THE VARSITY
The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
T HE VA RSI T Y
21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600
thevarsity.ca thevarsitynewspaper @TheVarsity thevarsitypublications the.varsity The Varsity
Vol. CXLV, No. 1 MASTHEAD
Eleanor Yuneun Park editor@thevarsity.ca
Editor-in-Chief
Kaisa Kasekamp creative@thevarsity.ca
Creative Director
Kyla Cassandra Cortez managingexternal@thevarsity.ca
Managing Editor, External
Ajeetha Vithiyananthan managinginternal@thevarsity.ca
Managing Editor, Internal
Maeve Ellis online@thevarsity.ca
Managing Online Editor
Ozair Anwar Chaudhry copy@thevarsity.ca
Senior Copy Editor
Isabella Reny deputysce@thevarsity.ca
Deputy Senior Copy Editor
Selia Sanchez news@thevarsity.ca
News Editor
James Bullanoff deputynews@thevarsity.ca
Deputy News Editor
Olga Fedossenko assistantnews@thevarsity.ca
Assistant News Editor
Charmaine Yu opinion@thevarsity.ca
Opinion Editor
Rubin Beshi biz@thevarsity.ca
Business & Labour Editor
Sophie Esther Ramsey features@thevarsity.ca
Features Editor
Divine Angubua arts@thevarsity.ca
Arts
Medha Surajpal science@thevarsity.ca
Science Editor
Jake Takeuchi sports@thevarsity.ca
Sports Editor
Nicolas Albornoz design@thevarsity.ca
Design Editor
Aksaamai Ormonbekova design@thevarsity.ca
Design Editor
Zeynep Poyanli photos@thevarsity.ca
Vicky Huang illustration@thevarsity.ca
Genevieve Sugrue, Milena Pappalardo video@thevarsity.ca
emilyshen@thevarsity.ca
andrewh@thevarsity.ca
utm@thevarsity.ca
utsc@thevarsity.ca
grad@thevarsity.ca
publiceditor@thevarsity.ca
Cover Vicky Huang & Zeynep Poyanli :
The Varsity acknowledges that our office is built on the traditional territory of several First Nations, including the Huron-Wendat, the Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. Journalists have historically harmed Indigenous communities by overlooking their stories, contributing to stereotypes, and telling their stories without their input. Therefore, we make this acknowledgement as a starting point for our responsibility to tell those stories more accurately, critically, and in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples.
TheVarsity currently has over 12 thousand social media followers collectively! Help us grow even more!
We are now looking for a part-time social media editor who will help us grow and maintain our online presence. If interested, please send a resume and optional examples of your work to online@thevarsity.ca
*This position is onlyopen to current U of T students*
Sacrifice Magazine Pitch Meeting
Date: Thursday, Sept. 5
Time: 6PM
Place: 2nd Floor, 21 Sussex Avenue
Each semester, TheVarsity publishes one magazine with articles, poetry, and visual pieces inspired by a particular theme. This year, that theme is SACRIFICE! We chose this theme because while it is provocative, it is also unassuming. We make sacrifices all the time. Growing up can mean sacrificing stability for the benefit of personal development and entering a relationship can mean sacrificing your independence. There are voluntary and involuntary sacrifices; mindless and intentional ones. What sacrifices do you make on a regular basis? Are there any you regret making, or not making? What kinds of sacrifices do you notice others make — friends, family, society? Think about the different ways sacrifice is represented in history, religion, or pop culture, if that interests you. Remember, you can also pitch a poem or a visual piece!
- Sophie Esther Ramsey, Features Editor Find us online!
Send your pitches to
Copy Editors: Aryan Chablani, Avery Murrell, Bruno Macia, Callie Zhang, Cameryn Moser, Caroline Ho, Jessica Lee, Lilianna Xing, Madison Truong, Maram Qarmout, Nandini Shrotriya, Nora Zolfaghari, Sofia Moniz, Sofia Tranopolsky, Victor Zhang
Designers Arthur Dennyson Hamdani, Caroline Bellamy
Vacant Caroline Ho
Letter from the Features Editor: Being a writer means taking risks
To creating stories in pursuit of the discomfort of crossing over
Sophie Esther Ramsey Features Editor
The writer is often imagined to be an isolated creature.
Writers are the ones looking from the outside in. They do not swim, but muse at the ocean from the shore and overhear conversations instead of having them. The image of the writer as a solitary creature may come as a comfort to some who feel safer watching from the sidelines. But, what if being a writer means feeling uncomfortable? What if, in order to hear and see others, writers also need to risk the vulnerability of being heard and seen? I feel compelled to reject the writer’s image as an isolated creature and encourage writers to pursue the discomfort of crossing over —
from the outside, in. As this year’s Features Editor, I hope my section will capture this spirit.
The Features section is all about stories: what stories are made of, and what stories can do. The stories I want to share are inspired not only by personal experience and preconceived ideas, but also those which give space to writers and readers to hear and see what they may not be able to with their perspective alone.
I hope that the articles I publish not only make the stories they tell matter, but will remind readers of what stories can do. By expanding on the nuances of each story, each article has the ability to inspire others to sometimes get uncomfortable and challenge their perspective to understand. I hope that this section can show readers that stories are not only words on a page but that they can speak volumes if they are given the right voice.
Letter from the Senior Copy Editor: The Matrix of words
If you are the “world’s best boss,” join the copy team
Ozair Anwar Chaudhry Senior Copy Editor
With the utmost wisdom, a man once inspired by Shakira said, “Copy editors don’t lie.” And of course, that man is me.
When it comes to writing, it’s never a one-person job. From understanding grammar and punctuation, to managing transitions between ideas and paragraphs, and ensuring factual accuracy, writing can sometimes feel like it’s taking years off your life. Therefore, as copy editors at The Varsity, we strive to give you back those years and help you tell your story more effectively — no matter the section.
I am Ozair Chaudhry, and I’m excited to serve as The Varsity’s Senior Copy Editor for Volume 145,
Reny. In a world overflowing with misinformation, our team is dedicated to providing you with the truth through rigorous fact-checking and copyediting.
My goal for this year is simple: to convey your stories, ensure you are seen and heard, and keep all three of our campuses informed about social, political, and economic issues — both around U of T and globally.
I joined The Varsity as a copy editor not only because I enjoy correcting people, but also because I had the attention span of a goldfish. So, if you’re someone like me, I highly encourage you to join the copy team.
Contact me at copy@thevarsity.ca and Isabella at deputysce@thevarsity.ca. I respond to emails
Letter from the Science Editor
What do you know?
Medha Surajpal Science Editor
’Sup geeks, nerds, and studious beings of all kinds. My name is Medha Surajpal, and I am the Science Editor for Volume 145. I am a neuroscience student with a never-ending hunger for weird facts about the brain and the human body. I am very excited to be leading the Science section this year for many reasons. One of them is the chance to hear what all of you want to learn more about.
What science story piqued your interest in the news recently? Have you ever wanted to go beyond your psychology coursework and learn how something really works? There is so
much that I still don’t know, but the coolest part about this is that hearing from every writer has and will continue to teach me so much about the subjects I know and love.
As the Science Editor this year, I hope to continue our long-running Science Fiction section as well as our event coverages. I intend to bring more mental health coverage into the section, including tips and tricks to manage the struggles that come with being a university student.
If you have any ideas for pitches or topics you’d like to see in print, you can reach me at science@thevarsity.ca.
Stay curious!
Letter from the Managing Online Editor: You probably don’t read our work. That’s not your fault
Here’s how we’re getting better at reaching the U of T community.
Maeve Ellis Managing Online Editor
The Varsity’s community-focused journalism covers the topics you care about. We’re just having trouble reaching people.
Last summer, Meta banned all Canadian journalism on their platforms — including Instagram and Facebook — in response to Bill C-18, which mandated media platforms to compensate news companies for displaying their articles. This fight between the Canadian federal government and a global corporation affected our local coverage of bugs in dining hall salad and student union controversies.
As a newspaper whose sole purpose is to communicate with a student body that we believe to predominantly use Instagram to communicate, Meta’s decision felt like banning the swim team from accessing the pool.
It also doesn’t look like we’ve yet been able to recoup audiences on social media platforms other than Meta’s. In a readership survey we sent in April, over half of respondents said Instagram was how they primarily accessed our articles — and this was after our Instagram account had been closed for eight months. Evidently, our other social media accounts were ineffective since people found an ac-
count that posted nothing to be the best way to reach us.
But we’re getting better. Thanks to our efforts, our articles were read 33 per cent more times this summer compared with 2023.
Here’s how you can find our work:
• We’ve created a second Instagram account to side-step the censorship. Find us on Instagram @thevarsitypublications. You can also find our articles and job postings on LinkedIn.
• We are also active on X (formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok, especially while reporting on the summer student encampment — Canada’s biggest student news story right on our front lawn at King’s College Circle.
• We’ve launched a series of mini-documentaries on YouTube, which provide in-depth analyses into topics from legal actions against encampment protestors to 2SLGBTQIA+ representation in classes
• On Friday, September 27 at 2:00 pm, we’re hosting an “Ask Us Anything” on the university’s subreddit, r/uoft.
I’m hiring a part-time social media editor. If you want to help make our news accessible on social media, email online@thevarsity.ca for more information on applying.
ARTHUR HAMDANI/THE VARSITY
“A volume worth reading”: Letter from the News
Editors
Selia Sanchez, James Bullanoff & Olga Fedossenko News Editor, Deputy News Editor & Assistant News Editor
A look back on our encampment coverage and stories to come
This year’s volume has already felt different.
Ever since 50 students broke into the gated King’s College Circle and set up the “People’s Circle for Palestine,” this News section has taken on more than usual. As a team, we’ve had to roll up our sleeves, conduct on-theground reporting, and consistently stay on top of encampment updates to accurately cover this watershed moment in U of T’s history.
Since May 2, our team has published 19 articles covering everything from live updates in the earlier days of the encampment, U of T’s decision to issue a trespass notice to the student protesters, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice granting the university’s injunction request, and students packing up peacefully after agreeing to an amnesty deal.
For us, student journalism goes beyond just
highlighting issues at our campus. This year, we seek to preserve accountability, prompt discussions on important topics, and ensure representative coverage of equity-seeking groups through our reporting. As students in a world that’s constantly changing, we face personal, cultural, and ethical issues in our daily lives. It’s our job as the News team to shed light on these issues in a way that’s accessible to our university community.
As we step into our roles as News Editor, Deputy News Editor, and Assistant News Editor, we want to prioritize stories that matter to our student body. Our goal for the News section is to continue pushing forward our approaches to equitable work and highlight communities across our campus.
We know that the News section can often feel daunting from the outside, which is why
we want to not only improve our readability but also our engagement with new writers. We plan to make our editorial processes more transparent so our section and paper can keep growing as the news evolves and changes. We’re also planning to continue exploring new forms of storytelling, such as improving our video content and social media presence.
Importantly, The Varsity is a tri-campus paper for all of U of T. As such, we hope to bolster our connections with the UTM and UTSC communities to make the many campus voices feel heard and represented. We’re excited for this upcoming year and hope to make it a volume worth reading.
News Editors Volume 145
Student protesters rally outside Simcoe Hall amid June Governing Council meeting
Governing council members discuss financial statements,
Vithiyananthan & Kyla Cassandra Cortez Managing Editor, Internal & Managing Editor, External
On June 27, U of T’s Governing Council held its final meeting of the 2023–2024 academic school year. In the meeting, council members discussed the university’s world rankings, financial statements, and the student encampment at King’s College Circle.
While the meeting was taking place inside Simcoe Hall, UofT Occupy for Palestine (O4P) — the student group that organized the encampment — held a rally outside the building.
Open letter, closed doors
On June 13, the Muslim Students’ Association at UTSG and UTSC collaboratively posted an open letter on their Instagram calling on the Governing Council to pressure U of T President Meric Gertler to meet O4P’s demands or remove him from his position.
For more than two months, O4P has demanded that the university disclose their financial holdings, divest from companies supplying Israel with weapons, and cut ties with Israeli academic institutions. The letter stated that none of O4P’s demands are unreasonable and that “it is essential for the university to respond as genocide unfolds before our eyes.”
The letter has since been signed by 490 U of T students, staff, faculty, and alumni.
On the day of the meeting, O4P shared a post on Instagram where they alleged that student members requested to discuss their demands with the Governing Council, but were declined access.
In response, the protesters rallied around Simcoe Hall to disrupt the meeting and block parking near the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering building. They wrote in the post that they “refuse to let [the school’s] complicity in apartheid go unaddressed.”
The meeting
In the meeting, President Gertler first gave an update on the encampment and “related protest activities,” stating that “the university has spent many hours in discussion with [O4P] representatives in our attempt to seek a peaceful and lasting resolution of the issues that they have raised in a way that adheres to our principles and long-established policies of the university.”
He then discussed the university’s “successful convocation season” and the QS 2025 World University Rankings — where U of T ranked first in Canada and 25th in the world — as well as the US News & World Report’s 2024–2025 Best Global Universities Rankings — where U of T ranked first in Canada and 17th in the world.
The Governing Council chair then reviewed the university’s audited financial statements for 2023–2024. According to the report, U of T’s net assets increased to $9.9 billion in 2024 from $923 million in the previous year. The Council resolved to approve the statements.
Council members also discussed reappointing Ernst & Young (EY) Canada as external auditors for 2024–2025. While acknowledging that EY is a “very reputable firm,” some council members raised concerns about the school’s lack of rotation between different auditing firms for risk management purposes. U of T’s Vice-President & Provost Trevor Young clarified that there are “only three
student encampment
that U of T is where EDI “became IED, improvised explosive device,” which he defined as “the preferable weapons of terrorists.”
Elitzur also claimed that “If you are [a] Jew now, you won’t be admitted to [U of T’s] medical school,” to which Young responded by apologizing on behalf of the university for failing in “making the Jewish community feel safe and included.”
Elitzur also compared the Jewish protesters at the encampment to Jewish people who served in Nazi Germany’s military.
“When somebody sits or stands in a camp where there are antisemitic remarks, they’re antisemites. If you are there, you are part of the problem,” he
firms that audit universities in Ontario,” and that other Ontario universities have also not rotated their auditors within a similar timeframe.
The council then approved the president as the “Summer Executive Authority,” which allowed President Gertler to take on urgent council decisions and approve potential curriculum changes until the start of the fall academic term.
Concerns about the student encampment During the meeting, several council members voiced concerns about the encampment and their limited ability to conduct the meeting amid the noise by the student protesters outside.
Ramy Elitzur, a professor of accounting at the Rotman School of Management, vocalized his concerns about the encampment as a Jewish faculty member.
Referring to U of T’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity (EDI) initiatives, Elitzur said, “When you talk about inclusivity, I’m not included… Jewish people are not included, Jewish [lives] do not matter. The actions of the university over the last year showed me I don’t matter.” Elitzur accused
said. “I’m actually embarrassed that 300 thugs are controlling my agenda and the agenda of the university.”
In an email to The Varsity, a university spokesperson wrote “suggestions and ideas can arise that may diverge from established university policies and practices,” and that U of T has a “high threshold” for speech and expression, including “speech and imagery that are uncomfortable and offensive to some.”
Karandeep Sonu Gaind, a professor at Temerty Faculty of Medicine, responded to Elitzur’s claims by saying that it’s not fair to characterize all of the 300 protesters as thugs. He noted that the council “should not conflate the actions of bad actors with our broader student population, many of whom are outside, protesting for whatever reasons they are there.”
