March 7th, 2022

March 7, 2022

THE VARSITY

Cedric Jiang Associate News Editor

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of war.

Oleksiy Sorokin remembers the night when he knew the war was becoming real.

He was at work until 3:00 am that day, which had become normal for him as his paper’s politics editor in the middle of a weeks-long military build-up at the Ukrainian-Russian border. Although conflicts and shelling in eastern Ukraine had been happening for days, Sorokin still smelled change when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the nation after his final plea for peace went unanswered by Russia.

Sorokin didn’t sleep that night — too busy reading the news and waiting — until he saw a video of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking. Before Putin even mentioned the word, Sorokin knew it was war. He called all his relatives and friends to let them know:

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start packing, prepare for the worst.

Hours later, the sounds of bombing and shooting shattered the silence of the early morning as Russian troops attacked military facilities in the Kyiv region.

“It became so real, so fast, that the whole night, we just remember packing and gathering family, looking for a bomb shelter and expecting the worst,” said Sorokin. His family moved to his grandmother’s house, whose large basement they used as a bomb shelter. One night, he recalled, they had to move down to the shelter three times, while sirens went off repeatedly.

A lot of residents stay in the subway stations to shelter. For others living in eastern cities like Kharkiv, where air raids are even more frequent, Sorokin said, some spend their nights running for their lives between apartments and shelters.

Now, Sorokin said, as Russian military convoys approach and encircle the city, Kyiv is preparing for combat: placing antitank barricades, deploying territorial defence units, and organizing

civilian militias with guns to patrol the streets.

“You can feel war on every corner,” said Sorokin. “Those who remain in the city… are ready for the worst.”

After graduating from U of T in 2018, Sorokin became a journalist in Ukraine, first with The Kyiv Post and then with The Kyiv Independent.

Last Tuesday, U of T President Meric Gertler condemned Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine, calling for diplomatic efforts to end the war and restore peace, security, and democracy. Gertler stressed U of T’s responsibility to foster an understanding of complex issues, bring about unity by way of dialogue, and “advance the human condition” around the world through education.

“In the face of this shocking human suffering, our thoughts turn to the many University of Toronto students, faculty, librarians, staff, alumni and friends who have personal connections to Ukraine and the wider region, and to all members of our community who have been impacted by these recent events – including

Vol. CXLII, No. 20

members of our Russian community who oppose the war and seek a peaceful resolution,” reads Gertler’s statement.

U of T’s connection to Ukraine is not only characterized by its many Ukrainian students and the numerous researchers it hosts who study the region — it was also the hosting institution for the Ukraine Reform Conference in 2019. Delegates and leaders from over 30 countries — including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister and then-Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland — attended the conference.

A U of T spokesperson confirmed that there are no U of T students currently in Russia or Ukraine on university activity, but they do not have information on students who may be studying remotely from either country. More than 100 Ukrainian citizens are currently enrolled at U of T and several dozen alumni are living in Ukraine.

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news@thevarsity.ca Invasion leaves Ukrainians shocked and grieving Nadiya Kovalenko was born and grew up in Ukraine and is a first-generation immigrant to Canada. She is a third-year student and the current co-president of the Ukrainian Students’ Club.

In an interview with The Varsity, Kovalenko said she is still in touch with families and friends in the war-torn region, who have told her what it’s like to live there at the moment. “There were things exploding around them… and they had no one else to turn to,” said Kovalenko.

Kovalenko said that, like many others, she did not anticipate the situation on Ukraine’s borders to escalate so quickly. She pointed out that the war between Russia and Ukraine has been going on since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

“I feel like people in Ukraine didn’t really believe that this was going to go any further than that, to be honest,” said Kovalenko. “And then seeing bombs being dropped on peaceful cities, you know, airstrikes, troops coming in on tanks. It’s just… I feel like none of us can believe that this is really happening.”

Kovalenko said some of her childhood friends and classmates have taken up arms. One of her friends almost lost his life in a combat recently and has lost an arm. “I’m speechless. I just can’t believe this has happened to someone that I grew up with, that I went to the same school with,” she said.

Kovalenko said she and her community are very grateful for the support they received from around the world. For Kovalenko, the worldwide solidarity with Ukraine is reassuring and provides hope.

Anton Ivanov is a Ukrainian-Canadian in his third year at U of T. His parents were born in Ukraine and his extended family still lives there. He said that since the invasion has started, he sometimes finds it hard to fully invest himself in his own work, because he’s worrying about his relatives. “A lot of the times my mind would drift to, ‘There’s an invasion going on. My family is living in danger,’ ” he explained.

Ivanov also spends a lot of time reading the news about what’s going on at the front line, hoping for good news. He feels encouraged when he reads about Ukrainians resisting the invasion and about Ukrainian cities that are still standing.

“There’s a chance that my family’s gonna be okay,” he said.

Marta Perehinets, a first-year undergraduate student, has a cousin deployed in the Luhansk region, which has been intensely bombarded by Russia.

She told The Varsity that her cousin describes the situation there as a “hellscape.” Fire, flying bombs, constant shooting — these are hallmarks of daily life. Perehinets said that even staying in touch with her cousin can be difficult.

Beyond Ukraine: A world order under assault Aurel Braun is a professor of international relations and political science at the Munk School

of Global Affairs and Public Policy, as well as a visiting professor at Harvard University’s Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. In an interview with The Varsity, Braun spoke to the international implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Braun said that he believes Russia’s invasion is not just about war with Ukraine, but is meant as an attempt to challenge the international order.

He added that, while it’s also taking expansionist actions toward other countries, Russia is also repressing its own people for the purpose of encouraging expansion.

“In parallel to Russia’s aggressiveness internationally, they have become ever more repressive domestically,” said Braun. As evidence, he pointed to the near assassination of opposition leader Alexei Navalny under the Kremlin’s order, who later faced a long jail time after returning to Russia.

Additionally, according to Russian authorities, 3,500 anti-war protesters have been arrested in cities across the country. Some outlets — such as OVD-Info, an independent Russian media outlet that reports on human rights and political persecution — have stated that the number is over 7,000.

Braun explained that Russia’s expansionism and oppression inside the country are the result of Russia trying to avoid domestic failure. Russia compensates for citizens’ loss of freedom with promises of global prestige and security from international ‘threats.’ He said that Putin’s Russia has failed to take advantage of opportunities to modernize its economy, and that the country remains highly dependent on exporting fossil fuels.

At the same time, Russia has also shown ambitions to expand in the Arctic region as an attempt to find new sources of oil and gas — a concerning trend for Canada, as it directly faces Russia in the Arctic. “An accident in the Arctic would have a devastating impact on the Canadian coastline,” said Braun. He added that as Arctic ice melts, Russia’s ability to navigate and control that area increases.

One of the major arguments Russia has used to justify the war has been Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership. Russia opposes NATO’s acceptance of Ukraine as a member state, wanting to keep NATO troops out of eastern European countries.

However, Braun doesn’t accept this justification. “Some will say, well, maybe NATO should not have enlarged.

But I don’t think that was a problem,” said Braun.

He pointed out that some eastern European states have actively sought NATO membership out of fear of Russian aggression.

And the invasion is about more than just the security alliance, Braun argued — Putin fears the successful democratization of Ukraine. “He fears

his own people. He fears democracy. And what he did not want to see is a Ukraine that would become a successful democratic state on his borders — a large, Slavic country, speaking a similar language, sharing some similar historical legacies, that will become a prosperous, modern, successful democracy, that will offer a contrast to the very repressive, corrupt dictatorial rule that is running inside Russia,” he said.

The global West’s failure to deter Russia’s aggression, Braun said, could have further ramifications. For example, Ukraine denuclearized following promises of protection from the West. If Ukraine falls, Braun argued, other countries may consider seeking out nuclear weapons of their own.

Entanglement, determination, and hope Some Ukrainian community members also talked about the global implications of the invasion. “We are fighting not only for ourselves,” said Sorokin.

“We are fighting for every democratic country, for every developing nation, for every nation that felt oppression during its history, for… those who are oppressed, for those who want democracy to prevail.”

Perehinets echoed Sorokin’s call to uphold liberal democratic principles. To her and her fellow Ukrainians, Perehinets said, freedom has always been a part of Ukrainian identity. “We are free and we fight for our own freedom,” said Perehinets.

Perehinets also slammed Putin’s claim that Russia created Ukraine, as well as his denial of the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood. She described the statement as a rewriting of history. But the important thing, she said, is that Ukrainians know their history and heritage. “It doesn’t matter what some psychopath in the Russian government says — we know who we are.”

Kovalenko shared this sense of pride, especially about the courageous resistance she’s seen demonstrated by everyone in Ukraine, from the president to ordinary Ukrainians. To the people of Ukraine, she said: “You have put up such a fierce resistance. I am so proud of you and… I’m very proud of my heritage.”

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U of T announces the return of study abroad programs after border restrictions lifted University to provide financial support to travelling students Beatriz Silva Associate News Editor

U of T has confirmed that, following a relaxation in border restrictions, students will now be able to travel internationally for university learning abroad programs again.

Relaxed restrictions In December, the University of Toronto cancelled study abroad programs planned for winter 2022 due to the rise in COVID-19 cases and the Omicron variant. However, on February 15, the Government of Canada announced a relaxation on border restrictions. Thus, many study abroad programs might be back on for the semester.

An announcement from the Public Health Agency of Canada outlines that, as of February 28, Canadians are no longer advised to “​​avoid travel for non-essential purposes.” The decision also includes a note that arriving travellers may

present either a rapid antigen test or a molecular test result, and are no longer expected to quarantine until the release of arrival test results.

Following the news, U of T updated the Learning Abroad website, declaring that students will be able to travel abroad as of that date, which a university spokesperson also confirmed in an email to The Varsity.

to the situation. Another point of frustration for students who had their programs cancelled was the impact on their financial plans.

The university reaffirmed its commitment to supporting students by directing $1.5 million in federal funds to exchange programs, as well as providing a series of awards that include compensation for that purpose.

Cancelled programs The spokesperson claimed that students who were planning to go abroad were being contacted by the university’s learning abroad team to reschedule their trips, which will depend on “the timing of the experience and the organization’s ability to host students.”

When study abroad programs initially got cancelled, many students who had planned to go abroad were extremely frustrated, not only about being unable to participate in the program that they had long been preparing for, but also because of the university’s approach

Health and safety According to the Canadian government’s website, the Public Health Agency of Canada’s decision was based on the decline of COVID-19 hospitalizations and the rise in vaccination, testing, and treatment, focusing on a long-term plan for the pandemic.

U of T Student Safety Abroad was also reopened on February 28. The platform aims to monitor and prepare for risks and offer support for students studying abroad in case of any issues. All students participating in study abroad programs are required to register for it.

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MARCH 7, 2022

Ontario universities maintain COVID-19 vaccine mandates until at least the end of term Provincial government no longer requires vaccine requirements at universities Elizabeth Shechtman Associate News Editor

The Ontario government recently announced that it is rolling back its vaccine mandate, though it will continue to support universities that choose to maintain vaccine mandate policies. It added that it will encourage students to get their third dose before returning to campus.

Some university organizations, like the

University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA), have expressed concerns about these developments. U of T has stated that it will maintain vaccine mandates until at least the end of term.

Future of mandates In an email to The Varsity, Bethany Osborne, director of communications for the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, wrote that

even though vaccine mandate policies are no longer required by the Ontario government, universities still have the right to instill such policies as legally autonomous institutions. Osborne added that university vaccine mandates are supported by the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health She wrote that as the government eases public health restrictions, students are still encouraged to get their third dose before returning to campus to protect both themselves and others. Osborne also noted that the rate of vaccination in university communities is already relatively high.

Moreover, even though the government is no longer requiring universities to enforce vaccine mandates, a U of T spokesperson wrote in an email to The Varsity that the Council of Ontario Universities — an organization meant to provide a forum for Ontario universities to discuss and promote their interests — has chosen to maintain its vaccination policies until at least the

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end of the term, to avoid causing uncertainty through abrupt policy switches.

Community response The UTFA has expressed concerns about the province’s announcement. In an email to The Varsity, UTFA President Terezia Zorić noted that the association’s members “overwhelmingly support vaccine mandates.” She added that experts who advise the association do as well.

“Dismantling the University vaccine mandate would needlessly intensify the risks facing students, staff, faculty, librarians, and the broader community,” Zorić wrote.

According to Zorić, the UTFA also fears that the government will choose to remove mask requirements — a decision that the association believes would be a risk to public health.

If that were to happen, she wrote, the UTFA would support the university maintaining mask requirements.

Michael Sobowale elected SCSU president as voter turnout plummets UNIFY UTSC slate wins all six executive positions in 2022 SCSU elections Syeda Maheen Zulfiqar UTSC Bureau Chief

In the unofficial results posted on the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) website, the union announced that members of the UNIFY UTSC slate have won in all executive positions.

Members of the slate ran unopposed for five out of the six elected executive positions.

The total number of votes cast for the executive positions was 484 — significantly less than the 1570 votes cast in the previous election. Considering

that the SCSU represents 14,000 members, this translates into a less than four per cent voter turnout rate, compared to the 11.67 per cent of voters who participated in the election in 2021 and the 13.85 per cent who participated in 2020.

Results Michael Sobowale, who ran unopposed for president, was elected with 302 votes, or 62 per cent of all votes cast.

Alyssia Fernandes was elected as vice-president campus life with 223 votes, comprising 46 per

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cent of all votes. Fernandes was running against Devesh Juneja, who ran on the INSPIRE UTSC slate and was the only other executive candidate not running on the UNIFY UTSC slate. Juneja received 163 votes, or 34 per cent of all votes cast.

Thai Higishihara won as vice-president external with 294 votes, or 61 per cent of all votes cast.

The winner of the vice-president academics position was Amrith John David with 292 votes and

60 per cent of the total votes. Yumna Abdelhameed, receiving 297 votes, or 61 per cent of all votes cast, was elected as vice-president equity.

Lastly, Mathooshan Manoharan was elected as vice-president operations with 292 votes, or 60 per cent of all votes cast.

Check out the winning candidates’ profiles on page 6.

UTM confirms student injured in altercation outside MaGrath Valley Residence Hong Kong Student Association pressing university for further safety measures Lexey Burns UTM Bureau Chief

On February 23, Terrence Ng, a life sciences student at UTM, was injured in an altercation with a group of individuals outside UTM’s MaGrath Valley Residence, after which Peel Regional Police and U of T Campus Safety took him to the hospital.

University of Toronto Erindale Hong Kong Student Association (UTEHKSA) posted about the incident on its Instagram account, claiming the student was from Hong Kong, and demanding that UTM improve safety measures on campus.

Statement from UTM Nicolle Wahl, acting executive director at the UTM Office of Communications, confirmed the details of the incident that occured on campus in an email to The Varsity.

According to Wahl — on Saturday, February 19 — there had been a “disruptive” party at MaGrath Valley Residence. Residence staff and Campus Safety officers ended the party, during which damage was inflicted to a residence unit.

Wahl further wrote that four days later — on February 23 — multiple individuals arrived at the residence from off campus to inquire about equipment from the party. “A residence student arrived on scene and an altercation occurred between that student and the individuals,” Wahl wrote. Only one student was considered a trespasser as the incident occurred outside the building.

The student was taken to the hospital by Campus Safety officers and Peel Regional Police, who had arrived at the scene of the altercation. His

injuries were treated and he was released. No charges were laid. Wahl wrote that following the incident, the one person who trespassed has been banned from campus. “UTM has cooperated fully with the Peel Regional Police investigation,” Wahl concluded.

Student Housing & Residence Life also sent out an email regarding the incident. “On Saturday, Feb. 19, an incident occurred at MaGrath Valley residence, involving a disruptive party. This party was organized through an unsanctioned group that offers students money to host unauthorized on-campus parties promoted through social media. Student Housing and Residence Life staff and Campus Safety officers intervened and stopped the party.”

The email read that as a result of this party, a further incident happened on February 23. It also encouraged students not to rent out units for parties or “engage in activities that encourage reckless behaviour or risk your safety.”

Details of incident Terrence Ng and Leah Ogutu, a witness to the incident, sat down with The Varsity to explain the attack.

Ogutu explained that one of their friends had rented out her residence dorm to some upperyear students for a party. She said that, during the party, a door was broken and residence dons were called to break up the event.

According to Ogutu, some equipment was left behind after the party was dissolved so the four students returned with crowbars to get the remainder of their belongings. The four students

showed up at MaGrath residence unprompted on February 23, four days after the party, and provoked Ng. “Terrence and I were leaving my place, and their car was parked outside of my house, like outside my door… As soon as we opened the door, they all came out of the car,” Ogutu said that the students “started screaming at Terrence in his face [and] calling him names.”

Ogutu added that before the fight, Ng said “I dare you,” which, according to the police, “turned [the incident] into a consensual fight.” After the fight, Ng was taken to hospital where he received stitches.

Ng said that he “talked to one of the [residence] council people, and they said, for my action, [there will be] consequences.” Ng said no one told him of any specific consequences yet, but believes he doesn’t deserve them because he was defending himself. Ogutu and Ng both added that they wish Campus Safety did rounds more often and offered more than walking them back and forth from class.

Ogutu is also upset that only one of the four students was charged with trespassing. “There were three other guys who were also involved in the incident,” Ogutu said. “I wish that they had done more to… punish the other students who were involved in that because they still can come on campus.” Ogutu said that she was forced to change dorm rooms out of fear of them finding her or Ng. Ng said that Student Housing & Residence Life’s statement is “not telling the whole story,” with Ogutu adding on that she believes that the

email sent out by residence pins the blame on Ng for instigating the fight and does “not [take] into any consideration the nuances of the situation.”

