Vol 42 issue 15

Lawsuit filed against UTMSU

The mental health problem

Uncommon women and graduates

A warning on trigger warnings?

Recovering from more than injury

News, page 2

Opinion, page 6

A&E, page 7

Features, page 10

Sports, page 15

MAHMOUD SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

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01.25.2016

Pro-life group files suit against UTMSU UTM Students for Life allege that UTMSU denied their group club status based on their pro-life views NICOLE DANESI NEWS EDITOR UTMSU has reportedly been served with a lawsuit in a case filed by a pro-life student group at UTM who claims that the union denied them club status and funding due to their views on abortion.

None of the allegations have yet been proven in court.

As reported by The Medium last Wednesday, UTM Students for Life filed a legal proceeding against the union demanding that UTMSU reverse its decision and allow them to receive club status and declare that their choice to prevent the group from receiving club status was a breach against their right to freedom of expression and association, and a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, among seven other petitions listed in the legal suit.

According to Diane Zettel, one of three applicants listed on the case and a fourth-year student at UTM, UTMSU was served last Wednesday at 2:45 p.m. The legal action was filed on January 15.

“The University of Toronto Mis-

According to SFL, UTMSU was served last Wednesday. sissauga Students’ Union will not comment at this time on any pending legal action,” said UTMSU president Ebi Agbeyegbe in an email to The Medium late Friday. “We are

proud to represent 13,000 undergraduate students at UTM and we will address this matter in the appropriate forum.”

Agbeyegbe did not confirm

MAHMOUD SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

whether UTMSU had been served.

According to the suit, UTMSU originally rejected the UTMSL’s application to renew club status in July 2015 as “members of the [clubs]

committee claimed to be concerned about the ‘political nature’ of SFL”.

According to Zettel, UTMSFL was an active student group at UTM in the 2014/15 academic year and received $250 in UTMSU funding that year.

The suit later goes on to quote an executive report by Russ Adade, UTMSU VP campus life, outlining the reasoning for the group’s rejected application.

“Students For Life, which has been recognized by UTMSU in the past, was not recognized for the upcoming school year due to their stance on abortion, in terms of being pro-life and using their platform to tell women what they should do in those situations,” reported Adadeat at the August 24 UTMSU board meeting.

SFL claims that two days later, the group received an email from Adade saying that he had denied their request for recognition because “SFL’s mandate was in direct conflict with the mission statement of UTMSU”, and adding that SFL could ask for a re-vote in the UTMSU board.

Pro-life continued on page 4

UTSU settles suit New details surface on sexism with Bollo-Kamara Syme talks about sexism in English and drama department ALAHEH AMINI NICOLE DANESI NEWS EDITOR UTSU has passed a motion at Saturday’s board meeting to accept a settlement deal with Yolen Bollo-Kamara, one of three defendants listed in a civil suit filed by UTSU last September.

According to UTSU’s statement published Saturday evening, the settlement was reached on January 7.

The suit against Bollo-Kamara, UTSU’s former president; Sandy Hudson, the union’s former executive director; and Cameron Wathey, UTSU’s previous VP internal and services, alleged that the three were involved in improper payments made to Hudson after she was terminated last April, which UTSU declared was done without cause.

“Ms. Bollo-Kamara has sworn under oath that she did not receive a financial benefit relating to the payment to Ms. Hudson,” reads the statement. “The UTSU believes that this is true.”

The exact details of the settlement have not been made public.

According to the statement, BolloKamara claims Hudson convinced her to issue the payments in question.

“Based on the established relation-

ship Ms. Bollo-Kamara had with Ms. Hudson, and the reliance and trust that she had placed in her, Ms. Hudson convinced Ms. Bollo-Kamara that Ms. Hudson was entitled to the severance and overtime pay,” reads the statement.

The statement also alleges that Hudson claimed to have received legal counsel with regards to the payments.

“Ms. Bollo-Kamara has sworn under oath that she did not receive a financial benefit relating to the payment to Ms. Hudson”.

“Ms. Hudson advised Ms. BolloKamara that Ms. Hudson had sought legal advice from DLA Piper regarding the Termination Agreement and related documents. DLA Piper has denied that it provided any legal advice regarding these documents,” reads the statement.

The Medium has not independently verified any of the claims.

The Medium has learned more information on incidents of sexism within UTM’s English and drama department.

As previously reported by The Medium, a presentation made to the Academic Affairs Committee earlier this month revealed sexism issues amongst students in the classroom in the English and drama department following an external review of various departments on campus.

According to Holger Syme, chair of the English and drama department, the two incidents in question occurred during the 2014/15 academic year and both involved inappropriate language in the classroom.

The first incident involved a male student making inappropriate comments during lectures and the second involved a temporary instructor using misogynist language, which prompted students to report the incidents to the department.

According to Syme, neither of the cases resulted in formal complaints being filed.

In an interview last week, Syme told The Medium that the depart-

DELANEY ROMBOUGH/THE MEDIUM

The two incidents took place in the 2014/15 academic year. ment has since held meetings with UTM’s equity and diversity officer, Nythalah Baker, to discuss and implement “classroom strategies designed to address insensitive, offensive, or aggressive student behaviour”. According to Syme, instructors have been asked to remind students that they are in a safe space and the importance of reporting incidents that students feel could jeopardize their safety.

Although Syme believes the in-

cidents were isolated, their nature is part of a larger problem following the “disgusting online threats against feminist professors and the grotesque and disruptive performances staged by a number of young men in some of UTM’s classrooms (with an eye on YouTube hits) last term […] there is a continuing pattern of misogynist threats on university campuses”.

Sexism continued on page 3

01.25.2016 THE MEDIUM NEWS

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3

The Medium a hair

QSS remains in deadlock

away from quorum

UTMSU and QSS have not been in contact since October MENNA ELNAKA ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR

MAHMOUD SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

A total of 41 members registered before and during the meeting.

WARD SUROUR NICOLE DANESI NEWS EDITOR

The Medium’s annual general meeting failed to reach quorum last Thursday evening with only a few members short of reaching the 40 members needed to hold an official meeting.

A total of 41 members registered before and during the meeting, which was held in the Student Centre Presentation Room, but a maximum of 38 members were reportedly present at one time in the room, not reaching a quorum high enough to conduct an official meeting.

The meeting unofficially proceeded as The Medium’s financial auditor, Sam Chou, presented The

Medium’s audited financial statements via Skype.

As of April 30, 2015, the 2014/15 financials reported a deficit of $2,702.

A maximum of 38 members were reportedly present at one time in the room, not enough to reach quorum.

A portion of the meeting was also used to announce the winners of The Medium’s 2015/16 Writing and Photo Contest. The winning entries have been published this week in the Features section.

The Quality Services to Students committee remains in a standstill as UTMSU continues to refuse to participate on the committee, preventing the QSS from reaching quorum.

“UTMSU has decided not to participate, which means we can’t meet the quorum to officially conduct business,” said Mark Overton, dean of student affairs, in an interview with The Medium.

“We’re happy to work through the concerns but the place to work them out is by meeting.”

According to Overton, if the standstill persists, QSS will not be able to resume and provide advice to university governance on student services; instead, consultations with students will carry on using other methods such as surveys, group and individual discussions, or brainstorming and prioritization exercises.

“At this time of the year, services would normally have presented their budget and fee proposals for discussion at QSS, to shape its advice to campus governance,” said Overton in his email.

To achieve quorum, at least one UTMSU rep must be present amongst the 11 members needed hold an official meeting. The 11 members must include a minimum of six students and representative of two student councils holding seats on the QSS committee.

According to Overton, his last contact with UTMSU was on October 23, when UTMSU president Ebi Agbeyegbe sent him an email outlining his concerns with the QSS. “We are not comforted by the

response so far from the university administration regarding our request raised periodically and as recently at our last meeting on Wednesday, October 21,” read Agbeyegbe’s email. “We do not want to continue to support a process that continues to reject or marginalize the views and opinions of student representatives.”

Also in the email, Agbeyegbe informed Overton that UTMSU’s decision on whether to partake in the QSS would be made by November 2 following the union’s board meeting on October 31.

As of press time, it is unknown if UTMSU discussed the QSS at the board meeting as minutes from the meeting have not been posted online.

To achieve quorum, at least one UTMSU rep must be present amongst the 11 members needed hold an official meeting.

“UTMSU has said they would follow up on things, but there was no follow-up,” said Overton, who said there have not been any QSS meetings since the beginning of the academic year.

Agbeyegbe did not respond to The Medium’s interview request to discuss their involvement on the QSS. Overton explained to The Medium that since QSS does not hold meetings over the summer, and since there were no meetings at all this academic year because of UTMSU’s decision not to participate, these situations have not been ad-

dressed.

In a recent email from Overton to the QSS council, Overton stated that reports from the Physical Education, Athletics, and Recreation Department and the Health and Counselling Centre, amongst other student services, were to be sent to QSS members that outlined feedback the services received from consultations held. “[These] consultations would normally have been launched though QSS-endorsed advisory groups in the late fall. At this time of the year, services would normally have presented their budget and fee proposals for discussion at QSS, to shape its advice to campus governance,” said Overton. “The services undertook equivalent consultations to help shape their plans and are presenting their proposals.”

QSS issues raised by UTMSU date as far back as 2013/14, when former UTMSU president Raymond Noronha wrote an open letter outlining his concerns with the QSS committee which included problems with financial transparency and problems with meeting minutes among others listed.

Consisting of students and administrators, the QSS committee puts forth advice to campus governance on issues related to the funding of and services to UTM students. Aside from 11 staff members, the committee comprises 11 student members, which include two UTMSU executives, and four students appointed by the union, two student representatives from the Athletic Council, two representatives from the Residence Council, and one from the Association of Graduate Students.

Townhall to address Hoy acclaimed Governing chair classroom culture Sexism continued from page 2 According to Syme, as part of the department’s “pedagogical mission to combat” sexism and other “retrograde behaviours”, Syme will hold a student town hall meeting later in the semester to address any questions regarding the department, including classroom culture.

The external review also reported that the department retains “highly productive faculty researchers who are leaders in their field” but faces “perception of gender inequality among faculty”. The report also claims such feedback related to gender inequality was not related to UTM as “eligible female faculty members have all been promoted or are under promotional review and most new hires are women”.

Permanent faculty in the department includes seven women and 10 men; over the last six years,

three of the five tenure-track professors have been women.

When discussing the future of gender equality and diversity within the department, Syme noted diversity as an area where improvements need to be made.

“We have hired more women than men in the last decade, and I hope that trend continues,” said Syme. “One area where we have to improve is diversity beyond gender or sexual orientation: we don’t currently have any persons of colour on the faculty, although that has been a priority consideration in recent hiring processes.

I’m afraid that reflects a diversity problem in our academic disciplines at large, one we still have to figure out how to change.”

Also under review, the English curriculum is being examined by the department to better respond to students’ diverse interests.

