September 2014

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University of Toronto Students’ Union

Health & Dental Plan

Opt Out & Family Enrolment Dates: Students starting in September 2014: Aug. 25 to Oct. 3, 2014 Students starting in January 2015: Jan. 5 to Jan. 30, 2015 Who is enrolled? Opting out

Family enrolment

All full-time undergraduate, professional faculty, and theology students at St. George or Mississauga are automatically enrolled in the UTSU extended health and dental plans.

Students who have comparable health coverage may opt out of the health plan while any student may opt out of the dental plan.

Students are required to opt out on an annual basis.

Students may enroll their spouse (including a common law or same sex partner) and/or children in either plan at the start of your first eligible term. Additional plan fees apply.

Coverage begins on September 1, 2014. Accounts for new plan members (first-year students, students previously enrolled in part-time studies, or students returning from a leave of absence) are activated by the end of November and reimbursements are processed subsequently.

To opt out, go to studentplans.hroffice.com

To enrol dependents, visit the UTSU Office at 12 Hart House Circle

Questions about coverage or claims?

Contact Green Shield: greenshield.ca/studentcentre 1-888-711-1119

Register at greenshield.ca/studentcentre to get personalized claims forms, claims history, to print your Green Shield ID card and to get discounts on dental and vision with exclusive Discount Networks.

Visit utsu.ca/health for benefits information and info about your students’ union

University of Toronto Students’ Union 12 Hart House Circle health@utsu.ca | www.utsu.ca/health

3 Even though this is usually the ‘frosh issue’, we’ve decided that it should be a blast from the past for all U of T students. To start with, U of T retains much of the both insecure but self-consciously leisurely English frame of mind that begot the institution in the first place, wherein the university is a cabinet of curiosities and wonders, full of a heap of booty and knowledge hauled from the world’s farthest corners to amaze and delight, and to accustom Toronto’s rising colonial middle class to proper respect for the immense expanse of the Empire… while instilling in them a talent for enterprise and global competition. We’re only 24th in the world rankings! We must redouble our efforts! Of course, the intensity of U of T, the Koyaanisqatsi-level of student activity day in day out, can be beautiful, exciting, and for me the whole experience of frosh year was to be happily lost in it. I met so many great friends and had my mind orgasm from the torrent of ideas.

But it can burn you out — hard. But that’s to be expected: familiarity with U of T’s history shows that this university has burnt itself out sometimes too. The whole place is a sort of impossible project that nonetheless continues. Again rooted in a very particular western history, the modern university is a place in which the exuberant jumble of reality is attempted to be tamed, arrayed by type, given an air of order it never quite has in the real world.

The whole idea is to make sense out of south Yemeni tattooing practices, Renaissance easel painting, quantum tunnelling, etc.

The result is a vast place of stability and the instability, contradictions and conundrums and paradoxes galore. Anyway, here is the issue, I hope you enjoy reading it, and please come by our offices if you would like to create something with us this year.

— David Stokes, Editor

Masthead

Contributors

Editor - David Stokes Publisher - Camille Angelo Designer - Daniel Glassman Illustrator - Jonathan Silveira Senior Copy Editor - Anna Roach Senior Editors Yasmine Laasraoui Isaac Thornley Dylan Hornby Zach Morgenstern Public Relations Paulina Saliba Music editor Melissa Vincent

Grant Oyston Isaac Thornley David Stokes Cara Sabatini Jane Alice Keachie David Banerjee David Fishbayn Zach Morgenstern Daniel Glassman Alex Baird aka qingtut S.D. Chrostowska Caleb Upton Jonathan Silveira Melissa Vincent Raf Cover image by Brendan George Ko

Before I even started at U of T I genuinely hated it. There was no one reason I didn’t like the school. It could have been the takeout smell that wafts through campus, the terrible frat party I had attended the Saturday before classes started or even that asshole with a communist star on his hat that that had refused to tell me which way my UC classroom was. As my first week of classes began and my displeasure with the institution grew, my shrink kept repeating his typical cliches: “make the best of it” or “be a good voyageur”, and all I could keep saying to myself was “maybe today will be the day the Robarts’ elevator works.” I’m not really sure when U of T started getting better for me. I think it probably had to do when I started to accept that Tinder was going to be the only plausible way of getting laid, and that if I wanted a semi decent GPA I was going to have to use the Librarian Instant Messaging System. The bottom line is no one loves U of T, they just develop enough of love hate relationship with it to tolerate it.

— Camille Angelo, Publisher

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Street Festival Join us for an afternoon of fun, games and prizes!

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“ i b i

G S a H

September 9, 2014 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

St.George Street UTSU.CA/ORIENTATION Multicultural Eatery & Bar

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by David Banerjee

“Academic politics is so vicious precisely because so little is at stake.”

Graffiti from SAC Offices, attributed to Henry Kissinger

I came acro ss the quote 2001, as I to in the fall o ok part in th f e single lam campaign in est UofT’s politi cal history. friend had as A hit the World Trad ked me to h e Centre.” In elp him organ anti-corpora Sid Smith ize Hall, students pac te sentiment k ed on campus. the main lob year had mar That stared in disbelie by and ked the high f at the televi -water mark “anti-globaliz sion: not one, of but two planes had ation” prote struck New sts through the world, an York. This out was no accident. d we were go It was no mer ing to chann the radicalis S omething had e protest. m towards a el happened. tuition freeze I had been q At that mom . uite motivate ent, people w tially. I think d, at least in ere in a state i- of anxious confusio the prospect o n f meeting wo . en was part P eo p le cl asses, but th still went to mof it, at leas ere was an ai t unconsciou also thought r of uncertai sly. I I think most ca that lower tu nty. ndidates wo itio than corpora uld have trie te tax cuts, an n was better to connect with peo d ple’s concern d I figured th most studen s, to adapt ts would agre at to the change in th e e if they took mood, and to time to listen th . And I thou engage ght that my fr e in a way that would would prob not make on iend margi ably make a e seem to nal. better Presid than the last ent guy. So I agre Sa d ly , ed th paign manag to be his cam is logic was er.

- him, the lost on Alex. masses need To We called o ed le ur group Ris adership, wh m eant they nee e Up! and o ic election slat h d ed to hear that the ur sue was e was called real isstill student “No Logo”, obvious iron d with was to ebt. The bes y. The plan w t strategy dispel the sh as fairly stra forward: we ock and horr ight- ing o would crash o r n by staym fr es o sh sa out literature ge. Loudly. events, hand , hold rallies, I remember and all the u al things peo that we spen su- tember ple do when t much of Sep 12 arguing ab they’re tryin get the supp g to plann out the rally ort of symp ed for the n we had athetic stud Ultimately, th ex en t day. He refu ts. cancel e goal was to the event, ar sed to elect a slate progressives guing that to of was wh to the SAC, ning down at the corpo with the hop getting the ve rate elite wan e of do. I ry staid univ ted us to maintained ersity to join er schools in th at o people weren th- mood, calling for gr ’t in the that it migh eater provin support for h t backfire, an cial had al igher educati d re that he ad o n y . won the elec Things did tion because not begin w sock puppet ell. I had fo the gotten that guy obviousl most studen r- get elec y did not wan ted at all. He ts were gen t interested in to erally I se expressed dis other things emed to dou m ay – enjoying in th pendence, d at bt this obvio de- questi ating, drinkin us wisdom. oned his san g – just as I been when I I ity. h ad was a frosh a Th us, as millio few years earl And no one n s o f ie televisions re wanted to han r. falling played bodies and go phone yellin collapsing b g, petition-sig ut with mega- a truck uildings, came to unlo ning, brow-b ing complain eat- front ad giant spea ers when th of Sid Smith kers in ere was fun had. . I remember to be guy th lo o e k rental in g at Worse, the us, asking if only candid that we need we were sure against us w ed at e running them. I remem asn’t really a that I’d happ ber thinking candidate. S one at Trin ily eat the dep ome- didat ity College o si t, but the cane was undet decided to sock-puppet erred. The sh run a on, named Wab o w must go an d on it went. bit against u every poorly No one stop s. At ten to attended deb ped to lisour live musi ate, my can date tried to c acts or our di- Perhap make though speeches. s it was me, tful argumen about access but the pum ts music d to higher ed p in g dance id not seem ucation. The just talked ab to mesh with sock looks out eating ca the numb on most of rrots. There no point to the passing was took the campaign faces. They the pamphle other than to absurd. ts, but I don’ be were p t think they aying attenti I actually th on.I rememb o it u to gh er t b e wanting it was quit over as soon ny, and it w e fun- if as possible, w as then that I was actual ondering I realized th friend wasn’ ly as milquetoas at my mad t actually m t as he had e me out to b y friend. He a strategicall e. was y nice acquai A t an y rate, we w ntance who drank the Ko on a resoun had tory w ol-Aid to the ding vicith 63% of th point that he no sense of h e popular vo had impli umour. To h te es . Which im, the sock that more th pet was an o -pup- wan an a third o bvious manif te f d people an inanimate estation of co rate capitalis rpo- dent. sock to be th t conservatis eir PresiI’m not sure m come to the witless st if this had to blind stud udents and p do with the ents’ twisted reven uniting in a sense of hum movement to t them from conservat o u r, inherent ism, or our ca shackles of st throw off th mpaign. e udent debt...

T o b e or somethin honest, I did that effect. I g to the o enjoy workin just thought ther two can g with it was an im ture stunt. Th didates and ma- I con e arguing on I’ m gl tr ad ib ly dampened uted, howev waning enth er slightly to that my joinin usiasm. g the movem UofT On a sunny ent for a tuit Tuesday mo But given th ion freeze. tember, I ga rning in Sep at a puppet n - the only ve an interv amed Wabbit opposition, I iew on CIU was When it was guess I felt th T. vigorou over, at abou at a less s campaign t 9am, I as the produce was in order ked that m r about my . Perhaps akes me a sell performance one was listen -out, or may . “No him ing,” he repli b e a it makes tr u e believer. I’m ed. “A plane just not really su re.

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The state of our “publicly assisted” schools

By Zach Morgenstern In 2011, UofT stopped referring to itself as a public institution, instead using the phrase “publicly assisted university.” This minor change in words was a major political confession. A 2013 Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) pamphlet on post-secondary education notes that through much of the sixties and seventies, governments covered over 90% of tuition costs. As funding has dropped, tuition fees have skyrocketed.

Today only 57% of post-secondary funding comes from governments.

When asked about this situation, UofT’s Arts and Science Student Union (ASSU) president, Abdullah Shihipar argued that “Ontario’s per student funding has remained [virtually] frozen...since 1991 while tuition fees have dramatically increased, outpacing inflation and the cost of other goods over time...the post secondary education system takes in a lot more students … [and f]unding levels need to reflect this.”

As of now, neither the governments of neither Ontario nor Canada seem prepared to make massive new investments in the post-secondary educational system.

The CFS and Canadian Association of University Teachers University Teachers are currently campaigning for direct federal oversight over education funding, arguing that Canada is the only major industrialized country without such an oversight program Canada’s Conservative government has given no sign it is going to make major new investments in post-secondary education.

The section of the Conservative party’s website entitled “Students” simply praises established Conservative investments in student aid and provincial governments. This reston-laurels mentality was shown in recent federal Toronto by-elections, where Conservative candidates Benjamin Sharma and Trevor Ellis were both quoted in The Varsity as saying their approach towards student issues would be to continue the current policies of the Harper government.

Ontario’s Liberal government meanwhile is even more enthusiastic in its defense of its established educational gains. Kathleen Wynne’s website puts particular emphasis on the Liberal-introduced 30%-off tuition program. This particularly aid program has been criticized for being denied to particularly vulnerable groups of students including students who are independent from their parents, students in second entry programs

(such as law and medical schools) and international students.

Meanwhile, Ontario’s Liberals have found themselves in a position where they feel the need to turn to austerity policies in the educational field. One such policy, differentiation, is a push to make funding more efficient by encouraging universities to specifically cater to certain demographics, and specialize, not only as teaching or research based schools, but also in programs they are deemed to handle best.

