Issue 13, (Volume 144) (January 8, 2024)

January 8, 2024

THE VARSITY The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880

Vol. CXLIV, No. 13

Graduate RAs at Daniels call out widespread mistreatment, demand USW representation Campaigners presented a supermajority petition to the dean faculty on Thursday Georgia Kelly Business & Labour Editor

Masters students at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design have launched a campaign calling on administrators and faculty to end allegedly unethical employment conditions for research assistants. Students’ objections include drastically low pay rates, pressure to underlog their hours, and a lack of respect for students’ boundaries between their working hours and personal lives.

On November 30, Izzy Mink, Bhavika Sharma, and Jessica Palmer — masters students at Daniels who organized the campaign — were joined by fellow Daniels masters students to deliver a petition outlining the campaign’s demands to the Dean’s office and to various faculty heads. According to the organizers, the petition includes signatures from 75 per cent of the graduate students at

Daniels; organizers also noted that 99.6 per cent of the students they approached agreed to sign the petition.

The campaign’s two central demands are as follows. First, faculty should be employing all students doing research assistant (RA) work through “official Research Assistant contracts,” which are protected by a collective agreement between the United Steel Workers (USW) Local 1998 and U of T’s central administration.

The campaign defines the work of RAs as “any job taken to assist a professor,” excluding Teaching Assistants’ (TA) work, whether or not the worker is officially designated as an RA. Secondly, and more simply, the campaign demands that all graduate students doing research assistant work should receive at least $25 an hour. Mink, Sharma, and Palmer noted in an interview with The Varsity that they prioritize the pay increase, whether or not their demand for USW representation is successful.

Feature: The uncertainty of life after graduation Pg 10

As of the time of publication, the campaign has not yet received a response from U of T. The university declined The Varsity’s request for comment on the students’ demands.

The complaints The 14-student group occupied the Dean’s office for a few minutes after they delivered the petition and shared stories of their mistreatment as employees.

Mink shared that she started her Work Study position in summer 2022, and received $15 an hour as compensation. “I thought it was really a great opportunity,” she said. Later, Mink described that she attended a conference where she met two architecture students, which she characterized as essentially working the same job, at Toronto Metropolitan University and Dalhousie University, respectively. “One was making $26 an hour, one was making $28 an hour,” she recounted.

News: SCSU Vice President equity resigns Pg 2

News: UTGSU & UTMSU AGMS discuss governance, Palestine activism Pgs 3 & 4

In an interview with The Varsity, Mink explained that the Work Study program essentially means professors are not bound by USW 1998’s collective agreement with the university administration for RA positions. This collective agreement doesn’t represent Work Study students. A Work Study position is specifically tied to a student’s Degree Program, and is largely funded by the university department offering the position. Since these positions are considered part of students’ education, they are also exempt from Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, which sets out basic conditions for workers hired through typical employers, such as vacation pay.

Palmer recounted to The Varsity that she’d been told by fellow students that their professors would encourage them to log fewer hours than they had actually worked, “saying, you know, ‘are you sure that took you 15 hours? Because it took so-and-so ten hours.’”

Continued on page 7

News: Five years of a smoke free campus Pg 6

Sports: Paralympian Stephanie Dixon on her U of T graduation Pg 18

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The Varsity would like to acknowledge that our office is built on the traditional territory of several First Nations, including the Huron-Wendat, the Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. Journalists have historically harmed Indigenous communities by overlooking their stories, contributing to stereotypes, and telling their stories without their input. Therefore, we make this acknowledgement as a starting point for our responsibility to tell those stories more accurately, critically, and in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples.

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SCSU Vice President Equity Denise Nmashie resigns, citing changing academic goals Applications for the VP equity position was open until January 2 James Bullanoff UTSC Bureau Chief

On December 13, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) announced on Instagram that it had opened applications for its vice-president (VP) equity position. The announcement came after former VP Equity Denise Nmashie resigned over the weekend.

Nmashie explained that her resignation came into effect on December 11. “I stepped down just to follow academic pursuits,” she wrote in a message to The Varsity. She noted that, according to the SCSU bylaws, executive members can only take up to 1.5 credits per semester, but she wanted to take more than three classes.

Back in March, Nmashie campaigned unopposed for the position. In an interview with The Varsity ahead of the election, she described herself as a “change maker” and highlighted her experience as president of the UTSC African Students’ Association.

During her time as VP equity, Nmashie reported that she’d helped advance multiple SCSU projects, including a collaboration with the International Students Association and the Women and Trans Center to provide programming for Queer Orientation. She also served as part of a committee hiring a new Indigenous and Black counselor for UTSC’s Health and Wellness Centre as a part of the SCSU’s MY HEALTH MATTERS campaign.

Nmashie engaged with Black student groups with the hope of addressing the disproportionate dropout rate among Black students at UTSC. Alongside VP External Khadidja Roble, she also serves on the AntiBlack Racism and Black Inclusion Advisory Committee, which advises UTSC’s executive team, including Vice-President and UTSC Principal Wisdom Tettey.

“It has been an amazing [eight] months with SCSU,” wrote Nmashie. “I look forward to the amazing work SCSU and the new Equity will achieve.”

In an email to The Varsity, Amrith David, president of the SCSU, wrote that the union “thank[s] Denise for her time with SCSU and wish[es] her well in her future endeavors.” He also wrote about the short turnaround for the position: “My team is eager to have the position filled as early as possible…we are hopeful that students will be able to apply by the deadline, but if need be can extend it for more applications”.

Applications for the position were open until January 2. Students registered in a UTSC full-time undergraduate program and not taking more than 1.5 credits in the upcoming semester were able apply for the position.

According to SCSU bylaws, the executive team will interview candidates and choose at most two candidates to present to the January Board of Directors meeting, who will elect the new VP. The date of this January meeting has not yet been determined. The new VP is then slated to begin their term on January 15.

U of T cancels Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health minor, prompting backlash Change threatens students’ mental health, academic diversity, students and professors say Sharon Chan Varsity Contributors

U of T recently decided to discontinue New College’s Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health (BPMH) program. This decision prompted criticism from faculty and students, and concerns about mental health and course offerings. In response, students have organized sit-ins and a petition calling on the university to retain the program.

The university cited “operational inefficiencies stemming from a lack of dedicated full-time continuing faculty” in its decision to shut down the BPMH program, according to Arts & Science Student Union President Anusha Madhusudanan, who has been in consultations with the university.

As of January 7, the program’s website states that “enrolment in the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health Minor will be administratively suspended as of January 31, 2024, and students will no longer be able to enrol in the program.”

A sudden shutdown According to a November press release from Professor Frances Garrett, the director of the BPMH program, and student organizers, New College Principal Yves Roberge told students and faculty that the college planned to close enrollment in the program this year.

Garrett shared in an interview with The Varsity that she was on a research trip in Nepal when she heard about the program’s shutdown. “They announced the closure of the program and the suspension of new enrollments into the program before they had consulted anyone, not even the faculty… that itself is very strange. It’s very sudden,” she said.

Garrett is also unhappy with the university’s reasoning for the shutdown, as she said that many related departments with faculty would be

thrilled to teach in and support the program.

“It isn’t a sign of their commitment to mental health among students, that’s for sure,” she said. She also added that the university lacks awareness of movements currently supporting student well-being in academic programs in other North American institutions, including UCLA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and University of Virginia.

Aside from concerns over the university’s attitude toward students’ mental health, there are also concerns over the university’s attitude toward cultural diversity and inclusion in academia.

“The uniqueness of the BPM program lies in its approach, which places value on Eastern perspectives in mental health and psychology— an aspect often overlooked in other analyses within the university's psychology departments,” wrote Madhusudanan in an email to The Varsity.

According to Calista Barber, a BPMH peer mentor, the students and professors who have been organizing for the program plan to continue advocating for it in the new year, as they believe that the program has enabled them to form rich, deeper, relationships with their peers, their communities and the world around them.

The program’s origins Founded in 2007 in New College, the program grew from 34 students in the 2007–2008 school year to a total of 308 students in 2020–2021, becoming the second-largest program at the college. According to the program’s website, many BPMH courses typically have long waiting lists.

With a focus on mindfulness — the practice of paying attention to the present — many BPMH courses draw on contemplative pedagogies, which encourage students to connect their lived, embodied experiences to ideologies they learn in the classroom.

Jennifer Bright, assistant professor of Buddhist Spiritual Care and Counselling

at Emmanuel College, also said she was disappointed about the university’s decision.

According to Bright, many of her students have shared with her that they deal with serious personal and intergenerational trauma. She says that they saw BPMH courses as a life-changing program, as it encourages students to take positive steps towards their mental well-being.

Student opposition to the shutdown According to Madhusudanan and Barber, students, in particular, have been actively pushing back against the BPMH’s closure.

Peers Are There to Help (PATH), a peer support network in the program, and the Buddhism and Psychology Student Union (BPSU) started a petition that had accrued more than 1,500 signatures as of January 5, 2024. The groups have also met with the New College administration through student consultations to “voice community concerns” and “[seek] clarification on the rationale behind the program's discontinuation,” according to Madhusudanan.

In addition, PATH and BPSU have hosted a joint sit-in at Sidney Smith Hall to demonstrate support for the BPMH program.

So far, according to Madhusudanan, the university has confirmed that “[the] proposed program closure will not be discussed in January governance meetings, which allows more time for the promised consultation processes.”

“The collective efforts of students and professors reflect a shared commitment to preserving a program that has played a vital role in fostering a unique and enriching educational experience,” wrote ​​Madhusudanan.

With files from Cedric Jiang.

U of T did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment in time for publication.

JESSICA LAM/THE VARSITY

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Graduate students pass motion to look into suing U of T over BDS Caucus Students vote against appointing interim VPs, pass financial audit at UTGSU AGM Jessie Schwalb News Editor

At the University of Toronto Graduate Student Union’s (UTGSU) December 7 Annual General Meeting (AGM), members voted to allow the union to hold a byelection for Board of Directors (BOD) positions. They also reinstated the union’s Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) caucus, which advocates against the Israeli government, and established a committee to coordinate advocacy for increased graduate funding.

Much of the meeting was spent talking about the process for appointing executive committee members in the case of vacancies.

Members voted down an amendment to the bylaws allowing the BOD to appoint executive committee members if a by-election proved infeasible. However, the current executive committee members pointed out that the Canadian Not-for-profit Corporations Act (CNCA) still allows the BOD to appoint executives. They stated that, as a result, the two interim executives the BOD appointed in November — Friedemann Krannich and Jady Liang, who are serving as interim Vice President (VP) internal and external respectively — could remain in their positions.

Around 250 people attended the approximately three-hour-long hybrid Zoom and in-person meeting, with about 50 attending in person.

To appoint or not to appoint?

The union began the academic year with one of six executive committee positions vacant; in last year’s elections, no one ran for the position of VP academics for divisions 1 & 2, which represents the humanities and social sciences. On September 28, the BOD voted to suspend President Lynne Alexandrova from office. VP Internal Aanshi Gandhi stepped down from her role on October 4. On November 7, VP External Neelofar Ahmed resigned. This had left only two executive committee positions filled.

At its November 7 special meeting, the BOD delegated the tasks and payment for Interim VP Internal and External to Krannich and Liang, respectively, pending confirmation from the union’s legal counsel that the decision was “legally possible with the bylaws and the [CNCA].”

At the AGM, BOD member and molecular biology doctoral student Vida Maksimoska proposed a motion that would add wording to the bylaws allowing the BOD to fill executive committee vacancies before the AGM if the union doesn’t hold a byelection for them. UTGSU members would then decide whether to approve the appointment at the AGM.

VP Academics and Funding Divisions 3 and 4 Mohammadamir (Amir) Ghasemian Moghaddam argued in favour of the motion. “It allows the union in times of need, special circumstances, to implement something that actually benefits the membership — to have people in the office that can get the job done,” he told attendees.

Former VP External Ahmed spoke against the motion, criticizing the BOD for having already appointed Krannich and Liang before the bylaws explicitly allowed it to do so. She argued that holding by-elections would allow more people to run, diversifying representation.

30 per cent of attendees voted in favour of the motion, so it did not carry.

Later in the meeting, Maksimoska moved a motion to ratify Krannich and Liang as VP internal and external, respectively, which couldn’t move forward because members had not passed the bylaw amendment. The chair, Sandhya Mylabathula, suggested that members could construct an additional motion to suspend the bylaws temporarily and vote on whether to accept Krannich and Liang’s appointments, but members did not carry the motion.

When asked during the meeting whether the lack of ratification nullified Krannich and Liang’s appointments, Moghaddam said that, in the absence of a specific bylaw, the UTGSU defers to the CNCA and that the CNCA gives the BOD power to appoint executives. As such, he said that Krannich and Liang will remain appointed.

According to the UTGSU bylaw article 7.3, the BOD has “full authority” to establish a by-election to fill vacant executive committee positions at any time except during scheduled university closures.

According to article 142 of the CNCA, subject to the union’s bylaws or “unanimous member agreement,” directors of a not-for-profit corporation can appoint people as officers. However, those appointed officers cannot submit questions to members requiring their approval, fill BOD vacancies, issue debt, approve financial statements, change the corporation’s bylaws, or establish new dues for members to pay.

In an email to The Varsity, the union’s new Executive Director Cory Scott wrote that the union is still determining how it will fill vacant executive committee positions in situations where a byelection may not be feasible. The BOD plans to consult with legal counsel and review ways to resolve this issue for the rest of the term.

BOD and executive-proposed motions Students passed two of the motions set forward by the BOD. First, they added a portion to the bylaws allowing the union to hold byelections during the AGM for vacant BOD positions. Maksimoska

motivated the motion, noting the many vacancies on the BOD, and members expressed their desire to have those positions filled.

Ahead of the AGM, the union had already announced a by-election to fill the vacant BOD seats, announcing that voting would take place during the time of the AGM — from 7:00 pm on December 7 to 11:59 am on December 8. Seven hundred and four students — 3.3 per cent of the UTGSU membership — voted in the by-election, which filled 12 of the 23 vacant BOD positions.

Second, the members passed a motion allowing the BOD to schedule a board meeting if 25 per cent of the BOD and at least two members voted in favour of holding it. The UTGSU’s bylaws and policy didn’t previously specify whether the BOD could call a meeting of its own accord. Krannich noted that, according to bylaw 7.7.1, the VP internal is responsible for scheduling BOD meetings. The bylaw change aimed to ensure that the BOD could call its own meetings if the union lacked a VP internal — which the union experienced earlier this semester.

Members also passed a motion accepting the UTGSU’s 2023 audited financial statement and appointing the same auditors for the next year.

An audit ensures that an organization’s financial statements are fair and accurate. According to the auditor’s report, the financial statements accurately reflect the UTGSU’s financial position and follow accounting standards. As of August 31, 2023, the union brought in $828,082 more than it spent over the year.

BDS Caucus reinstated, students call for suit against U of T Krannich additionally motivated a motion to remove the BDS Caucus from the UTGSU bylaws and policies. BDS is a Palestinian-led movement that aims to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territory through economic pressures.

In 2021, the Complaint and Resolution Council for Student Societies ruled that the BDS caucus broke the UTGSU’s policies prohibiting discrimination based on nationality and recommended that the union make the fee optional. The union refused, and the U of T administration decided to withhold student fees allocated to the caucus in 2022.

At its October meeting, the BOD voted to support removing the caucus. Krannich noted that the UTGSU hoped to remove the caucus so the union could use the money that had been withheld by the university. However, Scott clarified to attendees that U of T only withheld money the union explicitly collected for the caucus.

Members voted down the motion to remove the caucus.

RUESHEN AKSOY AND JESSICA LAM/THE VARSITY

Members also passed two motions proposed by criminology and sociolegal studies PhD student Sabeen Kazmi. The first motion recommended that the union recognize anti-Palestinian racism as a class of discrimination, note this form of racism in the union’s equity statement, and take action to support students’ rights to academic freedom when researching or speaking on Palestine. The motion specifically mentions a “surge” in doxxing of individuals who express pro-Palestinian views since October 7.

Geography PhD student Majd Al-Shihabi spoke in favour of the motion, noting instances such as the Azarova and Faculty of Law scandal where he believes U of T silenced Palestinian voices. “All of these [instances] have led me to change my PhD topic to something not Palestine-related because I am feeling the pressure,” he said. “This is a motion to recognize the anti-Palestinian racism that myself and other Palestinian students are facing.”

Kazmi’s second motion recommended that the union reinstate the BDS caucus and pursue legal action against U of T administration for withholding funds from the caucus, claiming that U of T’s decision to withhold funds violated its commitment to academic freedom and represented a “clear example” of anti-Palestinian racism.

Additional motions from membership Former BOD member and pharmaceutical sciences PhD student Chris Rogers proposed two motions that members carried.

One recommended that the BOD vote to run a referendum asking students whether they agreed to a 50-cent-per-year levy supporting the Canadian University Press, a nonprofit national organization connecting student newspapers.

The other tasked the union with filling the union’s Board of Appeal seats and ensuring it can function as soon as possible. According to the UTGSU’s bylaws, members can appeal any decision made by the BOD, the elections and referendum committee, or the equity officer to the Board of Appeal, which issues a final ruling on the decision.

Scott clarified in an email to The Varsity that the Board of Appeal currently has no members. The BOD plans to establish a committee that will interview candidates for the Board of Appeal.

Rogers also proposed an additional motion to record and livestream all of the union’s assembly, BOD, and executive committee meetings to increase “accountability and transparency.” Scott said that recording particular meetings that discuss finances might open the union to liability, and the motion did not carry.

PhD candidate Julian Nickel proposed a motion to create a committee that would coordinate action across U of T to secure increased funding for graduate students, which students also passed.