Shirley Hoy will replace Judy Goldring as chair on July 1

THEVARSITY.CA/2013/11/04/MEET-JUDY-GOLDRING/PHOTO

Established in 1971, Governing Council is the highest decision-making body at the university.

CHRISTINE SHARMA Shirley Hoy has been acclaimed chair of U of T’s Governing Council for the 2016/17 term.

Serving as a council member since December 2008, Hoy served as vice-chair of Governing Council for the last two years and will begin her term as chair on July 1 through June 30, 2017. An election is currently underway to elect a new vice-chair as elections are

required yearly in accordance with the University of Toronto Act. Hoy received both her undergraduate and Master’s of Social Work degrees at U of T prior to working as city manager at the City of Toronto and CEO of the Toronto Lands Corporation.

Current chair of Governing Council Judy Goldring will complete her term until the end of June after holding the position for three years.

Goldring received her undergraduate degree from U of T, and is currently the executive vice president and chief operating officer at AGF Management Ltd. and a member of the board of directors at AGF Management Ltd. Established in 1971, Governing Council is the highest decisionmaking body at the university and “oversees the academic, business, and student affairs of the university”.

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«NEWS

THE MEDIUM 01.25.2016

Housing plan in the works The report will outline campus housing for the next 10 years

The Master Plan is expected to be completed this summer.

KASSANDRA HANGDAAN STAFF WRITER UTM’s Department of Student Housing and Residence Life is working to establish a Campus Housing Master Plan, aiming to be completed this summer.

In a housing survey emailed to students by the university, participants were asked questions regarding meal plans, residence fees, and housing designs to be used when developing the Campus Housing Master Plan, a report to be completed by The Scion Group, a real estate services firm.

The survey was tentatively set to

end last Friday, but may be left open to allow more graduate students to participate.

Chad Nuttall, director of the Student Housing and Residence Life department, describes the plan as covering a “longer horizon” of the university’s facilities and building vision to direct UTM’s construction and renovations over the next 10 years. Besides plans to renovate housing, Nuttall told The Medium that the university is also looking into creating more accessible pathways to somewhat isolated buildings on campus—particularly OPH. “The purpose [of the plan] is to ask ourselves these big questions,”

»DO YOU THINK A PRO-LIFE CLUB

SHOULD BE ALLOWED ON CAMPUS?

Adelaide Attard 3rd year, English & PWC

Farhan Mumtaz 4th year, bio

They should have the freedom to be a club as long as they are not radical.

They should have a right to their own group, as UTMSU promotes free speech.

Philip Samaan 3rd year, bio specialist

Iqra Abid 4th year, psych

It’s hypocritical for UTMSU to censor pro-life views, as they support free speech.

Although my beliefs don’t align with pro-life views, I do think the group should be allowed the freedom to present their opinion.

JEANLOUIS REBELLO/THE MEDIUM

said Nuttall. “Do we have the appropriate buildings for the [incoming] students? We need to renovate, so how much will [renovation] cost?”

Along with other members in the Department of Student Housing and Residence Life, Nuttall has attended focus group sessions and meetings with students to obtain data and information to be considered in the Campus Housing Master Plan.

Though nothing has been confirmed, the Campus Housing Plan will most likely be presented at an upcoming Campus Affairs Committee.

Fair trade certification pending U of T not expected to UTM is expected to be fair trade certified by September

intervene in dispute Pro-life continued from page 2

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK/THE MEDIUM

Fair trade coffee, chocolate, and tea are offered at the North Side Bistro in Deerfield Hall.

KASSANDRA HANGDAAN STAFF WRITER UTM’s hospitality and retail services department is currently working to obtain fair trade certification as fair trade products are in the midst of being rolled out on campus.

Vicky Jezierski and Andrea De Vito, director and assistant director of the hospitality and retail services department, are currently working on UTM’s fair trade application to be submitted to Fairtrade Canada. The projected completion of the application and UTM’s designation as a fair trade campus is expected this September.

According to Fairtrade Canada, the fair trade practice is intended to “support small scale farmers and workers who are marginalized from trade in a variety of ways”.

Besides seeking to empower small

farmers and work organizations, the fair trade system emphasizes sustainability.

As of press time, certain oncampus products have been certified and produced according to fair trade standards, such as coffee, chocolate, and tea offered at the North Side Bistro in Deerfield Hall. The hospitality and retail services department is currently working with UTMSU to implement fair trade at the Blind Duck Pub and plans to include fair trade chocolate bars at the Duck Stop are underway.

After obtaining fair trade designation, the hospitality and retail services department hopes to implement fair trade standards to additional products available on campus.

Jezierski told The Medium that fair trade products offered at UTM will not be sold at an extra

cost. Using Starbucks espresso as an example, Jezierski noted that the espresso remained at the same price even after the fair trade standards were implemented.

Aside from no added cost to fair trade products, De Vito noted that the purchase of fair trade products helps small-time farmers. In particular, Chartwells employs a local roaster from Southern Ontario.

Jezierski also emphasized their intention to promote fair trade standards on campus.

“For us, it’s a process not just to get certification, but to get the campus together—like UTMSU and Chartwells… to create awareness for fair trade.”

Among other reforms to Chartwells’ operations, Chartwells is recycling 100 percent of fryer oil and offering discounts to students who use reusable beverage containers.

When asked for details about the group’s alleged conflict to UTMSU’s mandate, Adade said that it was because the group was “telling folks, especially women, what to do with their bodies”. The suit also quotes an excerpt from an alleged email from Adade on November 3 that says, “The reasoning behind the decision of the clubs committee to revoke club status for your club is due to the violations and discrepancies we found within your constitution in relation to the clubs handbook and UTMSU operational policy as it pertains to clubs.”

According to the suit, the group then proceeded to amend the eight constitutional issues identified by UTMSU. The suit claims that at a meeting on November 6 with the UTMSU clubs committee, the clubs committee instructed SFL to elect a fourth member to their executive to ratify the changes to the SFL’s constitution. SFL claims that the clubs committee also requested that a representative of UTMSU attend the meeting.

The suit further alleges that Adade, who was present at the election, also invited a group of five students—who the lawsuit claims were not members of SFL— to attend the meeting in addition to the three executives from SFL and another student, Marigrace

Noronha, who was slated to be elected as the fourth member of the SFL executive.

According to the suit, Adade allowed the five students to vote at the meeting, which took place by secret ballot. The results of the vote were four in favour and five opposed, resulting in Noronha’s failure to be elected.

The Medium has not independently verified any of the claims made by SFL. According to Althea BlackburnEvans, director of media relations at U of T, the university will not be intervening in the current legal action or UTMSU’s alleged choice not to renew SFL’s club status.

“Like all student groups, UTMSU is an autonomous organization; as such, U of T does not intervene in its decisions,” said BlackburnEvans in an email to The Medium on Friday.

When asked if UTM administration have been involved or in contact with either of the parties, UTM dean of student affairs Mark Overton said, “UTM has not been asked to become involved in the matter.”

The three applicants from UTMSFL, Zettel, Cameron Grant, and Chad Hagel, are represented

by Marty Moore, a Calgary-based lawyer from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. The centre has previously handled cases related to pro-life issues on postsecondary campuses.

01.25.2016

MASTHEAD EDITORS Editor-in-Chief Maria Iqbal editor@themedium.ca Managing Editor Maria Cruz managing@themedium.ca News Nicole Danesi news@themedium.ca A&E Kate Cattell-Daniels arts@themedium.ca Features Farah Qaiser features@themedium.ca Sports Eric Hewitson sports@themedium.ca — Photo Mahmoud Sarouji photos@themedium.ca Design Sarah Yassine design@themedium.ca Copy Akshaya Sharma copy@themedium.ca Online & Blog Corey Belford Kimberly Johnson online@themedium.ca blog@themedium.ca ASSOCIATES News Menna Elnaka A&E Hailey Mason Features Mahnoor Ayub Sports Daniel Bilyk Photo Christy Tam Copy Farah Khan Maleeha Iqbal GENERAL STAFF Webmaster Luke Sawczak web@themedium.ca Interim Distribution Manager Eric Hewitson distribution@themedium.ca Ads Manager Mayank Sharma ads@themedium.ca Cartoonist Corey Belford BOARD OF DIRECTORS Maryam Faisal, Jeremy Wu, Leo Jiang, Natalia Ramnarine, Rebecca Xu, Saima Khan (ex-officio), Christine Capewell (ex-officio) COPYRIGHTS All content printed in The Medium is the sole property of its creators, and cannot be used without written consent.

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To contribute, email editor@themedium.ca

»

5

The choice to have dialogue Having a large membership means allowing more voices, not fewer What a week.

Last Wednesday, my day began with news of the lawsuit filed against UTMSU by the Students for Life chapter at UTM. And after reading the lawsuit, boy is there a lot I’d like to know.

On the one hand, we have a student club (that was recognized by UTMSU and existed during the previous academic year) that is no longer being recognized by UTMSU. On the other hand, we have UTMSU, who as of press time has not offered us any comment on the lawsuit, but whose board minutes available online show a report from VP campus life Russ Adade saying, “Students For Life, which has been recognized by UTMSU in the past, was not recognized for the upcoming school year due to their stance on abortion, in terms of being prolife and using their platform to tell women what they should do in those situations.”

Now, it’s still early in the story to jump to any conclusions, especially since UTMSU has not yet issued a statement responding to the allegations.

But just from looking at the statement in UTMSU’s own board min-

utes, one wonders about the justification for rejecting a student club recognition on the basis of its views.

According to Adade’s report, Students for Life “was not recognized […] due to their stance on abortion”. Stop there for a moment. Does anyone recall the controversy earlier this year on UTMSU’s definition for

Representing 13,000 members is a huge responsibility—not all of them will agree on one side of the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate. “reverse racism”? Not all students agreed with that or other definitions UTMSU posted on Facebook, and there was a fair bit of commentary taking place on social media on the topic.

But UTMSU took a clear stance on the issue despite the disagreement.

In our efforts this week to reach out to UTMSU for comment on the lawsuit, among the few things UTMSU president Ebi Agbeyegbe said

was, “We are proud to represent 13,000 undergraduate students at UTM and we will address this matter in the appropriate forum.”

Representing 13,000 members is a huge responsibility—not all of them have agreed with UTMSU’s previous stances, and I don’t believe that all 13,000 of them would agree on one side of the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate. So, in theory, what authority does UTMSU even have to shut down specific clubs on the basis of their views?

Abortion is a huge and highly personal topic and I don’t believe UTMSU needs to take a position on it at all—their job as a union is to represent student voices. Not shut them down.

As far as Adade’s report speaks to the issue of women being told what to do, I think women should be able to decide for themselves. And as with many complicated issues, it’s best to inform oneself of both sides of the debate before reaching a conclusion.

It’s not yet clear what precise activities SFL was involved in during the time it was recognized on campus. But as far as allowing discussion and events on the topic of pro-life or

anti-abortion (however you prefer to think of it), it would be undemocratic to shut it down simply because one disagrees with its views.

