Issue 8, November 4, 2024 by The Varsity

THE VARSITY

Victoria University’s Attendance Awareness Program revoked amid union pressure

USW Local 1998 argued the program caused employees to come to work sick

Rubin Beshi Business & Labour Editor

From July 1 to October 9, Victoria University implemented its Attendance Awareness Program (AAP), which applied to all members of the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1998 Victoria University bargaining unit. The unit’s members include food servers, cooks, and electricians.

Victoria University is one of U of T’s three federated colleges — along with the University of Trinity College and the University of St. Michael’s College — that operate independently from U of T.

Under the program, employees who are absent from work four or more times in a three month period will be entered into the program. The program has five stages — with the last stage resulting in the managers considering the employee’s termination. While the Program Policy & Manager Guide outlined that the program aimed to encourage employees to commit to regular attendance at work, it

“A streak of bad luck with people’s health” Ankenman explained that he believes the college created the program due to their concerns about employees “abusing” the sick leave provision 14.05 outlined in the union’s collective agreement. The provision requires supporting medical documentation from employees who are on sick leave for more than seven days.

However, Ankenman mentioned that during a round of collective bargaining last year, the college pressed the union to change the collective agreement to require medical documentation for sick leave of any length, including for just one day. The union ultimately refused to budge on this. Following this bargaining round, the college decided to implement the AAP program.

According to Ankenman, the AAP caused concern for the union because the program did not distinguish between employees taking advantage of the sick leave provision and those who had otherwise perfect attendance, but had

members based on their union membership,” Ankenman said.

The campaign Upon receiving advance notice of the AAP in March, the unit immediately began efforts to combat the program. They argued that the program would cause employees to come to work while sick to avoid being placed in the program, which could also potentially spread illness throughout the community.

“We pointed out to [the college] that we have a significant number of our members who work in food services, who… cook the food that the students and residents eat every day,” Ankenman said. He explained that as a result of the program, he knew “as a fact [that] there were a significant number of employees who were coming in sick, possibly with COVID-19… [or] other respiratory diseases.”

Continued on page 5.

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Faculty of Music community call on U of T to reopen MacMillan Theatre SCIENCE

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U of T students hold tri-campus walkouts in protest of ongoing violence in Gaza

Protesters march through UTM, UTSC, and Sidney Smith

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Razia Saleh

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On October 7, the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) organized a campus-wide walkout to protest Israel’s ongoing violence in Gaza. Three days later, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) and students at the UTSG campus followed suit.

Since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 Israelis, the Israeli military has killed over 44,000 Palestinians. Israel has continued its attacks on Gaza and recently intensified its attack on the Lebanese political party and militant group Hezbollah. Since September, Israel’s attacks on Lebanon have killed over 700 people.

The Varsity attended each walkout and spoke with students about their participation in the protests.

UTSG

On October 10, roughly 200 students at UTSG marched through the hallways of Sidney Smith Hall, McLennan Physical Laboratories, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Convocation Hall. This protest was part of UofT Occupy for Palestine’s (O4P) Week of Rage, a series of events held in solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon.

Students flying Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyehs gathered at the steps of Sidney Smith at 2:30 pm. Speakers with megaphones encouraged attendees to reiterate their demands for the university administration to disclose their financial investments, divest from Israeli companies, and cut ties with Israeli institutions.

The protestors marched up the steps of Sidney Smith and through the hallways before exiting onto St. George Street and continuing on their route through several major buildings on campus.

Second-year social justice education masters student Sara Rasikh, who is an O4P spokesperson and one of the organizers of the walkout, spoke about the purpose of the Week of Rage. “It has to do with the frustration and anger that is related to the university’s silence on what is going on in Palestine,” she said.

Simcoe Hall as students rallied briefly near the doors before continuing the march north on St. George Street. The walkout concluded in front of Robarts Library shortly after 4:00 pm.

UTSC

In partnership with various other student groups, the SCSU held its walkout on October 10 at 12:00 pm. Around 70 students gathered in the Student Centre, where SCSU President Hunain Sindhu delivered his opening remarks.

“Today we gather to call out U of T for its complicity in a year of genocide,” he said.

Student Strike for Palestine (SS4P) at UTSC — a Palestinian advocacy group that participated in the walkout — was tabling in the Student Centre at the time. It encouraged students to sign a petition calling on the SCSU to support a student strike for Palestine as part of a national movement occurring on campuses across Canada.

Students then marched into the Instructional Centre, where Katherine Blouin, an associate professor of ancient history at UTSC, addressed the walkout attendees.

“I want to thank you for showing us how the critical thinking abilities and the historical literacy skills [that] professors like me were hired by this institution to teach you ought to be used in practice… One day U of T will disclose, divest, and cut ties. When it does, it will be because of you. You are history and you are the university. Never forget that,” she said.

Students then marched through the Sam Ibrahim Building and back toward South Campus, with Campus Safety Special Constables following the demonstration.

Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario’s Chairperson Adaeze Mbalaja and National Executive Representative Cyrielle Ngeleka were also present and addressed walkout attendees in Highland Hall.

“We are here to impress upon you, people, students of conscience, that we cannot stop, we cannot rest, until every single institution across so-called Canada divests from weapons and arms manufacturers and divests from genocide and destruction of the people of Palestine,” said Mbalaja.

Ngeleka added that, “Student Union autonomy is under attack. Administrations are going to use tactics in order to implement divides… We need to stay consistent. We need to stay united in this movement.”

Multiple student groups — including the Association of Palestinian Students at UTM — voiced their support for the cause.

Students then formed a circle between the Communication Culture & Technology Building and the football field. They chanted, “The students united will never be defeated!” “No justice, no peace!” and “Free, free, free Palestine, from the river to the sea, even here at U of T.”

The students also expressed widespread frustration with UTM and Principal Alexandra Gillespie’s silence on the ongoing violence.

Last year, Gillespie publicly condemned the UTMSU for releasing a statement on its solidarity with Palestine and civilians affected by the ongoing violence.

UTMSU President Joelle Salsa remarked, “The University of Toronto remains complicit [and] silent [which] contributes to our grief and suffering. Shame!”

Salsa reminded participants of the significance of the land on which the protest took place, noting that the university is built on stolen Indigenous land. “We have a responsibility to Indigenous people here,” she said, drawing a parallel between the historical oppression of Indigenous communities in Canada and the current plight of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon.

Salsa highlighted the long history of student activism at U of T, reminding the crowd that, “U of T students organized against the war in Vietnam [and] apartheid in South Africa.” She praised the university’s historical role in standing up against global injustice and called on today’s students to continue that legacy.

Another key concern raised during the protest was the alleged use of student tuition fees to invest in companies like Lockheed Martin.

In May, O4P issued a report claiming that the university is indirectly investing billions of dollars in companies profiting from Israeli military action in Gaza through the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM). UTAM manages investing U of T’s endowment and allocates the majority of its endowment funds to external investment managers.

In the report, O4P listed Lockheed Martin, which manufactures arms used by the Israeli military among 55 others, as a company that UTAM’s external investment managers oversee assets for.

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“The university claims to be neutral while their investments only serve the interests of the Israeli state,” Rasikh continued. “And so we are bringing forward the contradictions that exist at the university, and we are calling out [the] administration.”

The university has noted that any claims connecting U of T to the Israeli military have “no basis in fact.”

Around 3:30 pm, the crowd entered Convocation Hall by pushing through security guards and Campus Safety who attempted to block the doors. One protester holding a door open was forcibly pulled away by a Campus Safety officer. When confronted by another protester, the officer remarked, “What are you going to do about it?” Meanwhile, dozens of other protesters continued to hold open other entrances to the building, insisting that they were students and should be permitted inside.

The security guards and Campus Safety then reorganized to guard the entrance of

Students then marched to The Meeting Place, where the Health and Wellness Centre was holding its fall HealthyU Experience. The demonstration ended at around 3:00 pm with about 50 students present.

UTM

On October 7 at 12:00 pm, UTM witnessed a large-scale walkout organized by the UTMSU. The protest called for the university to divest from companies that profit from the violence in Gaza and Lebanon.

The walkout, which began at the Student Centre and ended at the William G. Davis Building, called on students and community members to protest the university’s complicity amidst escalating attacks and imperial violence by the Israeli government.

An Instagram post shared by the union ahead of the walkout called on the UTM community to “stand in solidarity” and demand divestment from Israel’s military investments.

According to a U of T spokesperson, the university’s investments are held in two separate funds. The Expendable Funds Investment Pool (EFIP) is “the fund that would include any tuition money not immediately spent.” They added that the EFIP, including other savings, is not invested in any company shares.

One anonymous participant, who identified as half-Palestinian, expressed her personal connection to the cause.

“My people are the ones dying… I’m here to support them… to be a voice for them,” she explained.

In an email to The Varsity , Salsa noted that there was “No response from Principal Alexandra Gillespie or any of the administrative heads” regarding the walkout.

In response to Salsa’s claim, a university spokesperson referred to the User Guide on U of T Policies on Protests.

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UTSU 2024 AGM presents financial statements, executive reports with four members present

Students question President’s summer job, VP Student Life’s attendance

James Bullanoff Deputy News Editor

On October 20, approximately 60 students attended the online meeting for the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) Annual General Meeting (AGM). The union was able to meet quorum after failing to do so last year and pushing the AGM to November.

During the AGM, the union discussed its financial statements and gave executive reports with only four of the six executive members present. Students questioned the absence of the UTSU Vice-President (VP) Student Life and concerns about UTSU President Shehab Mansour’s summer job.

Financial statements

UTSU VP Finance & Operations Elizabeth Shechtman gave an overview of the union’s 2023–2024 financial statements. Shechtman noted that the union is “good to go” and “everything is in order.”

According to the statements, UTSU’s assets and liabilities increased from roughly $7.9 million to roughly $9.1 million. Following the union changing its mental health coverage and reverting back to the original plan, student insurance expenses for the health and dental plan increased from $13.2 million to roughly $14.5 million.

The majority of the union’s revenue came from its health and dental plan, generating roughly $16.2 million in 2023–2024 compared to the $15.4 million made in 2022–2023.

Executive reports

During the AGM, executives gave their reports on their work over the year. Shechtman gave the president’s report, as Mansour was sick and was not able to attend the AGM.

Shechtman highlighted that the union is in the final stages of implementing the Respect Educate Empower Survivors program — an online platform students can use for reporting sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault.

The union has been discussing this since their August Board of Directors meeting. However, there is currently no date for when the pilot will be introduced on campus.

UTSU VP Public and University Affairs Avreet Jagdev highlighted that the union is still collecting data for the Student Census — a survey that seeks to better understand issues students face in relation to identity factors such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Missing VP Student Life

After delivering the executive reports, the union moved onto a question period where one student asked why UTSU VP Student Life Tala Mehdi didn’t submit a report for the AGM. The student added that many other students have complained about being unable to reach Mehdi and asked how the executive plans to ensure that she serves students.

“I am aware that the report was not complete. I will be talking to [Mehdi] in private conversations,” said Shechtman. “I am not sure what’s

going on, but I’m sure that if there is something, then we will be able to handle it.”

Mehdi also didn’t attend the AGM. Shechtman added she’s aware of “private matters” going on and students sometimes have personal things that come up. “As of right now, there are no worries,” said Shechtman.

Another student asked a follow-up question about how long students have been unable to reach Mehdi. Shechtman responded by saying, “I am not sure, since it wasn’t me that said that she hasn’t been responding, so I unfortunately don’t have an answer to that one.”

In an email to The Varsity, Mehdi explained that she wasn’t present because of a personal family emergency. “I am a Lebanese international student and the situation in the country is very unstable at the moment,” she wrote.

