Issue 21, (Volume 144) (March 11, 2024)

Hunain Sindhu elected SCSU president in IMPACT sweep

Members of IMPACT UTSC won all of the executive positions for the 2024–2025 academic year in this month’s Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) general elections. Four of the executive candidates ran contested, and two ran unopposed.

On the evening of March 8, the SCSU posted the unofficial results of the elections on its website. At least 1,755 students — 12 per cent of the UTSC student body, according to U of T’s published numbers from last year — cast their ballots from March 4–6.

Last year, TRANSFORM UTSC ran unopposed and won all executive positions with a voter turnout of less than four per cent of those eligible to vote. This year the union will also be run by members of one slate, with TRANSFORM UTSC having run no candidates in this cycle.

Executive results

Students elected Hunain Sindhu as president with 55 per cent of all votes, Zanira Manesiya as vice-president (VP) academics and university affairs with 64 per cent, Omar Mousa as VP external with 60 per cent, and Lalise Shifara as VP equity received 59 per cent.

In the two uncontested elections, Rafay Malik won the VP campus life position with 74 per cent of votes, and Jena Bah won VP operations with 69 per cent of votes.

Shehab Mansour wins UTSU president election

Referenda and the board of directors

The Regenesis UTSC levy passed with a 55 per cent vote of approval. Its levy proposal stated that starting fall 2024, full-time students would pay a fee of $7.23 per session, and part-time students would pay $3.62. The proposal also said that students would be able to opt out of the levy.

Students raised concerns regarding this levy increase during a February candidates’ debate.

The current VP Operations Akaash Palaparthy also referred to Regenesis UTSC’s budget for the levy as “very rudimentary” during the SCSU’s February board of directors (BOD) meeting.

Thirty-seven students ran for the 18 available BOD positions. From ELEVATE UTSC, voters elected nine directors: Kira Jensen, Christine Villa, Jaki Shi, Carlos Arturo Paez Gonzalez, Gayathri Siva, Alexandros Grekos, Ayden Lim, Khalil-Najir Miles, and Sabine Mohamad. From IMPACT UTSC, voters elected six directors: Amna Ali, Harry Xu, Hania, Ayesha Ashraf, Bianca Camacho, and Zakariya Sohail. Every candidate who was elected was part of either the ELEVATE or IMPACT slates.

Mya Ayilara and Miriam Younes of IMPACT UTSC were elected to the BOD by acclamation, meaning that because they ran unopposed for their respective positions, they automatically got the positions. No candidate ran for director of anthropology, and that seat will be pushed to the 2024 fall byelections.

The SCSU must approve the results during its March BOD meeting, for which the union has not yet set a date. All elected and approved candidates will begin their terms on May 1.

On March 11, the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) announced the tentative results of the union’s spring elections, which determine who will lead the union for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Voters elected Shehab Mansour as president, beating out Aidan Thompson and Jake Barton with 49.1 per cent of the vote. For the vice-president (VP) positions, students elected Elizabeth Shechtman as VP finance and operations, Avreet Jagdev as VP public and university affairs (VP PUA), Erica Nguyen as VP professional faculties, Sakeena Mohammad as VP equity, and Tala Mehdi as VP student life.

The voting period ran from March 4 at 9:00 am until March 7 at 5:00 pm. Within the voting period, 5,476 students cast their ballots online — a voter turnout of 13.1 per cent of those eligible to vote, an increase of two percentage points from the approximately 11 per cent who cast their ballots in the 2023 spring elections.

Referenda and the board of directors

The UTSU student aid program (SAP) levy increase passed with a 60 per cent approval

vote. SAP assists students with housing, transportation and academic costs by allowing them to request up to $500. UTSU members will now pay five dollars a semester, up two dollars from the previous three-dollar levy.

Students also passed the Sexual Education Centre (SEC) levy increase with a 60.4 per cent approval vote, marking the first increase to the SEC’s levy funding since 1996. The SEC provides students with free safe sex supplies, in person peer counselling, and information sessions at their office at 230 College Street, Room 326. In 1996, students passed a referendum to establish a 25-cent levy for the SEC. With this increase, students will now pay 75 cents a semester.

Fifteen students ran for Directory at Large of the UTSU Board of Directors (BOD). Rayan Awad Alim, Alice Ferguson-O’Brien, Daisy Zhao, Krishi Shah, Lilah Williamson, Sophia Mitonides, Diego Moura Panario, Jane Lee, Noah Goldstein, and Ron Ulitsky secured the 10 spots available.

The current BOD will determine whether to ratify the election results at its next meeting scheduled for March 17.

This article has been shortened for print. Read the full version online at thevarsity.ca.

James Bullanoff UTSC Bureau Chief

Caroline Bellamy Creative Director

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The Varsity would like to acknowledge that our office is built on the traditional territory of several First Nations, including the Huron-Wendat, the Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. Journalists have historically harmed Indigenous communities by overlooking their stories, contributing to stereotypes, and telling their stories without their input. Therefore, we make this acknowledgement as a starting point for our responsibility to tell those stories more accurately, critically, and in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples.

The breakdown: Navigating Toronto’s housing maze

The

guide to

your ideal home as a U of T student

Along with the day-to-day difficulties, many students must also consider how to find suitable accommodations in a city plagued with rising rent rates and a deepening housing crisis. Although finding an adequate unit — not to mention ideal roommates, amenities, and flexible rent rates — might seem like an uphill battle. The Varsity broke down some tips and insights to help the novice student better understand the world of student accommodation.

Chart out your needs

Before beginning your search, narrow down your basic needs and specifications. Are you looking for student accommodations in an on-campus residence or off-campus housing such as an apartment building, greek life house, or co-op? What is your monthly budget, and how will rent factor in?

Adding to this, it is also important to determine what type of floor plan you would like — for example, would you prefer a one-bed, one-den unit; a studio; or another type? You might also want to consider location and distance, factoring in the time it might take to commute to and from campus.

Considering these factors, one option for students is to seek on-campus housing that they can view through the StarRez portal or to live in private residences primarily catering to students, such as Parkside, Tartu College, or Avant Toronto. These types of residences tend to advertise greater safety and security, offer shorter-term rental periods, and may provide other amenities such as meal services, study rooms, and social events.

Another option is co-operative housing. Cooperative housing tends to be more affordable, and has the advantage of being run by those living there, giving every tenant responsibility for maintaining the building unit.

If you find it difficult to narrow down your specifications, consider making a comparative list of the different types of accommodations that might interest you. Considering how limited options in the

market can be especially as you near the start of the academic year, determine which areas you can possibly compromise on in exchange for more important factors.

After you’ve determined your broad goals, U of T’s Off-Campus Housing online tool can be a great place to start looking if you decide an off-campus option might be right for you. All current U of T students, faculty, and staff can access the website using their UTORid or JOINid to access the directory of off-campus housing. Your choice of options will be specifically catered to specifications you can set on your profile.

URent — a program run by U of T Student Life — also provides access to modules and workshops that will help coach you through the process of finding accommodation.

Another resource you can refer to is the U of T Students’ Union Housing Guide, which provides essential information ranging from student rental tips to information about financial aid.

Finding roommates and reviewing rent

Unless you wish to live alone in a studio, roommates can be ideal for those who wish to reduce expenses by sharing rent. Finding a roommate or roommates who share your specifications can help expand your search for housing options. Having roommates also ensures a sense of shared responsibility when signing the lease agreement for the unit’s upkeep.

To find the ideal roommate, use tests such as the Roommate Compatibility Checklist created by Student Life to determine if your respective lifestyles match.

U of T has an online roommate finder tool on the U of T off-campus housing website, which students can use to connect with others interested in renting together.

Rent rates in the city, especially in downtown Toronto, have risen since the pandemic. The rent you pay will likely depend on various factors, including the location and your preferred floor plan. You can use the comparative report by the City of Toronto on average rent rates and monthly

occupancy costs when determining if the prices for accommodation downtown line up with market rates.

Reviewing a lease and signing tenancy agreements

Before signing a lease, ensure that you are completely up to date with the Ontario legal tenancy regulations and requirements under the Residential Tenancies Act of 2006 and are not only aware of your rights as a tenant, but also the rights of your landlord. An important aspect of this is reviewing and agreeing upon any changes in the rent rate itself, especially if you are reviewing your lease.

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Anuraag Kumar Nair Varsity Staff ELIZABETH

For the most part, Ontario is a rent-controlled province. Currently, landlords legally are only allowed to raise the rent by 2.5 per cent; in most cases, landlords have to make a suitable appeal to Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board with good reason as to why rent should be increased above the 2.5 per cent marker. Landlords, by law, are required to inform tenants of any change in their given rent 90 days in advance, regardless of whether or not your unit is rent-controlled.

However, these rent control regulations only apply to residents of any condos, apartments, or houses who have lived there before November 5, 2018. This means that in newer buildings and units that aren’t fully under the purview of provincial regulation, landlords have greater freedom in determining the extent of rent charges.

Ensure that you have viewed the unit and thoroughly inspected it for property damages before signing any written agreement. Furthermore, looking into getting tenancy insurance that provides complete coverage for all your belongings is a good idea. In the event of an accident, such coverages insure you from damages and help lessen overall liability.

Moreover, be wary of potential housing scams, especially on housing websites. Be sure to double-check that the unit listed is verified, look up online reviews, and follow up on any conflicting information you find. While the U of T Off-Campus Housing website regularly screens and checks posted listings, you should immediately report any red flags or potential rental scams.

Keep in mind that in the event of any disagreement between you and your landlord, you are completely within your rights to file a case with the Landlord and Tenant Board of Ontario. However, considering the massive backlog of tenancy disputes, the experience may be less than satisfactory and will be time-consuming.

Nicolas

“I am my ancestors’ wildest dream”: BHM luncheon celebrates Black excellence

Olga Fedossenko Video Editor

U of T held its 22nd Black History Month Luncheon on February 24 at Hart House. The event — which featured former Governor General of Canada Michaëlle Jean as a keynote speaker — aimed to bring together the U of T community to celebrate Black excellence, history, and culture.

Around 600 in-person and virtual attendees heard from Jean; Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow; U of T’s president Meric Gertler; and poet Randell Adjei — who the Ontario legislature named the first Poet Laureate of Ontario, a position created in honour of musician Gordon Downie.

In an interview with The Varsity, Glen Boothe, the event’s co-founder, said the luncheon is a place of showing what he described as “the symbols and representations of Black excellence.”

The luncheon served dishes from the Caribbean, West African, South and Central American regions. Boothe said he tried to highlight as many different areas of the Black diaspora as possible with his food choices.

Brief history of the BHM Luncheon Boothe began working at U of T in the 1990s —

there” motivated her to speak at the luncheon.

“What exclusion is creating in our country is a huge deficit… of possibilities, opportunities, energy, synergies, and ideas, a deficit of democracy, and the deficit of development. That’s why Black History Month is a reminder that we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go,” said Jean.

one month of the year. Kengo suggested setting up a Black Excellence office at the Mississauga campus to “support [UTM] students and organize similar events.”

Kengo called back to a quote Adjei said earlier in the event: “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” “I take that even to heart even for myself, as a selfidentifying Black male,” he said.

Event featured speakers, poetry, music, and foods from the Black diaspora Classes scheduled to proceed as usual as members review and vote on agreement

just a few years after Canada formally recognized Black History Month. At the time, he said the university had no centralized events or celebrations of the month.

He came up with the event over 20 years ago in the lunch room of the Division of University Advancement, which coordinates the university’s fundraising. In an interview with The Varsity, he described eating every day with colleagues bringing food from a variety of cultures.

“I would bring in my jerk, they would bring their khichdi, and some people would bring in the noodles. Then I turned and just said, ‘Why don’t we take this to another level?’” said Boothe.

Boothe felt that food was the gateway to different cultures and that the event allowed to create a space for people in a time when “nothing was being done during Black History Month.”

“Ultimately, it’s about inclusiveness and bringing other people into your own culture,” said Boothe.

Michaëlle Jean’s remarks

Aside from diverse foods, this year’s luncheon featured keynote speaker Jean, who served as Canadian governor general from 2005 to 2010.

In an interview with The Varsity, Jean said, “The challenges [for the Black community] that are still

CUPE units reach tentative agreement with U of T minutes before entering legal position to strike

Eshnika Singh Associate News Editor

In the early hours of the morning on March 4, members of a collective bargaining team representing five units of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) informed members that they’d reached a tentative collective employment agreement with the university.

“United we won!” posted CUPE 3902 on X a bit after 4:00 am.

CUPE 3902 units 1 and 5 and three units of CUPE 3261 — collectively representing more than 8,000 educators and service workers at U of T — had previously declared their intentions to strike if they didn’t release a satisfactory agreement with the university by the legal deadline. At 12:01 am, the five CUPE units from two chapters of the union would have entered a legal position allowing them to go on strike.

In a public statement, CUPE 3902 Communications Coordinator and anthropology PhD candidate Marianna Reis wrote that the bargaining committee received “historic” final offers from U of T a few minutes before midnight. The committee decided to sign the new offers into a tentative agreement.

Members of these units will have a chance to vote on whether to ratify this tentative agreement online from March 9 at 6:00 pm to March 11 at 6:00 pm. The unions’ members must ratify the tentative agreement through a secret ballot for it to come into effect. If members decline to ratify the agreement, the bargaining committee will ask the university to return to the bargaining table.

At the moment, the units are advising their members to return to campus for work as usual.

Who was at the bargaining table?

CUPE — the largest trade union at U of T —

Jean discussed how diversity and inclusion “shouldn’t be a trend.” She encouraged students to examine what is happening in the institution to identify necessary changes in the system.

Public’s impressions

Martin Kengo, the manager of Black Initiatives at UTM who attended the event, also mentioned the need for changes and celebrations beyond

Multiple U of T students and staff who came to the luncheon talked about the sense of community they experienced. Siobhan Stewart, U of T’s student life coordinator, said that as a fairly new member of U of T, she was finally able to connect with other staff on campus. “[The Black History Month Luncheon] just felt very warm, very inviting, and a really great opportunity to feel like student life has life,” said Stewart.

The bill was in effect during the negotiations for all five units’ most recent collective agreements with the university about workers’ terms of employment. Most of the multi-year agreements that resulted from these negotiations expired in 2023.

represents thousands of workers at U of T, including teaching assistants (TA), course instructors, library workers, food service workers, and post-doctoral fellows. Among the 10 CUPE bargaining units at the university, five had nearly entered a legal position to declare a strike at 12:01 am.

CUPE 3902 – Unit 1: This unit represents approximately 6,000 graduate and undergraduate students working as educators, including TAs, course instructors, lab assistants, and invigilators not employed by the federated colleges, as well as post-doctoral fellows contracted to teach.

CUPE 3902 – Unit 5: Around 800 postdoctoral fellows who work with faculty members and graduate students to conduct research make up this unit. Twenty per cent of the unit 5 members also belong to CUPE 3902 Unit 1.

CUPE 3261 - Full Time/Part Time (FT/ PT), Casual and 89 Chestnut units : The FT/PT unit represents approximately 700 caretakers, food service workers, maintenance and grounds workers, veterinary technologists, building patrol, and other service workers at U of T. The Casual unit represents approximately 250 service workers employed on a casual basis, in work similar to that for FT/PT staff for up to 24 hours per week. The 89 Chestnut represents approximately 80 workers at Chestnut Residence and Conference employed in food service, housekeeping and maintenance.

What’s at stake?

In November 2022, the Superior Court of Justice struck down Bill 124 — which came into effect in 2019 and capped annual wage increases for Ontario public sector employees at one per cent. At the same time, over 2022, average prices in Canada increased by 6.8 per cent, according to the Canadian consumer price index.

Reis wrote that the tentative agreement negotiators reached on Monday includes a 12.8 per cent wage increase over the next three years for members of CUPE 3902 Unit 1, a nine per cent 2023 retroactive wage increase for members of Unit 5, and a minimum wage of $25 an hour for CUPE 3902’s FT/PT and 89 Chestnut units, among other terms.

As of March 2, according to a bargaining update from CUPE 3902 Unit 1, the unit was demanding that U of T increase wages by 10 per cent in 2024 and by five per cent in both 2025 and 2026 to keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living in Ontario. The unit also demanded “100% coverage of UHIP premiums, guaranteed subsequent appointments for undergraduate and master’s TAs, and a clear financial commitment to subsidized transit for student workers,” according to a bargaining update it distributed on March 2.

Unit 5 was demanding an increase in its members’ minimum salaries. It also demanded that U of T create professional development funds that would cover the cost of accommodations for activities like travel and hotels for conferences.

The three CUPE 3261 units were advocating for extended contract expiration dates and

a complete ban on the university contracting out their work to non-union workers. The Casual unit wanted its members’ pay to equal the pay of FT/PT members for the same work and asked for 10 paid sick days per year. The 89 Chestnut unit wanted paid sick leave for its members, and vacation and shift premiums equal to the FT/PT unit.

What happened before Monday?

Since the beginning of 2024, a collective bargaining committee representing all five units has been meeting with the university to negotiate new deals, but until March 4, it had not come to an agreement with U of T that met the units’ demands.

In February, all five units held strike mandate votes — which allowed members to demonstrate whether they supported their bargaining committee calling for a strike if the committee did not reach a satisfactory deal with the university. In all elections, between 91 and 98 per cent of workers who voted in each unit indicated support for a strike.

On February 16, all five units requested and received a notice from the Ontario Ministry of Labour allowing them to begin a 17-day countdown toward entering aa legal strike position. On March 4 at 12:01 am, all five units entered the legal strike period.

CUPE 3902 last went on strike in February 2015. The strike, which lasted for a month, led most academic activities to be cancelled, suspended, or disrupted.

