The Queen's Journal, Volume 151, Issue 3

the journal

Members of Queen’s gender studies receive hateful e-mail

Message came two days after University of Waterloo stabbing

Sofia Tosello

Assistant News Editor

The Queen’s Gender Studies Department was shaken by a “disturbing” e-mail received in the wake of the hate-motivated stabbing in a gender studies classroom at the University of Waterloo.

Eight members of the department received an e-mail from a Kingston local claiming “toxic femininity” and “powerful women” destroyed his life on June 30. The individual requested the gender studies department contact him directly to discuss the matter.

“I reported the e-mail to campus security and [the gender studies department] felt security’s response was inadequate and they didn’t understand the complexity of the situation,” said Sailaja Krishnamurti, gender studies department head in an interview with The Journal

The Journal was unable to obtain a copy of the e-mails sent to the gender studies department.

A supervisor from campus security notified Kingston Police of the situation and contacted Krishnamurti claiming the police were going to speak to the e-mail’s sender.

“The gender studies department responded to campus security by saying the police aren’t always the best strategy in a situation like this. We need to focus on de-escalation,” Krishnamutri said.

This wasn’t the first time the individual sent e-mails aimed at the gender studies department. Members of the department received similar messages on multiple occasions over the past two years.

Krishnamutri suggested campus security start a discussion with faculty about de-escalation and harm reduction approaches to gender-based violence. When someone in a mental health crisis is approached by police, the individual’s emotions may intensify leading them to become more upset, explained Krishnmautri. Employing mental health counselors or social workers

OUTER SPACE, OLYMPICS, AND APOCALYPSE

Queen’s Players is open for new talent

Suzy Leinster Assistant Arts Editor

The summer shred is heating up as Queen’s Players launched us into the meteor-world of the summer Olympics.

The show runs a new cast every semester, and they never miss a summer season. This time, audiences got a glimpse into “A Space Olympocalypse,” a “See You Next Tuesday” cabaret focusing on the Olympics with a mix of apocalypse. The sold-out event ran from July 19 to 22 at The Mansion.

“One of the traditions of the summer show is that it’s really chaotic, so I wanted to throw in the apocalyptic curveball, and it turned out to be really fun,” Director Olivia Orsi, ArtSci ’23, said in an interview with The Journal.

Running for over 100 years, all the shows’ proceeds are donated to charitable organizations in Kingston and Canada.

Full of racy jokes and laughter, Orsi said Players is a great club for people who express themselves and find community through theatre.

alongside the police or campus security to handle situations involving individuals who are under mental duress and approaching them in a noncombative, non-threatening manner can help de-escale a tense situation. Krishnamutri said these de-escalation approaches can be learned by all members of the Queen’s community.

According to her, campus security was unable to have conversations about de-escalation and the University has not offered any de-escalation training to faculty or staff.

Formed in November 2022, the Hate Crime Steering Committee was tasked with addressing the rising number of hate crimes occurring on Queen’s campus. The committee hasn’t had any further conversations since releasing a statement in May, explained Krishnamutri.

The Steering Committee is

JDUC blueprints unaccounted for

expected to formally begin its work in the fall, said Kim Murphy, executive director (risk and safety services), in a statement to The Journal

Students in the gender studies department speculated hate-motivated stabbings at the University of Waterloo spurred the e-mail at Queen’s.

“I’m not shocked […] this individual took the time to do this when [hate-motivated violence] was already a focus in the media,” said Melanie Murdock, a PhD student in the gender studies department, in an interview with The Journal

In the wake of the incident, Queen’s University published a statement condemning gender-based violence on June 29.

“I wasn’t aware of this statement. A statement is only meaningful as long as people hear about it,” Murdock said.

Murdock voiced concerns the University’s approach to hatebased assaults is reactive rather than proactive.

“The University should be talking with the queer community, radicalized folk, and students and faculty at Queen’s to determine what security and safety looks like for equity-deserving groups,”

“I realized a lot about myself and was able to come out of my shell a bit more. I joined in fourth year, and it’s never too late to get started.”

Her role as a director dealt with administrative work such as scheduling vocal and choreography rehearsals, writing the script, and choosing the production’s songs.

Players is an extensive team with various moving parts, according to Orsi. This allowed for a diverse range of people to join the team. Stage lovers and script writers alike can join Players so long as they nail their audition.

Vocal directors help members learn their harmonies, choreography directors create dances, and the production team makes promotional content for social media. First time cast members have the opportunity to advance into leadership positions after the initial show.

The team reserves spots for new members to join the club, but Orsi said every director must be a Player’s alumnus as it allows them to teach rookies how to perform. See Players on page 9

PHOTO BY CURTIS HEINZL AND HERBERT WANG

Report shows 50 per cent of Queen’s students don’t use sexual protection

61 per cent of students reported sex satisfaction

Sophia Coppolino Senior News Editor

The wellness survey responses shed light on students’ sexual heath practices and alcohol consumption.

Student Wellness Services

(SWS) published the results of the two wellness surveys, the National College Health Assessment, and the Canadian Campus Wellbeing Survey, in February. The surveys were conducted over the winter 2022 semester, while COVID-19 restrictions were in place.

Overall, 13 per cent of students responded to the survey with 70 per cent of respondents being undergraduate students. The results provided SWS a broad snapshot of student wellness at Queen’s.

“The survey results show the health and wellbeing of Queen’s students is similar to their peers at other Canadian post-secondary institutions,” SWS Executive Director Cynthia Gibney said in a statement to The Journal Sexual Health

Queen’s students had more sex than the Canadian population. Sixty-eight per cent of respondents reported having engaged in sexual activity—the Canadian average is 52 per cent. Protective barriers were used “always or almost always” by 44 per cent of students.

SWS increased access to STI testing, including running STI Quick Test Clinics.

“[SWS has] a continued focus on programming, resources, and community building for equitydeserving students continues across campus including the creation of a TransCare team and increased equity education for SWS staff, and expanded sex-positive programming,” Gibney said.

Peer-to-peer education is a longstanding part of SWS’ sexual health promotion, including a blog where students can submit

Students given extra TAMs

Sofia Tosello

Assistant News Editor

Leonard dining hall is getting a face lift.

The dining hall’s kitchen, which feeds up to 700 students daily, is being upgraded during the fall term and is expected to be running at full capacity for January.

Leonard will no longer be all-you-can-eat and will operate for daily lunch and dinner. Leonard’s kitchen will be closed as cooking stations and dishwashers are upgraded and replaced. Food served at Leonard will be made in trailers located outside the dining

anonymous questions about sex.

Substance Use

Substance use at Queen’s was slightly higher than the Canadian population in 2022, except when it comes to binge drinking.

More than a quarter of students reported binge drinking one or more times per week. Student athletes were more likely to binge drink than other student subgroups.

Thirty-five per cent of students reported one or more negative consequence of using alcohol over the past year, with 44 per cent reporting memory loss.

“Concern remains amid student reports of binge drinking; alcohol harm reduction will remain a priority area of focus across student services,” Gibney said.

During high-risk party times, such as Homecoming, Queen’s plans to extend substance related services beyond the longstanding Campus Observation Room (COR).

Initiatives include Big Breakfasts in residence, food and water giveaways, ongoing safe drinking education, and Party Goer and Party Thrower Safety Kit giveaway events, Gibney explained.

Forty-one per cent of students indicated using cannabis over the last year, with half of cannabis-using students indicating high or moderate risk use. Seventy per cent of students with C or D grades reported risky cannabis use.

Mental Health

Students’ top sources of stress were procrastination, personal appearance, and academics. Overall, 66 per cent of respondents indicated average or high mental wellbeing in the two weeks preceding the survey with 47 per cent reporting good abilities managing their stress.

This wasn’t the case for all students on campus. The majority—71 per cent—of gender non-conforming or trans students reported severe mental distress, and 65 per cent of students identifying as LGBTQ+ reported

New Dean of Law: Colleen Flood

Meghrig Milkon Assistant News Editor

Colleen Flood has a vision for Queen’s Law, and she’s committed to making it a reality.

Appointed as the Dean of the Faculty of Law for a five-year term effective July 1, Flood is committed to increasing research opportunities for law students, eliminating inefficiencies, and promoting opportunities for graduates. Flood sees her role as preparing students for the future, whatever it might entail.

“I want to help students see that a Queen’s Law degree is an investment in their future that will pay off,” Flood said in an interview with The Journal.

“I see my role as Dean to really accelerate and support excellence in teaching, in research, and in service. So that’s my job—to make all of that happen.”

A long-term goal of Flood’s is to provide law students with more research opportunities.

“When I look at our strategic plan and our organizational chart,

being lonely.

“Social and personal identities influence many aspects of wellbeing, highlighting the continued need for specific, targeted resources that support students with intersectional identities,” Gibney added.

Gibney told The Journal SWS is collaborating with other University offices, including Athletics & Recreation. SWS created a TransCare team, increased equity education for SWS staff, and expanded sex-positive programming.

In terms of new programming, the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies is launching a pilot program this fall called First-Year Learning Communities.

“The program aims to support student transition to university life, support academic skill building, enhance students’ sense of belonging [...], and connect students with supportive resources on campus,” Gibney said.

we don’t have enough resources devoted towards the research part of the mission, which in turn, would give a lot more opportunities for both undergrad and graduate students to work on research. We plan to accelerate that a lot,” Flood said.

While settling in as dean, Flood will continue her own research focusing on governance of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Having previously collaborated with the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences Jane Philpott on a book about COVID-19, Flood expressed eagerness to collaborate on research opportunities across faculties.

“We can definitely be more together, we’re more than the sum of our parts,” Flood added.

Flood spent time getting to know Queen’s through meeting professors and staff one-on-one. Eliminating inefficiencies is a priority, even though it may sound like a small task.

“We’re working to really elevate everybody. That’s the secret. I think I’m someone who sets very clear objectives, and then I go for it. But I’m someone who will listen to what people have to say,” Flood said.

Bringing people together is important to Flood; joy is one of her core values. She emphasized wanting to get to know faculty and staff working within the faculty.

“I am planning events with staff and faculty where the

Queen’s largest dining hall under renovations

hall, and other foods items will be transported from the Ban Righ Dining Hall.

“For the fall 2023-2024 term, Leonard Dining Hall—including most of the seating area—will remain open for students in residence on meal plans, and will offer a variety of menu stations, featuring a rotation of students favourites,” said Jennifer Pete, director of business development and communications (Housing and Ancillary Services), in a statement to The Journal.

For one dinner meal swipe, students will receive one tray of

food, consisting of a choice for a main dish, a side dish, a drink, and a dessert.

To compensate for the renovations, residence meal plans will be increased from 19 to 21 meals per week, and students will receive 50 additional trade-a-meals (TAMs).

Ban Righ dining hall, Lazy Scholar, and Location 21 are extending their hours of operation. Ban Righ and Jean Royce will continue to offer all-you-can-eat meals and provide options for students with dietary needs.

“Ban Righ will now be the main

dining hall for residents,” President of the Residence Society (ResSoc)

Nathan Beckner-Stetson, MSc ’24, said in an e-mail to The Journal.

“More food stations are being added [to Ban Righ] and more seating is being added in some of the spare rooms surrounding the dining hall.”

Beckner-Stetson—in his capacity as the president for the student government representing those living in residence—is in close contact with Housing and Ancillary Services and gave suggestions on how to improve students’ dining experience during the renovations.

staff talk about their work, and the faculty talk about their work, then we don’t live in these two separate oceans that sometimes exchange.”

Flood encouraged people of different backgrounds to get involved with Queen’s Law. An exemption from the hiring freeze was made to hire a Queen’s National Scholar for Indigenous law this upcoming year.

“We want to encourage all the potential scholars out there in Indigenous law to apply and start to build this community of scholars engaged on Indigenous issues and the Truth and Reconciliation goals that we have. It’s a very exciting time in that space,” Flood said.