Alumnus Governor Brian Madden echoed Gaind’s sentiment, but added that he believes it to be “implausible that, with the technology we have at hand today — facial recognition, artificial intelligence, machine learning — that we couldn’t really just fly a drone over there”
to identify the people inside and outside of the encampment.
The spokesperson wrote to The Varsity that Elitzur and Madden declined to comment on their statements. They also noted the university does not use “any form of facial recognition technology, artificial intelligence or drone technology for surveillance.”
Outside protest
Outside of Simcoe Hall, the protesters chanted at the council to let them into the meeting. Among them, O4P spokespersons Sara Rasikh, a masters student studying social justice education; Aviral Dhamija, a recent philosophy and international relations graduate; and Erin Mackey, a recent political science and environmental studies graduate spoke to the crowd.
“This university does not actually want to commit to anything that it claims to stand for. It only wants to commit to the bottom line,” said Dhamija. “That’s all it’s proven to us in the past two months, in the past six months, in the past 76 years.”
Mackey added that U of T has to “end their complicity in genocide” and that “there’s no other option for us other than continuing to show up every single day here at this encampment.”
As council members left Simcoe Hall, Campus Safety and security guards escorted some of them to their vehicles.
Director of Campus Safety Michael Monroe, President Gertler, and a few other members boarded a Campus Safety vehicle, which was guarded by a group of approximately six Campus Safety officers — some on foot and some with bikes. Student protesters started gathering around the car, chanting “shame on you.”
Some students who approached the vehicle were pushed away by Campus Safety officers. One officer used a bike as a blockade to stop students from approaching the car. Another officer told student protesters to form a line “or be charged,” as the officers with bikes continued to make way for the vehicle while the protesters blocked the car’s path.
One officer used their bike to push about six protesters holding a banner and blocking the vehicle into the fence around the encampment. The officer then used their bike to trip the protester as the vehicle sped down King’s College Road.
In an email to The Varsity, a university spokesperson said that Campus Safety officers “receive extensive training in conflict prevention and deescalation” to keep U of T community members and visitors safe.
They added that the officers only use force “as a last resort” and “in circumstances allowed under applicable laws and policies,” such as protecting themselves, community members, or campus visitors from “assault or threats of assault,” or when “applying or enforcing” the law.
Ajeetha
UTMSU organizes Hurricane Beryl relief efforts
Earliest Category 5 of 2024 Atlantic hurricane season rips through southeast Caribbean
Olga Fedossenko Assistant News Editor
On July 1, Hurricane Beryl passed through the southeast Caribbean, ripping doors, windows, and roofs off homes with winds exceeding 220 kilometres per hour.
The hurricane made landfall on Carriacou island in Grenada as a Category 4 storm, later intensifying to Category 5. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is used to measure hurricanes’ severity based on wind speed, with Category 5 being the highest.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a United Nations health agency responsible for the Americas, has confirmed a total of 11 deaths in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada together. At the time of PAHO’s July 16 report, 30 people were injured and two were missing.
When Beryl hit Jamaica next, PAHO reported four deaths, and 72 people injured. On July 3, the hurricane passed near the southern coast of the island and then continued toward the Gulf of Mexico, reaching Texas as a Category 1 hurricane.
Third-year student in human biology and member of the U of T West Indian Students’ Association, Erin Moo-Penn’s family was in Jamaica at the time of the hurricane. In an interview with The Varsity , she said, “My initial reaction was definitely worry and shock. It’s been a while since a hurricane of this magnitude hit the Caribbean.”
Moo-Penn noted that most of the destruction occurred in the southern part of the island, particularly along the shoreline.
“Zinc roofs came off schools and different entertainment establishments. Trees were down on certain roads. For almost two weeks, people across the island had no light, running water, or Wi-Fi,” she said.
Moo-Penn also mentioned that a seafood market in her city, which her family frequents, suffered significant damage. Meanwhile, Jamaica’s important landmark Bamboo Avenue — a two-and-a-half-mile-long bamboo forest in the southwest parish of St. Elizabeth — was completely uprooted.
She explained that hurricanes of this strength are rare. The last time a hurricane of similar magnitude to Beryl struck the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Beryl 20 years ago.
This time, the hurricane gained its strength from unusually warm ocean waters, which are currently hotter than usual, even for September — the peak of hurricane season.
Beryl became the earliest hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season to reach Category 5 intensity. The hurricane affected several countries, including Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago.
U of T’s response and UTMSU support At the time of speaking, Moo-Penn had not heard of any student groups organizing hurricane relief fundraisers at the St. George campus. However, she believes U of T should play a role in spreading information about natural disasters that impact Caribbean students, who take up a large segment of the school’s population.
“U of T has a big platform and a strong voice to spread awareness about things students from other countries might not know about. Even just putting the word out there that this is what’s happening, that we feel for our students and want to share our support — this is something that U of T could do,” she said.
On the other hand, The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) launched a relief campaign from July 8–10 to support hurricane victims. In collaboration with Caribbean Connections UTM, UTMSU set up a donation drive in the UTM student centre where students could contribute relief items.
In an email to The Varsity , the union reflected that the campaign was “very successful.”
“We managed to spread awareness about the cause, which encouraged many students on campus to get involved. They donated relief items such as toiletries, non-perishable food, and first aid kits,” wrote the union.
After the donation period ended, Caribbean Connections UTM worked with Canadian nonprofit community outreach organization, CARION SVG Disaster Preparedness, to organize with the Consulate of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in Toronto to make a shipment of supplies.
UTSC Principal, U of T Vice-President Wisdom Tettey steps down
After six years of service, Tettey’s named Carleton University’s 17th president
Damola Omole Varsity Contributor
On April 16, UTSC announced that Wisdom Tettey is stepping down from his role as U of T’s Vice-President and UTSC Principal to become Carleton University’s 17th President and Vice-Chancellor. In June, Professor Linda Johnston was appointed as Tettey’s succes sor for a five-year term.
After six years at U of T and being reappoint ed for a second five-year term in 2022, Varsity reflects on Tettey’s notable achieve ments as he bids farewell to Scarborough.
Inspiring inclusion
Tettey was appointed to his role at U of T on July 1, 2018. He previously served as the Dean of the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences at the University of British Columbia’s satellite Okanagan campus. Upon his inauguration, Tettey stated in an interview that he sought to “cultivate the next generation of leaders.”
He built upon previously established initia tives, such as the Imani Tri-Mentorship Pro gram, which provided Black UTSC Students with leadership opportunities by connecting them with Black faculty and alumni.
During his tenure at UTSC, Tettey also implemented new initiatives, such as the 2020–2025 Strategic Plan, Inspiring Inclusive Excellence. He created the plan as a governing document to push forward his vision of UTSC.
Some key commitments of the plan in cluded advancing a culture of leadership, promoting a healthy learning and working environment, and enhancing U of T’s global academic reputation.
Tettey described the plan as a “living document that is robust and adaptable,”
which helps the school “realize [its] goals of transformative learning, scholarly prominence, inclusive citizenship, and reciprocal local and global engagement.”
Tettey also facilitated a campus-wide curriculum review to develop new courses, pro-
larger structural changes at UTSC with the hopes of fostering community.
Tettey initiated constructing Harmony Commons, a first-year residence building that is the largest ‘passive house’ — which is a building that uses less energy for heating and
UTSC through environmental and economic initiatives.
In 2022, he put plans for the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health into action. At the time, Tettey stated that the purpose of this academy was to “address the acute healthcare needs of our underserved communities in the Eastern GTA” through training talented individuals from local neighbourhoods. The plan included creating a new building to act as a hub for the Academy, which is set to open in September 2025.
During Tettey’s time, UTSC also launched the Environmental and Related Technologies Hub (EaRTH) District: a physical hub created in partnership with five universities and colleges. Tettey envisioned the hub to include a net-zero vertical farm — a farm grown on a vertical surface that balances the amount of greenhouse gasses produced and removed — as a structure that would “empower community members to play an active role in combating climate change.”
Departing words
On June 30, Tettey wrote a “Thank you message to the community” in an email, expressing his final farewell to UTSC.
“I want to express my deep and sincere gratitude to all of you for the privilege of serving you and serving with you these past six years,” wrote Tettey. “I appreciate all the blessings that have come with being part of the UTSC, U of T, Scarborough, and Eastern GTA families, as well as the extended family of partners beyond.”
“I leave you with the words “mia ga do go”, from my Ewe mother tongue, meaning “good-bye for now,” “until we meet again,” “see you (soon).””
Wisdom Tettey wishes community
mia ga do go” in farewell message. COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SCARBOROUGH
JAYLIN KIM/THE VARSITY
Toronto experienced “dangerously hot” heat wave in June
U of T community members weigh in on extreme weather conditions
Sharon Chan Varsity Contributor
On June 17, Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a heat warning for eastern Ontario, including Toronto. The alert warned Torontonians of “dangerously hot and humid conditions expected through most of the week” due to the human-induced climate crisis.
With temperatures as high as 35 degrees Celsius, Torontonians were not prepared for the sudden and extreme temperature increase. By the 2050s, Canadians are predicted to experience four times as many days with temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius or higher.
Understanding heat waves
A heat wave is a period when excessive heat accumulates over a series of unusually hot days and nights. Once a rare event, heat waves have increasingly affected numerous parts of the world in recent years.
The World Health Organization identifies heat waves as “among the most dangerous of natural hazards.” Meanwhile, a report from Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, World Weather Attribution, and Climate Central reveals that 6.8 billion people — the equivalent of 78 per cent of the world’s population — experienced at least a month of extreme heat.
The impact of heat waves on the human body can vary by age, gender, urbanization, and socioeconomic factors. Exposure to excessive heat can also lead to heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
Heat waves can be more dangerous when combined with high humidity, as they impair the body’s cooling ability through the evaporation of sweat.Young children, the elderly, people with chronic illnesses, athletes, outdoor workers, city dwellers, and those living without air condition-
ing are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness and death.
In response to the extreme weather Canada experienced this summer, Environment Canada urged people to visit loved ones, particularly if they are living alone, disabled, or mentally ill. The City of Toronto reminded people to seek relief
classrooms have been air conditioned luckily, because of the extreme differences in temperature going in and out of buildings I have also had more frequent headaches and felt more easily nauseous.”
In an interview with The Varsity, Jeffrey Brook — an associate professor at the Dalla Lana
from the heat at various drop-in centres, shelters, and 24-hour respite sites across the city.
U of T community members’ reaction Joy Xu, a third-year student studying history, cinema studies, and English, described her experiences taking classes amid the extreme weather conditions.
“I definitely felt an extreme loss of appetite,” Xu wrote in an email to The Varsity. “Though
School of Public Health with 25 years of experience as an environmental scientist — commented on the stuffy classrooms that students and teachers have been experiencing due to the lack of air-conditioning.
“We want all our schools [to have] air conditioning? Where does this end? Eventually, we [might] just have to build a dome over everywhere and live in an artificial world,” said Brook. Later, he stated that our reliance on air-
conditioning is a band-aid solution that would only aggravate our current climate problems. Rather than installing more air-conditioning in schools, Brook believes Toronto should create more green spaces and transition to green energy and heat pumps, which are economical and more energy-efficient cooling units. He also sees the current climate crisis as a great opportunity for teachers to educate students more about climate crisis solutions and inspire their interest them in natural spaces.
Brook also mentioned the growing movement where teachers take their students outside the classroom to help them develop a deeper connection with nature.
“You can turn it into a bit of an opportunity for [including] things into the curriculum and for inspiring youth to work on solutions and think about how they can be a force for change. As you know, they’re the inheritors of… this damaged planet.”
U of T’s responsibility
Dr. Samantha Green, an assistant professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the chair of Health Providers Against Poverty, believes that the university has a moral obligation to open air conditioned spaces to the wider public during extreme heat events.
“Why only allow students and other university community members, when during an extreme heat event, it’s members of the public, especially the elderly, and the very young, who are most at risk?” she said.
Dr. Green also acknowledged that the university had made the right step by promising to divest from fossil fuels. However, she believes that U of T could “do more” to increase students’ access to nature by planting more trees around the downtown campus, emphasizing green spaces’ benefits on physical and mental health.
UTSU announces Student Senate elections, plans, and new platform for clubs' funding
Executives discuss senate elections and orientation plans for the 2024–2025
Olga Fedossenko Assistant News Editor
On August 18, the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) held its monthly Board of Directors (BOD) meeting. Executives provided updates on transit, sexual health services for students, and the upcoming orientation week.
The UTSU also announced the dates for their Annual General Meeting (AGM) and the Student Senate elections.
Discussing changes in transit and sexual health services
UTSU President Shehab Mansour began the
the student transit service. He discussed his meeting with volunteer-led transit advocacy group, TTC Riders, on providing “affordable alternatives to students” for the 2024–2025 academic year.
Mansour mentioned the possibility of creating a U-Pass for transit, with support from all U of T student unions and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). The proposed transit pass would allow students unlimited fare-free rides on the TTC — prepaid as part of their tuition. Currently, UTM is the only campus with a U-Pass.
Mansour also mentioned implementing REES (Respect,
Educate, Empower, Survivors) — an online platform for reporting sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault. The platform has already been introduced to the Universities of Windsor, Winnipeg, and Manitoba.
Mansour is hopeful to meet with a REES representative next week to work out introducing the platform on campus. UTSU has no specific date for a potential rollout.
Student governance
VP Finance and Operations Elizabeth Shechtman announced the upcoming elections for UTSU’s Student Senate — the union’s “sole gov ernance organ” and advisory body composed of
academic year
51 to 75 student representatives. She said the union plans to elect their senators on September 15.
Shechtman hopes to have enough members this year to run the Student Senate, which 2023–2024 UTSU executives unsuccessfully attempted to abolish. Since its introduction into the union’s bylaws in 2022, the Student Senate has never successfully been elected.
She also announced that the UTSU AGM will take place online on October 20. Shechtman stressed the importance of the meeting reaching a quorum of 50 people, which the union failed to do last year. This time, Shechtman plans to organize a giveaway to provide an incentive for students to attend the meeting.
Orientation and a new prayer space
VP Student Life Tala Mehdi provided updates on orientation week preparation. She announced that the UTSU had secured approximately $125,000 in sponsorships for the event and over 300 clubs had confirmed their attendance at the union’s Clubs Fair on August 30.
Despite UTSU’s success in securing funds and participants, Mehdi discussed some accessibility-related issues at Front Campus, where the union held their Clubs Fair. “I really want to make sure every student has access to the events that we’re having,” said Mehdi.
VP Equity Sakeena Mohammad shared the news about converting UTSU’s closet space at Student Commons into a prayer room, which may open as early as September 3. The new space will add to almost a dozen prayer rooms across U of T’s downtown campus.
OLGA FEDOSSENKO/THE VARSITY
JAYLIN KIM/THE VARSITY
SCSU presents income statement, highlights concerns presented at meeting with OSEW
Executives were told a Muslim mental health counsellor will be hired after removal of chaplain in March
Urooba Shaikh Varsity Contributor
At its Board of Directors (BOD) meeting on August 21, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) appointed an at-large member to the Bursary Committee. The union also presented its income statement and reviewed its meeting with the UTSC Office of Student Experience and Wellbeing (OSEW).
