The Strand | Vol. 64, Issue 1

the

STRAND VICTORIA UNIVERSITY’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER VOLUME 64, ISSUE 1 | 30 AUGUST 2021

Pen and paper

Shifting perspectives

Room to grow

OPINIONS | PAGE 5

FEATURES | PAGE 9

ARTS AND CULTURE | PAGE 10

02 NEWS

EDITORS | DREW-ANNE GLENNIE AND SARAH ABERNETHY NEWS@THESTRAND.CA

VUSAC: What’s that?

The Strand presents the annual VUSAC almanac CEDRIC BUSTAMANTE CONTRIBUTOR

VUSAC (Victoria University Students' Administrative Council) is Victoria College’s student government. It typically consists of 20 elected members. Of these, four executives and seven commissioners are elected annually in the Winter semester, and nine councillors are elected in the following Fall semester. There are also five staff positions.

VUSAC offers many in-person and online services to Victoria College students. Need to print and have spare coins? VUSAC’s office printing is five cents! If you have thought of starting a club, they can also help you get the necessary funding and resources to get started. They also sell cozy merchandise in Vic’s Fall colours (because Canada is cold). The executives, along with certain commissions, also advocate for student concerns and needs to Victoria College’s head administration and the University of Toronto.

The council is headed by four executives.

The President is VUSAC’s spearhead and oversees the council’s general plan for the year, including budgeting and representing VUSAC in meetings with other student bodies from the

larger University of Toronto community. The Vice-President External is the bridge between VUSAC and external governing bodies, such as the Dean’s Office and the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU). The Vice-President Student Organizations is the main contact for clubs and levies at Victoria College. They support and provide resources about budgeting and other information to these groups. The Vice-President Internal is the backbone of the council and is responsible for maintaining the office’s culture and rules.

The nine councillors have a more general role on council, supporting different commissioners and executive portfolio initiatives. They are elected each fall and nominations for the 20212022 school year open September 3, 2021.

Regarding the global pandemic and the University’s reopening strategy, President Jerico Raguindin said that they are “waiting on the Dean’s Office, the University of Toronto’s senior administration and public health guidelines to figure out when [they] can provide inperson programming in the Fall. [They] hope to provide in-person programming as soon as possible [...] it is crucial to get students back to campus and re-building the in-person Victoria College community experience.”

The name game

VUSAC’s seven commissions plan events and provide services regarding their respective portfolios: Commuter, Equity, Scarlet and Gold (formal events), Academic, Arts & Culture, Mental Wellness, and Sustainability.

Commissioners run each committee, often with the help of a co-chair. Teams of students help each commission with specific concerns like social media, budgeting, and planning events. These events include Highball (the annual formal), the Bob Comedy Revue, and more. Though applications for joining these commissions’ teams will be released come the Fall semester, new members are always welcome to meetings—check out VUSAC’s social media or website to stay updated on the latest opportunities!

The upcoming (all online) Fall election will be for nine councillors. There will also be a by-election for Equity Commissioner, Arts & Culture Commissioner, Mental Wellness Commissioner, Commuter Commissioner, and Vice-President Internal. By-elections will also be held for the Victoria University Senate (VUS), the Victoria College Council (VCC), and the Board of Regents.

PHOTO | HANA NIKCEVIC

University of Toronto Campus Police rebrand as Special Constable Service

DREW-ANNE GLENNIE AND SARAH ABERNETHY NEWS CO-EDITORS

As campus reopens for Fall 2021, you will find a different organization patrolling its streets and buildings: meet University of Toronto Campus Safety - Special Constable Service.

In June 2021, the University of Toronto Campus Police announced that it was changing its name and visual identity across UofT’s three campuses. Their official news release cites that the rebranding will “better reflect the robust range of public safety services that [they] provide to the University community.” According to web archives, individual members of the Campus Police Service were called Special Constables since at least July 2010. The organization’s mission remains the same: “Creating a safe, secure and equitable environment for those who work, live and study on the St. George Campus.”

Despite the rebranding, Special Constables’ front-facing literature defines their authority primarily in relation to police officers: “On or in relation to University property […] Special Constables have the powers of arrest and release, have the discretion to act on criminal and

provincial offences, and have the authority to transport prisoners within the City of Toronto.”

They are also mandated to bring infractions of university policies to academic leaders.

The current role and authority of Special Constables are nearly identical in its first archival, dated July 25, 2010. The same goes for the training program, which teaches Special Constables laws and procedures relevant to front-line officers: aside from a new name to match the new brand, its description is the same word-for-word.

This change in the Campus Police’s persona comes only a year after the widespread Black Lives Matter protests of June 2020, wherein faculty and student groups across campus continued an ongoing effort to advocate in support of the Defund the Police and Cops Off Campus movements. In an open letter, published in The Varsity in the summer of 2020, community members demanded “a comprehensive process for defunding and abolishing Campus Police and creating anti-carceral community safety initiatives,” as well as for “[f ]unding intended for further training and policy development for Campus Police [to] be reallocated to the hiring

of more counselors and trained personnel to support students in crisis.”

The letter cites a history of police misconduct on University of Toronto campuses, the most recent reported incident being in 2019 when a University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) student in mental distress was handcuffed instead of being provided with the appropriate counseling or support. A video posted to the University of Toronto Graduate Student’s Union's Facebook page shows students being met with intimidation tactics from a number of officers after putting a Cops Off Campus banner in their office window last winter.

“At the very best, the rebranding of Campus Police signifies an acknowledgement of these long-standing issues, and is the first step towards reimagining the role of policing in the University and greater context,” said Isaiah Murray, VicePresident Equity at the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union—a group that remains committed to Cops Off Campus—in an email to The Strand. “At its worst, the rebranding stops at a performative avoidance to associations with existing police brutality and corruption.”

NEWS 03

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 30 AUGUST 2021

Unravelled: Canadian astronomy conference rebuked by Mi’kmaw professor for handling of Indigeneity panel CASCA leadership denies intent to limit Indigenous content at conference

PHOTO | ROBERT RITCHIE

ADAM LAM WEB EDITOR

A prominent Canadian astronomy society pulled the plug on a panel discussion about improving Indigenous representation in astronomy in a move publicly rebuked by the Mi’kmaw astronomy professor set to moderate the event.

The Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA) invited Professor Hilding Neilson, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Toronto, to moderate the discussion at the CASCA 2021 Annual General Meeting (AGM) held from May 10 to 14, 2021.

According to Professor Neilson, the panel was important as it could enable an open dialogue between Indigenous perspectives and the leadership of astronomy organizations including CASCA, the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, and the National Research Council.

But in April, Professor Neilson was informed that CASCA had cancelled the panel due to “pressure on the schedule.” He later received a tip from a CASCA member on the Online Organizing Committee (OOC) that the stated cause may have been inaccurate.

A subsequent email exchange on the cancellation, reviewed

by The Strand, took place from April 26 to 28 between Professor Neilson and Professor Sara Ellison, CASCA president and a Physics and Astronomy professor at the University of Victoria.

On April 28, Professor Ellison wrote to Professor Neilson via email that CASCA’s leadership did not intend to mislead Professor Neilson about the panel’s cancellation.

The reasons behind the cancellation were threefold, she wrote: to expand a previous session on Indigenous cultural awareness with writer Bob Joseph, member of Gwawaenuk Nation; to allow attendees “personal time to reflect and recover” after Joseph’s session; and to establish a rhythm to “build-up to […] the very specific topic of the [Thirty Meter Telescope] midweek and finally the broad-reaching [Long-Range Plan] discussion on Friday.”

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) controversy concerns the construction of an astronomy facility on land considered sacred to the Mauna Kea kia’i people in Hawaii. The Long-Range Plan (LRP) is a “vision for the highest priority projects in astronomy in Canada from 2020 to 2030,” according to CASCA’s website.

“I hope these details help to clarify that the Board put a lot of effort and thought into how to bring indigenous [sic] discussions and education to the community at the AGM,” she wrote. “It is certainly not that we are trying to dodge any tricky questions and aiming to be covert. We know the community wants to have these conversations - we are trying to help prepare them for having them, as we are absolutely committed to indigenous inclusion and the LRP recommendations.”

In his response, Professor Neilson thanked Professor Ellison for her honesty, but strongly criticized the motivations for cancelling the panel.

“The response is even more frustrating for me,” he wrote. “I understand that the session with Bob Joseph can be emotional for participants and that

it might be hard for settlers to face another session right after.”

“That is a reason to move the session but not to cancel it,” he wrote to Professor Ellison. He contended that the TMT and LRP sessions were not sufficient substitutes due to their lack of Indigenous speakers.

He also forwarded that the decision prioritized the feelings of settlers over the interests of Indigenous academics in astronomy.

Professor Ellison replied the same day, but did not commit to rescheduling the panel. “To speak to the panel discussion - this is essentially happening in the LRP session on Friday,” she wrote. “It may not [be] called a panel in the program, but it is me, Chris Wilson, Stefi Baum and Locke Spencer, plus we have invited other key people represented in the LRP (including several who were on your list,

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such as Luc Simard and Don Brooks) to be on hand to answer questions.”

