day, the student realized that the recording might be more serious than they first believed and when passing the Thrive UTM campaign table in William G. Davis Building, the student airdropped the recording to Barre and deleted it off their phone.
mitted the recording to the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Elias Ancer as evidence that Walker violated the Election Procedure Code (EPC) by trash talking Thrive UTM.
The student told The Varsity that they did not realize the repercussions that the recording would have for them or for Walker and affirmed that they did not mean to cause Walker or anyone else harm. They began to fear for their own safety after seeing hateful and negative comments on Instagram about them and their actions.
On March 13, 2023, It’s Time UTM — a candidates’ slate running in the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union’s (UTMSU) upcoming elections, headed by presidential candidate Sam Aboul Hosn and campaign manager Adam Aboul Hosn — released a statement on Instagram with two other election slates, UTM United and Elevate UTM. A few days later, they took down the Instagram post. The statement alleged that, on March 7, a student collaborating with the Thrive UTM team — another slate in the upcoming elections managed by current UTMSU president Maëlis Barre — “illegally recorded” Niguel Walker, a candidate for vice-president external and part of the It’s Time UTM slate. The statement claimed that the person recording influenced Walker “to talk in a way that would yield him demerit points.”
Thrive UTM denied a connection to the student. Barre alleged that she received the recording “randomly” from a student and sub-
After the slates published the statement, Thrive UTM received 25 demerit points per slate member for “Failure to comply with the spirit of elections,” according to the UTMSU elections’ CRO. After Thrive UTM appealed the decision, the CRO lowered demerit points to 10 each for the incident, as of the time of publication. All of the slates, excluding Thrive, received 10 demerit points per candidate for “Unapproved material.”
Voting in the UTMSU elections took place on March 14 to March 16, from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, daily.
The recording
In an interview with The Varsity , Walker claimed that, during a conversation with another student on March 7, he discussed personal and private information including where he lived, who he lived with, and his family situation. The other student took an audio recording of the conversation without notifying Walker.
In a message to The Varsity , Ancer wrote that “there is no personal information from Niguel in that recording that I believe would violate any laws.” The Varsity has not been able to confirm the contents of the voice recording.
In an interview with The Varsity , a third-year student, who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of repercussions, admitted to having created and shared the recording. They said that they felt uncomfortable during their conversation with Walker, during which Walker discussed Thrive UTM and its campaign with a passive-aggressive tone. The student began recording the conversation and said that they sat with Walker for close to an hour. The next
Barre, who is on leave from her UTMSU presidency while she manages the Thrive UTM campaign, decided to send the recording to the CRO.
Both Gulfara (Gulfy) Bekbolatova, who is the presidential candidate from Thrive UTM, and Barre told The Varsity that there is no relationship between Thrive UTM and the student who recorded Walker.
Sam told The Varsity that the recording “defies what the UTMSU fights for.” He noted that one of the UTMSU’s main campaigns is Consent Is Mandatory.
Both Sam and Walker have reported experiencing mental distress related to the recording.
The statement the three slates published reads, “Niguel has been subjected to great mental stress, making him highly hypersensitive and paranoid when engaging in conversations out of fear of being recorded, again, without his consent.”
T HE VAR SI T Y
CXLIII, No. 22
Vol.
The Varsity would like to acknowledge that our office is built on the traditional territory of several First Nations, including the Huron-Wendat, the Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. Journalists have historically harmed Indigenous communities by overlooking their stories, contributing to stereotypes, and telling their stories without their input. Therefore, we make this acknowledgement as a starting point for our responsibility to tell those stories more accurately, critically, and in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples.
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Due to editorial error, a correction in Issue 20 about the article “The newfound success of the independent music critic” didn’t contain the corrected table it was supposed to. We’ve printed the corrected table below.
Sea of colours: Students partake in Holi celebrations on campus. VURJEET MADAN/THEVARSITY
In a Business & Labour article from Issue 20 titled “International students at U of T pay nearly $60,000 in tuition every year. Why?” the first graph was originally mislabeled as representing per cent change in tuition, instead of overall tuition change. The Varsity also added a note to the online versions of two of the article’s graphs, explaining the methodology used to calculate “tuition adjusted for inflation” lines, which represented tuition rates if they rose from the beginning of the graph onward only by the yearly rate of inflation. These lines were calculated year by year using the consumer price index from the previous year, and were not solely based on the original year’s CPI. We’ve printed the corrected tuition change graph below.
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Special illo thanks to Cheryl Nong.
The complaint
Barre told The Varsity that she sent the recording to the CRO via email because she and the Thrive UTM slate believed Walker presented misinformation and “trash talk” about Thrive UTM that violated the EPC. Specifically, Barre alleged that Walker violated the EPC under the Rules for Election: misrepresentation of facts.
Ancer told The Varsity that Barre sent the recording to him on March 9 as evidence supporting a complaint from Thrive UTM “with regards to Niguel in his time as a board member.”
The official complaint issued by Barre alleged that Walker expressed confusion about the proceedings of a BOD meeting in the recorded conversation with the anonymous student. To Barre, Walker’s words explaining his confusion to the student implied that the UTMSU withheld important information from elected students that these elected students are sanctioned to obtain, which she claimed was a misrepresentation of facts, as all UTMSU BOD members can access this information. Barre also wrote in the initial complaint that the BOD is presented with training regarding Robert’s Rules of Order, which is meant to help BOD members understand meeting proceedings.
In an interview with The Varsity , Walker said he did not recall being confused at the BOD meeting.
“[However], if at any point I was confused about the meetings, Robert's Rules of Order clearly states that I could indicate to the chairman that I'm confused,” Walker said. “If I need clarifications, I always ask,” he added.
Legal and electoral implications
Section 184 of the Criminal Code of the Canadian law outlines that any recording of a private conversation is illegal unless one of the participants consents to the recording.
Accordingly, in a text message to The Varsity , Bekbolatova, the presidential candidate for Thrive UTM, denied allegations that the recording was illegal.
The CRO confirmed to The Varsity that demerit points will be issued to both slates, and that they usually post demerit points a day after a complaint is issued on the Wall of Transparency within the Student Centre and online.
The CRO wrote that “Thrive UTM went out of their way and recorded [a] conversation with a candidate from an opposing slate and submitted the recording as evidence of the candidate breaching EPC rules.” The CRO wrote that, although the EPC does not explicitly outlaw recording other candidates, these actions
are “a breach in the spirit and purpose of the elections.” The CRO also stated that the recording breached the Fair Play section of the EPC, which states that candidates cannot use anything that violates someone’s intellectual privacy, property or other rights. According to the EPC, executive candidates who receive more than 40 demerit points are automatically disqualified.
In a follow-up interview with The Varsity , Barre said that the Thrive UTM team is working toward an appeal for the demerit points. She said the student came to her anonymously, airdropped the recording, and left, leaving no digital evidence to confirm why they decided to share the recording.
“We submitted it [to the CRO] because elections are meant to be fair,” Bekbolatova said. They alleged that the recording demonstrated Walker trash talking Thrive UTM and not act-
ing fairly towards the student who recorded the conversation.
Barre said that being penalized for raising awareness about what other candidates do may discourage others from pointing out incidents that may violate the EPC. Bekbolatova said that students deserve to have access to accurate information on other candidates’ fairness.
In an interview, Barre said that “[Thrive UTM] absolutely never made [the recording] public and we absolutely never talked to students about this.” She said that Thrive UTM did not send the recording to the CRO right away because “[Thrive UTM] wanted to be fair play. We don’t want to [report] things to the CRO left, right, and centre.”
“We don't want to have our campaigns based on other people,” Barre said.
Meanwhile, Sam told The Varsity that, although he and his team initially did not want to alert authorities about the recording and hoped it could be addressed within the UTMSU, they ultimately decided to go public. “We will probably file a police report,” he said.
Bekbolatova said that she “was really disappointed to see that all of the teams came together and released a public statement about a recording that was first of all, sent privately, from our side to this CRO because we thought it was violating the EPC.”
The EPC prohibits cross campaigning and publishing any materials not approved by the CRO as campaign material. As such, the public statement issued from the It’s Time UTM slate, Elevate UTM slate, and UTM United slate was awarded 10 demerit points for unapproved material.
Members of the TRANSFORM UTSC slate won all the executive positions in the 2023 Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) general elections. All six executive candidates ran unopposed.
On March 13, the Chief Returning Officer informed The Varsity that the SCSU announced the unofficial results of the elections for the 2023–2024 academic year. Around 460 students — less than four per cent of those eligible to vote — cast their ballots from March 7 to March 9. Last year, five out of six executive candidates ran uncontested, and less than four per cent of those eligible voted in the elections.
Results
Amrith David — current SCSU vice-president academic and university affairs (VP PUA) and interim president since January — was elected as president with 363 votes, or 78 per cent of all votes cast.
Afsana Miah, who ran unopposed for VP PUA, was elected with 327 votes, or 70 per cent of all votes cast.
Abdulrahman Diab won the vice-president campus life position with 337 votes, or 73 per cent of all votes cast.
Denise Nmashie received 340 votes, or 73 per cent of all votes cast, and will assume the vice-president equity position next year.
Khadidja Roble was elected as vice-president external with 343 votes, or 74 per cent of all votes cast.
Lastly, Akaash Palaparthy will serve as vicepresident operations next year, after receiving 344 votes, or 74 per cent of all votes cast.
Twenty three students ran for the eighteen available board of director (BOD) positions. Among them, Kathy Nguyen, Belar Amin, Aaliyah Jaleel, and Prithika Piratheepan won seats on the BOD.
Meanwhile, Markle Ning, Leen Chanouha, Hycil Fernandes, Alba Jorquera, Dan Pham, Gayathri Siva, Austin Le, Adegoriola DeboAdesina, Hunain Sindhu, Khalil-Najir Miles, Zaynab Azeem, Desteenie Africa, Fawzia Elhag, and Vyshnavi Kanagarajamuthaly were elected to the BOD by acclamation.
All elected candidates will begin their terms on May 1.
As the enrolment period for academic programs opens, students face the daunting task of applying to their desired programs of study — also known as subject POSts. Any student who has earned at least 4.0 credits, including transfer credits, must enrol or apply to an academic program on ACORN — U of T’s student information service and hub for managing student life.
To help students navigate the UTSG Faculty of Arts & Science (FAS) program enrolment process, The Varsity compiled tips, resources, and advice.
Programs at U of T
At U of T, a program is a group of courses taken in a specific subject area. To graduate, a student must complete a minimum of 20 credits, consisting of selected program requirements, electives, and breadth requirements. They must also maintain a cumulative GPA (CGPA) of at least 1.85, although the Faculty of Arts and Sciences may allow individuals with a CGPA between 1.50 and 1.84 to graduate if they have completed all other requirements.
Across all campuses, students must complete one specialist program, two major programs, or one major and two minor programs.
U of T requires each student to complete a set number of mandatory courses associated with their program. These program requirements can change on a yearly basis, so it is important to follow them as per the program’s recent academic calendar.
Some programs have optional program focuses, which are specific sets of courses that allow students to specialize in an area related to their program. Students can apply to a focus after successfully enrolling in the associated programs. There are two ways a student can enroll in a program focus. Certain program
focuses, such as the Human Geography Major or Management Specialist, can be enrolled in through ACORN. For other program focuses, such as the cell and molecular biology specialist and major programs, interested students can enroll in their desired focus through the associated department.
Limited and open programs
Open programs have no entry requirements, offer unlimited spaces, and can be enrolled in on ACORN at any time.
For limited programs, eligibility depends on a student’s ability to meet the program entry requirements outlined in the faculty’s academic calendar. These can include the completion of specific courses, acquiring a minimum grade in a course, filling out a supplementary application, or meeting a minimum CGPA. Students must also have completed 4.0 credits to enroll. Students interested in collaborative life science programs, which are co-hosted by the FAS and the Faculty of Medicine, should consider those programs’ special enrolment in-
structions. These instructions are outlined on the Sidney Smith Commons Program Toolkit website, and include details about application steps and timing. Students can apply to a maximum of six collaborative life science programs, and can simultaneously apply to other programs that are not a part of the collaborative life sciences group.
With the exception of collaborative life science programs and the Arts & Science Internship Program, all programs follow the same application and enrolment deadlines.
