November 16th, 2020

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A C C E S S ISSUE

November 16, 2020 Vol. CXLI, No. 9

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“Our community is hurting”: campus groups demand mental health action after death of New College student Vol. CXLI, No. 9 21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600 the.varsity

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Content warning: this article contains mentions of suicide.

Student groups across campus have released statements following the death by suicide of New College student and Chestnut resident Keshav Mayya, giving their condolences and demanding greater action from the university on mental health issues. The groups highlighted COVID-19 as a factor affecting student mental health, but stressed that the pandemic exacerbated a pre-existing problem of poor mental health support on campus.

Micah Stickel, acting Vice-Provost Students, wrote to The Varsity that U of T is offering support to the community, as well as in-person support for those directly affected.

This most recent incident follows four other student deaths that have been reported since 2018.

Three of them occurred at the Bahen Centre for Information Technology, prompting students to protest and advocate the university to improve its mental health support.

Student groups on campus respond The New College Student Council (NCSC) released a statement on November 6, expressing sadness at the death and “frustration and dismay regarding the normalization of poor mental health at the University of Toronto.” The NCSC described a perceived lack of substantial change by the university in response to student criticisms.

The U of T Physics Student Union released a statement on November 4, writing, “The student was not only a member of the University of Toronto community, but also of the physics community.” The group urged students to take care of their mental health despite the stress of exams.

The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) released a statement on November 3, writing, “Our community is hurting.” The UTSU assert-

A New College student has recently passed away.

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ed that the student death has “highlighted a cultural and institutional problem at University of Toronto that has continued to go unaddressed.”

The UTSU urged U of T to make student mental health a priority and create a “compassionate, empathy-driven academic culture.” The union also committed to investing in student mental health, which it characterized as a “crisis.”

The other major student unions — the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union and the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union — released statements as well, expressing condolences for the student who died and calling for the university to do better on mental health.

Arts and Science Students’ Union (ASSU) executive members released a similar statement on November 3, criticizing the university’s “appalling” mental health policies, as well as the resources available for student mental health care. It also highlighted online

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The UTSU was one of many student unions that responded to the death.

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learning and the lack of in-person activities as factors that may negatively impact students.

“Students’ mental health and their ability to thrive should always be a priority of the University. Unfortunately, this has never been the case,” wrote the ASSU executives in their statement.

Calls for better mental health support The UTSU, U of T Mental Health Policy Council, ASSU, and eight other student unions held an emergency meeting for students and student leaders to share their thoughts on mental health and accessibility at U of T. Many students spoke about the difficulties they have faced with receiving mental health and accessibility support from the university, and expressed anger and frustration at the continuing mental health crisis on campus.

First-year student Nejat Ahmed circulated a petition calling for reform in U of T’s mental health services following the student death. The petition had garnered over 3,800 signatures by November 12 and urges U of T to invest more in mental health services on campus.

In an email to The Varsity, Ahmed wrote that she wanted to spread awareness about the issue, identifying a few main goals.

She urged U of T to use its “multi-billion (not million, billion) dollar budget” to hire additional counsellors and to reduce wait times for appointments.

Ahmed also suggested that U of T hire a team of oncall counsellors to work with campus police, pointing to an incident last year when a student seeking mental health care was handcuffed by campus police at UTM. Ahmed also urged the administration to allow students extensions on coursework even without documentation.

“For years the school has facilitated an environment where you can’t breakdown under pressure; ‘you’re either the best or nothing at all,’ one could even say. Mix it with a flawed mental health system and you’re left with an institution designed for burnout, anxiety and failure,” wrote Ahmed.

Mental health crisis hotlines If you or someone you know is in distress, you can call: Canada Suicide Prevention Service phone available 24/7 at 1-833-456-4566 Good 2 Talk Student Helpline at 1-866-9255454 Ontario Mental Health Helpline at 1-866531-2600 Gerstein Centre Crisis Line at 416-929-5200 U of T Health & Wellness Centre at 416978-8030

Warning signs of suicide include: Talking about wanting to die Looking for a way to kill oneself Talking about feeling hopeless or having no purpose Talking about feeling trapped or being in unbearable pain Talking about being a burden to others Increasing use of alcohol or drugs Acting anxious, agitated, or recklessly Sleeping too little or too much

Withdrawing or feeling isolated Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge Displaying extreme mood swings The more of these signs a person shows, the greater the risk. If you suspect someone you know may be contemplating suicide, you should talk to them, according to the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.

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One year later: U of T’s progress on the mental health task force recommendations

Incomplete items include centralized booking website, electronic records Savannah Ribeiro Varsity Staff

In December 2019, U of T’s Presidential & Provostial Task Force on Student Mental Health released a series of recommendations on mental health that were all accepted by the president a month later. The task force was formed following a student death on campus in March 2019.

The task force was directed to review four areas of concern for student mental health, with a mandate to examine the climate of student mental health and conduct consultations, as well as provide recommendations to evaluate mental health services and programs.

Although student groups had criticized the task force for lacking student representation, the groups considered some of the task force’s recommendations a step in the right direction.

Previously, Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr told The Varsity that there was no concrete timeline for the recommendations to be implemented and that they would take effect as soon as possible. Now, almost a year later, campus student groups continue to identify an ongoing mental health crisis in the wake of another student death earlier this month.

In the mental health task force’s final report, there are 21 recommendations sorted into seven general categories. Many of the recommendations are about the four main areas the task force was mandated to examine: mental health services and delivery at the university, coordination of services between the three campuses, community partnerships, and improvement of the physical spaces in which mental health spaces are offered. In addition to the four mandated areas, the report also touches on three additional topics — the culture at U of T, institutional systems and policies, and next steps for mental health reform.

The Vice-President and Provost’s website offers a section to keep track of the task force’s progress, listing 36 action items divided into five categories. Currently, some recommendations have been completed, others are in progress, and still others have not yet been completed, with no clear timeline for when they will be completed.

Mental health service delivery Completed items in this category on the Division of the Vice-Provost’s website include the expansion of My Student Support Program, the establishment of drop-in counselling at Robarts Library during exam season, and the introduction of same-day counselling at UTSG. During the pandemic, most mental health care appointments at UTSG have been virtual or over the phone.

Several items remain “in-progress,” including the extension and coordination of student health insurance plans. Under the current University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union health plan, for example, those who are eligible are covered for only $500 per year for mental health services like private counselling and therapy.

Other items in progress include the launch of a single website for mental health services and the adoption of a single letter for accessibility services across all campuses and divisions.

Broad items remain in planning stages, including the adoption of an online booking and electronic records systems. Many ongoing items are broad, such as the expansion of “the diversity of [U of T’s] services, service providers, and partnerships.”

Culture of caring and excellence The task force’s final report noted that U of T has a “strong reputation for its culture of academic excellence” and concedes that the pressures from this culture need to be balanced with mental health concerns. As well, students who were consulted by the task force mentioned that other non-academic obligations impact well-being.

Only two items under this category have been completed: the appointment of a special advisor on the Healthy Labs Initiative — a project to improve resources for graduate student-run labs — and the making public of the “approach to communications in the event of a death of a U of T student.”

More than half of the items under this category remain in progress. These include establishing a standing advisory board on graduate mental health, addressing concerns on institutional policies and structures that “can sometimes act as

The task force was created in 2019 to examine mental health services at U of T. SHANNA HUNTER/THEVARSITY

barriers to student success,” and identifying lab management best practices through the Healthy Labs Initiative.

Two additional in-progress items in this category are improving the understanding of the University-Mandated Leave of Absence Policy and conducting a review of the policy. The policy has received strong criticism because it is viewed as a reactive response to mental health, and students feel it is discouraging to those seeking help.

Partnerships, physical spaces, and financial resources The last three categories on the Vice-President and Provost’s website also had a few recommendations. Under community partnerships, U of T and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health began a partnership last year, and the recommendations in progress are about strengthening the relationship between the two institutions.

The university also plans to renovate the Health & Wellness Centre and evaluate other physical spaces available for students on campus.

Under financial resources, U of T has completed the items of making health and wellness a prior-

ity in the budget, and is currently advocating for more mental health support from the provincial government and continuing to fundraise to support student mental health.

Institutional systems and policies The handcuffing of students requiring mental health care is mentioned in the final report under the category of “Institutional Systems and Policies,” and the report recommends that “this practice be reviewed by the University and that a trauma-informed protocol to support Campus Police in their evaluation of the safety and risk of students transported to the hospital for further assessment be developed.”

Further, it notes that the university should also consider other “methods of transporting students to hospital for emergency psychiatric assessment.” Additionally, there is a recommendation for campus police to undergo enhanced mental health training.

U of T Media Relations was not able to respond to The Varsity’s request for comment at this time.

A breakdown of online mental health resources at U of T Services like Navi, My Student Support Program have been introduced for all students in past year Khatchig Anteblian Associate News Editor

U of T rolled out a new mental health support app in September called Navi. The new service comes alongside other recent mental health resources for students and community members, which include My Student Support Program (My SSP) and general online services offered through the Health & Wellness Centre.

Navi U of T released a new artificial intelligence (AI)powered chatbot called Navi — both short for navigator and used to denote kind acts in some cultures. The tool can help users locate resources on mental health and wellness, provide advice and resources to help with academic success, and guide users to personal counselling services.

Navi offers a text message-style chat to answer questions about mental health resources through AI. It can be accessed from anywhere 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While the chat conversations are logged to help improve the AI, no personally identifying information is collected.

The technology comes from IBM and makes U of T the first postsecondary institution to use the IBM Watson Assistant technology for mental health care.

Responses from Navi were tailored to U of T specifically, providing more streamlined access to mental health information and resources, which are also available on the U of T Health and Wellness website.

Sandy Welsh, Vice-Provost Students, said about the service, “We want the members of our university community to know that support is always close at hand. With this tool, finding the appropriate resource is fast, user-friendly, and completely anonymous.”

My SSP U of T offers counselling services through My SSP, released last year, and the Good2Talk Student Helpline, both of which are usable 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

My SSP allows users to call or chat with a counsellor at any time or place, and is meant to offer assistance on a variety of issues, from mental health to personal problems. It is also available

ANANYA ANANTH/THEVARSITY

for immediate support in 35 languages.

Online services and resources U of T has multiple online services and programs aimed at mental health and well-being, which can be accessed on the Student Life Health & Wellness website.

These include workshops on managing exam anxiety and building positive mental health during COVID-19, as well as services like peer support that can help connect students with trained student peers for personal, one-on-one, and con-

fidential support.

Students can also book an appointment with a mental health clinician, who will provide appropriate help based on the unique needs of each student. College registrars’ offices can also provide guidance and referrals.

Students who would like to learn how to support others can also access a 30-minute online training workshop called “Identify, Assist, Refer,” which prepares them with the skills and information they need to be there for individuals experiencing mental health challenges.

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U of T community gathers mostly virtually for annual Remembrance Day Event honoured veterans of the world wars through speeches, musical performances Carmina Cornacchia Lead Copy Editor

On November 11, the University of Toronto held its annual Remembrance Day ceremony in honour of U of T alumni who served during World War I and World War II. This year, the event was mostly virtual due to COVID-19, with a small in-person ceremony at Soldiers’

Tower, which was built in 1924 to commemorate those who died during World War I. The service was live-streamed with a recording posted on the University of Toronto’s alumni website. The “Virtual Service of Remembrance” was part of Remembrance Week, during which time Toronto honours veterans and soldiers who served in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Afghanistan.

Wreaths were laid by members of the U of T community at Soldiers’ Tower.

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The event featured pre-recorded vocal music performances, and instrumental musicians performed from behind plexiglass barriers.

Various representatives who attended in person had the opportunity to lay wreaths at Soldiers’ Tower in honour of different constituencies of U of T. Among these representatives were U of T President Meric Gertler, U of T Faculty Association President Terezia Zorić, and University of Toronto Students’ Union President Muntaka Ahmed.

The service began with words from Michelle Alfano, Chair of the Soldiers’ Tower Committee, who noted that 2020 marks 75 years since the end of World War II. “Today we wish to humbly acknowledge the bravery and commitment of our U of T alumni… and all Canadians involved in the war effort, with the full knowledge that, had they not done so, our lives and our liberties would be very much changed to the detriment of all Canadians,” said Alfano.

A speech by Richard Ruggle, the officiating chaplain for the ceremony, followed. Ruggle spoke about the sacrifices made by the more than 100,000 Canadians who volunteered in World War I and World War II. “They shall not grow old, as we who are left grow old,” Ruggle said, quoting Robert Laurence Binyon’s “For The Fallen.” Ending on a hopeful note, Ruggle reminded viewers that “as we remember the trauma that many soldiers try to forget, we commit ourselves to

work for reconciliation so that people may live together in peace.”

Ruggle’s speech was followed by a naval hymn, as well as a recitation of the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McRae, a U of T alum who died in 1918. The recitation was given by Ann Urquhart Knopf, whom Ruggle introduced as “the daughter of the late Lieutenant-Colonel Gerhard-Knopf.”

Following the hymns, U of T alum and military historian Eric McGeer honoured Jack Clancy, a U of T alum from St. Michael’s College. McGeer said that Clancy was “involved in three decisive operations in the liberation of Europe” and also served in Korea.

Clancy helped set the stage for the Normandy invasion — often referred to as D-Day — and was given the Military Cross that same year for a separate military endeavour. He also contributed to the “airborne attack over the Rhine that opened the final assault into Germany,” said McGeer, and Clancy followed this by helping to prevent Soviet movement into Denmark in 1945.

The event culminated in the customary moment of silence. “When the first Remembrance Day observance took place 100 years ago today, the silence in memory of the fallen quickly became the defining moment of the service,” reflected Chaplain Ruggle as he initiated the moment of silence. “Silence can speak when words fail. Now we, too, remember in silence.”

Pharmacy students advocate for temporary licensure, virtual testing after sudden cancellation of exams Many interns work long hours for lower pay due to COVID-19 slowdowns Marta Anielska Associate News Editor

Because of COVID-19, the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), pharmacy students’ last hurdle before licensure, was cancelled less than two days prior to the time the examination had been scheduled to run this month. This is the second time the exam has been cancelled since the spring.

The cancellation has left pharmacy students without a clear path to licensure, causing some to demand alternative solutions. The exam typically involves both a written portion and several tasks, including interacting with a simulated patient, client, or other health care professional.

In a series of tweets, U of T pharmacy graduate student Michelle Wang called on several organizations, including the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at U of T, the Ontario College of Pharmacists (OCP), and the provincial government, to help pharmacy residents stuck in limbo as they await licensure.

Exam cancellation and student backlash According to the Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada (PEBC), which offers the OSCE, facilitation restrictions became more stringent after Toronto public health officials ruled that the examination was a meeting, rather than an educational event. This ruling subjected the OSCE to more gathering restrictions. The PEBC also identified the roll out of the provincial government’s new COVID-19 response framework as another barrier.

Attempts by the PEBC to clarify the exam’s educational nature were unsuccessful, forcing officials to cancel the exam planned for November 8 in Toronto. The examining board noted that exams were held in other locations in the province.

However, Wang pointed out that more could have been done to make sure that the exam took

place. In an interview with The Varsity, she suggested that U of T could have hosted the event, and argued this could have helped in getting the examination designated as an educational event.

“There’s been times when our whole class [has had] to do these mock OSCE final exam scenarios to pass our year. So they’re capable of doing 240 students in a 16-storey building. They have so many rooms, so much space — no one’s in that building right now.”

A U of T spokesperson wrote that the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy “explored serving as an exam site and started down the path of planning fall exams” but that “as the pandemic worsened, we learned that the exam could not be accommodated given the space requirements.” The spokesperson added that the faculty dean has unsuccessfully requested that the exam be deemed an educational activity.

Wang also noted that the PEBC could have moved its exams online, especially since the OSCE for pharmacy students requires less physical contact. “PEBC kept saying that they [couldn’t] make it virtual for security reasons, which I don’t understand, because other professions have done this as well… Pharmacists never touch their patients unless they’re giving a flu vaccine.”

She added that she’s disappointed that pharmacy regulatory bodies haven’t found a solution, given that professions who do more hands on work, like chiropractors and physiotherapists, were able to get licensed during the pandemic.

Pharmacy graduate students also pay around $2,000 to take the PEBC exams. Wang suggested that money could be invested in technology infrastructure or software engineers to move the examination process online.

In an email to The Varsity, the PEBC wrote that “the need to ensure the security of the exam and fairness to all candidates” could get in the way of administering the exam. The board added that “a virtual OSCE would have high technol-

Pharmacy students’ exams have been cancelled for the second time during COVID-19.

UMAMA SIDDIQI/THEVARSITY

ogy demands given the need for all participants, candidates, Standardized Patients, and assessors, to have computers and internet connectivity with sufficient speed.”

Compensation and conditional licensure Wang and other graduate students have also asked the OCP whether it would be willing to grant conditional licensure so that they can be compensated as fully licensed pharmacists, who get paid more than pharmacy interns. “Pharmacies are so busy right now… these interns who’ve been helping out so much [get] paid a little bit more than minimum wage, practicing a full scope during this time,” she said.

In her experience, many older pharmacists also started taking fewer shifts because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so much of the increased workload has fallen on younger pharmacists and interns.

Wang also argued that some Canadian programs are already accredited by the Associations of Faculties of Pharmacies of Canada (AFPC), which checks for many of the skills tested by the PEBC. Completing a program that meets AFPC-accreditation requirements could temporarily stand in for the OSCE. Other provinces, such as Québec, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba, have either granted conditional li-

censure for pharmacy graduates given the unique circumstances of COVID-19, or don’t require pharmacy graduates to take PEBC examinations at all. In a tweet, Wang also pointed out that, according to the Pharmacy Act of 1991, pharmacy graduates can receive licensure from any examination approved by the council of the OCP. “OCP, our regulatory body, and the provincial government, and [Toronto Public Health]… they’re really the decision makers that can say ‘we’re going to grant you immediate conditional licensure,’” Wang said when asked where the next step for a resolution might come from.

