISTENE BROWNE ILLUSTRATION: JIMMY KWAN

By Alexandra Holyk COURTESY CHRISTENE BROWNE

Students rally for Browne’s return to teaching Throughout his four years at Ryerson, Yang said faculty have largely ignored the concerns of students, which made him feel it was crucial that others joined in demanding Browne’s return.

He found success after creating a group chat with all 32 of Browne’s project development students.

Among those who spoke out to bring Browne back were Desirée Green and Keemya Parsa. The two students are in a group producing a web series about a Black biracial teenager who’s struggling to feel “authentically Black,” said Green, who pitched the project.

They said they gave Ryerson an ultimatum: rehire Browne or their group would drop practicum.

“As a Black woman, telling a Black story, dealing with racial issues, Christene has not only been a knowledgeable advisor from a production level…but also a mentor who can relate directly to the material,” Green wrote.

Green said Browne is the first Black or racialized instructor that she’s ever had, from primary to post-secondary education. Having a mentor to look up to was a new feeling, she said.

She added that someone who can’t relate to the community shouldn’t be advising her project when qualified “educators and storytellers” like Browne are available. “[RTA] mirrors the industry with the amount of boundaries, gatekeepers and the lack of BIPOC within the staff and student body.”

“I am frustrated and exhausted,” Greene’s email read. “I find myself disappointed but not surprised that amid a pandemic and a Black revolution fighting for my right to exist, that I am here emailing my school about systemic racism.”

Parsa said she was “hurt” and “insulted” that RTA kept Browne from applying without warning or explanation to Browne herself or her students.

“We really wanted to put up a fight,” said Parsa. “Christene was a really integral part of our group.

We really wanted her in our team, at the end of our credits, we wanted her there. And we felt like with her expertise in the field she works in, she honestly is the perfect fit.”

The group decided they would rather work together outside of class to complete the project than work with an advisor they “didn’t connect with,” said Parsa.

Students said RTA didn’t give them a direct answer about Browne.

However, Yang said he continued to correspond with Pirrie Adams, who was interested in speaking with Yang and his crew via Zoom about their project, as well as equity, inclusion and RTA hiring practices.

“Christene was a really integral part of our group” Yang said many students ended up discussing racism within the program with Pirrie Adams; a representative of Falzon, Catherine Dowling and a tech lead, who Yang asked to record the call.

In August, about a month and a half after students began advocating for her, Ryerson allowed Browne to continue advising practicum.

When asked whether Ryerson apologized and if an explanation was given to her, Browne said she was given none. She said Ryerson simply asked in an email if she wanted to continue teaching the course and sent her a contract. “I asked, of course, why did they change it so that CUPE members could no longer apply?” said Browne. “I wasn’t given any explanation.”

In an emailed statement to The Eye, Ryerson did not answer directly why the position became avail-

able to CUPE members when it was initially closed. The university said CUPE Local 3904, Unit 1 Contract Lecturers are hired in accordance with Article 13 and 14 of the union’s collective agreement.

Section 1(a) of Article 13 states that “Decisions as to what teaching functions may be available for discharge by Contract Lecturers and all actions incidental to the process of reaching such decisions shall be within the University’s discretionary authority.”

Browne said the situation felt unnecessary. “Why didn’t they recognize the fact that they actually do need some kind of representation on the faculty?”

According to Browne, there have been recent changes and the project development course is now available for CUPE members. However, Browne said doesn’t know if she’ll be able to apply for practicum next fall.

“I speak up and use my voice because I really enjoy teaching and I believe wholeheartedly in equity and inclusion,” said Browne. “I also believe that students of colour deserve to see themselves reflect in the faculty.”

With or without Ryerson, Browne will be busy with her art.

Browne is writing a libretto—the story of an opera and the words sung by performers—called Inertia, with the guidance of the dramaturg in residence of the Candian Opera Company and Montreal-based Musique 3 Femmes.

The story is “a meditation on inertia, isolation, death, dying and love,” and was inspired by Browne’s former neighbour, a Jamaican lady who lived 92 years alone, said Browne.

In November, Browne’s film Farewell Regent—a “love letter” to Regent Park, which explores the “perils of gentrification”—will have its Canadian broadcast premiere on Hollywood Suites as part of Reelworld Film Festival’s 20th anniversary.

The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) has officially laid off five of its former full-time staff members after temporarily laying them off due to reduced workloads during the pandemic, according to an email obtained by The Eyeopener.

This comes after a motion to extend the temporary layoff recall period put forward at the Sept. 16 RSU Board of Directors’ (BoD) meeting was tabled until January 2021. It is not clear if the board was part of the decision-making process to determine whether the five people would be rehired.

In the months of May and June, the RSU temporarily laid off its events coordinator, CopyRITE printing service manager, Good Food Centre coordinator, campus groups coordinator and the graphic designer coordinator. Campus groups coordinator Dawn Murray and graphic designer coordinator Vanessa Lee were reinstated parttime in July with reduced hours.

In June, RSU president Ali Yousaf told The Eye in an email that the RSU’s staff was reduced due to concerns about low enrolment numbers and lack of work.

However, Ryerson’s Board of Governors confirmed during a June meeting that student enrolment remained relatively the same for the 2020-21 year.

In an email obtained by The Eye, Yousaf explained that the collective agreement between the RSU and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 1281 includes a four-month period during which those who are temporarily laid off still have access to their benefits, including health and dental insurance. Since the four-month period is up for the individuals, they are no longer employed by the RSU and have lost their benefits.

“The RSU is run by students— not the employees’ union, which has its own interests and agenda: including financing itself from the dues it receives when full-time employees are paid,” the email reads.

“The RSU cannot use students’ fees to pay for services that are not

being utilized. The RSU exists to provide services to students using their fees responsibly. It does not exist solely to pay salaries,” Yousaf continued in the email.

The email also states that the five employees were notified of their termination.

In July, CUPE 1281 released an open letter addressed to the RSU calling on them to restore student services and reinstate its employees.

“CUPE 1281 sees these layoffs as very problematic as we recently supported the RSU in their legal battle against Ryerson University, which the RSU won,” the letter read. “Now seeing the RSU cut full-time unionized positions is beyond frustrating.”

CUPE 1281 also started a petition in support of the demands.

In October, the Ryerson Campus Coalition penned an open letter to the RSU, requesting that it reopen the Good Food Centre for the 202021 academic year. The coalition is comprised of the RSU, the Continuing Education Students’ Association of Ryerson (CESAR), CUPE Local 3904, CUPE Local 1281 and the Ryerson Faculty Association.

“Some of our organizations have made our positions known regarding the labour dispute, but the purpose of this letter is to focus specifically on the necessity of the Good Food Centre in building a campus that values food security, poverty reduction and antistigma for students and workers accessing food banks on post-secondary campuses,” the letter read.

When the letter was addressed at the Oct. 22 BoD meeting, Yousaf said “We do not represent CESAR. We do not represent CUPE. We represent the Ryerson students.”

Yousaf previously told The Eye that “each of the five positions will be dealt with separately on a caseby-case basis.”

“The management team will be looking at the demand for work that each position brings in and incorporate that into the decisionmaking process,” Yousaf added.

The RSU did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

This article will be updated online with the RSU’s response.

4

EDITORIAL

The Classes of 2020 and 2021 deserve a real convocation

By Catherine Abes

from Eric McCormack (a Ryerson grad of Will and Grace fame), and even a special pre-recorded message from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I know that this isn’t exactly what you had in mind when you thought of graduation day,” Trudeau said, with his perfectly coiffed hair never budging and his tie needing a tiny adjustment, but no, the graduates of 2020 are more urgent than that. “No kidding,” I said, lying on the couch in shorts and an old t-shirt, grateful that he couldn’t see me in realPHOTO: JIMMY KWAN time given the unflattering angle he Last June, I graduated several times. would get from below my chin.

The Ryerson School of Journalism uploaded a video congratulating my “My convocation is about cohort and I on our achievement.

Thanks to my last name being at [my parents] success as the beginning of the alphabet, I much as my own” only had to wait one minute and forty-one seconds for it to come up on the screen.

I could graduate every day if I The Faculty of Communication wanted to. The videos are all availand Design held a Virtual Grad— able on YouTube. But it won’t feel a webpage with a message from real until I cross the convocation the Dean and a slideshow with the stage in person. As to when that will names of every graduate, separated happen, though, I’m not sure. by faculty. Ryerson University also According to Ryerson’s convocacelebrated me in a day of livestream tion website, “fall and spring 2020 events that included custom graduate graduates will be given the opZoom backgrounds, a digital address portunity to cross the convocation

stage. Once plans for 2021 convocation ceremonies are finalized in the coming months, the university will reach out to invite all of our 2020 graduates to participate in the upcoming ceremonies.”