If adopted poorly, differentiation may threaten post-secondary institutions with educational approaches that do not fit easy bureaucratic classifications. In a 2013 interview with Arthur, Trent University’s President Steven Franklin cautioned “If [differentiation] happens and there is a strong commitment from the government to fund the universities that are doing well on certain metrics, we will find ourselves, as did the hospitals, in a very vulnerable position and we will no longer be able to do certain things that we hold very dear.” Differentiation could prove a threat to those who want Canadian Universities to adopt approaches more in line with small liberal arts colleges, as well as those who more generally believed that education should be valued whether or not it meets bureaucratically set standards of practicality.

It should be noted that UofT’s strategic mandate agreement with the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities for 201417 is fairly broad, meaning UofT student experiences will not necessarily be hindered by the differentiation process. Nonetheless, by establishing itself as an elite, well-rounded University under Ontario’s new differentiation framework, UofT is securing funds for itself, that now may not go to other, less developed institutions with similar research and education ambitions to UofT. As now UTSU executive director Sandy Hudson said in 2010 “the government can’t afford strive to turn some of Ontario’s universities into elite institutions without turning the rest into second-rate establishments.”

As Ontario revamps its approach to post-secondary education, its broader post-secondary funding formula will also need changing. Ontario currently funds universities using a formula which compensates schools with higher enrollment levels .

The Varsity has criticized this model instead proposing an outcomes-based approach, ie a formula that would reward schools for success in research, job creation, etc.

Abdullah Shihipar, agrees that an enrollment-based formula is inappropriate “because this encourages the situation we see at U of T today; ever increasing enrolments, larger class sizes and consequentially a decreased quality of education,” however, he believes that “an outcomes based approach should be approached with caution.”

He notes, that success based programs for elementary and secondary schools in the United States such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the top, simply create further burdens for disadvantaged schools, thus encouraging tactics like grade inflation for the sake of securing funds.

What form differentiation and the provincial funding formula take remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that amongst federal and provincial politicians radical, positive rhetoric remains in short supply, and Ontario students, for the time being will have to continue paying high fees for oversized classes.

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Mark Knight

Alan Ackerman

is an English professor specializing in Victorian literature, religion and literature, theory, and G.K. Chesterton. He's currently working on a project on Samuel Butler. He has an office on the 6th floor of the Jackman Building; he’s had the office for three years. His books are organized thematically, and then semi chronologically. He doesn't write in his books because too often he is annoyed by his early comments. He likes to move around a lot when he's working and often works in coffee shops. He didn't expect to become a professor when he entered university. He began majoring in history but found English more fulfilling and he stuck with it. This is a poster in his office. This is an example of the notes he keeps when he reads a book.

is an English professor whose teaching primarily covers American literature and modern drama. He has an office on the 9th floor of the Jackman Building; he's had the office for eight years, and he says he likes the view. His favourite objects in his office are the pictures of his kids and their artwork. He has portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Samuel Beckett, people he admires. His books are divided into primary sources and into criticism, and both sides are organized alphabetically.

He doesnt like writing in coffee shops and mostly works in the office. He sometimes writes in his books. He still has a number of his undergraduate lecture notes and occasionally finds them useful.

Freshman displays bong prominently in residence room New student confident that marijuana apparatus will elicit friendship, admiration

by Grant Oyston After careful consideration, U of T Faculty of Arts & Science freshman Tyler Finley, 18, has elected to display his bong on the top shelf of the bookshelf to the left of his door.

“After we moved in all my stuff and my family left, I put it on my windowsill but then I was like, what if my RA sees it, like if the door is open?” Finley said. “So now it’s on the bookshelf so you can see it if you’re sitting on the bed chilling, but not if you’re just standing in the doorway.”

Finley, originally from Thornhill, Ont., told the newspaper that he hopes the paraphernalia will symbolize to fellow students his relaxed and easygoing attitude, disdain for authority, and frequent use of marijuana. To the left of the water pipe, Finley has arranged a carefully curated selection of his fitted caps, while the space to the right has been left deliberately empty, reserved for what he anticipates will soon be a substantial collection of empty Jäger bottles, which Finley explained will “show another side of my personality.”

Finley’s new roommate, Steven, 18, was confident that he and Finley would find common ground. “I’m studying biology and I’m pretty sure Tyler is in science too, which is cool. I saw when he was unpacking that he had this really fancy beaker,” Steven said. “He also has a little electronic scale, which I think is for intro physics.”

The bong itself, a 24” piece purchased from his friend Mike back in Grade 10, features a motif of gold and green swirls, which Finley noted probably represents “something Jamaican.”

“My older brother Markus was going to give me this 30” one he got last summer when he was in Amsterdam with his girlfriend but I was like, nah, because I don’t want people to be intimidated by my huge bong. 30” is way too big for most people to handle, I think, but 24” is normal, right?” he said, pulling out his smartphone to Google average bong size.

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By David Fishbayn

There is a dragon that lives beneath this institution. That dragon is the unfortunate lack of community that many, but certainly not all, undergraduate students experience during their studies at U of T. I use the metaphor of the dragon below the castle because the antisocial nature of U of T is often an aspect of the university that is most certainly there and most certainly does affect us as students. We feel it deeply, but is not publicized by U of T staff and is not often discussed as being directly related to students' well being. It is an element of the university culture that kind of hovers in the background of our experiences. But I think many of us, especially commuters, pay a big psychological price for spending so much time in an environment with such an unsupportive, disconnected social community.

To the right are the results of an INFORMAL, NON-SCIENTIFIC online survey conducted in August 2014.

I posted a link in about one dozen large U of T Facebook groups. I asked U of T students to share their feelings about two aspects of their university experience: their connection to the university and their connection to their fellow undergraduate students. There were 516 respondents.

There are two things to keep in mind before examining these survey results.

The first is that because I posted the survey link in a number of Arts and Science based groups, this sample probably reflects the feelings of Arts and Science students more than it does students from other faculties. The second is that students who feel frustrated with the university are probably more likely than satisfied students to click on the survey link, because they are more motivated than satisfied students to express their opinion.

However, all biases and problems in methodology accounted for, the below information is meaningful and revealing. It is important to think about this information if you are a U of T undergraduate. Even if the actual numbers are a bit more positive then the numbers below, there is still clearly a problem at the University of Toronto that needs to be properly acknowledged.

I have 2 goals in producing and publicizing this information:

1. I would like students who feel frustrated with their social life at U of T and with their relationship to the University to know that they are not alone. If you have never made a close friend in your U of T classes, know that at least 189 people share your experience (and this is in a sample of only a small fraction of the student body).

If U of T makes you feel like a number, know that almost half of all students "really" relate to your feeling.

2. It is important for students to properly recognize that this university does have a problem that needs to be improved. I would like students to think hard about whether some of their own personal difficulties as U of T students may be more rooted in the antisocial culture of the school than they had originally thought. We are social creatures to our very core. We need to feel supported and connected to the group with which we spend the majority of our time.

It is a very significant problem that some students do not feel comfortable speaking to each other during breaks in class or that some students have never considered it important to build a friend group at their university.

I will not comment further on these survey results and I will not try to offer an explanation for U of T's lack of social cohesion. I will also add that a lack of social cohesion is not a problem that plagues only the University of Toronto. Establishing a fulfilling social life is a problem faced by many people living today. The roots of this problem go far beyond the university environment.

This being said, I would like to offer an opportunity to any reader of this article who feels this lack of community at the University of Toronto and would like to join a group that is trying to do something about it.

I am leading a campaign for the 2014-15 school year called the "U of T Campaign For Community". Our group intends to improve students' connection to the University and to each other by creating large-scale creative projects similar to "How Does U of T Make You Feel?" (the first of our creative projects). Some of our projects will be done on the grounds of the campus, some projects will be events, and some projects will take place online.

Three examples of creative projects we plan to carry out are: 1. An undergraduate version of those U of T flags which celebrate successful graduates. Instead of "Professor John Smith, Economics Expert", our flag would read "Jane Smith, recovering from mental health problem before returning to studies" 2. A giant collage in front of Sid Smith made up of the names, collages, and ethnic backgrounds of thousands of students who walk by the area and choose to contribute\ 3. A Facebook Page called "U of T Stu-

dent Stories" where students share their U of T experience anonymously through our page. Readers are then given the opportunity to be put into contact with the writer of the story if they find they relate to the story We are going to see if undergraduates students can actually do something to improve the university's sense of community.

If you feel this desire to improve the culture of this university please message "David Fishbayn" right now on Facebook saying "I'm interested in joining" or something like that.

It’ll all end in Biers...

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Multicultural Eatery & Bar

THANK YOU

for your patience during construction as we work to improve transit in Toronto

Dear customers, residents and businesses, Through the patience of TTC riders like you and the hard work of TTC employees, the streetcar track replacement and water main work is now complete, as are the upgrades to the Spadina Station streetcar platform. Watch for the new accessible streetcars starting August 31st!

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2014-08-18 5:43 PM

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ART_02_TTC46128E-7 TTC CORPORATE 10” X 7.5” (1/2 PG) 4C SEPT 2, 2014 U OF T THE NEWSPAPER

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Coming out, coming out, coming out OCT 11, 2013 | BY ISAAC THORNLEY … the idea that once you’re out, you’re out, is painfully simple and simply false. If it were only so simple! I would be spared the hassle of coming out to every new person I meet who assumes my heterosexuality until informed otherwise. Coming out is not a single event in someone’s life, not the beginning of a new way of being. It is a multitudinous process, a constant requirement for any non-straight person in this very straight world. The closet isn't some terrible place that I finally gained the courage to escape when I turned 17; the closet is the world I inhabit, a world that continually privileges and expects heterosexuality from all. I am faced with new closets everyday. So long as I live in this world, so long as these expectations are continually applied to me, so too I must continue to come out, and continue to make myself visible.

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Inside the steam plant OCT 04, 2012 | BY DAVID STOKES … You’ve seen the chimney towering over the St. George campus. On cold days, it’s what’s puffing out the giant white cloud of vapour. …A massively complex operation of millions of working parts. Miles of tubes. Intense heat. Explosive pressure. The facility heats 75 campus buildings and provides electricity. The plant is the reason classrooms aren’t freezing and the lights stay on. The steam plant is the St. George campus’ only working engineering site, a status that sets it apart and makes it a world of its own. And it’s an active one: the plant is in operation 24 hours a day. “We never stop...it’s always on.” {{{{the sound }}}} The inside of the plant is an enormous visually confusing landscape of criss-crossing bright coloured pipes, blinking light, levers, pulley systems, and knobs that surround in all directions. The smell is pungent and oily, and the noise is that of a thousand different sounds trapped in one place, punctuated by loud releases of pressure. It feels like navigating the subconscious. And then there’s the heat. Some of the walls in the plant are over 70 Celsius. And yet, in the winter, it sometimes snows in the building, the flakes sucked in en mass by the air intake fans. …we are ducking around pipes, walking up yellow metal catwalks and staircases, passing hissing valves and clanking machinery. My guide has to yell over the noise, I have to strain to hear him. …he opens an inauspicious metal hatch in one of the boilers. Behind this seemingly inert hunk of metal is an inferno. The boiler chamber contains two jets that release a whirling, roaring blue flame wide enough to drive a car through. The chamber has a negative pressure that can change unpredictably, which can result in flames flying out of the hatch. Given the danger and high heat, we can only observe the flame quickly. The plant has eight of these massive jets, yet the pipe that brings in natural gas into the building is only 8 inches wide, a few feet under Russell Street….

What’s growing on campus?