Bursary Committee and SCSU’s income
After appointing members to its other at-large committees during the previous SCSU BOD meeting on August 2, the union reopened applications for the Bursary Committee members due to a lack of applicants. An at-large member was appointed to the committee by vote at the meeting.
Vice-President (VP) Operations Jena Bah, presented SCSU’s income statement. In 2023–2024, the union made $8.8 million in revenue: a 10 per cent increase from the SCSU’s 2022–2023 revenue and a 27.5 per cent increase from 2021–2022. The union’s total expenses in 2023–2024 amounted to about $7.5 million — roughly the same as last year. Finally, Bah reported a net surplus — their total income after deductions — of around $235,000.
Campaigns and advocacy
VP External Omar Mousa announced the creation of two new advocacy groups — the Housing Advocacy Group and Transit Advocacy Group — to assist with gathering testimonials, conducting
general outreach for petitions and events related to the portfolio, and organizing meetings on behalf of the SCSU.
Some of the campaigns under the two groups will include a petition for a UTSC-Kennedy Station shuttle bus and a U-Pass for UTSC students.
The previous SCSU executives discussed transit initiatives at the end of their term, as they found data from Uber reflected a 72 per cent increase in trips in Scarborough before and after the Scarborough Line 3 shutdown.
Mousa also provided updates on the SCSU Executive Committee’s meeting with the OSEW. During the meeting, SCSU executives raised the issue of the lack of faith-based mental health support for Muslim students at UTSC, following U of T cutting ties with the Muslim chaplain, Imam Omar Patel, in January. The decision followed an alleged antisemitic Instagram post, which he said was falsely attributed to him.
SCSU President Hunain Sindhu shared that the OSEW decided a Muslim counsellor would be hired.
Mousa also noted that SCSU executives mentioned the need to change the OSEW’s postering policy at their meeting with the group. In March, a group of UTSC
professors advocating for the security of Jewish students under the name Campus Aware set up posters across campus. The posters criticized chants and phrases used by pro-Palestinian protesters such as, “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the Intifada” — writing that such chants “affect the sense of security… of Jewish students, staff and faculty.”
“OSEW allowed posters with anti-Palestinian racism to be put up, twisting the meanings of
Sindhu added, “For anyone who may have heard that OSEW didn’t approve them, just know that OSEW also didn’t take them down.”
Lastly, Sindhu shared that SCSU executives asked OSEW to release a statement in support of the student-led protests in Bangladesh.
“We know that the Bangladeshi community on campus was very disturbed,” he said. “Yes, the SCSU can do something [to support students], but it won’t have as much impact as [when] OSEW [takes action].”
Mousa added that there were UTSC students who took part in the protests in Bangladesh and were injured.
“We asked the [OSEW] to be more open with our students in terms of being willing to release statements about issues. We will continue to advocate for our students, their mental health, and their right to protest,” said Mousa.
UTGSU discusses financial
budgets and changes in policies and bylaws
Union increases honoraria for BOD members to
$300 per semester
Muzna Erum
Varsity Contributor
On August 21, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) met for its monthly Board of Directors (BOD) meeting to discuss new honorarium policies, financial budgets, and orientation plans.
New honorary systems for the BOD During the meeting, executives discussed
designed to help keep the union and students more “accountable.”
The new policy finds that BOD members, excluding the executives, can receive $300 for each semester they attend in the summer, fall, and winter sessions. It also includes guidelines for how honoraria will be assessed and the number of hours that union members must spend to receive their honoraria.
Effective May 2025, Moghadam said that the number of board directors will be reduced
and Bylaw 4, which addresses the number of board directors.
The Board of Appeal Committee
The union also discussed the new amendments made to the G10 policy, which focuses on how the Board of Appeal Committee (BOA) operates. The BOA is the “final level of appeals” within the UTGSU and investigates any decisions the union makes.
According to the former G10 policy in the UTGSU handbook, union members form a BOA within 72 hours after an individual provides “written notification of intent to the appeal board.”
Given the new amendments, the union will form a hiring committee to establish a permanent BOA committee and open the applications for the hiring board in the coming weeks.
Julian Nickel, Vice-President (VP), Academic Divisions 3 and 4, is the BOA committee officer, and BOD members Abdul Hamed and Joscelyn van der Veen have been nominated as the com-
The union’s budget
Based on the union’s end-of-year financial report, Executive Director Corey Scott noted that this year’s budget for the union is expected to go five per cent over the planned amount.
The union is recommending a budget increase for membership meetings — which costs from $14,000 to $18,000 — and legal meetings — which costs from $40,000 to $46,000. These two areas will increase the union’s budget.
Krannich said the union’s budget is usually created by assessing previous years’ budget costs. He noted that the previous years’ UTGSU budgets have been low due to the pandemic and the lack of members filling seats on the board. This lowered the union’s overall operating expenses.
This year, Krannich’s budget increase recommendation covers last year’s unaccounted operating costs, as well as new bylaws and policies that will take effect.
Opinion
September 3, 2024
thevarsity.ca/category/opinion opinion@thevarsity.ca
Letter from the Editor: The ‘small,’ ‘insignificant’ stories matter too
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul
Charmaine Yu Opinion Editor
Whether it’s the things you witness on your TTC commute, your first time partying sober, or your switch to a different soap at home, these seemingly trivial stories all reveal themselves as puzzle pieces of a larger picture. Those ‘little’ things may not be breaking news but, more often than not, it is the trifling moments of life that shine a light on the cogs of a machine — the sputtering engines that fuel the systemic problems of our world.
As the Opinion Editor of The Varsity , I want to showcase writers who have personal experiences to share with our community. The cornerstones of journalism tend to prioritize neutrality, detachment, and the ‘objective truth.’ But that’s not what journalism should be limited to, not to me at least. I could even argue
that neutrality is pure fiction, but perhaps we can continue that idea in another letter.
Let me exemplify my point. With the new policies surrounding international student per mits in Canada, I don’t just want anyone to comment on it through the lens of economic and political factors. I want to hear specifically from international students to understand how this could affect their dreams for the future, the friendships they’ve formed in a new country, and how piles of paperwork can add to the stress of an already nightmarish exam season.
Of course, facts and figures are important, but if the ultimate goal of journalism is to document life and civilization, I struggle to see how it would be meaningful without considering the humanity of it all.
In Chinese, the word for journalist is “ 记者” — “the one who remembers,” in its literal English translation. In my view, journalism is about
such a unique and wonderful spread in our student paper. It’s an exciting platform that welcomes articles in many shapes and forms: op-eds, editorials, forums, column pieces, and just as we publish letters from the editor, we also very much encourage letters to the editor. This makes it possible for us to have healthy debates and evolutionary dialogue that connect our personal experiences with relevant topics that concern local, national, and international affairs.
Having been the ‘What’s New in News’ columnist at The Varsity last year and now growing into my new role as Opinion Editor, I believe I’ve finally found a vaguely suitable comparison to illustrate the equal, yet different, merits of news and opinion writing. While news is like a gallery of traditional photography, opinions are an Impressionist painting. Impressionists are distinct in that they don’t aim to capture the subject in a pursuit of objectivity like much of traditional photography. Instead, Impressionism reflects and recalls the sensations that make up the idea of the subject.
Furthermore, just as ‘insignificant,’ individual stories are atomic parts of a larger mosaic, Impressionist paintings are composed of fleeting, unblended brushstrokes, that ultimately represent the painter’s characterization of a scene — skewed by the light, vision, or mood. However, when you look at a Renoir, Monet, or Manet painting, you’ll quickly realize that every fickle detail, every fragmented line, and every blotch of pigment devoid of precision plays a significant role in a painter’s interpretation of the wider narrative.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Henri Matisse once said, “Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.”
Toronto needs drug decriminalization now more than ever Federal opposition against decriminalization will only worsen Toronto’s opioid crisis
and methamphetamine, will not face criminal charges and arrest, but they can still be fined.
Content Warning: This article discusses substance use and overdose.
The first time I saw someone smoking crack cocaine was just after I got off the subway at St. George station. Coming from a place like San Francisco, it might be hard to believe that this was my first encounter with public drug use. However, the moment has been stuck in my memory ever since: a stark visualization of the growing opioid crisis that Toronto is facing. As a Toronto resident, seeing people I live alongside struggle is painful. In a city with 733 suspected drug-related deaths, including 523 deaths confirmed or “likely caused by opioid toxicity” in 2023, the crisis is hard to disregard. Despite it being a highly contested topic among public servants and policymakers in Ontario and beyond, I am a strong advocate for drug decriminalization because — contrary to popular belief — it can save lives.
In 2022, Toronto requested to be exempt from the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to decriminalize the possession of drugs under 2.5 grams — an act that the rest of Ontario would continue to follow even if Toronto was granted the exemption. In fact, the City has publicly advocated for decriminalization since 2018.
its commitment to “a full continuum of downstream mental health, harm reduction, and treatment services.”
Social impacts of decriminalization
Health Canada’s statement also raised concerns about the Toronto Police Services not having the “feasibility and ability” to implement the model, despite the Chief of Police signing off on Toronto’s decriminalization proposal in 2023. However, one oversight I see from Toronto’s model is that there is no cap on the amount of drugs a person can legally possess other than a vague “small amount.” I believe Toronto could have proposed to align with British Columbia’s (BC) policy of a 2.5 gram possession limit introduced in 2023.
The multi-pronged approach
However, on May 17, Health Canada rejected Toronto’s request, stating it is “100 per cent opposed” to it. The Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health, Ya’ara Saks, emphasized that decriminalization does not “adequately protect public health and maintain public safety.” And, Dr. Eileen De Villa, the Toronto Medical Officer of Health, stressed in a statement the next day that “the need to invest in other available evidence-based interventions is all the more critical.” But, Saks and De Villa did not specify which interventions they would focus on.
Toronto’s stance on decriminalization
Too often, when I mention decriminalization, someone will say something like, “So people should just be allowed to do drugs in the streets now?”
No. That would be an example of legalization, where you can buy a drug from a licensed seller (think LCBO with alcohol). Under legalization, there are legal frameworks for producing the substances, and buyers and sellers are taxed. Decriminalization is an umbrella term that encompasses many aspects of drug policy, including import and legality. But, here, I will focus on drug possession. Decriminalization means that adults who possess small amounts of certain drugs such as cocaine, opioids,
I find this incredibly frustrating because I believe Toronto’s proposed model addressed the concerns that Health Canada raised in rejecting the decriminalization request. The City stated
The federal government rejected Toronto’s request just after BC, a leading province in decriminalization, decided to repeal part of its plan and recriminalize public drug use. What I find most frustrating about BC’s decision to recriminalize is that the province has not expanded harm reduction services or safe injection sites, meaning that those using drugs in public will be arrested instead of directed to mental health and addiction resources. While I disagree with Health Canada’s statement that Toronto’s proposed plan does not adequately protect public health, I agree with De Villa’s emphasis that a city as large and diverse as Toronto needs a multi-pronged approach to “other available evidence-based interventions.” But, in my view, the multi-pronged approach is already demonstrated by Toronto’s suggestions to decriminalize drugs as well as adding “24/7 crisis centres, expanded housing programs, new social supports, and health services.”
My opinion is that decriminalization alone is not sufficient to fully address the crisis. Instead, it is imperative that we also acknowledge our collective role as a community and commit to upholding its health.
Decriminalization can save lives. As explained by the BC government on their website for the Centre of Disease Control, fears and stigma around drug use are what drive people to use drugs alone — the leading cause of overdose. If a drug is criminalized, the person using it could feel ashamed to reveal it to their friends and family, much less call 911 for help during a potential overdose over fear of police responding. To me, this means decriminalization does not necessarily make sure that people don’t use drugs, but it significantly reduces the risk of overdosing.
Drug criminalization also contributes to higher incarceration rates of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, as they are more likely to be profiled by the police for criminal activity. Disproportionally high arrest rates for these groups perpetuate cycles of inequality and marginalization. Because of the systemic injustices of drug policing, I think decriminalization would help racialized people struggling with substance use disorder and promote healing in communities that are affected by over-policing. The federal government should have passed Toronto’s request for decriminalization, and I believe the government of Ontario is actively doing its people a disservice by blocking this critical resource amid a drug crisis. Decriminalization is a massive step towards recognizing substance use disorder as a health concern, not a criminal one.
Amelia Spong is a second-year student at Woodsworth College studying Book and Media studies and anthropology.
Amelia Spong
Varsity Contributor
Gen Z has a new dialogue with drinking, and it’s a dying one Cheers, I’ll think to that!
Mia Rodrigo Varsity Contributor
The two-edged sword of booze: to let loose or fear losing control?
According to Forbes, the demand for the nonalcoholic market is expected to grow by 25 per cent throughout 2022 and 2026. I believe this ‘sober-curious’ movement can be associated with the younger generation’s shifting attitude and their evolving relationship with drinking, as Gen Z is reported to drink 20 per cent less than millennials.
College drinking typically begins during a student’s first and second years, with 19 being the legal drinking age in Ontario. Students at the St. George campus often fall into the embrace of Madison Avenue Pub, known more affectionately as “the Maddy” by students, with its lingering sweat
painfully obvious that I knew less about drinking than many of my peers and even my parents. However, in order to engage in what seemed to me like an overrated chorus of supposed gratification, I would drink out of obligation.
It wasn’t until I met a group of peers who were open-minded about various drinking experiences that I began to appreciate the art of preparing drinks for gatherings with friends or ‘pre-gaming’ before heading out to bars. To my delight, they introduced me to the endless, creative possibilities of mocktails for those who are sober or simply want to drink mindfully.
Those Facebook motivation quotes might be right: Health is wealth
As young adults, we’re expected to make informed decisions and understand their impacts. I would even argue that newer generations are becoming increasingly health-conscious. Being a member of Gen Z, I grew up with middle school curricula that taught me the dangers of substance use. Now, with TikTok, we bear witness to the indestructible, multi-coloured Stanley cups for hydration and the nightstand Ashwagandha capsules for better sleep. Sure, the ’80s had leg-warmer aerobics, but you could still smoke on a plane then.
But what about the unseen and inexplicable effects of drinking? Undergraduate life can be distressing, and the National Library of Medicine reports that individuals with common mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are twice as likely to report alcohol use disorder — including harmful and dependent drinking — than those without mental health disorders.
housing
Evidence from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that alcohol dependencies and extreme drinking can lead to increased mental health issues, and Gen Z is the generation most likely to report struggles with mental health. Does that mean previous generations didn’t grapple with poor mental wellness and detrimental binge drinking? Probably not. However, in my view, Gen Z is making the stride to address their difficult feelings and vulnerabilities by exploring a potential path of sobriety.
I think that this recent wave of health conscious ness, including this newfound sober-curiosity, has become trendy, similar to how the wild college party life is typically considered to be cool.
Furthermore, many existing worries which tran scend the scope of our control may contribute to Gen Z’s decreased participation in drinking. For example, The Guardian reports that Toronto ranks 84th out of 94 international cities in terms of af fordability. This suggests to me a bleak insight to the future, promising financial uncertainty for a large majority, and you might find yourself check ing your banking statements before splurging on a $20 cocktail.