The next day, Professor Neilson publicized his disagreements with the decision on Twitter, where he reiterated the contentions he previously emailed, drawing 62 retweets and nearly 375 likes across the thread. He also withdrew from another scheduled talk, “Indigenizing the Drake Equation,” from the conference on April 26, citing the lack of transparency behind the cancellation.

In an email to The Strand, Professor Ellison wrote: “The Board was actively promoting an Indigenous session (for the first time at an AGM). It is absolutely untrue that our intention was to limit Indigenous content.”

On May 10, Professor Ellison addressed the dispute in the opening remarks of the conference.

“In preparing for this conference there was a genuine misunderstanding between the Board and the OOC regarding the planning of the session on Indigenous cultural awareness,” she said in a statement reviewed

by The Strand. “This misunderstanding has had very serious consequences.”

“What is abundantly clear to me—and to

everyone in the CASCA leadership—is that in planning this conference we failed to meet the expectations you had for discussing critical issues regarding Indigenous rights,” she said. “And for that, we are profoundly sorry. I want to apologize again to Hilding Neilson and to the committees involved in the organization of this meeting.”

She stated that the CASCA Board reaffirmed its commitment to a full implementation of “the recommendations regarding Indigenous rights” in CASCA’s LRP. She also said that the CASCA Board will work to create “more opportunities to participate in an open discussion about Indigenous rights.”

The plan’s recommendations include the establishment of a CASCA committee to engage Indigenous communities; expanded research opportunities for Canadian undergraduates from marginalized groups; diversity targets to increase CASCA members from marginalized groups; and the creation of guiding principles centred on consent for astronomy projects on Indigenous territory.

Professor Pauline Barmby—co-chair of CASCA’s LRP, an astrophysics professor at Western University, and an attendee at the conference— wrote to The Strand in a capacity independent of the organizers and CASCA that Professor Neilson’s contributions to the plan “were very valuable and influential in our recommendations.”

She remarked: “There were mismatched expectations and poor communication by all parties involved. I don’t find this particularly surprising: like Prof. Neilson almost all of the (volunteer) conference organizers are professors, and most of us are pretty exhausted.

That tends not to lead to clear communication, especially about an issue that requires careful listening.”

“I absolutely would not dispute Prof. Neilson’s assertion that Canadian astronomy has a long way to go in terms of engaging with Indigenous peoples, and that action is more important than words,” she continued. “I think that the very high attendance at the Indigenous Cultural Awareness session that was part of the conference is a good sign and a good start. I’m hopeful that in-person sessions at next year’s conference will be even more productive.”

Professor Terry Bridges, conference attendee and a professor of Physics and Astronomy at Okanagan College, wrote to The Strand: “What happened to Hilding was awful, and many CASCA members such as myself were very upset about what happened,” noting that his views do not represent CASCA’s Equity and Inclusivity Committee (EIC) that he serves on, nor CASCA’s leadership. He confirmed that “there is internal ongoing CASCA work, including the CASCA Board and the EIC, underway to ensure that a situation like this doesn’t happen again.”

Professor Neilson criticized the statement for lacking a firm commitment to changing its course of action to the previous events. “That is the politest racism or anti-Indigeneity that I have experienced yet,” he remarked to The Strand. He later outlined firm calls to action on Twitter, including withdrawal of support for the TMT, the hiring of Indigenous faculty, and scholarships at every level for Indigenous academics.

Professor Ellison declined to respond to Professor Neilson’s individual assertions in The Strand’s interview, letting the statement stand as CASCA’s response.

04 EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF | KHADIJA ALAM EDITOR@THESTRAND.CA

On orienting ourselves

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strand V O L U M E

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The Strand has been the newspaper of record for Victoria University since 1953. It is published 12 times a year with a circulation of 1200 and is distributed in Victoria University buildings and across the University of Toronto’s St. George campus.

The Strand flagrantly enjoys its editorial autonomy and is committed to acting as an agent of constructive social change. As such, we will not publish material deemed to exhibit racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or other oppressive language.

@STRANDPAPER WWW.THESTRAND.CA

Around this time two years ago, I was one of thousands of doe-eyed, scarlet-shirted bodies gathered at the Vic quad, echoing chants set to off-beat rhythms that I can no longer recall. If you asked me to sum up my O-week in one word, it would be “disorienting.” I had a fun time, but I also had so many questions and concerns: What do I want to study? Which clubs should I get involved with? Is it bad that I’ve been talking to this person for 20 minutes and I can’t remember their name?

I’ve since found the answers to most of my questions, but still, if you asked me to sum up my undergraduate experience since O-week in one word, it would be “disorienting.” University life feels like a path riddled with steep slopes, speed bumps, and forks in the road. One answered question leads to another unanswered one: How do I explain my major in Literature and Critical Theory to my family of doctors and lawyers? Should I go to grad school even though I don’t know if academia is for me, since I don’t know how else to delay entering the ‘real world’? Or, to quote the great John Mulaney, “Do my friends hate me or do I just need to go to sleep?” Throw a pandemic on top of that, and the path turns into a whole maze.

The Strand’s annual Orientation Issue is a special occasion for me. Not only did Vol. 62’s edition mark my first involvement with this small but mighty publication, but the issue is always a good read to ring in a new academic year. Previous Orientation Issue editorials have covered the relevance of student papers amidst the “death of print journalism,” the prospect of a fresh start upon entering university, and the importance of community involvement in light of the Student Choice Initiative (which has, thankfully, been struck down a second time!).

As you can tell, “orientation” is more than just

a synonym for “frosh week” here at The Strand. To orient ourselves means to gather our bearings and to prepare for what’s to come. This feels especially true now more than ever. To me, orienting ourselves also means unlearning the dominant narratives that undergird stories and looking at them from oftneglected angles. It’s navigating campus life and social interaction after more than a year of being alone.

And understanding that although we all want some semblance of “normalcy,” COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere without equitable access to vaccines around the world. Orienting ourselves is proving to be a tad bit more complicated this fall, to say the least.

The Strand has kept this encapsulating sense of “orientation” in mind while preparing this issue for you.

We’ve tried to answer some of the questions you might have as we head into a hybrid fall semester. How is VUSAC operating and what services are they offering?

What are some tips to find research opportunities at UofT? How can I explore the city on a budget? Will I finally fall in love this O-week? The issue also contains The Strand’s signature style of stories that are personal to their authors but still tap into shared experiences— from an argument for a breadth of testing strategies in academia to a story about the journey of coming into one’s own identity.

This volume’s Orientation Issue feels extra special because it seems that all of us are on the cusp of a new beginning. Many of us are entering our first year of university, many of us are honorary first-years (looking at you, sophomores), and many of us feel like first-years after not stepping foot on campus in some eighteen months. Whether you’re making the trek from Vic to Con Hall for the first time, settling into the city after a long flight, or reading this issue from the Northrop Frye McDonald’s, I hope that the Orientation Issue and The Strand can be your companion as we all orient ourselves.

OPINIONS 05

EDITOR | EMMA PAIDRA OPINIONS@THESTRAND.CA

Pen and paper The daunting return to in-person testing EMMA MACKENZIE CONTRIBUTOR

I can recall with mixed emotions the last exams I wrote before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although I’m convinced any memory that predates COVID must be better than the past year and a half of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, I can say with confidence that this is one memory I do not associate with the ‘better days’ we so desperately long to return to.

Four exams over the course of three days—two on the same day, and one the following morning. Living off of Clif Bars and kombucha, I sat in the Hart House Library on four hours of sleep, rigorously attempting to look over the notes I had taken for my Art History class. As I sat there trying to memorize the titles, dates, artists, and materials of over 200 pieces of art (knowing I would be tested on just six of them), I questioned my right to exist in the academic world; I had never felt so unworthy of calling myself a UofT student.

I entered the exam room the next morning feeling completely defeated and incompetent. With only a few minutes to write down as much information as I could recall about each work, it felt as though my life depended on the pen in my hand, and it simply could not write fast enough.

The anxiety-inducing nature of timed exams is not an unfamiliar concept to post-secondary students. My story is one that thousands of others have experienced under those same overwhelming conditions. The standardized method of academic testing has been common in Western education culture since the nineteenth century, and students’ performance on these tests are pivotal determiners of their academic success. But, despite the long tradition of these timed, in-person exams, extraordinary circumstances brought on by the ongoing pandemic have forced institutions to re-evaluate their testing format.

As in-person classes shifted to online learning, so too did methods of standardized testing. As an English and Art History major, the bulk of my exams became

open-book or take-home style. Although I have many lamentations about online school, this was one aspect of the digital age of learning that I embraced as a positive change. For the first time during my undergraduate degree, I allowed myself to engage with the course material in lectures as opposed to focusing my attention on taking detailed notes. I was able to complete the readings at a pace that felt more comfortable to me and to absorb the information more thoroughly. For the first time, I felt like I was actually learning the material being taught, not simply memorizing it in preparation for the final exam. It was an incredibly liberating feeling during a time of such grueling isolation. It’s safe to say that I, along with many other students, have adjusted to the more lenient style of open-book testing over the past year, so it is no wonder that the thought of returning to in-person learning is a bit daunting.