Criticism from UTEHKSA In an Instagram post on February 28, the UTEHKSA wrote that “a UTM student from Hong Kong was attacked by 4 masked men with weapons outside of UTM McGrath [sic] Valley Residence.”

The Varsity has not received confirmation from UTM about the number of individuals or their appearance.

The statement from UTEHKSA read that UTM administration was informed of the incident. “However, they did not address the incident to all UTM students nor add any safety measures yet to prevent such incidents to happen again.”

Wahl wrote that Student Housing has offered physical and emotional support, and safety planning to several involved residence students.

The UTEHKSA also wrote to The Varsity that they “hope to ensure everyone safety at campus, not just [Hong Kong] students.”

Student Housing has offered several involved residence students physical and emotional support, as well as safety planning.

Mitra Yakubi, president of the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union, wrote in response to the incident: “We have been contacted by the students impacted and have since been able to support them and connect them to necessary resources.”

The Varsity has reached out to Peel Regional Police for comment.

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UTSU VP professional faculties, St. Mike’s director resign Board discusses implications of Israel-Palestine divestment motion Jessie Schwalb Assistant News Editor

At the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) February board meeting, the board discussed how to address a recent motion to boycott firms complicit in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Citing the divisiveness and vagueness of the motion, St. Michael’s College Director David D’Aversa resigned at the meeting.

Vice-President Professional Faculties Cathy Wang also submitted her resignation from the position at the meeting due to personal reasons and workload.

Executives also discussed the union’s ongoing projects.

Israel-Palestine divestment motion After the UTSU’s Special General Meeting on February 16, students decided to pass a motion commiting the UTSU to divest from “firms complicit in the occupation of Palestinian Territory.”

To gain clarity about the motion’s implica-

tions, the UTSU voted to “engage in open consultation with stakeholder groups on campus” and consult with reputable international sources. The investigation’s conclusions will be presented at the April BOD meeting, where the board will have to decide how to implement the students’ mandate.

The motion to divest also prompted the resignation of director David D’Aversa, who made a statement at the meeting explaining his decision. D’Aversa told the board that he decided to resign because he believes the motion undermines the UTSU’s purpose and lies outside of its scope.

“I believe that we are an apolitical body that advocates for the rights of all students and I’m submitting my resignation here because I think we’re moving in the wrong direction as a body,” said the former St. Michael’s College representative.

“The motion was divisive, vague, the implications left up to interpretation… It sets a precedent and it puts the UTSU in a very vulnerable position,” he added. “The reason why I feel so

strongly on this is that I know and I’ve seen firsthand the great work that we’re all capable of as the UTSU.” D’Aversa also expressed his disappointment with the way the motion had been handled.

“What’s clear now [about the discussion on the motion] is that many people feel that they didn’t have the chance to express themselves.”

He also called attention to the way this issue has overtaken other discussions about campus issues. D’Aversa said he was disappointed that they did not talk about “the great work” the UTSU has accomplished in the past year in assisting students with academics and with mental health during the pandemic.

Vice-president professional faculties resigns At the meeting, the board acknowledged Wang’s resignation from the position of vicepresident professional faculties. Wang submitted her resignation on February 6.

UTSU President Alexa Ballis spoke on her behalf, saying that she stepped down due to personal reasons and because of her workload.

“She really appreciated the opportunity to serve as a member of the board and [be] able to advocate for professional faculties students.

And I know that it was a very hard decision to make, but it was the one that she needed,” said Ballis.

Student aid referendum The UTSU’s quarterly budget report leaves it on track to end the year with surpluses in many budget areas.

The pandemic has also impacted how the UTSU’s budget needs have changed. “There were some things that we anticipated happening, which didn’t end up happening given COVID-19,” said Fiona Reuter, the UTSU’s vicepresident operations. However, the pandemic has also corresponded with a dramatic uptick in the number of students that are applying for funds. In response, the board is hosting a referendum to increase the levy for the union’s student aid program from $2 to $3.

One participant also proposed an expansion

The Student Commons.

CAROLINE BELLAMY/THEVARSITY

of the UTSU’s student refugee program. “We’re only hosting one singular student at New College at the moment, and I think that this can be expanded throughout our further faculties and federated universities,” they said.

If students vote to increase funding for campus chapters of the World University Service of Canada, the university will be able to host another refugee student. However, Social Science Director Victoria Liu questioned whether the UTSU could do more by asking for funding from individual colleges, potentially being able to host “one more refugee student for every college.”

Recent initiatives During the meeting, board members drew attention to some of the recent initiatives the UTSU has undertaken.

Ballis reported on the launch of the Students for Survivors Campaign. This campaign was created in response to recent allegations that former Trinity Provost Andy Orchard and members of the Faculty of Music committed sexual harassment against students.

The three-month campaign includes events aimed at supporting and advocating for survivors of sexual violence, including an art showcase, performances, and care kits. “Folks are also tabling across campus to spread awareness, and it was really wonderful speaking with students about [the campaign],” said Ballis.

So far, the Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy, Response, for Survivors Project (PEARS) and the UTSU have jointly released a video titled “Surviving the Centre,” where campus leaders and survivors read student testimonials about experiences with the U of T Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Center (SVPSC).

These statements have been collected by PEARS through an anonymous survey, which is still active and accepting responses. The responses PEARS has collected from this survey express frustrations about the SVPSC’s response time, its accessibility, and ways that it coerces students to avoid reporting. This frustration from students has fuelled plans from PEARS to hold a protest in April.

Past UTMSU President Felipe Nagata appointed as new executive director Residence town hall postponed Lexey Burns UTM Bureau Chief

At the February 25 meeting of the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union’s (UTMSU) Board of Directors, executives introduced Felipe Nagata as the new executive director of the UTMSU and updated the attendees on their activities for the last month. They also announced the postponement of the residence town hall, which had been scheduled for February 28.

New executive director Vice-President Internal Wei Lai went over the hiring process for the UTMSU’s executive director, chief returning officer (CRO) and deputy returning officers (DROs).

The hiring committee consisted of President Mitra Yakubi, Lai, Vice-President Equity Ryan Tomlinson, and non-voting member Nour Alideeb. The committee received eight applications for the executive director position.

After being narrowed down through interviews, Athisaya Satgururajah was hired as the new CRO, Chelsea Reys and Regelle Dumlao as the DROs, and Felipe Nagata as the new executive director. Nagata is a former president of the UTMSU and chairperson of Canadian

Federation of Students​​– Ontario.

Upcoming events Yakubi gave an update on the residence town hall that the UTMSU has been planning to hold.

Although it was originally supposed to be held on February 28, the UTMSU postponed the event because “​​members of [U of T] administration decided that they would not be attending the meeting.”

Yakubi explained that it wasn’t feasible for them to still hold the session at the original time, because the point of the event was for students to be able to give one-on-one feedback to the members of the administration. It will be rescheduled for a date when both students and administrators can attend.

In addition, the union is doing advocacy during the week of March 21 for Sustainability Week, and will hold Mental Health Awareness Week from March 28 to April 1.

Members also discussed the UTMSU elections, which are happening this month. The voting period will start on March 15 and will end on March 17.

Executive reports The executive team also gave updates on the work they have been doing for the past month.

The UTMSU offices.

DOMINICK HAN/THEVARSITY

Merica Joy Carlos, vice-president university affairs, confirmed that the UTMSU’s research symposium will be judged by Nagata; UTM’s Vice-Principal, Academic and Dean Rhonda McEwen; Tenley Conway, a professor in the geography department; and Michael Lettieri, UTM’s vice-dean, academic experience and a professor in language studies.

Maëlis Barre, the UTMSU’s vice-president external, explained her actions with the Safe Return to Campus Campaign, which held a multiple banner drop and a phone zap. The housing committee also held a meeting with the city councillor to talk about housing priorities for students.

Tomlinson went over the seven events that the UTMSU held for Black History Month, which included a talk from Professor Julius Haag in the Department of Sociology about racism in the judicial system and the Black History Month closing ceremony on February 28, which included a game of Family Feud and an open mic night.

Tomlinson further said that the UTMSU has received a lot of feedback from students about the necessity of consent training, so it held an event about combatting sexual violence on campus for the general student population over reading week.

thevarsity.ca/section/news

MARCH 7, 2022

UTSU extends nomination period for spring elections

UTGSU bans Adam Hill from meetings for rest of term

Nomination period to end March 11 at 5:00 pm

Impeachment motion against internal commissioner fails

Lauren Alexander News Editor

The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) has extended the nomination period for its spring elections by one week, until March 11 at 5:00 pm.

The announcement of the extension of the nomination period was made on March 4, one day before the All Candidates Meeting originally scheduled for March 5.

The UTSU has struggled with election participation in the past few years. During last year’s spring elections, only two of the six executive positions were contested. Additionally, the position of vice-president public & university affairs remained vacant throughout the election after the sole candidate dropped out.

In an email to The Varsity, UTSU Chief Returning Officer Cole Currie claimed that the UTSU has been seeing good participation this election season. Currie wrote that the nomination period was extended so that all students would get a chance to run. “This year students are participating in their studies online from around the world, and we found it important to extend the nominations period to allow more chances for more members to participate, should they wish.”

Currie pointed out that the director elections, many of which have been taking place within college and programs, have seen a number of contested positions.

He further noted that, due to the lack of inperson events, students may feel isolated from campus groups, and running for the UTSU can be a positive way of connecting on campus.

Disclosure: Cole Currie was The Varsity’s deputy news editor from 2017-2018.

IRIS DENG/THEVARSITY ALEX DENHART/THEVARSITY

New graduate residence proposed for Harbord Street Residence to address growing demand for campus housing Lauren Alexander News Editor

The university has proposed a new UTSG graduate residence to be built on Harbord Street, which would provide an additional 188 beds for graduate students. The project is an attempt to address the growing demand for graduate student housing on campus.

The recommendations for the residence were approved at a meeting of the University Affairs Board (UAB) this week. It will be presented to the Governing Council on March 31 for final approval.

Proposed residence The proposed residence would be an “operational extension” of Graduate House, a graduate student residence at the intersection of Spadina Avenue and Harbord Street. There will be a basement-level connection to amenity rooms in Graduate House, like a TV room and games room.

The building is planned to be nine stories tall and nearly 9,500 square metres. It will include communal kitchens and a “food market.” Floors will be composed of both two-bedroom suites and single-bedroom apartments with kitchens.

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The building plan includes a number of lounges and a study space as well.

At the UAB meeting, Anne MacDonald, assistant vice-president of ancillary services, said that the building will have “a beautiful brick facade and postmodern design that still reflects the neighbourhood.”

In response to a question about ventilation in the building, MacDonald said that there will be an HVAC air system. She added that the university has been having active conversations about ventilation throughout the planning process.

The need for additional housing The proposal for the residence notes that demand for additional housing on campus has been consistently growing, with estimates showing a need for 2,300 additional beds. In her presentation on the project, MacDonald said that the residence is part of the university’s 4 Corners Strategy, which plans on adding more than 4,000 new beds over the next 15 years.

MacDonald acknowledged that the project does not fully eliminate the current demand for student housing, but she said that it is a start.

— With files from Jessie Schwalb

COURTESY OF MICHAEL MALTZANM/ARCHITECTS ALLIANCE

Padraic Berting Graduate Bureau Chief

At a tense meeting of the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) Board of Directors (BOD) on February 22, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) representative and former candidate for internal commissioner, Adam Hill, was barred from further UTGSU BOD meetings over allegations that he has continually harassed members of the executive committee.

At the meeting, Hill continued to pursue an impeachment motion against current Internal Commissioner Sarah Alam, which failed after an in-camera discussion.

The BOD meeting, which lasted over three hours, also included discussions on the creation of a caucus for students who work at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the selection of the union’s chief returning officer (CRO), and the election of the executive member-at-large (EAL).

Hill’s ejection and failed impeachment motion At the previous board meeting, Hill submitted an impeachment motion against Alam, which was tabled until the next meeting. In addition, he posted a video on YouTube explaining his dissatisfaction with the union, sharing it on Twitter and tagging various U of T accounts, including The Varsity and Jordan Peterson. The Varsity is unable to verify the credibility of most of the assertions he makes in both the video and his impeachment motion.

At the beginning of the meeting, Hill engaged in a verbal conflict with the board, after which the board voted in favour of removing him from the meeting. Shortly thereafter, University Governance Commissioner Lwanga Musisi read off a statement prepared by the executive team, which asserted, “the UTGSU has progressively become an unsafe working environment due to the frequent harassment of the Union’s staff and certain Executive Committee members.”

The statement also directly mentions Hill, reading, “the current CTLSA representative (Mr. Adam Hill) unceasingly targets specific members of Staff and Executive, an unacceptable behaviour that has been going on for over a year and continues to go on.”

Musisi concluded by stating that the executive requests the board take action to cease these “endless personally motivated and vindictive attempts.” After a break, the board moved

in camera — a private portion of the meeting where guests and media were not present — and voted to suspend Hill from BOD meetings for the remainder of the semester.

In an interview with The Varsity following the meeting, Hill accused the executives of participating in “ad hominem” rebuttals, and alleged that they have been acting with “increasing authoritarianism.” He asserted that his actions did not constitute harassment but reasonable political discourse, and concluded by paraphrasing Winston Churchill, saying “[democracy is] the worst form of government except for all the others.”

Alam, the target of Hill’s impeachment motion, wrote in an email to The Varsity that she was “grateful to the board for making a just decision.” However, she wrote, “I am pretty concerned that this fixation will not halt and will continue to escalate whether I am serving as an executive at the UTGSU or not, as this has intensified beyond UTGSU corridors through public platforms.”

She rejected the notion that the impeachment was centred around genuine political disagreement, and that the UTGSU has an obligation to address all of its staff and executive members’ personal concerns. Additionally, she accused Hill of “misrepresenting subjective opinions, especially legal perspectives, as facts; disrespectful and threatening behaviour at meetings and in correspondence; and taking up so much space within the UTGSU that governance processes are severely hindered.”

Later on in the meeting, during an in camera discussion and vote, the board voted to keep Alam as internal commissioner.

Other business Following Hill’s ejection from the meeting, the BOD voted on a number of other developments.

A group of graduate students situated at the ROM successfully formed a caucus within the UTGSU, which was approved by the board and received an initial budget of $500. Additionally, the executive committee nominated Molly Simpson to become the union’s CRO in the upcoming election, and after some brief motivating remarks, Simpson’s nomination was confirmed by the BOD. Lastly, there was a robust election for the union’s unfilled EAL position. Three candidates ran for the position — Sophia Zhong, Sierra Codeluppi, and Angela Liu. After candidate speeches, the board moved in camera for a vote and selected Codeluppi as the new EAL.

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THE VARSITY

news@thevarsity.ca

NEWS

SCSU EXECUTIVE TEAM 2022–2023 Vice-President A&UA

President Michael Sobowale

Amrith John David

Marta Anielska Deputy News Editor

Michael Sobowale, a fifth-year student majoring in political science and international development, has been elected as president of the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) for next year.

Earlier this year, Sobowale was appointed as the SCSU’s vice-president campus life. He has also acted as an orientation coordinator for two years and volunteered at the SCSU’s food centre.

In an interview with The Varsity, Sobowale noted that his experience in the position has brought him into close contact with students and helped him gather their opinions and perspectives.

Sobowale hopes that as president, he can direct the SCSU toward lobbying for a post-pandemic recovery plan. According to his platform, this would include advocating for hybrid learning models so that students can safely attend classes.

“It’s important that when students come back to school, they feel safe, [and] that they have the

Syeda Maheen Zulfiqar UTSC Bureau Chief

necessary tools to continue that education and campus life,” Sobowale said.

Moreover, Sobowale plans to support international students by advocating for lower international tuition and exemptions for in-person classes, as well as lobbying for international students to be covered under the OHIP. He will also try to implement a Community Care Centre to ease first-year students’s transition to university and support climate justice initiatives.

Sobowale also plans to improve communication between the union and its membership. He will do so by releasing regular surveys to capture student feedback on the workings of the SCSU.

Amrith John David was elected as next year’s vice-president academics & university affairs on the UNIFY UTSC slate. He is in his fourth year, pursuing a specialist in international development studies and a minor in human geography.

In an email to The Varsity, David shared his prior experience that he believes will help him perform the role effectively, including working as an apprentice to the director of student engagement of the International Development Studies Students’ Association (IDSSA) in 2019. He was also involved in the Tamil Students’ Association as a first-year representative in 2019 and as the association’s director of events at UTSC in 2020. He is currently the president of the IDSSA and the vice-president external at Water.org UTSC. According to his platform on the UNIFY UTSC

Vice-President Campus Life

Vice-President Equity

Alyssia Fernandes

Yumna Abdelhameed

Syeda Maheen Zulfiqar UTSC Bureau Chief

Elizabeth Shechtman Associate News Editor

Alyssia Fernandes is a third-year political science and international development student and next year’s vice-president campus life of the SCSU on the UNIFY UTSC slate.

Fernandes has worked with the SCSU as the orientation coordinator for the first fully virtual Frosh Week in 2020. She also served as the president’s associate this year. She has been involved in student activities in high school, fundraising and working with students. In an interview with The Varsity, Fernandes said that these experiences will help her in doing “the very best as [vice-president] campus life to make sure that students are getting the best out of their university experience.”

Yumna Abdelhameed is next year’s vice-president equity on the UNIFY UTSC slate. She is in her third year, majoring in psychology and health studies and minoring in biology.

Her campaign outlined the goals and promises she wishes to accomplish. These goals include introducing two new grants, the Survivor Grant and the Transit Grant, to “better support students in accessing necessary support and accommodations.”

She also hopes to host monthly mental wellness initiatives to support students throughout the entire year, not just during stressful academic periods.

