March 4, 2019

THE VARSITY March 4, 2019

The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880

Graduate Students’ Union elections underway

Vol. CXXXIX, No. 19

Business

Comment

University’s 2019–2020 budget $88 million short of original projections

Why the UTSU should abolish its elections nomination period

6

Candidate profiles, page 4–5

7

Feature

Arts

The kids are not alright: the intimate effects of divorce

What comes after Bohemian Rhapsody?

Our picks for the next great biopics

10

13

International Women’s Day Science

Sports

Professor Cynthia Goh on entrepreneurship and maternity in STEM

Is professional sports culture anti-feminist?

15 SCSU board refuses to ratify incoming executive, directly contravenes union bylaws

Vice-President Operations-elect Rayyan Alibux not ratified, leaving position apparently vacant Jayra Almanzor UTSC Bureau Chief

Tensions were high at the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) Board of Directors meeting on February 26 as members voted against ratifying recently-elected Vice-President Operations Rayyan Alibux in direct contravention of the SCSU’s bylaws.

The move was also a possible breach of the Ontario Corporations Act (OCA), under which the union is incorporated.

The board also narrowly voted to ratify recently-elected Vice-President External Chaman Bukhari, discussed student society fee adjustments, and ratified the remaining incoming SCSU Board of Directors.

Ratification complications

Director of Sociology Theresa Louise Lagman motioned that each executive be ratified separately to allow for individual discussions.

All executives and directors were ratified except for Alibux, following concerns raised about his comments during the election. Alibux is planning on taking action against the union in response to the board rejecting his ratification.

Director of Physical & Environmental Sciences Zakia Fahmida Taj challenged the motion to ratify Alibux, citing an article from The Underground in which Alibux is identified as writing, “I hope this chat is never leaked,” in a group chat in response to transphobic comments.

“I have had students come up and tell me [after the article was published]… they [had] already voted them [in, but] they would change it if they could go back to it,” said Taj. A vote by secret ballot resulted in five directors against Alibux’s ratification, two in favour, and two abstentions, meaning that the motion to ratify Alibux failed.

According to the union’s Elections Procedure Code, “the Board, at its discretion, may refuse to ratify any singular Director or Executive office election, upon the recommendation of the Elections Appeals Committee [EAC].”

The EAC’s job is to review “appeals made by candidates regarding the decisions of the Elections and Referenda Committee,” which would be on subjects such as demerit points.

However, since there were no violations posted against Alibux, meaning that there was nothing to appeal, he contends that the board had “no backing” in refusing to ratify him, since there was no way for it to have received a recommendation from the EAC. He added that he did not receive word about any violations or appeals to the EAC regarding himself.

Therefore, the SCSU would be in contravention of its own bylaws if the board acted without the recommendation of the EAC. Following that, the union could have also breached the OCA with this move, as the act states that directors and officers of a corporation must act in accordance with their bylaws as well as in good faith.

“Aside from the fact that they cannot legally refuse to ratify me when the students have voted me in, they are clearly trying to obscure the voting process,” wrote Alibux.

In an email to The Varsity, SCSU President Nicole Brayiannis referred to Robert’s Rules of Order, which governs how board meetings are held and allows for secret ballots.

She added that it was not about “withholding insight” from the public, but rather a recognition of the sensitivity of the topic.

Brayiannis told The Varsity that the SCSU “is taking the current matter very seriously and is investigating next steps.”

There were also tensions surrounding the ratification of Bukhari, though his ratification eventually passed by a narrow margin.

Taj challenged the motion to ratify Bukhari, citing an article from The Underground that reported that Bukhari had made anti-LGBTQ+ comments.

The comments were later revealed by The Varsity to have been from almost two years ago.

“I am just questioning whether enough members of the SCSU had the opportunity to make an informed decision,” said Taj. “[The article] came out very last second, so you can’t go back and change your votes.”

The article on Bukhari was published on February 7, which was also the last day of voting.

Discussions between The Underground’s Editor-in-Chief Eilia Yazda-

nian and students centred on whether context had been left out of the article due to an alleged lack of Bukhari’s side to the story and Bukhari’s apparent refusal to give comment to The Underground.

Bukhari entered the room in the middle of the discussions.

“Because we do not know the outcome of the people voting, because such and such post was not brought into light before voting period… would the same apply if let’s say someone gets ratified, and then later some [inappropriate] post of theirs came about?” said Bukhari. “Would they then cease to have that politician? I don’t believe that ratification would exist later on. This is an inconsistent line of argument.”

The vote on Bukhari’s ratification resulted in two directors in favour, one against, and seven abstentions. After some confusion of whether this motion failed or not due to the number of abstentions, Chair Caitlin Campisi ruled that the motion passed. Campisi is a former Internal Commissioner who was disqualified when she ran for reelection in 2016. She is the current Executive Director of U of T’s Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students.

Some board members have called for a re-vote because of confusion concerning abstentions. Lagman said that she was in the washroom, and so she was not able to vote.

Campisi said that according to Robert’s Rules of Order, only those who voted in favour of the vote could motion for a re-vote. In the end, the motion still carried.

“This report was written to the best of my ability and time,” says CRO

The Chief Returning Officer’s (CRO) report was prepared and presented by CRO Philip Scibor. However, long

17 discussions and debates arose due to the fact that the report only included an overview of the elections process.

Scibor noted in his report that he will later submit another report on the problems faced with the current Elections Procedure Code (EPC). In the second report, he “hopes that the incoming Board of Directors will take these concerns into consideration and strive to update the SCSU EPC in a way that will allow for a smoother election process.”

“How can the board ratify a report where [it lacks] main details, which are the challenges in the elections, which will determine whether the election was democratic, or if there should be a reelection?” said Yazdanian.

Yazdanian also pointed out that he thinks that a lot of the report is just summarization. “It kind of misses your view as a CRO and your analysis of the election,” said Yazdanian.

Scibor replied that he did not have enough time for the second report. He then offered some suggestions, including making the demerits system clearer.

“This report was written to the best of my ability and time,” said Scibor.

Campisi clarified Scibor’s intentions with the second report. “In addition to the report which is before you today…

[Scibor] would like to make the recommendations… That would be a secondary document that is not required by your bylaws or EPC… [but] on a voluntary basis,” said Campisi.

A student at the meeting said that people are asking the same questions and that the CRO report is “good enough to pass.”

Campisi further clarified that the motion being voted upon is just on the CRO report presented. She urged the room to vote, and the motion carried with seven in support and three abstentions.

Read the rest at var.st/SCSUBoD

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Graduate Students’ Union membership votes to establish permanent committee on BDS Controversial motion sparks opposition based on procedure, principle Adam A. Lam Associate News Editor

The University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) voted to make its Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Committee a permanent, long-term standing committee at its Special General Meeting (SGM) on February 26, after a long and heated discussion.

According to the motion that created the committee in 2012, the committee’s mandate is to advocate for U of T “to refrain from investing in all companies complicit in violation of international law.” This includes firms that “[profit] from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, directly [benefit] from the construction of the Wall and Israeli settlements, [are] economically active in settlements, and [profit] from the collective punishment of Palestinians.”

The committee was inspired by the wider 2005 BDS movement, which urged corporations, universities, and local governments to boycott Israel in protest of its treatment of Palestinians and occupation of Palestinian territory, which is illegal under international law. BDS has been criticized by opponents who view it as a bid to delegitimize the Israeli state and hurt its economy. Some people characterize the BDS movement and its leadership as antisemitic, though the movement rejects this interpretation.

The motion brought to the SGM sought to make the body a standing committee, which would be created by the General Council but led by the Executive Committee. Initial discussion was cut off by a motion to “call the question,” which would automatically end debate and move the motion to a vote.

The motion to call the question caused around two dozen members to walk out of the room in an apparent bid to force an end to the meeting by causing it to lose quorum. Quorum for the SGM was set at 150 members, which the meeting maintained by a small margin after the walkout.

Opposition members who left the SGM did a headcount in the hallway outside the meeting room. Realizing that the bid to end the meeting failed, most members re-entered the room, though some left the premises entirely. The bylaw ultimately passed, elevating the BDS Committee to the status of a permanent standing committee.

In an interview with The Varsity, Adam Hill, an Ontario Institute for Studies in Education course union representative to the General Council and a candidate for Internal Commissioner, explained his opposition to the motion, but noted that he declined to participate in the walkout.

He stayed in the room because he “wanted to continue to debate,” said Hill, by trying to “speak

against calling to question while [the motion to end debate] was still being discussed.”

Explaining his stance against the bylaw, Hill said that he doesn’t “fully believe that [BDS] should be a standing committee.” He did say that he believes that it “should be a representative part of the organization because I’m extremely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.”

Hill continued by saying that the structure of UTGSU committees would make the causes of the BDS Standing Committee reflective of the “organization mandate [and] intention” of the UTGSU as a whole. According to Hill, this could make the union liable to “undue litigiousness in the future” by plaintiffs who may sue the UTGSU on the basis of “discrimination.”

In response, BDS Committee Chair Robert Prazeres wrote to The Varsity that “there is no basis on which to refer to divesting from unethical companies as ‘discrimination.’”

“The BDS campaign advocates for severing ties with companies and institutions complicit in human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians, on the basis of their complicity in those human rights abuses only. Advocating for this sort of action is a tried-and-true strategy of many human rights movements and, needless to say, is a protected form of political expression in every free democracy,” said Prazeres.

Dean Lavi, a first-year Master of Global Affairs student, said that he opposed the motion on principle.

“I don’t want my money and the reputation of my school being attached to something that is divisive, that encourages hate, and that furthermore, at the end of the day, pushes ultimately for the death and destruction of the Jews,” said Lavi.

He said that many advocates for BDS argue for the establishment of “one Palestinian state that requires, by its definition, the removal of civilians, and the murder and the genocide and the ethnic cleansing of what is essentially five million people.”

In response to Lavi’s statement to The Varsity, Prazeres wrote, “This is flatly false, and parts of that ring of a conspiracy theory with racist undertones. The ultimate demands of the BDS campaign, which are repeated over and over again in almost every explanation of the campaign that organizers have ever given, are that the Israeli government — and any complicit organisations — cease their violations of international law and respect universally-recognized

human rights as they pertain to Palestinians. No more, no less.”

Explaining his support for the bylaw, Prazeres wrote that the amendment “does not change the way the UTGSU operates, [because] it was only about changing the status of the existing BDS committee from a temporary committee to a long-term committee that can build on ongoing work.”

“To continue its work, it had to be renewed by a vote of the UTGSU General Council every year, and that process took away even more of our members’ time,” wrote Prazeres. “As a standing committee, the volunteers who take time out of their studies to do this human rights-based work can now use that time to focus on the actual divestment campaign.”

Long debate on whether to allow media presence passes with conditions

At the very beginning of the SGM, members spent over an hour debating whether to allow members of the media to stay in the room. The Varsity was the only media outlet in attendance.

At the January General Council meeting, members had voted to pursue a policy of unconditional access for members of the media at this SGM. However, it was subsequently ruled out of order after it was discovered that the member who had moved the motion was not authorized to do so at the meeting.

Therefore, the SGM was not covered by any media policy and members had to separately debate whether to allow media access.

The majority of the debate was spent on procedural discussions.

In the end, the members voted to seat the media but disallowed photography, live-tweeting, and livestreaming.

The GSU voted to make its BDS committee permanent at a special meeting.

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

U of T acknowledges criticism of late UTSG class cancellations at Governing Council meeting Council approves FitzGerald Building Revitalization funding, Gertler says Boundless campaign could fund additional student aid Andy Takagi Associate News Editor

University officials addressed recent criticisms about U of T’s policies on closing campuses during inclement weather at a Governing Council meeting held on February 28 at UTM. In response to a question from graduate student member Sandhya Mylabathula, U of T Vice-President & Provost Cheryl Regehr acknowledged recent criticisms about the multiple late closures of UTSG in the last few weeks, saying that there will be new considerations taken when assessing whether or not to close the campus.

Regehr is involved in determining UTSG’s status under adverse weather conditions along-

side other university administrators.

Regehr also emphasized that Robarts Library will always be open 24 hours, even during harsh weather, adding that students could stay overnight during snowstorms.

The university has also hired additional staff, said Regehr, with current staff already working overtime to keep streets and entrances clear.

Vice-Provost Academic Operations Scott Mabury, who oversees operations to clear snow, assured the council that 350 workers should have entrances cleared by 9:00 am.

Building projects, Gertler’s report

Governing Council also approved funding for the FitzGerald Building Revitalization project, which would revamp the building to make

it more efficient. Construction would start in May 2019, with occupancy expected by October 2020, though demolition and hazardous waste removal is slated to happen this month.

According to the project report, it currently costs around $50 per gross square metre to operate the building, and post-renovations should cost around $10 per gross square metre.

President Meric Gertler, who presented a report at the beginning of the meeting, reaffirmed the university’s access guarantee — which states that financial standing should not affect a student’s ability to attend U of T — and noted that contributions to the Boundless campaign could also be used to firm up student aid, in light of the cuts to the Ontario Student Assistance Program.

MARCH 4, 2019 | 3

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U of T to investigate Southlake hospital after gender discrimination allegations

“The power to change the world”: Raptors President Masai Ujiri speaks at U of T

Ujiri speaks on the power of sports in honour of Black History Month Kelly-Anne Johnson Varsity Contributor

U of T’s 17th annual Black History Luncheon on February 28 rounded out four weeks of Black History Month celebrations.

The event commemorated Afro-Canadian culture through food and live music, culminating in the recognition of the philanthropic efforts of Masai Ujiri, President of the Toronto Raptors.

Ujiri is the first African-born General Manager in the NBA. In addition to his work with the Raptors, he is the co-founder of Giants of Africa, a non-profit organization that uses basketball as a means to improve the lives of African youth.

In an email to The Varsity, Ujiri wrote, “Every year I am amazed by the youth of Africa. They are truly the future.”

Ujiri founded Giants of Africa soon after becoming director of the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders, when he was inspired to create a basketball camp for the children of his home country, Nigeria.

As an NBA scout at the time, he was concerned with finding the next African NBA star. However, over the years, Ujiri came to the realization that few people have the skills it takes to make it to the NBA. He said at the event, “That began to eat me inside because not everybody is going to be a talented basketball player that’s going to play in the NBA.” Ujiri said that he may not have been the greatest basketball player, nor did he make it to the NBA, but he “used basketball as a tool” to get himself an education and to meet new people. Basketball helped him to

Raptors president Masai Ujiri believes sports can teach a person valuable life lessons.

Courtesy of PERRY KING

understand the importance of traits such as teamwork and leadership and this is what he hopes to teach the children who attend his camps.

It is also important to him that they understand that there is more to sports than being a professional basketball player. He listed sports management, psychology, law, and journalism as a few of the areas available.

Ujiri discovered that this was not a common perception in Africa, and so he sought to educate children about alternative careers in sports.

The sold-out luncheon took place in Hart House’s Great Hall at UTSG on Thursday.

It was also live-streamed at UTM, UTSC, and the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport. The event included guests such as Nigerian High Commissioner to Canada Adeyinka Olatokunbo Asekun, U of T President Meric Gertler, New Democratic Party MPP Jessica Bell from University—Rose-

U of T proposing new building near Faculty of Law, Music Building to be constructed on the site of McLaughlin Planetarium, will house School of Cities

There are plans to build an interior walkway between the new building and the Edward Johnson Building (pictured).

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Silas Le Blanc Associate News Editor

U of T is proposing to build a new ninestorey building on the site of the now-closed McLaughlin Planetarium in front of the Faculty of Music.

The proposed building at 90 Queen’s Park Crescent will become the new permanent home to the School of Cities, an interdisciplinary research hub focused on solving urban problems.

The building will be designed to hold classrooms and public spaces, as well as a music recital hall, event hall, public plaza, and space for the Royal Ontario Museum next door.

There will also be facilities for the departments of History, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, Jewish Studies, Islamic Studies, and Archaeology, as well as the Faculty of Music and the Faculty of Law, which are located nearby.

Pending further approval, construction will commence in June 2020, and the goal is for the project to be completed by spring 2023.