So, yes, regardless of my personal views on the topic (and I don’t consider myself as exclusively on one side or the other), I think Students for Life should be recognized and permitted to hold events and speak its views on campus.

After all, I’m sure there are plenty of clubs already on campus whose views not all students agree with.

But in a democracy, we allow those views to exist and promote discussion and dialogue on them rather than silence them. As long as the clubs don’t incite hatred or promote violence towards others, what’s there to fear?

YOURS, MARIA IQBAL

CORRECTION NOTICE The Jan. 18 article “Lost something? Find it in the woods” incorrectly stated that Into the Woods ran at Hart House until last Wednesday. The musical runs until Jan. 30.

6

«OPINION

THE MEDIUM 01.25.2016

The fight to understand the crisis Why we need to know more about student mental health The Star ran an article a week ago on Navi Dhanota, saying that she’d “won” her “mental health fight”.

That fight was the right to not disclose her mental health diagnosis in order to register for academic supports. She has a point: we have a right to privacy. Those on the other side also had a point: they wanted to better match her with help appropriate to her needs. The common thread might run: Who has the right to assess her needs?

In an opinion piece a few days later, Heather Mallick argues that the eventual ruling was a step backward, because treating the knowledge of your diagnosis as a source of stigma from which you have to shield yourself runs counter to the laudable new trend of treating mental health or illness as something factual, something to put on the table without fear of judgement. Mental health diagnoses “are facts, not sources of shame”, Mallick writes. (She later goes too far, apparently deploring even the fact that we’ve begun to distinguish and refine our definitions of mental health, because she fears that they’ll become nebulous and easy to exploit.)

More to my point, she goes on to say that all the mental health incorporation at universities “ob-

scures the central element, which is the learning itself ”, being that “professors and students are on an intellectual mission together” in which students can’t expect endless accommodation.

Also too far, but a phenomenon we have to pay attention to. Because, judging by the aptly titled article “Schools tend to the student soul” in Saturday’s Star, Mallick’s words are fast becoming an unreasonable characterization of postsecondary education. Colleges and universities have taken in massive numbers of students and many of them are ill-prepared.

“The Ivory Tower is becoming a kindler, gentler, more emotionally nurturing institution,” writes Louise Brown in that article. This is already the reality, regardless of any debate about whether it should or shouldn’t be, so Mallick had better catch up.

But why is it becoming this way?

That’s the question I wanted badly to deal with during my time as editor of The Medium, but the feature article I had in mind never had the space in my and my reporters’ lives that it would have required. What started me thinking about it was a 2012 Maclean’s article on escalating student suicide rates. Student mental health is a very complex

issue, and there are two equally important voices to contribute: our own as students and the statistical one from outside observers.

The Star article, for example, says campus officials put it down to the fact that students “are distraught at their job prospects, unequipped to stickhandle life without their parents’ help, and caught in a socialmedia pressure cooker from which they dare not unplug”.

Mental health is a huge problem and only going to get worse. And universities are saddled with it. Whether or not they’re prepared.

Each of these is a potentially huge topic, and even if those summaries ring true or false, there are points to explore in them. Maybe our job prospects really are terrible: What are the figures like for employment after graduation?

What do we believe about those figures? Maybe we really are suffering from extended, coddled adolescence, exacerbated by what Terry McQuaid at Seneca puts down to “the all-students-must-

pass philosophy” that means our “skills in math and literary aren’t what they should be”, as quoted in the article. Maybe social media and social stress really have crippled us emotionally, as a student quoted in the article puts it when she says that thanks to cripplingly enabling technology, “we’re more isolated than we’ve ever been”. Maybe, as Mallick implies, students have been taking advantage of accommodation, rather than pinpointing their real needs. Maybe these mental health statistics were always true but the social climate prevented their being recognized until now. Maybe we face more pressure from our parents, who see us staying longer and longer at home and don’t know how to gently express their concerns about our ability to support ourselves in the future. Maybe there’s just such a huge intake to universities that many people who are there don’t have their strength in academia, but in something else, and are struggling desperately to adapt to something that’s not right for them just because a bachelor’s degree is the new high school degree and the de facto prerequisite for a good job—if one is even waiting for us.

Maybe, as it was put a couple of years ago by the then-VP equity

of UTMSU, the “root cause” of mental health is higher and higher tuition fees that we have trouble paying, spending our time outside of class not studying or sleeping or socializing but working at Denny’s.

It could be any of these reasons.

Or all of them. And more besides.

Whatever it is, it’s a huge problem and only going to get worse. And universities are saddled with it.

Whether or not they’re prepared.

Whether or not it’s their job. So they will try to make accommodations, and they will hire more and more health staff and run more and more sessions, all on tight budgets (which Mallick points out are “swallowed” by “a phalanx of highly paid administrators”), and try to diagnose each student’s needs.

From an individual student’s point of view, the right to privacy over her diagnosis may be a victory. But there’s a much bigger story playing out and I’m desperate to see good, informed coverage that rings true to the experiences of me and my friends and coworkers. In that story, the more we know, the better.

Luke Sawczak Editor-in-Chief 2013/15

01.25.2016

»

7

Saints and satyrs of the liberal arts Theatre Erindale debates feminism, education, and corn nuts in Uncommon Women and Others KATE CATTELL-DANIELS A&E EDITOR Theatre Erindale’s latest concoction, Uncommon Women and Others, is spellbinding. Set at a prestigious liberal arts college for women, Wendy Wasserstein’s play takes the audience back to their senior year, which, let’s be honest, really hasn’t changed much since the ’70s. The girls’ house is a place of many opinions: what happens after graduation, whether or not one should get married, whether or not one should be sleeping around. And the truth is that there’s no right answer; there’s just getting there, all while being supervised by the adorable Mrs. Plum (Kira Meyers-Guiden).

Director Diana Leblanc makes some bold choices in her direction.

Projections are not an easy thing to pull off in a play—they are often distracting and very often pointless. Leblanc, however, doesn’t try to hide her projections—instead, she integrates them right into the fabric of the play. They are not an afterthought, but a deliberate tool.

The first and last scenes in the play

JIM SMAGATA/PHOTO

Uncommon Women and Others unpacks the politics of women’s education. take place in a New York restaurant, where a city skyline at sunset splashes across the entire back wall of the stage. During scenes at the college, the front of an old Hart House–type building sets the mood. The other challenge Leblanc confronts is the number of locations required by the

script, but this too is seamless, with a bedroom stage right serving for every bedroom necessary, and the dining room centre and living room stage left work as common areas.

From there, everything is accomplished with lighting, pulling specific individuals and moments from

the shadows.

There are no shallow or easy roles in Uncommon Women and Others.

Everyone gets a big piece of pie, as it were. All the girls are people—they feel worried and excited and stay up till all hours reading Nietzsche and talking about sex. They are a gen-

eration of women fast outgrowing a school system that endorses formal tea socials. They all seem to be battling for their independence, for something to keep them from blurring into the background.

It is out of this ardent feminism that my major qualm with the play arises, and it does not lie with anyone but the writer. I am confused as to whether Wasserstein is advocating for women’s rights or shooting them down. Several of the characters seem utterly lost without a man to help them along. There are moments where it seems as if the major takeaway from the play is, “Don’t worry, you were never going to use your education in a practical sense anyway. All you ever needed was an MRS.” Yet, at the same time, the girls engage in a great deal of manbashing, expressing their dreams for their lives to come. The contrasting message is, “Be your own person and don’t worry about what your peers are doing.” And at the end, there is very little satisfaction to spread around.

Women continued on page 8

Let your muse out: poetry as storytelling Poetry event gets straight to tough issues, ensuring that good writing stays in the foreground FARIDA ABDELMEGUIED Poetry and spoken word are often used to breach difficult and pressing topics, as was the case at this year’s second semi-final of the Toronto Poetry Slam, held in the Underground of the Drake Hotel in downtown Toronto on January 17. The venue itself is reflective of the aims of the poetry slam: to tell stories. With its welcoming vibe, the Underground was well suited to handle the deep emotion that occurred that night.

Even before the show began, the room was busy, and the crowd seemed ecstatic to welcome the poets. All the energy in the room was shared between the poet and the audience. The poetry slam consisted of two rounds with seven poets, each poet being given the opportunity to perform twice, and four of the poets made it to the finals, which will be held in February.

The participants were demographically diverse, yet their stories were all relatable and universal, and their authenticity resonated with the crowd.

The seven poets of the night were Trick, Justin G, Yes, Twiggy StarBlade, Spin, Moe Fleeka, and Shauna Dmitri. The matters they articulated varied widely, and many tackled large issues such as race, body image, ad-

JILLIAN SEGOVIA/THE MEDIUM

Poets perform at the Underground in the Drake Hotel in Toronto. diction, Canadian politics, gender inequality, abuse, and masculinity.

It’s an admirable feat—facing strangers, judges, family, and friends, and revealing personal, controversial and, at the very least, discussionworthy details. The poets performed exceptionally well, and many in the crowd were moved by the poets’ ability to express and transmit raw emotions and thoughts. The poets’ capac-

ity to connect with their audience so easily and naturally while maintaining effective body language, intonation, and presentation of their work was astounding.

The semi-finals also included a feature by Cathy Petch, whose many talents include playwriting, poetry, and spoken word. Petch is an influential figure in Canadian poetry and activism, and she seeks and encourages

artistic means of expression. She has a collection of what she refers to as “unhuman poems”, which are poems written from the point of view of an inanimate object. One of Petch’s main ideas is that of “othering” of individuals who are not part of the “majority”, or the “norm”, two ideas she tries to challenge in her art. For example, she performed a cover of the famous song “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me

Down)”, written by Sonny Bono. She chose to invert the gender roles in the song in order to use the song to advocate for women’s rights. Nearing the end of her feature, Petch praised spoken word art, expressing that spoken word requires looking at yourself, finding what makes you unique, and talking about what you’re not supposed to talk about.

Spoken word poetry is becoming an increasingly prevalent form of self-expression. One of the artists, Spin, said, “I’ve seen art give life to death, freedom to jails, and peace to violence, so I stay giving guidance to the babies for them to write through the pain, soak their papers up with tears, and start all over again… Block it all out and write, write, write, so more than reciting, ignite the fire inside so your light can shine bright.”

Poetry is common ground, available to all of us, and an efficient and productive method of catharsis. “When I put fingers to keys, all that matters is I release what’s inside of me.” Spin, Trick, Moe Fleeka, and Justin G did just that—released what’s inside of them—during the semi-finals and made it to the final round.

The finals will be held at the end of February in Bloor Cinema, and tickets are available online now.

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THE MEDIUM 01.25.2016

REWIND KASSANDRA HANGDAAN STAFF WRITER High school is admittedly a volatile stage in one’s life. It marks that awkward transition between childhood and adulthood. It doesn’t help that the pressure to succeed in both a social and academic setting is omnipresent—the pressure stemming from one’s family, friends, and society at large.

It is this daunting experience that is depicted in The Breakfast Club (1985).