Abdelhameed plans to create an improved physical space for the Racialized Students’ Collective to make its on-campus gatherings safer and to guarantee a

Fernandes committed to organizing a free concert for students at the beginning of the year and improving funding for clubs, including a $150 subsidy for gatherings at the 1265 Bistro.

She also plans to host a “choose your program” fair with first- and upper-year students to foster networking and engagement.

She also told The Varsity that one of her goals is to alleviate students’ pressure in dealing with the pandemic and online learning. “I think [it’s] really important being [vice-president] campus life to acknowledge that… everyone’s walk of life is so diverse,” said Fernandes.

Vice-President External

Vice-President Operations

Thai Dillon Higashihara

Mathooshan Manoharan

Jessie Schwalb Associate News Editor

Cedric Jiang Associate News Editor

Thai Dillon Higashihara is next year’s vice-president external of the SCSU on the UNIFY UTSC slate. Higashihara is a fourth-year student pursuing a double major in political science and international development studies. He is also the campaign and outreach director at Oxfam UTSC, an organisation that combats poverty, in part by advancing women’s rights.

Higashihara stresses the importance of forging connections. “I really believe that UTSC can be better and brighter by reaching out. With Unity, we can achieve far greater things than by working on our own,” he wrote in his candidate statement.

As vice-president external, Higashihara hopes to increase campus sustainability, advocate for UTSC students, and create more inclusive opportunities. To actualize these goals, Higashihara plans to strengthen the SCSU’s Unite With Students campaign, which has lobbied municipal and provincial governments for increased educa-

tional funding and investments in Scarborough’s infrastructure.

His other project goals include improving the insurance and health benefits that are available to students, through hosting an “international student symposium” as a way to learn how to better serve the student body and reducing TTC fare for commuting students. Higashihara has previously participated in TTCriders, an organisation that advocates for improved public transit with a focus on sustainability and access for marginalized communities.

Higashihara also hopes to build connections with the Scarborough community by inviting local leaders and Indigenous groups to speak about Toronto-based activism. “We can work together both with other student groups and community leaders to build a sustainable unified transition back into in person student life once more,” he wrote.

Mathooshan Manoharan is next year’s vicepresident operations on the UNIFY UTSC slate.

Manoharan is a fourth-year student studying molecular biology, immunology, and disease. He is currently the president of the Pre-Optometry Students Association and he previously served as the director of operations at UTSC’s Investment Society.

Manoharan wrote to The Varsity that his experiences in these positions have prepared him for the skills required for being vice-president operations. He believes the skills he cultivated in his past executive positions, such as reaching out to sponsors and coordinating budgets and finances, can be directly applied to the vicepresident operations position.

Manoharan mentioned that he is passionate about representing students and making their

website, David hopes to introduce an academic advocacy coordinator position to provide assistance to students that may have been accused of academic offences.

David also intends to create more avenues for student academic support in the current teaching landscape as it fluctuates between in-person and online learning. Specifically, in order to encourage both in-person and virtual student networks, he wishes to establish “peer tutoring sessions and department-based study sessions during exam periods.” David has also committed to investing in the SCSU’s Academic Support Centre and, specifically, the centre’s Free Book Network program, which allows students free access to student-donated textbooks. David aims to ensure students can access current textbooks through the program.

safe organizing space for racialized students.

She believes her previous experience as the co-founder of her high school’s Black Students Association has prepared her for the role. In an email to The Varsity, Abdelhameed wrote, “Alongside a few friends, [the Black Students Association] led multiple workshops, events and collaborations at our district school board in order to bring awareness, educate and inspire others to create a safer place for all students and educators who felt left out within our community.”

Abdelhameed added, “I am planning to ensure that all students feel heard, understood and included within our SCSU.”

voices heard, especially regarding tuition. He wrote that students’ extremely low usage of the amenities on campus during the pandemic was not meaningfully reflected by any differences in their tuition fees. He would like to see initiatives that improve the student experience and make sure that students are “given the most value for the price they pay.”

Manoharan plans to expand the availability of food services and initiatives. In addition, he will create more sponsorships for the union with the aim of improving the services and events it provides for UTSC students. He will also work on improving purchasing guidelines for clubs and departmental students associations.

photos courtesy of candidates

Business & Labour Is freelancing right for you?

Four U of T students describe what it’s like to do freelance work on the side Georgia Kelly Varsity Contributor

If stocking grocery store shelves until midnight or being chained to a cash register all day just isn’t right for you, why not consider freelance work instead? Some students opt to be their own bosses and market their unique skills in order to make money as they go through school. The Varsity spoke with four students about their experiences working freelance jobs while studying at U of T. Choosing a service to sell If you’re lucky, you could just start charging people for the activities that you already like to do. Alayna Jang, a second-year student double majoring in cognitive science and sociology, for instance, started doing photography as a hobby before taking on paid jobs.

A similar progression happened for Scott Joliceur, a second-year music student who also teaches private guitar lessons. “When I was about 15 years old, I was told that I was at a level where I probably could just start teaching,” he explained in an interview.

Other work, such as tutoring, may not exactly be a fun hobby you get paid for, but can allow for more flexible work hours and provide fulfilling work experience. Olivia Sun, a second-year student majoring in ethics, society, and law, who tutors high school students in English, enjoys her job. “I personally like working with people, especially with kids, because they can be so cute sometimes. And it’s still fulfilling in some sense, because you feel like you’re helping people,” she said.

Finding clients It’s not much of a job, however, unless someone is paying you.

Sun told me that she uses the platform Superprof to find students. “Slowly, students started to reach out to me. And then from there, I kind of built a base where people would give recommendations and I got more students,” she said.

Meanwhile, Jang uses social media to advertise her services: “On Facebook, there’s a Hong Kong teen part-time page where students or other young adults or teenagers can put up a posting saying that they’re looking for work, and [I’ve been] able to build connections that way.”

Strangers on the internet aren’t the only potential clients. Jang explained that she got her first photography job through a friend of hers. Similarly, Vanessa Yu, a second-year music student, who teaches piano lessons, said that most music students get into teaching the same way: “Family friends and your parents’ work friends, they start finding out that there are opportunities for their kids to get lessons from someone they know.

And so [then] they started asking. So my first couple of students were mostly family friends.”

Having skills that people are willing to pay for is one aspect of freelance work, but if you want people to hire you, effective personal marketing is crucial. Jang describes the impressive efforts that went into building her online presence, such as making a website, navigating Instagram’s algorithms and hashtag systems, and strategically including sample work in her Facebook posts in order to attract clients.

Sun explained that on platforms like Superprof, potential tutors are selected based on their education, a personal bio, and their purported “teaching methodology,” among other factors. I asked Sun what attracted students to her profile. “I think it’s probably the fact that I got [a grade of] 100 [per cent] in grade 11 and 12 English,” she replied.

March 7, 2022 thevarsity,ca/section/business biz@thevarsity.ca

Setting the terms of service One of the most attractive aspects of freelance work is the freedom, but it’s also a bit of a doubleedged sword.

On one hand, it can make the job more enjoyable. Sun noted that designing lesson plans for her students from scratch allows her to be creative. Joliceur told me that he has a particular way he likes to teach guitar, which would be something he would have to compromise if he opted to teach through a school.

Being in charge of your own schedule is also particularly useful when you’re a full-time student.

Sun said, “I did a lot of tutoring in the summer.

I think I had [around] 10 students at a time. But then once school started, I dropped a lot of them.”

Similarly, Jang told me that she spaced out her photography bookings during the school year to give herself enough time to prepare for all of them.

With great freedom, however, comes great responsibility. “When you’re working freelance, a lot of [your business] is up to you,” Yu described.

“And in some ways, that can be harder because you have a lot more roles to fulfill. And you’re the one imposing deadlines upon yourself. If you don’t

follow them, that’s also up to you.”

Final step: cash in!

Well, hopefully. But getting rich doing something you love seems too good to be true, and it sometimes is. Finding work is often contingent on being discovered on networking platforms, being selected over your competitors, and building and maintaining connections.

For Jang, this meant having to start all over from zero when she moved to Toronto from Hong Kong. “I have not been able to find work in Toronto.

And so I kind of put freelance photography [to the side],” she said.

In the absence of contracts, freelancers are also at the mercy of their clients’ whims. “I feel like [the number of students] really went down in 2020 when COVID-19 started,” Joliceur recounted. He added that many of his students did not want to transition to Zoom lessons once in-person sessions were out of the question. He picked up a retail job later that year.

In the end, if it’s any consolation to the shelf stockers and cashiers out there, freelance work isn’t exactly easy, either.

KALLIOPÉ ANVAR MCCALL /THEVARSITY

Should you negotiate an entry-level salary?

Breaking down the decisions and method of salary negotiations for entry-level jobs Janus Kwong Varsity Contributor

Have you ever felt like you weren’t getting paid enough for your work? Was your boss ever so intimidating that you didn’t think you could speak up about your salary?

Many students starting at an entry-level job feel as though they are underpaid or doubt their skills.

However, Rotman Career Educator & Coach Mollo Miller recommended that every entry-level worker consider negotiating their salary if they feel they are not getting the pay that their job is worth — and such negotiation is not as difficult as you may think.

When to negotiate a salary First, identify a genuine reason for negotiating a salary. “Don’t negotiate for the sake of it, to see if you can get more money, or because it’s something you should do,” Miller said in an interview with The Varsity.

You should negotiate primarily to address gensine concerns about the salary you’ve been offered.

Miller explained that the decision to negotiate depends on a combination of what you are trying to accomplish with this job and the original offer itself, so be sure to define what your professional and personal goals are. Whether you want to gain professional experience, earn more money, learn or improve a skill, or practise leadership or teamwork, knowing what you want out of a job is crucial to weighing the pros and cons of an offer. By reconsidering and evaluating your goals, you can then begin to prioritize the importance of your negotiation and determine your flexibility for compromise.

She also stressed the importance of always considering the entire job offer, including any added

REBECA MOYA /THEVARSITY

benefits. While your given salary may be less than you anticipated, you may want to take into account benefits such as vacation days and insurance.

You could also negotiate a specific adjusted compromise by trading off one benefit for another.

Possible benefits might include the job’s start date, flexible hours, work-from-home days, cost coverage for cell phone bills, training opportunities, bonuses, vacation days, and more. This is also a great time to ask for a mentor within the organization!

Lastly, Miller said, do your research. Compare your offered salary to others in the market. Platforms such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor are useful for this purpose. You can also connect with your

university’s career centre and find career resources available to students. Talking to peers within your network to compare rates or asking for advice are other ways to go. When comparing rates, be sure to note your peers’ backgrounds to watch out for discriminatory practices in your offer.

Going about the negotiation If, based on all the criteria above, you do decide to negotiate, Miller suggests putting together a case with the research you have prepared. Be ready to justify and defend it.

Don’t turn the negotiation into a long chain of emails. Instead, ask for your employer’s availability

and meet them for a conversation to discuss the offered salary. Lay out all of your arguments, concerns, and thoughts on your current situation, and ultimately try to reach some form of compromise or agreement by the end of the meeting.

However, throughout this negotiation process, it is imperative to remember that employers are people too. The point of the negotiation is to appeal to their understanding and present your own concerns in hopes for a positive change. That makes it all the more important to be respectful and reasonable.

Miller recommended replying to the person that sent you the offer, saying, “Thank you so much for this. This is great; really happy to receive this. I do have a couple of questions and points of concern that I would love to discuss. Are you available in the next couple of days for a conversation?” This stresses the importance of a conversation rather than an email.

“We have to acknowledge power dynamics and leverage,” she continued. “As young professionals and students, we often have less leverage than what we will later on in our career when we may have more experience and education than others.

However, it doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate if you don’t feel the offer is fair.”

It can be incredibly daunting to stand up for yourself and assert your needs in a situation where employers are bound to have more power, but it is equally important to be aware of and be confident in your own abilities and goals when entering a new job. Regardless of your fears, your needs come first.

And who knows — you could leave the conversation with a better offer than the one you came in with!

Comment

March 7, 2022 thevarsity.ca/section/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

Toronto’s Ukrainian community demands action to prevent further catastrophe Ukrainians in Toronto speak about how they’re feeling, call for support Eden Zorne Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of war.

In the early hours of the morning on February 24, people in Ukraine were awoken to the sound of explosions, gunfire, and alarms. Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, had declared a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, which is his way of avoiding the word ‘war.’

But make no mistake: what happened and is still happening in Ukraine is war, in the purest definition of the word, and civilians are caught in the middle of it. With no warning, Ukrainians awoke to cities burning, the sky bright with the flashes of artillery fire, and the air thick with smoke. They had the bitter, crushing realization that their home was under attack, and that Putin not only wanted their physical land, but he also wanted to discredit their ethnic identity and independence from Russian culture.

History of the war The current war in Ukraine isn’t new, or at least not as new as many media outlets are making it out to be. The war started in 2014, when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula, which was first transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during Soviet times and officially remains part of independent Ukraine today despite its annexation. Russia also propped up separatist groups which occupied parts of the eastern Ukrainian oblasts, or districts, of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are collectively known as the Donbas region. After that point, and until recently, the war remained in a bitter stalemate, with no further advancement into Ukraine on Russia’s part.

Then, in 2021, Russia built up two major points of military power along the Ukraine-Russia border, prompting fear of another invasion of Ukraine — which ultimately occurred the next year, not just in the Donbas region but into the

entirety of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022.

The cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Mariupol are all currently under attack by Russian troops from the sea, air, and ground. Further explosions have occurred in Odesa, Kramatorsk, Dnipro, Lutsk, and Ivano-Frankivsk.

Canada has one of the largest Ukrainian diaspora communities in the world, second only to Russia. A large Ukrainian-Canadian population calls the GTA their home. With their homeland and very identity under attack, the community — many of whom have family and friends residing in Ukraine — has understandably been shocked, devastated, and frightened about what the future holds. The situation is evolving so rapidly that even five minutes could mean a total upheaval of what little semblance of normalcy their lives still have.

The voices of the Toronto Ukrainian community So how does the Ukrainian community in Toronto feel about this vicious attack?

Marta Perehinets, a first-year U of T student, said that her emotions “[have] ranged from terrified, to angry, to just depressed.” She fears for her family, since the majority of them live in Ukraine. Perehinets also has a cousin fighting in the Ukrainian military. “I wish that I could pull [him] out of the military, but… he wants to be there himself, which is very, very admirable.”

Anna Lysenko, a second-year U of T student, felt shock at first, followed by fear due to the lack of clarity in immediate media reports of the situation.

“Troops coming into Ukraine… could mean that two soldiers came into Ukraine to check things out, or it could mean that I’ve woken up and Ukraine has been conquered,” Lysenko said.

Iryna Turchyn, a Ukrainian community member, said, “I cried [the day of the invasion] all day. I couldn’t go to work [and] couldn’t sleep. I was feeling very angry, just completely, that they’re trying to take my country.”

However, in addition to the anger

ARTHUR HAMDANI/THEVARSITY

and fear, many are taking great pride in their country and in those who are defending it. After the February 25 rally organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress at the Ukrainian Consulate in Etobicoke, Marina Soroka, a Ukrainian community member, said that she was “scared but also proud.”

Lysenko expressed her pride in Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is staying in Ukraine. He famously told the United States, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” Lysenko said that she has newfound respect for Zelenskyy, as she feels that he is “being a real leader.” “He’s clearly willing to die for his country… What more can you expect from a leader?” Lysenko said.

Although global support for Ukraine has been massive, many in the community have expressed frustration toward the so-called ‘Global West’ for their lack of military and defensive assistance both before and after the invasion. Turchyn said that the West can’t leave it at saying they support Ukraine: “They have to act right away.”

After the rally, Zoriana Didenko, whose family is still in Ukraine, said that “everyone is [saying], ‘We are supporting

Canada has one of the largest Ukrainian diaspora communities in the world.

JADINE NGAN/THEVARSITY

Ukraine,’ but Ukrainians are [fighting] alone.” She added that she believes the Russian threat is no longer just about Ukraine but about all of Europe. “Now, [Russia wants] Ukraine; tomorrow, they will want Poland; and the day after, they will want France and all [of the] European Union,” Didenko said.

Organizers of the event Friday called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine in order to protect not only troops fighting on the ground but also civilians and civilian buildings from being hit by Russian airstrikes. Perehinets said that the “number one” thing that the West needs to do is to ban all air traffic in Ukrainian airspace. “Ukraine can fight on the ground. We have very, very well-trained soldiers… but we can’t just make an invisible shield to prevent bombs from falling. They’re going to fall if air traffic is allowed.”

Lysenko doubts that Russia will be stopped by “anything less than a more active coalition of countries against the war.” Specifically, she said that the United States needs to take stronger action: “Americans have always prided themselves on drawing the red line [that] no one will cross. But now where is the red line?” She added, “[The invasion] spat in the face of sovereignty and the global order won’t be the same after this.”

Some community members also voiced concern for global stability following Russia’s invasion. “If Russia can invade Ukraine and the UN can do nothing about it, and America can do nothing about it, and the EU doesn’t do anything about it, then what kind of precedent does that set? China can invade Taiwan. And [it’s] even bigger than that. Like, why can’t America invade Canada? [They have] similar cultures, similar languages… It just sets such a horrible precedent for politics,” Lysenko said.

The West must act now before it’s too late As a Ukrainian-American, I feel the pain that is felt by our community in Toronto and around the world. I am disappointed by the lack of direct military aid to Ukraine from Canada, the US, and the European Union.

I understand that sending troops would further provoke the situation.

But, at the same time, Ukraine is fighting alone against a country with more manpower and stronger weapons.