The provincial government wrote to The Varsity that the Ministry of Health is “not involved in licensing pharmacists or graduates of pharmacy programs” and that it relies on the OCP to guarantee that pharmacy graduates are qualified for licensure.

A spokesperson for the OCP wrote that the college shares students’ frustrations and continues to work toward appropriate solutions, “including the potential for temporary emergency registration, or conditional licensure which will be discussed at an upcoming Board meeting.”

“Such emergency registration would be subject to the government’s approval and determination that it is necessary to ensure access to pharmacy services in the province is protected,” they wrote.

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In the Spotlight: OISE students return to inperson elementary teaching during pandemic Perspectives on safety, communication with students Isabel Armiento Graduate Bureau Chief

it is like to be teaching in a classroom during the pandemic.

Over 500 students in teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) returned to in-person or virtual classroom placements this year. Normally, over 1,000 OISE students participate in a practicum or internship for program credit or certification, with most of these placements occuring in schools.

Despite the pandemic, OISE is continuing to offer students in-person teaching placements, in addition to virtual options.

“There are currently 342 students completing a placement wholly or partly in-person, and 212 students completing an online placement,” Normand Labrie, OISE Associate Dean Programs wrote in an email to The Varsity. He added that, due to the pandemic, “[OISE’s] programs are carefully considering how to meet professional requirements while also supporting school partners during this time.”

So far, there have been 3,282 school-related cases of COVID-19 reported in Ontario, and some have criticized the class sizes in Ontario’s approach to reopening public schools for being too large.

The Varsity spoke with two Master of Arts in Child Study & Education (MA-CSE) candidates doing in-person elementary school placements about what

In-person versus online placements Having an in-person placement was important to some OISE students, such as Christine Tropak, who is in her first year of the MA-CSE program and has been placed in a third grade classroom. “There is something to be said of being physically there,” Tropak said. “That was definitely something really important to me.”

For others, like Abigail Godfrey, who teaches second and third grade students, a virtual placement would have been preferable. “I was pushing for a virtual placement,” she said. “I have a high risk person in my household… [and] I have my own health issues.”

While Godfrey’s placement is in person, she is grateful that the class only has 16 students and is within walking distance.

“I know that [OISE] listened and responded, and in the end, it worked out,” Godfrey said.

She added that while the placements are meant to be hands off, that doesn’t always happen. “It’s honestly so hard… to teach in a completely hands-off way,” Godfrey said. She added that physical distancing at the placement is challenging because it’s hard to hear students through their masks, so teachers often need to get close to students and bend down to hear them.

“I’m much, much closer to them than I could ever have believed,” Godfrey said.

Both students reported feeling some stress about COVID-19 while at their placements. “Obviously there’s some concern… It’s definitely something that’s always in the back of your mind,” Tropak said.

“But I think that we’re doing the best that we can be doing.”

“I feel like [the stress] is ever present,” Godfrey said. “I’m just used to this low level, constant [COVID-19] narrative.”

Godfrey added that, so far, there have been no confirmed COVID-19 cases at the school where she has been placed. However, two of her classmates are placed at schools that have had confirmed cases.

Teaching during a pandemic Tropak reported that safety is a top priority for schools. “The school provides me with medical grade masks, and the kids all wear their masks from home.

They have to leave their masks on pretty much at all times,” she said. “There’s hand sanitizer at every door and reminders everywhere to sanitize and social distance.”

Godfrey and Tropak both reported that classrooms windows remain open at all times to increase ventilation. “I’m not sure how it’ll be in the dead of winter, but for right now… I don’t notice it,” said

SVEN/THEVARSITY

Tropak. Godfrey added,“It’s going to be really hard if it’s -20 outside, and the windows are open, and there’s snow blowing in.”

Tropak said that teaching students while wearing masks is certainly more challenging. “I do try to be more expressive than normal… when I’m speaking to [my students] to make up for what I’m lacking with a mask.” She added that teaching young students how to pronounce words and sounds is much more difficult when wearing a mask. “You don’t realize how much you’re looking at someone’s mouth when they talk.”

Both Godfrey and Tropak noted that everyone has been handling the situation as best they can, from students to schools to OISE faculty. “I… am very appreciative of the administrative and practicum team at OISE for being so conscientious and caring in placing us,” said Godfrey.

“The schools have done a really good job of rolling with the punches and being as safe as they can,” said Tropak. “Honestly, the real MVPs here are the kids.

They’ve done such an amazing job. I’m very proud of them.”

U of T alum petitioning to extend student loan non-repayment period for 2020 graduates

Multiple MPs stand with students as petition collects over 461 signatures Cedric Jiang Varsity Staff

A University of Toronto alum has initiated an online petition to the House of Commons, calling for a sixmonth extension of federal student loan non-repayment for new graduates in 2020. This would be on top of an initial freeze on student loans and interest repayment for all borrowers that took place between March 30 to September 30.

While the federal government introduced the initial freeze as a special measure of economic relief in March in light of the impact of COVID-19, the non-repayment period overlapped with the automatic six-month repayment freeze for 2020 graduates, leaving them with no additional benefit.

As of time of publication, the petition has gathered more than 461 signatures from across the country. Petitions are certified if they reach 500 signatures, after which time they are presented to the House of Commons.

Financial challenges for new graduates Patty Facy, a 2020 graduate from the Faculty of Information, started the petition. In an interview with

The Varsity, Facy explained that the current policy in place does not grant any additional support for spring graduates, and they will be required to repay starting this month.

“The COVID-19 freeze was no doubt helpful to anyone who graduated before the pandemic started and who is still making loan repayments but unfortunately offered zero additional benefit to students who graduated DURING the pandemic,” Facy tweeted.

Facy said that her research assistant position at U of T was cancelled due to the pandemic, and she is now struggling to find another permanent job.

Some of her classmates were trying the entire summer to secure a position; however, she claimed that not many jobs were posted.

Facy and her peers’ experiences are not unique.

During the pandemic, over one third of Canadian postsecondary students had their job placement cancelled or delayed. In October, Canada saw a youth unemployment rate of 18.8 per cent, and the number is projected to grow to 22.6 per cent by the end of this quarter. With difficulties finding employment and repayments due soon, spring graduates are experiencing financial stress.

Support from MPs Multiple MPs and groups showed their support. MP Daniel Blaikie — the New Democratic Party (NDP) Critic for Employment, Workforce Development & Disability Inclusion — authorized the petition to go public on November 3. MP Heather McPherson, NDP Deputy House Leader, retweeted the thread started by Facy with the hashtag “FreezeTheNSLSC” — freeze the National Student Loans Service Centre.

“The stress on students and grads is incredible this year. The government should forgive student loan interest or, at the very least, extend the interest-free deferral of payments,” McPherson commented in the tweet.

MP Matthew Green — NDP Critic for National Revenue, Public Services and Procurement — commented, calling for solidarity with students. The Canadian Federation of Students and Don’t Forget Students also supported the motion, with both calling to

CAROLINE BIEL/THEVARSITY

sign the petition.

Facy concluded in her tweet thread that students who graduated in 2020 should receive the same benefit as other borrowers and that recent graduates should not have to choose between loan repayments and their living expenses.

The Varsity has reached out to the Government of Canada for comment.

Meric Gertler appointed Vice-Chair of Universities

Coalition of university presidents operates as “unified voice” on policy-making Marta Anielska Associate News Editor

On October 28, U of T President Meric Gertler began his term as vice-chair of Universities Canada, a membership organization of university presidents that aims to provide higher education institutions with a “unified voice” through advocacy at the federal level, and facilitates collaboration between universities, the government, and the private sector. Gertler will serve for one year as vice-chair before moving on to a two-year term as chair.

In an email to The Varsity, a university spokesperson wrote that Gertler’s new position provides U of T with a strong voice in conversations that will affect it. The spokesperson added, “It also provides [the university] with an opportunity to ensure [it is] aligned with other institutions on

important issues such as supporting international students and pandemic planning.”

Gertler wrote to The Varsity: “I am delighted to have this opportunity to collaborate with Professor D’Amours and all of our colleagues across the country in pursuit of our shared goals.” Sophie D’Amours is the current chair of the organization, whom Gertler will be working alongside to prepare for the position.

According to the spokesperson, his goals as a vice-chair include developing connections that will provide opportunities for U of T researchers and students to circulate ideas that “shape our understanding of the world.”

As chair, Gertler will “play an integral and central role in leading Universities Canada into the future,” Philip Landon, Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of Universities Canada, wrote in an email to The Varsity. He added that Gertler

will have a major impact responding to emerging issues on behalf of the organization.

A former professor of geography, Gertler’s time at U of T has been characterized by a heightened focus on city building, global connectivity, and sustainability initiatives. He has also advocated for expanding experiential learning opportunities and increasing the university’s research collaborations with Canadian businesses.

Gertler recently finished his term as the chair of the U15 group of Canadian research universities and serves on the Council of Ontario Universities’ Executive Committee. The former works to shape long-term and sustainable research policy to the benefit of Canadian universities while the latter has a similar mission to Universities Canada, but on a provincial level.

As vice-chair of Universities Canada, Gertler will serve on its board of directors. The board is

Meric Gertler will serve as vice-chair then chair of Universities Canada.

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composed of 13 members, including 12 university presidents and the president of Universities Canada, Paul Davidson. The board meets four times a year to determine the association’s strategic direction and priorities and is also responsible for making decisions for the organization.

Gertler will also become a member of the executive and finance committees, and chair the Nominating Committee, which recommends candidates for future board positions.

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UTM’s decennial campus master plan for 2020 in consultation phase

Chief administrative officer discusses objectives of infrastructure growth, Indigenous placemaking Hafsa Ahmed UTM Bureau Chief

UTM is currently working on the UTM Campus Master Plan 2020, a series of guidelines and goals for the campus space. UTM devises a new master plan around once every 10 years — having released its previous plan in 2011 — and the plan focuses on buildings and the use of space on campus.

The plan will be used to inform future campus projects and seeks to incorporate a range of initiatives, such as strengthening the preservation and use of campus open spaces, focusing on environmental sustainability, and improving safety and user mobility in and around campus.

The current phase of the plan involves identifying what changes to the draft are needed and collecting feedback from community members. This phase, which runs from September to December, includes having campus and Indigenous consultation sessions, and a first presentation to a design review committee.

The UTM Campus Master Plan 2020 is expected to be in its final stage during the first four months of 2021. This phase will include remaining stakeholder meetings, a third campus consultation, and a second presentation to the design review committee.

More space for students, research The Varsity spoke with Saher Fazilat, Chief Administrative Officer at UTM, to discuss the plan and its current phase.

Fazilat said that the current phase involves consultations with the internal community at UTM. The internal consultations began and

were intended to take place in person, but due to the pandemic, consultations continued online.

“We couldn’t figure out, in April [and] May, how to best engage the students,” Fazilat said, but the consultants eventually found the Bang the Table online engagement tool, through which they could solicit feedback from students, faculty, and staff members.

“It would be a fruitless plan without engaging the community, so we had to find new ways,” Fazilat said. She noted how the internal consultation phase was extended as well, since students in September were “just coming back, catching up, and trying to get used to the new environment.”

Fazilat also said that the UTM Campus Master Plan 2020 is in its draft form and is “likely to change a lot after [UTM gets] the full feedback from the internal committee.”

According to Fazilat, the plan aims to enhance infrastructure for students and community members who are already at UTM. “We want to add space so that students have more study space,” Fazilat said. “We want to shift away from just hallway seating. We want to give [students] dedicated space.”

The plan involves ensuring that spaces work well for the UTM community, such as by ensuring pedestrian-friendly roads so that “cars and people can live together.” Additionally, the plan is meant to inform where growth of infrastructure will take place and how initiatives — such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preserving UTM’s green space, and deciding on building locations — will be implemented.

After internal consultations are drafted, consultations with the external community

The master plan lays out a vision for the UTM campus space.

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will take place regarding central objectives of the plan, including sustainability and Indigenous place making.

Indigenous consultation on the master plan Tee Duke, Assistant Director Indigenous Initiatives at UTM, wrote to The Varsity with her thoughts regarding the UTM Campus Master Plan 2020 and UTM’s efforts to consult with Indigenous community members. Duke highlighted the central identity of UTM’s natural setting on the Credit River, noting that “Indigenous perspectives are pivotal in the phases leading to this updated Campus Master Plan.”

The Indigenous Perspectives Survey is available online for Indigenous community members to “share insights on ways to enhance the campus experience for Indigenous Peoples through place making and other initiatives at UTM.” “These initiatives may also build greater awareness amongst the non-Indigenous com-

munity of Indigenous histories, cultures, and Treaties,” Duke wrote. Duke also mentioned that the architect team from the Brook McIlroy firm, which is working with UTM on its master plan, has “an Indigenous Design Studio led by Indigenous team members.”

Duke wrote that there is always more that can be done with regard to forming connections with Indigenous communities and highlighted the importance of non-Indigenous UTM community members to “reflect on how they see themselves in relationship building as well.”

“Ultimately it is on all of us as a campus community to continue to do the work by seeking out and maintaining reciprocal relationships with each other,” she wrote.

Duke expressed gratitude to the “Indigenous colleagues, faculty, students, external community members and allies that continue to help achieve more Indigenous-focused place making at UTM.”

New student residence being built at UTSC will double residence capacity

Building will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, have low energy consumption Alexa DiFrancesco UTSC Bureau Chief

Construction has begun on a new 750-student residence building at UTSC that is expected to be completed by fall 2023. The new space will be on the site of a current campus parking lot located at 3300–3316 Ellesmere Road.

UTSC proposed the nine-storey residence building in 2017, and the project was approved by the city in July 2020, with construction originally planned to start in August. The residence will double the current residence capacity at the UTSC.

The structure will be the first residence built at UTSC since Joan Foley Hall in 2003. Joan Foley Hall is UTSC’s sole apartment-style residence, alongside 13 townhouse residences, which serve as another option for students.

Facilities Residential floors will be arranged into three sections, or ‘communities,’ that will vary in colour and design. The building will include a mix of single- and double-occupancy bedrooms, fully accessible suites, and kitchen, lounge, and study spaces.

The building will also feature a rooftop gar-

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den and terrace, an event space, and rooms dedicated to workshop-style learning.

The residence’s dining facility will provide UTSC with students access to meals seven days per week for the first time, as campus food services are currently open only from Monday through Friday.

The residence will also house the Office of Student Experience & Wellbeing and Student Housing & Residence Life, which currently operate out of UTSC’s Arts and Administration Building and the Residence Centre, respectively.

In an email to The Varsity, Andrew Arifuzzaman, UTSC’s Chief Administrative Officer, wrote that “Expanding our residence spaces has been a priority for the University, to meet a major need at UTSC, and provide a hub of community that meets the needs of our students.”

“The project showcases U of T’s commitment to providing dynamic approaches to learning and living, and investing in infrastructure that makes our campus an environment for excellence.”

Designing for low energy consumption Pomerleau, a Canadian contractor, was selected earlier this year to design and build the space to the Passive House standard. To be certified as a Passive House, a building must have low energy consumption. The residence will be one of North America’s largest Passive House projects.

In a comment to ReNew Canada, Patrick Stiles, Vice-President and Regional Manager of Pomerleau, noted that the company is “very proud to be partnering with the U of T Scar-

borough” for the delivery of the Passive House building, one Stiles explained is “set to be one of the most eco-efficient in the country.”

“Our focus on building innovative and sustainable buildings has never been stronger, and we are excited to work with the U of T Scarborough to create a safe, healthy and inspirational living environment for its students,” Stiles remarked.

Energy-efficient features will include tripleglazed windows and walls with improved thermal performance and continuous insulation.

This is estimated to result in between 40–60 per cent energy savings in heating and cooling compared to conventional buildings. It will also maximize light exposure to the outside campus.

These features are part of a larger goal by U of T to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 37 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030. The Landmark Project at UTSG also recently broke ground, including a geothermal field that is expected to help achieve that goal.

In a video message to UTSC students, U of T Vice-President and UTSC Principal Wisdom Tettey explained that the residence’s creation is part of Inspiring Inclusive Excellence, UTSC’s recently launched five-year plan. Tettey added that the building “shows U of T’s commitment to addressing climate change.”

Addressing the UTSC community, U of T Principal Meric Gertler described the new residence as an “act of hope,” and one that is “especially welcome” given the circumstances of the pandemic. Claire Kennedy, U of T’s Governing Council Chair, referred to the building as an “iconic structure,” noting that it “will serve to promote a sense of belonging and lifelong stewardship.”

Business & Labour

November 16, 2020 var.st/business biz@thevarsity.ca

Affordable, accessible, inclusive: Toronto’s post-pandemic housing plan HAT advocates for renting assistance, solutions to homelessness, consultations with racialized peoples

Megan Brearley Senior Copy Editor

This pandemic has highlighted a number of issues that need to be prioritized — among them the need for a home and financial security. Back in March, the City of Toronto established the Housing Action Team (HAT) to address the intersection of these difficulties. In August, the team released its findings in the Housing and People Action Plan.

Noble intentions The HAT, chaired by Deputy Mayor Ana Bailão, was formed to “flag new and emerging issues, collectively identify solutions, and plan for longer term recovery.”

Its report highlights guiding principles, including the importance of housing as a human right; housing stability during a pandemic; the need to strengthen supportive housing; and the importance of aligning housing, health, and economic programs and policies.

The HAT also raised the importance of finding long-term housing solutions, as well as the need to address racial disparities among people experiencing homelessness and to create housing opportunities for Indigenous peoples that are “designed, developed, and operated by Indigenous Peoples and organizations.”

In an email to The Varsity, Bailão’s office wrote that the HAT “is focussed on solutions as they relate to people (people experiencing homelessness, renters and operators/landlords) and the creation of a diverse set of affordable and market rental housing opportunities.”

A plan for all seasons The plan used a ‘housing-first’ approach to homelessness, whereby people experiencing homelessness are placed in long-term housing situations rather than temporary shelters. It called for a number of immediate measures, such as increasing support for rent

banks — which provide low-interest loans to lowincome households — to keep up with demand during the pandemic. The plan also seeked to minimize the number of eviction orders filed as temporary bans on evictions lift.