Directed by John Hughes, the witty dialogue and quintessential coming-ofage theme makes the movie a popular cult classic.

The perfect time to watch this movie is in your late teens. Although it doesn’t have explicit themes or scenes, the serious topics discussed in the movie require an audience mature enough to internalize the meaning.

I say this because the first time I attempted to watch this movie, I was just entering high school, and out of naivety, I skipped many scenes and never finished the movie. In the end, I concluded that the plot was way too boring. Only now that I’ve gone through the rigours of adolescence can I fully appreciate the plot.

One such theme is the feeling of being misunderstood. Everyone feels misunderstood at some point, and high school is a period in which the mentality of thinking everyone is out to get you is prevalent. Sure enough, the teenage characters in the movie are afflicted with the same kind of mentality.

Students Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy), Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald), John Bender (Judd Nelson), Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall), and Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez) are not friends. In fact, had they not been serving deten-

tion together (all for various reasons), they would never have met each other at all. The reason for their avoidance of one another is due to the social nature of high schools. Just as tacit social hierarchies and ranking systems are ingrained in every high school setting, these students are not exempt from classification.

Each one of them falls into a specific category and social norms tacitly forbid them from interacting with each other. Allison is the basket case, and from the start, she’s portrayed as emotionally unstable and antisocial.

Claire is the “good girl”, Andrew is the jock, Brian is the nerd, and Bender is the rebel.

What makes this movie so charming—and almost poignant at times— is the eventual convergence of understanding between members of the group. From the intimate conversations and crazy antics that they undertake with each other, they each learn the truth of the adage “Never judge a book by its cover”.

Like most people, I fell prey to stereotyping and forming shallow judgments on each character simply because of my first impressions of them.

I never moved beyond the impression that Bender was a troublemaker, and that maybe there were familial conflicts underlying his behavior. In the end, this is a judgment I deeply regret, because had I not made an effort to understand Bender, I would have dismissed him as the antagonist of the movie.

Everyone goes through their own struggles, and it comes as a shock to the group to realize the number of similarities they share. The Breakfast Club has many parabolic themes, truly making it a timeless cult classic, and it reminds us that we are all more alike than we let ourselves on to be.

The art that crosses oceans ADELAIDE ATTARD

Anna Yin is one of Mississauga’s legacies when it comes to literature and poetry. Born in China, Yin immigrated to Canada in 1999. The Chinese-Canadian poet first used writing as a method to improve her English shortly after her arrival in Canada. Not long after writing daily entries in her journal, Yin chose to channel her passion for writing specifically into poetry.

Since discovering her devotion for and ability to write poetry, she has composed and published five books, including her first full collection of poetry, Wings Toward Sunlight. In 2015, Yin published a new book of poetical works called Seven Nights With The Chinese Zodiac. Throughout the book, Yin writes a series of poems about art, family, love, and her experience as an immigrant.

The Medium: Why did you choose poetry as your medium as opposed to fiction or creative non-fiction?

Anna Yin: I like the lyrical rhythm poems have, even though my poems don’t rhyme. After writing in my journal to improve my English, I fell in love with poetry. I chose poetry over fiction because poetry can be short. Since I’m so busy, I don’t have time to write a fiction or non-fiction novel. I like poetry because it’s easy to write and easy to read. Poetry has more room for imagination; it gave me freedom. I don’t want to be too specific in my work. With fiction and non-fiction, I find there are too many rules. I also wanted to get my work out there. I posted my poems online and people read them. I think if I did that with a fiction or nonfiction story, no one would bother reading them.

Poetry continued on page 9

The long and short of it

ADAM SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

Holiday Film Challenge ensures an audience for student films.

HAILEY MASON ASSOCIATE A&E EDITOR The trailer for a film is often more entertaining than the film itself. Short bursts of action, a quick explanation of the film’s premise, and a crafty structure that’s designed to linger in our thoughts—what’s not to like? We excitedly watch trailers because they capture the essence of a film in only a few minutes. With this instinctive allure to brief clips of film, it’s little wonder why short films are so popular.

The Hart House Film Board and Raindance on Campus satisfied U of T’s craving for short films with their Holiday Film Challenge last Friday evening. Raindance is an international network of filmmakers that outsources its means to include sub-communities on university campuses worldwide. This university program—known as Raindance on Campus—is a student filmmaking club located at both the St. George and Scarborough campuses.

The event involved a screening of eight short films, each under five minutes, created by teams of U of T students from the St. George and Scarborough campuses. Following the screening, awards were handed out to the top three teams. The winning film was The Witching Hour by Sarvan Singh and his team, in second place was Boy/Girl by Greg Martin and his team, and in third place was Uninvited by Jessica Rapson and her team.

The films were separated into three acts: Inquisition, Revelations, and Termination. The Witching Hour screened under Act II: Revelations.

In short, this film is beautifully produced. Part horror, part thriller, part mystery, The Witching Hour is a guarantee for goosebumps. The plot follows a man who is mourning the loss of his girlfriend, although the details surrounding their relationship are left ambiguous.

The film opens at night with a thick fog rolling in front of a psychic reading shop, where the man comes to seek answers. After the psychic advises him to return to his photography studio, the man is confronted with a nightmarish scene.

Singh and his team hit all the right marks in terms of creating a short horror film—the setting is ominous, the music is eerie, and there’s a perfect amount of suspense. Despite all these features, The Witching Hour is surprisingly not a cliché. The plot is original, the acting is well-performed, and the filming is sharp.

Boy/Girl screened under Act I: Inquisition. The premise behind this film is equally, if not more, original than The Witching Hour. Boy/Girl relies on its dialogue, rather than imagery, to carry the plot. The film focuses on the conflicting thoughts of a boyfriend and a girlfriend. But here’s where things get tricky: the girl’s lines are written on screen while the boy’s lines are spoken. This technique simultaneously presents two different perspectives on the

same thought. The lines occur with different Toronto settings playing in the background and an acoustic guitar melody strumming alongside the words and images. The filming in Boy/Girl is artistic, yet the insightful exchange between boy and girl generates the main power in this film.

Boy/Girl is a unique spin on the commonly depicted relationship drama.

As the first film of the evening, Uninvited also screened under Act I: Inquisition. Similar to the other two films, Uninvited holds an original and unexpected premise. The plot follows three girls as they enter and explore an abandoned house. The film takes its unique turn in the ending when the girls’ behaviour turns morbid as they encounter an elderly couple living in the house. Despite the film’s eerie setting and grim outcome, the ending appears more comical than sinister due to the exaggerated actions of the girls and old couple. The filming of Uninvited is well-crafted and the script is definitely entertaining. Uninvited was one of my favourite films of the night.

The Film Board is a Hart House club that teaches filmmaking to its members through a series of workshops. The club also provides its members access to professional film and video equipment, allowing them the means to develop their videography skills. The Film Board is proud to sponsor screenings of studentmade films, including the Holiday Film Challenge.

A place for women onstage Women continued from page 7 I believe—and I could be very wrong about this—that Wasserstein’s favourite character was Carter, played by Dominique Corsino in the Theatre Erindale production. Carter is silent, stoic, and the least distracted of the roommates. She is also the only freshman in a house full to the brim with seniors. Carter knows exactly what she wants: to make a movie.

And she does. And as far as we know, she is satisfied with that metaphorical birth. Corsino brings a beautiful depth into the role. Her character simmers away, revealing nothing, and she is incredibly patient with girls dropping in at all hours to un-

burden themselves on her.

All the other characters stand on the opposite end of the teeter-totter.

Rita (Larissa Crawley), Samantha (Marryl Smith), Kate (Emma Robson), Muffet (Rachelle Goebel), Holly (Roxhanne Norman) and Susie (Sarah Kern) are all brilliant, extroverted, and looking for love.

Leilah (Chelsea Riesz) balances somewhere between them, with academics on one hand and her friends on the other. Every actor here has found something that makes them special. That thing is both personal to them and to their characters, and despite their often extravagant personalities, they are grounded in truth.

In her introduction in the program, Leblanc writes about how this piece is special because all the actors “[play] young women in a life situation that resembles their own.

Graduation. Facing a world they have been preparing for and, at the same time, one that they have been sheltered from”. There will be nostalgia here for anyone who has been to university and stood at that place between the last day of class and the first day of the real world. And I can’t deny it—I feel a little twinge in my heartstrings when anyone wearing pyjamas eats peanut butter with a spoon.

Uncommon Women and Others runs until January 31.

01.25.2016 THE MEDIUM ARTS» 9

You’re so immature Vic College actors on what it means to be a real adult

ZARA RIZWAN

FACEBOOK.COM/VCDS

God of Carnage inverts parent-child expectations.

ANTON MYKYTENKO

In their first show of 2016, the Victoria College Drama Society put on an exhilarating performance of Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award–winning black comedy God of Carnage (translated by Christopher Hampton).

The play took place in Victoria College’s Cat’s Eye Lounge. From the vision of director Ben Murchison, the lounge was transformed into the Novak Loft.

Through a series of conflicts, Benjamin Raleigh knocks out Henry Novak’s incisors with a stick. In an attempt to resolve the conflict peacefully, the Novak parents invite the Raleighs over for conversation at lunch. They start off polite, albeit awkward. As the evening progresses and expectations fall through, the two couples begin to act childish and irresponsible. The façade drops and the alcohol comes out.

Rampant swearing and sexism take over the once-polite atmosphere.

As the audience filed into the small, cozy space, the four main characters sat calmly on the furnished set. Henry Novak (Katie Pereira) and Camile Novak (Katie Cohen) were seen arguing, often in the middle of the audience. Lists of the “Novak Family Rules” were left on audience seats. “No roughhousing, or horsing around of any kind,” was written in the middle of the list, preceded by rules like, “Art books shall only be looked at with Mom’s supervision.”

The lighting shifted from a mellow purple to a bright yellow. The still characters began to move. God of Carnage is set in a small apartment, but the actors made great use of the space. Alan (Ryan Falconer) took off to corners of the room for his constant cellphone interruptions with the light almost directly in his face. Annette (Rachel Hart) threw up immediately in front of the crowd beside the coffee table.

When Veronica (Samantha Finkelstein) hurls herself on top of Michael (Matthew Fonte), the two trample

through the background in a comedic mess, filling the scene with movement.

The hilarity of the play was subtle.

The awkward pauses, the implied messages, and—near the end—the blunt swearing were all funny without being overbearing. This left room for the real meaning—the constant backand-forth between politeness when everything was civil and insults when expectations weren’t met.

God of Carnage is a testament to the act of adulthood. It shows how four fully-grown adults with children of their own can still act out despite all of their supposed knowledge and responsibility. It makes the claim that no matter the smoke and mirrors in front of a person, there is still an innate ability to be savage and crude.

The drunken revelry of the play ended abruptly in the open-ended and rhetorical question, “Oh, what do we know?” The lighting faded back to the despondent purple, which left me both curious and begging for more of the same.

It’s all about the feelings for Mississauga poet Poetry continued from page 9 TM: How did you feel after publishing your first poetry collection?