FEB 10, 2013 | BY DAVID STOKES

14 …. Bruce takes me up and into the greenhouses built on the rooftop. It’s a sharp transition from

the chugging machines of the basement to this place filled with light: only a thin sheet of glass separates us from the outside and there is the sweet summery smell of wet dirt. …There are tall grasses grown as alternate biofuel sources, wild radishes used for a study on climate change, and dense tangles of water hyacinths floating in a pool for a study on this highly invasive plant which Bruce considers “the world’s worst weed.” …Next, Bruce shows me the display greenhouses, also on the roof. The first is jungle-hot, humid, filled with orchids, ferns, and an interlocking mass of other plants--each with their own strange arrangement of spots and shapes …a lush horizon exploding with every shade of green. You expect to hear bird calls. Growing from above are pitcher plants, whose large and long shapely red flowers hang like delicate cups. These flowers trap insects. “But in this case it looks like it would even take a mouse down,” Bruce says. Ducking under banana trees with huge leaves, we come to a tree with spikes all over its trunk, called “Monkey’s Dinner Bell”, so named for its explosive fruit. … in a tub, as totally still as the rock they enjoy sitting on, are two bearded dragons, Socrates and Bernard. I pass a grapefruit tree, a ponderosa lemon, an ornamental orange. One plant without spikes, a Welwitschia, is a member of a very ancient plant group found only in a desert in Namibia. Though they look frail and have no defenses, Welwitschia can live thousands of years, and are one of the longest lived creatures in the world. This plant, a male of the species, recently got the chance to mate…

The U of T greenhouses are located at the Department of Earth Sciences Earth Sciences Centre 22 Russell Street Toronto

The life of a cadaver OCT 26, 2012 | BY CARA SABATINI …Located in the basement of the Medical Sciences building, the anatomy labs are sites of the most intimate tandem of life and death: the donation and dissection of human specimens. … At the time of the donor’s death, the nextof-kin or executor notifies the Division of Anatomy, which arranges for the transportation of the body. When the body is received at the Division, it undergoes an embalming process whereby chemicals are injected to preserve the biological tissue.

Following embalming, the body is ready for dissection, and assigned to six to eight medical students who work to

study and dissect the cadaver as part of the first year medical curriculum. “The cadavers are the students’ first patients,” explained UofT Anatomy Professor Judi Laprade in her office down the corridor from the labs. As such, the cadavers enjoy a similar level of privacy. “We expect the students to be very respectful of the cadaver material,” said Laprade.

Before anatomical dissection, students are required to sign an agreement that prohibits discussing the cadavers outside the lab. …“body snatching” had its place in Ontario. A student wrote in 1855 from Trinity College, Toronto, ‘Some of the students are medical, and as the

bodies they require for dissection are sometimes stolen, we are all called 'Kidnappers.’ In addition to providing handson training, cadavers also teach students empathy. “Somebody’s parent, grandparent, son, donated their body for you to learn,” said Laprade. “There’s a bit of awe that you don’t get from looking at a textbook.”… there are roughly 100 cadavers currently used for dissection purposes in the Medical Sciences laboratories. The bodies are stored in the climate controlled labs. … As enrollment increases, so does the demand for cadavers. “Every year we hold our breath and hope we get enough donations,” said Laprade. …

Corpus Colossus MAR 08, 2013 | BY DAVID STOKES What began as a cupboard that housed a few special items has become, just over 50 years later, a 6-storey sanctuary… the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, home to a set of precious and delicate contents: over 700 000 volumes of rare books. To shield the books from the bleaching rays of UV light it is always dark inside, medieval and dramatic. The building maintains an internal humidity of 45 per cent all year round (in summer it can be 95 per cent outside whereas in winter it can drop to 2 per cent) and a constant temperature of 20 degrees Celsius. The collection includes a 1789 BCE Babylonian cuneiform tablet from Ur; medieval manuscripts illuminated with gold; a first folio of Shakespeare’s work; first editions of Newton’s Principia, Darwin’s Origin, and the suppressed writings of Lenin. They try to get everything that’s published in Canada, no matter how ephemeral, before it disappears. …The staff have been omnivorous in their collection of compelling and peculiar printed matter, be it portraits, letters, beer labels, menus, manuscripts. They have acquired and catalogued backs of letters and paper bags on which novelists have scribbled inspirations, a poetic draft on a piece of cardboard, and little books that Margaret Atwood made when she was nine. …Revealing the enormity of the collection, Dondertman takes me to the basement, the utilitarian iceberg below the elegant tip that is the upstairs building. A maze-like network of dimly lit hallways reveals row after row of books, crammed full in every spot. Like a book bestiary, there are books of every stripe, language, and variety, held in the cavernous spaces under Fisher and two sub-basements below Robarts proper. We pass shelves of gay pulp fiction (with titles like “Bound For Pleasure”); playing cards; boxes of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs; a literary critic’s Christmas cards; Leonard Cohen’s early drafs, hundred year old lithographs from the Zoology department…The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is open to everyone…

Redefining virginity FEB 06, 2014

BY JANE ALICE KEACHIE … the word on the street is that you’re a virgin until you meet a person of the opposite sex and you are penetrated by or penetrate that person. … But Louise*, a 20 year old student at the University of Toronto, said, “My most intimate and even scary sexual experiences were the ones which didn’t involve penetrative sex. The first time I ever went down on another girl—that was scary and new to me. …I don’t think of those ten minutes when I first had penetrative sex with a man as anything special…I won’t ever ‘lose’ my virginity, because I don’t think I had anything to be hoisted away from me to begin with.”

Lucy*, a 20 year old student at the University of Toronto, defines herself as a virgin, but said, “To be clear, I am not waiting for the love of my life, or for marriage.” “I’m not expecting fireworks, or for it not to hurt like a bitch, or for me not to bleed, or for me to feel completely satisfied, but I think with the right person I won’t be afraid at the least. I’m only bothered by still being a virgin when it feels like I’m left out from something everyone is doing.”

If you “lose” it too early you’re slutshamed, but if you wait too long you’re taught to feel like there’s some-

thingwrong with you. Or, if you don’t fit into the neat category of straight sex—according to dominant narratives—you haven’t technically lost your virginity at all.

Isaac, a 21 year old U of T student said, “It wasn’t until university that I had a sexual experience with another gay man, and a whole year later that I had anal sex for my first time. I’ve been with my boyfriend now for over a year, and we never have anal sex …

Does that mean I’m in a sexless relationship? Not at all. There are many things two people can do with each other to provide sexual pleasure other than penetration.”

“So when did I lose my virginity, if ever? Was it to the boy I fooled around with in high school? The first gay boy I ever kissed and had fun with? The one who first fucked my ass? My inanimate dildo? Or my boyfriend? People that I know like to point to the buttsex and say, ‘Aha! That’s when you lost your v-card!’ It just seems too simple to me though—too arbitrary.”

Reconceiving the myth of losing one’s virginity calls for changing how we view sex and sexual experiences to make it a more inclusive and individualistic concept. … and to view your first time having sex (whatever that means to you) as a part of a longer line of sexual experiences rather than a single momentous experience….

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Hip hop dad RJD2 on being a 20-something DECEMBER 16, 2013 | BY TED RAWSON

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Editors Note: The following article is a collection of adapted and condensed excerpts from Martin Friedland’s indispensable book, The University of Toronto: A History, first edition, published by University of Toronto Press, March 15 2002. We are using these excerpts here under the fair dealing provision of the Copyright Act of Canada.

From the advance of minority rights, to the hijinks of university characters, to the rise of student activism, use this whirlwind history tour to help ground yourself in an appreciation of the context and events that have shaped U of T. A lot of worthwhile stuff has been omitted, and Professor Friedland’s book not only explains a lot more, it’s also a great read.

In 1792, when John Graves Simcoe, who would become first lieutenant governor, arrived in Toronto, there was no town, and he and his family had to live in a tent. Even at that most incipient moment he was in favour of a college in the colony. Before he had left England for Canada, the Oxford-educated Simcoe had written about establishing “a college of a higher class.” Such an institution “would give a tone of principle and manner that would be of infinite support to government.” Of perhaps greater importance, it would also help prevent students from picking up subversive ideas in the United States, where, “owing to the cheapness of education ... the gentlemen of Upper Canada will send their children.” Simcoe had fought against the Americans in the revolutionary war and had no wish to lose the rest of British North America. A university, he stated, would “have a great influence in civilizing the Indians.”

Simcoe’s dream would have to wait till 1827, when the Anglican bishop of Toronto, John Strachan, travelled to England to receive a royal commission for a religious college in Toronto. This school was called Kings College and the religious tests for admission, which benefited Anglicans, a minority in Ontario, made the college controversial and limited in scope.

On April 3rd, 1849 a bill was submitted to the provincial parliament to convert King’s College into a new institution: the University of Toronto. The bill would completely secularize the university, eliminating any publicly funded chairs of divinity and all religious tests for any members of the university. Christian colleges, like Victoria, could affiliate

with U of T but only with provisions.

In the meantime, King’s College had been limping along in the unused red brick legislative building on Front Street.

Rules included requiring students to be back in the residence before the gates were closed at 9:30 in the evening and to attend a certain number of chapel services. Students complained about the food: “day after day the same pies and puddings made their appearance.”

The U of T bill passed in the legislature, 44 to 14, and U of T came into existence January 1, 1850.

The foundation stone for University College was laid 1856.

Exactly two years after, the capstone for the 120-foot tower was set in place by the Governor General to a twenty-onegun salute and a banquet in the library. U of T’s first president, John McCaul, gave a speech that to this day eloquently summarizes the most noble goals of the university. Long after his bones turned to dust, he predicted, there would remain an “institution which freely offers the advantages of an education of the highest order to all who are qualified to avail themselves of its benefits, and enables the son of the poorest and humblest man in the land to compete on equal terms with the children of the most affluent and the most influential.”

By 1860, there were 100 full-time students. The college was a semi-rural retreat, somewhat removed from the city. The college gardens provided food for the kitchens, and the fields provided pasture for the cows, which supplied milk.

Students and professors spent the afternoons taking walks.

“No professor,” a student at the time said, “if he could avoid it, lectured in the afternoon, which was reserved for recreation and walking.”

By 1867, there were 250 full-time students. One of those who graduated in 1867 was a prize-winning black student, Alfred Lafferty, who went on to become the headmaster of the Guelph High School, and, later, a lawyer. Canada lived under the shadow of the American civil war. A university rifle corps saw action resisting the Fenian raids on the Niagara frontier. Three U of T students died and the bell in the great tower of University College tolled every minute until their bodies were brought back.

In 1878, John Galbraith was selected as the first professor of engineering. He refused to accept the usual hazing by

upper year students, and he stood “at the door of his room with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.”

In 1882, the Women’s Literary Club continued its efforts to petition for the admission of women to University College. “The exclusion of women from the University College,” read their petition, “is unlawful and unjust and has no basis in the Charter of the College. ... We regard the exclusion of women as students from University College as an insult to the sex and a wrong to the individual and society.” By 1883, a motion to admit women was brought before the university senate, but it was rejected. The then U of T president, Daniel Wilson, was concerned about the moral breakdown that might result from “bringing scores of young men and women into intimate relations in the same institution at the excitable age of 18 to 22.” Though he made clear that “it is not in the lecture room that trouble is to be apprehended, or danger incurred.” When a group of male students assured Wilson that women would be welcome at the University, he replied, “that’s not what I fear, Gentlemen; what I fear is that your reception will be too cordial.” Wilson himself was concerned about delivering his classes on English literature to a mixed audience.

He felt he would have to avoid discussing Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure or Othello.

Despite the opposition, on March 5, 1884, a motion was passed by the Ontario legislature that U of T should admit women. Several women applied for admission and sent in their fees for September 1884. But still the university denied them entry. The government, however, insisted, and the university quickly fitted up a waiting room for women, and a “Lady Superintendent” was hired. On October 6, 1884, three women students officially attended lectures at University College, and eight others joined them that year.

But they were not allowed to stand at the bulletin boards in the halls, use the reading room, join clubs without permission, or even consult the library catalogue.

On Friday evening, February 14, 1890, at 8 o’clock, around 3,000 people were set to take part in the annual conversazione party. There were to be concerts and literary readings, scientific demonstrations, and marching bands. Shortly before 7 o’clock, two servants were carrying a tray of lit kerosene lamps from the UC basement to the upper floors

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to illuminate the rooms and the exhibits. While they were climbing the staircase, the tray fell. Burning kerosene ignited the wooden staircase and spread to the upper library.

Toronto’s entire fire brigade responded–the city had only two engines at the time–but could do little. There was only one hydrant, and the water pressure was insufficient to send water to the upper storeys. Luckily, a brisk northwestern wind prevented the fire from damaging most of the west part of the college. And miraculously, no one was injured. But there was substantial damage, notably the whole of the library. The U of T president was in despair. But the walls of UC had remained and the building was restored.

In fact, everything was made better than before.

On Friday, 15, 1895, a mass student meeting was called, the largest at the time. (A large sign greeted those entering the building: Gentlemen Will Please Not Spit on the Floor.)

