Issue 10, Volume 143 (November 21, 2022)

THE VARSITY

Investigation into UTM professor’s misconduct comes to light

Nawa Tahir Managing Editor, External

Content warning: This article discusses sexual harassment and racial microaggres sions.

In April 2022, U of T’s Office of the Vice-Pro vost, Faculty & Academic Life wrote to two alumni — Bryan Gee and Yara Haridy — to inform them that Professor Robert Reisz, a vertebrate paleontologist who has been a professor of biology at UTM since 1975, had violated the university’s sexual harassment policy and had failed to “meet the standards we expect of a faculty member.” U of T com missioned an external investigation into al legations of sexual harassment, racial micro aggressions, and academic bullying against Reisz, which concluded in January 2022.

The investigation came after Haridy and Gee reported Reisz to U of T in July 2020. As of October 24, undergraduate and graduate students still work at the Reisz Lab at UTM, and Reisz will teach two undergraduate courses in the winter 2023 semester.

In June, Haridy and Gee posted Twit ter threads about their experience report ing Reisz to U of T two years prior. Haridy is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago who finished her mas ters degree in Reisz’s lab in 2018, and Gee is a research scientist at the University of Washington who completed his PhD at Re isz’s lab in 2020. In their tweets, they linked a Medium post that they had written, which includes screenshots of email communica tions with Reisz. The Medium post lists vari ous incidents that Haridy and Gee reported to U of T in 2020.

External investigation

On July 8, 2020, Haridy and Gee filed an of ficial complaint against Reisz — a 72-page report detailing numerous incidents of “aca demic and sexual harassment” — to U of T’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB). Haridy’s report under U of T’s Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy was forwarded to the Office of Safety and High Risk in September 2020. EEB noti fied Gee in November 2020 that the univer sity would undertake an investigation into his allegations against Reisz.

U of T commissioned Kenda Murphy, a le gal counsel and workplace investigator with over 25 years of experience in civil and crim inal litigation, to look into Gee and Haridy’s allegations. Haridy and Gee participated in

numerous interviews with Murphy through out the year of 2021. The investigation pro cess took almost 400 days in total.

In her investigation, Murphy used the balance of probabilities standard of proof, meaning that she determined whether it is more likely than not that an incident hap pened.

In January 2022, U of T sent summaries of Murphy’s findings to Haridy and Gee. The university split up their reports. Haridy re ceived the findings from U of T’s Office of Safety and High Risk. Her allegations were further categorized into two parts: sexual harassment complaints and supervisory conduct complaints. Gee received the find ings from the chair of EEB.

In her investigation, Murphy found that most of Haridy’s allegations under the Sex ual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy were factually substantiated. Furthermore, Murphy wrote that the majority of Gee and Haridy’s harassment and supervisory con duct allegations were also substantiated.

Allegations under Policy on Sexual Vio lence and Sexual Harassment

In her report to EEB, Haridy detailed numer ous incidents that she perceived as sexual harassment. A number of those incidents were from a field trip that Haridy and Reisz took to Oklahoma in 2016 — Haridy, who was an undergraduate student at the time, was the only person accompanying Reisz.

In her report to EEB, Haridy wrote that Re isz had discouraged other students from go ing to Oklahoma. In her summary of findings, Murphy noted that it was “odd and unusual” that Haridy, an undergraduate student at the time, was the only one accompanying Re isz. However, Murphy also accepted Reisz’s evidence that he “did not arrange the trip to spend time alone with Dr. Haridy.”

Haridy wrote in her report that, during a car ride in Oklahoma, Reisz said to her, “if I were a few years younger, I could really go for someone like you.” In the investigation findings document that Haridy received from the Office of Safety & High Risk, Murphy concluded that Reisz had said something to that effect, stating that she found Haridy’s evidence more compelling than Reisz’s.

Murphy also concluded that during the same field trip, Reisz took a photo of Haridy “laying on the sofa, in shorts and a shirt, drinking a glass of wine.” Murphy acknowl edged that Reisz did not recall taking that photo, nor was the photo on his phone or computer.

In her report, Haridy wrote that the same

night, Reisz asked Haridy for a hug “while he was sitting on his bed.” Murphy accepted Reisz’s evidence that he had shared friendly hugs with Haridy on other occasions and that he shared hugs with “people inside and outside of his lab.”

Murphy further wrote that Haridy believed that the hug was a “demand and not a re quest.” Murphy concluded that Haridy’s un derstanding was reasonable “in the circum stances of the power imbalance inherent in a student/professor relationship.” Murphy found that Reisz asked Haridy for a hug when she was turning in for the night.

Murphy also found that, once in Septem ber 2016, Reisz sent a text to Haridy asking her to send him a picture of herself “look ing ready to kill” or “looking dressed to kill,” when he learned that she was going to a friend’s wedding.

Haridy further reported that in September 2019, after she had graduated from U of T, Reisz referred to her as “babe” in an email. She attached screenshots of the emails in her report — Haridy’s response to that email said, “I suggest a quick and earnest apol ogy.” During Murphy’s investigation, Reisz admitted that he intended to write the word “babe” in the email.

Allegations of racial microaggressions

In their report to EEB, Haridy and Gee de scribed several instances in which Reisz made “racially motivated remarks.”

Murphy accepted Haridy’s evidence that, “When [Haridy] was volunteering at Prof. Re isz’s lab, Prof. Reisz peered over her shoul der one day and said that he ‘didn’t know that people like [her] were interested in this stuff.’ ” Regarding this allegation, Murphy also accepted Reisz’s evidence that he did not recall making this statement, and that he has students from different cultural back grounds in his lab.

Haridy, who is an Egyptian-Canadian, further reported that Reisz made offhand comments to her about racial stereotypes like belly dancing. Murphy found that Haridy was “dancing around the lab one day” when Reisz asked his lab technician Diane Scott if Haridy was belly dancing. However, Murphy also accepted that Reisz holds belly dancing in high regard.

In the investigation report that EEB sent Gee, Murphy accepted Gee’s allegation that during their first meeting, Reisz asked Gee if he spoke Chinese, which Gee interpreted as a microaggression. Murphy accepted Reisz’s claim that he asked that question because he believed that, if Gee were flu

ent in Chinese, that skill could have helped Reisz because of his affiliation with Jilin Uni versity in China. However, Murphy also ac knowledged that Reisz would comment on Gee’s lack of Chinese language skills over the course of Gee’s PhD program.

Supervisory misconduct allegations

Murphy accepted Haridy’s evidence sup porting the allegation that “Prof. Reisz asks his recent former students for correspond ing authorship and attributes his request to his need to satisfy his Jilin University pub lishing requirements.”

Murphy further found that Reisz spoke with Haridy about “her gender and minority status being helpful for her when looking for employment opportunities after her PhD.”

After Haridy graduated from U of T and left Toronto, Haridy tried to cease contact with Reisz by not responding to his emails. But Reisz continued to email her, and then even tually, emailed her PhD supervisor in Berlin. In her report to EEB, Haridy wrote that get ting these emails was stressful for her.

Murphy concluded that it was reason able for Reisz to email Haridy’s new supervi sor, but she found that Reisz’s language in those emails was “objectively problematic.”

Murphy reached this conclusion because she believed that Reisz “could and ought to” have used more neutral language in his emails.

Murphy accepted Gee’s allegation that Reisz commented that the #MeToo move ment has gone too far, which was corrobo rated by Reisz’s admission of that comment to Murphy. Murphy also accepted that Reisz once commented, “You can’t joke about anything these days,” which was further supported by Reisz’s admission to Murphy that “that is the way that he feels.”

In his report, Gee alleged that Reisz had said, “Fellowships directed at underrepre sented groups ruin meritocracy.” Murphy preferred Gee’s evidence over Reisz’s re garding this allegation. Murphy also noted, “Prof. Reisz’ previous comments to the ef fect that diversity initiatives have resulted in one of his former students with excellent academic credentials having difficulty secur ing a position.”

Murphy also found that after Haridy had graduated from U of T, Reisz told a student about what he perceived to be Haridy’s shortcomings. Murphy found that Reisz had made similarly negative comments about other former students in the lab.

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10 months after investigation concluded, Robert Reisz still supervising students, will teach winter courses

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Supervisory misconduct allegations

Murphy accepted Haridy’s evidence supporting the allegation that “Prof. Reisz asks his recent former students for corresponding authorship and attri butes his request to his need to satisfy his Jilin Uni versity publishing requirements.”

Murphy further found that Reisz spoke with Haridy about “her gender and minority status being helpful for her when looking for employment oppor tunities after her PhD.”

After Haridy graduated from U of T and left To ronto, Haridy tried to cease contact with Reisz by not responding to his emails. But Reisz continued to email her, and then eventually, emailed her PhD su pervisor in Berlin. In her report to EEB, Haridy wrote that getting these emails was stressful for her.

Murphy concluded that it was reasonable for Re isz to email Haridy’s new supervisor, but she found that Reisz’s language in those emails was “objec tively problematic.” Murphy reached this conclusion because she believed that Reisz “could and ought to” have used more neutral language in his emails.

Murphy accepted Gee’s allegation that Reisz commented that the #MeToo movement has gone too far, which was corroborated by Reisz’s admis sion of that comment to Murphy. Murphy also ac cepted that Reisz once commented, “You can’t joke about anything these days,” which was further sup ported by Reisz’s admission to Murphy that “that is the way that he feels.”

In his report, Gee alleged that Reisz had said, “Fellowships directed at underrepresented groups ruin meritocracy.” Murphy preferred Gee’s evidence over Reisz’s regarding this allegation. Murphy also noted, “Prof. Reisz’ previous comments to the ef fect that diversity initiatives have resulted in one of his former students with excellent academic credentials having difficulty securing a position.”

Murphy also found that after Haridy had gradu ated from U of T, Reisz told a student about what he perceived to be Haridy’s shortcomings. Murphy found that Reisz had made similarly negative com ments about other former students in the lab.

After the investigation

After receiving the summary of findings in January 2022, Haridy and Gee received confidential letters from the Office of the Vice-Provost in April. In those

letters, which The Varsity has obtained, U of T ac cepted the investigator’s findings.

In the letter to Gee, Vice-Provost, Faculty & Aca demic Life Heather Boon wrote, “[Reisz] failed to respect appropriate boundaries and failed to recog nize the significant power imbalance in the supervi sor-student relationship.”

In the letter that Haridy received, Boon wrote that, of the incidents that Haridy reported, only the one pertaining to Reisz asking her for a hug violated the university’s Policy on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment. Other incidents, Boon added, “fall be low the University’s expectations for behaviour of a faculty member towards a student they are super vising, fail to respect appropriate social boundaries and fail to recognize the significant power imbalance inherent in the supervisor-student relationship.”

In both letters, Boon wrote, “The University has taken corrective action.” However, Boon could not share the details of what action against Reisz would involve, citing privacy concerns.

In response to a question from The Varsity about what U of T has done to ensure students’ safety, a U of T spokesperson wrote, “The university has taken corrective action to prevent similar experiences in the future for our students.”

Through a Freedom of Information request, The Varsity found that two graduate students joined Reisz Lab this fall. Furthermore, four undergradu ate students are working in the lab in the 2022–2023 academic year. Reisz is scheduled to teach two in-person third-year biology courses at UTM in winter 2023.

The university spokesperson did not respond to The Varsity’s query about the steps that U of T has taken to inform Reisz’s current students of the in vestigation’s findings.

In an interview with The Varsity, a student — who was a member of Reisz Lab at the time of the investigation and wished to stay anonymous due to fear of retribution — said that the first time that U of T communicated with Reisz’s students about the complaints and investigation was in June, af ter Haridy and Gee published their Medium post. Murphy’s external investigation had concluded in January.

In an email to The Varsity, the U of T spokes person wrote, “The university determined that on a number of occasions the faculty member’s su pervisory practices did not meet the standards ex

Federal government moves to eliminate interest on student loans Proposal

On November 3, Canada’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland unveiled the Liberal Government’s 2022 Fall Economic Statement. The multi-billion dollar plan, which in cludes targeted spending on services to assist those most affected by the economic slowdown, contains a proposal to permanently eliminate inter est on federal student loans.

The proposal

In March 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government announced a moratorium on student loan repayments that tem porarily eliminated interest for the federal portion of both Canada Student Loans and Canada Appren tice Loans. With this policy, the federal government intended to ease the financial burden on students during the pandemic. With the moratorium set to expire on March 31, 2023, the federal government has moved to eliminate interest payments perma nently.

On November 3, Freeland sponsored the Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2022.

CORRECTIONS:

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pected of a University of Toronto faculty member and/or breached university policy.”

The spokesperson further wrote, “The faculty member is permitted to work with, supervise and mentor students.”

On July 29, 2022, Gee took to Twitter to an nounce that he had decided to leave academia. He wrote, “Robert and the ecosystem around him are emblematic of deeply rooted systemic issues in both paleo and academia. That environment is just not for me.”

On September 29, the UTM Research Office posted a tweet congratulating Reisz, who had re cently published his 250th peer-reviewed paper. The tweet described Reisz’s accomplishment as “a rare and impressive research milestone.” Since the tweet was posted, numerous individuals have responded to the tweet with criticism. One user wrote that the original tweet celebrates “a profes sor with a documented history of abuse.”

Robert Reisz has declined The Varsity’s request for comment.

If you or someone you know is affected by the content in this article:

• Contact the PEARS Project at thepearspro ject@gmail.com for disclosures and traumainformed support.

• Contact the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre at (416) 597-8808.

• Call the Women’s College Hospital Sexual As sault and Domestic Violence Care Centre at 416-323-6040.

• Call the Assaulted Women’s Helpline at 866863-0511.

• Visit svpscentre.utoronto.ca for information, contact details, and hours of operation for the tri-campus Sexual Violence Prevention & Support Centre. Centre staff can be reached by phone at 416-978-2266 or by email at svpscentre@utoronto.ca.

• Contact U of T’s Anti-Racism and Cultural Di versity Office at antiracism@utoronto.ca.

For further leads, please reach out to Nawa Tahir at nawat@thevarsity.ca. For all other communications regarding this article, including concerns and cor rection requests, please reach out to Jadine Ngan at editor@thevarsity.ca.

U of T. “I think it’s a step in the right direction.”

Another U of T student, Pearly Anne Ellarde, added that the government should provide more options for grants or scholarships so that students don’t have to worry about paying back their loans.

Krish Patel, a life sciences student at U of T, said that the elimination of student loan interest would allow him to explore more post-secondary options.

“It is very helpful in terms of paying everything back. It relieves a lot of stress,” he said.

The bill passed its first reading in the House of Commons and is currently in its second reading. If passed, the act would eliminate interest on all Can ada Student Loans and Canada Apprentice Loans currently being repaid and those that will be repaid in the future starting on April 1, 2023. According to the Fall Economic Statement, the policy would save an average of $410 per year for students who take out loans and cost the government $2.7 billion over five years. The government also estimates that most beneficiaries of the proposal will be Canada Student Loan borrowers.

The proposal would apply only to the federal portion of student loans and not the portion pro vided by the provincial or territorial government. As such, Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) loans will continue to accrue interest starting during the six-month grace period after a student leaves full-time studies.

Students’ reactions

The Varsity spoke to multiple U of T students, who generally agreed that eliminating interest on student loans would increase education affordability.

“I think it’ll definitely benefit us in the long run,” said Marko Tolj, a chemical engineering student at

In an email to The Varsity, University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) President Omar Gharbiyeh said that the UTSU welcomed the federal govern ment’s push to eliminate interest on federal student loans, noting that the proposal is an “important step forward toward” in increasing accessibility of postsecondary education.

“In a just and equitable society, financial barriers should never be a reason for a student not to have access to post-secondary education, and we hope that the federal and provincial governments will continue to implement various policies to ensure that this is so,” Gharbiyeh wrote.

However, Gharbiyeh noted that the UTSU would like to see more action from the provincial govern ment to address the affordability of post-secondary education. He called on the province to improve access to OSAP loans and provide additional sup port to part-time, international, and second-entry students, all of whom face barriers to accessing financial aid.

“It is important that both the federal and pro vincial actions provide strong policy support to students looking to access better education,” said Gharbiyeh. “We hope that the federal government will consider aggressive action to make up for pro vincial shortfalls in the necessary support.”

In last week's issue of The Varsity, a comment article titled “Letter to the Editor: The StART program is rooted in diversity and inclusion” was accompanied by an image of a mural by artist Uber5000. In fact, that art is not associated with funding from StART. We have replaced the image on our website with an image that accurately reflects StART's work.

A feature titled “Crossing a line in the sand” mistakenly called the final episode in the Audible version of The Sandman “Dream Country.” In fact, the final episode is called “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”

would make Canada Student Loans permanently interest free

Emma Livingstone Graduate Bureau Chief

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Isabella

Trans Day of Remembrance & Resilience and Trans Awareness Week at U of T

Sexual & Gender Diversity Office provides health supports, career resources

Selia Sanchez Associate News Editor

From November 14 to 18, the University of Toronto facilitated a number of campus-wide events in honour of Trans Day of Remem brance & Resilience and Trans Awareness Week. In doing so, the university hoped to reaffirm its support for transgender individu als within the U of T community as well as de nounce transphobia.