The HAT suggested the implementation of a multi-tier “temporary rental assistance program” similar to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). Suggested tiers of the program included ones for people transitioning between the CERB and other government benefits — like Employment Insurance and the Canada Recovery Benefit — and another that would provide assistance to renters who do not qualify for other benefits.

The plan also recommended increasing and accelerating investments under the 2017 National Housing Strategy, which aims to cut homelessness by 50 per cent across Canada. Specifically, it recommended increasing grants, streamlining the decision-making processes for projects that are already in development, and allocating uncommitted funding within the next six to nine months.

Other recommendations included expanding current financial assistance programs and allocating funding to retrofit and renovation projects and supportive housing projects. The plan stressed a “housing as homes” approach that places local needs above investments.

New study finds mistrust of banks can overshadow objective savings

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A recent U of T study has revealed that misinformation can affect financial preferences. “Elaborating on the Abstract: Group Meaning-Making in a Colombian Microsavings Program” analyzes observations from a Colombian governmentsponsored program that saved participants money,

Toronto the Good-enough-for-now Walks praised the rhetoric of long-term goals in respect to addressing homelessness in the city and racial disparities among people experiencing homelessness, as it laid the foundation for future policy to address these issues.

He said that, when the City of Toronto’s plans are actualized, “if they truly do take to heart the idea of a right to housing, and making sure that traditionally marginalized communities are better served, and are

Potential pitfalls The Varsity spoke with Alan Walks, a professor in the Department of Geography & Planning and a co-lead of the Affordable Housing Challenge Project from U of T’s School of Cities. He said that, in regard to addressing homelessness in the city, “there is a danger here in what might be called a go-slow incremental approach because the pandemic has really affected the landscape quickly — and now, we’re heading into winter.”

Finance and fake news: how misinformation can hurt your personal bottom-line

Sarah Folk Associate Business & Labour Editor

Loren March, a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography & Planning and the project manager for the Affordable Housing Challenge Project, wrote to The Varsity about the City of Toronto’s response to the pandemic. “I think [Toronto] has underestimated the intensity of the crisis of homelessness in the city and it takes a largely prevention-based approach which does not do much for unhoused people immediately.”

promoted financial literacy, and allowed them to discuss their experience with banking in groups.

The results of the program yielded a surprising discovery: as financial education and literacy amongst the participants improved, interest in offered financial products decreased. The authors of the study attribute this seemingly paradoxical result to negative anecdotes, hostility toward financial institutions, and general misinformation.

actually served in a way that recognizes that right to housing, I think then the long-term visions that will emerge will be beneficial.”

“The city is maybe starting to come to terms with the fact that market rates are increasingly incredibly unreasonable and not doable for a very large part of the city’s residents - but it would be helpful for them to incorporate more ‘affordability in perpetuity,’” March wrote.

Walks also identified that, due to the pandemic, dealing with housing affordability is difficult due to the nature of planning during a pandemic, as well as the issue of costs. “The pandemic has meant that cities are facing greater need in exactly the same time where the revenues have dropped,” Walks said. “So the funding issue is huge.”

“It’s hard to say what’s going to happen in the future,” Walks said. “So much is uncertain and depends on the timing of the pandemic and everything else.”

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Interpreting the results Objectively, the microsavings program resulted in increases in savings, with participants’ median monthly savings increasing from 3.15 USD to 9.44 USD by the end of the program. However, this increased level of savings was accompanied by a decline in financial product interest with only 64.9 per cent of participants interested in financial products at the end of the program, compared to 73.6 per cent at the beginning of the program.

In studying this seemingly counterintuitive result, the study found that the Colombian government used vague and abstract messaging to describe the financial program, leaving participants to augment their understanding of it through group discussion. Said discussion was replete with three factors: anecdotal negative experiences with banking, rumours and misinformation regarding the program, and negative delivery of otherwise neutral information.

“In development economics literature, there’s a strong expectation that as people’s material conditions improve, they’ll become increasingly interested in formal financial products,” Laura Doering, an associate professor in the Rotman School of Management and co-author of the paper, said in an interview with The Varsity.

“Our expectations about how our financial preferences are formed don’t usually account for how we receive information and how we digest that information in groups. This study… [shows] that our financial preferences are very much affected by these processes.”

Mass communications, mass misunderstandings Information released by governments and institutions is meant to be digestible and easy to understand. However, the simplification of complex information can result in misunderstandings.

Although the findings focused on the actions of participants in one microsavings program, Doering explained that she sees the implications of their findings as being broadly applicable to any institution attempting to disseminate abstract informa-

tion to large and diverse audiences. “[If ] I have to share information with 50,000 people across the country, how do I do that in an efficient way?” she explained. “The response — which is a reasonable one — is to say, ‘let me compress this information into a form that’s easy to share, that’s scalable, and that anybody, no matter who they are, no matter where they are, can pick it up and understand it.’”

However, the compression of institutional messaging can lead to exaggeration of otherwise neutral information. “We, as human beings, are meaningmaking creatures,” she continued.

“So we will take what is very skeletal basic information, and we will add colour to it; we will add narrative to it. We will add examples; we will add anecdotes of things that our friend of a friend of a friend told us.”

A fascination with negative information Doering emphasized that human beings have a tendency to pay more attention to negative information. “What came out really strongly in the research was how often people would take very basic factual information with negative anecdotes, with secondhand stories. And the fact is, negative information is really interesting. We like it — we’re drawn to it.”

The effects of ‘fake news’ are well-documented in the political sphere, but it’s important to realize how misinformation can creep into all aspects of life. Recognizing the human tendency to focus on negative information is especially important during the uncertainty of the pandemic.

“As consumers of information, we want to be careful, especially in the time of [COVID-19],” Doering said. “When we’re receiving abstract information, say, from public health officials, [be careful] that we don’t necessarily fall into this tendency when we’re talking with our friends and family of attaching negative accounts to it… try to maintain a sort of balanced perspective and a balanced way of engaging with that that information.”

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Op-ed: We need to be careful about how we talk about those with mental health struggles

It is harmful to reduce tragedies to situations of overwhelming stress Vanshika Dhawan Varsity Contributor

Content warning: this article contains discussions of suicide and mentions of sexual violence.

The ubiquity of social media in our personal and professional lives has made grief feel both communal and inescapable. It is comforting to know I am not alone in my mourning, but I also feel like I am drowning in everyone else’s. I have no interest in telling people how to cope or how to grieve.

But suicide is an incredibly complicated and nuanced societal issue, and some of the discourse and advocacy on this campus has been more harmful than helpful. Now more than ever, we must be mindful of what we say and share, and ensure our advocacy is focused on pragmatic, evidence-based solutions.

Writing this piece felt like reopening a wound. My heart is hurting. I am in my seventh year of post-secondary education, which has spanned three universities and two cities. Nearly every year, a student on my campus passed away — in some years, as many as three. These incidents are sometimes reported as a suicide, sometimes assumed, sometimes rumoured — but always devastating, traumatizing, and a reminder that the last wound never fully healed.

I have struggled with suicidal ideation and have talked about it openly for years. I often wonder if I had attempted suicide last year when I was struggling, if the narrative that followed would have been about law school, about the difficulty of it all, about how I was incapable of handling it — when the truth was that my mental health worsened after a traumatic incident pertaining to sexual violence.

Even then, at first, I attributed my own state to academic stress. I have no doubt everyone else would have, too. I would have resented the erasure of my experience as a victim.

That is the predominant discourse I have seen — the difficult environment at U of T, the university’s shortcomings. However, it is presumptuous to advocate around school being too stressful after a student suicide, as if academic stress is the sole contributor to mental health issues. We never know what someone is going through, what their story is.

People’s lives are complex and messy and intricate and, most importantly, private. Everyone is juggling family, school, relationships, friendships, housing, finances, health, and so much more. Even with our closest friends and family, the full extent is unknowable.

It is extremely harmful to reduce the identities of people who die by suicide to ‘U of T students.’ It is upsetting, especially as someone with a mental illness and disability, to see the erasure of severe mental health issues from these conversations, the erasure of lived experiences outside of school, and most importantly, the presumption that suicide ‘makes sense,’ that it is an inevitability when otherwise relatively welladjusted students ‘succumb’ to academic stress.

It is not. It is so much more complicated than that, in ways that tweets and Instagram infographics can only begin to scratch the surface of.

Perfectionism and dysfunctional thoughts concerning success have long been identified as a contributing factor to suicidal ideation and suicide. But there are so many other contributing factors, like sexual orientation, suicide attempts in the family, depression and depressive symptoms, other mental illnesses, traumatic events, broken relationships, and so on.

Although having a mental illness is not a precondition to suicide, students with mental illnesses are disproportionately overrepresented amongst students with suicidal ideation.

Everyone has mental health that they must take care of. Universities undeniably contribute to poor mental health, and this is incredibly important to acknowledge and address. But people who die by suicide are so much more than students; not everyone’s greatest stressor in life is related to academics, even if it may be the most easily identifiable one.

There are students on this campus with severe mental illnesses. Their everyday experiences and their struggles matter, even when they are invisible. There are also students who experience poor mental health because of various stressors in their life.

Their struggles matter just as much.

All students are deserving of support that is proactive and appropriate to their needs.

No student, no matter how “little” they think they are struggling, should be afraid to ask for help.

There are many ways to do this; triaging and case management are a couple of evidence-based suggestions.

Building accessibility into the system — by mandating recorded lectures, for example — instead of putting the onus on students to selfadvocate and attain an accommodation to an otherwise inaccessible service, is another.

There are many more.

Responding to the mental health crises on our campuses is not as simple as increasing access to therapists and pharmaceuticals. In fact, I worry that advocacy is amounting to demanding our universities become mental health care providers that abandon students once they graduate. I strongly believe these roles must be and are best fulfilled by robust, government-funded mental health care.

The university should absolutely provide short-to-mid-term counselling, access to therapists, doctors, and psychiatrists. But reactive measures can only do so much.

What about proactive measures? We call on the university to support students after the fact, but what about the unattainable standards it sets? That we as students also perpetuate?

How many of us associate our self worth with our grades, with our institutional accolades, with the extracurricular positions we obtain and the types of jobs we secure?

How much do we romanticize being

overworked and overtired in overloaded semesters? How much do we reinforce the validity of these cognitive distortions when we frame student suicides around school stress — and only school stress? As if suicide is a valid and understandable response to school stress, when it never is?

I say cognitive distortions because that is what they are — false equivalencies, harmful ideals, implications of inferiority. We are all inherently worthy of love and respect and kindness. We are all trying our best. It is okay to admit we are struggling, that we made a mistake, that we do not have the capacity.

None of that makes us “less than,” none of us are “less than” — even if we feel that way sometimes.

It starts with the little things. Reducing the stigma around needing to drop courses, understanding that school may not be the biggest priority for many students, letting people define success for themselves, and not imposing our own definitions on other people.

It starts with the way we think and talk about mental health issues, mental illnesses, and suicide on campus. It starts with our mindsets, our social circles, ourselves.

I do not claim to have all the answers. In fact, sometimes there are none. Sometimes, there is no particular cause of suicide, just a million little things and a lack of intervention.

I understand how difficult that is to accept, how much easier it is to blame academic stress, how this may be a grief response — but this has the potential to be reductive and harmful.

It is comforting to see that mental health and wellness advocacy is a priority for many students; I simply hope that we as a student community can reflect and be mindful of the complexities of suicide discourse and advocacy as we try our best to support each other.

Vanshika Dhawan is a second-year Juris Doctor candidate at the Faculty of Law. She is also the University of Toronto Students’ Union representative for the Students’ Law Society and a board member of Students for Barrier-Free Access.

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Online learning is overwhelming — and students are falling behind Expectations need to adjust to this year’s unique circumstances

Natasha Lewis Varsity Contributor

Confronted with an entire year of online learning, U of T students have become concerned with the unpredictability of online courses.

Students are now living in a virtual world that requires strict self-motivation and, oftentimes, that motivation seems impossible to produce.

This has resulted in a culture of impossible student expectations with almost no support on how to get back on track if you don’t meet them.

According to U of T’s Getting Ready for Online web page, “online courses will take as much time and are as academically rigorous (or more rigorous) as a face-to-face course.” This implies that U of T’s goal amidst course changes has been to maintain course difficulty above all else.

The question on students’ minds then becomes, why does the transition to online learning require that online classes be more demanding than in-person ones?

In U of T’s COVID-19 Academic Continuity Strategy: 2020–2021, U of T wrote that one of its central pillars for academic planning is to provide a manageable workload. However, this concern that the workload will become too strenuous is specifically geared toward professors and employees of the university — not students.

In fact, professors have incorporated a heavy workload into learning in an effort to engage students; however, this has become problematic.

U of T’s new online “flexible course design” recommends increased engagement outside of the classroom.

Extra course material could include group projects, student-led discussions, peer feedback activities, and more. The extra course involvement asks for supplemental, weekly completions that are graded as well. These excess tasks that professors are now using to grade students have started to become overwhelming.

U of T Student Life offers tips on how to succeed in online learning. These tips include setting up a good workspace, building a routine, engaging in the content by asking questions and taking notes, reaching out to the community by talking with professors, creating study groups, seeking mentorship, and setting clear expectations by reaching out to your registrar and other

supports.

Most of this advice is common knowledge and geared toward being a productive student in general. However, none of these ‘tips’ are specific to the struggles that students are facing with an online workload.

Falling behind at U of T is simply not an option. The university demonstrates that it expects its students to stay on track and nothing less.

As such, there is no guidance for when students do fall behind, only advice on how to avoid it.

Students’ anxieties stemming from online learning also revolve around time management.

U of T should not assume that online learning means more time. The Getting Ready for Online webpage tiptoes around the issue of why students could lack motivation, or how to recover from piles of overdue work.

On the upside, the website does offer helplines and student support programs for when students become distressed. The website transitions from how to avoid overdue work to resources to seek when in need of help for men-

tal health.

Mental health helplines and programs are a necessity; however, there is no acknowledgement for other necessities, like how to get back on track with work. The webpage indicates that U of T does offer academic support, but again, it links back to U of T Student Life and Accessibility Services without addressing the central problem at hand.

Students are doing their best during these trying times. Instead of claiming students have poor time management, there should be questions pertaining to whether the workload is too demanding and supports for when students aren’t able to meet these demands.

Multiple opinion pieces have highlighted the difficulties of online classes; it should be up to the professor to make changes and reduce stress for students. It has always been up to the student to meet impossible expectations, but this needs to change.

U of T needs to modify its focus from blaming students to looking at how course require-

ments have shifted and if this shift is too much for students to bear. The lack of these modifications creates an inaccessible learning environment for students with mental illnesses or disabilities. Not everyone can keep up with the university’s ever-growing academic expectations, and not everyone should.

Professors and administrators do not need to change the curriculum, but rather listen to students on how to improve online learning. Altering the course requirements of a midterm or responding to expectations that are overbearing could drastically shift the online learning experience.

Falling behind has become easier during the pandemic because of these flexible course designs. As such, if professors and administrators argue that these course designs are indeed flexible, they should be easy to modify to support student excellence.

Natasha Lewis is a fifth-year criminology and English student at Victoria College.

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Letters to the Editor Re: U of T, New College confirms death of student “University once was a place to polish the person - I fear it has become far too expensive and employment driven, lacking heart and soul, chasing work and wallets instead.

Just a thought. Youth deserve a better, more human and humane experience.”

— Paul Newland (from web) Re: How films depicting the working class fail to capture the reality of poverty “Kinda odd that this article, which offers a generalized critique of Parasite (and films like it) doesn’t reference any specific sequences to back up its argument. It also neglects to mention the scene during the flash rainstorm that takes the film away from satire for a solid chunk of time and soberingly depicts the fragility of the working class, especially under crisis.

The author should probably watch the film again.”

— Albert Hoang (from web)

Re: How films depicting the working class fail to capture the reality of poverty “Yeah, sorry, I dont agree with this. For sure parasite is not necessarily perfect, but it is certainly not dehumanizing of its leads, nor is it presented as a realist story either.

The Kims do bad things, yes, but the movie treats them more as scrappy, resourceful and desperate than evil. They have goals of attending university, pursuing the arts, providing for their family. I really dont know if we watched the same movie??

And if what you’re looking for is the ‘drudgery’ of poverty, I would not watch an action thriller movie. There are plenty of realist/kitchen sink drama filmmakers that DO depict the more mundane aspects of working class life (Andrea Arnold, Mike Leigh, Sean Baker to name a few) but that’s more a stylistic difference than ideological. I agree we should have more class diversity in films (as well as other types of diversity obviously) but I actually think parasite is a step forwards rather than a step back.”

— Teresa Mersereau (from web)

Re: In Photos: U of T from a squirrel’s perspective “george and i aren’t on the best of terms… he ate every vegetable i planted in my garden on outer circle rd.”

— Stephen Brooke (from web) Re: The very existence of Campus Police is racist, and it must be abolished “This article is absolutely bogus.

Your claim that campus police are dangerous and violent has as evidence the one incident of the student handcuffed while getting help at the HCC. Handcuffing a student seeking help for mental health is a protocol that should be removed right away. But even this incident does not show that police in this situation were violent towards the student.

To then further use this one example of police action (wrong course of action) and apply it to the whole campus police force is simply a false generalization.

Further, to attribute blame to campus police for the tragic deaths of students on cam-

pus is flat out disrespectful.

To claim that there is ‘widespread lived experience of violence’ on campus is not supported by evidence at all. Where are the widespread numbers of students speaking out about the violence they have suffered from campus police?

Lastly a question: As a female student, who do I call when I feel unsafe being followed by someone on campus when walking at night?

Who do I call when my bike gets stolen on campus?

Who do I call when I witness harassment on campus?

This is a flat out embarrassing article to read in a university paper. A piece of writing with only unfounded and fallacy filled arguments.”

— Natalia Zambrowicz (from web)

10

THE VARSITY

COMMENT

comment@thevarsity.ca

Another student death reinforces the need for better mental health support The administration’s many promises have not translated to sufficient action Mélina Lévesque Associate Comment Editor

Content warning: this article contains mentions of suicide.