While mulling over my own anxiety about the return to in-person exams, I found myself trying to identify the roots of why we have standardized testing in the first place. After some research, I found one explanation that stood out to me. As Maryellen Weimer, PhD puts it, standardized testing exists “to assess the degree to which the students have mastered the content and skills of the course.” But this begs the question: is it valid to determine a student’s academic merit and comprehension of the course material based on their ability to memorize 200-plus pieces of art in one night, or on their capacity to write an A-level essay in one hour? Certainly, we would not judge a well renowned author on their ability to do so. Why, then, would we place these limitations on students?

This isn’t to say there is no place for timed exams in the academic world. Vanessa Marshall, a first-year student at Carleton University, says that she prefers in-person exams for her particular program (Industrial Design) because they provide a proper setting to focus.

Marshall feels open-book exams provide her with a false sense of comfort and that she performs better during closed-book exams, especially with multiple choice

style questions. However, when speaking with Trishla Parekh, a fourth-year English major at UofT, the outlook on in-person exams shifted. Parekh expressed concerns specifically about writing timed essays on exams, as open-book style exams have allowed her to take her time and use available notes and sources, functioning more like a “timed assignment” than an exam. With these contrasting opinions in mind, I think open-book exams may be more appealing to arts and humanities students, and perhaps testing approaches should be reconsidered according to individual programs as schools reopen in the fall.

From my perspective, timed exams assess speed and your ability to regurgitate memorized facts.

Although there are undoubtedly situations when speed is necessary in life, your skills when writing an essay or identifying a passage from a novel you read three months ago should not be one of them. As an arts student who has experienced both methods of exam formatting, I will say that timed exams tend to shift my focus to fear of failure, overthrowing my ability to learn. I obsess over the grade-generating factors of exams as opposed to the educational component, and if you asked me to recite the details of any one of those 200 art pieces I memorized two years ago, well, I could not do it.

If the pandemic has taught us anything about the world of academia, it’s that there are other ways of doing things. Just as online learning itself can serve as a good alternative to in-person learning, there are alternative testing methods that can foster more efficient and inclusive learning specific to each program, helping to reduce anxiety levels and improve students’ mental health during exam season.

In the interest of twenty-first century progress, perhaps our methods of standardized testing also need to “grow as a tree through the ages,” as UofT’s motto so aptly puts it.

ILLUSTRATION| AMIE LEUNG

06 OPINIONS

EDITOR | EMMA PAIDRA OPINIONS@THESTRAND.CA

Commuting to college From the lens of a woman of colour

PHOTO | JED DELA CRUZ

LAYLARY H. JULIEN CONTRIBUTOR

Content Warning: sexual assault, physical assault, and gender-based violence Commuting regularly hasn’t been a thought that crossed my mind until it was my only option. Ever since my elementary years, school was always a walk away, and for the few times it wasn’t, my parents could afford to spare me a car ride. Now that I’m forced to live an entire city over from Toronto just to have a modest roof over my head, I see that those lifts were luxuries rather than commodities.

Furthermore, I somehow have to find my way through a part of Canada that I’ve never been to, on top of having little to no experience of the outside world (I don’t go out much... courtesy of my strict parents). Any time I show my face beyond the walls of my bedroom, I’m plagued with fear over the thought of an hour-long train ride with strangers.

I’ve seen the news. I’ve heard it from my parents. I’ve missed out on life’s pleasures, such as sleepovers and parties between friends. After being taught about the horrors of this world, how am I supposed to adapt to this '180' way of living? I have classes that will start as early as 9 am and end as late as 8 pm this year; how many predators will be lurking, waiting for their next victim at those times? It’s important to address these fears and instill an awareness of safety amongst new students, and I will be doing so to the best of my ability.

These are the worst-case scenarios that no one thinks will happen to them until they do. Statistics

Canada’s Martha Burczycka lists numerical representations of college students’ experiences with sexual assault in 2019, reporting that 71 percent of Canadian pupils witness or experience “unwanted sexualized behavior” involving fellow students or school staff on and off campus. Additionally, 77 percent of women and 70 percent of men who have been victims of sexual assault report that at least one incident occurred off campus. These findings are even more troubling when paired with the fact that off-campus locations, such as Canadian transit hubs, don’t track sexual assault incidents that occur at their bus stops or train stations. In 2019, The Globe and Mail published an article about transit passengers who were victims of sexual violence from 2013 to 2017. In the article, Annie Burns-Pieper opens with three cases where young women and one minor were either groped, physically assaulted, stalked, or had their undergarments photographed without their consent. Although the police were notified, “the transit systems did not record any of these incidents in their statistics on sexual assault and unwanted sexual acts on transit.”

The Globe and Mail highlights that this lack of information is political in nature; when these crimes are reported, victims are told that the transit’s agency isn’t responsible, that the crime wasn’t sexual or regarded as criminal behavior, or that transit employees weren’t trained to inform women how to report misogynistic behavior. Not only does this perpetuate rape culture, but it also undermines how dangerous commuting can be.

Furthermore, CTV News reported that Statistics Canada found that “more than six in 10 Indigenous women” have been physically or sexually assaulted at least once in their life compared to

“more than four in 10 in non-Indigenous women.”

The world can truly be a dark place, and because there’s very little light at the end of the tunnel— i.e., support and justice for victims—the issue can seem impenetrable. But the best thing a likely target can do is prepare themselves. When making your commute, travel with a friend or two in order to be able to protect each other; a single assaulter is less likely to attack a group. If you’re a loner like me, try acting like you’re with someone. If you witness an assault, start recording and being loud to attract attention. Because of Canada’s stringent laws regarding self-defense, the best “weapon” a potential victim can use is an airhorn, and even so, warns The Coast, “burst your assailant’s eardrums and you still might face charges.”

Lack of safety isn’t the only issue faced by public transportation; there is also the issue of accessibility. Public transit has historically been an accessible means of travel for people in need of transportation. Given the vast number of jobs that COVID-19 took from the working class, the TTC should be available to all, right? Yet, in 2019, Narcity Toronto’s Allysha Howse declared that Toronto has “The Worst Commute In All Of North America,” with Expert Market naming it the sixth worst transit system in the world. Howse argues that Toronto transit often has delays and route closures, has the highest average commute times in the world, and is costly (two-thirds of unemployed people have low access to transit).

The idea of commuting in the fall is already dreadful, but what really matters is getting to and from school safely and without incident.

PHOTO | LINEPHOTO

OPINIONS 07

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 30 AUGUST 2021

An unusual circumstance The thoughts of a second-year student on a 'second' first-year experience

PHOTO | HANA NIKCEVIC

CHLOE BANTLE CONTRIBUTOR

When I heard that classes would be in-person for the upcoming semester, I was over the moon. The anxiety set in a couple of minutes later. What if I walk into the wrong lecture hall? What if I can’t find my classroom? What if I humiliate myself in front of 500 people in the middle of a lecture? What if everyone stares at me? (And so on and so forth.)

You know, the usual questions an introvert—and perhaps the occasional extrovert—asks themselves before walking into any given social situation.

By nature, I find big groups of people intimidating, but this doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in meeting new people. In fact, I can’t wait to see my fellow second-year students faceto-face after spending all of last year viewing them through a screen. I’m hoping that we can all band together and figure out our 'second first year' together. I have a feeling many of us are wondering how we’re supposed to navigate this massive campus and make it to all of our classes on time, or how we’re going to manage closed-book exams again. These questions are what one would expect a first-year student to be asking themselves as they arrive on campus for the first time, but during this rather exceptional school year, second-years will be asking the very same questions.

On the bright side, our unique first year experience still provided us with the necessary tools to be successful in university-level courses, something incoming first-years won’t yet have.

I found certain aspects of online learning to be quite handy, such as the ability to pause, rewind, or speed up recorded lectures. If I missed a lecture or found myself in a rush to get through

the material, I could simply double the speed of the recording and whiz through the lesson, with a few pauses to finish taking notes. It’s a pity we can’t pause lectures in real time, but being able to attend lectures last year—synchronous or recorded—gave us the necessary blueprints upon which to build the foundation of our study and note-taking habits. I might not know exactly what an in-person lecture entails, but I won’t be coming in unprepared. This revelation helped alleviate my anxieties…somewhat.

For all my experience in online lectures, there’s little I can do to stop worrying about the social interaction associated with in-person learning.

Luckily, I was able to spend my first year living in residence. I’ve met many of the people who make up the Victoria College community, and I can confirm that the people here are friendly and welcoming. Whether you are a first-year coming into university for the first time, or a second-year who never had the opportunity to visit campus, rest assured that your fellow Victoria students are more than willing to offer their help.

Aside from academics, clubs and sports have also experienced many changes. Last year, I joined the Victoria Chorus, which took place entirely online. Rather than having live concerts, as was the norm, we ended up recording ourselves singing and sending the videos in by email. This year, I’m hoping we’ll be able to rehearse in person, if the University permits, and maybe even put on a show or two. As with everything else about the upcoming semester, I have mixed emotions. I’m excited yet nervous to attend an in-person choir rehearsal, but I’m glad I managed to acquire some experience, albeit in an unusual format, before returning to

'normal.'