This is the answer I give my parents when they periodically ask me if I know what’s happening with my graduation. I wish I could tell them something more, because my convocation is about their success as much as my own. My parents always hoped that I would be able to get a post-secondary education, saving for it since I was little and supporting me through the process.

And while I was burnt out and bitter by the time I dragged myself across the finish line, my parents could still see my degree for what it was: an immense privilege, a gift and an achievement worth celebrating.

Both my parents remember their convocation ceremonies fondly and wanted the same for me. My mum bought me a red dress (with pockets!) to wear for the day. It came in the mail one week after Ryerson moved the rest of its winter 2020 semester online and still hangs in my closet. My dad, meanwhile, dug out his own degree from Ryerson—

class of 1984—to compare with the one I eventually received in the mail (concluding that my outrageously expensive Ryerson frame was worth the aesthetic).

But convocation is more than the degree and the dress. For many students it’s symbolic of challenging and overcoming the systemic barriers that have made academia overwhelmingly white, male and exclusive to upper income families.

Our cover story this week speaks to first-generation graduates about the significance of convocation for their families. The story addresses the barriers to post-secondary: language barriers, lack of access to resources and information as well as funds and discrimination. Convocation symbolizes the challenges first-gen students overcome and what many immigrant parents dream of: a brighter and easier future for their kids.

Convocation can also be a personal triumph for students who’ve faced injustice in their undergraduate career. Just this year The Eyeopener has reported on Black, Indigenous and People of Colour feeling unsafe on campus and unseen within the curriculum; students with accessibility needs left to advocate for themselves; and the prioritization of “long-term economic health” over the needs of students. Graduating doesn’t just mean passing your classes: it can mean making it out of a system that wasn’t built with you in mind and doesn’t care to see you succeed. And that in itself is worth celebrating as well.

I understand that safety comes first now and that a large gathering will be out of the question for the foreseeable future. Postponing convocation ceremonies was a necessary step in preventing the spread of COVID-19. But Ryerson can’t break its promise to the Class of 2020 and their families and should make the same commitment to the Class of 2021—even if the actual ceremony happens a year down the line.

The university sure as hell makes us work for our degrees, so the least they could do is allow us to celebrate the end of them.

Editor-in-Chief Catherine “Snape Apologist” Abes

General Manager Liane “*Phew*” McLarty

News Alexandra “ThriveRUing” Holyk Heidi “Unbridled Rage” Lee Libaan “Who Knits?” Osman

Advertising Manager Chris “Your Ad Could Be Here” Roberts

“Graduating...can mean making it out of a system that wasn’t built with you in mind and doesn’t care to see you succeed”

Photo Laila “Understands Cath” Amer Jimmy “Sweet But No Brain” Kwan Jes “Murder on Cover” Mason

DATE: December 3, 2020 TIME: Speeches at 6 p.m.

PLACE: Google Hangouts

Available positions

Arts and culture editor, Fun and Satire editor, Media editor, News editor, Photo editor

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Design Director J.D. “Adios, Shitbag” Mowat

Contributors Nishat “High School Sweet Grades” Chowdhury Online Yasmine “Campus Vibes” Elkhouly Tyler “Every Category” Griffin Thea “Get Your Flu Shot” Gribilas Madi “Voice of the Global Youth” Reedah “Tracking COVID” Hayder Wong Aisha “Big Smoke” Jaffar Julia “Batman x Joker <3” Mlodzik Features Lester “iPhone Photography is Dhriti “No One Opens the Door” Actually Pretty Dope” Pinlac Gupta Ranaa “Healthy Horns?” Akram Lorenza “Real SLC Hourz” De Arts and Culture Benedictis Rhea “ 4 A Native New Yorker” Singh Peyton “Pads and Tampons and Cameras, Oh My!” Mott Sports Leila “Pecs On Point” Kazeminejad Will “Fingerlickin’ Good” Baldwin Serena “100 Dhriti DMs” Lopez Vanessa “Knowledgeable” Quon Biz and Tech Donald “47 Outlets at Once” Higney Aaliyah “Cover Story<3” Dasoo Ben “We Both Messed Up” Okazawa Justin “Copy Edit” Walters Communities Manuela “I Ain’t Never Seen” Vega Kiernan “Happy Birthday Keirnan!” Kayla “Two Pretty Best Friends” Zhu Green Arianna “Wendy Williams Is Lips” Kyriacou Fun and Satire Charlize “Don’t Tell” Alcaraz Zach “Gaping Ass Wound” Roman Naomi “Dibs” Chen Mariam “Full Hands” Nouser Media Prapti “Ace Attorney” Bamaniya Connor “Clean Shaven” Thomas Tamunoibifiri “Fireside Chat” Parnika “Banned From Tinder” Raj Fombo Anita “Great Job” Pogorzelska Web Developer Desiree “Top Consultant” Green Farhan “You Guys Kill People?” Sami Nicole “Golden Voice” Pryce

5

NEWS

Convocation is more than a milestone for first-gen students For first-generation students and their families, graduation often serves as a moment to celebrate intergenerational achievements together

By Aaliyah Dasoo

ILLUSTRATION: JIMMY KWAN

I

n September 2019, Tanzina Nowshin started documenting her fourth year of mechanical engineering through video—a cute and sentimental way to remember her final year of university.

When March rolled around and campus shut down, she thought the pandemic would only last about two weeks. It wasn’t until she saw COVID-19 cases rise in Toronto that she realized her graduation ceremony would be postponed.

Instead of attending her graduation, Nowshin had her degree mailed to her and was invited to a tentative fall 2020 convocation ceremony.

After postponing spring 2020 convocation ceremonies in March due to public health concerns, Ryerson also postponed fall 2020 ceremonies.

The university will be holding a virtual ceremony on Nov. 17 for fall 2020 graduates, similar to the one held this past spring.

In an interview with The Eyeopener, Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi said “it was very difficult to postpone convocations,” but ultimately it was “the right thing to do” due to safety concerns and rising COVID-19 cases.

But for Nowshin’s family, convocation is a “big deal,” as she is a first-generation student—meaning she is the first person to obtain a post-secondary degree or certificate in her immediate family.

According to Daun-Barnett, challenges like navigating finances and racial or ethnic identity are more common with first-generation students, making the completion of the degree more significant.

“First-gen intersects with other identities as well,” said Daun-Barnett, who specializes in college access, financial aid policy and college transition. “Often, first-gen students come from families with more modest means. If you have fewer economic privileges, it may be challenging because you might have to work while you’re in school.”

He said it is important to acknowledge the identity of a firstgen student also intersects with class, race and gender.

“Looking back, it makes sense now,” Daun-Barnett continued.

“There are things that [our] parents may not have known earlier in our educational career, that would’ve had an effect on our success in college.”

He said convocation gives parents this sense of pride that their child has accomplished something they have never done.

“Parents don’t fully appreciate the magnitude of the experience until you get to that celebration—it’s abstract to them,” adding that parents have been told attending university is important as it may bring their child better opportunities.

“But the celebration gives them a window of insight into the experience of their [child] that they may not normally get.”

“When you come together and you see all of these people celebrating, you see faculty on stage in their ceremonial garb…there is a gravity and a weight to that,” Daun-Barnett added. “[Graduation] is a really important accomplishment, that is worthy Daun-Barnett said one challenge of celebration.” that’s specific to first-generation students is access to education reor Siobhan Liu and her sources and information because family, the end of the last parents are often not familiar with school year was “strange.” the college choice process.

Liu, a 2020 science and chemistry “First-generation students often graduate, wasn’t the only person won’t realize that their experience in her family to finish school last in K-12 education may have been spring. Both her younger brother different than the students they’re and sister had their college and surrounded by,” he said. high school graduation ceremonies Using himself as an example, cancelled, too.

Daun-Barnett explained that as a first-generation student, he planned “The moment’s passed to attend an engineering program in and the feeling is lost” college, but his parents didn’t know they had to get him on an “advanced math track,” which he would’ve Since her parents found out about started in middle school. her siblings’ cancelled ceremonies While he started college having before hers, Liu said they weren’t only taken pre-calculus, all of his surprised, however, they were still peers had already taken calculus. “If “disappointed” and “upset.” that’s the case, and you grade on a “It’s like a [lost] sense of pride... curve, then I’m always going to be at They sacrificed a lot to come here, the low end of the curve. I couldn’t so they kind of expect their chilfigure out why I was doing so poorly dren to be more successful than compared to other students,” he said. they are,” said Liu.