It looks different for everyone
When you enter university, you’ll likely realize how much larger the world actually is as your autonomy and responsibilities increase tenfold. Beyond health concerns or personal preferences as simple as taste, I’ve encountered students who abstain from drinking due to cultural or religious beliefs. There are also students who used to drink but are now pursuing a sober life to achieve their personal goals or journeys.
adopt
practices
For reasons specific or casual, people will decide whether to drink and set their own limits. I assure you, going to a club like Toronto’s beloved Apt 200 sober won’t denounce your youth. You can also enjoy weekend listening bars with a simple Perrier in hand. In fact, I would also argue that a night-in to catch up on sleep might be the best retreat from the snare of U of T. With a growing discussion around mental health, candidness about substance use, and the
Have you ever thought about what happens when the soap from your dishes and hands ends up down the drain? The truth is, the soaps and sponges we use are not just cleaning our kitchens and bathrooms — they’re leaving a mark on our health and planet.
It’s time we reconsider our choices in cleaning products. We, as part of the Campus Cooperative Residence Inc. (CCRI), recently transitioned to sustainable cleaning practices.
CCRI is Canada’s oldest housing cooperative of 23 houses in downtown Toronto, which provides affordable housing to over 200 post-secondary students — not limited to U of T.
We hope our experience can drive more students and residents to embrace eco-friendly cleaning practices.
Everyday soaps impact our health and the environment
Researchers from the US and Mexico reveal that the chemicals in common household soaps are polluting human and marine health. The familiar brands of soap are often packed with risky substances like parabens, phthalates, and triclosan, which are chemicals that can enter the body through ingestion or skin contact. While they keep the soaps effective and long-lasting, they’re not as friendly to our bodies or the environment when we wash them down the sink.
Parabens, while great at keeping bacteria at bay, affect our hormonal balance and reproductive health. Phthalates, which make soaps
more durable, are associated with cognitive and metabolic disruptions. Triclosan fights germs but lingers in rivers and lakes once washed away, posing risks to aquatic creatures due to its persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity.
While many of these chemicals can be broken down by our bodies in small amounts, our widespread exposure to these soaps has resulted in researchers finding samples of human tissue with various parabens and phthalates in them. Surfactants, which are cleaning agents in detergents, mix oil and water to remove dirt and grease effectively. However, when they enter waterways, they can disrupt ecosystems and contaminate drinking water.
These are just a few harmful substances. We strongly believe that the negative impacts of these soaps calls for a thoughtful look at what goes into our cleaning products and how we can make safer choices for ourselves and the planet.
Biodegradable soaps drive student leaders to victory
When I recognized the harmful impact of cleaning products, I undertook an initiative for CCRI to transition to biodegradable cleaning products. In the spring of 2024, just before the executive board elections at CCRI, I sparked a sustainability debate with a simple, research-backed proposal: asking the community to switch to biodegradable soaps.
Students rallied behind the eco-friendly cause by voting for candidates who supported the proposal. Cameron Wheeler and my co-author, Priyanka Verma, who both supported the initiative, respectively secured positions as President
and Treasurer. We believe this victory highlights that students support leaders championing environmental responsibility and that green promises can drive electoral success.
CCRI’s blueprint:
Phasing out conventional soap
After the elections, the CCRI’s board of directors voted for the switch to biodegradable soap. Wheeler, who is a third-year student at Toronto Metropolitan University, recalls that “the price increase [between the new and old soaps] is around 30 per cent.” Despite this, Verma rearranged the budget to afford both biodegradable and conventional soaps.
In an interview with us, Wheeler expressed confidence about phasing out conventional soap entirely. Wheeler supported this initiative in her presidential campaign, but said that the slow switch is a pilot project at the present. She affirmed that, if the houses with biodegradable soap stay within budget, the CCRI can phase out the conventional soap.
At CCRI, sustainability isn’t just a buzzword to us — it’s a commitment we’re growing into daily. Wheeler explained that because the CCRI belongs to a cost-cutting program that aims to keep its residence affordable to students, they “are limited to one supplier of products,” and the suppliers do not offer biodegradable options for every product the CCRI buys.
“I was really hoping we could transition our entire suite of products,” she added. This campaign is not without challenges, but we are on an ongoing journey to encourage suppliers to invest in eco-friendly products, too.
Paving the way for a fully biodegradable future
Recognizing the importance of choice in fostering sustainable habits, CCRI also allows members to purchase their preferred ecofriendly supplies while offering reimbursements. Looking ahead, we’re eager to make all CCRI household supplies biodegradable, from laundry detergents to bathroom cleaners — setting the stage for a complete green overhaul.
Education will be key in this transition. We are planning more initiatives to inform members about the benefits of using eco-friendly products and how they can make these purchases. With a growing community backing, we hope to increase the budget at the next CCRI General Meeting, potentially enabling partnerships with suppliers committed to sustainability.
Our ultimate goal is to ensure all products at CCRI are eco-friendly and cruelty-free. By transitioning to products that do not participate in animal testing or use animal byproducts, we aim to underscore the CCRI’s commitment to environment and ethical standards.
We call on U of T students, academic dons in student housing, student organizations, and residents in social housing organizations to reach out to their administrators and advocate for eco-friendly cleaning products.
We believe the story of our CCRI project not only highlights how students can push for sustainability but can also offer a blueprint for U of T student residences and the over 180 housing cooperatives in Toronto. In our opinion, this case exemplifies how grassroots efforts within a community can lead to significant environmental initiatives, foregrounding student leadership’s role in promoting sustainability in academic environments.
Harshit Gujral is a fourth-year PhD student studying computer science studying the impact of the environment on health. He is a member of CCRI and Climate Justice UofT.
Priyanka Verma is a third-year PhD student studying technology in participatory budgeting and voting. She is the treasurer of CCRI.
Harshit Gujral & Priyanka Verma Varsity Contributors
I believe Gen Z wields sacred knowledge in the face of a new party culture.
KATE CARACCI/THE VARSITY
Grassroots efforts can lead to significant environmental initiatives.
KAISA KASEKAMP/THE VARSITY
THE MAKING OF AN ACTIVIST
Exploring the motivations behind the pursuit of a greater cause
“I’m still powerful. I’m outspoken. I’m unruly. I’m rebellious,” said Chi Pinaysewak, an Anishinaabeg ikwe or woman. As a leader of the Land Back Movement — an Indigenous-led movement toward land ownership and self-governance — and a residential school survivor, her conviction reflects the willpower of many others who dedicate their lives to a greater cause.
For the past few months, universities all over the world, including U of T, have witnessed a wave of student activists giving up their security, risking their futures, and even facing police brutality for the safety of the people in Gaza. From resistance against colonization and labour union strikes to feminist and queer rights, the twenty-first century has seen movements pushing for change all around the world.
For those of us who watch protest movements from the sidelines, it might be difficult to fathom what might drive someone to take such measures. Therein lies the crux of the question that has been brewing in me for some time now: what motivates someone to become an activist?
I figured asking an activist might be the best way to find an answer. This is how I came to interview six people engaged in different forms of activism across different movements.
A preamble: Who is an activist?
When I first approached the people in these interviews, not all of them were comfortable with calling themselves activists. Perhaps because proclaiming oneself as such can come off as “selfimportant,” as recent U of T graduate Aviral (Avi) Dhamija put it. Dhamija was one of the organizers and media liaisons for UofT Occupy for Palestine’s
is an English managing editor of OVD-Info — an independent media group monitoring human rights in Russia. In our interview, he defined an activist as “a political actor who is deeply committed to a certain cause, [who is] willing to participate in politics beyond voting.”
I have therefore decided to stick with the title of “activist” to encompass the various forms of participation among those involved in social, political, or environmental movements as protestors, academics, artists, or social media news sharers. As broad as the definition might be, this definition doesn’t confine activism to any particular means or morality. Everyone interviewed expressed this sentiment.
The spark: What piqued your interest in activism?
For Chi Pinaysewak Ka iKwe Pimoset Muzugamay (meaning “Big Thunderbird Woman Who Walked All the Way,”) activism is integral to her very existence: “I started to become an activist while I was in my mother’s stomach. To become an activist [is] to fight for my right to live as a First Nations ikwe (woman) on First Nations’ land that [was] gifted to [us].”
Chi Pinaysewak’s mother was pregnant with her at a residential school at the age of 12. Chi herself lived six years in a residential school: an experience that profoundly shaped her experience. “I should have been one of those little kids in those 215 massive holes,” she said, referring to the number of unmarked graves of Indigenous children found in Kamloops, British Columbia. “But I survived… probably to tell my story.”
“That’s why there’s a lot of us still living, because we’re those walking bundles of hope. I’m still powerful. I’m outspoken. I’m unruly. I’m rebellious… My living as an Anishinaabeg ikwe is a protest, is activism.”
simply not enough. “I found out that it’s a huge thing… [which] they didn’t tell us about in school. It was kind of radicalization for me.” He recalled that, “Politics, in general, in Russia were terrible. I started to do climate activism… And every week, I was getting more radical because I was feeling like a part of civil society that was repressed.”
Makichyan felt an inescapable sense of doom about what was happening in his country and on a global scale. “I think it was a moral question for me,” he said, “if I [were to remain] silent… then it would be impossible for me to consider myself an honest and good person.”
Storyev’s commitment to activism started in college. “For those who are radicalized in college, it’s a very natural process, because you’re independent, getting away from your parents where you didn’t really feel like you had some capacity for action.” This realization of independence, he thinks, is what pushes college students into becoming political activists.
My living as an Anishinaabeg ikwe is a protest, is activism.
Morningstar understands that her faith not only lies in her hopefulness, but also her grief. “I know that my daughter [is] alive.”
For others, the disappointment that comes with activism lies in the arduousness of the journey, which is often long and full of pitfalls. “Burnout is a very real thing,” said Storyev. To navigate this rut, he advises that activists practise self-compassion and care by staying attuned to their wellbeing and making sure they eat well. “These are all important things,” Stroyev said. “You can’t really do good work without them.”
Moreover, Storyev emphasizes the importance of remembering the significance of your work and continuing it for long. To him, part of self-care means long-term planning. “I think, especially in young people, there is this martyrdom idea, like you have to be super serious, but you need to think long-term. Just try to actually enjoy what you’re doing so that you can do it for longer.”
“I think sometimes we get a little self serious,” said Dhamija. “When you look at the history of the modern world, it’s mostly just defeats, right? Defeatism is something you can share with the community who actually galvanized you to act. And when you share that, it feels less defeatist.”
Makichyan believes that the state of the world is going to get “much worse.” This is why he believes that activism “isn’t about hope, it’s about survival.” His duty to strive for a more liveable world is what sustains his cause: “A lot of people are going to die, a lot of countries will be in huge crises… [due to] the climate crisis, but I believe in activism and I believe in truth. [I believe] that if you are trying to do your best, you don’t really need to be some kind of hero to change something. You just need to do something, and then other people will join you.”
Storyev’s entry into activism happened when he was a child, living with his mother in the Russian countryside. His village had been impacted by a series of wildfires, and Stroyev saw the power of organized activism when his mother gathered the local population to call the local governors. “Because my first act of political organizing was driving to the local forester, trying to pressure the local government to do something about [the fires] so people don’t have to burn in their houses. This tangibility connects with my activism throughout the
Dhamija, on the other hand, started as “a passive consumer of protests.” Before moving to Canada to study at U of T, Dhamija said that they had a fairly “left critique” of what was happening in India. In 2021, there were enormous farmer protests in the country against new agricultural laws which threatened the business of farmers and food affordability. “I was a little baby boy then, 17 years old, but it was quite interesting to see how hundreds of thousands of people can be galvanized by a single cause.” Their interest turned into educa-
“You go from critique, [from] theory, [from] reading groups, to just realizing that eventually, you
The fuel: What radicalized you to engage in
Many of the activists I interviewed describe the experience of being compelled to become active participants in political and social change. This experience is described as a “radicalization.”
“Radicalization is a slow process. Political awakening, it’s a slow process,” said Dhamija, whose development as an activist was a steady metamorphosis. On the other hand, climate and antiwar activist Arshak Makichyan can identify a pivotal moment in his journey. Born in Armenia, Makichyan emigrated to Russia in 1995 and was a violinist in the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory until 2018. He recalls, “I was playing music. Then I read about [Greta] Thunberg’s strike for climate [change],
Inspired by Thunberg’s Fridays for Future youth strike movement, Makichyan organized Russia’s Fridays for Future movement in 2020. In a country where protesting can result in a prison sentence, Makichyan picketed alone every Friday for two years, urging the Russian government to address climate change, and inspiring climate activists across the country. He now resides in Berlin after
The enormity of the climate issue struck him, leading him to realize that changing his habits was
“Because that’s what independence is all about, right? It’s [a] capacity for independent action.”
For Fatima Hassan, a South-African human rights lawyer and social justice activist in Canada, radicalization began earlier than Storyev’s and Makichyan’s. “The thing about growing up in apartheid South Africa is that a high school became a place for political education. You can’t escape it. Your teachers were political, your friends were political.”
From Hassan’s politicization in high school to her law school degree, her involvement in social justice work was inevitable. She has since founded the Health Justice Initiative in Canada: a public health and law initiative that promotes racial and gender equity in access to healthcare. In 2022, she won the Calgary Peace Prize for her work on HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 vaccine inequity. “When you grow up in an unjust society, every act of injustice becomes magnified and that’s what forces you to go down that path.”
The fire: How do you stay hopeful? Taking a stance against powerful forces comes with a price. For Morningstar, that price was unimaginable.
Morningstar shared that her daughter is under provincial care right now due to her involvement with the Land Back Movement in 2020. “When you’re fighting for the land you love, sometimes you lose things in that fire.”
To deal with such loss and still persevere, Morningstar finds hope in spirituality. She explained that, “one of the first teachings I ever received was that in the spiritual world, the Creator shows us the life we’re about to live. We make a conscious decision to come down here af ter seeing everything… [and then] we sign that contract.”
Her mother told her that, when Morningstar was born, she cried for the first three months of her life. “They say the reason why those babies cry like that is because they’re grieving the life that they just saw and what they’re about to experience.”
Chi Pinaysewak’s resilience is an extension of her very being. “I’m still here. And I’m living. And I have four little warriors that I’ve birthed, that have been traumatized as well, but still have golden hearts and still care for other people. That’s why I have hope. And because people from across the sea are coming together with First Nations people, we’re acknowledging each other and sharing stories, sharing ceremony, sharing our dances. Together.”
Reflections: So, what makes someone an activist?
There seems to be as many paths to becoming an activist as there are ways of being one, but two requirements appear to be essential: compassion and knowledge. For some, the fight for justice comes from experiencing injustice. For others, the need to fight for a cause comes from learning about it. In both cases, conviction toward a cause comes from a place of compassion. This compassion may extend to the injustice of a particular community, or injustice at large. Knowledge, too, is instrumental for activism, because the more people learn about an issue, the harder it becomes to ignore it.
While activists might often seem pessimistic about the state of the world, they are actually fuelled by the relentless optimism that, even though they are but a drop in the ocean, their ripples will make a difference. There is no other option, be-
Kanak Gupta
Varsity Contributor
Business & Labour
September 3, 2024
thevarsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca
Letter from the Editor: To breaking conventionality
Keeping our wallets — and U of T’s financial management — in check
Beshi Business & Labour Editor
Business dominates every aspect of our lives. As U of T students, we’re constantly obsessing over how to balance paying for tuition and rent while maintaining any semblance of a social life. Corporate advertising strategies whisper to us as we obsessively scroll, eat, and drink. Everything has been standardized, packaged, and branded with the same conventional wisdom that led us to enroll in this university to begin with.