Seven hundred students attended, including a hundred women. The immediate cause of the demonstration was the dismissal by the government of the popular professor William Dale, announced that day. The firing galvanized the study body. William Lyon Mackenzie King, a member of the class of ‘95 and a future prime minister of Canada, noted in his diary, “I was that excited that I could not keep still, my blood fairly boiled. I scarcely ate any lunch.” A motion was introduced at the meeting by the “rather solemn, moon faced” ‘Billy’ King to “abstain from attendance at lectures ... until a proper investigation” into the firing.

A journalist who was there wrote that King “electrified his hearers by his denunciation of the age-old cult of tyranny,” just as his grandfather William Lyon Mackenzie had done as one of the leaders of the 1837 rebellion. The students striked. A professor described just how successful the strike was: “My lecture was in the big West Hall that will seat 600 and to lecture to one man in that huge place was certainly ridiculous.”

The causes of the strike are complex. On one hand, the strike may have been owing to the presence of a surprisingly large number of future politicians at University College. There was hostility between students and the administration in the years leading up to the strike. In October 1892, just as in previous years, there was a physical ‘hazing’ by sophomores of the freshmen. The faculty tried to stop the action by turning a fire hose on the students. James Loudon, who had become president of the University just a few weeks before, actually manned the hose. Another future politician wrote: “Obviously no student can wrest a fire hose from the hands of a president and turn it on his sacrosanct person. It is academic suicide ... By pardonable oversight we had neglected to cut the hose.” There was now a feud between ‘95 and the faculty as a whole.

Another reason for the strike was that King was having his own personal troubles with the administration. In 1893, he had taken part in one of the Halloween pranks that were part of student life - he and others tore down an old shed beside the college–and was fined $15. He at first refused to pay, but did so when told that he would be unable to write

his exams until the fine was paid. King was also angry that a professor he disliked had been arbitrarily appointed.

King had asked that professor to re-mark one of his papers, and he did–and gave King a lower mark. On another paper, the professor gave him a mark that killed his chances for a scholarship.

U of T President Loudon had other problems with the students. The evening of the day that the strike was called off was the conversazione, the first that had been held since the fire in 1890. Promenading, that is, walking with a partner to music, was part of the program, but the students

preferred dancing. (Dancing was not officially permitted at the college until the following year, when polkas and waltzes were on the program. At Victoria, dancing was not allowed until 1926.) The Toronto Star described Loudon’s undignified attempt to stop it: “The president evidently anticipated dancing and was on hand to prevent it. He was successful in each room in which he was, but when he entered the East Hall the dancing began in the West, and when he returned to the West it was resumed in the East ... The dancing was kept up at intervals until nearly three o’clock.”

The strike probably helped contribute to the closing down of the residence in University College in 1899. Many thought it had been responsible for much of the student agitation. Some argued that the residence–a “pocket nobility”–ran student life in the college. Whatever the causes of the strike, it signaled the birth of student activism at U of T. By 1903, Clara Benson and Emma Baker became the first women to receive a PhD from the University. In 1909, U of T began a program to admit ten Chinese students to free spots every two years. In 1909 as well, Professor Ernest Jones, later to be Sigmund Freud’s biographer, lectured in psychiatry at the University and reported to Freud that “two hundred innocent youths are being severely inoculated with psychoanalytic doctrines.” There is, he wrote to Freud, “a strong prejudice in Toronto against me on account of the stress I lay on sexual matters.” Complaints were brought to the president that Jones should be dismissed so that he could “no longer pervert and deprave the youth of Toronto.” He was accused of recommending masturbation and sending young men to prostitutes. His home had to be guarded by detectives.

The First World War began. Two years into the war, there were more women than men at Victoria College. Two German professors were forced to leave. “If we cannot get university professors of British blood,” said a provincial Member of Parliament, “then let us close the universities.”

In 1922, there was criticism of the gifts of Sir John Eaton and the Rockefeller Foundation. In each case, it was alleged–with some justification–that private donors were controlling the agenda of the University. Not only did the Eatons have a major say in the selection of the holder of the chair, but the gift also stipulated that a committee be created to advise the president on the reorganization of the department of medicine.

In 1922 also, a team of U of T professors discovered insulin. In 1923, they were awarded the Nobel Prize, an international validation of the quality of the U of T staff and facilities, by now some of the finest in the world.

The historian Brian McKillop has carefully combed the Varsity and other sources to determine whether U of T students in the 1920s were like those depicted in some of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels. He concludes that they were not, and that academic life “reflected a reality significantly removed from that of flappers and gin flasks.” Indeed, there seemed to be less drinking then than there had been shortly after the war. Students, he argues, “were neither morally out of control nor in revolt against a meaningless past.” But there were some skirmishes. A Varsity editor in 1929 publicly challenged a clergy member. The editor was fired by the Students’ Administrative Council. In 1931, another Varsity editor claimed that “practical atheism” was prominent on campus. He was suspended and the Varsity itself was suspended for the remainder of the year.

In 1931 as well, 68 U of T professors sent a public letter to the press, protesting against the action of the Toronto

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TTC Post-Secondary Photo ID

There are changes to the TTC Student photo ID. Post-Secondary students must carry photo ID. Although you do not need to show it when using a Post-Secondary Metropass, you must be able to produce it upon request by Fare Enforcement Officers or TTC staff.

For more information, please visit ttc.ca

police commission in preventing a campus group from meeting. The police alleged that the group was a communist front. The professors, led by Frank Underhill, claimed that “the right of free speech and free assembly is in danger of suppression in this city.” The U of T board of governors publicly dissociated itself from the views of the 68 professors. Underhill later wrote an article criticizing the prime minister; the U of T president wrote to him and cautioned him that such writing endangered the autonomy of the University. Underhill responded that many professors had engaged in such public discussions, and moreover, he argued, “if professors at Toronto must keep their mouths shut in order to preserve the autonomy of the University, then that autonomy is already lost.”

Enrolment in 1933 was 8,000. About two-thirds of the first year female and half of the first year male students came from families with professional or business backgrounds.

Women students represented just under 40 per cent of the total, though there were few in medicine, commerce, law, or engineering. In 1933, Underhill again was warned by the U of T president. Underhill had publicly stated that “the British Empire should be assigned to the ‘scrap heap.’” Later, the U of T president went to Italy and returned praising aspects of Mussolini’s regime, and spoke favourably of the Italian fascists. Despite the racism in Europe, in 1934, Jacob Finkelman was promoted to assistant professor, without difficulty: he was the first Jewish person appointed to a fulltime position at U of T. There were apparently no quotas on race or religion, though it should be noted that in the 1930s the central administration kept a running tally of the number of Jews at the University.

The Second World War broke out and U of T students went to war and U of T staff worked on research and management of military programs. Toronto scientists helped create the first proximity fuses, and a U of T chemist, George Wright, helped develop RDX, an explosive more powerful than TNT that had been known about since the First World War. The problem was that it was unstable. Wright and his colleagues at the University worked on improving its stability. A senior official with the Department of Munitions and Supply was shocked, however, to discover that Wright was conducting some of the experiments using this unstable substance in the elevator shaft of the old chemistry building. After the war, Wright would be awarded the US Medal of Freedom for his contributions.

U of T also built the first decompression chamber in North America to test the effects of high altitudes. Frederick Banting, one of the discoverers of insulin and a Nobel Prize winner, was the first to test it, and obtained the equivalent of a height of 25, 000 feet at a temperature of -59 degrees Fahrenheit. Banting tended to be somewhat reckless. Still suffering from the effects of the mustard gas he had tested on himself, in a confused state in the chamber he wanted to increase the decompression. Physiologist Wilbur Franks developed an idea that resulted in the first high altitude low-gravity suit. He had noticed that his test tubes often broke when subjected to severe centrifugal force. He had solved the problem by first inserting them in water-filled bottles. The same idea, Franks thought, could be employed for pilots, who could wear water-filled outer suits. Mice who would otherwise have died survived when spun in water-filled condoms.

U of T played a significant role in chemical and biological warfare during the war. Banting had written to the government: “the next development in war will be the utilization of epidemic disease as a means of destroying an enemy.”

Plague bacilli, for example, could be delivered “by means of rats harbouring infected fleas.” Shells, he went on, could contain “bacteria such as gas gangrene, tetanus and rabies ... so that even a scratch would be deadly.” U of T, with the government and the U of T administration’s blessing, became heavily involved in both chemical and biological warfare: labs experimented with parrot fever and typhus, typhoid and salmonella poisoning, among others.

In 1944, the percentage of women at the university was about 45 per cent. After the war it dropped to 27.5 per cent in 1950. Marriage rates soared: for women aged 15-19, it more than doubled what it had been before the war–and they had more children.

In 1949, the U of T president wrote that ‘out of a student body of over 16, 000,’ the communist club ‘can muster only 37 members.’ The number 37 is suspiciously precise; he was likely kept informed by the Canadian security service of communist activities on the campus.

The Institute for Aerophysics opened a facility in 1950. It included a supersonic wind tunnel developed with the help of two grad students, Irvine Glass and Gerald Bull. Bull was was assassinated in Brussels in 1990 because of his work on the development of a “super gun” for Saddam Hussein. In 1950, U of T personnel also developed their own electronic

computer, one of the first working computers in the world, and the University also purchased a computer, the second commercially sold computer in the world. The machine was able to play checkers by 1952.

In 1951, Trinity frosh were sent on a scavenger hunt and one item to be obtained was a streetcar advertising sign.

Seventeen students were arrested for causing damage to TTC property. A month later, some students, allegedly engineers, painted the word “Skule” on arts buildings throughout the campus. In 1953, women frosh from Victoria were taken by bus to the stockyards in the west end of the city, heavily sprayed with perfume, and, after each had had one shoe removed, were required to find their way back to Vic on their own. In the course of the event, eight windows of the bus were broken. When Hal Jackman was sworn in as the University’s thirtieth chancellor in 1997, he reminisced about “swiping” the chancellor’s chair in the 1950s. “I don’t want you to think that I spent all my university days doing this kind of thing, although it did seem to take quite a bit of time.”

A three-hour battle between Trinity and Wycliffe students ended in a bonfire and the arrival of three fire trucks. The next year, UC students dumped eighteen cans of garbage over Trinity’s front steps. In 1954, hundreds of engineering frosh, to the accompaniment of the engineering cannon and the Lady Godiva Memorial Band, went on a tour of the campus and entered UC looking for material that could form part of a later auction. In the course of the raid, the UC registrar was injured. By 1957, to clamp down on the revelry, part of the engineers’ initiation involved cleaning up parks and beaches.

In 1957, women were not allowed to go to Hart House to see Senator John F. Kennedy debate. In 1959, women still had no access to a students’ union. At the start of the 1950s there were only 60 Asian, 20 African, and 20 West Indian students at the University.

By the end of the 1950s, the post-war baby boom would be beginning to enroll in university–a doubling of enrolment. The U of T president wanted to be ready. “We are now in a position,” he wrote in 1956, perhaps not realizing the appropriateness of his language, “to do some concrete planning.” The following few years witnessed the creation of a huge number of (largely huge and concrete) buildings, new colleges, and the suburban campuses at Mississauga and Scarborough.

In 1962, Ernest Sirluck was appointed dean of U of T’s graduate school, and became the first Jew to be appointed to a senior administrative position at the University. He was invited to join the York Club, where many university meetings were held, but later the chairman of the club’s membership committee started chatting with him. “What is your background? Norwegian?” “No,” Sirluck replied, “Russian Jewish.” He never heard from the club again.

In 1964, the school hired two black academics–Don Meeks and John Gandy as a lecturer. Meeks was likely the first black person to be given a tenure-stream appointment at the University. Daniel Hill, later head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and B.A. McFarlane, later a professor at Carleton, had been hired several years earlier, but both were one-year appointments. The Vietnam war became the most charged issue on campus in the late 1960s. The university, many activists claimed, was part of the military-industrial complex that supported the war, and was thought of as an authoritarian institution. There was a peaceful protest in 1965 when Adlai Stevenson, the US ambassador to the UN, received an honorary degree. After meeting some student leaders in the spring of 1965, U of T president Claude Bissell noted in his diary, “there is an ugly undercurrent, deep and irrational.”