“The celebration gives parents a window of insight into the experience of their child that they may not normally get” Nowshin’s parents immigrated to Canada from Bangladesh just three years before she was born. Like many immigrant families, they were looking forward to her graduation for the many years leading up to it.

She said the cancelled ceremony meant missing out on an opportunity to show her appreciation for her parents. “[I wanted to] show them that I’m thanking them for this,” she said.

“This is my thank you for everything that they’ve supported me in.”

“It’s not the same feeling, opening up a letter and being like, ‘ah, here is the diploma’ versus being in a cap and gown and then being able to take pictures with [friends and family],” said Nowshin.

Nathan Daun-Barnett, an associate professor and the chair of the department of educational leadership and policy at the University of Buffalo, said there are a few conditions that can contribute to graduation being such a culminating event.

F

the stage and actually shake hands with president Lachemi,” said Liu. Despite the cancellation of convocation, Nowshin did get to celebrate thanks to her extended family, who threw her and her parents a surprise graduation get-together—following public health protocols—over the summer.

“I cried throughout the whole thing,” Nowshin said. “I realized how much this graduation meant when I saw my dad because within five minutes of him realizing what was happening, he started crying, and I’ve never seen him cry like that.”

Nowshin said she feels really lucky to have received that sort of closure from her family. As for attending a potential in-person ceremony in Daun-Barnett said firstborn chil- the future, she said she feels “indifdren who are also first-generation ferent,” as the “moment’s passed and students can feel a certain level of the feeling is lost.” responsibility to figure things out on their own and set a good example for “They expect their their younger siblings behind them, because of the sacrifices their parents children to be more have made to give them the opportusucessful than they are” nity of post-secondary education.

Liu’s parents came to Canada as refugees from China “to start a better Liu also expressed disinterest in life” and weren’t able to attain much attending an in-person ceremony. formal schooling growing up.

Having worked in the convocation Her father dropped out of elemen- office herself as a ceremonials assistary school, and her mother didn’t tant, Liu said holding ceremonies for get to complete high school, so when that many graduating classes would she began university “it was more be a “logistical nightmare.” excitement than anything.”

According to the convocation Fanya Wu, a doctoral student of website, all spring and fall 2020 Daun-Barnett, is researching the graduates will “be given the opcollege choices of immigrant and portunity to cross the convocation international students. Wu ex- stage” and the university will invite plained that another reason gradu- all 2020 graduates to participate in ation is a big deal for the whole upcoming ceremonies. family is that many first-generation The university also plans on students have parents who are sending out “graduation boxes” non-native English speakers. to 2020 graduates. The box is ex“They [are helping] their fam- pected to include a blue graduaily navigate this new land,” said Wu. tion cap, 2020 tassel and an alumni “Graduation is not only to help them- welcome package. selves accumulate capital, it’s for their Lachemi said it’s too soon to say whole family to live a better life.” whether or not spring 2021 convoLiu said her parents always had cation would be held in-person or expectations that she would go to what it will look like, but as soon as university and that her younger sib- a decision is made on spring 2021 lings would follow her path. ceremonies, it will be shared with the “This is what they’ve been kind Ryerson community. of planning for since they moved Nowshin was looking forward here,” said Liu. “They always wanted to receiving her iron ring—a rite us to get a better education, so we of passage for engineering students would have a better life.” entering the workforce to remind Without a graduation ceremony, them to work ethically and responLiu didn’t get the chance to cel- sibly. She said her mother often asks ebrate with her family. She didn’t if it’s come in the mail yet, but she’s attend the virtual spring ceremony had to tell her no every time. Nowbut rather joined a small Zoom call shin and her classmates plan on atwith some of her professors and tending the ring ceremony, if not peers, many of whom were also convocation, depending on which grieving the cancellation of their events end up taking place. final thesis presentations.

“If I’m already full into the work“We were just watching videos and force and it’s over a year later, I don’t highlight reels of the past four years know how motivated I will feel,’’ and things like that. So [the depart- said Nowshin. “It will really depend ment] did something but you know, on my parents as well. It’s a once in it’s not the same as being able to cross a lifetime event.”

THROUGH IVORY-TINTED GLASSES How academia’s Western stamp of approval alienates BIPOC students and does a disservice to social work WORDS BY VANESSA QUON ILLUSTRATIONS BY LAILA AMER CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses topics of racism, ing. Further, when non-Western content is taught, it’s usually violence, Islamophobia, colonial violence and generational trauma. presented in comparison to Eurocentric ideas. This can leave There are mentions of abuse, residential schools and suicide. social work students unprepared to work in their upper-year placements and future workplaces since they lack the cultural awareness necessary to aditting in a 10 Dundas East Cineplex equately combat white saviourism: a theatre, Juliet Chapman watched harmful narrative that is historically as a row and a half of her fellow and continually perpetuated in the social work students walked out of her social work field. first-year politics class.

Lynn Lavallée, a Ryerson social The professor had brought up work professor and the strategic Ryerson’s namesake, Egerton lead of Indigenous resurgence in Ryerson, while giving a lecture the Faculty of Community Serabout the colonization of vices, says that even the mandaIndigenous Peoples in Canada. tory Indigenous-focused classes in Ryerson played an integral role the social work program don’t do in the creation of the residential the best job of teaching Indigenous school system in Canada, advocating ways of knowing. for Indigenous children to be educated The social work program is accredseparately from white children at boarding ited by the Canadian Association of schools. These schools ordered for the violent Social Work Educators, which reremoval of thousands of Indigenous children from their quires mandatory Indigenous-focused courses for accreditafamilies and communities in forcible attempts to assimilate tion. Lavallée says the Indigenous teachings are factual, citing them into colonial Euro-Canadian culture. content about the residential school system and the incarceraMany children experienced psychological, spiritual, physical tion and institutionalization of Indigenous peoples. However, and sexual abuse at the hands of “caregivers” at these schools. the courses typically focus on negative narratives and fail to The long-term impact has left many residential school sur- teach the amazing things that Indigenous people are doing tovivors facing heightened feelings of anger, anxiety, low self- day and have done in the past. esteem, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and high She notes that many Indigenous teachings in the program rates of suicide, and more. are designed to be taught to non-Indigenous students in parWhile giving background on Ryerson, the professor in- ticular. “We don’t design it for Indigenous people,” she says. ferred that even though Ryerson did terrible things, the “good “A lot of times, that content does more harm to Indigenous things” he did shouldn’t be dismissed. people who are in the classroom.”

While the professor spoke about Ryerson and residential Indigenous and other non-Western ways of knowing are schools, an Indigenous student sitting in the front row raised her rarely valued or respected on their own terms, but only gain hand. She started to describe the negative impacts of the resi- value in relation to Western knowledge, according to a 2019 dential school system on Indigenous Peoples, but the professor’s article in the journal Teaching in Higher Education. When tone was dismissive in their response, trying to keep the con- Western individuals bring non-Eurocentric ways of knowing versation focused on politics. Chapman could tell some students into Western spaces, they tend to seek approval for their genwere upset—faces were angry and she overheard some students erosity, according to the article. saying things like, “I can’t believe he said that” and “that was so inappropriate of him to say.”

The Indigenous student was the first to walk out. Other students in the class followed suit. The professor, without addressing the students who walked out, called for a break. About half the students were missing when class resumed. ringing Indigenous ways of knowing into academic Chapman, now in her fourth year of the social work prospaces and positioning them as equal to other knowlgram, says she thinks the professor articulated his point in the edge has been a goal for Lavallée throughout her wrong way and sees how what he said was harmful. “You can’t academic career. really say that if somebody does something good, it makes up Lavallée, an Anishinaabek Qwe registered for the 50 wrong things that they’ve done,” she says. “Especial- with the Métis Nation of Ontario, began ly if one of those things...has damaged an entire community.” working in Ryerson’s social work For some students at Ryerson, learning course content sole- program in 2005. She remembers ly through a Eurocentric lens is a reality. Western ideas are not having much control over what often presented as the only legitimate way of knowing, which she taught. A lot of the Indigenous in turn dismisses contributions from Black, Indigenous and content was already planned, people of colour (BIPOC) in academia. leaving her with little room to The content and resources that make their way into curric- modify the teachings. ulums have often been founded in Eurocentric thought with a So when she got a free class history that dates back to colonization, according to a Univer- due to an unplanned extra week in sity of New Brunswick study from 2019. These Eurocentric the term, she decided to teach her ideas are often given an academic “stamp of approval” and left students about the North American unquestioned by faculty when taught to students in classroom Indigenous Games—a multi-sport discussions and assigned readings. event involving Indigenous North Ryerson’s social work program has made efforts to combat American athletes that have run irregularly the centring Western knowledge in its classrooms, such as since 1990. Lavallée decided to teach her students making Indigenous-focused classes mandatory and confront- about them because she has a kinesiology degree and is ing Eurocentric ideas in class content with discussions. How- involved in Indigenous sport grassroots across Canada. ever, some racialized students in the program say they do not She says when people think about Indigenous studies, receive sufficient education in non-Western ways of know- they’re usually thinking about the Indian Act, legislation and

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supreme court rulings. But for a program such as social work, she says students should be learning about Indigenous identity in the present tense. “If you’re going to work with Indigenous people, you have to understand who they are, because colonization directly attacked our identity and it still is,” she says.