The music recital hall is one of the proposed

building’s showpieces, as it is planned to have a large south-facing window showing the Toronto skyline as a backdrop.

The site is currently home to the McLaughlin Planetarium, which closed in 1995. The land was bought from the Royal Ontario Museum by the University of Toronto in 2009. Plans to replace it were first announced in 2016, prompting an ongoing campaign to preserve the planetarium.

In an email to The Varsity, Chief of University Planning, Design and Construction Gilbert Delgado wrote, “The new building at 90 Queen’s Park includes [a] 250-seat recital hall that can be used for student performances, and will draw talented artists to play at the university.”

Delgado added that student representatives were involved during the development of this project’s program and other key features. “All our major project designs are shared with the community through our Community Liaison Committee, which has student representation. As the project progresses, there will be more opportunities to hear from the public, including students,” Delgado continued.

dale, and students from the York Region District School Board.

In his email to The Varsity, Ujiri wrote that Africa will always be his homeland.

“I will always be proudly African. Every country in Africa has its own unique charm and beauty, but universally Africans are hardworking, good people dedicated to [bettering] themselves and those around them.

Giants of Africa and basketball have shown me sides of the continent I didn’t even know.

The resilience, strength of the youth, women and Africans in general is unparalleled.”

However, he added that “Toronto is an incredible, world class city that I consider to be home,” and that Toronto has “come into its own” as a “tier one sports city.”

For Ujiri, sports can teach a person valuable life lessons of “hard work, dedication, teamwork and commitment,” and because of that, sports have “the power to change the world.”

Third-year music student Ricci Ebron told The Varsity that she would prefer if there were more practice rooms, as the faculty is lacking in this regard. She also wrote that the building could use an underpass to connect to the music faculty, which would make it easier to move large instruments from classrooms to the recital hall.

Delgado said that there are plans to build an interior walkway between the new building and the Edward Johnson Building, which is home to the Faculty of Music.

The building has also been criticized by some students online for being ugly and failing to blend in with its surrounding environment.

Matteen Victory, a first-year law student, said that the building “invokes no sense of awe, no sense of wonder, no sense of culture, heritage, or craft.”

“The vandals behind this project have allowed empty function to replace artful form, and would see the campus marred by an awful postmodern tumour metastasizing out into the street, looming over the historical Philosopher’s Walk,” Victory wrote.

Mike Liu, a second-year music student, told The Varsity that he hopes to see the building dedicated to providing more practice rooms.

“While a new concert hall is great and the building seems that it will have a positive impact on the University, as a music student there are two things that are more important,” he wrote.

“If the university can get enough funding for a new concert hall, why can’t we get more practice rooms and more importantly, music stands?

It seems we have complained about the lack of space and stands forever and yet the university never improves the situation.”

The building will be 43 metres tall and around 6,780 square metres. Plans also include incorporating the 118-year-old Falconer Hall, which is part of the Faculty of Law, into the design of the new building.

The building is being designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an architecture firm behind New York’s High Line and Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.

Former emergency department chief did not hire single female doctor for 16 years: report Ilya Bañares Deputy News Editor

The University of Toronto is launching an investigation into the learning environment at Southlake Regional Health Centre, following a report in The Globe and Mail of gender discrimination allegations filed against former emergency department chief Dr. Marko Duic.

The Globe’s investigation in December revealed that Duic, a celebrated doctor known for transforming the field of emergency medicine and reducing wait times in hospitals, had not hired a single female doctor to work in his departments for 16 years. Prior to his time at Southlake in Newmarket, he was the emergency chief at St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Toronto from 2002–2011.

“The University takes its shared responsibilities for the learning environment of trainees very seriously,” reads a tweet from U of T’s Faculty of Medicine. “Equity and inclusion are at the heart of our education and research mandates — and we are sympathetic to the women involved in this matter.” U of T sends medical students to train at both of these hospitals.

A female doctor was hired in October 2018, weeks after The Globe had sent questions to the hospital regarding its hiring practices. As of January, two female physicians were working in the emergency department.

Duic resigned as head of Southlake’s emergency department effective January 31, but will continue to work and take up clinical duties in the hospital, said Kathryn Perrier, corporate communications manager at Southlake, to The Globe.

Duic has been a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario since 1982. His LinkedIn notes that he graduated with an MD from U of T in the same year.

According to The Globe, the newspaper was first tipped off about possible gender discrimination after it received a formal complaint about Duic from Toronto lawyer Danny Kastner, who specializes in employment and labour law, is representing a group of eight female doctors who chose to remain anonymous due to fears of professional backlash.

The complaint was sent to Southlake and U of T. Heidi Singer, a spokesperson for the Faculty of Medicine, says that the university will aim to speak with people who have been involved with the hospital.

“Through an external investigator, we will invite current and previous trainees as well as members of the clinical care team within the Emergency Department to participate in interviews,” said Singer.

“The investigation will be conducted in a manner that is confidential, that protects individuals from reprisals if they come forward with concerns or allegations, and that is procedurally fair to all participants. It’s important that we let that work take place before we determine any future actions.”

Southlake replied to the faculty’s announcement on social media, saying that it will work with the faculty in the investigation. “As a partner with @uoftmedicine we want our Emergency Department to be a healthy environment for everyone — including learners from the University of Toronto.

We will cooperate with the Faculty to make sure they can successfully conduct their investigation.”

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Here are your Graduate Students’ Union candidates Ilya Bañares, Reut Cohen, Ann Marie Elpa, Adam A. Lam, Silas Le Blanc, and Andy Takagi Varsity Staff

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Kim Borden Penney Finance Commissioner By: Adam A. Lam

Kim Borden Penney is a second-year PhD candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She is running for Finance Commissioner.

Penney is running because she believes that her 20 years of experience in the financial sector and six years in student governance will enable her to help the UTGSU continue serving its students.

With regard to expected funding cuts stemming from the provincial government’s Student Choice Initiative (SCI), she believes that her background will help her guide advocacy efforts and strategies “to combat some of those cuts.”

Penney has been involved with the Social Justice Education department since 2013, and she has also worked with the Faculty of Kinesiology

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Julie Marocha

Finance Commissioner By: Adam A. Lam Julie Marocha is a fifth-year Molecular Genetics PhD student running for Finance Commissioner.

She is the President of the Toastmasters International Toronto Engineering Club of Speakers and previously served as the club’s Vice-President Membership and Events and Budget Coordinator. Marocha has been a U of T student for more than eight years.

Marocha is running because she wants “to bring positive change to the lives of students.”

Her priorities include maintaining and possibly increasing financial resources for students, such as scholarships. As Finance Commissioner, she plans to fund this by developing “ties with alumni” for donations and sponsorships, and by asking them to support specific causes such as mental health services.

& Physical Education to improve retention issues and support strategies concerning racialized students.

Speaking on her financial background, she referred to her experience as a senior vice-president at a major bank, followed by about 10 years as Chief Financial Officer before her return to academia. Penney declined to name what bank she worked for, as she does not believe it is relevant to her work in student issues.

As Finance Commissioner, Penney would prioritize funding available for student bursaries, conference funding, and financial resources for conducting research. Her goals are to better financially support graduate students throughout their degrees, especially if students face issues finding funding.

Penney also believes that it’s important for the UTGSU to better communicate what financial resources it offers students, referring to her personal experiences having to “navigate the [financial] system alone without very much information about where to even start.”

Her priorities would also include mobilizing students to increase pressure on the provincial government in response to likely funding cuts.

Immediately following the announcement of the SCI by the provincial government, Penney said she was “disappointed” about what she perceived as students’ perceived lack of “mobility or pushback” to the policy.

To work around the cuts, Penney would draw from her past experience in investment banking to “look at alternative ways of leveraging certain things that we have here with the university.”

Specifically, she would lobby the university, student government, community partners, and other stakeholders at U of T. Faced with possible budget cuts stemming from the provincial government’s Student Choice Initiative (SCI), she hopes to avoid compromising services and benefits received by UTGSU members, including scholarships and conference bursaries. She also plans to prioritize funding for UTGSU committees, as well as the UTGSU itself.

Should severe cuts occur, she plans to reduce unnecessary spending, such as expenses for food and drinks for executives. She would then approach the union’s finances based on “percentages, rather than absolute numbers.” For example, said Marocha, if 10 per cent of graduate students receive grants or scholarships from the UTGSU, but a certain number of students opt out of the levy, she may make budget plans in such a way that the same percentage of remaining UTGSU members still receive funding.

She also intends to launch a universitywide survey to better determine budgeting priorities. As a last resort, said Marocha, she would consider increasing the levy.

Marocha also has plans to collect university-wide data on the financial circumstances of graduate students should she be elected. The survey would advocate for “affordable education under the Ford cuts,” and Marocha hopes to spread awareness about the “foreseeable impacts on cuts to OSAP and education funding.”

She plans to ensure that the surveys have high response rates by running social media campaigns, asking graduate student associations of each department to contact their constituents, and possibly adding incentives such as prizes, if funding is available. She also believes that the relevance of the government cuts “to many, if not all of us” will also help garner high response rates.

Branden Rizzuto

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Finance Commissioner By: Adam A. Lam Branden Rizzuto is a fourth-year Archaeology PhD student running for Finance Commissioner.

Rizzuto is seeking re-election to help guide the union’s response to funding cuts that may occur under the provincial government’s Student Choice Initiative (SCI).

He also aims to re-evaluate how course unions and graduate student groups are financed in the face of funding difficulties due to inflation and to increase awareness about services offered by the UTGSU among students.

He referred to his record as a UTGSU executive, having served as Academics & Funding Commissioner and Executive-at-Large before his current role as Finance Commissioner, as qualifications for his re-election.

Reflecting on his initiatives this year, Rizzuto believes that he has been “very successful” in revising and overhauling the UTGSU’s financial

Jarir Machmine

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Academics & Funding Commissioner, Divisions 1 & 2 By: Andy Takagi Jarir Machmine is a graduate student in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and is running for Academics & Funding Commissioner for

PEARL CAO/THE VARSITY

Norin Taj

Academics & Funding Commissioner, Divisions 1 & 2 By: Andy Takagi Norin Taj is a PhD candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education running for Academics & Funding Commissioner, Divisions 1 & 2. She

structures and transparency measures. Specifically, he guided the redesign of the finance section of the union’s website and public posting of UTGSU finance documents.

Rizzuto also highlighted that he supervised revisions of the union’s finance-related bylaws to “increase the efficiency and transparency of the union’s financial operations.”

Faced with possible budget cuts from the SCI, Rizzuto aims to “mitigate any revenue loss scenarios which threaten the health of the union’s services to members.”

He said that he has “formulated more than a dozen contingency plans to address any potential revenue loss scenarios.” Rizzuto also emphasized his belief that any financial restructuring measures would need be done in consultation with the UTGSU’s stakeholders.

Should severe funding cuts occur, Rizzuto said that the UTGSU has “three major options.”

These are to “increase the administration fee as part of [its] health and dental insurance plan,” “increase the UTGSU fee itself,” or enact “budget cuts.” However, Rizzuto said that the UTGSU is in a “strong financial position to mitigate any revenue loss scenarios” as it can “tighten many different budget lines.”

Should budget cuts be necessary, he would prioritize grants offered to “our course unions and our caucuses, to our standing committees, as well as UTGSU member groups who put on events on campus that benefit the graduate experience.”

At the same time, he also acknowledges the need to maintain the “internal operating costs” that enable the UTGSU to do “advocacy work for finances, for academics, as well as general outreach in the health and dental insurance planning.”

Divisions 1 and 2.

Machmine said that his candidacy is motivated by a frustration with the lack of communication and clarity when seeking help from various offices. In an interview with The Varsity, he said that he hopes to rectify this through the position of Academics & Funding Commissioner by communicating with students.

On what he would improve in the UTGSU, Machmine said that he wants to ensure that executives are not only following regulations, but also taking student well-being into consideration, going on to say that some people follow regulations “blindly.”

However, he also emphasized that the current UTGSU executives are maintaining a good relationship with students.

Despite not having been involved with the UTGSU previously, Machmine highlights his multicultural background and open mindset as qualifications for the position.

When asked why he chose to run for the position, Machmine said that he did not see the appeal of working off-campus, and that he is more interested in advocating on academic issues.

has served as Vice-Chair on the UTGSU Equity and Advocacy Committee for three years.

Taj is running because she sees navigating university procedures as daunting, especially for international students. She hopes to keep graduate students updated on funding opportunities, as well as maintain open communication with students, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds.

Taj particularly wants to see the UTGSU executive prioritize inclusivity, and wrote in a statement to The Varsity that the current executives are working well toward that goal.

She added that as a mother of two, she hopes to advocate for students with families as well.

“I plan to… initiate conversations with graduate students and to channel student voices concerning funding, health care, degree requirements, supervision, and employment opportunities, among other administrative/policy matters,” wrote Taj. In addition, Taj strives for equity in her work, seeking to address concerns of all graduate students — part-time, full-time, international, and domestic — with the same level of commitment.

MARCH 4, 2019 | 5

var.st/news

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Sophie McGibbon-Gardner

Academics & Funding Commissioner, Divisions 3 & 4 By: Silas Le Blanc Sophie McGibbon-Gardner is a PhD student in physics seeking re-election as the Academics & Funding Commissioner for Divisions 3 and 4.

Her main goals if elected are to develop tools for lobbying, increase student engagement, and identify systemic issues facing UTGSU members.

“I think that the level of engagement of

Courtesy of LWANGA MUSISI

Lwanga Musisi

University Governance Commissioner By: Reut Cohen Lwanga Musisi is a second-year PhD candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He is running for University Governance Commissioner.

“Student leadership and policy are not foreign terrain to me,” wrote Musisi. He pointed to his experience in student caucuses and other forums for helping him develop the skills necessary for the position, including networking, lobbying, and negotiation.

PEARL CAO/THE VARSITY

Lynne Alexandrova

University Governance Commssioner By: Andy Takagi Lynne Alexandrova is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

She was the Internal Commissioner for the UTGSU until she was pushed out of office by the General Council in November. She is now running for University Governance Commissioner.

the [UTGSU] for many reasons is pretty low.

There’s not a lot of listening to each other on both sides,” said McGibbon-Gardner. “We can only continue to ask graduate students to come and engage with us so much. We have to switch it up. You have to start going to them.”

McGibbon-Gardner added that she wants to identify systemic issues and fix them before they happen. “If there are funding issues or toxic supervisory relationships that are occurring in a certain area or across the board across the University of Toronto, it would be better to identify structurally what’s going on there, why is this occurring repeatedly, and how can we address the root cause of that issue as opposed to continuously trying to help and deal with it after the fact. How do we stop these issues from happening in the first place?”

When asked why she is running for reelection, McGibbon-Gardner pointed to how she believes it is a “fairly universal feeling among graduate students to feel frustrated with not having access to the funding and academic resources,” adding that she feels less frustrated when she can work to help other graduate students in this situation.

“I feel very strongly that having a cohesive voice for graduate students is important and I want to be involved in that again.”

When asked why he is running for a position on the UTGSU Executive Committee, Musisi wrote, “I strongly believe that every great institution requires a selfless individual with the qualities, principles, ability and dedication to successfully move things for the benefit of the larger graduate student body without the expectations of immediate selfgratification.”

Musisi applauded the UTGSU for keeping its membership updated on key issues, including lobbying of the provincial and federal governments and scholarship opportunities. He believes some areas that require further development are funding opportunities for conferences and research, discussions of mental health services and accessibility, and increasing governance transparency to members.

Musisi would seek to lobby the university on issues including secure funding, mental health services, better integration of international graduate students into the U of T community, and affordable graduate student accomodations.

When asked whether he plans to lobby the Ford government in response to the recent changes in postsecondary educational funding, Musisi answered, “The student body at large has ideas on how this could be effected. So first and foremost, I will consult the student body for ideas of the best way to go about it.”

Alexandrova, in a statement to The Varsity, wrote that her motivation to run for an executive position on the UTGSU again is the recently announced changes to postsecondary education funding by the provincial government, which Alexandrova believes will require “serious negotiations” with the university and coordination with other students across Ontario.