Flood was raised in rural New Zealand and was the first in her family to attend university. She has been practising law since the age of 21.

After receiving her doctorate at University of Toronto, Flood was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto for 14 years, specializing in health law and policy. She is the founder of the Centre for Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at University of Ottawa.

“It has always been a dream of mine to be the Dean of Law at Queen’s,” Flood said.

—With files from Sophia Coppolino

CORRECTIONS

Gael Tanner Big Canoe wins RBC Indigenous Youth Scholarship Big Canoe is not the Captain of the Queen’s Golf Team as stated previously.

Kingston and Queen’s celebrate National Indigenous People’s Day

The article incorrectly stated the opening date for Tipi Moza Transitional Housing and incorrectly spelled the name of Aaron St. Pierre.

Incorrect information appeared in the June 26 issue of The Queen’s Journal The Journal regrets the error.

‘It has always been a dream of mine’

Flood began her five-year term on July 1. SUPPLIED BY LIS GRAHAM

Queen’s residence not guaranteed after April 2024 Ontario

Housing Minister promises student support at Queen’s Park

Mikella Schuettler Assistant News Editor

First-year to doctoral students are scrambling to find housing as Kingston’s supply struggles to keep up with demand.

First-year students accepted after April 2024 won’t be guaranteed residence for the 2024-25 academic year, while graduate students struggle to focus on academics amid rising costs and stagnant salaries.

“The university will continue to offer a residence commitment to most first-year students in the coming years,” the University wrote in a statement to The Journal.

Queen’s said the ongoing JDUC construction and Gordon-Brockington House renovations, which will temporarily decrease total available beds, and the shift from guaranteed residence.

First-year students accepted after April will be entered into a lottery for the remaining residence beds. Queen’s supports off-campus students through the First Year

Off-Campus Community.

This year the application portal for the Queen’s community housing, An Clachan and John Orr Tower, totaling 383 rooms, was overwhelmed by demand and had

to be shut down. For SGPS President Devin Fowlie, the University is worsening the housing crisis by increasing its enrollment intake targets.

“If [Queen’s] wants to bring more students in, they have to consider what the implications are on the housing market,” Fowlie said in an interview with The Journal.

Graduate students living in Queen’s community housing tend to stay for multiple years, meaning few rooms go ‘on the market’ each year, explained Fowlie. Many graduate students have families and can’t realistically live in multi-student homes.

“I don’t think Queen’s can continue to be a top tier research institution, if it’s students are constantly under mental stress from these sorts of—housing—pressures,” Fowlie said.

Kingston rent prices ranked the eighth highest in Canada, according to a 2023 Kijiji study.

“We’ve heard from some students who’ve had to leave their programs because of financial pressures,” Fowlie said.

Base funding for PhD programs is $20,000 a year in compensation from the University, intended to cover their cost of living and their tuition.

Packages have not increased with inflation. The packages were last increased by $2,000 in 2018. The Tri-Council Graduate Scholarships, awarded by the federal government, haven’t increased since 2003.

“Students are being forced to choose between putting food on the table and having […] a roof over their head,” Fowlie said.

Lori Oliver, a political studies PhD candidate, published a report on the housing crisis in her role as chair of PSAC 901’s Affordable Housing Working Group in June. The report cited over 90 per cent of graduate students spend more than 30 per cent of their monthly earnings on housing.

“It really has been a struggle to get the University to realize the difficulty that grad students are facing,” Oliver said in an interview with The Journal.

From Oliver’s perspective, Queen’s hasn’t taken action to alleviate the pressures of an unaffordable housing market.

“It’s not a good feeling to live so precariously when the university

is such a wealthy and renowned institution,” Oliver said.

Queen’s, the City of Kingston, and the Ontario government all claim to be stepping in.

Queen’s Off Campus Living Advisor Adam King provides advice and resources to Queen’s students navigating the housing market. Queen’s recently hired Christopher Akol to join King’s office. He will focus on talking to graduate students with families, about housing possibilities.

“Students come to me feeling anxious about finding accommodations and then walk away from our meeting confident,” King said in a statement to The Journal.

The University brought 334 new residence beds online last year with the building of the Endaayaan–Tkanónsote residence. The residence—new last year—temporarily compensates for the beds lost to the JDUC renovation which is set to re-open next year.

“Housing affordability is not an issue that can be resolved overnight. It takes collaboration among Queen’s campus colleagues, as well as with the City of Kingston and the Province of Ontario,” King said.

Queen’s Rector Owen Crawford-Lem thinks solutions on the housing shortage lie at the hands of the City of Kingston and the Ontario government.

“There are a lot of legislative and policy [tools] that could be done to protect students,” Crawford-Lem said in an interview with The Journal.

Last year Crawford-Lem, along with student consultancy group CREO solutions, collected informal data on student’s housing experiences at Queens, to inform future action. For Crawford-Lem, the data showed the living conditions of housing are just as important as affordability.

“There are always concerns with housing affordability […] what we’re really looking into at Queen’s is the condition of the houses, and what can be done to hold landlords accountable,” Crawford-Lem said.

At the provincial level Ontario Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs Steve Clark, capped the Ontario rent increase guideline at 2.5 per cent for 2024, which is below the rate of inflation.

Students who found housing before the onset of rent inflation, and reside at the same address, will benefit the most from the cap. Students entering the market now, or who move often, remain vulnerable to soaring rent prices.

“We are putting students first by keeping tuition frozen […] and getting shovels in the ground to build affordable housing,” Clark said in a statement to The Journal.

“We are committed to making housing more accessible for hardworking Ontarians and addressing the supply crisis.”

The University District is close to downtown.

PHOTO BY HERBERT WANG

AMS declined to release blueprints

New JDUC funded by student dollars

Cassidy McMackon Editor in Chief

With approximately one year left of construction, the University and AMS are withholding blueprints for the new JDUC building.

The Journal contacted the

AMS requesting blueprints for proposed student spaces in the JDUC new build. In an e-mail, AMS Communications Director Mikayla Crawford wrote the AMS didn’t have access to blueprints, despite the AMS providing The Journal with blueprints to the proposed new space for the Queen’s Pub in March. The University declined The Journal’s request for documents, citing club space allocation is the

responsibility of the AMS.

Funding for the JDUC redevelopment project was passed in a campus-wide referendum in 2019, when 52.3 per cent of voters casted a ballot in favour of implementing a student fee to fund the project. The referendum passed with just 210 votes.

According to the JDUC redevelopment website, the JDUC is meant to house student

COMPSA wants $14,700 from ASUS

Low survey turnout creates discrepancies between ASUS records and COMPSA survey results

After reviewing the survey results and COMPSA’s anticipated budget for upcoming events and programs, Singh decided on a rebate amount of $14,700 would be needed to expand events.

Singh explained how COMPSA would use the rebate amount to ASUS executives during the budget presentation on June 26.

computing students.

“In the 2022-23 academic year, 30 computing students asked for jacket reimbursement according to our data. Jacket reimbursements are around $500 each. COMPSA’s [survey] data does not reflect this,” Walters said.

government offices, allocate space for over 100 student clubs, and include a discrete wellness space. CoGro, Tricolour Outlet, and QP will have larger spaces in the new JDUC.

Queen’s Budget Update

Hiring freeze, 1.5 per cent reduction in spending across facilities is underway

Meghrig Milkon Assistant News Editor

Akash Singh explained.

Sofia Tosello Assistant News Editor

The Computing Student Association (COMPSA) is asking for a $14,800 rebate of computing students’ mandatory ASUS fee to increase orientation funding.

COMPSA asked on June 26 for the ASUS executives to transfer $14,700 in computing students’ mandatory ASUS fees. ASUS will make its decision in mid-August.

COMPSA plans to allocate $3,500 towards computing orientation week; $8,750 will help support computing clubs, professional development ventures, equity and academic support initiatives, and internal affairs. The rest of the funds will be used for various events that COMPSA plans to host in the fall and winter, COMPSA President

Last years’ large event turnout motivated the COMPSA executives to increase orientation and school-year events’ capacity but found themselves facing budgetary restraints. COMPSA executives launched an Instagram survey to investigate the extent computing students utilized ASUS services in June. The survey received around 150 responses. “What we expected to see [from the survey results] is what we saw. Overall, the computing student body is not engaging too much within ASUS services,” Singh said in an interview with The Journal Singh told The Journal 97 per cent of surveyed students didn’t use the ASUS jacket subsidy and only one respondent volunteered for ASUS.

“Any extra revenue coming back into COMPSA is going to ensure that students who in the past have not seen much value in COMPSA or have not engaged with us have a reason to do so,” Singh said.

If granted, the rebate will be a one-time payment.

COMPSA has the lowest mandatory faculty society fee, sitting at $1.13 per student.

To relieve the budgetary strain for future executives, Singh plans to propose an additional student fee for computing orientation or increase the current computing student fee during referendum in February.

In an interview with The Journal, ASUS President Amaiya Walters noticed there were discrepancies between the ASUS database and the data gathered during the COMPSA survey. The largest discrepancies were the amount of jacket subsidies used by

Kingston’s first hospice

10-suite residence to be accompanied by a $13 million price tag

Allie Moustakis

Copy Editor

Kingston embraces its first hospice residence with 24-hour end-of-life care.

The 10-suite hospice residence is set to open in mid-2024 and will provide support services in a home-like setting to people in the final stage of their life. The 13,000 square foot residence is currently under construction at 1200 Princess St. and will cost $13 million.

Hospice Kingston has offered in-home visiting, wellness services, and grief and bereavement support groups for clients and caregivers in the community for 38 years. After a decade of planning, they voluntarily merged with Providence Care in 2022 to create the community’s first residence.

“From a hospice service perspective, this has been the missing piece […] to support a continuum of palliative care in Kingston,” said Krista Wells Pearce, vice-president of corporate services and executive director, Hospice

Kingston at Providence Care, in an interview with The Journal The residence will be run primarily by community volunteers with staff on-call to assist.

Volunteers go through general orientation and are required to complete over 30 hours of self-directed training provided to them by Hospice Palliative Care Ontario (HPCO).

Volunteers are then matched with clients to provide one-on-one support for mental and physical health. With the mental health side being the most intense part of the job for all involved, explained Wells Pearce

“The physical stuff is textbook, you know how to manage pain and make sure that people aren’t getting pressure ulcers and their nutrition is modified; but the spiritual, social, and emotional side of all services is important—especially at end-oflife,” Wells Pearce said.

One of the major issues Ava Penry, MSc ’24, observed among seniors in Kingston is loneliness and isolation. Penry is the co-chair of Queen’s Grandfriends, a club that

Walters attributed the discrepancies in the survey to the low student sample size. Of 1,100 computing students, only around 150 students completed the survey.

Low participation in the survey means ASUS can’t depend solely on the survey data to decide on issuing a rebate amount. Walters will consider the information which ASUS has in their database.

“If COMPSA has enough funds to run orientation now, then we can continue to talk with COMPSA about some better data collection to see how computing students are using ASUS services. We can then give them a rebate later in the fall semester to run events and programs,” Walters said.

The next step is for ASUS to evaluate if the proposed rebate COMPSA suggested aligns fairly with their budget for orientation week.

journal_news@ams.queensu.ca

to open in 2024

Queen’s announced new risk mitigation measures to balance the University’s budget on July 6.

The Queen’s Board of Trustees projected the University will run a $62.8 million deficit for the upcoming year. Queen’s is drawing from its reserves to cover this year’s shortfall.

“Funds from these budget reduction may also be used to support initiatives to identify efficiencies, generate revenue, or support projects key to moving the University forward in achieving its strategic goals,” the University said in a statement to The Journal.

Queen’s is imposing a hiring freeze on full-time positions which are currently vacant, and a 1.5 per cent reduction in funding allocation for all University budgets for the following two academic years. All faculties must reduce their operating deficits to five per cent of their operating budget according to a press release.