U of T community members sampled Caribbean, West African, and South and Central American food at the February 24 luncheon. COURTESY OF JOHNNY GUATTO CC UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

ARYAMAN CHOPRA

CANDIDATE PROFILES 2024/25

life sciences — has served as this year’s Mississauga director for The Varsity’s board of directors, a role in which he says he gained “first-hand knowledge of the issues that are affecting [the UTM] community.”

Chopra, who is not running with any slate, told The Varsity that he wants to reduce the fees the union charges to students and provide students the choice to opt out of incidental fees. He pledged to donate his entire presidential salary to the union’s initiatives and students in financial need.

Chopra’s platform also includes advocating for the increased frequency of bus 199, which currently runs from UTM to Brampton six times a day. He also wants to extend the Blind Duck Pub’s hours — which currently run from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday to Thursday, and until 5:00 pm on Friday — so it remains open late into the night, until around 11:00 pm or 12:00 am.

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT EmpowerUTM

the Association of Palestinian Students and as a member experience associate at the gym MOVATI Athletic, where she has advocated to resolve peoples’ individual concerns with their health and broader concerns with the university.

Salsa’s focuses include increasing the number of student seats on U of T governance committees, and clearly communicating the important decisions these committees make and how to become involved.

Salsa hopes to push the university to increase financial aid and collaborate with national organizations like the Canadian Federation of Students to lobby the government to address high tuition.

She says she’s “very committed” to the union’s Divest Now campaign, and hopes to advocate for U of T to pursue an investment strategy that is “anti-genocide and anti-occupational.” She says she intends to research and advocate for what students think U of T should divest from.

JOELLE SALSA (No Slate)

Chopra noted that the union has experienced some controversy, such as during last year’s elections, and is “not really liked by the student body.” To increase engagement, he plans to ensure students can email executives — who currently do not have their emails posted on the UTMSU website — and directly approach students in the student centre to ask for feedback.

issues students experience have persisted throughout the years.”

James serves on the Academic Plan Task Force and other governing bodies, including the UTM Campus Council and UTM Academic Affairs Committee. Combined with his experiences as a Program Assistant for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Canada, James wrote, “I have worked with the government and the university and these experiences have taught me how they work, how to work with them, and how to raise our voice and get things done for students.”

“The UTMSU desperately needs change,” he wrote.

James’s campaign focuses on including multifaith spaces in new on-campus housing, re-negotiating Universal Pass access to include Brampton transit, increasing MiWAY service to UTM, and “repackaging good-to-eat food” from campus into free meals provided to students.

James emphasizes that “no issue is too small, or too big, for our UTMSU to work on.” He aims to increase connections with student clubs to prioritize student concerns in the UTMSU’s decisionmaking. He also commits to consult student and club leaders about any UTMSU policies and initiatives. “We need a UTMSU working for the students, by the students, and with the students,” he wrote.

Albert Pan — a first-year hoping to double major in biochemistry and anthropology — wrote in an email to The Varsity that he’s running for the role because of his commitment to “champion[ing] change” that he’s held from a young age.

Though he hasn’t had the chance to participate widely in organizations on campus so far, Pan has played team sports for the last 15 years, which, he wrote, has taught him skills like time management, empathy, and leadership.

Pan’s main campaign promises include increasing financial transparency from the union by clearly communicating the union’s budget to the public through detailed quarterly financial updates. Additionally, Pan aims to host opportunities for students to give input on how the UTMSU spends its budget.

“Students have the right to know exactly where the union is spending money, since that is all student money at the end of the day,” he wrote.

Pan also pledges to spearhead more career opportunities, such as resume-building workshops hosted through the union, to help students during uncertain economic times.

Joelle Salsa — a third-year specializing in theatre and drama studies — told The Varsity that she’s “passionate about representing the diverse voices [of the student] body.” She serves as president of

Salsa aims to increase the range of food options by pressuring the university to expand options and directly providing food through collaborations with restaurants, as well as offering a buffet and fresh produce in the student centre.

Finally, Salsa wants to ensure “the union is a home for students.” She pledged to host office hours and collaborate with campus groups so that students will come to the union with issues they face.

Ronny (Yuyang) Chen — a third-year student double majoring in mathematics and statistics — first became involved with the UTMSU when she started volunteering for the union two years ago. This year, she served as UTMSU’s vice-president internal associate, focusing on budget services and operations, and helping her team secure sponsorships for events like the Lunar New Year Hot Pot.

In an interview with The Varsity , Chen said she would aim to address rising food costs on campus through initiatives like an all-you-caneat buffet lunch at the Blind Duck and providing fresh produce at the Food Centre. Chen also hopes to make more affordable services like barbers and nail technicians available on campus to alleviate the cost burden on commuter students.

“Students deserve access to diverse, affordable, and good food options, and I will make it a priority to work on this,” said Chen.

If elected, she seeks to enhance accessibility and transparency within the UTMSU by hosting office hours and creating space for students to ask questions about budgets.

Daniel Ripoll — a fourth-year student studying political science and philosophy — told The Varsity that the main focus of his campaign is improving public transit for students. He’s served as the VP external relations for the UTM Mock Trial Club and the Filipino Student Association at UTM.

If elected, Ripoll plans to lobby MiWay to increase the number of buses running the 44 route — which runs from UTM to Meadowvale Town Centre — and the 26 route — which runs from Kipling to the South Common Mall — and push the city to build bike and ride-sharing options students can use to get to campus. He also pledged to lobby the Brampton transit service to get more buses for the 199 route — which travels between Brampton and UTM. He also wants to investigate the lack of GoBus services at UTM.

“I’m a commuter myself, and I think a lot of students get to campus by commuting, so they really need the support,” he said.

Ripoll also told The Varsity that he wants to improve the UTMSU’s relationships with other student unions and the provincial and municipal governments. He said this would allow them to work collectively and improve the quality of the student experience at U of T.

Aryaman Chopra — a first-year student studying

Jessie Schwalb

Jessie

Ehab James — a third-year double majoring in political science and sociology — wrote in an email to The Varsity that “some of the most common

Arthur

SIMRAN PATTANPAL

to “help students get the best out of their university experience.” She’s participated in the UTM Pre-Law Organization, the Political Science Association, and the Historical Studies Society, which, she writes, provided her with opportunities to connect with professionals and UTM administrators.

Pattanpal’s campaign focuses on transit, housing, and food availability on campus. She plans to work with the mayor of Mississauga to extend transit lines into Brampton and increase the frequency of buses running to or from campus, including the 44, the 1, and the 199. She also pledged to advocate for UTM to allocate more residence spots for upper-years and extend operating hours for on-campus dining halls and restaurants so that students can grab food after class.

Pattanpal wants to push UTM to implement residence-specific wifi networks that will handle the “heavy workload” students face. To increase the union’s accessibility, she hopes to transition future UTMSU elections to have online voting.

Pattanpal says that the ForUTM slate prides itself on having already sat down with various student groups and external advisors — including the mayor of Mississauga — to ensure that its plans are feasible. “We are not making promises that we cannot keep,” she wrote.

Majo Romero wrote in an email to The Varsity that she wants students “to have a better opportunity [to succeed]” than she’s had in her three years at UTM.

A third-year student studying psychology and digital enterprise management, Romero served as the event director for the Latin American Student Association, where she planned and organized events that catered to the student community.

Romero’s campaign focuses on advocating for U of T to move the CR/NCR deadline to after students receive their final grades. She also hopes to change exam deferral policies so that when a student defers an exam after someone they know dies, they no longer have to provide proof of death documentation. In addition, she wishes to push for more scholarships geared toward international students who would not otherwise be able to afford UTM tuition.

Romero aims to “create more options for students to get academic job opportunities” by collaborating with the Career Centre to develop new programs, and partner with local businesses to offer internships and create mentorship programs where students can get advice from professionals in the fields that interest them.

To encourage students’ confidence that the UTMSU is “finally making tangible, meaningful progress,” Romero said she would listen to students and floated the idea of “reforming how the elections are held” to make it easier for any student to run.

opportunities for everyone.”

Zarroug was the head of her high school’s first Black Student Association in Dubai. Her campaign emphasizes ensuring women’s safety by implementing an anonymous UTM-specific sexual harassment and assault hotline where people can seek help, and by advocating for the university to implement mandatory courses on consent and increase the number of emergency towers on campus.

Zarroug also aims to advocate for the university to provide more diverse food options representing various cultures, writing that “the lack of halal, vegan and ethnic foods [at UTM] are astonishing.”

As a Sudanese immigrant with experience living in different countries, Zarroug wrote that she understands the importance of community. She plans to revitalize campus spaces like the Blind Duck, which she hopes to keep open on weekends. She also wants to introduce live music and host themed nights at the pub so students can socialize and bond.

In an interview with The Varsity, Sidra Ahsan — a fifth-year student majoring in biology for health science and minoring in creative writing and French studies — highlighted her experience researching university policies as a student support associate at the UTMSU. She said that this research has provided her insight into the challenges students face, such as academic isolation.

If elected, Ahsan aims to establish an Academic and Career Mentorship Program to connect students with alumni and experts in their fields of interest. She also plans to collaborate with the Career Centre to organize professional networking nights and financial literacy workshops, particularly for students from programs like arts that often don’t typically receive that type of support.

Ahsan also hopes to reform academic policies, including advocating for a revised CR/NCR system where students can declare “NCR” after they receive their final grade. Ahsan says she’s heard from students that the current model isn’t effective for them.

“I believe students are entitled to services that support their mental health and well-being,” said Ahsan. “I’m dedicated to empowering them by helping them take control of their careers and university life at UTM.”

Philip Anyang — a third-year student studying economics and political science — told The Varsity that he wants to see initiatives on campus where “people feel more included, feel more supported, and [that] make campus a much safer and inclusive place for students.”

He currently serves as an outreach and marketing assistant at the UTM Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Office and previously worked with the university’s Anti-Black Racism Task Force to advocate for inclusive policies within academic units.

Anyang pledged that, if elected, he would work to create a dedicated space within the UTMSU’s racialized students’ lounge where students can “connect with peers and strengthen their community.”

Anyang also wants to host more equityrelated events, workshops, and cultural celebrations throughout the year and to create a calendar displaying equity events on campus. He also hopes to establish a fund to provide campus groups with more financial support that they need to host events.

Anyang highlighted accessibility as a huge issue on the UTM campus. He expressed disappointment in U of T’s “inaction” in promoting and supporting students with disabilities. To combat this issue, Anyang said he would create an accessibility team that would identify areas where students’ needs may not be met.

The UTMSU president acts as a spokesperson for the union, fills in for absent VPs, chairs multiple union committees, and leads the executive team.

The VP internal fills in for the president if absent and chairs multiple committees within the union, including the budget committee.

The VP external liaises with organizations outside of U of T including municipal, provincial, and federal governments; national student organizations such as the Canadian Federation of Students; and representatives from other student unions.

The VP university affairs liaises with academic departments and societies, supervises the union’s campaigns and advocacy commission, and chairs multiple committees within the UTMSU including the UTMSU Recognition of Achievement Award Committee and the Campaigns & Advocacy Commission.

The VP equity liaises with university equity offices and groups, chairs the union’s bursary committee, and supervises the campaigns and advocacy commission, with the end goal of helping marginalized groups at U of T.

Layla Zarroug — a third-year double major in political science and psychology — wrote in an email to The Varsity that she would use her position as VP equity “as a platform to create equal

Zarroug aims to support students affected by international events by advocating for the university to implement “more accessible extensions” and lift a policy that requires students to provide proof of death documentation when requesting an exam deferment when someone they are close to dies.

UTM undergraduate students can cast their ballot for executive committee and board of directors candidates daily between March 12–14, from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Voting will take place in person at the William G. Davis Building; the Communication, Culture, and Technology Building; the Instructional Centre; Maanjiwe Nendamowinan; the Kaneff Centre; and the Mississauga Medical Academy Building.

Simran Pattanpal — a third-year double majoring in political science and history of religions — wrote in an email to The Varsity that she wants

Kamilla Bekbossynova

UTM Bureau Chief

Caroline Bellamy Creative Director

Caroline Bellamy Creative Director

Caroline Bellamy Creative Director

Business & Labour

“We are not the issue:”: International student caps should hit private colleges, says U of T

Business

board banks on

the province to leave its international recruitment numbers alone

Georgia Kelly Business and Labour Editor

U of T’s January 31 Business Board meeting re vealed that the federal cap on international student visas, coupled with the province’s decision to continue its domestic tuition freeze, is topof-mind for members of the board as they draft the 2024–2025 budget.

Following Canada’s an nouncement on January 22 that it will slash the number of Ontario’s postsecondary inter national student visas in half, U of T vice presidents have pointed the finger at other Ontario institutions as the ‘real’ culprits behind the interna tional student exploitation problem that the federal government has alleged, and asserted that its own policies should not — and will not — warrant government regulation.

2025 academic year, U of T Vice President Scott Mabury described during the University’s Business Board meeting in January.

Despite potential restrictions, U of T marches

Still, the Business Board has not lost faith in the provincial government but has simply redirected its optimism. “We appreciate the changes announced are focused on addressing abuses in the system by particular actors and are not intended to adversely impact universities such as ours,” wrote Joseph

Wong, U of T’s Vice President in international affairs, in a statement to The Varsity

will recognize U of T as a good actor in terms of their recruitment of international students, in that it “uphold[s] rigorous and transparent recruitment and admissions processes, and offer robust student supports.” An FAQ page for U of T applicants, in response to the question “what do Canada’s changes for international students mean for me?” states that “the new [federal] measures are not intended to impact the number of students allowed at the University of Toronto and other universities in Canada but implementation details remain to be decided.”

students come — although he described that this has also been a strategic move on the business board’s part to not become dependent on a single “source country” and become vulnerable to that country’s particular economic or political changes.

Pointing the finger

In the January meeting, Mabury asserted that Ontario must treat colleges and universities differently when determining who gets to admit how many international students.

“Most of the bad actors are in the for-profit, private sector, college area,” he said.

However, Mabury also called out Algoma University in Ontario and Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia as examples of universities that he said have engaged in exploitative practices. Neither university responded to The Varsity’s request for comment on this matter.

A month after Mabury’s assertions, however,

Postsecondary institutions across Canada have become increasingly dependent on international students’ tuition to fund their operating expenses ever since provincial governments started aggressively decreasing public funding over the past three decades. The Ontario government’s regulations on domestic tuition have hit its colleges and universities especially hard in the past four years as it cut domestic tuition by 10 per cent in 2019, and then froze this rate in place ever since.

U of T was very optimistic that Ontario would end the freeze this year — the business board had drafted next year’s operating budget on the assumption that Ontario students’ tuition would increase by three per cent.

This increase is what the provincially commissioned Blue Ribbon Panel strongly recom mended. However, the Ontario government announced at the end of January that it is continuing the tuition freeze anyway. This decision has left members of the board “scrambling” to rework the proposed operating budget for the 2024–

The federal government will issue approximately 120,000 international student visas to Ontario post-sec ondary applicants for the upcoming academic year, down from the ap proximately 240,000 visas it issued in 2023. The Ontario government is in charge of deciding how to allocate these visas amongst all of the province’s post-secondary institutions and has until March 31 to announce those numbers.

The provincial government’s deadline to announce how it will allocate its visa permit limits has thrown a wrench into U of T’s internal admissions timeline, as the university generally starts sending out letters of admission to international applicants before March 31. According to prospective students’ online posts, some U of T programs have already started sending out letters of admission to international applicants for the 2024–2025 academic year as if nothing has changed.

The U of T administration did not The Varsity’s inquiries as to what the university will do if Ontario limits the number of study permits for U of T below the number of international students that it is planning to admit.

Wong asserted in his statement that Ontario

U of T Vice President Scott Mabury made similar remarks at the university’s January Business Board meeting as the board discussed the upcoming release of the proposed 2024–2025 university budget. “We are not the issue the government is trying to address,” Mabury said.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has previously accused post-secondary institutions of exploiting international students for their tuition payments and failing to provide quality education or adequate support for their living situations. Some other federal agents, such as a communications advisor for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada in a January comment to The Varsity, have added that institutions’ recruitment of international students exacerbates housing shortages in univer sity and college towns across Ontario.

Mabury pointed to the university’s guaran tee to provide university residence ac commodations for first-year international students — including beds rented from hotels — as well as U of T’s bursary support for international students, which he said the uni versity had increased. Mabury also noted that the university committed to diversifying the countries from which international

CBC News published data on the top 10 biggest recruiters of international post-secondary students across all of Canada: nine out of the 10 are in Ontario, and eight of those nine are colleges. However, all but one — University Canada West — are public institutions. This runs contrary to the claim from both government officials and private commentators — including U of T VPs — that private colleges were the driving force behind the surge in international recruitment.

Ontario universities and colleges in hot water

With Laurentian University declaring insolvency in 2021 and Queen’s University potentially facing bankruptcy, the threat of Ontario colleges and universities going under is creeping closer than ever.

“A lot of things changed today, and not in a positive direction,” Mabury said in the January meeting. The comment comes as the business board prepares to review its proposed operating budget for the 2024–2025 academic year.

The university did not answer The Varsity’s questions on whether the university is equipped to balance its budget if Ontario significantly limits the number of international students it can admit.

Throughout the week of March 4, the bargaining team for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3902 Unit 1, CUPE Local 3902 Unit 5, and CUPE 3261 Full-Time/Part-Time (FTPT), 89 Chestnut, and Casual units came to tentative contract deals with the U of T administration. This was the first time these unions had employed joint bargaining at U of T.

This joint campaign was called “We are U of T” and called for an end to “unlivable wages, job insecurity, and burnout from overwork.” Collectively, the campaign represented over 8,000 workers at U of T in different work areas.

“Historic” deals

CUPE 3261 released details of the tentative agreement to the public on March 4. While the deals are similar to recent wage settlements U of T offered to other unions, and may not meet some demands from the membership, they are significantly better than previous agreements. In

its published summary of the tentative agreement from March 6, CUPE 3261 explains, “the Tentative Agreements won in both CUPE 3902 and 3261 include substantial financial wins that have never previously been achieved in a single Collective Agreement, and that [have been] historically rejected”.