“We’re still being erased.”

At the beginning of the school year in 2017, Lavallée left Ryerson to teach at the University of Manitoba (U of M) in a new position the university created: vice-provost of Indigenous engagement. She felt hopeful entering the position but ended up resigning after a year and four months due to antiIndigenous racism towards herself and other Indigenous students, faculty and staff.

She told the CBC that instead of being able to develop initiatives to support Indigenous students and fight systemic racism at U of M, “she found herself repeatedly forced to justify to senior administration why Indigenous initiatives are important.”

In response, Janice Ristock, provost and vice-president (academic) of U of M released a statement saying they respect Lavallée’s contributions and that U of M ”remains firm in its commitment to bring about transformations at the institutional level that will facilitate Indigenous achievement.”

Lavallée decided to return to Ryerson soon after, taking on her current role as strategic lead of Indigenous resurgence.

After her experiences in Manitoba, she knew her efforts to bring Indigenous ways of knowing into the classroom had to be strategic. At Ryerson, Lavallée says her ability to teach is still currently limited as she’s more involved in administration, meaning she can only teach one course and doesn’t teach any of the mandatory courses.

Within her role, she focuses on making Ryerson a safer place for Indigenous peoples, rather than educating the entire student body. She explains that reconciliation and Indigenization have fallen largely on the shoulders of Indigenous people, and the initiatives haven’t helped Indigenous students’ progress within academic spaces like Ryerson.

While students in the social work program learn about Indigenous ways of knowing in various courses, the program only has one mandatory course specifically on Indigenous studies in its second year, titled Aboriginal Approaches to Social Work. This is due to what Lavallée calls the “infusion model” of Indigenization that encourages every professor to teach Indigenous content. However, she says not everyone can properly teach that kind of content because they could say things that harm Indigenous learners. She says many Indigenous community members understand that a Western education is usually needed to find success, but Indigenous students a r e often left unsupported.

“We want it to be a place that will do no further harm, but we’re not putting enough effort to support Indigenous people in the academy.”

Lavallée says that Indigenous faculty roles are often questioned and challenged when they try to create spaces to advance Indigenous knowledge, despite Ryerson having a reconciliation plan. She adds that reconciliation includes creating positions that don’t fit normally into the hierarchy of the institution. “You get tired of always fighting,” she says.

Eurocentrism in education is generally based on doubts about the humanity of non-Western people and their ability to think, according to a 2014 article from the University of South Africa. As a first step toward redeeming Indigenous ways of knowing in academia, it says curricula need to rid the notion of objectivity that has stemmed from West-

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features ern philosophy. This idea of objectivity has placed Western ways of knowing as the only kind of knowledge that is capable of being “universal.”

Within the social work program, this can look like BIPOCcentred content being taught as secondary to Eurocentric knowledge, which further legitimizes Eurocentric knowledge as “objective” and the only correct way of knowing.

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t was March 2019 when a mass shooting took place at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people and seriously injuring over 40. The white gunman had broadcast the shooting live. In a social media post before the shooting began, an account believed to be linked to the gunman posted a link to an 87-page manifesto filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim ideas, according to CNN. A few days later, Ameena Huda, a fourth-year social work student, and her friend, both Muslim, were walking to one of their second-year social work classes at the International Living & Learning Centre. Huda, anxious to see if somebody would bring the event up in class, asked her friend whether she thought it would be mentioned. Given that this shooting was all over the news, she assumed it would be discussed.

At the beginning of every lecture, the professor would ask if anyone had any current events or news-related topics they wanted to discuss. Huda says that they never talked about issues in the Muslim community in that class. She hoped that the class or the professor would have something to say about the shooting on their own accord, rather than looking to herself and her friend, who were visibly Muslim. “Just because it happened to our community doesn’t mean that we’re the only people it affects or that need to stand up for it,” she says.

After listening to the professor and the other students talk about different current events, Huda felt both nervous and hurt. It wasn’t brought up. She felt that people didn’t care about the Muslim community and questioned if people would care if something like that happened to her. But she didn’t hold it against anyone in the class. She was used to the Muslim community not being brought up in discussions, not only in this class but in others as well.

Now in her fourth year of the program, Huda says most of her social work classes do take an anti-oppressive approach— the professors make an effort to point out Eurocentric views in any of the readings they assign to students in order for them to get a better understanding of the content without a Westernized focus.

But Huda still feels the range in the content they discuss is limited. She says many of the issues that the Muslim community face aren’t talked about in her courses, and she also doesn’t remember doing any readings on Middle Eastern or South and East Asian backgrounds. This was true even in one of her third-year classes that focused on anti-oppression.

While she enjoys learning about Black and Indigenous perspectives, such as what they did in that class, she wishes she could learn about other cultural and racial groups as well. She says there’s a deeper impact on her learning when hearing about what people with a similar life experience to her are going through. “It definitely hits home a bit differently when it’s about your people.”

Huda adds that the knowledge from her own experiences has helped her with her assignments, such as by using her cultural background in writing her social work essays. Huda wants to work within the Muslim community after graduation and hopes that having that cultural knowledge will help her relate to and better address the issues that people from her own community are experiencing.

The 2019 University of New Brunswick study says research in curriculum planning and lesson implementation suggests that students become more involved in a lesson and face the challenges of learning new concepts if their cultural heritages, social contexts and background experiences are critically taught. If students’ lived experiences are included in the classroom, there’s a possibility

that they can better succeed academically, the study says.

Chapman says she’s learned about the ways that Eurocentric and Western values have been adopted in the social work field. However, the students aren’t necessarily taught how to cater to different cultural needs and how to put those kinds of teachings into practice.

Chapman was born and raised in Guyana and says she’s seen the suffering of the people in that country and how that contrasts with those in Canada. In Guyana, she saw people sleeping on the streets on top of garbage, homes being separated by sheets and those in the queer community being discriminated against and killed. In her experience, there’s been no education on how to approach someone that has experienced that kind of adversity.

She says that as much as they’re told to avoid bulldozing through marginalized communities with white saviourism, the lack of education they receive on properly working with these communities teaches them otherwise.

White saviourism is when white individuals are positioned as the servers and BIPOC communities are positioned as objects of the service, as defined in a 2019 Merrimack College study. Through this complex, white privilege is reproduced while BIPOC communities continue to be oppressed through cultural, institutional and individual forms of racism, according to the study.

A famous example of white saviourism’s influence in the field of Canadian social work can be found in The Sixties Scoop. It refers to a series of policies enacted by provincial child welfare authorities starting in the mid-1950s that saw thousands of Indigenous children taken from their homes and families, which were often stable and loving but deemed “insufficient” by white middle-class social workers, and placed in foster homes and adopted out to white families across Canada and the United States, according to CBC. The practice continued into the 1980s. These children lost their names, languages and a connection to their heritage.

Like the residential school system, the Sixties Scoop was part of a broader plan to assimilate Indigenous people into Western colonial culture, and caused immense damage and intergenerational trauma.

The social work field is a site of whiteness and privilege, says Elizabeth Beck, a white social work educator at Georgia State University, in an interview with Social Work Helper. She says that rather than seeing marginalized communities as experts, social workers instead reproduce positivism—a theory that knowledge can be scientifically verified or is capable of logical proof—and gatekeeping. She says she hopes to provide students with the ability to deconstruct knowledge, rather than just accept the knowledge derived from white methods and ways of knowing.