During the approval of the agenda, members agreed to amend it to add a motion from Ahmed for members to vote on later in the meeting.

The motion asked the UTGSU to withhold the honoraria usually paid to UTGSU directors from those who had not taken anti-oppression training.

It also stipulated that directors who didn’t attend the training within the 30 days after the union suspended their honorarium would be automatically removed from office, following policy G9.1 of the UTGSU policy handbook.

In a November email to The Varsity, Moghaddam wrote that four BOD members had not yet taken the training due to scheduling delays. Following the AGM, Scott wrote to The Varsity that the four board members have since received the training and that the union has not issued any honorariums for BOD members up to this point. Scott wrote that the UTGSU plans to hold a mandatory equity and antioppression training for new and incoming directors and officers once new BOD members start their terms in January. He noted that many “unforeseen circumstances” had resulted in staff, BOD, and executive committee vacancies that delayed trainings this past semester.

The meeting time ran out before members could discuss the motion.

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Students pass motion to officially take “proPalestine stance” at UTMSU 2023 AGM Union says it will look into increasing club funding, discusses plans for lobby week

Kamilla Bekbossynova UTM Bureau Chief

At the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) Annual General Meeting (AGM) on November 29, 2023, students passed motions for the union to explore increased funding for campus clubs and officially adopt a “pro-Palestine stance” that will affect all clubs and services the UTMSU funds.

Approximately 100 students engaged in the two-hour AGM, which is held so all UTM students can propose and vote on important changes to the union.

Increased funding for campus clubs Students passed a motion proposed by UTMSU Executive Director Felipe Jiyudim Nagata for the union to explore options for increasing the funding the UTMSU allocates to support clubs — including starting funds it provides to new clubs — and report back to membership.

During the meeting, students discussed restructuring the union’s funding considerations for new and recognized clubs, including funding criteria tied to membership size, event participation, and potential awards.

Students also passed a motion from Talha Çelik, Executive Director of the UTM Cobra Muay Thai Club, for the UTMSU to provide “endorsement and support” to the club’s efforts at cultural exchange with European universities.

The UTM Cobra Muay Thai Club is part of the International Traditional Taekwondo Association Federation, and has partnered with a European Union (EU) project meant to establish “deep institutional transnational cooperation in martial arts studies alongside European Universities.” Cobra Muay Thai hopes to share resources with the UTMSU, promoting internships and creating job opportunities on campus through funding it receives from the EU in grants tied to the initiative.

In a January 7 message to The Varsity, Nagata said that the executive team had not yet met with the UTM Cobra Muay Thai Club to discuss what support it would need and clarified that the UTMSU would not be providing financial support to the club.

UTMSU passes motion affirming support for Palestine Students also passed a motion to affirm the union’s support for the Palestinian people and “their ongoing struggle against the occupation of Gaza.”

The motion called for the UTMSU to stand in solidarity with the call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Additionally, the motion tasked the union’s Divest Now campaign — which has previously advocated for fossil fuel divestment — with advocating for the divestment from weaponry manufacturers and other corporations that are funding the Israeli military’s attacks in Gaza.

It also called on the UTMSU to continue lobbying the university administration to improve accommodations for students affected by the violence in Gaza and Israel. The motion committed the UTMSU to create a comprehensive resource booklet — including contacts for legal counsel, information on individual rights, and guidance on engaging in peaceful protests — for students seeking to engage in “organized… Palestinian liberation and the end of the occupation of Gaza.”

Although the Israeli government maintains it has not occupied Gaza since 2005, other organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the International Criminal Court, still classify its presence in Gaza as occupation because of its control of Gaza’s borders, airspace, waters, the supply of infrastructure, and some government functions.

Students added amendments to modify the language of the motion during a discussion and debate period. Among other changes, attendees broadened the wording to express support for all Palestinians and not just those in Gaza.

One student also proposed an amendment to have the union adopt “an official pro-Palestine stance that extends to all clubs and services funded by the UTMSU,” arguing that the UTMSU can make a bigger impact on its pro-Palestinian advocacy by influencing the smaller organizations under its domain. The student who proposed the motion did not clarify whether they intended the motion to impact whether the UTMSU would recognize or fund clubs.

During a discussion on the motion, Nagata clarified that the union can’t mandate that clubs take certain stances but can withhold funding or recognition from clubs. He asked the student who proposed the motion for more clarification on what they intended it to do, and the student said that they “intentionally” left the motion “a little bit vague.”

Students passed the motion with the amendment.

Updates on UTMSU campaigns During the meeting, the UTMSU executives also highlighted the union’s upcoming Lobby Week, which will take place from January 21–27. During this week, the UTMSU aims to bring multiple campaigns it’s currently running into the spotlight with renewed lobbying: Education For All, which calls for free tuition for all students and specifically focuses on lowering international student tuition; Consent is Mandatory, which calls on the university to increase staff training and transparency around

sexual assault and harassment; and Housing Advocacy, which calls for the city to increase affordable housing.

Students will have the opportunity to engage in collaborative efforts to compose documents supporting a campaign of their choosing. Additionally, they will have the opportunity to meet with administrators to present their recommendations for the university and lobby them on specific initiatives.

Financial audit reports John (Yongxin) Liang, the UTMSU’s vice-president internal, went over the UTMSU and Blind Duck Pub’s financial audits from the 2022–2023 fiscal year.

The UTMSU notably increased the amount of funding it provided for clubs post-COVID because more clubs have started as in-person activities have increased.

The union’s decision to increase wages and benefits for the Blind Duck’s employees, from $192,000 to $334,000, was propelled by the Ontario government’s increase in minimum wage and an expansion in the pub’s staff. Liang said the Blind Duck operated in a deficit this year mostly because of its low food prices. The pub also lost money in the 2021–2022 and 2022–2023 school years.

The UTMSU’s orientation expenses for the past year amounted to $292,000, a surge from the previous year’s cost of $60,000. Liang attributed this substantial increase to the return of in-person activities and the orientation concert, which required the union to pay performing artists.

The assembly passed the audit report for the 2022–2023 school year and appointed auditors for the 2023–2024 school year.

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LEXEY BURNS AND JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

UTSU discusses international student work cap updates, election dates during December meeting Board plans to expand its Student Aid program Kyla Cassandra Cortez Deputy Senior Copy Editor

During its December 17 Board of Directors (BOD) meeting, the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) executive members provided updates on the federal government’s decision to extend a policy freezing its 20-hour weekly work cap for international students. The board also approved dates for next year’s UTSU elections, with voting scheduled to take place March 4–7.

Executives further discussed plans to expand the Student Aid program, which provides bursaries to U of T students.

Updates on international students’ weekly work cap and study permits Aidan Thompson — the union’s vice president, public and university affairs — provided updates

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JESSICA LAM AND JADINE NGAN/THEVARSITY

on the weekly work cap and study permits for international students in Canada.

The federal government’s work cap limited international students to at most 20 hours of off-campus work per week. After years of activism from international students who criticized the policy for pushing international students struggling to pay high tuition costs into unregulated work, the federal government announced in 2022 that it would suspend the work cap from November 15, 2022 until December 31, 2023.

On December 7, the federal government announced that it would extend the freeze until April 30 for international students already in Canada and for those who had submitted an application for a study permit before the announcement. This freeze allows these students to work more than 20 hours per week.

Thompson also said that while Marc Miller — the

current federal minister of immigration, refugees, and citizenship — discussed capping the number of study permits Canada issues for international students in September, this decision is “unlikely to affect U of T.” In a press conference on December 7, Miller said that the government’s reason for capping study permits is to prevent international students from getting scammed by “sketchy employers” and “unscrupulous schools” — which Miller referred to as “the diploma equivalent of puppy mills” — that would leave those students struggling to pay their housing, find jobs, and pay for basic necessities, such as food, in Canada.

Recently, Conestoga College — a Canadian college with 11 campuses in Ontario — has been a hot topic of discussion on social media apps like TikTok and Reddit because of its massive increase in international students, whose enrollment increased by over 20,000 in 2022. In 2022–2023, students’ tuition and fees made up 72.9 per cent of the institution’s operating revenue, which increased by 137.9 million dollars since 2021–2022. Since 2014, Conestoga College has seen a 1,579 per cent increase in international students. In comparison, during that time period, universities such as the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University only had a 62 per cent and a 66 per cent increase, respectively. “[U of T] should be a trusted institution [such] that we can continue bringing in the same number of international students as we have been, but that could change,” said Thompson during the BOD meeting. “It’s going to be an issue that we’re very active on.”

UTSU 2024 Election Dates At the meeting, the BOD approved dates for its elections for the 2024–2025 academic year.

The nomination period will open on February 15 at 9:00 am and close on February 22 at 5:00 pm.

After the nomination period ends, from 5:01 pm of the same day, the union’s Silent Period — which is the time when “any form of election activities” such as but not limited to nominations, campaigning, endorsing, and voting are prohibited — will occur until February 26 at 8:59 am.

UTSU candidates can campaign from February 26 at 9:00 am up until March 6 at 5:00 pm. U of T students can vote for the candidates from March 4 at 9:00 am until March 7 at 5:00 pm.

Student Aid expansion plans Vice President of Operations and Finance Samir Mechel talked about the Student Aid Report, which detailed the number of applications received, processed, and accepted for the Student Aid program.

The UTSU’s Student Aid program aims to provide funds to U of T students who are in need of financial support in one of nine categories: Book and Academic Supplies; Exam Deferral Fees; Academic Conferences and Pursuits; Health and Wellness; Accessibility Needs; Transit; Emergencies; Other University Fees and Transaction; and the Professional Faculty Mandatory Placements. The bursary grants students up to $500 in the category they applied for.

However, because of the program’s lack of funding, the UTSU rejected more than 50 per cent of Student Aid applicants for this year. As a solution, Mechel proposed raising the levy for the program by two dollars for each student; increasing the union’s outreach campaigns to raise awareness for the program; reaching out to sponsors and potential external funding sources; and using extra money from the budget for the program.

thevarsity.ca/category/news

JANUARY 8, 2024

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U of T marks National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women Mayor Oliva Chow and poet Kai Cheng Thom give speeches commemorating victims Muzna Erum Associate News Editor

Content warning: This article discusses violence and mentions death and transphobia.

“We mourn, and then we work for change,” said Olivia Chow, in a speech at Hart House on December 6. Members from the U of T faculty, staff, students and alumni had gathered in person and via an online live stream to acknowledge the 34th anniversary of the École Polytechnique massacre and reaffirm the need to end gender-based violence.

The event — led by the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (FASE) — included Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Kai Cheng Thom, an author and performer who discussed the need to promote compassion and empathy.

The École Polytechnique massacre On December 6, 1989, a man opened fire on women in an engineering class and a cafeteria at the École Polytechnique in Montréal. A suicide note by the shooter confirmed that he was motivated by misogyny.

In 1991, the Parliament of Canada officially recognized December 6 as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, also known as White Ribbon Day. The occasion seeks to honour and mourn the 14 women killed and all others who experience gender-based violence, including women and 2SLGBTQI+ people.

According to Statistics Canada, 90 people were killed through intimate partner violence in 2021, three-quarters of whom were women and girls.

Chow’s speech During the event, Chow told attendees about the first time she remembered hearing about the massacre, 34 years ago.

“All day, I was in shock. And then, in those evenings, some of us said we needed to do something,” said Chow. Following the massacre, Chow and her friends collected money to create a December 6 fund, which gave $750 interest-free loans to women leaving abusive relationships.

Chow also shared her personal experience of seeing gender-based violence growing up. She remembers her father physically abusing her mother and described the shame her mother felt until, sometime after Chow’s university years, her mom decided to leave the relationship.

As mayor, Chow told the crowd that she plans to build shelters and housing for individuals experiencing domestic abuse. According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, shelters can provide immediate refuge for women and children experiencing domestic violence, allowing them to figure out their next steps. Chow also pushed a motion, that passed in July 2023, for the Toronto City Council to designate intimate partner violence and gender-based violence as an epidemic in the city.

Student research awards and ceremony The Award for Scholarly Achievement in the area of Gender-Based Violence, first given by U of T in 2017, recognizes students from all disciplines who have made essential contributions to research on gender-based violence and engaged in community, co-circular, and academic commitment on the issues of violence against women, girls, and trans and non-binary people.

This year, third-year undergraduate student Gabrielle Tavazzani, who studies bioethics, received the award for her research and work

providing pro bono dental care for survivors of domestic violence. Faculty of Music PhD candidate Nil Basdurak also received the award for their work on violence against women in Turkey.

After the awards, Marisa Sterling — assistant dean and director of diversity, inclusion and professionalism at the FASE — joined the stage to lead a moment of silence. Fourteen students from the engineering department with white ribbons on their shirts came up one by one, each reading the name of one woman killed in the massacre.

Sterling shared that she was a chemical engineering graduate student when the massacre occurred. Today, in her role, she said she seeks to make FASE’s culture more welcoming and safe for women through a mentorship program that connects first-year engineering students with upper-year mentors.

Engineers Canada — an organization that helps regulate engineering licenses and encourages the field’s growth — found that, in 2020, women only represented 14.2 per cent of engineer license holders, a small increase from 13.9 per cent in 2019. Although more women have graduated from and enrolled in engineering programs in the past decade compared to previous years, less than 14 percent of those who graduate go on to practice engineering.

A 2011 US study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that women who left engineering tended to do so because of machismo workplace climates, lower salaries, and a lack of advancement opportunities.

Keynote speaker: Kai Cheng Thom During her speech, Cheng Thom shared poems and letters from her anthology Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls. The anthology, a Canadian bestseller praised by The

New York Times, explores Cheng Thom’s journey as a trans woman and includes expressions of self-acceptance and passion.

Throughout her talk, Cheng Thom acknowledged the violence experienced particularly by marginalized transgender women worldwide.

According to Cheng Thom, many were upset with her presence at the event, with some spreading transphobia on social media. During the event’s livestream, individuals on Twitter also posted angry messages invalidating Cheng Thom’s identity.

Cheng Thom spoke about the roots of transphobia: “When our fear overtakes our capacity for empathy, our capacity for love, we lose the ability to see the human in the other. And so they become a monster in our eyes, a being who must be restrained and defeated at all costs.” She hoped to lead the audience to move through fear and into a world that encourages love.

In a post on X, the platform formally known as Twitter, Thom reflected on the online backlash to being a transgender woman speaking at the event, writing, “Though not the majority of the online comments criticizing my keynote at the Dec 6 memorial, there are some that openly call for violence… This is not dialogue. It degrades us all.”

Leila Agil, a first-year FASE student, was one of the many students who attended the event. In an interview with The Varsity, she shared that she sees the event as a testament to how far women in STEM have come and how much work remains to be done.

She noted Chow’s line from earlier: “We mourn, and then we work for change.” Agil went on to say, “I think mourning is inherent in tragedies like this… But I also think it’s important to see where we can go and how we can stop this from happening again.”

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow delivers speech at Hart House.

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NEWS

Five years after U of T went smoke-free, what does smoking look like on campus?

Despite the ban, some students continue to smoke on campus Carly Campbell Varsity Contributor

January 1 marked the fifth anniversary of U of T prohibiting smoking on its three campuses. The policy, which U of T put into effect in 2019, prohibits individuals from smoking any lighted tobacco or cannabis and from using vapes or e-cigarettes on U of T property.

While smoking policies and practices have changed, some students continue to smoke on campus — calling into question the policy’s effectiveness.

Student smoking behaviour In 1995, U of T introduced a policy that prohibited smoking inside all University of Toronto buildings, except for in designated smoking areas such as residences and campus pubs. The 2019 smoke-free campus policy extended the ban on smoking to all U of T property.

Third-year political science student Natalia Montano smokes on campus and believes it remains a fairly regular activity. “Usually later in the day, you can spot at least three to four people trying their best to finish their cigarettes in the freezing cold,” she wrote in a message to The Varsity.

While the 2019 policy applies to all U of T property, with no exceptions for designated smoking zones, she wrote that many spots are used so commonly for smoking that they “seem specially designed for

smokers.” Montano explained that one can find giant piles of cigarette butts on “stairwells, benches and behind buildings, just out of sight.”

Nicotine consumption has changed over the past few years. A 2022 survey conducted by the Government of Canada found that six per cent of Canadians aged 15 and older had reported vaping in the 30 days before they took the survey — up from five per cent in 2019, when the government first began conducting the survey.

This number is much higher among young people, with approximately 20 per cent of 20–24-yearolds reporting having vaped in the past month and 33 per cent of them reporting that reducing stress was their main reason for vaping — making them the group with the most reported vapers.

“If it weren’t for the accessibility of vapes, I think we’d see a lot more students gathering outside to smoke,” said Montano.

Why do students smoke?

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), tobacco kills more than eight million people each year, including an estimated 1.3 million people who are killed by secondhand smoke. Smoking is also the leading cause of lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Considering these effects, why do university students continue consuming nicotine?

“It’s an obvious stress reliever and not too time consuming,” wrote Montano. “Once you finish one or two cigarettes you know your break is over and it’s

U of T’s smoke-free campus policy aims to create healthier campuses.

ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY

time to get back to work.”

A 2022 study by the Government of Canada found that the primary reason for youth vaping is stress reduction. The study also found that the prevalence of smoking or vaping is higher among youth who rated their mental health as fair or poor than among those who rated their mental health as excellent, very good, or good. Nicotine releases dopamine, which can cause feelings of pleasure and relaxation, which leads to the beginning of nicotine cravings.

A 2022 pan-Canadian survey by the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry that measured stress levels among university students found that, on average, they were incredibly high. Stress is a leading cause of mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety.

The post-secondary age range is also particularly at risk for this development due to their stage of brain development.