Commemorations

First observed in 1998, Trans Day of Remem brance & Resilience is internationally recognized on November 20 each year. It aims to remember and honour the lives of transgender and nonbi nary individuals that were lost due to transphobic violence.

The week leading up to Trans Day of Remem brance & Resilience is Trans Awareness Week.

According to U of T’s Sexual & Gender Diversity Office (SGDO), this week-long commemoration “uses education and celebration to encourage awareness of and advocacy around trans rights and inclusion.”

In an email to The Varsity, a spokesperson for the University of Toronto explained that “We all have a role to play in creating a supporting and affirming community for employees and students alike. The University of Toronto continues to chal lenge marginalization and discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.”

The spokesperson recommended regularly sharing pronouns as an “inclusive gesture to trans and nonbinary colleagues [that] signals you aren’t making assumptions and are willing to invite space for others to share their pro nouns as well.”

In honour of Trans Awareness Week, the SGDO hosted several events for students, faculty, librarians, and staff. These included a number of workshops, discussions, webinars, guest lectures, and a vigil.

Resources and initiatives

The university offers a range of resources and initiatives to support trans and nonbinary members of the U of T community.

As of July 1, 2022, the University of Toronto began offering a $10,000 gender affirma tion health care benefit for transgender and nonbinary employees. The extended cover age was the result of a two-year collabora tion between benefits provider Green Shield Canada and the SGDO, and it applies to the one per cent of U of T employees who identify as trans. It includes reimbursement for core surgeries, vocal surgeries, chest contouring, breast reduction, laser hair removal, nose sur gery, and other services that are essential for many trans people. However, some genderaffirming items that are not considered to be medical grade, such as shapewear, are not covered by the benefit.

According to Allison Burgess, Director of the Sexual & Gender Diversity Office, the ex tended coverage represents a huge step for ward. “When someone has to argue for things that are essential — things that are critical to the core parts of who they are and that can significantly impact their experiences of navi gating through the world and coming to work — it can be an extraordinary burden,” she said in an interview with U of T News. “This is a truly significant change and step forward in terms of being able to affirm our trans and nonbinary staff.”

In addition to the support provided for trans employees, the University’s Health and Well ness Centre at the St. George campus pro vides gender-affirming healthcare appoint ments for students.

Identity management tools are also avail able through the SGDO website. These re sources enable students, faculty, librarians, and staff to make name or gender changes in the university’s records without changing their legal names.

The SGDO also provides accessible career resources in the form of recorded discussions and publications. These resources serve as a

workplace guide for both transgender individ uals and allies in order to foster more inclusive work environments.

Members of the U of T community that are currently transitioning and seek further sup port are encouraged to contact the SGDO or visit their website. Additional information can be located at the UTM and UTSC Equity, Di versity, and Inclusion Office websites. There are also opportunities to connect with U of T 2SLGBTQ+ communities such as Queer U of T Employees and Queer & Trans Connec tions — a new program for 2SLGBTQ+ and questioning students.

U of T Law professors denounce Ford’s use of notwithstanding clause

Tony Xun Associate News Editor

On November 14, U of T’s Faculty of Law host ed a panel in which professors discussed Pre mier Doug Ford’s use of the “notwithstanding clause” in his conflict with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). The panel, which was moderated by the Dean of the Faculty of Law Jutta Brunnée, critiqued Ford’s use of the clause.

Conflict between CUPE and the Ford gov ernment

During recent negotiations with Ontario’s pro vincial government, CUPE demanded pay raises for education and administrative assis tants, custodians, and other education work ers. They asked for an 11.7 per cent annual pay raise, pointing out that inflation has risen 17.8 per cent from 2012 to 2021.

The Ford government, however, is reluctant to pay up. The government initially proposed raises of two per cent for workers making less

than $40,000 per year and 1.25 per cent for others, but the offer was rejected by CUPE.

On November 3, Ford’s Progressive Con servative government passed Bill 28, the “Keeping Students in Class Act,” to head off a strike notice issued by CUPE. The bill im posed a deal on workers and instituted heavy fines for striking. However, a 2015 ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court recognised striking as an “indispensable component” of collec tive bargaining and protected a union’s right to strike under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . To preempt a court challenge, Ford invoked Article 33, a controversial part of the Charter known as the “notwithstanding clause.”

The bill received swift political blowback, in cluding criticism from the Ontario New Demo cratic Party and the federal Liberals. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau protested Ford’s use of the notwithstanding clause; in a press con ference on November 4, Trudeau said, “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms cannot be come a suggestion.” Unions expressed out rage, and a broad coalition of unions began to consider a rare general strike.

On November 14, the Ford government re pealed Bill 28. As of November 20, the gov ernment and CUPE have reached a tentative agreement, averting a strike.

The role of the notwithstanding clause

The notwithstanding clause allows federal and provincial governments to temporarily circum vent Sections 2 and 7–15 of the Charter. These sections protect Canadians’ fundamental civil liberties, including the right to strike. By pre emptively invoking the notwithstanding clause, the Ford government hoped to avoid a court challenge to Bill 28.

During the U of T panel discussion, U of T Law Professor David Schneiderman provid ed historical context for the notwithstanding clause. According to Schneiderman, the his tory of the American judiciary helped inspire Canada’s notwithstanding clause. During the Lochner Era — named after Lochner v. New York and spanning from 1897 to 1937 — mul tiple American Supreme Court cases greatly limited government intrusion in the capitalist free market.

As a result, the US Supreme Court played a crucial role in stalling “legislative innova tions to protect vulnerable workers.” Looking to the mistakes of the early twentieth-century American system as an “anti-model,” draft ers “rationalize[d] the inclusion of the not withstanding clause” in the Canadian Charter, which was passed in 1981.

However, Ford’s recent invocation of the clause may not reflect these intentions. During the panel, U of T Law Professor Kerry Rittich said that Ford’s usage of the notwithstanding clause threw a “nuclear bomb into collective bargaining as a whole.” According to Rittich, unions feared Ford’s use of the clause because laws against striking cripple their power at any negotiation and limit workers’ ability to exer cise collective bargaining tactics. However, limiting collective bargaining doesn’t merely affect the workers involved. “Collective bar gaining is crucial to legitimizing and stabilizing political democracy,” said Rittich.

Professor Nathalie Des Rosiers also criti cized the Ford government’s legislation. Bill 28, she declared, was a “brutal attack on la bour rights.” She also took issue with the gov ernment’s preemptive use of the notwithstand ing clause, saying that it “shuts down judicial deliberations.”

A “truly significant change” for the U of T transgender community. NICHOLAS TAM/THEVARSITY

Professors discuss Charter clause’s role in provincial dispute with CUPE

Despite surges in respiratory illnesses and calls for masking from provincial leaders, U of T has not had a mask mandate since July 1. An immu nocompromised student and a faculty member with disability spoke to The Varsity about their experiences navigating a mostly maskless return to in-person activities this fall.

Provincial situation

On November 14, Ontario’s Chief Medical Of ficer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore “strongly” rec ommended that people wear masks in all indoor public settings, as Ontario’s health-care system continues to face “extraordinary pressures.” These pressures are due to the “triple threat” of COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus — a common respiratory virus that infects the lungs and airways — currently circulating across the province.

While Moore stopped short of reinstating a provincial mask mandate, many, including the president of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and members of the Toronto Board of Health, are calling for the reinstatement of mask man dates to curb the rise in respiratory illnesses among vulnerable populations.

Lack of mask mandates causes “great anx iety”

Two members of U of T’s disabled community — a student and a faculty member — spoke to The Varsity about the difficulties they have faced since the university lifted the mask mandate. Both have already gotten sick over the course of the fall term, and they recognize that they are at higher risk for death and hospitalization from COVID-19.

Karuna, an undergraduate student, was diag nosed with an autoimmune disease last January. She asked that The Varsity not publish her last name, because she fears employment discrimi nation from disclosing her condition. She cur rently takes immunosuppressants, which lower her immune system’s ability to fight off infections such as COVID-19. Last winter, Karuna was hospitalized after she caught the flu.

In an interview with The Varsity, Karuna said that navigating this fall term has caused her “great anxiety.” She “seriously considered”

transferring schools or taking a break from her studies. “It felt as if I had to decide between my education and my health,” she said.

Her rheumatologist recommended that Karu na not attend in-person classes, in part because of U of T’s lack of mask mandates. As a result, Karuna individually reached out to professors in order to take independent studies courses, which enabled her to attend classes remotely.

Karuna still attends one in-person course this fall. She initially deemed the class “safe” to at tend in person because there are only two other students in the course. However, despite always wearing a medical-grade mask to class, she said that she likely caught a cold from one of her classmates, neither of whom wore masks.

“I couldn’t attend that class for two weeks, because I had such a flare-up of my autoim mune condition,” she said.

According to a study by Public Health On tario, mask mandates increase mask-wearing adherence and reduce COVID-19 transmission. However, the provincial government opted to lift most province-wide mask mandates in June, and the university followed close behind.

“Oftentimes, when policies are made, people who are immunocompromised or disabled… their needs tend to be ignored,” said Rain Chan, the campaigns coordinator for Students for Bar rier Free Access — a U of T-based nonprofit organization that advocates for disability justice — in an interview with The Varsity Chan said that, since the university lifted mask mandates, their clients with disabilities and compromised immune systems have been especially concerned about returning to in-per son classes. With this, they expect that immu nocompromised people will attend classes less frequently.

Although vaccines can offer a layer of pro tection to most people, some individuals — in cluding people with a history of severe allergic reactions to vaccine components and those re ceiving immunosuppressing therapy — cannot receive the COVID vaccine.

Faculty member now on sick leave due to lingering COVID-19 symptoms

A.W. Peet — a professor at U of T’s Department of Physics — said that they got COVID-19 for the first time within a week of returning to in-per son activities this fall. Despite not being immu

nocompromised, Peet already had other chronic health issues prior to contracting COVID-19.

When The Varsity spoke to Peet on Octo ber 14 — around five weeks after they had first tested positive — Peet was experiencing “heavy brain fog,” which undermined their cognition, concentration, short-term memory, and longterm memory recall. They were also experienc ing “a lot of fatigue” — particularly, cognitive stress— which made it difficult for them to read and watch videos.

Peet said that they could only work for around three hours each day because of these func tional impairments. “I’ve had to press pause on basically all my research activities in order to be able to cover the teaching,” they said.

On October 27, Peet tweeted that they were now officially on sick leave from the university due to their numerous “disabling” post-COVID symptoms.

Peet believes that they likely got infected on campus. They said that they followed COVID-19 protocols “extremely careful[ly]” and that officials from Toronto Public Health told Peet that they were “doing everything right to minimize risk.” However, Peet said that the majority of the people they interacted with at meetings and in classes at U of T were not wearing masks.

“It’s too bad… [that we] pretend that all re sponsibility is just [for] personal [benefits],” Peet said. “We have an ethical obligation to protect everybody else and ourselves from COVID. Be cause [the virus] has proven to be… causing a great deal of distress to people, killing a lot of people… disabling a lot of people [in the longterm].”

Both Karuna and Peet recognize that they are at higher risk for death and hospitalization from COVID-19, since — according to the Govern ment of Canada — people who are older, have chronic medical conditions, and have weak ened immune systems are at greater risk for se vere disease or outcomes from the coronavirus.

Mask mandates at U of T Currently, U of T’s tri-campus mask policy al lows people to choose whether or not they wear a mask. In an email to The Varsity, a U of T spokesperson reiterated that U of T “strongly” encourages people to wear medical masks in “high-density indoor spaces” where physical distancing is not possible.

“While members of our community can re quest [that] those around them wear masks, those that choose not to comply with this re quest should not be disadvantaged or disci plined,” the spokesperson clarified. “We ask everyone to respect each other’s decisions, comfort levels and health needs.” Under this policy, even though they knowingly have comor bidities, Peet could not mandate that students in their classes wear masks.

In an email to The Varsity, University of Toron to Faculty Association (UTFA) President Terezia Zorić highlighted the importance of having a mask mandate at U of T. “Without a mask man date, many classrooms, hallways, and com mon areas on campus are filled with unmasked people. With high case counts in the GTA, this means the risk of exposure is high.”

“UTFA has been unwavering in both public and direct advocacy on mask mandates,” Zorić added. In May, the UTFA — in collaboration with other labour unions at U of T — launched a pe tition to reinstate the mask mandate that has since garnered over 2,700 signatures.

However, Zorić claims that the U of T admin istration has “severely” limited their communica tions with the UTFA on important health issues. “We had been meeting every two weeks, but now they are willing to meet about health and safety only four times per year,” she wrote. The U of T spokesperson did not respond to The Varsity’s query regarding the university’s fre quency of meetings with the UTFA.

On September 30, U of T President Meric Gertler told The Varsity, “We will bring back masks or vaccine mandates if, or when, condi tions change… At the moment, we’re worried that if we were to bring a mandate in now, there will be a lot of noncompliance.”

Recently, the University of Waterloo rein stated an indoor mask mandate, and Western University continues to maintain its indoor mask mandate. However, Western’s official student newspaper, The Western Gazette, has found that many community members do not follow the mandate, with reporters documenting stu dents not wearing masks or wearing masks im properly in packed classrooms.

“We are in regular contact with various ex perts and groups throughout the university community on COVID-19 and other concerns,” the U of T spokesperson concluded.

Ontario citizens strongly recommended to wear masks in indoor settings. NICHOLAS TAM/THEVARSITY

Alyanna Denise Chua UTSC Bureau Chief

Ahead of AGM, UTMSU presents more accessible bylaws

Two Division 2 directors effectively resign from the UTMSU Board of Directors

Lexey Burns Deputy News Editor

On November 18, the University of Toronto Mis sissauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) Board of Directors (BOD) held their eighth meeting. In preparation for the union’s Annual General Meet ing (AGM) on November 24, the UTMSU moved to approve amendments to their bylaws to make them more accessible. In addition, the UTMSU voted to remove two BOD members for not at tending the previous three BOD meetings, and approved the UTMSU’s 2022 financial state ments.

Bylaws

At the meeting, the BOD preliminarily approved changes to bylaws, which must be adopted at the AGM. Maëlis Barre, president of the UT MSU, explained that they reworded their by laws to make them more accessible and open to more individuals and groups. One proposed change would allow the individual designated to chair a meeting to pass that responsibility to another.

Barre explained that this amendment would allow executives who suddenly become un available to pass the duty of chair, limiting the need to reschedule meetings around certain individuals.

According to Barre, the amendments also re move the University of Toronto Students’ Union from the bylaws, since the UTMSU no longer operates under the UTSU. Another amendment changed the wording in the bylaws regarding “clubs” to “campus groups”; Barre explained that campus groups can include “clubs, aca

demic societies and levy groups.” The UTMSU also amended the bylaws so that its BOD and committees are not required to be physically present on campus for their meetings.

According to the current bylaws, UTMSU BOD members would be deemed to have delivered resignation if they fail to attend three consecu tive meetings. During the pandemic, the UTMSU introduced a limit of missed meetings that trig gered resignations to ensure that BOD members weren’t penalized for missing meetings over the summer that not all members could attend. The amendments proposed by Barre would reverse this policy, allowing BOD members to deliver any resignations prior to September 1.

For these amendments to take effect, students must approve them at the upcoming AGM. The UTMSU encourages students to sign up for the UTMSU’s AGM which is happening on Thursday, November 24, from 6:00–10:00 pm ET.

Removal of Division 2 directors

The UTMSU also affirmed the resignation of two directors from Division 2, the division represent ing full-time undergraduate students. Minal (Ee sha) Syed and Gabriel Horan did not appear at the three previous meetings and, according to bylaw 10, effectively delivered their resignation.

Barre explained that the UTMSU tried to reach out to Syed and Horan through different means, but the two directors did not respond.

Felipe Nagata, executive director, explained that the UTMSU is “pretty lenient” regarding BOD members’ attendance, but the number of meetings members can miss is limited. “It’s a privilege to be in the positions that we’re in,” said Nagata. He explained that BOD members

Aaju Peter

have to meet their responsibilities and “if we’re unable to do that, we can leave space for students who actually want to be here and actually participate.”

UTMSU and Blind Duck audited fi nancial statements

Wehnan (Berry) Lou, UTMSU vice president internal, presented the finan cial statements for the UTMSU and the Blind Duck, the UTMSU’s pub, to the BOD. Ac cording to the statements completed by Yale PGC, the Blind Duck experienced a $29,496 deficit in 2022. The pub’s wages and benefit expenses more than tripled, rising from nearly $59,000 to $192,555. The costs of serving sup plies, office and general, and amortization — an accounting procedure used to reduce the cost of a loan — also increased from 2021. Despite these increases in cost, the Blind Duck’s 2022 deficit is still lower than the 2021 deficit, which totalled $58,536.