On the morning of November 3, The Varsity reported the fifth death of a U of T student since June 2018. This news isn’t only heartbreaking because of the sheer fact that another life has been lost in the student community, but also because this life was lost under an administration that has consistently turned a blind eye to the critical importance of actively supporting student mental health.

While the ongoing pandemic has opened our eyes to the importance of mental health as we continue to tackle the physical and emotional challenges of online learning, it has also exacerbated the issues with the university’s approach to mental health and student wellbeing.

As members of a community who have mourned the devastating loss of peers in the past, students need to come together and hold U of T accountable for its inattention in reevaluating the structural flaws that have allowed the mental health crisis to continue.

U of T is known for an academic culture of excellence and toxic competition, and criticisms on the extent of U of T’s mental health support are nothing new.

Students have organized protests and petitions in response to student deaths in recent years, demanding the administration to significantly improve the quality and level of accessibility of mental health services on campus. In response to students’ pleas for action, in March 2019, following a reported student death on campus, U of T formed the Presi-

ISABELLA TAN/THEVARSITY

dential & Provostial Task Force on Student Mental Health. Through the task force, the university committed to review its mental health services and support systems.

Only a few months later, on September 27, 2019, another student death was reported, marking the fourth reported non-criminal student death over the span of 16 months.

Students responded in a similar fashion, collectively expressing their frustrations with the lack of mental health support from the university at an Academic Board meeting on October 3, 2019.

What was President Meric Gertler’s response? That administration had listened to us, had heard us, and would “continue to do so.” He added, “we share your concerns, and we are strongly committed to collaborating with you to address them,” a response that students have become too used to hearing.

In the days after the most recent reported suicide, apart from a statement from New College President Bonnie McElhinny, there has been little from the central U of T administration. Instead of receiving words of acknowledgment from Gertler — or a statement on the U of T website — students read about the loss of yet another life gone too soon on The Varsity and social media. This is shameful in and of itself.

The lack of progress following other student deaths gives the appearance of complacency and acceptance that these tragedies are just a part of student life at U of T. One reported student death is a tragedy.

Five is beyond unacceptable, contributing to a cycle that has become far too familiar for the

U of T community.

“Last November, Vice-Provost Sandy Welsh stated that mental health is a priority of the University but we are once again faced with the reality of inaction,” wrote the Arts and Science Students’ Union in a statement released November 3.

We are faced with the consequence of the university’s negligence toward students’ wellbeings, a longstanding issue that has only become compounded by the impacts of a pandemic — isolation being at the top of the list.

As students and faculty navigate a new environment of remote learning and teaching, it is important to recognize that not every student is doing their studies in the comfort of their family’s home or in the living room of a cozy apartment shared with friends and housemates. There are students who are isolated in dorm rooms without roommates, living alone, and not in a position to physically surround themselves with the comfort and stability of loved ones.

During the particularly stressful period of midterms and soon-to-be finals season, students’ tendencies to fall into feelings of isolation, stress, and anxiety have been intensified by this new learning and living environment.

That being said, student mental health should hold an indefinitely strong place at the top of our administration’s priority list.

Just as students and faculty continue to readjust to the changes brought by the pandemic and its accompanying safety regulations, U of T has a responsibility to re-evaluate its priorities as an academic institution in a way that recognizes the larger picture of what is

at stake: the mental well-being of its students during this challenging time. This is long overdue.

While U of T has made it clear that mental health resources and support are available to students, the university needs to do more to advertise its resources. Advertising U of T news articles saying, “We are here for you when you need us,” is not enough and, quite frankly, reads as an empty promise at this point. It is one thing to publicize these messages of support and care. It is another to put these words into practice.

Despite virtual supports such as My Student Support Program, a forum in partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health where counsellors can answer questions from struggling students, and Navi, an app that connects its users to the different mental health services provided here at U of T, students are still struggling and burning out. While these programs are promising, another student death indicates that they are not adequate.

It should not be up to students to ensure that their peers are okay and receiving support when they need it. It is without question that an increased amount of pressure must be placed on the university to take proactive and immediate action. All we can do as students is continue to advocate for positive change by demanding that greater efforts be made by our administration in the name of student mental health and well-being.

Mélina Lévesque is a f ifth-year political science and sociocultural anthropology student at Victoria College. She is an associate comment editor.

var.st/comment

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

11

Accessibility Services’ extension policy leaves too much up to professors Approval of requests are arbitrary — they should be guaranteed Talia Shafir Varsity Contributor

Accessibility services are essential to a host of students. One such academic accommodation enables them to receive extensions on assignments. However, the current state of the policy makes it so the accommodation is almost rendered useless.

Currently, in order to receive an extension on an assignment for a particular course, a student must first email a request to their professor. The professor chooses whether to accept or reject the student’s request. Considering the currently overloaded nature of coursework in online classes, there are several issues with this process of requesting accommodations.

Since the current policy requires students to wait for confirmation of their extension requests, it is difficult for students to request extensions at the last minute. If the extension is meant to increase accessibility for those who struggle with stress in their life, making it so the extension cannot be requested up to the moment assignments are due strays from the extension’s original purpose.

For example, I have an extension accommodation because I have exceptional difficulty with time management, so I often find myself realizing just

before an assignment is due that I need more time to complete it. An extension policy that makes receiving extensions at the last minute challenging is not helpful for students who, like myself, struggle with time management.

Expanding this to students with mental illnesses or disabilities, creating a time frame for when you are able to request an extension asks students to manage their struggles in a way that would make the necessity of an accommodation null and void.

Another issue with the current extension policy is that professors, rather than Accessibility Services (AS) itself, get to decide whether students get extensions. From my perspective, the people who work at AS — people who have been trained to understand disability and accessible education — should be the only people responsible for making decisions related to student accommodations.

Most of my professors have accepted my extension requests without any issue. However, I have had two occasions where a professor has turned down my extension request. On both occasions, the reason for turning down the extension was that the professor had decided that extensions were not something they would allow for anyone in their course.

Extension requests should not have their own deadlines.

SAMANTHA YAO/THEVARSITY

The fact that professors can choose to deny students extension requests based on their personal views on extensions means that accommodations only increase accessibility for students who are lucky enough to have a professor who understands the use of extensions.

Understandably, this is not the case for everyone, meaning there’s always a chance that necessary extensions are not guaranteed because of their dependence on each professor’s opinion. The extension accommodations are supposed to alleviate anxiety, but the ambiguity around whether or not one will get their extension is anxiety-provoking.

Especially now when time management and organization is completely left up to the students themselves amidst an increased workload, extensions not being guaranteed restricts the ability for

some students to succeed with online learning.

Test accommodations — such as extra time on tests — are scheduled directly through AS and do not require a professor’s approval. Test accommodations are also guaranteed to students who schedule them by the required date, so there is no ambiguity around whether or not students will receive their test accommodation.

I propose that AS adopt a similar system for extension accommodations: extension requests should not have their own deadlines or require the approval of a professor — and they should be guaranteed.

Talia Shaf ir is a second-year cognitive science, mathematics, and writing and rhetoric student at Innis College.

We must proactively build community in light of online limitations How the pandemic has impacted the ‘normal’ graduate student experience

Rana Haider Varsity Contributor

While students are still getting a lot of educational value out of their university experience, the essence of what it means to be a university student has vanished into the fiber optic cables of the internet. The allure of higher education was never exclusively about academics. Rather, it was all the trimmings that we have now lost that made the experience so life-changing, intense, and memorable.

Less than 10 days after I received my long awaited admission letter from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education’s (OISE) Department of Curriculum, Premier of Ontario Doug Ford declared a state of emergency in the province. Needless to say, my dreams of a busy socio-academic life have been completely shattered, and a new reality has set in — one where we are bound to our laptops and couches, hopping from one Zoom meeting to another with absolutely no real human contact.

The much anticipated first day of classes passed just like any other day, with a few Zoom orientation sessions dispersed throughout. To be fair, orientation in both OISE and the School of Graduate Studies emphasized the themes of making connections, encouraging student engagement, and creating a sense of community.

Professors have been warm and engaging, trying their best to create a welcoming and inclusive environment in their synchronous and asynchronous classes. Despite the efforts, a nagging mantra sits at the back of my mind on a constant loop: “It’s just not the same.”

For one, the networking component of graduate life has taken a big hit. I have attended several U of T events over the past couple of months, mostly professional development (PD) workshops and some lectures. While I

have learned a lot, I have not made a single new acquaintance.

This can be related to the now well-known procession of Zoom meetings: faceless voices and the anxiety of being the first one to speak. If there are technological difficulties, such as a lagging internet connection or abruptly being kicked out of meetings, one can simply give up on the meeting altogether.

This arrangement doesn’t leave a lot of room to create casual conversation, let alone to professionally network.

Lacking physical presence, your interlocutor remains more of an idea or a concept rather than a person whose physical and emotional cues you can read, interpret, and judge. The reality of attending online networking and PD events is that you aren’t able to network in a meaningful way. This does not bode well for the future of work, given the value of networking when it comes to seeking out employment opportunities.

Had I been in a face-to-face class, I would have probably hung back for a few minutes after class to speak with colleagues or my professor about the lecture, future plans and projects, or maybe an outing we were planning to have. This is an aspect of graduate life that has been completely lost.

I am fortunate enough to belong to an incredibly supportive and dynamic cohort of highly motivated and very talented PhD and

REBECA MOYA/THEVARSITY

master’s students.

We have set up a private WhatsApp group to keep in touch. Many of us are participating in a secret Santa gift exchange this Christmas using an app, and we have started a book club to encourage each other to read seminal works on theory in our field. We have all been making an effort to forge connections without having met once in person.

Reflecting upon my experience as a graduate student during these unprecedented times, I would say a verdict has been reached:

humans are social animals through and through. We cannot truly thrive unless we exist inside meaningful networks with other people.

It is essential for students, especially graduate students, to take a proactive approach to create communities within their programs given the online academic world they are currently in.

Rana Haidar is a f irst-year curriculum, teaching, and learning graduate student at OISE.

12

THE VARSITY

FEATURES

“Lonely, unsafe, and unheard”: four women speak out about experiences reporting assault at UTSC How institutional barriers at UTSC have failed survivors of assault Writer: Lily Knaggs Illustrator: Fiona Tung

Content warning: this article contains discussions of sexual assault.

When you think of the University of Toronto, you think big. Big dreams, big classes, big ideas. As students, we usually feel pride in our ability to say we go to the top school in Canada. But this fantasy does not always match up to the reality.

As great as U of T may come across as, the institution fosters an environment in which many students, particularly survivors, feel unsafe and unheard when they experience sexual or physical assault and harassment on campus. In my second year of university, I became one of these students.

I experienced harassment from a man I worked with at the UTSC residence. I was one of three coworkers he targeted, as he made inappropriate comments about our bodies and sometimes even became physically abusive. Some of us were tackled onto the ground; some were lifted without consent and thrown in trash cans; and some were tied to chairs and pushed over in the middle of our workplace without prompting.

I also felt dismissed in conversations, and he constantly mocked me or shut me down in front of others. No matter what we did or said, the words ‘stop’ and ‘no’ meant nothing to him.

These experiences had a particularly difficult impact on me because they stirred up memories from high school, when I had multiple experiences with men who sexually assaulted and emotion-

ally abused me. This was trauma that I had never dealt with or processed — instead I just moved on, telling myself that I was making too big of a deal out of it. At that age, it wasn’t hard to forget after a while. But my experiences at UTSC brought everything back.

My coworkers and I endured this treatment from our colleague for months until, one day, we decided to do something about it. The three of us gathered together, huddled on a bedroom floor late at night. We already felt exhausted from his actions over the past few months, and the fear mixed with the guilt we felt about reporting him was overwhelming.

We worried about if we would be believed or if we would be taken seriously, trying to figure out if our experiences were even worth reporting. We sat in the circle for hours, taking notes about each other’s stories, making sure we wouldn’t forget anything.

It was exhausting. We went through our individual experiences, tracing how they all connected. We cried together as we were reminded of past trauma and as we reflected on the treatment we had endured. I was tired of feeling walked on.

My story is one of many at UTSC. Every institutional, interpersonal, or emotional barrier that I faced to see justice brought against my colleague was a barrier that many other survivors encountered as well.

To explore this issue further, three women who have experienced the process of reporting sexual assault at UTSC spoke to me on the condition of anonymity. Hearing their stories, I realized that their testimonies merged and intertwined with mine for certain experiences, ultimately illuminating where UTSC consistently fails its survivors.

Reporting experiences at UTSC residence My colleagues and I reported our coworker to our residence life manager this past March, and by May, we still had not heard anything.

During those three months, we didn’t see any changes.

He was kept on staff, working in close proximity with us. We had to sit in rooms with him each week and were assigned to work shifts with him, which created severe challenges for some of us. For the rest of the year, until we left campus due to the pandemic, we were unable to sit through meetings or missed events simply because he would be there. The lack of communication from UTSC’s residence management left us in the dark for months.

My experience with UTSC residence inefficiently and ineffectively handling my case mirrored the experience of Emma*, a recent UTSC graduate who also worked as a staff member with the UTSC residence life department. During her time there, she filed a report on behalf of a man student against a woman coworker for sexual assault. According to Emma, this woman coworker already had multiple reports filed against her for misconduct.

According to Emma, the student whom she had filed a report on the behalf of had initially reported his experience to a residence life team member, who then took the matter to the department managers. Despite multiple people reporting the assault, no actions were taken to remove the accused staff member from her position.

Emma then recalled how that accused staff member went on to work in the same job the following year.

She remembered her conversation with the affected student, as he felt like residence didn’t really do anything to provide substantial support, aside from providing him with resources to the Sexual Violence Prevention

& Support Centre (SVPSC) and health and wellness centres.

This was a common theme with residence; likewise, when I reported my colleague with my coworkers to residence management, we were unsatisfied with the outcome. When we expressed this sentiment to residence management, we were only given resources instead of an actual solution.

Another student who also endured the realities of residence’s lack of ability to appropriately handle these cases is Maya*, a third-year student studying international development studies who was raped while living in residence in her first year back in 2016. Initially, she chose to not report, wanting to move on from the experience.

Her assailant later physically and verbally assaulted her one day on campus because she had told some people that she had not consented.

Concerned for her safety, she chose to report her assault to residence. Maya recalled that during her reporting process, she wasn’t offered support or sent to any external offices that would have been more equipped to handle it. The SVPSC was not yet established in 2016.

“Complaints were handled through the Office of Safety and High Risk, and [residence] never directed me there or to any of the external bodies,” Maya said. “Then, even when the [SVPSC] happened, I only was aware of it because of another student on residence [who] was then raped.”

Throughout the reporting process, she was also contacted by her assailant with threatening messages.

“The guy who assaulted me texted me another kind of threatening message while I was reporting to [residence],” Maya said. “I told them, and they asked me to read it out and repeat it a couple of times, so I assumed they were including it in the report. But when I picked up my report in 2018, there was no mention of the threatening message, much less what it said.”

Although Maya had a witness who saw her assailant physically confronting her on campus, after she reported her assault, her assailant remained on campus, living in a townhouse not far from her own. Maya said that she did not understand why he remained in residence, and the fact that he was not removed affected her greatly.

For the remainder of her first year, Maya slept on a friend’s couch in residence, unable to sleep in her own room because that was where the assault occurred.

She also knew that residence had the ability to suspend students from living there because after her assault, toward the end of the academic year in 2017, Maya was falsely accused of smoking marijuana outside one of the townhouses. The residence office gave her a one-year suspension from living in residence effective immediately, even though Maya offered to take a drug test.

“That was interesting because the guy who assaulted me, there was nothing like that where he wasn’t allowed to return,” Maya said. “I mean, now, smoking weed is legal and assault still isn’t.”

After her first year, Maya took time off for her mental health, staying in the hospital for a period of time due to her trauma.

Maya returned to campus in 2018 and decided she wanted to further pursue her case, as she had not heard any updates on progress from residence. Since reporting through residence and reporting through the university are separate processes, Maya had to pick up her file and bring it to the SVPSC. Maya said that as she watched a worker make her a copy of her file, she realized that her entire residence reporting experience meant that her story “sits in a file cabinet for two years, and nothing happens.”

The reporting process I had a much more positive experience when go-

features@thevarsity.ca

ing through the reporting process outside of residence than those I spoke to. After first reporting to residence and not seeing any progress made on my case, I then chose to disclose to the SVPSC about my experiences.

Disclosing is different from reporting in the sense that it does not begin a formal investigation of the assault, but still lets you access support through the centre. Then, I reported again to the equity offices. For my coworkers and me, re-reporting was fairly tiring, as we had to tell our stories over and over, but we had support from each other and a Health & Wellness Centre counsellor.

Out of all of the testimony I heard from the other survivors, my case is the only one with a positive outcome, and it took a group of three women who could testify against one assailant in order to see change happen. However, the other survivors I spoke to didn’t experience nearly as much support, which impacted them greatly.

Amelda*, a fifth-year student studying health policy, recalled her emotionally exhaustive and ultimately unproductive history of reporting.

She explained that she was raped on campus by a teaching assistant (TA), and she didn’t know where to go to seek help. She initially sought out the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) for guidance because the union advocates for student concerns, but due to a lack of training, she was sent to the campus police, where she had a fairly traumatic experience.

“Campus police are… mostly men, and so when you go, it’s like you’re talking to a very rigid man who is basically talking to you like you’re the criminal,” Amelda said. “That was just uncomfortable for me.”

When they questioned her, she remembered feeling uneasy about the situation.

“They ask you a series of questions, and a lot of those questions are really personal,” Amelda said.

“I remember breaking down in the office.”

They asked her questions like what she was wearing, the nature of her assailant’s relationship to her, and if she had showed any signs of wanting physical contact with him.

“It was horrifying,” Amelda said. “They didn’t even follow up on it… It was a very vague thing.”

In addition to issues with the campus police, survivors have spoken about the SVPSC being unhelpful or unsupportive after disclosures.