The first disruptive protest occurred in 1967 against recruiting on campus by Dow Chemical Corporation, the manufacturers of the napalm being used in Vietnam.

A group of students attempted to block the entrance to the University’s recruiting centre by lying in front of the entrance. Although the U of T and Toronto police stood by, no action was taken. Dow officials suspended interviews on campus. 1967 was also the year that tenure came to be understood as the inability for the University to fire a professor.

In 1968, construction on Robarts library began. In 1969, the first gay and lesbian group in Toronto and on any Canadian campus–the U of T Homophile Association–was formed. Jearld Moldenhauser, a research assistant in the faculty of medicine who would later establish the Glad Day Bookstore and help found the gay liberation magazine The Body Politic, placed a four-line classified advertisement in the Varsity, asking others to join. The first meeting drew 16 people–15 men and 1 woman. In little more than a year the group was challenging discrimination in law, in policing, and inspiring activist groups beyond the campus.

Also in 1969, the committee of Ontario university presidents published a paper suggesting that it might be necessary to use strong tactics to counter threatening student protests, and U of T’s disciplinary body issued a statement that echoed that report. The student council condemned the threats of strong action and demanded that Bissell dissociate himself from both statements. He refused. The student council gave him a week to change his mind and implicitly promised that Simcoe Hall would be occupied if Bissell’s response was not acceptable. On the morning of the deadline date, the Varsity urged a sit-in. Bissell met with students and his response to the council was accepted as adequate, and Bissell left with the audience singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The crisis was averted, and Bissell was elated.

But in March 1970, a sit-in of the senate chamber in Simcoe Hall did occur. The crisis centred on the issue of day-care funding from the university. Supporters wanted the university to provide additional funds for day-care and demanded, outside Simcoe Hall, that Bissell speak to them. He refused, resulting in the senate chamber being occupied by the demonstrators, many of whom had brought their children. Banners hung out of the windows, one of which read “Infants of the World Unite, You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Diapers.” The demonstrators were joined by others, and approximately 200 people spent a congenial evening in the senate chamber. Bissell was informed that the student council had voted $500 for food for the occupants and that “the senate chamber [was] heavy with the sweet smell of pot.” Bissell met with the leaders, pledged to find the money for the day-care centre, and the latest crisis was over. Police were never called, though U of T had prepared to obtain a court injunction to deal with the occupiers.

In 1970, a time capsule sponsored by Zoologist David Chant, founder of Pollution Probe, was buried on the south side of Robarts library. The plague reads, in part, “we have buried here a record of man’s folly on the planet he’s outgrown.”

In 1972, women were first admitted to Hart House, and the first courses on women and their history were given at U of T. Also, in 1972, U of T did call in police to evict protestors who had occupied Simcoe Hall. The issue was access to the as-yet-unopened Robarts library stacks, which were then only planned for use by graduate students. A petition of more than 4,500 names was submitted to change that policy and allow undergraduate access. “Books, like all other raw materials of education,” one pamphlet read, “should be available to anyone who wants to use them.” After the U of T senate voted on Friday, March 1972 to continue denying access to undergraduates, about 75 people left that meeting and forced their way into Simcoe Hall. They refused to leave until the senate granted stack access to all undergraduates. On Sunday morning, the about 25 protestors who remained in the senate were evicted with the assistance of the Toronto police force, who broke through the door of the senate to get in. Fourteen people were charged with criminal code trespass offences, including the student council president, a co-editor of The Varsity, and four others were charged with more serious offences, such as assault. On Monday afternoon, a mass student rally in Con Hall was followed by another occupation of the senate chamber, this time by more than 500 people. The occupation was abandoned the following day after the new university president stated that he would personally support equal access to the stacks, and that the university would tell the crown attorney that it was not in the university’s interest to proceed with the charges. The crown did drop the trespass charges, but proceeded to convict three assault charges. When the library opened in 1973, it was decided by the library itself that all students would be given stack access.

The 1970s also brought great interest in women’s issues.

Women’s studies courses were first introduced: in 1971-2, two students, undergraduate Ceta Ramkhalawansingh and graduate student Kay Armatage, organized an interdisciplinary course on women, and a course on the history of women was presented by Jill Conway and Natalie Davis.

Conway became the first female vice-president, and she helped correct anomalies in the salaries of women - a group that held only about 7 per cent of all full-time faculty positions. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, U of T addressed a range of other issues of particular interest to women–maternity leave, day care, safety on campus, and sexual harassment. The sexual harassment office handles about 250 cases a year. In one widely noted case in 1989, a male professor was banned from the athletic wing of Hart House for five years for harassing a female swimmer in the Hart House pool. Conway and others also worked to increase the number of women faculty members. Over the next dozen years, the number increased, but it was still under 20 per cent of full-time faculty in the mid-1980s–even though women

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20 constituted about 50 per cent of the student body.

By 1984, the quality of student life on campus reached a low point. Students, one report stated, complained of inadequate classroom space, of poor campus food, and of feeling “faceless, alienated and lonely.” One student said: “it’s like being a cedar chip on the bottom of the hamster cage.” The new U of T president addressed these feelings in his instillation address: “The opportunities are boundless and they are not beyond our reach.”

In 1985, the Hart House debates committee invited the Glenn Babb, South African ambassador to Canada, to participate in a debate on investment in apartheid-ruled South Africa. Disruptions ensued - one of the speakers from the floor threw the ceremonial mace at Babb, and others in the audience stomped and chanted–and the debate was cancelled. “The need to dissolve the Hart House debate before all sides of the divestment issue were heard,” wrote Brian Burchell for the Students’ Administrative Council, “was a shameful moment in the history of the University.” The U of T administration agreed and indicated that another opportunity to debate should be organized in order to secure freedom of expression. But a number of U of T faculty disagreed. Peter Rosenthal from the mathematics department, along with a large group of professors, sent a petition to the administration saying that “no official representatives of the government of South Africa should be invited to speak at the University of Toronto until apartheid has been completely dismantled.” Ultimately, law students invited Babb to a debate, and while throughout there were shouts of “Jail Botha, free Mandela,” the debate, protected by RCMP officers as well as Toronto Police, took place. U of T also was divided over whether it should continue to invest its endowment funds in companies that had dealings with South Africa. One meeting of the governing council was terminated because of a serious disruption over the issue by some 250 demonstrators. In the end, the governing council approved the complete divestiture of all securities in companies doing business in South Africa.

In 1986, U of T professor John Polanyi won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. By a happy coincidence, a large rally to seek greater funding had been planned for the next day in Con Hall. The hall was packed, and between one and two thousand more people heard the proceedings over loudspeakers outside the building. At the end of the meeting, Polanyi entered the hall and received an exuberant two-minute standing ovation. The U of T president wrote that the meeting was “a really electrifying and memorable experience. The impact on the crowd and on the politicians must have been immense.” That very afternoon, U of T learned that the Ontario cabinet was likely to add $50 million to the funding of Ontario universities. The federal government followed within a week with a program that would match research funds given by the private sector.

Polanyi, however, criticized the federal initiative, stating that “the insistence on relating fundamental science–university-type science–to the needs of the marketplace ... has become short-sighted.” It had taken over a decade, he pointed out repeatedly, for the practical applications of his own research to come to fruition. Nevertheless, what is called “technology transfer,” the transfer of technology from universities to industry, became an important component of research at U of T, and an office of technology transfer was established in Simcoe Hall in 1988. One successful patent has brought in excess of $5 million in royalties. So-called spin-off companies that bring revenue to the University are now being formed at the rate of about five a year.

Throughout the 1990s, issues involving allegations of racism had to be dealt with. Several days after the installation of a new U of T president, his office was occupied

by an anti-racist group which demanded that the University establish a racial harassment advocacy centre and that classes be cancelled on Martin Luther King Day for a teach-in on racism. To defuse the situation, two special advisors were appointed to prepare a report, and U of T adopted several of the report’s suggestions, including the establishment of a meeting room for the Native Students’ Association, the creation of a presidential advisory committee on race relations, and the setting up of an office of race relations and anti-racism. In a survey in 1994, about half the members of the student body identified themselves as non-white, yet the number of professors belonging to visible minority groups remained relatively low: by the end of the decade, fewer than 9 per cent of the faculty members identified themselves as belonging to a visible minority group. At that rate, it would be more than fifty years before even 15 per cent of the faculty consisted of members of visible minority groups.

Page 136

Some years needed to pass before I went on the payroll of a university police department. I patrolled the school buildings with a flashlight and 21 shortwave radio on the lookout for suspicious persons and security hazards.

Among my ancillary duties was dropping off human eyeballs at the macabre “Eye Bank,” in a container tagged “Sandman, PhD.”

Velut Arbor Ævo ; As A Tree Through The Ages

In the years in which I scoured the university premises at night, half the time was spent exporing. I carried, so to speak, two pairs of eyes: one for performing my duties, the other for sating my curiosity. The night patrol broadened greatly my knowledge of the university. Places which by day were congenial to me appeared menacing in the sulphuric light. And vice versa: those I thought unhomely before nightfall I gravitated to after dark. Surprising resemblences often presented themselves to the eye between objects that by day were as unlike each other as could be. One realized that the dispossessed were also residents (and onetime students) of the university. One found them asleep in basements and libraries. A homicide would be committed, and one would witness the removal of a corpse -- as happened with one cadaver-handler, in the morgue of the university’s Gross Anatomy Department, whose murderer and co-worker (co-handler of corpses) burned down his parish church and set ablaze two others, then took his own life in Bluffers Park that same night.

(Lurid details these; but every revenge homicide has its lurid details.) As I thus got to know the university after dark and after hours, I also learned more about the university (and at the university). One could say that all my hands-on extracurricular activities within the university -- including invigilation and usherdom -- were learning activities, not unlike academics, though subordinate to academics. All of them were designed to bring you safely back to your studies, not take you away from them.

At another juncture in my university education, I was putting on Hamlet. I wanted to stage Hamlet the play as well as play Hamlet the man. My abbreviated version of the tragedy revolved around Hamlet’s indecisiveness, the discrepancy between his thoughts and his actions -- its most dramatically challenging aspect. All the pieces, as they say, fell into place: the funds, the crew, the actors, and a stage to upstage the great hall at Elsinore. I walked around the college for weeks memorizing monologues, I learned fencing to know how to handle a foil, I strongly identified with the protagonist, yet, after much wavering, I could not bring myself to act the part. My ineptitude as an actor of Hamlet could not but put into question my aptitude as a director of Hamlet. This irresponsibility, thinly disguised as responsibility, threw a wrench into the gears of my play. At the last minute a new Hamlet had to be found and, suddenly, the other pieces fell out of place -- the funds proved insufficient, the stage-hall was re-booked for other events, and the crew, at loggerheads. And so, the superb idea of staging Hamlet (of staging none other than Hamlet!) fell through; but that, of all plays, Hamlet should fall through seemed strangely apropos. I used to regret this miscarried performance and play, but my view of it changed in the recounting. As it seems to me now, in my vacillation to play Hamlet, I may have succeeded at playing him after all.

Not long after this fiasco, which set me behind in my studies while also being part of my studies, it dawned on me that surviving my so-called Liberal Arts education required little more than going through the motions of learning in lockstep. Sticking one’s neck out for Shakespeare (or anything else for that matter) was a mistake.

Further along in one’s university career, with the safeguards gone, one could disengage from the chain. Things would not be laid out as neatly as before and, left to one’s own devices, one would learn to cut corners -- but that’s the flip side of liberty. Even the following tenet of “Pestalozzianism” -- whose best principles and methods were allegedly implamented in American schools, banishing rote learning and corporal punishment -- was a pragmatist’s pipe dream, bound to clash with capitalism and individualism: Education is nothing more than the polishing of each single link in the great chain that binds humanity together and gives it unity. The failings of education and human conduct spring as a rule from our disengaging a single link and giving it special treatment as though it were a unit in itself rather than a part of the chain. It is as though we thought the strengh and utility of the link came from its being silver-plated, gilded, or even jeweled, rather than from its being joined unweakened to the links next to it, strong and supple enough to share with them the daily

t a y t t W w l y O Y t h b y m y w B s b h v t a t l f w o h u t t m r a s y s w t b l e w d t ( l u y

22 stresses and strains of the chain. (Pestalozzi, The Education of Man) ...