Mitigation measures will ensure the academic and research mission is not jeopardized. The University expects to balance its books for the 2025-26 school year.

Queen’s annual evaluation by external crediting agencies, Morningstar DBRS, and Standard and Poor’s, determined Queen’s remains in strong credit standing. Morningstar DBRS issued an AA rating, and Standard and Poors issued an AA+ rating.

“The student demands, effective management practices, and strong academic profile are cited as strengths of a strong balance sheet,” the University said.

volunteers with local seniors in long-term care homes.

“Grandfriends works to level the field to make everyone feel there is someone there to support them in what they need support for. I think a lot of the things that we do would be applicable in [the hospice] setting as well,” Penry said in an interview with The Journal.

Providence Care is looking to expand their partnership with Queen’s students and the Faculty of Health Sciences to grow their number of volunteers.

“If we didn’t have our volunteers, we wouldn’t be providing community services because we’re not funded to. The funding doesn’t

work from the province in such a way that we’d be able to pay staff to provide community-based services,” Wells Pearce said.

“We receive our funding solely for our staff and [right now] I’ve got a staff of 2.25 people,” Wells Pearce added. “The volunteers are the people who go and actually interact with the clients, they’re the ones providing the support.”

Once open, the residence will rely heavily on community fundraising and a limited envelope of provincial funding to grow their full-time staff. The provincial government is currently contributing $1.75 million to the new hospice.

The University accumulated more than $618 million surplus between 2013 and 2021, according to Queen’s University Faculty Association’s 2022 budget and financing review.

The longstanding tuition freeze, imposed by the provincial government in 2019, remains in effect. This costs the University $179.4 million in lost revenue. Inflationary costs and the decline in international student enrollment have further put a strain on the budget.

Queen’s attributed its confidence in restoring the budget to its strong academic profile. The University reported receiving over 55,000 applications for about 5,000 first-year positions.

Rebate requested to boost event capacity.

PHOTO BY HERBERT WANG

Renderings of the hospice.

SUPPLIED BY PROVIDENCE CARE

Data across the board suggests increased food bank usership

Food banks a band-aid solution to food insecurity

Cassidy McMackon

Editor in Chief

Early July saw the hallowed limestone buildings on campus going without the usual hustle and bustle of students milling to and from classes. For Rianna Murchison, AMS Food Bank head manager, the quiet campus meant nothing for the operations of the AMS Food Bank, which she’s preparing to open for service.

On an average summer day, Murchison arrives at Rideau Hall at 2:30 p.m. alongside the AMS Food Bank’s Marketing and Outreach Assistant Manager Jessica Rogers in a taxi full of groceries. The duo quickly fills a wagon with canned goods and lugs boxes of vegetables, dairy products, meat, and other pantry items into room 105.

After all items are accounted for, Murchison darts across the small concrete room, shelving groceries item by item. Tucked beside a fridge, Rogers separates meat into portions before gently placing them into a freezer. Once all groceries are shelved, Murchison turns her attention towards special orders from patrons, filling boxes with family necessities such as diapers, baby formula, and shampoo.

Another box holds Napa, a Chinese cabbage, which Murchison says is an ingredient requested frequently by one regular patron of the Food Bank.

It’s hot—the garage door at the building’s side rests slightly open, but without a breeze the afternoon air is sweltering. Despite the heat, Murchison remains poised and organized. She prepares to welcome patrons to the Food Bank.

Post-pandemic inflation caused basic living expenses to skyrocket, sparking conversations about food insecurity on university campuses. While Statistics Canada recently reported the annual inflation rate fell to 2.8 per cent in June, grocery prices continue to soar with an average increase of 9.1 per cent increase in the last year.

In 2022, 18.4 per cent of Canadian households across ten provinces experienced food insecurity. At Queen’s, 29 per cent of students indicated they experienced food insecurity in the same time frame.

Increase in Food Bank usage

Ever since opening its doors in 1997, the AMS Food Bank has provided non-judgmental and confidential services to Queen’s students who need assistance accessing groceries.

The service is currently open from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on

Mondays and Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 12:30PM on Thursdays.

To fill the shelves for its patrons, Murchison places weekly grocery orders with Grant’s No Frills on Sunday evening. This process involves restocking regular food bank stock and filling special orders.

She repeats the process on Tuesday evening for restock and service on Wednesday and Thursday.

Routinely stocked items include bread, milk, eggs, butter, cheese, cereal, soup, tomato sauce, pasta, crackers, green beans, and canned goods such as tuna, fruits, and vegetables. The service offers fresh produce including apples, bananas, Roma tomatoes, cucumbers, and romaine lettuce, as well as meat and protein-rich meat alternatives.

To ensure there’s enough stock, Murchison said the food bank limits the amount patrons can take of certain products, with meat and dairy products considered to be especially expensive commodities. Patrons are limited to taking either a pack of ground beef, one chicken breast, two drumsticks, or a portion of tofu. Eggs aren’t to be taken by the dozen and are instead separated into cartons of four.

Murchison currently spends roughly $1,500 on groceries each week. This coming year, the service has budgeted $50,940 for food purchasing, marking a 30 per cent increase from last year’s budget, where the food bank spent a total of $35,784 on groceries.

Though the summer streets of campus run vacant in comparison to the academic year, the number of patrons at the Food Bank this summer alone have notably increased from last year. Murchison serves roughly 30 to 35 patrons each restock shift, with patrons lining up for food an hour before opening. Last year, approximately 10 to 15 patrons would access the service each shift.

“That’s obviously a really huge increase, which is a great thing that the service has been brought aware of, but also with such a low budget, it is hard to maintain access for all patrons that do come,” Murchison said in an interview with The Journal.

Despite a mandatory student activity fee of $4 from both undergraduate and graduate students to fund the bulk of food bank spending, a higher demand for groceries from a larger volume of students creates a central issue—more pressure on the service’s ability to support students.

To mitigate this demand, the Food Bank has set a fundraising goal of $13,750 for the 2023-24 year.

The ever-increasing demand for groceries isn’t unique to the

Queen’s AMS Food Bank. The student-run food bank operated by the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) AMS is also facing a strain as demand for food support services rises.

UBC’s AMS Food Bank is funded largely by student dollars, receiving additional support from the University alongside private donors.

According to Senior Manager of Student Services Kathleen Simpson, UBC’s AMS Food Bank spent $250,000 on groceries alone in the 2022-23 academic year. This number is expected to increase to $400,000 in the upcoming year.

The projected cost for the 2023-24 academic year accounts for two things: a data proven increase in students accessing food bank services and inflation.

“Our user numbers have either doubled or tripled every year for the past three years, and we expect a doubling in the number of students who are accessing the Food Bank this year. That’s kind of what that projection is based off,” Simpson told The Journal in an interview.

“You’re not just accounting for the number of students that you have coming to theFood Bank and the user costs, but also the increase in food pricing for inflation. That kind of estimate takes into account both of those factors,” she said.

Simpson shared that in the 2020-21 year, UBC’s AMS Food Bank had 2,317 user interactions, with 7,496 interactions the following year. In 2022-23, the service interacted with hungry patrons a total of 16,253 times.

With current projections of the volume of students doubling over the year, the Food Bank expects approximately 20,000 user interactions in the coming year. Strains caused by inflation on food banks present twofold challenges. When the rising cost of living drains students’ bank accounts, more students are driven to food banks as the purchasing

while keeping food purchasing costs low.

Though the UBC AMS Food Bank has existing partnerships with some grocers to reduce food costs, the price of some products has increased as much as 20 per cent in a span of four months.

Simpson said balancing the increasing demand for food bank services with increasing grocery costs involves making several difficult decisions.

This past April, the Ubyssey reported UBC’s AMS announced a policy change to the AMS Food Bank that rendered the University’s staffers ineligible for the food bank’s services. According to Simpson, this decision was necessary if the AMS Food Bank wanted to provide the same quality of services to students in the coming year.

“It’s not that we’re currently giving students more than we did last year, it’s just that we’re able to maintain that same level of service that we did from last year through to this year, knowing that our user numbers are going to grow and the cost of some of our food items are growing quite substantially,” Simpson said.

Simpson added projected costs of food purchasing to support UBC staff using the Food Bank would equal $300,000 for the full year in addition to the $400,000 projected cost of supporting students.

“For that reason, we felt that as a student society, funded by student fees, we ultimately had to make the difficult decision to prioritize students in what we’re offering.”

The food banks at both Queen’s and UBC see similar demographics accessing services. Murchison said most of the patrons at Queen’s are graduate students, international students, and students with familial responsibilities. At UBC, international students make up 72 per cent of all students referring to the service, and 52 per cent of all students are graduate students.

its Emergency Food Support Fund to aid graduate student workers. First implemented this past January, funds for the program have been exhausted twice.

PSAC 901 President Justyna Szewczyk El Jassem said the most recent launch of the fund points to immense strains on graduate student budgets.

The second implementation of the Emergency Food Support Fund was opened this past month. In a press release, PSAC 901 reported receiving 205 applications for aid in the program’s first week.

“We received 205 applications just when we opened the program,” El Jassem told The Journal in an interview. “To put [that] into perspective, we had over 400 applications in the previous round, which was 15 weeks long.”

El Jassem credits the increase of support-seeking students in the summer launch of the Emergency Food Support Fund to scarce employment for graduate students during the summer-time. Where all graduate students within their funding periods are guaranteed either teaching or research assistant positions in the regular academic year, these positions become sparse during summer.

While El Jassem mentioned some students might seek employment elsewhere, she noted the need to work in the summer takes away from these students’ valuable research time.

“Let’s be honest, summer is the time when we can do our other work, which is research because [with] teaching obligations, it’s very difficult to fully focus on research,” she said. “A lot of people just do their research work over the summer and are not able to take other employment options.”

PSAC 901 launched the Emergency Food Support Fund with over $20,000 to offer PSAC members. The union secured funding through a GoFundMe page and donations from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 1302, and the Queen’s University Faculty Association (QUFA). The bursary was funded through money set aside from an emergency hardship grant the labour union set aside at the beginning of its current collective agreement as a temporary aid to

Since the last bargaining period, graduate student workers only received a one per cent wage increase due to Bill 124 still being active law at the time of bargaining. The hardship bursary was implemented to aid students struggling to stay afloat due to minimal wage increases and rapidly increasing cost of living

PHOTO BY JOSEPH MARIATHASAN

The AMS Food Bank managment staff during a shift.

Students who accessed support from the Emergency Food Support Fund successfully received grocery gift cards to give maximum autonomy to members.

Despite providing support for some members, El Jassem said PSAC 901 isn’t equipped to cover all its members’ needs.

PSAC 901 is involved with Unity Council, an amalgamation of all unions representing Queen’s staff. Unity Council puts pressure on the University to provide better wages for its workers.

“This labour union is not an institution that can solve [food insecurity]. We’re just trying to help the most food insecure members that we know of” she said. “Food banks and food programs are only patches.”

From a student government perspective, Society of Graduate and Professional Students (SGPS)

President Devin Fowlie said food insecurity is among one of the more vocalized problems for students. He agreed with El Jassem that low graduate funding packages are particularly to blame for graduate student food insecurity.

“With rising rent costs, [and] relatively stagnant funding for the last while for graduate students, it’s had a huge impact on food insecurity,” Fowlie said in an interview with The Journal. “We know that food bank [use] has gone up dramatically for graduate and professional students—which is a large component of the financial instability piece.”

“We cannot expect to claim that we are a high-performing research institute if we achieve that through having food insecure graduate students.”

A Band-Aid solution

In 1981, the first Canadian food bank opened in Edmonton.

The idea behind food banks at the time was to provide a temporary charitable relief as Canadians struggled through a recession.

Forty-two years later, economic crises still reinforce food banks as community fixtures of dependence in need of donations and volunteers.

At the Partners in Mission Foodbank on Hickson Ave., Executive Director Dan Irwin credits the continued success of the organization to the generosity of the Kingston community, despite breaking records of patrons served each year.