Chapman notes that most social work students don’t really get to learn about other approaches from BIPOC unless they’re taking a specific class about it, which she says can be hard for some to do on top of mandatory classes and other electives. She says BIPOC-focused courses weren’t electives that easily worked into her schedule. She usually takes 5 to 6 courses per semester and used to volunteer in her community in Durham, making it harder for her to be in Toronto to attend the classes.

When Chapman has been taught BIPOC-centred content in the social work classes she’s taken, it’s been in comparison to Western ways of knowing. This has looked like professors not only discussing how Eurocentric values have negatively impacted racialized communities, but also the ways in which they “benefited” them.

Sheila Sampath, activist, creative professional and professor in the digital communications program at Humber College, says BIPOC knowledge is often taught as alternative ways

of knowing, reinforcing that Westernized knowledge is the default. She adds that it can be helpful for students who first need that framework in order to learn from it, but in other instances, it can come from a racist standpoint if a professor teaches it as, “this is the way the world works, but some people believe this other thing.”

For Sampath, BIPOC-focused teaching isn’t about bringing academic institutions into marginalized communities, but rather honouring the knowledge that’s already held in those groups and using academic institutions as a way of formalizing and validating that expertise.

Sampath teaches classes in design and sees the classroom as a collaborative conversation. What this looks like for her is using academic spaces as a place to exchange and recognize that BIPOC knowledge is worthy of study and that BIPOC can already be experts without a Western stamp of approval.

While she’s given an established course description, she creates the content and chooses how she implements it. In her classrooms, BIPOC students would talk about the work being done in their communities and the class would have a conversation about what it means to critique that work through a white gaze. “Effectively what we end up doing sometimes is extracting BIPOC knowledge and then teaching it back to BIPOC communities for a fee,” Sampath says. “That is an extractive and exploitative process.”

She adds that it’s problematic that academia enforces the idea that a professor is an expert. “I go into a classroom thinking that students are also keepers of their own knowledge.” She tries to keep in mind how she can shift from an expert to a facilitator of knowledge exchange between people.

She says this could mean physically setting up the classroom so that there’s not a clear leader. It could also mean having students speak to some of their own lived experiences, validating and connecting them to more formalized theory.

Critical self-reflection can also be a useful decolonizing tool, according to a 2018 article from the journal Teaching in Higher Education, as it asks people to interrogate assumptions about what knowledge is assigned value in Western institutions and to see how that knowledge may be “harbouring injustice and racism.”

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ast semester, Chapman made her way into the Victoria Building for her third-year social work class on decolonization.

Before starting the class, the professor looked at the rows of desks and said the setup didn’t work for her. Her class was about decolonizing, and decolonization had to start in the classroom.

She felt that the typical classroom set up in rows doesn’t make for a welcoming environment for students, especially for those who sit in the back, because it creates a stigma that only the “good” students sit in the front and “bad” students sit in the back. Instead, she wanted to create a space that was equally occupied.

And so the professor, with the help of the students, reorganized the physical space. They moved the desks into a circle with no front or back of the classroom. Both the professor and the students could walk around the room. Chapman says this environment fostered a more inclusive and comfortable space where students could speak freely and teach each other, rather than being afraid to ask questions.

Looking back, Chapman says it helped her better understand the course content as well as be more engaged in the class because she could physically see everyone and therefore more easily interact with them. She says the discussions were very conversational and they never ran into issues with students talking over one another because they did a “popcorn” style discussion, where students could freely add on to other students’ ideas in a respectful way.

“It’s just those little changes that actually matter,” Chapman says.

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COMMUNITIES

Indigenous workforce at greater risk of automation job loss Ryerson research shows Indigenous peoples are disproportionately represented in industries affect by automation

By Naomi Chen Approximately 250,000 jobs held by Indigenous workers—one-third of the Indigenous workforce—are at high risk of automation, according to a July 2020 report by the Ted Rogers School of Management’s Diversity Institute.

The research, in collaboration with the Canadian Council of Aboriginal Business (CCAB), found that Indigenous workers are disproportionately represented in the top five industries at risk for automation.

Those industries include accommodation and food service, retail, construction, transportation and warehousing, and management.

Indigenous workers in these industries make approximately $2.43 bil- ILLUSTRATION: LEILA KAZEMINEJAD lion of wage revenue. brought about by automation, ac“Many small Indigenous busi- cording to the report. Remoteness, nesses...may not be able to intergenerational trauma of residenmake the shift for remote work” tial schools and lack of funding for education on reserves are some of What’s more, Indigenous com- the challenges that make higher edumunities are more susceptible to au- cation more difficult to attain. tomation due to limited opportunity This problem is compounded by as a result of lower levels of educa- a lack of internet access. According tion and a lack of internet access. to a 2016 report by the CCAB, four “It’s a multi-layered challenge”, said in 10 Indigenous businesses don’t Wendy Cukier, founder of the Diver- have a reliable internet connection. sity Institute. “Even for Indigenous This makes it harder for these busiworkers who do live in urban areas, nesses to succeed in a technologytheir level of education and access to driven and connected economy. proper training remain inferior to “The impact of the COVID-19 their non-Indigenous counterparts.” fast-paced digitalization has not The negative impact of colonial- been experienced equally by Caism and intergenerational trauma nadian businesses,” said Andy Avcan make it difficult for Indigenous gerinos, project manager, research communities to access a higher at CCAB. “Many small Indigenous level of education, which the report businesses, and those with emsays is needed to limit the job loss ployees living in remote communi-

ties where internet service is often sparse or unaffordable may not be able to make the shift for remote work,” he said.

Further, just 40 per cent of Indigenous adults have graduated high school and less than half of that population is employed. Without formal education, employment in jobs requiring continued education is difficult. Consequently, many Indigenous workers remain in low-skill jobs.

The majority of jobs held by Indigenous workers also skill transferability. “This is not just a social justice issue; it also has very real implications from an economic development perspective,” said Cukier.

While systems of oppression have made it more difficult for Indigenous workers to gain employment in industries that are less exposed to automation, they are still

a significant part of the economy.

The Indigenous contribution to the Canadian economy is “substantial,” said Cukier. Indigenous workers currently represent four per cent of the labour force in Canada and generate a combined household income of around $30 billion a year.

“This is not just a social justice issue; it also has very real implications from an economic development What’s more, when given the opportunity, Indigenous businesses have been innovative in the market. According to Avgerinos, Indigenous businesses are “twice as likely to introduce a new product or service, and three times as likely to introduce a new business process.”

While the risks presented by automation are critical, there are ways to support the Indigenous labour market.

The report lays out several solutions for policymakers. First, they should conduct a more in-depth analysis of the distribution of Indigenous workers in each industry and their risk of automation. They should also investigate the social impacts of job automation, estimate the cost of retraining workers and calculate the productivity gains from automation.

Different levels of government, the private sector and Indigenous leadership should also work together to bring education reform to communities and ensure Indigenous youth have equal access to educational opportunities as non-Indigenous Canadians.

Further, the CCAB’s Progressive Aboriginal Relations program–the first corporate social responsibilities program for Indigenous peoples in Canada–currently has over 200 companies in a collaboration that educates non-Indigenous companies to work with Indigenous ones more effectively and respectfully.

“Through working with Indigenous corporations, we’ve also learned the importance of putting a social lens on everything we’re doing, and not dichotomizing social justice and entrepreneurship as if they were two different things,” said Cukier.

Going forward, it will be important to recognize and solidify the success of Indigenous workers and businesses as a driving force in the Canadian economy.

Upcoming Positive Space events for Trans Awareness Month

By Kiernan Green Volunteers with Positive Space at Ryerson created eight events for Trans Awareness Month for members and allies of the transgender community to celebrate their vibrancy and resilience. Following their virtual kick-off and two other events last week, here’s the rundown on the remaining events this month: Trans Pandemics: COVID-19, HIV Activism, and Defunding Police with Professor Marty Fink Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 1:00 P.M. Marty Fink, a professional communications professor with a focus on queer and trans studies, is going live to review the activism of trans women during the HIV/ AIDS pandemic and the lessons it can provide for the response to COVID-19. They’ll also connect historical activism for HIV to the ongoing activism for Black Lives Matter during the pandemic.

Trans Day of Remembrance Friday, Nov. 20 at 12:00 P.M. Positive Space is hosting an online space for folks to reflect on the Trans Day of Remembrance. Originally the culminating day of Transgender Awareness Week, Trans Remembrance Day is meant to honour trans-identifying people who have been hurt, killed, or otherwise victimized in attacks against the trans community by individuals and systems of oppression.

ers and creatives, including Laverne Cox, Lilly Wachowski, Yance Ford, Mj Rodriguez, Jamie Clayton, and Chaz Bono, share their reactions and resistance to some of Hollywood’s most beloved moments,” says the movie’s website.

