OCTOBER 26, 2020
THE VARSITY The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
Engineering TAs report inadequate compensation for training under online learning
“The inability to read lips and facial expressions further exacerbates threats to proper communication”
Two note spending more hours than expected by departments
Isabel Armiento
Engineering teaching assistants (TAs) at U of T have reported taking on additional work during the transition to online teaching this year without receiving adequate compensation. Reported additional work includes requiring TAs to complete training sessions or to adapt to new online platforms. The Varsity spoke to two engineering TAs about the challenges they’ve faced while teaching online courses, including working more hours. TAs report uncompensated training time Stacy*, a TA in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, wrote in an email to The Varsity that she was required to complete specific training modules, but was only compensated for a fraction of the time it took her to complete them. When Stacy reached out to her department informing them that she spent around 15 hours on the training modules, she received a response saying that the department would only pay for four hours of training. “I just don’t understand why they make such courses mandatory, but then say they will only pay you for 4 hours,” Stacy wrote. “It is not just me being slow either. I spoke to several other TAs who also claimed to have spent around the same number of hours completing all the training.” Julian*, who is also a TA in the engineering faculty, said in an interview with The Varsity that he also wasn’t compensated for all of the hours he spent completing his training. While he noted that compensation was proportionate for some of the training courses, he highlighted the time it took to complete the Quercus training, which included several different modules. “I definitely think the expectation that we could complete all of that in one hour and just get paid for one hour was a lot to ask because it was six plus hours, for some people maybe even more,” he said. Another issue was the transition to online learning and time spent becoming familiar with mandatory online teaching platforms, such as Blackboard Collaborate and Crowdmark. “These were pretty new to me and took a lot of time to figure out how to use,” Stacy wrote. “I had to read through the help pages written by the university and go through many of the ‘non-mandatory’ training modules on Quercus to learn how to navigate the sites.” “They did cover a little bit of that in the training,” Julian said. “But… I just had to go in myself and try it out and practice and read some of the manuals from the companies themselves, too.” “My biggest issue is not so much the amount of work,” Stacy wrote. “It is the fact that we will never be paid for all of the additional work that is required.” Stacy mentioned that she has put in 90 hours
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Business & Labour Hear from a Rotman �irst-year, and tips on navigating the program
of TA work since the start of the school year, but will only be compensated for 50 hours over the entire semester. Julian reported a similar experience. “I am… putting in way, way, way more hours than we’re getting paid for,” he said. However, he sees the extra time he’s spent working as an investment, when he hopes to teach this course again and reuse the lectures he’s spent his time preparing. “I probably won’t have to put much time in in future years.” “With this job, I knew that if I’m having to prepare all [of ] my own course materials, it’s just going to take a lot of time,” he added. Responses from U of T, CUPE 3902 In response to a question about how the university is ensuring that TAs are compensated for their work, a U of T spokesperson wrote that TAs are compensated based on the collective agreement with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3902 (CUPE 3902) Unit 1, “which sets out the terms and conditions of employment, including a commitment to provide compensation for all hours worked and any training that may be required.” “Teaching Assistants make very important contributions to a wide range of academic programs at the University of Toronto and we appreciate their contributions,” they added. The spokesperson also noted that many TAs have completed the training on online teaching offered by the university. “More than 4,300 people participated in 60 webinars focused specifically on online teaching, and more than 1,300 people participated in online modules focused on a range of teaching-related topics,” they wrote. Amy Conwell — chair of CUPE 3902, the union that represents contract academic workers at U of T, including TAs — wrote to The Varsity that “It’s a lot of work to shift a course from one delivery mode to another, and even more so when you have no time to prepare.” “Inevitably, TAs… performed many extra hours of work learning to shift their work online, in many cases without adequate ergonomic set-ups for their short and long term and health and in some cases without the infrastructure necessary to perform work remotely,” Conwell wrote. Conwell added that, in May, CUPE 3902 presented the university with a letter of understanding that asked U of T to commit to allocating equal or more TA hours for an online course as would have been allocated if the course had been taught in person. Another point in the letter of understanding was a request for a fund that could be used to support any additional costs incurred by working remotely. According to Conwell, members, including TAs, “have had to lean on their collective agreement rights to request paid training and grieve.”
Vol. CXLI, No. 7
How Deaf students navigate the university during COVID-19 Read on p. 3
*Names changed due to fear of retribution.
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Comment
U of T needs to step up its policies for accommodation
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Feature
Reviewing mental health services during the pandemic
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Arts & Culture
Science
Bringing Parkdale to podcast in a Torontomade horror series
Your brain on meditation, a U of Ta�iliated study
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Sports
BIPOC Varsity Association on reforming U of T athletics
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Faculty of Information students release report calling for diversity in course content, mandatory equity training
Dean Wendy Duff advocates for more “holistic” approach to change
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In September, the Diversity Working Group (DWG) — a network of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) and ally students and alumni in the Faculty of Information — released a report outlining the results of a survey on equity and diversity within the faculty. The survey aimed to evaluate the experiences of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ students, as well as students who are disabled. The results show that many Faculty of Information community members are unsatisfied with the representation of marginalized groups in course content, the lack of appropriate conversations on marginalized communities, and a lack of equity and diversity training. The report includes a list of goals in the short, medium, and long term to eliminate the “culture of white supremacy” at the faculty and make it more inclusive. Survey results and report demands Survey questions pertained to class content, discussion facilitation, diversity training, and overall experience and suggestions. It was completed by 130 respondents, 51.2 per cent of whom identified as white. Among the respondents, the most represented programs were the User Experience Design program, then the Library & Information Sciences program, followed by the Archives and Records Management and Master of Museum Studies programs. The results showed that many students want more diverse content to be taught, with 52 per cent agreeing that the status quo is insufficient. They also wanted to avoid “token weeks” — specific weeks dedicated to certain topics that are not discussed in the rest of the class — by both creating new classes to address content on marginalized communities and integrating it into current classes. Students noted that it was important for them to learn about marginalized communities since they would be serving a diverse population in the public sphere. Courses on user accessibility, systemic racism in technology and media, diverse LGBTQ+ perspectives, and mental health were suggested by the report as steps toward achieving more inclusivity. Moreover, only 27 per cent of respondents reported feeling supported by staff, and less than one per cent were confident in how discussions on marginalized communities were facilitated. Some also recounted experiences of racism, homophobia, and ableism in their classes. Without discussions and training on equity and diversity, some students reported feeling unprepared for the workplace. Alongside training, the need for a more diverse faculty and admissions process were also heavily emphasized by students. The report’s demands include the institution of paid notetakers; mandatory recordings of all classes;
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the elimination of municipal and campus police involvement in crisis and safety intervention; and mandatory cultural competency training for faculty, staff, and students. Conflicts and cooperation between students and faculty In June, Faculty of Information Dean Wendy Duff hired three research assistants to investigate inclusivity initiatives at the faculty. The report claims that when they asked her to release a statement in solidarity with the Black community, she refused to do so and responded with an “all lives matter sentiment,” even when told it was inherently anti-Black. Duff eventually released a statement condemning anti-Black racism that same month and, when contacted by The Varsity, a spokesperson noted that she has “a different understanding of the events in question.” However, the DWG and several other groups were unsatisfied with the “disingenuous statement and the general lack of action” by the faculty. Following the June statement, many student groups at the Faculty of Information organized the survey and released a petition outlining more pressing issues, which had 557 signatures as of August. In an email to The Varsity, Dominica Tang, an author of the report, wrote that while the faculty had taken some steps to fulfill demands, “The Dean and senior management were apprehensive to write up an action plan for the organizational level of the ischool, which speaks volumes about where the faculty of information stands.” Jace Harrison, another author of the report and a member of the DWG, took a more grim view of communication between students and faculty. “We have asked that the faculty update students on progress regarding our initial, and updated, asks/recom-
mendations. But, we have been repeatedly told to wait and see what the response will be. Or, that things are more complicated than we understand,” Harrison wrote in an email to The Varsity. Both the report and Harrison also point out the emotional burden put on students to continuously push for change. “It really shocks me when white faculty members tell us that we ‘need to understand that these changes take time,’ and that they ‘already have a large workload,’ [or] that they’ve already gone to one training session and are suddenly woke,” wrote Harrison. “I think that we know more about patience, and reluctantly taking on labour, than a lot of white faculty will ever know.” Changes within the faculty Initiatives that the faculty has instituted include creating a scholarship for Black and Indigenous students; creating a staff position for a diversity, equity, and inclusion officer; and hiring more students to work on diversity and equity issues. Duff also sent an email to all Faculty of Information students thanking them for conducting the survey, analyzing the results, and providing feedback. In response to a question on how the faculty will institute change, Duff argued that the problem was structural and that it would take more than changing reading lists to solve it. “As much as I acknowledge and appreciate the work the students have done… my approach is more holistic and involves looking at curricula, content integration, and culturally responsive pedagogy as a whole,” she wrote. She added that an expectation of perfection should not become a barrier to creating a more inclusive environment. “That this will be a long and arduous process and not a quick fix is no doubt frustrating to some, but changing structures that have been in place for decades takes time,” concluded Duff.
Innis College to be expanded, renovated over three years
Proposal to add more student-focused spaces, promoting accessibility, well-being Cedric Jiang Varsity Staff
Innis College will be renovating and expanding upon its main building in the next three years, adding extra space for students and community members. Planning on the project started in 2018 and has progressed through a series of consultations with students, faculty, and staff. The Innis College building, initially designed for 800 students, is now serving over 2,000 as the college has grown. According to Innis student Didier Ha, lead student ambassador for the expansion, the lack of adequate space is limiting students’ access to services, groups, and collaboration opportunities. “Our college newspaper, The Herald; Innis College Student Society, and the commuter lounge are in obscure [parts] of the college… these spaces are
quite small and unfit for the work and purposes thereof,” wrote Ha in an email to The Varsity. The project, designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects, consists of a three-storey addition to the west wing of the current Innis College building. The new structure will house offices, an expanded Innis Café, and more student-focused spaces — including classrooms, the student learning hub, and meeting and gathering spaces. Innis College is attempting to raise $10 million to fund the project. The new learning centre included in the expansion will provide students with a variety of accessible spaces for both individual work and collaboration. Featuring expansive windows and green spaces, the project will promote the indoor and outdoor connection and, according to Ha, could create a more dynamic space for students. “By having more social spaces that take advan-
tage of the greenery around the college, the hope is that students feel like the college is a place to study and socialize comfortably,” wrote Ha. Ha also expressed his hope that this project will contribute to improving community-building. “Innis has a great sense [of ] community and lovable culture,” he wrote. “By expanding the physical space, the project inevitably expands that community and culture.” The construction is expected to be completed by 2023. A U of T spokesperson wrote that the university will minimize the impact as much as possible by communicating closely with students to plan for any disruptions. There are preliminary talks to temporarily move affected student groups and activities to alternative spaces. “Students will have greater accessibility to services and study spaces: working together, studying together, and [creating] more together,” wrote Ha.
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OCTOBER 26, 2020
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How Deaf students are navigating university during COVID-19 Mixed responses as U of T offers transparent masks, interpreters, closed captioning
Lauren Alexander Deputy News Editor
As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the country, the practice of wearing face masks has become increasingly widespread, with evidence showing that masks are among the most effective ways of curbing the spread of the virus. However, students who are deaf and hard of hearing, who may rely on the use of American Sign Language (ASL) translation and lipreading in their daily lives, face unique challenges when navigating the university during the pandemic. Though U of T is working to offer accommodations for these students, including by offering transparent masks and closed captioning for lectures, these practices are still not widespread. Experiences of Deaf students with online learning In an email to The Varsity, Alex Lu, a PhD candidate in computer science, described his experiences as a Deaf student during the pandemic. Lu relies mostly on ASL interpretation for courses and lipreading during daily interactions.
ASL interpretation has been moved online along with most U of T courses, where students in need of translation can pin the interpreter on a Zoom call. According to a U of T spokesperson, students are increasingly asking for other services, such as closed captioning for online lectures and tutorials. The accessibility office offers real-time captioning services for remote learning through third-party vendors. Robarts Library’s accessibility office is also working to create “post-production captioning support” for media materials given out by professors, which may include podcasts or YouTube videos. U of T has also been working to provide nonmedical masks with clear plastic panels “where needed” to students and instructors in courses with a Deaf student who may rely on lipreading for everyday communication. They work with those who may require these accommodations on an individual basis. The plastic panels allow people who rely on lipreading for communication to see someone’s lips while they are talking, even though they are still wearing a mask. However, according to Lu, these accommoda-
Masks with a plastic cutout are more accessible. COURTESY OF ALEX LU
tions are often not as clear cut as they may seem. “A lot of remote video software is not designed for us, especially in larger groups. For example, Zoom videos will focus on whoever’s speaking orally, but there’s no similar mechanism for signers. Bandwidth issues affect us more - whereas audio might not be broken up, videos can stutter and cause us to miss parts of what’s being said,” wrote Lu. In an email to The Varsity, Alexandra McLean, Vice-President Equity for the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU), who is a deaf student with cochlear implants, criticized the university’s accessibility services for what she described as a “lack of communication” with students. McLean’s main mode of communication is verbal, though she criticized the university for not providing transparent masks more widely. “In the one in-person [class] I had before classes were moved online, everyone wore non-transparent face masks, making it significantly [more] difficult to understand anyone in the room,” she wrote. “For the Deaf/deaf and Hard of Hearing community, the inability to read lips and facial expressions further exacerbates threats to proper communication,” wrote McLean. McLean’s primary accommodations include notetaking and closed captioning for online courses, though she added that Blackboard Collaborate, a popular medium for online courses, does not offer automated closed captioning directly through the service, and there is no standard for how these should be added. She noted that recording of online courses is also essential for accessibility. “One of the main challenges is asking for these accommodations when they haven’t been standardized across all learning platforms,” she wrote. She added that the provision that students provide documentation of a disability in order to receive accommodations is a barrier for many. She described courses during the pandemic as a “double-edged sword,” as most in-person classes did not provide clear face masks, and online courses further “inequities that continue to
persist in the university” for students who require accommodations. Deaf culture, day-to-day life Lu wrote not only about the difficulties of navigating university and daily life during the pandemic, but also about how interaction within the Deaf community has fared. Specifically, Lu discussed issues with signing over Zoom and through masks due to facial cues that are a part of ASL, explaining that many members of the Deaf community prefer to meet in person for these reasons. Lu is part of a scientific committee at a Deaf academic conference, which was postponed rather than moved online this year to accommodate the cultural preferences within the Deaf community. Lu identified “Zoom fatigue” as one area in which Deaf people may have an advantage. “We have more experience in paying attention to non-verbal cues, so while hearing people have to suddenly work harder to capture these cues in Zoom meetings, Deaf people have been doing this as a routine part of our lives daily already. So we’ve built up the stamina it takes to navigate an online video-chat world better,” wrote Lu. Lu also discussed the difficulties of wearing masks in daily life. “While I book interpreters for academic meetings, and other important meetings like medical appointments, I generally don’t have an interpreter for day-to-day interactions, like at coffee shops, or talking to colleagues in the hallway,” wrote Lu. He wrote that although he is often able to guess at what he is being asked in common social interactions, if they “go off-script,” he has few ways of navigating. “Hearing people mostly don’t have strategies other than repeating themselves over and over again when they are not understood,” wrote Lu. He suggested some more effective ways for hearing people to navigate these situations, such as using gestures or writing things down, though he said that people are sometimes not understanding or patient when he requests these accommodations. “Transparent masks do help, however,” he added.