Partners in Mission supplies 80 to 85 food hampers to individuals and families struggling to put food on the table. While the organization budgeted $425,000 for food purchasing this year, Irwin expects a total of $2.6 million in food to be distributed within the community.

Despite being one of these community fixtures, Irwin stressed food banks are not the solution to food insecurity. They’re a band-aid solution.

“We’re not here to solve food insecurity. That’s not what food banks do. Food banks are a very necessary band aid to keep people going and get them through the month,” he said.

“Feeding hungry people’s what we do. Food insecurity is about income.”

Irwin noted the implementation of the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) in March 2020 as a direct example of how livable incomes provides better access to food. While the number of patrons at Partners in Mission set new

records each year in the four years Irwin has been at the organization, 2020 is a lone exception.

“To be honest, CERB saved us,” he said. “2020 was the first dip in total users for many years.”

“In Kingston, if you had two people who were laid off and were collecting $2,000, each with our cost of living in 2020 that’s sustainable. They could go buy groceries.”

Like Irwin, Elaine Power, professor in the school of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s, expressed how food insecurity is a problem of income. She also noted food banks wrongfully promote the stigma associated with food insecurity.

This stigma in Canada stems largely from a neoliberal political climate where people without access to food internalize blame for not being able to feed themselves independently of social supports.

Being food insecure at a wealthy institution like Queen’s amplifies this stigma exponentially for students.

“Because we live in this kind of neoliberal society where we’re expected to look after ourselves, the expectation is that [being food insecure] is your fault, and you should be able to manage,” Power said in an interview with The Journal.

“No one wants to be poor, especially in the society that we live in, where consumption is a marker of status. Using the food bank for most people, not just students, is kind of a sign they hit the bottom.”

“[Food banks] give us the illusion that we’re looking after the problem,” she said. “We have a ton of evidence now to

say that this is not about food, that this is a problem of income.”

Power explained the erasure of experiences of food insecurity at the postsecondary level is dangerous. While postsecondary education used to promise a pathway to upward social mobility for students so long as they worked hard, it’s getting increasingly difficult to succeed in university settings without adequate food supply.

Food insecure students are more likely to take on additional work during school, taking valuable time away from their studies.

“If you’re food insecure, you’re less likely to succeed at university. You’re more likely to drop out, you’re more likely to take longer, you’re going to accumulate more debt,” Power said. “That doesn’t even count the people who don’t even bother to come because they know they’re not going to be able to afford it and they can’t count on families to help them out,” she said. Students without family assistance are particularly vulnerable to becoming food insecure.

“One of the things that struck me during the research is how much we assume that parents [and] families are in a position to be able to help [their] kids. That’s true for a lot of people, but not all.”

For Power, it’s ultimately a university’s responsibility to provide better structural changes to solve food insecurity among students. She mentioned though Queen’s advertises a handful of services to low-income students, the University needs to move beyond mere marketing

and live up to its Sustainable Development Goals.

“I like to think of universities as centres of critical thinking, of actually thinking about these issues and in a real way that not just like superficial marketing, devices to kind of cover up,” she said.

“It’s the place of the university to say no, this isn’t good enough to hold up.”

***

Despite hoping for better systemic change at the institutional level, both Murchison and Irwin both agree the best way to support people experiencing food insecurity is by donating to food banks. Whether through food donations, volunteering, or simply sharing the food bank’s message, any form of support helps these organizations stay afloat.

Murchison thinks it’s especially important to improve awareness of food insecurity among Queen’s students.

“Because Queen’s is such a wealthy institution, I think a lot of people don’t think about the effects that food insecurity has on its students. But it is important to be educated and understand that not everybody is as privileged as others,” Murchison said. “As someone who has dealt with food insecurity and food vulnerability, this service is something I would have really benefited from if I knew about it at the time, so I’m very grateful to be able to work in such an important service now and educate people on the importance of it.”

Universities: stop reactive responses to hate

We must learn from the attack at University of Waterloo.

In June, a former student of the University of Waterloo walked into a Gender Studies classroom and stabbed a professor and two students, sending all three to the hospital with serious injuries.

which mirrored the heinous antisemitism being endorsed by public figures across many forms of media at the same time.

Observing the prevailing attitudes towards marginalized groups across media could allow institutions to predict and prevent hate crimes—an opportunity Queen’s didn’t

Queen’s should be looking inwards to see how they’re contributing to anti-queer sentiments. There need to be conversations with professors in response to incidents like the intolerant exam question included on an engineering exam by Professor Colin MacDougall.

Professors being allowed to belittle the queer community constitutes institutional validation of anti-queer sentiments at best and incites violence at worst.

For the preservation of free speech and academic freedom, opinions can’t be allowed to intensify to the point of infringing upon the expressions or safety of others.

In addition to curbing hateful commentary in class, Queen’s must implement proactive measures like the training in de-escalation and harm reduction advocated by Krishnamurti.

Queen’s released an official statement in response to the stabbing at Waterloo, yet even that promoted reactive rather than proactive measures, instructing students in need of immediate assistance to contact the Emergency Report Centre.

It isn’t sufficient to punish perpetrators of hate crimes as they arise.

The assault has been confirmed to be hate-motivated.

Hate crimes don’t come out of nowhere. They result from hateful rhetoric, and the current tendency of ignoring the pipeline from menacing words to menacing behaviour is quickly becoming more dangerous.

Two days after the attack at Waterloo, the Queen’s Gender Studies department received threatening emails from a male member of the Kingston community. He blamed female empowerment for destroying his life and demanded a response from the department.

In response to this and previous emails, the department’s head, Sailaja Krishnamurti, appealed to the University and campus security to implement de-escalation training and harm reduction on multiple occasions, but without success.

It’s no secret Queen’s sees multiple hate motivated incidents every year.

Last school year, The Journal reported on numerous antisemitic acts of hate on campus,

Cassandra Pao Editorials Editor

Worrying about the feelings of privileged groups undermines advocacy.

When a social project gains mainstream attention, the dialogue around it often shifts. Suddenly the focus is no longer the aim of the activists, but how their actions affect the privileged majority.

Such intolerance for marginalized groups consolidating their own identity, rather than existing as peripheral to the majority, is complacent at best, and prejudiced at worst.

“Because I am a Girl” was a global campaign developed by Plan International, with the goal of denouncing and redressing gender-based discrimination.

Despite all it accomplished for young women—like influencing laws prohibiting child marriage and promoting equal access to education in 17 countries—the initiative was accused of villainizing and ostracizing boys.

Securing fundamental rights for girls was less of a priority than continuing to stroke the global male ego.

There was a “Because I am a Girl” club at my high school. It was well attended, but almost exclusively by girls, which troubled my school’s administration.

Like other critics, administrators at my high school worried the club was making male students feel unwelcome or demonized. Surely that was why the teenage boys weren’t joining the club to empower women.

The school changed the name of the club to “Champions of Change” the following year, losing all but a couple of its female members and failing to recruit male students. How surprising.

take advantage of then and continues to neglect now.

Universities’ promise of academic freedom enables the circulation of diverse opinions on their grounds. Academic dissonance—like which of two physics theories best explains a given phenomenon—doesn’t routinely escalate to violence.

Perpetrators of hate crimes can rationalize their violence with dehumanizing, demonizing portrayals of marginalized groups, such as people who are gender non-conforming.

As politics and rhetoric become further radically polarized, hate crimes will continue to multiply boundlessly unless inclusion of and respect for different ways of being can be promoted.

To protect all those on campus and to avoid contributing to the societal intolerance of marginalized groups, Queen’s must condemn hateful attitudes and stop dismissing the threats they pose.

—Journal Editorial Board

Advocacy shouldn’t pander

Forcing social projects to accommodate the perspectives they’re trying to escape understandably demotivates people from engaging with them. Similar discouragement could result from criticism of critical race theory (CRT).

CRT acknowledges discrimination as existing not only between individuals but being systemically ingrained in North American sociopolitical frameworks.

Republican lawmakers accuse the theory of making white students feel bad and have banned it in several U.S. states.

This move is obviously not a humanitarian attempt at protecting everyone’s feelings.

Both racialized and non-racialized students will be disadvantaged by the lost encouragement to discover and dismantle their biases.

Disallowing critical race theory signals a disregard for the emotional and longterm well-being of racialized students, as well as a disinterest in de-popularizing discriminatory biases.

“Because I am a Girl” never excluded or villainized boys, nor does critical race theory target white people. Men and non-racialized people are unharmed by the advocacy implemented by both.

A club about female empowerment doesn’t have to appeal to men for one reason the club isn’t about them.

Some white students could feel uncomfortable learning about inherited privilege, but that discomfort shouldn’t be avoided over reducing the generational and continually revived trauma experienced by racialized students.

Advocacy should never aim to alienate members of the majority, but their participation isn’t the priority.

Coddling the majority reinforces existing value systems. Being challenging or unappealing to some is crucial to informing and mobilizing others.

We should all accept discomfort in the name of advocacy and education. Nobody benefits from pandering.

Cassandra is a fourth-year English student and The Journal’s Editorials Editor.

Want

Contributions from all members of the Queen’s and Kingston community are welcome. The Journal reserves the right to edit all submissions.

Journal is an editorially autonomous newspaper published by the Alma Mater Society of Queen’s University, Kingston. Situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. The Journal’s Editorial Board acknowledges the traditional territories our newspaper is situated on have allowed us to pursue our mandate.

We recognize our responsibility to understand the truth of our history.

Editorial opinions expressed in The Journal are the sole responsibility of The Queen’s Journal Editorial Board, and are not necessarily those of the University, the AMS or their officers. 190 University Ave., Kingston, ON, K7L 3P4

Editorial Office: 613-533-2800

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Email: journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca

Please address complaints and grievances to the Editor in Chief and/or Managing Editor.

The Queen’s Journal is printed on a Goss Community press by Metroland Media in Toronto, Ontario.

Contents © 2023 by The Queen’s Journal; all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of The Journal.

ILLUSTRATION BY ARDEN MASON-OURIQUE

PHOTO BY JOSEPH MARIATHASAN

Silence from Queen’s administration lets rape culture prosper

Former professor’s dismissal another example of Queen’s shying away from conversations about sexual violence

Caroline Law

Contributor

This article discusses sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers. While The Journal uses “survivor” to refer to those who have experienced sexual assault, the author uses the word “victim.” We acknowledge neither term is universal. The Kingston Sexual Assault Centre’s 24-hour crisis and support phone line can be reached at 613-544-6424 / 1-877-544-6424.

At surface level, Queen’s presents as a vibrant and welcoming institution—but underneath lies consistent efforts to forget its darker secrets. This is particularly evident in the University’s attempts to conceal the problem of sexual violence.

Despite purveying a vigilant approach to tackling sexual assault, datasets, policies, and survivor’s stories suggest Queen’s has been negligent in solving this issue.

A recent example is the University’s handling of Professor Kate Rocklein’s situation.

Rocklein was fired from her administrative role last September and suspended from teaching in November. Administration explained she was let go for poor performance, but Rocklein alleged in interviews this decision was likely the outcome of her teaching students about the prevalence of sexual assault on campus.

Earlier that semester, Rocklein said she was admitted to KGH after being drugged and knocked unconscious after a staff function.

Rocklein’s suspicious dismissal

suggests Queen’s priorities lie in protecting their reputation more than the safety of their students and staff.

By allegedly firing the professor, Queen’s abdicates any responsibility in the matter , and protects its reputation. In ignoring Rocklein’s claims of violence, the University suggests it doesn’t care about instances of sexual violence in the Queen’s community—putting its students and staff in further jeopardy.

Rocklein’s alleged discrimination comes in a post-pandemic era where students are regaining social freedom. This results in increased engagement in party culture, and by extension, a heightened threat of sexual assault.

While some might view Kingston bars as hunting grounds for predators, date-rape drugs can be found within residence halls and house parties. This poses an urgent risk to students within the comfort of their own homes, and at the hands of their peers.