But new ideas! Crackling new ideas -- assumed, identified with, as good as my own -- were everywhere. Whenever I think of ideas in general, I always fall back on figuration: [[[get a picture from page 139 of the Robarts diagram]] A triangle-based monolith -- the central library, the library of libraries, the library of sub-libraries, a veritable mise en abyme. Its shelves bulging with intellectual inventory, much of it waiting to be dusted off and rediscovered.

And if the ideas bodied forth in them became negligible -- a rarity to be sure, as all such expired ideas have a fateful appeal, holding out the promise of life-altering adventures -- then at least the dust trapped inside these volumes, the powder shed by their disintegrating covers could be harvested and snuffed in some doses. As I got older -- twelve years was long enough to grow old -- I liked nothing more than this diving for ideas looming in the depths of university libraries that may never again see the light of day.

Ideas that held particular sawy over my mind arranged themselves memorably in my imagination. The more fanciful and inordinate of such conceits took on the poses of topiaries, seperated by the hedges of heteroclite categories; others, for modesty, took to creeping and rambling, protecting their entanglements with muscular tendrils and foliage. Many of these recondite, chimerical “specimens” fell from the lips of old professors who, ex cathedra, tricked me into thinking they were relevant -- those antiquated ideas of theirs -- even supremely relevant. As they spouted their ideas, they grew in my eyes to the size of intellectual giants. But overtop their musical phrasing one heard scratches -- as I did when I last listened to tape recordings of their lectures -- and one saw through cracks in their veneer their very irrelevance. One remembers their dirty fingernails, their lopsided shoes, the rubber bands around their earpieces, and one knows them for who they really were.

But my awakening to the benefits of learning antedated all that. I can pinpoint the exact circumstances of this adolescent awakening: an essay -- as far as I am concerned,

the only worthwhile essay I have ever composed -- on the topic of ugliness; not in any concrete and actual ugliness, but in the depiction of ugliness, not in painting but literature. I pored over my schoolbooks, aching to put everything I ever wanted to learn and say about ugliness and its perennial struggle with beauty into my essay, completely intoxicated with the nervous secretions of ratiocination.

It does not take much to enfeeble the body. With the mind it is different. The mind remains elastic and clear on most days; some evenings a dark cloud hangs over it, the weariness of repetition, the heaviness of anxiety. But on most days, it is the sun that defines its gradual unhurried trajectory, the waxing and waning of reason. Only when the mind is hit by obsession or derangement will you see it reel. It forges ahead clearing everything in its path or stumbling over it until, limp, it is delivered from its travail. That essay was a case in point. My teacher, used to receiving from me only sloppy work or medicore quality, facetiously drawled that I had written a book. It was for me the dawn of Sisyphean labor of mind.

My idea of pursuing this labor wherever it would lead was born around that time. Which brings me back to the mighty conjunction of will and action with which I began.

Such a perfect conjunction can seem a blessing -- and it was indeed -- but more often it is a double-edged sword.

“Perhaps the most fateful gift an evil genius could bestow upon our times is knowledge without skill” (Pestalozzi).

Once you have tasted the pleasures of knowledge, you are in it for the long haul. You find it hard to resist. Like a skier on the brow of a hill, propelled by the hill’s very incline, you let your runners carry you wherever they please.

That blinding slope is not a disaster waiting to happen, but a destiny already happening. You fulfill this destiny willy-nilly, let come what may.

For twelve years I saw nothing beyond this destiny: I saw no way out of America with its universities. Some would say, sarcastically, that for twelve years I was not at work but on holiday, not working hard but vacationing hard. But the truth is I heard the crack of a whip and I heeded it. The mystique of discipline sent me into ecstasy.

For certain individuals -- let’s say “problem individuals” -- the structure of higher education is a godsend. Their intellectual potential cannot develop in any other setting.

I was one of them. I threw myself into my studies with single-minded fervor.

If there are words that best describe my old university, they would be an oasis. It existed at the heart of a metrop-

olis as an island amid civic and suburban drabness. One confined oneself within its walls like a voluntary prisoner.

If, four years on, one still had no conception of the shape of the greater city, it was due to its insular character. On the other hand, one knew the shape of this oasis like the back of one’s hand. One knew it by day, one knew it by night; one knew it at all hours and in all states of consciousness. One had one’s own map of it, drawn with one’s own mind: there were darkened buildings one had entirely to oneself, but which by day one did not recognize; some sites were breached under duress, others entered only out of compulsion; from one year to the next certain places would become off-limits, simply cease to exist on one’s private map. Certain no-trespass zones marked off the past from the present. The university formed a society unto itself. Its paternal provosts, maternal caretakers (mostly Polish), and avuncular night porters (mostly Irish) were a grotesque familial body. Of course, its appeal for me never turned on its classes and sense of community, but on its reading rooms and sense of isolation.

When you entered such a university, you saw only a forest, were overwhelmed and instantly became lost in

this forest. It was hard to make out individual trees in that agglomerate of trees. Then, one day, the scales fell from your eyes; what you saw was no forest at all, but just one tree, a colossal oak-tree. And that you were a graft on this tree and would grow in tandem with it through the ages.

Whenever you were out of your element, moving in the world outside the university, you saw only scrawny, isolated trees; their sylvan cohesion remained invisible. And you felt like you had been felled.

On most days you left the house only for brief periods.

You rarely socialized with more than one person at a time. You grew rusty at socializing. At a lecture entited (o horror of horrors) “The Death of a Discipline” (reference being to your discipline, the discipline of your studies), you felt like a demented person, wondering about your motives for sticking to your discipline and returning to your alma mater. You have definitely not managed to wean yourself off of your dependency.

But the fact still stands that as students we were all shacked hand and foot. You commenced your studies believing that delight and instruction can go hand in hand; you were put out to pasture under minimal supervision. Just when you were beginning to enjoy yourself, the stranglehold tightened. This pattern repeated itself at every stage. First a perfect balance, freedom in captivity, then a perversion of both. And when you finally left the university, much reduced in stature, but with a fan of diplomas in your hand, you were yoked together with the rest of this elite herd and enlisted in the ranks of the intellectual proletariat. A young Turk I knew saw how things stood with the university. This is what the university has become -- he opined -- not what it used to be. According to him, an effective form of sabotage of the status quo had to take the guise of self-sabotage. You must pull out at the last moment and unceremoniously refuse your degree with its laughable perquisites. If you are in your right mind, you will refuse the university the satisfaction of having smoothly processed and branded you. You owe this to yourself, because throughout your schooling, in receiving your “priceless” education, you were (unbeknownst to yourself) completing a sophisticated, state-funded course in self-sabotage. Yes, in being beholden to an institution of higher (and highest) learning, you neglected precious lower learning. In being encouraged to live exclusively in the workd of ideas, you were betraying ideas that entail action. You made a killing doing nothing. Having subjected your ideas (and ideals) to disinterested scholarly inquiry, you denied your ideas (ideals). By being paid to scrutinize your beliefs, you lost the meaning of your beliefs. If this is true, then the ultimate act of defiance against the university will cost you nothing you have not already lost. You will be merely

23

throwing off institutional delusions. Rejecting institutional symbols. Exorcizing institutional evil.

I never followed his advice, and I don’t know if he ever did himself. In some respects, I was an exemplar of university education; but in other respects, I was the black sheep of the flock and a long-time dissenter from the university. On the one hand, I have become a prolific writer of academic literature. On the other hand, I am stacking these pages precisely against such literature (and the very notion of “humanistic discipline”!). I am not, of course, disparaging wholesale the work of scholarship, only the complacency of much of the printed knowledge coming out of universities and produced by insecure university employees. This work is all about security. It is only of instrumental use to the individual who produced it. However, regardless of its quality, this literature accumulates in the “knowledge bank” that is the university. You open these scholarly publications -- even the very best ones, across the arts and sciences -- and you see the glaring instrumentality of the work contained in them. The lazy narrowness of perspective is truly horrendous, horrendous. The formulair properties of work that needn’t have been formulaic. You get analytical rigor that lacks vigor.

You are put to sleep by the paradigm when you could have ralled right on the cutting edge. But, above all, you sense the cutthroat instincts at play. You see scores being settled in footnotes and book reviews. It would be too easy to mistake me for a traitor and malcontent, too easy

to accuse me of biting the hand that feeds. Nothing could be further from the truth. The progress of education really is hobbled by its own notion of progress. The education system is very much addled by its own notion of system.

I have long sensed that the core of the university is rotting away. Where others drool at advances in the Arts and Sciences, I often hold my nose.

Nonetheless, I returned to Poland not long ago fanning myself with my final university diploma. I held in my hand the proof of having sold off the unfettered, autodidactic spirit of true inquiry -- that latecomer of a spirit -- for a scholar’s title. I arrived and, at the first opportunity, worked my way up to the mountains again, wanting to be among them and its people. I stepped into the hillside home of my hosts just as their newborn calf lay dying. The village veterinarian was bedridden and could not examine it. Besides, all the signs read properly were death signs (only backwards could they spell health); an intervention now would be of no use. This ill-timed visit put me in my place. In the solemnity of a late dinner, I was asked for my news and muttered the words “doctor of philosophy.” Without looking at the moribund animal, I read the signs backwards and assured them it will get better. The brusque repy I recieved I can now only paraphrase: “The cow is in a bad way. And the vet is tied up with himself. You might be a doctor, just not the kind we need.” To my surprise, these words did not insult me in the least. Thank God for plain speaking! Even among the common folk, the university has lost its good name. Once upon a time, philosophy doctors ranked in usefulness with aninal doctors. But now it’s a different story.

Fearn Wren

[[[....to page 145 ]]]

A Flashlight Over My Shoulder:

The Psalmist says of the Hebrew Scriptures, status, was also a sign in the deep trust that orize, everyday’, ‘memorize, everyday’ almost ‘Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on I had in the truth of the Christian faith— like a mantra. I decided that I would take my path’ (Psalm 119:105). Now while one reading about the Qu’ran, Karl Marx, New her up on her challenge and prove her wrong cannot necessarily reflect the rays of divine Testament textual criticism, and atheism, that even with such studying, the class was light unto your path, one can hope to illu- did not frighten me in the least, nor should far too difficult. Sure enough however, my mine your divine light with reflections upon have they. First and foremost then, while I pride went before the fall (Prov. 16:18), and one’s own path. It is with this endeavor that may not know why you wish to pursue your she was right. I memorized and studied eva former undergraduate can hope to shine a education as you are so doing—be prepared eryday, and ended the course with an A. of the Hebrew Scriptures, status, was also a sign in the deep trust that orize, everyday’, ‘memorize, everyday’ almost flashlight over his shoulder to illumine your to be transformed, and in the process possi However, this does not mean that mp for my feet, a light on I had in the truth of the Christian faith— like a mantra. I decided that I would take future by his past.

Coming fresh out of high bly value your education in a different light. your professors are always right about every119:105). Now while oneI had reading about the the Qu’ran, New truth her has up on her challenge wrong school, one goal—get best Karl edu-Marx, Second, nothing to fear,and doprove not her thing that they may advise or teach. It is here reflect the rays of divine Testament textual criticism, and atheism, that even with such studying, the class was cation possible.

To give you a noble reason view ‘faith’ as a set of propositions that must where we must come to the straight-forward ath, one can hope to illu- did not frighten me in the least, nor should far too difficult. Sure enough however, my for why I wanted to get the best education be defended at all costs, rather, view ‘faith’ reality of the campus of the University of light with reflections upon have they. First and foremost then, while I pride went before the fall (Prov. 16:18), and I possibly could get would be a masterpiece as trust, as a verb, that invites you to throw Toronto, that will you meet people not only is with this endeavor that may not know why you wish to pursue your she was right. I memorized and studied evof deception I hope I will never be capable yourself in, knowing that after all the transwith different beliefs but conflicting beliefs duate can hope to shine a education as you are so doing—be prepared eryday, and ended the course with an A. of.

Being raised in Christian apologetic maformation has been gone through, no matter to your own.

The question then is how will shoulder to illumine your to be transformed, and in the process possi- However, this does not mean that terial, scholarship, books, movies etc… that how painful, that it is worth it. one interact with the ‘other’.

