October 16, 2023
THE VARSITY The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
Vol. CXLIV, No. 6
Chestnut and New College dining halls move to controversial pay-by-weight system Diners weigh in on price, quality, nutrition, and transparency concerns Je Ho Cho Varsity Contributor
At the start of the fall 2023 term, the New College and Chestnut Residence dining halls changed pricing for some food items — including those from the salad bar, entrée, pizza, and self-serve pasta stations — from an a la carte system, where students could purchase individual food items at set prices, to a pay-by-weight (PBW) system. Stations that operate under the PBW system charge diners based on the weight of their meals, which cashiers measure using scales at the checkout station. The Varsity found that Food Services at the University of Toronto, which manages both New College and Chestnut dining halls, did not publicly announce the changes on its website, on social media platforms, or in contracts with residents before the fall 2023 term started. Food Services has stated that the change will increase student choice. However, students have raised concerns about how food affordability under the new system may have
health repercussions for students who live or dine in these residences. In interviews with The Varsity, many students discussed how the PBW system makes them feel forced to limit their food intake and eat less nutritious food. These sentiments echo criticism from fall 2020, when Food Services last tried to implement a PBW system in some parts of both New College and Chestnut Residence dining halls. At the time, the proposed system led students to organize a dining hall boycott, and Food Services reversed its decision to charge by weight. The nutritional impacts of pay-by-weight According to the Meal Plan Calculator on Food Services’ website, a student with the $6,070 Meal Plan B — which Food Services describes as adequate for students with “average appetites” who stay on campus most weekends — that did not eat dining hall meals during the university’s holiday closure or reading weeks must spend an average of $27.59 or less to remain within their budget. The Varsity interviewed 19 students on their
experiences with the Chestnut Residence and New College dining halls. In those interviews, 15 students shared the prices of meals they had eaten in the past day. Based on the prices they shared, students paid $15 on average for a single meal — a total of $45 per day if they wanted to eat three comparable meals. Residents also discussed how they limited their food intake, skipped meals, and opted for cheaper, unhealthier options to preserve their meal plan balances for the rest of the school year. William Gomez, a first-year engineering student, estimated that he had lost at least five pounds in the three to four weeks since he moved into Chestnut Residence because he had been “eating less” to ensure that his meal plan lasts for two semesters. Eight Chestnut students The Varsity interviewed said that they regularly skip meals or reduce their portion size due to residence hall food prices. When asked about the PBW model’s impact on student finances and nutrition, Anne
Macdonald, the university’s assistant vicepresident of spaces & experiences, wrote to The Varsity, “All of our dining locations continue to provide a variety of affordable, healthy, and nutritious options for students to choose from.” David Chen, a first-year Rotman Commerce student living in New College, noted that, despite being on the largest available New College meal plan, he still limits his starch and protein intake and considers vegetables a “luxury.” In 2021, Food Services commissioned a report from Envision Strategies, a private consulting firm, about New College and Chestnut Residence’s dining programs — including their menu offerings, pricing, sustainability, and community engagement. In the report, Envision Strategies found that students felt limited to a $21–25 daily budget because they worried they would run out of meal plan money before the semester ended, which hindered them eating healthy and balanced meals.
2
THE VARSITY
news@thevarsity.ca
NEWS
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.
THE V
THE VARSITY Vol. CXLIV, No. 6 21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600
thevarsity.ca
the.varsity
thevarsitynewspaper
the.varsity
@TheVarsity
The Varsity
MASTHEAD Sarah Artemia Kronenfeld Editor-in-Chief
editor@thevarsity.ca
Caroline Bellamy Creative Director
creative@thevarsity.ca
Andrea Zhao Managing Editor, External
managingexternal@thevarsity.ca
Shernise Mohammed-Ali Managing Editor, Internal
managinginternal@thevarsity.ca
Mekhi Quarshie Managing Online Editor
online@thevarsity.ca
Ajeetha Vithiyananthan Senior Copy Editor
copy@thevarsity.ca
Kyla Cassandra Cortez Deputy Senior Copy Editor
deputysce@thevarsity.ca
Jessie Schwalb News Editor
news@thevarsity.ca
Selia Sanchez Deputy News Editor
deputynews@thevarsity.ca
Maeve Ellis Assistant News Editor
assistantnews@thevarsity.ca
Eleanor Yuneun Park Comment Editor
comment@thevarsity.ca
Georgia Kelly Business & Labour Editor
biz@thevarsity.ca
Alice Boyle Features Editor
features@thevarsity.ca
Milena Pappalardo Arts & Culture Editor
arts@thevarsity.ca
Salma Ragheb Science Editor
science@thevarsity.ca
Kunal Dadlani Sports Editor
sports@thevarsity.ca
Arthur Dennyson Hamdani Design Editor
design@thevarsity.ca
Kaisa Kasekamp Design Editor
design@thevarsity.ca
Zeynep Poyanli Photo Editor
photos@thevarsity.ca
Jessica Lam Illustration Editor
illustration@thevarsity.ca
Olya Fedossenko Video Editor
video@thevarsity.ca
Aaron Hong Front End Web Developer
aaronh@thevarsity.ca
Andrew Hong Back End Web Developer
andrewh@thevarsity.ca
Kamilla Bekbossynova UTM Bureau Chief
utm@thevarsity.ca
James Bullanoff UTSC Bureau Chief
utsc@thevarsity.ca
Emma Livingstone Graduate Bureau Chief
grad@thevarsity.ca
Vacant Public Editor
Communication gaps between administration and students Among the students interviewed for the article, seven said that they learned about the new payment system through word of mouth from dons, upper-year residents, family members, and friends. When asked how they had learned about the changes to the dining hall, none of the students The Varsity interviewed said it was because U of T had informed them. Macdonald commented on how the university was communicating with students about new changes to the dining hall: “We are communicating the expanded pay-by-weight system to students by placing signs at the dining halls, launching a social media campaign, and offering more resources and information on our website. We continually seek feedback from our students to refine our offerings and ensure that the dining options we provide reflect their needs.” On September 19, 2023, Food Services posted a press release on its web page titled “The choice is yours,” that announced the PBW system. Looking through press releases on Food Services’ website, its social media pages, and financial statements from the administration’s budget report on residential services, The Varsity couldn’t find any evidence that Food Services publicly announced these changes prior to the beginning of the fall semester. Additionally, The Varsity couldn’t find any mention of these changes in the New College Residency or Chestnut Residence occupancy agreements, which outline residence policies.
Student choice “[The pay-by-weight] model also better accommodates students with diverse eating habits, dietary and cultural preferences, and food allergies,” wrote Macdonald. Food Services’ press release also argues that the PBW model increases students’ choice. “You get to customise your meal according to your habits… just pick what serves you best!” The press release claimed that the PBW system helped address the requests students raised during student-led feedback sessions led by Food Services and the Innovation Hub — a student-led organization that collaborates with U of T to research how it can improve student experiences — in fall 2022. The Innovation Hub’s report featured several stages of feedback sessions and “co-creation events” that included dining hall staff and Chestnut Residence students. However, the report noted low student turnout, with only three students attending the initial feedback session. Mike Lawler, a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Geography and a former don at Chestnut Residence, told The Varsity that the sessions he attended didn’t discuss the PBW system. “What Food Services is doing is using a single report that was commissioned by them… to say that students want choice [and] ergo, they want to have this kind of pay-by-weight option,” he said. “I think it paints an incorrect picture as to what students actually want.” A history of criticism and controversy In September 2020, students and dons at the New College and Chestnut dining halls criticized
the university after Food Services changed the dining halls’ payment method from an All You Care to Eat style — where students could swipe their TCard to have unlimited access to food during their visit to the dining hall — to a declining balance model that requires diners to pay for each item. Alongside this new declining-balance system, certain food stations adopted a PBW model. Many dons and students highlighted how the new system limited student choice and didn’t allow most students, particularly those who need more calories, to eat enough while staying within budget. In November 2020, dons and students boycotted the New College dining hall. In an interview with Lawler at the time, he said that the dons intended to “send a clear message” about the lack of affordable food to staff and other students. Colin Porter, who served as the executive director food and beverage services & campus events at the time, wrote to The Varsity in 2020 that a primary reason Food Services switched to the declining balance model was because COVID-19 restrictions prohibited buffet-style food service. However, the meal plans required to live in Chestnut and New College residences still use a declining balance model, despite the end of all provincial COVID-19 restrictions in April 2022. A year after Food Services implemented the declining balance system, the 2021 Envision Strategies report noted students’ “frustration” with the PBW system that U of T had recently removed from the Chestnut and New College dining halls’ salad bars, alongside general dissatisfaction about the new declining-balance model.
publiceditor@thevarsity.ca
Ozair Anwar Chaudhry, Lina Tupak-Karim Associate Senior Copy Editors Muzna Erum Associate News Editor Divine Angubua, Isabella Liu Associate Comment Editors Caitlin Adams Associate Features Editor Alyssa Ukani Associate A&C Editor Medha Surajpal Associate Science Editor Salina Khan Social Media Manager
Ahmad Khan Associate Sports Editor Nina Uzunović Associate B&L Editor Vacant Associate Design Editor Biew Biew Sakulwannadee Associate Illo Editor Vacant Associate Photo Editor Julie Han, Genevieve Sugrue Associate Video Editors Vacant Associate Web Developer
Copy Editors: Emily Chan, Huda El-Zein, Muzna Erum, Ikjot Grewal, Taban Isfahaninejad, Darya Kartalaei, Maryam Khan, Anuraag Kumar Nair, Elizabeth Li, Cindy Liang, Sofia Moniz, Isabella Reny, Sara Russo, Nandini Shrotriya, Jake Takeuchi, Madison Truong, Alyssa Ukani, Carter Vis, Kyleeanne Wood, Valerie Yao, Despina Zakynthinou Designers: Catherine Doan, Kevin Li
U of T implemented a pay-by-weight system in two of its dining halls. KATE WANG/THEVARSITY
Resources for articles on violence in Israel and Palestine If you or someone you know has experienced harassment or discrimination based on race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship and/or creed at U of T, report the incident to the Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity office: https://antiracism.utoronto.ca/help/. You can report incidents of anti-Muslim racism through the National Council of Canadian Muslims’ Hate Crime Reporting form at https://www.nccm.ca/ programs/incident-report-form/, and antisemitic incidents at U of T to Hillel U of T at https://hillelontario.org/uoft/report-incident/.
Cover: Jessica Lam
BUSINESS OFFICE
Ishir Wadhwa Business Manager
business@thevarsity.ca
Rania Sadik Business Associate
raniasadik@thevarsity.ca
Eva Tsai Advertising Executive
evat@thevarsity.ca
Vacant Advertising Executive
@thevarsity.ca
The Varsity is the University of Toronto’s largest student newspaper, publishing since 1880. It is printed by Master Web Inc. . on recycled newsprint stock. Content © 2023 by The Varsity. All rights reserved. Any editorial inquiries and/or letters should be directed to the sections associated with them; emails listed above. The Varsity reserves the right to edit all submissions. Inquiries regarding ad sales can be made to ads@thevarsity.ca. ISSN: 0042-2789
If you or someone you know is in distress, you can call: • Canada Suicide Prevention Service phone available 24/7 at 1-833-456-4566 • Good 2 Talk Student Helpline at 1-866-925-5454 • Connex Ontario Mental Health Helpline at 1-866-531-2600 • Gerstein Centre Crisis Line at 416-929-5200 • U of T Health & Wellness Centre at 416-978-8030 CORRECTIONS: A news article from issue 5 stated that SVPSC will incorporate all feedback into the final version of the online education module. However, the center has in fact stated that because some of the feedback is contradictory it would be impossible to reflect all feedback in the final version of the module. The article has also been updated to reflect the SVPSC’s statements. A business & labour article from issue 4 stated that units with full-time employees negotiated a new plan for the change from the current long-term disability plan to the new University Pension Plan. In fact, new participants either transfer from their existing pension plan to UPP, or they did not previously have a pension, and have now gained one through their bargaining unit joining UPP. This is unrelated to a disability plan. A science article from issue 4 has been updated to state that Jack Clark is the former policy director for OpenAI.
thevarsity.ca/category/news
OCTOBER 16, 2023
U of T Israeli and Palestinian students process the violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip
Students discuss how they’re coping as the refugee camp, which is located around an hour from the Israeli border, and their parents were university bodies release controversial statements away visiting when the war broke out. Jessie Schwalb News Editor
Content warning: This article discusses death and violence and contains mentions of genocide, antiPalestinian racism, and antisemitism. On October 7, violence broke out between the Israeli government and Hamas, the militant group currently controlling the Gaza Strip. As of October 16, attacks by Hamas and retaliatory bombings from Israel’s military have caused the deaths of more than 4,100 people — at least 1,400 people in Israel, according to Israeli authorities, and over 2,700 Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel placed Gaza under a blockade in 2007, and in the escalating violence, the Israeli government has placed Gaza under siege — leaving many Palestinians trapped without humanitarian aid. In interviews with The Varsity, Israeli and Palestinian students talked about the pain they have experienced watching the violence unfold from afar. Students expressed their need to grieve and asked others to recognize the civilians suffering from ongoing violence while acknowledging the context of the conflict. U of T, the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU), and various other student groups have released statements on the violence — many of which have received backlash from other members of the U of T community. Some students have criticized U of T’s statement for focusing only on Israeli casualties and not mentioning Palestinian deaths. Meanwhile, U of T administration condemned a statement put out by the UTMSU, claiming that it disregarded the views of Jewish and Israeli students. The current violence On the morning of October 7, Hamas launched surprise attacks against Israel with rockets and armed fighters. Hamas militants, who attacked Israeli towns and military bases, took an estimated 150 Israeli civilians and soldiers hostage. Hamas attacked on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, and Simchat Torah, a celebratory holiday that marks the Jewish people receiving the Old Testament. In the hours after the attacks began, the Israeli government began launching airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. On October 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that he had ordered a complete siege of the area, which Israel has blockaded for the past 16 years. The attacks have allowed Benjamin Netanyahu — Israel’s right-wing prime minister — to consolidate a wartime coalition, and the US has since announced it would send military assistance to Israel. On October 14, the Israeli military announced that it was preparing for “significant ground operations” in Gaza. On October 9, a spokesperson for Hamas’ military branch warned that the militant group would execute a civilian hostage every time Israeli airstrikes struck Gazan homes. Although the Israeli government claims that it is targeting sites connected to Hamas, Hamas members live among the Gazan community, and Israel’s attacks have killed many civilians. Israeli officials have told Palestinians in northern Gaza to flee further south, which the United Nations (UN) warned would be impossible “without devastating humanitarian consequences.” So far, Egypt has closed its border to Palestinians, cutting off the Gaza Strip’s only land border not with Israel. The UN has called on Israel to lift the siege and denounced Israeli officials’ rhetoric. Multiple Israeli officials have made statements that both Jewish and Palestinian commentators have characterized as signalling genocidal intent against Palestinians. UN officials have estimated that the conflict had displaced more than one million Gazans. The Israeli military’s air strikes have damaged hospitals and other facilities providing waste sanitation and water services in Gaza. The Israeli government’s siege, its refusal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza until Hamas releases the Israeli hostages, and Egypt’s
closed border policy have limited Gazans’ food, water, electricity, and fuel and caused a humanitarian crisis.