What kind of message does it send to the world that the US, a country that has long declared itself a preserver of democracy, is doing nothing to preserve democracy and is letting Russia invade its neighbour? It sends the type of message that there is nothing that will stop imperial-minded superpowers from exerting control over their independent neighbours.

I saw a news headline: the European Council President said that a nofly zone over Ukraine was “one step too far.” But has Russia not already gone “one step too far”? Not only has it violated international law by invading its neighbour, but it has also bombed residential buildings, killed hundreds of innocent civilians and displaced at least a million people who have had to flee to Poland, and detained children in Moscow for bringing flowers to the Ukrainian Embassy. If that’s not “one step too far,” then what is?

We learned this lesson in the 1930s.

Hitler was appeased time and time again — and look what he ended up doing. Just over a week into this all-out war, it looks as if history is shaping up to repeat itself. If Putin is not stopped hard and fast now, he will eventually wear out Ukraine’s brave defenders, and he won’t stop at controlling Kyiv.

He’ll move on to Warsaw, and then Berlin, Prague, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

The West cannot wait until Putin invades Poland to start fighting back.

By then, it will be too late to prevent a global catastrophe. We need a nofly zone over Ukraine this minute, and troops need to be dispatched immediately. For the sake of Ukrainians, Russians, and the entire world, the West needs to step up and stand up to Putin now.

Eden Zorne is a second-year European affairs, history, and Slavic languages student at Trinity College. She is an associate editor for the Trinity Times and a proud Ukrainian-American.

thevarsity.ca/section/comment

MARCH 7, 2022 9

Unaffordable rental housing may negatively impact our in-person return The cost of rental housing is rising, and more rental units are needed Anika Munir Varsity Contributor

housing supply to the market and allows students to find a home within their budget. Most students cannot afford to rent their own apartments. This type of housing can enable many of them to turn to room housing for a short period of time and have more roommates, which can assist in paying the overall rent for a single-family home.

Some studies have found that the population around the downtown core is decreasing in various Toronto neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods were predominantly built with singlefamily houses. The number of children in a family are declining, and the houses are becoming too large and expensive for small families. Additionally, many children have left those neighbourhoods, resulting in the presence of empty nest homes.

Hence, future housing development should focus on creating dense communities that include different types of housing. As a result, students would be able to find housing that fits their budget and could have more choice in

deciding what type of residence they would like to live in.

New housing developments that meet the rental housing market in Toronto could take several years to develop, but in the meantime, students can search for rental housing through various rental housing website services. Renter housing services are dedicated to helping individuals stay within their budget, while offering them a wide variety of housing options to consider. If you have roommates you would like to live with, you can use these services to help find a place to reside within the city.

While this strategy may not be as common today as it used to be, students can also look for flyers at religious facilities or community centers with information about different housing advertisements available in the region. This option is ideal if you have a particular community in mind that you would like to live in.

It is not easy to find housing, but it is a component of your everyday life. It is vital that you find a space to maintain a healthy lifestyle. It may be difficult to find roommates and live a movie life university experience in the wake of the pandemic. The good news is that now that since students are returning to in-person learning, you have the opportunity to form friendships and find individuals with whom you may discuss future rental housing arrangements.

Anika Munir is a third-year public policy, city studies, and public law student at UTSC. She is the director of human geography on the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union and the co-president of the Geography and City Studies Student Association.

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In response to the University of Toronto resuming in-person classes, students throughout the country and the world are taking steps to travel to Toronto. Upon returning to Toronto, many are faced with the need to find suitable housing.

Many students want a place close to campus so they can walk to classes, have access to transit, and have a variety of amenities nearby.

The decision of where to live is essential for students since they will spend most of their time in that area. This is especially true during the pandemic when some COVID-19 restrictions are still in place and some classes are still happening online.

Although the challenge for many students is the costs of housing in Toronto, the competitiveness that comes with a large population of students returning to in-person classes is another significant hurdle to finding accommodation.

In Toronto’s current real estate market, with the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment starting at $2,495, many students are forced to look for roommates and live with students from other universities. It is challenging to live by yourself and purchase healthy meals, all while managing to retain an income for other expenses.

Moreover, during the pandemic, many students may have had trouble establishing friendships due to virtual learning.

Therefore, many students have likely needed to turn to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Discord to find roommates. Luckily, students can

join Facebook groups specific to their campus to search for housing and roommates from the same campus. They can also join other university housing groups to arrange to live with students from other universities.

UTSG is located in downtown Toronto, which is more expensive to reside in than other places due to popularity, access to services, and proximity to the city centre. By purchasing housing further from the university, students can find large spaces but, as a result, have to commute longer to get to school.

Similarly, areas surrounding the downtown core are full of single-family homes. This has caused many students to take part in multi-tenant housing. This type of housing is illegal in several parts of the city, and the presidents of many Toronto universities are advocating reforms to this policy.

Multi-tenant housing has its positives and negatives, but overall, it helps reduce the unaffordable housing crisis as it adds more

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COMMENT

Toronto’s civilian-run mental health response team could have major benefits

Trains, pains, and automobiles Our trains may be awful but they’re getting better

The team is rebuilding trust while destigmatizing mental illness Ayesha Firoz Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article mentions police violence.

Within the next few weeks, a new mental health response team is set to launch in Toronto. This mental health response team, which is a civilian-run initiative, will be led by nurses and mental health workers rather than law enforcement, showcasing a significant advancement in Toronto’s focus on mental health and well-being.

By allowing mental health professionals to respond to mental health calls, people in crisis will receive proper care, which contrasts with past situations in which law enforcement has violently and inadequately responded to such calls. Beyond supporting citizens’ mental health, this initiative will work to rekindle the distrustful relationship between civilians and the system, especially given recent events involving police violence during mental health checks.

The visibility of the response team could also result in a destigmatization of mental health and has the potential to transform our overall cultural and societal understanding of mental illness. The creation of the response team signals to the public that mental illness must be visible rather than hidden and shameful. Legitimizing mental health as an issue worthy of attention may bring about opportunities for further funding for other projects, and by making mental illness visible to the public, we may be able to find better solutions for Torontonians impacted by mental health issues.

Mental illness is a complex and nuanced topic that is interconnected with several other social and personal issues. Although anxiety and depression are starting to be widely talked about and better understood, more complicated mental disorders remain relatively unknown or misunderstood. Many fail to see mental health issues for what they are — health issues.

This isn’t to say that no progress has been made to destigmatize mental health. In the past few years, the stigma surrounding the issue has decreased, and mental health initiatives have been implemented in many areas of life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, organizations like Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario implemented mental health initiatives targeted toward youth, such as offering virtual counselling sessions.

The response team’s initiative could help further improve social understanding of mental illness by highlighting it as a socially and structurally constructed issue. Poverty, discrimination, education, unemployment, and inequality — all structural and solvable­issues — can increase the likelihood that someone will struggle with their mental health. Toronto’s northeastern areas and ANDREA ZHAO/THEVARSITY

the eastern areas of downtown Toronto, followed by its northwestern areas and the western areas of downtown, are of the greatest concern in this respect. These places are where the pilots of the response team program will launch first.

By focusing on areas that have a higher need for mental health services, the response team takes a vital first step in addressing the structural issues that make them necessary, which may place significant pressure on our governments to address and solve the underlying problems that created this need. At the same time, we can better understand mental health on a personal level and destigmatize it on a social level. We can work collectively to better understand mental illness while also addressing its interconnectedness with other major social issues.

The response team will also replace law enforcement and police on mental health calls. There have been several recent incidents involving police violence in response to mental health calls, such as the deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet and Ejaz Choudry, both of whom were killed by police during mental health checks despite posing no serious threat. These incidents, as well as other situations that have involved police brutality, continue to stoke distrust toward the police and the governmental system as a whole.

Furthermore, by virtue of it being civilian-led, the response team could help rekindle trust between citizens and the government. For certain groups — especially those who have historically been marginalized and victimized by the police — rebuilding this relationship, while very difficult, is extremely important as it motivates people to reach out during times of crisis.

Indigenous people, for example, have higher rates of mental illness due to several external stressors and structural inequalities, yet they also report a higher mistrust and fear of the police compared to non-Indigenous people. It is vital that all citizens feel safe and secure in their decision to reach out for help, especially those who face social and structural barriers that might bar them from receiving treatment.

Rekindling trust is crucial — a positive relationship between citizens and the governmental system may promote greater social cohesion, which can improve the well-being and functionality of society as a whole. Furthermore, destigmatizing mental health and better understanding the societal factors that affect it can foster greater trust and solidarity between citizens and the government.

Hence, Toronto’s new mental health response team is an extremely significant development for the city of Toronto and has great potential to positively impact all citizens.

Ayesha Firoz is a first-year humanities student at Victoria College.

Parking lots around GO stations prevent a lot of residential development.

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Sulaiman Hashim Khan Varsity Contributor

Trains were once the guiding lines for civil development. With trains came the development of railway towns. Train stations were not built around where people settled — people would settle around where train stations were built.

However, less than 100 years after trains came into existence and seemed to become ineffaceably entrenched into society, governance, and culture, they were effaced nonetheless by the automobile. Trains were abandoned as the primary threads of the tightly knit sweater of industrial civilization. Many suburbs and newer parts of cities in North America would be designed around cars. Highways were given precedence over rail lines, and most people began to drive to their destinations rather than take trains. In southern Ontario, many people started to exclusively drive to their workplaces, many of which were in downtown Toronto.

This shift in priorities has been reflected in the shortcomings of Ontario’s GO Train and rapid transport systems.

Every day, U of T students, faculty, and alumni, as well as Ontarians at large, rely on GO trains to go not only to school and home but also to places of work and leisure. In the 1960s, the GO train system began as a single commuter line along the lakeshore in response to mass immigration and the development of suburban living. The GO train catered to suburbanites who went into downtown Toronto for work in the morning and returned home in the afternoon. As time passed, more lines from other suburbs in the region beyond the lakeshore were created, allowing even more people to work or attend university and still avoid highway buildup.

Still, more than 50 years later, the GO system never really evolved beyond commuter rails — trains that bring passengers to Toronto in the morning and stay idle until the evening when they bring passengers home.

It does not take a great visionary to identify the wasted potential. All GO trains from the suburbs travel toward and away from Toronto. There are no lines for the express purpose of connecting one suburb to another unless they happen to be on the way to Union Station. While it is true that there are alternative transportation options — like city buses, streetcars, and even GO buses run by the GO commission — they pale in comparison to the speed, efficiency, and convenience of dedicated rapid rail lines.

Perhaps the most tragic waste of time and money is how most GO trains only run during commuting hours in the morning and evening with nothing afterward. If you had a long day at

work, or you wanted to grab some coffee with your friends after class and happen to miss your train, then — oops! I guess you just have to stay the night or find some other way of getting home.

As of now, GO buses are the de-facto substitute for GO trains; they run during the hours when trains don’t, and anywhere a GO train stops, GO buses stop, although the reverse is not always true.

The issue with GO buses, unlike GO trains or other railway transit, is that buses are essentially big cars and face all the disadvantages of automobiles. A commuter taking the GO bus has to worry about overcrowding, cramped spaces, and — worst of all — traffic.

The issue of general accessibility and utility isn’t limited to time but also expands to space.

Many GO stations are not situated close enough to all of the places where people live for them to be able to walk or bike to the station. While there are incentives for residential development around stations, GO station parking lots prevent any commercial or residential development from happening. And since there are no residential developments nearby, commuters need to drive to the stations and the parking lots become necessary. This creates an awful cycle — an ouroboros made of drab, gray concrete.

For younger people like students, who often don’t have access to cars that they can abandon at a parking lot for an entire day, or for those that don’t drive, this brings another obstacle of accessibility. At the moment, this transit problem is only haphazardly solved by city buses, which face all the same problems as GO buses.

All hope is not lost though. The existence of barren, concrete wastelands surrounding many stations remains a problem, but stations like Port Credit GO and Cooksville GO present an ideal situation, with stations built in places people actually live or want to go to. Community-integrated stations like these serve as examples of how GO train stations should work.

Metrolinx has also made efforts to increase the frequency of trains on certain lines. In 2013, the Lakeshore line expanded to all-day service, with trains arriving every 30 minutes. If you miss your train, don’t fret, another will come soon — if you live along the lake, that is.

But perhaps the most important development is the 2025 expansion project, which will introduce interconnecting lines between suburban destinations. Further development such as the implementation of light rail transit in Peel and more underground subway lines in Toronto bring hope for the future of public transit — and for a more connected Ontario.

Sulaiman Hashim Khan is a first-year humanities student at St. Michael’s College.

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MARCH 7, 2022 11

Western and U of T are different, but have same next steps Preventing sexual violence and supporting survivors should be central to U of T policy Sarah Stern Varsity Contributor

Content warning: This article describes instances of sexual violence.

In September 2021, the discussion of genderbased and sexual violence (GBSV) on university campuses reemerged on social media. Numerous students from Western University, known across Canada for its party culture, posted allegations of distinct instances of gender-based violence on social media in the same month: a mass drugging in the Medway-Sydenham Hall residence and four reported sexual assault cases during orientation week.

According to a 2018 Statistics Canada survey, in their first month at university, a number of young women at Western became part of the around 33 per cent of women in Canada to experience GBSV. Gender-based violence and sexual assault are not new campus threats. And yet only just now, in February — months after September protests against sexual violence at Western University — did Western’s Gender-Based & Sexual Violence Action Committee share its policy recommendations on how to protect students against sexual violence.

The four new policies include requirements that all incoming students at Western University complete training about GBSV; that there be more housing support staff in residences, as well as staff who specialize in sexual violence; that orientation leaders and student mentors are provided with proper training to understand GBSV; and that Western hire a new support case worker and a prevention and education coordinator, both of whom specialize in responding to GBSV. Meanwhile, in October, U of T announced a review of its own sexual violence policy. This policy renewal was projected to run through February 2022, concurrently with Western’s own policy revisions, and be co-chaired by Dean Linda Johnson of the Lawerence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and Sexual and Gender

Western University and U of T have been working to change their sexual violence policies.

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Diversity Office Director Allison Burgess.

U of T does not have the same reputation as Western University. U of T is not a party school; it is more known for its academic rigour than for a culture of partying that fosters misogyny.

Yet GBSV still exists on campus and is likely dangerously underreported. The consequences of student and staff ignorance around sexual violence on campus are an unprotetected student body and insufficient sexual violence prevention and support services.

In response to the prevalence of sexual violence on campus within the Faculty of Music and Trinity College’s administration, student groups have criticized U of T’s policies and are advocating for change. Three otherwise unconnected student groups — the University of Toronto Students’ Union, the Prevention Empowerment Advocacy Response for Survivors Project, and the Faculty of Music Undergraduate Association — have launched the Students for Survivors campaign, united solely by their goal

to protect U of T students from GBSV. The campaign shares goals that complement Western University’s policy recommendations: creating more sexual violence awareness and prevention training, increasing the number of experienced staff and improving legal, medical, and mental supports on campus.

Fostering a safe environment on campus is an incredible challenge. Allegations of students being drugged, stalked, or assaulted regularly occur across universities nationwide. In this regard, no measure taken toward GBSV prevention is a waste of effort.

While expecting upper-year students, including second-years, to manage traumatic situations with the same care as a professional is unreasonable, equipping residence dons with the proper training to handle sexual violence should be integral to every university’s sexual violence policy. Not providing dons with any proper training is unjust not only for them but also for the students who need their support.

After the allegations at Western University emerged in September, Western student Ali Ibrahim-Hirji created an Instagram post about focusing on the experience of orientation leaders on the evening of the alleged mass drugging. In the post with 25,000 likes, Ibrahim-Hirji wrote, “What you don’t see is our team responding to our 6th gender-based violence situation of the night, and then the 11th, and then the 14th.

What you don’t see is our [orientation leaders] going above and beyond to make sure that this space is safe, EVEN when that means putting themselves in danger because no one else is there to help.”

One day later, Ibrahim-Hirji posted a public apology addressed to survivors of GBSV at Western University for his post, which seemed to try to reposition a narrative that wasn’t his own, and for writing over womens’ experiences. But while it is wrong to suggest that he and the other orientation leaders shared the same trauma as survivors of GBSV, encountering sexual violence on campus is traumatic, even for those who aren’t directly affected.

Policies such as the ones Western’s Action Committee just recommended, and the ones that U of T students are begging for, would mitigate the mishandling of cases of sexual violence and, more importantly, ensure there are better and more informed resources for survivors of GBSV. These policies would not only benefit survivors but also limit the trauma of the people who lack the proper training to aid survivors who are relying on them.

The likelihood that policies against GBSV will eradicate it from university campuses entirely is small, but the goal of policies such as those proposed by U of T’s Students for Survivors campaign is to prevent GBSV as much as possible and support those who have been affected by it. Caring for the well-being of fellow students is ultimately the greatest vehicle of change and the best hope for fostering a safer campus community.

Sarah Stern is a second-year English student at Victoria College.

Public Editor: Speaking to those who don’t want to listen The representation of right-wing and diverse viewpoints in The Varsity Emory Claire Mitchell Public Editor

At U of T, we had a front row seat to the hundreds of protesters that came to Queen’s Park recently to protest public health measures against COVID-19. The juxtaposition between the best school in Canada and the masses that occupied the park many of us walk through was, at best, amusing. It is easy to feel superior in our intellect when we hear about the blatant misinformation being spread in our streets — it feels far away from a world that demands ‘at least three peer reviewed sources.’ However, even at U of T, there is vast disagreement between people over what constitutes a fact.