“A very urgent matter came up the day of the AGM and I had to prioritize my family at that time; this was also why I was unable to submit the report,” she added.

Mehdi noted that one of the Student Life executive assistants attended the AGM and gave her details of the meeting and student requests. She also mentioned speaking to Shechtman and that “the executive team has been very supportive regarding the situation.”

“I always respond to student inquiries via email, and I am always willing to support them,” wrote Mehdi. “I can confirm there is no issue with communication - we have just received a larger influx of requests due to club registration.”

U of T community members reflect on Israel’s ongoing violence in Lebanon

Student leaders discuss solidarity with Lebanon amid Israel’s violent attacks

Sharon Chan Associate News Editor

Content warning: This article discusses death and ongoing violence in Lebanon and Gaza.

On September 17, thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, resulting in more than 2,800 people injured and at least nine people killed. A Lebanese security source told Reuters that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers ordered by Lebanese political party and militant group Hezbollah, months before the detonations.

Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah has been launching rockets to Israel and repeatedly vowed to cease attacks if Israel ends its war on Gaza.

On September 24, Israel dramatically intensified its airstrikes in Lebanon, killing over 720 people. Lebanese authorities deemed the attacks the “deadliest barrage” since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

As of October, Israel’s escalating airstrikes on

Lebanon displaced 1.2 million people. In response to the escalating humanitarian crisis, the United Nations World Food Programme and the United Nations Children’s Fund dispatched a humanitarian convoy to provide essential protection, health, water, and sanitation services to those affected.

In light of the ongoing violence, The Varsity spoke to U of T community members about Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.

Students’ reactions and response

Mohamad Yassin — president of the Muslim Students’ Association and second-year masters student studying electrical engineering — is a Palestinian who grew up in Lebanon. “Majority of my family [is] still in Lebanon in the refugee camps,” wrote Yassin in an email to The Varsity

“After a year of witnessing unrestrained violence targeting civilians in Gaza, there is a great amount of concern that (as we are already seeing) Israel will likely do the same in Lebanon,” he added.

“Community members are very troubled by the situation… Personally, I’ve been having trouble

sleeping as I’m in contact with my family trying to stay as up-to-date on the situation as possible.”

Yassin shared that his family members are refusing to leave Lebanon “as they do not believe anywhere is safe based on what we have seen from Gaza.”

On September 23, the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) and the Middle Eastern Students’ Association released a joint statement on Instagram in response to the Israeli government’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon.

“Amidst escalating attacks and imperial violence by Israel, the University of Toronto, continues to remain willing collaborators in the actions of a settler colonial apartheid state,” wrote the statement.

In the statement, the union wrote that it stands “in solidarity with Lebanon and condemns the Israeli government’s attacks” and will continue to “demand the university to divest from all forms of direct and indirect financial investments that sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation, war and genocide.”

The statement follows the King’s College Circle pro-Palestinian student encampment, that demanded the university to disclose its investments and divest from companies that supply Israel with weapons and technology. The encampment started on May 2 and ended on July 3, following the Ontario Superior Court of Justice’s decision to grant the university’s injunction request to remove the encampment.

The university’s response In a statement to The Varsity, a U of T spokesperson noted that any claims connecting the university to the Israeli military “have no basis in fact.”

The spokesperson added that the university has “an established process to consider divestment requests that is open to all members of the U of T community, including students.” They stated that “student activists have consistently declined to use the process.”

Yassin also called on the university to “show consistency in its approach,” referring to U of T President Meric Gertler’s response to Russia’s

“I really enjoy working in this position and have put in a lot of work over the past few months to ensure we are supporting student life in all aspects,” she wrote.

Faculty of Music community call on U of T to reopen MacMillan Theatre

Students and faculty discuss concerns, theatre remains closed for rest of the year

James Bullanoff Deputy News Editor

On October 25, the Faculty of Music Undergraduate Association (FMUA) sent a petition to David Lehto, the chief, university planning, design & construction at U of T, on behalf of the Faculty of Music calling on the university to reopen MacMillan Theatre.

Since the theatre closed in December 2023, students and faculty have had to relocate to other theatres across the GTA. They face longer commutes, added costs, and lose out on the experience of performing in an orchestra pit at their university.

MacMillan Theatre

The MacMillan Theatre — named after former Faculty of Music Dean Sir Ernest Campbell MacMillan — is an 815-seat theatre. It’s one of the few stages in Toronto that can host a full-scale opera production.

The theatre, a flagship venue for the Faculty of Music, hosted over 600 shows a year, more shows than any other arts organization in the city, according to the university. It features an 80-foot-high fly tower — a system of pulleys and counterweights above the stage — and a 50-person orchestra pit.

The stage has featured many top Canadian musicians, including opera star Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, Grammy award-winning soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan, and Academy Award-winning composer Mychael Danna.

The theatre closed for a remediation project after not having any major renovations since opening in 1964. In an Instagram post on January 19, the U of T Faculty of Music wrote that the theatre was temporarily closed and previously scheduled winter semester performances would be moved to new venues.

The university is currently seeking proposals from architects for the MacMillan Theatre remediation project with a deadline of November 12. Beyond the project, the university also has a longer-term revitalization project that aims to transform the theatre with additional seating, better acoustics and sightlines, upgrading the lobby, and state-ofthe-art technological infrastructure.

“Important space”

In the petition, members of the Faculty of Music community expressed their concerns to Lehto over the continued closure of the theatre.

“It has been frustrating and frankly, devastating, to hear announcements of a continued closure without a definite reopening date,” they wrote.

They also highlighted that the closure of the theatre not only leads to students feeling that they are being “disregarded” but students and faculty are now “forced to find new locations to rehearse and perform in.”

“We implore the University to return to the originally planned, eight-week (8) timeline for the reopening of the MacMillan Theater,” they wrote.

“We implore the University to find a solution that reopens the MacMillan Theater for the [winter semester] as previously scheduled.”

Students and faculty have had to travel to places such as the Tribute Communities Recital Hall at York University — a 34-minute subway ride from Museum Station — to perform.

Enquan (Frank) Yu, a first-year masters of music student specializing in opera, spoke to The Varsity about the effects of having to find a new theatre space.

“Because [MacMillan] is closed, we have to move our performances somewhere else… requiring more money because we have to rent those spaces and then [travel] to those spaces to

Weekend closures

Over the past year, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) commuters saw a number of changes to their transit from ongoing construction and weekend closures, to Reduced Speed Zones (RSZs) and concerns about safety conditions.

The Varsity spoke with UTSG commuter students about how these changes have impacted their commute on the TTC.

Ongoing construction

Since the fall of 2023, the TTC has been carrying out extensive construction at stations near the UTSG campus — including Queen’s Park Station, Museum Station, and St. Patrick Station.

The ongoing renewal program will remove outdated lighting supports and ceilings and install a new surveillance system and subway platform wall panels. The installation will begin early 2025 and continue throughout the year.

Mansi Bhatia — a second-year student studying physiology and health and disease — wrote in an email to The Varsity that the construction has made her 50-minute commute from Etobicoke even more challenging.

“I take the TTC every day… transferring from Line 2 to Line 1,” wrote Bhatia. “I’ve noticed that Queen’s Park Station signage is unclear during construction, which adds to my stress, especially when I’m already running late.”

Almost every weekend, TTC commuters face significant subway closures. On September 14 and 15, the TTC suspended service over an 8.5-kilometre stretch on Line 1 between the Sheppard West and St. Clair West Stations. Similarly, on October 12 and 13, the TTC closed Line 2 between the Victoria Park and Kennedy Stations. They closed it again on October 26 and 27. The transit agency attributes these closures to “planned track work,” but the frequency strains commuters who rely on uninterrupted weekend travel.

Raha Mirza — a second-year student studying physiology and health and disease — also wrote in an email to The Varsity about the impacts on her commute.

Mirza explained that weekend shutdowns affect her travel plans since she lives on campus during the week and relies on the TTC to get home each weekend. She added that these closures force her to leave earlier or navigate shuttle buses, disrupting her usual routine.

Reduced Speed Zones (RSZ) RSZs are areas where trains are required to travel at slower speeds to minimize wear on the tracks and allow track maintenance work and upgrades. Having an RSZ in place does not mean the track is unsafe to travel on.

In May, the TTC’s geometry survey, which

rehearse during the school days,” Yu explained. “That’s not really convenient for any of us, even for the instructors [and] the director, and especially for the students.”

Yu was an undergraduate student at U of T and spent time performing at the MacMillan Theatre. When looking at other venues like York University, he found that other stages don’t compare and that MacMillan Theatre is “a great space for students to grow and learn in.”

“If you look at the situation itself, it’s definitely good to have experience in different theatres, but at the same time, it’s coming at the cost of [not having] access to our own theatre,” said Yu.

In an interview with The Varsity, FMUA VicePresident Student Life Jay-Daniel Baghbanan spoke about the impacts of the closure.

“You can’t shut down our curricular spaces and then not give us alternatives, not support us, not even provide us with proper space,” he said.

Baghbanan added that the alternative theatres don’t have orchestra pits and that “the people performing aren’t getting the proper experience.”

“They have not given us a clear timeline, and they don’t understand how this messes with so many people’s degrees… like we’ve lost our biggest theatre,” he explained.

In an interview with The Varsity, Gillian MacKay — a professor of music at U of T — also expressed concerns about the continued closure of the theatre and said that, “there’s no particular upside.”

“This is our laboratory space. It’s our performance space, and it’s not just another classroom,” she said. “This is a really important space for us, and I’m not sure that people outside of music necessarily understand that.”

Curtains closed

In a statement to The Varsity about the theatre’s closure, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Music Ryan McClelland wrote that the university had originally projected the theatre to open for the 2024–2025 winter term.

“After further assessment, we learned that the upgrades are more extensive and complex than first anticipated,” wrote McClelland. “The theatre will remain closed for the remainder of the current academic year.”

McClelland mentioned that he had communicated this delay in a letter emailed to the entire Faculty of Music community in early October.

When asked about the FMUA’s petition and whether the eight-week timeline for the reopening of the theatre would be considered, a university spokesperson wrote that “the answers to these questions can be found in the statement already shared.”

“We appreciate everyone’s flexibility as we work together to deliver the best musical experiences possible while undertaking the necessary changes to ensure the space is safe for all who learn, teach, work, and visit there,” wrote McClelland.

Commuters express concerns over TTC disruptions, construction, safety

Students share thoughts on weekend closures, removing Wi-Fi, Reduced Speed Zones

uses special devices to make laser-guided measurements of the rails, identified issues with tracks in need of repair not being visible during regular track inspections. Following the survey, the TTC implemented RSZs across 33 locations as of July 29 this year. The majority of these restrictions are on Line 1, with some affecting Line 2.

Second-year kinesiology student Paramjyot Kainth frequently commutes on weekends for student organization and extracurricular commitments.

“The slow zones… add time to my commute and frequently put me at risk of being late to my meetings,” wrote Kainth in an email to The Varsity “I’ve started leaving earlier… but it would be ideal if these zones could be better managed to reduce disruptions.”

Earlier this year, TTC spokesperson Adrian Grundy told CityNews, “We’re using our planned early closures, weekend closures, and non-revenue hours to do the repairs. Given the number of RSZs, it will take some time to work through them.”

Indoor pollution

While the TTC improves its functionality and aesthetics, unresolved issues impact commuter experience, particularly for students.

A June study conducted by U of T researchers from the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering identified friction braking — a type of braking that uses friction between a moving and a stationary part of a brake when pressed together — as a major source of indoor pollution.

“Air quality at Queen’s Park Station is definitely a concern for me, especially during rush hours,” wrote Bhatia. “It feels crowded and stuffy. I wish the

TTC would improve ventilation in busy stations.”