UTSC Academic Affairs Committee discusses future course offerings at October meeting
Transition to online learning, enrolment updates reviewed Alexa DiFranesco UTSC Bureau Chief
The University of Toronto Scarborough Academic Affairs Committee (ACC) held its second meeting of the year on October 22. Members discussed future curriculum offerings, an assessment of UTSC’s transition to online teaching, and a comparison of enrolment and staffing from the 2019–2020 academic year. The meeting began with reports from members of the executive team, who explained their respective duties and upcoming plans for the school year. Curriculum offerings Katherine Larson, Vice-Dean of Teaching, Learning and Undergraduate Programs, began the meeting by talking about upcoming course offerings at UTSC. Larson noted that “a number of programs are at various stages of development,” including a joint program with Centennial College in music business and technology, majors in public law and environmental chemistry, and a certificate in sustainability. Larson also shared that UTSC is “in the very early stages on the development of a potential certificate in queer studies.”
Following Larson’s speech, the ACC debated potential modifications to existing undergraduate classes for winter 2021. Several departments will be introducing new course offerings, including ENGC20 — The Antihero in Literature and Film, MGEC45 — Sports Data, Analysis and Economics, SOCB40 — Thinking Like a Sociologist, and SOCD13 — Sociology of Finance. Finally, the health studies program introduced two new courses: HLTB31 — Current Issues in Health II: Synergies Among Science, Policy, and Action and HLTB44 — Introduction to Pathophysiology and The Etiology of Diseases. Transition to online courses With regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, VicePrincipal Academic & Dean William Gough called the October 2 transition “seamless,” noting that “all elements already had an online equivalent.” Regarding the winter and summer 2021 sessions, Gough mentioned that UTSC’s offerings “will look much the same as fall.” Gough described UTSC as returning to a mode of operation that is similar to that of the summer. He mentioned “check-in points” at the entrance of Bladen Wing for students needing to access
The UTSC Academic Affairs Committee held its second meeting of the year.
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UTSC’s library and computer rooms. Gough also commented that UTSC is “monitoring who is coming to campus to ensure contact tracing is possible.” Starting next Monday, “all those coming to campus are now required to do UCheck,” an online portal which asks users to answer a series of questions to evaluate their risk for COVID-19. Gough noted that more details would be revealed soon. Enrolment and staffing updates According to Gough, UTSC has 252 more students enrolled than it did last year. Though Gough reported that there are less domestic students than last year, he notes that UTSC’s retention rates con-
tinue to improve. He also informed the committee that 140 students are still living in residence, and between 50–100 students continue to visit campus daily. With regard to faculty, according to Gough, UTSC has 26 faculty openings for “half new positions and the remainder replacement positions.” He elaborated that the campus is proposing funds to ensure that its hiring is inclusive, “especially for groups that have been historically and systematically excluded from academia.” Karen McCrindle, Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning, briefly noted that UTSC has increased the staff within the Centre for Teaching and Learning.
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CAUT begins censure process against Medical community members U of T over IHRP hiring controversy call on U of T to invest Temerty Concerns raised about external donation in eco-friendly industries reviewer Professor Bonnie Patterson Marta Anielska Associate News Editor
On October 15, the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ (CAUT) Executive Committee voted in favour of a censure against U of T in response to a hiring controversy at the Faculty of Law. The decision came after U of T announced its widely criticized “impartial review.” Concerns have also been raised about the appointed reviewer due to her reported involvement in a different controversy surrounding academic freedom in 2001. The controversy surrounds an alleged offer that the Faculty of Law made to scholar Valentina Azarova for the position of director of the International Human Rights Program (IHRP). The faculty then allegedly rescinded the offer due to external pressure from a donor, who is believed to be Justice David Spiro, a member of the Tax Court of Canada, a U of T alum, and a donor to the university. The Dean of the Faculty of Law Edward Iaccobucci has denied that an offer was made to Azarova or that there was any interference in the hiring process. CAUT censure CAUT, which has begun the censure process against U of T, represents over 70,000 faculty and staff at universities across Canada. While the censure has already been voted on by the Executive Committee, it still must be ratified in a council meeting in November. In an email to The Varsity, Lisa Keller, CAUT’s Communications Officer, wrote that “it is extremely unlikely that the Council will not vote to ratify.” If approved, U of T would have six months to enact the CAUT’s demands before the censure would go into effect. CAUT censures are extremely rare, with the last one having occurred in 2008. This is in part because the consequences are fairly severe. The CAUT will stop spreading job listings from any censured institution, widely publicize any dispute, and encourage other institutions to commit to similar measures. Moreover, it will ask for its members to take on more general actions. “What it amounts to… is effectively a boycott by all 70,000 plus members to not accept appointments, not accept invitations to speak or participate in conferences, and not to accept any honour from U of T,” Vincent Wong, a member of the hiring committee for the Peter Robinson College principal position who resigned when the scandal broke, wrote in an email to The Varsity. He added that even 50 per cent of members complying “[could cause] massive damage for any educational institution of higher learning.” A former IHRP director, Samer Muscati, wrote that the censure will make U of T “an academic pariah” and that “its reputation… will suffer irreparably.” He claimed that this is the right action to take on the part of the CAUT, and that it’s encouraging to see an institution standing up for academic freedom.
“I hope [the censure] will convince the University of Toronto administration to do some soul searching that will lead to transparency and accountability over what happened.” Both Muscati and Wong agreed that the first steps to rectifying the situation were to create a truly transparent review process and to apologize and reinstate an offer of employment to Azarova. Muscati also wrote that if the university continues to obscure the situation, it will be an “opportunity lost” for a learning experience about the university hiring process. Criticism of review process for lack of impartiality, transparency U of T announced that it would be conducting a review of the controversy, led by former Trent University President and Professor Bonnie Patterson, on October 14. Since then, several people have made allegations against Patterson and questioned the review’s ability to be truly impartial. In a series of tweets, Louis Century, a U of T alum and associate at Goldblatt Partners, brought attention to Patterson’s reported involvement in a scandal in 2001. According to a CAUT report, during a controversy involving the closure of two historic colleges at Trent University, Patterson reprimanded Professor George Nader for speaking out against the closure of the colleges. Afterward, Nader was refused reappointment as principal of Peter Robinson College. Patterson then refused to participate in the CAUT’s review, which concluded that Nader’s academic freedom had been infringed upon. Wong wrote that, due to Patterson’s involvement in the previous scandal, to say that a review led by her would be impartial is a “true stretch of the imagination.” A statement written by Kelly Hannah-Moffat, Vice-President of Human Resources and Equity, claimed that Patterson’s “reputation as a wise and impartial academic colleague makes her ideal to conduct this impartial review.” Muscati also agreed the review is flawed because its director was chosen by Hannah-Moffat, who has already denied that the offer was ever made. Moreover, he noted that the full report will not be released to the public and that, consequently, administration officials will be able to choose what they disclose. In an email to The Varsity, a U of T spokesperson reasserted the university’s “confidence in the review [it has] launched” and assured that they are “committed to transparency and will release the report’s findings.” They justified not releasing the full report because of the “personal information” it may contain. Professor Emerita Rebecca Cook, Founder of the IHRP, will serve as interim director of the IHRP until another suitable candidate is found for the role, which has been vacant for over a year. Her role will be to outline future directions for the IHRP and share these possibilities with the next dean.
The CAUT has heavily criticized U of T’s review process for hiring controversy. MICHAEL PHOON/THEVARSITY
Petition calls for more transparency in investment process
Members of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine are pushing for fossil fuel divestment. UMAMA SIDDIQI/THEVARSITY
Khatchig Anteblian Associate News Editor
In the wake of the historic $250 million donation to the U of T Faculty of Medicine by the Temerty family, a petition was published on October 19 by a group of Canadian physicians calling for the Faculty of Medicine to keep funds from the donation away from the fossil fuel industry. The letter, addressed to the dean of the faculty, Trevor Young, not only calls for the use of the donation funds for investment in community projects, but also calls for divestment of any funds supporting the fossil fuel industry and committing to reallocating those funds by the year 2025. The $250 million donation more than doubled the amount of revenue from donations that U of T received in the 2018–2019 school year and is equivalent to 27 per cent of all that U of T spent on medical research from April 2018 to March 2019. “We recognize that the Temerty family’s gift has transformative potential for the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine,” the letter reads, also noting that the faculty “has a tremendous opportunity to ensure that this historic contribution is also used to improve the health and well-being of those beyond the walls of the University and generations in to the future.” Doctors from the Temerty Faculty of Medicine call for divestment Dr. Antonia Sappong, family physician and member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), and Dr. Colin SueChue-Lam, resident physician at U of T and also a member of CAPE, were two of the co-authors of the petition, which has received over 100 signatures from U of T faculty physicians, researchers, medical alumni, medical trainees, and other health workers. Sappong and Sue-Chue-Lam note that, as physicians, they have sworn an oath to do no harm, which they believe includes not harming the Earth. “Asking for divestment is a small way that we can call on our institutions to invest in a healthy, and livable future for all,” they wrote in an email to The Varsity. Sappong and Sue-Chue-Lam continued, “We, as physicians, recognize that we have a limited amount of time left to act to reduce the worst impacts of the climate crisis.” They also added that “the only way this shift is going to happen is if we make it socially unacceptable for individuals and institutions to continue to invest in the fossil fuel industry.” Lack of transparency in investment holdings In an interview with The Varsity, Paul Downes, a professor in the English department at U of T and a member of Divestment and Beyond, and Evelyn Austin, a member and coordinator at environmental group Leap U of T, stressed the need for transparency when it comes to U of T’s investment portfolio, specifically in reference to the massive donation from the Temertys. “We want far more transparency about where,
which companies, and which sectors are being invested in to generate these returns that then fund the initiatives,” said Downes, referring to initiatives outlined by U of T after receiving the Temerty donation. The issue, Downes and Austin agreed, is that U of T hires the U of T Asset Management Corporation (UTAM) to handle investments, and UTAM, in turn, hires individual investment managers. The result is what Downes calls a “manager of managers approach,” in which the individual investment managers don’t report exactly what they have invested in to UTAM. In turn, Downes noted, UTAM doesn’t report to the U of T administration, so U of T can’t report to the community. “As far as I’m concerned, they could be hiding all sorts of horrible investments from us as long as they’re not being transparent about exactly where the money is being invested,” Downes said. UTAM has committed to reducing the carbon intensity of its investment portfolios by 40 per cent by 2030. However, carbon intensity only measures the emissions per dollar spent, not total emissions, which many U of T community members have criticized. U of T also plans to reduce its total emissions by 37 per cent by 2030. Social and financial harm of investing in the fossil fuel industry Another issue that the letter addresses is the rights of Indigenous peoples. Austin believes that investing in fossil fuel extraction companies is akin to supporting the violation of the rights of Indigenous peoples and even violence against them. Austin also noted that extraction companies have a history of racism that leads to violence against Indigenous women. Additionally, Downes noted that “increasingly, investment managers are realizing that fossil fuels are not a good long-term investment,” highlighting that, besides the impacts on the environment, investments in fossil fuels also carry a financial risk. He said that the university should take note of the growing global recognition of the long-term risks of fossil fuel investments. “A university has to think about the long term,” Downes said. “We’re not just trying to make a quick profit.” Impact on the future Sappong and Sue-Chue-Lam believe that the climate crisis is urgent, and while they see that a lot of critical changes have to be made, they think that the petition is a small step that could have a big impact in the long run. They wrote, “This petition sends a signal to the public and to decision-makers at our institutions that, as healthcare professionals, we recognize the imminent threat of the climate crisis to human health, that we recognize that urgent action is needed to move away from fossil-fuels and other exploitative systems, and that we are committed to ensuring that our own institutions are not harming current and future generations.”
var.st/news
OCTOBER 26, 2020
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Students prefer synchronous lectures, have more social difficulty with online courses, UTSU survey finds Use of chat functions, dedicated question period in online classes appreciated
Hannah Carty News Editor
The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) released a report on students’ thoughts about online learning, covering topics from course delivery to mental health. The report was created out of the findings of a survey the UTSU conducted from August to September. In all, 272 students responded to the survey questions, half of whom were from the Faculty of Arts & Science. Most of the respondents were second-, third-, and fourth-year students. “The primary goal of this report is to provide feedback to administrators and instructors on how to improve online learning for students,” wrote UTSU Vice-President Public and University Affairs Tyler Riches to The Varsity. They elaborated that the report identified several problems students are facing in regard to online learning, notably that professors’ efforts to engage students with more, smaller assignments are often ineffective and makes it more difficult for students. The UTSU has sent the report to administrators, colleges, and deans. Course delivery Half of the students preferred live, synchronous lectures to recorded lectures, though one third of students preferred recorded ones. A
Students’ experiences during online learning The report also contained some general questions about student life during COVID-19, such as mental health and friendships. Of the students surveyed, 75 per cent of students found it difficult to make relationships with their classmates online. Less than seven per cent of students reported that making relationships online was easy, and 17 per cent had no opinion.
strong majority of students also preferred synchronous lectures to having to teach themselves the content with PowerPoint slides. A strong majority of students preferred to write their questions in an online class, whereas less than 10 per cent preferred to ask them verbally. Similarly, over 60 per cent preferred having a dedicated question period. Students also reported that they liked non-graded questions that kept them engaged with course material. Other aspects of online learning that a majority of students agreed
For group work, students were about equally split on whether they liked being set up in groups with other students, with over one third in favor of being split into groups and about one third against. The remaining 25 per cent were neutral. A small majority of 57 per cent of students reported that their productivity had decreased while doing online classes, though 23 per cent of students reported that their productivity had increased.
were helpful are instructors posting course content at the same time each week, keeping a well-organized Quercus page, and returning assignments in a timely manner. The majority of students were also happy with their ability to reach professors and TAs easily and were happy that office hours were well publicized. Lastly, the two most popular course administration platforms were Quercus and Blackboard Collaborate, with 98 and 93 per cent of respondents, respectively, reporting the use of each platform.
HANNAH CARTY/THEVARSITY
UTM Campus Affairs Committee discusses slight decrease in enrolment due to COVID-19 $12 million shortfall predicted due to impacts of pandemic
Hafsa Ahmed UTM Bureau Chief
The UTM Campus Affairs Committee had its second meeting of the 2020–2021 academic year on October 22. Alexandra Gillespie began the meeting with a presentation on UTM’s strategic priorities for this year. This was her first Campus Affairs Committee meeting since her beginning of term as vicepresident and principal at UTM in July. Gillespie discussed enrolment, faculty recruitment, research, UTM’s Capital Plan, and the implementation of UTM’s existing Academic Plan. UTM strategic priorities Gillespie discussed undergraduate enrolment for
2021–2022, outlining a drop in enrolment this year. New student enrolment is expected to decrease for fall 2020 by 351 students from the previously budgeted 3,842, comprising 295 domestic and 56 international students. Gillespie highlighted that these are estimated actuals, and noted that, “we may still see some fluctuation in terms of students’ decision to stay in [or] drop out of programs.” She also discussed faculty recruitment, which will involve 29 searches that are “in progress across all of the different disciplines at UTM.” She highlighted how shortlists are coming together, and that consultations are opening in regard to hiring in key areas, including medicinal chemistry, robotics, Indigenous studies, critical digital humanities, population health, and South Asian civilizations. With regard to re-
The UTM Campus Affairs Committee discussed enrolment numbers. HAYDEN MAK/THEVARSITY
search initiatives, Gillespie noted that the committee is looking to “promote UTM’s role in tri-campus strategic initiatives,” and to implement new strategies to increase UTM’s share of tri-council funding. Gillespie moved on to discuss UTM’s Capital Plan, and the development of its Campus Master Plan, which is redone once every 10 years and outlines initiatives for the physical campus space. “This is something that happens once a decade and it’s happening right now,” she said. UTM is moving into the consultation phase for the capital plan, where it will bring a draft strategic plan to community members for feedback. One of the projects Gillespie mentioned was a Student Services Commons, which would act as a “one-stopshop” for students seeking core services and accessibility services, such as counselling. Academic plan Vice-Principal Academic & Dean Amrita Daniere also talked about strategic priorities, such as the Academic Plan and the Draft Sustainability Strategic Plan, which has recently been completed and will undergo a community review before being finalized. Daniere highlighted the outreach and review processes the plan took with the UTM community. The sustainability plan will be finalized in the next few weeks and presented formally to the principal. A new program proposal by the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (ICCIT), called Coding and Society, is also in the works. The ICCIT also plans to move its digital enterprise program fully out of Sheridan College and into UTM. “This is an enormous proposal because there’s a lot of students in that program,” Daniere noted, highlighting that, while Sheridan has always been a fully engaged partner, the ICCIT director
and faculty felt the decision to move this program to UTM is in the best interest of students. Enrolment and budget Christine Capewell, Executive Director of Budgets, Planning, and Financing, presented details surrounding the impact of COVID-19 on UTM’s budgets. She highlighted a $7.2 million shortfall due to a decrease in undergraduate enrolment, noting that the impact of this year’s shortfall will be reflected in the 2021–2022 budget. However, she also explained that, due to the 2020 summer enrolment budget going substantially over target, there is some positive variance along with the negative decrease in enrolment. The overall impact on the budget for 2020–2021 is expected to be a loss of $12 million due to loss of revenue, scholarship costs, teaching costs, and COVID-19-related costs, such as personal protective equipment, signage, and quarantine costs. In order to reach a net impact of zero, UTM plans to utilize $11 million from its central budget savings and $1 million from delayed staff hires. The central budget savings are meant for unexpected events or costs, such as the impacts of COVID-19. Capewell also noted that residence and parking, which are not part of UTM’s operating budgets, have been “hit really hard in terms of revenue loss,” and as a result, parking cannot afford to repay its loan to the operating budget. Parking will likely need additional loans in order to operate in the current and following year, with repayment plausible in upcoming years, “depending on how quickly the parking revenue comes back.” The pandemic has also had a significant impact on ancillary budgets, which will be discussed in the next meeting.