Addressing her history with previous UTGSU executives, several of whom are running for re-election, Alexandrova wrote that there was “implicit mistrust” and “progressively escalating misunderstanding and estrangement.”

She hopes to continue some of the work she had started as Internal Commissioner, “depending on the composition of the new executive.”

Alexandrova also hopes to address funding issues and the lack of Indigenous studies programs at the graduate level, as well as provide mentorship opportunities, among other things.

To achieve her goals, Alexandrova wrote in her candidate statement that she will “stretch the current limits of procedure and existing formats of student participation,” expressing a hope to make UTGSU services worthwhile to students.

PEARL CAO/THE VARSITY

Maryssa Barras

External Commissioner By: Ann Marie Elpa Maryssa Barras is a master’s student in archaeology running for External Commissioner.

Barras is also the incumbent UTGSU Executive-at-Large and recently took on the duties of Internal Commissioner late last year after the office was vacated by the General Council.

Much of Barras’ platform for External Commissioner centres around forging relationships between student levy groups amid the Ford government’s sweeping changes to postsecondary education funding.

“I think that currently, given the political climate and what’s going on with the student services, the main campaign that I would be pushing forward would be to reverse or stop the Ford cuts,” said Barras. She also wants to advocate for mental health initiatives by addressing factors that affect students’ mental health, such as finances.

On the topic of tuition reduction, On-

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Adam Hill

Internal Commissioner By: Ilya Bañares Adam Hill is a second-year PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) specializing in Curriculum & Pedagogy. He is running for Internal Commissioner.

Hill is currently an OISE course union representative on the UTGSU’s General Council.

“In my first two years as a member and representative in the Union, I have witnessed two fraught Internal Commissioners’ tenures,” he wrote in a statement online. “I love the Union; I want to do everything within my capacity to do the most for the most people.”

tario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) cuts, and levy opt-outs, Barras said that such changes ultimately disadvantage marginalized groups on campus that would otherwise not be able to access postsecondary education.

“Under the [OSAP] scheme put out by the previous government, there was an increase across the board in students from minorities and underprivileged groups accessing funds.”

Barras also pointed to the exclusion of international students from the tuition cut.

“International students don’t have that 10 per cent cut so they’re likely to take on the financial burden.”

University officials have told The Varsity that they are not planning to increase international student tuition more than previously decided for the coming academic year.

When asked about the UTGSU’s relationship with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), Barras acknowledged that while other students may have antagonistic feelings toward the CFS as a whole, the UTGSU ultimately pays to use CFS resources.

The CFS is a national organization representing student unions across Canada. In 2016, the UTGSU lost a lawsuit against the CFS after the former attempted to hold a referendum to defederate. Full-time graduate students currently pay $8.37 per session and part-time students pay $4.19 per session to the CFS. “I understand that the University Toronto’s Graduate Students’ Union is not a pro-CFS environment… But I also recognize that we pay them money to have access to the resources,” Barras said.

“So long as we are part of the CFS, we should utilize the resources that they give us access to because otherwise it’s just money down the drain.”

Hill previously served on the Society of Graduate Students and the Education Students’ Council of Western University.

He is campaigning on a platform of developing a conflict of interest policy consistent with the Ontario Corporations Act (OCA), under which the UTGSU is incorporated.

“After reviewing all of our current Bylaws and Policies, I found that our Union’s vision of conflict of interest lacks clarity and precision,” he wrote on his campaign platform.

“No Conflict of Interest policy will ever be comprehensive and exhaustive enough, but we can do a lot more than what’s currently on our books.”

In his interview with The Varsity, Hill called a more robust conflict of interest policy “extremely valuable” due to “the complicated network of interests within a student society.”

Hill is also advocating for incorporating the UTGSU under the Canadian Not-forprofit Corporations Act instead of the OCA because “it gives us a bit more… flexibility and stability,” given “what’s happening with the Ford government right now, [the OCA is] not exactly reliable… or consistent.”

Hill is referring to the recent changes to postsecondary education funding that are affecting the Ontario Student Assistance Program, tuition, and student fee opt-outs. These changes could potentially lead to drastic cuts to the UTGSU’s funding.

Disclaimer: Gurdeep Singh, candidate for Academics & Funding Commissioner, Divisions 3 & 4; Sevgi Arslan, candidate for Internal Commissioner; and Leonardo José Uribe Castano, candidate running for re-election for Civics & Environment Commissioner did not reply to requests for comment. Christopher Ball, running for re-election for Academics & Funding Commissioner, Divisions 1 & 2, declined to comment.

Lynne Alexandrova, candidate for Internal Commissioner; Maryssa Barras, candidate for External Commissioner; and Norin Taj, candidate for Academics & Funding Commissioner, Divisions 1 & 2 did not respond to requests for a photo.

Business

March 4, 2019 var.st/business biz@thevarsity.ca

U of T’s 2019–2020 budget $88 million short of projections Facing revenue decreases due to tuition cuts, university readjusts five-year budget Michael Teoh Business Editor

Three days after U of T welcomed students back from the winter holidays, Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr presented her assessor’s report to Governing Council’s Planning and Budget Committee (PBC). Within her 17-odd minute report, Regehr cited an excerpt of the provincial government’s ominous 2018 Ontario Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review: “The fiscal hole is deep. The road ahead is not an easy one, and it will require difficult decisions. Everyone in Ontario will be required to make sacrifices, without exception.”

This was the extent of the information available to the university at the time, and Regehr would proceed to speculate on the ramifications of the then-unknown — yet still expected — string of provincial government changes to postsecondary education finances.

In response to a question from a committee member, Regehr cited the 2008 financial crisis as an example of how the university had responded to large-scale revenue losses in the past. During that period, the university lost $62 million — $73 million today when accounting for inflation. Could the government’s changes really be as impactful on the university as a global financial crisis?

With uncertainty in the air, Regehr summarized what the committee needed to know: “We anticipate that this will be difficult for us and we still need to find out how difficult.”

A week afterward, the provincial government announced its sweeping changes, including a 10 per cent cut to domestic tuition, Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) reforms, and the option for students to opt out of “non-essential” incidental fees.

U of T’s recently released budget and longrange budget guideline proposals highlight the effects of these changes: a $65 million reduction compared to this year, and an $88 million reduction in revenue from original 2019–2020 projections.

The budget is an annual report that determines how operating revenue and expenditure is broadly managed across the university, while the accompanying long-range budget guidelines are the university’s projections for each of the next five academic years. The budget is balanced, meaning that revenue and expenditures are equal.

By the time the PBC convened again on February 27 to discuss and recommend the proposed 2019–2020 budget, much had changed.

Tuition

With the tuition changes taken into account, the university’s budgeted 2019–2020 operating revenue is $2.77 billion, approximately 3.5 per cent more than this year’s $2.68 billion operating revenue, but 1.7 per cent less than the previously projected $2.81 billion.

Tuition and student fees constitute 62.7 per cent, or over $1.7 billion, of the budgeted revenue.

While the provincial government noted that everyone was required “to make sacrifices,” the university’s divisions are facing vastly different levels of sacrifice due to government changes. According to Vice-President Operations Scott Mabury, some divisions are facing a nine per cent decrease in operating revenues, while other divisions will see an 18 per cent increase. Divisions facing greater decreases to tuition revenue are, as expected, ones that are predominantly populated by domestic students. The second entry programs of medicine and dentistry, for example, will be more significantly impacted by the tuition cuts, as 98.7 and 99.3 per cent of their respective undergraduate students this year pay domestic tuition rates.

According to the budget, academic divisions’ management of revenue losses will include “some combination of changes to faculty and staff hiring plans, deferral of capital projects, service reductions, and operating cost efficiencies.” The university will also allocate portions of its University Fund to support divisions most affected by the changes.

Ten per cent of each division’s revenues are allocated to the fund, which then redistributes resources based on need. For example, in 2019–2020, the Arts & Science division will see an approximate net loss of $12.9 million from the fund, while the Dentistry division will receive approximately net $9.5 million.

While domestic tuition in 2020–2021 will be frozen at 2019–2020 levels, the long-range budget plan assumes a return to the three per cent year-on-year domestic tuition increase cap after this period.

Residence costs do not fall under the university’s tuition group and are instead considered cost-recovery ancillary fees, meaning that they are unaffected by the government’s changes.

TROY LAWRENCE/THE VARSITY

Operating grants

The bulk of U of T’s remaining revenue comes from provincial operating grants, which will constitute 24.1 per cent of the overall 2019– 2020 revenue. The provincial government has indicated that there will be no cuts to operating grants, although it has not formally committed to this position. The university’s core operating grant is $578.2 million per year.

It also receives a graduate expansion grant, which is expected to increase from $11 million to $14.3 million in 2019–2020. Operating grant revenue is expected to rise by more than $10 million over five years, although the province has yet to approve these plans. The timeline for approval is unclear.

U of T’s dependence on operating grants has decreased over the years. When the current budget model was established in 2006– 2007, 45 per cent of the operating revenue came from operating grants. The university estimates that this will continue to decrease to 21 per cent of its operating revenue in 2023–2024. Mabury said that this is “almost perfectly matched” by the increased dependence on international student tuition, from seven per cent in 2006–2007 to 34 per cent in 2019–2020 and 38 per cent in 2023–2024.

As part of its existing Strategic Mandate Agreement (SMA) with the previous Liberal provincial government, the university must decrease domestic undergraduate seats by 1,800 students through 2020. Due to the terms of the SMA, the core operating grant is not expected to decrease despite decreases to domestic enrolment.

Expenditures

Fifty-nine per cent of the university’s 2019– 2020 expenditures are set to cover academic faculty and staff compensation. This equates to $1.6 billion, of which $905 million goes to academic compensation and $720 million to staff compensation. Academic compensation refers to faculty, instructors, librarians, and teaching assistants, while staff compensation goes to administrative staff. U of T is planning to hire 51 additional faculty next year, although the budget notes that some of these hires may be delayed due to the revenue loss.

Overall student aid expenditure in 2019– 2020 is set to $247.1 million, compared to the planned $233.6 million, which is also up from this year’s $224 million expenditure. The bulk of this increase comes from academic divisions, which have increased student aid expenditure to $119.2 million, $19.4 million more than originally planned. Due to the government easing domestic tuition costs, demand for the university’s program for needs-based aid to OSAP-eligible undergraduate students, the University of Toronto Advance Planning for Students, is set to decrease. U of T has accordingly decreased its funding to $39.9 million, a $6.9 million cut from its original 2019–2020 plans.

The Budget Report 2019-20 and Long Range Budget Guidelines 2019-20 to 202324 were unanimously recommended by the PBC on February 27. The budget still needs to be recommended by the Academic Board, Business Board, and Executive Committee before Governing Council votes to approve it on April 4.

Comment

March 4, 2019 var.st/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

With Ford’s postsecondary changes, UTM loses too Student Choice Initiative and domestic tuition cut threaten to undermine student life, exploit international students Sharmeen Abedi UTM Affairs Columnist

The new five-day nomination period is yet another barrier for student candidates.

ADAM A LAM/THE VARSITY

Hey UTSU, let’s abolish the nomination period

As we head into elections, the process should be more accessible for students Sam Routley UTSG Campus Politics Columnist

We are about to begin elections for next year’s University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU).

The ban on slates at last October’s Annual General Meeting has made this year’s electoral period uniquely unpredictable, because slates have long been the main form of organization among candidates and successful candidates are usually aligned with one.

This sense of instability prompted an emergency meeting among UTSU members regarding the details of the elections. Above all was the concern that the nomination period — cut from 10 to five days — was insufficient for candidates to gather the necessary signatures. Joshua Bowman, the UTSU’s Social Sciences Director, proposed a motion to start the period one week earlier but was defeated in a close 6–5 vote. To Bowman, this extended period would have made the process more accessible.

The UTSU’s list of candidates is determined by the nomination period. During this time, director candidates must collect at least 25 signatures from their constituency and executive candidates must collect 100 signatures from UTSU members.

The decision to cut the time was done in an attempt to include a levy group’s requested referendum on the final election ballots. This required the submission of a petition to the UTSU’s Elections and Referenda Committee three weeks prior to the nomination period. Had the nomination run for the full 10 days, the levy group could not have fulfilled this criteria.

Yet the centre of this debate was not so much the question of practicality, but ideas about what the nomination period is supposed to be. In introducing his motion, Bowman argued that the time allotted challenged the accessibility of the electoral process, making it more difficult for students who are not considered UTSU ‘insiders’ to run. Those particularly impacted include commuters and students affected by midterm season. As it is scheduled to run through the second week of March, the nomination period will overlap with written tests, essay assignments, and necessary study time.

Proponents of the five-day nomination period contended that Bowman's argument was a nonstarter. According to Vice-President Operations Tyler Biswurm, the nomination period “is not really supposed to let everyone in” and acts as a screening process. The implication here is that the students who truly want and ought to be elected

will put in the legwork to get the necessary signatures. Advocates of the five-day period argue that for those motivated students, five days will be more than enough time to secure a nomination.

This latter view is ultimately the more problematic one. Conceiving of the nomination period as a screening process seems arbitrary, since the actual vote on election day is already an all-encompassing process. This is already an effective measure that ensures that only one individual — ideally, the most qualified one — makes it through.

In this regard, Bowman and his cohort are correct in pointing out the problems with a shortened nomination period. However, the main problem with the nomination period is not its length — it is that it is altogether unnecessary and serves no purpose. The limits that it puts on student accessibility have no legitimacy. There is no give-andtake, no benefits that make up for its adverse effects.

Instead, it is a barrier to a process that is already challenging. In order to run for office, a student must put aside valuable time from assignments and studying in order to properly campaign and gain support for their candidacy. This is not to mention the fact that running for a position can even interfere with class time or work schedules.

This is an inherent and unavoidable part of candidacy, and it seems unnecessary that candidates should also worry about getting enough signatures in a given period.

The UTSU should try to make the election process more accessible and less disruptive to the demands of student life, including academic pressures, work, and commute times.

That being said, the UTSU’s policy to provide financial compensation for individuals campaigning and who have demonstrable need is a step in the right direction. As a result, students cannot be barred from running due to insufficient finances.

The policy has helped to ensure that students do not need to compromise their finances to put up a successful campaign, making the process more accessible. Nevertheless, it is necessary to make the same accommodations for time and its respective resources.

The nomination period ought to be abolished.

It is an arbitrary hurdle that candidates must overcome in addition to the time, and potentially grades, that they sacrifice throughout the elections process. If the UTSU is truly dedicated to making its electoral process the most accessible it can be, then this is the next step.

Sam Routley is a fourth-year Political Science, Philosophy, and History student. He is The Varsity’s UTSG Campus Politics Columnist.

Earlier this year, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government announced the controversial Student Choice Initiative (SCI), which will give students the option to opt out of incidental, “nonessential” fees. These may include fees that go toward student unions, clubs and societies, and campus newspapers. While the Ford government highlights the importance of providing students with choice, this policy puts many student services into jeopardy — including here at UTM. Unfortunately, students may underestimate the importance of student unions, such as the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU). The UTMSU provides services and a single voice for UTM students in fighting for their interests independently from the university. The prospect of reduced fees means that the union may not be able to effectively function and advocate for change.

UTM students should remember that it is through UTMSU advocacy that they enjoy many important and popular services. For example, the U-Pass is a necessity for many students to affordably commute. Such a privilege does not come out of thin air — it is the outcome of a strong willingness from the UTMSU to fight for its students.

While the government has assured that existing transit passes will not be affected by the SCI, plans for improved passes in the future — such as a GTA-wide pass, which the UTMSU is looking into — will likely be out of reach.

The university administration does not always see student interests as a top priority, but the union exists to ensure that students are heard. The most recent example of this is the Course Retake Policy, which has given students the option of retaking a course and having only the second grade included in their GPA. According to the UTMSU, it had been pushing the policy for seven years. Clearly, getting the university to accommodate administrative changes is not an easy feat to accomplish.

The UTMSU has also been dedicated to tackling food issues on campus. Free Breakfast Wednesdays, which are intended to help fight food insecurity on campus, have been a regular occurrence for the past two years. Similarly, the Food Centre, which provides non-perishable items to students free of charge, is another important studentdriven measure that is funded by a $0.50 levy. In 2015, The Medium reported that the centre’s usage had increased drastically from the previous year.