When it comes . Coming fresh out of high bly value your education in a different light. your professors are always right about everysought to ‘defend’ the Christian faith on

Speaking of painful transformation, to your professors, the first thing that I can e goal—get the best edu- Second, truth has nothing to fear, do not thing that they may advise or teach. It is here historical grounds against the perceived onlet me tell you a story from my first year that advise you, for I had seen it in many of my o give you a noble reason view ‘faith’ as a set of propositions that must where we must come to the straight-forward slaught of secularism, Islam, and post-modshould reassure you in two respects—one, friends throughout my undergrad, is that to get the best education be defended at all costs, rather, view ‘faith’ reality of the campus of the University of ernism I had begun to notice that those who your education will be challenging, and two, when you encounter a professor who apet would be a masterpiece as trust, as a verb, that invites you to throw Toronto, that will you meet people not only were talked about the most, and were taken your professors are not your enemies, despite pears to be challenging your particular bepe I will never be capable yourself in, knowing that after all the trans- with different beliefs but conflicting beliefs most seriously in the public court of opinion all appearances.

My program was a specialliefs about something is do not panic. Many Christian apologetic ma- formation has been gone through, no matter to your own. The question then is how will were those with high degrees from top uniization in Christian Origins, so I was reChristian friends had continually asked , books, movies etc… that how painful, that it is worth it. one interact with the ‘other’. When it comes versities.

They had proven themselves more quired to take two years of classical Greek— throughout the course of my study—‘how d’ the Christian faith on Speaking of painful transformation, to your professors, the first thing that I can than capable in the scholarly realm and had if you’ve ever studied another language you has studying under liberal professors affected against the perceived on-to make let me tell you a storyoffrom my first year advise you, had seen in many of my wished a public defense the Chrisknowthat how difficult it is,for letI alone howitdiffiyour faith?’, ‘how did you manage to keep ism, Islam, and post-mod- should reassure you in two respects—one, friends throughout my undergrad, is that in the midst of all the criticism tian faith, and their status as elite academics cult it is when the language is considered as your faith n to notice that those who your education will be challenging, and two, when you encounter a professor who aponly helped the cause.

In a rather cynical dead as you feel after you’ve learned it!!!

The of the Bible you had learned?’ While, these professors arecoming not yourout enemies, despite the most, and were taken as your pears our to be challenging your be- were greatly appreciate, it is immanner, I perceive it now, of first day of class, professor, invited us particular to questions the public court of opinion all appearances. My program was a special- liefs about something is do not panic. Manyto note that they came from a place high-school with the same desire, I sought to read a passage of Homer’s The Odyssey…in portant in Christian so I Greek. was re-MostChristian igh degrees from get top the uni-bestization continually education at the topOrigins, university of us werefriends not sure had we knew the of asked timidity and fear and what I always red proven themselves more quired to take two years of classical Greek— throughout the course of my study—‘how them was, the professors were not in Canada, the University of Toronto.

If I exentire alphabet of the Greek language.

Needminded e scholarly realm and had if you’ve ever studied another language you has studying under liberal professors affected posed myself to the harshest criticisms of the less to say, near the end of the first semester out to destroy my faith. To be quite honest, ublic defense of the Chris- know how difficult it is, let alone how diffi- your faith?’, ‘how did you manage most to keep Christian faith, studied the New Testament the class had dwindled from 40 people to 12, professors could probably care less cult it scholars, is when the considered as your ir status as elite academics faithexam in the midst of all the criticism under the ‘liberal’ andlanguage engage atisthe and before our first I was considering about what you actually ‘believe’, what is cause. In a rather cynical dead as you feel after you’ve learned it!!! The of the Bible you had learned?’ While, these highest levels of academic debate—I would to be numbered among the 28 that dropped important for them is that you understand eive it now, coming out of first day of class, our professor, invited us to questions were greatly appreciate, it is imcome out with my Christian faith all the out.

I had never struggled so much learning the teaching material, not that you yourself the same desire, I sought to read a passage of Homer’s The Odyssey…in portant to note that they came from a place stronger, and a mark of status so that people anything as I had classical Greek, I had come subscribe to their point of view.

I myself ation at the top university Greek. Most of us were not sure we knew the of timidity and fear and what I always rewould have to listen to my opinion. out of high-school with a 92% average with most assuredly changed some of my beliefs iversity of Toronto. If I ex- entire alphabet of the Greek language. Need- minded them was, the professors were not

As cynical as this endeavor origlittle to no difficulty—to be unable to grasp because of what I had been taught by proe harshest criticisms of the less to say, near the end of the first semester out to destroy my faith. To be quite honest, inally began, it did instill a virtue in me the complex grammar of classical Greek was fessors, but, as equally important, I was all udied the New Testament the class had dwindled from 40 people to 12, most professors could probably care less that I would now trade for nothing else in an embarrassment to whatever ego I had, and the more enriched and confirmed in some scholars, and engage the and courage before our first exam was considering what actuallythe‘believe’, is theatworld—the to pursue the Itruth, brought meabout to tears, as I you was failing class ofwhat my beliefs because of what professors had cademic debate—I would to be numbered among the 28 that dropped important for them is that you understandThe key was that at the end of the for truth has nothing to fear.

Throwing my miserably for nearly four months.

I asked our taught. y Christian faith all the out. I had never struggled so much learning the teaching material, not that you yourself faith in the ‘deep waters’ as it were, while professor repeatedly how I could do better, day I had to trust that I could engage 100% ark of status so thatoriginally people beginning anything as as aI pursuit had classical Greek, to their point of view. Iwith myself of a mark of I had shecome gave thesubscribe same answer each time—‘memthe thoughts and worldviews presented en to my opinion. out of high-school with a 92% average with most assuredly changed some of my beliefs al as this endeavor orig- little to no difficulty—to be unable to grasp because of what I had been taught by proid instill a virtue in me the complex grammar of classical Greek was fessors, but, as equally important, I was all trade for nothing else in an embarrassment to whatever ego I had, and the more enriched and confirmed in some urage to pursue the truth, brought me to tears, as I was failing the class of my beliefs because of what professors had ing to fear. Throwing my miserably for nearly four months. I asked our taught. The key was that at the end of the waters’ as it were, while professor repeatedly how I could do better, day I had to trust that I could engage 100% ng as a pursuit of a mark of she gave the same answer each time—‘mem- with the thoughts and worldviews presented

›

The question and challenge of the ‘other’, when it comes to your peers, can be best exemplified by my interaction with a Yugoslavian acquaintance of mine. In my pursuit of understanding science (and fulfilling my science distribution requirement, of course) I took a history and philosophy of science course. Unexpectedly, I had seen another guy who I knew from my middle school days in the same class—we were not on the best of terms. Whenever the topic of ‘religion’ came up amongst our mutual friends on Facebook or whatnot, inevitably we’d get caught up in those utterly time-consuming and ineffective internet-debates. He would accuse me of being an idiot, a Biblical literalist, and what not, where as I had overtly made the point that I was much more well-read than him and because I felt that I was smarter than him he should back-down.

Well, this course in the history and philosophy of science could not have been a better situation to put an angry atheist and a proud Christian together in to see what would happen. Throughout our conversations and studying, I don’t think either of us actually persuaded one another about the truth of our particular stances but we did manage to laugh, interact, and even become friends.

He became convinced that I was not a ‘religious’ idiot to be ignored, and I became convinced that his anger came from a real anguish over the conflicts between Muslims and Christians in the Balkans. I learned not to use an intellectual status to clobber people into agreeing with me, and I’m sure that he learned that insults were not arguments.

The reason that I relate this story to you is because in your new environment,

By Caleb Upton

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The Psalmist says of the Hebrew Scriptures, status, was also a sign in the deep trust that orize, everyday’, ‘memo ‘Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on I had in the truth of the Christian faith— like a mantra. I decide my path’ (Psalm 119:105). Now while one reading about the Qu’ran, Karl Marx, New her up on her challenge cannot necessarily reflect the rays of divine Testament textual criticism, and atheism, that even with such stu light unto your path, one can hope to illu- did not frighten me in the least, nor should far too difficult. Sure mine your divine light with reflections upon have they. First and foremost then, while I pride went before the f one’s own path. It is with this endeavor that may not know why you wish to pursue your she was right. I memo a former undergraduate can hope to shine a education as you are so doing—be prepared eryday, and ended the c flashlight over his shoulder to illumine your to be transformed, and in the process possi- However, this future by his past. Coming fresh out of high bly value your education in a different light. your professors are alwa school, I had one goal—get the best edu- Second, truth has nothing to fear, do not thing that they may adv cation possible. To give you a noble reason view ‘faith’ as a set of propositions that must where we must come to for why I wanted to get the best education be defended at all costs, rather, view ‘faith’ reality of the campus I possibly could get would be a masterpiece as trust, as a verb, that invites you to throw Toronto, that will you of deception I hope I will never be capable yourself in, knowing that after all the trans- with different beliefs b of. Being raised in Christian apologetic ma- formation has been gone through, no matter to your own. The ques if you walk, live, and study with your peers get rid of those fearsmovies with every

muchit.more could have been how painful, thatWhile it is worth terial, scholarship, books, etc…little thatpractice one interact with the ‘o with a posture of trust towards that with the worse it gets because you have no alertsaid or advised, it is the hope of this writer Speaking of painful transformation, sought to ‘defend’ the Christian faith on to your professors, the which you have been brought to trusthistorical in, ed grounds and taught yourthe brain that there thatyou youa story will have to takeadvise the you, for I had se let isme tell fromenough my firsttrust year that against perceived on-really you can treat those ‘others’ in: (1) a hostile something to fear.

My fearful obsessions had next steps yourself, and to share the light you slaught of secularism, Islam, and post-mod- should reassure you in two respects—one, friends throughout m manner, imagining them your enemy, (2)ernism an me hospitalized for a week due to sleep your and education encounter others as I have to you encounter I had begun to notice that those who willwith be challenging, and endeavor two, when indifferent manner, imagining them as other food deprivation to the point of thoughts do so here.

May you be blessed by the readwere talked about the most, and were taken your professors are not your enemies, despite pears to be challenging objects essentially in your world to be tolerof suicide.

In public a matter of weeks I had went ing of thisMy reflection. trust thatliefs the about something is most seriously in the court of opinion all appearances. programMay wasyou a specialated, or (3) in love toward them, imagining from viewing myself as a top scholar to the ground of your being can handle any queswere those with high degrees from top uni- ization in Christian Origins, so I was re- Christian friends had them as, while fully being the mysterious at themselves St. Joseph’s more hospital,quired in to tion trouble youclassical may encounter. versities.psychiatric They had ward proven takeortwo years of Greek— May throughout the course ‘other’ as, nevertheless, like you—fragile, the company of those who were much more you treat others as sites of love bat-studying under libe younot has than capable in the scholarly realm and had if you’ve ever studied another languageand scared, anxious, and a whole other hostwished of mentally afflicted than I. During my time tle-grounds.

Finally, may you find home in faith?’, ‘how did to make a public defense of the Chris- know how difficult it is, let alone how diffi- your issues that afflict students today. The interacin the ward, my grades, my scholarship, my community as you engage, explore, endure, tian faith, and their status as elite academics cult it is when the language is considered as your faith in the mids tion between my Yugoslavian friend and only my- helped learning for at cynical the end ofdead the asponder, andlearned live lifeit!!! as the that you feelquestion, after you’ve Thegift of themeant cause.nothing, In a rather the Bible you had le self, is a great example of the third. We were day I was as fragile and weak as anyone else it is at the University of Toronto. manner, as I perceive it now, coming out of first day of class, our professor, invited us to questions were greatly enemies, at first we tolerated each other,high-school but therewith whothe I may considered myself as a passage of Homer’s The Odyssey…in portant to note that th read samehave desire, I sought to the more that we saw that though we were having an advantage over before.