AY: I lacked confidence in the beginning of my writing career. I built up the courage to read my work at the Ontario Poetry Society conference.

While I was there, the coordinator read a rough collection of poems I put together myself. She then granted me an award, and shortly after that, I published the book. Winning this award gave me confidence. I was so happy when I published my first poetry collection. There was a point in my life where I felt very overwhelmed. I didn’t have enough time for poetry and my IT job, so I had to make a plan to do both. Once I managed my time I put together the rough book of work, which I read at the conference. Getting the book published gave me the confidence and motivation to continue writing.

TM: Do you feel that there are certain themes that come up frequently in your work?

AY: I find I mostly write about love.

In my newest book, Seven Nights With

The Chinese Zodiac, there is a large focus on death. I lost my sister to cancer last year. Because of this, I think about death a lot. I also incorporate a lot of Chinese Zodiac imagery and symbols from my Chinese heritage.

These are mostly symbolic animals.

I use both the Chinese and biblical symbol of a snake a lot. In my first book, there are a lot of images of fish, which symbolize loneliness, longing, and desire. I found that in my second book, Inhaling the Silence, I steered away from my inner self and focused on themes of outer self. These also come up in Seven Nights With The Chinese Zodiac.

TM: Are your poems personal? Do you have to be feeling an emotion in order to express it in words?

AY: I am very lucky. When it comes to writing, I am easily inspired by my feelings. I do a good job of taking my feelings and turning them into poetry. I think it’s very important to write about my inner thoughts because if I don’t, I fear I will lose them. But I don’t always need an emotion to stir me. Even when my life is uneventful and I don’t feel anything, I can quickly

pick up inspiration from other poets.

But the times where I do feel emotion, I can express them very deeply in my work.

TM: Did you have a mentor or teacher who influenced your work?

AY: Not exactly. I always want to achieve more and learn more, so sometimes I search for teachers and professionals that can help me improve my craft. Since I don’t have a specific teacher, I learn from other authors and poets. I learn from writers like P.K. Page, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Li-Young Lee, and Billy Collins. These writers teach me that I can write poems with such beauty. Margaret Atwood teaches me about mystery and suspense.

Sylvia Plath teaches me that poetry can be both dark and beautiful, and how to be brave in my writing. Emily Dickinson teaches me about light and darkness. When I read Li-Young Lee’s poems, they touch my soul, whereas Billy Collin’s poems make me laugh and think. These writers are my teachers.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

While rummaging through The Medium’s collection of rejected albums, I found myself in awe at the album art of Alison Goldfrapp’s Head First. My attention was caught by the album’s stock image of a pink sunrise and close-up of a woman with her head in the clouds— literally. The cover art screamed cheesy and my immediate assumption was that this would be an awful, awful choice. So naturally, I had to listen to it.

The album begins with “Rocket”, a gentle electropop song that I couldn’t help but bob my head along to until I realized what it was about. The chorus sums up the horror in three lines: “OhOh-Oh I’ve got a rocket/Oh-Oh-Oh you’re going on it/Oh-Oh-Oh you’re never coming back.” Goldfrapp never fails to sing her lyrics with a honeysweet voice, making the song even creepier than it was to begin with. And still it’s the strongest song on the album. The tones of the synthesizer and the subtle power of the lyrics combine and captivate, but set the standard high for the rest of the album.

Goldfrapp’s soft voice carries on through the next two songs, “Believer” and “Alive”. After a fairly creepy intro, these songs contrast the first with stronger energy and choruses con-

sisting of positive mantras. The retro sounds of classic pop inject a nostalgic quality.

The album’s titular song disappointed me. That’s the trouble with starting off too strong. Based on the title alone, “Head First” sounds like it would be an exciting tune to jump and dance to, but the single is a simple love song with the cliché concept of falling head first in love. In fact, that’s the refrain. “Head first in love.” Like I said, cliché.

Based on the title alone, “Head First” sounds like it would be an exciting tune to jump and dance to.

My favourite song next to “Rocket” is “Hunt”. Where “Rocket” sounds cheerful despite the grim content, no effort is made to hide the emotions of the singer in “Hunt”. Goldfrapp sings hauntingly while ominous chanting joins her in the refrain. She warns her listener in the refrain, “Tonight they hunt for you.” She sets the scene in my head of being chased by the same murderer that wants to strap me to a rocket.

The creepiest songs truly are the best.

MMM

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01.25.2016

Going too far with trigger warnings?

The Medium interviewed members of the campus population for more on trigger warnings ASSIA MESSAOUDI Trigger warnings, often shortened to “TW”, warn viewers of implications or explicit mentions of traumatic incidents such as sexual assault, violence, self-mutilation, etc. These warnings are often found all over the Internet, particularly across Tumblr and Twitter, where users warn their visitors to tread through their pages with caution. Despite the fact that the majority of TWs are being found online, they seem to be increasingly migrating from your computer screen to the front page of your syllabus.

Recently, there has been a push for trigger warnings to be incorporated into education across university campuses. Universities are now seeking to protect young minds by forewarning students about specific works that may contain content that could be potentially triggering.

Trigger warnings are meant to act as a warning, especially for trauma victims. However, according to Dr. Metin Basoglu (who appeared in the Telegraph’s article “Trigger Warnings: More Harm Than Good”), avoidance isn’t necessarily the best option.

“Most trauma survivors avoid situa-

IFUNANYA PAULINUS/THE MEDIUM

Trigger warnings can be found abundantly across the Internet, especially on Twitter and Tumblr. tions that remind them of the experience. Avoidance means helplessness and helplessness means depression.

That’s not good,” he says. “Exposure to trauma reminders provides an opportunity to gain control over them.”

So in essence, providing students with trigger warnings could assist them in avoiding a potential trigger, but on the other hand, facing their triggers could be more beneficial to

them.

Mental health is another factor to consider, as it has become an increasing problem for young people. With every new year, universities and colleges are taking in students with diverse mental health issues on their campuses. In fact, a 2013 study conducted across 32 Canadian postsecondary institutions by the American College Health Association sheds

light on worrying statistics. Within the past 12 months, 5.8 percent of surveyed students reported being diagnosed or treated for panic attacks, 9.5 percent had seriously considered suicide, and 89.3 percent of students felt overwhelmed by everything they had to do. While these statistics may be slightly outdated, it is clear that the demands for the consideration of student needs is prevalent now more

than ever.

To learn more about the usage of trigger warnings at UTM, The Medium turned to various members of the campus population.

According to Althea BlackburnEvans, director of U of T’s Media Relations, “[the] issue has not arisen broadly at the University of Toronto, and there are no specific related policies”.

Blackburn-Evans also comments that “instructors are primarily concerned with creating a rich learning experience” and that they are concenrned with “balancing the needs of students, and their capacity to approach learning in various ways, with the need to present materials that is authentic and reflective of the real world”.

English professors Brent Wood and Chester Scoville don’t use the phrase “trigger warning”.

Scoville believes that “the term itself has become a red flag for some people”, while Wood sees the term being used at poetry slams as opposed to university lectures. Scoville mentions that there is nothing wrong with warning students about triggering content.

Trigger continued on page 14

Bringing manuscripts to your screens Professor Alexandra Gillespie co-leads a million-dollar project to preserve medieval manuscripts FARIDA ABDELMEGUIED Professor Alexandra Gillespie, a specialist in English and medieval studies in the Department of English and Drama, is co-leading a milliondollar initiative to develop tools that will aid the study and archiving of fragile and important items.

The project is specifically focused on medieval manuscripts and early printed books.

Aside from documents, items such as paintings, poetry, and archeological remains will also be included. In Gillespie’s words, the “project is about being able to sit in your bedroom in Mississauga and look at manuscripts in the Vatican, the British Library, the National Library of South Africa, and Harvard University”.

However, the project isn’t limited to simply increasing access to these medieval documents, but to also “pull them together into a space” where users can create their own exhibits or their own “narrative” about them.

The project will also “enable scholars to do in-depth scholarly work without having to travel to ar-

ISLAMICMANUSCRIPTS.INFO/PHOTO

The project is focused on medieval manuscripts and early printed books. chives, able to do work when they’ve left and before they go and if they’re unable to go”. It would also enable them to “share results in a way that is interoperable so that other scholars can use these results”.

When asked about why the project is being coordinated now, Gillespie said, “We are [now] at a point where we are seeing a rapid increase in the number of objects that we are

making available digitally, and the technology has developed enough that [we are] able to do different things. We’re able to make the objects available in ways that enable us to do more interesting things with them.”

Gillespie goes on to thank digital technology, which has given us a “whole new way of preserving these extraordinary things that have sur-

vived for thousands of years”, and through which we “are able to tell us amazing stories about the cultures they have come from”.

“We have a new way of accessing these objects, and we’re now 20 to 30 years into the Internet Age, and standards and methods of disseminating our information using technology have changed a lot,” she says.

Gillespie is co-leading this project

with Sian Meikle, director of Information Technology Services at U of T’s Robarts library.

The ITS unit is responsible for “providing support for digital scholarship in all fields across the university,” she says. “It’s complemented from the support we receive here at the UTM library as well, but Robarts has a central role because it’s the core of the collection. [Robarts is] interested in finding new ways to support scholarship and pedagogy using digital tools and have some dedicated librarians doing that and the money came from the agency to work with the library to do this kind of development.”

Gillespie went on to say that “libraries, museums, and archives are the ones who are implementing the data models—that’s why the foundation that funds us, Mellon, wants to fund us to work with a library”.

This specific project falls under the overarching initiative of the International Image Interoperability Framework. Several libraries and museums are involved with this initiative.

Project continued on page 11

01.25.2016 THE MEDIUM FEATURES» 11

Discussing internalized racism Not just manuscripts MARYAM FAISAL

Eyes follow you as the rich smell of curry carries across the cafeteria when you open your lunchbox.

Middle schoolers around you deliberately sniff the air with suspicion and whisper, “Ew,” to one another. Someone yells at you to put that away. Your cheeks turn red.

You can feel your heart racing and your eyes well up with tears.

You go home and ask your mom to give you a burger tomorrow.

You begin to get used to the taste and ease of eating pizza, preferring it over the labour of your parents’ hands all because of one incident.

But five years later, you call your mom from your dorm room.

“I miss your food—can you pack me some for next week?” It hits you like a wave when you release yourself from the burden of your self-hatred.

This is an example of internalised racism in action.

Internalized racism is a hardly talked about term. Few know what it means but when they learn the definition, a lot of people nod their heads in agreement because most of us have experienced it at least once in our lives.

The term has come to be loosely understood as the adoption of racist views by racialized individuals against others within their own race.

Tehreem Tufail, a second-year political science student, says that generally, internalized racism is insulting a part of your culture that is “contradictory with West-

ern culture”.

This hierarchical way of thinking consistently ranks whites above people of colour and places even more barriers when it comes to attaining racial equality. Colourism, skin-bleaching, and lightening creams are both a reason for and a result of internalized racism. A lot of times, being bullied because a few features make you a distinct part of your ethnic group is what causes people to first loathe themselves and then loathe their own race.