The UTMSU has also declared its struggle against rising food prices on campus. Since Chartwells has a monopoly over campus food, it is arduous to pursue price reductions.

The UTMSU may be committed to this fight; however, it is of no avail if its own survival is in peril.

The UTMSU also supplies a huge amount of funding for clubs and student societies, which offer students the opportunity to meet like-minded people, form a sense of

community and belonging, and engage in activities of interest. That is what I have gained from my involvement with the Sociology and Criminology Society. The SCI puts club funding in serious jeopardy.

Limiting student clubs takes away many opportunities for campus experience outside the classroom.

The SCI also threatens the student media.

Student media crucially hold the university and student governments accountable, keep students informed about campus issues, and provide a platform for free and diverse expression. Campus media also endow students with invaluable journalism experience. I have spoken to UTM alumni who have cited their experiences at The Medium as one of the highlights of their university careers. I’ve been involved with both The Medium and The Varsity, and I find my experience with campus journalism irreplaceable.

Another aspect of Ford’s announced postsecondary changes is the 10 per cent domestic tuition cut. Though it appears to benefit students, it will not come with increased university funding. This means that university revenues will take a hit.

In response, UTM Principal Ulrich Krull has suggested over-enrolling international students next year as compensation. If implemented, UTM’s international student population will increase from 24 per cent to 25 per cent of the student body.

While this may not seem like a significant increase, there are several problems with this proposal. Krull has already said that the university has faced issues accommodating so many students. With the Davis and North buildings still under construction, there is limited classroom and study space. If UTM plans to increase the number of international students, it will have to increase its resources and space allocation as well — and there is no indication that they will do so.

Admitting more students can decrease the quality of the student experience. Since UTM previously announced decreasing the number of incoming students, this sudden announcement seems to be misguided and abrupt.

Over-enrolling international students is also not fair to international students. It seems that the administration is willing to exploit the fact that international tuition is unregulated and use international students as moneymakers.

International students already pay thrice the tuition fees of domestic students, yet they do not receive any special accommodations or specific resources to reflect this hefty amount. Instead, they are likely to face bigger obstacles in adjusting to a new environment with little support.

The Ford government’s approach to postsecondary funding is alarming. The SCI and tuition cut are ultimately against student life and affordability on campuses. UTM students must critically review and challenge these changes.

Sharmeen Abedi is a fourth-year Criminology, Sociology, and English student at UTM. She is The Varsity’s UTM Affairs Columnist.

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comment@thevarsity.ca

The dangers of cultural messaging

Reviewing a UTM study on Toronto children’s accent preference

The newsroom shouldn’t be an echo chamber The Varsity needs to emphasize diversity in its opinion pages

Morag McGreevey Public Editor

Even in a multicultural city like Toronto, people may still face discrimination for their accents or use of language.

SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY

Rehana Mushtaq Varsity Contributor

With a rich mosaic of languages and cultures in the city of Toronto, there is an expectation that children grow up unbiased to those who differ from themselves, most notably in their ability to make friends. However, as a recent study by researchers Elizabeth Johnson and Melissa Paquette-Smith in the Department of Psychology at UTM observed, children in Toronto “showed strong preferences for peers who spoke with the locally dominant accent, despite growing up in a linguistically diverse community.”

The study’s participants were asked, “Who would you rather be friends with?” and were given the choice between two children who were made “as indistinguishable from one another as possible; with their accent being the only major difference between them.” No further information was given on personality or background.

Biases play a pivotal role in the way we form social judgments. Studies such as this one have revealed that racial biases are more inherent in children early on in their development than previously thought, playing a fundamental role in their classroom and social settings. It suggests that it is impossible to erase social categorization and stereotypes from our social perceptions and interactions as they allow us to make sense of complex situations and relationships.

It is problematic when our reliance on these categories allows generalizations to become ingrained prejudice.

Discussions of discrimination typically centre on appearance as a signifier of racial or cultural differences, often ignoring the effects of accents and speech on everyday lived experiences. In January 2018, The Atlantic published an article titled, “Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?” Sociolinguist Calvin Gidney compared the differences in speech between Mufasa, who speaks with an American accent, and Scar, who speaks with a British one in The Lion King. Scar sounds “monstrous,” Gidney notes, in a way that could not sound as terrifying in another tone.

In children’s television shows such as Kim Possible and Phineas and Ferb, heroes also fight villains who carry foreign accents, such as Professor Dementor and Doofenshmirtz, who are continually ousted by the moral code and intellect of their apparently superior, ‘non-accented’ counterparts. Even without a particular focus on villainy, these foreign accents — which are really more of a convolution of various Eastern European ones — are shown as key features of those lacking the cunning to succeed, and more blatantly, of those with crass demure and goals.

Adult shows also carry these overused stereotypes, extending beyond villains and into

the lovable immigrant goofs, who are stupid, lecherous, cheap, and highly one-dimensional.

Think Fez from That ’70s Show, or Apu from The Simpsons. These formulations of character have created an ingrained set of affective responses to particular accents, none of which are positive.

This is not a new convention in cinema, television, or literature. Foreign accents are and have long been associated with particular character traits, most clearly demonstrated in children’s media. These depictions reinforce a particular kind of ‘cultural messaging’ among children that affects the ways in which they engage with the idea of diversity, as well as how they function within a diverse community. These depictions of accents are often poor approximations of pronunciation and culture, blurring the lines between various ethnicities, but marking a distinct line between what is considered to be like ‘us’ and like ‘them.’ The less one assimilates to the ideal imperialist model of language and behaviour, the more one is subject to an otherness that conveys a certain deeply repulsive barbarism.

Research has shown that TV is a foundational medium for the acquisition of information on different ethnic groups, as well as the development of one’s own ethnic and racial identity. In addition, it affects perceptions of intelligence and education, based on characteristics of language and competency. Children who consume this content are more at risk of embodying negative perceptions in their own mode of living as they age and as they interact with one another on the playground.

While children are often perceived as being unconnected to what happens on a larger scale socially, ideas are already being ingrained into their senses of self and other that will greatly influence them as they grow older. It is worrisome that despite their exposure to a multitude of peoples, children in Toronto carry biases that have been even more deeply ingrained in them through the cultural messaging of products consumed in a very media-obsessed generation.

While schools are unable to filter what children are exposed to outside of the classroom, particularly on the internet, it is essential for educators to engage in thoughtful ways with these conventional but convoluted generalizations of different identities. This will ensure that children reflect on what they think, and why, in order to mobilize a thoughtful and socially conscious generation.

While it is impossible to totally erase social categorization and stereotypes from our social perceptions and interactions, for the sake of social and moral order, we cannot allow these generalizations to evolve into ingrained prejudices.

Rehana Mushtaq is a third-year English and Religion student at University College.

The Varsity occupies an important role at the University of Toronto because it satisfies two functions: it provides readers with information that they want to know, and it shares information that they ought to know. Sometimes, these objectives exist in tension with each other. Traditional news media, especially print media, is valuable because it emphasizes comprehensiveness.

In an era of Facebook algorithms that make it possible to exclusively encounter news that affirms a reader’s personal belief system, there is something refreshing about reading a newspaper from cover to cover. It allows readers to encounter a diversity of subjects, from arts and sciences to sports and business. It should also introduce readers to a variety of thoughtful and carefully articulated political viewpoints.

Indeed, this requirement is entrenched in The Varsity’s Code of Journalistic Ethics, which requires The Varsity to remain true to its readers by presenting news and opinion pieces accurately and fairly.

This includes providing a balanced and impartial presentation of all relevant facts or substantial opinions, striving to maintain an open dialogue with readers, and giving due consideration to all relevant points of view. This is the minimum standard for responsible and ethical journalism at The Varsity. Failure to meet this standard instigates a breakdown of trust between the newspaper and its readership.

Some readers believe that this trust has been breached. They see The Varsity’s Comment section, which is predominantly filled with left-leaning critiques and political viewpoints, as contradicting the newspaper’s institutional commitment to comprehensiveness, fairness, and accuracy. As one reader articulated, the demographic that publishes in The Varsity “is very much the social-justice left. This is not representative of the university as a whole, but is a product of the current political climate.” Comment Editor Ibnul Chowdhury attributes the Comment section’s political slant to the fact that most Varsity contributors have left-wing views.

The reader conceptualized The Varsity’s Comment section as a feedback loop in which conservative viewpoints are consistently marginalized. This occurs in two ways.

First, “there is a sense among nonleftists that having your name on an article that criticizes social jus-

tice rhetoric, even if it’s completely correct, will damage future employment opportunities.” According to the reader, issues like race and sexual assault have become so contentious that it’s impossible to challenge aspects of these debates without facing disproportionate public backlash. This deters people from contributing opinions that are not in line with popular intellectual, moral, or political consensus.

Second, the reader fears that The Varsity’s editorial process is more rigorous for pitches featuring controversial opinions than for those that align with the dominant political views of The Varsity’s readership.

Chowdhury rejected this assessment. He argued that “making this about ideology shields the real conversation, which is the quality and relevance of contributors’ pitches and arguments.” Any difficulties with accepting reader contributions may be attributable to argumentative issues surrounding the article rather than its underlying political viewpoint.

Nonetheless, the reader I spoke with views the current political climate alongside The Varsity’s editorial practices as a perfect storm that marginalizes unpopular, conservative, and controversial viewpoints.

According to the reader, potential contributors whose opinions do not align with The Varsity’s apparent politics begin to self-select out of contributing or are filtered out in the editorial process. In turn, readers who don’t agree with the Comment section’s left-leaning slant gradually stop engaging with The Varsity, since their points of view aren’t represented.

For its part, The Varsity makes a concerted effort to publish diverse political perspectives. During my conversation with Chowdhury, he expressed a sincere commitment to publishing fair, accurate, and comprehensive content within the Comment section. However, this is a task that requires all of us to work together. Readers of and contributors to The Varsity need to engage in a type of political discourse that values self-reflection, respectful criticism, and a willingness to learn from the community. The newsroom isn’t supposed to be an echo chamber; it is a space for diversity and debate.

Morag McGreevey is The Varsity’s Public Editor and can be reached at publiceditor@thevarsity.ca.

MARCH 4, 2019 | 9

var.st/comment

Op-ed: The SCSU’s refusal to ratify my election was illegal The VP Operations-elect calls on the union to reverse its decision and apologize

Op-ed: In support and solidarity with Chemi Lhamo SFT-UTSG reflects on anti-Tibetan harassment against the SCSU president-elect

SFT is a worldwide organization that advocates for human rights and freedom in Tibet.

Courtesy of STUDENTS FOR A FREE TIBET - UTSG

Dechen Tenzin Varsity Contributor

Alibux accuses the SCSU Board of Directors of malicious behaviour.

ANDY TAKAGI/THE VARSITY

Rayyan Alibux Varsity Contributor

As students, we are supposed to be able to trust our elected student unions to advocate for student issues, rights, and interests when no one else will.

But in the case of the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU), it is unfortunate that it has failed to fulfil the role it was elected to do.

Just like their predecessors, the Board of Directors this year has shown that the laws only apply where it sees fit. Having already dealt with an attempt by the SCSU to have me removed from last year’s election, I can attest firsthand that the SCSU attempts to intimidate students from challenging them. In this year’s election, I was elected

by UTSC students to serve as Vice-President Operations. But on February 26, the board chose to illegally refuse to ratify my election.

The basis for the refusal was my presence in a group chat in which I supposedly condoned another individual’s transphobic comments, even though my only comments were “Good God” followed by “I hope this chat is never leaked.” One individual publicly described me as a “good racist” on social media.

The blatant attempts to skew what was said and defame my character were aggravating enough.

But when another board member admitted to me in a private message that they were aware of the context behind the statement and understood that I was not to blame for someone else’s transphobic comments, and yet still chose not to communicate this context to the board in my defence — that is what has convinced me that this ratification process was one conducted with malice.

Ultimately, the board’s decision was made with incorrect interpretations of SCSU bylaws. There is no way that our student union is so ignorant that it is not aware of the laws, especially when it is its job to understand them. Its decision was made on the basis that candidates cannot be deemed elected until they have been ratified by the board. However, as per the Elections Procedure Code itself, there are only two circumstances in which the board can refuse ratification.

The first is if the board refuses to accept the entire report by the Chief Returning Officer (CRO), on the grounds that the election was deemed to be conducted illegally, for instance, through vote manipulation, tampering, or demerits. The second is if a recommendation to refuse ratification is made by the Elections Appeals Committee, which may only make a judgment based on the violations ruled on by the CRO.

Having approved the CRO’s report, the board has formally provided its consent that its findings were legitimate, and that there was no tampering within the election, eliminating its grounds for the first circumstance. The CRO found no evidence of violations by me, as per his report, and since there were no appeals, the Elections Appeals Committee could not advise the board to refuse my ratification, eliminating the grounds for the second circumstance.

What this means is that the board either does not know its own bylaws or is willingly breaking them. But it does not end there. In addition to breaking its own bylaws, the board has incidentally broken provincial law too. As a corporation, it must follow the Ontario Corporations Act (OCA).

Consider Section 127.1(2), which states that directors and officers of corporations subject to the OCA, like the SCSU, must act in accordance with the bylaws of their corporation and the OCA. As per the Elections Procedure Code, officers are elected by a plurality of votes and the voting members — the students — are the ones who cast the ballot. This does not grant the SCSU the authority to dismiss the results of the ballot without recommendation from the Elections Appeals Committee. The SCSU’s lack of due process for intervening within a democratic election is a clear violation of the law.

Also consider Section 127.1(1), which confirms that the SCSU board must act in good faith. Failure to ratify the democratically elected VP Operations on illegitimate grounds, refusal to allow candidates to make their case to the board, defamation of candidates, and disregard for its own bylaws does not demonstrate the diligence, prudence, and care that is required from our representatives on the board.

In sum, the SCSU has broken multiple laws — both its own and those of the province. I am offering the SCSU the opportunity to own up to its own mistake. Ratify me as is legally obligated and, on behalf of the students, admit that you messed up and do the unthinkable: apologize.

Indeed, all SCSU board members at the ratification should publicly apologize for trying to subvert the law behind false pretenses, for defaming me and my colleagues, and apologize to the students for continuing the SCSU tradition of breaking the little trust we have toward our union.

Rayyan Alibux is a third-year Political Science and Business Economics student at UTSC. He was elected SCSU Vice-President Operations but his election was not ratified by the Board of Directors.

If you’re a student at U of T, you know that toward the middle of every winter semester comes an exciting election period in which student leaders promise change on campus for the better. This election cycle was especially of interest for me due to the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) presidential candidacy and successful election of Chemi Lhamo — a fellow Tibetan and student activist.

This year, however, the SCSU elections became a national headline that drew much-needed attention to how global forces can threaten campus life.

What should have been a celebratory occasion for Lhamo’s Shine Bright UTSC slate and the larger student community was instead overshadowed by a harassment campaign by a large group of international Chinese students.

The students involved left thousands of hateful online comments against Lhamo, and individually attacked her identity as an exiled Tibetan. They even went as far as starting a petition against her presidency on change.org. In light of what she has had to endure, we, the Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) chapter members at UTSG, UTM, Ryerson University, and York University, declare our support for and solidarity with Lhamo as both our fellow Tibetan and as the SCSU president-elect.

As a Canadian with a deep connection to and understanding of her Tibetan identity, Lhamo’s rise to a position of leadership and power seems to be an irritant for China. This is likely because her advocacy for human rights and Tibetan independence challenges the Chinese government and its harsh policies toward Tibetans and other oppressed peoples under their rule.

China’s forceful occupation of Tibet is nearly six decades old now. Despite its iron-fisted clamp down against the Tibetan people’s freedom, resistance to China has continued to grow from within Tibet as well as in the diaspora. Outside Tibet, the rise of younger generations of Tibetans in exile who are strongly committed to the politics of their identity demonstrates that the Chinese government has not succeeded in its oppression.