For open programs, students must enroll between March 1, 2023 and September 20, 2023. For limited programs, students seeking to enroll by July 7, 2023 must apply between March 1, 2023 and April 28, 2023. Students who wish to enroll by September 20, 2023 must apply between July 8, 2023 and August 22, 2023. After completing 4 credits, students can’t enroll in courses until they enroll in an accepted program combination.
Students taking fewer than 3.5 credits over the course of the fall and winter semesters can choose to pay course fees, in which the university charges them per course. Students taking more than 3.5 credits over the academic year pay a program fee, which is a flat rate for each session. The Fees Assessment page further details the calculation of program fees.
At U of T, there are a few deregulated programs that demand higher fees than regulated programs. These include the accounting specialist, finance and economics specialist, and management specialist at Rotman Commerce; computer science major and specialist; bioinformatics & computational biology specialist; and the data science specialist.
Students enrolled in a deregulated program have to pay their program’s fees throughout their time taking Arts & Science courses, even if they’ve finished their program requirements.
The Sidney Smith Commons offers an online Program Toolkit to help students with the program application process. It includes a variety of resources, from an alphabetical list of programs to stories from upper year students.
Each year, U of T hosts Program Exploration Days to support students who want to learn about the application process. These events discuss the available academic programs and allow students to ask questions, hear from academic advisors and program coordinators, and speak with faculty, staff, alumni, and current students. Individual colleges and departments also host similar events for their students.
U of T encourages students who have more questions about program enrolment to contact their College Registrar’s Office for further support.
working in multiple student organizations. BOD members voted to appoint Patrick to the position.
On March 13, after months of deadlock due to internal disputes over the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) nomination process, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) appointed a CRO to administer the union’s elections.
The appointment occurred during a special meeting of the UTGSU Board of Directors (BOD), which the board scheduled to complete unfinished business from their February 21 general meeting. During the meeting, the UTGSU BOD also appoint ed a Chair and Vice-Chair to the Board of Appeals, where one of their responsibilities includes responding to complaints about the union’s operations. It also appointed several stu dents to UTGSU committees and doubled the award amount for the Graduate Community Development Fund (GCDF). The GCDF was cre ated in 2017 in partnership with the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies in an attempt to supply merit-based equity awards that recog nize students and their contributions to the overall graduate student experience.
New appointments
At the meeting, the Elections & Referenda Com mittee put forward CRO candidate Justin Pat rick, a graduate student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Patrick served as the UTGSU’s internal commissioner from January to April 2019. In motivating the motion, the UTGSU’s executive director Levi Clarkson noted Patrick’s “extensive experience”
Then, the BOD respectively appointed Noah Khan and Madalena Liougas to the Chair and a Vice-Chair positions, of the UTGSU Board of Appeals — the final body that responds to complaints and conflicts regarding the UTGSU’s operations.
Finally, the BOD appointed students to a vari-
Activity Space, Finance Committee, Governance Committee, Graduate Affairs Committee, and the Elections & Referenda Committee.
GCDF amendment
Danielle Karakas, vice-president academics and funding for the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) divisions 3 and 4, motioned to increase the award
$500 per award across 10 awards, the UTGSU would only give out $5,000 in total. The BOD passed the motion.
Elections timeline
With the CRO officially hired, the UTGSU sent an email to all graduate students on March 14, officially opening the UTGSU elections nomination period for the 2023-2024 academic year.
The union struggled to fill vacancies in both the BOD and the executive team during the current academic year. The vice-president external position sat vacant for the majority of the school year, and the vice-president internal position became vacant for the second semester after Vice-President Internal Sarah Alam resigned from her position in early December.
Additionally, the several seats on the BOD remained vacant throughout the school year, which contributed to the difficulties of appointing a CRO. The bylaws stated that the BOD must comprise the Elections & Referenda Committee tasked with appointing the CRO. However, the lack of BOD members forced the union to pass a motion that allows them to recruit committee members from the general membership. The nomination period for candidates running for the UTGSU executive and the BOD positions will remain open until March 31. The UTGSU elections include races for the six executive positions and 28 Board of Director positions. The union plans to run the elections campaign period from April 8–21, with voting opening on April 18.
After months of delay, UTGSU
appoints
With CRO elected, UTGSU opens nomination period for executives, BOD members
Emma Livingstone Graduate Bureau ChiefStudents applying to programs must consider a number of factors, including desired classes, graduation requirements, and fees.
The soldier stepped forward to block my path, one hand stretched out in front of me, the other on his assault rifle. First in Arabic, and then in English after my confused apology, he barked: “Where are you from?”
Canada.
That word was like magic in Jerusalem’s Old City, prompting softened looks from authority figures and almost, but not quite, removing their predisposed reaction to my hijab and ethnically ambiguous face.
“Canada! How are you?” His face and tone instantly became playful, perhaps betraying admiration for my citizenship, but he nonetheless checked my passport, and my sisters’ passports, before letting us pass.
In the five days I visited Jerusalem and the surrounding cities as I toured the Middle East with my family this winter, I became used to seeing guards holding assault rifles longer than my arm. The aura of power and fear that surrounded them marred the cobblestone streets and otherwise immaculate historical beauty of the region.
I became used to the soldiers who guard the Al-Aqsa Mosque — the journey to which is notoriously difficult no matter where you hail from — stopping me at the gates. I became used to pulling my Canadian passport out of my bag to confirm my citizenship and reciting verses from the Quran to confirm my religion — which also served as a passport in this highly controlled region.
As a tourist, I witnessed and experienced just an iota of the discrimination that the Palestinian people experience every day.
I became used to not talking to — or looking at — strangers, and walking straight ahead with my head down, but not so low that I would bump into someone. The city was bustling, but
tourists did not mingle nor loiter, anywhere, especially not near the soldiers’ many stations.
They walked the streets of the Old City and around the Al-Aqsa compound, their army green ironically standing out among civilians and tourists.
The Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa compound has the most beautiful architectural design I have ever seen. The camera could not do the intricacies of the gilded designs justice. But only a select few people can experience this beauty.
Only those who identify as Muslim are permitted to enter the mosques within the Al-Aqsa compound to perform prayers. Non-Muslim tourists can tour the outdoor areas at certain hours. As I was walking out of the Dome of the Rock, my sister and I overheard a Christian woman complain about this — the compound holds religious significance for her too. Jerusalem is home to a variety of relics and sites that are significant for all three Abrahamic faiths.
In 1969, when tourists were permitted to enter the mosques, a religious extremist from Australia committed arson in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, resulting in extensive damage and heated demonstrations. Some of the most revered and historic parts of the mosque were burnt, including a 900-year-old pulpit, which was a gift from the Egyptian Sultan Salah al-Din Ayyubi, who captured the city of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187.
The compound is beautiful and serene, but silence — emptiness — punctuates this serenity. Outside of visiting hours, only gun-toting soldiers and a few worshippers haunt the cobblestone complex.
Walking through the streets of the Old City was like being transported back in time, thousands of years ago. The city has a special magic, as if covered in a golden glow. Even amid the chaos and fear, the shopkeepers were all so gracious, asking my sisters and I questions about ourselves as if we were the most interesting people they had ever met.
Barriers bury the beauty of Palestine — especially for its peopleAt sunrise, Al-Aqsa is majestic in its solitude. Al-Aqsa is beautiful, but often remains empty. Shops in the Old City before opening hours.
Their faces lit up when we walked in. One shopkeeper offered discounts on anything we would glance at. His shop was too close to where the soldiers were stationed, he said. Tourists were wary of the proximity. He could go days without a single customer.
The West Bank barrier that passes through Bethlehem isolates the Palestinian territories from Israel. The Israeli government started its construction in 2002 during the Second Intifada, a time of Palestinian uprising. The harsh grey cement has since become a museum of sorts for Palestinians, a canvas for their feelings — the graffiti a symbol of defiance against the separation, against the settler colonies on the other side.
There are posters on the wall with anecdotes and quotes from Palestinian people. “Dreams are for kids and for the stupid,” one poster reads. “We dream but we don’t believe it.”
Hebron is home to many historic and religious sites — as well as many checkpoints, guarded by soldiers. These historic sites were once teeming with life, with residents selling their wares, but most of the stores have been shut down. The
cobblestone alleyways are ghost towns. Few shops remain open.
They used to be doctors, scientists, professors, one of the shopkeepers told me. Now, those whose shops have been shut down live off charity. The few who are still working make few sales, as few tourists feel comfortable visiting due to the precarity and constant violence in Hebron.
I only visited Palestine for five days. Yes, I got used to keeping my head down, and I came inches close to so many rifles that I became an expert at contorting my body to avoid touching them. But every time a soldier stopped me or my hijab received a dirty look, I knew that this was temporary. I could pull out my passport. I could leave the country just as I entered it. I could come home.
But for Palestinians, that is home. A home some cannot leave without a visa. A home some were expelled from and can never return to. A home whose name is taboo, erased from maps. Home is where the heart is, they say. But for some, the heart is the only safe place for the home.
Content warning: This article discusses police violence against Black and Indigenous people, and briefly mentions street harassment and racial slurs.
The day a first-year U of T student survived a brutal stabbing on the TTC this January, I was on the next streetcar on the same line. I vividly recall how my streetcar diverted lanes due to what was, at the time, announced as an “incident” ahead of us. When I read the news about the stabbing later on, I suffered for a while from a form of victim mentality; given the proximity of the student’s streetcar and mine, I felt powerless over the idea that the victim could have easily been me.
This is why I momentarily felt reassured when I saw the Toronto Police Service’s (TPS) announcement that it was increasing police presence in the TTC to help address the recent rise in violence in Toronto’s transit system. In their published statement on January 26, the TPS Board Chair emphasized that “[the] TTC must be safe for everyone without exception.”
Although the TPS decided to halt the deployment of extra police officers in the TTC earlier this week, we must still ask why it believed higher police presence was an appropriate initial response to the rise in violence on the TTC. As a person of a race and gender that has not been historically antagonized by the police, I found the Board Chair’s mandate was relieving. However, to many Black and Indigenous Torontonians, who have historically been — and continue to be — harmed by police, the increase in police presence may have had the opposite effect.
The TPS announced that increased police presence has led to 314 arrests and more than 220 referrals to mental health services and social support for people in need, but the question remains: what were those arrests for, and what
specific social support services did police actually provide? Not only does the public deserve to know the efficacy of the heightened patrolling, but the TPS must also remind itself that this decision was a mere band-aid solution to a bigger problem. The truth is, Toronto needs real solutions to help address the rise in violence — solutions that don’t further harm people of colour.
Police violence in Toronto
On January 30, several days after the TPS reported its decision to increase police presence on public transit, a group of six councillors of the City of Toronto sent a letter to former Mayor John Tory addressing the announcement. They made three critical points in their letter: they questioned the cost of additional police services, the police’s approach to racialized communities, and the capability of police to de-escalate non-violent situations.
While the letter was dismissed by the former mayor in a tweet that accused the councillors of playing politics, the questions the councillors asked are still integral, and opened the floor to discussions on what increased police presence on the TTC could really mean for Torontonians. The letter raised questions about how the TPS planned to increase police presence without repeating past discriminatory policing practices that have targeted Black and Indigenous Torontonians.
A 2020 report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission confirmed that Toronto police officers were disproportionately more likely to charge, shoot, or kill Black people than other Torontonians. Although they made up only 8.8 per cent of Toronto’s population in 2016, Black Torontonians represented over 40 per cent of people charged with obstruction of justice. As of 2020, Indigenous peoples were also 1.6 times over-represented in police enforcement actions relative to their presence in Toronto.
Data like these makes it evident that the increased presence of police may threaten Black
and Indigenous peoples’ sense of safety and security when travelling in Toronto. As such, the TPS’s decision to increase police presence on the TTC directly contradicts its earlier statement that “[the] TTC must be safe for everyone without exception.”
In 2022, the TPS published Race and Identity-Based Data Collection (RBDC) Findings with data from 2020. This initiative revealed that Black people are significantly overrepresented as targets of police officers’ strip searches and uses of force. The TPS has emphasized its plans to address the disproportionately high levels of force that police officers have used against Black and Indigenous peoples, through listening, governance, communication, and mandatory procedural training. However, if the public is to trust the TPS’s ability to keep Toronto safe, the public must actively see the TPS execute its plan to address the high levels of force used against people of colour.
The TPS must be transparent about how the findings from the RBDC have been factored into its decision to increase police officers on the TTC. To effectively address the rise in violence without further harming people of colour, the TPS needs to actively communicate with Black and Indigenous communities and hear their concerns. Contrary to what former Mayor John Tory may believe, questioning the TPS’s decision to increase police presence is not just political, but essential, and it is never too late to do it.