“A lot of my friends who are survivors also complain… [The SVPSC is] not very resourceful,” Amelda noted.

Maya had a direct experience with the SVPSC coordinator at UTSC, who she alleges has taken two years to file her report and, even now, still hasn’t filed it.

After Maya’s assault in 2016, she tried to file her report with the SVPSC in 2018. This process stretched into two years of back and forth between Maya and her coordinator, during which time her case still had not been officially reported with the SVPSC. “[The coordinator] kept telling me that I wasn’t ready, which I don’t think was her decision to make,” Maya said.

After the coordinator took a leave from campus in February of this year, Maya was left without her report filed.

However, when Maya tried to file her report with the UTSG office instead, they took her report over a Zoom call in April.

The other major campus resource that was discussed were the equity offices. In my case, when residence failed to take action, my coworkers and I went to the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office to re-report our case. Along the way, we experienced challenges that other survivors also noted — namely, the university policy that survivors aren’t privy to updates about their investigations.

Under the investigation subsection of the reporting process in U of T’s Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy, there is no clear protocol in place explicitly stating that survivors will be privy to updates on the investigation.

When I reported to both residence and the equity office, my coworkers and I were told both times that we would not know more information about the case as it proceeded because it was university policy, and was in place to protect the person being reported. Even when it came to in-

formation about the final outcome of our case, all my coworkers and I received was an email telling us that the investigation had been closed.

Amelda also talked about her experience at an equity office after the SVPSC referred her there.

“They just asked me a series of questions — very vague — asking what was my relationship with the guy and all this stuff,” Amelda said. “And then, they didn’t give me a clear indication of what would happen. They just said it would be under investigation.”

Now, it has been two years since she reported her case. “I still haven’t gotten an email, and I did try to follow up, but it gets lost,” Amelda said. “And then, on top of that, the reason it’s been pretty bad [is] because he’s a TA now for a class I was going to take, which is why I followed up with them.”

In the meantime, she was not presented with many options after filing her report.

“When I did report about him being a TA, their first option for me was asking if I wanted to transfer to a different campus,” Amelda said. “It wasn’t ‘oh yeah, we should kick him out’ or something, and that’s when I just gave up.”

The emotional toll Knowing that there’s no follow up from filed reports and that the reporting process is lengthy can be discouraging to survivors who may be hesitant to report in the first place. Across each story, there was one common theme: the reporting process is vague and confusing — and often leads to no results.

Maya left university and came back, enduring the systems of reporting at residence and the SVPSC, all while fighting her case for the past four years with still no end in sight. Her attacker remained at U of T. Amelda went from the SCSU, to the campus police, the SVPSC, and the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office. Her assailant is still on campus with his job.

Emma reported on behalf of another student in residence, and the accused employee kept her job and continued working there the following year.

Out of these stories, my coworkers and I were the only ones who saw tangible results.

Reporting to residence and then again to the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office, we were finally able to see a positive outcome for our case. However, the office never confirmed to us that this outcome was going to happen — instead, we had to hear about it from mutual friends.

I want to emphasize that my coworkers and I were the only ones who had the privilege of a solid support system throughout the reporting process. As three survivors who banded together to report against one man, we were able to lean on each other.

But, like most survivors, Maya and Amelda had to fight their cases on their own.

When I reached out to U of T Media Relations for comment on the multiple allegations made against U of T bodies and employees in this piece, they were unable to provide comment in time for publication.

Going through the process of reporting even once is an exhausting and difficult process. But reporting multiple times, reliving the trauma again and again, is debilitating, especially when the outcome is unknown or likely negligible. The emotions survivors may feel during this process are unpredictable.

Speaking from my own experience, two days after my coworkers and I filed our report, I fell into a depressive episode. I was unable to get out of bed, crying all day, and not sleeping or eating. I missed all my classes and felt the same dirty feeling I had felt years before in high school. I wanted to literally crawl out of my own skin — it was like dirt that could never be washed off.

For Maya, she was so affected by her assault that she was hospitalized for a week during her second year. She had to take time off from her academics and push back her

graduation while her assailant continued on with his studies.

Amelda said that she felt lonely, unsafe, and unheard throughout the reporting process. Now, she no longer feels secure when she’s at UTSC. “I’m always skeptical when I step onto campus or I go to class because nothing was done,” she said. “How unsafe does the campus need to be before something is done?”

*Names have been changed out of privacy concerns.

The Varsity is looking to expand this article into a three-part series to include survivor experiences at UTSG and UTM. If you are from these campuses and have a story you would be comfortable sharing, please contact features@thevarsity.ca. Anonymity is always an option that can be discussed.

Where to find sexual violence and harassment support at U of T A list of safety resources is available at safety.utoronto. ca The tri-campus Sexual Violence Prevention & Support Centre’s website is www.svpscentre.utoronto. ca Individuals can visit the centre’s website for more information, contact details, and hours of operation.

Centre staff can be reached

by phone at 416-978-2266.

Locations: U of T downtown Toronto campus: Gerstein Library, suite B139 U of T Mississauga: Davis Building, room 3094G U of T Scarborough: Environmental Science and Chemistry Building, EV141 Those who have experience d sexual violence can also call Campus Police to make a report at 416-978-2222 (St. George and U of

T Scarborough) or 905-569-4333 (U of T Mississauga).

After-hours support is also available at: Women’s College Hospital Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Care Centre (416-3236040) Scarborough Grace Sexual Assault Care Centre (416-4952400) Trillium Hospital Sexual Assault Care Centre (905-848-7100)

Photo

November 16, 2020 var.st/photo photo@thevarsity.ca

Commuter Accessibility: from Bikes to the TTC How accessible is the UTSG campus for commuters?

Samantha Yao Photo Editor

Bike Share Toronto is an easily accessible, affordable way to commute — but only for those who live downtown.

SAMANTHA YAO/THEVARSITY

Likely due to its location in the heart of downtown Toronto, most of the students at UTSG commute from home. These commutes can range from a few minutes to a few hours, and as a subway commuter myself, it is difficult to remember how accessible the campus really is.

Not many students have the luxury of living within a reasonable walking distance of campus. While on campus, however, U of T has made walking quite accessible and safe for its students. From dedicated pedestrian streets to crosswalks at frequent intersections along St. George Street, it is quite enjoyable to explore the scenery on campus and be able to commute to different areas on campus without using a vehicle.

With Toronto constantly improving its streets for cyclists, biking is becoming an increasingly popular method of commuting. St. George Street has dedicated bike lanes, and there are multiple locations to lock bikes throughout the campus — to me it seems that biking is a compromise between walking and driving.

Are these stickers for TTC users in wheelchairs really useful?

SAMANTHA YAO/THEVARSITY

Day after day, riding the same route on the TTC and being likely to encounter at least one delay per trip can get frustrating for me. Despite this and the limited locations of TTC stations, our campus is fortunate to be close to not one, but four subway stations: Museum, St. George, Spadina, and Queen’s Park. The TTC also has elevators at most stations, although the usefulness of the stickers installed on the platforms to designate spaces for boarding the trains is doubtful. The TTC seems to be one of the most popular — yet also most unpopular — ways to get to campus.

There are also multiple Bike Share Toronto stations on campus, which serve as a relatively convenient and affordable way for those to bike who may not have space at home to keep a bicycle.

Arguably, I believe that the most inaccessible way to reach campus is by car. This is different from most other universities, as well as UTM and UTSC. Driving in downtown Toronto brings a whole myriad of problems, not to mention the limited and expensive parking on campus.

Accessing campus by commuting is open to far more possibilities than those that I mentioned. Just the other day, I saw commuters skateboarding, rollerblading, and scootering. Keep commuting fun, and don’t forget about the opportunities that UTSG’s location brings!

Arts & Culture

November 16, 2020 var.st/arts arts@thevarsity.ca

How beauty pageants reduce participants to marionettes Reflecting on the toxic intersection of sizeism, misogyny, mental health

Kate Haberl Varsity Contributor

I’ve always been fat. The kind of fat that makes people say, “What are you talking about? You’re not fat!”

In a way that reassures nobody and serves only to reinforce the idea that fat is bad.

Ashamed as I am to admit it, I’ve internalized that message for my entire life. At 16 years old, I was the skinniest I had ever been. Flying high, I became a part of what is known as a “scholarship program” through a mix of subliminal pressure from my mother and dreams of wearing pretty dresses. This scholarship program was essentially a pageant — like Miss America, but on a figuratively and literally smaller stage.

The program I was a part of lasted 20 months — eight months of training followed by a year-long ‘reign’ once you’ve been crowned. For six months, I attended workshops that taught us everything from how to make tea sandwiches to how to change a tire.

There were judges at multiple events over the training period, culminating in a final gala at which we all wore ball gowns, had our hair in complicated updos, and performed a dance to a Spice Girls song before one of us was crowned as a queen, another as a princess, a third as Miss Friendship, and the rest as ambassadors — I, of course, was an ambassador.

Like the vast majority of girls who have participated in the program, I am white. The program was founded in 1948; I know of only two crowned queens who have not been or passed

for white since 1970. There are many possible reasons why that’s the case — the majority of the girls who participate are white, and we come from a relatively white city, but I would suggest that there is a bias present. I can’t prove it, but I felt it, and so did other girls.

Another important word here is “girls.” This program is the most heteronormative, gender-conforming program I have ever seen. Hair has to be in updos; red lips are worn at every event; skirts and heels are mandatory. I attempted to wear Vans under my ball gown at the gala and was told I had to wear heels.

If anyone attempted to subvert gender norms or didn’t conform to a strict binary of gender, I think heads would have exploded.

Our lipstick-painted smiles and coiffed hair spoke to a larger feeling of erasure. I say that as a privileged white woman, but I felt like a prop.

My job at many events was to greet people, serve tea, sit at tables in hospitality suites, and look pretty.

Nobody ever asked me real questions. At one dinner, when I joined a conversation on US politics and offered my thoughts, people seemed shocked that I could contribute. I watched The Stepford Wives and felt like I was seeing my future.

Perhaps being reduced to marionettes is what caused many of us to struggle with our mental health: panic attacks, anxiety, bouts of anger, and depression were all common.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that we were constantly being judged, including by a secret judge who could be observing us at any time — it felt like being in a panopticon.

Perhaps it was the set of rules we agreed to in the contract we signed — no dating, no drinking, no dying our hair, no tank tops, no leaving the house at any time without hair and makeup done, among others.

For me, maybe it was the fact that I was by far the “biggest” girl, as they so kindly put it. Repeatedly, clothes were ordered for me in sizes that I knew wouldn’t fit, or items of clothing made me look like a lumpy blob.

At our gala night, one of the organizers repeatedly told me to “push up the girls” and “adjust the girls,” referring to my breasts. At a photoshoot, they told me to smile, then said “not like that” when I did. It

certainly didn’t help that my opinions were repeatedly criticized, my achievements belittled, and my personality deemed “too loud,” “unladylike,” and “brash.”

Whatever combination it was, my mental health suffered. Flareups of anxiety and depression meant that my last year of high school was riddled with absences and days spent in bed. I gained 40 pounds, which only reinforced my rapidly plummeting body image and self-esteem.

Slowly, whatever spark I had inside of me was stomped out. After we were “crowned,” I avoided every event with the program that I could, then moved to Toronto for school, though I still had eight months left

in my “reign.”

It’s been more than two years since I became involved with what I call the “pageant program,” and I still cringe when trying on clothes and try to smile big but not too big. I avoid clothing that lets people see my body; I hide behind my hair.

I am learning that it’s okay to talk about struggling with mental health and that I am worth more than a pretty table centerpiece. I have to remind myself of that every time I gather up the courage to talk in a tutorial or a student council meeting. I am learning, and healing, and trying to figure out where to go from here.

Wherever it is, I won’t be signing any contracts to get in.

GRACE XU/THE VARSITY

Lights, camera, screenwrite: spotlighting U of T’s one-of-a-kind screenwriting club Victoria College group gives students unique opportunity to flex their writing skills

Anna Sokolova Varsity Contributor

Going into its third year of running at the University of Toronto, Screenwriting at Victoria College is a student-founded, student-run club. Participants meet to listen to seminars on screenwriting by executive members and discuss writing techniques used in renowned films.

What makes this club a standout, as put by Vice-President Internal Elizabeth Coulter in an email interview with The Varsity, is that its “focus on screenwriting… is a focus not just on film, but on story.”

Kenneth Ting, the founder and president of the club, organized its conception upon realizing how limited accessible screenwriting education is at the University of Toronto.

“Although the School of Continuing Studies and Cinema Studies Institute at U of T do offer screenwriting courses, they may not be accessible to everyone as the former option is quite expensive (~$650 per screenwriting course), and the latter is only offered once every two

years with a maximum enrollment of 15 students,” wrote Ting in an email interview with The Varsity.

The club is a free and accessible alternative: according to Ting, you can get a comprehensive educational experience encompassing the journey of “learning the theory, then applying the knowledge, to eventually getting this learning experience recognized by being published in [the club’s] journal.”

Ting stressed the importance of the club’s academic nature: “Similar to the academic courses organized at UofT, we formulate our own learning curriculum annually and upload all of our learning materials with supplemented answer keys to members regularly.”

The seminar content derives from screenwriting books recommended by The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The club’s faculty advisor is Professor Daniel Tysdal, an instructor of screenwriting at Victoria College.

“Participating in this club has taught me how important screenwriting is to filmmaking,” wrote Robyn Bacon, a club member. “As a Cinema Studies gradu-

ate from the University of Toronto, we studied every aspect of the filmmaking process; cinematography, editing, miseen-scène, lighting, camera movement, and sound—without exploring the craft of screenwriting.”

She continued by writing that the club “has positively affirmed, supported, and intellectually challenged [her] passion for screenwriting while allowing [her] to connect and learn from other students who feel similarly.” The club welcomes both those who study film like Bacon and those who don’t, as no prior experience with film is required.

The club’s setting of student discussion may be just what we need in COVID-19 isolation. Like many other student activities, it currently runs via Zoom. Although Zoom meetings are not the same as in-person hangouts, they have boosted attendance and allowed for more personal interaction.

“Through breakout rooms, we are able to hold smaller discussions, allowing all our members to really engage and not have to be drowned out by many other people,” wrote Coulter. As they did in

The club gives students the opportunity to publish their writing in the club journal.

JACKY LAI/THE VARSITY

previous years, students are able to analyze, learn, and discuss scripts.

Screenwriting Perspectives, the club’s academic journal, has recently released its first issue of students’ film criticism, discussing films such as Little Women and Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi.

“Learning how to deconstruct a movie is a very important learning process of writing a screenplay,” wrote Ting.

“Our journal places special emphasis on writing a film analysis from a screenwriter’s perspective because it encourages students to practice how

to identify and critique fundamental elements in storytelling, which they can subsequently innovate and integrate into their own scripts accordingly.”

Ting added that the group will innovate future issues to include interviews of figures in the screenwriting industry, as well as hidden gems and theme of the year sections.

Anyone interested in getting involved can do so. No prior experience in screenwriting or affiliation with Victoria College is required whatsoever — just an interest in watching and writing about some flicks!

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ARTS & CULTURE

arts@thevarsity.ca

How digitalization during COVID-19 has made Canadian art more accessible And why it should stay that way

Margaret Ng Varsity Contributor

Disability is a prevalent experience among Canadians. The most recent Canadian Survey on Disability found that one in five Canadians aged 15 or above had one or more disabilities. The University of Toronto alone has more than 2,000 students registered with accessibility services.

Whether physical, sensory, cognitive, or mental, all disabilities have the potential to pose significant barriers for individuals to fully enjoy the arts. Theatres may be wheelchair-accessible, but the bus ride to get there may not be; museums may display educational artifacts, but the stressful long lines may stop a visitor with autism from comfortably learning.

These accessibility problems may have found a solution due to COVID-19’s impact on everyday life: digitalization.

What has been done While originally a reaction to COVID-19-related lockdowns, many Canadian art institutions are now offering accessible online experiences of arts and culture.

Classical plays at the Stratford Festival may now be screened through the subscription streaming service STRATFEST@HOME. Paid on a monthly basis, subscribers can watch historical performances, supplementary content, educational videos, and guest forums.

Ensemble music by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) is now available on TSO On Demand, where patrons can purchase tickets to online concerts. Pass-holders can view hour-long performances recorded at Roy Thomson Hall as well as behind-the-scenes moments with special guests.

The Art Gallery of Ontario’s YouTube channel uploads videos in which curators and artists explain interesting collections. At no cost, viewers can hear perspectives from professional curators about art ranging from medieval artifacts to post-

modern artworks.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) offers free online exhibitions, some of which are presented through Google’s Arts & Culture. There is also the newly created ROM AT HOME, where ROM experts take the virtual visitor on a guided artifact tour and provide educational activities that can be done by children at home.

Performances are already recorded, and now they just need the addition of closed captions or sign language interpretation for those with hearing impairments. Plays are already scripted, and now they just need more narration to assist those with visual impairments. Exhibit labels are already written, and now they just need image magnification and text-to-speech options.

CELENE CZARNOTA/THE VARSITY

With all of these virtual adaptations, a wealth of arts and culture is now just a click away and brought to the comfort of our own homes. We should applaud what has been done since it undoubtedly alleviates disability-related obstacles, especially for those with physical and mobility disabilities.

Why accessible art should stay But more needs to be done to remove accessibility barriers altogether — and we may already be halfway there.

The most difficult part of digitalization — that is, actually moving the content online — has already been done. Why should these efforts be wasted post-COVID-19?

Obviously, the much more prudent choice is to let these adjustments stay. The immediate benefit of digitalization is the broadening of inclusivity for those with physical and sensory disabilities, as we have already seen.

The long-term educational value of accessible digital art should also be considered. Individuals with cognitive disabilities, such as attention defi-

MyUofT: a website for students to virtually connect

Project hopes to provide an alternative way to meet new people during COVID-19 Sapolnach Prompiengchai Varsity Contributor

Beginning my first year at the University of Toronto from my home in Thailand would have been a greater challenge if I hadn’t managed to make friends at this point. Although many social media platforms exist, I have tried to connect with fellow students through a newly launched website: MyUofT. MyUofT is a website where any student at any campus with a verified U of T email can create a profile and list their social media platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitter, and WeChat. Once an account is made, the users can see other students’ names, programs of study, campus, year of graduation, and social media profiles.