In addition to the smoke-free policy, U of T offers support for staff and students who want to quit smoking. Student programs for smoking cessation are available through the Health and Wellness centres found at all three campuses. The U of T Health and Wellness centres also provide access to workshops that can assist students with managing stress through coping and mindfulness strategies.

Has the smoking ban been effective?

Then-Vice President of Human Resources and Equity Kelly Hannah-Moffat told U of T News in 2018 that the policy aimed to create “healthier campuses.”

The five-year anniversary of the smoke-free campus policy is a good chance to evaluate how well the policy has worked.

When asked about the effectiveness of the policy, Montano wrote that she hadn’t “personally” been impacted by the smoking ban. She noted that staff don’t seem to walk past spots where people tend to smoke very often. “When they do, they don’t say anything,” she wrote.

According to a U of T website, when enforcing the policy, the university focuses on educating U of T community members about the dangers of

smoking. Generally, the university says enforcement measures may vary depending on “the individual’s relationship with the university, the nature of the infraction, and the place in which it occurred.”

A 2020 article published by The Varsity a year after the policy came into effect insinuated that students had been “ignoring” the policy. The article noted that the size of the St. George campus and its integration within the heart of Toronto complicate the ability to police the area.

The smoke-free policy page on the U of T website mentions that both UTM and UTSC have designated smoking areas, and individuals can smoke in areas of the St. George campus operated by the city, including many streets and sidewalks within the campus. “St. George does not have clearly defined borders, so the line between what counts as even smoking on campus is blurry,” Montano told The Varsity.

Michelle Amri, assistant professor of public policy at Simon Fraser University, is an expert in smoke-free policies. In an email to The Varsity, Amri explained that smoke-free policies can be effective in reducing smoking consumption rates. However, the most successful way to reduce smoking is through a mixture of policy tools.

A 2020 Canadian study that surveyed public health practitioners on the most effective methods to reduce tobacco use found that most viewed economic incentives and regulation — such as localized bans and taxation — as the most effective ways to reduce smoking rates. The WHO also recommends mixing various interventions to limit smoking.

Amri explained that policies that target the perception of smoking as a normal activity, like smoking bans, can be highly effective. For instance, public health policymakers advocate for ‘denormalizing’ tobacco by framing it as an activity that is not mainstream or normal. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that denormalization is successful in reducing the prevalence of smoking, with social unacceptability specifically being connected to reducing cigarette smoking.

“Smoking bans on campus are one strategy that can help denormalize tobacco products, but also prevent non-smokers from being exposed to secondhand smoke and contain cigarette butt litter,” wrote Amri.

Honest Reporting Canada, an Israel advocacy group, flagged the post on November 17. Soon after Zaarour’s post, SickKids released a statement on November 19 saying it was investigating “complaints about a social media post involving one of our physicians,” although it didn’t release the name of the physician under investigation.

The CoHa spokesperson called on the university to “end the double standard of instantly disciplining alleged/perceived antisemitic voices while turning a blind eye to demonstrable Anti-Palestinian, AntiArab, and Islamaphobic rhetoric.” They added that “institutions should have publicly available policies that are robust and fairly implemented to all cases of discrimination, harassment, and bias.”

Temerty Medicine physicians sign open letter defending their right to openly identify as Zionist Online group has posted screenshots of activity from signatories, alleging hateful content Selia Sanchez Deputy News Editor

Content warning: This article mentions antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism.

On November 22, Doctors Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (DARA) — a group of healthcare professionals opposing academic boycotts and “racial or geopolitical bias” — publicized a letter, signed by 555 physicians, standing for their right to work openly as Zionists.

Following the letter’s release, Combat Online Harassment (CoHa) — an online organization that aims to provide a space for people who have faced online harassment or hate — posted screenshots of the online activity of a number of doctors who allegedly signed the letter, claiming that they had posted or engaged with anti-Palestinian content on their personal social media accounts.

DARA’s letter 555 Jewish physicians employed at research hospitals affiliated with the university’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFOM) signed the open letter, which focused on the physicians’ right to openly identify as Zionists “free of censure.”

The letter mentioned alleged instances of “antizionism and other forms of antisemitism” from colleagues following October 7, claiming that some of those anti-Zionist statements invoked antisemitism. It argues that the doctors’ colleagues have applied a double standard to Israel since the attacks, “all because Israel is a Jewish state.”

The letter also states that leaders in academia have issued statements that “collide with equity, diversity and inclusion for Jews, or which make Jews feel unsafe and unwelcome.” The letter does not specify which statements it refers to. The signatories called for Jewish faculty to “[receive] the same consideration and protection that the TFOM provides to other minority groups.”

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Philip Berger, one of the doctors who wrote the statement, referred to Temerty Medicine as “the epicentre of antisemitism at the University of Toronto.” Berger said that he holds the highest level of U of T’s administration, including the president’s office, accountable for what he sees as an insufficient response to reports of antisemitism.

In 2020, U of T formed the Antisemitism Working Group (ASWG) to address racism and discrimination experienced by Jewish people at U of T. In December 2021, the ASWG released a report outlining a number of recommendations for U of T to implement to become a “more inclusive and equitable place.”

Some of the ASWG’s recommendations include appointing an Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office Advisor to focus on countering antisemitism; offering kosher food options across all campuses; and frequently reiterating the university’s commitment to academic freedom. According to the university’s institutional equity commitment dashboard, U of T has fully instituted six of the eight recommendations — including those listed above — and is in the process of implementing the remaining two.

CoHa’s response Since November 10, CoHa began posting screenshots of U of T faculty members posting or interacting with allegedly anti-Palestinian content on their social media pages. CoHa’s posts feature personal posts from doctors that they claim are justifying violence against Palestinians in Gaza and perpetuating anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim stereotypes.

In an email to The Varsity, a CoHa spokesperson explained that the organization was investigating the 555 doctors who signed the DARA letter, as they allege a portion of them have posted or liked content “[inciting] hatred.” DARA did not share the names of the doctors who signed the letter. CoHa posted a spreadsheet of the names of the doctors who signed the letter on social media, although it says that this spreadsheet has since been taken down.

Its spokesperson recognized that those who signed the letter are entitled to their own beliefs but wrote that “the issue is when these expressions of belief in the university and healthcare setting lead to harmful behaviour, discrimination, and bias.”

The Varsity reached out to the faculty members who appeared in the screenshots and some of the public signatories of the letter, although none of them provided a response.

The CoHa spokesperson claimed in an email to The Varsity that faculty members accused of antisemitism or anti-Zionism are immediately suspended, but the same standard is not applied to faculty members expressing anti-Palestinian racism. The spokesperson listed a number of Ontario doctors who have been disciplined for pro-Palestinian social media posts.

The list included Temerty Medicine doctor Christian Zaarour, an anesthesiologist at SickKids, who had shared a social media post criticizing Israel.

U of T’s response U of T’s 2021 Annual Freedom of Speech Report reiterates the university’s commitment to free expression. The report recognizes that “free speech can be uncomfortable” and members of the university should be “prepared to confront opinions they find erroneous, unreasonable, or even deeply offensive,” but threats or acts of violence are not tolerated.

The report reads, “Every member of the University community should be able to work, live, teach and learn in a University free from discrimination and harassment.”

In a statement to The Varsity, Patricia Houston, interim dean of Temerty Medicine, wrote, “The Faculty acknowledges the immense grief, anger and distress that many members of the community are experiencing and condemns all forms of discrimination.”

“All our faculty members are expected to adhere to relevant university policies and professional standards of behaviour,” the statement reads. “We work closely with affiliated hospital partners to uphold these standards in our learning and clinical environments, and to address concerns about faculty behaviour in breach of these standards.”

Business & Labour Continued from the cover During the sit-in at the Dean’s office, Palmer highlighted that the power imbalance between Daniels’ graduate students and their employers makes collective protections all the more important, since those employers are often also the students’ own professors. “They know every single person coming to critique you, they have a really strong voice when it comes to your ability to complete a job in the future,” she said.

As an example of these power imbalances, Palmer shared the story of a peer who was assigned to do TA work during their work-study

contract. In an interview with The Varsity, Palmer’s peer — a former Daniels’ masters student who has now graduated — directly confirmed the story. They requested to remain anonymous out of concern for future employment opportunities.

The former student told The Varsity that they had secured a TA position in the fall with the same professor who had employed them to assist with research earlier that summer. “I was asked to do a significant number of hours [for the] tasks that were for the upcoming TA position… I did all of that on the wages of a [Work Study student],” they explained. They recalled that they received $19 an hour through their Work Study contract

January 8, 2024 varsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca

— as of January 1, 2023, CUPE3902’s collective agreement with the university guarantees all workers doing TA work an hourly wage of $47.64.

They also noted that they did TA work for a second class that their professor was teaching during the fall, despite only being formally contracted for one. Eventually, they described, everyone in the second class thought that the student was their TA, too. “They thought that I was the person to reach out to for questions,” the student recalled.

More conversations to come Sharma told The Varsity that the group is open to

having further conversations with the Dean about the campaign and its demands following the petition’s delivery and sit-in. Palmer said, “There were people who came in and listened. And that was really good to see.”

Still, the members also emphasized the individual responsibility that professors carry. In an interview with The Varsity, Daniels masters student Kazia Rodrigo said, “Professors themselves dictate how they treat their employees — having good work-life boundaries and respecting each other’s time. They’re actively choosing to do it. It has nothing to do with the university setting that up.”

Current and “exiled” U of T academics call out universities’ unethical hiring practices Academics describe lack of secure faculty positions as “neoliberal carrot and stick” Zen Nguyen Varsity Contributor

On October 24, Scholars Strike Canada — a group of university workers, activists, and organizers with connections to academia — held an online teach-in panel that they called “Refusing the Neoliberal Carrot: Academic Precarity and Solidarity.” The panel session was part of a two-day series the organization called “Teaching and Learning Against Social Abandonment,” which included other sessions on topics surrounding academic freedom and university faculty’s job security.

The Neoliberal Carrot panel included four academic workers and organizers, including current Assistant Professor in Writing Studies at UTM Sheila Batacharya, and former — or “exiled,” as Scholar Strike puts it — Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) contract lecturer Vannina Sztainbok.

The panellists spoke about their experiences with precarious academic work and discussed how they are a symptom of larger, structural issues in academic job insecurity.

The other two panellists, Zoë Newman and Stephanie Latella, are faculty at York University.

Latella is an academic and contract instructor and a PhD candidate in Social and Political Thought.

Newman is on the bargaining team of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3903 — the union representing York University’s contract faculty, teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and research assistants — as contract faculty Along with Sztainbok, Newman is also part of the

Precarity Collective — a group that formed out of the original “No Precarious Employment” campaign, which arose in response to OISE’s Social Justice in Education department’s abrupt release of Sztainbok from their faculty in 2022. The two are working together toward a podcast project called “Talking Precarity.”

Precarity in post-secondary education The panel acknowledged that precarity can look differently and take many forms, and conceptualized employment precarity as having employment that lacks continuity or certainty of duration, being under-valued and under-supported, and often being exploited. Panellists described experiences of being paid less for courses, being contracted term-byterm, not being funded for mentoring or researching, being looked down on by tenured faculty members, and being expected to perform unpaid work such as grading assignments after contract time. They also emphasized the disproportionate effect of precariousness on racialized, queer, and disabled people.

According to CUPE, more than half of undergraduates are taught by faculty members in precarious positions. Panellists highlighted an increasing trend of increasing precarity in the economy within the last few decades and described precarity as a necessity of capitalism, which sustains institutions in academia through the exploitation of their workforce.

Describing the precarious state of academic employment as made up of a “neoliberal carrot [and] stick,” the panellists argued that it results in conformity and a lack of academic freedom. Thus,

COMIC: New Year’s Resolutions

Sztainbok describes academic employment as “a tool, a threat, and a promise” which reproduces “the ethos of neoliberalism.” The panel consistently warned of detriments in financial and mental wellbeing as a direct result of precarity.

Precarity at U of T The panellists described that U of T is no exception to the general trend of using precarious employment in post-secondary institutions. “There’s an inherent contradiction when you are relying on people who you claim are not excellent enough to deserve job security, but you tell your students that you offer the best education in the world,” Sztainbok said.

Statistics for the number or share of courses of non-tenure-track faculty members are hard to come by, as U of T only publishes employment statistics for appointed faculty members. This excludes “sessional instructors, hired to teach courses, clinical faculty (ono-appointed) [sic], and faculty who hold status-only or adjunct appointments,” which Sztainbok described as other positions of relative precarity. In the published 2021 data, 709 out of 3,390 appointed faculty members were on limitedterm contracts, including 389 part-time faculty members.

Sztainbok and the No Precarious Employment campaign had previously raised criticism of the nefarious part-time employment policy and its detrimental effects on faculties. This precarity can also Bianca Delmar Varsity Contributor

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affect students’ research — Sztainbok’s contract unexpectedly ended while she was in the middle of supervising two master’s theses.

In an email statement, the university wrote that “only full graduate faculty members can be primary supervisors, and virtually all of these are in the continuing tenure stream, so there’s largely no issues regarding graduate supervision continuity.”

Sztainbok disputed this assertion. “In some departments, there are students who end up taking the majority of their courses with adjunct faculty.

Who are they going to turn to to ask for references?

Who is going to assist them when they apply for grad school, or for grants? Who knows their work well enough to support their research agenda?” she wrote in an email to The Varsity.

“Contract or sessional workers have a lot in common with other gig workers, for example when it comes to how our work is broken up into smaller and smaller pieces or contracts,” Newman said.

Similarly, Sztainbok noted during the panel discussion that “academics are not special, [they] are workers.” She and other panellists raised the need for unity and solidarity between precarious or part-time and tenure-track faculties, as well as between workers of all professions. The panel emphasized organizing widely and using solidarity as a support system to protect each other against precarious work.

Comment

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Op-ed: U of T is not a climate leader — yet Why U of T’s new sustainability ranking is misleading Amalie Wilkinson Varsity Contributor

U of T was recently named the world’s most sustainable university by the QS World University Rankings: Sustainability 2024. As a student at U of T and a climate activist, I was horrified. Here is why.

There is broad scientific consensus about the main driver of climate breakdown: the production and consumption of fossil fuels. Since the 1970s or earlier, the fossil fuel industry has known that it is causing climate change. Not only has the industry failed to mitigate the climate crisis, but it has also actively promoted climate change denial.

The “Canada’s Big Oil Reality Check” report by Environmental Defence Canada and Oil Change International shows that Canadian oil companies still do not have serious plans to meet net zero, despite knowing about climate change for decades.

Beyond direct fossil fuel extraction companies, Canadian banks are direct enablers of the fossil fuel industry. They are some of the biggest funders of fossil fuel projects in the world.

Today, U of T has many ties with fossil fuel industry actors. Listed below are just a few of these ties.

U of T’s Boundless fundraising campaign has received donations from numerous fossil fuel companies, including a donation of between $100,000 and $999,999 from Husky Energy Inc. — part of Cenovus Energy — a donation of between $25,000 and $99,999 from BP Canada Energy Company, and a donation of between $25,000 and $99,999 from Suncor Energy Inc. In November 2022, U of T’s Climate Positive Energy Initiative hosted a Climate Economy Summit.

The event was sponsored by Enbridge, a Canadian multinational pipeline corporation, and Imperial Oil,

If U of T wants to mitigate the climate crisis, it must cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.

COURTESY OF MECANOO ARCHITECTEN AND RDH ARCHITECTS INC/THE VARSITY

a fossil fuel company that has been a historic leader in campaigns of climate denial.

In August 2022, I attended the Climate Positive Energy Institute’s inaugural Climate Positive Energy Research Day. One keynote speaker for this conference was Graham Takata, the director of climate change at BMO Global Asset Management. His speech focused on how the Bank of Montreal is engaging its assets under management toward net zero. In truth, however, BMO has financed the global fossil fuel industry with about 138.380 billion USD between 2016 and 2022, according to Banking on Climate Chaos’ 2023 Fossil Fuel Finance Report.

Fossil fuel ties at U of T date back to at least the early 2000s. For instance, in 2002, TransCanada PipeLines Limited donated $500,000 to U of T to help set up the TransCanada PipeLines Chair in Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing. Its mandate was to “[conduct] health research, [develop] education programs in aboriginal health, [raise] awareness of

the importance of aboriginal health research, and [provide] academic leadership for aboriginal health research students.”

Unfortunately, this chair position is a prime example of ‘redwashing,’ where a company or institution co-opts narratives around Indigenous reconciliation to improve its image at a purely superficial level. In reality, TransCanada, now TC Energy, has a history of violating Indigenous sovereignty for its fossil fuel transportation projects.

The list goes on, but I will stop for now. The point I am making is that U of T, while posing as a leader in sustainability, is an active partner of fossil fuel companies. I contend that by accepting these partnerships, U of T implicitly endorses the activities of fossil fuel companies and announces them as worthy partners of academic institutions.

Donations can allow the fossil fuel industry to gain influence over internal decision-making, research directions, and messaging by the university. Energy research funded by fossil fuels is

proven to be biased in favour of industry interests, often promoting natural gas as a climate solution.

The QS World University Rankings for Sustainability looks at environmental impact, social impact, and governance. In the article about its ranking, U of T boasts that it “has implemented a number of infrastructure projects aimed at achieving the goal of becoming climate-positive by 2050,” and that “30 per cent of all undergraduate courses at U of T in 2023-24 have a sustainability orientation.” These are undoubtedly important steps, but initiatives to improve localized carbon footprints and climate education cannot, in my opinion, make up for U of T’s active legitimation of the fossil fuel industry.

To me, a positive environmental impact means not actively contributing to the climate crisis threatening future generations. A positive social impact means not accepting money and providing social license to operate with the fossil fuel industry, which often acts without Indigenous consent and causes human rights crises from climate breakdown. Good, impartial, and sustainable governance means, at the least, not having direct links with the primary industry that lobbies to delay climate action. U of T is succeeding on none of these metrics.

If U of T is serious about helping to mitigate the climate crisis, I believe it must cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.

Amalie Wilkinson is a fourth-year student at University College studying international relations and peace, conflict and justice studies. Xe is a member of the Fossil Free Research campaign within Climate Justice U of T.

Death caught up to Henry Kissinger before justice could Kissinger’s bloody legacy in Bangladesh must be accepted for what it is Safwaan Shams Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article mentions death, rape, and descriptions of genocide.

One of the last conversations I had with my grandfather was about the 1971 Bangladesh genocide.

It was the first time I heard the name Kissinger. “He was a man who could have stopped a lot,” my grandfather said. “But chose not to.”

Henry Kissinger died on November 29. He was 100 years old, a veteran of the Second World War, and a juggernaut in Washington. His death garnered widespread reaction, with US Presidents paying homage to the late National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations.

However, reactions to his death have been less reverent among the wider public.

Media reactions on his passing have largely ranged from BBC’s characterization of him as “pivotal and polarizing” to the Rolling Stone’s scathing condemnation of his legacy as a war criminal. I concur with the criticism — death appears to have caught up to Henry Kissinger before justice ever had the chance to.

Foremost among the litany of charges brought against him is the US’ carpet bombings of Cambodia, from 1969 to 1973, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and indirectly allowed dictator Pol Pot to seize power. Kissinger aided military regimes in Latin America by sharing intelligence as a part of Operation Condor and pursued foreign policies to undermine the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, leading to the military regime of General Augusto Pinochet. During his tenure as Secretary of State, he backed US support of Argentina’s military junta in what Jon Lee Anderson refers to as its “‘Dirty War’ against leftists” and endorsed Indonesian dictator Suharto’s invasion of East Timor, informing the military strongman, “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.”

There is a substantial body of evidence which

supports the charges that countries affected by Kissinger’s actions have pressed against him. To many developing countries in the shadow of the Cold War, the figure of Henry Kissinger looms like a ghost.

As it does in Bangladesh.

Responding to genocide On March 25, 1971, the Pakistan Armed Forces launched Operation Searchlight as a response to growing unrest in former East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh. What followed was an eight-monthlong war which resulted in a systematic genocide, which killed around three million people and involved the genocidal rape of 200,000 to 400,000 girls and women, according to Bangladeshi authorities.

Bangladesh won its independence at a gruesome cost, leaving families broken in a nascent nation. For many Bangladeshis born after independence, firsthand recollection of that genocide remains between the silence and the stories of elders like my late grandfather.

Then-US Consul General to Dhaka, Archer Blood, identified the massacres as a genocide from the onset and dissented with 20 of his staff. Blood outlined the severity of the situation in a telegram to the Nixon administration from Dhaka. Despite clear warnings of a genocide, what eventually came to be known as the Blood Telegram was ignored. In a recorded transcript from June 1971, then-National Security Advisor Kissinger dismissed any notion of cutting military or economic aid to Pakistan.

Genocide was a mere footnote to Kissinger’s antagonism toward the imagined possibility of Soviet influence in the region, evidenced by a conversation with Nixon. To Kissinger, if the countless Bangladeshis facing genocide were made independent, it would become “a cesspool. [It would] be 100 million people, [with] the lowest standard of living in Asia” and a “ripe field for Communist infiltration.”

Gary J. Bass’ The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide details the Nixon administration’s response to the 1971 genocide and shows how Kissinger was complicit in enabling

the atrocities. His support for military dictator Yahya Khan’s government continued well until the end of the war, despite US intelligence estimating a West Pakistani loss as early as April 12, just six days after the Blood Telegram was sent. In the end, however, the newly independent ‘cesspool’ of 100 million never turned communist.

Remembering Kissinger Whenever I am in Bangladesh, posters, vigils, and news coverage ingrain Yahya Khan, Tikka Khan, and the Razakars as the symbols of oppression and tyranny, but there is little mention of Kissinger, the man who enabled them to carry out such horrors in the first place. Despite my years growing up in Bangladesh, watching the documentaries that air around Independence Day about its key figures, and despite all its patriotic traditions, I was unfamiliar with Kissinger for the longest time.

Kissinger’s image is a sanitized one outside of the Global South. World leaders reacted to his death with messages of sympathy and praise.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Israeli President Issac Herzog paid their respects, as did China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Kissinger occupies the imagination of leaders of dominant countries as a statesman who shaped an era.

To Kissinger, people, documents, and even countries were nothing more than chess pieces in

a game against the Soviet Union. Millions of bodies halfway across the world mattered little if it meant stamping out the possibility of communism. It certainly seemed not to weigh on his conscience.

His successes were built on the breaking of many impoverished countries around the globe — Bangladesh among them.

Yet, for all of his politicking, that work didn’t bear fruit. The détente he established to relax political tensions with the Soviet Union collapsed within a decade, and a deteriorating relationship with China is reflected in the trade war since 2018. His ‘shuttle diplomacy’ of playing the intermediary in Middle Eastern affairs lies in pieces amid the genocide in Gaza. For all he broke to build his masterpieces, many of them, too, broke within 20-odd years.

The legacy of Henry Kissinger is one of pain and suffering. I believe it is a legacy that must now be judged by history as the legal and political systems we have in place failed to deliver justice over the past five decades. The first step toward honouring the memory of those who suffered, like my grandfather, is the refusal to bury their stories under the altar of such a man. The first step toward justice is to know what happened and accept Kissinger for what he is: a war criminal.

Safwaan Shams is a third-year student at Woodsworth College, studying history, English, and digital humanities.

The legacy of Henry Kissinger is one of pain and suffering.

COURTESY OF MARSHA MILLER CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

thevarsity.ca/category/comment

JANUARY 8, 2024

Mixed-use developments are what Toronto has desperately needed A look at one of Toronto’s ‘Well’-deserved new developments Emily Carlucci Varsity Columnist

In Toronto’s ever-expanding city developments, a new player has emerged — ‘The Well.’ This largescale mixed-use development that opened in November promises to be the city’s urban saviour.

But are mixed-use developments like The Well really the knight in shining armour that Toronto needs, or are they just another shiny distraction?

Spoiler alert: I’m leaning toward the former, and here’s why.

What is ‘The Well’?

The Well isn’t your standard Toronto brutalist building; it is an almost-eight-acre wonder of city living. It’s got everything but the kitchen sink — wait, it actually has that too. Residential spaces?

Check. Commercial hubs? Absolutely. Retail therapy options? You bet. This development is like the Swiss Army knife of urban planning — and I believe Toronto desperately needs the versatility of developments like it.

Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods — and don’t get me wrong, I love it. But it seems that we also forget that we can have multiple building types exist simultaneously on one plot of land. Developments like The Well swoop in like superheroes of city planning by blending living, working, and leisure spaces into one harmonious ensemble. To me, the emergence of these developments is like city planners finally realizing that people don’t just live to work or work to live — they want to do both without needing a car to get from their apartment to the office.

Monotony is overrated I expect that urbanologist Jane Jacobs would be doing a happy dance in her grave right now at seeing a development like this, because it’s the embodiment of her idea of a vibrant city: a melting pot of activities and communities, or as Jacobs would put it, “organic [and] spontaneous.”

It’s not just about stacking up condos like Jenga blocks — it’s about creating a living, breathing organism where people can live, work, and play without needing a GPS. Mixed-use developments are all about balance. Their residential units ensure that the development isn’t just a deserted office park after 6:00 pm. They’re places where people actually live and create a community that isn’t only alive during business hours. I believe it really is the urban dream: a place where you can grab your morning coffee, attend a meeting, buy groceries, and catch a movie all within the same city block.

Critics might scoff at The Well and argue that the development won’t be used by the working class, dismissing it as another playground for the elite — and fair enough, because Toronto isn’t exactly lacking in the luxury department. But here’s the thing: just because a development has a touch of glamour doesn’t mean it’s a useless addition to the cityscape.

Toronto is in the middle of an affordable housing crisis, and we can’t ignore that. But mixeduse developments don’t just cater to the high rollers. In my view, their principle is about creating a diverse community that brings together different income brackets to foster a sense of shared space.

Matt Rife can be funny without his misogyny Rife’s popularity on social media exposes what a certain audience wants to see Devarya Singhania Varsity Contributor

Content Warning: This article discusses misogyny and the objectification of women.

The guy who seems to be on everyone’s TikTok algorithm — Matt Rife — has finally infiltrated mine.

Over the summer, I became an audience to a clip of him at an unfortunate 4:00 am. I don’t remember his punchline, but it was crowd work, which I think seems like nearly all he does. However, in my view, his success with misogynistic jokes presents an image for comedians who are men: that they’ll only be successful if they are misogynistic.

Rife’s crowd work joke once involved interrogating an interracial couple. After probing them with some generic questions about where they met and whose idea it was to attend his show, he made a confusing joke. He asked the white boyfriend which ‘BLM rally’ he and his girlfriend met at. I usually react instantly to a joke, but I didn’t know how to this time.

For context, Matt Rife is a straight, white man.

He says it himself. I was confused as to whether it was okay for white men to joke about the Black Lives Matter movement — or if Rife was even joking about the movement. I let the clip play further, and toward the end of it, he addresses the white boyfriend: “You wanna be Black so bad.”

A white guy telling another white guy that he wants to be Black. Did he have the capability or ability to identify what makes someone ‘Black’?

If so, how did he come to the conclusion? I don’t agree with Rife’s sentiments, nor do I support this joke — it seems to me that he’s reducing the identity of an interracial couple to a pair of protesters. Additionally, his assumed understanding of what makes someone Black is undoubtedly ‘problematic’ — he

doesn’t have the right to make those assumptions about another race. I like humour, but Rife is trying to get away with truly baffling jokes, disguised as ‘dark’ humour.

Rife’s defence would probably be that he was trying to be funny, and that the couple laughed at his jokes. However, I don’t think that’s conclusive: I feel like an audience is left with no choice but to laugh when a comedian is recording them for a joke. I worry that the couple might fear being labelled as ‘snowflakes’ in the comments on that clip had they not laughed.

When I scrolled through the app again, I saw Rife’s videos more frequently because I had accidentally liked his racist-joke clip. His videos ambushed me, and I realized why my friends say they hate comedians who are men. The repetition in his jokes was — and continues to be — stupendous.

The frequency at which Rife flirts with women in the audience in the name of crowd work makes me wonder what his improv strategy is. Is his strategy based on ‘I-see-pretty-woman-I-flirt-I-laugh-youpay?’

To me, Rife’s scripts feel like a fusion of misogyny, implicit sexism, and objectification: most of his jokes involve him calling women ‘hot’ or discuss how proud he is at the prospect of women engaging with him sexually. Seeing how he has reduced women in his ‘jokes’ to be mere subjects of flirtation, I read these jokes as both misogyny and objectification. It is misogynistic because he fails to value women. He even called them a burden on his career on what Medium writer Amber Wardell refers to as ‘alpha bro’ podcasts,’ which highlight misogynistic behaviour from men. It is objectification because he only values women for their looks. Rife is the epitome of the word ‘problematic’— so much so that he even called his tour “ProbleMATTic World Tour.”

I know that some people might roll their eyes at the mention of ‘cultural spaces’ in a luxury development, dismissing it as a euphemism for exclusive art galleries and overpriced boutiques. But let’s not be so quick to judge. Cities evolve, and so should their cultural hubs.

In my view, these mixed-use developments provide an opportunity to redefine what cultural spaces mean in Toronto. Sure, they might include high-end art galleries, but they also have the potential to host grassroots initiatives, community-driven events, and a cultural scene that doesn’t require a black Amex card for entry.

Mixed-unit developments often include communal spaces, such as parks, plazas, and community centers. These spaces provide opportunities for residents and community members to interact, share ideas, and organize potential community initiatives, such as California’s Santana Row’s community events and local pop-ups. Additionally, these developments often incorporate cultural and arts spaces, which can be used for community events, art exhibitions, and performances, encouraging a sense of cultural identity and community expression.

It’s a challenge to the developers — make these spaces inclusive, and you might just win over the skeptics. With its high-rises and business suites, Toronto often seems to forget it has a soul, but mixeduse developments may be here to remind us that the city isn’t just about profit, it’s about culture.

Affordability, affordability, and affordability Affordability is the word on everyone’s lips, and I get why. The city’s stuck in the slew of housing crises and skyrocketing rent. People’s frustrations are understandable because things are really, really bad right now.

Another luxury building like The Well might seem like a nail in the coffin for affordable living, but here’s the twist: mixed-use developments can actually be part of the solution. A study in the Journal of American Planning Association suggests that mixed-use developments “increase density, promote active transportation, encourage economic development, and Rife is not the first misogynist comedian, but his commercial boom scares me. I want to especially emphasize ‘commercial boom,’ because I cannot believe we are still enjoying misogynistic comedy. It seems to be thriving.

I infer from Rife’s label as a TikTok comedian that TikTok’s algorithm has exposed the truth: audiences today still enjoy misogynistic comedy. The likes on his videos show how his material is loved more than it’s loathed. He gets over a million likes on Instagram, even though his jokes constantly need women to be flirted with. A friend told me that Rife’s material is just jokes and not that deep.

I agree, partly because a lot of his jokes arrive with exaggeration.

In my opinion, Rife invading the privacy of the women in this audience — probing them constantly about their virginity, sex life, or even if they’d ‘hook up with him’ — stems from his own insecurity.

When he’s not barraging such invasive comments, he makes sure that the audience is aware of how ‘hot’ he is.

If future comedians who are men were to repeat Rife’s success, they’d have to become — as my friend calls him — ‘a pretty boy’ who is evidently horny. It’s a funny title but comes with a dangerous definition. What I’ve understood from this is that future comedians who are men will have to crack the same misogynistic, objectifying, and sexist jokes. If it gained Rife such quick, enormous success, these protegés might think it will yield them similar results.

But comedians do not have to be misogynistic to be successful. Comedians like Rahul Subramanian, Vir Das, Trevor Noah, Ronny Chieng, and Hasan Minhaj are some examples of popular comedians who are non-misogynistic and men. No stand-up comedian is free of controversy — some of these comedians have stirred controversies for insulting politicians, for example — but I still uphold political satire to be far more astute and humorous than Rife’s ‘I-see-pretty-woman-must-flirt’ template.

I believe we must be aware that the comedians’ successes become a reflection of us, the viewers.

We are making their jokes seem funny and naturally, these comedians successful.

Although many have criticized Rife, the idea that misogynistic jokes can still land a comedian’s suc-

9

create lively, diverse neighbourhoods” — all of which are factors that can decrease housing inequality in the long-term.

In my view, mixed-use developments have the potential to create a self-sustaining ecosystem by combining residential, commercial, and retail spaces. Businesses bring jobs, residents bring customers, and we may have a micro-economy that I believe could, just maybe, alleviate some financial stress of the city. It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s also not another champagne brunch for the rich only — it’s an attempt to diversify the urban landscape and make city living a bit more tenable for the rest of us.

In a city that’s constantly growing, The Well feels like the friend who shows up with a solution and a box of chocolates. I believe mixed-use developments like it have the potential to be the breath of fresh air Toronto needs, because development should not just be about putting a roof over heads but about creating a community where people don’t feel like they are just commuting between work and home. Instead, mixed-use developments are a nod to how cities are made up of people, not just buildings.

So, is The Well just another muddy puddle in Toronto’s development? Absolutely not. It’s an oasis — and Toronto, drink it in.

Emily Carlucci is a third-year student at Trinity College studying political science and English. She is the Urban Planning columnist for The Varsity’s Comment section.

Mixed-use developments blend living, working, and leisure spaces into one.

KAMILLA BEKBOSSYNOVA//THE VARSITY

cess is still scary. I thought we moved beyond such jokes — not by denying their existence but by not finding them humorous — but Rife managed to prove me wrong. Or, the viewers did.

I watched his stand-up special, Matt Rife: Natural Selection, on Netflix to see whether he could ever change his material. For the most part, no. There were a lot of jokes on women, although this time they were a little different: they didn’t involve flirting with women but calling their fixation on crystals and astrology stupid. He also dishes out ‘suggestions’ on how a woman should act to avoid domestic violence in the poor disguise of dark humour. He says he did it ‘for the guys.’ Well, of course, Rife. As a ‘guy,’ what else can I find funnier than jokes about women calling them stupid?

Rife has funny jokes on non-misogynistic matters too. He knows how to talk about topics beyond women or him. His Netflix special has some great punchlines on topics of growing up and family. They weren’t just honest but vulnerable, and I could see his comedic skill. Although his misogynistic comedy has gained him success, I hope he delves into diverse topics and alters his reputation. He is a comedian, after all, and one type of topic should not define his humour.

I’ve laughed at a few of Rife’s jokes, so I’m slightly disloyal in my critique of him. I am not cancelling him. I’m not making posters saying, “Matt Rife should not do comedy — agh!” But Rife gained fame very quickly. I struggle to pinpoint the ‘exact’ date, but seeing how frequently he appeared on my feed after one reel, I assume it was close to overnight.

Rapid successes like Rife’s often invite a dangerous consequence: the inability to process them. I’m worried that Rife may believe that only misogynistic comedy can give him success, given his recent success with it. It’s a dangerous precedent to have any talent receive such ‘overnight’ success without sound explanation — and I hope Rife does not attribute it to his problematic material.

Devarya Singhania is a second-year student at Woodsworth College studying English and creative writing. He is the editor-in-chief of The Woodsworth Review.

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On the precipice of change The realities of life after graduation Muzna Erum Associate News Editor

This story comes with an accompanying podcast! Find it online at www.thevarsity.ca.

“Journalism internship” is the most searched title on my Google search history. Every day, after I am done working — or procrastinating on YouTube — I always make it to the Google search bar, endlessly scrolling to see if there is a new opening or opportunity to apply to.

As a university student graduating this year, this semester has filled me with dreadful anxiety from endless LinkedIn searches for job opportunities, coffee chats, and the constant barrage of writing cover letters and resumes for the next phase of life: adulthood.

To me, adulthood means getting ready for what happens after university life: finding that dream job that can pay me a salary to live on, making the life-altering decision to move out, and creating a repayment plan to pay back tuition loans. I have always had these expectations that my “adulthood” would look a bit like something out of a cheesy comingof-age movie, where I’d become a completely self-sufficient person. But most of all, I know it means transitioning from having the identity and status of a student to a new adult.

Conversations around life after graduation always seem to be focused on jobs — how to prepare to land a job in the industry you want to work in. But how does transitioning from university affect your social life and mental health? Are our expectations of being a new adult ever realistic? I spoke with two U of T alumni, who revealed the ways that transitioning out of university and into the workforce felt nothing like what they expected.

Navigating the job market “My expectation of being an adult and graduating… it was definitely more like, ‘Oh, I’ll get a job, and I’ll be working in an office, and I’ll [have] money, and it’s going to be so fun. It’s going to be just like the movies [where I am] going to be so successful — and it just didn’t work out that way,” explained Noora Zahedi, a U of T alumni who graduated from U of T in April 2022.

Zahedi majored in political sciences and minored in sociology and history at UTSC. She currently lives with her parents. Zahedi feels responsible for her parents’ well-being, since her mother is sick. To Zahedi, being an adult has been about having more responsi-

bilities without enough time to fulfill them. “It’s not as if it’s not necessarily busy. It’s just not having as much free time,” she said.

Currently, Zahedi works for her family’s printing company, which can be very physically demanding. Although she works more on the marketing side, she ”[does] a little bit of everything.”

“You get your hopes up every time, and it just crashes” It took half a year of job hunting and a terrible corporate sales job before Zahedi decided to work for her father’s business. Even though she wasn’t the most organized person when it came to looking for jobs, she started job hunting in her third year to get a bit ahead of the process. In her third year, Zahedi took every career opportunity she could to figure out what exactly she wanted to do. “I started going to random job placements, random info sessions, trying to see if I have an interest in anything at all. Around [January of my] fourth year... I started applying,” she explained.

Zahedi says the job market was challenging to crack into when she started applying for jobs. In fact, she knows people who, to this day — two years after graduation — are still looking for work.

According to Statistics Canada’s (StatCan) Labor Force Survey of October 2023, the unemployment rate reached 5.7 per cent that month, a 0.7 per cent increase since April 2023. The unemployment rate among youth aged 15–24 had the highest growth at 11.4 per cent — 2.4 times higher than the unemployment rate for individuals in the next age bracket. Another StatCan quarterly report found that, from 2016 to 2022, the number of currently unemployed people with bachelor's degrees or higher exceeded the number of positions available for them.

Laura Cohen, a career counsellor and registered counselling therapist at Canadian Career Counseling (CCC) — an organization that helps people seeking career support — explained that depending on the industry, it could take about six months to a year for a student to find a job in the current landscape.

Cohen says that many undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 25 come

for support at CCC, all facing different circumstances. A lot of her clients experience frustration, exhaustion, and self-doubt during the job search process. “Young people in their 20s, who are maybe looking for work and don’t have success, might start to doubt themselves and then spiral and [think], ‘Who am I? What am I doing again?’ So there’s that existential anxiety,” she said. “[Applying for jobs] takes a lot of resilience and patience and emotional gusto… It can be personally taxing when you’re trying to find work and you haven’t found work,” added Cohen.

To help make the job process easier and more successful, Cohen says that there are three main things students should focus on.

First, they should try to get as much exposure to their field as they can, and get any type of work experience. Second, students should use the platform LinkedIn as much as possible. Finally, networking, Cohen explains, is one of the most powerful tools that can help one in the job process — especially when it comes to the “hidden job market.” According to her, 60 per cent of jobs are found through “hidden markets,” where people hire people they trust and know.

Throughout the job search process, Zahedi used platforms like LinkedIn and tools like networking heavily. Everyone told her that networking was crucial to finding a job and that handing in resumes and cover letters was not enough anymore. However, those tools never found her the job she was looking for.

“I was applying to 10 jobs every day, and networking every day with different people, online, sometimes in person. And, you know, I would get a lot of interviews, which was good, a little hopeful, because I did have work experience and it was all relevant — [but] at the end of the day, I would not get the position,” she shared.

For Zahedi, the process of navigating through the job market left her feeling massively disappointed and exhausted. “You get your hopes up every time, and it just crashes,” she said.

The international student experience Lidiia Tulenkova, an international student who studied sociocultural anthropology with a minor in art history and media culture, graduated in June 2023. She shared the same sentiments as Zahedi on job hunting.

Originally from Russia, Tulenkova works as a design research lead and program coordi-

nator at a design thinking firm. She currently lives alone and is grateful to have some financial support from her parents.

In an interview with The Varsity, Tulenkova shared that coming to U of T to do her undergrad was “decided overnight.” One day, she was sitting in her dad’s office playing video games in St. Petersburg, and the next minute she had to learn how to speak English in six months to pass the International English Language Testing System, a standard English language test required for applying to Canadian universities.

Although her undergrad life was very busy, it was a time she enjoyed. It felt like a moment in her life when she felt she had an infinite amount of time to try anything — which, she explained, was the “beauty” of being an undergrad student. “Every single day was different,” she said.

Since Tulenkova wanted to stay in Canada after undergrad to either get work experience or take graduate studies, she started thinking about her career path in the third year. At one point in her third year, she was attending 40 coffee chats each month to figure out what she wanted to do in the future.

Tulenkova officially started applying for jobs in her fourth year of January 2023 and received an official interview and job offer in June 2023. It took her five months.

Tulenkova said that the job search process was filled with a feeling of uncertainty and some panic due to her immigration status as an international student. Figuring out how to get a Post-Graduation Work Permit to continue working in Canada added additional pressure to her search. She was also filling in grad school applications at the same time, which left her mentally exhausted. She didn’t exactly know what her life would be like after graduating in terms of her career or what she would be doing, but she knew she wanted to stay in Canada.

Post-college blues Significantly, throughout university and the transition to applying to jobs, one of the hardest and most important hurdles Tulenkova and Zahedi had to experience was compromises to their mental well-being.

The issue of students having poor mental health in university is not new. It’s something I have personally experienced, and no doubt that other students have experienced, what with the balancing of studies, life, and everything else. A 2019 study from the National

features@thevarsity.ca JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

College Health Assessment that surveyed Canadian post-secondary students found that nearly 70 per cent of students had been dealing with “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous 12 months and more than half were living with debilitating depression.

In 2017, Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez found that post-graduation depression is a very real feeling recent students can face.

This phenomenon is often unreported and understudied due to the lack of “young adulthood” population in research studies and because graduation is normally seen as a joyful time.

I feel that strong sense of hopelessness as I am trying to find that internship and job myself.

There is no official diagnosis for post-college depression, but it can be categorized as “the extreme sadness and impaired feeling” that new graduates report when they leave college. The symptoms therapists have found in post-graduation depression can include an abnormal negative perspective, a lack of motivation to get out of bed, and hopelessness.

I feel that strong sense of hopelessness as I am trying to find that internship and job myself. Although I am very excited about the accomplishment of graduating and getting a degree I worked so hard for in the past four years, the challenges around finding a job and the cost of living have created a sense of hopelessness and a negative outlook on the future I can see for myself.

For Tulenkova, as an international student, the experience of loneliness is very different.

Being alone is something that she learned at an early age to be comfortable with. After university, Tulenkova shares that the feeling of loneliness comes and goes, but she has been able to work on it by making her social life better by joining dancing groups, meeting new people, and always trying to make friends.

The loneliness and sadness Tulenkova feels through this new transition in her life, however, comes from being unable to see her

parents. She misses the comfort her parents could give her, letting her know everything would eventually be okay and being part of her major life events. Although her parents support her financially and she calls them at times, Tulenkova explains it is not the same as being physically in the same place as them.

She knows that she is capable of solving most of her problems on her own, but having her parents physically here supporting her would make a world of difference. She misses the feeling of her mom hugging her and telling her everything is going to be okay. “But now you have to be the person who goes ahead and makes [you] a cup of tea and hugs you,” she explains.

During the end of her fourth year, Tulenkova says she only got to talk to her parents once in two weeks. She hopes to become a Canadian permanent resident in the next four years, at which point she will more easily be able to travel to see her family. She is counting down the days she gets to hug her mom.

International students in Canada also face a wide variety of issues during and after university when applying for jobs, including food insecurity, poor mental health, discrimination, and the effects of the housing crisis — and the pandemic also exacerbated some of these factors. Meanwhile, a 2021 International Student Survey, in which more than 40,000 international students across the country responded, found that students who identified as Asian and Black experienced discrimination, harassment, and feeling unsafe on and around their campuses.

All of this may affect international students’ financial stability. Another StatCan study published in 2021 that analyzed the income trajectory between how much domestic and international students earn after their postsecondary education found that in a five-year period after graduation, international students still had lower earnings than domestic students.

For Zahedi, mental health is something that “doesn’t exist right now”: it’s the worst it’s ever been with her mother’s illness. The feeling of loneliness is something she feels because of a lack of social life post-graduation.

She explains that university forced her to be around people and socialize. “The fact that I could sit in a class and be surrounded by people my age who would give their opinions and I could talk to, that was so much a gem that I didn’t realize at the time… I wish someone would force me to be in a group right

now,” she expressed.

Zahedi shares that she doesn’t often get to socially interact with her friends, due to responsibilities at work and home and her friends’ similarly busy schedules — or due to the realization that she didn’t have much of a connection with some of them in the first place. Still, even though living with her parents sometimes means a lack of privacy, Zahedi finds that her parents help her feel less lonely through this transition as an adult.

Finances and the housing market Just like Zahedi, I have always had this belief that after graduating and finding a job that paid a living wage, I would be able to move out and make the life transition to become what I would like to think is a “real adult.” However, considering the job market and the housing affordability crisis, these expectations seem less likely possible with each passing day.

According to StatCan, in 2021, 35.1 per cent of young adults aged 20–34 still live with a parent. A 2001 study found that only 30 per cent of 20–34 year olds lived with a parent.

There are many reasons numerous adults still live with a parent well into adulthood.

Umay Kader, a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia who is planning to study this phenomenon, predicts that the increase of adults living with parents may be related to the precarious job market, and probably has to do with the state of the housing market.

“If I don’t move out by then [by the time I am 25], at least, I [have failed] at life, and I don’t know where I’m going”

Canada is currently experiencing an unaffordable housing crisis: many young Canadians cannot afford to buy a home.

Part of the unaffordable housing crisis stems from housing prices — which rose 44 per cent during the pandemic — outpacing incomes. Canada has also seen an increase in rental rates, which are currently up to 12.2 per cent from January 2023. According to Global News, the average asking price for a

one-bedroom apartment in Toronto — one of the most expensive cities to live in after Vancouver — is around $2,457 per month.

One of the biggest factors behind the housing crisis, according to the National Bank of Canada and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, is that housing demand is outweighs the supply. The Royal Bank of Canada warned that Canada will need to construct houses and rentals, or Canada will be short 120,000 units by 2026.

A report by the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA) that did a poll with Abacus Data found that student debt was one of the biggest barriers to homeownership. OREA has called on the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) to increase the grace period for OSAP loans repayment from six months to a year so that students can find stable employment and save money before worrying about paying off student loan debt.

Right now, Zahedi estimates that she earns the equivalent of rent for a one-bedroom apartment each month, which means she won’t be moving out anytime soon. Her older sister, who was also a U of T alumnus, was just recently able to move out at 25.

She hopes when she gets to that age, she will be able to move out. “If I don't move out by then [by the time I am 25], at least, I [have failed] at life, and I don’t know where I’m going,” Zahedi believes.

Although I have realized my expectation of what my transition to “new adulthood” might not ever be a reality due to many factors like the current housing and job market, I was impressed at both Zahedi and Tulenkova’s optimistic outlooks on the future.

Tulenkova plans to focus on continuing to build the life she wants for herself. She sees next year as a chance to figure out a proper balance in life and to create more of a community around her. She’ll continue building a network of meaningful friends, meeting new people, and she hopes to maybe even get a promotion at work.

Zahedi hopes that in the next five years, she will get a chance to move out and become more financially free. If you ever ask her late at night, she might even say she’d like to be married.

Regardless of what Zahedi and Tulenkova might have expected about the transition to this next phase of life called “new adulthood” — and regardless of the struggles they currently face — in the end, both are excited to see what the future might bring.

Photo

January 8, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/photo photos@thevarsity.ca

PhotoCap.

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An exploration of quiet “We learn, travel, be happy, be impatient, all in silence.”

Gabriel Carter Varsity Contributor

Last winter, I was out for a walk one afternoon as the sun was getting low in the sky.

I saw a man sitting at a table on the corner of Nathan Phillips Square, alone, studying a chessboard.

I approached him and asked if I could take his picture: he agreed. To me, his striking image is emblematic of how we exist in the quiet.

We learn, travel, feel happy, and experience impatience, all in silence. Of course, with sound, these feelings and experiences can take on a different character.

Noisy impatience might be accompanied by huffing and puffing, rapid tapping toes, and repeated questions of how long the wait will be. Likewise, loud expressions of happiness might involve exuberant screaming and ecstatic shouting.

Hushed moments include none of these things. Noiseless impatience can be seen in the shivering bodies of people waiting in the cold for their orders. And silent happiness can manifest through a smile given wordlessly to a stranger. Such soundless experiences are ordinary, varied, and important.

As I write this, I sit on a Kipling-bound TTC train. I, too, feel the quiet.

Arts & Culture

January 8, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/arts-culture arts@thevarsity.ca

In Translation: Am I Bangladeshi enough?

How linguistic imperialism has impacted my identity as a Bangladeshi-born Canadian Mashiyat Ahmed Varsity Contributor

I once heard someone say that the language you can argue in is your language. I come from Bangladesh, a small yet vibrant country with a rich history, nestled on the northeast side of India, where Bengali is the official language.

However, I have lived in Canada from a very young age; thus, I never had to translate my mother tongue to English or deal with words getting ‘lost in translation,’ because at no point in my life was Bengali the dominant way I expressed myself.

Growing up on the diverse and bustling streets of Toronto, English naturally became the language in which I could best think, express, and argue. Communicating in Bengali became an act of translating my mother tongue from English. This very fact has shrouded me with much guilt, and to some degree, cultural estrangement. I was left wondering whether Bengali was even my language, when my loved ones can not only argue in Bengali, but also risked their lives to do so.

The British Empire directly ruled the Indian subcontinent from 1858 until 1947, and afterward, it partitioned the area into Pakistan and India — a process which resulted in massive upheaval of the region’s diverse ethnic groups and violence along religious lines. Before its independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh — formerly East Pakistan — had an ethnically and culturally distinct population that was made out to be inferior by ethnocentric ideologies perpetuated by West Pakistan. Then-President of Pakistan Muhammad Ayub Khan called Bengalis “conquered peoples, while the inhabitants of West Pakistan were the descendants of conquerors.”

This rhetoric, among other ideologies, inspired multiple attempts by West Pakistani officials to eradicate the linguistic and cultural sacredness of my nation by imposing Urdu as the official language rather than Bengali.

My grandfather, who was a medic during

the War of Independence in 1971, recalls how Bangladeshi men and women vehemently — and at the expense of their safety — protested the imposition of West Pakistani cultural norms and for the right to speak Bengali in what is now known as the Bengali Language Movement of 1952. In fact, speaking Bengali was such an immense source of comradery that it laid the foundation for Bangladeshi nationalism, pride, and unity years later.

For these reasons, my difficulty reaching native fluency in Bengali can make me incredibly emotional. In both casual exchanges and heated conversations, while I try to speak as effortlessly as my grandparents do, I am stung by how uneasy I feel speaking a language my elders fought to protect. I am more comfortable when speaking English — the colonizer’s language — than when I speak my mother tongue, whose preservation and endurance came through the martyrdom of those who fought for Bangladeshi independence.

When I last visited Bangladesh in 2017, apart from being overwhelmed by the heaviness of the mid-July heat, I was surprised by the sheer amount of ‘Banglish’ I heard. Banglish is a combination of Bengali and English, where people will switch between both languages or weave one into the other.

As an immigrant in Canada, I knew that Banglish was a linguistic reality among people like me who had to acclimate to another culture, but I did not expect it to be so popular among people who had lived their entire lives in Bangladesh. In the urban chaos of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, I saw endless advertisements and heard multiple conversations solely in English. Common words in Bengali were frequently substituted by English ones.

I gradually realized the extent to which globalization and the colonial legacy of the British Empire had influenced the language bias of my community. For example, even in vernaculars not completely taken over by Banglish, it is more common to say

JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

“amakay owui chair ta dhou” — translating to “give me that chair” — because the Bengali word for “chair” is hardly ever used, and thus is an extinct piece of vocabulary among many youths, including myself.

Even though Bengali is the state-officiated language, English has come to symbolize modernization, social prestige, and even notions of educatedness: higher paying jobs are only offered to fluent English speakers, and wealthy families tend to send their children to ‘English-medium’ schools, which predominantly teach an English curriculum. I became painfully aware of the fact that, especially among Bangladesh’s youth, proximity to a colonizer’s language often determines how a person’s social, economic, and even individual value is perceived. English being held in such high regard means that Bengali is considered a more casual, unserious, and ‘inferior’ form of communication.

Since 2017, my grandparents and peers have told me that Banglish has become the norm for many people as they try to navigate an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, a world where our mother tongue is constantly being put on the back burner. This sombre reality makes me wonder how much of the younger generation has

internalized a subconscious negative attitude toward their mother tongue, a mother tongue that people died for only two generations prior.

Speaking in broken Bengali fills me with a sense of separateness from other Bangladeshis and gives me the impression that I will never be able to understand nor express the plight of my people.

But as it turns out, both diaspora and natives are finding it harder to stay connected to their languages as English becomes more dominant. Linguistic imperialism did not end with independence from British rule.

My grandfather growing up would always tell me that speaking Bengali was a mark of claiming cultural and ethnic uniqueness, and that it was a precursor to eventual nationhood. Above all, I wonder if I am failing to live up to the sacrifices and teachings of those who directly fought for Bangladesh’s linguistic and national independence. Honouring the historical struggle and grief of those who fought for Bengali is a challenge not only I face, but that Bangladeshis in Bangladesh face too. I am still in the process of learning my own history, having important conversations with my parents to make up for the things I’ve lost in translation, and realizing that no matter what pace I keep, it doesn’t make me any more or less Bangladeshi.

Russell Braun triumphantly returns to U of T to conduct The Florentine Straw Hat UofT Opera opened its 2023–2024 season with Nino Rota’s top-notch comic opera Eric Yang Varsity Contributor

After a two-year hiatus, the renowned Canadian baritone Russell Braun returned to UofT Opera to conduct a production of Nino Rota’s comedy, The Florentine Straw Hat, from Nov 23–26, 2023 at the Faculty of Music, MacMillan Theatre. Since his conducting debut at the UofT Opera in 2016, his appearance at the helm of the orchestra has always garnered great praise and applause.

And this time around is no different.

The Florentine Straw Hat tells the story of Fadinard, a bridegroom, racing around Paris on his wedding day to replace a straw hat that his horse had accidentally eaten. The hat’s owner, a married woman, is engaged in an illicit affair, and the straw hat was given to her by her husband!

Threatened by the lady’s lover, Fadinard must find an identical hat to avoid her husband finding out about her affair. A comical series of events follow, with Fadinard trying to hide this fiasco from his domineering father-in-law, all while avoiding the married woman’s forbidden lover.

The UofT Opera program was founded in 1946.

It has trained young singers in all aspects of opera for nearly eighty years, providing them opportunities to advance their careers. A typical season from the program consists of three full-scale productions.

Russell Braun’s mastery of Rota’s comedic opera easily showed through his interpretation of the music. From the onset of the overture to the final scene in Act IV, Braun seemed to keep all the musicians at his fingertips. No moment in any scene was safe from his all-encompassing vision.

Of particular note was Braun’s treatment of Act IV, in which he took some tempos at a quicker pace than any other recording of this opera I’ve listened to — and to great effect! Each scene built off the energy of the previous scene, so that when the music reaches a comedic conclusion, his well-planned organization gave the audience a satisfying reward.

The orchestra featured in these performances was also top-notch. Selected from members of the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra — the flagship orchestra at the Faculty of Music — these young musicians obviously represent the cream of the crop in their craft. They were quick to respond to Braun’s conducting, reproducing his motions into sound, delivering a polished performance. The woodwinds and brass in this performance were excellent. I am happy to note that the brass did not overpower the singers, even in big moments, and the woodwinds blended effortlessly into every section, both of which were great improvements from the year before.

Michelle Tracey’s set design also offered what the audience expects from UofT Opera sets:

meticulously detailed, historically informed, yet abstract in its function. The two-levelled dynamic stage delivered the best of both worlds, not being too abstract to take away from the historical setting, and yet having enough space for the singers to play around in. The second level of the stage, enclosed with walls on three sides, acted as a barrier between the singers, allowing for moments of dramatic irony and witty interactions.

The costumes — going for the historically informed slant — were grand and absolutely gorgeous, with the banquet chorus especially well designed, their dress colours matching with the stage lights. The historically informed set and costumes represent what I’ve noticed as the UofT Opera program’s approach: to provide adequate professional training to young singers while still not shying away from experimentation.

Lyndon Ladeur as Fadinard in the Friday and Sunday cast was impeccable. His voice yielded a gorgeous mixture from the bottom of his range to the top, and he showed no signs of fatigue at the end of the show, even after singing in nearly every scene in a 120-minute opera. His several high B flats rang out right to the back of the MacMillan Theatre. Jordana Goddard as Elena in the same cast had some of the most lyric singing I’ve heard, projected with great power, even at the softest sections. Of note was her performance

Lyndon Ladeur as Fadinard in Act II of Rota’s The Florentine Straw Hat. COURTESY OF RICHARD LU CC UOFT OPERA

of Elena’s aria in Act IV — a truly virtuosic performance.

Dante Mullin-Santone’s performance as Beaupertuis never failed to garner laughter from the audience. As the Baronessa in the Thursday and Saturday cast, Lissy Meyerowitz balanced her humorous acting with her lyrical, effortless singing.

Her scene in Act II played out especially smoothly.

Finally, Ben Wallace’s scene in the final act, as the corporal of the guards, was a welcoming surprise — a powerful and yet beckoning tone.

UofT Opera continues its season with a work entirely composed by students, Lysistrata, which will premiere on January 21.

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ARTS & CULTURE

Artist profile: Myuri Srikugan is never far from her roots Navigating subject, heritage, and Scarborough through digital art Franchesca Fu Varsity Contributor

Myuri Srikugan is at home in Scarborough. As a child, she would run around with her dad’s Nokia phone, taking photos of her wall, of anything. Her uncle brought over a camcorder, and she ran around again, taking videos. Photos of her extended family lay all around her home. They chronicle where her family, the backbone of her community, has been and who they are.

Years later, Srikugan graduated from UTSC with a minor in Studio Art alongside her Human Biology major. She is a Tamil-Canadian digital artist based out of Scarborough, living in the same home where she started taking photos and videos. Srikugan is never far from her roots, which are reflected in her work that often centres on her family and Scarborough community.

“I’ve been living here my whole life, like this exact

spot… And I feel very close to it,” she said in an interview with The Varsity.

Srikugan’s work is currently on display until July 31 in UTSC’s Instructional Centre Vitrines as part of the Doris McCarthy Gallery’s exhibition The Yet. The exhibition envisions the future and how the past informs it. The Yet exhibit was developed in conjunction with artist Erika DeFreitas, who mentored Srikugan and two other emerging Scarborough artists. Srikugan described working with DeFreitas, one of her inspirations, as being “so surreal.”

In the exhibition, Srikugan showcases three photos called “Love Letters to the Wombs Before Me.” It consists of one photo of her mother, one of her and her sister, and one of her grandmother’s family. She then crafted a love letter to accompany each photo to show her gratitude to the people portrayed in them and the complexity inherent in familial relationships.

The photos allow her to peer into her family’s lives and solidify

a connection with them that she might not always be able to create in person. Since her grandmother lives in Sri Lanka, the time they spend together is infrequent and only happens once every few years. As a result of this distance, Srikugan acknowledges that she doesn’t have “the closest relationship with her.” Regardless, Srikugan described her grandmother as “someone that [she] just [admires], and [she’s] always mesmerized by when [she sees] her.”

As a photographer and documentarian, Srikugan recognizes the complexity and rich emotional lives behind the subjects she profiles.

Her work explores that sentiment and she strives to create intuitively and address overlooked or potentially taboo topics head-on to find healing for all parties involved.

One of these unstated topics is Scarborough’s negative reputation. Travelling around the GTA, she has noticed others’ negative perceptions of Scarborough. At one point, it made her question her hometown and even avoid putting Scarborough on her resume. “I’m just like, is this a bad place?” she’d ask herself. But she shakes that off through her art, which often highlights Scarborough residents and includes collaborations with local organizations.

Her past work also includes a documentary profiling Abhirami Balachandran, a trans, nonbinary Tamil person, and their experience with colourism. The documentary is straightforward and delves immediately into Balachandran’s in-

Grounded in her Tamil-Canadian heritage, Srikugan makes art to connect people.

COURTESY OF MYURI SRIKUGAN

Marija Buzanin Varsity Contributor

ternalized childhood belief that having darker skin means being undesirable. Overlayed with Balachandran’s honest commentary, the documentary has footage of them existing naturally in scenery outdoors — beyond their skin colour, they are a person to be seen and heard up close.

Experiencing and combatting colourism is a personal journey with deep-seated generational roots. Srikugan found that she could capture familiar experiences in the Tamil community and be open about her heritage through the lens of another.

For Srikugan, art is rooted in the people you get inspiration from, collaborate with, and showcase to. When Srikugan interacts with other creatives — such as the Supercollective, an informal group of Scarborough artists she belongs to who meet up regularly to support each other — she feels energized and a sense of gratitude. The people around her are the foundation of her work.

When capturing other people through photography or documentary, she’s honing in on qualities already in them instead of moulding them into something that they are not. Her advice for potential photoshoot subjects: “If you want to be seen as confident, then you need to come as confident.”

After a work has been completed, Srikugan believes that the art “should be brought out to the communities and made more accessible to the working class as well.” For example, she turned her documentary with Balachandran into stills and displayed them at a local bakery. Part of Srikugan’s responsibility as an artist is to bring her work to people.

As for her current work, she is finishing up a documentary titled “Imminent Visions,” and she’s gathering inspiration for future projects.

After a long stretch of creation and working with DeFreitas, she is now soaking in other people’s art.

Srikugan’s art career is just beginning, but it will always be grounded in her Tamil-Canadian heritage and sense of place. “I’m always going to return to Scarborough at some point. It’s always so sweet.

Just the way specifically creatives talk about this space, too, and how they find home here,” she said.

The people are where this artist finds inspiration — and for her, the people are in Scarborough.

Interested readers can find Srikugan’s work on her website: https://www.myurisrikugan.com/

UC Follies’ Danny and the Deep Blue Sea explores fundamentality of forgiveness

Danny and the Deep Blue Sea is a tale of love and woe; two strangers, Danny and Roberta, meet at a bar and face the fateful consequences of their encounter, which spiral into violence and vulnerability. Though both characters follow an archetype — unstable individuals angry at the world and their circumstances but secretly in need of love — the story never feels like a cross into cliché. Between December 1–3, the UC Follies — University College’s theatre troupe — put on John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at Theatre Passe Muraille.

The ‘alternative’ Passe Muraille theatre offered little in the way of set design for this particular play, but its outer appearance, industrial and nondescript, masks an ingenious story inside.

The tight, asymmetrical space, which holds a stage in the corner of the room, is almost claustrophobic, drawing the audience into the middle of the characters’ lives. Costuming, makeup, lighting, even sound — all distractions are minimized until the viewer is alone in a wide ocean, with nothing to hold onto except the play’s characters, who are equally lost.

Like all good stories, it begins in a rundown bar — this one is in the playwright’s home, the Bronx. In fact, every aspect of the play seems to be influenced by Shanley’s life; he worked an odd string of jobs, including bartending.

Danny and Roberta exist in the bubble of their first meeting, dancing back and forth between the initial violence and the spark of their first barroom interaction, but never exiting that moment.

Ethically dubious and at times painful to watch, trauma and its effects act as a third character in

the pair’s story. It occupies such a large space in the small theatre that there isn’t much room for healing.

However, the play is not a glorification of abusive relationships and childhood trauma; in fact, it opens up room for a difficult conversation about mental health. First performed in 1984, in an era which lacked the privilege of the language we have today, the play is truly a story of piecing one’s life back together against the odds. Despite lacking the right words for it, Danny and Roberta navigate their emotional baggage together. The actors do a fantastic job hinting at the tensions below the surface as they do so.

John Cleave, a U of T student and the play’s director, described his hands-off approach: his interpretation is defined not just by making artistic choices but also by not making them.

Cleave emphasized the emotional dynamics of the two main characters rather than flashy production. The physical distance between the actors — who are farther apart while they meet as strangers and who grow closer as they learn more about each other — contributed to the audience’s sense of being inside their lives, feeling what they feel. As for the actors, they were loud, brash, and, at times, took it out on the audience — a totally immersive experience. Even in silent moments or gaps in conversation, the actors conveyed their characters’ inner turmoil in a raw and beautiful way.

Danny and Roberta, like most people we meet in this world, are not necessarily good people; they are loud, rude, and angry, and they often hurt each other verbally and physically. But are they bad?

According to Cleave, Danny and Roberta shouldn’t work, but they do. Perhaps there can

A heart-wrenching, intimate story of trauma and romance be love even in the harshest places, as long as there is also forgiveness. It’s a scrappy, painful process, but Danny and Roberta absolve each other of their sins, proclaiming the final words: “I forgive you.”

Phaedra Archimandriti stars as Roberta and Jean-Baptiste Mellinand as Danny in UC Follies’ latest production.

COURTESY OF DUA SIDDIQUI

Science

January 8, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca

How stars can help us find dark matter Astronomers hunt for dark matter through ribbon-like remnants of dead galaxies Sultan Nessa Varsity Contributor

On the morning of November 24, Assistant Professor Ting Li at U of T’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics was awarded the 2023 Dorothy Shoichet Women Faculty in Science Award of Excellence. Later that evening, she gave a presentation as part of Star Talk, a series hosted by U of T’s Astronomy & Space Exploration Association, titled “Navigating Stellar Streams: Unveiling the Milky Way’s Hidden Secrets.”

I was nervous being in that lecture hall. I hadn’t been to an astrophysics lecture in six years.

Luckily, the talk was approachable to those without a physics background.

Seeing dark matter in the Milky Way Large images and graphs accompanied Li’s talk.

One was a simulated density map of dark matter in the Milky Way, which is a spiral galaxy, or a massive collection of stars, dust, and gas in the form of a spinning pinwheel. In general, density maps are maps of a region in the sky where lighter areas of the region indicate high clusters, or a high density of whatever matter scientists are measuring, and darker areas indicate sparser matter in a given region.

Dark matter, according to NASA, is an unknown matter that makes up about 27 per cent of our universe and is not visible or normal matter. Dark matter has mass that can bend the light travelling from galaxies behind it. The degree to which this mass bends the light helps astronomers create density maps of dark matter.

On the other hand, a stellar density map of the Milky Way — where Earth resides — is a density map that would help configure the distribution of stars in the galaxy as well as the structure of our galaxy’s swirling arms.

And these density maps show a lot. Surround-

ing the disc of the Milky Way is a gigantic spherical halo shape of dark matter known as the main halo, and it is orbited by many smaller and more compact clusters of dark matter known as subhalos. Sub-halos that are large enough and have enough gas can create stars and dwarf galaxies smaller than the Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies like the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds can orbit the Milky Way as satellite

gravitational pull and now exist as linear clusters of individual stars, called member stars.

Stellar streams and how to find them The importance of stellar streams lies in their ability to answer questions about the mass and shape of the Milky Way. Stellar streams can help in understanding how much dark matter mass is in our galaxy and how it affects the Milky Way.

Professor Ting Li explains how stellar streams can help us elucidate mass distribution in the Milky Way. COURTESY OF ASX ASSOCIATION

galaxies. Satellite galaxies are essentially galaxies that orbit other galaxies, like planets orbiting the Sun. If satellite galaxies get too close to the Milky Way, they can end up as ribbon-like structures called stellar streams. These streams are the remains of galaxies and star clusters that have been ripped apart due to the Milky Way’s

While nearly a third of the universe is made up of dark matter, most of the Milky Way is dark matter. Finding dark matter would help us understand the weight of the galaxy and that in turn would help answer cosmological questions, especially about the evolution of galaxies.

Li used the analogy of Christmas lights to demonstrate the role of stellar streams. Just

like the shape of Christmas lights on a tree in the dark can provide an idea of what the tree looks like, stellar streams function as visible matter that can help us infer the mass distribution of the Milky Way. Astronomers are using sky surveys to discover stellar streams. Using powerful cameras, they image the sky multiple times to look for data on stars, like their brightness and location. Stellar density maps, created by powerful cameras, are used to map member stars and then detect stellar streams.

Astronomers have known of the existence of stellar streams since 1994, and research on stellar streams has been rising dramatically for the last two decades due to emerging surveys. One reason for this sharp increase in discoveries is the advancement of giant telescopic cameras with diameters at least a metre wide. The specific camera Li mentioned was the Dark Energy Camera, part of a four-metre telescope located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Space satellites like Gaia and the Giant Magellan Telescope have also helped pave the way to discovering more stellar streams. Gaia is a spacecraft with the main mission to create a precise 3D map of more than a thousand million stars in our galaxy and beyond. According to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Giant Magellan Telescope is going to be the world’s largest and most powerful telescope and is to be operational by 2029.

The takeaway I realized I had been leaning over the desk for the entire lecture. I stuck around to sit down with Professor Li, who told me that there is beauty in discovering something you never meant to.

Awe had replaced my nerves by then. I had stumbled upon a whole world I didn’t know about, which included discoveries, people, and entire entities that are much more than meets the eye.

When science and magic intersect Sahir Dhalla manipulated us with the power of neuroscience at TedxUofT Alejandro Izquierdo López Varsity Contributor

We all know that magic cannot break the laws of physics. Yet, magicians conjure objects out of nothingness, teleport cards, and can easily guess which number we are thinking of — or, at least, that’s what our brain tells us. The explanation behind many magic tricks may be rooted in cognitive neuroscience, according to one U of T undergraduate student.

Sahir Dhalla is currently the neuroscience liaison at Cove Neurosciences Inc. and a student in neuroscience and philosophy at the University of Toronto. By the end of his TEDxUofT Salon talk, which took place on November 10, our minds had been completely manipulated — not by any technology or superpower, but by the power of magic.

How do magicians manipulate people’s perception of reality?

Any skilled magician knows that magic isn’t just about complex, dexterous hand movements. “If I had to summarize magic in a few words, it would be manipulating expectations,” wrote Dhalla in an email to The Varsity. Our minds cannot handle all the information they process but rather hold onto a few observable facts and fill the rest with expectations, or predictions. With their words, movements, and posture, magicians can influence these predictions.

Dhalla is also a magician. At one point during the talk, he called a member of the audience onstage and asked someone in the first row to hold an envelope.

The volunteer chose a card from a deck randomly.

We all saw the card: the king of diamonds. With the card back inside the deck, Dhalla took a magic wand out of his pocket, and, with a gentle touch, the card disappeared from its deck. The envelope was then opened to reveal the king of diamonds.

According to Dhalla, our brains are completely gullible and can be easily manipulated. His magic trick was an elaborate manipulation of our perception of reality. How did he do it?

How brains become misdirected Among all sensory inputs our brain processes, vision is dominant, but it is also limited. In 2008, a group of researchers from Durham University tracked people’s eye movements while they watched a magic trick. Through his gaze and subtle moments, the magician influenced which sections of the trick received the most visual attention from his audience.

Simultaneously, he was performing the real manoeuvre in plain sight, in an area of low attention.

Dhalla is aware of this technique. He explained that magicians use ‘spotlight’ cues to direct your attention. At the same time, the more details of the trick that you see, the less likely you are to discover what really happened. Was the wand perhaps a misdirection, keeping our attention far from something else?

Dhalla tells us that pulling out the magic wand created a frame of attention. As a result, everything beforehand became fuzzy memories in our minds.

Magicians usually overload our memory with pointless steps so that we cannot trace back sequences of events.

The illusion of free will Magicians often use a strategy called “forcing,” in which they use subliminal messages to influence our choices. Magicians often explain their actions out loud, but they can also use this as just another way to make us fall into their narrative, even subconsciously. All of these messages affect our minds without us knowing. Dhalla demonstrated this strategy with another trick.

He said, though this trick is usually done in groups of three to seven people, he was confident it would work on us too. He asked us to think of a two-digit number that followed a set of rules. There were 8 possible numbers that fit all the rules — and yet many people chose 37. Dhalla had subliminally forced this number on us by making sure we were thinking of its digits.

Similarly, many card tricks leave one card exposed for a longer time — unnoticeable to the audience, but holding our attention. Did Dhalla perhaps manipulate the volunteer into choosing the king of diamonds?

The combined strength of magic and science Prediction errors, where our expectations don’t align with reality, are why magic works — and they tell us a lot about our brains too. Dhalla explained that when someone’s arm is paralyzed, if the area of

their brain that controls its movement is unaffected, they may still believe that they are moving their arm.

Cognitive neuroscientists have used magic tricks to study short-term memory and the role of different brain areas in prediction errors.

Dhalla had misdirected our senses and our memory, manipulated our thoughts and choices, and forced our brains into a narrative in which he could teleport cards.

But magic is more than awe and games. These same techniques are used in everyday life, from helping form good habits to scamming people. After tricking us, Dhalla asked the audience: “Do you think you could stop someone from doing the same to you?” Perhaps a neuroscientist would give you the answer, but a magician never reveals their secrets.

Disclosure: Sahir Dhalla served as The Varsity’s Science Editor for Volume 143.

Sahir Dhalla, a U of T student, discusses the science behind manipulation.

CHLOE LOUNG/THEVARSITY

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THE VARSITY

science@thevarsity.ca

SCIENCE

Neurosurgery’s glass ceiling: Addressing the gender imbalance in the field Dr. Gelareh Zadeh speaks on the underrepresentation of women in neurosurgery Parsa Babaei, Veronica Papaioannou, Zahn Bariring & Lauren Shaw Varsity Contributors

Within the medical sciences, the field of neurosurgery stands as a beacon of both awe and challenge, demanding dedication and an intimate understanding of the human brain. However, hidden within this discipline lies an undeniable fact: a glaring gender disparity that persists to this day.

Indeed, women in medical fields have repeatedly pushed barriers and exposed the systemic challenges present in fields dominated by men.

While this fight for equality has increased diversity and access to medical fields, unfortunately, women remain largely excluded from neurosurgery. In particular, a lack of mentorship by women, deep-rooted cultural biases, and institutional obstacles are significant deterrents that dissuade numerous aspiring women surgeons from pursuing their dreams.

The bleak statistics reveal the problem: despite women constituting a substantial portion of medical school graduates, their presence in neurosurgery remains disproportionately low.

For example, a report published by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) highlights this phenomenon concisely. In 2019, only 11 per cent of neurosurgeons in Canada identified as women.

We had the opportunity to listen to the experiences and insights of Dr. Gelareh Zadeh, a remarkable woman neurosurgeon whose experiences serve both as a testament to the challenges she faced and an urgent call for gender diversity within neurosurgery.

Lack of women mentors in neurosurgery A significant barrier in neurosurgery has been the lack of women mentors. Notably, a survey

of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School’s female students of 2017–2018 revealed that 88 per cent of the 104 respondents had no senior female mentor in neurosurgery. Mentorship is crucial for guiding prospective applicants to competitive specialties and fostering an inclusive space where applicants do not feel alienated.

Ultimately, encouraging more women to become neurosurgeons will lead to more women mentors who will help support the next generation of women in neurosurgery. When we asked Dr. Zadeh to share her thoughts on barriers that women face in neurosurgery, she expressed a similar sentiment: “A lack of mentors, role models, and the sense of having allyship and having people that are similar to you in the field… is one of the biggest factors [preventing women from pursuing neurosurgery], so increasing [the] number of people from diverse backgrounds whether it’s females or others is really important.”

Dr. Zadeh herself is an ardent advocate for change, actively engaged in mentoring young women.

Systemic barriers for female neurosurgeons Undeniably, women bring valuable perspectives and skill sets to neurosurgery. Furthermore, women surgeons may better advocate and care for women patients who have trouble connecting with surgeons who are men. It logically follows that more women in neurosurgery will gradually lead to fewer barriers and more equality in neurosurgery.

However, to achieve this goal, first, we need to remove some of the systemic barriers present to enable women to enter neurosurgery in the first place.

Some of these changes could involve several different modifications to the current system: from having neurosurgery residency spots re-

served for women to having mandatory diversity training education for current practicing neurosurgeons.

Dr. Zadeh stressed the imperative to support prospective women surgeons: “A culture shift needs to happen not from the underrepresented or minority group, but they need to have support [from members of the dominant group].”

Another significant challenge that hinders equality is the prevalence of negative stereotypes that women surgeons face. Many patients have a preconceived notion that women surgeons perform operations worse than their men counterparts. This view discourages women from pursuing surgical subspecialties such as neurosurgery, and is also unfounded.

Indeed, a 2023 study led by Dr. Christopher J. D. Wallis, who is involved in the Departments of Surgery at U of T, Mount Sinai Hospital, and the University Health Network, has suggested that patients treated by women surgeons have lower rates of adverse outcomes after surgery compared to patients treated by men surgeons.

When asked about her personal experience with patients, Dr. Zadeh reflected: “When I was younger, nobody actually thought of me as the neurosurgeon. So I’ve always been asked to do things that, usually, are for nursing staff [such as adjusting the bed]… [I] would explain the procedure and then [patients] would look at me and say ‘when is Dr. Zadeh coming in?’…

There were a few patients that didn’t want to have surgery with a female neurosurgeon.”

Challenges for aspiring or current women neurosurgeons with children Surprisingly, a major obstacle to achieving equality in neurosurgery comes from medical institutions themselves. These institutions pose numerous challenges to aspiring women

surgeons. For example, the long training required for neurosurgery disadvantages women with kids, who are often looked down upon for taking maternity leave.

When asked about unique challenges that women face during their neurosurgery training, Dr. Zadeh provides valuable insights on some of the concerns that aspiring women surgeons might have: “There [are] statistics to show that… the rate of miscarriages in [neuro]surgical residents is much higher than the average population and other medical fields… and of course, after having a child, there are elements of nursing and caring for your baby, and hospital environments aren’t very conductive and supportive of that.”

A 2021 study highlighted that pregnant neurosurgery residents are exposed to toxic chemicals found in research facilities and during surgical operations, which may affect the wellbeing of a developing fetus. Additionally, many women neurosurgery residents fear discrimination from colleagues for having children, and the lack of access to support resources such as proper maternity leave policies and lactation facilities is well documented.

The journey to achieving gender equality in neurosurgery is multifaceted, presenting a series of challenges that extend from the lack of female mentors to the deeply ingrained detrimental societal stereotypes to the systemic biases embedded within the medical institutions themselves.

Overcoming these hurdles requires a concerted effort from practicing neurosurgeons, patients, and institutions. It is the responsibility of society to dismantle barriers to empower every aspiring woman neurosurgeon to ascend the peaks of this field, leading to the best care possible for all patients.

MRI brain images.

COURTESY OF MANSOOR ET AL AND LR0725 CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

thevarsity.ca/category/science

JANUARY 8, 2024

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Targeting proteins that hijack genetic switches offers new avenues for cancer therapy Unlocking the secrets of cancer growth

3D imaging of Sox2 enhancer clusters.

COURTESY OF ELIFE CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Shayamikka Ravichandran Varsity Contributor

In the complex symphony of our genetic code, enhancer regions — or ‘enhancers’ — are like music conductors orchestrating the expression of specific genes, which act as the instruments.

By switching genes on or off, enhancers guide the harmonious development of our tissues, organs, and more through gene expression — by using the information encoded within genes to produce proteins that are crucial for the growth and development of living organisms.

When ‘transcription factors’ — regulatory proteins that bind to enhancers — modify the enhancers, they can alter gene transcription and disrupt normal cell expression. Cancer can cunningly exploit this mechanism of enhancer reprogramming — a field of epigenetics explored by Professor Jennifer Mitchell and her research team at U of T’s Department of Cell and Systems Biology.

What enhancers do Enhancers play a pivotal role in regulating gene function. During genetic transcription, ‘coding’ regions of the genome are transcribed into RNA proteins. However, there are also ‘non-coding’ regions of the genome, referred to as regulatory DNA, which can accumulate changes depending on environmental pressures and genetic inheritance patterns.

These regulatory DNA sequences regulate whether the process of transcription is activated

or deactivated on another ‘coding’ sequence of the genome. Enhancers lie within the noncoding regions of the genome.

The Sox2 gene The Sox2 gene is crucial for tissue formation during development across multiple organs, including the brain, eyes, esophagus, inner ear, lungs, skin, stomach, taste buds, and trachea in both humans and mice. The regulatory regions that control the expression of the gene Sox2 constitute a poorly explored topic of research.

Increased expression of the Sox2 gene can sometimes indicate a patient has an aggressive cancer of the lungs, breast, uterus, or colon.

Understanding what activates overexpression of Sox2 in cancer patients can tell us more about how to deactivate these same mechanisms when developing cancer therapeutics.

Embarking on the journey of investigating this gene, Mitchell delved into investigating potential candidates for enhancer regions that affect the Sox2 gene. In a 2017 seminar with the Broad Institute, a research organization affiliated with Harvard and MIT, she discussed an enhancer region termed SRR124-134 that comprises a group of regulatory genes, which the team identified as affecting Sox2 expression.

Surprising findings on enhancers’ role in cancer Most people associate cancer with specific mutations, but the team associated SRR124-

Quantum chemistry and AI: An equitable solution to water pollution?

Aakash Anil Varsity Contributor

A TEDxUofT salon talk

by Diana Virgovicova

Diana Virgovicova discusses how we can leverage AI and quantum science to alleviate the water pollution crisis.

ALBERT XIE/THEVARSITY

Aakash Anil Varsity Contributor

The glass may be half empty or half full depending on your perspective, but the stark reality for two billion people is that the glass is polluted.

Two billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water, and in many places, people have to walk up to four hours to reach a source of drinkable water. Water pollution is an urgent global issue.

The search for safe water is not only a timeconsuming task but also a gendered one, often falling upon the shoulders of women and girls.

This unequal burden has far-reaching implications, including hindering educational opportunities for girls and perpetuating gender inequalities.

At the TEDxUofT Salon, U of T Lester B Pearson scholar and founder of the water

technology company Xatoms Diana Virgovicova discussed how quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI) can provide a solution.

Virgovicova’s journey into the world of water sciences and entrepreneurship began during her teenage years. At 14, she visited India for the first time and saw blackened rivers in the suburbs around Mumbai. Confronted with a reality where girls no older than her had to use this polluted water — even during their periods, which put their health at great risk — she spent the next three years studying quantum chemistry to try and help address the issue.

A new molecule Virgovicova wished to find a photocatalyst: a material that upon absorbing light undergoes a cascade of chemical reactions that disintegrate water pollutants into simple organic compounds. By absorbing certain wavelengths of

134 and Sox2 with cancer through a different mechanism. They found that the impact of SRR124-134 on the Sox2 gene was a result of whether the cluster was in its ‘open form’ or ‘closed form.’ The ‘form’ refers to how accessible a cluster is to transcription factors. If an enhancer region is in its open form, it is easier for transcription-enhancing proteins to bind to the region than when it is in its closed form.

The researchers in the Mitchell Lab noticed that the SRR124-134 cluster was causing noticeable overexpression of the Sox2 gene in breast and lung cancer cells. These cancer cells all had this enhancer DNA in its open form, making it more accessible for transcription factor proteins. From this, the researchers concluded that the more accessible enhancer sequences were correlated with overexpression of the Sox2 gene in cancer cells.

Mitchell next investigated the consequences of having no enhancer region to regulate Sox2 transcription. Using CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing techniques that can add or delete a DNA sequence, Mitchell discovered that creating a deletion in the SRR124-134 cluster results in dysregulation in Sox2 gene activity.

Without normal expression of the SRR124134 cluster to regulate Sox2 gene transcription, mice had developmental lethal physical traits, such as impaired esophageal-tracheal separation, preventing them from having separating passageways for air and food. This shows that the SRR124-134 cluster is important for maintaining normal levels of Sox2 gene expression

and that without sufficient levels of gene expression, there are severe consequences.

light, the photocatalysts give rise to highly reactive chemicals, which then undergo chemical reactions that convert emerging water pollutants into carbon dioxide and water.

Virgovicova used quantum chemistry — which provides a theoretical framework to understand the behaviour of atoms and molecules at the quantum level — to design and model potential photocatalytic molecules on computers.

At the age of 17, Virgovicova’s work culminated in the discovery of a novel photocatalyst — an achievement recognized by Princess Victoria of Sweden. Most photocatalysts available at the time worked by absorbing ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This was a major disadvantage: treating water with these photocatalysts would require expensive UV reactors, which subject incoming water to UV light. The new molecule Virgovicova found absorbs visible light to undergo a series of water-purifying reactions. This could make the process of cleaning polluted waters more cost-effective.

Today, Virgovicova’s Xatoms is at the forefront of employing quantum computing and AI for molecular discovery. Traditionally, identifying a molecule required a lot of trial and error. Researchers need to model a large number of molecular permutations. To speed up this process, Xatoms enables them to study larger molecular systems than before and leverages AI to rapidly sift through a vast number of models of photocatalysts.

Using AI and quantum computing technology, Virgovicova explained, can expedite the process of identifying molecules capable of purifying water efficiently, a significant leap from other methods currently used to find photocatalysts.

technology sectors. She believes this discrepancy hampers the development of inclusive and comprehensive solutions to environmental challenges.

The event wasn’t just about presenting problems but also igniting hope and action.

Virgovicova’s story is a testament to the power of determination, intellect, and the unwavering pursuit of a better world. Her path wasn’t easy, especially with juggling the challenges of being an international student during the pandemic while kick-starting her venture.

Yet, her perseverance paid off in the support she received from notable figures like Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit.

Virgovicova emphasizes that developed nations are affected by water pollution. Environmental issues are global and must be treated as such. It is our collective responsibility to speak up and take action.

As the talk concluded, Virgovicova left the audience with a poignant message: every effort counts in the battle against water pollution and in striving for gender equality. She envisioned a world where access to clean water is a norm, not a privilege, and every woman and girl can look to a future filled with possibilities.

Diana Virgovicova’s presentation at the TEDxUofT event was more than just a talk — it was a call to action. Her journey from a curious teenager to a pioneering scientist and entrepreneur is an inspiration to the U of T community and beyond. Her work at Xatoms, combining AI and quantum chemistry, is not just a scientific breakthrough — it’s a blueprint for how technology can be harnessed to address some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges.

As U of T continues to foster innovation and social responsibility among its students and alumni, Virgovicova’s story stands as a beacon, reminding us that the pursuit of knowledge and the drive to make a difference can indeed transform the world.

Beyond this discovery Beyond her scientific endeavours, Virgovicova is a staunch advocate for gender equality in STEM fields. She highlighted the stark underrepresentation of women in leadership roles within water

Balancing normal expression levels but preventing overexpression So if we know that we need normal levels of Sox2 gene for tissue formation and that the overexpression of Sox2 gene is associated with cancer, how can researchers prevent the gene’s overexpression? Mitchell explored this idea further.

The transcription factor proteins that bind to the SRR124-134 cluster help regulate this enhancer region in early developmental processes, such as during the development of proper separation of airway passageways and the esophagus. The team found that these transcription factor proteins include FOXA1, which activates this enhancer region, and NFIB, which represses the region.

These findings are significant because they tell us that FOXA1 and NFIB can be used to regulate the enhancers that control Sox2 gene overexpression in cancer cells. As such, targeting FOXA1 and NFIB can offer pathways to control overexpression. By creating drug therapies that target activity levels of FOXA1 and NFIB, we might be able to prevent the formation of cancer cells.

As researchers continue to explore the different mechanisms to control normal expression and malignant overexpression of genes like Sox2, Professor Mitchell’s research efforts provide us with a beacon of hope for the development of innovative cancer-targeting drugs.

Sports

January 8, 2024 thevarsity.ca/category/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Paralympian Stephanie Dixon adds U of T master’s degree to her long list of achievements Dixon discusses her swimming career, experience at U of T, and ableism in parasports Kunal Dadlani Sports Editor

At the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, Australia, 16-year-old swimmer Stephanie Dixon won five gold medals — the Canadian record for most golds at a single game.

Dixon views that competition as a standout memory from her long and illustrious swimming career. Yet it wasn’t just the medals that stood out — it was also the environment around the pool. “We had 17,000 people in the stands there to watch us swim. I was used to having some parents clapping for us in the stands,” Dixon reminisced in an interview with The Varsity.

In November 2023, Dixon earned another big achievement in her life, in a very different environment: she finished and collected her master’s degree from the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) at U of T. Coming back to school wasn’t just about getting a degree: “I didn’t care as much about having a designation of a master’s in science,” Dixon said.

That isn’t hard to believe when her resumé also includes 19 Paralympic medals, six gold medals from the Parapan American Games, 10 gold medals at the IPC World Championships, and membership into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada.

“I think [my degree] was really about personal transformation,” Dixon added. “I wanted to learn more about my disabled identity and my experience of harm and marginalization in sports… and how we can [also] begin to contribute towards dismantling systems of oppression and harm.”

Challenges and accomplishments Early on in her swimming career, Dixon — who was born without her right leg and hip, and with an abdominal medical condition known as omphalocele — struggled with her identity and experience as a

disabled person. While it’s a label she now wears proudly, she didn’t always like to be labelled as disabled. “I was just trying to fit in and not stand out,” Dixon explained. “I wanted to be viewed as very capable and very able, and just as good as my non-disabled teammates.”

Dixon’s parents encouraged her to explore the passion she had for the water, enrolling her in swimming lessons when she was around two years old. “[My coaches] helped me to be comfortable in my different body on the pool deck, as well as to challenge me in many different ways,” she added. The coaches she had were the ones who helped her explore the parasport and mainstream sports world, but viewing other disabled athletes also helped her recognize that she could be disabled and a ‘real athlete’ at the same time.

Over time, one competition led to another, and Dixon began progressing further into the world of competitive swimming. Dixon retired from competitive swimming in 2010 and moved to Whitehorse, Yukon, exploring other sports and beginning a new chapter in her life as a coach.

Ableism in parasports When she was around 37, Dixon realized that sports was not always a place of joy, belonging, and inclusion. “I started to see that there was a lot of ableism [and] there was a lot of harm,” Dixon explained. Awareness of parasports and para-athletes has increased immensely — yet Dixon’s thinking towards parasports has also evolved.

“I used to think that it was so powerful to show the world what disabled people could do,” she said. “[But then I] started to question why we feel the need to show as disabled people how ‘able’ we are all the time, and how much [of] that is a reflection of our internalized ableism.”

“Ableism makes us think that disabled folks are less than or inferior to non-disabled people,” Dixon explained further. “While I love my swimming career,

Diving into the value of sports drinks

Prime and other sports hydration drinks are compelling for their hype, not their nutritional value Franchesca Fu Varsity Contributor

As I stood in line at a grocery store, a kid who looked no older than twelve ran ahead of me to meet his mother. He held two bottles of Prime hydration drinks and begged his mother to buy the drinks. His mother shook her head repeatedly — presumably not seeing the value of a colourful, sweet beverage — until she finally relented and let him get one of the drinks.

The kid’s fierce desire for Prime, which was almost incomprehensible to me, indicates the drink’s popularity. Launched in 2022 by influencers Logan Paul and Olajide ‘JJ’ Olatunji — better known as KSI — Prime has sold over one billion bottles and is projected to rake in more than 1.2 billion USD in sales in 2023.

Evidently, Prime has established itself in the sports and energy drink world with its sales, influencer fanbase, and marketing to back that up.

However, how does Prime stack up against other sports drinks on the market? What are the health benefits of Prime?

The sweet taste Prime currently sells two types of drinks: hydration and energy drinks. Prime energy has been heavily

criticized for its caffeine dosage, though Prime hydration is caffeine-free — and supposedly healthier.

Their hydration drinks, akin to drinks made by Gatorade or Powerade, replenish fluids and contain electrolytes. Prime hydration also contains around 25 calories, no added sugar, 10 per cent coconut water, B vitamins, and antioxidants.

Gatorade’s standard Thirst Quencher contains 34 grams of sugar, exceeding the American Health Association’s daily sugar recommendation of at most 25 grams per day for women and close to the recommended maximum of 36 grams per day for men. Excessive sugar consumption can contribute to diabetes and heart disease.

Gatorade and Powerade offer sugar-free versions sweetened with acesulfame and sucralose — this is also how Prime sweetens its drinks. These artificial sweeteners are generally safe for healthy adults in small amounts. Yet, they have been linked with a higher risk of stroke and heart disease when consumed daily for the long-term.

The important minerals At face value, antioxidants, electrolytes, and B vitamins sound like they would help with athletic recovery and make you ‘healthier.’ In reality, however, these are already basic components of the human body’s functioning.

I think it offered me an avenue to try and prove that I was not ‘less than,’ that I was not inferior, and that I was not disabled.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a disabled athlete wanting to challenge [themselves]… and see what [they’re] able to do,” Dixon added. “[Yet] disabled people shouldn’t have to be ‘able’ or ‘athletes’ to be considered valuable.”

So Dixon decided to return to school to explore how sports can become a more safe and inclusive space. She was directed to Dr. Gretchen Kerr, the Dean of KPE at U of T, and Dixon discovered that they had similar values and visions. “It was an easy decision after that to apply to the University of Toronto,” she said. Dixon credits Kerr and KPE Professor Emeritus Bruce Kidd for supporting her throughout her degree.

Community and belonging U of T was also a familiar place for Dixon — during her last two years of high school, Dixon swam with the U of T swim team. When she moved back to Toronto for her in-person classes, Dixon began swimming at the Varsity Pool again and reconnected with some old teammates. “It was incredibly meaningful to kind of come full circle, 20 years later,” Dixon said.

While it feels good to witness your skills improve, in the end, sports are about exploring what our bodies and minds are capable of and supporting each other as we learn and express ourselves, Dixon explained. “Sports and recreation [should] bring us joy and feelings of community and belonging.”

On the academic side, Dixon encourages students to take the time to let their research and experiences change them, to “let the knowledge and different ways knowing and being have a chance to integrate.” She encourages others to do the same: study in order to go on a personal journey that can change you and your ways of thinking.

Electrolytes are essential minerals, like sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, and magnesium, found in our blood, sweat, and urine. We readily consume these minerals in our food. On average, Americans consume over 3,400 milligrams of sodium daily, surpassing the recommended 2,300 milligrams.

In an interview with The Varsity, Ira Jacobs — a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at U of T — explained that sweating is the primary mechanism of heat loss for healthy adults. After high-intensity physical activity, an average adult can lose at least a litre of fluid by sweating. So, those fluids should be replaced by drinking more fluids.

Electrolytes and other nutrients lost through exercise can be replenished easily. Jacobs said, “We are able to maintain our electrolytes quite well with normal healthy nutrition.” Ultimately, he said, “water will be just fine” for rehydrating after a workout.

What’s more important than getting our fluids' exact composition right is ensuring that we are sufficiently hydrated. Jacobs explained that “humans are one of the few animals… where, when we become dehydrated… feeling thirsty isn’t enough.”

Your feelings of being thirsty actually disappear before you are fully hydrated. One way to benchmark how much to drink is to weigh yourself before and after exercise — you should replenish what you lost

Stephanie Dixon has won 19 Paralympic medals.

COURTESY OF THE CANADIAN PARALYMPIC COMMITTEE AND STEPHANIE DIXON

in sweat by drinking fluids.

While sports drinks are not necessary after a typical hour-long workout, they can be convenient and useful for prolonged physical activity in hot environments, such as when working on a construction site or conducting military drills. When people are active for longer periods, they lose more sodium, so monitoring fluid and salt intake is important — and sports drinks provide a quick solution.

Drink or no drink?

Ultimately, each sports drink company likes to portray itself as being evidence-backed to help with exercise recovery and healthier than its competitor.

For example, Powerade touts that it contains “50% more electrolytes vs the leading brand.”

The reality is that, for many, sports drinks are no better for hydration and recovery than water and a meal. Yet, they are also no worse than the occasional sweet beverage.

As long as you’re hydrating after physical activity and exercising general common sense with your beverage consumption, odds are you’re giving your body what it needs and behaving in the range of what’s healthy. So, when buying any sports drink, consider its cost, marketing, and taste over its health benefits.

So, if you’re an older, healthy person, feel free to have that occasional bottle of Prime hydration!

Prime has become a very popular sports drink, especially among kids.

VALERIE YAO/THEVARSITY

thevarsity.ca/category/sports

JANUARY 8, 2024 19

Daniel Demaras’ racing journey From go-karting to Formula 1200, this third-year continues to rise in the racing world Ahmad Khan Associate Sports Editor

Racing is in the Demaras family’s blood. From an early age, Daniel Demaras, a third-year political science student at U of T, was introduced to racing by his father, Chris. Demaras saw the unique excitement motorsport brought as he watched Formula 1 as a kid.

“There’s nothing really like it in other sports,” he explained in an interview with The Varsity.

The early days The human aspect of motorsport, combined with its machinery, creates exciting battles on TV, but it was the personal challenge — trying to improve yourself by continually getting faster — that drew Demaras in. It wasn’t long before he found himself racing around the Nascar SpeedPark in Vaughan at age five. K1 Speed and Polson Pier in Toronto were two other early stomping grounds for Demaras and his family.

The safe environment they provided allowed Demaras to get a taste of what driving by himself felt like. Although he wasn’t going as fast as the racers he watched at the Honda Indy Toronto and the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, it didn’t matter. “[Even] if you go 10 kilometres an hour, you feel like you’re Fernando Alonso,” Demaras said.

Overcoming adversity When Demaras was 13, he began competing in the Canadian Rookie Karting Championship, where he won two championships. Next up was the TRAK Championship, a competitive racing series at the club level in Southern Ontario.

Yet, starting in TRAK in 2017, Demaras encountered his first roadblocks. He struggled for the next three years. Karting is incredibly chaotic: as Demaras explained, “there [are] 1,000 things that can go wrong,” with crashes being commonplace. Frustration can also set in easily when competing alongside drivers with much more experience, some of whom even began racing as far back as 2003 — the year Demaras was born.

But struggles and adversaries are a pivotal part of any story. Look no further than the appropriately named Will Powers, one of Demaras’ heroes.

Before winning the 2014 IndyCar Series and the 2018 Indianapolis 500, Powers encountered several struggles. In 2014, Powers found himself in close fights for the championship in different seasons but lost out each time, often due to crashes that brought his seasons to an end. Some of these even happened in the final races of the season. “It broke my heart every time,” Demaras reminisced.

However, it was overcoming that very struggle that made him Demaras’ hero. Taking inspiration from Powers, Demaras adopted his number, 12, and with it Powers’ unyielding attitude.

Persistence was key for Demaras, and his commitment paid off in 2020: he broke through and won his first race in TRAK. He didn’t stop there: he won the championship that year and again in 2021. Demaras also competed in the K1 World Championships in California, finishing third in 2019.

Into Formula 1200 After winning his second TRAK championship, Demaras found himself test-driving a Formula 1200 car at the end of 2021. In 2022, he began racing in Formula 1200, a transition that brought on a whole new set of challenges.

The series focused on close-quarter racing, leaving even less of a margin of error than before. Additionally, Demaras is now competing in more races than ever. A weekend in Formula 1200 consists of practice sessions, qualifying, and three races: one on Saturday, with two more happening on Sunday.

There is also a step up in competition. One of Demaras’ fellow competitors is Phil Wang, who has won each Canadian season between 2015 and 2022. His wealth of experience means he often can predict what other drivers will do. “If you’re moving to the left to pass him, he already knows you’re going to do that,” Demaras explained.

Other newer competitors bring a level of aggression with them that can be equally challenging to deal with. The accumulation of these various challenges in Formula 1200 requires

Demaras began racing in Formula 1200 in 2022.

drivers like Demaras to be focused at all times, as the slightest mistake can mean the end of your day.

Despite finding himself on a few podiums and finishing third overall in his first year, frustration set in once again as his first win evaded him. Yet, he didn’t have to wait long to overcome it, as he earned his first Formula 1200 win in 2023. Demaras won three more times that season, leading to him being crowned the 2023 Canadian Formula 1200 Champion.

Racing is difficult to advance further into due to the lack of a ladder system found in other sports, such as hockey. Finances are another issue. For example, Formula Three requires hundreds of thousands of dollars to race. For Demaras, continuing to compete any way he can is his focus. “If that’s Formula 1200, then I’m happy to be there,” Demaras said.

Rally against hunger As Demaras waits for the next season of Formula 1200 to begin in May, the Demaras family is giving back for the holiday season.

The Rally Against Hunger, which they held on December 3, consisted of a charity go-kart race — in which some audience members participated — and a food drive.

“It’s disheartening to see because we’re a world-class city, but we’ve got a lot of people who can’t afford to feed themselves,” Demaras said.

Demaras Racing was able to help the community at the event — which they organized jointly with Race Lab and Can-Jam Motorsports — gathering 1,220 pounds in food donations.

Daniel Demaras won the 2023 Canadian Formula 1200.

COURTESY OF MICHELLE DEMARAS CC DEMARAS RACING

COURTESY OF ALEX SMALLEY CC GOFAST PHOTOGRAPHY

Who will win Super Bowl LVIII? Diving into which teams could be contenders at the next Super Bowl Justyn Aleluia Varsity Contributor

The 2023–2024 NFL season has been loaded with storylines. With breakout stars, struggling favourites, and new contenders emerging, no one could have predicted the outcome of the season thus far. But the playoffs are quickly approaching, and the stage is set for the top 14 teams in the league to face off against each other.

The question is, who will win it all? Will the obvious contenders be victorious at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas? Or will a dark horse continue to make this a truly unpredictable season?

The seemingly obvious Super Bowl favourites are the Baltimore Ravens in the American Football Conference (AFC) and the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football Conference. Led by MVP-favourite Lamar Jackson, the Ravens are entering the playoffs with the league’s best record. Jackson leads the league in yards rushed by a quarterback (QB) by a large margin, though he’s also had his share of stellar passing games. Jackson is backed by a solid defense, as the Ravens allowed the second-fewest points to go through this season after the Kansas City Chiefs.

Yet, the Ravens are matched by the 49ers, who arguably have the best team on paper.

Sophomore 49ers QB and former last-overall pick Brock Purdy has been a rock for them

throughout the season and was the MVP favourite for most of it. It helps that the team has the best running back (RB) in the league in Christian McCaffrey, and a plethora of stars on offence, like Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, and George Kittle.

But again, the 49ers’ defense — led by Nick Bosa and the recently-acquired Chase Young — is nothing to scoff at, as they’ve allowed the fifth-fewest touchdowns in the league and made the second-most interceptions this season. Though they lost their only matchup so far against the top-of-the-league Ravens a few weeks ago, they will be a worthy opposition should they meet again in Vegas.

Of course, the NFL playoffs wouldn’t be the NFL playoffs without the reigning champs. QB Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs have struggled this season compared to previous years due to the lack of adequate players for Mahomes to pass to in the offense.

But with a superstar like Mahomes leading the team, they should never be counted out — especially in the playoffs.

Their AFC rivals, the Miami Dolphins, finally broke out this season thanks to QB Tua Tagovailoa, wide receiver Tyreek Hill, and RB Raheem Mostert. Everyone knew the Dolphins were bound to be one of the best teams in the league, and this season Tagovailoa finally leaped to become one of the league’s best QBs.

Despite their good record, the Dolphins might be the biggest question mark heading into the playoffs. This season, they have only one win against a team with a winning record. Their record is built on beating up on the losing teams, so it will be interesting to see how they fare against the juggernauts in the playoffs.

The Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and last year’s runners-up the Philadelphia Eagles are some other teams to look out for in the playoffs. The Lions have finally put together a winning team with a solid QB in Jared Goff. They’ve ended a seven-year playoff drought and now hope to finally win a playoff game for the first time in 31 years. The Cowboys are always expected to make the playoffs, and they have the star power this year to back that expectation.

Finally,

the Eagles haven’t let go of the gas since losing last year’s Super Bowl to the Chiefs, and they maintained most of their roster in 2023 with a great performance to back it.

One team that may not be on your radar is the Cleveland Browns. After their starting QB Deshaun Watson and primary RB Nick Chubb went down early in the season with injuries, the team’s supporting cast stepped up in their place. They have the best defense in the league, having allowed the lowest average yards and made the fourth-most interceptions. If 38-year-old QB Joe Flacco can remain consistent in the playoffs and continue finding the red-hot wide receiver Amari Cooper and tight-end David Njoku, the Browns can go on a serious run in the postseason.

The winner of this year’s Super Bowl is still up in the air. Will we get to see a new winner in rising stars like the 49ers and Ravens, or will Patrick Mahomes reclaim his spot at the top of the football world? All questions will be answered when the NFL playoffs begin on January 13 — and on the greatest stage of them all, at the Super Bowl LVIII on February 11 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Super Bowl LVIII will take place in Las Vegas on February 11.

COURTESY OF TOM WOLF CC FLICKR

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THE VARSITY

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JANUARY 8, 2024