Business
October 26, 2020 var.st/business biz@thevarsity.ca
My five tips for Rotman Commerce first-years
A senior student reflects on lessons learned
My five weeks as a Rotman Commerce first-year
A first-year student reflects on the difficulty in learning lessons online Andrew Yang Ki Varsity Contributor
When I walked out of my grade 12 history class in March, I thought I would be back in class in two weeks — I did not expect that to be the last time I would ever step foot in my classroom. The fully online end of high school was extremely jarring for me and did not help the anxiety I felt about my upcoming first year at U of T Rotman Commerce. While I wasn’t sure then what to expect from a fully online business school, I must admit that the reality has often been disappointing.
REBECA MOYA/THE
Atbin Jahandideh Varsity Contributor
Where did all the time go? I remember my first day as a Rotman Commerce student: waiting outside Isabel Bader Theatre, surrounded by all those awkward and excited faces. If only I could go back to that day and advise 18-year-old me. Without time travel, the next best thing would be to give that advice to the next generation of Rotman Commerce students. My first days at U of T are gone, but the memories — and lessons learned — remain. No fear econ Economics is hard! To tell you the truth, it won’t get easier. If you’re planning on pursuing a finance and economics specialist, you’ll have to embrace suffering. In my opinion, aspiring accounting specialists and management specialists have it a bit easier. Unfortunately, there is no escape. ECO101 — Principles of Microeconomics will test your ability, and ECO204 — Microeconomic Theory and Applications (for Commerce) will test your soul. Both courses involve a theoretical understanding of commerce. ECO204 will dive deeper into the theoretical, and ECO220 — Introduction to Data Analysis and Applied Econometrics will dive deeper into the practical. Many of the tools you learn in these courses will be applied again in 300- and 400-level Rotman and economics courses. Don’t be disheartened — there is hope! Office hours and the Economics Study Centre (ESC) are the open secrets to success. While often overlooked as being unhelpful, office hours allow you to gain a better grasp of course content. Likewise, the tutors at the ESC are there to answer technical questions. Electives are a gift Learn something new! Learn Hungarian, Swahili, Python, or medieval art history. What are you interested in? Follow your curiosities and let your passions guide you. Learning something new will give you an edge when you’re job hunting. Having a non-Rotman or economics course may appear distracting, but studying something outside of the unending gruels of profits and margins is refreshing. Fulfill your breadth requirements and remember that you always have the blessed option to credit/no credit. As for Rotman electives, take courses in the areas that interest you. Every year, the academic unit offers special topic courses that are meant to diversify the traditional scope. For your upper-year
economics elective, try an econometrics course if ECO220 was to your liking. Regression analysis will be used in many mandatory Rotman courses, and having an enriched grasp will be an advantage. No such thing as a bird course Forget about it — there is no such thing as a ‘easy A.’ Every course is difficult, just to different extents. That human resources course might be easier than that game theory course, but if you’re not willing to attend your lectures, do your readings, and study eight to 10 hours per week, you’re not going to be successful. When a course is labelled a ‘bird course,’ it creates a false sense of security that becomes detrimental. You’re better off taking the course that you find interesting and intellectually stimulating over taking a ‘bird course’ that doesn’t interest you. The myth of the 4.0 Everyone has heard stories of someone who knew someone who knew a guy whose sister had a 4.0 GPA — war stories we tell each other to fill our hearts with hope. The smartest person I ever met was a finance and economics specialist with a 92 per cent average and a 3.98 GPA. Earning similar grades is not impossible — but it is improbable. U of T is harder than other universities and employers know this. To graduate with “High Distinction” printed on your diploma, you will need over a 3.5 GPA or higher. For “Distinction,” you will need a 3.2–3.49. A 3.2 may seem low to those studying outside of U of T, but there is a reason why it deserves merit. U of T is difficult, and a B+ is considered a great mark. Several students graduate every year with a Bachelor of Commerce without any form of distinction and still land great jobs with top employers. Is Rotman for you? Hopefully during these unprecedented times you were able to do some soul searching. A lot of my friends switched programs and schools. There is no shame if it just isn’t for you. The whole point of university is self-discovery — and graduating with High Distinction, of course. No one enters U of T and leaves as the same person. You’ll discover new interests, new passions, new opportunities, and new thoughts that would have been foreign to you four years ago. If this program is for you, then you will find a way to get through it, earning the skills and pride that comes with a Bachelor of Commerce from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Missed connections The importance of in-person events to business education should not be understated. Rotman Commerce students would usually have a plethora of extracurricular networking meetups to attend, alongside in-class events featuring experienced businesspeople. While there are now accommodations for virtual networking events, nothing is as motivating as meeting new people or learning from accomplished speakers in person. Until the future, when everyone is healthy and back in business, it will be difficult to persevere while everything seems out of reach and arduous. I’m not the only one who feels this as well. “Online learning has cut down a lot of my productivity and motivation as well as on-campus opportunities,” wrote Laura Lin, another first-year Rotman Commerce student. Zoom and gloom My first lectures ever, a time I should’ve spent acclimatizing academically, were instead spent acclimatizing to a swath of technical issues. Connectivity issues with Blackboard Collaborate during the first lecture of RSM100 — Introduction to Management meant that the class pivoted to continue on Zoom. However, we soon discovered that our class numbers exceeded Zoom’s limit, forcing the instructor to have to juggle one lecture section split in half across the two platforms. This was eventually resolved three to four weeks in, but at that point, we had expended valuable educational time. This sort of negative technological experience is endemic to my semester so far. In MAT133 — Calculus and Linear Algebra for Commerce, problems with automatically distributing stu-
dents to breakout rooms in lecture meant that my instructor had to assign around 100 students to rooms individually. Outside of the ‘classroom,’ the group work that is essential to a good business education is exceedingly difficult when group members are spread across the world’s time zones — frequently with varying internet connection quality as well. Prying proctor problems Networking — and network connectivity issues — are not the only things that have changed during these unprecedented times. Given the nature of online testing, it was inevitable that something like ProctorU — an online service used to monitor students who are taking tests and exams — would have to be implemented to ensure academic integrity. RSM100 utilizes the service, and I find it to be the worst part of online learning. Lin echoed similar sentiments, writing, “I just don’t like the whole concept of [ProctorU]: having my webcam and audio recorded gives me MAJOR exam anxiety.” She also expressed privacy concerns, given that ProctorU requires users to provide government identification. Credit where it’s due As a business student, missing aspects of the Rotman Commerce experience leave me wanting more. Yet, I do appreciate the attempts to retain the spirit of the program, no matter how hard it is online. Despite many students disliking ProctorU, in my opinion, RSM100 has dealt with online learning well, making students work together for projects and bringing in guest lecturers with important wisdom. Our instructor, Professor Michael Khan, makes sure that the conversation goes two ways by emphasizing teacher-student dialogue — preventing himself from essentially becoming Khan Academy. I pictured my first year as a Rotman Commerce student differently, to say the least. My expectations included sitting in grand lecture halls, building my network face to face, and being prepared to study late into the night at Robarts Library. Months into the pandemic, classes are screen-to-screen and networking is harder than ever — but at least my late-night studies are in a comfier environment.
EVELYN HAYES/THE VARSITY
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October 26, 2020 var.st/comment comment@thevarsity.ca
The online transition must be more accessible, accommodating for students
Instructors should be better equipped to meet mental health needs Asma Unwala Varsity Contributor
As we combat another semester of online classes, the need for mental health resources is surging as a consequence of rigorous course structures and social isolation. U of T’s task force has unveiled Navi, a virtual chat assistant created in partnership with IBM that can aid students in finding the best resources for their mental health needs in a quick, user-friendly, and fully anonymous way. Other helpful resources are available for all students, including a multilingual app for counselling, My Student Support Program, and an online forum created in partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health meant to assist those struggling with mental health due to the added stress of COVID-19. Despite that, U of T fails to address one major shortfall: providing
professional development to instructors on mental health needs for their students, something especially necessary with the online class framework. Students, across different courses and programs, have expressed on social media platforms the strong link between increased workload and overwhelming stress. Many students feel overwhelmed from attending classes and completing the numerous quizzes and assignments across different platforms like Persuall, Quercus, Wiley, and TopHat. They feel that there is no time left for them to focus on their mental and physical health. It’s a sad reality as U of T’s extensive workload, due to competitiveness, results in social isolation leading to a lacking sense of community amongst students. Consequently, none of these new resources could be implemented impactfully, as students are overburdened with so many tasks to be completed on a
weekly basis. For students registered with Accessibility Services (AS), it gets tougher as accommodation needs can be compromised due to the online transition. As a registered student with AS, having many learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, it was essential for me to request accommodations within my courses. To my awe, one of my professors could not provide my accommodation of extra time on my homework assignments, as it was too difficult to change the system for one student. It got worse, as my accommodation for a heavily marked assignment in the same course was disregarded, followed by an announcement emphasizing that deadlines were firm for students with and without accessibility needs, and requests for extensions would be “ignored.” However, if it weren’t for my advisor at AS — Jennifer Kirk — I
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wouldn’t have understood the rights I have as an AS registered student. If you are a student registered with AS and require accommodations, you must reach out to your advisors. There are only a handful of instructors whose teaching approach focuses on student learning and not accountability. A takeaway from this is that U of T needs its mental health support policies to provide effective guidelines to professors on how to better accommodate their students. The implementation of new re-
sources is a sign that U of T is on the right path, but none of this is relevant, given these teaching approaches that are causing students to burn out and exhaust themselves. It’s crucial for U of T to focus on addressing students’ needs, in respect to changing circumstances, by being proactive to changing student demands and not just hearing us, but also listening to us. Asma Unwala is a second-year economics student at University College.
Where’s the colour? We need more diversity in our curricula Reviewing the problem in art history — and other programs
Sierra Peca Varsity Contributor
Throughout my years as a student at U of T — more specifically an art and art history student at UTM — I have found that professors have formulated curriculums that are based around Eurocentric views and do not incorporate different cultural experiences. If we examine the Art History program alone, we see major gaps in representation. For example, let’s look at the Baroque period, which occurred from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and which many art history classes focus on. What I’ve found disappointing is that I have only learned about what was happening in Europe during this time. I have absolutely no idea what art looked like in India, Ghana, and China during the Baroque period. To push this idea even further, African art as a whole is not represented fully in any art history course at U of T as of now. Not only are these courses limited to mainly European art, but they are also largely based on white artists. We don’t see a focus on talented nonwhite artists, even though they surely existed within Europe at the time. As students, we see paintings of white people by white artists on a daily basis. In my time in the art history program, I have only ever learned of one Black artist, Juan de Pareja, during the Baroque period, and his work was not the focus of discussion. Instead, we learned about his life as a slave in passing. This neglect enforces the idea that European art is the standard that should be admired, when in fact, the standard of art is all relative to what we have been taught. If we were to learn about art around the world,
without it being deemed lesser than or less skillful than European art, we would open students up to a rich history that could positively influence our own techniques and broaden our understanding of what makes art “good.” We would understand that there are many different artists that aren’t limited to the likes of Michelangelo and Caravaggio, ones that show students that art and artists don’t all look one way. The art faculty has tried in some ways to be more inclusive, but from what I’ve seen, it’s not yet enough. There has been an incorporation of Indigenous art history but nowhere near the extent needed for Indigenous culture to be fully represented in arts relating to the past and present. In European art classes, we break
down the study based on each period throughout history leading up to the present day. The same level of attention has not been shown to Indigenous art. The UTM Department of Visual Studies website has even addressed the current anti-Blackness and lack of diversity with promises to improve the curriculum in coming years. Although I am happy to see changes being made, this brings up two major concerns for me. First, how far is the school willing to go? Inclusivity to me does not mean a couple of courses that will satisfy the demand, but rather many courses that allow for a range of study of Black artists throughout different eras until the present day. Second, it makes me question why it
has taken so long for this to be recognized as an issue within the program and what changes need to be made so that the administration understands the importance of diversity in the arts. As much as I believe that this is an issue within our school, it is not solely on our professors to make this change. Many of my professors are open to critiques on inclusivity in our course and try to bring in topics of diversity when they can. At the end of the day, it is up to the university to make the alterations to the program. In my experience, for most of my classes outside of art, nearly every single one of my assigned readings is written by a white person, often a man. This means that the perspectives we are hearing do not represent a large portion of our student body. What
this once again does is generalize and perpetuate the notion that whiteness is the norm; that it represents the experiences of everyone, when in fact that is not true. Our campus is diverse, which is one of the reasons why it is amazing. This allows for cultural experiences to be shared among students outside of class, but unfortunately, the dialogue often ends there and is not communicated in the curriculum. It is important to remember that proper representation in curricula is more than just a kindness that some professors can choose to incorporate. It should be the standard of our education to receive well-rounded information that is not limited to one perspective; an education that doesn’t depict whiteness and European culture as the only perspectives that exist. There are so many voices to be heard, now and throughout history. It would be a disservice to those people to not give them the platform and opportunity to influence students in the same way that their white counterparts have had the privilege to do. The lack of expansion of course content is evidence of the education system’s anti-Black and colonial roots that must be overturned. Despite this, I am hopeful for our university’s future. I am hopeful to see future students gain information that will expand their thoughts and form important conversations. I am hopeful that they will be given the opportunity to learn things that past generations did not. Most of all, I am hopeful that I will be able to see these changes come into effect during my time at U of T. Sierra Peca is a third-year art, art history, and professional writing student at UTM.
A diverse curriculum is crucial to a holistic education. COURTESY OF MICK HAUPT/UNSPLASH
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Burnout is worse this year — U of T needs to address mental wellness Reviewing course structure, academic policies, health services Drishti Jalan Varsity Contributor
Burnout and undue stress are common features of life as a university student. Students balance jobs, family, and social lives along with several other commitments. Unfortunately, the pandemic and the resultant changes it has brought to everyone’s daily routines have worsened this burnout. New challenges To start with perhaps the most important contributing factor — academics — the pandemic brought with it unprecedented changes to delivery methods. Some professors have changed their syllabi and grading schemes to include shorter assignments spread out over the term — perhaps in an attempt to help keep students on track. I’ve found that, while the weighting of these numerous smaller assignments may be minimal compared to the larger assignments pre-pandemic, this means that students have to constantly study. Every week involves consistent work on our part as opposed to a large amount of work centred around fewer deadlines. This can be beneficial for some. Students can now stress less about the results of a few assignments that will largely dictate their entire grade.