According to the UTMSU’s financial state ment, the union ended the 2022 financial year with $1,851,883 in net income. The statement broke down revenues and expenses into cat egories.

In the first category, finance, the UTMSU’s revenue increased across all streams. Lou ex plained that the increased revenue resulted from the full return back to in person, which increased demand for services including lock ers, photocopiers, and the Infobooth. The UT MSU brought in $630,062 under the finance category.

In the second category, representing the stu dent centre, the UTMSU’s revenue included a shuttle bus subsidy. InfoBooth wages expenses increased from just under $19,000 in 2021 to just over $34,000 in 2022. The InfoBooth al lows students to visit a UTMSU representative in person regarding student U-Passes, lockers, shuttle bus tickets, and more.

However, the repairs and maintenance ex penses went from over $55,000 to under $5,000 and telephone expenses were com

Lecture

Jessie Schwalb Assistant News Editor

On November 15, Aaju Peter presented the 2022 Harold Innis Lecture, titled “Twice Colo nized.” The lecture focused on how Peter re claimed her identity after being separated from her culture as a child. Peter, an activist, lawyer, teacher, and designer, was born in Greenland and travelled to Denmark at the age of 11.

Harold Innis lecture

The Harold Innis lecture is an annual event hosted by the Harold Innis Foundation (HIF) and the Innis College Alumni Office. According to Ben Weststrate, the HIF secretary, the board chooses lecturers based on their connection to themes in Harold Innis’ work and their capacity to “shine a spotlight on important issues.”

In an email to The Varsity, Westrate con nected Peter’s advocacy for the seal hunting rights of Indigenous people to The Fur Trade in Canada, Harold Innis’ seminal 1930 book on Canadian economic history.

“This is the tip of the iceberg (Arctic pun in tended) with respect to alignment between Aaju Peter and Harold Innis. And there are, of course, important differences in their perspec tives,” wrote Weststrate. “Aaju Peter was a dream lecturer for us.”

Peter’s story

After an introduction from former city councillor Ceta Ramkhalawansingh and a video appear ance from author Margaret Atwood, Aaju Peter took the stage wearing a green hooded dress that she had made.

Within the hour, Peter had chronicled her life, interspersing songs, jokes, and teachings into her narrative.

Peter was born in the northern part of Green land. “There was a policy in Greenland that de manded that we should all become Danishized — we should all learn the Danish language, we should all learn everything about Denmark, that had colonized our island,” she said.

At the age of 11, Peter was sent to Denmark with a group of students and placed with a Dan ish family. When she returned to Greenland as an 18 year old, she had forgotten how to speak Greenlandic, the language spoken by her par ents.

“I couldn’t speak with my mother,” she re counted. This hurt was compounded by the judgment she received. “I was scolded for not being able to speak my own language. I was told that I was a cookie: I was brown on the outside and white on the inside,” she said. “That made me very angry and hurt.”

A year later, Peter attended a meeting of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents the Inuit in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Chu kotka, a northern region of Russia. “I was blown away,” she said. “I had never heard any story about my own background, about my own people.”

She said that, in 1981, she “took the first Inuk guy from Canada” and moved to the Canadian Arctic to live with her new husband’s family.

Moving to the Arctic allowed Peter to recon nect to Inuit culture. “People welcomed the fact that I was learning, as opposed to in Greenland — because I was Greenlandic, I [was told I] should be ashamed for not being able to speak my own language.” While living with her then

husband’s family, she learned the stories, lan guage, and values of the Inuit community in Canada.

Over the subsequent years, Peter became a fierce advocate for the rights and cultural practices of the Inuit in Canada and across the Arctic. She raised five children, received a law degree, released an album of Greenland Inuit songs, began designing sealskin clothing, and has been featured in multiple documentaries.

Currently, Peter lives in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut. She teaches Greenlandic — the language she lost as a child and which she re learned later in life — to other Inuit.

Seal hunting in Inuit culture

Peter is a renowned advocate for the rights of the Inuit to hunt seals, and her lecture highlight ed the importance of seal hunting to the eco nomic and social well-being of Inuit. According to Peter, hunters share the meat with the com munity and often sell skins to recover the costs of hunting.

Seal meat is also rich in nutrients including protein, zinc, calcium, and iron. It is one of the few sources of food produced in the Arctic, where most food must be shipped from the south at high prices.

A 2009 EU ban prohibited the trade of seal products on the European market. Although a 2015 amendment inserted an exemption for products produced by Inuit, some Inuit have received threats for engaging in the seal trade, and a report published by the European Com mission in 2020 found that the exemption has failed to address the socio-economic harms of the ban. “What the seal ban did was make a life that was already hard for… our people even harder,” said Peter.

According to the 2017–2018 Household Food Security Survey Module, 57 per cent of households in Nunavut experience food insecu rity. A 2020 paper published by the Library of

pletely cut out.

The third category focused on social activities and planning. One of the main expenses includ ed in this category was orientation, which cost just over $154,000. Meanwhile, the revenue made from tickets and sponsors of orientation was just over $60,000. The UTMSU ended up with a $181,817 deficit in this category.

The Academic Societies Affairs Committee dropped their academic awards expense from $3,500 to $370. This allowed the UTMSU to earn a profit of $14,744 in this category, up from $1,505 in 2021.

The World University Service of Canada, which funds refugee students, had an excess of revenue totalling just under $47,000. The Duck Stop, the UTMSU’s convenience store, suffered a deficit of $9,380.

Executive reports and upcoming plans

In his report, Alistair Kirk, UTMSU vice presi dent external, noted that the UTMSU’s housing support clinic will be operational next semester. The UTMSU will also publish its International Student Survival Guide at the beginning of the winter semester.

Reagan Roopnarine, UTMSU vice president equity, explained that the UTMSU has started planning events for Black History Month. Roop narine also highlighted a food drive for the UT MSU’s food centre, to be hosted in collabora tion with the Centre for Student Engagement. The UTMSU also received a donation from Hart House towards the food centre.

Lou explained that the Job Readiness Pro gram will host a LinkedIn profile picture taking session and a LinkedIn workshop on November 23. According to Lou, the UTMSU is also re questing a bus that goes directly from Milton to the UTM campus in an effort to help commuter students. Additionally, the UTMSU’s operating budget will be presented at their December BOD meeting.

The UTMSU will host exam destressors from December 5–8, as students prepare for fall se mester exams.

Parliament attributed such astronomical rates of food insecurity to the high cost of food in the Arctic, along with “socioeconomic inequities, the legacy of colonial policies, climate change and environmental dispossession and contami nation.”

Since receiving her law degree, Peter has written legal articles and appeared at the Hague and other governmental bodies arguing against seal hunting bans. She is featured prominently in the 2016 documentary “Angry Inuk,” which chronicles Inuk activists’ fight against seal hunt ings bans.

Her advocacy is informed by what she has learned from her community. “I follow the teach ing of our elders that say you have to talk, you have to be kind, you have to come to an under standing,” said Peter.

Reactions from the U of T community 513 people registered to attend the lecture either virtually or in person, one fifth of whom were students. After the lecture, The Varsity spoke with a few attendees.

Marisa Brook, an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics, said that she came to the lecture because of her interest in lan guage but was blown away by the perspective that Peter shared. “I didn’t expect how easily we would be welcomed into a perspective that was just so much more different than I expect ed, and yet so accessible and welcoming and challenging all at the same time,” she said.

“This matching of gratitude and responsibility is something that’s really hit home for me in the last couple of months in particular because of multiple talks I’ve heard from Indigenous lead ers,” said Karen Reed, the acting principal of Innis College.

Reed also believes that lectures such as these inform her work. “[Peter] touched on so many themes today in her talk,” she said. “It reminds me that, when I’m talking and work ing with students, [I should] be really listening and thinking about how to incorporate some of those ideas into my own work.”

“Twice Colonized”:

presents the 2022 Harold Innis

Greenland-born Inuk activist discusses language loss, seal hunting rights

Sexual Violence and Sexual Harrassment Policy updated, pending December meeting

UTSC, UTM Campus Councils discuss graduate student complaints, low enrolment numbers

Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence and harassment.

The UTSC Campus Council and UTM Campus Council gathered for the second time in the 2022–2023 academic year on November 15 and November 16, respectively.

Both councils heard updates about U of T’s Policy on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harrass ment. Revisions to the policy include increased clarity in certain processes and stronger lan guage on zero tolerance for retaliation on sur vivors.

The councils also discussed COVID-19, key complaints at U of T, and enrolment numbers.

Revisions to the Policy on Sexual Harrass ment and Sexual Violence

Vice-Provost Students Sandy Welsh presented the latest revisions to U of T’s Policy on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harrassment to both the UTSC and UTM campus councils. The policy is currently in its final consultation stage, and will be presented to the Governing Council on De cember 15 for approval.

In July, U of T accepted all 12 recommenda tions from a review of the policy. At both coun cils, Welsh presented the three major revisions of the policy after the 12 recommendations were taken into account.

First, the updated policy would require U of T to produce an annual public report that provides statistical information on sexual violence cases at the university. Additionally, it now uses stron ger language for the nontolerance for reprisals or retaliation against anyone who reports sexual violence.

The update has also clarified the parameters for nonadjudicative processes — an area of the policy that Welsh said has been critiqued in the past as being unclear or missing. According to the revision, a nonadjudicative process involves discussions about possible resolutions between a neutral facilitator and the “complainant” and “respondent.” Some options for resolutions may include an apology, a no-contact order, or coun selling.

The Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy, Response, for Survivors (PEARS) Project — a U of T student-led, trauma informed organiza tion supporting sexual violence survivors — previously critiqued recommendation seven of the July iteration of the policy. The seventh

recommendation called for the university to es tablish formal supports for individuals accused of sexual harassment or violence. The revised policy now states that such individuals will be “made aware of the supports that are available to them.”

Welsh said that this updated set of revisions is the direct result of feedback collected from an online consultation form, which university members filled out from September to October. The revisions also incorporated “additional final feedback from a student group.”

Ombudsperson report

Ombudsperson Bruce Kidd presented the Re port of the University Ombudsperson for 2021–2022 to the UTSC and UTM councils, in which he highlighted the increase in graduate student complaints and decrease in academic integrity cases, among other issues at U of T.

The Office of the Ombudsperson is an inde pendent and impartial body that offers advice and assistance to all U of T members that have unresolved concerns about their treatment at the university.

Kidd highlighted four key issues based on the complaints his office had received. For one, graduate student complaints have increased by 35 per cent, from 72 cases in 2020–2021 to 97 cases in 2021–2022.

“Maltreatment in graduate supervision has been an issue for the university for a long time,” Kidd said. He was “pleased” to report, however, that extreme cases of bad supervision, such as total neglect, have “leveled off.”

Another issue Kidd highlighted is academic integrity. While the number of academic integ rity cases decreased, the length of delays in creased, which resulted in some cases lasting over two years.

Kidd emphasized the significant impact that these cases can have on a student’s academic career. “In each case, it means that students’ academic plans — and in some cases, their en tire degree programs — have to be put on hold,” he said.

He also highlighted other key issues, includ ing mental health challenges that U of T mem bers face and the university’s inefficient commu nication channels.

Overall, the Office of the Ombudsperson re ceived 405 complaints in 2021–2022, which is 13 per cent higher than in 2020–2021. Of these complaints, the office has been able to settle 338.

UTM enrolment numbers

Amrita Daniere — UTM’s interim vice-principal, academic and dean — reported that UTM had intended to enroll 2,662 domestic and 1,180 in ternational students for the 2022–2023 academ ic year. As of October 11, however, UTM has only enrolled 2,582 and 737 students respectively.

In particular, the decrease of 443 international students has “some very negative implications” for UTM’s budget, according to Daniere. She said that, as a result, UTM is taking “some sig nificant actions” to manage the shortfall.

Most UTM international students pay ap proximately $59,000 per year, while students in all Management and Commerce programs and select specialized programs including Computer Science, Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology pay $59,000 in their first year, and up to $67,000 in later years.

The reason for this year’s shortfall in interna tional enrollment is that UTM did not admit as many international students to its more competi tive programs — such as management, comput er science, and life science — compared to the previous academic year. According to Daniere, UTM underenrolled international students in these areas with the intention to correct last year’s overenrolment in these disciplines.

COVID-19 masking update

At the UTSC meeting, Wisdom Tettey, UTSC’s principal and U of T vice president, said that “we encourage everyone to [wear masks], but we recognize that individuals have a choice in this matter.”

Tettey reiterated U of T’s masking policy in ad dressing the announcement made by the prov ince on November 14, in which Ontario’s chief medical officer “strongly” recommended the public to wear masks in all indoor public set tings. This announcement came as Ontario’s healthcare system continues to face “extraordi nary pressures” due to the “triple threat” of CO VID-19, respiratory syncytial virus, and influenza circulating across the province.

UTSC and UTM continue to have mask dis pensers at major entrances on each campus. Both campuses also have hosted vaccine popup clinics: UTSC collaborates with Scarborough Health Network to provide flu and COVID-19 vaccine shots on campus, while UTM books GO-VAXX buses to provide COVID-19 vaccine shots.

Pandemic impact on

Academic and Dean William Gough reported about the negative “legacy” effects of CO VID-19 on students’ academic performances. He said that first-year students often struggle academically during their first term at UTSC, but he observed that “more senior students” have also been struggling.

“Many students are finding exam writing chal lenging, especially if they come from a school board that eliminated exams [during the lock downs],” he said.

Gough said that UTSC is currently identifying and developing resources in order to address these gaps.

Other business

The UTSC Campus Council also discussed the university’s ongoing negotiations with the Ca nadian Union of Public Employees, Locals 3261 and 3902.

Meanwhile, UTM has implemented a new ap plication that tracks UTM shuttle buses in real time and will add four new buses to its fleet.

The next UTM Campus Council meeting will be held on January 24, 2023, while the UTSC Campus Council meeting will be held on Janu ary 25, 2023.

If you or someone you know has been af fected by sexual violence or harassment at U of T:

• Contact the PEARS Project at thepe arsproject@gmail.com for disclosures and trauma-informed support.

• Contact the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre at (416) 597-8808.

• Visit safety.utoronto.ca for a list of safety resources.

• Visit svpscentre.utoronto.ca for informa tion, contact details, and hours of operation for the tri-campus Sexual Violence Preven tion & Support Centre. Centre staff can be reached by phone at 416-978-2266 or by email at svpscentre@utoronto.ca.

• Call Campus Safety Special Constable Service to make a report at 416-978-2222 (for U of T St. George and U of T Scarbor ough) or 905-569-4333 (for U of T Missis sauga).

• Call the Women’s College Hospital Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Care Cen tre at 416-323-6040.

• Call the Scarborough Grace Sexual As sault Care Centre at 416-495-2555.

student performance

Addressing the UTSC council, Vice-Principal,

• Call the Assaulted Women’s Helpline at 866-863-0511.

Alyanna Denise Chua, Jessica Lam Varsity Editors

Both satellite campuses held their Campus Council meetings on November 15 and 16.

LEXEY BURNS/THEVARSITY

Explainer: Who is going on strike, and how do strikes work? CUPE locals and other labour unions currently in negotiations

Zen Nguyen and Georgia Kelly Labour Correspondent and Associate Business & Labour Editor

We are living through an upsurge in the strength and intensity of labour organizations around the world. Canada is no exception to this, and with wages lagging behind soaring inflation, workers have been fighting for better compensation. One way they do this is through strikes.

A strike, also referred to as industrial action, is when workers collectively decide to withhold their labour by stopping or limiting their work. It can be as small as a local business or as big as India’s nation-wide strike of 250 million in 2020 — the largest strike in history.

How strikes work

Strikes are usually organized by labour unions — organizations formed by and for workers to pro mote their workplace interests. Strikes can be an integral part of bargaining or a way to show solidar ity with other workers. They are also a means for political protests, such as the strikes in Iran against the Khomeini regime that took place this fall or the strikes by education workers in Ontario this past week. The purpose of a strike is always to stop or limit output and production to make a point — usu ally to promote workers’ bargaining demands.

Canadian laws state that a strike is only legal when organized by a union that has previously ac quired permission from their members to strike, af ter a contract with the employer has expired and a new agreement is not reached, and all negotiation options for a new contract have been exhausted. At this point, the union must pass a majority vote in which the union membership decides to go on strike.

These negotiation options include conciliation, in which the Minister of Labour appoints an officer to help reach an agreement. If this fails, there is a 21-day long ‘cooling-off’ period before strikes can begin, and unions must serve at least three-day notice before a strike.

Traditionally, strikers will create picket lines, which are boundaries usually established in front

of their workplace. Crossing a picket line — usu ally done by consumers demanding the service or other workers hired by the employer to re place strikers — is considered disrespectful and unsupportive of the strike effort.