A brief history of a complex context Mohammad Rasoul Kailani, a third-year U of T student specializing in peace, conflict, and justice studies, grew up hearing stories about the Nakba. The Nakba — which translates to ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic — is how many Palestinians refer to the period around Israel’s declaration as an independent state in 1948, after neighbouring powers rejected UN partition plans that included the existence of Israel alongside an Arab Palestinian state and declared war on Israel. During this period, Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Kailani wrote to The Varsity that for many Palestinian students like himself, the current war invokes this and other generational traumas. Over the next few decades, Israeli policy, in conjunction with policies from surrounding states, left many Palestinians officially stateless or trapped in the Gaza Strip — a small piece of land sandwiched between Israel and Egypt — and the West Bank — an area east of Israel currently occupied by the Israeli military. Hamas won elections in Gaza in 2006 and has remained the de facto authority in the absence of further elections. According to Amnesty International, Hamas has carried out human rights abuses against Palestinians, including torture and extrajudicial killings. Hamas has also endorsed and perpetrated attacks against Israeli civilians. Roey Stav, a second-year student studying conservation biology and environmental ethics with a certificate in sustainability, lived in Israel from ages five to eight and remembers going down into bomb shelters while missiles risked hitting their house in Tel Aviv. They told The Varsity that these memories made watching the current conflict unfold feel more vivid. “I know what it’s like to be randomly woken up with bombs flying over your head,” they said. “It’s not an experience most people in Canada have.” The Israeli government has often responded to Hamas attacks with air strikes on Gaza that have killed civilians. The Israeli military has argued that it “strikes military targets exclusively” and minimizes civilian deaths, although Human Rights Watch has determined in previous instances that Israel’s military launched attacks in areas without nearby military targets. Meanwhile, Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which the state put in place in 2007 after Hamas took control, has limited the opportunities and basic goods available to Gazans — the majority of whom are younger than 24. One Palestinian student, M, requested anonymity because they worried about the repercussions of speaking given instances over the past few days where people in Western countries have lost their jobs for criticizing Israel. They told The Varsity, “[Palestinians in Gaza are] living in such squalid conditions… There’s a lot of rage built up, and inevitably something’s going to happen. It’s just a tragic situation all around.” The Israeli government has encouraged increasing numbers of Jewish settlers to move to the West Bank, in violation of international law. In the West Bank, checkpoints and roadblocks restrict Palestinians’ movement, and the Israeli government carries out forced evictions and demolishes Palestinian villages. Multiple human rights organizations, including the Israeli organization B’tselem and Amnesty International, have called the Israeli government’s policies apartheid. In 2022, the Israeli military killed 151 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to a report from Amnesty International. Students’ experiences Students with connections to Israel and Palestine have struggled to deal with the ongoing violence. M spent the first few years of their life in a refugee camp in Lebanon, which restricts legal rights for Palestinian refugees. Much of their family still lives in
“There are some nights where I just can’t sleep. There are times where I’m just sitting down, I’m just staring off into space, [and] my mind [is] just going down rabbit holes of how so many people are suffering and dying,” they said. “I just feel so powerless.” M has stopped reading the news, and work has helped them to keep their mind off the conflict. They also write to help organize their thoughts. They said that they and their family are “trying to grieve together.” Kailani wrote to The Varsity that he knows many Palestinian and Arab students who have struggled to focus or engage in academics. In a similar vein, Stav, who has family in Israel, asked for accommodations because they haven’t been able to focus on schoolwork. In an email to The Varsity, Toby King — a Jewish mature student studying theatre and performance studies, and a member of Peace Now UofT, an organization dedicated to facilitating conversation between Israeli and Palestinian students — wrote about the difficulty of trying to continue as normal while processing the trauma happening to their community. “I hate human suffering. I love my Jewish community and family, I love the Palestinian people. I am wracked with grief and anger right now,” they wrote. Discussing the violence King recommended that students without a direct relation to the conflict who want to help should prioritize listening to and supporting their peers over having political debates. “You should be able to put your politics aside to care about the person in front of you who is hurting, and if you cannot, you should simply leave the situation,” they wrote. Kailani wrote that he has appreciated others messaging him with questions and showing that they’re willing to listen to Palestinian experiences. He suggested that people should share “one to two profound posts” that emphasize the toll the conflict is taking on civilians and its history. Kailani noted that external pressure often makes it difficult for Palestinian students to speak publicly. He wrote that it’s important that Palestinian students can discuss their experiences so that they feel valued and can process what they’re going through. King also added that, when posting on social media, people should differentiate between the actions of everyday citizens and governments, and refrain from sharing graphic or violent pictures and videos. He added that people should identify the power imbalance between the Israeli government and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip while still denouncing violence against Israeli civilians. King wrote, “I believe deep in my heart that Palestinian and Jewish liberation is entwined; that one cannot be truly achieved without the other.” Stav noted similarities between what Israeli and Palestinian civilians are facing. “At the end of the day, it is a fight between extremist groups where civilians pay the cost,” they said. “It’s just horrible that innocent people have to pay for this.” M noted that being Palestinian makes them relate to those suffering more, but they question why non-Palestinians don’t seem to feel the same compassion for Palestinians. “Why doesn’t anyone else relate to this? Like, aren’t we all human beings? Don’t we all deserve to live?” U of T’s statement On October 9, Vice-President International Joseph Wong released a Message to the Community on the War in the Middle East. The statement expressed sadness at the outbreak of war and the “attack on Israel’s civilian population.” “We share our immense grief for the loss of life and offer our heartfelt condolences to all those suffering in Israel and Palestine and to everyone who has been personally impacted,” wrote Wong. Wong noted that many U of T community members will hold “strong and opposing views” on any conflict and urged people to “engage in respectful dialogue.” Many deans of divisions including the Munk
3
School, the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, and the Temerty Faculty of Medicine released similar statements. M told The Varsity that they thought the statement was “relatively balanced” — but noted that it didn’t condemn the Israeli government for bombing Palestinian civilians. “It’s like their lives are valued higher than our lives,” they said. UTMSU statement sparks pushback from university administration On October 10, the UTMSU released a statement on its Instagram, which expressed its “solidarity with all Palestinians and innocent civilians affected by the ongoing conflict in Gaza and around its borders.” The statement focuses on human rights abuses the Israeli government has perpetrated against Palestinians. “This statement in no means justifies or accepts the killing of innocent people, but rather sheds light on the dehumanization of the Palestinian people,” reads the statement. The statement does not directly mention Israeli casualties and discusses the right of the Palestinian people “to resist an apartheid regime.” On October 13, UTM Principal and Vice-President Alexandra Gillespie released a statement responding to the UTMSU’s post, which the administration emailed to UTM students. She noted that many students, staff, faculty, alumni, and parents shared with the administration that they felt pain over the UTMSU’s statement. “It is entirely inappropriate for [the UTMSU] to express a position that does not represent the views of its full membership – views that are as diverse as the student body itself,” she wrote. Gillespie noted that the university administration had communicated its concerns with the UTMSU and asked the union’s executive to “confirm the actions it will take to ensure that no student at UTM is marginalized or discriminated against on the basis of nationality or religion.” Hillel UofT posted on its Instagram that the UTMSU’s statement demonstrated a “lack of care for not only Jewish but all students affected by the horrible tragedies that have and continue to occur.” The post called for the UTMSU to remove the statement. In a statement to The Varsity, the UTMSU team wrote that they did not intend to disregard Jewish students’ experiences and “wish to see an end to all violence.” However, they wrote that they wanted to call out the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians, given their responsibility to stand for human rights. “This week’s events show that everyone is impacted by the occupation to varying degrees,” they wrote. They noted that many Israeli and Jewish people do not support the Israeli government’s actions. “We firmly believe that people can seek justice for Palestinians without conflating it with antisemitism.” Supports for students, staff, and faculty In a post online, the Muslim Student Association highlighted free counselling offered online and in person by U of T’s Muslim Chaplaincy. The majority of Palestinians are Muslim, although some practice Christianity or other religions. On October 19, Hillel UofT will host a support circle for Jewish staff and faculty, and Hillel staff will be available this coming week from Tuesday to Friday for students who want to drop by the Wolfond Centre to talk. Students can contact Hillel Ontario to receive mental health counselling. U of T and community organizations offer mental health helplines and emergency counselling services to all students. In his October 9 statement, Wong noted that undergraduate students requiring academic support can contact their Faculty of College Registrar, while graduate students should reach out to their department or the School of Graduate Studies. Faculty, staff, and librarians, as well as their partners and children, can access free counselling services for grief and stress through the Employee & Family Assistance Program. With files from Maeve Ellis. If you or someone you know has experienced harassment or discrimination based on race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship and/ or creed at U of T or is in distress, see the resources on page 2.
4
THE VARSITY
news@thevarsity.ca
NEWS
JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY
Canada-India diplomatic relations cast shadow over Indian students at U of T
Suspension of visa services causes concern for many Indian students Anuraag Kumar Nair Varsity Contributor
Content warning: This article mentions death. On September 18, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the Canadian government was investigating “credible accusations” of a link between India’s government and the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C, on June 18. The Indian government had previously accused Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, of leading a militant group called the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF). In response to these allegations, the Indian government stopped processing visa applications for Canadian citizens, and both India and Canada have ordered some of the others’ diplomats to withdraw. Many Indian students on campus face increasing uncertainty about how the diplomatic standoff will affect their futures. Additionally, some analysts have raised concerns that the travel advisories issued by both nations could affect the number of aspiring international students from India who seek higher education in Canada. What is the reason behind these tensions? The KTF is a militant group connected to the Khalistan separatist movement, which advocates for creating a separate homeland for Sikhs in the Punjab — a region that comprises the Indian state of Punjab and parts of the Pakistani state of Punjab. Sikhs make up the majority of people in India’s Punjab state, but only 1.7 per cent of India’s total population. The separatist movement included an armed insurgency that reached its zenith in the 1970s and 1980s. The Indian government cracked
down on the movement in the early 1980s, killing thousands of people and prominent Sikh leaders. While the movement has not had much of a resurgence in Punjab since the 1980s, India has repeatedly accused Sikh activists living abroad of anti-Indian rhetoric. Sikhs comprise nearly two per cent of Canada’s population, and the Indian government has previously accused the Canadian government of harboring Khalistan separatists. Nijjar’s assassination Nijjar moved to Canada in 1997 and worked as a plumber. The Indian government repeatedly labeled Nijjar as a wanted terrorist and, in 2016, told the Canadian government about its concerns. Nijjar denied taking part in any violent activity. In June 2023, two gunmen wearing dark clothes shot and killed Nijjar outside a Sikh temple while he sat in his pickup truck. On September 19, a day after Trudeau’s announcement, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told reporters that the Canadian government had expelled an Indian diplomat in connection to the killing. According to Canadian intelligence, the diplomat led a branch of India’s foreign intelligence service. The Indian government has vehemently rejected the claims made by the Canadian government, calling them “absurd and motivated.” The Indian government has demanded that Canada remove 41 diplomats from India, although Canada has removed none or almost none of its diplomats, according to CBC News. The Canadian government released a travel advisory warning about anti-Canadian sentiments in India, and the Indian government released an advisory warning their citizens about anti-Indian
activities and “hate crimes” in Canada. In a press conference, Trudeau said that he thinks Canada should continue to engage with India “constructively” and called for the Indian government to cooperate in determining what happened. Repercussions for current students Comprising almost seven per cent of the total undergraduate student population and 10 per cent of the total graduate student population, Indian students made up the second largest group of international students at U of T in 2021. In interviews with The Varsity, some Indian students expressed concerns about the recent ban on visa services for Canadians and the speed with which both governments have reacted to the accusations. Saransh Jain, a third-year international student from India studying history, economics, and political science, told The Varsity, “I certainly hope [the tension] gets resolved as soon as possible.” “That would certainly cause myself and my family less stress,” he said. Ahan Kalra Mathur, a second-year Rotman Commerce international student from India, voiced similar concerns. He told The Varsity that the travel advisory and suspension of visa services have “made [him] a bit more hesitant to go out of Canada… for reading week or for the winter break or summer, because [he is] worried about not being able to get back in.” On September 26, U of T Vice-President, International Joseph Wong released a statement assuring members of the U of T community with ties to India that the university remains aware of the situation and welcomes them. The statement included resources for affected students, staff,
and faculty. “We know that many members of the University of Toronto community are watching relations between the governments of Canada and India with concern. The situation is evolving rapidly, causing uncertainty and stress, and we do not yet have answers to many of the pressing questions it raises,” wrote Wong. Implications for future students Jain said that he hasn’t seen much of a difference in current Indian students’ everyday lives. He thinks the diplomatic tensions might have implications for future Indian international students, reducing the chance that they will consider U of T as a top choice for further studies. Mathur told The Varsity that, had these tensions and visa restrictions existed when he attended high school, he “[might] not actually have applied.” In an interview with The Globe and the Mail, Roopa Desai Trilokekar — a professor of education at York University — said that the diplomatic tensions could cause a “dip” in the number of Indian student applicants. She said their repercussions would depend on the “official stances” either government takes. According to a report by the Canadian Bureau for International Education, students from India comprise almost 40 per cent of the 800,000 international students in Canada and are a major financial contributor to universities across the country. Given the province’s cap on domestic tuition and stagnating government funding, U of T has increasingly relied on international student tuition to finance the university in recent years — a funding system many international students have criticized.
thevarsity.ca/category/news
OCTOBER 16, 2023
5
Speakers at the event discussed how Iran has changed in the year since Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s ‘morality police.’ ARTIE KRONENFELD AND GEORGIA KELLY/THEVARSITY
U of T community members gather to discuss future of Iranian resistance Event commemorates death of Mahsa Amini, addresses organizing in the diaspora Georgia Kelly & Sarah Artemia Kronenfeld Business & Labour Editor & Editor-in-Chief
Content warning: This article discusses death and violence. On September 19 — approximately a year after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in the custody of Iran’s ‘morality police’ — U of T community members and members of the Iranian diaspora gathered in a classroom at the Ramsay Wright building to commemorate Amini’s death and the protest movement that it sparked. During three hours of speeches and discussion, attendees discussed resistance against Iran’s current authoritarian regime and what Iranians inside and outside of the country envision for the country’s future. The event — called “Mahsa Amini: the Spark of a Revolution” — was the latest in a series of community events hosted by the University of Toronto Students for a Free Iran (UTSFI) over the last few months. According to an email from organizers, they hoped that the evening would “shed light on the reflections and lessons drawn from the Iranian people’s enduring resistance, as well as their relentless fight for justice and freedom over the past year.” Organizers estimated that over 100 people attended the event. The evening opened with a video from the UTSFI, a retrospective on Iranian activism against the current regime over the past year. Four activists from the Iranian diaspora then spoke to the audience about their experiences resisting the Iranian regime. Speakers included Hamed Esmaeilion, former president and spokesperson and current board member of Families of Victims of Flight PS752; Zarrin Mohyeddin, a long-time political activist; Kaveh Shahrooz, a lawyer, human rights activist, and sessional lecturer and director of partnerships and legal counsel at UTM; and Mehrdokht Hadi, a community organizer who worked with the UTSFI for last year’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests. After their speeches, each speaker hosted a question-and-answer period with the audience in both English and Farsi, and at the end of the event, Esmaeilion returned to the podium to answer still more questions. Many audience members participated in the discussions, and the event ran for an hour later than originally scheduled. The speakers called on Canada to recognize the Iranian regime’s humanitarian abuses, including human rights violations related to the protests sparked by Amini’s death. Speakers and community members discussed what it means to organize resistance movements from the Iranian diaspora, and what a post-regime government would have to look like in the long term to be successful. Attendees also discussed what they want to see in terms of support from non-Iranian allies.
Mahsa Amini’s death The event came days after the one-year anniversary of the death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini — also known by her Kurdish name Jina — in a hospital in Tehran, Iran’s capital. She died on September 16, 2022, shortly after Iran’s ‘morality police’ — a unit that enforces the country’s mandatory dress code — seized her for allegedly failing to wear her hijab in compliance with the code. Iranian officials have officially announced that Amini died of a heart attack due to pre-existing conditions. Her family, however, cite eyewitness accounts that police beat Amini while she was in custody, and her father has held the police responsible for Amini’s death. After her death, massive demonstrations calling for an end to the theocratic Iranian regime began across the country and around the world. The protest movement she sparked — which rallies behind the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” — is only the latest in a history of popular resistance against the current Iranian regime, headed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The current regime first came to power in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which arose from resistance to the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Following the revolution, a religious populist wing of the movement took over, instituting policies which limited women’s freedoms and cracking down brutally on dissenters. Iranian women have driven resistance to the regime since its inception. Mohyeddin, who took part in anti-revolutionary resistance during the Iranian Revolution, fled Iran over 40 years ago, fearing retaliatory violence from the incoming regime. “I have been in this city for 44 years protesting and opposing the human rights abuses of the Islamic regime,” she told audience members at the UTSFI event. “It is not new for me.” The event recalled others alleged to have been killed or injured by the current regime. Some of these include victims of the regime’s crackdowns on “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests after Amini’s death. The state has responded to demonstrations against the regime by shutting down protests violently, including by opening fire with pellet bullets on protesters in some of Iran’s top universities. During the course of the protest, it also launched widespread shutdowns of the internet and freely distributed information. According to human rights associations from outside Iran, at least 500 people were killed during protests, and thousands were imprisoned. A report to the United Nations described the Iranian government’s activity since the protests as “the most serious human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the past four decades.” Iran carried out more executions in 2022 than at any time in the past five years. The report described that the regime’s application of the death penalty
has disproportionately targeted ethnic and religious minorities. Active protests around the country have decreased significantly since the end of 2022, and in December, the Iranian government temporarily suspended the deployment of the ‘morality police’ force. Since July, however, the state has redeployed the force. On September 20, a day after the event, the Iranian government approved a new bill that lays out new punishments for women and men who violate legal dress requirements. Women who are found to violate Iran’s hijab requirements will be charged financial penalties, and serve prison sentences if authorities deem the violation part of an organized effort. In the year after Amini’s death, figures who took part in the movement have also faced further suppression: journalists who covered Amini’s death and the subsequent protests have faced trial for allegedly “colluding with hostile powers.” The expulsion of dissenting academics from some of Iran’s top universities has spurred debate about whether their firings were related to the protests. On the one-year anniversary of Amini’s death, organizers held protests in multiple cities worldwide. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime increased its police surveillance in Tehran and other Iranian cities around the anniversary to prevent further widespread protest movements. According to Kurdish rights group Hengaw, security forces have also been spotted in Kurdish minority regions of western Iran, where Amini was from and where residents staged large protests last year. The group additionally reports that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard detained Amini’s father in front of his home before the anniversary of Amini’s death. Going forward Still, Iranian reporters have observed changes in Iran over the past year. One of the most visible changes reporters have remarked upon since the advent of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests is the number of women navigating the streets of Iran without headscarves, even though Iran’s dress code hasn’t changed, and women are still required to wear the hijab under Iranian law. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement also sparked the UTSFI’s formation, explained executive member Sara Shariati, a graduate student at U of T’s Institute of Medical Science, in an interview with The Varsity. Shariati explained that the organization aims to raise awareness among non-Iranians and foster discussions within the Iranian community in Toronto. Over the past year, the UTSFI has hosted speakers, other discussion events, and a rally on campus calling for action to liberate Iran. Although speakers at the event discussed and condemned the actions of the Iranian regime during the protests, speakers often focused on build-
ing for the future. “To be honest with you, I see no point in trying to repeat the list of all the horrible things the Iranian regime has done and continues to do,” said Shahrooz in his speech. “If you’re here, you already know all that.” Overall, speakers frequently emphasized how long-term planning, strengthening civil institutions, and prioritizing a representative movement with space for conflicting viewpoints will be vital to future advocacy. Shahrooz emphasized that the movement’s goals must be “freedom, equality, and pluralism.” He warned against the movement being taken over by “those who want to drown out voices that are different than theirs.” “The path towards an absolute separation of religion and state is difficult, painful, and long,” Esmaeilion said. He noted that the ultimate goal he envisions is creating a democratic society in Iran, but that goal requires a lot of work building up Iran’s civic institutions. How to get there In her speech, Hadi advocated for better community organization within the Iranian diaspora. In an interview with The Varsity, she explained that the formation of the UTSFI was an example of how diaspora members can support each other’s organizations. She had coordinated with the group last year — when the UTSFI was working to organize a “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest and vigils for Mahsa Amini on campus — and helped connect them to resources and information. Now, she says, the group is “well known, [with a] good reputation,” and can empower other speakers with events like these. Hadi described to The Varsity how important universities were as spaces to contribute to open dialogue and societal change, and called on Canadian universities to help out Iranian students fleeing the country by issuing them student visas. She added that she hoped student organizations would use their voices to call on the university and bring attention to Iranian issues. Speakers asked for attention and advocacy in prioritizing Iranian issues from allies outside the Iranian community. For Canadians outside of the Iranian diaspora, and for members of the diaspora who know people in Canadian political office, Shahrooz had a specific message: Iranians aren’t looking for foreign military intervention but for governments to pay attention to human rights violations in Iran. He asked people to rally their networks to pressure national and international governments to acknowledge abuses committed by the Iranian government. “The people of Iran have shown remarkable courage,” he said. “What we’re asking for is for the world to help Iranians free themselves.”