My time at The Varsity has been anything but conventional. I spent the last two years as an Opinion columnist, voicing my thoughts on both international and local affairs. From Rishi Sunak’s appointment as the British Prime Minister to rising car theft in Toronto, I argued. For people to be more moderate in American politics, for greater measures to be taken to protect Canada’s national security against foreign espionage. And then I argued some more.
But during this race to argue, I slowed down, believing more could be done by thinking small. Who actually is in charge of the power structures that shape up our daily lives? How can these people be held to account? How can we influence our university — the institution that we collectively pay billions of dollars to — to manage its finances responsibly and equitably?
I decided the Business & Labour section was a good place to start answering these questions.
This spring, 50 students set up an encampment in King’s College Circle, calling on the university to disclose and divest its investments in companies contributing to the Israeli military. After witnessing the anger and unrest the university’s business operations were causing in our community, I made it a priority for this section to try to deliver answers as accurately and timely as possible. The section got off to a running start with a deepdive analysis of University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation’s investments.
U of T financial statements reveal university expenses outpace revenue growth
Beshi &
U of T’s financial statements reported a net income of $508 million in the 2023–2024 school year at the Business Board meeting on June 19.
Although the university maintained that it is in a “strong financial position” in their financial statements , this year’s net income — the profit the university takes home after subtracting expenses from its revenues — marks a roughly eight per cent decrease from the 2022–2023 school year. U of T’s financial statements reveal that this decrease is due to rapidly increasing expenses relative to revenue growth, with the key factors being high inflation and new compensation agreements with U of T employees.
Here is a breakdown of U of T’s reported net income for the 2023–2024 school year and what it means for the university in the upcoming year.
How a university’s net income is calculated Canadian universities’ revenues typically consist of tuition fees, government grants, and endowments — which is money donated to the university. On the other hand, university expenses generally include employees’ salaries and benefits, maintenance fees, and scholarships. A university’s net income demonstrates its financial stability to investors, who can influence the university’s ability to fund its programs and research projects.
U of T’s revenue and expenses are divided into four categories: the operating fund, ancillary operations, the capital fund, and restricted funds.
The operating fund primarily concerns teaching and administrative activities, including facilitating student enrollment growth and employees’ salaries and benefits.
Ancillary operations include providing residential housing, food and beverage services, and real estate services, among others.
The capital fund includes capital assets — university properties such as land, buildings, computers, and furnishings — that are not already included in ancillary operations.
Restricted funds include endowments, research grants, and contracts.
Investment earnings appear in all funds, but are predominantly seen in the operating fund and restricted funds.
U of T’s report For the 2023–2024 school year, U of T reported $4.6 billion in revenue and $4.1 billion in expenses. The vast majority of the revenue comes from the operating fund, with student fees alone contributing over $2.2 billion to it. This indicates strong student enrollment, which increased by 7.7 per cent over the past five years.
Government grants for general operations, which support the activities of the operating fund, totalled $726 million. Government and other grants for restricted purposes, such as for capital infrastructure and research, brought in $510 million.
The remainder of the revenue came from $453 million in sales, services, and miscellaneous income, $506 million in investment income, and $155 million in donations.
Although this $4.6 billion in revenue marks an 8.5 per cent increase in revenue over the past year, U of T’s expenses increased by approximately 11 per cent. The operating fund accounted for the largest portion of expenses, with salaries and employee benefits costing the university approximately $2.5 billion alone. Next were $456 million in employee benefits, $364 million in scholarships, fellowships and bursaries, and $311 million in materials, supplies and services, among other expenses.
The financial statements attribute this drastic increase in expenses to “a recent period of high inflation” and, importantly, “significant post-Bill 124 compensation increases negotiated with many of the University’s bargaining units.” Bill 124 was an attempt by the provin-
As your Editor, I want to streamline governance coverage by introducing a governance correspondent to the section. A lot is said and done at the Business Board and Planning and Budget committee meetings. Little tidbits of information are sprinkled all over hundredpage financial reports, so what better way to keep the people in charge on their toes than by bringing this information to light?
I’d also like to continue the section’s strong tradition of providing labour coverage. Last year’s team proved to be very busy with labour news, as Canadian Union of Public Employees’s long-winded negotiations with U of T finally ended with significant compensation increases. I want to maintain this section’s role as the home for the stories of never-ending struggles between workers and their employers for better pay and benefits.
Lastly, I believe entrepreneurship coverage is very important and would like to emphasize this by starting a series on business coverage. Student start-ups and business ventures deserve
cial government to limit wage increases for all public sector workers’ to one per cent per year for three years, before being deemed unconstitutional by the Ontario Superior Court in 2022.
Why the university’s expenses have been taking a hit
Inflation has hurt U of T’s maintenance costs, which rose from $961 million in the 2022–2023 school year to $1.2 billion in the 2023–2024 school year. The report explains that this is due to “the cost of non-residential building construction in the City of Toronto [growing] at the fastest rate in the last 40 years.”
As supply chains — systems that convert raw materials to finished products — continue to recover from the recent COVID-19 pandemic, a 2023 RBC report stated that Toronto is facing higher prices in raw materials, labour, and municipal development fees.
Furthermore, the increasing demand for construction in Toronto driven by a surging population has greatly exceeded the supply of construction workers, resulting in an even higher increase in construction costs.
More importantly, employee salaries and benefits have significantly increased in the past year. The financial statements explain that “salaries and benefits increased from $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion” from 2020 to 2024. This increase is due to the post-Bill 124 compensation negotiations, alongside “an increase of 16.7% in the total number of faculty and staff over that time period.”
The five units of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Locals 3261 of service workers and CUPE 3902 of academic staff and the U of T administration reached a tentative agreement in early March, which drove the compensation increases. After months of
a spotlight in our paper. We are funded and supported by you, after all.
In our relentless pursuit of professional and academic success, we often find ourselves trying to conform to society’s expectations of us. But in this way, we neglect the curious, brilliant sounds and ideas that surround us — the uncelebrated union victories, the unread budget reports. I want this section to be the place where all this exploration is brought to light.
Conventional is boring. Together, I’m looking forward to breaking new ground with you in providing business and labour coverage.
dispute, the parties reached an agreement by March 16, which included terms such as increasing salaries to a living wage for service workers, raising pay for course instructors and post-doctoral staff, and improving health coverage.
Going forward
Due to this outpace of revenue growth, the report states that the budgets of all 18 academic divisions including the Faculty of Arts & Science will be put under pressure.
In an email to The Varsity , U of T Chief Financial Officer Trevor Rodgers wrote that due to the university’s decentralized budget model, each division will have to independently decide on how to cover increased expenses, including implementing “a careful review of hiring and capital plans.” Additionally, overall funding to all divisions will be limited since it will likely take “several years for divisions to fully absorb the impact of these cost increases.”
However, during the Business Board meeting, Rodgers stated that an eight per cent decrease is “relatively flat on a net income basis.”
He also explained that this net income decrease is not reflected in the university’s investment returns. He noted that the university has seen “strong returns on short-term” investment deposits due to “persistently high interest rates,” resulting in investment income being “60 per cent higher than in prior years.”
This decrease is also not reflected in the university’s debt repayment, as $305 million of the school’s $508 million net income will be allocated to capital assets in the form of debt repayments. This amount is consistent in keeping with the university’s debt-burden ratio — the university’s total monthly outgoing payments to its total income.
ARTHUR DENNYSON HAMDANI/THE VARSITY
Arts & Culture
September 3, 2024
thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture arts@thevarsity.ca
Letter from the Editor: A
call
to be wild
Let us unfurl, oil those fingers, and get to work
Divine Angubua Arts & Culture Editor
As I write this, many things are happening. A new academic year is here with new opportunities for greatness. We are organizing calendars, intensely prowling for the perfect clothes, ending romances that no longer serve our vibe, hunting for accommodation, resetting diets, declaring new love that promises warmth for the winter, and setting goals. The sun has set on the summer of Charli XCX’s album Brat and a soft chill ushers in the fall of demure, and we are still — in every way we can — trying to keep it all together and save ourselves from suffering.
There is also me, Divine Angubua, your new Arts and Culture Editor, and I have my goals. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about pain, which is another name for pleasure. Music and madness; lecture halls and cathedrals; photography and the corrupt impulse to capture and entrap;
beautiful bodies and haunted houses; the abject and the perverse swimming inside a clean, cold iced caramel macchiato. Everywhere I look, I see things layered on top of each other, sliced and cut like loaves of sweet bread — and how I wish to talk about it all!
As your editor who is also a writer, I want us to poke and peek where we shouldn’t. As your editor, I want us to run a bit feral. In our new Love and Sex column — now renamed ‘Sex and the Univer-city’ — I want us to unearth our sexy secrets and play in the wet, warm, slimy dark. In our film and TV column, I want us to place what we watch within a context and against a canvas so that the picture becomes a clear work instead of a mumbo-jumbo about aesthetics and cinematography. In our new humour column, I ask that we test our facility for alchemizing outrage, grief, horror, and the
mundane into something laughable, familiar, and approachable.
Our music column shall be partnering with students from the Faculty of Music to bring you exciting commentary and coverage on campus events and popular music culture. We shall be keeping up with our artists and creatives, too, scouring theatres and galleries to bear witness to the creative ambition of the people of our school. I ask that you join me, us, in this task of appreciating the gift of community.
As U of T students, it is our duty to shape our lives as we wish them to be. It is also our duty to show ourselves who we are: our ugliness, fabulousness, anxieties, hopes, and dreams. I want us to keep ourselves in mind and support each other by writing about each other.
There is much in store for us this year, so let us unfurl, oil those fingers, and get to work.
Cool girl novelist and sad girl writer — who is she?
The curse of the cool girl novelist isn’t revolutionary, nor is it real
The “cool girl” novelist is here, she’s sad, emotional, and unapologetically herself. She’s also deeply hated. In the world of modern fiction, she’s the ultimate disrupter because she’s raw, real, and rewriting the rules of what it means to be a cool girl.
The rise of the “cool girl novelist” Sally Rooney stands at the forefront of this cool girl movement, with her novels like Normal People that, without brimming with emotion, cause tremendous discourse on every social media platform. But writers like Rooney don’t shy away from life’s messiness — they dive right in, offering a mirror to our own anxieties and desires. Their stories are intimate, their prose is sharp, and most importantly, their impact is undeniable. So, why do we despise them?
Charlotte Stroud, a columnist at The New Statesman, placed Rooney at the centre of the discourse when critiquing the cool girl novelist and “sad girl writers” phenomenon in “The curse of the cool girl novelist.” The piece lambasts these authors for the supposed triviality of their work, their angst, and self-absorption. Ironically, this article strikes me as a very cool girl in the sense of author Gillian Flynn — a woman talking about how awful other women are for constantly complaining.
The truth about cool, sad girl novels is that they are simply stories centring young modern-day women. The stories resonate with them as many young girls navigate messy, angsty lives, and may crave fiction that mirrors their reality: balancing intelligence with accessible prose.
The angst in these books is multifaceted. Sometimes, it is tinged with moral anxiety, a reflection of living in a politically charged society where everyone feels compelled to showcase their virtues on social media. Other times, it’s about beauty, exacerbated by social media culture, sexual trauma, economic anxiety, or a general sense of unease the protagonist herself doesn’t fully understand.
Authors like Ottessa Moshfegh, Raven Leilani, Elif Batuman, Carmen Maria Machado, and Mona Awad join Rooney in embracing the messiness of women’s existence. They offer readers a mirror to reflect their own anxieties and desires, making the angst of modern life feel both profound and relatable.
In her critique, Stroud can’t grasp why women authors today aren’t just “bucking up” and being more cheerful — and she lacks consideration that men could write this way, too. The absence of counterexamples by women writers implicitly suggests women write in a “bad” way while men write in a “good” way.
Stroud tries so hard to lump together a group of cool girl authors, all of whom are accused of using words to describe, introspect, and be women. I feel that Stroud is just listing a bunch of women they don’t like, pretending they form a meaningful category we should all be upset about. There’s no genuine connection between many of them, like grouping My Year of Rest and Relaxation author Moshfegh and Rooney, who have almost nothing in common.
Why cool girl novels hit different These books are relatable because they reflect the feelings of many young people now, particu-
larly women: depressed and alienated, having grown up through pandemic lockdowns, housing crises, and the craziness of social media. It’s no surprise that readers want characters who feel as empty as they do.
“Their depressed protagonists hardly speak at all,” Stroud writes — but who are “they?” Is it Marianne from Normal People who struggles with self-love and lack of worthiness? Is it the sleeping and internally dead unnamed protagonist from My Year of Rest and Relaxation, who ultimately discovers the beauty in being awake and alive?
But what I find makes the name-dropping in Stroud’s article further unexpected is that Rooney’s novels in particular are deeply optimistic. They argue that love, with its raw attachment and vulnerability, transforms into a system of mutual care, challenging the myth of individualism and highlighting our radical interdependence. Marianne would not have chosen herself without the security that Connell’s love provided. His love makes her see her own goodness, and somewhere along their relationship, Marianne stops viewing herself as despicable. For the first time, she feels confident enough to prioritize her happiness and discover her identity beyond her insecurities.
Rooney’s characters may seem aggressively mundane, living simple, unremarkable lives, but their stories and experiences are profoundly intriguing. They are indeed normal people who feel, love, and break the same way we do.
This ordinariness makes Rooney’s work relatable and deeply optimistic. Her books suggest that genuine human connection and love can lead to healing and growth. They argue that love is one
of the few things in the world worth pursuing, although often marked by hatred and cruelty. This is a running theme of Rooney’s optimism and perspective in her novels: love doesn’t fix but rather heals.
The hate train for sad girl novelists needs a serious upgrade
The critique of so-called cool girl novelists seems to miss a crucial point: sad girls have a right to express their experiences through writing. While authors who are men — think of Ernest Hemingway and even J.D. Salinger — have long explored themes of depression and alienation, there’s now an uptick in women writers doing the same.
However, instead of being met with understanding, the cool girl novelists face mockery and derision. Stroud suggests that novels should entertain rather than instruct, dismissing the value of exploring the human condition through literature. I see this approach as reflecting a form of literary misogyny, using the perspectives of writers who are men to devalue the work of women authors. By labelling women novelists as emotionally hysterical or preachy, Stroud diminishes their contributions to literature, as if Rooney and her contemporaries are simply whiny girls seeking validation. Her criticism directed at cool girl novelists reveals more about societal biases and expectations than it does about the quality of their writing. So, let’s embrace the cool girl novelist for who she is — a powerful yet small addition to the modern literary landscape because, if we’re being brutally honest, she’s not even close to breaking the status quo or bringing in a new set of diversity. She’s just a sad girl.
ARTHUR HAMDANI/THE VARSITY
SIMONA AGOSTINO/THE VARSITY
Kamilla Bekbossynova
Varsity Contributor
Victor Zhang Varsity Contributor
In Memoriam: Alice Munro Canada’s master of short stories dies at 92 before a dark revelation
Content Warning: This article mentions sexual abuse.
Alice Munro’s name is synonymous with the Canadian short story. She garnered outstanding critical success and received many of the most distinguished awards in the literary world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro’s stories consistently focused on rural Canadian life, despite her international popularity.
It is in this ostensibly utterly uninteresting setting where Munro unearthed beautiful stories that anatomized human nature and relationships. Her prose style remained intimately linked to the subject matter: brief and concise sentences that often expressed an acute small-town wisdom.