The Varsity wants to be representative of the entire student body. It wants to be a method of amplification for all voices here. Regardless, our comments sections seem to reflect the increasing chasm of understanding between political viewpoints that we see in the outside media as well. Our recent Arts & Culture article commenting on the misinformation Joe Rogan’s podcast spreads attracted more comments than most of our articles. Notably, none of the commenters were arguing that the podcast did not encourage anti-vax sentiment through misinformation.

Instead, their content focused on nitpicking the details of the article, criticizing the usage of the word ‘problematic,’ and declaring it to be a meaningless overused word. This comment attracted the highest number of reactions, all positive, and received more engagement than the article itself.

To me, this shows that there is a kind of animosity between left-wing and right-wing members of the student body. The Varsity wants to be an asset for all of the people it represents, but clearly some people see it as biased and thus only engage in ways that do not aim to change the paper, only criticize it.

The paper has tried to include more rightwing and diverse viewpoints. They have tried to ensure that their perspectives are fair and balanced in a way that really gives all relevant viewpoints equal space. But, according to The Varsity Managing Editor Tahmeed Shafiq, those articles have sometimes been cut in the past if they were not backed up with sufficient evidence.

Publishing these articles without sources that support it would create a false balance. A false balance is when an argument is presented to be equally as strong as its counter, despite it lacking equal evidence. If The Varsity created a false balance it would hurt its own journalistic integrity. Thus, while it might try to include more viewpoints with the hopes of engaging more of our community in a positive way, it is difficult to do so in many cases.

Still, news is about encouraging and cultivating the minds of the community it represents.

Confirmation bias is strong and our first impressions and beliefs on an issue persevere. Often, people are uninterested in engaging with something they believe to be oppositional to their worldview. This is not necessarily because they want to stick their head in the sand. It is because that is how humans are made to think.

The Varsity wants to be representative of the entire student body.

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This tendency of humans to seek out supporting evidence for our beliefs and ignore everything else unconsciously is working against The Varsity in its attempts to engage everyone and form a stronger understanding. However, despite their desires to work toward a stronger community, it cannot ethically equate beliefs that are not equally supported. Instead, we have to keep

looking for ways to engage, meet with understanding, and build trust. But that will take time and it is an issue far bigger than U of T, no matter how close it is in proximity.

Emory Claire Mitchell is the public editor at The Varsity and can be reached at publiceditor@ thevarsity.ca.

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FEATURES

Yash Singhal Varsity Contributor

Imagine you’ve stepped off the top of an 80-storey skyscraper.

You’re falling, falling fast.

Your shirt flutters in the wind. Your hair whips around your face. You open your mouth to scream but the wind muffles your voice.

You see the sky, then the building, and then the sky again as you tumble through the air, plummeting towards the ground at 200 kilometres an hour. Gut clenched, arms flailing, you shiver as the adrenaline takes over and your body starts tingling.

You’re going faster and faster, the ground is getting closer and closer, and just as you’re about to crash into the concrete pavement, you push your shoulder blades together, forcing your wings to flap open. The unfurled appendages catch the wind, tug you upwards, and now you’re gliding.

You’re swimming through the air, in control, flowing with the wind instead of just being thrown against it. You strain your back muscles and flap your wings, rising a little higher. You’re not falling anymore. You’re flying.

The allure of flight Individual flight has long captured people’s imaginations. The Greeks tell the myth of Icarus who used wings made of wax and feathers to escape his confinement. Judeo-Christian texts describe angels that could fly up to the heavens. Leonardo da Vinci spent days designing flying machines that would mimic birds and let humans take to the skies.

Just looking at an eagle gliding through the air gives us land-dwellers a pang of jealousy. For us, the sky is forbidden, unconquered. Although we have our airplanes and our jets, flying in a big metal tube and peering through those tiny oval windows doesn’t quite fulfil that primal urge to feel the wind in our wings.

So why, even after thousands of years of innovation and research, are we still forced to sit in our cars and complain about the traffic instead of just flying above the road?

Why can’t I flap my wings open and go over to my nearest McDonald’s fly-through? Why are we chained to the Earth when we so long to fly?

It might have something to do with the fact that we humans just aren’t designed to fly. Surprise, surprise! Unlike those of birds or bats, our bodies are heavy, our muscles are weak, and probably most significant of all, we don’t have wings.

Yet. Wings of flesh and bone In an interview with The Varsity, Douglas Blackiston, a developmental biologist at Tufts University,

shared his research on tissue plasticity and the development of wings.

His research involves understanding and changing the underlying genetic and physiological factors to create specific body parts and anatomical systems. Humans already have millions of years of evolutionary history that has given us our nimble fingers, mostly hairless bodies, and giant brains — to name a few things.

All sorts of useful traits but not a single instance of functional wings.

“From an evolutionary standpoint, we don’t really see new structures developing from nothing; you generally must modify existing bones to produce a particular anatomy. For wings, this involves giving up arms or hands,” Blackiston explained.

If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.

No animal, extant or extinct, has the four-legged, two-winged structure of a western-style dragon.

Blackiston suggests that this is because natural selection would be hard-pressed to create wings from shoulder blades.

If they existed, “dragons would likely look more like pterosaurs, where the arm bones and fingers elongate and are covered with a membrane,” he added.

The other problem with growing wings is that even with all the advances in genetic technology, it would be really difficult to edit genes in every one of the million cells in an adult. Instead, the blueprints for a set of wings would have to be inserted into the genome at the single-cell stage.

So if you are reading this, it’s probably too late for you already.

Fine. If genetic technology can’t pave the way to a feathered future, maybe plastic surgery can?

After all, it has managed to give people horns, forked tongues, and pointy fae ears.

Joe Rosen, a plastic surgeon at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centre, believes that one day you could walk into his clinic and leave with a fresh pair of wings a few hours later. According to his blueprints, the wings would be grafted onto the back or moulded out of the existing flesh and bone, a grotesque-sounding process with angelic results.

“If I were to give you wings, you would develop, literally, a winged brain,” shared Rosen, in an interview with The Guardian. “Our bodies change our brains, and our brains are infinitely mouldable,” he added.

This means that the new appendages would soon get linked to the body’s nervous system, allowing the owner to feel as if they were always there. However, he did clarify that the wings would be just for the aesthetic.

That may seem like another dead-end to this flight of fancy, but the possibility of wings with sensation does show some promise. Say, all the stars align perfectly: we are able to advance the technology enough, we’ve sorted out the ethics of it all, and your far-sighted parents wanted an angel baby. Et voilà, you’re born with a pair of wings sprouting out your back. Ones that you can feel and control. Functional wings. Magnificent wings.

Could you fly then?

Think about the simplest mechanism of passive flight: gliding, or what Buzz Lightyear would call “falling with style.” The typical hang-glider needs a parachute that’s around 30–40 feet wide, just to let us gently descend through air. To be able to gain altitude, your wings would have to generate enough upward force to overcome the gravity pulling you downwards.

Birds do this by either flapping tiny wings really fast, like hummingbirds do, or massive wings really slowly, like pelicans. Either mechanism requires extremely strong muscles, which is something we lack.

Evolutionary change has honed birds to be perfect flying machines. Birds lack teeth, large brains, and complex digestive systems, all to minimize weight. They have massive, dense chest muscles to power their wide wings. Their bones are hollow but rigid enough to withstand the large amounts of force the wings

produce. Every aspect of their biology is adapted to make them powerful but at the same time light as a feather.

On the other hand, we are substantially larger while being embarrassingly weak. To compensate for weight, the average adult male would need wings that are seven metres wide! Aside from looking ridiculous, wings that large would be heavy, so we’d need stronger muscles that would add more weight. Now we need even wider wings, adding even more weight. The solution in turn makes the problem more difficult to solve.

“We would have to drastically redesign the human body for flight to be possible, to the point that you would likely no longer be recognized as human,” Blackiston said. “It’s one of those ideas that always captures the imagination but is challenging to actualize in reality.”

A resounding no on the ‘wings of flesh and bone’ idea then. That’s okay, we’ve got technology in our arsenal, too.

The case for technology Icarus didn’t grow his wings and neither did the Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming. We humans may not have hollow bones or massive muscles, but our claim to fame has always been our ingenuity, our use of tools.

Flight is very much possible through technology, and we’ve proven this fact multiple times.

We’ve built planes that can carry hundreds of people over thousands of kilometres, jets that

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achieve speeds of over 3,200 kilometres per hour, and rockets that are strong enough to completely overcome Earth’s gravity.

Heck, we’ve even built some prototype jetpacks that eliminate the need for wings entirely.

All of these are incredible feats, yes, but they just aren’t good enough. Flying in an aeroplane is just like riding in a bus; great for going from point A to point B, but that’s it. There’s no air rushing past you, no action, no adrenaline.

Propellers and engines are bulky, noisy, costly, and dangerous. There are also a lot of regulations and requirements that you need to satisfy regardless of if you’re flying a recreational, ultralight aircraft or a big passenger plane. Although aviation is possible through technology, it is inaccessible to the common man and unenjoyable for the trained pilot.

Through biology, we can grow wings that look the part. Through technology, we can build machines that do the job. At the intersection of both stands Hugh Herr on his cyborg legs, guiding us towards a winged future.

Herr is an MIT professor who lost both his legs in a mountain climbing accident. Undeterred, he built himself new ones: extremely high tech, prosthetic limbs with sensors, microprocessors, and actuators that returned his ability to walk,

run, and skip.

Now, he is working on developing the field of neuro-embodied design, a new methodology of designing synthetics that works alongside biology. It aims to strengthen the bi-directional connection between the two, allowing us to not only control but also communicate with technology.

If you close your eyes and move your arm, you still know which way it is pointing, just via muscular cues. Neuro-embodied design would allow us to have that same sort of bodily awareness, but for robotic limbs. In a perfect synergy of mind and matter, the synthetic would become an extension of us.

So far, this growing field has yielded robotic limbs and surgical techniques that, when used together, give amputees the experience of having real limbs again. One such limb replacement even allowed a man named Jim Eqing to become the first cyborg mountain climber.

Imagine a future where the lines between man and machine are blurred even more. What if, instead of just restoring human capabilities, we could enhance them?

In his 2018 TED Talk, Herr said, “In this twentyfirst century, designers will extend the nervous system into powerfully strong exoskeletons that humans can control and feel with our minds.

Muscles within the body can be reconfigured for the control of powerful motors… In this twentyfirst century, I believe humans will become superheroes.”

The wings we grow could be augmented with computers and motors to provide the power and control that

we couldn’t, yet they would be a part of us, a mere thought away from unfurling.

Near the end of his optimistic speech Herr promises, “Humanity will take flight, and soar.”

It’s a wild thought, isn’t it? Something right out of a sci-fi movie. Imagine a world where wings are so increasingly commonplace that not having them becomes a handicap of sorts.

If enough people chose to bio-augment in this way, our architecture, our cities would change entirely. New laws and regulations would have to come into place. Our current roads might be replaced by highways in the sky.

Everything will be altered to facilitate flight, to accommodate our new abilities. Would this change in infrastructure and our way of life put those that chose to be without wings at a disadvantage? What if they don’t have a choice, and the technology just isn't accessible to them?

An ethical dilemma Just as with genetic modification, the ethical dilemma stands: Should we give people wings?

We use tools to enhance our natural capabilities all the time. We wear flippers to swim faster, glasses to see clearer, shoes to run faster, and jackets to keep warm. But we have never attempted to alter our bodies directly for these effects.

Although this concept of using bio-augmentation would intrigue a lot

of people, it would bring in a much larger number of skeptics. After all, not everyone wants wings.

In an interview with The Varsity, Darek Magusiak, a paragliding enthusiast and certified instructor, shared details of his experience in the air.

As someone who has been flying planes and gliders since 1996, he’s as close to a man with wings as we can find today. I asked him to describe the indescribable feeling of flight for us land-dwellers, and with immense glee in his voice, he narrated instances of flying beside crows and swimming through the clouds.

Magusiak described flying as a source of freedom. Beyond the thrill of successfully taking off with the wind, for Magusiak, flying brings a sense of peace which can be incredibly stress relieving.

He describes the silence — how “the only sound you have around you is essentially the sound of wind, the airflow, hitting your lights.”

I wanted to get his professional opinion on this novel concept of bio-technological wings.

At first, he was taken aback by the idea but soon warmed up to it.

While Magusiak believes it would take a lot to “develop it to the point it was viable,” he is excited about it, even if he’ll be “too old for it” by the time it comes out.

After hearing his thoughts, I conducted an informal study: for a week, I asked everyone I met whether they’d be open to getting wings in this way. Most said yes, with some even describing vivid dreams of flight they’d had since childhood.

However, not everyone was as enthusiastic about the possibility. Some had an outright negative response, saying, “I would never alter my body in that way.” Others wondered whether the procedure was permanent and stated that they’d go for it only after spending half their lives on the ground. A few people started discussing the ramifications of living flightless in a winged world, ultimately saying that they’d have no choice but to get them.

What about you? If you had the access to wings of flesh and steel, would you choose to fly? Would you give in to that call of the void or miss out, stay standing on your own two feet?

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“Slava Ukraini”: In downtown Toronto, thousands protest Russian invasion of Ukraine Chrystia Freeland, John Tory, and Margaret Atwood among rally attendees Jadine Ngan Features Editor

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of war.

On February 27, thousands rallied in downtown Toronto to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The crowd gathered at YongeDundas Square before marching to Nathan Phillips Square. One group of protesters carried a large blue and yellow flag through the streets. Others held signs criticizing Russian president Vladimir Putin and demanding the protection of Ukrainian airspace.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was one of the people at the forefront of the march and took the stage at Nathan Phillips Square to address the crowd. “Over the past few days, the whole world has seen how remarkable Ukraine is — how remarkable the Ukrainian people are,” she said.

She also referred to Ukraine as “the battleground in the world between democracy and dictatorship.” This fight, she said, determines whether the post-WWII international order will stand.

“I am so proud that Canada sent lethal aid to Ukraine before this war started. And we, with our allies, are

going to continue supporting that Ukrainian war effort,” she told the crowd.

The president of the UkrainianCanadian Congress, Alexandra Chyczij, was among the rally’s other speakers.

“We need to protect the beautiful blue skies of Ukraine. We need to keep the machines of death out — those that rain down bombs on civilian populations… NATO must declare and enforce a no-fly zone,” she said. Her statement was met with cheers from the crowd.

Other notable attendees at the march included Toronto mayor John Tory and author Margaret Atwood.

At Nathan Phillips Square, the sun shone through protesters’ signs, illuminating them from behind.

At Yonge-Dundas Square, a Ukranian child holds a sign pleading not to be shot or bombed. The United Nations has recorded a total of 752 casualties in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion, including scores of children.

One protester, Chantal McDonald-Stovin, offers blue and yellow felt hearts to members of the crowd, helping tie them to people’s sleeves

As the march begins moving west down Dundas Street, some protesters hold the edges of a large Ukrainian flag in their gloved hands.

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MARCH 7, 2022

Ukrainian-Canadians are not the only ones at the march: a variety of protesters — including communities from Latvia, Hong Kong, and Georgia — fly flags and hold signs in solidarity with Ukraine.

Ukrainians and their allies are demanding that NATO “shelter” Ukrainian skies by enforcing a nofly zone over Ukraine. Enforcing a no-fly zone would entail military engagement with any Russian aircraft in Ukrainian airspace — an act that would be, as one former US air force general put it, “tantamount to war.”

A young protester, with the words “NO WAR” written across their face, waves a Ukrainian flag as the crowd listens to speeches at Nathan Phillips Square.

Many protesters’ flags and signs contain the trident, or ‘tryzub’ — a Ukrainian symbol of national unity that dates back to the Rurik dynasty of the tenth to twelfth centuries. It became the state coat of arms in 1918, just after the Russian empire collapsed.

Some protesters’ signs emphasize the direness of the situation in Ukraine.

As the event comes to a close, two protesters stand against the backdrop of City Hall, raising smoke bombs in the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

Midway through the afternoon, snow begins to fall, accumulating on the large Ukrainian flag that dozens of people hold aloft in front of the speakers’ stage.

Some protesters of Russian descent, like these two, hold signs expressing support for Ukraine and a desire for peace.

“Slava Ukraini,” which means “Glory to Ukraine,” is a popular rallying cry for the marchers. Underneath those words, this protester’s sign also contains text that translates to “glory to the heroes.”

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Arts & Culture

March 7, 2022 thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture arts@thevarsity.ca

U of T alum Nathalie Bibeau directs a love letter to the below-average dancer Why We Dance proves that dance is in all of us Hannah Katherine Varsity Contributor

So, you think that you can’t dance?

You know how it is — many shy away from the topic of dance, claiming that they can’t dance or that they’re not the “dancing type.” But what if someone was to tell you that dance is an essential component to human survival and evolution? Or that we, as humans, practically danced ourselves into existence?

This is precisely what award-winning director and U of T alum Nathalie Bibeau explores in her whimsical documentary, Why We Dance.

The documentary, which premiered on CBC Gem’s The Nature of Things on February 25, examines the relationship of humans with dance from as early as our development in the womb and infancy. It also highlights how humans use dance to create connections with ourselves, other people, and nature.

In an interview with The Varsity, Bibeau discusses these same aspects of dance.

Dance as evolution What makes Why We Dance unique is that it doesn’t showcase dance as a skill or pristine art form, but rather as a primal instinct. In the documentary, audiences learned that flamingoes’ dance-like behaviour is crucial to their reproduction and survival and that chimpanzees also participate in a rhythmic movement, though they lack the ability to dance to a beat.

Bibeau said that this element was inspired by the ideas of dancer and philosopher Kimerer LaMothe. By relating dance to human develop-

ment, Bibeau blurs the line between science and art, as in this context, dance becomes instinctual rather than a talent or a skill-based activity.