This is especially the case for SFT, which has been at the forefront of advocating for human rights and freedom in Tibet for over 20 years. Our organization serves as an amplifier for Tibetan voices that are banned back home. We have branches all over the world, including one based here in Toronto and a student-led chapter at UTSG. Unfortunately, the harassment and slander directed at Lhamo is not surprising for us at SFTUTSG. Our members have been a constant target of ire from certain sections of the international Chinese student community at our events on campus. It is not uncommon for Chinese students to show up at our tables to mock, question, and demean our displays and our objective of spreading awareness about the ongoing Tibetan struggle.

An example of this is Dr. Lobsang Sangay’s visit to UTSG last November. Sangay is the President

of the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibet’s government-in-exile based in India. SFT-UTSG and three other SFT chapters, led by Lhamo as the main coordinator, organized a Hart House talk entitled “Party-less and Global — A Case of Tibetan Democracy in Exile.”

At this event too, a number of international Chinese students showed up to protest. Clearly, protest groups such as these are well-coordinated, but their participants seem to be relatively unaware of the issues at hand — few of the comments made against Lhamo, for instance, had anything to do with her platform.

Such well-planned attempts to divert and disrupt Tibetan-focused events forces one to ask: who is behind it all? It would not be entirely surprising if the international Chinese students campaigning against Lhamo were receiving direct support from the Chinese government. It would not be the first time that questions over the Chinese government’s interference through student groups have surfaced.

The university is committed to the principles of academic freedom and the right to freedom of speech, as well as to equity and justice. Accordingly, students have a right to express their disagreement and opposition to their elected representatives, but they also have a right to express their identity without fear of retribution.

The attitude of some international Chinese students toward Tibetan identity exceeds the reasonable limit for free speech and should be regarded as hate speech. We need to be able to speak up against such organized campaigns that target people on the basis of national and ethnic identities.

Canada is known as a country that places high value on and has respect for human rights, including freedom of expression. It is incumbent upon us to be aware of infiltrating forces seeking to destroy our very culture of respect for human rights. U of T can play a huge role in ensuring that Canadian values are upheld. The administration should investigate the possibility of external Chinese influence in a campaign of online vitriol against Lhamo.

March 10 will mark the 60th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising that took place in Lhasa, Tibet. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army crushed the uprising, which triggered the flight of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans into exile. It has also been more than 10 years since mass uprisings took place across Tibet and other regions in response to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Tibetans around the world continue to remember the spirit of Tibetan National Uprising Day, to actively resist the forceful occupation of Tibet, and to seek the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet. We call on the U of T community to join SFT-UTSG and the Tibetan diaspora in Toronto in a collective march on March 10, as we pursue justice, human rights, and a free Tibet.

Dechen Tenzin is a fourth-year International Relations and Political Science student at Woodsworth College. She is a member of SFT Canada and President of the SFT-UTSG.

10 | THE VARSITY | FEATURES

The dissolution o

Divorce, family, and sh

Writer: P Visuals: Courtesy of the AR

Divorce through time My parents split up in 2011. My mother packed her bags and moved my brother and I about 10,000 kilometres away to a new country. In my middle school eyes, this looked nothing like a divorce or even a separation, because their motivation was us: to put us kids in a different education system. They kept emphasizing that nothing was “not working” and that everything was fine. This had nothing to do with them.

Seven years later, my mother revealed to me that even before 2011, my brother and I were the glue that kept the family together — legally, if not geographically. Over breakfast, she once shrugged as she said, “There really is no other reason for us to stay together.” A shrug for decades of marriage. Two people stuck in limbo, “just ’cause.” I couldn’t stop thinking childishly, “I thought this was about love?”

What about love?

Over 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, marriage was a means of keeping power within the family. These strategic partnerships based on the production of heirs are the first recorded evidence of marriage contracts.

For centuries to come, the idea of romance existed strictly outside of these business affairs as marriage was too serious to be influenced by the vulnerability and fragility of emotion.

Around the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the concepts of romance and marriage began to be seen as compatible. The growth of the middle class in the nineteenth century offered greater autonomy and financial means for individuals to make their own decisions about what marriage would represent in their lives. In turn, this also gave divorce the impetus it needed to nearly double within a decade.

From 1971–1975 alone, divorce rates increased by a whopping 90 per cent in Canada. While this was happening, marriage rates were declining. The latter half of the twentieth century was characterized by drastic changes to the entire culture of marriage. As a consequence of the social and economic developments of industrialization, parents, economic conditions, and patriarchal expectations started to release their grip on the unmarried. Instead of social obligations and financial demands, subjective happiness became a central factor in marriage, following what was dubbed the “soulmate model.” Institutional marriage was becoming outdated and replaced by companionate marriage at an alarming rate.

Historically, companionate marriage has been met with a slew of criticisms and has even found itself

The impact of divorce on children at different ages

under the spotlight of social policy.

A primary concern has been the individualistic nature of companionate marriage, perceived as the abandonment of building traditional, cohesive family units. The social order was being challenged.

In valuing sexual and emotional compatibility over kinship, childbearing, and property relations, companionate marriages do appear to result in higher divorce rates than traditional marriages that are established on stricter familial obligations. Advocates of this evolution offer an alternate view, saying that this is making room for self-development and second chances. The practice of divorce itself is being destigmatized, and

we’re becoming less afraid of leaving marriages that simply aren’t working for us.

While these offer new pathways for us in love and give us more room to navigate the roles of dating, relationships, and marriage in our lives, prior to that, we are subject to our parents’ experiences. What if right now you’re not in your twenties or thirties looking to settle down, but are instead a 10-year-old hearing your parents argue in the next room, or a high school kid realizing for the first time that they might not be as in love as you always thought they were? What happens to you when it’s your turn?

U of T student Afeq Aiman revealed that his parents’ divorce drastically impacted his promises to his future self.

“I’m not going to make my family in the future go through that. I want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone I know.” He agrees that his ideas of family-building are tied to his experiences, watching his parents go through divorce and witnessing the aftermath for all parties.

About half of all divorces will involve children who will witness firsthand the individual economic and social struggle of each parent to survive. Having chosen to stay with their mother while his brother went to live with their father, Aiman watched closely how his mother managed the difficulties that followed in the coming years.

“I think she’s still suffering, she’s not that stable right now. I want to do my best to help her out sooner or later,” he explains. He looks forward to graduating and getting a job to offer her more financial support.

The divorce had different effects on him and his brother, who is eight years older. “Because you’re older, you understand more of the whole thing,” he says about the heightened sensitivity observed in his brother. While Aiman was eight, his brother was in high school. “He was a teenager, his education suffered the most impact… it was harder for him to go to a bigger university especially with the timing and money and all.” He reflected that being the older sibling subjected his brother to more of what was happening.

Studies have shown that young adults tend to assume greater responsibility to care for their parents throughout the turmoil of a divorce or separation. Furthermore, in being forced into the middle of a loyalty conflict, they can internalize guilt that weighs them down. Parents often hold on to children, who may have initially planned to move, in subtle ways as a means of finding a replacement for a lost figure in their home life. As a result, grown children can be unprotected from the nasty edges of divorce and be left to deal with their unique experience of dissolution of the family alone.

Being younger in such situations can be advantageous as children will have little memory of the divorce process.

However, children need a consistent familial environment to offer the necessary stability for optimal development, which can be challenging to maintain during times of divorce. Being young doesn’t mean you don’t know what’s happening, but it does mean you’re faced with a greater challenge of articulating your concerns when witnessing clear parental distress. Some have

features@thevarsity.ca

of the holy family

hifting understandings

Paige Chu RT GALLERY OF ONTARIO

cited this as the cause for deep-seated anxiety that presents itself in children in divorce in their later years.

When asked about what else he remembers of his parents’ marriage prior to the split, Aiman mentions vague memories of loud arguments and knowing that his parents never saw eye to eye, but one particular instance stuck out to him. “I was eight — I think seven or eight — and my parents were fighting in this room and I think I heard my mom throw a vase or something.” He tells me that he spent the rest of the night crying in the room next door while his brother comforted him. The memory is vivid, and in the years leading up to the divorce, Aiman says that he continued to watch the temper in his family members cause fights that led to more screaming and breaking furniture.

In his current relationships, Aiman considers himself even-tempered and tends to avoid expressing his anger.

“My current girlfriend of five years, every time she gets into a fight, she gets really angry really fast,” he says. As for him, “I’ve never gotten angry at her, not even once. I’ve gotten annoyed, but not angry.” Aiman says that watching the divorce unfold has contributed directly to his tendency to avoid arguments and confrontation that could escalate.

Though only eight years old at the time and completely oblivious to the split until he was sat down for a conversation, Aiman admits to seeing some lasting effects on his personality.

“I think the divorce had the most impact on arguments and confrontations and how I try to have a conversation instead. It’s taught me a few things.”

Aiman says that although he doesn’t necessarily want to reverse his parents’ decision as he remembers so little of it, he does confess that “the hardest part to go through was never having a sense of family. I just never had that.”

He recounts a time when he went to a friend’s family dinner and had the sudden realization of what he’d been missing. “It’s just that I had it and then I lost it, and sometimes you don’t realize you’ve lost it until you see it again with someone else. So I think that was a hard part, I never had a big family for a long time.”

As he grows older, he’s more able to compare his upbringing with that of his peers. Some realizations he has made have changed the way he views how he was brought up. If he were to ever have to go through a divorce of his own, Aiman says that he would immediately feel like he was “going back on [his] own word.” Evaluating how his home life had shifted so much without him realizing led to a dedication to commit to marriage, he says. “I promised myself something big.”

The deinstitutionalization of marriage: how to find your own ideas of love I was 18 when my mom revealed her marital indifference to me. Innocent as I was, I was completely appalled. Realistically, none of this should have come as a surprise as I had gone all 18 years of my life not witnessing a single hug shared, hand held, or affectionate word spoken.

For some unknown reason other than an unexplainable strength of naïveté, I had never once considered that my parents were disinterested in one another.

My parents’ relationship had evolved into a simple partnership built on coraising two kids without my knowing, and it built the four walls within which

my conceptions of marriage had been insulated. I held on to the belief that love was the basis for marriage, and by that logic, if my parents weren’t divorced, they had to have been in love. This is what it looked like to be married. This is what 30 years together looked like. I might’ve even believed for 18 years that this was what it looked like to be happily married.

With their marriage’s mortality revealed, being 18 suddenly became so much harder. I was moving away for college and slowly becoming financially independent. Their reason for partnership was nearing an end, and our home life was suddenly suspended in mid-air. It begged the question of whether the problem belonged to me and my brother, as it constantly felt like the onus had some-

how been placed on us to always lend a fraction of our lives to keeping the four of us bound as a family unit. I felt so responsible for something that dismantled my entire childhood.

I don’t blame my parents for wanting to protect us from ‘failure,’ but as I attempted to forge romantic relationships of my own, I realized that their ‘protection’ resulted in a personal battle of building ideas of love that existed independently from this experience. It put my own views of intimacy in flux and left me with polarized approaches to dating. On the one hand, I would experience phases of desperately wanting to escape the limits that this experience seemed to have placed on me. On the other, I couldn’t convince myself that people knew how to stay in love and instead adopted the idea that time gave way to inevitable deterioration.

In the year that I have lived with this tension, I have simply wanted to know this: how do you learn to love in a completely unaffected way? How do you learn to love in a way that is your own?

In the bigger picture of society, I am not alone in my ever-changing conceptions of intimacy. It seems that every decade we’re learning new ways of how people choose to come together and fall apart.

When divorce rates skyrocketed in the ’60s, moving from the margins of society to the mainstream, we were changing our minds about what we owed to each other as members of a family unit and as members of society. We were becoming more aware of our responsibilities to ourselves and our moral obligation to self-fulfilment. We can still feel this ethical shift in 2019 as we constantly remake our ideas about the nature and purpose of family.

As the serial killers of industries ranging from soap to motorcycles, millennials are also blamed for putting marriage on the chopping block. Noted as one of the most recent and key moments in relationship building, we are entering the age of non-marital cohabitation, and with fewer marriages come fewer divorces.

Throughout history, love has taken on various shapes and forms. From love and marriage being mutually exclusive to the former being made the very bedrock of the latter, relationships have faced criticism, embrace, and fear. The impacts of family breakdown — however it may happen — are undeniable and can cause retrospective confusion and questions about the foundations of a family. But I’d like to think that prospectively, we have a lot more choice. Prospectively, some of us may vow to never argue, to never divorce, or to never marry in the first place.

If marriage can make its way from being a tool for establishing diplomatic and trade ties to fulfilling emotional needs and intimacy, then prospectively, love is what we make of it.

Arts & Culture

March 4, 2019 var.st/arts arts@thevarsity.ca

Broken Social Scene formed in 1999 and has had as many as 19 members and has five studio albums.

RYANKINDELAN/CC WIKIMEDIA

This interview is broken In conversation with Broken Social Scene’s Justin Peroff and Sam Goldberg Jr. Edgar Vargas Varsity Contributor

The Varsity recently had the opportunity to sit down with two members of the Juno awardwinning Toronto supergroup Broken Social Scene — Justin Peroff and Sam Goldberg Jr. — right before they embarked on their latest tour in support of their February 15 EP, Let’s Try The After (Vol. 1).

Peroff has been a member of Broken Social Scene since their 2001 debut album, working predominantly as the group’s lead drummer.

Sam Goldberg Jr. joined the band a guitarist in 2007 and has remained a permanent fixture in the group ever since. Their last album was Hug of Thunder, released in 2017 after a seven-year hiatus.

The Varsity: How have the last few months been since you got off the Hug of Thunder tour?

Justin Peroff: Sammy and I were actually just in the studio yesterday with a songwriter called Kelly Healey. Sammy and Brendan [Canning] started writing… and fleshed out some tunes and brought me in on the project. And then we finally tracked drums on four tracks. So that’s nice. I think it’s important to keep creating during the time that you’re not creating with your main hub. I think it allows us to approach things with a fresher perspective the next time around when we’re to get together as a group.

Sam Goldberg Jr.: I’m always working on projects at home: the Kelly Healey thing, my own music. But it’s just nice to know that we don’t have to go to the airport. We don’t have to get on a bus. You don’t have to be surrounded by a thousand people. I mean that stuff is great, but after a while it’s just nice to be hunkered down, be in your own space, and play with your animals. It’s nice to get cozy.

TV: What were fan reactions like to the band reuniting? The pre-tour hype?

SGJ: There’s always been a BSS fanbase.

There’s always been excitement for the band when a new album comes out. I don’t personally follow many reviews and stuff like that, but you could definitely sense the excitement when we started playing again, getting on the road.

JP: I think that’s a good question. Compared to any of the previous albums, there was more of an anticipation because we had taken so much time off. So I feel like I was a little more nervous this time. First of all, we’re in an environment where indie rock is not necessarily carrying that torch anymore. You know we have the Lil Uzi Verts of the world and Juice WRLDs, and a lot of people making emo-rap. That’s kind of where the youth are. And we’re veterans now.

We’re almost like a legacy act.

TV: You guys have been around right at the rise and fall of CDs, vinyls, and MP3s. Now the big thing is streaming — how do new ways of consuming music affect you as a band?

SGJ: I’m an Apple guy. Everyone’s been telling me to get on Spotify. I like the fact that I can listen to music just like [that]. I open my eyes in the morning. I have a really nice sound system.

I push a button. I have my playlists that I have created or whatever I want to listen to. I mean, I love how user-friendly and quick you can get to something. But also, I love putting a record on my turntable and listening to that. But as for releasing music? It’s hard to know how to release music these days, it’s always changing.

JP: So we had to reset a lot of things this time around. We reset our management team. We hired a social media team for the first time and we really kept in mind exactly what you were saying. We kept in mind that this is a different landscape that we’re navigating. We are old

men navigating — I say that tongue-in-cheek — we’re an older band navigating in a very sort of modern, new landscape for us. Our management company is amazing, we’re with Red Light. At first when we were touring there were certain things that needed to come out that were more like ‘assets’ but now that we’re in an off-record cycle… we still want to engage with our fans. Kevin [Drew] is doing all of our social media engagement. But in terms of how I consume music? I have cassettes, I have vinyl, I have a Spotify account, I have a TIDAL account.

TV: What are some new acts you guys are listening to?