In my perspective, these are not unreasonable expectations, but overdue feedback, since the TPS’ RBDC report testifies that it will directly work with communities to further develop its actions.
As we’ve already seen, given its track record, there is ample reason for the public to question the TPS’ capability to help people who are in need. I believe that increasing police presence
was the wrong approach to addressing the rise in violence on the TTC because that decision will harm Toronto’s most vulnerable and marginalized populations.
The City of Toronto has been implementing pilot Toronto Community Crisis Service programs, which divert mental health crisis calls for 911 without police involvement. Given the efficacy of the pilots — 78 per cent of crisis calls in the past six months were dealt with sans police — the city and the TPS need to divulge how the cost of crisis response workers compares to the cost of police officers. This information is important, given that the TPS has halted its increase in police presence on public transit due to a budget deficit.
To be frank, since starting school at U of T in 2021, I have never been more scared in my life to walk through a city or use its transit system.
Since 2021, I have been physically harassed in the streets, called racial slurs in the TTC and, most recently, chased down a busy street in broad daylight. However, even within the wide range of places and people that have given me such fear, we can see that there is no one solution that fits all of those problems. The TPS should stop treating its decision to increase police presence as the only solution to the recent increase in violence, or even the optimal one.
Toronto needs to provide more than a bandaid solution to the swelling concerns around how Toronto’s police are currently failing the city’s racialized communities. For the present, we at least deserve to know whether the increase of police officers in public transit has actually helped alleviate the violent crime rates on the TTC. In the end, I do not want to feel safe at the expense of others’ safety.
Eleanor Park is a second-year student at Trinity College studying English and religion. She is an Associate Comment Editor at The Varsity
We need a public assessment of police on the TTC Increased police presence is where the public safety conversation starts, not ends
Varsity Contributors
Recently, The Varsity published an opinion piece on President Meric Gertler and Dr. Ayelet Kuper’s discourse surrounding U of T’s decision not to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.
We believe that the refusal of the university to adopt the IHRA’s definition or proposal of an alternative definition of antisemitism is not only a step backward but also a worrying sign that U of T is failing to protect its Jewish students and listen to our concerns. It is our belief that not having a clear and agreed-upon definition of antisemitism allows antisemitic people to capitalize on the ambiguity surrounding antisemitism, and to escape accountability for their words and actions.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism uses a series of clear examples and illustrations explaining the unique ways in which antisemitism manifests. The definition has been adopted by the Canadian federal government, as well as the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick. The legislatures of 38 other countries have taken similar steps to adopt the IHRA’s definition.
Furthermore, over 1,000 entities around the world, including numerous universities, have chosen to adopt the IHRA definition because its acceptance promotes a safer society for citizens without stifling freedom of speech.
Although it is disappointing that U of T has chosen not to adopt the definition, altogether, we’re not surprised. U of T has a shameful history of antisemitism, as demonstrated by the discriminatory system of quotas that restricted the number of Jews allowed to attend the university during the post-war period into the 1970s. Just as Dr. Ayelet Kuper’s report has reminded the broader community, antisemitism at U of T did
not end with the abolishment of the quota system — antisemitism is still very much present at U of T.
There’s a hurtful assumption commonly made by many that Jewish institutions label any criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitic for the purpose of silencing it, but that’s all this notion is: an assumption. The IHRA definition explicitly states that criticisms of Israel that are similar to criticisms raised against other countries are not automatically seen as antisemitic.
This means that if you’re interested in engaging in constructive and nuanced conversations about Israel, then having a practical and agreed upon definition of antisemitism shouldn’t scare you. We encourage readers to take a critical look at the definition for themselves. The definition does not focus on stifling free speech about criticisms of Israel, but instead clarifies when comments about Jewish people become double standards, demonization, and delegitimization.
Why is it important to discuss antisemitism?
David Hirsh, a lecturer in sociology at the University of London, developed the “Livingstone Formulation” to describe a defensive stance of a person accused of antisemitism. According to Hirsh, when being accused of antisemitism, some individuals deploy a counter-accusation that the person raising the issue of antisemitism is doing so to shut down legitimate criticisms of Israel. Hirsh first developed the “Livingstone Formulation” to describe Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, who responded to backlash for calling a Jewish reporter a “German war criminal” by claiming that the real reason he was accused of antisemitism was because of his criticisms of the Israeli government.
These individuals blur the line between what is or isn’t a “criticism of Israel” to legitimize their antisemitism. When Jews identify antisemitism, they need to have their concerns heard. We believe that nothing more could illustrate the failure of people to listen to Jews than the current de-
bate over the IHRA definition.
Antisemitism is often presented as a societal issue that walks hand in hand with racism and white supremacy. With this in mind, others assume that if we work to get rid of racism and white supremacy, then antisemitism will naturally disappear as well. However, we, as Jewish students, believe that antisemitism doesn’t present itself like other forms of discrimination. Antisemitism is constantly evolving and often appears as tropes about Jewish power, disloyalty, pestilence, and malevolence — some of which date back thousands of years.
For centuries, antisemitism has been part of Jewish life, both in Christian Europe and the Islamic world. The antisemitic beliefs in the Arab world resulted in severe threats of violence and state discrimination against Jewish people. Consequently, millions of Jews were forced to flee their homes. In the modern era, antisemitism continues to plague the West.
It’s easy for people to claim that they are informed about social justice, that they care about putting an end to racism in Canadian society, and that the very idea that they could hold antisemitic views is unfathomable. However, it's important to recognize that antisemitism may still be very much present, even if it is not obvious.
As Jewish students, we see gaps in the education that has been provided to our non-Jewish peers about who we are as a nation that saw its ethnogenesis in the Land of Israel. Criticizing a government and a state’s actions is one thing, but the line is crossed when Jewish people are denied their collective right to self-determination. We won’t allow ourselves to be demonized for believing in our right to self-determination.
Our Jewish identity is greater than our suffering. Jewish culture is our persistence, curiosity, tradition, speculation, and value of family. Key components of Jewish culture include tikkun olam (repairing the world) and tzedakah (charity/ justice). Jewish culture encompasses our reli-
gious beliefs, as well as our ethnic identity.
Taking a step back, we acknowledge that the issue of free speech in academia is complex. When it comes to free speech, the university has a responsibility to decide where it wants to draw the line of what it is willing to allow. However, what the university must recognize is that debating where to draw the line at free speech is completely different from outright choosing to accept bigotry. U of T mustneeds to take a stand to identify, condemn, and address antisemitism on campus.
In cases where words spill over into action, we, as Jewish students, also need to be able to say we have experienced antisemitic discrimination without being forced into an argument over definitions of antisemitism.
January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but the only mention of antisemitism on The Varsity ’s social media that day was a post promoting the opinion piece celebrating U of T’s decision not to adopt the IHRA definition. On the same day, Jewish communities across Canada were shocked by a shooting attack that took place outside of a synagogue in Jerusalem, where seven were murdered, while some were desperately trying to save the lives of others.
The assumption that antisemitism can’t be combated without harming efforts to advocate for Palestinian rights is absurd. Antisemitism is antisemitism, and we will continue to stand against it no matter where it comes from because we don’t have the privilege of doing otherwise.
Yardena Rosenblum is a fourth year student at UTSC completing a specialist in neuroscience and minor in psychology.
Yotam Gubbay is a third-year student at University College pursuing a major in political science with minors in Near and Middle Eastern civilization and Jewish studies.
Yotam Gubbay, Yardena RosenblumWolfond Centre for Campus Jewish Life. KHUSHI SHARMA/THEVARSITY
Indigenous people being left out of Canadian legislation, policy, and general federal conversation is nothing new. Despite recent efforts to increase diversity in government decisions, the exclusion of Indigenous voices from national dialogue continues to be a problem in Canada. But when it comes to certain issues, such as the climate crisis, a lack of representation in government is not just disrespectful — it is dangerous, especially for Inuit.
Lack of Indigenous representation in Canadian government
To describe the current Environment and Climate Change Canada, which is a governmental department that works toward protecting natural heritage and the environment, as ‘predominantly white’ is an understatement, as nearly every member is white. Furthermore, despite the fact that Indigenous peoples are often most affected by Canada’s changing climate, there is no position in the department that deals specifically with the impact of the climate crisis on Indigenous communities.
Among Indigenous populations, it is Inuit that are likely to be the first Canadian group to encounter the truly devastating consequences of the climate crisis. Seals, a major part of many Inuit communities, is a species that the climate crisis has put at risk as rising temperatures destroy their icy breeding grounds. The climate
crisis will also increase the risk of humans contracting diseases from wild animals, increase the risk of oil or chemical spills, and render previously climate-tailored infrastructure virtually unusable, placing a new economic strain on struggling communities. This would add to the existing economic strain in Inuit communities, which stems from factors such as unemployment.
James T. Arreak, a former chief executive officer of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., an organization that works to ensure that promises made under the Nunavut Agreement are carried out, has been a long time proponent for Indigenous
representation in the Canadian government.
According to Arreak, the Canadian government needs to include permanent Indigenous representative positions in their caucuses as this would allow Indigenous peoples to finally have a say in their futures. Including permanent Indigenous representative positions has significantly boosted proportional Indigenous representation in places like New Zealand.
Canadian funding for Inuit groups
Though Inuit groups are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis, the Canadian government does not appear to be too benevolent
with its funding.
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an Inuit non-profit organization, designed and released an urgent four-year plan for the government to combat the Arctic climate crisis and its effects on Inuit communities in 2019, which is known as the National Inuit Climate Change Strategy (NICCS). Despite an annual government expenditure of over $350 billion and a federal climate crisis expenditure of over 100 billion since 2015, NICCS, in comparison, only received $1 million in 2019.
Representation is overdue
Inuit have lived off the land for centuries. The bond between people and their natural surroundings, knowledge and understanding of wildlife, and weather patterns and seasonal changes plays an important role in Inuit cultures; this needs to be respected and amplified the same way other Canadian perspectives are. Though Inuit have their own governing bodies and policies, they are still affected by federal decision making.
The lack of Inuit representation in the Canadian and federal government is no longer just embarrassing, it is also dangerous. If Canada wants to get serious about climate action, the nation needs to start paying attention to the communities that need it most.
Kayla Litschko is a second-year student at University College studying history, bioethics, and political science. She is a climate columnist in The Varsity’s comment section.
Has this ever happened to you? You meet a pal, a study buddy, and everything’s going swim mingly. Then, while ‘studying’ at Robarts during a bout of procrastination, a TikTok on Andrew Tate shows up on your For You page. Your face contorts in disgust at the hatred that he spews, and you show your new friend. To your surprise, he responds, “He has a point.” God dammit, you mentally scream.
Not another Tate fan!
to say Tate just hates women, but that’s not the full story. Tate also brings up men’s rights, which, to most guys on first inspection, sounds reasonable. Yeah, men go through struggles too! Men also suffer with their mental health or get sexually assaulted! They also face body-image issues! But, the more you look into Tate’s views on men’s rights, the more you realize that there are a lot of reasons why you prob ably wouldn’t want to support them.
According to Urban Dictionary, meninism is the belief that men are victimized by feminism and that more attention needs to be brought to the struggles of being a man in the twenty-first cen tury.
“reclaim” men’s rights from what they believe to be an actively anti-masculinity society. Me ninists, the supporters of meninism, talk about
unfair standards for men, such as expectations to keep their emotions bottled up and be the
nism, minus the hate speech. Wacky! Who’d have imagined feminism could have equal ben-
yond just TikTok.
Overall, the way I see it, the problem with meninists is that they often use their own personal insecurities and hardships to excuse their misogynistic behaviour and attitudes toward women. They’re misled into believing that the only way to uplift men is through hatred against
However, that approach to uplifting men is harmful and destructive to both men and the women around them. But I don’t think the answer is to completely scrap masculinity, either. There are many ways to express one’s own masculinity, but putting down, objectifying, and dominating women are not healthy ways to do so.
Instead, maybe we can transform masculinity and advocating for men’s rights into something healthy and uplifting for people of all genInstead of using your hands forsion and violence, use them to create, to love, and to nurture. Instead of silently struggling, reach out and seek help. And instead of thinking of masculinity as a monotonous construct, see it as a diverging identity that you, and only you,
It’s a lot to ask for, so let’s start simple. The first thing you can do is dislike every Tate YouTube short you come across. Uplift yourself —
Vincent Quach is a third-year student in Victoria College studying English, mathematics, and
It’s important to support men, but not at the expense of women’s rights
On advocating for men’s rights in a healthy and uplifting way
Vincent Quach Varsity Staff
“When the war started, I did not return to Syria for the next eight years, until my grandfather passed away in 2018. I have not been since.”