On the other hand, this puts undue stress on the students who struggle to keep up week to week. Now, if you face a tough or busy couple of weeks and fall behind on schoolwork, you’ve potentially missed many assignments — with no chance of catching up. The online format has also exacerbated burnout in other ways. Some students are still completing the term from abroad. In their cases, burnout is bound to be more pronounced as attending lectures and tutorials in the middle of the night from a different time zone cannot be easy for anyone. On top of managing deadlines across two time zones, they must socialize with friends and peers completely online depending on the pandemic restrictions of their countries. The normal pick-me-ups and stress relieving activities that we would usually turn to during these times, such as hanging out with friends or participating in extracurricular activities, have unfortunately been restricted. No matter where they are situated on the globe, students are of-
ten confined to the physical spaces in their rooms as the recent shift to greater online delivery brings an end to face-to-face interactions for many. How U of T should respond While preventing burnout completely may not be possible, U of T should be committed to finding appropriate remedies. Burnout is always a concern
for students, but professors and the university administration should have done better to address the fact that this year is far from normal. For instance, professors should consult students as to what is realistic before setting their syllabi in stone. Our current system allows no institutional pathway to make our thoughts heard on a syllabus until the semester is over and course evaluations roll around. Professors need to actively solicit feedback from students and incorporate their suggestions meaningfully. Moreover, significant resources and pathways should exist for students to redistribute grade weightings, and a clear and standardized policy should be in place for students to make up missed assignments. Having no recourse to improve one’s grade demotivates students and forms a dangerous cycle wherein burnout causes more burnout as work piles up. When the pandemic started, several changes were made to academic policy such as extending credit/no credit (CR/NCR) deadlines. For many students, this semester is just as stressful and chaotic as the winter semester last year when the
pandemic first started to affect U of T. Clearly, there was a strong enough argument to allow students greater flexibility with CR/NCR then, so why does that argument no longer apply to this semester? Aside from changes to academic policy and course structure, the university needs to encourage participation in clubs and extracurricular activities, especially for first-year students who lack an established community on campus. But, perhaps most importantly, U of T needs to invest in mental health support. Providing new initiatives such as My Student Support Program and an online discussion forum is helpful and can be of great assistance for students with immediate needs. However, it leaves students who require long-term care in the dust. It looks like COVID-19 is here to stay, and unless things change, student burnout will also continue. In this scenario, U of T needs to step up in providing support through changes to course structures, academic policies, and mental health services. Our current circumstances are tough enough for students to deal with. U of T shouldn’t be actively contributing to the deterioration of our mental health as well. Drishti Jalan is a third-year political science and book and media studies student at Victoria College.
HANNAH FLEISCH/THEVARSITY
For reconciliation, classrooms should incorporate the land acknowledgement
Further awareness of Indigenous history, presence can go a long way Anira Mohsen Varsity Contributor
“
The North Borden Building is also U of T’s First Nations House for Indigenous Student Services, a support system not widely known. CAROLINE BELLAMY/THEVARSITY
We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. — University of Toronto Land Acknowledgement Protocol
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In recent years, U of T’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Steering Committee (TRCSC), its Indigenous Initiatives Annual Progress Report, and the Office of Indigenous Initiatives have pointed to important campus developments in the pursuit of reconciliation. The university has been successful in pursuing its published Calls to Action for reconciliation to some extent through naming buildings and, most interestingly, allowing the Indigenous practice of smudging for spiritual respect. By now, all of us are most likely familiar with the land acknowledgement protocol, with the purpose of honouring and respecting the traditional grounds belonging to the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. However, how much are students truly aware of U of T’s initiatives, the broad-
er historical context, and the significance of practices like the land acknowledgement? There is still much work to do with regard to increasing awareness, publicization, and normalization of Indigenous history and presence today. The two major groups that make up the student body are Canadian and international students — the former might be equipped with prior basic knowledge on Indigenous history and the latter likely needs an introduction to Canadian history. In order to facilitate more in-depth engagement with Indigenous history in Canada amongst all groups of students, the land acknowledgement should be more widely promoted. The first step to normalize the practice of acknowledging the land would be to integrate Indigenous history into as many courses as possible. This seems far-fetched since not all courses are applicable to Canadian history. But faculty and professors could begin
classes with the acknowledgement and also incorporate it into their syllabi — as often as the Academic Code is fortified. They could provide an overview of Indigenous history among other resources on class pages, right alongside course outlines and academic guides. This would encourage and enlighten many students to educate themselves further, embedding Indigenous history into the U of T community as a natural academic and moral reflex, as we do with academic and co-curricular matters. Although there are leaps and bounds to overcome to make amends with the Indigenous communities in Canada, the starting point should be a simple, necessary, and naturalized approach to spreading awareness — starting from the classroom — to encourage acknowledgement beyond that setting, too. Anira Mohsen is a third-year economics and political science student at UTM.
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OCTOBER 26, 2020
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There’s nothing wrong with doing all three degrees at U of T Staying here can lead to many opportunities, resources Ambika Maharaj Varsity Contributor
In a world in which a university degree is practically standard, what makes a person stand out? Many of us have been told that learning abroad is the answer, or at the very least, doing our degrees — graduate or doctoral — at different institutions. However, this may not always be feasible. Annual tuition for an international student getting a PhD at a UK university can be up to almost $23,000, and that doesn’t even include living costs. Doctoral programs in the US can average up to around $50,000 per year for international students. The fact of the matter is that most students simply cannot afford to study abroad, and those who can may not necessarily want to. According to the Times Higher Education’s global university employability rankings, U of T has been the top Canadian institution for employability for over six years straight. On the global scale, in 2019, U of T ranked 15th in the World University Rankings employability table, beating out institutions like John Hopkins University, Imperial College, and Dartmouth College. Many students who remained at U of T from undergraduate to PhD studies have landed elite positions in the global job market. One such case is Tony Liang, who studied electrical and computer engineering at U of T
from his undergraduate years all the way to his PhD and landed a job as an antenna engineer involved in designing satellites at SpaceX, a company founded by Elon Musk. With regard to international experience, employers do appreciate the expanded perspective it brings, along with the increased competency in individuals who have had to adapt to and navigate a new environment and culture. However, one does not necessarily need to leave U of T to acquire these skills. The University of Toronto offers opportunities for students to study abroad at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. U of T has partnered with top institutions all over the world — from universities in Australia to England to Hong Kong — to offer courses, research opportunities, international placements, and internships. Thus, even though we may be studying at U of T, we can also add an international learning experience to our résumés. In fact, Ontario Student Assistance Program funds can be maintained while studying abroad through U of T — even while completing an international internship. U of T also offers awards and scholarships to assist in funding a learning abroad experience. Finally, interviews with recruitment officials and acquisition heads actually show that some employers are not incredibly focused on where you get your degrees from. They are more interested in the skills you have
ISABELLA CESARI/THEVARSITY
to offer and whether you’d be a good ‘fit’ for their company culture. Most importantly, employers are interested in candidates who have experience and appear to be wellrounded. That is, what makes you most appealing to future employers isn’t whether you did your master’s and PhD at the same school — it’s whether you worked while doing it and were involved in extracurriculars.
This seems to be asking a lot of students who are swamped with coursework from four to five university courses in addition to the demands of day to day life. Luckily, U of T has over 1,000 clubs, groups, and student organizations to choose from, as well as a work-study program. This program is designed to schedule work hours around classes to cater to the busy lives of students.
Altogether, while it is ultimately your choice as to where you pursue your graduate degrees, there appears to be no detriment to staying at the University of Toronto. In fact, it seems to be a very smart choice. Ambika Maharaj is a third-year psychology, English, and Buddhism, mental health, and psychology student at Victoria College.
Op-ed: Combatting academic dishonesty cannot happen at the expense of privacy, equity
COVID-19 demands that we re-evaluate traditional approaches to assessment Amna Noor Varsity Contributor
Following the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Toronto was forced to close its three campuses and move to a virtual setting for an indefinite period of time on March 16. Students, faculty, and staff alike were handed the difficult task of finishing the semester through online learning. However, with the final exam period beginning just two weeks after, the faculty had little time to impose anti-cheating measures, resulting in what the CBC reports as a “perceived rise in cases of suspected cheating.” This raises the question: how important should academic honesty be with regard to online and at-home examinations? To answer the question, one should first discuss what academic honesty is and the purpose it serves. Traditionally, academic honesty refers to the notion of upholding utmost integrity and honesty in all the academic work one completes, no matter the circumstances. Without an academic code of conduct, there would be nothing to separate wrong from right in terms of classroom ethics and no standard to distinguish students’ level of knowledge. To combat this perceived rise in cases of academic dishonesty, some professors are taking extreme measures, such as forcing students to turn on their cameras for virtual proctoring. However, many students live in apartments and shared
housing, and turning on cameras not only infringes upon their privacy, but also the privacy of others around them. While academic dishonesty is unethical and should be addressed, it should never be combatted through means that are also unethical. Two wrongs cannot make a right. Another scheme some professors have adopted to fight against academic dishonesty is restricting the time allotted for final exams and not allowing students to go back to previous questions. This policy does not take into account the technical difficulties students might face. In enacting these policies, professors are assuming that students have equal access to high-speed internet when that is simply not the case, especially in rural areas. These are unreasonable expectations for students who are struggling to keep up with academic and other commitments during these uncertain, trying times. In light of the above points, one can conclude that the steps that faculty members have taken so far to address academic honesty are leaving students in vulnerable positions. Given the pressures on students to perform well academically, the onus of addressing cheating in an equitable way falls on the university’s shoulders. The pandemic has necessitated a shift in methods in many areas, and assessments should be considered another one of them. Exams were never really the best way to test students. I am sure that I’m not alone in expe-
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riencing that horrible feeling of remembering an answer right after walking out of an exam room. Some students also experience high levels of exam-related stress. The notion that exams are a good representation of one’s intellectual ability is questionable at best. A movement away from rote memorization and toward critical learning has been long overdue, and the pandemic may be a catalyst for just that. In an era of rapid change, universities need to produce leaders and not products of information regurgitation.
Literature reviews, short reading reflections, and group presentations are all excellent alternatives to traditional exams. Since these types of assignments require presenting an argument or a novel hypothesis, students have less of an opportunity to share answers with their peers or find them online. U of T is well within its right to expect honesty and ethical practices from its students. Indeed, academic dishonesty hurts students most of all by devaluing their hard work. However, if the answers to questions are readily available at an ex-
tremely competitive institution, it is not hard to imagine why students would resort to such measures. There is a need to redefine several traditional academic policies, now more than ever. Otherwise, we can expect to fight two pandemics: COVID-19 and compromised academic integrity. Amna Noor is a fourth-year human biology, cell and systems biology, and immunology student at Victoria College. Noor is the co-president of the Cell and Systems Biology Students’ Union.
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THE VARSITY
FEATURES
With U of T gone digital, how have mental health supports fared? Students discuss about phone therapy, privacy with online wellness resources Writer: Janine Alhadidi Illustrator/Photographer: Joseph Donato
COVID-19 has taken a toll on mental health worldwide. As people stay indoors and limit their social exposure, many report feeling the emotional strain of physical distancing. A recent poll conducted by the Angus Reid Institute showed that 50 per cent of surveyed Canadians experienced declining mental health during the pandemic, with stress and anxiety as the most common issues. Another poll by the Canadian Mental Health Association found that seven out of 10 Ontarians think a “serious mental health crisis” will follow the pandemic. The burdens that students carry are foregrounded by the perils of an unstable workforce, high rent costs, and a heavy workload. Without accessible mental health support at the university level, the mental health of students will suffer. At a time when students are meant to experience milestones such as graduation and job hunting, most of us are trying to stay afloat as we face challenges that perpetually put our physical and mental health at risk. The huge student body at U of T has a heightened demand for mental health services and resources in the stressful environment of COVID-19. U of T has offered a wide array of mental health resources during this pandemic through the health centres on its campuses. These resources include access to the My Student Support Program (My SSP) app that predated the pandemic and the introduction of Navi, an app that can connect users to different mental health resources at U of T or beyond the university. Newer developments this year include an online mental health support forum for students to share their experiences, which the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is partnered with and monitors, delivering advice to students on a case-bycase basis. Students can access this forum with their U of T email, and they are given the opportunity to use an anonymous username. As U of T’s mental health supports have transitioned to fully online platforms, The Varsity interviewed two students to ask them what they thought about the efficacy of some of U of T’s online mental health resources, as well as the Mental Health Policy Council (MHPC) on the role of student mental health advocacy during a pandemic.
Looking at U of T’s health and wellness centres Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, health and wellness centres at U of T’s three campuses have moved from in-person to virtual sessions, with services including counselling, psychotherapy, and various mental health assessments. The confluence of academic disruption, financial constraints, and isolation hitting students this year reinforces the urgent need for accessible online mental health care that is free of excessively long wait times and accommodates the unique needs of all students. The question of wait times for U of T’s online mental health resources sessions during COVID-19 remains paramount. Today, time is an important commodity that few of us can afford to lose as we juggle our online courses, jobs, and time spent with families and friends. Over the past few years, student groups at UTSG have conspicuously advocated for shorter wait times at the Health & Wellness Centre, which often felt neverending to students struggling with their mental health. In the Report of the Presidential & Provostial Task Force on Mental Health in December 2019, one of the recommendations was timely mental health care and same-day appointments for students. The recommendation underscores the frustration of students who have been unable to access mental health care for weeks, and sometimes months at a time. Another issue that has arisen is with U of T’s transition to virtual mental health supports. To understand this better, The Varsity interviewed Riley*, a fourth-year student double majoring in neuroscience and molecular biology. They wrote about their experiences both with in-person therapy and online therapy at UTSG’s Health & Wellness Centre. Riley was one of many who made the shift to online therapy when the pandemic hit, and they experienced issues with online therapy during the early days of the pandemic as U of T transitioned to these online platforms. For in-person sessions in early February, Riley wrote, “I barely had any wait time because I learned through the registrar to ask directly for my college’s therapist.” It was only about a month later, when U of T transitioned all sessions to an online or telephone format, that they had to transfer to another therapist and experienced chal-
lenges with getting timely appointments. Riley was informed that their sessions would take place on the phone as the centre tested different virtual platforms. They referred to that week of transition as being very hectic for them because no one “knew what was happening.” “I was told that my regular appointment [would] still be happening over the phone, but it didn’t happen because it was the first week,” they wrote. Riley expressed that their issues mainly stemmed from the training that their new therapist had to undergo. “If I didnt [sic] have a therapist in
training, I would think I would’ve continued over the phone like normal. And that people who kept their therapist wouldve [sic] just continued like normal over the phone,” Riley wrote. However, since moving back home with their family, they have decided to temporarily stop therapy sessions. Riley also expressed that they would have preferred if the sessions were held over video. “I really disliked [therapy] over the phone,” they wrote. “It was much harder to communicate for me.” Today, the Health & Wellness Centre offers both phone calls and video conferencing sessions at the student’s discretion.