Unsurprisingly, unions demand a pay rise comparable to the inflation level to catch up to their losses from Bill 124, which was installed in 2019 and only declared unconstitutional in 2022. Bill 124 restricted salary increases to no more than 1 per cent of total remuneration every three years. This was 16 per cent for CUPE 3902 Unit 5 and 19 per cent for Unit 1. However, the tentative agreement only offered a 12.8 per cent wage increase over three years for all four locals except CUPE 3261 Casual.

On the other hand, U of T’s offers raised the minimum wage for postdoctoral researchers from $36,000 to $50,000. Additionally, they fulfilled the CUPE 3261 FTPT and 89 Chestnut units’ demand for the minimum living wage to be increased from $16.55 to $25 per hour, and will be implementing

the minimum wage for the Casual unit to the demanded $20 per hour by 2025. They also included many other details and improvements regarding benefits and compensation, such as a substantial increase in sick leave for the 89 Chestnut unit from three days to 15 weeks.

What is behind the deals?

The “historic” nature of the deals is no coincidence: it mirrors exactly the historic nature of the unity and solidarity shown by the CUPE locals.

In a previous statement to The Varsity in January 2024 regarding negotiations with the university, CUPE 3261’s President Luke Daccord discussed concerns that U of T might use “pattern bargain ing” tactics, writing, “U of T will bargain with some of the bigger unions and groups on campus first, and then whatever is achieved there they will force on the rest of us.” He argued that this approach to bargaining results in much lower wage agreements that disproportionately affect the lowest-paid and smaller unions.

The approach of “pattern bargaining” that Daccord mentioned effectively represents a ‘divide and conquer’ scenario, which limits bargaining power. Bigger locals naturally have more bargaining power because their larger membership allows for more funding and the ability to bargain, fund, and maintain a strike. Most importantly, they create much more disruption during a strike. This makes a strike much more costly and thus creates more incentives for the university to agree to the union’s demands.

This threat of withholding labour power de termines bargaining power, and thus bargaining outcomes. Therefore, bargaining jointly with other

unions and locals, which CUPE 3902 and 3261 did, is meant to improve bargaining outcomes by increasing the size and strength of the union. In their words: “United we win.”

Research on industrial relations tends to confirm that a union’s size and militancy — its willingness, preparedness, and ability to strike when demands are not met — contribute to a better contract. For example, a study conducted by Craig W. Riddell in 1980, using data from 1953–1973 and including 2,360 contracts from 18 Canadian firms, found that a strike and its length both positively influence wage changes, concurring with previous evidence.

It is no surprise that U of T made significant

CUPE3902

A month in rewind for Climate Justice UofT

Recent CJ UofT report criticized the University’s continued association with fossil fuels despite 2021 divestment promises

Medha Barath & Je Ho Cho Business Correspondent & Varsity Contributor

Climate Justice UofT (CJ UofT) has had a busy month — following a banner drop at Rotman on February 5 that was part of the new phase of its Banks Off Campus campaign, the group launched its “Bound to Big Oil” report, which emphasized U of T’s many connections with the fossil fuel industry, on February 8.

Although U of T and its federated colleges have committed to divestment from fossil fuels, fossil fuel presence continues to pervade the University, according to research done by CJ UofT. In particular, as part of this campaign, the organization has highlighted the university’s connections with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), which it notes was the largest financier of fossil fuel projects globally in 2022.

In a statement to The Varsity, Anaum Sajanlal, a second-year student majoring in history and critical studies in equity and solidarity and the CJ UofT’s spokesperson for the Banks Off Campus campaign, also scrutinized the impact of fossil fuelaffiliated corporations on First Nations such as the Wet’suwet’en nation.

Taking banks off Rotman

CJ UofT has a history of advocating against the presence of financial institutions on campus. In March 2023, the organization hosted a sit-in at the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) Student Commons’ RBC branch to call for the Union to cut ties with the bank for its financial ties to the fossil fuel industry. This action was successful — the UTSU agreed to not renew its lease for the RBC branch after it ends in 2026 and also committed to declining all sponsorships from the bank.

CJ UofT calls for specific financial institutions to end their presence at U of T through the Banks Off Campus campaign. According to a guide to the movement released by the student group, the initiative “aims to pressure the university to sever all ties with the ‘Big Bad Five’ banks — RBC, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto Dominion (TD) — on campus so long as they continue to fund colonial violence in so-called Canada and abroad.”

Currently, the climate action group is targeting the Rotman School of Management, U of T’s business school that offers undergraduate and graduate programs, and their connections with RBC. “Rotman is tied to RBC in many ways, some of which we’re hoping to bring to light over the course of the campaign,” wrote Sajanlal.

On February 5, protesters dropped a banner in The Joseph L. Rotman School of Management

to its connections with militarism, climate chaos, and colonialism.

When asked what prompted the most recent action at Rotman, Sajanlal wrote that “we have lots of evidence for why RBC is a deeply unethical corporation,” citing the bank’s current financing of the controversial Coastal Gaslink Pipeline in British Columbia — a project that has come under fire for violations of local Wet’suwet’en sovereignty and heavy-handed police action against protestors and land defenders.

The Rotman Commerce program has significant ties with RBC. The program has hosted case competitions and recruitment events, like the RBC x Rotman Sustainable Finance Week. “The bank has very successfully portrayed itself as a climatefriendly, youth-friendly institution, but these are all lies,” wrote Sajanlal. They said the group carried out the banner drop to “[expose] [RBC’s] role as funders and enablers of colonial violence and the destruction of our futures.”

CJ UofT’s campaign against banks isn’t just grounded in removing RBC from campus — it’s also about winning the hearts of Rotman students. “Sometimes when we disrupt events, we get booed by students and laughed at. With Rotman, we’ve found that so far this has been the vast majority of students’ response,” wrote Sajanlal.

Despite these initial setbacks, they were optimistic about their prospects in educating Rotman students about their mission: “We spoke to many students and one of them said that they were planning to work for RBC, but after learning about how unethical they are, they’re considering looking elsewhere for employment.”

The “Bound to Big Oil” Report

While the Banks Off Campus campaign currently has a strong focus on the relationship between Rotman and RBC, CJ UofT’s “Bound to Big Oil” report revealed how the university at large remains intertwined with the fossil fuel industry through millions in donations, research funding, and the professional affiliations of several members of university governing bodies.

On February 8, CJ UofT hosted the reveal event for its report. The report authors manually culled through the list of donors to U of T’s Boundless campaign and added up the donation amounts from all donors deemed to be part of the fossil fuel industry, funding the industry, or promoting industry talking points, based on the Corporate Mapping Project’s definition.

Working with the bottom ranges of the donation amounts listed on the Boundless website, the authors determined that the University received at least $64 million in direct monetary contributions from fossil fuel-affiliated corporations between 2008 and 2018. Additionally, the authors noted in

database that tracks the exact amount of financial contributions to the University, and so their findings represent a lower-end estimate.

Using the “funding agency” search parameter on the Web of Science database — a database that compiles information on published scientific papers — the report authors found that 635 published research articles affiliated with U of T between 2018 and 2023 mentioned fossil fuel companies in their funding disclosure. “About 25 percent of the articles were affiliated with climate science,” said Erin Mackey, one of CJ U of T’s cofounders and primary authors of the report, in an interview with The Varsity

The Banks Off Campus report also highlighted fossil fuel executives’ continued presence on the University of Toronto’s Governing Council, the central body responsible for the “government, management and control of the University [of Toronto]” according to the 1971 University of Toronto Act. According to the report, one TD executive and one RBC executive currently sit as a part of the University’s Governing Council, and executives of corporations such as Imperial Oil have previously held seats on the Council.

In response to these findings, a U of T spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Varsity that U of T’s research funding decisions are governed by its research ethics policy, publications policy, policy on research partnerships, and conflict of interest policies. These policies address and illustrate the general rules that govern the University’s actions, and are designed to protect research independence.

The spokesperson also pointed to the Provostial Guidelines on Donations by the Division of the VicePresident & Provost, last updated in 2021, which is more specifically focused on how the University interacts and handles donations. The Guidelines state, “The University values and will protect its integrity, autonomy, and academic freedom, and does not accept gifts when a condition of such acceptance would compromise these fundamental principles.” They specify that when researchers use funding gifts for a designated purpose, it still “must be consistent with the University’s mission and approved academic priorities.”

The spokesperson expressed, “[U of T is] deeply committed to both meeting the global challenges posed by climate change and maintaining the highest standard of integrity in research.”

“In pursuit of that work, faculty identify and secure funding that they determine is appropriate to their research, which may include funders that some in our community do not support. There is no policy at U of T – nor any federal law or directive – that prohibits scholars from taking funding from fossil fuel companies, however, one defines

opportunities as this is a fundamental tenet of the university’s commitment to academic freedom.”

CJ UofT’s recommendations

CJ UofT’s ultimate purpose with its campaigns is to remove any connection between the university and institutions promoting fossil fuel usage. As stated in its report, the organization’s calls for “full fossil fuel dissociation” are described as “cutting all financial, reputational, and other ties between the University of Toronto and the fossil fuel industry.”

The Banks Off Campus campaign wants to make sure that organizations like RBC will not have a future inflow of student hires through access to the University’s recruiting events: “The goal is to reduce their recruitment opportunities… and to disgrace them in the eyes of the public so they are not seen as prestigious or working in the interest of the people,” wrote Sajanlal.

When asked about what employment opportunities on campus would replace corporations like RBC, Amalie Wilkinson, one of the authors of the “Bound to Big Oil” report, responded that “if Canada is serious about transitioning away from fossil fuels, [companies like RBC are] no longer going to be the key economic actors… there are a ton of other companies, including civil society actors, government spaces, and other private actors that are much better aligned with principles of environmental justice [where students can find employment].”

Moreover, CJ UofT feels that professors and executives at Rotman must eliminate their ties to the bank. The report noted that several professorships and chair positions, among other positions at Rotman, are endowed by petroleum and oil companies. Sajanlal expresses on behalf of CJ UofT, “We see this as a conflict of interest. How can those tied to companies that enable the destruction of our future be allowed to hold positions of power and authority at a university?”

RBC did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment in time for publication.

Arts & Culture

March 11, 2024

thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture arts@thevarsity.ca

Toronto indie music festival comes to Hart House

Wavelength Music Winter Festival brings new sounds to campus

Eric Yang Varsity Contributor

A line forms out of an unassuming hallway on the second floor of Hart House, and a soft hum of music is in the air. As you turn the corner and peer past the crowd, you see that the music room at Hart House has been transformed. Rows of chairs replaced by standing tables, the piano moved in favour of a platform stage, and a sound booth installed at the back of the room.

From February 29 to March 2, the Wavelength Music festival came to Hart House. This year’s “East to West” festival celebrated up-and-coming Canadian indie musicians and bands across Toronto for three days. This year, thirteen different acts showcased diverse music, ranging from hip-hop and post-modern electronic music to jazz and low-fi inspired acoustic.

And it wasn’t just the music that was diverse; the musicians themselves all came from diverse heritages. While all of the acts at Wavelength were ‘local,’ hailing from either Toronto or Montréal, the music they played was widespread; the curation Wavelength Music did for this festival truly hit the mark for the variety of sound.

“East to West”: Engaging Toronto music venues

A big part of the reason Wavelength Music held a day of their festival at Hart House is their dedication to choosing new live music venues around Toronto. In September, Wavelength Music organizers released a report titled “Reimagining Music Venues,” written in conjunction with the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. The report details post-COVID audience recovery through choosing novel and innovative venues. Holding the festival at Hart House was part of this mission, sparking new life into the live music scene in Toronto.

Teaching tactics Comic

The festival at Hart House and at St. Anne’s Parish Hall had a huge demographic contrast. Of course, an event on campus attracts more students, but the audience seemed to age about 20 years when the festival moved off campus. Personally, it feels like the indie music community in Toronto caters to an older demographic than most U of T students, perhaps hanging on to a style of indie music and live performance that isn’t seen as cool among younger people anymore.

Festival highlights

Starting at Hart House, the night's first act was CAIJO, a Zimbabwean-Canadian emcee from Toronto, who wowed the audience with his smooth flow. Abstract animations from students at OCAD University accompanied his onstage presence. These visuals almost seemed to move and dance with the beat and his flow, changing between verses and adding a unique layer to the music.

CAIJO often moved into the audience to deliver his message, creating an electric connection between himself and his audience. His producer on a turntable further added a layer of audience engagement, changing and tuning his sound live. With a mastery of both his sound and stage presence, CAIJO demonstrates what live hip-hop currently sounds like in Toronto.

Moving to St. Anne’s Parish Hall, the mood softened as we heard Cots — a quartet consisting of a singer, guitar, bass, and drummer — with a unique sound combining bossa nova with quiet acoustic jazz. Hailing from Montréal, the quartet impressed me with their masterful balance between the harmonies, rhythms, and singing, with each musical aspect cleanly coming off in the final product. The singer and bandleader, Steph Yates, further exceeded my expectations with her clean, crystalline, and luxurious voice. Fitting neatly in the sound

space, the singer and band meticulously carved their low-fi, acoustic jazz sound as if they were carving through the air around them.

Finally, those who look for eclectic masterpieces will love the quartet Animatist. The local Toronto act’s sound can only be described as a mixture of post-jazz and math-rock. And they do it so well. Comprising a saxophonist, guitarist, bassist, and kit, their music sounds like nothing I’ve heard before.

Their pieces fall into these structural building blocks, where one instrument or a subset of the band will play a phrase, repeating it until another instrument joins. This creates an effect of steps — a gradus ad Parnassum , if you will

— until the climax, when the quartet unleashes their full potential, enveloping the audience with sound and amplified vibrations. Often, their pieces ended with a ‘poof’ — a sudden end and a complete absence of sound.

The Wavelength Music festival defeated my expectations of what live music should sound like on campus, away from the dull and academic, and towards fitting into the larger music scene in Toronto. Wavelength Music hosts curated events and future indie concerts around the city, which you can find on its website. However, I found that the best way to discover new music was to merely talk to other audience members.

Genres at the Wavelength festival ranged from jazz fusion to hip-hop to math rock.

ERIC YANG/THEVARSITY

Kehu Li Varsity Contributor

In Translation: The consequences of forgetting

What I learned about myself while relearning my language

Sadiah Bemat Varsity Contributor

My first words were from my mother tongue, Gujarati. My language is what ties me back to the little village of Panoli, where fields of wheat and barley grow and the sunrise is covered in morning fog; where the chai is stronger, the food is fresher, and the water is purer. My ancestors have called Panoli home for centuries, and despite only being able to go back sparingly, this family history maintains my feeling of deep-rooted connection to the land. Gujarati in particular — a language from one of India’s western provinces — as well as our strong faith in Islam ties my family together. We speak a Gujarati dialect that is unique to our village, and it carries the unique history of my ancestors and relatives.

Even while far from Panoli, my early life was immersed in the Gujarati language. As a secondgeneration Canadian, my parents, grandparents, three aunts, one uncle, and I lived together in my childhood home, a lively house filled with laughter, joy, and warmth. My family only spoke Gujarati, so that is what I used to connect to the world around me. “Chalo chalo!” — “Let’s go, let’s go!” — my dad would say to all of us as we gathered into our old van for another trip to Niagara Falls.

I would spend the most time with my aunts, clinging to their hands everywhere we went and fighting with the youngest aunt because of our close age — we were almost like sisters. They always address me as “Lali,” a term of endearment that one uses for their niece. Although many

girl cousins have come after me, they always reserved the name for me.

The memory that clings to me the most is how I spent most of my days with my grandparents while everyone else was at school, work, or both.

“Avid na” — “like this” — my grandfather would say patiently to me as he showed me how to spin coins on the floor for the 10th time, and my tiny hands reached under the couch to find a dime or a nickel to try again.

I grew up only knowing Gujarati until I started school at the age of four. Without being able to communicate with my peers, I was isolated. Seeking acceptance, I shunned my own language to fit the mould of what is considered “educated” in Canada, and over time, I began to forget. I could not remember the words that my mother used to comfort me, the words that my grandmother spoke to me softly when braiding my hair, or even the jokes passed around during family parties.

Slowly, I lost my one connection to my homeland. It took me until the COVID-19 pandemic, when speaking to my family became my largest source of in-person social connection, to realize what I had lost.

It struck me when we had all gathered in person after months apart for Eid, a festive celebration that Muslims celebrate after a month of fasting during Ramadan. After our feast, we gathered in the living room, and the stories and jokes began to spark. Someone had made a joke, and everyone erupted in laughter. I turned to my aunt to ask, “What did she say?” This was the first moment I really felt like an outsider.

Ulis Bertin Varsity Contributor

One would think that re-learning a language is easier than learning it the first time, but Gujarati is not a simple language to pick up. Gujaratiproduced media seldom has English translations, and even in translation, meanings fall through the cracks: sometimes, a phrase can only be truly understood when you’ve spent a lifetime speaking it. By losing my Gujarati, I lost the cultural references and community that come with it.

If I had been born a generation before and still lived in Gujarat, I would not have felt so disconnected from my family, my motherland, and my culture. The sad truth is that I also would probably not be sitting here today, gaining a proper education and working, learning, and being my own person. India is a beautiful country, with incredible cultural and linguistic diversity. Unfortunately, 200 years of British colonialism resulted in the deterioration of its land and resources and a divide-and-conquer strategy between the Hindus and Muslims, which ended in shambles during the 1947 partition.