Sexual assault has become a common experience at universities. One in four postsecondary women have experienced rape or been the victim of an attempted assault.

Queen’s might not officially affiliate itself with the downtown bar scene and party culture, but it’s clear the Kingston community depends on students to keep businesses afloat.

As such, the University has a duty to protect students in environments where there’s risk of sexual violence. Academic institutions should hold perpetrators accountable with a zero-tolerance policy.

The effects of sexual assault on health and wellbeing are numerous. They include but aren’t limited to psychological distress, addiction, and chronic health conditions, all of which hinder students’ ability to flourish in demanding university settings.

While Queen’s provides high quality education, it must also protect its students and foster an environment where they can excel while feeling safe.

After a long week of studying and late library nights, it’s a necessary source of relief for many students to go out with friends to blow off steam. This fun is too often tainted by the threat and occurrence of sexual violence.

Students are more likely to find themselves victims of sexual violence in environments with alcohol, where the intoxication and diminished self-control increases their vulnerability.

to choose between safety or having regular fun—not to mention that incidents of sexual assault aren’t confined to social gatherings.

Though Rocklein’s reported assault didn’t occur in an academic hall, by neglecting claims that don’t appear school-related, Queen’s perpetuates an ongoing rape culture that indicates it values its reputation over its students.

A 2018 research survey on sexual violence in Ontario universities found Queen’s has the fourth highest rate of sexual assault, with 30.8 per cent of student respondents indicating they experienced sexual assault in the 2017-18 academic year.

The inability to prevent recurring and escalating rates of assault reflects poorly on the University.

Perhaps Queen’s doesn’t want to draw attention to elevating numbers of assault complaints. Nonetheless, the University needs to get over its embarrassment and do right by its community.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. Ideally, institutions must strive towards addressing toxic masculinity —a root cause of rape culture and violence against women. They must also wholeheartedly believe and support survivors.

In the meantime, smaller tangible policy changes can create substantial improvement.

There are many ways Queen’s can end the culture of silence around sexual violence on campus and become proactive in its efforts to prevent this in the future. Improving policies to reduce the barriers and stigma of reporting sexual violence is a vital first step.

Website updates are imperative in improving seamless accessibility to support services. The site is extremely difficult to navigate, uses lengthy jargon, and focuses primarily on legal resources instead of mental health support.

The issue of rape within party culture is prevalent across Ontario universities. In September 2021, approximately 30 women were drugged and assaulted at the University of Western Ontario during orientation week.

Extensive research has proven that in all postsecondary contexts, there’s an inextricable link between substance use, party situations, and sexual assault.

The danger of assault could be avoided if students refrained from partying.

However, not only do many enjoy this social aspect of university, there is also mounting social pressure to engage in party life. Many feel their self-worth and social standing is bound to these events.

It simply isn’t fair to ask students

Queen’s is already equipped with a Sexual Violence and Prevention Policy (SVPR), which claims to “prohibit sexual violence, and provides non-judgmental safety planning and support.” While the policy informs students of resources available to them both on and off campus, it still raises concerns.

One significant concern centres around the procedure for anonymous complaints. The SVPP indicates the standard investigation methods for complaints are not applicable to anonymous reports. These reports are instead referred to Campus Security and Emergency Services for assessment and response.

Many victims feel uncomfortable revealing their identity—it’s inconceivable the only listed solution for anonymity is to pass the responsibility onto another service.

Simplifying the website’s information will increase accessibility and allow survivors to access urgent help without obstacles.

First-years and other incoming students are especially vulnerable. To ensure their safety, the University should implement mandatory orientation courses on safe participation in party culture. By providing neutral thirdparty support, the University can eradicate the shame that silences survivors and allows rape culture to prosper. Only then focus can shift towards the process of justice and healing.

Most importantly, Queen’s needs to get comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. This means engaging in the tough conversations that can dismantle long-entrenched rape culture that hinders student success and violates the sexual integrity and freedom of far too many.

Caroline is a third-year sociology student.

Players’ performs at The Mansion

Continued from front. Orsi said board members look to hire a director who will support cast members—especially first time performers—while lifting other people up.

Central to being a director is acting as support to all cast members, with an emphasis on welcoming the rookies, Orsi said.

“I think directors are someone the board feels members can look up to,” Orsi said.

Orsi explained that directors are the main leads for the cast, and it’s ultimately their job to create a safe environment where people can feel comfortable being their most creative and funny self.

“I just want people to have a good time. It sounds cliché, but I think all I want is a really funny show. I just hope [the audience] laugh and have fun with the music.”

If you ever thought to stop by The Mansion on a breezy summer night, you would have heard Rasputin being yelled into a microphone as Caesar Flickerman opened the Olympocaluypse Games.

The cast members filled the stage with colourful wigs and gaudy jokes as they brought their audience to their feet. Eccentric, hectic, and full of boozy fun, the audience joined in on the 2012 classic “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen, and watched Dobby talk about his flaccid penis.

Even more awe-inspiring was the appearance of the dearly departed Marilyn Monroe as she sang “Happy Birthday” to Players president, Stephanie Swindell, on opening night.

Players is looking to expand their cast to bring new members to the team. If you’re looking to sing like Amy Winehouse, dance like you’re in the reruns of Glee, and star in a Saturday Night Live-esq set, Players might be right for you.

September will see auditions open for Players’ fall semester cast.

Ranking ORT Mystery Concert headliners

Maddie Hunt Senior Arts Editor

The Orientation Roundtable (ORT) Mystery Concert is scheduled for September, and it’s time to reminisce.

Orientation week is one of the most exciting parts of joining the Queen’s community, where students partake in various events filled with excitement. Each year the ORT chooses an artist to headline a concert that first- year students attend in the Miller Hall parking lot.

Here’s a ranking of some fan-favourite past performers and their concerts.

3. Yung Gravy

After three years without a mystery concert due to COVID-19 restrictions, our concert drought was saved by gravy—Yung Gravy.

This brought hysteria and excitement to not only the class of ’26, but to the second- and third-year students who never got to experience a mystery concert.

Gravy achieved his fame through TikTok videos and his relationship with TikTok celebrity Addison Rae’s

mother. Unfortunately, without his online status and speaking to his music alone, I would argue there may have been be much less interest in Gravy as a performer. Gravy’s setlist was hip-hop and rap music—a genre past mystery concert performers had yet to play. This offered a fresh performance for students.

2. Yukon Blonde & Tokyo Police Club

The Journal dubbed the 2012 mystery lineup a hit for the class of ’16’s students, and I must agree.

Yukon Blonde and Tokyo Police Club (TPC) took the stage in 2012. I don’t know either band well, but after a quick Apple Music search, their talent, strong vocals, and positive melodies spoke for themselves. I have no doubt these bands hyped up the crowd of first year students.

Songs like “Bambi” by Tokyo Police Club offered upbeat indie melodies paired with strong rock-styled vocals from lead singer Dave Monks. Yukon Blonde added cheerful instrumental compositions in songs like

Art opportunities at Queen’s

Maddie Hunt

Senior Arts Editor

Kingston’s vibrant art scene offers multiple avenues for those interested in the arts to become a part of the creative tapestry that colours the Queen’s community.

Head of the Queen’s Department of Art History and Art Conservation, Norman Vorano provided insight to incoming students on how they can get involved in the Queen’s art community, along with the

ARTS

“Stairway,” complimented by lead singer Jeff Innes’ alternative vocals.

In 2023, this lineup of bands would be a flop due to their lack of relevance, but it’s no doubt in their prime year, Tokyo Police Club and Yukon Blonde would be fan favorites for the student body.

1.Marianas Trench

I hope my envy doesn’t seep into this ranking too much, but the 2018 Queen’s Mystery Concert welcomed Marianas Trench to the stage, and they didn’t disappoint.

Unsurprisingly, lead singer Josh Ramsay brought the energy to Miller Hall, performing hit songs such as “Desperate Measures,” “Cross My Heart,” and “Shake Tramp.”

Each song offered rock guitar

tunes and pop melodies that would make anyone jump up and down, with lyrics you couldn’t help but sing along to—as explicit as they were.

Having grown up listening to much of their music on pop radio, many of us have a deeprooted familiarity with the popular Vancouver band. I wish I could experience the level of nostalgia throughout the crowd that night.

The bar is high for future Mystery Concert artists after Ramsay’s performance.

***

While the headliners for the 2023 Mystery Concert may not be your favourite artist, it’s still a great opportunity to be out with

importance of student engagement with the arts.

“Like most people who get into the arts […] there’s a fundamental belief in the power of art [and] the way in which it shapes and transforms our lives,” he said in an interview with The Journal.

Prior to his involvement at Queen’s, Vorano worked as a curator at the Canadian Museum of History. Vorano said this role helped him understand the importance of how art and cultural collections

shape our individual identities. Opportunities exist for students in the art history program and for those who explore art as a hobby according to Vorano. He encourages students to subscribe to the art history department’s newsletter where the department shares events, activities, and opportunities to connect within the department and across the university. This includes learning from alumni.

“In the past, we’ve had our own alumni come back […] to give workshops to students. We’ve had people come back who talk about digital media

preservation, different artists come back.”

queensjournal.ca/arts

CORRECTIONS

‘Just to Please You’ is a love letter to the Skeleton Park neighbourhood Matt Rogalsky’s named was spelled incorrectly.

Incorrect information appeared in the June 26 issue of The Queen’s Journal The Journal regrets the error.

ORT hosts mystery concert each year.

PHOTO BY HERBERT WANG

‘More than a store’: Alphabet Mafia builds queer joy in Kingston

Store serves as a resource to queer community in Kingston

Violetta Zeitlinger Fontana Business, Science, & Technology Editor

First opened as a storefront in the spring of 2022, Alphabet Mafia, is now a bustling resource hub and safe space for the queer community.

Located at 342 Princess St. in downtown Kingston, Alphabet Mafia sells queer-centric merchandise, while focusing on queer education, sharing local resources, and building community.

“There was an opportunity for a space to get folks together, have a place to be able to give back to the community, and find things that represent them,” said Rae Loggie, ArtSci ’21, and Alphabet Mafia team leader, in an interview with The Journal.

Alphabet Mafia was born as a joint effort after its founders were looking to create a space for themselves to feel comfortable, Loggie said.

Since then, Alphabet Mafia has grown to hold space for many others, including queer folks, allies, and “soon-to-be allies,” a term Loggie uses to refer to people who may not be very knowledgeable about queer issues, but are willing to askquestions and learn.

“We get a lot of folks who are in the area who are questioning their identity, or maybe their placement in the queer community,” Loggie said.

While this is something many queer spaces expect when opening their doors, Loggie shared the community engagement has been incredible.

“Besides just being in the storefront, we do a lot of resource work behind the scenes,” Loggie said. “It’s really powerful to have a space where people can come in and talk to allies, or queer folk themselves, and ask questions about proper language and queer spaces.”

Given their platform, Loggie and their team frequently refer community members to established resources in the Queen’s and Kingston communities. For many, accessing resources without this guidance can be a challenge, particularly when considering the need for intersectionality.

From trans healthcare, to support groups, Loggie mentioned often referring community members to the Trans Joy Club, Trellis, The Yellow House, and the Sexual Health and Resource Centre (SHRC).

“Being intersectional means constantly [being] in a position of learning. Not only educating yourself but realizing your own bias.”

From the international student body at Queen’s to the bustling tourist scene the summer season brings to Kingston, Loggie commented on the unity celebrating Pride brings.

“The pure joy on a lot of their faces—that’s not tangible in a business sense, but I think those things are far more important.”

In their journey as a small business, Loggie says the support from the City of Kingston has been important when

discussing intersectional queer issues. This is especially critical when considering Kingston’s colonial past.

“The City has been so welcoming, not only listening to our recommendations for better general spaces, but things such as the inclusion of more gender neutral bathrooms, or keeping the [Pride-themed] crosswalks in place all year round.”