These are the words of John Chakkour, a proud Syrian man and a third-year U of T student. As an adult, Chakkour left the Middle East to avoid being enlisted in the Syrian Civil War, an ongoing con-
A better life abroad Chakkour’s story is tragic, but not unique. In Syria, men between the ages of 18 and 42 are obligated by law to serve in the Syrian military. Exemption from this service is on a case-by-case basis, and is unlikely to be granted for healthy men such as Chakkour. As of 2019, this mandatory military service had fuelled the departure of more than 5.6 million citizens, many of whom plan to never return to the country.
“My parents don’t want me to go back, because there is a risk that I [will] be drafted,” Chakkour expressed.
In late 2010, successful protests and uprisings, which later became known as the Arab Spring, overthrew Egypt and Tunisia’s presidents, which gave hope to pro-democratic activists in Syria. Soon afterwards, the Syrian government, led by President al-Assad, reacted to the protests by killing hundreds of protestors, and imprisoning many more. By July 2011, military defectors formed the Free Syrian Army, a group of rebels aiming to overthrow the Syrian government. This announcement triggered the beginning of the war. Since then, the war has claimed the lives of nearly 600,000 Syrians and displaced nearly 13.3 million Syrians.
Since 2020, Syria’s humanitarian crisis has been aggravated by an unprecedented economic downturn, which was caused by a Lebanese economic crisis, U.S. sanctions, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Syrian currency’s value depleted by 80 per cent in 2021, while the country’s hyperinflation hit 140 per cent in 2022; paired together, both factors caused Syria's poverty rate to have reached 90 per cent as of March 2022.
“Every time I speak to my grandmother on the phone, she tells me there’s no water, there’s no electricity, no gas for cars,” Chakkour described.
“The people are starving.”
Many countries in the Levant, the eastern shore land of the Mediterranean Sea, are perceived as unstable and dangerous. Currently, the situation in Lebanon, a country of 5.6 million, ranks “among the most severe crises globally since the mid-19th century,” according to the World Bank, because of its civil war, political instability, and ongoing economic crisis. These days, there are nearly 14 million Lebanese people who live in the diaspora outside of Lebanon, a number that triples Lebanon’s current population.
Of those 14 million, Adam Aboul Hosn, a 19-year-old Lebanese expat and UTM student, craving change like so many others, was forced to leave his home behind during the 2006 Lebanese Civil War, moving to Dubai instead.
“I don’t personally like calling it leaving Lebanon, because, for me, I never left,” Aboul Hosn described. “You wouldn’t call me a resident of Lebanon, but Lebanon is my heart. I haven’t gone one summer without going back.”
Aboul Hosn is a part of Lebanon’s Druze community, adherents to an esoteric faith originating from the villages of Mount Lebanon and Jabal al Druze. He explained that he’s noticed that people living outside of Lebanon, especially Druze people, associate themselves with different names and religions to preserve their safety.
This yearning to belong and to express oneself freely inevitably leads to a longing for home.
A feeling shared by every expatriate is the longing for home, the craving to walk the streets they’ve walked as children, holding a grandparent’s hand as they toured through villages. They yearn to share meals with their cousins, aunts, and uncles, and to dance Dabke until their legs can no longer sustain them. But many Lebanese expats have a romanticized image of Lebanon, a fantasy no longer representative of the current state of the
“My beliefs of going back and living in Lebanon are very pessimistic… [Due] to the economic situation in Lebanon, it’s just not feasible for someone so young to live in Lebanon, [where] opportunities are very rare,” Aboul Hosn said.
And in a country devoid of stability or opportunities, families and youth such as Aboul Hosn are forced to pursue opportunities for growth abroad.
“All these minds, all these people that could have built the country are now building somewhere else,” said Lamees Al Ethari, an Iraqi-born writer who immigrated to Canada with her two boys in 2008. Al Ethari currently researches the narratives of the lives of Iraqi women living in North America.
“All of that is a loss for your country,” Al Ethari believes. “But some people are starting to go back, they’re starting to work there, and they’re starting to teach there.”
Aboul Hosn added: “My dream is to go back to Lebanon… but I don’t think [I] could live there, if it is in the state that it is.”
A home lost to the ages Chakkour feels a rather similar yearning for home, although he is not as confident that the Syria of to-
of Chakkour’s life, such as academics: “Whenever I’d complain about anything in school, or I would get a bad grade, she’d tell me about all the kids in Syria who don’t have parents, who are suffering, who are dying,” Chakkour said.
“In one way, I sort of resented my mom for saying this because it made me feel like I was not allowed to enjoy anything, but on the other hand, it really does contextualize the privilege that I grew up with relative to other Syrians,” Chakkour said.
For Chakkour, this guilt persisted beyond childhood and adolescence. “Nowadays, in general, I guess that I do feel guilt that I am able to go to a good university, live in Canada, and have a good life… There are kids my age in Syria, and younger, who are suffering, who are orphaned, who are homeless, starving, and dying.”
For some, this guilt was a reminder to strive for a successful life, to take advantage of opportunities people back home had no access to. “[Guilt]
was always in the back of my mind,” Chakkour confessed. “If I let someone down, it was as if I was letting my country down.”
For Aboul Hosn, diaspora guilt influences the way he lives today. “I look back, I have family in Lebanon, they’re suffering from severe economic crisis, and I’m over here in Canada, and I’m studying in one of the best institutions in the world, and learning from the most amount of books I can.”
“In a way, I do feel guilty that I owe something back to the country I care so much about,” Aboul Hosn said. “But not in the sense that I shouldn’t be there.”
For Abdullah Hamasni, a third-year student at UTM, this guilt is motivation for meaningful change, that urges him to help his fellow Lebanese who suffer from the nation’s instability.
“I see that the [health] system has a lot of problems, and I know a lot of family members who struggle with their health,” Hamasni said. “I want to go back to Lebanon and start my own practice there.”
This prophesied return of many hopeful diasporic people may stem from a feeling of culpability, from not being able to support one’s country in its time of need.
For many, this yearning to help back home stems from the culpability of not having been able to help before, including Hamasni. “May-
be I’m just trying to compensate for the years that I couldn’t be there,” Hamasni said.
For Al Ethari, this guilt can never be alleviated. She believes that, instead, this guilt manifests itself in aspects of one’s life and character. “You can never get rid of [diaspora guilt], you can only make it better for certain amounts of time.”
Al Ethari’s solution, however, is to use this guilt as a basis for change. “I think that [diaspora guilt] can create a basis for starting something,” she began. “I think longing allows us to build platforms that can help back home.”
And therein lies the challenge: metamorphosing guilt into something productive, like hope, until this hope leads to a desire for change.
A yearning to change
Diasporic efforts for change tend to resemble grassroots initiatives that bring together the diaspora community, uniting expatriates with a common goal. Recently, these initiatives have taken the form of donation drives and fundraisers.
Early this February, UTM’s Lebanese Students’ Association (LSA) brought the Levant diasporas together in efforts to collect hygiene items, school supplies, and clothes to send to orphanages across Lebanon in an attempt to help alleviate the strain of Lebanon’s economic crisis and supply shortages, which leave inhabitants unable to afford essential supplies.
Following February’s earthquakes in northern and western Syria, UTM’s LSA and Syrian Students’ Association mobilized to send sleeping bags, blankets and jackets, and organized fundraisers to garner funds for charities working to help displaced peoples.
For Chakkour, fundraisers aren’t enough: “There are a lot of sanctions imposed on Syria… helping directly through monetary aid is not exactly the easiest way.”
For Aboul Hosn, the path toward substantial meaningful change is through educating the next generation. “Yes, there is a human desire for instant change… I think that the way I would be able to change Lebanon is to write about it, to talk about it, [and] to let people know about it,” he said.
This concept of hope in the next generation is common amongst many diasporic people, who when forced to leave their home nation, hope that their children can one day return, and bring their lineage back to their home country. For the diaspora, exile is only temporary.
Al Ethari agrees that hope lies within educating the future generations: “You do whatever you can to instill in the new generation [not ony] an idea of home but also the idea that they have the ability to change things, [and] we do this through education.”
Despite the war, and despite the conflict, Chakkour sees himself returning to Syria one day to raise his children so that they too can grow up as Syrians, although he is apprehensive as to whether his country is safe to rear a child.
“I’m 19 years old now. Assuming I get married at 29, that would be in 10 years. Do I think Syria in 10 years will be a fit place to raise a family and have children? I’m not sure,” he said.
For those unable to physically return to their home countries, Al Ethari suggests an alternative in the form of local diasporic communities which can mimic a sense of return. These diasporic communities can provide a sense of belonging and community through culture, language and religion.
However, Chakkour does not believe that the compromise of a diasporic community abroad is sufficient. “I thanked my parents every day that they took me to Syria when I was a kid, every summer and every winter,” Chakkour recalled. “I have memories of [Syria], I know what it looks like, I remember the smells, the sights, and the sounds… There’s no shortcut, there’s no turnaround to getting that type of cultural experience.”
Chakkour is adamant that he wants his children to experience everything that Syria has to offer: “My children will visit Syria, and I will try to make them go and see as much as they can, because that’s an invaluable part of their identity.”
Though I still love reading, I can’t help but notice that the experience of cracking open a book has changed since I was a kid. I remember finishing a book series feeling a distinct sense of satisfaction and sadness. I wanted to interact with characters on the daily and desperately wished to stay in the world they inhabited.
I was by no means alone in my escapist fantasy either, as is evidenced by the number of children’s books that focus on a different, or at least transformed, world. From The Wizard of Oz to The Chronicles of Narnia , there’s something about portals to a different world that we just can’t seem to resist.
That feeling is also the pathos behind No Place Like Home , a new children’s book by U of T alum Linh Nguyễn released on March 14. The book pays homage to portal fantasies like The Wizard of Oz while adapting the format to explore the meaning of home from an immigrant perspective. Nguyễn sat down with The Varsity to discuss what home means, both literally and figuratively, in her novel and life.
Exploring home
Nguyễn originally thought of the idea for No Place Like Home while doing an independent study under Deirdre Baker, who studies children’s literature, in the fourth year of her undergraduate degree. She originally plotted the book as a reverse Wizard of Oz , in which a protagonist got transported to a different land and their goal was to stay rather than leave, in order to tap into the feeling of wanting to remain in a magical place forever.
However, initially Nguyễn’s story felt too simplistic so she adapted, making it a more nuanced exploration of home. For Nguyễn, who immigrated at age 11 from Vietnam, home is more a collection of memories, people, and places. As a result, her protagonist Lan, who shares Nguyễn’s immigration story, goes on a journey to discover how we carve a home out in strange places and redefine the concept for ourselves.
Though Lan isn’t immediately interested in staying in an unknown place, she is motivated to stick it out for the people she meets and due to a feeling of wanting to prove herself. Over the course of her journey, her relationships to both her environment and the people around her change. When she returns to Toronto, her new home after moving from Vietnam, she’s able to apply the skills she learned to another unknown place.
Fiction as home
Nguyễn didn’t start seriously working on the book until she had a strange dream a little while after she graduated. She recounted that in the dream, she was sitting in a lecture hall and Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson series was at the podium. Her eyes locked on Annabeth’s and as they greeted each other,
Nguyễn realized that she felt she had known this person her entire life, despite the fact that she wasn’t real.
Nguyễn explained that finishing a good book feels like leaving the magical world in a portal fantasy, and that the metaphor was crystallized at that moment. When she woke up, she felt that loss at no longer being able to communicate with Annabeth and saw how she could manipulate that format to explore homecomings and departures more generally.
The book tries to capture that shift you feel when you read a book that really resonates with you, which changes how you view the real world as well. She emphasized the importance of literature and stories for not only children, but for people of all ages, and concluded that we must continue to value stories and encourage people to write.
Nguyễn noted that, though people believe you can’t make money writing fiction, that’s not really the case, and that lots of writers get by on the earnings they get from their work. For fellow writers like me, who have heard their fair share of cautionary tales about a humanities degree, it’s comforting to remember that writing is a job like any other, and that I can hold onto the stories I love for a little longer, even as I supposedly grow too old for fiction.