This religious tension only spread and festered afterward, leaving Muslims unable to get stable jobs. This forced my parents to leave India to help their families reach safety and stability and make sure that their children had a fighting chance in the

JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

world to do more with their lives than just struggle. Often, I think about what India could have looked like before colonization, and I can’t help but wonder how differently my life would have turned out if I had grown up in my homeland, with Gujarati as the language I think, dream, and speak in every day. To me, it’s not just a language. It’s the face of every ancestor that came before me, that created the face I bear today.

I can’t rewind the past and stop my language from leaving me. I simply have to accept that I have to re-learn it, something that often hurts my ego.

I’ll admit, my Gujarati is still not very good, but my broken words have now started to form sentences and full conversations. I only felt comfortable conversing with my grandparents in Gujarati for a long time because they are the only ones who don’t laugh at me.

Over time, though, I let go of my fear of embarrassment and pushed myself. I don’t want my language to be forgotten in future generations. My family didn't come here to erase our past — we came here to build a better life. I don’t want to forget my culture to be Canadian, but rather, make a new identity that ties my heritage to the place I now call my home.

Men, maids, and maneaters: The 2024 Hart House U of T Drama Festival

Fifteen thought-provoking student plays premiered at the annual festival

An android who dances for watching stars, fragile male podcasters on psychedelics, and a slapstick comedy set in a college dorm — these were the eclectic variety of plays that won this year’s annual Hart House Drama Festival, a competitive showcase for student theatre since 1936.

On the historic Hart House stage, students from all three campuses compete over the course of five days to gain feedback and awards from professional artists. Comprising 15 one-act plays in five days, this year’s Dramafest from February 27 to March 2 centred on thought-provoking blends of social critique and innovative staging. Each night, the theatre was a riot of students and professionals from U of T’s drama scene, and rife with conversation and greetings at each intermission. Here, I was lucky to see all the winning shows and meet many of the enthusiastic student casts and crews.

At the final ceremony, three plays won the top honours for their excellence. First was the UTSC Drama Society’s Lemons and Ginger, a college dorm comedy which received the Janet Bessey Award for Stage Management and the Presi dent’s Award for Best Production.

The play follows seven spirited friends — including two exes, a secret admirer, and a suspicious girlfriend — who share a college dorm. And when their new British roommate arrives preceding a house party, things turn hysterical.

The writing was wacky and effective.

The play moved with the assurance of a Seinfeld episode over a classic Greek com edy plot. Writer Yvette Chester wrought age-old plot devices of mistaken identity, eavesdropping, and secret love into funny, original lines. Although these jokes some times pandered to college students, the ac tors’ vigour widened the appeal of the show.

A defining moment was the character Kian giving a passionate two-minute opening monologue, only to be guffawed at by his new roommate: “You’re British!”

The acting was excellent in places. Even through the slapstick comedy, the characters Liam, Kian, and David still felt believable. Clara, Jake, and Isabella, however, were showy at times, playing brashly to the audience and lacking the specificity to be funny. The set and lighting were also solid, and made the play feel as comfortable as a sitcom episode.

At the awards ceremony, an entire section of the audience, rooting for the UTSC drama society, rose to their feet in triumph.

The second winner was the UC Follies’ Average Male Conversation (AMC), a comedy-drama which received the Robert Gill Award for Best Direction and the Robertson Davies Playwriting Award. Written by Luis Sanchez, the play centers on three 20-something army friends — Mitchell, Berto, and Peters — catching up to record a podcast for men. Enter tirades, tank-tops, and testosterone. The catch — Mitchell just got engaged, and the gummies Berto brought are psychedelics.

The writing for AMC was explosively over-thetop, sampling from pop culture like a raccoon let wild in a sweetshop. This is not a play above absurdity. There was, for example, a trip sequence where Janet turns into a slice of pizza to counsel the boys about emotional intelligence. Sanchez’s script is raucous, imaginative, and guaranteed laughs.

However, echoing the curse of tragicomedy, it frequently sacrificed depth for humour. Though deeply memed, the problems of male relations are an ocean of social dynamics that deserves exploring. In his sixty minutes, Sanchez often got close, but always changed course at the last second to make his audience laugh. This created a strange lack of resolution where the group’s loser, Peters, was left still broken and unchanged at the end.

Nonetheless, the acting was excellent. Neve Chamberlain expertly cast and directed the four stars, embodying their characters with a conviction I rarely saw in the rest of Dramafest. Special praise goes to Yael Sher and James Goldman, who threw their bodies around the stage for comedy’s sake but still achieved depth. This is a promising play that deserves development.

Stellar Parallax, was an independent sci-fi story which took both the IATSE Local 58 award for technical achievement and the Donald Sutherland Award for Best Performance. This play was different, and chiefly a vehicle for the star, exceptional dancer Mikaël Toblo Bennett. Opening on a starlit stage, the play includes a still, androgynous figure in the center. As time passes, the android begins to mirror the stars in dance. While frustrated scientists try to make it talk for an upcoming convention, the android is wordless in

its struggle to express its existence, and this is the journey of the play.

This is achieved through precise technicality, such as the android writing on the fourth wall which appeared synchronized on the theatre screen.

Technical director Linnea Sander created a delicate bath of light and sound for the android to dance within, creating a deeply immersive aesthetic.

In terms of writing, the scientists’ lines could often have been more serious. Though there is a contrast between human pettiness and disarming humanity in the play, the actors should have been more deliberate in portraying this. Overall, Stellar Parallax was exquisite, even just as a showcase of Bennet’s dancing. The technical aspects were new and imaginative, and Stellar Parallax deserved both of its awards.

Many plays won merit awards and also received feedback from well-spoken adjudicator Kevin Matthew Wong. Among the best were Bluelight, whose technical worldbuilding award was given to Shunsho Heng and Maggie Tavares; Cassandra Marcus Davey’s work Helen/Klytemnestra, or Maneater, which fully deserved the “radical reimagining” award for its faithful reworking of the story of Helen; and Three Plays and a Conversation by Nina Katz, joyful and imaginative, which won the ‘Continue the Conversation’ award.

When I left the theatre on Saturday, the buzz had not yet died down. Arguments over who deserved which award persisted long after the curtain call, as the University of Toronto theatre world returned to its usual frenetic rhythm.

There’s still plenty of student theatre to see on campus — the Victoria College Drama Society’s Young Frankenstein premieres at Isabel Bader Theatre on March 14, as does Trinity College Drama Society’s A Streetcar Named Desire at Father Madden Hall. Still, the Hart House Dramafest is a special vehicle for aspiring writers, actors, and stage managers to test their talents. All that’s left is to ask: what will they come up with next year?

The cast of Lemons and Ginger pose with their President’s Award for Best

Trials by fire

What the women in three Hindu epics taught me about womanhood

Ajeetha Vithiyananthan Senior Copy Editor

First, a disclaimer: the following isn’t meant to dissuade anyone from their faith, belief in a higher power, or optimistic nihilism. In fact, more power to you for walking through life’s trials by fire unscathed and stronger for it — I’m sure, one day, I’ll come out the other end too.

I have a fickle relationship with faith. My parents are Hindu by ancestry and choice, whereas I tend to identify as Hindu by ancestry, agnostic by choice, and a convert to any God who’ll take me by exam season.

I won’t go into extensive detail about why I walked off the path to salvation, ending reincarnation, or whatever else. Put simply, I’m a humanist at heart — I believe that I can satisfy my emotional and spiritual needs and follow an ethical life without God or religion — and am determined to stand by my own moral compass.

Nor will I go into how I walk the line between existentialism, nihilism, and absurdism — because I don’t. Every day, at random, I trip and fall — but never settle — into any one of the three philosophies about our life, death, purpose, or rather the lack thereof.

Instead, what I would like to divulge here is my love for the mythos and my unwavering love for my fellow women, mortal and immortal.

My love for Hindu stories was instilled by my parents, explored through Indian classical music, remembered during the excruciating wait for Uncle Rick’s The House of Hades, and like any Gen Z kid when the adults ran out of answers to our unending questions, reignited on the internet. I also grew up adoring the Hindu goddess Durga — a principal form of Shakti, the divine

and a badass warrior — and I wish to embody her energy, forever and always.

Aside from Durga, three other female figures also occupy my mind: Ramayana ’s Sita, Mahabharata ’s Draupadi, and Silappathikaram ’s Kannagi. These women share three qualities besides being one of, if not the defining protagonists of different Hindu epics. One, they are strong women who endure tough ordeals and refuse to be beaten down. Two, they are women whose ‘purity’ is considered of the utmost importance — but, then again, what woman doesn’t have that in common? Three, oddly enough, they each share a story with Agni, the god of fire.

These women undergo unspeakable trials that involve large amounts of suffering, and their stories eerily echo how I think women are treated in society today.

Fire as creator, destroyer, messenger, and watcher Fire is a ubiquitous part of anyone’s story — not just those of Sita, Draupadi, and Kannagi, whom we’ll get to soon.

Fire is a natural element of the Earth and one of humankind’s first discoveries. From time immemorial, we humans have been in awe of fire: it keeps the world bright, our food easy on the stomach, and us and our loved ones warm. Simultaneously, we’re terrified of it: painful to endure and sometimes deadly, fires can be weaponized against us, be it by mother nature or fellow humans.

Hence, it follows that Agni has a central role in Hinduism. Agni is often depicted in a deep shade of red with two faces — suggesting both his destructive and generous qualities — riding on a ram and wielding the fiery Agneyastra. And while considered the creator of the fire within the sun and stars, and the heat required for digestion, his humble abode is within wood, among humanity. As fire can be reborn with the friction of two sticks and maintained as long as there’s a steady supply of oxygen, he remains forever young yet

Rama and Sita: their upbringing, marriage, her abduction by the King of Lanka Ravana, Rama and his crew’s defeat of Ravana, and their return to the Kingdom of Ayodhya, where they are coronated as king and queen. The lamps lit by Hindus on Diwali symbolize the triumph of good over evil.

In the Ramayana , Sita is the incarnation of Lakshmi — the Hindu goddess of good fortune, wealth, and beauty. She’s also considered the daughter of Mother Earth, as she was found as a baby in a furrow that Janaka — the king of Mithila — was plowing, who then adopted and raised her as a princess. She married Rama, the prince and soon king of Ayodhya and the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the maintainer of the worlds — thus her divine companion.

Agni crucially appears in the Ramayana after Sita’s rescue and the crew’s return to Ayodhya. When they return, Rama hears concerns among his citizens about Sita’s chastity, and Sita willingly performs an agnipariksha to prove herself to the kingdom.

The details behind the agnipariksha vary by the epic’s retellings across the Indian subcontinent. In one version, it is said Sita is being asked to prove herself to her citizens — but not Rama, as he knows her loyalty is on a cosmic level — primarily so that her husband can rule as a righteous and respected king. In another version, Rama also doubts her chastity, and Sita enters the burning pyre of her own accord to prove her faithfulness.

He’s also the courier between the human and celestial realms. From temple altars to homely shrines, lamps are lit from dawn to dusk in service of the Gods, to whom our prayers and from whom our boons Agni carries. In yagnas and pujas — rituals of fire — his seven tongues are said to consume sacrificial offerings, and the smoke trails signify their path to the gods above. In Hinduism, when people die, their bodies are cremated so that — according to some tales, at least — Agni guides their souls to their rightful destination in the cosmic order.

But to me, his most interesting and markedly different role from other mythological guardians of fire is that of the witness. As fire burns in every corner of the world, so does Agni, ever-watching the triumphs and tribulations of humanity. Agni is considered the primary witness for Hindu marriages, as a couple completes their seven vows to each other and the corresponding seven circles around the sacred fire. Because Agni bears witness to all, he’s also considered the best at discerning truth from lies. As such, fire is not only a creator, destroyer, messenger, and watcher, but also a judge. Agnipariksha is the age-old practice of making someone walk through fire — or a proximate — with the idea that an unscathed success would indicate truthfulness and purity. It’s horrifying, and yet, the idea and execution of a ‘trial by fire’ isn’t unique to Hinduism, as the term originated from medieval practices. One of the most famous instances is that of Emma of Normandy in mideleventh century England, who twice widowed was accused of adultery with the Bishop of Winchester and required to walk across red-hot ploughshares to prove her innocence.

Furthermore, while something like ‘vibhuti,’ the sacred ash made of burnt dried wood or burnt cow dung, is applied across the forehead only among devotees of Lord Shiva — the destroyer of worlds and companion of Shakti — burning incense is also a common practice in Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Given that fire can eliminate filth and kill bacteria, it’s fitting that fire is seen as the remover of sin and revealer of truth. So, Agni is a creator, destroyer, messenger, watcher, adjudicator, and purifier — but what does he have to do with Sita, Draupadi, and Kannagi? These women’s stories take place across the Indian subcontinent and across different times, yet Agni plays a crucial role in each one of them.

Ramayana

If you’ve ever celebrated Diwali — the festival of lights — with some Hindu friends, you probably have heard of the Ramayana. The epic, known in Sanskrit as “Rama’s journey,” centres around

In a later addition to the original, Ravana is said to have abducted Maya Sita, an illusionary duplicate, while Sita was in the refuge of Agni. Through the agnipariksha, the real Sita switches with Maya Sita and returns. In this version, Rama is in on the plan while the citizens rejoice their queen is pure.

In yet another version, however, despite Sita being untouched by the fire, people continue to doubt, so Sita leaves for the forest. She returns years later with her and Rama’s grown-up sons, only to be asked to prove her chastity once more. Knowing that she’s done enough, Sita asks Mother Earth to open up and take her back — and Earth complies, swallowing her up whole.

Draupadi in Mahabharata

You may have heard of the Mahabharata through Oppenheimer’s famous misquote (“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”) from the Bhagavad Gita — a scripture from the epic detailing a lengthy conversation between Krishna, another of Vishnu’s incarnations, and Arjuna, one of the five Pandava brothers central to the epic.

The Mahabharata , the Sanskrit roughly translating to “the great epic of the Bharata dynasty,” centres around the Pandava brothers: their growing up; exile by their cousins, the Kauravas; and the war between the Pandavas and Kauravas.

There are many reasons this war broke out, but chief among them is Draupadi. When Drupada, king of Panchala, performs a yajna asking for a weapon to destroy the Bharata dynasty — the Pandavas and Kauravas — Draupadi is born as a fully-formed young woman from the sacrificial fire. Through a series of intentional and unintentional acts by the many characters in the epic, Draupadi marries all five Pandava brothers, further setting the stage for the oncoming war.

In all fairness, Draupadi herself didn’t intend to be a catalyst for the war. A pivotal moment in the war occurs when the eldest Pandava brother, Yudhishtir, bets his freedom in a slanted game of dice — and loses. When Saguni, the cunning maternal uncle of the Kauravas, reminds Yudhishtir that he still has Draupadi, Yudhishtir puts her at stake and loses her as well.

Draupadi is soon dragged by the hair into the court, and one of the Kauravas proposes that she is unchaste for being married to five men and orders that she be disrobed ‘like a prostitute.’ In the Ramayana , this is considered incorrect because her role as a common wife is seen as a private affair; she was given a boon in a previous life to marry five Bharata princes, each begotten by a god; and more importantly, as she was born from fire and thereby a child of Agni, Draupadi is the epitome of purity. Narrative aside, there are other issues with this comparison: it should be obvious that sex workers should, regardless of what you think of their occupation, have basic respect and autonomy.

Thankfully, her disrobing is stopped by the powers above — but not quickly enough as her humiliation fuels her righteous anger that her husbands would have to act on. Each of the younger four brothers takes an oath of vengeance against the

various people who took part in her humiliation, which they later fulfill during the war.

Kannagi in Silappathikaram

The Silappathikaram may not be a well-known Hindu epic, but it’s considered one of the five great epics of Tamil literature. Silappathikaram in Tamil roughly translates to “the story of the anklet.” The anklet in question belongs to Kannagi, who has a special place in my heart; my dad affectionately calls me his “Kannagi Amman,” as she’s considered my family’s kuladeivam — roughly meaning “family god,” similar to a guardian angel of sorts, in Tamil. My parents and their ancestors lived near and daily visited one of her temples in Sri Lanka, and so, though I am not religious, hearing the name fills me with pride and reverence for my roots.

The epic starts with Kannagi newly married to Kovalan, absolutely in love and bliss in a flourishing seaport city in the Chola kingdom in what is now known as southern India. However, Kovalan meets and falls for a courtesan and dancer named Madhavi and moves in with her. Though Kannagi is heartbroken, she unwaveringly waits as a chaste woman for her unfaithful husband to return. Soon enough, a misunderstanding between Kovalan and Madhavi leads him to return to Kannagi, who takes him back despite the betrayal.

After having spent all his money on Madhavi, Kovalan is penniless — yet Kannagi encourages him to rebuild their life. They move to Madurai, the capital of the Pandya kingdom, where she gives him one of her jewelled anklets to sell. Then, in an unfortunate turn of events, Kovalan, framed by a merchant, is brought before the Pandya king whose queen’s anklets had been stolen and is immediately executed. Once she hears of this, Kannagi storms into the court and proves his innocence by breaking open her remaining jewelled anklet, revealing rubies instead of pearls. The king, mournful of his mistake, falls to the ground and dies suddenly, the queen soon following after him.

Still, in a fit of rage and grief, Kannagi tears her breast off and flings it, cursing the city of Madurai. She demands Agni to

women undergoing severe hardship yet seemingly never achieving complete redemption. Sita, Draupadi, and Kannagi are epitomes of truth, strength, justice, and purity — but for what? It is precisely their sufferings — the reasons for which I don’t know — that keep my mind preoccupied.

Of course, it is easy to dismiss their tragedies when one knows that parables are meant to convey a tale of good versus evil and that Hindu epics, in particular, are meant to demonstrate ‘dharma’ — one’s duty, or the right way of living — and ‘karma’ — the effects of one’s actions that determine their next life.