To ensure a successful strike, unions prepare ahead of time. This can include organizing strike committees and informing union members, scouting for picket line locations, training picket captains, and making signs. Since workers are not working, they will lose income while on strike. A strike fund must also be prepared by the union to compensate the workers.

Are U of T Workers Striking?

Canadian Unions of Public Employees (CUPE), Local 3261, which represents 700 service workers at the University of Toronto, reached a tentative agreement last Thursday, just over 72 hours before their strike deadline of Novem ber 21. The agreement came the day after the

union held a “Day of Action for Good Jobs” in front of Sidney Smith Hall on the St. George campus with students, workers, and CUPE3902 members in attendance, to promote their cam paign “Good Jobs U of T” against the contract ing out of service workers’ jobs.

The tentative agreement will need to be ratified by a union vote in order to be finalized. CUPE3261 has received an outpour of solidar ity and financial support from other unions, in cluding a $25,000 donation from CUPE3902 — which represents post-doctoral researchers, sessional lecturers, and teaching assistants at U of T — toward their strike fund.

The University of Toronto’s Faculty Association released a statement in support of CUPE3261 and 3902, and donated $1,000 to the 3261 strike fund. CUPE3261 wrote an open letter to the University of Toronto, which more than 170 faculty members and librarians have signed so far in support of the union’s demand.

CUPE3902 Unit 3, which represents over 1000 academic workers at U of T, has filed a “noboard” report. Once approved by the Minister of Labour, this report starts a 17-day countdown to a potential legal strike. The union has achieved an 85 per cent vote for a strike mandate as of November 4. They are also in dispute with the university over proposed cuts to their healthcare benefits for Units 1 and 7, which could spur fur ther work stoppage.

Other Strikes Across Ontario

You might have seen headlines about the twoday province-wide strike on November 4 and November 7 by the CUPE education workers and their various protests and picket lines. Their 55,000-strong strike brought down the Ford government’s unconstitutional ‘backto-work’ legislation. After negotiations broke down again, they served another five-day no tice, meaning a strike could start on November 21.

A general strike — in which other unions join to show solidarity — was rumoured before parties reconvened negotiation last week, and it still seems to be a possibility. This general strike will likely involve public education work ers across Ontario.

Public education workers are not the only ones striking in Ontario. More than 2,200 GO employees also went on strike recently, result ing in cancellation of some GO bus services. The outcome of this strike is a new tentative contract, which the union is now voting on.

Employees in higher education are also not hesitant to strike. Wilfrid Laurier University’s Contract Teaching Faculty teaching faculty is positioned to strike on November 21. How ever, a tentative agreement has been reached, and will likely avert a strike if union members accept it. A similar course of events occurred between faculty members and administration at Western University. Meanwhile, bargaining talks with teaching and research assistants at McMaster University have failed, and their union is gearing up to strike on November 21.

In academic settings, opportunities to gain hands-on experience are rare. The struggle to gain real-world experience like internships, coop, and volunteering is an uncertain battleground filled with constant struggle and seemingly large mountains to overcome.

The University of Toronto Investment Banking Club (UTIBC) aims to solve this issue by helping its members get a foot into the door of invest ment banking — a form of banking that helps firms organize complex financial transactions such as mergers. They do so by providing stu dents with an understanding of financial theory basics and experience.

Preparing its members for a career in in vestment banking “UTIBC is committed to [promoting] diversity across our organization by welcoming prospec tive members from all years and academic pro grams,” wrote Thomas Aalbers — co-president of UTIBC — in an email to The Varsity

The club has been focused on the vision of its members graduating with the necessary skills to begin a career in investment banking. UTIBC

offers memberships and programs to train its members in this field in order to achieve this vi sion.

The club achieves this by offering analyst train ing that spans a year, designed to help students gain knowledge and experience in analyzing. This program is designed for any student with any level of experience and knowledge in this field. Weekly tutorials, modules, intra-club stock simulation competitions, and interactive market discussions are a few of the activities students are exposed to in this program.

The club also includes a membership program with the option of members joining as general or Blue Chip Members. General members have ac cess to digital communications, like newsletters and email reminders about events; the UTIBC Discord Server that provides job updates; and access to the UTIBC online educational resourc es and recommended reading list.

Blue Chip Members receive all the benefits of general membership, as well as others, such as invitations to limited capacity opportunities, career preparation guides, recordings of the Analyst Training Program sessions, and exclu sive discounts for partner materials including Wall Street Oasis, Breaking into Wall Street and Corporate Finance Institute. Blue Chip Members

also have access to mentorship opportunities with upper year students and club alumni.

The UTIBC Impact Fund

The UTIBC Impact Fund is an initiative that the club aims to launch by fall 2023. This initiative focuses on giving back to the U of T community by contributing to financial aid at the university and charities within Toronto. It also aims to al low members to practice theory they learn in class through real-world application under the supervision of the executive board, the portfolio management team, and the investment team.

“We wish to leave a long-lasting legacy at the University of Toronto and broader community through this initiative,” wrote Aalbers.

As the fall 2023 project date approaches slowly, the onset of students giving back to students through a club focused on inclusion, education, and giving back will certainly be an exciting historical moment at U of T.

Bringing diversity to a male-dominated field

“The finance industry has been historically dominated by white male bankers. We hope to address this and other dimensions of systemic inequality in the industry by establishing inclu sion as a core value at UTIBC,” wrote Aalbers when asked about UTIBC’s open-to-all policy. “We aim to make access to information more equitable and breaking into the industry more accessible to students from all backgrounds,” he wrote.

As UTIBC grows, Aalbers hopes to “continue to diversify [the club’s] member base, expand operations, and build long-lasting relationships with [the U of T] alumni network, industry pro fessionals, and corporate partners.”

With such a strong team, students with any level of experience who are interested in joining this club will most definitely be welcomed with open arms and minds.

Jasmin Akbari Varsity Contributor

UTIBC prepares students heading into financial careers.

COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO INVESTMENT BANKING CLUB

U of T needs to address the intersections of mental health and anti-racism

Racialized students with mental health concerns need better support from the university

Noshin Talukdar Comment Columnist

One late evening in May 2020, my family hud dled together in front of the TV as the first wave of protests, catalyzed by the brutal killing of George Floyd, swept across the United States.

The phrase that ricocheted off the streets and across social media — “Black Lives Matter” — was simple. Yet, implicit in the three words was a pressing call to action: acknowledge the rac ist underpinnings of the modern western state that is inherently averse to Black life, defund and abolish the institutions maintaining its violence, and enact widespread systemic reform to end racial injustice.

So when the University of Toronto signalled its intention to reevaluate institutional responses to mental health concerns in early 2021, there was cause to be hopeful.

This October, the U of T administration con cluded that it will be amending how campus safety personnel respond to students experienc ing mental health crises across all U of T cam puses. Among other changes is a commitment to “[deepening] integration of equity, diversity, in clusion and anti-racism competencies and men tal health knowledges” in training for Campus Safety Special Constable Service staff — who, up until August of 2021, self-identified as Univer sity of Toronto Campus Police.

Despite the name change, U of T special con stables on campus continue to enjoy the same privileges bestowed upon police officers. Man aged by Toronto Police Services, U of T special constables handle criminal offences at their dis cretion, remaining well within their rights to ar rest, search, and release students.

And so, here I rekindle the argument that spawned the 2020 uprising and countless movements before it: any model based on polic

ing — no matter how prettily packaged under promises of equity and sensitivity — is bound to disproportionately harm people of colour, par ticularly those from Black and Indigenous com munities who bear the brunt of police violence.

In 2019, a third-year UTM student sought help from the Health and Counselling Centre for her suicidal ideations, only to be arrested by cam pus police. More recently, the Centre for Addic tion and Mental Health has found evidence of students at multiple Ontario universities being restrained by police during mental health crises.

These incidents of hyper policing — while themselves not racially significant — are insepa rable from the institution’s history of serving the interests of the white settler-colonial state we call Canada. Given stories of campus police insti gating or abetting discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) indi viduals, it’s clear that when the criminalization of mental health converges with racialized status, it will be students of colour experiencing mental disability who pay the price.

The point I hope to make is that we cannot chant ‘abolish the police’ at Christie Pits Park for 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet — who died in 2021 after police arrived at her home — then sit idly as racialized students struggling with mental health, criminalized by virtue of existing, are subjected to initiatives that cement police presence on campus.

With Black Torontonians being 230 per cent more likely than whites to have an officer’s gun pointed at them — and other racialized groups being similarly overrepresented in instances of police force — the privilege of publicly experi encing mental crises without the threat of los ing one’s life is not equally granted to all. BIPOC students cannot afford to abandon long internal ized fears of police simply because special con stables briefly underwent diversity training, the

results of which are arguably immeasurable.

There is no deeper cut than watching a po lice system be refashioned for public friendliness when BIPOC students are already overwhelm ingly underresourced in terms of social support. To place special constables at the crux of men tal health-care emergencies as first responders suggests an unwillingness to invest in student needs and reinforces stigmatization of racialized people with mental disabilities by further associ ating them with crime and risk. In some circles, we’d call this institutional neglect. In others, we call it systemic violence.

To be truly antiracist, let us begin by divesting from campus policing. Let’s address the inter secting factors that underlie students’ mental health crises. Let’s open up scholarships and aid programs to ease financial burdens, normal ize flexible and asynchronous learning options to accommodate different needs, and expand cultural resources to fortify students’ sense of belonging.

Let’s strengthen community partnerships so survivors of violence find resources and shelter. Let’s design courses based on compassion, en trench unlimited CR/NCR — without a deadline — and facilitate access to career counselling to fuel student success. Let’s increase funding for extracurricular clubs and programs, and es tablish peer-facilitated social and psychological

support networks to promote socialization and collective well-being. Let’s simultaneously cen tre the underprivileged communities which have historically needed it most.

We cannot expect to apply band-aid solutions that ignore the wider structural inequities under lying our institutions and hope that they will natu rally translate into favourable outcomes for all. It is impossible to simply “diversity train” the deeply flawed police system into perfection when its ex istence and unchecked power themselves sit at the root of many BIPOC communities’ intergen erational traumas. Rather than a depoliticized solution that seeks to blindly amalgamate racial ized communities with more privileged groups, BIPOC students deserve approaches to mental health care that are specifically tailored to their concerns, histories, and social realities.

We have consistently ranked among the world’s best universities in terms of research, innovation, and influence. If anyone can spear head institutional change away from carceral care toward community-based reconciliation, it’s us. The best time to do so has passed, long before the first protest erupted in 2020. The sec ond best time will always be now.

Noshin Talukdar is a fourth-year student at Vic toria College. She is the equity columnist for The Varsity’s Comment section.

BIEW BIEW SAKULWANNADEE/THEVARSITY

U of T students need better access to primary healthcare

Shreya Vanwari Comment Columnist

The two functions of primary health care are to provide first-contact health care and to provide referrals to patients that require more specialized services. As such, primary health care includes basic emergency services, basic mental health services, prevention and treat ment of common diseases, and coordination with other levels of care.

province isn’t meeting the demand for primary health-care practitioners.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice and capability of primary health care in Ontario has markedly declined.

The pandemic has resulted in a delay in pre ventative and ongoing health care, which has caused patients to present with more complex and severe issues later on. Primary care cli nicians then have to deal with these complex conditions, which add further strain onto pri

However, COVID-19 isn’t the original cause of this strain. Prior to the pandemic, there were many long standing issues

fected the quality of primary care in the prov ince. The pandemic has only exacerbated the issue. In 2020, around 1.8 million people in Ontario did not have a family doctor and this number was predicted to further increase.

This is why the University of Toronto should focus more on giving students easy access to primary health care during this capacity crisis.

U of T has an international student population of 30.3 per cent — many of whom likely don’t have family doctors or know how to navigate the Ontario health-care system. In addition, there are many out-of-province and in-prov ince students who also don’t have access to a family doctor while at U of T.

Currently, U of T’s Health and Wellness Centre provides a range of physical and men tal health services and resources for students. One of these services is providing students with appointments with a range of physicians. This system is a useful resource for many stu dents who may not know where to turn for primary health care in Ontario.

However, actually waiting for an appoint ment with a physician at U of T Health and Wellness Centre can be a long process. Another resource that U of T provides is a helpline number students can contact.

In an interview with The Varsity , Sasha Mehra, an international student at UTSG, discussed her experience with a fractured left clavicle in February. Mehra said that she could not find appointments with a physi

cian for the coming week and was in great pain, so she contacted the helpline. While discussing her experiences, she said, “There was no response at first, and I had to call three times before getting a response.” Dur ing the call, Mehra said that she “discussed the history but they said there’s nothing [they] can do.”

According to Sasha, U of T should at least have a 24/7 clinic on campus instead of af filiated centres because most of them either don’t work during the hours students may need help or have long lines for the general population. It is upsetting that U of T doesn’t have a system that can support its students who may face injuries or health issues.

Ontario’s growing need for primary care practitioners should be a call to action for U of T to provide their students with more support. One critical step would be to have an oncampus family physician who takes students for walk-in appointments when they require it. Finally, U of T must work on its coordina tion with other levels of care so students with more complex issues have somewhere to turn to. I believe these steps are crucial in provid ing students with a better and more efficient healthcare system.

Shreya Vanwari is a third-year psychology student at Woodsworth College. She is the local affairs columnist in The Varsity ’s Com ment section.

As Canada faces a shortage of family doctors, we need better services on campus

St. George Street is dangerous for pedestrians

dangerous. Don’t get me started on the muf flers and honking that can be heard from the highest floors of Robarts Library.

With only ten minutes between some class es, students often have to run across campus to make it to class on time. With this in mind, the poorly planned pedestrian crossings at UTSG can force students into potentially lethal situations.

The fate of cyclist collisions also rests in the university administration and the City’s hands. The attempt at a designated bike lane on St. George is pathetic. In fact, painted bike lanes are more dangerous than no bike lanes at all. Sharing the road with large high-speed vehi cles with no protective barriers is a massive safety oversight from the university. Calling for better roads, specifically to accommodate cy clists, has been a longstanding proposal from students. Back in 2014, the University of To ronto Students’ Union was unsuccessful when they petitioned the university administration and the City of Toronto for the pedestrianiza tion of St. George Street.

Emily Carlucci Varsity Contributor

I’m sure that like myself, most students are frus trated with the pedestrian crossings at UTSG — in particular, the ones on St. George Street. With a subway station, libraries, and residences, there’s no question that St. George is the most important street on campus. As the connecting street between College and Bloor, St. George Street is also a crucial artery to campus. How ever, it’s been polluted with bumper-to-bumper traffic during the day and careless speeders at night. This poses a threat to pedestrians.

In 2012, U of T became more pedestrian

friendly by transforming a portion of Willcocks Street into Willcocks Common. This pedestri an-only zone between Huron and St. George opened up the possibility for renovation along side the Spadina area of campus so that Will cocks Street could become a mix of both pe destrian-only and pedestrian-friendly spaces.

The Willcocks pilot project was completed about eight years before my enrolment at U of T, so I can’t attest to the issues the street posed before a section of it was closed off to cars. However, I can vouch for the fact that it is a much nicer part of campus to walk on: con trolled speeds for cars, bustling student life with people socializing and eating on the tables out

Rishi Sunak is the UK’s best bet

Rubin Beshi Comment Columnist

On October 25, Rishi Sunak was

The elec tion was triggered by the resignation of Su nak’s predecessor Liz Truss, who stepped down after her devastating economic plan ruined financial markets and caused a govern mental crisis. Sunak, who is now Britain’s third prime minister in 2022, faces the difficult job of fixing Britain’s economy, reuniting his party, and restoring public trust in the British govern ment.

Due to these troubling times, many feel Su nak is not up to the task. His political record has come under heavy scrutiny in the past few weeks, with many focusing on his history of slashing benefits from Universal Credit, which is a form of welfare the UK government pro vides to people with low income. Despite these valid criticisms, I still believe that Sunak is the right man for restoring Britain’s financial state. Sunak has previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022, giving him valuable experience working at the helm of Britain’s economy. As chancellor, he did an excellent job in handling Britain’s finances dur ing COVID-19 by implementing big spending programs that helped businesses and citizens alike. His response to the pandemic has gar

nered him praise, and his furlough schemes ensured that millions of employees could take time off while still getting paid.

Given his experience, I believe Sunak is the most qualified member of the Conserva tive Party to serve as prime minister and the most likely candidate to stabilize an economy headed for a recession. Moreover, Sunak ac curately predicted in August that Truss’s plans to cut taxes would end in disaster. He warned that increasing the budget deficit would sky rocket interest rates and drastically lower the pound, which quickly proved correct. Sunak’s appointment will likely mean a return to classic Tory economic policy: focusing on getting infla tion under control before introducing tax cuts.