Evaluating the My SSP app U of T also provides students with mental health resources in the form of apps such as the My SSP for timely virtual support. My SSP is a mobile app and call-in service for student support that can be accessed 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Counsellors on the app are trained to help students with issues touching on academic, social, and mental health concerns. Its most notable features include the chat function that is available in over 146 languages and immediate phone support that is available in approximately 35 languages. For international students, this feature is key in
features@thevarsity.ca
accessing adequate mental health care. My SSP has received some mixed responses from students over the past year since its launch, with some calling it helpful and others claiming concerns about privacy and wait times. Given that the fate of the pandemic is still uncertain, we have to start considering the longevity of online therapy, and how it can be improved over time. To get a sense of where mental health goals should be in the next year, The Varsity interviewed members from the MHPC, a notable student mental health advocacy group on campus. They noted how those who have service jobs and low incomes — which includes many students — must also cope with elevated stressors and transmission risks on top of academic work.
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When MHPC members reached out to a few students to survey their experiences with the app, it appeared to them that student engagement with My SSP had been limited, and that there were issues with the app’s mandate to provide timely support in a variety of languages. “We had trouble finding any students that had made use of mySSP and received worrying reports from students who have been unable to access support in a timely and linguistically-sensitive manner in spite of mySSP’s mandate,” they wrote. MHPC members also claimed to have heard from students who “haven’t been able to access a nonEnglish-speaking counsellor during reasonable hours.”
They argued that while apps like these are a useful part of U of T’s toolkit and an important step toward addressing the student mental health crisis, “an app isn’t going to address the most serious ways in which we have failed and are continuing to fail our most vulnerable community members.” Instead, they made calls for U of T to release data on student mental health, requesting that reporting mechanisms be put into in place to monitor situations like the number of students who were on waitlists for mental health support, how many have not continued to access U of T’s mental health resources, and those who have died due to mental illness on and off of all U of T campuses.
“No public health crisis of any kind can be effectively addressed without widespread availability of data like this,” MHPC members wrote. Outsourcing to private mental health care A further option for U of T students to access mental health supports includes booking appointments with private practices outside of the university. Many students are eligible to receive coverage through the university’s plans, including that of the University of Toronto Students’ Union’s Health and Dental Plan, which covers students for 15 sessions worth up to $100 each with private mental health practitioners. The Varsity interviewed Marium Vahed, a fourth-year student studying diaspora and transnational studies and anthropology. When asked why she chose to outsource to a private therapist, she wrote, “I am privileged to have a father who works in the mental health profession and was able to connect me to a therapist that he trusts. I chose my therapist because it meant no wait time, a high quality of service, and because they were a good fit for my personality.” Shedding light on her experiences with phone therapy, she found that the transition was not as bad because she had a longer relationship with her therapist and had already developed trust through their previous face-toface sessions. Although Vahed found that online therapy has not drastically changed her life, when asked about the issues she encountered as a result of phone therapy opposed to in-person therapy, she noted that she was more likely to be distracted over the phone and more aware of the lack of privacy. “Whereas when I attended inperson sessions I would have put my phone away, I now require my phone to speak to my therapist and at moments can’t help but notice my notifications,” Vahed wrote. “Sometimes, this makes it harder to focus on the session because I am constantly being reminded of the other things I could be doing with the time, like completing schoolwork and responding to my emails.” The fear of confidentiality was also an important tenant to Vahed’s therapy experience. “The main drawback to phone therapy
for me is that I am more cautious about what I say out of fear that my family might accidentally overhear me,” she wrote. “With COVID-19, everyone is working and learning from home, and there is always the chance that someone walks past my room or enters my room during a therapy session.” “This fear of a privacy breach is a barrier for me to engage fully with my therapist in the same way I would have in person.” What is U of T’s response? When The Varsity reached out to U of T for comment on its transition to online mental health support during COVID-19, the university emphasized its prioritization. “The mental and physical well-being of our students is a top priority; we understand that the pandemic brings additional challenges, especially around loneliness and isolation,” Micah Stickel, acting Vice-Provost Students, wrote to The Varsity. “We want our students to succeed and to thrive — both academically and personally.” When asked about the need for mental health resources during the pandemic for both domestic and international students, Stickel outlined the importance of online services, such as counselling at all three campuses and the My SSP app. Stickel also pointed to the discussion forum monitored by social workers that the university launched in March through a partnership with the CAMH. The forum was created to provide students with necessary support when struggling with mental health issues during the pandemic. Stickel wrote that the partnership between the CAMH and U of T aims to “review and improve mental health services for students, including better pathways to care for students.” He also commented that the CAMH is helping redesign U of T’s mental health support process to inform “the new care model for U of T.” Overall, as many students experience mental health struggles and overwhelming feelings of loneliness and isolation, including the lack of a physical community on campus, mental health needs to be prioritized as an important tenet of student care during this very vulnerable time. As all of university life has pivoted virtually, U of T’s transition to fully and effectively providing online mental health resources still very much remains a work in progress. *Name changed out of privacy concerns.
This fear of a privacy breach is a barrier for me to engage fully with my therapist.
Arts & Culture
October 26, 2020 var.st/arts arts@thevarsity.ca
Parkdale Haunt, a frighteningly good podcast
Two beds, three bathrooms, and no escape: The Varsity chats with the show’s creators Alex Lévesque Varsity Contributor
“This place feels wrong,” Judith said into her recorder as she walked into Claire’s house. This is only one of the blood-curdling lines in Frequency Podcast Network’s new podcast, Parkdale Haunt, which launched on September 28. The podcast follows the story of Judith Antoni, who tries to figure out the reason behind her best friend, Claire Sterback’s, mysterious disappearance. Re-listening to the audio drafts from their renovation podcast, Yes In My Backyard, Judith embarks on an investigation to prove her hunch that Claire isn’t fine-tuning her downward dog at a yoga retreat, as she had claimed. As Judith works her way through the tapes with the help of her friend Owen, it becomes clear that something more insidious and unnatural is helming this disappearance. Parkdale Haunt is set in one of Toronto’s most notable neighborhoods, the Parkdale neighborhood, which is known for its Victorian homes and awe-inspiring mansions. With this in mind, it is no surprise that Emily Kellogg and Alex Nursall, the creators of the show, chose this wealthy corner of Toronto to explore their love for the gothic horror subgenre. Kellog and Nursall are U of T alumni and served as the Arts Editor and Illustrations Editor, respectively, for Volume 131 of The Varsity. They sat down in a virtual interview with The Varsity to tell us about their experience making the podcast and why listeners should plug in and listen. The Varsity: So when did you both get the idea for the podcast? Alex Nursall: I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a Toronto Life article about a ‘reno from hell,’ and it was about a guy who bought a house and it had all gone to hell. He tried renovating it in the worst way possible, and it had been
proudly made fun of by the entirety of Toronto. Emily presented the idea of a podcast: “What if it was the reno from hell, but for real?” That was the elevator pitch. TV: Relating it to other shows out there, what would you say is the style of your podcast? Emily Kellogg: A mix of The Haunting of Hill House and Housebound, a New Zealand horrorcomedy. TV: What differentiates your podcast from other horror podcasts or shows out there? AN: A lot of them don’t tend to have women at the front. Much like most of these things, there are a lot of dudes. Plus, it plays off of our pre-existing relationships –– Emily and I are already friends. EK: A lot of other horror podcasts are anthologies where each episode is a different story. It’s more like a TV show in the sense that we use 10 episodes to tell one long story. It’s meant to be binged! That is, if you don’t get too freaked out. TV: Circling back on what you said about having women leads, was that an important aspect when first starting the podcast? AN: Yes. We wanted to explore how one navigates a situation in which one of your friends is struggling and you can’t identify what is really going on. EK: We wanted Judith and Claire’s friendship to be at the core of everything. Part of the reason why I love horror is because it’s stories told in the language of trauma. We wanted to simultaneously talk about very human, real issues at the same time that we’re talking about the supernatural. TV: In the podcast, the characters bring up Claire’s mental health prior to the supernatural occurrences. What was the reason behind this? AN: Yes, it puts the seeds of doubt in your mind. Is Claire reliable? How does Judith see this? How do other people see this? What part of it is the house?
EK: In horror, there’s the trope of the hysterical woman, so she often isn’t believed because of her mental illness. There’s a fear for Claire, both of her own sanity and the fear of not being believed. If your friends don’t believe you, they can’t help you. That’s a kind of horror in and of itself. TV: With certain horror genres, they limit their style to just horror. You guys had characters in the podcast that added some comic relief. Why was it important to include those characters? EK: I wanted to create characters who were more humanlike — characters who had other things going on in their life besides the horrors of the house. AN: I, traditionally, am not a horror writer. Emily has seen almost basically every horror movie. I traditionally write non-fiction and humour. We both wanted there to be a lighter edge to make the characters feel more real. We didn’t want them to be bummers. In real life, people would still be making some pretty dark jokes about what’s going on. TV: Any favourite comedic characters in mind? AN: Austin Bird. He was the most fun to write because he was the weirdest and terrible in a real way. Bird was voiced by Taylor Davis, a comedian who recently did a show with Carson Pinch, the voice of boring Adam, Claire’s boyfriend. TV: There’s a lot of creepy audio effects in the show. What unique experience does your podcast offer that, for example, a television show wouldn’t? AN: One of the hardest things is to set these things up in a situation in which you cannot show anything and can only rely on what someone is hearing, and it has to be done in a way that feels naturalistic. From a horror perspective, it both limits you and opens a lot of new doors on how you can scare somebody. Audio is freaky! EK: I think a challenge was working in the framework that we kind of need a reason that everything
is recorded. It’s almost like found-footage horror in that way. Think Paranormal Activity. Alex asked Ian Boddy, our sound engineer, about how we could make the sound of thousands of house centipedes pouring out the sink. TV: Your initial goal in the podcast was to express your love for the horror genre. Do you think your goal has shifted at all due to COVID-19? EK: Alex and I both got really into horror podcasts in a time when we needed escapism from reality. I feel like fiction is a nice alternative to true crime when the world is already too much. TV: Was creating the podcast difficult in any way due to the pandemic? AN: We were lucky because we started recording a year ago. By the time that the pandemic had really picked up and lockdown had started, everything was already recorded. By then, we had already done all the dialogue edits. By that point, it was just up to Ian to do all the sound design. ______ Parkdale Haunt explores the dark secrets of a decrepit house in the Parkdale neighborhood, with only a half-working flashlight. The house seems to have a malevolent mind of its own –– much like the Toronto real estate market. Yet, despite this overwhelming darkness, Parkdale Haunt grounds the story in Judith and Claire’s powerful friendship, calming the listener’s nerves with occasional humourous soundbites that ultimately render this show deathly addictive. Parkdale Haunt is a gift to audiences looking to spook up their lockdown, even more so with Halloween quickly approaching. Audiences can now stream it wherever they get their podcasts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CELENE CZARNOTA/THEVARSITY
var.st/arts
OCTOBER 26, 2020
“The teacher was speaking into an abyss”: pedagogy under a pandemic
OISE’s Kathleen Gallagher on the digitization of a high school drama class Carmina Cornacchia Varsity Staff
A recent publication authored by Kathleen Gallagher, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education — in coalition with Christine Balt, Nancy Cardwell, and Brooke Charlebois, PhD students at the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning — examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the social interactions of students in a high school drama class. The article, though academic in nature, takes on a contemplative quality rather than an analytical one, which, the authors remark, mirrors the informality that the pandemic has brought with it. Every one of us is learning new ways to work and interact during a pandemic, and to match that, the authors have written what they call “an essay of musings.” The authors commented on a number of changes that they observed in the students’ “personal geographies,” or social interactions. One change in student behaviour that was observed with the shift to online classes was the level of student engagement on online platforms. They give the anecdotal example of a teacher who, pre-pandemic, was competing with smartphones for the attention of drama students. However, with the shift online, they notice students opting out of digital audio and visual contributions. It’s an interesting change — a generation that is so often characterized as tech-savvy recedes from these types of interactions once their environments become oversaturated with the digital. The Varsity had the opportunity to interview Gallagher. “The irony of shifting into online teaching was that once [the students’] worlds became fully digital, they didn’t even want to be seen,” she
said. “Over the course of the term, the camera started coming off. So the teacher was speaking into an abyss.” This, I think, resonates with many of us in synchronous lectures and tutorials. In my experience, I have had to work much harder to absorb information from online lectures, whether pre-recorded or not. There is something to be said about the sound of fellow students typing away with you in a lecture hall; I find it much easier to focus in the presence of others who are working toward the same goal. Gallagher spoke to the dilemma of perceived focus and how difficult it can be, even in person, for instructors to assess whether or not a student is engaged. A student could have the body language to give the illusion of being focused, while their mind is elsewhere. As such, it is difficult for an instructor to assess engagement under normal circumstances — and this is exacerbated with online learning. Now more than ever, we are accountable for our own progress. As Gallagher put it, “With the online world, you are making decisions at every moment about whether you are checking in or checking out. So my hope, when we go back to some other… consistently live form of learning, is that people become more conscious of the ways in which they are paying attention or not.” She also spoke about access and the barriers between young people and engagement in online platforms. There are a series of technological requirements for digital learning platforms, and having to share them with others, especially in a small living space, can quickly put a strain on one’s learning. Gallagher explained that through this online shift, it is more difficult to ignore existing inequities and that the pandemic represents a “chance
to revisit and revise all kinds of policy frameworks that we’ve operated from for a long time.” I think that many U of T students would agree with this statement. Since the start of the pandemic, students have had to navigate unreliable wi-fi connections, different time zones, and, for some international students, certain websites being banned in the country where they are living.
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Gallagher provided some great insights throughout our interview, but I think this next one might be my favourite. In regard to social interactions in a post-pandemic future, she said: “There may not be as much desire to escape the moment that you’re in.” I would like to think that out of these times of isolation, a newfound appreciation for communities — and for each other — will emerge. We can’t always control the situation that we’re thrown into, but we do have a choice in how we respond to it, and my hope is that, as per Gallagher’s prediction, we will realize that we have a responsibility to be present for one another.
ISABELLA TAN/THEVARSITY
Among Us and Jackbox: hanging out, hidden roles, and house rules On multiplayer gaming in place of in-person social gatherings
Jade Goh McMillen Varsity Contributor
According to the official rules, the majority of a game of Among Us is supposed to be played in silence. I think my friends and I would play in silence if we were doing it in person, but after a day or a week of online classes, putting on the camera for a dedicated conversation feels too tiring for most of us. Instead, we start up a game of Among Us and chat over Discord’s audio call function about things unrelated to the game as we run around performing our various tasks. It feels a little like riding the subway together or holding a study group when we have no classes in common: everyone’s attention is divided, but we’re still saying whatever comes to mind and hearing each other’s voices. The game’s meeting function, where players confer about who they think the impostor is, feels a little like a quiz to check if we still know one another. Our chatting — which, as a house rule, cannot be related to the game except during the designated in-game meeting times — doesn’t seem to compromise the hidden role mechanic of the game too badly. The impostor wins about 50 per cent of the time in our games, with a 20 per cent error margin depending on which of us it is. All in all, I’d call it a good replacement for the things I miss most about hanging out with friends in person — the little things that happen by chance and wouldn’t have been worth calling a gathering for even if it were safe to gather right now. I’ve never been much of a party person, so small gatherings were my main form of social interaction before the pandemic. I had never really thought about it enough to predict how much I would miss it. With dual delivery classes moving online for the
rest of the semester, I’m gearing up to make more of an effort to actively seek out group activities in the hopes of feeling like I’ve done something other than just sit in my room and study. Like many of us, I’m trying to come up with little routines and rituals that work for me. Part of that is designating which chair I use for schoolwork and which I use for recreation; another part is coming up with house rules for gaming
with my friends. In addition to Among Us, my friends and I sometimes play Jackbox games. As a series of games that are essentially bundles of board gamestyle multiplayer games, those always feel a little more like a party. Full disclosure: back when parties were a thing, the few parties I went to tended to consist mainly of playing board games. Unlike Among Us, Jackbox tends to
Pixelated social interactions, brought on by the pandemic, are not so bad after all. HAYDEN MAK/THEVARSITY
take up our undivided attention. We often spend the time between games either playfully arguing about which of the included games to play next or verbally constructing highlight reels of our favourite moments from previous games. Our house rules for Jackbox are things like ‘attempts at backseat driving are only allowed when we’re on the last two people in Trivia Murder Party,’ and they vary depending on who’s hosting. The variation in these rules and in the availability of games based on which party packs the host has helps make it feel like a simulation of going over to someone’s house for a party — though, of course, there are also some notable differences. However, enough of these gaming differences are positive in nature that I think I’d be happy to keep doing this even at a point in the future when the pandemic has subsided. The presence of options like muting my microphone and adjusting the volume makes me feel more at ease and able to stay longer than I usually would have at an in-person social gathering. Also, any breaks in conversation can easily be turned to focusing on the game until someone thinks of something they want to talk about — rather than just saying filler words until the awkwardness reaches a critical mass and we start talking about recent movies half of us haven’t seen. There are never more than 10 of us playing at a time since Among Us can have up to 10 players, and most of the Jackbox games we play can have up to eight, so we almost never have anyone playing who we don’t already know. At the start of the year, I might’ve regretted not making new friends, but at this point, I’m just glad we can hang out in a way that’s a little more casual than a recurring Zoom meeting.