The point of this article isn’t to wedge feminism between people and their faith. I know that, in these tales, the characters are simply mirrors that writers, or the Gods, hold up to humanity, to show us the paths we could, and should, be taking and their consequences. After all, Sita is ultimately Goddess Lakshmi playing a role; Draupadi is never fully human, born already a grown woman from fire as a weapon of destruction; and Kannagi becomes memorialized as Kannagi Amman, her chastity and valour worshipped by many, including my family. The three women are the perfect wives, and thus exemplary of the perfect woman.

Yet, the tragic heroine is a constant archetype in stories, past and present, which only begs the question: why are women in stories persistently made to suffer? In the Abrahamic religions, all evil stems from Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit. No such similar story exists in Hinduism to my knowledge.

According to Aristotle, a tragic hero must have a hamartia — a fatal flaw or error, not necessarily a morally condemnable one — that leads to their ill fate. While I consider Sita, Draupadi, and Kannagi to be infallible, do they also have a hamartia? Is Sita’s fatal flaw her excessive trust, ‘allowing’ her to be kidnapped; Draupadi’s her sharp tongue, which angered the Kauravas and invoked their hatred; and Kannagi’s her forgiveness? Or, are they not even allowed to be less than perfect?

I should mention that none of this is to say that the men in these stories don’t suffer. The men — Rama and Ravana, the Pandavas and Kauravas, Kovalan and the Pandya king, and more — do suffer, but they more or less suffer directly or indirectly by their own and each other’s actions. How I see it, the women in these stories suffer at the hands of men — men they trust will give them at least basic respect and keep them safe

life — and this probably extends to every woman in the history of humanity — has been prodded, questioned, and tested, their value apparently never inherent to themselves but given, and just as easily taken away, by others. As women, we’re placed on the highest pedestals, seen as precious vessels of purity, until just one blemish taints our surface — after which we’re burned down to ashes and a new pedestal is built for the next unsuspecting woman. Sooner or later, we’re not young enough, naive enough, loyal enough, patient enough, or strong enough — good enough — for the patriarchy.

And having grown up religious, I can’t help but ask: what mistakes are okay? What is my supposed dharma, and is it different from that of men? Why is a woman’s chastity so important? Is my existence as a woman, marked by suffering according to one too many writers, karma for lives I don’t remember? Or are these stories simply highlighting the unfairness women endure from the men around them? Are these stories actually feminist?

When my mother lights the lamps and prays every morning at home — the place where seemingly only women are relegated to do so while men predominantly run the temples — should I join her? When I do join her, I watch the flickering flame and am reminded of Agni: in my story, does he play witness, protector, or male saviour? Or does he even care?

Often, I fear I am fated to end up like Sita, Draupadi, or Kannagi — my morality and intelligence tried, my body and self capitalized on without my will, or slowly made mad until I explode, incinerating everything I touch.

Alternatively, attaining perfection — impossible for any human but somehow made even more so for every woman — may just lead me to give up entirely. It’s a more liberating prospect but still shameful with my conditioning. I have to remind myself: while I aim to embody Durga, I’m only mortal and I can’t triumph over evil all the time, so I’ll make mistakes, and that’s okay.

Do I hope that Agni, in some form, helps me walk through my trials of fire? Yes: as I’ve said my faith, or lack thereof, is the opposite of resolute.

Now, one might think there’s merit to these women’s tri als; they’re at least not docile or passive, instead choos ing to venture alone into the forest; single-handedly raise children; wage war; or burn an entire city to crisps in righteous indignation — but it is still un fair that they had to be so strong in the first place. Though Sita might’ve been the only one to go through a literal trial by fire, Draupadi and Kannagi, too, go through their own metaphorical ones. woman I’ve adored and cherished in my

But more so, do I hope that I can tame the flames, stoked by the women who came before me, fictional or real, so I can direct them to the patriarchy and set it alight? Absolutely.

U of T, tell us what you’re doing to protect free speech on Palestine

U of T administration says it cares about protecting free speech, but its responses to pro-Palestine community members are louder

Varsity Editorial Board

Content warning: This article discusses antisemitism, racism, and ongoing genocidal violence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

It’s obvious that Palestine and Israel have been on the minds of U of T students in recent months. Since October, at all three campuses, we’ve seen Palestine and Israel come up again and again in our news coverage in the context of academic lectures, club controversies, climate activism, campus art events, and university committees’ and student unions’ meetings and statements.

In many cases, we’ve seen U of T students organize vigils, walkouts, sit-ins, and other protests in support of Palestine. And this student activism for Palestine shows no sign of stopping — it’s clear that Israel and Palestine are going to be at the forefront of students’ minds in the next school year as well. We’ve already seen activism for Palestine discussed at length in this student election cycle. Multiple candidates have explicitly brought up Palestine in their speeches and platforms for office, and students, including representatives from the student group Tkarón:to Students in Support of Palestine, have publicly questioned UTSU candidates about their stances on Palestine.

Student activists for Palestine at U of T are not alone. This year, we’ve seen students participate in protests across the country — and beyond — against Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

And, again, it’s obvious why students feel the need to talk about it. Since October 7, 2023, attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and caused more than 8,000 to go missing in Gaza.

In December 2023, South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on allegations of genocide over the Israeli military’s attacks against Palestinians in Gaza. In January 2024, the ICJ determined that none of the Israeli legal team’s defence was “sufficient to rule out the existance of a plausible intent to commit genocide.” It ordered Israel to “take all possible measures” to prevent a genocide, per the 1948 Genocide Convention.

However, as of the time we’re writing this, Israeli ministers have completely dismissed the ICJ’s orders, and the death toll in Palestine has continued to rise by the thousands.

In light of the ICJ’s preliminary ruling and the Israeli government’s subsequent refusal to adhere to the court’s orders, we believe the latter’s treatment of Palestinians can be reasonably characterized as genocidal.

Not all students will agree with us. But all students should be able to agree that we need to be able to talk safely about violence in Gaza, and to talk about an ongoing genocide.

That’s something we’ve seen writers tell us in our Comment section. But we’ve also heard concerns from students about speaking out — sometimes because of fears over rising hate crimes, but also sometimes because they’re unclear on how U of T may respond to them.

Once again, it’s obvious why: U of T’s attempts to intervene in issues of speech around Israel and Palestine so far have often either specifically punished pro-Palestine voices or have been confusing and unclear.

U of T has a long history of suppressing speech for Palestine. From withholding fees from the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union’s Boycott, Divestment, and

Sanctions caucus in 2022, to a controversial lecture in 2019 where U of T’s international relations program welcomed Israeli-British historian Efraim Karsh onto campus to espouse anti-Palestinian views, students have frequently criticized the university for allowing antiPalestinian rhetoric on campus or suppressing speech on Palestine.

On October 18, President Meric Gertler wrote a statement to students expressing “profound grief for the victims of violence on both sides of this conflict.” In the statement, Gertler reaffirmed that U of T should be an environment “free from discrimination, racism, hate or fear” and that we must ensure “[diverse] perspectives, so long as they are lawful, continue to be heard.”

But the university’s actions since October 7 have not done much to give students a reason to trust its actions in protecting student speech. Instead, in a year where students are witnessing more intense and direct violence in Gaza and Israel than they’ve ever seen, U of T’s actions have disappointingly failed to alleviate the tensions at home.

U of T’s firing of Imam Patel, and responses to faculty UTSC’s firing of Imam Omar Patel is the most recent example of U of T’s inconsistency in approaching issues pertaining to the genocide in Gaza. UTSC fired Patel as UTSC’s Muslim chaplain — although he was employed directly by the Chaplaincy — seven weeks after Hillel Ontario, a Jewish student organization, asked the school to investigate a post allegedly from Patel that the organization received reports about, which it characterized as antisemitic.

The university confirmed to The Varsity that it did receive a complaint about a post and conducted an investigation into it, although it did not specify whether this investigation was related to its decision to fire the Imam.

Patel has claimed he did not make the post in question. Both Patel and UTSC students have criticized the university for its lack of transparency about how it conducted the investigation.

To this day, U of T has not published a public statement regarding the results of the investigation — or even confirmed whether that investigation was on Patel’s actions at all. We find the school’s obfuscation of the investigation process — which even Patel himself claims he got minimal information on — concerning. And we’re not the only ones. In our article on his firing, students expressed fears about how the university’s actions might apply to them: “If [this] can happen to Imam Omar Patel then it can happen to any one of us [students],” one student said.

At the same time, the university has not intervened in specific cases of U of T professors posting on social media about the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine — even with content that has reportedly made students feel unsafe. Markedly, it has failed to even address or conduct investigations into social media posts that espoused anti-Arab sentiment.

Last October, an online collective called the “Students Against Discrimination at UofT” posted a change.org petition for the university to investigate UTM psychology professor Stuart Brian Kamenetsky because of pro-Israel Facebook posts he made in 2013 containing anti-Arab racist tropes. The petition states that the post “affects a significant portion of the UTM student body,

which is largely composed of Arab students” — and has got 2,468 signatures as of March 10. U of T has still not responded to it.

Even more recently, on October 17, 2023, Kamenetsky further shared a LinkedIn post that included a racist caricature of a man with a green headband and exaggeratedly elongated nose washing blood off his hands, bemoaning, “Such barbarians.” It’s captioned, “Israel has shut off water supply to Gaza.”

Kamenetsky isn’t the only professor who’s come under the community’s scrutiny for their remarks. Uahikea Maile — an assistant professor of Indigenous politics at U of T’s Department of Political Science — has shared content and made statements comparing Palestinians’ experiences with that of Indigenous peoples around the world and celebrating “Palestinian anticolonial resistance.” Since then, he’s received criticism from students and professors. Notably, Hillel U of T published an open letter on November 9 denouncing Maile’s statements.

The U of T administration did not mention anything about responding to Kamenetsky or Maile’s actions in their responses to The Varsity for our November 26 news article. The Varsity has not been able to find any public posts from U of T admin saying that U of T has investigated any of these cases.

While faculty are protected under the Memorandum of Agreement between U of T and the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA), and all U of T members are protected under U of T’s Statement on Freedom of Speech, these policies also outline reasonable limits to community members’ freedom of speech: speech must not be discriminatory, restrictive, or coercive based on race, creed, colour, and religious belief when criticizing U of T or society at large. We believe that students’ reactions to the professors’ posts warrant a more transparent explanation as to how U of T applies its policies.

U of T’s responses to the UTMSU on Palestine

The university’s condemnation of an October 10 statement from the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) on the Israeli government’s violence in and long-term besiegement of Gaza is seems like a blatant example of the university selectively applying free speech restrictions. On October 13, UTM Principal and Vice-President Alexandra Gillespie released an official statement criticizing the October 10 statement from the UTMSU, where the union expressed support for Palestinians’ rights to self-determination and “to resist an apartheid regime.”

Gillespie wrote in her statement that the union did “not represent the views of its full membership,” which includes all students at UTM, and explained that student unions should not be making statements on “contentious issues that purport to represent the views of all of their constituents.”

After, on October 23, UTMSU executives and the UTM administration held a meeting to discuss the post. UTMSU President Gulfy Bekbolatova alleged that, at the meeting, administrators indicated that, if the union had put out a statement that instead supported Israel, the UTM administration would not have condemned it.

If this is indeed what UTM administrators were trying to indicate, it is blatantly a biased application of the university’s speech guidelines. Even if not, UTM’s lack of clarity and apparent subjectivity about how it would criticize UTMSU’s

post in this other circumstance indicates the lack of clear guidelines on freedom of speech at U of T. If the university was more transparent on freedom of speech guidelines, we believe this incident wouldn’t have happened.

What next?

In a university composed of over 97,000 students, it is understandable that these students have considerable differences of opinion around a global issue as horrific and tumultuous as this one. However, as Gertler himself said to U of T News, U of T has a “long-standing commitment to freedom of expression, and must play an ever more important role in ensuring free debate is allowed to take place and that all voices can be heard as part of open discourse.” We expect that the administrators of such a university should have a consistent — and transparent — approach to how it judges issues around freedom of speech.

What students seem to be asking for is simple: for the university to enforce its guidelines on speech consistently, fairly, and transparently. Instead, U of T has kept any action it’s taken behind closed doors, and left students to wonder how U of T actually regulates speech, whether it will protect their own voices, and whether it will actually protect them from hate speech.

So, what has U of T done to address these concerns? Well, on January 1 of this year, U of T hired English Professor Randy Boyagoda as a civil discourse adviser. U of T’s official memo about his appointment writes vaguely that he will “establish a working group that will lead community consultations and develop a plan for tri-campus events, resources, and other initiatives for students and faculty that develop and sustain sensibilities and capacities for productive civil discourse.”

However, since the announcement and subsequent press appearances by Boyagoda, as far as we can tell, neither U of T nor Boyagoda have announced any more official updates or specific plans about what this job will actually entail, and about what information and support students can expect from his work. U of T simply hiring Boyagoda is not sufficient for the school to properly facilitate and protect free speech and discourse on campus — students need more concrete information, and they need it soon.

This issue isn’t going to go away, and it doesn’t look like students are going to stop talking about Palestine. So the clock is ticking for U of T: without a consistent standard for applying its guidelines on protected and penalizeable speech, it will be going into the upcoming year completely unprepared to respond to student activism. And the longer it deals with issues of speech behind closed doors — and the longer it refuses to respond to students’ and student groups’ concerns, demands, petitions, and letters — the less faith the student body will have in their administration.

U of T: if you understand your own guidelines, adhere to them. If you have a stance, state it. U of T’s apparent negligence of the very policies that it created, combined with its seeming hesitancy to show how it is conducting investigations, has worsened an already bad situation. It shouldn’t take another genocide for U of T to decide that it is time to stand up for what’s right — and allow students to do the same.

The Varsity ’s masthead elects the editorial board at the beginning of each semester. For more information about the editorial policy, email editorial@thevarsity.ca.

March 11, 2024

thevarsity.ca/category/comment comment@thevarsity.ca

Letter from the Editor: In hopes of graduating “Comment”

I want to rename The Varsity’s Comment section to “Opinion.” Here’s why.

Eleanor Yuneun Park

Comment Editor

When The Varsity published its first issue on October 7, 1880, it clearly established the editorial direction of the paper from the outset. The paper rejected any grand intention to serve as a “guiding star” or “interpreter” of Canadian universities, and instead presented itself as a “register of opinion in and out of the University in matters of education; an unbiased annalist of University life; and, in this last connexion, a strenuous advocate of what constitutes individual well-being.”

As the paper itself was inherently opinionated — strictly comprised of reviews on education, university politics, and events — the word “comment” only started to emerge in 1920 in the form of “Editorial Comment.” The section served precisely what the word entails: an additional, brief piece of commentary that was often humorous sarcasm. Fast-forward to the twenty-first century, we vacillated between

“Opinions” and “Opinion & Analysis” from 2000 to 2005, but officially adopted “Comment” on September 1, 2005.

144 years after its first published issue, The Varsity is no longer strictly a “register of opinion,” but a valuable source on campus for news, business, labour, arts, science, sports, and extended feature-length reporting. The paper’s Comment section is no longer a tiny space for a witty quip by the Editor but instead three pages full of extensively researched and sustained opinions on issues affecting students.

It’s not only our paper that has changed over time. We’ve seen the entire world transform under the influence of technology, and the “comment section” now has a more familiar connection with the virtual section of a page where people leave comments — typically under social media posts or YouTube videos. Since October 2023, The Varsity has also made the commenting option under our articles online available again.

Mass layoffs and burned-out journalists signal the erosion of Canadian news

We should all be worried about hundreds of journalists losing their jobs and quitting the industry

Charmaine Yu Comment Columnist

In early February, Bell Media decided to lay off 4,800 employees while also selling 45 regional radio stations. This came just two months after the CBC announced its plans to cut approximately 10 per cent of its workforce over the next year, beginning in December 2023.

These mass layoffs are, in my opinion, a watershed moment for journalists in Canada, demonstrating the worrying decline of the news industry. You, I, and everyone should be concerned.

The situation at Parliament Hill

Including the company’s previous round of layoffs in June 2023, Bell has laid off more than 6,000 employees in the last nine months. In a press appearance, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called this a “garbage decision,” critiquing the process where “small community newspapers are bought up by big corporate entities who then lay off journalists and chang[e] the quality of [their] offering.”

In another instance, Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge added that the government could assist the news industry once Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act — which regulates streaming platforms and requires them to contribute to the creation and promotion of Canadian content — is fully implemented. The bill became law in April 2023. But, Bell executives say they require immediate relief from the government.

Note that this is happening while the federal government has yet to reach final agreements about Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which requires online platforms like Meta and Google to compensate Canadian media companies whenever these platforms use or share their content.

Like Bill C-11, Bill C-18’s purpose is to enhance economic fairness between news businesses and online platforms. In theory, the money that would return to Canadian newsrooms from this bill would mediate their current issues of rising production costs, declining television advertising revenue, and competition with tech giants.

In 2024, The Varsity ’s Comment section is not a space for a quick editorial comment nor is it a social media or website comment section. In fact, our Comment articles written under contributors’ individual views are published online with the “Opinion” label in the headlines since 2019. Then-Comment Editor Angela Feng published a letter to announce the decision to include “Opinion,” following an instance where readers that year associated a Comment article with the view of the newspaper.

Our use of “Comment” here and “Opinion” there is all a bit too confusing. A newspaper must ensure consistency, accessibility, and clarity, but our mixed use of “Comment” and “Opinion” doesn’t reflect that. The New York Times retired the term “Op-Ed” to transition to “Guest Essays” in 2021, and I believe we must, like them, recognize the significance of serving readers with “direct, clear language” to create a more inclusive paper that invites a wider range of students to read and write for it.

We want our readers to grasp the purpose of our section at first glance. Newspapers must not only be up to date with the news, but with people as well. Among others, our section exists for the opinion of people, for people. I believe it is time for The Varsity to newly title our section “Opinion.”