In addition, Sunak has already demonstrat ed shrewd judgment and a remarkable ability to lead in the early days of his administration. He has made major changes to Truss’s cabi net, which includes the removal of 11 mem bers, but has also retained the services of a key few. Overall, Sunak has chosen people with high levels of experience in government, which sends a signal of stability to the British people. Sunak’s competency, eye for detail, and high level of confidence is just what Britain needs at this precarious moment.

Sunak’s appointment also carries symbolic weight. He is the first Hindu prime minister of the UK and the first racialized person to hold the office. Given that Sunak is of Indian de scent, his appointment is seen as a ground

side. Furthermore, desire paths, a convenient human-made shortcut that avoids inefficient sidewalk paths, also exist alongside the Spa dina vicinity of campus.

St. George Street, however, is an embarrass ing disaster. I should not have to wait for two minutes or longer to cross the street if I miss the light indicating to cross, which only lasts about 10 seconds. I also should not have to worry about almost getting hit by a car while crossing the street, a phenomenon that has happened to me much too often.

With cars making speedy right turns, impa tient left turns, and flying through red lights, the major intersections around campus are too

Realistically, what can be done? In the 2021–2022 academic year, undergraduate and graduate student enrolment at UTSG recorded a whopping 65,617 students, but the city lacks space to accommodate this large number of students walking to class. St. George Street being closed to vehicles, or at least working toward to becoming more pedestrian friendly, would allow more room for students in general as some parts of the sidewalk are extremely narrow and outdated.

Do I myself have a resolution? No, not really. That’s not my job. However, as U of T contin ues to welcome more students and Toronto’s downtown core keeps expanding, the universi ty administration and the City of Toronto need to prioritize students’ safety. We belong on this campus. We pay thousands of dollars a year to go to school here. U of T and the City of Toronto owe it to us to provide safe and walk able roads.

breaking milestone and a cause of celebration by racialized people worldwide.

Following Queen Elizabeth’s passing on September 8, England has come under more scrutiny for its colonial past. There’s no denying that the British empire has left behind a legacy of racism and oppression. In particular, it has been criticized for the crimes and thefts it has committed toward India, among other former colonies.

Finally, students here at U of T can also bene fit from Sunak’s appointment because Canada’s relationship with Britain is likely to improve as a result of it. According to Tony McCulloch, a pro fessor of North American studies at Oxford Uni versity, “[Sunak] will be much more traditional, much steadier… in foreign policy.” As a result, Canada’s negotiations with Britain over a new

free trade deal will likely achieve greater stability.

Overall, there is no doubt that Sunak has a formidable task ahead of him — his country is in horrible economic condition; his party is highly divided and in desperate need of unity; and the country at large is in turmoil, with many angry at rising costs and interest rates. However, due to his background as chancellor, brave leadership, and high level of confidence, Sunak is the right man for the job. As he said outside of his resi dence at 10 Downing Street on the day of his appointment, “I fully appreciate how hard things are… all I can say is that I am not daunted.”

Rubin Beshi is a second year student at Wood sworth College studying political science and English. Beshi is The Varsity’s international af fairs columnist.

Emily Carlucci is a second-year student dou ble majoring in political science and English at Trinity College.

The university administration and City need to implement safer pedestrian crossings at UTSG

appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom by King Charles III after winning the Conservative Party leadership election the day before.

Why the new prime minister is the right man for the job

U of T's Campus needs to be more pedestrian friendly. AUGUSTINE WONG/THEVARSITY

Rishi Sunak set to replace Liz Truss as the next PM of the United Kingdom. COURTESY OF HM TREASURY/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

How accessible is Robarts Library?

Dumé Features Accessibility Correspondent

Whether a dreary stone turkey or a proud, egotistical peacock, Robarts Library is em blematic of U of T’s culture. For some, the 49-year-old structure — named after John P. Robarts, the 17th Premier of Ontario — is a home away from home. From blocks away, students can spot the building’s broad tail or pointy beak in the sky, reminding them that they are near U of T’s central St. George Street.

So, when U of T announced that its larg est library would expand in 2016, I can only imagine that campus was abuzz. Its five-sto rey, freestanding expansion, named Robarts Common, promised to increase the library’s available study spaces by 25 per cent, bring ing its total to 6,000. The expansion con nects to Robarts Library through bridges on its second, third, and fourth floors; offers 32 meeting rooms; and has wi-fi access and wireless printing throughout the building. The space was funded through donations from more than 1,000 donors.

A U of T News article published in Septem ber wrote that Robarts Common “was de signed as a dedicated space for students.”

So, as a student with a disability, I was ex cited to visit the Common when it opened ahead of schedule on March 24. I was thrilled that it was designed with me in mind.

However, when I stepped through the build ing’s Harbord Street entrance, I was greeted by wooden bleachers and stairs behind the front desk. When I attempted to climb up to the top of these stairs, I mistook a gap for a step and fell down, banging my knee.

At the time of my fall, these steps had black wood, raised bumps, and cushions on the steps — this solved the accessibility issue of depth perception, which I lack, and should have prevented me from falling. However, I’m thankful for my banged knee and bruised pride. Without them, I wouldn’t have asked the important question: is Robarts truly acces sible? And, arguably more importantly, what does it mean to be accessible?

To answer those questions, I’ve spent the last several months conducting research, in terviewing librarians, students, architects, de signers, and getting personal tours of Robarts Common both before and after its official openings. I also toured the fourth floor reading room of Ro barts Library, which was renovated this year, to see if accessibility was consistent in these recently devel oped university spaces.

This article is a summary of my observations. It is in no way inten tionally bashing the hard work of the architects and librarian staff that I know have done their best to make both these spaces acces sible. Rather, by highlighting both

the expansion’s accessible and inaccessible elements, I hope that U of T and the public will consider how we can improve universal design and stretch the idea of accessibility.

Understanding accessibility

When reading this article, it’s important to re member that my comments have been based solely on my observations as a disabled stu dent who uses Robarts Library daily. But, when it comes to defining accessibility from a logistical and architectural lens, I’m no expert.

While writing this article, I researched two main frameworks of accessibility, both of which I’d like to touch on before diving in. The first is the Accessibility for Ontarians with Dis ability Act (AODA), an Ontario law which en sures that no one discriminates against some one with disability. Said discrimination could involve employment, education, or even de signing and building accessible spaces.

Despite this legislation, Canadians with dis abilities still experience ableism when enter ing and using public spaces. Thea Kurdi is the president of DesignABLE Environments, an organization of consultants who help their clients — including U of T — create acces sible designs through regulations and design principles. According to Kurdi, though AODA may dictate design requirements, the act is the minimum standard for accessibility. In an in terview with The Varsity, Kurdi also mentioned that the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ad vocates for accessibility standards that are much higher.

The second framework that I’ll mention is U of T’s own accessibility standards, which U of T follows under the umbrella of the AODA. In a statement to The Varsity, a spokesperson for the university’s AODA office wrote that, in the process of designing Common, the university

formed a tri-campus technical working group that “worked with world-leading accessibil ity consultants… to identify regulations and universal design principles appropriate for the University’s built environments.”

Ultimately, the university adopted the Uni versity Facility Accessibility Design Standards from the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD) as a framework and “is in the process of customizing these standards for [the U of T]context.” The spokesperson added that, once finalized, these standards will be applied to “all new capital projects, in cluding renovations,” and will be “updated as needed in consultation with members of the University community with lived experience of disability.”

Before writing this article, I also thought highly of another standard of accessibility — universal design, meaning the design of build ings, products, or environments to make them accessible to all people, regardless of age, disability, or other factors. Though it isn’t a formal guideline, I’ve always considered it the “golden rule” of design; it is a well-established set of accessible policies that everyone should adhere to. After all, its seven principles — eq uitable use, flexibility in use, intuitive use, pro viding perceptive information, avoiding haz ards, low physical effort, and appropriate use — seemed to be great guidelines.

However, Kurdi made it clear in her inter view that universal design isn’t so universal. Rather, it is very subjective and depends on the building codes, the design, and the client’s level of accessibility commitment, among oth er factors. This ambiguity, of course, blurs the guidelines of accessibility, making the defintion inconsistent for people with disabilities as they navigate new spaces.

Now that we know the basics, let’s consider

Catherine

Canadians with disabilities still experience ableism when entering and using public spaces.

Students using wheelchairs cannot access the raised seating areas CATHERINE DUME/THE VARSITY

a concrete example of the aforementioned ac cessibility standards at work: Robarts Com mon. Diamond Schmitt Architects is the ar chitectural firm that designed the Common; in May, their principal architect, Gary McCluskie, gave me a tour of the building. McCluski’s tour highlighted both accessible and inaccessible features of the space.

Exploring Robarts Common Navigating Robarts’ loading dock was a prob lem McCluskie’s firm faced when designing the common.. Loading docks are the arrival and departure point for shipments brought to or picked up from buildings, often by trucks.

In an email to The Varsity, U of T’s director of library communications, Larysa Woloszansky, wrote that Robarts Common is positioned “on a complex site, straddling an existing loading dock.” Therefore, Woloszansky explained, the building is oriented to encourage vertical travel through the space, with movement organized around the use of its three elevators.

Woloszansky added that, through the Com mon’s Harbord Street entrance, students “en counter the elevators immediately when they enter the [space],” and, because there are “no workspaces present on the ground floor… it was important to ensure the study areas on floors two through five could be accessed easily and efficiently upon entry.”

While touring the space, I also observed how accessible features were incorporated into the design of the Common’s study spaces themselves. For example, many desks were tall for those who prefer to stand instead of sit for periods of time. Additionally, the distances between desks are large enough for those in wheelchairs to easily navigate the aisles, and chairs were removable from desks, which al lows people in wheelchairs to easily use the tables as well.

The design of the Common also incorpo rated features for students with spectrum dis orders. Robarts Common is filled with natural light, which some students might find to be busy and bright. To make the space more inviting for these students, according to Wo loszansky, the Common has “automatic cur tains that are on sensors to help block any overwhelming lights which we hope can re duce any sensory output.” Woloszansky add ed that each study room has a dimmable light feature, which allows users to adjust to their preference.

Woloszanky also acknowledged that some people with spectrum disorders “may find the open area of the common and [sic] some nois es stimulating.” To solve this problem, Wolo szanky wrote, the Common includes bookable study rooms and secluded study spaces that encourage quietness. Woloszanky added that the flooring was chosen with noise in mind: “We used carpets mainly to keep sound and noise to a minimum as we know that can be overwhelming.” Lastly, Woloszanky wrote that, because the designers of the Common knew that some fabrics could trigger those with spectrum disorders, “We tried to use non fab ric furniture where possible.”

As beneficial as general accessibility fea tures are, it’s arguably most important to know whether this accessibility extends to emergency features. In Robarts Common, it does — fire alarms flash to indicate fire for students with hearing loss, and they flash in synchronization to prevent a strobing effect for those with epilepsy who find flashing lights triggering.

However, despite these elements of acces sibility, there were also points of inaccessibility within the space. The first problem lies with most of the space’s bookable study rooms; I noticed that they typically have handles, and

no buttons, to open their doors, which could make accessing the space tricky for wheel chair users. In an email to The Varsity, Wolo szansky wrote that, due to a “number of delays” from the Common’ ven dors, the contracts were “not able to fit the automated feature to the study rooms be fore [its] pre-launch.” However, Woloszansky added that, since then, the “study rooms 2-4F on the second floor have been installed with the automatic button features,” and that the Common “plans on rolling this [feature] out to all study spaces [in the future], working with availability of [its] contractors.”

However, even if this problem were solved, some of these study rooms are too small to fit a wheelchair comfortably. In the same email, Woloszanky wrote that 40 per cent of the study rooms along the walls were designed to accommodate two to four people, and the Common’s “large study rooms for 8-12 people are accessible and have been mea sured by code to accommodate wheelchair users.” Though it’s helpful that wheelchair us ers can use some study rooms, it’s a shame that they can’t use all of them; private study rooms are the perfect space to participate in a virtual class, to study with friends without disturbing others, and exist without worrying if others are judging you or whether your dis ability is visible.

The second problem involves the layout of Robarts Common. As mentioned previously, all of the building’s elevators are situated at the front entrance of the building, which opens onto Harbord Street. Woloszanky noted that “there are only emergency stairs on the other end of the Common”; in case of an emer

gency, “all users in the space would need to travel through the space… or [through] Ro barts [Library] where students use elevators to travel between floors.” This design means that students will have to travel to the back of each floor to reach the accessible spots situated there, potentially running into traffic as students cross into the Common through the bridge that connects it to Robarts Library. Adding another pair of elevators to the back of the space would solve this issue.

Additionally, near the building’s Harbord en trance, there are flights of stairs present. Even though there are three elevators located in the same area, these elevators will not offer stu dents access to the raised seating areas that are only reachable by climbing these stairs. Because of this design, those with physical disabilities could be excluded from studying with friends using this space.

During our tour, McCluskie agreed that this is an issue, but noted that it was not inten tional. Sadly, that’s the truth when it comes to ableism in design; it could be intentional in certain circumstances, but most of the time it is unintentional and simply the result of a design norm which only caters to able-bodied people.

Exploring the fourth-floor reading room

This year, the fourth floor of Robarts Library was renovated by the Toronto Architecture firm Superkül. The firm’s principal architect

We are not a “minority population” in terms of size, but we are a marginalized community that our world’s main population has forgotten.

Superkül considered acoustics and lighting when designing Robarts’ reading room

CATHERINE DUME/THE VARSITY

and designer, Meg Graham, showed me around the space in August, before its official September opening.

It’s important to know that Robarts’ fourth floor reading room is only on one floor of the library, and it doesn’t occupy the entire floor, as the majority of Robarts’ fourth floor is taken up by escalators. So, because Superkül was challenged with renovating a room as op posed to an entire building, there were limi tations in terms of what features they could make more accessible.

During the tour, Graham identified three important accessibility considerations the firm made when designing the reading room: acoustics, lighting, and ergonomic multiple usage of the space.

To create a space that was suitable for quiet studying and reduced the overstimulation of sounds, the firm installed metal and wooden panels, which have acoustic properties. They help muffle periphery sounds as they travel through the air. Similarly to Robarts Common, the renovators of the reading room also in stalled carpets to minimize the sound of travel.

In terms of lighting, every desk in the read ing room is accompanied by a controllable lamp. Although students cannot adjust the brightness of these lamps, having the option to use them is beneficial for students who are sensitive to light.

These aren’t the only accessible lighting features in the reading room — throughout the

space, there are light therapy zones, which are light boxes that mimic outdoor light. Re search has shown that light therapy zones can be effective in treating psychiatric disorders — this includes Seasonal Affective Disorder, a depression that is triggered by the change of seasons each year and one that 10 to 20 per cent of the Canadian population may suf fer from. Light therapy zones can also be used to treat insomnia, which is a common sleep disorder that a study published in the National Library of Medicine predicts that 7.7 per cent of university students suffer from.

Finally, there are adjustable seating arrange ments throughout the reading room. Most chairs are removable. This gives students the choice to use standing desks, while giving those who use wheelchairs the ability to raise or lower some of the tables that they’re work ing at.

Apart from the three features highlighted by Graham, there are consultation rooms that al low students to speak to a librarian, including the Accessibility Librarian, for additional sup port. Each room is also temperature controlled for those on the spectrum.

When seeing this room for the first time, I’d initially praised the railings around its stair cases because I knew that they would help individuals with eyesight problems avoid the concrete — the material that the staircase is made of — and to help to prevent wheelchair users from getting stuck underneath the stairs

by forcing wheelchair users to travel around the railings instead of under the railings. However, when observing further, I noticed that these railings do not help individuals avoid accidentally bumping into the concrete, espe cially if they are tall. Individuals with low vision or balance issues, or even some with a spec trum disorder may not have the spatial aware ness to avoid it. I wish the guardrail was higher and had multiple rows of metal to act more like a fence. Though it may disrupt the simplic ity of the design, I would argue that it’s worth compromising for the space to accommodate all students.

In response to this critique, Woloszansky wrote that although the guardrail’s design is “up to code for universal design,” the universi ty is “always willing to make amendments that benefit [their] users.”

So, is Robarts accessible?

The short answer is no. When I asked Kurdi which architectural project she was most proud of in terms of accessibility, she an swered that there isn’t one. Sadly, I under stand why. There are many chances for ac cessibility features to be forgotten during the building design process, such as accessibility being sidelined during the stage when archi tectural firms are bidding for projects. When those features are left out, institutions later face the cost of integrating accessible features into old buildings.

In our interview, Kurdi made it clear that ac cessibility is not a checklist. Some architects and designers may be genuine in their inten tion to include accessibility, but might still ap proach accessible features as an item they need to cross off. But accessibility extends beyond what we can physically see; what is accessible for someone may not be acces sible to someone else.

Good accessibility is integrated seamlessly into the design of a space. Accessibility done poorly sticks out like a sore thumb. It is like when you put on a shoe slightly smaller than your feet — you just know it isn’t working. You can’t ignore it.