In a disturbing twist in July, Munro’s daughter Andrea Robin Skinner posthumously exposed her mother for staying with and protecting her second husband — the victim’s stepfather — after he sexually abused Skinner as a child. Readers must now reckon with how this accusation affects her legacy.
Munro’s life and work
Munro was born in 1931 in Huron County, southwest Ontario. The vast and varied plains and once-manufacturing powerhouse of rural Ontario is where most of her characters lived, though they were sometimes as bold as to venture into Toronto. In Munro’s works, Canada defined her stories and characters, and the stories and characters defined Canada. While Munro’s narrators and characters often take their setting for granted, the reader would be struck by how socially layered and emotionally complex country life and psychology is.
In 1968, early in Munro’s career, she became
friends with another Canadian literary titan, Margaret Atwood. She witnessed Munro’s experience with prejudice and logistical troubles in getting published as a Canadian woman in the 50s and 60s. Remarkably, Munro stuck to writing about a superficially unexciting setting throughout her career. Atwood renders the utmost praise for Munro, writing for The Guardian in 2008 that, “She’s the kind of writer about whom it is often said — no matter how well known she becomes — that she ought to be better known.”
Munro’s stories usually carry women protagonists and feminist ideas. She wrote scrupulously and sensitively about the life and psychology of the small-town woman — and a meticulous examination of their love and sex lives in particular. In her 1988 short story “Five Points,” an immigrant teenager bankrupts her family by stealing money from their cash register to pay boys in her school for sexual favours.
In another short story, “The Bear Came Over
Green-eyed envy is the colour of the season
In comparing our lives, we risk losing ourselves in pursuing someone else’s reality
Mehek Berry
Varsity Contributor
You’re laying in bed, one arm uncomfortably squished under the weight of your body while you tap through endless Instagram stories. You come across a video of a friend pushing their sibling into the ocean with a Saint-Tropez, France, geotag in the right corner. In another picture, an acquaintance stands in the middle of the commercial madness in Shibuya, Japan, captioned “Tokyo Drift.”
You groan, wishing you could transport yourself somewhere — anywhere — else.
When the summer sun beams down, social media transforms into a gallery of desirable experiences: endless luxurious holidays and decadent outings that most of us dream of but can’t afford. This disparity between our mundane summer exploits and the extravagant adventures of others can stir a powerful, insatiable mix of jealousy and frustration toward ourselves.
But what happens when this envy goes beyond itself and morphs into a deeper, more disturbing obsession? From Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley to season two of the show
The White Lotus, the literature and movies we consume have vividly portrayed characters driven by discontent and desire who attempt to usurp the lives of the affluent. These narratives highlight a powerful motif of a shadow self, a low-income doppelgänger who covets the identity and wealth of the privileged elite.
As we, a new kind of doppelgänger, compare our lives to the curated perfection we see online, we risk losing our sense of identity in pursuing someone else’s reality. Others’ stories on social media mirror our feelings of inadequacy and
yearning, especially during the summer when our envy — our perception of what we lack — is amplified and presented in stark relief. This cautions us against the seductive but, ultimately, destructive allure of living someone else’s life.
Ultimate impostor
Let me introduce you to Tom Ripley, a young con artist, but above all else, a “nobody who bitterly resents” his life — as described by the New York Times Style Magazine. Highsmith’s novel and Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film adaptation cleverly demonstrate that Ripley’s envy of a stranger, Dickie Greenleaf, stems beyond monetary prosperity and a carefree lifestyle. He admires Greenleaf’s charm, independence, and social standing. Ripley wants more than to merely emulate Greenleaf’s life: he wants to wear Greenleaf’s skin and walk in his shoes. Ripley wants to be Greenleaf.
Ripley’s mimicry of Greenleaf serves as both a disguise and a psychological crutch for his own self-hatred. He loves himself more than when he is Greenleaf or a criminal deviation of the wealthy and attractive heir.
While this psychological thriller explores a darker side of jealousy and the lengths some people would go to escape their own identities and social constraints, Ripley remains an antihero who wants a better life than that of a “petty thief” or clerk for the Internal Revenue Service.
Social climbing and interlopers
A 2007 television series Gossip Girl’s world of New York City’s upper east siders — originally created by Cecily von Ziegesar in her young adult novel series and two television spin-offs — sets class envy against the backdrop of Manhattan’s elite.
the Mountain” from 1999, an elderly couple struggles with the wife’s dementia as the husband recalls the sex and adultery that has inundated their lives. Munro thoroughly exposes the couple’s surreptitious sexual world and its connections to public social calculations. As Atwood described in The Guardian piece on how, “a rumpled bed says more, in the hands of Munro, than any graphic in-out, in-out depiction of genitalia ever could.”
Munro was also concerned with how rural Canada changed over her lifetime. One of her last short stories, “Corrie” from 2010, examines the quiet decline of the manufacturing town. The titular Corrie is the heiress to the shoemaking factory that employs much of the town.
After her father dies, the business is bought out and shut down within years. In a poignant act, Corrie tries to turn the old factory into a museum that exhibits outdated shoemaking tools. A desperate cling to the life of her past, perhaps exposing a narrow under-
standing of what might be exhibition-worthy.
After the museum shuts down, Corrie takes up librarian duties at the local Carnegie library, which is itself a relic in Canadian history, as not many people use the library anymore. The Anglican church, which Corrie’s father ordered to be restored 20 years ago and catalyzed Corrie’s love affair with its architect Howard, shut down.
Even the tremendous prejudices and conflicts between Anglicans and Methodists that governed the town years ago dissipate. Munro here laments the death of the Canadian town, where so much of the drama, emotions, love, and sex that she wrote about are set in and could only be set in.
To readers, Munro’s writing may be diminished by the recent revelations about ignoring her late husband’s sexual abuse of her daughter. Western University has already announced the decision to pause appointing the endowed chair position named after Munro. Despite a judicious and sensible treatment of sexual violence in her writing, Munro seems to not have brought that sentiment home.
In reference to the situation, Atwood told The Star that, “All I can add is that she wasn’t very adept at real (practical) life. She wasn’t very interested in cooking or gardening or any of that. She found it an interruption, I expect, rather than a therapy, as some do.”
Munro’s cruel treatment of her daughter leaves fans distrustful and wary of her fiction. The penetrating insight into the human soul dis played in her writing has failed to guide her to morally decent behaviour in her own life. Each reader can decide for themselves how much an author’s personal flaws affect the merit of their work, but Munro’s stories will never be the same again for anyone. Considering the severity of the allegation, Munro’s legacy is likely greatly and irreparably tarnished.
Alice Munro died in Port Hope, Ontario at age 92 on May 13, 2024.
The show presents an anonymous blogger commenting about the private lives of the wealthy high school students attending the fictional Constance Billard St. Jude’s School and their families under the pseudonym ‘Gossip Girl,’ as the children navigate a world of money, power, social supremacy, and scandal.
Unlike most characters, the Humphrey family is deemed as outsiders because they’re from a “faraway land” — also known as Brooklyn. While Dan Humphrey is persistent in his endeavour to skip ahead of social classes by dating New York’s “It Girl” Serena van der Woodsen, his little sister Jenny Humphrey is infatuated by her peers’ privilege.
The Humphrey siblings’ desire to be a part of the world of the elite relays the allure of transcending class boundaries, embodying how social mobility is a myth perpetuated by those in power despite the Humphreys’ attempts to escape their socioeconomic limitations.
Deception and desire
What could possibly go wrong at a luxurious resort in Sicily? Cue Cristobal Tapia De Veer’s theme song “Renaissance” because season two of the comedy-drama series The White Lotus gives us the answer through a microcosm of society’s wealth divide.
Lucia and Mia, two local women attempting to earn their way through life by exploiting the
resort’s wealthy guests embody the theme of class division. Whether they are seducing an elderly guest or soliciting money from a younger guest to save themselves from their violent pimp, their interactions with the visitors highlight the glaring difference between the haves and have-nots — and the lengths to which Lucia and Mia would go to secure a better future.
The show critiques the social structures that leave people with limited opportunities as it relays that no ambition or action is too malicious in achieving one’s desires — especially not when the characters’ charm and cunning lead them out of their desperate economic situations.
As summer flooded our feeds with photos of rich people sipping their Aperol Spritzes by Lake Como in Italy or enjoying sweet oysters at Noma in Denmark, it is clear why such narratives resonate. Such stories appeal to the basic human need for more: more wealth, more beauty, more freedom, and more security.
So while we scroll through our feeds, let’s take time to consider the narratives as reflections of our deepest envies and dissatisfactions. While they warn us about the dangers of letting petty jealousy consume us, I think these stories signal us to be content with ourselves and to avoid the enticing — but ultimately disastrous — appeal of living someone else’s life.
MILENA PAPPALARDO/THE VARSITY
What happens when envy goes beyond and morphs into a deeper, more disturbing obsession?
ZEYNEP POYANLI/THE VARSITY
Through the eyes of Treasure Fatile’s girls
Unmasking the morals governing the cult of womanhood for the modern African girl
Divine Angubua Arts & Culture Editor
Treasure Fatile — a fourth-year art history and criminology student at UTM — is impressively quiet and controlled. This gentle aspect, revealed in her paintings as fierce introspectiveness, presents studies of “silent narratives” charged with expressions of joy, sorrow, resilience, and vulnerability.
Recently, at the exhibition Faces in Places, which culminated an eight-month residency at Visual Arts Mississauga, Fatile displayed her recent work alongside her fellow creative residents in the presence of friends, mentors, colleagues, and family. I attended the exhibition on June 1 and what I saw from Fatile moved me.
It is fitting that at an exhibition centering on “figures, faces and the human form,” Fatile displayed faces and bodies of women, muddied and aglow with their barely controlled inner turmoils and protruding traumas. These bodies were frozen in states of mystical and spiritual unrest, while the charged space between the rock of Black racial identity and the hard place of traditional African society depicted the form of womanhood.
Fatile’s overarching themes utilize patterns, textiles, and motifs from her Nigerian-Yoruba cultural heritage to interrogate what she describes as “the self in relation to different environments: deeply interested in how these factors intersect with manifestations of joy, belonging and loss.”
For Fatile, the face, the nonverbal, and the things unsaid reveal the human soul. In her painting Ọ̀rẹ́ Ìyàwó (Friends of the Bride), a group of ecstatic women in ‘iro’ and ‘buba’— traditional attire worn by Yoruba women from southwest Nigeria — huddle around a magnificent traditional bride, rejoicing in the promise of happiness for their friend through marriage. The scene is full of joyful noise, but Fatile layers a darkness within, evident in the woman’s signature black, shadowy eyes. These ghostly eyes are a dominant motif in the artist’s work, and in this painting, the darkness is restrained to realist effect; a darkness that recontextualizes expressions of joy to suggest lingering pains, the bad times, and the tragic histories ever present within them and us.
We see such pains most vividly in Fatile’s painting Most Coloured, Most Visible. A Black woman with short-cut hair, naked and rendered in oil paint on batik fabric, lies crumpled against a white background. The pattern of the batik rises from her skin, resembling scars, open wounds, or an embodied cultural tapestry and personal history searing the flesh from within. The image is brutal — introspective but intrusive — as I looked, I became both viewer and voyeur.
Fatile reveals here the complex inner life of the Black and African woman’s body, which is formed by its history as well as harmed by it. Within a single gaze, the body is reduced to a commodity in life and elevated to a spectacle in death. I imagined this woman to be another friend of the bride who, perhaps due to some vague illness, couldn’t make it to her friend’s wedding. Her eyes are dark and muddled, two voids staring outward, saying nothing yet revealing everything as a dim, lifeless soul. There is pain, which may have started within the borders of language, but has long since escaped into a blacker, mute, mental night country.
In Íyàwó Rere (The Good Wife), an old woman holds an old man in her lap in a depressing marriage portrait. Against a blood-red background, their eyes — and entire faces — appear as brownblack blurs, indicative of their eroding personhood. While the old man’s face is depicted with rougher strokes, his smoother, more pliant wife fills the frame. Fatile emphasizes the cost of duty on the African woman and the quiet suffering of the benign mother who aspires to an imposed archetype. This role demands from women the intimate sacrifice of gendered subjectivity, assuring degrees of destruction while ensuring a lively home and a satisfied patriarch.
In the digital paintings Blue and Daydream, Fatile exposes the imposition of the sacrifice in infancy. Young Black girls stare into nothing with dead eyes, or with eyes rolled back in mixed pain and pleasure to reveal the sclera — wide open, toward the viewer. Here, the mystic enters silently.
At first, there is a battle of wills between personal autonomy and the cultural binds of duty and sacrifice. These girls are caught in a struggle against the purity imposed upon them and the unnatural forces that possess their bodies, transforming them into spiritual vessels or conduits for society’s enjoyment.
There is another woman, an untitled portrait of a mix of oil paint and plastered fabric. In splendid bridal iro and buba, she resembles the Immaculate Heart of Mary for a post-colonial Nigeria. Her arms gesture outward and upward in a show of submissiveness. Her headdress sits like a crown.
A circle of batik fabric, featuring the same pattern as in Most Coloured, Most Visible, forms a halo. Her face pours out immeasurable sorrow. Her liquid dark brown eyes swirl with bliss and pain.
In some of these paintings, Fatile constructs a Black Madonna — the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary — trapped in the pose of piety, suggesting possession and holy passion in balanced expressions of gratification and mute suffering.
All of Fatile’s women may represent the same tortured woman in different strokes. My interpretation aligns with the paradox at the heart of the Virgin Mary; the woman struggles against authority while also marrying it. She is both the virgin and the mother. In The Good Wife, she embodies Mary, while her husband symbolizes the infant Christ. She is exposed, sullied, and ordinary, but she is also hidden, holy, mysterious, and miraculous. As the standard of peace, purity, and transcendence, the tortured woman is also the epitome of suffering and a woman’s incompetence before the heavenly judges: God and man.
Fatile unmasks the religious morals governing the sect of womanhood for the modern African woman and girl. She brings attention to the silences, duties, and sacrifices of the female experience — truths that are especially acute for Black African women who are often overlooked by mainstream feminism. By uncovering these silences, Fatile exposes us, the viewers, to our conformity and the comfort we enjoy at the expense of those we love.
Recently, Fatile received the Mississauga Arts Council award for Emerging Visual Artist in Traditional Forms, which recognized her “exceptional talent” and “unique artistic expression and commitment.” Her paintings have enough force to shake up old powers, and with enough support, Treasure Fatile just might accomplish exactly what she is setting out to do.
For Fatile, the face, the nonverbal, and things unsaid, are what reveal the human soul. COURTESY OF JIREH MATEO
Most Coloured, Most Visible COURTESY OF JIREH MATEO
Íyàwó Rere (The Good Wife)
DIVINE ANGUBUA/THE VARSITY
Party Trick DIVINE ANGUBUA/THE VARSITY
Daydream
DIVINE ANGUBUA/THE VARSITY
Untitled 305
DIVINE ANGUBUA/THE VARSITY
Ọ̀rẹ́ Ìyàwó (Friends of the Bride)
DIVINE ANGUBUA/THE VARSITY
2024 Toronto Fringe Festival: A myriad of boundless theatrical creativity Fringe Fest makes an impact once again
Toronto summers are often a dream — filled with sunny days, beaches, and an avalanche of entertainment. With hundreds of events ranging from cookouts to art festivals, this city hardly takes a break. Despite the never-ending list of festivals to attend, the annual Toronto Fringe Festival or “Fringe Fest,” has managed to make its impact for the 36th time in a row.