The “Unfiltered: Truth Talks” event was a safe space for students to come and engage in open conversation about internalized racism.

“I didn’t know there was a term for the entire situation,” says Khadra Omar, a third-year CCIT major. “In high school, a few girls used to complain that they couldn’t be in the sun for too long because they were going to get ‘too dark.’ ” “Even subconsciously, over here, especially from a young age, you want to start dressing like [non-POC], talking like them, and you’re embarrassed of your own culture and food,” says Nadia Fakhry, a second-year criminology and sociolegal studies major.

Last Wednesday, U of T’s AntiRacism and Cultural Diversity Office hosted the “Unfiltered: Truth

Talks” event, which was a safe space for students to come and engage in open conversation about internalized racism.

According to their website, the mandate for the Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office involves the creation of events that “highlight the intersection between the academic work in the areas of ethno-cultural diversity, critical race-related issues, and issues of relevance to the larger community on campus”.

“This session will engage students on how they’ve managed to move through/past internalized racism and other oppressions it intersects with. The session seeks to explore ways we transform self-hate into self-love and care.

Through this dialogue, we hope to explore what it truly means to be proud of one’s identity,” said Sandra Carnegie-Douglas, an antiracism and cultural diversity officer.

Given that the Unfiltered: Truth Talks event was a safe space for the sharing of personal and sensitive experiences, The Medium was not able to report on the content of the event.

“We work hard to foster a safer environment for students, which includes respect for their privacy and a peer-focused space. In keeping with this, the space is closed to media, for research, and the general public [outside of U of T],” added Carnegie-Douglas.

The Unfiltered: Truth Talks launched in 2013 and is currently run on all three campuses.

Project continued from page 10 Currently, IIIF is based on a data model known as Shared Canvas. The data model was at first used to share images of book pages. “Then they realized they could do this with paintings as well, and then they asked whether they could adapt the model to make it work for 3D images,” says Gillespie. “The images that are being shared are everything from oil paintings from the 18th century to medieval manuscripts and bits of archeological remains that were taken out of places like Syria and Iraq before the current civil war, and are now so important to preserving a cultural heritage.”

Other universities that are heavily involved with this initiative include the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. Gillespie stated that the former university has played an important role in terms of driving IIIF through their technological development.

“We’re also working with the University of Pennsylvania [and] they have a slightly different approach to some of the same issues,” she says.

“They are more interested in providing images that you can just download onto your desktop and work from there. One of the great things about this project is getting to have these international collaborations.”

When asked about the relevance of this project to those who may not be interested in medieval manuscripts, Gillespie stressed the importance of accessibility.

“For the general public, it’s about accessibility, and for everybody, it’s about sustainability. If we’re going to

spend a lot of money putting all this stuff up online, we want it to still be there in 30 years,” she said.

As for the project’s relevance to students, Gillespie says that these “are incredibly important objects of study, and that’s true for any university student. There are all sorts of questions we can ask of this material, and they’re going to be questions that are interesting to students for all sorts of different reasons”.

She also challenged the question of the project’s relevance by asking what the Internet will look like in 30 years. “There’s a technological piece to the project that is of interest to anybody. […] Everybody is interested in these things. [For example,] the Star Wars trilogy is based on medieval romances,” she said.

In an appeal to current global issues, Gillespie added, “If we’re talking about places like Syria and Iraq [and] some of the sites that are being destroyed—sometimes archaeologists will say that history and art are the glue that holds the community together, and so we think about what will happen after the war—we need heritage [and] the past.”

Gillespie also referred to the potential of the creation of a video game in the future, which will use real medieval transcripts instead of pretend ones. “That’s a UTM subproject, [and] I’m working on this project exclusively with UTM students.”

“When you bring together really wonderful scholarship in the humanities, with fantastic scholarship in technology and data science, really exciting things happen,” she said.

Career speed dating with “human books” The 14 available “human books” included a variety of graduate students and industry professionals KASSANDRA HANGDAAN STAFF WRITER WITH NOTES FROM FARAH QAISER FEATURES EDITOR Despite the necessity, it’s not very often that open discussions surrounding topics such as race, gender, religion, and sexuality take place in our day-to-day lives. However, last Wednesday, the Living Library event allowed such dialogues to take place.

Facilitated by UTM’s Student Life department, the Career Centre, the library, and Student Housing and Residence Life, the object of the event is to give students an opportunity to “borrow [a] human book for up to 25 minutes and engage in free-flowing conversation”. These “human books” were graduate students and alumni as well as professionals who shared personal stories and specific advice to the participating undergraduate students.

Among the variety of human books available were Kate Malisani and Nicolina Lanni.

Malisani currently works as an executive director at a family health clinic. Prior to her career, Malisani completed two master’s degrees: one in bioethics and another in critical disability studies.

Lanni, on the other hand, is a Toronto-based filmmaker. Notably,

TWITTER.COM/UTMSTUDENTLIFE/PHOTO

The event allowed students to have 25-minute conversations with a variety of “human books”.

Lanni has worked as a director and producer for award-winning programs such as Nazi Hunters & Manson.

Both individuals gave an in-depth description of how they entered their careers.

For Malisani, an ethical debate regarding Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a hematologist who was involved in the evaluation of a blood disorder treatment drug called Deferiprone, was

brought up in her high school biology class. Malisani described being intrigued by the controversy surrounding the approval of the drug, and related how she had felt strong support for Olivieri; so much support, in fact, that Malisani decided to write a letter to the hospital in which the drug was disputed. Since then, Malisani marked the event as the start of her fascination with bioethics.

When asked for the advice that she would give undergraduate students, she joked, “Don’t drop biology.”

Explaining, Malisani said that the initial culture shock experienced by students transitioning from high school to university is overwhelming. She advised students to continue taking their chosen courses despite the challenges, and that undergraduate years provide a rare

opportunity to experiment with lifestyle changes.

“I wish I hadn’t [dropped biology]. I always wonder […] It’s the one thing I kind of regret,” she said.

Despite her stable career and illustrious academic background, Malisani said to students that being uncertain about the future is natural.

“I still don’t know what I want to do for the rest of my life,” she said.

For Lanni, the inspiration to pursue journalism and filmmaking also began in high school. In her sophomore year, Lanni volunteered for a local cable station in Niagara.

“I was an honorary reporter—this was years and years ago, it was in the ’90s when we were on tape to tape,” Lanni said, recalling how she covered stories involving organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. “I [also] jumped out of an airplane once,” she said.

One quirks of the job that interested Lanni was the ability to interact with her interviewees. “I always loved the process of interviewing.

I was really […] captivated by sitting with someone and hearing their story. How they came to be where they are, and part of it was my own research for life. How do people exist?” she said.

Library continued on page 14

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«FEATURES

THE MEDIUM 01.25.2016

We put out a call for submissions to uncover the creative talent at UTM, and picked a winner and runner-up in each category. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

Visit themedium.ca for the runners-up in each category.

“Crawly Things”

NON-FICTION

Amara Malik I still remember those tiny crawly things in our New York apartment. My parents called them cockroaches, and my grandparents would stick their noses up in disgust whenever they saw them.

I wondered where they came from, where they scurried to when the lights came on, and if they slept with me in my bed. I didn’t like that thought.

The crawly things both excited and scared me.

They vacationed behind sofas and in between freshly washed dishes. They would waterfall down the curtains, hid in every hole in the wall, and came out in waves

under beds and stovetops. They watched TV with us, ate our food, and played with my toys when I wasn’t around.

They didn’t live with us—we lived with them.

One day, as I played on the white-tiled floor of our kitchen, I saw a jet-black cockroach bravely run across the room, right over my hand. Their tiny feet scampered onto my palm and its antennas felt the air. The cockroach appeared as big as my small hand.

My eyes widened.

Then it ran off to its family, and probably hid in the corner of the wall with the yellow wallpaper that

“Lucid”

peeled off a little more each day.

I jumped up and held my hand like it had been injured.

“Is everything all right?” my mother said.

I nodded my head and ran to the living room in the comfort of my loud TV that would scare away the tiny crawly things.

At night, I turned into a sneaky cockroach myself.

From my bed, murky shadows slithered across the wall. Every small, pitch-black object reminded me of cockroaches.

Frightened, I crawled out of bed, crouched low, and quietly ran from my parents’ room to my grand-

FICTION

Cameron Allan The moon cast its pale glow along the ridged surface of the barren field. Its freezing breeze wafted through my body. My brittle bones shuddered.

The arid soil crumbled under the forceful swings of my hoe. The repeated impact made the wooden handle vibrate and sent a sharp shock of stinging pain through my callused hands and into my forearms.

I dropped the tool. It struck the ground and a plume of dehydrated dirt circulated upward toward my face. I panted for air. I drew in a wheezy, crackling breath of dry dirt and exhaled hoarsely. Pa wanted me to break up another line of soil before I headed inside, but I couldn’t do it anymore. The pain, the cold, and my creeping tiredness became too difficult to ignore.

I gripped the cool, shiny metal of the farmhouse door and swung it open. I grabbed onto the screen door handle and pushed it inward. The hinges creaked loudly, and the stopper hissed as the door slowly shut in waves. I stepped inside.

“Bobby, did yuh git it done?” Pa’s slurred voice resonated from over in the living room. I ambled toward it.

Empty cans of Pabst Blue sat crushed around his feet. An empty pack of Marlboro Southern Cut cigarettes laid open on his lap. A weight loss infomercial echoed throughout the deafeningly silent house.

“No. No, not yet. I’m sorry, it got too cold and my hands started to hurt real bad. I just want to go to sleep, Pa.” His empty, black eyes peered over a copy of the Omaha World Herald.

He studied my tattered image with disgust. “Yuh know boy, you really are fuckin’ pathetic ain’t ye?” He threw the newspaper to the ground and stomped his feet on the floor. His giant, furry hands gripped the armrests of the red sofa as he propped

parents’. I blended into the inky darkness and wouldn’t stop until I reached their bed.

My grandparents waited for me each night. My grandmother would think of a new twist to the same story she told me over and over again.

I eagerly climbed onto their bed and over them like they were two big, soft mountains and I was an explorer in search of a new adventure.

I always sat in the windowsill beside their bed, looked down at the busy city life, and watched people that looked like ants walking to their anthill.

My grandmother captured me with a web of stories and fantasies of talking animals and little fairies that would eventually lull me to sleep.

“It’s time for you to go back to bed now, little doll,” said my grandfather, when he saw my droopy lids in the light of the streetlamp.

“No,” I said.

“Oh dear,” my grandmother said, as she called to my mom to get me.

As my mom carried me back across the living room to our bedroom, I sensed the cockroaches watch us as they reclined on the couches in the silence and safety of the night.

“All of You”

POETRY

Keena Alwahaidi himself upward.

He stumbled over toward me. “I mean look at ye, yer weak! You aint a man yer a little bitch!” He shoved me sharply with his index finger. I turned away. “Hey! I’m talkin’ to yuh boy! Why don’t you grow a pair uh fuckin’ nuts?”