Through a Most of us were not sure we knew the of timidity and fear an get the best education at the top university Greek. an ‘other’ to each other, that if we did really process of medication, therapy, and an unin Canada, the University of Toronto. If I ex- entire alphabet of the Greek language. Need- minded them was, the trust our beliefs, trust in that which weposed be- myself derstanding of the deep love ofofGod lessIto say, near the end of the first semester out to destroy my faith to the harshest criticisms the that lieved to be the ground of our being—then could trust no matter what, I recover in time Christian faith, studied the New Testament the class had dwindled from 40 people to 12, most professors could there was no fear needed to be had. to brief bring the research to a close and start and before our first exam I was considering about what you actua under the ‘liberal’ scholars, and engage at the

Lastly, however, I must tell highest you my final year of university, not knowing levels of academic debate—I would to be numbered among the 28 that dropped important for them is about my extremely traumatic encounter whether would be ablefaith to handle The I had never struggled so much learning the teaching material, come out with Imy Christian all the it. out. with an issue every student faces, anxiety. most important lesson then that I have to ofas I had classical Greek, I had come subscribe to their poi stronger, and a mark of status so that people anything During the summer after the third yearwould of have fer you is, that as a student of a particular ‘reout of high-school with a 92% average with most assuredly changed to listen to my opinion. my undergrad, I had a GPA of 3.6 and I had ligious’ faith, you can endeavor boldly trust that while little to no difficulty—to be unable to grasp because of what I had As cynical as this origbeen awarded a student award of excellence you may not always have it together, theiscomplex grammar of classical Greek was fessors, but, as equally inally began, it did instill a virtue in me there scholarship, for which I would work on athat re- I would a love in the universe that cares for you.

That now trade for nothing else in an embarrassment to whatever ego I had, and the more enriched and search project with my one of favorite profesmay sound sentimental to the anyone has me to tears, as I was failing the class of my beliefs because o the world—the courage to pursue truth,thatbrought sors, Dr. John S. Kloppenborg, throughout not had their ‘life’s-breakdown’ yet, to those for truth has nothing to fear. Throwing my miserably for nearly four months. I asked our taught. The key was th this summer. During the summer however, keenly aware of were, their own professor repeatedly how I could do better, day I had to trust that faith inwho the are ‘deep waters’ as it whilefragility I had a very unexpected onset of Obsessive and anxiety ridden nature, the news onegave the same answer each time—‘mem- with the thoughts and originally beginning as a pursuit of a mark ofthatshe Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as a result of can trust that there is a love greater than you guilt over sexual-related anxieties, and isola- and whatever broken things you may have tion due to the research project. The aspect relied upon, is good. of myself that I had most trust in, and had Hopefully, now having helped you relied upon for my entire university career, initially navigate what it means to be a stumy brain, had begun to fail me. In OCD the dent of faith, and how you should interact brain alerts you of your worst fears, no mat- with your peers and professors in how you ter how irrational and the more one tries to hold your beliefs,

The Psalmist says of the Hebrew S ‘Your word is a lamp for my feet, a my path’ (Psalm 119:105). Now cannot necessarily reflect the rays light unto your path, one can hop mine your divine light with reflecti one’s own path. It is with this ende a former undergraduate can hope t flashlight over his shoulder to illum future by his past. Coming fresh ou school, I had one goal—get the cation possible. To give you a nob for why I wanted to get the best e I possibly could get would be a ma of deception I hope I will never b of. Being raised in Christian apolo terial, scholarship, books, movies et sought to ‘defend’ the Christian historical grounds against the perce slaught of secularism, Islam, and p ernism I had begun to notice that t were talked about the most, and w most seriously in the public court of were those with high degrees from versities. They had proven themsel than capable in the scholarly realm wished to make a public defense of t tian faith, and their status as elite a only helped the cause. In a rathe manner, as I perceive it now, comi high-school with the same desire, I s get the best education at the top u in Canada, the University of Toront posed myself to the harshest criticis Christian faith, studied the New T under the ‘liberal’ scholars, and eng highest levels of academic debate come out with my Christian fait stronger, and a mark of status so th would have to listen to my opinion.

As cynical as this endea inally began, it did instill a virtu that I would now trade for nothin the world—the courage to pursue t for truth has nothing to fear. Thro faith in the ‘deep waters’ as it we originally beginning as a pursuit of

e, everyday’, ‘memorize, everyday’ almost a mantra. I decided that I would take up on her challenge and prove her wrong even with such studying, the class was too difficult. Sure enough however, my e went before the fall (Prov. 16:18), and was right. I memorized and studied evday, and ended the course with an A. However, this does not mean that r professors are always right about everyg that they may advise or teach. It is here re we must come to the straight-forward ity of the campus of the University of onto, that will you meet people not only h different beliefs but conflicting beliefs our own. The question then is how will interact with the ‘other’. When it comes our professors, the first thing that I can se you, for I had seen it in many of my nds throughout my undergrad, is that n you encounter a professor who aprs to be challenging your particular beabout something is do not panic. Many istian friends had continually asked oughout the course of my study—‘how studying under liberal professors affected r faith?’, ‘how did you manage to keep r faith in the midst of all the criticism he Bible you had learned?’ While, these stions were greatly appreciate, it is imtant to note that they came from a place imidity and fear and what I always reded them was, the professors were not to destroy my faith. To be quite honest, t professors could probably care less ut what you actually ‘believe’, what is ortant for them is that you understand teaching material, not that you yourself scribe to their point of view. I myself t assuredly changed some of my beliefs ause of what I had been taught by proors, but, as equally important, I was all more enriched and confirmed in some my beliefs because of what professors had ght. The key was that at the end of the I had to trust that I could engage 100% h the thoughts and worldviews presented

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anguish over the conflicts between Muslims and Christians in the Balkans. I learned not to use an intellectual status to clobber people into agreeing with me, and I’m sure that he learned that insults were not arguments.

The reason that I relate this story to you is because in your new environment, if you walk, live, and study with your peers with a posture of trust towards that with which you have been brought to trust in, you can treat those ‘others’ in: (1) a hostile manner, imagining them your enemy, (2) an indifferent manner, imagining them as other objects essentially in your world to be tolerated, or (3) in love toward them, imagining them as, while fully being the mysterious ‘other’ as, nevertheless, like you—fragile, scared, anxious, and a whole other host of issues that afflict students today. The interaction between my Yugoslavian friend and myself, is a great example of the third. We were enemies, at first we tolerated each other, but the more that we saw that though we were an ‘other’ to each other, that if we did really trust our beliefs, trust in that which we believed to be the ground of our being—then there was no fear needed to be had.

Lastly, however, I must tell you about my extremely traumatic encounter with an issue every student faces, anxiety.

During the summer after the third year of my undergrad, I had a GPA of 3.6 and I had been awarded a student award of excellence scholarship, for which I would work on a research project with my one of favorite professors, Dr. John S. Kloppenborg, throughout this summer. During the summer however, I had a very unexpected onset of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as a result of guilt over sexual-related anxieties, and isolation due to the research project. The aspect

›

The question and challenge of the ‘other’, when it comes to your peers, can be best exemplified by my interaction with a Yugoslavian acquaintance of mine. In my pursuit of understanding science (and fulfilling my science distribution requirement, of course) I took a history and philosophy of science course. Unexpectedly, I had seen another guy who I knew from my middle school days in the same class—we were not on the best of terms. Whenever the topic of ‘religion’ came up amongst our mutual friends on Facebook or whatnot, inevitably we’d get caught up in those utterly time-consuming and ineffective internet-debates. He would accuse me of being an idiot, a Biblical literalist, and what not, where as I had overtly made the point that I was much more well-read than him and because I felt that I was smarter than him he should back-down.

Well, this course in the history and philosophy of science could not have been a better situation to put an angry atheist and a proud Christian together in to see what would happen. Throughout our conversations and studying, I don’t think either of us actually persuaded one another about the truth of our particular stances but we did manage to laugh, interact, and even become friends.

He became convinced that I was not a ‘religious’ idiot to be ignored, and I became convinced that his anger came from a real

of myself that I had most trust in, and had relied upon for my entire university career, my brain, had begun to fail me. In OCD the brain alerts you of your worst fears, no matter how irrational and the more one tries to get rid of those fears with every little practice the worse it gets because you have no alerted and taught your brain that there really is something to fear. My fearful obsessions had me hospitalized for a week due to sleep and food deprivation to the point of thoughts of suicide. In a matter of weeks I had went from viewing myself as a top scholar to the psychiatric ward at St. Joseph’s hospital, in the company of those who were much more mentally afflicted than I. During my time in the ward, my grades, my scholarship, my learning meant nothing, for at the end of the day I was as fragile and weak as anyone else there who I may have considered myself as having an advantage over before. Through a process of medication, therapy, and an understanding of the deep love of God that I could trust no matter what, I recover in time to brief bring the research to a close and start my final year of university, not knowing whether I would be able to handle it. The most important lesson then that I have to offer you is, that as a student of a particular ‘religious’ faith, you can boldly trust that while you may not always have it together, there is a love in the universe that cares for you. That may sound sentimental to anyone that has not had their ‘life’s-breakdown’ yet, to those who are keenly aware of their own fragility and anxiety ridden nature, the news that one can trust that there is a love greater than you and whatever broken things you may have relied upon, is good.

Hopefully, now having helped you initially navigate what it means to be a stu-

dent of faith, and how you should interact with your peers and professors in how you hold your beliefs,

While much more could have been said or advised, it is the hope of this writer that you will have enough trust to take the next steps yourself, and to share the light you encounter with others as I have endeavor to do so here. May you be blessed by the reading of this reflection. May you trust that the ground of your being can handle any question or trouble you may encounter. May you treat others as sites of love and not battle-grounds. Finally, may you find home in community as you engage, explore, endure, ponder, question, and live life as the gift that it is at the University of Toronto.

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THE FUTURE IS HERE THE NEW STREETCAR IS COMING TO SPADINA ON AUGUST 31ST

The new streetcars on Spadina are more accessible, more comfortable, more convenient to board, more spacious and carry twice as many passengers. The 510 Spadina will now run on a Proof-of-Payment (POP) system. Customers will need to show their POP receipt to a TTC fare inspector upon request.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: PASS HOLDERS:

TRANSFER HOLDERS:

Customers with a Metropass, Day Pass or Weekly Pass will be able to board the new streetcar through any door. Your Pass is your POP receipt.

Customers with a transfer can board the streetcar through any door.

Your transfer is your POP receipt.

TOKENS: Customers using tokens will need to pay at an on-board or curbside fare vending machine to receive a POP receipt. Your POP receipt can also be used as your transfer.

TTC TICKET HOLDERS: Customers using Senior/Student or Child tickets are required to have their tickets stamped at a ticket validator located beside the on-board or curbside fare vending machines. Your stamped ticket is your POP receipt and can be used as your transfer.

CASH FARES: The fare vending machines accept coins only (change is not provided), and will issue a POP receipt. Your POP receipt can be used as your transfer.

CURBSIDE FARE VENDING MACHINES: Customers can also purchase fares and validate their tickets at new curbside fare vending machines installed at the busiest stops along the route, such as College and Spadina. Fare vending machines accept coins only (change is not provided).

The new fare vending machines and ticket validators are unique to the 510 Spadina route. There will be a transition period when both new and regular streetcars will run on the 510 Spadina route. Customers boarding regular streetcars will pay their fare as usual and will now be required to show a POP receipt upon request.

ART_00_TTC46066E-3.indd 1

2014-08-18 3:54 PM

Physics graduate student Emmanuel Thibau stands with the thin film deposition and analysis device he uses for research. His work focuses on organic materials and organic devices: carbon-based devices based on synthesized molecules that conduct electricity. These devices will help make computers and screens that can bend and roll. Substrates get inserted into the chamber on the right, which when sealed is pumped down to extremely low pressure - leaving only a couple molecules floating within. The heavy-duty look of the machine is due to the stainless steel chambers that let it generate such low pressures. The sample moves from the first chamber to another through a valve. Inside this next chamber is an arm that allows you to grab the sample and move it to another chamber, called a deposition chamber, where the molecular interfaces are created. The deposition chamber has a ring of beam generators that direct sublimated vapours of different materials towards the sample stage. The vapours solidify on the sample and form layers that are only a few nanometers thick. In this way, new stacks of molecules are created.

The sample goes back to the first chamber, where analysis takes place. To analyse the deep structure of the new material, an x-ray diffraction device atop the chamber passes high energy photons through the material. The high energy causes the material to emit electrons, which are captured by detectors which generate a spectrum. The spectrum shows the fundamental characteristics of the material. UV photon electron spectroscopy is also available to find out about the characteristics of the outer levels.