Toronto Comicon came in full swing this year. As with any con, at Comicon, you can expect to see a parade of photo-worthy cosplayers with intricately designed get-ups, complete with makeup and prop-making skills that rival those of million dollar movie productions. However, among the crowd of foam armour and unrealistically coloured wigs stands an interesting type of cosplayer, like me: — the crossplayer.
What is cosplaying and crossplaying?
Cosplaying aims to bring specific characters from your favourite franchises to life, with detail in mind. You can either buy a ready-made cosplay
has a history in geek and nerd conventions. Before the advent of online retailers, when these conventions were solely for ‘geeks,’ you’d have to have extensive prop making and crafts skills to make these outfits and potentially extend that knowledge into creating prop weapons.
And what about ‘crossplay’? It combines the previous idea of cosplay, but adds ‘crossdress’ into the mix. It goes both ways — you’ll often find men dressing as women and women dressing as men.
Crossplay isn’t as easy as it sounds — though anyone can throw on a dress or wear a wig, it takes considerable effort to mask certain features typical of each end of the biological spectrum in order to fully immerse yourself as a character that may identify as another gen-
by the drag queen makeup tutorial I watched on YouTube. Another hurdle was my body — I’ve taken the liberty to learn how to properly tuck so the dreaded bulge doesn’t show up when I’m in those uncomfortably tight-fitting anime girl outfits. Others may also opt to look into breast forms.
So crossplaying adds an extra few layers of process to the already demanding and time-consuming hobby of cosplaying, emphasizing better makeup skills and some temporary alterations to your body that may be uncomfortable for prolonged periods.
Why is crossplaying special?
I had no idea crossplaying was an actual thing for a long time. Most of the examples I saw on the internet were bearded men in Sailor Moon seifukus — not exactly an appealing look to me. However, deep inside, I’ve always wanted to cosplay women characters because I could always see myself as them; their personalities and aspirations always resonated with my own. I’ve also always found lolita fashion, a sub-genre of fashion from Japan that takes heavy inspiration from Victoriaera dresses, to be way more endearing than a gentleman’s formal attire of a suit and tie.
Eventually, the omnipotent YouTube algorithm exposed me to people like YouTuber Natt or the professional League of Legends player Zach Scuderi, who did crossplay regularly, and that got me thinking. If only I could be a girl and just wear what they were wearing! But wait — Zach and Natt were wearing them, and they’re cisgender men, as far as I’m aware. So why couldn’t I?
So one day, after weeks of debating and saving money, I went to my local drugstore and filled my basket with eyeliner, lipstick, contour, and some cheap brushes, and I ordered a wig from AliExpress. I asked my friend if she had any unused makeup and I swooped them out of her hands. After an hour of cursing and foundation-crusted fingers, I finally put on my wig. And what do you know — I actually liked how I looked! Although my eyeliner was completely wonky, my friend was
there to support me and her kindness and positivity motivated me. For the first few months, I crossdressed in my room, before I eventually went outside and let others see me in a wig and makeup. My first cosplay outside closed doors was Killjoy from Valorant, a cosplay built completely from thrift store finds. My friends were super supportive and complimented my skills, and I kept pushing myself to try new things. The first cosplay I brought to a con, AnimeNorth, was Sucrose from Genshin Impact. Despite the appalled looks of con-goers when I replied to their photo requests with my husky, masculine, “Sure thing, man,” many of them were still overjoyed to get a photo with me.
Crossplaying let me discover a passion that I never knew I had. I mean, I knew I enjoyed lolita fashion thanks to Pandora Hearts, but I was never really able to justify channeling or expressing that aesthetic appreciation anywhere. This art form has allowed me to break free from the gender norms hammered into my head — that only women should wear dresses or makeup — and turn that into something that lets me meet wonderful new people at cons and school clubs. I’ve found myself to be more confident and happier once I had the chance to dress like my favourite characters or in what people often see as girls’ clothing, whether it be a miniskirt, stockings, a lolita dress, or skinny jeans.
Initially, I thought makeup would suffice, but it turns out learning to shave with a straight razor or foam smithing — a fancy word for cutting and shaping EVA foam, a type of foam used in interlocking gym mats, into costume parts — is a nice skill to have, too.
It’s a never-ending journey of learning new skills and improving my craft, and that’s one of the many things I love about crossplaying. The road to self-discovery and burning myself with hot glue has been arduous, but it’s made me into a happier, better, and more confident person with lots of supportive friends and strangers and a cool new cosplay Instagram to boot.
I first met Professor James Reilly when I took NMC278 — Introduction to the Modern Middle East — in fall 2019 as a second-year undergraduate student minoring in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (NMC). I was immediately absorbed by the course content, as Reilly’s passion and profound knowledge of this topic really emanated from his lectures. Although the course material was dense, Reilly’s eloquent and tranquil lecturing style, peppered with subtle humour and personal anecdotes, made it a delight to take his class.
Reilly is a professor emeritus of modern Middle East history in the NMC department, where he worked from 1987 until his retirement in 2022. Reilly holds a master’s degree from the American University of Beirut and a PhD from Georgetown University, where he specialized in modern Middle Eastern history with a special interest in the Ottoman-era history of Lebanon and Syria. He released his book Fragile Nation, Shattered Land: The Modern History of Syria in 2019.
Reilly’s unique insights come from his experience of living in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon and Syria, and interacting with the people there on an everyday basis, which is why he is so capable of giving life to the past and oftentimes forgotten events. Reilly had the opportunity to live in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s when the sociopolitical environment in Lebanon and Syria was safer for academic activities. That opportunity is no longer as readily available due to the unfavourable geopolitical environment in many countries in the Middle East. For instance, nowadays the protracted and ongoing Syrian Civil War robbed many academics of their careers and resources to conduct their research and they have become targets in the war.
I would like to dedicate this article as a token of appreciation for the long-lasting positive impact and inspiration Reilly has had on me and my fellow classmates. This article includes excerpts from an interview I had with Reilly where I asked him about his time as a scholar living and doing academic re-
search in the Levant in the 1970s and 1980s, and how the concurring Lebanese Civil War impacted him. Furthermore, we asked him about his reflections on teaching at U of T, the impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on his teaching, and what new projects he will embark on during his retirement.
The Varsity: The Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) was in many ways like the Syrian Civil War — very long, bloody, and complex. You mentioned you first visited Lebanon as a third-year undergraduate student in the 1974–1975 academic year when the civil war had just started. To what extent were you affected by it and how did it impact your academic work and outlook?
James Reilly: In the initial months of the war, it was on-again and off-again fighting in localized areas… I was never in physical danger but it raised a lot of questions in my mind. And of course, while talking to the local people, I would get 100 different explanations depending on who I was talking to. So this made me very curious to try to understand and conceptualize the war when I went back to the US to finish my undergraduate degree.
That’s why I went back to Lebanon and did
my master’s degree — because I was so curious to untangle this very tangled situation. During my master’s degree years, the fighting did sometimes hit close to home and it left me with no illusions of modern warfare. It is hard to have any illusions of modern warfare when you see it up close, there is nothing glorious about it. I never had any illusions about war’s ability to solve any problems ever since then.
TV: You also spent many years in Syria doing research in your field. It must be very disheartening to see a place where you lived and dedicated so much of your academic career get destroyed in the ongoing Civil War. How has this experience been for you?
JR: I was not able to do my PhD research in Lebanon because by then it was in the midst of an even more terrible stage of its war. So I went to Damascus, Syria, where I did the archival research that produced my doctoral dissertation. I went back to Syria many times with my family after that to either just visit for fun and see friends, or conduct more research for my book, A Small Town in Syria: Ottoman Hama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
We continued to return to Syria often in the 2000s, the last time we visited was in 2010. So it has been terrible to observe the destruction of Syria and the tragedy of Syrians whose [lives have] been destroyed and [who have] been forced to move ever since 2011.
TV: Did the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to online classes at U of T expedite your decision to retire now?
JR: One does slow down a bit as you get older and I had already decided two to three years ago that I’d retire at this time. Besides, I think it is time to open the door and bring in some new blood to invigorate the field, and to bring new perspectives and new questions forward. But the pandemic has made it a more unexpected two to three years. I mean, the fun part of teaching is having an audience and being in a room with people.
A very important aspect of having classes with other people is the potential of developing a community. Students learn as much from each other as from their professors, so I’m very happy when I walk into a classroom and I hear the buzz that is already going on, or when students leave in groups after my class finishes, talking about the class or whatever else is going on in their lives. That community is really important for learning and you just can’t have that when you are staring at a screen.
TV: And what are you looking forward to during your retirement? Will you be still involved with the NMC?
JR: Now I have a couple of little grandchildren who are delightful and I am looking forward to spending more time with them. Yes, I will continue to be involved. I still have PhD students that I am supervising so I will continue to be engaged with them and their work. Also, I might be in other student PhD committees depending on the need. As the university returns to in-person activities, there ought to be guest lectures and events that will continue to be of interest to me. So I will be leaving the teaching ranks, but I will not be leaving U of T entirely.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Many people, especially Canadians, dream about becoming professional hockey players. The dream became an unexpected reality for Montreal Force defenseperson Gabrielle De Serres when the former Varsity Blues player signed a one-year contract with the Force of the Premier Hockey League (PHF) — a professional North American women’s hockey league — in October 2022.
“It’s kind of surreal,” De Serres told The Varsity. “Growing up, it’s not something that was ever a possibility. I think a lot of young guy players will grow up with the hope of making it to the show, and it’s always that dream, whereas for us [girls], it was never really a possibility. So seeing it all unfold and being able to play for my hometown has been surreal, because it’s never something I thought was ever gonna happen.”
Growing up, U SPORTS and Team Canada were what De Serres thought were the highest levels for girls. “After that, that’s where you hung up your skates, and your career was over,” she said.
Fortunately for De Serres, women’s hockey continues to grow, and she has been able to continue her hockey career playing in the PHF. However, it wasn’t until De Serres’ later years of university that she realized that going professional was a possibility.
Her older sister, Mathilde, also played for the Blues and played professional hockey in Germany in 2021. De Serres saw hope because of her sister’s success but was never sure if she would
be able to make a career out of playing hockey.
Before going pro, Gabrielle was stellar in blue and white. She was the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) MVP in 2022 and named a U SPORTS Academic All–Canadian. She was a part of the OUA All–Rookie team in 2018 and won the McCaw Cup with the Blues in 2020, which she says is her favourite memory as a Blue.
“When we won the McCaw Cup, it was my best moment of university, because my sister was still on the team, and it’s the kind of moment that’s very special to be able to share with someone like a relative,” said De Serres. She stated that sharing the win with her family is a memory she’ll have forever.
While the McCaw Cup was De Serres greatest achievement as a Blue, she made sure to note that she faced challenges along the way. The Rotman graduate spent five years at U of T but only played in four seasons due to the cancellation of the 2021 OUA season as a result of COVID-19.
Despite the tough times, the pandemic solidified De Serres’ love for hockey. Her initial plan was to graduate and enter the workplace, but she wanted to give pro hockey a shot. “If you truly love something, it’s not because everybody else is going in a certain direction. Sometimes if you have the opportunity you might as well go
for something that’s kind of like a dream because you’ll regret it if you don’t attempt to go for it.”
Her decision paid off on November 5, 2022 — she made her professional debut with the Force, and on November 26, she got to play her first pro game in Montréal with friends and family in the audience.
De Serres told The Varsity that the time management she learned as a student athlete helps her as a professional, because she works a fulltime job at a startup company in the operations and customer success department.
“It’s very similar to school where you have a busy schedule, and you need to maintain that level of [competitiveness] while getting your [own] things done.”
She says one big difference between U SPORTS and professional hockey is that, despite the same expectations to compete, there are different outcomes if performance isn’t good enough. “At school you still have an expectation to compete, but at the end of the day, you’re coming back the next year,” she said. “[At] Pro, if you’re not performing you could be nearing the end of your career.”
De Serres wants to continue her pro career and contribute to growing women’s hockey beyond this season. “I’m definitely hoping for a second year in the league. I had a really good experience, and it’s our first year, so we have so much building that we can and have to do. I would love to be a part of that journey.”
De Serres is excited for where the journey takes her as she continues to grow with women’s hockey.