The hard truth is, despite the legislation’s very necessary presence, we can’t rely on the AODA for guidance without risking treating accessibility as a checklist.

Instead, Kurdi strongly encourages archi tects and interested parties to establish an accessibility commissioner, whose role would be to inspect buildings to ensure that they are accessible before the space becomes open to the public. Most importantly, an accessibil ity commissioner would hire people with dis abilities to use these spaces and report any problems that they experienced.

The hidden benefits and importance of accessibility

In our interview, Kurdi highlighted the many hidden ways in which improving accessibility

can benefit the general public. Firstly — and, arguably, most importantly — accessibility is one of the key safeguards against able ism. “[Ableism] is as bad as racism” was one of the most revolutionary phrases that Kurdi said during our interview. It’s revolutionary be cause I don’t think we recognize what it truly means.

Out of the many stories Kurdi told me, the one I distinctly remember, is how someone asked her: “So what percentage of housing should be accessible?” Kurdi responded by asking, “What percentage of housing should be for Black people?” By responding in that way, Kurdi was emphasizing that this per son was asked a ridiculous question; hous ing should be accessible for everyone. It shouldn’t be a feature that a select portion of the population has to earn. We wouldn’t think twice about creating safe spaces for people of various races, so why do we have second thoughts when creating spaces for accessi bility needs?

Second, accessibility is a positive invest ment into our future. About 22 per cent of Canadians have either a temporary or per manent disability. But even our society’s per ceived “ordinary” individuals may experience

a situational disabling of their abilities some time in their lives. For instance, cognitive im pairment is a side effect of being drunk, and elderly people tend to have mobile impair ment simply because of aging.

This is not to say that everyone will eventu ally become disabled or identify as disabled; rather, it’s to demonstrate that the disabled community is far more vast than we may as sume it is. As a member of the disabled com munity, I want you to know this: we are not a “minority population” in terms of size, but we are a marginalized community that our world’s main population has forgotten.

Finally, though potentially costly at face val ue, accessibility is often a more sustainable building practice. Kurdi explains that the cost ly reputation of making a building accessible is only true if the implementation of acces sible features was done after the fact during renovations. If the building had incorporated accessible features within the pre-planning of the design for the building, it would have been cheaper to do so, and far more sustainable. On average, renovations generate approxi mately 60 pounds of waste per square foot; when we remodel or renovate, we destroy the building, producing more waste and using

more materials than needed.

What can we learn?

Through my tours, interviews, and research, I’ve learned that Robarts Library and U of T have clearly tried their best to make the li brary’s new spaces accessible — and I’m ex cited to note that these efforts are continuing with new renovations. Robarts Library is once again collaborating with Superkül to redesign Robarts Libary’s fifth floor. By the time this ar ticle is published, Superkül will have met with U of T’s Innovation Hub to get student feed back about their designs.

Beyond new projects, Woloszansky wrote that the university knows that they “are not going to know everything, so [they] have made the space as flexible as possible and always welcome feedback from [their] users.” They know that accessibility must remain flex ible to accommodate individual needs, which is a massive step in the right direction of cre ating accessible spaces.

“Robarts Common[s] is just one part of the much larger offering of diverse spaces we hope to offer in all of our libraries,” Woloszan sky continued. She mentioned that the uni versity built a family space in Robarts Library

to accommodate users with children, that it built a dedicated meditation space, and that it renovated and removed the turnstile door to the main Robarts entrance to add more accessibility. “We genuinely want to learn and find different ways to accommodate our unique student needs,” Woloszansky wrote.

Despite its few issues of inaccessibility, Ro barts Common and the library’s fourth floor demonstrates U of T’s promise of making its community more accessible. In the next year, the university will be making strides towards various construction projects.

At UTSG, the Landmark Project will add new walkways, gardens, landscaping, and public seating, therefore improving acces sibility to the St. George campus. When the project is finished, an underground parking garage will house 60 electric vehicle parking spots and 300 bike spaces below King’s Col lege Circle. At UTSC, an Indigenous House and new residence building have both broken ground, and a renovation to the campus li brary is in its early stages. At UTM, construc tion of the New Science Building is underway.

I, for one, am excited to see how these projects improve our university, for all the members of its community.

Accessibility extends beyond what we can physically see; what is accessible for someone may not be accessible to someone else.

Marta Anielska Arts & Culture Editor

I would rather watch paint dry than rewatch Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!

And that’s saying a lot; Scooby-Doo is my alltime favourite childhood entertainment. Which movie is my favourite? I’ll give you my top five. Which Scooby shows do I think represent and ex pand on the franchise best? I can name two or three. Which are the only live-action movies worth watching? Okay, no competition there. We all know it’s James Gunn’s often massively problem atic and joyously campy duology.

But my perception of these beloved charac ters barely survived one viewing of Trick or Treat; I highly doubt it would be able to survive another. The movie takes the concept of the Scooby-Doo franchise and shoves it so far up its own ass that it may as well spend the rest of its pathetically miser able life there, if this is the franchise’s future. The result is a half-baked metacommentary with little to no character, plot, or intrigue to speak of — that simultaneously manages to disrespect the fran chise’s previous iterations while becoming the very thing it criticizes.

Metacommentary: The movie!

Here’s a quick rundown of Trick or Treat for those of you who stopped paying attention to Scooby Doo like functional adults. Having captured their latest baddie, Mystery Inc uses a thread from their costume to connect all the crimes they’ve ever solved — or, at least, the ones they solved in the original series. Turns out these mysteries can all be traced back to evil costume designer Coco Dia blo, whom they quickly trick into confessing to the authorities.

But oh no! Now there’s no more mysteries to solve. What will Mystery Inc do? The answer is literally throw a coin into a well and wish for the best, which apparently works since a ghost arbi trarily shows up to terrorize them yet again. Now, they have to gang up with the very person who’s always been behind the madness: Diablo, intro duced Hannibal Lecter style.

This is when the movie takes a turn; instead of maintaining the unsubtle commentary on capital ism they’ve been shoving down our throats for the first 30 minutes, they spend the next half hour propelling the plot forward with metajoke after metajoke. The biggest culprits are the monsters themselves, which are all crude interpretations of

Jinkies! Way to kill the franchise

our main cast that spell out how each of their fatal flaws are counterproductive to their goals. These monsters feel less like opponents and more like your sibling poking you throughout the movie, whispering, “Do you get it?”

According to the prison warden — the ultimate villain of the story — his monsters are ‘evil’ ver sions of the gang. But they often end up feeling more like reflections than foils. Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby get it the worst — with Fred’s obsessive ness and Shaggy and Scooby’s gluttony actively impeding Mystery Inc’s goals. Though Velma and Daphne aren’t manifestations of their archetypes, they aren’t exactly developed characters — but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The result is a plot constructed of coincidences all subordinated to a grand metacommentary — these characters’ story ended after the first series, and every product that’s come after has seen writ ers forcing them through the motions.

Here’s the thing, though: I don’t think this is an inherently bad commentary to make in a ScoobyDoo movie, which becomes especially clear when the pieces fall further into place in the last 15 min utes of the movie. Once unmasked, the prison warden, Mystery Inc’s self-proclaimed biggest fan, explains that he was trying to give Mystery Inc one last thrill. His last significant act is then accidentally releasing all the prisoners, whom the gang has to round up in a rushed and pointless finale. The last scene in the movie sees Fred throwing money into that same well by the handful while Mystery Inc laughs hysterically in the background. The last shot teases a sequel — the eye of a monster at the bottom of the well.

Okay, so I get it. The initial run of Scooby-Doo heavily criticized a distinctly American version of capitalism that constructed a social hierarchy based on private property ownership. In the origi nal series, most of the villains attempt to commit white-collar crimes that destroy community bonds in favour of stealing profitable land. Trick or Treat then repeatedly alludes to these villains to under score anticapitalism as the original commentary of Scooby-Doo

So what happens when the original series ends and that goal is met? Fred throws a coin into the well — symbolizing both rampant consumerism and greed — producing an arbitrary ghost that characterizes every subsequent iteration of the franchise as a hollow and unnecessary addition produced by the exact thing that Mystery Inc op posed. The finale is supposed to feel pointless be cause it’s forced by the prison warden — a repre

sentation of the consumer who keeps begging for new villains for the Scooby gang to bust.

There are kernels of additional commentary here and there on everything from modern policing to the prison industrial complex, but what I’ve de scribed is basically the gist. And that’s all — hon estly, pretty interesting. The movie’s core idea — that capitalism beats franchises like a dead horse until they fail to produce profits — could work. So why doesn’t this movie work for me?

Unfortunately, in order to comment on how a franchise ran its course over 50 years ago and has spent most of its life reproducing cheap and shal low versions of its message and characters, the writers needed the Scooby-Doo franchise to actu ally fit that description. Though it might be the case that the majority of Scooby-Doo projects came to life due to capitalistic greed and consumerism, that doesn’t mean the artists who made them didn’t attempt to create interesting and original products.

To make an archetype

The 1998 film Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island in corporates elements of real horror into its story and has the gang facing off against actual supernatural creatures, resulting in my obsession with zombie media. The characters — who are reunited after we see them split up and pursue their own paths — are recognizable, yet likable and admirable.

2005’s Scooby-Doo! in Where’s My Mummy actually manages to tackle how white tomb rob bers steal ancient artefacts under the guise of archeological discovery, which feels like a mean ingful expansion on issues that the original series tackled. It also includes new, compelling char acters about whom we get to learn through the meaningful interactions they have with our main characters.

As a rule, characters in Trick or Treat don’t inter act, let alone meaningfully. Instead, they say things at each other to characterize themselves with one defining trait. Even the characters with whom the writers try to do something — Velma and Daphne — end up falling flat because their arcs are used to reinforce more bland commentary.

I’ll start with Daphne, since she’s tradition ally been the harder character to handle. In the years since the original series came out, writers have struggled to deal with Daphne’s damsel-indistress status and the conflation of her character with her looks. I don’t personally think that Daph ne is an inexcusably misogynistic stereotype in the original series, but most writers do, given the number of times she’s been ‘girl bossified.’ Some

versions do it more gracefully than others — dem onstrating how Daphne combines femininity and resourcefulness to solve problems — while others elect to just make her a badass.

But I’ve never seen any movie or TV show just flat out call her useless, which is basically all the beginning of Trick or Treat does. Additionally, it has the audacity to make vanity the fatal flaw of her monster self, as though that was ever a problem she had in the original series. It honestly comes off as more misogynistic that the writers watched the original series, decided that Daphne’s only character traits were being feminine and pretty, and then conflated those traits with vanity and uselessness.

Admittedly, these explicit statements of her uselessness are meant to be subverted, since she’s the only one who actually pushes the plot forward. But when the end of the movie tries to feed me the ‘she was the leader all along’ line, I feel gaslighted. If her only claim to leadership is that she finally solved one mystery and did so be cause the rest of the characters were made to act incompetent by the writers, then it doesn’t really feel like an earned feminist moment. It feels like a cheap appeal to modern sensibilities.

Velma doesn’t get anything better. The majority of the hype around this movie is due to Velma’s ca nonical crush on Coco. Now, I’m all for LGBTQ+ representation in kids’ shows, and, honestly, this has been a long time coming. But it’s almost dis appointing that it has to be in this product. Velma’s only real storyline is that she likes Coco — which, embarrassingly, is how she’s made incompetent. In a movie that comments on how capitalism re duces characters and stories, it feels particularly cynical to make one of those characters LGBTQ+ while failing to develop them in any other mean ingful way. Talk about exploiting identity for profit.

Ultimately, the writers have subordinated their story to their message. They couldn’t tackle the nuanced characters into which Mystery Inc had evolved through multiple iterations, so they decid ed to turn the gang into ‘strawmen’ whom they could knock down with one punch. Add some un original and, frankly, overdone metacommentary and criticism of capitalism, and voila: the writers created the exact product they’re mocking while looking down their noses at artists who actually tried to do something new with the material.

At least Trick or Treat’s writers are right about one thing: if this is where capitalistic greed is tak ing the Scooby-Doo franchise, then maybe it is best that we let it die.

The social justice of the Hippie movement was surface level, at best. JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY; COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Varsity Contributor

Scrolling through Twitter has a brand-new feel to it. What once felt to me like a flawed but relatively well managed environment has now become a landscape primarily shaped by misinformation. Why? Well, it seems that new ideas emerging from the mind of Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, have led to an atmosphere that feels polluted.

As a platform, Twitter has traditionally had a pretty humble goal: helping people stay connect ed through short posts known as tweets. And yet, Musk’s acquisition — a surprising power move brought on by a simple joke — has thrown all of that out the window. Now, the joke has become reality and resulted in major changes in the way the platform operates. More specifically, the arrival of a short-lived paid subscription service, which has provoked a flurry of fake accounts, raises a question: is Twitter on its last legs?

Breaking trust

The major change, of course, is that content moderation is much less strict in the name of free speech. This is so much the case that for a brief period of time, users were able to acquire verifica tion status — a blue checkmark, formerly reserved for accounts Twitter had verified as real notable people, celebrities, or organizations — through a monthly subscription service known as Twitter Blue.

Predictably, Twitter Blue resulted in a rampant uprising of people impersonating celebrities and major organizations, meaning that all sources had to be looked at more critically, with the risk of oth erwise consuming something insincere.

Musk essentially created a new form of fake news carried by the mouthpiece of seemingly real celebrities, politicians, and organizations. There was a new surge in misinformation, written off as jokes by impersonators, that still inevitably had consequences.

A fake account was made for Premier Doug Ford that poked fun at him, but it could easily be construed as offensive and have real political con sequences if a user were to think it was his actual account. One Tweet from the fake account stated, “If you’ve got a sick kid, I want you to know that I do not want them anywhere near my cottage.”

Another fake account impersonated Eli Lilly & Co. and tweeted “insulin is free now.” The real company’s total stock value then dropped by $15 billion, leading it to halt its advertising deal with Twitter. Fake accounts have broken celebrities’ and companies’ trust in the platform, if not the whole internet’s. And yet, Twitter’s biggest victim may be itself.

But what about Twitter?

Musk’s approach to content moderation has, iron ically, led to his own platform being used against him. The #StopToxicTwitter coalition — dedicated to boycotting the platform and convincing adver tisers to do the same — has attempted to pres sure Musk into bringing back content moderation amidst concerns over brand safety and a major influx of misinformation that is turning Twitter into a dangerous landscape.

The fake accounts have even targeted Musk himself. A parody Tesla account tweeted, “We will be offering 10,000 vehicles to support the Ukrai nian military,” and that’s not to mention all the ac counts impersonating Musk’s personal account.

The sheer amount of backlash and rise of fake

accounts forced Musk to remove the subscription service entirely within days of its launch. Simply sweeping the havoc that these fake Twitter ac counts had wrought under the rug wouldn’t help Musk reverse or move past the consequences of such a catastrophic move. While presently, it is unclear what exactly Twitter will look like in com ing months, we can only imagine what is up next.

It begs the question of why Musk would launch an idea like this in the first place? Why implement something that could clearly be abused? I believe it’s because Musk has no idea what he’s doing.

His entire purchase of Twitter has literally been a big joke from the start, and only now are people starting to realize that it’s not funny anymore. The constant changes and promises for something better are simply ideas with no thought to their consequences. Musk is not qualified to manage this social media giant, which is clear given that he recently issued his employees an ultimatum.

In an email, Musk gave his employees a choice:

either accept “extremely hardcore” work or a lay off with three months of severance pay. It’s a sim ple get-on-board-or-get-out-of-the-way model that, in the coming days, will completely reshape Twitter, just like his other massive layoffs did.

Of course, the memes are still free flowing, and they’ve proved a decent mechanism for exposing the major problems in Musk’s plans. The old say ing “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” still holds up. Musk didn’t really need to change Twitter at all — the platform was doing fine before he started making wild changes.

As it stands, I do see Twitter’s downfall incom ing. Musk’s decisions have irreversibly polluted the platform. While clear efforts have been made to mitigate these consequences through the re moval of Twitter Blue, it still remains unclear of what the future holds, especially with a mass lay off still in sight. If Musk really wants to save Twitter, he must do better, before he clips the bird’s wings for good.

Smith Varsity Contributor

Radio is no longer the booming voice that it once was, with streaming platforms like Spo tify and Apple Music leaving it with a waning audience of middle-aged dads — mine in cluded. However, every so often, I find my self being force fed radio pop in malls, res taurants, or in that one friend’s old car that doesn’t have AUX.

The prominent genre on radio has been, and will continue to be, pop — a music genre that is defined by its catchy melodies and simple lyrics. This is true even with the advent of streaming platforms, which afford intense accessibility to the music industry and have allowed for more diversity than ever before. So why does pop remain at the forefront of the music scene?

A rich man’s world

In Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin scrutinizes capitalism’s influence on the art world and argues that the reproduction of art for profit significantly diminishes its worth and authenticity.