Alphabet Mafia faced some challenges, with a few instances of people entering the store and spewing hurtful remarks or defacing store property with harmful symbols.

Despite this, Loggie remains extremely positive and grateful for the Alphabet Mafia community, sharing the outpour of love the store receives following difficult instances such as these.

“Even when we do have those little incidents of hate or misinformation, it’s always received back with 20 times more love, and a willingness to learn more,” Loggie said.

The store is hoping to host more community events, such as craft events and story times. Loggie hopes for the events to be family-oriented, where people can come together and listen to different queer voices.

Alphabet Mafia is hoping to collaborate with local businesses, clubs, and organizations to host, sponsor, or promote these events in the future.

As a Queen’s history grad, Loggie holds Kingston close to their heart and hopes the community honours Kingston’s diverse history as they continue to implement initiatives in the future.

“It’s really powerful to have a space like Alphabet Mafia where people who aren’t even sure if they’re a part of our rainbow community yet can hang out and enjoy different aspects of queer culture. I think it’s so beautiful.”

Loggie encourages anyone interested in connecting with Alphabet Mafia to do so via email, social media, or in-person at the store.

Law Newbie democratizes answers to legal queries Kingston invests in young entrepreneurs

Queen’s law grad supported research and development

Asbah Ahmad

Editor in Chief

Technology is changing the legal landscape, and Lawyer Jordan Donich is working to streamline answers to basic legal questions.

Though it isn’t legal advice or substitute for a lawyer, Law Newbie is a legal chatbox software that Donich developed by licensing the underlying chatbox software and making changes to the user interface. Law Newbie is designed to democratize access to basic criminal and civil legal questions that might be asked by a client looking to connect with a lawyer.

During the development process of Law Newbie, Donich hired Sarah MacDonald, Law ’20, as a summer research student. She worked extensively with other law students at the time to train the chatbot with researched information.

“There’s not a lot of innovation [in the legal profession]. It’s scary as a lawyer because you don’t want to get sued. You’re taking a risk,” Donich said in an interview with The Journal.

“[Law Newbie] is bridging the gap between people who don’t have a lawyer and people who need a lawyer. It’s a lot of answers to questions. That doesn’t require as much of an analysis,” MacDonald said in an interview with The Journal.

Most technology in the legal profession is currently aimed at allowing lawyers to efficiently practice law. Donich’s site works to create an interface for clients who are

looking for guidance on which questions to ask a legal professional.

Accessibility in law is important for those who might not be able to afford legal services and need direction, explained MacDonald. Having access to accurate and reliable information also allows people to save precious time when dealing with legal problems.

“I worked at a legal clinic when I was at Queen’s. We were able to help people with those questions. But there’s a certain income cap where you’re able to qualify for those services,” MacDonald said.

Future development of legal chatboxes means the potential for development across many areas of law. This would help broaden the scope of the types of issues clients can receive support for.

“The way I see it, is that it could encourage other law firms who have different practice areas to develop similar tools. If you need advice about a will, an estate matter, or corporate issue [...] other types of firms could utilize it,” MacDonald said.

As it stands, Donich remains involved with the programming of Law Newbie. He still works to program the chatbot to answer new and evolving queries. He said the most common query is asking for legal advice, which he shuts down.

With changing technology, legislation and regulations are catching up. Now well out of law school, MacDonald said her experience in a technology law club at Queen’s was important, along with the case studies related to technology taught in courses. This is part of a broader trend at better integrating technology and legal education across the board according to Donich.

Kingston providing up to $3,000 for student entrepreneurs

Nay Chi Htwe Contributor

Government funding is enabling student entrepreneurs to innovate in diverse fields.

Since 2001, the City of Kingston has provided young entrepreneurs aged 15 to 29 with grants up to $3,000 with funding from the Ontario government. Besides funding, the program provides mentorship opportunities, enabling participants to work closely with local entrepreneurs.

This year, four of the 10 participants are Queen’s University students: Eric Colonna, Mason Rice, Roman Mironov, and Owen McDowell. The Journal had the opportunity to sit down for interviews with the four participants.

Eric Colonna, Comm ’23, is the founder of Pick 6 Athletics, a business he started in the summer of 2020. Colonna first generated a following by posting workout drills and football tips on Instagram.

Using his experience as a defensive back on the Queen’s football team, Colonna hopes to make high-level coaching accessible to young defensive backs.

Besides content creation, another way Colonna utilized business technology was through Wix, a website provider he used to create a site and mobile application which offers additional workout resources.

A piece of advice he would give to future entrepreneurs is to avoid paralysis by analysis and to start their business as soon

as possible. Colonna emphasized the importance of a supportive environment, reflecting on the times his family and peers helped him film content.

Mason Rice, Sci ’27, started Rice Photography, which reflects his passion for tinkering with video and film production and specializes in creating short films.

As part of the program, Rice hopes to expand his business under the mentorship of local social media marketing company, James Media.

As an incoming first-year student, Rice looks forward to meeting new people and hopes to take Instagram pictures for first years during special events like Homecoming.

Rice identified consistency as a key trait entrepreneurs should strive for. Despite his upcoming engineering course load, he’s still going to try to find free time to keep filming videos.

Once in university, Rice hopes to shoot videos for sports teams, like football and rugby. As of now, Rice has shot an advertisement for the Kingston Yacht Club, as well as for Roman Mironov, Comm ’25, a fellow participant of the 2023 Summer Company Program.

Mironov founded 199 Media, a consulting company specializing in digital advertising for businesses.

Mironov’s marketing experience started early—he helped his mother’s e-commerce business by making posters on Canva before branching out into social media advertising.

To read the full story, visit queensjournal.ca/

Alphabet Mafia is located at 342 Princess St. ILLUSTRATION BY VIOLETTA ZEITLINGER FONTANA

‘It was unreal’: Ethan Miedema selected in NHL Draft

Miedema selected in the NHL Draft

RORY STINSON Senior Sports Editor

Hockey players each year dream of making it to the big leagues. This year, Ethan Miedema was one of the successful few when the Frontenacs’ forward and Ontarionative was selected 109th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in the 2023 NHL Selection Draft.

A New Hope for Gaels football

Ashton Watson joins the Gaels

AIDAN MICHAELOV Assistant Sports Editor

A new prospect joins the Gaels football squad. Ashton Watson—a wide receiver from Newmarket, Ontario—looks to bring a wealth of experience, talent, and dedication to success to the Gaels roster .

Watson’s football career began at the age of six where he played two seasons for the Newmarket Bucks. When he switched to the Metro Toronto Wildcats two years later, he met Coach Marcello Lio, a figure Watson cited as having a profound impact on his football career.

“I had a bit of an ego; he changed my whole mindset. He made me a team player. My work ethic got way better when I was getting coached by him,” Watson said in an interview with The Journal

Having played running back for almost the entirety of his football

career, Watson saw the change to wide receiver in his Grade 12 season to best utilize his skillset.

“I like helping, blocking, and making big plays for my other teammates, but I couldn’t really do that as a running back. So, I kind of like receiver a lot,” Watson said. “I’m also in the open field already, and that’s where I excel at for sure.”

Even before his recruitment to Queen’s, Watson was recognized on a national level. From scoring touchdowns in the Canadian Football Chat prospect team to competing on Team Ontario for the Canada Cup, he never struggled to succeed at any level of his playing career.

Watson displayed immense excitement and commitment about joining the Gaels. When asked about his motivations behind choosing Queen’s, he said the attraction of a good football program that values academic growth of their student-athletes was the selling point.

“They care about building

each player on their team,” he said. “Resumes for businesses, mock interviews, all that little stuff matters to me, like they don’t just care about football. They care about their player. They’re not just a roster number.”

Coming from an all-boys boarding school of about 600 students, Watson voiced his worries about the number of students at Queen’s. He emphasized the pressure he’s put on himself to be accountable as he won’t have anyone watching over him anymore.

Watson will be living on campus this year where he’s excited to play video games and watch Star Wars with friends.

Watson will face off against the Laurier Golden Hawks in the Gaels home opener at Richardson Stadium on Aug. 26. He’ll be going up against his brother, Mason Watson, a solid Defensive End for the Golden Hawks.

At 6’4” and weighing in at just over 200lbs, Miedema’s hockey IQ and dedication to becoming a well-rounded player has been something reporters have talked about.

Miedema joined the Frontenacs mid-way through last season when the Windsor Spitfires traded him for Shane Wright. Between the Frontenacs and the Spitfires, Miedema posted 52 points in 68 games in the 2022-23 season .

“I’m still really happy to be in Kingston as a Frontenac and looking forward to the upcoming season,” Miedema said in an interview with The Journal. “The coaches care a lot and really want us to do well individually and as a group…When you combine coaches who care and all the extra stuff you do, it puts you in a position to be successful.”

Finding the success that many hockey players work so hard to have, Miedema described

hearing his name called in the draft as “unreal.”

“It’s something you dream of as a kid,” he said. “To hear your name called, that’s something that you get chills about…It’s a dream come true for not only myself, but everyone who’s supported me.”

Originally from Cobourg, ON, Buffalo is one of the closest cities to home for Miedema.

“I lucked out with that,” he said. “I literally drove to development camp, whereas a lot of guys got to fly across the country or fly through another state or province.”

Having recently attended development camp for the Sabres, Miedema recounted what a typical day with them looked like.

“The way they treat us is top notch,” he said. “The NHL’s the real deal.”

Miedema said practicing on NHL ice was a particularly heartfelt moment for him.

“I know it’s only a practice jersey, but wearing that jersey for the first time—like I said earlier about getting drafted—you get chills.”

“[It’s] something you dream about as a kid, wearing an NHL jersey for real, not just one of someone you look up to,” he said. “It’s your own jersey and this might sound pretty cliché, but it’s truly one of the best feelings in the world.”

From Kingston to Morocco, James Fair is

headed to new waters

RORY STINSON

Senior Sports Editor

James Fair , will be sailing through the formidable waters of Morocco this fall when he represents Canada at the U21 Sailing World Championships.

Morocco is known to be challenging for even the most experienced of sailors, but Fair expressed his excitement for the challenge.

Though Kingston is said to have smaller waves than most sailing locations, Fair explained how he built his affinity for sailing in rougher water.

“One of the things I always loved growing up was just going out for three hours at a time,” Fair told The Journal in an interview. “My coach would take me [out] as far we could go and then we’d just surf the waves all the way back down to the club.”

“That was always what I loved most,” Fair said. “When I finally got to travel and do competitions

Fair is heading to Morocco for the U21 sailing world championships

elsewhere, anytime I got the chance to surf the waves in the boat and do that kind of racing, I think just because I enjoyed it so much, I just really started to excel at it.”

As a second year engineering student at Queen’s, Fair said there’s an intimate link between his sport and academics.

“Sailing is super focused on physics I’ve been doing vectors and stuff like that since I was literally 12 years old,” he said. “Eventually I’d like to maybe focus on designing foils or something to do with sailing through engineering.”

Growing up in Kingston, Fair expressed gratitude for support he received from the both the local and Queen’s communities.

“More than anything I’d say my parents are my biggest supporters. Beyond that the Kingston Yacht Club has supported me my entire career so far,” he said.

“There’s been a lot of people

across Canada, but through Queen’s I’ve also had a lot of support from some of the professors and the Dean of Engineering actually are sailors themselves.”

Fair further explained what sort of effect growing up in Kingston has had on his success in the sport.

“Kingston is known as the fresh water sailing capital of the world, so I’ve been very fortunate to grow up in a place that is amazing to sail a good portion of the year,” said Fair.

Fair shared the names of Olympic athletes from Kingston who have helped him on his way, including Ali ten Hove and Dannie Boyd.

He credited those not directly involved with his training as a significant help.

“Sailing as a sport takes a lot of support, so its definitely takes a lot of community and I’ve had a lot of help along the way, through Queen’s, through everybody, but

I’m always looking for support from anybody that can help me out,” he said.