'Returning to normal.' For first- and secondyears alike, we aren’t necessarily returning to 'normal.' As an institution, the University is reinstating some of its old methods of operation, but we students are entering an entirely new set of circumstances with which we have little—if any— experience. It’s important to remember that many of us are making the transition from high school to online university to in-person university, or just from online high school to in-person university. For second-years, that’s three different lifestyles in two years—it’s rather disorienting. I managed to settle into online learning (reluctantly), and now I’m jumping into in-person learning. The transition, though less jarring than the one from high school to university, is a transition nonetheless. Anxieties and worries of any kind are valid. We are, after all, still in the middle of a pandemic. It’s perfectly acceptable to worry about what life will be like in September, especially when changes can occur without warning.

All in all, I eagerly anticipate the start of second year, and I can’t wait to return to Toronto.

During these trying times, I hope we can all come together, whether we’re in our first year or our fourth. We’re all coming back—or, in the case of those who haven’t been to UofT yet, coming in—to a vastly different year than the last. Life on campus is returning to 'normal.' For those of us who don’t quite know what that entails and who find themselves worried, know that you’ve still got some experience to guide you and that those of us at Vic are always willing to help out.

08 FEATURES

EDITOR | ANNA SOKOLOVA FEATURES@THESTRAND.CA

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ILLUSTRATION | YOON-JI KWEON

FEATURES 09

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 30 AUGUST 2021

LUNA MC CONTRIBUTOR

“He was totally flirting with you! Go get his number!”

My friend squeezed my arm excitedly. It was my first year at UofT and I was nervous. I also wanted a boyfriend.

Badly. I’d never had one before and everyone told me it was high time. So what happens when the guy who's nice enough to you starts flirting with you? Well, you flirt back, of course (or at least try to), and you tell him that you’d love to go out with him (even if you’re not completely sure that you like him), and you convince yourself he’s really cute (when the lighting's good) and that (perhaps) you could kiss him.

So you do kiss him, but it’s not all fireworks and magic; in fact, all you can really think about is how his beard itches, and how you’d much rather be alone in bed watching Bridget Jones’s Diary for the third time than making out with him.

My friends always told me that if the beard scratched me, it meant I wasn't into him enough. “You just have to experiment more, babe.” Okay, fine. Go out with more boys. I nodded my head. I could do that.

Each new experience felt like déjà vu. It didn’t matter if it was a different boy, a different setting, or a different month. After each escapade, I found myself feeling terrible about what I had done, knowing that I hadn’t really enjoyed it. But hey, at least I had a fun story to tell my friends now.

In retrospect, maybe I should have realized my sexuality before. I knew that I wasn’t straight; dates with

relationship.” Comphet for short, it’s a system that everyone’s thrown into the second they’re born. And if you’re designated to be a pretty baby girl, you get called “princess” and told you’ll be a real boy magnet when you grow up. Assumptions are thrown around like confetti. Women are taught to perform their femininity for men. We’re told to be fun, bubbly, and smart (but not too smart). Our dresses are supposed to be just the perfect amount of revealing (but not too revealing).

We're supposed to walk behind, talk softly, and love unconditionally. Realizing the forces of comphet in one’s own life can be incredibly powerful, but also sad. You realize how much of your personality didn’t even come from you. Something as personal as desires sometimes just ends up being what we’ve been told to desire.

One day, as I scrolled through social media, I discovered the Lesbian Masterdoc. I believe that the Lesbian Masterdoc is a gift from Sappho herself. It's a big document explaining comphet and its effects in detail.

The second I learned about this, something clicked. I realized my desire for male validation wasn’t even my own. It was something that society told me would make me worthy and more valued.

In the middle of the crazy year we had with lockdowns and social isolation, I don’t think I would have realized the role that comphet has played in my life if not for this resource. The shift from going out multiple nights a week to being at home 24/7 was abrupt, to say the least. Day in and day out, alongside the rest of the world, I would repeat the same routine over and over again. Wake up, get changed, log on to Zoom lectures,

Aretha Franklin once sang, “You make me feel like a natural woman,” and while I love Aretha and mean no disrespect, I realized there’s nobody on planet Earth that has the capacity to make me feel more like a woman than I do. My relationship to my gender and my sexuality is uniquely my own, even if others don’t understand it, and even when I can’t find a way to make people understand it. I don’t have the right terminology or statistics to express how masculine or feminine I am, or how gay or straight I am. I don’t need it, anyway.

Having uncovered new aspects of myself, devoid of the male gaze and societal expectations, I was high on the excitement of my newfound identity when my old friend, loneliness, showed up. Now, loneliness and I have a long history together—but with the grace of technology, quick fixes have always been easily available.

Not so much during quarantine, though. Once again, I found myself grappling in the dark for something to make me feel better, only to find myself at the other end.

To know myself, to befriend and be there for myself.

Cravings and desires are scary, especially when they’re not socially acceptable. Almost every queer person who’s ever gone through a denial phase knows this. I know this, and I thought that with the power of accepting my bisexual identity, the sexuality struggle was behind me. Boy, was I mistaken. What then ensued was not so much a crisis, but rather an awakening.

I realized that I really didn’t miss men at all. Maybe I missed the attention, the flirting and the free drinks, but none of what really mattered. Not the intimacy, not the emotional connections. And definitely not the scratchy

AS I DARED TO OPEN UP MY PANDORA'S BOX OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER, I REALISED THAT THE ONLY REASON WHY I FELT LIKE A WOMAN WAS BECAUSE I DIDN’T FEEL LIKE A MAN. AS SHATTERING AS THIS REVELATION WAS, IT GAVE ME THE SPACE TO EXAMINE MY GENDER IDENTITY ON MY OWN TERMS.

girls and one lesbian situationship clarified that enough for me. But when it came to men, I figured I just hadn’t met the right one. So I called myself bisexual. While I know that bisexuality is a completely valid identity in and of itself, I couldn’t help but feel that I was personally using it as a placeholder. It fit me like an old pair of gloves: a little too big and rough around the edges, definitely not a perfect fit, but, well, they kept my hands warm.

Truth be told, I found myself in a grey area that I didn’t quite know how to navigate. I didn’t like men, but I liked when they gave me attention. I liked being flirted with. I liked dressing up pretty (but the specific kind of pretty, the kind that’s expected of me). I was ashamed to admit it to myself, but I realized that my femininity was a performance for everybody but myself.

The performance went a bit like this: welcome to the show, take a seat. I could be the perfect amount of coy and soft-spoken and flirty. This play was as much comedy as it was tragedy. The first act had me jumping, grunting, and panting as I struggled to pull the Spanx above my ass. For the second act, I pulled out my curve hugging, booty-popping, body-con dress that my friend assured me would make me a guy magnet. With lipstick and mascara applied, with my hair long, beautiful, and straight, I was ready. Each night I went out, I followed a similar script—a script that I later realized wasn’t mine to begin with.

Compulsive heterosexuality. Equality Archive describes it as “a system of oppression that denies people’s sexual self-determination by presenting heterosexuality as the sole model of acceptable sexual and romantic

log off. At night, motivated by the powerful forces of boredom, I’d try on my old dresses and ‘going out’ clothes. Without any other distraction, without the party and the friends and the booze and the boys, I was left gazing at myself in the mirror. The presence of just my reflection staring back at me felt overwhelming at times, partly because I knew that something had changed. I had changed. Many of the clothes that I owned didn’t even feel like me. They were what I had been told looked good on my body. And then, dressing for myself, knowing that the only person perceiving me was me, made me realize just how far I went for the validation of others.

Moreover, the little isolation bubble I found myself in gave me the space to re-examine many of the things about myself I’d just assumed to be true. As I dared to open up my Pandora's box of sexuality and gender, I realized that the only reason why I felt like a woman was because I didn’t feel like a man. As shattering as this revelation was, it gave me the space to examine my gender identity on my own terms. It's powerful when you realize that gender expression truly doesn’t have any essence or rulebook; it can be whatever you want it to be.

And thus the experimentation began: I started small by chopping off my chest-long hair (much to my parent’s chagrin). Over time, I added borrowed (read: stolen) shirts from my dad's closet to my wardrobe. Humans are multidimensional—as I gazed at myself, with my shirt neatly ironed and my short hair slicked back, I uncovered a new version of me. A version that didn’t replace the old me, but existed peacefully alongside it.

I still felt like a woman, but more so on my own terms.

beards.

Sometimes I wish I could have it all written down for me. A big guidebook explaining the complexities of gender, sexuality, attachment, and desire. The truth is, though, you can have all the guidebooks to your life and it still won’t make the process any easier. The endeavor to know oneself is a lifelong journey. It takes work, it takes honesty, and it takes courage—but man, is it worth it.

As we prepare to head into campus and begin life again, I have my reservations and anxieties about coming to an old place as the new me. While my straight friends may not completely understand my experiences, I realize that it is not their total understanding I need, but rather their support and love for me as I continue to evolve as a person. Furthermore, while I’m not that afraid of looking typically queer and people making assumptions of my sexuality based on my appearence, I do fear the much-dreaded question: “What are you?”