How MyUofT started In an email to The Varsity, Promise Xu, a U of T alum and one of the founders of MyUofT, wrote, “I see clearly how COVID-19 is sucking the life out of the UofT experience—stranded at home, unable to have the kind of interactions with professors and classmates as I was used to.”

Xu and Gavin Ouyang, another U of T alum,

subsequently decided to “[spend] a few weeks designing and building the site,” launching its first version in October. Xu noted that they “felt there is a real need for a platform that helps UofT students find and connect with each other, no matter where they are during this pandemic.”

“This is especially important for international students, as most of them couldn’t even come to live in and experience Canada,” Xu wrote.

Being an international student myself and having never met any friends at UTSC in person, I can relate to this sentiment.

The website allows users to view social media profiles of other U of T students.

KEVIN XIAO/THE VARSITY

cit disorder, may benefit as they are able to repeat performances as many times as they see fit and read exhibit materials for a longer period of time without worrying about being in the way of other visitors.

Those with mental health conditions, such as social anxiety, may benefit as they can wholeheartedly learn and contemplate the artistic experience within the solace of their own homes and without having to be under the pressure of a distressing public environment.

In short, digital art is an initiative with multiple rewards.

It has made it easier for one fifth of Canada’s population to indulge in arts and culture by giving them greater control and less discomfort. In return, these accessibility advances provide a pathway for art institutions to promote Canadian art to those previously excluded. At the same time, digital art also contributes positively to Canada’s broader cultural education by making the learning process feasible and enjoyable.

Beyond COVID-19 The pandemic, while presenting great challenges, offers a golden opportunity for the arts and culture sector to adapt, innovate, and improve. Previously hollow statements and commitments to accessibility are now — finally — forced into action.

The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Canada has ratified, promises to “take all appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy access to cultural materials in accessible formats.” Right now is the perfect time to take that “appropriate measure.” Right now is the perfect time to refine that “accessible format.”

Right now, we already have the foundation of digitalized art. All we need to do is fill in the remaining accessibility gaps and let these digitalization projects stay — for good.

Socializing on MyUofT First, to verify that you are studying at U of T, you will have to fill in your U of T email. Then, you can fill in optional, basic information like your real name, gender, campus, year of graduation, and expected program of study.

After this, you can add your social media or edit the information that you want to show on your profile and to your friends at U of T! Although the website is quite new and has some cool functions currently in development, I found the website to be very user-friendly.

When asked about the inspiration for the site, Xu wrote, “The idea of MyUofT, a directory where UofT students could list themselves and discover other students and their Instagram, TikTok and more, really came from the experience of living through the current global pandemic.”

This list of names can be found under the “Directory” page on the website.

Furthermore, Xu added that students can socialize with people beyond their program of study, which is often difficult during the regular school year.

The MyUofT team is constantly trying to improve the website. At the moment, a search function is being developed and the team “[hopes to] achieve sorting/filtering by campus/year/program.”

Xu and their team are very eager to see more people try MyUofT. “Gavin and I really take inputs and suggestions seriously,” Xu wrote. “There are numerous features and improvements on the site that came directly from community members (every input implemented is credited on the site).”

var.st/arts

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

17

The shame that ought to belong to him

Let’s talk about sex and knowing someone’s body before their mind Caroline Biel Varsity Contributor

“Love makes trouble, love makes trouble,” I thought with every step.

I walked quickly to the pharmacy with my hood pulled tightly around my face. The morning rush hour traffic thrummed. I followed the grey sidewalk with my eyes down. I still couldn’t believe what had happened.

I had found him on the Internet. Really, no differently from the way I find my shoes and shirts online. Swipe left, swipe right.

He looked kind. Gentle. Intelligent. I had been hoping to find someone like him.

He seemed unlike some of the others I’ve seen online: “I’m a simple man. I like pretty darkhaired women,” wrote one; “I’m a professional staple remover. Lol, I don’t even have any visible skills,” wrote another.

Fools. Some men are like rotten fruit at the supermarket.

A quick exchange led to my first rendezvous with the kind, gentle one.

I met him by the water on a sunny summer evening. He was beautiful. He must have thought the same of me. Everything clicked.

Somehow, though, I knew I wouldn’t fall in love with him.

Thankfully, I wasn’t looking for love. Thankfully, I don’t think he was either.

We went slow, then suddenly, we went very fast. You know how it is, I’m sure. All you need is a spark. A moment alone. And it all unfurls.

It’s very strange to know someone’s body be-

fore you know their mind. It can be a dangerous thing. I should have known this would all lead to trouble, like drinking bleach without reading the warning label.

We did lots of things together. We went for evening walks. Leisurely bike rides. We played tennis. We discussed our careers. Our aspirations.

Our past loves. And we ate pizza in the bathtub.

I was looking for someone like this — a companion.

We were there for each other until we weren’t.

You know how it is, I’m sure. All you need is a spark. A moment of anger. And it all unfurls.

Why did we end? Well, you could say he didn’t like wrapping it up. We survived a little longer, but here I knew it would be the end.

This morning, I stepped into the pharmacy. I felt the stare of the store security guard on me, understandably so.

I must have looked like a shoplifter upon entering the store with my heavy cloak and hood pulled up. My avoidant gaze didn’t help. It betrayed guilt, though for a different sin. Normally, the attention of security would have made me self-conscious, but I barely noticed them today.

I walked to the back of the store with empty confidence. I caught the gaze of the pharmacist, who strolled over to the counter to meet me.

I began speaking, trying to make my voice sound calm and measured. I couldn’t look him in the eye, but I could sense kindness and sympathy from him when he responded. I was grateful for that. It dampened the shame inside me.

He fetched the product and returned, confirming: “That’ll be $29.99. Has it been within three

TROY LAWRENCE/THEVARSITY

days?” He said this almost in a whisper, as if he was hoping to protect my dignity.

I nodded to confirm, again grateful for his kind manner.

“Any questions?” he asked, before sliding the card reader in my direction.

I thought of last night and, in my bitterness, wanted to ask him, “Why is it that the woman must pay for the man’s mistake? For his moment of rashness? And why does she take on his shame,

when it really ought to belong to him?”

I was quiet. I shook my head, paid, and left.

I felt better, lighter somehow. I had left some shame behind in the pharmacy. And I washed the rest away in the shower when I cleansed myself of last night’s sweat and semen.

I made myself breakfast. I enjoyed my oatmeal over a good vampire romance novel. I didn’t bother shedding any tears. I washed down my pill with water.

Up-and-coming Canadian Indigenous creatives you should know Seven artists of photography, filmmaking, visual arts, music, and more

Ashiana Sunderji Varsity Contributor

Many Indigenous peoples tell incredible stories through their artwork. Here are seven artists from different communities whom you should check out.

Matthew Monias Matthew Monias, known by his stage name Mattmac, is a blind Oji-Cree rapper from Garden Hill First Nation, a reserve of the Island Lake region close to Winnipeg. Surrounded by gospel music as a child, it is clear that music has played a very strong role in his life. Though he is blind, his disability never stopped him from becoming a self-taught pianist, guitarist, and drummer.

As a musician, Mattmac has just over 5,500 monthly listeners on Spotify, with his song “Paradise” having been streamed over 50,000 times. Mattmac is definitely going places: his voice is incredible, and “Paradise” is very catchy and has a great beat. He also has an album in the works and plans to release it this year, so you should keep your eye out.

Lauren Crazybull Lauren Crazybull is a Blackfoot and Dene painter based in Edmonton and is the first Alberta Artist in Residence. Their website showcases stunning portraits, filled with vibrantly coloured and beautiful patterned backgrounds. I love the way the paintings bring out the character and detail in each painted individual. Crazybull has painted gorgeous mural

paintings around Alberta as well, one at the gallery at dc3 Art Projects and one at Mount Royal University.

Billy-Ray Belcourt Billy-Ray Belcourt is a celebrated Driftpile Cree writer from Alberta. He was a 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a 2016 Rhodes Scholar, and is currently working at the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor in creative writing. He has written three poetry books.

I recently listened to a short excerpt of his most recent book, A History of My Brief Body, and I was incredibly blown away by the beauty of his storytelling through poetry. Referring to his parents, he wrote, “They made a family out of nothing but the human need to be a part of something less resonant with tox-

icity than solitude.”

I hope to get a hold of more of his poetry; it is transformative and paints such a vivid picture.

Teresa Young Teresa Young is a Métis painter who focuses on surrealism and abstract acrylics. Originally from British Columbia, her paintings are incredibly dynamic and equally as captivating when brightly coloured as well as when sketched in black and white. Her art is intricate and filled with many small details that bring the piece to life. Her stunning paintings are sold on her website and on Le Galeriste as pillows, tote bags, apparel, and even face masks perfect for COVID-19.

Melody Charlie Melody Charlie grew up in the Ahousaht First Nation community located on Flores Island. Charlie has a captivating photography portfolio: from capturing portraits, to natural landscapes, to moments in black and white. Each piece conveys more than a moment in time, narrating a story beyond the frame. It is the kind of art that speaks for itself.

Alexandra Lazarowich Alexandra Lazarowich is a Cree director, producer, and screenwriter with a passion for sharing Indigenous stories. From Edmonton, she is accredited for the direction of films that have premiered internationally, and she even won a Special Jury Award for Directing at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019 for Fast Horse, which she wrote and directed.

These Indigenous creatives use diverse media to tell must-listen stories.

COURTESY OF LAUREN CRAZYBULL

Leela Gilday Leela Gilday is a singer and songwriter of the Dene Nation. She grew up in the Northwest Territories and has performed in many countries around the world, including Australia, the United States, around Europe, and of course Canada. She has released five albums and has over 2,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

What I love about Gilday’s music is the clarity in her voice and her ability to connect with you through song. Even upon listening to her music for the first time, I felt something so familiar and comforting about her songs.

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THE VARSITY

ARTS & CULTURE

arts@thevarsity.ca

Pigeonholes is a collaborative inter-sectional column from the Arts & Culture and Science sections, exploring issues across academic boundaries.

This week in the Pigeonholes column: space, time, and COVID-19

FIONA TUNG/THE VARSITY

Hello dear reader! We’re thrilled to announce this first entry into our new inter-sectional column, Pigeonholes: the Arts-Science Writers Exchange. This column represents something new for The Varsity: two sections writing a single column together. Every month, our regular columnists Valeria Khudiakova and Alexa DiFrancesco will explore a single topic, approaching it from two different perspectives and reporting styles.

Alexa and Valeria are both relatively new to their respective sections: Alexa, our science columnist, has previously only written for Business, Arts & Culture, and News in her capacity as UTSC Bureau Chief. Though her articles touch on a myriad of themes, her strong and consistent voice is prevalent throughout her writing. Valeria, our arts columnist, set her sights on Science through her role as a science correspondent last year. Her strong focus on issues in science with a societal impact is clear throughout her writing, a trend that continues in her first column here.

Students at U of T are often stereotyped according to their programs of study as a ‘science person’ or an ‘arts person.’ Humanities students are moody creatives, STEM students couldn’t read a book if you paid them, and so on. We want to challenge these narrow perceptions of how academic disciplines slot you into a particular ‘box’ with a set list of skills and interests. Instead, we hope to show through this column that students across disciplines can provide new and exciting insight into topics that are traditionally not under their purview.

We can’t wait to see what our columnists come up with.

Ori Gilboa and Tahmeed Shafiq Arts & Culture Editor and Science Editor The Varsity Volume 141

Our changing relationship to spaces in the age of COVID-19 Dispatches from the Arts-Science writers exchange — on comfort, discomfort, and privilege Valeria Khudiakova Varsity Contributor

People find comfort in the familiar routines of everyday life.

Just eight months ago, my routine included a morning coffee at Starbucks, German courses at St. Michael’s College, the bustling campus with crowds shuttling between the Galbraith Building and the Bahen Centre for Information Technology, and a cozy carrel at the Innis College Library.

We all belong to numerous spaces, whether physical or virtual, social or personal. We all belong to the classes we attend, whether in person or online, to our workplaces, to our social groups and communities, to the cities or towns we live in, and to the spaces — however small — that we create for ourselves.

Change, on the other hand, often brings discomfort by forcing us to step out of our comfort zones and adapt — and COVID-19 has been no exception. Such changes affect how we relate to the world around us and the spaces we find ourselves in.

Physical spaces and the ability to breathe Our spaces can be comforting or discomforting — or even both at the same time.

Coming back to your room to rest after a long day is heartening, while being stuck in the same room for weeks might feel limiting and frustrating.

After the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and things started shutting down in Toronto, people on Instagram and Facebook were chanting in unison, “Stay home, save lives,” insinuating a certain relationship with the spaces we occupy.

This relationship brings a host of problems with it. For one, not everyone has a roof over their head, and not everyone who has one is safe underneath it. But for those who can, staying home as much as possible is one of the

few simple things that can be done to stop the spread of COVID-19, which inevitably involves rethinking one’s attitude toward being at home more and learning to be okay with it.

In an essay on how COVID-19 has changed our relationship to life and death, Achille Mbembe wrote, “Caught in the stranglehold of injustice and inequality, much of humanity is threatened by a great chokehold as the sense that our world is in a state of reprieve spreads far and wide.”

COVID-19 seems to drag on, but the changes that the pandemic is bringing to our spaces will most likely be temporary.

However, there is another crisis that threatens to literally destroy our shared space — our planet — through even more pandemics and natural disasters if we do not act fast. The climate crisis is an ongoing issue beyond COVID-19 that we need to be mindful of moving forward. This current crisis is therefore a valuable reminder for us to stop taking our lives and spaces for granted.

Social spaces and power The spaces we occupy and how we relate to them are both functions of how much privilege and power we have. As a white, able-bodied, upper-middle-class, cisgender settler, I hold immense amounts of privilege, which is made especially clear through this pandemic and the grievences brought forth by the Black Lives Matter movement.

For example, while physically-distanced, outdoor physical activity is allowed during the shutdown in Ontario, I feel bad for going on my daily solo walks, though I’m obviously masked and staying two metres away from the scarce passerby.

I can’t stop myself from going out because I feel like I needed more space to move around and more air to breathe, which is a selfish attitude because even breathing is a privilege in the time of COVID-19. Being able to walk in

the city without fearing for your life is a privilege. And I was, and still am, lucky and privileged enough to be able to take up more space than my room.

For most of us, COVID-19 restrictions will eventually be over, but many chronically ill or immunocompromised people will remain homebound.

Meanwhile, some domestic violence survivors are locked in with their abusers with nowhere to go during lockdown. Some LGBTQ+ folks are stuck in places where they can’t be themselves, and many racialized people are encountering even more systemic and overt racism during COVID-19. The pandemic also brings extra distress to people going through homelessness and people who are disabled and experience difficulties accessing vital services.

The viral unequalizer in virtual spaces Among other challenges, the pandemic has also made it necessary for us students to manage the spaces where we learn. A New York Times article contends that universities are incredible equalizers — under normal circumstances.

When we take our classes in the same lecture halls, hit the books in the same silent libraries, use the same reliable campus wi-fi, and write our midterms and exams in the same giant impersonal rooms, most of the socioeconomic disparities between us are barely noticeable.

Now, however, most of the spaces that are vital to our learning are off-limits, leaving students to take classes from their homes. You need a quiet space to concentrate on your lectures, but what if you share a tiny apartment with a teething baby, your wi-fi keeps cutting off, or you can’t afford wi-fi altogether so you rely on a faint signal from a nearby Tim Hortons? Your teaching assistant wants you to keep your camera on, but what if you don’t want others to see where you are?

U of T students in Toronto can come and

study on campus, even if their courses are online, which further isolates those studying from inaccessible spaces elsewhere. The pandemic creates yet another spatial divide that has not been present before.

Creating space for discomfort We all have varying thresholds of discomfort, especially regarding social spaces, and we all set boundaries to protect ourselves, which is a vital skill. Yet sometimes, accepting the discomfort and learning to live with it is necessary for growth and learning, and sometimes, it is necessary for survival. So how do we decide when we shield ourselves from discomfort and when we sit through it to grow, like during a particularly painful stretching exercise?

Of course, with some types of discomfort, setting appropriate boundaries and disengaging are what help us grow. But some discomfort cannot be avoided. There are some uncomfortable truths and dilemmas we have to face with regard to COVID-19.

Yes, lockdowns aren’t fun and limit certain freedoms and privileges we’re used to, but they are necessary to protect others. The pandemic also raised many ethical questions to which there are no easy answers: questions of potentially triaging ventilators, our duties to others, resource allocation, and the intensifying digital divide.

We need to make space for that discomfort, be it by reflecting on how our actions contribute to the status quo or by acknowledging the devastating impact of the pandemic. First, let the discomfort sink in. Breathe through it.

Take your time.

No one can single-handedly solve world hunger, create a COVID-19 vaccine, or stop the climate crisis, but we can all make a difference in our spaces. We can make our classrooms safe and accessible through advocacy and tackling difficult questions. And we can create spaces that bring comfort to ourselves

Science

November 16, 2020 var.st/science science@thevarsity.ca

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Time, our unstable anchoring

Dispatches from the Arts-Science Writers Exchange — on time and COVID-19 Alexa DiFrancesco UTSC Bureau Chief

Pigeonholes is a collaborative inter-sectional column from the Arts & Culture and Science sections, exploring issues across academic boundaries. This week in the Pigeonholes column: space, time, and COVID-19.

For many of us, the start of the pandemic in March might feel like a lifetime ago. After seven homebound months, memories are becoming more difficult to create, store, and access. Time has transformed from a proverbial river to a tangled delta — moments arranged non-linearly in sequences that sometimes go by too fast, or else proceed at glacial, mind-numbing pace.