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ARTS & CULTURE
arts@thevarsity.ca
Overlooked: Suck
Sink your teeth into this hidden gem of a film Savannah Ribeiro Varsity Staff
I like the versatility of vampires. Across media and genres, vampires have been interpreted to mean many things: from expressions of forbidden sexuality — homosexual and otherwise — to xenophobic fears of ‘the other,’ to the literal bloodsucking parasitism of the privileged. So I figured I should shed some light on Suck. Suck, written and directed by Rob Stefaniuk, is a 2009 film about a struggling rock band, ironically named The Winners. The cast is largely made up of Canadian actors, with some notable exceptions. Jennifer ( Jessica Paré), the band’s bassist, is turned into a vampire within the first 15 minutes of the film. The other band members notice something different about her, but they don’t know what it is. That is, until she gets caught eating a fellow musician. Jennifer racks up quite the body count because if she doesn’t eat often, she suffers from a sort of blood withdrawal. So, the other band members have to decide whether to become vampires or stay human. After 10 years, this seems to be their shot — do they take it? The film is about fame and success. But it’s also about the price of that success. Thus, it is also partly a tale about morality. Joey (Stefaniuk), the lead singer, spends a good deal of time mulling over the very idea of being a vampire — and thus, getting the fame and success that he had been chasing. “Dude, being famous ain’t all it’s cracked up to be,” warned Victor (Iggy Pop), a music recorder. The film’s characters are aware of the existence of vampires, and Victor doesn’t trust them. This is
in contrast to Jeff (Dave Foley), the band’s sleazy manager who sees vampires as a means to an end, not minding that they kill people. The literal visualizations of Joey’s conundrum come in a scene set at a crossroads. The first of these visualizations has Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” playing faintly in the background, which adds depth — but not just because of the song’s name. According to legend, Johnson met the devil at a crossroads and sold his soul to become the world’s greatest blues player. Over 80 years after his passing, Johnson remains an incredibly influential musician. Of course, there’s no truth to the myth, but it still lingers around his legacy. With this in mind, a Faustian bargain hangs over Joey’s head. The devil stand-in (Alice Cooper) in this scene is pushing him toward eternal youth and fame in exchange for his soul and humanity. However, the film doesn’t bludgeon the audience over the head with the metaphor; it is not shy about the fact that it is first and foremost a comedy. The film revels in the corn syrup blood, and the dialogue is stuffed with vampire puns. “Here, try some groupie!” cracks me up. The puns extend into the sexual, with two men characters insinuating that Jennifer perform oral sex on them. The word “suck” is used — suck their blood, that is. There are also visual references to famous rock albums, including the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. Music jokes are made alongside the vampire jokes, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s clear that the movie is about rock music and the lifestyle — just with vampires. Combined with an excellent soundtrack, a
Book Review: Mark Kingwell’s On Risk
A sobering analysis from a U of T philosophy professor
Lucas Ratigan Varsity Contributor
You began with childhood, with a time-honoured board game that took up weeks of your summer, poring over an absurdly carved map in feverish conquest. You record the state of the game on a nearby scrap of paper before retiring to bed so that you can continue tomorrow. You may even end with doomsday, though the chance of it happening can only be binary — it either absolutely happens or absolutely doesn’t — so no need to panic. All that flanks and lies between these scenarios is the terrain of risk, anti-cartographic by definition, and, perhaps more troublingly, very antihuman. Such is how Mark Kingwell’s new book,
The book explores the often overlooked politics of risk redistribution. COURTESY OF BIBLIOASIS/MARK RAYNES ROBERTS
On Risk, unfolds. The book can easily be praised for its timeliness — a compliment somehow less cheap than clairvoyance — but to do so would be next to meaningless. Kingwell, renowned writer, essayist, and philosophy professor at UTSG, was interested in the politics of risk and risk-assessment models for some time before the proliferation of COVID-19 this past December — what soon became the everyday tragedy of our pandemic, where “all thoughts of life risk were reordered.” As Kingwell observes, risk permeates our lives no matter the time or place. The indifference of everyday risk and the much-less neutral field of risk-redistribution in the global political economy were both long overdue for relitigation, whether in sickness or in health.
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grungy, mid-2000s ‘scene’ aesthetic, and some creative use of special effects and camerawork, this film is a hidden gem. It didn’t get a fair shake in terms of the box office. Maybe it’s because it came out in 2009, the year of the vampire. That year saw the second of the Twilight movies, the second season of True Blood, and several other vampire films. By the end of True Blood’s run, the market was saturated with vampire films and shows. However, Suck stands apart from these other films and series, primarily in how it interprets the vampires.
Modern films tend to romanticize vampires. Suck does, too, to an extent. But it’s more about what being a vampire means — and not in the broody, self-loathing way we see in Interview with the Vampire or Twilight. Vampires are like rock stars, and the film also asks what it would mean to trade a ‘normal life’ for the one promised at the crossroads. But hey, vampires are ultimately cool. So, go watch Suck.
Risk is, and has always been, a matter of life and death — no matter how very ‘normal’ we remember feeling almost a year ago. Although it may be perceived as a supposedly neutral phenomenon, decisions around risk-redistribution are anything but. Kingwell initiates his critique through characteristically lucid stories of his ‘military brat’ childhood in which the previously implicated board game, Risk, served a major part, as well as an erudite catalog of film, fiction, and music. Philosophy, of course, serves throughout as his grounding discipline. Kingwell dedicates the first chapter, sardonically titled “The Game of Risk,” to the very inability to ‘game’ or master the elements of risk. In acknowledging unexpected life lessons from the titular game — which he describes as “a strange cultural symptom of the Cold War paranoia” — Kingwell notes: “My friends and I were victims of hope over experience. We would begin each game with a sense of optimistic, even bloodthirsty, martial ambition. Soon, though, the power struggles would bog down in negotiations, attacks, and counterattacks, and a seemingly interminable flow of power back, forth, and across the cartographic globe.” He also emphasizes, with some discomfort, that “the action is governed by the appropriately revealing arbitrariness of dice rolls.” While a critique of risk where the duly-named board game is put forward as evidence might seem a familiar entry point, Kingwell makes sure to adequately upset those comforted by homespun memories of global domination. The full title of the book is actually On Risk: Or, If You Play, You Pay: The Politics of Chance in a Plague Year — a deceivingly reassuring subscript that offers us the false choice of not playing, should we find the incumbent terms disagreeable. However, Kingwell’s most troubling yet sobering point is that we are always playing, whether we chose to or not. “The house will always win in the end — that’s what the house does — but maybe we can scrape together a few winning hands or rolls along the way,” he wrote at the close of the first chapter.
Kingwell’s analysis proceeds into the supposed realms of luck, chance, and theodicy — the question of divine intervention, or lack thereof, in human justice and morality. In order to mitigate ‘luck-generated inequities’ — or ‘acts of God’ as humourlessly termed in actuarial reporting — we must first acknowledge their arbitrary essence and then tackle the systems of capital that redistribute losses with such abject proficiency. As Kingwell puts it: “The application of statistical analysis to human risk, including the formal study of actuarial science, was motivated in large measure not to eliminate or even predict risky outcomes, but to manage our expectations about them.” This leads to the question of political risk, which Kingwell considers its most pressing form: “Risk… is racial, cultural, and political, just like all status functions.” To this point, On Risk is easily differentiated from other forms of philosophical and cultural critique — such as those popularized by Slavoj Žižek — by imparting explicit policy proposals in the final chapter, such as drastically reformed taxation schemes, reparations for historically persecuted groups, regulation of social media, universal basic income, and an end to corporate bailouts at the expense of taxpayers. These policies serve as ways of mitigating the unjust risk-redistribution that Kingwell observes in societies governed by a form of classist casino ethics, where ‘gamers’ play and ‘gamblers’ pay — the necessary corollary to his main argument. I would argue here that the tonal change from critique to prescription in the last chapter is felt most vividly in the context of the single-sitting reading, or something proximal to that, and is entirely worth the few silent hours. In the last chapter, called “Death and Taxes,” Kingwell wrote with startling clarity and pathos about our way forward, with brilliant assertions. “When your calloused hands get to work out of recognition of bleakness and catastrophe, hope becomes radical,” he wrote. “Bet on that, friends, with some postapocalyptic political hope coiled into your next roll of the dice or spin of the wheel.” As Sartre dramatized, “les jeux sont faits” — the games are made; the chips are down — so why not play to win and divvy up the pot a bit while we’re at it?
Science
October 26, 2020 var.st/science science@thevarsity.ca
What meditation actually does to your brain — and how to measure it Promising U of T study suggests machine learning is the key Reha Jerath Varsity Contributor
A simple Google search of the term ‘mindfulness’ provides countless search results detailing various tips on how to practice mindfulness in your daily life and its endless health benefits. Meditation and mindfulness seem to have become catch-all phrases for mental and physical well-being, associated with emotional regulation and everyday self-awareness. Practicing mindfulness is shown to have improved health benefits associated with blood pressure, cardiovascular health, and obesity. However, its advantages aren’t just limited to physical benefits — the ability to practice selfawareness and attentiveness through meditative practices has been linked to lowered stress levels and reduced symptoms for mental disorders. Meditation has clear psychological advantages in helping individuals deal with increased stress levels, improve attention, and build resiliency. However, a problem often arises with researching these claims: the lack of quantitative data to back up these statements. While studies have explored the effects of meditation and have found mindfulness to be somewhat effective in aiding emotional regulation, these studies often lack appropriate measures to determine the significance of their results. Recently, a new U of T-affiliated study published in the Frontiers journal highlighted the use of machine learning and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to obtain quantifiable data that measures the mental states of individuals practicing meditation. It provides a promising approach to objectively assessing the effects of mindfulness on overall well-being. The two types of attention The lack of quantifiable data within mindfulness research makes it difficult to research what the meditating mind goes through — namely, how one’s attention is affected. The U of T-affiliated study focused on trying to identify one type of attention called internal attention in the brain through fMRI technology and machine learning. In an interview with The Varsity, Dr. Norman Farb, a professor of psychology and a co-author of the study, noted that internal attention states are all about “what’s happening inside your own mind or inside your own body. It’s experiences that wouldn’t be accessible to someone else.” This is contrasted with external attention, where you pay attention to stimuli from the outside world like sights and sounds. The term ‘internal attention’ was first coined in a 2011 study from Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologists. They described it as the predominant mode of attention used to access information already stored in the brain, such as retrieving long-term memories or making abstract decisions, like what to eat for lunch. At the interface between internal and external attention is working memory, used for making decisions that involve immediate sensory information. For example, a student reading an essay will try to piece together the structure of the argument as they read. Attention and mindfulness Mindfulness practices often centre on evaluating the usefulness of thoughts and emotions. Farb explained that this kind of cognitive processing is actually an internal attention state because we are trying to access information already in the mind: our thoughts. “If the thought is wrong or unhealthy, or misconstruing a situation, then everything that comes after it is going to be wrong,” he said.
In 2011, three US psychologists proposed a way of classifying attention. Their categories were used by U of T researchers studying the brain activity that meditation creates.
Internal attention Occurs when processing information stored in the mind, such as long-term memories. Mediation and mindfulness use this type of attention. For example, mindfulness exercises often ask you to sift through your emotions — an information source you can access without using any external senses.
Working memory The process of applying your knowledge to the situation at hand. Although working memory is categorized as a type of internal attention, it is truly at the boundary. It involves taking in external information and processing it internally. For example, when you’re driving, you note the distance between the car ahead of you and adjust your speed accordingly.
“So that’s the source that you want to attend to, like what’s happening internally and how I perceive a situation.” He further elaborated that meditation is “really a process of introspection.” “In the classic sense, I’m really looking internally at what’s playing out inside me to understand the building blocks of much more obvious responses that are full blown emotions or a full blown move into hostility or avoidance,” he said. This process of introspection supports the emotional regulation that is commonly the aim of practicing mindfulness. The study suggests that being able to measure internal attention states would allow researchers to identify moments when participants lose focus on mindfulness tasks, and would provide crucial insight into the ef-
fectiveness of the meditation process for mindfulness practitioners of all experience levels. Using machine learning to measure attention states Being able to monitor these mental states would more objectively indicate whether meditational practices impact behaviour or alleviate stress, as mindfulness activities largely focus on emotional regulation and healthy self-reflection. The study employs the use of machine learning analysis and fMRI technology in order to predict and track patterns of activity within a participant’s mind based on pre-labelled data. This process of machine learning involves feeding a set of data into an algorithm
ALEX DENHART/THEVARSITY
External attention Characterized by focusing on information from the external environment — sights, sounds, tastes, and so on. You use external attention when you’re listening to a podcast or counting stars in the night sky. You can focus on stimuli from a particular area in the environment, or the same point in space across time.
with predetermined conditions based on the specific factor being measured. In this study, researchers asked 16 participants to go through a set of meditation activities designed to create internal attention states. Their brain activity was measured using an fMRI machine. Afterward, an algorithm was trained on the data until it could detect the distinct patterns of neural activity associated with meditation. The study found that significant neural patterns associated with different attention states were present within all participants. It recorded specific patterns associated with meditative breathing for 87.5 per cent of participants through this methodology, including novice participants. Once trained, the algorithm was able to accurately detect internal attention from the data 42 per cent of the time — which was considered significant because a random guess would be successful 20 per cent of the time. This shows that the choices the algorithm made were not due to chance, but rather a genuine ability to recognize meditation from brain activity data. As Farb explained, “we want to validate that when we do know the right answer, that [the algorithm is] getting the right answer above chance, [that] it actually is making informed decisions. And then, we can try to apply it to situations where we’re not so sure what’s happening.” While Farb cautioned that the relatively small number of study participants makes this result more of a proof of concept than a landmark breakthrough, the results of this study still provide an encouraging future for the use of machine learning in neuroscience. The tested methods may be used to further understand mindfulness training and provide quantitative evidence that supports the effectiveness of mindfulness. Meditation may work for some mental health concerns; for others, medication or therapy might be more effective. Either way, an improved understanding of meditation’s effects will help us to prescribe the right course of action. As Farb put it, “there isn’t a one-size-fits-all [approach to] mental health care, but understanding how each of these things works might make us better at guessing.”