A tear streamed down my face and clung at my jaw line. Pa sneered at me and marched up the creaky stairs. He paused about halfway and turned around at me. “Don’t you put your dirty paws in mah damn fridge neitha, pussy boy. You eat when you earn it in these parts, yuh hear?”

“Okay, I’m sorry I ain’t good ’nuff Pa,” I replied. I heard no response. I guessed he didn’t need to share that he agreed.

I lay down and stared up at the waterlogged ceiling of the living room.

I wanted to have a better life. I didn’t understand why Pa had to be so mean to me sometimes.

I knew he loved me, I just wished he’d show it more often.

When I dreamed, things were exactly the way I wished they were between him and I. I could see Pa signing off on a deed to our house and land. He’s shaking a realtor’s hand.

He turns to me with a cheeky grin and lunges inward for a big, strangulating hug.

There would be no more working.

We could relax outside. I wouldn’t feel guilty anymore if I decided to go to school either.

Pa would have enough money to put food on the table, pay property taxes, and replace hole-infested clothing. We wouldn’t have to remain filthy to save on the hydro bill, or shut off all the lights so we could afford to keep them on the next month.

In my dreams, we live happily, together. We traveled. Pa isn’t a drunk, and he isn’t addicted to cigarettes. He pays for me to go to college once I

graduate and visits me in the big city, even though he hates city folk.

But even I had the sense to know that dreams were just that, dreams.

They weren’t ever meant to happen in reality.

Pa’s footsteps interrupted my thoughts of aspiration. He morosely plodded down the stairs toward the front door and idly opened it halfway. He noticed my glowing, awakened eyes from the living room. Pa trudged over toward the couch.

“Bobby. Look, I’m sorry I yelled at yuh. Yuh know how I git sometimes.”

“Yeah. It’s okay Pa, I forgive yuh!”

Pa smiled. A weighty, wrinkled frown developed on his face shortly thereafter.

He intently stared at me with a red, glossy-eyed expression. He grazed the underside of his hand along my cheek and kissed my forehead.

“I love yuh. Son,” he whispered into my ear. It tickled a little. As he backed away, his prickly face scratched along my skin and gave me goosebumps.

I didn’t understand why he looked so sad. He couldn’t ever share his feelings with anyone. I hadn’t seen him cry before either. I could tell he held it in just now, like always.

“Hey Pa?” I asked.

“Yea Bobby?”

“Whachya doin’ outside?”

“Oh I jus’ needa take care of somethin’. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

Pa shut the door behind him.

The dim, amber garage light flickered on. His shadow emerged in the window. Then, it went pitch black again.

A shotgun blast sounded off. A flock of birds maniacally fluttered away from the old oak tree in the front yard.

Pa must’ve noticed a critter snooping around in our vegetable patch again. He’d be back in a jiff.

Your body is a map The curves that swerve along your sides Are long, unknown roads that stretch for miles The gaps between your fingers and The creases in your palm Are like back roads To the hometown I love But can never visit Your eyes are Like all the countries I’ve wanted to go to But have never been to before Your body is home Was I the guest that expected too much?

The one who wouldn’t leave?

Your hands reached out to feed me And you loved me like your own You were the bed that I lay on Your tears like a bath that washed me clean Your heart was a welcome mat that I perhaps stepped all over Here I can claim refuge For I have nowhere else to go

JUDGES’ COMMENTS NON-FICTION: The metaphor of the narrator turning into a cockroach is fresh, coupled with a great emphasis on detail throughout the story.

FICTION: The tense relationship between a father and son is well-handled.

Readers sympathize with the son but also see that the father is fighting his own demons, making the story richer.

POETRY: The poem’s greatest strength is its imagery and attention to detail, and the seamless way it ties together the tangible and intangible.

01.25.2016 THE MEDIUM FEATURES» 13

Photojournalism Yannis Davy Guibinga

Portrait Hannah Taylor

JUDGES’ COMMENTS PORTRAIT: What was interesting with these portraits was that the flow of the water and the woman’s hair are almost in harmony with one another. The use of colour evokes a calm and cooling feeling.

PHOTOJOURNALISM: These photos are aesthetically pleasing to the eye and evoke a feeling of curiosity. The viewer is drawn into this world; we want to know more about their origins and their stories.

14

«FEATURES

THE MEDIUM 01.25.2016

Usually the Blackboard Special is dedi-

protein shake, he gets most of his recom-

cated to desserts, main dishes, and

mended daily value for “protein, vegetable,

baked goodies, but for this one, we’re try-

fruit, and vitamin intake early in the day”.

ing something different. (New Year, new

(He later adds that with his particular brand

me, anyone?) This week, Eric Hewitson, a

of protein powder, he gets his entire rec-

third-year English major and sports editor

ommended daily intake of Vitamin D and

of The Medium, has contributed his daily

140% of Vitamin E. Dang.)

grapefruit-flavoured protein shake for the Blackboard Special.

While Hewitson prefers to add grapefruit to his shake for additional flavour, he also

Following the old adage “Breakfast

recommends using alternatives such as

is the most important meal of the day”,

pomegranate. Personally, I stick to banana

Hewitson prepares his protein shake every

or strawberry milkshakes—I can’t even

morning. As a former Varsity Blues player,

imagine what a grapefruit-flavoured shake

Hewitson constantly keeps an eye on his

would taste like.

nutritional intake, and says that with this SERVES 1

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

• 1 grapefruit (or alternative fruit)

1. Place all ingredients in a blender.

• 1 cup of baby spinach

2. Blend until the protein shake reaches

• 1 teaspoon of flaxseeds • 1 scoop of Vega One All-In-One Nutritional Shake protein powder (or alternative protein powder)

OLIVIA ADAMCZYK/THE MEDIUM

Where should we draw the line for the usage of trigger warnings?

Trigger continued from page 10

Eric’s Protein Shake Combo

• 2 cups of almond milk

More harm than good?

desired consistency.

3. Serve immediately or refrigerate for later.

“Calling attention to a text’s potentially disturbing content is a way of framing them; it’s not avoiding difficulty but confronting it,” says Scoville.

When asked whether they had ever felt the need to remove texts from their syllabi, both professors replied in the negative. “Though, I have sometimes decided that the content of a particular text might be too distracting from the point I need to make in a specific part of the course,” says Scoville.

Wood, who teaches ENG201Y: Reading Poetry, says that he “wants to be able to deal with emotionally challenging topics” but does not want students “to be so paralyzed with fear that they’re unable to speak”. To him, English provides a place to explore “emotional text within an intellectual context”.

When asked about the perception of increased sensitivity of students, Scoville disagreed and said he does not see “that students now are any more sensitive than their predecessors. I’ve never been asked to remove a text, although I have been asked to address and alert people to particular topics before we discuss them, which seems fair enough”.

“Students are more willing now to speak explicitly about problematic issues,” adds Woods. “Students are more open now about sex, sexuality, mental health, and trauma than when I was an undergraduate student.”

UTM students echo similar thoughts when it comes to trigger warnings. Alexandra Babaik, a fourth-year English student, doesn’t feel as though trigger warnings in a university setting are a bad thing at all. “Trigger warnings are a good thing, because at least if a warning

is in place, a student can be aware of the content they are about to experience,” she says. “I do, however, think that people’s need to be catered to emotionally is an issue, specifically this generation, and I don’t think students should be able to opt out of reading certain material because they feel ‘sensitive’ to it […] I think [that] it’s a sense of entitlement that is unattractive, and is also inhibiting in how we as students interpret information.”

However, Babaik stresses that if there is a text that may be “psychologically damaging or traumatic” for a student, then “by all means I think they should not have to partake”.

Karina Cotran, a third-year English student, says that students should be given the opportunity to opt out of reading or viewing certain course material “depending on the level of the content. If the content itself is extremely graphic, then, yes, they should have that option [of opting out]”.

Cotran goes on to say that she’s never personally “had a professor who excused a class from reading or viewing something due to its content” but she has had “professors who simply warn the students that the content we are reading or viewing is considered offensive, but that we should read or view the content anyways. Most professors strongly encourage us to keep an open mind”.

She adds that she does not think that trigger warnings are detrimental to a student’s learning as “having a traumatic flashback because no trigger warning was in place is also in itself detrimental to the student’s learning”.

When it comes to sensitivity, Cotran believes that while some students may be more sensitive than others, “[students] need to keep in

mind that we cannot create trigger warnings for every offensive thing we come across on campus”.

Joey Close is a third-year CCIT and PWC double major. When asked about whether she believes that students have become too sensitive, she agrees wholeheartedly.

“As a mature student I can say that students today are far more sensitive than they were 10 years ago. I can’t say I ever remember hearing students talking about this,” says Close. “[…]

This is all fairly new, and to be honest unsettling, to say the least. There is a big world out there and I believe students need to be taught where we have come from and why we are where we are today. This includes very sad, and sometimes violent, topics unfortunately.”

Close believes that students should not be given the opportunity to opt out of reading a certain text or viewing a material that could potentially be triggering.

Acknowledging the difficulty of the question, Close adds, “As harsh as this may sound, we need to think realistically here. If universities begin to allow one student to opt out of a required reading then soon thereafter, another student will want to do the same. I believe it will only be a matter of time that professors will not be able to properly educate students for the real world and the purpose of getting a higher education will become ill to none.”

Close then referred to an incident that took place at Harvard University in 2014, where students had felt that rape law should no longer be taught.

“How does one go out into the world and become a lawyer and defend rape victims if universities are no longer able to teach rape law?” she says. “[...]

As they say, it’s a jungle out there, and students need to be prepared.”

Lanni’s thesis focused on AIDS Library continued from page 11 Soon, Lanni became passionate about journalism and covering such stories, and she eventually applied to a journalism course at Carleton University. For her master’s thesis, Lanni traveled to rural South Africa to work on a documentary that focused on the AIDS crisis at the time.

“I wanted to tell a story about how I thought that combating the AIDS crisis in rural South Africa was very different than combating the crisis in urban South Africa,” she said. “I passed my thesis but it was a terrible

documentary. I learned the lesson the hard way. It was good in an academic setting, but […] it was awfullooking.”

Recently, Lanni has been involved in the production of Lost & Found— a documentary that features the lives of five beachcomber families and their discovery of Japanese items that washed up on shore following the devastating 2011 Japanese tsunami.

“I found out about [these families] through the news and I started reaching out to them, [asking] ‘What are you going to do with these items?’ A

lot of them started to research these items to see if they could figure out who these items belong to,” she said.

The documentary follows these individuals as they attempted to find the original owners of the items, which ranged from a “Harley Davidson motorcycle to a volleyball or a sandal with a girl’s name on it”.

While not every owner was reunited with their belongings, Lanni says that “the film ended up becoming a story of these really crazy friendships that were formed between families in America and in Japan in the wake of the [tsunami]”.