My personal opinions notwithstanding, this is not a decision I want to or should make unilaterally. The Varsity is a student newspaper that is funded by and centred around students,

Journalists are tired, too

But the worrying state of Canadian news goes further than that: we should be concerned about the journalists themselves.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published an enlightening article last year about burned-out journalists choosing to quit the industry. Their causes for burnout ranged from job instability to issues with censorship to lowball salaries.

and how you as a reader and student perceive and understand the section takes precedence.

So, this coming week, we are sending out a readership survey to you via email. This survey will ask your opinion on our content and accessibility to strengthen our understanding of reader engagement — in addition to your preference between “Comment” and “Opinion.” We want to know which helps you understand our section’s purpose better. So when we send the survey, tell us where you stand on this section’s name.

We need your opinion.

Eleanor Yuneun Park

Comment Editor

Volume 144

ARTHUR DENNYSON HAMDANI/THEVARSITY

individual must take on the responsibilities of multiple people. Now that’s a recipe for colossal burnout.

Keeping our heads up

Google reached a deal with the government in November 2023 where Google must pay $100 million annually to publishers and continue to allow access to Canadian news content on its platform. Still, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission, an administrative tribunal that regulates Canadian broadcasting, is yet to conclude the details of this implementation in the bargaining process with Google. Meta, however, responded to the Act by blocking links or removing the visibility of accounts that showcase Canadian news on its social media platforms. Critics have since argued that the bill causes more harm than good for Canadian journalism, as it is inhibiting Canadians’ access to news.

Like a snake eating its tail, it surely feels as if Canadian journalism is in a state of gridlock. Stuck in limbo, our government must also confront the fact that the Local Journalism Initiative, which federally funds hundreds of local journalists and underserved regions, expires this month.

The pandemic only magnified pre-existing challenges for journalists. A survey by the International Centre for Journalists found that job insecurity, confronting increased disinformation, online harassment, growing attacks from elected officials, constant witnessing of human suffering, and workers feeling like their ethics have been compromised while covering COVID-19 have all led to media workers being exposed to heightened mental health problems.

Unfortunately, a 2022 report from the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma found that Canadian news workers suffer from “alarming” levels of work-related stress and trauma. 28 per cent of respondents are diagnosed with anxiety, and 21 per cent are diagnosed with depression. To put this into perspective, the rate of diagnosed anxiety among Canadian journalists is nearly 11 times the rate of the general population, and the rate of diagnosed depression is over four times higher.

As news companies lay off employees, Bell Media’s vice-presidents of local TV and news

Honestly, I’m not particularly hopeful about Bill C-18 following the successful footsteps of its parallel in Australia, as the Australian government’s private negotiations with big tech were completed before their Facebook news ban became codified into law. Our federal government seems unwilling to back down, and Meta is stubborn in striking deals with us.

While we’re stuck in this unfortunate stalemate, the best we can do is unlearn our reliance on consuming news through Meta’s platforms. Go directly to news organizations’ websites, download their apps, and sign up for their newsletters. Show journalists you care and are still willing to stick out these rough times for them. Plus, who knows, maybe Meta will eventually follow suit from Google.

Despite all this, it is undeniable that journalists play a crucial role in our democracy by providing us with information about the world with accuracy and integrity. It’s difficult work, but it is also important work.

Seven out of 10 US-based journalists surveyed by Pew Research say they are very or somewhat satisfied with their jobs these days. Simultaneously, three-quarters of the journalists say they are extremely or very proud of the work they do, and nearly eight out of 10 respondents say they would pursue a career in the news industry all over again if they could go back in time.

Although we, as news consumers, can do our part by creating more traffic on news organizations’ websites, or paying for subscriptions if that’s a viable option for you, the responsibility should not rest entirely in our hands. Editors and union representatives need to better consider journalists’ mental well-being in their agendas, develop support programs, and be more empathetic to the specific anxieties that come with being a journalist.

It’s a rough time for all, but the rough times seem to particularly rock the boat for journalists — not just in Canada, but globally too. As a student journalist, I wish I had more comforting words for you, but I, too, can’t fully shake off the uneasiness of it all. Keep your head up, I guess.

Charmaine Yu is a third-year student studying political science and English. She is an editor-inchief of The Trinity Review and a features editor at The Strand. She is the What’s New In News columnist for The Varsity’s Comment section.

U of T is not giving credit to student climate activists

Student activism is what’s driving climate action at U of T

Urooba Shaikh Comment Columnist

On February 8, Climate Justice UofT launched its Bound to Big Oil Report in a presentation at the Health Sciences building, which presented extensive research about U of T’s ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Sitting in the audience, what struck me the most was the scale of the work put in by student activists to research and organize, and that attending the launch was the first I was hearing of their efforts. I was also surprised to learn that many of U of T and its federated colleges’ most significant climate action initiatives of divesting from fossil fuels were preceded by months of student activism, only for there to be no mention of it in what I see to be U of T’s self-congratulatory statements about them.

In September 2023, Trinity College released a statement upon its decision to divest from “remaining indirect investments in fossil fuel companies.” In the statement, Provost Mayo Moran claims that “Trinity has always been a leader on issues of sustainability and the environment, and we believe that we must take a critical and integrated approach to sustainability in order to ensure a healthy common future.” However, the college failed to mention that it was the last of U of T’s three federated colleges to make this commitment, and what I see as the real reason behind this decision: student activism.

This was not the first time U of T failed to give proper credit where due. In April 2023, Victoria College became the first of the three federated colleges to announce divestment from direct fossil fuel producers. Its flowery statement — which

I interpreted as something along the lines of, “we had planned to do it anyways” — and extensive praises toward the Board of Regents, the highest decision-making body at Vic, do not mention the event that directly preceded the divestment announcement: an 18-day occupation of the college’s Old Vic building, led by student activist group Climate Justice UofT.

Victoria College’s statement was also not the first time U of T has oversold itself as a leader in climate action. In October 2021, the univer sity as a whole committed to divest ing from fossil fuel companies. U of T President Meric Gertler’s Letter to the Community, upon the decision, recognized the influence universities have as institutions of academic authority and social actors, writing, “This is an opportune moment to commit to even more am bitious carbon reduction goals for the University’s long-term investments.”

climate research; reducing operation emissions; and prioritizing climate education in the curriculum of certain U of T programs.

However, U of T was opposed to divestment just a few years earlier. In March 2016, Gertler released a report titled “Beyond Divestment: Taking Decisive Action on Climate Change.” This report disregarded recommendations made by the President’s Advisory Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuels — formed by Gertler in response to pro-divestment petitions — to divest from companies that showed “blatant disregard” for limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a threshold set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The 2016 report instead outlined efforts such as investing in companies with sound environmental, social, and governance practices; increasing

The UK Conservative party must charter a new path to move away from elitism

The party must put trust in British people to implement change they see fit

Felix Hughes Varsity Contributor

With UK Prime Minister (PM) Rishi Sunak set to call a general election before the end of the year, polling predictions are pointing to the Conservative Party’s complete failure. Current polling by The Financial Times has Labour taking 44.2 per cent of the votes compared to the Conservatives taking just 24.1 per cent, essentially reversing the previous election.

This is reminiscent of the 1993 Canadian federal election in which the progressive conservatives were “pincered between the center-left and the populist right,” leaving them with just two MPs, down from a previous majority of 156.

Although the UK conservatives are unlikely to face the embarrassment of their ideological cousins, predictions by UK political forecasting website Electoral Calculus have Labour ending up with a majority of 260 seats, a damning indictment of the Tories’ time in government.

Throughout the last five years, the party’s popularity has been on a decline. I see the scandals about mismanagement over COVID and immigration, to name just a couple, to have irreversibly tainted the current government. This has been made worse under Sunak despite the fact that he’s brought, as I see it, a sense of calm to office, as well as halving inflation and cutting National Health Service waiting lists. This has been crucial given the vast backlog of cases that occurred due to the pandemic. However, he has overseen a shift to the hardright style of populism, making him the most right-wing PM since Margaret Thatcher, a highly controversial PM herself.

But, with election defeat seemingly inevitable, there is great opportunity for the Conservative

Party. I believe that for the party to be taken seriously, its members need to take a serious look at themselves, reshaping their values away from reactionary populist rhetoric aimed at appealing to the far right, and instead, embrace moderate and ambitious politics that appeal to voters nationwide.

A new face for English Conservatism

The first step to embracing moderacy comes with a leadership change. I believe Sunak’s greatest failure is being unable to empathize with voters. An example that comes to mind is his $1,723 (£1,000) bet with Piers Morgan — a controversial journalist for British news known for focusing on generating “clickbait” over proper investigative reporting — was over the success of a bill colloquially referred to as “the Rwanda bill.” The bill, if passed, would send migrants illegally entering the country to Rwanda.

This episode showcases how he makes politics seem more like a game, by betting on sending migrants to a repressive dictatorship. This is exactly what I believe so many people hate about the Tories: they see the party as the privileged few legislating policy on people they do not understand.

Instead, in Sunak’s place, the party must do all it can to bring Rory Stewart back to politics. Stewart is a former Member of Parliament who resigned from the Conservative Party following the 2019 election of Boris Johnson as PM, and I believe he is exactly the kind of moderate politician the UK needs.

Stewart is best described as a “one-nation [conservative,]” as he believes in a society that works together to develop social and economic programs that benefit the ordinary person. He is a man unafraid to look across the political

While these may seem like important steps to be taking, they simply are not up to calibre with the capacity U of T has to make impactful, longterm change through its financial endowments. For example, the “Stranded assets and the fossil fuel divestment campaign” report published in October 2013 by Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment discusses risks companies take on by trading in assets seen as overly unsustainable. “The outcome of the stigmatisation process, which the fossil fuel divestment campaign has now triggered, poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies and the vast energy value chain. Any direct impacts pale in comparison,” it concludes.

Gertler’s alternative measures were thus nowhere near the magnitude of change divestment would have led to and seemed to be merely a diversion from his lack of action.

I argue that Gertler’s change of heart in 2021 could hardly have been simply due to his own moral conscience. The time between his rejection of divestment in 2016 and his commitment to divestment in 2021 was marked by a number of student-led campaigns and actions.

Days after the divestment rejection in 2016, members of UofT350, the main student organization for climate activism at the time, hung up banners and briefly blocked traffic outside President Gertler’s office. The coming months

and years saw rallies, petitions, publications, and disruptions as part of the divestment campaign.

Student action leading to change is nothing new; it’s just U of T that takes forever to listen. Although the fossil fuel divestment campaign at U of T succeeded in 2021, with much of its major action taking place in 2015, it originally began in 2012. It took nine years of relentless organizing to make U of T listen.

Going even further back to U of T students’ history of activism, students began the campaign for divestment from apartheid in South Africa in 1983, finally achieving success in 1990. This came after statements from George Connell, president of U of T at the time, saying he did not want to take a social or political stance on the issue in 1988.

In 2011, Students Against Israeli Apartheid began a campaign demanding that U of T divest from all companies involved in the occupation and oppression of Palestinians, although the university has yet to heed this call.

I see a pattern here where U of T continually denies student demands, only to eventually give in due to pressure and then take credit for action as its own. It’s time for U of T to start listening to its students and recognizing their efforts when taking actions that I believe work to save the university’s reputation.

Urooba Shaikh is a third-year student at UTSC studying molecular biology, immunology, and disease, public law, and psychology. She is a Climate Crisis columnist for The Varsity’s Comment section. COURTESY

spectrum, and his balanced discussion on Israel and Palestine in a segment on “How to cover Israel-Gaza,” from his podcast The Rest is Politics reflects a politician who understands neither the right nor left has all the answers but that both must work together for a common understanding.

In addition to bringing a bipartisan viewpoint, I see Stewart bringing a strong sense of ambition. When he entered politics in 2010, he dreamed of reshaping the British constitution and unlocking the nation’s “untapped” potential. This kind of ambition would not only shift the Conservative Party away from controversial policies like the Rwanda migrant bill, which I believe does nothing to help the average voter and reaffirms the weakening status quo of the British government.

Stewart’s ambition also contrasts with what I see as the reactionary style politics of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which seems more focused on saying whatever the Conservatives are not and hoping voters like it.

Giving power to voters

From a new moderate position under Stewart, the Conservative Party then needs to become the party of the people again. In the 2019 UK general election, the party did well because it took seats in the Labour heartlands where people switched allegiances believing the Conservatives could benefit them more.

But, as of January 2024, there are about 6.4 million people on Universal Credit — a monthly payment from the government to UK adults with low incomes, which also takes the form of social housing. During the last general election in 2019, only 2,3 million people were on Universal

Credit — illustrating why people feel betrayed by a government that has left them worse off and, hence, are going back to Labour. But how can the conservatives reverse this?

I believe the Conservatives need to push for what Stewart refers to as “hyper-localized democracy,” where the federal government gives power to local governments to enact change in their spheres of influence. This way, ordinary people who know their local issues best have the power to fix those issues, away from the mess of bureaucracy. Essentially, the central government gives money to local governments and allows them to invest that money in the way their local knowledge deems best.

The way I see it, the current Conservative government has shown that there are limits to the success of the career politicians of the Westminster bubble — the Members of Parliament isolated from outside life — and that the Conservatives can no longer focus on centralized government and must embrace localized government instead.

Ultimately, the Conservatives cannot afford to entrench themselves into populist right ideals. A Statistica poll from January 2024 found that only eight per cent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 were planning on voting for the Conservative Party in the upcoming election. If Conservatives want to entice younger voters to the party, they must focus on rebuilding their values from a position of moderacy — whereby they are not seen as the party of the elite but the party that puts that trust in British people to implement change how they see fit.

Felix Hughes is a first-year student at Trinity College studying humanities.

The Conservatives cannot afford to entrench themselves into populist right ideals. COURTESY OF JESSICA TAYLOR AND STEPHEN PIKE CC THE UK PARLIAMENT

How the psychedelics revolution is advancing mental health treatments

U of T professor Norman Farb on psychedelics as a unique gateway to treating mental illnesses

Mashiyat Ahmed Science Columnist

Psychedelics — magic mushrooms, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, and more — are powerful psychoactive substances that can alter the building blocks of human consciousness. They can induce changes in perception, mood, thoughts, and behaviour.

In the last thirty years, the scientific community has started to study the potential ways in which psychedelics can benefit users, especially those experiencing severe mental health disorders such as treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. The Varsity spoke with Professor Norman Farb, at UTM’s psychology department, on why psychedelics prompted a new way of thinking about depression among scientists, and the insights of his clinical research at UTM’s Psychedelic Studies Research Program.

Psychedelics: A background

Psychedelics are a class of psychoactive substances that remain a marvel in the world of pharmacology. These drugs have a rich yet censorious history — before their popularity in science, psychedelics were embraced by Indigenous communities around the world for their cultural and spiritual importance.

In the 1900s, these drugs enjoyed a brief period of both scientific and cultural interest in the West, often being associated with the counterculture movements of the ’60s and liberal politics. However, restrictive and prohibitory legal measures enacted in the ’60s and ’70s, especially in the US and the UK, temporarily halted all scientific research

into the therapeutic potential of these drugs. When research began again, it was heavily restricted.

Since then, psychedelics have come to represent a unique and fascinating avenue into not only treating mental illness but also exploring transpersonal psychology — the study of transcendental and spiritual experiences. In clinical research, psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, has shown surprising significance in treating — or at least improving in the long term — severe depression, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and other debilitating disorders that were otherwise not responsive to cognitive therapies and antidepressants. However, psychedelic clinical trial studies published during the present ‘second wave’ of psychedelic research have had small sample sizes and have not conclusively demonstrated the positive effects of psilocybin. Still, over time, psychedelics are increasingly more involved in the “mental health revolution.”

Why are psychedelics effective in treating depression?

Professor Norman Farb’s research focus is on how meditative and contemplative practices such as mindfulness and body awareness can alleviate symptoms of depression. These practices involve consciously perceiving what is happening in and around your body as a way to become more aware of your thoughts and feelings. “My broad interest is in how people get programmed into [negative] habits and perceptions and how being able to shift those habits can powerfully transform peoples’ sense of well-being, connectedness, and belongingness.”

The

flight of the mind

Virginia Woolf and the emerging self

Avery Murrell Science Correspondent

The mind is not an easy thing to express — it is inaccessible, unpredictable, and ever-changing. Scientists believe the mind holds thoughts, perceptions, senses, consciousness, and awareness. In what science cannot yet explain, the arts provide an interpretation.

In the early 1900s, it was common to find authors using the conventional omniscient Victorian narrator. But in the 1920s, one author sought to trace the “flight of the mind” through time, along with its untold and unlimited complexities: Virginia Woolf.

Woolf’s written mind

Woolf’s writing style was firmly rooted in her own experiences of the brain and her experiences of mental illness. While staring at the ceiling to pass the time when she was prescribed bed rest, Woolf contemplated her illness, which she described in A Writer’s Diary as the “whirring of wings in the head.”

Woolf concluded that she had — as she describes in A Room of One’s Own — “no single

Feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, irrational self-judgment, and excessive rumination are common thought patterns in depression. When our minds are persistently consumed by these negative patterns, there is no longer any possibility for new experiences or information that can potentially challenge those thoughts to enter.

“Part of why mindfulness is so effective in the context of depression vulnerability is that it’s the practice of sensing,” explained Farb. Experiencing other physical and emotional modes of awareness that could be induced by drugs can make people more welcoming of positive thoughts, or at the very least, the awareness that one has agency over their negative thoughts.

This is where psychedelics enter the scene: they are a potential access point to contemplation and mindfulness, both of which are needed to break away from the persistent negative thought patterns that overwhelm a person suffering from depression.

According to Farb, the mind-altering nature of these drugs “break down [our] ability to form fences in [our] mind,” potentially relieving patients from the traps of rumination about past failures, future anxieties, and other irrational and unproductive ideas. In essence, the hallucinations, unique mind states, and even transcendental experiences provoked by magic mushrooms can introduce a person to new self-narratives, meaning, connections, and possibilities — ideas that they normally would not be able to access because of depression.