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THE VARSITY
SCIENCE
science@thevarsity.ca
COVID-19 nightmares: U of T researchers on how ‘coronaworries’ affect your sleep The impact of the pandemic on our dreams
Chloe Bantle Varsity Contributor
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a source of anxiety for many. For some, this stress has reached the point where their dreams are affected. From Italy to the United States, researchers all over the world sought to understand the effects of COVID-19 on dreams, including a team at the University of Toronto. Graduate students Leela McKinnon, Erica Kilius, and Noor Abbas at UTM, alongside anthropologist David Samson, studied COVID-19 dreams among U of T’s student population from June to September. Not only did the study’s participants report a change in their dreaming patterns, they also described dreaming more vividly and having more nightmares. One third of participants said they had dreamt about COVID-19, specifically. The researchers also found that friends, family, and loved ones are playing more prominent roles in dreams. Their research provided the basis for further exploration as they looked for unifying characteristics across the dreams of a globally dispersed student population — a question, according to Abbas, that could be tested against ‘threat simulation theory,’ an ominously named evolutionary theory of why we dream. Threat simulation theory The threat simulation theory proposes that dreams are a way to simulate stressful or risky situations without fear of bodily harm or death. The subconscious mind uses dreaming as a safe place to practice dealing with stressors.
Since the pandemic began, the general risk level one experiences has risen considerably which allows for the threat simulation theory to be tested. “So far, our project shows preliminary support for this prediction and with females in particular demonstrating significantly more aggressive content in their dreams compared to baseline measures in dream content,” wrote Abbas in an email to The Varsity. “As once stated by Professor Samson, this indicates to us there may be some biological sex differences in threat perception,” she continued. Other studies have replicated these results — it appears that women’s brains are more affected than men’s. Dr. Deirdre Barrett, an assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, suggests this happens “because women are bearing more of the burden of caregiving, job loss, and other hardships.” The U of T researchers noted that approximately 73 per cent of participants “reported that their dreams had changed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” and that “many dreams described by participants carried negative emotions, including feelings of confusion, anxiety, fear and sadness.” Fear was the highest participant observation and sadness was the lowest. The project began in June, after U of T Global’s Student Engagement Award approved the proposal and funded its research. Early tasks included hiring an artist who could illustrate the findings and calling for students to participate. “The last few weeks prior to deadline submission [were] concerned with preparing final deliverables: such as the art pieces, presentation
As we spend more time at home, we spend more time in bed. SAMANTHA YAO/THEVARSITY
of qualitative results, and engaging infographics,” wrote Abbas. The project lasted a total of three months, ending on September 4, when the project was due. Dreams as therapeutic tools This research project shed some light on the wider implication of dreams and nightmares. “There is an emerging area of research primarily concerned with using dreams in therapy,” wrote Abbas. “The idea here is that dreams are used to facilitate some introspective problem-solving ability by using imagery rehearsal treatment.” This area of research is called ‘dream work’ or ‘dream therapy.’ In addition, this research can be used to help people “practice stressful events” through threat simulation theory. Abbas provided the example of public speaking: if an individual has to speak at a big event, they could have a dream where it all goes wrong a few nights before as a way to rehearse that potential outcome.
Of all the research project participants, 49 per cent said that they “[believed] dreams [could] help a person make decisions about their life.” Perhaps this belief, alongside the threat simulation theory, is why many people believe dreams are glimpses of the future. When asked whether or not dreams were prophetic, Abbas was hesitant. “It’s too early to say if our research project shows that dreaming helps us accurately predict tomorrow’s events… It could be that, rather, dreaming simulates probable events, and this is often conflated with dreams being able to tell the future.” COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on sleep schedules. People find themselves spending more time in bed now that commuting has become less frequent, and meetings can take place in the comfort of the home. Time spent in bed allocates more time for dreams and thus more potential for nightmares. Be sure to seek help if the dreams or anxiety becomes too much to handle alone.
New U of T study finds protein that lowers PTSD H2A.Z protein found in brain, associated with fear responses among female mice
Karen Fang Varsity Contributor
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that may emerge after a traumatic experience, such as natural disasters, accidents, war, or violence. People with PTSD may have intrusive memories of the trauma and develop strong negative reactions, such as anxiety, toward mild stimuli. Women are twice as likely as men to have PTSD. In fact, it is estimated that 10–12 per cent of women develop PTSD in their lives — compared to just five to six per cent of men — and the effect of PTSD tends to last longer in women. In a recent Nature study, a group of UTM researchers led by professor of psychology Dr. Iva
FLORENCE TANG/THEVARSITY
B. Zovkic reported on a protein in the brain that may play a role in the sex difference of PTSD and other fear-related disorders. It is important to note that differential experiences of PTSD may not completely be explained by physiology — non-biological factors such as gender socialization can play a role, which this study does not address. Fear among mice This protein, called H2A.Z, is a histone variant implicated in the formation and retention of memories. Histones are the proteins that strands of DNA wrap around to form chromosomes. The reduction of this protein in the brain has been found to enhance fear memory
in male mice. The researchers sought to discover whether the reduction or deletion of this protein affects female mice in a similar way. In a simple fear conditioning test, male and female mice in a chamber were allowed to roam freely before they were subjected to a mild stressor and later removed from the chamber. The next day, when put back in the same chamber, all mice show a fear response, where they froze in place instead of exploring as usual. This freezing behaviour is measured as a proxy of their fear memory. As expected, male mice with H2A.Z deletion showed a greater fear memory than control male mice. But surprisingly, H2A.Z deletion had no influence on fear memory of female mice. This hints at the sexspecific effects of this protein on fear memory. To model a PTSD-triggering situation, the researchers dialed up the stressors. This time, mice received 10 mild stressors randomly spaced in an hour. The next day, mice were returned to the same chamber, and their freezing behaviour was measured as a proxy of their fear sensitization. No difference was found between the H2A.Z-deletion group and the control group in male mice. However, there was a significant difference between the two groups in female mice. The female mice with H2A.Z deletion exhibited reduced fear sensitization compared to the control group. This shows that the reduction of this protein has a protective effect on female mouse models of PTSD. To understand the observed sex-specific ef-
fects of the protein, the researchers found that H2A.Z has higher binding to several genes that are associated with memory in the hippocampi of female mice. This indicates that there may be higher levels of H2A.Z in female mice and points to H2A.Z as a potential therapeutic target for alleviating PTSD-related conditions in women. Physiological differences in human brains These findings may be relevant to humans, in which H2A.Z is also present. H2A.Z is involved in the regulation of transcription and DNA repair, and has been similarly implicated in diverse biological processes, including memory. Physiologically, trauma is shown to have divergent effects in male and female brains. The hypothalamus-pituitary axis, which is a central stress response system, seems to be more sensitized in female brains, while the hyperarousal system, which leads to heightened state of anxiety, appears to be more sensitized in male brains. These sex differences in responses to stress and trauma, observed in both mice and humans, point to a potential need for sex-specific therapies in treating PTSD. Currently, there are a variety of treatments for PTSD, including cognitive behavioural therapy and pharmacotherapy. While women and men may respond differently to PTSD therapies, the current literature regarding the sex differences in therapy outcomes is largely limited and warrants further investigation.
var.st/science
OCTOBER 26, 2020
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U of T research takes inspiration from sudoku to predict protein shapes
Algorithm trained on number puzzle produces impressive results
ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY/FLICKR
Adiitya Chawla Varsity Contributor
Proteins are the building blocks of all life. They fold into a highly specific three-dimensional structure from a sequence of amino acids. Their structure determines their function, which can range from industrial uses like food storage to developing novel drug therapies. Until now, designing a protein structure based on a sequence from scratch has been a challenge. A research group including U of T’s Philip M. Kim, a professor at the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and the Departments of Molecular Genetics and Computer Science, has recently made advances
in solving this problem. Rather than testing all possible sequences, the group members start from an existing threedimensional structure and try to predict possible amino acid sequences using machine learning techniques. The results were published in the journal Cell Systems. From sudoku to protein design One of the difficulties of designing proteins is the vast number of possible sequences. There are 20 amino acids for living organisms to choose from, and the number of random protein sequences that are 200 amino acids long would exceed the number of atoms in the galaxy.
Researchers began by thinking of protein design as a type of constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). “In simple terms, [CSPs] are puzzles where we are given some variables and our goal is to assign one out of a predetermined set of values to each of those variables while obeying certain conditions,” wrote Alexey Strokach, lead author of the paper and PhD student, in an email to The Varsity. “One commonly-used example of a CSP is the map colouring problem, where we are asked to assign a colour to every country on a map such that no two neighboring countries have the same color.” The trick was to design an algorithm that could solve a well-established CSP, before extending it to protein design. In this case, the researchers chose sudoku as their initial target, which has the advantage of having a definite solution. “It is much easier to generate the training data and to train and evaluate models to solve a toy CSP, such as Sudoku, than to train a model for protein design,” Strokach wrote. The constructed algorithm was able to correctly solve up to 72 per cent of a given sudoku puzzle on a first try, with accuracy going up to 90 per cent after multiple attempts. The challenge was to teach an algorithm to “play” sudoku
on millions of protein sequences and design new sequences from scratch. Using neural networks The final algorithm, called ProteinSolver, grew out of an understanding that protein design could be modelled as a graph — points or nodes connected by lines — from which patterns can be inferred by a machine learning algorithm called a neural network. With the amino acids in a protein structure standing in for nodes and the separation between acids represented as lines in the graph, ProteinSolver was able to correctly replicate known protein sequences. Eventually, it was able to generate novel sequences for given protein structures. To test whether their predicted sequences work in reality, Albert Perez-Riba, a postdoctoral fellow at the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research, expressed and purified these proteins in the lab. Then, Perez-Riba probed the secondary structure through experimental methods and found that they match the predictions from the algorithm. Although the predicted protein sequences in this paper are not believed to have practical applications, there are numerous practical applications of the algorithm beyond this initial publication. According to Strokach, these include generating variants of known proteins for industrial use. “In the pharmaceutical industry, this could be used to improve the shelf-life of biologics, while in industrial process engineering, this could be used to increase the activity of biocatalysts in inhospitable conditions,” he wrote. The researchers have made both their code and program available for public use.
NASA Space Apps blasts off in Toronto U of T student organizers, participants on the international hackathon Sarah Kronenfeld Varsity Contributor
Every year, NASA hosts the Space Apps Challenge, an international hackathon designed to make use of NASA’s vast stores of data about the Earth and the far reaches of space. This year, Space Apps ran from October 2–4, and thousands of teams of creators from all over the world submitted their own solutions to the world’s problems. And — like many other events these days — the hackathon was held entirely online. The Toronto chapter of the hackathon included over 50 people, submitting a total of 16 complete projects. The top two teams — 3.14Heads and Rain Rangers — are proceeding to the global judging phase, where a short list of finalists are picked to get the opportunity to present their project to a worldwide audience. The Toronto chapter was co-organized by the U of T Astronomy and Space Exploration Society (ASX). The story behind the hackathon In 2018 and 2019, Space Apps Toronto had been organized entirely by the Canadian branch of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). This year, it has been run by a group of Toronto university students, mostly hailing from U of T and Ryerson University. Spencer Ki, a member of ASX, was one of the event’s organizers. His first encounter with Space Apps was through the special COVID-19 focused event held in May. “As soon as I realised that each location is… thrown together by random people instead of centrally managed by NASA, I tried to get ASX involved,” Ki wrote to The Varsity. ASX, SEDS, and organizers from RU Hacks, Ryerson’s annual hackathon, have been working to-
gether since early June to set up this Space Apps event. Another U of T student, Lucy Ma, is one of the SEDS event coordinators who worked on Space Apps. She’s had experience organizing hackathons, but she said that this one was very different. Although Ma found that the online format allowed for faster, more direct communication between participants and organizers — which could be difficult during in-person hackathons — she said that reaching people was challenging. “Before, if it was in person, you knew when a hackathon is happening — you [saw] people sleeping on the benches,” Ma said in an interview with The Varsity. “But with a virtual hackathon, how do you engage people? How do you advertise it?” Of course, like so many others during the pandemic, participants have found that online events come with some benefits as well. “I specifically appreciated the use of the discord channel to quickly gather information and track updates,” Joshua Smith, a member of team Above the Horizon, wrote. How to talk to satellites The project from the winning team 3.14Heads, LinkedUp, is a game designed to explore the complexities of communicating with space missions. Users are presented with a dashboard that lets them control the physical properties of a “signal” that they send to a virtual satellite. Once they’ve settled on their parameters, the program evaluates whether their satellite link would hold. “We hoped to demystify the technical side of things through a nice user interface,” Ketan Vasudeva, a U of T student and member of 3.14Heads, wrote to The Varsity. “In all honesty, going to Mars, space travel in general, is one of my dreams… I hope that tools and challenges like this continue to pop up
to get everyone excited about the future of human space flight!” According to the official project brief of second place team Rain Rangers, it set out to “develop an application that [the members] personally would find useful.” Users of Rain Rangers’ program can plug in a time range and receive a list of asteroids passing close to Earth during that period, along with drawings of their orbits. The team has also developed an SMS notification service that pairs with the project to warn users about any asteroids identified as “hazardous.” Existing tools to learn about nearby asteroids, the team said, all require some prior knowledge to use — but to use the Rain Rangers application, you don’t need to know the name or exact position of asteroids to figure out which ones might be passing by Earth. The People’s Choice Award, given by fellow participants, went to team Above the Horizon. Their project also focused on objects flying in the night sky. However, instead of asteroids, Above the Horizon allowed users to identify satellites they might spot flying around their night sky. The program displays a map of the night sky given a specified place, time, and date, and then labels all satellites that would be visible in that segment of the sky. Clicking on any particular satellite shows the user the satellite’s view of Earth.
split into seven major categories. Although many of the challenges were designed for people with some programming experience, there were some that people with all sorts of skill sets could contribute to, as well as challenges specifically designed for youth participants. “They definitely really encouraged diversity,” said Ma. “Hackathons shouldn’t be a thing that [are] just for programmers… [They] should be a thing for anyone who can design, anyone who can innovate, anyone who can create something cool and impactful.” All in all, participants from Space Apps Toronto tackled a wide range of challenges — more than half of those set out by NASA, including space mission simulations, wildfire detection systems, and interactive explorations of NASA’s history. All projects submitted to Space Apps Toronto 2020 can all be found on the Space Apps homepage. Space Apps 2021 will be held from October 2–3, 2021.
A variety of challenges In total, NASA gave competitors 23 challenges
Disclosure: Spencer Ki is The Varsity’s Volume 141 Business Editor.
COURTESY OF SPACE APPS TORONTO 2020
Sports
October 26, 2020 var.st/sports sports@thevarsity.ca
Opinion: The NBA, WNBA anti-racism protests are a ripple that will start a wave Pro teams continue a legacy of political action in sport
Guiller Lorenzo Cenizal Varsity Contributor
lanta Dream team owner Kelly Loeffler by her name when it admonished her.
In March, my dad and I were watching a game between the Dallas Mavericks and Denver Nuggets — we seldom pass on an opportunity to watch, in my opinion, the heir-apparent of the NBA, Luka DonÄ?ić. That was when we heard the news that Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19, shuttering a multi-billion-dollar industry overnight. It was a cough heard around the world of sports, if you will. Fast forward to the present, a few weeks since the NBA and WNBA seasons — ones that were doomed mere months before — concluded and we’re seeing the end of the ‘bubble.’ The bubble was an ambitious and historic experiment met with league-wide apprehension that could, in many ways, be deemed a success, especially when comparing it to the state of health and safety in the NFL and Major League Baseball. Yet, in my opinion, the biggest story of the bubble was not its success, nor was it Lebron James’ fourth ring or the WNBA’s Seattle Storm’s second title in three years. Rather, it was the way it intersected with the renewed and impassioned protest for Black lives, which has been heard around the world much louder than Gobert’s positive COVID-19 test.