“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could al ways be imitated by men,” Benjamin wrote, acknowledging that creating new art based off of old music is not new.

But if you have a background in music or if you are an avid listener of pop music, you’ll know that something feels a bit different this time around. Chord progressions within pop songs hardly vary, creating an oversaturation of songs that, in essence, sound almost iden tical. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes all you

need is a cheesy pop song to brighten your day, but their mass production has changed the character of the music industry.

The sheer number of songs like this may, in part, be attributed to consumer culture. People are no longer satisfied by just listening to an artist’s music. They want to meet them, watch their interviews, wear their merch, and purchase candles with their faces on them. The availability of artist-affiliated products only

allelism, and its success is dependent on its stagnancy.

Companies recognize the profitability of pop music, and therefore, promote it, creat ing an endless cycle that forces pop to the top and ensures that it stays there. If pop mu sic were to evolve quickly, it would threaten the corporations that capitalize on this genre. This is why, when pop music does develop, it does so in a gradual manner, not incorpo

small number of styles in popular music man age to sustain a high level of instrumentational complexity over an extended period of time,” the study added.

Essentially, the study postulates that the popularity of a music genre increases the ge nericity of songs within said genre. The popu larization and mass production of pop music over the past 10–15 years reflects this trend.

Instead of providing artists who are cre ative, experimental, and generally different with a platform to create, the industry has suc cumbed to the comfort of similitude, resulting in songs that are reproduced versions of each other and artists who are valued based on their social presence, attractiveness, and net worth, as opposed to their genuine talent.

bolsters the consumption that is a staple of pop music and contributes to its profitability.

As a result, the modern pop music indus try creates a success binary. It implies that in order to become a star, you must be a ‘pop star.’ You must make music that is generic, designed for commercial success, and have a personality that is fit for a reality TV show. The binary limits not only the kind of music that is popularized, but it also limits artists who are thrusted into categories based on what has already been done. The pop music industry is, at its core, an industry that profits from the binary. The genre is popularized by its par

rating different styles and compositions, but consuming them, ensuring that companies are able to keep up and maintain a tight grasp on their assets.

So where does that leave us? Interestingly, there is also scientific reasoning behind pop music’s homogenization, aside from its profitability. Researchers from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria found that as the sales numbers of a genre increase, it becomes more formulaic in terms of instru mentation due to a tendency toward low va riety and musicians with similar skills. “Only a

We often hear the term “fast fashion” in re lation to cheap, mass-produced, low-quality clothing. The same is occurring within the music industry. We are moving into a world of “fast music.” There has been a consequential shift in the music market. Currently, music is adopting a profit-over-value stance, a stance that is standardizing the music scene and creating music that is just a consumer prod uct, not artful expression. Music notes quickly morph into bank notes.

Our ability to mass produce music on a global scale leads to a loss of original thought, emotion and talent. But moreover, humanity’s passive intake of pop music and the consum er quota that it fulfills, only serves to justify the industry’s massive profits. The consistency of pop as a genre also affords incentive to those who intend on profiting from it, as its fixed nature almost guarantees its longevity — a perfect business model. After all, if something works,

Elon Musk makes the future of Twitter unstable. ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY

James Bullanoff

Hannah

The problem with AI that acts like you

Sahir Dhalla Science Editor

When discussion on artificial intelligence (AI) gained popularity in the twentieth century, math ematician, scientist, and philosopher Alan Turing proposed a test for machines that was initially in tended to measure intelligence.

The imitation game, later known as the Turing test, tests a machine’s ability to exhibit humanlike behaviour. It involves three participants: two humans and one machine. Participant A, one of the humans, communicates to Participants B and C, asking them questions and analyzing their responses to figure out which of the two partici pants is human.

While philosophers have criticized the test’s ability to measure intelligence, there is no ques tion that it is a good marker for how adept these machines are at human mimicry. As artificial intel ligence has gone from fiction to reality in recent years, and its development has increased expo nentially, it seems inevitable that machines will eventually be capable of passing the Turing test.

Could AI act like humans?

A few months ago, on June 11, Blake Lemoine, a former Google engineer, released a transcript of a conversation he had with LaMDA. LaMDA is Google’s machine-learning model that mimics hu man speech and thought, and Lemoine believed it was sentient.

While the consensus within the academic com munity remains that LaMDA has a long way to go before attaining sentience, the transcript shows how close these systems are to convincingly mimicking human speech.

Another AI model, GPT-3, already generates text so convincing it is sometimes difficult to tell whether you are speaking to a human or a bot. An

April 2022 review by The New York Times claimed that GPT-3 could write prose with fluency equiva lent to that of humans. When I tried talking to GPT3 myself, it was only clear I was speaking to a bot after a few dialogues; if I had only spoken to it for a few exchanges, I might’ve readily believed there was a person on the other end.

In the realm of chess, human-like AI models have shown incredible progress. In an interview with The Varsity, Reid Mcllroy-Young, a PhD student at the University of Toronto studying the development of human-like AI, said, “For every single possible instantiation of chess, we have relatively strong human-like AI,” primarily since the game is “a very closed system” with a limited set of rules and possibilities.

“In many other out-in-the-world domains, it tends to be that you have human-like performance on some very specific subsets,” he continued. “[Models like GPT-3] will be able to generate texts that seem human-like on some specific tasks, but usually they’re not 100 per cent [accurate].”

One reason our knowledge and research in this area haven’t increased as much as in other ar eas of AI is that we don’t know how to quantify human-like activity. Mcllroy-Young explained that There are specific programs that people agree ‘feel’ more human-like, but it’s difficult to pinpoint what qualities make them feel that way.

Do we even need human-like AI?

With the current focus on developing chess play ers and chatbots, human-like AI seems frivolous and not all that useful. But the true impact of AI with an understanding and potential mimicking of human activity comes from the cooperation be tween AI and humans.

Mcllroy-Young gave the example of a self-driv ing car: if the vehicle is approaching a yellow traffic light and has its data synced up to the grid so it

knows when each light will turn red, the car’s AI system could calculate that if the vehicle acceler ates right now, it could get through the intersec tion. But a move like this may startle human driv ers, potentially causing an accident.

Or consider the use of AI for teaching systems. Mcllroy-Young explained that, currently, we have “superhuman models [like] Stockfish and Leela, and they’re strictly better than humans, but it’s very difficult [for humans] to learn from them.”

Building more human-like systems increases the cohesiveness and cooperation between man and machine. But as these models get better and are trained on larger data sets, their mimicry will get better, raising significant ethical concerns.

Considering the ethics

One concern with training these models is where that information on human-like actions is taken from.

A few weeks ago, a group of lawyers and GitHub programmers served a class-action law suit against Github for allegedly violating intellec tual property rights. GitHub recently released an AI model called Copilot that would generate lines of code based on a prompt you gave. However, according to the plaintiffs, much of the code the model released seemed heavily based on code written by GitHub users who had not consented to Github using their work to train AI.

And this isn’t an isolated incident. Many other open-source platforms, such as ImageNet — a sizable visual database for image recognition software — have faced issues where the data sets used to train the AI models were not open sourced.

“There are lots of artists and AI critics who have criticized ImageNet as basically being a way for tech companies to launder licence agreements for a bunch of images,” remarked Mcllroy-Young.

Another ethical issue with these models has recently appeared as the “right to be forgotten.” This issue is a direct reaction to the notion that nothing is truly lost on the internet, and under this framework, everyone should have the right to be forgotten on the internet. If an AI model has used your information in its training and later uses it to make predictions in other areas, a case could be made that your right to be forgotten is not being

respected there.

Most AI systems have also displayed bias. From racist job recruiters to sexist university ap plication reviewers, human bias in data sets has led to AI inheriting these same biases.

When creating human-like AI, we must con sider upon whom we should base humanness.

“Does [being human] mean to act like an under grad at a top 10 US college? Or does it mean to act like a person from a rural undeveloped coun try? They’re both human,” Mcllroy-Young pointed out.

From ethics to legislation

Legislation for AI has been notoriously difficult to create, primarily due to the public support the field has received in enabling rapid innovation. It is dif ficult for policymakers to justify creating policies that hold back progress in such a manner.

However, the aforementioned examples high light the need for such legislation. With unen cumbered access to developing these models, corporations will inevitably leverage and exploit consumer data for personal profit.

Human-like AI, and AI in general, have been shown to have immense potential to revolution ize our societies and technology. But to ensure fair and ethical AI for all, governments must enact legislative frameworks in this domain.

Andrea Zhao Design Editor

With the quickest cars and best drivers on the plan et, racing at uniquely challenging tracks around the world, Formula One is arguably the most exciting motorsport series there is today. Each year, millions of fans tune in, both live at the circuits and on TV, to cheer on their favourite drivers and teams as they compete for victory. Much of Formula One’s appeal comes from racing on the track, but there’s much more than meets the eye — the science behind the sport is equally crucial to its success.

One of the most crucial aspects of an F1 car is its aerodynamics. From the perfectly engineered front wings to the floor optimized for perfect airflow, these cars are designed to stick to the ground, improving their grip and performance around the track.

The basics of Formula One

The Formula One grid currently comprises of ten teams, each fielding a lineup of two drivers. These twenty drivers compete for wins and the champi onship over the course of twenty-three races from March to November. The months in between are reserved for preparing and testing the car for the next season. Every year, the teams attempt to de velop the fastest car they possibly can, and they rely on an expert team of engineers to work out the physics of the racing.

Downforce

One of the most important scientific concepts in Formula One is downforce. Downforce is the

downward vertical aerodynamic force generated by the surfaces of a Formula One car, the oppo site to lift, the force that planes employ to take off and stay in the air. At high speeds, the down force created by airflow around the car’s body significantly exceeds the car’s weight. Formula One cars produce around 3.5 Gravitational force equivalents, or G-force, of aerodynamic down force — equivalent to three and a half times their weight; since they weigh a minimum of 798 kilo grams, this would amount to approximately 2793 kilograms of force exerted.

The high amounts of downforce that these cars generate allow them to pass through corners ex ceptionally quickly — at a speed of up to 310 kilo meters per hour — making them the fastest rac ing cars in the world. These aerodynamic forces are so powerful that they may even allow Formula One cars to defy the laws of physics.

Could Formula One cars drive upside down?

Formula One cars generate so much downforce that they could, in theory, drive upside down. While this concept may seem outlandish at first, it is perhaps less impossible than we imagine.

Physicists believe that with favourable aerody namic forces, such as those produced by Formula One cars, and by driving at high enough speeds, a car can drive at any angle — including upside down — for an indefinite amount of time. A 2019 report from the MIT Technology Review examined different possible methods for upside-down driv ing. It states that a Formula One car would be able to use its aerodynamic downforce to drive upside down if travelling at a sufficient speed, which they

estimate to be around 200 miles per hour; others theorize that speeds as low as 145 kilometers per hour would be enough.

Other factors also come into play, such as cen tripetal force, which is the force acting on an ob ject travelling along a circular path. If a car were to drive upside down around a circular track — as opposed to on the ceiling of a straight tunnel, for example — centripetal forces would further play a part in holding it against the track.

The verdict

Although it’s scientifically feasible that a Formula One car could drive upside down, it’s impossible to know until the theory is tested. When consid ering the possibility of driving upside down, it’s

essential to account for the other relevant factors besides the sheer force of physics — for example, whether the fuel, oil tanks, engine, and brakes would still be able to work correctly if the car were upside down.

For now, driving upside down seems limited to the realm of action films and video games, but it may well become a reality in the future. Formula One teams are no strangers to a little bit of fun — they’ve taken their cars to the tops of skyscrapers for a round of celebratory donuts and through icy fields with spikes attached to their wheels — so, who knows?

Conquering gravity may just be next on the list for the daredevils of the world’s favourite racing series.

ANDREA ZHAO/THEVARSITY

Could a Formula One car drive upside down? How the aerodynamics of Formula One cars could allow them to defy gravity

Human-like AI models raise questions of bias and our right to personal data

EVELYN BOLTON/THEVARSITY

Where did the other humans go? An exploration of where our ancestors went and why we walk the world alone

Aimee Perry Varsity Contributor

As humans, we consider ourselves an elite spe cies, capable of a great number of fantastic feats. We have been to the moon, built nearly kilome tre-high buildings, and can complete 100 metre races in almost nine and a half seconds. Look ing at the complex processes that occur in the human brain, even the simple task of walking to class seems impressive.

We know that this refinement didn’t just appear: the Homo sapiens that we know are the products of six million years of evolution and evidence sug gests that eight major human species, which we will explore, are divided by region.

Africa: the ancient home

Let us introduce the first species of the genus Homo, Homo habilis. This species evolved from apes approximately 2.4 million years ago, and was discovered by a team of researchers who dis covered fossilized relics in Tanzania. Indeed, this species was notably different from humans today, featuring smaller frames — typically, 70 pounds and under five feet — and larger braincases.

While H. habilis indeed assumed a primate-like figure, based on the visibility of Broca’s area — a region of the brain essential for speech production — in fossilized brain casts, researchers hypoth esize that this species may have been capable of rudimentary language.

Today, we dub H. habilis “handyman” with the knowledge that these species made complex tools for survival and nourishment, such as using stones for butchering animals, and thus began the long and slow process of human invention, from the basic to the extraordinary.

Today, it is widely understood that this species went extinct in part due to the inability of their technology to evolve and subsequently adapt to environmental change.

Next is the far more researched H. erectus, which evolved 1.89 million to 110,000 years ago in Africa before spreading into many parts of Asia. As the name suggests, this species was the first of the Homo genus to stand erect — fully upright — resembling modern human proportions more than their H. habilis ancestor and those of apes.

However, unlike apes, H. erectus developed long legs for running and shorter arms, as well as a notably large braincase and smaller teeth. The latter feature certainly aided the species in eating meat and helped them consume the necessary nourishment to develop more complex and adap tive brains and bodies.

Scientists even discovered campfires near the species’ remains, which is direct evidence that H. erectus were the first Homo species to experi ment with cooking. Understandably, this species

was relatively successful and existed on Earth for a period close to ninefold times longer than mod ern humans have up to today.

Like their ancestors, unfortunately, H. erectus seemed ill equipped to deal with drastic climate variations. For those who survived, a potential ‘mass death’ from a volcanic eruption may have eradicated the remaining individuals in this spe cies in the last 10,000 years.

Around 1.9 to 1.8 million years ago, Homo rudolfensis walked the Earth, although we know very little about the species. The hominid was dis covered near Lake Turkana in Kenya and had a larger braincase than apes and H. habilis, as well as recognizable pelvises and shoulders, which provides good evidence that this was a human species. Competition for resources with their more advanced relatives likely eliminated this ar chaic human species.

Finally, in South Africa, some 335,000 to 236,000 years ago, the Homo naledi hominids walked the Earth. An expedition in 2015 showed that this species had a smaller stature of under five feet, but we know little else, in spite of the remarkable number of specimens collected from the species. Researchers postulate that H. naledi was the first human species driven to extinction by us, the H. sapiens

Europe: migration and adaptation

We know little more about Homo heidelbergen sis, which evolved 700,000 to 200,000 years ago in Europe and eastern Africa and were the first humans to live in cold regions. This species re sembled wider and smaller humans and were the first to use spears to hunt large animals and build shelters for warmth and protection. Further, the location of this species is important. Research ers contend that H. heidelbergensis of the African

branch is the species that instigated the emer gence of H. sapiens

The primary reason why this species no longer walks the Earth is their inability to adapt to rap idly changing ecosystems that were vastly differ ent from the African climate human species had known thus far.

And now, we present the species that we are likely most familiar with: Homo neanderthalensis, or neanderthals. Neanderthals emerged some 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, originating in Eu rope and Asia. The stature of this species was not unlike our own, only shorter and sturdier with big ger brains.

This species built sophisticated shelters and fires and used needles and other complex tools to make clothing. Most remarkably, we begin to observe complex cognitive processes in this spe cies, with evidence of marked graveyards, all of which suggest that Neanderthals buried their dead and even conducted rituals that we associ ated with empathy and grief in modern life.

Contemporary research extracts DNA from H. neanderthalensis to examine specific characteris tics of this species and has found some startling connections between them and humans today. It is possible that, at one point, H. sapiens and Ne anderthals mated, merging parts of our gene pool until individuals with traces of neanderthal DNA were indistinguishable from H. sapiens

Asia

As we approach the existence of modern hu mans, we come across another species that evolved some 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, Homo floresiensis. The discovery of this species has been essential to determining the extent of human migrations, as its uncovering on the Island of Flores, Indonesia in 2003 revealed its isolation.