JP: I’m on a big emo-rap phase right now. I’ve been listening to the new Trippie Redd mixtape, A Love Letter To You 3. I’m listening to a lot of classical music as well. So I’ll start my day with a classical playlist and then as I head into the day, I’ll listen to that Carters album.

SGJ: Kurt Vile, his new record [or] that Cat Power record. I really like that new A Place to Bury Strangers record. I think that guy is a master at production and weird, super dark sounds.

TV: What is it like still getting accolades for ‘old’ records? The newest one was, I believe, the Polaris Heritage Prize Fan Vote?

JP: I don’t know what to say. I think my life’s a trip. I don’t know man, I’m grateful. I love that album and I love that people still listen to it and consider it a classic. I’m very flattered and I’m very proud.

TV: What songs or recordings are you guys most proud of? Which do you have fond memories of?

JP: If I can continue to riff on You Forgot It, [then] You Forgot It In People and the self-titled album were recorded at Stars and Suns, which

is a studio that doesn’t exist anymore in Toronto. But the producer and owner of that studio, David Newfeld, is out in Trenton, Ontario now. I believe he still calls it Stars and Suns. But when we were recording those two albums, the studio environment was very unhealthy. There were no windows, no circulation, no air conditioning. I don’t even know if there was any heat? There must have been heat. But it was just this really bizarre, kind of half-made space.

SGJ: I was making a record at the same time, with David Newfeld, at the same studio. I had a band called Hawaii with my girlfriend at the time. And — similar experience — but it’s funny because these guys would do sessions and I would go in and hear David talking about his experience: “God its so hard! There’s so many of them!” I also remember when you guys were deciding how to pay David at the end of You Forgot It. They were saying he would get a percentage of the songs or an overall sum. I would hear about this after they left which is weird [because] I wasn’t in the band.

TV: How does the release of a full EP differ to full-length projects? Is there less pressure as a band when promoting and touring a shorter work?

JP: Well, since this first EP is “volume 1” of what will clearly be more, the standard type of marketing and touring apply. Even if we were releasing only one shorter work to promote and tour, we wouldn’t ‘phone it in.’ Present climate of the music industry requires constant presence, materials, and assets to stay in the game.

TV: You guys going to be like the Rolling Stones at 70 years old?

JP: Yeah!

SGJ: I hope so!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MARCH 4, 2019 | 13

var.st/arts

Top picks for biopics

It’s time for these figures to have their own awardwinning movies Jillian Schuler Varsity Contributor

Bohemian Rhapsody, Darkest Hour, and The Theory of Everything — biopics make up a significant portion of the movie content that we see today, and have consistently played a large role in the awards season.

A biopic or biographical film is a dramatic intepretation of someone’s true life story. These reinterepretations are always complex, and face increased scrutiny as they attempt to embody not only the facts but the spirit of the person featured, hence why they tend to have a spotlight during the awards season.

This last year saw a plethora of biopics being released, including Bohemian Rhapsody, featuring the band Queen while having a specific focus on the lead singer, Freddie Mercury.

Recent biopics have not only centered on cultural figures, but also political ones, such as On the Basis of Sex, which showcases the young life of Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as more serious scientific achievements such as in First Man, which presents Neil Armstrong’s personal, physical, and emotional journeys in getting to the moon.

Biopics can vary greatly, but it’s their universal quality of providing us with an up-close and personal look into the life of a person we have admired or observed that makes them appealing year after year.

With this in mind, I would like to present some interesting, niche stories of people that Hollywood may have forgotten about, but certainly deserve a bit of the spotlight.

Joan of Arc

The year was 1428, in the midst of the Hundred Years War between the French and the English, and the French struggled under an unstable monarchy. At just 16 years of age, Joan of Arc claimed to have heard the voices of saints telling her to go to the Dauphin of France, Charles VIII, to join his cause.

Despite the captain of the garrison rejecting her initial request to join the military, Joan persisted, and managed to secure herself an audience with the Dauphin. She faced extensive questioning by ecclesiastical authorities in the Dauphin’s court before they agreed that she possessed the knowledge of divine spirits, and granted her not only a position in the military but a team of military men to support her mission.

Acting entirely on the voices she heard, Joan of Arc managed to obtain several military victories, earning her the respect and influence to convince

the Dauphin to go to Reims, recently freed from enemy hands, and be crowned king of France.

Although she had accomplished her mission and was subsequently idolized throughout France, Joan was not yet done. She continued to launch military campaigns to reclaim more and more land from the English. During one unfortunate campaign, Joan was captured by the Anglo-Burgundian forces, determined a heretic, tried for witchcraft, and burned at the stake at the ripe old age of 19 years old.

Joan of Arc continues to be an icon of the French, and she did receive decent attention in the 1990s, with a French film and a Canadian mini series both attempting to document her life.

But 2019 is a new age, one that desperately needs a reminder of how powerful and capable young women can be.

In addition, Joan of Arc resented wearing traditional women’s clothing of the time, and changed into men’s clothing any chance she could get. It would be interesting to see this timeless story told with a modern approach and understanding of feminism as well as gender identity.

Louis Pasteur

The last time a movie was made about Louis Pasteur was in 1936. Considering how medical technology has shifted in recent years, the film certainly deserves a reboot with a modern perspective. If we are going to make yet another movie about an old white man, let it at least be someone who may remind some confused parents as to why it is important and necessary to vaccinate their children.

As a reminder, Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist in the mid to late 1800s. His accomplishments include discovering that microorganisms cause fermentation, introducing the pasteurization process, and developing the principle of vaccination. His work with vaccinations was his last contribution to the world of science, but despite his well-respected position in the scientific community, many people were reluctant to accept the concept of vaccinations.

It was not until Pasteur published the results of studies showing the success of an anthrax vaccination that people began to consider his work valid. When Pasteur created a vaccination for rabies, a disease that tormented people for centuries due to its mysterious origin, he vaccinated nine-year Joseph Meister, and introduced the world to preventative medicine.

Today’s ill-informed anti-vaccination movement could do well with a reminder of the origin of vaccinations, not to mention many other sim-

Overlooked: Derry Girls

IRIS DENG/THE VARSITY

ple medical concepts that Pasteur introduced and verified to the world, including the germ theory of disease. Sometimes, in order to move forward, it’s necessary to look back with a gentle reminder of where we came from.

Gladys Bently

Allow me to introduce you to Gladys Bentley — and for those of you familiar with this lovely jazz and blues singer and LGBTQ+ icon of the Harlem Renaissance, let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Much like her French counterpart, Joan of Arc, Bentley also left home at 16, and found herself at odds with the gender roles placed upon her by society. The oldest of four girls, Bentley left her Trinidadian-American family in Pennsylvania to join the art scene of the Harlem Renaissance in New York. Singing initially at rent parties and buffet flats, Bentley’s uniquely powerful voice and talented blues parodies had her moving on to nightclubs and speakeasies including the famous Clam House and Ubangi Club.

In addition to her musical abilities, Bentley would become known for her unique sense of style that featured a tuxedo and top hat, as well as being very open about her sexuality, having a slew

Sana Mohsin Varsity Contributor

Another show surrounding four gal pals trying to live their best lives

Derry Girls orginally premiered on the British television network, Channel 4.

Season 2 will air this fall.

DERRY GIRLS/CC WIKIMEDIA

What happens when you have four out-oftheir-mind teenage girls and their pitiable English tag-along and set them up against the backdrop of civil conflict? You get the brilliant show Derry Girls!

The show follows Erin and her friends as they cross the usual hurdles of being 16: parents, independence, romance, school. But where Derry Girls stands out in its references to checkposts, army officers, and the everpresent threat of clashes between Irish republicans and British unionists.

Maybe unexpectedly, Derry Girls is absolutely hilarious. Bad luck seems to constantly follow Erin and her gang, putting them in awkward situations, which include witnessing a false miracle, housing a Russian immigrant, and finding a stowaway in their car while crossing the border to the Republic of Ireland.

The teenagers are ridiculous in their comedy and actions, but the stars of the show are their school’s headmistress, who is sarcastic and

of glamorous girlfriends. The end of the Harlem Renaissance created new challenges for Bentley, who moved to California with her mother, but she still managed to make a living, especially during World War II when gay bars became more common on the west coast.

Unfortunately this came to an end during the era of McCarthyism, which became a witch hunt for gay people in the United States. Facing extreme pressure as a famous lesbian of the time period, Bentley was forced to claim that she had “cured” her lesbianism with hormone treatment, began to wear female clothing, and married a man. During this time, she continued to perform, and joined “The Temple of Love and Christ Inc.” on her way to becoming an ordained minister, before her untimely death in the 1960 flu epidemic.

Bentley’s life highlights the power of the Harlem Renaissance in encouraging not just racial but sexual freedom and acceptance. In addition, her life serves as a brutal reminder of the challenges that members of the LGBTQ+ community faced during the twentieth century. Bentley has received even less attention from Hollywood than Joan of Arc and Pasteur, and deserves the spotlight more than anyone.

clearly has put up with fumbling teenagers for too long, and Erin’s family, which has a realistic and quirky dynamic. Needless to say, each scene is jam-packed with action even if it is the most mundane of situations.

Derry Girls is unique in the fact that not many Irish television shows have gained its level of international success, especially as it features young women in starring roles.

It shows us how even in places of conflict, ordinary lives exist and still have to go on, though interrupted as they are.

It resonates especially with me because I grew up in conflict-ridden Lahore, Pakistan, but our day-to-day life continued nonetheless.

I wish someone made a series like this about Lahore!

The show not only made me laugh but also taught me about an important historical decade that I did not know much about, which led me to research more on the issue. You’ll fall in love with the characters, that’s a given, but you’ll also begin to love Derry itself.

With only six episodes at about 20 minutes each — which are all readily available on Netflix — what are you waiting for?

14 | THE VARSITY | ARTS & CULTURE

arts@thevarsity.ca

Black Pistol Fire is a high-octane rock duo based out of Austin, Texas. They formed in 2009 and have four studio albums.

Courtesy of BLACK PISTOL FIRE

The life of a rock star: getting to know Black Pistol Fire In conversation with drummer Eric Owens George Moshenski-Dubov Associate Arts & Culture Editor

If you’ve never listened to Black Pistol Fire, it can only be described by the band’s drummer, Eric Owens, as “[Taking] a sword from medieval times — not the restaurant —the age, hollow it down, break half of it off so it’s not pointy on the end, but a jagged sharp edge, then dip it into molten lava, then use that hot sword to cut down a dead tree limb.” Or, in other words, “Just sweaty, fiery, rock n’ roll with swords — the sword is a metaphor for Kevin [McKeown]’s guitar.”

Bluesy rockers Eric Owens and Kevin McKeown have taken over the rock-androll airways with their band, Black Pistol Fire. Originally from Toronto, the duo is now based in Austin, Texas, releasing hits such as “Suffocation Blues,” “Hipster Shakes,” and “Lost Cause.” Owens, the drummer, spoke with The Varsity last year about competing and performing.

The Varsity: Why would musicians or artists who are dying to make it onto the scene or are trying to release more of their art go to Austin, Texas, as opposed to Hollywood, California? You know, the cliché.

Eric Owens: I think the thing with Austin is no one really goes there to make it, necessarily. Because like you just said, there’s not as much industry there as there is in LA or New York or even Nashville. I think the reason people go there is it’s just an interesting, creative hub and the level of musicianship. I don’t think you go there to become a star by any means, but you want to be surrounded by really good competition, healthy competition and as far as really good musicians — which exists everywhere — but it’s kind of like a lower pressure situation.

TV: You’ve been able to release four albums in the last four years. How do you create music so consistently?

EO: I think a big part of it is just work ethic and liking to do it. Kevin constantly writes, I mean, all the time. His mind is constantly going, constantly at it. I had a friend ask me, “So, when you’re not on the road, do you just hang out, binge-watch Netflix all day?” Absolutely not. We’re constantly trying to come up with new stuff and make some new music. So yes, I guess part of it is work ethic and the love for it. Having a partner who is very, very hard working is a big, big plus.

TV: I find that drummers always have their own superstitions around the way they like to perform. When I was looking at your live sets I noticed that you’re always wearing what looks like batting gloves or golf gloves. What’s that about?

EO: Yes, so those are older sets. I haven’t worn those in about two to three years, but I used to. And that wasn’t so much a superstitious thing — I use these really big, stupid drumsticks, that are like big marching band drumsticks, and they’re fine for one show, but if you’re playing multiple shows, the blisters will get so bad they’ll start to bleed. So [the gloves] were a way to alleviate that. I found that over time the gloves ended up doing nothing after a couple of shows, and they would wear out on the spots I get blisters. Then it also just smelled horrific after a couple of days, like a hockey bag or something.

So, I had actually abandoned those, but my new superstition is blister band-aids and [I] preventably put them on the spot before every show. It’s kind of like a ritual doing that, just taping up the fingers.

TV: What’s the song that really challenges those blisters?

EO: The toughest one, there is a song we play near the end of the set called “Run Rabbit Run.” It doesn’t sound anything like it does on the record — I mean it does, but we take it for a ride. It ends up being somewhere between eight to 10 minutes. By the end of that I think both of us are gassed, because it goes peaks and valleys, it speeds up, it slows down, it gets intense, then it softens up. It’s kind of a rollercoaster, so that one’s always a bit of a challenge, but also very fun and rewarding to play.

show where everyone knows the words and are fans of the band, and it’s just your band, that’s also a really good feeling. I wish I had an answer for that. Yeah, they both serve a different purpose. Festivals are just a lot more people which is amazing and it’s really cool to see. There’s a good fun energy, but there’s something special about a club full of just your fans that know the words to the song and everything. So it’s definitely not one or the other, they both serve a different purpose and a great purpose.

TV: When it comes to two-person bands or duos, I think people are very quick to associate them with other duos, even if they’re more dissimilar than they are similar. Do you still get that as much as you used to?

EO: I would say it’s definitely happening a little less than it was. It still happens of course. It does happen a little less. At first it was just inescapable, but it definitely happens a lot less than it did.

People are still very excited to say, “Do you like Royal Blood?” or, “Do you like this band?” Yeah, they’re two guys, cool.

I mean, they’re fine, I guess. Yes, interesting it’s almost like some people, a very small fraction, like to make it like a genre, even though the music maybe doesn’t sound similar. But, yeah, there are great duos out there, of course, some that we aren’t as fond of, but there are some that make really good music.

TV: I talked to Jason Pierce, the new drummer of Our Lady Peace, and when I asked him a similar question, he said that one issue with smaller venues is that people can really read you and they can tell if you’re terrified or nervous. Do you feel the same way?

EO: I don’t know if people can read it as well. I’ve never had that feeling or thought about that about smaller venues. My issue with the smaller venues, like a very small venue, occasionally the sound might not be as good as it sounds. I’ve never had that thought about smaller venues that they can see and tell. That’s interesting.

TV: From the Phoenix Concert Theater to Lollapalooza, what’s your favorite kind of venue and atmosphere to play in?

EO: A big festival with a lot of people like Lollapalooza, or we did a really big one in Madrid last [July] called Mad Cool where there are thousands and thousands of people. I mean, it’s pretty hard to beat that atmosphere. But a big sold-out large club

TV: What can we fans expect from you in the near future?

EO: There’s going to be some music released. It might be just one song by the end of [last] year. It might be two. It might be three, but I think definitely at least one that we have ready to go fairly soon.

It shouldn’t be that long; it’ll be before [December] and once we have it all, kind of figure it out. We’re doing some backend stuff on the business side of things, getting a release planned for all that. But there are songs in the chamber.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Science

March 4, 2019 var.st/science science@thevarsity.ca

In conversation with Professor Cynthia Goh

Chemistry professor bridges passions for research and entrepreneurship Javiera Gutierrez Duran Varsity Staff

Professor Cynthia Goh balances many responsibilities. She is a professor in the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the Institute of Medical Science, and the Munk School of Global Affairs.

She is the director and founder of the Impact Centre, which strives to bring “science to society” through entrepreneurship, and also the academic director of University of Toronto Entrepreneurship.

Goh describes herself as “a STEM student through and through.” Explaining her interest in STEM, she says, “I think if you know the rules that govern the world you can make a better world.”