Bibeau also noted, “We now attribute labels to people, [such as] ‘good dancer’ and ‘bad dancer,’ [or] you’re ‘the right body type’ and, you’re ‘not the right body type.’” As someone against such labels, she hopes that, “When people see [her] documentary... they’ll realize they actually can [dance]. It is inherent in them.”

However, Bibeau did not always think that way.

Introspecting on her career as a trained dancer and her ideas about dance prior to this film, Bibeau commented that she had “imagined [that dance] was an activity that we choose to do… [an activity in which] we’re either good at or bad at.”

Dance as socialization Bibeau said that “one of the theses of [Why We Dance] is that dance connects us to ourselves, to others, and to our natural world.” The documentary includes different experiments that show these connections, such as a social experiment led by Social and Evolutionary Psychologist Bronwyn Tarr.

During this experiment, strangers imitated

Why We Dance focuses on how we can use dance as a social connection COURTESY OF KENSINGTON COMMUNICATIONS AND CBC

and synchronized their movements while developing empathy for one another. This exercise, which motivated social engagement, demonstrated that the ability to imitate and synchronize are key in human evolution because they allow us to explore and change new ways of expression.

Dance as nature To Bibeau, visually connecting dance to nature

was the most challenging relationship to demonstrate. The decision to film the documentary predominantly outdoors “was a clear aesthetic choice.”

Among others, this decision is prominent in a scene with an Indigenous dance group from Red Sky Performance — the dancers integrated their beach environment into a contemporary dance through partially burying themselves and then emerging from the sand.

Bibeau said that the documentary created challenges such as these because she wanted “the subconscious… to remember that ultimately this is about connecting to our environment.”

Dance as movement Through the many dances featured in the hourlong documentary, Bibeau successfully captures the motion by having her cinematographer follow the dancer’s movement.

For this choice, Bibeau took inspiration from Maya Deren, an experimental filmmaker from the 1940s. Bibeau explains, “One of the things [Deren] did so well was to make the camera feel as if it is a participant in the movement of the person being filmed.”

In the documentary, Bibeau wanted the camera to be part of the moment, so this was an important directive decision to make. Its result was blending the fluid motions of the dancers and the motion of the camera.

Bibeau’s documentary, Why We Dance, is uplifting. Dance, which is commonly viewed as a hobby, is so much more. Through her work, Bibieau demonstrates that dance is a spectrum, and that any expressive movement can often become a dance. Therefore, we all dance.

Bibeau’s final thoughts about her documentary is that it’s a “fun film, it is whimsical, and it is meant to encourage creativity.” Airing at a time where the world contains numerous conflicts, she hopes that her film is “an opportunity to just feel joy.”

I entered a beauty pageant — and I’m a feminist Pageants can be feminist if they prioritize contestants’ values Aissatou Barry Varsity Contributor

Beauty contests have been around for a long time. In Ancient Greece, annual beauty contests were called ‘Euandria,’ which involved male contestants. In medieval Europe, celebrations such as the English May Day involved beauty pageants that ranked women based on their facial attributes.

The earliest beauty pageants were just that: beauty competitions. Throughout the years, however, beauty pageants have become a staple of popular culture. One of the most famous pageants, Miss World, has raised more than US$500 million for charity since its inception in 1951.

The first Canadian beauty pageant was Miss Canada. Held in 1946 with 40 participants, Miss Canada’s first edition took place in Hamilton, Ontario. With 7,000 spectators, the edition was solely a swimsuit contest. The following editions were expensively televised on CTV. After the Miss Canada trademark gained huge success in the 1980s, the competition came to an end in 1992 due to lack of donations. This abrupt ending was praised by many Canadian feminists, including Judy Rebick, who thought that beauty pageants

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were “a symbol of the exploitation and oppression of women.”

Miss Canada is not the only pageant that has received criticism from feminists. Throughout the years, many international pageants have become popular for representing conventionally attractive people, much to public dismay. Talking about Miss America, Tricia Bishop, the deputy editorial page editor for The Baltimore Sun, said that “beauty pageants should die out like the dinosaurs they are.” As our society is becoming more aware of misogynistic practices and customs, beauty pageants seem like an outdated dog show for women.

As a young woman discovering her own womanhood, I know that being a woman means navigating the male gaze every day. I’ve gotten into arguments with teachers about dress codes and bra straps.

I’ve been a victim of catcalling and have received creepy messages from men on Instagram.

While I cannot deny my disdain for misogyny, I’ve still always felt drawn to pageantry. In January, I submitted a candidacy to participate in Miss Canada 2022. To my surprise, I was selected as a finalist and will be defending my campaign in Montréal later this year.

Once my participation was confirmed, I was excited and anxious. On one hand, I felt honoured to join the competition knowing I had zero prior experience in the pageant world. On the other hand, I felt more conscious of my appearance.

Was I entering an objectifying environment that would possibly impact my body image? Many questions like this flew around my mind as I tried to accept both parts of me — the feminist and the potential beauty queen.

After doing my research, I’ve come to the conclusion that beauty pageants and female empowerment aren’t inherently compatible — but they

can be. Miss Canada is a perfect example. After its return from a 15-year hiatus, the Canadian pageant committed to change its priorities.

On its website, the Miss Canada pageant describes itself as a competition that evaluates contestants based on values such as team spirit, participation, comradeship, and charisma. Moreover, Miss Canada does not impose height and weight requirements. Needless to say, our national pageant has come a long way from hosting swimsuit competitions in the park.

It is relieving to see that competing in a pageant would not lead me to lose my feminist principles.

I believe that other pageants can be compatible with feminism too, as long as they prioritize contestants’ values, attitude, and campaign over their silhouettes. As a next step, it would be great if contestants’ silhouettes weren’t examined at all.

To those who believe that pageants are outdated and shouldn’t exist anymore: thinking this way is a close-minded approach to change. Yes, beauty contests have a dark history of degradation. But, with honest commitment to inclusion, they can easily turn into meaningful spaces for contestants to showcase their intelligence, ingenuity, compassion, and creativity.

In my opinion, feminism is not about telling women what empowerment looks like — it’s about giving us the space to define empowerment for ourselves. Some women are dignified by entering men-dominated industries while others find their own power through fashion and makeup. So we should be wary of spending our time demonizing stereotypically feminine interests; that time could instead be used to dismantle chauvinism of men.

After all, the villain isn’t the beauty queen — it’s the pervert checking her out.

thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture

MARCH 7, 2022

Free menstrual hygiene products are necessary — and U of T agrees Access to menstrual products for all increases financial accessibility Baran Seyedi Varsity Contributor

The decision is just as exciting as it seems: on March 1, U of T announced that free menstrual hygiene products will be coming to dispensers in 75 women’s, men’s, and gender-inclusive washrooms at UTSG. The pilot project, launched by the Office of the Vice-Provost, Students and Facilities & Services aims to address the stigma around menstruation.

Historically, menstrual hygiene products have been labelled as luxury items, though I have no idea who decided that having a period was a luxury. Newsflash: most menstruators are not huge fans of periods. A large part of their disdain isn’t because of the period themselves, but rather the social stigma of those who experience it.

So, why is it essential to provide free menstrual products to university students? I’ll tell you.

When was the last time you paid for toilet paper in a public washroom? When was the last time you worried about bringing an extra roll of toilet paper to use in the washroom when leaving your house? Then why is it not the case for menstruators, who are typically left to take care of their hygiene using their own resources.

The inability to afford menstrual products disrupts productivity. Generally, students don’t have much money to spare between tuition, housing,

textbooks, and other school supplies. On top of that, a month’s supply of a box of menstruation supplies can be an unaffordable expense for many. The average menstruator will spend

about 10 years of their life on their period and will use at least 21 tampons every cycle. Moreover, it’s estimated that the average menstruator spends more than 4,700 USD on necessary menTh e pro inabi du lity ct to AN s dis aff o DR ru EA pts rd m ZH p e AO rod nst /TH uc rua EV tivi l AR t S y.

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struation products in a lifetime. In many cases, menstruators miss school because they cannot afford these products.

In situations when menstrual hygiene products aren’t available, the alternatives can be hazardous to the menstruators’ health. One alternative is using tissue paper or toilet paper to contain blood, which are unhygienic and could affect the health of reproductive organs. Another alternative commonly used is keeping a tampon in for an extended period of time — in this case, bacteria will be produced which may lead to Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). In serious cases, TSS can cause seizures, organ damage, shock, and even death.

It’s not just the health and financial complications of menstruating that matter — the stigma around menstruation has its own consequences.

Not only do transgender and gender-nonconforming menstruators bear the financial and the medical burden of expensive menstrual hygiene products, but they also suffer from the more-thanusual lack of access to these products. Up until this point, menstruation products were available in some women’s washrooms at U of T, meaning that menstruators using men’s washrooms were denied access to sanitary products.

Most importantly, offering free menstrual products in bathrooms signals to students that their needs matter and that their period is an integral part of being healthy. As Sandy Welsh, U of T’s Vice-Provost, Students, mentioned in the decision’s press release: “This is an issue of equity.”

If items as basic as sanitary menstrual products help enhance student productivity while reducing their stress, isn’t it an investment worth making for any university?

UTSC alum Nana Adwoa Frimpong on healing through art Healing in Color screened virtually at UTSC for Black Mental Health Day Alexa DiFrancesco Varsity Contributor

What does it look like to heal yourself?

This is the essential question that UTSC alum Nana Adwoa Frimpong aims to answer through her 2022 documentary, Healing in Color. Created as part of an advanced production class at the University of Southern California, Frimpong’s work — which she filmed, directed, and produced — explores how a group of five Black women confront personal struggles and how they heal said struggles through art.

On March 1, Frimpong joined UTSC via Zoom for a virtual screening of Healing in Color. She was joined by the documentary’s cinematographer, Sebastien Cech; the film’s composer; and Madeline Smith, one of the film’s subjects.

The screening, which celebrated Black Mental Health Day, was hosted by the UTSC Mental Health Network, UTSC Health & Wellness Centre, UTSC Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Office, UTSC Development and Alumni Relations Office, and the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union.

During the screening, Frimpong discussed the inspiration for Healing in Color, art as a healing tool and the importance of self care.

UTSC as film inspiration Healing in Color was made as part of an advanced production class at the University of Southern California, which Frimpong attended after graduating from UTSC in 2018. Each semester of the class, three projects were selected to be made.

Frimpong explained that, though she was selected to create Healing in Color three years after graduating from UTSC, much of her documentary was inspired from her experiences there.

“When I was on my bed feeling low, wondering what I [could] say or what I could pitch, I came back to myself… I realized that the reason I had come to film school [was] part of the activism I was doing at UTSC.” This activism, Frimpong noted, centered primarily around healing and “getting more focused on where I was at and how I was feeling and figuring out [how] to bring other people with me.”

Frimpong also mentioned that her film highlights “what [she’s] thinking about now,” which is “how Black women participate in a world that is not interested [in] our participation.”

Art as healing When asked about how creating art can be a form of healing, Smith recalled wearing earrings

made by women who were part of the Maasai tribe in Kenya. The women travel to the centre of their village and make these earrings by hand.

Smith explained that the women who make the earrings are “able to talk and care and focus on the gift [that] I think a lot of women — not just women of colour, but a lot of women — have. We become so technology driven that we forget that we’re able to create incredible things with our hands.”

Frimpong related the question about art as healing to her experience spearheading Healing in Color, mentioning that she initially had “a lot of anxiety” about telling the stories of the film’s subjects correctly.

“I realized that I could [say] who I was and say what I wanted to do and that they would… not only meet me there but surpass any kind of expectation that I had,” Frimpong explained.

She explained that the process of creating the film showed her “what happens when… you align yourself with your intention.”

Frimpong added that she felt that her intention “permeated throughout the team,” mentioning that the majority of the people who worked on Healing in Color were not Black, “which I think in this really powerful and beautiful way added to the development of the film.”

“It was so beautiful to be in a space with these other folks who don’t necessarily have my shared experience,” Frimpong said. “For them to be consciously and consistently asking questions so as to not overstep, but to honour… [that] was a challenge and also one of the most beautiful, beautiful things.”

Self-care as healing One of the key takeaways of Healing in Color, said Smith, was its success in celebrating the differences between each unique person. Smith highlighted that being able to express yourself freely is essential to happiness.

Frimpong explained, “Black [women have] the burden and opportunity to heal and pursue themselves [in] a world that isn’t interested all the time… We can’t always [be] in that space because it’s really tiring.”

“Make yourself a priority,” Smith added. “Even if it’s just… watching a movie or listening to music or going for a walk or picking up a pen…

I’m a Christian, I’m a minister as well… A lot of people pray for me.”

Smith concluded, “Fill your body with things that are healthy and that are going to help you progress.”

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arts@thevarsity.ca

ARTS & CULTURE

Artist Robert Small’s poster series paints a LEGACY Exploring what parts of The Vagina Monologues have stood the test of time Aside from being a self-taught artist, Small is also an entrepreneur and educator. He graduated from the University of Windsor with degrees in sociology and criminology, and has a teaching degree from York University. Small’s first experience in entrepreneurship was through his first job outside of university at Black Pages Directory, which was a telephone listing of Black businesses in the GTA. Small was inspired to pursue art because of the worldbuilding that he noticed in comic books.

“When I was reading [comics], I was captivated [by] how the artist created a scene,” he said. “I always feel like I was there… so consequently, my interest in art developed from there,” Small said.

Similar to how colourful comic covers make people want to read the story inside, Small’s art engages viewers to learn about incredible Black Canadians who — like comic heroes — are changemakers and fighters. Small’s art was also inspired partially by history that, the artist noted, usually tends to repeat itself, excluding and forgetting people’s societal contributions in the process. “Being exposed to what other ethnic groups have experienced in Canada… shows you that you’re not alone,” Small explained. “All people have a Canadian experience, both positive and negative.”

Jenefer Savoeung Varsity Contributor

For 28 years, Toronto-based artist Robert Small has painted portraits of accomplished Black Canadians in honour of Black History Month.

His artwork culminated in a poster series called LEGACY, which is currently on display at the Niagara Artists Centre.

In an interview, Small shares his journey in art, entrepreneurship, and how his creative passion became a collection of work honouring Black Canadians.

Entrepreneurship and transition into art In the background of Small’s Zoom display, there are two of his pieces on display: “Majesty of the Mountains,” which focuses on the importance of activism, and “Celebrating African-Canadian Women,” which celebrates the accomplishments of Canadian Black women at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels.

Aside from his office, Small’s artwork has also been hung in schools across Canada, every branch of the Bank of Montreal, and as part of an anti-racism campaign in over 20 Toronto subway stations. Additionally, his art was featured on the side of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union’s Yonge and Wellesley building as a mural. “[When I was younger], they would think that you’re some radical if you asked for a Black face on the wall,” Small recalled. “[Now, people] come to me saying they’ve grown up with my poster and that their mother used to get a poster every year.”

Poster series and inspiring others Each of the posters in Small’s LEGACY series measures 19-by-27 inches and features about five or six prominent Black figures. Small draws each person and writes captions that explain their contributions to Black history. Though the

posters focus primarily on people of African descent who live in Canada, they also incorporate different aspects of African culture.

For Small, LEGACY catalogues change, as the posters inspire a future where Black Canadians have space to share their stories. “I [wanted] to create something that is known throughout my whole family,” Small said. He imagines his future family proudly pointing at his posters and saying, “Your great grandfather made that poster.”

Small also educates youth by conducting workshops targetted toward them. In February, he led an interactive workshop organized

by UTSC’s The Hub, during which he shared knowledge and experience of creating value and earning money as an artist and entrepreneur.

The message was important to Small, as he encourages young creatives to consider their reputation and learn about service costs.

“Is there something about you personally that has some value, that you have to add to the prices that you’re asking for?”

Small posed. “Sometimes, with entrepreneurs, we get too personally attached to the cost we’re asking people and not looking long term… You might give somebody a break on the price [and] they might introduce you to 10 other people.”

to be listed among other Canadians I grew up watching [and] respecting. It’s really great for both myself as well as the community at large,” Small said.

Small, like the people he paints, is a symbol for legacy and recognizing history. But what’s next for the innovative artist?

Small plans to release an education-driven project called “Afrotastic” this year. Afrotastic will be a learning tool about African Canadians from various provinces and territories, and fields of work.

Afrotastic would also acknowledge often underrepresented demographics such as Black women and LGBTQ+ individuals. “[The learning portal is] a good learning tool for university students as well as high school students,” Small explained.

Aside from expanding Afrotastic, Small wants to continue to paint and produce posters, and gain support from new businesses. He also hinted at getting into the comic book business, saying, “I eventually want to create my own comic book… for the 18 year old in me who still yearns to get out.”

Disclosure: Jenefer Savoeung is a writer at The Hub.

Legacy and future endeavours Late last year, Small was appointed to the Order of Canada, which is the highest honour given to Canadian citizens who contribute to the country for a lifelong or significant time.

Small is one of the youngest Black recipients of the Order of Canada.

“It’s a tremendous honour

Robert Small is a self-taught artist and entrepreneur.

COURTESY OF ROBERT SMALL

A soliloquy to my monster vagina Exploring what parts of The Vagina Monologues have stood the test of time Madeline Szabo Arts & Culture Correspondent

Content warning: This article mentions rape and female genital mutilation.

At 13, I became aware of a monster in the shape of an inverted rotten strawberry that was on me.

Rather, it was in me. It had always been there, hiding inside of me, waiting to fold out, get dressed up, and present itself when I spread my legs in front of my bedroom mirror. I really became aware of this monster when I learned about it in health class.

I was worried about my vagina. To quote V, formerly named Eve Ensler and writer of the 1996 play The Vagina Monologues, “We were worried about vaginas.”