Panel discussion: Trans and non-binary inclusion in the workplace Thursday, Nov. 26 at 12:00 P.M. Join panelists to discuss the personal and systemic barriers faced by “Disclosure” Film Screening and the trans community to full engageConversation with Sam Feder ment in the workplace. Learn how to Tuesday, Nov. 24 at 12:00 P.M. support and take action for the rights Join Sam Feder for a viewing and of your trans peers at Ryerson. discussion of their Sundance and Hot Docs award-winning docu- Positive Space Reading and Conmentary, Disclosure. “Disclosure is an versation: “Small Beauty” by Jiunprecedented, eye-opening look aqing Wilson-Yang at transgender depictions in film Friday, Nov. 27 at 12:00 P.M. and television, revealing how HolJiaqing Wilson-Yang, a sexual lywood simultaneously reflects and violence specialist at Consent Comes manufactures our deepest anxieties First and an advocate against genderabout gender. Leading trans think- based violence, will share a reading

from her book, Small Beauty. The winner of the 29th Annual Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction tells the story of Mei, “a mixed-

race trans woman managing the death of her cousin, the ways she contorts to navigate racism and transphobia, and her desire for community.”

ILLUSTRATION: JIMMY KWAN

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BIZ AND TECH

Students design video game based on city water crisis TO Play highlights how poor urban planning has lead to water privatization, urbanization and environmental racism

By Charlize Alcaraz Ria Kapoor and her team are leading the way to gamifying the water crisis in Toronto.

Kapoor, a fourth-year media production student at Ryerson, is the creative director of TO Play, a firstperson adventure video game where players can explore Toronto like they’ve never seen before.

TO Play “uses interactive storytelling as a platform for advocacy—tackling themes of water privatization, urbanization, environmental racism, and Indigenous water and land values,” according to their website.

The game will guide its players as they navigate Toronto and learn about environmental injustices that have happened in the city. The different themes will be tackled in a geographical pattern as players can click and interact with the different objects and elements in the game, triggering pop-up facts. Dialogue will also play a role in the educational aspect.

However, players will not be taking on the trope of being a “hero” in this game.

“In this day and age, there’s no way we should be scrounging for water” “This game is not about heroism, and you see that in a bunch of traditional games where they are the hero. For us, what we’re really looking for is a sense of agency,” said Qudsiya Jabeen, marketing and research lead.

Kapoor developed the plot for the adventure game with Ryan Spooner, a fourth-year media production student and game designer, as part of their RTA thesis project. Kapoor was inspired by what she’d learned about the Lost Rivers in a geography course she was taking.

The Lost Rivers of Toronto are waterways that were buried as the city was being built and urbanized from the 1800s until today.

She also said that urban exploration is one of her interests and that it sparked her idea of gamifying the city.

“I was seeing that there were marks of the buried rivers everywhere. There were signs, there were artifacts, there were emblems,” said Kapoor. “The elevation is different here and there, it’s all because of the rivers. There’s so much that I didn’t know.”

ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY PERNIA JAMSHED, EDITING BY JES MASON

guided through three levels. In the second level, they’ll be taken underneath Trinity Bellwoods to discover the history behind a waterway that once flowed through it.

“At Trinity Bellwoods, they get to go to the rivers and we’re animating it so it feels like a real place, and it is a real place,” said Kapoor. “And underground, that’s where the player discovers and is exposed to the Indigenous water and land values.”

Jeremy Kai, author of the photo series “Rivers Forgotten,” told Torontoist that not a lot of people know about the history of underground rivers and tunnels in Toronto and how it shaped the city.

“Cities are basically fabricated ecosystems that mimic natural ecosystems, because you can’t change watersheds…To me, it’s interesting how we change the landscape to suit our lifestyle,” said Kai.

Amplifying the water crisis at Six Nations of the Grand River reserve According to Kapoor, the game couldn’t be created without acknowledging and incorporating Indigenous values and teachings.

One of the pillars of TO Play is recognizing the Indigenous communities that have inadequate access to clean water, said Jabeen.

“This is here, this isn’t some far off place that we’re talking about.

It’s in the Six Nations community and they have to travel all the way to Caledon to get water.”

CBC reported that only approximately nine per cent of the residents in the Six Nations of the Offering a virtual exploration Grand River reserve have houseof the Lost Rivers hold access to clean water and that Players of the video game will be many of them don’t have function-

ing water pipes at all.

Environmental racism against Indigenous communities is evident in their lack of access to clean drinking water as the towns surrounding the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, such as Caledonia and Brantford, have fullyfunctioning water systems.

First Nations communities in Canada have the highest concentration of water advisories. Water advisories are put in place when a community’s water systems are contaminated and therefore unsafe to drink.

As reported by the Council of Canadians, as of May 2018, there were over 174 drinking water advisories in over 100 First Nations communities across the country and 73 per cent of First Nations’ water systems are at high or medium risk of contamination.

Dawn Martin-Hill, resident of the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve and Indigenous studies professor at McMaster University, spoke to CBC and said that “it’s everybody’s guess as to why does Six Nations not have good water.”

“It’s by design. It has to be,” said Hill. “In this day and age, there’s no way we should be scrounging for water.”

According to a 2009 report from the National Network on Environments and Women’s Health, “women carry out 80 per cent of water-related work throughout the world and therefore carry the greatest burden of water inequity.”

Water privatization leads to the increasing of the costs of water therefore making it inaccessible to poorer communities. This can dis-

proportionately affect Indigenous women, who make less money than men and are one of the poorest groups of people in the country, according to the report.

According to the 2016 Census, 25.1 per cent of Aboriginal females (following the federal government’s definition: those who are First Nations, Métis or Inuit and/or registered under the Indian Act of Canada and/or those who have band membership) reported low-income status compared to 14.5 per cent of non-Aboriginal females.

“A change has to happen and behaviour change has to happen, people need to have a sense of agency ” A lack of access to water supply, or water disconnection due to an increase in costs, can also increase the number of water-related illnesses in a community. For example, the Kashechewan First Nation in northern Ontario had to evacuate because their water supply was unsafe and caused skin diseases.

According to the Council of Canadians, this community has been under water advisories for over nine years.

“The lack of clean, safe drinking water in First Nations is one of the greatest violations of the UN-recognized human rights to water and sanitation,” their website states.

Storytelling as a form of advocacy By engaging their audience with gameplay and visual storytell-

ing, Kapoor, Spooner, and Jabeen want to advocate for the water crisis and illustrate it in a way that drives a change in the way people think and behave about environmental justice.

“We’re seeing that stories can be used, and complex issues are best told through the lives of people whose experiences illustrate the very systems at play,” said Jabeen.

Kapoor said that what makes TO Play different is its emphasis on embedding environmental activism within the contents of the game.

She added that although the game is still being developed, her team is ensuring that people can actively participate in real-world issues and not just in the virtual world they have created.

“There’s been other games like this and there’s been other interactive media that’s trying to advocate for something, but their calls to action are always like, ‘Here’s a link, here’s a donation button,’” said Kapoor.

“We want to make the call [for] action interactive as well and embed it within the narrative and the points of our game.”

According to Jabeen, the call for action in this game is recognizing the value of water and bringing Indigenous values to the forefront of the storytelling.

“The whole idea of [the game] and showing what success could look like is giving people a sense that change can happen even though we’re made to feel like we can’t,” said Jabeen.

“A change has to happen and behaviour change has to happen, people need to have a sense of agency.”

TO Play is currently in production and is set to launch in 2021.

10

SPORTS

“This feels like home”

How the construction of the Mattamy Athletic Centre laid the foundation for a successful Ryerson athletics culture PHOTO: JES MASON

By Will Baldwin On the first weekend of September 2012, the stands for the men’s hockey exhibition opener were packed. The energy at the game was something Ryerson had never really seen before. For the first time in decades, there was a buzz around Ryerson athletics.

The Ryerson Rams had finally found a real home: the Mattamy Athletic Centre (MAC), previously known as Maple Leaf Gardens.

All the administration wanted was a place that Ryerson students and athletes could feel proud of.

What they got was a level of success that few considered possible for the department.