Fringe Fest is the city’s largest theatre festival, attracting more than 90,000 people each year. It provides a perfect escape from the stressful summer internships in dreary buildings and a chance to indulge your creative senses.
From July 3–14, Fringe Fest organized 77 shows across downtown, including a pop-up patio with free programs every day. Uniquely, the festival prides itself in being a non-juried event where they decide the productions through a lottery-based system, encouraging a wide range of artists to apply. I had the opportunity to visit some festival favourites and interact with the audience and cast members alike.
In an interview with The Varsity , Seamus Tokol, director of the play Unfurnished , recommended the festival “not only as a platform,” but as an opportunity for new creators to break even in the world of theatre. An upbeat act inspired by old Cary Grant comedies, Tokol’s Unfurnished showcased at Tarragon Theatre this year.
The Cabaret of Murder at Alumnae Theatre Mainspace was perhaps the most hyped-up
show in this year’s line-up, sporting seven fringe show nominations across Canada and the 2022 ‘Pick of the Fringe’ award in Vancouver. This dynamic theatrical performance grappled with a common element shared by many serial killers: artistry.
The actors set up an eccentric, loud, and crudely funny tone while performing art pieces curated by notorious serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. Clad in glowing white shirts and blood-red lipstick, the actors re-enacted the plays, poems, and even songs composed by some of the most ferocious criminals in history. The dim stage lighting and minimal props added to the venue’s rusty, dark atmosphere, where the audience was presented with a whirlwind of information about the serial killers and a rapidly changing storyline.
The play allowed the audience to catch a glimpse into the minds of the dangerous individuals through the art they created, inciting a few uncomfortable chuckles from the audience at the performance I attended, which countered the ghoulish atmosphere.
Taking a 180-degree turn from the dark undertones, I introduce a play set on irony and sarcasm: Yoga For Billionaires . This performance at Tarragon Theatre Extraspace targeted the natural, deeply embedded desire to get filthy rich. Sara Raj — a famous South Asian comic — played the role of a yoga guru dedicated to earning billions through this practice.
Yoga for Billionaires was an immersive act where the audience were called up on the stage to perform multiple yoga asanas or poses — but there was a twist: the asanas were all named after famous personalities like
Jeff Bezos and Oprah Winfrey. The show was speckled with snide comments on the failed capitalist institutions and the rising cost of living in the city of Toronto, earning an uproar of approval from the audience.
The limelight of the show belonged to Lindita, the helper in Raj’s temple. Lindita blended herself with the props and executed a near-perfect symmetry for the stage layout.
The finishing touch of the play was the humorously edited pictures of Raj with multiple billionaires that were passed around the theatre. The play’s interactive elements left me with an overwhelmingly positive impression, and the audience was elevated from the level of mere spectator to active contributor.
Alongside these talented artists was the cast of My Time Will Come : a play at Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, based on Brazilian folklore about society’s subconscious and the arbitrary concept of good versus evil. To many of the international actors on the cast, it was their first time working in a fully English production. Similarly, Tokol recalled his show as, “the idea of a bunch of young creative artists trying to show that this will be the next generation.”
In addition to an eccentric make-up look that adorned all the actors with a ghostly mask, My Time Will Come was led by a live narrator. The Toronto-based producer, singer, and songwriter Leo Dressel was a guitar-playing narrator with remarkable voice modulation. The constant reverberations of Dressel’s guitar and the clever use of onomatopoeia elevated the stage presence of My Time Will Come . The 45-minute-long production’s colour-changing
stage lights also provided a phenomenal contrast for the viewers.
The final show I attended was a drastically underrated puppet show, Chloe and Meraki Despite being aimed at a younger audience, this play tackles themes like environmental degradation to raise awareness towards otter conservation. The writer intended to serve both entertainment and information.
The theatre at St. Volodymyr Institute was awash in a peaceful sound of the seashore, but accompanied by an angsty script. Plastic, cups, and bags littered the stage to create a gnarly picture of the garbage that had trapped Chloe and Meraki, while the actors — alongside the adored sea otters — implored the kids in the audience to save the planet.
The play’s use of puppets and minimal dialogue allowed the audience to absorb the visual artistry, focus on the plot, and understand the broader message. Moreover, each attendee at the performance I attended was given a small bookmark in the shape of an otter, eliciting excitement from the children on the Toronto Fringe Festival’s last day.
As the City’s most beloved theatre festival concluded, you could still hear the lingering chatter of the audience and writers and actors reminiscing about their roles. Fringe Fest is set to bring back a sister festival in October — the 17th Next Stage Theatre Festival.
“I highly recommend anyone with an artistic soul or a creative soul in their body… check it out” adds Tokol. So, in case you missed this year’s iconic Fringe Festival, prepare yourself for another round of creativity waiting to showcase itself this fall.
Vyusti Magan Shroff
Varsity Contributor
The city’s largest theatre festival attracted more than 90,000 people. VYUSTI MAGAN SHROFF/THE VARSITY
From July 3-14, Fringe Fest organized 77 shows across downtown. VYUSTI MAGAN SHROFF/THE VARSITY
The annual Toronto Fringe Festival has managed to make its impact for the 36th in a row. VYUSTI MAGAN SHROFF/THE VARSITY
Fringe Fest is set to bring back a sister festival in October — the 17th Next Stage Theatre Festival. VYUSTI MAGAN SHROFF/THE VARSITY
September 3, 2024
thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca
Agency of artificial intelligence and human input
Perspectives from economics and philosophy at the Absolutely Interdisciplinary conference
On the sunlit morning of May 7, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society’s annual Absolutely Interdisciplinary conference began inside the brand-new Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus at U of T. The highly anticipated academic event connected researchers and industry experts of varying specializations with the public to discuss key findings, problems, and the next steps in artificial intelligence (AI) research.
University of Michigan Professor and Philosopher, Peter Railton, and Johns Hopkins University Professor and Economist, Gillian Hadfield, opened the day with a session entitled “A world of natural and artificial agents in a shared environment,” to discuss the common ground between ethical competence and normativity.
Can AI models be competent?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines competence as “the quality or state of having sufficient knowledge, judgment, skill, or strength.” For example, for a human being to have a favourite novel, they must have previously acquired the competence to understand the language that the novel is written in.
Competence is often a characteristic of many AI models, particularly in agents. In this context, an “agent” refers to an entity that has “the capacity to act.”
According to technology company International Business Machines also known as IBM, an AI agent is not limited by a static dataset, as it can “obtain up-to-date information” on the fly. In contrast, models like AI research organization OpenAI’s ChatGPT respond to inputs based on a constrained, time-bound dataset.
Railton’s examples of specific AI competencies included generating natural language and
images, interpreting images, and participating in strategic gameplay. He attributed the emergence of these competencies to the practice of training. In the context of AI models, training often entails a back-and-forth interaction between human trainers and the AI to identify the
If AI models can acquire ethical competence, they could theoretically help safeguard against the frequent concerns of data misuse and data breaches in the digital landscape.
Railton explained that ethical competence is further complicated by determining whose
associations between words. Over time, this allows a model to fine-tune its ability to use the language to interact with a user.
Railton suggested that if these competencies have successfully emerged in AI models, it might also be possible for ethical competence — the capacity to act on principles of ethics — to emerge in a similar way. Ethics — a field of thought that concerns itself with acting morally among other agents — is relevant to conversations about digital privacy, security, and safety.
U of T alumni are bridging the healthcare gap across Ontario
The Access to Care program offers an innovative way to improve healthcare access
Access to primary healthcare — including first contact with the healthcare system and routine care for common health problems — is a significant concern in Ontario, particularly for students and residents struggling to find a family doctor. Primary care physician shortages can lead to increased reliance on emergency services, poorer health outcomes, and fragmented care as patients navigate the health system independently.
According to the Ontario Medical Association, approximately 2.3 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor — a number that could rise dramatically if the issue is not addressed.
International students face additional obstacles, such as unfamiliarity with the healthcare system, language barriers, and limited understanding of their insurance coverage. The University Health Insurance Plan (UHIP) is available to international and exchange students studying
at Ontario universities and offers similar benefits to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. However, many international students lack knowledge on how to effectively use UHIP’s benefits. The same applies to numerous out-ofprovince and in-province students. As a result, many students may turn to emergency rooms for conditions that could be managed by a primary care provider, placing additional strain on emergency services.
The Access to Care program: A step forward
In response to the pressing issue of healthcare inaccessibility, some pharmacies across Canada have begun participating in the Access to Care program, offered by MedEssist — U of T’s healthcare startup tech company. The program attempts to tackle how more than one in five Canadians do not have a primary care provider by creating a more accessible avenue to prescribed care.
actions need to be regulated, controlled, or limited, and by whom — especially when both human and AI agents can play active roles in perpetuating these risks.
This principal problem can be broken down into two main sub-problems: algorithmic bias — the tendency for some algorithms to disproportionately represent, misclassify, or omit critical demographic data — and AI disclosing individuals and corporations’ private information to other parties without consent. Grounding
In particular, pharmacists are well-positioned to offer immediate support for minor health issues, medication management, and preventative care. They can fill the gap left by the shortage of family doctors by assessing and prescribing medication and treatment. The Access to Care program partners with pharmacies to provide prescriptions for birth control, diabetes supplies, inhalers, and more through an easily accessible website. With this program, certain prescriptions can be generated instantly, eliminating the need to visit a hospital or wait in a clinic for basic care.
Access to Care program’s benefits for U of T students
The Access to Care program offers various benefits to students by helping them effectively manage their health. It simplifies access to primary care by making it easier for students to find and receive care. For many non-emergency concerns, students can access care from their local pharmacy through the guided process online. This reduces the time and effort needed to be treated, especially for those unfamiliar with the local healthcare system.
By partnering with local healthcare professionals — with a specific focus on pharmacists — the program ensures that students receive continuous, quality care through a network of easily accessible clinics and pharmacies close to campus. This initiative addresses the specific healthcare challenges students face, facilitating easier access to primary care and helping them better manage their medical needs and maintain good health.
Insights from healthcare providers
Zubin Austin, a professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, shared his excitement about the program. In an email to The Varsity, Austin wrote, “We’re proud and so pleased to see our Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy alumni
models in clear ethical standards for interaction is a step toward a safer environment for both natural and artificial agents.
A model for AI governance
Hadfield’s research seeks to constructively address questions rising in the field of normativity. Normativity is the practice of labelling actions in a society as “okay” and “not okay,” producing a set of guidelines for behaviour known as norms. The field of normativity conceptualizes this act of self-questioning as a distinct mode of operation for agents. Balance within a group of agents is achieved when they have coordinated around what is considered “okay” and “not okay.” This builds what Hadfield called “a shared classification institution,” or a comprehensive understanding of how to behave correctly in a society that enforces these norms to experience social acceptance.
Hadfield added that achieving balanced society-wide relations might involve including what she called “silly rules” — rules that don’t result in any direct reward for following them. Silly rules can provide additional context, helping an AI agent more easily infer how to participate in its society and act according to its norms.
During the Q&A session, Hadfield commented on the dangers of assuming that AI agents will always make sound ethical judgment. Railton suggested that agents should not assume what is ethical in advance. Instead, he proposed incorporating human feedback to refine their ability to develop the self-awareness needed to adopt a proper moral stance. As such, AI agents may always need to rely on human beings for direction to develop ethical judgement. Despite the ongoing anxiety surrounding the unprecedented advancements in AI technology, this session offered a hopeful glimpse into a future where AI and humans could co-exist peacefully.
working collaboratively and creatively to solve problems in Canadian healthcare and to improve the lives of patients.”
Healthcare professionals have also expressed enthusiasm about the Access to Care program. Kristen Watt, a pharmacist at Kristen’s Pharmacy, said that the program is a “unique way to leverage the pharmacist’s skills within the current framework of the legal allowable limits.” Watt expressed concerns over pharmacists being “highly underutilized healthcare practitioners” and noted that the program is a unique way to allow patients to access care.
Kumail Remtulla, pharmacist of Everest Whole Health Pharmacy, wrote to The Varsity that the program has allowed pharmacists to be accessible to patients when needed. Remtulla recalled, “For instance, we were able to help a student who recently arrived in Canada and urgently required a prescription for birth control. We looked up the Canadian Equivalent Medication and were able to prescribe it through the Access to Care initiative. Our goal is simple: to ensure patients receive timely care whenever they need it.”
Everest Whole Health Pharmacy is conveniently located near Victoria College. It serves as a familiar hub for students living on or near campus, offering services such as treatment for minor illnesses, vaccinations administration including flu and COVID-19 shots, medication management, and travel health consultations. Reforming our healthcare system is crucial. The pandemic exposed flaws in the current system, and much work remains to ensure healthcare is equal and universal for everyone. The Access to Care program is one way healthcare professionals are working to bridge the healthcare gap. By streamlining access to primary care, the program helps people obtain care more easily, improving health outcomes and alleviating broader systemic pressures on the healthcare system.
Aqsa Ali & Rahima Shokoya Varsity Contributors
Prajna Pendharkar Varsity Contributor
Everest Whole Health Pharmacy near Victoria College participates in the Access to Care program. RAHIMA SHOKOYA/THE VARSITY
Kelly Lyons (left) began the conference by introducing Gillian Hadfield (middle) and Peter Railton (right) prior to their session. COURTESY OF JOHNNY GUATTO CCSCHWARTZ REISMAN INSTITUTE FOR TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
Sports
Tarushi Sahni Varsity Contributor
September 3, 2024
thevarsity.ca/section/sports sports@thevarsity.ca
Meet the 2024 Paris UofT-lympians
Varsity Blues athletes achieve remarkable triumphs on the world stage
Sitting in the stands with your friends, cheering on your university team, waiting with bated breath for that last point to be scored — that’s the magic of sports. Whether it’s the precision of a tennis serve, the grace of a gymnast, or the intensity of a 100-metre sprint, sports remind us that we can defy the odds, break records, and chase the thrill of victory.
athletes, staff, and alumni have all had remarkable
athletic journeys in their university years, building up to their competition in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Here are some Varsity Blues athletes, staff, and alumni who represented Canada in Paris this summer.
Swimming: Kylie Masse
Kylie Masse is a veteran Olympian, five-time Ontario University Athletics (OUA) swimmer of the year, five-time first team OUA All-Star, and four-time U Sports woman swimmer of the year.
Masse represented Canada for the third time in Paris after winning the bronze medal in the 100-metre backstroke at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, not only did Masse win a bronze as a member of Canada’s 4x100-metre relay, but she also won two silver medals in the 100-metre and 200-metre backstroke events.
The most recent accolade of her illustrious career is another bronze medal in the 200-metre backstroke at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She is also a world record holder for completing the 100-metre backstroke in 58.10 seconds at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships and went on to defend it at the 2019 Championships in Gwangju, South Korea.
During her undergraduate studies at U of T from 2014 to 2019, Masse dominated the OUA and went undefeated in backstroke races across five championships. She was also U of T’s woman athlete of the year for four consecutive years.
Badminton: Michelle Li
Propelling the Varsity Blues badminton team to winning their first OUA championships in 10
2024 Paris highlights: Canada’s summer Olympic journey
Record-breaking performances and the joy of Olympic glory
Atinc Goc
Varsity Contributor
The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics will likely be remembered as one of the best Olympics.