The Vagina Monologues is the opposite of the health class that revealed my monster.

V’s theatrical baby is a play that features the experiences of over 200 people — all involving their vaginas. In a monologue called “Hair,” a woman learns to accept her pubic hair despite her husband’s wishes to remove it. Another monologue focuses on having your first orgasm at 72 — it’s appropriately named “Flood.” In “The Vagina Workshop,” the clitoris is even compared to a semi-automatic gun. V’s monologues never paint the vagina as a monster, a rotten strawberry, or an organ. In The Vagina Monologues, the vagina is a place for pleasure, not shame.

My favourite monologue is about vaginas getting dressed up, in which people are asked what their vagina would wear if it were a person.

Someone’s vagina wears a taffeta ball gown, another person’s vagina wears jeans. I use this fun mind exercise whenever I feel particularly dry — my vagina can’t be a monster when she puts on a wool cardigan.

V’s work is seminal because so much of it remains relevant today, nearly 20 years later. The play was written with the hope of ending violence against those with vaginas. This was evident in monologues like “Reclaiming Cunt,” in which a woman celebrates that she has a cunt. This message is essential in a world where ‘vagina’

Beyond the pro-vagina movement that came from her play, V has also impacted people through her foundation, V-Day. V-Day is a global activist movement that aims to end violence against cisgender and transgender women, those who hold fluid identities, and nonbinary people. So far, V-Day has raised over 120 million USD.

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feels like a dirty word. ‘Vagina’ doesn’t feel like a dirty word to me, but that’s because I’ve written it 17 times in this article already.

But, despite all of its successes, parts of The Vagina Monologues have aged. Many of the play’s monologues equate womanhood with

vaginas and exclude transgender and nonbinary people.

V has also come under fire for showcasing a colonial perspective through her work. The monologues employ mostly white actors to depict the characters in the play. The stories of non-white characters are almost exclusively about sexual violence. While people of colour are disproportionately affected by sexual violence, women of colour appearing only in the monologues when talking about sexual violence sends a completely different and harmful message.

For example, in the monologue “My Vagina was my Village,” Bosnian women describe war rape. Another monologue, “Not-So-Happy-Fact,” represents genital mutilation, particularly mentioning incidents of the practice in Africa. A white woman writing about non-white women in violent contexts in a play, which otherwise discusses vaginal pleasure, limits women of colour to the crimes committed against them.

The Vagina Monologues is not perfect. But our society can still use parts of it as a tool to normalize its love for vaginas. Many of us have experiences with, opinions about, or even just fantasy outfits for our vaginas — so why is it taboo to express that to the world?

In 2020, the University of Pennsylvania invited students to submit their own vagina monologues to be performed. The show included 23 original monologues that focused on various experiences with vaginas. The core values that V promoted remained the same; however, more people got to enjoy the feeling of hearing how pleasurable their vagina is.

We should embrace the joy, shock, and boldness of The Vagina Monologues. We should use its shortcomings to create better ones in the future and across college campuses. Life is not a health class — your monster vagina is yours to dress up and enjoy.

Science

March 7, 2022 thevarsity.ca/section/science science@thevarsity.ca

Supermileage Team designs U of T’s first hydrogen-powered vehicle

student who works on the business side of UTSM. In electrical cars, the electricity is still produced from the combustion of fossil fuels. The benefit of the hydrogen vehicle is that it takes hydrogen and oxygen into its engine and produces water, a byproduct that is not harmful to the environment — and something that many automobiles do not produce.

As exciting as all this sounds, the project does require the team to take precautions. “There are many safety protocols that we do need to go through. And with that, we just need to be very careful when [we’re] using hydrogen,” explained Yaromich. Hydrogen is extremely flammable, so it’s important to be stringent. “We’re using a very, very small amount.”

Another challenge that the UTSM faces is funding. Due to the pandemic, it has become difficult for the UTSM to come up with enough funding for their projects. As a result, they had to be more careful when spending money on different materials and supplies required for the vehicle.

Engineering student Christine Yaromich leads UTSM to the Shell eco-marathon

The U of T Supermileage Team has been working hard on a hydrogen-powered car.

COURTESY OF CHRISTINE YAROMICH

Janhavi Agarwal Associate Business & Labour Editor

U of T may see its first hydrogen-powered vehicle at the end of the year, courtesy of the University of Toronto Supermileage Team (UTSM). Spearheaded by fourth-year mechanical engineering student Christine Yaromich, the team of over 100 members has been working hard this year to build a vehicle that will run on hydrogen. They hope to bring it to the Shell eco-marathon, where STEM students from all around the world compete with energy-efficient cars they have built.

The Varsity spoke with Yaromich and two members of the business side of UTSM, Selina Yang and Elaine Zhou, about their team’s mission and the groundbreaking innovation that they have been working on.

Hydrogen-powered vehicles are a game changer UTSM started off as a two-member team, and has now become a team with over 100 dedicated students working toward designing, building, and safely racing fuel-efficient vehicles. The group has previously worked on its ‘prototype vehicle’ — an

internal combustion vehicle that uses gasoline to power the automobile. The top mileage for this vehicle was 3,421 miles per gallon, the equivalent of driving from Toronto to New York City on just 543 milliliters of gasoline — the volume of a bottle of water!

While electrical and gasoline powered vehicles have dominated the automobile industry for a few years, the popularity of hydrogen-powered vehicles seems to be catching up. This year, the UTSM is building a hydrogen-operated vehicle.

“It’s about renewable energy at the end of the day,” said Yang, a second-year Rotman Commerce

Promoting the message of sustainability While winning the Shell eco-marathon is a shortterm goal for the team, they have set their sights far into the future. “If our design is very successful, especially at the Shell eco-marathon, we can begin pitching our design and usage to corporate sponsors [and] companies for them to incorporate into their vehicle building so that we can start spreading energy-efficient vehicles into practical situations for people… I think that’d be very long term, though,” said Elaine Zhou, also a secondyear Rotman Commerce student who works in the business side of the UTSM. Apart from building the hydrogen-powered vehicle, the team also hopes to continue to promote sustainability through various sustainabilityfocused projects that it is working on. “It’s really important for us to be able to… have a better grasp of these new technologies that we will be able to use in the future,” said Yang.

Scientific racism: The misuse and misrepresentation of science How science has been used to reinforce and justify discrimination

Shankeri Vijayakumar Varsity Contributor

Scientific knowledge is valued for its objectivity, as it helps us understand more of the world.

We often use scientific evidence to inform our decisions — but what happens when science is misused and scientific facts are misrepresented in order to further interests that negatively impact certain groups of people?

Scientific objectivity is based on the idea that various aspects of science — such as claims, results, methods, and researchers — are not influenced by biases, differing perspectives, or values.

This idea offers authority to scientific discoveries

and is why we ascribe such a strong power to science to help guide much of our decision making and thinking.

While scientific inquiries can lead us to objective truths, science has also been misused to reinforce and justify discrimination against some groups of people. Throughout history, specific ideas without bases in science have slipped through the cracks, being framed as scientific truths to justify racial inequalities.

Today, race is more commonly understood as a social construct, which means that it is believed to be based on social meaning and cultural understandings of racial groups.

However, not too long ago, race was once viewed as distinguishing biological differences. Race is not wholly dictated by genetic differences, nor is there sufficient evidence to support such genetic differences, but this has not stopped people from situating race as a biological concept to enforce the idea that certain races are inherently superior or inferior.

One of the most common ways that science has been misused to reinforce racial discrimination is through the claim that some groups of people are better than others in terms of cognitive or behavioural traits due to genetic differences.

In the nineteenth century, some scientists were proponents of “polygenism,” which suggested that different human races were distinct species. This theory used pseudoscientific methods like craniometry — the measurements of human skulls — which scientists believed provided evidence for the idea that white people were

biologically superior to Black people. Supposedly, skull shapes and measurements indicated genetically inherited traits that belonged to particular groups. Positing that craniometry was a method that provided proof of a genetically advantaged race resulted in racial discrimination against people who did not possess these supposed genetically advantageous indicators.

Another instance of misusing science to enforce racial differences was the emergence of the idea that intelligence is a purely genetic trait.

The premise was that IQ was an inheritable trait and correlated to race. Conflating social differences with genetic roots and advancing these ideas as fully based in science creates social animosity and makes society believe that these divisions are justified.

The authority of science holds incredible weight in society, as it has the power to influence our understanding of the world. In a time when misinformation and disinformation are as prevalent as ever, the misuse and misrepresentation of science in order to further interests that marginalize people can be extremely harmful.

Co-opting the authority of science to justify racial inequalities by furthering unfounded claims, which attribute differences among different populations to biology, has no place in society today. This is especially true when it comes to using unfounded biological explanations to reinforce discrimination and further the idea of a dominant population of people.

While concepts like race and ethnicity can certainly be determinants or help explain differences in health outcomes, furthering claims that merge social differences with biological explanations is a disservice to scientific objectivity. Great strides are being made in society and in research to recognize historical, political, and social factors that can explain differences across populations, which should help us advance and strive to ensure that both scientific inquiry and communication are being conducted with integrity.

While scientific inquiries can lead us to objective truths, science has also been misused to justify racism.

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Pesky little fruit flies are smarter than we think

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science@thevarsity.ca

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The surprising intelligence of the fruit fly

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Sarah Qu Varsity Contributor

There’s a lot of hype in the scientific community about different mammalian model organisms, but it seems like the general population forgets just how fascinating animals like fruit flies are. Even if they look like they’re head-empty while buzzing around your food or trash, the little guys surprisingly have many cognitive functions that parallel those found in humans — though of course at a different level. This idea is connected back to evolutionary ideas that all species come from a common ancestor.

Fruit fly brains can be useful as a model for studying how our brains work, mostly by identifying common molecular pathways for simple functions that are conserved across species. And let’s face it, though neuroscientists would love to dissect human brains on a daily basis, fruit flies are a bit more available — and probably more ethical to study.

Pavlov’s fruit flies If you think the idea of Pavlov’s dog is a little too old-fashioned, you’ll like the idea of Pavlov’s fruit flies.

On February 16, a University of California study was published where scientists successfully conditioned fruit flies using a visual stimulus to predict an incoming aversive one.

This is extremely important for fruit flies to anticipate potential threats in their environment and allows them to prepare or escape as a response.

Way more exciting than some dogs drooling for food, right? We’re talking fruit flies that find ways to survive,

which requires an amount of heavy lifting from their brains.

What’s even more enticing is that these fruit flies were successful even with a trace conditioning procedure where the predictive visual stimulus was presented a few seconds before the presentation of the aversive stimulus.

At first, this might not seem all that different, but in this setup, the fruit flies are required to retain memory of the visual stimulus that has been presented, and use this information to predict whether the aversive stimulus is coming. Their ability to do this has several implications, all of which suggest that fruit flies have many important cognitive systems. By retaining a trace, fruit flies demonstrate that they can retain items in their working memory, recall cues from the past, and maintain attention. Just imagine the little gears that turn in fruit fly brains as they employ those cognitive functions.

A fruit fly thinks before it acts Scientists have also been able to track the lifespan of memories in the brains of fruit flies, from their formation to their fading away. This happens primarily in the flies’ version of our sensory and motor cortex, which is called the ellipsoid body. Interestingly, the flies’ memory encoding could be distracted by another neutral stimulus, showing that flies are capable of mental multitasking. While encoding the memory of the past cue, they can simultaneously pay attention to their surroundings for new stimuli that may be presented. These abilities speak to the intricate systems that are required for survival, even in simple fruit flies. It’s fascinating that traits as cognitively complex as attention, working memory, and conscious-awareness are present in such a humble creature.

A 2014 study also shows the intricacies of the fruit fly brain. The flies in this study needed to distinguish between different concentrations of an odour, and as a result, the experimenters confirmed that fruit flies ‘think before they act.’

During the trial, they appeared to process different pieces of information before they made their decision, and scientists further noticed that the flies pondered longer when making more difficult decisions. This implies that they consider the complexity of the situation and are capable of taking the time to combine pieces of information for their decision. This kind of intelligence is characteristic of the processing seen in primates and humans.

And here’s another kicker: the fact that flies take the time to consider their decisions shows that they have impulse control. According to mathematical models, this kind of decisionmaking behaviour matches those displayed by primates and humans.

Goodnight, sleep tight Another conserved function that is present in many animals is sleep. Though they seem like rowdy little guys, fruit flies actually do sleep.

Much comparison has been made between the regulation of sleep in fruit flies and in mammals. In both systems, dopamine signals for wakefulness, while serotonin signals for sleep, demonstrating that sleep is controlled in similar ways in fruit flies and in mammals and thus may be modulated similarly, as well. Due to the relationship between sleep and cognition, noting these similarities can inform us of how cognitive functions in fruit flies translate to mammalian cognition. Studies about sleep are also important for us to understand neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

All of this doesn’t mean that our brains are the same as fruit flies. It’s truly fascinating that an organism with such a tiny brain can still perform cognitive functions similar to our own. This perspective also emphasizes the vast capabilities of our own brain, which build on the simple structures present in fruit flies. So, next time you go and swat at one of those little pests and miss, consider the fact that you’ve been outsmarted by a fruit fly.

thevarsity.ca/section/science

MARCH 7, 2022

University of Toronto Design League: Translating scientific theory to practice UTDL welcomes students of all academic backgrounds Catherine Lu Varsity Contributor

The University of Toronto Design League’s (UTDL) third Designathon was held February 4–6, where over 100 people from around the globe participated. University students from different backgrounds were invited to design a neurologically controlled exoskeleton.

In the 47-hour sprint held online this year, recent high school graduates, PhD candidates, and anyone in between competed with each other. The Designathon offers opportunities for students over a wide range of levels and fields to accomplish hands-on design projects. All students — even those in fields like political science with no prior design experience — participated in the event.

history with 3D printing and CAD software dating back to grade 10, Damrell wished to bridge the gap between theoretical comprehension and practical application of engineering skills.

Jump straight into the action The mechanical components of UTDL’s exoskeleton are designed to assist the function of the ankle to improve the mobility of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. The end product includes a motor that powers a simple joint with

Where it all started The Varsity spoke with Kyle Damrell, currently the chief technology officer of the UTDL and one of its founders. Damrell highlighted his working objective of translating “the digital workspace [into] physical [ones].”

Much of the mechanical engineering coursework that Damrell did throughout his undergraduate studies focused primarily on learning theory. For example, one of his class’ efforts to collectively model a gearbox and simulate stress points involved virtually no production of the gearbox, nor were there any consideration of the real-life applications of such a project. Having a rich

one point of independent motion.

Many teams of students collaborated to bring the project from conception to completion. There is a software team working with electroencephologram (EEG) signals from the brain to control the exoskeleton’s motor and stimulate muscles. When the prototype is 3D printed and assembled, a combined team of 11 people — some even exposed to 3D modelling for the first time — will move on to software and hardware testing. However, the design

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team has not yet met with end users of their product — instead, they are opting to build a functional device first.

Success stories It is notable how one of the winning teams had a high school student — a perfect demonstration of the openness of design engineering projects to all. As the UTDL grows, new students with unique and diverse backgrounds can help define engineering goals and implement more human-centered design.

Ella Walsh, an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo studying biomedical engineering, explained how “non-mechanical engineering students, perspectives from different fields, is what makes a design team really successful.”

As the project manager for the exoskeleton, Walsh was excited when she interviewed Amy Guo, a University of Toronto undergraduate political science student. As a member of the mechanical design team for the exoskeleton, she said that “[Guo] really wanted to join a design club [because] this is something [that she has] never done before.” Guo has enjoyed the steep learning curve of design thinking and CAD software. She is currently working on a 3D-printed electronics enclosure.

Tochi Oramasionwu, a U of T master’s student who is also the exoskeleton’s mechanical team lead, expressed how “it’s important to have a solid reason why we’re doing this project.” The team may use Autodesk’s generative design feature on the enclosure, Walsh mentioned, a feature which is used more in industry than in engineering coursework. This is another way of exposing team members to novel applications and furthering Damrell’s goal of bridging the gap between theory and practice.

U of T paper proposes inclusive approach to triage practices Collective ‘greater good’ can overlook individual rights Safiya Patel Associate Senior Copy Editor

The ethical theory of utilitarianism involves maximizing collective happiness, but it’s more than just the reasoning behind ordering your favourite ice cream flavour or letting a trolley run over one person to save five. Several Canadian clinical institutions have adopted this approach for decision-making protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a recent paper, several researchers from the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the Centre for Ethics at U of T examined the inequities that stem from a utilitarian approach to triage, as well as responses to such protocols. They also proposed new protocols that would result in equitable clinical practices. Given the scarcity of resources in the pandemic, these clinical decisions follow the practice of maximizing collective well-being. However, these decisions overlook the needs of individuals with severe illness or complex needs — often those who need the most treatment — by prioritizing those with a higher chance of survival.

Inequities in pandemic protocols With the pandemic came an increased need for health care, but resources did not magically increase. As such, Canadian clinical institutions created documents to guide triage practices.

Some of these documents present intrinsically discriminatory guidelines, thus perpetuating ableist and inequitable clinical practices.

One such document is the 2020 draft of the Ontario COVID-19 Triage Protocol, which uses a Clinical Frailty Score (CFS) to guide triage decision-making. Notably, patients who score high have a predicted mortality rate of over 80 per cent — meaning that they’re low priority for triaging. This includes patients with severe impaired cognition or neurodegenerative disorders, as well as those with lessened abilities to perform daily activities.