6
THE VARSITY
news@thevarsity.ca
NEWS
University waives tuition fees for students from nine First Nations communities U of T recognizes 1794 treaty by charging domestic rates to Indigenous students from US In 2022, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, one of the First Nations on whose traditional territory U of T is located, opened an office on the UTM campus. COURTESY OF PHILIP COTE AND TRACEY ANTHONY
Selia Sanchez Deputy News Editor
On September 22, U of T announced its new Indigenous Tuition Initiative, which will waive tuition fees for students from nine First Nations communities whose territories “are situated on or adjacent to” the St. George, Mississauga, and Scarborough campuses, according to U of T News. The university won’t charge tuition to students from Alderville First Nation, Curve Lake First Nation, Hiawatha First Nation, Nation Hurrone-Wendat/Huron-Wendat First Nation, Mississauga First Nation, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte (Tyendinaga Mohawk), and Six Nations of the Grand River. U of T began charging Indigenous students living outside of Ontario the domestic provincial tuition rate in May 2022. As part of the new initiative, the university will also charge Native American or
Alaska Native students from the continental United States the domestic Ontario tuition rate. The decision recognizes the Jay Treaty of 1794, which allows for free movement for Indigenous peoples between the US and Canada. Indigenous peoples in the Canadian education system According to the 2016 census, approximately 53 per cent of Indigenous individuals in Ontario between the ages of 25 and 64 had some sort of post-secondary education, compared to 65 per cent among all people living in Ontario. In the 2019 book Knowing the Past, Facing the Future: Indigenous Education in Canada, Sheila Carr-Stewart — a professor emerita at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Education and professor at the University of Alberta — noted how the federal government has failed to meet education-related promises made in treaties to First Nations or provide adequate funding for
Indigenous students’ education. The book also discusses how the effects of the genocidal Indian residential school system continue to negatively impact Indigenous students and how the Canadian educational system prioritizes colonial beliefs and worldviews. The university’s announcement comes nine months after two U of T professors presented research that found the university profited from dispossessed Indigenous lands to fund its own development. According to their research, in 1827, U of T obtained nearly 226,000 acres of land that the Crown had seized, which it sold for roughly $43 million in 2023 dollars — enough to cover domestic Ontario tuition for more than 7,000 full-time students enrolled in regulated Faculty of Arts and Science programs. The initiative The university officially launched the new initiative on October 11 as part of its efforts to be more “accessible and inclusive” for Indigenous students, according to an article from U of T News. The article also states that the policy aims to strengthen relationships between U of T and Indigenous communities in Canada and the United States. The initiative aligns with the 34 calls to action made by the final report of the Steering Committee of the University of Toronto Response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, titled Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin. In its report, the U of T commission called on the university to incorporate Indigenous co ntent into its curricula, create dedicated Indigenous spaces on campus, and launch an initiative to support the hiring of Indigenous faculty. According to Shannon Simpson — the senior director of the Office of Indigenous Initiatives at U of T — the administration consulted with each of the
U of T’s 2023 Orange Shirt Day event centers Residential School Survivor Storybase U of T librarians discuss online platform that shares residential school survivors’ stories Jessie Schwalb News Editor
Content warning: This article discusses anti-Indigenous racism and the residential school system, and mentions death and sexual assault. On September 29, U of T held its fourth annual institution-wide event commemorating Orange Shirt Day. The day, observed on September 30, honours Indigenous children who did and did not survive the residential school system and highlights Canadian institutions’ need to actively seek reconciliation. The ceremony highlighted the Indian Residential School Survivors’ Storybase — a resource created by a team of ten U of T librarians, students, and staff in September — which platforms and organizes stories from residential school survivors. Members of the team participated in a panel discussion, where they talked about the project and how they practiced relational and non-extractive research in creating the Storybase. “[What] we hope to see a lot of... going forward is more [academic] production that is meeting a need, that is guided by Indigenous communities, that is not quantifying them,” said Mikayla Redden — a New College librarian who is mixedrace, Anishinaabe and Anglo-settler, and a member of Curve Lake First Nation. “We’re interested in… creating a space for people to find stories so that folks can learn the truth and, hopefully, head towards [reconciliatory] action.” The residential school system The Canadian government, in partnership with churches, ran more than 140 ‘Indian residential schools.’ The first residential school opened in 1831, and the Canadian government officially started funding the residential school system nationwide by the 1880s. The schools aimed to assimilate Indigenous kids into white settler society and erase their
Indigenous identity by preventing them from speaking their languages or practicing their cultures. The schools also imposed other horrific conditions on children, such as insufficient or spoiled food, sexual assault, forced labour, and inadequate sanitation. Residential schools in Canada lasted for over 150 years, with the last residential school closing in 1996. In 2015, the Liberal government’s National Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded that the system was a form of cultural genocide. More than 150,000 Indigenous kids between the ages of four and 16 attended residential schools in Canada. Many children died, with the former head of the TRC estimating in an email to the New York Times that more than 10,000 children had gone missing from residential schools. The event Around 10:30 am, a crowd of over 150 people, mostly sporting orange shirts, gathered at the Hart House Great Hall for U of T’s Orange Shirt Day commemoration. The event was also livestreamed online. In his opening remarks, Hart House Warden David Kim, a settler of Korean ancestry, noted that the planning committee intentionally chose many non-Indigenous speakers and contributors for the event as a way to “engage others and not have the work of the day fall on the shoulders of our Indigenous peers.” The event featured a panel discussion that included Redden; Desmond Wong, a librarian at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Chinese-Canadian settler; and Grant Hurley, a librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and settler with Irish-Acadian roots. Redden, who led the Storybase project with Wong, said that the project grew out of discussions with her sister, a primary school teacher who noted that teachers often find it difficult to find resources suitable to educate kids about the residential school system. This is a particular issue for teachers that didn’t learn about residential
schools when they themselves were in school, or about best teaching practices on the topic when they were studying to become a teacher. Redden also said that by giving teachers other resources to educate their students, the project aims to remove some of the extra emotional labour that Indigenous teachers — and Indigenous people generally — tend to do. The Storybase The Storybase includes 519 video, audio, and written stories from residential school survivors as of October 7, although the team plans to add more in the future. Users can search based on keywords, the name of a residential school or a survivor, the format of stories, and other factors. The Storybase also includes preselected collections of stories, including one for Orange Shirt Day and one with stories appropriate for K-8 kids. Wong said that, as a librarian at OISE, he has promoted the Storybase to teacher candidates. The group has also raised awareness about the resource through media interviews, and Wong highlighted that the university has helped promote the project as well. The welcome page on the Storybase website reminds settlers not to reach out to an Indigenous person to process the grief they feel after listening to, reading, or watching the stories. “We do not want this to become an emotional labour for those most affected by residential schools,” said Desmond. Instead, the Storybase directs users to channel that grief into action, with a page offering additional learning resources, places Indigenous individuals can receive support, and guides to taking action as a settler. Wong noted the emotional toll these stories can take on viewers, and the importance of taking breaks when viewing materials. Redden added that her colleagues didn’t ask her to view the stories during the cataloguing process because she is Indigenous, which she characterized as an example of “true, authentic allyship.”
nine First Nations communities named in the announcement to strengthen their relationships and build pathways to increase recruitment from these communities. “I reached out to the chiefs of all nine communities, and connected individually with each chief or the head for education for each community, as they preferred, to discuss the initiative,” wrote Simpson in a statement to The Varsity. “All were supportive.” Director of the Centre for Indigenous Studies and Professor Susan Hill commended the university for its tuition initiative, explaining that it “puts into action the words in the University’s Land Acknowledgement.” Eligibility Any student who identifies as a member of one of the nine named First Nations communities and is currently enrolled in the university on a full-time or part-time basis can request a tuition grant from the Indigenous Tuition Initiative. The tuition grant does not cover ancillary fees — such as special coursework equipment, transcript fees, or library fines. The grant is renewable and can be combined with other U of T funding issued to a student. The tuition initiative website explains that once the student’s band has confirmed their membership in one of the nine named First Nations communities, U of T automatically applies the grant to the student’s account for each year of study. Students who change their program may need to re-apply for the tuition grant. For students who have already paid their tuition fees for the 2023–2024 academic school year, U of T will refund the grant amount to their bank account. For students who have received third-party funding to pay for their tuition, U of T will issue a refund to the third party. Non-extractive research practices Hurley highlighted that libraries contain vast amounts of archival material that often depict a one-sided view of Canadian history or treat Indigenous peoples as objects for research. “We were determined not to contribute to the histories of settler colonialism and extraction within librarianship and instead create new relations based on reciprocity and trust,” said Wong. The team began by meeting with organizations such as the Legacy of Hope Foundation that provide support to residential school survivors. Based on their meetings, they modeled the Storybase as an index repository, meaning that the Storybase website refers users to pages that include the stories elsewhere on the internet, but does not store them on the website itself. If any survivors or their families request that the librarians remove their story from the Storybase, the librarians will remove the link. Hurley highlighted a few key guidelines for librarians working with Indigenous communities. He noted that archivists need to change how they contextualize materials, such as by updating their terminology to use words preferred by Indigenous peoples, and giving Indigenous communities access to library collections. Hurley told the crowd that librarians should work to promote learning that centres Indigenous stories and form relationships with Indigenous communities “that end up benefiting the origin communities more than the library.” He noted that fulfilling this last guideline might include repatriating materials. Kristina Cổ — a third-year student majoring in criminology and sociolegal studies who attended the event — told The Varsity that she appreciated the event’s emphasis on not putting additional labour on Indigenous people. As someone considering a career in academia, she said, learning about how research institutions have and continue to harm Indigenous communities “makes me question the research ethics that I always have to consider.” If you or someone you know has been affected by the residential school system, you can call: • Indian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419 (available 24 hours a day), • Hope for Wellness Helpline at 1-855-2423310, • KUU-US Crisis Line at 250-723-4050, • Talk4Healing Help Line at 1-855-5544325.
thevarsity.ca/category/news
OCTOBER 16, 2023
UTMSU initiates student centre expansion referendum Board of Directors discusses increases to staff wages, upcoming events Kamilla Bekbossynova UTM Bureau Chief
Building, the Instructional Centre, Deerfield Hall, Maanjiwe nendamowinan, and the Kaneff Centre.
The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) held an emergency Board of Directors (BOD) meeting on September 23, where it passed a motion to hold a referendum among UTM students about expanding UTM’s Student Centre. At its regular monthly board meeting on October 6, the board voted to increase staff and executive wages and heard reports from the union’s executives about upcoming initiatives and events.
October BOD meeting On October 6, the UTMSU board approved a motion to raise the hourly wages of its part-time staff to $17. This decision comes in response to Ontario's recent increase in the minimum hourly wage from $15.50 to $16.55. The motion on the agenda emphasized that the current minimum wage falls short of meeting students’ financial needs.
During executive reports, Okikioladuni (Kiki) Ayoola, vice-president external, reported that the union has held meetings with the co-presidents of the UTM Pre-Law Organization and members of Downtown Legal Services, a legal clinic run by the Faculty of Law that offers legal support to students and low-income people. The union hopes to revive housing support clinics offering legal information and advice to students. These clinics aim to assist students who are struggling with landlord and tenancy issues, like safety regulation violations. The UTMSU also started working on a public campaign called the Transit Advocating Party to advocate for better transit after it attended the City of Mississauga Transit Advisory Committee’s meeting. Jasnoor Sandhu, vice-president campus life, highlighted upcoming events during the UTMSU’s Halloweek festivities, including a campus groups carnival, movie night, pub night, and Halloween-
Emergency BOD meeting During the first emergency BOD meeting, the UTMSU’s board voted to hold a referendum to expand the Student Centre. The referendum question will ask students whether they support the implementation of a Student Centre expansion levy fee, which would start at $10 per student per semester from fall 2024 to spring 2027 or until the building expansion opens, at which point the levy would increase to $30 per student per semester until the union finishes paying mortgage payments. The proposed plan for the student centre expansion includes additional multipurpose and multifaith spaces, better student-led food services, and improved shared areas for campus groups. The UTMSU will host a question-and-answer session about the referendum on October 18. UTMSU students will be able to vote from October 24–26 from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm at voting stations across the campus, including in the William G. Davis Building, the Communication Culture & Technology
Board of Directors members discussed Boycott, Divest, Sanction caucus and reinstating a faculty union The Board of Directors (BOD) for the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) began its meeting on September 28 with a vote to suspend the union’s president, Lynne Alexandrova, from office. Alexadrova’s suspension was the first item on a packed agenda for the board’s first meeting of the fall semester. The union will also need to organize a byelection after two members of the UTGSU Governance Committee resigned. The board passed motions moving all meetings to a hybrid format and removing the union’s Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions caucus. Appointment setting After the suspension vote, the board members moved on to discussions about committee appointments. Vice-President Internal Aanshi Gandhi informed the BOD that two members of the Governance Committee — a UTGSU committee that oversees the union’s bylaws, policies, and operations — had resigned from their roles, and the BOD would need to work out a process for electing new members. Gandhi also reminded the members that she had provided her own two weeks’ notice of resignation and would step down from her role as vicepresident internal on October 4, 2023. With three positions on the executive committee vacant, the UTGSU will need to rework how to redistribute the tasks usually assigned to those executives and staff the committee spots. The union will also have to determine a process
themed breakfast. Sandhu also mentioned potential collaborations with other clubs and encouraged club members to get in touch if interested. Ruth Alemayehu, vice-president equity, reported on her meetings with student clubs to discuss the student centre expansion and said that she and her staff have launched a form where students can submit feedback on campus accessibility. President Gulfy Bekbolatova highlighted the progress of the union’s peer support program, which the UTMSU launched last year. The program, which provides virtual meetings with trained UTMSU students, is now fully operational. Bekbolatova discussed the UTMSU’s process for running the student centre expansion referendum, which include engaging with campus groups, discussing referendum question content, and planning campaign logistics.
LEXEY BURNS AND JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY
The UTGSU’s September: What happened after the union suspended President Alexandrova? Emma Livingstone Graduate Bureau Chief
7
the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) caucus as a permanent, funded caucus of the UTGSU. The BDS movement aims to end the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians and occupation of Palestinian territories through economic pressure. In 2022, the university notified the UTGSU that it would withhold funding from the caucus, following a 2021 ruling from the Complaint and Resolution Council for Student Societies (CRCSS) that found the caucus’ fee — which the UTGSU charged to all graduate students — had violated UTGSU anti-discrimination bylaws, specifically its bylaw prohibiting discrimination based on nationality. After some discussion, the members voted in favour of striking the caucus with opposition.
for hosting a byelection to fill the executive positions, a task that proved to be a challenge for the UTGSU last year. The union’s bylaws require the BOD to appoint a committee to find a Chief Returning Officer who could run the election, which
Motions passed by the board The BOD also passed a motion moving all of its future meetings into a hybrid format. The meetings have taken place in a strictly online format since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
would include a former Elections and Referendum Committee member, the Executive Director, and another BOD representative. Vacancies on the BOD last year limited the pool of potential committee members, leading the union to open applications for the committee to all graduate students.
Tabled and dead motions The meeting agenda outlined a motion to discipline Vice-President Finance Zoya Tawhidi for failing to meet the duties of the role outlined in the UTGSU Bylaws. Another motion on the agenda also sought to suspend Tawhidi from her role without pay until the union could hold a member’s meeting to review the suspension. However, none of the members present at the meeting moved or seconded the motion, so the motion didn’t pass. The members also discussed a motion to reinstate the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Graduate Students’ Union (OISE GSA) as a “recognized course union” within the UTGSU. The UTGSU voted to de-affiliate with the OISE GSA in 2019, after the UTGSU’s investigation into the RUESHEN AKSOY AND JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY course union’s elections found that the OISE GSA had violated its conChris Rodgers, the BOD representative rep- stitution. The Social Justice Education Departresenting life sciences graduate students who mental Student Association broke off from the moved the motion, explained that since CO- OISE GSA to create its own course union the VID-19 restrictions have now mostly been lifted, same year, which is now listed as a course union the hybrid format would allow for greater ac- for Division 2: Social Sciences. The board ulticountability. The motion passed with objection. mately voted to table the motion and will discuss The BOD also discussed a motion to remove it further at a later date.
Arts & Culture
October 16, 2023 thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture arts@thevarsity.ca
Wearing stories on your wrist For many, jewelry just means shiny objects. For others, it means the whole world. Julie Lam Varsity Contributor
People collect many things — some amass different coins, records, and even dolls. I’m a collector of jewelry. I remember my aunt’s jewelry box, which I dubbed the “treasure chest.” It was a little wooden box with three drawers. Whenever I visited my aunt, I would rummage through the box, not to take anything but to appreciate its contents. It was a heap of precious goods: beaded necklaces tangled into knots, separate pairs of earrings, and silver bangles that clinked like music. In a couple of years, I discovered Claire’s, which enamoured me as soon as I stepped into that purple-painted room. As I got older, I grew out of Claire’s and discovered the world of vintage jewelry. Vintage jewelry has a special place in my heart due to its beautiful attention to detail and history. While jewelry fads oscillate, vintage pieces remain classically beautiful. I like to imagine who owned the piece before me and their story. Over time, I curated a box just as messy and full as my aunt’s. I have always been drawn to jewelry for many reasons: self expression, sentiment, function, and also because I have the mind of a magpie: I like shiny things. The history of jewelry Jewelry has an extensive historical context; the earliest recorded human-made jewelry is dated to around 25,000 years ago. Fashion and jewelry are not meaningless. Their complex and thoughtful fabrications reflect different ways of life in all areas of the world, as Miranda Priestly iconically details in The Devil Wears Prada. In fact, you can dissect jewelry the same way an anthropologist could examine cave drawings. For example, some of the earliest civilizations we can
study have created beautiful talismans representing good luck, protection, and other meanings that transcend time. Across the world, jewelry varies greatly in style and fabrication, but all have similar intentions to protect, remind, or symbolize something to the wearer — think Katniss Everdeen’s Mockingjay pin in The Hunger Games. Skulls in jewelry famously represent ‘memento mori,’ the inevitable march of death as a reminder to seize the day. In Ancient Egypt, scarab beetles represent various things, including good fortune and rebirth. Women in China originally began wearing jade bangles for good luck and to repel bad intentions, and some families pass down these cherished pieces for generations. Even more recently, during the early 2000s, during the mass panic and excitement surrounding the rapid advancement of technology at the turn of the millennium, chunky silver-toned pieces became popular as emblematic of ‘futuristic’ technology. One facet of jewelry wearing is the elevation it brings to a look. For many, jewelry is seen as an indication of status or money — every diamond is judged by its karat count and accompanying price tag. My mom has always restricted the times she wears fine jewelry to special occasions because she feels such events call for a level of sophistication that such jewelry can provide. A piece’s material value and wearability do not have to be mutually exclusive. Interestingly enough, an individual’s emotional attachment toward a precious piece of jewelry can compel them to wear that piece every day — as seen below in the stories of my three interviewees, Cam, Zoe, and Aliyah. Students’ jewellery stories Cam Boese got his watch from a complete stranger — a customer whom he was serving at a coffee shop. She had walked in and commented on the double watch stack that he was wearing at the
Cam’s vintage watch and Zoe’s eclectic stack of bracelets. MAYUMI RAMOS & MILENA PAPPALARDO/THEVARSITY
time. He explained that he liked the look and did not pay mind to the conventional ways of wearing jewelry. The two chatted for some time before she left the store. The next day, the customer strolled in with a beautiful vintage watch, which she explained belonged to her late grandfather. He had worked in a watch factory and collected watches; he possessed a box full of these time-telling accessories. She presented Cam with the watch as a gift, which he now wears on his wrist every day. Miriam and Micah is a vintage store in Kensington that Zoe Zusman frequents. The owner, Miriam, is a kind lady with long grey hair who always shares warm stories of her travels and history lessons on the pieces in her curated antique jewelry collection. During one visit, while Miriam and Zoe were catching up, Miriam exclaimed that she recently acquired a unique 1960s metal mod bracelet and sold it to Zoe at a discounted price. While Zoe usually has a rotation of bracelets every day, this one has been glued to her wrist since it was purchased. Aliyah Rahim sports a necklace in Arabic embedded with stones. The necklace was custommade for, and previously belonged to, her great grandma. At the time when women were restricted from having their own assets, gold was treated as insurance in case of an emergency, where they could sell their jewelry in exchange for money. Aliyah now wears her family heirloom most days.