“A powerful labor organization against major sports leagues� Deol’s article is an impassioned opinion piece reflecting on being a young sports fan who grew up watching his athlete role models stand up to racial injustice. He chronicles his vivid memories as an 11-year-old watching James and his team at the time, the Miami Heat, posing in the way that Trayvon Martin had when he was shot. I, too, was 11 years old when Trayvon Martin was murdered, but I would be lying if I said I understood what the Miami Heat’s actions truly meant at the time. It is only years after that I saw what Deol saw. This year’s bubble season served as a microcosm for this kind of protest for justice, bringing issues that players have been trying to emphasize for years to the forefront. “This was the first time I have ever witnessed such a powerful labor organization against major sports leagues in my lifetime,� wrote Professor Derek Silva from the Department of Sociology at King’s University College at Western University. True, some individual athletes have spoken out in
The bubble protests As Associate Sports Editor Angad Deol wrote in his retrospective article on the NBA’s political protests: “some things are bigger than sports.� It all started when the Milwaukee Bucks decided to forgo their playoff game against the Orlando Magic in a silent but nevertheless impactful protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Then followed a league-wide strike that shook the sports world. Although playoffs resumed days later, it was clear that the unrest had only just begun as the players wore jerseys with messages aligning with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. But did the politicization of professional basketball start here? The WNBA has been merging social justice efforts and court time for years. This past season, it committed to devoting its upcoming season to promoting social justice and rallying against antiBlack racism. The WNBA even refused to call anti-BLM At-
the past — Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, and Colin Kaepernick to name a few — but not without ramifications. As Deol mentioned, Ali’s boxing career was subsequently cut short after he spoke out against the Vietnam War. Silva reminded me that Kaepernick is someone who has not played in the NFL since he took a knee and has been ostracized into pseudoretirement. Still somehow, we saw the entirety of two sports leagues mobilize succinctly around BLM. The circumstances of political protest in sport To fully comprehend how this happened, one must start from the beginning. Silva reminded me where. “I think that one of the things overlooked in this whole narrative is the fact that athletes in the WNBA have long been LEADERS in shedding light on social injustice and racial inequality,� he wrote. “We forget that these athletes were speaking up and kneeling before Colin Kaepernick.� Many of the initiatives and actions that professional players and organizations adopted during this bubble period have been done by WNBA players before. Indeed, they pioneered a blueprint to follow for both leagues. In the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd
AMBIKA MAHARAJ/THEVARSITY
and Breonna Taylor, the NBA and WNBA found themselves grieving from injustice once again. “No social movement ever happens in a vacuum,� Silva told me. “Covid-19 is a variable in all of this — and an important one. Covid-19 shed light on major forms and manifestations of structural inequality, systemic racism, and white supremacy that have been plaguing our world since long before [COVID-19].� While the NBA and WNBA negotiated the terms of their return-to-play mid-pandemic and the risks that they would be exposed to, we witnessed — perhaps for the first time ever — a holistic leveraging of their power as income generators. In a circumstance where they could choose to do nothing, something, or the right thing; they chose the latter. We see players and executives standing up to problematic ownership. Coaches like Doc Rivers and Gregg Popovich have advocated for voter participation. We exist in an afterglow of an overall successful social justice campaign. However, like James articulated after his team’s Game 1 victory in these past NBA finals, I believe that “the job is not done.� From ripple to wave That is why I reached out to the University of Toronto BIPOC Varsity Association (BVA), a student group founded on its members speaking out about their experiences and the inequities they have faced on a personal and institutional level. In other words, they are young athletes who actively choose not to be silent. They share James’ sentiment, writing, “Racism does not cease to exist when the season ends, and the media coverage dies down.� They were pleased with how both leagues handled the campaign. The sincerity and passion with which these professionals — their idols — spoke was inspiring to them and many others. In fact, the BVA even sees a parallel in how helpful institutional support is in spreading its message. But again, the job is still not done. When I asked Silva what he thought the future held, he began with: “prognosticating is not fully in my repertoire.� It is not in mine either, but he believes that athletes “will not stop speaking about what is important to them.� I am inclined to agree. Only time will tell if this is indeed the ripple that started a wave.
Opinion: With winter coming, outdoor gyms are not the answer
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Online, remote exercising is the only sustainable option during COVID-19
Angad Deol Associate Sports Editor
As COVID-19 cases have begun to rise, the Ontario government recently decided to close indoor fitness centres in regions that are peaking — York, Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa — within the province. This has left gyms, for the second time this year, scrambling to find ways to serve gym-goers. Many gyms have begun to offer outdoor workouts, often in the parking lots of their facilities. Many students have already begun to adjust to this
new normal, especially in the wake of the University of Toronto closing down gyms in recent weeks in response to a spike in cases. They have the option of either home fitness or grabbing a local subscription to a gym that now offers an outdoor studio experience. As the Varsity Blues teams have already opted to continue their strength and conditioning training outdoors, it might be worth thinking about the logistics of this move. As team trainers make do with a limited amount of portable gym equipment and the little outdoor training space around Goldring and the
Varsity Centre, one has to wonder if this adaptation really is a solution. Do outdoor spaces really present a solution for the gym-going public? How long can we last as the weather gets colder by the minute? Firstly, what are “outdoor gyms?� Quite simply, they’re fitness studios that are outside, equipped with most if not all of the equipment one would find in an actual gym. Sometimes, these gyms are under a tent to protect workout warriors from the elements, and sometimes they are permanent institutions. To adapt to COVID-19, these outdoor gyms have instituted physical distancing measures and provided adequate sanitation supplies. The case for the great outdoors It’s important to recognize that outdoor exercise does have some major pros, especially when analyzing the spread of COVID-19 that can occur in indoor fitness studios. For example, the SPINCO spin studio in Hamilton had an outbreak after an indoor class, leading to 80 cases — 50 of which were from primary exposure to employees and patrons — after an asymptomatic patron took part in a session. Potential transmission of the virus can occur via airborne droplets, which can remain in circulation for long periods of time. The increased rate of exhalation that occurs during exercise can exacerbate this despite efforts to sanitize and physically distance, and indoor gyms can often lack the required ventilation to cir-
cumvent this form of transmission. Thus, outdoor gyms can potentially prevent the spread of the virus more effectively than indoor settings. And the case against outdoor gyms While outdoor gyms do provide a valuable service in these uncertain times, they do have a major flaw. The inevitable dip in temperature that comes around wintertime means that few can feasibly expect to be able to exercise in mid-November s bone-chilling weather. Especially when it begins to snow, outdoor gyms will be forced to pack up. No matter how much Canadians pride themselves on their ability to bear the cold, I doubt anyone is deadlifting in the middle of a blizzard. I know I will be foregoing the outdoor dumbbell workouts come snowfall. This realization can have major consequences for gym owners — while things had just started to look up, a second lockdown could spell financial ruin. For those gyms, outdoor setups are temporary solutions to a problem that feels more permanent every day. Gym-goers and owners, including here at U of T, alike should start focusing on more sustainable solutions for this pandemic that seems to be going nowhere fast. Their focus should be on investing more in their online and remote exercise options.
var.st/sports
OCTOBER 26, 2020
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“Lift up and elevate all BIPOC athletes”: BIPOC Varsity Association combats racism in the Varsity Blues In conversation with the organization’s co-founders
Giselle Dalili Varsity Contributor
Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) student athletes and alumni have come together to address the racism they experience within the Varsity Blues by creating the BIPOC Varsity Association (BVA). The Varsity contacted two of the BVA’s co-founders, Devon Bowyer, Chair, and Sarah Kwajafa, an alumni relations, engagement, and advisory board member, to discuss the formation and future of the organization. Bowyer and Kwajafa are alumni of the Varsity Blues. The Varsity: How did you come to be a part of the organization? Sarah Kwajafa: There were so many traumatic events that everyone witnessed around the world, highlighting the severity of the need for the Black Lives Matter movement. From the perspective of a lot of people in the BIPOC, and specifically Black, community, these triggering events really signified a breaking point. Amongst these events of oppression and racism, past and present Varsity athletes came together. We’re now the co-founders of the BVA. We met with Ira Jacobs, the Dean of the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, and Beth Ali, who is the Executive Director of Athletics & Physical Activity, to discuss anti-Black racism and diversity within the Varsity program. In this, a lot of us were coming together as athletes and teammates just sharing our stories. We realized
that we were so alone dealing with these things; we didn’t realize that our teammates were going through a lot of these issues of subtle and overt racism. People don’t realize that this is happening within our own community. We knew it was really important to emphasize that with the administrative level so that they’re clear on what’s happening and why it’s so important for us to create change. Devon Bowyer: We wrote a letter to Ali and Jacobs after the Varsity Blues administration put out a public statement. We were happy that they put a statement out, but we thought, ‘Okay, this is great, but what are the protocols, tools, and supports that are available for BIPOC athletes?’ And currently, we don’t have any. After we wrote the letter, we created that small group of 11 current and former BIPOC athletes. We all experienced subtle forms of discrimination or racism. It didn’t really matter if I graduated in 2018 or was still there; we all experienced the same thing. TV: What are the BVA’s short-term and long-term plans? SK: All of these goals and a lot of the initiatives that we’re working toward, we’re hoping to share at our information session on October 30 from 5:00–7:00 pm. All the details have been posted on the Varsity Blues social media. One goal is to help with education — educating the Varsity Blues’ governing bodies about anti-racism and anti-oppression and also Varsity athletes, both allies and BIPOC individuals as well. Another is representation. There are not many BIPOC coaches or
Where to find workouts during a pandemic Online classes to get you moving MIA CARNEVALE/THEVARSITY
Nancy Dutra Varsity Staff
Whether you’re counting steps, calories, or how many months it’s been since life was relatively normal, it’s human nature to count something. If numbers aren’t your thing, maybe you’re philosophical about what your time in lockdown will count for in the long run. Will this time count as a step toward fitness? Or has exercise fallen to the wayside? No matter your actions so far, you can still make your COVID-19 time count toward a healthier lifestyle. With exercise gyms and studios ordered to close yet again, here’s a look at five fitness facilities that offer online
programming. There’s something here for you whether you are on a tight budget or can afford a monthly membership. And, of course, U of T is offering virtual classes. Sure, it’s not the same as exercising with people in person. But if you’re able to make the time, an increase in physical fitness is within your grasp. #UTRAIN U of T’s virtual fitness studio offers classes live and on demand ranging from pilates, high intensity interval training, cardio dance party, barre, and more. There is no fee for students enrolled in fall classes, and U of T staff, faculty, alumni, and students not enrolled
Hard pill to swallow — the truth behind multivitamins
They are redundant, so focus on a healthy diet instead
AMBIKA MAHARAJ/THEVARSITY
Angad Deol Associate Sports Editor
In case you haven’t taken a stroll through your local pharmacy or grocery store in the past few decades, the multivitamin industry is huge. In 2020, the total value of the industry is a stag-
gering 478.4 million USD. Clearly, the consumer market for multivitamins is massive. But, what are multivitamins, really? Before we can discuss the true bodily impact of them, we should first understand what we mean by multivitamins. Traditionally, when you purchase supplemental multivitamins, be it from Centrum, Ja-
BIPOC individuals at the administrative and institutional levels. Also, at the athlete level, we’re hoping to help increase representation on that front. And then our final goal is just to help create opportunities. Systemic racism is really present everywhere, but, especially, it’s here, embedded at U of T. We really want to help lift up and elevate all BIPOC athletes and create opportunities for them. TV: Underneath the “Introducing the BIPOC Varsity Association” video on the Varsity Blues’ YouTube channel, the description reads that one of the BVA’s initiatives is “ensuring mandatory antiracism training for student-athletes, coaches and staff.” How exactly does this anti-racism training manifest in practice? SK: Anti-oppression training is being developed by one of our staff advisors within the Diversity & Equity department. All of the BVA executives have actually been a part of that training, and what’s really exciting is that it’s not just about race. It encompasses so much within the diversity, equity, and inclusion realm. This is definitely in the early stages and we’re working our very best to make sure that everything is done thoroughly and properly so that this training can occur for years to come. TV: Does the BVA have plans to diversify or collaborate with other organizations within or beyond U of T? DB: We have been contacted by a couple of places and events, but we want to work in baby steps. We’re this fall pay $34.99 per month or $129 per semester. While working out at home is not the same as meeting other students in person, it’s still a nice way to stay in touch with the student body — pun intended. MoveU MoveU is a free tri-campus initiative made up of student volunteers who promote mental and physical fitness to students and community members across all three U of T campuses. MoveU Anywhere! has been offering short videos and workout plans for virtual exercise instruction since before the pandemic for students without ample time to exercise. MoveU’s exercise circuits come with clear instructions and training tips to keep you safe while doing a variety of programs including total body, core, and stretch workouts.
brand new. Just having a clear idea of who we are and what we’re about is our priority right now. TV: Has the BVA experienced any obstacles? DB: We had a whole list of golden objectives, but it became too much. The majority of the team are still Varsity athletes, so they are still training. Then, obviously, COVID-19 just makes things that much more difficult because we can’t come together. Yes, we’re at home, but our schedules end up packed. Sarah works full time. I’m in school. I have two jobs. There are other people that are working multiple jobs as well. So, with all that, I think we need to realize, based on our circumstances, having two or three goals out of our larger list to prioritize in the next year is more doable. TV: How can someone become a BVA ally or member? SK: If you’re a BIPOC individual in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education program or the Varsity program, you are a member of the BVA. But of course, adding yourself on the contact list on the Varsity Blues website — as a member or ally — is really important because when we have events or when we need support, we will definitely be reaching out that way. A first step, of course, is just to attend our information session. We’d love the support of allies as well. There will definitely be a space for allies to participate and to help in the work that we’re doing. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Mishler has many videos available for free, she also has courses available for purchase through her website. The Running Room The Running Room (TRR) has long been offering free introductory running groups that have recently moved online. If you’re new to running and have questions about apparel, nutrition, or hydration, you can access a running coach free of charge. TRR even offers virtual gait analysis to help you determine which running shoes are best for you. Membership is free but requires registration.
Yoga with Adriene Adriene Mishler has been offering free yoga classes from the privacy of her studio in Austin, Texas since 2012. Her popular YouTube channel, Yoga with Adriene, has an online community of over eight million viewers who have learned about yoga and mindfulness through her dedicated teaching. Although
Toronto Boxing Academy If physical distancing has you feeling pent up anger and irritability, boxing is a safe way to vent your aggressions. Toronto Boxing Academy (TBA) offers an award-winning program — that is now offered virtually — focusing on boxing, conditioning, or a combination of both. The academy currently offers a one-week trial of group classes for $7 and a Personal Training Special for $90 that provides three, 30-minute solo virtual sessions with a coach. Visit TBA’s website for more details.
mieson, or Kirkland, you’re buying capsules with varying amounts of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids. These supplements are traditionally taken by individuals to promote aspects of their health. For example, people might take multivitamins to try to reduce their risk of heart disease or to prevent cognitive decline. However, for the most part, these promises are empty. In an article posted on the U of T Faculty of Medicine website, Deborah O’Connor, a nutrition professor at U of T, wrote that our modern multivitamins are simply “leftovers” of a different time when our diets and deficiencies were much different. O’Connor went on to discuss how the multivitamins we take now may be redundant to the diet of the average person and neglect to fill the dietary holes we currently do have. So, do multivitamins actually improve our health? The jury is still out. Specific groups of people could indeed benefit from particular supplements; for example, the elderly and those who follow vegetarian-based diets are susceptible to vitamin B12 deficiency. As a result, they may stand to benefit from adding a multivitamin
supplement to their existing diet. However, the diet of an average, healthy person will not be enhanced by a multivitamin. In fact, it’s been proven: according to John Hopkins Medicine, studies show that multivitamins did not reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, or mental decline. A study of heart attack survivors who were either on a placebo or high doses of multivitamins showed similar rates of later heart attacks, heart surgeries, and death. Medical professionals instead recommend following a healthy diet, rather than supplements. Larry Appel, Director of the Johns Hopkins Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, has said that consuming a diet containing protein sources such as fish and chicken, plenty of produce such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy is enough to maintain your health instead of multivitamins. In short, the next time you’re at the grocery store, maybe buy the bundle of carrots instead of the bottle of multivitamins; you’ll save yourself time and money in the long run.
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