I heard from a friend of mine, who could comment on this phenomenon, by email: James Ralph, a third-year student majoring in philosophy and women and gender studies. They suggested that their source of solace in the midst of this delta has taken the form of an Instagram account.

“It’s become a bit of a diary for me,” Ralph reflected on their posted photos. “Often when I think about the past week, I can’t remember how I was feeling and when, so it’s been helpful to document that in a semiprivate space.”

When scrolling through their posts, it soon becomes obvious that Ralph has participated in their fair share of common ‘quarantine activities’ — similar to many others Instagram pages, theirs boasts photos of freshly baked bread and lit candles.

Also like many others, there’s a lingering sentiment of being fearful of our unprecedented time. “I think someone should catch me,” they write in one post. “I feel like I’m floating in the air, floating and unable to anchor onto anything solid for very long.”

Worsened memory In an email to The Varsity, researchers at U of T’s Memory & Perception Lab gave reasoning for Ralph’s worsened memory. One researcher, Melissa

Meade, looks at how the brain combines multisensory information to create rich memories of events.

“For most people, the pandemic has been a relatively uneventful time. Staying at home and continually engaging in a limited set of activities has made it feel like the days are blending together, and this makes it really difficult to differentiate specific days and events in memory,” Meade explained. Meade’s findings further enforced the importance of having an outlet to keep track of feelings and events during COVID-19.

In an email to The Varsity, Aedan Li, a graduate student and researcher at the Memory & Perception Lab, added: “We might falsely recall that we spoke to a friend yesterday about a new Netflix show, when in actuality we might have spoken to the friend last week about course work (and we might have instead read an article online about the new Netflix show).”

Meade and Li’s research agrees with a July questionnaire posed by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) that examined how the passage of time was distorted during the United Kingdom’s lockdown period.

According to LJMU, previous research showed that performance of familiar tasks, or tasks with a low cognitive load — tasks we use less memory to complete — resulted in the perception that time was passing slower than usual.

The study explained that this spare cognitive capacity to focus attention on the passing of time, as observed during boredom, could result in this sensation. In contrast, increased task complexity, and heightened intellectual requirements tasks may contribute to the sensation of time passing quickly.

The study’s takeaway? Our perception of the rate time is passing at is proportional to the attention we can give to it.

Poor mental health In the same study, LJMU reported that negative emotions cause a slower passage of time. In a July

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health study, 50 per cent of surveyed Canadians reported worsening mental health since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Moreover, 44 per cent of participants reported feeling worried, and 41 per cent of participants attested to feeling anxious — impacts that can negatively impact our memory post-pandemic, according to Meade.

“When attention is diverted away from the present moment and instead focused on the things we’re anxious about, which right now might be a loved one contracting covid, the loss of a job, or just difficulty coping with this incredibly abnormal situation, our memory for the events we experience is worse than it would be under normal circumstances,” Meade wrote.

Furthermore, Meade noted that “highly emotional events (for example, finding out a loved one passed away) are typically remembered in vivid detail for many years.” This concept, referred to as ‘flashbulb’ memories, contrasts a normal COVID-19 experience. “Anyone that experiences a highly emotional event during this time will likely remember that particular event extremely well,” Meade wrote.

An era of uncertainty Dr. Sam Maglio, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at UTSC and the Rotman School of Management, wrote an article for The Washington Post about two weeks after the March COVID-19 lockdown began. The piece explains how the uncertainty of living in a pandemic can make time feel prolonged.

“Lately, we’re all in the second, unsure condition,” Maglio wrote. “The best guess as to how long life as we know it will be put on hiatus looks to be ‘indefinitely.’ It’s like Charlie Brown’s football, only instead of yanking it away, Lucy lets him kick it but then moves the goal posts back. And frustration tacked onto uncertainty compounds how badly time drags.”

A remedy for this uncertainty? Believe it or not,

it’s trying something new, proposes Bryan Hong, a graduate student at the Memory & Perception Lab. “Introducing new events into your routine where possible, whether it’s attempting a new recipe or taking a walk in a neighbourhood you’ve never been to before, can help improve our ability to situate ourselves in time,” the researcher wrote to The Varsity.

“The positive mood associated with these events also [has] an additional benefit for our overall mental well-being!”

As COVID-19 cases rise this winter, we may have to settle in for another lockdown. At the very least, we will have fewer occasions to socialize safely outdoors. In either case we can expect mental health to worsen — and with it, our grasp on the passage of time.

As we settle in for an indoor hibernation and the nights grow darker and longer, the days might start to merge together. Developing habits to prevent this from happening will go a long way. Whether that means lighting candles like Ralph, or taking a walk like Hong suggested, we owe it to ourselves to find comfort in a newfound time.

And if that comfort is given from an Instagram account? In an era generating so many thoughts, a picture’s worth a thousand words.

20

THE VARSITY

SCIENCE

science@thevarsity.ca

Transportation and grocery store distribution make Toronto inaccessible, U of T experts say Looking into the urban design decisions that create city-wide barriers

Vivian Cheng Varsity Staff

For many of us, Toronto is a great place to live.

Indeed, it’s been ranked highly by many indices, like the Economist Intelligence Unit, for its notable liveability feats. Nevertheless, our city poses accessibility challenges on a systems-wide level in various ways.

For able-bodied individuals, accessibility may seem like a concern for an individual building, such as when a college building lacks elevators.

But a growing body of evidence argues that the accessibility of a city is as much a matter of urban design as it is the architecture of its individual

buildings or neighbourhoods. Wide-ranging design decisions, such as those pertaining to transportation and food inaccessibility, shape the accessibility of an entire city.

Accessible transportation Despite the Toronto government’s commitment to creating an accessible and inclusive city — through legislation such as the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 and the Ontario Human Rights Code — Toronto’s urban design remains centred around able-bodied individuals, according to Ron Buliung, a professor in U of T’s Department of Geography & Planning.

“When you’re next recharging your PRESTO

Growing evidence suggests that urban planning decisions can affect the accessibility of city-wide systems, like public transit.

SAMANTHA YAO/THEVARSITY

card, ask yourself how well the PRESTO machine would work for someone using a power wheelchair,” wrote Buliung in an email to The Varsity. In a separate interview with U of T News, Buliung asked readers to again consider the experience of someone in a wheelchair, in the middle of winter, backtracking several blocks on the subway map to find an accessible station.

In 2000, Toronto City Council adopted a motion to make the city accessible by 2008. As such, in 2004, the City of Toronto provided accessibility design guidelines and implementation strategies for all sectors to promote human rights principles and make Toronto a “barrier free” community. These guidelines provide advice for exterior and interior spaces and advice to conduct accessibility audits and plan developments.

Buliung wrote that change has happened since these goals were established. However, he added that change comes slowly, highlighting that, in his lifetime, “things have become marginally more accessible in some places, some of the time.”

He further noted that change has not reflected diversity in the disability context, despite legislation aimed at building an inclusive community.

The accessibility of grocery store distribution In addition to physical barriers, structural barriers can make nutritious food inaccessible to some — particularly those with lower incomes.

Michael Widener, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography & Planning, explained that individuals’ time, financial, or mobility constraints can hinder their ability to secure adequate nutrition. In a 2015 paper, Widener discussed how the traditional method of measuring access, identifying “food deserts” — residential areas that are not proximate to supermarkets — has not been a useful measure of food accessibility.

“If there’s a single parent with two children working multiple jobs, it doesn’t necessarily mat-

ter if they live right next door [to a supermarket],” he clarified in an interview with The Varsity. He noted that there are other factors at play, such as “if they don’t have the time to go shop, if they don’t have the financial resources to purchase food and also all the things associated with it, like cooking and cleaning up.”

Time constraints may also apply to other groups, he commented. For example, individuals who must endure long transit times to reach a supermarket and individuals who have work schedules that do not align with a typical nine-to-five workday may have difficulty accessing healthy foods, according to Widener’s research.

Of course, these constraints are much more pronounced in lower-income individuals.

Wealthier individuals may be able to hire help, order food delivery, or call a ride-sharing service.

All of these actions, while convenient, introduce additional costs that not everyone can afford. This process results in a cycle where individuals with lower incomes spend more time attempting to access resources and less time pursuing other opportunities.

According to Widener, Toronto is a “great place to live” for individuals with access to a car and a good income due, in part, to amenities being relatively well-distributed across neighbourhoods.

Moving forward, Buliung urged individuals to reimagine what their environment would look like if initially designed from an anti-ableist lens.

Then accessibility barriers would not be as present. “A ‘key factor’ is that people and institutions sometimes lack imagination - they can’t or don’t re-imagine the city as accessible, even if sometimes they are required to under [the] law.”

“By treating… disability as a problem to be solved, folks fail to consider the possibilities that exist in making our cities work better for everyone.”

How going from wet lab to Zoom lab showed me the value of collaboration Experiences researching from home

Ungku Zoë Anysa Varsity Contributor

Two years ago, when I started working in my lab, I did not imagine that I would ever be instructing a graduate student to carry out my experiment in the lab from the comfort of my own home. Yet, here I am.

Adapting to COVID-19 has required me to direct other members of the lab to perform experiments on site. While it was not an ideal circumstance, it was a valuable lesson in the value of collaboration in science.

Making the shift online I started in Professor Al-Amin Dhirani’s lab studying nanostructure materials and applications in 2018 through CHM299 — Research Opportunity, the chemistry department’s offering for U of T’s Research Opportunity Program (ROP). Through my ROP, I was introduced to Mahip Singh, a fellow undergraduate student who has been my partner in Dhirani’s lab ever since.

Our initial eight-month research course transitioned into a work study over the summer of 2019.

Currently, we are wrapping up our study of twodimensional nanosheets made from manganese dioxide. These nanosheets can be used to better understand enzymes that increase the rate of biochemical reactions.

Since official wet-lab work for our research had been completed before COVID-19 restrictions were put in place at the university, Singh and I were able to spend the summer writing up our research manuscript.

On August 6, our research paper, written as a collaboration with other researchers, was finally submitted to a journal for publication. By the end of August,

it had been transferred to a sister journal, and in October, we received promising news that our research would be published once a few revisions were made.

As exciting as this was, I remember worrying about how we would address the reviewers’ points with COVID-19 restrictions in our way.

Having many friends who are graduate students, I had heard of the difficulties that COVID-19 restrictions had brought. These ranged from limited lab time to strictly scheduled lab access — some live lab samples even had to be prematurely terminated as they would denature if left unattended for an indefinite amount of time.

In my case, the issue was not being able to access the Analytical Laboratory for Environmental Science Research and Training (ANALEST) Facility in the Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories building.

ANALEST’s current Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) does not allow undergraduate students in the facility due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Gaining access to ANALEST would have required alteration to the SOP that would have needed further approval from the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Department of Chemistry. Instead of processing all that paperwork, we opted to coordinate with Steven Gravelsins, a graduate student in the Dhirani Lab, to finish the remaining wet lab work while we instructed him — virtually.

Zoom experiments Before going into the lab, we had Zoom calls with Dhirani and Gravelsins to plan out what needed to be accomplished in the lab. We wrote up a procedure for Gravelsins that was a little more detailed than your average lab manual, complete with pictures that I had taken throughout the year to post on my Instagram — mostly to show my parents what I had been up to in the lab. It turns out they came in handy!

COVID-19 has given me the opportunity to experience what is usually common in the scientific research community — collaborations from a distance.

SAMARTH AGARWAL/THEVARSITY

Once Gravelsins was in the lab, we watched him through his smartphone and chimed in on Zoom to answer questions he had, such as where we had left specific chemicals or how we carried out certain steps. This was a crash course for Gravelsins. He took a week off from his own research to carry out what we had been doing for the past year. Thankfully, everything went according to plan and we are almost at the finish line.

Looking back at the past two months, I would have preferred to have been on site, but being able to work from home has freed up a lot of time — time that would have been spent going into the lab in between classes and standing by the lab bench for hours at a time.

Having to conduct research from home has shown

me that there really is more than one way to accomplish a goal. In my case, the goal was to take feedback from a journal review and answer the questions and comments without physically being able to gather the last bits of data needed.

This experience has reminded me that being part of a lab or research project means that you are part of a team. Without our team, we would have had to wait until it was safe to go into the lab ourselves to finish what we started. Overall, COVID-19 has given me the opportunity to experience what is usually common in the scientific research community — collaborations from a distance.

Disclosure: Ungku Zoë Anysa is the president of the Materials Chemistry Student Union.

var.st/science

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

21

For its 60th season, The Nature of Things takes the wide view of climate protests David Suzuki, filmmakers of “Rebellion” discuss their new documentary Tahmeed Shafiq Science Editor

At 84 years old, David Suzuki shows no signs of slowing down.

The veteran environmentalist and science communicator has graced television screens for decades as the host of CBC’s The Nature of Things. Now, the program returns for its 60th year during a pandemic with origins many have connected to environmental devastation.

The season opener is a documentary called “Rebellion.” In it, Suzuki takes the viewer through a whirlwind global tour of the massscale environmental protests of the past few years, from the Extinction Rebellion protests in London to smaller school strikes — inspired by Greta Thunberg — in Sudbury, Ontario.

The Varsity sat down with Suzuki and the makers of “Rebellion” to discuss the film and its value in a time when young people are becoming increasingly involved in climate action.

A pandemic reveals the scale of the climate crisis In “Rebellion,” Suzuki speaks to a range of climate experts around the world, including the famous British environmentalist David Attenborough. There is an overall sense of a growing awareness from the public — and especially from young people — of the urgent need for substantial climate action.

“The pandemic crisis has revealed vast social divides, and that’s just a hint of what will happen if we allow the climate crisis to escalate and trigger massive poverty and climate

migration,” Suzuki said in the documentary.

He echoed this point in an interview with The Varsity, describing the colossal mishandling of the pandemic in the United States as part of a larger anti-scientific attitude from governments and decision-makers. The social inequities that COVID-19 exposed demonstrate the need to treat society’s problems holistically instead of in a piecemeal fashion.

The filmmakers agree. “Now we have this huge zoonotic disease decimating the population of the Earth, especially in the Global South,” said co-director Caitlin Starowicz. “It has really brought home the message that we need to believe scientists because [the climate crisis] is here. And it’s happening now.”

In the film, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Gail Bradbook, describes COVID-19 as an “ecological crisis” arising from declining biodiversity. “It’s not a separate crisis,” she said. “It’s a lesson in the fact that nature is in charge.”

Creating a documentary during a pandemic Filmmakers Mark and Caitlin Starowicz are a father-daughter team who are both experienced directors. Mark was the head of CBC Documentaries for 23 years; Caitlin has created and produced documentaries for PBS, CBC, and others, and contributed to The Varsity during her time at U of T. Mark describes the process of producing “Rebellion” as one of adaptation in an interview with The Varsity. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the film was 70 per cent complete. The goal was to finish the documentary with footage from Earth Day on April 22, and Mark and Caitlin initially

hoped they would be able to continue filming — they had plans to visit Africa to cover local climate activists.

“But then the murder of George Floyd happened in Minneapolis,” Mark said. “And when the massive crowds started appearing in the streets globally, they were of all races, ethnicities, and colours. Something was clearly happening. Something had changed.”

Late into the film, the focus shifts to the Black Lives Matter movement. To the filmmakers, climate action and systemic racism are deeply linked — a growing consensus among activists and academics who predict that marginalized communities suffering from social inequities are more vulnerable to the consequences of the climate crisis.

“Climate justice is social justice is racial justice,” Caitlin said.

“For over 30 years, we’ve been lied to by fossil fuel companies who have been knowingly destroying the planet for a profit, and the brunt of that abuse is felt by communities of colour, [particularly] people in the Global South.”

even if you’re in a crowd of 20,000 people,” Mark said. “Sometimes you’ve got to show the wide shot. This documentary is the wide shot.”

“It has been said that the best link between a person and the truth is a story,” Caitlin added. “And if we can provide that story and show people that they’re not alone… then I think that is the most important message you can give. To show people that we all care together, and that it’s not a futile fight, that we are all going to stand up and all rise up together.”

“Rebellion” is available to watch for free in Canada on CBC Gem.

The value of a documentary Why did the filmmakers choose to tell the story of the global climate movement through a documentary?

“When you’re in a march… you can feel isolated David Suzuki is the host of “Rebellion,” the season opener for the 60th season of CBC’s The Nature of Things.

JOHN W MACDONALD/FLICKR

How to learn to code LaTeX, Python, and R

Free resources from U of T, the internet Shruti Misra Varsity Contributor

Coding has become increasingly important in today’s digitized world. Programming languages encompass a broad spectrum of functions, such as data analysis, research, web design, and engineering. While their breadth and scope may seem intimidating, experience with even a few languages gives students a leg-up in the job market.

A degree in computer science can help develop vital skills in problem-solving, logic, and flexibility, but there are also many free resources available for students to develop proficiency in the majority of programming languages.

LaTex, Python, and R are three popular languages that are especially useful in research and university-level work.

LaTeX Free resources: Overleaf, Sublime Text, and VSCode.

LaTeX differs from other programming languages in the respect that, instead of coding applications or programs, it typesets scientific and technical documents. LaTeX is built on the principle that individual formatting wastes valuable time and often produces confusing, substandard manuscripts.

Thus, LaTeX is encouraged in computer science, math, and physics courses to produce uniformly formatted documents, homework, and lab reports with complex equations, figures, and custom formatting. It is particularly important in mathematical and engineering research, which require clear, standardized representations.

LaTeX may initially appear cumbersome and confusing to beginners. However, free online editors such as Overleaf can ease the learn-

ing process by providing manuscript templates and collaborative tools. Overleaf assists with formatting as the user types the document, so little prior knowledge of the language is required. Other editors include Sublime Text and VS Code. With these editors, students can learn how to format a document using LaTeX in only a few hours.

Python Free resources: Harvard CS50x on edX, “Learn to Program: The Fundamentals” on Coursera, and CodingBat. Python is one of the most popular languages for beginning and experienced coders alike, offering relatively intuitive syntax, open-source libraries, and strong community support. The language is extremely flexible in its applications, but is especially important in data analysis and visualization, and is highly utilized in machine learning research. At U of T, Python is used as an mandatory introductory coding language to teach students the principles of computer science.