01.25.2016

»

15

Bigger, faster, stronger after injury Albert Awachie recovers because of strong motivation, ready for the 2016 football season ERIC HEWITSON SPORTS EDITOR Albert Awachie is a physical specimen. Currently listed at 6’3” and 228 pounds, Awachie is so talented and gifted at football that his position on the field is ambiguous to the Varsity Blues coaching staff. He resembles the Predator, a sneaky alien monster attacking players on other OUA teams. At first, Awachie may seem intimidating, but really, he’s a humble, motivated, and gifted athlete with a big smile and big dreams.

The third-year UTM political science student from Colorado, U.S. suffered a horrific knee injury last January that sidelined him for the entire 2015 season, putting a roadblock in the ambitious man’s dreams. He suffered a knee dislocation that tore his bicep tendon, lateral collateral ligament, and anterior cruciate ligament.

Initially, when Awachie injured himself in the Varsity Field dome, he grabbed his leg in agony, wondering how this could happen.

MAHMOUD SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

At 6’3”, 228 lbs, Albert Awachie is an aesthetically pleasing individual with incredible athletic ability.

“I started to question everything; was I not humble enough, did my prayers go through, what about my time, my money, my blood—it felt like closing credits. My friends got in contact with me and gave me encouragement, which eventually eased my mind,” says Awachie.

When Awachie’s teammate and fellow UTM student Aaron Jervis received a harrowing concussion in 2014, finding himself sidelined for the remainder of that year, some significant life-changing lessons set in.

“I learned I’m no longer the hero

figure I imagined myself to be. I’m just a man whose actions are subject to the laws of physics. There is no mercy of these laws in the collision of sports,” says Jervis.

The most difficult thing about coming back after a distressing concussion or knee injury may be

your ability to maintain a mindset that is confident and relentless.

“To play football differently would not be playing football, it would be watching,” says Jervis.

Awachie didn’t want to accept the reality of his situation, so he would show up to school without crutches before his surgery, trying to tough it out.

“I stayed confident almost to a fault,” says Awachie. “After surgery, I expected to stay ahead of the timeline because I had an excellent staff and rehab facility [Goldring Centre for High-Performance Sport] who I’d visit at least three times a week. I needed to rely on a will to beat the odds, which I felt I could do.”

Though Awachie went through a difficult time recovering from his injury, he’s maintained a positive attitude. Looking back, he sees the injury as providing him with insight and a maturity that he can go on and take to accomplish his next great challenges.

Injury continued on page 16

Olympic-style archery at UTM For second year in a row, UTM Archery holds events for skilled and beginner shooters on Mondays MAANYA KHANNA Archery is a sport derived from a time when people used to bowhunt for their food. Today it has become a sport that has branched into many different forms. It has gained enough interest on our campus that the UTM Archery Club continues into its second year, providing space for shooting for experienced shooters and coaching for beginners.

UTM Archery hosts two-hour sessions of target archery every Monday from 8 to 10 p.m. at the RAWC, with an Olympic-style setup for some of the most skilled shooters.

The aim of Olympic-style archery is to shoot all of the arrows in a target that stands 70 m away from the shooter to the innermost ring, to earn the maximum number of points. Archery poses a challenge because the centre of the target is the size of a grapefruit, and from the shooting distance, it appears to be the size of a dime.

“I think the most important part of archery is to stay relaxed and just to have fun, and not worry too much about where your arrows go

UTM ARCHERY CLUB/PHOTO

Shooters aim for the grapefruit-sized target in the middle of the board. as long as they point in the right direction. Initially, I was expecting more people, and I was waiting for a more formal range, but it’s nice to have the informality of the gym as well,” says Danielle Mackie, a second-year member of the club.

Anyone is allowed to attend the archery sessions, even if they have no experience with archery. Half of the gym is designated for coaching

beginners, where two coaches demonstrate how to shoot with precision and accuracy. The targets for new students are bigger and set up much closer to the individual until they become familiar with the entire process.

The greatest challenge for someone that has just begun to learn is how to train their body to stand in a particular way, which can be un-

familiar and uncomfortable. Many students struggle with noticing and correcting automatic movements that are made unconsciously based on their logical scheme. These mistakes are important to correct as they are ergonomically incorrect, or they debilitate the person’s ability to shoot the target.

Seeing the more experienced archers shoot alongside the beginners

is inspiring to those who have just begun.

“I like it. I would like to try it and be in the regular group and do what they are doing. That’s my goal for now,” says David Nam after holding a bow for the very first time.

“My mother and I went to the Medieval Times show downtown, and it was a good experience,” says coach Tessa Lehmann, explaining her archery origins 12 years ago.

“But my mom was a little unimpressed with how Hollywoodish it was, so she signed me up for archery thinking that it was more of a classical-type archery. It turned out to be not classical, but competitive.

I fell in love with the first arrow, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Although derived from an older tradition of bowhunting, “At its core it’s the same—it’s still much of the same positioning, it’s just a different goal,” explains Lehmann.

In one, archers practice shooting at a paper target, and in the other it’s hunting an animal for food. “It’s a show of marksmanship, it’s a show of dedication, and you have to work at it to be good at it—like most things.”

16

«SPORTS

THE MEDIUM 01.25.2016

Slowing the game ERIC HEWITSON SPORTS EDITOR

MAHMOUD SAROUJI/THE MEDIUM

Awachie credits exercise habits to successful knee rehabilitation.

Injury continued from page 15 “I had to learn to be more patient and accept time as my friend, whereas before I was always trying to beat it. The injury narrowed my priorities to simply recovering and keeping my grades in check,” he said.

There’s a realistic chance that Awachie will grab the attention of professional football scouts next year.

He also feels his football mindset has improved as he heads into training camp next year, his eyes set on a successful future with the program and career.

“Relying less on my athleticism and focusing more on detail has helped slowed the game for me,” says Awachie. He isn’t intimidated by the reality that he could fall victim to another injury when he suits up for the 2016 Varsity Blues.

“I want to finish what I started. Everything will fall into place. I must ap-

preciate the opportunities others give me,” he says.

Awachie wants to inspire others to push through the tough times and remain patient following their recovery plan; it’s a marathon, not a sprint. He made a video of himself running on a football field in August for the first time since his injury, showing family and teammates that he’s more ready than every to turn heads on the field.

Awachie doesn’t want to be defined by his injury; he wants to be determined by how well he used injury as motivation to become not only the best athlete he can be, but also the best version of himself.

“Don’t let go of the pain, that’s your drive—find a positive way to embrace it, and it’ll add to your story,” he says.

“You’ll look back at what you had to go through, and you’ll realize you’re better off facing the next big decision in your life because of the lessons you learned.

EXERCISING WITH YOUR DOG You’re sitting alone in your bed watching Netflix, and there’s absolutely nowhere else you’d rather be, but there’s a little problem—your dog is staring at you with those sad eyes that you can’t resist. You haven’t taken your dog out for a walk today because it’s winter and there’s not much you can do with your dog in the winter—right?

You’re wrong. Don’t let the cold weather freeze up your exercise routine.

You can easily get creative with your little pooch and take him or her out for a date that they’ll never forget. But don’t just think of it as taking him or her out for some exercise; use it as a way for you to get active, too.

Set your alarm clock for 30 minutes earlier and before you leave for school in the morning, put on your earmuffs and gloves and grab your puppy’s leash. You’ll make the little furball’s morning by saying, “Wanna go for a walk?”, watch the little guy bounce off the sofa and into your arms—or maybe you have one of those little pug dogs that just look at you like you’re crazy. Take your dog out for a 20 to 30-minute walk; it’s an excellent way to start the day off without anxiety or stress, and it’ll freshen up your mind and allow you to plan your tasks for the day—oh, and it counts as physical exercise.

I’m not trying to remind you to walk your dog or tell you the secret to becoming your parent’s favourite kid—I’m letting you know that getting creative with your dog’s walks can improve your and your dog’s mood and physical

health.

This winter I went home for Christmas and asked my little brothers to go out tobogganing.

We were about to leave without our yellow lab until we saw her sad eyes. We thought she’d be a hindrance, but turns out her running around, chasing us up the hills with our sleds, and throwing snowballs into the snow watching her wonder where the white ball went was the highlight of the whole evening.

Long story short, my brothers and I, who usually go to bed at one o’clock, fell asleep watching Polar Express at 10 o’clock because we were so exhausted.

If you’re like me and are easily amused by something like playing dog tag, simply go outside in your backyard or a park and play tag with your dog—labs and shepherds always win.

The winter Blues The women’s Varsity Blues basketball team fall victim at home

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The Varsity Blues women’s basketball team lost to the Ottawa Gee-Gees on Friday.

ERIC HEWITSON SPORTS EDITOR The Varsity Blues women’s basketball team couldn’t finish off the Ottawa Gee-Gees Friday night in their annual Think Pink, Bleed Blue game hosted at the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport in Toronto. The hard-fought close game ended in the Gee-Gees’ favour, 6962.

The Blues fell to a 3-6 record, staying put in third place in the OUA East division, while the nationally ranked (number 10) GeeGees advance to an 8-1 record, holding the top spot in the North Division.

From the Blues, third-year guard and Scarborough native Rahshida Atkinson led all players with 15 points while adding three rebounds and three assists. Third-year Diedre Edwards scored 12 points while adding five rebounds and two assists. Rookie Mahal De La Durantaye had a great showing, scoring eights points and grabbed four rebounds and two steals.

The game went back and forth and both teams exchanged leads, making it a nail-biter until the end. First-year guard Keyira Parkes brought her Blues squad to life in the first quarter with a three-pointer that evened up the game at nine.

The Blues took the lead at half time, 36-34. During intermission, the Junior Blues gymnastics club raised over $700 and performed a Think Pink dance routine to support breast cancer research. Varsity Blues football player Kevin Collins raised $1,000 for the cause and had his hair cut because of his pledge.

The second half was worth the admission for the jam-packed stadium. Atkinson, the Blues’ clutch three-point specialist with a .316 success rate behind the arc, scored eight out of the 10 points when the Blues took a 10-0 run to open the second half. After a timeout, the Gee-Gees came together and played sound fundamental basketball, taking the Blues’ lead to a narrow 50-49 advantage.

The fourth quarter was not the best of quarters for the Blues; they

gave up double the amount of points than what they scored, giving the Gee-Gees a hard-fought win. Kelli Ring scored 13 points for the Gee-Gees, also leading the team with seven rebounds.

The women lost another battle 67-63 on Saturday night to the Carleton Ravens. The Blues record sinks to 3-7, while Carleton improves to 6-4, giving them second place in the North division.

Parkes led the team with a careerhigh 23 points and two rebounds; she was unstoppable from shooting range.

Edwards tallied 12 points and led the team with six steals, while firstyear Texas native Charlotte Collyer scored eight points and grabbed five rebounds.

The Blues went on a 9-0 run, but would give the points right back to Carleton when they went on their 10-0 streak. The game was tied 6363 with less than a minute remaining, but the Ravens gave the Blues their woes, scoring on consecutive free throw opportunities.