Farb comments that when people with treatment-resistant depression or PTSD are given a full dose of psychedelics, they get a “profoundly different experience of themselves and the world that they [eventually] realize how rigid their [previous] modes of perception had become. [...] When they come down off the drug… they know that life doesn’t have to be like this.”

This realization, kickstarted by psychedelics, can be when the journey to recovery begins! It’s important to emphasize, however, that success in psychedelic therapies involves both high-dose psilocybin treatments and more classical approaches to depression such as cognitive behavioral therapies.

A clinical trial using psilocybin

In Farb’s current clinical trial in UTM’s Psychedelic Studies Research Program, participants are given either a microdose of psilocybin or a placebo. Due to its chemical properties mimicking that of serotonin — a chemical messenger in the brain that mediates anxiety, learning, memory, physical and sexual appetites, and more — psilocybin functions by interacting with serotonin receptors and amplifying their effects.

The volunteer participants in Farb’s trial are suffering from acute depression and are keen on improving their mood, creativity levels, and concentration, or reducing their anxiety — all processes that psychedelics can facilitate. In fact, studies continue to suggest that the vivaciousness of psychedelic experiences can increase spontaneous creativity and cognitive flexibility — an orientation to openness that empowers individuals to see beyond the bleakness that depression brings.

“What is significant is that everyone [regardless of whether they are on psilocybin or placebo] who starts going through the trial [begins] feeling better,” said Farb, “and I think in some ways, the trial itself has become a type of therapy.”

Though still in its initial stages, Farb says that preliminary results from the trial indicate that “there is improvement [of mood and depressive symptoms] across the board, but that this is not necessarily related to being in the [psilocybin] group.” The supportive and reflective space that this trial provides to participants seems to play a big role in the positive results.

Right now, recreational psychedelic use is illegal in Canada, with exceptions for research purposes like Farb’s trial. In addition to supporting future research based on microdoses of psilocybin, Dr. Farb and his colleagues hope to provide an experimental framework that makes psilocybin research less daunting to other researchers around the world.

“We are hoping to publish very transparent guidelines, not just about what happened in the trials but how we went about getting permission from [regulatory authorities like Health Canada]... and how other people can follow in [our] footsteps.”

Recent research shows promise for psychedelic use in treating certain mental illnesses. COURTESY OF INLIGHT SUMMER RESEARCH INSTITUTE

state.” She felt that her mind was fragmented, and yet maintained its integrity. Woolf searched for the glue of our fragile minds — what makes us whole — in her art. Through it, she found the author of our minds and its consciousness: the self.

At that moment in time, scientists embraced materialism — that is, the belief that every phenomenon can be reduced to physical processes — believing that the self was simply matter in the body that was yet to be uncovered. Woolf instead emphasized the profundity of the self, and a century later, the self has still evaded physical characterization by science. This seems only to confirm her original insights that the mind is fragmentary and yet mysteriously bound into being.

For that reason, Woolf’s writing might provide a revealing answer to understanding ourselves and why we have avoided an existence in which we are constantly falling apart. How does the self arise?

The act of attention

In her writing, Woolf documents consciousness as a process. She realized that the self continually emerges from the attention we give to the sensations we experience. We thoroughly interpret the

world, but we accentuate some sensations in the mind while ignoring others, and this intersection of sensory information and perspective creates a diverse array of interpretations. No experience is the same for two people — nuance is unavoidable in our attention to our surroundings.

Woolf describes this process of visual attention in her novel, To the Lighthouse, through the experiences of the story’s matriarch, Mrs. Ramsay. During a dinner scene, she becomes lost in thought, her mind finding a “still space that lies at the center of things,” and she becomes captivated by a bowl of fruit in the centre of the table, ignoring the conversation around her. As if her mind is “a light stealing under water,” the cause of these sensations has developed into consciousness: Mrs. Ramsay is paying attention.

The flow of thought in Mrs. Ramsay’s mind is borne from a few seconds of brain activity, as her gaze drifts over the bowl and settles on its specific components. We see how an unconscious urge becomes conscious, as she recalls staring at a pear without a clear reason.

This idea that we invent ourselves out of our unique sensations is not so far-fetched — Woolf’s insights have been confirmed by modern neuroscience. Attention is a crucial component of consciousness and, by some means, these separate moments are bound together by a fictional self.

Consider Woolf’s example of Mrs. Ramsay and a pear on a dinner table. The sensitivity of Mrs. Ramsay’s neurons was increased simply by paying attention to this stimulus; the cells seeing what would have otherwise been filtered out by her nervous system. Jonah Lehrer describes Woolf’s insights in his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Similar to a lighthouse shining light outward into the dark unknown, Lehrer describes how this attentiveness selectively“increases the firing rate of certain neurons,” which then bind together in what Lehrer de-

scribes as a “temporary coalition” that enters the stream of consciousness. In our choices of how we pay attention, the elusive ‘self’ can induce changes in neuronal firing, “as if a ghost were controlling a machine” — the machine being our minds.

The transformation of perception into consciousness would not be possible without an attentive self. In the absence of neuronal firing, the realities that neurons represent when they’re active and focusing our attention cease to exist. We only become aware of sensations after we’ve selected them for attention, just as Mrs. Ramsay didn’t understand why she was staring at the pear.

A problem with no solution

Many scientists have tried to understand the mind, but Woolf knew that any physical description would be insufficient; we don’t experience our neurons, and our consciousness seems more ambiguous than the sum of our cells. Thus, any reductionist psychologies — which reduce complex phenomena to their fundamental components — seem incomplete, because to define consciousness only by its parts would be to entirely overlook our singular realities.

In essence, our individuality holds an intimacy that science cannot unlock. But it often holds true that artists can describe what science cannot: experience overcomes experiment. Woolf viewed the self as fiction, not fact, and thought that to understand ourselves through fictional narratives would be as close to the truth as we would achieve.

Consciousness is not a place but a process with no end to its progression. To analyze it in search of absolute knowledge would be to ignore its ceaseless subjectivity. Woolf has shown that intangible things can still unveil truths about ourselves. We live in moments — emerging from chaos — to which we choose to give attention.

Virginia Woolf insights on the workings of the mind were ahead of her time, leaning into the mysterious origins of the self.

COURTESY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CC WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

ELVIA IP/THEVARSITY

Divination or reality: How human perception relies on predicting the future

The predictive processing theory attempts to illuminate human cognition and perception

Sahir Dhalla Varsity Contributor

How do you perceive the world around you? How do you see the shapes on the screen or page right now, and further recognize them as words when reading this article?

Initially, you might expect that perception occurs in the following steps: your sensory organs, like your eyes and ears, start by taking in some information about the world. The brain then uses that information to create your internal, cohesive image of the world — your conscious experience. This is what you perceive daily as you go through life, known as a bottom-up approach.

However, a particular theory of cognition known as predictive processing put forth by neuroscientist Karl Friston in 2010 postulates a top-down approach to perception, and the theory claims something that may seem quite counter-intuitive.

According to the predictive processing framework of perception and cognition, your perception of the world occurs more like this: the brain continuously generates internal models, or best guesses, about what the external world should look like at any given moment based on past experiences and stored knowledge.

It then compares these predictions with incoming sensory data. When there’s a mismatch between prediction and actual sensory input — a prediction error — the brain updates its models to reduce this error. In this way, what you perceive at any moment is not a direct representation of the outside world but rather the brain’s interpretation or hypothesis of that world, constantly refined by prediction errors.

This ongoing, dynamic process means that your perception is essentially a constructive act, shaped by both the external sensory inputs and the internal predictions of your brain, leading to a subjective experience of reality that is both unique and adaptable.

Predicting the future

The concept of a predictive brain, while relatively new in neuroscience, was anticipated a millennium ago by medieval mathematician

and physicist Ibn al Haytham. According to the 1985 translation of the Book of Optics of Ibn alHaytham, al-Haytham claimed that “many visible properties are perceived by judgment and inference.”

German physician Hermann von Helmholtz first formalized the ideas that led to the modern predictive processing brain theory in the 1860s, and argued that the brain is a hypothesis tester. According to this theory, the brain develops predictions about what the world may be like based on past information that we’ve accrued through our experience of the world — known as priors. The brain then tests these predictions against the incoming sensory information using unconscious perceptual inferential processes.

Neuroscientists model this process through a modified version of Bayes’ theorem, a mathematical formula for calculating conditional probabilities. In this model, the likelihood of a particular hypothesis given the sensory data we perceive is a product of two independent probabilities: the likelihood of the hypothesis occurring regardless of any sensory input, and the likelihood that this hypothesis can explain our sensory input and evidence.

For example, when crossing a street in an urban area you might hear a roaring engine and witness a blinding light. To figure out the most likely perception, your brain will compare the results of various hypotheses generated by your internal model such as (a) a car coming to a halt or (b) a massive lion with a headlamp chasing you down.

Whichever of these your brain predicts to be most likely is what you perceive.

However, neuroscientists are still unsure as to how our brains calculate such complex probabilities unconsciously and consistently. Our neurons clearly aren’t sitting with a blackboard, calculating each probability. There is some inherent unknown property about how neurons are organized and communicate, enabling them to make complex, accurate predictions.

A significant advantage of this predictive explanation of perception is that it can provide a reason for the specific organization and connections in the brain.

Take the visual cortex, for example. In this region, information flows through a series of processing levels, from basic feature detection — such as detecting edges and colours in the primary visual cortex — to integrating these features into more complex shapes and objects. According to predictive processing, each level of this hierarchy is involved in generating predictions and sending them down to lower levels in the hierarchy, while simultaneously receiving prediction errors from these lower levels when reality misaligns with predictions.

This two-way communication allows for the refinement of internal models of perception at every level, ensuring that the brain’s predictions become increasingly accurate, enabling a nuanced and detailed representation of the visual world.

When predictions go wrong

Despite the incredible power and efficiency the brain possesses, it makes quite a few mistakes.

To develop predictions, our brains rely on the likelihood of priors and the probability that a certain hypothesis can explain our sensory inputs. But because your brain needs to carry out these calculations consistently, for just about every new input and every goal-oriented action, the brain has to take some shortcuts: shortcuts that magicians and illusionists become experts at exploiting.

But these incorrect predictions have implications that lie far beyond falling for mere illusions and tricks. Understanding the role of the predictive mind and its neurobiological basis could be the key to understanding neurodivergent cognition and developmental disorders.

Schizophrenia and the hallucinations and delusions associated with the disorder provide a case where predictive processing goes wrong. The predictive model suggests that many of the disorder’s characteristic symptoms may occur due to the brain’s failure to appropriately weigh prediction errors. Instead of correcting the flawed predictions and feeling surprised, the damaged feedback loops in a schizophrenic brain may give inappropriate weight to an incorrect hypothesis, leading to a reality disconnected from the external world.

For instance, vivid hallucinations could be seen as the brain’s predictions running without sufficient checks from sensory inputs or prior beliefs, creating perceptions without corresponding external stimuli. And since these internal representations become codified when the brain uses them to adjust the weights assigned to other priors, it stands to reason that engaging with hallucinations will only strengthen them, something seen in patients suffering from schizophrenia. Delusions might then arise from the brain’s attempts to make sense of these faulty predictions, constructing elaborate and seemingly impossible explanations for the misperceived reality.

In the case of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) meanwhile, difficulties with predictive processing might manifest in a different but equally impactful manner, as proposed by Reshanne Reeder, Giovanni Sala, and Tessa van Leeuwen in a 2024 study. Where people with schizophrenia deal with under-inhibited predictions, people with ASD might rely on precise, detail-focused predictions at the expense of more generalized, contextual predictions. This could lead to sensory overload, as the brain struggles to filter out irrelevant sensory information, and difficulties with social interactions and communication, where predictive processing is crucial for interpreting subtle cues and intentions.

The intense focus on details might also explain the preference for predictable routines people with ASD tend to exhibit, as familiar environments and activities minimize the likelihood of unpredictable, overwhelming sensory input.

Understanding these conditions through the lens of predictive processing may help us gain insight into their underlying mechanisms and open up new avenues for interventions aimed at recalibrating the brain’s predictive models.

In the process of computationally modelling the mind, predictive processing has emerged as a transformative lens through which we understand cognition. By exploring how our brains anticipate and interpret the world around us, this theory might offer a key to unlocking just how humans experience the world.

How plastic alternatives work

Biodegradables, bioplastics, and recycled plastics explained

Philip Harker Science Correspondent

Whether we like it or not, plastic is all around us. The incredible twentieth century innovation of highly moldable, highly adaptable, and lightweight material transformed the world forever.

Today, we can find plastic everywhere — from food processing to medical devices, from electronic components to consumer goods packaging. And though plastic technology has no doubt benefited humanity, its direct impact on the land-based and aquatic environment is massive and growing.

Plastic is extremely inert and biounavailable. In other words, most plastics are unlikely to react with any other chemicals in the environment or to be broken down by plants, animals, or bacteria. Plastic trash that ends up in our landscapes and seas will take anywhere from a few decades to a few millennia to break down.

Coupled with the fact that plastic is largely produced from fossil fuel based compounds called petrochemicals, this creates a great environmental incentive to transition away from our current dependence on plastics.

But it’s not as simple as just banning all plastics everywhere. There are many fields where plastic is essential, perhaps irreplaceable — think technologies like air bags in cars or implanted medical devices. In many other applications, plastics aren’t strictly required but have become the expected standard: straws, disposable cutlery, and food packaging come to mind.

This poses innovators with a problem: phasing out traditional plastics in favour of alternative solutions. A situation like this is ripe for “greenwashing,” a term used for dressing up environmentally destructive acts to appear eco-friendly.

Consumers have a responsibility to develop scientific literacy to understand the language alterna-

tive plastics manufacturers use. This knowledge is valuable to inform our habits and to help scrutinize new products in the current plastic pollution crisis.

Biodegradable plastics

Plastic is extremely persistent. Even when plastic appears to break down in the environment, it is often just being ground up into tiny pieces — called microplastics — that hang around in soil, water, and inside our bodies. For the sake of health and the Earth, waste management would be much easier if plastic could degrade at a fast rate like other waste products.

“Biodegradable plastics” offer a potential solution. As the name implies, these kinds of plastics are designed to decompose after disposal like organic matter would naturally.

Biodegradable plastics still pose environmental trade-offs. Many such plastics are still made with the same petrochemicals of mass-market plastic. So, while biodegradation reduces the waste problem, they still cause an enormous carbon footprint as a result of extracting the resources necessary for production.

However, many other biodegradable plastics also fall into another category: bioplastics.

Bioplastics

For years, materials scientists have been working to make plastic out of a cheaper, more abundant, and less environmentally harmful material. At their core, all plastics are just polymers — a type of chemical that is a repeating chain of linked molecules. Polymers from petrochemicals ultimately come from living things — fossil fuels are just fossilized biomass, after all. Recent breakthroughs in manufacturing have capitalized on more available non-fossilized polymers from plants.

Many polymers currently being used to create bioplastics come from waste products,

Invisible matter matters

Theories of galaxy formation and dark matter

Ridhi Balani Science Correspondent

A galaxy is a huge collection of stars, dust, and gas held together by gravity and moving through space together. Our solar system, like many others, orbits around the center of a galaxy — in our case, the Milky Way.

So, how did this happen? Why do solar systems exist in these structures rather than in isolation? In other words, what forms galaxies?

Theories of galaxy formation

Astrophysicists are still researching galaxy formation to this day. Some theories posit that following the Big Bang — the theory that the universe started and expanded from a single intensely dense point — gravity pulled matter to create dense clumps that grouped together. The clumps that did not dissipate because other opposing forces grew larger, attracting more matter around them.

Eventually, high amounts of the clumped matter collapsed under their own gravity. These clumps formed within the first few hundred thousand years of the universe’s existence, developing into the first proto-galaxies that we see today.

A 1962 paper by astrophysicists O. J. Eggen, D. Lynden-Bell, and A. R. Sandage suggested that the mass of proto-galaxies was comparable to the mass of today’s galaxies. At this size, the clumps of matter collapse under their own gravity and become proto-galaxies, which later develop into mature galaxies. This is known as the top-down or Monolithic Collapse model.

However, in 1984, physicists J. R. Primack, G. Blumenthal, and S. M. Fabera proposed the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, which builds

especially food waste like starches and cellulose. Cellulose is a plant material made of chains of sugar molecules and is one of the most abundant polymers on Earth — the tough, indigestible parts of plants are largely cellulose-based. It can also be used to make bioplastics.

The promise of plastic mass-produced from what is essentially a waste product is exciting, but consumers should keep in mind that not all bioplastics are easily biodegradable.

Recycled plastics

Plastic is recyclable. It can be reclaimed from some forms of plastic goods and made into other forms — but some other forms of plastic, such as shopping bags and trash can liners, can never be recycled.

The only consideration with recycled plastics is that they are chemically no different from their conventional counterparts and can only be recycled a limited number of times. We consumers might see the word “recycled plastic” on a product and mentally equate it to a bioplastic or biodegradable plastic, but this is not the case.

The problem with ‘green plastic’

Industrial plastic is entirely non-natural. Humans were the first organisms to introduce plastic to the biosphere, and plastic will persist for thousands of years. Even with the introduction of organically-made plastics, plastics that will eventually degrade, and reusable products designed for lifetime use, none of these alternatives solve the core issue of the industry.

All of these solutions to the current plastic crisis are predicated on the fact that the industry must continue to grow and expand, that we must continue to produce more goods. Perhaps the best path forward isn’t “different kinds of plastic,” but rather “less plastic altogether.”