While this championship will be Fair’s fourth world sailing championship, it will be his first one competing in the men’s Olympic single-handed class.

“It’s a very, very competitive fleet,” Fair said.

Preparing for the upcoming championship, Fair said a lot of the training is about being productive without pushing your body too hard and facing potential injury.

“A lot of the prep work at this stage is making sure you’re kind of mentally in the right mindset to know when you need to push for it, when you need to go for it.”

For Fair, the key to success in sailing is making sure you’re always having fun and not putting too much pressure on yourself.

“Getting to a world level

or getting to an Olympic level is a long waiting game,” he said. “Understanding that [if] you’re not where you need to be or where you want to be right now, in a year’s time everything can change and if you just stay with it. You’ll get there eventually.”

CORRECTIONS

U Sports commits to Safe Sport

It was incorrectly reported that Queen’s University didn’t publicly address Hillary’s letter. Additionally, the LGBT YouthLine phone number ran at the start of the article was incorrect.

Incorrect information appeared in the June 26 issue of The Queen’s Journal The Journal regrets the error.

Ashton Watson has committed to Gaels Men’s Footbsll as a wide receiver.

PHOTO BY HERBERT WANG

The Frontenacs’ forward discusses being selected in the NHL Draft

PHOTO BY JOSEPH MARIATHASAN

The beginner’s guide to sports at Queen’s

From playing sports to watching games, this is your guide to athletics at Queen’s

AIDAN MICHAELOV & RORY STINSON Journal Staff

Whether you’re a first-year student hoping to explore Queen’s athletics, or a seasoned student looking for something new this school year, Queen’s has everything you’ll need to stay active.

One of the focal points for Queen’s students and athletes is their rich athletic and recreational facilities, which hosts several programs for all students. For incoming students, here’s a guide to athletics and recreation at Queen’s.

The hub for all athletics and recreational programs available at Queen’s is the ARC. It’s home to basketball gyms, pickleball courts, and various private rooms which house a variety of clubs.

Athletics & Recreation (A&R) offers a range of programs from competitive to club

sports, intramurals to drop-in gymnasium times.

Queen’s maintains many facilities which are often open for public use. Tindall Field is frequently riddled with Spikeball nets, pickup soccer, frisbee and football games, whereas Nixon Field is commonly home to club

sports.

Aside from the facilities on campus, there are several parks in City of Kingston for physical activity.

The Gord Edgar Downie Pier is a major attraction for swimming in the summer months and Lake Ontario is an attraction for skating in the winter. Victoria Park is a great

New Gael to ‘Cap’ off men’s hockey roster

Dharan Cap joins Queen’s Men’s Hockey

AIDAN MICHAELOV Assistant Sports Editor

A new recruit will hit the ice this season as the Gael Men’s Hockey team add another player to their roster. Originally from Vancouver, Dharan Cap is a strong forward with top-tier goal-scoring ability, a great forecheck and backcheck, and an unrivalled physicality on the ice.

Cap’s love for hockey ignited at a young age. He cites his older brother Ethan as his biggest influence.

“He’s playing pro and I’ve looked up to him ever since I was little and following in his footsteps here,” said Cap in an interview with The Journal.

Cap made his way through the AAA circuit playing for the Vancouver North West Hawks, where he stood out for his defensive and physical capabilities.

Most recently, Cap played for the Soo Thunderbirds in Sault Ste. Marie for the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League (NOJHL). There, he won the NOJHL championship in the 2021-22 season, and was awarded the NOJHL’s Top Defensive Forward award.

Cap highlighted his devotion towards the physical aspect of the sport as one of his most valuable skills.

“I like creating turnovers and being a two-way player. I can lock it down in the [defensive] zone and make plays in the offensive zone.”

With each season playing for the Soo Thunderbirds, Cap improved his offensive game. Last season, Cap posted 30 goals and 38 assists,

totaling 68 points in 55 games.

When asked about where he sees himself making an impact on the Gaels roster this upcoming season, Cap emphasized his ambition to win is built on commitment to his team.

“I know Coach Gibson was talking a lot about how they missed playoffs last year, and they want to make a run for it this year,” Cap said. “I’m hoping to bring my experience of a team first mentality and having a great connection with the guys and making it to the championship.”

Faced with the challenge of living away from home and without a billet family for the first time since his departure from junior hockey, Cap joked that cooking for himself will definitely be an adjustment. He sees opportunity for disaster living in a house with six other Gael’s hockey players.

RORY STINSON

Senior Sports Editor

Four members of the Queen’s Rowing teams took to Bulgarian waters this summer as part of the U23 World Rowing Championship.

Bob Bryden, Lucas Celia, and Andrew Hubbard of the Men’s Rowing team, and Claire Ellison from the Women’s Rowing team faced off against international competitors in Plovdiv, Bulgaria from July 19 to 23.

The tournament ended with mixed finishes for the Queen’s athletes.

Ellison finished third in the U23 Women’s Eight Final race, Bryden finished fifth in the U23 Men’s Pair Final B race, Celia finished third in the U23 Lightweight Men’s Quadruple Sculls Final race, and Hubbard finished fourth in the U23 Men’s Double Sculls Final C race.

As one of the closest races of the tournament, Ellison’s team was decided by a photo finish. Her team finished a mere 0.06 seconds ahead of Great Britain to secure the bronze medal. Germany won silver and U.S.A. won Gold.

Celia won bronze, with a third place finish 6.31 seconds ahead of U.S.A. in the Lightweight Men’s Quadruple Sculls Final—a goal he mentioned in an interview with The Journal. He finished

“We’ve got a house of seven hockey guys, that’s gonna get messy. On top of engineering. It’ll be a good time though.”

While it will be Cap’s first time living in a student house, he has no plans to shy away from the opportunity to meet

with consistency, routine and social connections.

Intramurals are a great way for first-year students to play sports in a competitive environment, without the time commitment of varsity and club sports.

Many students at Queen’s find that playing various sports and going to the gym helps them succeed in all aspects of their university life. Staying active benefits not only their mental and physical health, but also provides the opportunity to continue to participate in sports they’re passionate about.

Students also love to watch varsity sports for the great action, passion and energy everyone brings to every game.

place to go for walks or play some pickup sports with friends.

Karley Salsbury, who is the current Manager of Intramurals and Recreation Clubs at A&R, mentioned the importance of staying active during the transition to postsecondary. To Salsbury, staying active provides students

Some upcoming games this fall are the Queen’s Football Homecoming Game, the Vanier Cup, U Sports Women’s Soccer Championship, and the Engineering vs. Commerce Basketball Game.

Four Gaels are rowing in championship

beyond Germany and Italy.

“It was awesome that I hit that stepping stone, but the finish line is yet to come,” he said .

Both Ellison and Celia discussed preparation for the championship prior to the race.

“At the beginning of spring, we were training two to three times a day, six days a week some days— sometimes even seven days in a row,” said Celia in an interview with The Journal Ellison detailed what training sessions looked like for her.

“We do a lot of on-water training, when we’re in season,” she said. “Putting in some really good technical work in the fall is sort of the first building block and then we’re inside for most of the winter and we’re doing training on IR’s [Indoor Rowers] and lots of time spent on stationary bikes, in the weight room.”

“Coming towards spring, I kind of headed out west right when the training camp opened at the start of May,” said Ellison. “We had about a month to prepare for when we started doing selection against a bunch of other athletes from across Canada.”

In terms of mental preparation,

new people and connect with his future teammates.“I’m hungry,” he said. “I’ve already lived far away from home and had to make new friends.

And I already know a few guys on the team next year, a few people going to Queens, I don’t think the social aspect will be

Celia said it’s important to start cool, calm, and collected.

“After a race we [say]: light, loose, and lit,” he said.

Both athletes shared what they are most looking forward to before the race.

“My thing I want to get the most out of this is to go fast with a bunch of my best friends,” Ellison said. “Rowing on these teams is a unique experience because [I had] to come together with a bunch of people I didn’t know that well beforehand, and figure out what makes you go fast.”

For those wanting to get involved in the excitement of rowing, Ellison mentioned novice programs provide participants with the chance to train with the team and race at the end of the season.

“It’s never too late to join and it’s a late entry sport,” she said. “I’d encourage anyone who’s ever thought about rowing to give it a try.”

Celia encouraged hopeful future rowers.

“Just give it the best you can on that day, each day give 100 per cent of what you can, and you will succeed,” said Celia.

too difficult .”

Cap and the rest of the Gaels Men’s Hockey team will face off against the UOttawa GeeGees on Oct. 13 in their home opener.

Cap brings a physicality and two-way play style to Gaels as a new forward SUPPLIED BY A&R

Lucas Celia and Claire Ellison travel to Bulgaria

What you can do to get in on sports action.

PHOTO BY HERBERT WANG

Recipes for surviving residence dorm life

Easy, cheap, and nutritious meals for students away from home

Sam Kimball Contributor

Moving into Queen’s residence is a difficult adjustment for most, and not being able to cook whatever you want can make homesickness hit harder.

Though meal plans are a staple part of the experience and included in residence fees, living in a dorm room can entails situations where accessing—or enjoying—food on campus is challenging.

When hunger strikes outside dining hall hours, or you simply don’t feel like trekking through a snowstorm to eat, there are many easy, cheap, and nutritious meals you can make from the comfort of your shared floor kitchen—if you have one.

Breakfast

While breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day, it’s the meal you’re most likely to skip. The early hours and need to leave your room can make eating a

Noah Lee Contributor

Bill C-18 will require big digital news intermediaries such as search engines or social media platforms to compensate news outlets for their journalistic work.

Though the bill itself is vague, we now know from an exchange between Senator Paula Simons and Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez that Bill C-18 will target Meta and Google. Both tech giants are

nutritious morning meal difficult to prioritize. When TAMS run out and you can’t grab a late morning snack, you’ll need to get creative.

Since residence allows students to have some sort of mini-fridge, there’s plenty of options for breakfasts. One of my favorite easy meals is a homemade parfait. For me it involves purchasing a tub of yogurt, granola, and diligently searching for berries on sale at Metro.

If you’re looking for a warm breakfast, meal prepping muffin egg bites is a great move. Simply add your preferred ingredients, throw them together in your common room, and voila! You now have a great meal you can reheat on mornings you’re running too late for breakfast at the dining halls.

Lunch

Because the dining halls are usually open for lunch, packing a midday meal doesn’t always seem necessary. On the rare occasion you find yourself in your room, there’s plenty of options beyond ramen and protein shakes. These meals lack essential vitamins, and the scurvy epidemic is best left in the 16th century.

If you’re too far from your

currently set on blocking Canadian news content before the end of 2023.

As the largest search and social media platforms, Meta and Google dominate the distribution of world news. From 2019 to 2023, Meta and its subsidiaries captured a 69 per cent average user share of Canadians using social networks for weekly news content. In March 2023, Google dominated search engine use by

sketchy dorm microwave, you’ll need a lunch that tastes good cold. For this, I suggest salads. Think beyond vegetables and consider pasta, potato, or chicken salad. These versatile options can easily be customized to meet your specific nutrition requirements. Since I just badmouthed ramen, I’ll suggest homemade soup as an alternative. It’s comforting, warm, and requires minimal effort to prepare. Combine your preferred protein, veggies, and carbs, and you’ll have a simple meal ready to thaw when the inevitable first year flu strikes.

Dinner

When making dinner in residence, it’s best to cook with friends. For dinners with variety, it’s helpful to assign different aspects

91 per cent of Canadians.

It’s clear a large portion of Canadians rely heavily on these two platforms to stay informed on current affairs. Giving that much responsibility to any source of information is illadvised—if both Meta and Google’s services ceased to exist, many Canadians would lose their primary source of news.

This situation should be a wake-up call for people who rely on Meta and Google to get their news.

of the meal to different people. This not only makes cooking more affordable, but reduces the waste of preparing individual meals for one night.