The Harvard CS50x course offered for free on edX is a useful starting point for students who want to jump into programming. While it does not focus primarily on Python, it helps develop a foundational understanding of computer science as a whole and offers a surfacelevel experience of several different languages, including Scratch, C, and Swift.

For a Python-specific option, U of T offers “Learn to Program: The Fundamentals” on Coursera, which introduces the fundamental building blocks of Python. Other free Pythonexclusive resources include online textbooks — A Byte of Python, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python — and YouTube video tutorial playlists “Python 3.4 Programming Tutorials,” “Python MIT Lectures,” and “Python for Absolute Be-

Free online resources are making it easier than ever to learn coding languages like Python.

TAHMEED SHAFIQ/THEVARSITY

ginners.” Sites such as CodingBat also walk students through writing simple programs.

While the time it takes one to master the language is largely dependent on the student, mastering the basics takes roughly two months, depending on the pace of the introductory course, and creating complex independent projects can take several weeks to several months.

R Free resources: Swirl, “Learning Statistics with R,” and “Learning R” on LinkedIn Learning.

R is primarily used to develop statistical programs and perform data analysis. It is commonly used in research to find and analyze patterns in large and complex data sets, extract key information, and create data visualizations.

Like Python, it is free and open-source software with strong community support.

Users can also expand R functionalities by implementing packages that include advanced statistical programming. STA130 — An Introduction to Statistical Reasoning and Data Science is an introductory statistics course that uses R to teach statistical principles and reasoning.

LinkedIn Learning is free for all U of T students and offers several courses on R, such as the popular “Learning R” course, which takes students through the statistical techniques R uses through lectures and examples.

“Learning Statistics with R” is a free online textbook that reviews the key statistical principles underlying the language and provides a strong foundation for new students. Finally, Swirl offers several interactive courses from beginner to advanced levels of R that turn the R console itself into a learning environment.

Sports

November 16, 2020 var.st/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Opinion: People who are disabled benefit from sports — so let’s build access

The world of athletics must serve everyone

REBECA MOYA/THEVARSITY

Jessica Han Varsity Staff

There are barriers and discrimination that people who are disabled face, excluding them from partaking in regular, everyday activities. Sports can help minimize these stigmas by demonstrating that individuals who are disabled can play sports, and their disability doesn’t hinder them from doing so.

Athletic pursuits present opportunities for inclusive spaces or a community where everyone gets an exhilarated feeling while having fun and competing with others. Sports have numerous positive effects — physical, psychological, social, and the elimination of barriers — that benefit people who are cognitively and physically disabled.

The sports industry should aim to create a safe and supportive environment where anyone can engage regardless of whether they are disabled or not.

Society should not block people who are disabled from being physically active.

Physical benefits A more obvious benefit is that sports improve physical health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, physical activity reduces the chance of being susceptible to many future health conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and colon cancer. Particularly, anyone with arthritis — a chronic disease that can lead to a disability — will find that playing sports helps in controlling joint pain and swelling.

Individuals with chronic and disabling physical conditions can also greatly benefit from being physically active as it improves muscle strength and stamina.

Psychological benefits Not only do sports have physical benefits, but they also have psychological ones, promoting the mental health of people who are disabled. The United Nations noted that by participating in sports, individuals who have disabilities become empowered and more independent.

Their mental health drastically improves as being physically active fosters a positive mood as well as reduces mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. On that note, stress levels also decrease and the desire to live healthily substantially increases. Overall, the well-being and mental state of people who are disabled becomes much stronger with sports.

Social benefits One of the most important social benefits that sports bring is inclusion. Often, individuals who are disabled feel excluded from the rest of the world.

However teamwork and personal development, two cornerstones of athletic pursuit, foster inclusion as they show others that their disabilities do not affect their capability to play a sport.

Furthermore, interpersonal relationships with friends and family may improve in light of an athletic pursuit if the person with a disability feels disconnected or misunderstood because of it. Through a common framework and the cooperative language of sport, better communication can be fostered between those who are disabled and their confidants or close relatives.

Eliminating barriers Many children and adults who are disabled face bar-

Canada’s game shouldn’t be the rich’s game

riers, including their own fear and preconceived negative attitudes from others, preventing them from engaging in some sort of physical activity.

This is why it’s important for there to be representation of people who are disabled in sport: people who are disabled who play sports change the attitudes and assumptions of people who are not disabled.

Specifically, women who are disabled face more barriers and discrimination than men who are disabled. The United Nations reports that only seven per cent of women who are disabled are involved in sports. A solution to this alarming statistic would be to provide women who have disabilities with opportunities to participate in sports in order to remove gender and disability stereotypes.

But how? If athletic endeavours are so beneficial, how can we promote those who are disabled to become involved in sports? How do we reduce the barriers to entry?

According to Sportanddev.org, much more research and work needs to be done to ensure that people who are disabled, regardless of their particular disability or geographic location, have equal access to athletics. As an ongoing problem in every level of sport, players, coaches, and franchises alike need to renew a focus on inclusion and dissolution of barriers to entry for those who are disabled.

This can mean anything from infrastructural changes in gyms, to expanding inclusion policies in recreational leagues, to creating bursaries and outreach programs for youth with disabilities.

People who are disabled deserve equal access to the benefits of athleticism — sports have to serve everyone.

Access to hockey challenged by the sport’s expenses ZAHRA DANAEI/THEVARSITY

Audrey Miatello Varsity Contributor

As a Torontonian, I’m usually mocked mercilessly about the Toronto Maple Leafs, but in general, nonCanadians seem to assume that I watch, follow, and even play hockey. Are we really so obsessed with hockey?

Apparently, we are. A 2015 study by Scotiabank uncovered some significant statistics. Most Canadians surveyed, 90 per cent, believed that hockey was a part of their cultural identity. During the hockey season, Canadians spend around seven hours a week watching or talking about the sport, and hockey contributes a staggering $11.2 billion annually to the Canadian economy.

It’s a significant part of our identity, and if soccer is the world’s game, hockey has certainly become Canada’s game.

And yet a study conducted by Hockey Canada and Bauer found that 90 per cent of Canadian families don’t enrol their children in hockey. Why might this be? They ended up discovering that one substantial barrier is the price, as the sport has become inac-

cessible to many Canadians.

In 2011–2012, a survey by Hockey Canada found that the average registration cost for hockey was $1,200. However, that number can skyrocket to more than $8,000 to play on higher level teams. And these exorbitant figures only represent registration fees.

Most competitive sports require some travel, and hockey is no exception. The difference, however, lies in the fact that hockey is arguably the most equipment-heavy sport. While a soccer player may only need shoes, shin guards, and a ball, a hockey player must buy equipment off an extensive list.

On top of padding and a helmet, sticks and skates can cost hundreds of dollars each. It’s not surprising, then, that the price can climb into the thousands of dollars, dissuading families from introducing their kids to hockey.

A sport, of course, should be about making lifelong friends, celebrating hard fought wins, and accepting crushing defeats. It’s about the feeling you get when you hear the buzzer at the end of the third period, when you’re up by only one goal.

It should be a place to have fun. But with the

current state of the game, this isn’t the conversation anymore.

Children have stopped asking themselves, “Would I like to play hockey?” From a young age, they must instead think about the reality of the game — “Is it worth it to spend tens of thousands of dollars when I probably won’t go pro?” If this was the right question, few would play hockey at all.

Nonetheless, we love hockey — it’s the reason why 26.5 million Canadians, or 80 per cent of the population, watched at least part of our Olympic gold medal game in 2010. While hockey should be something that unites us, the cost is quickly dividing us instead.

Going forward, I hope to see NHL athletes and teams continue to donate equipment and raise awareness.

But the solution also lies in our hands. If you are a hockey player, consider donating old equipment. If you are able, give to programs like Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart, which has helped over two million children play sports such as hockey. Make this important conversation heard.

Anxiety and OCD: how I confronted my own barriers in sport

Being picked last helped me pick myself first Angad Deol Associate Sports Editor

I remember the moment I realized, “Wow, I kind of suck at sports.” I was 11 years old, and I had a wide-open shot to win my little league basketball game. I promise you there is nothing more crushing than airballing the gamewinning shot with a packed gym watching you.

The gym fell silent; I could feel all the eyes staring at me, all these parents wondering why I got the ball.

In my two seasons of house league basketball, I scored one jump shot. That’s right. Two points in two years. Nobody ever passed me the ball because they had no faith in me.

After spending my childhood constantly being picked last for sports, I wrapped up my hoop dreams and realized, “Maybe I’m better off catching the ball at the three-point line and hoping for the best.” It definitely took its toll on me.

I spent summers practicing in my backyard, studying my idols Steve Nash, Brandon Roy, and Kobe Bryant. But in the end, anytime I touched the ball in actual action, I choked up and coughed up the ball. My teammates would roll their eyes, as if they expected as much.

Much later on in life, I discovered that my struggles as a child — not only with sports, but also with social situations and schoollife balance — were the result of anxiety and OCD. All those years of sleepless nights spent thinking about countless steps up and down the court without ever touching the ball once weren’t actually healthy, apparently.

It took me a long time to come to terms with these disorders, and eventually, I took steps to take back my life. I started focusing on being patient with myself and confronting my anxiety and OCD. I started becoming more comfortable with myself and my friends, loosening up around them.

When I was 18 years old, I finally played my first good game of basketball. My friends convinced me to shoot some hoops in my backyard during a barbecue, which eventually led to a full-on scrimmage. For once, I was finally being asked to be on someone’s team — I wasn’t just the pity pick.

I was being guarded hard and knocking down shots. I’ve never told my friends this, but that’s honestly one of the best memories I have.

Nowadays, not only do I love watching basketball, but I also finally love playing it again.

While I still have my bouts of self-doubt and am still getting better at handling my OCD, playing basketball has become an escape for me, something that brings me tremendous joy.

While I may not be as good as the athletes I spent my childhood watching, I can proudly say that I’m a pretty good shooter and absolutely should not be left open on the court — and I can finally throw those crazy passes like Nash could.

If I could tell 11-year-old Angad one thing, it would be to take a deep breath, pull up those socks, and play your heart out, without caring about what everyone else thinks. In fact, I’d give that advice to all the past versions of myself, but hindsight is 20/20. If these words can resonate with even one person and make them feel like King James anytime they pick up a tennis racket, dust off their cleats, or hit the hardwood, then I know I have done my job.

var.st/sports

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NOVEMBER 16, 2020

Out of Left Field: How Rotman’s dragon boat team is facing the pandemic

Liquid Assets talks pre-COVID-19 training, plans for the future

Laura Ashwood Sports Editor

It’s been hard for clubs to create a sense of community during COVID-19, especially clubs that focus on athletics. How do you train together and keep team morale up as the seasons start to change? One team that is tenaciously keeping their community alive is Rotman Commerce’s dragon boat team, Liquid Assets.

Dragon boating consists of 20 paddlers, a cox who steers from the rear, and a drummer at the front. The sport originated in China over 2,000 years ago from a superstition that the races would promote prosperous crops.

Liquid Assets, the 2018 national and world university champions, are a force to be reckoned with.

Mariam Bacchus, Vicki Zhang, and Maria Fahim are all in leadership roles in the club; Bacchus is a trainer, Zhang is a trainer and the public relations officer, and Fahim is co-captain. The three of them spoke to The Varsity about how they are working hard this year to keep Liquid Assets exciting for its members.

Pre-pandemic, the team was practicing in fullswing: “Generally, we do one to two sessions during the week [for on-land training] and then one weekend session where we all try to get together as a team instead of just small groups,” said Bacchus.

During these sessions, the team does one hour of weight lifting and one hour of cardio. “Usually, we start around May and then go until the end of summer. We do morning practices maybe two times a week and then one weekend practice.”

With so many group sessions during a regular season, the team had to come up with ways to keep their athletes engaged while adhering to the province’s pandemic guidelines. Zhang spoke about how they moved all of their weekly sessions to Zoom, with three to five sessions a day that people could choose from.

“As for Saturday practices… we’ve had to move outdoors, so now we practice at a park at Christie Pits,” Zhang said. “Throughout the entire two-hour session, we are strongly mandating physical distancing [and] masks if you can’t physically distance. When we work out, we’re spaced as far apart as possible.”

Zhang continued, “[Before COVID-19], there were 40–50 people [at these practices]. Because that is against Ontario bylaws currently, we split that into two sessions.”

Moving forward, the team is looking into more creative and immersive ways to get the athletes involved off-water while maintaining a safe distance. “There’s a

really great gym called Afterburn [Fitness]; [it has] something called paddle-ergs, so it’s rowing ergs but you’re paddling, and we really use those a lot for training,” Fahim said.

“We also go to [the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre],” she continued. “If it does open up, I think we’ll continue as previous years, where we send small groups — maybe like three to five [athletes]… one or two trainers, and a couple of recruits — and they go over there and they train on the paddle-ergs.”

Fahim added that they are looking into getting pool practices, where they sit around the pool and mimic being in the water. The dragon boat members added that, unfortunately, all of this is dependent on reopening gyms. In the meantime, the team is focusing on keeping spirits up and training when they can.

For many students, staying fit while gyms are closed is a major challenge. If you live on campus or in downtown Toronto, chances are you don’t have access to a backyard to run circles in to burn off a few calories.

However, I’m a firm believer in the phrase, “Where there’s a will, there is a way,” especially when it comes to fitness. We can keep telling ourselves that the gyms are closed so we can’t workout, or that it’s getting too cold outside, but if you truly want to get in shape, there are many ways to build a home gym without a lot of equipment — even on a budget.

Here are some of my favourite pieces of workout equipment — that are much cheaper than the alternatives — to keep you healthy while we are still hunkered down.

Peanut butter and jelly — and banana — sandwich Ingredients: 1 tablespoon peanut butter 1 tablespoon jam 2 slices of bread 1 banana

REBECA MOYA/THEVARSITY

have to do is grab a large backpack and fill it with any heavy objects you have around the house.

I usually fill mine with bags of rice, but flour, sugar, or old textbooks that you never read could also work. Try to start with 20 per cent of your body weight and walk around your neighbourhood for half an hour. Then, you can progressively build up the time and weight. Make sure to only do this once a week at most, or you could seriously mess up your knees.

I recommend doing rucking with a friend or while listening to a podcast or audiobook. It’s a great way to get your steps in, burn some calories, and do some sightseeing while you’re at it.

Sweet potato chips Ingredients: 1 pound sweet potato, thinly sliced Paprika, Garlic powder Black pepper Salt to taste Store-bought potato chips not only sell you air at criminal prices, but are also less healthy than what you can do at home. By making them at home, you can circumvent the detriments to health caused by storebought chips and get some nutritional value from sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are a good source of magnesium, potassium, vitamin B6, and protein. Simply skin the sweet potatoes, and cut them into thin slices. Season them with spices of your choice, and throw them in the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, but make sure to flip them at the 15-minute mark.

Buffalo cauliflower tacos Ingredients: 9 cauliflower 3 soft tortillas Buffalo hot sauce to taste Cauliflower has very few calories and contains two grams of protein per cup. Marinate your cauliflower in buffalo hot sauce, and then bake it at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for around 15–20 minutes. Meanwhile, either in a pan or a microwave, warm up your tortillas. After that, assemble the ingredients and you have a perfect lunch or snack.

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Calisthenics Contrary to popular beY SIT lief, calisthenics can give VAR E H /T ATO you the same results as ON HD P E most gym equipment. These JOS are exercises that work large muscle groups, often performed rhythmically and with minimal equipment. All it requires is consistency and a willingness to stick to a plan. You can also use chairs and couches to do dips, elevated pushups, or “box” jumps.

YouTube channels like Chloe Ting, Bullyjuice, and Natasha Oceane offer great calisthenic workouts for free! They all offer workouts that Rucking Rucking, or load-bearing marching, is the go-to range from 15–60 minutes, focusing on core, cardio for people who hate running. This is the glute, arm, and leg workouts. With so many best way to burn some calories and build strong great at-home workout options, there’s no excuse shoulders and thigh muscles on a budget. All you to not get sweating.

This is an easy dessert to make for those who have a sweet tooth and are cognizant of their fat and caloric intake. In a mug, mix in one scoop of protein powder, three tablespoons of all purpose flour, and some dairy-free milk — or skim milk for lesser fat content — until it is a thick batter. Throw the mug in the microwave for a minute and a half and boom: you should have the perfect workout dessert.

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Resistance bands — substitutes for free weights Bands offer resistance that replicates free weights and can even generate the same progress if you train with

Many of us have come to believe that the affordable college diet can only consist of ramen noodles, luncheon meat, and energy drinks. After some trial and error, I’ve learned how to make delicious, healthy snacks that are easy and quick — and affordable.

Here are some of my favourite healthy recipes on a student budget.

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Bags of rice — the perfect replacement for kettlebells Kettlebells are expensive! However, anything kettlebells can do, rice can do too — and at a much lower price. You can use rice to do kettlebell exercises such as squats, press ups, rows, weighted sit ups, weighted pushups, twists, farmer carries, and much, much more. Your imagination really is the limit here.

Steven Hu Varsity Contributor

Microwave protein cake Ingredients: 1 scoop of protein powder 3 tablespoons all purpose flour ¼ mug of almond, cashew, coconut, or skim milk — the measurement does not need to be exact

Equipment to help you mimic your favourite gym exercises them consistently. I’ve also found that using bands is easier on the joints than weights, so you can train more frequently as a result. As a bonus, because bands are cheap and portable, they offer a great alternative for at-home training.

Easy eats that won’t break the bank

Nothing beats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which has been hailed by many as the best postworkout meal. One tablespoon of peanut butter already packs 3.5 grams of protein! Adding sliced bananas in between the sandwich is also a game changer, giving you the added nutritional content of potassium, fiber, and important vitamins.

How to get your sweat on outside of the gym Steven Hu Varsity Contributor

Healthy snacks for students on a budget

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THE VARSITY

DIVERSIONS

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

Answers for the Issue 8 crossword

Comic: “Reading Week” By: Alex Denhart