Goh’s research interests lie in nanoscience — specifically, the properties, structures, conformations, and interactions of

molecules such as polymers and biomolecules, and how these molecules can be used to improve areas such as health care and disease treatment.

After receiving tenure, she shifted her focus to entrepreneurship. “I was making impact in my discipline, I would write a paper and people would quote it and write papers about it. But, I really wanted to see how to make a difference in people’s lives and I learned, basically, that’s about bringing this nice research result to creating a product that somebody can use.” This is how the Impact Centre was created.

The Impact Centre was recognized by the university in 2013, but it has been in operation for years prior to that. Goh describes the centre’s mission as striving to connect the research being done in institutions to a service or a product to create positive impact.

BoneTape: gluing the broken pieces back together U of T scientists create revolutionary device for fixing facial bone fractures Vaibhav Bhandari & Mark F. Mabanglo Varsity Staff

Researchers affiliated with the University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre have invented a flexible bone stabilization device that promises to help improve the treatment of craniomaxillofacial (CMF) fractures — or fractures around the head and face.

Referred to as BoneTape, the device is currently undergoing pre-clinical testing in hopes of improving CMF reconstruction.

Traumatic CMF fractures commonly occur due to road accidents, sports incidents, and war-related injuries. The thin and geometrically complex bones and soft tissues of the head and face, as well as the difficult cosmetic approaches of

current treatment options, makes these injuries difficult to treat.

Jeffrey Fialkov, a CMF surgeon and one of the researchers credited for the invention, points out that current solutions for fractures — whether to the face or the femur — are similar. Metal plates are placed to align bone fragments and screws are used to hold the bones together while they heal.

However, plates and screws are not ideal for treating some shattered CMF bones that are very thin and complex in shape. For screws to provide solid fixation, a certain bone thickness is needed, thus limiting their applicability for some CMF injuries.

Reports suggest that up to half of the patients who undergo reconstructions experience complications, often requiring follow-up surgeries to remove the

MARCH 18–22, 2019 Check out the panels, workshops, info sessions, and more at uoft.me/entweek

In its beginning stages, Goh had designed an extracurricular entrepreneurial skills training program for students who believed that the skills would be of value to them.

But according to Goh, there was a disconnect between research and application. The change in direction was a challenge. However, Goh views challenges as opportunities to overcome obstacles and forge paths to new areas.

In fact, when Goh began working at U of T, she was the only woman in the Department of Chemistry, and this continued for eight years.

“When I had my kid, nobody knew what the maternity leave rules were because nobody has asked for maternity leave before me,” says Goh. She recounts that she would carry her child at work and would, at times, receive strange looks.

But instead of “carrying a chip on [her]

shoulder,” she explains, “I’ve always had the attitude that if people maybe may sound like they’re not on your side, it’s probably because they just don’t have the experience.”

From the small sample of children Goh has worked with, she says that despite the generalization that boys seem to

have more outward confidence than girls, “confidence comes from having done your homework.”

The nature of STEM subjects, she says, allows for checking if an answer is correct. “In math, you can tell what the correct answer is, so I can build a lot of confidence knowing I’m right.”

hardware.

In an interview with The Varsity, Fialkov said that it was the “need to get facial fractures and facial reconstruction to heal without loading them up with metal” that led to a search for alternative options. Fialkov and Cari Whyne, a senior scientist and professor of surgery at U of T, studied the structural integrity of the skull and facial skeleton to determine solutions for CMF. In a major realization during their biomechanical research, Fialkov said that the pair found that “the forces that act on the facial skeleton are nowhere near as strong we originally thought and we don’t need to use so much hardware to fix it.”

Working with the idea of a flexible “tape-based” support system, research led by Paul Santerre, professor at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) and University Health Network Baxter Chair in Health Technology & Commercialization, and Robert Pilliar, another IBBME professor, helped to identify the best materials to create BoneTape.

Applied to the fracture site once the fragments are properly realigned, a biocompatible adhesive attaches the tape

to the bone. The material is translucent, allowing the fracture site to be seen and the tape to be properly aligned.

An advantage of the tape is its pliability. According to Michael Floros, a postdoctoral fellow working on the project, “using an initially flexible material is one of the major innovations.”

Unlike plates, which have to be moulded to closely match the shape of each bone fragment, the tape’s flexibility allows it to assume the natural shape of the patient’s CMF structure.

Made from a bioresorbable material, the BoneTape does not have to be removed from the patient once the fracture has healed either. Over an 18-month period, the material “resorbs in a process similar to dissolvable sutures,” Floros wrote to The Varsity.

The application of a flexible tape promises to be an easier technique for surgeons to master.

Miniplates must be bent to match a patient’s bone anatomy, and screws, often less than a couple millimetres in size, are very challenging to place. Misplacements can lead to an improper alignment of the bone that may cause discomfort and pain.

Use of BoneTape can also reduce

tissue damage experienced by the bone during drilling for screw placement.

Fialkov said that once the bones are aligned, “it does not require a lot of skill to be able to just lay the bone tape across the fractured site.” This means that procedures in the operating room will be more efficient and accessible to users.

Following preclinical trials, Whyne, Fialkov, Santerre, Pilliar, Floros, and Eli Sone — a bioadhesive specialist and a recent addition to the team — plan to bring BoneTape to the market for clinical use through Cohesys, a company that Floros founded to oversee the project as it develops.

Cynthia Goh is a professor in the Department of Chemistry.

Courtesy of JAMES LI

FIONA TUNG/THE VARSITY

16 | THE VARSITY | SCIENCE

science@thevarsity.ca

Science Around Town

What will Toronto’s climate be like in the future?

Visualization tool predicts North American urban climates in 2080

Emily Deibert Varsity Staff Flora Hewitt-Harris Varsity Staff

Nature has published a new climate visualization tool, which matches the projected 2080 climate of 540 North American urban areas with a present-day climate analogue. Climate analogues refer to regions experiencing statistically similar weather conditions, distinct from the period in which they currently occur.

The visualizer was developed by Dr. Matthew C. Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor in the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Dr. Robert R. Dunn, Professor of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University.

Through climate analogue mapping, the tool matches 12 climate variables, including maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation, during different seasons of a present-day location with its future climate counterpart.

For example, Toronto’s climate in 2080 is projected to be akin to the climate of present-day Secaucus, New Jersey, which has summers that are on average 2.9 degrees Celsius warmer and 35.1 per cent wetter than Toronto’s.

Other Canadian cities show similar increases in summer temperature and precipitation levels: Montréal’s analogue, Chester, Pennsylvania, is 4.2 degrees Celsius hotter and 11.6 per cent wetter; while Ottawa’s pair, South Shore, Illinois, is 3.3 degrees Celsius hotter and 18.6 per cent wetter.

Across all of the areas studied, a general trend of similarity to locations hundreds of kilometres away and mainly to the south was observed. Certain projections were found to have no modern-day equivalent.

The tool was created in order to show the human dimensions of climate change in accessible and relevant ways for the general public. It

illustrates cities currently populated by over 250 million people, and considers the impact of emission levels as well as climate variables on current and future climate trends.

However, Dr. Stephen Bede Scharper, Associate Professor in U of T’s School of the Environment, explained in an email to The Varsity that these types of models can produce mixed results.

“On the one hand, it can indeed raise awareness about climate change, and help people think about the implications for their cities if they don’t take serious action in limiting greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, this can also lead to a false sense of security. What we are experiencing today is not actually climate change but climate ‘chaos.’

The accent here is on chaos.”

Scharper noted that rising temperatures are affecting weather regulators such as the Jet and Gulf Streams, resulting in unpredictable weather. Focusing solely on temperature and rainfall, the potentially wild and violent impacts on weather patterns caused by climate change are not fully explored by the tool.

It is becoming more apparent that a long-term, sustained plan may be the only way to address climate change, and awareness-raising tools such as the one described are merely the first step.

“While taking public transit or reducing use of fossil fuels in one’s personal life is vital, we have to as local, national, and international citizens make the structural change that will make the reductions necessary to alter our climate course,” wrote Scharper.

“This is not going to be remedied by filling our recycling bins, changing our light bulbs, [or] reducing our garage tenants from two cars to one.

This requires a firm, dedicated, and lasting commitment to a new way of doing business in the world. Business as usual is unacceptable.”

Why Representation Matters in Canadian STEM Research Join Women in Chemistry TO for a panel discussion on the importance of diversity and inclusion in STEM, featuring four of Canada’s leading STEM researchers.

Date: Monday, March 4 Time: 6:30–9:00 pm Location: Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship, 55 St. George Street, Lau Auditorium Admission: Free with registration Our DNA: What’s Next & How Far Should We Go? George Church, the ‘godfather’ of the Human Genome Project, will discuss his research and the future of genomics at this event.

Date: Tuesday, March 5 Time: 12:15–1:45 pm Location: George Ignatieff Theatre, 15 Devonshire Place Admission: Free with registration Data Resources for Entrepreneurs Data literacy skills are crucial for new businesses. At this event, you’ll get hands-on experience harnessing large and small datasets and learn how to use these data in innovative ways.

Date: Thursday, March 7 Time: 3:00–5:00 pm Location: UTSC Library, 1265 Military Trail, Instruction Lab Admission: Free with registration A Day in the Life of an Engineer Celebrate National Engineering Month at this Royal Canadian Institute for Science #WomenInSTEM series event, featuring talks from biomedical and materials engineers.

Date: Thursday, March 7 Time: 7:00–8:00 pm Location: Mississauga Central Library, 301 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Glass Pavilion Admission: Free with registration Welcoming the Waves of Rare Disease Research A collaboration between patient support group Ben’s Friends and the Rare Disease Review journal, this mini-conference will address all aspects of current and future research on rare diseases in the GTA. Date: Sunday, March 10 Time: 10:00 am to 3:00 pm Location: Hart House, 7 Hart House Circle, Debates Room Admission: Free with registration

TROY LAWRENCE/THE VARSITY

Sports

March 4, 2019 var.st/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Vanessa Wallace wants to be a student of the world Former Blues women’s basketball player on overcoming playing struggles and working with at-risk youth

Wallace played for three seasons on the Varsity Blues women's basketball team DANIEL SAMUEL/THE VARSITY

Daniel Samuel Sports Editor

MLSE, her time with the Blues, and the women who inspired her growing up.

It’s been four years since Vanessa Wallace last suited up for the Varsity Blues women’s basketball team, for a game she never anticipated would be her last.

Wallace, a role player and shooter for the Blues, scored a single threepointer during three minutes of action in the final home game of Toronto’s 2014–2015 season, which would result in a loss against the Queen’s Gaels.

Wallace didn’t see any action in the Blues’ opening round playoff victory over the Brock Badgers, nor did she play when the team bowed out of the competition following a 15-point loss to the Windsor Lancers.

The following season, Wallace was cut from the team.

The entire experience has been an invaluable lesson, but one she never expected to have to go through. Wallace admits that she failed to meet the expectations that she’d had for herself in basketball when she first entered U of T. She started playing in a recreational basketball league when she was nine years old, but basketball was “nothing serious” until she made a club team in Grade Six. As a first-year student unsure of what to major in, the sport was the only thing she knew she wanted to do at university. The Ottawa native admits that she placed more emphasis on where she wanted to play than on where she wanted to live when choosing a university.

Wallace graduated from U of T in August 2017 with a degree in English and a double minor in history and anthropology. She still plays the sport that she loves, but in an arguably more meaningful way. She teaches a blend of basketball and life skills to underprivileged youth at her job with the Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment (MLSE) LaunchPad, an organization seeking to “explore and measure how sport can help improve the lives of youth.”

The Varsity sat down with Wallace to discuss her current role with

The Varsity: How did you make the transition into the workplace after graduation?

Vanessa Wallace: I only played my first three years of undergrad, and so [during] my last two years, I was in school but I was also not loving school. It was really important to find out what was out there workwise and be able to build up my résumé that way, because English is not necessarily something that lends to one specific industry. I knew I loved basketball, being involved, so it took a lot of creativity, and I really took to volunteering.

TV: Can you describe your experiences volunteering?

VW: I was trying to create an internship for myself and go do all these different placements. You Can Play has been the organization that I’ve been involved with since 2016 and that’s been really awesome. It’s an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion in sport. I get to work with youth, go into high schools, and run workshops about how to identify casual homophobia in sport. I’ve worked with kids for a really long time, so that was great to marry that with sports advocacy.

TV: What’s working with kids like?

VW: It’s really fun, for starters. Kids are so fun and I love getting to share that experience with them. Living in a city like Toronto, being in U of T, you kind of forget that there’s information that you kind of just take for granted, that isn’t something you automatically knew. Somebody taught you that and at some point you have to be the person who teaches it to somebody else.

So getting that opportunity has been an honour.

TV: Can you describe your role working for MLSE? VW: I’m a sport program lead, basketball specifically at MLSE Launchpad.

Youth can participate in basketball, soccer, volleyball, ball hockey, there’s a rock climbing wall… The program

isn’t sport for performance, it’s really sport for development. There’s a life skills component that we teach. This month, the life skill of focus is social competency and the last program cycle it was self-regulation. The outcome that’s hoped for is sports [being] the hook that brings youth in, but when they leave they have all of these life skills that will take them much further than layups, footwork, and physical fitness.

I knew I had basketball knowledge, but I didn’t know how that would translate into a coaching role. Being able to write up the program, convey it to supporting staff, and see it go start to finish was a huge growth point for me. Having confidence in the program I was writing [and] how I wanted it to be delivered, that’s been a really big turning point in the last few months. I felt really solid about that and initially I wasn’t.

TV: Would you say that your experience with the Blues really helped you hone those skills?

VW: I definitely have had some great coaches to look up to on the Blues [team] and not until I started coaching did I realize that — I was doing things similarly to how they would. So you don’t even know how much you’re getting from that person until a while after, how much you’re emulating the things that they do… As an athlete something that I found really difficult is you really have one main focus and that’s your performance. It’s cool now to reflect on how much you’ve learned from everyone — teammates, seniors, and captains. You don’t recognize that until you’ve moved on.

TV: What was your experience like playing for the Blues?

VW: Michelle [Belanger] is a fantastic coach, she eats, sleeps, and breathes basketball. What I learned from her in the short time that I was on the team was just the tip of the iceberg.

Overall, I’d say my time on the team was some of the most challenging years of my life. I dealt with some mental health issues and then the pressure of being a Varsity athlete on

top of that my experience wasn’t going as planned. I had such high expectations for how I would perform and how it would feel. Although I did make really great friends and got to travel and play basketball, which is what I love, I didn’t really have any self-worth because I wasn’t performing well. After my third season, I was cut and that was really tough.

I didn’t have any direction, and that’s when I started applying to all these different jobs and learning what was out there beyond playing, which is kind of how I forged my path. [Eventually], I realized that all of these hard lessons that Michelle and sport taught me… even though the experience didn’t go as planned, I learned so much from [them] and I’m so grateful for it.

TV: Do bonds between Blues teammates really last forever?

VW: Yes, definitely. I was just visiting a teammate who’s since moved to the States and it was awesome. We didn’t even make any plans. The idea was [that] we were just going to hang out and spend time together. The funny thing is, you spend everyday with them, practice, a nutrition session, individual practice, weight session — that could all be in one day. Maybe you have classes with them, maybe they’re also your roommate, and then you spend months apart but when you see them again, it’s like no time has passed.

TV: How important is growth for women’s sports?

VW: It’s definitely really important to me. It wasn’t until I started working with girls and seeing what I experienced growing up, [what] they are continuing to experience as well, [only then] did I realize how great of an impact that they actually had on me.

Not getting the same amount of gym time, women’s basketball shoes aren’t really a thing — you just get men’s shoes, you lace them up as tight as possible, and, you know, different social norms.

I see that there’s still similar hurdles that I and teammates of mine have

faced, but there is more awareness and more organizations, like Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport [and] Fast and Female.

TV: Which female athletes inspired you growing up?

VW: I wasn’t big into watching professional sports on TV, but I was really lucky I had so many female role models in the basketball community that I could look up to. At U of T, there were some girls that came in and Michelle was the first female coach that they’d ever played for… To me, that was shocking because Ottawa is a big basketball town. Every weekend, I was either at a Carleton game or a UOttawa game, so a lot of those players at Carleton and Ottawa U, I really looked up to and then my own seniors that I would play with.