Truthfully, I still don’t know. I spent a long time trying to fit myself into a label. I tried to be more feminine, I tried to repress my sexuality for the first 18 years of my life, I gave up and tried putting on a label I knew kind of fit me—but mostly didn’t. I might be completely gay, or I might not. However, my sexuality and gender identity don’t need to be palatable for others. It’s okay for me to not know, and it’s definitely okay for me to not have the words to explain them to others. Language is limited and feelings and desires are so complex. How can we ever hope to fit something so vast into a box so small?

All I know is that I am a queer person, who’s now gayer than ever, and I’m not ashamed of it.

10 SCIENCE

EDITOR | JESS NASH SCIENCE@THESTRAND.CA

Back to the lab Navigating a return to in-person research JESS NASH SCIENCE EDITOR

To undergraduate students seeking lab experiences, global shutdowns in March 2020 in response to COVID-19 were uniquely devastating. Much-anticipated introductory summer projects were cancelled, and many September plans ultimately fell through as well. Students across every year of study were left without important practical research experience, or they had to take on unexpected remote alternatives, such as bioinformatics work.

“COVID has been a wrecking ball to the sandcastle I'd imagined undergrad research to be,” related third-year Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology student Albert Cheng to The Strand. “Where I thought I'd be playing with Petri dishes and pipettes, instead I was subsetting data frames thousands of rows long and constructing mixed effects models. In all likelihood, my first time carrying out classics like the Western blot or inducing mutations in my cells will be in the artificial context of a laboratory course instead of the messy reality of a bona fide wet lab.”

Now, though, it looks like real-life research could be back on the table at UofT. With a better handle on COVID-19 allowing tentatively optimistic plans for a return to in-person classes this year, UofT’s lecture halls and

labs are planning to open their doors to undergrads again.

UofT’s strong research culture means that there are plenty of avenues to get into a lab, even without the past experience of which many prospective student researchers have been deprived. Recent Biochemistry and Cell & Systems Biology graduate Flora Zhiqi Wang suggests that second- or third-year students apply to Research Opportunity Programs (ROPs), which are specially targeted to students without past experience; undergrad research opportunities organized by Graduate and Life Sciences Education (GLSE); or, for third- and fourth-year students, thesis research courses.

Students can also directly contact professors who head labs of interest to them. Cheng tells students to “[b]e ahead of the curve—particularly if this is your first research experience, try to contact [principal investigators (PIs)] even months ahead of the start date.” For summer opportunities, this means December and January are key times to reach out to PIs, usually in the form of cold emailing. Before sending out inquiries, though, Cheng advises peers to “make sure to read what [professors] do; not just skimming a few papers, but going through the methods.”

Similarly, Wang recommends: “Tailor your email to the [professor’s] research and keep your email short when

reaching out to [them].”

As for what to expect from the work itself, the day-today experience will vary between individual labs. Generally speaking, one can expect to apply basic skills learned in course practical sections, such as safety procedures and use of personal protective equipment (PPE), basic calculations, pipetting, and so on. Some refreshers on these skills can be found with quick searches on Google or YouTube. More advanced or lab-specific skills will typically be demonstrated as part of training, and students will have ample opportunity to practice in the lab.

Importantly, Wang reminds students that “[they] are definitely free to leave or switch labs after the research course if [they] do not find the PI’s mentorship style or the lab environment to be conducive to [their] development.”

In this unique and difficult situation, most students have gone through similar challenges and setbacks. From professors to undergraduates, no one is alone in feeling held back from valuable opportunities by the pandemic—but from here, there’s only room to move forward.

Find more information about UofT’s student research programs at artsci.utoronto.ca and glse.utoronto.ca.

PHOTO | ARTEM PODREZ

Cave syndrome The psychology of returning to face-to-face social interactions MARY DITTA CONTRIBUTOR

Though it seems like everyone around us couldn’t be happier about in-person classes, seeing friends face-toface, and visiting every patio in the city, recent survey data suggests that they’re actually in the minority. Among the 52 percent of Canadians that reported feeling anxious about our reopening in an Association for Canadian Studies survey, 18 to 24-year-olds showed the most unease: 68 percent, even among the fully immunized.

Psychiatrist Arthur Bregman coined the term “cave syndrome”: a reluctance to once again venture outside one’s home. Cave syndrome can be as mild as feeling apprehensive about dinner plans or as extreme as a full withdrawal from friends and family. If you’re wondering why our reopening is causing anxiety—even though in-person life is nothing new—here are some of the reasons behind this unease and steps you can take to overcome it.

Transitional periods spike anxiety levels. The uncertainty associated with change to our norms and routines has been well-documented. The amygdala— the tiny, almond-shaped part of our brain responsible for memory, emotion, and fear—is trained to be alert and to anticipate danger in unfamiliar situations. Just as it’s normal to feel uneasy during a major transitional period, like starting a new job or your first day of college, it’s normal to feel unease about not knowing exactly what to expect as the world reopens. Be kind to yourself and acknowledge the evolutionary validity of those emotions, but remember that there are resources available to help you navigate the adjustment (UofT’s Health and Wellness Centre, to name one).

Social relationships and boundaries have changed.

COVID-19 has permanently altered many of our social norms, and it’s difficult to anticipate what will and won’t be considered socially acceptable. How restrictive will our interactions be? What will people be comfortable with?

Will vaccination status or social distancing diligence impact our social hierarchies? Make a point of openly discussing boundaries and expectations, respecting each other’s personal comfort levels, and speaking up if you don’t feel comfortable.

Medical anxiety. The pandemic is still very much happening. While much of Canada is seeing success with vaccine programs, our perspective of the pandemic’s life cycle is a privileged one: many communities around the world are in the midst of outbreaks and vaccine shortages.

Personal factors—such as individual experiences with COVID, age, and health issues—also mean that we all have varying degrees of concern about our safety. Research around other traumatic events like natural disasters suggests that it can take up to three years to experience full mental health recovery and comfort with a return to normal.

There’s no right way to jump back into things—everyone will respond at a different pace.

Just as common as cave syndrome, though, is the sentiment that the pandemic has spurred the re-evaluation of priorities and what matters most. For those of us who have experienced life slowing down, it’s been easier to let empty time be, without giving into the compulsion to fill it with activities we aren’t necessarily looking forward to.

The uncertainty of reopening isn’t a directive to return to life exactly as it was before; it’s an opportunity to create something even better.

PHOTO | JEFFREY CZUM

SCIENCE 11

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 30 AUGUST 2021

In-person classes and inoculation

ILLUSTRATION | NATALIE SONG

How will herd immunity, variants, and indoor classes shape our school year?

JULIA BERARDINI CONTRIBUTOR

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been drastic changes accompanying the need to limit personto-person interaction. One of the most impactful changes for students was the transition of schooling to an online format. After a year of almost entirely online classes, inperson classes finally seem to be arriving in the fall.

Throughout the summer, UofT has continued to release guidelines regarding in-person classes. Notably, in an email on August 20, UofT announced that “all members of the University community—including students, staff, faculty, and librarians will be required to provide proof of full vaccination or register in the University’s rapid screening program.” Alongside this policy, the University will not be instating classroom capacity or social distancing restrictions.

These new developments pose interesting questions regarding the safety and feasibility of in-person classes.

How will the rollout of vaccines across Ontario impact the upcoming school year?

There is a significant amount of nuance needed to fully estimate the effects of vaccination on the school year, but one can use broad vaccine statistics to approximate what it might be like. Many shifting factors, including international student vaccination rates, viral variants, and the overall fluid nature of this pandemic mean that no prediction can be set in stone.

At the time of writing, just over 82 percent of eligible people in Ontario have at least one dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, while 75 percent of eligible people are fully vaccinated. That said, this number is subject to variation at UofT, considering the younger demographics and diverse nationalities of those attending the University.

Herd immunity is a state where there are enough immune people in a population to stop the spread of the virus. Current estimates suggest that we need at least 70 percent of all people fully vaccinated—not just those eligible—in order to achieve herd immunity against

COVID-19. At the time of writing, just over 65 percent of all Ontarians are fully vaccinated. Given this statistic, it can be estimated that there may not be full herd immunity within Ontario by the start of classes—but it may well be achieved within the UofT community.

High vaccination rates among UofT students are to be expected with the University’s new vaccination policy. This, combined with mandatory masking in UofT buildings, means that there will be significant protection from COVID-19. As Ontario vaccination rates continue to rise and risks of infection, severe disease, and transmission fall, students can likely expect a greater return to pre-pandemic normalcy.

How will COVID-19 variants affect the feasibility of in-person class?

One of the big questions surfacing as the pandemic continues is how the many COVID-19 variants—primarily the Delta variant—will impact current reopening. There is certainly the fear of a variant-driven fourth wave that may lead to yet another lockdown.

That being said, there has been little to no proof that our current vaccines are truly ineffective against the Delta variant, which now makes up the majority of COVID-19 cases in Ontario. A study done in July in The New England Journal of Medicine found that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 88 percent effective against the Delta variant and 93.7 percent effective against the Alpha (UK) variant.

The Moderna vaccine was shown to be 72 percent effective against the Delta variant after just one dose.

Though these numbers are estimates, they do show that the most popular vaccines for young Ontarians provide excellent protection against the Delta variant. Most importantly, full vaccination greatly reduces the severity of Delta infection, and hospitalizations are incredibly rare.

With Ontario’s current vaccination rates, it can be assumed that hospitalizations and deaths will continue to stay low going forward, and that any fourth wave in Ontario would be less severe than those previous. This means that as long as

everything continues as is, variants do not pose a significant threat to in-person classes next school year.

How can everyone continue to stay safe indoors?

The pandemic has created significant apprehension towards returning to in-person classes, especially since crowds of people have largely been associated with superspreading events. Transitioning from over a year of athome schooling to large lecture halls will certainly be a big change for students, and safety will be a top priority for many. Considering the University’s aforementioned safety protocols, the upcoming academic year will be very safe.

That said, social distancing where possible and limiting the size of groups can further contribute to safety, even if these actions are not mandated. Of course, public health measures are constantly being updated as COVID-19 research continues and the situation changes locally, so it is always best to listen to doctors and other public health professionals for the most accurate advice.

Most importantly, one of the key aspects of staying safe during the return to in-person schooling is to prioritize personal mental health. UofT offers resources to help students cope with the transition back to in-person classes, and it can be incredibly beneficial to read over and take advantage of them. Do not be afraid to speak with friends, family, or mental health professionals about your feelings and experiences regarding the transition back to campus.

There is support available for you, and no problem is too big or small for you to seek assistance.

Please see the following support options: U of T Mental Health Resources Info Page: https:// www.viceprovoststudents.utoronto.ca/covid-19/ CAMH Mental Health and COVID-19: https://www. camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-health-and-covid-19 Ontario Mental Health Resources: https://ontario. cmha.ca/provincial-mental-health-supports/

10 ARTS AND CULTURE

EDITOR | JANNA ABBAS ARTSANDCULTURE@THESTRAND.CA

Room to grow Extending the coming-of-age story PHOTO | FELIX MOONEERAM

ANNA SOKOLOVA FEATURES EDITOR

Since I was a kid, coming-of-age films have charmed me—I eat them up.

Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, racing through a streetlight-lit freeway tunnel. The Breakfast Club crew sat in a circle, stammering out their secrets. Mean Girls’ Cady breaking her plastic prom queen crown into pieces. Their journeys feel at once innocent and ancient, cathartic and uncertain. As I watched these characters become, I felt I was watching something ageless and universal. I waited my turn.

But it isn’t ageless or universal, I found out as I watched myself grow older than the characters I loved. They graduated high school having grown into people, and their stories ended. Mine didn’t. They had reached their end goal: finished high school and enrolled in university. I had passed those mythologized ages of 16 and 17, but I had not come of age.

It was when I could no longer wait for the growing to suddenly occur— as I reached the designated age and period of life—that I realized just how synonymous the coming-of-age genre has become with teenhood. Looking up coming-of-age movies set during university pulls up articles listing coming-of-age films to watch before starting it. I’ve comforted a friend who was freaking out about turning 18. I have myself occasionally forgotten my real age, stuck to an idea of myself as a seventeen-year-old, as if I had left some growing unfinished.

My own university experience has been coloured by a flooding sense that I’ve been left unfinished, but life has gone on anyway. Therefore, the coming-of-age media I hold closest to my heart grapples with that desire for continuing growth by extending its time frame. TV is well-equipped to handle this because it has the freedom of more screen time to delve into the way people change as time passes; however, movies can pull this off as well.

Moonlight combines together a child, teen, and adult Chiron and shows the way his experiences as a small boy and his unresolved issues as a teenager affect his behaviour as a man. By the end of the film, he has begun to open up, and the catharsis of that step of progress warmed the late bloomer in me.

PHOTO | NETFLIX

Watching the second season of The End of the F***ing World felt like breathing fresh air: James and Alyssa, two years after their high school adventures, are still dealing with the trauma of their experiences from the first season, and the events that have happened since. Alyssa is a waitress and is getting married; James is grieving his dad and his and Alyssa’s past.

They are both different, and they are both flawed. Their road continues.

Watching them, I felt okay that I was taking my time, too.

PHOTO | NETFLIX PHOTO | NETFLIX

While graduation is a useful and common ending for coming-of-age media, some pieces acknowledge the fallacy of equating graduation with catharsis. In Lady Bird, the protagonist dreams of getting out of her town and into university; still, the last scene of the film places her at a college party, her conflict with her mother still unresolved, as she realizes that, despite her expectations, she is still unsatisfied. Has she, at that point, moved from childhood into adulthood? She’s grown, but she still has more growing ahead of her. In university and beyond, she could, like many people, reevaluate her sexuality and gender, drop everything for a passion, go through trauma and reconciliation with loved ones, and have experiences that may be associated with teenhood but are, in reality, not limited to it. And if that’s the case, at what point will Lady Bird—will we—have come of age?

To me, this question is central for understanding what coming-of-age films and TV shows set during university should look like. Whether or not someone is actually in university, this age feels like an in-between. After Normal People conveys this sentiment in another way by dropping in on all, it is different from high school: students have a completed period of the main characters over several years, from high school to college, finding life behind them, but their future outside of institutionalized education them changed each time. Connell and Marianne grapple with their pasts, remains unclear. oscillating towards and away from each other, struggling with problems that have become familiar but keep developing in new ways. There is no central point at which they come of age—they are continuously growing.

Like me, I thought with relief, watching the screen with a blanket over my head. Like all of us.

The fear remains that I will age past these characters, too, and still won’t feel done growing. Who will my fictional peers be? The solution isn’t to rehash the classic story in other settings and ages; growing looks different depending on when and where it occurs. As much as I sometimes feel stuck at age 17, I’m not in the same place and I’m not the same person. Perhaps, as I graduate university, I’ll look with new eyes at Pitch Perfect and Legally Blonde; moving further on, I’ll have The Devil Wears Prada and 500 Days of Summer. And I can’t say I’d mind being the same age as Bilbo in The Hobbit.

To me, each of these are still coming-of-age films—with the caveat that coming of age is not a one-and-done, singular process that ends when the last bell rings. There should be movies and TV series with protagonists growing at every age, and for growing people of every age. Rather than PHOTO | NETFLIX promoting a longing towards a certain limited period of life, I want a genre that recognizes that we are all growing, all the time.

ARTS AND CULTURE 13

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 30 AUGUST 2021

Finding balance How my love of the arts turned toxic, and served as a reminder to live life fully JANNA ABBAS ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR

During the past year, I, like many people, found immense solace in the arts. From movies and TV shows to books and even painting, I finally had the time to indulge in my passions. The first few months of quarantine passed, and I was happily catching up on the TV shows everyone was raving about and finally making progress on my Goodreads challenge, all while holding on to the hope that soon, things would return to normal.

As we all know now, this was not the case. Before long, I started to hate everything that I used to love about the arts. The characters in the movies and books I was consuming became harsh reminders of everything I had missed out on. However foolish it may seem, I felt cheated. Suddenly, it felt like all the media and books I had been enjoying were mocking me, laughing maniacally along as another character experienced something I never would. Or

so I thought.

After much wallowing and a lot of sorrow, I remembered one of the main reasons that I had fallen in love with the arts in the first place: escapism. I could blissfully ignore the fact that I couldn’t leave my house, didn’t get a graduation, and missed out on the freshman experience by losing myself in countless episodes and chapters. I found comfort in living vicariously through my favorite characters in a feeble attempt to disguise my pain. And it worked, at least for a while.

As you can imagine, though, this practice quickly turned toxic. I feel like there’s a fine line between using the arts to occasionally escape the perils of life and completely succumbing to books and movies because you feel like your life will never be as interesting or as ‘perfect’ as the ones you read about or watch. I had gladly crossed this line before I realized that even though I was experiencing so many stories and lives, I was missing out on my own.

Now, this is not just my long-winded way of

saying that quarantine turned me into a Film Bro™.

With restrictions easing up, I’m reminded of how much I want to do and see outside of the confines of a book or a laptop screen. So, from now on, I will be living my life through song lyrics: finding the sunshine and warmth that Lorde describes in “Solar Power,” and experiencing the “poetry in the streets” that The 1975 sings about. I will be exploring the art and culture of Toronto while taking photos I can look back on to remind myself of the adventures I’ve had. In short, I will be putting my love of the arts to good use and romanticizing my life to the fullest, and I sincerely hope that you, too, can do the same.

If you still need a push or a little inspiration, the Arts and Culture team has prepared a playlist that will hopefully guide you along your many adventures:

ILLUSTRATION | AMIE LEUNG

An Arts and Culture guide to Toronto RION LEVY ASSOCIATE ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR

This fall, the University of Toronto will finally welcome back many of its students. For some, Toronto will be a completely new space, and for those who knew the city before the pandemic, it will be a somewhat different one. In light of this, I present to you an introduction to the arts and culture scene in Toronto.

Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) The ROM is Canada’s largest cultural institution.

It features art, cultural artifacts, and natural history exhibits. It is located north of the Philosopher’s Walk.

Post-secondary students receive free general entry on Wednesdays with a student ID. Special exhibitions and installations cost extra.