This document — as well as those of other jurisdictions — has evoked criticism because it excludes patients with neurodegenerative disorders and ultimately emphasizes those with a higher survival rate in the short run. Guidelines born of utility, such as the CFS, are intrinsically ableist when they deem individuals with categorical disabilities as less important than those without them. Even beyond the pandemic, 85 per cent of pediatric organ transplant centres consider neurological disorders when distributing organs — even when these impairments are not predictors for poor outcomes.

Current practices distribute health care resources according to maximization of overall benefit, making way for this principle by trading off principles for individual rights and benefits, such as justice.

Justice Disability advocates and some individuals with disabilities often disagree with the idea that disability reduces quality of life. They argue that they are worse off not because of the disability itself,

but because of the biases and barriers they face in a society designed for non-disabled people.

To be truly equitable, the application of justice, a core principle of medical ethics, must account for the perspectives of all those involved and be used to evaluate whether the allocation of health care resources is fair. Under the ethical view of prioritarianism — ­ which emphasizes the happiness of individuals who are ‘worse off’ — the principle of ‘fair equality of opportunity’ allows those with disabilities to receive greater opportunity than others due to their deprivation of certain abilities, or, as it happens, their deprivation of access to society.

Current practices also fall short because of the lack of procedural justice and a holistic viewpoint during the development process of guidelines. Conversations of protocol development historically exclude those with categorical disabilities. Without insight into the experiences of these individuals, how is it possible to develop protocols that can adequately include them?

Revamping triage Quality of life cannot be reduced to the consequences of a diagnosis or simply one facet of a person’s identity. U of T researchers proposed another measure in their paper, unlike the CFS that evaluates overall individual well-being, it considers connection to nature and community, among other things, to provide a holistic view of quality of life.

To put things in perspective, acclaimed

physicist Stephen Hawking’s diagnosis of ALS would render him low priority when using the CFS as a measure — he had little independence in terms of performing “activities of daily life.”

The researchers’ proposed scale, on the other hand, focuses on “capabilities and flourishing” rather than individual autonomy, and would thus depict Hawking as an individual with a high quality of life and well-being. Having won several awards for his contributions to society, Hawking was a valuable member of society — his disability did not hinder his ability to function in every aspect of life.

Clinical practices are inevitably born from a balance between individual rights and social utility. Social determinants of health, such as socioeconomic status and race, also play a role in clinical outcomes. In attempts to vilify ableist or otherwise prejudiced practices that stem from social factors, the researchers propose a just triage framework that affords “positive freedoms” — more leniency in assessing clinical priority — to those whose poorer prognoses derive from social conditions.

During a pandemic, when collective wellbeing is at stake, it may be easy to forget that the very definition of patient care includes providing services to individuals. The myriad of health risks and societal factors that these individuals are familiar with should not serve to systemically dismiss them from this care.

Disability should not be thought of as what takes away one’s humanity — rather, it should challenge the societal ideas of normalcy.

Sports

March 7, 2022 thevarsity.ca/section/sports sports@thevarsity.ca

Kicking it with U of T’s TikTok sensation Sabadabadoodle Sabrina is a U of T student and TikToker whose skills have conquered the app Angad Deol Sports Editor

Content warning: This article discusses sexual harassment on social media.

If you’ve scrolled through the “For you page” of TikTok recently, you might have come across Sabadabadoodle — a creator whose content consists of captivating kicks, some artwork of her favorite anime characters, and some lifestyle-type videos. She’s amassed well over a million followers, more than 30 million likes on her videos thus far, and the numbers keep growing by the day. Outside of the app, people know Sabadabadoodle as Sabrina, a tae kwon do instructor as well as a student here at the University of Toronto.

The Varsity recently sat down with her to get to know the person behind the screen.

Kicking it off-screen Sabrina has been practicing tae kwon do — a Korean martial art — since 2006. Currently a holder of an impressive thirddegree black belt, she’s training for her fourth-degree black belt while also training students of all ages in tae kwon do, including students with disabilities.

Outside of training, Sabrina balances school, work, and life just like the rest of us at U of T, spending her days transitioning between school, work, and posting online. You

Olivia Kairu Varsity Contributor

Excitement and buzz for the start of a new Formula One (F1) season are customary all through the winter break, and following the controversy of the Driver’s championship end — where Max Verstappen was able to come back and win the race, after a crash caused by fellow driver Nicholas Latifi created chaos in the race. The offseason has been filled with this exact atmosphere, if not one with an upped ante. Following the race, Michael Masi, former F1 racing director, was removed from his position following an inquiry into his decision-making. He’s since been replaced by two other officials, Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas. The pre-season antics have shocked and awed – as well as fulfilled – F1 fans’ expectations.

might think that in order to balance viral fame and ordinary life, you’d follow a strict regimen, but Sabrina begs to differ. “I don’t have a strict schedule whatsoever. My sleep schedule is actually garbage,” she explained. “I try to do my videos at night or in between breaks, because I can get really caught up in editing, because it’s so fun, right?” As someone who failed at media projects in high school because I could hardly use a crop tool on Photoshop, I’d disagree that editing is fun — but for Sabrina, it allows her to further express her creative vision.

An unexpected rise Like a lot of people, Sabrina’s introduction to TikTok was through people in her life: “When the pandemic first hit… I downloaded it because [my sisters] kept sending me the links.” At first, she thought the app was “a complete joke” and “lame,” but over time she made an account and began posting visual arts content, such as drawings of some of her favorite TV and anime characters.

Later, she began posting the occasional video of her tae kwon do skills, such as her kicking a water bottle mid-air after balancing it on her leg.

“I stopped doing visual arts because I realized I wasn’t challenging myself as an artist, and I got really art blocked,” she said. Eventually, she realized her tae kwon do content was getting more views and began shifting more toward the content we see today. However, you can see her go back to her drawing roots occasionally.

She didn’t expect to ever get such a mas-

sive following — her closest brush to going viral was occasionally getting a hundred likes on Tumblr posts. Despite her large audience, Sabrina seems incredibly humble. Even when her tae kwon do students recognize her from TikTok, she asks them if they saw the drills she posted and tells them to continue working hard. She even takes her siblings’ teasing with stride, recalling how her sister would yell out “Is that Sabadabadoodle?” or “Can I get an autograph?” in public.

The darker side of viral fame Last year, the Pew Research Center found that 33 per cent of women under the age of 35 have experienced sexual harassment online.

Unfortunately, Sabrina also deals with a horrifying amount of derogatory and inappropriate comments on her videos.

From the time she started posting on the app, she would receive unsolicited sexual comments, which were quite stressful for her to deal with.

But she’s never been shy to call out people posting such comments on her videos, as she’s posted many videos rightfully calling out the creepy and hurtful commenters.

“Sometimes I’ll do my best to ignore them, but other times I will stand up for myself and make a point that it’s not okay, it’s not right.”

She added that she believes girls should not experience such comments just because “that’s what the internet is.” She does her best to be a role model and inspire women to stand up for themselves on the app and across all social media platforms.

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“For the girls who literally [just] exist, or even myself trying to make nonsexual content; men, or just people in general, need to understand that it doesn’t matter if they’re doing something that may be suggestive to you.

Just be quiet.”

Sabrina mentioned that because she may appear like a minor to the algorithm, even though she’s an adult, the app sometimes flags her content just because she’s wearing a sports bra or leggings, leading to punishments for otherwise innocuous content. She feels that TikTok could do more to not penalize people creating regular content and catch people that are actually producing inappropriate content.

She also hopes TikTok can begin to better moderate comments and remove those that are derogatory, but may not be seen as derogatory without context.

Sabrina is truly an example of what a great, responsible content creator looks like. Her goal of being a role model for other girls on the app is admirable, and the fact that she balances school, work, and viral fame goes to show she’s exactly the person for the task. Hopefully, she and other creators like her can be the ones to kickstart change.

The shuffling, returns, and debuts of the 2022 Formula One Season

New rules, new turf The start of the turbo-hybrid era ushered in massive regulations that changed the sound of F1 — from the roaring V8 engines to the tamer sounding V6 engines. However, aside from engine reverberations, this era is most notable for the beginning of Mercedes’ and Lewis Hamilton’s dominance, one that brought seven consecutive Constructor’s championships.

Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton’s rivalry in the last season broke the dry spell of intense wheel-to-wheel racing that was lacking in the sport just at the close of the hybrid era.

The 2022 F1 season promises a continuation of the rivalry throughout the grid. The introduction of new regulations, which was held back

This season is sure to leave a mark

due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is arguably the most drastic change the sport has seen in decades. Leaving the V6 engines virtually untouched, the changes to the bodywork and aerodynamics of the cars are sure to create more competition.

new seasons ahead, to make for more action – unlike that of the previous age.

Shuffling of the driver lineup carries great potential for unpredictability, as Hamilton no longer has a sidekick in Valtteri Bottas.

The Finnish driver moved to Alfa Romeo from Mercedes and was replaced by George Russell, who now works alongside Hamilton to hopefully make up for last season’s controversial conclusion.

An air of anticipation outshadowed all livery and car launches, making for anxious yet eager feelings as to where teams and drivers will rank on the standings. It is far from believable that Mercedes and Red Bull will stray from the top; however, it seems that Ferrari’s return to competitive fashion is lurking, especially as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc set the fastest time on Day Two of Barcelona testing.

Making a mark on the silver screen Netflix’s Drive to Survive is set to make a recurrence in its fourth and most exciting season yet on March 11. The audience for F1 continues to grow globally, especially in the Middle East, and even in North America. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile has approved the construction of a Miami circuit as well as an extenExcitement is filling the air for F1 fans. sion for the US Grand Prix at the Circuit of COURTESY OF ROSSO SCUDERI the Americas to 2026, as a testament to the success from wrangling a larger audiA momentum shift in the rankings ence. The Canadian Grand Prix will also make its A neck-and-neck title fight heading into the season return following a delay due to the pandemic. finale is quite uncommon, and next season’s rules The notion that a championship fight is a rarity would allow for such competition to thrive. The within the F1 world may soon be a notion of the technical rules implemented by F1 are all with past, giving breath to the frequency of an actionthe aim of tightening the middle-rankers of the packed sport all through the season — and one competition and continuing the fight well into the to continually look forward to.

thevarsity.ca/section/sports

MARCH 7, 2022

Dear Tessa and Scott: You’ve ruined skating for me How the retired Canadian ice dance duo set inimitable standards Simran Randhawa Varsity Contributor

Quick disclaimer : I am no skating expert. Did cheesy movies like Go Figure, The Mighty Ducks, and Ice Princess introduce me to the basics of ice skating? Yes. Am I a great ice skater? Not really, though one can dream.

Yet, I find ice dancing to be one of the most beautiful and captivating sports ever created, and with the 2022 Winter Olympics, I thought I would be closely watching it again — as it turns out, I did not.

As an average viewer of the Winter Olympics with little experience playing the sports involved, I watch the competitions and base my opinions on what I find technically impressive on an assumed scale of difficulty and the overall appeal of the performance. However, my favourite event is figure skating, which I believe to be about more than technical merit and achieving the best scores. I owe that to Canada’s retired ice dance duo, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.

The pair have been skating partners since 1998, performing on the ice for 22 years before retiring in 2019. They significantly impacted the rink, especially following their debut at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

I recently revisited my favourite of their debut performances at the 2010 games, the Free Dance, where a duo gets to skate to a song and tempo of their choice. It was more captivating when I first watched it. Tessa and Scott perform with such grace that it makes it feel like they are not on the ice at all — instead, they’re floating midair, caught up in a whirlwind of each other. Their costumes, white and sparkly as the ice beneath them, evoke an angelic visual that sets a light atmosphere. In conjunction with their dancing style, a combination of spins and lifts, the routine comes together to create a mesmerizing and magical story. Yet the most enchanting element of their performances is their unmatched chemistry.

Romance is a vital aspect of the duo’s performances. From their performances in 2010 to the ground-breaking Free Program from Pyeongchang 2018 performed to

“Moulin Rouge,” Tessa and Scott present various forms of romance through their facial expressions and body language.

Tessa and Scott are excellent actors. Based on the type of romance, music, and storyline, the pair know how to move between emotions

and expressions with ease. It is a subtle way to pull the viewers into the duo’s intimate and comfortable relationship.

On the other hand, the pair have a strong personal relationship that merges well into their professional lives. Both skaters are extremely close to each other throughout their performances, without hesitation or fumbling.

In my opinion, it alludes to a familiarity that few skating pairs express. In their dynamic performances, the pair have a strong balance of liveliness and aggression while being immensely controlled in their movements and with each other.

Aside from landing their skillful skate maneuvers, Tessa and Scott are rarely apart and often transfixed on each other, executing a

The dynamic duo has stolen the hearts of many globally.

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convincing story about passionate romance.

Their ethereal performances portray innocent and fragile forms of love through beauty and trust, like their Free Dance in 2010 and Free Program from Sochi 2014.

In the 2014 Free Program, the duo used their space differently by gliding with poise and ease, yet extending for each other. Their synchronicity is almost perfect, as if their souls stem from the same place. At their speed, it looks like the wind is rushing at them, and their furrowed brows, parted lips, and desiring stares are that love story from your favourite movie coming to life. Their characters have entire personalities and a relationship that radiates love — Scott does a beautiful job showing this through his dexterity and delicacy when lifting and holding Tessa, who displays equal faith in her partner.

The strength of their relationship is in the little moments and details, which come together into a cohesive work of art. Often, I feel like they revel in the moment, embracing each other’s artistry before bowing to the audience with joy. It makes it feel like we are merely voyeurs of the sport and their relationship. At times, they look so in love that it is hard to believe they have never been involved romantically outside their careers.

At the core of it all, the pair are storytellers. The execution of their artistry and recurring chemistry makes them stand out among the competition. In addition, the pair brought something new and fascinating to ice dance that flourishes from their platonic relationship. I suppose it is why Tessa and Scott were the youngest pair to win gold at their debut Olympics and later became the most decorated skaters in Olympic history.

So why am I not watching the Olympics closely this year? Well, because there is no Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir anymore.

As I applaud the newer generations of ice dancers who possess skills and talent that few share, I miss watching a story unfold with flawless execution and a remarkable story that makes me believe in magic or soulmates. It would be unfair for me to unintentionally compare the craft of current athletes from Tokyo 2022 with Virtue and Moir because I know they will not speak to me as the Canadian duo has for years.

For now, I will be rewatching highlights of their performances and hoping that someday there will be ice dancers whose performances leave me in awe like Virtue and Moir did — or that they come back from retirement again. One can dream.

Disclosure: Simran Randhawa is currently a member of The Varsity’s Board of Directors.

Where to enjoy spring in Toronto Taking in the views the 6ix has to offer Caroline Mekhaeil Varsity Contributor

This winter — like all winters in Ontario — has made it a little bit hard to be motivated to exercise outdoors, while having a daily routine of school and especially during midterm season, which can cause a lot of stress.

However, there is lots to do outdoors around U of T. There are some amazing parks to walk around in Toronto. High Park is one of our most popular ones — you can enjoy its nice walking trails with your dog or with friends after a long day of studying or working. After all, a quick break makes a huge difference.

You can also have a good time at Ontario Place, where you can reserve a firepit with family and friends and enjoy the evening outdoors with your loved ones, or take in a hot drink while playing board games. And if those activities require too much planning, you can always go watch an outdoor movie there!

If you are looking for something more active, you can try the Bike Share Toronto program. I

remember when I tried this program a few months ago with some of my friends — it was very entertaining.

Through the Bike Share Toronto, you can borrow a bike and enjoy exploring the city on it. There is also the option of purchasing an annual membership, which grants a reduced price, and you can enjoy it while commuting to U of T every day. Biking is a great cardio exercise that helps you stay active even with a busy schedule.

Personally, I think that skating is one of the most interesting winter outdoor activities. I have been skating at Nathan Phillips Square, and I’ve enjoyed it, even though I’ve spent most of my time falling.

These are all very easy winter activities that you can enjoy without making big plans or spending a lot of money. You can do them alone or even turn them into social outings with family or friends — and all of them can help you stay healthy and focused.

MIA CARNEVALE/THEVARSITY

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TheDIVERSIONS Weekly Crossword

by Margie E. Burke

THE VARSITY

ACROSS 1 Stadium souvenirs 5 Have ___ on (claim) 9 Fraternity letter 14 Declare 15 Lie next to 16 Nobleman 17 Fix up 18 Sparkly mineral 19 "____, Don't Shop" 20 Former 22 Every so often 24 Ever and ___ 26 River embankment 27 Life imitator 29 Company owner, e.g.

34 Table in chemistry class 36 Kate of "The Martian" 37 Epson product 38 Ripple 41 Strong desire 42 Like some traits 43 Put on a show 47 Foot the bill 48 Jockey's controls 49 Close in on 51 Swear words 55 Signs of spoilage 58 Went wild over 59 Kind of ring or swing 61 Translucent gem 62 Accustom 63 Plead 64 Salazar of TV's "Undone" 65 Silent performer 66 Rough guess 67 Sports award DOWN 1 Find fault 2 State positively

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3 Bunion healer 4 What Beatles' fans did 5 Reservoir creator 6 Wading bird 7 Pastoral 8 Flower part 9 Drops off 10 Smooth operators 11 Teen's big date 12 Clinton's birthplace 13 Aardvark's fare 21 R2D2, e.g.

23 Cain raiser 25 Art subject 27 Cobbler fruit 28 Fred Berry role 30 Round Table title 31 Inappropriate 32 Field of play 33 Well-attired 35 Meddle 38 Took the gold 39 Prayer's end

40 YouTube upload 42 Bend out of shape 44 Kindle user 45 Vintage toy material 46 Ill will 50 Love to pieces 51 Stiffly formal

52 "Doctor Who" villainess, with "the" 53 Egg, to a biologist 54 Class with mats 56 Coarse file 57 Do in, as a dragon 60 Center of a ball?

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