There were three seniors when I was in Grade 11 that I really looked up to.

They were on a rep team I played for; it was Kellie Ring, Rashida Timbilla, and Kim Pierre-Louis. At U of T, I got to play with Jill Stratton, who is, I think, still the program’s leading scorer and that was amazing, but also playing with Rachel Sider, Liane Bailey, [and] Jasmine Lewin.

TV: Where do you envision yourself in the future?

VW: I’m learning. I still feel like I’m in the position where I’m learning more than I’m giving back. I have that foundation of basketball knowledge and experience playing, but in really understanding how the game can impact more marginalized communities, I feel like I’m a rookie.

It’s hard to see… myself in five years because there’s so much more information that I want [to learn].

I’m finding as many opportunities to be kind of a student of the world, whether that’s [through] a program that benefits girls or whether that is a program that helps with poverty reduction or violence against women, I’m just pursuing all of those opportunities right now.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

18 | THE VARSITY | SPORTS

sports@thevarsity.ca

Blues women’s hockey team earns spot in McCaw Cup Final

How Tamara Tatham became a household name in Canadian basketball Two-time Olympian, new Raptors 905 mentor, Varsity Blues women’s basketball assistant coach

Julie Szulewska scores late gamewinning goal In 2018, Tatham beacame the first Canadian woman on a G-League coaching staff.

Daniel Samuel Sports Editor

Photo Courtesy of VARSITY BLUES ATHLETICS

Jaime McLaughlin Varsity Staff

Tamara Tatham never set out to be a trailblazer, but she’s taking the label in stride.

Last August, Tatham made history as the first Canadian woman to be named to a coaching staff of a North American professional men’s basketball team when she was hired as a mentor coach with the Toronto Raptors’ GLeague affiliate, the Raptors 905. It’s an honour that many would take pride in by itself. And while its significance isn’t lost on Tatham, it’s simply one piece of a much larger picture of her athletic achievements.

Two Olympics appearances. Over 150 games played during a sparkling 11-year Team Canada career. A cabinets’ worth of team and individual awards during a decade-long pro career in Europe and Australia. Currently, the assistant coach of the Varsity Blues women’s basketball team. At just 33 years old, Tatham, from Brampton, is in elite company.

Undoubtedly, her remarkable achievements cement her legacy as a veteran who helped build Team Canada’s national women’s program from the ground up to become one of the world’s most competitive. The accolades alone, however, leave out the profound impact of her drive, work ethic, and faith required to get her there.

The kid is alright

Tatham grew up as the middle child in an active family of seven that included her three brothers — Patrick, Tyan, and Kenroy — and her sister, Alisha.

Tamara dabbled in a bit of everything in her childhood, including swimming and piano, and showed great athletic promise in track & field specifically — much to the delight of her parents, who were familiar with the sport due to its popularity in their native country of Jamaica.

Incredibly, it wasn’t until the ripe age of 13 that Tamara picked up a basketball for the first time. Following in the footsteps of her brother Patrick — just one year her senior — who was already playing, Tamara decided to give the game a try.

As fate would have it, the love was instant — and intense.

“Right when I started playing, like, the week after I started playing,” Tamara reflected in an interview with The Varsity, “I was like, ‘I love this.’ That’s where I started getting passionate.”

Drawn to the competitiveness of the

game and the chance to play with peers who quickly became close friends, Tamara’s whirlwind love affair with basketball quickly established itself as a permanent fixture in her life — a cause to which she could apply her work ethic and drive, and an outlet through which she could showcaseher gift of athleticism. Alisha quickly followed suit, resulting in a sort of ‘Tatham sister’ dynasty that would become a fixture in the Canadian and international basketball scenes for years to come.

Tamara saw her stock rise through a stellar career at Chinguacousy Secondary School, where she led the Timberwolves to the Peel Region championship twice and posted a double-double average — 23 points, 10 rebounds — in her senior year, 2003. College coaches took notice, and eventually, Tamara found herself headed south of the border to the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a full-ride athletic scholarship.

Reaching new heights

Heading into UMass, Tamara admits that while she didn’t approach her university career with grand expectations, both at school and in the long-term, she was fully prepared to work hard and see where it could take her.

Tamara had an instant impact on Marnie Dacko’s Minutewomen, with a consistently high performance level that carried her throughout four seasons. Over the course of that time, Tamara started all but three of the 115 games she played in, averaging nearly 31 minutes per game and giving the squad a solid presence in the front court, finishing three of four seasons as the team’s second-leading scorer and her final two as their top rebounder.

Eclipsing 1,000-point and 700-rebound career totals, Tamara also holds a spot in several categories of the UMass record books, including the third most games started, as well as top 10 positions in total steals, rebounds, minutes played, and free throws made.

The girl who fell in love with the game as a teenager — not with expectations or entitlements but simply the will to work — saw her sweat pay off. By 2007, she had graduated with a degree in Sport Management and had also earned a roster spot on Team Canada, which was gearing up to try to qualify for the Beijing games the following year. When it didn’t pan out, Tamara found herself packing her bags for Europe, where, little to her knowledge, a lengthy and decorated career awaited her.

In the decade to come, Tamara padded her basketball résumé with European league honours. Multiple player of the year and top defender awards punctuated her time overseas, which included stints in Finland, Slovakia, Australia, Russia, and most notably, Germany, where she spent five seasons, from 2008-2013.

Her pro career coincided with her tenure on the national team. Tamara was part of a group of women who revived Team Canada women's basketball, transforming the team a from struggling squad to international contender, and helping the squad to its first Olympic appearance in 12 years when they qualified for the London Games in a victory on Canada Day in 2012.

They made a second appearance in Rio in 2016.

Tamara holds fond memories from her time with Team Canada. She shared many of her years on the squad with Alisha, including at those 2012 Olympic games. Meanwhile, Tamara described her squad’s so-called “golden summer” — including a pair of historic gold medals over the United States at the Pan Am Games in Toronto and the FIBA Americas in Edmonton — in 2015 as one of the highlights of her career.

The next chapter

Like many other elite athletes who spend decades involved in high-level sport, there was a point when Tamara wasn’t sure what her next chapter would be, after her playing career came to a close. Tamara credits her Christian faith for keeping her grounded, saying that it was a reminder that sports didn’t define her entire identity, and that it helped her to develop trust in herself and her journey. “[My faith] helped me change the way I thought about basketball and sport in general. I just played more free… I have to be able to trust that whatever happens, happens, and be able to just be ready to go with it.”

And just as her brother Patrick got her hooked on basketball, she credits her sister Alisha for sparking her interest in a new passion: coaching. After returning home one February following the conclusion of her pro season, Tamara decided she would help her sister out with the JUEL team Alisha was coaching at the time.

“I was like, “whoa, this is pretty cool.

I like this!” Tamara chuckled.

Tamara and Alisha would go on to set up their Live Love Hoop camps, tailored toward young female basket-

ball players to give them opportunities to “get mentored… by role models in the community,” through the provision of basketball and life skills training.

Their brand’s current moniker, “The Tatham Sisters,” essentially caters itself toward the same ideals: mentorship for “the next generation” — especially young women.

Familiar surroundings amd new sights

While Tamara no longer spends her waking hours working on baseline jumpers, she hasn’t exactly removed herself from the familiar surroundings she’s grown accustomed to on the court.

These days, Tamara is still typically found around the gym, whether she’s decked out in her signature UofT blue tracksuit at the Goldring Centre as the assistant coach of the women’s team, or donning the black-and-red of her 905 squad. Affectionately known as ‘T’ to players, friends, and mentees alike, Tamara Tatham’s imposing, athletic 6’1 frame contrasts a quiet yet assured, confident energy about her — the kind developed only through the sense that your achievements are the direct and purposeful result of years of hard work.

Tamara credits her parents as a guiding force in her life, and strives to become a role model for other young women in sport — something she didn’t necessarily have growing up.

“When it came to sports [growing up], I looked up to male basketball players… When the WNBA came around, it was cool, because there was finally gonna be some women you could look up to — it wasn’t just men.

I want to give young women the opportunity to see women they can look up to… I think it’s really huge for girls to see strong women.”

Tatham credits her work ethic, of course, to helping her reach the place she’s at today. For younger players, she stressed that “we need to know there’s no ceiling when it comes to what you want, what you can attain, and what you can be successful at.” Emphasizing that “it is 120 million per cent okay to fail,” she offered a simple piece of advice: “Just dream big, and have the audacity to do it.”

The Blues are headed to their first McCaw Cup Final in a decade.

DANIEL SAMUEL/THE VARSITY

The Varsity Blues women’s hockey team is headed to the McCaw Cup Final after defeating the Western Mustangs 2–1 on Saturday at Thompson Arena. The victory came less than 24 hours after the Western Mustangs forced a winner-takes-all match with a win at Varsity Arena in the best-of-three OUA semifinals.

This is the Blues’ first trip to the OUA women’s hockey finals in a decade.

Blues fourth-year forward Jessica Robichaud scored the opening goal of the contest midway through the second period. Fourth-year forward Stephanie Ayres’ pass deflected off a Mustangs defenseman and Robichaud corralled the loose puck, launching a quick shot to beat Mustangs goaltender Carmen Lasis.

The Blues found themselves in multiple shorthanded situations throughout the second period due to their undisciplined play. Toronto committed three penalties in the period and a total of five in the game, while Western only registered two.

Mustangs third-year forward Sydnee Baker capitalized on Megan O’Brien’s body checking penalty late in the second period with a powerplay goal to even the score at 1–1, with less than four minutes remaining in the period.

Blues fifth-year defenceman Julia Szulewska tallied the game-winning goal for the Blues with six minutes left in the third period. Louie Bieman played a sharp-angled pass across the crease, and Szluewska fired the puck five-hole and past Lasis.

Western scrambled to level the score in the final minutes of the game. Mustangs head coach Candice Moxley pulled Lasis, with 90 seconds remaining for the extra attacker. While the Mustangs’ overwhelming puck presence forced Blues first-year goalie Erica Fryer to make a few sprawling saves in the final moments, Western was unable to find the back of the net.

Fryer continued her strong play this season, recording 22 saves.

With their victory over the Mustangs, the Blues will face the Guelph Gryphons on March 9 in the McCaw Cup Final and have earned a bid to the U SPORTS Championship.

MARCH 4, 2019 | 19

var.st/sports

Is professional sports culture anti-feminist?

Analyzing the gender dynamics in professional sports

SKYLER CHEUNG/THE VARSITY

Sandakie Ekayankie Varsity Contributor

Content warning: discussions of sexual violence Like many of my female counterparts, I am a fan of professional sports; I have been involved in one for some time now. The MLB was my first love, but now the NHL has taken the top of the podium. While watching my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs earlier in the season, I was struck by the question of whether supporting professional sports was unfeminist. I began to consider professional sports as a whole, examining the culture they breed, the repercussions of that culture on women, and what that means for me, a proud feminist.

Professional sports are incredibly lucrative industries. If you’re an athleticallytalented young man who makes it into professional sports, you could easily cash yourself a cheque for millions of dollars and live a lavish lifestyle of luxury. But, because of this, we need to consider professional sports as an industrial complex that reinforces the heteropatriarchy and creates a whole lot of problems for women.

When it comes to sports, we tend not to question the ramifications or larger systems at play because, as a society, we have bought into the great myth that sports are inherently pure and good, and that they inevitably lead to positive growth, both personally and communal-

ly. Individuals who pursue sports must then transmit these inherent virtues of purity and goodness.

Before I go on, I want to preface this by saying that by no means do all professional athletes succumb to this myth. It is of concern and worthy of our attention, however, that many athletes and their behaviour fit this bill to some degree.

We see this as professional male athletes continue to rise to the moral level of superhero — the athlete as hero embodies attributes of the myth and affirms the myth. He surpasses mere admiration to achieve the mantle of idealization.

Talk of our heroes is talk of ourselves because we aspire to be like them; they show society its highest potential. For another comparison, high-profile athletes with multi-million dollar contracts are arguably the rock stars of our generation; they live fast, party hard, and can do close to nothing wrong. Athletes embody this persona and become invincible, brimming with hubris.

But the pedestal that professional athletes are put on isn’t just fun and drinking games; it has real and very dangerous consequences for women, athletes or not.

Perhaps the most salient examples are the repeated instances of sexual misconduct and domestic violence that continue to occur at the hands of current and upcoming professional athletes.

Oftentimes, athletes are not held accountable for their actions, They receive

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minimal penalties, if they receive any at all, and they are able to return to their respective sports leagues with little attention paid to their personal conduct.

Occasional referrals to their ‘off-thefield behaviour’ are made only to reinforce narratives of overcoming the troubles they’ve faced. By doing this, the sports industrial complex systemically reinforces the behaviour, and the cycle continues.

A high-profile example is that of NFL player Ray Rice, who was caught on video brutally beating his then-fiancée in 2014.

He was served with a pathetic two-game suspension that was only extended after public outcry. While he was suspended indefinitely and never rejoined the league, Rice was arguably at the end of his career at the time of the incident.

This past November, NFL player Kareem Hunt, who played for the Kansas City Chiefs, was released from the team when a similar video of him repeatedly kicking a woman surfaced. Despite the incriminating evidence, his field talent quickly garnered the interest of a handful of teams; he was signed by the Cleveland Browns just last week and will almost certainly be playing for them next season.

This doesn’t just happen in the NFL either. Signalling the start of his redemptive narrative, Derrick Rose was lauded by broadcasters, fans, and fellow NBA superstars for his 50-point game last October.

At the same time, his ex-girlfriend was appealing a 2016 civil court decision that had acquitted Rose and his friends of gang raping her while she was unconscious.

The court ultimately upheld the ruling, though the judges of both trials noted that the accusations were likely true — there was just no physical evidence to corroborate her story and prove Rose guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Rose himself admitted during the fallout that he didn’t know what consent was, falling back on the archaic ‘boys will be boys’ defence instead.

Perhaps the most fruitful example of this narrative, however, is Kobe Bryant.

The public sphere was so eager to redeem his mythic hero status that he has been completely disassociated from his 2003 rape allegation and trial. I didn’t even know about it until I began research for this article!

Only after his attorneys shamed his accuser did Bryant admit that he had assumed consent, and that he understood how the victim may not have consented.

Regardless, Bryant embraced his newfound redemption narrative and went on to defy the odds, having a storied career and highly publicized retirement. He even made a movie bolstering his mythic

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persona that went on to win an Academy Award.

In the world of professional sports, what spaces do women occupy? We are relegated to the sidelines and the stands; we are wives, girlfriends, and cheerleaders.

There is the odd female reporter, who still has far to go in terms of being accepted and treated equally; and now, ground is finally being broken by female coaches and officials in some leagues. But the professional athlete’s female partner continues to be a pop culture persona in and of herself. The WAG, representing all Wives and Girlfriends of professional athletes, is essentially a trophy wife — expected to be exceptionally gorgeous and fertile, she also carries the negative connotations of being vain and high maintenance, unintelligent, and of little substance overall.

Their glamorous lifestyles have even earned them countless reality TV series, including WAGs Atlanta, WAGs Miami, The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives, and VH1's Basketball Wives. Even though I do not agree with these women’s decisions, nor would I make them for myself, true femi-

nism would posit that we don’t judge other women for the decisions they choose to make. We must strive to empower and lift each other up always.

The freedoms that our foremothers fought for included the freedom for these women to make this choice, as much as my freedom to make mine. However, one doesn’t have to dig much deeper to encounter the unequivocal, patriarchal dynamics that are reinforced in these relationships. And this is problematic.

Sports don’t need to be analyzed critically because we know that they are inherently good. But we cannot ignore that the underwhelming responses to the abuse and oppression of women by those in professional sports industries contributes to the deeply rooted issues of heteropatriarchy and toxic masculinity that underwrite systems of oppression.

So this International Women’s Day, I challenge you to embrace sports — but reject the myth of the sporting superhero, interrogate the industrial sports complex, and realize the damaging consequences for women.

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