In 2021 a report from Health Canada, the National Research Council of Canada, and U of T revealed that the TTC’s initiatives with new trains and updated braking technologies contributed to improving air quality in the subway system. Since 2022, Line 1 has been operating under Automatic Train Control, which reduces the amount of friction during the braking process.

Safety concerns

The TTC’s decision to end free public Wi-Fi at subway stations by the end of the year has raised alarms as well. The TTC cited a 65 per cent decline in use since introducing 5G cellular service, arguing that the Wi-Fi’s aging technology and security concerns warrant the change.

“Wi-Fi is a safety tool for students who want to stay connected to friends and family,” wrote Kainth. “This change will impact student commuters by making it harder to use travel time effectively by doing school work or managing other responsibilities. While data is an option, not all students have sufficient resources.”

Safety remains a concern for students. In January 2023, a first-year architecture student was a confirmed victim of a Spadina streetcar stabbing. However, reported offences against passengers have dropped by 35 per cent this year.

“Generally, I feel safe on the TTC, but I’m more cautious traveling alone late at night,” wrote Mirza. “More visible TTC staff could make things feel more secure for solo travelers.”

The TTC did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment in time for publication.

Asmi Khanna Associate News Editor

Queen’s Park Station, where ongoing construction affects student commuters. ABBY RUSSCHEN/THE VARSITY

JAYLIN KIM/THE VARSITY

Business & Labour

Continued from the cover.

Additionally, the unit argued that part of the program violated the union’s collective agreement with the college. According to the program guide, employees in the third and fourth stage of the program would have their AAP status considered when being evaluated for promotions or other job positions within the college.

While Ankenman stated that, “the collective agreement language that deals with job postings and the hiring process did not include any wording that would allow for [this rule],” the AAP guide stated that the program did not override or replace any part of the unit’s collective agreement with Victoria University.

After Victoria University implemented the program on July 1, the unit filed a policy grievance — a formal complaint — against the college on July 18, outlining their concerns. The union and the college held at least four meetings, including a grievance meeting on August 29.

Alongside the policy grievance, the union launched a public campaign to build solidarity within the bargaining unit and among students and faculty. On September 27, the union set

up a booth at Charles Street in front of the Isabel Bader Theatre to gather signatures for a petition against the AAP. The event lasted three hours and garnered 86 signatures from unit members and 52 signatures from students.

To new horizons

On October 9, the college sent out an email to the unit members informing them that the program had been officially rescinded.

“I was a little surprised that it was rescinded,” Ankenman said. However, he noted that members were optimistic after their last meeting with the college in October and appreciated the support they were receiving from students.

A Victoria University employee — who requested anonymity due to fear of retribution — wrote to The Varsity in an email that, “We are all relieved, as we believe the program was unnecessarily punitive.”

In an email to The Varsity, a spokesperson for Victoria University wrote that it made the decision to discontinue the program “after receiving valuable feedback from employees and USW.” They added that the college is now focused on supporting “our employees through their managers.”

Ankenman credits the college for listening to

November 5, 2024

varsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca

and fully engaging with the union’s arguments throughout the process. “The union’s last meeting with the [college] left us thinking that we had been heard,” he said.

“From the union’s point of view, the issue is resolved,” Ankenman said. “We’ll have to see how the [college] goes about implementing a program that’s focused on employees who they believe are possibly abusing the sick

leave positions provision in the collective agreement.”

The Victoria University spokesperson wrote to The Varsity that, “Regular attendance at work is important for our students, who depend on us, and for our colleagues, who work alongside us. We are committed to fostering a healthy workplace where everyone feels they have the support they need to thrive.”

U of T students take on aerospace giants, placing second in international drone defence competition Prandtl Dynamics outperforms Boeing, wins $375,000

intelligence and robotics student; and Michael Acquaviva, a fourth-year specializing in electrical engineering.

Solution to the threat

Prandtl Dynamics — a startup founded by a group of U of T engineering students that creates anti-drone systems — is breaking new ground in the aerospace and defence sectors with its nonlethal anti-Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS) technology. This technology uses acoustic systems — the use of sound waves — to neutralize drone threats, offering a safer alternative for military and civilian applications.

From May 27 to June 21, Canada’s department of National Defense at Suffield Canadian Forces Base in Alberta hosted the Counter-UAS Challenge. This international competition was an opportunity for companies to showcase their anti-drone technologies. Prandtl Dynamics placed second and was awarded $375,000. Prandtl Dynamics made history as the first student-led team in the event, competing against major aerospace companies, including Boeing, Sentrycs, and Arcfield.

Prandtl Dynamic’s technology

Four U of T engineering students co-founded Prandtl Dynamics. Parth Mahendru, a fourthyear aerospace engineering student; Anna Poletaeva, a third-year who studies material sciences; Asad Ishaq, a fourth-year machine

Prandtl’s anti-drone technology stands out in the defence industry for its unique, nondestructive approach to neutralizing threats. Unlike ‘jamming’ systems that interfere with communication or kinetic methods that physically intercept drones, this system uses acoustic waves to disrupt internal electronics.

Prandtl focuses on defence and private sector markets, though most of its efforts are currently directed at refining its technology.

The team prioritizes improvements based on insights from the Counter-UAS Challenge, with enhancements like waterproofing, wind resistance, and increased range. Given its non-lethal, non-destructive design, they see potential applications in urban areas for civilian safety.

“If you’re at a concert arena and… there’s a drone over you, our technology will help you safely get it down… we can [direct] the drone to where we want it to be,” Parth explained.

Prandtl is already building a presence in the aerospace and defence industry. “We have a different market that does not… conflict with anyone else, just because of the novelty of the idea,” Mahendru noted. Moreover, the team is actively seeking partnerships and expertise from industry experts.

Developing this technology is challenging, as acoustics in drone tech remains largely uncharted. With limited resources, the team relied on research from as far back as the 1960s, often testing and troubleshooting in their own apartments. During testing, they encountered numerous obstacles, such as unanticipated magnetic interference that affected the precision of their ultrasonic targeting.

The non-destructive solution resonated with the team. “Not everything has to be violent or… destructive,” Poletaeva said. This philosophy guided their decision to design a solution targeting only the drone’s internal components.

Focusing ultrasonic waves on specific points creates resonant frequencies that interfere with core systems, enabling the team to remotely influence a drone’s behaviour. The system can send targeted ultrasonic frequencies — sounds with a frequency above 20,000 hertz — to destabilize critical components of the drone to allow responses from nudging the drone off course to distorting altimeter readings, which can cause a rapid descent.

“[Our technology can make a drone] think that it’s 5,000 feet off the ground when it’s actually just a few metres above,” Mahendru explained. The system can also disrupt visual feeds for drones relying on cameras, making navigation nearly impossible. It can reduce

visuals to mere pixels or even disable the camera.

Another challenge was the sheer power required to drive their acoustic array. They constructed a makeshift device with transducers arranged in a circular dish, but keeping it stable and energy-efficient proved difficult. The team spent hours remodelling their design, learning to adapt and refine it for maximum range and effectiveness.

Prandtl’s future plans

After their second-place finish at the Sandbox competition, the Prandtl Dynamics team met to discuss future goals. “We want to work on… mentally stimulating [challenges] that… can have a real… positive impact,” Parth said, emphasizing their commitment to creating a purely defensive, non-lethal technology designed to protect without harm.

What excites them most is the freedom to shape their company, allowing the exploration of ideas without conventional restrictions.

“Working for ourselves,” he added, “that’s what’s most exciting.”

Poletaeva finds the journey ahead equally inspiring, noting that this project is “the challenge that keeps calling.”

Right now, that challenge is expanding the range of their technology, amplifying the system to work even more effectively.

VICKY HUANG/THE VARSITY

Iva Zivaljevic Varsity Contributor

Opinion

November 5, 2024

thevarsity.ca/category/opinion opinion@thevarsity.ca

Academic boycotts of Israel are

an ethical imperative

Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the occupation of Palestine

Content warning: This article discusses death and the ongoing violence in Palestine.

A few years back, I celebrated the completion of my undergraduate studies with Professor Sofyan Taya. Taya was a renowned physicist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Waterloo when we met. I shared my interest in pursuing a similar career: one day being a part of the esteemed enterprise of higher education.

In early December 2023, Israel murdered Taya and his family when an airstrike hit their home. Taya is just one of thousands of Palestinian students, staff, and faculty who have lost their lives amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza — a genocide that I believe is aided and abetted by Canadian academic institutions.

However, it is necessary to understand how North American universities partnering with Israeli academic institutions contributed to Israel’s scholasticide — the systemic obliteration of education — during this genocide of Palestinians.

An infographic by Palestine’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education highlights that Israeli attacks and occupations have targeted numerous universities in Gaza, resulting in the complete destruction of all universities in Gaza. The same infographic reveals that Israeli bombardment has murdered over 400 educational staff and denied more than 80,000 students access to their universities.

Since the 1980s, the University of Toronto has consistently opposed academic boycotts on the grounds of “promoting academic freedom” and “freedom of expression.”

However, as a graduate student who cares deeply about my work, I often contemplate what it means to engage in an academic arena — particularly in the sciences — that expects political sterility. I believe that academic boycotts are a just strategy for achieving true academic freedom and expression, especially in response to a genocide.

Israeli universities are active agents of occupation

Universities in Israel have directly engaged in land theft. For instance, Ariel University is situated on an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Such settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Additionally, Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus is built on land captured during the 1967 six-day war. Early Zionist leaders recognized the establishment of this university on a hill dominating the East Jerusalem skyline, as a symbol of unifying Jerusalem as the new “Jewish capital” of Israel.

The Mount Scopus campus has continued to expand into illegally seized land since its capture in 1967, encompassing over 90 per cent of the territory belonging to the Palestinian village, Issawiya.

Issawiya’s residents are surveilled by the Israeli National Police from lookouts on the Mount Scopus campus, endure daily raids, and encounter arbitrary physical obstacles such as the closure of their neighbourhood’s entrance at the university’s behest.

Furthermore, Israeli universities silence

Palestinian voices. The Israeli police have arrested professors for opposing genocide and punished students for voicing support for the people of Gaza. During Israel’s military offensive on Gaza in 2008, Israeli military and security experts defended the bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza by citing that “universities historically have been breeding grounds for radical thought, free speech and protest.”

Israeli universities also collaborate directly with the Israeli military. Israeli academic institutions were founded in tandem with military industries — their mutual growth has established Israel as a perceived centre of military and technological mastery. The early Zionist militia established in 1920, the Haganah, developed bases at Hebrew University, the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and the Weizmann Institute of Science to help displace Palestinians. This included the infamous Operation Cast Thy Bread, which used biological warfare to poison Palestinian water sources.

This mutually beneficial partnership between science and industry has produced some of Israel’s largest weapons companies today, including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries.

Students should not accept normalizing our universities’ ties with complicit Israeli institutions through exchange programs or collaborations that claim to advance “scientific knowledge” and promote “economic growth.”

The academy is not apolitical

So how can academic boycotts change the reality in Palestine? The pressure exerted by boycotts on Israeli academic institutions can extend to the Israeli state. Such boycotts aim to force institutions to clarify and rectify their complicity in the occupation. Israeli politicians themselves have recognized that these boycotts could pose a “first-rate strategic threat” to Israel.

When the American Studies Association unanimously voted to boycott Israeli institutions in 2013, it foregrounded the rights of the

Palestinian students and scholars who have been systematically silenced. Joining this rising moral tide, the American Association of University Professors reevaluated its previous anti-boycott stance in August, and affirmed academic boycotts as a valuable tactic.

The global community of academics is not deaf; universities across the world are already participating in boycotts and divestment, and the University of Toronto must not fall behind.