Research on insular dwarfism has led to the hy pothesis that, the smaller a habitat, the further an animal will reduce its body size, and H. floresiensis exemplified this concept. Recent findings also re vealed that this species used small tools for hunt ing other diminutive animals. Unlike climate and ecosystem changes that wiped out many other humans, volcanic eruptions are the most likely cause for wiping out H. floresiensis

The eighth major species in the genus is Homo luzonensis, which evolved at least 67,000 years ago and whose remains were unearthed in an isolated cave in northern Indonesia in 2019. Re searchers found few intact fragments but were in trigued by the species’ geographic seclusion. The science behind this particular species is some what elusive compared to the other geographi cally isolated species in the genus, such as H. neanderthalensis and H. florseinsis

As to where they went, a combination of chang ing climate and the arrival of H. sapiens drove H. luzonensis to extinction.

Emergence of the modern human

And now we come to the talking, over-thinking, moon-visiting, internet-creating, Velcro-inventing species you are likely acquainted with. As you might have gathered, our evolution and creation has taken an extremely long time and the evolu tion of many different hominids. H. sapiens have been evolving in our subset for the last 300,000 years, with variations of language emerging 150,000 years into that evolution. This species emerged from a few locations across Africa, with various groups interbreeding with other members of the Homo genus. This diversity has contributed profoundly to the success of humanity today.

You might be wondering why H. sapiens are the only surviving member of the genus — in deed, for most of this species’ existence, many of the Homo families described above roamed the Earth. Indeed, we have been portrayed as a rather cruel species, responsible for wiping out at least three of our ancestors and genetic relatives. It was only around 40,000 years ago, following close to six million years of the species’ existence, that re search suggests the H. sapien species found itself alone on Earth.

While the delineations aren’t clear, research ers in this area have proposed that a combination of environmental circumstances, potential inter breeding of species, and competition and biologi cal differences, such as larger brains, explain why we remain on Earth instead of one of our capable ancestors. Our complex ability to explore, survive unprecedented changes, and build technological marvels have resulted from millennia of evolution. Despite this information, it is not far fetched to reason that, perhaps, our existence will always remain a mystery.

CHERYL NONG/THEVARSITY

Leveraging light to induce memory loss in mice

Quinn Pauli Varsity Contributor

After a memory is formed, it is stored in a spe cific network of brain cells. These memorystoring cells, or engrams, are reactivated when the memory is retrieved, allowing past experi ences to inform behaviour. U of T researcher Dr. Sheena Josselyn and her colleagues set out to understand the fate of an engram when a threat memory is forgotten in mice.

First, the researchers used a technique called classical conditioning to pair a fearful stimulus in the mice with a neutral one. Mice received an unpleasant foot shock while hear ing a distinctive sound. When the mice were later exposed to the sound alone, they showed a common threat response of freezing, in an ticipation of the shock. However, when the

researchers repeatedly presented the sound, in the absence of the shocks, they gradually forgot the sound-shock association and froze less frequently.

To test the precise role of engram cells in forgetting, the researchers used a technique called optogenetics to permanently tag the threat engram cells with a light-sensitive pro tein. This protein tag allowed artificial reactiva tion of the engram whenever the researchers directed light into the brain’s fear centre to mimic memory retrieval. Following repeated engram activation alone, the mice froze less frequently in response to the sound, indicating that artificially reactivating engram cells also leads to forgetting. These results reveal that repeatedly reactivating engram cells — artifi cially or naturally — induces unlearning of the original memory by silencing the engram.

in research

How ‘activity snacks’ can help your muscle health

Selin Naz Avdan

Varsity Contributor

Do you spend a lot of time sitting and looking at your computer? Do you also like snacks? If your answer is yes to both, this one is for you; in a recent study published by the Journal of Applied Physiology , scientists have demon strated that you should have some ‘activity snacks’ to break up long hours of sitting. This doesn’t mean gorging on chips or Twizzlers in between assignments, but instead engaging in short bursts of physical activity.

In the study, scientists established that in terrupting prolonged sitting with small exer cises can help with your muscle health. The study by Daniel R. Moore — an associate professor of muscle physiology — and his

colleagues observed in a small sample of par ticipants that interrupting long hours of sitting with ‘activity snacks,’ such as bodyweight squats or walking, can help keep skeletal muscles healthy.

The researchers studied the dietary amino acid utilization of 12 adults during prolonged sitting as well as when periods of sitting were broken up with squats and walking. With the incorporation of activity snacks, dietary amino acid utilization increased. More amino acids means that there will be higher skeletal muscle protein synthesis — hence, muscle growth.

So, the next time you write a paper, watch a video, or do anything that requires you to sit for a long time, listen to the science and be sure to have some activity snacks for health ier muscles!

The Varsity’ s World Cup 2022 bracket

Four teams to watch at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

A breakdown of the four squads out to make an impact

Mac Bell Varsity Contributor

It’s been over four years, but finally, the FIFA World Cup is back. As usual, footballing giants such as Brazil, France, Argentina, England, and Belgium will be the top competitors to win the tournament. Canada will also be competing in the tournament for the first time since 1986, their only previous World Cup berth. With 32 teams taking part, it can be hard to sort out where you should focus your attention, especially in a busy group stage. I will try to alleviate any stress you have about miss ing something important by detailing four teams to watch, as well as some of the group stage games you shouldn’t miss.

Argentina

Argentina, another South American powerhouse, sits next to Brazil on many fans’ lists of potential World Cup winners. Lionel Messi will likely be the main reason for that high billing, but surrounding him is a very strong squad. Argentina’s attack is their biggest strength, which of course, Messi will lead, but he’s joined by fellow stars Paulo Dybala, Lautaro Martínez, and Ángel Di María. Most teams will struggle to keep Argentina from scoring, so it’ll be up to their defense to keep the ball away from their net if they’re going to beat elite opponents.

Like Brazil, Argentina ran through CONMEBOL Qualifying undefeated, and won the 2021 Copa America with a 1–0 win over Brazil in the final. That Copa America run has many people thinking this could finally be Messi’s year to win the World Cup, possibly cementing himself as the greatest foot baller of all time.

The Netherlands

By moving onto the Netherlands, we leave behind South America and the traditional favourites on this list, to whom the Netherlands is likely consid ered a tier below this year. However, they could be set for a deeper run than expected in this tourna ment. Their tier group contains Ecuador, Senegal,

and their host, Qatar, which — barring disaster — should mean an easy run into the knockout stages. This could prove beneficial as other teams will have to dig deeper to make it that far. They’ll be led by defenders Virgil Van Dijk and Matthijs De Ligt, as well as midfielder Frenkie De Jong, as they try to redeem missing the 2018 World Cup. These play ers will provide a solid base for the Dutch, but their fate will likely fall onto Memphis Depay. He’s their star attacker, and performed for them in World Cup Qualifying, but is little more than an afterthought at his club, Barcelona. His form is a big question mark going into the tournament; if the Dutch go far, it will likely result from Depay’s performance.

Canada

Call me biased, but I think Canada is the most likely team to make a dark horse run into the knockout

stages. A fantastic run through World Cup Qualify ing has united the country behind the best group of players Canada has ever seen. They’ve drawn a group that will see them play Belgium, Croatia, and Morocco. To make it out of the group stage, a win against Morocco will likely be necessary. They would also need to take a point from one of the two games against Croatia and Belgium. The aging de fense of both teams could allow younger Canadian stars Alphonso Davies, Jonathan David, and Cyle Larin to score the goals necessary to get points out of matches against either. A run into the knockout stages would be a legendary moment in Canadian football history, but so would simply scoring Cana da’s first-ever World Cup Goal.

Games to watch

Here are a few games in the group stage that are

worth skipping classes for:

England-USA — Friday, November 25; 2:00 pm ET: England is one of the favorites to win the tour nament this year, and they’ll be facing a USA team with high expectations.

Spain-Germany — Sunday, November 27; 2:00 pm ET: Two European powerhouses with high hopes at the tournament face off in this group stage match.

Brazil-Switzerland — Monday, November 28th; 11:00 am ET: This will be Brazil’s toughest test in the group stage — a good chance to see if this team can live up to the hype.

Canada-Morocco — Thursday, December 1; 10:00 am ET: This is both teams’ last group stage matchup, and if either — hopefully Canada — wants to make a surprising knockout stage berth, it will be because they win this match.

The Argentina national team is loaded with skilled players. COURTESY OF КИРИЛЛ ВЕНЕДИКТОВ/CC WIKIMEDIA

Can money win the World Cup?

A deep-dive into the ways that money affects international soccer

Kunal Dadlani Associate Sports Editor

With the Qatar World Cup in full blast this week, a lot of hardcore football fans will have the following question on their minds: does more money trans late into more success? The leverage that money brings to the table is well documented at the club level, but do they pan out on the world stage? These are the five most valuable teams at the Qatar World Cup — let’s see how accurately their talent is valued.

England Squad Value: €1.74 billion

FIFA Ranking: 5

This team is certainly overvalued. The midfield tandem of Jude Bellingham and Declan Rice are scarily good, yet Kalvin Phillips and Jordan Hender son are both prone to injury and lack consistency. Nevertheless, the team’s attack is very impressive, with star players like Harry Kane, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden, as well as some underrated players like Callum Wilson and James Maddison.

Their defense is the clear area of concern. Harry Maguire has been far from his best, and barely comes off the Manchester United bench, while Eric Dier and John Stones are very inconsistent.

Trent Alexander-Arnold is certainly overrated — he provides great attacking opportunities, but is de fensively unreliable. The team’s defense is not all bad, however; with outstanding performances on both the defensive and attacking end, Kieran Trip pier has been instrumental to Newcastle’s success this season. Additionally, Conor Coady feels under rated — he’s reportedly a big morale booster in the squad.

Brazil

Squad Value: €1.14 billion

FIFA Ranking: 1

Thanks to incredible talents like Neymar Jr. and Vinicius Jr., Brazil’s attackers provide roughly half

of Brazil’s squad value, and it’s hard to suggest that any of them are overrated. Additionally, as he plays in the Brazilian league, away from most internation al scrutiny, Pedro Santos, from Clube de Regatas do Flamengo, actually feels underrated.

On the defensive end, Ederson de Moraes and Alisson Becker are both stellar goalkeepers, yet Brazil has also bizarrely selected 39-year-old Dani Alves for right back. Thiago Silva is 38, but still per forms well for Chelsea and is certainly an under rated player, but Alves has been selected purely for being “one of the captains of the team.” Neverthe less, Marcos (Marquinhos) Corrêa and Eder Militao are both solid choices. Furthermore, with Bruno Guimarães and Carlos Casimiro, the midfield is still strong.

France

Squad Value: €1.08 billion

FIFA Ranking: 4

The reigning champions have a squad that is pretty well balanced between young talent and veterans.

Antoine Griezmann has struggled in recent years and his value is certainly declining. However, it’s im possible to deny the strength of rising star Kylian Mbappé. Furthermore, Olivier Giroud is certainly underrated, given that he has consistently per formed well for France and plays exceptionally for AC Milan.

Meanwhile, Aurélien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga have both been excellent for Real Ma drid and have a lot of potential, but this will be their first international tournament, which brings their value into question. Nevertheless, the defense, with the Hernández brothers, William Saliba, and Raphaël Varane is still solid. Specifically, Benjamin Pavard is underrated — he was outstanding at the last World Cup.

Portugal

Squad Value: €937 million

FIFA Ranking: 9 Portugal’s team is dominated by young talent. Ra

phael Leão is talented, yet João Félix feels over rated given that he has never impressed while at Atletico Madrid. Both William Carvalho and João Mario are aging and certainly overrated, while Bru no Fernandes’ performances have improved. Surprisingly, Cristiano Ronaldo is underrated de spite the critiques that he's been getting lately. Ron aldo is 37 and barely playing at Manchester United. Furthermore, after his controversial interview with Piers Morgan, Ronaldo will likely be without a team and facing a hefty lawsuit once the World Cup ends. Yet, despite the drama, ultimately Ronaldo is still the top scorer of all time in international soccer and it’s impossible to bet against him. Away from Manchester and in an environment where he feels respected, Ronaldo could thrive.

Spain

Squad Value: €877 million FIFA Ranking: 7 While there is a lot of talent, this team is very un balanced. The midfield is headlined by Barcelona teenagers Pedro López and Pablo Gavira, along with 34-year-old Sergio Busquets — who is still an incredible player despite his age. Spain’s midfield is easily one of the most formidable in the world. In comparison, the attack and defense simply feel empty. Álvaro Morata has never been a consis tent goalscorer, yet is somehow the best attacker among those selected. Additionally, Jordi Alba and

Furthermore, Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea surprisingly didn’t even make the initial 50-player shortlist. Taking his place is Unai Simón, who despite impressing at Euro 2020, still lacks the vast experience de Gea wields. This deci sion to trust Simón is worrisome considering how empty the Spanish defense already is and the op ponents Spain could face — including Germany in the group stage.

Does money matter?

France had a whopping squad value of €1.08 bil lion when they won in 2018 — they were the most valuable team.

Yet, money doesn’t win games — performances do. The Italian national team is the seventh most valuable in the world, worth €585.5 million. In con trast, the Canadian national team is worth €187.30 million, with Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David accounting for more than half of that figure. And yet, Italy didn’t qualify for the World Cup — Canada did.

While the most valuable team won in 2018, the most valuable team did not win in 2014 — Germa ny did, famously crushing the fourth-most valuable team, Brazil, on their way to victory. While money can be a good predictor of success, it cannot guar antee it.

Whitney Buluma Varsity Contributor

With the 2022 World Cup in full swing, athletes may be contemplating the dangers of another type of play: sexual activity. The superstition that having sex is detrimental to athletic performance likely emerged in Ancient Greece and Rome, where it was widely believed that sex depleted men’s testosterone and energy. Specifically, they believed the loss of testosterone from ejaculation would reduce aggression and muscle strength. These beliefs still hold some sway over athletes and coaches in the twenty-first century. Profes sional wrestler Ronda Rousey once said that be fore she fights, she has as much sex as possible to raise her testosterone levels. In the lead up to the 2014 World Cup, four teams — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Mexico, and Russia — pro hibited their players from engaging in sexual in tercourse. All four teams were eliminated in the knockout stage.

Scientific research largely does not support this superstition, but the effect of sex on athletic per formance is also largely understudied.

The research

The first study on sex and physical performance, conducted in 1968, involved 14 women former athletes. The researchers tested the women’s muscular strength and endurance twice: the morning after sex and after at least six days of ab

stinence. They found no evidence that sex nega tively affected strength or endurance.

One 1995 study did find a slightly negative ef fect of sex on physical activity. Up to two hours after participants engaged in sexual activity, re searchers tested their aerobic fitness on a tread mill and found a significant increase in heart rate in the recovery phase. However, when the research ers tested the participants again ten hours after sex, they found no differences in recovery heart rate.

A systematic review and metaanalysis in Na ture, published in September 2022, examined all the relevant scientific evidence on the effects of sexual activity — including sex or masturbation — on physical fitness. The review found no such effects when participants engaged in sexual ac tivity 30 minutes to 24 hours before researchers assessed their physical performance. The assess ments measured aerobic fitness, musculoskel etal endurance, or muscular strength or power. However, the review drew from only nine studies and emphasized the need for further high-quality research.

Research limitations and gaps

The results of these studies are likely not generaliz able to the whole population. The majority of stud ies on this subject have been conducted on men; for instance, the 2022 systematic review focused on 132 male participants and one female par

ticipant. Many of the studies also had very small sample sizes, likely because people were unwilling to participate.

The studies relied on tests of physical activ ity or fitness but failed to examine actual athletic performance in the context of a competition. Per haps there are other factors at play in a competi tive context that would provide a scientific basis for the superstition. The studies also have a risk of bias, since participants likely knew what was being tested, which may have affected the out comes of the studies.

The underlying assumptions

Even if the evidence — scant as it is — suggests that sex doesn’t undermine physical performance, could the underlying claims of the superstition have some merit?

Athletes and coaches have long claimed that sex saps testosterone. The evidence is mixed. Some studies found sex had no short or longterm effect on testosterone levels. Another study measured concentrations of testosterone in saliva before sex, after sex, and when no sex took place. The study found that testosterone levels actually increased after sex.

The second claim is that sex drains energy.

However, sex has a low energy expenditure, usu ally around 25 calories, which is the equivalent of walking up two flights of stairs. Even if athletes are engaging in more vigorous types of sexual play, they would likely not deplete the energy stores in their muscles.

A mind game: The psychology of sex

Some researchers have argued that the effect of sex on atheletic performance is merely psycho logical, although they provide little empirical evi dence for their claims. For instance, the invertedU hypothesis in sport psychology postulates that abstinence causes frustration, which athletes can channel into better athletic performance. A differ ent view suggests that sexual satisfaction engen ders relaxation, reducing anxiety before a compe tition and possibly improving performance.

To sum up, there is insufficient evidence that having sex negatively impacts physical perfor mance. However, more research is needed to determine the physiological and psychological ef fects of sexual activity on athletic performance. It remains to be seen whether athletes and coaches will completely abandon superstition and em brace desire.

Daniel Carvajal have experience, but aren’t as im pactful as Busquets.

JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY,