THE VARSITY
Vol. CXXXIII, No. 14
University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
21 January, 2013
24 Strong finish for Blues track and field
14
Britta Badour, the poet of Regent Park
8 Bruce Kidd on Hart House
2
VARSITY NEWS
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
WHAT’S GOING ON
THE VARSITY
THIS WEEK
VOL. CXXXIII No. 14
21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON, M5S 1J6 Phone: 416-946-7600 www.thevarsity.ca
Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief Murad Hemmadi editor@thevarsity.ca Design Editors Suzy Nevins suzy@thevarsity.ca Dan Seljak dan@thevarsity.ca Photo Editor Bernarda Gospic photo@thevarsity.ca Production Editor Alex Ross production@thevarsity.ca Managing Online Editor Patrick Love online@thevarsity.ca Senior Copy Editor Vacant copy@thevarsity.ca News Editor Simon Bredin news@thevarsity.ca Comment Editor Joshua Oliver comment@thevarsity.ca Features Editor Simon Frank features@thevarsity.ca Arts & Culture Editor Brigit Katz arts@thevarsity.ca Science Editor Dennis Dobrovolsky science@thevarsity.ca Sports Editor Zoë Bedard sports@thevarsity.ca Illustrations Editor Minhee Bae illustration@thevarsity.ca Video Editor Wyatt Clough video@thevarsity.ca
ISRAEL AND PALESTINE IN 2013: A LECTURE BY NORMAN FINKELSTEIN Graduate Students’ Union Wednesday, January 23, 7–9 pm OISE | OISE Auditorium 252 Bloor St. W.
Designers Ethan Chiel Arshile Egoyan Natalie Morcos Suzy Nevins Dan Seljak Shaquilla Singh Nathan Watson
Fact Checkers Lois Boody Karen Kyung Fuhrmann Catharine Kabasele Laura Sabatini Michelle Speyer Shifa Tauqir Photo and Illustration Jasmine Vallve William Ahn Joshua Fumo Bernarda Gospic Cover Wendy Gu Bernarda Gospic Carolyn Levett
Business Office Business Manager John Fountas
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Advertising Manager Tina Yazdi advertising@thevarsity.ca Advertising Executives victoria@thevarsity.ca Victoria Botvinnik nick@thevarsity.ca Nick Brownlee sofia@thevarsity.ca Sofia Luu maokai@thevarsity.ca Maokai Shen The Varsity is the University of Toronto's largest student newspaper, publishing since 1880. The Varsity has a circulation of 20,000, and is published by Varsity Publications Inc. It is printed by Master Web Inc. on recycled newsprint stock. Content © 2012 by The Varsity. All rights reserved. Any editorial inquiries and/or letters should be directed to the sections associated with them; emails listed above. The Varsity reserves the right to edit all submissions. Inquiries regarding ad sales can be made to ads@thevarsity.ca. ISSN: 0042-2789 Please recycle this issue after you are finished with it.
SEMRA SEVI @SEMRASEVI There was a proposal in the JCR last night. The couple first met here 9 years ago @UC_Lit #uoft — January 20 2013
NADIA POPOV @NADIAPOPOV94
CO-CURRICULAR RECORD TOWN HALL MEETINGS Office of Student Life Friday, February 1, 12.30–1.30pm Bahen Centre | Room 1160 40 St. George St.
ENVIRONMENTAL FASHION SHOW AND AUCTION VUSAC Sustainability Friday, February 1 , 8–11 pm Victoria College | Old Vic Foyer 73 Queen’s Park Crescent
VARSITY PUBLICATIONS INC. REFERENDUM January 28, 29, 30, 2013 voting online at http://voting.utoronto.ca
At the rink watching the @queensgaels women’s hockey take onUofT. Man I miss this sport #nostalgia — January 19 2013
SARAH @SARAH_UOFT Great break from the city discovering #Kingston this weekend! Anyone else falling behind on their readings? #UofT — January 15 2013
COREY SCOTT @COURAGEOUSCOREY To the 100 journalists that have contacted me for articles in@TheVarsity. Im working on responses, hope that someone might cover #wwow2013 — January 18 2013
VARSITY PUBLICATIONS INC., the student group that publishes The Varsity newspaper, is seeking a $1 increase in its annual perstudent levy, also known as its compulsory non-academic incidental fee. All full-time undergraduate students at the University of Toronto who pay the fee are eligible to vote in the referendum to approve the increase.
Contributors
Copy Editors Lois Boody Katherine Kyung Fuhrmann Susan Gordon Catharine Kabasele Kerrie McCreadie Helen Picard Kayla Rosen Laura Sabatini Michelle Speyer Shifa Tauqir Jasmine Vallve Catherine Virelli Miranda Whittaker
the week in tweets
ON CAMPUS
Associate Design Editor Nathan Watson Associate Photo Editor Vacant Associate Online Editor Sofia Luu Associate Copy Editor Catherine Kabasele Associate News Editors Rida Ali Zane Schwartz Associate Comment Editor Vacant Associate Features Editor Damanjit Lamba Associate A&C Editor Danielle Klein Associate Science Editor Roxanne Leung Katrina Vogan Associate Sports Editor Elizabeth Benn William Deck
Assunta Alegiani, Rida Ali, Jasleen Arneja, Zainab Asadullah, Salena Barry, Cameron Becker, Elizabeth Benn, Omar Bitar, Kelvin Chen, Ethan Chiel, Matthew da Motta, Wes Dutcher-Wells, Joshua Fumo, Karen Kyung Fuhrmann, Jesse Hildebrand, Adrienne Ho, Evan Hutchison, Lia Kim, Danielle Klein, James Maiangowi, April Pawluk, Zane Schwartz, Abdullah Shihipar, Fatima Syed, Colin Tessier, David Woolley
news@thevarsity.ca
Crime Stats January 12–18
9
Thefts
20
Trespasses
1 3
Arrest
Harrassment
1
Mischief
Quoted
LUKE SAVAGE @LUKEWSAVAGE @InklessPW In 1957 during Peter Gzowski’s time as EIC@TheVarsity student politicos actually went to the printer and burnt an entire run. — January 16 2013
dispatches from the Reddit thread on S.E.C.’s sex positivity party (more on pg 5)
I should say... Although I didn’t mean to mislead anyone, I refrained from using “student sex club adventure” in the title considering the post I made earlier quoting that got removed by the mods (it’s back up now), and I didn’t want to use the same title as the one that got removed. I used the term “orgy” loosely and somewhat jokingly — it is an event where people can get naked and have sex non-privately. “Orgy” is what I associated the event with. It’s been said that this “buzzword” is what’s shocking everyone and giving the event negative attention, but I think it’s really the concept of the event that’s causing the reaction — not that it was called an orgy. —Antigravity-Kitten Ask yourself the question “Would I really want to have sex with someone who goes to a party like this?” —nofear220
How involved is sec going to be involved, as far as etiquette enforcement? Will you be monitoring for condom usage, for example? I feel it could be an intrusion, but also that sec, given your purpose, should be doing something at your own events besides just putting out condoms and saying “you can do what you want.” Also, how is the place cleaned? Do people have to sanitize their area like when you use a weight machine in a gym?
Is there a camera policy? As a recent single person out a bad relationship, I feel a strong need to do/attend something crazy and probably awkward but crazy and wild like this...but I probably wouldn’t if it’s possible that photos will leave the party. —therealright What’s the dungeon?
—deleted —Antigravity-Kitten Well, what it will boil down to is that we will provide all of the best information and safer sex supplies and safety/inclusion presence that we can, but after that it comes down to informed, consensual decision making between two adults. I suppose it boils down to the trust that people will have the common sense to utilize and own risk reduction. The place is cleaned with.. shoot, I can’t remember what kind of sanitizer it is. Give me a few minutes to double check on this. —syphiliticmind
The dungeon is a room stocked with BDSM related furniture for people to use if they want to explore some kink. We will have volunteers there throughout the night to answer questions and talk about kink play later in the evening. Also if you want to indulge in this area you will need to bring your own toys. —Alias123
VARSITY NEWS
var.st/news
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
3
Class action lawsuit filed over student privacy breach Fatima Syed VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
Goldring Centre construction on Charles Street. Bernarda Gospic/THe VarsiTy
Goldring Student Centre construction delayed Unexplained holdup prompts refunds for graduating students Zainab Asadullah VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
A new delay on construction of Victoria College’s much-anticipated Goldring Student Centre has forced the college administration to issue refunds to graduating students who will not be able to use the facilities for which they were charged. The delay, which Victoria College president Paul Gooch attributed to “unforeseen circumstances,� means that the Centre intended to be finished in 2013 will instead be pushed back another year. The building’s designers, Toronto architectural firm Moriyama & Teshima, were unavailable for comment. A 2009 referendum to determine student financing for the Centre ultimately supported levying a $100 fee on full-time students every year from 2010 through 2012, increasing to $200 in 2013. Part-time students paid $50, increasing to $100, over the same time frame. Only fourth-year students will be refunded in full, while first- to third-year students will be refunded half the amount, as well as being given a chance to move down to the pre-access rate. “Students paid the full fee this year in anticipation, but since that expectation has not been realized, there will be a refund according
to the schedule of the agreement,� said Gooch. The refund comes as the result of an agreement between the Victoria University Student Administrative Council (vusac) and the college, which held that “a student should not be required to pay the fee if he or she would not be able to enjoy the Goldring Student Centre before graduation.� “When it became apparent in December that the [Centre] was not going to open on time, I brought up this issue with Kelley Castle, the dean of students, and she agreed that this needed to happen,� said Shoaib Ali, vusac president. “vusac and Victoria College students are definitely glad to be getting this money back, though it’s unfortunate that the cost comes at the price of not seeing the centre after the construction that has gone on for so many years.� Ali says he and other alumni who are eligible for refunds will likely return to campus to see the completed centre, after having invested so much in the building over a number of years. Named for Victoria College graduates Blake C. Goldring and Judy G. Goldring, the centre will be attached to Wymilwood, a historic campus building. When the levy was originally approved in 2009, The Varsity reported that administrators antici-
pated finishing construction of the building in 2011. In spite of the delay, the centre’s final construction is eagerly awaited by students at Victoria College. Amenities include meeting rooms, new office space for vusac and nearly 20 other student groups, a cafĂŠ and two-storey lounge, an assembly space, and lockers. The centre is expected to triple available student space at the college and unlike the current Wymilwood building, the Goldring Centre will be wheelchair-accessible. The modern design of the extension fits in with the diverse architecture at Victoria. Borrowing design elements from Wymilwood, the centre will stand alongside the neo-gothic Burwash Hall, Romanesque Old Vic, and the more contemporary Isabel Bader Theatre. The delay could potentially pose fresh problems for the Faculty of Law, which is preparing to move from its current site at 84 Queen’s Park Crescent to Victoria College, and was depending on completion of the Goldring Student Centre to accommodate law school students who need study space and clubs offices. “The new building will be a state-of-the-art student centre,â€? says Gooch. “We are all eager to see it completed.â€?
Newfoundland lawyer Bob Buckingham has filed a national class action lawsuit on behalf of 583,000 people whose personal information was kept on an external hard drive that was lost by the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (hrsdc). As previously reported by The Varsity, the lost hard drive contained the personal and financial information of students who obtained Canada Student Loans between 2000 and 2006, including names, social insurance numbers, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, amounts of money borrowed, and spousal and parental information. The loss was announced on January 11 by the hrsdc, nearly two months after the drive was first reported missing. Buckingham says that almost 12,000 students have joined the class action suit. “It changes by the moment,� says Buckingham, whose firm has been inundated with phone calls and emails from those affected. Buckingham says he anticipates tens of thousands more will eventually join the suit. Buckingham’s firm website and social media presence have also attracted a considerable following since the press coverage of the suit began late last week. The lawsuit is seeking compensation for time, expenses, hardship, breach of privacy, stress incurred, and “additional damages to impress upon the government the seriousness of this loss of information.� Although several firms have already filed with courts across the country, Buckingham says he is the only one to have filed with the federal court. Buckingham says he has requested a meeting with the federal privacy commissioner, the superintendent of the rcmp, and Minister Diane Finley as the next step in the lawsuit. He said he hopes to “discuss ramifications of this issue� and press the government for immediate action to address the situation. “We have a group of people who are between the ages of 24 and 30 who are affected by this, and they are going to live to the age of 80 or 90, so how is this going to affect them down the road, if this portable hard drive has been stolen or fallen in the wrong hands?� asks Buckingham. “People are going to be living with the issue over their heads for the next 40, 50 to 60 to 70 years. Where is my identity? Will it ever be used? And could it be used by someone down the road?� Buckingham says one of the primary objectives of his lawsuit is to
prompt the government to take a more proactive approach to the privacy breach. “Things have to be changed,� says Buckingham. He has urged Finley to implement new policies to protect those affected from future harm and wants the federal government to pay for the development of software that will monitor transactions through financial institutions for any suspicious activity. “The department will be making every effort to contact the individuals whose information was lost. This includes direct notification to those for whom we have current contact information,� Finley said in a statement announcing the loss of the drive. “I want to see the government step in and state very quickly ‘we are looking at this issue’ and put in place programs to deal with this loss in the short term,� said Buckingham. The suit will also seek to compel the federal government to pay for credit checks, identity protection insurance, lost wages, and other potentially costly side-effects for those affected by the breach. “I want the government to say that because they are suggesting to people to go and get credit checks and buy identity theft insurance, which is what some of the people in the government call-in centres are suggesting, I want the government to say ‘we’re going to pay for that,’� said Buckingham. “I want the superintendent of the rcmp to come out and say this is a security issue.� Affected students voiced their frustration over the situation to The Varsity when the loss was first announced. Jaroslava Avila graduated from U of T in 2011, and received federal loans in 2005 and 2006. She said she was still unsure if she has been personally affected by the breach. “This is just one more thing for students to worry about on top of paying thousands of dollars in students loans,� said Avila. Munib Sajjad, vice-president, university affairs, of the University of Toronto Students’ Union, said he had around $6,000 of federal loans taken out during the time frame in question. His personal information may also have been compromised in the breach. “I’m kind of baffled, and really, really surprised that our government is losing student records,� said Sajjad. “This failure by the government to protect people’s identity has certainly raised questions concerning the priority the government is giving to protecting personal privacy,� said Buckingham. “We rely on the government to protect the information they collect on us, and along with the ability to collect goes an obligation to protect.�
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VARSITY NEWS
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
news@thevarsity.ca
Law faculty plots move to Victoria campus Administrators to replicate Rowell Hall student space in Birge-Carnegie, including famed sculpture of Bora’s Head Adrienne Ho
VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR The University of Toronto Faculty of Law is forging ahead with plans to decamp to Victoria College from 2013 until 2015 as its existing facilities undergo extensive renovation and expansion. According to a December 2012 report released by the Project Planning Committee for the Faculty of Law Expansion, $33.1 million has been raised through private donors for the renovation. The committee is confident it will attain its private fundraising goal of $36 million. A combination of loans and university funds will cover the remainder of the expected $54 million cost of the project. On Wednesday, at a student information session, the faculty provided updates about the move and addressed issues raised at a town hall meeting last year. Students were concerned about the availability of study rooms and access to library resources during the transitional period. Challenges around accessing library resources have now been mostly resolved. Of the approximately 220,000 print volumes currently in the library, chief law librarian John Papadopoulos has identified a core of about 20,000 to 30,000 that are in high demand. These volumes will be moved to Birge-Carnegie, where the existing Wymilwood Café will be renovated to become the new law library. Library resource offices will be relocated to the ground floor. Given that the bulk of case law and legislation is available online, the loss of the Bora Laskin Law Library is not expected to substantially affect students’ ability to complete coursework.
Concerns about a lack of study space have not yet been fully addressed. The Students’ Law Society (sls) anticipates consulting with students to assess needs. Similarly, Papadopoulos is identifying current usage amongst both Victoria College and law students. Sean Ingram, senior development officer at the Faculty of Law, said that the law school is also looking at leasing additional space for faculty and students. However, limited meeting space may be available at Flavelle House, one of the current law buildings, which is expected to remain more accessible during construction than had been previously anticipated. With the exception of the Bora Laskin Law Library complex, lockers, a kitchen and the offices of faculty members and the student society will remain mostly untouched. Although the extent of the disruption is unclear, classes, mostly those taught in the evenings, will continue to be held at Flavelle House. Falconer House will remain open. A reserved space for graduate students, a kitchen, and a reading room will be also added to Birge-Carnegie. As for classrooms, the Office of Space Management will oversee their allocation between law and Victoria College students. The identification of space needs will be an ongoing project for the faculty over the next few months as it prepares to move into Victoria College over the summer, after students have finished their exams. When asked about how the move might affect Victoria College students, Ingram explained that the law faculty will be leasing space that Victoria College will be vacating. He stated that the college’s student union would move into the Goldring Student Centre that will be completed in
MEGA
March, which would be an improvement over its current facilities. (For more on the delay in the Goldring Student Centre construction, see “Refunds” on pg 3). Ruta Rudminaite, vusac’s communications commissioner, agrees. In an email, Rudminaite said that “with the incoming Goldring Student Centre, Vic students will have as much bookable space at Victoria College as they need (which is our first priority), so we’re excited to see the relationship between the Faculty of Law and Victoria College evolve naturally.” Law students have equally been concerned about maintaining a strong community. To mitigate the move’s impact, the ground floor
of Birge-Carnegie will be renovated to create an exclusive student lounge to replicate the Rowell room, a popular space where law students often convene to mingle and to hold events. “The administration has always been animated by the primary concern that the law student experience be as contained and as cohesive as possible,” said Kate Hilton, assistant dean of the advancement office. To this end, Bora’s Head, the bust of the late Supreme Court Justice Bora Laskin, will be relocated to the new student lounge. Hilton is confident that the incoming first year class will have as a good of an experience as current students. The faculty plans to hold orientation events to ease the transition.
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VARSITY NEWS
var.st/news
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
News in brief Western University campus paper faces forced shift
1 Spadina receiving expansion, makeover
Eric Leung appointed UTSU’s new Chief Returning Officer
Western University’s student council drew criticism this week for its decision to move The Gazette, Western’s student newspaper, from its offices in favour of campus faith-based groups that say they don’t want to move. The Gazette, Canada’s only student-run daily paper, announced Wednesday that the University Students’ Council (usc) planned to turn the 40-yearold newspaper office into a multi-faith space. The usc cited concerns about spiritual cleansing stations, noise reduction, and privacy in Western’s current multi-faith space, established in 2010. Usc’s concerns were not shared by the Muslim Students’ Association, Western Hillel, or Chabad House at Western, all faith-based groups who reported they were satisfied with the current multifaith space. In an editorial published Wednesday, Gazette editor-in-chief Gloria Dickie speculated the usc’s decision resulted from long-simmering tensions between the Gazette and the usc. On Friday, The Gazette reported discussions between the usc and the paper about the office space were ongoing.
The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design unveiled a plan this week to transform 1 Spadina into a state-of-the-art centre for architectural research and education. The proposed plan will see 1 Spadina, an historic neo-Gothic building on the west edge of campus, expanded northwards, with a new three-storey complex featuring design studios and research spaces. Further plans include building a series of pavilions, one of which will house the new Global Cities Institute, and removing the fence that surrounds the existing building. “We didn’t want just another glass box,” said Richard Sommer, dean of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture. “This project needs to raise the bar for Toronto.” Architect, philanthropist, and faculty namesake John Daniels provided lead funding for the project in 2008. Additional gifts are planned early in 2013 and the remaining funds will be raised as part of “Boundless,” the university’s fundraising campaign.
Eric Leung has been appointed utsu’s new Chief Returning Officer (cro). As cro, Leung will be responsible for handling the upcoming electoral process and enforcing the Elections Procedure Code, a document outlining everything from candidate eligibility to fundraising rules. Leung steps into the role at a crossroads in university student governance. Student opposition leaders on campus have renewed calls for electoral reform following last year’s elections, including proposals to end proxy voting on utsu’s board of directors and to implement online voting. Leung replaces Daniel Lo, a controversial figure in campus politics during his term last year. Trinity College’s student government passed a motion calling for Lo’s immediate resignation. Also during the previous election season, Lo faced repeated criticism for perceived conflicts of interest, disparities in demerit points awarded to candidates, and an all-candidates debate called on unusually short notice. Lo infamously awarded current utsu president Shaun Shepherd demerit points when The Varsity endorsed him, construing the endorsement as an unapproved advertisement.
— Evan Hutchison With files from The Gazette.
— Colin Tessier With files from U of T Magazine
—James Maiangowi
SEC’s “sexy social” scandalizes media Sexual Awareness Week kickoff event goes viral after Redditor promises students “orgy” Karen Kyung Fuhrmann VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
After over a week of intensive media attention, the Sexual Education Centre at the University of Toronto begins its annual Sexual Awareness Week this Monday with a “sexy social” at Oasis Aqualounge, an upscale sex club and water-themed adult playground. “Sexual Awareness Week is about cultivating healthy communication about sex, along with networking, and education,” said Dylan Tower, external education and outreach coordinator at the Sexual Education Centre (sec). From January 21–25, the centre has scheduled nine volunteer-run events — some new and some recurring events from previous years — including Hentai and Sushi; a workshop on bdsm for beginners; Sex and Guilt; and Q21 Conversation Café. “These events are held to educate the guests, not only on the topic at hand, but also on how to talk openly about sex with others, without the shame and embarrassment that is usually tied to them,” says Tower. National media attention has focused on only one of these nine events, the “sexy social,” after a Reddit post from a user named AntiGravity-Kitten advertised the event to the University of Waterloo, announcing that “U of T is holding an orgy,” with the only admission requirement a student ID card. Toronto Star reporter Katie Daubs picked up on the post, and the paper ran an article with a headline describing the event as an “epic sex club adventure.”
Daubs’ story was shared widely on social media by U of T students, prompting widespread misinformation (and excitement), including the belief that the sec was using student dollars to fund an orgy. National Post columnist Barbara Kay penned a scathing opinion piece, describing sec as a “Pimps-RUs program” and condemning the university for supporting the event. A subsequent column detailed Kay’s exchange with U of T spokesperson Laurie Stephens after Stephens appeared to distance the university from affiliation with the event. “I don’t think [sec] should be promoting sexual awareness at all… As far as I’m concerned, the whole expedition is a chance for titillation and pushing transgressive envelopes in the name of education. I think the whole thing is very hypocritical, a waste of money, and a very bad image for the University of Toronto,” said Kay in an interview with The Varsity. “It is unsuitable for any club from the University of Toronto to facilitate an event or party at Oasis. If they are doing it for sexual positivism, I find it nonsensical.” Tower and other sec executives have worked to counteract rumours and misinformation. “The social is actually much more akin to a pub crawl,” said Tower on Reddit. “People are allowed to have sex on premise,” Tower explained to the Star. “There is not any type of ‘You should be having sex when you’re here.’ It’s very much, ‘come and enjoy the space,’ there’s no prodding or pushing in that direction.” The event is expected to have two distinct phases, with guests remaining clothed during the day, followed by a “clothing-optional” evening.
“This isn’t our first rodeo,” said Tower. Student groups such as Lesbians, Gay, Bisexuals and Transpersons of the University of Toronto (lgbtout) and the sec have hosted bathhouse nights and other events at venues like Oasis for several years. Trained volunteers will be on hand at the event, promoting safe sex. At a similar event last year, around 80 guests attended, while only two couples had sex, according to accounts provided by guests. This year, organizers anticipate a larger attendance given loosened admittance rules and national media attention, but they have also had to contend with harassment towards those who had already confirmed their attendance on the event’s Facebook page. “The Toronto Star has demonstrated a poor standard of journalistic integrity and research in publishing the article that dealt with this issue,” said utsu vice-president, internal, Corey Scott, who has previously been involved with planning popular bathhouse night events with lgbtout. “What initially started as an event to debunk social stigma has resulted in national coverage of misinformation based on an unaffiliated Reddit post.” Sec receives its funding from a 25 cent student levy paid for by all students. Students can opt out of the levy at the beginning of the academic year. The Sexual Awareness Week Sexy Social will charge $5 for admission, instead of Oasis’ usual $40 fee. Admission includes lockers and towels. Students must show their student card at the door, and are allowed one guest per student. The event is 19-plus.
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VARSITY NEWS
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
news@thevarsity.ca
Agenda finalized as UTSU special general meeting set for February 5 Filtered through committee and board, member-driven amendments up for final vote Rida Ali ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
The agenda for a February 5 special general meeting of the University of Toronto Students’ Union has taken final shape, following weeks of speculation since a late November agm was aborted over the absence of member-driven reforms. Proposed amendments for the replacement meeting were due by January 8, and were then reviewed at a Policy & Procedures Committee meeting the next day. Thirteen proposed by-law amendments were discussed at the committee. Three were referred to the Board of Directors for a decision, six were defeated, and four were carried directly onto the February 5 agenda. Only a handful of the motions whose absence doomed the previous meeting’s agenda will be up for a vote in February. “I resubmitted all of the proposals that I put forward for the first agm,” said Sam Greene, co-head at Trinity College. “All four of them were considered by the Policy & Procedures Committee, based on fairly flimsy reasoning, two of them weren’t even sent to
the board to discuss.” The six amendments defeated in committee involved a number of reforms to the functioning of the utsu board of directors, including new requirements that the speaker of the board be elected from amongst its membership and reducing the supermajority of director support required to forward amendments to agms for final approval (two-thirds, instead of the three-quarters currently needed). Other amendments killed in committee included one that would have mandated utsu executives carry a higher course load during their terms, another that would have added an extra member (appointed by the U of T Office of the Ombudsperson) to an influential elections appeal body, and a third giving the Board of Directors the power to amend the Election Procedure Code. A motion to include a questionand-answer period during agms, where members could direct queries at the executive committee, was also defeated. Benjamin Dionne, president of the University College Literary and Athletic Society (UCLit), said his submitted amendments were not considered at all, not even
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by the Policy & Procedures Committee. Dionne had submitted motions to compel discussion of the Non-Partisan Declaration on Electoral Reform. “The UCLit endorsed these ideas, and I wanted to present it to the union. So it is disappointing but not really that surprising. I wished the propositions for electoral reforms as part of the NonPartisan Declaration would be at least studied, and as there is really nothing controversial in there, I don’t know why the utsu does not want to look into it,” said Dionne. The committee did choose to advance four amendments to the Board for consideration. These included the addition of a presidential address to the agm, increasing from 14 to 21 the number of days notice provided to members prior to an agm, and reducing the number of proxies carried by members from 10 to five. In an effort to avoid situations like the previous general meeting, during which membership rejected the union’s proposed agenda, the fourth amendment advanced by the committee would require the union to post the deadline for by-law amendments and agenda items on its website at least 14 days in advance.
While the Policy & Procedures Committee has the power to approve agenda items directly, it chose to forward three proposals to the Board for consideration. These included giving utsu executives the option of being full-time students, disallowing proxy use at the Board of Directors (a change that will soon be mandated by federal law), and reducing from 200 to 100 the number of nomination signatures needed to run for an executive union position. The three amendments were discussed at a January 14 board meeting, and only one — to change the number of nomination signatures required to run for the executive — made it onto the February agenda. “The discussions lasted for several hours with the Board of Directors where we were able to deconstruct the amendments and determine that the motions were not in the best interest of the students’ union and its members,” said vice-president, internal, Corey Scott. “There were a huge number of the proposals put forward by myself and others, and of these they are only willing to let one proposal even be voted on at an agm. And that was a relatively minor,
administrative proposal about nomination signatures,” said Greene. “This to me is evidence that they don’t want the student membership deciding important issues about electoral and procedural reform at the union. They want to shut down those discussions and they only want arguments raised by people who agree with them.” “The amendments that we wanted were struck down either at the committee or the board stage. Amendments not only have to clear a committee, they have to clear the board by a 75 per cent margin. It’s procedurally easier to amend the US constitution than it is to get something on the agenda at the utsu agm,” said Robert Boissonneault, a former legal consultant to opposition campaigns. (Disclosure: Boissonneault currently serves on Varsity Publication Inc.’s Board of Directors). “I think that really speaks to how uninterested the leadership is in any kind of outside input or even acknowledgement that their institutions are not adequate.” utsu president Shaun Shepherd declined several opportunities to comment on the agenda and submitted amendments.
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MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
VARSITY NEWS
news@thevarsity.ca
Questions For... Bruce Kidd, Warden of Hart House
Bruce Kidd, Hart House Warden and Olympian. Bernarda Gospic/THe VarsiTy
Zane Schwartz
ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
THE VARSITY: You’ve been here in one capacity or another for many decades. When did you first decide to come here as a student? BRUCE KIDD: In my last few years of high school, every evening after school I would jump on the Bloor streetcar and come down either to train at Varsity, or at Hart House. And although we didn’t always run upstairs in Hart House it was really the base for fall and spring running too. And that did change my life. In my Grade 13 year I could have spent every weekend going to recruitment weekends at different colleges in the United States. They were all trying to recruit me but I wanted to have time to run and I couldn’t do that if I was away every weekend. I narrowed it down to Harvard and U of T, but in the end chose U of T. TV: There’s an ongoing debate in the athletic community at U of T about potential restructuring. Two options seem to have emerged: either continuing to fund all teams roughly equally, or slashing funding for those teams that are less successful and focusing on the ones that are most successful. What should be done? BK: You know I’m reluctant … I know my colleagues in the Faculty of Kinesiology are wrestling with very difficult financial challenges. In finding worthwhile opportunities for U of T students, I would say that I had much to do with the creation of the broadly-based program and I’m a great believer that, given the educational benefits of sport in a university environment, you should provide as many opportunities as you can. TV: Can you tell students a bit about what’s coming up at Hart House that they might want to get involved in, anything new or anything old that’s worthy of note? BK: You know there’s so much going on in Hart House… TV: Where’s a good place to start? BK: Every day, every room in this house is buzzing with student energy, and you know the learning that goes on is extraordinary. We provide opportunities in the visual, literary, and performing arts through the committees and facilities in those areas. Sport and physical activity through the fitness wing, public policy and social justice through the debates and social justice committees, and culture and food through the farm committee. Students sit on all those committees and participate in programs that are as intellectually challenging and as invigorating as the learning that goes on in any classroom in this University. Yet we have
students who say they’ve never heard of Hart House, or they’ve only been to Sammy’s and they’re unaware that there’s an art gallery or a fitness centre. TV: Why do you think that might be? BK: I would share that question with you and your readers. We invest significantly, although we don’t have pots of money, in communication — in print, in digital, we’ve just upgraded our website, we have big Facebook and Twitter feeds. We have student ambassadors who go to every faculty and college on all three campuses, but we can never communicate enough. My advice to students is just spend an hour walking around the building and if you see something that you like, just screw up your courage and go to the first meeting. If you need an introduction, come and see me and I’ll take you to the first meeting! TV: You mentioned that Hart House doesn’t have pots of money. Hart House has been operating at a structural deficit for years now. BK: Hart House is funded by a combination of student fees from the compulsory ancillary fee that all students pay into, and the user fees that we charge others for using the space. Beyond that, we’re entirely self sufficient. We receive absolutely nothing, despite the contribution Hart House makes to the educational mission of the university, we get nothing from the operating budget of the university. Nothing. Repeat nothing. TV: There’s been some talk about unnecessary overlap between the Office of Student Life and Hart House. If money is tight, why not cut back on either OSL or Hart House? BK: That’s the first I’ve heard of that. I guess I’m totally shocked. Hart House provides special opportunities: it provides space for student activities on the three U of T campuses, and it provides this extraordinary ceremonial and social heritage. We overlap with Student Life in that we are also engaged in leadership training. Student Life encompasses the health service, international exchanges, a whole slew of things — there’s very little overlap. TV: I was wondering if we could talk a bit about your own plans. You’d mentioned that you were considering retiring in the next few years. BK: You know I’m here, I’ve signed a four-year contract so I’ll be here until 2016… TV: Are you planning to stay on after that in some capacity? BK: [laughs] I’m scheduled to retire, I will be well past my expected retirement date at that point so let’s leave that as an open question.
Comment
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21 JANUARY 2013 comment@thevarsity.ca
To succeed, anti-bullying programs need to change their goal var.st/comment
THE QUESTION
Is education a right? Rights rhetoric is misleading our generation about higher education Wes Dutcher-Wells VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
The defeat of the utsu Annual General Meeting agenda in November focused the debate over campus politics even more than before on the particular and the personal. Student political discourse has had an increasingly narrow focus on utsu incumbents, their contentious electoral history, and other U of T-specific concerns. Here, I want to take a “wider” view by focusing on rhetoric, not on policy, elections, or candidates. This may seem like nitpicking, but words have power, and the rhetoric of the utsu and its national umbrella organization, the Canadian Federation of Students (cfs), has real consequences for our generation’s approach to post-secondary education. Rights rhetoric is ubiquitous in all kinds of activism, including student advocacy, but the cfs seems particularly zealous in promoting it as their big-banner tag line. Contrary to the proclamations, placards, and protest slogans of the cfs and its on-campus affiliates, post-secondary education is not a right. In fact, the whole purpose of higher education is that it is a great privilege, granted on a very specific basis. My argument is premised on the idea that there are different kinds of rights. That is, if access to higher education is a right, it is not a universal or fundamental right, as the cfs clearly imagines it to be. The cfs and utsu’s invocation of rights rhetoric isn’t restricted to accessing post-secondary education itself. A list of student rights on the utsu’s website includes the “right” to refuse to submit work to www.turnitin.com and the “right” to submit handwritten essays, for example. It’s crucial to remember that these two kinds of “rights” — the right to be a post-secondary student in the first place and the rights of post-secondary students — are very different, both from one another and from the most fundamental rights such as those to vote, life, liberty, and security of person. Clearly, there are different kinds of rights, and they vary in importance and scope. I don’t claim that the cfs and utsu intentionally conflate these types of rights in their rhetoric; it is most likely that they simply would disagree with me about these distinctions. Nonetheless, the invocation of universal and fundamental rights rhetoric does serve their purposes by providing a compelling rhetorical backdrop for campaigns and advocacy, which are often worthwhile and productive. If they were to qualify their use of the word “right,” there would be no problem. In a YouTube video available on its website, the cfs correctly argues that Canada is formally obliged to work towards equal access to education because it is a signatory to the 1976 U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. This document enshrines the “right of everyone to education” and stipulates that higher education “be made equally accessible to all.” However, the most this gives Canadian citizens is the “right” to hold the government to account on fulfilling an agreement it has signed, and I am skeptical as to whether this creates a “right” to post-secondary education. Further, there are undoubtedly many people deserving of higher education who live in countries that haven’t ratified the U.N. covenant. On what basis is their right to be claimed and exercised? The U.N. document is a faulty foundation for the “right” to higher education. The sole basis for a universal or fundamental entitlement to higher education is academic dedication and integrity, and everything else, including student loans, tuition rates, and accessibility, is secondary.
WilliAM AhN/ThE VARSiTY
In these ways, invoking rights rhetoric about access to post-secondary education is a conceptual inaccuracy, or perhaps a blurring of categories. However, it has practical consequences too. When it is applied to post-secondary education, rights rhetoric creates a normative discourse. That is, it implies that pursuing post-secondary education is, or should be, the norm for young people. Rights ask to be exercised. This can be seen any time a young person explains their decision to work, travel, or do anything other than go to college or university directly out of high school; the apparent need to explain it in the first place shows how normative post-secondary education has become. Rights rhetoric sanctifies, elevates, and — dare I say it? — privileges one option above all others facing young people. University education may be the sole path to success as many people conceive it, and financial hurdles should never be allowed to prevent those willing to work hard from accessing it. However, it is simply one of many choices, all of which contribute to a healthy, productive, and diverse economy and society. When young people are told that it is their right to get a university education, I worry at how many of them might pick up on the implied continuation — “…and you’d be stupid not to exercise it!” — then go on to choose university when they otherwise would not have. So, if post-secondary education is not a right, what is it? I think it can be better understood in either of two ways: as a choice, or as a privilege. It’s a choice in that, ideally, young people should choose for themselves whether postsecondary education is right for them, based on an honest appraisal of their willingness to apply themselves and work with integrity. It is a privilege in that only those willing to do so are entitled to it. If something belongs to only certain members of society — as higher
CONTINUED PG 10
Access to education breaks up the status quo Abdullah Shihipar VARSITY STAFF
Last February, students armed with pots and pans took to the streets of Montreal to demand that the government halt its plan to increase tuition fees. In Ontario, the McGunity government rolled out a plan to reduce tuition for some students by 30 per cent, with some fine print. Graduate and part time students, among others, are excluded from this program. The Canadian Federation of Students (cfs) insisted that McGuinty was not taking a serious approach to post-secondary education. U of T Liberals insisted that the cfs was being spoiled and that the grant was sufficient considering the provincial government’s fiscal circumstances. In both instances, an age-old debate was once again brought to the forefront of campus discussion. Is education a right, or is it a privilege? I believe that education is a right. This does not translate to “I demand free education for all immediately.” I would love for this to be the case, but I realize that our current resources don’t allow for this dream to materialize at the moment. So if free education is not possible right now, why advocate for education as being a right? To prevent the ivory tower from becoming a restricted zone, accessible to only to those who have the finances to carry them forward. When education is classified as a right, it means that we as a society accept that learning should be accessible to all and that all barriers preventing people from accessing it should be torn down. With this understanding, the government would have to make post-secondary education a priority and work towards making education more affordable to all through increased
funding. It would ensure that students from disenfranchised communities are properly represented in the ivory tower. It would also ensure that students who have disabilities and mental health issues are given the support they need to complete their studies. And, it would prevent students whose parents’ income exceeds the standards set for financial aid from slipping through the cracks if their parents don’t financially support them. Furthermore, in all societies, education has proven to be the engine that drives the vehicle of progress. It allows people to better their circumstances and incubates societies’ best and brightest minds and ideas. Knowledge is power and when we restrict access to that knowledge, we limit access to that power for certain individuals. So, we are left with a reinforcing cycle, in which the privileged get access to education, which is linked to success, and the status quo continues. If we want to move towards a more just, equitable society, we would open up these educational possibilities to all. By opening up education to all and allowing all to contribute, we are exposed to more diverse ideas and thoughts and we challenge the power structure in society as more people are given the ability to advance. If we want all members of society to have the best possible education, so that we can all benefit from their contributions; then we must take the first step of declaring access to education a human right. If not, we will continue to accept a world where knowledge is limited and your access to it is dependent upon your pocketbook. Abdullah Shihipar is a second year student studying Cell and Molecular Biology and a member of the Arts and Science Students' Union executive. The views expressed here are his own.
but not many more 10 MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013 “RIGHTS” CONTINUED FROM PG 9 education belongs only to dedicated students — it is not a universal right. Of course, it’s not a question of learning ability, financial capacity, or other accessibility issues, and the CFS and UTSU are right to focus on removing all barriers to accessing post-secondary education in these
VARSITY COMMENT
areas. But those who are able but simply unwilling to work hard have no right to post-secondary education, and to say otherwise is to devalue the achievements and degrees of all students. Worse, it misleads a whole generation about their postsecondary choices. Wes Dutcher-Walls is a fourth-year student in political theory.
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MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
11
THE QUESTION
Gun control and the constitution The logic of consitutional originalism protects all rights David Woolley VARSITY STAFF
“1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!” Alex Jones barked. The lumbering Texan with a penchant for conspiracy theories hurled insults and threats of revolution at Piers Morgan, the British expat television presenter who, less than three years into his new show on CNN, was now unable to get a single word in edgewise. “Are you done?” asked Morgan. “Yes,” replied Jones before commencing another tirade regarding the tyranny of gun control legislation.
Countless viewers watched the spectacle with mouths agape. Morgan has never been a particularly skillful interviewer — many find him priggish and disingenuous. But this guy, this shock jock from Austin, was something else. Was this the face of the gun rights crowd? Were they actually motivated by the idea that a New World Order — rife with so-called “suicide-mass-murder-pills” and led by a Kenyan-born president — is waiting to take over and enslave all Americans? If so, those gun nuts really are crazy. And if they are that crazy, how have their concerns spread through a sizeable proportion of the US population? Well, beyond the gun fanatics — and US television hasn’t unmasked them all — there are a number of Americans who fight against gun control with principled and earnest conviction based on the philosophy of constitutional originality. Their thinking follows a progression from first principles and leads them incontrovertibly to their posi-
Vice President Joe Biden led the task-foce that developed the Obama administration's gun-control poropsals. Marc Nozell/flickr
A civilian arms race puts everyone in the line of fire Kelvin Chen VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
Almost like clockwork, after every highly publicized mass shooting event, policy makers reactively try to calm nerves by declaring the need for more effective gun regulations. This time around, in the aftermath of the second-deadliest school shooting in US history, the Obama administration was decidedly quick to deliver meaningful changes to existing gun controls. Last week, President Obama and VicePresident Biden unveiled a $500 million program, signed 23 executive orders, and announced that they will pursue new gun control laws that would introduce universal background checks, limit high-capacity magazines, and re-enact a ban on assault weapons. On the other hand, perhaps we don’t need better gun laws. Why? Simple — we don’t need guns. Civilians of established democracies such as the United States do not need access to firearms. Oh, I suppose it’s some people’s dream to whip out a Walther P99 pistol and save the day by subduing armed robbers, but this doesn’t happen at any appreciable rate in real life. For untrained people, the consequences of firing a single bullet runs ahead of our ability to wrap our head around it, especially during a heated altercation or in the
midst of a mental breakdown. Before the advent of guns, if you wanted to kill someone, you had to risk your own life to do it. With a gun in hand, pulling the trigger is almost effortless. In the peaceful classrooms of an elementary school or the parking lot of a supermarket, killing another person should never be this easy. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution, coupled with a 2008 US Supreme Court interpretation, gives its citizens the constitutional right to keep and bear arms for selfdefence. Enacted in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the Amendment is dated and its relevance in today’s society has woefully diminished. The Bill of Rights was created as the coda of the tumultuous American Revolution. The motion to give citizens the right to bear arms was arguably inspired by the pre-revolutionary period. This period saw the Patriots forming their own independent legislatures and militias, and the British and Loyalist seeking to thwart their efforts by restricting their access to firearms and ammunition. To prevent this from happening again, the Second Amendment was proposed to give individuals the power to protect themselves against a potentially tyrannical government. The Amendment itself, which was proposed by the presiding government of the time, is a courageous one. It embodies the idea that the government must never be an ends to itself, and that it must rise and fall according to the interest of the people. Today, over two centuries later, the US has grown more mature and people usually rely on dialogue, not violence, to effect political change. So, this once courageous idea is now much less relevant.
tion. What follows is a small attempt to discover the logic behind their beliefs. In May of 2010, PFC Bradley Manning was arrested on suspicion of leaking classified U.S. government documents to the website Wikileaks. To begin understanding the thinking of gun rights supporters with this event may seem odd, but, as an analogy, it helps to shed light on the overarching ideology of constitutional originality. In the wake of his arrest, Manning was detained for months without trial, and he accused his captors of holding him in inhumane conditions. Julian Assange, the founder and public face of Wikileaks, was demonized in the US Congress by many major figures in both parties who called for his arrest, trial, imprisonment, and, in some cases, his execution. Assange — according to everyone from liberal firebrand senator Dianne Feinstein, to the architect of the Republican revolution of the 1990s, Newt Gingrich — was a criminal guilty of sedition for leaking classified government documents to the public. However, there was something these individuals were sidestepping when talking about Assange: the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” A constitutional originalist would argue, therefore, that Assange is not a criminal. Case closed. Others may argue that freedom of speech must have its limitations — to curtail such things as hate speech and libel. They would ask Assange, and other journalists such as Daniel Ellsberg, who released classified government documents revealing outright lies by the US government regarding its involvement in the Vietnam War, to justify their actions, to explain why they needed to release classified documents. Not so the constitutional originalist. And constitutional originalists approach the Second Amendment in similar fashion because they believe the power of the government is limited to what is stated explicitly in the Constitution. Accordingly, the Second Amendment does not say the government may regulate the ownership of arms; it states that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Just as they do not ask journalists “Why…” they do not ask the gun owner “Why do you need to own an assault rifle?” This does not mean that the government can never enact gun laws. It means that in order to do so, according to a constitutional originalist, it must first amend the Constitution. Until that is accomplished, the government must follow the Constitution to the letter. It cannot act outside the confines of its own laws. Practically, the First Amendment has been limited to disallow libel, hate speech, copyright infringement, and other acts. These precedents may pave the way for the passing of gun legislation in the US However, there will remain that segment of the population — the constitutional originalists — who will fight such laws based on their belief in the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution. David Woolley is a political science and history student at Victoria College. Let us take a step back. What makes a constitution a constitution? Constitutional laws are cornerstones that maintain the integrity and values of any assembly from a university club to an entire nation. A constitution should be resilient, but not stubborn. It should be timeless, not because it cannot change over time, but because every generation gets to interpret it all over again. The founders that drafted the Constitution lived in a different era — much has changed over the centuries. US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argues that adhering to an original interpretation of the Constitution was essential to protecting the Constitution and democracy. He has perhaps forgotten that the Constitution ultimately protects the will of the contemporary people. The US no longer needs the right to bear arms. At this point, it merely creates an unnecessary civil arms race. Individuals that are intent on committing a crime with a weapon are usually more adept with guns than the average gun owner. This disparity makes the playing field uneven, the vulnerable more vulnerable, and catastrophes more catastrophic. Contrary to what the National Rifle Association might tell you, a safe society is not one where everyone has a gun, but one where nobody has one. The constitutional right to bear arms solves a problem, which that very Constitution had already solved. Ironically, a society that encourages everyone to take up arms is essentially like a loaded gun, poised for any one of its gunslingers to ignite a tragedy in the heat of a single moment. Kelvin Chen studies psychology and physiology.
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MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
VARSITY COMMENT
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LETTERS TO
Vol CXXXIII, No. 13, January 14, 2012 Feds lose data for hundreds of thousands of students "According to a timeline released by the hdrsc, the hard drive was first reported missing on November 5, 2012. But the Departmental Security Officer was not notified until November 28, and it was not until December 6 that the department discovered what was on the lost hard drive." I'm the Assistant Company Security Officer in our company (acso) and the moment a breach of security is detected by anyone it is to be reported to the Company Security Officer (cso) or the acso immediately. So between Nov 5 28 our information was not reported missing to either cso or acso. That is a direct violation under Industry Canada codes. No wonder why Departmental spokesperson Christian Plouffe declined to comment on either gap. — Anonymous (from web) Totally not acceptable. I have been affected by this and I can tell you, that I am not impressed. They hid the fact they lost this information for two months to those affected and also they didn't report it right away. What the hell! This is people's personal information, and it's not to be taken lightly. — Not Impressed (from web) Apparently they are claiming that the hard-drive is missing within the building. How would they even know if it is still within the building or not if it's just plain missing? Is telling that piece of information to those who are affected supposed to make them feel better? More like makes one feel worse that they are actually feeding affected individuals complete b.s. to cover their butts. Staff can and do steal things, y'know. — Holly (from web) Newman Centre courts controversy I am speaking for myself, not for Courage. I am a member of Courage. Never once have we talked about trying to become straight. I have never done the 12 steps or talked about it at a meeting. The only time I hear the word hate are from those who are opposed to Courage. I look at life through the plank in my own eye. Therefore I judge no one. I hope you will allow me the freedom to attend a group that gives me strength and support to live a life in ac-
THE EDITOR cordance with the teachings of the Church. I don't ask you to agree with me, but I think living in a free society gives me the right to make my own choices. — Tyke (from web) Keeping cool, staying warm Glad to see U of T finally puts on colours. There was far too much grey when I attended. It made me sick to watch global diversity covered in city grit. Warm colours are much more welcoming, especially in winter. However, I think you guys at The Varsity could find a better tip for students than send them to a store that charges anywhere around 30-130 dollars for a single item. Send them to Winners or another reasonably priced store. Zara items often go there anyway in my experience, and by the time they reach Winners, they have been through 2 or 3 write-downs in price. Perhaps a fashionista could draw up a list of places to buy cool clothes for people living on a student budget? — TobiasM (from web) “Men’s issues” groups test limit of free speech on campus In reply to “Hardy Weinberg”... "Next, I am quite concerned with the suggestion in this article about the regulation of what events can and cannot be on campus. The last thing I want is to give the administration and osm free reign to decide what events can and cannot be held on campus." Funny, I'm supposed to meet with osm, David Newman and Shannon Howes today to discuss the event with Norman Finkelstein on the 23rd of January from 7-9pm (hopefully in oise's auditorium — although osm won't confirm the booking —it'll still be there). Like always, I agree with Hardy. The administration should let the law (although I believe hate speech laws infringe on our charter rights) and 'activism v. activism' handle these sorts of things. The mras are losing support naturally, in exactly the ways Hardy points out. We don't need to stop them from speaking. We need to realize they're nuts, pay them no attention, and forget about them. Remember the Simpsons (Halloween) episode with the advertisements that came to life and started terrorizing
the town. Springfield just stopped paying attention to them and they died. Be more like Lisa and less like Homer. — Bahram Farzady (from web) In reply to “bobk”... Actually, I condemned blocking entrances to a university-approved event because I believe it is an affront to democratic free speech. You're clearly very stupid, because the only position I could not possibly be speaking from at this point is denial. I appreciate that there are massive flaws in the ways that men and women are socialized and I work in a law firm that fights for the rights, predominately, of men who have been sexually victimized as children. But to insinuate that men have it 'worse' in modernity is ridiculous. Look at the pay gap. Look at the frequency of sexual abuse. Look at the fact that I can't walk down the street without having my ass grabbed on my way to school. I don't want that world for my daughters and I will teach my sons better. I will teach them that they can cry when they are upset and that it is not emasculating to seek help when needed. Will you do the same for your kids? Or are all women just lying bitches? All we want is an equal place in society and we don't have it yet. We should all be trying to fix the multitude of issues facing both men and women. — Aimee Quenneville (from web) I'm curious as to how much mra propaganda would be spewed all over this article if we were required to login with our UTORID in order to comment. I'm not sure that the views reflected in the comments really capture the perspective of U of T students, definitely none that I know. But of course, mras would probably suggest that I am exclusively friends with a bunch of radical feminists. Sigh. — Actual U of T Student (from web) In reply to “Paul Elam”... I'm not sure you understand how journalism works, but it entails summarising the evidence available and composing an article that presents the conclusions of the journalist involved, and there are word limits. If the Varsity were to present its evidence, the newspaper would end up a booklet containing the inane drivel of mras, and that's way too much space to devote to most of what you say. — fakefighter (from web)
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VARSITY COMMENT
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
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Distractions from justice Criticism of aboriginal leaders distract from systemic problems Cameron Becker VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
As the Idle No More movement and Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike gain notoriety across Canada and the world, criticism of the two events and questions about their legitimacy are on the rise. A leaked report suggest that Spence’s isolated northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat has failed to properly account for millions of dollars in government funding between 2005 and 2011. This has created considerable criticism of Spence and of Idle No More. In October 2011 Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency, saying that poor housing had become too dangerous as the temperature began to drop. Appalled, Canadians blamed the horrible conditions experienced by the native inhabitants of Attawapiskat on government inaction. Yet, following this leak, many are changing their minds and beginning to point fingers at Spence and other native leaders for causing the myriad of issues facing native communities in Canada through their incompetence and corruption. Leading questions like, 'what is Chief Spence be hiding?' or 'how widespread is corruption amongst native leaders?' are being posed in the media, seeking to discredit Chief Spence and Idle No More. One National Post contributor even went so far as to proclaim that, “$100
million dollars buys a lot of housing, sanitation and health care, even on the shores of James Bay.” However, this viewpoint is clearly missing the point of both Spence’s hunger strike and the Idle No More movement. Idle No More's stated purpose is “Indigenous rights and respect for the treaties… and stopping environmental degradation and economic/social inequality," while Spence is seeking a meeting between the Prime Minister, Governor General, and Aboriginal leaders. Any administrative incompetence of native leaders is an issue that should be addressed. But, one only needs to look at the real issues facing the indigenous population of Canada to clearly see that they do not lie in any leadership’s corruption or incompetence. Arguments being made against Spence and Idle No More — calling them “illegitimate in the wake of clear evidence of Chief Spence’s incompetency, or even criminality” — are using the recent leak as a means of distracting attention away from the legitimate claims of Idle No More and Spence. To suggest that improperly balanced books are the sole cause of the issues facing indigenous Canadians today is outrageous. In what way can this alleged incompetency be tied to, for example, the disappearance and murder of over 600 native women in Canada since 2000? How can the so called, “widespread corruption within in-
Attawapiskat Cheif Teresa Spence has faced criticism in the misdt of her ongoing hunger strike. Sean KilpatricK/cp
digenous Canadian leadership” be a causal factor in the endemic health issues facing indigenous communities, including mental illness, addiction, high rates of miscarriages, cancer, and tuberculosis? Corruption and mismanagement exist in Canada at various levels of government — both in native and non-native communities. Maclean’s magazine called Montreal one of the most corrupt cities in Canada, yet for some reason Montrealers share next to none of the issues plaguing natives in many areas of Canada. The reality is that incompetence or
corruption of native leadership are not the root of the issues facing indigenous Canadians. Many of these issues are, in reality, firmly rooted in a history of iniquitous treatment by the government of Canada — a government which kidnapped and abused native children in residential schools, denied natives their right to their traditional cultures and land, and entrenched racism into our police and justice system. Those who point towards the spotty financial records of a single native community as a means of distracting attention away from the le-
gitimate calls for justice are distracting attention away from legitimate issues, which must be addressed. Our longstanding refusal to treat indigenous Canadians equally, or with respect for their land and customs is the real root of the issues facing natives today. Spence may need to focus more time on properly administering her community’s finances, but this will not aid in repairing the legacy of injustice that Idle No More and Spence seek to repair. Cameron Becker graduated from the University of Toronto in 2012.
The virtual classroom Redefining the learning experience Omar Bitar VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
The phenomenon of digital or elearning has roots that go back to the 1960s, a decade that saw cutting edge advances in technology and communication. The electronic method had proven to be supportive, innovative, and treefriendly, and educational institutions around the world have begun to embrace it. Of course, the more traditional learning method we all experience almost every day prevails, but it is now mixed with and enriched by the electronic experience. If you doubt this, imagine the disaster that ensues if you fail to check Blackboard on a regular basis. This semester, I found out that one of my courses is going to be taught online. My reaction was a blend of curiosity with a hint of fear — this was a first for me. I had many questions. How is it going to be structured? What exactly is going to be “online” about it? I was excited at the prospect of attending my first class and getting some answers. What was most interesting was that “attending class” had taken on a whole new meaning. Titled “Neurobiology of Behavior,” the course is the first of its kind at the University of Toronto in a number of ways. According to the course instructor Dr. Franco Taverna, it is the first course to be structured and delivered completely online using the newly
licensed Blackboard Collaborate web-seminar (or webinar) tool. Providing a real-time experience for about a hundred students, Blackboard Collaborate is the primary form of interaction and the medium in which the lectures and tutorials take place. It becomes a space of its own, just like Convocation Hall or Sidney Smith. The features and tools of the webinar software serve to recreate the traditional elements of a class or lecture hall, but simultaneously provide a much more immersive medium for learning. As the instructor speaks, I am able to see and hear him clearly. I am also able to scroll down the list of students logged into the session. Through a chat window, I can share thoughts on a certain theory, answer or ask a question, or discuss an argument with a peer — all in real-time. One of my favorite features is the “raise-hand” button that I usually use when I have an inquiry or comment to make. This particular feature, at least in my opinion, ensures that even though we may all be dispersed geographically, we are at least as interactive as we would be in a lecture hall. The whiteboard tool is a major part of the webinar software. It not only substitutes the overhead projector but also becomes another medium for student interaction. In lectures and even more in tutorials, we are randomly sorted into a number of ‘rooms’ where we discuss, argue, and also share our thoughts or answers right on the whiteboard tool. Of course,
we can also participate vocally through a microphone or simply type it all into the chat box. It is important to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the virtual classroom. Talking to a couple of students gave me a sense of the overall feel of this class. One of the students likes to stay warm and cozy at home especially with Toronto’s unpredictable winter weather. She also finds it easier to ask a professor a question in the virtual classroom — the online format takes some of the pressure off. Another student said that she is actually motivated to attend lectures. In a virtual class, the notion of attending becomes just as virtual as the class itself. Hence, skipping class becomes a much easier task. However, this student’s experience tells me a great deal about the advantages of the webinar structure. She suggests that this format can result in a decrease in the amount of classes students skip, “due to its sheer convenience.” I would completely support the virtual classroom. However, I appreciate the legacy within university campuses and the aesthetic beauty of many grand lecture halls. I believe further incorporation of webinar-based courses at the University of Toronto can have a great impact on its educational system and provide a whole new innovative, immersive, and modern means of instruction. Omar Bitar is studying Neuroscience and Sociology.
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ritta Badour and I stand at the corner of Dundas and River as she gives me advice on traveling through Regent Park: “They say that you should never walk up River from Queen to Gerrard, unless you want to get jumped.” Badour laughs, obviously halfjoking. But there is an undercurrent of caution to her words. Regent Park was built in the late 1940s as part of an initiative to provide affordable, highdensity housing for families living on social assistance. Over the years, it has become a hub for new immigrants to the city, and remains the area with the highest concentration of people living on social assistance programs in Toronto’s downtown core. As it matured, the neighbourhood developed a reputation for drug use and crime, becoming a no-go area for many Torontonians living outside it. This was partly a reaction to real crimes that were being committed in the area. However, it was also based on assumptions and prejudices about the types of people living there. As a result of this stigma, Regent Park remained relatively untouched by redevelopment until 2005 when the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (tchc), in partnership with City Council, began work on the Regent Park Revitalization project. The project is a $1 billion, 15-year initiative to redevelop the area that aims to mix community housing with both affordable and luxury housing units, turning the area into a mixed-income neighbourhood to promote the mixing of socio-economic groups, and to make the area safer and more accessible for all residents and visitors. Despite the Revitalization, the generally impression of Regent Park is still quite confused, uninformed, and guided by stigma and prejudice. In order to gain a clear image of Regent Park today — seven years into the redevelopment — I sought the help of spoken-word poet and resident Badour. Badour showed me around the neighbourhood, explaining what the area means to its residents and how the Revitalization is affecting the local culture. As we walk up Sackville Street, which has now been extended to cut through the entire neighbourhood, Badour describes her first few weeks in the area: “I’ve been living in Regent Park now for almost four years. I first moved in over on River and I was really scared ’cause in the first two weeks that I was living there, there were three shootings,” she remembers. “It was pretty wild. So I was like a little bit freaked out. But that’s been probably the biggest negative thing that’s happened in the area since I’ve lived here.” I comment on the general view that Regent Park is a dangerous neighbourhood, and ask Badour whether this impression is based on fact or not. “Regent Park has that stigma, I guess you could say. It has a very bad rep’. But like I’ve said, for living here for the past four years it’s such a good community… I love living here,” Badour explains. “The people you see out here are pretty much people you see every time you step out of your house. And they give love and you give love back or you just go on your merry way [laughs]. I feel like that’s the way it should be in a community, in a neighbourhood or whatever.”
by Matthew da Mota photos by Bernarda Gospic
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ackville Street is flanked by open fields where low-rise housing units used to stand. Just beyond the field sits Nelson Mandela Park Public School, which is set to reopen on March 19, after more than a year of extensive remodeling and renovations. We continue our walk up to the Daniels Spectrum, known locally as the Art Box, which has become the new cultural and artistic hub of the neighbourhood. The Spectrum is a free space where after school programs are organized by volunteers, and large cultural events take place. This summer the Art Box was the site of the Manifesto Hip-Hop festival, an annual festival intended to promote local artists as well as music on a global scale. Badour noted that hosting Manifesto was really important for the community. “Manifesto is the biggest rap and hip-hop festival in Toronto… Having Manifesto has drawn a lot of attention to Regent Park as well, which has helped the community programs.” The organizers of the festival wanted to host it in Regent Park in the past, but were unable do so because of the widespread demolition and construction projects in progress until recently. It was only this year that the infrastructure for such an event arrived. Upstairs in the Art Box are conference rooms, offices, and classrooms where after14
school programs are held. The lobbies of both the first and second floor are filled with paintings and photographs mostly by local artists, some of who are friends of Badour’s. The new community centre is important, but Badour says that it’s the volunteers that make the programs what they are. “The thing that I really love is that the people who live here, they really leave their footprint, you know?” What about concerns that these people might be pushed out as new, more affluent tenants move in? “I don’t think that’s happening,” Badour says. “I think that was a concern for a lot of people when they were living here while things were being torn down, but for me it feels like it’s becoming more of a family-based place and like young professionals — that kind of living space.” Walking west on Dundas from the Art Box, we see the new aquatic complex, which features a full gym and a regulation size Olympic pool. Although membership costs money, the rates are extremely low compared to similar centres. Talking about how quickly the pool was built Britta laughs, saying, “I was reading that back in the sixties they basically wanted to raise money to build a pool in Regent Park, and so they fought hard to add two dollars a month to their rent and it took 17 years to raise $17,000 to start putting a centre together for a pool. That was like back in the sixties, and now look at it.”
Who is Britta Badour? Britta Badour is a spoken word poet from Windsor who has lived in Regent Park for the last four years. She conducts motivational speaking and poetry workshops in high schools throughout Toronto and the country by using her life story to demonstrate to students how she uses poetry to change the world. On January 26 at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, she is co-hosting the show “When Sisters Speak,” put on by Dwayne Morgan and the Up From The Roots poetry team, and will be sharing the stage with To Be Young, a poet that she has looked up to throughout her career. During Black History month (February) she will be making appearances at schools and events around Toronto, including at Ryerson for a poetry night on February 6 and will be scheduling several performances with her band The Banter as well. She will also be attending the “What Makes a Man” conference held by the White Ribbon Campaign at Ryerson on March 1 and 2. The entrance fee is $10 or pay what you can, and the conference will feature Carlos Andre Gomez, the writer of Man Up: Cracking the Code on Modern Manhood, a poet who Britta has looked up to since she first started writing poetry during her time at Laurier University, where she earned a B.A. in biology. missbrittab.wordpress.com www.torontohousing.com/regentpark
Touring Regent Park’s revitalization with poet Britta Badour
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uring the walk Badour has been carrying a sign that reads “I Have A Story,” which she explains the significance of. After moving into the area Badour got involved with a program called Put Food In The Budget, aiming to provide sufficient funds for people on social assistance programs to afford food. “They don’t have money to even about food once their rent is paid,” says Badour. “And so especially living in an area like Regent Park where people do have subsidized housing and they do have government assistance, that for me was something I wanted to connect to personally … also on behalf of those who live in areas like this all over the world and don’t really have the voice to speak out on it. “I put together something called ‘I Have A Story’ with the help of three other poets, and what I realized, just talking to people who live on social assistance programs, is that we all do have a story. I wanted to bring light and power to people’s voices.” Walking from the developing area into the old part of the neighbourhood, Badour tells me about rumours that the name of the area will be changed to Research Park. “I don’t know if it’s a joke or whatever,” Badour says. To change the name would go too far in erasing what Regent Park once was, and still is, in part. To erase the name of a place is to wipe out its history, and despite its negative reputation, Regent Park is an important part of the city’s history. This is not only felt in the rumoured
changing of the name, but also in the physical destruction of the buildings with their many murals and the history that they represent. On one of the last single-story housing sections in Regent Park is a large mural listing statistics on pregnancy and sti transmission in the neighbourhood, and promoting safer sex. It’s a stark reminder that simply replacing the old buildings with taller, shinier glass versions will not fix the many problems that exist in Regent Park. Although living arrangements will improve, there will still be almost 3,000 people in Regent Park who live on social assistance and who, after paying their rent, have little left to buy food and other necessities. Putting rich and poor together and hoping that it will improve things, although an intriguing idea, may not cause a staggering change in these people’s day to day lives, nor will it necessarily put them in better positions to provide for themselves and their families.
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espite the clear problems that still exist in Regent Park, there is a sense that the neighbourhood has a strong cultural life and a community bond that exists in few other areas of Toronto. People still seem to help each other out and get involved in improving their surroundings and educating the younger generations — something to be envied and emulated. Moreover, Regent Park does not self-consciously claim to be an artistic area, yet experiencing the neighbour-
hood through Badour’s guidance I saw and heard about more art and art-related events than in any other area of Toronto — even more than downtown areas claim to be centers of creativity. Regent Park is a vibrant neighbourhood that is often ignored, but seems to be on the edge of doing and creating some very interesting and important things, culturally and socially. The hope is that the Revitalization will facilitate positive change and growth rather than washing away the local flavour and gentrifying it entirely. But the neighbourhood remains in flux and sporadic crime is still a reality. Badour finished the tour with a few words about her hopes for Regent Park’s future. “I think that people in this community have a chance to have their say, and whatever goals they have in mind, now they have the opportunity to actually fulfill and to accomplish with their community. That’s what I really love about being here, because it’s so young and vibrant in culture that I have a lot of appreciation for it… I don’t know man, young people and family culture, that’s kind of how I see, like how I vibe with things right now. I have a lot of hope, I see a lot of good things coming out of this development especially with the way things are right now, I don’t have any negative comments on it whatsoever. I think we’re gonna grow, expand more and more into our awareness of how each of us does have the opportunity to do what we want with our communities.” 15
Arts & Culture
NEXT WEEK
var.st/arts
21 JaNUarY 2013 arts@thevarsity.ca
Interview with the stars of Warm Bodies var.st/arts
On the Adrenaline Nightshift
Japandroids drummer David Prowse opens up about touring, recording, and the future of the band sively, and then laboured over the traditionally dreaded sophomore album for much longer than planned. Expectations for the follow-up to their promising debut were high, and there was a lot of pressure to excel, perhaps most intensely from the duo itself. “Recording this album was not very fun,” Prowse admitted. “Post-Nothing was made before anyone had really ever heard of our band. There was some stress [with our first album] because recording was pretty unfamiliar territory for us, but nothing compared to Celebration Rock. With this album we’re trying to prove that the first round wasn’t a fluke.” And prove that they did. When the album finally dropped in Canada last May, and worldwide in June, it was clear that Japandroids had exceeded expectations. Pitchfork gave the album a “Best New Music” tag, Celebration Rock made various year-end lists, and Spin crowned Japandroids the band of 2012. On paper, the band’s sophomore album is not much different from Post-Nothing. As with their debut, Japandroids recorded Celebration Rock at the Hive in Vancouver with sound engineer Jesse Gander, and put exactly eight songs on the finished record. The band made a conscious decision to keep their sophomore album similar to Post-Nothing, with, according to Prowse, “maybe some more energy and feeling.” While Celebration Rock doesn’t stray far from its predecessor, there’s a notable shift in the album’s lyrics and vocals. When Japandroids started out, their lyrics were an afterthought to their instrumental conceptions, and neither band member considered himself a good singer. Consequently, lyrics are sparse on Post-Nothing, with songs like “Crazy/Forever” consisting of just three lines, and the vocals are muddled up in distortion. On Celebration Rock however, greater confidence and improved skill have made for a clearer vocal sound. According
Assunta Alegiani VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
When it comes to touring, Japandroids are a bit like two kids in a candy store: they get a little sick from indulging in a few too many treats, but heck, that won't stop them from doing it again. The band’s enthusiasm for playing shows on the road comes through when drummer and co-vocalist David Prowse describes Japandroids' tour for the band’s latest album, Celebration Rock. “Playing a show in front of a large audience who are really into your music is the best feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life, and I get to do that on a very regular basis,” he says. “I mean, that’s the reason we tour so much, because obviously it’s something we have kind of become addicted to.” But the extensive touring Prowse and guitarist/co-vocalist Brian King have been doing also takes its toll. “When you’re playing five to six shows a week, the adrenaline that runs high on a tour compensates for your lack of sleep most of the time,” Prowse explains. “As the tour goes on, it becomes a bit more stressful because you just want to make sure you give people as good a show two months in as you did the first week.” Prowse and King have spent most of the last few months touring, and are now gearing up to leave for their Pacific Rim tour in a few days; after a brief interlude at home in Vancouver, the next nine months or so will be spent on the road again. Playing shows is what has driven the Vancouver duo's signature style on their past two albums, which are defined by hooky, energetic rock songs that revel in their directness and come without pretention. After Japandroids’ debut album Post-Nothing unexpectedly garnered international buzz in 2009, the band — who at that point had decided to call it quits due to lack of interest and support in their hometown — reassembled, toured exten-
David Prowse of Japandroids. WeNDY GU/tHe varsitY
CONTINUED NEXT PAGE
One Hour Cafeteria FOOD FINDS JOSHUA FUMO
With just over a year under its belt, Spadina's One Hour Cafeteria is quickly gaining recognition for its addictive combination of comfortable, minimalist ambiance, pleasing array of Chinese teas, and light yet satisfying snacks. The brainchild of former U of T architecture student Han Shao, One Hour's premise is simple: keep things, well, simple. White walls, adorned with little more than the odd wooden coat hanger or piece of local art, are contrasted with natural wood stools and tabletops. The dining area — split in two by the front desk and kitchen — also features a handful of communal wooden bench tables and bean-bag chairs, creating the illusion of openness in a narrow dining space. The café’s selection of food options is small, especially compared to the encyclopedic menus so often found in neighboring Chinatown restaurants. Instead, One Hour places its array of specialty teas and drinks in the foreground. Ranging from $5 to $8, each tea is made to order and features a variety of fresh ingredients. The banana tea ($5.99), a combination of fresh banana, green tea, milk, sugar, and ice, is served over sweet tapioca pearls and garnished with a chocolate-hazelnut rolled wafer. Drink options also include freshly-made juices, such as honeydew and papaya ($5.99–6.99). A “make your own” drink option allows diners to choose
VARSITY COLUMNIST
the flavour of fruit-infused tea, the type of tea (black or green), and the type of tapioca/jelly that they would like to include in their creation ($3.99–5.99). As far as food goes, One Hour separates its dishes into “big” and “small” options; the former features Asian specialty soups and noodle dishes, while the latter focuses on appetizersized snacks best suited for sharing. The restaurant’s beef noodle soup ($6.29 small/$7.29 large), a more refined version of what can be found at every pho restaurant in Toronto and elsewhere, showcases fresh ingredients like diced tomato and cilantro on top of thinly sliced beef and delicate rice noodles, all of which is steeped in a rich beef broth. One Hour’s cheesecake in a jar ($5.99), one of only two dessert options, is a mason jar filled to the brim with tangy, smooth cheesecake filling and topped with sweet strawberry preserves. If you have yet to be initiated into the world of Chinese teashops, One Hour is the perfect destination to start your culinary adventure. With its warm and comforting atmosphere and firm dedication to quality ingredients, the future of this minimalist teashop is nothing but bright. The One Hour Cafeteria is located at 435 Spadina Ave. It is open every day from noon to midnight.
Beef noodle soup and banana tea from One Hour Cafeteria. JOsHUa FUMO/tHe varsitY
VARSITY ARTS & CULTURE
var.st/arts CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE to Prowse, “there is much more storytelling and much more being said on this record.” Beyond pushing themselves to tackle areas that they felt could be improved and wanting to “make something great,” Japandroids laboured over Celebration Rock for such a long time because that is simply how they work. “It takes us a lot longer to come up with something we feel really strongly about,” Prowse says. “We had a lot of ideas, but to get them to a fully fleshed out song was a very long process. We had to really grind away and keep chipping at songs.” It probably didn’t help that both Prowse and King don’t like recording. Prowse describes the recording studio as a “sterile, static environment,” basically the polar opposite of the raw, energetic atmosphere that their live shows are known for. This sentiment reveals a general attitude that echoes throughout Japandroids’ lyrics and work: what the band strives for is to create something communal. When Prowse and King shout in unison on “Heart Sweats” or “The House That Heaven Built,” the sing-along quality of their songs is hard to resist. The band’s love of playing live and the self-inflicted pressure to put out something worthwhile speaks to a desire to create or sustain a sense of belonging, to foster togetherness. As Prowse
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
explains, “I don’t think either of us feels like we were born to do this, but we love music so much that we’re willing to put the time in to try to make something that we think is worth putting out into the world.” Listening to Prowse describe Japandroids’ motivation and dedication, it becomes clear that the band is trying to create something greater than their egos. Yet the future of the band is not entirely certain. The bandmates are so busy with their touring schedule that they have yet to discuss their next step, but Prowse says, “I don’t think it’s crazy to say that we won’t release another album. That’s a possibility. We have a pretty short-term outlook on the band and I think that comes from the fact that we did pretty much break up before we did Post-Nothing.” When it comes down to it, the band will only release another album if they feel like they can make something better than Celebration Rock — if they feel that what they have left up their sleeves is a worthy contribution to the world of music. Japandroids is serious about what they do, and that is exactly why they might not do it without end. “The way this band operates, it dictates our lives,” Prowse says. “Everything we do is built around this band because we’re so invested in it, emotionally and in terms of how much time we put into it. It’s all-consuming. I don’t know if that’s sustainable forever.”
GALLERY REVIEW Evan Penny: Refiguring The Human Form AGO’s latest exhibit shakes up perspectives on appearance
Music & Lyrics by Kieren MacMillan and Jeremy Hutton Book by William Foley, Jeremy Hutton, Jesse MacLean, Kevin MacPherson and Kate Smith Based on the collective creation by Shakespeare by the Sea - Halifax Directed by Jesse MacLean
JAN 11 – 26, 2013 Left: Evan Penny with Aerial #2, right: Evan Penny and Old Self . PHOTO COURTESY AGO
Salena Barry VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
A nine-foot-tall sculpted head, enlarged and stretched vertically, is only one of Evan Penny’s works that has the remarkable quality of looking simultaneously real and fake. This Canadian sculptor’s exhibition at the ago incites more gasps of shock than nods of quiet contemplation. "Evan Penny: Refiguring The Human Form" showcases Penny’s work from the past decade up until his most recent creations. Penny’s earlier works are relatively conservative and, for the most part, do not feature the artist’s now signature alterations of the human form. Penny’s more recent sculptures straddle the line between realism and distortion. A bust of the artist, for example, is slightly stretched and flattened in a manner which makes the work look like a two-dimensional photograph rather than a three-dimensional sculpture. Penny’s body of work, aside from being visually impressive, also engages the viewer intellectually by questioning how we view the human form. The distortions in Penny’s work, along with their realistic qualities, highlight the tension between the authenticity of reality and its representation.
Penny’s fascination with the human form began while he was working as a special effects artist, making prosthetics for Hollywood films. His work is a product of meticulous craftsmanship, and he is involved in every step of the creation process, which begins with the digital scans that he uses to create handmade clay models of his subjects. His final works are constructed using a variety of materials, sometimes including human hair. Visitors to the exhibit will be pleased to know that the exhibit’s curator, aware of the inevitable impulse to reach out and touch Penny’s life-like works, set up a “touching station,” where visitors can feel some of the materials used in the sculptures’ construction. There is also a viewing room where a short film describing Penny’s processes is screened. "Refiguring The Human Form" is such an engaging exhibition because it offers so much: a fascinating visual experience, an astute comment on the objectivity of perspective, and an example of painstaking craftsmanship. The one problem with this exhibit is that, occupying only five rooms of the museum, it is a little too short and sweet. "Evan Penny: Refiguring The Human Form" runs at the AGO until February 10.
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MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
VARSITY ARTS & CULTURE
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The sweetest story DANIELLE KLEIN checks out the Chocolate Tales Workshop and learns about the art of chocolate-making photos by Bernarda Gospic As I entered the Market Kitchen that overlooks the large brick warehouse of St. Lawrence Market, I was hit by the scent of fresh, rich chocolate, quickly marred by the residual aromas of fish and day-old produce. The room was brimming with couples venturing on out-of-the-box dates, families on shopping excursions, and people scoping out the Chocolate Tales Workshop. I do not possess the most sophisticated culinary palette. My skills as a foodie are limited to sometimes correctly identifying the difference between Coke and Pepsi. When it comes to chocolate, my connoisseurship is restricted to my ability to make it miraculously vanish by eating all of it, really fast. Accompanied by a history of kitchen mishaps ranging from burning every bag of popcorn I’ve ever made to using salt instead of sugar to bake cookies, I embarked upon the task of learning to make chocolate. The Chocolate Tales Workshop is a hands-on introduction to chocolate making. My session was led by “Cocoa” (a.k.a. Kelly Maxfield), who began by providing a brief overview of the history of chocolate. As a history minor, this, I knew, was the one moment in this workshop where I would excel. I took careful notes, clinging to the hopeful delusion that we might be quizzed on the information later, and I would be able to prove my personal merit in light of the inevitable failure of my foray into the art of chocolate making. The first use of chocolate occurred in Mexico approximately 2000 years ago by the Mayans, who ground cocoa beans into a fine powder and then placed them in boiling water. The result was essentially a bitter hot chocolate. Without milk or sugar to sweeten the drink, the Mayans instead added sweet corn or hot pepper to the beverage to add flavour. Chocolate was enjoyed almost exclusively by royalty, and only occasionally indulged in at celebrations of the common people. A king after my own heart consumed over 50 cups of this chocolate beverage per day. Chocolate was also given to Mayan prisoners subject to the death sentence immediately before their punishment, due to chocolate’s comforting qualities. Chocolate releases serotonin in the brain, which in turn makes us happy, or as Kelly put it, produces that “oolala-we-love-chocolate-feeling.” The secret of producing this chocolate drink was brought to Europe by a Spanish explorer. In Spain, sugar was added to the beverage for the first time, after which chocolate began to spread throughout Europe. Chocolate was first produced in solid form in the 1800s, and it was the Swiss who began adding dried milk to chocolate, producing the creatively titled “milk chocolate.” Chocolate is grown on cacao trees, which form pods that resemble footballs. Once ready, farmers open the harvested pods with machetes to reveal
the white cocoa beans, which roast in the sun and achieve the familiar brown colour of chocolate. In a factory, the cocoa bean is processed in order to separate the cocoa powder and the cocoa butter. Now sufficiently educated to open up our own cacao tree farms and chocolate factories, the group proceeded to get our hands on some chocolate. The workshop began with an exercise in developing our palettes, and we were each given three ganache tasters with different flavour profiles. The ganache was made from a high-grade chocolate with a high content of cocoa butter, mixed with whipping cream, causing it to be velvety and glossy. A mild shot of ganache was spiced with cinnamon, a medium shot with ground ginger, and a bold shot with cajan pepper. I was certain that old reliable cinnamon would be my preference of the three. Much to my surprise, I found the cajan pepper ganache the most delicious due to its intense flavour. Side note: chocolate shooters should definitely be an alternative option at all bars. We were then given tempered chocolate in which to dip marshmallows and ganache, along with different toppings for decorating our creations. Kelly explained how to shape our chocolates and create moulds to fill with milk chocolate, which I promptly failed to do, producing instead poorly decorated marshmallows, a bunch of triangular shaped chocolates, and lots of truff les because rolling chocolate into a ball was the only option within my creative capacity. Around the table, participants focused intensely on their decorating. Some even made an attempt at drawing swirling designs on their chocolates, while others glumly surveyed their sad clumps of white chocolate and coconut shavings. Our final chocolate-making task was to employ our decidedly professional skills while garnishing miniature chocolate lava cakes with milk chocolate and cocoa powder. I enlisted the help of photo editor Bernarda Gospic in creating a checkerboard of milk chocolate, over which I delicately sprinkled cocoa powder. Miraculously, it didn’t look terrible, and I felt far more accomplished than I should have for finally producing something half-decent looking. We wrapped up our chocolate creations in little plastic bags and tied ribbons around them. My stomach was aching from all the bits and pieces here and there I’d nibbled on over the course of the workshop, and the pages of my notebook were stained with chocolate fingerprints. I had overdosed on ganache. I later brought the chocolates to a few friends to get their opinions, and the general consensus was that my work was, in fact, not bad at all. Given that review, and in light of my reputation as a disastrous chef, I consider my brief stint as a chocolatier-to-be, in modest terms, a downright triumph.
VARSITY ARTS & CULTURE
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MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
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Success Kids Talking with the team behind Curt Kenzie: Professional Memewriter Ethan Chiel VARSITY STAFF
Making a student film is both risky and almost entirely risk-free. Risky because student films are always in danger of being written off as just that: amateur efforts that may, at best, show sign of promise. Risk-free because, unconstrained by concerns that might affect filmmakers working professionally, student filmmakers are free to experiment. Over the course of several weekends this past summer, Scott Stephenson, a fourth-year student at Victoria College, conducted one such risky experiment. Aided by a cast and crew of friends, he filmed Curt Kenzie: Professional Memewriter, a comedy that Stephenson wrote himself. Memewriter tells the story of the rise and fall of its namesake, the star writer at a fictional meme website. Stephenson says he developed the premise in response to “six months where Facebook was memes everyday,” or more specifically, memes Stephenson remembers as “lame Internet humour that wasn’t smart or good,” a “niche, nerd phenomenon” that suddenly became wildly popular. Add a hyper-exaggerated corpo-
rate backdrop, and you’ve got the oddball world Memewriter is set in. Stephenson is tall and lanky with an easy manner. Seated between two of his lead actors, Kieran Higgs and Zachary Gardham, he guides the conversation, but neither Higgs nor Gardham seem to mind. Gardham, a fourth-year film student at York, explains that he and Stephenson are old friends. “We went to high school together, and I think that’s the point [when] we both wanted to start making movies… That’s why I’m here; I’m here to help Scott.” The two have been working together for years, Stephenson explains. “This is something that we’ve all been doing for a long time now; me and Zach both stayed back from our last year in high school and made a feature length movie, an 80-minute long movie called The Carpenter that’s absolutely terrible. I’m sure I’ll think the same of Memewriter in a couple years, but it taught me a lot and … since then, I’ve just been jumping from project to project.” Higgs is a more recent addition to the group, but no less a part of it. “I know Scott because we did The Bob together last year, the sketch review at Vic College,” he says. “[Scott] met me through that, looking for actors, and now we’re awesome friends.”
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Student filmmakers Zach Gardham, Scott Stephenson and Kieron Higgs, relaxing. Bernarda Gospic/THe VarsiTy
Memewriter isn’t the first time that Higgs has worked with Stephenson and Gardham on a film. Last February, during Reading Week, they made Beer Wizards, working with Motion Victures, a film club at Victoria College. The three have a clear rapport. Gardham explained that what keeps him working with Stephenson is the “level of consistent comedy in Scott’s projects that … is really, really, funny, and unique and original.” Memewriter is, in some sense, a very personal work for Stephenson. “I had a weird year in my life,” he
says. “And I think that like a lot of that stuff came out in the movie, and I just sort of used memes as a way to channel that.” At the same time, though, he sees himself as “just a kid making movies.” The movie is a comedy, but Stephenson hopes it does more than just make people laugh. “The ending is meant to jar you … and it just really hammers home a lot of things that I think are wrong with the Internet, about the anonymity of it and how you can make fun of people and honestly destroy peoples’ lives over the Internet.”
At the same time, however, Stephenson hopes to get a chuckle out of his audience with Memewriter’s oddball humour. “I make fun of memes being bad jokes, but I also write a bunch of bad jokes that I want to get a laugh.” Asked what’s on the horizon, the three are short on details, but long on plans. Regardless of how Memewriter is received when it premiers at Isabel Bader Theatre this Friday, the trio intends to make another movie over Reading Week this year. After all, they’re just kids making movies.
Science
THIS TIME LAST YEAR
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Classes got you exhausted yet? We talk sleep habits
21 JaNUarY 2013
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science@thevarsity.ca
U of T undergrad founds cancer conference First Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology conference on cancer research a success Jasleen Arneja VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
On Saturday, January 12, Jasmine Song woke up to the day she had been planning for almost a year. The lmp Conference on Cancer Research, was founded and organized by Song and Desmond She, both fourth year Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology students, with the support of the lmp students union and Dr. Doug Templeton. It was the first undergraduate conference of its kind in the country, and it addressed the future of cancer research, clinical practice, and nonprofit support in Canada. Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology stands at the nexus of basic biomedical, scientific research and clinical practice. The exchanges between the lab and the clinic provide the opportunity to translate new knowledge into improved health outcomes for patients and populations. The conference’s keynote speaker addressed a new term in cancer research: ‘oncodynamics.’ Dr. Gurmit Singh, a professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University, and Senior Scientist at Hamilton Health Sciences, coined the term to define the impact of abnormal cues generated by tumours on the physiological functioning of the body. Singh discussed
Jasmine Song and Desmond She, founders of the lmp cancer conference. BErNarda GospIC/tHE varsItY
the mechanisms associated with cancer-induced pain and cancer-induced depression. The Singh lab has demonstrated that glutamate is secreted by cancer cells via a well-defined antiporter mechanism that
shuttles cysteine into the cancer cell for antioxidant synthesis, and glutamate out of the cell. They hypothesized that glutamate signaling is involved in cancer-induced pain. Furthermore, they postulated that
cancer-induced depression is mediated via glutamate signaling. The molecular mechanism implicated in this connection is the mTOR pathway, an ubiquitous protein synthesis and synaptic plasticity signaling pathway. This is real cutting edge research. Singh joked that the audience would not find anything if they googled ‘oncodynamics’ as he was in the process of defining it for the first time on Wikipedia. Singh’s research provides a ray of hope for current breast cancer patients, since the oncodynamic effects of cancer dictate quality of life for the patient. Singh’s presentation was followed by seminars on current cancer trends. Dr. Annie Huang, an oncologist at the Hospital for Sick Children provided great insight about studies on rare paediatric cancers and how such studies have informed present understanding of tumour biology and therapeutics. Dr. Susan Done of U of T’s lmp Program discussed recent advances in the understanding of breast cancer, and different technical approaches to characterize patients’ tumours. Option three was a lecture on multiple myeloma, not to be confused with melanoma, where Dr. Chan outlined the sequence of molecular events and pathobiology involved in the develop-
CONTINUED PG 22
Reading the human genome Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner shares his passion for science April Pawluk VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
On Tuesday, January 15, the University of Toronto played host to one of the world’s most influential and successful scientists: Dr. Sydney Brenner. Brenner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2002 for his contributions to molecular biology. Brenner was born in 1927 in South Africa, and completed his undergraduate education there. While studying to be a medical doctor, Brenner discovered his true calling in anatomy and physiology. He found he had a knack for laboratory research, so instead of pursuing a career as a doctor, he pursued an MSc degree. At the age of 18, he published his first scientific paper. Brenner’s love of research led him to enroll in PhD studies at Exeter College of the University of Oxford in the UK. He proceeded to work alongside Francis Crick and James Watson in Cambridge as they first began to deduce the molecular structure of dna that was later announced in 1953. Throughout the next two decades, Brenner worked with Crick to develop much of the central theory of molecular biology. This paradigm describes the flow of information in biological systems, from dna (the information storage molecule), to rna (the transcript or copy), to protein (the functional unit). These concepts are fundamental to understanding how cells encode, produce, and regulate the proteins that perform every essential function in cells from bacteria to humans. Subsequently, Brenner focused his efforts on establishing the nematode worm, C. elegans, as an important model organism for studying developmental biology, neuronal development, and genetics. This organism is
still widely used in scientific research today. You can find labs all across the Faculty of Medicine here at U of T that work solely with this one-millimetre-long worm. It is for this work that received the Nobel Prize in 2002. Over 200 students, faculty, and guests gathered in the MacLeod Auditorium for Brenner’s talk, entitled “Reading the Human Genome.” It was a rare sight in modern science lectures. With no slides, PowerPoint presentation, or even chalkboards to accompany him, Brenner addressed his audience from the podium. He spoke about the Human Genome Project, and the great work that remains to be done now that so many genome sequences are known. He pronounced that, “computers are often very obedient, but rather stupid,” which prompted a few chuckles from the crowd, as he urged his young audience members to pursue the art of understanding the human genome. The 86-year-old Nobel laureate gazed at the crowd with eyes full of excitement. He spoke with passion about tracing the secrets hidden in genomic sequences in order to discover the origins of complex life from evolution to the development of tissues and organs. The human genome holds information about our evolutionary past — where we came from and what changes brought us to where we are today — and deciphering these records could provide insight into millions of years of human history. Despite a successful life at the forefront of biological research, Brenner invoked fascination with one of the most basic evolutionary principles as he reminded the audience that the intricate human genome arose through random mutations from “some point far back, when we were probably just balls of cells”. Most importantly, Brenner did not aim just to educate, but to inspire. He spoke often of challenges facing modern scientists,
Dr. Sydney Brenner addresses the U of T audience. CarolYN lEvEtt/tHE varsItY
and the questions he believes we can answer with the data and technology available to us today. He ended his presentation by challenging his audience to contribute to “reconstructing the past” through ge-
nomics. With his passion and talent for science and public speaking, Sydney Brenner undoubtedly left his audience at the University of Toronto intrigued, inspired, and full of scientific curiosity.
VARSITY SCIENCE
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MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
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What a 150-pound runner eats in a day BREAKFAST
LUNCH
DINNER
RECOVERY
SNACKS
2 slices toast with peanut butter 1 bowl cereal 1 banana 1 cup orange juice, diluted – 90 per cent water
1 turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, cheese, and mayonnaise 1 bowl cereal 1 cup orange juice, diluted – 90 per cent water
1 bowl salad with lettuce, broccoli, tomato, cheese, cucumber, and carrots 1 bowl spaghetti with chicken
Water during interval rests POST-Rx supplement during 30-minute window 1 bottle V8 1 bagel
1 bowl cereal and 1 fruit between meals
Members of the U of T track team. Bernarda Gospic/THe VarsiTy
Eat like a champ How does U of T’s track team energize and refuel to perform at their best? Lia Kim VARSITY STAFF
There is a broad scientific agreement as to what constitutes a healthy diet for high performance sport. “Good nutrition is composed of eating small amounts of a lot of different kinds of foods [that are] nutrient-dense per calorie,” says Dr. Debbie Gurfinkel, a nutritional sciences professor at the University of Toronto. “An athlete would want to choose nutrient-dense foods.” A well-planned eating strategy will help support any training program, promote efficient recovery between workouts, and help you to achieve your best performance whether you are training recreationally or at the elite-level. “The most healthy diet for everyone is what runners should follow,” says Dr. Michelle French, physiology professor at U of T. “If we’re looking at a plate of food, at least half of it should be vegetables and fruits. [The rest should consist of] some complex carbohydrates, some amount of protein, and a bit of fat.”
CALORIES “Your daily calorie needs depend on your age, weight, [fat to muscle ratio], and exercise frequency,” says French. Gurfinkel claims that an athlete in training may be expending, and therefore, consuming maybe 1,000 calories more per day than the average, relatively sedentary person. And if they’re eating nutrient-dense foods, they’re also going to increase their micronutrient intake within those 1,000 calories.
ENERGY FOR EXERCISE French says that the energy we need comes from a molecule called adenosine triphosphate (atp). Energy is produced by the breakdown of carbohydrate, fat, and protein, which go through different metabolic pathways to become atp. “As you train, you improve a lot of the mechanisms that transport blood to your muscles,”
French elaborates. “You can increase your VO2 max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen you can deliver to your tissue. Athletes’ hearts tend to get larger, and that allows them to pump out more blood. The enzymes become more efficient in metabolic processes, so essentially, you’re able to obtain energy more quickly.”
EATING HABITS OF ELITE RUNNERS “A lot of our diet is geared around workouts, classes, and weights,” says fourthyear Blues middle-distance runner Ethan Davenport. “Timing is everything,” Davenport stresses. The best pre-race meal consists mainly of carbohydrates, since they’re easy to digest, says Davenport. “I eat something like bread and peanut butter two to three hours before competition.” In particular, foods that contain complex carbohydrates like brown rice, whole grain breads, wheat pastas, and legumes are recommended. Teammates Alex Denault and Sacha Smart concur. “Five and a half hours before a race, I’ll have a turkey sandwich, says Denault. “And two hours before, I’ll have some peanut butter.” “It satisfies gastrointestinal needs,” adds Denault. “A lot of people go through a process of trial and error to try and figure out what their bodies like [as well as] how to time their eating.” French recommends consuming a small amount of food within half an hour after exercising. “The carbohydrate to protein ratio should be 4:1, and athletes should also consider diluting any sports drinks.” Athletic success, according to Gurfinkel, requires an understanding of your body’s metabolism and adjusting your diet to match the metabolic needs of your chosen sport. Davenport echoes a similar view about the proper nutrition for athletes. “Your body is a magical, well-oiled machine that’s doing amazing things. Treat it right.”
VARSITY SCIENCE
22 MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013 “CANCER� CONTINUED FROM PG 20 ment of multiple myeloma. He also talked about the application of some currently available laboratory tests on the diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of the disease.
A networking fair at lunch provided the opportunity to meet with the renowned speakers and explore areas of involvement and volunteerism in the field of cancer. It was followed by another choice of three seminars: “Putting a Face on Ovarian Cancer: A Survivor’s Perspective�; “Sub-
group-specific structural variation across 1,000 medulloblastoma genomes� by David Shih, a PhD Candidate; and “Knowledge Deficits in Childhood Cancer Survivors about Their Cancer, Treatment, and Late Effects,� by Iqra Syed an MSc candidate at U of T. Listening to the graduate students discuss their areas of study was a relatable and attention-grabbing experience for the undergraduates in the audience. The second round of seminars was followed by a panel discussion, with the panel comprising Dr. Sylvia Asa, Medical Director of the Laboratory Medicine Program at the University Health Network, Senior Scientist at the Ontario
science@thevarsity.ca
Cancer Institute and a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, Sally Bean, an Ethicist & Policy Advisory at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics, and Dr. David Uehling, a member of the Medicinal Chemistry platform of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. The final keynote address was delivered by Dr. David Malkin, whose talk used illustrative ‘real life’ cases to highlight the enormous advances in the diagnosis and treatment of children with cancer. Malkin discussed how an explosion of ever-newer technolo-
gies has accelerated translation of discoveries in the lab into practical diagnostic and treatment applications in the clinic. He explained that the worlds of the clinic and the lab work better in collaboration than in isolation, leading to a new approach to the practice of medicine and the conduct of science. The opportunities and challenges of this new world order were also argued. The lmp Undergraduate Conference on Cancer Research was a coherent and complete conference, and a great opportunity for undergraduate students in the life sciences to experience and explore the different pathways that await them in the future.
A taste of the future Jesse Hildebrand VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
MMPA
Master of Management & Professional Accounting
t %FTJHOFE QSJNBSJMZ GPS OPO CVTJOFTT VOEFSHSBEVBUFT t 'PS DBSFFST JO .BOBHFNFOU 'JOBODF BOE "DDPVOUJOH t &YUSFNFMZ IJHI DP PQ BOE QFSNBOFOU QMBDFNFOU 5P MFBSO NPSF BCPVU UIF ..1" 1SPHSBN BUUFOE PVS JOGPSNBUJPO TFTTJPOT Wednesday, January 30, 2013 11:00 am – 1:00 pm 3PPN 0*4& #VJMEJOH #MPPS 4U 8 6OJWFSTJUZ PG 5PSPOUP Thursday, January 31, 2013 11:00 am – 1:00 pm 3PPN 0*4& #VJMEJOH #MPPS 4U 8 6OJWFSTJUZ PG 5PSPOUP
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Conventional animal farming does not work. Last year, in the U.S alone, 10 billion animals were slaughtered. The National Resources Defense Council (an environmental law firm) estimates that Americans waste nearly 22 per cent of all meat, which means that over 2 billion animals were killed for no reason last year, while living in horrific conditions. Livestock also represents a massive source of pollution. Alongside their waste products, which spread disease and pollute waterways, the methane emitted by farm animals amounts to almost 30 per cent of total methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. Add that to the loss of forests caused by the need for agricultural land and the billions of litres of water needed to sustain the animals, and it all amounts to
a very unsustainable means to produce food. Winston Churchill once said, “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.� There is a very real chance that his statement could become a reality. The solution lies in a technology known as in vitro meat. Individual cell lines have been grown for research for decades, and in vitro meat extends this technology to another application, the growth of the desired parts of meat without all the waste. In the future, this technology could be used to grow a hamburger out of beef muscle cells without needing to grow and kill the whole cow. The muscle cells would be grown in a nutrient broth, which means unhealthy foods could be tailored to be healthy. In this way, a burger could help prevent heart disease rather than cause it.
For now, the potential to grow enough meat to feed all of humanity is a distant dream, but recent research has shown the capability to achieve it is there. A lab in the Netherlands grew a small test tube burger, while peta is offering a $1 million prize to the first lab that grows in vitro meat on a commercial scale. While such a shift in the way we produce food will not be palatable to some, the benefits are significant. Saving tens of billions of animals from slaughter, drastically decreasing farming related deforestation and pollution, increased health for billions, and, eventually, a lower cost means of accessing waste-free food are some of the things in vitro meat can accomplish. While progress in this field of research has been slow and has a long way to go to achieve all of these goals, it is worth pursuit, if only to give people a chance to have a taste of the future of farming.
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MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
L A R E N GE T I N G E E M L A I C E SP
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AGENDA 1. Call to Order 2. Executive Update 3. Old Business 2012 AGM-01: Approval of Minutes 2012 AGM-02: Receipt of Audited Financial Statements 2012 AGM-03: Approval of UTSU Bylaw Changes • By-Law I – Interpretation • By-Law II – Membership • By-Law V – Board of Directors • By-Law VII – Duties of the Board • By-Law VIII – Executive Responsibilities • Bylaw XI – Commissions and Committees 4. New Business - Consideration of Motions Duly Served 2013 SGM-01: Oppose Unpaid Internships 2013 SGM-02: Examine Winter Residence Fees 2013 SGM-03: Investigate Additional Multifaith Space 2013 SGM-04: Condemn “A Voice for Men” 2013 SGM-05: Clubs Town Hall & Box Office 2013 SGM-06: Eliminate Styrofoam Container Use 2013 SGM-07: Presidents’ Address & Forum at AGM 2013 SGM-08: Endorse Idle No More 2013 SGM-09: Extend AGM Notice Requirements 2013 SGM-10: Provide Notice & Deadline for AGM items 2013 SGM-11: Student Representation in Governance
2013 SGM-12: Include International Students on GC 2013 SGM-13: Reduce AGM proxies to a maximum of 5 2013 SGM-14: Reduce Nominations for Candidacy 2013 SGM-15: Create Anti-War Coalition 2013 SGM-16: Implement Electoral Reform Recommendations 2013 SGM-17: Redefine Clubs’ Recognition 2013 SGM-18: Lobby for Discounted GTA-Wide Transit 2013 SGM-19: Build Mental Health Campaign 2013 SGM-20: Investigate UPASS Transit System
5. Adjournment
To see the full agenda, audited statements and motions served, visit www.utsu.ca Wheelchair accessible. If you have any accessibility or childminding requests or other inquiries, please contact Corey Scott, Vice-President Internal & Services at vpinternal@utsu.ca
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Sports var.st/sports
21 JaNUarY 2013 sports@thevarsity.ca
Blues leave their mark on Fred Foot Classic U of T track and field team has strong showing at annual meet The Varsity Blues men’s and women’s track and field teams competed in the Fred Foot Classic on home turf this past weekend, winning several events and performing exceptionally well. The Fred Foot Classic is an annual track and field meet hosted by the University of Toronto at the Athletic Centre Field House. This year’s event featured athletes from several universities across Ontario, including Ryerson, York, Ottawa, Queen’s, and Laurier in addition to U of T. Athletes from independent track and field clubs such as the Burlington Legion, Project Athletics Track and Field Club, and London Legion were also present, in addition to competitors not associated with a school or club. The Classic kicked off on Friday evening with the men’s and women’s pentathlon. Blues’ athlete Maddie Budinger captured first place in the event with a score of 3,814 points. “The individual events went pretty well, I didn’t [do my] personal best in anything but everything was pretty solid,” said Budinger. “There’s definitely room for improvement in a bunch of events so
that’s encouraging for the rest of the season.” Budinger also competed in several events hosted on Saturday including shot put, where she placed second after throwing 11.93m, despite only throwing once. The Fred Foot Classic marked the first meet in which Budinger has competed in over eight months, after being out with an injured calf. Budinger saw the meet as an opportunity to get used to competing again and evaluate the results of the training camp she attended over the winter holidays. “It was nice after training camp to come and get some performances in and see how the training translated into events,” she explained. Blues’ athlete Marie-Josee LeJour, who won first place in the weight throw with a season’s best distance of 17.27 m, also shone. LeJuor’s 8 am event kicked off her third meet and third win of the season. “My performance was pretty good considering it was at 8 am. The weight throw, like any throwing event, is really a nervous system event; you have to be quick and ready to throw, and at 8 am that can be complicated since you are not super awake,” she explained.
LeJour was also happy about the results from other U of T weightthrowing athletes. “All three athletes on the Varsity Blues’ team had personal bests, we had a school record in men’s weights, and we had two oua qualifiers, so it was a pretty good day,” said LeJour. The Blues also made a strong showing in pole vaulting. Jason Wurster won first place in the men’s event after vaulting 5.40m. In the women’s competition, Blues’ vaulters Heather Hamilton and Allison Harris took first and second place, after vaulting for 4.00m and 3.65m respectively. On the track, several Blues athletes dominated with Maddie Hunlan coming in second in the 60– metre dash with a time of 7.75s, despite this only being her second meet of the season. “It was a personal best so I’m happy about that,” said Hunlan. “I actually only had one race this season; I ran at Windsor, at Can-Am, last weekend where I ran the 300–metre and didn’t do as well as I was hoping.” Several other women runners had great races for the Blues. Sasha Gollish won the 1,000–metre with a
time of 2:53.97 and Gabriela Stafford won the 3,000–metre after running the race in 9:46.66. On the men’s side, several U of T runners also claimed victory in their events. In the 60–metre hurdles, Brandon Wilson finished first with a time of 8.21 s. This came after he won the preliminary round with an almost identical time of 8.22s, running alongside fellow Blues’ hurdler Greg MacNeil, who came in a close second with a time of 8.40s. Despite the second place finish, MacNeil was not ecstatic about his performance. “It was OK. It was a step in the right direction. It wasn’t the greatest time, but there were parts of the race that were good, so I need to go back, execute, and get better,” said MacNeil. “I think I won my heat, but the time didn’t reflect the time I wanted to run today, and at the end of the day it is about running fast times when it counts. This is a good step in the right direction,” MacNeil added. Because of a minor hip injury suffered during the preliminary round, MacNeil chose to sit out the finals to
by William Deck photos by Sam Cen rest, and watched as teammate Wilson took first place. Other men’s runners did equally well. A notable performance came from Daniel Chen, who claimed first in the 300–metres with a time of 35.95s. In the 3,000–metres, Anton Paulie also came in first for the Blues after finishing the race in just 8:42.75. Aside from the Varsity Blues, several other high calibre athletes had impressive performances. One standout was Ryerson University’s Miana Griffiths, who is ranked as one of the top 20 female sprinters in the world. Griffiths, who competed in the Pan American games in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2011, and came in fifth in the 100–metre dash at the Canadian National Championships that same year with a time of 11.61, won her 60– metre race by a wide margin. The meet ended on Saturday afternoon with a men’s and women’s 4×400 metre run. Heat Athletics won the women’s race with a time of 4:14.12 and Brock University took first place in the men’s with a time of 3:40.05. The Blues next travel to Montreal, where they will compete in the McGill Team Challenge from January 25–26.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Relive the Blues’ Sarah Wells’s qualification for the London Olympics var.st/ajg
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VARSITY SPORTS
MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013
27
Blues swim to success at Ontario Cup U of T swimmers translate Barbados training camp into top podium finishes
JAMIE MACDONALD/VArsIty BLUEs
Elizabeth Benn ASSOCIATE SPORTS EDITOR
The 2013 Ontario Cup was held at the Varsity pool this past weekend with Blues swimmers competing strongly and coming out on top against fierce club competition. “The meet being at U of T rather than elsewhere makes it a more comfortable race environment,” explained Troy MacDonald, who swam in the 50m fly, 100m fly, and 50m free. “We’re used to the blocks, walls, and general feel of the pool which can be very advantageous as other swimmers from other schools may misjudge these things. “The general atmosphere is usually pretty good, you get close friends and family that often show up which adds to the comfortable environment.” The Cup marked U of T’s first multi-club swim meet since returning from a 10-day training camp in Barbados. “During the winter break we had a training camp in Barbados for roughly two weeks where we did a combination of weights, swimming, and dry land. We do these sort of training camps every year and they always seem to help boost team moral and fitness,” said MacDonald. Taylor Bond also commented on the feeling of team bonding. “Training camps provide a great opportunity to build team spirit,” he said. “We come back from the holidays much closer. There has been a great vibe on the team lately and people are swimming fast, and excited for the meets to come.” “It’s great being able to get away from all the distractions and just focus on training for 10 straight days,” fellow swimmer Brian Lee concluded. Andrea Jurenovskis also noted, “It sounds like a vacation, but it is very hard work. The sun and sand take a backseat to training, napping and working off those wonderful home cooked Christmas meals.” The Ontario Cup commenced this past Friday with the women’s 800m freestyle and the men’s 1,500m freestyle. The Blues started off strong, Bridget Coley finishing the former event with a time of 8:42.67, followed by two swimmers from the Toronto Swim Club. Just narrowly missing a podium standing was Blues’ rookie Esther Haines coming in at just under nine minutes. Coley
dominated the event from the start, leading from beginning to end. The results mirror her strong performance in the Ontario University Athletics (oua) championships last year, where she received four medals, and at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (cis) championships, where she placed fifth, eighth, and tenth in her three races. Saturday morning, the competition was in full–swing with 12 events, and the Blues did not disappoint a gallery filled with friends, family, and fans. U of T also controlled the men’s 200m freestyle. The Blues Frank Despond placed first with a time of 1:49.67, followed by teammates Zack Chetrat and Matthew Myers, who finished second and third respectively, and Kikot Kent and Taylor Bond, who placed seventh and twelfth respectively. In the men’s 50m butterfly, U of T put up impressive times, all beating the time of former Olympian, Blake Worsely. Mike Smerek was top of the podium with a time of 24.23s, followed by fellow Blues Edward Liu, and Zack Chetrat, who all placed above Worsely. Close behind were two other U of T swimmers, Brian Lee and Troy MacDonald, who finished sixth and seventh respectively. Smerek also beat Worsely in the men’s 50m backstroke, placing first in the competition with Worsely finishing second. Smerek, one of the Blues’ veteran swimmers, has finished first in the 50m fly in the oua championships since 2009 and in the cis championships for the past two seasons. He has also put up incredible performances in the 100m and 200m fly, consistently placing higher than seventh in the two events in the oua and cis championships. “It was a great swim for me, but it’s important to realize that Blake made the Olympics in the 200m freestyle. It’s an off event for both of us and off events are always fun to compete in as we sometimes get too focused on our main events,” Smerek explained, noting that he lost to Worsely on Saturday night in the 100m freestyle. The women’s swim team came to life in the 50m backstroke where Jurenovskis placed first, beating the runner–up from Western University, Jennifer Trung, by over a second. U of T’s Margot Cunningham finished
ninth in what proved to be a tight race, only 1.26 seconds behind her teammate Jurenovskis. Jurenovskis has finished between first and sixth place in four consecutive years in the 50m back, 50m fly, 200m back, 100m back, 50m free, and 200m free in the oua and cis championships, consistently proving that she deserved the recognition she received as oua female swimmer of the year in 2011. This weekend, she also finished second in the women’s 100m freestyle, trailing Chantique Payne, the winner, by 0.92 of a second. Sunday morning, Jurenovskis won the women’s 100m backstroke event, with teammate Cunningham finishing third, less than one second behind her. Jurenovskis explained, “The Ontario Cup for us is just another stepping stone toward our ultimate goal of winning the Provincial University Championships (oua), which will be held here at U of T, but more importantly this is all in preparation for the National University Championships (cis) which will be in Calgary. We have some high expectations for that meet with several reigning cis champions hoping to defend their titles.” In the women’s 40m individual medley, Vanessa Treasure — a Varsity Blues female athlete of the week in December — finished far ahead of her opponents with a time of 4:41.14, over six seconds faster than Samantha Stratford from gmac who finished in second place. Blues rookie Esther Haines,f finished fourth in the event, just over 12 seconds behind her teammate. Treasure has proven herself to be a strong leader and competitor for the Blues. This season, she has been named athlete of the week once in December, after receiving the same recognition last year, as well as oua weekly honours, which she has been awarded twice. She swept the individual medley events at the oua championships last year, earning her the Dr. Jeno Tihanyi Award and oua female swimmer of the year, before finishing first in the 200m and 400m im competitions in last year’s cis championship. This weekend, she also finished first in the women’s 200m butterfly, finishing almost seven seconds
before Emma Spourle, Western’s runner up. She also placed second in the women’s 200m IM. In the men’s 400m im, Blues’ swimmers David Riley and Jeremie Holdom earned the top two seeds with Holdom finishing just .03 of a millisecond behind Riley, who also placed third in the men’s 200m backstroke later in the day. Holdom also placed fourth in the men’s 200m IM. Zack Chetrat, the 22 year old Blues competitor, finished first with a time of 53.26s in the men’s 100m butterfly, which the Blues dominated. In second was Smerek, then Liu and Summerhayes who finished third and fourth with Kikot and MacDonald rounding out the results finishing sixth and eighth respectively. The
Blues were then able to claim six of the 10 top spots in the event, with Western claiming three of the others. The Blues host the oua championships at the Varsity pool in February, before heading to Calgary for the cis championships. Blues swimmer David Dorian is excited to compete at home. “This is really getting us geared up for the oua championships which we are holding here in three weeks. The atmosphere there will be electric without a doubt.” Another advantage of swimming at home, as Alexandra Augello, who swam in the 50m and 100m butterfly this weekend, pointed out, is, “being able to sleep in your own bed rather than hotel beds.”
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