Jewelry that represents you A couple of years ago, while I was still developing my personal style, I joined a beginner jewelry-making workshop. We were given air-dry clay, beeswax, a couple of tools that looked like they came from a dentist’s office, and several prompts — one of them being “make something thinking of a mantra that represents you.” The process I used took simple techniques without an actual jeweller’s bench. Despite this, I was still creating something from a slab of clay and turning it into something meaningful and wearable. It reminded me of times when I used to sit down and make friendship bracelets as a kid; I experienced the same stillness of trying to execute a vision. Looking down at my fingers wrapped in different rings, I know they are not worn for pure accessory — they are an extension of myself. More than just broad reflections of certain times and places, jewelry can hold special stories. It’s one of the great appeals and what attracts us to pieces of jewelry for generations: they are little tokens of human connection or to mark an occasion. As jewelry is art, it is also just as subjective in how it can be perceived. What can seem to be an ugly gaudy engagement ring to one person could hold the most precious memory to another. Attaching a trinket with meaning gives us a whole new lens to look at our jewelry with fondness. I think one of the most primal behaviours of humankind is storytelling, and jewelry is a form of storytelling. Like a picture, jewellery can capture a single memory, only this time, the story is made wearable.
In defence of Rory Gilmore Rory’s Gilmore Girls transformation teaches us the dangers of perfectionism Sarah Stern Varsity Contributor
Content warning: Spoilers ahead! If the teenage Rory Gilmore who said “Who cares if I’m pretty if I fail my finals!” could meet herself two seasons later at 20 years old, when she drops out of Yale after stealing a yacht, she would be stunned. I was, too, when I first watched Gilmore Girls. Every fall, my roommates and I begin our Gilmore Girls marathon and hope that Rory’s high school study habits will inspire us. Gilmore Girls is a decidedly autumnal show that follows Rory and her mother Lorelai from fall through spring every year, from Rory’s sophomore year of high school to her university graduation. The show opens with Rory’s acceptance into an elite private school, Chilton, where Rory progresses from getting her first D grade to being named valedictorian.
In season four, when Rory starts at Yale University, she is much like her younger self: moral, ambitious, and precocious. However, Rory then begins her moral descent, which Gilmore Girls fans criticize. Over the course of next two seasons, she commits adultery with her married high school sweetheart, mocks and body-shames a ballerina in the Yale Daily News, steals a yacht, and finally drops out of Yale and estranges herself from her mother and best friend, Lorelai. Rory’s mistakes are extensive, but Gilmore Girls viewers also project unrealistic expectations onto Rory. We watch her grow up and, consequently, are disappointed that as an adult Rory becomes more flawed than her innocent teenage self. Throughout the show’s earlier seasons, Lorelai and the whole community of Stars Hollow perpetuate the illusion that Rory is perfect, using unrealistic metrics. In season three, Lorelai overhears Rory tell her friend Paris that she didn’t have sex with either of her high school boyfriends. Lorelai whispers, “I’ve got the good kid” to herself, as if Rory is morally superior to Paris, who just
Gilmore Girls is a beloved show to watch during autumn. HANNAH KATHERINE/THEVARSITY
confessed to Rory that she had sex for the first time. With limited exposure to people who question her innocence and precociousness, Rory believes that she is uniquely moral, more intelligent and gifted than her peers. Rory’s self image is threatened when she begins university and is forced to confront her privilege amongst less forgiving people and their criticism. Rory’s editor and boss at the Yale Daily News, Doyle, challenges Rory’s journalistic aspirations when he calls her first submission mediocre. Rory then offers him a scathing review of a ballet that she and Lorelai agreed was third-rate, and Doyle loves the article. Rory embellishes her opinion by describing the ballerina’s “back fat,” and yet is surprised that the ballerina confronts her and calls her a “jerk.” Rory’s criticisms are harsh and unprofessional, yet I understand what compels Rory to be so uncharacteristically brutal. She makes a mistake that young people are susceptible to when breaking into the arena that is today’s job market: she compromises her integrity. In the following season, Rory receives a more crushing blow to her professional aspirations. Her boss — and boyfriend’s father — Mitchum Huntzberger is the biggest name in the journalism industry. He tells Rory that she doesn’t have it to succeed in the industry, but that she “would make a great assistant.” Rory’s confidence in her future as an international correspondent is shaken. She copes by committing ‘grand theft-yacht,’ spending a night in jail, dropping out of Yale, and forgoing contact with her mom for months. It’s at this point in the series that many viewers can no longer forgive Rory’s actions. I can’t explain Rory’s resolve to steal a yacht,
but I do understand why she drops out of Yale. She spends her formative years believing everything is within her reach, in part because she is smart, but also because the people in her orbit never told her otherwise. When media tycoon Mitchum implies Rory might not have what it takes to succeed as a journalist, Rory’s future plans come crashing down. After dedicating her adolescence to one goal, her time at Yale suddenly seems pointless. Rather than empathize with Rory’s decision to reassess her professional plans, Lorelai ostracizes her daughter. Lorelai fails Rory — yet I find that viewers are more critical of Rory than of Lorelai. Gilmore Girls sets out in the first few seasons to convince us that Rory is ‘perfect.’ On the other hand, when we meet Lorelai we learn she has a complicated past as a teenage mother with an imperfect relationship with her parents. Viewers forgive her mistakes because they don’t expect her to be perfect. Gilmore Girls is the perfect back-to-school show, not just because of the fabulous fall wardrobe and spotlight on Thanksgiving, but because the show also highlights how easily academic achievement and high self-expectations can become intertwined with self-image. The new academic year welcomes renewed resolve to spend hours at the library, go to campus activities, become acquainted with professors, and make more friends, but sometimes we fall short of our personal goals. When students expect too much from themselves, failure becomes inevitable. If for once in Rory’s youth she had accepted criticism without making it her mission to prove that critique wrong, she would have avoided her months-long spiral — and Gilmore Girls viewers wouldn’t have been so disappointed in Rory.
thevarsity.ca/category/arts-culture
OCTOBER 16, 2023
Taking flight: The Toronto International Festival of Authors My experience at the literary festival showed it was about more than just books The festival hosted acclaimed writers to do public readings and interviews. COURTESY OF BRIAN MEDINA
Lucy Buchanan Varsity Contributor
At the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ (TIFA) opening party, two writers gave me their business cards, and I was caught on camera three times by the event photographer. The shindig also boasted an Irish Flight as its signature cocktail, fitting for this year’s festival theme: taking flight. I had drunk two, felt a bit tiddly, and started asking everyone when Margaret Atwood was going to show up — she didn’t. I left at 9:00 pm, grabbing as many mini cherry pies as I could elegantly haul to The Maddy, and feeling slightly awestruck, I took my BeReal. Call it one-too-many, but that evening marked the beginning of my first foray into the Toronto literary scene and the excitement alone deserved a wistful smile up to the stars. What had brought me there? I am an exchange student from Scotland, and having worked at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) this past summer, I was in Toronto to be a panel moderator and sleuth the literary festival scene.
TIFA is Canada’s largest literary festival: an annual 11-day celebration of stories with events for children and adults, including performances, readings, conversations, and masterclasses from globally renowned authors and artists. Since the festival’s birth in 1974, it has welcomed thousands of authors to its stages from over 100 countries, including 22 Nobel Laureates. TIFA 2023 took off on September 21, with performances and readings around the various venues of the Toronto Harbourfront Centre until October 1. The world of literary festivals is smaller than you think. I got my moderator gig at TIFA through my Edinburgh colleagues who had a contact in Toronto. In fact, the current festival director, Roland Gulliver, was associate director at the EIBF for over a decade before joining TIFA in 2020. Most literary festival positions appear to be not year-round but temporary — many staff members I’ve spoken to are students or teachers who work the circuit during summer vacation or retirees looking for a hobby rather than a career. Lack of government funding for the arts and
the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic have been forcing arts festivals to strip back. However, a newer threat looms large at these festivals: the ‘greenwashing’ of sponsorship, which is a term used for when companies advertise themselves as eco-friendly without it being true. At this year’s EIBF, authors raised concerns over claims that the festival sponsor, Baillie Gifford, was linked to fossil fuel investments. The investment firm is also a sponsor of TIFA but has not — yet — received the same condemnation in Canada. ‘Greenwashing’ has been an issue for other arts festivals here. A group of A-list actors, including Mark Ruffalo and Joaquin Phoenix, demanded the Toronto International Film Festival renounce the Royal Bank of Canada as a sponsor, declaring the corporation “one of the most polluting companies” in Canada. I was anxious for TIFA, having just suffered the backlash at EIBF — authors cancelled last minute, and some even walked out during the event. To my relief, no outbreak of media backlash took hold of TIFA. Five extraordinary, ordinary storytellers, one hilarious host, and an award-winning violinist walk into a concert hall, and you get a fireball of a warm-up to the festival. The pre-festival performance came by way of The Moth Mainstage at Koerner Hall. The Moth — a non-profit group based in New York centred around the art of storytelling and founded by American novelist George Dawes Green in 1997 — collaborated with TIFA to bring together five stories on the theme of Between Worlds. I attended alone, having bought the tickets in Scotland before arriving in Toronto. The evening was indeed a convergence between my two worlds, yet I felt strangely connected to the people around me: the pair of elderly women to my left who told me they were getting stiff sitting and the young couple to my right who laughed at anything and everything. There’s something incredibly emotional about being in a live audience and hearing these intimate stories reverberate in such a large space. It was so
9
different from my ritual listening to The Moth podcast. Oral tradition is part of our humanity — we are social creatures, and we need to tell our story. I walked out of the theatre, called my brother, and told him the story of my day. At the heart of this year’s festival were The Swings — a part performance and part installation conceived by Edinburgh-based All or Nothing Aerial Theatre — which encompassed an aerial dance duet followed by an open invitation to the public to try the five-metre-high swing set. I accepted the invitation, and it was surprisingly wonderful. There’s something quieting about being on a swing — I felt time suspended, held back by the incessant pull of gravity. On the last weekend of the festival, I interviewed the public on their experience of The Swings. People of all ages and backgrounds joyously told me how much they love to be on a swing. I asked one child, “What does it feel like to be on a swing?” “Like a bird,” she said. Toward the end of the festival, I did get to see Margaret Atwood — she gave a dramatic reading of her version of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 1348 Patient Griselda alongside actor Jesse Eisenberg. The event, in collaboration with Theatre of War Productions, took place on Orange Shirt Day and explored themes of power and control, domestic violence, and family dynamics. It was a heavy two-hour panel performance and discussion, which brought to the fore Theatre of War Artistic Director Bryan Doerries’ question, “What are stories for? And what can they do?” It felt fitting to end the festival with an open question because my experience at TIFA was eclectic and, indeed, hard to define. And that makes sense, considering Canada’s diverse literary voices. Stories, however diverse, are for connection — they can be the bridge between worlds. After the 11 days of the festival, I didn’t feel homesick anymore, but I didn’t feel at home either. I was stuck between worlds. My only option: to take flight.
Snide Clyde Died is a U of T alum’s audacious debut If the title character is one thing, it’s unlikeable Sofia Moniz Varsity Contributor
Daniel Ninkovic has been writing since he was a child, and has gone all the way from stapling together pieces of paper as a child to self-publishing his debut novel. A former U of T student, he took a creative writing course in his final semester, where he created and workshopped the idea for Snide Clyde Died, his satirical novel about a Toronto man’s quarter-life crisis that spirals into criminal territory. In an interview with The Varsity, Ninkovic said that all his writing comes from a deeply emotional place: “Like a journal [he] decided to show the world.” Ninkovic began to write his novel in his early twenties, an age when many people have a quarter-life crisis. He explained that while there’s a whole genre dedicated to coming-of-age stories about teenagers leaving high school and becoming adults, he wanted to write a novel for young adults who were finishing university and moving on to the ‘real world.’ The main character of Ninkovic’s novel, Clyde, works at a bank. He is everything you wouldn’t want in a financial advisor: sarcastic, narcissistic, with a habit of stealing your money and — if you’re particularly rich or you particularly piss him off — your identity. He is the kind of character you love to hate. In an attempt to alleviate his friend’s debt to their new drug dealer — and get rich in the process — Clyde enters into a business arrangement with Foley, a businessman involved in various unethical practices. As the novel progresses, Clyde digs himself deeper and deeper into his new shady deal until he finds himself with no way out. Ninkovic compares the eponymous character of his novel to Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. This comparison comes up a lot when books have unlikeable characters, and if Clyde is one thing it’s unlikeable. Having read both novels, however, I don’t think this is an accurate comparison. I find Holden to
be extremely endearing, if a little annoying. He is caring, craves connection, and wants to believe there is good in the world. Most of his unlikeability comes from the fact that he is young and disillusioned. Clyde, on the other hand, does not have the same humanizing characteristics. I think, deep down, he also craves connection, but I’m not sure that’s something he could admit to himself. Clyde constantly feels the need to one-up people and vindictively ruins people’s lives. I think where the novel struggles is that its flawed protagonist’s true motives and insecurities lack nuance. I am not against novels with dubious main characters — a good example of a novel that succeeds in crafting an amoral protagonist is The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith’s success lies not in the plausibility of her plot but in her nuanced character writing. While Tom Ripley also makes choices that seem pretty implausible, I was willing to suspend my disbelief, whereas I was more reluctant with Clyde’s choices. Highsmith immerses the reader in Tom’s thought process; we have a front-row seat to his mental gymnastics, which makes his crimes seem like totally reasonable actions to take given his circumstances — even when they’re not. When an unlikeable character is wellwritten, readers find themselves rooting for them despite the horrible things they’ve done. Clyde’s lack of redeeming characteristics made it difficult for me to stay on board with what he was doing. Admittedly, it is kind of interesting to watch Clyde make terrible decisions and ruin his life. However, in order to effectively convey the book’s themes — quarter-life crises, status-oriented culture, and materialism — we need to have some level of empathy for the character, and I struggled to identify with him. I think the need to constantly be one-upping people comes from a place of anxiety and insecurity that someone out there is doing better than you, yet I don’t really feel like this comes across in the book. We do get a bit of Clyde’s thought process when he’s
sabotaging people he perceives as his competition, but we don’t get any self-reflection due to his lack of self-awareness. When the moment of self-reflection and clarity finally comes in the last couple of sentences, it feels like it came out of nowhere. Ninkovic cites his “twisted sense of humour” and conversations with his friends as inspiration for the banter in the novel. As an example, the first barroom banter scene includes an in-depth discussion about whether they would have sex with a mermaid, debating if the top half or bottom half of a woman is more important in the bedroom. Personally, I found these exchanges very alienating as a woman. To be fair, I don’t think I was necessarily the target audience for this book — it seems the audience was straight, single men in their twenties. And as this is a satirical novel, it is safe to assume that many of these conversations are exaggerated. However — while I do think it can be funny and appropriate to include this type of banter if the author is establishing their character as a sleazy guy who makes inappropriate comments — if the punchline is just the content of the joke itself and not about satirizing his less-than-savoury behaviour, I think that kind of humour is best left behind in middle school. Ninkovic is right to point out that these kinds of people do exist and these conversations do happen, although if I were him I wouldn’t so readily admit that I participate in them. Ninkovic explains his story acts as a cautionary tale. It is intended to show the deterioration of Clyde’s character over time: the reader watches him slowly make bigger and bigger compromises to his morals. From what I understood, the novel’s message is to avoid becoming too materialistic and obsessed with how others perceive you, online and in person, because none of that matters at the end of the day. While Ninkovic is apt in identifying these problems, these moral lessons are not adequately fleshed out; they’re
The author began to write this novel in his early twenties, an age when many people have a “quarter-life crisis.” COURTESY OF DANIEL NINKOVIC
hastily inserted at the end rather than woven throughout the book. Ninkovic explains he opted to go the selfpublishing route so he had complete control over the finished product and didn’t have to compromise his values in the process. He says self-publishing is a good learning experience — if you’re disciplined — and credits a creative writing course he took at U of T for teaching him to be self-critical. Personally, I think some aspects of traditional publishing would have been helpful; there were quite a few typos in the novel, which occasionally took me out of the narrative. But I do appreciate that he wanted to publish his book in its pure form, without having to change it to fit a specific genre. Overall, it’s never a waste of time to support independent authors in our community. As Ninkovic said himself, this book is not for everyone, but I always find literature’s ability to resonate differently with different readers really exciting. So if you’re looking for an audacious debut novel, Snide Clyde Died may be the book for you.
10
THE VARSITY
FEATURES
Unaffordability weighs heavy on the backs of youth Finding optimism under the burden of living in Toronto Sophie Esther Ramsey Varsity Contributor
Financial struggle is a guarantee for many young people in Toronto today. For first-year international relations student Cypress Chernik, this guarantee was made apparent by her older sister’s experience of moving out at 18. Chernik’s sister lived on her own when she moved out 10 years ago, only to be driven by the rising costs to move back home last year despite her well-paying job. “I can see myself in [that] future as well,” Chernik worries. For a long time, the big city has been thought of as a place of inspiration. Cities like Toronto are emblems of hope for their abundance of opportunities for self-expression, work, and connection. It’s this richness of possibility that makes the city appetizing for those most eager to find their place in the world: youth. Yet in Canada, this pasture for opportunity is becoming increasingly abandoned by its citizens. An article published in January 2023 by Better Dwelling, Canada’s largest independent housing news outlet, reveals that just last year, 78,100 residents left Toronto for another part of Ontario, and 12,625 emigrated to another country. The Ontario Real Estate Association reports that more than 40 per cent of Ontario post-secondary graduates intend to leave the province after graduation due to the cost of living crisis . Unsurprisingly, the ever-rising cost of living can be held responsible for Toronto’s population losses. Although the City of Toronto reports that the average household rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,538, online housing site rentals.ca reports that the market average for a new one-bedroom apartment listing in Toronto costs around $2,620. The rentals.ca report also detailed that between May and August of 2023, landlords demanded a 5.1 per cent per month increase in rental prices. The financial turmoil Toronto residents experience extends beyond housing. In April this year, Toronto’s public transportation system demanded 10 more cents per fare from its riders with no adjusted compensation for students. Groceries have also become more expensive: an article published by Global News reported that Canadian food prices have increased 20 per cent since 2021. These rising costs affect everyone living in Toronto but are particularly demoralizing for the city’s youth who are only just graduating high school and university. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Gen Z — short for Generation Z, a term used to describe people born be-
tween 1997–2012 — to imagine a life of success and independence in Toronto.
Under the dark cloud of inflation, it does not matter whether young people are paying their rent yet; the weight of debt still rests on our shoulders. The anticipated burden of debt The city’s unaffordability places an enormous burden on the shoulders of Gen Z to plan their futures around impending debt. “Money is a big, big factor that worries me,” said Chernik. Though she would have preferred that her university experience included living independently, she didn’t have much choice but to live with her parents during undergrad and settle for a commute of at least “40 minutes on a good day.” “I don’t think there was a better option for me,” Chernik said. “Even if I had tried to find a place that’s near the campus or closer to the campus, it would have been so expensive, and it wouldn’t have been a worthwhile way to spend my money right now.” The life decisions young people make today are heavily influenced by the idea of debt, which confines their aspirations. Since living alone for Chernik is an elusive pursuit
for the foreseeable future, her decision to live at home is less of an economic choice and more of an obligation. Under the dark cloud of inflation, it does not matter whether young people are paying their rent yet; the weight of debt still rests on our shoulders. For Andrew Fiorido, a 2023 U of T graduate who works in the community office of New Democratic Party MPP Tom Rakocevic, this financial burden was actualized once he started university and became responsible for managing his own finances: “When it came time to go to university, I had to put myself through. I had to work, I had to take OSAP, and I had to [recognize] that I was going to be thousands of dollars in debt after university. It was a real eye-opening moment for me, stepping into adulthood and realizing how difficult it is out there.” Fiorido said that his interest in politics shifted after the pandemic to a focus on the struggles of the middle class: “I saw that the pandemic was extremely hard on the middle class. People lost their jobs, [they] had to rely on food banks,” he said. “Life is getting so much more expensive, but wages are stagnant for the middle class.” This idea of the death of the middle class is supported by a statement the Liberal government made in May 2023 regarding a “grocery rebate.” According to the statement, this rebate for “lower-income Canadians” is expected to aid 11 million Canadian households. There are approximately 15.3 million households in Canada as of 2021, which means those 11 million
An article published in July of this year by the Toronto Star writes that for workers to affordably live in a two-bedroom apartment — which would mean allocating no more than 30 per cent of their income before tax to paying rent — Ontario would have to increase its minimum wage to $40 an hour. This shows not only how Ontario’s minimum wage is insufficient to sustain a basic comfortable lifestyle, but that the cost of said lifestyle in Toronto has become unaffordable for the average person. Acquiring a well-paying job in this city as a young person today is
represent more than half the country’s households — emphasizing how much the disparity of wealth is reducing Canada’s financial middle ground. Even after the sacrifices youth are making — trading independence and ambition for more affordable paths — debt seems to remain an inevitability. As of 2022, 1.9 million Canadians owe the federal government a collective $23.5 billion in student loans, according to an article published this year by CBC. After taking into consideration provincial loans and private debt, the total amount of debt the Canadian public holds only increases. A shortage of opportunity Having a well-paying job seems not to matter as much as it should now, as Fiorido’s difficulty moving toward living independently illustrates: “I think I have a very well-paid job for someone straight out of university. But at this point of time, where the average rent is $2,400 a month, that’s just [too] difficult to afford.” Fiorido also mentioned a friend fresh out of university working for Bell Canada, who he estimates makes $20,000 more than the average Canadian, yet still struggles to afford a place to live.
commendable in itself, as breaking into the job market appears to be a trial. “I have a lot of friends who just graduated university as well, and they are having a lot of trouble even just getting entry-level jobs,” said Fiorido. “There’s just not a huge job market right now.” “The government is a great employer for students [to get] entrylevel jobs,” Fiorido said. However, such opportunities for young, educated people to begin their careers are currently scarce
features@thevarsity.ca
ticle
misfortune of a small job market but in a market that resists letting young people break through. For today’s youth, the sluggish endeavour of entering the workforce makes the idea of a wellpaying job — which still does not guarantee sufficient funds for independent living — elusive at best, and hopeless at worst. “I don’t want to say there’s a lack of jobs,” said Fiorido. “But I think right now there’s definitely difficulty acquiring a job even for people who did ‘everything right’ — you know, you went to university, you graduated, you got your degree… [Those students are] having trouble.” A crisis of despair Toronto’s unaffordability, and the lack of opportunities available to achieve independence, are not merely obstacles that young people must overcome to master adulthood. They are part of a crisis of how the city undervalues youth, where young people are excluded from the workforce and the opportunity to live independently. Meanwhile, past generations seemed to benefit from their hard work more quickly. “A couple of my buddies are having a very hard time finding jobs right now,” said Fiorido. “And they come from families that maybe have a hard time understanding why [it’s so difficult for someone] straight out of university to find a job.” This crisis is also shaping the ways in which Gen Z experiences youth and views the future. “The city is just that common point of misery for a lot of young people,” said Fiorido. “There’s this weird… nihilism, cynicism about it… Especially for a generation who [had to] come of age and go through high school
CBC a r-
published this year show that the employment rate for people between the ages 15 and 24 has dropped dramatically since 2021, from 19.1 per cent that January to 10.7 per cent this May. Yet, as of that same May, the food and accommodation services sectors have gained 10,000 jobs. Since youth unemployment and jobs are simultaneously on the rise, it is evident that the problems students encounter with finding work lie not in the
and university during a pandemic,” he said. “It makes the city feel more alien, more fractured.” Despair is a common feeling that many young people today experience in anticipation of their future, or amid the struggles of their present. “If I am going to attempt to live independently [right now], I am going to feel awful about the fact that I am putting a high sum of money into providing for my own living situation every single month,” said Chernik. “I think that is such a hopeless thing.” This “hopeless thing” is the reality for many students, whose youth and university experiences are being overshadowed by the burden of rent and tuition. With the reality of life in Toronto working against them, many youth are
forced to keep their early adulthood in the confines of their family’s home. “I think our generation has been infantilized,” said Fiorido, “by the fact that it’s really hard to own property, it’s really hard even to rent [a place].” “There’s definitely a sense of hopelessness,” said Fiorido about the emotional impact of unaffordable living in Toronto. “In our generation, it’s like a common joke, like, ‘Wow, imagine owning a home someday!’” Right now, the inaccessibility of financial independence for Gen Z is robbing them of the opportunity to gain and experience autonomy. “There is a big leap between our generation and our parents’ generation,” said Chernik. “I think this divide makes it even more crucial that young people have an opportunity for independence.”
“I think a lot of people want to get out of here, but at the same time, there’s something very, very charming about Toronto” Fighting to stay While the solutions to this crisis may not be under our control, and though our big city pastures are not looking so green, we can learn to surpass this hopelessness flooding Toronto. More and more Canadians are taking initiative to acquire higher pay and better benefits by leaving their jobs in search of greater opportunities. In January 2023, CBC reported that 50 per cent of Canada’s workers planned to search for a new job in the coming year. According to a survey conducted in May by business consulting firm Robert Half, Gen Z Canadians are the most likely to make such career changes by the end of the year. Gen Z is also more conscious about their relationships with money, demonstrating the financial control and initiative they are taking in their own lives. According to The Globe and Mail, seven in 10 Canadians aged 18 to 26 refrain from spending money on nonessentials and prioritize saving for greater investments, such as home ownership, car ownership, and emergency funds. “This might be me being overly optimistic,” said Fiorido, “but I am very hopeful that [the housing crisis in Canada] will get better within the next 10 to 15 years… It’s at the point where every political party has to address this issue… [and] this is an issue they can’t ignore.” Fiorido is not the only one who is optimistic. In
March 2022, CityNews stated that Gen Z youth between the ages 18 and 28 see homeownership as a prosperous investment, and that one in three expect to make a housing purchase within the next five years. Yet, despite the sense of despair that rising costs are causing Gen Z, Toronto is still a place that many young people still want to live in. “[Toronto] is where I want to stay for the rest of my life,” said Fiorido. “My plan is to gain experience at the job I have, and hopefully be able to move up [and] earn more one day.” “I think that when you are young, things tend to seem pretty hopeless,” said Chernik. “[But] rent prices aren’t everything… There’s a lot to any given place, especially a place like Toronto.” “I think that despite the challenges, we are ultimately quite a resilient generation, having grown up during the pandemic… [and] that [resilience] is already starting to show in all of the ways art and culture are still very much alive in Toronto — just maybe in different ways than they were before.” According to the Toronto Arts Council (TAC), the city continues to be Canada’s richest creative community, with 93 per cent more artists than elsewhere in the country. TAC provides more than 60 grants each year to support young artists and youth-led organizations. There are also many efforts to make culture accessible in Toronto, with organizations like the Toronto Public Art Strategy that seeks to revive public art in the city. Other programs encourage youth involvement in art, like the Art Gallery of Ontario’s free admission for youth under 25, and the Soulpepper Theatre’s free tickets for people under 25 and anyone accompanying them. “I think a lot of people want to get out of here, but at the same time, there’s something very, very charming about Toronto,” said Chernik. “[There are] places that have a lot of art and a lot of soul to them. And I think that the incoming generation, our generation, as we grow, will continue to make the city our own.”
BIEW BIEW SAKULWANNADEE/THEVARSITY
due to a hiring freeze. “I know this first hand,” Fiorido said. “[Government offices are] not hiring [someone] unless they drastically need to. It’s estimated that one in five City of Toronto positions are vacant because they can’t afford to provide them.” Chernik too considers the difficulty of finding a job in Toronto highly discouraging for youth: “When I did an exchange trip in Quebec [this past summer, I noticed] every young person starting from 15 or 16 was able to find a job… It was just something that you did there. Here, having a job is pretty uncommon until you’re 18 or 19, at which point it is still extremely difficult.” As expenses climb, the barrier around the job market grows thicker. “You really need paid work experience to get paid work experience,” said Chernik. “A lot of people work or volunteer for their parents now, and that’s how [they] get into the workforce… That should not be the case, because getting into the workforce shouldn’t be this massive task, [even just] to work a retail job.” Indeed, Statistics Canada numbers in a
Business & Labour Explaining the minimum wage increase: What difference does $1.05 make? Ontario’s minimum wage rate still lags behind the cost of living in Toronto Mari Khan Varsity Contributor
On October 1, the Ontario government increased the provincial hourly minimum wage rate from $15.50 to $16.55. Ontario initially announced the increase in March, seven months before it went into effect, with the intention of giving employers enough time to make adjustments to accommodate the increased cost of paying employees. U of T students with work-study positions may have noticed their wages increase due to this change. The CLNx website notes that the university paid all students in work-study positions a minimum rate of $15.90 prior to October 1, which increased to a minimum of $16.55 afterward. Should students be paid less? The Ontario government also increased its “student minimum wage” from $14.60 to $15.60 an hour. This rate is lower than the general minimum wage rate requirement. Most U of T students do not have to worry about being paid less than the standard minimum, though, as this student rate applies to workers under the age of 18, who work 28 hours a week or less when school is in session, during school breaks, or over the summer holidays. Ontario is the only province to still have a student minimum wage in effect. The Ontario gov-
ernment first brought in student minimum wage to encourage employers to hire youth, who have less experience, by paying them lower wages. In 2013, then-CIBC Chair in Youth Employment Morley Gunderson told U of T News that some studies in Canada and the US have suggested that employment rates among youth workers may be the most susceptible to decreasing as minimum wage rates increase. In general, however, there is a lack of consensus on whether increasing minimum wage rates actually end up decreasing the rate of employment, in the general population and amongst youth. Some commenters call the two-tiered system “discriminatory,” as it could imply that youth do not deserve the same pay that everyone is entitled to. Students’ experiences Fatima Nawaz, a second-year student at UTM, is working as a gallery attendant for the Blackwood Gallery through the Work Study program. Nawaz wrote in a message to The Varsity that she is currently receiving the increased minimum wage. Nawaz also said that she was pleased to see the increase, and now feels motivated to take on more shifts to benefit as much as possible from the increased rate. Nawaz said that the increased minimum wage rate is “fine enough”
October 16, 2023 thevarsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca
to support her lifestyle as she tends to save her money and be cautious. But, seeing a few extra dollars is a welcome experience. Zakira Desai, a second-year humanities student, also wrote in a message to The Varsity that the dollar increase is welcome, especially considering the rising prices of goods and services. Desai is a chef at Hale Coffee and receives minimum wage. She noted that her hourly rate was changed immediately to accommodate the dollar increase on October 1. However, she believes that she needs her wage to increase more in order to live a comfortable lifestyle. Desai currently lives at home with her parents but has plans to move out and begin renting an apartment downtown. She believes that, considering the cost of paying rent, groceries, utilities, phone bill, and other living expenses, the minimum wage should be closer to $25 per hour.
Minimum wage still not high enough? Indeed, the Ontario Living Wage Network calculates that the average “living wage” rate for an adult in Toronto is $23.15 an hour. The network, which advocates for wage increase initiatives in the province, bases the calculation on the yearly cost of basic goods and services for adults in a variety of family structures and then divides this cost by the number of full-time hours worked in a year. But that calculation is based on the assumption that a worker is working a full-time job. For university students who are dividing their time between coursework and their job, finances may be even tighter. The Ontario Student Assistance Program, other scholarships, and bursaries from U of T and its colleges make financial assistance available to students for this reason — although specific qualifications for these programs vary, and some students may have a hard time finding sufficient financial aid to support themselves.
Minimum wage workers can expect higher rates starting October 1. JULIA DEDDA/THEVARSITY
Your new study partner may be an AI-powered app Penseum co-founders on why — and how — they’re creating an AI study assistant Medha Barath Varsity Contributor
A team of entrepreneurs is currently leveraging generative artificial intelligence (AI) to build an app called Penseum, which they hope will make university courses easier for students. The Penseum company is a part of MaRS, an incubating service for tech startups based in Toronto and a partner organization with U of T. Generative AI has taken over headlines since ChatGPT was launched last November and has become some students’ best friend. A survey from the American information website Best Colleges found that one in five of the 1000 college students it surveyed had used AI tools such as ChatGPT in some capacity on their assignments or exams. Universities and individual professors, including at U of T, have since considered policies regulating how these tools can be used in coursework. Penseum users can upload course material to their software to receive personalized study guides, flashcards, and practice
The team behind Penseum. COURTESY OF PENSEUM
questions. The software also offers a chatbot that analyzes the content that individual users upload and then answers users’ questions about that content. Based off the university student experience “This product came mainly out of our personal experiences,” co-founder Samit Khalsa told The Varsity in an interview. Many students struggle when transitioning from high school to university, especially as they begin to acquaint themselves with the large lecture sizes, Khalsa explained. However, fellow co-founder Kamyar Hosseini noted that professors tend to use a “cookie-cutter approach” to teaching students various subjects, without considering the differences in their studying styles, which can be detrimental to students’ success. “You have lectures that go on for three hours and students don’t learn anything,” he said. Hosseini also described that educational systems have been slow to change their methods even though far more effective systems exist. This is why the co-founders chose to design their tool around education, Hosseini said — it was the area where they felt they could have the most impact.
A quick journey from the idea to the market Penseum’s journey is impressive, given that the founders only devised the idea eight weeks ago. Khalsa and Hosseini incorporated the company three weeks after that, on August 14, and then started distributing its minimum viable product — the early version of the tool — to get feedback from some test users. Now, they currently have a beta version of Penseum available for early users to try out. Penseum also does not depend on funding from external investors. The company uses the “bootstrap model” — all of its funding comes from the founders’ personal finances and whatever revenue the company can collect as it begins to operate. This is not the first time Khalsa and Hosseini have been involved in a start-up. The two established a software development company three years ago before creating Penseum. Hosseini noted that this experience was crucial in letting them hit the ground running and keep up their morale this time around. “You have to
kind of have that grit and kind of mental resilience and emotional resilience because you launch and no one cares. No one uses your platform. And if you give up, then the world will never know how good your platform is,” Hosseini said. Indeed, the company had trouble getting engagement with their product on social media in the beginning, receiving only 10 or 20 views on their videos. “At that point, if you don’t truly believe in [your project], you’d probably give up,” Khalsa said. Eventually, though, their product began to receive more attention. In fact, the Penseum beta is currently not allowing any more sign-ups due to limited capacity. Learning from their start-up journey Having been a part of the start-up industry for some years, Khalsa and Hosseini have a lot of advice for budding student entrepreneurs. Hosseini emphasizes the importance of adaptability. “You may have a plan. The plan, 99 per cent of the time, doesn’t work.” Being able to pick yourself back up after making mistakes or facing changes is therefore essential, he said. “Take a chance on yourself,” said Khalsa. Many students often have great ideas but do not have the confidence to invest in themselves. Yet, someone else might have the same vision and decide to pursue it, resulting in success. Khalsa highlighted the importance of taking initiative once you develop an idea. Right now, the founders noted that they have been “talking to cognitive scientists” and plan to implement educational techniques based on cognitive science in Penseum in the future. For example, Hosseini pointed to the strategy of spaced repetition, in which the student reviews information in multiple, spaced-out sessions, rather than all at once. Penseum’s ultimate goal is to make learning more effective, in whatever way that might be in the future.
Comment
October 16, 2023 thevarsity.ca/category/comment comment@thevarsity.ca
The Western response to the IsraelPalestine conflict is hypocritical Western sympathy and support is one-sided, and one-sidedness has consequences for Palestinians Raafia Shahid Varsity Contributor
Content warning: This article discusses the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine. This past weekend has been an emotional one for me and many of my peers on campus. I’m shaken to the core by the news coming out of the Middle East and the Canadian media’s despicable coverage of events. No, I do not support the killing of Israeli settler civilians and children. But what makes me so angry is the sheer hypocrisy of Western politicians, institutions, and media organizations. Following Hamas’ invasion of Israel, Canadian politicians were quick to announce their unequivocal backing of the Zionist state. On October 8, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford issued statements fully supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, while Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow later condemned the pro-Palestinian rally that took place in Toronto on October 9. On the same day, U of T also issued a message to the community, expressing deep sadness at the attack. The response from the United States was even tougher, with President Joe Biden announcing on October 7 “rock solid and unwavering” support for Israel, which was followed by the US sending assistance to Israel by mobilizing aircraft carriers, missile cruisers, munitions, and fighter jets. Hamas’ killing of over 1,300 Israelis over the past few days is saddening and deplorable, but so is the Israeli forces’ killing of 6,407 Palestinians between January 2008 and September 2023 as recorded by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The 6,407 Palestinians include over 1,437 children and 626 women. And this is just the death toll, which discounts the number
of Palestinians that the Israeli forces have injured, unlawfully imprisoned, starved, and kicked out of their homes. If you have been following events in Israel, you know that the far-right government has created an apartheid regime that allows for them to regularly harass Palestinians and treat them as second-class citizens. In 2023 alone, Israel killed more than 200 Palestinians before last week’s violence began. Settlers seized 290 Palestinian homes in the first quarter of the year. Israeli forces attacked Muslim worshippers as they prayed at the Al-Aqsa mosque during the holy month of Ramadan. Israeli settlers have attacked multiple Palestinian towns, including Jenin, Turmus Aya, Baytin, Qablan, and Huwwara. And while Canadian politicians ‘tut, tut’ at this oppression when they visit our mosques to seek support for their political campaigns, they never light up the Ottawa Peace Tower in red, green, and black when Israel bombs Gaza seemingly indiscriminately. In fact, political leaders who call attention to the plight of the Palestinian people face immense pressure from other politicians to stay silent. Premier Ford called for Hamilton’s New Democratic Party MPP Sarah Jama to be removed from caucus after she posted a statement calling for the end of Israel’s “apartheid” — a word the United Nations has also used. The deafening silence of the West in the face of Israel’s ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people throughout the years sends a clear message: the right to safety and support is reserved for Israelis alone. The reason for this vast discrepancy in Western institutional response is not hard to imagine. Palestinian oppression has become so normalized across the world that many see it as sad yet routine. In contrast, Hamas’ violence against Israeli
Palestinian oppression has become so normalized that it is seen as sad yet routine.
settlers is shocking, and has resurfaced the Western world’s collective guilt from the Holocaust — as seen in statements by world leaders like US President Joe Biden. I believe the Western world’s guilt for the genocide of the Jewish people should persist and act as a moral compass. Intergenerational trauma is very real and Jewish people experience it to this day. But the Western narrative conveniently ignores that Palestinians who were forced out of their homes 75 years ago by Zionist militants to create the Israeli state also experience intergenerational trauma. In the 1948 Nakba, or “Catastrophe,” Israeli forces destroyed 531 villages, killed 15,000 Palestinians, and forcefully displaced 750,000. For the 5.9 million current Palestinian refugees, the trauma they experienced is ongoing as they continue to live a life of displacement, occupation, and violence. Some of the facts emerging from last week are so bizarre and jarring to me that I am left amazed at the immense state of disassociation in the West. One of the sites of Hamas’ violence was a music festival on the outskirts of Gaza. The UN Report of the Special Rapporteur defined Gaza as an open-air prison, where 2.3 million people live in blockade on 365 square kilometres of land. Within this blockaded region, 81.5 per cent of the population live in poverty, and the majority of people face barriers to accessing clean water, electricity, food, fuel, and medical supplies because the passage of goods and people is under the complete control of Israel. In a practice the Israeli military has called “mowing the grass,” the Israel Defense Forces also regularly bomb this densely packed strip of land, where over half the residents are children. I am flabbergasted that a music festival was
U of T departments’ silence on Palestine displays immense cowardice U of T is comfortable with performative anti-colonialism but seems to cower from addressing ongoing apartheid Fatima Zahra Mohammed Varsity Contributor
Content warning: This article discusses the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine. If you’ve ever wondered how the world stood by and watched historic apartheid, genocide, and injustice occur, look no further than U of T’s academic departments’ silence on Palestinian issues. This past week has shown us that their land acknowledgments and “anti-colonial,” “antioppression” buzzwords are smoke and mirrors. In this age of information, we are seeing a world-renowned research institution claim that the United Nations-recognized apartheid and war crimes committed by Israel are simply too complicated to discuss. The cowardice is deeply disturbing. When I received an email from my graduate department forwarding the “Message to the Community on the War in the Middle East” from U of T’s Vice-President, International, I sat in shock and rising anger. Surely, a statement regarding 75 years of occupation since the Nakba in 1948, including ethnic cleansing and apartheid, did not centre the most recent retaliation against the oppressor in the first sentence. A coalition of U of T students, staff, faculty, and alumni who share this reaction have also been circulating a joint statement, expressing “shock and disappointment at the statement.” As a Muslim, my faith teaches me to always as-
sume the best of others, giving ample benefit of the doubt. So, upon reading the statement, I decided to email my department chairs to respectfully let them know that this does not represent the perspective of myself or my peers. With 35 of my classmates as signatories, I presented the chairs with facts, such as how former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, former Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, and South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor have all labelled Israel’s occupation as apartheid, and the UN has declared the occupation unlawful, in breach of international law, in hundreds of resolutions. I also noted how Amnesty International has determined through a comprehensive report that the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention unequivocally deem the seizure of land, thousands of deaths, forcible displacement, and denial of nationality as apartheid and a crime against humanity. As a master’s student in the Department of Geography, this crisis is central to our practice. We constantly discuss anti-oppression, nationalism, institutionalized power, and study land acknowledgments, committing ourselves to understanding the role our field has had in historic and ongoing settler-colonialism. Alongside professors in every class, our department’s Equity and Diversity statement has rightfully discussed geographers' responsibility to critically examine displacement and oppression and to advocate for peace and justice through our work.
Clearly, I was mistaken for thinking that meant anything. I honestly had some hope when communicating with the department but the response fell flat. In an email to the department listserv, the Geography department’s chairs told us that they would only comment on actions taken by the department, and exclusively refer to statements issued by U of T. What stands out as particularly concerning is the reason they cited: “The extreme diversity within the calls made on us so far to comment in relation to the IsraelHamas conflict have shown us the impossibility of equitably representing the whole of our community on this issue.” What I’m hearing: a difficult conversation about the truth is not worth having. What role should U of T play in times of injustice? Should it be a platform that represents the truth and stands up against injustice, or should it pander to the myriad perspectives held by students? To me, our university masquerades as the former, and when things get real, it operates entirely as a performative shill. It succumbs to the pressure and hides from taking the victim's side. Why is this so problematic? Because context matters. We are seeing international propaganda spread disinformation, and the public is believing it without fact-checking. Some of the most heinous claims against Palestinians populating headlines, news segments, and social media are wholly unsubstantiated. Notably, the US President retracted a statement claiming he saw images of Hamas beheading
COURTESY OF BILAL HOOR CC/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
happening outside the barricaded fences, with revellers partying throughout the night, while Gazan children slept in starvation. Is the Western world so out of touch with the concept of absolute poverty that our sympathy is only for those who share our lifestyle? While I condemn the brutal killing of the festival attendees, I am allowed to call attention to this stark discrepancy in living standards between Israelis and Palestinians. My heart bleeds for all the civilians killed in this conflict. I do not know what the solution is. All I know is that Western sympathy, support, and criticism has always felt one-sided, and this one-sidedness has consequences on the way Palestinians are treated. Sieges of civilians are illegal under international law, but as I write, the siege of Gaza continues. At least 2,228 Gazans are dead, including 724 children. Israel shut off the region’s electricity and water. Hospitals are running out of fuel. Yet the West is silent. As of October 14, Western officials such as Mayor Chow or President Biden have made no statements expressing support for Palestinians. While the West pays considerable attention to the terrorist tactics deployed by Hamas, they never call the terrorist tactics of the Israeli state into question. Does the normalization of terror have a different name in Israel? Raafia Shahid is a second-year Master of Public Policy student at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. If you or someone you know has experienced harassment or discrimination based on race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship and/or creed at U of T or is in distress, see the resources on page 2. children, with a spokesperson admitting that the president had not seen said images. Celebrities are posting images of crying children and fallen buildings, captioning them with prayers for Israel, only to realize that they are images of Gaza. It is this context that necessitates real advocacy, and for our leadership to put their buzzwords into practice. Let’s be clear. The deaths of innocent civilians are horrific. We must unequivocally condemn discrimination and antisemitism at all costs, and this article in no way seeks to diminish the pain or mourning of the death of Israeli civilians. As critically-thinking academics, we need to recognize that condemning an apartheid state that is breaking international law to wipe out an indigenous population does not negate sympathizing with innocent deaths on both sides. The silence from our leadership speaks volumes. What we are asking for is not complex. Critically examining the facts and standing for human rights should be inarguable. It’s crucial that our Department of Geography — and other departments — release statements condemning the apartheid that we are witnessing in Palestine. A land acknowledgment does not rectify ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism. Decolonization requires action and an active commitment to do better. Now is the time to speak up — otherwise, this program and U of T as a whole are failing to produce leaders of change. Change begins here and now. Fatima Zahra Mohammed is a second-year Master’s of Science student studying urban planning at the Department of Geography. If you or someone you know has experienced harassment or discrimination based on race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship and/or creed at U of T or is in distress, see the resources on page 2.
14
THE VARSITY
comment@thevarsity.ca
COMMENT
We have to acknowledge that Hamas’ recent attack did not occur in a vacuum The attack was unforgivable, but so are Israel’s crimes against humanity Lina Obeidat Varsity Contributor
Content warning: This article discusses the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine. Since 1948, Israel has existed as a country — built on the murder and dispossession of Palestinians. Since 1967, Israel has held Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza under military occupation. Since 2007, Israel has forced Palestinians in Gaza to live in what a United Nations Special Rapporteur defined as an “open-air prison,” where virtually nothing enters or leaves due to a land, air, and sea blockade created by Israel. While Israel claims that the blockade around Gaza that forms this open-air prison is meant to protect Israeli citizens from Hamas, US military documents released by WikiLeaks in 2011 alleged that Israel is deliberately using the blockade to keep Gaza’s economy “on the brink of collapse.” In 2018, the UN declared Gaza’s open air-prison as unlivable. Living quarters are cramped, with 2.2 million Palestinians forced to share the same 140 square miles. Youth unemployment stands at around 70 per cent, infrastructure is substandard, and electricity is frequently unavailable for hours at a time. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza do not have enough access to clean water and must deal with a limited food supply. Israeli forces frequently subject Palestinians in Gaza to home demolitions, arbitrary detention, air strikes, unlawful killings, and physical and emotional torture, just as they do to Palestinians in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli citizens living in Israel or a very short distance away in West Bank settle-
ments — which much of the international community maintains are illegal under international law — can maintain their dignity and enjoy everything that Palestinians in occupied Palestinian territory are denied. To call it unfair would be an understatement. The fact of the matter is that Palestinians are living under an apartheid regime: a crime against humanity. You do not need to take it from me — Amnesty International, a prominent human rights organization, conducted research between 2017 and 2021 to determine if claims like mine held any validity and came to the following conclusion in their 280-page report: “The totality of the regime of laws, policies and practices described in this report demonstrates that Israel has established and maintained an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis — a system of apartheid —wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948.” Israel’s disgusting treatment of Palestinians under apartheid rarely makes headlines or generates enough criticism from the international community. This is why it is maddening to see institutions and countries across the world lighting up signs in blue and white to show solidarity with Israel or spreading statements about their condemnation of terrorism in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7, where militants took over 100 Israelis — mostly civilians — hostage. The Israeli death toll since the attack has risen to over 1300. In their statements about the attack, these countries and their institutions either do not mention Israel’s response — like in the case of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s initial statement about the Hamas attack — or express support for Israel’s defence without explaining what that
Letter to the Editor: Bria Mack highlights the hypocrisy of Black people needing to ‘turn the other cheek’ Re: Review: Bria Mack Gets a Life Kevin Bourne Varsity Contributor
This year’s Toronto International Film Festival featured a number of hard-hitting films and series about the Black experience. Among them was Sasha Leigh Henry’s series Bria Mack Gets A Life, a coming-of-age story about a young Black woman’s lived experience in Canada. On September 17, The Varsity published a glowing review of the series written by Genevieve Sugrue, except for one point. In refer-
ence to a joke where the seemingly harmless act of touching a Black person’s hair was compared to Emmett Till’s seemingly harmless act of allegedly whistling at a white woman, Sugrue commented that the joke “didn’t land well with me,” as if to trivialize what Sasha Leigh Henry was trying to say. Although this appeared to be a joke, it was really a commentary on the Black experience as the rest of the series conveys. Till’s supposedly harmless act of a whistle led to his death, and while Bria Mack wanted to react in similar fashion to the seemingly harmless act
response looks like — like in the case of US President Joe Biden. Currently, Israel’s response to the attack involves carpet bombing buildings in Gaza so that the Palestinian injury and death toll is in the thousands — at over 9,700 injured and 2,300 dead in Gaza as of October 15 — and that the number of those displaced is over 423,000. These numbers are likely to increase drastically given that Israel has also completely cut off food, water, and electricity supplies to all the inhabitants there. I believe that the Zionist state’s response to Hamas’ attack cannot possibly be framed as self-defence. Instead, it reveals the power imbalance between Palestinians, who have almost no resources, and their oppressor, a state that has a multi-billion dollar military budget and clearly seeks to enact what I would characterize as massacres — like the massacres Israeli militias committed during the Nakba in 1948 — and what a UN human rights official described as “ethnic cleansing” on an entire population. Ariel Kallner, a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has even said in a statement on Instagram, “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.” Moreover, the statements of these institutions and countries around the world do not mention the more general crimes against humanity Israel has inflicted on indigenous Palestinians in today’s age and throughout history, which were in part what provoked the attack in the first place. To be clear, I stand firmly against Hamas and its decision to target Israeli civilians in the attack — their deaths are tragic and deeply painful. However, I do not believe that the aforementioned institutions have any right to condemn
such violence without also condemning Israel’s crimes against humanity and actively demanding that Palestinians are liberated from occupation and apartheid, ensuring that their counterparts in the diaspora are able to return to the land that was stolen from them in 1948. Until liberation and return become a reality, Palestinians will have every reason to resist. They will resist as they have done before with strikes, marches, and boycotts. However, if some of them branch out into violent resistance, as they sometimes do, and if more civilian lives are regrettably lost on both sides as a result, let it not taint the image of all Palestinians and discourage support for their cause. Instead, let the international community take the deaths of these civilians as yet another sign that the ‘arc of the moral universe’ is not bending quickly enough in the direction of justice and that they must take action. Lina Obeidat is a first-year student at Innis College studying social sciences. If you or someone you know has experienced harassment or discrimination based on race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship and/or creed at U of T or is in distress, see the resources on page 2.
Amnesty International reports that Palestinians in Gaza are living under an apartheid regime. COURTESY OF NASA AND SASHA KROTOV CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
of touching her hair — as seen in the cutaway to her imagination — she practiced restraint and said nothing. This is an unfortunate part of the Black experience. Those who lynched Till never practiced restraint in response to his acts, but Bria Mack and Black people as a whole have to practice restraint regularly because the system is not in our favour. We have to be intentional about rejecting stereotypes out of a responsibility to ourselves and our community. Sugrue’s comment not only came across as dismissive of the point being raised, but she allowed her offence or discomfort to hinder her from learning and seeing a different perspective. The joke wasn’t supposed to land with her. It wasn’t supposed to make her and the audience feel good. It was supposed to make her think, to look deeper and listen to what the filmmaker was actually trying to say. Unfortunately, she allowed her offence or discomfort to hinder her from doing that very thing. Sugrue proceeded to write, “As a white woman, I cannot speak on how Black writers
engaged with that moment in history or how members of the Black community interpreted the comparison,” right after speaking on that very thing. What Sugrue failed to take away from the joke was that it wasn’t about history at all. It was highlighting the hypocrisy of Black people needing to turn the other cheek when it comes to seemingly harmless acts like touching our hair, when we haven’t been afforded the same luxury, not only in 1955 but in 2023 too. I’d suggest that the next time the writer finds herself being offended or uncomfortable that she seeks to understand what the showrunner and writer is trying to say before judging the message based on what does or doesn’t land with her. Kevin Bourne is a Toronto-based entertainment journalist, TEDx speaker, and diversity marketing strategist. He is the co-founder and editor of the SHIFTER magazine.
Bria Mack Gets a Life is a coming-of-age story about a young Black woman in Canada. COURTESY OF TIFF
thevarsity.ca/category/comment
OCTOBER 16, 2023
15
The Canadian International Air Show subverts Canada’s spirit of multiculturalism Our united cultural front must now cater to more than one type of Canadian Emma Dobrovnik International Affairs Columnist
For many people, the Canadian International Air Show is a beloved practice that unites generations in honouring their national pride. While I have not seen much discussion on whether the recreational use of warplanes is appropriate amidst Canada’s changing demographics, I feel as if it is almost offensive to broach the subject, lest you be deemed soft, or worse, anti-veteran. However, the country’s growing refugee population and the associated shift in cultural ideals prompt the following questions. Who is the air show really for? If it’s for Canadians, then what kind of Canadian does the show claim to represent? It seems unlikely that the display is intended for the benefit of those fleeing from war. It’s no secret that refugees are likely to suffer from trauma, which may have been inflicted by the same planes we see in our Toronto skies over Labour Day weekend. With that in mind, we should consider what this implies for the lived realities of refugees. Where do those affected by war fit in when it comes to Canada’s military fetishism? It hardly seems like there’s room for the melding of both pro- and anti-war ideologies in our cultural mosaic, no matter how nuanced the mosaic is. I believe the Air Show’s celebration of military aircraft promotes a culture of war, which is particularly disturbing when nearly a quarter of Canada’s population consists of immigrants as of 2021, and when our nation prides itself on being a provider of global asylum. Instead, the tension between the country’s pacifist ideals and its thinly-veiled militarism indicates a societal disconnect. The Canadian government has no issue adopting vaguely anti-
war, pro-peace stances when it’s convenient, as it contributes to its international status as a ‘tolerant’ democracy. However, it has failed to integrate significant anti-imperialist attitudes into cultural promotion. It’s worth noting that the 2021 Toronto Air Show was sponsored by worldwide weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which proudly flew its F-35 fighter jet over crowds of admiring Torontonians. According to Lockheed Martin’s website, this plane is the “most lethal, survivable, and connected fight-
JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY
er jet in the world,” and is uniquely qualified to offer a “critical advantage” over adversaries. While this language strategically reinforces notions of homeland defense and global security, the truth is that the F-35 warplane boasts a kill-to-loss exchange ratio of 15:1 — a ratio defined by the number of planes a pilot can expect to lose compared to how many they can expect to kill. The US
Fewer young people feel pressured to have sex compared to past generations Young people feel a declining need to fit into society’s expectations of sex or appeal to gender roles Alyssa Villar Varsity Contributor
One may assume that young people would be having more sex than ever before, with the emergence of ‘hookup culture’ and increasingly progressive views around sex. In reality, it’s actually the opposite. A study done by UCLA shows that nearly 38 per cent of Californians aged 18 to 30 reported having zero sexual partners in the year 2021, in comparison to 22 per cent of Californians in the same age bracket a decade prior. This trend seems to extend beyond California since many countries other than the U.S. have noticed this change in behaviour too. There is general consensus among researchers that Gen Z is having less sex than older generations did at our age. While the pandemic might be playing a role, I think that the younger generations — Gen Z and Millenials alike — may simply feel less pressure to adhere to many societal norms, resulting in the decrease in sexual intercourse. Less judgement around sex and not having sex In an age of dating apps and a plunging number of people ‘settling down,’ casual sex seems to be more commonplace. Clearly, our notions of sex have come a long way since the Victorian era. With a change in times and further steps in the sexual liberation movement, Gen Z lives in an era where we feel less judgement around what we do with our lives. Consequently, our views on people who have sex versus people who don’t have also changed. Young people might not feel as pressured to
has also deployed the warplane in both northern Iraq and Syria. Beyond the window dressing, it appears that Canada is happy to rejoice in the mass construction and distribution of weaponry built for the explicit purpose of killing — as long as it’s rebranded as wholesome, family-friendly fun. In my view, the cognitive dissonance required to embrace multiculturalism while inviting children to marvel at weapons of mass destruction is nothing short of exhausting. It becomes a dark day when Canadians are happy to pat themselves on the
be chaste and fearful of sex as much as older generations did — and on the other side of the coin, they might not feel pressured to explore sex early on either. With this, I believe that Gen Z finds more freedom in the rejection of society’s ideas around sex. Renouncing general societal norms enables the younger generation to feel free of expectations and less pressured to succumb to constraints of ‘promiscuity’ or ‘purity culture.’ I believe the pressure young people face from society and from their peers to have sex at a certain age has decreased because of this generational progress. Less pressure to appeal to expectations around relationships Sex is not the only life event that young people are feeling less pressured to partake in — fewer young people are getting married too. Although there’s an array of factors that could explain this, I believe that one of them is that young people feel less pressured to appeal to societal expectations of marriage. A 2019 survey showed that 44 per cent of millennials were married versus 53 per cent of Gen Xers and 61 per cent of Boomers at a comparable age. The trend in older generations may mean that the number will continually decrease for Gen Z as well. Similarly, the goal of having a ‘nuclear family’ is dying, and it seems as though there’s no rush to follow modern society’s timeline of when you should lose your virginity, get married, and have kids. Times are changing and so are attitudes around fitting into society’s idea of how you should live your life. With longer life spans, better education and quality of life, and more people focusing on their personal goals, young people’s lifestyles are changing.
back for their openness and acceptance, despite their refusal to adapt to Canada’s changing population. Of course, we can strike a balance when commemorating our joint histories as Canadians. There’s no doubting the importance of a shared national identity. With that said, I’m not sure that a gratuitous military display reflects the values of a Gen Z generally strays from tradition because we live in a world where we can. We are able to question societal expectations and ask ourselves about what we truly want these days. What makes this generation different is that most Gen Zers have had access to the internet for the majority of their lives. There is no shortage of information, ideas, and philosophies being spread across the web, and I see young people feeling more confident in questioning and formulating their own opinions about our society. There is less pressure to abide by social constructs in general, which is why I believe young people are also delaying ‘the deed.’ Dismantling heteronormative ideas around sex So far, society’s notions of sex have been heteronormative in nature. Concepts like ‘virginity’ and ‘purity culture’ have been held over our heads, traditionally dictating how we should view intercourse. In recent years, however, more progressive views on sex continue to garner interest and foster growing sexual liberation in younger generations. The idea that there is no need to fit into society’s expectations of sex or appeal to
country characterized by its commitment to tolerance and diversity. I can see these criticisms being met with suggestions that younger generations are less appreciative of what it means to be Canadian, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In our increasingly atomized world, we’re in need of a united cultural front now more than ever, but this front must now cater to more than one type of Canadian. I hope that an integrated model of national pride will better reflect the wealth of cultural contexts seen throughout Canada today. Accounting for the conflicting interests of our shifting population is no easy feat, but the reality is that Canada is home to an estimated 140,621 refugees as of 2022. What’s more is that globally, up to a quarter of refugees have PTSD. The glorification of military aircraft seems to be at odds with Canada’s alleged dedication to welcoming victims of war. A nation deemed the world leader in the resettlement of refugees should consider how the ways that we honour our heritage risk encroaching on the lives of those seen as “less Canadian.” After all, what good is there in patriotism when it comes at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens? In the end, I believe that we can commend our history of national defense without supporting a state-sanctioned advertisement for military weaponry. Emma Dobrovnik is a third-year student at St. Michael’s College studying political science and criminology. She is a Director of Mentorship for the Association of Political Science Students and an International Affairs columnist for The Varsity’s Comment section. gender roles is becoming ever so prevalent. Recently, the increased acknowledgement of diverse gender expressions and sexual orientations has been a large part of younger generations feeling more free from the constraints of society. I think this has helped people move away from exclusive ideologies surrounding sex. In general, people are not so closed-minded when it comes to sex compared to the past, and over time we are straying from the sentiment that sex should be defined by gender roles and limited by societal norms. Lastly, young people are more willing to challenge the patriarchy and find its faults. I think that as more young people learn how systems of oppression like patriarchy are flawed, the less we feel the need to align with them and the less power they have over us. As I see the patriarchy slowly losing importance in younger generations and in generations to come, I think less young people feel pressured or threatened to appeal to its ideology. Alyssa Villar is a second-year student at UTSC studying human biology and biochemistry.
JODI NYAWA/THEVARSITY
Science
October 16, 2023 thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca
How internet backlash slashed costs for tuberculosis testing Online communities rallied this year to make TB testing more accessible Philip Harker Varsity Contributor
Tuberculosis (TB) in the twenty-first century feels a bit old-world, doesn’t it? Though tuberculosis has always been one of humans’ biggest dangers, it feels old-fashioned, like smallpox or the bubonic plague. But TB is far from a thing of the past. Even though humans cracked the code for the antibacterial drugs that fight it decades ago, TB remains the deadliest infectious disease in the world. It was the second deadliest disease in 2022, only falling behind COVID-19. A patient’s recovery from TB is contingent on two things: diagnosis and treatment. Treating TB can be straightforward in many cases, but one major problem facing impoverished communities is actually identifying the disease in a patient before it’s too late to treat. Traditional methods for diagnosing TB are highly labour-intensive, often involving a lab tech sitting at a microscope and identifying signs of the bacteria from a biological sample. But in the twenty-first century, technology offers a newer and easier way for low- and middleincome countries to rapidly diagnose TB. Enter the GeneXpert machine. It’s a brilliant invention by Cepheid, a biotech firm owned by the Danaher Corporation, a large American holdings corporation. GeneXpert takes a sample of body fluid inserted into a plastic cartridge to diagnose TB. The fluid undergoes a
polymerase chain reaction inside the machine to identify any DNA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes TB. It only takes a matter of hours for the machine to make its analysis. Not only does GeneXpert turn a highly timeconsuming job into a quick and easy process, but it also has the additional ability to determine whether the patient’s TB is multi-drug resistant (MDR) — a critical piece of knowledge in determining a treatment plan. MDR-TB is defined as a TB strain not susceptible to some antibiotics. Using the wrong drugs to treat an MDR-TB patient can lead to serious complications or death. However, as is often the case with global health issues, the problem with using GeneXpert machines is their cost. Machine users have to buy a single-use cartridge for each patient. It’s easy for charitable organizations like the United States Agency for International Development to make a one-time donation of GeneXpert machines to impoverished communities, but this burdens the same communities with the ongoing cost of the cartridges the machines use — a situation comparable to having to purchase expensive ink for a relatively cheap printer. When each diagnosis comes at a 10 USD cost for a remote rural clinic in the developing world, it’s hard to argue that Danaher and Cepheid are fighting TB so much that they are profiting from the world’s poorest healthcare systems. Tuberculosis activists have long been campaigning Danaher to reduce the cost of Gen-
The GeneXpert machine can rapidly diagnose TB and determine whether it is multi-resistant. USAID INDONESIA CC/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
eXpert cartridges. Independent analyses have concluded that their cartridges cost less than 10 USD to manufacture. For years, organizations like the French humanitarian medical group Doctors Without Borders, have been fighting for a 50 per cent cost reduction of GeneXpert cartridges — the “Time for $5” campaign, as it came to be known. However, the Danaher Corporation is an obscure and non-public-facing company. It’s difficult to campaign against something that no one has heard of. Activists needed a spokesperson. This is where John Green — an American author, YouTuber, and philanthropist — comes into the picture. Most people know him from his 2012 novel The Fault in Our Stars or his YouTube projects like Vlogbrothers and Crash Course. What people know less about him is his recent involvement with TB activism. Earlier this year, Green led a campaign against Johnson & Johnson to release their patent on Bedaquiline, a drug for treating MDR-TB. More recently, he and his inter-
net community led an initiative to flood Danaher’s social media and contact lines with demands to lower the price of GeneXpert cartridges. The ongoing “Time for $5” campaign, combined with Green’s extensive following, proved too loud for Danaher to ignore. On September 19, Danaher announced a price cut to 7.97 USD — a 20 per cent reduction in consumer cost — after just a week of Green’s public involvement in the campaign. For poorly-funded healthcare systems, this reduction can make a difference. Though this is still far from five dollars, it is progress in the right direction. Inequitable access to health care is an ongoing and complex issue. The TB crisis is not going to go away overnight. But the fact that this four-year campaign was suddenly accelerated in a matter of days by an influencer is a clear sign that we can make progress by employing our attention — an incredibly precious and powerful resource.
De Wilde’s photographs of colour blind vision How art could help us empathize with different perceptions of the world Ashiana Sunderji Varsity Contributor
The majority of people with colour blindness worldwide can actually see in colour. It is rare that colour blindness causes people to experience a complete absence of colour; instead, they usually lack the ability to distinguish between certain shades. In the retina — the light-sensitive tissue toward the back of our eyes — we have photoreceptors known as rods and cones. Rods detect light while cones detect colour. Cones can contain one of three different photopigments: red, blue, or green. Colour blindness, or achromatopsia, is due to a cone malfunctioning. This malfunctioning is caused by any genetic mutation that inhibits the cone’s response to light, which then interferes with its phototransduction — the process by which cones and rods transmit signals from the eye to the brain. There are, in fact, some cases of colour blindness where the world might appear like a movie from the early 1900s — black, white, and in shades of grey — as opposed to the red-green colour blindness that people are less familiar with. Known
as complete achromatopsia, this is when an individual’s cones lack any function at all. While this is a global rarity, it is relatively prevalent in Pingelap Island. Achromatopsia in Pingelap islanders Pingelap Atoll Island is an isolated Micronesian island found in the South Pacific. After a catastrophic tsunami in the late eighteenth century, the island was left with around a mere 20 survivors. This population bottleneck, combined with the remoteness of the island and a prominent religion that disallowed inhabitants to marry outside of their religion, resulted in the loss of genetic diversity and allowed the mutation to persist. One survivor, the king, possessed a genetic mutation in his CNGB3 gene, which provides instructions to make a subunit of an important protein found in photoreceptors within the retina. A mutation in this gene causes cone dysfunction that results in complete achromatopsia. As the years progressed, this mutation was transmitted across generations, and today 10 per cent of the inhabitants of Pingelap Island have
Photographer Sanne De Wilde uses infrared photography to mute and change different colours in her photographs of Pingelap Atoll. ZOE PEDDLE STEVENSON/THEVARSITY
complete achromatopsia. This is an anomaly compared to the rest of the world where the prevalence of complete achromatopsia is roughly 0.0033 per cent. As you can imagine, complete colour blindness requires adaptation for navigating and surviving the world. To compensate for this deficiency in cone function, the people of Pingelap Island try to blink, squint, cover their eyes, or readjust in coordination with the lighting. Squinting allows them to focus their vision on one area and restricts the number of points of entry that light has into the eye. De Wilde’s photographs Sanne De Wilde is a Belgian photographer whose projects dabble at the intersection of inheritable characteristics, such as dwarfism, albinism, and colour blindness; the location in which such characteristics are prevalent; and the reputation that the characteristics have in a social context. Through this work, she is able to present lesserknown perspectives of the world to her audience. By prompting people to truly empathize with someone who has a genetic mutation that impacts their daily life, her work calls attention to the things that people without such conditions may take for granted. For her project “The Island of The Colorblind,” she uses different mediums of photography to showcase and educate her audience on complete achromatopsia in Pingelap Island. The diversity in her work can be a metaphor for how a single scene can appear so different to different people. Using long exposure, she captured blackand-white portraits of islanders with complete achromatopsia. Long exposure is a stylistic technique that allows for photos with the appearance of simultaneous stillness and motion. Photographers can accomplish this by leaving the shutter of the camera open for longer than usual.
While these black-and-white photographs were symbolic of how some individuals with colour blindness might view the world, other islanders claimed to see small subtleties or inflections of color, like maybe red or blue. To portray this, De Wilde also took infrared images, a challenge that required technology sensitive to infrared light. Infrared wavelengths are longer than the wavelengths of light that are visible to the human eye. Infrared photos, then, can allow photographers to capture light wavelengths of the spectrum that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Therefore, photographers use infrared photography as a tool to portray nonstandard nonstandard colour perceptions. Infrared images capture unique contrasts, adding brightness or darkness or revealing new textures. Photography is also a medium to which one can add special effects and colour filters that were not part of the original photograph. De Wilde collaborated with colourblind collaborators on the island, asking them to paint over her images. In a New Yorker article, Max Campell, a New York based writer and photographer, writes about De Wilde’s work: “The head of a dog, slaughtered for a celebration, turns an unexpected yellow at the hands of an achromatic collaborator, a hint of red for the snout. A parrot has been given a technicolor coat that its author cannot see.” These surprising palettes demonstrate the colourful distorting lens through which people with colour blindness might view the world. Providing a viewer who can see colour with insight into how people with colour blindness might see the world, De Wilde’s photographs remind us how everyone’s lived experiences, genetic inheritances, and background might influence their perspectives. De Wildes’ artwork advocates, educates, entertains, and enlightens the viewer, and, like life, is open to many interpretations.
thevarsity.ca/category/science
OCTOBER 16, 2023
17
Pandora’s box: Artificial intelligence in education The growing role of artificial intelligence in education raises questions about what we value in academia Alyssa Ukani Associate Arts & Culture Editor
This article could have been written by ChatGPT. I assure you that it was not — but you would likely never be able to tell if it was. This fact is a testament to the ever-growing impact and influence that artificial intelligence has in nearly every aspect of our society. Among the plethora of new artificial intelligence (AI) software lies large language models, which are leading the charge that is changing our world. The term large language model (LLM) refers to a machine learning model that has been extensively trained to understand and generate text much like we do. These models are specifically designed to mimic human language production, which includes creating unique syntactic structures every time this software is used. This makes it very difficult to regulate the use of LLM tools in education, as originality and critical thinking are key elements of the learning process. Thus, we must consider how to accommodate the use of LLM-based AI tools without compromising students’ learning. The impact of LLM-based tools in education was a main focus of the Absolutely Interdisciplinary Conference, hosted by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at U of T from June 20–22. The session included two panellists: Paolo Granata, an associate professor of Book and Media Studies at St. Michael’s College, and Lauren Bialystok, an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, faculty associate at the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, and acting director of the Centre for Ethics.
Granata’s and Bialystok’s session on LLMs featured discussions on how to approach both the rapidly increasing presence of LLM tools in educational fields and the ideal role they might play in education. The discussions included questions surrounding the value of originality and creativity as part of the learning process as well as the opportunities that LLM tools provide. Originality in education In her presentation, Bialystok explored the value of originality from the perspective of educational philosophy. Bialystok unpacked the view that LLM tools promote and facilitate cheating in academic settings, particularly in the humanities. One focus of her presentation was the emphasis the Western world places on originality. Our academic paradigm asserts that the use of ChatGPT is a form of plagiarism, the use of which instructors deem wrong for two reasons. The first is that students using LLM-based tools will fail to learn what they are supposed to and not develop certain skills. Bialystok argues, however, that this presupposes generally agreed-on aims of education, which are not always clearly defined. The second argument against plagiarism is that it provides an unfair advantage over other students who follow the rules. According to Bialystok, this emphasis on originality, from which notions like plagiarism emerge, is more common in individualist cultures of the West. Different perspectives might encourage us to question whether or not there is such a thing as an original, or new, idea at all. Some argue that all the human brain does is provide new combinations of these ideas, disguising them as original. All of this together led Bialystok to conclude
ELENA OSIPYAN/THEVARSITY
that the emphasis on originality in academic settings might be fundamentally flawed. Yet, this realization does not diminish the dangers that LLM tools pose in this space, particularly when their use is unchecked and unregulated. The opportunities of emerging technology Whilst Bialystok takes a more cautious approach to integrating LLMs in both education and academic circles, Granata seems very optimistic. As a self-described media historian, he took us through the history of pedagogical tradition — a history that saw very little change until the COVID-19 pandemic. Granata discussed a very interesting example of change in academic settings, which he likens to the present-day development of LLMs: the advent of the calculator. Banned in classrooms in the 1970s, we realized over time that calculators are a prime example of the value that technology can have on a student’s education without compromising educational objectives. Similarly, Granata argues, colleges started recognizing the value of LLM tools in academic settings when professors began to use them to write reference letters.
Granata views artificial intelligence as a method of “extending, augmenting, [and] expanding what makes us human.” As such, the advent of LLMs and their introduction into academic spaces afford a unique opportunity to enhance the educational experience. From fostering the dialogical approach to finding ways to create a more immersive learning experience, LLM tools can lead educational practices into the future and help students develop new skills. Granata thus encourages educators to foster AI literacy in students so that they may be able to play a more proactive role in their education. The reality is that LLMs will only further advance in their ability to mimic human speech patterns and creativity. As a result, generative AI’s prevalence in our daily lives, including educational spaces, will continue to grow. Attempting to deny or avoid such a future would be futile. Instead, these speakers argue, we must adapt our approach to AI in education. This involves continuing to challenge our current perspectives and procedures and consider how we can find balance between the objectives of our educational system and the demands of developing AI software.
The emotional connotations of visual art Why colour and line-drawing may not be as black-and-white as you think Khaleda Khan Varsity Contributor
Colours hold a kind of emotional symbolism when depicted in visual art. In a study published in the Journal of Vision, postdoctoral researcher Claudia Damiano at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and her colleagues found connections between emotional expression and colour and line in visual art. The Varsity interviewed one of the researchers on the study, Dirk Bernhardt-Walther, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at U of T. This study had two primary aims: to explore how students use colour and line to express basic emotions and whether non-artists express their emotions with certain colours like trained artists do. The researchers sampled just over 80 students from the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University and U of T and asked them to create abstract drawings that depict six basic emotions: joy, anger, disgust, sadness, fear, and wonder. One group consisted of 40 artists recruited from OCAD University, with an average age of about 24 years. Another group from U of T consisted of 41 non-artists with an average age of 24 years. The artists had formal art training or were in an art-related program, while the non-artists were students in STEM programs. The researchers compared participants’ accuracy in predicting which drawings represented each emotion category to that of a computer algorithm. The algorithm’s prediction accuracy of the emotion that each type of artwork conveyed was higher for colour drawings than line drawings.