Stunning venues transformed the two-week sports extravaganza into a visual feast. Memorable performances, iconic photographs, and fierce competition culminated in a beautiful closing ceremony. It was also where the International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach handed over the Olympic flame to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
Canada’s overall performance
Team Canada delivered a memorable performance in Paris, with 315 Canadian athletes competing in 15 different sports. With a total of 27 medals — nine gold, seven silver, and 11 bronze — Canada ranked 12th on the official medal standings. From the swimming pool to the track — and everywhere in between — Canadian athletes shone brightly and made Canada proud.
Rising star: Summer McIntosh
At just 17 years old, swimmer Summer McIntosh emerged as one of Paris 2024’s brightest stars. She amazed everyone with her incredible performances in the swimming pool, winning three gold medals and one silver medal. She also set new Olympic records in the 200-metre butterfly and 400-metre individual medley. The joy and pride on her parents’ faces after each race made her victories even more
special. Now, like her parents, fans everywhere eagerly look forward to the next Olympics, knowing that McIntosh is a rising star poised to dominate in the coming years.
Next-gen sports:
Skateboarding and breakdance
Skateboarding, one of the newest Olympic sports, made its second appearance in Paris 2024. Canada competed with four skateboarders, including 14-year-old Fay De Fazio Ebert, who represents this rapidly growing sport’s next generation of talent.
The Canadian skateboard team had quite a memorable tournament in Paris. Rain delays disrupted their events, and to add to the chaos, their bus broke down on the way to the venue. The team found a very creative solution to this problem: they got off the bus, skated to the venue, and had a great time along the way.
Breakdance made its Olympic debut in Paris in a unique event that will likely be the first and last time the event is featured in the Olympics. Canadian athlete Philip “Phil Wizard” Kim delivered a spectacular performance, winning the gold medal and making this unique event more special for Canadians.
years, Michelle Li has left an indelible mark in badminton at U of T and the 2024 Paris Olympics.
After debuting in the 2012 London Olympics, the Paris Olympics was her fourth Olympics appearance. This year, she played two matches, though she lost the second one.
However, after finishing on an impressive fourth place in the 2012 London Olympics in the women’s doubles event, Li is considered to be the most successful Canadian woman badminton player ever. The six-time Pan American Championship singles gold medalist also achieved a top 10 finish in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She is the first Canadian woman to win a singles gold at the Commonwealth Games and was also crowned OUA woman MVP in 2013.
Track and Field:
Jazz Shukla and Lucia Stafford
Competing in her first Olympics, Jazz Shukla steadily rose up the ranks of Canadian athletics and won the national title in the 800m race.
Throughout her time at U of T between 2016 and 2022, she earned U SPORTS first-team AllCanadian and OUA first-team All-Star honours in cross country and track. In her 2024 Olympics debut, Jazz fell just short of reaching the 800m semifinal.
Lucia Stafford competed in her second Olympics after reaching the semifinals in the 1500-metre race in the 2020 Tokyo Games. She also recently set a new 2000-metre Canadian record in her debut at Diamond League: an annual series of track and field athletic competitions. The Varsity Blues alumna was named the U of T woman athlete of the year and the OUA woman athlete of the year across all sports in 2020.
Beach Volleyball: Heather Bansley
Heather Bansley is considered among the best defensive beach volleyball players in the
was a threat to Team USA, he responded with a dismissive “Who?” multiple times and laughed. However, the Canadian sprinting team had the last laugh. Anchored by Andre De Grasse, the Canadians executed a flawless race, clinching gold and defeating the favoured American team. After the victory, De Grasse said, “It feels pretty amazing. To be out with these guys, my brothers,
world and has competed in the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Olympics — placing fifth overall in both. She was recognized as the world’s best defender in the 2015, 2016, and 2018 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour. Bansley and her partner Sophie Bukovec lost in the preliminary round in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
As a U of T student-athlete, she was a two-time all-Canadian athlete and an instrumental player in helping the Blues secure an OUA Championship title. Bansley was also the assistant coach for U of T in 2021–2022.
U of T coaches and staff at the Olympics Byron MacDonald entered his 47th season as the swimming head coach with the Varsity Blues and attended his 10th Olympic Games as a broadcaster.
A U of T alumna who earned her Doctor of Medicine in 2014, Jane Thornton was Team Canada’s chief medical officer at 2024 Paris. In volleyball, Ed Drakich went to the 2024 Paris Olympics as a volleyball technical official for the fifth time. He also represented Canada in the 1996 Olympics and several other international tournaments and was an assistant coach with the Varsity Blues in 1989–1990.
Linda Kiefer, a swimming coach for the Blues at her sixth Olympic Games, coached Masse for the 2016 Rio Olympics, 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and the 2017 FINA World Championships, where she set the world record. Kiefer was a backstroker for the Varsity Blues and has multiple coach of the year accolades from both the OUA and U Sports — spanning two decades. Ron Castro was a massage therapist to the Canadian swimming team and is also a fellow alumnus of the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education.
U of T’s presence at the 2024 Paris Olympics was nothing short of legendary. These U of T stars have showcased grit, talent, and the spirit of excellence on the world’s grandest stage.
that Canada won gold in both men’s and women’s hammer throw events, making it one of the standout moments of the Games.
However, the success was no surprise — it resulted from a well-developed British Columbia (BC) system that has been nurturing elite hammer throwers. This system was greatly enhanced when Olympic medalist and highly celebrated Ukrainian coach, Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk, moved to Canada and began training athletes in Kamloops, BC, ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Bondarchuk’s expertise was crucial in establishing a strong training system in BC. Now, Canada boasts two Olympic champions and has a bright future ahead for its athletes.
Celebrating Canada’s performance
While we’ve highlighted some of Paris 2024’s most unforgettable moments, it’s important to remember that every Canadian athlete who competed deserves recognition and pride.
Relay victory: The 4x100 metres relay surprise
Just a few months before the 2024 Paris Olympics, American sprinter Noah Lyles didn’t seem to fear Team Canada. When reporters asked if Canada
Hammer throw: A historic double-double Canada achieved a historic “double-double” in the hammer throw event — “a track-and-field sport where athletes throw a “hammer,” a metal ball attached to a grip by a steel wire,” according to the World Athletics — at Paris 2024. Hammer throwers Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers both secured gold medals for Canada in their respective events. This was the first time in Olympic history
Each moment contributed to Canada’s Olympic legacy, from the women’s beach volleyball team’s impressive silver medal to Katie Vincent’s heartstopping photo finish — a race finish so close that the winner can only be determined by a video or photo review — in canoeing. The women’s rugby team delivered an incredible performance, winning silver, while the doubles tennis pair of Gabriela Dabrowski and Félix Auger-Aliassime secured bronze with a thrilling run. And who could forget the emotional moment when “Imagine” played during a beach volleyball game?
Though we couldn’t cover every story, we proudly celebrate each of our athlete’s incredible efforts who represented Canada with excellence and passion.
Kylie Masse continues her Olympic dominance. COURTESY OF MARTIN BAZYL VARSITY BLUES MEDIA
Team Canada wins gold with in Men's 4 x 100 relay.
The sordid state of Canada Soccer
On-field success is constantly tarnished by scandals behind the scenes
Thomas Law Varsity Contributor
Is soccer in Canada on an upward trajectory or in the doldrums? A case could be made either way, and this past summer perfectly encapsulates these mixed fortunes. With both the Canadian Men’s National Team (CMNT) and Women’s National Team (CWNT) having achieved monumental strides in recent years and with Canada set to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a sense of occasion and optimism should have been the headline coming out of the summer off-season.
However, a cloud hangs over both national teams following a drone spying scandal at the 2024 Paris Olympics that resulted in the CWNT being punished, casting criticism over past and present results. With memories fresh over player pay disputes and broadcasting rights controversies with the Canadian Soccer Federation, the national soccer teams in Canada appear to be in flux — its future direction is uncertain.
Canadian soccer’s 2024 summer
At the Copa América, a continental tournament that hosts North America and South America’s best national teams, the CMNT — led by newly-appointed manager Jesse Marsch — surprised people by reaching the semi-finals. Despite an opening day loss to the reigning World Cup and Copa América champions Argentina, the CMNT grabbed a victory over Peru and a draw to Chile that concluded the group stages saw the team advance to the knockout stages. There, the CMNT celebrated a penalty triumph over Venezuela in the quarter-finals.
Another well-earned loss against Argentina demonstrated the team’s ability to compete with established countries. The youthful squad also offers hope of further improvement in time for the joint World Cup on home soil in two years’ time. Considering that this year was Canada’s debut at the Copa América, and that they were the only North American team to win in the quarter-finals, the summer was nothing but a success for the era of the CMNT.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, the women’s team had a perfect record in their group, defeating New Zealand, Colombia, and France. They went toeto-toe with Germany in the quarter-finals — only losing to the eventual bronze medallists and European Championship runners-up on penalties. This campaign followed successful games in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which saw the team win its first gold medal.
Drone controversy
However, revelations that the CWNT staff used drones to spy on New Zealand’s training sessions have tarnished Canadian Soccer’s reputation and impacted these on-field successes. FIFA suspended and sent home CWNT Manager Bev Priestman following the breaking of the news, and docked six points from the CWNT before their first game was played. If the team topped their group, lowerranked Brazil would have been their quarter-final opponents, instead of Germany.
Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue said that “ad ditional information has come to our attention re garding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris [Olympics].” He admitted that he was concerned over a “potential long-term, deeply embedded systemic culture of this type of thing occurring.”
In 2021, Honduras’ men’s national team suspended a training session in Canada when they saw a drone during World Cup qualifiers. Canada Soccer has blamed former head coach, John Herdman for starting the practice of drone spying during his tenure with the CWNT. Herdman managed the men’s team from 2018 to 2023 and managed the women’s team from 2011 to 2018. Herdman has since denied any wrongdoing.
In 2019, English soccer club Leeds United’s manager Marcelo Bielsa admitted to spying on pro motion rival Derby County. He said, “I have been using this kind of practice since the qualifiers for the World Cup with Argentina [1998-2004]. It is not illegal, we have been doing it publicly and we talk about it in the press.”
In the aftermath, Leeds fans chanted about the incident and the club was fined £200,000 — which Bielsa paid off himself. Canada’s fallout looks to be far more serious, and not simply because it is not an isolated incident. It isn’t the only crisis for Canada Soccer to contend with.
Financial problems
Canada Soccer has been involved in a pay dispute with its players for some time now. In 2022, the CMNT called off their friendly against the Panama men’s soccer team, demanding a more equitable pay structure for World Cup revenue, along with the CWNT. A temporary agreement was put in place, before the CWNT threatened to go on strike in February 2023 over pay cuts. The CWNT returned to the fold after Canada Soccer threatened legal action over unlawful strike action, and the pay situation has never been satisfactorily resolved. A short-term deal was reached in July 2023, but a long-term solution remains uncertain.
Much of the pay dispute simply comes down to the fact that there is not enough money to go around to satisfy everyone. The players argue that they should be better remunerated for having taken their country to prestigious and lucrative tournaments, in line with other countries. But such is the penny-pinching that the three major Canadian clubs — Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps, and the Montréal Impact — in
In 2018, Canada Soccer signed over commercial and broadcast rights to Canada Soccer Business in exchange for at least three million dollars per year. Canada Soccer Business would negotiate deals and, in return, use the money to subsidize the growth of Canadian soccer and the Canadian Premier League. However, knowing that the World Cup was on its way to North America and a promising crop of young talent blossoming, this deal seems somewhat shortsighted and leaves Canada Soccer shortchanged. It is estimated that Canada Soccer will have a four million dollar operating deficit this year and needs at least an additional $10 million in annual revenue to achieve its aims.
These are not disparate technical issues removed from the on-field innocence. There has been speculation that the International Olympic Committee could strip the CWNT’s 2020 Tokyo Olympic gold medal following complaints of unfair sporting advantage. The scandal immediately puts the past decade of Canada’s on-field growth under deserved scrutiny.
All the while, the pay dispute rumbles on and the penchant for drone espionage has affected player morale. Centre-back Vanessa Gilles admitted that players had been unable to eat, sleep, and were crying over the matter.
Soccer in Canada has always faced challenges, from the harsh climates to fighting for
Going gold: 2024 Summer Paralympics preview
Team Canada look to continue their blistering summer in Paris
A brief history of the Paralympics
While the 2024 Paris Olympics have come to a triumphant close, sports fans still have much to look forward to with the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games running from August 28 to September 8. Paris will host 4,400 athletes from 182 delegations, including 126 Canadian athletes.
With 549 events spread over 22 Parasports, Canada will be looking to better their medal total of 21 — five gold, 10 silver, and six bronze —
The Paralympic Games were officially established in 1960 exclusively for athletes in wheelchairs, but various competitions and clubs for athletes with impairments have existed in Canada and at U of T for decades.
Over time, more events have been added and the eligibility of athletes has expanded. For example, in the 1976 Toronto Paralympics, amputee athletes and athletes with a visual impairment competed for the first time. Today, para athletics are categorized into the following 10 eligible impairment types: impaired muscle power, impaired passive range of movement, limb deficiency, leg length difference, short stature, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis, vision
Depending on the event, athletes are further separated by “Sports Classes” within the impairment categories. Athlete grouping is determined by the “degree of activity limitation resulting from their impairments,” according to the Paralympics’ governing council — the International Paralympics Committee.
U of T also has some decorated Paralympians among its alumni. To this day, the Canadian record for most gold medals at a single Paralympics game is held by U of T alumna Stéphanie Dixon, who won a mind-boggling five gold medals at just 16 years old in the Sydney 2000 Paralympics.
The unique and exciting events of the Paralympics
Goalball is a mixed-gender sport exclusive to athletes with visual impairments, where two teams of three players try to bowl a ball with two bells inside into the opposing team’s net while the de-
of boccia is to propel leather balls as close as possible to a target known as the jack. Truly a game of centimetres, boccia athletes display impressive and complete control of the ball.
Another standout Paralympic event is the classic Para Athletics. The track events are particularly exciting: 20 general classes and seven wheelchair classes, and each event brings unique racing styles and strategy. Yet, no matter what class or impairment, one commonality is pure blistering speed. Canada has medalled at every track and field Paralympics since the Tel Aviv Paralympics in 1968, and looks to continue their strong results in Para Athletics.
Standout Canadian athletes to look out for Paralympic wheelchair fencer Ruth Sylvie Morel, a living legend, will turn 68 during her fourth Paralympic appearance in Paris. She was the first Canadian wheelchair fencer to compete at a Paralympic Games, when competing in Sydney 2000. Morel looks to continue her 24-year Paralympic legacy with no signs of slowing down. Para-rower Jacob Wassermann was paralyzed from the waist down in the tragic 2018 Humboldt Broncos junior ice hockey team’s bus crash, in which he lost 10 teammates and six staff members. While his ice hockey career came to an abrupt end, Wassermann started Para-rowing in late 2022 and is set to make waves at his debut in Paris.
With five gold, three silver, and two bronze medals since London 2012 in her cabinet, Paraswimmer Aurélie Rivard is already a Canadian legend. Rivard looks to continue her medal haul in Paris in her specialty of freestyle swimming.
Jake Takeuchi Sports Editor
VICKY HUANG/THE VARSITY
BANA CHERAGHI/THE VARSITY