Boxing is a very appealing sport for filmmakers. In September 2022, The Varsity published a list of the five best sports films — three of them are about boxing. More recently, Creed III was released and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Elsewhere, at UFC 285, Jake Gyllenhaal was spotted filming several boxing scenes for his upcoming movie, Road House
The Varsity sat down with an associate professor at U of T’s Cinema Studies Institute, Bart Testa, to get an understanding of why boxing and movies are a match made in heaven.
The forbidden sport
Boxing films have a deep and rich history. “[In] the 1900s, the two most popular genres… were boxing films and Jesus movies,” Testa explained. “The world of boxing was a great opportunity for filmmakers, because it had such a powerful spectacle.”
Due to boxing’s proclivity to be brutally violent, it was illegal until the 1920s. While it fell behind other sports in terms of popularity around the 1980s, a part of its appeal was the fact that it was forbidden; therefore, boxing films began as a kind of “sports pornography.” “What you weren’t allowed to see in person, you could see in the movies,” said Testa.
Other sports, like football and baseball, were legal, already popular, and usually had well-hidden criminal activities. Furthermore, Testa added: “Individual combat is part of the appeal.” Compared to other sports, no one else is there in the ring to help the boxer win.
The commercialization of boxing meant that the
forbidden appeal declined, though a level of eroticism has remained. Nevertheless, among more contemporary American boxing films, there are common themes that still attract audiences.
The first is the personal struggle a boxer experiences inside and outside the ring. “The boxer is someone with an unstable personality,” Testa said. “The violence in boxing usually represents… the manner of character.” For example, look at the unstable Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me and the hot-headed champion Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.
The aggression LaMotta executes in the ring leads to an aggressively toxic and abusive relationship with his family. This personality trait among boxers often adds a tragic dimension to films about boxing.
“The boxer comes to a tragic situation because of corruption within boxing,” Testa explained. In The Set-Up, Stoker, a washed up fighter with a relentless determination to win, enters a boxing match, unaware that his manager has bet against him. This corruption creates melodrama and ultimately harms Stoker’s boxing career. In Raging Bull, as LaMotta’s career develops, his relationships with his wife and brother devolve to a point of no return.
“I don’t deny that violence is part of the appeal,” he added. “But when things become violent, they break certain norms that belong to boxing.” In Raging Bull, after LaMotta’s wife nonchalantly compliments his next opponent’s appearance, LaMotta goes overboard and brutally beats him up in the ring beyond the norms of the sport. Meanwhile, Million Dollar Baby gets gruesome only when the main character, Maggie Fitzgerald, is hit with an illegal punch.
Testa said that in boxing films, “When something gets really violent, something’s gone
wrong.” Boxing movies showcase the sport as a duel between two rivals. However when a fighter brutally hurts his opponent, this violence is unorthodox to boxing movies as a whole. In Raging Bull, LaMotta brutally loses his middleweight championship, largely due to his brother and wife’s lack of support for him. While boxing is inherently violent, events that occur outside the ring can have just as much of an effect, or more, on the boxer in the movie.
Another appeal of contemporary boxing films is the boxer’s identity and the narratives that these identities compel. “[Boxing] is often an opportunity for someone who belongs to a degraded ethnic group to triumph over his class position,” Testa explained.
In the early history of boxing films, these boxers were typically of Irish or Italian descent, like LaMotta or Rocky Balboa, and now these films tend to include Black people, like Adonis Creed. The protagonist’s underprivileged identity helps
stipulate an appealing underdog narrative.
“There’s almost always an underdog story,” Testa stated. In Rocky, Rocky Balboa, a poor small-time boxer, is a clear underdog to his opponent, the heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed. While the first Creed film had Adonis Creed, Apollo’s son, serving as an underdog, Creed III slightly flips this common narrative, as Adonis is now a thriving boxer. Instead, his opponent — Damian Anderson — is now the underdog, as he aims to fulfill a dream that was interrupted by his incarceration. This variation makes for a more unique viewing experience, but also continues exploring the intersection of class and race.
In the history of cinema, the boxer is someone who fights against the rest of the world — and even themselves. Boxing films aren’t just successful because of the primal acts of violence instigated by the fighters in the ring. Importantly, boxing stands as a method that filmmakers use to highlight the darkness within individuals and societies.
The beauty of boxing
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, why are there so many boxing movies?
Kunal Dadlani
Associate Sports EditorDe Serres had a legendary career as a Varsity Blue. COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV/VARSITY BLUES MEDIA JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY
October 8, 2022 was the worst day of my life, and it definitely ranks among the worst for my fellow Toronto Blue Jays fans. After the Jay’s blew an 8–1 lead to the Seattle Mariners, I proclaimed that I was done with the team, would not buy any tickets next season, and wouldn’t watch any games. But here we are at the dawn of the 2023 season, and I have more than 10 tickets to my name. How did the team win fans back?
The Jays began their offseason trading away fan favourites Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Teoscar Hernández for some much-needed relief pitching in Erik Swanson and improved outfield defence in Daulton Varsho. They also signed centerfielder Kevin Kiermaier to a one-year deal, and he has already gained fans’ love with his charming and positive attitude. Stats-wise, Gurriel's and Hernández’s combined Wins Above Replacement equals that of Varsho alone. They also don’t come close to Kiermaier’s three gold gloves.
The true selling point of the acquisitions was made apparent with the announcement of the new dimensions of the playing field at the Rogers Center. The new venue includes a more shallow outfield, elevated walls, raised bullpens, and
more. The new uniquely-shaped outfield would be a nightmare for notoriously bad defenders Gurriel and Hernández.
The Jays’ biggest free agency splash was the signing of Chris Bassit, a versatile pitcher coming off a great season with the New York Mets. Bassit is the Ross Stripling replacement and the new number three in the rotation. Even though he doesn’t solve all the pitching problems, Bassit is an excellent and much needed acquisition.
But the Blue Jays still have concerns with their number four and number five spots in the starting pitching rotation.
José Berríos, a pitcher I thought could be their future ace, was brutal last season. He gave up the most earned runs in the American League (AL) in the first year of a seven-year contract. Yikes. The Jays need a bounce-back season from him if they have any hopes of winning the AL East.
Yusei Kikuchi, who posted an abysmal 5.19 Earned Run Average (ERA) in 2022, came into spring training looking to earn the number-five spot in the rotation. So far, Kikuchi has provided surprising results; he hasn’t allowed a single run in four games in the spring. Some fans attribute his success to his new beard, which he grew over the offseason, and it might just be the only explanation for his miraculous revival.
The stars have aligned for the Blue Jays to win the American League East in 2023. Their new, smaller ballpark gives every reason for Jays’ superstar Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to return to his MVP-finalist form and offers an opportunity for defence-first players to explode offensively with less surface area to cover. New bench coach and baseball legend Don Mattingly brings a focused mindset and represents the more sophisticated culture in the clubhouse as a veteran coach and former outfielder.
The Red Sox and Orioles are still a few years away from competing, the Rays did nothing to
improve their mediocre offense, and the Yankees’ success depends on another historic season by Aaron Judge. Match this with the new, balanced schedule and the new rules that cater to the Jays’ young team, and success seems imminent.
In classic Toronto sports-fan fashion, I am excited for the 2023 season despite a disappointing end to the previous one. With an renovated roster matching the renovated ballpark and a renewed sense of focus, the Blue Jays are positioned to be one of the best teams in the MLB, and I can’t wait to see what they’re capable of.
OUA MVP Evan Falardeau dueled U SPORTS MVP Jordan Canham in thrilling game
with his 19th kill of the game, Canham secured the third set 25–22 for the Golden Bears, who took a 2–1 lead.
On March 17, the Varsity Blues men’s volleyball team lost to the University of Alberta Golden Bears 3–1 in the quarter-final of the U SPORTS championships in Hamilton.
The Blues knew this game would be tough. The Golden Bears are the defending U SPORTS champions and are the number-one ranked team in Canada this season. Yet, while the Blues are certainly disappointed, they still impressed in their fight against the defending champions. In particular, Blues left-side hitter and Ontario University Athletics (OUA) MVP Evan Falardeau had a valiant duel with Bears outside hitter and U SPORTS MVP Jordan Canham.
What happened
The Blues and the Golden Bears started the first set evenly, yet the Bears’ offense overpowered the Blues, giving the former a strong 10–6 lead. Nevertheless, the Blues were resilient and a powerful kill from hitter Mitchell Neuert and a service ace from setter Davis Young tied the game 12–12.
Alberta fought back to take an 18–16 lead thanks to a service ace from Canham, his third of the set. Yet Falardeau began to dominate, as he launched a pair of powerful kills and blocks to give the Blues their biggest lead at 20–18. After some
incredible digs from Young and leftside hitter Jayden Talsma stifled the Golden Bear’s offense, a kill from Falardeau placed the Blues at set point. Falardeau finished the setoff 25–22, giving the Blues a 1–0 lead.
The Blues and Bears traded points with each other early in the second set. As the Blues took an 11–10 lead, Falardeau flexed to the Hamilton crowd after his powerful kill deflected off the head of a Bears player. From here on, the Blues clearly held the momentum. Falardeau continued his dominance as his 10th kill of the set gave the Blues an 18–15 lead. Yet the momentum clearly shifted, as back-to-back kills from Bears outside hitter
A late goal ends the Blues’ hopes of a National Championship
Cole Hayes Varsity StaffThe University of Toronto Varsity Blues women’s hockey team lost 2–33–2 in the U Sports championship quarterfinals to the Mount-Royal University (MRU) Cougars. The loss ends the Blues hopes at a National Championship.
Cougars forward Breanne Trotter scored late in
the third period advancing her team to the semifinals.
What happened
The first period saw little action until there wereas 45 seconds left in the period, when Cougars forward Courtney Kollman snuck between the Blues' defensce, burying the cross crease pass to give the Cougars a 1–-0 lead heading into intermission.
Isaac Heslinga tied the set 18 –18. Ultimately, a strong kill from Canham powered Alberta to take the second set 25–22 and tie the game 1–1.
The third set began with the Golden Bears dominating, but the Blues stayed within reach, as a big block from middle John Dunning tied the set 10–10. The Bears responded with three straight points, but Falardeau took over — two straight kills reduced the deficit. After a great dig and set from Young, a kill from Dunning gave the Blues a 14–13 lead. The Blues continued to impress, preventing the Bears from taking a massive runaway lead and setting up another tight finish. Ultimately,
The Blues fortunes changed in the second period. They got an early scoring chance that was close enough to going in that Sophie Grawbarger threw her arms up in celebration, but the puck stayed out.
The Blues tied the game seven minutes into the period when forward Juliette Blais-Savoie found defensive playerceman Caroline Eagles in the slot. Eagles shot beat Cougars goaltender Kaitlyn Ross glove side to even the score.
With 55 seconds left in the period, it was the Blues’ turn to get a late goal. Defensive playernceman Emma Potter went to the front of the Cougars net undetected and received a pass from Blues captain Taylor Trussler. Potter and beat Ross to give the Blues a 2–-1 lead going into intermission.
Midway through the third period, Cougars defensive playerceman Jori Hansen-Young ripped a shot through traffic beating a screened Erica Fryer
The decisive fourth set began tight, as Falardeau was responsible for three of the Blues’ first four points. Attack errors gave the Golden Bears a 7–5 lead, yet a service error from setter Cam Kern and another kill from Falardeau tied the set 7–7. Nevertheless, the Blues would spend much of the set chasing the Bears. An attack error from middle Hayden Cavender gave the Bears a 16–12 lead, yet a kill from Cavender along with a kill and service ace from Talsma reduced the Bears’ lead to 17–16. Yet, Alberta retaliated with three straight points.
Ultimately, two big kills from Heslinga brought the Bears a match point, and a service ace from middle Grayden Wiebe ended the set 25–20 and the game 3–1 in favour of the Golden Bears. Falardeau finished the game with 17 kills and Young finished with 33 assists and 11 digs. On the other side, Canham finished with 25 kills and three service aces.
What’s next
The Bears will advance to the final eight, while the Blues will play in the consolation semifinal on March 18. The time of the game and their opponent are yet to be determined.
and tying the game at two. The Cougars took the lead late in the third period when Trotter scored, with three minutes and 3:45 seconds left in the game.
The Blues pushed for an equalizer with the empty net and threw everything they had at the Cougars but unfortunately, MRU pulled off the upset, defeating the Blues 3–-2 and ending their hopes at a National Championship.
What’s next
The Blues won their 19th McCaw Cup this season and will now try and continue to grow from their success, with the hope of reaching the end goal of a National Championship. There is a lot to be proud of and lots to work on for a Blues squad that had what felt like a magical during the 2023 season.
On March 9, the Academic Board met at Simcoe Hall. At the meeting, Professor Cheryl Regehr — vice-president and provost of U of T — presented the budget report for 2023–2024 fiscal year, as well as the long-range budget guidelines.
The report noted that the lingering effects of the pandemic and current rates of inflation are straining the university’s budget, but the report still maintains that the university is financially healthy and is pursuing a few different strategies to mitigate the financial impacts of the pandemic.
The budget is set to be approved at the March 30 Governing Council meeting. Here are some key aspects of the report.
Rising operating revenue due to rising tuition revenue
The total budgeted operating revenue — which includes tuition, student fees, and provincial grants — for 2023–2024 is $3.36 billion, which represents a 3.9 per cent increase from the operating revenue for 2022–2023. Enrolment revenue, which comes from student fees and operating grants, is expected to increase by 3.3 per cent. This increase is largely due to rising tuition revenue from tuition increases for international and domestic out-of-province students, since the university expects operating grants to remain frozen.
The budget assumes that domestic Ontario resident tuition will remain frozen for the next year, but acknowledges that there is a possibility that the government could make a “late announcement” allowing the university to make changes in domestic Ontario-resident tuition fees. If this happens, the university aims to increase those fees by three per cent, which would increase the operating revenue by about $15 million.
The university plans to increase tuition for domestic non-Ontario residents in undergraduate programs by five per cent from last year’s tuition. For international students, undergraduate fees will increase by two per cent for students in the Faculty of Arts & Science.
The tuition increase for other programs will vary according to “local factors,” the budget says.
Other contributors to the operating revenue include investment income, endowment income, income from Canada Research Chairs — a government program which supports research and contributes towards researchers’ salaries at universities — funding for indirect costs of research, and sale of services. An endowment fund is income based on investment portfolios obtained from donations.
As of April 2022, U of T’s various benefactors had total endowments that were worth more than $3.17 billion since it was created. Endowment income will represent 2.5 per cent of the university’s total operating revenue in 2023–2024. However, endowment revenue intended for research and academic programs was not included in the operating budget.
The university acknowledged that the investment landscape has been rocky in recent years due to the war in Ukraine, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, high inflation, and rising interest rates. Investment returns to the university from May to November 2022, which were 0.8 per cent, were much lower than the target return set by the university, where the short-term rate of return was assumed to be 1.1 per cent in 2023. This return rate reflected this uncertainty expressed by the university. The university expects short-term returns to rise to 1.9 per cent in the next fiscal year. The medium-term rate of return is expected to remain at 3.02 per cent over the planning period from the 2022 budget. The budget does not mention long-term rates.
An additional $166 million in revenue for the university is expected to come from application fee revenue, service charges from overdue accounts, licensing revenue from commercialization, and more.
The budget noted that the university is pursuing recommendations set out by the Alternative Funding Sources Advisory Group, which was founded in 2017. The group exists to create alternative sources of funding for the university, especially amid declining funding from the provincial government. The university is working on shifting a significant source of its revenue to real estate investments. The “Four Corners Strat-
egy”, which is the university’s real estate strategy to enhance the academic experience by building innovation spaces, student and faculty housing and more, plans to bring in $50 million per year by 2033 by developing new residential buildings, office space, and other amenities.
Expenditures
Total expenditures are projected to increase from $3.23 billion in 2022–2023 to $3.36 billion in 2023–2024. $2.09 billion, or 62 per cent of the operating budget expenditures, goes toward salaries and benefits. Out of this, 50.7 per cent — or $1.059
billion — will go toward academic compensation, 45 per cent — or $942 million — will go toward staff compensation, and the remaining $85 million towards the pension risk contingency, which is a fund created to alleviate solvency risk by the University Pension Plan (UPP) which manages employees’ pension funds for several universities. The creation of the UPP was announced in 2017, and the plan was meant to account for increasing life expectancy, which creates additional payouts to retired employees, and future funds to current employees.
Each division at U of T receives an expense budget that is equal to the net revenue they generate annually. Divisions also receive an allocation from the University Fund, which provides academic divisions with a non-formulaic allocation of funds. Academic divisional plans include the hiring of tenure and teaching stream faculty, enhancement of student services, and more.
Students, affordability, access, and outcomes
The budget’s section on “Students, Affordability, Access & Outcomes” is mainly focused on tuition issues. The university’s tuition fees for domestic and international students are determined by several policies, including the university’s Tuition Fee Policy, the Statement of Commitment Regarding International Students, and the provincial government’s Tuition Fee Framework.
For undergraduates, the U of T Advanced Planning for Students (UTAPS) program — which fills financial gaps for full time university students which government aid, like OSAP, is unable to cover — will be redesigned, separating its need assessment process from OSAP’s need assessment policies. This will allow development of a flexible and efficient system of financial support, which will accommodate students according to accurate living costs in Toronto.
Priority investments
The budget’s section on “Priority Investments” details the financial constraints that the university is currently facing due to provincial tuition and enrolment frameworks, as well as frozen operating grant funding.
To cover inflationary costs and improve academic programming and delivery, the Provost will allocate a total of $19.3 million to divisions for the 2023–2024 academic year. This allocation will fund five categories of university activity: building inclusive cities and societies, reimagining the undergraduate experience, defying gravity, investing in divisional priorities, and driving scientific discovery.
Within these categories, $2.3 million will be allocated to diversity in academic hiring, $2 million to classroom renewal, and $1.3 million to frontline gift officers needed to meet the goals of the Defying Gravity fundraising campaign. Additionally, $3.6 million will support divisions facing budgetary challenges, and $5.9 million will support large-scale research.
The divisions plan to invest in new faculty hiring; equity, diversity and inclusion; academic programming; and enhancing undergraduate research experiences. These funds will be used to launch several new programs, including a Master of Arts in Kinesiology and a Master of Public Health focused on Black Health by various academic divisions.
Inflation is a large focus of the budget’s section on “Risk,” with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the average change in prices for consumer goods, for Toronto having peaked at 7.5 per cent in July 2022. The CPI has remained above five per cent since.
The Ontario government is projecting a deficit of $12.9 billion for 2022–2023, which may result in continued spending restraints for postsecondary education.
Humans love stories. Far before moving pictures and writing, fiction existed in the forms of oral storytelling, dances, and dramas. Unfortunately, unlike paintings and books, these forms couldn’t fossilize for us to examine.
Whereas the oldest surviving work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was engraved on ancient Babylonian tablets about 4,000 years ago, the cave paintings in sites like Chauvet and Lascaux in France that depicted rituals, hunting practices, and volcanic eruptions, were likely accompanied by oral storytelling and are estimated to be from around 30,000 years
Considering that evidence Homo sapiens — who are not even the oldest human species — appeared around 190,000 BCE, there’s a large gap in our history of storytelling. Nonetheless, scientists have deduced two evolutionary advantages of oral storytelling using various sources.
Just like birds who sing beautifully, good storytellers may be more likely to attract mates.
a 2017 study in Nature Communications, anthropologists found that in the Agta community — a hunter-gatherer population in the Philippines — those identified as skilled storytellers had higher reproductive success. On average, skilled storytellers had 53 per cent more living children than others.
According to the researchers, skilled storytellers’ higher reproductive success may be because others in the community were inclined to look favourably at the storyteller’s family and extend their help. Skilled storytellers were found to be nearly twice as likely to be chosen as preferred campmates than others. They were even chosen over people who had equally good reputations for hunting, fishing, and foraging. The study also found that the presence of good storytellers in communities led to increased cooperation. This isn’t to say humans prefer a good story over loads of food. Rather, it indicates that storytelling may have an equally adaptive value to human life.
The researchers also found that, in a resource-sharing game, skilled storytellers were the likeliest to be recipients of rice. The researchers theorize that this outcome may correspond to real-life benefits for storytellers from community members, such as food, assistance with childcare, or access to other resources that contribute to their well-being and survival.
Two heads are better than one
Since our ancestors evolved to live in groups, they likely used storytelling to gather and communicate information about their environments and increasingly complex social relationships. Stories served as a way to make sense of the world and its benefits and dangers. The use of narratives allows people to remember information far more than facts alone. Thus, stories allowed our ancestors to transmit and remember important information about their environment, such as where to find food and water, and how to avoid dangers, such as predators and illnesses.
In addition to practical knowledge, stories also helped to establish social norms and behaviours. In the same 2017 Nature Communications study
As humans developed more complex soci eties, storytelling also played a critical role in shaping their beliefs and values.
With the developments of agriculture and written language, people needed less time to teach and learn the basics of survival, and more time could be spent on understand ing the physical world and our abstractions. Humans could grapple with questions about natural phenomena like the weather and the sun, moon, and stars, as well as existential questions about purpose, fate, and higher powers.
In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the word ‘meme’ to de scribe a “unit of cultural transmis sion.” Memes, he wrote, could be any product of human intellect — such as ideas, tunes, or aesthetics — and are similar to biological genes in that they carry information, replicate, transmit from one person to another, and mutate at random, all while serv ing their own, ‘selfish’ ends. In that manner, all stories are memes.
Stories evolved into myths, legends, and religious narratives — engaging and dramatic memes that often followed similar structures and espoused similar themes — to explain the mechanisms of nature and guide people’s moral and spiritual thinking. By telling and retell ing these stories, people could reinforce their shared beliefs across generations far and wide, as well as reinvent and adapt to newer cultures.
Larger societies, now sharing a framework for understanding the world, could then use stories to organize themselves, work toward common goals, and function efficiently. To day’s world largely functions and cooper ates because of the story of money.
Unfortunately, some have applied Charles Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ evolutionary theory to societies, which means that societies with different ide ologies may use their stories as justifica tion to dominate others, or merge stories as a means of assimilating and diminish ing others.
European colonialism often operated on stories that white, ‘civilized,’ and Chris tian societies were superior to racialized cultures of different religious or spiritual be liefs and practices. More recently, the term “cultural appropriation” signifies that certain practices are mutated to fit the interests of a dominant group, losing the nuanced, culture-specific narrative behind them. Me ninists and right-wing groups often co-opt well known feminist and left-wing slogans to disseminate their ideologies, while proponents of Adam Smith’s free market and Karl Marx’s communist theories have been fighting about capitalism and com munism for decades, disagreeing on how and why we should work for money.
While stories were once cause for celebration for their benefits to human evolution, they’re now in a precarious position. Whether the power of story telling can lend to further development of human life, or limit it, is some thing only time can tell.
If you’ve read texts surrounding Hinduism or Buddhism, you have probably heard of the ‘third eye’ and the great power that it holds over our minds and bodies. You may have been told that it can open up your ‘chakras,’ and that it is key in meditation.
Interestingly, a third eye is actually present in some species, though it may not be as solely spiritual as you think. This ‘third eye’ is the parietal organ, a specialized organ that is well developed in reptiles, birds, and fish. It is a light sensitive — or photosensitive — structure located on the top of the head, and it is often associated with the pineal gland in these animals.
Its role in animals is to monitor light levels dur ing the day, allowing other parts of the brain to regulate the circadian rhythms — the internal biological clock — in these animals. The parietal eye can detect changes in light and dark cycles and help the animal adjust its behavior accord ingly. In some reptiles, the eye is also thought to be involved in the ability to regulate body temperature.
It seems that this structure is not cur rently present in humans, since we did not evolve from animals with the parietal eye. Our evolutionary history diverged from that of animals that possess this structure approximately 325 million years ago. Since the
parietal eye’s functions, namely regulating circadian rhythms and thermoregulation, were not essential for our survival, other sensory organs, such as the eyes and skin, took over these functions in humans.
But the parietal eye did not just disappear from us. People who are blind can still regulate their sleep-wake cycles by light and darkness cues. How is this possible?
On March 7, 2023, the Sandra Rotman Centre for Health Sector Strategy at U of T hosted a panel titled “Digital Health and Primary Care.” The panel focused on how primary care delivery is evolving in Canada and around the world due to the implementation of virtual health.
A lack of human resources
Dr. Payal Agarwal, a family physician at Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and Innovation Fellow at the WCH Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care was the first panellist. She explained that a significant challenge in primary care is the lack of human resources, which can be mainly attributed to burnout as a result of poor systems in place. Digital systems are becoming essential, as two million people in Ontario do not have primary care providers, and digital solutions could address that deficit.
Primary care consists of three key elements: access, teams, and relationships — all of which technology is capable of facilitating and enhancing. To solve a number of issues faced by the health-care system, Agarwal suggested implementing ongoing multi-modal communication between care providers and patients. She stressed the importance of making the patient an active member involved in their care and comfortable with their health record. She also stressed the importance of moving toward teams and removing workload of primary care providers to improve efficiency. Finally, she stated that while it is important to invest in new technology, it is as important to invest in the infrastructure for success.
The second panellist was Dr. Jonathan Fitzsimon, a family physician and the medical lead for the Renfrew County Virtual Triage and Assessment Centre and the Renfrew County Integrated Virtual
Care. Renfrew County, explained Dr. Fitzsimon, is the largest county in Ontario and consists of a population that is older, at a socioeconomic disadvantage, and has a higher rate on average of chronic disease. There is also double the average number of individuals without a family doctor, and the county lacks walk-in clinics and urgent care centers, evidently resulting in a heavy reliance on emergency departments. It was the COVID-19 pandemic that forced change, as they could no longer use one single center to diagnose and care for patients.
To solve this issue without massive infrastructure upheaval, Fitzsimon presented a new model for primary care departments that takes advantage of digital solutions. The model showed how, first, patients would call the Renfrew County Virtual Triage and Medical Center, where they would speak to a receptionist and undergo triage, followed by registration and an appointment booking. Patients would then have a clinician assessment that might lead to treatment, escalation, or transfer to emergency departments.
The county decided to take this further in order to reduce isolation within their population by offering virtual care, including appointments by video chat. It was this hybrid project that has combined virtual with in person care, the collaboration between family doctors and paramedics and in the clinic versus at home, reducing the issues surrounding access. This hybrid project benefitted nearly 2,500 patients, providing preventative care to patients who never had the opportunity before.
Zayna Khayat, the third panellist, is the vice president at Teladoc Health and a health futurist at Deloitte Canada. While the main element of primary care in Canada is diagnostics and treatment, she argued that there should also be a focus on prevention, referrals and coordinating follow ups, and monitoring once you have been diagnosed and treated. A virtual model implemented by
photopigment called melanopsin that is responsive to blue light, and they regulate circadian rhythms in humans. Melanopsin allows ipRGCs to respond to light in the absence of input from rods and cones, the other two types of photoreceptor cells in the retina that make up regular vision. “We hypothesize that the parietal eye contains photoreceptor cells that are the evolutionary precursor of rod and cone cells,” says Thomas
absence of light and help regulate the body's circadian rhythms and sleep-wake cycle. The pineal gland, known for secreting the sleep hormone melatonin, is closely associated with the parietal eye. The absence of the parietal eye in reptiles seems to shrink the pineal body, as well as cause changes in behavior and activity cycles. Memory is a brain capacity that could be altered by such an absence of the parietal eye. Although the exact mechanism of the relation is unclear, there is some evidence to suggest that the parietal eye in reptiles may be involved in spatial memory. For example, studies have shown that lizards with a functional parietal eye have better spatial learning and memory than those without one. The parietal eye essentially helps to maintain an internal map of the environment, which is necessary for spatial navigation. Another theory is that the parietal eye provides additional sensory input that can help reptiles form more accurate spaInterestingly enough, scientists who traced back to our pre-mammalian ancestors found that these animals did, in fact, have the third eye. The structure is hypothesized to have disappeared approximately 246 million years ago. While humans do not have a physical parietal eye, as reptiles do, we still retain its functionality, and the concept of the third eye has become adopted in spiritual and metaphysical contexts as a symbol of higher consciousness and spiritual aware-
some practices in the United States focuses on all four elements of primary care to decrease the need for diagnostics and treatment.
She subsequently spoke on how the referrals system in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has improved. Through connecting general practitioners directly with specialists, they are able to communicate quickly before referring a patient that might not even need to see that specialist.
This has improved the workload of specialists, as they are only getting patients referred that they are actually qualified to treat or that they can actually help.
By focusing on individuals who have low access to health care, Khayat believes we can learn more about the inefficiencies in our current systems. The advantage to trying to solve the issue of individuals who have no access to health care is that it is a fresh start where program implementation is concerned, and there aren’t any old behaviours that need to be unlearned or problems that need to be rectified.
Finally, Micheline Wiebe, the Chief Virtual Health Officer for the British Columbia Health Services Authority, spoke about the situation in British Columbia (BC) in terms of virtual health care. One of the biggest challenges to healthcare access in BC is the landscape, with mountains and oceans isolating communities from primary care centers. During the pandemic, the number of virtual health-
care appointments rose from 62,000 in 2019 to 13.2 million.
Real-time virtual support pathways
Wiebe also discussed a major digital health initiative being carried out in BC: Emergency Health Services, which offers virtual services such as check-ins, visits with care providers, and help for patients to take care of themselves. Another example is Real-Time Virtual Support Pathways, which was facilitated by the rural coordination center of BC. This initiative focuses on reaching out to communities and continuously offering support to rural healthcare providers, instead of relying on more traditional models where rural communities reach out to urbanized health care facilities when needed. It provides support to rural health care providers, creates good collaboration between the virtual providers in urban or regional areas with the rural care providers, and is offered in all the specialty services. This has reduced isolation and enhanced retention in the rural community in BC.
It was incredibly insightful to learn about what solutions are being implemented to change the structural issues of virtual health care. It is motivating to see how these programs have not only improved access to virtual health care, but health care in general in terms of prevention, access to healthcare, and empowering physicians in isolated areas.
From jokes about high cold tolerance to a cultlike reverence for hockey, a Canada without cold temperatures seems inconceivable. In a country that is deeply connected to its snowy winters, the climate crisis is having an irreversible influence that could alter winter landscapes forever. The snowy weather that Toronto has experienced in recent weeks might soon become an anomaly across Canada, because data from different sources shows the declining trends in the rates of snow.
What is happening?
Environment Canada has been collecting data from weather stations going as far back as the
1970s. 90 per cent of the stations have seen a decline in the presence of at least one centimetre of snow on the ground, while 99 per cent of weather stations projected an increase in average winter temperatures. Toronto’s proximity to the great lakes impacts the snowfall rate, nonetheless, the number of days with temperatures above freezing has increased in spite of this microclimate. Halifax’s snow cover is also worsening, with on average a two-week decrease in the amount of snow cover.
Across Canadian cities, waking up to a snowy Christmas morning has become, on average, 13 per cent less likely. In the city of Toronto, the likelihood of a snowy holiday season between 1960 and 1984 was 56 per cent. Between 1997 and 2021, that rate dropped to 40 per cent — a whopping 16 per cent decline.
Since 1948, the average temperatures in Canada have increased by around 1.7 degrees per year Celsius and, in Northern Canada, the average annual temperature hike is around 2.3 degrees Celsius. According to a 2019 report commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada, the temperatures in the country are increasing twice as fast, on average, as in the rest of the globe. Winters are starting later and ending earlier, which is causing cascading economical, social, and environmental effects.
Scientists at Environment Canada teamed up for a 15-year-long study to translate the stats into a tangible number. They found that in the past 39 years, snowfall in both Canada and the United States has dropped by about 4.6 billion tonnes per year. That’s the equivalent of two million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Why is it happening?
Snow cover is the measurement of land with
snow on the ground. It is closely linked to air temperature, and is dependent on seasonal cycles and can vary each year. Scientists are interested in this measurement because low snow levels can increase the risk of wildfires and alter hydrological systems. To figure out how snow cover has changed, both short-term and long-term changes need to be taken into consideration.
Looking at short-term changes, we could note that this year has been particularly warm, with January — the coldest month of the year — being seven to eight degree Celsius warmer in areas like London, Ontario. Meteorologists have attributed this decline to a jet stream, an air current that acts as a barrier between the cold north winds from the warmer air in the Gulf of Mexico. Its pathway has been moving north this winter and prevented the northern winds from making their way across Ontario, thus bringing warmer temperatures.
The long-term observed trends meanwhile show a steady snow cover decline. If snow levels are consistently lower each year, it cannot be attributed to natural causes. A few outlying years are to be expected, but if data collected from around four decades shows a downward trend, then something must be amiss.
Unsurprisingly, the culprit for the consistent snow cover decline is climate warming. As temperatures increase, more water evaporates, which leads to more precipitation. But while this might usually fall as snow, warmer average temperatures mean that this precipitation now falls in other forms such as rain, sleet, or freezing rain. For Toronto, an area near a large lake, there is a chance that as Lake Ontario stays unfrozen for longer, more water will evaporate.
The past year saw the largest increase to date in the use of robotics across various sectors. From manufacturing to coffee shops, robotics has taken over an incredible number of jobs and tasks. North American companies ordered more than 40,000 robots over the past year, with sales totalling more than $2.38 billion, ranging from small, single-tasked robots with few mechanical parts to larger, more general purpose robots.
But this massive increase hasn’t been just due to advancements in robotics. In the past year, the use — and the power — of artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded in almost every sector, from education and health care to sports and banking. With programs like ChatGPT dominating headlines across the globe and others quietly improving the lives of millions, we have hit a point where AI has become incredibly valuable to modern society.
Combined with the incredible dynamic power and adaptability of AI, robots have been able to perform an array of tasks that they would not be able to before, and businesses across North America are paying attention.
Your car was built by a robot
Over half of all robot sales in the past year were in the automotive industry, with car companies purchasing an estimated 23,807 robots. These robots work in a number of functions across automotive factories and specialize in fast, repeatable actions involving the assembly of car parts.
In the past, many of these robots would have simply performed repetitive functions, like attaching one component of the car in a long line of parts, but a great number of newer robots use machine learning techniques and AI to do a variety of tasks and improve pre-existing processes.
One such process is computer vision. Computer vision is a subfield of AI that involves enabling a computer to understand the world around it and undertake more complex tasks. Robots can then use this vision to better adjust their movements and adapt more dynamically to their environment.
With robots that could only do repetitive motions, a small issue like a misaligned wheel nut on a car could have halted an entire production line, but with advances in computer vision, a robotic arm can notice the misalignment and adjust accordingly.
Outside the automotive world, one industry that purchased a sizable and surprising proportion of robots in the past year was the service sector — specifically, the restaurant industry. One company, for example, is working to develop AIenhanced robots that can cook meals autonomously. These robots are capable of automating essentially every part of the cooking process, from chopping vegetables and processing ingredients to cooking on a pan and plating a meal.
Without the advancements in AI, the idea of such a robot would have been nearly impossible. You might not think it, but there are an incredible number of variables your brain unconsciously ac-
People across Canada are dealing with the consequences of less snow. Due to consistently low snow and quicker melting times, the City of Montréal has decided to adopt a new payment method for contractors by making payments based on the quantity of snow removed, rather than by how much snow falls. From snow farming in an Albertan ski resort to using snow guns in Québec, people are doing what they can to ensure activities like skiing can continue.
Warmer winters are affecting agriculture as well. Because winter thaws are now more common, a layer of ice tends to form on top of snow when it rains, making farmers concerned about plants suffocating in ice.
But beyond us humans, nature is a timebound process. Delayed snowfall and increased evaporation as outlined above can impact the spawning time of fish, and decrease the amount of water available for use.
Snow is also Earth’s natural mirror. The Albedo effect is a process in which snow’s brightness reflects about 80 to 90 per cent of the sun’s rays. Without snow, the ground absorbs the sun’s rays, accelerating snowmelt even further. As the planet gets hotter, the best mechanism to protect against warming is also the most vulnerable to change.
Environment Canada estimates that snow cover will decrease by approximately 10 to 20 per cent by 2050. Actions, both individual and collective, are necessary to combat this downward trend. Snow is important to Canada but, more than that, it is needed for the planet. The cost of doing nothing would mean no winter wonderlands, no dashing through the snow — and a whole lot more ice, ice baby.
counts for when you cook. Simply carrying out a repetitive motion is often not enough to cook a meal to perfection, and there are changing situations that you constantly need to adapt to.
Beyond automation and services, robotics and AI are coming together in a number of ways. Robots are being used in harvesting and agri-
culture, in construction to monitor progress, and even to deliver food from restaurants in place of services like Uber Eats. With all these technologies booming, it is clear that we are at the tipping point of a whole new generation of robotics and AI, with the only practical limits being our imagination.
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Robots using AI in tasks are becoming increasingly prevalent across many industriesingly prevalent across industriesSahir Dhalla Science Editor
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