Gardiner Museum Located next to Annesley Hall, the Gardiner Museum is one of the world’s only museums dedicated to ceramics, showcasing a collection of almost 4,000 pieces from around the globe. It frequently hosts new exhibitions, meaning that there is almost always something new to see. Students receive free admission with ID. Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) Just steps away from the south side of campus, the AGO is located at the intersection of Dundas and Beverly. The gallery features one of the largest

collections of art in North America! Individuals under 25 are eligible for a free membership that offers free entry to the museum and to special exhibitions.

Bata Shoe Museum (BSM) The BSM boasts an impressive collection of over 13,000 shoes and shoe-related objects from over the past 4,500 years! The museum lies across the street from Rotman Commerce, at Bloor and St George, and offers discounted tickets at $8 to students with ID. Koffler Centre of the Arts The Koffler Centre is an organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and discussion of the arts through a range of events and a year-round gallery that features Canadian artists. It is located next to Trinity Bellwoods Park, at 180 Shaw St. Admission is free.

UofT Art Museum Situated right on campus, the UofT Art Museum has two galleries that feature four collections altogether. The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery is located in Hart House, and the University of Toronto Art Centre is just a few metres away at University College.

Both offer free admission.

Campus Theatre In a pandemic-free world, UofT’s theatre scene is rich and exciting. Hart House Theatre runs four to five shows each season, offering discounted tickets for students. Additionally, the UC Follies, SMC Troubadours, Trinity College Dramatic Society, and Victoria College Drama Society offer shows of all kinds during the school year.

Mirvish Mirvish Productions offers some of the best, well-known theatre in Toronto. The company owns the Royal Alexandra Theatre, the Princess of Wales Theatre, the Ed Mirvish Theatre, and the CAA Theatre.

Unfortunately, there are no student discounts, as prices vary based on specifics.

Live Music There are over 130 music venues registered with the Toronto Music Directory in the downtown core.

Whatever your taste, there is no shortage of shows to attend. Venues with student-friendly ticket prices include The Horseshoe Tavern, The Danforth Music Hall, The Velvet Underground, and The Phoenix Concert Theatre.

12 ARTS AND CULTURE

EDITOR | JANNA ABBAS ARTSANDCULTURE@THESTRAND.CA

Chalkboardom: a new pastime The tale of my newfound affection for colourfully powdered fingers and 2D art.

PHOTO | ESPERANZA DORONILA

adriana goraieb contributor

Overcoming boredom during the pandemic has easily allowed leeway for experimentation and selfdiscovery. I have had friends learn to play the ukulele, develop a passion for cooking, launch pseudonymous social media accounts to showcase their electric guitar skills, and even become adequately decent at skateboarding.

Me? I didn’t learn anything new for the first couple of months so much as I used my free time to perfect my existing skills—sitting at the piano for hours at a time, practicing dance routines in the kitchen as I waited for tea to boil, and even making my friends bracelets using yarn I’ve had since the age of seven.

I’ll admit—as rewarding as it was to focus on selfimprovement, I ached to experience the serotonin rush of successfully stumbling upon a new hobby and entering the honeymoon phase of having it consume my every waking thought.

And one day, as though the universe read my mind, it happened—as I wiped clean the chalkboard wall in my best friend’s room, I drew inspiration from Levi Ackerman fanart I had once seen, picked up some chalk, put up a picture for reference, and drew him as best as I could. I have no shame in saying that my pride in that sketch spurred me to try some more, and chalkboard drawings quickly piqued my interest and took my world by storm.

Dated since Paleolithic times, chalk drawing represents one of the earliest forms of human artistic expression. The Paleolithic technique consisted of using natural stone available in either black, white, or sanguine (derived from the French word for bloodred), and although it was primarily used for making preliminary sketches of a larger work, it was later developed as an artistic medium in its own right in the late Renaissance period (late sixteenth century).

Famous artists including da Vinci, Rembrandt,

and Michelangelo habitually used chalks for their drawings, as they were deemed the most effective for quick sketches and simple-lined drawings. Later, twentieth century artists, including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, pioneered its use for finished works.

And yet, I’ve rarely heard of chalk being taken into consideration in discussions about art. It is often brushed off as simplistic, nothing more than the mere foundation over which a more ‘complex’ work of art shall be painted. We often centre our focus on pencil sketches, acrylic paints, and digital art (all of which, by the way, are absolutely beautiful), inadvertently forgetting to acknowledge this ancient art form which has sneakily climbed its way into our everyday modern lives! A core memory of mine—and I believe it would be one for many others as well—is using chalk to draw the hopscotch outline on our driveway and getting all my fingers (and consequently my shorts) smudged with reds, blues, and yellows. I also often see chalk used for blackboard café menus, for the interior decoration of a smoothie place my family frequently visits, and to outline the basic architecture of in-progress construction projects. Chalk has been so flawlessly ingrained into my everyday life that I hadn’t taken note of it until the day my best friend wanted to redo her chalkboard wall, and I took it upon myself to do so.

DATED SINCE PALEOLITHIC TIMES, CHALK DRAWING REPRESENTS ONE OF THE EARLIEST FORMS OF HUMAN ARTISTIC EXPRESSION.

Returning to chalk drawing as a young adult is quite interesting for two reasons: first, it made me quite nostalgic for my hopscotch-playing days; and second, it instilled in me a deeper sense of appreciation for its versatility and simplicity. As a detail-oriented person, I found it extremely therapeutic to rely on simple lines and occasional blending to create sketches of my favorite anime characters (and of my best friend) as accurately as possible. With pencil sketching (a past hobby of mine), you need to blend properly, adjust the angle at which you hold the pencil, create lines of different thicknesses using varying pressures, and use a variety of pencil types, tools, and techniques if you’re looking for a precise sketch, and so it takes much more expertise. Don’t get me wrong—it’s beyond rewarding for a pencil drawing to be accurate because it can produce beautiful results. Pencil drawing just requires an immense amount of patience—a luxury I no longer have—and chalks have provided me with a medium to quickly sketch a face for an hour, admire it for the next three, and reset.

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve dabbled with a variety of different creative art forms—I’ve experimented with GarageBand to make music (not as easy as Clairo and mxmtoon make it sound), I’ve painted a self-portrait, and I’ve completed a couple of sketches—but none have struck a chord with me as much as chalkboard drawing did. Not to sound immodest, but I feel really proud of the sketches I have completed and they genuinely provide me with a sense of fulfillment—it’s that much fun.

Plus, I’ll admit that the sight of smudged colourful fingers is quite satisfying, and I definitely recommend anyone reading this to invest in a chalkboard and go crazy.

I wouldn’t have spent my free time in quarantine any other way.

PHOTO | DINO DEMOPOULOS

STRANDED 15

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 30 AUGUST 2021

Fun and funky ways to battle Zoom fatigue VICTORIA MCINTYRE STRANDED EDITOR

This one goes out to all our hybrid babies, still in the online world, Zooming their way into undergrad...

Oh, hey. It’s me, logging on to my computer again, trying to ignore the impending sense of dread as I join my next Zoom call. Whether it’s a class or a club meeting or a call with my Meemaw—all I know is that I don’t want to be there. And that, most likely, the other people don’t want to be there either. So hey,

PHOTO | TONY TRAN

let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the bad times, and how to turn them into good times. Here are my top five fun and funky tips for battling Zoom fatigue. (I thought about making ten, but I figured you’re already trained from online school to go on your phone after approximately 30 seconds of stimulation.)

1. Look, I don’t know about you, but having my camera on for more than an hour at a time kind of makes me wanna vom. And not because I don’t love myself. I’m pretty cool with a 'k'. It’s just that, after a while, I start to do that thing where I think about what faces I’m making as I’m listening instead of aCTuAlly listening. Do I look attentive? Am I smiling enough?

The answer is almost always no. So, my first suggestion is to not be afraid to minimize the tab when you can, or even turn your camera off for a second. Close your eyes.

Have a sip of water. If this advice feels too obvious or too genuine for a comedy column, it’s because I know we all need to feel more litty and less shitty right now.

2. Get. A. Snack. On. Your. Break. Do it! Don’t you remember that childlike sense of excitement you’d get when you knew a sweet, sweet snack was heading your way? Imagine feeling that for the first hour of your Zoom class. Eat those Scooby Snacks when you need them most. And start with the blue one. (This is coming

from a connoisseur of THE Scooby Doo franchise and all related snacks. It may be the only area where I’ll ever be considered an expert.)

3. Make a joke. You don’t have to be a stand-up comedian. Honestly, it’s better if you’re not that funny at all. If you can make a wisecrack, then it might just lighten the weightiness of online life for a moment, and remind everyone that we’re all human on the other sides of our screens. Come on guys, let’s make each other giggle.

4. Cry about it! Seriously!! If you’re having trouble getting there, just take a whiff of those sweatpants you’ve been wearing without fail for two weeks straight.

Or glance at your split ends. Shit, sorry, I’m supposed to be making you feel better. But hey, if Bo Burnham is considered funny for making us all look at our own sense of isolated inertia for an hour and a half, maybe I can point out that we all reek.

5. Step outside. If you can find the time for a walk, then oh hell yeah, take it. We’ve got to breathe in and sneeze out all that pollen while we still can before it’s back to the cold, dead winter.