Computational algorithms and human participants could accurately guess emotions conveyed from colour and line drawings. The study implies that people use similar features as the computer algorithm to infer emotions from colour drawings. The algorithm also showed how non-artists used colour to convey emotions compared to artists. The study explored a parallel question — whether artists or non-artists were better at illustrating their emotions and how accurately a separate viewer deduced these emotions. The researchers found that the non-artists effectively communicated their emotions better, or at least in more conventional ways that could be deduced, compared to artists. Bernhardt-Walther said that this result is interesting because artists tend to use artistic license when working with lines and colours. He said it’s a little harder to recognize emotions depicted by artists than depictions by non-artists because artists tend to want to be unique. He adds, “[Artists] know the conventions, but they want to pick out of the convention every now and so often, so there’s more variability.” While non-artists generally have a common understanding of correlating basic emotions with basic colours, artists tend to go outside the box. The results show that all of the abstract drawings that participants made convey certain basic human emotions based on their visual features — which is what we, as observers, use to understand the intended emotional connotations of abstract visual art. BernhardtWalther said, “The take-home message is that we… can effectively communicate emotions through visual depiction.”
The research suggests an evolutionary link between contour features, such as smooth long lines or short angular lines, and emotional judgment. The study by Damiano, BernhardtWalther, and their colleagues suggests that certain contour features carry positive or negative associations, but there’s a lot of room for researchers to further investigate the nature of these associations. Angular contour lines, for instance, are perceived as threatening because they signal dangerous, sharp stimuli like thorns or fangs. On the other hand, symmetry and repetitive patterns hold a positive aesthetic association for the viewer. Bernhardt-Walther said that the 2015 children’s movie Inside Out is a good example of how colours can be associated with certain emotions. Much like the movie’s characters — Joy, Disgust, Anger, Sadness, and Fear — some of the most basic examples that the study found were that participants connoted anger with red and sadness with blue in their artworks. He also added that sometimes these colours tend to physically manifest on our faces. If someone is sick or nauseous, he said, their complexion may turn a shade or have an undertone of green, or even yellow. We can even detect angry expressions when a person’s face turns red or purple due to the blood flow. Currently, Damiano, Bernhardt-Walther, and their colleagues are looking to repeat this research with children and collaborators of different ages who don’t have as much cultural and social exposure to what colours tend to represent.
Artists and non-artists communicate their emotions differently through line and colour. COURTESY OF YAGO HORTAL MOCO BARCELONA
Sports
October 16, 2023 thevarsity.ca/category/sports sports@thevarsity.ca
Cole Purboo: Skating through challenges on and off the ice The Blues hockey captain discusses hockey, academics, and the importance of team bonding Dihyah Khan Varsity Contributor
The sound of skates carving into ice can be heard echoing throughout Varsity Arena, located in the centre of Toronto and looking upon the city’s immense skyline. Amid the anticipated adrenaline of a hockey game, you’ll find Cole Purboo, the captain of the Varsity Blues men’s ice hockey team. As old-school rap songs from 50 Cent and Eminem fill his ears, Purboo prepares for the upcoming game with his usual Tim Hortons order — a black coffee and a raisin bran muffin — accompanied by a nourishing pregame meal of rice, fish, and lots of greens. Family ties Sports have always played a huge role in Purboo’s life — he’s been skating since he was three years old. What most people might not know about or expect from the hockey player is that he initially learned figure skating. Still, growing up he spent Saturday nights watching the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Oakville Rangers, which contributed to Purboo’s passion for ice hockey. Furthermore, athletics have always been a part of Purboo’s family. His mother had competed in track and field as well as basketball, which his father also played at McMaster University. The family bonds over watching and talking about sports, and even over participating in fantasy football leagues. “We pride ourselves on hard work,” Purboo mused in an interview with The Varsity. “And I think there’s no better way to characterize that other than in sports.” He also has a lot of gratitude toward his grandparents: “My grandparents are extremely
hard working and they were able to create great opportunities for my parents who worked hard to create opportunities for me… The work ethic that I have is a tribute to [them].” In addition to his family and the Leafs, Purboo idolizes NHL players like Jarome Iginla and Rick Nash, both dominant power forwards who always used their size to their advantage. Balancing sports and studies This student athlete is no stranger to busy schedules and lengthy to-do lists. Currently in his fourth year at Rotman Commerce, Purboo is specializing in management with minors in economics and computer science. Purboo, who has always had to juggle hockey with school, has learned to master his time management skills. “I’ve always enjoyed school,” he said. “And being busy actually keeps me going.” He actively makes efforts to allocate enough time for sleep, work, and free time so that he is able to achieve everything he aspires to. For Purboo, transitioning from playing for the Windsor Spitfires in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) to the Varsity Blues was a clear choice. He was drawn to U of T by its hockey program and wanted to be closer to home after a long four years in the OHL. Conversations with his family and Blues head coach Ryan Medel sealed the deal for him. The supportive environment of the Blues team also played a role — in fact, it’s the basis of his leadership style. Using empathy as his guiding principle, he leads by example on and off the ice. “I try to put myself into every guy’s shoes and make sure that every guy knows that I’m there for them,” Purboo explained. He acknowledges that while being a U of T student isn’t easy, playing hockey is an escape
for many and he strives to ensure that all his teammates find solace on the ice. Behind the scenes Behind the rush of the sport are the unseen hours Purboo has put in to achieve his success. He emphasized the sacrifices, injuries, and relentless effort of being an athlete that often go unnoticed by the supportive crowd. “[There’s] a lot more than meets the eye,” he pointed out. He highlighted the strenuous journey that athletes go through, a testament to their dedication on and off the ice. Purboo’s summer was a decent mix of camaraderie and hard work. He completed an internship and summer school in addition to morning training sessions before work with team trainer Nardine Oakes. His summer also included a memorable team bonding excursion: an 18-day trip to Europe touring Portugal, Spain, and Croatia. The trip accomplished one of Purboo’s short-term goals for the team by bringing them together, allowing a good start to the season — hopefully a continuing trend. “A good start to the season helps you out way down the line because it is a long season,” Purboo explained. Building on past successes, including a pivotal playoff victory last year, the Blues strive
for even greater triumphs, aiming for a national championship. On October 6, as the first official faceoff of the season happened where the Blues defeated the Windsor Lancers 4–1, Cole Purboo stood tall while exemplifying passion, perseverance, and empathy — qualities embodied by the Varsity Blues. He is a great example of how athletes achieve greatness not only through talent but also through determination, leadership, and sportsmanship.
Cole Purboo leads the Blues on and off the ice.
COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV CC VARSITY BLUES MEDIA
The ‘Super Max’ era: A blessing or curse for Formula 1? Assessing Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing’s impact on F1’s balance Aleksa Ćosović Varsity Contributor
JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY
The record for most consecutive Grand Prix (GP) competitions won by a Formula 1 (F1) driver was broken at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza race track last month by none other than — you guessed it — Max Verstappen. The Flying Dutchman’s impressive yet predictable display of driving prowess at the 2023 Italian GP secured the three-time champion his 12th race victory of the season and 10th consecutive win ‘on the trot.’ This shattered the record previously held by former Red Bull Racing pilot Sebastian Vettel, who in 2013 won nine successive races en route to his fourth straight World Drivers’ Championship (WDC) crown. Red Bull Racing — Verstappen’s current team — has secured the top podium spot in
16 of the 17 races held in 2023 thus far. Although Red Bull’s streak of 15 consecutive wins — dating back to Verstappen’s triumph at the 2022 Abu Dhabi GP — was broken at Singapore’s Marina Bay Circuit on September 17 by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, it’s safe to say that the Milton Keynes-based outfit’s reign over F1 will not be vamoosing us fans anytime soon. Fans have been eager to witness a different team claim first place all year long, or at least put up a fight against the six-time world champions. This then begs the question: has F1 become boring due to Verstappen and Red Bull’s supremacy? Dominance is customary in F1 Periods of dominance by one team are not uncommon in F1. Between 2014 and 2021, Mercedes won seven WDCs — six by Lewis Ham-
ilton and one by Nico Rosberg — and eight World Constructors’ Championships (WCC). From 2010 to 2013, Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull won four WDCs and WCCs. From 1999 through 2004, Ferrari won six WCCs, while Michael Schumacher claimed five WDCs in that stretch. Given how often one driver or team is seen dominating the sport in successive seasons, it is relatively peculiar to hear a myriad of fans, pundits, and drivers complaining about ‘Mad Max’ and Red Bull’s ongoing spell of predictability. Some have even asserted that oneteam dominant eras of F1 have directly led to a decrease in fandom and viewership. Yet they couldn’t be more wrong. What the numbers suggest It is fair to state that F1 in 2023 has been rela-
tively dry compared to recent years, which have seen the season’s winners decided by the smallest of margins. Verstappen officially sealed the lid on the drivers’ championship last weekend after finishing second in the sprint event at the Qatar GP, rendering the season’s remaining five races rather meaningless as the chasing pack now fights for consolation prizes and the “best-of-the-rest” title. However, F1 has continued to see an uptick in television viewership, particularly in North America. Sports Illustrated reported that F1 wrapped up the first half of its 2023 season with record audience numbers. Across the two television networks, ESPN and ABC had seen an average of 1.24 million viewers per race for the first 12 races of the season — slightly higher than the previous record-breaking 2022 average of 1.21 million. Furthermore, the 2023 season has garnered the records for the second, third, and fourthlargest live television audiences for an F1 race in US history. 1.96 million viewers tuned in for the Miami GP, 1.79 million for the Monaco GP, and 1.76 million for the Canadian GP. The inaugural 2022 Miami GP — a race where Verstappen emerged victorious at the checkered flag — still holds the record for most viewership with 2.6 million live viewers. Following the conclusion of the Abu Dhabi GP in late November of last year, The Athletic revealed that the 2022 season saw a 28 per cent increase in television viewership from 2021. This upsurge in viewership can also be due to the hype around Netflix’s sports docuseries, “Formula 1: Drive to Survive.” However, it is undeniable that F1’s popularity has reached its pinnacle over the last two seasons — even during the dominant reign of ‘Super Max.’
thevarsity.ca/category/sports
OCTOBER 16, 2023 19
A League1 Victory: Valentina Greco’s journey balancing a student-athlete lifestyle Greco discusses her League1 victory and future plans with Varsity Blues soccer place on the field started when she was six years old. Her father was an avid soccer player and wished to pass on his love of the sport to her. “My On August 5, the League1 Ontario team, Alliance family says that on my very first soccer game, I United, was awarded its first Premier Women’s cried my eyes out the whole time. I took my dad’s Division Trophy in a 2–1 victory against National hand and ran up and down the field. I begged him Development Centre Ontario. The team consists to get me out of here as fast as he possibly could.” of Varsity Blues finest: seven alumnae, four current “[Then] he made me a deal,” she said. “He was Varsity Blues staff, and 12 Blues women’s soccer like, ‘If you score a goal, we don’t ever have to players, all led to triumph by head coach Angelo come back if you don’t want to.’ So, I went on Cavalluzzo. the field and I decked out all the six-year-olds “[That feeling] can’t even be described honand scored a goal.” estly… Alliance was phenomenal,” said Val“The next week came along, and I entina Greco, who plays fullback for the was like I really want to go back… Varsity Blues women’s soccer team at the that was kind of fun.” University of Toronto. Greco used to play Greco never looked back. From as a midfielder but started adjusting to her that point on, Greco became a new position when playing for Alliance. student athlete, now competing in “[The positions are] very different, I will Ontario University Athletics (OUA) say that,” Greco said in an interview with the Blues and in League1 with The Varsity. “I do, of course, Ontario with Alliance United. miss playing in the midfield, but After years of practice, GreI like [playing] where I am right co has become an aggressive now.” player, focusing on her quick Greco’s journey to find her thinking on the ball. Like many other young socValentino Greco helped lead Alliance United to a League1 victory in the summer. cer players, she
Tania Guiti Varsity Contributor
COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV CC VARSITY BLUES MEDIA
idolizes Cristiano Ronaldo’s philosophy of hard work over talent. Furthermore, her new position as a fullback has given her a different perspective on the game and helped her identify her weaknesses and play to her strengths. When playing as a midfielder, Valentina was used to playing short passes, but is now adjusting to keeping her head up and being attentive in order to play longer passes as a fullback. Greco’s glad to take on the challenges that come with now playing fullback. Greco emphasized how playing in League1 — Canada’s pro-am women’s soccer league — was, by far, her most significant experience. “It feels like I’m reminiscing, kind of, because that [League1] team was kind of the same [Blues] team that I had at my very first year of university. So a lot of the [Blues] graduates — I got to play with them again.” “[Those teammates] used to look at me as a baby,” Greco said. “And now… I’m a fifth year technically, [and] it feels like we have a lot more in common.” League1 is a stepping stone between highperforming amateur youth and professional stars of the Canadian soccer industry. Given the age differences of the players, their competitive spirit,
and the team’s rigorous training schedule, playing with Alliance has not only helped players like Greco to improve their game but also helped them gain fresh perspectives. Players then passed these new perspectives onto others who played in the OUA to teach the up-and-comers of women’s soccer. “A lot of [these] people are now coaching their own teams. So having them lead by example and coach me on the field [with Alliance] allows me to be better as a player,” Greco explained. “When I transitioned back to the OUA, I kind of take everything they’ve taught me and hopefully give that to the younger girls that are coming in their first and second year.” As Greco is in her last year of undergraduate studies, completing a Bachelor in Business Administration in management and financial studies, she hopes to pursue a master’s degree at U of T and continue playing with the Varsity Blues. “I don’t know if I’d play for another school unless it was a perfect opportunity,” she explained. Greco also plans to continue playing in League1, especially if her previous team decides to stay together. “I’ll probably hang up the boots when [my teammates] decide to hang up the boots and end on a good note.”
Grab your blasters: Zombies invade U of T! Club president Jacob Friedman talks about the Humans Vs. Zombies & Nerf Club Regan Boyles Varsity Contributor
The University of Toronto Students’ Union held a clubs fair on September 6 with over 300 clubs in attendance — including the newly created Humans Vs. Zombies & Nerf Club (HVZNC). The Varsity had a chance to talk to the club’s president, Jacob Friedman, a second-year cinema studies and political science major, and attend the season’s first game on September 24 at the Innis College parking garage. A Nerf war variant, the game of Humans vs. Zombies (HvZ) was first created on the Goucher University campus in 2005. In the game, the ‘human’ team, armed with Nerf guns, attempt to shoot the ‘zombies’ — a team that tries to infect the humans by tagging them. The game ends when all humans are turned into zombies or when the humans survive until the set time limit. HvZ quickly grew in popularity and spread to other university and college campuses. “I’ve played HvZ on other campuses a handful of times. There’s approximately, I believe, 1,000 campuses it’s played on across the world,”
Friedman said. “When I came to U of T, I was like, ‘Is this a club here?’ and I saw it wasn’t. I was like, ‘Well that’s unfortunate, I guess I’ll make one myself.’” Traditionally played over several days, HvZ features 24/7 campus-wide gameplay, with designated no-play and safe zones to not interfere with classes. The game can also include unique variants of ‘zombie’ roles, such as Wraiths. The HVZNC, however, is playing with some modified rules to allow for multiple matches to be played in a single afternoon. Friedman said, “I think that if it’s a first-year club, it’s good to start smaller and work our way up as we go along. Maybe there will be larger games, invitationals, or something, once we get more solid footing. For now, I just want to see how U of T and HvZ go together.” When asked about his interest in running other Nerf-style games, Friedman advised that “some people were interested in other types of Nerf games, and I’m open to organizing that, but the HvZ games were far and away more popular than anything else.” For new players interested in playing HvZ, Fried-
man suggests connecting to the club’s official Instagram page. “In the Instagram bio is a LinkTree, which has everything else… the club constitution, the gameplay rules, and the Discord link,” he said. “I do have roughly around 30 Nerf blasters that people are allowed to borrow,” he explained. If possible, though, Friedman encourages bringing your own blasters to allow more players to get involved. Students had a great time at the first game.
‘Zombies’ and ‘humans’ are now fighting mock NERF battles at U of T. REGAN BOYLES/THEVARSITY
Blues take a tough loss to Nipissing Lakers in their home opener Second-year forward Emma Elders scored the Blues’ only goal of the game Shonita Srinivasan Varsity Contributor
On October 13, the Varsity Blues women’s hockey team lost 4–1 in a rough game against the Nipissing Lakers in their home opener. The Blues and Lakers had a tight rivalry last season, with the latter winning two out of their three games against the Blues during the regular season. Yet, later in the season, the Blues dramatically defeated the Lakers 2–1 to win the McCaw Cup. As a result, this Friday, the Blues were on track for a tough match from the start. What happened The Lakers got an early lead as their forward Emma Thomas scored in the first minute. The Lakers then scored two more goals in the first period, both on the power-play. The Blues went to the power-play three times but could
not score. This left them trailing by three as the second period opened. The second period included many challenges for the Blues, and two minutes in, the Lakers secured yet another goal — their fourth of the game. However, as the game progressed, second-year forward Emma Elders was able to sink in the Blues’ first goal of the game, and the season, with the help of defender Aubrey Cole and forward Juliette Blais-Savoie. In the third period, both teams had many good shots that both goalies saved, but the Blues were pressing for a comeback win. They were aggressive and the referees handed out four penalties throughout the period. Blues goalie Erica Fryer came out with 14 saves, but the Lakers held on to win the game. What’s next “There was a lot of things that we did right and a lot of things that we’re going to take from
Marcuz Cosiquien, a third-year environmental studies major, said the game was enjoyable and encouraged people to join future events — sentiments that other players echoed. Steven Kim, a fourth-year double majoring in cell system biology and human biology, said, “It’s really good, I’m liking it, you guys should all come out.” If you’re interested in joining in for the next game, be sure to look up the club’s official Instagram page for more updates.
this game, learn from, and move forward,” Blues forward Natasha Athanasakos said in a post-game interview with The Varsity.
“Everything’s a learning opportunity.” The Blues had a tight turnaround with a game on October 14 against the Western Mustangs and bounced back with a dominant win. Goals from Blues defender Olivia Hilton, forward Taylor Trussler, and Athanasakos helped secure a 3–1 win — their first of the season.
The Blues’ rivalry with Nipissing continues as new season starts. KATE WANG/THEVARSITY
20
THE VARSITY
OCTOBER 16, 2023
ADVERTISEMENTS
The Varsity’s Weekly Crossword — The Tent Elise Corbin Varsity Contributor
Answers to the previous crossword
46 Book Sale th
Annual
The Friends of the Library, Trinity College
October 18–22, 2023 Wednesday, October 18 9 am – 8 pm
Saturday, October 21 10 am – 6 pm
(Admission $5)
Thursday, October 19 10 am – 8 pm Friday, October 20 10 am – 8 pm
Sunday, October 22 12 noon – 6 pm (Free admission from Thursday to Sunday)
Debit / Credit cards only | Seeley Hall, 6 Hoskin Avenue
For more information: www.trinity.utoronto.ca/booksale fotl@trinity.utoronto.ca CHARITABLE REGISTRATION # II926975IRR000I
Do you edit your friends’ essays for free all the time? Why not try your hand at The Varsity and earn an honorarium for your contributions? Join Copy today! Email copy@thevarsity.ca or deputysce@thevarsity.ca to get started!
Quality time Kyanna Velasquez Varsity Contributor