“It was too beautiful to be covered” Not long ago, Ryerson’s athletic department was something of a punch line in Ontario’s university sports scene. The school was the only one without an Ontario University Athletics (OUA) conference championship, let alone a national championship.

In a city with two other university athletic departments —the York University Lions and the University of Toronto Varsity Blues— the Rams were a distant third place.

The basketball and volleyball teams played in the Kerr Hall Gymnasium and the hockey teams played all the way out at George Bell Arena, a full hour away from campus via the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in the Junction neighbourhood.

In 2008, then-Ryerson president Sheldon Levy tasked Ivan Joseph with fixing the school’s virtually

non-existent athletic reputation.

Joseph came from Graceland University in Iowa. He led the school’s men’s soccer program to a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championship among other achievements in his time there. This gave him a winning pedigree, something few others—if any—associated with Ryerson athletics had.

Part of Joseph’s recruiting process coming in was Levy’s promise of some type of new facility as the university knew its facilities were part of the problem.

“The public’s perception of your athletics teams influences their interpretation and their perception of your academic reputation,” Joseph said. “That made the university pay attention to the value athletics played in helping to elevate the academic reputation of this university.”

When Joseph came to the school, nothing was guaranteed. Although it was agreed a new facility was needed and on its way— where and what it would look like was completely up in the air.

Ideas like upgrading Kerr Hall, re-doing the Ryerson Athletic Centre, or even buying another building were tossed around but nothing was sticking. Luckily for the university, just a block off-campus was a national historic site with a vacancy.

T

oronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens was built in 1931 to replace the team’s old home, the Arena Gardens.

From its inception, the Maple Leaf Gardens became one of the most iconic buildings in the country, coming to be known as a “cathedral of hockey.” The Gardens played host to everything from the Maple Leafs,

to The Beatles, to a Muhammad Ali fight, to countless other concerts and political rallies that helped incentivize the Canadian government to make it a national historic site in 2006.

By the late 90s, the arena had run its course as a realistic home for the Maple Leafs, so the team built a new arena. With the Maple Leafs moving out in 1999 to the Air Canada Centre (ACC, now Scotiabank Arena) and the Toronto Rock (Toronto’s professional lacrosse team) joining them in 2000, it left the arena without a major tenant.

In 2004, Loblaws and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) came to an agreement on the purchase of the building. Financial issues around renovating the building made it sit dormant for years after the deal. Part of this was due to a condition from MLSE that the arena couldn’t host events that competed with the ACC. Left with a massive bill for renovation, Loblaws was in need of a partner to make it work. As luck would have it, Ryerson was in need of a new home for its athletic facilities. It was a partnership destined to happen, the university just had to hold up its end of the bargain.

To make Maple Leaf Gardens a possibility for Ryerson, Joseph needed to get a student referendum passed for the funding. In 2004, a similar one was attempted for a facility upgrade but 60 per cent of the students that voted said no.

Five years later though, 74 per cent of voters approved the extra $126 fee hike to student fees to make a new facility possible. When the referendum was won, Galen Weston of Loblaws contacted Levy, forming a financial partnership that would take the dream to a reality, according to Joseph.

In 2009, it was announced a deal had been reached and an approximately $60 million dollar renovation would ensue. The deal included $20 million from Stephen Harper’s federal government and $20 million from the students.

“That will be a memory that will last forever” After years of inactivity and three years after the deal in 2012, Canada’s cathedral of hockey had a new name and purpose as the home of the Ryerson Rams.

Throughout construction, the plan for how to execute Ryerson’s new athletic home changed a couple of times. Though this made construction more stressful, Joseph said he’s proud of the process.

“There’s very few projects where you start building one way and end up finishing in a completely different, better way.”

One of the early plans called for the iconic roof and scaffolding to be covered. As Joseph says, however, “It was too beautiful to be covered.”

As part of the referendum, Joseph talked to 2,100 students to see what they wanted in the new facility.

From that survey of student opinion, Joseph went to the construction team with a plan of action for Ryerson’s new home.

Part of the challenge was fitting a rink, court and weight room in a building that used to just be an arena. One of the things they did to maximize the space according to Joseph was to move the rink 10 stories up into the rafters of the old design.

Three years after Ryerson agreed to move in and 13 years after the final Maple Leafs’ game, the building was

almost ready. Before opening officially to the public once it was completed in the summer of 2012, the facility received a legendary approval from a Hockey Hall of Famer that cemented it was ready for its return.

Joseph got to walk the building with Toronto Maple Leafs legend, Red Kelly. Kelly knew the old Garden well, having played 470 games for the Maple Leafs over the course of eight NHL seasons. His final season was 1966-67—an important year for the franchise and the last time they won the Stanley Cup. As Kelly walked his former home, he couldn’t help but marvel at what it had become. When he got to the third floor that overlooks the arena, Kelly was full of emotion according to Joseph.

“Oh my God, this feels like home, you captured it. It’s perfect,” Joseph remembers him saying. If the athletic department needed any confirmation that they had done a good job, this was the highest possible praise.

“When you get somebody who lived in that building, who called it home, who looked at is a shrine, that is the greatest compliment we could’ve got,” Joseph said.

With the seal of approval of a man whose jersey used to hang in the building’s rafters, Maple Leaf Gardens was set to reopen, with a new name of course.

Joseph counts many moments as Ryerson’s athletic director as unforgettable, but he said very few match the first weekend the MAC opened to its students in September 2012.

He remembers being full of pride at what the school had created in such a short time. As he stood on the concourse and viewed the first of many great nights in Rams history at the MAC, he couldn’t help but smile.

11

SPORTS

| PHOTO: CHELSEA POTTAGE Prior to the MAC, the volleyball and basketball team’s home was the Kerr Hall Gym.

The stands were packed. Students were getting the communal university experience he dreamed of for them. Above it all was the famous roof of one of sports’ most iconic buildings. It was a perfect marriage of old and new and somehow, it was now the home of the Ryerson Rams.

N

ow that the teams had a facility to be proud of, Joseph could tackle the next foundational element under his control: coaching. Joseph already had respected names like men’s basketball coach Roy Rana and women’s volleyball coach Dustin Reid on staff and with the 2011 and 2012 additions of Lisa Haley and Carly Clarke to coach women’s hockey and basketball respectively, Ryerson had one of the most impressive coaching groups in the conference by the time the MAC opened its doors.

Clarke’s first year leading the women’s basketball program came in that inaugural 2012 season. Early on, she observed the differences between Ryerson and the University of Prince Edward Island and Dalhousie University—two programs she previously coached at in terms of history and prestige. However, she instantly noticed the devotion of her new university to athletic excellence.

“The mission of the department was very, very clear and that was

around creating exceptional student experiences,” Clarke said.

Clarke found the school’s commitment to “being innovative and forward-thinking,” as a factor that helped make up ground in the competitive conference of the OUA. She thinks that it can be seen as a separating factor for the school saying it’s “what made it special and what makes it currently special.”

In 2015, Joseph and the department put that mission on paper when they unveiled “Higher Expectations - 2015-2020 Strategic Plan.” The three main points of the plan were to foster exceptional student experiences, champion vibrant community engagement and build capacity and operational excellence.

last forever,” said Joseph on the historic night.

Two years later, the women’s volleyball team captured the school’s first national championship, a moment that made Joseph’s “heart burst with joy.”

That championship would be Joseph’s last at Ryerson as he would move on to Dalhousie to become the school’s vice provost, student affairs the next school year. Ryerson replaced Joseph with Louise Cowin who came to the school with equally high expectations for the department.

Cowin came to Toronto after more than 25 years of experience in post-secondary education. Her most recent job before Ryerson was as the vice-president, students at the University of British Columbia. According to Ryerson’s athletics website, Cowin spent two years as the acting director of the Athletics and Recreation Department where “the varsity program extended and expanded its winning trajectory.”

Now in charge of Ryerson’s athletics since August 2019, Cowin recognizes the impact of the MAC in recruiting and day-to-day competition for the school, describing the facility as having a “wow factor.”

Brian Finniss is the director, sport at Ryerson. Finniss agreed with Cowin on the recruiting advantages of the building, describing it, “as a

very impressive facility for some of our student-athletes when they first come and visit.”

While the advantage in recruiting is important, Finniss pointed to a structural asset of the MAC that provides athletics day-to-day with added advantages that have been integral to their success since moving in.

“It is nice to have a lot of our resources in one central location,” said Finniss. “We have our athletic offices, coaches’ offices, athletic therapy clinic, strength and conditioning space, study hall, etc. all in one location (which is often not the case at other universities), so it is easier for the student-athletes.”