Those are my tips! They’re simple, so maybe you’ll use them! I know I haven’t.

My favourite study spots last year at UofT MAYA SHANKAR CONTRIBUTOR

After the crazy year we’ve had, it feels intimidating to find a public space where you can simultaneously study and breathe without violating the law and/or giving yourself anxiety. I want to help first-years out by giving them some unique places to stress over coursework!

Here are my favourite study spots, in no particular order. If you notice a pattern, it has nothing to do with me being trapped in a tiny dorm room for six months and 17 days (I counted).

Disclaimer: Study in these places at your own risk.

Consequences may include: break and enter charges, suspension, and any physical injuries inflicted by the occupant of the room.

1. The Desk In My Room A solid choice, but it feels overdone. Everyone studies at their desk these days. I’m not against tradition, but it is a bit boring. Rating: 8/10 2. The Bed In My Room By far my favourite place to study, but I get very little done here. My bed is very comfortable, which tends to cause involuntary naps and decrease my motivation. Relaxing, but inefficient. Rating: 4/10 3. This One Corner In My Room It's alright, I guess. The variety makes it special, but I get a strange sense of déjà vu. Rating: 6/10 4. The Other Corner Of My Room See above.

5. The Common Room There are weird drafts and none of the couches feel

quite right. There is one benefit: it gets me out of my room. Rating: 7/10 6. The Bench Outside My Room There is wind, as well as occasional squirrels that like eating trash and scaring people. On rainy days, there is also rain, which is extremely distracting. Rating: 2/10 7. The Closet In My Room The closet is dark and sometimes cramped. Hard to see my homework. Very good for hiding from my responsibilities. Rating: 8/10 8. The Floor Of My Room This is one of the most efficient places to study.

I can cry on the floor, then go right back to calculus problem sets! Another benefit: increased proximity to hell. Rating: 10/10

How to REALLY prepare for university According to an English major JANNA ABBAS ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR

You’ve probably just finished your senior year of high school, have been listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour on repeat, and are desperately trying to convince yourself you’re the main character in a coming-of-age movie.

You must think that you couldn’t be more prepared for university, right? Wrong. Preparing for university is a complex process that goes far beyond being fresh and cool, or even being good at school. However, don’t start panicking just yet—we’ll save that for later—as these steps will ensure your successful transition from high school into the wacky life of post-secondary education.

First and foremost, you must choose a program.

It is essential that you choose the program which will enrage your parents the most––preferably English or the performing arts––and will make them regret having agreed to pay your tuition.

Next, sit down with your family to have the inescapable conversation in which you must explain how the degree you’re applying for is, in fact, not “useless” or a “waste of time and money.” Make sure to have a tissue box handy for when your grandmother inevitably breaks down because you destroyed her “lifelong dream” of seeing you become a doctor—the

one she developed after seeing you in that Halloween costume when you were four.

After you’re done with the traumatic experience of telling your family, you must now confront your friends. Wait for the awkward silence to ensue as soon as you deliver the news of your chosen major, and then jokingly mention how if all else fails, you’ll just drop out and become an influencer. This is sure to garner a lot of laughs, making your friends feel better about not knowing what to say to you.

It is now time for you to fully process the decision you’ve made. You suddenly realize that ​ preparing for university is no longer about what you want to do with your life, but about meeting other people’s expectations of what they deem socially acceptable to study or pursue as a career.

Start panicking because this realization, understandably, causes you to ponder your life decisions and prompts

you to have a proper mental breakdown.

Lastly, wake up and go through this whole process again. Only when you can email your professors without having to overthink it for an hour because you think they’ll find your tone “mean” or “disrespectful” and suppress the urge to invent a major when someone asks what you’re studying will you truly be prepared for university.

ILLUSTRATION | YOON-JI KWEON

16 STRANDED

EDITOR | VICTORIA MCINTYRE STRANDED@THESTRAND.CA

How to ask questions that will impress your professor TALIA SHAFIR CONTRIBUTOR

On the first day of classes, some students may be distracted by thoughts like, “I hope I do well in this class,” or, “I hope I make friends.” But, in every class, there is always one student who dares to dream a little bigger. In every class, there is a student with one goal, and one goal only: they want to ask questions that will impress the professor. If you are one of those students, then keep reading for instructions on how to ask questions that will get your professors to wonder whether you are an undergrad student or a fellow faculty member.

Average students (not you!) ask questions in order to improve their understanding of the course material. If you want to show the professor that you are on a higher plane than everyone else, ask questions that are only tangentially related to the course. When you ask your professor these types of questions, they will realize that you have already mastered the course material and that you are ready to cure cancer and end world hunger. For bonus points, add a little tidbit of personal information to your questions. These personal tidbits will leave your professor hungry for

more, leading them to invite you for coffee.

Here is an example of a question you could ask in a cell biology course: “My second cousin has a rare genetic disease. Do you think there is a way to apply cell biology concepts to find a cure?” You can ask this question even if you don’t know the definition of “genetic” or don’t actually have a second cousin. This question will show the professor that you understand the course concepts so well that you are already applying them toward finding cures for diseases. The tantalizing detail about your second cousin’s wildly uncommon ailment will fascinate your professor, and they will invite you for coffee to ask follow up questions like, “What kind of rare genetic disease?”

Note that this sensually-charged, self-actualized formula can be applied to impress professors in any course.

Finally, a word of caution: if you are in a philosophy class, you should first place duct tape on the mouths of all the other students to make sure your question stands out.

A guide to online socialization ADRIANA GORAIEB CONTRIBUTOR

@hairypoppins would like to send you a message. *open dms* hairypoppins HI OMG LET’S BE FRIENDS

It’s an adrenaline rush like no other to

receive a text message from someone who’s read your introduction post on the uoft.25 Instagram page (HUGE kudos to the account admins) and connected with your love for cinnamon rolls, piano, and fictional men. Before you know it, you’ve exchanged TikTok usernames and started to send each other edits of the 2D characters you collectively simp for. However, my experience socializing online before officially arriving as a first-year student has involved a couple of rocky convos.

My experiences have opened my eyes to the Dos and Don’ts that we should all be mindful of as we scramble to connect before meeting each other face-to-face in September: Do: Introduce yourself using an area of common interest. I’ve built much better connections with people who’ve told me they liked the same show or music as me—and if I had a dollar for every time I wracked my brain for responses to mundane chitchat, I’d buy myself a new phone.

Don’t: Start by hating on something the other person likes. I’ve had someone

HI OMG SURE … who are you again?

Me

text me for the first time saying that Attack on Titan and Jujutsu Kaisen (my fav animes) were overrated, and that did not make me want to continue the conversation as much as it made me want to report the text as false information.

Do: Plan things to do in Toronto once you’re there together—a great way to get to know more about the other person’s interests.

Don’t: Tell people you’re not an animal lover. That’s sad. And a little bit frightening. Hit me up and I’ll accompany you to a dog park to meet cute dogs, because animals are the absolute best.

On a serious note, as Orientation Week approaches, I’m beyond ecstatic to finally put faces to the usernames I’ve been conversing with. I’m a bit of an introvert, so having been able to connect with so many people online (thank God for twenty-first century technology, can’t imagine what it would have been like to be in this pandemic in the 80s) has been greatly comforting.

Can’t wait to see everyone in September!

START

e b l l i w Who h s o r F r you ? h s u r c Week Dija thi, and Tori, HaJ-14 Columnists

You're trying to pick one accessory to stand out on Zoom. What do you reach for?

A tube of lip gloss from the seventh grade!!

A pair of reading glasses with a chain that goes around my neck!!

A silly goose who's a little out oftouch

When you turn your camera on, what room are you in?

Crying in the Dairy Queen parking lot next to my old high school

My parent's study, reclining on a leather chaise lounge

Who do you think is cuter?

The third year Frosh Week leader who tries to lead chants over Zoom

My dad's coworker on a Zoom call one room away. I like the sound of his voice... the cut of his jib, if you will.

Try Again!

Jimmy.

When you see him in your Frosh Week group, you realize that not everything from high school stays in high school. He’s still got his winning smile that your friends have tried to convince you looks like a dog with his maw wrapped around your neighbour’s ankle. He still asks you what’s going on in class because he’s busy with his real friends. Damn you, Jimmy, and your familiar, safety blanket-like charm.

Your friends would describe you as Over accomplished and exhausting.

Which Club Fair booth are you hitting up first?

I am frothing at the mouth to join the debate team.

I have no idea what I'm into yet but me likey the looks of those cookies over there.

Which song would you rather sing at the Frosh Week karaoke night?

"Summer Lovin'" by The cast recording of Grease from my high school, poorly mixed by the overworked gym teacher

"When I Kissed the Teacher"

by ABBA

Talk about a Teacher's Pet! ;)

She’s old, she’s close to the camera, and she can’t hear a word you’re saying—because she’s already speaking over you. You’re Hot for Teacher. We could all stand to be a little more naughty, and who better to do it with than your ANT100 professor as she slips off her blazer to reveal the buffer cardigan between her dress shirt and the world? Start prepping your question for that sweet first day of class.

That long-awaited meet cute.