If you’re alone, stir-fry is always a reliable option. Most recipes incorporate a combination of veggies, carbs, and proteins which can be customized by you. Cooking together is a wonderful bonding activity, especially with the new floormates. Plus, you’ll quickly discover who among them has never cleaned a dish in their life.

Dessert

In first year, I discovered any dessert I wanted could be made in a mug. Whether it was cookies, or another sweet treat, I could whip up a single serving in a few minutes.

Luckily, even if Meta and Google go ahead with their plans, there are other ways to go about staying informed.

News flash—there are other search engines out there apart from Google.

While it’s true these other search engines are often considered irrelevant by popular media, they are truly functional alternatives to Google.

One example of a totally

If you’re looking to make friends, make dessert to share. It’s the best way to earn some brownie points among your floormates.

While you should use the meal plan to get the most out of your residence fees, it’s important to know some basic recipes if you can’t access campus food when you need it. Hopefully this knowledge will help you navigate first year dining arrangements when campus food is limited.

C-18 should be a wake-up call

functional alternative is Bing, Microsoft’ssearchengine.Microsoft Canada said they would abide by any regulations on their products. On the other side of the coin is Yahoo Search, which makes use of Bing’s search engine to fuel results.

queensjournal.ca/lifestyle

Making good meals in residence is easier than you think.

PHOTO BY HERBERT WANG

Bill

The social network showdown: Twitter vs Threads

New app threatens Twitter’s place in public discourse

Twitter seems to be growing more archaic by the second, making space for a similar looking competitor, Threads, to rise.

The most obvious difference between the two apps is that for Threads, you can sign up using your Instagram account. You also have the option to manually follow the same accounts you followed on Instagram if they’ve also created a Threads accounts. This offers some continuity in retaining your followers from Instagram to Threads.

When it comes to the look and feel of the apps, Threads feels slightly less cluttered. Meta opted out of including the number of likes, reposts, and views at the bottom of every post, presenting users with a sleeker version of Twitter without the need to quantify everything.

Image quality is where Twitter overtakes Threads.

Twitter lets users load and view images in 4K. Threads doesn’t offer such an option, and the image and video quality is more or less the same as Instagram.

If viewing images in 4K is important to you, then you can choose to keep Twitter as an occasional source of high-quality wallpapers and premium photo browsing.

According to the privacy policy of Threads, the app can access to your location, cameras, photos, IP information, and device signals that includeWi-Fiaccesspoints.Metahas a poor history of protecting private data. Last May, Meta was fined by the EU for violating EU privacy laws, meaning Threads’ user data may not be in the safest hands.

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, the site has seen rapid changes that concern many users— such as the loss of two executives overlooking data privacy and two-factor authentication being

GRAPHIC BY NAY CHI HWTE

hidden under Twitter’s premium subscription service.

On other platforms, like Instagram and Threads, users don’t need to pay for two-factor authentication. Because Twitter hid this essential security feature behind a paywall, Twitter users who haven’t opted into Twitter Blue are more vulnerable to cybercriminals.

There was a time when Twitter offered the possibility of having meaningful conversations and generating greater empathy and understanding amongst users. This time has come to an end, and Twitter has since become a breeding ground for division and toxicity.

While Facebook and Instagram are no better, with the emergence of Threads comes the possibility for users to have a break from the chaos that has become all too prominent on Twitter. These reasons make me a firm believer that Threads is the better app compared to Twitter.

CASSIDY MCMACKON Editor in Chief

I spent most of my first year scared of my teaching assistants (TAs).

The moment I set foot in Ellis Hall for the first session of Human Geography, I was intimidated by the people seated at the front of the classroom. While I didn’t count on being especially memorable to my course instructors, I felt enormous pressure to impress the professor-adjacent figures I thought expected brilliance every week in tutorial.

Years later, I now know I had nothing to be afraid of. Now I’m writing my master’s thesis, and don’t think I would’ve made it to where I am without the support of my past TAs.

As someone who has now been on both sides of the student-teaching assistant relationship, I’ve had ample time to re-evaluate the way this relationship should be approached.

For the most part, my time as a TA in the philosophy department has been rewarding. In the last two years, I was assigned to some of my favourite classes from my undergrad and worked under supportive professors.

I watched students get excited about philosophy for the first time—a feeling I remember from my first year.

That said, working in this capacity isn’t without challenges.

As a woman in academia, I’ve had male students question my competence in my role. Though it’s normal for students to come to office hours with questions about their grades, it’s unacceptable for second-year men to berate women in TA positions about their grades when they can’t even bother to spell a philosopher’s name right.

It’s quite invasive when male students overstep the boundaries of student/TA relationships. Though I’m happy to say hello to students if I see them out and about, I have no interest in listening to them trauma dump during my morning visit to a coffee shop.

It’s also true that we’re overworked and underpaid.

Though TA positions are available to upper-year undergrads in some programs, most TAs are students completing master’s or doctoral degrees. These positions

are offered to grad students to facilitate access to the full slate of funding promised when we get accepted to Queen’s.

Funding varies by department, but TAs are paid around $1,200 each month. We’re contracted for 120 working hours each semester and balance our teaching duties on top of our course work and research.

It’s ultimately graduate student labour that keeps courses running smoothly. We run labs and tutorials, as well as mark assignments. We’re expected to work approximately 10 hours a week, responding to student emails, holding office hours, revisiting course readings, and grading.

In my most recent contract, I ran tutorials. Though each session was only an hour long, I often spent 12 hours preparing my talking points alone.

During midterm and finals season, we often exceed our allotted working hours marking final assignments. I had to choose between losing sleep and falling behind on my own research during these weeks.

Queen’s is a particularly wealthy institution, and most undergrads will avoid working in the academic year if they can. Unfortunately, this isn’t feasible for many grad students. We often come to these programs with debt, which usually increases by the time we leave due to our dismal funding packages. I balanced my TA work with not only my academic responsibilities, but another part-time job to supplement the cost of groceries. I know I’m not the only one who’s had to make these choices.

Pursuing a major academic project while facilitating an undergraduate course is demanding enough. Relying on retail work to break even because your employer won’t pay you a livable wage spreads us even more thin.

This past year, I cheered for students who showed a concerted effort to improve with each passing assignment. When the semester ended, I got excited when students told me they wanted to take more philosophy classes in the future. I hope they come to love the discipline as much as I do.

While I hope the class of 2027 arrives on campus excited to start fostering academic relationships with professors and teaching assistants alike, I hope they do so while understanding the strain their TAs are under.

Dear first-years: Here’s what your TA wished you knew

TAs face heavy workload and low pay—but we’re still here for our students

PHOTO BY HERBERT WANG

Working as a TA comes with many demands.

Four things I learned from four years at Queen’s Important takeaways from a grateful graduate

NIKI BOYTCHUK-HALE

Contributor

When I walked onto the cobble stone campus to complete a degree in Fine Arts and Education, I didn’t know that the most important lessons I would learn would come from outside the classroom.

I always cared about my grades, and credit this to my genuine love of learning. As the first in my family to attend university, I never took my access to education for granted.

I told myself I wouldn’t do anything beyond academic courses in my first year to ensure I could manage my studies. Somewhere along the way, my priorities shifted.

When I became a Con-Ed orientation leader and took a campus job at Studio Q—the student-run digital media service at the AMS—I realized there were more authentic learning opportunities outside the classroom.

In my extracurriculars, I could apply what I learned in my classes to the real world. Studio Q allowed me to take a classroom lesson in colour theory and create transformative logos for a client’s new business.

There’s a trade-off with taking on a job during your degree. Sometimes it feels like your peers are getting ahead of you academically—especially when the balancing act between work and school becomes more delicate.

As a Fine Art student, there were many times I walked into the studio to see that while my peers had pulled another all-nighter, I was struggling to find time to even begin executing

my plans in-between jobs.

The constant display of other people’s work feeds into a special type of internal comparison game—exacerbated by being a working student—inherent to being a visual art student.

In my case, it wasn’t that I lacked the dedication of my peers, but I had the reality of needing to work a full-time job to help fund my education. Having additional responsibilities didn’t negatively affect my experience at Queen’s. As I progressed through my undergrad, I naturally slimmed down my class and extracurricular schedule as I learned what I valued most.

I don’t depend on for emotional support, because I know that isn’t something they can provide. Sometimes other friendships get much less time because we don’t place importance on the small day-to-day interactions, but the bond we have is strong and will last a lifetime.

You know you’ve struck gold when your day-to-day friend is the same friend you share all your hopes and dreams with.

It might take time to meet the people who will uplift, inspire, and ground you, but when you find your people, it will be worth the wait. Friends at university will push you to attend classes or persuade you to go out for karaoke—bringing a sense of balance and pushing you out of the daily monotony of life.

At the end of my third year, I continued to challenge my perspective on friendship and community when I took a job at the AMS.

Although being the Director of Marketing for a multi-million-dollar organization wasn’t a simple job, I never wanted to take a day off because I was passionate about the work. I was proud to honour the AMS executive’s mandate to support the interests of 20,000 students.

“Turns out, taking the risk and accepting the marketing job was transformative.

My overall fear of losing community faded when I realized I was only expanding my circle. I always thought by leaving the services side of the AMS, I would have to say goodbye to connections with staff and fun moments with managers.

contribute because I thought it was beyond my capabilities.

Days later, a friend sent the same post to my direct messages encouraging me to apply. I called my mom to get her opinion and to her, it was obvious that I should submit a proposal.

After applying, I was selected to create a community building artwork depicting consent culture. I used insight from students to land on the concept for my painting, which I titled A Love that Clings

Two years after installation, I still get an overwhelming amount of feedback from our community. I realized people care about how the mural makes them feel when they walk past Harrison-LeCaine Hall—not the proportionality of my lines.

I wasn’t spending less time as an active community member, but learned to focus my attention on the areas that were most important to me. This empowered me to find meaningful work while ensuring I wasn’t sacrificing my personal life and academic success.

When assignments and work deadlines piled up, having friends by my side made my Queen’s experience exciting. My university experience was full of different groups of friends that served distinct purposes. We all have our own capacities and intentions when it comes to relationships, and its key to have the right expectations.

I have very close friends that

Originally, I had my heart set on one specific position at the AMS. When I was offered a different position in the marketing office, I almost said no. I heard how hard the government side was and didn’t know what the community would be like in the offices.

Turns out, taking the risk and accepting the marketing job was transformative. Though I thought graphic design was my dream job, my new role expanded my world. I realized my time at Studio Q prepared me for this next step. If I rejected the new challenge, I would’ve missed the opportunity to do exceptional work.

There was more emotional labour involved in governance, but I established a new community. My office was a revolving door for anyone and everyone to brainstorm their next big project, work through their problems, or have a taco break.

The opportunities I had in my undergrad didn’t happen because I was the most talented artist, designer, marketer, or manager. Instead, I credit my success to my work ethic and the endless Adobe tutorials.

There were times I almost passed up projects because I couldn’t imagine executing them perfectly with my limited experience. In second year, I scrolled past an Instagram post looking for proposals for a campus mural. At first, I rejected the idea I had something to

The support I received from this mural gave me the confidence to continue making art about social issues, and eventually led to my thesis on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

I’m happy to report there’s nothing I regret about my undergrad at Queen’s because each challenge and mistake led to personal growth.

I was hyperaware my undergrad would fly by and used that perspective to fuel my work ethic and social life. While there were many obstacles—global pandemic included—my time at Queen’s shaped me into the person I’ve become.

I firmly believe if you enjoy what you do, the rest will fall into place when you realize success isn’t determined by conventional skills.

Welcome to the best four, five, or six years of your life, class of 2027.

“The constant display of other people’s work feeds into a special type of internal comparison game inherent to being a visual art student.

Niki reflects on life lessons leanred through classes, extracurriculars, and jobs.

PHOTO BY JOSEPH MARIATHASAN