Of course many industries still have no suitable replacement for the material, but it’s worth considering that for most of our history we got along just fine without plastic straws or containers — disposable, biodegradable, recycled, or otherwise.

to form visible proto-galaxies. The model then continues with the bottom-up model of protogalaxy maturation through galactic mergers.

on a bottom-up model that opposes the topdown model. It instead states that proto-galaxies grew into mature galaxies through galactic mergers or the collision of two or more galaxies.

The Lambda Cold Dark Matter model adds cold — or slow-moving — dark matter to the equation of galaxy formation. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that does not interact with

Physicists prefer this model, and it is more supported by observational data, such as evidence of mergers that astronomers can observe by viewing distant galaxies in the process of merging, dwarf galaxies near larger galaxies that are at the beginning of merging, or even faint tails of gas associated with galaxies that are left-over indications of past mergers.

But if dark matter is invisible, how can physicists even study it to develop a model that includes it in galaxy formation?

light. It does, however, have gravitational effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters. It is through its gravitational influence, then, that astrophysicists measure dark matter and why they think dark matter exists.

The Lambda Cold Dark Matter model explains the initial clumping of matter after the Big Bang, arguing that the pronounced variations in dark matter density throughout the universe initially clumped together and collapsed under their own gravity, attracting visible matter

Dark matter

Dark matter accounts for around 85 per cent of the total matter in the universe or over five times more than visible matter.

Each galaxy has its own ‘halo’ of dark matter around it that has more mass than all the other matter in that galaxy put together. This dark matter halo influences the movement of that galaxy. Furthermore, the gravitational interactions of the halos of different galaxies contribute to driving the growth and structure of galaxies.

With the amount of plastic humans use, innovators continue to develop alternatives, ranging from recyclable plastics to bioplastics.

The existence of this halo of dark matter can be seen through an effect called gravitational lensing. Massive objects bend space-time, the fabric of the universe, and that warp also causes light to bend around sources of high mass. This causes distortion and magnification of light from objects behind and in the same line of sight as the mass, causing space-time bending.

Galaxies bend space-time and cause the distortion and magnification of light from other galaxies further back. Physicists use this level of distortion to calculate the amount of mass in a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies, as well as its location. Astrophysicists concluded that dark matter must exist to account for the mass required to cause these distortions.

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory obtained evidence for dark matter by studying a particular cluster of galaxies called the Bullet cluster.

A previous high-energy collision between two large galaxies formed the Bullet cluster around 3.8 billion light years away from Earth. Because dark matter does not directly interact with itself or with other matter like gas, it was not impacted in the collision, whereas other visible matter like gas was. This caused a separation between dark matter and visible matter in the cluster. Optical imaging of the cluster shows this separation of mass and how nearly all the matter in the cluster is dark matter. This separation of matter allows us to avoid conflating dark matter and visible matter – it allows us to understand that dark matter is a separate type of matter from visible matter.

So, galaxies and how they behave and form largely depend on dark matter interactions, and there is still a lot more to learn about them. Astrophysicists worldwide are still intensely researching questions like what dark matter is made of, what causes supermassive black holes in the middle of galaxies, and many more. In fact, the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at U of T is one of the research facilities studying these topics and the many questions they raise.

ARTHUR DENNYSON HAMDANI/THEVARSITY

MEDHA SURAJPAL/THEVARSITY

Sports

Behind the Blues swimming team that got gold at 2024 U SPORTS Championships

Diving into the past, present, and future success of the Varsity Blues swimming team

On March 9, after three days of swimming competitions in Montréal, the Varsity Blues swim team won both the men’s and women’s respective U SPORTS Championships. This was their third women’s championship victory in a row and 18th overall since their inception, and their first men’s win since 2016 and their 20th overall.

While every swimmer is now heading back to Toronto with a gold medal, there were several standout performers for the Blues in Montréal.

Masters student and swimmer Ainsley McMurray earned seven medals — four golds, one silver, and two bronze. Blues rookie Bill Dongfang won two gold medals — setting a U SPORTS record (2:00.85) in the 200-metre butterfly — and three silver medals.

Second-year swimmer Nina Mollin claimed three gold medals in individual events, one on each day, ending the competition with four golds and one bronze. Fellow sophomore Benjamin Loewen also shined, taking one gold, two silvers, and one bronze. Head coach Byron MacDonald also won the 2023–2024 U SPORTS Men’s Coach of the Year Award.

Overall, the conclusion of the U SPORTS Championship marks the end of another magnificent Varsity Blues swimming season. Earlier this year, on February 18, the Blues had equal provincial success, winning the Ontario University Athletics Championships at Brock University — the 20th consecutive title for the men and the 10th consecutive title for the women.

Yet, the Blues remain hungry for more medals and there is no reason to believe that they cannot accomplish that with their history of dominating their competition. But how can the past, present, and future success of the team be explained?

Good recruitment has been one of the keys to the Blues’ victories. “[You can] have the best coaching in the world, [but] if there’s no talent, the team is not going to succeed,” MacDonald said. According to MacDonald, two factors — U of T’s strong history of both academic and swimming success — explain why so many talented swimmers choose to compete with the Varsity Blues.

Student first, athlete second Academics are the first big factor to explain why swimmers join the Blues. “When you finish your swimming career, it’s accompanied [by] an amazing degree from [U of T],” explained McMurray.

Compared to athletes in sports like soccer or hockey, swimmers don’t have a professional league that they can compete in as professional athletes. As a result, many swimmers understand that competing at the university level might be their last opportunity, so they also want to receive a degree from an established institution. “Building those transferable skills that you can then translate into a successful career [is important],” Mahaylia Datars, a fourth-year swimmer, said.

The swimming program supports its studentathletes in all their endeavours. “One of the big things that I was told about U of T that really resonated with me was that you’re a student-athlete, [so] you’re a student first [and then] an athlete second,” McMurray said. It’s also something that the coaches emphasize at the start of each year.

While the team hosts 13 practices a week, the team isn’t required to attend all of them. In fact, unlike many universities in the United States, there isn’t a minimum number of practices a swimmer has to attend to maintain their place on the team. During exam season, the schedule becomes more lenient, allowing swimmers to miss practices if they have to study for exams or finish assignments.

“Swimming is a very demanding sport… but [the coaches] recognize how [academically tough] U of T is,” Loewen explained. Additionally, according to McMurray, the academic ambitions and goals that permeate throughout the team have also helped make them better swimmers and a better team.

A cycle of success

Ultimately, the swimmers still want to compete, so according to MacDonald they also look for a university with “a good swimming program.” With a combined total of 48 national titles and 104 provincial titles across both men’s and women’s championships, the Blues have a great history of success — the best across Canadian universities.

MacDonald has been a big part of that historical success. A former Olympian at the 1972 Olympic Games, MacDonald became the new

head coach of the Varsity Blues men’s swim team in 1978, and five years later, he began coaching the women’s team as well. 46 years later, MacDonald is still with the Varsity Blues. “Thank God, the government… decided to eliminate the mandatory retirement law, because otherwise, I would [be done],” MacDonald said with a laugh. “That would have been crushing simply because I absolutely love [coaching].”

In 1990, MacDonald was joined by Linda Kiefer as his associate head coach. A Varsity Blues alum, Kiefer has now worked with MacDonald for 34 years and is Canada’s highest-ranked women’s swimming coach. “Byron and Linda… have built [an] incredible legacy at U of T. They’re a partnership that’s unlike any other in Canada,” McMurray said.

The Blues swimming program has flourished with MacDonald and Kiefer at the helm and several current and former Varsity Blues swimmers have since competed with international teams, with Canadian Olympian Kylie Masse serving as the most recent example.

“[I] could see all these amazing swimmers that came out of the program like Kylie Masse… and you can see that this program is something that cultivates success,” Datars said. Masse’s success has been one reason why swimmers — like Datars and Loewen — have joined the Blues.

Regardless, as a coach, MacDonald aims to keep a close relationship with all his team members, prioritizing creating a more welcoming environment that is more encouraging and supportive. “Winning’s nice, [but] it’s not the be-all in the end all,” he stated simply. While the coaching team wants to help swimmers improve and get faster, the process matters most.

The Blues family

The support and culture within the Varsity Blues is also strong. “[It’s] a very diverse group of swimmers and people, which I love most… and we all get along well together,” Mollin explained. Datars compares the team to a “weird, dysfunctional family.”

The team does movie nights, potlucks, and plays spike ball together when the weather is warm. Taking a look at some of the reels on their Instagram page — like one where swimmers are asked to jump without bending their knees — reveals the banter and familiarity between all of the swimmers.

“One of the best parts of going to the pool is afterwards just getting to talk and chill in the change

room together,” Loewen added. “Especially when you’re younger, you can look up to the older guys on the team… you can lean on them for advice, which helps a lot.”

A trend that MacDonald has noticed over his long career in the swimming world, is that there is now a bigger circle of support for swimmers, especially as the training practices continue to evolve and get harder. Compared to team sports, where teammates compete with each other to start games or earn more minutes, in swimming everyone is on an equal playing field. According to Datars, that prevents the creation of a hierarchical structure, leading to less competition between the members and more support.

“It’s really easy to get wrapped up in the success and your entire personality being dictated by how well you do in a sport,” McMurray said when asked about the team’s culture. “So coming here and being on a team that will lift me up in every facet of my life has been one of the main reasons that I’ve been here for so long.”

What’s next?

For the future, the team has their eye on more success, but there will be hurdles along the way.

Specifically, there are several women’s swimmers, including McMurray and Datars, who will graduate and leave the team. “There will be new incoming women’s [swimmers] so that will be very fun,” Mollin said. “It will be a weird adjustment in training and [in the] environment but I believe we will make the best out of the situation.”

Between the swimmers staying on the team — like Mollin — and this year’s new recruits, MacDonald also thinks the team can still compete. Comparatively, the future of the men’s swimmers on the team is less troubling, with many of their core swimmers returning next season.

Yet, the season isn’t over for around 25 swimmers on the team. Their eyes are set on a more immediate goal — qualifying for the upcoming Paris Olympics, with the Canadian Olympic trials taking place in Montréal between May 13 and 15.

“We have some very good athletes on the swim team here… [and] we’re going to try to get them [to Paris],” MacDonald said.

It’s a big challenge, but the swimmers are up to it. And the entire swimming program, led by MacDonald and Kiefer, has proven capable of supporting them along the way.

Kunal Dadlani Sports Editor

The men’s and women’s swimming team were both winners for the first time since 2016. COURTESY OF JAYSON CHILDS CC VARSITY BLUES MEDIA

Jake Takeuchi Associate Sports Editor

Overtime heartbreak as Varsity Blues beaten in McCaw Cup final

Gritty team defence not enough to secure back-to-back championships

What happened?

In a high-energy building filled with raucous chanting from both home and away fans, the first period proved to be a cagey affair with minimal stoppages in play during the opening five minutes.

Darrell Adams: Creating a championship football program at U of T

New head coach aims to create a winning legacy with the Varsity Blues

Alaina Tsimicalis Varsity Contributor

On January 5, the Varsity Blues football program announced the appointment of it 27th head coach, Darrell Adams.

In what is currently a transformative period for the Blues, Adams brings a multitude of experience and a successful track record in team development and leadership. His proven history in rebuilding and bringing programs to playoff success looks like a positive step in the trajectory of the Varsity Blues football program.

From player to coach

Originally from Long Island, New York, Adams attended and played football at Villanova University, where he was a three-time captain and first-team All-Conference player. After graduating from Villanova, he briefly played for the New York Jets in 2006 before moving to Canada in 2007. He signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as a defensive tackle and played for three years.

Before his retirement in 2010, Adams reached out to the Ti-Cats in need of employment. Luckily enough, he had just obtained his strength and conditioning coaching certification. As a result, the Ti-Cats hired him as an assistant coach and player mentor — specifically, helping players make the transition from American football to Canadian football.

“After coaching the Tiger-Cats for two years and really seeing the nuances of the game, [and] learning how I could do more as a coach and as a player, I really fell in love with the coaching,” Adams said in an interview with The Varsity

From 2013–2016, Adams worked as the defensive line coach and strength and conditioning coordinator with the Carleton University Ravens, leading them to the playoffs after a 15-year hiatus.

Following his time at Carleton, Adams worked with the Waterloo Warriors in 2016, serving as their associate head coach, defensive coordinator, and recruiting coordinator. With his help, not

only did the team secure a playoff spot in four out of five seasons, but he also led them to their first playoff win in 18 years.

Coaching philosophy: Relationships come first

When discussing his coaching philosophy, Adams spoke about how crucial it is to build relationships. Reflecting on his high school and university playing career, Adams expresses how he met like-minded players and coaches who communicated well and trusted one another. As a result of these bonds, Adams saw each player become the best version of themselves.

“Student-athletes do not care [about] what you know until they know that you care,” Adams explained when asked about applying these lessons as a head coach. “[And] the only way they know that you care is if you’re accessible [to them].” With this mindset, Adams has an “opendoor policy” where he can get to know his players beyond the football field — understand what drives them, their morals, and what they need from him as a leader.

“I can’t ask my players to run through a wall for me if they don’t know I’ll run through a wall for them,” Adams exclaimed. He coaches his athletes based on mutual respect, love, and by truly counselling them in times of need.

A holistic approach to student-athlete recruitment

For recruitment, Adams does look for players who are qualified academically, athletically, and financially for U of T, but also stresses the importance of getting to know two other aspects of each potential recruit: their love for football and their background.

For Adams, having players on the team who have a true affinity for football — not just viewing it as a hobby — is crucial. Furthermore, a student-athlete who is committed to themselves on the field but also in the classroom is key, as they both go hand-in-hand. Additionally, he says getting to know his potential players personal

The Blues opened the scoring on the first shot of the game, as forward Juliette BlaisSavoie rifled the puck glove-side on a savvy stick-lift touch pass from linemate Emma Elders. Despite leading the game, momentum swung in the Warriors’ favour as the period progressed when Warriors forward Carly Orth answered with a snipe of their own at the 14-minute mark. Strong team defence saw the Blues hang on to the 1–1 scoreline going into the intermission.

The second period was defined by special teams with three and two penalties given out in quick succession to the Blues and Warriors, respectively. Particularly impressive was OUA all-star and Blues team captain Taylor Trussler, who continually put her body in the line of fire on the penalty kill. Blues defence Caroline Eagles continued a string of impressive contributions on both ends of the ice, as the team rallied to nullify an agonizingly long 101-second 5-on-3 penalty kill. The period ended with neither team showing any cracks in their airtight defence.

background and upbringing is important.

“Can you identify cover three? Can you identify what the smash concept is? I am going to teach the student-athlete all [these tactics],” Adams said. Compared to the personal details of his players, their football knowledge isn’t as important. “What I need to know is how am I going to help this kid become the best studentathlete possible. I cannot know that until I know where he comes from,” he added.

Creating a championship program

In meetings he conducted with all 83 players of the 2023 season, Adams asked each player what they needed and what they believed was missing within the team. From here, he identi fied crucial attributes for success in the team: adopting a championship mentality by giving the team dedi cation, establishing cultural values of love, discipline and account ability, and lastly, the expecta tion of each of his players to conduct themselves as kind and respectful men.

“All of [these] el ements are things that I am bring ing to the table to get this pro gram — not just the team —

The intense war of attrition continued into the third period, with the Blues fighting to gain an advantage on every inch of the ice. The period’s highlight was provided by OUA allstar goaltender Erica Fryer, who topped her incredible game thus far with an incredible windmill save followed up by a herculean recovery for another save on a shot from a wide-open Warrior in the slot. Strong sticks and saves from both teams saw the intensity continue as the period wound down, with the Blues defensive core continually stepping up in crucial moments.

With the sudden death format of overtime, the crowd reached a fever pitch as the Blues played nervy end-to-end hockey. The teams exchanged breakaways before Waterloo capitalized on a turnover, just over eight minutes into the overtime period, to win their first McCaw Cup in program history.

What’s next?

The Varsity Blues still have a chance for silverware this season as they turn their attention to the U SPORTS championship in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, starting March 14. They will look to secure their first national title in 23 years as they face off against the best teams across Canada.

back to a championship level,” Adams said. He also stresses the importance of setting standards and accountability for his players. Adams strives for the team’s upperclassmen to be mentors for freshman players, establishing a mentality that is ingrained within each player in the program now and in the future.

Overall there are four major pillars for the program Adams wants to institute. Firstly, he wants everyone on the team to graduate. Secondly, he wants his team to create relationships and find hobbies outside of football. Thirdly, he wants everyone to apply the tools and lessons they learn in the program, outside football — a necessity to succeed. Lastly, Adams wants to bring championships to U of T. With Adams as head coach, the Blues football program will certainly undergo significant changes and growth in rebuilding and team development as they commit to success on and off the field.

Entering their fourth Ontario University Athletics (OUA) final in five years as title defenders, the

Varsity Blues women’s ice hockey team fell just short of securing their 20th McCaw Cup banner on March 9, losing 2–1 in a hard-fought battle against the Waterloo Warriors at the Varsity Arena.

Darrell Adams has been named as the head coach of the Varsity Blues football team. COURTESY OF TERRENCE TONG CC VARSITY BLUES MEDIA

The Blues couldn’t defend their McCaw Cup title. ZEYNEP POYANLI/THEVARSITY

Answers to Terrible pick-up lines

Answers to You had me at hello

The Varsity is very excited to announce it will be hosting its Spring Art Gallery on March 27 where student artists will have the opportunity to showcase and sell their art! It will be held in Student Commons Room 500, in the southwest corner of the UTSG campus.

We are currently open for submissions. We are accepting pieces in five categories and are looking for pieces that embody the concept of spring

— whatever that means to you. Our submission categories are illustration, photography, artisan, video/animation, and multimedia/fine arts.

If you are interested in joining us, submissions are open until March 15. To submit please email submissions to submissions@thevarsity.ca prior to the deadline, with a subject line of Holiday Art Gallery Submission: [category]. Everyone who is selected will hear back by March 20.