“[It gave] us a place to call home. Where everybody felt like they mattered and belonged” Clarke also pointed to the centrality of the facility as being “pretty special,” and that it helped to build a “great coaching culture to be a part of.”

Though Cowin is convinced about the advantages of the building, she knows success will also come thanks to the people in the building.

“What will drive further competitive success for the Rams is not just facility-related, it also includes Ry-

erson having the best coaches who are therefore able to recruit the best student-athletes,” Cowin said. “Its facilities plus excellent coaches plus financial assistance plus other student-athlete supports.”

W

hile the MAC itself didn’t necessarily have a hand in hiring coaches or winning championships, it was a substantive force in changing a culture that slightly over a decade ago, hardly existed.

Just five years ago Ryerson had no championships to its name. Now, three different varsity sports teams have brought home conference titles and one has a national title banner that now hangs in the MAC. Championship success was certainly part of the vision for Joseph but to only look at that part of the story would be to ignore what matters most to him to this day. His greatest accomplishment at Ryerson in his mind is, “how much we contributed to the campus spirit and pride.”

As for the building that now defines a large part of his legacy at Ryerson, he’s proud of what it has done for the university’s reputation.

“I think MAC did exactly what it was supposed to,” said Joseph. “[It gave] us a place to call home.

Where everybody felt like they mattered and belonged.”

“The mission of the department was very, very clear and that was around creating exceptional student experiences” Just a year later, the department celebrated its first two conference championships. In the span of about 15 minutes, Ryerson went from having no conference titles to having two as the men’s and women’s basketball programs both captured the inaugural titles on the evening PHOTO: CHRIS BLANCHETTE of March 13, 2016.

“That will be a memory that will In 2016, the Rams men’s and women’s basketball teams won the first conference championships in school history on the same night.

Maple Leaf Gardens and the Mattamy Athletic Centre by the numbers

0

45

$60 Million

1931

3

conference titles won by Ryerson Athletics prior to moving into the MAC

minutes via transit from campus to George Bell Arena, one of the main reasons hockey attendance at home games struggled

dollars budgeted for renovation of the MAC, financed by Ryerson, the Canadian Federal Government and Loblaws

was the year on the time capsule found by construction workers during renovation in 2011.

The capsule was from the opening of the original building in 1931

concerts played by The Beatles at Maple Leaf Gardens. The arena was used for far more than just sports, playing a regular host to concerts and other events large events

12

FUN AND BACKTIRE

Students react to Ryerson lifting Kerr Hall Quad smoking ban

By Aisha Jaffar Did you know you can now smoke in the Kerr Hall Quad? Ryerson has lifted its ban on smoking in the beloved campus green space. I bet you didn’t, since you probably couldn’t see that Ryerson removed all of the “No smoking within 9 metres of entrance” signs through all the smoke.

Last Friday, Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi appointed a task force to remove the signs (finally, a task force that actually did something).

“Lifting the smoking ban was never something we planned on doing,” said Lachemi. “But when Juul offered us $500,000 to lift the ban and rename the quad ‘Juul Outdoor Vape Lounge,’ we said hey, why not?”

The Eyeopener conducted socially distanced interviews with people in the quad, asking them if they even knew Ryerson lifted the ban. Our reporters stayed six feet apart in order to not catch COVID-19—or breathe in all that second-hand smoke.

“Are you joking? I’ve been smok-

ILLUSTRATION: JIMMY KWAN ing grass on that grass for a while now,” said Roger Redeye, a secondyear engineering student. “You’re telling me I’ve been breaking the law? Oh no. No, no, no, no.”

After frantically walking around the quad in circles trying (and failing) to find one of the three very obvious exits, Redeye finally calmed down.

He found his way back to us and made a friendly offer: “Wanna get blazed and then hit up Blaze Pizza?”

Stress seems to be a leading factor in a student’s decision to smoke. A study conducted by Ryerson’s Facilities Management and Development team found that during midterms and final exams, at least twice the

Ryerson student accidentally becomes world’s fastest typist

By Zachary Roman A Ryerson student has just become the world’s fastest typist after almost a full semester’s worth of watching and taking notes on their pre-recorded lectures at two times speed.

The student, Ty Pinfasta, said they didn’t realize how incredible their keyboard skills have become.

But with four three-hour lectures to take notes on each week—and only six hours to type notes for all of them due to their rigorous gaming schedule—Pinfasta was inadvertently training to become the world’s fastest typist.

“By God...It’s Ty Pinfasta with a steel keyboard” A happy coincidence is that Pinfasta has also improved their Mario Kart skills—they even set a world record time on Maple Treeway as Waluigi in the Standard Kart.

What they hadn’t realized before was that all the speed-typing they were doing while taking notes for class would improve their reflexes, hand strength and finger dexterity to superhuman levels.

“To be honest with you I’ve just been watching my lectures at two times speed because I’m up all night, every night, playing Among Us with

my friends,” said Pinfasta. “I’m not really sure if I retain any information doing things this way, but now that I can type so fast I always have the best alibi for when I’m looking sus.”

One day, Pinfasta saw an ad for the Guinness World Records speedtyping competition and decided to sign up because their friends weren’t free to game that day.

They said it was one of the best decisions they ever made. At the Guinness World Records’ World’s Fastest Typist event, held virtually via Zoom last week, Pinfasta hit a peak words-per-minute of 420.69.

This almost doubled the previous world record of 212 which was held

by Barbara Blackburn.

All three judges at the event, Con Trol, Al T. and Dee Lete were flabbergasted—commentator and event host Jace Bar fainted, woke up, fainted again, woke up, then threw his chair across the room before running out of the camera frame yelling “SWEET JESUS LORD HAVE MERCY ON MY SLOWTYPIN’ SOUL!” The judges all agreed that Pinfasta’s record was unprecedented and probably unbeatable too.

“It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before,” said Trol, a 119-yearold typist from the Yukon. “And I’ve been judging typing competitions since God, whom Ariana Grande correctly predicted is a woman, came down from the heavens and blessed

me with the first typewriter ever.”

During the record-setting type session, Pinfasta was up against Sloan Itdown. Itdown started off with an early lead, but when Pinfasta came from behind and overtook Itdown, commentator Bar came through with the legendary play-by-play: “By God...IT’S TY PINFASTA WITH A STEEL KEYBOARD! THEY ON TEXT GAMES MOOOOOOOOOOODE!!!”

“As you well know, I’m even faster than that” Pinfasta said it was the most exhilarating moment of their life, besides the time they beat legendary Formula 1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton at go-karting IRL. The fact that they got a cool $10,000 reward and a dope plaque to show off in their apartment was a nice bonus, too.

“Now I have the perfect excuse to spend more time gaming than watching my lectures,” said Pinfasta.

“And don’t even bother hating on my successes. I can type a two-page reply dunking on your rude Twitter mention so fast you’d think I was legendary Formula 1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton.”

“But as you well know, I’m even faster than that.”

amount of cigarette butts and joint roaches are found littered on the ground in the quad compared to the rest of the year.

It seems that even professors at Ryerson had no idea about the old no-smoking rule. Or perhaps they were just ignoring it in order to try and be cool.

“Holy smokes!” said politics professor Nick O’Tine, blissfully aware he was making a dad joke. “I’ve been smoking here since I was a student at Ryerson, which was not that long ago; I’m still quite hip.”

While O’tine is most certainly not hip, even people that are hip didn’t know that you couldn’t smoke at the quad.

“Are you serious? I had no idea. My boys and I have been smoking there every day for three years,” said Mohammed Tambaku, an international student from Pakistan in his fourthyear of business management.

“Smoke Benson, no tension,” said Tambaku as he lit up a Benson & Hedges cigarette and asked us why Canada only has boring, plain-pack-

aged cigarettes. In his opinion, they make his Insta stories look less cool.

Mans got 99 problems and nicotine and social-media induced dopamine addictions are two of them.

On our way out of the Quad, we spoke to two squirrels, Squeaky and Nibbles. Squeaky was only capable of saying “chirp chirp chirp” while examining his tiny little paws in wonder, blinking very slowly.

“Wanna get blazed and then hit up Blaze Pizza?”

Nibbles explained. “The homie’s really been struggling with the second-hand high. Dude just keeps saying the same thing over and over again and I think he just realized he doesn’t have thumbs” he said.

“Chirp chirp chirp,” said Squeaky.

Stay in school and don’t do drugs kids. But hey, at least now you can legally smoke drugs in the quad— not that it stopped anyone before.

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