As North American academics, we must reckon with the exceptional status of the State of Israel in our cultural, political — and by extension — academic climates. Our governments provide seemingly unconditional military and diplomatic support, irrespective of gross violations of humanitarian law and order.

Academic freedom does not exist in a vacuum. Our institutions of knowledge production have never existed as removed from historical or political contexts. This includes the material conditions under which universities were founded: the sources of funding, the land used to construct their buildings, and the public mission that universities champion.

Academic institutions have a prerogative to advance society through education, but such social development must not come at the expense of international law which our countries have signed onto, specifically the genocide convention.

I therefore call upon the members of my university community — students, staff, and faculty — to reflect on the implications of ignoring the academic freedom of our Palestinian colleagues, while privileging the academic freedom of institutions complicit in genocide and occupation.

Let us remain encouraged that even under the rubble and fire, the dreaming spires of education will never be destroyed.

Yousuf Ramahi is a second-year PhD student studying computational biophysics. He is a Graduate Studies Columnist for The Varsity’s Opinion section.

Yousuf Ramahi Graduate Studies Columnist

Institutions of knowledge production have never existed as removed from historical or political contexts.

COURTESY OF SOFYAN TAYA

Boycotts aim to force institutions to rectify their complicity in the occupation.

COURTESY OF SOFYAN TAYA

Students should not accept normalizing our universities’ ties with complicit Israeli institutions. COURTESY OF SOFYAN TAYA

Sandro Galati Varsity Contributor

No, Pierre Poilievre

is not Donald Trump Why the two leaders and their

There is a good chance that next year, both the US and Canada will be run by conservative leaders for the first time since 2009. While the US presidential race remains a coin toss, Republican candidate Donald Trump is polling significantly better than before he won in 2016. Similarly, in Canada, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is maintaining an impressive 20-point advantage in the polls.

Given their concurrent rise, Liberal opportunists on this side of the border have attempted to portray the two men as one. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland referred to Poilievre’s caucus as “MAGA maple syrup,” suggesting her opponent shares similarities with the former president.

But is this comparison — which Abacus Data reported in January that four in 10 Canadians agree with — valid?

Though the two camps have always been somewhat distinct, I believe that American Republicans and Canadian Conservatives are further apart than at any time in recent memory. For decades, they shared a relative ideological alignment. However, core tenets of ‘Trump-ism’ are now cemented into the Republican candidate’s platform, and Canadian Conservatives, in my view, have not followed in America’s footsteps.

We have a federal election approaching, and I see this clarification as necessary to better inform voters who are inclined to support or oppose Poilievre simply because they believe he is Trump.

Free trade skepticism

Of all the positions that animate ‘Trump-ism,’ the former President is perhaps most consistent in his criticism of free trade, which he blames for driving American industry and jobs overseas. During his term, Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, aiming to create a more favourable trade

parties remain markedly different

balance for the US and new labour provisions and agriculture industry policies.

Today, he is as ambitious as ever, pledging to remove the federal income tax and instead fund the government through a 10 per cent tariff — a tax imposed on goods and services entering the US. By doing so, he claims to be rejecting “the siren song of globalism” in favour of an economic model which puts Americans back in the driver’s seat.

Poilievre, by contrast, emphasizes the need to further embrace a “free enterprise approach to governance,” highlighting a plan to establish free trade with Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Far from being a “Tariff Man” — what Trump refers to himself as — Poilievre’s plan focuses on vigorously pursuing the “reduction of international trade barriers and tariffs.”

Non-interventionist foreign policy

Trump’s “America First” message also extends into the realm of foreign policy. In 2016, he famously denounced the idea of committing trillions of dollars to endless foreign conflicts and

‘LinkedIn-ification’ is ruining the university experience Why is everything transactional?

clubs become when they are filled with students who don’t actually have a passion for their objectives?

he told Republican politician Jeb Bush in a 2016 debate that the Iraq War was a “big fat mistake.”

His non-interventionism is most evident in the Russia and Ukraine war. His current running mate, JD Vance, is a vocal opponent of wartime aid. Additionally, Trump himself has said that he vows to persuade Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin into peace negotiations.

Poilievre, however, adopts a position more aligned with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: he promised that Canada would always support Ukraine. In a rally earlier this year, he criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for failing to provide an additional $400 million in air defence to Ukraine. Poilievre even derided Putin as a “tyrant” bent on global conquest — a leader whom Trump claims to have a “good relationship” with.

Immigration restrictionism

Since 2015, hardly a day has gone by where Trump does not rail against the perils of illegal immigration, which he claims involves the smuggling of “drugs” and “crime” into America.

hear, trying to appear academic and refined — ultimately extinguishing all personality from our self-presentation.

Time is money

From a labour or employment perspective, we trade our time and productivity for monetary compensation. But social connections — specifically in a university setting — shouldn’t employ the same transactional premise.

His solutions have become increasingly hardline, now including a call for the largest deportation operation in American history that targets millions of undocumented immigrants. He also took aim at legal immigration while in office. Through 472 executive actions aimed at immigration policy, Trump banned migration from seven Muslim-majority countries, stunted refugee admissions, increased green card denial rates, and oversaw reducing the number of foreign-born residents in America.

Alternatively, Poilievre’s immigration position is less defined and appears to fluctuate with public sentiment. He has criticized Trudeau for threatening to deport victims of student visa scams and for failing to fast-track the migration of high-skill applicants.

However, more recently, Poilievre has moderated his stance in response to decreased public support for immigration and suggested that Canada should tie the number of accepted immigrants to the availability of housing.

While Poilievre’s position is restrictionist, it notably differs from Trump’s. It seems to me that Poilievre views immigration as a mathematical problem, whereas Trump frames it in terms of crime and national sovereignty. I acknowledge that trade, foreign policy, and immigration are not the only issues worth considering. Nonetheless, I believe they are essential for comparing Trump and Poilievre and, by extension, American and Canadian conservatism.

Therefore, as long as Polievre’s Conservatives stand opposed to Trump on these topics, I believe they remain fundamentally different in irreconcilable ways.

Whether that is good or bad, I will leave it up to the readers.

Sandro Galati is a fourth-year student studying political science and ethics, society, and law.

exacerbated by the pandemic.

This could explain why we do everything we can to prepare ahead, as university students standing on the precipice of post-graduation in this daunting economy. We feel compelled to be relentless in our pursuit of financial stability, and this pursuit practically forces us to make everything in our academic lives transactional.

When money is our lifeblood, transactions become our means of survival.

The ‘LinkedIn-ification’ of the university experience, especially at an institution as prestigious as U of T, has shifted the emphasis on “university experience” from “university” to “experience” — and not in a good way.

While I do believe it is important to gain vocational skills and connections on campus, we need to take a step back and reevaluate how and why we build ourselves not just as people, but as brands.

I believe the ever-growing emphasis on premature professionalization at the expense of genuine self-expression prevents us from forging meaningful connections and representing our true selves when we engage in academic and professional opportunities. However, professionalism does not require impersonality.

The plague of inauthenticity

Joining clubs and finding opportunities to share and engage in our passions with like-minded peers is a fantastic way to foster friendship and connect with each other and the campus. What I oppose is viewing extracurriculars as merely a means to an end. Joining clubs solely to add bullet points to our résumés has become common among university students, reflecting the inauthenticity we use to navigate an institution with rigorous expectations. There is nothing inherently malicious about joining a club to boost your résumé or connections. However, the frequency of this raises the question: how meaningful do these

The same logic applies to professional connection-building. On more than one occasion I have heard professors woefully ask that students at least try to form some kind of genuine connection with them before mauling them with requests for letters of recommendation or spots in their research labs.

I think many people attend not only networking nights but even office hours with just one thing on their minds: professional advancement. We want so badly to develop, progress, and brand ourselves as experienced and knowledgeable that, in our pursuits, we become monotonous encyclopedias. We say what we think our superiors and peers want to

I see this phenomenon of transactional social interactions translating directly to the university realm, where we speed through homework, duck out of lectures and tutorials as soon as possible, and weave in and out of crowds of our peers.

We’re always racing toward the next thing on our schedules, never taking the time to be present in one place without worrying about what’s next.

This inability to stop looking ahead, along with our habit of trying to map out our futures as early as possible, might stem from the deteriorating economic climate. The COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point for Canada’s economy.

Soaring housing costs, challenging rental markets, unprecedented inflation, and shrinking job markets are some of the most prominent features of the current economic landscape, all of which were

Conversations with professors, attendance at office hours, membership in clubs and activities, and constantly updating our LinkedIn profiles have become rungs on the pre-corporate ladder of university institutions. They seem to suck us in, mould our minds, and pump us out on a conveyor belt — scattering us to the various professional niches for which we spend our long undergraduate years rigorously preparing.

Taking a step back

LinkedIn is not the pinnacle of academic or professional achievement; it is merely a social media outlet. Like Instagram and TikTok, we can just scroll away.

So, how do we deconstruct the ‘LinkedInification’ of the university experience? How do we stop feeling immense social pressures, obsessively comparing ourselves based on our academic achievements, and trying to curate ourselves as brands on LinkedIn rather than as university students — or as people?

I think it starts with actively delinking impersonal professionalism from academic advancement. We don’t need to attend every networking night or be involved in every club, and we don’t have to curb our personalities or self-expression when we engage in these events and with our peers.

In deconstructing the LinkedIn-ification of universities, we can unlearn our habits of repressive self-expression and obsessive opportunism.

Shontia Sanders is a third-year student at St. Michael’s College studying political science. She is an associate Opinion editor for The Varsity, and an associate editor for POLIS.

Canadian Conservatives, in my view, have not followed in America’s footsteps. COURTESY OF SHALEAH CRAIGHEAD AND JAKE WRIGHT CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Shontia Sanders Associate Opinion Editor

JENNIFER AHN/THE VARSITY

The ‘Queer Aesthetic’ isn’t real!

Don't stylize your identity in a one-stop shop

Charlotte Gray-Cyre Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article discusses homophobia.

In an age where the internet makes connecting with millions over shared interests or traits easier, forming real-life social connections can feel comparatively confusing.

Social media is a relatively recent addition to the long history of human socialization and adds a unique layer to how we interact. As someone with unlimited screen time and a knack for procrastinating, I often find myself scrolling through my X feed throughout the day — against my better judgment.

As someone who identifies as queer, my feed is, by algorithmic design, filled with fellow queer users that turn to X to connect with others in the 2SLGBTQ+ community. Through this, I came across a post from a user named @insanhitty — also known as Sanhitty Peta on Instagram — who shared a photo of himself at an upscale event.

In this photo, Peta wears a houndstooth jacket and a black sleeveless patterned shirt. He wrote: “I’ve got TERRIBLE gay face but pls help me, how do I let girls know I like girls when I interact with them, ESPECIALLY when I find them attractive[?]”

Another user, @2sandz quote-reposted with the comment, “Not wearing a sleeveless lacy button up would actually help you greatly.”

In this post, Peta expresses the struggle of failing to attract women as a result of his nonheteronormative self-presentation. Upon first reading @2sandz’s reply, I laughed in agreement with their point. Identifying as queer often involves

so when a man expresses such feelings, it’s viewed as ‘emasculating.’ Whether intentional or not, @2sandz’s comment suggests that men wearing a textile-like lace, typically associated with women’s fashion, reflects a queer, genderflipping style of self-expression.

At the moment, though, I chose not to think too hard about this and took the post purely at surface level. Many others must have done the same; @2sandz’s reply has amassed more than 106,000 likes since it was posted — a number that continues to grow.

I kept seeing more and more posts on X about Peta, with users making similar jokes about how he is ‘dressing gay’ and, as a result, not attracting the attention of the opposite sex. From this, I realized that I — and many others — share similar ideas about gendered fashion aesthetics and how they affect perception, since many people found a similar conclusion about where Peta went ‘wrong’.

Not long after seeing these posts, I started to overthink the idea that one’s fashion choices signal exactly who they’re attracted to. If someone’s personal style subtly involves ‘dressing gay’ when they aren’t, can it truly be authentic?

I hadn’t given this much thought before, so I began to reflect on how I present myself and the impressions my fashion choices leave on others. What does ‘dressing gay’ mean in a culture where sexuality and gender are increasingly viewed as fluid? Is the ability to easily spot ‘our kind’ in public a good or a bad thing? And how are queer fashion trends being co-opted by those outside the community to fit in? Questions like these may arise as we explore the cultural impacts of some of Gen Z’s favourite apps.

A captivating broken telephone

To begin analyzing the relationship between identity and fashion, I decided to look inward to find similarities between myself and Peta regarding where we get fashion tips. When I look at my wardrobe, how do I decide what to wear?

Sure, I might go through the arbitrary process of pulling out random articles of clothing and trying them on to see if they work together. But my sense of which pieces work together will differ from someone else’s — everyone has their own personal style.

Where do I go for outfit inspiration? Naturally, I turned to Pinterest. The most aesthetically pleasing of apps, serving as the headquarters for the niche trends to follow while still convincing all your friends that you just whipped it all together on a whim. Already, Peta and I have something in common: we both totally trust social media for style help.

With the world at my fingertips, I can explore what Pinterest has in store for me — my most recent dive into the platform has recommended categories like “grunge clothes” and “dark academia outfit.” These recommendations are quite eerily on point with the music and books I have recently engaged with, but if I like the pictures they show me when I click on them, I don’t think about it too deeply.

For some fellow Gen Z students at U of T, Pinterest’s recommendations suggest they should follow certain trends based on their identities.

“I sometimes search for specific clothing items I see — recently it’s been cute tops that come with a thin scarf, [which] I’ve seen a lot in East Asian fashion,” said fourth-year drama specialist Elizabeth So. As a Chinese-Canadian, So observes a connection between her cultural identity and the clothing pieces Pinterest recommends her, indicating that the platform’s algorithm conflates human traits with material self-expression.

Feeds will differ from person to person, but So and I have both noticed that fashion trends often affiliate certain lifestyles with specific ‘aesthetics’. Through online posts and fastfashion advertisements, you are sold a stylized version of your own identity in a one-stop shop. These ads may make you feel inadequate, as if dressing like these Pinterest models will somehow validate you in your community. Advertisers prey on these insecurities for monetary gain.

“I’m so used to things [like artificial intelligence recommending these trends that] my brain just blurs it out,” said So, reflecting on the normalization of targeted trends. Though individual human beings may not be actively curating the algorithm, the lasting, real-life effects of these micro-trends exist without us even consciously realizing them

‘Dressing gay’ and fitting in Popular culture today imposes fewer restrictions on the ways individuals can use fashion to express their identities, regardless

It never used to be that ‘gay’ or queer fashion choices were part of mainstream culture, or even seen as means of making a profit in general — many of these fashions existed long before the internet or social media, and were created by the 2SLGBTQ+ community for an existential purpose.

Sure, it was for fashion’s sake, but most importantly, it was for survival. In the journal Symbolic Interaction, researcher David J. Huston wrote in his article “Standing OUT/ Fitting IN” that, from the 1950s to the 1980s, “the connection between appearance and identity became salient for an individual’s life and safety.”

“Being ‘gay’ meant being visible or standing out, typically through appearances that broke gender conventions,” wrote Hutson. Drag queens, butch lesbians, and other members of the queer community were persecuted for their identities and the way they chose to visually express themselves. To fit in with the dominant heterosexual society, 2SLGBTQ+ individuals would alter or censor the way they dress so that they would be presumed as straight, so that they need not worry about whether or not they will make it home safely at the end of the day in a society rife with homophobia. But, that didn’t stop queer people from finding themselves and others like them.

Hutson mentions ear piercings, tight clothes, high-legged men’s boots, and methods of hairstyling among many other styling signals that were historically used by queer communities. They were silent forms of selfexpression, subterraneously setting the bar for experimental and artistic fashion permanently. Hutson also notes that queer fashion trends even varied based on race, gender, and country of origin. Dressing ‘gay’ can mean a hundred different categories of fashion.

Dressing ‘gay’ has multiple layers, a plethora of styles that have been built out of forced shame and hardship. Author Lisa M. Walker remarked in “How to Recognize a Lesbian”, from the special issue “Theorizing Lesbian Experience” in the journal Signs, that lesbian and gay theorists in the 1990s were noting the “performance of visible differences” between queer and straight fashion choices as key points of political autonomy, as these styles could be used as a means of dismantling

pre-conceived ideas regarding gender, race, sexuality and other identities, announcing it as not only clothing but a call to action.

However, it may be disconcerting for many queer people to see how little the political background of queer fashion is understood today, spearheaded by internet trends on my Pinterest page with each new login.

Queer-coding viral aesthetics

Okay, now picture this: you are at a bookstore, browsing through the latest novels in a curated section of greyscale book covers. You pick one up and read the synopsis on the back, the story might be set in the 1980s at a prestigious American Ivy-league school, or in the 1890s at a countryside mansion in England. You can expect the main characters to be men, and between two of these young men, there are unspoken feelings and an unacknowledged tension.

If you’re like me, this description will resonate with the storylines for many of the books you love. Notably, the brooding setting of the story and the homoerotic subtext provides some of the quintessential tropes for what is known as

‘dark academia’ — an aesthetic trend running rampant all over Pinterest and beyond. Amongst the online queer community, the seemingly androgynous staples of dark academia fashion, such as blazers and crew-necked sweaters, have allowed for the aesthetic to gain popularity. And when allusions to queerness are present in ‘dark academia’ books, like in Donna Tartt’s The Secret it’s even easier for queer people to connect to these stories.

The dark academia aesthetic is relatively new. Tartt did not write her books with the dark academia trend in mind when they were published in the 1990s. Aida Amoako, JSTOR Daily, dated the dark academia trend to the mid-2010s on Tumblr.

Kristen Bateman in the New York Times stated it skyrocketed in popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown. Dark academia has now become an aspired lifestyle — photos of two sweater-clad gentlemen almost holding hands leaning against a brick wall, or a bookshelf, are now everywhere on the internet under the tag “dark academia.”

Here’s the problem: the dark academic archetype’s toeing of the line between definite 2SLGBTQ+ representation and incredibly close friendship is at best poor representation and commodification at

worst, when the aesthetic and its superficial queer representation are taken as aspirational content by internet users and Pinterest algorithms.

When I interviewed Izzy Friesen — a graduate student at U of T studying classics — they explained how the dark academia aesthetic “treats queerness the same way it treats academia [by] engaging with it at a surface level or the level of the aesthetic.” This evasive approach avoids engaging with the nuances of these queer-coded characters and understanding why queer people might relate to them.

Dark academia books frequently end in tragedy, discussing the perils of rigorous higher education as the characters repress their authentic selves in order to succeed academically. Conversely, the visual aesthetic, as seen on Pinterest, cannot take this nuance into account, selling users the idea that they can be just like their favourite queer-coded character if they dress according to their recommended Pins.

Social media algorithms take such archetypes perpetuated in culture and coopt them into attention grabbing aesthetics for users to consume. On platforms such as Pinterest, the dark academia aesthetic thus attracts the same audiences that queer subplots in literature appeal to. Admirers of dark academia are therefore compelled to indulge in an aesthetic perpetuation of a superficial representation of queer identity.

Friesen continued, “People are treating academia as something that can be flagged like queerness but misunderstanding that [beneath]

of actual queer individuals. However, the ways that the dark academia trend depicts queerness can be misleading in their ignorance of real queer experiences, reducing the hardship faced by these characters in books to an artificial aesthetic.

The dark academia aesthetic has taken the internet by storm, but it is important to understand why many queer readers resonate so much with it before you go on to engage with it as an aesthetic or a lifestyle — which is admittedly difficult when all that is shown to you is photos and online clothing store links.

So… now what?

With all that said, I don’t believe that those outside the queer community should pack their carabiners away into a dark corner; identity and self-expression are incredibly personal matters with widely varying experiential connections. If you’re moved to buy an article of clothing because of what you’ve seen online, you’re not necessarily contributing to any false narratives about any sexual, gender, or racial identities.

The normalization of dressing ‘gay’ should be seen as having a positive impact on the world of fashion. An issue arises only when the creators and history of queer fashion are being greatly overshadowed by consumerism and algorithms that don’t show the casual scroller what exactly they’re buying into, purely pushing the ‘aesthetic’ to make money. It’s almost an insult to dress this way and not know where it came from.

The queer aesthetics or notions of dressing ‘gay’ circulated by online platforms can be detrimental and disillusioning to the queer community. However, by taking a step back to try and understand the past and present significance of trends and online aesthetics, I hope that the average social media user discovers the ways that queer people have impacted popular style. Only then can we honour them while adding our own individual flair to help the genre expand.

Acknowledging the queer history present in modern fashion is an essential step into harnessing the power of social media trends like Pinterest aesthetics, turning them from artificial internet-made products into celebrations of diverse identities and self-expressions across queer and heterosexual communities alike.

Arts & Culture

November 5, 2024

thevarsity.ca/category/arts-culture arts@thevarsity.ca

Tradwife or Trendwife?

The paradox of hyper-femininity in the age of equality

Marija Buzanin Varsity Contributor

Content warning:

This article mentions a misogynistic slur.

An impeccably dressed woman glides through her spotless, Pinterest-like kitchen — you’ve seen the video. In a raspy, composed voice, she paints a picture of domestic bliss and details how she fulfills her family’s every wish with a perfect smile.

The internet is enthralled with the thin, beautiful woman who dedicates her life to cooking from scratch for her husband and children. Is it as debilitatingly clichéd as a hallmark movie, or is it mildly horrifying like watching a slow-motion train wreck? Either way, you can’t look away.

In the era of the pantsuit’s victory over the pinup girl, how did we end up here? Are we merely longing for a simpler time, or are we aggressively chipping away at the scabs of the hard-won freedoms we’ve fought for?

An old idea in a new shape

At first glance, the tradwife’s wants and needs don’t stray too far from those of her husband and children. After all, the allure of domesticity is not relegated to its duties — it’s about the fantasy of a simpler life, free from the pressures of modernity — and who wouldn’t trade in their existential dread for the simple worry of serving perfectly timed and organic dinners every night?

Let’s take TikTok star Nara Smith as an example. In her impeccably styled home, with her uniquelynamed children, supermodel husband, and egregiously expensive fashion tastes, she insists on making everything for her family “from scratch.” When her husband wants a glass of Coca-Cola or a piece of gum, she whips it right up in a bespoke Chanel outfit. This work has even led Smith to a brand deal with Marc Jacobs, in which she carefully

and demurely “bakes” their tote from scratch.

Pretty good for a “simple” housewife, right?

This isn’t the case for Smith. While she portrays herself as a housewife only, perched in a home as immaculately composed and gentle as her own demeanour, one would never guess that Smith has been a top model since age 14. She is a working mom like any other, and says her culinary excursions are simply for her enjoyment and not the mark of brutal subservience to her husband, which a significant swathe of her critics seem to want to believe. “It’s really not that deep,” she said in response.

So, maybe the tradwife has some dimension, some hopes and dreams sprinkled throughout. Maybe, she dresses up to play house for fun. But, in this age of social loafing and globalization, no one can really make anything “from scratch” — in fact, it’s somewhat foolish to even try.

Here lies a far more interesting truth for this tradwife: far from being a victim of her domestic duties and outdated interests, she is a strategic operator — a master manipulator carefully leveraging her wifely role and our unsanctioned pity for her as part of a calculated marketing strategy, with the same calculated finesse that top business executives use to navigate the domestic economy.

The art of domestic manipulation

Smith knows she is being extra and inaccessible when she hand-slices, juices, and individually packs her children’s homemade Kool-Aid pouches instead of just reaching for the store-bought option. She knows that, at her level of fame and influence, there is no reason she couldn’t pay for organic dupes of anything her family might wish to consume.

She knows that feeding and tending to her children is labour — unpaid, stereotypically ‘womanly,’ and thankless labour, but work nonetheless. And that’s why she gets paid for

“Anthony Bourdain is my father”

The kids are uncomfortable with their mortality

it. She’s tapped into a profitable niche, with her viewers comprising those who champion her as a model of traditional femininity and those who criticize her as a throwback to anti-feminist ideals.

Every outraged podcaster, glowing endorsement, and brand deal contributes to her bottom line, allowing her to profit directly from the nostalgic allure of femininity, even as debates rage around her image.

As the cultural pendulum swings from wild hedonism to wistful domesticity, Smith profits from men’s fantasy of the ‘perfect’ wife and mother, à la Paris Hilton, who famously navigated her public “dumb” and “bimbo” persona between the realm of glamour and the image of domestic bliss, through her later ventures in cooking and home lifestyle branding.

Fooled by a pretty smile

The tradwife ideal is not just an isolated or humorous trend, but reflects broader

Nora Zolfaghari Lead Copy-Editor

Although many people think the COVID-19 lockdowns have globally become something akin to ancient history, there is still much to discuss regarding the adverse effects that the pandemic had on the youth who lived through it. One of these effects is a yearning for connection beyond just friends and family, as surviving the pandemic required us to become hermits, kept away, and at a distance from everyone — especially those we loved. Naturally, we looked for something more — like parasocial relationships.

We’ve heard it all before. Apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram provide a place for anyone with a phone and a dream to talk to any celebrity or influencer of their choosing. Since we lived to talk to our friends online, those authentic friendships began to blend with the completely arbitrary emotions we felt toward celebrities. This carved a dark tunnel for growing attachment between celebrities and their fans. For example, a 16-year-old me had a parasocial relationship with actor Josh O’Connor when I watched Season 3 of The Crown as I rotted on my bedroom floor.

Bed rotting became something like a daily ritual. Of course, this was a response to the pandemic’s unrelenting mass catastrophe, isolation, and death, but also a part of the surge of all-too-corporatized indie sleaze and ‘messy girl’ aesthetics. As a result, this ritual took a questionable turn.

Youths who grew up during lockdown suddenly began trading in their imaginary friends and Discord relationships for an “emotional support dead guy.” A since-deleted tweet that catalyzed this trend was posted on October 23, 2022, by @ saintpdf — also known as baby bri — which simply read that “every girl has an emotional support dead guy.” No punctuation, no auto caps, just another random train of thought.

cultural conversations about gender, power, and identity. In one view, she is a puppet of societal expectations, a victim of subliminal brainwashing, while in another, her perhaps outdated love of domesticity is a harmless expression of free will. A third, more nuanced view, however, puts the tradwife in a new light: she is the puppet master herself, profiting from the men’s fantasy she plays into. Whether mired in controversy or wired for success, the tradwife is the output of an increasingly globalized world reflected in the tiny microcosm of the internet, and our fascination with her is an opportunity to explore the myriad paradoxes of femininity in the twenty-first century. As we peel back the layers of this specific phenomenon and its roots in female oppression, we get to explore whether and how beauty, simplicity, and domesticity can be harnessed and cultivated in today’s culture.

But baby bri’s words did not go unsung, and suddenly there were countless slideshows of pictures of Elliott Smith, George Harrison, Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, and more racking up thousands of likes on TikTok and X.

One of my best friends has a spiritual connection with the late chef Anthony Bourdain, which goes beyond your average celebrity-fan relationship. These emotional support dead guys aren’t just your friends: they’re your brothers, fathers, and spiritual guides.

Another facet of the emotional support dead guy that one must understand is the way grief was perpetuated through TikTok. Many believe it is not a new critique that it is not normal for people to get bored if a video is longer than 30 seconds. However, as a lot of us grew up on this fast-paced content, we began to consume everything online with the same surface-level mentality. Genuine tragedies quickly become the subject of multilayered irony posting, and the era of ‘taking serious things seriously’ seems to be long behind us.

I can only assume that the reason why emotional support dead guys overtook everyone’s for-youpage the way they did is because the internet has changed the nature of grief. Creators and news outlets alike exploited death for content. To cope, many youth chose just one person — often someone who died young and tragically — to pour their grief into. Stuck at home with nothing to do, we consumed media, rotted in bed, and made slideshows about celebrities to the sound of TV Girl and Big Thief.

The emotional support dead guy sticks with you even after the trend has died. Without my friend’s passion, I would’ve never honestly sat down, thoroughly enjoyed Parts Unknown, and finally started cooking for myself without hating every second of it. The mildly fucked-up origins of internet trends can be hashed out forever, but the truth is everyone needs an emotional support, dead guy.

JISHNA SUNKARA/THE VARSITY

Ten things I regret not shoplifting

Sometimes a bit of stolen inspiration is just what we need

Divine Angubua, Milena Pappalardo Arts & Culture Editor, Short-Form Video Editor

1. A Red Bull from the cafeteria to keep me awake through my threehour Monday evening lecture.

“I need Fuuuuuuel!”

2. The juiciest red apple from the residence cafeteria because I get hungry during my three-hour Monday evening lecture.

“An apple a day sort of keeps the existential agony away.”

3. Saint Laurent oval sunglasses to let me sleep in case the Red Bull stops working mid-lecture.

“Wow, they’re so mysterious UwU! (girl blushing profusely next to them, meanwhile they look tired and disheveled and definitely asleep).”

4. The course textbook from the university bookstore because I still have not done any of the readings for this three-hour Monday evening lecture and I am utterly clueless.

“At this point, I need a miracle.”

5. Those shiny ashwagandha gummies that would’ve supposedly removed the debilitating feeling of doom that creeps up on me during my three-hour Monday evening lecture.

A pack of coloured pens to take notes with during my three-hour Monday evening lecture after my mom advised that I try seeing the world “in colour”.

“Maybe I should return to Catholicism for some actual guilt relief.”

“But no amount of colour can change the barren reality of my GPA…”

A Harvard University hoodie from a Salvation Army thrift store so that everyone in my three-hour Monday evening lecture figures I’m still recovering from being rejected three years ago.

“Awww, hopefully they get in for grad school… (person in class glancing pitifully at them).”

A new journal to write reflections in because this three-hour Monday evening lecture makes me achingly aware of my own mortality.

“I need to leave my mark on this world before I am taken from it (writing frantically, crazed look in their eyes).”

A sticker that said “Self-love is the best love” to keep me inspired during my three-hour Monday evening lecture as I try to recover the remnants of my ‘self’ through reflective journaling.

“How can I love a self I don’t even know? Who even am I?”

10. More Red Bull cans, because I have another three-hour Monday evening lecture after this.

“What do you say we keep these good vibes going!”

November 5, 2024

thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca

Why your biases are making you a bad voter

How do different types of bias

affect politics?

Aakash Anil Varsity Contributor

Let’s take a tour of the average voter: a civilian who is passionate about a small salad of topics. On other political issues, they have only a cursory understanding of complex and pressing issues and they are often uninterested in learning more, particularly with social media being a source of news and political information. Importantly, the average person is not exempt from cognitive biases and frequently acts in ways that seem bizarre or irrational.

What are cognitive biases?

Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts our minds use to help us think faster and navigate situations based on a subjectively constructed reality. However, these cognitive biases can sometimes lead us astray. If we’re not careful, they can undermine our ability to engage effectively in a democratic society. An example is during an election, when presidential candidates introduce themselves to the nation; they may use exaggerations, exploit emotions, appeal to authority figures, make confirmatory statements, and employ self-aggrandizing rhetoric to make an impression and win votes.

In a 2005 correlational study from Princeton University published in Science , students were shown one-second glimpses of unfamiliar political candidates and asked to judge their competence. Remarkably, these snap judgments were in line with the outcome of elections about two-thirds of the time, significantly better than random chance. This rapid judgment was made using the students’ pre-existing cognitive biases.

We are influenced by the opinions of those around us

A candidate’s confidence is as important as the policies they advocate. The confidence heuristic

JAYLIN KIM/THE VARSITY

occurs when people assume that a confident speaker must be correct. This can elevate charismatic leaders while overshadowing more qualified, but less assertive candidates. Regardless of what your personal politics are, one reason former US President Barack Obama garnered widespread favour — even in traditionally Republican states — was the charismatic, charming, and confident attitude he brought to speeches and debates.

There are other ways we falter based on first impressions. Anchoring bias occurs when initial numbers and data have a disproportionate influence on our decisions. For instance, the government’s proposed budget can become an anchor around which lawmakers and the public negotiate, often failing to consider whether the initial figures are appropriate. Similarly, opening statements in a debate can skew our perceptions of a candidate, shaping our overall opinions about their capabilities.

In addition to anchoring bias, another common bias that plagues our decisionmaking is confirmation bias, where we tend

A new dimension for gene regulation

The discovery that won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology

to pay more attention to information that aligns with our preexisting beliefs, ultimately reinforcing polarized views.

Our biases run deep, leading us to sometimes conform to a group’s beliefs that we don’t necessarily agree with. This is known as confirmation bias. In a 1955 study of conformity, voters were asked, “Which one of the following do you feel is the most important problem facing our country today?” They could choose from five options: economic recession, educational facilities, subversive activities, mental health, and crime. When asked individually, only 12 per cent answered ‘subversive activities.’ However, when placed in a group that already endorsed ‘subversive activities,’ 48 per cent of the new participants agreed with the group. This strong desire to conform to a group significantly shapes our choices, leading us to maintain these decisions long after the ground influence has faded, both in the political arena and beyond. Conformity studies like these have been replicated as recently as 2023.

Quin Xie Varsity Contributor

Genes are the parts of our DNA that contain the instructions to make the proteins our body needs to keep running. For a human gene to carry out its function, it must first be converted into messenger RNA (mRNA) through a process called transcription. The mRNA contains a message about how the protein is to be translated, so that specific cells can carry out their functions. The flow of information from DNA to RNA to protein is known as the central dogma of molecular biology.

The intriguing question is that if all of our cells share the same DNA, what makes the difference between things like brain cells and heart muscle cells? Furthermore, how do cells know when and where to develop in the body, so the heart muscle cells do not end up in the brain? There must be some mechanisms that ensure specific sets of genes are expressed in corresponding cell types at the right times. This is known as gene regulation.

A discovery using mutants of C. elegans

This year, developmental biologist Victor Ambros and molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun are the Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of how one such mechanism depends on microRNAs. These tiny molecules, different from the mRNA involved in the central dogma, function by binding to specific mRNAs to block their translation into proteins. Since microRNAs act after mRNAs have been made in the cell, they belong to post-transcriptional regulation.

The duo first discovered this mechanism in Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a roundworm widely used in molecular genetics and developmental biology due to its coordination of specialized and evolutionarily conserved cell types such as the nerve, muscle, and gut cells.

Biases affect everyone, whether you’re conscious of it or not It’s not only voters who fall prey to biases; politicians do as well, often with dire consequences. In 2017, former President Donald Trump justified sending more American troops to Afghanistan, and said, "Our nation must seek an honourable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives." This statement reveals a clear example of the sunk cost fallacy, which occurs when individuals continue to invest in a poor decision due to resources already expended, even when it’s no longer the best course of action.

A 2005 report to former US President George W. Bush on the events leading to the Iraq war stated, "When confronted with evidence that indicated Iraq did not have [weapons of mass destruction], analysts tended to discount such information. Rather than weighing the evidence independently, analysts accepted information that fit the prevailing theory and rejected information that contradicted it." This cognitive bias had dire consequences, as nearly 300,000 civilians lost their lives due to America’s invasion of Iraq, illustrating the tragic cost of poor political decisions made without recognizing the biases that influenced them.

With biases shaping our political landscape, it’s natural to ask why we fall prey to such heuristics. Evolutionarily, there may have been many situations where swift decision-making was more important than complete accuracy, like in life or death scenarios. Most knowledge within a species is shared; if someone presented you with information contrary to what you’ve heard, your safest bet was to ignore it. This illustrates the evolutionary incentive for cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, to evolve. These heuristics simplified a complex world and generally led to reliable decisions. However, in today’s intricate political environment, these same biases can mislead us. With the US presidential elections approaching and the world facing extreme polarization, rampant misinformation, global conflicts, and economic instability after COVID-19, it is imperative to check our biases and reflect on how they may be shaping our beliefs and choices.

C. elegans is only one millimetre long with a 100 million base pair genome. For reference, the human genome has about three billion base pairs. They independently investigated two previously discovered C. elegans mutants — lin-4 and lin14 — which had developmental defects. Ambros showed that the function of lin-14 gene was somehow inhibited by the lin-4 gene, which seemed to function only through a short mRNA molecule. Ruvkun showed that the inhibition by the lin-4 gene happened after transcription. Together, the two laureates discovered a new process regulating gene expression mediated by microRNA that targeted a specific segment in lin14 mRNA.

Over 1,000 microRNAs have now been found

The scientific community received their findings with caution after the initial publication. Previously, it was thought that proteins were the true effectors of cell functions — including gene regulation — which was carried out by a specific type of proteins called transcription factors. It was not until the discovery of another type of microRNA in animals that people started to recognize the significance of this gene regulation mechanism. The new discovery — the let-7 gene — shows that microRNAs are not a peculiarity in C. elegans, but rather a regulation mechanism common to all animals, including humans.

Today, many groups of researchers have found over 1,000 different microRNAs in humans. These molecules orchestrate complex gene networks by fine-tuning the expression of multiple genes with far-reaching biological and medical significance across multicellular organisms.

Ambros and Ruvkun’s work has reshaped our understanding of cellular machinery for gene regulation and opened new avenues for the treatment of many congenital disorders that are present from birth and cancers.

KATE CARACCI/THE VARSITY

Building the future of protein research and application

The focus for the recipients of the 2024

Lauren Nicole Robinson Varsity Contributor

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is all about proteins, the chemical building blocks and tools that virtually all living creatures use to function and thrive. The human body builds proteins from DNA to use for countless essential processes.

First, genes must overcome different processing and translation steps to produce proteins with specific functions, a theory known as the central dogma of biology. For many years, scientists did not have the tools necessary to predict what proteins are going to be built based on “untranslated” information, and whether we could dictate the design of proteins themselves.

Now, with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) from this year’s winners — Demis Hassabis,

John Jumper, and David Baker, — we can design and predict proteins with precision and impact.

The importance of proteins

Proteins are the body’s classic overachievers. These building blocks for life form the physical foundation of hormones, antibodies, transporters, and enzymes, which all aid in chemical reactions necessary to sustain life, such as replicating DNA, cell communication, and breaking down food in the stomach. Ever the workaholics, these molecules are essential to our bodily processes’ structure, function, and regulation. A protein takes shape when amino acids — the proteins’ building blocks whose sequence is coded for by our genes — are strung together in a particular order, which dictates how the protein folds and, consequently, its function. If you’re a fan of breathing, you’ll need to have the proper folding of hemoglobin, an

Nobel Prize for Chemistry is proteins

oxygen-carrying protein found in red blood cells. Improper folding can have disastrous repercussions — such as illnesses like sickle cell anemia, in which a single amino acid is substituted for another due to a genetic mutation. This switch results in a sickle shape, as opposed to the typical disc shape, a severe structural defect that impacts the blood’s ability to circulate freely, sometimes resulting in a stroke due to blocked blood flow to the brain.

Using AI to solve Levinthal’s paradox However, when it comes to predicting the structure of a protein based on its amino acids, a problem known as Levinthal’s paradox emerges. A protein is composed of a hundred amino acids, each with the ability to adopt three unique conformations. Manually creating every possible protein structure by brute force calculation would take 1010 years. That’s longer than the age of our universe and much longer than the time it takes for a cell to create a protein, which is a matter of minutes.

This paradox begs the question: how can scientists accurately derive protein structure based solely on its amino acid sequence? Many researchers tackled this paradox, but despite their herculean efforts, the best prediction software yielded results that were 40 per cent accurate at most. It seemed the issue would remain unresolved until a new player arrived on the scene.

Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google’s DeepMind, an interdisciplinary AI research lab. He developed AlphaFold — an AI system that allows scientists to predict the threedimensional coordinates of all atoms for a given protein — along with his colleague, physicist John Jumper. The team employed AI and artificial neural networks to take a data set, group it by common characteristics, and derive relationships between these similarities to form an output; in this case, a protein structure.

Designing proteins and real-life implications

Seventeen years before the birth of AlphaFold, biochemist David Baker and his lab at the University of Washington created the Rosetta program, which is a software capable of predicting protein structures with some success. Eventually, Baker and his team decided to reverse the process, inputting protein structures into the software to determine the necessary amino acid sequence. Through this novel approach, proteins can be engineered using their desired shapes, giving scientists the power to novel proteins with different functions.

AlphaFold and Rosetta have enabled scientists to tackle pressing problems in science beyond proteins. In the field of waste management, plastic decomposing enzymes have been created because of these innovations, effectively removing the time barrier to identifying the correct amino acid sequence for this novel technology. The treatment and recycling of plastic waste is essential to protect the environment, and biological enzymes can degrade waste into reusable parts that can be used to synthesize new plastics with a high degree of efficiency.

Through this technology, researchers can create more effective vaccines by attaching virus-like proteins or immunogens, to particles that the body’s immune system can recognize and protect itself from that virus in the future. By maximizing the immunogens’ visibility, our immune system can more effectively protect us from becoming sick. Scientists use the Rosetta software to create precise and large structures, thereby enhancing the body’s response to respiratory viruses.

Life itself would be inconceivable without the existence of proteins. The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry rightfully recognizes the limitless benefits of creating and predicting the structure of proteins for humanity. The combined achievements of these scientists are a testament to the critical role of large language models and machine learning in revolutionizing the future of scientific discovery.

What happens to the brain under pressure?

New research shows that in rhesus monkeys, too much pressure can lower performance

Do you ever find yourself blanking during an exam that you studied for weeks, or struggle to succeed in tasks you’re usually great at when it actually counts? If you created a hypothesis for why this phenomenon occurs, would you attribute it to a lack of motivation, a disturbance in the brain, or a decline in the rate of signals sent from the brain to our bodies? A group of neuroscientists, engineers, and researchers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, studied the brains of rhesus monkeys to uncover the reasons behind this common dilemma.

Rhesus monkey brains

‘choking under pressure’

In a 2024 paper, researcher Adam Smoulder and his colleagues discuss how the brains of rhesus monkeys react to high-pressure situations. They provided three monkeys with a computer monitor and attached a cursor to their index fingers. The task was straightforward: keep the cursor on the central target displayed in the middle of the screen, and refrain from moving it when another target appeared until the central target disappeared. If the monkeys succeeded, they were given a reward; if they failed, they faced a punishment. While all three monkeys had decent success rates for small to medium rewards, their success significantly decreased under the highest-pressure task, the jackpot.

So what caused this dip, specifically the phenomenon of ‘choking under pressure’ in these primates? The scientists found that the reward system was closely linked to the monkeys’ motor cortices, the part of their brain that is responsible for movement. When presented with a significantly larger reward than usual, the subject’s reward system became so highly stimulated that the neurons could not transmit enough information to the motor cortex’s preparation site, meaning you wouldn’t be sufficiently prepared to move. This led to the conclusion that motor performance declines when subjects are faced with a larger reward.

Applying beyond the monkey brain

So what does this mean for us humans? When faced with higher levels of rewards or potential punishment, we often find ourselves excessively monitoring our performance, becoming highly aroused, distracted, or stressed. This can lead to overstimulation of our reward systems, similar to the effects observed in rhesus monkeys. As a result, motor systems receive less signalling than usual, which diminishes our ability to effectively tackle the task at hand.

So how can we, as students and members of society, best coexist with this potential biological disadvantage? Harvard’s Business Review states that to decrease the likelihood of choking under pressure, we should practice, rationalize, and ‘just do it.’ But that’s all easier

said than done, isn’t it? People often tell us that meditation is key, and while it can be a great habit for some, what about those who find meditation to be a source of stress?

Through years of trial and error, I’ve discovered that not much of what works for others works for me. To be completely honest, I have not yet found a foolproof solution that works every time. Some techniques, like giving myself time to mentally prepare by creating a list of next steps or clenching my jaw, help much more than deep breathing exercises. Some of my friends find that imagery training

— a common technique used in sports where individuals mentally visualize success — works best for them, while others prefer to talk themselves through the activity step-by-step to find their way out.

Everyone is unique and copes with stress in their own way. With over eight billion people in the world, there could be just as many solutions. There has to be one out there that works for both you and me. So, if you ever find yourself choking under pressure, remind yourself that it could be due to your brain being stressed or overly excited, making it hard to stay still!

Sana Swenson Varsity Contributor

Sports

Joe’s Basketball Diaries: Intersection of politics and sport

An interview with U of T Vice President, International Joseph Wong

Caroline Ho Associate Sports Editor

Earlier this year, U of T’s Vice President, International Joseph Wong was quoted in The Toronto Star about his suggestions on how Toronto Raptors legend Vince Carter could be honoured in the city.

“[I have] been quoted many times in the media before, as a political scientist, but never for my ‘expertise’ as a Raptors fan,” Wong posted on X in response to the article.

For many, basketball serves as a beacon of community. It provides opportunities for people to come together and delve into issues that are prevalent not just in sports but in the world around us. Wong, also a professor at U of T’s Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, is no exception to this philosophy.

The Varsity sat down with Wong in an exclusive interview to talk basketball, podcasts, and politics.

Last year, Wong hosted Joe’s Basketball Diaries, a six-episode video series on the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy website discussing the ups and downs of basketball and its intersections with global affairs and politics. A Toronto Raptors season-ticket holder since 2004, he has featured guests on his panel including former Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, AsianAmerican trailblazer Jeremy Lin, and two-time Olympian and Varsity Blues women’s basketball head coach Tamara Tatham.

Wong is a self-proclaimed “die hard” Raptors fan. Basketball has always been something that his family has enjoyed, with his mother having played basketball during her time at university in Taiwan. However, he describes himself as

becoming a “delusional fan” who developed an “irrational love for the Toronto Raptors” over time, with the Raptors’ first NBA championship win in 2019 “[cementing his] and a lot of people’s love of both basketball and the Toronto Raptors.”

In addition to being a basketball fan, Wong describes himself as an avid “consumer of basketball podcasts” — most notably The Raptors Show (now relaunched as Hello and Welcome) hosted by Will Lou and Alex Wong. Like its many listeners, he enjoyed tuning in to hear conversations about playing basketball, ChineseCanadian heritage, and the multicultural sport communities that support basketball. Intrigued by the concept of building a community made up of “tens of thousands of listeners who don’t know each other but feel an affinity with one another,” Wong said he saw the value of sport and the community, which culminated in the fruition of Joe’s Basketball Diaries

Wong also credits the conception of Joe’s Basketball Diaries to an article he read about sports and social activism in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) magazine Pursuit written by Jelena Damjanovic, a public relations officer at U of T. Damjanovic discusses why some athletes are also social activists, drawing from the Black Lives Matter movement, where the WNBA led the charge in solidarity, and the NBA followed suit to make a powerful statement on the systematic oppression of Black people in the US. Wong describes the example as signifying how it is “quite clear that sports have this amazing impact when it comes to things that we as a society and we as individuals care about.”

Wong factored the aspects of sport,

Blues dominate in home opener against TMU Bold

Alvarez’s 24-point night leads team to first Metro Hoops Classic

The Varsity Blues routed the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold in an 84–67 win on November 1 at the Goldring Centre. With the win, the Blues claimed the inaugural Men’s Metro Hoops Classic, a brand new series between the Blues and their local “Line 1 Derby” rivals, and their second win of the regular season.

What happened?

Guard Iñaki Alvarez led the charge with a gamehigh 24 points with four three-pointers and three steals. Alongside him was second-year guard Simeon Jeffers adding 20 points of his own and five rebounds. Third-year forward Nigel Hylton contributed eight points, five rebounds, a block, and a steal off the bench to help the Blues’ lockdown defense in a hard-fought win.

The player of the game for TMU Bold was guard Aaron Rhooms, who put up 23-points with four steals and three blocks, while guard Javier Gilgeous-Glasgow led the team with five assists and nine points of his own.

A neck-in-neck first quarter suggested that this game would be a 48-minute dogfight. Neither team held more than a three-point lead, with the Blues and Bold going head-to-head into a 19–19 stalemate at the end of the quarter.

community, and social activism into Joe’s Basketball Diaries, where he aimed to “use sports as a lens through which to understand society around us.” In episode three, he highlighted this lens in a conversation with Janelle Joseph — an assistant professor of Critical Studies of Race & Indigeneity at KPE — whose IDEAS Research Lab wrote a “very powerful and impactful report” on the state of racism in collegiate sports in Ontario. The report included the stereotypes she had to contend with, and how these issues can “permeate into community-level and collegiate level sports.”

Wong also discussed how he enjoyed filming the series’ sixth and final episode, “Women in Sports,” where he talked about the impact of Title IX — a landmark US federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools.

“What was really amazing was talking to these [women] athletes, coaches, leaders, and so forth and [hearing] their own experiences with continued gender discrimination, and then the intersectional discrimination they might face… it was one of those conversations where I just sat back and listened, and [really] took it all in. I think viewers who watched the show got a sense of that as well.”

In addition to providing a unique approach to talking about global issues, Wong also believes that sport can serve as “a critical driver in global development.” He stated that his dream podcast guest would be Raptors President Masai Ujiri — “not because [he’d] ask him about the Raptors, but rather [because of] his work with the Giants of Africa, which is his effort to use basketball to facilitate youth development in several countries in Africa.”

Giants of Africa is a not-for-profit organization that travels across Africa to enrich the lives of African youth through basketball, both on and off the court. While the initiative is centred around basketball, it is a proponent of access to education, health services, and other youth supports, and is “designed to provide young people in Africa with the skills and confidence through basketball to become global citizens.”

Joe’s Basketball Diaries exemplifies how sport is not just a form of entertainment but also an indicator of the greater world around us. The series reflects a multitude of sociopolitical attitudes, and serves as an everyday reminder of how injustices are embedded within all aspects of life, affecting people in explicit and implicit ways.

Alvarez led the Blues with eight points, including two three-pointers against Rhooms, who had eight points and two three-point shots of his own.

The second quarter saw the game blown open by the Blues, outscoring the Bold 26–16. Fourth-year guard Quarry Whyne led the charge with perfect shooting this quarter and adding three rebounds and a steal to help seal the first half with a 10-point lead.

The rest of the game was a Blues affair. With a game-high 17-point lead midway through the third quarter, the Blues were able to capitalize on 19 turnovers from the Bold for 26 points and out-rebounded TMU for an extra 18 points. The Bold’s free throw struggles only added to their troubles, scoring 2 of 10 on the night. The Bold weren’t able to come back from the third-quarter lead and the game ended in a decisive win for the Blues.

What’s next?

The Blues hosted the Algoma University Thunderbirds at the Goldring Centre on November 3, beating them 114–41. The team will then play a midweek matchup against the University of Waterloo Warriors on November 6, as they look to continue their positive start to the season.

Garrett Dai Varsity Contributor

Iñaki Alvarez puts up a contested bucket. COURTESY OF ZIKANG DENG CC VARSITY BLUES MEDIA

JAYLIN KIM/THEVARSITY

Blues' championship dreams end in quarterfinals

Men’s soccer team lose 5–2 to Ontario Tech

Bruno Macia Men’s Soccer Columnist

On the night of October 23, the strong winds at Varsity Stadium blew away the championship dreams of the Varsity Blues men’s soccer team. The team’s championship hopes ended abruptly with a 5–2 loss to Ontario Tech University in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) playoff quarterfinals. The Blues entered the OUA quarterfinal match

with high expectations. Playing on home turf, they faced the fifth-seeded Ridgebacks, who dominated the game from start to finish, ending the Blues’ 2024–2025 title campaign.

What happened?

It was a surprising start to the game for those watching. The Ridgebacks pressed hard on the Blues’ defense, forcing them to clear the ball from deep in their own half of the field multiple times.

and allowed the Ridgebacks to get close.

The opening goal came 22 minutes into the game, when Ridgebacks defender Alexander Irwin seized an opportunity, stopping a cross with his chest and placing it in the net. A few minutes later, defender Alex Maadanian crossed the ball from the left side, finding defender Matthew Keeler alone in the penalty box, who scored to make it 2–0.

The Blues appeared disorganized and unable to execute the cohesive play that had propelled their success throughout the season. Recognizing the situation, Coach Ilya Orlov got forward Niklas Hallam off the bench at the 37-minute mark.

Before the end of the first half, another high ball from the left flank found both Blues goalkeeper Maxwell Campeau and Irwin in the air. The ball dispute resulted in a goal for the visiting team, leaving the Blues down 3–0 at halftime.

The second half of the game felt like a massive

Erratic passing by the Blues in the midfield allowed the Ridgebacks to find space and the ball. At the 53-minute mark, Maadanian stole the ball, sprinted alone, and scored from outside the box, bringing the Ridgebacks’ lead to 5–0.

Toronto fought hard in the last 30 minutes of the match. A foul in the box resulted in a penalty kick, and forward Andrea Schifano’s subsequent penalty found the net at the 81-minute mark, making the score 5–1.

At the 90-minute mark, Blues Captain Mehdi Essoussi carried the ball into the goal box, assisting forward Kingsley Belele who scored the final goal, ending the match at 5–2.

What’s next?

The Blues have been eliminated from the OUA championship. Nonetheless, it was a fantastic season for the team, showcasing great matches from a squad that will miss key senior players who

Rebuilding the Raptors: A

2023–2024 review and 2024–2025

preview

Toronto looks to youth for inspiration in the new season

Anthony Carbone Varsity Contributor

With falling leaves, pumpkins aplenty, and Thanksgiving meals, October has arrived — and so has the return of the NBA.

Raptors fans are more excited than ever, and after what they witnessed last season, everyone is ready for a fresh start. How will the Raptors fare this year? Let’s preview the 2024–2025 Toronto Raptors season.

Last season

The 2023–2024 Raptors season was one to forget for Toronto basketball fans. The team’s performance was unbearable, finishing with a 25–57 record — the fourth-worst in franchise history. This record is just ahead of the 2010–2011 season (22 wins), the 1995–1996 season (21 wins), and the expansion-era 1997–1998 season, which saw only 16 wins.

Everything seemed to fall apart for the Raptors on March 1 against the Golden State Warriors when Raptors small forward Scottie Barnes fractured his hand while contesting a layup, causing him to miss the rest of the NBA season.

Without Barnes, they were easily the worst team in the NBA in the last five weeks of the season, as the Raptors went on to post a 3–19 record to finish the campaign.

The news of Barnes’ season-ending injury was a blow to Raptors fans, compounding the disappointment of seeing his best season derailed. Barnes was averaging a career-high 19.9 in points, 8.2 rebounds, and 6.0 assists as the key piece in the Raptors’ rebuild.

While the play on the court was disappointing, off-the-court scandals — particularly one involving Jontay Porter — ultimately sealed the team’s fate. The former Toronto Raptors center received a lifetime ban from the NBA after an internal investigation revealed that he had placed bets on basketball games and provided information to another bettor to improve their odds of winning.

This news broke the NBA, with many players expressing their disbelief at Porter’s actions. “I never [encountered a] situation like this before,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković.

Along with finishing the season with a dismal record, the Raptors saw their hopes for a top-10 pick dashed. After the first half of the 2023–2024 season, they aimed to tank for a lower position in the league, hoping to increase their chances of securing a top10 overall draft pick via the draft lottery. However, this strategy ultimately yielded no result. Instead, they acquired Jakob Poeltl, and the eighth overall pick was traded away to the San Antonio Spurs. The Raptors had to wait until the 19th pick when they drafted Ja’Kobe Walter.

The 2023–2024 Raptors season was marked by disarray, as the team experienced several low points, including the largest home loss in franchise history — a 48-point differential — and a 15-game losing streak in April. To say last season was difficult for Raptors fans is an understatement.

So, what can Raptors fans look forward to this season?

New signings

In June, the Toronto Raptors bolstered their young roster by signing center Branden Carlson as a free agent in a two-way deal and trading Jalen McDaniels to the Sacramento Kings for forward Davion Mitchell, Sasha Vezenkov, and the No. 45 pick.

Both players are expected to receive decent minutes per game as the Raptors aim to build chemistry along with their current players and new additions.

July was Toronto Raptors President Masai Ujiri’s busiest month of the offseason. He made several selections in the 2024 NBA draft, most notably selecting guard Walter for a rookie contract as well as point guard Jonathan Mogbo. Adding these pieces will help the Raptors build for the future.

The Raptors are strategically adding young talent while also acquiring seasoned veterans to support their development. In free agency, the Raptors signed veteran shooting guard Garrett Temple to mentor the younger players, along with another youngster, point guard Jamal Shead.

Contract extensions

In addition to signing new players, two key Raptors players were up for a new contract, starting with former New York Knicks guard Immanuel Quickley. The deal is worth around $175 million over five seasons. Quickley is an exceptional player who will contribute significantly to the team’s growth.

The biggest signing of the summer for the Raptors was Barnes’ maximum rookie contract extension. Barnes’ contract is worth $225 million and could rise to $270 million if he meets the supermax criteria. Like Quickley, Barnes’ deal is also for five years. With this signing, the Raptors

have established their core for what appears to be a rebuilding phase for the organization.

Expectations

What can we expect from this year’s Toronto Raptors? For fans hoping the Raptors could contend for a playoff spot, sorry to say, it doesn’t look like that will happen. The team is still in the process of finding their identity, and their core players are still too green. During a press conference on September 30, Ujiri was asked to describe the upcoming season, to which he replied, “I would use the word rebuilding.”

Looking on the bright side, the Raptors now have a clear direction for the team. With the right young pieces surrounding them, they could become a force to be reckoned with in a few years.

Fans have seen many players come and go with the Raptors, but with a young core that includes Barnes, Quickley, Gradey Dick, and others, they can feel optimistic about the team’s long-term future.

A Raptors fan gazes into the Toronto skyline.

Forward Andrea Shifano weaves through Ontario Tech’s defense. COURTESY OF ARU DAS CC VARSITY BLUES MEDIA

Forward Kingsley Belele whips in a cross from the wing. COURTESY OF ARU DAS CC VARSITY BLUES MEDIA